Shield of Faith in the power of God whereby we are enabled to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked And we must take the Helmet of Hope and sure expectation of Everlasting Life which will keep us from being easily knock'd down to the Earth by the fiercest Assaults of our Adversaries And lastly we must take to us the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God whereby we may divide betwixt Good and Evil and admit the one and reject the other And being thus appointed we must pray alwaies with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit watching thereunto with all perseverance And especially to watch in such a sense as this as to be extremely shy and careful how we admit any thing under the colour or upon the rellish of Animal pleasure but rather eo nomine to decline it Which is an impregnable Bulwark against the assaults of the Flesh and such as will ever defeat them If we do these things we shall never fall let the assaults of the Fleshly Lusts be as violent as they will 3. But if we be overcome let us now see what a lamentable spoil they will make of us and how cruelly and tyrannically they will use us For First They will rob us of whatever is precious that we have They will take down and carry away with them that chearful and delightful furniture of the Soul Peace and Tranquillity of mind For the mind of man is not of so base an Original as to enjoy it self in things so much below it self as are the Fleshly Lusts Whence it must needs be that she will be ever and anon disturbed with loathings and regrets of Conscience amidst her so base condition and practices and instead of that steady peace and chearfulness of Spirit which are enjoyed in our adherence to Holiness and Vertue be exposed to many horrours and distractions and confusions of thoughts and an ungrateful sense of inward shame and reproach which accompanies such unworthy actions Secondly They will disarm the Soul of that honest activity and diligence which we ought to have in our Affairs and make us more uncareful and more unable to pursue and manage our Business with that discretion and faithfulness we ought to do to the scandal of the World as well as to our own detriment This Lucretius notes of that notorious kind of Fleshly Lusts the being addicted to Women Languent officia atque aegrotat fama vacillans But takes place also in Gluttony in Drunkenness and whatever other pleasure has once overcome the Soul and subdued her to it self Thirdly These Fleshly Lusts rob a man of the safe use of his Reason They will make it wonderfully prevaricate in the behalf of themselves and commit such Paralogisms as the Soul cannot but be ashamed of so soon as she has got out of the reach of their power And they will in the conclusion so weaken the Faculties of the Mind that they shall very fondly dote in their Verdicts even touching such things as the Fleshly Lusts themselves are unconcerned in For these Lusts bereaving the Mind of her purity must needs dim and obscure her Faculties more or less in all uses of them where there is ordinarily any difference of Sentiments amongst men Fourthly and lastly These Lusts deprive us of the Life and Influence of the Divine Spirit and most dismally damp and dead the Power of Faith and Sense of Religion in the Soul which is of more consequence than even Reason it self which proves very weak in the assurance of these things when the sagacity of a better Life is extinguished or smothered by the soul impurities of the Lusts of the Flesh. But the Soul being once purged from these ipso facto unites with the Spirit of God and by an Holy and Divine Instinct is in a proneness and readiness to believe such things as God is truly said to have done or to intend to do concerning the sons of men by vertue of her union with the Divine Spirit or that Eternal Mind that immutably contains the whole Counsel of God touching things past present and to come This miserable spoil do the Fleshly Lusts make of the poor Soul when they overcome her and not only so but they use her cruelly to boot That they put out her Eyes I have already intimated in that I noted that they bereave her both of Faith and Reason And that they pluck all her Feathers out of her Wings it is as manifest since our being captivated with Fleshly Lusts keeps down the Soul and hinders all Holy and Heavenly Aspires and extinguishes the pure Flames of Devotion Nor are they content with this but they also crucifie and nail the captive Soul to this Earthly Body as Plato complains 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All Pleasure and Grief nails saith he the Soul to the Body Nor is it impertinent to name enormous Grief amongst the Lusts of the Flesh since no Grief is enormous but out of the enormity of Self-love or inordinate love of this Corporeal Personality of ours which if we could be sufficiently unconcerned for and love and esteem nothing but the Almighty Lord of Heaven and Earth and those Divine Laws and Holy Sentiments he has implanted in our Souls Enormity of Grief would