to a single Person as to the man of Judah prophesying against the Altar of Bethel or to a Nation as to the Jews at Sinai or to all Mankind as to the world descending from Noah it was nothing else but a trial or an instance of our Obedience a particular prosecution of the Law of Nature whereby we are obliged to do honour to God which was to be done by such expressions which are natural entercourses between God and us or such as he hath made to be so Now in Christianity we are wholly left to that manner of prosecuting this first natural Law which is natural and proportionable to the nature of the thing which the Holy Jesus calls worshipping God in spirit and truth In spirit that is with our Souls heartily and devoutly so as to exclude hypocrisie and 〈◊〉 and In truth that is without a lie without vain imaginations and phantastick resemblances of him which were introduced by the evil customs of the Gentiles and without such false guises and absurd undecencies which as they are contrary to man's Reason so are they contrary to the Glory and reputation of God such as was that universal Custom of all Nations of sacrificing in man's bloud and offering festival lusts and impurities in the solemnities of their Religion for these being against the purpose and design of God and against right Reason are a Lie and enemies to the truth of a natural and proper Religion The Holy Jesus only commanded us to pray often and to praise God to speak honour of his Name not to use it lightly and vainly to believe him to revere the instruments and ministers of Religion to ask for what we need to put our trust in God to worship him to obey him and to love him for all these are but the expressions of Love And this is all Christ spake concerning the first natural Law the Law of Religion For concerning the Ceremonies or Sacraments which he instituted they are but few and they become matter of duty but by accident as being instruments and rites of consigning those effects and mercies which God sent to the world by the means of this Law and relate rather to the contract and stipulation which Christ made for us than to the natural order between Duty and Felicity 28. Now all these are nothing but what we are taught by natural Reason that is what God enabled us to understand to be fit instruments of entercourse between God and us and what was practised and taught by sober men in all Ages and all Nations whose Records we have received as I shall remark at the Margent of the several Precepts For to make these appear certainly and naturally necessary there was no more requisite but that Man should know there was a GOD that is an eternal Being which gave him all that he had or was and to know what himself was that is indigent and necessitous of himself needing help of all the Creatures exposed to accidents and calamity and 〈◊〉 no ways but by the same hand that made him Creation and Conservation in the Philosophy of all the world being but the same act continuing and flowing on him from an instant to duration as a Line from its Mathematical Point And for this God took sufficient care for he conversed with Man in the very first in such clear and certain and perceptible transaction that a man could as certainly know that God was as that Man was And in all Ages of the world he hath not left himself without witness but gave such testimonies of himself that were sufficient for they did actually perswade all Nations barbarous and civil into the belief of a God And it is but a nicety to consider whether or no that Proposition can be naturally demonstrated For it was sufficient to all God's purposes and to all Man's that the Proposition was actually believed the instances were therefore sufficient to make faith because they did it And a man may remove himself so far 〈◊〉 all the degrees of aptness to believe a Proposition that nothing shall make them joyn For if there were a Sect of witty men that durst not believe their Senses because they thought them fallible it is no wonder if some men should think every Reason reproveable But in such cases Demonstration is a relative term and signifies every probation greater or lesser which does actually make faith in any Proposition And in this God hath never been deficient but hath to all men that believe him given sufficient to confirm them to those few that believed not sufficient to reprove them 29. Now in all these actions of Religion which are naturally consequent to this belief there is no scruple but in the instance of Faith which is presented to be an infused Grace an immission from God and that for its object it hath principles supernatural that is naturally incredible and therefore Faith is supposed a Grace above the greatest strength of Reason But in this I consider that if we look into all the Sermons of Christ we shall not easily find any Doctrine that in any sense troubles natural Philosophy but only that of the Resurrection for I do not think those mystical expressions of plain truths such as are being born again eating the flesh of the Son of man being in the Father and the Father in him to be exceptions in this assertion And although some Gentiles did believe and deliver that article and particularly Chrysippus and the Thracians as Mela and Solinus report of them yet they could not naturally discourse themselves into it but had it from the imperfect report and opinion of some Jews that dwelt among them And it was certainly a revelation or a proposition sent into the world by God But then the believing it is so far from being above or against Nature that there is nothing in the world more reasonable than to believe any thing which God tells us or which is told us by a man sent from God with mighty demonstration of his power and veracity Naturally our bodies cannot rise that is there is no natural agent or natural cause sufficient to produce that effect but this is an effect of a Divine power and he hath but a little stock of natural Reason who cannot conclude that the same power which made us out of nothing can also restore us to the same condition as well and easily from dust and ashes certainly as from mere nothing And in this and in all the like cases Faith is a submission of the understanding to the Word of God and is nothing else but a confessing that God is Truth and that he is omnipotent that is he can do what he will and he will when he hath once said it And we are now as ignorant of the essence and nature of forms and of that which substantially distinguishes Man from Man or an Angel from an Angel as we were of the greatest Article of our Religon before it was
in that to the Ephesians at this Day This Epistle is still extant forged no doubt 〈◊〉 S. Hierem's time who tells us that it was read by some but yet exploded and rejected by all Besides these there was his Revelation call'd also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or his Ascension grounded on his ecstasie or rapture into Heaven first forged by the Cainian Hereticks and in great use and estimation among the Gnosticks Sozomen tells us that this Apocalypse was owned by none of the Ancients though much commended by some Monks in his time and he further adds that in the time of the Emperour Theodosius it was said to have been found in an under-ground Chest of Marble in S. Paul's house at Tarsus and that by a particular revelation A story which upon enquiry he found to be as false as the Book it self was forged and spurious The Acts of S. Paul are mentioned both by Origen and Eusebius but not as Writings of approved and unquestionable credit and authority The Epistles that are said to have passed between S. Paul and Seneca how early soever they started in the Church yet the falshood and fabulousness of them is now too notoriously known to need any further account or description of them SECT IX The principal Controversies that exercised the Church in his time Simon Magus the Father of Hereticks The wretched principles and practices of him and his followers Their asserting Angel-worship and how countermin'd by S. Paul Their holding it lawful to sacrifice to Idols and abjure the Faith in times of persecution discovered and opposed by S. Paul Their maintaining an universal licence to sin Their manners and opinions herein described by S. Paul in his Epistles The great controversie of those times about the obligation of the Law of Mofes upon the Gentile Converts The Original of it whence The mighty veneration which the Jews had for the Law of Moses The true state of the Controversie what The Determination made in it by the Apostolick Synod at Jerusalem Meats offered to Idols what Abstinence from Bloud why enjoyned of old Things strangled why forbidden Fornication commonly practised and accounted lawful among the Gentiles The hire of the Harlot what How dedicated to their Deities among the Heathens The main passages in S. Paul's Epistles concerning Justification and Salvation shewed to have respect to this Controversie What meant by Law and what by Faith in S. Paul's Epistles The Persons whom he has to deal with in this Controversie who The Jew's strange doting upon Circumcision The way and manner of the Apostles Reasoning in this Controversie considered His chief Arguments shewed immediately to respect the case of the Jewish and Gentile Converts No other controversie in those times which his discourses could refer to Two Consectaries 〈◊〉 this Discourse I. That works of Evangelical Obedience are not opposed to Faith in Justification What meant by works of Evangelical Obedience This method of Justification excludes boasting and intirely gives the glory to God II. That the doctrines of S. Paul and S. James about Justification are fairly consistent with each other These two Apostles shewed to pursue the same design S. James his excellent Reasonings to that purpose 1. THOUGH our Lord and his Apostles delivered the Christian Religion especially as to the main and essential parts of it in words as plain as words could express it yet were there men of perverse and corrupt minds and reprobate concerning the Faith who from different causes some ignorantly or wilfully mistaking the doctrines of Christianity others to serve ill purposes and designs began to introduce errors and unsound opinions into the Church and to debauch the minds of men from the simplicity of the Gospel hereby disquieting the thoughts and alienating the affections of men and disturbing the peace and order of the Church The first Ring-leader of this Heretical crue was Simon Magus who not being able to attain his ends of the Apostles by getting a power to confer miraculous gifts whereby he designed to greaten and enrich himself resolved to be revenged of them scattering the most poisonous tares among the good wheat that they had sown bringing in the most pernicious principles and as the natural consequent of that patronizing the most debauched villainous practises and this under a pretence of still being Christians To enumerate the several Dogmata and damnable Heresies first broached by Simon and then vented and propagated by his disciples and followers who though passing under different Titles yet all centred at last in the name of Gnosticks a term which we shall sometimes use for conveniency though it took not place till after S. Paul's time were as endless as 't is alien to my purpose I shall only take notice of a few of more signal remark and such as S. Paul in his Epistles does eminently reflect upon 2. AMONGST the opinions and principles of Simon and his followers this was one That God did not create the World that it was made by Angels that Divine honours were due to them and they to be adored as subordinate mediators between God and us This our Apostle saw growing up apace and struck betimes at the root in that early caution he gave to the Colossians to let no man beguile them in a voluntary humility and worshipping of Angels intruding into those things which he hath not seen vainly puft up by his fleshly mind and not holding the head i. e. hereby disclaiming Christ the head of the Church But notwithstanding this warning this error still continued and spread it self in those parts for several Ages till expresly condemned by the 〈◊〉 Council Nay Theodoret tells us that in his time there were still Oratories erected to the Archangel Michael in those places wherein they were wont to meet and pray to Angels Another Gnostick principle was that men might freely and indifferently eat what had been offered in sacrifice to Idols yea sacrifice to the Idol it self it being lawful confidently to abjure the Faith in time of persecution The first part whereof S. Paul does largely and frequently discuss up and down his Epistles the latter wherein the sting and poison was more immediately couched was craftily adapted to those times of suffering and greedily swallowed by many hereby drawn into Apostasie Against this our Apostle antidotes the Christians especially the Jewish Converts among whom the Gnosticks had mixed themselves that they would not suffer themselves to be drawn aside by an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God That notwithstanding sufferings and persecutions they would hold fast the profession of the Faith without wavering not forsaking the assembling of themselves together as the manner of some is the Gnostick Hereticks remembring how severely God has threatned Apostates that if any man draw back his Soul shall have no pleasure in him and what a fearful thing it is thus to fall into the hands of the living God 3. BUT
should cause the Sacrifice and the Oblation to cease At the time of Christ's death the veil of the Temple from top to bottom rent in sunder to shew that his death had revealed the mysteries and destroyed the foundations of the legal Oeconomy and put a period to the whole Temple-ministration Nay the Jews themselves confess that forty years before the destruction of the Temple a date that corresponds exactly with the death of Christ the Lot did no more go up into the right hand of the Priest this is meant of his dismission of the Scape-goat nor the scarlet Ribbon usually laid upon the forehead of the Goat any more grow white this was a sign that the Goat was accepted for the remission of their sins nor the Evening Lamp burn any longer and that the gates of the Temple opened of their own accord By which as at once they confirm what the Gospel reports of the opening of the Sanctum Sanctorum by the scissure of the veil so they plainly confess that at that very time their Sacrifices and Temple-services began to cease and fail As indeed the reason of them then ceasing the things themselves must needs vanish into nothing 10. THE third sort of Laws given to the Jews were Judicial and Political these were the Municipal Laws of the Nation enacted for the good of the State and were a kind of appendage to the second Table of the Decalogue as the Ceremonial Laws were of the first They might be reduced to four general heads such as respected men in their private and domestical capacities concerning Husbands and Wives Parents and Children Masters and Servants such as concerned the Publick and the Common-wealth relating to Magistrates and Courts of Justice to Contracts and matters of right and wrong to Estates and Inheritances to Executions and Punishments c. such as belong'd to strangers and matters of a soreign nature as Laws concerning Peace and War Commerce and Dealing with persons of another Nation or lastly such as secured the honour and the interests of Religion Laws against Apostates and Idolaters Wizards Conjurers and false Prophets against Blasphemy Sacriledge and such like all which not being so proper to my purpose I omit a more particular enumeration of them These Laws were peculiarly calculated for the Jewish State and that while kept up in that Country wherein God had placed them and therefore must needs determine and expire with it Nor can they be made a pattern and standard for the Laws of other Nations for though proceeding from the wisest Law-giver they cannot reasonably be imposed upon any State or Kingdom unless where there is an equal concurrence of circumstances as there were in that people for whom God enacted them They went off the Stage with the Jewish Polity and if any parts of them do still remain obligatory they bind not as Judicial Laws but as branches of the Law of Nature the reason of them being Immutable and Eternal I know not whether it may here be useful to remark what the Jews so frequently tell us of that the intire body of the Mosaick Law consists of DCXIII Precepts intimated say they in that place where 't is said Moses commanded us a Law where the Numeral Letters of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Law make up the number of DCXI. and the two that are wanting to make up the complete number are the two first Precepts of the Decalogue which were not given by Moses to the people but immediately by God himself Others say that there are just DCXIII letters in the Decalogue and that every letter answers to a Law But some that have had the patience to tell them assure us that there are two whole words consisting of seven letters supernumerary which in my mind quite spoils the computation These DCXIII Precepts they divide into CCXLVIII 〈◊〉 according to the number of the parts of man's body which they make account are just so many to put him in mind to serve God with all his bodily powers as if every member of his body should say to him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 make use of me to fulfil the command and into CCCLXV Negative according to the number of the days of the year that so every day may call upon a man and say to him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 oh do not in me transgress the Command Or as others will have it they answer to the Veins or Nerves in the body of man that as the complete frame and compages of man's body is made up of CCXLVIII Members and CCCLXV Nerves and the Law of so many affirmative and so many negative Precepts it denotes to us that the whole perfection and accomplishment of man lies in an accurate and diligent observance of the Divine Law Each of these divisions they reduce under twelve houses answerable to the twelve Tribes of Israel In the Affirmative Precepts the first House is that of Divine worship consisting of twenty Precepts the second the House of the Sanctuary containing XIX the third the House of Sacrifices wherein are LVII the fourth that of Cleanness and Pollution containing XVIII the fifth of Tithes and Alms under which are XXXII the sixth of Meats and Drinks containing VII the seventh of the Passeover concerning Feasts containing XX the eighth of Judgment XIII the ninth of Doctrine XXV the tenth of Marriage and concerning Women XII the eleventh of Judgments criminal VIII the twelfth of Civil 〈◊〉 XVII In the Negative Precepts the first House is concerning the worship of the Planets containing XLVII Commands the second of separation from the Heathens XIII the third concerning the reverence due to holy things XXIX the fourth of Sacrifice and Priesthood LXXXII the fifth of Meats XXXVIII the sixth of Fields and Harvest XVIII the seventh of Doctrine XLV the eighth of Justice XLVII the ninth of Feasts X the tenth of Purity and Chastity XXIV the eleventh of Wedlock VIII the twelfth concerning the Kingdom IV. A method not contemptible as which might minister to a distinct and useful explication of the whole Law of Moses 11. THE next thing considerable under the Mosaical Oeconomy was the methods of the Divine revelation by what ways God communicated his mind to them either concerning present emergences or future events and this was done 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostle tells us at sundry times or by sundry degrees and parcels and in diverse manners by various methods of revelation whereof three most considerable the Urim and Thummim the audible voice and the spirit of Prophecy imparted in dreams visions c. We shall make some brief remarks upon them referring the Reader who desires fuller satisfaction herein to those who purposely treat about these matters The Urim and Thummim was a way of revelation peculiar to the High Priest Thou shalt put on the breast-plate of Judgment the Urim and the Thummim and they shall be upon Aaron's heart when he goeth in before the
