Day of Salvation says Isaiah and that day reacheth from the time that Remission of sins is preached in the bloud of Christ unto the end of the world Now as the Text is common to all Evangelical Days so there is one Day that lifts up its head above them all the most memorable Day of our Saviour's Resurrection then it was verily fulfilled as Peter urg'd it that the Stone which the Builders refused became the head of the corner St. Chrysostom Nyssen and almost who not pitch upon Easter-day for the particular application of this Text that was the Day wherein God did bring forth a more eminent work than in other common days and upon every Sunday in the year for that Day 's sake the Church hath appointed sacred Assemblies that we may rejoyce and be glad Well then of Davids Day first and from thence how particular Holidays may be ordeined to magnifie Gods extraordinary benefits next of the blessed Age of the Gospel wherein we have great cause to rejoyce and be comforted for Christ hath wiped away all tears from our eyes And last of all I shall take the right opportunity to speak of the glorious Feast of the Resurrection and how the Church doth keep the weekly Feast of the Lords day to rejoyce and be glad in it And first the Holy Ghost hath left it written for the honor of the Lords Anointed This is the Day which the Lord hath made There is one thing in that form of speech which jarrs a little against the ear how can it be said that God did make one day more than another for he hath framed all Times and Seasons alike the Sun knoweth his going down and he maketh it return again every morning to give light unto the World In the Hymns of the Heathen he is called Diespiter the Father of all days indifferently it is he that sets the Heavens in perpetual motion and makes the hours run on and when he calls back his word the Plumbets shall go down and time shall be no more It is granted therefore that he giveth continuance and being to all days after one sort and for the Phrase of my Text a new Writer hath well exprest himself Non includitur mensura temporis sed conditiones tempori incidentes it is not meant of the Day which the Sun makes with his diurnal motion but of the great Work which was wrought in that Day that is not that God made that Day more than others but that He made more in that Day than in others It is vulgar to impute the condition of things which fall out in some certain dayes to the days themselves per metonymiam adjuncti although a day as it is meerly a space of time cannot possibly be capable of such Attributes We take liberty to call this a cold or a moist day not for its own sake but because coldness and moisture happen in the day so for the contingency of glorious things we call the day it self glorious and to renown the memorable acts of the Lord we have got a use to speak thus This is the day which the Lord hath made In 1 Sam. 12.6 according to the Original and that 's pointed at in our Margent it is said that the Lord made Moses and Aaron why are not all that are born of a woman the works of his hands as well as Moses and Aaron therefore our Translation hath rendred the sense rather than the word that the Lord advanced Moses and Aaron In like manner we may read my Text thus This is the Day which the Lord advanced for he made it remarkable with an extraordinary favour and thereby gave it a Dignity and Exaltation above its fellows The going out and the return of every year are from the Almighty with the store and abundance that it brings forth but when the clouds drop fatness with unusual plenty then the Prophet says that he crowns that year with his goodness Psal lxv 11. So some principal Days are crowned above the rest as this Day wherein through the sun shine of his mercy he set a Crown of pure Gold upon the head of David his Servant Piety forbid that we should not thankfully receive the most vulgar benefits I know that common things are commonly neglected but learn to see God in small things or you shall never see him in greater If I had learnt it of no other yet I find enough in Seneca for that use Communia negligenda non sunt c. neglect not to give thanks for common and quotidian favours for life and health and suppeditation of food that the Sun doth shine upon us that we have the air to breath in that the Sea doth ebb and flow for navigation There are days of small things as Zachary calls them chap. iv 10. but those small things are to be consider'd of us with a grateful heart who are less than the least of all his mercies but how much more requisite is it then to observe those days wherein some eminent blessings are confer'd upon us what a behooveful thing it is every man for his own part to keep a Calender of the famous Acts of the Lord for our Birth for our Baptism for great Preservations and to represent them before us at the return of every year with grateful acknowledgment from the bottom of our heart and when God doth see that we are so mindful of a prosperous Day he will grant us many prosperous Years and for the period of joy a most prosperous Eternity that shall never have a period This is made as plane then as you can wish upon what special Prerogative the Lord is said to make a particular day because he doth appoint some special favour to fall out upon it and the Wise-mans Question is answered Ecclus. xxxiii 7. Why doth one day excel another when as all the light of every day of the year is of the Sun It is not the material light which distinguisheth the nobleness of Dayes but he that made the Sun more excellent than the other Stars of the Firmament hath made Princes glorious as the Sun in the Orb of the Common-wealth and a Day of a Princes Exaltation is like a Prince among Days and in that capacity to be magnified Such a day is said to be made by God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because God himself and none else is the Author of the Power of Kings He and none but He took David from following the Ews great with young and set him over the Princes of his People In a word since the Day is taken for the Work of the Day the real meaning of the first words of my Text is this is the King which the Lord hath made Samuel anointed him the People shouted and cried God save him but the Lord did constitute him the Ruler of the Twelve Tribes and gave him his Sovereign Authority the Crowns of Glory in Heaven and the Crowns of Dignity upon Earth are both held by
wrong opinions that offend against it For whatsoever things they are to which men do offer religious worship and service beside the Lord let them distinguish that they do it improperly with a less religious worship with reference to Almighty God let them slick it over with what gloss of wit they please I am on the Lords side and in his behalf I plead that they run into some kind of Idolatry But first plainly and affirmatively without rubbing against the adversary's errors that God only is to be worshipped and served In the first place I must not conceal from you this word upon which we stand so much and good reason for it but this word Only is not to be found in that verse which is quoted by our Saviour Deut. vi 13. the margent of your own Bible and indeed all Expositors ancient and modern hold that to be the very Scripture which Christ doth here apply and thus you find thou shalt fear the Lord thy God and serve him and shalt swear by his name I but 't is not written there thou shalt serve him only Hath He added to the word put case He should add to the word as in this instance He did not but put case He should it were free for him but for none else to do it He may do what He will with his own After Moses had finished the Law and the Lord had said thereupon cursed is he that addeth unto it yet the book of the Psalms and the Prophets were put to it and after all these the Gospel and the whole New Testament was added yet none of those were the patches of mans wit but the increase and supply which God himself gave to his own eternal Oracles Yet I give not this answer as if Christ had thrust one syllable into the Law to give it more sense and authority than it had before He came to fulfil the Law but not to overfil it For first Christ said nothing but that which is written if not here yet in another Prophet and one spirit is in all the Prophets consult with Samuel 1 lib. chap. 2. v. 3. Prepare your hearts unto the Lord and serve him only that 's down right as my Text hath it I need not give it a grain to make up weight Then there 's for Satan he cannot say but he was refuted with very Scripture Secondly let us keep unto those words of Deuteron for surely those were intended and the word only is there in effect the next verse makes it good that it could not be excepted Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God and serve him Well but will God admit any partner otherwise we must serve him alone just so for it follows ye shall not go after other Gods of the Gods of the people that are round about served him and no other God whatsoever Why then it is a clear aequipollencie in Logick thou shalt serve him only The Devil is most perverse and litigious yet he never denied it Thirdly be satisfied yet further that the 72 Translators so called having the right understanding of the Text that God commandeth all glory and worship and divine service to himself without comperes or sharers they render the Hebrew in those Greek words which our Saviour quoted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 him only shalt thou serve Now all do yield that the five books of Moses were translated by those 72 Jews of great learning whom Eleazar the High-Priest sent to Ptolemy Philadelphus for that purpse So much both Philo and Josephus acknowledge though they speak of no more Occasion is taken from hence by some to cry up that Greek Translation of the Old Testament because our Saviour alledgeth these words as those Septuagint have made them up and not as they are in the pure original Hebrew I will not stand upon this Theme any long time but say much in brief First that St. Paul layes a firm ground how the Jews had the Oracles of God committed to them it was one of their National Privileges therefore their tongue is the matrix and fountain from whence we are to expound what the Holy Ghost hath delivered in the Old Testament I deny not but the Jews themselves might use the Copies of the Greek Language for there were many of them and some conjecture that where we read of certain Hellenistae Greeks that came to our Saviour in the Gospel they were those Jews that rather used the Greek Translation than the Hebrew perhaps being more easie to their capacities for their common speech in those daies was Syrian and Hebrew was taught in Sholes as we teach Latin therefore some suppose there was a Faction of Hellenists among them they and the Scribes who damned all Scripture which was not in their own Hebrew tongue being upon all occasions at hot variance So you find there was a murmuring of the Graecians against the Hebrews Acts vi 1. To return to my conclusion some Jews did not abhor to read their own Law in the Greek tongue yet these were but a Faction for when St. Paul saies the Oracles of God were committed to them and by way of high privilege he must mean it of that idiom which their Fathers spake wherein it was first wrote and whereof their learned men for the present were the Doctors Secondly though the Hebrew was and is the authentique language for that part of Scripture yet there was a most venerable Translation of it into Greek which our Saviour the Evangelists and Apostles used it kept the sense yea the words of the Hebrew for the most part so exactly that our Saviour who taught the Law according to it did say one jot or title of the Law should not perish St. Hierom says if that Translation had been purely extant he would have spared his own pains and not have undergone so laborious a task to turn the whole Old Testament out of Hebrew into Latin Thirdly that pure Greek Translation was used by our Saviour though not in Greek words but in Syriac not as preferring it or matching it with the original authentique Hebrew but partly because it was most frequent and most known for they all spake the Greek tongue in all the hither parts of Asia after Alexander the great had exalted the Graecian Monarchy partly to import that a door of faith was now opened to the Gentiles and that they should reap those heavenly things since the Jews thought themselves unworthy of them Fourthly this Greek Translation which at this day goes under the name of the 72 is of far less value and authority than that which was so honour'd with our Saviours mouth for I will believe St. Hierom in this case being a most exact Linguist rather than those Fathers that took languages upon trust but thus He. Germana illa antiqua translatio corrupta est violata ac pro varietate regionum diversa feruntur exempla That old genuine Translation was corrupted and violated and several Copies of it
having such near relation I have found out most principal Texts for them both this year out of the same Chapter for Easter day Ver. 24. whom God hath raised up having loosed the pains of death For Whitsunday in that notable portion of the story which I have read unto you And I told you upon the last great solemnity that Whitsunday was principally ordained for this end to make Easter day famous over all the world But the principal fruits of this day are three if we may comprehend an Ocean of graces in so small a number In the zeal of our Prayers we passed them over in the Morning Collect and that Collect extracted them from the Epistle and Gospel appointed Thus you may perceive that the Service of the Church of England is the treasure of my observations The Collect runs upon these three Points Teaching Illumination Consolation God which upon this day hath taught the hearts of thy faithful people for heavenly Doctrine began to be made common to all the world from this day Yet many hear the Word but most unprofitably therefore it follows that God hath sent us the light of his holy Spirit to have a right judgment in all things And many have the benefit of true Doctrine and the help of Illumination but with much sorrow and persecution therefore the Holy Ghost came down also that we might rejoyce in his holy comfort Thus far the contents of that short Prayer have helpt me The Gospel for the day runs altogether upon the last branch upon Consolation I will pray the Father and he will give you another Comforter The Epistle falls upon the two former upon Doctrine and Illumination and that in two sensible miracles For Doctrine that a sound came from heaven as of a mighty wind to foreshew that the sound of the Word should go forth into all Lands for Illumination that cloven tongues appeared and sate upon them as it were of fire The noise was as a Trumpet to wake the World the firy Tongues as so many lights to let them see their visitation Thus the Holy Ghost is presented to both the senses to the Ear as to the sense of faith to the Eye as to the sense of love The Ear is the ground of the Word and Doctrine and that gives the first admittance to Faith and therefore the Holy Ghost began his operation there according to my Text and that in these particulars to be considered 1. That God caused a sound to be heard upon the descending of the Holy Spirit 2. The manner of the sound is resembled to a Wind. 3. To a sudden wind 4. To a rushing mighty wind 5. It was from heaven 6. It filled all the house where they were sitting All these particulars are worthy of my labour and your attention That there came a sound from heaven at the mission of the Holy Ghost is the first thing remarkable A sound first to call in them that were without Secondly To demonstrate the Office of them that were within As the chiming of Bells calls us together to Church so an audible sound from heaven was a warning to the Jews to flock to that place where the Apostles were gathered together The Master of the Feast in the Gospel sent forth his Servants and invited the Guests and bad them be told what preparation he had made for their coming so the men of Jerusalem had as sensible an invitation to draw them to the great Feast of the Gospel as if a Canon had been discharged in their Ear. Or if they were yet unprepared to taste of such Manna as fell from heaven into their lap yet the Lords doings were so palpable before them that their consciences must be extremely stupified with malice if they made an ill interpretation of others that were then filled from above with the great power of God And indeed Oecumenius says that the sound did pierce the ears of all that were in the City that such as were curious to know the reason might come and see 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the open manifestation of the miracle might preserve it from calumny But you will say it did not gain the good opinion of the Jews for all the gift of Tongues had such a forerunner not vox clamantis but sonus intonantis not the voice of a Crier but a peal of thunder to bring it into the world yet the people did disgrace it with a vile imputation of drunkenness True it proved as ill as could be expected but says St. Chrysostome if they said the Apostles were full of new Wine when these signs concurred what would they have said without them The most graceful and melodious sounds in the world are lost to deaf men and though a clamour and a cry from heaven were come down as it is in my Text yet it moved not those that like the deaf Adder had stopped their ears The Serpent in that place is called in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by Antiphrasis or the contrary because it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an unperswaded Creature all Art and Charming is spent in vain it will not listen it will not mitigate its venomous wrath and so the Translator Apollinarius says upon it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that when the Adder is mischievously angry for the time of his violent anger and while that lasts he is stark deaf though he can hear by nature So such as are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tit. i. 16. Disobedient and reprobate to every good work though they have the sense of hearing by nature yet when they are violently set upon infidelity and stubbornness they give no more attention to the sound that comes from heaven than do the stones of the Temple When Stephen preached so divinely to the Jews that the heavens opened in the time of his Sermon Acts vii 56. as if way had been made for the Angels and Saints to be his Auditors even then when the gates of heaven stood wide open at the grace of his words they that should have given him best attention stopped their ears and ran upon him But the sin of them that will not hear let it lie upon their own head they cannot say but there hath been a Trumpet among them to awake them from the sleep of sin The sound which God hath sent forth is shrill and loud to call in those that are without And he that hath ears c. But secondly the Spirit came in a very audible sound to declare what a door of utterance should be opened from thenceforth to the Messengers of Christ That their sound should go out into all the earth and their words unto the ends of the World Rom. x. 18. The Gospel preached to every creature under heaven Col. i. 23. How many were in that lamentable condition like the Disciples at Ephesus that had not so much as heard whether there were an Holy Ghost Angels themselves began to be Preachers when a door of entrance was
