all your faculties with his corrections yet he shall doe that but to change your water into wine as he did there he shall make his very Judgements Sacraments conveyances and seals of his mercy to you though those manifold sins be got over your heads as a roof as a noise as an overflowing of waters And that which is the heaviest of all and our last consideration sicut Dominus as a Lord as a Tyran as an Usurper Pretiâ— redempti esâ—is nolite fieri servi says the Apostle you are bought with a price therefore glorifie God There he shews you your own value and then Ne dominetur peccasâ—um Let not sin have dominion over you there he shews you the insolency of that Tyran You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free says Christ to the Iews Well They stood not much upon the truth but for the freedome We were Abrahams seed and were never bound to any but Christ replies Whosoever committesh sin is the servant of sin And of whomsoever a man is overcome to the same he is in bondage Now we are slaves to sin not onely as we have been overcome by sin for he that is said to be overcome by sin is presumed to have made some resistance but as we have sold our selves to sin which is a worse and a more voluntary act There was none like him like Ahab says the holy Ghost wherein was his singularity above all He had sold himself to work wickednesse in the fight of the Lord. Now how are we sold to sin By Adam That 's true Ejus praevaricatione ut it a dicam Negotiatione demnoso frandulento commercio venditi sumus Wee were all sold under hand fraudulently sold and sold under foot cheaply sold by Adam But thus wee might seem to be sold by others so Ioseph was and no fault in himself But we have sold our selves since Did not Adam sell himself too Did God sell him by any secret Decree or contract between the Devil and him Was God of counsel in that bargain God forbid Thus faith the Lord Where is the bill of your mothers divorce whom I have put away or which of my creditours is it to whom I have sold you Behold for your iniquities you have sold your selves and for your transgressions is your mother put away In Adam we were sold in grosse in our selves we are sold by retail In the first and generall sale we all pass'd even the best of us We know the Law is spirituall but I am carnall sold under sin says the Apostle even of himselfe But when does the Apostle say this in what state was hee when he accuses himselfe of this mancipation and sale under sin Says he this onely with relation to his former times when he was a Iew and under the Law Or but then when he was newly come to the light of the Gospel and not to a clear sight of it It is true that most of the Eastern Fathers and it is true that S. Augustine himselfe was of that opinion that S. Paul said of himselfe that he was sold under sin respecting himself before his regeneration Non qui vult esse sapiens statim fit sapiens says Origen A man is not presently learned because he hath a good desire to be learned nor hath he that hath begun a conversion presently accomplished his regeneration nor is he discharged of his bargain of being sold under sin as soon as hee sees that he hath made an ill bargain But when he growes up in grace say they as S. Paul had done when hee said this then he is discharged But as S. Augustine ingenuously retracts that opinion which as he says he had held when he was a young Priest at Carthage so is there nothing clearer by the whole purpose of the Apostle in that place then that he in his best state was still sold under sin As David speaks of himself being then regenerated In thy sight shall no man living be justified So S. Paul speaks of himself in his best state still he was sold under sin because still that concupiscence under which he was sold in Adam remains in him And that concupiscence is sin Quia inest ei inobedientia contra dominâ—â—m mentis Because it is a rebellion against that soveraignty which God hath instituted in the soul of man and an ambition of setting up another Prince so it is peccatum sin in it self And it is poena peccati says that Father Quia reddita est meritis inobedientis Because it is laid upon us for that disobedience it hath also the nature of a punishment of sin as well as so sin it self And then it is Causa peccati too Defectione consentientis because man is so enfeebled by this inherence and invisceration of Originall sin as that thereby he is exposed to every emergent tentation to any actuall sin So Originall sinne is called by many of the Ancients the cause of sin and the effect of sin but not so exclusively as that it is not sin really sin in it self too Now as Originall sin causes Actuall in that consideration as we sell our selves over again in our acts of recognition in ratifying our first sale by our manifold sins here so is sin gone over our heads by this dominion as a Tyran as an usurper Hoc lex posuit Non concupisces This is the Law Thou shalt not covet Non quod sic valcamus sed ad quod persiciendo tendamus Not that we can perform that Law but that that Law might be a rule to direct our endevours Multum boni facit qui facit quod scriptum est Post concupiscentias tuas non eas He does well and well in a fair measure that fulfils that Commandement Thou shalt not walk in the concupiscences of thine own heart sed non perficit quia non implet quod scriptum est Non concupisces But yet says he hee does not all that is commanded because he is commanded not to covet at all Vt sciat quò debeat in hac mâ—â—talitate conari That that commandement might teach him what he should labour for in this life Et quò possit in illa immortalitate pervenire to what perfection wee shall come in the life to come but not till then Though therefore we did our best yet we were sold under sin that is sold by Adam but because we doe not but consent to that first sale in our sinfull acts and habits wee have sold our selves too and so sin is gone over our heads in a dominion and in a tyrannicall exercise of that dominion If we would goe about to expresse by what customes of sin this dominion is established we should be put to a necessity of entring into every profession and every conscience And the morall man says usefully Si tantum irasci vis sapientem quantum exigit indignitas scelerum we will
heart Let a man be zealous and fervent in reprehension of sin and there flies out an arrow that gives him the wound of a Puritan Let a man be zealous of the house of God and say any thing by way of moderation for the repairing of the ruines of that house and making up the differences of the Church of God and there flies out an arrow that gives him the wound of a Papist One shoots East and another West but both these arrows meet in him that means well to defame him And this is the first misery in these arrows these tentations Quia alienae they are shot from others they are not in our own quiver not in our own government Another quality that tentations receive from the holy Ghosts Metaphore of arrows is Quia veloces because this captivity to sin comes so swiftly so impetuously upon us Consider it first in our making In the generation of our parents we were conceiv'd in sin that is they sinn'd in that action so we were conceiv'd in sinne in their sin And in our selves we were submitted to sin in that very act of generation because then we became in part the subject of Originall sin Yet there was no arrow shot into us then there was no sinne in that substance of which we were made for if there had been sin in that substance that substance might be damn'd though God should never infuse a soul into it and that cannot be said well then God whose goodnesse and wisdome will have that substance to become a Man he creates a soul for it or creates a soul in it I dispute not that he sends a light or hee kindles a light in that lanthorn and here 's no arrow shot neither here 's no sin in that soul that God creates for there God should create something that were evill and that cannot be said Here 's no arrow shot from the body no sin in the body alone None from the soul no sin in the soul alone And yet the union of this soul and body is so accompanied with Gods malediction for our first transgression that in the instant of that union of life as certainly as that body must die so certainly the whole Man must be guilty of Originall sin No man can tell me out of what Quiver yet here is an arrow comes so swiftly as that in the very first minute of our life in our quickning in our mothers womb wee become guilty of Adams sin done 6000 years before and subject to all those arrows Hunger Labour Grief Sicknesse and Death which have been shot after it This is the fearfull swiftnesse of this arrow that God himself cannot get before it In the first minute that my soul is infus'd the Image of God is imprinted in my soul so forward is God in my behalf and so early does he visit me But yet Originall sin is there as soon as that Image of God is there My soul is capable of God as soon as it is capable of sin and though sin doe not get the start of God God does not get the start of sin neither Powers that dwell so far asunder as Heaven and Hell God and the Devill meet in an instant in my soul in the minute of my quickning and the Image of God and the Image of Adam Originall sin enter into me at once in one and the same act So swift is this arrow Originall sin from which all arrows of subsequent tentations are shot as that God who comes to my first minute of life cannot come before death And then a third and last danger which we noted in our tentations as they are represented by the holy Ghost in this Metaphore of arrows is that they are vix visibiles hardly discernible 'T is true that tentations doe not light upon us as bullets that we cannot see them till we feel them An arrow comes not altogether so but an arrow comes so as that it is not discern'd except we consider which way it comes and watch it all the way An arrow that findes a man asleep does not wake him first and wound him after A tentation that findes a man negligent possesses him before be sees it In gravtssimis criminibus confinia virtutum ladunt This is it that undoes us that vertues and vices are contiguous and borderers upon one another and very often we can hardly tell to which action the name of vice and to which the name of vertue appertains Many times that which comes within an inch of a noble action fals under the infamy of an odious treason At many executions half the company will call a man an Heretique and half a Martyr How often an excesse makes a naturall affection an unnaturall disorder Vtinam aut sororem non amasset Hamon aut non vindicasset Absolon Hamon lov'd his sister Tamar but a little too well Absolon hated his brothers incest but a little too ill Though love be good and hate be good respectively yet says S. Ambrose I would neither that love nor that hate had gone so far The contract between Ionathan and David was If I say The arrow on this side of thee all is wel If I say The arrow is beyond thee thou art in an ill case If the arrow the tentation be yet on this side of thee if it have not lighted upon thee thou art well God hath directed thy face to it and thou may'st if thou wilt continue thy diligence watch it and avoid it But if the arrow be beyond thee and thou have cast it at thy back in a forgetfulnesse in a security of thy sin thy case is dangerous In all these respects are these arrows these infirmities deriv'd from the sin of Adam dangerous as they are alienae in the hand of others as they are veloces swift in seising us and as they are vix visibiles hardly discern'd to be such And these considerations fell within this first branch of this second part Thine arrows tentations as they are arrows stick fast in me These dangers are in them as they are sagittae arrows and would be so if they were but single arrows any one tentation would endanger us any one tribulation would encumber us but they are plurall arrows and many arrows A man is not safe because one arrow hath mist him nor though he be free from one sin In the execution of Achan all Israel threw stones at him and stoned him If Achan had had some brother or cousin amongst them that would have flung over or short or weakly what good had that done him when he must stand the mark for all the rest All Israel must stone him A little disposition towards some one vertue may keep thee from some one tentation Thou mayst think it pity to corrupt a chast soul and forbear soliciting her pity to oppresse a submitting wretch and forbear to vex him and yet practise and that with hunger and thirst other sins or
find him upon the consideration of the cause of all these distresses That it is from the Contemplation of the anger of God There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine Anger there wee shall finde a way offered to him that may if hee pursue it aright bring him to a Reparation to a Redintegration for if hee look upon the Anger of God in a right line it will shew him that as that Anger is the cause of his Calamities so his sinnes are the cause of that Anger May wee not piously apply that Proverbiall speech Corruptio optimi pessima that when good things take in another nature then their own they take it in the highest exaltation thus that when God who is all mercy growes angry he becomes all anger The Holy Ghost himselfe seemes to have given us leave to make that application when expressing God in the height of his anger hee calls God then in that anger a Dove wee read it the fiercenesse of an oppressour but Saint Hierome reads it The anger of a Dove And truly there is no other word then that in that tongue the word is Ionah that signifies a Dove and that word does signifie a Dove in many other places of Scripture And that Prophet which made his flight from God when hee sent him to Nineveh is called by that name Ionah a Dove And the Fathers of the Latine Church have read and interpreted it so of a Dove Some of them take Nebuchadnezzar to be this angry Dove because hee left his owne Dove-coat to feed abroad to prey upon them and some because the Dove was the Armes and Ensigne of the Assyrians from the time of Semiramis But the rest take this Dove to bee God himselfe and that the sinnes of men had put a Gall into a Dove Anger into God And then to what height that anger growes is expressed in the Prophet Hosea I will meet them says God when hee is pleased he says hee will wait for them as a Bear no longer a Dove as a Bear robbed of her whelpes sensible of his injuries and I will rent the caule of their hearts shiver them in peeces with a dispersion with a discerption And I will devour them as with a Lyon nothing shall re-unite them again But I will break them as a Potters vessell that cannot be made whole again Honour not the malice of thine enemy so much as to say thy misery comes from him Dishonour not the complexion of the times so much as to say thy misery comes from them justifie not the Deity of Fortune so much as to say thy misery comes from her Finde God pleased with thee and thou hast a hook in the nostrils of every Leviathan power cannot shake thee Thou hast a wood to cast into the waters of Marah the bitternesse of the times cannot hurt thee thou hast a Rock to dwell upon and the dream of a Fortunes wheel can not overturn thee But if the Lord be angry he needs no Trumpets to call in Armies if he doe but sibilare muscam hisse and whisper for the flye and the Bee there is nothing so little in his hand as cannot discomfort thee discomfit thee dissolve and powr-out attenuate and annihilate the very marrow of thy soul. Every thing is His and therefore every thing is Hee thy sicknesse is his sword and therefore it is Hee that strikes thee with it still turne upon that consideration the Lord is angry But then look that anger in the â—face take it in the right â—line as the Originall phrase in this text directs à facieirae Dei There is no soundnesse in my flesh from the face of thine anger As there is a Manifestation of Gods anger in this phrase The face of Gods anger so there is a Multiplication a plurality too for it is indeed Mippenei à faciebus the faces the divers manifestations of Gods anger for the face of God and so of every thing proceeding from God is that by which God or that work of God is manifested to us And therefore since God manifests his anger so many usefull and medicinall ways unto thee take heed of looking upon his anger where his anger hath no face no manifestation take heed of imagining an anger in God amounting to thy Damnation in any such Decree as that God should be angry with thee in that height without looking upon thy sinnes or without any declaration why hee is angry Hee opens his face to thee in his Law he manifests himself to thee in the Conditions by which he hath made thy salvation possible and till he see thee in the transgression of them he is not angry And when he is angry so be glad he shews it in his face in his outward declarations that fire smothered would consume all Gods anger reserved till the last day will last as long as that day as that undeterminable day for ever When should we goe about to quench that fire that never bursts out or to seek reconciliation before a hostility be declared Therefore Saint Bernard begs this anger at Gods hands Irascaris mihi Domine O Lord be angry with me And therefore David thanks God in the behalf of that people for his anger Thou forgavest them though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions The fires of hell in their place in hell have no light But any degrees of the fires of Hell that can break out in this life have in Gods own purpose so much light as that through the darkest smother of obduration or desperation God would have us see him Therefore Saint Hierome makes this milder use of this phrase that God shewes faciem irae but non iram that his face of anger is rather a telling us that hee will bee angry then that hee is angry yet the corrections that God inflicts to reduce us if wee profit not by them were anger Ab initio wee shall suffer for the sinnes from which those corrections should have reduced us and for that particular sinne of not being reduced by them but if they have their effect there was not a drop of gall there was not a dramme of anger in the anger Now that that God intends in them is that as wee apprehend our calamities to proceed from Gods anger and to discharge Destiny and Fortune so wee apprehend that anger to proceed from our own sinnes and so discharge God himselfe There is no rest in my bones because of my sin As we are the sons of Dust worse the sonnes of Death we must say to Corruption Thou art my Father and to the worm Thou art my Mother so we may say to the anger of God it is our grandfather that begot these miseries but wee must say too to our sinne Thou art my great-grandfather that begot Gods anger upon us and here is our wofull pedegree howsoever wee be otherwise descended 'T is true there is no soundnesse there is misery enough
Lord Lord why hast thou forsaken me of a suffering hell in his soule or of a departing of the Father from him for Ioh. 16. it is I am not alone for the Father is with me offer no exposition of those words more convenient then that the foresight of the Jewes imminent calamities expressed and drew those words from him In their Afflictions were all kindes and all degrees of Miserie So that as one writer of the Roman Story saith elegantly He that considereth the Acts of Rome considereth not the Acts of one People but of Mankinde I may truly of the Jewes Afflictions he that knoweth them is ignorant of nothing that this world can threaten For to that which the present authority of the Romanes inflicted upon them our Schools have added upon their posterities that they are â—laves to Christians and their goods subject to spoile if the Lawes of the Princes where they live did not out of indulgency defend them Did he then aske and was not heard God forbid A man is heard when that is given which his will desired and our will is ever understood to be a will rectified and concurrent with God This is Voluntas a discoursed and examined will That which is upon the first sight of the object is Velleit as a willingnesse which we resist not onely because we thought not of it And such a willingnesse had Christ when suddenly he wished that the cup might passe but quickly conformed his will to his Fathers But in this Prayer his will was present therefore fulfilled Briefly then in this Prayer he commended not all the Jewes for he knew the chief to sin knowingly and so out of the reach of his reason for they know not Nor any except they repented after for it is not ignorance but repentance which deriveth to us the benefit of Gods pardon For he that sinnes of Ignorance may be pardoned if he repent but he that sinnes against his Conscience and is thereby impenitible cannot be pardoned And this is all which I will say of these words Father forgive them for they know not what they do O eternall God look down from thy Throne to thy footstoole from thy blessed Company of Angels and Saints to us by our own faults made more wretched and contemptible then the wormes which shall eat us or the dust which we were and shall be O Lord under the weight of thy Iustice we cannot stand Nor had any other title to thy mercie but the Name of Father and that we have forfeited That name of Sonnes of God thou gavest to us all at once in Adam and he gave it away from us all by his sinne And thou hast given it again to every one of us in our regeneration by Baptisme and we have lost it again by our transgressions And yet thou was not weary of being mercifull but diddest choose one of us to be a fit and worthy ransome for us all and by the death of thy Christ our Iesus gavest us again the title and priviledge of thy Sonnes but with conditions which though easie we have broke and with a yoke which though light and sweet we have cast off How shall we then dare to call thee Father Or to beg that thou wilt make one triall more of us These hearts are accustomed to rebellions and hopelesse But O God create in us new hearts hearts capable of the love and feare due to a Father And then we shall dare to say Father and to say Father forgive us Forgive us O Father and all which are engaged and accountable to thee for us forgive our Parents and those which undertooke for us in Baptisme Forgive the civill Magistrate and the Minister Forgive them their negligences and us our stubbornnesses And give us the grace that we may ever sincerely say both this Prayer of Example and Counsell Forgive our enemies and that other of Precept Our Father which art in Heaven c. SERMON XXXV Preached February 21. 1611. MATTHEVV 21. 44. Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grinde him to powder ALmighty God made us for his glory and his glory is not the glory of a Tyrant to destroy us but his glory is in our happinesse He put us in a faire way towards that happinesse in nature in our creation that way would have brought us to heaven but then we fell and if we consider our selves onely irrecoverably He put us after into another way over thorny hedges and ploughed Lands through the difficulties and incumbrances of all the Ceremoniall Law there was no way to heaven then but that after that he brought us a crosse way by the Crosse of Jesus Christ and the application of his Gospell and that is our way now If we compare the way of nature and our way we went out of the way at the Townes end as soone as we were in it we were out of it Adam dyed as soone as he lived and fell as soone as he was set on foote If we compare the way of the Law and ours the Jewes and the Christians their Synagogue was but as Gods farme our Church is as his dwelling house to them locavit vineam he let out his Vine to husbandmen and then peregrè profectus he went into a farre Countrey he promised a Messias but deferred his coming a long time but to us Dabitur Regnum a Kingdome is given the Vineyard is changed into a Kingdome here is a good improvement and the Lease into an absolute deed of gift here is a good inlargement of the Terme He gives therefore he will not take away againe He gives a Kingdome therefore there is a fulnesse and all-sufficiency in the gift and he does not go into any farre Countrey but stayes with us to governe us usque ad consummationem till the end of the world here therefore God takes all into his owne hands and he comes to dwell upon us himself to which purpose he ploughs up our hearts and he builds upon us Vos Dei agricultura Dei aedificium Ye are Gods husbandry and Gods building Now of this this husbandry God speaks familiarly and parabolicaly many times in Scriptures of this building particularly and principally in this place where having intimated unto us the severall benefits we have received from Christ Jesus in that appellation as he is a stone he tells us also our dangers in mis-behaving our selves towards it Whosoever shall fall on this c. Christ then is a stone and we may run into two dangers first we may fall upon this stone and then this stone may fall upon us but yet we have a great deale of comfort presented to us in that Christ is presented to us as a stone for there we shall finde him first to be the foundation stone nothing can stand which is not built upon Christ Secondly to be Lapis Angularis a corner stone that unites things most dis-united and then
