then called the spirit of prayer and supplication For ever since the affections of the outward man prevailâ—d upon the ruins of the soul all our desires were sensuall and therefore hurtfull for ever after our body grew to be our enemy In the loosnesses of nature and amongst the ignorance or imperfection of Gentile Philosophy men used to pray with their hands full of rapine and their mouths of blood and their hearts of malice and they prayed accordingly for an opportunity to steal for a fair body for a prosperous revenge for a prevailing malice for the satisfaction of whatsoever they could be tempted to by any object by any lust by any Devil whatsoever The Jews were better taught for God was their teacher and he gave the spirit to them in single rayes But as the spirit of obsignation was given to them under a seal and within a veile so the spirit of Manifestation or patefaction was like the gem of a vine or the bud of a rose plain indices and significations of life and principles of juice and sweetnesse but yet scarce out of the doors of their causes they had the infancy of knowledge and revelations to them were given as Catechisme is taught to our children which they read with the eye of a bird and speak with the tongue of a bee and understand with the heart of a childe that is weakly and imperfectly and they understood so little that 1. They thought God heard them not unlesse they spake their prayers at least efforming their words within their lips and 2. Their forms of prayer were so few and seldome that to teach a forme of prayer or to compose a collect was thought a worke fit for a Prophet or the founder of an institution 3. Adde to this that as their promises were temporal so were their hopes as were their hopes so were their desires and according to their desires so were their prayers And although the Psalms of David was their Great office and the treasury of devotion to their Nation and very worthily yet it was full of wishes for temporals invocations of GOD the Avenger on GOD the Lord of Hosts on God the Enemy of their Enemies and they desired their Nation to be prospered and themselves blessed and distinguished from all the world by the effects of such desires This was the state of prayer in their Synagogue save onely that it had also this allay 4. That their addresses to GOD were crasse material typical and full of shadows and imagery paterns of things to come and so in its very being and constitution was relative and imperfect But that we may see how great things the Lord hath done for us God hath powred his spirit into our hearts the spirit of prayer and supplication and now 1. Christians pray in their spirit with sighs and groans and know that GOD who dwells within them can as clearly distinguish those secret accents and read their meaning in the Spirit as plainly as he knows the voice of his own thunder or could discern the letter of the law written in the tables of stone by the finger of God 2. likewise the spirit helpeth our infirmities for we know not what we should pray for as we ought That is when God sends an affliction or persecution upon us we are indeed extreme apt to lay our hand upon the wound and never take it off but when we lift it up in prayer to be delivered from that sadnesse and then we pray fervently to be cured of a sicknesse to be delivered from a Tyrant to be snatched from the grave not to perish in the danger But the spirit of God hath from all sad accidents drawn the veil of errour and the cloud of intolerablenesse and hath taught us that our happinesse cannot consist in freedom or deliverances from persecutions but in patience resignation and noble sufferance and that we are not then so blessed when God hath turn'd our scourges into ease and delicacy as when we convert our very scorpions into the exercise of vertues so that now the spirit having helped our infirmities that is comforted our weaknesses and afflictions our sorrows and impatience by this proposition that All things work together for the good of them that fear God he hath taught us to pray for grace for patience under the crosse for Charity to our persecutors for rejoycing in tribulations for perseverance and boldnesse in the faith and for whatsoever will bring us safely to Heaven 3. Whereas onely a Moses or a Samuel a David or a Daniel a John the Baptist or the Messias himself could describe and indite formes of prayer and thanksgiving to the time and accent of Heaven now every wise and good Man is instructed perfectly in the Scriptures which are the writings of the spirit what things he may and what things he must ask for 4. The Spirit of God hath made our services to be spiritual intellectual holy and effects of choice and religion the consequents of a spiritual sacrifice and of a holy union with God The prayer of a Christian is with the effects of the spirit of Sanctification and then we pray with the Spirit when we pray with Holinesse which is the great fruit the principal gift of the spirit And this is by Saint James called the prayer of faith and is said to be certain that it shall prevail Such a praying with the spirit when our prayers are the voices of our spirits and our spirits are first taught then sanctified by Gods spirit shall never fail of its effect because then it is that the spirit himself maketh intercession for us that is hath enabled us to do it upon his strengths we speak his sense we live his life we breath his accents we desire in order to his purposes and our persons are Gracious by his Holinesse and are accepted by his interpellation and intercession in the act and offices of Christ. This is praying with the spirit To which by way of explication I adde these two annexes of holy prayer in respect of which also every good man prayes with the spirit 5. The spirit gives us great relish and appetite to our prayers and this Saint Paul calls serving of God in his spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is with a willing minde not as Jonas did his errand but as Christ did die for us he was straitned till he had accomplished it And they that say their prayers out of custome onely or to comply with external circumstances or collateral advantages or pray with trouble and unwillingnesse give a very great testimony that they have not the spirit of Christ within them that spirit which maketh intercession for the Saints but he that delighteth in his prayers not by a sensible or phantastic pleasure but whose choice dwells in his prayers and whose conversation is with God in holy living and praying accordingly that man hath the spirit of Christ and therfore belongs to Christ for by this spirit it is
that Christ prayes in Heaven for us and if we do not pray on earth in the same manner according to our measures we had as good hold our peace our prayers are an abominable sacrifice and send up to God no better a perfume then if wee burned assa faetida or the raw flesh of a murdered man upon the altar of incense 6. The spirit of Christ and of prayer helps our infirmities by giving us confidence and importunity I put them together For as our faith is and our trust in God so is our hope and so is our prayer weary or lasting long or short not in words but in works and in desires For the words of prayer are no part of the spirit of prayer words may be the body of it but the spirit of prayer alwayes consists in holinesse that is in holy desires and holy actions words are not properly capable of being holy all words are in themselves seâ—vants of things and the holinesse of a prayer is not at all concerned in the manner of its expression but in the spirit of it that is in the violence of its desires and the innocence of its ends and the continuence of its imployment this is the verification of that great Prophecie which Christ made that in all the world the true worshippers should worship in spirit and in truth that is with a pure minde with holy desires for spiritual things according to the minde of the spirit in imitation of Christs intercession with perseverance with charity or love That is the spirit of God and these are the spiritualities of the Gospel and the formalities of prayer as they are Christian and Evangelicall 7. Some men have thought of a seventh way and explicate our praying in the spirit by a mere volubilty of language which indeed is a direct undervaluing the spirit of God and of Christ the spirit of manifestation and intercession it is to return to the materiality and imperfection of the law it is to worship God in outward forms and to think that Gods service consists in shels and rinds in lips and voices in shadows and images of things it is to retire from Christ to Moses and at the best it is a going from real graces to imaginary gifts and when praying with the spirit hath in it so many excellencies and consists of so many parts of holinesse and sanctification and is an act of the inner man we shall be infinitely mistaken if we let go this substance and catch at a shadow and sit down and rest in the imagination of an improbable unnecessary uselesse gift of speaking to which the nature of many men and the art of all learned men and the very use and confidence of ignorant men is too abundantly sufficient Let us not so despise the spirit of Christ as to make it no other then the breath of our lungs * For though it might be possible that at the first and when formes of prayer were few and seldome the spirit of God might dictatethe very words to the Apostles and first Christians yet it follows not that therfore he does so still to all that pretend praying with the spirit For if he did not then at the first dictate words as we know not whether he did or no why shall he be supposâ—d to do so now If he did then it follows that he does not now because his doing it then was sufficient for all men since for so the formes taught by the spirit were paternes for others to imitate in all the descending ages of the Church There was once an occasion so great that the spirit of God did think it a work â—it for him to teach a man to weave silke or embroider gold or woke in brasse as it happened to Besaleel and Aholiab But then every weaver or worker in brasse may by the same reason pretend that he works by the spirit as that he prayes by the spirit if by prayer he means forming the words For although in the ease of working it was certain that the spirit did teach in the ease of inditing or forming the words it is not certain whether he did or no yet because in both it was extraordinary if it was at all and ever since in both it is infinitely needlesse to pretend the Spirit in forms of every mans making even though they be of contrary religions