that any Martyr or Confessor departed hath done for Christs sake it is a shame for you if you do not covet to do as much or more than that at least accuse your self if you be not sorry that your frailties make you come short of the best Lay your hand every one upon his own conscience and you may well say after me sweet Jesu should any of thy Creatures love thee better than I Should any servant be more obedient than I Any Martyr be willing to suffer more than I Should Enoch that walked with God desire to please thee more than I Never will I give over to try if I can run before them for none of thine Elect is so much endebted to thy bloudy Passion as I am because none of them had so many sins to be forgiven Press on to be the nearest of them that shall stand before the presence of the Lord and account it among thy great sins if thy heart do not pant and yearn to be equal with the principal of the Saints And make not your estimation of a good man by this rule that his vertues are more than his vices Or as Guicciardine says who had cause to know what he wrote that Popes are praised for their goodness when they do not exceed the wickedness of other men and trust not to that fleshly sloth that a moderate competency of honesty is well enough Non omnes possunt esse Scipiones Maximi All men cannot be anointed with the oyl of gladness above their fellows If Noah and Abraham and Moses had roused up their spirit no better what should the Church have done for exquisite Semplars of Zeal and Faith but if it had wanted all these an absolute pattern of holiness had remained in Enoch upon the earth was no man created like him we must therefore carry some transcendent sanctity in our notions to know what it is to walk with God First It commends him that he had much conversation or as it were a familiar friendship with God Can two walk together unless they be agreed Amos iii. 3. Agreement is not all it imports as much as an endearing and a sociable benevolence We took sweet counsel together and walked in the house of God as friends Psal lv 14. Let this embolden none to walk and strout it in the body of the Church while others are at their Prayers in the Quire they are more bold and familiar with God than welcome I know not what greater contempt could be shewn by a civil man if he were present at the time of sacred hours in one of the Mosques of Mahomet But I will not digress To walk with God is to go hand in hand like a loving Associate and I need not mince it to say like the friend of God We are all servants properly naturâ debito in our Nature and in our debt to the Law Neither do we ever cease to be servants by the gift of grace but it is an Evangelical priviledge that some of those that are servants and obey his will in all things should be called the friends of God So our Saviour says to his Disciples after he had given them a taste of all saving knowledge Henceforth I call you not servants for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doth but I have called you friends for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you Now although the condition that all men lived in before Christ came into the world was the state of servants yet such Prophets and Patriarchs as were greatly illuminated with Evangelical faith praeter rationem status notwithstanding the bondage of Nature and of the Law were vouchsafed this Title the friends of God A thrice blessed name which vindicates us from Captivity it breaks our bonds asunder it makes us partakers of divine acquaintance it consigns us an interest in the love of Christ more than we dare boast of it And is this the way to procure it to walk with God What say you to walking through Fire and Sword What think you of walking through the Valley of the shadow of death Break not hands with such a God though it should come to a most bitter exigent But in that ease and safety that we live now few or none are put to any hardness for Christs sake No League in the world more sought for more willingly accepted no Amity less burdensom or more beneficial St. Austin in his Confessions brings in a couple that served the Roman Emperour thus debating the matter What can we look for in this Palace more than to be called the friends of the Emperour This is no sure unmovable favour when we have it and how long must we wait and attend before we get it Amicus Dei si esse voluero ecce nunc fio Let me turn to God to day and desire to be his friend it shall be done instantly and never delayed So they resolved though their courses were excentrick to the way of honour and preferment they would walk in righteousness to be called the friends of Christ and so Enoch walked with God Vera amicitia est idem velle idem nolle says the Oratour A friendship will hold fast between them that chuse the same things and refuse the same things and agree in all things So that to walk with God so far till it grow to the tide of a friendship is no more nor no less than Fiat voluntas tua The will of the Lord be done The fore-cited Clemens in his lately revived Epistle instead of saying that Enoch walked with God phraseth it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God found him to be a just man through all obedience and so translated him and the Chaldee Paraphrase He walked in the fear of the Lord turning neither to the right hand nor to the left I know the word being metaphorical may be varied and followed in many senses and all according to a godly Canou Gregory the Great deviseth this distinction of the word out of his own ingenuity Some walk from God as Apostates and Demas that turned to the world Some walk against God or set their face against him as the proud and rebellious so the stiff-necked Israelites Ye walk contrary to me Lev. xvi 21. But some on the laudable part may be said to walk before God as the Prophets so John the Baptist was a forerunner of Christ He went before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways Some walk after God as humble Penitents and those that take up their Cross and follow him Finally A religious Magistrate that is solo Deo minor whose power is from God and useth that power as he ought he walks with God and he that despiseth him despiseth the Lord. Every whit of this may be maintained with good construction but lest the phrase should be dissected too much to the loss of the sense I will rather be rude in expression than subtil to
a scandalous Minister had confiscated his own authority of reprehending that in others which he was guilty of himself and that the Doctrin and Discipline of our Church could never have been so contemptible but for their sakes who with their ill lives and manners made all the threatnings of holy Scripture which they preached and all the Censures of the Church which they passed or denounced ridiculous and insignificant yet withal his Lordship ever gave the people warning not to despise the chastening of their Mother for no man can lightly esteem the power of the Keys upon earth and yet be well prepared in heart to receive the judgment of God in the World to come For better amendment of whatsoever was amiss his Lordship would like St. Austin and other antient Bishops frequently sit Judg in his Ecclesiastical Courts and hasten the dispatch of all Affairs and especially if there were any thing that concerned his Clergie would always be present at the hearing of those Causes that neither his Clergie nor any by them might be wronged when he went not in person to the Court he gave ready access at his own House to all who came to complain even the meanest people who were grieved with long and tedious Suits and after hearing what they could say would sometimes send for the Chancellour and Proctors on both sides and what he could not redress at home he would oftentimes go to Court and end there throwing out many Causes that had been long depending for trivial matters and would not suffer any Causes to be entred for defamatory words or trifles without his own knowledg first to the end they might be composed without much vexation to the parties by this means his Lordship created to himself much trouble which he valued not for the great good he did by it and though less profit came to the Officers of the Court yet were they also contented believing God would better bless them for taking onely those Fees which so conscientious a Judge was willing to allow After Ordination he seldom dismissed any whom he ordain'd without rare counsel To remember they were Ordain'd to Cures not to Sine Cures the Cure of Souls the greatest of all others and wish them every day to think of the invaluable dignity and seriousness thereof and therefore in all their Preachings to avoid lightness Quia Nugae in ore Sacerdotum sunt blasphemiae as likewise all ridiculous gestures and loud vociferations empty affectation of words and phrases without weighty and ponderous sense and significancy accounting that elegant words without solid matter were but perfum'd Nonsense and that there was infinite difference between plainness and rudeness They had a duty to discharge both to the wise and unwise and therefore must take care that the learned Auditor might still learn somewhat and the unlearned Auditor might understand not only some but all His charge was that in every thing we should retain this great Principle to offer to God the very Best we have whosoever builds God an House let them build it better than their own the Ornaments thereof should be fairer than our own our Sermons there superiour to our ordinary discourses or labours in any other kind arising not from extemporary sawciness but our studied and best industry and therefore ever warned them as St. Paul did Timothy though he had the gift of Prophecying still to attend to reading as Preaching and remember St. Paul himself would not preach without Books and therefore caused them to be brought after him in all his Travels and sometimes preached the same thing the next Sabbath-day and therefore probably kept Notes He conceived it small commendations to any to pour out faster than they took in and that indiligent and over-frequent Preaching beyond the Preacher's parts or what the people 's needs required was no advantage to learning or piety especially in the obvious way of Preaching altogether by Doctrin Reason and Vse which of all Expositors of Scripture Musculus first took up and was one great means to lay the Pulpit open to the prophanations of the late times such Preaching being oftentimes so poor and easie that every Justice of Peace his Clerk thought he could perform as well as his Minister whereas a good Preacher had need be skill'd in the whole Encyclopedy of Arts and Sciences Logick to divide the Word aright Rhetorick to perswade School Divinity to convince Gainsayers knowledge of many Tongues to understand Originals and learned Authors and above all he would recommend St. Hierom's counsel Discamus in Terris quorum scientia nobis perseverabit in Coelis for otherwise all kind of learning in a Minister without good Example and innocency of life was but a jewel of gold in a Swine's snout This was his constant advice to his Clergie at Ordinations and Visitations which he duly held every third year Visitation of Churches he would maintain was no Filia noctis started up in a night of darkness and Popery but an Apostolical Institution and practised afterwards by all the Primitive Fathers and Bishops Herein his Lordship would oftentimes be the Preacher himself so that in his first Visitation Anno 1665. in his Progress in Shropshire and at Stafford from the last of May to the fifteenth of June he preached eight times in the compass of those few dayes at Bridgnorth Salop Elsmere Wem Whitchurch Drayton Hodnet and Stafford and confirmed above five thousand persons whom he required not to be tumultuarily presented but with the preexamination of their several Ministers and was in all places most joyfully received So that when he put on his Episcopal Robes he put not off his Ministerial Labours no man had reason to say his Majesty by making him Bishop had spoiled a good Preacher as it was said of Frier Giles that the Pope had marr'd a painful Clerk by making him a powerful Cardinal nor was he like Julius the third of whom the Historian complains that he had been formerly a diligent man but when he came to the Popedom never minded his Study or the Affairs of the Church more Our Bishop on the other side professed he found as many cares in his Bishops Rochet as he believed Antigonus did in his Royal Purple and if it were not for the glory of God and good of his Church had rather throw it away than hang it about his shoulders St. Paul very well understood his Office when he called it a good work not to be discharged without painful study often preaching daily hearing and determining Cases of Conscience judging in Causes Ecclesiastical repairing or building of Churches These and so many other things beside he found to do at home that all absence seemed tedious and intolerable to him abroad so that he never slept out of his Bishoprick in many years nor was willingly absent from his Flock but upon extraordinary occasions as in Parliament c. and then would often request my Lord Chamberlain
bought into the Colledge Library and to the Vniversity Library he bequeath'd by Will all his own Books which cost him about 1500 l. It was his judgment that a Bishop was bound by antient Canons to dispend his Episcopal Revenues in Acts of charity and therefore no year passed without some eminent actions of that kind which were never written in any Book upon Earth the more certain that they are in Heaven To the several Prisons in London he sent oftentimes good relief by a Friend whom he ever straitly charged to conceal from whence it came When the Plague was in London he collected from his poor Diocess 351 l. by November Anno 65. for the City in that woful time besides what he sent particularly and bountifully to his old Parish of Holbourn from himself And all this he did without being burthensome to his Clergy ever giving them quick dispatch when they repaired to him for Institution and gave in charge to dismiss them with very small Fees Whenever he gave any of them preferment he was as clear from Simony as from Witchcraft which he detested above all sins and ever accounted it among the fatal Prognosticks of a dying Church When Jason outbid Onias and Menelaus outbid Jason 300 Talents it is set down as a prodigious token of the destruction of Jerusalem and joyned with the fiery Horsemen that appeared in the next Chapter to the same affrighting purpose Truth is in his poor Church he had but few preferments to give otherwise he would say he would never suffer good Scholars to sit close in their Studies unpreferred while others who less deserved sharkt them away To give the best Preferments to the worst men was in his opinion to set the Goats on the right hand and the Sheep on the left which would certainly hasten the Divine Judgment which would decree righteousness I will only add further upon this Head that wherever any object commendable and deserving was represented to him there needed not much speaking his charity was Distillatio Favi like the dropping of an Honeycomb you need not press it it would drop of it self without straining But for such as were Validi mendicantes Vagabonds and sturdy Beggars who had both health and limbs and yet sought to eat their bread by the sweat of others our Bishop never would encourage them for by long acquaintance with Judges he had heard they were generally Atheists Libertines living in promiscuous lust Pilferers evil Servants to God unprofitable to the King and Common-wealth dishonorers of the Christian Name and therefore sometimes was of the mind to go from the Church to the Quarter Sessions and complain there that Gods heavy Judgments would fall upon that Kingdom where these were permitted There never was a greater Enemy to idleness than this diligent and painful Bishop who would seldom spare an afternoon but nothing could divert him from his Morning study to his last and say he was then like a French-man primo impetu acerrimus best in a Morning and that Aurora was the Mother of Hony-dews and Pearls which dropt from Scholars Pens upon their Papers and ever reckoned that he had great advantage of some great Divines Dr. Holdsworth and Jeffries his dear Friends whom for their late watchings he called Noctuae Londinenses But by a constant study he had searcht into all kinds of learning he had been a great enquirer into the knowledg of Nature and made many peculiar observations of very many Creatures especially Bees Spiders Snails and of all sorts of Husbandry and would often merrily say since Husbandry was turned over to Swains and mean persons the Earth disdain'd to give so luxuriant a Crop as when it was turned up laureato vomere triumphali aratro by a laureat Plowman and one that had triumph'd in the Capitol and that it was much easier to be great and rich than wise and learned and if it were not below his Profession he would undertake to grow rich by Hops having strange skill in the weather and in the nature of the Plant so that he had an extraordinary foresight when they were likely to take or not as Aristotle reports of Thales the wise man that one year he bought up all the Oyle before hand when he foresaw the scarcity of the next but the Bishop intended nothing but Philosophy and therein the contemplation of the Creator of all things asserting that the least creature beneath us was worthy the contemplation of our whole life and yet would not be throughly understood and that David worthily made a Choir of all Creatures to praise God from the greatest Angel in the Host of Heaven to the smallest Flake of Snow In his younger time he had been much addicted to School-learning being then much used in the Vniversity but afterwards grew weary of it and professed he found more shadows and names than solid juyce and substance in it and would much mislike their horrid and barbarous terms more proper for Incantation than Divinity and became perfectly of B. Rhenanus his mind that the Schoolmen were rather to be reckoned Philosophers than Divines but if any pleased to account them such he had much rather with St. John Chrysostom be styled a pious Divine than an invincible or irrefragable one with T. Aquinas or our own Country-man Alex. Hales For knowledg in the Tongues he would confess he could never fix uppon Arabian learning the place was siticulosa regio a dry and barren land where no water is and had been discouraged in his younger years by such as had plodded most in it and often quarrelled his great friend Salmasius for saying he accounted no man solidly learned without skill in Arabick and other Eastern Languages our Bishop declared his mind otherwise and bewailed that many good Wits of late years prosecuted the Eastern Languages so much as to neglect the Western learning and discretion too sometimes Mr. Selden and Bishop Creitton had both affirmed to him that they should often read ten Pages for one line of sense and one word of moment and did confess there was no learning like to what Scholars may find in Greek Authors as Plato Plutarch c. and himself could never discern but that many of their quotations and proofs from them were in his own words incerta inexplorata 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After all this I would detein the Reader no longer in things of less concern especially knowing it to be against his mind to permit any Picture of himself that could not represent him within as well as without approving what Plotinus said that the other was only the Image of an Image and in thirty years commonly out of fashion and then grew ridiculous and serv'd only to make people laugh yet he had one taken by stealth to which I will add only a touch or two as is usual quia me juvat ire per omnem Heroa He was of bodily stature small and slender in all parts
