so have our Desires theirs which is their end And here we have them both the Object of our Knowledge delivered first 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a generality UT COGNOSCAM ILLUM That I may know him that is Christ secondly dilated and enlarged in two main particulars 1. Resurrection 2. his Passion In the one he beholdeth power in the other fellowship and communion which includeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a conformity to his death Christ indeed is risen but he suffered first so must we be conformable to his death if we will feel the power of his resurrection So these three are most considerable 1. Christ 2. the power of his resurrection 3. the fellowship of his sufferings these are three rich Diamonds and if they be well set if we take the words in their true Syntaxis and joyn configuratus to cognoscam our conformity to his death to our knowledge of his sufferings and resurrection we shall place them right even so fix them in the Understanding part that they will reflect or cast a lustre on the Heart even such a lustre as will light us through the midst of rocks and difficulties unto the end here aimed at the Resurrection of the dead Of these then in their order Of the Object first then of the Nature of our Knowledge which will bring us to the End though beset with words of fear and difficulty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if by any means We begin I say with the Object in general That I may know him We begin with Christ who is Α and Ω the beginning and the ending From whom we have saith the Father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to live and to live well and to live for ever If we begin without him we run into endless mazes of errour and delusion every on-set is danger every step an overthrow And if we end not in him we end indeed but it is in misery without an end John 17.3 To know him is life eternal Then our Ignorance must needs be fatal and bring on a death as lasting For where can we be safe from the Deluge but in the Ark Where can we rest our feet but upon this Stone Where can we build but upon this Foundation For let Philosophie and the Law divide the world into Jew and Genâ—ile and then open those two great Books of God his Works and his Words and see the Philosopher hath so studied the Creature that he maketh his God one Rom. 1 23. and turneth his glory saith the Apostle into the similitude of corruptible Man nay into Birds and Beasts â—â—d Creeping things And the Jew's proficiency reached but so far as to know he was the worse for it On every letter he findeth gall and wormwood and the very bitterness of Death The Philosopher hath learned no more then this that he can be but happy here and the Jew that without a better guide he must be unhappy for ever Reason the best light the Heathen had could not shew them the unsteddy fluctuations of the mind the storms and tempests of the soul the weakness of nature and the dimness of her own light how faint her brightness is how she is eclipst with her own beams how Reason may behold indeed a supreme but not a saving Power because she will be Reason It is true the light of Reason is a light and from heaven too But every light doth not make it day nor is every star the Sun And though we are to follow this light which every man brought with him into the world yet if we look not on that greater Light the Sun of Righteousness which hath now spread his beams over the face of the earth we cannot but fall into the ditch even into the pit of destruction The light then of Reason will not guide us so far in the wayes of happiness as to let us know we stand in need of a surer guide and therefore the Gospel you know is called that wisdom which descended from above But now in the next place for the Jew Ye will say that the Law was the Law of God and so made to be a lantern to their feet and a light to their paths 'T is true it was so But the Apostle will tell us that by this light too we may miscarry as being not bright enough to direct us to our end 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. 7.18 because it giveth a weak and unprofitable light In the verse before my Text S. Paul seemeth to run away from it and utterly to renounce the Law not quoad substantiam not indeed in regard of the duties therein contained but quoad officium justificandi in that it could not justifie not make him perfect not lead him to his end It may threaten accuse contemn and kill and so in Scripture it is said to do And then what guilty person will sue for pardon from a dead letter which is inexorable We may say of the Law as S. Paul speaketh of the yearly sacrifice Heb. 10.1 that is did not make the comers thereto perfect but left behind it a conscience of sin not onely ex parte reatus a conscience that did testifie they sinned and affright them with the guilt but ex parte vindictae a conscience which questioned not onely their sin but their atonement and told them plainly that by the Law no man could be justified And therefore S. Chrysostom on that place will tell us In that the Jews did offer sacrifice it seemed they had conscience that accused them of sin but that they sacrificed continually argued that they had a conscience too which accused their sacrifice of imperfection Wherefore then served the Law The Apostle answereth well Gal. 3.19 It was added because of trangressions not to disannul the Covenant but as an attendant an additament as a glass to discover sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Clemens The Law doth not beget sin for that it cannot do but manifest it Non est in speculo quod ostenditur I may shew you a Death's head in a glass but there is no such horrid substance there And the Law which is most perfect in it self may represent my wants unto me and make me flie to some richer Treasury for a supply Now to draw this home When both Lights fail when the Law of Nature is so dim that it cannot bring us to our journey's end and the Law written is as loud to tell us of our leasings as to direct us in our way what should we do but look up upon the Sun if righteousness Christ Jesus who came to improve and perfect Nature and who is the end of the Law and the end of our hopes and the end of our faith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Father calleth him that great Sabbath in which the Jew and the Gentile may rest in which the Father resteth as well pleased and the holy Ghost resteth in whom the Saints and Martyrs and the whole Church have
of the soul which are called by the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 puffings up for riches or learning or beauty or strength or eloquence or virtue or any thing which we admire our selves for elations and liftings up of the Mind above it self stretching of it beyond its measure 2 Cor. 10.14 making us to complain of the Law as unjust to start at the shadow of an injury to do evil and not to see it to commit sin and excuse it making our tongues our own Psal 12.4 our hands our own our understandings our own our wills our own leaving us Independents under no law but our own The Prophet David calleth it highness or haughtiness of the heart Solomon Psal 131 1. Prov. 16.18 haughtiness of the spirit which is visible in our sin and visible in our apologies for sin lifting up the eyes Psal 10.4 and lifting up the nose for so the phrase signifieth and lifting up the head and making our necks brass as if we had devoured a spit as Epictetus expresseth it I am and I alone Graeci 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 appellant Arrian in Epict. is soon writ in any mans heart and it is the office and work of Humility to wipe it out to wipe out all imaginations which rise and swell against the Law our Neighbour and so against God himself For the mind of man is very subject to these fits of swelling Humility Our very nature riseth at the mention of it Habet mens nostra sublime quiddam impatiens superioris saith the Oratour Mens minds naturally are lifted up and cannot endure to be overlookt Humility It is well we can hear her named with patience It is something more that we can commend her But quale monstrum quale sacrilegium saith the Father O monstruous sacrilege we commend Humility and that we do so swelleth us We shut her out of doors when we entertein her When we deck her with praises we sacrilegiously spoil her and even lose her in our panegyricks and commendations We see for it is but too visible what light materials we are made of what tinder we are that the least spark will set us on fire to blaze and be offensive to every eye We censure Pride in others and are proud we do so we humble our brethren and exalt our selves It is the art and malice of the world when men excel either in virtue or learning to say they are proud and they think with that breath to level every hill that riseth so high and calleth so many eyes to look upon it But suppose they were alass a very fool will be so and he that hath not one good part to gain the opinion of men will do that office for himself and wonder the world should so mistake him Doth Learning or Virtue do our good parts puff us up and set us in our altitudes No great matter the wagging of a feather the gingling of a spur a little ceruss and paint any thing nothing will do it nay to descend yet lower that which is worse then nothing will do it Wickedness will do it 〈◊〉 10.3 He boasteth of his hearts desire saith David he blesseth himself in evil Prov. 2.14 He rejoyceth in evil saith Solomon he pleaseth and flattereth himself in mischief And what are these benedictions these boastings these triumphs in evil but as the breathings the sparkles the proclamations of Pride Psal 10.4 The wicked is so proud he careth not for God God is not in all his thoughts When Adam by pride was risen so high as to fall from his obedience God looketh upon him in this his exaltation or rather in this ruine and beholdeth him not as his creature but as a prodigie and seemeth to put on admiration 〈…〉 22. ECCE ADAM FACTVS TANQVAM VNVS E NOBIS See the man is become as one of us God speaketh it by an Irony A God he is but of his own making Whilest he was what I made him he was a Man but innocent just immortal of singular endowments and he was so truly and really but now having swelled and reached beyond his bounds a God he is but per mycterismum a God that may be pitied that may be derided a mortal dying God a God that will run into a thicket to hide himself His Greatness is but figurative but his misery is real Being turned out of paradise he hath nothing left but his phansie to deifie him This is our case our teeth are on edge with the same sowr grapes We are proud and sin and are proud in our sins We lift up our selves against the Law and when we have broke it we lift up our selves against Repentance When we are weak then we are strong when we are poor and miserable then we are rich when we are naked then we clothe our selves with pride as with a garment And as in Adam so in us our Greatness is but a tale and a pleasing lye our sins and imperfections true and real our heaven but a thought and our hell burning A strange soloecisme a look as high as heaven and the soul as low as the lowest pit It was an usual speach with Martine Luther that every man was born with a Pope in his belly And we know what the Pope hath long challenged and appropriated to himself Infallibility and Supremacy which like the two sides of an Arch mutually uphold each other For do we question his Immunity from errour It is a bold errour in us for he is supreme Judge of controversies and the conjecture is easie which way the question will be stated Can we not be perswaded and yield to his Supremacy Then his Parasites will tell you that he is Infallible By this we may well ghess what Luther meant For so it is in us Pride maketh us incorrigible and the thought that we are so increaseth our Pride We are too high to stand and too wise to be wary too learned to be taught and too good to be reproved We now stand upon our Supremacy See how the Worm swelleth into an Angel The Heart forgetteth it is flesh and becometh a stone and you cannot set Christs Impress HVMILITY upon a stone Learn of me for I am humble The Ear is deaf the Heart stubborn Matth. 11.29 the Mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Theodoret a reprobate Rom. 1.28 reverberating mind a heart of marble which violently beateth back the blow that should soften it Now the office of Humility is to abate this swelling its proper work is to hammer this rock and break it to pieces Jer. 23.29 to drive it into it self to pull it down at the sight of this Lord to place it under it self under the Law under God to bind it as it were with cords to let out this corrupt blood and this noxious humour and so sacrifice it to that God that framed it to depress it in it self that
imitateth natural motion It is weak in the beginning stronger in the progress but most strong and violent towards the end Transit in violentiam voluntas antiqua That which we will often we will with eagernerness and violence Our first onset in sin is with fear and reluctation we then venture further and proceed with les regret we move forwards with delight Delight continueth the motion and maketh it customary and Custome at last driveth and bindeth us to it as to our centre Vitia insolentiora renascuntur saith Seneca Sin groweth more insolent by degrees first it flattereth then commandeth after enslaveth and then betrayeth us First it gaineth consent afterwards it worketh delight Jer. 6.15 at last 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a shamelesness in sin Were they ashamed Nihil magis in natura sua laudare se dicebat quam ut ipsius verbo Vtar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Suet. Caligula They were not at all ashamed nay 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a senslesness and stupidity and Caligula's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a stubbornness and perversness of disposition which will not let us turn from sin For by neglecting a timely remedy vitia mores fiunt our evil wayes become our manners and common deportment and we look upon them as upon that which becomes us upon an unlawful act as upon that which we ought to do Nay peccatum lex Sin which is the transgression of the Law 1 John 3. â— is made a Law it self S. Augustine in his Confessions calleth it so Lex peccati est violentia consuetudinis That Law of Sin which carrieth us with that violence is nothing else but the force of long custome and continuance in sin For sin by custome gaineth a kingdome in our souls and having taken her seat and throne there she promulgeth Laws Lex alia in membris meis repugnavit legi mentis mea Rom. 7. Lex 〈◊〉 peccati est violentia consuetudinis qua trahâ—tur tenetur etiam invitus animus eo merito quo in eam volens illabitur Aug. l. 8. Confess c 5. Psal 127.2 If she say Go we go and if she say Do this we do it Surge in quit Avaritia She commandeth the Miser to rise up early and lie down late and eat the bread of sorrow She setteth the Adulterer on fire and maketh him vile and base in his own eyes whilst he counteth it his greatest honour and preferment to be a slave to his strumpet She draweth the Revengers sword She feedeth the Intemperate with poyson And she commaundeth not as a Tyrant but having gained dominion over us she findeth us willing subjects She holdeth us captive and we call our captivity our liberty Her poyson is as the poyson of the Aspick She biteth us and we smile we die and feel it not Again it is dangerous in respect of God himself whose call we regard not whose counsels we reject whose patience we dally with whose judgements we sl ght to whom we wantonly turn the back when he calleth after us to seek his face Psal 27.8 and so tread that Mercy under foot which should save us We will not turn yet upon a bold and strange presumption That though we grieve his Spirit though we resist and blaspheme his Spirit yet after all these scorns and contempts after all these injuries and contumelies he will yet look after us and sue unto us and offer himself and meet and receive us at any time we shall point as most convenient to turn in It is most true God hath declared himself and as it were become his own Herald and proclaimed it to all the world The Lord Exod. 34.6 7. merciful and gracious long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands He is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 most lovingly affected to Man the chief and prince of his creatures He longeth after him he wooeth him he waiteth on him His Glory and Mans Salvation meet and kiss each other for it is his glory to crown Man Nor doth he at any time turn from us himself till we doat on the World and Sensuality and divorce him from us till we have made our heaven below chosen other Gods which we make our selves and think him not worth the turning to Jer. 23.23 He he is alwayes a God at hand and never goeth from us till we force him away by violence How many murmurings and rebellions how many contradictions of sinners hath he stood out and yet looked towards them Amos 2.13 How hath he been pressed as a cart under sheaves and yet looked towards them How hath he been shaken off and defied and yet looked towards them He receiveth David after his adultery and murder after that complication of sins the least of which was of force enough to have cast him out of Gods presence for ever He receiveth Peter after his denial and would have received Judas had he repented after his treason He received Manasses when he could not live long and he received the Thief on the Cross when he could live no longer Psal 100.5 Heb. 13.8 All this is true His Mercy is infinite and his Mercy is everlasting and is the same yesterday and to day and for ever But as Tertullian saith well De pudicit c. 10. non potest non irasci contumeliis misericordiae suae God must needs wax angry at the contumelies and reproches which by our dalliance and delay we fling upon his Mercy which is so ready to cover our sins For how can he suffer this Queen of his Attributes to be thus prostituted by our lusts How can he endure to to see men bring Sin into the world under the shadow of that Mercy which should take it away and advance the kingdome of darkness and fight under the Devils banner with this inscription and motto lifted up The Lord is merciful What hopes of that souldier that flingeth away his buckler or of that condemned person thar teareth his pardon or of that sick man that loveth his disease and counteth his Physick poyson The Prophet here in my Text where he calleth upon us with that earnestness Turn ye turn ye giveth us a fair intimation that if we thus delay and delay and never begin a time may come when we shall not be able to turn It may seem indeed a harsh and hard saying a doctrine not sutable with the lenity and gentleness of the Gospel which breatheth nothing but mercy to conclude that such a time may come that any part of time that the last moment of our time may not make a Now to turn in that whilest we breathe our condition should be as desperate as if we were dead that whilest we are men our estate should be as irrevocable as that of the damned spirits with this difference onely that we are not yet in the place of torment which nevertheless is prepared for us and will as certainly receive us as it doth now the Devil
