see he did in the Councell of Nice when after many disputations amongst the great Men of great estimation the weakest Man in the Councell rose up and he o◠whom his owne party were afraid lest his discourse should disadvantage the cause overthrew and converted that great Advocate and defender of Arius whom all the rest could never shake for though this man said no more then other men had said yet God at this time disposed the understanding and the abilities of the Adversaries otherwise then before sometimes God will have glory in arming his friends sometimes in disarming his enemies sometimes in exalting our abilities and sometimes in evacuating or enfeebling theirs And so as the Apostles were as many of us as celebrate this day as they did are filled with the Holy Ghost that is with so much knowledge as is necessary to Gods purpose in us Enough for our selves if we be private men and enough for others if wee have charge of others private men shall have knowledge enough where to seeke for more and the Priest shall have enough to communicate his knowledge to others And though this knowledge were delivered to the Apostles as from a print from a stampe all at once and to us but as by writing letter after letter syllable after syllable by Catechismes chismes and Sermons yet both are such knowledges as are sufficient for each As the glory of heaven shall fall upon us all and though we be not all of equall measure and capacity yet we shall be equally full of that glory so the way to that glory this knowledge shall be manifest to us all and infallible to us all though we do not all know alike The simplest soul that heares me shall know the way of his salvation as well as the greatest of those Fathers whom he heares me cite And upon us all so disposed the holy Ghost shall fall as he did here in fire and In tongues In fire to inflame us in a religious zeal and in Tongues to utter that in confession and in profession that is to glorifie God both in our words and in our actions This then is our portion in this Legacy A sober seeking after those points of knowledge which are necessary for our salvation and these in this text Christ derived into these three That I am in my Father That you are in me That I am in you The first of these is the knowledge of distinction of persons and so of the Trinity Ego in Paetre Trinitas Principale munus scientiae est cognoscere Trinitatem saith Origen The principall use and office of my knowledge is to know the Trinity for to know an unity in the Godhead that there is but one God naturall reason serves our turn to know a creation of the world of nothing reason serves us too we know by reason that either neither of them is infinite if there be two Gods and then neither of them can be God or if both be infinite which is an impossibility one of them is superfluous because whatsoever is infinite can alone extend to all So also we can collect infallibly that if the world were not made of nothing yet that of which the world shall be pretended to have been made of must have been made of nothing or else it must be something eternall and untreated whatsoever is so must necessarily be God it self To be sure of those two an unity in the Godhead and a creation of the world I need no Scriptures but to know this distinction of Persons That the Son is in the Father I need the Scriptures and I need more then the Scriptures I need this Pentecost this comming this illustration of the holy Ghost to inspire a right understanding of these Scriptures into me For if this knowledge might be had without Scriptures why should not the heathen beleeve the Trinity as well as I since they lack no naturall faculties which Christians have And if the Scriptures themselves without the operation of the holy Ghost should bring this clearnesse why should not the Jews and the Arians conform themselves to this doctrine of the Trinity as well as I since they accept those Scriptures out of which I provethe Trinity to mine own cōscience We must then attend his working in us we must not admit such a vexation of spirit as either to vex our spirit or the Spirit of God by inquiring farther then he hath been pleased to reveale If you consider that Christ sayes here You shall know That I am in the Father and doth not say You shall know How I am in the Father and this to his Apostles themselves and to the Apostles after they were to be filled with the holy Ghost which should teach them all truth it will out off many perplexing questions and impertinent answers which have been produced for the expressing of the manner of this generation and of the distinction of the persons in the Trinity you shall know That it is you shall not ask How it is It is enough for a happy subject to enjoy the sweetnesse of a peaceable government though he know not Arcana Imperii The wayes by which the Prince governes So is it for a Christian to enjoy the working of Gods grace in a faithfull beleeving the mysteries of Religion though he inquire not into Gods bed-chamber nor seek into his unrevealed Decrees It is Odiosa exitialis vocula Quomodo sayes Luther A hatefull a damnable Monosyllable How How God doth this or that for if a man come to the boldnesse of proposing such a question to himself he will not give over till he finde some answer and then others will not be content with his answer but every man will have a severall one When the Church fell upon the Quomodo in the Sacrament How in what manner the body of Christ was there we see what an inconvenient answer it fell upon That it was done by Transubstantiation That satisfied not as there was no reason it should And then they fell upon others In Sub and Cum and none could none can give satisfaction And so also have our times by asking Quomodo How Christ descended into Hell produced so many answers as that some have thought it no Article at all some have thought that it is all one thing to have descended into hell and to have ascended into heaven and that it amounts to no more then a departing into the state of the dead But Servate depositum Make much of that knowledge which the holy Ghost hath trusted you withall and beleeve the rest No man knows how his soul came into him whether ther by infusion from God or by generation from Parents no man knows so but that strong arguments will be produced on the other side And yet no man doubts but he hath a soul No man knows so as that strong arguments may not be brought on the other side how he sees whether by reception of species from without or
gods as there are Creatures from God and more then that as many gods as they could fancie or imagine in making Chimera's of their owne for not onely that which was not God but that which was not at all was made a God And then as in narrow channels that cannot containe the water the water over-flowes and yet that water that does so over flow flies out and spreads to such a shallownesse as will not beare a Boat to any use so when by this narrownesse in the Gentiles God had over-flowne this bank this limitation of God in an unity all the rest was too shallow to beare any such notion any such consideration of God as appertained to him They could not think him an Omnipotent God when if one God would not another would nor an Infinite God when they had appeales from one God to another and without Omnipotence and without Infinitenesse they could not truly conceive a God They had cantoned a glorious Monarchy into petty States that could not subsist of themselves nor assist another and so imagined a God for every state and every action that a man must have applied himselfe to one God when he shipped and when he landed to another and if he travailed farther change his God by the way as often as he changed coynes or post-horses Deut. 6.4 But Heare O Israel the Lord thy God is one God As though this were all that were to be heard all that were to be learned they are called to heare and then there is no more said but that The Lord thy God is one God There are men that will say and sweare they do not meane to make God the Author of sin but yet when they say That God made man therefore that he might have something to damne and that he made him sin therefore that he might have something to damne him for truly they come too neare making God the Author of sin for all their modest protestation of abstaining So there are men that will say and sweare they do not meane to make Saints Gods but yet when they will aske the same things at Saints hands which they do at Gods and in the same phrase and manner of expression when they will pray the Virgin Mary to assist her Son nay to command her Son and make her a Chancellor to mitigate his common Law truly they come too neare making more Gods then one And so do we too when we give particular sins dominion over us Quot vitia tot Deos recentes sayes Hierom As the Apostle sayes Covetousnesse is Idolatry so sayes that Father is voluptuousnesse and licentiousnesse and every habituall sin Non alienum sayes God Thou shalt have no other God but me But Quis similis sayes God too Who is like me Hee will have nothing made like him not made so like a God as they make their Saints nor made so like a God as we make our sins Wee thinke one King Soveraigne enough and one friend counsellor enough and one Wife helper enough and he is strangely insatiable that thinks not one God God enough especially since when thou hast called this God what thou canst Hâ—â—â—r he is more then thou hast said of him Cum definitur ipse sua definitione crescit When thou hast defined him to be the God of justice and tremblest he is more then that he is the God of mercy too and gives thee comfort When thou hast defined him to be all eye He sees all thy sins he is more then that he is all patience and covers all thy sins And though he be in his nature incomprehensible and inaccessible in his light yet this is his infinite largenesse that being thus infinitely One he hath manifested himselfe to us in three Persons to be the more easily discerned by us and the more closely and effectually applied to us Now these notions that we have of God as a Father as a Son as a Holy Ghost Trinitas as a Spirit working in us are so many handles by which we may take hold of God and so many breasts by which we may suck such a knowledge of God as that by it wee may grow up into him And as wee cannot take hold of a torch by the light but by the staffe we may so though we cannot take hold of God as God who is incomprehensible and inapprehensible yet as a Father as a Son as a Spirit dwelling in us we can There is nothing in Nature that can fully represent and bring home the notion of the Trinity to us There is an elder booke in the World then the Scriptures It is not well said in the World for it is the World it selfe the whole booke of Creatures And indeed the Scriptures are but a paraphrase but a comment but an illustration of that booke of Creatures And therefore though the Scriptures onely deliver us the doctrine of the Trinity clearely yet there are some impressions some obumbrations of it in Nature too Take but one in our selves in the soule The understanding of man that is as the Father begets discourse ratiocination and that is as the Son and out of these two proceed conclusions and that is as the Holy Ghost Such as these there are many many sprinkled in the Schoole many scattered in the Fathers but God knowes poore and faint expressions of the Trinity But yet Praemisit Deus naturam magistram Tertul. submissurus prophetiam Though God meant to give us degrees in the University that is increase of knowledge in his Scriptures after yet he gave us a pedagogy he sent us to Schoole in Nature before Vt faciliùs credas prophetiae discipulus naturae That comming out of that Schoole thou mightest profit the better in that University having well considered Nature thou mightest be established in the Scriptures He is therefore inexcusable that considers not God in the Creature that comming into a faire Garden sayes onely Here is a good Gardiner and not Here is a good God and when he sees any great change sayes onely This is a strange accident and not a strange Judgement Hence is it that in the books of the Platonique Philosophers and in others much ancienter then they if the books of Hermes Trismegistus and others be as ancient as is pretended in their behalfe we finde as cleare expressing of the Trinity as in the Old Testament at least And hence is it that in the Talmud of the Jews and in the Alcoran of the Turks though they both oppose the Trinity yet when they handle not that point there fall often from them as cleare confessions of the three Persons as from any of the elder of those Philosophers who were altogether dis-interested in that Controversie But because God is seene Per creaturas ut per speculum per verbum ut per lucem Aleus In the creature and in nature but by reflection In the Word and in the Scriptures directly we rest in the knowledge which we
JOHN 11.21 Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not dyed pa. 816 NOVEMB 29. 1639. Imprimatur THO BROUN SERMONS Preached upon Christmas-day SERMON I. PREACHED AT St. PAVLS upon Christmas day 1622. Coloss 1.19 20. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulnesse dwell And having made peace through the bloud of his Crosse by Him to reconcile all things to himselfe by Him whether they be things in Earth or things in heaven THE whole journey of a Christian is in these words and therefore we were better set out early then ride too fast better enter presently into the parts then be forced to passe thorow them too hastily First then wee consider the Collation and Reference of the Text and then the Illation and Inference thereof For the Text looks back to all that was said from the twelfth verse For the first word of the text For which is a particle of connexion as well as of argumentation is a seale of all that was said from that place And then the Text looks forward to the 23 ver where all these blessings are sealed to us with that Condition If ye continue setled in the Gospell This is the Collation the Reference of the text for the Illation and Inference the first clause thereof For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulnesse dwell presents a double Instruction First that we are not bound to accept matters of Religion meerely without all reason and probable inducements And secondly with what modesty we are to proceed and in what bounds we are to limit that inquisition that search of Reason in matters of that nature When the Apostle presents to us here the great mystery of our reconciliation to God he in whose power it was not to infuse faith into every reader of his Epistle proceeds by reason He tels us V. 13. That the Father hath translated us into the Kingdome of his deare Son the Son of his love That were well if we were sure of it If our consciences did not accuse us and suggest to us our owne unworthinesse and thereby an impossibility of being so translated Why no sayes the Apostle V. 14. there is no such impossibility now For Now we have Redemption and forgivenesse of sinnes Who should procure us that If a man sin against God who shall plead for him What man is able to mediate 1 Sam. 2.25 and stand in the gap between God and man You say true sayes the Apostle no man is able to doe it and therefore He that is the Image of the invisible God V. 15. he by whom all things were created and by whom all things consist he hath done it Hath God reconciled me to God And reconciled me by way of satisfaction for that I know his justice requires What could God pay for me What could God suffer God himselfe could not V. 18. and therefore God hath taken a body that could And as he is the Head of that body he is passible so he may suffer And as he is the first born of the dead he did suffer so that he was defective in nothing not in Power as God not in passibility as man for Complacuit It pleased the Father that in him All fulnesse a full capacity to all purposes should dwell Thus farre we are to trace the reason of our redemption intimated in that first word For. And then we are to limit and determine our reason in the next Quia complacuit because it was his will his pleasure to proceed so and no otherwise Christ himselfe goes no farther then so Mat. 11.25 in a case of much strangenesse That God had hid his mysteries from the wise and revealed them unto babes This was a strange course but Ita est quia Even so Father for so it seemed good in thy sight I would faine be able to prove to my selfe that my redemption is accomplished and therefore I search the Scriptures and I grow sure that Christ hath redeemed the world and I search the Scriptures again to finde what marks are upon them that are of the participation of that Redemption and I grow to a religious and modest assurance that those marks are upon me I finde reasons to prove to me that God does love my soule but why God should love men better then his own Son or why God should love me better then other men I must end in the reason of the text Quia complacuit and in the reason of Christ himself Ita est quia It is so O Father because thy good pleasure was it should be so To passe then from the Collation and Reference Divisio by which the text hath his Cohaerence with the precedent and subsequent passages and the Illation and Inference by which you have seene the generall doctrine That reason is not to be excluded in religion but yet to be tenderly and modestly pressed we have here the Person that redeemed us and his Qualification for that great office That all fulnesse should dwell in him And then we have the Pacification and the Meanes thereof Peace was made through the bloud of his Crosse And then the Effect the application of all this to them for whom it was wrought That all things in earth and heaven might be reconciled to God by him In the qualification of the person we finde plenitudinem fulnesse and omnem plenitudinem all fulnesse and omnem plenitudinem inhabitantem all fulnesse dwelling permanent And yet even this dwelling fulnesse even in this person Christ Jesus by no title of merit in himselfe but onely quia complacuit because it pleased the Father it should be so In the pacification which is our second part Peace was made by the bloud of his Crosse we shall see first quod bellum what the warre was and then quae pax what the peace is and lastly quis modus how this peace was made which was strange per sanguinem by bloud to save bloud and yet by bloud And per sanguinem ejus by his bloud his who was victoriously to triumph in this peace and per sanguinem Crucis ejus by the bloud of his Crosse that is his death the bloud of his Circumcision the bloud of his Agony the bloud of his scourging was not enough It must be and so it was the bloud of his Crosse And these peeces constitute our second part the Pacification And then in the third the Application That all things might be reconciled to God we shall see first what this Reconciliation is and then how it extends to all things on earth which we might thinke were not capable of it and all things in heaven which we might think stood in no need of it And in these three parts The person and his qualification The thing it selfe The Pacification The effect of this The Reconciliation the Application wee shall determine all First 1. Part. Plenitudo In the person that redeemes us we finde fulnesse And there
