own brow it stays not to be tempted by little avocations and to creep into holes but runs into the sea through full and usefull channels So is a mans prayer if it moves upon the feet of an abated appetite it wanders into the society of every trifling accident and stays at the corners of the fancy and talks with every object it meets and cannot arrive at heaven but when it is carryed upon the wings of passion and strong desires a swift motion and a hungry appetite it passes on through all the intermediall regions of clouds and stays not till it dwells at the foot of the Throne where mercy sits and thence sends holy showers of refreshment I deny not but some little drops will turn aside and fall from the full channell by the weaknesse of the banks and hollownesse of the passage but the main course is still continued and although the most earnest and devout persons feel and complain of some loosenesse of spirit and unfixed attentions yet their love and their desire secure the maine portions and make the prayer to be strong fervent and effectuall Any thing can be done by him that earnestly desires what he ought secure but your affections and passions and then no temptation will be too strong A wise man and a full resolution and an earnest spirit can doe any thing of duty but every temptation prevailes when we are willing to die and we usually lend nothing to devotion but the offices that flatter our passions we can desire and pray for any thing that may serve our lust or promote those ends which we covet but ought to fear and fly from but the same earnestnesse if it were transplanted into Religion and our prayers would serve all the needs of the spirit but for want of it we do the Lords work deceitfully 3. Our Charity also must be fervent Malus est miles qui ducem suum gemens sequitur He that follows his Generall with a heavy march and a heavy heart is but an ill souldier but our duty to God should be hugely pleasing and we should rejoyce in it it must passe on to action and doe the action vigorously it is called in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the labour and travail of love A friend at a sneese and an almes-basket full of prayers a love that is lazy and a service that is uselesse and a pity without support are the images and colours of that grace whose very constitution and designe is beneficence and well-doing He that loves passionately will not onely doe all that his friend needs but all that himself can for although the law of charity is fulfilled by acts of profit and bounty and obedience and labour yet it hath no other measures but the proportions and abundance of a good mind and according to this God requires that we be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 abounding and that alwayes in the work of the Lord if we love passionately we shall doe all this for love endures labour and calls it pleasure it spends all and counts it a gain it suffers inconveniencies and is quickly reconciled to them if dishonours and affronts be to be endured love smiles and calls them favours and wears them willingly alii jacuere ligati Turpitèr atque aliquis de Diis non tristibus optat Sic fieri turpis It is the Lord said David and I will be yet more vile and it shall be honour unto me thus did the Disciples of our Lord goe from tribunals rejoycing that they were accounted worthy to suffer stripes for that beloved name and we are commanded to rejoyce in persecutions to resist unto bloud to strive to enter in at the strait gate not to be weary of well doing doe it hugely and doe it alwayes Non enim votis neque suppliciis muliebribus auxilia Deorum parantur sed vigilando agendo benè consulendo omnia prosperè cedunt No man can obtain the favour of God by words and imperfect resolutions by lazie actions and a remisse piety but by severe counsells and sober actions by watchfulnesse and prudence by doing excellent things with holy intentions and vigorous prosecutions Ubi socordiae ignaviae te tradideris nequidquam Deos implorabis If your vertues be lazy your vices will be bold and active and therefore Democritus said well that the painfull and the soft-handed people in Religion differ just as good men and bad nimirùm spe bonâ the labouring charity hath a good hope but a coole Religion hath none at all and the distinction will have a sad effect to eternall ages These are the great Scenes of duty in which we are to be fervent and zealous but because earnestnesse and zeal are circumstances of a great latitude and the zeale of the present age is starke cold if compar'd to the fervors of the Apostles and other holy primitives and in every age a good mans care may turne into scruple if he sees that he is not the best man because he may reckon his owne estate to stand in the confines of darknesse because his spark is not so great as his neighbors fires therefore it is sit that we consider concerning the degrees of the intention and forward heats for when we have found out the lowest degrees of zeale and a holy fervour we know that duty dwels there and whatsoever is above it is a degree of excellence but all that is lesse then it is lukewarmnesse and the state of an ungracious and an unaccepted person 1. No man is fervent and zealous as he ought but he that preferres Religion before businesse charity before his own ease the reliefe of his brother before money heaven before secular regards and God before his friend or interest Which rule is not to be understood absolutely and in particular instances but alwayes generally and when it descends to particulars it must be in proportion to circumstances and by their proper measures for 1. In the whole course of life it is necessary that we prefer Religion before any state that is either contrary to it or a lessening of at s duties He that hath a state of life in which he cannot at all in fair proportions tend to Religion must quit great proportions of that that he may enjoy more of this this is that which our blessed Saviour calls pulling out the right eye if it offend thee 2. In particular actions when the necessity is equall he that does not preferre Religion is not at all Zealous for although all naturall necessities are to be served before the circumstances and order of Religion yet our belly and our back our liberty and our life our health and a friend are to be neglected rather then a Duty when it stands in its proper place and is requir'd 3. Although the things of God are by a necessary Zeale to be preferred before the things of the world yet we must take heed that we doe not reckon Religion and orders of worshipping onely to be the
Holinesse is the Sun and righteousnesse is the Moon in that region our society shall be Quires of singers and our conversation wonder contemplation shall be our food and love shall be the wine of elect souls and as to every naturall appetite there is now proportion'd an object crasse materiall unsatisfying and allayed with sorrow and uneasinesse so there be new capacities and equall objects the desires shall be fruition and the appetite shall not suppose want but a faculty of delight and an unmeasureable complacency the will and the understanding love and wonder joyes every day and the same forever this shall be their state who shall be accounted worthy of the resurrection to this life where the body shall be a partner but no servant where it shall have no work of its own but it shall rejoyce with the soul where the soul shall rule without resistance or an enemy and we shall be fitted to enjoy God who is the Lord and Father of spirits In this world we see it is quite contrary we long for perishing meat and fill our stomachs with corruption we look after white and red and the weaker beauties of the night we are passionate after rings and seals and inraged at the breaking of a Crystall we delight in the society of fools and weak persons we laugh at sin and contrive mischiefs and the body rebels against the soul and carries the cause against all its just pretences and our soul it self is above half of it earth and stone in its affections and distempers our hearts are hard and inflexible to the softer whispers of mercy and compassion having no loves for any thing but strange flesh and heaps of money and popular noises for misery and folly and therefore we are a huge way off from the Kingdome of God whose excellencies whose designs whose ends whose constitution is spirituall and holy and separate and sublime and perfect Now between these two states of naturall flesh and heavenly spirit that is the powers of darknesse and the regions of light the miseries of man and the perfections of God the imperfection of nature where we stand by our creation and supervening follies and that state of felicities whither we are designed by the mercies of God there is a middle state the Kingdome of grace wrought for us by our Mediator the man Christ Jesus who came to perfect the vertue of Religion and the designs of God and to reforme our Nature and to make it possible for us to come to that spirituall state where all felicity does dwell The Religion that Christ taught is a spirituall Religion it designs so far as this state can permit to make us spirituall that is so as the spirit be the prevailing ingredient God must now be worshipped in spirit and not only so but with a fervent spirit and though God in all religions did seise upon the spirit and even under Moses Law did by the shadow of the ceremony require the substantiall worship by cutting off the flesh intended the circumcision of the heart yet because they were to minde the outward action it took off much from the intention and activity of the spirit Man could not doe both busily And then they fail'd also in the other part of a spirituall Religion for the nature of a spirituall Religion is that in it we serve God with our hearts and affections and because while the spirit prevails we do not to evill purposes of abatement converse with flesh and bloud this service is also fervent intense active wise and busie according to the nature of things spirituall Now because God alwayes perfectly intended it yet because he lesse perfectly required it in the Law of Moses I say they fell short in both For 1. They so rested in the outward action that they thought themselves chast if they were no adulterers though their eyes were wanton as Kids and their thoughts polluted as the springs of the wildernesse when a Panther and a Lionesse descend to drink and lust and if they did not rob the Temple they accounted it no sin if they murmur'd at the riches of Religion and Josephus reproves Polybius for saying that Antiochus was punished for having a design of sacriledge and therefore Tertullian sayes of them they were nec plenae nec adeò timendae disciplinae ad innocentiae veritatem this was their righteousnesse which Christ said unlesse we will exceed we shall not enter into the Kingdome of heaven where all spirituall perfections are in state and excellency 2. The other part of a spirituall worship is a fervour and a holy Zeal of Gods glory greatnesse of desire and quicknesse of action of all this the Jewes were not carefull at all excepting the zealots amongst them and they were not only fervent but inflamed and they had the earnestnesse of passion for the holy warmth of Religion and in stead of an earnest charity they had a cruell discipline and for fraternall correction they did destroy a sinning Israelite and by both these evill states of Religion they did the work of the Lord deceitfully they either gave him the action without the heart or zeal without charity or religion without zeal or ceremony without religion or indifferency without desires and then God is served by the outward man and not the inward or by part of the inward and not all by the understanding and not by the will or by the will when the affections are cold and the body unapt and the lower faculties in rebellion and the superior in disorder and the work of God is left imperfect and our persons ungracious and our ends unacquired and the state of a spirituall kingdome not at all set forward towards any hope or possibility of being obtained All this Christ came to mend and by his Lawes did make provision that God should be served intirely according as God alwaies designed and accordingly required by his Prophets and particularly in my Text that his work be done sincerely and our duty with great affection and by these two provisions both the intension and the extension are secured our duty shall be intire and it shall be perfect we shall be neither lame nor cold without a limb nor without naturall heat and then the work of the Lord will prosper in our hands but if we fail in either we do the Lords work deceitfully and then we are accursed For so saith the Spirit of God Cursed be he that doth the work of the Lord deceitfully 1. Here then is the duty of us all 1. God requires of us to serve him with an integrall intire or a whole worship and religion 2. God requires of us to serve him with earnest and intense affections The intire purpose of both which I shall represent in its severall parts by so many propositions 3. I shall consider concerning the measures of zeal and its inordinations 1. He that serves God with the body without the soul serves God deceitfully My son give me thy heart
high Priest they kept Damascus with a Garrison they sent parties of souldiers to silence and to imprison the Preachers and thought they did God service when they put the Apostles to death and they swore neither to eat nor to drink till they had killed Paul It was an old trick of the Jewish zeal Non monstrare vias eadem nisi sacra colenti Quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos They would not shew the way to a Samaritan nor give a cup of cold water but to a circumcised brother That was their Zeal But the zeal of the Apostles was this they preached publickly and privately they prayed for all men they wept to God for the hardnesse of mens hearts they became all things to all men that they might gain some they travel'd through deeps and deserts they indured the heat of the Syrian Starre and the violence of Euroclydon winds and tempests seas and prisons mockings and scourgings fastings and poverty labour and watching they endured every man and wronged no man they would do any good thing and suffer any evill if they had but hopes to prevail upon a soul they perswaded men meekly they intreated them humbly they convinced them powerfully the watched for their good but medled not with their interest and this is the Christian Zeal the Zeal of meeknesse the Zeal of charity the Zeal of patience 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in these it is good to be zealous for you can never goe farre enough 2. The next measure of zeal is prudence For as charity is the matter of Zeal so is discretion the manner It must alwaies be for good to our neighbour and there needs no rules for the conducting of that provided the end be consonant to the design that is that charity be intended and charity done But there is a Zeal also of Religion or worshipping and this hath more need of measures and proper cautions For Religion can turn into a snare it may be abused into superstition it may become wearinesse in the spirit and tempt to tediousnesse to hatred and despair and many persons through their indiscreet conduct and furious marches and great loads taken upon tender shoulders and unexperienced have come to be perfect haters of their joy and despisers of all their hopes being like dark Lanthorns in which a candle burnes bright but the body is incompassed with a crust and a dark cloud of iron and these men keep the fires and light of holy propositions within them but the darknesse of hell the hardnesse of a vexed he art hath shaded all the light and makes it neither apt to warm nor to enlighten others but it turnes to fire within a feaver and a distemper dwels there and Religion is become their torment 1. Therefore our Zeal must never carry us beyond that which is profitable There are many institutions customes and usages introduced into Religion upon very fair motives and apted to great necessities but to imitate those things when they are disrobed of their proper ends is an importune zeal and signifies nothing but a forward minde and an easie heart and an imprudent head unlesse these actions can be invested with other ends and usefull purposes The primitive Church were strangely inspired with a zeal of virginity in order to the necessities of preaching and travelling and easing the troubles and temptations of persecution but when the necessity went on and drove the holy men into deserts that made Colleges of Religious and their manner of life was such so united so poor so dressed that they must live more non saculari after the manner of men divorc'd from the usuall entercourses of the world still their desire of single life increased because the old necessity lasted and a new one did supervene Afterwards the case was altered and then the single life was not to be chosen for it self nor yet in imitation of the first precedents for it could not be taken out from their circumstances and be used alone He therefore that thinks he is a more holy person for being a virgin or a widower or that he is bound to be so because they were so or that he cannot be a religious person because he is not so hath zeal indeed but not according to knowledge But now if the single state can be taken out and put to new appendages and fitted to the end of another grace or essentiall duty of Religion it will well become a Christian zeal to choose it so long as it can serve the end with advantage and security Thus also a zealous person is to chuse his fastings while they are necessary to him and are acts of proper mortification while he is tempted or while he is under discipline while he repents or while he obeys but some persons fast in zeal but for nothing else fast when they have no need when there is need they should not but call it religion to be miserable or sick here their zeal is folly for it is neither an act of Religion nor of prudence to fast when fasting probably serves no end of the spirit and therefore in the fasting dayes of the Church although it is warrant enough to us to fast if we had no end to serve in it but the meer obedience yet it is necessary that the superiors should not think the Law obeyed unlesse the end of the first institution be observed a fasting day is a day of humiliation and prayer and fasting being nothing it self but wholly the handmaid of a further grace ought not to be devested of its holinesse and sanctification and left like the wals of a ruinous Church where there is no duty performed to God but there remains something of that which us'd to minister to Religion The want of this consideration hath caus'd so much scandall and dispute so many snares and schismes concerning Ecclesiasticall fasts For when it was undressed and stripp'd of all the ornaments and usefull appendages when from a solemn day it grew to be common from thence to be lesse devout by being lesse seldome and lesse usefull and then it passed from a day of Religion to be a day of order and from fasting till night to fasting till evening-song and evening-song to be sung about twelve a clock and from fasting it was changed to a choice of food from eating nothing to eating fish and that the letter began to be stood upon and no usefulnesse remain'd but what every of his own piety should put into it but nothing was enjoyn'd by the Law nothing of that exacted by the superiours then the Law fell into disgrace and the design became suspected and men were first insnared and then scandalized and then began to complain without remedy and at last took remedy themselves without authority the whole affair fell into a disorder and a mischief and zeal was busie on both sides and on both sides was mistaken because they fell not upon the proper remedy which was to reduce the Law to the
our abode yet we misse in the manner and either we aske for evill ends or without religion and awefull apprehensions or we rest in the words and signification of the prayer and never take care to passe on to action or else we sacrifice in the company of Corah being partners of a schisme or a rebellion in religion or we bring unhallowed censers our hearts send up to God an unholy smoak a cloud from the fires of lust and either the flames of lust or rage of wine or revenge kindle the beast that is laid upon the altar or we bring swines flesh or a dogs neck whereas God never accepts or delights in a prayer unlesse it be for a holy thing to a lawfull end presented unto him upon the wings of Zeal and love of religious sorrow or religious joy by sanctified lips and pure bands and a sincere heart It must be the prayer of a gracious man and he is onely gracious before God and acceptable and effective in his prayer whose life is holy and whose prayer is holy For both these are necessary ingredients to the constitution of a prevailing prayer there is a holinesse peculiar to the man and a holinesse peculiar to the prayer that must adorn the prayer before it can be united to the intercession of the Holy Jesus in which union alone our prayers can be prevailing God heareth not sinners so the blind man in the text and confidently this we know he had reason indeed for his confidence it was a proverbiall saying and every where recorded in their Scriptures which were read in the synagogues every Sabbath day For what is the hope of the hypocrite saith Job will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him No he will not For if I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear mee said David and so said the Spirit of the Lord by the Son of David When distresse and anguish cometh upon you Then shall they call upon mee but I will not answer they shall seek mee early but they shall not find mee and Isaiah When you spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you yea when you make many prayers I will not hear your hands are full of bloud and again When they fast I will not hear their cry and when they will offer burnt offerings and oblations I will not accept them For they have loved to wander they have not refrained their feet therefore the Lord will not accept them hee will now remember their iniquity and visit their sins Upon these and many other authorities it grew into a proverb Deus non exaudit peccatores it was a known case and an established rule in the religion Wicked persons are neither fit to pray for themselves nor for others Which proposition let us first consider in the sense of that purpose which the blind man spoke it in and then in the utmost extent of it as its analogie and equall reason goes forth upon us and our necessities The man was cured of his blindnesse and being examined concerning him that did it named and gloryed in his Physitian but the spitefull Pharisees bid him give glory to God and defie the Minister for God indeed was good but he wrought that cure by a wicked hand No says he this is impossible If this man were a sinner and a false Prophet for in that instance the accusation was intended God would not hear his prayers and work miracles by him in verification of a lye A false Prophet could not work true miracles this hath received its diminution when the case was changed for at that time when Christ preached Miracles was the onely or the great verification of any new revelation and therefore it proceeding from an Almighty God must needs be the testimony of a Divine truth and if it could have been brought for a lye there could not then have been sufficient instruction given to mankind to prevent their beleef of false Prophets and lying doctrines But when Christ proved his doctrine by miracles that no enemy of his did ever doe so great before or after him then he also told that after him his friends should doe greater and his enemies should do some but they were fewer and very inconsiderable and therefore could have in them no unavoydable cause of deception because they were discovered by a Prophesie and caution was given against them by him that did greaten miracles and yet ought to have been beleeved if he had done but one because against him there had been no caution but many prophesies creating such expectations concerning him which he verified by his great works So that in this sense of working miracles though it was infinitely true that the blind man said then when he said it yet after that the case was alter'd and Sinners Magicians Astrologers Witches Hereticks Simoniacks and wicked persons of other instances have done miracles and God hath heard sinners and wrought his own works by their hands or suffered the Devill to doe his works under their pretences and many at the day of Judgment shall plead that they have done miracles in Christs name and yet they shall be rejected Christ knows them not and their portion shall bee with dogs and goats and unbeleevers There is in this case onely this difference that they who doe miracles in opposition to Christ doe them by the power of the Devill to whom it is permitted to doe such things which wee think miracles and that is all one as though they were but the danger of them is none at all but to them that will not beleeve him that did greater miracles and prophesied of these lesse and gave warning of their attending danger and was confirmed to be a true teacher by voices from heaven and by the resurrection of his body after a three days buriall So that to these the proposition still remains true God hears not sinners God does not work those miracles but concerning sinning Christians God in this sense and towards the purposes of miracles does hear them and hath wrought miracles by them for they doe them in the name of Christ and therefore Christ said cannot easily speak ill of him and although they either prevaricate in their lives or in superinduced doctrines yet because the miracles are a verification of the Religion not of the opinion of the power or truth of Christ not of the veracity of the man God hath heard such persons many times whom men have long since and to this day call Hereticks such were the Novatians and Arrians For to the Heathens they could onely prove their Religion by which they stood distinguished from them but we find not that they wrought miracles among the Christians or to verifie their superstructures and private opinions But besides this yet we may also by such means arrest the forwardnesse of our judgments and condemnations of persons disagreeing in their opinions from us for those persons whose faith