and pray one against the other it may serve an end of a phantastic and hypochondriacal religion or a secret ambition but not the ends of God or the honour of the Spirit The Jews in their declensions to folly and idolatry did worship the stone of imagination that is certain smooth images in which by art magic pictures and little faces were represented declaring hidden things and stoln goods and God severely forbad this basenesse but we also have taken up this folly and worship the stone of imagination we beget imperfect phantasmes and speculative images in our phansy and we fall down and worship them never considering that the spirit of God never appears through such spectres Prayer is one of the noblest exercises of Christian religion or rather is it that duty in which all graces are concentred Prayer is charity it is faith it is a conformity to Gods will a desiring according to the desires of Heaven an imitation of Christs intercession and prayer must suppose all holinesse or else it is nothing and therefore all that in which men need Gods Spirit all that is in order to prayer Baptisme is but a prayer and the holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper is but a prayer a prayer of sacrifice representative and a prayer of oblation and a prayer of intercession and a prayer of thanksgiving and obedience is a prayer and begs and procures blessings and if the Holy Ghost hath sanctified the whole man then he hath sanctified the prayer of the man and not till then and if ever there was or could be any other praying with the spirit it was such a one as a wicked man might have and therefore it cannot be a note of distinction between the good and bad between the saints and men of the world But this onely which I have described from the fountains of Scripture is that which a good man can have and therefore this is it in which we ought to rejoyce that he that glories may glory in the Lord. Thus I have as I could described the effluxes of the Holy Spirit upon us in his great chanels But the great effect of them is this That as by the arts of the spirits of darknesse and our own malice our souls are turned into flesh not in the naturall sense but in the morall and Theologicall and animalis homo is the same with carnalis that is his soul is a servant of the passions and desires of the flesh and is flesh in its operations and ends in its principles and actions So on the other side by the Grace of God and the promise of the
not so perfectly renounced or hated as they ought the parts of repentance which are left unfinished do sometimes fall upon the heads or upon the fortunes of the children I do not say this is regular and certain but sometimes God deals thus For this thing hath been so and therefore it may be so again we see it was done in the case of Ahab he humbled himself and went softly and lay in sackcloth and called for pardon and God took from him a judgement which was falling heavily upon him but we all know his repentance was imperfect and lame The same evil fell upon his sons for so said God I will bring the evil upon his house in his sons dayes Leave no arreares for thy posterity to pay but repent with an integral a holy and excellent repentance that God being reconciled to thee thoroughly for thy sake also he may blesse thy seed after thee And after all this adde a continual a servent a hearty a never ceasing prayer for thy children ever remembring when they beg a blessing that God hath put much of their fortune into your hands and a transient formal God blesse thee will not out-weigh the load of a great vice and the curse that scatters from thee by virtual contact and by the chanels of relation if thou beest a vicious person Nothing can issue from thy fountain but bitter waters And as it were a great impudence for a condemned Traitor to beg of his injured Prince a province for his son for his sake so it is an ineffective blessing we give our children when we beg for them what we have no title to for our selves Nay when we can convey to them nothing but a curse The praier of a sinner the unhallowed wish of a vitâ—ous Parent is but a poor donative to give to a childe who suck'd poison from his nurse and derives cursing from his Parents They are punished with a double torture in the shame and paines of the damned who dying Enemies to God have left an inventary of sins and wrath to be divided amongst their children But they that can truely give a blessing to their children are such as live a blessed life and pray holy prayers and perform an integral repentance and do separate from the sins of their Progenitors and do illustrious actions and begin the blessing of their family upon a new stock for as from the eyes of some persons there shoots forth a visible influence and some have an evil eye and are infectious some look healthfully as a friendly planet and innocent as flowers and as some fancies convey private effects to confederate and allayed bodyes and between the very vital spirits of friends and Relatives there is a cognation and they refresh each other like social plants and a good man is a * friend to every Good man and they say that an usuter knows an usurer and one rich man another there being by the very manners of men contracted a similitude of nature and a communication of effects so in parents and their children there is so great a society of nature and of manners of blessing and of cursing that an evil parent cannot perish in a single death and holy parents never eat their meal of blessing alone but they make the roome shine like the fire of a holy sacrifice and a Fathers or a Mothers piety makes all the house festivall and full of joy from generation to generation Amen Sermon V. THE Invalidity of a late or death-bed Repentance 13. Jeremy 16. Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darknesse and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains and while ye look for light or left while ye look for light he shall turn it into the shadow of death and make it grosse darknesse GOd is the eternall fountain of honour and the spring of glory in him it dwells essentially from him it derives originally and when an action is glorious or a man is honourable it is because the action is pleasing to God in the relation of obedience or imitation and because the man is honoured by God or by Gods Vicegerent and therefore God cannot be dishonoured because all honour comes from himself he cannot but be glorified because to be himself is to be infinitely glorious And yet he is pleased to say that our sins dishonour him and our obedience does glorifie him But as the Sun the great eye of the world prying into the recesses of rocks and the hollownesse of valleys receives species or visible forms from these objects but he beholds them onely by that light which proceeds from himself So does God who is the light of that eye he receives reflexes and returns from us and these he calls glorifications of himself but they are such which are made so by his own gracious acceptation For God cannot be glorified by any thing but by himself and by his own instruments which he makes as mirrours to reflect his own excellency that by seeing the glory of such emanations he may rejoyce in his own works because they are images of his infinity Thus when he made the beauteous frame of heaven and earth he rejoyced in it and glorified himself because it was the glasse in which he beheld his wisedom and Almighty power And when God destroyed the old world in that also he glorified himself for in those waters he saw the image of his justice they were the looking glasse for that Attribute and God is said to laugh at and rejoyce in the destruction of a sinner because he is pleased with the Oeconomy of his own lawes and the excellent proportions he hath made of his judgements consequent to our sins But above all God rejoyced in his Holy Son for he was the image of the Divinity the character and expresse image of his person in him he beheld his own Essence his wisedom his power his justice and his person and he was that excellent instrument designed from eternall ages to represent as in a double mirrour not onely the glories of God to himself but also to all the world and he glorified God by the instrument of obedience in which God beheld his own dominion and the sanctity of his lawes clearly represented and he saw his justice glorified when it was fully satisfied by the passion of his Son and so he hath transmitted to us a great manner of the Divine glorification being become to us the Authour and the Example of giving glory to God after the manner of men that is by well-doing and patient suffering by obeying his lawes and submitting to his power by imitating his holinesse and confessing his goodnesse by remaining innocent or becoming penitent for this also is called in the Text GIVING GLORY TO THE LORD OUR GOD. For he that hath dishonoured God by sins that is hath denied by a morall instrument of duty and subordination to confesse the glories of his power and the goodnesse of his lawes and hath
are troubled at little things and are carelesse of greater 6. We are overjoyed at a petty accident and despise great and eternall pleasures 7. We beleeve things not for their Reasons and proper Arguments but as they serve our turns be they true or false 8. We long extreamly for things that are forbidden us And what we despise when it is permitted us we snatch at greedily when it is taken from us 9. We love our selves more then we love God and yet we eat poysons daily and feed upon Toads and Vipers and nourish our deadly enemies in our bosome and will not be brought to quit them but brag of our shame and are ashamed of nothing but Vertue which is most honourable 10. We fear to die and yet use all means we can to make Death terrible and dangerous 11. We are busie in the faults of others and negligent of our own 12. We live the life of spies striving to know others and to be unknown our selves 13. We worship and flatter some men and some things because we fear them not because we love them 14. We are ambitious of Greatnesse and covetous of wealth and all that we get by it is that we are more beautifully tempted and a troop of Clients run to us as to a Pool whom first they trouble and then draw dry 15. We make our selves unsafe by committing wickednesse and then we adde more wickednesse to make us safe and beyond punishment 16. We are more servile for one curtesie that we hope for then for twenty that we have received 17. We entertain slanderers and without choice spread their calumnies and we hugg flatterers and know they abuse us And if I should gather the abuses and impieties