perfume the sweetness overcomes our sence Here 's one line for a copy and enough to be taken out at one time Vnto you is born this day c. The Text cannot be divided into equal parts for here is one word among them which not only in this place but wheresoever you find it it is like Saul higher by head and shoulders then all the rest As Painters and Guilders write the names of God in glass or upon the walls with many rays and flaming beams to beautifie it round about so the name of Saviour is the great word in my Text and all that is added beside in other circumstances is a trail of golden beams to beautifie it First then with reverend lips and circumcised ears let us begin with the joyful tidings of a Saviour 2. Here 's our participation of him in his Nature natus he is born and made like unto us 3. It is honourable to be made like us but it is beneficial to be made for us and natus vobis unto you is born a Saviour 4. Is not the use of his Birth superannuated the virtue of it long since expir'd no 't is fresh and new as a man is most active when he begins first to run hodie natus he is born this day 5. Is he not like the King in the Gospel who journeyed into a far Country extra orbem solisque vias quite out of the way in another world no the circumstance of place points his dwelling to be near in civitate David he is born in the City of David 6. Perhaps to make him man is to quite unmake him shall we find him able to subdue our enemies and save us since he hath taken upon him the condition of humane fragility yes the last words speak his excellency and power for he is Christus Dominus such a Saviour as is Christ the Lord for unto you is born this day in the City of David c. The beginning of our days work is from that word which magnifies him that is the word of God above all things for he is a Saviour Time was when the children of Israel had rather Moses should speak unto them than God Speak thou with us and we will hear but let not God speak with us lest we dye Exod. xx 19. Now let Israel say let not Moses speak with us nor the Law for then we shall surely die Above all tongues let the Angel speak with us that proclaims a Saviour and we shall surely live If all comfort in the world were forgotten nothing but darkness and weeping and captivity over all the earth yet here 's a word which is enough to turn all that sorrow into gladness yea to turn Hell it self into Heaven This day is born unto you a Saviour it comprehends all other names of Grace and blessing as Manna is said to have all kind of sapors in it to please the taste When you have call'd him the glass in which we see all truth the fountain in which we taste all sweetness the ark in which all precious things are laid up the pearl which is worth all other riches the flower of Jesse which hath the savour of life unto life the bread that satisfieth all hunger the medicine that healeth all sickness the light that dispelleth all darkness when you have run over all these and as many more glorious titles as you can lay on this one word is above them and you may pick them all out of these syllables a Saviour which is Christ the Lord. Abraham could endure to live in a strange Land nay he could endure to want his only Son Isaac if God pleas'd Elias could want his bodily sustenance for forty days John Baptist could want the comfort of all society in the Wilderness Peter could leave all he had and want his substance Paul could live in bonds and want his liberty Paphnutius could want his eyes yea the Martyrs for Christs sake could want their lives but they could not be without the redemption of their soul they could not want a Saviour The Prophet Isaiah hath foretold that the heaven and earth should joyn their strength together to make a Saviour Isa xlv 8. Drop down the heavens from above and let the earth open and let them bring forth salvation that 's the effect and the 15. verse speaks of the person O God of Israel the Saviour The heavens must drop down from above and the earth must open and concur beneath the whole universe must be put together the Divine Nature and the Humane tantae molis erat to make a Saviour To confuse the Jews with this place I have read of a learned Scribe of theirs one Rabbi Accados who wrote thus before the coming of Christ that the Messias should come into the world to save men and the Gentiles should call him Jesus or the Saviour of the world Indeed the Gentiles did not only do so after our Saviours ascension into Heaven being taught unto it by the Apostolical preaching but in the time of Idolatry which is very strange Tully says in the 4. Oration against Verres that he saw an Image at Syracuse in Sicily with this Inscription upon it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Saviour and he admires at the strong significancy of the word Hoc quantum est magnum est ut latine exprimi uno verbo non possit to give salvation or to be a Saviour is such an appellative that all the Latine tongue was not furnished with a word to set it forth But what if their language could have fit it that 's nothing unless the soul do unite it to it self and write it upon the tables of the heart But that the name may not be an empty sound to us as it was to them consider these three things 1. With what honour it was impos'd 2. What excellency it includes 3. What reverence it deserves For the first of these an honour in the imposition of a name will ever stick by the person and the origen hereof came from the chiefest that is above all Phil. ii 9. Wherefore God hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name It was ever of old in the right of the Father to give a name unto his child Zachary when he could not speak call'd for writing tables to appoint the name of John the Baptist therefore Christ having no Father on earth his Father gave him a name from Heaven His Father gave it but he did commit it to the trust of an Angel to bring it for the Angel was the first that ever mention'd it to Joseph the husband of Mary in a dream Thou shalt call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins Matth. i. 21. God gave it the Angel brought it and men did assign it the eighth day when he was circumcised his name was called Jesus which was so named of the Angel before he was conceived in the Womb. Hereupon Bernard casts in
special priviledge not by common publication that which was a secret among some few is now vulgar to all God hath disclosed his hidden treasures to us as unto friends He was their Lord so he is ours but he is also our Father They were his servants and so are we but the interest we have in Christ that hath taken our nature upon him hath made us more than servants and exalted us to be his friends Hitherto I have held your attentions to the Supplicant now the Petition of his soul comes in order that he may depart The Servant had a burden that opprest him a frail and a corruptible body and he desires the Lord to ease him of it and to take it from him For so St. Ambrose and the Syrian Paraphrast read the word optatively Dimitte O take me away from hence and let me depart And they that say it is dimittis for dimittes the Present Tense for the Future bring it up to the same sense Lord thou wilt now let thy servant depart so Origen and St. Cyprian read it for the Hebrews use to make their Petitions in the future time as thou shalt hear my prayer in an acceptable time which is a fit form of words to ask in faith and not to waver as St. James says but the word here is Metaphorical in the original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as you would say in the native term Lord now lettest thou thy servant be unloosed as horses are taken from the Plough and set up to rest when they have drawn till Evening and are weary or to signifie says St. Ambrose that necessity compelled him to stay here Ideo dimitti poscit quasi à vinculis quibusdam ad libertatem festinaret therefore he desires to be let loose as if he had been enthraled like some Captive and now would shake off his bonds and attain his liberty This earth is not our Country therefore though we have an inbred desire to have the union of the body and soul maintained yet our willingness inclines to be uncloathed of the body rather than not go from hence when we are full of days Quis peregre constitutus non prepararet in patriam regredi says St. Cyprian that man were unnatural that affected to be a stranger and had rather travel always than settle himself at home in peace revolve in your memory the words of just men in holy Scripture and you shall find that this is common to them all to mourn and sigh because their pilgrimage was prolonged Wo is me that I am constrained to live with Mesech says David Who shall deliver me from the body of this death Says St. Paul It is enough Lord take away my life I am not better than my Fathers says Elias While the body was a Palace the soul was content to stay in it now it is become a filthy prison no wonder if it desires to be gone Let not Simeons Nunc dimittis nor this Doctrine be mistaken every mans willingness to leave this world and to die is not commended from hence but when it is joyned with patience and good internal motives especially when we find an aptness and good preparation in our selves that when we go from hence we shall be joyned to the Lord. There is no worse sign in some that God is departed from them than when they are sullen and froward with their life and care not which way they break violently out of the world so they may depart Seneca could say Mori velle non tantum fortis patiens set etiam fastidiosus potest that is not only stout men are resolved to die and such as are fortified against fear but the discontented that cannot bear his cross had rather lose himself than his peevishness good and bad upon several reasons are contented both to die and to live Sunt homines qui cum patientiâ moriuntur sunt autem quidam perfecti qui cum patientiâ vivunt says St. Austin There are some holy men that exercise their patience to be content to die there are some perfect men that exercise their patience to be content to live therefore the motives that induced Simeon to this must be sifted to make him an inoffensive nay a profitable example Salmeron the Jesuit follows a most capricious invention that this reverend Sire importuned God to put a period to his days as soon as Christ was born that he might be the first Nuncio to the Fathers that were in limbo and certifie them that the Messias was come into the world who would exalt them from that lowly condition in which they were held and conduct their souls into the Kingdom of heaven This is so extravagant that I give it you to note the man and the far-fetcht way of their expositions The true reason is that this cygnea cantio this farewel Song of his hath taught us that there is no terror in going to the Grave no sting in death since God appeared before us and became man to deliver our souls from the nethermost hell and to make our bodies like to his own most glorious body They that know not what their condition may be in the next world must needs think of death with an heavie heart and sigh and wring their hands when they feel it approaching He that could see Christ no otherwise than through the dark mists of the Law did count it somewhat an irksom thing to go out of the land of the living it was a good King of Judah that chattered like a Swallow when Isaiah told him he should live no longer But it is incredible to humane reason how it encourageth a faithful man to meet his death with chearfulness because though not in our own bodies yet in the Apostles and others we have seen we have heard and our hands have handled the word of life and that we know there is plentious redemption for us in Christ our Saviour Simeon knew the instant of his dissolution was at hand and yet he sang away the remainder of his life with joy as who should say Egredere ô anima fly away my soul fly away like a dove and take thy rest for now I see that the promises of grace and mercy are true here is Christ thy Saviour in thy hands thine eyes do see thine arms do support thy Salvation though thou departest thou shalt not go from him for he is man on earth to comfort thee and God in heaven to glorifie thee This is it which did animate Simeon to say Lord let me depart and therefore as the Patriarches in the time of the Law desired length of days upon earth that they might live to see the Messias so let us desire a joyful departure to be with him for evermore I proceed the time which he sets for the accomplishment of his Petition is presently or at that instant Now Lord now let c. Nunc ante hâc non item As who should say if I had been summoned to leave
all the chief Prophesies about Christ came unto the Israelites when they were most out of heart and needed comfort Jacob's Balaam's Isaiah's Daniel's Haggai's either they were in Egypt or among fiery Serpents in the Wilderness or in Babylon or in some woful plight when Christ was promised but that was a suddain way to stop the course of all sorrow I cannot stand upon it for I must now declare the second reason why Jesus is said to be born in the days of Herod the King to refer the hearers to Jacobs Prophesie that if Herod reign then the Messias must come The tenour of Jacob's Prophesie bears that sense as the most learned Christians say it is extant Gen. xlix 10. The Scepter doth not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come The learned in the Hebrew tongue say that Shebeth is a Tribe as well as a Scepter and the sense may be the Tribe of Judah shall continue distinct until Christs coming whereas the other ten Tribes were scatter'd and confus'd by captivity But the most learned do assent what we translate a Scepter very well imports Princedom The Septuagint hath it A Prince shall not depart from Judah nay the Scripture gives light to that sense in other places Judah is my law-giver Psal lx 9. And again 1 Chron. v. 2. Judah prevailed above his brethren and of him came the chief rulers The Chaldee Paraphrase doth notably make good the words for the Christian cause He that hath dominion shall not be taken away from Judah nor a Scribe from his childrens children until the Christ come whose the Kingdom is and him shall the people obey The Jerusalem targum as I find it quoted by faithful Authors hath as famous a gloss as that Kings shall not cease from the house of Judah nor Doctors that teach the Law until the time that the King Christ do come whose the Kingdom is and all the Kingdoms of the earth shall be subject unto him the best judgments no way prejudicated did ever so interpret it Therefore Herod having wrung the Scepter from Judah this was the time for the Saviour of the world to come Two things are cast cross in the way to elude the Prophesie which doubts I must clear up for the honour of this day First that neither our Saviour or his Evangelists did ever make use of that saying of Jacob in the New Testament to prove that the day of the Lord was come why no more doth any Apostolical Writer in the New Testament apply that act of Abraham's to our Saviours Passion when he took his only Son Isaac to offer him up for a whole burnt-offering Yet the Church reads that Chapter for the first Lesson on Good Friday and did ever so conceive it and that for good reason for Isaac was a Type of Christ In Isaac shall thy seed be blessed But another scruple is more cumbersom to be removed It may seem that the Scepter was departed from Judah even from those days that Zedekiah was carried away into captivity from Zerobabel or a little after to Herod many hundred years some of the stock of Levi had the superiority therefore Shiloh did not come when the government was taken from Judah and then the Prophesie will not serve our turn to apply the Nativity of Christ to the days of Herod upon necessary connexion For answer there are many ways to the Wood as we say proverbially yet but one fair satisfaction that I can meet withal which consists of two heads First that the Scepter which Jacob foretold should not depart till Shiloh came belonged to the whole Nation of the Jews Secondly that appropriatively and principally it belong'd to the Tribe of Judah and upon these two hangs the truth of the Prophesie You know that which agrees with the event and success of a thing is the best interpretation of a Prophesie and upon the event it is manifest the Jews had a Governour of their own lineage from Moses until this Herod whose Father was an Edomite and his Mother an Ishmaelite That short interruption of 70 years in the Babylonish captivity is not considerable in so many hundred years but the Government at sundry ages sometimes fell to the lot of one Tribe sometimes to another From Moses to David the Judges were sometimes Ephramites sometimes Danites of Zabulon of Judah of other stocks promiscuously From David to Zedekiah 470 years the lineage of David had the preheminence from the return of the captivity to this Herod the Hasamonei or Levites sate at the stern but still he was an Israelite born and not a stranger till God appeared in the flesh All that time before it was Regnum Judaicum a Judaical Kingdom though not in the power of a man of Judah Saint Austin saw this was the safest construction Non defuit Judeorum Princeps ex ipsis Judeis usque ad Herodem alienigenam Jâ—dea did not want a Prince that was a a Jew until Herod the Foreigner usurpt upon them and before him in Eusebius days the current went that way says he The prediction of Jacob was not fulfilled while Princes lasted of the Jewish Progeny but from that time that Christ was born there were no Princes Ex Juda aut ex Judaeorum familia either of Judah or of the Jewish blood But because Jacob vented this Prophesie in the benediction of his Son Judah I will add briefly that the glory which was common to all the Jews did fall and rest principally upon the tribe of Judah To make this even you must put many considerations together their name and Nation did flourish most from that time that David a man of Judah was chosen King by God and anointed by Samuel all the Kings from him to Zedekiah for 470 years were of the same family So Judah had the most honourable time of government After they came home out of captivity 't is true that in a little while certain Levites had the principality yet still the glory was Judah's For Jacob foresaw that the whole band of Israelites that come from Babylon should be called Jews from Judah and after for ever Almost the whole Country they liv'd in was only Judah's lot and inheritance The chief Metropolis Jerusalem where the Prince resided was at first indeed in the lot of Benjamin but ever since David's conquest it fell to Judah Except the person of the Ruler all was Judah's the Scepter therefore did not depart from Judah though the person did And those Levites that commanded all were called not the Princes of Levi but of Judah therefore Judah did not lose his glory quite until Herod thrust him from it So that now the great work of the Lord was to come to pass that the Scripture might be fulfilled and Jesus was born in the days of Herod the King My Author whom I follow gives a good instance to illustrate it that the Crown of Spain is devolved by the Marriage of a female