others and to pray for them with probable effect I say with probable effect for when the event principally depends upon that which is not within our own election such as are the lives and actions of others all that we can consider in this affair is whether wee be persons fit to pray in the behalf of others that hinder not but are persons within the limit and possibilities of the present mercy When the Emperour Maximinus was smitten with the wrath of God and a sore disease for his cruell persecuting the Christian cause and putting so many thousand innocent and holy persons to death and he understood the voice of God and the accents of thunder and discerned that cruelty was the cause he revoked their decrees made against the Christians recall'd them from their caves and deserts their sanctuaries and retirements and enjoyned them to pray for the life and health of their Prince They did so and they who could command mountaines to remove and were obeyed they who could doe miracles they who with the key of prayer could open Gods four closets of the wombe and the grave of providence and rain could not obtain for their bloudy Emperour one drop of mercy but he must die miserable for ever God would not be intreated for him and though he loved the prayer because he loved the Advocates yet Maximinus was not worthy to receive the blessing And it was threatned to the rebellious people of Israel and by them to all people that should sin grievously against the Lord God would break their staffe of bread and even the righteous should not be prevailing intercessors Though Noah Job or Daniel were there they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousnesse saith the Lord God and when Abraham prevailed very far with God in the behalf of Sodome and the five Cities of the Plain it had its period If there had been ten righteous in Sodom it should have been spared for their sakes but four onely were found and they onely delivered their own souls too but neither their righteousnesse nor Abrahams prayer prevailed any further and we have this case also mentioned in the New Testament If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death he shall aske and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death At his prayer the sinner shall receive pardon God shall give him life for them to him that prays in their behalf that sin provided it be not a sin unto death For there is a sin unto death but I doe not say that he shall pray for it There his Commission expires and his power is confin'd For there are some sins of that state and greatnesse that God will not pardon S. Austin in his books de sermone Domini in monte affirms it concerning some one single sin of a perfect malice It was also the opinion of Origen and Athanasius and is followed by venerable Bede and whether the Apostle means a peculiar state of sin or some one single great crime which also supposes a precedent and a present state of criminall condition it is such a thing as will hinder our prayers from prevailing in their behalf we are therefore not encouraged to pray because they cannot receive the benefit of Christs intercession and therefore much lesse of our Advocation which onely can prevail by vertue and participation of his mediation For whomsoever Christ prays for them wee pray that is for all them that are within the covenant of repentance for all whose actions have not destroyed the very being of Religion who have not renounc'd their faith nor voluntarily quit their hopes nor openly opposed the Spirit of grace nor grown by a long progresse to a resolute and finall impiety nor done injustices greater then sorrow or restitution or recompense or acknowledgment However though it may be uncertain and disputed concerning the number of sins unto death and therefore to pray or not to pray is not matter of duty yet it is all one as to the effect whether we know them or no for though we intend charity when we pray for the worst of men yet concerning the event God will take care and will certainly return thy prayer upon thy own head though thou didst desire it should water and refresh thy neighbors drynesse and St. John so expresses it as if he had left the matter of duty undetermin'd because the instances are uncertain yet the event is certainly none at all therefore because we are not encouraged to pray and because it is a sin unto death that is such a sin that hath no portion in the promises of life and the state of repentance But now suppose the man for whom wee pray to be capable of mercy within the covenant of repentance and not farre from the Kingdome of heaven yet 2ly No prayers of others can further prevail then to remove this person to the next stage in order to felicity When S. Monica prayed for her son she did not pray to God to save him but to cōvert him and when God intended to reward the prayers and almes of Cornelius he did not do it by giving him a Crown but by sending an Apostle to him to make him a Christian the meaning of which observation is that we may understand that as in the person prayed for there ought to be the great disposition of being in a saveable condition so there ought also to be all the intermediall aptnesses for just as he is disposed so can we prevail and the prayers of a good man first prevail in behalf of a sinner that he shall be invited that he shall be reproved and then that he shall attend to it then that he shall have his heart open'd and then that he shall repent And still a good mans prayers follow him thorough the severall stages of pardon of sanctification of restraining graces of a mighty providence of great assistance of perseverance and a holy death No prayers can prevaile upon an undisposed person For the Sun himself cannot enlighten a blind eye nor the soule move a body whose silver cord is loosed and whose joints are untyed by the rudenesse and dissolutions of a pertinacious sicknesse But then suppose an eye quick and healthfull or apt to be refreshed with light and a friendly prospect yet a glow-worm or a diamond the shels of pearl or a dead mans candle are not enough to make him discern the beauties of the world and to admire the glories of creation Therefore 2. As the persons must be capable for whom we pray so they that pray for others must be persons extraordinary in something 1. If persons be of an extraordinary piety they are apt to be intercessors for others This appeares in the case of Job When the wrath of God was kindled against Eliphaz and his two friends God commanded them to offer a sacrifice but my servant Job shall prey for you for him will I accept and it
have grace by which we do serve and it is something better consonant to the discourse of the Apostle For having enumerated the great advantages which the Gospell hath above those of the Law he makes an argument à majori and answers a tacite objection The Law was delivered by Angels but the Gospell by the Son of God The Law was delivered from Mount Sinai the Gospell from Mount Sion from the heavenly Jerusalem The Law was given with terrors and noises with amazements of the standers by and Moses himself the Minister did exceedingly quake and fear and gave demonstration how infinitely dangerous it was by breaking that Law to provoke so mighty a God who with his voice did shake the earth but the Gospell was given by a meek Prince a gentle Saviour with a still voice scarce heard in the streets But that this may be no objection he proceeds and declares the terror of the Lord Deceive not your selves our Law-giver appeared so upon earth and was so truly but now he is ascended into heaven and from thence he speaks to us See that ye refuse not him that speaketh for if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth much more shall not we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven for as God once shaked the earth and that was full of terror so our Lawgiver shall do and much more and be farre more terrible 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said the Prophet Haggai which the Apostle quotes here he once shook the earth But once more I shake 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is in the Prophesie I will shake not the earth only but also heaven with a greater terror then was upon Mount Sinai with the voice of an Archangell with the trump of God with a concussion so great that heaven and earth shall be shaken in pieces and new ones come in their room This is an unspeakable and an unimaginable terror Mount Sinai was shaken but it stands to this day but when that shaking shall be the things that are shaken shall be no more that those things that cannot be shaken may remain that is not only that the clestiall Jerusalem may remain for ever but that you who do not turn away from the faith and obedience of the Lord Jesus you who cannot be shaken nor removed from your duty you may remain for ever that when the rocks rend and the mountains flie in pieces like the drops of a broken cloud and the heavens shall melt and the Sun shall be a globe of consuming fire and the Moon shall be dark like an extinguish'd candle then you poor men who could be made to tremble with an ague or shake by the violence of a Northern winde or be remov'd from your dwellings by the unjust decree of a persecutor or be thrown from your estates by the violence of an unjust man yet could not be removed from your duty and though you went trembling yet would go to death for the testimony of a holy cause and you that would dye for your faith would also live according to it you shall be established by the power of God and supported by the arme of your Lord and shall in all this great shaking be unmovable as the corner stone of the gates of the new Jerusalem you shall remain and abide for ever This is your case And to summe up the whole force of the argument the Apostle addes the words of Moses as it was then so it is true now Our God is a consuming fire He was so to them that brake the Law but he will be much more to them that disobey his Son he made great changes then but those which remain are farre greater and his terrors are infinitely more intolerable and therefore although he came not in the spirit of Elias but with meeknesse and gentle insinuations soft as the breath of heaven not willing to disturb the softest stalk of a violet yet his second coming shall be with terrors such as shall amaze all the world and dissolve it into ruine and a Chaos This truth is of so great efficacy to make us do our duty that now we are sufficiently enabled with this consideration This is the grace which we have to enable us this terror will produce fear and fear will produce obedience and we therefore have grace that is we have such a motive to make us reverence God and fear to offend him that he that dares continue in sin and refuses to hear him that speaks to us from heaven and from thence shall come with terrors this man despises the grace of God he is a gracelesse fearlesse impudent man and he shall finde that true in hypothesi and in his own ruine which the Apostle declares in thesi and by way of caution and provisior ary terror Our God is a consuming fire this is the sense and design of the text Reverence and godly fear they are the effects of this consideration they are the duties of every Christian they are the grace of God I shall not presse them only to purposes of awfulnesse and modesty of opinion and prayers against those strange doctrines which some have introduc'd into Religion to the destruction of all manners and prudent apprehensions of the distances of God and man such as are the Doctrine of necessity of familiarity with God and a civill friendship and a parity of estate and an unevennesse of adoption from whence proceed rudenesse in prayers flat and undecent expressions affected rudenesse superstitious sitting at the holy Sacrament making it to be a part of Religion to be without fear and reverence the stating of the Question is a sufficient reproof of this folly whatsoever actions are brought into Religion without reverence and godly fear are therefore to be avoided because they are condemned in this advice of the Apostle and are destructive of those effects which are to be imprinted upon our spirits by the terrors of the day of Judgement But this fear and reverence the Apostle intends should be a deletery to all sin whatsoever 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sayes the Etymologicum whatsoever is terrible is destructive of that thing for which it is so and if we fear the evill effects of sin let us flie from it we ought to fear its alluring face too let us be so afraid that we may not dare to refuse to hear him whose Throne is heaven whose Voice is thunder whose Tribunall is clouds whose Seat is the right hand of God whose Word is with power whose Law is given with mighty demonstration of the Spirit who shall reward with heaven and joyes eternall and who punishes his rebels that will not have him to reign over them with brimstone and fire with a worm that never dies and a fire that never is quenched let us fear him who is terrible in his Judgements just in his his dispensation secret in his providence severe in his demands gracious in his assistances bountifull in
were evill spirits who had seduced them and tempted them to such ungodly rites and yet they who were of the Pythagorean sect pretended a more holy worship and did their devotion to Angels But whosoever shall worship Angels do the same thing they worship them because they are good and powerfull as the Gentiles did the Devils whom they thought so and the error which the Apostle reproves was not in matter of Judgement in mistaking bad angels for good but in matter of manners and choice they mistook the creature for the Creator and therefore it is more fully expressed by St. Paul in a generall signification they worshipped the creature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 besides the Creator so it should be read if we worship any creature besides God worshipping so as the worship of him becomes a part of Religion it is also a direct superstition but concerning this part of superstition I shall not trouble this discourse because I know no Christians blamable in this particular but the Church of Rome and they that communicate with her in the worshipping of Images of Angels and Saints burning lights and perfumes to them making offerings confidences advocations and vowes to them and direct and solemn divine worshipping the Symbols of bread and wine when they are consecrated in the holy Sacrament These are direct superstition as the word is used by all Authors profane and sacred and are of such evill report that where ever the word Superstition does signifie any thing criminall these instances must come under the definition of it They are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a cultus superstitum a cultus Daemonum and therefore besides that they have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a proper reproof in Christian Religion are condemned by all wise men which call superstition criminall But as it is superstition to worship any thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 besides the Creator so it is superstition to worship God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 otherwise then is decent proportionable or described Every inordination of Religion that is not in defect is properly called superstition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Maximus Tyrius The true worshipper is a lover of God the superstitious man loves him not but flatters To which if we adde that fear unreasonable fear is also superstition and an ingredient in its definition we are taught by this word to signifie all irregularity and inordination in actions of Religion The summe is this the Atheist cal'd all worship of God superstition the Epicurean cal'd all fear of God superstition but did not condemn his worship the other part of wise men cal'd all unreasonable fear and inordinate worship superstition but did not condemn all fear But the Christian besides this cals every error in worship in the manner or excesse by this name and condemns it Now because the three great actions of Religion are to worship God to fear God and to trust in him by the inordination of these three actions we may reckon three sorts of this crime the excesse of fear and the obliquity in trust and the errors in worship are the three sorts of superstition the first of which is only pertinent to our present consideration 1. Fear is the duty we owe to God as being the God of power and Justice the great Judge of heaven and earth the avenger of the cause of Widows the Patron of the poor and the Advocate of the oppressed a mighty God and terrible and so essentiall an enemy to sin that he spared not his own Son but gave him over to death and to become a sacrifice when he took upon him our Nature and became a person obliged for our guilt Fear is the great bridle of intemperance the modesty of the spirit and the restraint of gaieties and dissolutions it is the girdle to the soul and the handmaid to repentance the arrest of sin and the cure or antidote to the spirit of reprobation it preserves our apprehensions of the divine Majesty and hinders our single actions from combining to sinfull habits it is the mother of consideration and the nurse of sober counsels and it puts the soul to fermentation and activity making it to passe from trembling to caution from caution to carefulnesse from carefulnesse to watchfulnesse from thence to prudence and by the gates and progresses of repentance it leads the soul on to love and to felicity and to joyes in God that shall never cease again Fear is the guard of a man in the dayes of prosperity and it stands upon the watch-towers and spies the approaching danger and gives warning to them that laugh loud and feast in the chambers of rejoycing where a man cannot consider by reason of the noises of wine and jest and musick and if prudence takes it by the hand and leads it on to duty it is a state of grace and an universall instrument to infant Religion and the only security of the lesse perfect persons and in all senses is that homage we owe to God who sends often to demand it even then when he speaks in thunder or smites by a plague or awakens us by threatning or discomposes our easinesse by sad thoughts and tender eyes and fearfull hearts and trembling considerations But this so excellent grace is soon abused in the best and most tender spirits in those who are softned by Nature and by Religion by infelicities or cares by sudden accidents or a sad soul and the Devill observing that fear like spare diet starves the feavers of lust and quenches the flames of hell endevours to highten this abstinence so much as to starve the man and break the spirit into timorousnesse and scruple sadnesse and unreasonable tremblings credulity and trifling observation suspicion and false accusations of God and then vice being turned out at the gate returns in at the postern and does the work of hell and death by running too inconsiderately in the paths which seem to lead to heaven But so have I seen a harmlesse dove made dark with an artificiall night and her eyes ceel'd and lock'd up with a little quill soaring upward and flying with amazement fear and an undiscerning wing she made toward heaven but knew not that she was made a train and an instrument to teach her enemy to prevail upon her and all her defencelesse kindred so is a superstitious man zealous and blinde forward and mistaken he runs towards heaven as he thinks but he chooses foolish paths and out of fear takes any thing that he is told or fancios and guesses concerning God by measures taken from his own diseases and imperfections But fear when it is inordinate is never a good counsellor nor makes a good friend and he that fears God as his enemy is the most compleatly miserable person in the world For if he with reason beleeves God to be his enemy then the man needs no other argument to prove that he is undone then this that the fountain of blessing in this state in which the
up his soul is one that hath no charity no love to God no trust in promises no just estimation of the rewards of a noble contention Perfect love casts out fear faith the Apostle that is he that loves God will not fear to dye for him or for his sake to be poor In this sense no man can fear man and love God at the same time and when St. Laurence triumph'd over Valerianus St. Sebastian over Diocletian St. Vincentius over Dacianus and the armies of Martyrs over the Proconsuls accusers and executioners they shew'd their love to God by triumphing over fear and leading captivity captive by the strength of their Captain whose garments were red from Bozrah 3. But this fear is also tremulous and criminall if it be a trouble from the apprehension of the mountains and difficulties of duty and is called pusillanimity For some see themselves encompassed with temptations they observe their frequent fals their perpetuall returns from good purposes to weak performances the daily mortifications that are necessary the resisting naturall appetites and the laying violent hands upon the desires of flesh and bloud the uneasinesse of their spirits and their hard labours and therefore this makes them afraid and because they despair to run through the whole duty in all its parts and periods they think as good not begin at all as after labour and expence to lose the Jewell and the charges of their venture St. Austin compares such men to children and phantastick persons afrighted with phantasmes and specters Terribiles visu formae the sight seems full of horror but touch them and they are very nothing the meer daughters of a sick brain and a weak heart an infant experience and a trifling judgement so are the illusions of a weak piety or an unskilfull unconfident soul they fancy to see mountains of difficulty but touch them and they seem like clouds riding upon the wings of the winde and put on shapes as we please to dream He that denies to give almes for fear of being poor or to entertain a Disciple for fear of being suspected of the party or to own a duty for fear of being put to venture for a crown he that takes part of the intemperance because he dares not displease the company or in any sense fears the fears of the world and not the fear of God this man enters into his portion of fear betimes but it will not be finished to eternall ages To fear the censures of men when God is your Judge to fear their evill when God is your defence to fear death when he is the entrance to life and felicity is unreasonable and pernicious but if you will turn your passion into duty and joy and security fear to offend God to enter voluntarily into temptation fear the alluring face of lust and the smooth entertainments of intemperance fear the anger of God when you have deserved it and when you have recover'd from the snare then infinitely fear to return into that condition in which whosoever dwels is the heir of fear and eternall sorrow Thus farre I have discoursed concerning good fear and bad that is filiall and servile they are both good if by servile we intend initiall or the new beginning fear of penitents a fear to offend God upon lesse perfect considerations But servile fear is vitious when it still retains the affection of slaves and when its effects are hatred wearinesse displeasure and want of charity and of the same cogrations are those fears which are superstitious and worldly But to the former sort of vertuous fear some also adde another which they call Angelicall that is such a fear as the blessed Angels have who before God hide their faces and tremble at his presence and fall down before his footstool and are ministers of his anger and messengers of his mercy and night and day worship him with the profoundest adoration This is the same that is spoken of in the Text Let us serve God with reverence and godly fear all holy fear partakes of the nature of this which Divines call Angelicall and it is expressed in acts of adoration of vowes and holy prayers in hymnes and psalmes in the eucharist and reverentiall addresses and while it proceeds in the usuall measures of common duty it is but humane but as it arises to great degrees and to perfection it is Angelicall and Divine and then it appertains to mystick Theologie and therefore is to be considered in another place but for the present that which will regularly concern all our duty is this that when the fear of God is the instrument of our duty or Gods worship the greater it is it is so much the better It was an old proverbiall saying among the Romans Religentem esse oportet religiosum nefas Every excesse in the actions of religion is criminall they supposing that in the services of their gods there might be too much True it is there may be too much of their undecent expressions and in things indifferent the very multitude is too much and becomes an undecency and if it be in its own nature undecent or disproportionable to the end or the rules or the analogy of the Religion it will not stay for numbers to make it intolerable but in the direct actions of glorifying God in doing any thing of his Commandements or any thing which he commands or counsels or promises to reward there can never be excesse or superfluity and therefore in these cases do as much as you can take care that your expressions be prudent and safe consisting with thy other duties and for the passions or vertues themselves let them passe from beginning to great progresses from man to Angel from the imperfection of man to the perfections of the sons of God and when ever we go beyond the bounds of Nature and grow up with all the extention and in the very commensuration of a full grace we shall never go beyond the excellencies of God For ornament may be too much and turn to curiosity cleanlinesse may be changed into nicenesse and civill compliance may become flattery and mobility of tongue may rise into garrulity and fame and honour may be great unto envie and health it self if it be athletick may by its very excesse become dangerous but wisdome and duty and comelinesse and discipline a good minde and eloquence and the fear of God and doing honour to his holy Name can never exceed but if they swell to great proportions they passe through the measures of grace and are united to felicity in the comprehensions of God in the joyes of an eternall glory Sermon X. The Flesh and the Spirit Part I. Matt. 26. 41. latter part The Spirit indeed is willing but the Flesh is weake FRom the beginning of days Man hath been so crosse to the Divine commandements that in many cases there can be no reason given why a man should choose some ways or doe some actions but onely because they are
and though I cannot think that Nature was so sacramentall as to point out the holy and mysterious Trinity by the triangle of the heart yet it is certain that the heart of man is Gods speciall portion and every angle ought to point out towards him directly that is the soul of man ought to be presented to God and given to him as an oblation to the interest of his service 1. For to worship God with our souls consesses one of his glorious ateributes it declares him to be the searcher of hearts and that he reads the secret purposes and beholds the smallest arrests of fancy and bends in all the flexures and intriques of crafty people and searches out every plot and trifling conspiracy against him and against our selves and against our brethren 2. It advances the powers and concernments of his providence and confesses all the affairs of men all their cabinets and their nightly counsels their snares and two-edged mischiefs to be over-rul'd by him for what he sees he judges and what he judges he rules and what he rules must turn to his glory and of this glory he reflects rayes and influences upon his servants and it shall also turn to their good 3. This service distinguishes our duty towards God from all our conversation with man and separates the divine commandements from the imperfect decrees of Princes and Republiques for these are satisfied by the outward work and cannot take any other cognisance of the heart and the will of man but as himself is pleased to signifie He that wishes the fiscus empty and that all the revenues of the Crown were in his counting-house cannot be punished by the Lawes unlesse himself become his own traytor and accuser and therefore what man cannot discern he must not judge and must not require but God sees it and judges it and requires it and therefore reserves this as his own portion and the chiefest feudall right of his Crown 4. He that secures the heart secures all the rest because this is the principle of all the moral actions of the whole man the hand obeys this and the feet walk by its prescriptions we eat and drink by measures which the soul desires and limits and though the naturall actions of man are not subject to choice rule yet the animal actions are under discipline and although it cannot be helped but we shall desire yet our desires can receive measures and the lawes of circumstances and be reduced to order and nature be changed into grace and the actions animall such as are eating drinking laughing weeping c. shall become actions of Religion and those that are simply naturall such as being hungry and thirsty shall be adopted into the retinue of religion and become religious by being order'd or chastis'd or suffered or directed and therefore God requires the heart because he requires all and all cannot be secured without the principle be inclosed But he that seals up a fountain may drink up all the waters alone and may best appoint the channels where it shall run and what grounds it shall refresh 5. That I may summe up many reasons in one God by requiring the heart secures the perpetuity and perseverance of our duty and its sincerity and its integrity and its perfection for so also God takes account of little things it being all one in the heart of man whether maliciously it omits a duty in a small instance or in a great for although the expression hath variety and degrees in it in relation to those purposes of usefulnesse and charity whither God designs it yet the obedience and disobedience is all one and shall be equally accounted for and therefore the Jew Tryphon disputed against Justin that the precepts of the Gospell were impossible to be kept because it also requiring the heart of man did stop every egression of disorders for making the root holy and healthfull as the Balsame of Judaea or the drops of Manna in the evening of the sabbath it also causes that nothing spring thence but gummes sit for incense and oblations for the Altar of proposition and a cloud of perfume fit to make atonement for our sins and being united to the great sacrifice of the world to reconcile God and man together Upon these reasons you see it is highly fit that God should require it and that we should pay the sacrifice of our hearts and not at all think that God is satisfied with the work of the hands when the affections of the heart are absent He that prayes because he would be quiet and would fain be quit of it and communicates for fear of the lawes and comes to Church to avoid shame and gives almes to be eased of an importunate begger or relieves his old parents because they will not dye in their time and provides for his children lest he be compeld by Lawes and shame but yet complains of the charge of Gods blessings this man is a servant of the eyes of men and offers parchment or a white skin in sacrifice but the flesh and the inwards he leaves to be consumed by a stranger fire And therefore this is a deceit that robs God of the best and leaves that for religion which men pare off It is sacriledge and brings a double curse 2. He that serves God with the soule without the body when both can be conjoyned doth the work of the Lord deceitfully Paphnutius whose knees were cut for the testimony of Jesus was not obliged to worship with the humble flexures of the bending penitents and blinde Bartimeus could not read the holy lines of the Law and therefore that part of the work was not his duty and God shall not call Lazarus to account for not giving almes nor St. Peter and St. John for not giving silver and gold to the lame man nor Epaphroditus for not keeping his fasting dayes when he had his sicknesse But when God hath made the body an apt minister to the soul and hath given money for almes and power to protect the oppressed and knees to serve in prayer and hands to serve our needs then the soul alone is not to work but as Rachel gave her maid to Jacob and she bore children to her Lord upon her Mistresse knees and the children were reckoned to them both because the one had fruitfull desires and the other a fruitfull wombe so must the body serve the needs of the spirit that what the one desires the other may effect and the conceptions of the soul may be the productions of the body and the body must bow when the soul worships and the hand must help when the soul pities and both together do the work of a holy Religion the body alone can never serve God without the conjunction and preceding act of the soul and sometimes the soul without the body is imperfect and vain for in some actions there is a body and a spirit a materiall and a spirituall part and when the action
