tastlesse things Compare the Prophets with the Son and even the promises of God 2 King 4.34 in them are faint and dilute things Elishaes staffe in the hand of Gehazi his servant would not recover the Shunamites dead child but when Elisha himselfe came and put his mouth upon the childs mouth that did In the mouth of Christs former servants there was a preparation but effect and consummation in his owne mouth In the Old Testament at first God kissed man and so breathed the breath of life and made him a man In the New Testament Christ kissed man he breathed the breath of everlasting life the holy Ghost into his Apostles and so made the man a blessed man Love is as strong as death Cant. 8.6 As in death there is a transmigration of the soule so in this spirituall love and this expressing of it by this kisse there is a transfusion of the soule too And as we find in Gellius a Poëm of Platoes where he sayes he knew one so extremely passionate Vt parùm affuit quin moreretur in osculo much more is it true in this heavenly union expressed in this kisse as S. Ambrose delivers it Per osculum adhaeret anima Deo et transfunditur spiritus osculantis In this kisse where Righteousnesse and peace have kissed each other In this person where the Divine and the humane nature have kissed each other Psal 85.10 In this Christian Church where Grace and Sacraments visible and invisible meanes of salvation have kissed each other Love is as strong as death my soule is united to my Saviour now in my life as in death and I am already made one spirit with him and whatsoever death can doe this kisse this union can doe that is give me a present an immediate possession of the kingdome of heaven And as the most mountainous parts of this kingdome are as well within the kingdome as a garden so in the midst of the calamities and incommodities of this life I am still in the kingdome of heaven In the Old Testament it was but a contract but per verba de futuro Sponsabo I will marry thee Hos 2.19 Mat. 9.15 but now that Christ is come the Bride-groome is with us for ever and the children of the Bride-chamber cannot mourne Now by this we are slid into our fourth and last branch of our first part Exhortatic The perswasion to come to this holy kisse though defamed by treachery though depraved by licentiousnesse since God invites us to it by so many good uses thereof in his Word It is an imputation laid upon Nero That Neque adveniens neqùe profisciscens That whether comming or going he never kissed any And Christ himselfe imputes it to Simon as a neglect of him That when he came into his house he did not kisse him Luke 7.45 August This then was in use first among kinsfolks In illa simplicitate antiquorum propinqui propinquos osculabantur In those innocent and harmlesse times persons neare in bloud did kisse one another And in that right and not onely as a stranger Iacob kissed Rachel Gen. 29.12 and told her how near of kin he was to her There is no person so neare of kin to thee as Christ Jesus Christ Jesus thy Father as he created thee and thy brother as he took thy nature Thy Father as he provided an inheritance for thee and thy brother as he divided this inheritance with thee and as he dyed to give thee possession of that inheritance He that is Nutritius thy Foster-father who hath nursed thee in his house in the Christian Church and thy Twin-brother so like thee as that his Father and thine in him shall not know you from one another but mingle your conditions so as that he shall find thy sins in him and his righteousnesse in thee Osculamini Filium Kisse this Son as thy kinsman This kisse was also in use as Symbolum subjectionis A recognition of soveraignty or power Pharaoh sayes to Ioseph Thou shalt be over my house Gen. 41.40 and according to thy word shall all my people be ruled there the Originall is All my people shall kisse thy face This is the Lord Paramount the Soveraigne Lord of all The Lord Jesus Iesus Phil. 2.10 Mat. 28.18 at whose name every knee must bow in heaven in earth and in hell Iesus into whose hands all power in heaven and in earth is given Iesus who hath opened a way to our Appeal from all powers upon earth Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soule Iesus Mat. 10.28 who is the Lion and the Lambe too powerfull upon others accessible unto thee Osculamini Filium Kisse this Son as he is thy Soveraigne It was in use likewise In discessu friends parting kissed Gen. 31.15 Act. 20.37 Laban rose up early in the morning and kissed his sons and his daughters and departed And at Pauls departing they fell on his neck and wept and kissed him When thou departest to thy worldly businesses to thy six dayes labour kisse him take leave of him and remember that all that while thou art gone upon his errand and though thou worke for thy family and for thy posterity yet thou workest in his vineyard and dost his worke They kissed too In reditu Esau ran to meet his brother and fell on his neck and kissed him Gen. 33.4 When thou returnest to his house after thy six dayes labour to celebrate his Sabbath kisse him there and be able to give him some good account from Sabbath to Sabbath from week to week of thy stewardship and thou wilt never be bankrupt They kissed in reconciliation David kissed Absalon 2 Sam. 14.33 If thou have not discharged thy stewardship well Restore to man who is damnified therein Confesse to God who hath suffered in that sin Reconcile thy selfe to him and kisse him in the Sacrament in the seale of Reconciliation They kissed in a religious reverence even of false gods I have sayes God 2 King 19 18. seaven thousand knees that have not bowed unto Baal and mouths that have not kissed him Let every one of us kisse the true God in keeping his knees from bowing to a false his lips from assenting his hands from subscribing to an Idolatrous worship And as they kissed In Symbolum concordiae Rom. 16.16 which was another use thereof Salute one another with a holy kisse upon which custome Iustin Martyr sayes Osculum ante Eucharistiam before the Communion the Congregation kissed to testifie their unity in faith in him to whom they were then Sacramentally to be united as well as Spiritually And Tertullian calls it Osculum signaculum Orationis Because they ended their publique Prayers with that seale of unity and concord Let every Congregation kisse him so at every meeting to seale to him a new band a new vow that they will never break in departing from any part of his
mony is issued that is his Church where his merits should be applied to the discharge of particular consciences Coloss 2.9 So that here is one fulnesse that in this person dwelleth all the fulnesse of the Godhead bodily Here is another fulnesse that this person fulfilled all righteousnesse and satisfied the Justice of God by his suffering Thren 1.12 non est dolor sicut there was no sorrow like unto his sorrow It was so full that it exceeded all others And then there is a third fulnesse the Church Eph. 1.23 which is his body the fulnesse of him that filleth all in all perfit God there is the fulnesse of his dignity perfit man there is the fulnesse of his passibility and a perfit Church there is the fulnesse of the distribution of his mercies and merits to us And this is omnis plenitudo all fulnesse which yet is farther extended in the next word Inhabitavit It pleased the Father that all fulnesse should dwell in him The Holy Ghost appeared in the Dove Inhabitavit Remigius but he did not dwell in it The Holy Ghost hath dwelt in holy men but not thus So as that ancient Bishop expresses it Habitavit in Salomone per sapientiam He dwelt in Salomon in the spirit of wisedome in Ioseph in the spirit of chastity in Moses in the spirit of meeknesse but in Christo in plenitudine in Christ in all fulnesse Now this fulnesse is not fully expressed in the Hypostaticall union of the two natures God and Man in the person of Christ For concerning the divine Nature here was not a dram of glory in this union This was a strange fulnesse for it was a fulnesse of emptinesse It was all Humiliation all exinanition all evacuation of himselfe by his obedience to the death of the Crosse But when it was done Ne evacuaretur Crux Christi 1 Cor. 1.17 as the Apostle speaks in another case lest the Crosse of Christ should be evacuated and made of none effect he came to make this fulnesse perfit by instituting and establishing a Church Esay 1. ult The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him saies the Prophet of Christ There is a fulnesse in generall for his qualification The Spirit of the Lord but what kinde of spirit It followes the spirit of wisedome and understanding the Spirit of Counsell and Power the Spirit of knowledge and of the feare of the Lord we see the spirit that must rest upon Christ is the Spirit in those beames in those functions in those operations 〈…〉 as conduce to government that is Wisedome and Counsell and Power So that this is Christs fulnesse that he is in a continuall administration of his Church in which he flowes over upon us his Ministers Joh. 1.16 for of his fulnesse have all we received and grace for grace that is power by his grace to derive grace upon the Congregation And so of his fulnesse all the Congregation receives too and receives in that full measure That they are filled with all the fulnesse of God Eph. 3.19 that is all the fulnesse that was in both his natures united in one person when the fulnesse of the Deity dwelt in him bodily all the merits of that person are derived upon us in his Word Sacraments in his Church which Church being to continue to the end it is most properly said habitavit in him in him as head of the Church all fulnesse all meanes of salvation dwell and are to be had permanently constantly infallibly Now how came Christ by all this fulnesse Complacuit this superlative fulnesse in himselfe this derivative fulnesse upon us That his merits should be able to build and furnish such a house to raise and rectifie such a Church acceptable to God in which all fulnesse should dwell to the worlds end It was onely because complacuit it pleased God for this personall name of the Father It pleased the Father is but added suppletorily by our Translators and is not in the Originall It pleased God to give him wherewithall to enable him so farre for this complacuit is as we say in the Schoole vox beneplaciti it expresses onely the good will and love of God without contemplation or foresight of any goodnesse in man Catharin nam hac posita plenitudine exorta sunt merita First we are to consider this fulnesse to have been in Christ and then from this fulnesse arose his merits we can consider no merit in Christ himselfe before whereby he should merit this fulnesse for this fulnesse was in him before he merited any thing and but for this fulnesse he had not so merited August Ille homo ut in unitatem filii Dei assumeretur unde meruit How did that man sayes St. Augustine speaking of Christ as of the son of man how did that man merit to be united in one person with the eternall Son of God Quid egit ante Quid credidit What had he done nay what had he beleeved Had he eyther faith or works before that union of both natures If then in Christ Jesus himselfe there were no praevisa merita That Gods fore-sight that he would use this fulnesse well did not work in God as a cause to give him this fulnesse but because hee had it of the free gift of God therefore he did use it well and meritoriously shall any of us be so frivolous in so important a matter as to think that God gave us our measure of grace or our measure of Sanctification because he fore-saw that we would heap up that measure and employ that talent profitably What canst thou imagine he could fore-see in thee A propensnesse a disposition to goodnesse when his grace should come Eyther there is no such propensnesse no such disposition in thee or if there be even that propensnesse and disposition to the good use of grace is grace it is an effect of former grace and his grace wrought before he saw any such propensnesse any such disposition Grace was first and his grace is his it is none of thine To end this point and this part non est discipulus supra magistrum The fulnesse of Christ himselfe was rooted in the complacuit It pleased the Father nothing else wrought in the nature of a Cause and therefore that measure of that fulnesse which is derived upon us from him our vocation our justification our sanctification are much more so we have them quia complacuit because it hath pleased him freely to give them God himselfe could see nothing in us till he of his owne goodnesse put it into us And so we have gone as farre as our first part carries us in those two branches and the fruits which we have gathered from thence First those generall doctrines that reason is not to be excluded in matters of religion and then that reason in all those cases is to be limited with the quia complacuit meerly in the good
incorruptionem sicut anima per fidem Because our bodie shall be regenerated by glory there as our soules are by faith here Therefore Tertul. cals the Resurrection Exemplum spei nostrae The Originall out of which we copy out our hope and Clavem sepulchrorū nostrorum How hard soever my grave be locked yet with that key with the application of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus it will open And they are all names which expresse this well which Tertullian gives Christ Vadem obsidem fidejussorem resurrectionis nostrae That he is the pledge the hostage the surety of our Resurrection So doth that also which is said in the Schoole Sicut Adam forma morientium Theoph. it a Christus forma resurgentium Without Adam there had beene no such thing as death without Christ no such thing as a Resurrection But ascendit ille effractor as the Prophet speaks The breaker is gone up before and they have passed through the gate that is assuredly Mich. 2.13 infallibly they shall passe But what needs all this heat all this animosity all this vehemence about the Resurrection May not man be happy enough in heaven though his body never come thither upon what will ye ground the Resurrection upon the Omnipotence of God Asylum haereticorum est Omnipotentia Dei which was well said and often repeated amongst the Ancients The Omnipotence of God hath alwaies been the Sanctuary of Heretiques that is alwaies their refuge in all their incredible doctrines God is able to do it can do it You confesse the Resurrection is a miracle And miracles are not to be multiplied nor imagined without necessity and what necessity of bodies in Heaven Beloved we make the ground and foundation of the Resurrection to be not meerely the Omnipotency of God for God will not doe all that he can doe but the ground is Omnipotens voluntas Dei revelata The Almighty will of God revealed by him to us And therefore Christ joynes both these together Erratis Ye erre Mat. 22.29 not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God that is not considering the power of God as it is revealed in the Scriptures for there is our foundation of this Doctrine we know out of the Omnipotence of God it may be and we know out of the Scriptures it must be That works upon our faith this upon our reason That it is man that must be saved man that must be damned and to constitute a man there must be a body as well as a soule Nay the Immortality of the soule will not so well lie in proofe without a resuming of the body For upon those words of the Apostle If there were no Resurrection we were the miserablest of all men the Schoole reasons reasonably Naturally the soule and body are united when they are separated by Death it is contrary to nature which nature still affects this union and consequently the soule is the lesse perfect for this separation and it is not likely that the perfect naturall state of the soule which is to be united to the body should last but three or foure score yeares and in most much lesse and the unperfect state that in the separation should last eternally for ever so that either the body must be beleeved to live againe or the soule beleeved to die Never therefore dispute against thine own happinesse never say God asks the heart that is the soule and therefore rewards the soule or punishes the soule and hath no respect to the body Nec auferamus cogitationes a collegio carnis saies Tertullian Never go about to separate the thoughts of the heart from the colledge from the fellowship of the body Siquidem in carne cum carne per carnem agitur quicquid ab anima agitur All that the soule does it does in and with and by the body And therefore saies he also Caro abluitur ut anima emaculetur The body is washed in baptisme but it is that the soule might be made cleane Caro ungitur ut anima consecretur In all unctions whether that which was then in use in Baptisme or that which was in use at our transmigration and passage out of this world the body was anointed that the soule might be consecrated Caro signatur saies Tertullian still ut anima muniatur The body is signed with the Crosse that the soule might be armed against tentations And againe Caro de Corpore Christi vescitur ut anima de Deo saginetur My body received the body of Christ that my soule might partake of his merits He extends it into many particulars and summes up all thus Non possunt in mercede separari quae opera conjungunt These two Body and Soule cannot be separated for ever which whilst they are together concurre in all that either of them doe Never thinke it presumption saies S. Gregory Sperare in te quod in se exhibuit Deus homo To hope for that in thy selfe which God admitted when he tooke thy nature upon him And God hath made it saies he more easie then so for thee to beleeve it because not onely Christ himselfe but such men as thou art did rise at the Resurrection of Christ And therefore when our bodies are dissolved and liquefied in the Sea putrified in the earth resolv'd to ashes in the fire macerated in the ayre Velut in vasa sua transfunditur caro nostra Tertul. make account that all the world is Gods cabinet and water and earth and fire and ayre are the proper boxes in which God laies up our bodies for the Resurrection Curiously to dispute against our owne Resurrection is seditiously to dispute against the dominion of Jesus who is not made Lord by the Resurrection if he have no subjects to follow him in the same way Wee beleeve him to be Lord therefore let us beleeve his and our Resurrection This blessed day Ille Iohn 2.19 Iohn 10.17 which we celebrate now he rose he rose so as none before did none after ever shall rise He rose others are but raised Destroy this Temple saies he and I will raise it I without imploying any other Architect I lay downe my life saies he the Jewes could not have killed him when he was alive If he were alive here now the Jesuits could not kill him here now except his being made Christ and Lord an anointed King have made him more open to them I have a power to lay it downe saies he and I have a power to take it up againe This day Nos Iohn 2.3 we celebrate his Resurrection this day let us celebrate our owne Our own not our one Resurrection for we need many Upon those words of our Saviour to Nicodemus Oportet denuo nasci speaking of the necessity of Baptisme Non solum denuo sed tertiò nasci oportet saies S. Bernard He must be born againe and againe againe by baptisme for Originall sin and for actuall sin againe by repentance Infoelix homo ego
things as are problematicall if thou love the peace of Sion be not too inquisitive to know nor too vehement when thou thinkest thou doest know it Come then to ask this question 3. Part. not problematically as it is contracted to them that shall live in the last dayes nor peremptorily of man as he is subject to originall sin but at large so as the question may include Christ himself and then to that Quis homo What man is he We answer directly here is the man that shall not see death And of him principally August and literally S. Augustine as we said before takes this question to be framed Vt quaeras dictum non ut desperes saith he this question is moved to move thee to seek out and to have thy recourse to that man which is the Lord of Life not to make thee despaire that there is no such man in whose self and in whom for all us there is Redemption from death For sayes he this question is an exception to that which was said before the text which is Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain Consider it better sayes the Holy Ghost here and it will not prove so Man is not made in vain at first though he do die now for Perditio tua ex te This death proceeds from man himself and Quare moriemini domus Israel Why will ye die ô house of Israel God made not death â—ap 1.13 neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living The Wise man sayes it and the true God sweares it As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a sinner God did not create man in vain then though he die not in vain for since he will needs die God receives glory even by his death in the execution of his justice not in vaine neither because though he be dead God hath provided him a Redeemer from death in his mercy Man is not created in vain at all nor all men so neare vanity as to die for here is one man God and Man Christ Jesus which liveth and shall not see death And conformable to S. Augustines purpose 〈◊〉 speakes S. Hierome too Scio quòd nullus homo carneus evadet sed novi Deum sub velamento carnis latentem I know there is no man but shall die but I know where there is a God clothed in mans flesh and that person cannot die But did not Christ die then Shall we joyne with any of those Heretiques which brought Christ upon the stage to play a part and say he was born or lived or dyed In phantasmate In apparance only and representation God forbid so all men were created in vain indeed if we had not a regeneration in his true death Where is the contract between him and his Father that Oportuit pati All this Christ ought to suffer and so enter into glory Is that contract void and of none effect Must he not die Where is the ratification of that contract in all the Prophets 〈◊〉 53.4.9 Where is Esays Verè languores nostros tulit Surely he hath born our sorrows and he made his grave with the wicked in his death Is the ratification of the Prophets cancelled Shall he not must he not die Where is the consummation and the testification of all this Where is the Gospell Consummatum est And he bowed his head and gave up the ghost Is that fabulous Did he not die How stands the validity of that contract Christ must die the dignity of those Prophecies Christ will die the truth of the Gospell Christ did die with this answer to this question Here is a man that liveth and shall not see death Very well For though Christ Jesus did truly die so as was contracted so as was prophecied so as was related yet hee did not die so as was intended in this question so as other naturall men do die For first Christ dyed because he would dye other men admitted to the dignity of Martyrdome are willing to dye but they dye by the torments of the Executioners they cannot bid their soules goe out and say now I will dye And this was Christs case 〈◊〉 10.15 It was not only I lay down my life for my sheep but he sayes also No man can take away my soule And I have power to lay it down And De facto he did lay it down he did dye before the torments could have extorted his soule from him Many crucified men lived many dayes upon the Crosse The thieves were alive long after Christ was dead and therefore Pilate wondred that he was already dead His soule did not leave his body by force 〈…〉 but because he would and when he would and how he would Thus far then first this is an answer to this question Quis homo Christ did not die naturally nor violently as all others doe but only voluntarily Again the penalty of death appertaining only to them who were derived from Adam by carnall and sinfull generation Christ Jesus being conceived miraculously of a Virgin by the over-shadowing of the Holy Ghost was not subject to the Law of death and therefore in his person it is a true answer to this Quis homo Here is a man that shall not see death that is he need not see death he hath not incurred Gods displeasure he is not involved in a general rebellion and therfore is not involved in the generall mortality not included in the generall penalty He needed not have dyed by the rigour of any Law all we must he could not dye by the malice or force of any Executioner all we must at least by natures generall Executioners Age and Sicknesse And then when out of his own pleasure and to advance our salvation he would dye yet he dyed so as that though there were a dis-dis-union of body and soule which is truly death yet there remained a Nobler and faster union then that of body and soule the Hypostaticall Union of the God-head not onely to his soule but to his body too so that even in his death both parts were still not onely inhabited by but united to the Godhead it selfe and in respect of that inseparable Union we may answer to this question Quis homo Here is a man that shall not see death that is he shall see no separation of that which is incomparably and incomprehensibly a better soul then his soule the God-head shall not be separated from his body But that which is indeed the most direct and literall answer to this question is That whereas the death in this Text is intended of such a death as hath Dominion over us and from which we have no power to raise our selves we may truly and fully answer to his Quis homo here is a man that shall never see death so but that he shall even in the jawes and teeth of death and in the bowels and wombe of the grave and in the sink and furnace of hell
by emission of beames from within And yet no man doubts whether he see or no. The holy Ghost shall tell you when he tels you the most that ever he shall tell you in that behalf That the Son is in the Father but he will not tell you how Our second portion in this Legacy of knowledge Incarnatio is That we are in Christ And this is the mystery of the Incarnation For since the devill had so surprized us all as to take mankinde all in one lump in a corner in Adams loynes and poysoned us all there in the fountain in the roote Christ to deliver us as intirely took all mankinde upon him and so took every one of us and the nature and the infirmities and the sins and the punishment of every singular man So that the same pretence which the devill hath against every one of us you are mine for you sinned in Adam we have also for our discharge we are delivered for we paid our debt in Christ Jesus In all his tentations send him to look upon the Records of that processe of Christs passion and he shall finde there the names of all the faithfull recorded That such a day that day when Christ dyed I and you and all that shall be saved suffered dyed and were crucified and in Christ Jesus satisfied God the Father for those infinite sins which we had committed And now Second death which is damnation hath no more title to any of the true members of his mysticall body then corruption upon naturall or violent death could have upon the members of his naturall body The assurance of this grows from the third part of this knowledge Redemptio That Christ is in us for that is such a knowledge of Christs generall Redemption of mankinde as that it is also an application of it to us in particular For for his Incarnation by which we are in him Cyril that may have given a dignity to our humane nature But Quae beneficiorum magnitudo fuisset erganos si hominem solummodo quem assumpserat salvaret What great benefit how ever the dignity had been great to all mankinde had mankinde had if Christ had saved no more then that one person whom he assumed The largenesse and bounty of Christ is to give us of his best treasure knowledge and to give us most at last To know Christ in me For to know that he is in his Father this may serve me to convince another that denies the Trinity To know that we are in Christ so as that he took our nature this may shew me an honour done to us more then the Angels But what gets a lame wretch at the poole how soveraign soever the water be if no body put him in What gets a naked beggar by knowing that a dead man hath left much to pious uses if the Executors take no knowledge of him What get I by my knowledge of Christ in the Father and of us in Christ so if I finde not Christ in me How then is Christ in us Here the question De modo How it is is lawfull for he hath revealed it to us It is by our obedience to his inspiration and by our reverent use of those visible meanes which he hath ordained in his Church his Word and Sacraments As our flesh is in him by his participation thereof so his flesh is in us by our communication thereof And so is his divinity in us by making us partakers of his divine nature and by making us one spirit with himself which he doth at this Pentecost that is whensoever the holy Ghost visits us with his effectuall grace for this is an union in which Christ in his purpose hath married himself to our souls inseparably and Sine solutione vinculi Without any intention of divorce on his part But if we will separate him à mensa toro If either we take the bed of licentiousnesse or the board of voluptuousnesse or if when we eat or drink or sleep or wake we do not all to the glory of God if we separate he will divorce If then we be thus come to this knowledge let us make Ex scientia conscientiam Enlarge science into conscience for Conscientia est Syllogismus practicus Conscience is a Syllogisme that comes to a conclusion Then only hath a man true knowledge when he can conclude in his own conscience that his practise and conversation hath expressed it Who will beleeve that we know there is a ditch and know the danger of falling into it and drowning in it if he see us run headlong towards it and fall into it and continue in it Who can beleeve that he that separates himself from Christ by continuing in his sin hath any knowledge or sense or evidence or testimony of Christs being in him As Christ proceeds by enlarging thy knowledge and making thee wiser and wiser so enlarge thy testimony of it by growing better and better and let him that is holy bee more holy If thou have passed over the first heats of the day the wantonnesses of youth and the second heat the fire of ambition if these be quenched in thee by preventing venting grace or by repenting grace be more and more holy for thine age will meet another sin of covetousnesse or of indevotion that needs as much resistance God staid not in any lesse degree of knowledge towards thee then in bringing himselfe to thee Doe not thou stay by the way neither not in the consideration of God alone for that Coeli enarrant all creatures declare it stay not at the Trinity Every comming to Church nay thy first being brought to Church at thy Baptisme is and was a profession of that stay not at the Incarnation That the Devill knowes and testifies But come to know that Christ is in thee and expresse that knowledge in a sanctified life For though he be in us all in the work of his Redemption so as that he hath poured out balme enough in his blood to spread over all mankinde yet onely he can enjoy the chearfulnesse of this unction and the inseparablenesse of this union who as S. Augustine pursues this contemplation Habet in memoria servat in vita who alwayes remembers that he stands in the presence of Christ and behaves himselfe worthy of that glorious presence Qui habet in Sermonibus servat in operibus That hath Christ alwaies at his tongues end and alwaies at his fingers ends that loves to discourse of him and to act his discourses Que habet audiendo servat faciendo That heares Gods will here in his house and does his will at home in his owne house Qui habet faciendo servat perseverando who having done well from the beginning persevers in well doing to the end he and he onely shall finde Christ in him SERMON XXXI Preached at S. Pauls upon Whitsunday 1629. GEN. 1.2 And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters THe