a sigh or a feigned and formal confession so far we are content to humble our selves And this we may deplore with tears of bloud but cannot hope to remove though we should speak with the tongue of men and Angels since it hath taken such deep root in the hearts of men that they who cry down this Expecting of grace and Fighting against grace and who had rather see a fair shew of it in their lives then in their Panegyricks and would think it a more delightful sight to see them grow in grace then commend it and resist it are themselves cryed down and counted bringers in of new doctrine and enemies to the Grace of God because they would establish it And so the Drunkard may swill his bowls and chear up his heart in the dayes of his youth and expect that happy hour when Sobriety and Temperance shall possess him unawares The Oppressour may grind the face of the poor more and more since God's Grace is sufficient to melt his heart He may hope he may be honest one day who as yet resolveth to be a knave He that is turbulent in all his wayes who like a Haggard checketh at every feather and is troubled with every gust of wind nay with every breath may imagin that Grace will soon settle and compose his mind that Content and Peaceableness will one time or other suddenly fall upon him as a sweet and pleasant sleep He that hath a high look and a proud heart may be brought down and humbled in the twinckling of an eye And what is this but to cast away the Grace of God as S. Paul speaketh to turn it into wantonness as S. Jude to make it nothing else but a pretense and excuse to prolong our time in the tents of Kedar to encourage us to sport it on in our evil wayes like the wild asse or the wanton heifer Oh 't is a dangerous thing to attribute so much to Grace as to make it void and of no effect to cry up its power and be unwilling to feel it to say it can do that which we will not suffer it to do It is the constant voice of Scripture to commend God's Grace but withal to awake our industry to encourage us with the sight of so sure a guide and then bid us Vp and be doing God beseecheth us to be reconciled and commandeth us to reconcile our selves His will is that we should be saved and his will is that we should work out our salvation He persuadeth us to be patient and he persuadeth us to possess our souls with patience Where we are told that he worketh in us both to Will and to Do Phil. 2.13 it is given as a reason why we should 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 MAGIS OPERARI work more strenuously and intentively AUGESCERE IN OPERE as some increase and abound in our work Grace is a good wind to drive us on but must not be made a pillow to sleep on Humbled God would see us and he enjoyneth us to humble our selves S. Ambrose speaketh it plainly Non vult invitos cogere he will not save us against our wills And if we stand out and will not he cannot save us Non vult importunus irruere he breaketh not in by violence but when he entereth he calleth thee to open And this maketh our Humility voluntary that thy Will may lead thee and not Necessity draw thee A forced Humility is but Pride in a chain and a stubborn heart with a weight of led upon it Pharaoh's Humility Zech. 5. driven on with an East-wind and compassed with Locusts Ahab's Humility at the sound of the Prophet's thunder For here is the difference The righteous fall to the ground the wicked are tumbled down Their Humiliation is like Haman's going before Mordecai not like David's dancing before the Ark like the submission of a condemned man to the block which upon refusal he had been dragged to There is saith the devout Schoolman Humilitas poenalis and Humilitas medicinalis Humility which is not a virtue but a punishment and Humility which is not a punishment but a medicine Humility which is gall and wormwood and Humility which is an antidote When the vial is broken upon my head it poisoneth me but when I temper it my self and take it down it is a cordial The Gospel our Saviour calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a yoke and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a burthen a yoke which if we yield not our necks will break them and a burthen which if we bow not under will sink us but when Humility beareth it it is easie and when it weareth it light To be humbled then is not enough we must humble our selves and take some pains to do it Not enough to be on the ground unless our hand hath thrown us down Not enough to be in sackcloth unless we have put it on Not enough to be crucified unless we crucifie our selves Take them both together Be humbled and Take pains to humble your selves and you have crowned S. Peter's Exhortation We come now to our second Consideration and must shew you Wherein this Humbling of our selves consisteth The Oratour will tell us Virtutis laus in actione consistit Every virtue is commended by its proper act and operation and is then actually when it worketh And thus S. Paul exhorteth Timothy 1 Tim. 4.7 to exercise himself unto godliness which is learned by doing it and Plato 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to exercise the soul Every virtue is seen in its proper act Thus Temperance doth bind the appetite Liberality open the hand Modesty compose the countenance Valour guard the heart and Humility work its contrary out of the mind every thing that riseth up every swelling and tumour of the soul 2 Cor. 12.20 The Apostle calleth them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 puffings up for Riches or Learning or Eloquence or Virtue or something which we admire our selves for the elation and lifting up of our mind above it self 2 Cor. 10.14 the stretching of it beyond its measure setting it up against the Law against our brethren against God himself making us complain of the Law start at the shadow of an injury commit sin and excuse it making our tongues our own our hands our own our understandings our own our wills our own leaving us Independents under no Law but our own Psal 131.1 Prov. 16.18 The Prophet David calleth it the highness or haughtiness of the heart and Solomon the haughtiness of the spirit which is visible in our sin and visible in our apologies for sin lifting up the eyes Psal 10.4 and lifting up the nose as the phrase signifieth lifting up the head making our neck brass as if we had devoured a spit as Epictetus said I AM AND I ALONE is soon written in any man's heart and no hand but that of Humility can wipe it out For the mind of man is much subject to these fits of swelling Humility our
blessings or by his judgments yet if we seek him he will be found Let us have as much feeling as the Cedars of Libanus which are shaken with his voice Let us seek him for there may be more wrath yet left in his vials let us seek him that he poure it not forth that our gold become not dim Lam. 4. that the pretious sons of Sion become not as earthen pitchers that the tongue of the suckling cleave not to the roof of his mouth for thirst that they amongst us who are brought up in scarlet embrace not the dunghils that our Jerusalem be not made a heap of stones And therefore let us with one heart and mind make a covenant to seek the Lord 2 Chron. 15.12 who now seemeth to stand behind the cloud and hide himself from us This is a Holy League a blessed Covenant indeed and we never yet read of any other Let those who have lost him by pride bow and seek him by humility those who have lost him by luxury seek him by temperance and severe discipline those who have lost him by profaneness seek him by reverence and devotion Let all seek him that he may be found of all and return to the many thousands of his Israel that we may be found in him in peace without spot and blameless and he may be found to us as light shining upon our Tabernacles but as a consuming fire devouring the adversary that the tryal of our faith which is much more pretious then gold that perisheth though it be tryed with fire may be found unto praise and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ 1 Pet. 1.7 and he may be found to us our exceeding great and everlasting reward The Twentieth SERMON PART I. MATTH VI. 12. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors BEing to prepare you for a feast even the Supper of the Lamb there to partake of the body and bloud of Christ of all those benefits which issued from him with his bloud and are the effects of his love I could not invite your thoughts or call your meditations to a fitter and more proper object then this the Mercy of God covering your sins and at once working Mercy in you towards your brethren his Grace and Pardon and the Condition required to make it ours And here we have them both in this Petition God shining upon us with the bright beams of his mercy that it may reflect from us upon others Christ's bloud distilling upon our souls to melt them that as he was merciful we may be merciful as he forgiveth us our debts we may forgive our debtors In which Petition there are two parts or members which evidently shew themselves In the first is comprehended that which we desire in the second the cause or manner S. Cyprian calleth it the Law by which we put it up Forgive us our debts SICUT as we forgive our debtors God is ready if we be well qualified but if we forgive not then he shutteth his ears and is deaf to our petition For with what measure we mete he will measure to us again If we take our brother by the throat he will deliver us to the goaler If we will not forgive our brother an hundred pence a disgrace some injury some debt something which would be nothing if we were merciful he hath no reason to forgive us all Secundum nostram sententiam judicabimur He will pass no other sentence upon us then that which we have subsribed to in this Petition We beg for pardon on this condition SICUT ET NOS If or As we forgive our debtors And if we make not good our condition we do but prompt the Judge to the severity of a denial and ex ore nostro are condemned already out of our own mouth Let us then take a view of them both both of what we desire Forgiveness of our debts and what we bind our selves to in this request Forgiveness of others In the first we shall consider 1. Why Sins are called debts 2. What Remission of sin is What it is we desire when we pray for forgiveness of sins And this will fill up our first part In the second part 1. Who these Debtors are we must forgive 2. What Debts or Trespasses they be 3. In what the parity or similitude consisteth what extent the SICUT hath and how far our forgiveness must answer and resemble God's And of these we shall speak in their order First our Sins are compared to pecuniary Debts And they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is a kind of analogy and proportion betwixt them For what S. Matthew here calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 debts S. Luke calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sins And we may contemplate the wisdom of the holy Ghost in making choice of this resemblance in fashioning himself to the natural affections of men and bringing us to a sight of the deformity of our sins by that which is familiar to our eyes When we say that Sin is a transgression of the Law we are bold to ask whether it be a Substance and real thing or a Defect whether it be a Privation or Positive act We talk of the Act of sin and the Habit of sin and the Guilt of sin And we give it divers names according to its several effects and operations We call it a stain because it defaceth the image of God a pollution because of that contagion with which it doth infect the soul a prevarication because it is a kind of collusion and defeat of the command a crime because it deserveth to be brought to the bar and accused wickedness and abomination because it is injurious to the Majesty of the Highest But none of these appellations do express Sin so lively to the very sense as when we call it a debt Those names many times flie about us like atomes in the air shew themselves to the understanding and straight vanish away or if they enter they make no deep impression but this word is a goad cum ictu quodam auditur we hear it with a kind of smart Rem invisibilem per visibilis rei formam describit It conveyeth unto us that which is in its own nature invisible for who ever handled Wickedness who ever saw the wrath of God by the forms of things that are visible and familiar to us that we may more deeply apprehend and more firmly remember them And as in many places of Scripture God draweth reasons from outward blessings making our love to them a motive to bring us to himself so here he applieth himself to our infirmity and to drive us from sin calleth it by that name we love not to hear as mothers use to fright their froward children with the names of Hags and Spirits and Hobgoblins And this is the wisdom of the holy Ghost to take us by craft To win us to Wisdom by calling it a bracelet or ornament to bring the ambitious to him by telling
unto death There is lex Factorum the Law of Works For they are not all Credenda in the Gospel all articles of Faith there be Agenda some things to be done Nor is the Decalogue shut out of the Gospel Nay the very articles of our Creed include a Law and in a manner bind us to some duty and though they run not in that imperial strain Do this and live yet they look towards it as towards their end Otherwise to believe them in our own vain and carnal sense vvere enough and the same faith vvould save us vvith vvhich the Devils are tormented No thy Faith to vvhich thou art also bound as by a Law is dead that is is not faith if it do not vvork by a Law Thou believest there is a God Thou art then bound to vvorship him Thou believest that Christ is thy Lord Thou art then obliged to do what he commandeth His Word must be thy Law and thou must fulfill it His Death is a Law and bindeth thee to mortification His Cross should be thy obedience his Resurrection thy righteousness and his Coming to judge the quick and the dead thy care and solicitude In a word in a Testament in a Covenant in the Angel's message in the Promises of the Gospel in every Article of thy Creed thou mayest find a Law Christ's Legacy his Will is a Law the Covenant bindeth thee the Good news obligeth thee the Promises engage thee and every Article of thy Creed hath a kind of commanding and legislative power over thee Either they bind to some duty or concern thee not at all For they are not proposed for speculation but for practice and that consequence vvhich thou mayest easily draw from every one must be to thee as a Law What though honey and milk be under his tongue and he sendeth embassadours to thee and they intreat and beseech thee in his stead and in his name Yet is all this in reference to his command and it proceedeth from the same Love which made his Law And even these beseechings are binding and aggravate our guilt if we melt not and bow to his Law Principum preces mandata sunt the very intreaties of Kings and Princes are as binding as Laws preces armatae intreaties that carry force and power with them that are sent to us as it were in arms to invade and conquer us And if we neither yield to the voice of Christ in his royal Law nor fall down and worship at his condescensions and loving parlies and earnest beseechings we increase our guilt and make sin sinful in the highest degree Nor need we thus boggle at the word or be afraid to see a Law in the Gospel if either we consider the Gospel it self or Christ our King and Lord or our selves who are his redeemed captives and owe him all service and allegeance For first the Gospel is not a dispensation to sin nor was a Saviour born to us that he should do and suffer all and we do what we list No the Gospel is the greatest and sharpest curb that was ever yet put into the mouth of Sin The grace of God saith S. Paul hath appeared unto all men teaching us that is commanding us Tit. 2.11 to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts Libertas in Christo non fecit innocentiae injuriam saith the Father Our liberty in Christ was not brought in to beat down innocency before it but to uphold it rather and defend it against all those assaults which flesh and bloud our lusts and concupiscence are ready to make against it Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world He taketh away those sins that are past by remission and pardon but he setteth up a Law as a rampire and bulwork against Sin that it break not in and reign again in our mortal bodies There Christ is said to take away not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sins but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sin of the world that is the whole nature of Sin that it may have no subsistence or being in the world If the Gospel had nothing of Law in it there could be no sin under the Gospel For Sin is a transgression of a Law But flatter our selves as we please those are the greatest sins which we commit against the Gospel And it shall be easier in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah then for those Christians who turn the grace of God into wantonness who sport and revel it under the very wings of Mercy who think Mercy cannot make a Law but is busie onely to bestow Donatives and Indulgences who are then most licencious when they are most restrained For what greater curb can there be then when Justice and Wisdom and Love and Mercy all concur and joyn together to make a Law Secondly Christ is not onely our Redeemer but our King and Law-giver As he is the wonderful Counsellour Isa 9 6. Psal 2.6 so he came out of the loyns of Judah and is a Law-giver too Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion The government shall be upon his shoulder He crept not to this honour Isa 9.6 but this honour returned to him as to the true and lawful Lord With glory and honour did God crown him and set him over the works of his hands Heb. 2.7 As he crowned the first Adam with Understanding and freedom of Will so he crowned the second Adam with the full Knowledge of all things with a perfect Will and with a wonderful Power And as he gave to Adam Dominion over the beasts of the field so he gave to Christ Power over things in heaven and things on earth And he glorified not himself Heb. 5.5 but he who said Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee he it was that laid the government upon his shoulder Not upon his shoulders For he was well able to bear it on one of them For in him the Godhead dwelleth bodily And with this power he was able to put down all other rule autority and power 1 Cor. â—5 24 to spoil principalities and powers and to shew them openly in triumph to spoil them by his death and to spoil them by his Laws due obedience to which shaketh the power of Hell it self For this as it pulleth out the sting of Death so also beateth down Satan under our feet This if it were universal would be the best exorcism that is and even chase the Devil out of the world which he maketh his Kingdom For to run the way of Christ's commandments is to overthrow him and bind him in chains is another hell in hell unto him Thirdly if we look upon our selves we shall find there is a necessity of Laws to guide and regulate us and to bring us to the End All other creatures are sent into the world with a sense and understanding of the end for which they come and so without particular direction and yet unerringly
accepted as if we had never been lost as if we had alwayes been free-denizons of the City of God and never wandred from thence as if we had never forfeited our right In a word Our sins are wiped out as if they had never been And thus we were made free 1. à reatu peccati from the Guilt of sin which whosoever feeleth bath his Tophet his Hell here and whosoever committeth it doth at some time or other feel it It made Hezekiah chatter like a crane and mourn like a dove It withered David's heart like grass and burned up his bones as an hearth It made Peter's tears flow in bitterness What should I say more It made Judas hang himself Quis enim potest sub tali conscientiâ vivere For who can live under the guilt and conscience of sin But there is Balm in Gilead for this 2. We are made free à dominio peccati from the Power and tyranny of Sin Which many times taketh the chair and setteth us hard and heavy tasks biddeth us make brick but alloweth us no straw biddeth us please and content our selves but affordeth us no means to work it out condemneth one to the mines to dig for that money which will perish with him fettereth another with a look or with a kiss driveth a third as Balaam did his beast on the point of the sword through all the checks of conscience the terrours of the Law every thing that standeth in its way to the pit of destruction This power Sin may have and too oft hath in us But the power of the Gospel is greater then the power of Sin then the power of any Act and can abolish it of any Habit and may weaken and scatter it and is able to pull Sin from its throne and put down all its authority and power 3. We are made free à rigore Legis from the rigour from the strict and exact observation of the Moral Law which God at first required From the Law I say as it was a killing letter For this yoke is cast away when we put on the yoke of Christ who indeed requireth as you have heard before more holiness more integrity and greater perfection then the Law did but yet is not so extreme to mark what is done amiss nor doth he under this gracious dispensation punish every infirmity inadvertency and imperfection which the Law did HOC FAC ET VIVES Do this and thou shalt live And not to do it exactly is to break it and die 4. We are made free à servitute legis Ceremonialis from the servitude of the Ceremonial Law a busie and toilsome and expensive servitude in quâ non vivebant sed puniebantur saith S. Hierom in which they did not live but were punished A burthen saith the Apostle which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear This deliverance may seem more proper to the Jew For how could the Gentiles be freed from that Law of Ceremonies to which they were never bound For where S. John telleth us that if the Son make us free we shall be free indeed he speaketh of the freedom from the guilt and condemnation of sin which S. Paul in no place that I remember calleth our Christian liberty although he speaketh of it in many places but not under that name 5. Last of all this Law of Liberty passeth over to us as by patent the free use of the Creature that we are not bound by any Religion to these or these meats but may indifferently use or not use them The earth is the Lord's and all that there in is and he hath given it to the children of men But yet he was pleased upon some reasons to grant some meats for use and to forbid others as unclean Not that any were in their own nature unclean For whatsoever he made was good Sed ut homines mundarentur pecora culpata sunt But to reform and purge the manners of men he seemed to lay an imputation of Uncleanness upon the creature which could not be unclean in it self because it was the work of his hands In the Camel saith the Father he condemneth a crooked and perverse life in the Sow that walloweth in the mire he forbiddeth all pollution of sin in the Lizard our inconstancy and uncertain variety of life in the Hare our lust in the Swan our pride in the Batt our delight in darkness and errour These and the like enormities the Law did exsecrate in these creatures And the Jews were subject to these ordinances TOUCH NOT TASTE NOT HANDLE NOT. Which indeed were not so much prohibitions as directions and remedies that what was taken from their lusts might be added to their manners And such a restraint was fit for them who preferred the onions and garlick of Egypt before Manna it self and would not have liberty that they might still stay by the flesh pots of their enemies who were Lords over them But now claves macelli Christus nobis tradidit saith Tertullian Christ hath put the keys of the shambles or market into our hands The great sheet is let down from heaven and we may rise and kill and eat Every creature of God is good 1 Tim. 4.4 and none to be refused but to be received with thanksgiving and requireth no more sanctification or cleansing but by the word of God and by prayer And Whatsoever is set before you eat asking no question for conscience sake 1 Cor. 10.25 27. And The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the holy Ghost And he that is scrupulous in this Rom 14.17 and is fearful to touch or taste hath his face set as if he were returning to Jerusalem calleth that common which God hath cleansed as weak and vain as that Philosopher who would not venture into a ship because he thought it a sin to spit into the Sea These are the particulars of that Liberty which this perfect Law bringeth with it All which I once intended severally and more fully to handle But it would require more time then the present Power that is over us hath been willing to allow us We will therefore more strictly keep our selves to the words of the Text and see how we may reconcile these two things in appearance so contrary a Law which hath a severe and rigorous aspect and Liberty which hath so pleasing and flattering a countenance the Law which tieth us up and Liberty which seemeth to let us loose to do what we please For in this sense the world seemeth to take it which is fuller of Libertines then of Christians Who when they are under a Law are in bonds and never think themselves free but when they are a Law unto themselves that is when they are the veriest slaves in the world Et libertas libertate perit Liberty is made a gulf to swallow up it self It was a grave complaint of S. Hierom Non reddimus unicuique rei suum vocabulum We
esse debet ager quà m agricola The farm must not be too great for the husbandman but what he may be well able to manure and dress And the reason is good Quia si fundus praevaleat colliditur dominus Because if he prevail not if he cannot manage it he must needs be at great loss And it is so in the speculations and works of the mind Those inquiries are most fruitful and yield a more plentiful increase which we are able to bring unto the end which is truly to resolve our selves Thus it is as a little plot of ground well tilled will yield a fairer crop and harvest then many acres which we cannot husband for the Understanding doth not more foully miscarry when it is deceived with false appearances and sophismes then when it looketh upon and would apprehend unnecessary and unprofitable objects and such as are set out of sight Res frugi est sapientia Spiritual Wisdome is a frugal and thrifty thing sparing of her time which she doth not wantonly wast to purchase all knowledge whatsoever but that which may adorn and beautifie the mind which was made to receive Virtue and Wisdome and God himself To know that which profiteth not is next to ignorance But to be ambitious of impertinent speculations carrieth with it the reproch of folly Hom. 29. adv calumn 8. Trin. What is it then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Basil speaketh to seek with such diligence for that which is past finding out And first the knowledge of the hour of Christ's coming is most impertinent Acts 1.7 Psal 31.15 and concerneth us not It is not for us to know the times As our dayes so the times are in God's hand and he disposeth and dispenseth them as it pleaseth him fitteth a time to every thing which all the wisdome of the world cannot do Thou wouldst know when he would take the yoke from off thy neck It is not for thee to know That which concerneth thee is to possess thy soul with patience which will make thy yoke easie Thou wouldst know when he will break the teeth of the ungodly and wrest the sword out of the hand of them that delight in blood It is not for thee to know Thy task is to learn to suffer and rejoyce and to make a blessing of persecution Thou wouldst know when the world shall be dissolved Why shouldst thou desire to know it Thy labour must be to dissolve the body of sin and set an end and period to thy transgressions Thou wouldst know what hour this Lord will come It is not for thee to know but to work in this thy hour and be ready and prepared for his coming 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The present the present time that is thine and thou must fill it up with thy obedience That which is to come of what aspect so ever it be thou must onely look upon and consider as an help and advantage to thee in thy work The Lord will come speaketh no more to me then this To labour and sweat in his vineyard till he come All the daies of my appointed time will I wait Job 14.14 saith Job There is a time and an appointed time and appointed by a God of eternity and I do not study to calculate or find out the last minute of it but I will wait which is but a syllable but of a large and spreading signification and taketh in the whole duty of man For what is the life of a Christian but expectation of and waiting for the coming of the Lord David indeed desireth to know his end and the measure of his dayes Psal 39.4 but he doth not mean so to calculate them as Arithmeticians do to know a certain and determined number of them so to number them as to tell them at his fingers ends and say This will be the last but himself interpreteth himself and hath well explained his own meaning in the last words Let me know the measure of my dayes that I may know how frail I am know not exactly how many but how few they be let me so measure them that I may know and consider that they are but few that in this little time I may strive forward and make a way to eternity This was the Arithmetick he desired to have skill in It may seem a paradox but there is much truth in it few men are so fully resolved of their mortality as to know their dayes are few We can say indeed that we are but shadows but the dreams of shadows but bubbles but vapours that we began to die before we were born and in the womb did move and strive forward towards the gates of Death and we think it no disparagement because we speak to men of the same mold who will say the same of themselves and lay to heart as little as we But should we pass over Methusalem's age a thousand times yet when we were drawing even towards our end we should be ready to conceive a possibility of a longer race and hope like the Sun to run the same compass again And though we die every day yet we are not so fully confirmed in this that we shall ever die Egregia res est condiscere mortem saith Seneca The best art is the knowledge of our frailty and he must needs live well who hath well learnt to die And egregia res est condiscere adventum Domini Ep. 26. It is a most useful thing to have learnt and well digested the coming of the Lord. For we cannot take out this as we should but we must be also perfect in those lessons which may make us fit to meet him when he cometh The hour of his coming is lockt up in the treasury of his Wisdome and he hath left us no key to open it that we might not so much as hope to find it and so mispend our thoughts in that which they cannot lay hold on and which should be fastened on the other to advance and promote our duty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fix that well which is present here lay out all thy store all the powers of thy soul Whilest it is time whilest it is day whilest it is thy day make ready for his coming For secondly though it be in the future tense VENIET he will come though it lie hid as it were in the womb of Time and we know not when it will be brought to birth yet at this distance it looketh upon us and hath force enough in it self to work that fear and caution in us which the knowledge of the very hour peradventure might not do We say we believe it and that is enough And some have given Faith the preeminence above Knowledge and count the evidence we have by Faith clearer and more convincing then that we have by Demonstration But if it were not yet even that which is but probable in other things doth prevail with us and is as it were principium motus the