hast superadded Reason making those first propensities of Nature to be reasonable in order to Society and a conversation in Communities and Bodies politick and hast by several laws and revelations directed our Reasons to nearer applications to thee and performance of thy great End the glory of our Lord and Father teach me strictly to observe the order of Creation and the designs of the Creatures that in my order I may do that service which every creature does in its proper capacity Lord let me be as constant in the ways of Religion as the Sun in his course as ready to follow the intimations of thy Spirit as little Birds are to obey the directions of thy Providence and the conduct of thy hand and let me never by evil customs or vain company or false persuasions extinguish those principles of Morality and right Reason which thou hast imprinted in my understanding in my creation and education and which thou hast ennobled by the superadditions of Christian institution that I may live according to the rules of Nature in such things which she teaches modestly temperately and affectionately in all the parts of my natural and political relations and that I proceeding from Nature to Grace may henceforth go on from Grace to Glory the crown of all Obedience prudent and holy walking through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen SECT IV. Of the great and glorious Accidents happening about the Birth of JESVS The Angels appearing to the Shepherds S. LUKE 2. 14. Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace good will towards men The Epiphanie S. MAT 2. 11. When they had opened their treasures they presented unto him gifts Gold and Frank incense and Myrrhe 1. ALthough the Birth of Christ was destitute of the usual excrescences and less necessary Pomps which used to signifie and illustrate the birth of Princes yet his first Humility was made glorious with Presages Miracles and Significations from Heaven which did not only like the furniture of a Princely Bed-chamber speak the riches of the Parent or greatness of the Son within its own walls but did declare to all the world that their Prince was born publishing it with figures and representments almost as great as its Empire 2. For when all the world did expect that in Judaea should be born their Prince and that the incredulous world had in their observation slipt by their true Prince because he came not in pompous and secular illustrations upon that very stock Vespasian was nurs'd up in hope of the Roman Empire and that hope made him great in designs and they being prosperous made his fortunes correspond to his hopes and he was indeared and engaged upon that fortune by the Prophecy which was never intended him by the Prophet But the fortune of the Roman Monarchy was not great enough for this Prince design'd by the old Prophets And therefore it was not without the influence of a Divinity that his Decessor Augustus about the time of Christ's Nativity refused to be called LORD possibly it was to entertain the people with some hopes of restitution of their Liberties till he had grip'd the Monarchy with a stricter and faster hold but the Christians were apt to believe that it was upon the 〈◊〉 of a Sibyll foretelling the birth of a greater Prince to whom all the world should pay adoration and that the Prince was about that time born in Judaea the Oracle which was dumb to Augustus's question told him unask'd the Devil having no tongue permitted him but one to proclaim that an Hebrew child was his Lord and Enemy 3. At the Birth of which Child there was an universal Peace through all the World For then it was that Augustus Caesar having composed all the Wars of the World did the third time cause the gates of Janus's Temple to be shut and this Peace continued for twelve years even till the extreme old age of the Prince until rust had sealed the Temple doors which opened not till the Sedition of the 〈◊〉 and the Rebellion of the Dacians caused Augustus to arm For he that was born was the Prince of Peace and came to reconcile God with man and man with his brother and to make by the sweetness of his Example and the influence of a holy Doctrine such happy atonements between disagreeing natures such confederations and 〈◊〉 between Enemies that the Wolf and the Lamb should lie down together and a little child boldly and without danger put his finger in the nest and cavern of an Asp and it could be no less than miraculous that so great a Body as the Roman Empire consisting of so many parts whose Constitutions were differing their Humours contrary their Interests contradicting each others greatness and all these violently oppressed by an usurping power should have no limb out of joynt not so much as an aking tooth or a rebelling humour in that huge collection of parts but so it seemed good in the eye of Heaven by so great and good a symbol to declare not only the Greatness but the Goodness of the Prince that was then born in Judaea the Lord of all the World 4. But because the Heavens as well as the Earth are his Creatures and do serve him at his Birth he received a sign in Heaven above as well as in the Earth beneath as an homage paid to their common Lord. For as certain Shepherds were keeping watch over their slocks by night near that part where Jacob did use to feed his cattel when he was in the land of Canaan the Angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them Needs must the Shepherds be afraid when an Angel came arrayed in glory and clothed their persons in a robe of light great enough to confound their senses and scatter their understandings But the Angel said unto them Fear not for I bring unto you tidings of great joy which shall be to all people For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour which is Christ the Lord. The Shepherds needed not be invited to go see this glorious sight but lest their fancy should rise up to an expectation of a Prince as externally glorious as might be hoped for upon the consequence of so glorious an Apparition the Angel to prevent the mistake told them of a Sign which indeed was no other than the thing 〈◊〉 but yet was therefore a Sign because it was so remote from the common probability and exspectation of such a birth that by being a Miracle so great a Prince should be born so poorly it became an instrument to signifie it self and all the other parts of mysterious consequence For the Angel said This shall be a sign unto you Ye shall find the Babe wrapt in swadling-cloaths lying in a manger 5. But as Light when it first begins to gild the East scatters indeed the darknesses from the earth but ceases not to increase its 〈◊〉
favourable And it is considerable that nothing is worse than Death but Damnation or something that partakes of that in some of its worst ingredients such as is a lasting Torment or a daily great misery in some other kind And therefore since no humane Law can bind a man to a worse thing than Death if Obedience brings me to death I cannot be worse when I disobey it and I am not so bad if the penalty of death be not expressed And so for other penalties in their own proportions This Discourse is also to be understood concerning the Laws of Peace not of War not onely because every disobedience in War may be punished with death according as the reason may chance but also because little things may be of great and dangerous consequence But in Peace it is observable that there is no humane positive superinduced Law but by the practice of all the world which because the 〈◊〉 of the Prince is certainly included in it is the surest interpretation it is dispensed withall by ordinary necessities by reason of lesser inconveniences and common accidents thus the not saying of our Office daily is excused by the study of Divinity the publishing the banns of Matrimony by an ordinary incommodity the Fasting-days of the Church by a little sickness or a journey and therefore much rather if my Estate and most of all if my Life be in danger with it and to say that in these cases there is no interpretative permission to omit the particular action is to accuse the Laws and the Law-giver the one of unreasonableness the other of uncharitableness 22. Fourthly These Considerations are upon the execution of the duty but even towards Man our obedience must have a mixture of the Will and choice like as our injunction of obedience to the Divine Command With good will doing service saith the Apostle for it is impossible to secure the duty of inferiours but by conscience and good will unless provision could be made against all their secret arts and concealments and escapings which as no providence can foresee so no diligence can cure It is but an eye-service whatsoever is compelled and involuntary nothing rules a man in private but God and his own desires and they give Laws in a Wilderness and accuse in a Cloister and do execution in a Closet if there be any prevarication 23. Fifthly But obedience to humane Laws goes no farther we are not bound to obey with a direct and particular act of Understanding as in all Divine Sanctions for so long as our Superiours are fallible though it be highly necessary we conform our wills to their innocent Laws yet it is not a duty we should think the Laws most prudent or convenient because all Laws are not so but it may concern the interest of humility and self-denial to 〈◊〉 subject to an inconvenient so it be not a sinful Command for so we must chuse an affliction when God offers it and give God thanks for it and yet we may cry under the smart of it and call to God for ease and remedy And yet it were well if inferiours would not be too busie in disputing the prudence of their Governours and the convenience of their Constitutions Whether they be sins or no in the execution and to our particulars we are concern'd to look to I say as to our particulars for an action may be a sin in the Prince commanding it and yet innocent in the person executing as in the case of unjust Wars in which the Subject who cannot ought not to be a Judge yet must be a Minister and it is notorious in the case of executing an unjust sentence in which not the Executioner but the Judge is only the unjust person and he that serves his Prince in an unjust War is but the executioner of an unjust sentence But what-ever goes farther does but undervalue the person slight the Government and unloose the golden cords of Discipline For we are not intrusted in providing for degrees so we secure the kind and condition of our actions And since God having derived rays and beams of Majesty and transmitted it in parts upon several states of men hath fixed humane authority and dominion in the golden candlestick of Understanding he that shall question the prudence of his Governour or the wisdom of his Sanction does unclasp the golden rings that tie the purple upon the Prince's shoulder he tempts himself with a reason to disobey and extinguish the light of Majesty by overturning the candlestick and hiding the opinion of his wisdom and understanding And let me say this He that is confident of his own understanding and reasonable powers and who is more than he that thinks himself wiser than the Laws needs no other Devil in the neighbourhood no tempter but himself to pride and vanity which are the natural parents of Disobedience 24. But a man's Disobedience never seems so reasonable as when the Subject is forbidden to do an act of Piety commanded indeed in the general but uncommanded in certain circumstances And forward Piety and assiduous Devotion a great and undiscreet Mortifier is often tempted to think no Authority can restrain the fervours and distempers of zeal in such holy Exercises and yet it is very often as necessary to restrain the indiscretions of a forward person as to excite the remissness of the cold and frozen Such persons were the Sarabaites spoken of by 〈◊〉 who were greater labourers and stricter mortifiers than the Religious in Families and Colledges and yet they endured no Superiour nor Laws But such customs as these are Humiliation without Humility humbling the body and exalting the spirit or indeed Sacrifices and no Obedience It was an argument of the great wisdom of the Fathers of the 〈◊〉 when they heard of the prodigious Severities exercised by 〈◊〉 Stylites upon himself they sent one of the Religious to him with power to enquire what was his manner of living and what warrant he had for such a rigorous undertaking giving in charge to command him to give it over and to live in a community with them and according to the common institution of those Religious families The Messenger did so and immediately 〈◊〉 removed his foot from his Pillar with a purpose to descend but the other according to his Commission called to him to stay telling him his station and severity was from God And he that in so great a Piety was humble and obedient did not undertake that Strictness out of singularity nor did it transport him to vanity for that he had received from the Fathers to make judgment of the man and of his institution whereas if upon pretence of the great Holiness of that course he had refused the command the spirit of the person was to be declared caitive and imprudent and the man 〈◊〉 from his troublesom and ostentous vanity 25. Our Fasts our Prayers our Watchings our Intentions of duty our frequent Communions and
poison to make experiment of the antidote and at the best it is but a running back to come just to the same place again for he that is not tempted does not sin but he that invites a Temptation that he might overcome it or provokes a Passion that he may allay it is then but in the same condition after his pains and his 〈◊〉 He was not sure he should come so far The PRAYER O Dearest God who hast framed Man of Soul and Body and fitted him with Faculties and proportionable instruments to serve thee according to all our capacities let thy holy Spirit rule and sanctifie every power and member both of Soul and Body that they may keep that beautious order which in our creation thou didst intend and to which thou dost restore thy people in the renovations of Grace that our Affections may be guided by Reason our Understanding may be enlightned with thy Word and then may guide and perswade our Will that we suffer no violent transportation of Passions nor be overcome by a Temptation nor consent to the impure solicitations of Lust that Sin may not reign in our mortal bodies but that both Bodies and Souls may be conformable to the Sufferings of the Holy Jesus that in our Body we may bear the marks and dying of our Lord and in our spirits we may be humble and mortified and like him in all his imitable perfections that we may die to sin and live to righteousness and after our suffering together with him in this world we may reign together with him hereafter to whom in the unity of the most mysterious Trinity be all glory and dominion and praise for ever and ever Amen SECT IX Of JESVS being Baptized and going into the Wilderness to be Tempted The Baptisme of Iesus S. MAT. 3. 17. And lo a voice from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased Luc. 3 23. And Iesus himselfe began to be about thirty yeares of age The Temqtation of Iesus S. MAT. 4 10 Get thee behind me Satan For it is written Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou sarue 1. NOW the full time was come Jesus took leave of his Mother and his Trade to begin his Father's work and the Office Prophetical in order to the Redemption of the World and when John was baptizing in Jordan Jesus came to John to be baptized of him The Baptist had never seen his face because they had been from their infancy driven to several places designed to several imployments and never met till now But immediately the Holy Ghost inspired S. John with a discerning and knowing spirit and at his first arrival he knew him and did him worship And when Jesus desired to be baptized John forbad him saying I have need to be baptized of thee and comest thou to me For the Baptism of John although it was not a direct instrument of the Spirit for the collation of Grace neither find we it administred in any form of words not so much as in the name of Christ to come as many dream because even after John had baptized the Pharisees still doubted if he were the Messias which they would not if in his form of Ministration he had published Christ to come after him and also because it had not been proper for Christ himself to have received that Baptism whose form had specified himself to come hereafter neither could it consist with the Revelation which John had and the confession which he made to baptize in the name of Christ to come whom the Spirit marked out to him to be come already and himself pointed at him with his 〈◊〉 yet it was a ceremonious consignation of the Doctrine of Repentance which was one great part of the Covenant Evangelical and was a Divine Institution the susception of it was in order to the fulfilling all righteousness it was a sign of Humility the persons baptized confessed their sins it was a sacramental disposing to the Baptism and Faith of Christ but therefore John wondred why the Messias the Lamb of God pure and without spot who needed not the abstersions of Repentance or the washings of Baptism should demand it and of him a sinner and his servant And in the Hebrew Gospel of S. Matthew which the 〈◊〉 used at 〈◊〉 as S. Hierom reports these words are added The Mother of the Lord and his brethren said unto him John Baptist baptizeth to the Remission of sins let us go and be baptized of him He said to them 〈◊〉 have I sinned that I should go and be baptized of him And this part of the Story is also told by Justin Martyr But Jesus wanted not a proposition to consign by his Baptism proportionable enough to the analogy of its institution for as others professed their return towards Innocence so he avowed his perseverance in it and though he was never called in Scripture a Sinner yet he was made Sin for us that is he did undergo the shame and the punishment and therefore it was proper enough for him to perform the Sacrament of Sinners 2. But the Holy Jesus who came as himself in answer to the Baptist's question professed to sulfil all rightcousness would receive that Rite which his Father had instituted in order to the manifestation of his Son For although the Baptist had a glimpse of him by the first irradiations of the Spirit yet John professed That he therefore came baptizing with water that Jesus might be manifested to Israel and it was also a sign given to the Baptist himself that on whomsoever he saw the Spirit descending and remaining he is the person that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost And God chose to actuate the sign at the waters of Jordan in great and religious assemblies convened there at John's Baptism and therefore Jesus came to be baptized and by this Baptism became known to John who as before he gave to him an indiscriminate testimony so now he pointed out the person in his Sermons and Discourses and by calling him the Lamb of God prophesied of his Passion and preached him to be the World's Redeemer and the Sacrifice for mankind He was now manifest to Israel he confirmed the Baptism of John he 〈◊〉 the water to become sacramental and ministerial in the remission of sins he by a real event declared that to them who should rightly be baptized the Kingdom of Heaven should certainly be opened he inserted himself by that Ceremony into the society and participation of holy people of which communion himself was Head and Prince and he did in a symbol purifie Humane nature whose stains and guilt he had undertaken 3. As soon as John had performed his Ministery and Jesus was baptized he prayed and the heavens were opened and the air clarified by a new and glorious light and the holy Ghost in the manner of a Dove alighted upon his sacred head and God the Father gave