compelled to come as it is expressed in the Gospell when the Master of the feast sends into the streets and to the hedges to compell blind and lame to come in to his feast A fountaine breaks out in the wildernesse but that fountaine cares not whether any Man come to fetch water or no A fresh and fit gale blowes upon the Sea but it cares not whether the Mariners hoise saile or no A rose blowes in your garden but it calls you not to smell to it Christ Jesus hath done all this abundantly he hath bought an Hospitall he hath stored it with the true balme of Palestine with his bloud which he shed there and he calls upon you all to come for it Hoe every one that thirsteth you that have no money come buy Wine and Milke without money eate that which is good and let your soules delight in fatnesse and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you even the sure mercies of David This Hospitall this way and meanes to cure spirituall diseases was all that Christ had for himselfe but he improved it he makes it a Church and a glorious Church which is our last consideration Quis sinis to what end he bestowed all this cost His end was that he might make it to himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle but that end must be in the end of all here it cannot be Cum tot a dicat ecclesia quamdiu hîc est Dimitte debita nostra non utique hîc est sine macula et ruga Since as yet the whole Church says forgive us our Trespasses the Church as yet is not without spots or wrinkles The wrinkles are the Testimonies of our age that is our sinne derived from Adam and the spots are the sinnes which we contract our selves and of these spots and wrinkles we cannot be delivered in this world And therefore the Apostle says here that Christ hath bestowed all this cost on this purchase ut sisteret sibi Ecclesiam that he might setle such a glorious and pure Church to himselfe first ut sisteret that he might setle it which can onely be done in heaven for here in Earth the Church will always have earthquakes Opartet haereses esse stormes and schismes must necessarily be the Church is in a warfare the Church is in a pilgrimage and therefore here is no setling And then he doth it ut sisteret sibi to setle it to himselfe for in the tyranny of Rome the Church was in some sort setled things were carried quietly enough for no Man durst complaine but the Church was setled all upon the Vicar and none upon the Parson the glory of the Bishop of Rome had eclipsed and extinguished the glory of Christ Iesus In other places we have seen the Church setled so as that no man hath done or spoken any thing against the government thereof but this may have been a setling by strong hand by severed discipline and heavy Lawes we see where Princes have changed the Religion the Church may be setled upon the Prince or setled upon the Prelates that is be serviceable to them and be ready to promote and further any purpose of theirs and all this while not be setled upon Christ this purpose ut sisteret sibi to setle such a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle holy to himselfe is reserved for the Triumphant time when she shall be in possession of that beauty which Christ foresaw in her long before when he said Thou art all faire my love and there is no spot in thee and when we that shall be the Children of the Mariage Chamber◠shall be glad and rejoice and give glory to him because the Mariage of the Lambe is come and his wife hath made her selfe ready that is we that are of that Church shall be so clothed as that our own clothes shall not defile us againe as Io◠complaines that they doe as long as we are in this world for though I make me never so cleane yet mine own clothes defile me againe as it is in that place But yet Beloved Christ hath not made so improvident a bargaine as to give so great a rate himselfe for a Church so farre in reversion as till the day of Judgement That he should enter into bonds for this payment from all eternity even in the eternall decree between the Father and him that he should really pay this price his precious bloud for this Church one thousand six hundred years agoe and he should receive no glory by this Church till the next world◠Here was a long lease here were many lives the lives of all the men in the world to be served before him But it is not altogether so for he gave himselfe that he might settle such a Church then a glorious and a pure Church but all this while the Church is building in heaven by continuall accesse of holy Soules which come thither and all the way he workes to that end He sanctifies it and cleanses it by the washing of water through the word as we find in our Text. He therefore stays not so long for our Sanctification but that we have meanes of being sanctified here Christ stays not so long for his glory but that he hath here a glorious Gospell his Word and mysterious Sacraments here Here then is the writing and the Seale the Word and the Sacrament and he hath given power and commandement to his Ministers to deliver both writing and Seale the Word and Baptisme to his children This Sacrament of Baptisme is the first It is the Sacrament of inchoation of Initiation The Sacrament of the Supper is not given but to them who are instructed and presum'd to understand all Christian duties and therefore the Word if we understand the Word for the Preaching of the Word may seeme more necessary at the administration of this Sacrament then at the other Some such thing seems to be intimated in the institution of the Sacraments In the institution of the Supper it is onely said Take and eate and drinke and doe that in remembrance of me and it is onely said that they sand a Pslame and s◠departed In the institution of Baptisme there is more solemnity more circumstance for first it was instituted after Christs Resurrection and then Christ proceeds to it with that majesticall preamble All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth◠and therefore upon that title he gives power to his Apostles to joine heaven and earth by preaching and by baptisme but here is more then singing of a Psalme for Christ commands them first to teach and then to baptize and then after the commandement of Baptisme he refreshes that commandement againe of teaching them whom they baptized to observe all things that he had commanded them I speake not this as though Baptisme were uneffectuall without a Sermon S. Angustines words Accedat yerbum fiat Sacramentum when the Word is
can cover it and say He that knew that I bought my office will be content to let me be a saver by it If our hands be foule with shedding of innocent bloud as Saint Hierome sayes that Adam eate the Apple Ne contristaretur Delicias suas left he should over grieve his wife by refusing it Ne contristaremur Delicias nostras either because we would not displease another or because our beloved sinne to which we had maried our selves did sollicite us to it Particular excuses cover our particular defects from the sight of men but to put on Christ covers us all over even from the sight of God himselfe So that how narrowly so ever he search into us he sees nothing but the whitenesse of his Sonnes innocency and the rednesse of his Sonnes bloud When the prodigall child returned to his father his father clothed him intirely and all at once he put a robe upon him to cover all his defects which Robe when God puts upon us in clothing us with Christ that robe is not onely Dignitaes quam perdidit Adam as Augustine says but it is Amictus sapientiae as Ambrase enlarges it It does not onely make us aswell as we were in Adam but it enables us better to preserve that state It does not onely cover us that is make us excusable for our past and present sinnes but it indues us with grace and wisdome to keep that robe still and never to returne to our former foulnesses and deformities Our first parents Adam and Eve were naked all over but they were not sensible of all their nakednesse but onely of those parts whereof they were ashamed Nothing but the shame of the world makes us discerne our deformities And onely for those faults which shame makes us take knowledge of we goe about to provide And we provide nothing but short Aprons as that word signified and those but of fig-leaves That which comes first to hand and that which is withered before it is made that doe we take for an excuse for an aversion of our owne conscience when she begins to cast an eye or to examine the nakednesse and deformities of our soules But when God came to cloath them their short aprons were extended to coates that covered them all over and their fig-leaves to strong skins for God saw that not onely those parts of which they were already ashamed needed covering but that in all their other parts if they continued naked and still exposed to the Injurie and violence of the weather they would contract diseases and infirmities and therefore God covers them so throughly as he doth not onely provide for reparation of former inconveniences but prepare against future And so perfect effects doth this garment Christ Iesus work upon us if we put him on He doth not onely cover Originall sinnes which is the effect of those disobedient Members which derive sinne upon us in the sinfull generation of our parents but he covers all our actuall sinnes which we multiplie every day and not onely those which the world makes us ashamed of but which we hide from the world yea which we hide from our selfes that is sinnes which by a long custome of practise we commit so habitually and so indifferently as that we have forgot that they are sinnes But as it was in Adams Clothing there so must it be in our spirituall putting on of Christ. The word used there Labash doth not signifie that God cloathed Adam nor that Adam cloathed himselfe but as the Grammarians call it it is in Hiphil and it signified Induere fecit eos God caused them to be cloathed or God caused them to cloath themselves which is also intimated nay evidently expressed in the words of this text we are our selves poore and impotent creatures we cannot make our selves ready we are poore and beggerly creatures we have nothing to put on Christ is that garment and then Christ is the very life by which we stretch out our armes and our legs to put on that garment yea he puts it on upon us he doth the whole worke but yet he doth not thrust it on He makes us Able to put it on but if we be not willing then he puts no necessity upon our will but we remaine naked still Induere then to put on is an extension a dilatation over all And sometimes it signifies an abundant and overflowing and overwhelming measure of Gods judgements upon us Princeps Induetur desolatione The prince shal be 〈◊〉 with desolation and with astonishment But most commonly the rich and all-sufficient proportion of his mercies and spirituall benefits as he expressed it to his Apostles at his ascension Stay you in the Citty quousque Induamini virtute ex alto till ye be indued so we translate it that is cloathed with power from on high And this was per fidem ei innitends and per opera cum declar ando says Saint Augustine He onely hath pat on Christ which hath Christ in himselfe by faith and shewes him to others by his works which is Lucernâ— ardens as Christ said of Iohn Baptist a burning lamp and a shining lamp profitable to others as well as to himselfe There is a degree of vanity and pride whereby some Men delight to weare their richest clothes innermost and most out of sight But in this double garment of a Christian it is necessarily so for faith is the richest and most precious part of this garment an this which is our Holy-day garment is worne innermost for that our faith is onely seen by God but our outward garment of workes which is our worky-day garment that is our sanctification is seen of all the world And that also must be put on or else we have not put on Christ and it must cover us all over that is our sanctification must goe through our whole life in a constant and an even perseverance we must not onely be Hospitale and feed the poore at Christmas be sober and abstinent the day that we receive repent and thinke of amendment of life in the day of visitation and sicknesse but as the garment which Christ wore was seamlesse and intire so this garment which is Christ Iesus that is our sanctification should be intire and uninterrupted in the whole course of our lives we must remember that at the Mariage which figured the kingdome of heaven the master of the feast reprehended and punished him that was come in not expresly because he had not a wedding garment but Quâ—modo intrasti says he how camest thou in not having on thy wedding garment So that if it could be possible though we had put on the inside of this garment which is Christ that is if we had faith yet if we have not the outside too that is sanctification we have not put on Christ as we should for this is Indui virtute ex alto to have both inside faith and outside sanctification and to put it on so that it may
there is ablutiâ— pedum a washing of our feet of our steps and walkes in this world and that 's by repentance sealed in the other Sacrament and properly that is for actuall sinnes Thirdly in this ablution there is an Ego lavi there is a washing and I my selfe doe something towards this cleansing of my selfe And fourthly it is Lavi it is I have washed not Lavabo it is not I will wash it is already done it is not put off to mine age nor to my death bed but Lavi I have washed And lastly it is Pedes meas I have washed mine owne feet for if by my teaching I cleanse others and remaine by my bad life in foule ways my selfe I am not within this text Lavi pedes meos I have not washed my feet But if we have sincerely performed the first part we shall performe the other too Quomodo we shall come into a religious detestation and indignation of falling into the same foulenesse againe To passe then through all these for of all these that 's true which Saint Basil says of all words in the Scriptures Habent minutissime particulae suae mysteria Every word hath force and use as in Pearle every seed Pearle is as medicinall as the greatest so there is a restorative nature in every word of the Scriptures and in every word the soule findes a rise and help for her devotion To begin with the first the necessity of washing consider us in our first beginning Concepti in peccatis our Mothers conceived us in sin and being wrapped up in uncleannesse there can any Man bring a cleane thing out of filthinesse There is not one for as we were planted in our Mothers wombe in conception so we were transplanted from thence into this world in our Baptisme Nascimur filii â—rae for we are by nature the children of wrath as well as others And as in the bringing forth and bringing up of the best and most precious and most delicate plants Men employ most dung so the greatest persons where the spirit and grace of God doth not allay that intemperance which naturally arises out of abundance and provocation and out of vanity and ambitious glory in outward oftentations there is more dung more uncleannesse more sinne in the conception and birth of their children then of meaner and poorer parents It is a degree of uncleannesse to fixe our thoughts too earnestly upon the uncleannesse of our conception and of our birth when wee call that a testimony of a right comming if we come into the world with our head forward in a head-long precipitation and when we take no other testimony of our being alive but that we were heard cry and for an earnest and a Prophecy that we shall be viri sanguinum et dâ—losi bloudy and deceitfull Men false and treacherous to the murdering of our owne soules we come into this world as the Egyptians went out of it swallowed and smothered in a red sea Pueri sanguinum infirmi weake and bloudy infants at our birth But to carry our thoughts from materiall to sptrituall uncleannesses In peccatâ— concepti we were conceived in sinne but who can tell us how That flesh in our mothers wombe which we are having no sinne in it selfe for that masse of flesh could not be damned if there never came a soule into it and that soule which comes into that flesh from Godâ— having no sinne in it neither for God creates nothing infected with sinne neither should that soule be damned if it came not into that body The body being without sinne and the soule being without sinne yet in the first minute that this body and soule meet and are united we become in that instant guilty of Adams sinne committed six thousand years before Such is our sinne and uncleannesse in Originall sinne as the subtillest Man in the Schooles is never able to tell us how or when we contracted that sinne but all have it And therefore if there be any any any-where of that generation that are pure in their owne eyes and yet are not washed from their filthinesse as Solomon speakes Erubesce vas stercorum says good Saint Bernard If it be a vessell of gold it is but a vessell of excrements if it be a bed of curious plants it is but a bed of dung as their tombes hereafter shall be but glorious covers of rotten carcasses so their bodies are now but pampered covers of rotten soules Erubescat vas stercorum let that vessell of uncleannesse that barrell of dung confesse a necessity of washing and seeke that and rejoyce in that for thus farre that is to the pollution of Originall sinne in peccato concepti and nasâ—imur filii iraâ— wee are conceived in sinne first and then we are borne the children of wrath But where 's our remedy Why for this for this originall uncleannesse is the water of Baptisme Opâ—rtet nos renasci we must be borne againe we must There is a necessity of Baptisme As we are the children of Christian parents we have Ius ad rem a right to the Covenant we may claime baptisme the Church cannot deny it us And as we are baptized in the Christian Church we have Ius in re a right in the Covenant and all the benefits thereof all the promises of the Gospell we are sure that we are conceived in sinne and sure that we are borne children of wrath but not sure that we are cleansed or reconciled to God by any other meanes then that which he hath ordained Baptisme The Spirit of God moved first upon the water and the spirit of life grew first in the water Primus liquor quod viveret edidit The first living creatures in the first creation were in the waters and the first breath of spirituall life came to us from the water of baptisme In the Temple there was Mare aeneum a brasen sea In the Church there is Mare aureum a golden sea which is Baptisterium the font in which we discharge our selves of all our first uncleannesses of all the guiltinesse of Originall sinne but because we contract new uncleannesses by our uncleane ways here therefore there must bee Ablutio pedum a washing of our feet of our ways of our actions which is our second branch Cecidimus in lutum super acervum lapidum says Saint Bernard we fell by Adams fall into the durt but from that we are washed in baptisme but we fell upon a heape of sharpe stones too and we feel those wounds and those bruises all our lives after Impingimus meridie we stumble at noone day In the brightest light of the Gospell in the brightest light of grace in the best strength of Repentance and our resolutions to the contrary yet we stumble and fall againe Duo nobis pedes says that Father Natura Consâ—eâ—â—do we stand says he upon two feet Nature and Custome and we are lame of one foot hereditarily
then thirdly here is a continuation of Gods anger when they are risen for they are not rais'd to their former state and dignity from which they were fallen they are not rais'd to be established but it is arise and depart And in all this which is a fourth Consideration God precludes them from any hope by solicitation he reveales his purpose his Decree and consequently his inexorablenesse evidently in that word for never murmur never dispute never intreat you must depart For it is determined it is resolved and here is not your Rest In which also the Commination is yet more and more aggravated first in that they lose their Rest which God hath sold them so dearly by so many battailes and so many afflictions and which God had sworn to them so solemnly by so many ratifications they must lose their Rest they must have no Rest Here not there not in the Land of Promise it selfe And then lastly as they are denied all rest there There where was the wombe and Center of their Rest so there is no intimation no hope given that they should have rest any where else for as they were to rise onely to depart so they were to depart into Captivity The first is an increpation they were fallen but from whence It was once said Qui jacet in terra non habet unde cadat but he that is earth it selfe whither can he fall whither can Man derived from earth before his life enamored of the earth embracing it and maried to it in his life destined to the earth betrothed to it for a second mariage after this life whither can he fall It is true of us all I shall say to corruption Thou art my father and to the worme Thou art my Mother and my sister and can we fall into worse company contract an alliance with a more base and beggerly kindred then this Not if we were left there then we could not but when we consider a nation of whom God hath said sponsabo te mihi I will mary thee without any respect of disparagement in thy lownesse I will not refuse thee for it I will not upbraid thee with it I will mary thee for ever and without any purpose of divorce sponsabo in aeternum of this nation thus assum'd thus contracted thus endowed thus assured why may not we wonder as vehemently as the Prophet did of the fallen Angels Quomodo cecidisti de caelo Lucifer filius Orientis how did this nation fall out of Gods armes out of Gods bosome Himselfe tells us how what he had done to exalt them what they had done to devest his favours for their naturall lownes he says In thy nativity when thou wast born thy Navell was not cut thou wast not washed thou wast not salted thou wast not swadled No eye pitied thee but thou wast cast into the open fields in contempt I passed by and saw thee in thy bloud and said thou shalt live I sware unto thee and entred into a covenant with thee and thou becamest mine I washed thee anointed thee and adorned thee and thou wast perfect through my beauty which I set upon thee well then in this state Quomodo cecidisti de caelo how fell she out of Gods armes out of his bosome thus Thou didst trust in thine owne beauty because of thy renowne and so playedst the harlor When that nation was in massa damnata a loafe of Adams dow through all which the infectious leaven of sin had passed without difference when that nation had no more title nor pretence to Gods mercy then any of their fellow wormes when God had heaped and accumulated his tempor all blessings upon them and above all dwelt with them in the alliance and in the familiarity of a particular Religion which contracted God and them and left out all the world beside when God had imprinted this beauty in them and that they had a renowne and reputation for that they trusted to their owne beauty to worship whom they would and how they would they followed their own invention yea they trusted in beauty which was not their owne in borrowed beauty in painted beauty and so tooke in and applied themselves to all the spirituall fornications to all the Idolatries of the nations about them some that were too absurd to be hearkned to some too obscene and foule to be named now by us though the Prophets to their farther reproach and confusion have named them some too ridiculous to fall into any Mans consideration that could seriously thinke of a Majesty in a God which should be worshipped yet all these absurd and obscene and ridiculous Idolatries they prostituted them selves unto Take them in their lowness for any disposition towards the next world and this was their state Their navell was not cut that is they were still incorporated into their mother to earth and to sinne and they were not one step higher then all the world beside in Iacobs ladder whose top is in heaven Take them in their dignity in this world and then we finde them in Egypt where they were not Personae but Res they were not their Masters Men but their Masters goods they were their cattell to vex and wear out with their labours spent upon the delights of others They must goe farre for straw a great labour for a little matter and they must burne it when they had brought it they must make bricke but others must build houses with their materialls and they perish in the fields they must beget children but onely for the slaughter and to be murdred as sooneâ—â— they were borne what nation what Man what beast what worme what weed if it could have understood their state would have changed with them then This was their dejection their exinanition in Egypt if we shall beginne there to consider what he did for them As after in the Christian Church he made the bloud of the Martyrs the seed of the Church so in Egypt he propagated and multiplied his Children in the midst of their cruell oppressions and slaughters as though their bloud had been seed to encrease by under the weight of their depressions he gave them growth and stature and strength as though their wounds had been playsters and their vexations cordials when he had made Egypt as a Hell by kindling all his plagues in her bosome yet Non dereliquit in Inferno he left not his beloved in this Hell he paled in a Paradise in this Hell a Goshen in Egypt and gave his servants security briefly those whom the sword should have lessen'd whom labour should have creepled whom contempt should have begger'd he brought out numerous and in multitudes strong and in courage rich and in abundance and he opened the Red-sea as he should have opened the booke of life to shew them their Names their security and he shut the sea as that book upon the Egyptians to shew them their irrecoverable exclusion If we consider what he did