not be able to seize upon us Nor do they only thus crucifie and kill that higher and Diviner Life of the Soul but by the exorbitant excitations of the contrary Life into several enormous modes and forms metamorphose men into so many abhorred Monsters whom they keep in the chains of this base servility and captivity and then let them loose upon the most villainous outrages or the basest and most contemptible actions imaginable Wrath and Revenge like a Bear robb'd of her Whelps makes them tear apieces and destroy all they meet with in their way Ambition and Avarice like an Evening-Wolf makes them fall upon the Sheepfolds and suck the blood of innocent Lambs to satisfie their thirst Superstition and false Zeal turnes them into such Furies or Devils that they destroy whole Cities and Countries with Fire and Sword out of pride and impatience that others do not submit to their Wisdom and give themselves up to their Guidance who yet have no Light but those Infernal Torches of an ignorant and bitter Zeal devoid of all Christian Charity which they could light no where but from the Flames of Hell nor conduct a Soul by this Light any whither but to the place of those Infernal Flames The sting of Lust transforms them into such Satyrs and Baboons that they fly upon all promiscuously not sparing their own Mothers Sisters nor Daughters Gluttony and Drunkenness as Circe did Vlysses his Companions changes their shapes into foul dirty Swine To say nothing of those ugly indecorums of Effeminacy that brings some into as base a Servility as Omphale did Hercules who made him put off his Lyons-Skin and sit amongst her Maids at the Distaff and Spindle Not to add what one would
Pet. 2. 5. And ye as living stones be made a spiritual house and holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Iesus Christ. Ver. 9. You are a chosen generation a royal priesthood And if we consider the qualification of the righteous man the unfeigned Christian we shall find him fit for this employment Who more gracious with God than he Who more loving to men than he Who therefore more fit to make Prayers and Supplications for the People than he That Life which is in him even the Spirit of Christ doth adopt him into an higher Order than the Order of Aaron Or rather Christ whose Spirit of Life is in him is that High-Priest higher than the Order of Aaron A Priest after the Order of Melchizedek A Kingly Priest who officiates in Everlasting Righteousness Here 's a Priest without exception above all commendation worthy all honour and admiration worthy to be heard of God worthy to be obeyed by Men worthy to be attended by Angels worthy to whom all power should be given in Heaven and Earth worthy of that Glorious Throne even the Right-hand of God the Father in the height of Heaven where he makes intercession for us his poor members wandering and toyling in the mire and mud of this wicked earth That vve being redeemed vvith his most precious Blood may be made Kings and Priests to his Father to offer Spiritual Sacrifices and first of all our selves in a sensible apprehension that vve are vvholly from him nothing at all of our selves and then an open and free-hearted love to our Neighbour in acknovvledgment that our fulness is not of our selves but of God And this contains the last and best requisite in that description of a Sacrifice the acknowledgment of our Humane infirmity and the praise and profession of the Divine Majesty HITHERTO we have compared this Christian Sacrifice with the general notion of a Sacrifice We will now see how it fits with the kinds of Sacrifice Which according to the Schoolmens Division are three 1. Sacrificing or slaying of living Creatures which is most properly called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and is the word in my Text. 2. Immolation which is a Sacrifice of inanimate things as of Meal Bread Salt Frankincense and such like Or 3. Libamentum a Drink-offering as of Wine or other liquid things How well some kinds of doing good will agree with that first kind of Sacrifice we should easily understand if we did but rightly apprehend how that the sundry lives of beasts lurk in the bodies of men as in some the Fox in others the Lyon in others the Bull in some one in some other in others many Our Saviour calls Herod Fox S. Paul his Persecutors Lyons So Eccles. 6. Be not proud in the device of thine own mind lest thy soul rend thee as a bull Where there is the living property of a Beast in a man no wonder that the Spirit of Truth that pierceth through the surface of things into the depth of Life calls them by that which they are within not by that which they seem without He therefore that can kill the Oxe the Bull the Goat in any mans Soul that is a stupid laborious toyl in the dirt an high raving unquietness of mind or that goatish nature that brutish sensual lust He that can exhibit these animalities dead before God who is Judge of the Quick and the Dead he offers of the first kind of Sacrifice which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the mortification of some Life that God was displeased with He that doth this either in himself or others doth sacrifice in this kind He that gives his Bread to the hungry sacrificeth an Immolation He that gives his Drink to the thirsty offers a Drink-offering As much as you did it to one of these little ones you did it unto me He that goes about doing good as our Saviour Christ that is He that lives not to himself but according to the Command of God and Example of his Son spends all his time power and ability in diffusing of that good which God hath bestowed on him offers Frankincense Or rather that precious composition of sweet odours which is mentioned Exod. 30. 