of his faith and they are spiritual qualities wonted to go hand in hand Take the Centurion for an example who protested against our Saviours coming under the roof of such an abject sinner and incontinently Christ gave him this Encomium I have not found so great faith no not in Israel Attend to this comparison What means our Saviour That this Centurion was the most faithful of all believers Cajetan I think puts home to the true sense of the words 1. Non dicit non inveniam sed adhuc non inveni He doth not say I shall not find so great faith when after my Ascension the whole mysteries of salvation shall be revealed but as yet in the beginning of my manifestation I have not found so great faith 2. Christ did seek for increase of faith among the Jews by Preaching by Signs and Miracles and he found more in this Centurion than in any other since the time of his Preaching whereof the second year did run on but those words are no denial that there was not greater faith in the blessed Virgin his Mother and in John the Baptist for they believed before he began to Preach and before he began to do Signs and Wonders in Israel Therefore the Centurions faith was greater than any that were drawn to believe by Doctrine and the power of Miracles in which respect John the Baptist transcends the Centurion for he had not heard a word fall from our Saviour's mouth he had neither seen nor heard of any mighty work wrought by his hand nay he did not so much as know his face till even now that he came to Jordan and yet he knows and confesseth that he was the Lamb without spot and wondred that he should come to be wash'd in the Baptism of Repentance Bernard speaks to these words upon it Valde humiliaris Domine Lord thou wert marvellously humbled almost so far that thou couldst not be discerned only John perceived thee who thou wert Qui per utriusque mater ni uteri parietes te cognovit Yet he knew thee through the womb of his own mother Elizabeth through the womb of thy blessed Mother Mary thou couldst not be unknown to him through those double walls but he leapt for joy Here Expositors have made some work for our resolution upon a double doubt I have told you that our Prophet gave Christ a welcom into the world by springing in his mothers womb Yet he professeth that when he came to Jordan he knew him not but he that sent him to baptize told him it was he upon whom the Spirit should descend from heaven like a dove Joh. i. 33. Yet we see in this Text he knew him and forbad him to be baptized before the Spirit descended upon him in any bodily shape St. Hierom hath not waded to the depth of the answer for here he sticks that John at the first view perceived he was the Son of God yet knew not till he saw the visible sign of the Holy Ghost upon him that he should save the world through the cleansing of water This cannot hold for before John had seen him this was part of his Doctrine He that commeth after me shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost S. Austin was troubled with an error of the Donatists that the Baptism of an Heretick or wicked person had no efficacy to cleanse the party baptized This pestilent opinion was fresh in his days to be refuted and very strongly he proves this conclusion That Baptism is of soveraign vertue by the power of him into whose name we are baptized neither is it corrupted through his fault by whom it is administred Therefore as most men use to do he draws this Text to his purpose Innotuit per columbam Dominus non â—â— qui se non norât sed qui in â—o aliquid non noverat John knew the Messias by the token of the Dove not simply for he knew somewhat before but respectively through that sign He learnt somewhat which he knew not before namely that the vertue of Baptism was not imputed to the Servant but to the Son of God by whom we receive the Holy Ghost This exposition supposeth what we must not grant that so great a Prophet as John was not ignorant how the gift of God which sanctifieth the heart cometh only from the Lord of light St. Chrysostoms answer me seems is best both for soundness and perspicuity When Jesus came to John John did apprehend him by a double knowledge both by a sudden inspiration and afterward by the sluttering of the bird upon his head The infinite wisdom of the Father had so disposed that Christ after his coming out of Egypt lived at Nazareth till about thirty years of age All this while John lived in the Wilderness of Judea had contracted no familiar acquaintance with our Saviour nay had never seen his face till they meet at Jordan left the Pharisees should say when John bare testimony of him all was devised between them as plots use to be laid by them who are of intimate familiarity But as soon as ever the Eternal Son of God shewed his head at the brink of waters the Spirit suggested unto John This is he whose way thou art sent to prepare as when David came out of the field and was brought before Samuel the Lord said in secret to Samuel Arise anoint him this is he And for his further confirmation the Promise was kept which was made unto him about the descending of the Dove whereby he had an experimental object to strengthen his faith and a warrant from that illustrious miracle to preach him to the Jews with greater confidence and authority Therefore he knew him not till even hard before the Dove came down and was completely confirmed when the Dove fate upon him O great faith which embraced the Lamb of God and fell down at his feet in all humility as soon as one spark of illumination was kindled in his spirit before a visible sign appeared and to shew that here after faith shall be rewarded with the vision of God it was given to him to see the Spirit in the form of a Dove Let this be the end of the first general part of the Text. In the next part this holy Saint makes profession of his own vileness and infirmity I have need to be baptized of thee From which words I will speak to these three particulars 1. How far forth it is to be understood that there is a need to be baptized 2. That John was not clean from sin for he makes his moan that he had need to be baptized 3. He looks for that Baptism from none but Christ a testimony of the next Theological vertue As if he had said And now Lord what is my hope Truly my hope is even in thee I have need to be baptized of thee and comest thou to me For the first of these we have need of that which God hath set down by his own
be yet it is a sweet consolation that we have a general taste of Gods Mercies and gracious Promises towards them but no good Christian can choose but think so divinely of the Sacraments that our comfort is more perfect and better satisfied when they had the special seal of grace before they departed And if any mans fancy lead him to hold that both shall be glorified yet where the honour of the Sacrament lights the greater glory shall follow I had rather assent to this opinion than gainsay it though I know not how to prove it And let me end this Point as he begins his Poem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Water is the best Element in the world The Air for natural life the Water for spiritual And my exhortation is that you endeavour to see the Sacrament conferred upon all Infants as far as it is possible because John says I have need to be baptized I must now proceed to shew that John found imperfection in his own heart and therefore thus bemoans himself I have need to be baptized Two Expositions I suppose are natural to this Point 1. I have need to be baptized with thy Spirit and to receive thy grace 2. I desire that the infinite merit of thy bloud-shedding may be applied to me for the washing away of my sins The Baptism of the Spirit is the infusion of heavenly grace into the soul and John confesseth he had need of it Need I mean of the increase thereof although he had it in great abundance as soon as he was sent to prepare the way of the Lord. Abraham was circumcised in his old age and yet was justified before he received Circumcision Rom iv Cornelius was baptized having received comfort before from the Angel that his Prayers and Alms were pleasing to God When great multitudes of the Gentiles had their hearts touch'd from heaven says Peter Can any forbid water that these should not be baptized which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we Acts x. 47. In these instances it is seen that some grace did prevent the Sacrament and yet the parties who had received the Holy Ghost came willingly to be baptized For God doth not give all his grace at once or twice but more and more is added and supplied to the former Dose and though the outward man perish yet the inward man is renewed day by day therefore the holiest Prophet alive while he carries flesh upon his loyns may say and ought to say I have need to be baptized of the Spirit This interpretation is accepted of all sides and what rubs can the other find that John did implore the mercies of Christ for the washing away of his sins Though he in a mortifying phrase and most contrite humility may seem to put himself in the number of sinners and so I have cited St. Ambrose making that sense of his words Tu venis ad me peccatorem Dost thou come to me a sinner Yet there are some that say unto him as Peter did to our Saviour Master spare thy self So they to another purpose spare thy self do not condemn thine own innocency thou art not polluted neither hadst thou any corruption in thee which could extend unto a mortal sin for it is written Luke i. 15. He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mothers womb That John was sanctified before he was born is it which hath made the scruple This is the doubt then which I am to clear that a man sanctified from his nativity I before his nativity may be a sinner whose iniquities have need to be washt away in the bloud of Christ To be sanctified from the womb it is a word of divers constructions and when I have named them all choose ye which you will and my conclusion will be inviolable First It hath been usual to say such Infants were sanctified from the beginning of their life to whom God hath very soon demonstrated some extraordinary favour So St. Ambrose says of Jacob the Patriarch that it was a sign of grace in him before he was born that he wrestled with Esau in the womb of Rebecca Ephraim the Syrian says as much of Moses that a divine blessing was upon him as soon as he was exposed in the Ark of Bulrushes because Pharaohs Daughter when she lookt upon him could not choose but pitty him Yet neither of these were so undefiled in their way but that they had need of remission of sins Secondly St. Austin hath this interpretation that to sanctifie him from the womb is not to pour extraordinary grace into the Infant at that rawness of age but to ordain him in due time unto Sanctification Sanctificavi i. e. destinavi sanctificare it is spoken of as a thing done in the present because Gods Predestination is sure from the first conception As the Gentiles are called the children of God before the Doctrine of faith was preach'd among them because they should be made the children of God as it is written Joh. xi 52. that Christ died not only for that Nation of the Jews but for the children of God that were scattered abroad the instance is in Jer. i. 5. I knew thee before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified and ordained thee a Prophet unto the Nations Even Maldonat confesseth out of these words he was sanctified because from the first minute of life he was ordained to be sanctified Non per inspirationem Prophetiae sed per destinationem not as if he were inspired so young but so young in the eternal Council he was appointed to be inspired It is in effect as St. Paul offers himself to us in the like phrase Gal. i. 15. It pleased God who separated me from my mothers womb and called me by his grace To separate from the womb is the same as to sanctifie from the womb Separare est à patre matre rebusque terrenis rem segregare Deo consecrare It is to draw a thing from Father Mother and all earthly relations and to appropriate it to God And yet this Apostle sighs it forth that he is the greatest of sinners and yet separated or sanctified from the womb And surely it is a Text of validity to prove that Jeremy was not cleansed from the foulness of Original sin for he reviles the day of his birth because it brought forth nothing but a miserable sinner Cursed be the day wherein I was born let not the day wherein my Mother bare me be blessed Jer. xx 14. I am very loth to lay any faults to the Saints of God yet after all answers and shifts I cannot see but that Jeremy in those words is guilty of great impatiency Thirdly To be sanctified not only from the womb but even from the earliest minute of life in the conception is to be endowed with eminent motions of grace not usual to other Infants and so it was in John the Baptist in whom two things of Gods especial
volume of thy book it is written of me that I should fulfill thy Law then said I loe I come 2. He fulfilled the Moral Law not only by giving it the right interpretation but by exact obedience whereupon he said Which of you can accuse me of sin 3. He gave life to the Ceremonies pointing to their true meaning as instead of the Circumcision of the flesh exhorting to the Circumcision of the heart 4. Whereas the judicial Law of the Jews did mention temporary and corporeal rewards and punishments Christ changed that stile of speech into spiritual and eternal No doubt but Christ did fulfil all righteousness for he came not to do his own will but the will of his Father his justice was multiformous in all the actions of his life from his Cratch to his Cross yet my Text says that he did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thus by receiving Baptism by that one act fulfil all righteousness I know not one bad interpretation upon that Point which is rare among Expositors to be so divers in their judgments and yet all allowable One says it is meant quoad inchoationem justitiae that so it behoved him to begin the course of righteousness That was but one act of his humility but the first wherein he did manifest obedience So Baptism is the first step that we make into the Church of Christ therefore because light was the first thing that God made among his visible Creatures and Baptism is the first of his spiritual graces it hath ever been called in the Greek Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the illumination of a Christian it is the day of inauguration when we first claim right unto our title of the Kingdom because we are adopted the Sons of God Surely the ordinary gloss conceits the words otherwise but very profitably Righteousness is either Legal which consists in an exact obedience to all the Commandments of God Or else Evangelical which knows Salvation is not attained unto by the works of the Law but thus Repent and believe and thou shalt obtain remission of sins therefore Christ speaking in the person of us who are his members says to John 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thus must we fulfil all righteousness by calling upon men to repent and be baptized in the true faith and their sins shall be covered and blessed is that man or righteous is that man to whom the Lord imputeth no sin This was the Doctrine taught in the Church every where three hundred years past and more Omnis justitia impletur ex gratiâ All our righteousness is fulfilled through grace and not through works Ut nullus ex operibus neque ex arbitrio glorietur they are the words of the gloss to the end that none may boast of works or in the power of his own free will but acknowledge himself guilty of damnation and obnoxious to the dreadful justice of God let us fly to that grace which freely washeth away our sins Thus it behoveth us to fulfil all righteousness Chemnitius makes this apprehension of the Text. Christ did omit no means to reconcile us to his Father that we might be justified before him and this he brought to pass two principal ways 1. When he gave himself an Oblation upon the Cross to take away our sins 2. When he did institute the means and instruments to apply that meritorious satisfaction unto us on this wise therefore he did fulfil righteousness by sanctifying the Sacrament unto us which is the especial medium to apply the righteousness of faith to every one that shall be saved Another and the last sense of this word that likes me also consists in these terms By receiving this Sacrament of Baptism we are tied as far as we are able to fulfil all righteousness It behoveth them that profess the true Faith to keep themselves undefiled from the world and to be holy unto the Lord. As Rachel cried out to Jacob Give me children or else I die so a sincere faith cries out unto the conscience Let me bring forth good works or else I shall be a dying faith and altogether unprofitable Do we make void the Law through faith Says St. Paul God forbid yea we establish the Law Rom. iii. 31. So it appears how righteousness buds forth from Baptism our conscience being watred with the heavenly dew of that Sacrament it makes us fruitful with good works Sed in istôc nequaquam sunt omnia will some man say Will that serve instead of all righteousness For our Saviour saith Thus it behoveth us to fulfil all righteousness God gave the word great was the company of Interpreters and his Spirit is in them all You shall hear the several consolations which they pick out from hence 1. To be a perfect teacher and a perfect doer of Gods will these are Tabor and Hermon the two fruitful hills upon which the blessing of the Lord descends To be a Teacher and not to do well is very bad like Hophni and Phinehas those dissolute Priests who polluted the holy Sacrifice To do well and not to teach is laudable and good but it is not excellent for to be an instructer and a doer is a degree of perfection beyond it Omne tulit punctum it is more blessed to give instruction than to receive therefore our Saviour was abundant in both Praeivit in exemplo quod verbo docuit He did lead the way of obedience by example and afterward did preach it to the people Blessed is he therefore that is not only a teacher but a doer of the word this is to fulfil all righteousness 2. Suum cuique there are but three heads from whence all justice is distributed and they may be drawn out of this Baptism for by receiving Baptism we are obedient to the institution of God we provide a salutiferous medicine for our own soul and by letting our light shine before men we do edifie our brother But to render that which is due to God to our own soul to our brother is to be perfect in every line of justice therefore in the universality Christ might say thus he did fulfil all righteousness 3. Says St. Austin Quid est impleatur omnis justitia Impleatur omnis humilitas The Son of God had this meaning how he fulfilled all righteousness because he condescended to the lowest step of humility for there are these three fallings as I may say one lower than another To be subject to a Superiour and not to prefer himself before an equal is justitia sufficiens sufficient humility and no want To be subject to an equal and not to prefer himself before an inferiour is justitia abundans that is not only justice enough but large and abundant humility but to be subject to an inferiour yea the most mighty God to be subject in Baptism to his Creature this is justitia perfectissima most perfect lowliness none can submit it self more and thus indeed to make the pride of base man to blush who