hath the same constitution that a man hath without the act of both it is as imperfect as a dead man the soul cannot produce the body of some actions any more then the body can put life into it and therefore an ineffective pity and a lazie counsell an empty blessing and gay words are but deceitfull charity Quod peto da Caï non peto consiliam He that gave his friend counsell to study the Law when he desired to borrow 20 l. was not so friendly in his counsell as he was uselesse in his charity spirituall acts can cure a spirituall malady but if my body needs relief because you cannot feed me with Diagrams or cloath me with Euclids elements you must minister a reall supply by a corporall charity to my corporall necessity This proposition is not only usefull in the doctrine of charity and the vertue of religion but in the professions of faith and requires that it be publick open and ingenuous In matters of necessary duty it is not sufficient to have it to our selves but we must also have it to God and all the world and as in the heart we beleeve so by the mouth we confesse unto salvation he is an ill man that is only a Christian in his heart and is not so in his professions and publications and as your heart must not be wanting in any good profession and pretences so neither must publick profession be wanting in every good and necessary perswasion The faith and the cause of God must be owned publiquely for if it be the cause of God it will never bring us to shame I do not say what ever we think we must tell it to all the world much lesse at all times and in all circumstances but we must never deny that which we beleeve to be the cause of God in such circumstances in which we can and ought to glorifie him But this extends also to other instances He that swears a false oath with his lips and unswears it with his heart hath deceived one more then he thinks for himself is the most abused person and when my action is contrary to men they will reprove me but when it is against my own perswasion I cannot but reprove my self and am witnesse and accuser and party and guilty and then God is the Judge and his anger will be a fierce executioner because we do the Lords work deceitfully 3. They are deceitfull in the Lords work that reserve one faculty for sin or one sin for themselves or one action to please their appetite and many for Religion Rabbt Kimchi taught his Scholars Cogitationem pravam Deus non habet vice facti nisi concepta fuerit in Dei sidem Religionem that God is never angry with an evill thought unlesse it be a thought of Apostasie from the Jewes religion and therefore provided that men be severe and close in their sect and party they might roll in lustfull thoughts and the torches they light up in the Temple might smoke with anger at one end and lust at the other so they did not flame out in egressions of violence and injustice in adulteries and fouler complications nay they would give leave to some degrees of evill actions for R. Moses and Selomoh taught that if the most part of a mans actions were holy and just though in one he sinned often yet the greater ingredient should prevail and the number of good works should outweigh the lesser account of evill things and this Pharisaicall righteousnesse is too frequent even amongst Christians For who almost is there that does not count fairly concerning himself if he reckons many vertues upon the stock of his Religion and but one vice upon the stock of his infirmity half a dozen to God and one for his company or his friend his education or his appetite and if he hath parted from his folly yet he will remember the fleshpots and please himself with a phantastick sin and call it home through the gates of his memory and place it at the door of fancy that there he may behold it and consider concerning what he hath parted withall out of the fears and terrors of religion and a necessary unavoidable conscience Do not many men go from sin to sin even in their repentance they go backward from sin to sin and change their crime as a man changes his uneasie load and shakes it off from one shoulder to support it with the other How many severe persons virgins and widows are so pleased with their chastity and their abstinence even from lawfull mixtures that by this means they fall into a worse pride insomuch that I remember St. Austin said Audco dicere superbis continentibus expedit cadere they that are chaste and proud it is sometimes a remedy for them to fall into sin and by the shame of lust to cure the devill of pride and by the sin of the body to cure the worser evils of the spirit and therefore he addes that he did beleeve God in a severe mercy did permit the barbarous nations breaking in upon the Roman Empire to violate many virgins professed in Cloisters and religious Families to be as a mortification of their pride lest the accidentall advantages of a continent life should bring them into the certain miseries of a spirituall death by taking away their humility which was more necessary then their virgin state It is not a cure that men may use but God permits it sometimes with greater safety through his wise conduct and over-ruling providence St. Peter was safer by his fall as it fell out in the event of things then by his former confidence Man must never cure a sin by a sin but he that brings good out of our evill he can when he please But I speak it to represent how deceitfully many times we do the work of the Lord. We reprove a sinning Brother but do it with a pompous spirit we separate from scandall and do it with glory and a gaudy heart we are charitable to the poor but will not forgive our unkinde enemies or we powre relief into their bags but we please our selves and drink drunk and hope to commute with God giving the fruit of our labours or effluxes of money for the sin of our souls And upon this account it is that two of the noblest graces of a Christian are to very many persons made a savour of death though they were intended for the beginning and the promotion of an eternal life and those are faith and charity some men think if they have faith it is enough to answer all the accusations of sin which our consciences or the Devils make against us If I be a wanton person yet my faith shall hide it and faith shall cover the follies of drunkennesse and I may all my life relye upon faith at last to quit my scores For he that is most carefull is not innocent but must be saved by faith and he that is least carefull may
of Judgement A negative Religion is in many things the effects of lawes and the appendage of sexes the product of education the issues of company and of the publick or the daughter of fear and naturall modesty or their temper and constitution and civill relations common fame or necessary interest Few women swear and do the debaucheries of drunkards and they are guarded from adulterous complications by spies and shame by fear and jealousie by the concernment of families and the reputation of their kindred and therefore they are to account with God beyond this civill and necessary innocence for humility and patience for religious fancies and tender consciences for tending the sick and dressing the poor for governing their house and nursing their children and so it is in every state of life When a Prince or a Prelate a noble and a rich person hath reckon'd all his immunities and degrees of innocence from those evils that are incident to inferiour persons or the worser sort of their own order they do the work of the Lord and their own too very deceitfully unlesse they account correspondencies of piety to all their powers and possibilities they are to reckon and consider concerning what oppressions they have relieved what causes and what fatherlesse they have defended how the work of God and of Religion of justice and charity hath thriv'd in their hands If they have made peace and encouraged Religion by their example and by their lawes by rewards and collaterall incouragements if they have been zealous for God and for Religion if they have imployed ten talents to the improvement of Gods bank then they have done Gods work faithfully if they account otherwise and account only by ciphers and negatives they can expect only the rewards of innocent slaves they shall escape the furca and the wheel the torments of lustfull persons and the crown of flames that is reserved for the ambitious or they shall not be gnawn with the vipers of the envious or the shame of the ingratefull but they can never upon this account hope for the crowns of Martyrs or the honorary rewards of Saints the Coronets of virgins and Chaplets of Doctors and Confessors And though murderers and lustfull persons the proud and the covetous the Heretick and Schismatick are to expect flames and scorpions pains and smart poenam sensus the Schooles call it yet the lazie and the imperfect the harmlesse sleeper and the idle worker shall have poenam damni the losse of all his hopes and the dishonours of the losse and in the summe of affairs it will be no great difference whether we have losse or pain because there can be no greater pain imaginable then to lose the sight of God to eternall ages 5. Hither are to be reduced as deceitfull workers those that promise to God but mean not to pay what they once intended * people that are confident in the day of case and fail in the danger * they that pray passionately for a grace and if it be not obtained at that price go no further and never contend in action for what they seem to contend in prayer * such as delight in forms and outsides and regard not the substance and design of every institution * that think it a great sin to tast bread before the receiving the holy Sacrament and yet come to communicate with an ambitious and revengefull soul * that make a conscience of eating flesh but not of drunkennesse * that keep old customes and old sins together * that pretend one duty to excuse another religion against charity or piety to parents against duty to God private promises against publick duty the keeping of an oath against breaking of a Commandement honour against modesty reputation against piety the love of the world in civill instances to countenance enmity against God these are the deceitfull workers of Gods work they make a schisme in the duties of Religion and a warre in heaven worse then that between Michael and the Dragon for they divide the Spirit of God and distinguish his commandements into parties and factions by seeking an excuse sometimes they destroy the integrity and perfect constitution of duty or they do something whereby the effect and usefulnesse of the duty is hindred concerning all which this only can be said they who serve God with a lame sacrifice and an imperfect duty a duty defective in its constituent parts can never enjoy God because he can never be divided and though it be better to enter into heaven with one foot and one eye then that both should be cast into hell because heaven can make recompence for this losse yet nothing can repair his losse who for being lame in his duty shall enter into hell where nothing is perfect but the measures and duration of torment and they both are next to infinite SERMON XIII Part II. 2. THe next enquiry is into the intention of our duty and here it will not be amisse to change the word fraudulentèr or dolosè into that which some of the Latin Copies doe use Maledictus qui facit opus Dei negligentèr Cursed is he that doth the work of the Lord negligently or remissely and it implyes that as our duty must be whole so it must be fervent for a languishing body may have all its parts and yet be uselesse to many purposes of nature and you may reckon all the joynts of a dead man but the heart is cold and the joynts are stiffe and fit for nothing but for the little people that creep in graves and so are very many men if you summe up the accounts of their religion they can reckon dayes and months of Religion various offices charity and prayers reading and meditation faith and knowledge catechisme and sacraments duty to God and duty to Princes paying debts and provision for children confessions and tears discipline in families and love of good people and it may be you shall not reprove their numbers or find any lines unfill'd in their tables of accounts but when you have handled all this and consider'd you will find at last you have taken a dead man by the hand there is not a finger wanting but they are stiffe as Isicles and without flexure as the legs of Elephants such are they whom S. Bernard describes whose spirituall joy is allayed with tediousnesse whose compunction for sins is short and seldome whose thoughts are animall and their designes secular whose Religion is lukewarm their obedience is without devotion their discourse without profit their prayer without intention of heart their reading without instruction their meditation is without spirituall advantages and is not the commencement and strengthning of holy purposes and they are such whom modesty will not restrain nor reason bridle nor discipline correct nor the fear of death and hell can keep from yeelding to the imperiousnesse of a foolish lust that dishonors a mans understanding and makes his reason in which he most glories to be weaker then the
discourse of a girle and the dreams of the night In every action of Religion God expects such a warmth and a holy fire to goe along that it may be able to enkindle the wood upon the altar and consume the sacrifice but God hates an indifferent spirit Earnestnesse and vivacity quicknesse and delight perfect choyce of the service and a delight in the prosecution is all that the spirit of a man can yeeld towards his Religion the outward work is the effect of the body but if a man does it heartily and with all his mind then religion hath wings and moves upon wheels of fire and therefore when our blessed Saviour made those capitulars and canons of Religion to love God and to love our neighbors besides that the materiall part of the duty love is founded in the spirit as its naturall seat he also gives three words to involve the spirit in the action and but one for the body Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soule and with all thy mind and lastly with all thy strength this brings in the body too because it hath some strengths and some significations of its own but heart and soule and mind mean all the same thing in a stronger and more earnest expression that is that we doe it hugely as much as we can with a cleer choice with a resolute understanding with strong affections with great diligence Enerves animos odisse virtus solet Vertue hates weak and ineffective minds and tame easie prosecutions Loripedes people whose arme is all flesh whose foot is all leather and an unsupporting skin they creep like snakes and pursue the noblest mysteries of Religion as Naaman did the mysteries of Rimmon onely in a complement or for secular regards but without the mind and therefore without Zeal I would thou wert either hot or cold said the Spirit of God to the Angell or Bishop of Laodicea In feasts or sacrifices the Ancients did use apponere frigidam or calidam sometimes they drank hot drink sometimes they poured cold upon their graves or in their wines but no services of Tables or Altars were ever with lukewarm God hates it worse then stark cold which expression is the more considerable because in naturall and superinduc'd progressions from extreme to extreme we must necessarily passe through the midst and therefore it is certain a lukewarm Religion is better then none at all as being the doing some parts of the work designed and neerer to perfection then the utmost distance could be and yet that God hates it more must mean that there is some appendant evill in this state which is not in the other and that accidentally it is much worse and so it is if we rightly understand it that is if we consider it not as a being in or passing through the middle way but as a state and a period of Religion If it be in motion a lukewarm Religion is pleasing to God for God hates it not for its imperfection and its naturall measures of proceeding but if it stands still and rests there it is a state against the designes and against the perfection of God and it hath in it these evills 1. It is a state of the greatest imprudence in the world for it makes a man to spend his labour for that which profits not and to deny his appetite for an unsatisfying interest he puts his moneys in a napkin and he that does so puts them into a broken bag he loses the principall for not encreasing the interest He that dwells in a state of life that is unacceptable loses the money of his almes and the rewards of his charity his hours of prayer and his parts of justice he confesses his sins and is not pardoned he is patient but hath no hope and he that is gone so far towards his countrey and stands in the middle way hath gone so far out of his way he had better have stay'd under a dry roof in the house of banishment then to have left his Gyarus the Island of his sorrow and to dwell upon the Adriatick So is he that begins a state of Religion and does not finish it he abides in the high-way and though he be neerer the place yet is as far from the rest of his countrey as ever and therefore all that beginning of labour was in the prejudice of his rest but nothing to the advantages of his hopes He that hath never begun hath lost no labour Jactura praeteritorum the losse of all that he hath done is the first evill of the negligent and luke-warm Christian according to the saying of Solomon He that is remisse or idle in his labour is the brother of him that scattereth his goods 2. The second appendant evill is that lukewarmnesse is the occasion of greater evill because the remisse easie Christian shuts the gate against the heavenly breathings of Gods holy Spirit he thinks every breath that is fan'd by the wings of the holy Dove is not intended to encourage his fires which burn and smoke and peep through the cloud already it tempts him to security and if an evill life be a certain inlet to a second death despaire on one side and security on the other are the bars and locks to that dore he can never passe forth again while that state remains who ever slips in his spirituall walking does not presently fall but if that slip does not awaken his diligence and his caution then his ruine begins vel pravae institutionis deceptus exordio aut per longam mentis incuriam virtute animi decidente as St. Austin observes either upon the pursuit of his first error or by a carelesse spirit or a decaying slackned resolution all which are the direct effects of lukewarmnesse But so have I seen a fair structure begun with art and care and raised to halfe its stature and then it stood still by the misfortune or negligence of the owner and the rain descended and dwelt in its joynts and supplanted the contexture of its pillars and having stood a while like the antiquated Temple of a deceased Oracle it fell into a hasty age and sunk upon its owne knees and so descended into ruine So is the imperfect unfinished spirit of a man it layes the foundation of a holy resolution and strengthens it with vows and arts of prosecution it raises up the Sacraments and Prayers Reading and holy Ordinances and holy actions begin with a slow motion and the building stays and the spirit is weary and the soul is naked and exposed to temptation and in the days of storm take in every thing that can doe it mischief and it is faint and sick listlesse and tired and it stands till its owne weight wearies the foundation and then declines to death and sad disorder being so much the worse because it hath not onely returned to its first follies but hath superadded unthankfulnesse and carelesnesse a positive neglect and
frequency in prayers and that part of zeal which relates to it is to be upon no account but of an holy spirit a wise heart and reasonable perswasion for if it begins upon passion or fear in imitation of others or desires of reputation honour or phantastick principles it will be unblessed and weary unprosperous and without return or satisfaction therefore if it happen to begin upon a weak principle be very curious to change the motive and with all speed let it be turned into religion and the love of holy things then let it be as frequent as it can prudently it cannot be amisse 2. When you are entred into a state of zealous prayer and a regular devotion what ever interruption you can meet with observe their causes and be sure to make them irregular seldome and contingent that your omissions may be seldome and casuall as a bare accident for which no provisions can be made for if ever it come that you take any thing habitually and constantly from your prayers or that you distract from them very frequently it cannot be but you will become troublesome to your self your prayers will be uneasie they will seem hinderances to your more necessary affairs of passion and interest and the things of the world and it will not stand still till it comes to Apostasie and a direct despite and contempt of holy things For it was an old rule and of a sad experience Tepiditas si callum obduxerit fiet apostasia if your lukewarmnesse be habituall and a state of life if it once be hardned by the usages of many daies it changes the whole state of the man it makes him an apostate to devotion Therefore be infinitely carefull in this particular alwayes remembring the saying of St. Chrysostome Docendi praedicandi officia alia cessant suo tempore precandi autem nunquam there are seasons for teaching and preaching and other outward offices but prayer is the duty of all times and of all persons and in all contingences From other things in many cases we can be excused but from prayer never In this therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is good to be zealous 2. Concerning the second instance I named viz. To give almes above our estate it is an excellent act of zeal and needs no other caution to make it secure from illusion and danger but that our egressions of charity do not prejudice justice See that your almes do not other men wrong and let them do what they can to thy self they will never prejudice thee by their abundance but then be also carefull that the pretences of justice do not cousen thy self of thy charity and the poor of thine almes and thy soul of the reward He that is in debt is not excused from giving almes till his debts are paid but only from giving away such portions which should and would pay them and such which he intended should do it There are lacernae divitiarum and crums from the table and the gleanings of the harvest and the scatterings of the vintage which in all estates are the portions of the poor which being collected by the hand of providence and united wisely may become considerable to the poor and are the necessary duties of charity but beyond this also every considerable relief to the poor is not a considerable diminution to the estate and yet if it be it is not alwaies considerable in the accounts of Justice for nothing ought to be pretended against the zeal of almes but the certain omissions or the very probable retarding the doing that to which we are otherwise obliged He that is going to pay a debt and in the way meets an indigent person that needs it all may not give it to him unlesse he knowes by other means to pay the debt but if he can do both he hath his liberty to lay out his money for a Crown But then in the case of provision for children our restraint is not so easie or discernible 1. Because we are not bound to provide for them in a certain portion but may do it by the analogies and measures of prudence in which there is a great latitude 2. Because our zeal of charity is a good portion for them and layes up a blessing for inheritance 3. Because the fairest portions of charity are usually short of such sums which can be considerable in the duty of provision for our children 4. If we for them could be content to take any measure lesse then all any thing under every thing that we can we should finde the portions of the poor made ready to our hands sufficiently to minister to zeal and yet not to intrench upon this case of conscience But the truth is we are so carelesse so unskil'd so unstudied in religion that we are only glad to make an an excuse and to defeat our souls of the reward of the noblest grace we are contented if we can but make a pretence for we are highly pleased if our conscience be quiet and care not so much that our duty be performed much lesse that our eternall interest be advanced in bigger portions We care not we strive not we think not of getting the greater rewards of Heaven and he whose desires are so indifferent for the greater will not take pains to secure the smallest portion and it is observable that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the least in the Kingdome of heaven is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as good as none if a man will be content with his hopes of the lowest place there and will not labour for something beyond it he does not value it at all and it is ten to one but will lose that for which he takes so little pains and is content with so easie a security He that does his almes and resolves that in no case he will suffer inconvenience for his brother whose case it may be is into erable should do well to remember that God in some cases requires a greater charity and it may be we shall be called to dye for the good of our brother and that although it alwaies supposes a zeal and a holy fervour yet sometimes it is also a duty and we lose our lives if we go to save them and so we do with our estates when we are such good husbands in our Religion that we will serve all our own conveniences before the great needs of a hungry and afflicted brother God oftentimes takes from us that which with so much curiosity we would preserve and then we lose our money and our reward too 3. Hither is to be reduced * the accepting and choosing the counsels Evangelicall * the virgin or widow estate in order to Religion * selling all and giving it to the poor * making our selves Eunuchs for the Kingdome of Heaven * offering our selves to death voluntary in exchange or redemption of the life of a most usefull person as Aquila and Priscilla who ventur'd their lives for St.