the annointing Oyle and powre it upon his head The Mitre as you may see there was upon his head then but then there was a Crowne upon the Mitre There is a power above the Priest the regall power not above the function of the Priest but above the person of the Priest 1 Sam. 10.1 24. But Unction was the Consecration of Kings too Samuel saluted Saul with a kisse and all the people shouted and sayd God save the King but Is it not sayes Samuel because the Lord hath annointed thee to be captaine over his inheritance Kings were above Priests and in extraordinary cases God raysed Prophets above Kings for there is no ordinary power above them But Unction was the Consecration of these Prophets too Elisha was annointed to be Prophet in Elias roome and such a Prophet as should have use of the Sword 1 Reg. 19.16 17. Him that scapes the Sword of Hazael Hazael was King of Syria shall the Sword of Iehu slay and him that scapes the Sword of Iehu Iehu was King of Israel shall the Sword of Elisha slay In all these in Priests who were above the people in Kings who in matter of Government were above the Priests in Prophets who in those limited cases expressed by God and for that time wherein God gave them that extraordinary employment were above Kings The Unction imprinted their Consecration they were all Christs and in them all thereby was that Nuncupatio potestatis which Lactantius mentions Unction Annointing was an addition and title of honour Psal 109. Psal 2.6 Deut. 18. Much more in our Christ who alone was all three A Priest after the Order of Melchizedek A King set upon the holy hill of Sion And a Prophet The Lord thy God will rayse up a Prophet unto him shall yee harken And besides all this threefold Unction Humanitas uncta Divinitate He had all the unctions that all the other had and this which none other had In him the Humanity was Consecrated anointed with the Divinity it selfe So then Nazian Cyrill Psal 95.7 unio unctio The hypostaticall union of the Godhead to the humane nature is his Conception made him Christ for oleo laetitia perfusus in unione Then in that union of the two natures did God annoint him with the oyle of gladnes above his fellows There was an addition something gained something to be glad of and to him as he was God The Lord so nothing could be added If he were glad above his fellows it was in that respect wherein he had fellows and as God as The Lord he had none so that still as he was made Man he became this Christ In which his being made Man if we should not consider the last and principall purpose which was to redeem man if we leave out his part yet it were object inough for our wonder and subject inough for our praise and thankesgiving to consider the dignity that the nature of man received in that union wherin this Lord was thus made this Christ for the Godhead did not swallow up the manhood but man that nature remained still The greater kingdom did not swallow the lesse but the lesse had that great addition which it had not before and retained the dignities and priviledges which it had before too Damasc Christus est nomen personae non naturae The name of Christ denotes one person but not one nature neither is Christ so composed of those two natures as a man is composed of Elements for man is thereby made a third thing and is not now any of those Elements you cannot call mans body fire or ayre or earth or water though all foure be in his composition But Christ is so made of God and Man as that he is Man still for all the glory of the Deity and God still for all the infirmity of the manhood Idem Divinum miraculis lucet humanum contumeliis afficitur In this one Christ both appear The Godhead bursts out as the Sun out of a cloud and shines forth gloriously in miracles even the raysing of the dead and the humane nature is submitted to contempt and to torment even to the admitting of death in his own bosome sed tamen ipsius sunt tum miraculae Idem tum supplicia but still both he that rayses the dead and he that dyes himself is one Christ his is the glory of the Miracles and the contempt and torment is his too This is that mysterious person who is singularis and yet not individuus singularis There never was never shall be any such but we cannot call him Individuall Idem as every other particular man is because Christitatis non est Genus there is no genus nor species of Christs it is not a name which so as the name belongs to our Christ that is by being annointed with the divine nature can be communicated to any other as the name of Man may to every Individuall Man Christ is not that Spectrum that Damascene speaks of nor that Electrum that Tertullian speakes of not Spectrum so as that the two natures should but imaginarily be united and only to amaze and astonish us that we could not tell what to call it what to make of it a spectre an apparition a phantasma for he was a Reall person Neither was he Tertullians Electrum a third metall made of two other metals but a person so made of God and Man as that in that person God and Man are in their natures still distinguished He is Germen Davidis Iere. 23.5 Isa 4.2 in one Prophet The branch the Off-spring of David And he is Germen Iehovae The Branch the Off-spring of God of the Lord in another When this Germen Davidis the Sonne of Man would do miracles then he was Germen Iehovae he reflected to that stock into which the Humanity was engrafted to his Godhead And when this Germen Iehovae the Son of God would indure humane miseries he reflected to that stock to that humanity in which he had invested and incorporated himself This person 1 Cor. 15.3 Tertul. this Christ dyed for our sins says S. Paul but says he He dyed according to the Scriptures Non sine onere pronunciat Christum mortuum The Apostle thought it a hard a heavy an incredible thing to say that this person this Christ this Man and God was dead And therefore Vt duritiam molliret scandalum auditoris everteret That he might mollifie the hardnes of that saying and defend the hearer from being scandalized with that saying Adjecit secundùm scripturas He adds this Christ is dead according to the Scriptures If the Scriptures had not told us that Christ should die and told us againe that Christ did die it were hard to conceive how this person in whom the Godhead dwelt bodily should be submitted to death But therein principally is he Christus as he was capable of dying As he was Verbum naturale and innatum
had need be so for he found our measure full of sin towards God and Gods measure full of anger towards us for our parts as when a River swels at first it will finde out all the channels or lower parts of the bank and enter there but after a while it covers and overflowes the whole field and all is water without distinction so though we be naturally channels of concupiscencies for there sin begins and as water runs naturally in the veines and bowels of the earth Gen. 6.5 so run concupiscencies naturally in our bowels yet when every imagination of the thoughts of our heart is onely evill continually Then as it did there it induces a flood a deluge our concupiscence swells above all channels and actually overflowes all It hath found an issue at the eare we delight in the defamation of others and an issue at the eye Psal 50.18 Psal 12.4 If we see a thiefe we run with him we concurre in the plots of supplanting and destroying other men It hath found an issue in the tongue Our lips are our owne who is Lord over us We speak freely seditious speeches against superiours obscene and scurrile speeches against one another prophane and blasphemous speeches against God himselfe are growne to be good jests and marks of wit and arguments of spirit It findes an issue at our hands they give way to oppression by giving bribes and an issue at our feet They are swift to shed bloud and so by custome sin overflowes all Omnia pontus all our wayes are sea all our works are sin This is our fulnesse originall sin filled us actuall sin presses down the measure and habituall sins heap it up And then Gods measure of anger was full too from the beginning he was a jealous God and that should have made us carefull of our behaviour that a jealous eye watched over us But because wee see in the world that jealous persons are oftnest deceived because that distemper disorders them so as that they see nothing clearely and it puts the greater desire in the other to deceive because it is some kinde of Victory and Triumph to deceive a jealous and watchfull person therefore we have hoped to goe beyond God too and his jealousie But he is jealous of his honour jealous of his jealousie he will not have his jealousie despised nor forgotten for therefore he visits upon the children to the third and fourth generation when therefore the spirit of jealousie was come upon him Numb 5.14 and that he had prepared that water of bitternesse which was to rot our bowels that is when God had bent all his bowes drawne forth and whetted all his swords when he was justly provoked to execute all the Judgements denounced in all the Prophets upon all mankinde when mans measure was full of sin and Gods measure full of wrath then was the fulnesse of time and yet then Complacuit It pleased the Father that there should be another fulnesse to overflow all these in Christ Jesus But what fulnesse is that Omnis plenitudo all fulnesse And this was onely in Christ Omnis plenitudo 2 Reg. 2.9 Acts 6.5 Acts 9.36 Elias had a great portion of the spirit but but a portion Elizaeus sees that that portion will not serve him and therefore he asks a double portion of that spirit but still but portions Stephen is full of faith a blessed fulnesse where there is no corner for Infidelity nor for doubt for scruple nor irresolution Dorcas is full of good works a fulnesse above faith for there must be faith before there can be good works so that they are above faith as the tree is above the roote and as the fruit is above the tree The Virgin Mary is full of Grace and Grace is a fulnesse above both above faith and works too for that is the meanes to preserve both That we fall not from our faith Eccles 10.1 and that dead flyes corrupt not our ointment that worldly mixtures doe not vitiate our best works and the memory of past sins dead sins doe not beget new sins in us is the operation of Grace The seaven Deacons were full of the Holy Ghost and of Wisedome Acts 6.3 full of Religion towards God and full of such wisedome as might advance it towards men full of zeale and full of knowledge full of truth and full of discretion too And these were plenitudines fulnesses but they were not all Omnis plenitudo all fulnesse I shall bee as full as St. Paul in heaven I shall have as full a vessell but not so full a Cellar I shall be as full but I shall not have so much to fill Christ onely hath an infinite content and capacity an infinite roome and receipt and then an infinite fulnesse omnem capacitatem and omnem plenitudinem He would receive as much as could be infused and there was as much infused as he could receive But what shall we say Deus adimplendus was Christ God before and are these accessory supplementary additionall fulnesses to be put to him A fulnesse to be added to God To make him a competent person to redeeme man something was to be added to Christ though he were God wherein we see to our inexpressible confusion of face and consternation of spirit the incomprehensiblenesse of mans sin that even to God himselfe there was required something else then God before we could be redeemed there was a fulnesse to be added to God for this work to make it omnem plenitudinem for Christ was God before there was that fulnesse but God was not Christ before there lacked that fulnesse Not disputing therefore what other wayes God might have taken for our redemption but giving him all possible thanks for that way which his goodnesse hath chosen by the way of satisfying his justice for howsoever I would be glad to be discharged of my debts any way yet certainly I should think my selfe more beholden to that man who would be content to pay my debt for me then to him that should entreat my creditor to forgive me my debt for this work to make Christ able to pay this debt there was something to be added to him First he must pay it in such money as was lent in the nature and flesh of man for man had sinned and man must pay And then it was lent in such money as was coyned even with the Image of God man was made according to his Image That Image being defaced in a new Mint in the wombe of the Blessed Virgin there was new money coyned The Image of the invisible God the second person in the Trinity was imprinted into the humane nature And then that there might bee omnis plenitudo all fulnesse as God for the paiment of this debt sent downe the Bullion and the stamp that is God to be conceived in man and as he provided the Mint the womb of the Blessed Virgin so hath he provided an Exchequer where this
much much is due to her and this amongst the rest That she had so cleare notions above all others what kind of person her Son was that as Adam gave names according to natures so the Prophet here leaves it to her to name her Son according to his office She shall call his name Immanuel Wee told you at first Immanuel that both Ioseph and Mary were told by the Angel that his name was to be Jesus and we told you also that others besides him had beene called by that name of Jesus but as though others were called Jesus for Iosuah is called so Heb. 4.8 If Iesus had given them rest that is If Iosuah had c. And the son of Iosedech is called so throughout the Prophet Aggai yet there is observed a difference in the pointing and founding of those names from this our Jesus so though other women were called Mary as well as the blessed Virgin yet the Euangelists evermore make a difference betweene her name and the other Maries for Her they call Mariam and the rest Maria. Now this Jesus in this person is a reall an actuall Saviour he that hath already really and actually accomplished our salvation But the blessed Virgin had a clearer illustration then all that for she onely knew or she knew best the capacity in which he could be a Saviour that is as he is Immanuel God with us for she and she onely knew that he was the Sonne of God and not of naturall generation by man How much is enwrapped in this name Immanuel and how little time to unfold it I am afraid none at all A minute will serve to repeate that which S. Bernard saies and a day a life will not serve to comprehend it for to comprehend is not to know a thing as far as I can know it but to know it as far as that thing can be knowne and so onely God can comprehend God Immanuel est verbuminfans saies the Father He is the ancient of daies and yet in minority he is the Word it selfe and yet speechlesse he that is All that all the Prophets spoke of cannot speake He addes more He is Puer sapiens but a child and yet wiser then the elders wiser in the Cradle then they in the Chaire Hee is more Deus lactens God at whose breasts all creatures suck sucking at his Mothers breast and such a Mother as is a maid Immanuel is God with us it is not we with God God seeks us comes to us before wee to him And it is God with us in that notion in that termination El which is Deus fortis The powerfull God not onely iâ— infirmity as when hee died in our nature but as he is Deus fortis able and ready to assist and deliver us in all encumbrances so he is with us And with us usque ad consummationem till the end of the world in his Word and in the Sacraments for though I may not say as some have said That by the word of Consecration Cornelius in the administration of the Sacrament Christ is so infallibly produced as that if Christ had never been incarnate before yet at the pronouncing of those words of consecration he must necessarily be incarnate then yet I may say that God is as effectually present with every worthy receiver as that hee is not more effectually present with the Saints in Heaven And this is that which is intimated in that word which we seposed at first Ecce for the last of all Ecce Behold Behold a Virgin shall conceive c. God does not furnish a roome and leave it darke he sets up lights in it his first care was that his benefits should be seene he made light first and then creatures to be seene by that light He sheds himselfe from my mouth upon the whole auditory here he powres himselfe from my hand to all the Communicants at the table I can say to you all here The grace of our Lord Iesus Christ be with you and remaine with you all I can say to them all there The Body of our Lord Iesus Christ which was given for you preserve you to everlasting life I can bring it so neare but onely the worthy hearer and the worthy receiver can call this Lord this Jesus this Christ Immanuel God with us onely that Virgin soule devirginated in the blood of Adam but restored in the blood of the Lambe hath this Ecce this testimony this assurance that God is with him they that have this Ecce this testimony in a rectified conscience are Godfathers to this child Jesus and may call him Immanuel God with us for as no man can deceive God so God can deceive no man God cannot live in the darke himselfe neither can he leave those who are his in the darke If he be with thee he will make thee see that he is with thee and never goe out of thy sight till he have brought thee where thou canst never goe out of his SERMON III. Preached upon Christmas day at S. Pauls 1625. GALAT. 4.4 5. But when the fulnesse of time was come God sent forth his Son made of a woman made under the Law to redeem them that were under the Law that we might receive the adoption of Sonnes WEE are met here to celebrate the generation of Christ Jesus Esay 53.8 but Generationem ejus quis enarrabit sayes the Prophet who shall declare his generation his age For for his essentiall generation be which he is the Son of God the Angels who are almost 6000. yeares elder then we are no nearer to that generation of his then if they had been made but yesterday Eternity hath no such distinctions no limits no periods no seasons no moneths no yeares no dayes Methusalem who was so long lived was no elder in respect of eternity then Davids son by Berseba that dyed the first week The first Fiat in the Creation of Adam and the last note of the blowing of the Trumpets to judgement though there be between these as it is ordinarily received 2000. yeares of nature between the Creation and the giving of the Law by Moses and 2000. yeares of the Law between that and the comming of Christ and 2000. yeares of Grace and Gospell between Christ first and his second comming yet this Creation and this Judgement are not a minute asunder in respect of eternity which hath no minutes Whence then arises all our vexation and labour all our anxieties and anguishes all our suits and pleadings for long leases for many lives for many yeares purchase in this world when if we be in our way to the eternall King of the eternall kingdome Christ Jesus all we are not yet all the world shall never be a minute old Generationem ejus quis enarrabit what tongue can declare what heart can conceive his generation which was so long before any heart or tongue was made But we come not now to consider that eternall generation
Gods first is not truly his Kings nor his own And then God does not sell him back againe to his parents at a racked at an improved price He sels a Lord or a King back againe to the world as cheap as a Yeoman he takes one and the same price for all God made all Mankinde of one blood and with one blood the blood of his Son he bought all Mankinde again At one price and upon the same conditions he hath delivered over all into this world Tantummodo crede and then fac hoc vives is the price of all Beleeve and live well More he asks not lesse he takes not for any man upon any pretence of any unconditioned decree At the time of this presentation there were to be offered a paire of Turtles or a paire of Pigeons Columbae The Sacrifice was indifferent Turtles that live solitarily and Pigeons that live sociably were all one to God God in Christ may be had in an active and sociable life denoted in the Pigeon and in the solitary and contemplative life denoted in the Turtle Let not Westminster despise the Church nor the Church the Exchange nor the Exchange and trade despise Armes God in Christ may be had in every lawfull calling And then the Pigeon was an embleme of fecundity and fruitfulnesse in marriage And the Turtle may be an Embleme of chaste widowhood for I thinke we finde no Bigamy in the Turtle But in these Sacrifices we finde no Embleme of a naturall or of a vowed barrennesse Nothing that countenances a vowed virginity to the dishonour or undervaluing of marriage Thus was our Saviour presented to God And in this especially was that fulfilled Agg. 2.9 The glory of the later house shall be greater then the glory of the former The later Temple exceeded the former in this that the Lord the God of this house was in the house bodily as one of the congregation And the little body of a sucking childe was a Chappell in that Temple infinitely more glorious then the Temple it selfe How was the joy of Noah at the return of the Dove into the Ark multiplied upon Simeon at the bringing of this Dove into the Temple At how cheape a price was Christ tumbled up and down in this world It does almost take off our pious scorn of the low price at which Iudas sold him to consider that his Father sold him to the world for nothing and then when he had him again by this new title of primogeniture and presentation he sold him to the world again if not for a Turtle or for a Pigeon yet at most for 5. shekels which at most is but 10. shillings And yet you have had him cheaper then that to day in the Sacrament whom hath Christ cost 5. shekels there As Christ was presented to God in the Temple so is hee presented to God in the Sacrament not sucking but bleeding And God gives him back again to thee And at what price upon this exchange Take his first born Christ Jesus and give him thine Who is thine Cor primogenitum sayes S. August The heart is the first part of the body that lives Give him that And then as it is in nature it shall be in grace too the last part that dyes for it shall never dye Joh 6.50 If a man eat the bread that commeth down from heaven he shall not die sayes Christ If a man in exchange of his heart receive Christ Jesus himselfe he can no more die then Christ Jesus himselfe can die That which Eschines said to Socrates admits a faire accommodation here He saw every body give Socrates some present and he said Because I have nothing else to give I will give thee my selfe Do so sayes Socrates and I will give thee back again to thy self better then when I received thee If thou have truly given thy selfe to him in the Sacrament God hath given thee thy selfe back so much mended as that thou hast received thy self and him too Thy selfe in a holy liberty to walk in the world in a calling and himself in giving a blessing upon all the works of thy calling and imprinting in thee a holy desire to do all those works to his glory And so having thus far made this profit of these circumstances in the action it self appliable to us as receivers of the Sacrament that as the childe Jesus was first presented to God in the Temple so for your children the children of your bodies and the children of your mindes and the children of your hands all your actions and intentions that you direct them first upon God and God in the Temple that is God manifested in the Church before you assigne them or determine them upon any other worldly courses and then that as God returned Christ as all other children at a certain price so God delivers man upon certain and upon the same conditions He comes not into the world nor he comes not to the Sacrament as to a Lottery where perchance he may draw Salvation but it is ten to one he misses but upon these few and easie conditions Beleeve Love he may be sure And then also that the Sacrifice Pigeons or Turtles was indifferent so it were offered to God for any honest calling is acceptable to God if Gods glory be intended in it That of marriage and of widowhood we have some typicall intimations in the Law in the Pigeon and in the Turtle but of a vow of virginity begun in the parents for their temporall ends and forced upon their children for those ends we have no shadow at all That Christ who was sold after by Iudas for a little money was sold in this presentation by his Father for lesse and yet for lesse then that to us this day in the Sacrament Having made these uses of these circumstances in the action it selfe we passeion now to the consideration of some such qualities and dispositions of this person Simeon as may be appliable to us in our having received the Sacrament First then we receive it though not literally and expresly in the story Senex yet by convenient implication there and by generall tradition from all that Simeon was now come to a great age a very old Man For so S. August argues That God raised up two witnesses for Christ in the Temple one of each Sex and both of much reverence for age Anna whose age is expressed and Simeon who is recommended in the same respect saies that Father for age too And Nicephorus and others with him make him very old as it is likely he was if he were as Pet Galatinus makes him the son of Rabbi Hillel Hillel the master of Gamaliel the master of S. Paul So then we accept him A person in a reverend age Even in nature Age was the center of reverence the channell the valley to which all reverence flowed temporall jurisdiction and spirituall jurisdiction the Magistracy and the Priesthood were appropriated to
omnibus if it were not for this Therefore for that carries our consideration over the whole Epistle This Epistle particularizing all duties which appertaine ad pietatem erga Deum to our religious worship of God ad charitatem erga proximum to charitable offices towards one another and ad sanctimoniam propriam to a sanctification and holinesse of life in our selves You have seen a list of your debts sayes the Apostle and that men deeply endebted are loath to doe you have seen what you owe God what you owe your selves and what you owe the world Reddite ergo omnibus debita be therefore behinde hand with none of these but render unto all their dues For our debts here are not restrained to those that are mentioned in the following part of this verse Tribute and Custome and Feare and Honour but it is the knot that ties up all and this Text in this verse is the same that begins the next verse also Reddite debita omnibus Render to all men their dues and Nemini quicquam debeas Owe nothing to any man is all one It is farther then many use to come to know what they owe since I have brought you so far sayes our Apostle Render to all men their dues It is one degree of thrift Divisio but for the most part it comes late to bring our debts into as few hands as we can Our debt here we cannot bring into fewer then these three to God to our Neighbour to our selves Consider our debts to God to be our sins and so we dare not come to a reckoning with him but we discharge our selves intirely upon our surety our Saviour Christ Jesus but yet of that debt we must pay an acknowledgement an interest as it were of praise for all that we have and of prayer for all that we would have and these are our debts to God Consider our debts to man and our creditors are persons above us and persons below us superiours and inferiours and to superiours who are the persons of whom this Text or this verse is most literally intended we are debtors first in matter of substance expressed here in those words Tribute and Custome and in matter of ceremony expressed here in those words Feare and Honour And to our inferiours we are debtors for counsell to direct them and for reliefe in compassion of their sufferings And then to come to our third sort of creditors to our selves we owe our selves some debts which are to be tendred at noone which are to be paid in our best strength and prosperity in the course of our lives and some which are to be tendred at night at our Sun-set at our deaths Reddite ergo omnibus Render therefore to all their dues For your first debt to God we bring you to Church this is no place to arrest in but yet the Spirit of God calls upon you for those debts praise him in his holy place and pray to him in his house which is the house of prayer For your debts of the second kinde to other men for those to superiours we send you to Court for those to inferiours we send you to Hospitals and prisons and though Courts and prisons be ill paying places yet pay you your debts of substance and of ceremony of tribute and of honour at Court and your debt of counsell and relief to those that need them in the darkest corners And for you third kinde of debts debts to your selves make eaven with your selves all the way in your lives lest your payment prove too heavy and you break and your hearts breake when you come to see that you cannot doe that upon your death-bed Reddite omnibus Render to all to God to man to your selves their dues To begin then with our beginning our debts to God 1 Part. Deo if we take that definition of of debts which arises out of the sound of the word Debere est de alio habere a man owes all that which he hath received of another we are debtors of all that we have and all that we are to God our well being and our very being is from him If we take that definition of debt Debere est Iure aliquo teneri ad dandum aut faciendum aliquid To owe is to be bound by some Law to give something or to doe something to some person The Law of Nature in our hearts the Law of the Creature in our eyes the Law of the Word in our eares provokes us to give and to doe something to that God who hath given and done all to us and more then giving or doing hath suffered so much for us What then is the paiment which we are to make First Glory Praise For in all his works Laus God still proposed to himselfe his Glory Those men who will needs be of Gods Cabinet Counsell and pronounce what God did first what was his first Decree and the first clause in that Decree those men who will needs know and then publish Gods secrets And by the way that which sometimes it may concerne us to know yet it may be a Libell to publish it Those mysteries which for the opposing and countermining stubborne and perverse Heresies it may concerne us in Councels and Synods and other fit places to argue and to cleare it may be an injury to God and against his Crowne and Dignity in breaking the peace of the Church to publish and divulge to every popular auditory and every itching eare and thereby perplexe the consciences of weak men or offer contentious men that which is their food and delight disputation These men I say though they differ in their order whether Gods Decree of Reprobation and Salvation were before his Decree of Creation for some place it before and some after yet all on all sides agree in this That Gods first purpose was his owne glory that was his first Decree by what degrees soever he proceeded to the execution of that Decree And so in the great and incomprehensible work of our Salvation when that was uttered in the mouth of Angels to the Shepheards that Ambassage began with a Gloria in excelsis There was Peace upon earth and there was good will towards men but first there was Glory to God on high And though to correct Hereticall and Schismaticall men amongst whom some would expresse themselves in Gods service in one manner and some in another to the endangering of Doctrine and to the confusion of Order and thereupon some would say in the Church-Service Gloria Patri in Filio per Spiritum Sanctum Glory be to the Father in the Son by the Holy Ghost And some Gloria Patri per Filium Glory be to the Father by the Son And some Gloria Patri Filio per Spiritum Sanctum Glory be to the Father and the Son by the Holy Ghost Though to prevent the danger of these divers formes of service the Church came to determine all in that one Glory