a voice from Heaven saying Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased This was the inauguration and proclamation of the Messias when he began to be the great Prophet of the new Covenant And this was the greatest meeting that ever was upon earth where the whole Cabinet of the mysterious Trinity was opened and shewn as much as the capacities of our present imperfections will permit the Second Person in the veil of Humanity the Third in the shape or with the motion of a Dove but the First kept his primitive state and as to the Israelites he gave notice by way of caution Ye saw no shape but ye heard a voice so now also God the Father gave testimony to his Holy Son and appeared only in a voice without any visible representment 4. When the Rite and the Solemnity was over Christ ascended up out of the waters and left so much vertue behind him that as Gregorius Turonensis reports that creek of the River where his holy body had been baptized was indued with a healing quality and a power of curing Lepers that bathed themselves in those waters in the faith and with invocation of the holy Name of Jesus But the manifestation of this power was not till afterwards for as yet Jesus did no Miracles 5. As soon as ever the Saviour of the World was baptized had opened the Heavens which yet never had been opened to Man and was declared the Son of God Jesus was by the Spirit driven into the Wilderness not by an unnatural violence but by the efficacies of Inspiration and a supernatural inclination and activity of resolution for it was the Holy Spirit that bare him thither he was led by the good Spirit to be tempted by the evil whither also he was pleased to retire to make demonstration that even in an active life such as he was designed to and intended some recesses and temporary dimissions of the world are most expedient for such persons especially whose office is Prophetical and for institution of others that by such vacancies in prayer and contemplation they may be better enabled to teach others when they have in such retirements conversed with God 6. In the Desart which was four miles 〈◊〉 the place of his Baptism and about twenty miles from Jerusalem as the common computations are he did abide forty days and forty nights where he was perpetually disturbed and assaulted with evil spirits in the midst of wild beasts in a continual fast without eating bread or drinking water And the Angels ministred to him being Messengers of comfort and sustentation sent from his Father for the support and service of his Humanity and imployed in resisting and discountenancing the assaults and temporal hostilities of the spirits of darkness 7. Whether the Devils 〈◊〉 in any horrid and affrighting shapes is not certain but it is more likely to a person of so great Sanctity and high designation they would appear more Angelical and immaterial in representments intellectual in words and Idea's temptations and inticements because Jesus was not a person of those low weaknesses to be affrighted or troubled with an ugly 〈◊〉 which can do nothing but abuse the weak and imperfect conceptions of persons nothing extraordinary And this was the way which Satan or the Prince of the Devils took whose Temptations were reserved for the last assault and the great day of trial for at the expiration of his forty days Jesus being hungry the Tempter invited him only to eat bread of his own providing which might refresh his Humanity and prove his Divinity hoping that his hunger and the desire of convincing the Devil might tempt him to eat before the time appointed But Jesus answered It is written Man shall not live by Bread alone but by every word that 〈◊〉 out of the mouth of God meaning that in every word of God whether the Commandment be general or special a promise is either expressed or implied of the supply of all provisions necessary for him that is doing the work of God and that was the present case of Jesus who was then doing his Father's work and promoting our interest and 〈◊〉 was sure to be provided for and therefore so are we 8. The Devil having failed in this assault tries him again requiring but a demonstration of his being the Son of God He sets him upon the battlement of the Temple and invites him to throw himself down upon a pretence that God would send his Angels to keep his Son and quotes Scripture for it But Jesus understood it well and though he was secured of God's protection yet he would not tempt God nor solicite his Providence to a dereliction by tempting him to an unnecessary conservation This assault was silly and weak But at last he unites all his power of stratagem and places the Holy Jesus upon an exceeding high mountain and by an Angelical power draws into one Centre Species and Idea's from all the Kingdoms and glories of the World and makes an admirable Map of beauties and represents it to the eyes of Jesus saying that all that was put into his power to give and he would give it him if he would fall down and worship him But then the Holy Lamb was angry as a provoked Lion and commanded him away when his temptations were violent and his demands impudent and blasphemous Then the Devil leaveth him and the Angels came and ministred unto him bringing such things as his necessities required after he had by a forty days Fast done penance for our sins and consigned to his Church the Doctrine and Discipline of Fasting in order to a Contemplative life and the resisting and overcoming all the Temptations and allurements of the Devil and all our ghostly enemies Ad SECT IX Considerations upon the Baptizing Fasting and Temptation of the Holy JESVS by the Devil 1. WHen the day did break and the Baptist was busie in his Offices the Sun of Righteousness soon entred upon our Hemisphere and after he had lived a life of darkness and silence for thirty years together yet now that he came to do the greatest work in the World and to minister in the most honourable Embassie he would do nothing of singularity but fulfil all righteousness and satisfie all Commands and joyn in the common Rites and Sacraments which all people innocent or penitent did undergo either as deleteries of 〈◊〉 or instruments of Grace For so he would needs be baptized by his servant and though he was of Purity sufficient to do it and did actually by his Baptism purifie the Purifier and sanctifie that and all other streams to a holy ministery and effect yet he went in bowing his head like a sinner uncloathing himself like an imperfect person and craving to be washed as if he had been crusted with an impure Leprosie thereby teaching us to submit our selves to all those Rites which he would institute and although 〈◊〉 of them be like the
God at first designed to us And therefore as our Baptism is a separation of us from unbelieving people so the descent of the Holy Spirit upon us in our Baptism is a consigning or marking us for God as the Sheep of his pasture as the Souldiers of his Army as the Servants of his houshold we are so separated from the world that we are appropriated to God so that God expects of us Duty and Obedience and all Sins are acts of Rebellion and Undutifulness Of this nature was the sanctification of Jeremy and John the Baptist from their mothers womb that is God took them to his own service by an early designation and his Spirit marked them to a holy Ministery To this also relates that of S. Paul whom God by a decree separated from his mother's womb to the Ministery of the Gospel the 〈◊〉 did antedate the act of the Spirit which did not descend upon him until the day of his Baptism What these persons were in order to exteriour Ministeries that all the faithful are in order to Faith and Obedience consigned in Baptism by the Spirit of God to a perpetual relation to God in a continual service and title to his Promises And in this sence the Spirit of God is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Seal In whom also after that ye believed ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of Promise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Water washes the body and the Spirit seals the Soul viz. to a participation of those Promises which he hath made and to which we receive a title by our Baptism 22. Secondly The second effect of the Spirit is Light or Illumination that is the holy Spirit becomes unto us the Author of holy thoughts and firm perswasions and sets to his seal that the Word of God is true into the belief of which we are then baptized and makes Faith to be a Grace and the Understanding resigned and the Will confident and the Assent stronger than the premises and the Propositions to be believed because they are beloved and we are taught the ways of Godliness after a new manner that is we are made to perceive the Secrets of the Kingdom and to love Religion and to long for Heaven and heavenly things and to despise the World and to have new resolutions and new perceptions and new delicacies in order to the establishment of Faith and its increments and perseverance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God sits in the Soul when it is illuminated in 〈◊〉 as if he sate in his Throne that is he rules by a firm perswasion and intire principles of Obedience And therefore Baptism is called in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the baptized 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illuminated Call to mind the former days in which you were illuminated and the same phrase is in the 6. to the Hebrews where the parallel places expound each other For that which S. Paul calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illuminated he calls after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a receiving the knowledge of the truth and that you may perceive this to be wholly meant of Baptism the 〈◊〉 expresses it still by Synonyma's Tasting of the heavenly gift and made partakers of the Holy Ghost sprinkled in our hearts from an evil conscience and washed in our bodies with pure water all which also are a syllabus or collection of the several effects of the graces bestowed in Baptism But we are now instancing in that which relates most properly to the Understanding in which respect the Holy Spirit also is called Anointing or Unction and the mystery is explicated by S. John The Anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you and ye need not that any man teach you but as the same Anointing teacheth you of all things 23. Thirdly The Holy Spirit descends upon us in Baptism to become the principle of a new life to become a holy seed springing up to Holiness and is called by S. John 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 of God and the purpose of it we are taught by him Whosoever is 〈◊〉 of God that is he that is regenerated and entred into this New birth doth not 〈◊〉 sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God The Spirit of God is the Spirit of life and now that he by the Spirit is born anew he hath in him that principle which if it be cherished will grow up to life to life eternal And this is the Spirit of Sanctification the victory over the World the deletery of Concupiscence the life of the Soul and the perpetual principle of Grace sown in our spirits in the day of our Adoption to be the sons of God and members of Christ's body But take this Mystery in the words of S. Basil. There are two Ends proposed in Baptism to wit to abolish the body of Sin that we may no more bring forth fruit unto death and to live in the Spirit and to have our fruit to Sanctification The Water represents the image of death receiving the body in its bosom as in a Sepulchre but the quickning Spirit sends upon us a vigorous 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 power or 〈◊〉 even from the beginning renewing our Souls from the death of sin unto life For as our Mortification is 〈◊〉 in the water so the Spirit works life in us To this purpose is the discourse of S. Paul having largely discoursed of our being baptized into the death of 〈◊〉 he adds this as the Corollary of all He that is dead is freed from sin that is being mortified and buried in the waters of Baptism we have a new life of Righteousness put into us we are quitted from the dominion of Sin and are planted together in the likeness of Christ's Resurrection that henceforth we should not serve sin 24. Fourthly But all these intermedial Blessings tend to a glorious Conclusion for Baptism does also consign us to a holy Resurrection It takes the sting of death from us by burying us together with Christ and takes 〈◊〉 Sin which is the sting of death and then we shall be partakers of a blessed Resurrection This we are taught by S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his Death For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his Death we shall be also in the likeness of his Resurrection That declares the real event in its due season But because Baptism consigns it and admits us to a title to it we are said with S. Paul to be risen with Christ in Baptism Buried with him in Baptism wherein also you are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God which hath raised him from the dead Which expression I desire to be remembred that by it we may better understand those other
be they must be for it is not here as in Goods where we are permitted to use all or some and give what portion we please out of them but we cannot do our duty towards our Children unless we give them wholly to God and offer them to his service and to his grace The first does honour to God the second does charity to the Children The effects and real advantages will appear in the sequel In the mean time this Argument extends thus sar That Children may be presented to God acceptably in order to his service And it was highly preceptive when our Blessed Saviour commanded that we should 〈◊〉 little children to come to him and when they came they carried away a Blessing along with them He was desirous they should partake of his Merits he is not willing neither is it his Father's will that any of these little ones should perish And therefore he died for them and loved and blessed them and so he will now if they be brought to him and presented as Candidates of the Religion and of the Resurrection Christ hath a Blessing for our Children but let them come to him that is be presented at the doors of the Church to the Sacrament of Adoption and Initiation for I know no other way for them to come 13. Secondly Children may be adopted into the Covenant of the Gospel that is made partakers of the Communion of Saints which is the second Effect of Baptism parts of the Church members of Christ's Mystical body and put into the order of eternal life Now concerning this it is certain the Church clearly hath power to do her offices in order to it The faithful can pray for all men they can do their piety to some persons with more regard and greater earnestness they can admit whom they please in their proper dispositions to a participation of all their holy Prayers and Communions and Preachings and Exhortations and if all this be a blessing and all this be the actions of our own Charity who can hinder the Church of God from admitting Infants to the communion of all their pious offices which can do them benefit in their present capacity How this does necessarily infer Baptism I shall afterwards discourse But for the present I enumerate That the blessings of Baptism are communicable to them they may be admitted into a fellowship of all the Prayers and Priviledges of the Church and the Communion of Saints in blessings and prayers and holy offices But that which is of greatest perswasion and convincing efficacy in this particular is That the Children of the Church are as capable of the same Covenant as the children of the Jews But it was the same Covenant that Circumcision did consign a spiritual Covenant under a veil and now it is the same spiritual Covenant without the veil which is evident to him that considers it thus 14. The words of the Covenant are these I am the Almighty God walk before me and be thou perfect I will multiply thee exceedingly Thou shalt be a Father of many Nations Thy name shall not be Abram but Abraham Nations and Kings shall be out of thee I will be a God unto thee and unto thy seed after thee and I will give all the Land of Canaan to thy seed and All the Males shall be circumcised and it shall be a token of the Covenant between me and thee and He that is not circumcised shall be cut off from his people The Covenant which was on 〈◊〉 's part was To walk before God and to be perfect on God's part To bless him with a numerous issue and them with the Land of Canaan and the sign was Circumcision the token of the Covenant Now in all this here was no duty to which the posterity was obliged nor any blessing which 〈◊〉 could perceive or feel because neither he nor his posterity did enjoy the Promise for many hundred years after the Covenant and therefore as there was a duty for the posterity which is not here expressed so there was a blessing for Abraham which was concealed under the leaves of a temporal Promise and which we shall better understand from them whom the Spirit of God hath taught the mysteriousness of this transaction The argument indeed and the observation is wholly S. Paul's Abraham and the Patriarchs died in faith not having received the Promises viz. of a possession in Canaan They saw the Promises afar off they embraced them and looked through the Cloud and the temporal veil this was not it they might have returned to Canaan if that had been the object of their desires and the design of the Promise but they desired and did seek a Country but it was a better and that a heavenly This was the object of their desire and the end of their seach and the reward of their Faith and the secret of their Promise And therefore Circumcision was a seal of the righteousness of Faith which he had before his Circumcision before the making this Covenant and therefore it must principally relate to an effect and a blessing greater than was afterwards expressed in the temporal Promise which effect was forgiveness of sins a not imputing to us our infirmities Justification by Faith accounting that for righteousness and these effects or graces were promised to Abraham not only for his posterity after the flesh but his children after the spirit even to all that shall believe and walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham which he walked in being yet uncircumcised 15. This was no other but the Covenant of the Gospel though afterwards otherwise consigned for so the Apostle expresly affirms that Abraham was the father of Circumcision viz. by virtue of this Covenant not only to them that are circumcised but to all that believe for this promise was not through the Law of Works or of Circumcision but of Faith And therefore as S. Paul observes God promised that Abraham should be a father not of that Nation only but of many Nations and the heir of the world that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through Faith And if ye be Christ's then ye are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the Promise Since then the Covenant of the Gospel is the Covenant of Faith and not of Works and the Promises are spiritual not secular and Abraham the father of the faithful Gentiles as well as the circumcised Jews and the heir of the world not by himself but by his seed or the Son of Man our Lord Jesus it follows that the Promises which Circumcision did seal were the same Promises which are consigned in Baptism the Covenant is the same only that God's people are not impal'd in 〈◊〉 and the veil is taken away and the Temporal is passed into Spiritual and the result will be this That to