he alone for the salvation of all men as it is expresly said for this word in our Text they hath no limitation I came I alone that they all they might be the better Some of the ancient Fathers delivering the mercies of God so Illis omnibus as the articles of our Church enjoyne them to bee delivered that is generally as they are delivered in the Scriptures have delivered them so over-generally that they have seemed loth to thinke the devill himselfe excluded from all benefit of Christs comming Some of the later Authors in the Roman Church who as pious as they pretend to be towards the Fathers are apter to discover the nakednesse of the Fathers then we are have noted in Iustin Martyr and in Epiphanius and in Clement of Alexandria and in Oecumenius and Oecumenius is no single Father but Pater patratus a manifold Father a complicated father a Father that collected Fathers and even in S. Ierome himselfe and S. Ambrose too some inclinations towards that opinion that the devill retaining still his faculty of free will is therefore capable of repentance and so of benefit by this comming of Christ And those Authors of the Roman Church that modifie the matter and excuse the Fathers herein excuse them no other way but this that though that opinion and doctrine of those Fathers bee not true in it selfe yet it was never condemned by any Councell nor by any ancient Father So very far did very many goe in enlarging the mercies of God in Christ to all But waiving this over-large extention and profusion thereof and directing it upon a more possible and a more credible object that is Man S. Cyril of Alexandria speaking of the possibility of the salvation of all men saies by way of objection to himselfe Omnes non credunt How can all be saved since all doe not beleeve but saies he Because actually they do not beleeve is it therefore impossible they should beleeve And for actuall beleefe saies he though all doe not yet so many doe utfacilè qui pereant superent that by Gods goodnesse more are saved then lost saies that Father of tender and large bowels Moses S. Cyril And howsoever he may seeme too tender and too large herein yet it is a good peece of counsaile which that Rabbi whom I named before gives Ne redarguas ca falsitatis de quorum contrariis nulla est demonstratio Be not aptto call any opinion false or hereticall or damnable the contrary whereof cannot be evidently proved And for this particular the generall possibility of salvation all agree that the merit of Christ Jesus is sufficient for all Whether this all-sufficiency grow ex intrinseca ratione formali out of the very nature of the merit the dignity of the person being considered or grow ex pacto acceptatione out of the acceptation of the Father and the contract betweene him and the Son for that let the Thomists and the Scotists in the Roman Church wrangle All agree that there is enough done for all And would God receive enough for all and then exclude some of himselfe without any relation any consideration of sinne God forbid Man is called by divers names names of lownesse enough in the Scriptures But by the name of Enosh Enosh that signifies meere misery Man is never called in the Scriptures till after the fall of Adam Onely sinne after and not any ill purpose in God before made man miserable The manner of expressing the mercy of God in the frame and course of Scriptures expresses evermore the largenesse of that mercy Very often in the Scriptures you shall finde the person suddenly changed and when God shall have said in the beginning of a sentence I will shew mercy unto them them as though he spoke of others presently in the same sentence he will say my loving kindnesse will I not draw from thee not from thee not from them not from any that so whensoever thou hearest of Gods mercy proposed to them to others thou mightest beleeve that mercy to bee meant to thee and whensoever they others heare that mercy proposed to thee they might beleeve it to be meant to them And so much may to good purpose be observed out of some other parts of this Chapter in another translation In the third verse it is said His sheepe heare his voice In the Arabique tranflation it is Oves audit His sheepe in the plurall does heare in the singular God is a plurall God and offers himselfe to all collectively God is a singular God and offers himselfe to every man distributively So also is it said there Nominibus suo He cals his sheepe by their names It is names in the plurall and theirs in the singular whatsoever God proposes to any he intends to all In which contemplation S. Augustine breaks out into that holy exclamation O bone omnipotens qui sic cur as unumquemque nostrûm tanquam solum cures sic omnes tamquam singulos O good and mighty God who art as loving to every man as to all mankind and meanest as well to all mankind as to any man Be pleased to make your use of this note for the better imprinting of this largenesse of Gods mercy Moses desires of God Exod. 33.13 V. 18. V. 19. that he would shew him Vias suas His waies his proceedings his dealings with men that which he calls after Gloriam suam His glory how he glorifies himselfe upon man God promises him in the next verse that he will shew him Omne bonum All his goodnesse Exod. 346. God hath no way towards man but goodnesse God glorifies himselfe in nothing upon man but in his owne goodnesse And therefore when God comes to the performance of this promise in the next Chapter he showes him his way and his glory and his goodnesse in shewing him that he is a mercifull God a gracious God a long-suffering God a God that forgives sins and iniquities and as the Hebrew Doctors note there are thirteen attributes thirteen denotations of God specified in that place and of all those thirteen there is but one that tasts of judgement That he will punish the sins of Fathers upon Children All the other twelve are meerly wholly mercy such a proportion hath his mercy above his justice such a proportion as that there is no cause in him if all men be not partakers of it Shall we say sayes S. Cyril Melius agriculturam non exerceri si quae nocent tolli non possunt It were better there were no tillage then that weeds should grow Melius non creasse better that God had made no men then that so many should be damned God made none to be damned And therefore though some would expunge out of our Litany that Rogation that Petition That thou wouldst have mercy upon all men as though it were contrary to Gods purpose to have mercy upon all men yet S. Augustine enlarges his charity too far Libera nos Domine
under our senses non sensus nor with any thing which we can bring studiously or which can fall casually into our fancy or imagination non phantasia And upon the whole matter and all the evidence he joynes in this verdict with S. Hierome Tunc cernitur cum invisibilis creditur God is best seen by us when we confesse that he cannot be seen of us S. Augustine denies not That our eyes shall be spirituall eyes but in what proportion spirituall or to what particular use spirituall he will not pretend to know Vtrum in simplicitatem spiritus cedat it a ut totus homo jam sit spiritus whether the body of man shall be so attenuated and rarified as that the whole man shall become spirit Aut animam adjuvet corpus ad videndum whether the body shall contribute and assist the faculties of the soul as in this life it doth Fateor me non alicubi legisse quod existimarem sufficere ad docendum aut ad discendum sayes that blessed and sober Father I confesse I never read any thing that I thought sufficient to rectifie mine own judgement much lesse to change anothers But to all those places of Scripture which are to this purpose That the Angels see the face of God and that we shall be like the Angels and see God face to face he answers well Facies Dei ea est qua Deus innotescit nobis That is the face of God to us all by which God is known and manifested to us in which sense Reason is the face of God to the naturall man the Law to the Jew and the Gospell to us and such a sight of God doth no more put such a power of seeing in our bodily eyes then it puts a face upon God We shall see God face to face and yet God shall have no face to be seen nor we bodily eyes to see him by For Non legi That I have not read sayes he This sayes he I have read Regi incorruptibili invisibili Vnto the King eternall immortall invisible c. Neither dare I sayes S. Augustine 1 Tim. 1.17 sever those things which the Spirit of God hath joyned Vt dicam incorruptibilem quidem in saecula saeculorum invisibilem autem in hoc saeculo I dare not say that God is immortall in this world and in the next world too but invisible in this world only and visible in the next for the Holy Ghost hath pronounced him invisible as far as immortall Si rogas sayes he if you presse me Cannot God then be seen Yes I confesse he can If you ask me how Cum vult sicuti vult He may be seen when he will and how he will If you pursue it can he not be seen in his Essence yes he can If you proceed farther and ask me how again I can say no more sayes he then Christ sayes Erimus sicut Angeli we shall be like the Angels and we shall see God so as the Angels do but they see him not with bodily eyes nor as an object which is that that S. Ambrose and S. Hicrome and S. Chrysostome intend when they deny that the Angels see the Essence of God that is they see him not otherwise then by understanding him All agree in this resolution Solus Deus videt cor solum cor videt Deum Only God can see the heart of man and only the heart of man can see God For in this world our bodily eyes do not see bodies they see but colours and dimensions they see not bodies much lesse shall our eyes though spirituall see spirits in heaven least of all that Spirit in comparison of of whom Angels and our spirits are but grosse bodies So far the Fathers leade us towards a determination herein and thus far the School Nulla visio naturalis in terris Here in this life neither the eyes nor the minde of the most subtile and most sanctified man can see the Essence of God Nulla visio corporalis in coelis The bodily eyes of no man in the highest stare of glorification in heaven can see the Essence of God Nulla visio comprehensiva omnino That faculty of man which shall see the Essence of God in heaven yet shall not comprehend that Essence for to comprehend is not to know a thing as well as I can know it but to know it as well as that thing can be knowen and so only God himself can see and know that is comprehend God To end all in the whole body of the Scriptures we have no light that our bodily eyes shall be so enlightned in the Resurrection Job 19.26 as to see the Essence of God For when Iob sayes In carne mea In my flesh I shall see God and Oculi mei videbunt Mine eyes shall see God if these words must necessarily be understood of the last Resurrection which some Expositors deny and Calvin in particular understands them of a particular resurrection from that calamity which lay upon Iob at that time and of his confidence that God would raise him again even in this life yet howsoever and to which resurrection soever you refer them the words must be understood thus In my flesh that is when my soule shall re-assume this flesh in the Resurrection In that flesh I shall see God he doth not say That flesh shall but Hee in that flesh shall So when hee adds Oculi mei Mine eyes shall do it he intends Oculos internos of which the Apostle speaks The eyes of your understanding being enlightned Ephes 1.18 So then a faculty to see him so in his Essence with bodily eyes we finde not in Scripture But yet in the Scriptures we do finde that we shall see him so Sicuti est As he is in his Essence How It is a safe answer which S. Augustine gives in all such questions Meliùs affirmamus de quibus minimè dubitamus Only those things are safely affirmed and resolved which admit no doubt This hath never admitted any doubt but that our soule and her faculties shall be so exalted in that state of glory as that in those internall faculties of the soul so exalted we shall see the very Essence of God which no measure of the light of grace communicated to any the most fanctified man here doth effect but only the light of glory there shall And therefore this being cleare that in the faculties of our soules we shall see him Restat ut de illa visione secundum interiorem hominem certissimi simus sayes that blessed and sober Father As our reason is satisfied that the Saints in heaven shall see God so so let our consciences be satisfied that we have an interest in that state and that we in particular shall come to that sight of God Et cor mundum ad illam visionem praeparemus Let us not abuse our selves with false assurances nor rest in any other then this that we have made clean and pure our
consideration upon David or upon the Jews Thereupon doe the Father truly I think more generally more unanimely then in any other place of Scripture take that place of Ezekile which we spake of before to be primarily intended of the last resurrection but secundarily of the Jews restitution But Gasper Sanctius a learned Jesuit that is not so rare but an ingenuous Jesuit too though he be bound by the Councel Trent to interpret Scriptures according to the Fathers yet he here ackowledges the whole truth that Gods purpose was to prove by that which they did know which was the generall resurrection that which they knew not their temporall restitution Tertullian is vehement at first but after more supple Allegoricae Scripturae saies he resurrectionem subradiant aliae aliae determinant Some figurative places of Scripture doe intimate a resurrection and some manifest it and of those manifest places he takes this vision of Ezekiel to be one But he comes after to this Sit corporum rerum meánihilinterest let it sighnifie a temporall resurrection so it may signifie the generall resurrection of our bodies too saies he and I am well satisfied and then the truth satisfies him for it doth signifie both It is true that Tertullian sayes De vacuo similitudo non competit If the vision be but a comparison if there were no such thing as a resurrection the comparison did not hold De nullo par abola non convenit saies he and truly If there were no resurrection to which that Parable might have relation it were no Parable All that is true but there was a resurrection alwaies knowne to them alwaies beleeved by them and that made their present resurrection from that calamity the more easie the more intelligible the more credible the more discernable to them Let therefore Gods method be thy method fixe thy self firmly upon that beliefe of the penerall resurrection and thou wilt never doubt of either of the particular resurrections either from sin by Gods grace or from worldly calamities by Gods power For that last resurrection is the ground of all By that Verévicta mors saies Irenaeus this Last enemy death is truly destroyed because his last spoile the body is taken out of his hands The same body eadem ovis as the same Father notes Christ did not fetch another sheep to the flock in the place of that which was lost but the same sheep God shall not give me another abetter body at the resurrection but the same body made better for Sinon haberet caro salvari neutiquam verbum Dei caro factum fuisset If the flesh of man were not to be saved Idem the Anchor of salvation would never have taken the flesh of man upon him The punishment that God laid upon Adam In dolore in sudore In sweat and in sorrow sbalt thou eate thy bread is but Donecreverteris till man returne to dust but when Man is returned to dust Gen. 3.17 God returnes to the remembrance of that promise Awake and sing yethat dwell in the dust A mercy already exhibited to us in the person of our Saviour Christ Jesus Esay 26.19 in whom Per primitias benedixit campo saies S. Chrysostome as God by taking a handfull for the first Fruits gave ablessing to the wholw field so he hath sealed the bodies of all mankind to his glory by pre-assuming the body of Christ to that glory For by that there is now Commercium inter Coelum terram there is a Trade driven a Staple established betweene Heaven and earth Bernard Ibi caronostra hic Spiritus ejus Thither have we sent our flest and hither hath he sent his Spirti This is the last abolition of this enemy Death for after this the bodies of the Saints he cannot touch the bodes of the damned he cannot kill and if he could hee were not therein their enemy but their friend This is that blessed and glorious State of which when all the Apostles met to make the Creed they could say no more but Credo Resurrectionem I heleeve the Resurrection of the body and when those two Reverend Fathers to whom it belongs shall come to speake of it upon the day proper for it in this place and if all the Bishops that ever met in Councels should meet them here they could but second the Apostles Credo with their Anathema We beleeve and woe be unto them that doe not beleeve the Resurrection of the body but in gong about to expresse it the lips of an Angell would be uncircumcised lips and the tongue of an Archangell would stammer I offer not therefore at it but in respect of and with relation to that blessed State according to the doctrine and practise of our Church we doe pray for the dead for the militant Church upon earth and the trimphant Church in Heaven and the whole Catholique Church in Heaveen and earth we doe pray that God will be pleased to hasten that Kingdome that we with all others departed in the true Faith of his holy Name may have this perfect consummation both of body and soule in his everlasting glory Amen SERMON XVI preached at VVhite-hall the first Friday in Lent 1622. JOHN 11.35 Iesus wept I Am now but upon the Compassion of Christ There is much difference between his Compassion and his Passion as much as between the men that are to handle them here But Lacryma pass ionis Chrisi est vicaria August A great personage may speake of his Passion of his blood My vicargae is to speake of his Compassion and his teares Let me chafe the wax and melt your soules in a bath of his Teares now Let him set to the great Seale of his effectuall passion in his blood then It is a Common place I know to speake of teares I would you knew as well it were a common practise to shed them Though it be not so yet bring S. Bernards patience Libenter audiam qui non sibi plausum sed mihi planctum moveat be willing to heare him that seeks not your acclamation to himselfe but your humiliation to his and your God not to make you praise with them that praise but to make you weepe with them that weepe And Iesus wept The Masorites the Masorites are the Critiques upon the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament cnnot tell us who divided the Chapters of the Old Testament into verses Neither can any other tell us who did it in the New Testament Whoever did it seemes to have stopped in an amazement in this Text and by making an intire verse of these two words Iesus wept and no more to intimate that there needs no more for the exalting of our devotion to a competent heighth then to consider how and where and when and why Iesus wept There is not a shorter verse in the Bible not a larger Text. There is another as short Semper gaudete Rejoyce evermore and of that holy Joy
occasionally instrumenta of Gods glory August sahll finde cold affection If they killed Lazarus had not Christ done enough to let them see that he could raise him againe for Caeca sevitia sialiud videtur mertuus aliud occisus It was a blinde malice if they thought that Christ could raise a man naturally dead and could not if he were violently killed This then being his greatest Miracle preparing the hardest Article of the Creed the Resurrection of the body as the Mirracle it selfe declared sufficiently his Divinity that nature so in this declaration that he was God he would declare that he was man too and therefore Iesus wept He wept as man doth weepe and he wept as a man may weepe Noninordinaté Bernard Iob 10.4 for these teares were Testes naturae non Indices diffidentiae They declared him to be true man but no distrustfull no inordinate man In Iob there is a question ask'd of God Hast thou eyes of flesh and doest thou see as man sees Let this question be directed to God manifested in Christ and Christ will weepe out an answer to that question I have eyes of flesh and I do weep as man weepes Not as sinfull man not as s man that had het fall his bridle by which he should trune his horse Not as a man that were cast from the rudder by which he should steere his Ship Not as a man that had lost his interest and power in his affections and passions Christ wept not so Christ mingt goe farther that way then any other man Christ might ungirt himselfe and give more scope and liberty to his passions then any other man both because he had no Originall sin within to drive him no inordinate love without to draw him when his affections were moved which all other men have God sayes to the Jews That they had wept in his eares God had heard them weep Numb 11.18 but for what and how they wept for flesh There was a tincture there was a deep dye of murmuring in their tears Christ goes as far in the passion in his agony and he comes to a passionate deprecation in his Tristis anima and in the Si possibile and in the Transeat calix But as all these passions were sanctified in the roote from which no bitter leafe no crooked twig could spring so they were instantly washed with his Veruntamen a present and a full submitting of all to Gods pleasure Yet not my will O Father but thine be done It will not be safe for any man to come so neare an excesse of passions as he may finde some good men in the Scriptures to have done That because he heares Moses say to God Dele me Blot my name out of the book of life Therefore he may say God damne me or I renounce God It is not safe for a man to expose himself to a tentation because he hath seen another passe through it Every man may know his own Byas and to what sin that diverts him The beauty of the person the opportunity of the place the importunity of the party being his Mistresse could not shake Iosephs constancy There is one such example of one that resisted a strong tentation But then there are in one place two men together that sinned upon their own bodies Her and Onan Gen. 46. â—2 then when no tentation was offered nay when a remedy against tentation was ministred to them Some man may be chaster in the Stews then another in the Church and some man will sin more in his dreams then another in his discourse Every man must know how much water his own vessell draws and not to think to saile over wheresoever he hath seen anothe he knows not with how much labour shove over No nor to adventure so far as he may have reason to be confident in his own strength For thugh he may be safe in himself yet he may sinin anogher if by his indiscreete and improvident example another be scandalized Christ was alwayes safe He was led of the Spirit Mat. 4.1 of what spirit his own Spirit Led willingly into the wildernesse to be tempted of the devill No other man might do that but he who was able to say to the Sun Siste sol was able to say to Satan Siste Lucifer Christ in another place gave such scope to his affections and to others interpretations of his actions that his frineds and kinsfolds thught him mad besides himself But all this while Christ had his own actions and passions and their interpretations in his own power he could do what he would Here in our Text Jesus was troubled and he groaned and vehemently and often his affections were stirred but as in a clan glasse if water be stirred and troubled though it may conceive a little light froth yet it contracts no foulenesse in that clean galsse the affections of Christ were moved but so in that holy vessell they would contract no foulenesse no declination towards inordinatenesse But then every Christian is not a Christ and therefore as he that would fast forty dayes as Christ did might starve and he that would whip Merchants out of the Temple as Christ did might be knockt downe in the Temple So he knowing his owne inclinations or but the generall ill inclination of all mankind as he is infected with Originall sin should converse so much with publicans and sinners might participate of their sins The rule is we must avoid inordinatenesse of affections but when we come to examples of that rule our selves well understood by our selves must be our owne exaples for it is not alwaies good to go too far as some good men have gone before Now though Christ were farre from both Non Apathes yet he came nearer to an excesse of passion then to an Indolencie to a senselesnesse to a privation of naturall affections Inordinatenesse of affections may sometimes make some men like some beasts but indolencie absence emptinesse privation of affections makes any man at all times like stones like dirt In novissimis saith S. Peter In the last that is in the worst dayes in the dregs and lees and tartar of sin then shall come men lovers of themselves and that is ill enough in man for that is an affection peculiar to God to love himselfe Non speciale vitium sed radix omnium vitiorum saies the Schoole in the mouth of Aquinas selfe love cannot be called a distinct sin but the roote of all sins It is true that Iustin Martyr saies Philosophanti finis est Deo assimilari The end of Christian Philosophy is to be wise like God but not in this to love our selves for the greatest sin that ever was and that upon which even the blood of Christ Jesus hath not wrought the sin of Angels was that Similis ero Altissimo to be like God To love our selves to be satisfied in our selves to finde an omni-sufficiency in our selves is an intrusion an usurpation upon God