and deceptions of the Heart as Chrysippus did the oracular Lies of Apollo into a Table I fear they would seem Remedilesse and beyond the cure of watchfulnesse and Religion Indeed they are Great and Many But the Grace of God is Greater and if Iniquity abounds then doth Grace superabound and that 's our Comfort and our Medicine which we must thus use 1. Let us watch our hearts at every turn 2. Deny it all its Desires that do not directly or by consequence end in godlinesse At no hand be indulgent to its fondnesses and peevish appetites 3. Let us suspect it as an Enemy 4. Trust not to it in any thing 5. But beg the grace of God with perpetuall and importunate prayer that he would be pleased to bring good out of these evils and that he would throw the salutary wood of the Crosse the merits of Christs death and passion into these salt waters and make them healthful and pleasant And in order to the mannaging these advises and acting the purposes of this prayer let us strictly follow a rule and choose a Prudent and faithful guide who may attend our motions and watch our counsels and direct our steps and prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths streight apt and imitable For without great watchfulnesse and earnest devotion and a prudent Guide we shall finde that true in a spiritual sense which Plutarch affirmed of a mans body in the natural that of dead Buls arise Bees from the carcases of horses hornets are produced But the body of man brings forth serpents Our hearts wallowing in their own natural and acquired corruptions will produce nothing but issues of Hell and images of the old serpent the divel for whom is provided the everlasting burning Sermon IX THE FAITH and PATIENCE OF THE SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed 1 Peter 4. 17. For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God and if it first begin at us what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God 18. And if the righteous scarcely be saved where shal the ungodly and the sinner appear SO long as the world lived by sense and discourses of natural reason as they were abated with humane infirmities and not at all heighted by the spirit divine revelations So long men took their accounts of good and bad by their being prosperous or unfortunate and amongst the basest and most ignorant of men that onely was accounted honest which was profitable and he onely wise that was rich and that man beloved of God who received from him all that might satisfie their lust their ambition or their revenge Fatis accede deisque colefelices miseros fuge sidera terra ut distant flamma mari sic utile recto But because God sent wise men into the world and they were treated rudely by the world and exercised with evil accidents and this seemed so great a discouragement to vertue that even these wise men were more troubled to reconcile vertue and misery then to reconcile their affections to the suffering God was pleased to enlighten their reason with a little beame of faith or else heightned their reason by wiser principles then those of vulgar understandings and taught them in the clear glasse of faith or the dim perspective of Philosophy to look beyond the cloud and there to spie that there stood glories behinde their curtain to which they could not come but by passing through the cloud and being wet with the dew of heaven and the waters of affliction And accordding as the world grew more englightned by faith so it grew more dark with mourning sorrowes God sometimes sent a light of fire and pillar of a cloud and the brightnesse of an angel and the lustre of a star and the sacrament of a rainbowe to guide his people thorough their portion of sorrows and to lead them through troubles to rest But as the Sun of righteousnesse approached towards the chambers of the East and sent the harbingers of light peeping through the curtains of the night and leading on the day of faith and brightest revelation so God sent degrees of trouble upon wise and good men that now in the same degree in the which the world lives by faith and not by sense in the same degree they might be able to live in vertue even while she lived in trouble and not reject so great a beauty because she goes in mourning and hath a black cloud of cypresse drawn before her face literally thus God first entertained their services and allured and prompted on the infirmities of the infant world by temporal prosperity but by degrees changed his method and as men grew stronger in the knowledge of God and the expectations of heaven so they grew weaker in their fortunes more afflicted in their bodies more abated in their expectations more subject to their enemies and were to endure the contradiction of sinners and the immission of the sharpnesses of providence and divine Oeconomy First Adam was placed in a Garden of health and pleasure from which when he fell he was onely tied to enter into the covenant of natural sorrows which he and all his posteritie till the flood run through but in all
hearts and poor cottages and small fortunes A Christian so long as he preserves his integrity to God and to religion is bold in all accidents he dares die and he dares be poor but if the persecutor dies he is undone Riches are beholding to our fancies for their value and yet the more we value the riches the lesse good they are and by an overvaluing affection they become our danger and our sin But on the other side death and persecution loose all the ill that they can have if we do not set an edge upon them by our fears and by our vices From our selves riches take their wealth and death sharpens his arrows at our forges and we may set their prices as we please and if we judge by the spirit of God we must account them happy that suffer And therefore that the prevailing oppressor Tyrant or persecutor is infinitly miserable onely let God choose by what instruments he will govern the world by what instances himself would be served by what waies he will chastise the failings and exercise the duties and reward the vertues of his servants God sometimes punishes one sinne with another pride with adultery drunkennesse with murder carelesnesse with irreligion idlenesse with vanity penury with oppression irreligion with blasphemy and that with Atheisme and therefore it is no wonder if he punishes a sinner by a sinner And if David made use of villains and profligate persons to frame an armie and Timoleon destroyâ—d the Carthaginians by the help of souldiers who themselves were sacrilegious and Physitians use the poison to expel poisons and all common-wealths take the basest of men to be their instruments of justice and executions we shall have no further cause to wonder if God raises up the Assyrians to punish the Israelites and the Egyptians to destroy the Assyrians and the Ethiopians to scourge the Egyptians and at last his own hand shall separate the good from the bad in the day of separation in the day when he makes up his Iewels 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soph. Elect. God hath many ends of providence to serue by the hands of violent and vitious men by them he not onely checks the beginning errours and approaching sins of his predestinate but by them he changes governments and alters kingdoms and is terrible among the sons of men for since it is one of his glories to convert evil into good and that good into his own glory and by little and little to open and to turn the leaves and various folds of providence it becomes us onely to dwell in duty and to be silent in our thoughts and wary in our discourses of God and let him choose the time when he will prâ—â—e his vine and when he will burn his thorns how long he will smite his servants and when he will destroy his enemies In the dayes of the primitive persecutions what prayers how many sighings how deep groanes how many bottles of tears did God gather into his repository all praying for ease and deliverances for Halcyon dayes and fine sunshine for nursing fathers and nursing mothers for publick assemblies and open and solemn sacraments And it was 3 hundred years before God would hear their prayers and all that while the persecuted people were in a cloud but they were safe and knew it not and God kept for them the best wine untill the last they ventured for a crown and fought valiantly they were faithful to the death and they received a crown of life and they are honored by God by angels and by men whereas in all the prosperous ages of the Church we hear no stories of such multitudes of Saints no record of them no honour to their memorial to accident extraordinary scarce any made illustrious with a miracle which in the dayes of suffering were frequent and popular And after all our fears of sequestration and poverty of death or banishment our prayers against the persecution and troubles under it we may please to remember that twenty years hence it may be sooner it wil not be much longer all our cares and our troubles shall be dead and then it shall be enquired how we did bear our sorrows and who inflicted them and in what cause and then he shall be happy that keeps company with the persecuted and the persecutors shall be shut out amongst dogs and unbelievers He that shrinks from the yoke of Christ from the burden of the Lord upon his death-bed will have cause to remember that by that time all his persecutions would have been past and that then there would remain nothing for him but rest and crowns and scepters When Lysimachus impatient and overcome with thirst gave up his kingdom to the Getae and being a captive and having drank a lusty draught of wine and his thirst was now gone he fetched a deep sigh and said Miserable man that I am who for so little pleasure the pleasure of one draught lost so great a Kingdom such will be their case who being impatient of suffering change their persecution into wealth and an easie fortune they shall finde themselves miserable in the separations of eternity losing the glories of heaven for so little a pleasure illiberaliâ— ingrate voluptatis causa as Plutarch calls it for illiberal and ungratefull pleasure in which when a man hath entred he loses the rights and priviledges and honours of a good man and gets nothing that is profitable and useful to holy purposes or necessary to any but is already in a state so hateful and miserable that he needs neither God nor man to be a revenger having already under his splendid robe miseries enough to punish and betray this hypocrisy of his condition being troubled with the memory of what is past distrustful of the present suspicious of the future vitious in their lives and full of pageantry and out-sides but in their death miserable with calamities real eternal and insupportable and if it could be other wise vertue it self would be reproached with the calamity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I end with the advice of Saint Paul In nothing be terrified of your 〈…〉 Sermon XI The Faith and Patience of the SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed Part III. 〈…〉 from dishonour As long as they belong to God it is necessary that they suffer persecution or sorrow no rules can teach them to avoid that but the evil of the suffering and the danger must be declined and we must use such spirituall arts as are apt to turn them into health and medicine For it were a hard thing first to be scourged and then to be crucified to suffer here and to perish hereafter through the fiery triall and purging fire of afflictions to passe into hell that is intollerable