34 35. And the Lord said unto Moses Take unto thee sweet spices Stacte and Onicha and Galbanum sweet spices with pure Frankincense of each like weight And thou shalt make of it a perfume c. Philo Iudaeus will have these four ingredients to be Emblems of the four general Principles or Elements of which this World consists and the evaporation of this fume to be that acceptable re-ascending of the Creature to God in holy thankfulness and evacuation of it self into that great ocean His words are very significant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a Life saith he well befitting the World to give uncessant thanks to its Father and Maker even quite exhausting it self in a continual ascent and grateful fume and simplifying it self into its Elements that all may see that it hoards up nothing for it self but consecrates it self wholly unto God that made it Such a Sacrifice doth every Microcosm or little World every particular man offer dayly unto God when he spends all his dayes and employes all the strength and faculties of his Soul and Body It is a thankful acknowledgment of what he hath received resunding that goodness that he is partaker of back again to God through those sure conduits or conveiances the poor necessitous Brethren But there is yet another Division of Sacrifices into three kinds as before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So Philo Which our Modern Writers call thus Holocausta Hostias pacificas Hostias pro peccato The reason of this Division Philo thus unfolds The two main and general causes of Sacrificing be these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The latter consists in two things The participation of good and the removing or preventing of evil Hence that Sacrifice that respects the profit of the Sacrificer is twofold A Sin-offering for the preventing the just punishment thereof and a Peace-offering which was either pro beneficio accepto or accipiendo for a benefit received or at least hoped for 1. That the doing or communicating good appertains to the first sort which Philo calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Holocaust which respects merely the Glory of God and not the Profit of the Sacrificer will appear out of places of Scripture concerning this Duty of communicating Let your light so shine before men that they seeing your good works may glorifie your Father which is in heaven Matth. 5. 16. There 's the Honour of God Now that we are not to participate our selves in this but that it be wholly to God and for God a true Holocaust Our Saviour shews Matth. 6. 3. When thou doest thine almes let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth That is We must not have any sinister respect but do it simply in obedience to God and for his Glory Consult
not with thy left hand that is thy natural false Spirit that will counsel for it self But let thy right hand act by it self that strong Arm of God the Spirit of Christ that the action may be wholly to God the evil principle of that wicked life of falseness nothing at all intermingling it self with it And thus this communication of good will be an Holocaust totally consecrated and consummated in the service of God alone But for the other two kinds Though the Christian Sacrifice hath not finem Sacrificantis the end of the Iewish Sacrificant yet hath it finem Sacrificii For so thanks is rendered to God for his goodness and further goodness obtained and future evils prevented as is manifest out of Scripture 2. The end of the Peace-offering was to procure the Blessing and Favour of God See now what the Wisdom of God teacheth us Prov. 11. The liberal person shall have plenty and he that watereth shall also have rain And in the Psalms He hath dispersed abroad and hath given to the poor His righteousness shall remain for ever his horn shall be exalted with honour Cornelius his Prayers and Alms how well were they rewarded with the service of Men and Angels and the descent of the Holy Ghost For as he was Fasting and Praying in his House one in the shape of a man in white clothing stood before him and said Cornelius Thy prayer is heard and thine alms had in remembrance in the sight of God So he directs him to send for S. Peter who came and in requital of his Alms fed him with the Bread of Life at whose Preaching the Spirit of Life the Holy Ghost fell upon all his Auditors amongst whom was Cornelius Thus we see how meet a Sacrifice this is pro beneficio accipiendo for the procuring a benefit from God And as fit it is pro accepto to manifest our thankfulness for favours received Freely you have received freely give saith our Saviour This is all the requital I desire all the thanks I expect 3. The last Sacrifice is a Sin-offering The reward of sin is death But mercifulness and doing good delivers from this Prov. 20. 