our virility our holy manhood our true and religious strength consists in the assurance that though death have divided us and though we never receive our dead raised to life again in this world yet we do live together already in a holy Communion of Saints and shal live together for ever hereafter in a glorious Resurrection of bodies Little know we how little a way a soule hath to goe to heaven when it departs from the body Whether it must passe locally through Moone and Sun and Firmament and if all that must be done all that may be done in lesse time then I have proposed the doubt in or whether that soule finde new light in the same roome and be not carried into any other but that the glory of heaven be diffused over all I know not I dispute not I inquire not Without disputing or inquiring I know that when Christ sayes That God is not the God of the dead he saies that to assure me that those whom I call dead are alive And when the Apostle tels me That God is not ashamed to be called the God of the dead Heb. 11.16 he tels me that to assure me That Gods servants lose nothing by dying He was but a Heathen that said Menander Thraces If God love a man Iuvenis tollitur He takes him young out of this world And they were but Heathens that observed that custome To put on mourning when their sons were born and to feast and triumph when they dyed But thus much we may learne from these Heathens That if the dead and we be not upon one floore nor under one story yet we are under one roofe We think not a friend lost because he is gone into another roome nor because he is gone into another Land And into another world no man is gone for that Heaven which God created and this world is all one world If I had fixt a Son in Court or married a daughter into a plentifull Fortune I were satisfied for that son and that daughter Shall I not be so when the King of Heaven hath taken that son to himselfe and maried himselfe to that daughter for ever I spend none of my Faith I exercise none of my Hope in this that I shall have my dead raised to life againe This is the faith that sustaines me when I lose by the death of others or when I suffer by living in misery my selfe That the dead and we are now all in one Church and at the resurrection shall be all in one Quire But that is the resurrection which belongs to our other part That resurrection which wee have handled though it were a resurrection from death yet it was to death too for those that were raised again died again But the Resurrection which we are to speak of is forever They that rise then shall see death no more for it is sayes our Text A better Resurrection That which we did in the other part 2 Part. in the last branch thereof in this part we shall doe in the first First we shall consider the examples from which the Apostle deduceth this encouragement and faithfull constancy upon those Hebrewes to whom he directs this Epistle Though as he sayes in the beginning of the next Chapter he were compassed about with a Cloud of witnesses and so might have proposed examples from the Authenticke Scriptures and the Histories of the Bible yet we accept that direction which our Translators have given us in the Marginall Concordance of their Translation That the Apostle in this Text intends and so referres to that Story which is 2 Maccab. 7.7 To that Story also doth Aquinas referre this place But Aquinas may have had a minde to doe that service to the Romane Church to make the Apostle cite an Apocryphall Story though the Apostle meant it not It may be so in Aquinas He might have such a minde such a meaning But surely Beza had no such meaning Calvin had no such minde and yet both Calvin and Beza referre this Text to that Story Though it be said sayes Calvin that Ieremy was stoned to death and Esay sawed to death Non dubito quin illas persecutiones designet quae sub Antiocho I doubt not sayes he but that the Apostle intends those persecutions which the Maccabees suffered under Antiochus So then there may be good use made of an Apocryphall Booke It alwayes was and alwayes will be impossible for our adversaries of the Romane Church to establish that which they have so long endeavoured that is to make the Apocryphall Bookes equall to the Canonicall It is true that before there was any occasion of jealousie or suspition that there would be new Articles of faith coyned and those new Articles authorized and countenanced out of the Apocryphall Books the blessed Fathers in the Primitive Church afforded honourable names and made faire and noble mention of those Books So they have called them Sacred and more then that Divine and more then that too Canonicall Books and more then all that by the generall name of Scripture and Holy Writ But the Holy Ghost who fore-saw the danger though those blessed Fathers themselves did not hath shed and dropt even in their writings many evidences to prove in what sense they called those Books by those names and in what distance they alwayes held them from those Bookes which are purely and positively and to all purposes and in all senses Sacred and Divine and Canonicall and simply Scripture and simply Holy Writ Of this there is no doubt in the Fathers before S. Augustine For all they proposed these Bookes as Canones morum non sidei Canonicall that is Regular for applying our manners and conversation to the Articles of Faith but not Canonicall for the establishing those Articles Canonicall for edification but not for foundation And even in the later Roman Church we have a good Author that gives us a good rule Cajeâ—an Ne turberis Novitie Let no young Student be troubled when he heares these Bookes by some of the Fathers called Canonicall for they are so saies he in their sense Regulares ad aedificationem Good Canons good Rules for matter of manners and conversation And this distinction saies that Author will serve to rectifie not onely what the Fathers afore S. Augustine for they speake cleerely enough but what S. Augustine himselfe and some Councels have said of this matter But yet this difference gives no occasion to an elimination to an extermination of these Books which we call Apocryphall And therefore when in a late forraine Synod that Nation where that Synod was gathered would needs dispute whether the Apocryphall Bookes should not be utterly left out of the Bible And not effecting that yet determined that those Bookes should be removed from their old place where they had ever stood that is after the Bookes of the Old Testament Exteri se excusari petierunt Sessio 10. say the Acts of that Synod Those that
opinions yet even from their various opinions there arise good instructions we shall rather Problematically inquire then Dogmatically establish first whether these words were spoken of Angels or no whether this word Angell in this text be not as it is in many other places of Scriptures and in the nature of the Word it selfe communicable to other servants and other messengers then those whom ordinarily we intend when we say Angels and then secondly if the words be spoken of Angels then whether of Good or Bad Angels of those which stand now or those which fell at first and againe if of those that stand then what degree of perfection they have and what that which we use to call their Confirmation is how it accrues to them and how it works in them if even of them it be said Behold he put no trust in his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly In our second part what was inferd upon these premisses what was concluded out of these propositions what reflected upon us by this assimilation of ours to the Angels because it is a matter of much weight we shall first in our entrance into that part consider the weight of the testimony in the Person that gives it for it is not Iob himselfe that speaks these words It is but one of his friends but Elephaz but the Temanite a Gentile a stranger from the Covenant and the Church of God and yet his words are part of the Word of God And then for the matter that is inferd from our assimilation to the state of Angels will be fairely collected that if those Angels stand but by the support of Grace not by any thing inseparably inhering in their nature when we are at our best in heaven we shall do but so neither much lesse whilst we are upon earth have we in us any impossibility of falling by any thing already done for us Our standing is meerely from the grace of God and therefore let no man ascribe any thing to himselfe and Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall for God hath done no more for the best of us here nor hereafter then for those Angels and of them we heare here He put no trust in his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly First then 1 Part. An Angeli for our first Disquisition in our first part De quibus the persons of whom these words are spoken Amongst all our Expositors of this book of Iob which are very many and amongst all Authors Ancient and Moderne which have had occasion in their Sermons and Tractates to reflect upon this text which are many more infinite I have never observed more then one that denies these words to be spoken of Angels or that there is any mention any intention any intimation of Angels in these words And which is the greater wonder this one single man who thus departs from all and prefers himselfe above all is no Jesuit neither It is but a Capuccin but Bolduc upon this Book of Iob and yet he adventures to say That that Person of whom it is said in this text He put no trust in his Servants and He charged his Angels with folly is not God and that they of whom it is said He trusted not his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly are not Angels But that all that Eliphaz intended in all this passage of Iob was no more but this That no great Person must trust in any kind of Greatnesse particularly not in great retinues and dependances of many servants and powerfull instruments for that was Iobs owne case and yet he lost them all The doctrine truly is good neither should I sodainly condemne his singularity if it were well grounded For though in the exposition of Scriptures singularity alwaies carry a suspition with it singularity is Indicium as we say in the Law some kind of evidence It is Semi-probatio a kind of halfe-proofe against that man that holds an opinion or induces an interpretation different from all other men yet as these which we call Indicia in the Law worke but so as that they may bring a man to his oath or in some cases to the rack and to torture but are not alone sufficient to condemne him So if we finde this singularity in any man we take from thence just occasion to question and sift him and his Doctrine the more narrowly but not only upon that presently to condemne him For this was S. Augustines case S. Augustine induced new Doctrines in divers very important points different from all that had written before him but upon due examination for all his singularity the Church hath found reason to adhere to him in those points ever since his reasons prevailed In our single Capuccins case here in our text it is not so And therefore here we must continue that complaint which we are often put to make of the iniquity of the Roman Church to us If the Fathers seeme to agree in any point wherein we differ from them they cry out we depart from the Fathers If we adhere to the Fathers in any point in which they differ from them then they cry out we forsake the Church Still they presse us with their Trent-Canon You must interpret Scriptures according to the unanime consent of the Fathers and yet they suffer a single Capuccin of their owne to depart from the Fathers and Sons from the Ancient and Moderne Expositors in their owne Church And I may adde from the Holy Ghost too from the evident purpose and meaning of the place in more places then any Author whom I have seene and in this more then in any other place when he saies with such assurance that in these words He put no trust in his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly there is no mennon no intention of God or Angels but it is onely spoken of men of the infidelity of servants and of the insecurity of Masters relying upon such dependancies We take this then Ande Angelis Boâ—â— as All do All for this single Capuccin makes no considerable exception more then a mole-hill to the roundnesse of the earth to be spoken of Angels which was our first probleme and disquisition And our second is being spoken of Angels of what Angels they are spoken Good or Bad of those that fell or those that stood Here we meet with the same rub as before singularity For amongst all our Expositors upon this book I have not observed any other then Calvin to interpret this place of the good Angels of those that stand confirmed in grace Not that Calvin is to be left alone in that opinion as though he were the onely man that thought that the good Angels considered in themselves might be defective in the offices committed unto them by God for it is evident that Origen in divers of his Homilies upon the book of Numbers in his twentieth and twentie two and foure and twentie sixt and in his
enough by it to meet Davids question Quis homo what man with Christs answer Ego homo I am the man in whom whosoever abideth shall not see death SERMONS Preached upon WHITSUNDAY SERMON XXVIII Preached at S. Pauls upon Whitsunday 1627. JOHN 14.26 But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name Hee shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you THis day is this Scripture fulfilled in your cares saith our Saviour Christ having read for his Text that place of Esay Esay 61.1 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me And that day which we celebrate now was another Scripture fulfilled in their eares and in their eyes too For all Christs promises are Scripture They have all the Infallibility of Scripture And Christ had promised that that Spirit which was upon him when he preached should also be shed upon all his Apostles And upon this day he performed that promise when Acts 2.1 They being all with one accord in one place there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty winde and filled the house and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire and it sate upon each of them and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost And this very particular day in which we now commemorate and celebrate that performance of Christs promise in that Mission of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles are all these Scriptures performed again in our eares and eyes and in our hearts For in all those Congregations that meet this day to this purpose every Preacher hath so much of this Vnction which Vnction is Christ upon him as that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him and hath anointed him to that service And every Congregation and every good person in the Congregation hath so much of the Apostle upon him as that he feeles This Spirit of the Lord this Holy Ghost as he is this cloven tongue that sets one stemme in his eare and the other in his heart one stemme in his faith and the other in his manners one stemme in his present obedience and another in his perseverance one to rectifie him in the errours of life another to establish him in the agonies of death For the Holy Ghost as he is a Cloven tongue opens as a Compasse that reaches over all our Map over all our World from our East to our West from our birth to our death from our cradle to our grave and directs us for all things to all persons in all places and at all times The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name he shall teach you all things c. The blessed Spirit of God then the Holy Ghost the third person in the Trinity Divisio and yet not Third so as that either Second or First Son or Father were one minute before him in that Co-eternity that enwraps them all alike this Holy Ghost is here designed by Christ in his Person and in his Operation Who he is and what he does From whence he comes and why he comes And these two Hee and His office will constitute our two parts in this text In the first of which which will be the exercise of this day we shall direct you upon these severall Considerations First that the Person designed for this Mission and true Consolation is the Holy Ghost You shall not be without comfort saies Christ But mistake not false comforts for true nor deceitfull comforters for faithfull It is the Holy Ghost or it is none His Comfort or no comfort Him the Father will send sais Christ in a second branch though the Holy Ghost be God equall to the Father and so have all Missions and Commissions in his owne hand yet he applies himselfe accommodates himselfe to order and he comes when he hath a Mission from the Father and this Father saies Christ which is a third branch in this part sends him in my name Though he have as good interest in the name of Adonai which is all our Powerfull name and in the name of Iehâ—vah which is all our Essentiall name as I or my Father have the holy Ghost is as much Adonai and as much Ichovah as we are yet he is sent in my Name that is to proceed in my way to perfect my worke and to accomplish that Redemption by way of Application which I had wrought by way of Satisfaction And then lastly that which qualifies him for this Mission for this Imployment is his Title and Addition in this Text That he is the Comforter Discomfortable doctrines of a primary impossibility of Salvation to any man And that impossibility originally rooted in God and in Gods hating of that man and hating of that man not onely before he was a sinfull man but before he was any man at all not onely before an actuall making but before any intention to make him in Gods minde That God cannot save that man because he meant to damne him before he meant to make him are not the way in which the Holy Ghost is sent by the Father in the Sons Name For they that sent him and he that comes intend all that is done in that capacity as he is a Comforter as he is the Comforter And this is the Person and this will be the extent of our first part It is the Holy Ghost No deceiving Spirit He though as high as the Highest respects order attends a Mission staies till he be sent And thirdly he comes in anothers name in anothers way to perfect anothers worke And he does all in the quality and denomination of a Comforter not establishing not countenancing any discomfortable Doctrines First then 1. Part. Spiritus sanctus the Person into whose hands this whole worke is here recommended is the Holy Ghost The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost The manifestation of the mysterle of the Trinity was reserved for Christ Some intimations in the Old but the publication only in the New Testament Some irradiations in the Law but the illustration onely in the Gospell Some emanation of beames as of the Sun before it is got above the Horizon in the Prophets but the glorious proceeding thereof and the attaining to a Meridianall height only in the Euangelists And then the doctrine of the Trinity thus reserved for the time of the Gospell at that time was thus declared So God loved the World as that he sent his Son So the Son loved the World as that he would come into it and die for it So the Holy Ghost loved the World as that he would dwell in it and inable men in his Ministery and by his gifts to apply this mercy of the Father and this merit of the Son to particular souls and to whole Congregations The mercy of the Father that he would study such a way for the Redemption of our souls as the death of his only Son a way which