own sake and not for Gods sake he hates him Honours and affluency of all store are not contrary to Christianity nay many times God gives the one with the other and they agree together well enough But if not there is the trial whether we will be mercenary or no. What said the three generous Captives to Nebuchadonosor Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us out of thine hand and will deliver us but if not be it known unto thee we will not serve thy Gods that is no worship will we afford save to the Lord of Heaven though it cost us our life These were right that look'd to save nothing by their Religion but their soul Godliness is great gain says the Apostle for it gains a man in this life joy and tranquility of Spirit that he hath done that duty which belongs to his soul It is the punishment of sin for a man to know he hath sinned and to remember it to his torment so a good deed is rewarded that you can say you did it Sanctitas praemium est sancè operantis therefore follow not the Lord for the prey you look for for bread as Satan would have you the Kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink therefore where there is scarcity of all things let there be plenty of righteousness Before I come off from this Point let not one word which Jacob did speak stumble you Gen. xxviii 20. Jacob vowed a vow if God will be with me and keep me in my way and will give me bread to eat and rayment to put on then shall the Lord be my God Beloved it were a gross error to take Jacobs words absolutely as if he would have the Lord keep Covenant to give him bread and rayment or else he would not serve him What more sordid than those words in this sense Or more unworthy of Jacob But the words have respect to a Vow and to a particular worship of God as it is verse xxii First He would set up that stone for a Pillar that it might be as a Temple where the Lord should be worshipped And secondly He would give the tenth unto God of all he had He doth only covenant to sanctifie these particularities of Divine Worship to Jehovah if he found prosperity and relief in that dangerous journey Therefore I conclude this Point in defiance of Satan we must be the obedient children of God though we want bread and the most righteous are in scarcity sometimes that they may not seem to serve for an earthly reward Secondly God doth not suppeditate bread always to him that is his Son that he may loath this World and look for a recompence for all this misery not among these hard-hearted generations of men but among the habitations of the blessed Say to the righteous it shall be well with him for they shall eat the fruit of their doings Isa iii. 10. As Philostratus tells of one that desired his Son might not be Musical and therefore sent him to learn of the worst Musicians in the City that their scraping and jarring might make him not care to learn it So God provides for many whom he loves nothing but the harshness and worst entertainment of this world that they may learn to loath it Cujus bonitas non specie praesentium sed futurorum utilitate pensanda est says St. Ambrose Estimate the fatherly goodness of the Almighty not by the austere education wherewith he holds us under in this life but by the amplitude of our Patrimony in his Kingdom hereafter The beggary of vertue is grown a Proverb the Martyrology of the Saints is grown a Volume the felicity of their enemies is grown a wonder Mirabor hoc si sic abiret It is impossible but there must be another reckoning for these things the patient abiding of the meek shall not always be forgotten But as Christ said to his Disciples so may these to their enemies that have trod them under We have meat to eat that you wot not of And as Elisha said to one of the braveries of Samaria that God would fill the City with great plenty but he should be never the better Videbis sed non gustabis So may Lazarus say to the remorseless Glutton Thou shalt see the banquet which is set before me but thou shalt never taste of it The voluptuous had so much set upon their Table in the first course now that they shall never have a second Nemo transit à deliciis ad delicias rarò quisquam in hôc seculo primus est in secundo There were no alteration in the condition of naughty men if they could pass out of this life from pleasure to pleasure but many times he that is the Favourite of Fortune here shall be the least in the Kingdom of heaven that is shall be quite excluded from thence hereafter The Heathen in their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 did never deifie a poor man indeed they would allow it to some of their Kings and Princes that they became Stars in the Firmament and would call the Constellations after their names but they could not see whither the poor harmless man goes to a place above the Stars and where they shall shine above the Stars in glory Take courage therefore to say It is my turn to want for a while I shall be replenished hereafter he filleth the hungry with good things and the rich shall be sent empty away Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things when thy youth is renewed like the Eagles Psal ciii 5. There is a Mystery says St. Austin in joyning them two together for there is no satisfaction of good things for the righteous man untill his youth be renewed like the Eagles meaning the last Resurrection when God shall be all in all The upshot is that the Sons of God may be dear unto their Father and yet want bread for though our wages be small upon earth yet great is our reward in heaven Thirdly Though this Son of God to whom the Devil spake our blessed Saviour were innocent and yet suffered so many sorrows that hunger was the least not for any evil in himself but for our iniquities yet the best in the world beside are rebellious children and sometimes God breaks the staff of bread for their sins and whips them with the mild chastising of want and scarcity as he did the Prodigal Son to bring them home again Praestat sentire lenitatem patris quà m severitatem judicis Is it not better to feel the scourge of a Father to amend us than the Axe of a Judge to cut us off Is it not better with Lazarus to want the crums of the rich mans Table here than with the rich man to want a drop of water hereafter to cool his Tongue in hell fire If thou do evil says God to Cain sin lies at the door From whence some do truly meditate so long as an impenitent man continues in this world he
up an whole loaf every day when Anthony the Eremite came to keep him company If this were alledged as some stick not to do it to illustrate the Verse which Christ quoated I think Satan would rejoyn Where had you this tale This is a Legend of mine own fiction There are other examples which I rank'd in order before like a file of Souldiers to conquer the Devil and the richest and newest which was at our Saviours hand was that of John the Baptist who found a good diet in the Wilderness to make him temperate and serve God out of Locusts and wild honey The motion which the Tempter made being thus examined in the true Explication of Christs answer proves to be as unreasonably sensual as Esaus urging for Jacobs Pottage he would seek no further for any meat that he must have though it cost him dear like Philoxenus in Aelian that could not pass by the steam of a Cooks shop but he must take a bait where his sent did lead him So Satan to our Lord go not into the Towns or Villages near at hand satiate your appetite just at this present and without delay even where you stand Command that these stones be made bread And should not man wait Gods leisure and time when he wants bread since the beasts of the Forrest when hunger rouzeth them out of their Dens know not readily where to get their meat and yet are content to seek it of God the Fowls of the air have no barns to lay up store not a grain of Corn before hand yet they flutter out and pick up and down and at last return home contented Not unusefully therefore doth one change the words of this first Proposition into this Paraphrase Man lives not by bread alone Non cibo parato vivit homo sed qui sponte se offert Man shall not live alone by that which is artificially cook'd and provided but even by that which nature suppeditates as John Baptist lived by Locusts and wild honey and so the Patriarchs before the floud lived altogether upon fruits and herbage and upon the voluntary offrings of the Springs and Mountains Si ad naturam vivitur tam superfluus est coquus quà m miles says Seneca If Nation would not rise up against Nation what use were there of Souldiers and if men would give their body but just as much as would content nature there were no use of Cookery Yet God doth suffer our nature to exceed in the use of his blessings that we may abound with thankfulness but if the Patriarchs did praise and bless Gods name more for a few Sallets than we do for all the luxuriant store that the Fields and the Sea afford then their Temperance should judge our Gluttony and their Thanksgiving shall condemn our Unthankfulness But so far of the first Proposition Man shall not live by bread alone that is man is not necessarily bound to ordinary sustenance The second follows in this sense and interpretation God can nourish man by every word that proceedeth out of his mouth every way that it liketh and pleaseth him Whatsoever the Constitution and Decree of the Lord is that is called his Word Verbum appellat quia verbo omnia creavit dixit facta sunt He that spake the word and all things were made a word and a deed to him is all one And therefore the Shepherds in the Eclogue which they had together about going to Bethlem to find Christ use this speech Let us go see 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This thing which is come to pass is very right sense but in the Greek it is this word which is come to pass Gods words are not faithless nor full of vain ostentation as mens are his words were as those were which Daniel says were written with a hand upon the wall for his hand doth hold his word to execute and bring it to pass To make you a little further acquainted with the Phrase of Scripture Egressus est sermo ex ore is an Hebraism to signifie the resolute pleasure both of God and man The thing proceedeth from the Lord says Laban We cannot speak unto thee bad or good Gen. xxiv 50. A Domino egressus est sermo the word proceedeth from the Lord that is he hath decreed it and we cannot withstand it In like manner the Idolaters contest with Jeremy Chap. xliv 17. We will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth to burn Incense to the Queen of heaven that is after the swing of desperate sinners they would do what they list The insisting upon this Phrase is not in vain but the very key to open the plain effect of Christs answer which very profitably leaves us to make use of it in a double construction First says Tolet Verbum quod procedit ex ore Dei est res quam Deus in victum hominis destinavit Man shall live by every word that goes out of the mouth of the Lord that is by every thing that he will bless and appoint for the use of sustenance unto him And so Abulensis doth instance and exaggerate it the Lord is not that Father who if his Child should ask him bread would give him a stone but if he would infuse the vertue of nourishment into boards into stones yea into the flesh of Serpents we should prosper with them better than with all the Cullesses and Electuaries in the world How unsearchable are the ways of the Almighty how the Infant from the first conception is nourisht in the Mothers Womb When Philosophy hath spoken what it can the chief part must be left to Divinity to say it is fed by the word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God such things as would poyson one Creature are delicate dainties to fatten another It is as God hath allowed every thing for man and beast in their own kind that we might allow him his glory Secondly Man shall live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord that is by all his Promises and by every Vocation which he hath sanctified to relieve us And this agrees most aptly with Christ himself in the dispensation of his Mediatorship and with the instance of the Children of Israel who were fed with Manna in the Wilderness This is the prime rule which leads every man into some hope of prosperity that manageth an honest Calling That every one shall live and thrive who holds him to that way which God hath appointed him The Israelites journeyed from Egypt into the Wilderness not of their own head and will but by Gods Ordinance why it was impossible they should famish doing as he commanded them So Christ went not rashly into the Desart but he was led by the Spirit he did as the Lord would have him do this was his Vocation therefore though he could not make stones become bread God would find him sustenance some other way No conscionable man will set his servants to
the numbers of the Saints nay rather it speaks of them with the least many are called but few are chosen and fear not little flock it is your fathers pleasure to give you a Kingdom But Satan thinks to have credit from his multitudes and pretends to the whole retinue of them that have power and glory in the world whereas divers carry the true virtue of nobility in their heart as well as the title of nobility in their name and owe no service to him God doth permit the wicked sometimes elsewhere to reign for the sins of the people his antecedent will is upon all men especially upon the most renowned that are next and immediately under him Be ye holy as I am holy but he permits Ahab and Manasses to take their turn in the Kingdom of Israel to scourge the people for their sins and therein the adversary prevails against Gods velleity and complacency now that inch which God gives Satan calls it an ell and boasts that all the Princes of the Earth do hold in fee of him What saies he to Christ do you think to sit upon the seat of your Father David by fasting and prayer and by retiring for the discipline of your soul into the Wilderness no if you will rise and be some great one you must come to it by me frame your self to the fashion of the world the disposing of all Royalties and Honours are delivered unto me and to whomsoever I will give them Omne mendacium est in aliquo vero that 's the ground of this first point which I handle every falsehood leans upon some truth that it may appear not to halt lamely but to go upright To that end doth the Tempter cogg in this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for that is delivered unto me fatetur tradentem he doth acknowledge by that word that there is one above him who gives the Letters Patents of all honor and glory he is only intrusted as a Minister to deliver it Well this will not serve his turn like those conjuring Oracles which abused the Heathen of old which had alwayes an ambiguous meaning so the Devil in every proposition he makes as in this particularly hath some concealed aequivocation This is delivered unto me but by whom let us discover his pol-foot which he would conceal not by God he durst not bely his Maker so much but by the custom and practice of the world and custom is the strength and soul of a Law we have corrupted the pure stream of honour with flattery with gratuities with slavish services with Simony they that bid for advancement by such crooked means trust the Devil to keep stakes and if you will have them you must ask him to deliver them We have put the conveyance of many promotions into his power by the sinful practice of ambition as if he were our great Feoffee in trust as King Darius in the story of Esdras yielded himself up and all the power of his Majesty to Apame his Concubine she might take his Crown from his head and put it upon her own and he waited her courtesie to receive it again In such a sense it is true Satan hath a great share of honours to bestow but he received no such authority in Gods name as his words darkly convey'd do seem to challenge it for that is delivered unto me and unto whomsoever I will give it Some there are that make this climax or gradation to cast another shadow of truth upon his meaning Man was created Lord of the whole world and God bestowed the dominion of all things upon him which this Globe of creatures contains afterward by transgression man became the captive of sin and Satan for his servants ye are to whom ye obey that 's Gospel so that the Devil having Lordship over him who was Lord of all the whole world and the pomp thereof became to be his fee in our title that were captivated to him But I list not to stretch so many conclusions to make him speak truth who was a lyar from the beginning This shall suffice for that deceitful likelihood of truth which is in this motion it will be more glory to God and more benefit to our selves to examine the unlikelyhood The Devils Ministers have dared to contest with those Powers that were ordeined of God the contentious Hebrew asked Moses Who made thee a Prince or a Judg The Pharisees maundred at Christ By what authority dost thou these things and who gave thee this authority and doth the Devil suppose it shall go unaskt when this imperial sway was put into his hands to deliver all Kingdoms to whomsoever he will give them Promotion says the Psalmist cometh not per spiritum ventorum it cometh neither from the East nor from the West nor from the South no nor per spiritus infernorum it ascends not up from the pit with the spirits of damnation for why God is Judg of the Earth he setteth up one and plucketh down another Psal lxxv 6. This excessive claim of Satan to impute unto himself that all Kings hold their Scepters of him calls his whole faith in question that Charter cannot stand with Solomons Verdict which he hath given upon that title for thus he speaks for the Lord Prov. viii 15. By me Kings reign and Princes decree justice by me Princes rule and Nobles even all the Judges of the earth In true and exact propriety rendred the learned in the original tongue render the word not by me Kings reign but in me Kings reign God reigns in them as his Deputies they reign in God as their Author and Authoriser wherefore it is elegantly noted by one of our own Writers that Melchisedech is the first King spoken of in Scripture and he is brought in without Father without Mother upon earth to shew that Kings are Gods generation who only his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 none can declare his Generation St. Chrysostom says very well that this is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the especial dignity of Kingly estate that it comes from God and therefore Popes who now assume most unchristianly if not anti-christianly to depose anointed Princes and translate their Kingdoms to their enemies they were wont to write to Kings with all lowliness of stile wishing them health and long happiness in eo per quem Reges regnant in him by whom Kings reign that is in God under whom in their own Dominions they are next and immediately supreme Governors David sware by the Lord unto Bathsheba that Solomon his Son shâ—uld reign in his stead an Oath is the strongest proof of humane faith so that by an Oath God and man have put it out of all doubt that the Most High alone doth appoint who shall sit upon the Throne of David but huic injurato crederem we would sooner believe David though he had not sworn that the Power and Principality of Kings depends upon God than Satan with all his promises and protestations that he hath