Judge too I shall not be tried by an arbitrary Court where it may be wisdome enough to follow a wise leader and think as he thinks I shall not be tried by a Jury that had rather I suffered then they fasted rather I lost my life then they lost a meale Nor tryed by Peeres where Honour shall be the Bible But I shall be tryed by the King himselfe then which no man can propose a Nobler tryall and that King shall be the King of Kings too for He V. 5. who in the first of the Revelation is called The faithfull Witnesse is in the same place called The Prince of the Kings of the earth and as he is there produced as a Witnesse so Acts 10 42. Iohn 5.22 He is ordained to be the Iudge of the quick and the dedd and so All Iudgement is committed to him He that is my Witnesse is my Judge and the same person is my Jesus my Saviour my Redeemer He that hath taken my nature He that hath given me his blood So that he is my Witnesse in his owne cause and my Judge but of his owne Title and will in me preserve himselfe He will not let that nature that he hath invested perish nor that treasure which he hath poured out for me his blood be ineffectuall My Witnesse is in Heaven my Judge is in Heaven my Redeemer is in Heaven and in them who are but One I have not onely a constant hope that I shall be there too but an evident assurance that I am there already in his Person Go then in this peace That you alwaies study to preserve this testification of the Spirit of God by outward evidences of Sanctification You are naturally composed of foure Elements and three of those foure are evident and unquestioned The fourth Element the element of Fire is a more litigious element more problematicall more disputable Every good man every true Christian in his Metaphysicks for in a regenerate man all is Metaphysicall supernaturall hath foure Elements also and three of those foure are declared in this text First a good Name the good opinion of good men for honest dealing in the world and religious discharge of duties towards God That there be no injustice in our hands Also that our prayer be pure A second Element is a good conscience in my selfe That either a holy warinesse before or a holy repentance after settle me so in God as that I care not though all the world knew all my faults And a third element is my Hope in God that my Witnesse which is in Heaven will testifie for me as a witnesse in my behalfe here or acquit me as a mercifull Judge hereafter Now there may be a fourth Element an Infallibility of finall perseverance grounded upon the eternall knowledge of God but this is as the Element of fire which may be but is not at least is not so discernable so demonstrable as the rest And therefore as men argue of the Element of fire that whereas the other elements produce creatures in such abundance The Earth such heards of Cattell the Waters such shoales of Fish the Aire such flocks of Birds it is no unreasonable thing to stop upon this consideration whether there should be an element of fire more spacious and comprehensive then all the rest and yet produce no Creatures so if thy pretended Element of Infallibility produce no creatures no good works no holy actions thou maist justly doubt there is no such element in thee In all doubts that arise in thee still it will be a good rule to choose that now which thou wouldst choose upon thy death-bed If a tentation to Beauty to Riches to Honour be proposed to thee upon such and such conditions consider whether thou wouldst accept that upon those conditions upon thy death-bed when thou must part with them in a few minutes So when thou doubtest in what thou shouldst place thy assurance in God thinke seriously whether thou shalt not have more comfort then upon thy death-bed in being able to say I have finished my course I have fought a good fight I have fulfilled the sufferings of Christ in my flesh I have cloathed him when he was naked and fed him when he was poore then in any other thing that thou maiest conceive God to have done for thee And doe all the way as thou wouldst do then prove thy element of fire by the creatures it produces prove thine election by thy sanctification for that is the right method and shall deliver thee over infallibly to everlasting glory at last Amen SERMON XIV Preached at VVhite-hall March 3. 1619. AMOS 5.18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord what have yee to doe with it the day of the Lord is darknesse and not light FOr the presenting of the woes and judgements of God denounced by the Prophets against Judah and Israel and the extending and applying them to others involved in the same sins as Judah and Israel were Solomon seemes to have given us somewhat a cleare direction Prov. 9.8 Reprove not a scorner lest he hate thee Rebuke a wise man and he will love thee But how if the wiseman and this scorner bee all in one man all one person If the wiseman of this world bee come to take S. Paul so literally at his word as to thinke scornefully that preaching is indeed but the foolishnesse of preaching and that as the Church is within the State so preaching is a part of State government flexible to the present occasions of time appliable to the present dispositions of men This fell upon this Prophet in this prophecie Amos 7.10 Amasias the Priest of Bethel informed the King that Amos medled with matters of State and that the Land was not able to beare his words and to Amos himselfe he saies Eate thy bread in someother place but prophecy here no more for this is the Kings Chappell Amos 23. and the Kings Court Amos replies I was no Prophet nor the son of a Prophet but in an other course and the Lord tooke me and said unto me Goe and Prophecie to my People Though we finde no Amasiah no mis-interpreting Priest here wee are farre from that because we are far from having a Ieroboam to our King as he had easie to give eare easie to give credit to false informations yet every man that comes with Gods Message hither brings a little Amasiah of his owne in his owne bosome a little wisperer in his owne heart that tels him This is the Kings Chappell and it is the Kings Court and these woes and judgements and the denouncers and proclaimers of them are not so acceptable here But we must have our owne Amos aswell as our Amasias this answer to this suggestion I was no Prophet and the Lord tooke me and bad me prophecy What shall I doe And besides since the woe in this Text is not S. Iohns wo his iterated his multiplied wo Vae vae
1 Thes 5.16 I may have leave to speake here hereafter more seasonably in a more Festivall time by my ordinary service This is the season of generall Compunction of generall Mortification and no man priviledged for Iesus wept In that Letter which Lentulus in said to have written to the Senate of Rome Divisiâ— in which he gives some Characters of Christ he saies That Christ was never seene to laugh but to weepe often Now in what number he limits his often or upon what testimony he grounds him number we know not We take knowledgethat he wept thrice Hee wept here when he mourned with them that mourned for Lazarus He wept againe when he drew neare to Jerusalem and looked upon that City And he wept a third time in his Passion There is but one Euangelist but this S. Iohn that tells us of these first teares the rest say nothing of them There is but one Euangelist S. Luke Luke 19.41 Hcb. 5.7 that tells us of his second teares the rest speake not of those There is no Euangelist but there is an Apostle that tells us of his third teares S. Paul saies That in the daies of his flesh be offered up prayers with strong cries and teares And those teares Expositors of all sides referre to his Passion though some to his Agony in the Garden some to his Passion on the Corsse and these in my opinion most fitly because those words of S. Paul belong to the declaration of the Priesthood and of the Sacrifice of Christ and for that function of his the Crosse was the Altar and therefore to the Crosse we fixe those third teares The first were Humane teares the second were Propheticall the third were Pontificall appertaining to the Sarifice The first were shed in a Condolency of a humane and naturall calamity fallen upon one family Lazarus was dead The second were shed in Contemplation of future calamitie upon a Nation Jerusalem was to be destroyed The third in Contemplation of sin and the everlasting punishments due to sin and to such sinners as would make no benefit of that Sacrifice which he offered in offering himselfe His friend was dead and then Jesus wept He justified naturail affectins and such offices of piety Jerusalem was tobe destroyed and then Jesus wept He commiserated publique and nationall calamities though a private person His very giving of himselfe for sin was to become to a great many ineffectuall and then Jsus wept He declared how indelible the naturall staine of sin is that not such sweat as hi such teares such blood as his could absolutely wash it out of mans nature The teares of the text are as a Spring a Well belonging to onehoushold the Sisters of Lazarus The teares over Jerusalem are as a River belonging to a whole Country The teares upon the Crosse are as the Sea belonging to all the world and though literally there fall no more into our text then the Spring yet because the Spring flowes into the River and the River into the Sea and that wheresoever we find that Jesus wept we find our Text for our Text is but that Iisus wept therefore by the leave and light of his blessed Spirit we shall looke upon those lovely those heavenly eye through this glasse of his owne teares in all these three lines as he wept here over Lazarus as he wept there over Jerusalem as he wept upon the Crosse over all us For so often Jesus wept Fitst then 1 Part. Humanitus Jesus wept Humâ—nitus he tooke a necessary occasion to shew that he was true Man He was now in hand with the greatest Miracle that ever he did the raising of Lazarus so long dead Could we but do so in our spirituall raising what a blessed harvest were that What a comfort to finde one man here to day raised from his spirituall death this day twelve-month Christ did it every yeare and every yeare he improved his Miracle Mat. 9.25 In the first yeare he raised the Governours Daughter se was newly dead and as yetin the house In the beginning of sin and whilst in the house in the house of God in the Church in a glad obedience to Gods Ordinances and Institutions there for the reparation and resuscitation of dead soules the worke is not so hard In his second yeare Luke 7.15 Christ raised the Widows Son and him he found without ready to be buried In a man growne cold and stiffe in sin impenetrable inflexible by denouncing the Judgements of God almost buried in a stupidity and insensiblenesse of his being dead there is more difficultie But in his third yeare Christ raised this Lazarus he had been long dead and buried and in probability puttrified after foure daies This Miracle Christ meant to make a pregnant proofe of the Resurrection which was his principall intention therein For the greatest arguments against the Resurrection being for the most part of this kinde when a Fish eates a man and another man eates that fish or when one man eates another how shall both these men rise againe when a body is resolv'd in the grave to the first principles or is passed into other substances the case is somewhat neere the same and therefore Christ would worke upon a body neare that state abody putrified And truly in our srirituall raising of the dead to raise a sinner putrified in his owne earth resolv'd in his owne dung especially that hath passed many transformations from shape to shape from sin to sin hi hath beene a Salamander and lived in the fire in the fire successvely in the fire of lust in his youth and in his age in the fire of Ambition and then he hath beene a Serpent a Fish and lived in the waters in the water successively in the troubled water of sedition in his youth and in his age in the cold waters of indevotion how shall we raise this Salamander and this Serpent when this Serpent and this Salamander is all one person and must have contrary musique to charme him contrary physick to cure him To raise a man resolv'd into diverse substances scattered into diverse formes of severall sinnes is the greatest worke And there fore this Miracle which implied that S. Basil calls Miraculum in Miraculo a pregnant a double Miracle For here is Mortuus redivivus A dead man lives that had been done before but Alligatus ambulat saies Basil he that is settered and manacled and tyed with many difficulties he walks And therfore as this Miracle raised him most estmation so for they ever accompany one another it raised him most envy Envy that extended beyond him to Lazarus himselfe who had done nothing Iohn 12.10 and yet The chiefe Priests consulted how they might put Lizarus to death because by reason of him many beleeved in Iesus A disease a distemper a danger which no time shall ever be free from that whereforer there is a coldnesse a disaffection to Gods Cause those who are any way
other Heretiques in the Primitive Church would rather admit and constitute two Gods a good God and a bad God then be drawn to think that he that was the good God indeed could produce any ill of himself or meane any ill to any man that had done none And therefore even from Plato himself some Christians might learn more moderation in expressing themselves in this point Plato sayes Creavit quia bonus therefore did God create us that he might be good to us and then he addes Bono nunquam inest invidia certainly that God that made us out of his goodnesse does not now envy us that goodnesse which he hath communicated to us certainly he does not wish us worse that so he might more justly damne us and therefore compell us by any positive decree to sin to justifie his desire of damning us Much lesse did this good God hate us or meane ill to us before he made us and made us only therefore that he might have glory in our destruction There is nothing good but God there is nothing but goodnesse in God How abusively then doe men call the things of this world Goods They may as well call them so they do in their hearts Gods as Goods for there is none good but God But how much more abusively do they force the world that call them Bona quia beant Goods because they make us good blessed happy In which sense Seneca uses the word shrewdly Insolens malum beata uxor a good wife a blessed wife sayes he that is a wife that brings a great estate is an insolent mischiefe If we doe but cast our eye upon that title in the Law Bonorum and De bonis of Goods we shall easily see what poor things they make shift to cal Goods And if we consider if it deserve a consideration how great a difference their Lawyers make Baldus makes that and others with him between Bonorum possessio and possessio bonorum that one should amount to a right and propriety in the goods and the other but to a sequestration of such goods we may easily see that they can scarce tell what to call or where to place such Goods Health and strength and stature and comelinesse must be called Goods though but of the body The body it self is in the substance it self but dust these are but the accidents of that dust and yet they must be Goods Land and Money honor must be called Goods though but of fortune Fortune her self is but such an Idol as that S. Aug. was ashamed ever to have named her in his works and therefore repents it in his Retractations her self is but an Idol and an Idol is nothing these but the accidents of that nothing and yet they must be Goods Are they such Goods as make him necessarily good that hath them Or such as no man can be good that is without them How many men make themselves miserable because they want these Goods And how many men have been made miserable by others because they had them Except thou see the face of God upon all thy money as well as the face of the King the hand of God to all thy Patents as well as the hand of the King Gods Amen as well as the Kings fiat to all thy creatiōs all these reach not to the title of Goods for there is none good but God Nothing in this world not if thou couldst have it all carry it higher to the highest to heaven heaven it self were not good without God For in the Schoole very many and very great men have thought and taught That the humane nature of Christ though united Hypostatically to the Divine Nature was not meerly by that Union impeccable but might have sinned if besides that Union God had not infused and super-induced other graces of which other graces the Beatificall vision the present sight of the face and Essence of God was one Because say they Christ had from his Conception in his Humane Nature that Beatificall Vision of God which we shall have in the state of Glory therefore he could not sin This Beatificall Vision say they which Christ had here and which as they suppose and not improbably in the problematicall way of the Schoole God of his absolute power might have with-held and yet the Hypostaticall Union have remained perfect for say they the two Natures Humane Divine might have been so united and yet the Humane not have so seen the Divine This Beatificall Vision this sight of God was the Cause or Seal or Consummation of Christs Perfection and impeccability in his Humane Nature Much more is this Beatificall Vision this sight of God in Heaven the Cause or Consummation of all the joyes and glory which we shall receive in that place for howsoever they dispute whether that kinde of Blessednesse consist in seeing God formaliter or causaliter that is whether I shall see all things in God as in a glasse in which the species of all things are or whether I shall see all things by God as by the benefit of a light which shall discover all things to me yet they all agree though they differ de modo of the manner how that howsoever it be the substance of the Blessednesse is in this that I shall see God Blessed are the pure in heart sayes Christ for they shall see God If they should not see God they were not blessed And therefore they who place children that die unbaptised in a roome where though they feele no torment yet they shall never see God durst never call that roome a part of heaven but of hell rather Though there be no torment yet if they see not God it is hell There is nothing good in this life nothing in the next without God that is without sight and fruition of the face and presence of God which is that which S. Augustine intends when he sayes Secutio Dei est appetitus Beatitatis consecutio Beatitas our looking towards God is the way to Blessednesse but Blessednesse it self is only the sight of God himself That therefore thou maist begin thy heaven here put thy self in the sight of God put God in thy sight in every particular action We cannot come to the body of the Sun but we can use the light of the Sun many waies we cannot come to God himself here but yet here we can see him by many manifestations so many as that S. Augustine in his 20. Chapt. De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae hath collected aright places of Scripture where every one of our senses is called a Seeing there is a Gustate videte and audite and palpate tasting and hearing and feeling and all to this purpose are called seeing In all our senses in our faculties we may see God if we will God sees us at midnight he sees us then when we had rather he looked off If we see him so it is a blessed interview How would he that were come abroad at mid-night
and make him like himself The implicite beleever stands in an open field and the enemy will ride over him easily the understanding beleever is in a fenced town and he hath out-works to lose before the town be pressed that is reasons to be answered before his faith be shaked and he will sell himself deare and lose himself by inches if he be sold or lost at last and therefore sciant omnes let all men know that is endeavour to informe themselves to understand That particular Iesum that generall particular if we may so say for it includes all which all were to know is that the same Jesus whom they Crucified was exalted above them all Suppose an impossibility S. Paul does so when he sayes to the Galatians If an Angell from heaven should preach any other Gospell for that is impossible If we could have been in Paradise and seen God take a clod of red earth and make that wretched clod of contemptible earth such a body as should be fit to receive his breath an immortall soule fit to be the house of the second person in the Trinity for God the Son to dwel in bodily fit to be the Temple for the third person for the Holy Ghost should we not have wondred more then at the production of all other creatures It is more that the same Jesus whom they had crucified is exalted thus to sit in that despised flesh at the right hand of our glorious God that all their spitting should but macerate him and dissolve him to a better mold a better plaister that all their buffetings should but knead him and presse him into a better forme that all their scoffes and contumelies should be prophesies that that Ecce Rex Behold your King and that Rex Iudaeorum This is the King of the Iews which words they who spoke them thought to be lies in their own mouthes should become truths and he be truly the King not of the Jews only but of all Nations too that their nayling him upon the Crosse should be a setling of him upon an everlasting Throne and their lifting him up upon the Crosse a waiting upon him so farre upon his way to heaven that this Jesus whom they had thus evacuated thus crucified should bee thus exalted was a subject of infinite admiration but mixt with infinite confusion too Wretched Blasphemer of the name of Jesus that Jesus whom thou crucifiest and treadest under thy feet in that oath is thus exalted Uncleane Adulterer that Jesus whom thou crucifiest in stretching out those forbidden armes in a strange bed thou that beheadest thy self castest off thy Head Christ Jesus that thou mightst make thy body the body of a Harlot that Jesus whom thou defilest there is exalted Let severall sinners passe this through their severall sins and remember with wonder but with confusion too that that Jesus whom they haue crucified is exalted above all How farre exalted Three steps which carry him above S. Pauls third heaven Factus He is Lord and he is Christ and he is made so by God God hath made him both Lord and Christ We return up these steps as they lie and take the lowest first Fecit Deus God made him so Nature did not make him so no not if we consider him in that Nature wherein he consists of two Natures God and Man We place in the Schoole for the most part the infinite Merit of Christ Jesus that his one act of dying once should be a sufficient satisfaction to God in his Justice for all the sins of all men we place it I say rather in pacto then in persona rather that this contract was thus made between the Father and the Son then that whatsoever that person thus consisting of God and Man should doe should onely in respect of the person bee of an infinite value and extention to that purpose for then any act of his his Incarnation his Circumcision any had been sufficient for our Redemption without his death But fecit Deus God made him that that he is The contract between the Father and him that all that he did should be done so and to that purpose that way and to that end this is that that hath exalted him and us in him If then not the subtilty and curiosity but the wisedome of the Schoole and of the Church of God have justly found it most commodious to place all the mysteries of our Religion in pacto rather then in persona in the Covenant rather then in the person though a person of incomprehensible value let us also in applying to our selves those mysteries of our Religion still adhaerere pactis and not personis still rely upon the Covenant of God with man revealed in his word and not upon the person of any man Not upon the persons of Martyrs as if they had done more then they needed for themselves and might relieve us with their supererogations for if they may work for us they may beleeve for us and Iustus fide sua vivet sayes the Prophet Habak 2.4 The righteous shall live by his owne faith Not upon that person who hath made himself supernumerary and a Controller upon the three persons in the Trinity the Bishop of Rome not upon the consideration of accidents upon persons when God suffers some to fall who would have advanced his cause and some to be advanced who would have throwne downe his cause but let us ever dwell in pacto and in the fecit Deus this Covenant God hath made in his word and in this we rest It is God then not nature not his nature that made him And what Christ Christus Christ is anointed And then Mary Magdalen made him Christ for she anointed him before his death And Ioseph of Arimathea made him Christ for he anointed him and embalmed him after his death But her anointing before kept him not from death nor his anointing after would not have kept him from putrefaction in the grave if God had not in a farre other manner made him Christ anointed him praeconsortibus above his fellows God hath anointed him embalmed him enwrapped him in the leaves of the Prophets That his flesh should not see corruption in the grave That the flames of hell should not take hold of him nor sindge him there so anointed him as that in his Humane nature He is ascended into heaven and set downe at the right hand of God For de eo quod ex Maria est Petrus loquitur sayes S. Basil That making of him Christ that is that anointing which S. Peter speakes of in this place is the dignifying of his humane nature that was anointed that was consecrated that was glorified in heaven But he had a higher step then that God made this Iesus Christ and he made him Lord Dominus He brought him to heaven in his own person in his humane nature so he shall all us but when we shall be all there he onely shall be Lord
of all And if there should be no other bodies in heaven then his yet yet now he is Lord of all as he is Head of the Church Aske of me sayes his Father and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance Psal 2.8 and the utter most parts of the Earth for thy possession And as it is added ver 6. I have set my King upon my holy hill of Sion So he hath made him Lord Head of the Jews and of the Gentiles too of Sion and of the Nations also Hee hath consecrated his person raised his humane nature to the glorious region of blessed Spirits to Heaven and he hath dignified him with an office made him Lord Head of the Church not only of Jews and Gentiles upon earth but of the Militant and Triumphant Church too Our two generall parts were Scientia 2. Part. modus what we must all know and by what we must know it Our knowledge is this Exaltation of Jesus and our meanes is implied in the first word of the Text Therefore Therefore Therefore because he is raised from the Dead for to that Resurrection expressed in three or foure severall phrases before the Text is this Text and this Exaltation referred Christ was delivered for our sins raised for our justification and upon that depends all Christs descending into hell and his Resurrection in our Creed make but one Article and in our Creed we beleeve them both alike Quis nisi Infidelis negaverit apud inferos fuisse Christum saies S. Augustine Who but an Infidell will deny Christs descending into hell And if he beleeve that to be a limme of the article of the Resurrection His descent into hell must rather be an inchoation of his triumph then a consummation of his Exinanition The first step of his Exaltation there rather then the last step of his Passion upon the Crosse But the Declaration the Manifestation that which admits no disputation was his Resurrection Factus id est declaratus per Resurrectionem saies S. Cyrill He was made Christ and Lord that is declared evidently to be so 1 Cor. 1.20 by his Resurrection As there is the like phrase in S. Paul God hath made the wisdome of this world foolishnesse that is declared it to be so And therefore it is imputed to be a crucifying of the Lord Jesus againe Heb. 6.6 Non credere eum post mortem immortalem Not to beleeve that now after his having overcome death in his Resurrection he is in an immortall and in a glorious state in heaven For when the Apostle argues thus 1 Cor. 15.14 If Christ be not risen then is our preaching in vaine and your faith in vaine he implies the contrary too If you beleeve the Resurrection we have preached to good purpose Mortuum esse Christum August pagani credunt resurrexisse propria fides Christianorum The Heathen confesse Christs death To beleeve his Resurrection is the proper character of a Christian for the first stone of the Christian faith was laid in this article of the Resurrection In the Resurrection onely was the first promise performed Ipse conteret He shall bruise the Serpents head for in this he triumphed over Death and Hell And the last stone of our faith is laid in the same article too that is the day of Judgement of a day of Judgement God hath given an assurance unto all men saies S. Paul at Athens In that he hath raised Christ Iesus from the dead Acts 17.31 In this Christ makes up his circle in this he is truly Alpha and Omega His comming in Paradise in a promise his comming to Judgement in the clouds are tied together in the Resurrection And therefore all the Gospell all our preaching is contracted to that one text To beare witnesse of the Resurrection onely for that Acts 1.22 was there need of a new Apostle There was a necessity of one to be chosen in Iudas roome to be a witnesse of the Resurrection Non ait caeterorum sed tantùm Resurrectionis saies S. Chrysostome He does not say to beare witnesse of the other articles but onely of the Resurrection he charges him with no more instructions he needs no more in his Commission but to preach the Resurrection Athan. for in that Trophaeum de morte excitavit indubitatum reddidit corruptionem deletam Here is a retreat from the whole warfare here is a Trophee erected upon the last enemy The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death and here is the death of that enemy in the Resurrection And therefore to all those who importuned him for a signe Christ still turnes upon the Resurrection Iohn 2.38 Mat. 12.38 The Jewes pressed him in generall Quod signum What signe showest thou unto us and he answers Destroy this Temple this body and in three dayes I will raise it In another place the Scribes and the Pharisees joyne Master we would see a signe from thee and he tels them There shall be no signe but the signe of the Prophet Ionas who was a type of the Resurrection And then the Pharisees and Sadduces joyn now they were bitter enemies to one another but as Tertullian saies Semper inter duos latrones crucifixus Christus It was alwaies Christs case to be crucified betweene two Thieves So these though enemies joyne in this vexation They aske a signe as the rest and as to the rest Christ gives that answer of Ionas So that Christ himselfe determines all summes up all in this one Article the Resurrection Now Nos if the Resurrection of this Jesus have made him not onely Christ Anointed and consecrated in Heaven in his owne person but made him Lord then he hath Subjects upon whom that dominion and that power works and so we have assurance of a resurrection in him too That he is made Lord of us by his Resurrection is rooted in prophecie It pleased the Lord to bruise him saies the Prophet Esay But he shall see his seed Esay 53.10 and he shall prolong his daies that is he shall see those that are regenerate in him live with him forever It is rooted in prophecy and it spreads forth in the Gospell To this end saies the Apostle Christ died and rose that he might be Lord of the dead and of the living Now Rom. 14.9 Gregor what kinde of Lord if he had no subjects Cum videmus caput super aquas when the head is above water will any imagine the body to be drowned What a perverse consideration were it to imagine a live head and dead members Or consider our bodies in our selves and Our bodies are Temples of the Holy Ghost and shall the Temples of the holy Ghost lye for ever for ever buried in their rubbidge They shall not for the day of Judgement is the day of Regeneration as it is called in the Gospell Mat. 19.28 August Quia caro nostra ita generabitur per