he gave them the holy Ghost in stead of Scriptures But to us who are weaker hee hath given both The holy Ghost in the Scriptures and if we neglect either we have neither If we trust to a private spirit and call that the holy Ghost without Scripture or to the Scriptures without the holy Ghost that is without him there where he hath promised to be in his Ordinance in his Church we have not the seale of that Promise the holy Ghost Finde then that promise in your holy love and sober studie of the Scriptures and finde the performance the fruits thereof in your conversation and then you have an Autumne better then any worldly Spring A vintage a gathering of those blessed fruits Gal. 5.22 The fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace long-suffering gentlenesse goodnesse faith meckenesse temperance where by the way these are not called severally the fruits of the Spirit as though they were so many severall fruits which might be had one without another but collectively all together they are called the fruit It is not Love alone nor Joy alone no nor Faith alone that is the fruit of the holy Ghost Love but not love alone but that love when betweene the holy Ghost and you you can joy in that love and not repent it Joy but not joy alone but that joy when betweene the holy Ghost and you you can finde peace in that joy that you be not the sadder after for having beene so merry before this these these and all the rest together are the fruit of the holy Ghost and therefore labour to have them all or you lacke all And then lastly as we pursuing Gods Ordinance have beene able to say to you Accipite Spiritum sanctum Behold the holy Ghost in your selves behold he appeared to you when he moved you to come hither behold he appeared to you as often as he hath opened the window of the Arke your hearts to take in this Dove this houre so we may say unto you as we say in the Schoole There is an infusion of the holy Ghost liquor is infused into a vessell if that vessell hold it though it doe but cover the bottome and no more The holy Ghost is infused into you if he have made any entry if he cover any part if he have taken hold of any corrupt affection There is also a diffusion of the holy Ghost Liquor is diffused into a vessell when it fils all the parts of the vessell and leaves no emptinesse no driness The holy Ghost is diffused into you if he overspread you and possesse you all and rectifie all your perversnesses But then in the Schoole we have also an effusion of the holy Ghost And liquor is effused then when it so fils the vessell as that that overflowes to the benefit of them who will participate thereof Receive therefore the holy Ghost so as that the holy Ghost may overflow flow from your example to the edification of others That you may go home and say to your children receive ye the holy Ghost in the Spirit of contentment and acquiescence and thankfulnesse to God and me in that portion that I can leave you And say to your servants receive ye the holy Ghost in the spirit of obedience and fidelity And say to your neigh bours receive ye the holy Ghost in the spirit of peace and quiemesse And say to your Creditors receive ye the holy Ghost in the spirit of patience and tendernesse and compassion and for bearing And to your debtors receive ye the holy Ghost in the spirit of industry and labour in your calling You see Preaching it selfe even the Preaching of Christ himselfe had beene lost if the holy Ghost had not brought all those things to their remembrance And if the holy Ghost do bring these things which we preach to your remembrance you are also made fishers of men and Apostles and as the Prophet speaks Salvatores mundi Obad. 1.21 men that assist the salvation of the world by the best way of preaching an exemplar life and holy convesation Amen SERMON XXX Preached upon Whitsunday Part of the Gospell of the Day JOHN 14.20 At that day shall ye know That I am in my Father and you in me and I in you THe two Volumes of the Scriptures are justly and properly called two Testaments for they are Testatio Mentis The attestation the declaration of the will and pleasure of God how it pleased him to be served under the Law and how in the state of the Gospell But to speake according to the ordinary acceptation of the word the Testament that is The last Will of Christ Jesus is this speech this declaration of his to his Apostles of which this text is a part For it was spoken as at his Death-bed his last Supper And it was before his Agony in the garden so that if we should consider him as a meere man there was no inordinatenesse no irregularity in his affection It was testified with sufficient witnesses and it was sealed in blood in the Institution of the Sacrament By this Wil then as a rich and abundant Ver. 3. and liberall Testator having given them so great a Legacy as a place in the kingdome of heaven yet he adds a codicill he gives more he gives them the evidence by which they should maintain their right to that kingdome that is the testimony of the Spirit The Comforter the Holy Ghost whom he promises to send to them Ver. 16. And still more and more abundant he promises them that that assurance of their right shall not be taken from them till he himself return again to give them an everlasting possession That he may receive us unto himself and that where he is we may also be The main Legacy Ver. 3. the body of the gift is before That which is given in this Text is part of that evidence by which it appeares to us that we have right and by which that right is maintained and that is knowledge that knowledge which we have of our interest in God and his kingdome here At that day ye shall know c. And in the giving of this we shall consider first the Legacy it self this knowledge Cognoscetis Ye shall know And secondly the time when this Legacy grows due to us In illo die At that day ye shall know And thirdly how much of this treasure is devised to us what portion of this heavenly knowledge is bequeathed to us and that is in three great summes in three great mysteries First ye shall know the mystery of the Trinity of distinct persons in the Godhead Ego in patre That I am in my Father And then the mystery of the Incarnation of God who took our flesh Vos in me That you are in me And lastly the mystery and working of our Redemption in our Sanctification Ego in vobis That Christ by his Spirit the Holy Ghost is in us Nequitia animae ignoratio
use the Law lawfully Let us use our liberty of reading Scriptures according to the Law of liberty that is charitably to leave others to their liberty if they but differ from us and not differ from Fundamentall Truths Si quis quaerat ex me quid horum Moses senserit If any man ask me which of these which may be all true Moses meant Non sum sermones istiâ—â—onfessiones Lord sayes hee Ibid. This that I say is not said by way of Confession as I intend it should if I doe not freely confesse that I cannot tell which Moses meant But yet I can tell that this that I take to be his meaning is true and that is enough Let him that findes a true sense of any place rejoyce in it Let him that does not beg it of thee Vtquid mihi molest us est Why should any man presse me to give him the true sense of Moses here or of the holy Ghost in any darke place of Scripture Ego illuminem ullum hominen venientem in mundum 1.13 C. 10. saies he Is that said of me that I am the light that enlightned every man any man Iohn 1.9 that comes into this world So far I will goe saies he so far will we in his modesty and humility accompany him as still to propose Quod luce veritatis quod fruge utilitatis excellit such a sense as agrees with other Truths that are evident in other places of Scripture and such a sense as may conduce most to edisication For to those two does that heavenly Father reduce the foure Elements that make up a right exposition of Scripture which are first the glory of God such a sense as may most advance it secondly the analogie of faith such a sense as may violate no confessed Article of Religion and thirdly exaltation of devotion such a sense as may carry us most powerfully upon the apprehension of the next life and lastly extension of charity such a sense as may best hold us in peace or reconcile us if we differ from one another And within these limits wee shall containe our selves The glory of God the analogie of faith the exaltation of devotion the extension of charity In all the rest that belongs to the explication or application to the literall or spirituall sense of these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters to which having stopped a little upon this generall consideration the exposition of darke places we passe now Within these rules we proceed to enquire who this Spirit of God is or what it is Spiritus whether a Power or a Person The Jews who are afraid of the Truth lest they should meete evidences of the doctrine of the Trinity and so of the Messias the Son of God if they should admit any spirituall sense admit none but cleave so close to the letter as that to them the Scripture becomes Liter a occidens A killing Letter and the savour of death unto death They therefore in this Spirit of God are so far from admitting any Person that is God as they admit no extraordinary operation or vertue proceeding from God in this place but they take the word here as in many other places of Scripture it does to signifie onely a winde and then that that addition of the name of God The Spirit of God which is in their Language a denotation of a vehemency of a high degree of a superlative as when it is said of Saul Sopor Domini A sleepe of God was upon him it is intended of a deepe a dead sleepe inforces induces no more but that a very strong winde blew upon the face of the waters and so in a great part dryed them up And this opinion I should let flye away with the winde if onely the Jews had said it But Theodoret hath said it too and therefore we afford it so much answer That it is a strange anticipation that Winde which is a mixt Meteor to the making whereof divers occasions concurre with exhalations should be thus imagined before any of these causes of Winds were created or produced and that there should be an effect before a cause is somewhat irregular In Lapland the Witches are said to sell winds to all passengers but that is but to turne those windes that Nature does produce which way they will but in our case the Jews and they that follow them dreame winds before any winds or cause of winds was created The Spirit of God here cannot be the Wind. It cannot be that neither which some great men in the Christian Church have imagined it to be Operatio Dei The power of God working upon the waters so some or Efficientia Dei A power by God infused into the waters so others August And to that S. Augustine comes so neare as to say once in the negative Spiritus Dei hic res dei est sed non ipse Deut est The Spirit of God in this place is something proceeding from God but it is not God himselfe And once in the affirmative Posse esse vitalem creaturam quâ universus mundus movetur That this Spirit of God may be that universall power which sustaines and inanimates the whole world which the Platoniques have called the Soule of the world and others intend by the name of Nature and we doe well if we call The providence of God Spiritus Sanctus But there is more of God in this Action then the Instrument of God Nature or the Vice-roy of God Providence for as the person of God the Son was in the Incarnation so the person of God the Holy Ghost was in this Action though far from that manner of becomming one and the same thing with the waters which was done in the Incarnation of Christ who became therein perfect man That this word the Spirit of God is intended of the Person of the Holy Ghost in other places of Scripture is evident undeniable unquestionable and that therefore it may be so taken here Where it is said The Spirit of God shall rest upon him Esay 11.2 upon the Messiah where it is said by himselfe The Lord and his Spirit is upon me And the Lord and his Spirit hath anointed me there it is certainly and therefore here it may be probably spoken of the Holy Ghost personally It is no impossible sense it implies no contradiction It is no inconvenient sense it offends no other article it is no new sense nor can we assigne any time when it was a new sense Basil The eldest Fathers adhere to it as the ancientest interpretation Saint Basil saies not onely Constantissimè asseverandum est We must constantly maintaine that interpretation for all that might be his owne opinion not onely therefore Quia verius est for that might be but because he found it to be the common opinion of those times but Quia à majoribus nostris approbatum because it is accepted for the true
it shewed that there might be such a thing He that curseth Father or Mother shall surely dye sayes Moses Exod. 21.17 Deut. 21.18 And he that is but stubborne towards them shall dye too The dutifull love of children to Parents is so rooted in nature that Demosthenes sayes it is against the impressions and against the Law of nature for any child ever to love that man that hath done execution upon his Father though by way of Justice And this naturall Obligation is not conditioned with the limitations of a good or a bad Father Natura te non bono patri sed patri conciliavit Epictetus sayes that little great Philosopher Nature hath not bound thee to thy father as hee is a good Father but meerely as he is thy Father Now for the power of Fathers over their children by the Law of Nations that is the generall practise of Civill States the Father had power upon the life of his child It fell away by discontinuance in a great part and after was abrogated by particular Laws but yet by a connivence admitted in some cases too For as in Nature man is Microcosmus a little World so in nature a family is a little State a little Commonwealth and what power the Magistrate hath in that Aristor the Father hath in this Ipsum regnū suaptenatura imperium est paternum The power of a King if it be kept within the bounds of the nature of that Office Tertul. is onely to be a Father to his people And Gratius est nomen pietatis quam potestatis Authority is presented in a more acceptable name when I am called a Father then when I am called a Master and therefore sayes Seneca our Ancestors mollified it thus Vt invidiam Dominis contumcliam servis detraherent That there might accrue no envy to the Master for so great a title nor contempt upon the servant for so low a title they called the Master Patremfamilias The Father of a houshould and they called the servants familiares parts and pieces of the family So that in the name of Father they understand all power and the first Law that passed amongst the Romans against Parricides L. Pompeia was Contra interfectores Patrum Dominorum They were made equall Fathers and Soveraignes And in the Law of God it selfe Honour thy Father wee see all the honour and feare and reverence that belongs to the Magistrate is conveyed in that name in that person the Father is all as in the State of that people before they came to be settled both the Civill part of the Government and the Spirituall part was all in the Father that Father was King and Priest over all that family Present God to thy self then as a Father and thou wilt feare him and take knowledg that the Son might not sue the Father Enter no actiō against God why he made thee not richer nor wiser nor fairer no nor why he elects or refuses without respect of good or bad works But take knowledge too that when by the Law the Father might punish the Son with death he might not kill his Son before he was passed three yeares in age before hee was come to some demonstration of an ill and rebellious nature and disposition Whatsoever God may doe of his absolute Power beleeve that he will not execute that power upon thee to thy condemnation till thine actuall sins have made thee incapable of his love What he may do dispute not but be sure he will do thee no harme if thou feare him as a Father Now to bring that nearer to you Sacerdotalis which principally we intended which is the consideration and precaution of those sins which violate this Power of God notified in this name of Father we consider a threefold emanation or exercise of Power in this Father by occasion of a threefold repeating of this part of the Text in the Scripture The words are waighty alwayes at the bottome for we have these words in the last of the Prophets in Malachie and in the last of the Euangelists in Iohn And here in this Apostle we have them of the last Judgement Mal. 1.6 In Malachi he sayes A Son honoureth his Father if then I be a Father where is my honour This God speaks there to the Priest to the Levite Exod. 32.29 for the Tribe of Levi had before as Moses bade them consecrated their hands to God and punished by a zealous execution the Idolatry of the golden Calfe and for this service God fastned the Priesthood upon them But when they came in Malachies time to connive at Idolatry it selfe God who was himselfe the roote of the Priesthood and had trusted them with it and they had abused that trust and the Priesthood Then when the Prophet was become a foole Hose 9.7 and the spirituall Man mad or as S. Hierom reads it Arreptitius that is possessed by others God first of all turnes upon the Priest himselfe rebukes the Priest interminates his judgement upon the Priest for God is our high Priest And therefore feare this Father in that notion in that apprehension as a Priest as thy high Priest that refuses or receives thy sacrifices as he finds them conditioned and if he looke narrowly is able to finde some spot in thy purest Lambe some sin in thy holiest action some deviation in thy prayer some ostentation in thine almes some vaine glory in thy Preaching some hypocrisie in thy hearing some concealing in thy confessions some reservation in thy restitutions some relapses in thy reconciliations since thou callest him Father feare him as thy high Priest So the words have their force in Malachie and they appertaine Ad potestatem Sacerdotalem To the power of the Priest despise not that And then Civilis Iohn 8.42 in the second place which is in S. Iohn Christ sayes If God were your Father you would love me And this Christ speakes to the Pharisees and to them not as Sectaries in Religion but as to persons in Authority and command in the State as to Rulers to Governours to Magistrates So Christ sayes to Pilate Iohn 19.11 Rom. 13.11 Thou couldst have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above And so S. Paul There is no power but of God The powers that be be ordained of God Christ then charges the Pharisees that they having the secular Power in their hands they went about to kill him when he was doing the will of his Father who is the roote as of Priesthood so of all Civill power and Magistracy also Feare this Father then as the Civill Sword the Sword of Justice is in his hand He can open thee to the malicious prosecutions of adversaries and submit thee to the penalties of those Lawes which in truth thou hast never transgressed Thy Fathers thy Grandfathers have sinned against him and thou hast been but reprieved for two sessions for two generations and now maiest come
of that so that that be no occasion of neglecting due respects to others This being then thus fixed An Trinitas that Abraham received them as men that they were in truth no other then Angels there remaines for the shutting up of this Part this Consideration whether after Abraham came to the knowledge that they were Angels he apprehended not an intimation of the three Persons of the Trinity by these three Angels Whether Gods appearing to Abraham which Moses speaks of in the first verse were manifested to him Ver. 13. Ver. 17. when Sarah laughed in her selfe and yet they knew that she laughed Or whether it were manifested when they imparted their purpose concerning Sodome for in both these places they are called neither men nor Angels but by that name The Lord and that Lord which is Jehovah whether I say when Abraham discerned them to be such Angels as God appeared in them and spoke and wrought by them whether then as he discerned the Divinity he discerned the Trinity in them too is the question I know the explicite Doctrine of the Trinity was not easie to be apprehended then as it is not easie to be expressed now It is a bold thing in servants to inquire curiously into their Masters Pedigree whether he be well descended or well allied It is a bold thing too to inquire too curiously into the eternall generation of Christ Jesus or the eternall procession of the Holy Ghost When Gregory Nazianzen was pressed by one to assigne a difference between those words Begotten and Proceeding Dic tu mihi sayes he quid sit Generatie ego dicam tibi quid sit Processio ut ambo insaniamus Doe thou tell me what this Begetting is and then I will tell thee what this Proceeding is and all the world will finde us both mad for going about to expresse inexpressible things And as every manner of phrase in expressing or every comparison does not manifest the Trinity so every place of Scripture which the Fathers and later men have applied to that purpose does not prove the Trinity And therefore those men in the Church who have cryed downe that way of proceeding to goe about to prove the Trinty out of the first words of Genesis Creavit Dii That because God in the plurall is there joyned to a Verb in the singular therefore there is a Trinity in Unity or to prove the Trinity out of this place that because God who is but one appeared to Abraham in three Persons therefore there are three Persons in the God-head those men I say who have cryed downe such manner of arguments have reason on their side when these arguments are imployed against the Jews for for the most part the Jews have pertinent and sufficient answers to those arguments But yet betweene them who make this place a distinct and a literall and a concluding argument to prove the Trinity and them who cry out against it that it hath no relation to the Trinity our Church hath gone a middle and a moderate way when by appointing this Scripture for this day when we celebrate the Trinity it declares that to us who have been baptized and catechised in the name and faith of the Trinity it is a refreshing it is a cherishing it is an awakening of that former knowledge which we had of the Trinity to heare that our onely God thus manifested himselfe to Abraham in three Persons Luther sayes well upon this text If there were no other proofe of the Trinity but this I should not believe the Trinity but yet sayes he This is Singulare testimonium de articule Trinitatis Though it be not a concluding argument yet it is a great testimony of the Trinity Fateor saies he historico sensu nihil concludi praeter hospitalitatem I confesse in the literall sense there is nothing but a recommendation of hospitality and therefore to the Jews I would urge no more out of this place Sed non sic agendum cum auditoribus ac cum adversariis We must not proceed alike with friends and with enemies There are places of Scriptures for direct proofes and there are places to exercise our meditation and devotion in things for which we need not nor aske not any new proofe And for exercise sayes Luther Rudi ligne ad formam gladii utimur We content our selves with a foyle or with a stick and we require not a sharpe sword To cut off the enemies of the Trinity we have two-edged swords that is undeniable arguments but to exercise our owne devotions we are content with similitudinary and comparative reasons He pursues it farther to good use The story doth not teach us That Sarah is the Christian Church and Hagar the Synagogue But S. Paul proves that from that story he proves it from thence Gal. 4.24 though he call it but an Allegory It is true that S. Augustine sayes Figuranihil probat A figure an Allegory proves nothing yet sayes he addit lucem ornat It makes that which is true in it selfe more evident and more acceptable And therefore it is a lovely and a religious thing to finde out Vestigia Trinitatis Impressions of the Trinity in as many things as we can and it is a reverent obedience to embrace the wisdome of our Church in renewing the Trinity to our Contemplation by the reading of this Scripture this day for even out of this Scripture Philo Iudaeus although hee knew not the true Trinity aright found a threefold manifestation of God to man in this appearing of God to Abraham for as he is called in this Story Iehova he considers him Fontem Essentiae To be the fountaine of all Being As hee is called Deus God he considers him in the administration of his Creatures in his providence As he is called Dominus Lord and King he considers him in the judgement glorifying and rejecting according to their merits So though hee found not a Trinity of Persons he found a Trinity of Actions in the Text Creation Providence and Judgement If he who knew no Trinity could finde one shall not we who know the true one meditate the more effectually upon that by occasion of this story Let us therefore with S. Bernard consider Trinitatem Creatricem and Trinitatem Creatam A Creating and a Created Trinity A Trinity which the Trinity in Heaven Father Son and Holy Ghost hath created in our soules Reason Memory and Will and that we have super-created added another Trinity Suggestion and Consent and Delight in sin And that God after all this infuses another Trinity Faith Hope and Charity by which we returne to our first for so far that Father of Meditation S. Bernard carries this consideration of the Trinity Since therefore the confession of a Trinity is that which distinguishes us from Jews and Turks and al other professions let us discerne that beame of the Trinity which the Church hath shewed us in this text and with the words of the Church