letting out that line he that hath fixed his harping Iron in the Whale endangers himselfe and his boate God hath made us fishers of Men and when we have struck a Whale touch'd the conscience of any person which thought himselfe above rebuke and increpation it struggles and strives and as much as it can endevours to draw fishers and boate the Man and his fortune into contempt and danger But if God tye a sicknesse or any other calamity to the end of the line that will winde up this Whale againe to the boate bring back this rebellious sinner better advised to the mouth of the Minister for more counsaile and to a better souplenesse and inclinablenesse to conforme himselfe to that which he shall after receive from him onely calamity makes way for a rebuke to enter There was such a tendernesse amongst the orators which were used to speake in the presence of the people to the Romane Emperors which was a way of Civill preaching that they durst not tell them then their duties nor instruct them what they should doe any other way then by saying that they had done so before They had no way to make the Prince wise and just and temperate but by a false praising him for his former acts of wisedome and justice and temperance which he had never done and that served to make the people beleeve that the Princes were so and it served to teach the Prince that he ought to be so And so though this were an expresse and a direct flattery yet it was a collaterall increpation too And on the other side our later times have seen another art another invention another workmanship that when a great person hath so abused the favour of his Prince that he hath growne subject to great and weighty increpations his owne friends have made Libells against him thereby to lay some light aspersions upon him that the Prince might thinke that this comming with the malice of a Libell was the worst that could be said of him and so as the first way to the Emperors though it were a direct flattery yet it was a collater all Increpation too so this way though it were a direct increpation yet it was a collater all flattery too If I should say of such a congregation as this with acclamations and showes of much joy Blessed company holy congregation in which there is no pride at all no vanity at all no prevarication at all I could be thought in that but to convey an increpation and a rebuke mannerly in a wish that it were so altogether If I should say of such a congregation as this with exclamations and show of much bitternesse that they were sometimes somewhat too worldly in their owne businesse sometimes somewhat too remisse in the businesses of the next world and adde no more to it this were but as a plot and a faint libelling a publishing of small sinnes to keep greater from being talk'd of slight increpations are but as whisperings and work no farther but to bring men to say Tush no body hears it no body heeds it we are never the worse nor never the worse thought of for all that he says And loud and bitter increpations are as a trumpet and work no otherwise but to bring them to say Since he hath published all to the world already since all the world knowes of it the shame is past and we may goe forward in our ways againe Is there then no way to convey an increpation profitably David could find no way Vidi praevaricatores tabescebam says he I saw the transgressors but I languished and consumed away with griefe because they would not keep the law he could not mend them and so impaired himselfe with his compassion but God hath provided a way here to convey to imprint this increpation this rebuke sweetly and succesfully that is by way of counsaile by bidding them arise he chides them them for falling by presenting the exaltation and exultation of a peacefull conscience he brings them to a foresight to what miserable distractions and distortions of the soule a habite of sinne will bring them to If you will take knowledge of Gods fearfull judgements no other way but by hearing his mercies preached his Mercie is new every morning and his dew falls every evening and morning and evening we will preach his mercies unto you If you will beleeve a hell no other way but by hearing the joyes of heaven presented to you you shall heare enough of that we will receive you in the morning and dismisse you in the evening in a religious assurance in a present inchoation of the joyes of heaven It is Gods way and we are willing to pursue it to shew you that you are Enemies to Christ we pray you in Christs stead that you would be reconciled to him to shew you that you are faln we pray you to arise and si audieritis if you hear us so if any way any means convey this rebuke this sense into you Si audieritis lucrati sumus fratrem If you hear we have gain'd a brother and that 's the richest gain that we can get if you may get salvation by us Gods rebukes and increpations then are sweet and gentle to the binding up not to the scattering of a Conscience And the particular Rebuke in this place conveyed by way of counsail is That they were faln and worse could not be said how mild and easie soever the word be The ruin of the Angels in heaven the ruin of Adam in Paradise is still call'd by that word it is but the fall of Angels and the fall of Adam and yet this fall of Adam cost the bloud of Christ and this bloud of Christ did not rectifie the Angels after their fall Inter objectos objectissimus peccator amongst them that are faln he fals lowest that continues in sin for sayes the same Father Man is a king in his Creation he hath that Commission Subjicite dominamini the world and himselfe which is a lesse world but a greater dominion are within his Jurisdiction and then servilly he submits himselfe and all to that Qua nihil magis barbarum then which nothing is more tyrannous more barbarous All persons have naturally all Nations ever had a detestation of falling into their hands who were more barbarous more uncivill then themselves peccato nihil magis barbarum sayes that Father sin doth not govern us by a rule by a Law but tyrannically impetuously and tempestuously It hath been said of Rome Romae regulariter malè agitur There a man may know the price of a sin before he doe it and he knowes what his dispensation will cost whether he be able to sin at that rate whether he have wherewithall that if not he may take a cheap sin Thou canst never say that of thy soule Intus regulariter malè agitur Thou canst never promise thy selfe to sin safely and so to elude the Law
against the holy Ghost for this is the nearest step thou hast made to it to think that thou hast done it walke in that large field of the Scriptures of God and from the first flower at thy entrance the flower of Paradise Semen mulieris the generall promise of the seed of the woman should bruise the Serpents head to the last word of that Messias upon the Crosse Consummatum est that all that was promised for us is now performed and from the first to the last thou shalt find the savour of life unto life in all those flowers walke over the same alley againe and consider the first man Adam in the beginning who involv'd thee in originall sinne and the thiefe upon the Crosse who had continued in actuall sinnes all his life and sealed all with the sinne of reviling Christ himselfe a little before his expiration and yet he recovered Paradise and Paradise that day and see if thou canst make any shift to exclude thy selfe receive the fragrancy of all these Cordialls Vivit Dominâ—â— as the Lord liveth I would not the death of a sinner Quandocunque At what time soever a sinner repenteth and of this text Neminem judieat Christ judgeth no man to destruction here and if thou find after all these Antidotes a suspitious ayre a suspicious working in that Impossibiâ—e est that it is impossible for them who were once inlightened if they fall away to renew them againe by repentance sprinkle upon that worme wood of Impossibile est that Manna of Quorum remiseritis whose sinnes yee remit are remitted and then it will have another tast to thee and thon wilt see that that impossibility lies upon them onely who are utterly fallen away into an absolute Apostasie and infidelity that make a mocke of Christ and crucifie him againe as it is expressed there who undervalue and despise the Church of God those means which Christ Jesus hath instituted in his Church for renewing such as are fallen To such it is impossible because there are no other ordinary meanes possible but that 's not thy case thy case is onely a doubt that those meanes that are shaâ—â— not be applied to thee and even that is a slippery state to doubt of the mercy of God to thee in particular this goes so neare making thy sinne greater then Gods mercy as that it makes thy sinne greater then daily adulteries daily murthers daily blasphemies daily prophanings of the Sabbath could have done and though thou canst never make that true in this life that thy sinnes are greater then God can forgive yet this is a way to make them greater then God will forgive Now to collect both our Exercises and to connexe both Texts Christ judgeth all men and Christ judgeth no man he claimes all judgment and he disavows all judgement and they consist well together he was at our creation but that was not his first sense the Arians who say Erat quando non erat there was a time when Christ was not intimating that he had a beginning and therefore was a creature yet they will allow that he was created before the generall creation and so assisted at ours but he was infinite generations before that in the bosome of his Father at our election and there in him was executed the first judgment of separating those who were his the elect from the reprobate and then he knows who are his by that first Judgment And so comes to his second Judgment to seale all those in the visible Church with the outward mark of his baptisme and the inward marke of his Spirit and those whom he calls so he justifies and sanctifies and brings them to his third Judgment to an established and perpetuall glory And so all Judgment is his But then to judge out of humane affections and passions by detraction and calumny as they did to whom he spoke at this time so he judges no man so he denies judgment To usurpe upon the jurisdiction of others or to exercise any other judgment then was his commission as his pretended Vicar doth so he judges no man so he disavows all judgment To judge so as that our condemnation should be irremediable in this life so he judges no man so he forswears all judgment As I live saith the Lord of hosts and as I have died saith the Lord Jesus so I judge none Acknowledge his first Judgment thy election in him Christ his second Judgment thy justification by him breath and pant after his third Judgement thy Crown of glory for him intrude not upon the right of other men which is the first defame not calumniate not other men which is the second lay not the name of reprobate in this life upon any man which is the third Judgement that Christ disavows here and then thou shalt have well understood and well practised both these texts The Father hath committed all Iudgment to the Sonne and yet The Sonne judges no man SERMON XIIII Preached at Lincolns Inne JOB 19. 26. And though after my skin wormes destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God AMongst those Articles in which our Church hath explain'd and declar'd her faith this is the eight Article that the three Creeds that of the councell of Nice that of Athanasius and that which is commonly known by the name of the Apostles Creed ought throughly to be received and embrac'd The meaning of the Church is not that onely that should be beleev'd in which those three Creeds agree for the Nicen Creed mentions no Article after that of the holy Ghost not the Catholique Church not the Communion of Saints not the Resurrection of the flesh Athanasius his Creed does mention the Resurrection but not the Catholique Church nor the communion of Saints but that all should be beleev'd which is in any of them all which is summ'd up in the Apostles Creed Now the reason expressed in that Article of our Church why all this is to be beleeved is Because all this may be prov'd by most certaine warrants of holy Scriptures The Article does not insist upon particular places of Scripture not so much as point to them But they who have enlarged the Articles by way of explanation have done that And when they come to cite those places of Scripture which prove the Article of the Resurrection I observe that amongst those places they forbeare this text so that it may seem that in their opinion this Scripture doth not concerne the Resurrection It will not therefore be impertinent to make it a first part of this exercise whether this Scripture be to be understood of the Resurrection or no And then to make the particular handling of the words a second part In the first we shall see that the Iews always had and have still a persuasion of the Resurrection We shall look after by what light they saw that whether by the light of naturall reason And if not by that by what light given in other places
vestruâ—â— it is not for you to know times and seasons Before in his state of mortality 〈…〉 ignor antibus he pretended to know no more of this then they that knew nothing After when he had invested immortality per sui exceptionem says that Father he excepts none but himselfe all the rest even the Apostles were left ignorant thereof For this non est vestrum it is not for you is part of the last sentence that ever Christ spake to them If it be a convenient answer to say Christ knew it not as man how bold is that man that will pretend to know it And if it be a convenient interpretation of Christs words that he knew it not that is knew it not so as that he might tell it them how indiscreet are they who though they may seem to know it will publish it For thereby they fill other men with scruples and vexations and they open themselves to scorne and reproach when their predictions prove false as Saint Augustine observed in his time and every age hath given examples since of confident men that have failed in these conjectures It is a poore pretence to say this intimation this impression of a certaine time prepares men with better dispositions For they have so often been found false that it rather weakens the credit of the thing it selfe In the old world they knew exactly the time of the destruction of the world that there should be an hundred twenty years before the flood came And yet upon how few did that prediction though from the mouth of God himselfe work to repentance Naâ—â— found grace in Gods eyes but it was not because he mended his life upon that prediction but he was grations in Gods sight before At the day of our death we write Pridiâ—râ—surrâ—ctioniâ— the day before the resurrection It is Vigilia resurectionis Our Easter Eve Adveniat regnum tuum possesse my soule of thy kingdome then And Fiâ—â— voluntas tua my body shall arise after but how soon after or how late after thy will bee done then by thy selfe and thy will bee knowne till then to thy selfe We passe on As in Massa damnata the whole lump of mankind is under the condemnation of Adams sinne and yet the good purpose of God severs some men from that condemnation so at the resurrection all shall rise but not all to glory But amongst them that doe Ego says Iob I shall I as I am the same man made up of the samebody and the same soule Shall I imagine a difficulty in my body because I have lost an Arme in the East and a leg in the West because I have left some bloud in the North and some bones in the South Doe but remember with what ease you have sate in the chaire casting an account and made a shilling on one hand a pound on the other or five shillings below ten above because all these lay easily within your reach Consider how much lesse all this earth is to him that sits in heaven and spans all this world and reunites in an instant armes and legs bloud and bones in what corners so ever they be scattered The greater work may seem to be in reducing the soul That that soule which sped so ill in that body last time it came to it as that it contracted Originall sinne then and was put to the slavery to serve that body and to serve it in the ways of sinne not for an Apprentiship of seven but seventy years after that that soul after it hath once got loose by death and liv'd God knows how many thousands of years free from that body that abus'd it so before and in the sight and fruition of that God where it was in no danger should willingly nay desirously ambitiously seek this scuttered body this Eastern and Western and Northern and Southern body this is the most inconsiderable consideration and yet Ego I I the same body and the same soul shall be recompact again and be identically numerically individually the same man The same integrity of body and soul and the same integrity in the Organs of my body and in the faculties of my soul too I shall be all there my body and my soul all my body all my soul I am not all here I am here now preaching upon this text and I am at home in my Library considering whether S. Gregory or S. Hierome have said best of this text before I am here speaking to you and yet I consider by the way in the same instant what it is likely you will say to one another when I have done you are not all here neither you are here now hearing me and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better Sermon somewhere else of this text before you are here and yet you think you could have heard some other doctrine of down-right Predestinations and Reprobation roundly delivered somewhere else with more edification to youâ— you are here and you remember your selves that now yee think of it This had been the fittest time now when every body else is at Church to have made such and such a private visit and because you would bee there you are there I cannot say you cannot say so perfectly so entirely now as at the Resurrection Ego I am here I body and soul I soul and faculties as Christ sayd to Peter Noli timere Ego sum Fear nothing it is I so I say to my selfe Noli timere My soul why art thou so sad my body why dost thou languish Ego I body and soul soul and faculties shall say to Christ Jesus Ego sum Lord it is I and hee shall not say Nescio te I know thee not but avow me and place me at his right hand Ego sum I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath Ego sum and I the same man shall receive the crown of glory which shall not fade Ego I the same person Ego videbo I shall see I have had no looking-glasse in my grave to see how my body looks in the dissolution I know not how I have had no houre-glasse in my grave to see how my time passes I know not when for when my eylids are closed in my death-bed the Angel hath said to me that time shall be no more Till I see eternity the ancient of days I shall see no more but then I shall Now why is Iob gladder of the use of this sense of seeing then of any of the other He is not He is glad of seeing but not of the sense but of the Object It is true that is said in the School Viciniùs se habent potentiae sensitivae ad animam quà m corpus Our sensitive faculties have more relation to the soul then to the body but yet to some purpose and in some measure all the senses shall be in our glorifyed bodies In actu or in potentiâ
is his word in his servants mouth come to that Conscience now nor make him mis-interpret that which he does hear or call that passion in the Preacher in which the Preacher is but sagittarius Dei the deliverer of Gods arrows for Gods arrows are sagitta Compunctionis arrows that draw bloud from the eyes Tears of repentance from Mary Magdalen and from Peter And when from thee There is a probatum est in S. Aug. Sagittaveras cor meum Thou hast shot at my heart and how wrought that To the withdrawing of his tongue à nundinis loquacitatis from that market in which I sold my self for S. Aug. at that time taught Rhetorique to turn the stream of his eloquence and all his other good parts upon the service of God in his Church You may have read or heard that answer of a Generall who was threatned with that danger that his enemies arrows were so many as that they would cover the Sun from him In umbra pugnabimus All the better says he for then we shall fight in the shadow Consider all the arrows of tribulation even of tentation to be directed by the hand of God and never doubt to fight it out with God to lay violent hands upon heaven to wrastle with God for a blessing to charge and presse God upon his contracts and promises for in umbra pugnabis though the clouds of these arrows may hide all suns of worldly comforts from thee yet thou art still under the shadow of his wings Nay thou art still for all this shadow in the light of his countenance To which purpose there is an excellent use of this Metaphor of arrows Hâ—bak 3. 11. where it is said that Gods servants shall have the light of his arrows and the â—â—ining of his glittering spear that is the light of his presence in all the instruments and actions of his corrections To end all and to dismisse you with such a re-collection as you may carry away with you literally primarily this text concerns David He by tentations to sin by tribulations for sin by comminations and increpations upon sin was bodily and ghostly become a quiver of arrows of all sorts they stook and stook fast and stook full in him in all him The Psalm hath a retrospect too it looks back to Adam and to every particular man in his loines and so Davids case is our case and all these arrowes stick in all us But the Psalm and the text hath also a prospect and hath a propheticall relation from David to our Saviour Christ Jesus And of him and of the multiplicity of these arrows upon him in the exinanition and evacuation of himself in this world for us have many of the Ancients interpreted these words literally and as in their first and primary signification Turne we therefore to him before we goe and he shall return home with us How our first part of this text is applyable to him that our prayers to God for ease in afflictions may be grounded upon reasons out of the sense of those afflictions Saint Basil tels us that Christ therefore prays to his Father now in heaven to spare mankinde because man had suffered so much and drunk so deep of the bitter cup of his anger in his person and passion before It is an avoidable plea from Christ in heaven for us Spare them O Lord in themselves since thou didst not spare them in me And how far he was from sparing thee we see in all those severall weights which have aggravated his hand and these arrowes upon us If they be heavy upon us much more was their weight upon thee every dram upon us was a Talent upon thee Non delâ—r sicut dolor tuus take Rachel weeping for her children Mary weeping for her brother Lazarus Hezekiah for his health Peter for his sins Non est delor sicut dolor â—uus The arrows that were shot at thee were Alienae Afflictions that belonged to others and did not onely come from others as ours doe but they were alienae so as that they should have fallen upon others And all that should have fallen upon all others were shot at thee and lighted upon thee Lord though we be not capable of sustaining that part this passion for others give us that which we may receive Compassion with others They were veloces these arrows met swiftly upon thee from the sin of Adam that induced death to the sin of the last man that shall not sleep but be changed when thy hour came they came all upon thee in that hour Lord put this swiftnesse into our fins that in this one minute in which our eyes are open towards thee and thine eares towards us our sins all our sins even from the impertinent frowardnesse of our childhood to the unsufferable frowardnesse of our age may meet in our present confessions and repentances and never appear more They were as ours are too Invisibiles Those arrows which fell upon thee were so invisible so undiscernible as that to this day thy Church thy School cannot see what kinde of arrow thou tookest into thy soul what kinde of affliction it was that made thy soul heavy unto death or dissolved thee into a gelly of blood in thine agony Be thou O Lord a Father of Lights unto us in all our ways and works of darkenes manifest unto us whatsoever is necessary for us to know be a light of understanding and grace before and a light of comfort and mercy after any â—in hath benighted us These arrows were as ours are also plures plurall many infinite they were the sins of some that shall never thank thee never know that thou borest their sins never know that they had any such sins to bee horn Lord teach us to number thy corrections upon us so as still to see thy torments suffered for us and our own sins to be infinitely more that occasioned those torments then those corrections that thou layst upon us Thine arrows stook and stook fast in thee the weight of thy torments thou wouldest not cast off nor lessen when at thy execution they offered thee that stupesying drink which was the civil charity of those times to condemned persons to give them an easier passage in the agonies of death thou wouldest not tast of that cup of ease Deliver us O Lord in all our tribulations from turning to the miserable comforters of this world or from wishing or accepting any other deliverance then may improve and make better our Resurrection These arrows were in thee in all thee from thy Head torn with thorns to thy feet pierced with nayls and in thy soul so as we know not how so as to extorta Si possibile If it be possible let this cup passe and an Vt quid dereliquisti My God my God why half thou forsaken me Lord whilest we remain entire here in body and soul make us and receive us an entire sacrifice to