to the Church by one Sermon still our Christnings were equall to our burials at least Therefore when Christ saies to the Church Luke 12.32 Feare not little flock it was not Quia de magnominuitur sed quia de pusillo crescit saies Chrysologus Not because it should fall from great to little but rise from little to great Such care had Christ of the growth thereof and then such care of the establishment and power thereof as that the first time that ever he names the Church Mat. 16.18 he invests it with an assurance of perpetuity Vpon this Rock will I build my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevaile against it Therein is denoted the strength and stability of the Church in it selfe and then the power and authority of the Church upon others in those often directions Dic Ecclesiae complaine to the Church and consult with the Church and then Audi Ecclesiam Harken to the Church be judged by the Church heare not them that heare not the Church And then Ejice de Ecclesia let them that disobey the Church be cast out of the Church In all which we are forbidden private Conventicles private Spirits private Opinions For as S. Augustine saies well Psal 49. and he cites it from another whom he names not Quidam dixit If a wall stand single not joyned to any other wall he that makes a doore through the wall and passes through that doore Adhuc foris est for all this is without still Nam domus nonest One wall makes not a house One opinion makes not Catholique Doctrine one man makes not a Church for this knowledge of God the Church is our Academy there we must be bred and there we may be bred all our lives and yet learne nothing Therefore as we must be there so there we must use the meanes And the meanes in the Church are the Ordinances and Institutions of the Church The most powerfull meanes is the Scripture Medium Institutie But the Scripture in the Church Not that we are discouraged from reading the Scripture at home God forbid we should think any Christian family to be out of the Church At home the holy Ghost is with thee in the reading of the Scriptures But there he is with thee as a Remembrancer The Holy Ghost shall bring to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you saies our Saviour Here Iohn 14.26 in the Church he is with thee as a Doctor to teach thee First learne at Church and then meditate at home Receive the seed by hearing the Scriptures interpreted here and water it by returning to those places at home When Christ bids you Search the Scriptures he meanes you should go to them who have a warrant to search A warrant in their Calling To know which are Scriptures To know what the holy Ghost saies in the Scriptures apply thy selfe to the Church Not that the Church is a Judge above the Scriptures for the power and the Commission which the Church hath it hath from the Scriptures but the Church is a Judge above thee which are the Scriptures and what is the sense of the Holy Ghost in them So then thy meanes are the Scriptures That is thy evidence but then this evidence must be sealed to thee in the Sacraments and delivered to thee in Preaching and so sealed and delivered to thee in the presence of competent witnesses the Congregation When S. Paul was carried up In raptu 2 Cor. 12.4 in an extasie into Paradise that which he gained by this powerfull way of teaching is not expressed in a Vidit but an Audivit It is not said that he saw but that he heard unspeakeable things The eye is the devils doore before the eare for though he doe enter at the eare by wanton discourse yet he was at the eye be fore we see before we talke dangerously But the eare is the Holy Ghosts first doore He assists us with Rituall and Ceremoniall things which we see in the Church but Ceremonies have their right use when their right use hath first beene taught by preaching Therefore to hearing does the Apostle apply faith And as the Church is our Academy and our Medium the Ordinances of the Church so the light by which we see this that is know God so as to make him our God is faith and that is our other Consideration in this part Those Heretiques against whom S. Chrysostome and others of the Fathers writ Lumen fides The Anomaei were inexcusable in this that they said They were able to know God in this life as well as God knew himselfe But in this more especially lay their impiety that they said They were able to doe all this by the light of Nature without Faith By the light of Nature in the Theatre of the World by the Medium of Creatures we see God but to know God by beleeving not only Him but in Him is only in the Academy of the Church only through the Medium of the Ordinances there and only by the light of Faith The Schooledoes ordinarily designe foure wayes of knowing God and they make the first of these foure waies to be by faith but then by faith they meane no more but an assent that there is a God which is but that which in our former Considerations we called The seeing of God and which indeed needs not faith for the light of Nature will serve for that to see God so They make their second way Contemplation that is An union of God in this life which is truly the same thing that we meane by Faith for we do not call an assent to the Gospell faith but faith is the application of the Gospell to our selves not an assent that Christ dyed but an assurance that Christ dyed for all Their third way of knowing God is by Apparition as when God appeared to the Patriarchs and others in fire in Angels or otherwise And their fourth way is per apertam visionem by his cleare manifestation of himself in heaven Their first way by assenting only and their third way of apparition are weak and uncertain wayes The other two present Faith and future Vision are safe wayes but admit this difference That that of future Vision is gratiae consummantis such a knowledge of God as when it is once had can never be lost nor diminished But knowledge by faith in this world is Gratiae communis it is an effect and fruit of that Grace which God shed upon the whole communion of Saints that is upon all those who in this Academy the Church do embrace the Medium that is the Ordinances of the Church And this knowledge of God by this faith may be diminished and encreased for it is but In aenigmate sayes our Text darkly obscurely Clearly in respect of the naturall man but yet but obscurely in respect of that knowledge of God which we shall have in heaven for sayes the Apostle As long as we
no man would ever have thought of of himself nor might have prayed for if he could have imagined it this Mercy of the Father is the object of our Thankfulness The Merit of the Son That into a man but of our nature and equall to us in infirmities there should be superinfused such another nature such a divinity as that any act of that Person so composed of those two natures should be even in the rigour of Justice a sufficient ransome for all the sins of all the Werld is the object of our admiration But the object of our consolation which is the subject of this Text is this That the Holy Ghost by his presence and by inanimating the Ordinances of Christ in the Ministery of the Gospell applies this mercy and this merit to me to thee to every soul that answers his motions In that Contract that past between Solomon and Hiram for commerce and trade between their Nations 1 Kâ—â—g 5. That Solomon should send him Corne and Oyle and Hiram should send him Cedar and other rich materials for Building that people of God received an honor and an assurance in that present Contract for future trade and commerce So did the World in that Contract which past betweene the Father and the Son That the Father should send downe God and the World should deliver up Man The nature of Man to be assumed by that Son and so a Redemption should be wrought after in the fulnesse of Time And then in the performance of this Contract when Hiram sent downe those rich materials from Libanon to the Sea and by Sea in Flotes to the place assigned Ver. 9. where Solomon received them that people of God received a reall profit in that actuall performance of that which was but in contract before So did the World too when in the fulnesse of Time and in the place assigned by God in the Prophet Micah which was Bethlem the Son of God came in our flesh and after dyed for us His Blood was the Substance the Materials of our ransome and actually and really delivered and deposited for us which was the performance of the former Contract between his Father and him But then was the dignity of that people of God accomplisht when those rich Materials so sent were really imploied in the building of the Temple when the Altar and the Oracle were cloathed with that Gold when the Cherubim and the Olive-Trees and the other Figures were made of that rich stuffe which was provided when certaine chiefe Officers and three thousand three hundred under-Officers Ver. 15. Ver. 14. were appointed to over-see the Work and ten thousand that attended by monthly courses and seaven score ten thousand that were alwaies resident upon the Work And so is our comfort accomplisht to us when the Holy Ghost distributes these materials the Blood and the Merits of Christ upon severall Congregations and that by his higher Officers Reverend and Vigilant Bishops and others that have part in the Government of the Church and then by those who like Solomons ten thousand performed the service by monthly courses and those who like his seaven score and ten thousand are alwayes resident upon fixt places that salvation of soules so decreed at first by the Father and so accomplished after by the Son is by the Holy Ghost shed and spred upon particular men When as the world began in a community that every thing was every bodies but improved it selfe to a propriety and came to a Meum Tuum that every man knew his owne so that which is Salus Domini The Salvation of the Lord as it is in the first Decree and that which is Salus Mundi The Salvation of the World as it is in the accomplishment of the Decree by Christ may be Mea Tua My Salvation and thy Salvation as it is applyed by the Holy Ghost in the Ministry of the Church Salvation in the Decree is as the Bezar stone in the maw of that creature there it growes Salvation in Christs death is as that Bezar in the Merchants or Apothecaries provision But salvation in the Church in the distribution and application thereof by the Holy Ghost is as that Bezar working in my veines expelling my peccant humours and rectifying my former defects The last work the Seale and Consummation of all is of the Holy Ghost And therefore as the Manifestation of the whole Trinity seemes to have been reserved for Christ so Christ seemes to have reserved the Manifestation of the Holy Ghost for his last Doctrine For this is the last Sermon that Christ preached And this is a Sermon recorded only by that last Euangelist who as he considered the Divine Nature of Christ more then the rest did and so took it higher so did he also consider the future state and succession of the Church more then the rest did and so carried it lower For S. Iohn was a Prophet as well as an Euangelist Therefore in this last and lasting Euangelist and in this last Sermon Christ declares this last work in this world that is the Consummation of our Redemption in the application of the Holy Ghost For herein consists our comfort that it is He the Holy Ghost that ministers this comfort Christ had told them before that there should be a Comforter sent Ver. 16. But he did not tell them then that that Comforter was the Holy Ghost Here he does at last he does and he ends all in that that we might end and determine our comfort in that too This God gives me by the Holy Ghost For we mistake false comforts for true We comfort our selves in things that come not at all from God in things which are but vanities and conduce not all to any true comfort And we comfort our selves in things which though they doe come from God yet are not signed nor sealed by the Holy Ghost For Wealth and Honour and Power and Favour are of God but we have but stolne them from God or received them by the hand of the Devil if we be come to them by ill meanes And if we have them from the hand of God by having acquired them by good meanes yet if we make them occasions of sin in the ill use of them after we lose the comfort of the Holy Ghost which requires the testimony of a rectified conscience that all was well got and is well used Therefore as Christ puts the Origination of our Redemption upon the Father I came but to doe my Fathers will and as he takes the execution of that Decree upon himselfe I am the way and the truth and the life and the Resurrection I am all so he puts the comfort of all upon the Holy Ghost Discomfort and Disconsolation Sadnesse and Dejection Damnation and Damnation aggravated and this aggravated Damnation multiplied upon that soule that findes no comfort in the Holy Ghost If I have no Adventure in an East-Indian Returne though I be not the
richer yet neither am I poorer then I was for that But if I have no comfort from the Holy Ghost I am worse then if all mankinde had been left in the Putrifaction of Adams loynes and in the condemnation of Adams sin For then I should have had but my equall part in the common misery But now having had that extraordinary favour of an offer of the Holy Ghost if I feele no comfort in that I must have an extraordinary condemnation The Father came neare me when he breathed the breath of life into me and gave me my flesh The Son came neare me when he took my flesh upon him and laid downe his life for me The Holy Ghost is alwaies neare me alwaies with me with me now if now I shed any drops of his dew his Manna upon you With me anon if anon I turne any thing that I say to you now to good nourishment in my selfe then and doe then as I say now With me when I eate or drink to say Grace at my meale and to blesse Gods Blessings to me With me in my sleep to keep out the Tempter from the fancy and imagination which is his proper Sceane and Spheare That he triumph not in that in such dreames as may be effects of sin or causes of sin or sins themselves The Father is a Propitious Person The Son is a Meritorious Person The Holy Ghost is a Familiar Person The Heavens must open to shew me the Son of Man at the right hand of the Father as they did to Steven But if I doe but open my heart to my selfe I may see the Holy Ghost there and in him all that the Father hath Thought and Decreed all that the Son hath Said and Done and Suffered for the whole World made mine Accustome your selves therefore to the Contemplation to the Meditation of this Blessed Person of the glorious Trinity Keep up that holy cheerefulnesse which Christ makes the Ballast of a Christian and his Fraight too to give him a rich Returne in the Heavenly Jerusalem Be alwayes comforted and alwayes determine your comfort in the Holy Ghost For that is Christs promise here in this first Branch A Comforter which is the Holy Ghost And Him sayes our second Branch the Father shall send There was a Mission of the Son Missio God sent his Son There was a Mission of the Holy Ghost This day God sent the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost But betweene these two Missions that of the Son and this of the holy Ghost we consider this difference that the first the sending of the Son was without any merit preceding There could be nothing but the meere mercy of God to move God to send his Son Man was so far from meriting that that as we said before he could not nor might if he could have wisht it But for this second Mission the sending of the holy Ghost there was a preceding merit Christ by his dying had merited that mankinde who by the fall of Adam had lost as S. August speaks Possibilitatem boni All possibilitie of Redintegration should not only be restored to a possibility of Salvation but that actually that that was done should be pursued farther and that by this Mission and Operation of the holy Ghost actually really effectually men should be saved So that as the work of our Redemption fals under our consideration that is not in the Decree but in the execution of the Decree in this Mission of the holy Ghost into the World Man hath so far an interest not any particular man but Man as all Mankind was in Christ as that we may truly say The holy Ghost was due to us Luâ—â— 24. And as Christ said of himselfe Nonne haec oportuit pati Ought not Christ to suffer all this Was not Christ bound to all this by the Contract betweene him and his Father to which Contract himselfe had a Privity it was his owne Act He signed it He sealed it so we may say Nonne hunc oportuit mitti Ought not the holy Ghost to be sent Had not Christ merited that the holy Ghost should be sent to perfect the worke of the Redemption So that in such a respect and in such a holy and devout sense we may say that the holy Ghost is more ours then either of the other Persons of the Trinity Because though Christ be so ours as that he is our selves the same nature and flesh and blood The holy Ghost is so ours as that we we in Christ Christ in our nature merited the holy Ghost purchased the holy Ghost bought the holy Ghost Which is a sanctified Simony and hath a faire and a pious truth in it We we in Christ Christ in our nature bought the holy Ghost that is merited the holy Ghost Christ then was so sent A Patre as that till we consider the Contract which was his owne Act there was no Oportuit pati no obligation upon him that he must have been sent The Holy Ghost was so sent as that the Merit of Christ of Christ who was Man as well as God which was the Act of another required and deserved that he should bee sent Therefore he was sent A Patre By the Father Now not so by the Father as not by the Son too For there is an Ego mittam If I depart I will send him unto you But Iohn 16.7 cleane thorough Christs History in all his proceedings still you may observe that he ascribes all that he does as to his Superiour to his Father though in one Capacity as he was God he were equall to the Father yet to declare the meekenesse and the humility of his Soule still he makes his recourse to his inferiour state and to his lower nature and still ascribes all to his Father Thouh he might say and doe say there I will send him yet every where the Father enters I will send him saies he Whom Luke 24.49 I will send the Promise of my Father Still the Father hath all the glory and Christ sinks downe to his inferiour state and lower nature In the World it is far otherwise Here men for the most part doe all things according to their greatest capacity If they be Bishops if they be Counsellors if they be Justices nay if they be but Constables they will doe every thing according to that capacity As though that authority confined to certaine places limited in certaine persons and determined in certaine times gave them alwaies the same power in all actions And because to some purposes hee may be my superiour he will be my equall no where in nothing Christ still withdrew himselfe to his lower capacity And howsoever worldly men engrosse the thanks of the world to themselves Christ cast all the honour of all the benefits that he bestowed upon others upon his Father And in his Veruntamen Yet not my will but thine O Father be done He humbled himselfe as low as David in his Non nobis
himselfe but not for a Ransome not for a Satisfaction but onely for a lively example thereby to incline us to suffer for Gods glory and for the edification of one another If we call him Dominum A Lord we call him Messiam Vnctum Regem anointed with the oyle of gladnesse by the Holy Ghost to bee a cheerefull conquerour of the world and the grave and sin and hell and anointed in his owne blood to be a Lord in the administration of that Church which he hath so purchased This is to say that Jesus is a Lord To professe that he is a person so qualified in his being composed of God and Man that he was able to give sufficient for the whole world and did give it and so is Lord of it When we say Iesus est That Jesus is There we confesse his eternity and therein Dominus The Lord. his Godhead when we say Iesus Dominus that he is a Lord therein we confesse a dominion which he hath purchased And when we say Iesum Dominum so as that we professe him to be the Lord Then we confesse a vigilancy a superintendency a residence and a permanency of Christ in his Dominion in his Church to the worlds end If he be the Lord in his Church there is no other that rules with him there is no other that rules for him The temporall Magistrate is not so Lord as that Christ and he are Collegues or fellow-Consuls that if he command against Christ he should be as soone obeyed as Christ for a Magistrate is a Lord and Christ is the Lord a Magistrate is a Lord to us but Christ is the Lord to him and to us and to all None rules with him none rules for him Christ needs no Vicar he is no non-resident He is nearer to all particular Churches at Gods right hand then the Bishop of Rome at his left Direct lines direct beames does alwaies warme better and produce their effects more powerfully then oblique beames doe The influence of Christ Jesus directly from Heaven upon the Church hath a truer operation then the oblique and collaterall reflections from Rome Christ is not so far off by being above the Clouds as the Bishop of Rome is by being beyond the Hils Dicimus Dominum Iesum we say that Jesus is the Lord and we refuse all power upon earth that will be Lord with him as though he needed a Coadjutor or Lord for him as though he were absent from us To conclude this second part To say that Iesus is the Lord is to confesse him to bee God from everlasting and to have beene made man in the fulnesse of time and to governe still that Church which he hath purchased with his blood and that therefore hee lookes that we direct all our particular actions to his glory For this voice wherein thou saiest Dominus Iesus The Lord Iesus must be as the voyce of the Seraphim in Esay Esay 6.2 thrice repeated Sanctus sanctus sanctus Holy holy holy our hearts must say it and our tongue and our hands too or else we have not said it For when a man will make Jesus his companion and be sometimes with him and sometimes with the world and not direct all things principally towards him when he will make Jesus his servant that is proceed in all things upon the strength of his outward profession upon the colour and pretence and advantage of Religion and devotion would this man be thought to have said Iesum Dominum Luke 6.46 That Iesus is the Lord Why call ye me Lord Lord and doe not the things I speake to you saies Christ Christ places a tongue in the hands Actions speake and Omni tuba clarior per opera Demonstratio sayes S. Chrysostome There is not onely a tongue but a Trumpet in every good worke When Christ sees a disposition in his hearers to doe according unto their professing Iohn 13.14 then only he gives allowance to that that they say Dicitis me Dominum bene dicitis You call me Lord and you doe well in doing so doe ye therefore as I have done to you To call him Lord is to contemplate his Kingdome of power to feele his Kingdome of grace to wish his Kingdome of glory It is not a Domine usque quò Iohn 11.21 Lord how long before the Consummation come as though we were weary of our warfare It not a Domine si fuisses Lord if thou hadst beene here our brother had not died as Martha said of Lazarus as though as soon as we suffer any worldly calamity we should thinke Christ to be absent from us in his power or in his care of us It is not a Domine vis mandemus Luke 9.54 Lord wilt thou that we command fire from Heaven to consume these Samaritans as though we would serve the Lord no longer then he would revenge his owne and our quarrel for that we may come to our last part to that fiery question of the Apostles Christ answered You know not of what spirit you are It is not the Spirit of God it is not the Holy Ghost which makes you call Jesus the Lord onely to serve your own ends and purposes and No man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost For this Part 3 Part. Difficultas we proposed onely two Considerations first that this But excluding all meanes but one that one must therefore necessarily be difficult and secondly that that But admitting one meanes that one must therefore necessarily be possible so that there is a difficulty but yet a possibility in having this working by the Holy Ghost For the first of those hereticall words of Fanstus the Manichaean That in the Trinity the Father dwelt In illa luce inaccessibili In that light which none can attaine to And the Son of God dwelt in this created light whose fountaine and roote is the Planet of the Sun And the Holy Ghost dwelt in the Aire and other parts illumined by the Sun we may make this good use that for the knowledge of the Holy Ghost wee have not so present so evident light in reason as for the knowledge of the other blessed Persons of the glorious Trinity For for the Son because he assumed our nature and lived and dyed with us we conceive certaine bodily impressions and notions of him and then naturally and necessarily as soon as we heare of a Son we conceive a Father too But the knowledge of the Holy Ghost is not so evident neither doe we bend our thoughts upon the consideration of the Holy Ghost so much as we ought to doe The Arians enwrapped him in double clouds of darknesse when they called him Creaturam Creaturae That Christ himselfe from whom say they the Holy Ghost had his Creation was but a Creature and not God and so the Holy Ghost the Creature of a Creature And Maximus ille Gigas as Saint Bernard cals Plato That Giant in all kinde of
an emphaticall denotation for to this purpose Ille and Ipse is all one And then you know the Emphasis of that Ipse Ipse conteret He or It shall bruise the Serpents head denotes the Messias though there be no Messias named This Ipse is so emphaticall a denotation as that the Church of Rome and the Church of God strives for it for they will needs reade it Ipsa and so refer our salvation in the bruising of the Serpents head to the Virgin Mary we refer it according to the truth of the doctrine and of the letter to Christ himselfe and therefore reade it Ipse He. If there were no more but that in David Psal 100.3 Rom. 8.16 It is He that hath made us every man would conclude that that He is God And if S. Paul had said Ipse alone and not Ipse spiritus That He and not He the Spirit beares witnesse with our spirit every spirit would have understood this to be the holy Spirit the holy Ghost If in our text there had been no more but such a denotation of a person that should speak to the hearts of all the world that that I lle that He would proceed thus we must necessarily have seen an Almighty power in that denotation But because that denotation might have carried terrour in it being taken alone therefore we are not left to that but have a relation to a former name and specification of the holy Ghost The Comforter For the establishment of Christs divinity Esay 9.6 Christ is called The mighty God for his relation to us he hath divers names As we were all In massa damnata Forfeited lost he is Redemptor Esay 59.20 A Redeemer for that that is past The Redeemer shall come to Sion sayes the Prophet Job 19.2 and so Iob saw His Redeemer one that should redeem him from those miseries that oppressed him As Christ was pleased to provide for the future so he is Salvator Mat. 1.21 A Saviour Therefore the Angel gave him that name Iesus For he shall save his people from their sins So because to this purpose Christ consists of two natures God and man he is called our Mediator 1 Tim. 2.5 There is one Mediator between God and man the man Christ Iesus Because he presents those merits which are his as ours and in our behalfe he is called an Advocate 1 John 2.1 Rom. 2.6 Acts 10.42 1 Cor. 12.3 If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father Iesus Christ the righteous And because every man is to expect according to his actions he is called the Judge We testifie that it is he that is ordained of God to bee the Iudge of quick and dead Now for Christs first name which is the roote of all which is The mighty God No man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost And there is our first comfort in knowing that Christ is God for he were an Intruder for that which is past no Redeemer he were a weak Saviour for the future an insufficient Mediator a silenced Advocate and a Judge that might be misinformed if he were not God And though he were God he might be all these to my discomfort if there were not a holy Ghost to make all these offices comfortable unto me To be a Redeemer and not a Saviour is but to pay my debts and leave me nothing to live on To be a Mediator a person capable by his composition of two natures to intercede between God and man and not to be my Advocate is but to be a good Counsellor but not of counsell with me To be a Judge of quick and dead and to proceed out of outward evidence and not out of his bosome mercy is but an acceleration of my conviction I were better lie in Prison still then appeare at that Assize better lye in the dust of the grave for ever then come to that judgement But as there is Mens in anima There is a minde in the soule and every man hath a soule but every man hath not a minde that is a Consideration an Actuation an Application of the faculties of the soule to particulars so there is Spiritus in Spiritu a Holy Ghost in all the holy offices of Christ which offices being in a great part directed upon the whole world are made comfortable to me by being by this holy Spirit turned upon me and appropriated to me for so even that name of Christ which might most make me afraid 〈◊〉 The name of Judge becomes a comfort to me To this purpose does S. Baesil call the holy Ghost Verbum Dei quia interpres filii The Son of God is the word of God because he manifests the Father and the Holy Ghost is the word of God because he applies the Son Esay 62.11 Christ comes with that loud Proclamation Ecce auditum fecit Behold the Lord hath proclaimed it to the end of the world Ecce Salvator and Ecce Merces Behold his Salvation Behold thy Reward This is his publication in the manifest Ordinances of the Church And then the Holy Ghost whispers to thy soule as thou standest in the Congregation in that voyce that he promises Sibilabo populum meum I will hisse Zach. 10.8 I will whisper to my people by soft and inward inspirations Christ came to tell us all That to as many as received him he gave power to become the Sons of God Iohn 1.12 The Holy Ghost comes to tell thee that thou art one of them The Holy Ghost is therefore Legatus and Legatum Christi He is Christs Ambassadour sent unto us and he is his Legacy bequeathed unto us by his Will his Will made of force by his death and proved by his Ascension Now when those dayes were come that the Bridegroome was to bee taken from them Christ Jesus to be removed from their personall sight and conversation and therefore even the children of the mariage Chamber were to mourne and fast Mat. 9.15 Cant. when that Church that mourned and lamented his absence when she was but his Spouse must necessarily mourn now in a more vehement manner when she was to be in some sense his Widow when that Shepheard was not onely to be smitten and so the flock dispersed Mat. 26.21 this was done in his passion but he was to be taken away in his Ascension what a powerfull Comforter had that need to be that should be able to recompence the absence of Christ Jesus himselfe and to infuse comfort into his Orphans the children of his mariage Chamber into his Widow the desolate and disconsolate Church into his flock his amazed his distressed and as we may properly enough say in this case his beheaded Apostles and Disciples Quantus ergo Deus qui dat Deum Aug. Lesse then God could not minister this comfort How great a God is he that sends a God to comfort us and how powerfull a Comforter hee who