power Via miraculorum Miracles no man may ground his beliefe upon that which seems a Miracle to him Moses wrought Miracles and Pharaohs instruments wrought the like we know theirs were no true Miracles and we know Moses were but how do we know this By another voyce by the Word of God who cannot lie for for those upon whom those Miracles were to worke on both sides Moses and they too seemed to the beholders diversly disposed to do Miracles One Rule in discerning and judging a Miracle is to consider whether it be done in confirmation of a necessary Truth otherwise it is rather to be suspected for an Illusion then accepted for a Miracle The Rule is intimated in Deuteronomy where Deut. 13. though a Prophets prophecy do come to passe yet if his end be to draw to other gods he must be slaine What Miracles soever are pretended in confirmation of the inventions of Men are to be neglected God hath not carried us so low for our knowledge as to Creatures to Nature nor so high as to Miracles but by a middle way By a voyce But it is Vox de Coelis A voyce from heaven S. Basil applying indeed with some wresting and derorting those words in the 29 Psalme vers 3. De Coelis The voyce of the Lord is upon the waters the God of glory maketh it to thunder to this Baptisme of Christ he sayes Vox super aquas Ioannes The words of Iohn at Christs Baptisme were this voyce that David intends And then that manifestation which God gave of the Trinity whatsoever it were altogether that was the Thunder of his Majesty so this Thunder then was vox de Coelis A voyce from heaven And in this voyce the person of the Father was manifested as he was in the same voyce at his Transfiguration Since this voyce then is from Heaven and is the Fathers voyce we must looke for all our knowledge of the Trinity from thence For to speake of one of those persons Mat. 11.27 of Christ no man knoweth the Sonne but the Father Who then but he can make us know him If any knew it yet it is an unexpressible mystery no man could reveale it Mat. 16.17 Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in heaven If any could reveale it to us yet none could draw us to beleeve it No man can come to me except the Father draw him Iohn 6.44 So that all our voyce of Direction must be from thence De Coelis from Heaven We have had Voces de Inferis voyces from Hell in the blasphemies of Heretiques De Inferis That the Trinity was but Cera extensa but as a Rolle of Wax spread or a Dough Cake rolled out and so divided unto persons That the Trinity was but a nest of Boxes a lesser in a greater and not equall to one another And then that the Trinity was not onely three persons but three Gods too So far from the truth and so far from one another have Heretiques gone in the matter of the Trinity and Cerinthus so far in that one person in Christ as to say That Jesus and Christ were two distinct persons and that into Jesus who sayes he was the sonne of Ioseph Christ who was the Spirit of God descended here at his Baptisme and was not in him before and withdrew himselfe from him againe at the time of his Passion and was not in him then so that he was not borne Christ nor suffered not being Christ but was onely Christ in his preaching and in his Miracles and in all the rest he was but Jesus sayes Cerinthus We have had Voces de Inferis de profundis from the depth of hell De Medio in the malice of Heretiques And we have had Voces de medio voyces from amongst us Inventions of men to expresse and to make us understand the Trinity in pictures and in Comparisons All which to contract this point are apt to fall into that abuse which we will onely note in one At first they used ordinarily to expresse the Trinity in foure letters which had no ill purpose in it at first but was a religious ease for their memories in Catechismes The letters were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the two last belonged to the last person for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so there was Father Sonne and Holy Ghost as if we should expresse it in F and S and H and G. But this came quickly thus far into abuse as that they thought there could belong but three letters in that picture to the three persons and therefore allowing so many to Father Sonne and Holy Ghost they tooke the last letter P for Petrus and so made Peter head of the Church and equall to the Trinity So that for our knowledge in this mysterious doctrine of the Trinity let us evermore rest in voce de coelis in that voice which came from heaven But yet it is Vox dicens Dicens A voice saying speaking A voice that man is capable of and may be benefited by It is not such a voice as that was which came from heaven too when Christ prayed to God to glorifie his name Iohn 12.28 That the people should say some that it was a Thunder some that it was an Angel that spake They are the sons of Thunder and they are the Ministeriall Angels of the Church from whom we must heare this voice of heaven Nothing can speak but man No voice is understood by man but the voice of man It is not Vox dicens That voyce sayes nothing to me that speaks not And therefore howsoever the voice in the Text were miraculously formed by God to give this glory and dignity to this first manifestation of the Trinity in the person of Christ yet because he hath left it for a permanent Doctrine necessary to Salvation he hath left ordinary means for the conveying of it that is The same voice from heaven the same word of God but speaking in the ministery of man And therefore for our measure of this knowledge which is our third and last Part we are to see how Christian men whose office it hath been to interpret Scriptures that is how the Catholike Church hath understood these words Hic est Filius This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased How we are to receive the knowledge of the Trinity 3 Part. Athanasius hath expressed as far as we can goe Whosoever will be saved hee must beleeve it but the manner of it is not exposed so far as to his beliefe That question of the Prophet Quis
This is my beloved Son this day have I begotten him And with such Copies it seemes both Iustin Martyr and Irenaeus met for they reade these words so and interpret them accordingly But these words are misplaced and mis-transferred out of the second Psalme where they are And as they change the words and in stead of In quo complacui In whom I am well pleased reade This day have I begotten thee S. Cyprian addes other words to the end of these which are Hunc audite Heare him Which words when these words were repeated at the Transfiguration were spoken but here at the Baptisme they were not what Copy soever misled S. Cyprian or whether it were the failing of his own memory But S. Chrysostome gives an expresse reason why those words were spoken at the Transfiguration and not here Because saies he Here was onely a purpose of a Manifestation of the Trinity so farre as to declare their persons who they were and no more At the Trans-figuration where Moses and Elias appeared with Christ there God had a purpose to preferre the Gospel above the Law and the Prophets and therefore in that place he addes that Hunc audite Heare him who first fulfills all the Law and the Prophets and then preaches the Gospel He was so well pleased in him as that he was content to give all them that received him Eph. 1.6 power to become the Sons of God too as the Apostle sayes By his grace he hath made us accepted in his beloved Beloved That you may be so Come up from your Baptisme as it is said that Christ did Rise and ascend to that growth which your Baptisme prepared you to And the heavens shall open as then even Cataractae coeli All the windowes of heaven shall open and raine downe blessings of all kindes in abundance And the Holy Ghost shall descend upon you as a Dove in his peacefull comming in your simple and sincere receiving him And he shall rest upon you to effect and accomplish his purposes in you If he rebuke you as Christ when he promises the Holy Ghost though he call him a Comforter John 16.7 sayes That he shall rebuke the world of divers things yet he shall dwell upon you as a Dove Quae si mordet osculando mordet sayes S. Augustine If the Dove bite it bites with kissing if the Holy Ghost rebuke he rebukes with comforting And so baptized and so pursuing the contract of your Baptisme and so crowned with the residence of his blessed Spirit in your holy conversation hee shall breathe a soule into your soule by that voyce of eternall life You are my beloved Sonnes in whom I am well pleased SERM. XLIV Preached at S. Dunstanes upon Trinity-Sunday 1627. REV. 4.8 And the foure Beasts had each of them sixe wings about him and they were full of eyes within And they rest not day and night saying Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty which was and is and is to come THese words are part of that Scripture which our Church hath appointed to be read for the Epistle of this day This day which besides that it is the Lords day the Sabbath day is also especially consecrated to the memory and honour of the whole Trinity The Feast of the Nativity of Christ Christmas day which S. Chrysostome calls Metropolin omnium festorum The Metropolitane festivall of the Church is intended principally to the honour of the Father who was glorified in that humiliation of that Son that day because in that was laid the foundation and first stone of that house and Kingdome in which God intended to glorifie himselfe in this world that is the Christian Church The Feast of Easter is intended principally to the honour of the Son himselfe who upon that day began to lift up his head above all those waters which had surrounded him and to shake off the chaines of death and the grave and hell in a glorious Reserrection And then the Feast of Pentecost was appropriated to the honour of the Holy Ghost who by a personall falling upon the Apostles that day inabled them to propagate this Glory of the Father and this death and Resurrection of the Son to the ends of the world to the ends in Extention to all places to the ends in Duration to all times Now as S. Augustine sayes Nullus eorum extra quemlibet eorum est Every Person of the Trinity is so in every other person as that you cannot think of a Father as a Father but that there falls a Son into the same thought nor think of a person that proceeds from others but that they from whom he whom ye think of proceeds falls into the same thought as every person is in every person And as these three persons are contracted in their essence into one God-head so the Church hath also contracted the honour belonging to them in this kinde of Worship to one day in which the Father and Son and Holy Ghost as they are severally in those three severall dayes might bee celebrated joyntly and altogether It was long before the Church did institute a particular Festivall to this purpose For before they made account that that verse which was upon so many occasions repeated in the Liturgy and Church Service Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost had a convenient sufficiency in it to keep men in a continuall remembrance of the Trinity But when by that extreame inundation and increase of Arians these notions of distinct Persons in the Trinity came to be obliterated and discontinued the Church began to refresh her selfe in admitting into to the formes of Common Prayer some more particular notifications and remembrances of the Trnity And at last though it were very long first for this Festivall of this Trinity-Sunday was not instituted above foure hundred yeares since they came to ordaine this day Which day our Church according to that peacefull wisedome wherewithall the God of Peace of Unity and Concord had inspired her did in the Reformation retaine and continue out of her generall religious tendernesse and holy loathnesse to innovate any thing in those matters which might bee safely and without superstition continued and entertained For our Church in the Reformation proposed not that for her end how shee might goe from Rome but how she might come to the Truth nor to cast away all such things as Rome had depraved but to purge away those depravations and conserve the things themselves so restored to their first good use For this day then were these words appointed by our Church Divisic And therefore we are sure that in the notion and apprehension and construction of our Church these words appertaine to the Trinity In them therefore we shall consider first what these foure creatures were which are notified and designed to us in the names and figures of foure Beasts And then what these foure creatures did Their Persons and their Action will be our two
not Oportet impleri Scripturam The Scripture must be fulfilled We doe not wish them we do but Prophesie them no nor we doe not prophesie them but the Scriptures have preprophesied them before they will fall upon you as upon Iudas in condemnation and perchance as upon Iudas in desperation too Davids purpose then being in these words to work to their amendment Mollior sensus and not their finall destruction we may easily and usefully discerne in the particular words a milder sense then the words seeme at first to present And first give me leave by the way only in passing by occasion of those words which are here rendred Convertentur Erubescent and which in the Originall are Iashabu and Ieboshu which have a musicall and harmonious sound and agnomination in them let me note thus much even in that that the Holy Ghost in penning the Scriptures delights himself not only with a propriety but with a delicacy and harmony and melody of language with height of Metaphors and other figures which may work greater impressions upon the Readers and not with barbarous or triviall or market or homely language It is true that when the Grecians and the Romanes and S. Augustine himselfe undervalued and despised the Scriptures because of the poore and beggerly phrase that they seemed to be written in the Christians could say little against it but turned still upon the other safer way wee consider the matter and not the phrase because for the most part they had read the Scriptures only in Translations which could not maintaine the Majesty nor preserve the elegancies of the Originall Their case was somewhat like ours at the beginning of the Reformation when because most of those men who laboured in that Reformation came out of the Romane Church and there had never read the body of the Fathers at large but only such ragges and fragments of those Fathers as were patcht together in their Decretat's and Decretals and other such Common placers for their purpose and to serve their turne therefore they were loath at first to come to that issue to try controversies by the Fathers But as soon as our men that in braced the Reformation had had time to reade the Fathers they were ready enough to joyne with the Adversary in that issue and still we protest that we accept that evidence the testimony of the Fathers and resuse nothing which the Fathers unanimly delivered for matter of faith and howsoever at the beginning some men were a little ombrageous and startling at the name of the Fathers yet since the Fathers have been well studied for more then threescore yeares we have behaved our selves with more reverence to wards the Fathers and more confidence in the Fathers then they of the Romane perswasion have done and been lesse apt to suspect or quarrell their Books or to reprove their Doctrines then our Adversaries have been So howsoever the Christians at first were fain to sink a little under that imputation that their Scriptures have no Majesty no eloquence because these embellishments could not appeare in Translations nor they then read Originalls yet now that a perfect knowledge of those languages hath brought us to see the beauty and the glory of those Books we are able to reply to them that there are not in all the world so eloquent Books as the Scriptures and that nothing is more demonstrable then that if we would take all those Figures and Tropes which are collected out of secular Poets and Orators we may give higher and livelier examples of every one of those Figures out of the Scriptures then out of all the Greek and Latine Poets and Orators and they mistake it much that thinke that the Holy Ghost hath rather chosen a low and barbarous and homely style then an eloquent and powerfull manner of expressing himselfe To returne and to cast a glance upon these words in Davids prediction Erubescent upon his enemies what hardnesse is in the first Erubescent Let them be ashamed for the word imports no more our last Translation sayes no more neither did our first Translators intend any more by their word Confounded for that is confounded with shame in themselves This is Virga desoiplinae sayes S. Bernard as long as we are ashamed of sin we are not growne up and hardned in it we are under correction the correction of a remorse As soone as Adam came to be ashamed of his nakednesse he presently thought of some remedy if one should come and tell thee that he looked through the doore that he stood in a window over against thine and saw thee doe such or such a sin this would put thee to a shame and thou wouldest not doe that sin till thou wert fure he could not see thee O if thou wouldest not sin till thou couldst think that God saw thee not this shame had wrought well upon thee There are complexions that cannot blush there growes a blacknesse a sootinesse upon the soule by custome in sin which overcomes all blushing all tend ernesse White alone is palenesse and God loves not a pale soule a soule possest with a horror affrighted with a diffidence and distrusting his mercy Rednesse alone is anger and vehemency and distemper and God loves not such a red soule a soule that sweats in sin that quarrels for sin that revenges in sin But that whitenesse that preserves it selfe not onely from being died all over in any foule colour from contracting the name of any habituall sin and so to be called such or such a sinner but from taking any spot from comming within distance of a tentation or of a suspition is that whitenesse which God meanes when he sayes Thou art all faire my Love Cant. 4.7 and there is no spot in thee Indifferent looking equall and easie conversation appliablenesse to wanton discourses and notions and motions are the Devils single money and many pieces of these make up an Adultery As light a thing as a Spangle is a Spangle is silver and Leafe gold that is blowne away is gold and sand that hath no strength no coherence yet knits the building so doe approaches to sin become sin and fixe sin To avoid these spots is that whitenesse that God loves in the soule But there is a rednesse that God loves too which is this Erubescence that we speak of an aptnesse in the soule to blush when any of these spots doe fall upon it God is the universall Confessor the generall Penitentiary of all the world and all dye in the guilt of their sin that goe not to Confession to him And there are sins of such waight to the soule and such intangling and perplexity to the conscience in some circumstances of the sin as that certainly a soule may receive much ease in such cases by confessing it selfe to man In this holy shamefastnesse which we intend in this outward blushing of the face the soule goes to confession too And it is one of