between God and him he is well-near learned enough There may be enough in remembring our selves but sometimes that 's the hardest of all many times we are farthest off from our selves most forgetfull of our selves It was a narrow enlargement it was an addition that diminish'd the sense when our former Translators added that word themselves All the world shall remember themselves there is no such particularity as themselves in that text But it is onely as our later Translators have left it All the world shall remember and no more Let them remember what they will what they can let them but remember thoroughly and then as it follows there They shall turn unto the Lord and all the kindreds of the Nations shall worship him Therefore David makes that the key into this Psalme Psalmus ad Recordationem A Psalm for Remembrance Being lock'd up in a close prison of multiplied calamities this turns the key this opens the door this restores him to liberty if he can remember Non est sanitas there is no soundnesse no health in my flesh Doest thou wondet at that Remember thy selfe and thou wilt see that thy case is worse then so That there is no rest in thy bones That 's true too But doest thou wonder at that Remember thy self and thou wilt see the cause of all that The Lord is angry with thee Find'st thou that true and wondrest why the Lord should be angry with thee Remember thy self well and thou wilt see it is because of thy sins There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne So have I let you in into the whole Psalm by this key by awaking your memory that it is a Psalm for Remembrance And that that you are to remember is that all calamities that fall upon you fall not from the malice or power of man but from the anger of God And then that Gods anger fals not upon you from his Hate or his Decree but from your sins There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne Which words we shall first consider as they are our present object as they are historically and literally to be understood of David And secondly in their retrospect as they look back upon the first Adam and so concern Mankind collectively and so you and I and all have our portion in these calamities And thirdly we shall consider them in their prospect in their future relation to the second Adam in Christ Iesus in whom also all mankinde was collected and the calamities of all men had their Ocean and their confluence and the cause of them the anger of God was more declared and the cause of that anger that is sin did more abound for the sins of all the world were his by imputation for this Psalm some of our Expositors take to be a historicall and personall Psalm determin'd in David some a Catholique and universall Psalm extended to the whole condition of man and some a Propheticall and Evangelicall Psalm directed upon Christ. None of them inconveniently for we receive help and health from every one of these acceptations first Adam was the Patient and so his promise the promise that he received of a Messiah is our physick And then David was the Patient and there his Example is our physick And lastly Christ Iesus was the Patient and so his blood is our physick In Adam we shall finde the Scriptum est the medicine is in our books an assurance of a Messiah there is In David we shall find the Probatum est that this medicine wrought upon David and in Christ we finde the deceit it self Thus you may take this physick thus you may apply it to your selves In every acceptation as we consider it in David in our selves in Christ we shall consider first That specification of humane misery and calamity expressed here sicknesse and an universall sicknesse No soundnesse in the flesh And more then that trouble and an universall trouble No peace no rest not in the bones And then in a second branch we shall see that those calamities proceed from the anger of God we cannot discharge them upon Nature or Fortune or Power or Malice of Men or Times They are from the anger of God and they are as the Originall Text hath it à facie irae Dei from the face of the anger of God from that anger of God that hath a face that looks upon something in us and growes not out of a hate in God or decree of God against us And then lastly this that Gods anger lookes upon is sin God is not angry till he see sin nor with me till it come to be my sinne and though Originall sinne be my sinne and sicknesse and death would follow though there were no more but Originall sinne yet God comes not to this Non sanitas Nâ— soundnesse in my flesh nor to this Nâ—n pax No rest in my bones till I have made sinne my sinne by act and habit too by doing it and using to doe it But then though it bee but Peccatum in the singular so the Text hath it One sinne yet for that one beloved sinne especially when that my sinne comes to have a face for so the Originall phrase is in this place too à facie peccati from the face of my sinne when my sin looks bigge and justifies it self then come these calamities No soundnesse in the flesh â—o rest in the bones to their heighth because the anger of God which exals them is in the exaltation There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither any rest in my bones because of my sin All these particulars will best arise to us in our second consideration when wee consider Hamanitatem not Hominem our humane condition as we are all kneaded up in Adam and not this one person David But because we are in the consideration of health and consequently of physick for the true and proper use of physick is to preserve health and but by accident to restore it we embraâ—e that Rule Medioâ—rum theoria experientia est Practise is a Physicians study and he concludes out of events for says he He that professes himself a Physician without experience Chronica de future scribit He undertakes to write a Chronicle of things before they are done which is an irregular and a perverse way Therefore in this spirituall physick of the soul we will deal upon Experience too and see first how this wrought upon this particular person upon David David durst not presume that God could not or would not bee angry Anger is not always a Defect nor an inordinatenesse in man Be angry and sin not anger is not utterly to be rooted out of our ground and cast away but transplanted A Gardiner does wel to grub up thornes in his garden there they would
upon thee and true that God is angry vehemently angry But Expone juststiam irae Dei deal clearly with the world and clear God and confesse it is because of thy sinne When Cain says My sin is greater then can be forgiven that word Gnavon is ambiguous it may bee sinne it may bee punishment and wee know not whether his impatience grew out of the horrour of his sinne or the weight of his punishment But here wee are directed by a word that hath no ambiguity Kata signifies sin and nothing but sinne Here the holy Ghost hath fixed thee upon a word that will not suffer thee to consider the punishment nor the cause of the punishment the anger but the cause of that anger and all the sin Wee see that the bodily sicknesse and the death of many is attributed to one kind of sinne to the negligent receiving of the Sacrament For this cause many are weak and sick amongst you and many sleep Imaginem judicii ostenderat God had given a representation of the day of Judgement in that proceeding of his for then we shall see many men condemned for sinnes for which we never suspected them so wee thinke men dye of Fevers whom we met lately at the Sacrament and God hath cut them off perhaps for that sin of their unworthy receiving the Sacrament My miseries are the fruits of this Tree Gods anger is the arms that spreads it but the root is sin My sin which is another consideration We say of a Possession Transit cum onere It passes to me with the burthen that my Father laid upon it his debt is my debt so does it with the sin too his sin by which he got that possession is my sin if I know it and perchance the punishment mine though I know not the sin Adams sin 6000 years agoe is my sin and their sin that shall sinne by occasion of any wanton writings of mine will be my sin though they come after Wofull riddle sin is but a privation and yet there is not such another positive possession sin is nothing and yet there is nothing else I sinned in the first man that ever was and but for the mercy of God in something that I have said or done might sin that is occasion sin in the last man that ever shall be But that sin that is called my sinne in this text is that that is become mine by an habituall practise or mine by a wilfull relapse into it And so my sin may kindle the anger of God though it bee but a single sinne One sinne as it is delivered here in the singular and no farther Because of my sinne Every man may find in himself Peccatum complicatum sinne wrapped up in sinne a body of sin We bring Elements of our own earth of Covetousnesse water of unsteadfastnesse ayre of putrefaction and fire of licentiousnesse and of these elements we make a body of sinne as the Apostle says of the Naturall body There are many members but one body so we may say of our sin it hath a wanton eye a griping hand an itching ear an insatiable heart and feet swift to shed blood and yet it is but one body of sin It is all â—and yet it is but One But let it be simply and singularly but One which is a miracle in sin truly I think an impossibility in sin to be single to be but One for that unclean Spirit which possessed the man that dwelt amongst the tombs carryed it at first as though he had been a single Devill and he alone in that man I I adjure thee says he to Christ and torment not me not me so far in the singular but when Christ puts him to it he confesses we are many and my name is legion So though thy sinne slightly examined may seem but One yet if thou dare presse it it will confesse a plurality a legion if it be but One yet if that One be made thine by an habituall love to it as the plague needs not the help of a Consumption to kill thee so neither does Adultery need the help of Murder to damn thee For this making of any One sin thine thine by an habituall love thereof will grow up to the last and heaviest waight intimated in that phrase which is also in this clause of the Text In facie paccati that this sin will have a face that is a confidence and a devesting of all 〈◊〉 or disguises There cannot bee a heavier punishment laid upon any sinne then Christ lays upon scandall It were better for him a mil-stone were hanged about his neck and hee drowned in the Sea If something worse then such a death belong to him surely it is eternall Death And this this eternall death is interminated by Christ in cases where there is not always sinne in the action which wee doe but if we doe any action so as that it may scandalize another or occasion sin in him we are bound to study and favour the weaknesse of other men and not to doe such things as they may think sins We must prevent the mis-interpretation yea the malice of other men for though the fire be theirs the fewell or at least the â—ellows is ours The uncharitablenesse the malice is in them but the awaking and the stirring thereof is in our carelesnesse who were not watchfull upon our actions But when an action comes to be sin indeed and not onely occasionally sin because it scandalizes another but really sin in it selfe then even the Poet tels you Maxima debetur pueris reverentia si quid Tâ—rpe paras Take heed of doing any sinne in the sight of thy Child for if we break through that wall we shall come quickly to that faciâ—m Sacerdotis non erubuerunt they will not be afraid nor ashamed in the presence of the Priest they will look him in the face nay receive at his hands and yet sin their sinne that minute in their hearts and to that also faciem seniorum non erubuerunt they will not be afraid nor ashamed of the Office of the Magistrate but sin for nothing or sin at a price bear out or buy out all their sins They sin as Sodom and bide it not is the highest charge that the Holy Ghost could lay upon the sinner When they come to say Our lips are ours who is Lord ever us They will say so of their hands and of all their bodies They are ours who shall forbid us to doe what wee will with them And what lack these open sinners of the last judgement and the condemnation therof That judgement is that men shall stand naked in the sight of one another and all their sinnes shall be made manifest to all and this open sinner does so and chuses to doe so even in this world When David prays so devoutly to be cleansed from his secret sins and Saint Paul glories so devoutly in having renounced the
hidden things of dishonesty how great a burthen is there in these open and avowed sins sins that have put on so brasen a face as to out-face the Minister and out-face the Magistrate and call the very Power and Justice of God in question whether he do hate or can punish a sinne for they doe what they can to remove that opinion out of mens hearts Truly as an Hypocrite at Church may doe more good then a devout man in his Chamber at home be cause the Hypocrites outward piety though counterfeit imprints a good example upon them who doe not know it to bee counterfeit and wee cannot know that he that is absent from Church now is now at his prayers in his Chamber so a lesser sinne done with an open avowment and confidence may more prejudice the Kingdome of God then greater in secret And this is that which may be principally intended or atleast usefully raised our of this phrase of the Holy Ghost in David A facie peccati that the habituall sinner comes to sin not onely with a negligence who know it but with a glorious desire that all the world might know it and with a shame that any such Iudge as feared not God nor regarded man should be more feareless of God or regardless of man then he But now beloved when we have laid man thus low Miserable because Man and then Diseased and that all over without any soundnesse even in his whole substance in his flesh and in the height of this disease Restlesse too and Restlesse even in his bones diffident in his strongest assurances And when we have laid him lower then that made him see the Cause of all this misery to be the Anger of God the inevitable anger of an incensed God and such an anger of God as hath a face a manifestation a reality and not that God was angry with him in a Decree before he shewed man his face in the Law and saw Mans face in the transgression of the law And laid him lower then that too made him see the cause of this anger as it is sinne so to be his sinne sinne made his by an habituall love thereof which though it may be but one yet is become an out-facing sinne a sinne in Contempt and confidence when we have laid Man laid you thus low in your own eyes we returne to the Canon and rule of that Physician whom they call Evangelist aâ—â— medicinae the Evangelist of Physique Sit intentio prima in omni medicina comfâ—rtare whether the physician purge or lance or sear his principall care and his end is to comfort and strengthen so though we have insisted upon Humane misery and the cause of that the anger of God and the cause of that anger sinne in that excesse yet we shall dismisse you with that Consolation which was first in our intention and shall be our conclusion that as this Text hath a personall aspect upon David alone and therefore we gave you hit case and then a generall retrospect upon Adam and all in him and therefore we gave you your own case so it hath also an Evangelicall prospect upon Christ and therefore for your comfort and as a bundle of Myrrhe in your bosomes we shall give you his case too to whom these words belong as well as to Adam or David or you There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne If you will see the miseries of Man in their exaltation and in their accumulation too in their weight and in their number take them in the Ecce home when Christ was presented from Pilate scourged and scorned Ecce home behold man in that man in the Prophets They have reproched the feetsteps of thine Anointed says David slandred his actions and conversation He hath no form nor comlinesse nor beauty that we should desire to see him says Esay Despised rejected of men A man of sorrows and acquainted with griefes And Ecce homo behold man in that man in the whole history of the Gospell That which is said of us of sinfull men is true in him the salvation of men from the sole of the foot even unto the Head there is no soundnesse but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores That question will never receive answer which Christ askes Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow Never was never will there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow because there can never be such a person to suffer sorrow Affliction was upon him and upon all him for His soule was heavy unto death Even upon his Bones fire was sent into his bones and it prevailed against him And the highest cause of this affliction was upon him the anger of God The Lord had afflicted him in the day of his fierce anger The height of Gods anger is Dereliction and he was brought to his Vt quid dereliquisti My God my God why hast thou forsaken me We did esteem him striken of the Lord says Esay And we were not deceived in it Percutiam pastorem says Christ himselfe of himselfe out of the Prophet I will smite the shepheard and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered And then the cause of this anger sinne was so upon him as that though in one consideration the raine was upon all the world and onely this fleece of Gedeon dry all the world surrounded with sinne and onely He innocent yet in another line we finde all the world dry and onely Gedeons fleece wet all the world innoceâ— and onely Christ guilty But as there is a Verè tulit and a Verè portavit surely he bore those griefes and surely he carried those sorrows so they were Verè nostri surely he hath borne our griefes and carried our sorrows he was wounded for our transgressioâ—â— and bruised for our iniquitles The Chastisement of our peace was upon him 〈◊〉 â—efore it must necessarily follow as it does follow there with his stripes wee 〈◊〉 for God will not exact a debt twice of Christ for me and of me too 〈◊〉 therefore Quare moriemini Domus Israel since I have made ye of the houshold â— of Israel why will ye die since ye are recovered of your former sicknesses why will die of a new disease of a suspicion or jealousie that this recovery this redemption in Christ Iesus belongs not to you Will ye say It is a fearfull thing to fall into the hands Dei viventis of the living God 'T is so a fearfull thing But if Deâ—s mortuus the God of life bee but dead for mee be fallen into my hands applied to mee made mine it is no fearefull thing to fall into the hands of the living God Non sat is est medicum fecisse suum officium nisi agrotus adstantes sua It is not enough for Christ Jesus to have prepared you the balm of his bloud
not enough for us to minister it to you except every one of you help himself in a faithfull application and help one another in a holy and exemplar conversation Quà m exactè accuratè usus dictionibus How exact and curious was the holy Ghost in David in choice of words he does not say Non sanitas mihi sed non in car ne not that there is no health for me but none in me non in carne mea not in my flesh but in carne ejus in the flesh and bloud of my Saviour there is health and salvation In ossibus ejus in his bones in the strength of his merits there is rest and peace à facie peccati what face soever my sin have had in my former presumptions or what face soever they put on now in my declination to desperation The Lord waitâ—th that he may have mercy upon you He stays your leisure and therefore will he be exalted says that Prophet there that hee may have mercy upon you He hath chosen that for his way of honour of exaltation that he may have mercy upon you And then Quare moriemini If God bee so respective towards you as to wait for you if God be so aâ—bitions of you as to affect a kingdome in you why will ye die since he will not let ye die of Covetousnesse of adultery of ambition of prophanenesse in your selves why will yee die of jealousie of suspition in him It was a mercifull voice of David Is there yet any man left of the house of Saul that I may shew mercy for Jonathans sake It is the voice of God to you all Is there yet any man of the house of Adam that I may shew mercy for Christ Iesus sake that takes Christ Jesus in his arms and interposes him between his sins and mine indignation and non morietur that man shall not die We have done Est ars â—anandorum morborum medicina non rhetorica Our physick is not eloquence not directed upon your affections but upon your conscienâ—os To thus wee present this for physick The whole need not a Physician but the sick doe If you mistake your selves to be well or think you have physick enough at home knowledge enough divinity enough to save you without us you need no Physician that is a Physician can doe you no good but then is this Gods physick and Gods Physician welcome unto you if you be come to a remorsefull sense and to an humble and penitent acknowledgement that you are sick and that there is no soâ—ndnesse in your flesh because of his anger nor any rest in your bones because of your sins till you turn upon him in whom this anger is appeas'd and in whom these sins are forgiven the Son of his love the Son of his right hand at his right hand Christ Jesus And to this glorious Sonne of God c. SERMON XXI Preached at Lincolns Inne PSALME 38. 4. For mine iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden they are too heavy for mee DAvid having in the former verses of this Psalm assign'd a reason why he was bound to pray because he was in misery O Lord rebuke me not in thine anger for thine arrows stick fast in mee And a reason why hee should be in misery because God was angry Thy hand presseth 〈◊〉 v. 2. And there is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger 〈◊〉 And a reason why God should be angry because he had finn'd There is no 〈◊〉 my bones because of my sin in the same verse He proceeds to a reason why this prayer of his must be vehement why these miseries of his are so violent and why Gods anger is permanent and he findes all this to be because in his sins all these venimous qualities vehemence violence and continuance were complicated and enwrapp'd for hee had sinn'd vehemently in the rage of lust and violently in the effusion of bloud and permanently in a long and senslesse security They are all contracted in this Text into two kinds which will be our two parts in handling these words first the supergressa super Mine iniquities are gone over my head there 's the multiplicity the number the succession and so the continuation of his sin and then the Gravatae super My sins are as a heavy burden too heavy for me there 's the greatnesse the weight the insupportablenesse of his sin S. Augustine cals these two distinctions or considerations of sin Ignorantiam Difficultatem first that David was ignorant that he saw not the Tide as it swell'd up upon him Abyssus Abyssum Depth call'd upon Depth and all thy watâ—rs and all thy billows are gone ever me says he in another place hee perceiv'd them not coming till they were over him he discern'd not his particular sins then when he committed them till they came to the supergressae super to that height that he was overflowed surrounded his iniquities were gone over his head and in that S. Aug. notes Ignorantiâ—m his in-observance his inconsideration of his own case and then he notes Difficultatem the hardnesse of recovering because he that is under water hath no aire to see by no aire to hear by he hath nothing to reach to he touches not ground to push him up he feels no bough to pull him up and therein that Father notes Difficultatem the hardnesse of recovering Now Moses expresses these two miseries together in the destruction of the Egyptians in his song after Israels deliverance and the Egyptians submersion The Depths have covered them there 's the supergressa super their iniquities in that punishment of their iniquities were gone over their heads And then They sank into the bottome as a stone says Moses there 's the gravata super they depressed them suppressed them oppressed them they were under them and there they must lie The Egyptians had David had we have too many sins to swim above water and too great sins to get above water again when we are sunk The number of sins then and the greatnesse of sin will be our two parts the dangers are equall to multiply many lesser sins or to commit a few more hainous except the danger be greater as indeed it may justly seem to be in the multiplication and custome and habit of lesser sins but how great is the danger then how desperate is our state when our sins are great in themselves and multiplied too In his many sins we shall touch thus many circumstances First they were peccaâ—a sins iniquities and then peccata sua his sins his iniquities which intimates actuall sins for though God inflict miseries for originall sin death and that that induces it sicknâ—sse and the like yet those are miseries common to all because the sin is so too But these are his punishments personall calamities and the sins are his own sins And then which is a third circumstance they are sins in the plurall God is