gods as there are Creatures from God and more then that as many gods as they could fancie or imagine in making Chimera's of their owne for not onely that which was not God but that which was not at all was made a God And then as in narrow channels that cannot containe the water the water over-flowes and yet that water that does so over flow flies out and spreads to such a shallownesse as will not beare a Boat to any use so when by this narrownesse in the Gentiles God had over-flowne this bank this limitation of God in an unity all the rest was too shallow to beare any such notion any such consideration of God as appertained to him They could not think him an Omnipotent God when if one God would not another would nor an Infinite God when they had appeales from one God to another and without Omnipotence and without Infinitenesse they could not truly conceive a God They had cantoned a glorious Monarchy into petty States that could not subsist of themselves nor assist another and so imagined a God for every state and every action that a man must have applied himselfe to one God when he shipped and when he landed to another and if he travailed farther change his God by the way as often as he changed coynes or post-horses Deut. 6.4 But Heare O Israel the Lord thy God is one God As though this were all that were to be heard all that were to be learned they are called to heare and then there is no more said but that The Lord thy God is one God There are men that will say and sweare they do not meane to make God the Author of sin but yet when they say That God made man therefore that he might have something to damne and that he made him sin therefore that he might have something to damne him for truly they come too neare making God the Author of sin for all their modest protestation of abstaining So there are men that will say and sweare they do not meane to make Saints Gods but yet when they will aske the same things at Saints hands which they do at Gods and in the same phrase and manner of expression when they will pray the Virgin Mary to assist her Son nay to command her Son and make her a Chancellor to mitigate his common Law truly they come too neare making more Gods then one And so do we too when we give particular sins dominion over us Quot vitia tot Deos recentes sayes Hierom As the Apostle sayes Covetousnesse is Idolatry so sayes that Father is voluptuousnesse and licentiousnesse and every habituall sin Non alienum sayes God Thou shalt have no other God but me But Quis similis sayes God too Who is like me Hee will have nothing made like him not made so like a God as they make their Saints nor made so like a God as we make our sins Wee thinke one King Soveraigne enough and one friend counsellor enough and one Wife helper enough and he is strangely insatiable that thinks not one God God enough especially since when thou hast called this God what thou canst Hâ—â—â—r he is more then thou hast said of him Cum definitur ipse sua definitione crescit When thou hast defined him to be the God of justice and tremblest he is more then that he is the God of mercy too and gives thee comfort When thou hast defined him to be all eye He sees all thy sins he is more then that he is all patience and covers all thy sins And though he be in his nature incomprehensible and inaccessible in his light yet this is his infinite largenesse that being thus infinitely One he hath manifested himselfe to us in three Persons to be the more easily discerned by us and the more closely and effectually applied to us Now these notions that we have of God as a Father as a Son as a Holy Ghost Trinitas as a Spirit working in us are so many handles by which we may take hold of God and so many breasts by which we may suck such a knowledge of God as that by it wee may grow up into him And as wee cannot take hold of a torch by the light but by the staffe we may so though we cannot take hold of God as God who is incomprehensible and inapprehensible yet as a Father as a Son as a Spirit dwelling in us we can There is nothing in Nature that can fully represent and bring home the notion of the Trinity to us There is an elder booke in the World then the Scriptures It is not well said in the World for it is the World it selfe the whole booke of Creatures And indeed the Scriptures are but a paraphrase but a comment but an illustration of that booke of Creatures And therefore though the Scriptures onely deliver us the doctrine of the Trinity clearely yet there are some impressions some obumbrations of it in Nature too Take but one in our selves in the soule The understanding of man that is as the Father begets discourse ratiocination and that is as the Son and out of these two proceed conclusions and that is as the Holy Ghost Such as these there are many many sprinkled in the Schoole many scattered in the Fathers but God knowes poore and faint expressions of the Trinity But yet Praemisit Deus naturam magistram Tertul. submissurus prophetiam Though God meant to give us degrees in the University that is increase of knowledge in his Scriptures after yet he gave us a pedagogy he sent us to Schoole in Nature before Vt faciliùs credas prophetiae discipulus naturae That comming out of that Schoole thou mightest profit the better in that University having well considered Nature thou mightest be established in the Scriptures He is therefore inexcusable that considers not God in the Creature that comming into a faire Garden sayes onely Here is a good Gardiner and not Here is a good God and when he sees any great change sayes onely This is a strange accident and not a strange Judgement Hence is it that in the books of the Platonique Philosophers and in others much ancienter then they if the books of Hermes Trismegistus and others be as ancient as is pretended in their behalfe we finde as cleare expressing of the Trinity as in the Old Testament at least And hence is it that in the Talmud of the Jews and in the Alcoran of the Turks though they both oppose the Trinity yet when they handle not that point there fall often from them as cleare confessions of the three Persons as from any of the elder of those Philosophers who were altogether dis-interested in that Controversie But because God is seene Per creaturas ut per speculum per verbum ut per lucem Aleus In the creature and in nature but by reflection In the Word and in the Scriptures directly we rest in the knowledge which we
of excommunication That others should esteem them so and avoid them as such persons is sometimes debated amongst us in our books If the Apostle say it by way of Imprecation if it sound so you are to remember first That many things are spoken by the Prophets in the Scriptures which sound as imprecations as execrations which are indeed but prophesies They seeme to be spoken in the spirit of anger when they are in truth but in the spirit of prophesie So in very many places of the Psalmes David seemes to wish heavy calamities upon his and Gods enemies when it is but a declaration of those judgements of God which hee prophetically foresees to be imminent upon them They seeme Imprecations and are but Prophesies and such wee who have not this Spirit of Prophesie nor foresight of Gods wayes may not venture upon If they be truly Imprecations you are to remember also that the Prophets and Apostles had in them a power extraordinary and in execution of that power might doe that which every private man may not doe So the Prophets rebuked so they punished Kings So a 2 King 2.24 Elizeus called in the Beares to devoure the boyes And so b 2 Kings 1. Elias called downe fire to devoure the Captaines So S. Peter killed c Acts 5. Ananias and Sapphira with his word And d Acts 13.8 so S. Paul stroke Elymas the Sorcerer with blindnesse But upon Imprecations of this kinde wee as private men or as publique persons but limited by our Commission may not adventure neither But take the Prophets or the Apostles in their highest Authority yet in an over-vehement zeale they may have done some things some times not warrantable in themselves many times many things not to be imitated by us In Moses his passionate vehemency Dele me Exod. 32.32 If thou wilt not forgive them blot me out of thy booke And in the Apostles inconfiderate zeale to his brethren Optabam Anathema esse I could wish that my selfe were accursed from Christ Rom. 9.3 In Iames and Iohns impatience of their Masters being neglected by the Samaritans when they drew from Christ that rebuke You know not of what spirit you are In these Luke 9.55 and such as these there may be something wherein even these men cannot be excused but very much wherein we may not follow them nor doe as they did nor say as they said Since there is a possibility a facility a proclivity of erring herein and so many conditions and circumstances required to make an Imprecation just and lawfull the best way is to forbeare them or to be very sparing in them But we rather take this in the Text Excommunicatio to be an Excommunication denounced by the Apostle then an Imprecation So Christ himselfe If he will not heare the Chruch let him be to thee as a Heathen or a Publican That is Have no conversation with him So sayes the Apostle speaking of an Angel Anathema If any man if we our selves Gal. 1.9 if an Angel from heaven preach any other Gospel let him be accursed Now the Excommunication is in the Anathema and the aggravating thereof in the other words Maranatha The word Anathema had two significations They are expressed thus Quod Deo dicatum Just Mart. Quod à Deo per vitium alienatum That which for some excellency in it was separated from the use of man to the service of God or that which for some great fault in it was separated from God and man too Ab illo abstinebant tanquam Deo dicatum Ab hoc recedebant Chrysost tanquam à Deo abalienatum From the first kinde men abstained because they were consecrated to God and from the other because they were aliened from God and in that last sense irreligious men such as love not the Lord Jesus Christ are Anathema aliened from God Amongst the Druides with the Heathen they excommunicated Malefactors and no man might relieve him in any necessity no man might answer him in any action And so amongst the Jews the Esseni who were in speciall estimation for sanctity excommunicated irreligious persons and the persons so excommunicated starved in the streets and fields By the light of nature by the light of grace we should separate our selves from irreligious and from idolatrous persons and that with that earnestnesse which the Apostle expresses in the last words Maran Atha In the practise of the Primitive Church Maran Atha by those Canons which we call The Apostles Canons and those which we call The penitentiall Canons we see there were different penances inflicted upon different faults and there were very early relaxations of penances Indulgences and there were reservations of cases in some any Priest in some a Bishop onely might dispense It is so in our Church still Impugners of the Supremacy are excommunicated and not restored but by the Archbishop Impugners of the Common prayer Booke excommunicated too but may bee restored by the Bishop of the place Impugners of our Religion declared in the Articles reserved to the Archbishop Impugners of Ceremonies restored when they repent and no Bishop named Authors of Schisme reserved to the Archbishop maintainers of Schismatiques referred but to repentance And so maintainers of Conventicles to the Archbishop maintainers of Constitutions made in Conventicles to their repentance There was ever there is yet a reserving of certaine cases and a relaxation or aggravating of Ecclesiasticall censures for their waight and for their time and because Not to love the Lord Iesus Christ was the greatest the Apostle inflicts this heaviest Excommunication Maran Atha The word seemes to be a Proverbiall word amongst the Jews after their returne and vulgarly spoken by them and so the Apostle takes it out of common use of speech Maran is Dominus The Lord and Athan is Venit He comes Not so truly in the very exactnesse of Hebrew rules and terminations but so amongst them then when their language was much depraved Dan. 4.16 Deut. 33.2 but in ancienter times we have the word Mara for Dominus and the word Atha for Venit And so Anathema Maran Atha will be Let him that loveth not the Lord Iesus Christ be as an accursed person to you even till the Lord come S. Hierom seems to understand this Dominus venit That the Lord is come come already come in the flesh Superfluum sayes he odiis pertinacibus contendere adversus eum qui jam venit It is superabundant perversnesse to resist Christ now Now that he hath appeared already and established to himselfe a Kingdome in this world And so S. Chrysostome seemes to take it too Christ is come already sayes he Et jam nulla potest excusatio non diligentibus eum If any excuse could be pretended before yet since Christ is come none can be Si opertum sayes the Apostle If our Gospel be hid now it is hid from them who are lost that is they are lost from
God in Heaven sanctifying all their crosses in this World inanimating all their worldly blessings rayning downe his blood into their emptinesse and his balme into their wounds making their bed in all their sicknesse and preparing their seate where he stands soliciting their cause at the right hand of his Father And so the Minister hath the wings of an Eagle that every soule in the Congregation may see as much as hee sees that is a particular interest in all the mercies of God and the merits of Christ So then these Ministers of God have that double use of their Eagles wings first Vt volent ad escam Job 9.26 as it is in Iob that they may flie up to receive their own food their instructions at the mouth and word of God And then Vt ubi cadaver sit ibi statim adsit as it is in Iob also where the dead are Job 39.33 they also may be That where any lie Pro mortuis as S. Paul speaks for dead 1 Cor. 13.29 as good as dead ready to die upon their death-bed they may be ready to assist them and to minister spirituall Physick opportunely seasonably proportionably to their spirituall necessities That they may powre out upon such sick soules that name of Iesus which is Oleum effusum An oyle and a balme alwaies powring and alwaies spreading it selfe upon all greene wounds and upon all old sores That they may minister to one in his hot and pestilent presumptions an Opiat of Christs Tristis anima A remembrance that even Christ himself had a sad soule towards his death and a Quare dereliquisti some apprehension that God though his God had forsaken him And that therefore no man how righteous soever may presume or passe away without feare and trembling And then to minister to another in his Lethargies and Apoplexies and damps and inordinate dejections of spirit Christs cordials and restoratives in his Clarifica me Pater In an assurance that his Father though he have laid him downe here whether in an inglorious fortune or in a disconsolate bed of sicknesse will raise him in his time to everlasting glory So these Eagles are to have wings to flie Ad cadaver to the dead to those that are so dying a bodily death and also where any lie dead in the practise and custome of sinne to be industrious and earnest in calling them to life againe so as Christ did Lazarus by calling aloud Not aloud in the eares of other men so to expose a sinner to shame and confusion of face but aloud in his own eares to put home the judgments of God thereby to plough and harrow that stubborn heart which will not be kneaded nor otherwise reduced to an uprightnesse For these uses to raise themselves to heavenly contemplations and to make haste to them that need their assistance the Ministers of God have wings wings of great use especially now when there is Coluber in via A snake in every path a Seducer in every house When as the Devill is busie because he knows his time is short so his instruments are busie because they thinke their time is beginning againe therefore the Minister of God hath wings And then Sex alae their wings are numbred in our Text They have six wings For by the consent of most Expositors those whom S. Iohn presents in the figure of these foure Creatures here Esa 6.3 and those whom the Prophet Esay cals Seraphim are the same persons The same Office and the same Voice is attributed unto those Seraphim there as unto these foure Creatures here Those as well as these spend their time in celebrating the Trinity an in crying Holy Holy Holy The Holy Ghost sometimes presents the Ministers of the Gospel as Seraphim in glory that they might be knowne to be the Ministers and dispensers of the mysteries and secrets of God and to come A latere From his Councell his Cabinet his Bosome And then on the other side that you might know that the dispensation of these mysteries of your salvation is by the hand and means of men taken from amongst your selves and that therefore you are not to looke for Revelations nor Extasies nor Visions nor Transportations but to rest in Gods ordinary meanes he brings those persons down againe from that glorious representation as the Seraphim to creatures of an inferiour of an earthly nature For though it be by the sight and in the quality and capacity of those glorious Seraphim that the Minister of God receives his commission and instructions his orders and his faculties yet the execution of his commission and the pursuing of his instructions towards you and in your behalfe is in that nature and in that capacity as they have the courage of the Lyon the laboriousnesse of the Oxe the perspicuity of the Eagle and the affability of Man These winged persons then winged for their own sakes and winged for yours these Ministers of God thus designed by Esay as heavenly Seraphim to procure them reverence from you and by S. Iohn as earthly Creatures to teach you how neere to your selves God hath brought the meanes of your Salvation in his visible and sensible in his appliable and apprehensible Ordinances are in both places that of Esay and this in our Text said to have six wings And six to this use in Esay with two they cover their face with two their feete and with two they flie They cover their face Not all over for then neither the Prophet there nor the Euangelist here could have knowne them to have had these likenesses and these proportions The Ministers of God are not so covered so removed from us as that we have not meanes to know them We know them by their face that is by that declaration which the Church hath given of them to us in giving them their orders and their power over us and we know them by their voyce that is by their preaching of such doctrine as is agreeable to those Articles which we have suckt in from our infancy The Ministers face is not so covered with these wings as that the people have no meanes to know him For his calling is manifest and his doctrine is open to proofe and tryall But they are said to cover their face because they dare not looke confidently they cannot looke fully upon the majesty of the mysteries of God The Euangelists themselves and they that ground their doctrine upon them all which together as we have often said make up these foure persons whom Esay cals Seraphim and S. Iohn inferiour Creatures have not seene all that belongs to the nature and essence of God not all in the attributes and properties of God not all in the decrees and purposes of God no not all in the execution of those purposes and decrees we do not know all that God intends to do we do not know all that God intends in that which he hath done Our faces are covered from having seene
lesse Idolum Aeternitatis Perpetuity is but an Idol compared to eternity And an Idol is nothing sayes the Apostle Our soules have a blessed perpetuity our soules shall no more see an end then God that hath no Beginning and yet our soules are very far from being eternal But those gods are so far from being eternall as that considered as Gods that is celebrated with Divine worship they are not perpetual Psal 48.14 Psal 102.11 But God is our God for ever and ever ever without beginning and ever without end My dayes are like a shadow that fadeth and I am withered like grasse but thou O Lord dost remaine for ever and thy remembrance from generation to generation It is a remaining and it is a remembrance which words denote a former being So that God our God and onely he is eternall To conclude all with that which must be the conclusion of all at last this Eternity of our God is expressed here in a phrase which designes and presents the last Judgement that is which was and is and is to come For though it be Qui fuit Which was and Qui est Which is yet it is not Qui futurus Which is to be but Qui venturus Which is to come that is to come to Judgement as it is in divers other places of this Book Qui venturus Which is to come For though the last judiciary Power the finall Judgement of the World be to be executed by Christ as he is the Son of Man visibly apparantly in that nature yet Christ is therein as a Delegate of the Trinity It is in the vertue and power of that Commission Data est mihi omnis potestas He hath all Power but that Power that he hath as the Son of man is given him For as the Creation of the World was so the Judgement of the World shal be the Act of the whole Trinity For if we consider the second Person in the Trinity in both his Natures as he redeemed us God and Man so it cannot be said of him that He was that is that he was eternally for there was a time when that God was not that man when that Person Christ was not constituted And therefore this word in our Text which was which is also true of the rest is not appropriated to Christ but intended of the whole Trinity So that it is the whole Trinity that is to come To come to Judgement And therefore let us reverently embrace such provisions and such assistances as the Church of God hath ordained for retaining and celebrating the Trinity in this particular contemplation as they are to come to Judgement And let us at least provide so far to stand upright in that Judgement as not to deny nor to dispute the Power or the Persons of those Judges A man may make a pety larceny high treason so If being called in question for that lesser offence he will deny that there is any such Power any such Soveraigne any such King as can call him in question for it he may turne his whipping into a quartering At that last Judgement we shall be arraigned for not cloathing not visiting not harbouring the poore For our not giving is a taking away our withholding is a withdrawing our keeping to our selves is a stealing from them But yet all this is but a pety larceny in respect of that high treason of infidelity of denying or doubting of the distinct Persons of the holy blessed and glorious Trinity To beleeve in God one great one universall one infinite power does but distinguish us from beasts For there are no men that do not acknowledge such a Power or that do not believe in it if they acknowledge it Even they that acknowledge the devill to be God beleeve in the devill But that which distinguishes man from man that which onely makes his Immortality a blessing for even Immortality is part of their damnation that are damned because it were an ease it were a kind of pardon to them to be mortall to be capable of death though after millions of generations is to conceive aright of the Power of the Father of the Wisdome of the Son of the Goodnesse of the Holy Ghost Of the Mercie of the Father of the Merits of the Son of the Application of the Holy Ghost Of the Creation of the Father of the Redemption of the Son of the Sanctification of the Holy Ghost Without this all notions of God are but confused all worship of God is but Idolatry all confession of God is but Atheisme For so the Apostle argues When you were without Christ you were without God Without this all morall vertues are but diseases Liberality is but a popular baite and not a benefit not an almes Chastity is but a castration and an impotency not a temperance not mortification Active valour is but a fury whatsoever we do and passive valour is but a stupidity whatsoever we suffer Naturall apprehensions of God though those naturall apprehensions may have much subtilty Voluntary elections of a Religion though those voluntary elections may have much singularity Morall directions for life though those morall directions may have much severity are all frivolous and lost if all determine not in Christianity in the Notion of God so as God hath manifested and conveyed himself to us in God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost whom this day we celebrate in the Ingenuity and in the Assiduity and in the Totality recommended in this text and in this acclamation of the text Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty which was and is and is to come SERM. XLV PREACHED VPON ALL-SAINTS DAY APOC. 7.2 3. And I saw another Angel ascending from the East which had the seale of the living God and he cryed with a loud voyce to the foure Angels to whom power was given to hurt the Earth and the Sea saying Hurt yee not the Earth neither the Sea neither the Trees till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads THe solemnity and festivall with which the sonnes of the Catholique Church of God celebrate this day is much mistaken even by them who thinke themselves the onely Catholiques and celebrate this day with a devotion at least near to superstition in the Church of Rome For they take it for the most part to be a festivall instituted by the Church in contemplation of the Saints in heaven onely and so carry and employ all their devotions this day upon consideration of those Saints and invocation of them onely But the institution of this day had this occasion The heathen Romans who could not possibly house all their gods in severall Temples they were so over-many according to their Law Deos frugi colunto to serve God as cheape as they could made one Temple for them all which they called Pantheon To all the Gods This Temple Boniface the Pope begd of the Emperour Phocas And yet by the way this was some hundreds of