possesse immortality and impossibility of dying onely in a continuall dying when as a Cabinet whose key were lost must be broken up and torne in pieces before the Jewell that was laid up in it can be taken out so thy body the Cabinet of thy soule must be shaked and shivered by violent sicknesse before that soule can goe out And when it is thus gone out must answer for all the imperfections of that body which body polluted it And yet though this soule be such a loser by that body it is not perfectly well nor fully satisfied till it be reunited to that body againe when thou remembrest Mat. 26.36 and oh never forget it that Christ himselfe was heavy in his soule unto Death Mat. 26.39 That Christ himselfe came to a Si possibile If it be possible let this Cup passe That he came to a Quare dereliquisti Mat. 27.46 a bitter sense of Gods dereliction and forsaking of him when thou considerest all this compose thy selfe for death but thinke it not a light matter to dye Death made the Lyon of Judah to roare and doe not thou thinke that that which we call going away like a Lambe doth more testifie a conformity with Christ then a strong sense and bitter agony and colluctation with death doth Christ gave us the Rule in the Example He taught us what we should doe by his doing it And he pre-admitted a fearfull apprehension of death A Lambe is a Hieroglyphique of Patience but not of stupidity And death was Christs Consummatum est All ended in death yet he had sense of death How much more doth a sad sense of our transmigration belong to us to whom death is no Consummatum est but an In principio our account and our everlasting state begins but then Apud te propitiatio Psal 130.4 ut timearis In this knot we tie up all With thee there is mercy that thou mightest be feared There is a holy feare that does not onely consist with an assurance of mercy Pro. 21.15 but induces constitutes that assurance Pavor operantibus iniquitatem sayes Solomon Pavor horror and servile feare jealousie and suspition of God diffidence and distrust in his mercy and a bosome-prophecy of self-destruction Destruction it selfe so we translate it be upon the workers of iniquity Pavor operantibus iniquitatem And yet sayes that wise King Pro. 28.14 Beatus qui semper Pavidus Blessed is that man that alwayes fears who though he alwayes hope and beleeve the good that God will shew him yet also feares the evills that God might justly multiply upon him Blessed is he that looks upon God with assurance but upon himselfe with feare For though God have given us light by which we may see him even in Nature for He is the confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them that are a far of upon the Sea Though God have given us a clearer light in the Law and experience of his providence upon his people throughout the Old Testament Though God have abundantly infinitely multiplied these lights and these helpes to us in the Christian Church where he is the God of salvation yet as he answers us by terrible things in that first acceptation of the words which I proposed to you that is Gives us assurances by miraculous testimonies in our behalfe that he will answer our patient expectation by terrible Judgements and Revenges upon our enemies In his Righteousnesse that is In his faithfulnesse according to his Promises and according to his performances of those Promises to his former people So in the words considered the other way In his Holinesse that is in his wayes of imprinting Holinesse in us He answers us by terrible things in all those particulars which we have presented unto you By infusing faith but with that terrible addition Damnabitur He that beleeveth not shall be damned He answers us by composing our manners and rectifying our life and conversation but with terrible additions of censures and Excommunications and tearings off from his own body which is a death to us and a wound to him He answers us by enabling us to speake to him in Prayer but with terrible additions for the matter for the manner for the measure of our Prayer which being neglected our very Prayer is turned to sin He answers us in Preaching but with that terrible commination that even his word may be the savor of death unto death He answers us in the Sacrament but with that terrible perplexity and distraction that he that seemes to be a Iohn or a Peter a Loving or a Beloved Disciple may be a Iudas and he that seems to have received the seale of his reconciliation may have eat and drunke his own Damnation And he answers us at the houre of death but with this terrible obligation That even then I make sure my salvation with feare and trembling That so we imagine not a God of wax whom we can melt and mold when and how we will That we make not the Church a Market That an over-homelines and familiarity with God in the acts of Religion bring us not to an irreverence nor indifferency of places But that as the Militant Church is the porch of the Triumphant so our reverence here may have some proportion to that reverence which is exhibited there Revel 4.10 where the Elders cast their Crownes before the Throne and continue in that holy and reverend acclamation Thou art worthy O Lord to receive Glory and Honor and Power for as we may adde from this Text By terrible things O God of our salvation doest thou answer us in righteousnesse SERM. LXIX The fifth of my Prebend Sermons upon my five Psalmes Preached at S. Pauls PSAL. 66.3 Say unto God How terrible art thou in thy works Through the greatnesse of thy Power shall thine Enemies submit themselves unto thee IT is well said so well as that more then one of the Fathers seeme to have delighted themselves in having said it Titulus Clavis The Title of the Psalme is the Key of the Psalme the Title opens the whole Psalme The Church of Rome will needs keepe the Key of heaven and the key to that Key the Scriptures wrapped up in that Translation which in no case must be departed from There the key of this Psalm the Title thereof hath one bar wrested that is made otherwise then he that made the Key the Holy Ghost intended it And another bat inserted that is one clause added which the Holy Ghost added not Where we reade in the Title Victori To the chiefe Musician they reade In finem A Psalme directed upon the end I think they meane upon the later times because it is in a great part a Propheticall Psame of the calling of the Gentiles But after this change they also adde Resurrectionis A Psalme concerning the Resurrection and that is not in the Hebrew nor any thing in the place thereof And after one Author
leave that And these are the pieces that constitute our first part the circumstances that invest these persons Peter and Andrew in their former condition before and when Christ called them SERM. LXXII MAT. 4.18 19 20. And Iesus walking by the Sea of Galile saw two brethren Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother casting a net into the Sea for they were fishers And he saith unto them Follow me and I will make you fishers of men And they straightway left their nets and followed him WE are now in our Order proposed at first come to our second part from the consideration of these persons Peter and Andrew in their former state and condition before and at their calling to their future estate in promise but an infallible promise Christs promise if they followed him Follow me and I will make you fishers of men In which part we shall best come to our end which is your edification by these steps First that there is an Humility enjoyned them in the Sequere follow come after That though they bee brought to a high Calling that doe not make them proud nor tyrannous over mens consciences And then even this Humility is limited Sequere me follow me for there may be a pride even in Humility and a man may follow a dangerous guide Our guide here is Christ Sequere me follow me And then we shall see the promise it selfe the employment the function the preferment In which there is no new state promised them no Innovation They were fishers and they shall be fishers still but there is an emprovement a bettering a reformation They were fisher-men before and now they shall bee fishers of men To which purpose wee shall finde the world to be the Sea and the Gospel their Net And lastly all this is presented to them not as it was expressed in the former part with a For it is not Follow me for I will prefer you he will not have that the reason of their following But yet it is Follow me and I will prefer you It is a subsequent addition of his owne goodnesse but so infallible a one as we may rely upon Whosoever doth follow Christ speeds well And into these considerations will fall all that belongs to this last part Follow me and I will make you fishers of men First then Sequere Humilitas here is an impression of Humility in following in comming after Sequere follow presse not to come before And it had need be first if we consider how early how primarie a sinne Pride is and how soone it possesses us Scarce any man but if he looke back seriously into himselfe and into his former life and revolve his owne history but that the first act which he can remember in himselfe or can be remembred of by others will bee some act of Pride Before Ambition or Covetousnesse or Licentiousnesse is awake in us Pride is working Though but a childish pride yet pride and this Parents rejoyce at in their children and call it spirit and so it is but not the best Wee enlarge not therefore the consideration of this word sequere follow come after so farre as to put our meditation upon the whole body and the severall members of this sinne of pride Nor upon the extent and diffusivenesse of this sinne as it spreads it selfe over every other sinne for every sinne is complicated with pride so as every sinne is a rebellious opposing of the law and will of God Nor to consider the waighty hainousnes of pride how it aggravates every other sin how it makes a musket a Canon bullet and a peble a Milstone but after we have stopped a little upon that usefull consideration That there is not so direct and Diametrall a contrariety between the nature of any sinne and God as between him and pride wee shall passe to that which is our principall observation in this branch How early and primary a sin pride is occasioned by this that the commandement of Humility is first given first enjoyned in our first word Sequere follow But first Nihil tam centrarium Deo wee exalt that consideration That nothing is so contrary to God as Pride with this observation That God in the Scriptures is often by the Holy Ghost invested and represented in the qualities and affections of man and to constitute a commerce and familiarity between God and man God is not onely said to have bodily lineaments eyes and eares and hands and feet and to have some of the naturall affections of man as Joy in particular Deut. 30.9 The Lord will rejoyce over thee for good as he rejoyced over thy Fathers And so pity too Gen. 39.21 The Lord was with Ioseph and extended kindnesse unto him But some of those inordinate and irregular passions and perturbations excesses and defects of man are imputed to God by the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures For so lazinesse drowsinesse is imputed to God Awake Lord why sleepest thou So corruptiblenesse and deterioration Psal 44.23 Psal 18.26 and growing worse by ill company is imputed to God Cum perverso perverteris God is said to grow froward with the froward and that hee learnes to go crookedly with them that go crookedly And prodigality and wastfulnesse is imputed to God Psal 44.12 Thou sellest thy people for naught and doest not increase thy wealth by their price So sudden and hasty choler Kisse the Son lest he be angry and ye perish Inira brevi Psal 2.12 though his wrath be kindled but a little And then illimited and boundlesse anger a vindicative irreconciliablenesse is imputed to God I was but a little displeased Zech. 1.15 but it is otherwise now I am very sore displeased So there is Ira devorans Exod. 15.4 Iob 10.17 Ier. 21.5 Psal 80.4 Wrath that consumes like stubble So there is Ira multiplicata Plagues renewed and indignation increased So God himselfe expresses it I will fight against you in anger and in fury And so for his inexorablenesse his irreconciliablenesse O Lord God of Hosts Quousque how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people Gods owne people Gods own people praying to their owne God and yet their God irreconciliable to them Scorne and contempt is imputed to God which is one of the most enormious and disproportioned weakenesses in man that a worme that crawles in the dust that a graine of dust that is hurried with every blast of winde should find any thing so much inferiour to it selfe as to scorne it to deride it to contemne it yet scorne and derision and contempt is imputed to God Psal 2.4 Prov. 1.26 He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh the Lord shall have them in derision and againe I will laugh at your calamity I will mock you when your feare commeth Nay beloved even inebriation excesse in that kinde Drunkennesse is a Metaphor which the Holy Ghost hath mingled in the expressing of Gods proceedings with man
distempers both theirs that think That there are other things to be beleeved then are in the Scriptures and theirs that think That there are some things in the Scriptures which are not to bee beleeved For when our Saviour sayes Si quo minus If it were not so I would have told you he intends both this proposition I have told you all that is necessary to be beleeved and this also All that I have told you is necessary to bee beleeved so as I have told it you So that this excludes both that imaginary insufficiency of the Scriptures which some have ventured to averre for God shall never call Christian to account for any thing not notified in the Scriptures And it excludes also those imaginary Dolos bonos and fraudes pias which some have adventured to averre too That God should use holy Illusions holy deceits holy frauds and circumventions in his Scriptures and not intend in them that which he pretends by them This is his Rule Si quo minus If it were not so I would have told you If I have not told you so it is not so and if I have it is so as I have told you And in these two branches we shall determine the first part The Rule of Doctrines the Scripture The second part which is the particular Doctrine which Christ administers to his Disciples here will also derive and cleave it selfe into two branches For first wee shall inquire whether this proposition in our Text In my Fathers house are many Mansions give any ground or assistance or countenance to that pious opinion of a disparity and difference of degrees of Glory in the Saints in heaven And then if we finde the words of this Text to conduce nothing to that Doctrine wee shall consider the right use of the true and naturall the native and genuine the direct and literall and uncontrovertible sense of the words because in them Christ doth not say that in his Fathers house there are Divers Mansions divers for seat or lights or fashion or furniture but onely that there are Many and in that notion the Plurality the Multipliciry lies the Consolation First then 1 Part. for the first branch of our first part The generall Rule of Doctrines our Saviour Christ in these words involves an argument That hee hath told them all that was necessary Hee hath because the Scripture hath for all the Scriptures which were written before Christ and after Christ were written by one and the same Spirit his Spirit It might then make a good Probleme why they of the Romane Church not affording to the Scriptures that dignity which belongs to them are yet so vehement and make so hard shift to bring the books of other Authors into the ranke and nature and dignity of being Scriptures What matter is it whether their Maccabees or their Tobies be Scripture or no what get their Maccabees or their Tobies by being Scripture if the Scripture be not full enough or not plaine enough to bring me to salvation But since their intention and purpose their aime and their end is to under-value the Scriptures that thereby they may over-value their owne Traditions their way to that end may bee to put the name of Scriptures upon books of a lower value that so the unworthinesse of those additionall books may cast a diminution upon the Canonicall books themselves when they are made all one as in some forraigne States we have seene that when the Prince had a purpose to erect some new Order of Honour he would disgrace the old Orders by conferring and bestowing them upon unworthy and incapable persons But why doe we charge the Roman Church with this undervaluing of the Scriptures when as they pretend and that cannot well be denied them That they ascribe to all the books of Scripture this dignity That all that is in them is true It is true they doe so But this may be true of other Authors also and yet those Authors remaine prophane and secular Authors All may be true that Livy sayes and all that our Chronicles say may be true and yet our Chronicles nor Livy become Gospell for so much they themselves will confesse and acknowledge that all that our Church sayes is true that our Church affirmes no error and yet our Church must be a hereticall Church if any Church at all for all that Indeed it is but a faint but an illusory evidence or witnesse that pretends to cleare a point if though it speake nothing but truth yet it does not speake all the truth The Scriptures are our evidence for life or death Iohn 5.39 Search the Scriptures sayes Christ for in them ye thinke ye have eternall life Where ye thinke so is not ye thinke so but mistake the matter but ye thinke so is ye thinke so upon a well-grounded and rectified faith and assurance Now if this evidence the Scripture shall acquit me in one Article in my beliefe in God for I doe finde in the Scripture as much as they require of me to beleeve of the Father Son and Holy Ghost And then this evidence the Scripture shall condemne me in another Article The Catholique Church for I doe not finde so much in the Scripture as they require me to beleeve of their Catholique Church If the Scripture be sufficient to save me in one and not in the rest this is not onely a defective but an illusory evidence which though it speake truth yet does not speake all the truth Fratres sumus quare litigamus sayes S. Augustine Wee are all Brethren by one Father one Almighty God and one Mother one Catholique Church and then why do we goe to Law together At least why doe we not bring our Suits to an end Non intestatus mortuus est Pater sayes he Our Father is dead for Deut. 32.30 Is not he your Father that bought you is Moses question he that bought us with himselfe his blood his life is not dead intestate but hath left his Will and Testament and why should not that Testament decide the cause Silent Advocati Suspensus est populus Legant verba testamenti This that Father notes to be the end in other causes why not in this That the Counsell give over pleading That the people give over murmuring That the Judge cals for the words of the Will by that governs and according to that establishes his Judgement I would at last contentious men would leave wrangling and people to whom those things belonged not leave blowing of coales and that the words of the Will might try the cause since he that made the Will hath made it thus cleare Si quo minus If it were not thus I would have told you If there were more to be added then this or more clearnesse to bee added to this I would have told you In the fift of Matthew Christ puts a great many cases what others had told them Mat. 5. but he tels them that is not
it a Mysterie and a great mysterie yet he cals it a mysterie without controversie Without controversie great is the mysterie of God manifested in the flesh justified in the Spirit preached to the Gentiles beleeved in the world received into glory When he presents matter of consolation he would have it without controversie To establish a disconsolate soule there is alwaies Divinity enough that was never drawne into Controversie I would pray I finde the Spirit of God to dispose my heart and my tongue and mine eyes and hands and knees to pray Doe I doubt to whom I should pray To God or to the Saints That prayer to God alone was sufficient was never drawne into controversie I would have something to rely and settle and establish my assurance upon Doe I doubt whether upon Christ or mine owne or others merits That to rely upon Christ alone was sufficient was never drawne into Controversie At this time Christ disposed himselfe to comfort his Disciples in that wherein they needed comfort now their discomfort and their feare lay not in this whether there were different degrees of glory in Heaven but their feare was that Christ being gone and having taken Peter and none but him there should be no roome for them and thereupon Christ sayes Let not that trouble you for In my Fathers house are many mansions And so we have done with the former branch of this last part That it is piously done to beleeve these degrees of glory in Heaven That they have inconsiderately extended this probleme in the Roman Church That no Scriptures are so evident as to induce a necessity in it That this Scripture conduces not at all to it and therefore we passe to our last Consideration The right use of the right sense of these words First then Christ proposes in these words Consolation A worke Consolatio then which none is more divine nor more proper to God nor to those instruments whom he sends to worke upon the soules and consciences of others Who but my selfe can conceive the sweetnesse of that salutation when the Spirit of God sayes to me in a morning Go forth to day and preach and preach consolation preach peace preach mercy And spare my people spare that people whom I have redeemed with my precious Blood and be not angry with them for ever Do not wound them doe not grinde them do not astonish them with the bitternesse with the heavinesse with the sharpnesse with the consternation of my judgements David proposes to himselfe that he would Sing of mercy Psal 101.1 and of judgement but it is of mercy first and not of judgement at all otherwise then it will come into a song as joy and consolation is compatible with it It hath falne into disputation and admitted argument whether ever God inflicted punishments by his good Angels But that the good Angels the ministeriall Angels of the Church are properly his instruments for conveying mercy peace consolation never fell into question never admitted opposition How heartily God seemes to utter and how delightfully to insist upon that which he sayes in Esay Consolamini consolamini populum meum Comfort ye comfort ye my people Esay 40.1 And Loquimini ad cor Speake to the heart of Ierusalem and tell her Thine iniquities are pardoned How glad Christ seemes that he had it for him when he gives the sick man that comfort Fili confide My son be of good comfort thy sins are forgiven thee What a Coronation is our taking of Orders by which God makes us a Royall Priesthood And what an inthronization is the comming up into a Pulpit where God invests his servants with his Ordinance as with a Cloud and then presses that Cloud with a Vaesi non woe be unto thee if thou doe not preach and then enables him to preach peace mercy consolation to the whole Congregation That God should appeare in a Cloud upon the Mercy Seat as he promises Moses he will doe That from so poore a man as stands here Levit. 16.2 wrapped up in clouds of infirmity and in clouds of iniquity God should drop raine poure downe his dew and sweeten that dew with his honey and crust that honied dew into Manna and multiply that Manna into Gomers and fill those Gomers every day and give every particular man his Gomer give every soule in the Congregation consolation by me That when I call to God for grace here God should give me grace for grace Grace in a power to derive grace upon others and that this Oyle this Balsamum should flow to the hem of the garment even upon them that stand under me That when mine eyes looke up to Heaven the eyes of all should looke up upon me and God should open my mouth to give them meat in due season That I should not onely be able to say as Christ said to that poore soule Confide fili My son be of good comfort but Fratres Patres mei My Brethren and my Fathers nay Domini mei and Rex meus My Lords and my King be of good comfort your sins are forgiven you That God should seale to me that Patent Ite praedicate omni Creaturae Goe and preach the Gospell to every Creature be that creature what he will That if God lead me into a Congregation as into his Arke where there are but eight soules but a few disposed to a sense of his mercies and all the rest as in the Arke ignobler creatures and of brutall natures and affections That if I finde a licentious Goat a supplanting Fox an usurious Wolfe an ambitious Lion yet to that creature to every creature I should preach the Gospel of peace and consolation and offer these creatures a Metamorphosis a transformation a new Creation in Christ Jesus and thereby make my Goat and my Fox and my Wolfe and my Lion to become Semen Dei The seed of God and Filium Dei The child of God and Participem Divinae Naturae Partaker of the Divine Nature it selfe This is that which Christ is essentially in himselfe This is that which ministerially and instrumentally he hath committed to me to shed his consolation upon you upon you all Not as his Almoner to drop his consolation upon one soule nor as his Treasurer to issue his consolation to a whole Congregation but as his Ophir as his Indies to derive his gold his precious consolation upon the King himselfe What would a good Judge a good natured Judge give in his Circuit what would you in whose breasts the Judgements of the Star-chamber or other criminall Courts are give that you had a warrant from the King to change the sentence of blood into a pardon where you found a Delinquent penitent How rufully do we heare the Prophets groane under that Onus visionis which they repeat so often O the burden of my vision upon Judah or upon Moab or Damascus or Babylon or any place Which is not only that that judgement would be a