that Nation expressed by worshipping towards the Sanctuary by pulling off their shoes when they went into it by making it the determination of their Religious addresses by falling down low upon the earth in their accesses by opening their windows towards it in their private Devotions by calling it the glory of their Nation as is certain in the instances of David Daniel and the wife of Phinehas I shall not need to say that the devouter Christians in the first Ages did worship God with solemnities of address when-ever they entred into their Oratories It was a civility Jesus commanded his Disciples to use to common houses When ye enter into a house salute it I suppose he means the dwellers in it And it is certain what-ever those devouter people did in their religious approaches they designed it to God who was the Major-domo the Master of those Assemblies and thus did the convinced Christian in S. Paul's discourse when he came into the Church where they were prophesying in a known language The secrets of his heart are made manifest and so falling down on his face he will worship God 12. It was no unhandsome expression of reverencing God's Sanctuary that pious people ever used in bestowing costly and 〈◊〉 Ornaments upon it for so all the Christians did as soon as themselves came from contempt and scorn they raised Christian Oratories to an equal portion of their honour and by this way they thought they did honour to God who was the Numen of the place Not that a rich house or costly Offertory is better in respect of God for to him all is alike save that in equal abilities our Devotion is distinguished by them and be the Offering never so contemptible it is a rich Devotion that gives the best we have because although if all the wealth of the Levant were united into a Present it were short of God's infinity yet such an Offertory or any best we have makes demonstration that if we had an Offering infinitely better we should give it to express our love and our belief of God's infinite merit and perfection And therefore let not the widow's two mites become a Precedent to the instance and value of our Donation and because she who gave no more was accepted think that two farthings is as fit to be cast into the Corban as two thousand pound For the reason why our Blessed Saviour commended the Widow's oblation was for the greatness of it not the smallness she gave all she had even all her living therefore she was accepted And indeed since God gives to us more than enough beyond our necessities much for our conveniency much for ease much for repute much for publick compliances for variety for content for pleasure for ornament we should deal unworthily with God Almighty if we limit and restrain our returns to him by confining them within the narrow bounds of mere necessity Certainly beggerly services and cheapness is not more pleasing to God than a rich and magnificent address To the best of Essences the best of Presents is most proportionable and although the service of the Soul and Spirit is most delectable and esteemed by God yet because our Souls are served by things perishing and material and we are of that constitution that by the Body we serve the Spirit and by both we serve God as the Spirit is chiefly to be offered to God because it is better than the Body so the richest Oblation is the best in an equal power and the same person because it is the best of things material and although it hath not the excellency of the Spirit it hath an excellency that a cheap Oblation hath not and besides the advantage of the natural value it can no otherwise be spoiled than a meaner Offering may it is always capable of the same commendation from the Piety of the presenter's spirit and may be as much purified and made holy as the cheaper or the more contemptible God hath no-where expressed that he accepts of a cheaper Offering but when we are not able to give him better When the people brought Offerings more than enough for the Tabernacle Moses restrained their forwardness by saying it was enough but yet commended the disposition highly and wished it might be perpetual But God chid the people when they let his House lie waste without reparation of its decaying beauty and therefore sent famines upon the Land and a curse into their estate because they would not by giving a portion to Religion sanctifie and secure all the rest For the way for a man to be a saver by his Religion is to deposite one part of his estate in the Temple and one in the hands of the Poor for these are God's treasury and stewards respectively and this is laying up treasures in Heaven and besides that it will procure blessing to other parts it will help to save our Souls and that 's good husbandry that 's worth the saving 13. For I consider that those riches and beauties in Churches and Religious solemnities which add nothing to God add much Devotion to us and much honour and efficacy to Devotion For since impression is made upon the Soul by the intervening of corporal things our Religion and Devotion of the Soul receives the addition of many degrees by such instruments Insomuch that we see persons of the greatest fancy and such who are most pleased with outward fairnesses are most Religious Great Understandings make Religion lasting and reasonable but great Fancies make it more scrupulous strict operative and effectual And therefore it is strange that we shall bestow such great expences to make our own houses convenient and delectable that we may entertain our selves with complacency and appetite and yet think that Religion is not worth the ornament nor our fancies fit to be carried into the choice and prosecution of religious actions with sweetness entertainments and fair propositions If we say that God is not the better for a rich House or a costly service we may also remember that neither are we the better for rich Cloaths and the Sheep will keep us as modest as warm and as clean as the Silk-worm and a Gold chain or a carkenet of Pearl does no more contribute to our happiness than it does to the service of Religion For if we reply that they help to the esteem and reputation of our Persons and the distinction of them from the vulgar from the servants of the lot of Issachar and add reverence and veneration to us how great a shame is it if we study by great expences to get reputation and accidental advantages to our selves and not by the same means to purchase reverence and esteem to Religion since we see that Religion amongst persons of ordinary understandings receives as much external and accidental advantages by the accession of exteriour ornaments and accommodation as we our selves can by rich cloaths and garments of wealth ceremony and
hungry and therefore having so great need they might lawfully do it meaning that such particles and circumstances of Religion are not to be neglected unless where greater cause of charity or necessity does supervene 2. But when Fasting is in order to greater and more concerning purposes it puts on more Religion and becomes a duty according as it is necessary or highly conducing to such ends to the promoting of which we are bound to contribute all our skill and faculties Fasting is principally operative to mortification of carnal appetites to which Feasting and full tables do minister aptness and power and inclinations When I fed them to the full then they committed adultery and assembled by troups in the Harlots houses And if we observe all our own vanities we shall find that upon every sudden joy or a prosperous accident or an opulent fortune or a pampered body and highly spirited and inflamed we are apt to rashness levities inconsiderate expressions scorn and pride idleness wantonness curiosity niceness and impatience But Fasting is one of those afflictions which reduces our body to want our spirits to soberness our condition to sufferance our desires to abstinence and customes of denial and so by taking off the inundations of sensuality leaves the enemies within in a condition of being easier subdued Fasting directly advances towards Chastity and by consequence and indirect powers to Patience and Humility and Indifferency But then it is not the Fast of a day that can do this it is not an act but a state of Fasting that operates to Mortification A perpetual Temperance and frequent abstinence may abate such proportions of strength and nutriment as to procure a body mortified and 〈◊〉 in desires And thus S. Paul kept his body under using severities to it for the taming its rebellions and distemperatures And S. Jerom reports of S. Hilarion that when he had fasted much and used course diet and found his Lust too strong for such austerities he resolv'd to encrease it to the degree of Mastery lessening his diet and encreasing his hardship till he should rather think of food than wantonness And many times the Fastings of some men are ineffectual because they promise themselves cure too soon or make too gentle applications or put less proportions into their antidotes I have read of a Maiden that seeing a young man much transported with her love and that he ceased not to importune her with all the violent pursuits that passion could suggest told him she had made a Vow to fast forty days with bread and water of which she must discharge her self before she could think of corresponding to any other desire and desired of him as a testimony of his love that he also would be a party in the same Vow The young man undertook it that he might give probation of his love but because he had been used to a delicate and nice kind of life in twenty days he was so weakned that he thought more of death than love and so got a cure for his intemperance and was wittily cousened into remedy But S. Hierom's counsel in this Question is most reasonable not allowing violent and long fasts and then returns to an ordinary course for these are too great changes of diet to consist with health and too sudden and transient to obtain a permanent and natural effect but a belly always hungry a table never full a meal little and necessary no extravagancies no freer repast this is a state of Fasting which will be found to be of best avail to suppress pungent Lusts and rebellious desires And it were well to help this exercise with the assistences of such austerities which teach Patience and ingenerate a passive fortitude and accustome us to a despight of pleasures and which are consistent with our health For if Fasting be left to do the work alone it may chance either to spoil the body or not to spoil the Lust. Hard lodging 〈◊〉 garments laborious postures of prayer journies on foot sufferance of cold paring away the use of ordinary solaces denying every pleasant appetite rejecting the most pleasant morsels these are in the rank of bodily exercises which though as S. Paul says of themselves they profit little yet they accustome us to acts of self-denial in exteriour instances and are not useless to the designs of mortifying carnal and sensual lusts They have a proportion of wisdome with these cautions viz. in will-worship that is in voluntary susception when they are not imposed as necessary Religion in humility that is without contempt of others that use them not in neglecting of the body that is when they are done for discipline and mortification that the flesh by such handlings and rough usages become less satisfied and more despised 3. As Fasting hath respect to the future so also to the present and so it operates in giving assistence to Prayer There is a kind of Devil that is not to be ejected but by prayer and fasting that is Prayer elevated and made intense by a defecate and pure spirit not loaden with the burthen of meat and vapours S. Basil affirms that there are certain Angels deputed by God to minister and to describe all such in every Church who mortifie themselves by Fasting as if paleness and a meagre visage were that mark in the forehead which the Angel observed when he signed the Saints in Jerusalem to escape the Judgment Prayer is the wings of the Soul and Fasting is the wings of Prayer Tertullian calls it the nourishment of Prayer But this is a Discourse of Christian Philosophy and he that chuses to do any act of spirit or understanding or attention after a full meal will then perceive that Abstinence had been the better disposition to any intellectual and spiritual action And therefore the Church of God ever joyned Fasting to their more solemn offices of Prayer The Apostles fasted and prayed when they laid hands and invocated the Holy Ghost upon Saul and Barnabas And these also when they had prayed with fasting ordained Elders in the Churches of Lystra and Iconium And the Vigils of every Holy-day tell us that the Devotion of the Festival is promoted by the Fast of the Vigils 4. But when Fasting relates to what is past it becomes an instrument of Repentance it is a punitive and an 〈◊〉 action an effect of godly sorrow a testimony of contrition a judging of our selves and chastening our bodies that we be not judged of the Lord. The Fast of the Ninevites and the Fast the Prophet Joel calls for and the Discipline of the Jews in the rites of Expiation proclaim this usefulness of Fasting in order to Repentance And indeed it were a strange Repentance that had no sorrow in it and a stranger sorrow that had no affliction but it were the strangest scene of affliction in the world when the sad and afflicted person shall eat
and therefore less likely to deceive for which reason it is said that he shall deceive if it were possible the very elect that is therefore not possible because that by which he insinuates himself to others is by the elect the Church and chosen of God understood to be his sign and mark of discovery and a warning And therefore as the Prophecies of Jesus were an infinite verification of his Miracles so also this Prophecy of Christ concerning Antichrist disgraces the reputation and faith of the Miracles he shall act The old Prophets foretold of the Messias and of his Miracles of power and mercy to prepare for his reception and entertainment Christ alone and his Apostles from him foretold of Antichrist and that he should come in all Miracles of deception and lying that is with true or false Miracles to perswade a lie and this was to prejudice his being accepted according to the Law of Moses So that as all that spake of Christ bade us believe him for the Miracles so all that foretold of Antichrist bade us disbelieve him the rather for his and the reason of both is the same because the mighty and surer word of Prophecy as S. Peter calls it being the greatest testimony in the world of a Divine principle gives authority or reprobates with the same power They who are the predestinate of God and they that are the praesciti the foreknown and marked people must needs stand or fall to the Divine sentence and such must this be acknowledged for no enemy of the Cross not the Devil himself ever foretold such a contingency or so rare so personal so voluntary so unnatural an event as this of the great Antichrist 12. And thus the Holy Jesus having shewed forth the treasures of his Father's Wisdom in Revelations and holy Precepts and upon the stock of his Father's greatness having dispended and demonstrated great power in Miracles and these being instanced in acts of Mercy he mingled the glories of Heaven to transmit them to earth to raise us up to the participations of Heaven he was pleased by healing the bodies of infirm persons to invite their spirits to his Discipline and by his power to convey healing and by that mercy to lead us into the treasures of revelation that both Bodies and Souls our Wills and Understandings by Divine instruments might be brought to Divine perfections in the participations of a Divine nature It was a miraculous mercy that God should look upon us in our bloud and a miraculous condescension that his Son should take our nature and even this favour we could not believe without many Miracles and so contrary was our condition to all possibilities of happiness that if Salvation had not marched to us all the way in Miracle we had perished in the ruines of a sad eternity And now it would be but reasonable that since God for our sakes hath rescinded so many laws of natural establishment we also for his and for our own would be content to do violence to those natural inclinations which are also criminal when they derive into action Every man living in the state of Grace is a perpetual Miracle and his Passions are made reasonable as his Reason is turned to Faith and his Soul to Spirit and his Body to a Temple and Earth to Heaven and less than this will not dispose us to such glories which being the portion of Saints and Angels and the nearest communications with God are infinitely above what we see or hear or understand The PRAYER O Eternal Jesu who didst receive great power that by it thou mightest convey thy Father's mercies to us impotent and wretched people give me grace to believe that heavenly Doctrine which thou didst ratifie with arguments from above that I may fully assent to all those mysterious Truths which integrate that Doctrine and Discipline in which the obligations of my duty and the hopes of my felicity are deposited And to all those glorious verifications of thy Goodness and thy Power add also this Miracle that I who am stained with Leprosie of sin may be cleansed and my eyes may be opened that I may see the wondrous things of thy Law and raise thou me up from the death of sin to the life of righteousness that I may for ever walk in the land of the living abhorring the works of death and darkness that as I am by thy miraculous mercy partaker of the first so also I may be accounted worthy of the second Resurrection and as by Faith Hope Charity and Obedience I receive the fruit of thy Miracles in this life so in the other I may partake of thy Glories which is a mercy above all Miracles Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean Lord I believe help mine unbelief and grant that no 〈◊〉 or incapacity of mine may hinder the wonderful operations of thy Grace but let it be thy first Miracle to turn my water into wine my barrenness into fruitfulness my aversations from thee into unions and intimate adhesions to thy infinity which is the fountain of mercy and power Grant this for thy mercie 's sake and for the honour of those glorious Attributes in which thou hast revealed thy self and thy Father's excellencies to the world O Holy and Eternal Jesu Amen The End of the Second Part. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 THE HISTORY OF THE Life and Death OF THE HOLY JESUS BEGINNING At the Second Year of his PREACHING until his ASCENSION WITH CONSIDERATIONS and DISCOURSES upon the several parts of the Story And PRAYERS fitted to the several MYSTERIES THE THIRD PART Seneca apud Lactant. lib. 6. c. 17. Hic est ille homo qui sive toto corpore tormenta patienda sunt sive flamma ore recipienda est sive extendenda per patibulum manus non quaerit quid patiatur sed quà m bene LONDON Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston 1675 TO The Right Honourable and Vertuous Lady The LADY FRANCES Countess of CARBERY MADAM SInce the Divine Providence hath been pleased to bind up the great breaches of my little fortune by your Charity and Nobleness of a religious tenderness I account it an excellent circumstance and handsomeness of condition that I have the fortune of S. Athanasius to have my Persecution relieved and comforted by an Honourable and Excellent Lady and I have nothing to return for this honour done to me but to do as the poor Paralyticks and infirm people in the Gospel did when our Blessed Saviour cured them they went and told it to all the Countrey and made the Vicinage full of the report as themselves were of health and joy And although I know the modesty of your person and Religion had rather do favours than own them yet give me leave to draw aside the curtain and retirement of your Charity for I had rather your vertue should blush than my unthankfulness make me ashamed Madam I intended by this Address not onely to return you spirituals for
die and then gather his sheep together into one fold intimating the calling of the Gentiles to which purpose he was enabled by his Father to lay down his life and to take it up and had also endeared them to his Father that they should be preserved unto eternal life and no power should be able to take them out of his hand or the hand of his Father for because Jesus was united to the Father the Father's care preserved the Son's flocks 23. But the Jews to requite him for his so divine Sermons betook themselves to their old argument they took up stones again to cast at him pretending he had blasphemed but Jesus proved it to be no blasphemy to call himself the son of God because they to whom the Word of God came are in Scripture called Gods But nothing could satisfie them whose temporal interest was concerned not to consent to such Doctrine which would save their souls by ruining their temporal concernments But when they sought again to take him Jesus escaped out of their hands and went away beyond Jordan where John at first baptized which gave the people occasion to remember that John did no Miracle but this man does many and John whom all men did revere and highly account of for his Office and Sanctity gave testimony to Jesus And many believed on him there 24. After this Jesus knowing that the harvest was great and as yet the labourers had been few sent out seventy two of his Disciples with the like commission as formerly the 12. Apostles that they might go before to those places whither himself meant to come Of which number were the Seven whom afterwards the Apostles set over the Widows and Matthias Mark and some say Luke Justus Barnabas Apelles Rufus Niger Cephas not Peter Thaddaeus Aristion and John The rest of the names could not be recovered by the best diligence of Eusebius and Epiphanius But when they returned from their journey they rejoyced greatly in the legation and power and Jesus also rejoyced in spirit giving glory to God that he had made his revelations to babes and the more imperfect 〈◊〉 like the lowest Valleys which receive from Heaven the greatest flouds of rain and blessings and stand thick with corn and flowers when the Mountains are unfruitful in their height and greatness 25. And now a Doctor of the Law came to Jesus asking him a Question of the greatest consideration that a wise man could ask or a Prophet answer Master what shall I do to inherit eternal life Jesus referred him to the Scriptures and declared the way to Heaven to be this only to love the Lord with all our powers and faculties and our neighbour as our self But when the Lawyer being captious made a scruple in a smooth rush asking what is meant by Neighbour Jesus told him by a Parable of a Traveller fallen into the hands of robbers and neglected by a Priest and by a Levite but relieved by a Samaritan that no distance of Countrey or Religion destroys the relation of Neighbourhood but every person with whom we converse in peace and charity is that Neighbour whom we are to love as our selves 26. Jesus having departed from Jerusalem upon the forementioned danger came to a village called Bethany where Martha making great and busie preparation for his entertainment to express her joy and her affections to his person desired Jesus to dismiss her Sister Mary from his feet who sate there feasting her self with the viands and sweetnesses of his Doctrine incurious of the provisions for entertainment But Jesus commended her choice and though he did not expresly disrepute Martha's Civility yet he preferred Mary's Religion and Sanctity of affections In this time because the night drew on in which no man could work Jesus hastened to do his Father's business and to pour out whole cataracts of holy Lessons like the fruitful Nilus swelling over the banks and filling all the trenches to make a plenty of corn and fruits great as the inundation Jesus therefore teaches his Disciples that Form of Prayer the second time which we call the Lord's Prayer teaches them assiduity and indefatigable importunity in Prayer by a Parable of an importunate Neighbour borrowing loaves at midnight and a troublesome Widow who forced an unjust Judge to do her right by her clamorous and hourly addresses encourages them to pray by consideration of the Divine goodness and fatherly affection far more indulgent to his Sons than natural Fathers are to their dearest issue and adds a gracious promise of success to them that pray He reproves Pharisaical ostentation arms his Disciples against the fear of men and the terrors of Persecution which can arrive but to the incommodities of the Body teaches the fear of God who is Lord of the whole Man and can accurse the Soul as well as punish the Body He refuses to divide the inheritance between two Brethren as not having competent power to become Lord in temporal jurisdictions He preaches against Covetousness and the placing felicities in worldly possessions by a Parable of a rich man whose riches were too big for his barns and big enough for his Soul and he ran over into voluptuousness and stupid complacencies in his perishing goods he was snatched from their possession and his Soul taken from him in the violence of a rapid and hasty sickness in the space of one night Discourses of divine Providence and care over us all and descending even as low as grass He exhorts to Alms-deeds to Watchfulness and preparation against the sudden and unexpected coming of our Lord to Judgment or the arrest of death tells the offices and sedulity of the Clergy under the Apologue of Stewards and Governours of their Lords houses teaches them gentleness and sobriety and not to do evil upon confidence of their Lord's absence and delay and teaches the people even of themselves to judge what is right concerning the signs of the coming of the Son of Man And the end of all these discourses was that all men should repent and live good lives and be saved 27. At this Sermon there were present some that told him of the Galileans whose bloud Pilate mingled with their sacrifices For the Galileans were a sort of people that taught it to be unlawful to pay tribute to strangers or to pray for the Romans and because the Jews did both they refused to communicate in their sacred Rites and would sacrifice apart at which Solemnity when Pilate the Roman Deputy had apprehended many of them he caused them all to be slain making them to die upon the same Altars These were of the Province of Judaea but of the same Opinion with those who taught in Galilee from whence the Sect had its appellative But to the story Jesus made reply that these external accidents though they be sad and calamitous yet they are no arguments of condemnation against the persons of the men to convince them of a greater guilt than others
Scribes questioned his commission and by what authority he did those things But Jesus promising to answer them if they would declare their opinions concerning John's Baptism which they durst not for fear of displeasing the people or throwing durt in their own faces was acquitted of his obligation by their declining the proposition 10. But there he reproved the Pharisees and Rulers by the Parable of two Sons the first whereof said to his Father he would not obey but repented and did his command the second gave good words but did nothing meaning that persons of the greatest improbability were more heartily converted than they whose outside seemed to have appropriated Religion to the labels of their frontlets He added a Parable of the Vineyard let out to Husbandmen who killed the servants sent to demand the fruits and at last the Son himself that they might invade the inheritance but made a sad commination to all such who should either stumble at this stone or on whom this stone should fall After which and some other reprehensions which he so veiled in Parable that it might not be expounded to be calumny or declamation although such sharp Sermons had been spoken in the People's hearing but yet so transparently that themselves might see their own iniquity in those modest and just representments the Pharisees would fain have seised him but they durst not for the People but resolved if they could to entangle him in his talk and therefore sent out spies who should pretend sanctity and veneration of his person who with a goodly 〈◊〉 preface that Jesus regarded no man's person but spake the word of God with much simplicity and justice desired to know if it were lawful to pay tribute to 〈◊〉 or not A question which was of great dispute because of the numerous Sect of the 〈◊〉 who denied it and of the affections of the People who loved their Money and their Liberty and the Privileges of their Nation And now in all probability he shall fall under the displeasure of the People or of Caesar. But Jesus called to see a peny and 〈◊〉 it to be superscribed with Caesar's image with incomparable wisdome he brake their snare and established an Evangelical proposition for ever saying Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's 11. Having so excellently and so much to their wonder answered the Pharisees the Sadduces bring their great objection to him against the Resurrection by putting case of a Woman married to seven Husbands and whose Wife should she be in the Resurrection thinking that to be an impossible state which ingages upon such seeming incongruities that a woman should at once be wife to seven men But Jesus first answered their objection telling them that all those relations whose 〈◊〉 is in the imperfections and passions of 〈◊〉 and bloud and duties here below shall cease in that state which is so spiritual that it is like to the condition of Angels amongst whom there is no difference of sex no cognations no genealogies or derivation from one another and then by a new argument proves the Resurrection by one of God's appellatives who did then delight to be called the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob for since God is not the God of the dead but of the living unto him even these men are alive and if so then either they now exercise acts of life and therefore shall be restored to their bodies that their actions may be compleat and they not remain in a state of imperfection to all eternity or if they be alive and yet cease from operation they shall be much rather raised up to a condition which shall actuate and make perfect their present capacities and dispositions lest a power and inclination should for ever be in the root and never rise up to fruit or herbage and so be an eternal vanity like an old bud or an eternal child 12. After this the Pharisees being well pleased not that Jesus spake so excellently but that the Sadduces were 〈◊〉 came to him asking which was the great Commandment and some other things more out of curiosity than pious desires of satisfaction But at last Jesus was pleased to ask them concerning CHRIST whose son he was They answered The Son of David but he replying How then doth David call him Lord The LORD said unto my Lord Sit thou on my right hand c. they had nothing to answer But Jesus then gave his Disciples caution against the Pride the Hypocrisie and the Oppression of the Scribes and Pharisees and commended the poor widow's oblation of her two mites into the treasury it being a great love in a little print for it was all her living All this was spoken in the Temple the goodly stones of which when the Apostles beheld with wonder they being white and firm twenty cubits in length twelve in breadth eight in depth as Josephus reports Jesus prophesies the destruction of the place concerning which Prediction when the Apostles being with him at the mount of Olives asked him privately concerning the time and the ligns of so sad event he discoursed largely of his coming to Judgment against that City and interweaved Predictions of the universal Judgment of all the world of which this though very sad was but a small adumbration adding Precepts of Watchfulness and standing in preparation with hearts filled with grace our lamps always shining that when the Bridegroom shall come we may be ready to enter in which was intended in the Parable of the five wise Virgins and concluded his Sermon with a narrative of his Passion foretelling that within two days he should be crucisied 13. Jesus descended from the mount and came to Bethany and turning into the house of Simon the Leper Mary 〈◊〉 Magdalen having been reproved by Judas for spending ointment upon 〈◊〉 's 〈◊〉 it being so unaccustomed and large a profusion thought now to speak her love once more and trouble no body and therefore the poured ointment on his sacred head believing that being a pompousness of a more accustomed festivity would be indulged to the expressions of her affection but now all the Disciples murmured wondring at the prodigiousness of the woman's Religion great enough to consume a Province in the 〈◊〉 of her thankfulness and duty But Jesus now also entertained the sincerity of her miraculous love adding this Prophecy that where the Gospel should be preached there also a record of this act should be kept as a perpetual monument of her Piety and an attestation of his Divinity who could foretell future 〈◊〉 Christianity receiving the greatest argument from that which S. Peter calls the surer word of Prophecy meaning it to be greater than the testimony of Miracles not easie to be dissembled by impure spirits and whose efficacy should descend to all Ages for this Prophecy shall for ever be fulfilling and being every day verified does every day preach the Divinity of Christ's 〈◊〉 and of his