Reformation when in no long time the number of them that had forsaken Rome was as great as of them that staid with her Now to give way to this ascent of this Angel in thy selfe make the way smooth and make thy soule souple finde thou a growth of the Gospel in thy faith and let us finde it in thy life It is not in thy power to say to this Angel as Ioshua said to the Sun Siste Iosh 10.12 stand still It will not stand still If thou finde it not ascending it descends If thy comforts in the Gospel of Christ Jesus grow not they decay If thou profit not by the Gospel thou losest by it If thou live not by it nothing can redeeme thee thou dyest by it Wee speake of going up and downe a staire it is all one staire of going to and from the City it is all one way of comming in and going out of a house it is all one doore So is there a savour of life unto life and a savour of death unto death in the Gospel but it is all one Gospel If this Angel of the East have appeared unto thee the light of the Gospel have shined upon thee and it have not ascended in thee if it have not made thee wiser and wiser and better and better too thou hast stopped that light vexed grieved quenched that Spirit for the naturall progresse of this Angel of the East is to ascend the naturall motion and working of the Gospel is to make thee more and more confident in Gods deliverance lesse and lesse subject to rely upon the weake helps and miserable comforts of this world To this purpose this Angel ascends that is proceeds in the manifestation of his Power and of his readinesse to succour us Of his Power in this That he hath the seales of the living God I saw an Angel ascending from the East which had the seale of the living God which is our next Consideration Of the living God The gods of the Nations are all dead gods Sigillum Dei viventis either such Gods as never had life stones and gold and silver or such gods at best as were never gods till they were dead for men that had benefited the world in any publique and generall invention or otherwise were made gods after their deaths which was a miserable deification a miserable godhead that grew out of corruption a miserable eternity that begun at all but especially that begun in death and they were not gods till they dyed But our Angel had the Seale of the living God that is Power to give life to others Now if we seeke for this seale in the naturall Angels they have it not for this Seale is some visible thing whereby we are assisted to salvation and the Angels have no such They are made keepers of this seale sometimes but permanently they have it not This Seale of comfort was put into an Angels hand Ezek. 9.4 when he was to set a marke upon the foreheads of all them that mourned He had a visible thing Inke to marke them withall But it was not said to him Vade signa omnes Creaturas Go and set this marke upon every Creature as it was to the Minister of the Gospel Go and preach to every Creature Marke 16.15 If wee seeke this seale in the great Angel the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus It is true he hath it for Omnis potestas dâ—ta All power is given unto me in Heaven and in earth and Omne judicium Mat. 28.18 Iohn 5.22 The Father hath committed all judgement to the Son Christ as the Son of man executes a Judgement and hath a Power which he hath not but by gift by Commission by vertue of this Seale from his Father But because it is not onely so in him That he hath the Seale of the living God but He is this Seale himselfe Colos 1.15 Heb. 1.3 Iohn 6.27 Hee is the Image of the invisible God He is the brightnesse of his glory and the expresse Image of his Person It is not onely his Commission that is sealed but his Nature He himselfe is sealed Him hath God the Father sealed since I say naturall Angels though they have sometimes this seale they have it not alwaies they have not a Commission from God to apply his mercies to man by any ordinary and visible meanes since the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus hath it but hath it so as that he is it too the third sort of Angels the Church-Angels the Ministers of the Gospell are they who most properly can be said to have this Seale by a fixed and permanent possession and a power to apply it to particular men in all emergent necessities according to the institution of that living God whose seale it is Now the great power which is given by God in giving this seale to these Angels hath a lively representation such as a shadow can give in the history of Ioseph Pharaoh sayes to him Thou shalt be over my house and over all the land of Egypt Gen. 41.40 steward of the Kings house and steward of the Kingdome And at thy word shall all my people be armed Constable and Marshall too and to invest him in all these and more Pharaoh gave him his ring his seale not his seale onely to those severall patents to himselfe but the keeping of that seale for the good of others This temporall seale of Pharoh was a representation of the seale of the living God But there is a more expresse type of it in Exodus Thou shalt grave sayes God to Moses upon a plate of pure gold Lxod. 28.36 as Signets are graved Holinesse to the Lord and it shall be upon the forehead of Aaron What to do That the people may be accepted of him There must be a holinesse to the Lord and that presented by Aaron the Priest to God that the people may be acceptable to the Lord So that this seale of the living God in these Angels of our text is The Sacraments of the New Testament and the Absolution of sinnes by which when Gods people come to a Holinesse to the Lord in a true repentance and that that holinesse that is that repentance is made knowne to Aaron to the Priest and he presents it to the Lord that Priest his Minister seals to them in those his Ordinances Gods acceptation of this degree of holinesse he seals this Reconciliation between God and his people And a contract of future concurrence with his subsequent grace This is the power given by God to this ascending Angel and we extend that no farther but hasten to his haste his readinesse to succour us in which we proposed for the first consideration That this Angel of light manifested and discovered to us who our enemies were He cryed out to them who were ready to do mischiefe with a loud voyce so that we might heare him and know them Though in all Court-cases it be
In thy Treasury in thine Ordinance in thy Church Thou hast it to derive it to convey it upon us Here then is the first step of Sauls cure and of ours That there was not onely a word the Word Christ himselfe a Son of God in heaven but a Voyce the word uttered and preached Christ manifested in his Ordinance He heard a voyce He heard it How often does God speake and no body heares the voyce Audivit He speaks in his Canon in Thunder and he speaks in our Canon in the rumour of warres He speaks in his musique in the harmonious promises of the Gospel and in our musique in the temporall blessings of peace and plenty And we heare a noyse in his Judgements and wee heare a sound in his mercies but we heare no voyce we doe not discern that this noyse or this sound comes from any certain person we do not feele them to be mercies nor to be judgements uttered from God but naturall accidents casuall occurrencies emergent contingencies which as an Atheist might think would fall out though there were no God or no commerce no dealing no speaking between God and Man Though Saul came not instantly to a perfect discerning who spoke yet he saw instantly it was a Person above nature and therefore speakes to him in that phrase of submission Quis es Domine Lord who art thou And after with trembling and astonishment as the Text sayes Domine quid me vis facere Lord what wilt thou have me to do Then we are truliest said to hear when we know from whence the voyce comes Princes are Gods Trumpet and the Church is Gods Organ but Christ Jesus is his voyce When he speaks in the Prince when he speaks in the Church there we are bound to heare and happy if we doe hear Man hath a natural way to come to God by the eie by the creature Rom 2. So Visible things shew the Invisible God But then God hath super-induced a supernaturall way by the eare For though hearing be naturall yet that faith in God should come by hearing a man preach is supernatural God shut up the naturall way in Saul Seeing He struck him blind But he opened the super-naturall way he inabled him to heare and to heare him God would have us beholden to grace and not to nature and to come for our salvation to his Ordinances to the preaching of his Word and not to any other meanes Though hee were blinde even that blindnesse as it was a humiliation and a diverting of his former glaring lights was a degree of mercy of preparative mercy yet there was a voyce which was another degree And a voyce that he heard which was a degree above that and so farre we are gone And he heard it saying that is distinctly and intelligibly which is our next Circumstance He heares him saying that is He heares him so as that he knowes what he sayes so Dicentem as that he understands him for he that heares the word and understands it not is subject to that which Christ sayes That the wicked one comes Mat. 13.19 and catches away that that was sowne S. Augustine puts himselfe earnestly upon the contemplation of the Creation as Moses hath delivered it he findes it hard to conceive and he sayes Si esset ante me Moses Confes l. 1. c. 3. If Moses who writ this were here Tenerem eum per te obsecrarem I would hold him fast and beg of him for thy sake O my God that he would declare this worke of the Creation more plainly unto me But then sayes that blessed Father Si Hebraea voce loqueretur If Moses should speake Hebrew to mee mine eares might heare the sound but my minde would not heare the voyce I might heare him but I should not heare what he said This was that that distinguished betweene S. Paul and those who were in his company at this time Ver. 7. Acts 22.9 S. Luke sayes in this Chapter That they heard the voyce and S. Paul relating the story againe after sayes They heard not the voyce of him that spoke to me they heard a confused sound but they distinguished it not to be the voyce of God nor discerned Gods purpose in it Ver. 28. In the twelfth of Iohn there came a voyce from Heaven from God himselfe and the people said It thundred So apt is naturall man to ascribe even Gods immediate and miraculous actions to naturall causes apt to rest and determine in Nature and leave out God The Poet chides that weaknesse as he cals it to be afraid of Gods judgements or to call naturall accidents judgements Quo morbo mentem concusse timore Deorum sayes he he sayes The Conscience may be over-tender and that such timerous men are sick of the feare of God But it is a blessed disease The feare of God and the true way to true health And though there be a morall constancy that becomes a Christian well not to bee easily shaked with the variations and revolutions of this world yet it becomes him to establish his constancy in this That God hath a good purpose in that action not that God hath no hand in that action That God will produce good out of it not that God hath nothing to doe in it The Magicians themselves were forced to confesse Digitum Dei Exod. 6.16 The finger of God in a small matter Never thinke it a weakenesse to call that a judgement of God which others determine in Nature Doe so so far as works to thy edification who seest that judgement though not so far as to argue and conclude the finall condemnation of that man upon whom that judgement is fallen Certainely we were better call twenty naturall accidents judgements of God then frustrate Gods purpose in any of his powerfull deliverances by calling it a naturall accident and suffer the thing to vanish so and God be left unglorified in it or his Church unedified by it Then we heare God when we understand what he sayes And therefore as we are bound to blesse God that he speakes to us and heares us speake to him in a language which wee understand and not in such a strange language as that a stranger who should come in and heare it 1 Cor. 14.23 would thinke the Congregation mad So also let us blesse him for that holy tendernesse to be apt to feele his hand in every accident and to discerne his presence in every thing that befals us Saul heard the voyce saying He understood what it said and by that found that it was directed to him which is also another step in this last part This is an impropriation without sacriledge Sibi and an enclosure of a Common without damage to make God mine owne to finde that all that God sayes is spoken to me and all that Christ suffered was suffered for me And as Saul found this voyce at first to be directed to him so
and dignity and outward splendor The Church of God requires also besides unanimity in fundamentall Doctrines an equanimity and a mildnesse and a charity in handling problematicall points and also requires order and comelinesse in the outward face and habit thereof And so we preach a Kingdome So we preach a Kingdome as that we banish from thence all imaginary fatality and all decretory impossibility of concurrence and cooperation to our owne salvation And yet we banish all pride and confidence that any naturall faculties in us though quickned by former grace can lead us to salvation without a continuall succession of more and more grace And so we preach a Kingdome So as that we banish all spirituall treason in setting up new titles or making any thing equall to God or his Word And we banish all spirituall felony or robbery in despoyling the Church Psal 45.13 either of Discipline or of Possessions either of Order or of Ornaments Be the Kings Daughter all glorious within Yet all her glory is not within For Her cloathing is of wrought gold sayes that text Still may she glory in her internall glory in the sincerity and in the integrity of Doctrinall truths and glory too in her outward comelinesse and beauty So pray we and so preach we the Kingdome of God And so we have done with our first Part. Our second Part 2 Part. to which in our order we are now come is a passionate valediction Now I know that all you shall see my face no more where first we inquire how he knew it But why doe we inquire that They that heard him did not so They heard it and beleeved it Acts 17.10 and lamented it When S. Paul preached at Berea his story sayes that he was better beleeved there then at Thessalonica And the reason is given That there were Nobler persons there Persons of better quality of better natures and dispositions and of more ingenuity and so as it is added They received the word with all readinesse of minde Prejudices and disaffections and under-valuations of the abilities of the Preacher in the hearer disappoint the purpose of the Holy Ghost frustrate the labours of the man and injure and defraud the rest of the Congregation who would and would justly like that which is said if they were not mis-led and shaked by those hearers And so worke also such jealousies and suspitions that though his abilities be good yet his end upon his Auditory is not their edification but to work upon them to other purposes Though we require not an implicite faith in you that you beleeve because we say it yet we require a holy Noblenesse in you A religious good nature a conscientious ingenuity that you remember from whom we come from the King of heaven and in what quality as his Ambassadors And so be apt to beleeve that since we must returne to him that sent us and give him a relation of our negotiation we dare not transgresse our Commission The Bereans are praised for this That they searched the Scriptures daily whether those things that Paul said were so But this begun not at a jealousie or suspition in them that they doubted that that which he said was not so nor proceeded not to a gladnesse or to a desire that they might have taken him in a lie or might have found that that which he said was not so But they searched the Scriptures whether those things were so that so having formerly beleeved him when he preached they might establish that beliefe which they had received by that which was the infallible rocke and foundation of all The Scriptures They searched but they searched for confirmation and not upon suspition In our present case they to whom S. Paul said this doe not aske S. Paul how hee knew that they should see his face no more they beleeved as we doe that he had it by revelation from God and such knowledge is faith Tricubitalis er at coelum attingit sayes S. Chrysostome S. Paul was a man of low stature but foure foot and a halfe high sayes he and yet his head reached to the highest heaven and his eyes saw and his eares heard the counsels of God Scarce any Ambassadour can shew so many Letters of his Masters owne hand as S. Paul could produce Revelations His King came to him as often as other Kings write to their Ambassadours Acts 9.4 Gal. 1.1 Gal. 2. Acts 13. Acts 16. Acts 18. Acts 17. He had his first calling by Revelation He had his Commission his Apostle-ship by Revelation So hee was directed to Jerusalem And so to Rome to both by Revelation and so to Macedonia also So hee was confirmed and comforted in the night by Vision by Revelation And so he was assured of the lives of all them that suffered shipwrack with him at Malta All his Cate chismes in the beginning all his Dictats in his proceeding all his incouragements at his departing were all Revelation Every good man hath his conversation in heaven and heaven it self had a conversation in S. Paul And so even the book of the Acts of the Apostles is as it were a first Part of the book of Revelation Revelations to S. Paul as the other was to S. Iohn This is the way that Christ promised to take with him I will shew him Acts 9.16 Acts 20.11 how great things he must suffer for my sake And this way Christ pursued At Caesarea Agabus a Prophet came from Iudaea to Paul and took Pauls girdle and bound his own hands and feet and said Thus saith the Holy Ghost So shall the Iews binde the man that owes the girdle and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles This then was his case in our text for that revelation by Agabus his Prophesie of his suffering was after this he had a revelation that he should never be seen by them more but when or how or where he should dye he had not had a particular revelation then He sayes a little before our text Ver. 12. I goe bound in the Spirit to Ierusalem That is so bound by the Spirit that if I should not goe I should resist the Spirit But sayes he I know not the things that shall befall me there not at Jerusalem much lesse the last and bitterest things which were farther off the things that should befall him at Rome where he died But from the very first he knew enough of his death to shake any soule that were not sustained by the Spirit of God which is another Branch in this Part That no revelations no apprehensions of death removed him from his holy intrepidnesse and religious constancy We have a story in an Author of S. Hieromes time Palladius Non perterritus that in a Monastery of S. Isidors every Monk that dyed in that house was able and ever did tell all the society that at such a time he should die God does extraordinary things for extraordinary
colour of that exclude necessary things Howsoever you have delivered your selves to the mercy of God and he hath delivered a seale of his mercy to you inwardly in his Spirit outwardly in his Sacrament yet there are Amarae sagittae ex dulci manu Dei Nazian as Nazianzen calls afflictions after repentance Sharp arrowes out of the sweet hand of God Corrections by which God intends to establish us in that spirituall health to which our repentance by his grace hath brought us Remember still that this which David did for the present and that which he promised be would doe for the future both together made up the reason of his prayer to God by which he desired God in the former verses to returne to him to deliver his soule and to save him He had had no reason no ground of his prayer though he had done something already if he had not proposed to himselfe something more to be done There is a preparation before and there is a preservation after required at our hands if wee studie a perfect recovery and cure of our soules Gregor And as S. Gregory notes well there is a great deale of force in Davids Possessive in his word of appropriation Meus lectus meus and Oculus meus It is his bed that he washed and they are his eyes that washed it He bore the affliction himselfe and trusted not to that which others had suffered by way of Supererogation Sometimes when the children of great persons offend at Schoole another person is whipped for them and that affects them and works upon a good nature but if that person should take Physick for them in a sicknesse it would doe them no good Gods corrections upon others may worke by way of example upon thee but because thou art sick for physicke take it thy selfe Trust not to the treasure of the Church neither the imaginary treasure of the Church of Rome which pretends an inexhaustible mine of the works of other men to distribute and bestow No nor to the true treasure of the true Church that is Absolution upon Confession and Repentance No trust not to the merits of Christ himselfe in their application to thee without a Lectus tuus and an Oculus tuus except thou remember thy sins in thy bed and poure out thy teares from thine eyes and fulfill the sufferings of Christ in thy selfe Nothing can be added to Christs merits that is true but something must be added to thee a disposition in thee for the application of that which is his Not that thou canst begin this disposition in thy selfe till God offer it but that thou maist resist it now it is offered and reject it againe after it is received Trust not in others not in the Church nor in Christ himselfe so as to doe nothing for thy selfe Nor trust not in that which thou doest for thy selfe so as at any time to thinke thou hast done enough and needest do no more But when thou hast past the signet that thou hast found the signature of Gods hand and seale in a manifestation that the marks of his Grace are upon thee when thou hast past his privy Seale That his Spirit beares witnesse with thy spirit that thy repentance hath beene accepted by him When thou hast past the great Seale in the holy and blessed Sacrament publiquely administred doe not suspect the goodnesse of God as though all were not done that were necessary for thy salvation if thou wert to have thy transmigration out of this world this houre but yet as long as thou continuest in the vale of tentations continue in the vale of teares too and though thou have the seale of Reconciliation plead that seale to the Church which is Gods Tribunall and judgement seat upon earth in a holy life and works of example to others and looke daylie looke hourely upon the Ita quod of that pardon upon the Covenants and Conditions with which it is given That if by neglecting those medicinall helps those auxiliary forces those subsidies of the kingdome of Heaven those after-afflictions chuse whether you will call them by the name of Penance or no you relapse into former sins your present repentance and your present seale of that Repentance the Sacrament shall rise up against you at the last day and to that sentence you did not feed you did not cloathe you did not harbour me in the poore shall this be added as the aggravation of all you did Repent and you did receive the Seale but you did not pursue that repentance nor performe the conditions required at your hands But we are here met by Gods gracious goodnesse in a better disposition with a sincere repentance of all our former sinnes and with a deliberate purpose as those Israelites made their powring out of water a testimony of dissolving themselves into holy teares to make this fast from bodily sustenance an inchoation of a spirituall fast in abstinence from all that may exasperate our God against us That so though not for that yet thereby our prayers may be the more acceptable to our glorious God in our gracious Saviour To him that sits upon the throne and to the Lambe first that as he is the King of Kings he will establish and prosper that Crowne which he hath set upon the head of his Anointed over us here and hereafter Crowne that Crowne with another Crowne a better Crowne a Crowne of immarcescible glory in the Kingdome of Heaven and in the meane time make him his Bulwarke and his Rampart against all those powers which seeke to multiply Miters or Crownes to the disquiet and prejudice of Christendome And then That as he is the Lord of Lords he will inspire them to whom he hath given Lordship over others in this world with a due consideration that they also have a Lord over them even in this world and that he and they and we have one Lord over us all in the other world That as he is the Bishop and high Priest over our Souls he vouchsafe to continue in our Bishops a holy will and a competent power to super-intend faithfully over his Church that they for their parts when they depart from hence may deliver it back into his hands in the same forme and frame in which his blessed Spirit delivered it into their hands in their predecessors in the Primitive institution thereof That as he is the Angel of the great Counsayle he vouchsafe to direct the great Counsayle of this Kingdome to consider still that as he works in this world by meanes So it concernes his glory that they expedite the supply of such meanes as may doe his worke and may carry home the testimony of good Consciences now and in their posterity have the thanks of posterity for their behaviour in this Parliament That as he is the God of peace he will restore peace to Christendome That as he is the Lord of Hosts he will fight our battayls who have no other end
but is an offer a promise to all which is our other and last Consideration in this first part In this consideration let us stop a little upon this question Te. why the Scriptures of God more then any other booke doe still speake in this singular person and in this familiar person still Tu and Tibi and Te Thou must love God God speaks to thee God hath care of thee Certainly in those passages which are from lower persons to Princes no Author is of a more humble and reverentiall and ceremoniall phrase then the phrase of the Scripture is Who could goe lower then David to Saul that calls himselfe a flea 1 Sam. 24.15 2 Sam. 9.8 Dan. 2.37 and a dead dogge Who could goe higher then Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar O King thou art King of Kings In all places the children of men the beasts of the field the fouls of the ayre are given into thy hand Thy greatnesse reacheth to heaven Dan. 4.19 and thy dominions to the ends of the earth So is it also in persons nearer in nature and nearer in ranke Iacob bowes seaven times to the ground in the presence of his brother Esau and My Lord and My Lord Gen. 33.3 at every word The Scripture phrase is as ceremoniall and as observant of distances as any and yet still full of this familiar word too Tu and Tuus Thou and Thine And we also we who deale most with the Scriptures are more accustomed to the same phrase then any other kinde of speakers are In a Parliament who is ever heard to say Thou must needs grant this Thou mayest be bold to yeeld to this Or who ever speaks so to a Judge in any Court Nay the King himselfe will not speake to the people in that phrase And yet in the presence of the greatest we say ordinarily Amend thy life and God be mercifull to thee and I absolve thee of all thy sinnes Beloved in the Scripture God speaks either to the Church his Spouse and to his children and so he may be boâ—d and would be familiar with them Or els he speaks so as that he would be thought 〈◊〉 thee to speake singularly to thy soule in particular Know then that Christ Jesus haâ— done enough for the salvation of all but know too that if there had been no other name written in the booke of life but thine he would have dyed for Thee Of those which were given him he lost none but if there had been none given him but Thou rather then have lost Thee he would have given the same price for Thee that he gave for the whole world And therefore when thou hearest his mercies distributed in that particular and that familiar phrase Faciam Te I will make Thee understand thou knowest not whether he speake to any other in the Congregation or no Be sure that he speake to Thee which he does if thou hearken to him and answer him If thou canst not find that he means Thee yet that he speaks to thee now if thou thinke he speake rather to some other whose faith and good life thou preferrest before thine own doe but begin to thinke now of the blessednesse of that man to whom thou thinkest he speaks and say to God with thy Saviour Eli Eli My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Why art thou gone to the other side or why to the next on my right or on my left hand and left out me Why speakest thou not comfortably to my soule and he will leave the ninety nine for thee and thou shalt finde Onus amoris such a waight and burden and load of his love upon thee as thou shalt be faine almost to say with S. Peter Exi à me Domine O Lord goe farther from me that is thou shalt see such an obligation of mercy laid upon thee as puts thee beyond all possibility of comprehension much more of retribution or of due and competent thankesgiving Miserere animae tuae Be but mercifull to thine own soule and God will be mercifull to it too If God had never meant to be mercifull to thee he would learne of thee If thou couldest love thy selfe before God love thee God would love thee for loving thy selfe how much more for thy loving his love in thee Love understanding and faciet te intelligere he will make thee understand enough for thy pilgrimage enough for thy transmigration enough for thy eternall habitation As we count them wisest who are most provident and foresee most he will make thee see farther then all they through all generations beyond children and childrens children which is the prospect of the world to all eternity that hath no termination and he will allow thee an understanding for this world too He will bid thee Lift up thine eyes to heaven Esay 51.6 and bid thee Look downe to the earth too He will make thy considerations of this world acceptable to him as well as those of the next He will remember thee that Angels descended as well as ascended that to a religious soule Gen. 28. this world is not out of the way to heaven Faciet te intelligere He will make thee understand enough for both And so we have done with that first Part De credendis Things which we are bound to beleeve That even for those God workes upon the understanding That though God worke all in all yet it is the man that understands and lastly that in the Holy Ghosts choosing this word of singularity Te I will make thee understand there is pregnant intimation of Gods large and diffusive goodnesse to all This word Thee excludes none And so we passe to our second Part Instruction De agendis what we are to doe I will teach thee in the way thou shalt goe If any man lack wisedome 2 Part. Docebo let him aske it of God and Faciet intelligere God shall make him understand God shall I may study and then you may heare me but God onely makes us all understand for the understanding is the doore of faith and that doore he opens and he shuts So by understanding he brings us to beleeve But then he that truly beleeves finds that he hath something to doe too And he saies to himself Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his wayes And he cannot tell himselfe He askes them whom God hath sent to tell him his Ministers Viri fratres Men and brethren what shall we doe to be saved And by their leading he goes to the Spirit of God to God himself and sayes Mat. 19.16 Good Master what good thing shall I do that I may have eternall life And that good Master will teach him what to doe which is the promise of this part of Instruction in our Text Gregor I will teach thee in the way thou shalt goe And Plus est docere quà m instruere God promises more in this that he will Teach thee in the way then in the former