years after Christ But as Tertullian shews us an early birth of it so he tells us enough to shew us that it should not have been long liv'd when he acknowledges that it had no ground in Scripture but was onely a custome popularly and vulgarly taken up But Tertullian speaks of more then Prayer he speaks of oblations and sacrifices for the dead It is true he does so but it is of oblations and sacrifices far from the propitiatory sacrifice of the Masse for Tertullian makes a woman the Priest in his sacrifice Offert uxor sayes he annuis diebus dormitionis mariti The wife offers every yeare upon the day of her husbands death that is every yeare upon that day she gives a dole and almes to the poore as the custome was to doe in memory of dead friends This being then but such a custome and but so induc'd why did none oppose it Aerius Epiphanius Why it was not sufficiently opposed I have intimated some reasons before The affection of those that did it who were though mistaken in the way piously affected in the action And then the harmlesnesse in the thing it self at first And then partly a loathnesse in the Fathers to deter the Gentiles from becomming Christians And partly a cloud and darknesse of the state of the soule after death Yet some did oppose it But some not early enough and some not earnestly enough And some not with much successe because they were not otherwise Integrae famae They were not thought sound in all things and therefore they were beleeved in nothing which was Aerius his case who did oppose it but because Aerius did not come home to all truths he was not hearkned unto in opposing any error Otherwise at that time Epiphanius had a faire occasion offered to have opposed this growing custome and to have rectified the Church in a good measure therein about an hundred years after Tertullian For then Aerius opposed it directly but because he proceeded upon false grounds That since it was come to that That the most vicious man the most enormous sinner might be saved after his death by the prayers and devotions of another man there remained no more for a Christian to doe but to provide such men in his life to doe those offices for him after his death and so he might deliver himselfe from all the disciplines and mortifications and from the anguishes and remorses and vexations of conscience which the Christian Religion induces and requires Epiphanius discerning the advantage that Aerius had given by imputing things not throughly true he places his glory and his triumph onely in overthrowing Aerius his ill grounded arguments and takes the question it selfe and the danger of the Church no farther to heart then so And therefore when Aerius asks Can prayers for the dead be of any use Epiphanius sayes Yes they may be of use to awaken and exercise the piety and charity of the living and never speaks to that which was principally intended whether they could be of any use to the dead So when Aerius asks Is it not absurd to say That all sins may be remitted after death Epiphanius sayes No man in the Church ever said That all sins may be remitted after death and never cleares the maine whether any sin might And yet with all advantages and modifications Epiphanius lodges it at last but upon custome Nec enim praeceptum Patris sed institutum matris habemus sayes he For this which we doe we have no commandment from God our Father but onely an Institution implyed in this Custome from the Church our Mother But then it grew to a farther height from a wild flower in the field Chrysost and a garden flower in private grounds to be more generally planted and to be not onely suffered by many Fathers but cherished and watered by some and not above forty years after Epiphanius to be so far advanced by S. Chrysostome as that he assignes though no Scripture for it yet that which is nearest to Scripture That it was an Apostolicall Constitution And truly if it did clearly appeare to have been so A thing practised and prescribed to the Church by the Apostles the holy Ghost were as well to be beleeved in the Apostles mouthes as in their pens An Apostolicall Tradition that is truly so is good evidence But because those things doe hardly lie in proofe for that which hath been given for a good Rule of Apostolicall Traditions is very defective that is That whatsoever hath been generally in use in the Church of which no Author is known is to be accepted for an Apostolicall Tradition for so that Ablutio pedum The washing of one anothers feet after Christs example was in so generall use that it had almost gained the dignity of being a Sacrament And so was also the giving of the Sacrament of the Body and Bloud to children newly baptized and yet these though in so generall use and without any certaine Author are not Apostolicall Traditions Therefore we must apply S. Augustines words to S. Chrysostome Lege ex Lege ex Prophetis ex Psalmis ex Euangelio ex Apostolicis literis credemus Read us any thing out of the Law or Prophets or Psalmes or Gospel or Epistles and we will beleeve it And we must have leave to return S. Augustines words upon S. Augustine himselfe who hath much assisted this custome of praying for the dead Lege ex Lege c. Read it out of the Scriptures and we will beleeve it for S. Augustine does not pretend any other place of Scripture then this of the Maccabees and not disputing now what credit that Book had with S. Augustine certainly it fell not within this enumeration of his The Maccabees are neither Law nor Prophets nor Psalms nor Gospel nor Epistle Beloved it is a wanton thing for any Church in spirituall matters to play with small errors to tolerate or wink at small abuses as though it should be alwayes in her power to extinguish them when she would It is Christs counsell to his Spouse that is the Church Capite vulpes parvulas Take us the little foxes for they destroy the Vine though they seeme but little and able to doe little harme yet they grow bigger and bigger every day and therefore stop errors before they become heresies and erroneous men before they become formall heretiques Capite sayes Christ Take them suffer them not to goe on but then it is Capite nobis Take us those foxes Take them for us The bargaine is betweene Christ and his Church For it is not Capite vobis Take them to your selves and make your selves Judges of such doctrinall matters as appertaine not to your cognizance Nor it is not Cape tibi Take him to thy selfe spy out a Recusant or a man otherwise not conformable and take him for thy labour beg him and spoile him and for his Religion leave him as you found him Neither is it Cape sibi Take
Baptisme common to all all that are baptized are baptized from their sins And therefore this of Aquinas not reaching to S. Pauls Quid de illis and Quid illi to these men thus baptized is not that sense neither which we seek But the time will not permit us to pursue the severall interpretations of those Moderni whom directly or comparatively we call Ancients Neither truly though there be many other Interpreters then we have named are there many other interpretations then we have touched upon or then may be reduced to them And therefore to end here this consideration of the Fathers and those whom they esteem Pillars of their Church we are thus much at our liberty for all them That first there is no unanime consent in the interpretation of this place and that which they binde themselves to follow is the unanime consent of the Fathers And then though the Fathers had unanimely consented in one and that one had been the exposition which Bellarmine pursues yet we might by their example have departed from it for in the Roman Church Fathers and Fathers Fathers Popes themselves And howsoever the Fathers may be Fathers in respect of us yet in respect of the Pope who is S. Peter himselfe and alwayes sits in his person the Fathers are but children sayes Bellarmine were of opinion That the Sacrament of the Lords Supper was absolutely necessary for children to their salvation and this opinion lasted in force and in use for divers hundreds of yeares neither was it ever repressed by Authority till the other day in the Councel of Trent but wore out of it selfe long before because it had no foundation So the opinion of the Millenarians That Christ with his Saints should have a thousand years of a temporall raign here upon earth after his second comming had possessed the Fathers in a very great partie The Fathers in a great partie denied that the soules of good men departed were to enjoy the sight of God till the Resurrection And the Fathers affirmed That the cause of Gods election was the foresight of the faith and obedience of the Elect. These errors are so noted even by the Authors of the Roman Church for I depart not herein from their own words and observations as that they still present them so Omnes plurimi All the Fathers Most of the Fathers were of this and this opinion And yet for all these Fathers no man in the Roman Church is so childish now as to give his child that Sacrament or to accompany those Fathers in those other mistakings This hath been done in fact they have departed from the Fathers And then for a Rule Cardinall Cajetan tels us That if a new sense of any place of Scripture agreeable to other places and to the analogy of faith arise to us it is not to be refused Quia torrens patrum because the streame of the Fathers is against it For they themselves have told us why we may suspect the Fathers and by what means the Fathers have falne into many mis-interpretations First they say Quia glaciem sciderunt because the Fathers broke the Ice and undertook the interpretation of many places in which they had no light no assistance from others and so might easily turne into a sinister way And then Rhetoricati sunt say they The Fathers often applyed themselves in figurative and Hyberbolicall speeches to exalt the devotions and stir up the affections of their auditory and therefore must not be called to too severe and literall an account for all that they uttered in that manner And againe Plebi indulserunt as S. Augustine sayes of himselfe sometimes out of a loathnesse to offend the ignorant and sometimes the holy and devout and that he might hold his auditory together and avert none from comming to him he was unwilling to come to such an exact truth in the explication and application of some places as that for the sharpnesse and bitternesse thereof weaker stomachs might forbeare So also they confesse too that ex vehementia declinarunt In heat of disputation and argument and to make things straight they bent them too much on the other hand and to oppose one Heresie they endangered the inducing of another as in S. Augustines disputations against the Pelagians who over-advanced the free will of man and the Manicheans who by admitting Duo principia two Caufes an extrinsique cause of our evill actions as well as of our good annihilated the free will of man we shall find sometimes occasions to doubt whether S. Augustine were constant in his owne opinion and not transported sometimes with vehemency against his present adversary whether Pelagian or Manichean Which is a disease that even some great Councels in the Church and Church-affaires have felt that for collaterall and occasionall and personall respects which were risen after they were met the maine doctrinall points and such as have principally concerned the glory of God and the salvation of soules and were indeed the principall and onely cause of their then meeting there have beene neglected Men that came thither with a fervent zeale to the glory of God have taken in a new fire of displeasure against particular Heretiques or Schismatiques and discontinued their holy zeale towards God till their occasionall displeasure towards those persons might be satisfied and so those Heresies and Heretiques against whom they met have got advantage by that passion which hath overtaken and overswayed them after they were met And whatsoever hath fallen into Councels of that kinde Ecclesiasticall Councels may possibly be imagined or justly be feared or at least without offence be pre-disswaded and deprecated in all Civill Consultations and Councels of State That Occasionall things may not divert the Principall for as in the Naturall body the spleene may suffocate the heart and yet the spleen is but the sewar of the body and the heart is the strength and the Palais thereof so in politique bodies and Councels of State an immature and indigested an intempestive and unseasonable pressing of present remedies against all inconveniencies may suffocate the heart of the businesse and frustrate and evacuate the blessed and glorious purpose of the whole Councell The Basiliske is very sharpe-sighted but he sees therefore and to that end that he may kill So is so does passion Who would wish to be sharper sighted then the Eagle And his strength of sight is in this that he lookes to the Sun To looke to things that are evident The evident danger of the State and the Church The evident malice and power of the enemy The evident storme upon our peace and Religion To looke that God be not tempted by us nor his Lieutenant and Vicegerent wearied and hardened towards us This is the object of the Eagles eye and this is wisdome high enough Where men see a great foundation laid they will thinke that all that is not onely to raise a Spittle to cure or a Church-yard to bury a few diseased
119.136 Rivers of waters ran 161. E. 135.7 He causeth the vapours 264. B. 136.4 Facit mirabilia magna 215. C. 139.21 Doe not I hate them 99. C. 145.15 The eyes of all wait 684. D. 146.3 Put not your trust in Princes 483. A. PROVERBS 11.13 The fruit of the righteous 84. A. 12.23 A wise man concealeth 565. C. 13.22 The wealth of the sinner c. 83. C. 14.23 He shall have hope 83. D. 17.6 The glory of children 84. A. 25.16 Fill not thy selfe with honey 63. E. ECCLES 10.10 If the iron be blunt we must 356. C. 10.20 Those that have wings 92. D. 38.9 Myson in thy sicknesse c. 110. C. CANTICLES 1.8 O thou fairest among women 119. E. 2.15 Take us the little Foxes for they devoure the Vine 117. A. 782. B. 4.12 My Sister my Spouse is a garden en closed 515. C. 8.6 Set me as a seal on thy heart 456. D. ESAY 7.13 Is it a small thing to weary men 15. A. 9.6 A childe is given to us a Son is borne to us 86. C. 9.6 Counsellor The mighty God 6. B. 14.12 How art thou faln from heaven 187. B. 18.1 Wo to the land shadowing with wings 671. B. 27.7 Hath he smitten him as he smote those that smote him 505. D. 36.21 They held their peace and 410. B. 38.2 Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall and prayed 251. D. 40.15 As a drop upon the Bucket 64. D. 40.31 They that waite upon the Lord shall renew their strength 637. C. 53.10 It pleased the Lord to bruise him but 181. A. 55.8 My thoughts are not your 25. B. 58.11 Thou shalt be a spring of water 660. D. 60.1 Arise shine for thy light is come 188. E. JEREMIAH 1.10 Behold I have this day 734. B. 5.1 Run to and fro through the streets of 422. A. 18.2 Arise and goe downe 147. B. LAMENTATIONS 1.2 She weepeth continually in the night 540. A. 2.19 Poure out thy heart like water 591. D. 2.10 Women eat their children of a span long 146. D. 215. D. 4.8 My skin cleaves to my bones 519. B. EZECHIEL 9.4 Set a mark upon the foreheads 537. E. 16.29 Thou hast multiplied thy fornications c. 24. C. 44.2 This gate shall be shut c. 22. E. HOSEA 14.2 Take unto you words and turn 578. C. MICAH 2.13 The breaker is gone up before 181. B. HABAKKUK 2.4 The just shall live c. 79. C. 2.18 What good can an Idol or c 117. D. HAGGAI 2.9 The glory of the later house c. 30. D. ECCLUS 7.36 Remember the end and 371. B. 38.1 Honour a Physitian with 187. B. 38.15 He that sinneth before his 187. B. MATTHEVV 1.25 Till she brought forth her Son 22. E. 5.48 Be yee perfect as your Father in heaven is 823. A. 5.23 If thou bring thy gift to the Altar and 33. C. 7.19 He taught them as one 690. E. 9.2 My sonne be of good cheare 343. C. 10.39 He that finds his life 150. C. 16.24 He that will follow me let 732. C. 16.28 There be some standing here 259. A. 19.28 In the regeneration 181. A. 20.23 It is not mine to give 761. E. 21.44 He that falls upon this stone 665. B. 24.20 Pray that your flight be not in the Winter 580. B. 28.19 Goe and teach all Nations 47. B. MARKE 9.24 Lord I beleeve 669. C. LUKE 1.28 Blessed art thou amongst women 18. C. 4.23 Physitian heale thy selfe 420. B. 4.32 They were astonished at his 691. A. 7.29 The Pharisees and Lawyers rejected 366. D. 12.32 Feare not little flock for c. 45. C. 228. B. JOHN 1.3 4. All things were made by him 667. E. 1.16 Grace for grace 310. E. 1.9 He was that light c. 78. B. 345. C. 1.16 Of his fulnesse have all we received and grace for grace 4. C. 2.4 Woman what have I to doe with thee 23. D. 5.25 Verily verily I say unto you the houre 150. E. 5.17 My Father worketh 240. A. 5.39 Search the Scriptures 339. B. 8.11 Sin no more 110. A. 9.10 I am the doore 752. D. 10.3 His sheep heare his voice 66. D. 10.11 The good shepheard giveth his life for the sheepe 63. A. 19.29 They put it upon Hyssop 646. A. 20.16 Touch me not for 821. D. ACTS 1.22 There was a necessity of one 180. C. 17.11 The Bereans searched the c. 472. E. 20.22 I goe bound in the Spirit 473. C. ROMANS 6.21 What fruit had yee then 65. D. 8.15 Whereby we cry Abba Father 27. D. 8.21 The creature it selfe also shall be delivered from the bondage c. 9. D. 8.23 Our selves have the first fruits 293. B. 1 CORINTHIANS 1.20 God hath made the wisedome of this world foolishnesse 180. B. 6.3 We shall judge the Angels 235. A. 6.20 Yee are bought with a price 26. D. 10.13 No tentation shall befall us but 789. B. 15.8 As of one borne out of due 460. D. 15.3 Christ dyed for our sins 397. B. 15.28 God shall be all in all 231. B. 15.29 For the dead 56. D. 2 CORINTHIANS 7.1 Let us cleanse our selves 118. A. 12.7 A thorne in the flesh the messenger of Satan 526. E. 527. A. 12.9 My grace is sufficient for thee 527. D. EPHESIANS 1.10 That God might gather in one 9. D. 2.12 Without Christ without God 71. C. 3.19 That they are filled with all the 4. C. 5.14 Awake thou that sleepest 188. E. 11.6 Without faith it is impossible 105. A. PHILIPPIANS 4.8 If there be any vertue 681. A. COLOSSIANS 3.5 Mortifie your members 151. B. 1 THESSALONIANS 4.7 God hath not called us to c. 117. E. 5.25 I pray God your spirit 335. E. 1 TIM 2.1 I exhort you that supplications and prayers c. 510. D. TITUS 2.14 Christ gave himselfe for us 77. C. HEBREVVES 4.12 The Word of God pierces c. 335. D. 517. B. 4.12 A two edged sword 139. B. 11.35 Others were tortured c. 150. C. 13.22 I beseech you brethren suffer 610. D. JAMES 1.17 The Father of lights 385. B. 5.3 Your gold and your silver c. 81. B. 5.11 You have seene the end c. 399. A. 1 PETER 2.5 Built of lively stones 35. A. 2 PETER 1.19 We have also a more sure word of prophecie 59. E. 1 JOHN 3.2 Now we are the sonnes of God 120. C. 5.16 There is a sin unto death 348. E. REVELATION 3.14 Thus saith Amen 53. A. 12.4 The Dragons taile drew the 240. E. 12.7 Michael and his Angels fought against the Dragon 146. E. 17.2 The great Whore sitteth upon 310. B. 22.11 He that is holy 594. D. ⧠The Table of such Authors as are either cited illustrated or refelled in this BOOKE A ABulensis 7. A. B. 50. A. 314. D. 763. C. Aerius 781. B. Alcazar 184. B. Alvarez 693. C. Alexander Alensis 379. D. 603. C. Alcoranum 379. C. 744. C. Ambrosius 18. A. 24. A. 38. A. 88. A. 105. D. 106. A. 110. E. 262. D.