consult with Nature ask her if she do not sometime use superfluity for the greater elegancy of her workmanship plura ad unum assumit sicut duos oculos Why might not man have been a Cyclops why might not Nature have spar'd an eye but if she will make pairs where a single instrument might serve why should we limit God's grace and scant it to just as much passion as would fit the turn since there is plenteous redemption with our God Seconly Per suavitatem peccavit homo per asperitatem maximam satisfecit it seems there was some delicious relish in the fruit forbidden as it was very pleasant to the eye The taste of Adam was of a most sapid and quick mixture the Apple was of the most refined composition being the food of Paradice and Gods own Plantation these could not but leave a touch upon Adams lips sweeter than the Honey-comb or Manna in the Wilderness Now set the Scale of justice in an equal poise the transgression was sweetness the satisfaction must be bitterness the transgression was pleasure in the highest degree the satisfaction must be grief in the very gall of bitterness but what so bitter as death especially the Cross that death of malediction Thirdly this is the Master-piece among Lombards reasons but a flower pickt from St. Austins Garden Deus justitiâ voluit Diabolum vincere non potestate the Dragon and his Angels do plead against Michael and his Angels that the Judgment might be proportioned to the Crime committed But what did Satan accomplish by his impleadment God doth not deal like Pilate and the corrupt Judges of the world shift the Law out of their sight when it doth not serve the turn and stand a tip-toe upon their Power and Prerogative He doth not deal with Justice as Festus did with Paul Go thy wayes I will speak with thee at another time Justitiâ ' vincere voluit non autoritate Satan is confounded by Gods Justice not by his Authority Fourthly and lastly as Draco the rigid Magistrate wrote his Laws in blood so Christ that innocent Lamb wrote the Instructions of patience in his own blood Let the great Rabbies of Divinity dispute it whether one drop of our Saviours blood could not save as many Worlds as there be sins in this World that is infinite yet he took his share of all sorts of persecution ut nobis praeberet exemplum patientiae that when we are persecuted and stung with fiery vermin we might look upon the Brazen Serpent in the Wilderness and be comforted with patience For now by the Examples of his Sufferings when my Soul languisheth with any calamity I will turn me to my Lord and lay my wounds to his wounds my tears to his tears and my mouth dipt in gall to his mouth and my disgrace to his reproaches Finally in all my afflictions I will seem as it were to read his Title upon the Cross Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews I have drawn out my Clue very far to enlarge the true testimony that Pilate gives of Christ though he forbore to open the trial of his integrity which had he undertaken his arm was strong enough to disarm his Persecutors and to delude his Enemies but compassion of our misery made him draw out a long line of torments to stripes to buffettings to death to consummatum est till all was finished We may well give his tender heart that honourable title which St. Chrysostom gave unto St. Paul a volume of charity Is there any weak conscience in this place that marvails at our Saviours proceedings and makes it his own case whether it be fit to plead innocency before the Magistrate or whether wrongful accusation should be endured without an answer for such a man I give this Doctrin for his resolution As the Passover was divided into two Portions part thereof was to be eaten and that part which remained to be burnt with fire so among the actions of Christ some are to be eaten that is drawn into example as his Prayers his Purse of charity for the Poor his converting of Publicans to the fear of God some are to be consumed with fire that is to be adored with faith and zeal but not to be drawn into imitation as his miraculous fasting his walking upon the seas and this compassionate silence before Pilat he would not speak to shun death that our hearts and tongues might be blessed through his name to praise and magnifie him for ever For as Caesar said of his Souldiers when they were offered conditions to depart with safety Caesaris milites salutem dare solent non accipere that they used to give such benefits not to receive them so Christ came into the world not to take his life as the gift of Pilate but to give life to every one that should repent and believe in the Gospel I have one bough yet to prune off in this branch and then I will proceed Great bundles of Wast-paper are printed every moneth and discharged against us by the busie-headed Jesuits to disparage the integrity of our Reformed Religion for the most part such slight and unlearned stuff that we may say in another sense than Christs Disciples did of Solomons Building Lord what manner of stones be these yet if every Scribler be not answered the Chalenger goes out of the field and cries victoria I think it was Crassus the Roman that replied not one word to a foul-mouth'd fellow who railed on him by the way till he came to his own dores Light him home says Crassus to his Servant and bring him to his Lodging Beloved it doth become our patience to shew the same contempt to these idle Pamphleters and it becoms our Profession to shew them as much curtesie that is to light them home to the Kingdom of Heaven if they will hear our Doctrin When Israel fought with Amelech but the victory was swayed by the hands of Moses held up by Aaron and Hur It was not the hand which fought says Nazianzen but the hand which did not fight that conquered Amelech And it is said of Scaevola non retentis sed amissis manibus he put the Etruscans to flight not by using his hand but by burning it off so though we give a Truce and respite to the Pen which should write yet the patience which doth not write and the mildness which neglects their bitter words shall confound our Adversaries We dare lanch into the Seas as the learned Writings of this Kingdom can testifie our Ship that is our Religion is sound and will hold out water against all objections It is our modesty to harbor sometimes in the Haven to shun Pirats and stormy winds lest we should encounter with ignominious Rabsheka's and be perswaded it is no loss of reputation unto us no gain unto our Enemies that we stand dumb like Jesus before the Jews and say nothing at the Bar of Pilate I have prosecuted my method thus far to avouch the
time why God will provide himself a Lamb says Abraham He was more cunning in the mysteries of faith futura respondet filio de presentibus requirenti says Origen he put off his Son to the future age to the times to come then there would be a propitiatory Oblation worth all the bloud beside which was spilt in the world This was Abrahams Prophesie of Christ he saw a Ram behind him And I will tell you why it likes me to expound post eum behind him rather to time than place rather post seculum than post tergum for St. Austin tells it for news upon St. Hierom's credit that the Jews with whom St. Hierom spake in Palestina confessed unto him Vbi immolatus est Aries ibi postea crucifixus est Christus that by infallible tokens they know that Christ was crucified in the very plot of ground where the Ram was offered for a Burnt-offering as for the place then Abraham stood by the Pile of Wood and lookt upon it but it is a mystery in time that the Oblation for Isaac and for all the Elect was bound unto the Cross in after ages Vnus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem Mercy was sudden and ready to promise that the Seed of the Woman should bruise the Serpents head but the Divine Wisdom for the exercise of faith made the World look many a long look before the thing was accomplisht It was afternoon says Irenaeus as we read the cool of the day when the Gospel was preached to Adam that there should be a Saviour Quod adventus redemptoris ad mundi vesperam factus sit because time was far spent and the Evening of the World approached before the Advent of the Redeemer the Dove came in the Evening with an Olive branch in his mouth to the Ark of Noah Simeon was grown old at the very brink of the Grave Anna was far stricken in years before the Light of Israel did shine upon them in the Temple the revolutions of Heaven had had their courses for many ages before the Star appeared at Bethlem But because the case is altered in our days and the Ram is as much before our times as it was behind the time of Abraham Let this Mark pass as an obscure one the next is printed and engraven in him by which he may easily be known for he was caught in a thicket by his horns S. Austin writing upon the Prophecy of David concerning Christ I will open my mouth in Parables Psal 78. meditates thus upon it there would be no perplexity in it Si sicut os suum aperuit in parabolis ita aperiret etiam ipsas parabolas if he had opened the sense of the Parable as he did open his mouth in Parables but the sense of this mystery which I have read stands so direct before us as the Angel did in Balams way that we cannot turn aside and miss it If there be any variance it lies in a word and in the upshot that will make no variance at all The Septuagint and all the Fathers that follow the Translation read it Video arietem prehensum in arbore Sabec he saw a Ram intangled by the horns in a tree which is called Sabec the Interpreter forbore to give the Tree any other name but Sabec as it is in the Hebrew and since the whole Ram was held fast in a Tree well might St. Chrysostom say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 see the Lamb of God fastned by the two hands to the Tree of the Cross upon that accursed Tree his arms were pluckt out at length as if you might have seen him beckning with his hands to both ends of the World to the furthermost places of the Earth to come unto him and to be Members of his Church which He had watered with his bloud When the left hand as the Tradition goes when that hand which is next his heart was first driven through with a nail unto the Beam then you might have seen nature shrinking at it for pain and the body contracting it self when you might have seen the other hand reacht too far and pluckt out with violence here we must conceive the immensity of his griefs the veins bleeding the nerves rackt and distented the bones disjoynted the wounds of the stripes made wider the wood of the Tree unsquared and the rough bark upon it chafing the tender flesh the weight of his body oppressing him downward as he hung and the harmony of all the ribs about his breast dissolved In a word as Tully said of Milo the Wrestler that his arms were deteined so fast in the cleft of a tree that there he remained to be eaten up by the Wolves of the Forrest so my Saviour hung by the arms upon the Cross while the Wolvish Jews gaped upon him with odious revilings and at length devoured him One thing I cannot omit what kind of death more like unto this in all the Scripture than the death of Absalon caught fast by the head in the arms of an Oak tree thrust through the heart with Joabs darts as Christs side was pierced with the Souldiers Spear is Absalon therefore justified is it enough to boast of likeness of punishment without likeness of innocency Martyrem causa facit non poena they are not Martyrs that dy for errors in Religion not the sufferance of death but the sufferance for a good cause that makes a Martyr But this Thicket as Aquila reads it and as all the later Writers do follow it is no Tree properly but spinarum perplexitas an intricate Hedg of thorns wherein the Ram was entangled retentus in rete cornibus as Symmachus hath it as if he were catcht like a Bird in a Snare among the bushes it is as much in a Parable as the Gospel speaks directly that they platted a Crown of thorns upon his head who is our strength our might the horn also of our salvation and our refuge Victimae coronabantur as Pliny says Sacrifices were brought to the Altar with Crowns of flowers and Garlands upon their heads The Priest of Jupiter brought out Oxen and Garlands Acts xiv 12. and therefore it came to pass that the Ram had his Garland upon his head before he was burnt upon the wood but it was a twist of thorns Let us insist upon it a little that we may gather grapes from these thorns which prickt our Saviour that we may see the good will of him that dwelt in the Bush First no measure of affliction should seem too much for a Christian sorrows if they be without number should not be accounted too grievous a chastisement since Christ was prickt with as many thorns as his head could bear Vidit haerentem in spinis says my Text Abraham saw the Ram sticking in the thorns not the thorns sticking in him Qualis est haec praedicatio what manner of saying is this but an expression that there were more wounds in his body than sound flesh that was not mangled
our Saviour from his Miracles No man can do these miracles that thou dost except God be with him ver 2. Now the mactation of the Paschal Lamb had nothing in it but that which was ordinary in the external work but the use of the brazen Serpent was a mighty miracle Secondly As many Lambs were killed as there were housholds to eat them whereas there was but one Serpent made which comes nearer to the just resemblance that the Son of God by his one Oblation of himself once offered up made a sufficient satisfaction for the sins of the world Thirdly The Lamb was presented as other Viands are in a dish The Serpent was set up aloft as an Ensign a clearer pattern of the exaltation of the Cross Fourthly In the consumption of the Lamb God did embalm the memory of his great mercy and keep it fresh how he passed over the houses of the Israelites and did not kill them as he killed the Egyptians But the Serpent was set up for the cure of those that were bitten with Serpents In the former Type the people were sound and whole in the latter Type they were stung and sick and they that are whole do not perceive so well that they have need of the Physician as they that are sick Lastly He that did feed on the Paschal Lamb did eat by faith And he that look'd on the Serpent did see by faith But though faith is the evidence of things not seen yet the eye is more of kin to faith than the â—aste because it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a bodily mind as the Heathen said and our most heavenly sense In a word there were many other Figures of Christs sufferings but not any so plain as this for the use and application of it that none but true believers can be saved by his sufferings To the full satisfaction therefore of that which is concerned upon this day here you have Christ upon his Cross two ways both in the Old and in the New Testament For the Old Testament in the best and most exact Figure for the New Testament in a direct and literal prediction The figure contains these parts first the symbolical thing a Serpent Secondly The posture of it it was lifted up Thirdly The place in the Wilderness Fourthly The end for which Sicut Moses as Moses lifted it up The Prediction of the New Testament is to fulfil the Figure And that denotes 1. The Person the Son of Man 2. His inglorious glory must be lifted up 3. Here is a sic for the former sicut a correspondence with the manner and the end of the Figure so must the Son of Man be lifted up First Here is Christ crucified in the Old Testament in a symbolical sign which is a Serpent When his body hung upon the Cross it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as St. Luke calls it a sight for all the People to look upon that were present for outwardly it was the deed of wicked men But there was profundum crucis as St. Austin observes part of the accursed Tree was under ground for the stronger fastning the end and use of it which came from God which is discovered to them that search by faith is thus in a short sum a remedy against that punishment which our sins had deserved therefore to make a compleat survey of this Serpent first we must look upon it for our sins sake secondly for our punishment and thirdly for our remedy And first by the object of the Serpent we see sin in the Author Satan is traduced openly in this memorial for that Tempter that perswaded our first Parents to eat of the forbidden fruit It is his contumely to see himself disguised in so base a creature as God would not permit him to come in the form of a better creature but in this vile shape to do the office of a murderer so he is exposed to all Ages in the pourtract of that shape that his pride may see it self in a vaste distance of declension an Angel in Creation a despicable worm in his own mischievous Assumption But as St. Athanasius doth well observe there was a Serpent the Instrument and there was the Devil the Ingeneer two several natures compacted in some sort into one person and joyning in one stratagem to cast man out of Paradise So God and man two natures in one person met together in our Redeemer to reduce us unto the favour of God and to repossess us in a better Paradise And as the Language of sin was first taught through the mouth of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden so that it may never be forgotten it is continued in the dumb shew of a Serpent that was set up in the Wilderness Secondly By the object of the Serpent we see sin in the infection and contagion of it It is the biting of an Adder not perilous only to that part which is wounded but dispreading all over even to the vital parts of the body Every drop of bloud soaks in the malignity of that which is next unto it till there be no soundness remaining So one part of our body being tainted with the poison of sin traduceth its corruption to another if the ear be tickled with filthy talk the loins will be unchaste If the eye be wanton the heart will suffer and wax impure If the body pride it without the soul cannot be humble within every sense and faculty about us is a gangrene to another and if you give up one member you give up all to be instruments of uncleanness There is yet more contagion in the tooth of the Serpent by committing one transgression you are at the brink of the pit to fall into another the second offence makes the way smooth and slippery for the third Peccatum quod per poenitentiam non deletur mox suo pondere ad aliud trahit says Gregory Every sin that meets not with the Antidote of Repentance hath an operative and a venemous nature to fetch in another evil spirit like unto it self An high mind carries us to wrath and wrath to revenge and revenge to malice and malice to murder Thus it runs on like a spark in the stubble and unless grace extinguisheth it it is as unquenchable as the fire of hell Beside there is yet another Serpentine and pestilentious derivation in the works of darkness one sinner is a thousand sinners more in the dangerousness of his Leprosie one Absalom is an host of Rebels one Ring-leader is a shole of Hereticks one Jeroboam is a Kingdom full of Idolaters one incestuous person endangered the whole Church of Corinth with fornication says St. Paul and he was the occasion of his Proverb That a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump A drop of Poison mars a glass of Nectar Serpunt vitia in proximum quemque transiliunt contactu nocent says Seneca Stand far off from those that are impious they have a catching disease about them there is an infectious