lust to the mule both because the mule is Carne virgo Hieron but Mente impudicus which is one high degree of lust to have a lustfull desire in an impotent body And then he is engendred by unnaturall mixture which is another high degree of the same sin And these two vices we take to be presented here as the two principall enemies the two chiefe corrupters of mankinde pride to be the principall spirituall sin and lust the principall that works upon the body To avoid both consider we both in both these beasts It is not much controverted in the Schooles Superbia but that the first sin of the Angels was Pride But because as we said before the danger of man is more in sinking down then in climbing up in dejecting then in raising himselfe we must therefore remember that it is not pride August to desire to be better Angeli quaesiverunt id ad quod pervenissent si stetissent The Angels sin was pride but their pride consisted not in aspiring to the best degrees that their nature was capable of but in this that they would come to that state by other meanes then were ordained for it It could not possibly fall within so pure and cleare understandings as the Angels were to think that they could be God that God could be multiplied That they who knew themselves to be but new made could think not only that they were not made but that they made all things else To think that they were God is impossible this could not fall into them though they would be Similes Altissimo Like the most High But this was their pride and in this they would be like the most High That whereas God subsisted in his Essence of himselfe for those degrees of perfection which appertained to them they would have them of themselves They would stand in their perfection without any turning towards God without any farther assistance from him by themselves and not by meanes ordained for them This is the pride that is forbidden man not that he think well of himselfe In genere suo That hee value aright the dignity of his nature in the Creation thereof according to the Image of God and the infinite improvement that that nature received in being assumed by the Son of God This is not pride but not to acknowledge that all this dignity in nature and all that it conduces to that is grace here and glory hereafter is not onely infused by God at first but sustained by God still and that nothing in the beginning or way or end is of our selves this is pride Man may and must think that God hath given him the Subjicite and Dominamini A Majesticall Character even in his person to subdue and governe all the creatures in the world That he hath given him a nature already above all other creatures and a nature capable of a better then his owne is yet 2 Pet. 1.4 1 John 3.9 Acts 17.28 1 Cor. 6.17 Dan. 3.17 for By his precious promises we are made partakers of the Divine nature We are made Semen Dei The seed of God borne of God Genus Dei The off-spring of God Idem Spiritus cum Domino The same Spirit with the Lord He the same flesh with us and we the same spirit with him In Gods servants to have said to Nebuchadnezzar Our God is able to deliver us and he will deliver us but if he doe not yet we will not serve thy Gods In the Martyrs of the Primitive Church to have contemned torments and tormentors with personall scornes and affronts In all calamities and adversities of this life to rely upon that assurance I have a better substance in me then any man can hurt I have a better inheritance prepared for me then any man can take from me I am called to Triumph and I goe to receive a Crown of Immortality these high contemplations of Kingdomes and Triumphs and Crowns are not pride To know a better state and desire it is not pride for pride is onely in taking wrong wayes to it So that to think we can come to this by our own strength without Gods inward working a beliefe or to think that we can believe out of Plato where we may find a God but without a Christ or come to be good men out of Plutarch or Seneca without a Church and Sacraments to pursue the truth it selfe by any other way then he hath laid open to us this is pride and the pride of the Angels Now there is also a pride which is the Horses pride conversant upon earthly things To desire Riches and Honour and Preferment in this world is not pride for they have all good uses in Gods service but to desire these by corrupt meanes or to ill ends to get them by supplantation of others or for oppression of others this is pride and a Bestiall pride And this proud man is elegantly expressed in the Horse Job 39.19 The horse rejoyceth in his strength he goes forth to meet the armed man he mocks at feare he turnes upon the sword and he swallowes the ground The River is mine sayes Pharaoh Ezek. 29.3 and I have made it for my sefl They take all and they mistake all That which is but lent them for use they think theirs The River is mine That which God gave them they think of their own getting I made it And that which God placed upon them as his Stewards for the good of others they appropriate to themselves I have made it for my self But when time is Job 39.21 Zech. 12.4 Job 39.27 God mounteth on high and he mocks the horse and the rider In that day I will smite every horse with astonishment and his rider with madnesse The horse beleeveth not that it is the sound of the Trumpet When the Trumpet sounds to us in our last Bell for the last Bell that carries us out of this world and the Trumpet that cals us to the next is all one voyce to us for we heare nothing between the worldly man shall not beleeve that it is the sound of the Trumpet he shall not know it not take knowledge of it but passe away unsensible of his own condition So then is Pride well represented in the Horse and so is the other Lust Mulus licentiousnesse in the Mule For besides that reason of assimilation that it desires and cannot and that reason that it presents unnaturall and promiscuous lust for this reason is that vice well represented in that Beast because it is so apt to beare any burdens For certainly no man is so inclinable to submit himselfe to any burden of labour of danger of cost of dishonour of law of sicknesse as the licentious man is He refuses none to come to his ends Neither is there any tree so loaded with boughs any one sin that hath so many branches so many species as this Shedding of blood we can limit in murder and manslaughter
had been well if Bathsheba had bathed within doores and with more caution but yet these errors alone we should not be apt to condemne in such persons except by Gods permitting greater sins to follow upon these we were taught that even such things as seeme to us in their nature to be indifferent have degrees of naturall and essentiall ill in them which must be avoyded even in the probability nay even in the possibility that they may produce sin And as from this Example we draw that Conclusion That sins which are but the Children of indifferent actions become the Parents of great sins which is the industry of sin to exalt it selfe and as it were ennoble it selfe above the stocke from which it was derived The next sin will needs be a better sin then the last So have we also from David this Conclusion that this generation of sin is infinite infinite in number infinite in duration So infinite both waies as that Luther who seldome checks himselfe in any vehement expression could not forbeare to say Si Nathan non venisset If Nathan had not come to David David had proceeded to the sin against the Holy Ghost O how impossible a thing is it then for us to condition and capitulate with God or with our owne Nature and say to him or to our selves We will sin thus long and no longer Thus far and no farther this sin and no more when not onely the frailty of man but even the justice of God provokes us though not as Author or cause of sin to commit more and more sins after wee have entangled and enwrapped our selves in former Who can doubt but that in this yeares space in which David continued in his sin but that he did ordinarily all the externall acts of the religious Worship of God who can doubt but that he performed all the Legall Sacrifices and all the Ceremoniall Rites Yea we see that when Nathan put Davids case in another name of a rich man that had taken away a poore mans onely sheepe David was not onely just but he was vehement in the execution of Justice Hee was saies the text exceeding wroth and said As the Lord liveth that man shall dye But yet for all this externall Religion for all this Civill justice in matter of government no mention of any repentance in all this time How little a thing then is it nay how great a thing that is how great an aggravating of thy sin if thou thinke to bribe God with a Sabboth or with an almes And as a criminall person would faine come to Sanctuary not because it is a consecrated place but because it rescues him from the Magistrate So thou comest to Chuch not because God is here but that thy being here may redeeme thee from the imputation of prophanenesse At last Nathan came David did not send for him but God sent him But yet David laid hold upon Gods purpose in him And he confesses to God he confesses to the Prophet he confesses to the whole Church for before he pleads for mercy in the body of the Psalme in the title of the Psalme which is as Canonicall Scripture as the Psalme it selfe hee confesses himselfe plainly A Psalme of David when the Prophet Nathan came to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba Audiunt male viventes quaerunt sibi patrocinia peccandi Wee heare of Davids sin August and wee justifie our sins by him Si David cur non ego If David went in to a Bathsheba why may not I That Father tels you why Qui facit quia David fecit id facit quod David non fecit He that does that because David did it does not doe that which David did Quia nullum exemplum proposuit For David did not justifie his sin by any precedent example So that he that sins as David did yet sins worse then David did and hee that continues as unsensible of his sin as David was is more unsensible then David was Quia ad te mittitur ipse David For God sends Nathan to thee August with David in his hand He sends you the Receit his invitations to Repentance in his Scriptures and he sends you a Probatum est a personall testimony how this Physicke hath wrought upon another upon David And so having in this first Part which is the Consideration of the persons in our Text God and David brought them by Nathans mediation together consider wee also for a conclusion of this Part the personall applications that David scatters himselfe upon none but God Tu me and hee repeats it doe Thou purge mee doe Thou wash mee Damascen hath a Sermon of the Assumption of the blessed Virgin which whole Sermon is but a Dialogue in which Eve acts the first part and the blessed Virgin another Tu. It is but a Dialogue yet it is a Sermon If I should insist upon this Dialogue between God and David Tu me Tu me Doe thou worke upon me it would not be the lesse a profitable part of a Sermon for that For first when we heare David in an anhelation and panting after the mercy of God cry out Domine Tu Lord doe thou that that is to be done doe Thou purge doe Thou wash and may have heard God thereby to excite us to the use of his meanes say Purget natura purget lex I have infused into thee a light and a law of nature and exalted that light and that law by a more particular law and a clearer light then that by which thou knowest what is sin and knowest that in a sinfull state thou canst not be acceptable to me Purget natura purget lex let the light of nature or of the law purge thee and rectifie thy selfe by that Doe but as much for thy selfe as some naturall men some Socrates some Plato hath done we may heare David reply Domine Tu Lord put me not over to the catechizing of Nature nor to the Pedagogie of the Law but take me into thine owne hands do Thou Thou that is to be done upon me When we heare God say Purget Ecclesia I have established a Church settled constant Ordinances for the purging and washing of souls there Purget Ecclesia Let the Church purge thee we may heare David reply Domine Tu Alas Lord how many come to that Bath and goe foule out of it how many heare Sermons and receive Sacraments and when they returne returne to their vomit Domine Tu Lord except the power of thy Spirit make thine Ordinance effectuall upon me even this thy Jordan will leave me in my leprosie and exalt my leprosie even this Sermon this Sacrament will aggravate my sin If we heare God say Shall I purge thee Doest thou know what thou askest what my method in purging is That if I purge I shall purge thee with fire with seaven fires with tribulations nay with tentations with temporall nay with spirituall calamities with wounds in thy fortune wounds
of man do not become the servants and instruments of that Grace Let all that we all seeke be who may glorifie God most and we shall agree in this That as the Pelagian wounds the glory of God deepely in making Naturall faculties joynt-Commissioners with Grace so do they diminish the glory of God too if any deny naturall faculties to be the subordinate servants and instruments of Grace for as Grace could not worke upon man to Salvation if man had not a faculty of will to worke upon because without that will man were not man so is this Salvation wrought in the will by conforming this will of man to the will of God not by extinguishing the will it selfe by any force or constraint that God imprints in it by his Grace God saves no man without or against his will Glory be to God on high and on earth Peace and Good will towards men And to this God of Glory the Father and this God of Peace and reconciliation the Son and this God of Good will and love amongst men the Holy Ghost be ascribed all praise c. PREBEND SERMONS Preached at St. PAULS The first of the Prebend of Cheswicks five Psalmes which five are appointed for that Prebend as there are five other for every other of our thirty Prebendaries SERM. LXV Preached at S. Pauls May 8. 1625. PSAL. 62.9 Surely men of low degree are vanity and men of high degree are a lie To bee laid in the balance they are altogether lighter then vanity WE consider the dignity of the Booke of Psalmes either in the whole body together or in the particular limmes and distribution thereof Of the whole Body Basil it may be enough to tell you that which S. Basil saith That if all the other bookes of Scripture could perish there remained enough in the booke of Psalmes for the supply of all And therefore he cals it Amuletum ad profligandum daemonem Any Psalme is Exorcisme enough to expell any Devill Charme enough to remove any tentation Enchantment enough to ease nay to sweeten any tribulation It is abundantly enough that our Saviour Christ himselfe cites the Psalmes not onely as Canonicall Scripture but as a particular and entire and noble limme of that Body All must be fulfilled of me saith he which is written in the Law Luk. 24.44 in the Prophets and in the Psalmes The Law alone was the Sadduces Scripture they received no more The Law and the Prophets were especially the Scribes Scripture they interpreted that The Christians Scripture in the Old Testament is especially the Psalmes For except the Prophecy of Esay be admitted into the comparison no booke of the Old Testament is so like a Gospel so particular in all things concerning Christ as the Psalmes So hath the Booke of Psalmes an especiall dignity in the intire Body all together It hath so also in divers distributions thereof into parts For even amongst the Jewes themselves those fifteen Psalmes which follow immediatly and successively after the 119. Psalme were especially distinguished and dignified by the name of Graduall Psalmes Whether because they were sung upon the Degrees and staires ascending to the Altar Or because hee that read them in the Temple ascended into a higher and more eminent place to reade them Or because the word Graduall implies a degree of excellency in the Psalmes themselves I dispute not But a difference those fifteen Psalmes ever had above the rest in the Jewish and in the Christian Church too So also hath there beene a particular dignity ascribed to those seven Psalmes which we have ever called the Penitentiall Psalmes Of which S. Augustine had so much respect August as that he commanded them to be written in a great Letter and hung about the curtaines of his Death-bed within that hee might give up the ghost in contemplation and meditation of those seven Psalmes And it hath beene traditionally received and recommended by good Authors that that Hymne Matt. 26.30 which Christ and his Apostles are said to have sung after the Institution and celebration of the Sacrament was a Hymne composed of those six Psalmes which we call the Allelujah Psalmes immediatly preceding the hundred and nineteenth So then in the whole Body and in some particular limmes of the Body the Church of God hath had an especiall consideration of the booke of Psalmes This Church in which we all stand now and in which my selfe by particular obligation serve hath done so too In this Church by ancient Constitutions it is ordained That the whole booke of Psalmes should every day day by day bee rehearsed by us who make the Body of this Church in the eares of Almighty God And therefore every Prebendary of this Church is by those Constitutions bound every day to praise God in those five Psalmes which are appointed for his Prebend And of those five Psalmes which belong to mee this out of which I have read you this Text is the first And by Gods grace upon like occasions I shall here handle some part of every one of the other foure Psalmes for some testimony that those my five Psalmes returne often into my meditation which I also assure my selfe of the rest of my brethren who are under the same obligation in this Church For this whole Psalme Psalmus integer which is under our present consideration as Athanasius amongst all the Fathers was most curious and most particular and exquisite in observing the purpose and use of every particular Psalm for to that purpose he goes through them all in this maner If thou wilt encourage men to a love and pursuit of goodnesse say the first Psalme and 31. and 140 c. If thou wilt convince the Jewes say the second Psalme If thou wilt praise God for things past say this and this And this and this if thou wilt pray for future things so for this Psalme which we have in hand he observes in it a summary abridgement of all For of this Psalme he sayes in generall Adversus insidiantes Against all attempts upon thy body thy state thy soule thy fame tentations tribulations machinations defamations say this Psalme As he saith before that in the booke of Psalmes every man may discerne motus animi sui his owne finfull inclinations expressed and arme himselfe against himselfe so in this Psalme he may arme himselfe against all other adversaries of any kinde And therefore as the same Father entitles one Sermon of his Contr a omnes haereses A Sermon for the convincing of all Heresies in which short Sermon he meddles not much with particular heresies but onely establishes the truth of Christs Person in both natures which is indeed enough against all Heresies and in which that is the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father God of God this Father Athanasius hath enlarged himselfe more then the rest insomuch that those heretiques which grow so fast in these our dayes The Socinians who deny the Godhead of Christ
shall come to the glory of Heaven that hath not a holy ambition of this glory in this world for this glory which we speake of is the evidence and the reflexion of the glory from above for the glory of God shines through godly men and wee receive a beame and a tincture of that glory of God when we have the approbation and testimony and good opinion and good words of good men which is the Glory of our Text as far as this world is capable of glory All the upright in heart shall glory that is They shall be celebrated and encouraged with the glory and praise of good men here and they shall be rewarded with everlasting glory in Heaven In these words we propose to you but two parts Divisio First The disposition of the Persons Omnes recti corde All the upright in heart and then The retribution upon these Persons Gloriabuntur They shall Glory or as it is in the Vulgat and well Laudabuntur They shall be celebrated they shall be praised In the first The qualification of the persons wee shall passe by these steps First that God in his punishments and rewardings proposes to himselfe Persons Persons already made and qualified God does not begin at a retribution nor begin at a condemnation before he have Persons Persons fit to be rewarded Persons fit to be condemned God did not first make a Heaven and a Hell and after thinke of making man that he might have some persons to put in them but first for his Glory he made Man and for those who by a good use of his grace preserved their state Heaven and for those who by their owne fault fell he made Hell First he proposed Persons Persons in being And then for the Persons as his delight is for the most part to doe in this Text he expresses it which is rather to insist upon the Rewards which the Good shall receive then upon the condemnation and judgements of the wicked If he could chuse that is If his owne Glory and the edification of his Children would beare it he would not speake at all of judgements or of those persons that draw necessary judgements upon themselves but he would exercise our contemplation wholly upon his mercy and upon Persons qualified and prepared for his gracious retributions So he does here He speakes not at all of perverse and froward and sinister and oblique men men incapable of his retributions but onely of Persons disposed ordained prepared for them And in the qualification of these Persons he proposes first a rectitude a directnesse an uprightnesse declinations downeward deviations upon the wrong hand squint-eyed men splay footed men left-handed men in a spirituall sense he meddles not withall They must be direct and upright And then upright in heart for to be good to ill ends as in many cases a man may be God accepts not regards not But let him be a person thus qualified Vpright upright because he loves uprightnesse Vpright in heart And then he is infallably imbraced and enwrapped in that generall rule and proposition that admits no exception Omnes recti corde All the upright in heart shall be partakers of this retribution And in these branches we shall determine our first Part first That God proposes to himselfe Persons Persons thus and thus qualified he begins at them Secondly That God had rather dwell himselfe and propose to us the consideration of good persons then bad of his mercies then his judgements for he mentions no other here but persons capable of his retributions And then the goodnesse that God considers is rectitude and rectitude in the roote in the heart And from that roote growes that spreading universality that infallibility Omnes All such are sure of the Reward And then in our second Part in the Reward it selfe though it be delivered here in the whole barre in the Ingot in the Wedge in Bulloyn in one single word Gloriabuntur Laudabuntur They shall Glory yet it admits this Mintage and coyning and issuing in lesser pieces That first we consider the thing it selfe The metall in which God rewards us Glory Praise And then since Gods promise is fastened upon that We shall be praised As we may lawfully seeke the praise of good men so must wee also willingly afford praise to good men and to good actions And then since we finde this retribution fixed in the future We shall be praised we shall be in glory there arises this Consolation That though we have it not yet yet we shall have it Though wee be in dishonour and contempt and under a cloud of which we see no end our selves yet there is a determined future in God which shall be made present we shall overcome this contempt and Gloriabimur and Laudabimur we shall Glory we shall be celebrated In which future the consolation is thus much farther exalted that it is an everlasting future the glory and praise the approbation and acclamation which we shall receive from good men here shall flow out and continue to the Hosannaes in Heaven in the mouth of Saints and Angels and to the Euge bone serve Well done good and faithfull Servant Mat. 25.21 in the mouth of God himselfe First then God proposes to himselfe in his Rewards and Retributions Persons 1 Part. Personae qualificatae Persons disposed and qualified Not disposed by nature without use of grace that is flat and full Pelagianisme Not disposed by preventing grace without use of subsequent grace by Antecedent and anticipant without concomitant and auxiliant grace that is Semi-pelagianisme But persons obsequious to his grace when it comes and persons industrious and ambitious of more and more grace and husbanding his grace well all the way such persons God proposes to himselfe God does not onely reade his own works nor is he onely delighted with that which he hath writ himselfe with his own eternall Decrees in heaven but he loves also to reade our books too our histories which we compose in our lives and actions and as his delight is to be with the sonnes of men Pro. 8.31 Ephes 3.7 so his study is in this Library to know what we doe S. Paul sayes That God made him a Minister of the Gospel to preach to the Gentils to the intent that the Angels might know the manifold wisdome of God by the Church That is by that that was done in the Church The Angels saw God Did they not see these things in God No for These things were hid in God sayes the Apostle there And the Angels see no more in God then God reveales unto them and these things of the Church God reserved to a future and to an experimentall knowledge to be knowne then when they were done in the Church So there are Decrees in God but they are hid in God To this purpose and entendment and in this sense hid from God himselfe that God accepts or condemnes Man Secundum allegata Probata according
capable of his Mercies and his Retributions as here in this Text he names onely those who are Recti corde The upright in heart They shall be considered rewarded The disposition that God proposes here in those persons Recti whom he considers is Rectitude Uprightnesse and Directnesse God hath given Man that forme in nature much more in grace that he should be upright and looke up and contemplate Heaven and God there And therefore to bend downwards upon the earth to fix our breast our heart to the earth to lick the dust of the earth with the Serpent to inhere upon the profits and pleasures of the earth and to make that which God intended for our way and our rise to heaven the blessings of this world the way to hell this is a manifest Declination from this Uprightnesse from this Rectitude Nay to goe so far towards the love of the earth as to be in love with the grave to be impatient of the calamities of this life and murmur at Gods detaining us in this prison to sinke into a sordid melancholy or irreligious dejection of spirit this is also a Declination from this Rectitude this Uprightnesse So is it too to decline towards the left hand to Modifications and Temporisings in matter or forme of Religion and to thinke all indifferent all one or to decline towards the right hand in an over-vehement zeale To pardon no errors to abate nothing of heresie if a man beleeve not all and just all that we beleeve To abate nothing of Reprobation if a man live not just as we live this is also a Diversion a Deviation a Deflection a Defection from this Rectitude this Uprightnesse For the word of this Text Iashar signifies Rectitudinem and Planiciem It signifies a direct way for the Devils way was Circular Compassing the Earth But the Angels way to heaven upon Iacobs ladder was a straight a direct way And then it signifies as a direct and straight so a plaine a smooth an even way a way that hath been beaten into a path before a way that the Fathers and the Church have walked in before and not a discovery made by our curiosity or our confidence in venturing from our selves or embracing from others new doctrines and opinions The persons then whom God proposes here to be partakers of his Retributions Recti Corde are first Recti that is both Direct men and Plaine men and then recti corde this qualification this straightnesse and smoothnesse must be in the heart All the upright in heart shall have it Upon this earth a man cannot possibly make one step in a straight and a direct line The earth it selfe being round every step wee make upon it must necessarily bee a segment an arch of a circle But yet though no piece of a circle be a straight line yet if we take any piece nay if wee take the whole circle there is no corner no angle in any piece in any intire circle A perfectt rectitude we cannot have in any wayes in this world In every Calling there are some inevitable tentations But though wee cannot make up our circle of a straight line that is impossible to humane frailty yet wee may passe on without angles and corners that is without disguises in our Religion and without the love of craft and falsehood and circumvention in our civill actions A Compasse is a necessary thing in a Ship and the helpe of that Compasse brings the Ship home safe and yet that Compasse hath some variations it doth not looke directly North Neither is that starre which we call the North-pole or by which we know the North-pole the very Pole it selfe but we call it so and we make our uses of it and our conclusions by it as if it were so because it is the neerest starre to that Pole He that comes as neere uprightnesse as infirmities admit is an upright man though he have some obliquities To God himselfe we may alwayes go in a direct line a straight a perpendicular line For God is verticall to me over my head now and verticall now to them that are in the East and West-Indies To our Antipodes to them that are under our feet God is verticall over their heads then when he is over ours To come to God there is a straight line for every man every where But this we doe not if we come not with our heart Praebe mihi fili cor tuum saith God Pro. 23.26 My sonne give me thy heart Was hee his sonne and had hee not his heart That may very well bee There is a filiation without the heart not such a filiation as shall ever make him partaker of the inheritance but yet a filiation The associating our selves to the sonnes of God in an outward profession of Religion makes us so farre the sonnes of God as that the judgement of man cannot and the judgement of God doth not distinguish them Iob 1.6 Because then when the sonnes of God stood in his presence Satan stood amongst the sons of God God doth not disavow him God doth not excommunicate him God makes his use of him and yet God knew his heart was farre from him So when God was in Councell with his Angels about Ahabs going up to Ramoth Gilead 1 King 22.22 A spirit came forth and offered his service and God refuses not his service but employes him though hee knew his heart to be farre from him So no doubt many times they to whom God hath committed supreme government and they who receive beames of this power by subordination and delegation from them they see Satan amongst the sonnes of God hypocrites and impiously disposed men come into these places of holy convocation and they suffer them nay they employ them nay they preferre them and yet they know their hearts are farre from them but as long as they stand amongst the sonnes of God that is appeare and conforme themselves in the outward acts of Religion they are not disavowed they are not ejected by us here they are not But howsoever wee date our Excommunications against them but from an overt act and apparant disobedience yet in the Records of heaven they shall meet an Excommunication and a conviction of Recusancy that shall beare date from that day when they came first to Church with that purpose to delude the Congregation to elude the lawes in that behalfe provided to advance their treacherous designes by such disguises or upon what other collaterall and indirect occasion soever men come to this place for though they bee in the right way when they are here at Church yet because they are not upright in heart therefore that right way brings not them to the right end And that is it which David lookes upon in God and desires that God should looke upon in him 2 Sam. 7.21 According to thine owne heart saith David to God hast thou done all these great things unto us For sometimes God doth give