see danger and by this we avoid it By this we see beauty in ashes and vanity in glory And as other Creatures are so made and framed that without any guide or leader without any agitation or business of the mind they turn from that which is hurtful and chuse that which is agreeable with their nature as the Goddess which saith Pliny Nat. Hist l. 9. c. 30. carent omni alio sensu quà m cibi periculi have no sense at all but of their food and danger and naturally seek the one and fly the other So this Light this Power is set up in Man which by discourse and comparing one thing with another the beginning with the end shews with realities and fair Promises with bitter effects may shew him a way to escape Death and pursue Life through rough and rugged wayes even through the valley of Death it self And this is it which we call Vigilancy or Watchfulness Deut. 4.9 Take heed to thy self saith Moses Tom. 1 and Basil wrote a whole Oration or Sermon on that Text and considereth Man as if he were nothing else but Mind and Soul and the Flesh were the garment which clotheth and covereth it and that it is compast about with Beauty and Deformity Health and Sickness Friends and Enemies Riches and Poverty from which the Mind is to guard and defend it self that neither the glory nor terrour of outward objects have any power or influence on it to make a way through the flesh to deface and ruine it and put out its light 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Take heed to thy self PRAE OMNI CVSTODIA SERVA COR TVVM Keep thy heart with all diligence AB OMNI CAVTIONE Prov. 4.23 so it is rendred by Mercer out of the Hebrew from every thing that is to be avoided AB OMNI VINCVLO so others from every tye or bond which may shackle or hinder thee in the performance of that duty to which thou art obliged whether it be a chain of gold or of iron of pleasure or of pain whether it be of a fair and well promising or a black temptation keep it with all diligence and keep it from the incumbrances And the reason is given For out of it are the issues of Life PROCESSIONES VITARVM the Proceedings of many lives So many conquests as we gain over temptations so many lively motions we feel animated and full of God which increase our crown of joy All is comprehended in that of our Saviour Watch Matth. 26.41 and prâ—y lest you enter into temptation If you watch not your heart will lie open and tentations will enter and as many deaths will issue forth Evil thoughts Fornications Murders Adulteries Blasphemy as so many locusts out of the bottomless pit To watch then is to fix our mind on that which concerneth our peace to work out our salvation with fear and trembling Philip. 2.12 to perfect holiness in the fear of God 2 Cor. 7.1 Heb. 12.28 2 John 8. to serve him with reverence and godly fear to look to our selves that we lose not those things which we have wrought So that by the Apostle our Caution and Watchfulness is made up of Reverence and Fear And these two are like the two pillars in the porch of the Temple of Solomon 1 Kings 7.11 Jachin and Boaz to establish and strengthen our Watch. This certainly must needs be a sovereign antidot against sin and a forcible motive to make us look about our selves when we shall think that our Lord is present every where and seeth and knoweth all things when we shall consider him as a Witness who shall be our Judge that all we do we do as Hilary speaketh in Divinitatis sinu in his very presence and bosome that when we deceive our selves when we deceive our brethren when we sell our Lord to our Fears or our Hopes when we betray him in our craft crucifie him in our Revenge defile and spit upon him in our Uncleanness we are even then in his presence If we did firmly believe it we would not suffer our eyes to sleep nor our eye lids to slumber How careful are we how anxious how solicitous in our behaviour how scrupulous of every word and look and gesture what Criticks in our deportment if we stand before them whom we call our Betters indeed our fellow dust and ashes And shall we make our face as adamant in the presence of our Lord shall we stand idle and sport and play the wantons before him Shall we beat down his Altars blaspheme his Name beat our fellow servants before his face Shall we call him to be witness to a lie make him an advocate for the greatest sin suborn his Providence to own our impiety his Wisedome to favour our craft his Permission to consecrate and ratifie our sin Can we do what a Christian eye cannot look upon which Reason and Religion condemn and even Pagans tremble at Eccl. 23.17 Tertul. de Testm animae c. 2. Vnde haec tibi anima non Christiani can we do it and do it before his face whose Eye is pure and ten thousand times brighter then the Sun DEVS VIDET and DEVS JVDICAT God will see and God will Judge is taken out of the common treasury of Nature and the Heathens themselves have found it there who speak it as their language And if his awful Eye vvill not open ours our Lethargie is mortal We are Infidels if vve believe it not and if vve do believe it yet dare do those things vvhich afflict his eye vve are vvorse then Infidels Let us then look upon him think him present and stand upon our guard Psal 4.4 Let us stand in aw and not sin Let one Fear call upon another the Fear of this Lord upon the Fear of cautelousness and circumspection which is as our angel-keeper to keep us in all our vvayes in the smooth and even vvayes of peace and in the rough and rugged vvayes of adversity to lead us against our enemies vvhich are more then the hairs of our head as many as there are temptations in the world and to help us to defeat them to be our best buckler to keep off the darts of Satan and as a canopy to keep our virtues from soyl to keep our Liberality cheerful our Chastity fresh and green our Devotion fervent our Religion pure and undefiled to wast the body of Sin and perfect and secure our Obedience in a vvord to do that vvhich the Heathens thought their Goddess Pellonia did to drive and chase all evil out of our coasts For let us well weigh and consider it let us look upon our enemies the World with all its pageantry the Flesh with all its lusts the Devil with all his snares and wiles and enterprises let us look upon him coming towards us either as an Angel of light to deceive us or as a Lion to devour us and then let us consider our Lord and
was to put all to the sword and the event was he spared one too many 2 Sam. 1. for one of them was his executioner God biddeth us destroy the whole body of sin Rom. 6.6 12. to leave no sin reigning in our mortal bodies and if we favour and spare but one that one if we turn not from it will be strong enough to turn us to destruction Again it is Obedience onely that commendeth us to God and that as exact and perfect as the equity of the Gospel requireth and so every degree of sin is rebellion God requireth totam voluntatem the whole will for indeed where it is not whole it is not at all it is not a will and integram poenitentiam a solid entire universal conversion True obedience saith Luther non transit in genus deliberativum doth not demur and deliberate I may add non transit in genus judiciale It doth not take upon it self to determine which commandment is to be kept and which may be omitted what is to be done and what to be left undone For as our Faith is imperfect if it be not equal to the truth revealed so is our Obedience imperfect when it is not equal to the command and both are unavailable because in the one we stick at some part of the truth revealed and in the other come short of the command and so in the one we distrust God in the other we oppose him What is a Sigh if my Murmuring drown it What is my Devotion if my Impatience chill it What is my Liberality if my Uncleanness defile it What are my Prayers if my partial Obedience turn them into sin What is a morsel of bread to one poor man when my Oppression hath eaten up a thousand What is my Faith if my Malice make me worse then an Infidel The voice of Scripture the language of Obedience is to keep all the commandments the language of Repentance to depart from all iniquity All the Virtues in the world cannot wash off the guilt of one unrepented sin Mic. 6.7 Shall I give my first born for my transgression saith the Prophet the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul Shall I bring the merits of one Saint the supererogations of another and add to these the treasury of the Church Shall I bring my Almes my Devotion my Tears All these will vanish at the guilt of one sin and melt before it as wax before the Sun For every sin is as Seneca speaketh of Alexander's in killing Callisthenes De Benef. crimen aeternum an everlasting sin which no virtue of our own but a full complete Repentance can redeem As oft as it shall be said that Alexander slew so many thousand Persians it will be replyed he did so but withal he slew Callisthenes He slew Darius it is true and Callisthenes too He wan all as far as the very Ocean it is true but he killed Callisthenes And as oft as we shall fill our minds and flatter our selves with the forbearance of these or those sins our Conscience will check and take us up and tell us But we have continued in this or that beloved sin And none of all our performances shall make so much to our comfort as one unrepented sin shall to our reproch And now because in common esteem One is no number and we scarce count him guilty of sin who hath but one fault let us well weigh the danger of any one sin be it Fornication Theft Covetousness or whatsoever is called sin and though perhaps we may dread it the less because it is but one yet we shall find good reason to turn from it because it is sin And 1. Every particular sin is of a monstrous aspect being committed not onely against the Law written but against the Law of Nature which did then characterize the soul when the soul did first inform the body For though we call those horrid sins unnatural which S. Paul speaketh against Rom. 1. yet in true estimation every sin is so being against our very Reason which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very first law written in our hearts Or. 34. saith Nazianzene Sin is an unreasonable thing nor can it defend it self by discourse or argument If heaven were to be bought with sin it were no purchase for by every evil work I forfeit not onely my Christianity but my Manhood I am robbed of my chiefest jewel and I my self am the thief Who would buy eternity with sin who would buy immortality upon such loathsome terms If Christ should have promised heaven upon condition of a wicked life who would have believed there had been either Christ or heaven And therefore it is laid as an imputation upon Man Solum hoc animal naturae fines transgreditur No Creature breaketh the bounds and limits which Nature hath set but Man And there is much of truth in it Man when he sinneth is more unbounded and irregular then a Beast For a Beast followeth the conduct of his natural appetite but Man leaveth his Reason behind which should be more powerful and is as natural to him as his Sense Man Psal 49.20 saith the Prophet David that understandeth not is like to the beasts that perish And Man that is like to a beast is worse then a Beast No Fox to Herode Luke 13.32 no Goat to the Wanton no Tiger to the Murderer No Wolf to the Oppressour no Horseleach to the Covetous For Beasts follow that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 instinct of nature by which they are carried to the object but Man maketh Reason which should come in to rescue him from sin an instrument of evil so that his Reason which was made as a help as his God on earth serveth onely to make him more unreasonable Consider then though it be but one sin yet so far it maketh thee like unto a Beast nay worse then any though it be but one yet it hath a monstrous aspect and then turn from it 2. Though it be but one yet it is very fruitful and may beget another nay multiply it self into a numerous issue into as many sins as there be hairs of thy head It is truly said Omne verum omni vero consonat There is a kind of agreement and harmony in truths And the devout Schoolman telleth us that the whole Scripture is but one copulative proposition because the precepts therein contained are many and yet but one many in regard of the diversity of those works that perfect them yet but one in respect of that root of charity which beginneth them So peccatum est multiplex unum There is a kind of dependency between sins and a growth in wickedness one drawing and deriving poyson from another 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Epiphanius speaketh of Heresies Haeres Basilid as the Asp doth from the Viper which being set in opposition to any particular virtue creepeth on and multiplieth and gathereth strength to the endangering of
forward in the wayes of righteousness till we are brought to that place of rest where there is no evil to turn from but all shall turn to our salvation Thus much of the Exhortation Turn ye turn ye The next is the Reason or Expostulation For why will ye die O house of Israel The Twentieth SERMON PART V. EZEKIEL XXXIII 11. Turn ye turn ye from your evil wayes For why will ye die O house of Israel WHY will ye die is an Obtestation or Expostulation I called it a Reason and good reason I should do so For the moriemini is a good reason That we may not die a good reason to make us turn But being tendered to us by way of expostulation it is another reason putteth life and efficacy into it and maketh it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a reason invincible and unanswerable The Israelite though now in his evil wayes dareth not say he will die and therefore must lay his hand upon his mouth and turn God who is truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 free from all passion being to deal with Man subject to passion seemeth to put on Passion Exprimit in se ut exprimat de te saith S. Augustine He expresseth a kind of anger that thou mayest abhorre thy self for sin He seemeth sorrowful that thou mayest be melted into tears He putteth on a kind of wonder that thou mayest have confusion of face Will ye die why will ye die It moveth him much that Israel his chosen people should die that his house that he built upon a strong foundation and strengthened and supported on every side should even whilest he shined upon it sink and swerve and fall to ruine that the signature on his right hand should be defaced that the apple of his eye should be thus toucht This is enough to put God himself into passion to make him cry out and complain QVARE MORIEMINI Why will ye die O house of Israel Certainly the manner of speach maketh it evident that moved he was So it is Affections are commotions saith the Philosopher and many times make us speak what otherwise we would not Figura dictionis the tenour of our speach varieth with our mind and our very action and gesture and voice put on the shape of our affections The language here is sharp and violent not per rectam orationem by way of a plain and positive declaration of our mind but by a sudden and well-prest interrogation It is quick and round and leaveth a mark and imputation behind it He saith not The wayes ye walk in are evil turn from them If ye turn not ye run upon your death but QVARE MORIEMINI Why will ye die The question putteth it out of all question that God was either angry or sorrowful or struck with admiration The language of a quiet mind is as quiet as the mind This is sudden and vehement the very dialect of one in passion What coast soever the wind came from the storm is raised the tempest is high QVARE MORIEMINI Why will ye die is the voice of anger and sorrow the breathings and noise of a troubled mind Indeed all those attributes of Gods Will which we call affections from some likeness and analogy they bear with ours his Goodness and Love his Anger and Hatred his Fear and Grief may seem to meet here in this Obtestation His Love speaketh for he would not have us die His Anger speaketh for he is angry with us because we will not live He hateth Death and therefore would destroy it His Hope speaketh Isa 3◠1◠for he doth expect and wait that he may be gratious And he is even jealous of men that they will yet run on in their evil wayes and then he speaketh in his Fear and is brought to his Nè fortè I will not do this lest they sin Exod. 33.3 and I consume them in the way He is brought lower yet even to a kind of Despair QVID FACIENDVM What should I do to my vineyard Isa 5.4 which I have not done He loveth us even when we are his enemies that we may be his friends He is afraid of our ruine when we run boldly toward it He is troubled at our folly when we pride our selves and triumph in it He serveth with our sins and is wearied with our iniquities Isa 43.24 when we run at large and feel them not He is sorry for our transgressions when we leap and rejoyce in them He would be our God and we will not be his people He would have us live and we will die Good God! what an horrid spectacle is an Israelite a Christian in viis malis that runneth on in his evil wayes God cometh not near him but in a tempest at the very first sight of him he is in passion beginneth to ask questions is at his QVARE Why will ye do this And we cannot easily discern whether it be Quare exprobantis an upbraiding question or Quare indignantis an angry question or Quare dolentis a question raised and forced out by grief or Quare admirantis a question of one amazed at such extremity of folly or Quare accusantis whether it be not the form of a Bill of accusation and he draw articles against them Indeed this last includeth all For by way of upbraiding in grief and anger full of astonishment seeing such strange contempt he proceedeth against them ex formula formally and legally as we use in our Courts of Justice So that here as Rhetoricians will tell us Interrogatio pro accusatione est this Question is a plain Indictment And the arguments to convince them are drawn 1. Ab Inutili from the danger of the way Ducit ad mortem It leadeth unto death 2. Ab absurdo from the incongruity and absurdity which apparently followeth if they turn not That any should be willing to die is a great folly but nothing more absurd then that Israel should that the house of Israel should fall to pieces and ruine it self So then for the Convertimini or Repentance a reason we find but for the Moriemini for Death none at all nay many reasons there are we should not die First Gods Goodness who calleth after us warneth us of the danger qui minatur mortem nè inferat who threatneth death that we may not die Secondly He hath made us an house built us together on a sure foundation that we may mutually support each other from ruine and destruction Thirdly Death as the Philosopher calleth it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most terrible thing that can shew it self to flesh and blood able to fright any man from those wayes which lead unto it So that the conclusion which can follow hence can be no other then this If we die it will be in nobis ipsis in our selves and we shall be found guilty of our own destruction and the onely murderers of our own souls We have here a large field to walk over but we must