men to go on in sins and punishes them not it is not a mercy it is not a forbearance it is a hardning them a consigning them to ruine and reprobation and themselves give the best argument to prove it for they continue in their sin they multiply their iniquity and every day grow more enemy to God and that is no mercy that increases their hostility and enmity with God A prosperous iniquity is the most unprosperous condition in the whole world when he slew them that sought him and turned them early and enquired after God but as long as they prevailed upon their enemies then they forgat that God was their strength and the high God was their redeemer It was well observed by the Persian Embassadour of old when he was telling the King a sad story of the overthrow of all his army by the Athenians he addes this of his own that the day before the sight the young Persian gallants being confident they should destroy their enemies were drinking drunk and railing at the timerousnesse and fears of religion and against all their Gods saying there were no such things and that all things came by chance industry nothing by the providence of the supreme power But the next day when they had fought unprosperously and flying from their enemies who were eager in their pursuit they came to the river strymon which was so frozen that their boats could not lanch and yet it began to thaw so that they feared the ice would not bear them Then you should see the bold gallants that the day before said there was no God most timorously and superstitiously fall upon their faces and begged of God that the river strymon might bear them over from their enemies What wisdom and Philosophy and perpetual experience and revelation and promises and blessings cannot do a mighty fear can it can allay the confidences of a bold lust and an imperious sin and soften our spirit into the lownesse of a Childe our revenge into the charity of prayers our impudence into the blushings of a chidden girle and therefore God hath taken a course proportionable for he is not so unmercifully merciful as to give milk to an infirm lust and hatch the egge to the bignesse of a cocatrice and therefore observe how it is that Gods mercy prevailes over all his works it is even then when nothing can be discerned but his judgements For as when a famin had been in Israel in the dayes of Ahab for three years and a half when the angry prophet Elijah met the King and presently a great winde arose and the dust blew into the eyes of them that walked abroad and the face of the heavens was black and all tempest yet then the prophet was the most gentle and God began to forgive and the heavens were more beautiful then when the Sun puts on the brightest ornaments of a bridegrome going from his chambers of the east so it is in the Oeconomy of the divine mercy when God makes our faces black and the windes blow so loud till the cordage cracks and our gay fortunes split and our houses are dressed with Cypresse and yew and the mourners go about the streets this is nothing but the pompa misericordiae this is the funeral of oursins dressed indeed with emblems of mourning and proclaimed with sad accents of death but the sight is refreshing as the beauties of the field which God hath blessed and the sounds are healthful as the noise of a physitian This is that riddle spoken of in the psalme Calix in manu Dom vini meri plenus misto the pure impure the mingled unmingled cup for it is a cup in which God hath poured much of his severity and anger and yet it is pure and unmingled for it is all mercy and so the riddle is resolved and our cup is full and made more wholsome lymphatum crescit dulcescit laedere nescit it is some justice and yet it is all mercy the very justice of God being an act of mercy a forbearance of the man or the nation and the punishing the sin Thus it was in the case of the children of Israel when they ran after the bleating of the idolatrous calves Moses prayed passionately and God heard his prayer and forgave their sin upon them And this was Davids observation of the manner of Gods mercy to them Thou wast a God and forgavest them though thou tookest veangeance of their inventions for Gods mercy is given to us by parts and to certain purposes sometimes God onely so forgives us that he does not cut us off in the sin but yet layes on a heavy load of judgements so he did to his people when he sent them to schoole under the discipline of 70 years captivity somtimes he makes a judgement lesse and forgives in respect of the degree of the infliction he strikes more gently and whereas God had designed it may be the death of thy self or thy neerest relative he is content to take the life of a childe and so he did to David when he forbore him the Lord hath taken away thy sin thou shalt not die neverthelesse the childe that is born unto thee that shall die sometimes he puts the evil off to a further day as he did in the case of Ahab and Hezekiah to the first he brought the evil upon his house and to the second he brought the evil upon his kingdom in his sons dayes God forgiving onely so as to respite the evil that they should have peace in their own dayes And thus when we have committed a sin against God which hath highly provoked him to anger even upon our repentance we are not sure to be forgiven so as we understand forgivenes that is to hear no more of it never to be called to an account but we are happy if God so forgives us as not to throw us into the insufferable flames of hell though he smite us still we groan for our misery till we chatter like a swallow as Davids expression is and though David was an excellent penitent yet after he had lost the childe begotten of Bathsheba and God had told him he had forgiven him yet he raised up his darling son against him and forced him to an inglorious flight and his son lay with his Fathers concubins in the face of all Israel so that when we are forgiven yet it is ten to one but GOD will make us to smart and roar for our sinnes for the very disquietnesse of our souls For if we sin and ask God forgivenesse and then are quiet we feele so little inconvenience in the trade that we may more easily be tempted to make a trade of it indeed I wish to God that for every sin we have committed we should heartily cry God mercy and leave it and judge our selves for it to prevent Gods anger but when we have done all that we commonly call repentance and when possibly God hath forgiven us to some
without huge disturbances but by being also Atheistical in their opinions and to believe that the story of hell is but a bug-bear to affright children and fools easy believing people to make them soft and apt for government and designes of princes and this is an opinion that befriends none but impure and vicious persons others there are that believe God to be all mercy that he forgets his justice believing that none shall perish with so sad a ruine if they do but at their death-bed ask God forgivenesse and say they are sorry but yet continue their impiety till their house be ready to fall being like the Circassians whose Gentlemen enter not into the Church till they be threescore years old that is in effect till by their age they cannot any longer use rapine till then they hear service at their windows dividing unequally their life between sin and devotition dedicateing their youth to robbery and their old age to a repentance without restitution Our youth and our man-hood and old age are all of them due to God and justice and mercy are to him equally essential and as this life is a time of the possibilities of mercy so to them that neglect it the next world shall be a state of pure and unmingled justice Remember the fatal and decretory sentence which God hath passed upon all man-kinde it is appointed to all men once to die and after death comes judgement and if any of us were certain to die next morning with what earnestnesse should we pray with what hatred should we remember our sins with what scorn should we look upon the licentious pleasures of the world then nothing could be welcome unto us but a prayer book no company but a Comforter and a Guide of souls no imployment but repentance no passions but in order to religion no kindnesse for a lust that hath undone us and if any of you have been arrested with alarmes of death or been in hearty fear of its approach remember what thoughts and designes then possessed you how precious a soul was then in your account and what then you would give that you had despised the world and done your duty to God and man and lived a holy life It will come to that again and we shall be in that condition in which we shall perfectly understand that all the things and pleasures of the world are vain and unprofitable and irkesome and that he onely is a wise man who secures the interest of his soul though it be with the losse of all this world and his own life into the bargain When we are to depart this life to go to strange company and stranger places and to an unknown condition then a holy conscience will be the best security the best possession it wil be a horror that every friend we meet shall with triumph upbraid to us the sottishnesse of our folly Lo this is the goodly change you have made you had your good things in your life time and how like you the portion that is reserved to you for ever The old Rabbins those Poets of religion report of Moses that when the courtiers of Pharaoh were sporting with the childe Moses in the chamber of Pharaohs daughter they presented to his choice an ingot of gold in one hâ—â—d and a cole of fire in the other and that the childe snatched at tâ—e coal thrust it into his mouth and so singed and parched his tongue that he stammered ever after and certainly it is infinitely more childish in us