When Israel came out of Egypt and ending at the 118 inclusively went forth with his Disciples over the brook 〈◊〉 unto the mount of Olives to a village called Gethsemani where there was a Garden into which he entred to pray together with his Disciples 20. But taking Peter James and John apart with him about a stone 's cast from the rest he began to be exceeding sorrowful and sad even unto death For now he 〈◊〉 the ingredients of his bitter Draught pouring into the Chalice and the sight was full of horror and amazement he therefore fell on his face and prayed O my Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me In this Prayer he fell into so sad an agony that the pains inflicted by his Father's wrath and made active by his own apprehension were so great that a sweat distilled from his sacred body as great and conglobated as drops of 〈◊〉 and God who heard his Prayer but would not answer him in kind sent an Angel to comfort him in the sadness which he was pleased not to take away But knowing that the drinking this Cup was the great end of his coming into the world he laid aside all his own interests and devested himself of the affections of flesh and bloud willing his Father's will and because his Father commanded he in desiance of sense and passion was desirous to suffer all our pains But as when two seas meet the billows 〈◊〉 in ungentle embraces and make violent noises till having wearied themselves into smaller waves and disunited drops they run quietly into one stream so did the spirit and nature of Jesus assault each other with disagreeing interests and distinguishing disputations till the earnestness of the contention was diminished by the demonstrations of the spirit and the prevailings of Grace which the sooner got the victory because they were not to contest with an unsanctified or a rebellious nature but a body of affections which had no strong desires but of its own preservation and therefore Jesus went thrice and prayed the same prayer that if it were 〈◊〉 the cup might pass from him and thrice made an act of resignation and in the intervals came and found his Apostles asleep gently chiding their incuriousness and warning them to watch and pray that they enter not into temptation till the time that the Traitor came with a multitude armed with swords and staves from the Priests and Elders of the people to apprehend him 21. Judas gave them the opportunity of the night that was all the advantage they had by him because they durst not seise him by day for fear of the people and he signified the person of his Master to the souldiers by a Kiss and an address of seeming civility But when they came towards him Jesus said Whom seek ye They said JESUS of Nazareth He said I am he But there was a Divinity upon him that they could not seise him at first But as a wave climbing of a Rock is beaten back and scattered into members till falling down it creeps with gentle waftings and kisses the feet of the stony mountain and so encirles it so the Souldiers coming at first with a rude attempt were twice repelled by the glory of his person till they falling at his feet were at last admitted to the seisure of his body having by those involuntary prostrations confessed his power greater than theirs and that the lustre and influence of a GOD are greater than the violences and rudenesses of Souldiers And still they like weak eyes durst not behold the glory of this Sun till a cloud like a dark veil did interrupt the emissions of his glories they could not seise upon him till they had thrown a veil upon his holy face which although it was a custom of the Easterlings and of the Roman Empire generally yet in this case was violence and necessity because a certain impetuosity and vigorousness of spirit and Divinity issuing from his holy Face made them to take sanctuary in darkness and to throw a veil over him in that dead time of a sad and dismal night But Peter a stout Galilean bold and zealous attempted a rescue and smote a servant of the High Priest and cut off his ear but Jesus rebuked the intemperance of his passion and commanded him to put up his sword saying all they that strike with the sword shall perish with the sword so putting a bridle upon the illegal inflictions and expresses of anger or revenge from an incompetent authority But Jesus touched Malchus's ear and cured it 22. When Jesus had yielded himself into their power and was now led away by the chief Priests Captains of the Temple Elders of the people and Souldiers who all came in combination and covenant to surprize him his Disciples fled and John the Evangelist who with grief and an over-running phancy had forgot to lay aside his upper garment which in Festivals they are used to put on began to make escape but being arrested by his linen upon his bare body was forced to leave that behind him that himself might escape his Master's danger for now was verified the prophetical saying I will smite the Shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered But Peter followed afar off and the greatness of John's love when he had mastered the first inconsiderations of his fear made him to return a while after into the High Priest's Hall 23. Jesus was first led to Annas who was the Prince of the Sanhedrim and had cognizance of Prophets and publick Doctrines who therefore enquired of Jesus concerning his Disciples and his Discipline but he answered that his Doctrine had been publick or popular that he never taught in Conventicles and therefore referred him to the testimony of all the people For which free answer a servant standing by smote him on the face and Jesus meekly asked him what evil he had done But Annas without the Seventy Assessors could judge nothing and therefore sent him bound to Caiaphas who was High Priest that year President of the Rites of the Temple as the other High Priest was of the great Council Thither Peter came and had admission by the means of another Disciple supposed to be John who having sold his possessions in Galilee to Caiaphas came and dwelt near mount Sion but was by intervention of that bargain made known to the High Priest and brought Peter into the house where when Peter was challenged three times by the servants to be a Galilean and of Jesus's family he denied and forswore it till Jesus looking back re-minded him of his prediction and the foulness of the crime and the cock crew for it was now the second cock-crowing after ten of the clock in the fourth Watch. And Peter went out and wept bitterly that he might cleanse his Soul washing off the foul stains he had contracted in his shameful Perjury and Denying of his Lord. And it is reported of the same holy person that ever
satisfied with her own meditations that now that great Mystery determined by Divine Predestination before the beginning of all Ages was fulfilled in her Son and the Passion that must needs be was accomplished she therefore first bathes his cold body with her warm tears and makes clean the surface of the wounds and delivering a winding napkin to Joseph of Arimathaea gave to him in charge to enwrap the Body and embalm it to compose it to the grave and do it all the rites of Funeral having first exhorted him to a publick confession of what he was privately till now and he obeyed the counsel of so excellent a person and ventured upon the displeasure of the Jewish Rulers and went confidently to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus And Pilate gave him the power of it 39. Joseph therefore takes the body binds his face with a napkin washes the body anoints it with ointment enwraps it in a composition of myrrh and aloes and puts it into a new tomb which he for himself had hewen out of a rock it not being lawful among the Jews to interr a condemned person in the common coemeteries for all these circumstances were in the Jews manner of burying But when the Sun was set the chief Priests and Pharisees went to Pilate telling him that Jesus whilest he was living foretold 〈◊〉 own resurrection upon the third day and lest his Disciples should come and steal the body and say he was risen from the dead desired that the sepulchre might be secured against the danger of any such imposture Pilate gave them leave to do their pleasure even to the satisfaction of their smallest scruples They therefore sealed the grave rolled a great stone at the mouth of it and as an ancient Tradition says bound it about with labels of iron and set a watch of souldiers as if they had intended to have made it surer than the decrees of Fate or the never-failing laws of Nature Ad SECT XV. Considerations of some preparatory Accidents before the entrance of JESVS into his Passion Christ riding in triumph Matth. 21. 7. And they brought y e Ass. put on their clothes set him thereon and a very great multitude spread their garments others cut down branches from y e trees strawed them in y e way And the multitude y t went before and y t followed after cried Hosannah etc. Mary pouring ointment on Christ's head Mark 14. 3. As he sat at meat in the house of Simon y e leper there came a woman having an Alabaster-box of ointment very pretious poured it on his head And Jesus said let hir alone she is come aforehand to anoint my body to y e burying 1. HE that hath observed the Story of the Life of Jesus cannot but see it all the way to be strewed with thorns and sharp-pointed stones and although by the kisses of his feet they became precious and salutary yet they procured to him sorrow and disease it was meat and drink to him to do his Father's will but it was bread of affliction and rivers of tears to drink and for these he thirsted like the earth after the cool stream For so great was his Perfection so exact the conformity of his Will so absolute the subordination of his inferiour Faculties to the infinite love of God which sate Regent in the Court of his Will and Understanding that in this election of accidents he never considered the taste but the goodness never distinguished sweet from bitter but Duty and Piety always prepared his table And therefore now knowing that his time determined by the Father was nigh he hastened up to Jerusalem he went before his Disciples saith S. Mark and they followed him trembling and amazed and yet before that even then when his brethren observed he had a design of publication of himself he suffered them to go before him and went up as it were in secret For so we are invited to Martyrdom and suffering in a Christian cause by so great an example the Holy Jesus is gone before us and it were a holy contention to strive whose zeal were forwardest in the designs of Humiliation and Self-denial but it were also well if in doing our selves secular advantage and promoting our worldly interest we should follow him who was ever more distant from receiving honours than from receiving a painful death Those affections which dwell in sadness and are married to grief and lie at the foot of the Cross and trace the sad steps of Jesus have the wisdom of recollection the tempers of sobriety and are the best imitations of Jesus and securities against the levity of a dispersed and a vain spirit This was intimated by many of the Disciples of Jesus in the days of the Spirit and when they had tasted of the good word of God and the powers of the world to come for then we find many ambitious of Martyrdom and that have laid stratagems and designs by unusual deaths to get a Crown The Soul of S. Laurence was so scorched with ardent desires of dying for his Lord that he accounted the coals of his Gridiron but as a Julip or the aspersion of cold water to refresh his Soul they were chill as the Alpine snows in respect of the heats of his diviner flames And if these lesser Stars shine so brightly and burn so warmly what heat of love may we suppose to have been in the Sun of Righteousness If they went fast toward the Crown of Martyrdom yet we know that the Holy Jesus went before them all no wonder that he cometh forth as a Eridegroom from his chamber and rejoyceth as a giant to run his course 2. When the Disciples had overtaken Jesus he begins to them a sad Homily upon the old Text of Suffering which he had well nigh for a year together preached upon but because it was an unpleasing Lesson so contradictory to those interests upon the hopes of which they had entertained themselves and spent all their desires they could by no means understand it for an understanding prepossessed with a fancy or an unhandsome principle construes all other notions to the sence of the first and whatsoever contradicts it we think it an objection and that we are bound to answer it But now that it concerned Christ to speak so plainly that his Disciples by what was to happen within five or six days might not be scandalized or believe it happened to Jesus without his knowledge and voluntary entertainment he tells them of his Sufferings to be accomplished in this journey to Jerusalem And here the Disciples shewed themselves to be but men full of passion and indiscreet affection and the bold Galilean S. Peter took the boldness to dehort his Master from so great an infelicity and met with a reprehension so great that neither the Scribes nor the Pharisees nor Herod himself ever met with its parallel Jesus called him Satan meaning that no greater contradiction can be offered to the
Judas went out as soon as he was discovered and left this part of Discipline upon record That when a crime is made publick and notorious the Governours of the Church according to their power are to deny to give the blessed Sacrament till by Repentance such persons be restored In private sins or sins not known by solemnities of Law or evidence of fact good and bad are entertained in publick communion and it is not to be accounted a crime in them that minister it because they cannot avoid it or have not competent authority to separate persons whom the publick act of the Church hath not separated but if once a publick separation be made or that the fact is notorious and the 〈◊〉 of Law is in such cases already declared they that come and he that rejects them not both pollute the bloud of the everlasting Covenant And here it is applicable what God spake by the Prophet If thou wilt separate the precious thing from the vile thou shalt be as my mouth But this is wholly a matter of Discipline arbitrary and in the power of the Church nothing in it of Divine commandment but what belongs to the Communicants themselves For S. Paul reproves them that receive disorderly but gives no orders to the Corinthian Presbyters to reject any that present themselves Neither did our Blessed Lord leave any Commandment concerning it nor hath the holy Scripture given rules or measures concerning its actual reduction to practice neither who are to be separated nor for what offences nor by what authority nor who is to be the Judge And indeed it is a judgment that can only belong to God who knows the secrets of hearts the degrees of every sin the beginnings and portions of Repentance the sincerity of purposes by what thoughts and designs men begin to be accepted who are hypocrites and who are true men But when many and common men come to judge they are angry upon trisling mistakes and weak disputes they call that Sin that angers their Party or grieves their Interest they turn Charity into Pride and Admonition into Tyranny they set up a tribunal that themselves may sit higher not that their Brethren may walk more securely And then concerning sins in most cases they are most incompetent 〈◊〉 they do not know all their kinds they miscall many they are ignorant of the ingredient and constituent parts and circumstances they themselves make false measures and give out according to them when they please and when they list not they can change the balance When the matter is publick evident and notorious the man is to be admonished of his danger by the Minister but not by him to be forced from it for the power of the Minister of holy things is but the power of a Preacher and a Counsellor of a Physician and a Guide it hath in it no coercion or violence but what is indulged to it by humane laws and by consent which may vary as its 〈◊〉 Add to this that the Grace of God can begin the work of Repentance in an instant and in what period or degree of Repentance the holy Communion is to be administred no Law of God declares which therefore plainly allows it to every period and leaves no difference except where the Discipline of the Church and the authority of the Supreme power doth intervene For since we do not find in Scripture that the Apostles did drive from the communion of holy things even those whom they delivered over to Satan or other Censures we are left to consider that in the nature of the thing those who are in the state of weakness and 〈◊〉 have more need of the solemn Prayers of the Church and therefore by presenting themselves to the holy Sacrament approach towards that Ministery which is the most effectual cure especially since the very presenting themselves is an act of Religion and therefore supposes an act of Repentance and Faith and other little introductions to its fair reception and if they may be prayed for and prayed with why they may not also be communicated which is the 〈◊〉 of the greatest Prayer is not yet clearly revealed This discourse relates only to private Ministery for when I affirm that there is no command from Christ to all his Ministers to refuse whom they are pleased to call scandalous or sinners I intend to defend good people from the tyranny and arbitrary power of those great companies of Ministers who in so many hundred places would have a Judicature supreme in Spirituals which would be more intolerable than if they had in one Province 20000 Judges of life and death But when the power of separation and interdiction is only in some more eminent and authorized persons who take publick cognizance of causes by solemnities of Law and exercise their power but in some rare instances and then also for the publick interest in which although they may be 〈◊〉 yet they are the most competent and likely Judges much of the inconvenience which might otherwise follow is avoided and then it only remains that they consider in what cases it can be a competent and a proper infliction upon sinners to take from them that which is the means and ministery of grace and recovery whether they have any warrant from Christ or precedent in the Apostles practice and how far As for the sorms and 〈◊〉 of the Primitive Church they were hugely different sometimes for one cause sometimes for another Sometimes whole Churches have been excommunicated sometimes the criminal and all his houshold for his offence as it happened in the Excommunication of Andronicus and Thoas in Synesius in the year 411 sometimes they were absolved and restored by Lay Confessors sometimes by Emperors as it happened to Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nice who were absolved by Constantine from the sentence of Excommunication inflicted by the Nicene Fathers and a Monk did excommunicate Theodosius the younger So that in this there can be no certainty to make a measure and a rule The surest way most agreeable to the precedents of Scripture and the Analogy of the Gospel is that by the word of their proper ministery all sinners should be separate from the holy Communion that is threatned by the words of God with damnation and fearful temporal dangers if themselves knowing an unrepented sin and a remanent affection to sin to be within them shall dare to profane that Body and Bloud of our Lord by so impure an address The evil is to themselves and if the Ministers declare this powerfully they are acquitted But concerning other judgments or separations The Supreme power can forbid all assembling and therefore can permit them to all and therefore can deny them or grant them to single persons and therefore when he by Laws makes separations in order to publick benefit they are to be obeyed but it is not to be endured that single Presbyters should upon vain pretences erect so high a tribunal