very Apostles were enough to prove the Majesty of God 't is strange to work good upon any of us all our will is knotty timber our heart hollow and unsound what can the Workman make of such stuff but to commit the Talents of the Holy Ghost to such as these and to make them the Bankers from whom we should borrow the stock of the Church this is his exploit alone who can make a graine of mustard seed dispread into a tree that the Fouls of the air may build their nests in it Lord what are we that thou hast given such power unto men But Lord what art thou that hast given such power to most homely and simple men O Lord how excellent is thy name in all the world Thou that out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast ordained praise and put the Eloquence of the earth to silence by such unlookt-for Instruments These were no men of spirit active and stirring in the world such busie heads would never be fortunate to propagate the Gospel of peace Again they were of no honourable Order the Spirit had more use of humility than of dignity Inspirat non inflat as one said very well it inspired them it did not puff them up To be short they were not of the Scribes and Doctors that were Proficients in Arts and Learning that the work of God might disperse the greater amazement through such who were noted for ignorance and infirmity Yet they were not sent forth like Ideots and Fishermen that knew nothing but their Mechanical trade but were endued with power from on high to teach the Mystery of Godliness in all the Tongues that could be spoken Which is the next provocation to transport them with wonder as we read it ver 9. How hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born It will ask travel and pains through the whole life of a man to be cunning in two or three Tongues good Linguists know what study it costs them to come to a Grammatical excellency in a few Languages much more to a voluble pronunciation of them But to preach Christ Jesus in all the borders of the earth required more dispatch than to begin to get the elements of learning therefore by a shorter cut God gives them an inspiration to speak all Tongues in a moment and to preach the true sense of the Scripture in all those Tongues Sentire quae velint loqui quae sentiant they had words to cloath their matter as they pleased and they had matter to utter as well as words Quid voveat dulci nutricula maejus alumno quà m sapere fari quae sentiat They needed no more abilities than wisdom to know the mind of God and a tongue to declare their wisdom As in the beginning when God created the Heaven and the Earth he spake what he pleased and it was done Let there be light and there was light Let there be a Sea and there was a Sea So in the first foundations of the Church it was no more but let there be a revelation of the mysteries of the Gospel and there was a Revelation Let there be Tongues and there were Tongues Let there be a fountain opened in Jerusalem whose several spouts may water all the quarters of the world and it was so in the twinkling of an eye If God himself had come from heaven in his own Majesty his Almighty Word could not have been clearer than in this miracle Such as have an incredulous grudge in their minds an Ague that will never leave some carnal hearts they are troubled with a longing when they hear of this O that we had lived in those days when the arm of power from on high was made so manifest We take things up as the long revolutions of time have committed them to us but we live not in the days of wonder we see nothing for us by this strange omnipotency Beloved if there were a new Gospel to be preached we should have new Tongues as the Apostles had to publish it but the truth hath been preached round about the world to all Nations the continuance is old therefore why should new Wine of new Miracles be put into old bottles Then it was meet I mean on the first Whitsunday that the Gentiles should understand that way was made to call them to Salvation which could not be confirmed better than to hear the Cross of Jesus Christ published in so many forein Dialects and that the Prediction of the Psalm is fulfilled His sound is gone forth into all the earth and his Word unto the ends of the world there is neither Speech nor Language but their voice is heard among them Now it is confessed that it is accomplished and were not a miracle a most unnecessary and supernumerary thing to confirm it Hold you content that the Spirit is yet upon your tongues the seal is printed upon them to pray to God to bless one another to comfort one another If any thing will amaze a man in these days it is the bitterness the murmuring the swearing the lying the slandering of the tongue that we should do God more dishonour with one tongue than the Apostles did him honour with twenty So much for that Passion which took away the reason of them that were present for a time 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they were in an extasie they were amazed Now follows that which troubled their reason and exercised their reason I will put them both in one they hang so close together They were in doubt saying one to another What meaneth this Doubting is the unquietness of the mind which proceeds from ignorance It flutters about like Noahs Dove and knows not where to set its foot they wanted the Anchor of faith to fasten them to some certain resolution for as yet they knew not the Scriptures of the Prophet Joel to which St. Peter directed them Ver. 17. It shall come to pass in the last days saith God I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh Doubtfulness is the fruit of carnal wisdom it holds to nothing stedfastly it hath more faces than Janus looking every way and on every side and hath as many thoughts as there be minutes in the hour and it is impossible it should be fix'd until it pitch upon some clear Text of Scripture and say this is the truth I build upon it for so it is written in the Word of God The benefit of the holy Spirit descending as this day upon the Church was to bring us out of the windings and crooked Lanes of doubting and reduce all opinions to one setled conclusion that there was no salvation to be found but in the meritorious Passion of Jesus Christ The Academicks of Greece were so far from any certainty of knowledge that it was the perfection of their learning to doubt of every thing Whereupon an Egyptian Priest reproved them for that puerility 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you that call your selves
the Spirit of grace and strive to put off the incomprehensible work of God with a jest These men are full of new Wine So that as soon as God sent firy Tongues from heaven upon his Apostles the Devil likewise raised up firy Tongues from Hell and put them in the mouth of his Apostles Envy and despitefulness cares not what reproach it puts upon good men though there be neither sense nor probability to make it credible That is right 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word which is here used to vent any thing against the credit of holy persons whether it be right or wrong It was impossible they should perswade it in any one that they were overtaken with new Wine for there is no such liquor to be had in May not till September at the soonest But slanders use to rove at random And new wine say the Greeks will sooner intoxicate than old 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But what sign was there to make the objection credible that the Apostles were drunken Did their tongues falter Were their eyes red Was the Gesture foolish I know no man but Carthusian who goes about to invent a sign which should put the Jews into that unlikely suspicion that as the face of Steven when he was full of the Holy Ghost did shine with brightness so the countenances of the Disciples had a splendour and ruddiness in them with the fire of the tongues which sate upon their heads which made the rash Gazers conceive that they were inflamed with drink As the countenances of many that are most sober being red with the heat of the Liver make the uncharitable surmise that they are intemperate so I remember a story that Cassius Bishop of Narnia was despised by King Toteila because he was high coloured whereas Cassius was most abstemious but high coloured by natural infirmity Another thing concurred that it was the Feast day of Pentecost wherein the Jews were wont to rejoyce yet it was not their wont to solemnize the day with Feasting till the morning Sacrifice was offered up and that time was not yet come Therefore St. Peter answers That these men were not drunken for it was but the third hour of the day They that are scandalous in the sin of drunkenness use not to be gone so soon They that are drunken are drunken in the night says St. Paul that is most usual Although some do spend the whole night in quaffing untill the morning In lucem semper Acerra bibit Some prevent the rising of the Sun and are scarce sober one hour of the day whose souls lie under the Prophets woe Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning to follow strong drink Isa v. 11. But Peter did not strive to make an invincible refutation of their slander because their scurrility was so improbable and ridiculous and a defence which is over-anxious makes a good cause suspicious Had the accusation been true it had deserved a scorn as Noah was derided when he was drunken The drunkard makes himself an Ape for Boys to sport with his brutishness a natural fool is not such an object for derision and laughter So that passively it is true what Solomon says Wine is a mocker Prov. xx 1. It exposeth it self to the flouting of vain persons here and shall reap the scorn of God hereafter But says St. Cyril the wickedness of man shall turn to the praise of God and this slander of the Jews shall expound some Prophesies of Scripture and the mystery of the Holy Ghost It is granted says the Father the Apostles on this day were full of new Wine Novum verè erat illud vinum novi Testamenti gratia that is it is the grace of the New Testament which makes glad the heart of man Inebriabuntur pinguedine domus â—uae the Vulgar Latine keeps that word Psal xxxvi 8. we read They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures And again Cant. v. 1. I have drunk my wine with my milk meaning both the comfort and the nourishment of the Gospel O friends drink yea drink abundantly O beloved To this pertains another Psalm of David xxv 5. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies thou anointest my head with oyl my Cup runneth over Here is the oyl of the Spirit here is the Table of the Lord here is the Cup of Christs bloud an overflowing Cup sufficient to save a thousand worlds This Cup is that which ravisheth our Souls and carries up our Spirit to Heaven to partake of the body and bloud of Christ when we come to his holy Table this is Sobria ebrietas non madens vino sed ardens Deo This is a sober drunkenness an inflammation not with Wine but with the love of the Lord Jesus Happy were these Apostles that were drunken with drinking of him who says I am the Vine and ye are the branches But here is the difference between the meaning of these Scoffers and the meaning of those that make it an heavenly mystery he that is drunken with Wine looks like an incarnate Devil he that is drunken with the Spirit looks like an incarnate Angel I will stay a little while more not very long to shew how the mighty gifts poured out upon the Apostles on this day was a spiritual drunkenness First excess of Wine procures forgetfulness of things past so the Mission of the Holy Ghost made them that were converted to Christ forget the Ceremonial Law of Moses saving that little that was tolerated for a time to satisfie the weakness of the Jews it was laid aside as if it were quite dead and out of remembrance Thus St. Paul doth as it were make his Shears to pass between the Old and the New Law forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before Phil. iii. 13. Upon that accident that there wanted Wine at the Marriage in Cana the Gloss says Vetus legis vinum defecerat in nuptiis Ecclesiae none of the Wine of the Law remained at the Marriage of the Christian Church it was tilted and spent Secondly He that is giddy with wine makes no distinction of persons knows not his Friends from his Foes So he that is full of the Spirit renounceth all friendship affinity parentage in respect of the engagements of holiness and Religion Per calcatum perge patrem If thy Mother hold out her Breasts to entice thee from God if thy Father stop thy way shut thine eyes against the one tread upon the other make no respect of persons in that cause It is the praise and a most magnificent one which Moses gives to Levi Deut. xxxiii 9. Who said unto his Father and to his Mother I have not seen him neither did he acknowledge his brethren nor knew his own children Thus the mighty working of God works an extasie in his Servants that they care not for
their nearest Relations if they be a bar to the Kingdom of Heaven And who cares if revilers call it a drunkenness of the Spirit Thirdly Much Wine gives a great edge to valour and courage In praelia trudit inermes it runs into any danger because it knows not what is danger but there is nothing of such animosity nothing so undaunted as the Spirit of God The righteous is bold as a Lion says Solomon It must needs be that strength is doubled in him because he hath two lives in his heart this life and the life to come What could the world say but that some illapse from heaven was in the breast of the Apostles that those miselli those neglected worms should overtop the terrors of Councils of Prisons of Death of Devils Let such as Rabshekah call it drunkenness it was the boldness of the Spirit Fourthly Wine is a rejoycer of the heart Ecclus xl 20. But what joy is comparable to that which is begotten by the infusion of the Holy Ghost Let the righteous rejoyce and be glad let them also be merry and joyful A good conscience recreated by the Promises of God and assurance of forgiveness of sins is like a volary of sweet singing birds chirping and carolling within the Soul nothing but the pleasant notes of heaven and immortal blessedness When we sing Psalms of chearfulness let Scorners censure it for vanity but it is the new Wine of the Spirit which makes the heart glad Lastly As the airy vapours of wine make a man to broach his secrets and reveal them Arcana recludit so the Holy Ghost coming down this day did open the fountain which was sealed up before the Mysteries of Gods eternal counsel brought to pass in time by the Incarnation of his Son were made manifest to all the world This was it which confounded the Jews that were present to hear those abstruse things of Godliness divulged and they did not understand them The Spirit made the Apostles pour them out and they could not hold they were transported above natural to supernatural reason and they were carried above themselves as men even drunken with great Revelations Upon those words of St. Paul 2 Cor. v. 13. Whether we be beside our selves it is to God or whether we be sober it is for your cause says Bernard Audi sanctam insaniam Festus told Paul he was mad here he professeth little less for the Gospel sake he neither says that he was sober and he doth not contend whether he were beside himself or no. Such as he was he was for the Church sake possessed of the Spirit and full of that new Wine which gave him a tongue of utterance to preach Jesus Christ to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness These uses rise out of an holy and mystical sense of the words and that is no thanks to these taunting Jews who being full of malice a sin that is worse than drunkenness burden the Apostles that they were full of Wine or as the Syrian Paraphrast reads it without mincing these men are drunken The just upright man is laughed to scorn Job xii 4. Isaac the Son of Promise was scoffed at by Ismael the Profane Gen. xxi 9. The Septuagint calls it Ismaels play or sport Illa lusio erat illusio says St. Austin it was his pastime to mock the righteous Be prepared therefore against evil words and reproaches you must have your share of them if your conversation be Christian First you have a Paracletus which is a spirit of comfort to bear them off with patience Then you have a Paracletus for that is the word an Advocate to answer against the Accuser of the Brethren who shall discover your innocence Apoc. xii 10. There is no good action but the Devils claw of scornfulness is upon it At our Saviours Resurrection the Jews made the Apostles Thieves they forsooth had stoln away their Master by night and at the coming of the Holy Ghost they make them Drunkards But this was a baptizing with the Holy Ghost not a sousing with Wine it was somewhat poured on them no strong drink poured in them it was no drunken thing but rivers of living waters springing up to everlasting life and this he spake of the Spirit which they that believed on him should receive Joh. vii it is the fountain of the water of life issuing from the Throne of God and of the Lamb Rev. xxii So Moses likened the inspiration of Prophesie to the dew falling on the herbs or to the rain poured on the grass Deut. xxxii It is no distempering heady liquour but the Cordial of joy and the Balm of Gilead If then the effusion of the Spirit was tax'd with drunkenness what do you that think profane persons have devised concerning the Cup of the Sacrament Horrendum dictu because it is our Saviours Doctrine by a figurative speech that the Cup is the New Testament in his bloud the heathen traduced the Christians soon after the Apostles days that they killed a Child in their private Feasts and Sacrifices and drank his bloud And a long time it was before the heathen Magistrates would be perswaded that such as partaked the holy Communion were not murderers Indeed it is true though they understood it not that such as partake unworthily are murderers of their own souls But again if Gods mighty miracle was scoft at when he gave grace to his Apostles to preach so divinely what will profane persons say to our weak Doctrine so much inferiour to theirs Quoties dicimus toties judicamur nothing is more snatcht at to be made matter of idle talk and frumping discourse than that which is delivered in the Pulpit Take heed and remember that Michol was barren who scorned ac David that no Scorner might be begotten of her says St. Ambrose But the Devil hath got a new way to bring both Preaching and Praying into contempt For Preaching let every one practice it that will and then it will come to pass I am sure if not Musto pleni spumâ pleni if they be not full of new wine they will be full of froth Says the Apostle 1 Cor. xii 29. Are all Prophets Are all Teachers Are all workers of miracles It can no more agree that all should be Teachers than that all should be workers of Miracles As for publick Prayer the deriders of sanctity call it not new wine but they call it worse by the name of that homely broth for which Esau sold his birth-right But as the Prophet said to the calumnious Jews against whom do you sport yourselves Against whom do you make a wide mouth and draw out the tongue Against whom do you shoot out Arrows even bitter words Are ye not children of transgression a seed of falshood Isa lvii 4. But this is the derision which Satan would put upon Religion in this unsanctified unpeaceable Age. First take away directly the publick Liturgie of Prayers that the people may have