under the Law alone but also under the Gospel as a motive to turn us from sin and as a motive to strengthen and uphold us in the wayes of righteousness not onely as a restraint from sin but as a preservative of holiness and as a help and furtherance unto us in our progress in the wayes of perfection It may indeed seem a thing most unbefitting a Christian who should be led rather then drawn and not a Christian alone but any moral man Therefore Plato calleth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an illiberal and base disposition to be banisht the School of Morality And our great Master in Philosophy maketh Punishment one of the three things that belong to slaves as the rod doth saith Solomon to the fools back To be forced into goodness Prov. 26.3 to be frighted into health argueth a disposition which little setteth by health or goodness it self But behold a greater then Plato and Aristotle our best Master the Prince of Peace and Love himself striveth to awake and stir up this kind of fear in us telleth us of hell and everlasting darkness of a flaming fire of weeping and gnashing of teeth presenteth his Father the Father of Mercies with a thunderbolt in his hand Luk. 12.5 with power to kill both body and soul sheweth us our sin in a Deaths head and in the fire of hell as if the way to avoid sin were to fear Death and Hell and if we could once be brought to fear to die we should not die at all Many glorious things are spoken even of this Fear The Philosopher calleth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Bas in Psal 31 Tert. De poenit c. 6. the bridle of our Nature S. Basil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the bridle of our lusts Tertullian Instrumentum poenitentiae an instrument to work out Repentance Pachomius placeth it supra decem millia paedagogorum maketh it the best Schoolmaster of ten thousand Hearken to the Trumpet of the Gospel be attentive to the Apostles voice What sound more frequent then that of Terrour able to shake and divide a soul from its sin Had Marcion seen our Saviour with a whip in his hand had he heard him cursing the Fig-tree and by that example punishing our sterility had he weighed the many woes he pronounced against sinners perhaps he would not have fallen into that impious conceit of two Gods For though the dispensation have not the same aspect under the Law as under the Gospel yet God is the same God still as terrible to sinners that will not turn as when he thundered from Mount Sinai 2 Cor. 5.11 And if we will not know and understand these terrours of the Lord if we make not this use of them to drive us unto Christ and to root and build us up in him the Gospel it self will be to us as the Law was to the Jews a killing letter For again as humane laws so Christs precepts have their force and life from reward and punishment And to this end we find not onely scripta supplicia those woes and menaces which are written in the Gospel but God hath imprinted a fear of punishment in the very hearts of men Juvenat â—at Esse aliquos manes subterranea regna That there remain punishments after life for sin was acknowledged by the very Heathen And we may easily be perswaded that had not this natural domestick fear come in between the world had been far more wicked then it is We see many are very inclinable to deny that there is either Heaven or Hell and would believe it because they would have it so many would be Atheists if they could but a secret whisper haunteth and pursueth them This may be so There is an appointed time to die and after that judgement may come There can be no danger in obedience there may be in sin and this though it do not make them good yet restraineth them from being worse Quibus incentivum impunitas timor taedium Freedom from punishment maketh sin pleasant and delightsome and so maketh it more sinful but fear of punishment maketh it irksome bringeth reluctancies and gnawings and rebukes of conscience For without it there could be none at all Till the whip is held up there is honey on the harlots lips and we would tast them often but that they bite like a cockatrice Non timemus peccare timemus ardere It is not sin we so much startle at but hell-fire is too hot for us And therefore S. Peter when he would work repentance and humility in us placeth us under Gods hand 1 Pet. 5. â— Humble your selves under the mighty hand of God which expresseth his Power his commanding attribute His omniscience findeth us out his wisdome accuseth us his justice condemneth us Potentia punit but it is his Hand his Power that punisheth us Take away his Hand and who feareth his Justice or regardeth his Wisdome or tarrieth for the twilight to shun his all-seeing Eye But cùm occidat when we are told that he can kill and destroy us then if ever we return and seek God early Psal 78.34 Again as the Fear of death may be Physick to purge and cleanse our souls from the contagion of sin so it may be an antidote and preservative against it It may raise me when I am fallen and it may supply me with strength that I fall not again It is a hand to lift me up and it is an hand to lead me when I am risen inter vada freta through all the dangers that attend me in my way As it is an introduction to piety so is it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Gregorie Nyssene Tract 1. in Psalm c. 8. a watch and a guard upon me to keep me that no temptation no scandal no stone of offense make me turn back again into my evil wayes For we must not think that when we are turned from our evil wayes we have left Fear behind us No she may go along with us in the wayes of righteousness and whisper us in the ear that God is the Lord most worthy to be feared She is our companion and leaveth us not nor can we shake her off till we are brought to our journeys end Our Love such as it is may well consist with Fear with the Fear of judgement Look upon the blessed Saints David a man after Gods own heart yet he had saith Chrysostome L. 1. De compunct c. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Psal 6.1 Isa 38.14 15. Rom. 14 10. the memory of Gods judgements written in his very heart His thoughts were busied with it his meditations fixt here and it forced from him DOMINE NE IN FVRORE Correct me not O Lord in thy anger nor chastise me in thy wrath Hezekiah one of the best of the Kings of Judah yet walked in the bitterness of his soul did mourn like a dove and chatter like a Crane S. Paul buildeth up a tribunal and calleth
all tender and favourable to our own sins and because they pleased us when we committed them we are unwilling to revile them now but wipe off as much of their filth as we can because we resolve to commit them again and those transgressions which our Lusts conceived and brought forth by the midwifery of our Will we remove as far as we can and lay them at the door of Necessity and are ready to complain of God and Nature it self Now this complaint against Nature when we have sinned is most unjust For God and Nature hath imprinted in our souls those common principles of goodness That good is to be embraced and evil to be abandoned That we must do to others as we would be done to those practick notions those anticipations Natura nos ad optimam mentem genuit Quint. l. 12. Inst as the Stoicks call them of the mind and preparations against Sin and Death which if we did not wilfully stifle and choke them might lift up our souls far above those depressions of Self-love and Covetousness and those evils which destroy us quae ratio semel in universum vincit which Reason with the help of Grace overcometh at once For Reason doth not onely arm and prepare us against these inrodes and incursions against these as we think so violent assaults but also when we are beat to the ground it checketh and upbraideth us for our fall Indeed to look down upon our selves and then lift up our eyes to him from whom cometh our salvation Psal 62.1 121.1 is both the duty and security of the sons of Adam And when we watch over our selves and keep our hearts with diligence when we strive with our inclination and weakness as well as we do with the temptation Psal 103.14 then if we fall God remembreth whereof we are made considereth our condition that we are but men and though we fail his mercy endureth for ever But to think of our weakness and then to fall and because we came infirm and diseased into the world to kill our selves Wisd 1.12 to seek out Death in the errour of our life to dally and play with danger to be willing to joyn with the temptation at the first shew and approch as if we were made for no other end and then to complain of weakness is to charge God and Nature foolishly and not onely to impute our sins to Adam but to God himself And thus we bankrupt our selves and complain we were born poor we criple our selves and then complain we are lame we deliver up our selves and fall willingly under the temptation and then pretend it was a son of Anak too strong for such grashoppers as we We delight in sin we trade in sin we were brought up in it and we continue in it and make it our companion our friend with which we most familiarly converse and then comfort our selves and cast all the fault on our temper and constitution and the corruption of our nature and we attribute our full growth in sin to that seed of sin which we should have choked which had never shot up into the blade and born such evil fruit but that we manured and watered it and were more then willing that it should grow and multiply And this though it be a great sin as being the mother of all those mishapen births and monsters which walk about the world we dress and deck up and give it a fair and glorious name and call it Humility Which is Humilitas maximum fidei opus Hil. in Psal 130. saith Hilary the hardest and greatest work of our faith to which it is so unlike that it is the greatest enemy it hath and every day weakneth and disenableth it that it doth not work by charity but leaveth us Captives to the world and sin which but for this conceit it would easily vanquish and tread down under our feet We may call it Humility but it is Pride a stubborn and insolent standing out with God that made us upon this foul and unjust pretense That he made us so humilitas sophistica saith Petrus Blesensis the humility of hypocrites which at once boweth and pusheth out the horn in which we disgrace and condemn our selves that we may do what we please and speak evil of our selves that we may be worse Rom. 7.24 Oh wretched men that we are we groan it out and there is musick in the sound which we hear and delight in and carry along in our mind and so become wretched indeed even those miserable sinners which will ever be so And shall we call this Humility If it be Col. 2.18 it is as the Apostle speaketh a voluntary humility but in a worse sense He is the humblest man that doth his duty For that Humility which is commended to us in Scripture letteth us up to heaven this which is so epidemical sinketh us into the lowest pit That Humility boweth us down with sorrow this bindeth our hands with sloth that looketh upon our imperfections past this maketh way for more to come that ventureth and condemneth it self condemneth it self and ventureth further this runneth out of the field and dare not look upon the enemy Nec mirum si vincantur qui jam victi sunt And it is no marvel they should fall and perish whom their own so low and groundless opinion hath already overthrown For first though I deny not a derived Weakness and from Adam though I leave it not after Baptisme as subsistent by it self or bound to the centre of the earth with the Manichee nor washt to nothing in the Font with others yet it is easie to deceive our selves and to think it more contagious then it is more operative and more destructive then it would be if we would shake off this conceit and rowse our selves and stand up against it Ignaviâ nostrâ fortis est It may be it is our sloth and cowardise that maketh it strong Certainly there must be more force then this hath to make us so wicked as many times we are and there be more promoters of the kingdom of Darkness in us then that which we brought with us into the world Lord what a noise hath Original sin made amongst the sons of Adam and what ill use hath been made of it When this Lion roareth all the Beasts of the forrest tremble and yet are beasts still We hear of it and are astonished and become worse and worse and yet there are but few that exactly know what it is When we are Infants we do not know that we are so no more then the Tree doth that it grows Much less can we discover what poyson we brought with us into the world which as it is the nature of some kind of poyson though it have no visible operation for the present may some years after break forth from the head to the foot in swellings and sores full of corruption and not be fully purged out to our
by a sinister and unnecessary conceit of our own weakness rob and deprive our selves of that strength which might have defended us from Sin and Death which now is voluntary because we cannot derive it from any other fountain then our own Wills For Last of all be the blemishes in the Understanding and Will which we are said to receive by Adam's fall what they may be either by certain knowledge or conjecture yet we shall not die unless we will And if such we were all yet now we are washed now we are sanctified 1 Cor. 6.11 now we are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Leper who is cleansed complaineth no more of his disease but returneth to give thanks The Blind man who is cured doth not run into the ditch and impute it to his former blindness but rejoyceth that he can now see the light and walketh by the light he seeth And we cannot without foul ingratitude deny but what we lost in Adam we recovered again in Christ and that improved and exalted many degrees For Not as the offense Rom. 5.15 19â— so is also the free gift saith the Apostle For as by the offense of one many were made sinners that is were under the wrath of God and so considered as if they had themselves committed that sin so by the obedience of one many shall be made righteous made so not onely by imputation That we would have and nothing else have sin removed and be sinners still but made so that is supplyed with all helps and with all strength that is necessary and sufficient to forward and perfect those duties of piety which are required at the hands of a justified person For do we not magnifie the Gospel from the abundance of light and grace which it affordeth Do we not count the last Adam stronger then the first 2 Cor. 10.4.5 Is not he able to cast down all the strong holds all the towring imaginations which Flesh and Blood though tainted in the womb can set up against him And therefore if we be truly what we profess our selves Christians this Weakness cannot hurt us and if it hurt us it is because we are not Christians To conclude If in Adam we were all lost in Christ we are come home and brought nearer to heaven Et post Jesum Christum when we have given up our names unto Christ and profess our selves members of that mystical Body whereof he is the Head all our complaints of Weakness and disabilitie to move in our several places is vain and unprofitable and injurious to the Gospel of Christ Rom. 1.16 which is the power of God unto salvation And a gross and dangerous errour it is when we run on and please our selves in our evil wayes to complain of our hereditary infirmities and the weakness and imperfection of nature For God may yet breathe his complaints and expostulations against every son of Adam that will not turn Though you are weak though you have received a bruise by the fall of your first Parents yet in me is your strength and then Hos 13.9 Why will ye die O house of Israel We must now remove those other pretenses of Flesh and Blood But in our next and last Part. The Three and Twentieth SERMON PART VIII EZEKIEL XXXIII 11. Turn ye Turn ye from your evil wayes For why will ye die O house of Israel WE are told and can tell our selves that Sin is a burden and he that lieth under â— burden seeketh Ease Nor doth he alwaies ask counsel of his Reason to choose that which is made and fitted to remove it but oftentimes through the importunate irksomness of his pain he layeth hold on that which is next and that 's the best though it leave him under the same load and pressure and all his art and contrivance hath gained no more then this that he thinketh it lighter then it was when it is the same but with a large addition of weight And thus we sin but cannot perswade our selves we were willing to sin we run upon our death and yet it is that which both our eye and our will abhorreth We die for 1. we were born weak 2. we want means to avoid death 3. we want light to see our wayes 4. we walk on in them but we walk in pain and though we make no stop yet we have many a check We would not and yet we will go on we condemn our selves for what we do and do it And last of all we seek death but we mean life we do those things whose end is death but to a good end and so make our way to heaven through hell it self intend well and do those things which can have no other wages but death These are pillows which we sew under our own elbows Original weakness Want of grace Ignorance of our wayes the Reluctancy of our Conscience which we call Involuntariness And if these be not soft and easie enough to sleep on we bring in a good meaning and a good intention to stuff and fill them up And on these we sleep securely Judg. 16. as Samson did in the lap of Delilah till our strength go from us and we grow weak indeed fit for nothing but to grind in his prison and to do him service who put out our eyes able to die and perish but not able to live strong to do evil but faint and feeble and lost to that which is good For as we have sought for ease from the beginning of the world so have we also from the Beginning of the Gospel Mark 1.1 as S. Mark hath it As we have brought in the first Adam infecting and poysoning us so we would find some deficiency in the second as if that Grace which he plenteously spreadeth in our hearts had not virtue enough to expel the venome and purge it out As we pretend want of strength so we pretend want of help and succour the want of that Grace which we might have which we have but will not use And there is nothing more common in the world even in their mouthes who know not what it is What mention we the Many What talke we of those who like those narrow-mouthed vessels receive but little because it is powred out too fast and many times have as little feeling of what they receive as those earthen vessels to which we compared them Grace it is in every mans mouth the sound of it hath gone through the earth and they hear it and eccho it back again to one another They talk and discourse of it and yet all are not saved by that Grace they talk of Ebrius ad phialam mendicus ad januam August The Drunkard speaketh of it in his cups and by the Grace of God he will drink no more and yet drinketh drunk till there be no appearance in him either of Grace or Nature either of the Christian or the Man The Beggar he maketh it