usefulnesse and advantages of its first intention But this I intended not to have spoken 2. Our Zeal must never carry us beyond that which is safe Some there are who in their first attempts and entries upon Religion while the passion that brought them in remains undertake things as great as their highest thoughts no repentance is sharp enough no charities expensive enough no fastings afflictive enough then totis Quinquatribus orant and finding some deliciousnesse at the first contest and in that activity of their passion they make vowes to binde themselves for ever to this state of delicacies The onset is fair but the event is this The age of a passion is not long and the flatulent spirit being breathed out the man begins to abate of his first heats and is ashamed but then he considers that all that was not necessary and therefore he will abate something more and from something to something at last it will come to just nothing and the proper effect of this is indignation and hatred of holy things an impudent spirit carelessenesse or despair Zeal sometimes carries a man into temptation and he that never thinks he loves God dutifully or acceptably because he is not imprison'd for him or undone or design'd to Martyrdome may desire a triall that will undoe him It is like fighting of a Duell to shew our valour Stay till the King commands you to fight and die and then let zeal do its noblest offices This irregularity and mistake was too frequent in the primitive Church when men and women would strive for death and be ambitious to feel the hangmans sword some miscarryed in the attempt and became sad examples of the unequall yoking a frail spirit with a zealous driver 3. Let Zeal never transport us to attempt anything but what is possible M. Teresa made a vow that she would do alwaies that which was absolutely the best But neither could her understanding alwaies tell her which was so nor her will alwayes have the same fervours and it must often breed scruples and sometimes tediousnesse and wishes that the vow were unmade He that vowes never to have an ill thought never to commit an error hath taken a course that his little infirmities shall become crimes and certainly be imputed by changing his unavoidable infirmity into vow-breach Zeal is a violence to a mans spirit and unlesse the spirit be secur'd by the proper nature of the duty and the circumstances of the action and the possibilities of the man it is like a great fortune in the meanest person it bears him beyond his limit and breaks him into dangers and passions transportations and all the furies of disorder that can happen to an abused person 4. Zeal is not safe unlesse it be in re probabili too it must be in a likely matter For we that finde so many excuses to untie all our just obligations and distinguish our duty into so much finenesse that it becomes like leaf-gold apt to be gone at every breath it can not be prudent that we zealously undertake what is not probable to be effected If we do the event can be nothing but portions of the former evill scruple and snares shamefull retreats and new fantastick principles In all our undertakings we must consider what is our state of life what our naturall inclinations what is our society and what are our dependencies by what necessities we are born down by what hopes we are biassed and by these let us measure our heats and their proper businesse A zealous man runs up a sandy hill the violence of motion is his greatest hinderance and a passion in Religion destroys as much of our evennesse of spirit as it sets forward any outward work and therefore although it be a good circumstance and degree of a spirituall duty so long as it is within and relative to God and our selves so long it is a holy flame but if it be in an outward duty or relative to our neighbours or in an instance not necessary it sometimes spoils the action and alwaies endangers it But I must remember we live in an age in which men have more need of new fires to be kindled within them and round about them then of any thing to allay their forwardnesse there is little or no zeal now but the zeal of envie and killing as many as they can and damning more then they can 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 smoke and lurking fires do corrode and secretly consume therefore this discourse is lesse necessary A Physitian would have but small imployment near the Riphâ—an Mountains if he could cure nothing but Calentures Catarrhes and dead palsies Colds and Consumptions are their evils and so is lukewarmnesse and deadnesse of spirit the proper maladies of our age for though some are hot when they are mistaken yet men are cold in a righteous cause and the nature of this evill is to be insensible and the men are farther from a cure because they neither feel their evill nor perceive their danger But of this I have already given account and to it I shall only adde what an old spirituall person told a novice in religion asking him the cause why he so frequently suffered tediousnesse in his religious offices Nondum vidisti requiem quam speramus nec tormenta quae timemus young man thou hast not seen the glories which are laid up for the zealous and devout nor yet beheld the flames which are prepared for the lukewarm and the haters of strict devotion But the Jewes tell that Adam having seen the beauties and tasted the delicacies of Paradise repented and mourned upon the Indian Mountains for three hundred years together and we who have a great share in the cause of his sorrowes can by nothing be invited to a persevering a great a passionate religion more then by remembring what he lost and what is laid up for them whose hearts are burning lamps and are all on fire with Divine love whose flames are fann'd with the wings of the holy Dove and whose spirits shine and burn with that fire which the holy Jesus came to enkindle upon the earth Sermon XV. The House of Feasting OR THE EPICVRES MEASVRES Part I. 1 Cor. 15. 32. last part Let us eat and drink for to morrow we dye THis is the Epicures Proverb begun upon a weak mistake started by chance from the discourses of drink and thought witty by the undiscerning company and prevail'd infinitely because it struck their fancy luckily and maintained the merry meeting but as it happens commonly to such discourses so this also when it comes to be examined by the consultations of the morning and the sober hours of the day it seems the most witlesse and the most unreasonable in the world When Seneca describes the spare diet of Epicurus and Metrodorus he uses this expression Liberaliora sunt alimenta carceris sepositos ad capitale supplicium non tam angustè qui occisurus est pascit The prison keeps a
decline to publish it 3. That by a prudent morall care he watch over his words that he doe none of this injury and unworthinesse 4. That he offer up to God in his prayers all his words and then look to it that he speak nothing unworthy to be offered 5. That he often interweave discourses of Religion and glorifications of God instructions to his brother and ejaculations of his owne something or other not onely to sanctifie the order of his discourses but to call him back into retirement and sober thoughts lest he wander and be carried off too far into the wilde regions of impertinence and this Zeno calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to dip our tongues in understanding In all other cases the rule is good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 either keep silence or speak something that is better then it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so Isocrates constantly enough to this Evangelicall precept a seasonable silence or a profitable discourse choose you whether for whatsoever cometh of more is sin or else is folly at hand and will be sin at distance Lastly 5. This account is not to be taken by little traverses and intercourses of speech but by greater measures and more discernible portions such as are commensurate to valuable portions of time for however we are pleased to throw away our time and are weary of many parts of it yet are impatiently troubled when all is gone yet we are as sure to account for every considerable portion of our time as for every summe of money we receive and in this it was that St. Bernard gave caution Nemo parvi aestimet tempus quod in verbis consumitur otiosis Let no man think it a light matter that he spend his pretious time in idle words let no man be so weary of what flies away too fast and cannot be recalled as to use arts and devices to passe the time away in vanity which might be rarely spent in the interests of eternity Time is given us to repent in to appease the divine anger to prepare for and hasten to the society of Angels to stir up our slackned wills and enkindle our cold devotions to weep for our daily iniquities and to sigh after and work for the restitution of our lost inheritance and the reward is very inconsiderable that exchanges all this for the pleasure of a voluble tongue and indeed this is an evill that cannot be avoyded by any excuse that can be made for words that are in any sense idle though in all senses of their owne nature and proper relations they be innocent They are a throwing away something of that which is to be expended for eternity and put on degrees of folly according as they are tedious and expensive of time to no good purposes * I shall not after all this need to reckon more of the evill consequent to the vain and great talker but if these already reckoned were not a heap big enough I could easily adde this great evill that the talking man makes himselfe artificially deafe being like a man in the steeple when the bells ring you talke to a deafe man though you speake wisely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Good counsell is lost upon him and he hath serv'd all his ends when he pours out whatsoever he took in for he therefore loaded his vessell that he might pour it forth into the sea These and many more evils and the perpetuall unavoydable necessity of sinning by much talking hath given great advantages to silence and made it to be esteemed an act of Discipline and great Religion St. Romualdus upon the Syrian mountaine severely kept a seaven years silence and Thomas Cantipratensis tels of a religious person in a Monastery in Brabant that spake not one word in 16 years But they are greater examples which Palladius tels of Ammona who liv'd with 3000 Brethren in so great silence as if he were an Anachoret but Theona was silent for 30 years together and Johannes surnamed Silentiarius was silent for 47 years But this morosity and sullennesse is so far from being imitable and laudable that if there were no direct prevarication of any commands expressed or intimated in Scripture yet it must certainly either draw with it or be it self an infinite omission of duty especially in the externall glorifications of God in the institution or advantages of others in thanksgiving and publick offices and in all the effects and emanations of spirituall mercy This was to make amends for committing many sins by omitting many duties and in stead of digging out the offending eye to pluck out both that they might neither see the scandall nor the duty for fear of seeing what they should not to shut their eyes against all light It was more prudent which was reported of St. Gregory Nazianzen who made Silence an act of Discipline and kept it a whole Lent in his religious retirements cujus facti mei si causam quaeris said he in his account he gives of it idcircò à sermone prorsus abstinui ut sermonibus meis moderari discam I then abstained wholly that all the yeer after I might be more temperate in my talke This was in him an act of caution but how apt it was to minister to his purpose of a moderated speech for the future is not certaine nor the philosophy of it and naturall efficacy easie to be apprehended It was also practised by way of penance with indignation against the follies of the Tongue and the itch of prating so to chastise that petulant member as if there were a great pleasure in prating which when it grew inordinate it was to be restrained and punished like other lusts I remember it was reported of St. Paul the Hermit Scholar of St. Anthony that having once asked whether Christ or the old Prophets were first he grew so ashamed of his foolish Question that he spake not a word for 3 years following And Sulpitius as St. Hierom reports of him being deceived by the Pelagians spoke some fond things and repenting of it held his tongue till his dying day ut peccatum quod loquendo contraxerat tacendo penitùs emendaret Though the pious minde is in such actions highly to be regarded yet I am no way perswaded of the prudence of such a deadnesse and Libitinarian Religion Murmuracum secum rabiosa silentia rodunt so such importune silence was called and understood to be a degree of stupidity and madnesse for so Physicians among the signes of that disease in dogs place their not barking and yet although the excesse and unreasonablenesse of this may be well chastised by such a severe reproofe yet it is certaine in silence there is wisdome and there may be deep religion So Aretaeus describing the life of a studious man among others he inserts this they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without colour pale and wise when they are young and by reason of their knowledge silent as
Mutes and dumb as the Seriphian frogs And indeed it is certaine great knowledge if it be without vanity is the most severe bridle of the Tongue For so have I heard that all the noyses and prating of the poole the croaking of frogs and toads is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the light of a candle or torch Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge checks the dissolutions of the Tongue But ut quisque contemptissimus maximè ludibrio est it a solutissimae linguae est said Seneca Every man as he is a fool and contemptible so his tongue is hanged loose being like a bell in which there is nothing but tongue and noise Silence therefore is the cover of folly or the effect of wisdome but it is also religious and the greatest mystick rites of any institution are ever the most solemn and the most silent the words in use are almost made Synonymous There was silence made in heaven for a while said St. John who noted it upon occasion of a great solemnity and mysterious worshippings or revelations to be made there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one of the gods is within said Telemachus upon occasion of which his Father reproved his talking 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Be thou also silent and say little let thy soule be in thy hand and under command for this is the rite of the gods above And I remember that when Aristophanes describes the Religion in the Temple of Esculapius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Priest commanded great silence when the mysteriousnesse was nigh and so among the Romanes Ite igitur pueri linguis animisque faventes Sertaque delubris farra imponite cultris But now although silence is become religious and is wise and reverend and severe and safe and quiet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Hippocrates affirms of it without thirst and trouble and anguish yet it must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it must be seasonable and just not commenced upon chance or humour not sullen and ill-natur'd not proud and full of fancy not pertinacious and dead not mad and uncharitable nam sic etiam tacuisse nocet He that is silent in a publick joy hath no portion in the festivity or no thankfulnesse to him that gave the cause of it And though of all things in the world a prating Religion and much talke in holy things does most profane the mysteriousnesse of it and dismantles its regards and makes cheap its reverence and takes off fear and awfulnesse and makes it loose and garish like the laughters of drunkennesse yet even in Religion there are seasons to speak and it was sometimes pain and grief to David to be silent But yet although tedious and dead silence hath not a just measure of praise and wisdome yet the worst silence of a religious person is more tolerable and innocent then the usuall pratings of the looser and foolish men Pone Domine custodiam ori meo ostium circumstantiae labâ—is meis said David Put a guard O Lord unto my mouth and a dore unto my lips upon which St. Gregory said well Non parietem sed ostium petit quod viz. aperitur clauditur he did not ask for a wall but for a dore a dore that might open and shut and it were well it were so indeed Labia tua sicut vitta coccinea so Christ commends his Spouse in the Canticles Thy lips are like a scarlet hair-lace that is tyed up with modesty from folly and dissolution For however that few people offend in silence and keeping the dore shut too much yet in opening it too hastily and speaking too much and too foolishly no man is without a load of guiltynesse and some mouths like the gates of death Noctes atque dies patent are open night and day and he who is so cannot be innocent It is said of Cicero he never spake a word which himself would fain have recalled he spake nothing that repented him St. Austin in his 7. Ep. to Marcellinus sayes it was the saying of a fool and a sot not of a wise man and yet I have read the same thing to have been spoken by the famous Abbat Pambo in the Primitive Church and if it could be well said of this man who was sparing and severe in talke it is certain it could not be said of the other who was a talking bragging person SERMON XXIII Part II. THe consideration hitherto hath been of the immoderation and generall excesse in speaking without descending to particular cases but because it is a principle and parent of much evill it is with great caution to be cured and the evill consequents will quickly disband But when we draw neer to give counsell we shall finde that upon a talking person scarce any medicine will stick 1. Plutarch advises that such men should give themselves to writing that making an issue in the arme it should drain the flouds of the head supposing that if the humour were any way vented the tongue might be brought to reason But the experience of the world hath confuted this and when Ligurinus had writ a Poem he talked of it to all companies he came in But however it can be no hurt to try for some have been cured of bleeding at the nose by opening a vein in the arm 2. Some advise that such persons should keep company with their betters with grave and wise and great persons before whom men doe not usually bring forth all but the better parts of their discourse and this is apt to give assistance by the help of modesty and might doe well if men were not apt to learn to talk more in the society of the aged and out of a desire to seem wise and knowing be apt to speak before their opportunity 3. Consideration of the dangers and consequent evills hath some efficacy in nature to restrain our looser talkings by the help of fear and prudent apprehensions Aelian tels of the geese flying over the mountain Taurus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that for fear of Eagles nature hath taught them to carry stones in their mouths till they be past their danger care of our selves desire of reputation appetites of being believed love of societies and faire complyances fear of quarrels and misinterpretation of lawsuits and affronts of scorne and contempt of infinite sins and consequently the intolerable wrath of God these are the great endearments of prudent and temperate speech 4. Some advise that such persons should change their speech into businesse and action and it were well if they chang'd it into any good thing for then the evill were cured but action and businesse is not the cure alone unlesse we adde solitarinesse for the experience of this last age hath made us to feel that companies of working people have nurs'd up a strange Religion the first second and third part of which is talking and folly save onely that mischief and pride
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 dishonoured and despised his mercy which God intended as an instrument of our piety hath no better way to glorifie God then by returning to his duty to advance the honour of the Divine Attributes in which he is pleased to communicate himself and to have entercourse with man He that repents confesses his own errour and the righteousnesse of Gods lawes and by judging himself confesses that he deserves punishment and therefore that God is righteous if he punishes him and by returning confesses God to be the fountain of felicity and the foundation of true solid and permanent joyes saying in the sense and passion of the Disciples Whither shall we go for thou hast the words of eternall life and by humbling himself exalts God by making the proportions of distance more immense and vast and as repentance does contain in it all the parts of holy life which can be performed by a returning sinner all the acts and habits of vertue being but parts or instances or effects of repentance so all the actions of a holy life do constitute the masse and body of all those instruments whereby God is pleased to glorifie himself * For if God is glorified in the Sunne and Moon in the rare fabrick of the honey-combs in the discipline of Bees in the oeconomy of Pismires in the little houses of birds in the curiosity of an eye God being pleased to delight in those little images and reflexes of himself from those pretty mirrours which like a crevice in a wall thorow a narrow perspective transmit the species of a vast excellency much rather shall God be pleased to behold himself in the glasses of our obedience in the emissions of our will and understanding these being rationall and apt instruments to expresse him farre better then the naturall as being neerer communications of himself But I shall no longer discourse of the Philosophy of this expression certain it is that in the stile of Scripture repentance is the great glorification of God and the Prophet by calling the people to give God glory calls upon them to repent and so expresses both the duty and the event of it the event being Glory to God on high and peace on earth and good will towards men by the sole instrument of repentance And this was it which Joshuah said to Achan Give I pray thee glory to the Lord God of Israel and make confession unto him that one act of repentance is one act of glorifying God and this David acknowledged Against thee onely have I sinned ut tu justificeris that thou mightest be justified or cleared that is that God may have the honour of being righteous and we the shame of receding from so excellent a perfection or as S. Paul quotes and explicates the place Let God be true and every man a liar as it is written that thou mightest be justified in thy sayings and mightest overcome when thou art judged But to clear the sense of this expression of the Prophet observe the words of S. John and men were scorched with great heat and blasphemed the name of God who hath power over those plagues and they repented not to give him glory So that having strength and reason from these so many authorities I may be free to read the words of my Text thus Repent of all your sins before God cause darknesse and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains and then we have here the duty of repentance and the time of its performance it must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a seasonable and timely repentance a repentance which must begin before our darknesse begin a repentance in the day time ut dum dies est operemini that ye may work while it is to day lest if we stumble upon the dark mountains that is fall into the ruines of old age which makes a broad way narrow and a plain way to be a craggy mountain or if we stumble and fall into our last sicknesse instead of health God send us to our grave and instead of light and salvation which we then confidently look for he make our state to be outer darknesse that is misery irremediable misery eternall This exhortation of the Prophet was alwayes full of caution and prudence but now it is highly necessary since men who are so clamorously called to repentance that they cannot avoid the necessity of it yet that they may reconcile an evil life with the hopes of heaven have crowded this duty into so little room that it is almost strangled and extinct and they have lopped off so many members that they have reduced the whole body of it to the dimensions of a little finger sacrificing their childhood to vanity their youth to lust and to intemperance their manhood to ambition and rage pride and revenge secular desires and unholy actions and yet still further giving their old age to covetousnesse and oppression to the world and to the Devil and after all this what remains for God and for Religion Oh for that they wll do well enough upon their death-bed they will think a few godly thoughts they will send for a Priest to minister comfort to them they will pray and ask God forgivenesse and receive the holy Sacrament and leave their goods behinde them disposing them to