Adversary But why should the Messias do all the Creatures that honour to be esteemed clean Hath God care of Oxen The Jewish Rabbi ventur'd not upon that question but Irenaeus answers it omnia purificata sunt per sanguinem Christi Christ hath set the Church at liberty to be debarred from nothing which God hath made and the uncleanness of the beasts is now accounted cleanness because our filthiness is washed away and made clean in his most precious bloud That which was commonly usurped among the Gentiles throughout all the world was branded for unclean and therefore Peter said Lord I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean but now the stile is chang'd and that which is most common is most clean Our riches are made clean by being scattered abroad and communicated in charity the Word of God is most clean and undefiled whose sound is gone forth into all Worlds Prayer and Preaching are best when they are performed in the Congregation and are most publick The holy Eucharist is cibus communis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Communion of the body of Christ and yet it is so pure a food that being eaten by faith it purifieth the heart and conscience above all things To the clean all things are clean but because we live in the contagion of the evil World and he that toucheth pitch shall be defiled and because our own heart is an impure fountain from which the streams of bitterness do continually flow Cleanse the thoughts of our heart O Lord by the inspiration of thy holy Spirit that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy Name by Christ our Lord. AMEN THE SECOND SERMON UPON NOAH GEN. viii 20 21. And Noah builded an Altar unto the Lord and took of every clean Beast and of every clean Fowl and offered burnt offerings on the Altar And the Lord smelled a sweet savour THis is our Sacrifice which we offer unto God at this time to preach of Sacrifice and Preaching hath a great similitude with the Law of the Peace-offering Deut. xxvii 7. Thou shalt offer Peace-offerings and shalt eat thereof and rejoyce before the Lord thy God So we are come together to speak unto the honour of God and to make our selves perfect in his ways and Testimonies to do them We offer unto the honour of our Saviour and eat of our own Offering which is the very condition of a Pacificatory Sacrifice Now that I may bring nothing unto the Altar but that which is pure and clean the Lord grant that he will circumcise my lips and put a right Spirit into my Meditations Among the Beasts such a one was clean that parted the Hoof and chewed the Cud upon which St. Chrysostome deviseth this interpretation to divide the Hoof is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to divide the Word of God aright in St. Pauls Phrase To chew the Cud is to ruminate upon sacred things to roul them in our understanding and to examine them maturely not to admit or swallow down Divine Mysteries rashly with slight and undiscoursed credulity That we may chew the Cud in this Fathers sense I take these words upon which I have lately spoken again into my mouth to make further proof what is contained in them And lest confusion should make all that is to be said unprofitable I will divide the Hoof after the condition required in a clean Sacrifice I have declared before that there are two principal branches to be noted in the Text the material part and the formal the body and the soul of that Divine Worship which Noah offered unto the Lord. In the material part again are two contents the Gift and the place which sanctified the Gift The Gift was an whole burnt-offering of every clean Beast and of every clean Fowl the place was the Altar which he made and Noah built an Altar to the Lord. These are the visible body of the work The invisible part or the soul consists herein that the Lord smelt a sweet savour and that hath two members in it sensum and sensibile first the sweet Odour which did exhale from the Sacrifice what it was secondly a quick sense that took it the Lord smelled a sweet savour I did not dispatch all the material part when I first handled these words for accounting it a less fault to be abrupt than tedious I proceeded upon no more than the consideration of the bare Gift a Burnt-offering of every clean Beast and of every clean Fowl At this time I have measured to go a little further without prolixity I shall speak God willing upon the place that sanctified the Gift and Noah builded an Altar unto the Lord and upon the quick sense which did apprehend the sweet Odour it was even he who is present at every part of clean devotion and delighteth in it the Lord smelled a sweet savour From whence I will meditate 1. That the time was but new over that God destroyed almost the whole World see how soon he is pleased after his great wrath and with what small seeking 2. When we do any thing well there is joy in heaven 3. Many pious offices which stink in the Worlds opinion are sweet before God 4. There is no greater encouragement to do well than that we are sure it finds grace in the eyes of our heavenly Master it is sweet in his nostrils and he will reward it Of these as I have divided them And Noah builded an Altar c. The whole Earth had been overwhelmed for a long space with the waters of the Deluge in plain terms it was all under malediction but Noah builded an Altar of the tuâ—f and mold of the earth and so brought it again into good use and service and sanctified the whole Element to the Lord. Truly God that revealed unto Noah that he should make an Ark and be saved in the common Calamity deserved to have an Altar erected at his hands that thereon he might adore his Saviour The Jewish Rabbines are so punctual in their curiosities that they go about to tell us the very Plot of ground on which this Altar was raised and many things more of great fame to happen in the same place I am sure you will say the report is very strange if it be credible But this Ben-Maimon adventures to say that it is a Tradition by the hand of all where David built an Altar on the Threshing Flore of Araunah Solomon built a Temple and Abraham made ready there to offer up Isaac and Noah built this Altar in the same standing when he came out of the Ark that there was the Altar where Cain and Abel did first offer before Noah nay that the first man did offer an Offering there soon after he was created and yet he goes further our Wisemen say Adam was created out of the very earth of the same place There is no mediocrity in these mens conjectures and therefore I give them over without commending them Wheresoever
stand far off as you can from prophanness it hath a multiplying mischief in it there 's an infectious exhalation transpassant from man to man because sin is the biting of a Serpent O look up often to Christ and pray unto him to take away these Serpents from us our sins of daily incursion When your spirit is heavy and cast down with dispair prayer will make it rebound from earth to heaven It is the energetical expression of faith the Ambassador which hope sends up to God the fellowship of love the comfort of the Holy Ghost This may soon be done if we have a mind to it It is as easie to say Our Father which art in heaven as to see heaven which is alwayes in our sight If your Place and Calling take up much of your time let your Prayer be compendious well fill'd with matter an holy breathing speak home and be strong in sense But beware of high looks and high words Lord thou dost hear the desire of the humble and dost prepare their heart And beware of stiff joints Put your self back in great distance from the Lord that you may the better behold him in his excellent greatness Then the Serpent sin shall be taken from us The last point to be dispatched is about Serpent men There are such for our Saviour says of the Pharisees Ye Serpents ye generation of Vipers how can ye escape the damnation of Hell Matth. xxiii 33. The Heathen are meer men men of this World says the Psalm Good Christians are more than men Saints of God Bad Christians are not so good as men and have no wrong done them to be compared to beasts Of such as I shall speak of in reference to the feeling of our own condition I will tell you of their number that they are many of their continuance for length of time and of their qualities that they are crooked hissing subtle and venemous vermin Of these in as many strictures Take away the Serpents a multitude a plurality of them so my Text imports And so are ours though more to be endured yet not so many I hope as to be feared since great wisdom watcheth them I need not tell you you know it that they contrived themselves into seven interests If we were as confident Revelationers as they we should find the Beast with seven heads among them Revel xiii But those heads grew all upon one neck so do not these For not one of them hath an interest in the same Principles of Religion with the other The grave President of sedition that would not be seen among the rest can concur for mischiefs sake with those Fanaticks that will never be subject to his Classical Consistories O when shall we see a Bed of Roses grow so close together as Briars and Brambles black and white Thorn will twine into one Hedg The Spawn of seven Serpents all of different species can coagulate into one Roe Satan can melt his Heterogeneal Mettals and make them all run into one Furnace Every language that understands not the rest can help to build an internal Babel But our help is in him who sends us health from the seven Spirits that are before the Throne of the Lamb. Secondly a Serpent is slender but long And a long Council of Serpents held us many years in oppression Many fetches the old Dragon had to keep it together When it was cut in pieces some of the pieces according to the vulgar error came together again and brought the Servants of God and the King to scrape for Pearls of patience out of so great a Dunghil of misery Perhaps I had passed by this note of the length but that Pliny speaks of a great Serpent taken at the River Bagrada near to Old Carthage of 120 foot long whose body being consumed the skin was sent to Rome and what became of it there why it was hung up in the Capitol in their House of Parliament and hung up there so long as stuff could endure Note here a Serpent the longest that ever was heard of the skin remaining when the body was mortified and hung up in the Senate-house Any body may expound this Riddle without an application Thirdly we speak of a crooked creature Leviathan the crooked Serpent Isa xxvii 1. So are they that are devillish crooked and perverse Phil. ii 15. How hard is it to find their tract when they wriggle this way and that way in no direct line A right line is the shortest passage from point to point there you shall find sound Doctrin oblique deflections whether it be in Confession of Faith Form of Prayers or Discipline have as many shapes as the Moon One while a few Ceremonies shall be allowed and anon none at all sometimes they are stuck at but for inconvenient the next news that comes they are unlawful with the next tide we hear they are only unexpedient for the scandal sake of weak people At one hearing the Old Liturgy castigated will give content shortly nothing will serve but a new lump of Prayer which hath no congruity with any that ever was before in a while they will brook no set Form at all How many degrees hath the shadow run back upon their Dial 'T is like a motion in the Ches-board sometimes into a black chequer sometimes into a white but it is all one so they may check the King or move the Bishop How crooked are these Serpents and untraceable in their paths they can take any figure upon them be as square as a tile of the Pavement be as round as a hoop play at all weapons after the variety of the times As the Friar abused that of the Psalm Thy truth most mighty God is on every side This is able to pose the most prudent to make a clear observation upon it It was beyond Solomons wisdom Prov. xxx 19. four things are too hard for me to know the one is the way of a Serpent upon a rock for it is his own rule that which is crooked cannot be made right or after the Proverb a crooked Cucumer will never become strait It is only Prayer that can bring such things to be even and perpendicular But Lord take away the crooked Serpents from us And fourthly the hissing also the Rattle-snakes of one of our new Plantations their railings and invectives under the tone of whinings and lamentations This kind are Pulpit Serpents O impious for none but the Brasen Serpent should be set up in that place the Prince of peace and healing The Doctrine of the whole Clan is for anger and commotion Peragunt civilia bella cerastae as I may fitly say with Cato in the Poet When the Civil Wars were done the Asps and Adders begun a new Battel The hissing and the consequence are as pernicious as that of the false Prophets Mich. iii. 5. They make my people to err and bite with their teeth But it is a people bred in dark informations else such palpably
Luke by the motion of the Holy Ghost had made a true relation of the story 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but though all men dissembled with their double tongue here 's one Michaiah left one Evangelist that will defame him and deal plainly that he gave not God the glory The French Proverb says that the boiling pot doth discover the little pea which is in the bottom of it and the applause of a little vain glory doth discover the disposition of the mind of man more than any other passion tum qualis quisque sit scies si quemadmodum laudetur aspexeris the gravity or fickleness of mans spirit may easily be guest at as you shall see him disgest some publick praise and acclamation as you may see in Herod he came into Cesarea with the Majesty of a King the People gave him the Divinity of a God but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the itch of praise made him lower than a Servant Nocet laus si non rerum cupiditatem facit sed sui says Seneca glory is the fire that kindles vertue when it provokes vertue to good atchievments but when glory begets nothing but the desire of glory it is but childish popularity Therefore of tame Beasts none rends so much or makes such a waste in a well-affected mind as a Flatterer Si gulam ventrem ab inquinamentis liberamus quantò magis augustiora nostra oculos aures says Tertullian a pretty absurdity indeed not to suffer a crum in our drink or a mite in our meat to go down our throat and so into the very droff as Christ calls it but if an immodest spectacle if a dangerous flattery be presented our more curious senses are never watched but our eyes wink not and our ears are opened All flattery is the corruption of true glory but to flatter any man in his vices is a sacrilege against vertue Plato spent but few words in the praise of any man while he was living 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for by nature we are prone to change from better to worse there was more reason in his Philosophy than in their Christianity that lick the deformities of other mens actions and feature their unshapen whelps as if they were beautiful It is a note of a Reprobate that he speaketh good of the covetous whom God abhorreth How can this man be good says Licurgus of Charilaus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who is not rough and sharp with those that are vitious Such glozing tongues says St. Austin that commend other mens faults are like the dogs that lapt in Lazarus his sores But if flattery tickle the tongue of the Sycophant that it cannot keep in have the young Courtiers none to infect but Rehoboam If Vriah the Priest have a fancy to Idolatry is there none to be corrupted but Ahaz the King of Judah If men have such levity that praise and glory will transport them was there none to be abused but Herod A Democrcay is not a greater enemy to the honour nor a Jesuit to the life of a King than is a Flatterer to his prosperity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Plutarch as we use to say that the Gout is the rich mans disease so Flattery is the corruption of the Great and Honorable As by the Ordinance of our Church we give one day to the Honour of a Saints Name and no more so the Romans to claw their Governors stiled a whole Month by the name of an Emperor as if one proud Pagan had been worth thirty humble Christians Like Asahel it pursues none but Abner the Captain of the Host Volscentem petit in solo Volscente moratur turn to the right hand or to the left says Abner apprehende unum de adolescentibus fasten upon any of my Servants and take his spoils But that would not serve Abner is the mark he shot at Qui fontem corrumpunt non ab acervo sed à semente furantur ungracious practicers while they corrupt the fountain the Prince of the People they do not filch from our Stack or from our Barns but from our Seed Corn it self which is double thievery Flattery you see is the adulterating of vertue it self to flatter vice is to promote Satans Kingdom to flatter Princes is to destroy their Kingdoms to flatter Princes as the Sidonians did Herod Voces Dei non hominis the voice of God and not of man is to pluck down Gods Kingdom as David said of the raging of the Sea that it lifted up the Ship to heaven to bring it down again unto the deep so such blasphemous flattery lifts you up like the top of Corazin unto heaven to cast you headlong into hell The Athenians who were but Gentiles at the wisest could not endure such injury to be offered Deo ignoto to the God whom they knew not but put Timagoras their Ambassador to death quod regem Persarum tanquam Deum saâ—utasset because he adored the King of Persia like a God I pray you what mark of a God was in Herod that he was thus exalted He was nothing less than a God for speaking eloquently the holy Scripture is written stylo piscatorio in the humble stile of Fishermen nothing less than a God for suffering Blastus of his Chamber to be corrupted and bribed by the Sidonians to win his favour nothing less than a God for being so gracious with the multitude 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 alas put it to the hair-brain'd multitude to make a God and the first that ever they made was a Calf in Horeb and I cannot perceive that they made any better of Herod Finally nothing less than a God that could not discern how unworthy they were to be reconciled to man who were sacrilegious against God Constantius the Emperor pretending that he would lessen the Train that followed him offered this condition they that would stay with him should forsake Christianity and worship Idols and let the rest depart But upon the trial what did the Emperor discard all those that sacrificed to Idols and retained those that did not shrink from the true Religion supposing that they would prove most disloyal to him who had abandoned their faith to God And as Constantius punished his Servants so Canutus one of our own Princes punished himself to expiate the flattery of his followers Upon some good success no voice was heard among his People but that he was a God and that shall be tried presently says Canutus and sitting by the Sea-shore commanded that the waves should not touch him but the water coming to the soles of his feet Fie says the King how you have abused me the man whom yon call a God cannot keep his feet dry upon the Sea-shore so turning to the Palace of Winchester took off his Crown of Gold and putting it upon our Saviours Image never wore it more upon his own head I have said ye are Gods Mark Beloved I have said it