Body and his Bloud and S. Paul calleth it the Bread and the Cup Nor is S. Paul contrary to Christ but determineth and reconcileth all in the end both of Christ's suffering and our receiving in the words of my Text As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye do shew or shew ye the Lord's death till he come In which words the Death of the Lord of life is presented to us and we called to look up upon him whom our sins have pierced through to behold him wounded for our transgressions ex cujus latere aqua sanguis Isa 53.5 utriusque lavacri paratura manavit as Tertullian out of whose side came water and bloud to wash and purge us which make the two Sacraments Baptism and the Lord's Supper And the effect of both is our Obedience in life and conversation that we should serve him with the whole heart who hath bought us at so dear a price that we should wash off all our spots and stains and foul pollutions in the laver of this Water and the laver of this Bloud And therefore as he offered himself for us on the Cross so he offereth himself to us in the Sacrament his Body in the Bread and his Bloud in the Cup that we may eat and drink and feed upon him and taste how gracious he is Which is the sum and complement and blessed effect of the duty here in the Text to shew the Lord's death till he come For he that sheweth it not manducans non manducat eating doth not as Ambrose doth eat the Bread but not feed on Christ But he that fully acquitteth himself in this shall be fed to eternal life Let us then take the words asunder And there we find What we are to do and How long we are to do it the Duty and the Continuation of it the Duty We must shew forth Christ's death the Continuation of it We must do it till he come again to judgment In the Duty we consider first an Object what it is we must shew the death of the Lord Secondly an Act what it is to shew and declare it The death of the Lord a sad but comfortable a bloudy but saving spectacle And 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to shew a word of as large a compass as Christianity it self And the duration and continuation of it till he come that is to the end of the world Of these in their order The object is in nature first and first to be handled the death of the Lord. And this is most proper for us to consider For by his stripes we are healed and by his death we live And in this he hath not onely expressed his Love but made himself an example that we may take it out and so shew forth his death First it is his Love which joyned these two words together Death and the Lord which are farther removed then Heaven is from the Earth For can the Lord of life die Yes Amor de coelo demisit Dominum That Love which brought him down from his throne to his footstool that united the Godhead and Manhood in one Person hath also made these two terms Death and the Lord compatible and fastned the Son of God to the Cross hath exprest it self not onely in Beneficence but also in Patience not onely in Power but also in Humility and is most lively and visible in his Death the true authentick instrument of his Love He that is our Steward to provide for us who supplieth us out of his rich treasur◠who ripeneth the fruit on the trees and the corn in the fields who draweth us wine out of the vine and spinneth us garments out of the bowels of the worm and the fleece of the flock will also empty himself and pour forth his bloud He who giveth us balm for our bodies will give us physick for our souls will give up his ghost to give us breath and life And here his love is in its Zenith and vertical point and in a direct line casteth the rayes of comfort on his lost creature This Lord cometh not naked but clothed with blessings cometh not empty but with the rich treasuries of heaven cometh not alone but with troops of Angels with troops of promises and blessings Bonitas foecunda sui Goodness is fruitful and generative of it self gaineth by spending it self swelleth by overflowing and is increased by profusion When she poureth forth her self and breatheth forth that sweet exhalation she conveyeth it not poor and naked and solitary but with a troop and authority with ornament and pomp For Love bringeth with it whatsoever Goodness can imagine munera officia gifts and offices doth not onely give us the Lord but giveth us his sufferings his passion his death not onely his death but the virtue and power of it to raise us from the lethargy and death of Sin that we may be quick and active to shew and express it in our selves Olim morbo nunc remedio laboramus The remedy is so wonderful it confoundeth the patient and maketh health it self appear but fabulous Shall the Lord of Life die why may not Man whose breath is in his nostrils be immortal Yes he shall and for this reason Because it pleased the Lord of Life to die We need not adopt one in his place or substitute a creature a phantasm as did Arius and Marcion in his office For he took our sins and he will take the office himself Isa 63.3 he will tread the wine press alone and will admit none with him Nor doth this Humility impair his Majesty but rather exalt it Though he die yet he is the Lord still The Father will tell us that they who denied this for fear were worse then those who denied it out of stomach and the pretense of his honour is more dangerous then perversness For this is to confine and limit this Lord to shorten his hand palos terminales figere to set up bounds and limits against his infinite Love and absolute Will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to shape and frame him out to their own phansie and indeed to blaspheme him with reverence to take from him his heavenly power and put into his hand a sceptre of reed His Love and his Will quiet all jealousies and answer all arguments whatsoeever It was his will to die and he that resteth in God's Will doth best acknowledge his Majesty For all even Majesty it self doth vail to his Will and is commanded by it What the Lord of life equal to the Father by whom all things were made shall he die Yes quia voluit because he would For as at the Creation he might have made Man as he made other creatures by his Word alone yet would not but wrought him out of the clay and fashioned him with his own hands so in the great work of our Redemption he did not send an Angel one of the Seraphim or Cherubim or any finite creature which he might have done
but at the word 's speaking He crieth Lo I come to do it my self Look upon this object of Majesty and Humility yet once again and see the power and omnipotencie of his Love In this laying down his life for us he was pleased to give a price infinitely above the merchandize and as in the world some buyers are wont to do to buy his own affection to us to pay down not a talent for a talent but a talent for a mite Himself for a worm and his Love for the world nay by his infinite Love to bound as it were his infinite Power his infinite Wisdom and his illimited Will For here his Power Wisdom and Will find a NON ULTRA and are at the furthest He cannot do He cannot find out He cannot wish for us more then he hath done then being equal with God to take upon him the form of a servant and in that form to humble himself to the death of the cross How should this spectacle of Love and Power of Majesty and Humility affect and ravish our souls How should this fire of Love these everlasting burnings kindled in our flesh enflame us That benefit is great which preventeth our prayers That is greater which is above our hope That is greatest which pre-occupateth and forestalleth our desires But what is that which over-runneth our opinion and even swalloweth it up in victory Had not he revealed his will and told us he would die we could not have desired it but our prayers had been turned into sin our hope had been madness and our opinion impiety All that we can say is that it was his infinite Love And his Love defendeth his Majesty and exalteth the Humility of his Cross and maketh it as glorious as his Throne For when he was fastned to it when he died it was his Throne and from it he threw down Principalities and Powers and Sin and Death it self Love hath this priviledge that it cannot be defamed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Plato By a kind of law it hath the prerogative of Honour and maketh Bondage free Disgrace honourable Infirmity omnipotent Death life it worketh a harmony out of these two inconsistent terms Death and the Lord which is the joy of the whole earth Thus is Christ's Death made a spectacle unto us and his Love bespeaketh us to behold it and there needeâ—h no other Oratour to perswade us For where Love is denied the tongues of Men and of Angels are but as a tinckling cymbal But this is not all For In the second place Christ hangeth not on the cross onely as a sacrifice That every eye is willing to behold even the eye of flesh the eye that is full of adulteries But he standeth there as an Ensample to us of Humility Patience Obedience Love This Altar hath an inscription TOLLITE CRUCEM Take up your cross and follow me Not an Ensample alone that cometh too short Nor a Sacrifice alone for shall he be offered up for those who deny him Not an Ensample alone For flesh and bloud may follow him but never overtake him no not in those wayes which he marked out with his bloud of Obedience and Love Nor Satisfaction alone For how can he satisfie for those who will be in evil what he is in good yesterday and to day and the same for ever 1 Pet. 2.21 Christ suffered for us saith S. Peter leaving us an ensample that we should follow his steps Can an humble Saviour be a sacrifice for the proud Can a meek Saviour dye for a revenger Can a poor Christ give himself for him who will neither clothe nor feed him Can he in whom there was found no guile plead for him who is full of deceit Can a Lamb be a sacrifice for a Fox a Wolf or a Lion He is sacrificed and all is done on his part There is a CONSUMMATUM EST It is finished But our Obedience is not shut up in that but beginneth where Christ's did end and by the power and force of his Love must be carried on in an even and constant course unto our Consummatum est till we end 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We have redemption Ephes 1.7 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a pattern Jussit fieri qui fecit He sacrificed himself for us 1 Tim. 1.16 that we might offer our selves a lively sacrifice to the Lord. Jesus Christ is a pattern to them who shall believe on him to life everlasting We dare not say with some that Christ came into the world non ad satisfactionem sed exemplum not to satisfie at all but to direct us by his example in the wayes of life not to pay down our debts but to teach us an art of thrift to be able to pay them our selves But most true it is if we make him not an ensample he will not be a sacrifice nor will there remain any sacrifice for sin God forbid that our Malice should shelter it self in his Love that his Meekness should be a buckler for our Revenge that his Righteousness should shadow our Unrighteousness that all our Obedience should be lost in his Sacrifice that because he suffered so much to lead us the way we should take the less care to follow after him that by the Gospel as by the Law Sin should revive that the Law should convince the conscience and the Gospel flatter it that the Law should affright sinners and Christ encourage them that the Cross of Christ which is a School of virtue should be made a Sanctuary for wilful offenders that Christ should nail the handwriting against us to his cross and then let fall a Dispensation from all righteousness and make it less necessary for us to observe so strictly the moral Law that this ease and benefit should accrue to Christians by the death of Christ that we may be more indulgent to our selves do what we list Pardon lying so near at hand that we should destroy our selves because he is a Jesus pollute our selves because he is Christ to anoint us be more rebellious because he is our Lord and live in sin because he died for it A conceit so unreasonable that even common reason abhorreth it Had our Saviour given up his ghost and left no precept behind him had his Apostle been silent and said no more but that he died for our sins the weakest understanding might easily draw out this conclusion that we are to forsake them For why should he dye for that which he was willing should survive Or who would lay his axe to the root of the tree and not cuâ— it down to the ground And yet as gross a conceit as it is we open our hearts to receive it And it is summus seculi reatus the great guilt of the age the pit out of which locusts swarm which are as scorpions to bring evil on the earth Were it not for this Physick men would not be so sick were it not for hope of reconciliation men would
it becometh that Basilisk which killeth us by being looked upon Our Examination then must be exact and accurate a Judgement of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and temper of our soul an impartial Weighing of all our deeds and actions till we have rectified what is amiss and improved and established all that is imperfect and failing We must try and examine our actions as the Levites did their sacrifices and not offer them up if there be any blemish on them that so we may 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prove to our selves Rom. 12.2 have a full sense and experience in our own souls what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God It is true we must first look into our selves and he is too much his own enemy that hath no mind to look upon himself But what is a look what is the motion and twinkling of an eye The labour of the eye is too little from a man on himself especially when he standeth in an indifferent aspect between two eternities the one of pain the other of bliss or when he is either declining towards the gates of hell or in a fair approch and forwardness to the holy Hill Then let him look and look again Juvat usque morari His eye cannot dwell long enough upon himself in either site and position Then he may look and hate himself with profit and advantage look upon himself declining and with violence pluck himself out of the fire look upon himself pressing forwards toward the mark and mend his pace crucifie himself and then Angelifie himself look and hate hate and tremble tremble and amend himself and by his true repentance seal up the scrutiny ratifie his examination Eph. 5.10 and so prove what is acceptable to the Lord and what will make him accepted when he cometh to his Table The Apostle's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 reacheth farther ye see then a bare Examination of our selves We may take a survey of our selves and yet remain our selves We may see the breaches Sin hath made and not make them up see a foul house and leave it unswept see the danger we are in and love it and perish in it Who is there almost that sinneth and seeth it not even when he will not see it Who almost sinneth and feeleth it not and yet will not feel it The bloud which the Murtherer sheddeth stareth in his face and crieth against him and yet he thirsteth for more bloud The Adulterer is whipped with the beauty that caught him and yet he neigheth still and his eye is full of the adulteress The rust of the gold and silver which is the Oppressour's God witnesseth against him and will eat out his flesh as fire yet he coveteth still and with the daughters of the Horsleach crieth Give Give How soon is a sin seen and how soon doth it vanish out of sight in a clear day What a force hath Health and Power and Profit and Prosperity to make the greatest sin invisible and remove it out of sight Profit persuadeth Power commandeth Prosperity flattereth and at this Musick Conscience falleth asleep or if she speaketh is no more heard then if she were dead indeed her checks and chidings are not regarded To escape a temporal disgrace we increase our shame and blush not To redeem our selves from a present judgement we adde those sins which fill up our measure full and fit us for eternity of torment Thus we may examine our selves and yet not know our selves see our sins and not see them We walk on delicately The rich Oppressour