as can lay a necessity or can afford in excuse so them who are corrupted with the times As it is not pax temporis such a State-peace us takes away honour that secures a Nation nor such a Church-peace as takes away zeâ—l that secures a conscience so neither is it peccatum temporis an observation what other men incline to but what truth what integrity thou declin'st from that appertains to thy consideration It is not peccatum â—â—atis not the sin of thy father not the sin of the times not the sin of thine own years That thou shouldest say in thy old age in excuse of thy Covetâ—â—snesse All these things have I observed from my youth I have lived temperately continently all my life and therefore may be allowed one sin for mine case in mine age Or that thou shouldest say in thy youth I will reâ—re my self in mine age and live contentedly with a little then but now how vain were it to goe about to keep out a tide or to quench the heats and imperuous violence of youth But â—uge â—venilis defideria 〈◊〉 also youthfull lusts And left God hear not thee at last when thou comost with that petition Remember not the sins of my youth Remember thou thy Creator now in the days of thy youth for if thou think it enough to say I have but liv'd as other men have liv'd wantonly thou wilt finde some examples to die by too and die as other old men old in years and old in sins have died too negligently or fearfully without any sense at all or all their sense turned into fearfull apprehensions and desperation They are not peccata et atis such sins as men of that age must needs commit nor pecâ—â— arâ—tis such sins as men of thy calling or thy profession cannot avoid that thou should'st say I shall not be beleeved to understand my profession as well as other men if I live not by it as well as other men doe Is there no being a Carpâ—nter but that after he hath warmed him by the chips and baked and roasted by it hee must needs make an idoll of his wood worship it Is there no being a Silver-smith but he must needs make shrines for Diaâ—a of the Ephesians as Demetrius did No being a Lawyer without serving the passion of the Client no being a Divine without sowing pillows under great mens elbows It is not the sin of thy Calling that oppresses thee As a man may commit a massacre in a single murder and kill many in one man if he kill one upon whom many depended so is that man a generall libeller that defames a lawfull Calling by his abusing thereof that lives so scandalously in the Ministery as to defame the Ministery it self or so imperiously in the Magistracy as to defame the Magistracy it self as though it were but an engine and instrument of oppression or so unjustly in any Calling as his abuse dishnoâ—rs the Calling it self God hath institured Calling for the conservation of order in generall not for the justification of disorders in any particular For he that justifies his faults by his calling hath not yet received that calling from above whereby he must be justified and sanctified in the way and glorified in the end There is no lawfull calling in which a man may not be an honest man It is not peccatum Magistratus thou canst not excuse thy selfe upon the unjust command of thy superiour that 's the blinde and implicite obedience practised in the Church of Rome Nor peccatum Pastoris the ill example of thy Pastor whose life counter-preaches his doctrine for that shall aggravate his but not excuse thy sinne Nor Peccata Coeli the influence of Stars concluding a fatality amongst the Gentiles or such a working of a necessary and inevitable and unconditioned Decree of God as may shut up the ways of a Religious walking in this life or a happy resting in the life to come It is none of these not the sinne of thy Father not the sinne of the present times not the sin of thy years and age nor of thy calling nor of the Magistrate nor of thy Pastor nor of Destiny nor of decrees but it is peccatum tuum thy sin thy own sin And not onely thy sin so as Adams sin is communicated to thee by propagation of Originall sin for so thou mightest have some colour to discharge thy selfe upon him as he did upon Eve and Eve upon the Serpent Though in truth it make no difference in this spirituall debt of that sin who is first in the bond Adam may stand first but yet thou art no surety but a Principall and for thy selfe and he and thou are equally subject to the penalty For though Saint Augustine confesse that there are many things concerning Originall sin of which he is utterly ignorant yet of this he would have no man ignorant that to the guiltinesse of originall sin our own wills concurre as well as to any actuall sin An involuntary act cannot be a sinfull act and though our will work not now in the admitting of originall sin which enters with our soule in our conception or in our inanimation and quickening yet at first Sicut ominium natura ita omnium voluntates erant in Adam as every man was in Adam so every faculty of every man and consequently the will of every man concurred to that sin which therefore lies upon every man now So that that debt Originall sin is as much thine as his And for the other debts which grow out of this debt as nothing is so generative so multiplying as debts are especially spirituall debts sins for actuall sins they are thine out of thine own choice Thou mightest have left them undone and wouldest needs doe them for God never induces any man into a perplexity that is into a necessity of doing any particular sin Thou couldest have disswaded a Son or a friend or a servant from that sin which thou hast embraced thy selfe Thou hast been so farre from having been forced to those sins which thou hast done as that thou hast been sorry thou couldest not doe them in a greater measure They are thine thine own so as that thou canst not discharge thy selfe upon the Devill but art by the habit of sin become Spontaneus Damon a Devill to thy selfe and wouldest minister tentations to thy selfe though there were no other Devill And this is our propriety in sin They are our own This is the propriety of thy sin The next is the Plurality the multiplicity iniquitates Not onely the committing of one sin often and yet he deceives himselfe in his account dangerously that reckons but upon one sin because he is guilty but of one kinde of sin Would a man say he had but one wound if he were shot seven times in the same place Could the Iews deny that they flead Christ with their second or third or twentieth blow because
covered himself with a cloud so that prayer could not passe thorough That was the misery of Ierusalem But in the acts and habits of sin we cover our selves with a roof with an arch which nothing can shake nor remove but Thunder and Earthquakes that is the execution of Gods fiercest judgments And whether in that fall of the roof that is in the weight of Gods judgments upon us the stones shall not brain us overwhelm and smother and bury us God only knows How his Thunders and his Earthquakes when we put him to that will work upon us he onely knows whether to our amendment or to our destruction But whil'st we are in the consideration of this arch this roof of separation between God and us by sin there may be use in imparting to you an observation a passage of mine own Lying at Aiâ— at Aquisgrane a well known Town in Germany and fixing there some time for the benefit of those Baths I found my self in a house which was divided into many families indeed so large as it might have been a little Parish or at least a great lim of a great one But it was of no Parish for when I ask'd who lay over my head they told me a family of Anabaptists And who over theirs Another family of Anabaptists and another family of Anabaptists over theirs and the whole house was a nest of these boxes severall artificers all Anabaptists I ask'd in what room they met for the exercise of their Religion I was told they never met for though they were all Anabaptists yet for some collaterall differences they detested one another and though many of them were near in bloud alliance to one another yet the son would excommunicate the father in the room above him and the Nephew the Uncle As S. Iohn is said to have quitted that Bath into which Cerinthus the Heretique came so did I this house I remembred that Hezekiah in his sicknesse turn'd himself in his bed to pray towards that wall that look'd to Ierusalem And that Daniel in Babylon when he pray'd in his chamber opened those windows that look'd towards Ierusalem for in the first dedication of the Temple at Ierusalem there is a promise annext to the prayers made towards the Temple And I began to think how many roofs how many floores of separation were made between God and my prayers in that house And such is this multiplicity of sins which we consider to be got over us as a roof as an arch many arches many roofs for though these habituall sins be so of kin as that they grow from one another and yet for all this kindred excommunicate one another for covetousnesse will not be in the same roome with prodigality yet it is but going up another stair and there 's the tother Anabaptist it is but living a few years and then the prodigall becomes covetous All the way they separate us from God as a roof as an arch then an arch will bear any weight An habituall sin got over our head as an arch will stand under any sicknesse any dishonour any judgement of God and never sink towards any humiliation They are above our heads sicus tectum as a roofe as an arch and they are so toe sicut clamor as a voice ascending not stopping till they come to God O my God I am confounded and ashamed to lift up mine eyes to ther O my God why not thine eyes there is a cloud a clamour in the way for as it follows Our iniquities are encreased over our heads and our trespasse is grown up to the heaven I think to retain a learned man of my counsell and one that is sute to be heard in the Court and when I come to instruct him I finde mine adversaries name in his book before and he is all ready for the other party I think to finde an Advocate in heaven when I will and my sin is in heaven before mee The voice of Abels bloud and so of Cains sin was there The voice of Sodomes transgression was there Bring down that sin again from heaven to earth Bring that voice that cries in heaven to speake to Christ here in his Church upon earth by way of confession bring that clamorous sin to his bloud to be washed in the Sacrament for as long as thy sin cries in heaven thy prayers cannot be heard there Bring thy sinne under Christs feet there when hee walks amongst the Candlesticks in the light and power of his Ordinances in the Church and then thine absolution will be upon thy head in those seals which he hath instituted and ordained there and thy cry will be silenced Till then supergrâ—sse caput thine iniquities will be over thy head as a roof as a cry and in the next place sicut aqua as the overflowing of waters We consider this plurality this multiplicity of habituall sinnes to bee got over our heads as waters especially in this that they have stupefied us and taken from us all sense of reparation of our sinfull condition The Organ that God hath given the naturall man is the eye he sees God in the creature The Organ that God hath given the Christian is the ear he hears God in his Word But when we are under water both senses both Organs are vitiated and depraved if not defeaâ—ed The habituall and manifold sinner sees nothing aright Hee sees a judgement and cals it an accident He hears nothing aright He hears the Ordinance of Preaching for salvation in the next world and he cals it an invention of the State for subjection in this world And as under water every thing seems distorted and crooked to man so does man himself to God who sees not his own Image in that man in that form as he made it When man hath drunk iniquity like water then The flouds of wickadnesse shall make him afraid The water that he hath swum in the sin that he hath delighted in shall appear with horrour unto him As God threatens the pride of Tyrus I shall bring the deep upon thee and great waters shall cover thee That God will execute upon this sinner And then upon every drop of that water upon every affliction every tribulation he shall come to that fearfulnesse Waters flowed over my head then said I I am câ—â— off Either he shall see nothing or see no remedy no deliverance from desperation Keep low these waters as waters signifie sin and God shall keep them low as they signifie punishments And his Dove shall return to the Ark with an Olive leaf to shew thee that the waters are abated he shall give thee a testimony of the return of his love in his Oyle and Wine and Milk and Honey in the temporall abundances of this life And si impleat Hydrias aqua if he doe fill all your vessels with water with water of bitternesse that is fill and exercise all your patience and
choice whether hee should pardon me all those actuall and habituall sins which I have committed in my life or extinguish Originall sinne in me I should chuse to be delivered from Originall sin because though I be delivered from the imputation thereof by Baptism so that I shall not fall under a condemnation for Originall sin onely yet it still remains in me and practises upon me and occasions all the other sins that I commit now for all my actuall and habituall sins I know God hath instituted meanes in his Church the Word and the Sacraments for my reparation But with what a holy alacrity with what a heavenly joy with what a cheerfull peace should I come to the participation of these meanes and seals of my reconciliation and pardon of all my sins if I knew my selfe to be delivered from Originall sinne from that snake in my bosome from that poyson in my blood from that leaven and tartar in all my actions that casts me into Relapses of those sins which I have repented And what a cloud upon the best serenity of my conscience what an interruption what a dis-continuance from the sincerity and integrity of that joy which belongs to a man truly reconciled to God in the pardon of his former sins must it needs be still to know and to know by lamentable experiences that though I wash my selfe with Soap and Nitâ—e and Snow water mine own cloathes will defile me again though I have washed my selfe in the tears of Repentance and in the blood of my Saviour though I have no guiltinesse of any former sin upon me at that present yet I have a sense of a root of sin that is not grub'd up of Originall sinne that will cast me back again Scarce any man considers the weight the oppression of Originall sinne No man can say that an Akorn weighs as much as an Oak yet in truth there is an Oak in that Akorn no man considers that Originall sinne weighs as much as Actuall or Habituall yet in truth all our Actuall and Habituall sins are in Originall Therefore Saint Pauls vehement and frequent prayer to God to that purpose could not deliver him from Originall sin and that stimulus carnis that provocation of the flesh that Messenger of Satan which rises out of that God would give him sufficient grace it should not worke to his destruction but yet he should have it Nay the infinite merit of Christ Jesus himself that works so upon all actuall and habituall sins as that after that merit is applyed to them those sins are no sins works not so upon Originall sin but that though I be eased in the Dominion and Imputation thereof yet the same Originall sin is in me still and though God doe deliver me from eternall death due to mine actuall and habituall sins yet from the temporall death due to Originall sin he delivers not his dearest Saints Thus sin is heavy in the seed in the grain in the akorn how much more when it is a field of Corn a barn of grain a forest of Oaks in the multiplication and complication of sin in sin And yet wee consider the weight of sin another way too for as Christ feels all the afflictions of his children so his children will feel all the wounds that are inflicted upon him even the sins of other men as Lots righteous soule was grieved with sins of others If others sin by my example provocation or by my connivence and permission when I have authority their sin lies heavyer upon me then upon themselves for they have but the weight of their own sinne and I have mine and theirs upon me and though I cannot have two souls to suffer and though there cannot be two everlastingnesses in the torments of hell yet I shall have two measures of those unmeasurable torments upon my soul. But if I have no interest in the sins of other men by any occasion ministred by me yet I cannot chuse but feel a weight a burthen of a holy anguish and compassion and indignation because every one of these sins inflict a new wound upon my Saviour when my Saviour says to him that does but injure me Why persecutest thou me and feels the blow upon himselfe shall not I say to him that wounds my Saviour Why woundest thou me and groane under the weight of my brothers sin and my Fathers my Makers my Saviours wound If a man of my blood or allyance doe a shamefull act I am affected with it If a man of my calling or profession doe a scandalous act I feel my self concerned in his fault God hath made all mankinde of one blood and all Christians of one calling and the sins of every man concern every man both in that respect that I that is This nature is in that man that sins that sin and I that is This nature is in that Christ who is wounded by that sin The weight of sin were it but Originall sin were it but the sins of other men is an insupportable weight But if a sinner will take a true balance and try the right weight of sin let him goe about to leave his sin and then he shall see how close and how heavily it stook to him Then one sin will lay the weight of seelinesse of falshood of inconstancy of dishonour of ill nature if you goe about to leave it and another sin will lay the weight of poverty of disestimation upon you if you goe about to leave it One sin will lay your pleasures upon you another your profit another your Honour another your Duty to wife and children and weigh you down with these Goe but out of the water goe but about to leave a sin and you will finde the weight of it and the hardnesse to cast it off Gravatae sunt Mine iniquities are heavy that was our first and gravatae nimis they are too heavy which is a second circumstance Some weight some balast is necessary to make a ship goe steady we are not without advantage in having some sinne some concupiscence some tentation is not too heavy for us The greatest sins that ever were committed were committed by them who had no former sinne to push them on to that sin The first Angels sin and the sin of Adam are noted to be the most desperate and the most irrecoverable sins and they were committed when they had no former sin in them The Angels punishment is pardoned in no part Adams punishment is pardoned in no man in this world Now such sins as those that is sins that are never pardoned no man commits now not now when he hath the weight of former sins to push him on Though there be a heavy guiltinesse in Originall sin yet I have an argument a plea for mercy out of that Lord my strength is not the strength of stones nor my flesh brasse Lord no man can bring a clean thing out of uncleannesse Lord no man can say after I have
me my sinnes the sinnes of my youth and my present sinnes the sinne that my Parents cast upon me Originall sinne and the sinnes that I cast upon my children in an ill example Actuall sinnes sinnes which are manifest to all the world and sinnes which I have so laboured to hide from the world as that now they are hid from mine own conscience and mine own memory Forgive me my crying sins and my whispering sins sins of uncharitable hate and sinnes of unchaste love sinnes against Thee and Thee against thy Power O Almighty Father against thy Wisedome O glorious Sonne against thy Goodnesse O blessed Spirit of God and sinnes against Him and Him against Superiours and Equals and Inferiours and sinnes against Me and Me against mine own soul and against my body which I have loved better then my soul Forgive me O Lord O Lord in the merits of thy Christ and my Iesus thine Anointed and my Saviour Forgive me my sinnes all my sinnes and I will put Christ to no more cost nor thee to more trouble for any reprobation or malediction that lay upon me otherwise then as a sinner I ask but an application not an extention of that Benediction Blessed are they whose sinnes are forgiven Let me be but so blessed and I shall envy no mans Blessednesse say thou to my sad soul Sonne be of good comfort thy sinnes are forgiven thee and I shall never trouble thee with Petitions to take any other Bill off of the fyle or to reverse any other Decree by which I should be accurst before I was created or condemned by thee before thou saw'st me as a sinner For the object of malediction is but a sinner which was our first and an Inveterate sinner A sinner of a hundred yeares which is our next consideration First Quia centum annorum because he is so old so old in sinne He shall be accur sed And then Quamvis centum annorum though he be so old though God have spared him so long he shall be accursed God is not a Lion in his house nor frantick amongst his servants saith the Wiseman God doth not rore nor tear in pieces for every thing that displeaseth him But when God is prest under us as a cart is prest that is full of sheaves the Lord will grone under that burthen a while but he will cast it off at last That which is said by David is if it be well observed spoken of God himself Cum perverso pervertêris from our frowardnesse God will learn to be froward But he is not so of his own nature If you walk contrary unto me I will walk contrary unto you saith God But this is not said of one first wry step but it is a walking which implies a long and a considerate continuance And if man come to sinne so and will not walk with God God will walk with that man in his own pace and overthrow him in his own wayes Nay it is not onely in that place If you walk contrary to me In occursu as Calvin hath it ex adverso as the vulgate hath it which implies an Actuall Opposition against the wayes of God but the word is but Chevi and Chevi is but In accidente in contingente if you walk negligently inconsiderately if you leave out God pretermit and slight God if you come to call Gods Providence Fortune to call Gods Judgements Accidents or to call the Mercies of a God favours of great Persons if you walk in this neglect of God God shall proceed to a neglect of you and then though God be never the worse for your leaving him out for if it were in your power to annihilate this whole world God were no worse then before there was a World yet if God neglect you forget pretermit you it is a miserable annihilation a fearfull malediction But God begins not before sinne nor at the first sinne God did not curse Adam and Eve for their sinne it was there first and God foresaw they would not be sinners of a hundred yeares But him that was in the Serpent that inveterate sinner him who had sinned in Gods Court in Heaven before and being banished from thence fell into this transmarine treason in another land to seduce Gods other Subjects there him God accurs'd Who amongst us can say that he had a Fever upon his first excesse or a Consumption upon his first wantonnesse or a Commission put upon him for his first Briberie Till he be a sinner of a hundred yeares till he have brought age upon himself by his sinne before the time and thereby be a hundred yeares old at fourtie and so a sinner of a hundred yeares till he have a desire that he might and a hope that he shall be able to sinne to a hundred yeares and so be a sinner of a hundred yeares Till he sinne hungerly and thirstily and ambitiously and swiftly and commit the sinnes of a hundred yeares in ten and so be a sinner of a hundred yeares till he infect and poyson that age and spoile that time that he lives in by his exemplary sinnes till he be Pestis secularis the plague of that age peccator secularis the proverbiall sinner of that age and so be a sinner of a hundred yeares till in his actions he have been or in his desires be or in the fore-knowledge of God would be a sinner of a hundred yeares an inveterate an incorrigible an everlasting sinner God comes not to curse him But then Quamvis centum annorum though he have lived a hundred yeares though God have multiplied upon him Evidences and Seals and Witnesses and Possessions and Continuances and prescriptions of his favour all this hath not so riveted God to that man as that God must not depart from him God was crucified for him but will not be crucified to him still to hang upon this Crosse this perversnesse of this habituall sinner and never save himself and come down never deliver his own Honour by delivering that sinner to malediction It is true that we can have no better Title to Gods future Blessings then his Blessings formerly exhibited to us God former blessings are but his marks set up there that he may know that place and that man the better against another time when he shall be pleased to come thither again with a supply of more Blessings God gives not Blessings as payments but as obligations and becomes a debtor by giving If I can produce that Remember thy mercies of old I need ask no new for even that is a Specialty by which God hath bound himself to me for more But yet not so if I abuse his former Blessings and make them occasions of sinne How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathers her chickens saith Christ I know not how often surely very often for many hundreds of yeares But yet how often soever God left them open to the Eagle the Romane Eagle at last God gives