for the glittering of the small gloworms and the charcoal of worldly possessions to swallow the flames of hell greedily in our choice such a bit will produce a worse stammering then Moses had for so the aâ—ccursed and lost souls have their ugly and horrid dialect they roare and blaspheme blaspheme and roare for ever And suppose God should now at this instant send the great Archangel with his trumpet to summon all the world to judgement would not all this seem a notorious visible truth a truth which you will then wonder that every man did not lay to his heart and preserve therein actual pious and effective consideration let the trumpet of God perpetually sound in your ears surgite mortui venite ad judicium place your selves by meditation every day upon your death-bed and remember what thoughts shall then possesse you and let such thoughts dwell in your understanding for ever and be the parent of all your resolutions and actions The Doctors of the Jews report that when Absalom hanged among the oakes by the haire of the head he seemed to see under him hell gaping wide ready to receive him and he durst not cut off the hair that intangled him for fear he should fall into the horrid lake whose portion is flames and torment but chose to protract his miserable life a few minuts in that pain of posture and to abide the stroke of his pursuing enemies His condition was sad when his arts of remedy were so vain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soph. A condemned man hath but small comfort to stay the singing of a long psalm it is the case of every vitious person Hell is wide open to every impenitent persevering sinner to every unpurged person Noctes atque dies patet atri Janua Ditis And although God hath lighted his candle and the lantern of his word and clearest revelations is held out to us that we can see hell in its worst colours and most horrid representments yet we run greedily after bables into that praecipice which swallows up the greatest part of man-kinde and then onely we begin to consider when all consideration is fruitlesse He therefore is a huge fool that heaps up riches that greedily pursues the world and at the same time for so it must be heaps of wrath to himself against the day of wrath when sicknesse death arrests him then they appear unprofitable himself extreamly miserable if you would know how great that misery is you may take account of it by those fearful words and killing Rhetorick of Scripture It is a fearful things to fall into the hands of the living God and who can dwell with the everlasting burning That is No patience can abide there one houre where they must dwell for ever Sermon XX. OF CHRISTIAN PRVDENCE Matthew 10. latter part of Ver. 16. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmlesse as doves WHen our B. Saviour entailed a law a condition of sufferings promised a state of persecution to his servants and withall had charmed them with the bands unactive chains of so many passive graces that they should not be able to stir against the violence of Tyrants or abate the edge of axes by any instrument but their own blood being sent forth as sheep among wolves innocent and silent harmlesse and defencelesse certainly exposed to sorrow and uncertainly guarded in their persons their condition seemed nothing else but a designation to
in a cock-boat or use a childe for his interpreter and that Generall is a Cyclops without an eye who chooses the sickest men to man his Towns and the weakest to fight his battels It cannot be a vigorous prosecution unlesse the means have an efficacy or worth commensurate to all the difficulty and something of the excellency of that end which is designed And indeed men use not to be so weak in acquiring the possessions of their temporals But in matters of religion they think any thing effective enough to secure the greatest interest as if all the fields of heaven and the regions of the Kingdom were waste ground and wanted a Colony of planters and that God invited men to heaven upon any terms that he might rejoyce in the multitude of subjects For certain it is men do more to get a little money then for all the glories of heaven Men rise up early and sit up late and eat the bread of carefulnesse to become richer then their neighbours and are amazed at every losse and impatient of an evil accident and feel a direct strom of passion if they suffer in their interest But in order to heaven they are cold in their religion indevout in their prayers incurious in their walking unwatchfull in their circumstances indifferent in the use of their opportunities infrequent in their discoursings of it not inquisitive of the way and yet think they shall surely go to heaven But a prudent man knows that by the greatnesse of the purchase he is to make an estimate of the value and the price When we ask of God any great thing As wisdom delivery from sicknesse his holy Spirit the forgivenesse of sins the grace of chastity restitution to his favour or the like do we hope to obtain them without a high opinion of the things we ask and if we value them highly must we not desire them earnestly and if we desire them earnestly must we not pray for them fervently and whatsoever we ask for fervently must not we beg for frequently and then because prayer is but one hand toward the reaching a blessing and God requires our cooperation and endeavour and we must work with both hands are we not convinced that our prayers are either faint or a designe of lazinesse when we either ask coldly or else pray loudly hoping to receive the graces we need without labour A prudent person that knows to value the best object of his desires will also know that he must observe the degrees of labour according to the excellency of the reward Prayer must be effectuall fervent frequent continuall holy passionate that must get a grace or secure a blessing The love that we must have to God must be such as to keep his commandements and to make us willing to part with all our estate and all our honour and our life for the testimony of a holy conscience Our charity to our neighbours must be expressive in a language of a reall friendship aptnesse to forgive readinesse to forbear in pitying infirmities in relieving necessities in giving our goods and our lives and quitting our privileges to save his soul to secure and support his vertue Our repentance must be full of sorrows and care of diligence and hatred against sin it must drive out all and leave no affections towards it it must be constant and persevering fearfull of relapse and watchfull of all accidents Our temperance must sometimes turn into abstinence and most commonly be severe and ever without reproof He that striveth for masteries is temperate saith Saint Paul in all things he that does all this may with some pretence and reason say he intends to go to heaven But they that will not deny a lust nor refrain an appetite they that will be drunk when their friends do merrily constrain them or love a cheap religion and a gentle and lame prayer short and soft quickly said and soon passed over seldome returning and but little observed How is it possible that they should think themselves persons disposed to receive such glorious crowns and scepters such excellent conditions which they have not faith enough to believe nor attention enough to consider and no man can have wit enough to understand But so might an Arâ—adian shepherd look from the rocks or thorow the clefts of the valley where his sheep graze and wonder that the messenger stayes so long from comming to him to be crowned King of all the Greek Ilands or to be adopted heir to the Macedonian Monarchy It is an infinite love of God that we have heaven upon conditions which we can perform with greatest diligence But truely the lives of men are generally such that they do things in order to heaven things I say so few so trifling so unworthy that they are not proportionable to the reward of a crown of oak or a yellow riband the slender reward with which the Romans payed their souldiers for their extraordinary valour True it is that heaven is not in a just sense of a commutation a reward but a gift and an infinite favour but yet it is not reached forth but to persons disposed by the conditions of God which conditions when we pursue in kinde let us be very carefull we do not fail of the mighty price of our high calling for want of degrees and just measures the measures of zeal and a mighty love 3. It is an office of prudence so to serve God that we may at the same time preserve our lives and our estates our interest and reputation for our selves and our relatives so farre as they can consist together Saint Paul in the beginning of Christianity was careful to instruct the forwardnesse and zeal of the new Christians into good husbandry and to catechize the men into good trades and the women into useful imployments that they might not be unprofitable For Christian religion carrying us to heaven does it by the way of a man and by the body it serves the soul as by the soul it serves God and therefore it endeavours to secure the body and its interest that it may continue the opportunities of a crown and prolong the stage in which we are to run for the mighty price of our salvation and this is that part of prudence which is the defensative and guards of a Christian in the time of persecution and it hath in it much of duty He that through an indiscreet zeal casts himself into a needlesse danger hath betrayed his life to tyranny and tempts the sin of an enemy he loses to God the service of many yeers and cuts off himself from a fair opportunity of working his salvation in the main parts of which we shall finde a long life and very many yeers of reason to be little enough he betrayes the interest of his relatives which he is bound to preserve he disables himself of making provision for them of his own house and he that fails in this duty by his own fault is worse then