is just the cunning Politician honest a prosperous villain a Saint There is no man but at some time or other seeth his sins for Sin cannot hide its horrour till we veil it no man that doth not take some short survey of himself but then he taketh off his eye to look for refuge and sanctuary and becometh ten times more the child of the Devil then before This cometh far short of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 far short of Self examination Which is not fully accomplished and brought to its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and height till it end in amendment and newness of life The reason is plain There is nothing perfect and complete till it hath atteined its end Frustrà est quod rationem finis non ducit Every thing that hath its use from its end if it reach it not is unprofitable The Arts are then Liberal cùm liberos faciunt saith the Ppilosopher when they make men free and ingenuous Wit beareth the reproch of Folly if it make us not wise Riches will gather rust if we make not friends of them Grace it self will destroy us if we turn it into wantonness To see a Sin is to see nothing but Death if we forsake it not And to examine our selves is but to draw up a bill of accusation against our selves if we do not in this sense also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 amend and approve our selves Then our Examination is exact when we have seen our pollution and purged it out when we have seen the leprosie of our souls and washed out every spot when we have seen a weak and decaying soul enfeebled with lust shaken with anger torn and distracted with the love of the world even sinking to the condition of a damned spirit seen it and trembled at it and then out of these ruines raised up a Temple to the holy Ghost This is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to examine and approve our selves This is our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our preparation to the Feast Thus we may approch the Lord's Table having ransacked the house and swept it having seen the plague of our heart and purged it out having seen every deformity of the old man and fled from it and made our selves new creatures For how shall we come to a feast of Love whilest we are in the gall of bitterness How can we come to the Supper of the Lamb with the teeth of Lions How can we be partakers of the Lord's Table and of the Table of Devils No it is not a day's a moneth 's a year's examination that will fit us for God's presence and make us welcome guests For what is it to make a discovery of the enemy and not conquer him What is it to see our sins and the horrour they carry with them and yet embrace them What is it to condemn them with our mouth and then justifie them in our mortal bodies I mean the actions of our life As Luther well said Optima poenitentia nova vita that the best and truest repentance consisteth in newness of life so is our Examination then complete when we have made good the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in its full extent and sense when we have tried and approved our selves when we have seen and judged and condemned our selves and then repaired in our selves that image of God and goodness which upon a strict survey we saw defaced and almost lost Let us
their eternal rest For such an high Priest became us saith the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 separate from sinners Heb. 7.26 separate from the Gentile's blindness and separate from the Jew's stubbornness and imperfection of a transient mortality and a permanent beatitude a God and a Man that he might 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 gather together into one both Jew and Gentile Law and Reason make the Law Natural useful and the Law written useful that so those fair whispers of Truth which mis-led the Gentile and that loud accusing Truth which affrighted the Jâ—w may be in subserviency and attendance on Christ himself that the light of Nature and the light of the Law which were but scattered beams from his eternal Brightness may be collected and united in Christ again who is Α and Ω the Beginning and the End in which Circle and Compass they are at home brought back again to their Original And do we not now begin to look upon our Reason as useful indeed but most insufficient to reach unto the End Do we not renounce the Law our selves all things Do we not melt in the same flame with our Apostle Is it not our ambition to be lost to all the world that we may be found in Christ Shall we not cast all things behind us that we may look forward upon him What would we not be ignorant of that we may know him That we may know him we will know nothing else Our understandings here are fixed and cannot be removed Nor shall our contemplation let him go till we have seen him rising from the dead and known 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the power of his resurrection Which is the next Object we are to look upon and our next Part. That Christ is risen from the dead is an article of our Faith fundatissimae fidei saith the Father a principle of the Doctrine of Christ a truth so clear and evident that the malice and envy of the Jew cannot avoid it For let them be at charge to bribe the watchmen and let the watchmen sleep so soundly that an earthquake cannot wake them and then say his Disciples stole him away this poor shift is so far from shaking that it confirmeth our faith For if they were asleep how could they tell his Disciples stole him away Or if they did steal him what could they take away more then a carcase He is risen he is not here If an Angel had not said it yet the Earthquake the Clothes the Grave it self did speak without an epitaph Or if these were silent yet where such strange impossibilities are brought in to colour and promote it a Lie doth confute it self and Malice helpeth to confirm the Truth For it we have a verdict given up by Cephas and the twelve 1 Cor. 15.5 we have a cloud of witnesses even five hundred brethren and more who saw him We have a cloud of bloud too the testimony of Martyrs who took their death on it so certain of this Truth that they sealed to it with their bloud and because they could not live to publish it proclaimed it by the loss of life And can we have better evidence Yes we have a surer word the word of God himself a surer verdict then of a Jury a better witness then five hundred a louder testimony then the bloud of Martyrs And we have our Faith too which will make all difficulties easie and conquereth all And therefore we cannot complain of distance or that we are so many ages removed from the time wherein it was done For now Christ risen is become a more obvious object then before The diversity of the Mediums have increased and multiplied him We see him through the bloud of Martyrs and we see him in his Word and we see him by the eye of Faith Christ is risen according to the Scriptures 1 Cor. 15. Offenderunt Judaei in Christum lapidem saith S. Augustine When the Jews stumbled at him he presented but the bigness of a stone but our Infidelity can find no excuse if we see him not now he appeareth as visible as a mountain Christ then is risen from the dead And we have but touched upon it to give you one word of the day in the Day it self But that our Easter may be a feast indeed and our rejoycing not in vain let us as the Apostle speaketh go on to perfection and make a further search to find the reason of our joy in the power of his resurrection And what is the power of his resurrection The Apostle telleth us it was a mighty power Eph. 1.19 Indeed it rent the rocks and shook the earth and opened the graves and forced up the dead bodies of the Saints We may adde It made the Law give place and the Shadows vanish it abolished the Ceremonies broke down the Altars levelled the Temple with the ground 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 great wonders all Magnitudo virtutis ostenditur in effectu The greatness of power is most legible in the effects it worketh And here the volume is so great that the world cannot contain it Come see saith the Angel the place where the Lord lay A Lord he was though in his grave And by the same power he raised both himself and us By the same power he shook the earth and will shake the heaven also Heb. 13. disannulled the Law and established the Gospel broke down one alter and set up another abolished Death and brought Life and Immortality to light 2 Tim. 1.10 shall raise our vile bodies and shall raise our vile souls Shall raise them He hath done it already Conresuscitavit saith the Apostle Eph. 2.6 we are raised together with him both in soul and body and all by the power of his resurrection For 1. Christ's Resurrection is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 at least an exemplary cause of our spiritual rising from the death of sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Nazianzene Christ is risen from the dead that we may follow after him we who are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 planted together in the likeness of his death Rom. 6.5 dead to our lusts as he was to the functions and operations of life and planted with him in the likeness of his resurrection rising and exalting our selves and triumphing over Sin and Death so grafted in him that we may spring and grow green and blossom and bring forth fruit both alike and by the same power Now as Christ's Resurrection is a patern of our soul's resurrection so is it of our bodie 's also For we are not of Hymenaeus and Philetus mind to think the resurrection past already and make it but an Allegory No Christ hath cast the model of our bodie 's Resurrection also Plato's Idea and common Form by which he thought all other things had their exsistence was but a dream This is a real patern The Angel descended at his and shall at ours He is risen in our nature Isaac's figurative Resurrection
and casteth us on the ground and maketh us fome at our mouths fome out our own shame it casteth us into the fire and water burneth and drowneth us in our lusts And if it bid us Do this we do it We are perjured to save our goods beat down a Church to build us a banquetting-house take the vessels of the Sanctuary to quaff in fling away eternity to retain life and are greater devils that we may be the greater men Whilest Sin reigneth in our mortal bodies the curse of Canaan is upon us we are servi servorum the slaves of slaves And if we will judge aright there is no other slavery but this Now empti estis By the power of Christ these chains are struck off For he therefore bought us with a price that we should no longer be servants unto Sin but be a peculiar people unto himself full of good works which are the ensigns and flags of liberty which they carry about with them whose feet are enlarged to run the wayes of God's commandments Again there is a double Dominion of Sin a dominion to Death and a dominion to Difficulty a power to slay us and a power to hold us that we shall not easily escape And first if we touch the forbidden fruit we dye if we sin our sin lieth at the door ready to devour us For he saith our Saviour that committeth sin is the servant of sin obnoxious to all those penalties which are due to sin under the sentence of death His head is forfeited and he must lay it down Ye are dead saith S. Paul in trespasses and sins not onely dead as having no life no principle of spiritual motion not able to lift up an eye to heaven but dead as we say in Law having no right nor title but to death we may say heirs of damnation And then Sin may hold us and so enslave us that we shall love our chains and have no mind to sue for liberty that it will be very difficult which sometimes is called in Scripture Impossibility to shake off our fetters Sin gaining more power by its longer abode in us first binding us with it self and then with that delight and profit which it bringeth as golden chains to tye us faster to it self and then with its continuance with its long reign which is the strongest chain of all But yet empti estis Christ hath laid down the price and bought us and freed us from this dominion hath taken away the strength of Sin that it can neither kill us nor detain us as its slaves and prisoners There is a power proceedeth from him which if we make use of as we may neither Death nor Sin shall have any dominion over us a power by which we may break those chains of darkness asunder Look up upon him with that faith of which he was the authour and finisher and the victory is ours Bow to his Sceptre and the Kingdom of Sin and Death is at an end For though he hath bought us with a price yet he put it not into the hands of those fools who have no heart but laied it down for those who will with it sue out their freedom in this world For that which we call liberty is bondage and that which we call bondage is freedom Rom. 6.20 When we were the servants of sin we were free from righteousness and we thought it a glorious liberty But this Liberty did enslave us Prov. 10.24 For that which the wicked feared shall come upon him They that built the tower of Babel did it that they might not be scattered and they were scattered say the Rabbies in this world and in the world to come So whilest men pursue their unlawful desires that they may be free by pursuing them they are enslaved enslaved in this world and in the world to come But let us follow the Apostle But now being made free from sin Rom. 6.22 you are servants unto God See here a service which is liberty and liberty which is bondage the same word having divers significations as it is placed And let us sue out Liberty in its best sense in foro misericordiae in the Court of Mercy Behold here is the price the bloud of Christ And you have your Charter ready drawn If the Son make you free John 8.36 Acts 16. that is buy you with a price ye shall be free indeed Which words are like that great earthquake when Paul and Sylas prayed and sung Psalms At the very hearing of them the foundation of Hell shaketh and every mans chains are loosed For every man challengeth an interest in the Son and so layeth claim to this freedom Every man is a Christian and so every man free The price is laid down and we may walk at liberty It fareth with us as with men who like the Athenians hearken after news Whilest we make it better we make it worse and lose our Charter by enlarging it But if we will view the Text we may observe there is one word there which will much lessen this number and point out to them as in chains who talk and boast so much of freedom And it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ye shall be free indeed not in shew or persuasion For Opinion and Phansie will never strike off these chains but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 really substantially free and indeed not free 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in appearance or in a dream which they may be whose damnation sleepeth not Many persuade themselves into an opinion they call it an Assurance of freedom when they have sold themselves Many sleep as S. Peter did between the two souldiers bound with these chains Many thousands perish in a dream build up to themselves an assurance which they call their Rock and from this rock they are cast down into the bottomless pit and that which is proposed as the price of their liberty hath been made a great occasion to detain them in servitude and captivity which is the more heavy and dangerous because they call it Freedom Therefore we must once more look back upon that place of S. John and there we shall find that they shall be free whom the Son maketh free So that the reality and truth of our freedom dependeth wholly upon his making us free If he make us free if we come out of his hand formed by his Word and transformed by the virtue of the price he gave for us then we shall be free indeed If we have been turned upon his wheel we shall be vessels of honour And now it will concern us to know aright what the meaning of his buying is and the manner how he maketh us free 1 Cor. 7.23 By Purchase by buying us with a price and so it is here Col. 2.14 By Taking away the hand-writing which was against us and nailing it to his cross Eph. 5.2 By Satisfaction being made a sweet-smelling sacrifice to God for us But then also