I remember foure names by which man is often called in the Scriptures and of those foure three doe absolutely carry misery in their significations Three to one against any man that he is miserable One name of Man is Ish and that they derive à Sonitu Man is but a voice but a sound but a noise he begins the noise himselfe when he comes crying into the world and when he goes out perchance friends celebrate perchance enemies calumniate him with a diverse voice a diverse noise A melancholique man is but a groaning a sportfull man but a song an active man but a Trumpet a mighty man but a thunderclap Every man but Ish but a found but a noyse Another name is Enosh is meer Calamity misery depression It is indeed most properly Oblivion And so the word is most elegantly used by David Quid est homo where the name of man is Enosh And so that which we translate What is man that thou art mindefull of him is indeed What is forgetfulnesse that thou shouldest remember it That thou shouldest thinke of that man whom all the world hath forgotten First man is but a voice but a sound But because fame and honour may come within that name of a sound of a voice therefore he is overtaken with another dampe man is but oblivion his fame his name shall be forgotten One name man hath that hath some taste of greatnesse and power in it Gheber And yet I that am that man says the Prophet for there that name of man Gheber is used I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of Gods wrath Man Ish is so miserable as that he afflicts himselfe cryes and whines out his own time And man Enosh so miserable as that others afflict him and bury him in ignominious oblivion And man that is Gheber the greatest and powerfullest of men is yet but that man that may possibly nay that may justly see affliction by the rod of Gods wrath and from Gheber be made Adam which is the fourth name of man indeed the first name of man the name in this text and the name to which every man must refer himselfe and call himselfe by Earth and red Earth Now God did not say of man as of other creatures Let the earth bring forth hearbs and fruits and trees as upon the third day nor let the earth bring forth cattell and wormes as upon the sixth day the same day that he made man Non imperiaâ—i verbo sed familiari manu says Tertullian God calls not man out with an imperious Command but he leads him out with a familiar with his own hand And it is not Fiat homo but Faciamus not let there be but let us make man Man is but an earthen vessell 'T is true but when we are upon that consideration God is the Potter If God will be that I am well content to be this Let me be any thing so that that I am be from my God I am as well content to be a sheep as a Lion so God will be my Shepheard and the Lord is my shepheard To be a Cottage as a Castle so God will be the builder And the Lord builds and watches the City the house this house this City mee To be Rye as Wheate so God will be the husbandman And the Lord plants me and waters and weeds and gives the encrease and to be clothed in leather as well as in silke so God will be the Merchant and he cloathed me in Adam and assures me of clothing in clothing the Lillies of the field and is fitting the robe of Christs righteousness to me now this minute Adam is as good to me as Ghebaer a clod of earth as a hill of earth so God be the Potter God made man of earth not of ayre not of fire Man hath many offices that appertaine to this world and whilest he is here must not withdraw himselfe from those offices of mutuall society upon a pretence of zeale or better serving God in a retired life A ship will no more come to the harbour without Ballast then without Sailes a man will no more get to heaven without discharging his duties to other men then without doing them to God himselfe Man liveth not by bread onely says Christ But yet he liveth by bread too Every man must doe the duties every man must beare the incumbrances of some calling Pulvises Thou art earth he whom thou treadest upon is no less and he that treads upon thee is no more Positively it is a low thing to be but earth and yet thy low earth is the quiet Center There may be rest acquiescence content in the lowest Condition But comparatively earth is as high as the highest Challenge him that magnifies himselfe above thee to meet thee in Adam There bid him if he will have more Nobility more Greatness then thou take more originall sinne then thou hast If God have submitted thee to as much sinne and penalty of sinne as him he hath afforded thee as much and as noble earth as him And if he will not try it in the root in your equality in Adam yet in another Test another Furnace in the grave he must There all dusts are equall Except an Epitaph tell me who lies there I cannot tell by the dust nor by the Epitaph know which is the dust it speakes of if another have been laid before or after in the same grave Nor can any Epitaph be confident in saying here lies but here was laid For so various so vicissitudinary is all this world as that even the dust of the grave hath revolutions As the motions of an upper Spheare imprint a motion in a lower Spheare other then naturally it would have So the changes of this life worke after death And as envy supplants and removes us alive a shovell removes us and throwes us out of our grave after death No limbeque no weights can tell you this is dust Royall this Plebeian dust no Commission no Inquisition can say this is Catholique this is Hereticall dust All lie alike and all shall rise alike alike that is at once and upon one Command The Saint cannot acclerate The Reprobate cannot retard the Resurrection And all that rise to the right hand shall be equally Kings and all at the left equally what The worst name we can call them by or affect them with is Devill And then they shall have bodies to be tormented in which Devills have not Miserable unexpressible unimaginable Miserable condition where the sufferer would be glad to be but a Devill where it were some happinesse and some kinde of life to be able to dye and a great preferment to be nothing He made us all of earth and all of red earth Our earth was red even when it was in Gods hands a rednesse that amounts to a shamefastnesse to a blushing at our own infirmities is imprinted in us by Gods hand For this rednesse
Halfe-pelagianisme to thinke grace once received to be sufficient Super-pelagianisme to thinke our actions can bring God in debt to us by merit and supererogation and Catarisme imaginary purity in Canonizing our selves as present Saints and condemning all that differ from us as reprobates All these are white spots and have the colour of goodnesse but are indications of leprosie So is that that God threatens Decorticatio ficus albi rami that the figtree shall be bark'd and the boughes thereof left white to be left white without barke was an indication of a speedy withering Ostensa candescunt arescunt says Saint Gregory of that place the bough that lies open without barke looks white but perishes the good works that are done openly to please men have their reward says Christ that is shall never have reward To pretend to doe good and not meane it To doe things good in themselves but not to good ends to goe towards good ends but not by good ways to make the deceiving of men thine end or the praise of men thine end all this may have a whiteness a colour of good but all this is a barking of the bough and an indication of a mischievous leprosie There is no good whiteness but a reflection from Christ Jesus in an humble acknowledgement that wee have none of our own and in a consident assurance that in our worst estate we may be made partakers of his We are all red earth In Adam we would not since Adam we could not avoid sinne and the Concomitants thereof miseries which we have called our West our cloud our darknesse But then we have a North that scatters these clouds in the next word Ad imaginem that we are made to another patterne in another likenesse then our own Faciamus hominem so far are we gone East and West which is halfe our Compasse and all this days voiage For we are strooke upon the sand and must stay another Tyde and another gale for our North and South SERMON XXIX Preached to the King at the Court. The second Sermon on GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our Image after our likenesse BY fair occasion from these words we proposed to you the whole Compasse of mans voyage from his lanching forth in this world to his Anchoring in the next from his hoysing sayle here to his striking sayle there In which Compasse we designed to you his foure quarters first his East where he must beginne the fundamentall knowledge of the Trinity for that we found to be the specification and distinctive Character of a Christian where though that be so we shewed you also why we were not called Trinitarians but Christians and we shewed you the advantage that man hath in laying hold upon God in these severall notions that the Prodigall sonne hath an indulgent Father that the decayed Father hath an abundant Sonne that the dejected spirit hath a Spirit of comfort to fly to in heaven And as we shewed you from Saint Paul that it was an Atheisme to be no Christian without God says he as long as without Christ so we lamented the slacknesse of Christians that they did not seriously and particularly consider the persons of the Trinity and especially the holy Ghost in their particular actions And then we came to that consideration whether this doctrine were established or directly insinuated in this plurall word of our text Faciamus Let us us make man and we found that doctrine to be here and here first of any place in the Bible And finding God to speake in the plurall we accepted for a time that interpretation which some had made thereof that God spake in the Person of a Soveraigne Prince and therefore as they do in the plurall We. And thereby having established reverence to Princes we claim'd in Gods behalfe the same reverence to him That men would demeane themselves here when God is spoken to in prayer as reverently as when they speake to the King But after this we found God to speake here not onely as our King but as our maker as God himselfe and God in Counsell Faciamus and we applied thereunto the difference of our respect to a Person of that honorable rank when we came before him at the Counsell Table and when we came to him at his own Table and thereby advanced the seriousnesse of this consideration God in the Trinity And farther we failed not with that our Eastern winde Our West we considered in the next word Hominem that though we were made by the whole Trinity yet the whole Trinity made us but men and men in this name of our text Adam and Adam is but earth and that 's our West our declination our Sunset We passed over the foure names by which man is ordinarily expressed in the Scriptures and we found necessary misery in three of them and possible nay likely misery in the fourth in the best name We insisted upon the name of our text Adam earth and had some use of these notes First that if I were but earth God was pleased to be the Potter If I but a sheep he a shepheard If I but a cottage he a builder So he worke upon me let me be what he will We noted that God made us earth not ayre not fire That man hath bodily and worldly duties to performe and is not all Spirit in this life Devotion is his soule but he hath a body of discretion and usefulnesse to invest in some calling We noted too that in being earth we are equall We tryed that equality first in the root in Adam There if any man will be nobler earth then I he must have more originall sinne then I for that was all Adams patrimony all that he could give And we tryed this equality in another furnace in the grave where there is no meanes to distinguish Royall from Plebeian nor Catholique from Hereticall dust And lastly we noted that this our earth was red earth and considered in what respect it was red even in Gods hands but found that in the bloud-rednesse of sinne God had no hand but sinne and destruction for sinne was wholly from our selves which consideration we ended with this that there was Macula alba a white spot of leprosie as well as a red and we found the over-valuation of our own purity and the uncharitable condemnation of all that differ from us to be that white spot And so far we sayled with that Western winde And are come to our third point in this our Compasse our North. In this point the North we place our first comfort The North is not always the comfortablest clime nor is the North always a type of happines in the Scriptures Many times God threatens stormes from the North. But even in those Northern stormes we consider that action that they scatter they dissipate those clouds which were gathered and so induce a serenity And so fair weather comes from the North. And
Inquisition of Spaine But great inquirers into other men are easie neglecters of themselves The Image of God is not in mans body this way Nor that third way which others have imagined that is that when God said Let us make man after our likenesse God had respect to that forme which in the fulnesse of time his Sonne was to take upon him upon earth Let us make him now says God at first like that which I intend hereafter my Son shall be For though this were spoken before the fall of man and so before any occasion of decreeing the sending of Christ yet in the Schoole a great part of great men adhered to that opinion that God from all eternity had a purpose that his Sonne should become man in this world though Adam had not fallen Non ut Medicus sed ut Dominus ad nobilitandum genus humanum say they though Christ had not come as a Redeemer if man had not needed him by sin but had kept his first state yet as a Prince that desired to heap honour upon him whom he loves to doe man an honour by his assuming that nature Christ say they should have come and to that Image that forme which he was to take then was man made in this text say these imaginers But alas how much better were wit and learning bestowed to prove to the Gentiles that a Christ must come that they beleeve not to prove to the Iews that the Christ is come that they beleeve not to prove to our own Consciences that the same Christ may come again this minute to Judgment we live as though we beleeved not that then to have filled the world and torne the Church with frivolous disputations whether Christ should have come if Adam had not fallen Wo unto fomentors of frivolous disputations None of these ways not because God hath a body not because God assumed a body not because it was intended that Christ should be born before it was intended that man should be made is this Image of God in the body of man Nor hath it in any other relation respect to the body but as we say in the Schoole Arguitivè and Significativè that because God hath given man a body of a nobler forme then any other creature we inferre and argue and conclude from thence that God is otherwise represented in man then in any other creature So far is this Image of God in the body that as you see some Pictures to which the very tables are Jewells some Watches to which the very cases are Jewells and therefore they have outward cases too and so the Picture and the Watch is in that outward case of what meaner stuffe soever that be so is this Image in this body as in an outward case so as that you may not injure nor enfeeble this body neither by sinfull intemperance and licentiousnesse nor by inordinate fastings or other disciplines of imaginary merits while the body is alive for the Image of God is in it nor to defraud thy body of decent buriall and due solemnities after death for the Image of God is to returne to it But yet the body is but the out-cafe and God lookes not for the gilding or enamelling or painting of that but requires the labour and cost therein to be bestowed upon the Tablet it selfe in which this Image is immediately that is the soule And that 's truly the Vbi the place where this Image is And there remaines onely now the operation thereof how this Image of God in the soule of man works The Sphear then of this intelligence the Gallery for this Picture the Arch for this Statue the Table and frame and shrine for this Image of God is properly immediately the soule of man Not immediately so as that the soule of man is a part of the Essence of God For so effentially Christ onely is the Image of God Saint Augustine at first thought so Putaham te Deus Corpus Lucidum me frustum de illo Corpore I tooke thee ô God says that Father to be a Globe of fire and my soule a sparke of that fire thee to be a body of light and my soule to be a beame of that light But Saint Augustine does not onely retract that in himselfe but dispute against it in the Manichees But this Image is in our soule as our soule is the wax and this Image the seale The Comparison is Saint Cyrills and he addes well that no seale but that which printed the wax at first can fit that wax and fill that impression after No Image but the Image of God can fit our soule Every other seale is too narrow too shallow for it The magistrate is sealed with the Lion The woolfe will not fit that seale the Magistrate hath a power in his hands but not oppression Princes are sealed with the Crown The Miter will not fit that seale Powerfully and gratiously they protect the Church and are supreame heads of the Church But they minister not the Sacraments of the Church They give preferments but they give not the capacity of preferment They give order who shall have but they give not orders by which they are enabled to have that have Men of inferiour and laborious callings in the world are sealed with the Crosse a Rose or a bunch of Grapes will not answer that seale Ease and plenty in age must not be looked for without Crosses and labour and industry in youth All men Prince and People Clergy and Magistrate are sealed with the Image of God with the profession of a conformity to him and worldly seales will not answer that nor fill up that seale We should wonder to ses a Mother in the midst of many sweet Children passing her time in making babies and puppets for her own delight We should wonder to see a man whose Chambers and Galleries were full of curious master-peeces thrust in a Village Fair to looke upon six-penny pictures and three farthing prints We have all the Image of God at home and we all make babies fancies of honour in our ambitions The master-peece is our own in our own bosome and we thrust in countrey Fairs that is we endure the distempers of any unseasonable weather in night-journies and watchings we indure the oppositions and scornes and triumphs of a rivall and competitor that seeks with us and shares with us we indure the guiltinesse and reproach of having deceived the trust which a confident friend reposes in us and solicit his wife or daughter we endure the decay of fortune of body of soule of honour to possesse lower Pictures pictures that are not originalls not made by that hand of God nature but Artificiall beauties And for that body we give a soule and for that drugge which might have been bought where they bought it for a shilling we give an estate The Image of God is more worth then all substances and we give it for colours for dreames for shadowes But the
company in the reformation of Religion A miracle scarce lesse then the first propagation thereof in the primitive Church In how few yeares did God make the number of learned â—riters the number of persons of all qualities the number of Kings in whose Dominions the reformed Religion was exercised equall to the number of them who adhered to the Roman Church And yet thou must not depart from this contemplation till thou have made thy self an argument of all this till thou have concluded out of this that God hath made love to thy soule thy weake soule thy sick and foule and sinfull soule That he hath written to thee in all his Scriptures sent Ambassage to thee in all his preachers presented thee in all his temporall and spirituall blessings That he hath come to thee even in actions of uncle annesse in actions of unfaithfulnesse towards men in actions of distrustfulnesse towards God and hath checked thy conscience and delivered thee from some sins even then when thou wast ready to commit them as all the rest That that God who is but one in himselfe is yet three persons That those three who were all-sufficient to themselves would yet make more make Angels make man make a Christ make him a Spouse a Church and first propagate that by so weake men in so hard a doctrine and in so short a space over all the world and then reforme that Church againe so soone to such a heighth as these I say are to all the world so be thou thy self and Gods exceeding goodnesse to thee an argument That that God who hath shewed himself so loath to lose thee is certainly loath to lose any other soule but as he communicates himself to us all here so he would have us all partake of his joy and glory hereafter he that fils his Militant Church thus would not have his Triumphant Church empty So far we consider the accessiblenesse the communicablenesse the conversation of our good and gracious God to us in the generall There is a more speciall manner intimated even in the first word of our Text After this After what After he had seene the servants of God sealed sealed This seale seales the contract betweene God and Man And then consider how generall this seale is First God sealed us in imprinting his Image in our soules and in the powers thereof at our creation and so every man hath this seale and he hath it as soone as he hath a soule The wax the matter is in his conception the seale the forme is in his quickning in his inanimation as in Adam the waxe was that red earth which he was made of the seale was that soule that breath of life which God breathed into him Where the Organs of the body are so indisposed as that this soule cannot exercise her faculties in that man as in naturall Idiots or otherwise there there is a curtaine drawn over this Image but yet there this Image is the Image of God is in the most naturall Idiot as well as in the wisest of men worldly men draw other pictures over this picture other images over this image The wanton man may paint beauty the ambitious may paint honour the covetous wealth and so deface this image but yet there this image is and even in hell it selfe it will be in him that goes down into hell uri potest in gehenna non exuri sayes St. Bernard The image of God may burne in hell but as long as the soule remaines that image remaines there too And then thou who wouldest not burne their picture that loved thee wilt thou betray the picture of the Maker thy Saviour thy Sanctifier to the torments of hell Amongst the manifold and perpetuall interpretations of that article He descended into hell this is a new one that thou senâ—est him to hell in thy soule Christ had his Consummatum est from the Iewes he was able to say at last All is finished concerning them shall he never have a Consummatum est from thee never be at an end with thee Never if his Image must burne eternally in thy soule when thou art dead for everlasting generations Thus then we were sealed all sealed all had his image in our creation in the faculties of our soules But then we were all sealed againe sealed in our very flesh our mortall flesh when the image of the invisible God Christ Iesus the onely Sonne of God tooke our nature for as the Tyrant wished that all mankinde were but one body that he might behead all mankinde at a blow so God tooke into his mercie all mankinde in one person As intirely as all mankinde was in Adam all mankinde was in Christ and as the seale of the Serpent is in all by originall sinne so the seale of God Christ Iesus is on us all by his assuming our nature Christ Jesus tooke our souls and our bodies our whole nature and as no Leper no person how infectiously soever he be diseased in his body can say surely Christ never tooke this body this Leprosie this pestilence this rottennesse so no Leprous soule must say Christ never tooke this pride this adultery this murder upon himself he sealed us all in soule and body when he tooke both and though both dye the soule in sin daily the body in sicknesse perchance this day yet he shall afford a resurrection to both to the soule here to the body hereafter for his seale is upon both These two seales then hath God set upon us all his Image in our soules at our making his Image that is his Sonne upon our bodies and soules in his incarnation And both these seales he hath set upon us then when neither we our selves nor any body else knew of it He sets another seale upon us when though we know not of it yet the world the congregation does in the Sacrament of Baptisme when the seale of his Crosse is a testimony not that Christ was borne as the former seale was but that also he dyed for us there we receive that seale upon the forehead that we should conforme our selves to him who is so sealed to us And after all these seales he offers us another and another seale Set me as a seale upon thy heart and as a seale upon thine arme says Christ to all us in the person of the spouse in the Heart by a constant faith in the Arme by a declaratory works for then are we sealed and delivered and witnessed that 's our full evidence then have we made sure our salvation when the works of a holy life doe daily refresh the contract made with God there at our Baptisme and testifie to the Church that we doe carefully remember what the Church promised in our behalfe at that time for otherwise beloved without this seale upon the arme that is a stedfast proceeding in the works of a holy life we may have received many of the other seales and yet deface