the power of godlinesse never destroys any well built fabrick that was raised upon the reputation of religion and its pretences Nunquam est peccare utile quâ—â— semper est turpe said Cicero It is never profitable to sin because it is always base and dishonest and if the face of religion could do a good turn which the heart and substance does destroy then reâ—igion it self were the greatest hypocrite in the world and promises a blessing which it never can perform but must be beholding to its enemy to verifie its promises No. We shall be sure to feel the blessings of both the worlds if we serve in the offices of religion devoutly and charitably before men and before God if we ask of God things honest in the sight of men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Pythagoras gave in precept praying to God with a free heart and a publike prayer and doing before men things that are truly pleasing to God turning our heart outward and our face inwards that is conversing with men as in the presence of God and in our private towards God being as holy and devout as if we prayed in publike and in the corners of the streets Pliny praising of Ariston gave him the title of an honest and hearty religion Ornat hunc magnitudo animi quae nihil ad ostentationem omnia ad conscientiam refert rectèque facti non ex populi sermone mercedem sed ex facto petit And this does well state the question of a sincere religion and an ingenuous goodnesse It requires that we do nothing for ostentation but every thing for conscience and we may be obliged in conscience to publish our manner of lives but then it must be not that we may have a popular noise for a reward but that God may be glorified by our publike worshippings and others edified by our good examples Neither doth the sincerity of our religion require that we should not conceal our sins for he that sins and dares to own them publikely may become impudent and so long as in modesty we desire our shame should be hid and men to think better of us then we deserve I say for no other reason but either because we would not derive the ill examples to others or the shame to our selves we are within the protection of one of vertues sisters and we are not far from the gates of the kingdom of heaven easie and apt to be invited in and not very unworthy to enter But if any other principle draws the vail if we conceal our vices because we would be honoured for sanctity or because we would not be hindered in our designes we serve the interest of pride and ambition covetousnesse or vanity if an innocent purpose hides the ulcer it does half heal it but if it retires into the secrecy of sin and darknesse it turns into a plague and infects the heart and it dies infallibly of a double exulceration The Macedonian boy that kept the coal in his flesh and would not shake his arm lest he should disturbe the sacrifice or discompose the ministery before Alexander the Great concealed his pain to the honour of patience and religion But the Spartan boy who suffered the little fox to eat his bowels rather then confesse his theft when he was in danger of discovery payed the price of a bold hypocrisie that is the dissimulation reproveable in matter of manners which conceals one sin to make way for another 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lucian notes it of his Philosophical hypocrites dissemblers in matter of deportment and religion they seem severe abroad but they enter into the vaults of harlots and are not ashamed to see a naked sin in the midst of its uglinesse and undressed circumstances A mighty wrastler that had won a crown at Olympus for contending prosperously was observed to turn his head and go forward with his face upon his shoulder to behold a fair woman that was present and he lost the glory of his strength when he became so weak that a woman could turn his head about which his adversary could not These are the follies and weaknesses of man and dishonours to religion when a man shall contend nobly and do handsomly and then be taken in a base or a dishonorable action and mingle venome with his delicious ointment Quid quod olet gravius mistum dia pasmate virus Atque duplex animae longius exit odor When Fescenia perfumed her breath that she might not smell of wine she condemned the crime of drunkennesse but grew ridiculous when the wine broke thorow the cloud of a tender perfume and the breath of a Lozenge and that indeed is the reward of an hypocrite his laborious arts of concealment furnish all the world with declamation and severity against the crime which himself condemnes with his caution But when his own sentence too is prepared against the day of his discovery Notas ergo nimis fraudes deprensaque furta Jam tollas sis ebria simpliciter A simple drunkard hath but one fault But they that avoid discovery that they may drink on without shame or restraint adde hypocrisy to their vitious fulnesse and for all the amazements of their consequent discovery have no other recompence but that they pleased themselves in the security of their crime and their undeserved reputation Sic quae nigrior est cadente moro Cerussata sibi placet Lycoris for so the most easy and deformed woman whose girdle no foolish young man will unloose because shee is blacker then the falling mulbery may please her self under a skin of Cerusse and call her self fairer then Pharaohs daughter or the hinds living upon the snowy mountaines One thing more there is to be added as an instance to the simplicity of religion and that is that we never deny our religion or lie concerning our faith nor tell our propositions and articles deceitfully nor instruct Novices or catechumens with fraud but that when we teach them we do it honestly justly and severely not alwayes to speak all but never to speak otherwise then it is nor to hide a truth from them whose soules are concerned in it that it be known nequè enim id est celare cum quid reticias sed cum quod tuscias â—d ignorare emolumenti tui causâ velis eos quorum inter est id scire So Cicero determins the case of prudence and simplicity The discovery of pious frauds and the disclaiming of false but profitable and rich propositions the quitting honours fraudulently gotten and unjustly detained the reducing every man to the perfect understanding of his own religion so far as can concern his duty the disallowing false miracles legends and fabulous stories of cosening the people into awfulnesse fear and superstition these are parts of Christian simplicity which do integrate this duty for religion hath strengths enough of its own to support it self it needs not a devil for its advocate it is the breath of God
person for whom God will not hear me yet then he will hear me for my self though I say nothing in my own behalf and our prayers are like Jonathans arrows if they fall short yet they return my friend or my friendship to me or if they go home they secure him whom they pray for and I have not onely the comfort of rejoycing with him but the honour and the reward of procuring him a joy and certain it is that a charitable prayer for another can never want what it asks or instead of it a greater blessing The good man that saw his poor brother troubled because he had nothing to present for an offering at the Holy communion when all knew themselves obliged to do kindnesse for Christs poor members with which themselves were incorporated with so mysterious union and gave him mony that he might present for the good of his soul as other Christians did had not onely the reward of almes but of religion too and that offering was well husbanded for it did benefit to two souls for as I sin when I make another sin so if I help him to do a good I am a sharer in the gains of his talent and he shall not have the lesse but I shall be rewarded upon his stock And this was it which David rejoyced in Particâ—ps sum omnium timentium te I am a partner a companion of all them that fear thee I share in their profits If I do but rejoyce at every grace of God which I see in my Brother I shall be rewarded â—or that grace and we need not envy the excellency of another It becomes mine as well as his and if I do rejoyce I shall have â—ause to rejoyce so excellent so full so artificial is the mercy of God in making and seeking and finding all occasions to do us good 5. The very charity and love and mercy that is commanded in our religion is in it self a great excellency not onely in order to heaven but to the comforts of the earth too such without which a man is not capable of a blessing or a comfort he that sent charity and friendships into the world intended charity to be as relative as justice to do its effect both upon the loving and the beloved person It is a reward and a blessing to a kinde Father when his children do well and every degree of prudent love which 〈◊〉 bears to them is an endearment of his joy and he that loves them not but looks upon them as burdens of necessity and â—oads to his fortune loses those many rejoycings and the pleasâ—â—es of kindnesse which they feast withal who love to divide their fortunes amongst them because they have already divided out large and equal portions of their heart I have instanced in this relation but it is true in all the excellency of friendship and every man rejoyces twice when he hath a partner of his joy A friend shares my sorrow and makes it but a moiâ—ty but he swells my joy and makes it double For so two chanels divide the river and lessen it into rivulets and make it foordable and apt to be drunk up at the first revels of the Sirian star but two torches do not divide but increase the flame and though my tears are the sooner dryed up when they run upon my friends cheeks in the furrows of compassion yet when my flame hath kindled his lamp we unite the glories and make them radiant like the golden Candle-sticks that burn before the throne of God because they shine by numbers by unions and confederations of light and joy And now upon this account which is already so great I need not reckon concerning the collateral issues and little streams of comfort which God hath made to issue from that religion to which God hath obliged us such as are mutual comforts visiting sick people instructing the ignorant and so becoming better instructed and fortified and comforted our selves by the instruments of our Brothers ease and advantages the glories of converting souls of rescuing a sinner from hell of a miserable man from the grave the honour and noblenesse of being a good man the noble confidence and the bravery of innocence the ease of patience the quiet of contentednesse the rest of peacefulnesse the worthinesse of forgiving others the greatnesse of spirit that is in despising riches and the sweetnesse of spirit that is in meeknesse and humility these are Christian graces in every sense favours of God and issues of his bounty his mercy but al that Ishal now observe further concerning them is this that God hath made these necessary he hath obliged us to have them under pain of damnation he hath made it so sure to us to become happy even in this world that if we will not he hath threatened to destroy us which is not a desire or aptnesse to do us an evil but an art to make it impossible that we should For God hath so ordered it that we cannot perish unlesse we desire it our selves and unlesse we will do our selves