he never so wisely Nay further yet we suffer the Arguments of Religion to have so little impression upon our spirits that they operate but like the discourses of childhood or the Problems of uncertain Philosophy A man talks of Religion but as of a dream and from thence he awakens into the Businesses of the world and acts them deliberately with perfect Action and full Resolution and contrives and considers and lives in them But when he falls asleep again or is taken from the Scene of his own employment and choice then he dreams again and Religion makes such Impressions as is the conversation of a Dreamer and he acts accordingly Theocritus tells of a Fisherman that dreamed he had taken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Fish of gold upon which being over-joyed he made a vow that he would never fish more But when he waked he soon declared his vow to be null because he found his golden Fish was scaped away through the holes of his eyes when he first opened them Just so we do in the purposes of Religion sometimes in a good mood we seem to see Heaven opened and all the streets of Heavenly Jerusalem paved with gold and precious stones and we are ravished with spirituall apprehensions and resolve never to return to the low affections of the world and the impure adherencies of sin but when this flash of lightning is gone and we converse again with the Inclinations and habituall desires of our false hearts those other desires and fine considerations disband and the Resolutions taken in that pious fit melt into Indifferency and old Customes He was prettily and fantastically troubled who having used to put his trust in Dreams one night dreamed that all dreams were vain For he considered If so then This was vain and then dreams might be true for all this But if they might be true then this dream might be so upon equall reason And then dreams were vain because This dream which told him so was true and so round again In the same Circle runs the Heart of man All his cogitations are vain and yet he makes especiall use of this that that Thought which thinks so That is vain and if That be vain then his other Thoughts which are vainly declared so may be Reall and Relied upon And so we do Those religious thoughts which are sent into us to condemne and disrepute the thoughts of sin and vanity are esteemed the onely dreams And so all those Instruments which the grace of God hath invented for the destruction of Impiety are rendred ineffectuall either by our direct opposing them or which happens most commonly by our want of considering them The effect of all is this That we are ignorant of the things of God we make Religion to be the work of a few hours in the whole yeer we are without fancy or affection to the severities of holy Living we reduce Religion to the Beleeving of a few Articles and doing nothing that is considerable we Pray seldome and then but very coldly and indifferently we Communicate not so often as the Sun salutes both the Tropicks we professe Christ but dare not die for him we are factious for a Religion and will not live according to its precepts we call our selves Christians and love to be ignorant of many of the Lawes of Christ lest our knowledge should force us into shame or into the troubles of a holy Life All the mischiefs that you can suppose to happen to a furious inconsiderate person running after the wilde-fires of the night over Rivers and Rocks and Precipices without Sun or starre or Angel or Man to guide him All that and ten thousand times worse may you suppose to be the certain Lot of him who gives himself up to the conduct of a passionate blinde Heart whom no fire can warm and no Sun enlighten who hates light and loves to dwell in the Regions of darknesse That 's the first generall mischief of the Heart It is possessed with Blindnesse wilfull and voluntary 2. But the Heart is Hard too Not onely Folly but Mischief also is bound up in the Heart of man If God strives to soften it with sorrow and sad Accidents it is like an Ox it grows callow and hard Such a heart was Pharaohs When God makes the clouds to gather round about us we wrap our heads in the clouds and like the male-contents in Galba's time Tristitiam simulamus Contumaciae propiores We seem sad and troubled but it is doggednesse and murmur Or else if our fears be pregnant and the heart yeelding it sinks low into pusillanimity and superstition and our hearts are so childish so timerous or so impatient in a sadnesse that God is weary of making us and we are glad of it And yet when the Sun shines upon us our hearts are hardned with that too and God 〈◊〉 to be at a losse as if he knew not what to do to us Warre undoes us and makes us violent Peace undoes us and makes us wanton Prosperity makes us Proud Adversity renders us Impatient Plenty dissolves us and makes us Tyrants Want makes us greedy liars and rapacious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No fortune can save that City to whom neither Peace nor Warre can do advantage And what is there left for God to mollifie our hearts whose temper is like both to wax and durt whom fire hardens and cold hardens and contradictory Accidents produce no change save that the heart growes worse and more obdurate for every change of Providence But here also I must descend to particulars 1. The Heart of man is strangely Proud If men commend us we think we have reason to distinguish our selves from others since the voice of discerning men hath already made the separation If men do not commend us we think they are stupid and understand us not or envious and hold their tongues in spite If we are praised by many then Vox populi vox Dei Fame is the voice of God If we be praised but by few then Satis unus satis nullus We cry these are wise and one wise man is worth a whole herd of the People But if we be praised by none at all we resolve to be even with all the world and speak well of no body and think well onely of our selves And then we have such beggerly Arts such tricks to cheat for praise we inquire after our faults and failings onely to be told we have none but did excellently and then we are pleased we rail upon our actions onely to be chidden for so doing and then he is our friend who chides us into a good opinion of our selves which however all the world cannot make us part with Nay Humility it self makes us proud so false so base is the the Heart of man For Humility is so noble a vertue that even Pride it self puts on its upper Garment And we do like those who cannot endure to look upon an
ugly or a deformed person and yet will give a great price for a picture extreamly like him Humility is despised in substance but courted and admired in effigie And Aesops picture was sold two talents when himself was made a slave at the price of two Philippicks And because Humility makes a man to be honoured Therefore we imitate all its garbs and postures its civilities and silence its modesties and condescensions And to prove that we are extreamly proud in the midst of all this pagentry we should be extreamly angry at any man that should say we are proud And that 's a sure signe we are so And in the middest of all our Arts to seem Humble we use devices to bring our selves into talk we thrust our selves into company we listen at doors and like the great Beards in Rome that pretended Philosophy and strict life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We walk by the Obelisk and meditate in Piazza's that they that meet us may talk of us and they that follow may cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Behold there goes an excellent man He is very prudent or very learned or a charitable person or a good housekeeper or at least very Humble The Heart of man is deeply in love with wickednesse and with nothing else Against not onely the Lawes of God but against his own Reason it s own Interest and its own Securities For is it imaginable that a man who knows the Lawes of God the rewards of Vertue the cursed and horrid effects of sin that knows and considers and deeply sighes at the thought of the intolerable pains of Hell that knowes the joyes of Heaven to be unspeakable and that concerning them there is no temptation but that they are too big for man to hope for And yet he certainly beleeves that a holy life shall infallibly attain thither Is it I say imaginable that this man should for a transient Action forfeit all this Hope and certainly and knowing incur all that calamity Yea but the sin is pleasant and the man is clothed with flesh and blood and their appetites are materiall and importunate and present And the discourses of Religion are concerning things spirituall separate and apt for spirits Angels and souls departed To take off this also We will suppose the man to consider and really to beleeve that the pleasure of the sin is sudden vain empty and transient that it leaves bitternesse upon the tongue before it is descended into the bowels that there it is poison and makes the Belly to swell and the Thigh to rot That he remembers and actually considers that as soon as the moment of sin is past he shall have an intolerable Conscience and does at the instant compare moments with Eternity and with horrour remembers that the very next minute he is as miserable a man as is in the world Yet that this man should sin Nay suppose the sin to have no pleasure at all such as is the sin of swearing Nay suppose it really to have pain in it such as is the sin of Envy which never can have pleasure in its actions but much torment and consumption of the very heart What should make this man sin so for nothing so against himself so against all Reason and Religion and Interest without pleasure for no reward Here the heart betrayes it self to be desperately wioked What man can give a reasonable account of such a man who to prosecute his revenge will do himself an injury that he may do a lesse to him that troubles him Such a man hath given me ill language 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 My head akes not for his language nor hath he broken my thigh nor carried away my land But yet this man must be requited Well suppose that But then let it be proportionable you are not undone let not him be so Oh yes for else my revenge triumphs not Well if you do yet remember he will defend himself or the Law will right him at least do not do wrong to your self by doing him wrong This were but Prudence and self-Interest And yet we see that the heart of some men hath betrayed them to such furiousnesse of Appetite as to make them willing to die that their enemie may be buried in the same Ruines Jovius Pontanus tells of an Italian slave I think who being enraged against his Lord watched his absence from home and the employment and inadvertency of his fellow-servants he locked the doors and secured himself for a while and Ravished his Lady then took her three sons up to the battlements of the house and at the return of his Lord threw one down to him upon the pavement and then a second to rend the heart of their sad Father seeing them weltring in their blood and brains The Lord begd for his third and now his onely Son promising pardon and libertie if he would spare his life The slave seemed to bend a little and on condition his Lord would cut off his own Nose he would spare his Son The sad Father did so being willing to suffer any thing rather then the losse of that Childe But as soon as he saw his Lord all bloody with his wound he threw the third Son and himself down together upon the Pavement The story is sad enough and needs no lustre and advantages of sorrow to represent it But if a man sets himself down and considers sadly he cannot easily tell upon what sufficient inducement or what principle the slave should so certainly so horridly so presently and then so eternally ruine himself What could he propound to himself as a recompence to his own so immediate Tragedy There is not in the pleasure of the revenge nor in the nature of the thing any thing to tempt him we must confesse our ignorance and say that The Fleart of man is desperately wicked and that is the truth in generall but we cannot fathom it by particular comprehension For when the heart of man is bound up by the grace of God and tied in golden bands and watched by Angels tended by those Nurse-keepers of the soul it is not easie for a man to wander And the evil of his heart is but like the ferity and wildnesse of Lyons-whelps But when once we have broken the hedge and got into the strengths of youth and the licenciousnesse of an ungoverned age it is wonderfull to observe what a great inundation of mischief in a very short time will overflow all the banks of Reason and Religion Vice first is pleasing then it grows easie then delightfull then frequent then habituall then confirmed then the man is impenitent then he is obstinate then he resolves never to Repent and then he is Damned And by that time he is come half way in this progresse he confutes the Philosophy of the old Moralists For they not knowing the vilenesse of mans Heart not considering its desperate amazing Impiety knew no other degree of wickednesse but This That men preferred Sense
proper instruments of religion But since it is the greatest action of the religion and relies upon the most excellent promises and its formality is to be an action of love and nothing is more firmely chosen by an after election at least then an act of love to support Martyrdom or the duty of sufferings by false arches and exteriour circumstances is to build a tower upon the beams of the Sun or to set up a woodden ladder to climbe up to Heaven the soul cannot attain so huge and unimaginable felicities by chance and instruments of fancy and let no man hope to glorifie God and go to Heaven by a life of sufferings unlesse he first begin in the love of God and from thence derive his choice his patience and confidence in the causes of vertue and religion like beams and warmth and influence from the body of the Sun Some there are that fall under the burden when they are pressed hard because they use not the proper instruments in fortifying the will in patience and resignation but endeavour to lighten the burden in imagination and when these temporary supporters fail the building that relies upon them rushes into coldnesse recidivation and luke warmnesse and among all instances that of the main question of the Text is of greatest power to abuse imprudent and lesse severe persons Nullos esse Deos inane coelum Affirmat Selius probatque Quod se videt dum negat haec beatum When men choose a good cause upon confidence that an ill one cannot thrive that is not for the love of vertue or duty to God but for profit and secular interests they are easily lost when they see the wickednesse of the enemy to swell up by impunity and successe to a great evil for they have not learned to distinguish a great growing sin from a thriving and prosperous fortune Ulla si juris tibi pejerati Poena Barine nocuisset unquant Dente si nigro fieret vel unto turpior ungui Crederem They that beleeve and choose because of idle fears and unreasonable fancies or by mistaking the accounts of a man for the measures of God or dare not commit treason for fear of being blasted may come to be tempted when they see a sinner thrive and are scandalized all the way if they die before him or they may come to receive some accidentall hardnesses and every thing in the world may spoil such persons and blast their resolutions Take in all the aids you can and if the fancy of the standers by or the hearing a cock crow can adde any collaterall aids to thy weaknesse refuse it not But let thy state of sufferings begin with choice and be confirmed with knowledge and rely upon love and the aids of God and the expectations of heaven and the present sense of duty and then the action will be as glorious in the event as it is prudent in the enterprise and religious in the prosecution 6. Lastly when God hath brought thee into Christs school and entered thee into a state of sufferings remember the advantages of that state consider how unsavoury the things of the world appear to thee when thou are under the arrest of death remember with what comforts the Spirit of God assists thy spirit set down in thy heart all those entercourses which happen between God and thy own soul the sweetnesses of religion the vanity of sins appearances thy newly entertained resolutions thy longings after heaven and all the things of God and if God finishes thy persecution with death proceed in them if he restores thee to the light of the world and a temporall refreshment change but the scene of sufferings into an active life and converse with God upon the same principles on which in thy state of sufferings thou dost build all the parts of duty If God restores thee to thy estate be not lesse in love with heaven nor more in love with the world let thy spirit be now as humble as before it was broken and to what soever degree of sobriety or austerity thy suffering condition did enforce thee if it may be turned into vertue when God restores thee because then it was necessary thou shouldest entertain it by an after choice do now also by a prae election that thou mayest say with David It is good for me that I have been afflicted for thereby I have learned thy commandments and Paphnutius did not do his soul more advantage when he lost his right eye and suffered his left knee to be cut for Christianity and the cause of God then that in the dayes of Constantine and the Churches peace he lived not in the toleration but in the active piety of a Martyrs condition not now a confessor of the faith onely but of the charity of a Christian we may every one live to have need of these rules and I do not at all think it safe to pray against it but to be armed for it and to whatsoever degree of sufferings God shal call us we see what advantages God intends for us and what advantages we our selves may make of it I now proceed to make use of all the former discourse by removing it a little further even into its utmost spiritual sense which the Apostle does in the last words of the text If the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the wicked and the sinner appear These words are taken out of the proverbs according to the translation of the 70. If the righteous scarcely is safe where the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implyes that he is safe but by intermedial difficulties and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is safe in the midst of his persecutions they may disturb his rest and discompose his fancy but they are like the firy charriot to Elias he is encircled with fire and rare circumstances and strange usages but is carried up to Heaven in a robe of flames and so was Noah safe when the flood came and was the great type and instance too of the verification of this proposition he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was put into a strange condition perpetually wandring shut up in a prison of wood living upon faith having never had the experience of being safe in flouds And so have I often seen young and unskilful persons sitting in a little boat when every little wave sporting about the sides of the vessel and every motion and dancing of the barge seemed a danger and made them cling fast upon their fellows and yet all the while they were as safe as if they sat under a tree while a gentle winde shaked the leaves into a refreshment and a cooling shade And the unskiful unexperienced Christian shrikes out when ever his vessel shakes thinking it alwayes a danger that the watry pavement is not stable and resident like a rock and yet all his danger is in himself none at all from without for he is indeed moving upon the waters but fastned to an 〈◊〉 faith is his foundation
instance of providence that by the great religion and piety of the first Professors Christianity might be firmly planted and unshaken by scandall and hardened by persecution and that these first lights might be actuall Precedents for ever and Copies for us to transcribe in all descending ages of Christianity that thither we might run to fetch oil to enkindle our extinguished lamps But then piety was so universall that it might well be enjoyned by Saint Paul that if a brother walked disorderly the Christians should avoid his company He forbad them not to accompany with the Heathens that walked disorderly for then a man must have gone out of the world But they were not to endure so much as to eat with or to salute a disorderly brother an ill living Christian But now if we should observe this canon of Saint Paul and refuse to eat or to converse with a fornicatour or a drunkard or a perjured person or covetous we must also go out of the world for a pious or a holy person is now as rare as a disorderly Christian was at first and as Christianity is multiplied every where in name and title so it is destroyed in life essence and proper operation and we have very great reason to fear that Christs name will serve us to no end but to upbraid our basenesse and his person onely to be our Judge and his lawer as so many bills of accusation and his graces and helps offered us but as aggravations of our unworthinesse and our baptisme but an occasion of vow-breach and the holy Communion but an act of hypocrisie formality or sacrilege and all the promises of the Gospel but as pleasant dreams and the threatnings but as arts of affrightment for Christianity lasted pure and zealous it kept its rules and observed its own lawes for three hundred yeers or thereabouts so long the Church remained a Virgin For so long they were warmed with their first fires and kept under discipline by the rod of persecution but it hath declined almost fourteen hundred yeers together prosperity and pride wantonnesse and great fortunes ambition and interest false doctrine upon mistake and upon designe the malice of the Devil and the arts of all his instruments the want of zeal and a wearinesse of spirit filthy examples and a disreputation of piety and a strict life seldome precedents and infinite discouragements have caused so infinite a declension of piety and holy living that what Papirius Massonius one of their own said of the Popes of Rome In pontificibus nemo hodrè sanctitatem requirit optimi putantur si vel leviter mali sint vel minus boni quam caeteri mortales esse solent No man looks for holines in the Bishops of Rome those are the best Popes who are not extremly wicked the same is too true of the greatest part of Christians Men are excellent persons if they be not traytors or adulterous oppressors or injurious drunkards or scandalous if they be not as this publican as the vilest person with whom they converse Nunc si depositum non inficiatur amicus Si reddat veterem cum totâ aerugine fllem Prodigiosa fides Thuscis digna libellis Quaeque coronatâ lustrari debeat agnâ Juven Sat. 13. He that is better then the dregs of his own age whose religion is something above prophanesse and whose sobriety is a step or two from down right intemperance whose discourse is not swearing nor yet apt to edifie whose charity is set out in pity and a gentle yerning and saying God help whose alms are contemptible and his devotion infrequent yet as things are now he is unus è mitibus one of a thousand and he stands eminent and conspicuous in the valleys and lower grounds of the present piety for a bank is a mountain upon a levell but what is rare and eminent in the manners of men this day would have been scandalous and have deserved the rod of an Apostle if it had been confronted with the fervours and rare devotion and religion of our fathers in the Gospel Men of old looked upon themselves as they stood by the examples and precedents of Martyrs and compared their piety to the life of Saint Paul and estimated their zeal by the flames of the Boanerges Saint James and his brother and the Bishops were thought reproveable as they fell short of the ordinary government of Saint Peter and Saint John and the assemblies of Christians were so holy that every meeting had religion enough to hallow a house and convert it to a Church and every day of feasting was a Communion and every fasting day was a day of repentance and alms and every day of thanksgiving was a day of joy and alms and religion begun all their actions and prayer consecrated them and they ended in charity and were not polluted with designe they despised the world heartily and pursued after heaven greedily they knew no ends but to serve God and to be saved and had no designes upon their neighbours but to lead them to God and to felicity till Satan full of envy to see such excellent dayes mingled covetousnesse and ambition within the throngs and conventions of the Church and a vice crept into an office and then the mutuall confidence grew lesse and so charity was lessened and heresies crept in and then faith began to be sullied and pride crept in and then men snatched at offices not for the work but for the dignity and then they served themselves more then God and the Church till at last it came to the passe where now it is that the Clergy live lives no better then the Laity and the Laity are stooped to imitate the evil customes of strangers and enemies of Christianity so that we should think Religion in a good condition so that men did offer up to God but the actions of an ordinary even and just life without the scandall and allayes of a great impiety But because such is the nature of things that either they grow towards perfection or decline towards dissolution There is no proper way to secure it but by setting its growth forward for religion hath no station or naturall periods if it does not grow better it grows much worse not that it alwayes returns the man into scandalous sins but that it establishes and fixes him in a state of indifferency and lukewarmnesse and he is more averse to a state of improvement and dies in an incurious ignorant and unrelenting condition But grow in grace That 's the remedy and that would make us all wise and happy blessed in this world and sure of heaven Concerning which we are to consider first what the estate of grace is into which every one of us must be entred that we may grow in it secondly the proper parts acts and offices of growing in grace 3. The signes consequences and proper significations by which if we cannot perceive the growing yet afterwards we may perceive that we are
the same emission but sometimes by designe and sometimes by order sometimes by affection we are more busie more intire and more intent upon the actions of religion in such cases we are to judge of our growth in grace if after every interval of exraordinary piety the next return be more devout and more affectionate the labour be more cheerfull and more active and if religion returnes oftner and stayes longer in the same expressions and leaves more satisfaction upon the spirit Are your communions more frequent and when they are do ye approach neerer to God have you made firmer resolutions and entertained more hearty purposes of amendment Do you love God more dutifully and your neighbour with a greater charity do you not so easily return to the world as formerly are not you glad when the thing is done do you go to your secular accounts with a more weaned affection then before if you communicate well it is certain that you will still do it better if you do not communicate well every opportunity of doing it is but a new trouble easily excused readily omitted done because it is necessary but not because we love it and we shall finde that such persons in their old age do it worst of all And it was observed by a Spanish Confessor who was also a famous preacher that in persons not very religious the confessions which they made upon their deathbed were the coldest the most imperfect and with lesse contrition then all that he had observed them to make in many years before For so the Canes of Egypt when they newly arise from their bed of mud and slime of Nilus start up into an equal and continual length and are interrupted but with few knots and are strong and beauteous with great distances and intervals but when they are grown to their full length they lessen into the point of a pyramis and multiply their knots and joynts interrupting the finenesse and smoothnesse of its body so are the steps declensions of him that does not grow in grace at first when he springs up from his impurity by the waters of baptisme and repentance he grows straight and strong and suffers but few interruptions of piety and his constant courses of religion are but rarely intermitted till they ascend up to a full age or towards the ends of their life then they are weak and their devotions often intermitted and their breaches are frequent and they seek excuses and labour for dispensations and love God and religion lesse and lesse till their old age instead of a crown of their vertue and perseverance ends in levity and unprofitable courses light and uselesse as the tufted feathers upon the cane every winde can play with it and abuse it but no man can make it useful When therefore our piety interrupts its greater and more solemn expressions and upon the return of the greater offices and bigger solemnities we finde them to come upon our spirits like the wave of a tide which retired onely because it was natural so to do and yet came further upon the strand at the next rolling When every new confession every succeeding communion every time of separation for more solemn and intense prayer is better spent and more affectionate leaving a greater relish upon the spirit and possessing greater portions of our affections our reason and our choice then we may give God thanks who hath given us more grace to use that grace and a blessing to endeavour our duty and a blessing upon our endeavour 4. To discern our growth in grace we must inquire concerning our passions whether they be mortified and quiet complying with our ends of vertue and under command For since the passions are the matter of vertue and vice respectively he that hath brought into his power all the strengths of the enemy and the forts from whence he did infest him he onely hath secured his holy walking with God But because this thing is never perfectly done and yet must alwayes be doing grace grows according as we have finished our portions of this work And in this we must not onely inquire concerning our passions whether they be sinfull and habitually prevalent for if they be we are not in the state of grace But whether they return upon us in violences and undecencies in transportation and unreasonable and imprudent expressions for although a good man may be incident to a violent passion and that without sin yet a perfect man is not a well-grown Christian hath seldom such sufferings to suffer such things sometimes may stand with the being of vertue but not with its security For if passions range up and down and transport us frequently and violently we may keep in our forts and in our dwellings but our enemy is master of the field and our vertues are restrained and apt to be starved and will not hold out long a good man may be spotted with a violence but a wise man will not and he that does not adde wisedom to his vertue the knowledge of Jesus Christ to his vertuous habits will be a good man but till a storm comes But beyond this inquire after the state of your passions in actions of religion Some men fast to mortifie their lust and their fasting makes them peevish some reprove a vice but they do it with much inpatience some charitably give excellent counsell but they do that also with a pompous and proud spirit and passion being driven from open hostilities is forced to march along in the retinue and troops of vertue And although this be rather a deception and a cosenage then an imperfection and supposes a state of sin rather then an imperfect grace yet because it tacitly and secretly creeps along among the circumstances of pious actions as it spoils a vertue in some so it lessens it in others and therefore is considerable also in this question And although no man must take accounts of his being in or out of the state of grace by his being dispassionate and free from all the assaults of passion yet as to the securing his being in the state of grace he must provide that he be not a slave of passion so to declare his growth in grace he must be sure to take the measures of his affections and see that they be lessened more apt to be suppressed not breaking out to inconvenience and imprudencies not rifling our spirit and drawing us from our usuall and more sober tempers Try therefore if your fear be turned into caution your lust into chast friendships your imperious spirit into prudent government your revenge into justice your anger into charity and your peevishnesse and rage into silence and suppression of language Is our ambition changed into vertuous and noble thoughts can we emulate without envy is our covetousnesse lessen'd into good husbandry and mingled with alms that we may certainly discern the love of money to be gone do we leave to despise our inferiours and can we willingly endure