And at the judgement you shall stand but stand at the barre But when you stand before the Throne you stand as it is also added in this place before the Lamb who having not opened his mouth to save his owne fleece when he was in the shearers hand nor to save his own life when he was in the slaughterers hand will much lesse open his mouth to any repentant sinners condemnation or upbrayd you with your former crucifyings of him in this world after he hath nailed those sinnes to that crosse to which those sinnes nayled him You shall stand amicti stolis for so it follows covered with Robes that is covered all over not with Adams fragmentary raggs of fig-leafes nor with the halfe-garments of Davids servants Though you have often offered God halfe-confessions and halfe-repentances yet if you come at last to stand before the Lambe his fleece covers all hee shall not cover the sinnes of your youth and leave the sinnes of your age open to his justice nor cover your sinfull actions and leave your sinfull words and thoughts open to justice nor cover your own personall sinnes and leave the sinnes of your Fathers before you or the sinnes of others whose sins your tentations produced and begot open to justice but as he hath enwrapped the whole world in one garment the firmament so cloathed that part of the earth which is under our feet as gloriously as this which we live and build upon so those sinnes which we have hidden from the world and from our own consciences and utterly forgotten either his grace shall enable us to recollect and to repent in particular or we having used that holy diligence to examine our consciences so he shall wrap up even those sinnes which we have forgot and cover all with that garment of his own righteousnesse which leaves no foulnesse no nakednesse open You shall be covered with Robes All over and with white Robes That as the Angels wondred at Christ coming into heaven in his Ascension Wherefore art thou red in thine Apparell and thy garments like him that treadeth the wine fat They wondred how innocence it selfe should become red so shall those Angels wonder at thy coming thither and say Wherefore art thou white in thine apparell they shall wonder how sinne it selfe shall be clothed in innocence And in thy hand shall be a palm which is the last of the endowments specifyed here After the waters of bitternesse they came to seventy to innumerable palmes even the bitter waters were sweetned with another wood cast in The wood of the Crosse of Christ Jesus refreshes all teares and sweetnes all bitternesse even in this life but after these bitter waters which God shall wipe from all our eies we come to the seventy to the seventy thousand palms infinite seales infinite testimonies infinite extensions infinite durations of infinite glory Go in beloved and raise your own contemplations to a height worthy of this glory and chide me for so lame an expressing of so perfect a state and when the abundant spirit of God hath given you some measure of conceiving that glory here Almighty God give you and me and all a reall expressing of it by making us actuall possessors of that Kingdome which his Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen SERMON XXXIII Preached at Denmark house some few days before the body of King Iames was removed from thence to his buriall Apr. 26. 1625. CANT 3. 11. Goe forth ye Daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart IN the Creation of man in that one word Faciamus let Vs make man God gave such an intimation of the Trinity as that we may well enlarge and spread and paraphrase that one word so farre as to heare therein a councell of all the three Persons agreeing in this gracious designe upon Man faciamus let us make him make and him mend him and make him sure I the Father will make him by my power if he should fall Thou the Sonne shalt repayr him re-edify him redeem him if he should distrust that this Redemption belonged not to him Thou the Holy Ghost shalt apply to his particular soule and conscience this mercy of mine and this merit of the Sonnes and so let us make him In our Text there is an intimation of another Trinity The words are spoken but by one but the persons in the text are Three For first The speaker the Director of all is the Church the spouse of Christ she says Goe forth ye daughters of Sion And then the persons that are called up are as you see The Daughters of Sion the obedient children of the Church that hearken to her voice And then lastly the persons upon whom they are directed is Solomon crowned That is Christ invested with the royall dignity of being Head of the Church And in this especially is this applyable to the occasion of our present meeting All our meetings now are to confesse to the glory of God and the rectifying of our own consciences and manners the uncertainty of the prosperity and the assurednesse of the adversity of this world That this Crown of Solomons in the text will appear to be Christs crown of Thornes his Humiliation his Passion and so these words will dismisse us in this blessed consolation That then we are nearest to our crown of Glory when we are in tribulation in this world and then enter into full possession of it when we come to our dissolution and transmigration out of this world And these three persons The Church that calls The children that hearken and Christ in his Humiliation to whom they are sent will be the three parts in which we shall determine this Exercise First then the person that directs us is The Church no man hath seen God and lives but no man lives till he have heard God for God spake to him in his Baptisme and called him by his name then Now as it were a contempt in the Kings house for any servant to refuse any thing except he might heare the King in person command it when the King hath already so established the government of his house as that his commandements are to be signifyed by his great Officers so neither are we to look that God should speak to us mouth to mouth spirit to spirit by Inspiration by Revelation for it is a large mercy that he hath constituted an Office and established a Church in which we should heare him When Christ was baptized by Iohn it is sayd by all those three Evangelists that report that story in particular circumstances that there was a voice heard from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased and it is not added in any of those three
be called his enemy It is true if we consider the infinite disproportion between them he cannot but to many sad purposes and in many heavy applications Man is an enemy to God Iob could goe no higher in expressing his misery Why hidest thou thy face and holdest me for thine enemy and againe Behold he findeth occassions against me and counteth me for his enemy So man is an enemy to God And then to adhere to an enemy is to become an enemy for Man to adhere to Man to ascribe any thing to the power of his naturall faculties to thinke of any beame of clearnesse in his own understanding or any line of rectitude in in his owne will this is to accumulate and multiply enmities against God and to assemble and muster up more and more man to fight against God A Reconciliation is required therefore there is an enmitie but it is but a reconciliation therefore was a friendship There was a time when God and Man were friends God did not hate man from all Eternitie God forbid And this friendship God meant not to breake God had no purpose to fall out with man for then hee could never have admitted him to a friendship Net hominem amicum quisquam potest fidelitter amare cui se noverit futurum inimicum No man can love another as a friend this yeare and meane to bee his enemy next Gods foreknowledge that man and he should fall out was not a foreknowledge of any thing that he meant to doe to that purpose but onely that Man himselfe would become incapable of the continuation of this friendship Man might have persisted in that blessed amitie and since if he had done so the cause of his persisting had beene his owne will I speak of the next and immediate Cause As the cause why the Angels that did persist was Bona ipsorum Angelorum voluntas the good use of their own free-will much more was the cause of their defection and breaking this friendship in their owne will God therefore having made man that is Mankinde in a state of love and friendship God having not by any purpose of his done any thing toward the violation of this friendship in man in any man God continueth his everlasting goodnesse towards man towards mankinde still in inviting him to accept the means of Reconciliation and a returne to the same state of friendship which hee had at first by our Ministery Be ye reconciled unto God You see what you had and how you lost it If it might not bee recovered God would not call you to it It was piously declared in a late Synod That in the offer of this Reconciliation God meanes as the Minister meanes and I am sure I meane it and desire it to you all so does God Nec Deus est qui inimicitias gerit sed vos it is not God but you that oppose this Reconciliation O my people what have I done unto thee or wherein have I grieved thee testifie against me testifie if I did any thing towards inducing an enmity ot doe any thing towards hindring this Reconciliation which reconciliation is to be restored to as good an estate in the love of God as you had in Adam and our estate is not as good if it be not as generall if the merit of Christ be not as large as the sinne of Adam and if it be not as possible for you to be saved by him as it is impossible for you to be saved without him It is therefore but praying you in Christs stead that you be reconciled to God And if you consider what God is The Lord of hosts and therefore hath meanes to destroy you or what he is not He is not man that he can repent and therefore it belongs to you to repent first If you consider what the Lord doth He that dwells in the heavens doth laugh them to scorne and hath them in derision or what he doth not He doth not justifie the wicked balance nor the bag of deceitfull waights If you consider what the Lord would doe Ierusalem Ierusalem how often would I have gathered thy children together as the Hen gathereth her Chickens and yee would not or what he would not doe As I live sayeth the Lord I desire not the death of the wicked if yee consider all this any of this dare you or can you if you durst or would you if you could stand out in an irreconciliable war against God Especially if you consider that that is more to you then what God is and does and would doe and can doe for you or against you that is what he hath done already that he who was the party offended hath not onely descended so low as to be reconciled first and to pay so deare for that as the bloud of his owne and onely Sonne but knowing thy necessity better then thy selfe he hath reconciled thee to him though thou knewest it not God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himselfe as it is in the former verse there the worke is done thy reconciliation is wrought God is no longer angry so as to withhold from thee the meanes for there it followes Hee hath committed to us the word of Reconciliation That wee might tell you the instrument of Reconciliation is drawn between God and you and as it is written in the history of the Councell of Nice that two Bishops who died before the establishing of the Canons did yet subscribe and set their names to those Canons which to that purpose were left upon their graves all night so though you were dead in your sinne and enemies to God and Children of wrath as all by nature are when this Reconciliation was wrought yet the Spirit of God may give you this strength to dip your pennes in the bloud of the Lambe and so subscribe your names by acceptation of this offer of Reconciliation Doe but that subscribe accept and then Caetera omnia all the rest that concernes your holy history your Iustification and Sanctification nonne scripta sunt are they not written in the bookes of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel says the Holy Ghost in another case Are they not written in the books of the Chronicles of the God of Israel Shalt thou not finde an eternall Decree and a Book of life in thy behalfe if thou looke for it by this light and reach to it with this Hand the acceptation of this Reconciliation They are written in those reverend and sacred Records and Rolls and Parchments even the skinne and flesh of our Blessed Saviour written in those his stripes and those his wounds with that bloud that can admit to Index expurgatorius no expunction no satisfaction But the life of his death lies in thy acceptation and though he be come to his thou art not come to thy Consummatum est till that be done Doe that and then thou hast put on thy wedding garment A man
might get into that feast without his wedding garment so a man may get into the Church to bee a visible part of a Christian Congregation without this acceptation of reconciliation that is the particular apprehension and application of Christ but hee is still subject to a remove and to that question of confusion Quomodo intrasti How came you in That man in the Gospell could have answered to that question directly I came in by the invitation and conduct of thy servants I was called in I was led in So they that come hither without this wedding garment they may answer to Christs Quomodo intrasti How camest thou in I came in by faithfull parents to whom and their seed thou hast sealed a Covenant I was admitted by thy Servants and Ministers in Baptisme and have been led along by them by comming to hear them preach thy word and doing the other externall offices of a Christian. But there is more in this question Quomodo intrasti is not onely how didst thou come in but how durst thou come in If thou camest to my feast without any purpose to eate and so to discredit to accuse either my meat or the dressing of it to quarrell at the Doctrine or at the Discipline of my Church Quomodo intrasti How didst thou how durst thou come in If thou camest with a purpose to poison my meat that it might infect others with a determination to goe forward in thy sinne whatsoever the Preacher say and so to encourage others by thy example Quomodo intrasti How durst thou come in If thou camest in with thine own provision in thy pocket and didst not relie upon mine and think that thou canst be saved without Sermons or Sacraments Qvmodo intrasti How durst thou come in Him that came in there without this Wedding garment the Master of the Feast cals Friend but scornfully Friend how camest thou in But he cast him out God may call us Friends that is admit and allow us the estimation and credit of being of his Church but at one time or other hee shall minister that Interrogatory Friend how came you in and for want of that Wedding garment and for want of wearing it in the sight of men for it is not said that that man had no such Wedding garment at home in his Wardrobe but that hee had none on for want of Sanctification in a holy life God shall deliver us over to the execution of our own consciences and eternall condemnation But be ye reconciled to God embrace this reconciliation in making your use of those means and this reconciliation shall work thus it shall restore you to that state that Adam had in Paradise What would a soule oppressed with the sense of sin give that she were in that state of Innocency that she had in Baptisme Be reconciled to God and you have that and an elder Innocency then that the Innocency of Paradise Go home and if you finde an over-burden of children negligence in servants crosses in your tradings narrownesse penury in your estate yet this penurious and this encumbred house shall be your Paradise Go forth into the Country and if you finde unseasonablenesse in the weather rots in your sheep murrains in your cattell worms in your corn backwardnesse in your rents oppression in your Landlord yet this field of thorns and brambles shall be your Paradise Lock thy selfe up in thy selfe in thine own bosome and though thou finde every roome covered with the â—oot of former sins and shaked with that Devill whose name is Legion some such sin as many sins depend upon and are induced by yet this prison this rack this hell in thine own conscience shall be thy Paradise And as in Paradise Adam at first needed no Saviour so when by this reconciliation in apprehending thy Saviour thou art restored to this Paradise thou shalt need no sub-Saviour no joint-Saviour but Caetera adjicientur no other Angel but the Angel of the greas Councell no other Saint but the Holy One of Israel he who hath wrought this reconciliation for thee and brought it to thee shall establish it in thee For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son much more being reconciled shall we be saved by his life This is the summe and the end of all That when God sends humble and laborious Pastors to souple and appliable Congregations That we pray and you receive us in Christs stead we shall not onely finde rest in God but as it is said of Noâ—hs sacrifice God shall finde the savour of rest in us God shall finde a Sabbath to himself in us and rest from his jealousies and anger towards us and we shall have a Sabbatary life here in the rest and peace of conscience and a life of one everlasting Sabbath hereafter where to our Rest there shall be added Ioy and to our Ioy Glory and this Rest and Ioy and Glory superinvested with that which crownes them all Eternity SERMON XLI Preached at Saint Pauls Crosse. 6 May. 1627. HOSEA 3. 4. For the Children of Israel shall abide many dayes without a King and without a Prince and without a Sacrifice and without an Image and without an Ephod and without Teraphim SOme Cosmographers have said That there is no land so placed in the world but that from that land a man may see other land I dispute it not I defend it not I accept it and I apply it there is scarce any mercy expressed in the Scriptures but that from that mercy you may see another mercy Christ sets up a candle now here onely to lighten that one roome but as he is lumen de lumine light of light so he would have more lights lighted at every light of his and make every former mercy an argument an earnest a conveyance of more Between land and land you may see seas and seas enraged with tempests but still say they some other land too Between mercy and mercy you may finde Comminations and Judgements but still more mercy For this discovery let this text be our Mappe First we see land we see mercy in that gracious compellation Children the Children of Israel Then we see sea then comes a Commination â— Judgement that shall last some time many days shall the Children of Israel suffer But there they may see land too another mercy even this time of Judgement shall be a day they shall not be benighted not left in darkenesse in their Judgement many dayes all the while it shall bee day Then the text opens into a deep Ocean a spreading Sea They shall bee without a King and without a Prince and without a Sacrifice and without an Image and without an Ephod and without Teraphim But even from this Sea this vast Sea this Sea of devastation wee see land for in the next verse followes another mercy The Children of Israel shall returne and shall seeke the Lord their God and David their King and
enough of it self but that the Prince of the world the Devill is anima mundi the soul of this lower world he inanimates he actuates he exalts the malignity of the world against us and he is our second enemy It was not the Apple but the Serpent that tempted Eve no doubt had looked upon the fruit before and yet did not long But even this enemy is not so dangerous as he is conceived In the life of St. Basil we have a story that the Devil appeared to a penitent sinner at his praiers and told him If you will let me alone I will let you alone meddle not with me and I will not meddle with you He found that by this good souls prayers to God God had weakned his power not onely upon that man the prayed but upon others too and therefore he was content to come to a cessation of armes with him that he might turn his forces another way Truely he might say to many of us in a worse sense Let me alone and I will let you alone tempt not me I will not tempt you Our idlenes our high diet our wanton discours our exposing our selves to occasion of sin provoke and call in the Devill when he seeks not us The Devill possesses the world and we possesse the Devill But then if the fear of the Lord possesse us our owne Concupiscencies though they be indeed our greatest enemies because the warre that they maintain is a civill warre shall doe us no harm for as the Septuagins in their Translation diminish the power of the Devill in that name â—wordsâ— a disproportioned Creature made up of a Lion and an Ant because as St. Gregory saith upon that place formicis â—eoest volatilibus formica The Devill is a Lion to Ants dasheth whole hills of them with his paw that creep under him but he is but an Ant to birds they prey upon him that flie above him If wee feare the Lord our concupiscencies our carnall affections our selves may prove our best friends because as the fire in the furnace did not burn the men but it burnt off those bands that fettered and manacled them for they were loose and walked in the furnace so our concupiscencies if we resist them shall burn off themselves and file off their own rust and our salvation shall be surer by occasion of temptations We may prevent mortem mortificatione everlasting death by a disciplinary life Mori ne moriamur is his rule too To die to the fires of lust here lest wee die in unquenchable fires hereafter to die daily as S. Paul speaks of himself lest we die at the last day To end this this is the working of the fear of the Lord it devours all other fears God will have no half-affections God will have no partners He that fears God fears nothing else This then is the operation of the feare of the Lord this is his working remaines onely to consider what this feare of the Lord is And beloved in him be not afraid of it for this fear of God is the love of God And howsoever there may be some amongst us whom the heighth of birth or of place or of spirit hath kept from fear They never feared any thing yet I think there is none that never loved any thing Obligations of Matrimony or of friendship or of blood or of alliance or of conversation hath given every one of us no doubt some sense in our selves what it is to love and to enjoy that which we doe love And the fear of God is the love of God The love of the Lord passeth all things saith the Wise man The love what is that to fear It follows The fear of the Lord is the beginning of his love As they that build Arches place centers under the Arch to beare up the work till it bee dried and setled but after all is Arch and there is no more center no more support so to lie at the Lords feet a while delivers us into his arms to accustome our selves to his fear establishes us in his love Be content to stop a little even at the lowest fear the fear of hell When Saul was upon an expedition and did not finde himself well followed he took a yoke of Oxen and hewed them in pieces and proclaimed that whosoever came not to the supply all his Oxen should be so served and upon this says the Text there The fear of the Lord fell upon all the people and they came out as one man three hundred and thirty thousand If Sauls threatning of their worldly goods wrought so let Gods threatning of thy selfe thine inwardest self thy soul with hell make thee to stop even upon thy fear of the Lord the fear of Torment Stop upon the second fear too the fear of privation and losse of the sight of God in heaven That when all wee have disputed with a modest boldnesse and wondred with a holy wonder what kinde of sight of God we shall have in heaven then when thou shouldst come to an end and to an answer of all these doubts in an experimentall triall how he shall be seen seen thus thou shalt see then that thou shalt never see him After thou hast used to hear all thy life blessednesse summed up into that one act We shall see God thou shalt never come nearer to that knowledge thou shalt never see him fear the Lord therefore in this second fear fear of privation And fear him in a third fear the fear of the losse of his grace here in this world though thou have it now S. Chrysostome serves himself and us with an ordinary comparison A Tyler is upon the top of the house but he looks to his footing he is afraid of falling A righteous man is in a high place in Gods favour but hee may lose that place Who is higher then Adam higher then the Angels and whither fell they Make not thou then thy assurance of standing our of their arguments that say it is impossible for the righteous to fall The sins of the righteous are no sins in the sight of God but built thy assurance upon the testimony of a good conscience that thou usest all diligence and holy industry that thou maist continue in Gods favour and fearest to lose it for hee that hath no fear of losing hath no care of keeping Accustome thy self to these fears and these fears will flow into a love As love and jealousie may bee the same thing so the feare and love of God will be all one for jealousie is but a fear of losing Brevissima differentia Testamentorum Timor Amor This distinguishes the two Testaments The Old is a Testament of fear the New of love yet in this they grow all one That we determine the Old Testament in the New and that we prove the New Testament by the Old for but by the Old we should not know that there was to bee a New nor but