a mischief on purpose to get hell we are secured of heaven and there is not in the nature of things any way that can more infallibly do the work of felicity upon creatures that can choose then to make that which they should naturally choose be spiritually their duty and that he will make them happy hereafter if they will suffer him to make them happy here But hardly stand another throng of mercies that must be considered by us and God must be glorified in them for they are such as are intended to preserve to us all this felicity 9. God that he might secure our duty and our present and consequent felicity hath tied us with golden chaines and bound us not onely with the bracelets of love and the deliciousnesse of hope but with the ruder cords of fear and reverence even with all the innumerable parts of a restraining grace For it is a huge aggravation of humane calamity to consider that after a man hath been instructed in the love and advantages of his Religion and knows it to be the way of honour and felicity and that to prevaricate his holy sanctions is certain death and disgrace to eternal ages yet that some men shall despise their religion others shall be very weary of its laws and cal the commandments a burden and too many with a perfect choice shall delight in death and the wayes that lead thither and they choose mony infinitely and to rule over their Brother by al means to be revenged extremely and to prevail by wrong and to do all that they can and please themselves in all that they desire and love it fondly and be restlesse in all things but where they perish if God should not interpose by the arts of a miraculous and merciful grace and put a bridle in the mouth of our lusts and chastise the sea of our follies by some heaps of sand or
covenant and return again and very often step aside and need this great pardon to be perpetually applyed and renewed and to this purpose that we may not have a possible need without a certain remedy the Holy Jesus the Author and finisher of our faith and pardon sits in heaven in a perpetual advocation for us that this pardon once wrought may be for ever applyed to every emergent need and every tumor of pride and every broken heart and every disturbed conscience and upon every true and sincere return of a hearty repentance And now upon this title no more degrees can be added it is already greater and was before all our needs and was greater then the old covenaut and beyond the revelations and did in Adams youth antidate the Gospel turning the publike miseries by secret grace into eternall glories But now upon other circumstances it is remarkable and excellent and swels like an hydropick cloud when it is fed with the breath of the morning tide till it fills the bosome of heaven and descends in dews and gentle showers to water and refresh the earth 7. God is so ready to forgive that himself works our dispositions towards it and either must in some degree pardon us before we are capable of pardon by his grace making way for his mercy or else we can never hope for pardon For unlesse God by his preventing grace should first work the first part of our pardon even without any dispositions of our own to receive it we could not desire a pardon nor hope for it nor work towards it nor ask it nor receive it This giving of preventing grace is a mercy of forgivenesse contrary to that severity by which some desperate persons are given over to a reprobate sense that is a leaving of men to themselves so that they cannot pray effectually nor desire holily nor repent truly nor receive any of those mercies which God designed so plenteously and the Son of God purchased so dearly for us When God sends a plague of warre upon a land in all the accounts of religion and expectations of reason the way to obtain our peace is to leave our sins for which the warre was sent upon us as the messenger of wrath and without this we are like to perish in the judgement But then consider what a sad condition we are in warre mends but few but spoils multitudes it legitimates rapine and authorizes murder and these crimes must be ministred to by their lesser relatives by covetousnesse and anger and pride and revenge and heats of blood and wilder liberty and all the evil that can be supposed to come from or run to such cursed causes of mischief But then if the punishment increases the sin by what instrument can the punishment be removed How shall we be pardoned and eased when our remedies are converted into causes of the sicknesse and our antidotes are poison Here there is a plain necessity of Gods preventing grace and if there be but a necessity of it that is enough to ascertain us we shall have it But unlesse God should begin to pardon us first for nothing and against our own dispositions we see there is no help in us nor for us If we be not smitten we are undone if we are smitten we perish and as young Damarchus said of his Love when he was made master of his wish Salvus sum quia pereo si non peream plane inteream we may say of some of Gods judgements We perish when we are safe because our sins are not smitten and if they be then we are worse undone because we grow worse for being miserable but we can be relieved onely by a free mercy for pardon is the way to pardon and when God gives us our peny then we can work for another and a gift is the way to a grace and all that we can do towards it is but to take it in Gods method and this must needs be a great forwardnesse of forgivenesse when Gods mercy gives the pardon and the way to finde it and the hand to receive it and the eye to search it and the heart to desire it being busie and effective as Elijah's fire which intending to convert the sacrifice into its own more spirituall nature of flames and purified substances stood in the neighbourhood of the fuell and called forth all its enemies and licked up the hindering moisture and the water of the trenches and made the Altar send forth a phantastick smoke before the sacrifice was enkindled So is the preventing grace of God it does all the work of our souls and makes its own way and invites it self and prepares its own lodging and makes its own entertainment it gives us precepts and makes us able to keep them it enables our faculties and excites our desires it provokes us to pray and sanctifies our heart in prayer and makes our prayer go forth to act and the act does make the desire valid and the desire does make the act certain and persevering and both of them are the works of God for more is received into the soul from without the soul then does proceed from within the soul It is more for the soul to be moved and disposed then to work when that is done as the passage from death to life is greater then from life to action especially since the action is owing to that cause that put in the first principle of life These are the great degrees of Gods forwardnesse and readinesse to forgive for the expression of which no language is sufficient but Gods own words describing mercy in all those dimensions which can signifie to us its greatnesse and infinity His mercy is great his mercies are many his mercy reacheth unto the heavens it fils heaven and earth it is above all his works it endureth for ever God pitieth as a Father doth his children nay he is our Father and the same also is the Father of mercy and the God of all comfort So that mercy and we have the same relation and well it may be so for we live and die together for as to man onely God shews the mercy of forgivenesse so if God takes away his mercy man shall be no more no more capable of felicity or of any thing that is perfective of his condition or his person But as God preserves man by his mercy so his mercy hath all its operations upon man and returns to its own centre and incircumscription and infinity unlesse it issues forth upon us And therefore besides the former great lines of the mercy of forgivenesse there is another chain which but to produce and tell its links is to open a cabinet of Jewels where every stone is as bright as a star and every star is great as the Sun and shines for ever unlesse we shut our eyes or draw the vail of obstinate and finall sins 1. God is long-suffering that is long before he be angry and yet God is provoked every day by
that she might for ever be so far distant from a vice that she might onely see it and loath it but never tast of it so much as to be put to her choice whether she would be vertuous or no. God intending to secure this soul to himself would not suffer the follies of the world to seize upon her by way of too neer a trial or busie temptation 3. She was married young and besides her businesses of religion seemed to be ordained in the providence of God to bring to this Honourable family a part of a fair fortune and to leave behinde her a fairer issue worth ten thousand times her portion and as if this had been all the publick businesse of her life when she had so far served Gods ends God in mercy would also serve hers and take her to an early blessednesse 4. In passing through which line of providence she had the art to secure her eternal interest by turning her condition into duty expressing her duty in the greatest eminency of a vertuous prudâ—nt and rare affection that hath been known in any example I will not give her so low a testimony as to say onely that she was chast She was a person of that severity modesty and close religion as to that particular that she was not capable of uncivil temptation and you might as well have suspected the sun to smell of the poppy that he looks on as that she could have been a person apt to be sullyed by the breath of a foul question 5. But that which I shall note in her is that which I would have exemplar to all Ladies and to all women She had a love so great for her Lord so intirely given up to a dear affection that she thought the same things and loved the same loves and hated according to the same enmities and breathed in his soul and lived in his presence and languished in his absence and all that she was or did was onely for and to her Dearest Lord Si gaudet si flet si tacit hunc loquitur Coenat propinat poscit negat innuit unus Naevius est and although this was a great enamel to the beauty of her soul yet it might in some degrees be also a reward to the vertue of her Lord For she would often discourse it to them that conversed with her that he would improve that interest which he had in her affection to the advantages of God and of religion and she would delight to say that he called her to her devotions he encouraged her good inclinations he directed her piety he invited her with good books and then she loved religion