build the Church in Peter and Andrew brethren The principall fraternity and brotherhood that God respects is spirituall Brethren in the profession of the same true Religion But Peter and Andrew whom he called here to the true Religion and so gave them that second fraternity and brotherhood which is spirituall were naturall brethren before And that God loves that a naturall a secular a civill fraternity and a spirituall fraternity should be joyned together when those that professe the same Religion should desire to contract their alliances in marrying their Children and to have their other dealings in the world as much as they can with men that professe the same true Religion that they do That so not medling nor disputing the proceedings of States who in some cases go by other rules then private men do we doe not make it an equall an indifferent thing whether we marry our selves or our children or make our bargaines or our conversation with persons of a different Religion when as our Adversaries amongst us will not goe to a Lawyer nor call a Physitian no nor scarce a Taylor or other Tradesman of another Religion then their owne if they can possibly avoid it God saw a better likelihood of avoyding Schisme and dissention when those whom hee called to a new spirituall brotherhood in one Religion were naturall brothers too and tied in civill bands as well as spirituall And as Christ began so he proceeded Non cognati for the persons whom he called were Catechisticall instructive persons persons from whose very persons we receive instruction The next whom he called which is in the next verse were two too and brethren too Iohn and Iames but yet his owne kinsmen in the flesh But as he chose two together to avoid singularity and two brethren to avoid Schisme so he preferred two strangers before his own kindred to avoid partiality and respect of persons Certainly every man is bound to do good to those that are neare him by nature The obligation of doing good to others lies for the most part thus Let us do good to all men Gal. 6.10 but especially unto them which are of the houshold of the faithfull They of our owne Religion are of the Quorum Now when all are so of the houshold of the faithfull of our owne Religion the obligation looks home and lie thus He that provideth not for his own denieth the faith 1 Tim. 5.8 and is worse then an Infidel Christ would therefore leave no example nor justification of that perverse distemper to leave his kindred out nor of their disposition who had rather buy new friends at any rate then relieve or cherish the old But yet when Christ knew how far his stock would reach that no liberality howsoever placed could exhaust that but that he was able to provide for all he would leave no example nor justification of that perverse distemper to heape up preferments upon our owne kindred without any consideration how Gods glory might be more advanced by doing good to others too But finding in these men a fit disposition to be good labourers in his harvest and to agree in the service of the Church as they did in the band of nature he calls Peter and Andrew otherwise strangers before he called his Consins Iames and Iohn These Circumstances we proposed to be considered in these persons before Continuò sequuti and at their being called The first after their calling is their chearfull readinesse in obeying Continuò sequuti They were bid follow and forthwith they followed Which present obedience of theirs is exalted in this that this was freshly upon the imprisonment of Iohn Baptist whose Disciple Andrew had been And it might easily have deterred and averted a man in his case to consider that it was well for him that he was got out of Iohn Baptists schoole and company before that storme the displeasure of the state fell upon him and that it behoved him to be wary to apply himselfe to any such new Master as might draw him into as much trouble which Christs service was very like to doe But the contemplation of future persecutions that may fall the example of persecutions past that have falne the apprehension of imminent persecutions that are now falling the sense of present persecutions that are now upon us retard not those upon whom the love of Christ Jesus works effectually They followed for all that And they followed when there was no more perswasion used to them no more words said to them but Sequere me Follow me And therefore how easie soever Iulian the Apostate might make it for Christ to work upon so weake men as these were yet to worke upon any men by so weake means onely by one Sequere me Follow me and no more cannot be thought easie The way of Rhetorique in working upon weake men is first to trouble the understanding to displace and discompose and disorder the judgement to smother and bury in it or to empty it of former apprehensions and opinions and to shake that beliefe with which it had possessed it self before and then when it is thus melted to powre it into new molds when it is thus mollified to stamp and imprint new formes new images new opinions in it But here in our case there was none of this fire none of this practise none of this battery of eloquence none of this verball violence onely a bare Sequere me Follow me and they followed No eloquence enclined them no terrors declined them No dangers withdrew them no preferment drew them they knew Christ and his kindred and his means August they loved him himselfe and not any thing they expected from him Minùs te amat qui aliquid tuum amat quod non propter te amat That man loves thee but a little that begins his love at that which thou hast and not at thy selfe It is a weake love that is divided between Christ and the world especially if God come after the world as many times he does even in them who thinke they love him well that first they love the riches of this world and then they love God that gave them But that is a false Method in this art of love The true is radically to love God for himselfe and other things for his sake so far as he may receive glory in our having and using them This Peter and Andrew declared abundantly Relictia retibus they did as much as they were bid they were bid follow and they followed but it seemes they did more they were not bid leave their nets and yet they left their nets and followed him But for this they did not no man can doe more in the service of God then is enjoyned him commanded him There is no supererogation no making of God beholden to us no bringing of God into our debt Every man is commanded to love God with all his heart and all his power and a heart above a
dead as those Fathers did and as the Lutherans doe safely enough without assisting the doctrine of Purgatory if that were all that were to be said against such prayers Be then that thus settled The Fathers did not intend any such building upon that foundation not a Purgatory which should be a place of torment upon those prayers for the dead but then what did they meane by that Purgatory and that fire which is so frequent amongst them In the confession of our Adversaries the greatest part of the Fathers that mention a Purgatory fire intend it of the generall fire of conflagration at the last day They thought the soules of the Dead to have beene kept in Abditis and in Receptaculis till the day of Judgement and that then that fire which was to take hold of all creatures to the purifying of them should also take hold of all soules and burne out all that might be unacceptable to God in those soules and that this was their Purgatory Others of the Fathers have called that severe judgement and examination which every soule is to passe under from the hand of God at that time because it hath much of the nature of fire and many of the properties and qualities of fire in it a fire a purging fire and made that their Purgatory If others of the Fathers have spoken of a purging fire after this life so as it will not fall within these two acceptations of the fire of conflagration or of the fire of examination we must say in their behalfe as Sextus Senensis does That they are not the lesse holy Sext. Senens nor the lesse reverend for having straied into some of these mistakings because it is a fire without light In those sub-obscure times August S. Augustine might be excusable though he proceeded doubtfully and said Non incredibile It is not incredible that some such thing there may be and Quaeri potest It is not amisse to inquire where such things are to be inquired after that is in the Scriptures whether any such thing be or no and Vtrum latere an inveniri whether any such thing will be found there or no I cannot tell he may be excusable in his proceeding farther in his doubt Sive ibi tantum whether all our Purgatory be reserved for the next world Sive hic ibi or whether God divide our Purgatory some here and some there Sive hic ut non ibi or whether God exalt and multiply our Purgatory here that we may have none hereafter Of these things I say howsoever S. Augustine might be excusable for doubting in those darke times we should be inexcusable if we should not deny them in these times in which God hath afforded us so much light and clearenesse And rest in that acknowledgement that we have in this life Purgationem purgatorium A purging and a Purgatory A purging in this That Christ Jesus Whom God hath made the heire of all things by whom also he made the world Heb. 1.3 who was the brightnesse of his glory and the expresse image of his person That he by himselfe hath purged our sinnes There is our purging But then because after this generall purging which is wrapped up in the generall nature as Christ dyed for mankinde for all men and after that neerer application thereof as it is wrapped up in the Covenant as he dyed more effectually for all Christians still our own clothes defile us our own evill habits Iob our owne flesh pollutes us therefore God sends us a Purgatory too in this life Crosses Afflictions and Tribulations and to burne out these infectious staines and impressions in our flesh Ipse sedet tanquam ignis conflans God sits as a fire and with fullers soape to wash us Malac. 3.2 and to burne us cleane with afflictions from his own hand Let no man think himselfe sufficiently purified that hath not passed this Purgatory Irascaris mihi Domine saith S. Bernard Lord let me see that thou art angry with me Bernar. I know I have given thee just cause of anger and if thou smother that anger and declare it not by corrections here thou reservest thine anger to undeterminable times and to unsupportable proportions Propitius fuisti sayes David Thou wast a mercifull God to thy people for saith hee Thou didst punish all their Inventions In this consisted his mercy that he did punish for if he had been more mercifull he had been unmercifull If he had begun with no Judgements they had ended in Judgements without end Affliction is a Christians daily bread and therefore in that petition Da nobis hodie Give us this day our daily bread not onely patience in affliction but affliction it selfe so farre as it conduces to our mortification is asked at Gods hand It is an over-presumptuous confidence for which they glorifie one in the Romane Church that he was put often to his Decede à me Domine O Lord withdraw thy self and thy grace farther from me for by mine own sanctity or diligence I am able to wrastle with and to overcome all the tentations and tribulations of this life Decede à me withdraw thy selfe and thy grace and put not thy selfe to this trouble nor this cost with me but leave me to my selfe This was too much confidence but that was more which wee find in another That he begged of God by prayer that he might bee possessed with the Devill for some moneths because all the tentations of the flesh and all the crosses of the world were not enough for his victory and his triumph But it is an humble and a requisite prayer to ask such a measure of affliction as may ballast us and carry us steddily through all the storms and tempests of this life As hee that hath had no rubbe in his fortune in his temporall state is in most danger to fall to fall into murmuring at the first stumble he makes As hee that hath had no sicknesse till his age hardly recovers then So hee that hath not borne his yoake in his youth that hath not beene accustomed to crosses and afflictions hath a wanton soule all the way and a froward and impatient soule towards the end This is our true Purgatory And in this Purgatory we doe need the prayers of others and upon this Purgatory we may build Indulgences which are those testimonies of the remission of sinnes which God hath enabled his Church to imprint and conferre upon us in the absolution thereof which are nothing of kinne to those Indulgences of the Roman Church which are the children of this mother of Purgatory and to the maintenance of which they have also detorted our Text Else If there be no such Indulgences If the works of Supererogation done by other men may not be applied to the soules that are in Purgatory If there be no such use of Indulgences why are then these men baptized for the dead Against the popular opinion of the Spheare or
his Gomer his explicite knowledge of Articles absolutely necessary to salvation The simplest man as well as the greatest Doctor is bound to know that there is one God in three persons That the second of those the Sonne of God tooke our nature and dyed for mankinde And that there is a Holy Ghost which in the Communion of Saints the Church established by Christ applies to every particular soule the benefit of Christs universall redemption But then for our Quails birds of higher pitch meat of a stronger digestion which is the knowledge how to rectifie every straying conscience how to extricate every entangled and scrupulous and perplexed soule in all emergent doubts how to defend our Church and our Religion from all the mines and all the batteries of our Adversaries and to deliver her from all imputations of Heresie and Schisme which they impute to us this knowledge is not equally necessary in all In many cases a Master of servants and a Father of children is bound to know more then those children and servants and the Pastor of the parish more then parishioners They may have their fulnesse though he have more but he hath not his except he be able to give them satisfaction This fulnesse then is not an equality in the measure our fulnesse in heaven shall not be so Abraham dyed sayes the text Plenus dierum full of yeares Gen. 25.8 It is not said so in the text of Methusalem that he dyed full of yeares and yet he had another manner of Gomer another measure of life then Abraham for he lived almost eight hundred yeares more then he But he that is best disposed to die is fullest of yeares One man may be fuller at twenty then another at seaventy David lived not the tithe of Methusalems yeares not ten to his hundred he lived lesse then Abraham and yet David is said to have dyed Plenus dierum full of yeares he had made himselfe agreeable to God 1 Chro. 29.28 and so was ripe for him So David is said there to have dyed full of honor God knowes David had cast shrowd aspersions upon his own and others honor but as God sayes of Israel Because I loved thee thou wast honorable in my sight so because God loved David and he persevered in that love to the end he dyed full of honor So also it is said of David that he dyed full of Riches for though they were very great additions which Solomon made yet because David intended that which he left for Gods service and for pious uses he dyed full of Riches fulnesse of riches is in the good purpose and the good employment not in the possession In a word the fulnesse that is inquired after and required by this prayer carry it upon temporall carry it upon spirituall things is such a proportion of either as is fit for that calling in which God hath put us And then the satisfaction in this fulnesse is not to hunt and pant after more worldly possessions by undue meanes or by macerating labour as though we could not be good or could doe no good in the world except all the goods of the world passed our hands nor to hunt and pant after the knowledge of such things as God by his Scriptures hath not revealed to his Church nor to wrangle contentiously and uncharitably about such points as doe rather shake others consciences then establish our own as though we could not possibly come to heaven except we knew what God meant to doe with us before he meant to make us S. Paul expresses fully what this fulnesse is Colos 4.12 and satisfies us in this satisfaction Vt sitis pleni in omni voluntate Dei That yee may be filled according to the will of God What is the will of God How shall I know the will of God upon me God hath manifested his will in my Calling and a proportion competent to this Calling is my fulnesse and should be my satisfaction Gen. 8.21 that so God may have Odorem quietis as it is said in Noahs sacrifice after he came out of the Arke that God smelt a savour of rest a sacrifice in which he might rest himselfe for God hath a Sabbath in the Sabbaths of his servants a fulnesse in their fulnesse a satisfaction when they are satisfied and is well pleased when they are so So then this Prayer is for fulnesse Nos and fulnesse is a competency in our calling And a prayer for satisfaction and satisfaction is a contentment in that competency And then this prayer is not onely a prayer of appropriation to our selves but of a charitable extention to others too Satura nos Satisfie us All us all thy Church Charity begins in our selves but it does not end there but dilates it selfe to others The Saints in heaven are full as full as they can hold and yet they pray Though they want nothing they pray that God would powre down upon us graces necessary for our peregrination here as he hath done upon them in their station there We are full full of the Gospel present peace and plenty in the preaching thereof and faire apparances of a perpetuall succession we are full and yet we pray we pray that God would continue the Gospel where it is restore the Gospel where it was and transfer the Gospel where it hath not yet been preached Charity desires not her own sayes the Apostle but much lesse doth charity desire no more then her own so as not to desire the good of others too True love and charity is to doe the most that we can all that we can for the good of others So God himselfe proceeds when he sayes What could I doe that I have not done And so he seems to have begun at first when God bestowed upon man his first and greatest benefit his making it is expressed so Faciamus hominem Let us All us make man God seems to summon himselfe to assemble himselfe to muster himselfe all himselfe all the persons of the Trinity to doe what he could in the favour of man So also when he is drawne to a necessity of executing judgement and for his own honor and consolidation of his servants puts himselfe upon a revenge he proceeds so too when man had rebelled and began to fortifie in Babel Gen. 11.7 then God sayes Venite Let us All us come together And Descendamus confundamus Let us all us goe down and confound their language and their machinations and fortifications God does not give patterns God does not accept from us acts of half-devotion and half-charities God does all that he can for us And therefore when we see others in distresse whether nationall or personall calamities whether Princes be dispossest of their naturall patrimony and inheritance or private persons afflicted with sicknesse or penury or banishment let us goe Gods way all the way First Faciamus hominem ad imaginem nostram Let us make that Man according
the sorenesse of Circumcision they slew them all Gods justice required bloud but that bloud is not spilt but poured from that head to our hearts into the veines and wounds of our owne soules There was bloud shed but no bloud lost Before the Law was thorowly established when Moses came downe from God and deprehended the people in that Idolatry to the Calfe before he would present himselfe as a Mediator betweene God and them Exod. 32.28 32. for that sinne he prepares a sacrifice of bloud in the execution of three thousand of those Idolaters and after that he came to his vehement prayer in their behalfe And in the strength of the Law Heb. 9 22. all things were purged with bloud and without bloud there is no remission Whether we place the reason of this in Gods Justice which required bloud or whether we place it in the conveniency that bloud being ordinarily received to be sedes animae the seat and residence of the soule The soule for which that expiation was to be could not be better represented nor purified then in the state and seat of the soule in bloud or whether we shut up our selves in an humble sobriety to inquire into the reasons of Gods actions thus we see it was no peace no remission but in bloud Nor is that so strange as that which followes in the next place per sanguinem ejus by his bloud Before Per sanguinem ejus Psal 50.10 under the Law it was in sanguine hircorum vitulorum In the bloud of Goats and Bullocks here it is in sanguine ejus in his bloud Not his as he claims all the beasts of the forrest all the cattle upon a thousand hils and all the fowles of the mountaines to be his not his as he sayes of Gold and Silver The Silver is mine and the Gold is mine Hag. 2.8 not his as he is Lord and proprietary of all by Creation so all bloud is his no nor his as the bloud of all the Martyrs was his bloud which is a neare relation and consanguinity but his so as it was the precious bloud of his body the seat of his soule the matter of his spirits the knot of his life This bloud he shed for me and I have bloud to shed for him too though he call me not to the tryall nor to the glory of Martyrdome Sanguis animae meae voluntas mea The bloud of my soule is my will Bern. Scindatur vena ferro compunctionis open a veine with that knife remorce compunction ut si non sensus certe consensus peccati effluat That though thou canst not bleed out all motions to sinne thou maist all consent thereunto Noli esse nimium justus noli sapere plus quam oportet St. Bernard makes this use of those Counsels Be not righteous overmuch nor be not overwise Ecces 7.16 Cui putas venae parcendum si justitia sapientia egent minutione what veine maist thou spare if thou must open those two veines righteousnesse and wisedome If they may be superfluously abundant if thou must bleed out some of thy Righteousnesse and some of thy wisedome cui venae parcendum at what veine must thou not bleed Tostat in Levit fo 45. D. Now in all sacrifices where bloud was to be offerd the fat was to be offerd to If thou wilt sacrifice the bloud of thy soule as St. Bernard cals the will sacrifice the fat too If thou give over thy purpose of continuing in thy sin give over the memory of it and give over all that thou possessest unjustly and corruptly got by that sinne else thou keepest the fat from God though thou give him the bloud If God had given over at his second daies work we had had no sunne no seasons If at his fift we had had no beeing If at the sixt no Sabbath but by proceeding to the seventh we are all and we have all Naaman 2 Reg. 5.14 who was out of the covenant yet by washing in Jordan seven times was cured of his leprosie seaven times did it even in him but lesse did not Tostat in Levit 4. q. 16. The Priest in the Law used a seven-fold sprinkling of bloud upon the Altar and we observe a seven-fold shedding of bloud in Christ In his Circumcision and in his Agony in his fulfilling of that Prophesie gen as vellicantibus I gave my cheeks to them that plucked off the haire and in his scourging Esay 50.6 in his crowning and in his nayling and lastly in the piercing of his side These seven channels hath the bloud of thy Saviour found Poure out the bloud of thy soule sacrifice thy stubborne and rebellious will seaven times too seaven times that is every day and seaven times every day for so often a just man falleth And then Prov. 24.16 how low must that man lie at last if he fall so often and never rise upon any fall and therefore raise thy self as often and as soone as thou fallest Iericho would not fall Jos 6. but by being compassed seaven dayes and seaven times in one day Compasse thy selfe comprehend thy selfe seaven times many times and thou shalt have thy losse of bloud supplied with better bloud with a true sense of that peace which he hath already made and made by bloud and by his owne bloud and by the bloud of his Crosse which is the last branch of this second part Greater love hath no man then to lay downe his life for his friend yet he that said so Crux Joh. 15.13 did more then so more then lay downe his life for he exposed it to violences and torments and all that for his enemies But doth not the necessity diminish the love where a testament is there must also of necessity be the death of the testator Heb. 9.16 was there then a necessity in Christs dying simply a necessity of coaction there was not such as is in the death of other men naturall or violent by the hand of Justice There was nothing more arbitrary more voluntary more spontaneous then all that Christ did for man And if you could consider a time before the contract between the Father and him had passed for the redemption of man by his death we might say that then there was no necessity upon Christ that he must dye But because that contract was from all eternity Luc. 24.26 supposing that contract that this peace was to be made by his death there entred the oportuit pati That Christ ought to suffer all these things and to enter into his glory And so as for his death so for the manner of his death by the Crosse it was not of absolute necessity and yet it was not by casualty neither not because he was to suffer in that Nation which did ordinarily punish such Malefactors such as he was accused to be seditious persons with that manner of death but all this proceeded ex
pacto thus the contract led it to this he was obedient obedient unto death and unto the death of the Crosse Phil. 2.8 By bloud and not onely by comming into this world and assuming our nature which humiliation was an act of infinite value and not by the bloud of his Circumcision or Agony but bloud to death and by no gentler nor nobler death then the death of the Crosse was this peace to be made by him Though then one drop of his bloud had beene enough to have redeemed infinite worlds if it had beene so contracted and so applyed yet he gave us a morning showre of his bloud in his Circumcision and an evening showre at his passion and a showre after Sunset in the piercing of his side And though any death had beene an incomprehensible ransome for the Lord of life to have given for the children of death yet he refused not the death of the Crosse The Crosse to which a bitter curse was nayled by Moses Deut. 21 23. from the beginning he that is hanged is not onely accursed of God as our Translation hath it but he is the curse of God as it is in the Originall not accursed but a curse not a simple curse but the curse of God And by the Crosse which besides the Infamy was so painfull a death as that many men languished many dayes upon it before they dyed And by his bloud of this torture and this shame this painfull and this ignominious death was this peace made In our great work of crucifying our selves to the world too it is not enough to bleed the drops of a Circumcision that is to cut off some excessive and notorious practice of sin nor to bleed the drops of an Agony to enter into a conflict and colluctation of the flesh and the spirit whether we were not better trust in Gods mercy for our continuance in that sin then lose all that pleasure and profit which that sin brings us nor enough to bleed the drops of scourging to be lashed with viperous and venemous tongues by contumelies and slanders nor to bleed the drops of Thornes to have Thornes and scruples enter into our consciences with spirituall afflictions but we must be content to bleed the streames of naylings to those Crosses to continue in them all our lives if God see that necessary for our confirmation and if men will pierce and wound us after our deaths in our good name yea if they will slander our Resurrection as they did Christs if they will say that it is impossible God should have mercy upon such a man impossible that a man of so bad life and so sad and comfortlesse a death should have a joyfull Resurrection here is our comfort as that piercing of Christs side was after the Consummatum est after his passion ended and therefore put him to no paine as that slander of his Resurrection was after that glorious triumph He was risen and had shewed himselfe before and therefore it diminished not his power so all these posthume wounds and slanders after my death after my God and my Soule shall have passed that Dialogue Veni Domine Iesu and euge bone serve That I shall have said upon my death-bed Come Lord Jesu come quickly and he shall have said Well done good and faithfull servant enter into thy Masters joy when I shall have said to him In manus tuas Domine Into thy hands O Lord I commend my spirit And he to me Hodie mecum eris in paradiso This day this minute thou shalt be now thou art with me in Paradise when this shall be my state God shall heare their slanders and maledictions and write them all downe but not in my booke but in theirs and there they shall meet them at Judgement amongst their owne sinnes to their everlasting confusion and finde me in possession of that peace made by bloud made by his bloud made by the bloud of his Crosse which were all the peeces laid out for this second part with which we have done and passe from the qualification of the person It pleased the Father that in him all fulnesse should dwell which was our first part and the Pacification and the way thereof by the bloud of his Crosse to make peace which was our second to the Reconciliation it selfe and the Application thereof to all to whom that Reconciliation appertaines That all things whether they be things in earth or things in heaven might be reconciled unto him All this was done 3. Part. He in whom it pleased the Father that this fulnesse should dwell had made this peace by the bloud of his Crosse and yet after all this the Apostle comes upon that Ambassage 2 Cor. 5.20 We pray ye in Christs stead that ye be reconciled to God So that this Reconciliation in the Text is a subsequent thing to this peace The generall peace is made by Christs death as a generall pardon is given at the Kings comming The Application of this peace is in the Church as the suing out of the pardon is in the Office Ioab made Absaloms peace with his Father Bring the young man againe sayes David to Ioab 2 Sam. 14.22.2.28.24.16 but yet he was not reconciled to him so as that he saw his face in two yeare God hath sounded a Retreat to the Battle As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a sinner He hath said to the destroyer It is enough stay now thy hand He is pacified in Christ and he hath bound the enemy in chaines Now let us labour for our Reconciliation for all things are reconciled to him in Christ that is offered a way of reconciliation All things in heaven and earth sayes the Apostle And that is so large as that Origen needed not to have extended it to Hell too Origen and conceive out of this place a possibility that the Devils themselves shall come to a Reconciliation with God But to all in Heaven and Earth it appertaines Consider we how First then there is a reconciliation of them in heaven to God In coelis and then of them on earth to God and then of them in heaven and them in earth to one another by the blood of his Crosse If we consider them in heaven to be those who are gone up to heaven from this world by death they had the same reconciliation as we Animae either by reaching the hand of faith forward to lay hold upon Christ before he came which was the case of all under the Law or by reaching back that hand to lay hold upon all that hee had done and suffered when he was come which is the case of those that are dead before us in the profession of the Gospell All that are in heaven and were upon earth are reconciled one way by application of Christ in the Church so that though they be now in heaven yet they had their reconciliation here upon earth But