we are but beginners But it is not likely that God will trie us concerning degrees hereafter in such things of which in this world he was sparing to give us opportunities 3. Be carefull to observe that these rules are not all to be understood negatively but positively and affirmatively that is that a man may conclude that he is grown in grace if he observes these characters in himself which I have here discoursed of but he must not conclude negatively that he is not grown in grace if he cannot observe such signall testimonies for sometimes God covers the graces of his servants and hides the beauty of his tabernacle with goats hair and the skins of beasts that he may rather suffer them to want present comfort then the grace of humility for it is not necessary to preserve the gayeties and their spirituall pleasures but if their humility fails which may easily do under the sunshine of conspicuous and illustrious graces their vertues and themselves perish in a sad declension But sometimes men have not skill to make a judgement and all this discourse seems too artificiall to be tried by in the hearty purposes of religion Sometimes they let passe much of their life even of their better dayes without observance of particulars sometimes their cases of conscience are intricate or allayed with unavoydable infirmities sometimes they are so uninstructed in the more secret parts of religion and there are so many illusions and accidentall miseariages that if we shall conclude negatively in the present Question we may produce scruples infinite but understand nothing more of our estate and do much lesse of our duty 4. In considering concerning our growth in grace let us take more care to consider matters that concern justice and charity then that concern the vertue of religion because in this there may be much in the other there cannot easily be any illusion and cosenage That is a good religion that beleeves and trusts and hopes in God through Jesus Christ and for his sake does all justice and all charity that he can and our Blessed Lord gives no other deseription of love to God but obedience and keeping his commandements Justice and charity are like the matter religion is the form of Christianity but although the form be more noble and the principle of life yet it is lesse discernable lesse materiall and lesse sensible and we judge concerning the form by the matter and by materiall accidents and by actions and so we must of our religion that is of our love to God and of the efficacy of our prayers and the usefulnesse of our fastings we must make our judgements by the more materiall parts of our duty that is by sobriety and by justice and by charity I am much prevented in my intention for the perfecting of this so very materiall consideration I shall therefore onely tell you that to these parts and actions of good life or of our growth in grace some have added some accidentall considerations which are rather signes then parts of it Such are 1. To praise all good things and to study to imitate what we praise 2. To be impatient that any man should excell us not out of envy to the person but of noble emulation to the excellency For so Themistocles could not sleep after the great victory at Marathon purchased by Miltiades till he had made himself illustrious by equall services to his countrey 3. The bearing of sicknesse patiently and ever with improvement and the addition of some excellent principle and the firm pursuing it 4. Great devotion and much delight in our prayers 5. Frequent inspirations and often whispers of the Spirit of God prompting us to devotion and obedience especially if we adde to this a constant and ready obedience to all those holy invitations 6. Offering peace to them that have injured me and the abating of the circumstances of honour or of right when either justice or charity is concerned in it 7. Love to the brethren 8. To behold our companions or our inferiours full of honour and fortune and if we sit still at home and murmur not or if we can rejoyce both in their honour and our own quiet that 's a fair work of a good man And now 9. After all this I will not trouble you with reckoning a freedom from being tempted not onely from being overcome but from being tried for though that be a rare felicity and hath in it much safety yet it hath lesse honour and fewer instances of vertue unlesse it proceed from a confirmed and heroicall grace which is indeed a little image of heaven and of a celestiall charity and never happens signally to any but to old and very eminent persons 10. But some also adde an excellent habit of body and materiall passions such as are chast and vertuous dreams and suppose that as a disease abuses the fancy and a vice does prejudice it so may an excellent vertue of the soul smooth and Calcine the body and make it serve perfectly and without rebellious indispositions 11. Others are in love with Mary Magdalens tears and fancy the hard knees of Saint James and the sore eyes of Saint Peter and the very recreations of Saint John Proh quam virtute praeditos omnia decent thinking all things becomes a good man even his gestures and little incuriosities And though this may proceed from a great love of vertue yet because some men do thus much and no more and this is to be attributed to the lustre of vertue which shines a little thorow a mans eye-lids though he perversely winks against the light yet as the former of these two is too Metaphysicall so as the later too Phantasticall he that by the fore-going materiall parts and proper significations of a growing grace does not understand his own condition must be content to work on still super totam materiam without considerations of Particulars he must pray earnestly and watch diligently and consult with prudent Guides and ask of God great measures of his Spirit and hunger and thirst after righteousnesse for he that does so shall certainly be satisfied and if he understands not his present good condition yet if he be not wanting in the down right endeavours of piety and in hearty purposes he shall then finde that he is grown in grace when he springs up in the resurrection of the just and shall be ingrafted upon a tree of Paradise which beareth fruit for ever Glory to God rejoycing to Saints and Angels and eternall felicity to his own pious though undiscerning soul. Prima sequentem honestum est in secundis aut tertijs consistere Cicero Sermon XVI Of Growth in Sinne OR The severall states and degrees of Sinners WITH The manner how they are to be treated Jude Epist. Ver. 22 23. And of some have compassion making a difference * And others save with fear pulling them out of the fire MAn hath but one entrance into the world but a thousand wayes
to passe from thence and as it is in the natural so it is in the spiritual nothing but the union of faith and obedience can secure our regeneration and our new birth and can bring us to see the light of heaven but there are a thousand passages of turning into darknesse and it is not enough that our bodies are exposed to so many sad infirmities and dishonourable imperfections unlesse our soul also be a subject capable of so many diseases follies irregular passions false principles accursed habits and degrees of perversnesse that the very kindes of them are reducible to a method and make up the part of a science There are variety of stages and descents to death as there are diversity of torments and of sad regions of misery in hell which is the centre and kingdom of sorrows But that we may a little refresh the sadnesses of this consideration for every one of these stages of sin God hath measured out a proportion of mercy for if sin abounds grace shall much more abound and God hath concluded all under sin not with purposes to destroy us but Ut omnium misereatur that he might have mercy upon all that light may break forth from the deepest inclosures of darknesse and mercy may rejoyce upon the recessions of justice and grace may triumph upon the ruins of sin and God may be glorified in the miracles of our conversion and the wonders of our preservation and glories of our being saved There is no state of sin but if we be persons capable according to Gods method of healing of receiving antidotes we shall finde a sheet of mercy spread over our wounds and nakednesse If our diseases be small almost necessary scarce avoidable then God does and so we are commanded to cure them and cover them with a vail of pity compassion and gentle remedies If our evils be violent inveterate gangrened and incorporated into our nature by evil customes they must be pulled from the flames of hell with censures and cauteries and punishments and sharp remedies quickly and rudely their danger is present and sudden its effect is quick and intolerable and there is no soft counsels then to be entertained they are already in the fire but they may be saved for all that so great so infinite so miraculous is Gods mercy that he will not give a sinner over though the hairs of his head be singed with the flames of hell Gods desires of having us to be saved continue even when we begin to be damned even till we will not be saved and are gone beyond Gods method and all the revelations of his kindnesse And certainly that is a bold and a mighty sinner whose iniquity is sweld beyond all the bulk and heap of Gods revealed loving kindnesse If sin hath sweld beyond grace and superabounds over it that sin is gone beyond the measures of a man such a person is removed beyond all the malice of humane nature into the evil and spite of Devils and accursed spirits there is no greater sadnesse in the world then this God hath not appointed a remedy in the vast treasures of grace for some men and some sins they have sinned like the falling Angels and having over run the ordinary evil inclinations of their nature they are without the protection of the divine mercy and the conditions of that grace which was designed to save all the world was sufficient to have saved twenty This is a condition to be avoyded with the care of God and his Angels and all the whole industry of man In order to which end my purpose now is to remonstrate to you the several states of sin and death together with those remedies which God had proportioned out to them that we may observe the evils of the least and so avoid the intolerable mischiefs of the greater even of those sins which still are within the power and possibilities of recovery lest insensibly we fall into those sins and into those circumstances of person for which Christ never died which the Holy Ghost never means to cure and which the eternal God never will pardon for there are of this kinde more then commonly men imagine whilest they amuse their spirits with gaietyes and false principles till they have run into horrible impieties from whence they are not willing to withdraw their foot and God is resolved never to snatch and force them thence I of some have compassion and these I shall reduce to four heads or orders of men and actions all which have their proper cure pro portionable to their proper state gentle remedies to the lesser irregularities of the soul. The first are those that sin without observation of their particular state either because they are uninstructed in the special cases of conscience or because they do an evil against which there is no expresse commandment It is a sad calamity that there are so many milions of men and women that are entred into a state of sicknesse and danger and yet are made to believe they are in perfect health and they do actions concerning which they never made a question whether they were just or no nor were ever taught by what names to call them For while they observe that modesty is sometimes abused by a false name and called clownishnesse want of breeding and contentednesse and temperate living is suppressed to be want of courage and noble thoughts and severity of life is called imprudent and unsociable and simplicity and hearty honesty is counted foolish and unpolitick they are easily tempted to honour prodigality and foolish dissolution of their estates with the title of liberal and noble usages timorousnesse is called caution rashnesse is called quicknesse of spirit covetousnesse is frugality amorousnesse is society and gentile peevishnesse and anger is courage flattery is humane and courteous and under these false vails vertue sliâ—s away like truth from under the hand of them that fight for her and leave vices dressed up with the same imagery and the fraud not discovered till the day of recompences when men are distingushed by their rewards But so men think they sleep freely when their spirits are loaden with a Lethargy and they call a hestick-feaver the vigour of a natural heat tell nature changes those lesse discerned states into the notorious images of death Very many men never consider whether they sin or no in 10000. of their actions every one of which is very disputable and do not think they are bound to consider these men are to be pitied and instructed they are to be called upon to use religion like a daily diet their consciences must be made tender and their Catechisme enlarged teach them and make them sensible and they are cured But the other in this place are more considerable Men sin without observation because their actions have no restraint of an expresse Commandment no letter of the law to condemn them by an expresse sentence And this happens when the crime is comprehended under
is a law for sons not for servants and God that gives his grace without measure and rewards without end and acts of favour beyond our askings and provides for us beyond our needs and gives us counsels beyond commandments intends not to be limited out by the just evennesses and stricken measures of the words of a commandment Give to God full measure 〈◊〉 together pressed down heaped up and running over for God does so to us and when we have done so to him we are infinitely short of the least measure of what God does for us we are still unprofitable servants And therefore as the breaking any of the laws of Christianity provoks God to anger so the prevaricating in the analogy of Christianity stirres him up to jealousie He hath reason to suspect our hearts are not right with him when we are so reserved in the matter and measures of our services and if we will give God but just what he calls for by expresse mandate it is just in him to require all of that at our hands without any abatement then we are sure to miscarry And let us remember that when God said he was a jealous God he expressed the meaning of it to be he did punish to the third and fourth genoration Jelousie is like the rage of a man but if it be also like the anger of God it is insupportable and will crush us into the ruines of our grave But because these things are not frequently considered there are very many sins committed against religion which because the commandment hath not marked men refuse to mark and think God requires no more I am entred into a sea of matter which I must not now prosecute but I shall onely note this to you that it is but reasonable we should take accounts of our lives by the proportions as well as by the expresse rules of our religion because in humane and civil actions all the nations of the world use so to call their subjects to account For that which in the accounts of men is called reputation and publick honesty is the same which in religion we call analogy and proportion in both cases there being some things which are besides the notices of laws and yet are the most certain consignations of an excellent vertue He is a base person that does any thing against publick honesty and yet no man can be punished if he marries a wife the next day after his first wives funeral and so he that prevaricates the proportions and excellent reasons of Christianity is a person without zeal and without love and unlesse care be taken of him he will quickly be without religion But yet these I say are a sort of persons which are to be used with gentlenesse and treated with compassion for no man must be handled roughly to force him to do a kindnesse and coercion of laws and severity of Judges serjeants and executioners are against offenders of commandments But the way to cure such persons is the easiest and genteliest remedy of all others They are to be instructed in all the parts of duty and invited forward by the consideration of the great rewards which are laid up for all the sons of God who serve him without constraint without measures and allaves even as fire burns and as the roses grow even as much as they can and to all the extent of their natural and artificial capacities For it is a thing fit for our compassion to see men fettered in the iron bands of laws and yet to break the golden chains of love but all those instruments which are proper to enkindle the love of God and to turn fear into charity are the proper instances of that compassion which is to be used towards these men 2. The next sort of those who are in the state of sin and yet to be handled gently and with compassion are those who entertain themselves with the beginnings and little entrances of sin which as they are to be more pitied because they often come by reason of inadvertancy and an unavoidable weaknesse in many degrees so they are more to be taken care of because they are undervallued undiscernably run into incovenience when we see a childe strike a servant rudely or jeere a silly person or wittily cheat his play-fellow or talk words light as the skirt of a summer garment we laugh and are delighted with the wit and confidence of the boy and incourage such hopeful beginnings and in the mean time we consider not that from these beginnings he shall grow up till he become a Tyrant an oppressor a Goat and a Traytor Nemo simul malus fit malus esse cernitur sicut nec scorpijs tum innasâ—untur stimuli cum pungunt No man is discerned to be vitious so soon as he is so and vices have their infancy and their childe-hood and it cannot be expected that in a childs age should be the vice of a man that were monstrous as if he wore a beard in his cradle and we do not believe that a serpents sting does just then grow when he stricks us in a vital part The venome and the little spear was there when it first began to creep from his little shell And little boldnesses and looser words and wranglings for nuts and lying for trifles are of the same proportion to the malice of a childe as impudence and duels and injurious law-suits and false witnesse in judgement perjuries are in men And the case is the same when men enter upon a new stock of any sin the vice is at first apt to be put out of countenance and a little thing discourages it and it amuses the spirit with words and phantastick images and cheape instances of sin and men think themselves safe because they are as yet safe from laws and the sin does not as yet out cry the healthful noise of Christs loud cryings and intercession with his Father nor call for thunder or an amazing judgement but according to the old saying the thornes of Dauphine will never fetch blood if they do not scratch the first day we shal finde that the little undecencies and riflings of our souls the first openings and disparkings of our vertue differ onely from the state of perdition as infancy does from old age as sicknesse from death It is the entrance into those regions whether whosoever passes finally shall lie down and groan with an eternal sorrow Now in this case it may happen that a compassion may ruine a man if it be the pity of an indiscreet mother and nurse the sin from its weaknesse to the strength of habit and impudence The compassion that is to be used to such persons is the compassion of a Phisitian or a severe Tutor chastise thy infant-sinne by discipline and acts of vertue and never begin that way from whence you must return with some trouble and much shame or else if you proceed you finish your eternal ruine He that means to
distinctions and devices thought of for legitimating the worshipping of images And those people that are liberal in their excommunications make men think they have reason to say their Judges are proud or self willed or covetous or ill natured people These that are the faults of Governours and continued are quickly derived upon the sect and cause a disreputation to the whole society and institution And who can think that congregation to be a true branch of the Christian who makes it their profession to kill men to save their souls against their will and against their understanding who calling themselves disciples of so meek a Master do live like bears upon prey and spoil and blood It is a huge dishonour to the sincerity of a mans purposes to be too busie in fingring money in the matters of religion and they that are zealous for their rights and tame in their devotion furious against sacrilege and a companion of drunkards implacable against breakers of a Canon and carelesse and patient enough with them that break the fifth or sixth Commandments of the Decalogue tell all the world their private sense is to preserve their own interest with scruple and curiosity and leave God to take care for his Thus Christ reproved the Pharisees for straining at a gnat and swallowing a Camel the very representation of the manner and matter of fact discovers the vice by reproving the folly of it They that are factious to get a rich proselyte and think the poor not worth saving dishonour their zeal and teach men to call it covetousnesse and though there may be a reason of prudence to desire one more then the other because of a bigger efficacy the example of the one may have more then the other yet it will quickly be discovered if it be done by secular designe and the Scripture that did not allow the preferring of a gay man before a poor Saint in the matter of place will not be pleased that in the matter of souls which are all equal there should be a faction and designe and an acceptation of persons Never let us pollute our religion with arts of the world nor offer to support the arke with unhallowed hands nor mingle false propositions with true nor make religion a pretence to profit or preferment nor do things which are like a vice neither ever speak things dishonorable of God nor abuse thy brother for Gods sake nor be solicitous and over busie to recover thy own little things neither alwayes think it fit to lose thy charity by forcing thy brother to do justice and all those things which are the outsides and faces the garments and most discerned parts of religion be sure that they be dressed according to all the circumstances of men and by all the rules of common honesty and publick reputation Is it not a sad thing that the Jew should say the Christians worship images or that it should become a proverb that the Jew spends all in his passeover the Moore in his marriage and the Christian in his law suits that what the first sacrifice to religion and the second to publick joy we should spend in malice covetousnesse and revenge Pudet haec opprobria nobis dici potuisse non potuisse refelli But among our selves also we serve the Devils ends and minister to an eternal dis-union by saying and doing things which look unhandsomely One sort of men is superstitious phantastical greedy of honour and tenacious of propositions to fill the purse and his religion is thought nothing but policy and opinion Another sayes he hath a good religion but he is the most indifferent and cold person in the world either to maintain it or to live according to it the one dresses the images of Saints with fine clothes the other lets the poor go naked and disrobes the priests that minister in the religion A third uses God worse then all this and sayes of him such things that are scandalous even to an honest man and such which would undo a good mans reputation And a fourth yet endures no governour but himself and pretends to set up Christ and make himself his lieutenant And a fifth hates all government and from all this it comes to passe that it is hard for a man to choose his side and he that chooses wisest takes that which hath in it least hurt but some he must endure or live without communion and every Church of one denomination is or hath been too incurious of preventing infamy or disreputation to their confessions One thing I desire should be observed that here the Question being concerning prudence and the matter of doing reputation to our religion it is not enough to say we can with learning justifie all that we do and make all whole with 3. or 4. distinctions for possibly the man that went to visit the Corinthian Lais if he had been asked why he dishonoured himself with so unhandsome an entrance might finde an excuse to legitimate his act or at least to make himself beleeve well of his own person but he that intends to do himself honour must take care that he be not suspected that he give no ocasion of reproachful language for fame and honour is a nice thing tender as a womans chastity or like the face of the purest mirrour which a foul breath or an unwholesome air or a watry eye can fully and the beauty is lost although it be not dashed in pieces When a man or a sect is put to answer for themselves in the matter of reputation they with their distinctions wipe the glasse and at last can do nothing but make it appear it was not broken but their very abstersion and laborious excuses confesse it was foul and faulty We must know that all sorts of men and all sects of Christians have not onely the mistakes of men and their prejudices to contest withall but the calumnies and aggravation of Devils and therefore it will much ease our accounts of dooms-day if we are now so prudent that men will not be offended here nor the Devils furnished with a libell in the day of our great account To this rule appertains that we be curious in observing the circumstances of men and satisfie all their reasonable expectations and do things at that rate of charity and religion which they are taught to be prescribed in the institution There are some things which are undecencies rather then sins such which may become a just Heathen but not a holy Christian a man of the world but not a man professing godlinesse Because when the greatnesse of the man or the excellency of the Law engage us upon great severity or an exemplar vertue whatsoever is lesse then it renders the man unworthy of the religion or the religion unworthy of its fame Men think themselves abused and therefore return shame for payment We never read of an Apostle that went to law and it is but reasonable to expect that of all men in the