2. The treasures of wickedness profit nothing but righteousness delivers from death That is The covetous hoarding of the wicked man or Riches wickedly and unlawfully heaped and scraped up together shall not profit in the conclusion But Righteousness that is bountifulness acts of Mercy For so the original will signifie the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is sometime turned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an act of Mercy As also appears out of the Inscription of the Poor mans Box in the Iewes Temple which was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The chest of Iustice as we would Translate it following the first signification of the word but according to the signification of the word in that place the chest of Alms. This Righteousness Goodness of Mercifulness will deliver from Death That of our Saviour Christ is more plain and without exception Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy So whether we compare this Duty of communicating good with the general notion of a Sacrifice or with the kinds thereof we see correspondency enough it falls short in nothing of a Sacrifice under the Old Law but in not being a shadow which you might bear withal Though to say the truth it hath that in it too the outward act which I have intimated before But the inward principle it self whence those good acts flow nothing is greater than it nothing more divine nothing more sublime the Everlasting Life of Charity the Glory and Image of God the Beauty of Man the Lamp of Knowledge the Sun of Paradise the Seal of Eternity the Pledge and Crown of Everlasting Happiness NOW that I may not seem to have lost my time in inculcating this Truth so long let us see what useful Inferences will flow from the same First then If doing good be a Sacrifice let us remember that which R. Moses the AEgyptian conceives their Wise and Holy Law-giver to have bound them to Vt quisquis utilitatem aliquam ceperit ex re sanctificatâ pro praevaricatore habeatur c. Whosoever doth take to himself any profit out of Consecrated things as Oblations or Sacrifices or whatsoever is Consecrated to God he is a Transgressour and hath need of an Atonement to be made for him although he commits the act out of error Our doing good therefore to other men if we do it not simply in obedience to God and love of our Neighbour but in hope of requital by his friends or himself or out of desire of applause or vain glory or any other sinister respects it is a making use of a thing Consecrated a sharing with God in the Holocaust and makes our action sinful and unsavoury before God Wherefore vve are to endeavour to the utmost that vve be not guilty of this Sacrilege Secondly In omni Oblatione tuâ offeres sal Lev. 2. 13. All thy meat-offerings shalt thou season with salt neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat-offering Vpon all thy oblations thou shalt offer salt See hovv this Precept is inculcated for offering of Salt with every Oblation and Sacrifice That Salt is an enblem of Wisdom and Discretion is so well known that I need not speak of it I will only name our Saviours words You are the salt of the earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If the salt become foolish c. So that by Salt is understood Wisdom or Knowledge as it presently follows You are the light of the world So the seasoning our Christian Sacrifice of Bounty will prove nothing else but distributing our good things with discretion whether pertaining to Body or Mind Rebuke not a scorner for he will hate thee but rebuke a wise man and he will love thee saith Solomon And our blessed Saviour instill'd his words of Wisdom into his Disciples ears according as they were capable Iohn 16. 12. I have yet many things to say unto you but you cannot bear them now Howbeit when he is come which is the spirit of truth he will lead you into all truth As the Apostle 1 Cor. 2. The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God And Chap. 3. 1. I could not speak unto you brethren as to spiritual men but as unto carnal I fed you with milk and not with meat for you were not able to bear it This is the discretion in imparting Spiritual Alms. Nor is every man a fit object of our Bounty as concerning things belonging to the Body If Strength and Health be joyned to their Poverty the best Charity is to set them to work Thirdly Leaven was not to be offered in Sacrifice So these Christian Oblations are to be offered in sincerity of heart without pride without hypocrisie Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees which is Hypocrisie And 1 Cor. 5. the Apostle makes