this instance there was a rare mixture of effects as there was in Christ of Natures the voice of a Man and the power of God For it is observed by the Doctors of the Primitive Ages that from the Nativity of our Lord to the day of his Death the Divinity and Humanity did so communicate in effects that no great action passed but it was like the Sun shining through a cloud or a beauty with a thin veil drawn over it they gave illustration and testimony to each other The Holy Jesus was born a tender and a crying Infant but is adored by the Magi as a King by the Angels as their GOD. He is circumcised as a Man but a name is given him to signifie him to be the SAVIOUR of the World He flies into Egypt like a distressed Child under the conduct of his helpless Parents but as soon as he enters the Country the Idols fall down and confess his true Divinity He is presented in the Temple as the Son of man but by Simeon and Anna he is celebrated with divine praises for the MESSIAS the SON OF GOD. He is baptized in Jordan as a Sinner but the Holy Ghost descending upon him proclaimed him to be the well-beloved of God He is hungry in the Desart as a Man but sustained his body without meat and drink for forty days together by the power of his Divinity There he is tempted of Satan as a weak Man and the Angels of light minister unto him as their supreme Lord. And now a little before his death when he was to take upon him all the affronts miseries and exinanitions of the most miserable he receives testimonies from above which are most wonderful For he was tranfigured upon Mount Tabor entred triumphantly into Jerusalem had the acclamations of the people when he was dying he darkned the Sun when he was dead he opened the sepulchres when he was fast nailed to the Cross he made the earth to tremble now when he suffers himself to be apprehended by a guard of Souldiers he strikes them all to the ground only by replying to their answer that the words of the Prophet might be verified Therefore my people shall know my Name therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak behold it is I. 10. The Souldiers and servants of the Jews having recovered from their fall and risen by the permission of Jesus still persisted in their enquiry after him who was present ready and desirous to be sacrificed He therefore permitted himself to be taken but not his Disciples for he it was that set them their bounds and he secured his Apostles to be witnesses of his suffering and his glories and this work was the Redemption of the world in which no man could have an active share he alone was to tread the wine-press and time enough they should be called to a fellowship of sufferings But Jesus went to them and they bound him with cords and so began our liberty and redemption from slavery and sin and cursings and death But he was bound faster by bands of his own his Father's Will and Mercy Pity of the world Prophecies and Mysteries and Love held him fast and these cords were as strong as death and the cords which the Souldiers malice put upon his holy hands were but symbols and figures his own compassion and affection were the morals But yet he undertook this short restraint and condition of a prisoner that all sorts of persecution and exteriour calamities might be hallowed by his susception and these pungent sorrows should like bees sting him and leave their sting behind that all the sweetness should remain for us Some melancholick Devotions have from uncertain stories added sad circumstances of the first violence done to our Lord That they bound him with three cords and that with so much violence that they caused bloud to start from his tender hands That they 〈◊〉 then also upon him with a violence and incivility like that which their Fathers had used towards Hur the brother of Aaron whom they choaked with impure spittings into his throat because he refused to consent to the making a golden Calf These particulars are not transmitted by certain Records Certain it is they wanted no malice and now no power for the Lord had given himself into their hands 11. S. Peter seeing his Master thus ill used asked Master shall we strike with the sword and before he had his answer cut off the ear of Malchus Two swords there were in Christ's family and S. Peter bore one either because he was to kill the Paschal Lamb or according to the custom of the Country to secure them against beasts of prey which in that region were frequent and dangerous in the night But now he used it in an unlawful war he had no competent authority it was against the Ministers of his lawful Prince and against our Prince we must not draw a sword for Christ himself himself having forbidden us as his kingdom is not of this world so neither were his defences secular he could have called for many legions of Angels for his guard if he had so pleased and we read that one Angel slew 185000 armed men in one night and therefore it was a vast power which was at the command of our Lord and he needs not such low auxiliaries as an army of Rebels or a navy of Pirates to 〈◊〉 his cause he first lays the foundation of our happiness in his sufferings and hath ever since supported Religion by patience and suffering and in poverty and all the circumstances and conjunctures of improbable causes Fighting for Religion is certain to destroy Charity but not certain to support Faith S. Peter therefore may use his keys but he is commanded to put up his sword and he did so and presently he and all his fellows fairly ran away and yet that course was much the more Christian for though it had in it much infirmity yet it had no malice In the mean time the Lord was pleased to touch the ear of Malchus and he cured it adding to the first instance of power in throwing them to the ground an act of miraculous mercy curing the wounds of an enemy made by a friend But neither did this pierce their callous and obdurate spirits but they led him in uncouth ways and through the brook Cedron in which it is said the ruder souldiers plunged him and passed upon him all the affronts and rudenesses which an insolent and cruel multitude could think of to signifie their contempt and their rage And such is the nature of evil men who when they are not softned by the instruments and arguments of Grace are much hardned by them such being the purpose of God that either Grace shall cure sin or accidentally increase it that it shall either pardon it or bring it to greater punishment for so I have seen healthful medicines abused by the incapacities of a
we must know that oftentimes universal effects are attributed to partial causes because by the analogy of Scripture we are taught that all the body of holy actions and ministeries are to unite in production of the event and that without that adunation one thing alone cannot operate but because no one alone does the work but by an united power therefore indefinitely the effect is ascribed sometimes to one sometimes to another meaning that one as much as the other that is all together are to work the Pardon and the Grace But the doctrine of Preparation to Death we are clearest taught in the Parable of the ten Virgins Those who were wise stood waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom their Lamps burning only when the Lord was at hand at the notice of his coming published they trimmed their Lamps and they so disposed went forth and met him and entred with him into his interiour and eternal joys They whose Lamps did not stand ready before-hand expecting the uncertain hour were shut forth and bound in darkness Watch therefore so our Lord applies and expounds the Parable for ye know not the day nor the hour of the coming of the Son of man Whenever the arrest of Death seises us unless before that notice we had Oil in our Vessels that is Grace in our hearts habitual Grace for nothing else can reside or dwell there an act cannot inhabit or be in a Vessel it is too late to make preparation But they who have it may and must prepare that is they must stir the fire trim the vessel make it more actual in its exercise and productions full of ornament advantages and degrees And that is all we know from Scripture concerning Preparation 2. And indeed since all our life we are dying and this minute in which I now write death divides with me and hath got the surer part and more certain possession it is but reasonable that we should always be doing the Offices of Preparation If to day we were not dying and passing on to our grave then we might with more safety defer our work till the morrow But as fewel in a furnace in every degree of its heat and reception of the flame is converting into fire and ashes and the disposing it to the last mutation is the same work with the last instance of its change so is the age of every day a beginning of death and the night composing us to sleep bids us go to our lesser rest because that night which is the end of the preceding day is but a lesser death and whereas now we have died so many days the last day of our life is but the dying so many more and when that last day of dying will come we know not There is nothing then added but the circumstance of Sickness which also happens many times before only men are pleased to call that Death which is the end of dying when we cease to die any more and therefore to put off our Preparation till that which we call Death is to put off the work of all our life till the time comes in which it is to cease and determine 3. But to accelerate our early endeavour besides what hath been formerly considered upon the proper grounds of Repentance I here re-inforce the consideration of Death in such circumstances which are apt to engage us upon an early industry 1. I consider that no man is sure that he shall not die suddenly and therefore if Heaven be worth securing it were fit that we should reckon every day the Vespers of death and therefore that according to the usual rites of Religion it be begun and spent with religious offices And let us consider that those many persons who are remarked in history to have died suddenly either were happy by an early Piety or miserable by a sudden death And if uncertainty of condition be an abatement of felicity and spoils the good we possess no man can be happy but he that hath lived well that is who hath secured his condition by an habitual and living Piety For since God hath not told us we shall not die suddenly is it not certain he intended we should prepare for sudden death as well as against death cloathed in any other circumstances Fabius surnamed Pictor was choaked with a Hair in a mess of Milk Anacreon with a Raisin Cardinal Colonna with Figs crusted with Ice Adrian the fourth with a Flie Drusius Pompeius with a Pear Domitius Afer Quintilian's Tutor with a full Cup Casimire the Second King of Polonia with a Little draught of Wine Amurath with a Full goblet Tarquinius Priscus with a Fish-bone For as soon as a man is born that which in nature only remains to him is to die and if we differ in the way or time of our abode or the manner of our Exit yet we are even at last and since it is not determined by a natural cause which way we shall go or at what age a wise Man will suppose himself always upon his Death-bed and such supposition is like making of his Will he is not the nearer Death for doing it but he is the readier for it when it comes 4. Saint Jerome said well He deserves not the name of a Christian who will live in that state of life in which he will not die And indeed it is a great venture to be in an evil state of life because every minute of it hath a danger and therefore a succession of actions in every one of which he may as well perish as escape is a boldness that hath no mixture of wisdome or probable venture How many persons have died in the midst of an act of sport or at a merry meeting Grimoaldus a Lombard King died with shooting of a Pidgeon Thales the Milesian in the Theatre Lucia the sister of Aurelius the Emperor playing with her little son was wounded in her breast with a Needle and died Benno Bishop of Adelburg with great ceremony and joy consecrating S. Michael's Church was crouded to death by the People so was the Duke of Saxony at the Inauguration of Albert I. The great Lawyer Baldus playing with a little Dog was bitten upon the lip instantly grew mad and perished Charles the Eighth of France seeing certain Gentlemen playing at Tenniscourt swooned and recovered not Henry II. was killed running at Tilt Ludovicus Borgia with riding the great Horse and the old Syracusan Archimedes was slain by a rude Souldier as he was making Diagrams in the sand which was his greatest pleasure How many Men have died laughing or in the ecstasies of a great joy Philippides the Comedian and Dionysius the Tyrant of Sicily died with joy at the news of a victory Diagoras of Rhodes and Chilo the Philosopher expired in the embraces of their sons crowned with an Olympick Lawrel Polycrita Naxia being saluted the Saviouress of her Countrey Marcus Juventius when the Senate decreed
Christ and took them as testimonies of that truth for the affirmation of which the High Priest had condemned our dearest Lord and although the heart of the Priest rent not even then when rocks did tear in pieces yet the people who saw the Passion 〈◊〉 their breasts and returned and confessed Christ. 3. The graves of the dead were opened at the Death but the dead boies of the Saints that slept arose not till the Resurrection of our Lord for he was the first fruits and they followed him as instant witnesses to publish the Resurrection of their Head which it is possible they declared to those to whom they appeared in the Holy City And amongst these the curiosity or pious credulity of some have supposed Adam and Eve Abraham Isaac and Jacob who therefore were 〈◊〉 to be buried in the Land of Promise as having some intimation or hope that they might be partakers of the earliest glories of the Messias in whose 〈◊〉 and distant expectation they lived and died And this calling up of company from their graves did publish to all the world not only that the Lord himself was risen according to his so 〈◊〉 and repeated predictions but that he meant to raise up all his servants and that all who believe in him should be partakers of the Resurrection 4. When the souldiers observed that Jesus was dead out of spite and impotent ineffective malice one of them pierced his holy side with a spear and the rock being smitten it gushed out with water and 〈◊〉 streaming forth two Sacraments to refresh the Church and opening a gate that all his brethren might enter in and dwell in the heart of God And so great a love had our Lord that he suffered his heart to be opened to shew as Eve was formed from the side of Adam so was the Church to be from the side of her Lord receiving from thence life and spiritual nutriment which he ministred in so great abundance and suffered himself to be pierced that all his bloud did stream over us until he made the fountain dry and reserved nothing of that by which he knew his Church was to live and move and have her being Thus the stream of Bloud issued out to become a fountain for the Sacrament of the Chalice and Water gushed out to fill the Fonts of Baptism and Repentance The Bloud being the testimony of the Divine Love calls upon us to die for his love when he requires it and the noise of the Water calls upon us to 〈◊〉 our spirits and present our Conscience to Christ holy and pure without spot or wrinkle The Bloud running upon us makes us to be of the cognation and family of God and the Water quenches the flames of Hell and the fires of Concupiscence 5. The friends and Disciples of the Holy Jesus having devoutly composed his Body to Burial anointed it washed it and condited it with spices and perfumes laid it in a Sepulchre hewen from a rock in a Garden which saith 〈◊〉 was therefore done to represent that we were by this death returned to Paradise and the Gardens of pleasures and Divine favours from whence by the prevarication of Adam man was expelled Here he finished the work of his Passion as he had begun it in a Garden and the place of sepulchre being a Rock serves the ends of pious succeeding Ages for the place remains in all Changes of government of Wars of Earthquakes and ruder accidents to this day as a 〈◊〉 of the Sepulchre of our dearest Lord as a sensible and proper confirmation of the perswasions of some persons and as an entertainment of their pious phancy and religious affections 6. But now it was that in the dark and undiscerned mansions there was a scene of the greatest joy and the 〈◊〉 horrour represented which yet was known since the first falling of the morning stars Those holy souls whom the Prophet Zechary calls prisoners of hope 〈◊〉 in the lake where there is no water that is no constant stream of joy to refresh their present condition yet supported with certain showers and gracious visitations from God and illuminations of their hope now that they saw their Redeemer come to change their condition and to improve it into the neighbourhoods of glory and clearer revelations must needs have the joy of intelligent and beatified understandings of redeemed captives of men forgiven after the sentence of death of men satisfied after a tedious expectation enjoying and seeing their Lord whom for so many Ages they had expected But the accursed spirits seeing the darkness of their prison shine with a new light and their Empire invaded and their retirements of horrour discovered wondered how a man durst venture thither or if he were a GOD how he should come to die But the Holy Jesus was like that body of light receiving into himself the reflexion of all the lesser rays of joy which the Patriarchs felt and being united to his 〈◊〉 of felicity apprehended it yet more glorious He now felt the effects of his bitter Passion to return upon him in Comforts every hour of which was abundant recompence for three hours Passion upon the Cross and became to us a great precedent to invite us to a toleration of the acts of Repentance Mortification and Martyrdom and that in times of suffering we live upon the stock and expence of Faith as remembring that 〈◊〉 few moments of infelicity are infinitely paid with every minute of glory and yet that the glory which is certainly consequent is so lasting and perpetual that it were enough in a lower joy to make amends by its continuation of eternity And let us but call to mind what thoughts we shall have when we die or are dead how we shall then without prejudice consider that if we had done our duty the trouble and the affliction would now be past and nothing remain but pleasures and felicities eternal and how infinitely happy we shall then be if we have done our duty and how miserable if not all the pleasures of sin disappearing and nothing surviving but a certain and everlasting torment Let us carry alway the same thoughts with us which must certainly then intervene and we shall meet the Holy Jesus and partake of his joys which over-flowed his holy Soul when he first entred into the possession of those excellent fruits and effects of his Passion 7. When the third day was come the Soul of Jesus returned from Paradise and the visitation of separate spirits and re-entred into his holy Body which he by his Divine power did redintegrate filling his veins with bloud healing all the wounds excepting those five of his hands feet and side which he reserved as Trophies of his victory and argument of his Passion And as he had comforted the Souls of the Fathers with the presence of his Spirit so now he saw it to be time to bring comfort to his Holy Mother to re-establish the tottering Faith of