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 the walls of a rock we should perish in the deluge of sin universally as the old world did in that storm of the divine anger the flood of waters But thus God suffers but few adulteries in the world in respect of what would be if all men that desire to be adulterers had power opportunity and yet some men and very many women are by modesty and natural shamefacednesse chastised in their too forward appetites or the laws of man or publick reputation or the undecency and unhandsome circumstances of sin check the desire and make it that it cannot arrive at act for so have I seen a busie flame sitting upon a sullen cole turn its point to all the angles and portions of its neighbour-hood and reach at a heap of prepared straw which like a bold temptation called it to a restlesse motion and activity but either it was at too big a distance or a gentle breath from heaven diverted the speare and the ray of the fire to the other side and so prevented the violence of the burning till the flame expired in a weak consumption and dyed turning into smoak and the coolnesse of death and the harmlesnesse of a Cinder and when a mans desires are winged with sailes and a lusty wind of passion and passe on in a smooth chanel of opportunity God often times hinders the lust and the impatient desire from passing on to its port and entring into action by a suddain thought by a little remembrance of a word by a fancy by a sudden disability by unreasonable and unlikely fears by the suddain intervening of company by the very wearinesse of the passion by curiosity by want of health by the too great violence of the desire bursting it self with its fulnesse into dissolution a remisse easinesse by a sentence of scripture by the reverence of a good man or else by the proper interventions of the spirit of grace chastising the crime and representing its appendant mischiefs and its constituent disorder and irregularity and after all this the very anguish and trouble of being defeated in the purpose hath rolled it self into so much uneasinesse and unquiet reflections that the man is grown a shamed and vexed into more sober counsels And the mercy of God is not lesse then infinite in separating men from the occasions of their sin from the neighbour-hood and temptation for if the Hyaena and a dog should be thrust into the same Kennel one of them would soon finde a grave and it may be both of them their death so infallible is the ruine of most men if they be shewed a temptation Nitre and resin Naphtha and Bitumen sulphur and pitch are their constitution and the fire passes upon them infinitely and there is none to rescue them But God by removing our sins far from us as far as the East is from the West not onely putting away the guilt but setting the occasion far from us extremely far so far that sometimes we cannot sin and many times not easily hath magnified his mercy by giving us safety in all those measures in which we are untempted It would be the matter of new discourses if I should consider concerning the variety of Gods grace his preventing and accompanying his inviting and corroborating grace his assisting us to will his enabling us to do his sending Angels to watch us to remove us from evil company to drive us with swords of fire from forbidden instances to carry us by unobserved opportunities into holy company to minister occasions of holy discourses to make it by some means or other necessary to do a holy action to make us in love with vertue because they have mingled that vertue with a just and a fair interest to some men by making religion that thing they live upon to others the means of their reputation and the securities of their honour and thousands of wayes more which every prudent man that watches the wayes of God cannot but have observed But I must also observe other great conjugations of mercy for he that is to passe through an infinite must not dwell upon everie little line of life 10. The next order of mercies is such which is of so pure and unmingled constitution that it hath at first no regard to the capacities and disposition of the receivers and afterwards when it hath it relates onely to such conditions which it self creates and produces in the suscipient I mean the mercies of the divine predestination For was it not an infinite mercy that God should predestinate all mankinde to salvation by Jesus Christ even when he had no other reason to move him to do it but because man was miserable and needed his pity
providence was measured by the ends of the religion and the religion which promised them plenty performed the promise till the Nation and the religion too began to decline that it might give place to a better ministery and a more excellent dispensation of the things of the world But when Christian religion was planted and had taken root and had filled all lands then all the nature of things the whole creation became servant to the kingdom of grace and the Head of the religion is also the Head of the creatures and ministers all the things of the world in order to the Spirit of grace and now Angels are ministring spirits sent forth to minister for the good of them that fear the Lord and all the violences of men and things of nature and choice are forced into subjection and lowest ministeries and to cooperate as with an united designe to verifie all the promises of the Gospel and to secure and advantage all the children of the kingdom and now he that is made poor by chance or persecution is made rich by religion and he that hath nothing yet possesses all things and sorrow it self is the greatest comfort not only because it ministers to vertue but because it self is one as in the case of repentance and death ministers to life and bondage is freedom and losse is gain and our enemies are our friends and every thing turns into religion and religion turns into felicity and all manner of advantages But that I may not need to enumerate any more particulars in this observation certain it is that Angels of light and darknesse all the influences of heaven and the fruits and productions of the earth the stars and the elements the secret things that lie in the bowels of the Sea and the entrails of the earth the single effects of all efficients and the conjunction of all causes all events foreseen and all rare contingencies every thing of chance and every thing of choice is so much a servant to him whos 's greatest desire and great interest is by all means to save our souls that we are thereby made sure that all the whole creation shall be made to bend in all the flexures of its nature and accidents that it may minister to religion to the good of the Catholike Church and every person within its bosom who are the body of him that rules over all the world and commands them as he chooses 2. But that which is next to this and not much unlike the designe of this wonderfull mercy is that all the actions of religion though mingled with circumstances of differing and sometimes of contradictory relations are so concentred in God their proper centre and conducted in such certain and pure channels of reason and rule that no one duty does contradict another and it can never be necessary for any man in any case to sin They that bound themselves by an oath to kill Paul were not environed with the sad necessities of murder on one side and vow-breach on the other so that if they did murder him they were man-slayers if they did not they were perjured for God had made provision for this case that no unlawful oath should passe an obligation He that hath given his faith in unlawfull confederation against his Prince is not girded with a fatall necessity of breach of trust on one side or breach of allegeance on the other for in this also God hath secured the case of conscience by forbidding any man to make an unlawfull promise and upon a stronger degree of the same reason by forbidding him to keep it in case he hath made it He that doubts whether it be lawfull to keep the Sunday holy must not do it during that doubt because whatsoever is not of faith is sin But yet Gods mercy hath taken care to break this snare in sunder so that he may neither sin against the commandement nor against his conscience for he is bound to lay aside his errour and be better instructed till when the scene of his sin lies in something that hath influence upon his understanding not in the omission of the fact No man can serve two Masters but therefore he must hate the one and cleave to the other But then if we consider what infinite contradiction there is in sin and that the great long suffering of God is expressed in this that God suffered the contradiction of sinners we shall feel the mercy of God in the peace of our consciences and the unity of religion so long as we do the work of God It is a huge affront to a covetous man that he is the further off from fulnesse by having great heaps vast revenues and that his thirst increases by having that which should quench it and that the more he shall need to be satisfied the lesse he shall dare to do it and that he shall refuse to drink because he is dry that he dyes if he tasts and languishes if he does not and at the same time he is full and empty bursting with a plethory and consumed with hunger drowned with rivers of oyle and wine and yet dry as the Arabian sands but then the contradiction is multiplyed and the labyrinths more amazed when prodigality waits upon another curse and covetousnesse heaps up that prodigality may scatter abroad then distractions are infinite and a man hath two Devils to serve of contradictory designes and both of them exacting obedience more unreasonably then the Egyptian task-masters then there is no rest no end of labours no satisfaction of purposes no method of things but they begin where they should end and begin again and never passe forth to content or reason or quietnesse or possession But the duty of a Christian is easie in a persecution it is clear under a Tyranny it is evident in despite of heresy it is one in the midst of schisme it is determined amongst infinite disputes being like a rock in the sea which is beaten with the tide and washed with retiring waters and encompassed with mists and appears in several figures but it alwayes dips its foot in the same bottom and remaines the same in calms and storms and survives the revolution of ten thousand tides and there shall dwell till time and tides shall be no more so is our duty uniform and constant open and notorious variously represented but in the same manner exacted and in the interest of our souls God hath not exposed us to uncertainty or the variety of anything that can change and it is by the grace and mercy of God put into the power of every Christian to do that which God through Jesus Christ will accept to salvation and neither men nor Devils shall hinder it unlesse we list our selves 3. After all this we may sit down and reckon by great sums and conjugations of his gracious gifts and tell the minuts of eternity by the number of the Divine mercies God hath given his laws to rule us his
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 the obstinacy of the Jews and the folly of the Heathens and the rudenesse and infidelity of the Mahumetans and the negligence and vices of Christians and he that can behold no impurity is received in all places with perfumes of mushromes and garments spotted with the flesh and stained souls and the actions and issues of misbelief and an evil conscience and with accursed sins that he hates upon pretence of religion which he loves and he is made a party against himself by our voluntary mistakes and men continue ten yeers and 20. and 30. and 50. in a course of sinning and they grow old with the vices of their youth and yet God forbears to kill them and to consigne them over to an eternity of horrid pains still expecting that they should repent and be saved 2. Besides this long-sufferance and for-bearing with an unwearied patience God also excuses a sinner oftentimes and takes a little thing for an excuse so far as to move him to intermediall favours first and from thence to a finall pardon He passes by the sins of our youth with a huge easinesse to pardon if he be intreated and reconciled by the effective repentance of a vigorous manhood he takes ignorance for an excuse and in every degree of its being inevitable or innocent in its proper cause it is also inculpable and innocent in its proper effects though in their own natures criminal But I found mercy of the Lord because I did it in ignorance saith S. Paul he pities our infirmities and strikes off much of the account upon that stock the violence of a temptation and restlesnesse of its motion the perpetuity of its sollicitation the wearinesse of a mans spirit the state of sicknesse the necessity of secular affairs the publike customs of a people have all of them a power of pleading and prevailing towards some degrees of pardon and diminution before the throne of God 3. When God perceives himself forced to strike yet then he takes off his hand and repents him of the evil It is as if it were against him that any of his creatures should fall under the strokes of an exterminating fury 4. When he is forced to proceed he yet makes an end before he hath half done and is as glad of a pretence to pardon us or to strike lesse as if he himself had the deliverance and not we When Ahab had but humbled himself at the word of the Lord God was glad of it and went with the message to the Prophet himself saying Seest thou not how Ahab humbles himself What was the event of it I will not bring the evil in his dayes but in his sons dayes the evil shall come upon his house 5 God forgets our sin and puts it out of his remembrance that is he makes it as though it had never been he makes penitence to be as pure as innocence to all the effects of pardon and glory the memory of the sins shall not be upon record to be used to any after act of disadvantage and never shall return unlesse we force them out of their secret places by ingratitude and a new state of sinning 6. God sometimes gives pardon beyond all his revelations and declared will and provides suppletories of repentance even then when he cuts a man off from the time of repentance accepting a temporal death instead of an eternal that although the Divine anger might interrupt the growing of the fruits yet in some cases and to some persons the death and the very cutting off shall go no further but be instead of explicite and long repentances Thus it happened to Uzzah who was smitten for his zeal and died in severity for prevaricating the letter by earnestnesse of spirit to serve the whole religion Thus it was also in the case of the Corinthians that died a temporal death for their undecent circumstances in receiving the holy Sacrament Saint Paul who used it for an argument to threaten them into reverence went no further nor pressed the argument to a sadder issue then to die temporally But these suppletories are but seldom and they are also great troubles and ever without comfort and dispensed irregularly and that not in the case of habituall sins that we know of or very great sins but in single actions or instances of a lesse malignity and they are not to be relied upon because there is no rule concerning them but when they do happen they magnifie the infinitenesse of Gods mercy which is commensurate to all our needs and is not to be circumscribed by the limits of his own revelations 7. God pardons the greatest sinners and hath left them upon record
to follow and now that we are come to weep over the grave of our Dear Sister this rare personage we cannot chuse but have many vertues to learn many to imitate and some to exercise I chose not to declare her extraction and genealogy It was indeed fair and Honorable but having the blessing to be descended from worthy and Honoured Ancestors and her self to be adopted and ingraffed into a more Noble family yet she felt such outward appendages to be none of hers because not of her choice but the purchase of the vertues of others which although they did ingage her to do noble things yet they would upbraid all degenerate and lesse honourable lives then were those which began and increased the honour of the families She did not love her fortune for making her noble but thought it would be a dishonour to her if she did not continue her Noblenesse and excellency of vertue fit to be owned by persons relating to such Ancestors It is fit for all us to honour the Noblenesse of a family but it is also fit for them that are Noble to despise it and to establish their honour upon the foundation of doing excellent things and suffering in good causes and despising dishonourable actions and in communicating good things to others For this is the rule in Nature Those creatures are most Honourable which have the greatest power and do the greatest good And accordingly my self have been a witnesse of it how this excellent Lady would by an act of humility and Christian abstraction strip her self of all that fair appendage of exteriour honour which decked her person and her fortune and desired to be owned by nothing but what was her own that she might onely be esteemed Honourable according to that which is the honour of a Christian and a wise person 2. She had a strict and severe education and it was one of Gods graces and favours to her For being the Heiresse of a great fortune and living amongst the throng of persons in the sight of vanities and empty temptations that is in that part of the Kingdom where greatnesse is too often expressed in great follies and great vices God had provided a severe and angry education to chastise the forwardnesses of a young spirit and a fair fortune 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 prudent 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 slet 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 some by nature some by adoption To these also God gave her a very great love to hear the word of God preached in which because I had sometimes the honour to minister to her I can give this certain testimony that she was a diligent watchfull and attentive hearer and to this had so excellent a judgement that if ever I saw a woman whose judgement was to be revered it was hers alone and I have sometimes thought that the eminency of her discerning faculties did reward a pious discourse and placed it in the regions of honour and usefulnesse and gathered it up from the ground where commonly such homilies are spilt or scattered in neglect and inconsideration But her appetite was not soon satisfied with what was usefull to her soul she was also a constant Reader of Sermons and seldome missed to read one every day and that she might be full of instruction and holy principles she had lately designed to have a large Book in which she purposed to have a stock of Religion transcrib'd in such assistances as she would chuse that she might be readily furnished and instructed to every good work But God prevented that and hath filled her desires not out of cisterns and little aquaeducts but hath carried her to the fountain where she drinks of the pleasures of the river and is full of God 9. She alwayes lived a life of much Innocence free from the violences of great sins her person her breeding her modesty her honour her religion her early marriage the Guide of her soul and the Guide of her youth were as so many fountains of restraining grace to her to keep her from the dishonours of a crime Bonum est portare jugum ab adolescentiâ it is good to bear the yoak of the Lord from our youth and though she did so being guarded by a mighty providence and a great favour and grace of God from staining her fair soul with the spots of hell yet she had strange fears and early cares upon her but these were not onely for her self but in order to others to her neerest Relatives For she was so great a lover of this Honourable family of which now she was a Mother that she desired to become a chanel of great blessings to it unto future ages and was extremely jealous lest any thing should be done or lest any thing had been done though an age or two since which should intail a curse upon the innocent posterity and therefore although I do not know that ever she was tempted with an offer of the crime yet she did infinitely remove all sacrilege from her thoughts and delighted to see her estate of a clear and disintangled interest she would have no mingled rights with it she would not receive any thing from the Church but religion and a blessing and she never thought a curse and a sin far enough off but would desire it to be infinitely distant and that as to this family God had given much honour and a wise head to govern it so he would also for ever give many more blessings And because she knew that the sins of Patents descend upon Children she endevoured by justice and religion by charity and honour to secure that her chanel should convey nothing but health and a fair example and a blessing 10. And though her accounts to God was made up of nothing but small parcels little passions and angry words and trifling discontents which are the allayes of the piety of the most holy persons yet she was early at her repentance and toward the latter end of her dayes grew so fast in religion as if she had had a revelation of her approaching end and therefore that she must go a great way in a little time her discourses more full of religion her prayers more frequent her charity increasing her forgivenesse more forward her friendships more communicative her passion more under discipline and so she trimm'd her lamp not thinking her night was so neer but that it might shine also in the day time in the Temple and before the Altar of incense But in this course of hers there were some circumstances and some appendages of substance which were highly remarkable 1. In all her Religion and in all her actions of relation towards God she had a strange evennesse and untroubled passage sliding toward her Ocean of God and of infinity with a certain and silent motion So have I seen a river deep and smooth passing with a still foot and a sober face and paying to the Fiscus the great Exchequer of the Sea the Prince of all the watry bodies a tribute large and full and hard by it a little brook skipping and
Bishops did so too and in the highest detestation of their follies thought they might wisely enough imitate their innocent customes and Priestly ornaments and hoped they might better reconcile their mindes to the Christian Religion by compliance in ceremonials then exasperate them by rejecting their ancient and innocent ceremonies for so the Apostles invited and inticed Judaisme into Christianity And Tertullian complains of the Devils craft who by imitating the Christian rites reconciled mens mindes with that compliance to a more charitable opinion of the Gentile superstition The Devill intending to draw the professors of truth to his own portion or to preserve his own in the same fetters he first put upon them imitates the rites of our religion adopting them into his superstition He baptizes some of his disciples and when he initiates them to the worship of Mithra promiseth them pardon of sins by that rite he signes his souldiers in their forehead he represents the oblation of bread and introduces representments of the resurrection and laboriously gets martyrs to his cause His Priests marry but once he hath his virgins and his abstemious and continent followers that what Christians love and the world commends in them being adopted into the rituals of Idolatry may allure some with the beauty and fair imagery and abuse others with colour and phantastick faces And thus also all wise men that intended to perswade others to their religion did it by retaining as much as they innocently could of the other that the change might not be too violent and the persons be more endeared by common rites and the relation and charity of likenesse and imitation Thus did the Church and the Synagogue thus did the Gentiles both to the Jews and to the Christians and all wise men did so The Gentiles offered first fruits to their Gods and their tithes to Hercules kept vigils and anniversaries forbad marriages without the consent of Parents and clandestine contracts these were observed with some variety according as the people were civill or learned and according to the degree of the tradition or as the thing was reasonable so these customes were more or lesse universall But when all wise people nay when absolutely all the world have consented upon a rite it cannot derive from a fountain lower then the current but it must either be a command which God hath given to all the world and so Socrates in Xenophon Quod ab omnibus gentibus observatum est id non nisi à Deo sancitum esse dicendum est or a tradition or a law descending from our common parents or a reason derived from the nature of things there cannot in the world be any thing great enough to take away such a rite except an expresse divine commandement and a man by the same reason may marry his nearest relative as he may deny to worship God by the recitation of his prayses and excellencies because reason and a very common tradition have made almost all the world consent in these two things that we must abstain from the mixtures of our nearest kindred and that we must worship God by recounting and declaring excellent things concerning him I have instanced in two things in which I am sure to finde the fewest adversaries I said the fewest for there are some men which have lost all humanity but these two great instances are not attested with so universall a tradition and practise of the world as this that is now in question For in some nations they have married their sisters so did the Magi among the Persians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Tatianus in Clemens Alexandrinus and Bardisanes Syrus in Eusebius And the Greeks worshipped Hercules by railing and Mercury by throwing stones at him But there was never any people but had their Priests and Presidents of religious rites and kept holy things within a mure that the people might not approach to handle the mysteries and therefore besides that it is a recession from the customes of mankinde and charges us with the disrespect of all the world which is an incuriousnesse next to infinite it is also a doing against that which all the reason of all the wise men of the world have chosen antecedently or ex post facto and he must have a strange understanding who is not perswaded by that which hath determined all the world For religion cannot be at all in communities of men without some to guide to minister to preserve and to prescribe the offices and ministeries What can profane holy things but that which makes them common and what can make them common more then when common persons handle them when there is no distinction of Persons in their ministration For although places are good accessories to religion yet in all religions they were so accidentall to it that a sacrifice might hallow the place but the place unlesse it were naturally impure could not desecrate the sacrifice and therefore Jacob worshipped upon a stone offered upon a turfe and the Arke rested in Obed-Edoms house and was holy in Dagons Temple and hils and groves fields and orchards according to the severall customes of the nations were the places of addresse But a common person ministring was so near a circumstance and was so mingled with the action that since the materiall part and exteriour actions of Religion could be acted and personated by any man there was scarce any thing left to make it religious but the attrectation of the rites by a holy person A Holy place is something a separate time is something a prescript form of words is more separate and solemn actions are more yet but all these are made common by a cōmon person therfore without a distinction of persons have not a natural and reasonable distinction of solemnity exterior religion And indeed it were a great disreputation to religion that all great and publique things and every artifice or profitable science should in all the societies of men be distinguished by professors artists and proper ministers and onely religion should lie in common apt to be bruised by the hard hand of mechanicks and sullied by the ruder touch of undiscerning and undistinguished persons for although the light of it shines to all and so farre every mans interest is concerned in religion yet it were not handsome that every man should take the taper in his hand and religion is no more to be handled by all men then the laws are to be dispensed by all by whom they are to be obeyed though both in religion and the laws all men have a common interest For since all meanes must have some equality or proportion towards their end that they may of their own being or by institution be symbolicall it is but reasonable that by elevated and sublimed instruments we should be promoted towards an end supernaturall and divine now besides that of all the instruments of distinction the