with the Ancient Fathers 221. A. B. C Applause after Sermon given to the Primitive Fathers 48. D Applause of the people or popularity a dangerous and uncertaine thing not to be affected by any men especially not by the Clergie whom it usually deceiveth most ib. Approaches to Sinne how soone and easily they become Sinne 557. E Apostles why chosen out of simple fisher-men 719. C What things were called Apostles before Christs Apostles were so called 758 C Apostolicall Authority vainely claimed by the Pope 733. E Apostolicall Tradition what it is 781. E Articles of Faith how they are proved by Reason 178. A 611. D Atheist nothing so unnaturall as the Atheist 486. B Of the universall particular and practicall Atheist ibid. 487. A. B. vide 756. B. Authority of the Fathers not baulked by the Reformed Churches 557. A Though at the beginning of the Reformation our men were a little startled at it B. C B Balsame of the naturall Balsame in the body and in the soule 514. A Baptism of children how necessary 309. E. 425. B The Remembrance of our Baptisme a stop against sinne 310. A Christ why Baptised 425. A The Anabaptists argument against Baptisme of Children answered ibid. D The Baptisme of John whether the same with that of Christ 425. E The custome of late Baptising why tolerated in the Church 800. A Bees the manner of their working sub tecto 712. E Commended for their sedulity community secrecy and purity 713. A. B Beggers against ordinary Street-Beggers and relieving them Benedictines of their encrease and riches 602. E Benefactours and Founders their honorable commemoration and mention pleases God 85. D The Straights to which some of the Reformed Churches have been put about it ibid. The Benefits of this world seldom free 550. B Bishops not necessarily resident at their Sea 470. D Six thousand Bishops at one time in the Christian Church 471. A The passage between Athanasius and Dracontius who refused to be made a Bishop 471. D Bishop of Rome against his tyranny cruelty c. 284. B Against his Infallibility 698. C. 722. D His Imprisoning of the Holy Ghost 292. A His Universality 371. D Against his usurping Apostolicall Authority and not contenting himselfe with Episcopall 733. E Blasphemy not restrained to God alone other persons and things may be blasphemed 343. E No Blessing in this world without permanency and continuance 754. E Blessings of this world only Blessings in use 84. C How God blesseth man and man blesseth God 376. D Blessednesse what it is and what the Philosophers have thought of it 119. C. D. 752. A Whom Plato commanded the Poets and writers in his State to call Blessed 562. D. E That temporall Blessings doe not conduce at All to true Blessednesse 750. B The danger of Temporall Blessings without Spirituall 752. B What Plato thought Blessednesse 752. E Spirituall Blessednesse how it is superinduced upon Temporall as the reasonable soule upon that of sense 755. C. D Blood no Remission without it and why 6. D Christ shed it seven times 7. B The will the Blood of the Soule 7. A Blood taken for sin oftentimes in Holy Writ 132. A Bodies the Kingdome of heaven imperfect without them 145. A The little power we have over our own Bodies ibid. D Bodies glorified and their Dotes or Endowments 189. A. B Gods love to our Bodies 194. B. C Of sinning against our own Bodies by lust and licentiousnesse 195. D. E Bones what is meant by Bones in Scripture 516. C Bribery against it or receiving of Rewards 389. E Brothers the first enmity began in them 108. A Brownists their opinion that no particular Church may consist of more persons than may alwayes heare that man to whose charge that Church is given censured 471. C. D Building the Holy Ghost delights to use the name of Building and House 684. C Against Busy-bodies with other folks matters 721. E. 722. A Burthen how every thing even the least the Fly even the best as riches beauty comlinesse is a Burthen to us 664. C. D C CArd Cajetans reasons for not following the Judgement of the fathers in expounding Scripture 796. E. 79â— A. Calamities not to be jested at 478. E Not alwayes evidences of Gods displeasure ib. Calling the ordinary duties of our Calling not to be disputed but executed 41. A Such as are extraordinary may 42. A Against such as will take upon them no Calling 45. D. 411. B. 606. B How acceptable to God that labour is which is taken in an honest Calling 721. C Against Intruders and meddlers with other mens Callings ibid. E Calvin an approver of Ceremonies 80. D Candles the use of them in divine Service ancient 80. B Canonicall Houres no inconvenience in observing them so wee place no merit in them 596. D Catechizing the excellent use and benefit of it 250. A. 561. B. C. D. c. Cathedrall Churches why so called 115. C Censuring of Preachers and comparing one with another condemned 692. E Ceremonies of their antiquity and use 80. C They should differ from Mysteries ibid. Not hastily to be condemned ibid. E They are vehicula Religionis 300. B Against the Opposers of them ibid. How we are to love them 512. A Not to be disputed of by private men 575. C Changes of this world how many 481. D Of inconstancy and changing of minde 483. C Changes of sinne how dangerous 543. A Children of their love and duty to Parents 387 E CHRIST he came of women noted in Scripture for their incontinency 24. A He came to save All 26. C. 70. C. 66. B Learning at the height when hee was borne 72. C Whether hee was Man whilst in the Grave 157. A CHRIST his Death and Passion how necessary and how voluntary 7. D. 792. C Three remarkable Conjunctions at his Birth 11 B The world how full with expectation of it 21. D CHRIST shed blood seven times here on earth 7. B How effectually hee is present in the Sacrament 19. C His Incarnation no way so proper to deliver us as it 16. C His Humane Nature adunited to the Divine whether Impeccable 169. B The infinitnesse of his merits rather placed in Pacto than in Persona by the Schoole 179. B The difference betweene his Dying and other mens 272. E The severall Heresies concerning CHRIST 316. D CHRIST dyed for all men 741. E. 742. A. B Church the power of it in applying Christ to every particular soule 60. A The true Church which 61 A How soone multiplied and enriched 72. A. B The ten Persecutions of it 184 B. C The Church the ordinary place for knowledge and illumination of a Christian 228. A The Primitive Church how the whole world was bent against it 602. C The Church a Pillar and how 615. C What a losse it is to bee kept from Gods Church 664. A The care which God hath ever had of his Church 779. E Circle the proper Hieroglyphick of God and why 13.
E Citation of Scripture the words much more the Chapter and verse not alwayes observed in it 250. C. 325. D Complements of their abuse and use 176. A. B. C. 412. D Comforts how easily we mistake false Comforts for true 279. E. 382. D. 383. A. B 501. A Of the true Comfort of the Holy Ghost 353. D Of that Comfort and consolation which the Minister of the Gospell is to preach to all people 746. A. B C Confession to the Priest in some cases usefull and necessary 558. A 568. A. 589. B. C How necessary to Confesse 569. D. 586. E Confidence true Confidence proceeds onely from true goodnesse 171. E Confirmation whether a Sacrament 329. C The use and benefit of it ibid. D. E Continency that trial not made as should be whether young people can Conteine from marriage 217. B C Contrition Confession and Satisfaction three parts of true Repentance 568. A Conventicles against their private opinions 228. C Against them 455. A They are no Bodies 756. D Consideration of our selves and our insufficiencies how necessary 44. D. 45. A. c. Constitutions No sins to be layd and fathered upon them 90. A Corporations how they have no soules 99. A Covering of sinnes what good and what bad 569. E It is good to cover them from giving other men examples 570. A Counsell not to be given unlesse we love those to whom we give it 93. C How many miscarry in that poynt ibid. D Craft and that cunning and Craft which men affect in their severall Callings 411. D Creatures how farre we may love the Creatures and how farre not 398. E Curiosity against the excesse of it in matter of Knowledge 63. E. 64. A. 411. E. 563. B. 701. A Conscience obdurate and over-tender the effects of either 587. B. C. D Curses and Imprecations whether we may use them 401. C. D. 555. E D DAmned the consummation of their torment wherein it consisteth in the opinion of the Schoole 344. B More shall be saved than damned 765. C Of the torments of the damned 776. B. C The absence of God the greatest torment of the damned ibid. D Day of Judgement the manner of proceeding in it 140. B Fearefull even to the best 200. B. C The certainty and uncertainty of it 271. D To be had ever in remembrance and why 371. B. 389. C. 392. A Death how it may be desired of us and how not 38. A. B. C. D. 148. B. C. 531. D. E Against the ambition of it in the pseudomartyrs 142. C The word Fortasse hath place in all things but Death 147. C. D It is a law a tribute and a duty and how 147. E. 148. A We not to grudge if we dy soon or others live longer ibid. B Death how an enemy to mankinde and how not ibid E God made it not but maketh use of it 188. B Of undergoing Death for Christ 400. A B Not a banishment to good men but a visitation of their friends 463. C Death why so terrible to the good men of former times 532. D The often contemplation of Death takes much from the feare of it 473. E Debts of our Debts to God 87. C To our neighbours 93. E To our superiors 91. C To our selves 94. D Deceit and Deceiving the mischiefe of it 742. B The law will not suppose it either in a father or a master ibid. 42. Decrees of God to be considered only by the Execution 330. C None absolute considering man before a Sinner 675. C. D. E Departing from sinne to be generall 552. A We are not to retaine any one 568. D Deprecating of afflictions whether or no lawfull 504. B. C. D. E Desperation the sin of it greater and worse than that of presumption 398. C Severall sects there have been but never any of Despayring men 346. A Against it 360. D E God brings his servants to humiliation often but never to Desperation 464. Destroying whether man may lawfully destroy any one hurtfull species in the world 527. B 620. C De viâ the name of such as were Christians in the former times that is men of that way according to S. Chrysostome 426. B Devils capable of mercy according to many of the Fathers 66. A The Devils quoting of Scripture 338. C Devotion a serious sedulous and impatient thing 244. E It is good to accompany our selves to a generall Devotion 512 D It must be constant 586. B And not taken up by chance ibid. C Disciplining and mortifying Acts after God hath forgiven us our sinnes commended 546. E They inferre neither Purgatory nor Indulgences nor Satisfaction 547. A They are sharp arrows from a sweet hand ib. The necessity of them to make our Repentance entire 568. B Discretion the mother and nurse of all vertues 577. B What Discretion is to be used in telling people of their sinnes ibid. Division the fore-runner of destruction 138. D. E Not alwayes unlawfull to sow Division amongst men when they agree too well to ill purposes 493. D Doubting the way to know the truth 322. D Duels the inhumanity and sinne of them 5. E Duties of our calling not to be disputed but executed 41. A Of our generall weaknesse and impotency in spirituall Duties 513. C E EArly seeking of God what it is 245. C. D God is an Early God 809. A. B And we to seeke him Early ibid. D. E Eloquence required in the delivery of Gods Word 47. D Enemies profit to be made of them 98. A We come too soone to the name and then carry it too farre 98. C God and Religion both have Enemies 375 D 703. C How we may and how we may not hate our Enemies ibid. D. E Our Enemies are Gods Enemies 704. A Errours in the way almost as dangerous as Errours in the end 639. A. D Of the Errours of the Fathers of the Church 490. A About administring the Sacrament to children about the state of the soule after death c. 739. E Not good for the Church to play with small Errours and tolerate them when shee may as easily redresse them 782. B Esay rather an Evangelist than a Prophet 54. B Evill none from God 168. C. D Nothing is naturally Evill 171. A Example in all our actions and purposes wee to propose unto our selves some patterne or Example 667. D. Examples what power they have in matter of instruction 572. D. 593. A What care is to be taken in making the inordinate acts of some Holy men in Scripture our Examples 155. C. D. 488. D. E. 489. A. 526. E How farre Example works above precept or command 165. B Of giving good Examples to others 420. C God follows his own Examples 522. E Of giving bad Examples unto other men 570. A. 573. E Excommunication the use of it amongst the Druides and the Jewes 402. A Much tendernesse to be used in excommunicating any from the Church 667. A How many men excommunicare themselves without any Church-censure ib. B. C. 418.
Silence which is good 576. B. C Silence which is bad 577. D Good to be Silent sometimes even in good things and when 576. E Simple-men of this world why chosen for Christs Apostles 719. C Singular Gods speakes of things of grace in the Singular but of heavie things in the plurall number ever 711. A Single instances no safe concluding from them 460. E Neither in the case of the Thiefe on the Crosse nor S. Paul 461. B Singularity not ground enough to condemne every opinion 234. C Against Singularity 51. D. 177. C. 573. D. 722. B Of a Single testimony 234. B Sinne the cause of all sicknesses 109. C Little light and customarie Sinnes how dangerous 117. B. 164. C. D. 585. E All Sin is from our selves not from any thing in God 118. A. 330. D The Sin of the Heart the greatest of all Sin and why 140. D How well some Men husband their Sin 147. A That it is good for men to fall into some Sinnes 171. B. C Sinne is a fall and how 186. D. 187. C Whether it have rationem demeriti and may properly offend God 342. C Sinne not meerly nothing 342. E Not so much of any thing as of Sinne 343. C How soone Sinne is followed of Repentance 540. C How Sinne rises by little and little in us 585. C Against sitting in the time of Divine Service 72. D Socinians their monstrous opinions 317. C And nicknaming of Athanasius Sathanasius 654. D Against the growth of that pestilent Heresie of Socinianisme 821. B Sorrow for the dead how lawfull 157. C. D. E. 822. D Of the end lesse Sorrow of the wicked 632. B No communication of their Sorrow 634. D The Soule of the miseries of it in the body 190. A Of the lazinesse of the Soule in the disquisition of any Divine Truths 190. B C Of her excellency of knowledge in the next world ibid. C. D Of bending the Soule up to her proper height and putting of her home 483. D Soule and Spirit what the Fathers understand by them in Scripture 517. C Subjects how to looke upon the faults and errors of their Governors 13. C How reverent to be towards their Princes 92. D Supererogation against Workes of Supererogation and of the fondnesse of them 390. C 494. E. 495. A. 547. C. 732. E Superstition better than Prophanesse and why 69. A The danger of it to be prevented but how 485. E Supplications how they differ from Petitions or Prayers 553. E Synedrion the Originall and power of the Synedrion or Sanhedrim amongst the Jewes 491. E Herod called before it but not when hee was King 492. A T TEares against their inordinatenesse 155. A Never ascribed to God 156. D Well employed for the dead though they be at rest 157. A Of those whose constitution will afford no Teares 160. D Foure considerations that will enforce Teares 160. E. 161. A Of Teares shed for worldly losses ib. C. D. 162. A For sinne 539. B Of the effect of Teares 162. B How God is said in Scripture to heare Teares that make no sound 552. E Teares the humidum-radicale of the Soule 577. E Temporall blessings how seldome prayed for in Antiquitie 750. D. E They are blessings but blessings of the left hand 751. D Nothing permanent in them 823. D Tentations all men not alike enabled against them 310. E Whether it be lawfull to pray against all kind of Tentations 527. C One of the Divels greatest Tentations it is to make us think our selves above Tentations or Tentation-proofe that they cannot hurt us 603. E The use and necessity of them 789. C Thanksgiving the duty of thanksgiving better than that of Prayer 549. D How small it is if proportioned to the love of God unto us 550. B Thoughts of the greatnesse of sinnes of thought 140. D. 543. D Titles and bare empty Names how men are puffed up with them 734. D Torturing whether or no to be admitted in case of Religion 194. D Tongue how many it hath damned 344. B Tradition against the making of Traditions articles of Faith 779. D Transubstantiation the riddles and contradictions of it 36. E What true Transubstantiation in the Sacrament may be admitted 693. C Tribulations the benefit of them 563. B 604. A. B Spirituall Tribulations and afflictions heavier than Temporall 665. B. D. E Tribulation and affliction part of our daily bread which wee ought to pray for and how 787. B Tribute God never wrought miracle in the matter of money but onely for Tribute to Caesar 91. E Trinitie the knowledge of it not by naturall reason attained 301. B Not one of a thousand knows what himselfe meanes when he speakes of the Trinity 307. E Some obumbrations of the Trinity even in nature 379 What are illustrations of it to us Christians are no Arguments unto the Jewes 417. B Foure severall trinities 417. E. 418. A It is the onely rule of our Faith the Trinitie 426. E To be believed first of all but not last of all to be understood 428. C. D The opinions of severall Hereticks concerning it 429. D The severall wayes of expressing it by figures and letters 429. E Troubles five severall sorts of Troubles 518. D The universality and inevitablenesse of them 664. B Truth not alwaies to be spoken 576. E Turning of Gods Turning to us and of our Turning to God 524. B. C. D. 525. A. B. 526. A. B V VAgabonds and incorrigible rogues against receiving or harbouring of them 415. B. C Vaine things in themselves may be brought to a religious use 226. E Vbiquetaries 67. E Confuted by the Angels Argument 248. C Of that Vicissitude which is in all temporall things 823. D Vigils why discontinued in the Primitive Church 813. A Virginitie The dignity and prayse of it 17. C. D Three Heresies impeaching the Virginity of the blessed Lady 17. D Against vowed Virginitie 30. D Virgin Mary The errour of Tertullian about her 18. A Of the Manichees and Anabaptists 23. D Against appeales to her in heaven 46. A Borne in Originall sinne 314. A Called of the Fathers Deipara but not Christipara and why 400. D Threatned at a siege of Constantinople to bee drowned if shee did not drowne the enemy 418. E The Church onely in the Virgin Mary according to the Schoole 603. C Against Vncharitable objecting of repented sinnes 499. D Vnitie the Devils way to breake it 138. D The Vnsatiablenesse of sinne 709 C Vprightnesse what Vprightnesse is required of man in this world 677 B. C What it is to bee Vpright in heart ibid. 678. A. B. C Against Vsury 753. E. 754. A. Vulgate Edition of the Antiquity and Authority of it 542. E Not to be preferred before the originall ibid. W VVArre the miseries and incommodities of it 146. C. D Waters those of Baptisme sinne tribulation and death 309. C. c What is meant by Waters in Scripture 598. D Waiting upon Gods time how it consists with fervent Prayer 34. D Wings the severall acceptations of the Word in Scripture 671. B Winning upon God by prayer how well God likes it 513. E Wisdome of sinnes against it especially ignorance and curiosity 411. B Witnesse the credit of the Testimony dependeth much upon his credit that is the Witnesse 238. B Women our Saviour came from such as were dangerously suspected and noted in Scripture for their incontinence 24. A Never any good Angell appeared in the likenesse of a Woman 242. D Whether Women were created after Gods Image a question in S. Ambrose his Commentaries upon the Epistles that hath called those Commentaries in doubt 242. E Of Womens able in State affaires and matters of Government ibid. Powerfull in matters of Religion both on the right hand and on the left 243. A Wonder the difference between the Philosophers and the Fathers about wondering 194. A Word of God the very Angels of heaven referre themselves unto it 249. E Stronger than any reason to a Christian 394. B 815. A The onely rule of Doctrine 738. E The World is a sea and in how many respects 735. C Workes wee no enemies to good workes as the Adversarie doth traduce us 82. A. c No Faith without them 136. A We are to continue in them 554. B Workes good when to a good end 82. E To be done of what 83. A How they may be seene of men 141. B Sometimes there is good use in concealing our Workes of mortification 538. E Of those imperfections which are in the best of our Good Works 820 D. E Wounds of love how God doth so wound us that we kisse that hand that strikes us 463. A Z ZEale to be reconciled to discretion 10. A How the devill makes it his Instrument 42. B Of the Zeale we ought to have to Gods service 72. D Zeale distempered what it will doe 237. A Zeale and uncharitablenesse are two incompatible things 480. E Of Daniels Zeale in praying against the expresse Proclamation of the King 814. A. B. C Zoroastes he only laughed when he was born 21. A FINIS Errata Pag. line reade 22 39 waives 22 40 waives 22 50 waives 110 52 when he 116 40 may come 142 31 the Cato's 164 39 Manours 196 15 in indignifying 420 32 man 426 45 blown 534 35 Topicks 710 46 exorcised 751 43 or any people 782 63 Interimists In the life Pag. 15 line 12 for merit reade mercy Pag. 16. line 40. for friends reade friend