an affliction to him that hath it 69 70. 6. Amorous young man cured of his Vanity by a Stratagem 273. 2. Angels ministred at the Birth of Jesus 14. 4. Angels invited Shepherds to see the new-born Prince 26. 4. Angels multiplied into a Quire to sing Gloria Patri at the Birth of Christ 26. 5. Angels taught the Church the Christian Hymn ibid. That the Star appearing to the Wise men was an Angel the Opinion of the Greeks 27. 8. They rejoyced greatly when Mankind was redeemed 29. 1. They that fell not admitted to Repentance and why 198. 2. Are appointed to observe them that fast piously 274. 3. One of them comforted Jesus 385. 5. In what manner ibid. One of them rolled the Stone from the Grave of Jesus 419. 1. They were Guardians of the Sepulchre 427. 10. Anger forbidden in the 6. Commandment 245. 28. In what cases allowable ibid. Rules and measures of a lawful anger 246. 31. How long to abide 245. 30. That of the Heart forbidden ib. 27. Remedies against it 248. 35. Annas chief of the Sanhedrim 351. 23. He sent Jesus to Caiaphas ibid. Anniversaries of Christ's Nativity Resurrection and Ascension to be religiously observed 243. 24 26. Of Saints ibid. Anna the Prophetess received Christ as a reward to her long Fasting and Prayer 36. 5. 53. 6. Mark Antony to stir the Peoples affections presented the Body of Caesar 56. 9. Antichrist's pretence not furthered but hindred by his Miracles 280. 11. Apostasy from Christianity unpardonable in what sence true 201. 10 11. Apostles chosen by Christ 290. 5. Sent to preach by two and two ibid. Rejoyce at their power over Devils 203. 17. Who saw the Transfiguration saw also the Agony 383. 2. Apocryphal Miracles feigned of Christ's younger years 153. 8. Arsenius sad and troubled upon his Death-bed 402. 11. Arms not to be taken up against our Prince for Religion 492. 11. Ascension of Jesus into Heaven 421. 5. Attention to our Prayers Vid. Prayers S. Augustine entred into the Tomb of Caesar 114. 36. Authority of Ecclesiastical Censures 430. 16. Of the Contempt of Authority in smaller Impositions 46. 20 21. Augustus Caesar refused to be called Lord about the time of Christ's Nativity 25. 2. B. BAlaam's Prophecy of Christ's Star 27. 8. His Prayer explicated 303. 14. Babes of Bethlehem had the Reward of Martyrs 72. 11. Baptism sanctifies the worthy Suscipient 97. 4. Baptism is the only state wherein our sins in this life are declared to be fully and absolutely pardoned 314. 3. In it all our sins are forgiven 199. 7. To it Faith and Repentance are necessary Preparatories ibid. It is necessary before the Reception of the Eucharist 349. 16. 374. 12. Ordained by Christ 431. 17. what it operates and signifies ibid. Vide Disc. of Baptism 106. Baptism not onely pardons for the present but puts into a lasting state of easier pardon for the future 203. 17. S. Barbara to Execution miraculously veil'd 394. 10. Basil recalled from Exile for his reverent and grave saying his Offices 178. 13. Prayed for Head-ach 85. 9. The Baptist's Character of himself 151. 1. His Death and the occasion 169. 5. His Death revenged 169. 6. Beginners in Religion to be ruled by an experienced Guide 109 110. 22. They have a conditional certainty of Salvation 316. 7. Beginnings of Evil to be resisted 111. 26. Birth of Christ illustrated with Miracles 25. 1. It s place turned to a Church 14. 6. Peace universal at his Birth 25. 3. It was signified to Jews and Gentiles in the persons of Shepherds and Wise-men 31. 1. 34. 12. Whether Saints enjoy the Beatifick Vision before the day of Judgment 423. 1. 429. 15. Binding Jesus with Cords with circumstances of cruelty 387. 10. Blasphemy falsly charged upon Jesus 325. 23. Bloudy sweat of Christ what it did then effect and what it did then prefigure 385. 6. Blessings of the Gospel 429. 16. Assurance of Blessing made to them who are or do where or what God commands 68. 3. Breasts that are drie a curse 22. Bramble of Judaea an emblem of Anger 245. 30. Buffeting of Jesus foretold by a Sibyl 389 390. 1. C. CAmbyses sent the AEthiopian King a box of Nard 291. 9. Care for our Families how far to regard the future 258. 2. Ceadwalla's Vow 270. 20. Gentarion of the Iron Legion comes to Christ 291. 7. Charity makes us partake of the Joys and Sufferings of all Christians 29. 2. It is the measure of our own Peace 29 30. 5. Charity of Christians converted Pachomius 79. 2. It is consistent with repeating our own right 256. 9. It is part of the definition of Christian Faith 161. 5 6. Charity of Christians greater than civil Relations 158. 8. Is the last of graces 171. 5. Being exercised toward Christ's Servants is accepted as done to Christ 189. 4. It must increase with our Wealth 258. 2. S. Chad pray'd for others in stormy times 340. 7. Chastity wittily represented by Libanius 111. 27. Easier to die for it than to live with it 230. 15. Chastity of the Mind of the Eyes of all the Members enjoyned 249. 38. It abstains from all undecencies ibid. Caiaphas prophesied and determined the Death of Jesus 345. 2. He rent his Cloaths against the Law 352. 25. Casual and contingent Causes cut off the life of a Sinner 308. 24. Certainty of Salvation 313. per tot Cheap Offering not accepted when a better may be given 177. 12. Christ chose to do all the Ministeries of Religion 96. 1. His Passion in every minute was sufficient for Reconcilement of all the World 1. Exh. 3. The surplusage for example ibid. Christ paid mere for our Obedience than our Pardon 1. Exh. 3. He for himself merited the exaltation of his Humanity his Name his Kingdom c. 413. 5. How and to what purposes he overcame Death 426. 7. He is our Pattern 2. Exh. 7. How far imitable by us 4. Exh. 11. His Sufferings of value infinite 1. Exh. 3. He honoured Virginity and Marriage in the choice of his Mother ibid. He manifested his power in the instances of Mercy 5. Exh. 11. 278. 2. He is to be followed in the like proportion as he followed his Father V. 11. 5. Exh. 11. His Life easie compliant and imitable 9. 4. IV. 8 9. It helps us to its own imitation 3 4. Exh. 8 9. ibid. His Life is imitable by Practice and Religion VI. Exh. 15 16. He is God and Man 16. 6. He was first revealed to poor men 30. 6. By his Humility his Poverty and uneasiness fought against the Lust of the Flesh of the Eyes and the pride of Life 30. 8. He put himself to pain to be reckoned among Sinners 37. 3. He was redeemed at first and sold at last for an ignoble price 52. 3. He is best relished by them who least relish worldly things 53. 5. He is a Physician and a Law-giver 249. 36. His servants are most honourable 253. 5. He did
Christianity Indeed there is some cause why they are so zealous to keep both Scripture and their Divine Worship in a strange Language lest by reading the one the people should become wise enough to discover the gross errors and corruptions of the other Fifthly The Apostles had the gift of Healing of curing diseases without the arts of Physick the most inveterate distempers being equally removable by an Almighty power and vanishing at their speaking of a word This begot an extraordinary veneration for them and their Religion among the common sort of men who as they are strongliest moved with sensible effects so are most taken with those miracles that are beneficial to the life of man Hence the infinite Cures done in every place God mercifully providing that the Body should partake with the Soul in the advantages of the Gospel the cure of the one ushering in many times the conversion of the other This gift was very common in those early days bestowed not upon the Apostles only but the ordinary Governours of the Church who were wont to lay their hands upon the sick and sometimes to anoint them with oil a symbolick rite in use among the Jews to denote the grace of God and to pray over and for them in the name of the Lord Jesus whereby upon a hearty confession and forsaking of their sins both health and pardon were at once bestowed upon them How long this gift with its appendant ceremony of Unction lasted in the Church is not easie to determine that it was in use in Tertullian's time we learn from the instance he gives us of Proculus a Christian who cured the Emperor Severus by anointing him with oil for which the Emperor had him in great honour and kept him with him at Court all his life it afterwards vanishing by degrees as all other miraculous powers as Christianity gain'd firm sooting in the World As for Extreme 〈◊〉 so generally maintained and practised in the Church of Rome nay and by them made a Sacrament I doubt it will receive very little countenance from this Primitive usage Indeed could they as easily restore sick men to health as they can anoint them with oil I think no body would contradict them but till they can pretend to the one I think it unreasonable they should use the other The best is though founding it upon this Apostolical practice they have turn'd it to a quite contrary purpose instead of recovering men to life and health to dispose and fit them for dying when all hopes of life are taken from them XIII Sixthly The Apostles were invested with a power of immediately inflicting corporal punishments upon great and notorious sinners and this probably is that which he means by his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 operations of powers or working miracles which surely cannot be meant of miracles in general being reckoned up amongst the particular gifts of the Holy Ghost nor is there any other to which it can with equal probability refer A power to inflict diseases upon the body as when S. Paul struck Elymas the Sorcerer with blindness and sometimes extending to the loss of life it self as in the sad instance of Ananias and Saphira This was the Virga Apostolica the Rod mentioned by S. Paul which the Apostles held and shak'd over scandalous and insolent offenders and sometimes laid upon them What will ye shall I come to you with a rod or in love and the spirit of meekness Where observe says Chrysostom how the Apostle tempers his discourse the love and meekness and his desire to know argued care and kindness but the rod spake dread and terror a Rod of severity and punishment and which sometimes mortally chastised the offender Elsewhere he frequently gives intimations of this power when he has to deal with stubborn and incorrigible persons Having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled for though I should boast something more of our authority which the Lord hath given us for edification and not for your destruction I should not be ashamed that I may not seem as if I would terrifie you by letters And he again puts them in mind of it at the close of his Epistle I told you before and foretell you as if I were present the second time and being absent now I write to them which heretofore have sinned and to all others that if I come again I will not spare But he hop'd these smart warnings would supersede all further severity against them Therefore I write these things being absent lest being present I should use sharpness according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification and not to destruction Of this nature was the delivering over persons unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh the chastising the body by some present pain or sickness that the spirit might be saved by being brought to a seasonable repentance Thus he dealt with Hymeneus and Alexander who had made shipwrack of Faith and a good Conscience he delivered them unto Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme Nothing being more usual in those times than for 〈◊〉 excommunicate and cut off from the body of the Church to be presently arrested by Satan 〈◊〉 the common Serjeant and Executioner and by him either actually possessed or tormented in their bodies by some diseases which he brought upon them And indeed this severe discipline was no more than necessary in those times when Christianity was wholly destitute of any civil or coercive power to beget and keep up a due reverence and regard to the sentence and determinations of the Church and to secure the Laws of Religion and the holy censures from being sleighted by every bold and contumacious offender And this effect we find it had after the dreadful instance of 〈◊〉 and Saphira Great fear came upon all the Church and upon as many as heard these things To what has been said concerning these Apostolical gifts let me further observe That they had not only these gifts residing in themselves but a power to bestow them upon others so that by imposition of hands or upon hearing and embracing the Apostle's doctrine and being baptized into the Christian Faith they could confer these miraculous powers upon persons thus qualifisied to receive them whereby they were in a moment enabled to speak divers Languages to Prophecy to Interpret and do other miracles to the admiration and astonishment of all that heard and saw them A priviledge peculiar to the Apostles for we do not find that any inferiour Order of gifted persons were intrusted with it And therefore as Chrysostom well observes though Philip the Deacon wrought great miracles at Samaria to the conversion of many yea to the conviction of Simon Magus himself yet the Holy Ghost fell upon none of them only they were baptized in the Name of the Lord Jesus till Peter and John came down to them who having
was made to men He was first seen by him who most desired to see him He also adds several probable conjectures why our Lord first discovered himself to Peter As that it required a more than ordinary firmness and resolution of mind to be able to bear such a sight For they who beheld him after others had seen him and had heard their frequent Testimonies and Reports had had their Faith greatly prepared and encouraged to entertain it But he who was to be honoured with the first appearance had need of a bigger and more undaunted faith lest he should be over-born 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with such a strange and unwonted sight That Peter was the first that had made a signal confession of his Master and therefore it was fit and reasonable that he should first see him alive after his Resurrection That Peter had lately denied his Lord the grief whereof lay hard upon him that therefore our Saviour was willing to administer some consolation to him and as soon as might be to let him see that he had not cast him off like the kind Samaritan he made haste to help him and to pour Oile into his wounded Conscience 3. SOME time after this the Apostles began to resolve upon their journy into Galilee as he himself had commanded them If it be inquired why they went no sooner seeing this was the first message and intimation they had received from him S. Ambrose his resolution seems very rational that our Lord indeed had commanded them to go thither but that their fears for some time kept them at home not being as yet fully satisfied in the truth of his Resurrection till our Lord by often appearing to them had confirmed their minds and put the case beyond all dispute They went as we may suppose in several Companies lest going all in one Body they should awaken the power and malice of their enemies and alarm the care and vigilancy of the state which by reason of the Noise that our Saviour's Trial and Execution had made up and down the City and Country was yet full of jealousies and fears We find Peter Thomas Nathanael and the two Sons of 〈◊〉 and two more of the Disciples arrived at some Town about the Sea of Tiberias Where the Providence of God guiding the Instance of their imployment Peter accompanied with the rest returns to his old Trade of Fishing They laboured all Night but caught nothing Early in the Morning a grave Person probably in the habit of a Traveller presents himself upon the shore And calling to them asked them whether they had any meat When they told him No He advised them to cast the Net on the right side of the Ship that so the Miracle might not seem to be the effect of chance and they should not fail to speed They did so and the Net presently inclosed so great a draught that they were scarce able to drag it a shore S. John amazed with the strangeness of the matter told 〈◊〉 that surely this must be the Lord whom the Winds and the Sea and all the Inhabitants of that watry Region were so ready to obey Peter's zeal presently took fire not withstanding the coldness of the Season and impatient of the least moments being kept from the company of his dear Lord and Master without any consideration of the danger to which he exposed himself he girt his Fishers Coat about him and throwing himself into the Sea swam to shore not being able to stay till the Ship could arrive which came presently after Landing they found a Fire ready made and Fish laid upon it either immediately created by his Divine power or which came to the shore of its own accord and offered it self to his hand Which notwithstanding he commands them to bring of the Fish which they had lately caught and prepare it for their Dinner He himself dining with them both that he might give them an instance of mutual love and fellowship and also assure them of the truth of his humane nature since his return from the dead 4. DINNER being ended our Lord more particularly addressed himself to Peter urging him to the utmost diligence in his care of Souls and because he knew that nothing but a mighty love to himself could carry him through the troubles and hazards of so dangerous and difficult an imployment an imployment attended with all the impediments which either the perversness of men or the malice and subtilty of the Devil could cast in the way to hinder it therefore he first enquired of him whether he loved him more than the rest of the Apostles herein mildly reproving his former over-confident resolution that though all the rest should deny him yet would not he deny him Peter modestly replyed not censuring others much less preferring himself before them that our Lord knew the integrity of his affection towards him This Question he put three several times to Peter who as often returned the same Answer It being but just and reasonable that he who by a threefold denial had given so much cause to question should now by a threefold consession give more than ordinary assurance of his sincere affection to his Master Peter was a little troubled at this frequent questioning of his love and therefore more expresly appeals to our Lord's omnisciency that He who knew all things must needs know that he loved him To each of these confessions our Lord added this signal trial of his affection then Feed my sheep that is faithfully instruct and teach them carefully rule and guide them perswade not compel them feed not fleece nor kill them And so 't is plain S. Peter himself understood it by the charge which he gives to the Guides and Rulers of the Church that they should feed the Flock of God taking the over-sight thereof not by constraint but willingly not for filthy 〈◊〉 but of a ready mind Neither as being Lords over God's heritage but as examples to the slock But that by feeding Christ's Sheep and Lambs here commended to S. Peter should be meant an universal and uncontrollable Monarchy and Dominion over the whole Christian Church and that over the Apostles themselves and their Successors in ordinary and this power and supremacy solely invested in S. Peter and those who were to succeed him in the See of Rome is so wild an inference and such a melting down words to run into any shape as could never with any face have been offered or been possible to have been imposed upon the belief of mankind if men had not first subdued their reason to their interest and captivated both to an implicite faith and a blind obedience For granting that our Lord here addressed his speech only unto Peter yet the very same power in equivalent terms is elsewhere indifferently granted to all the Apostles and in some measure to the ordinary Pastors and Governours of the Church As when our Lord told them That all power