were the Elei among the Grecians as being sacred to Jupiter safe from the hostility of a professed enemy the same which was observed amongst the Romans Quis homo est tantâ confidentiâ Qui sacerdotem audeat violare At magno cum malo suo fecit Herculè But this is but one instance of advantage The Gentiles having once separated their Priests and affixed them to the ministeries of religion thought nothing great enough either to expresse the dignity of their imployment or good enough to doe honour to their persons and it is largely discoursed of by Cicero in the case of the Roman Augures Maximum autem praestantissimum in Rep. jus est Augurum cum est authoritati conjunctum neque verò hoc quia sum ipse Augur ita sentio sed quia sio existimare nos necesse est Quid enim majus est si de jure quaerimus quà m posse à summis imperiis summis potestatibus comitia tollere concilia vel instituta dimittere vel habita rescindere Quid magnificentius quà m posse decernere ut magistratu se abdicent consules quid religiosius quà m cum populo cum plebe agendi jus aut dare aut non dare It was a vast power these men had to be in proportion to their greatest honour they had power of bidding and dissolving publick meetings of indicting solemnities of religion just as the Christian Bishops had in the beginning of Christianity they commanded publick fasts at their indiction onely they were celebrated Benè autem quod Episcopi universae plebi mandare jejunia assolent non dico industriâ stipium conferendarum ut vestrae capturae est sed interdum aliquâ sollicitudinis Ecclestasticae causâ The Bishops also called publick conventions Ecclesiasticall Aguntur praecepta per Graecias illas certis in locis concilia ex universis Ecclesiis per quae et altior a quaeque in commune tractantur ipsarepraesentatio totius nominis Christiani magna veneratione celebratur It was so in all religions the Antistites the presidents of rites and guides of consciences had great immissions and influences into the republick and communities of men and they verified the saying of Tacitus Deûm munere summum pontisicem etiam summum hominem esse non aemulatione non odio aut privatis affectionibus obnoxium The chief Priest was ever the chief man and free from the envies and scornes and troubles of popular peevishnesse and contumacy and that I may use the expression of Tacitus utque glisceret dignatio sacerdotum for all the great traverses of the republick were in their disposing atque ipsis promptior animus foret ad capessendas ceremonias the very lower institutions of their religion were set up with the markes of speciall laws and priviledges insomuch that the seat of the Empresse in the Theatre was among the Vestall virgins But the highest had all that could be heaped upon them till their honours were as sublimed as their functions Amongst the Ethiopians the Priests gave laws to their Princes and they used their power sometimes to the ruine of their Kings till they were justly removed Among the Egyptians the Priests were their Judges so they were in Athens for the Areopagites were Priests and the Druids among the Gaules were Judges of murder of titles of land of bounds and inheritances magno apud eos sunt honore nam fere de omnibus controversiis publicis privatisque constituunt and for the Magi of Persia and India Strabo reports 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they conversed with Kings meaning they were their counsellours and guides of their consciences And Herodotus in Eustathius tells us of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the divine order of Prophets or Priests in Delphos 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they did eate of the publick provisions together with Kings By these honours they gave testimony of their religion not onely separating certain persons for the service of their Temples but also separating their condition from the impurities and the contempt of the world as knowing that they who were to converse with their Gods were to be elevated from the common condition of men and vulgar miseries 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As soon as I was made a Priest of Idaean Jupiter all my garments were white and I declined to converse with mortals Novae sortis oportet illum esse qui jubente Deo canat said Seneca He had need be of a distinct and separate condition that sings to the honour and at the command of God thus it was among the Jews and Heathens SECT II. NOw if Christian Religion should doe otherwise then all the world hath done either it must be because the rites of Christianity are of no mystery and secret dispensation but common actions of an ordinary addresse and cheap devotion or else because we under value all religion that is because indeed we have nothing of it The first is dishonorable to Christianity and false as its greatest enemy The second is shame to us and both so unreasonable and unnaturall that if we separate not certain persons for the ministeries of Christianity we must confesse we have the worst religion or that we are the worst of men But let us consider it upon its proper grounds When Christ had chosen to himselfe twelve Apostles and was drawing now to the last scene of his life he furnished them with commissions and abilities to constitute and erect a Church and to transmit such powers as were apt for its continuation and perpetuity And therefore to the Apostles in the capacity of Church officers he made a promise That he would be with them untill the end of the world they might presonally be with him untill the end of the world but he could not be here with them who after a short course run were to goe hence and be no more seen and therefore for the verification of the promise it is necessary that since the promise was made for the benefit of the Church and to them as the ministers of the benefit so long as the benefit was to be dispensed so long they were to be succeeded to and therefore assisted by the Holy Jesus according to that glorious promise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Not onely to the Apostles but absolutely and indefinitely to all Christs disciples their successors he promised to abide for ever even to the consummation of the world to the whole succession of the Clergy so Theophylact upon this place And if we consider what were the power and graces Jesus committed to the dispensation of the Apostles such as were not temporary but lasting successive and perpetuall we must also conclude the ministery to be perpetuall I instance first in the power of binding and loosing remitting and retaining sins which Christ gave them together with his breathing on them the holy Spirit and a
his hand But by the ministery he declares the work of God then wrought in the person suscipient And thus in absolution the Priest declares the act of God pardoning not that he is a Preacher onely of the pardon upon certain conditions but that he is not the principall agent but by his ministery declares and ministers the effect and work of God And this interpretation is clear in the instance of the blessed Sacrament where not onely the Priest but the people doe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 declare the Lords death not by a Homily but by virtue of the mystery which they participate And in the instance of this present question the consecrator does declare the power to descend from God upon the person to be ordained But thus the whole action being but a ministery is a declaration of the effect and grace of Gods vouchsafing and because God does it not immediately and also because such effects are invisible and secret operations God appointing an externall rite and ministery does it that the private working of the Spirit may become as perceived as it can be that is that it may by such rites be declared to all the world what God is doing and that man cannot doe it of himself and besides the reasonablenesse of the thing the very words in the present allegation doe to this very sense expound themselves for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are the same thing and expressive of each other the consecrator declares that is he doth not do it by collation of his own grace or power but the grace of God and power from above And this doctrine we read also in S. Cyprian towards the end of his Epistle to Cornelius ut Dominus qui Sacerdotes sibi in ecclesia sua eligere constituere dignatur electos quoque constitutos sua voluntate atque opitulatione tueatur It is a good prayer of ordination that the Lord who vouchsafes to choose and consecrate Priests in his Church would also be pleased by his ayd and grace to defend them whom he hath so chosen and appointed Homo manum imponit Deus largitur gratiam Sacerdos imponit supplicem dextram Deus benedicit potenti dextra saith S. Ambrose man imposes his hand but God gives the grace the Bishop layes on his hand of prayer and God blesses with his hand of power The effect of this discourse is plain the grace and powers that enable men to minister in the mysteries of the Gospel is so wholly from God that whosoever assumes it without Gods warrant and besides his way ministers with a vain sacrilegious and ineffective hand save onely that he disturbs the appointed order and does himself a mischief SECT VII BY this ordination the persons ordained are made ministers of the Gospel stewards of all its mysteries the light the salt of the earth the shepheard of the flock Curates of soules these are their offices or their appellatives which you please for the Clericall ordination is no other but a sanctification of the person in both senses that is 1 a separation of him to do certain mysterious actions of religion which is that sanctification by which Jeremy and S. John the Baptist were sanctified from their mothers wombs 2 It is also a sanctification of the person by the increasing or giving respectively to the capacity of the suscipient such graces as make the person meet to speak to God to pray for the people to handle the mysteries and to have influence upon the cure The first sanctification is a designation of the person which must of necessity be some way or other by God because it is a neerer approach to him a ministery of his graces which without his appointment a man must not cannot any more doe then a messenger can cary pardon to a condemned person which his Prince never sent But this separation of the person is not onely a naming of the man for so farre the separation of the person may be previous to the ordination for so it was in the ordinations of Mathias and the seven Deacons The Apostles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they appointed two before God chose by lot and the whole Church chose the seven Deacons before the Apostles imposed hands but the separation or this first sanctification of the person is a giving him a power to doe such offices which God hath appointed to be done to him and for the people which we may clearly see and understand in the instance of Job and his friends For when God would be intreated in behalfe of Eliphaz and his companions he gave order that Job should make the addresse Goe to my servant he shall pray for you and him will I accept this separation of a person for the offices of advocation is the same thing which I mean by this first sanctification God did it and gave him a power and authority to goe to him and put him into a place of trust and favour about him and made him a minister of the sacrifice which is a power and eminency above the persons for whom he was to sacrifice and a power or grace from God to be in neernesse to him This I suppose to be the great argument for the necessity of separating a certain order of men for ecclesiasticall ministeries And it relies upon these propositions 1. All power of ordination descends from God and he it is who sanctifies and separates the person 2. The Priest by God is separate to be the gracious person to stand between him and the people 3. Hee speaks the word of God and returns the prayers and duty of the people and reconveyes the blessings of God by his prayer and by his ministery So that although every Christian must pray and may be heard yet there is a solemn person appointed to pray in publick and though Gods spirit is given to all that aske it and the promises of the Gospel are verified to all that obey the Gospell of Iesus yet God hath appointed sacraments and solemnities by which the promises and blessings are ministred more solemnly and to greater effects All the ordinary devotions the people may doe alone the solemn rituall and publick the appointed Minister onely must do And if any man shall say because the Priests ministery is by prayer every man can doe it and so no need of him by the same reason he may say also that the Sacraments are unnecessary because the same effect which they produce is also in some degree the reward of a private piety and devotion But the particulars are to be further proved and explicated as they need Now what for illustration of this article I have brought from the instance of Job is true in the ministers of the Gospell with the superaddition of many degrees of eminency But still in the same kind for the power God hath given is indeed mysticall but it is not like a power operating by
body and bloud of Christ which we receive of the fruits of the earth and being consecrated by the mysticall prayer we take according to the rite And S. Hierom chides the insolency of some Deacons towards Priests upon this ground Who can suffer that the Ministers of widdows and tables should advance themselves above those at whose prayers the body and bloud of Christ are exhibited or made presentiall I adde onely the words of Damascen The bread and wine are changed into the body and bloud of Christ supernaturally by invocation and coming of the Holy Ghost Now whether this consecration by prayer did mean to reduce the words of institution to the sense and signification of a prayer or that they mean the consecration was made by the other prayers annexed to the narrative of the institution according to the severall senses of the Greek and Latin Church yet still the ministery of the Priest whether in the words of consecration or in the annexed prayers is still by way of prayer Nay further yet the whole mystery it self is operative in the way of prayer saith Cassander in behalf of the School and of all the Roman Church and indeed S. Ambrose and others of the Fathers in behalf of the Church Catholick Nunc Christus offertur sed offertur quasi homo quasi recipiens passionem offert seipsum quasi Sacerdos ut peccata nostra dimittat hic in imagine ibi in veritate ubi apudpatrem quasi advocatus intervenit So that what the Priest does here being an imitation of Christ does in heaven is by the sacrifice of a solemn prayer and by the representing the action and passion of Christ which is effectuall in the way of prayer and by the exhibiting it to God by a solemn prayer and advocation in imitation of and union with Christ. All the whole office is an office of intercession as it passes from the Priest to God and from the people to God And then for that great mysteriousnesse which is the sacramentall change which is that which passes from God unto the people by the Priest that also is obtained and effected by way of prayer For since the Holy Ghost is the consecrator either he is called down by the force of a certain number of syllables which that he will verifie himself hath no where described and that he means not to do it he hath fairly intimated in setting down the institution in words of great vicinity to expresse the sense of the mystery but yet of so much difference and variety as will shew this great change is not wrought by such certain and determined words The bloud of the New Testament so it is in S. Matthew and S. Mark The new Testament in my bloud so S. Paul and S. Luke My body which is broken My body which is given c. and to think otherwise is so neer the Gentile rites and the mysteries of Zoroastes and the secret operations of the Enthei and heathen Priests that unlesse God had declared expressely such a power to be affixed to the recitation of such certain words it is not with too much forwardnesse to be supposed true in the spirituality of the Gospel But if the Spirit descends not by the force of syllables it follows he is called down by the prayers of the Church presented by the Priests which indeed is much to the honour of God and of religion an endearment of our duty is according to the analogy of the Gospell and a proper action or part of spirituall sacrifice that great excellency of Evangelicall religion For what can be more aptand reasonable to bring any great blessing from God then prayer which acknowledges him the fountain of blessing and yet puts us into a capacity of receiving it by way of morall predisposition that holy graces may descend into holy vessels by holy ministeries and conveyances and none are more fit for the employment then prayers whereby we blesse God and blesse the symbols and aske that God may blesse us and by which every thing is sanctified viz. by the word of God and prayer that is by Gods benediction and our impetration according to the use of the word in the saying of our blessed Saviour Man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God that is by Gods blessing to which prayer is to be joyned that we may cooperate with God in a way most likely to prevail with him and they are excellent words which Cassander hath said to the purpose Some Apostolicall Churches from the beginning used such solemn prayers to the celebration of the mysteries and Christ himself beside that he recited the words of institution he blessed the Symbols before and after sung an Ecclesiasticall hymn And therefore the Greek Churches which have with more severity kept the first and most ancient forms of consecration then the Latin Church affirm that the consecration is made by solemn invocation alone and the very recitation of the words spoken in the body of a prayer are used for argument to move God to hallow the gifts and as an expression and determination of the desire And this Gabriel of Philadelphia observes out of an Apostolical Liturgy The words of our Lord 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 antecedently and by way of institution and incentive are the form together with the words which the Priest afterwards recites according as it is set down in the divine Liturgy It is supposed he meanes the Liturgy reported to be made by S. James which is of the most ancient use in the Greek Church and all Liturgies in the world in their severall Canons of communion doe now and did for ever mingle solemn prayers together with recitation of Christs words The Church of England does most religiously observe it according to the custome and sense of the primitive Liturgies who always did beleeve the consecration not to be a naturall effect and change finished in any one instant but a divine alteration consequent to the whole ministery that is the solemn prayer and invocation Now if this great ministery be by way of solemn prayer it will easier be granted that so the other are For absolution and reconciliation of penitents I need say no more but the question of S. Austin Quid est aliud manus impositio quam or atio super hominem And the Priestly absolution is called by Saint Leo Sacerdotum supplicationes the prayers of Priests and in the old Ordo Romanus and in the Pontificall the forms of reconciliation were Deus te absolvat the Lord pardon thee c. But whatsoever the forms were for they may be optative or indicative or declarative the case is not altered as to this question for whatever the act of the Priest be whether it be the act of a Judge or of an Embassadour a Counsellor or a Physitian or all this the blessing which he ministers is by way of a solemn prayer
But we must make these and all other the dutis of religion our imployments our care the work and end for which we came into the world and remember that we never do the work of men nor serve the ends of God nor are in the proper imployment and businesse of our life but when we worship God or live like wise or sober persons or do benefit to our brother I will not turne this discourse into a reproofe but leave it represented as a duty Remember that God sent you into the world for religion we are but to passe through our pleasant fields or our hard labours but to lodge a little while in our faire palaces or our meaner cottages but to bait in the way at our full tables or with our spare diet but then onely man does his proper imployment when he prayes and does charity and mortifies his unruly appetites and restrains his violent passions and becomes like to God and imitates his holy Son and writes after the coppies of Apostles and Saints Then he is dressing himself for eternity where he must dwell or abide either in an excellent beatifical country or in a prison of amazment and eternal horrour And after all this you may if you please call to minde how much time you allovv to God and to your souls every day or every moneth or in a year if you please for I fear the account of the time is soon made but the account for the neglect vvill be harder And it vvill not easily be ansvvered that all our dayes and years are little enough to attend perishing things and to be svvallowed up in avaritious and vain attendances and we shall not attend to religion with a zeal so great as is our revenge or as is the hunger of one meale Without much time and a wary life and a diligent circumspection we cannot mortify our sins or do the first works of grace I pray God we be not found to have grown like the sinnews of old age from strength to remisnesse from thence to dissolution and infirmity and death Menedemus was wont to say that the young boyes that went to Athens the first year were wise men the second year Philosophers the third Orators and the fourth were but Plebeians and understood nothing but their own ignorance And just so it happens to some in the progresses of religion at first they are violent and active and then they satiate all the appetites of religion and that which is left is that they were soon weary and sat down in displeasure and return to the world and dwell in the businesse of pride or mony and by this time they understand that their religion is declined and passed from the heats and follies of youth to the coldnesse and infirmities of old age The remedies of which is onely a diligent spirit and a busie religion a great industry a full portion of time in holy offices that as the Oracle said to the Cirrheans noctes diesque belligerandum they could not be happy unlesse they waged war night and day that is unlesse we perpetually fight against our own vices and repell our Ghostly enemies and stand upon our guard we must stand for ever in the state of babes in Christ or else return to the first imperfections of an unchristened soul and an unsanctified spirit That 's the first particular 2. The second step of our growth in grace is when vertues grow habitual apt and easie in our manners and dispositions For although many new converts have a great zeal and a busie spirit apt enough as they think to contest against all the difficulties of a spiritual life yet they meet with such powerful oppositions from without and a false heart within that their first heats are soon broken and either they are for ever discouraged or are forced to march more slowly and proceed more temperately for ever after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is an easie thing to commit a wickednesse for temptation and infirmity are alwayes too neer us But God hath made care and sweat prudence and diligence experience and watchfulnesse wisdom and labour at home and good guides abroad to be instruments and means to purchase vertue The way is long and difficult at first but in the progresse and pursuit we finde all the knots made plain and the rough wayes made smooth jam monte potitus Ridet Now the spirit of grace is like a new soul within him and he hath new appetites and new pleasures when the things of the world grow unsavory and the things of religion are delicious when his temptations to his old crimes return but seldom and they prevail not at all or in very inconsiderable instances and stay not at all but are reproached with a penitentiall sorrow and speedy amendment when we do actions of vertue quickly frequently and with delight then we have grown in grace in the same degree in which they can perceive these excellent dispositions Some persons there are who dare not sin they dare not omit their hours of prayer and they are restlesse in their spirits till they have done but they go to it as to execution they stay from it as long as they can and they drive like Pharoahs charets with the wheels off sadly and heavily and besides that such persons have reserved to themselves the best part of their sacrifice and do not give their will to God they do not love him with all their heart they are also soonest tempted to retire and fall off Sextius Romanus resigned the honours and offices of the city and betook himself to the severity of a Philosophical life But when his unusual diet and hard labour began to pinch his flesh and he felt his propositions smart and that which was fine in discourse at a Symposiack or an Academical dinner began to sit uneasily upon him in the practise he so despaired that he had like to have cast himself into the sea to appease the labours of his religion Because he never had gone further then to think it a fine thing to be a wise man he would commend it but he was loth to pay for it at the price that God and the Philosopher sot upon it But he that is grown in grace and hath made religion habitual to his spirit is not at ease but when he is doing the works of the new man he rests in religion and comforts his sorrows with thinking of his prayers and in all crosses of the world he is patient because his joy is at hand to refresh him when he list for he cares not so he may serve God and if you make him poor here he is rich there and he counts that to be his proper service his worke his recreation and reward 3. But because in the course of holy living although the duty be regular and constant yet the sensible relishes and the flowrings of affections the zeal and the visible expressions do not alwayes make