about striking the rock and wouldst not thou be glad to change sinnes with either of them Are not thy sinnes greater heavier sinnes And yet wouldest thou not be sorry to undergoe their punishments are not thy punishments lesse Hast thou found hony says the holy Ghost in Solomon and he says it promiscuously and universally to every body eate as much as is sufficient Every man may And then Ionathan found that hony and knew not that it was forbidden by Sauls proclamation and did but taste it and that in a case of extreme necessity and Ionathan must die Any man might eate enough He did but taste and he must die If the Angels if Adam if Balaam if Moses if Ionathan did if the Serpent in the text could consider this how much cheaper God hath made sinne to thee then to them might they not have colour in the eye of a naturall man to expostulate with God Might not Ananias and Saphira who onely withheld a little of that which but a little before was all their own and now must die for that have been excusable if they had said at the last gaspe How many direct Sacrileges hath God forborne in such and such and we must die Mighty not Eâ— and Onan after their uncleane act upon themselves onely for which they died have been excusable if they had said at the last gaspe How many direct adulteries how many unnaturall incests hath God forborne in such and such and we must die How many loads of miserable wretches maist thou have seen suffer at ordinary executions when thou mightest have said with David Lord I have done wickedly but these sheep what have they done What had this Serpent done The Serpent was more subtile then any other beast It is a dangerous thing to have a capacity to doe evill to be fit to be wrought upon is a dangerous thing How many men have been drawn into danger because they were too rich How many women into solicatation and tentation because they were too beautifull Content thy selfe with such a mediocrity in these things as may make thee fit to serve God and to assist thy neighbour in a calling and be not ambitious of extraordinary excellency in any kinde It is a dangerous thing to have a capacity to do evill God would do a great work and he used the simplicity of the Asse he made Balaams Asse speak But the Devill makes use of the subtilty of the craft of the Serpent The Serpent is his Instrument no more but so but so much he is his instrument And then says S. Chrysostome Pater noster execuratur gladium as a naturall father would so our heavenly father does hate that which was the instrument of the ruine of his children Wherein hath he expressed that hate not to binde our selves to Iosephus his opinion though some of the ancients in the Christian Church have seconded that opinion too that at that time the Serpent could goe upright and speak and understand and knew what he did and so concurred actually and willingly to the temptation and destruction of man though he were but anothers instrument he became odious to God Our bodies of themselves if they had no souls have no disposition to any evill yet these bodies which are but instruments must burn in hell The earth was accursed for mans sin though the earth had not been so much as an instrument of his sin Onely because it was after to conduce to the punishment of his children it was accursed God withdrew his love from it And in the law those beasts with which men committed bestiality were to be stoned as well as the men How poor a plea will it be to say at the last day I got nothing by such an extortion to mine own purse it was for my master I made no use of that woman whom I had corrupted it was for a friend Miserable instrument of sin that hadst not the profit nor the pleasure and must have the damnation As the Prophet cals them that help us towards heaven Saviours Saviours shall come up on Mount Sion so are all that concurre instrumentally to the damnation of others Devils And at the last day we shall see many sinners saved and their instruments perish Adam and Eve both God interrogated and gave them time to meditate and to deprecate To Adam he says Where art thou and who told thee that thou wast naked And to Eve What is this that thou hast done But to the Serpent no such breathing The first words is Quia fecisti no calling for evidence whether he had done it or no but Because thou hast done it thou art accursed Sin is Treason against God and in Treason there is no Accessory The instrument is the Principall We passe from that first Part the consideration of heavy Judgements upon faults in appearance but small derived from the punishment of the Serpent though but an Instrument Let no man set a low value upon any sin let no man think it a little matter to sin some one sin and no more or that one sin but once and no oftner or that once but a little way in that sin and no father or all this to do another a pleasure though he take none in it himself as though there were charity in the society of sin and that it were an Alms to help a man to the means of sinning The least sin cost the blood of the Son of God and the least sinner may lose the benefit of it if he presume of it No man may cast himself from a Pinnacle because an Angel may support him no man may kill himself because there is a Resurrection of the body nor wound his soul to death by sin because there may be a resurrection of that by grace Here is no roome for presumption upon God but as little for desperation in God for in the punishment of the Serpent we shall see that his Mercy and Justice are inseparable that as all the Attributes of God make up but one God Goodnesse and Wisdome and Power are but one God so Mercy and Justice make up but one act they doe not onely duly suceed and second one another they doe not onely accompany one another they are not onely together but they are all one As Manna though it tasted to one man like one thing to another like another for it tasted to every man like that that that man liked best yet still was the same Manna so for Gods corrections they have a different taste in different persons and howsoever the Serpent found nothing but Judgement yet we find mercy even in that Judgement The evening and the morning make up the day says Moses as soon as he had named evening comes in morning no interposing of the mention of a dark and sad night between As soon as I hear of a Judgement I apprehend Mercy no interposing of any dark or sad suspition or diffidence
we shall also see that all those particular that did aggravate the affliction in the former part That they were from the Lord from his Rod from the Rod of his wrath doe all exalt our comfort in this That it is a particular comfort that our afflictions are from the Lord Another that they are from his Rod and another also that they are from the Rod of his wrath First then in our first art and the first branch thereof The Generality of affliction considered in the nature thereof We met all generally in the first Treason against our selves without exception all In Adams rebellion who was not in his loins And in a second Treason we met all too in the Treason against Christ Iesus we met all All our sins were upon his shoulders In those two Treasons we have had no exception no exemption The penalty for our first Treason in Adam in a great part we doe all undergoe we doe all die though not without a lothnesse and colluctation at the time yet without a deliberate desire to live in this world for ever How loth soever any man be to die when death comes yet I thinke there is no man that ever formed a deliberate Prayer or wish that he might never die That penalty for our first Treason in Adam we do bear And would any be excepted from bearing any thing deduced from his second Treason his conspiracy against Christ from imitation of his Passion and fulfilling his sufferings in his body in bearing cheerfully the afflictions and tribulations of this life Omnis caro corruper at and thou art within that generall Indictment all flesh had corrupted his way upon Earth Statutum est omnibus mori and thou art within that generall Statute It is appointed unto all men once to die Anima quae peccaverit ipsa morietur and thou art within that generall Sentence and Judgement Every soul that sinneth shall die The death of the soul. Out of these generall Propositions thou canst not get And when in the same universality there commeth a generall pardon Deus vult omnes slavos God will have all men to be saved Because that Pardon hath in it that Ita quod that condition Omnem filium Hee scâ—urgeth every sonne whom he receiveth wouldst thou lose the benefit of that Adoption that Filiation that Patrimony and Inheritance rather then admit patiently his Fatherly chastisements in the afflictions and tribulations in this life Beloved the death of Christ is given to us as a Hand-writing for when Christ naild that Chirographum that first hand-writing that had passed between the Devill and us to his Crosse he did not leave us out of debt nor absolutely discharged but he laid another Chirographum upon us another Obligation arising out of his death His death is delivered to us as a writing but not a writing onely in the nature of a peece of Evidence to plead our inheritance by but a writing in the nature of a Copy to learne by It is not onely given us to reade but to write over and practise Not onely to tell us what he did but how we should do so too All the evills and mischiefes that light upon us in this world come for the most part from this Quia fruimur utendis because we thinke to injoy those things which God hath given us onely to use God hath given us a use of things and we set our hearts upon them And this hath a proportion an assimilation an accommodation in the death of Christ. God hath proposed that for our use in this world and we think to enjoy it God would have us doe it over again and we think it enough to know that Christ hath done it already God would have us write it and we doe onely read it God would have us practise the death of Christ and we do but understand it The fruition the enjoying of the death of Christ is reserved for the next life To this life belongs the use of it that use of it to fulfill his sufferings in our bodies by bearing the afflictions and tribulations of this life For Priùs Trophaeum Crucis erexit deinde Martyribus tradidit erigendum first Christ set up the victorious Trophee of his Crosse himself and then he delivered it over to his Martyrs to do as he had done Nor are they onely his Martyrs that have actually died for him but into the signification of that name which signifies a Witnesse fall all those who have glorified him in a patient and constant bearing the afflictions and tribulations of this life All being guilty of Christs death there lies an obligation upon us all to fulfill his sufferings And this is the generality of afflictions as we consider them in their own nature Now this generality is next expressed in this word of exaltation Gheber Ego vir I am the man It was that man that is denoted and signified in that name that hath lien under affliction and therefore no kinde of man was likely to scape There are in the Originall Scriptures four words by which man is called four names of man and any of the others if we consider the origination of the words might better admit afflictions to insult upon him then this Gheber vir I am the man At first man is called Ishe a word which their Grammarians derive à sonitu from a sound from a voice Whether mans excellency be in that that he can speak which no other creature can doe or whether mans impotency be in that that he comes into the world Crying in this denomination in this word man is but a sound but a voyce and that is no great matter Another name of man is Adam and Adam is no more but earth and red earth aud the word is often used for blushing When the name of man imports no more but so no more but the frailty of the earth and the bashfull acknowledgement and confession of that frailty in infinite infirmities there is no great hope of scaping afflictions in this name Adam Lesse in his third name Enosh for Enosh signifies aegrum calamitosum a person naturally subject to and actually possest with all kindes of infirmities So that this name of man Enosh is so farre from exempting him as that it involves him it overflows him in afflictions He hath a miserable name as well as a miserable nature Put them in fear O Lord says David that they may know they are but men but such men as are denoted in that name of man Enosh for there that name is expressed weak and miserable men Now to collect these as man is nothing but a frivolous an empty a transitory sound or but a sad and lamentable voice he is no more in his first name Ishe As man is nothing but red earth a moldring clod of infirmities and then blushing that is guilty sensible and ashamed of his own miserable condition and man is
not thus angry for one sin And again they are such sins as have been long in going and are now got over supergressae sunt they are gone gone over And then lastly for that first part supergressae Caput they are gone my head In which exaltation is intimated all this first sicut tectum sicut fornix they are over his head as a roofe as a cieling as an Arch they have made a wall of separation betwixt God and us so they are above our head And then sicut clamor they are ascended as a noise they are got up to heaven and cry to God for vengeance so they are above our head And again sicut aquae they are risen and swollen as waters they compass us they smother us they blinde us they stupefie us so they are above our head But lastly and principally sicut Dominus they are got above us as a Tyran and an usurper for so they are above our head too And in these we shall determine our first part When from thence we come to our second part in which as in this we shall have done their number we shall consider their greatnesse we finde them first heavy sinne is no light matter And then they are too heavy a little weight would but ballast us this sinkes us Too heavy for me even for a man equall to David and where is he when is that man for says our text they are as heavy Burden And the nature and incovenience of a Burden is first to Crooken and bend us downward from our naturall posture which is erect for this incurvation implies a declination in the inordinate love of the Creature Incurvat And then the nature of a burden is to Tyre us our very sinne becomes fulsome and wearisome to us fatigat and it hath this inconvenience too ut retardet it slackens our pace in our right course though we be not tried yet we cannot goe so fast as we should in any way towards godliness and lastly this is the inconvenience of a burden too ut praecipitet it makes us still apt and ready to stumble and to fall under it It crookens us it deprives us of our rectitude it tires us extinguishes our alacrity It slackens us enfeebles and intepidates our zeale It occasions our stumbling opens and submits us to every emergent tentation And these be the dangers and the mischievous inconveniences notified to us in those two Elegancies of the holy Ghost the supergressae the multiplicity of sinnes They are gone over my head and the gravatae They are a heavy burden too heavy for me First then all these things are literally spoken of David By application of us and by figure of Christ. Historically David morally we Typically Christ is the subject of this text In Davids person we shal insist no longer upon them but onely to look upon the two generall parts the multiplicity of his sinne and the weight and greatnesse thereof And that onely in the matter of Vriah as the Holy Ghost without reproching the adultery or the murder after Davids repentance vouchsafes to mollifie his manifold and his hainous sinne First he did wrong to a loyall and a faithfull servant and who can hope to be well served that does so He corrupted that woman who for ought appearing to the contrary had otherwise preserved her honour and her Conscience entire It is a sinne To runne with a theife when thou seest him or to have thy pâ—rtion with them that are adulterers already to accompany them in their sinne who have an inclination to that sinne before is a sinne but to solicite them who have no such inclination nor but for thy solicitation would have had is much more inexcusable In Davids sinne there was thus much more he defrauded some to whom his love was due in dividing himselfe with a strange woman To steale from another man though it be to give to the poor and to such poor as would otherwise sterve if that had not been stollen is injustice is a sinne To divide that heart which is intirely given to a wife in mariage with another woman is a sinne though she to whom it is so given pretend or might truly suffer much torment and anguish if it were not done Davids sinne flew up to a higher spheare He drew the enemy to blaspheme the name of God in the victory over Israel where Vriah was slaine God hates nothing more in great persons then that prevarication to pretend to assist his cause and promove his Religion and yet underhand give the enemies of that Religion way to grow greater His sinnes indeed were too many to be numbred too great too to be weighed in comparison with others Vriah was innocent towards him and faithfull in his imployment and at that time in an actuall and in a dangerous service for his person for the State for the Church Him David betrays in his letter to Ioab Him David makes the instrument of his own death by carrying those letters the warrants of his own execution And he makes Ioab a man of honour his instrument for a murder to cover an adultery Thus many sinnes and these heavy degrees of sin were in this one and how many and how weighty were in that of numbring of his people wee know not We know that Satan provoked him to doe it and we know that Ioab who seconded and accomplished his desire in the murder of Vriah did yet disswade and dis-counsell this numbring of the people and not out of reason of State but as an expresse sin Put all together and lesse then all we are sure David belied not himself His iniquities were gone over his head and as a heavy burden they were too heavy for him Though this will be a good rule for the most part in all Davids confessions and lamentations that though that be always literally true of himself for the sinne or for the punishment which he says personally David did suffer that which he complains of in the Psalms in a great measure yet David speaks prophetically as well as personally and to us who exceed him in his sins the exaltation of those miseries which we finde so often in this book are especially intended That which David relates to have been his own case he foresees will be ours too in a higher degree And that 's our second and our principall object of all those circumstances in the multiplicity and in the hainousnesse of sin And therefore to that second part these considerations in our selves we make thus much hast First then they were peccata sins iniquities And we must not think to ease our selves in that subtilty of the School Peccatum nihil That sin is nothing because sinne We are not all Davids amabiles lovely and beloved in that measure that David was men according to Gods heart But we are all Adams terrestres and lutosi earth and durty earth red and bloudy earth and therefore in our selves as deriv'd from
him let us finde and lament all these numbers and all these weights of sin Here we are all born to a patrimony to an inheritance an inheritance a patrimony of sin and we are all good husbands and thrive too fast upon that stock upon the encrease of sin even to the treasuring up of sin and the wrath of God for sin How naked soever we came out of our mothers wombe otherwise thus we came all apparell'd apparell'd and invested in sin And we multiply this wardrobe with new habits habits of customary sins every day Every man hath an answer to that question of the Apostle What hast thou that thou hast not received from God Every man must say I have pride in my heart wantonnesse in mine eyes oppression in my hands and that I never receiv'd from God Our sins are our own and we have a covetousnesse of more a way to make other mens sins ours too by drawing them to a fellowship in our sins I must be beholden to the loyalty and honesty of my wife whether my children be mine own or no for he whose eye waiteth for the evening the adulterer may rob me of that propriety I must be beholden to the protection of the Law whether my goods shall be mine or no A potent adversary a corrupt Judge may rob me of that propriety I must be beholden to my Physician whether my health and strength shal be mine or no A garment negligently left off a disorderly meal may rob me of that propriâ—ty But without asking any man leave my sins will be mine own When the presumptuous men say Our lips are our own and our tongues are our own the Lord threatens to cut off those lips and those tongues But except we doe come to say Our sins are our own God will never cut up that root in us God will never blot out the memory in himself of those sins Nothing can make them none of ours but the avowing of them the confessing of them to be ours Onely in this way I am a holy lier and in this the God of truth will reward my lie for if I say my sins are mine own they are none of mine but by that confessing and appropriating of those sins to my selfe they are made the sins of him who hath suffered enough for all my blessed Lord and Saviour Christ Iesâ—s Therefore that servant of God S. August confesses those sins which he never did to be his sins and to have been forgiven him Peccata mihi dimissa a fateâ—r quae med sponte feci quae te duce non feci Those sins which I have done and those which but for thy grace I should have done are all my sins Alas I may die here and die under an everlasting condemnation of fornication with that woman that lives and dies a Virgin and be damn'd for a murderer of that man that out-lives me and for a robbery and oppression where no man is damnified nor any penny lost The sin that I have done the sin that I would have done is my sin We must not therefore transfer our sins upon any other Wee must not think to discharge our selves upon a Peccata Patris To come to say My father thriv'd well in this course why should not I proceed in it My father was of this Religion why should not I continue in it How often is it said in the Scriptures of evill Kings he did evill in the sight of the Lord and walk'd in via Patris in the way of his father father in the singular It is never said plurally In via Patrum in the way of his fathers Gods blessings in this world are express'd so in the plurall thou gavest this land patribus to their fathers says Solomon in the dedication of the Temple And thou brought'st Patres our Fathers out of Egypt And again Be with us Lord as thou wast with our Fathers So in Ezekiel where your Fathers dwelt you their children shall dwell too and your children and their childrens children for ever His blessings upon his Saints his holy ones in this world are expressed so plurally and so is the transmigration of his Saints out of this world also Thou shalt sleep cum patribus with thy fathers says God to Moses And David slept cum patribus with his fathers And Iacob had that care of himselfe as of that in which consisted or in which was testified the blessing of God I will lie cum patribus with my fathers and be buried in their burying place says Iacob to his son Ioseph Good ways and good ends are in the plurall and have many examples else they are not good but sins are in the singular He walk'd in the way of his father is in an ill way But carry our manners or carry our Religion high enough and we shall finde a good rule in our fathers Stand in the way says God in Ieremy and ask for the old way which is the good way We must put off veterem hominem but not antiqâ—â—m Wee may put off that Religion which we think old because it is a little elder then our selves and not rely upon that it was the Religion of my Father But Antiquissimum dieâ—um Him whose name is He that is and was and is for ever and so involves and enwraps in himself all the Fathers him we must put on Be that our issue with our adversaries at Rome By the Fathers the Fathers in the plurall when those fathers unanimely deliver any thing dogmatically for matter of faith we are content to be tried by the Fathers the Fathers in that plurall But by that 〈◊〉 Father who begers his children not upon the true mother the Church but upon the Court and so produces articles of faith according as State businesses and civill occasions invite him by that father we must refuse to be tried for to limit it in particular to my father we must say with Nehemiah Ege domus patris mei If I make my fathers house my Church my father my Bishop I and my fathers house have sinned says he and with Mordecai to Esther Thou and thy fathers house shall be destroyed They are not 〈◊〉 a patris I cannot excuse my sins upon the example of my father nor are they 〈◊〉 Tempâ—ris I cannot discharge my sins upon the Times and upon the present ill disposition that reigns in men now and doe ill because every body else does so To say there is a rot and therefore the sheep must perish Corruptions in Religion are crept in and work in every cornet and therefore Gods sheep simple souls must be content to admit the infection of this rot That there is a murrain and therefore cattell must die superstition practis'd in many places and therefore the strong servants of God must come to sacrifice their obedience to it or their bloud for it Then no such rot no such murrain no such corruption of times