which she saw was not onely pleasing to God and an act or state of duty but pleasing to her Lord and an act also of affection and conjugal obedience and what at first she loved the more forwardly for his sake in the using of religion left such relishes upon her spirit that she found in it amability enough to make her love it for its own So God usually brings us to him by instruments of nature and affections and then incorporates us into his inheritance by the more immediate relishes of Heaven and the secret things of the Spirit He only was under God the light of her eyes and the cordiall of her spirits and the guide of her actions and the measure of her affections till her affections swelled up into a religion and then it could go no higher but was confederate with those other duties which made her dear to God Which rare combination of duty and religion I choose to expresse in the words of Solomon She forsook not the guide of her youth nor brake the Covenant of her God 6. As she was a rare wife so she was an excellent Mother For in so tender a constitution of spirit as hers was and in so great a kindnesse towards her children there hath seldom been seen a stricter and more curious care of their persons their deportment their nature their disposition their learning and their customs And if ever kindnesse and care did contest and make parties in her yet her care and her severity was ever victorious and she knew not how to do an ill turn to their severer part by her more tender and forward kindnesse And as her custome was she turned this also into love to her Lord. For she was not onely diligent to have them bred nobly and religiously but also was carefull and solicitous that they should be taught to observe all the circumstances inclinations the desires and wishes of their Father as thinking that vertue to have no good circumstances which was not dressed by his copy and ruled by his lines and his affections And her prudence in the managing her children was so singular and rare that when ever you mean to blesse this family and pray a hearty and a profitable prayer for it beg of God that the children may have those excellent things which she designed to them and provided for them in her heart and wishes that they may live by her purposes and may grow thither whither she would fain have brought them All these were great parts of an excellent religion as they concerned her greatest temporal relations 7. But if we examine how she demeaned her self towards God there also you will finde her not of a common but of an exemplar piety She was a great reader of Scripture confining her self to great portions every day which she read not to the purposes of vanity and impertinent curiosities not to seem knowing or to become talking not to expound and Rule but to teach her all her duty to instruct her in the knowledge and love of God and of her Neighbours to make her more humble and to teach her to despise the world and all its gilded vanities and that she might entertain passions wholly in designe and order to heaven I have seen a female religion that wholly dwelt upon the face and tongue that like a wanton and an undressed tree spends all its juice in suckers and irregular branches in leafs and gumme and after all such goodly outsides you should never eat an apple or be delighted with the beauties or the perfumes of a hopefull blossome But the religion of this excellent Lady was of another constitution It took root downward in humility and brought forth fruit upward in the substantiall graces of a Christian in charity and justice in chastity and modesty in fair friendships and sweetnesse of society She had not very much of the forms and outsides of godlinesse but she was hugely carefull for the power of it for the morall essentiall and usefull parts such which would make her be not seem to be religious 8. She was a very constant person at her prayers and spent all her time which Nature did permit to her choice in her devotions and reading and meditating and the necessary offices of houshold government every one of which is an action of religion
them most and endear obedience If you will obey ye shall eat the good things of the land Ye shall possesse a rich countrey ye shall triumph over your enemies ye shall have numerous families blessed children rich granaries over-running wine-presses for God knew the cognation of most of them was so dear between their affections and the good things of this world that if they did not obey in hope of that they did need and fancy and love and see and feel it was not to be expected they should quit their affections for a secret in another world whither before they come they must die and lose all desire and all capacities of enjoyment But this designe of God which was bare-faced in the dayes of the law is now in the Gospel interwoven secretly but yet plain enough to be discovered by an eye of faith and reason into every vertue and temporal advantage is a great ingredient in the constitution of every Christian grace for so the richest tissue dazles the beholders eye when the Sun reflects upon the mettal the silver and the gold weaved into phantastiâ— imagery or a wealthy plainnesse but the rich wire and shining filaments are wrought upon cheaper silk the spoil of worms and flies so is the imbroidery of our vertue the glories of the spirit dwell upon the face and vestment upon the fringes and the borders and there we see the Beril and the Onyx the Jasper and the sardyx order and perfection love and peace and joy mortification of the passions and ravishment of the will adherencies to God and imitation of Christ reception and entertainment of the Holy Ghost and longings after heaven humility and chastity temperance and sobriety these make the frame of the garment the cloaths of the soul that it may not be found naked in the day of the Lords visitation but through these rich materials a thrid of silk is drawn some compliance with worms and weaker creatures something that shall please our bowels and make the lower man tâ— rejoyce they are wrought upon secular content and material satisfactions and now we cannot be happy unlesse we be â—ious and the religion of a Christian is the greatest security and the most certain instrument of making a man rich and pleased and healthful and wise and beloved in the whole world I shall now remark onely two or three instances for the main body of this truth I have other where represented 1. The whole religion of a Christian as it relates to others is nothing but justice and mercy certain parents of peace and benefit and upon this supposition what evil can come to a just and a merciful to a necessary and useful person For the first permission of evil was upon the stock of injustice He that kills may be killed and he that does injury may be mischieved he that invades another mans right must venture the losse of his own and when I put my Brother to his defence he may chance drive the evil so far from himself that it may reach me Laws and â—udges private publick judicatures wars and tribunals axes and wheels were made not for the righteous but for the unjust and all that whole order of things and persons would be uselesse if men did do as they would willingly suffer 2. And because there is no evil that can befal a just man unlesse it comes by injury and violence our religion hath also made as good provisions against that too as the nature of the thing will suffer for by patience we are reconciled to the sufferance and by hope and faith we see a certain consequent reward and by praying for the persecuting man we are oured of all the evil of the minde the envy and the fretfulnesse that uses to gall the troubled and resisting man and when we turn all the passion into charity and God turns all the suffering into reward there remains nothing that is very formidable So that our religion obliges us to such duties which prevent all evils that happen justly to men and in our religion no man can suffer as a malefactor if he follows the religion truely and for the evils that are unavoidable and come by violence the graces of this discipline turne them into vertues and rewards and make them that in their event they are desirable and in the suffering they are very tolerable 3. But then when we consider that the religion of a Christian consists in doing good to all men that it is made up of mercies and friendships of friendly conventions and assemblies of Saints that all are to do good works for necessary uses that is to be able to be beneficial to the publick and not to be burthensome to any where it can be avoided what can be wished to man in relation to others and what can be more beneficial to themselves then that they be such whom other men will value for their interest such whom the publick does need such whom Princes and Nobles ought to esteem and all men can make use of according to their several conditions that they are so well provided for that unlesse a persecution disables them they cannot onely maintain themselves but oblige others to their charity This is a temporal good which all wise men reckon as part of that felicity which recompences all the labours of their day and sweetens the sleep of their night and places them in that circle of neighbour-hood and amity where men are most valued and most secure 4. To this we may adde this material consideration That al those graces which oblige us to do good to others are nothing else but certain instruments of doing advantage to our selves It is a huge noblenesse of charity to give alms not onely to our Brother but for him It is the Christian sacrifice like that of Job who made oblations for his sons when they feasted each other fearing lest they had sinned against God and if I give almes and fast and pray in behalf of my prince or my Patron my friend or my children I do a combination of holy actions which are of all things that I can do the most effectual intercession for him whom I so recommend but then observe the art of this and what a plot is laid by the divine mercy to secure blessing to to our selves That I am a person fit to intercede and pray for him must suppose me a gracious person one whom God rather will accept so that before I be fit to pray and interpose for him I must first become dear to God and my charity can do him no good for whose interest I gave it but by making me first acceptable to God that so he may the rather hear me and when I fast it is first an act of repentance for my self before it can be an instrument of impetration for him And thus I do my Brother a single benefit by doing my self a double one and it is also so ordered that when I pray for a