pleasure is alwayes clouded with impurity and carrieth its filth along with it When it passeth those bounds which that God who knoweth whereof we are made hath set up with this Inscription Hitherto thou shalt go and no further NOT BURN BUT MARRY when it breaketh out beyond this brutish men may in their ruff and jollity count it what they please call it their Pleasure their Paradise but it breaketh forth like a plague and infection and is as loathsome as Hell it self The Apostle Rom. 1.26 calleth ungoverned lusts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vile and dishonourable he might have said brutish affections But indeed Beasts in this are not unconfined as Men they do not kick at and revolt from that law and order of Nature in which they were made so oft as Men do who should have dominion over them and themselves nor have they that curb of Reason which Man hath to check and bound them And therefore that wandring lust of theirs which carrieth them with a swindge and violence to the next object doth not dishonour them for it leaveth them what they were but Beasts still But Man who hath a power within him to controll his flesh and temper and regulate every inclination who hath a spirit given him to spiritualize his flesh and not his flesh to effeminate his spirit when he letteth the weaker prevail against the stronger the worse part against the better the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Philosophers call the body the beast against the Man doth not onely pollute his soul but leaveth a peculiar and proper blemish upon his body and may be compared to the beasts that perish Nay he is worse then they For when Man is compared to the Beasts he is the worst of all the herd It is against the very nature of the body thus to be used against that order which God hath constituted and established amongst men The body is not for fornication It was not made to bow to every smile to be ravished with every sound to worship every painted Jezebel but for the Lord and in the power of his strength to be killed and crucified and when it looketh forward beyond its bounds to feel the curb to be so subdued as if it were not as if it were soul or at least in a perpetual subserviencie and obedience to it Indeed if you read ver 15. you will think if it be not as the soul yet it hath near affinity with it and is copartner of the same honour Know ye not saith S. Paul that your bodies are the members of Christ What this vile body of ours to be a member of Christ Yes he bought it and united it to his mystical body as well as the soul and will at last raise it up and make it like unto his most glorious body And what doth the Apostle infer Even that which may make the wanton blush which may make him an Eunuch for the kingdom of heaven Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot It is an argument ab absurdo which will either drive us from uncleanness or upon a most fatal and hellish absurdity Even the young man in the Proverbs who was destitute of understanding would soon agree that it were the greatest folly in the world to think the soul can be united to Christ though it bring the member of an harlot along with it or to excuse our selves by nature and the inclination of our temper or because there is a fire within us to think it is better to let it burn and consume us then to quench it or that God may be glorified as he was by the Three children in this fiery furnace that God may be glorified vvhen that body vvhich is the vvork of his hands is dishonoured Fly fornication saith the Apostle vers 18. Other sins that a man committeth are without the body but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body Malice and Theft abuse the hand Pride lifteth up the head Curiosity rowleth the eye Anger changeth the countenance and dyeth the face Sloth foldeth the arms Envy gnaweth the heart but Lust and Uncleanness is a noisome steam exhaled from the flesh which when it hath conceived and brought forth blasteth and polluteth it Even Nature it self hath declared thus much in that it brought in that custom amongst the Heathen for what else could bring it in after unlawful pleasures to wash and bath themselves by which they did at once acknowledge and strive to purge away that pollution Other sins are from the flesh but this is more carnal then any of them it leaveth more spots and loathsome impressions on the flesh yea many times it bringeth its Hell its fire into it it-maketh it self so visible in the very face and body of man that you may run and read it or rather run from the man for fear of the fornicator now branded and disguised with his sin I remember Salust speaking of Covetousness disgraceth it in these words that it doth corpus animumque virilem effoeminare effeminate and corrupt not onely the mind but also the body of man And Phavorinus in Gellius giveth the reason Because they who make haste to be rich are many of them sedentary men versed onely in the easie and delicate wayes of gain as the Usurer whose plough as they say goeth on the Sabbath and whose work is done while he sleepeth and many others who we see grow rich without sweat of brow or trouble of body And in such no marvel if the vigour and generosity of their minds and bodies do languish and be lost Or rather this is the reason Because the covetous person hath his mind like a bow alwayes bent set continually upon his gain and having all his thoughts gathered together and sent that way he letteth them loose but seldom to imploy them for the behoof either of his body or his soul Now one would think that of Salust were a more proper expression of the effects of Uncleanness For certainly that doth effeminate both the mind and the body Indeed it doth more It not onely weakeneth but polluteth both Nay it is the Devil's net with which he catcheth two at once and dishonoureth them both For what difference between an harlot and the member nay the body of a harlot For he that joyneth himself with a harlot is one body For two saith he shall be one flesh vers 16. Therefore Christ who came to purge both body and soul doth guard and sense it against the very appearance of this sin doth omnium sylvam libidinum caedere as the Father speaketh cut down the whole wood and lop off every branch and sprig of Lust He tieth up the Tongue from filthy communication shutteth up the Eye from looking upon that beauty which may raise a desire stoppeth the Ear that it open not to flattery cutteth off the very beginnings and first offers and risings of lust that we may
and time Care not for the morrow let the morrow care for it self There is no time to seek him but Now. For 1. It is the greatest folly in the world thus to play with danger to seek death first in the errours of our life and then when we have run our course and death is ready to devour us to look faintly back upon life For the endeavours of a man that hath wearied himself in sin can be but weak and faint like the appetite of a dying man who can but think of meat and loath it The later we seek the less able we shall be to seek the further we stray the less willing to return For Sin gathereth strength by delay devoteth us unto it self gaineth a dominion over us holdeth us as it were in chains and will not soon suffer us to slip out of its power When our Will hath captivated it self under sin a wish a sigh a thought are but vain things nor have they strength enough to deliver us One act begetteth another and that a third many make up a habit and evil habits hold us back with some violence from God What mind what motion what inclination can a man that is drowned in sensuality have to God who is a spirit a man buried in earth for so every covetous man is to God who is in Heaven he that delighteth in the breath of fools to the honour of a Saint Here the further we go â—he more we are in That which is once done hath some affinity to that which is done often and that which is done often is next to that which is done alwayes We say Custome is a second nature and indeed it imitateth natural motion It is weak in the beginning stronger in the progress but strongest towards the end Our first engagement our first onset in sin is with fear and reluctation we then venture further and proceed with less regret we move forward with delight delight continueth the motion and maketh it customary and costome at last driveth and bindeth us to sin as to our centre For though God in Scripture be said to Harden our hearts and some be very forward to urge those Texts as if Induration were not our fault but God's and would be comfort even in hell if we could say his hand threw us in yet Induration and hardening of the heart is the natural and proper effect of continuance in sin For every man is shaped and configured to the actions of his life whether they be good or evil An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit nor can a good tree bring forth evil Virtue constraineth us and Vice constraineth us One sin draweth on another and a second a third and at last we are carried 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of our own accord and as it were by natural inclination and brought to that extremity of sin which the Philosopher calleth ferity or brutishness and the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a reprobate mind to delight in sin to triumph in sin to consecrate sin and call it virtue and religion to that difficulty of seeking God which the Lawyers call Impossibility in things which may but yet seldome come to pass For though God may be found even of these yet we have just cause to fear that few thus disposed ever seek him 2. It is dangerous in respect of God himself whose call we regard not whose counsels we reject whose patience we dally with whose judgements we slight to whom we wantonly turn our backs and run from him when he calleth after us to seek his face and so tread that mercy under our feet which should save us and will not seek him yet because we presume that though we grieve his Spirit though we resist his Spirit though we blaspheme his Spirit yet after all these scorns and contempts after all these injuries and contumelies he will yet sue unto us and offer himself and be found at any time in which we shall think convenient to seek him It is true God hath declared himself by his servant Moses and as it were become his own Herald to proclaim his own titles The Lord the Lord God Exod. 34.6 7. merciful and gracious long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin Manasseth was the most notorious offender of all the Kings of Judah and wrought much wickedness saith the Text even above all the Amorites and this he did not for a little space but even till he was grown old and yet we see that patience attended his return and accepted his person when he prayed and humbled himself So loth is God to withdraw himself whilest there is any hope that we will seek him For he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 most lovingly affected to man the chief and prince of his creatures he wooeth him he longeth after him he waiteth on him he wisheth he were so wise as to seek him His glory and Man's salvation meet and kiss each other for it is his glory to crown him Nor doth he at any time leave us himself till we dote on the world and sensuality and divorce him from us till we have made our Heaven below chosen other Gods and think him not worth the looking after In a word he is alwayes a God at hand never goeth from us till we force him by violence When he went to lead his own people through the wilderness how many murmurings and rebellions did he endure ere he left them Till they committed that intolerable sin in Horeb in which it seemeth they were resolved to try the strength of his patience he did himself in person conduct them in the way Exod. 32. And after he telleth them he would not himself go before them left he should destroy them but he sendeth his Angel his vicegerent to supply his room so that even when he left them he left also room for mercy and he forsook them that he might not forsake them forsook them in some degree that he might not be constrained to forsake them for ever Since therefore God is so loth to hide himself from us or cast us off till we have cast off all care and thought of seeking him I would be very loth to wrong that property of his in which he seemeth so much to rejoyce or set bounds to his mercies which are infinite Yet as Tertullian speaketh non potest non irasci contumeliis misericordiae suae we cannot imagine but God must needs wax angry at the contumelies and reproches which by our dalliance and delay we fling upon his mercy vvhich is so ready to cover our sins For how can he suffer the Queen of his attributes to be thus prostituted to our lusts What hope of that souldier that kicketh away his buckler or of that condemned man that flingeth his pardon into the fire or of that sick man who loveth his disease and counteth his physick poison The Prophet here when he calleth upon
peculiar precepts quibus respondere liberum est Nolo which some must keep and others may answer they will not but universal and common and binding all alike Haec obligationis nostrae ratio est secreto fidelissimo hunc thesaurum depositi commendati nobis praecepti reservare saith Hilary This is the nature and force of our obligation to God to keep his commandments and faithfully to preserve that rich treasure which he hath deposited and laid up with us and commended to our charge For In the next place not to keep covenant with God but prodigally to misspend that substance which he gave us nay not to improve it but when he cometh to ask for his Talent to shew him a Napkin is a plain Forfeiture and bringeth us in danger of the Law And though we did owe our selves before even all that we have yet we were never properly Debtors till now But now it is debitum liquidum a plain and manifest Debt because we can give no account of what we have received at God's hands For what account can he give of his Soul who hath sold it to sin What tender can he make of his Affections who hath buried them in the world What Love can he present that hath pawned it to vanity What Fear can he make shew of who lived as if God could not be angry Or how should he appear before God who is long since lost to himself For St. Augustine needed not to have retracted that speech of his UT REDDERER MIHI CUI ME MAXIME DEBEO That I might be restored to my self to whom I did especially owe my slf and changed it into this UT REDDERER DEO that I might be restored and paid back unto God unto whom alone I am due The truth is Till Man be quite lost to himself to his Reason and Obedience and all that may style him Man he is still in manutenentia Dei in the hands and power and protection of God But when Man prodigally spendeth his estate amongst harlots and breaketh his covenant with God he maketh another contract with the World the Flesh and the Devil For Sin as it is in one respect a forfeiture and bringeth us in debt so on the other side it is a contract and bargain such as it is For can we call Death and Hell a purchase What hath Luxury brought in but rottenness to my bones and emptiness to my purse What hath my Soul gained but blackness and darkness and deformity What have I for my Trust in the world but Despair in God for my Integrity and Honesty which I flung away but Wealth perhaps or Honour or Pleasures which are but for a moment Which all are but speciosa supplicia Though we look upon them as glorious and gawdy ornaments and wear them as chains about our necks yet are they but shackles and the very chains of darkness In a word what have we for the Favour of God which we slighted but a gnawing Worm and a tormenting Conscience For In the last place the Penalty followeth Qui autor legis idem est exactor He that lent me these sums cometh to require and exact them at my hands and I have nothing to give him which I may call my own but the breach of his Law and he hath power not onely to sell me to Punishment for sin and to Sin for punishment but to expose me to shame not onely to kill the body but to put both body and soul into hell The penalty cometh in close upon the breach of contracts We have not such a God in the New Testament as Marcion the heretick phansied to himself qui solis literis prohibet delinquere who giveth no further check and restraint unto sin then by letters and words that doth fear to condemn what he cannot but disapprove that doth not hate what he doth not love and who beareth with that being done which he forbad to be done No He whose voice was in the thunder This thou shalt do thundereth still Ego condo mala It is I that create all those evils which flesh and bloud trembleth at His Sword hath still this inscription SI NOLUERITIS HIC GLADIUS VOS COMEDET If you will not obey this sword shall devour you Now in Obligations between man and man the Forfeiture and Penalty are expresly set down and the Creditor cannot exact two talents where the penalty is but one but here though the penalty is exprest yet not the measure unless in those comfortless terms That they are immeasurable Which when God remitteth and forgiveth to the penitent he manifesteth his infinite Goodness but when he inflicteth it as due to him who would needs die in his debt he magnifieth his Justice And S. Augustine giveth the reason Quia meliùs ordinatur natura ut justè doleat in supplicio quà m ut impunè gaudeat in peccato Because it is far better ordered that Justice should bring the impenitent to smart in punishment then that Impunity should encourage him forever to triumph in sin And he that peremptorily will offend doth by consequent will also the punishment which is due unto him Thus he that would not give God his obedience and so pay him his own must give himself to be dragged into prison He that would not be brought under the power of the Law must be brought under the stroke of the Law He that would not once read it when it is written for our instruction and presented in a golden character with precious promises must look upon it when it is a killing letter and as terrible as Death For Divines will tell us Per peccatum homo Dei potestati non est subtractus Man though by sin he runneth away from his God yet is still in his chain and though he have put on the Devil's livery yet he is still within the verge and reach of God's power who can deliver him up to Satan and make his new master whom he serveth his goaler and executioner For the Obligation still holdeth and God hath the hand-writing against us as S. Paul calleth it Which whether we term the Decalogue with some which was written with the finger of God or our own Memory with others which is nothing else but a gallery hung round about with our own deformities or whether with Aquinas we call it the Memory of God where our sins are written with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond whatsoever it is and wheresoever you place it it still looketh towards us In the Law there is horror and in God's memory our sins where they are sealed up as in a bag Job 14.17 where he keepeth them as his proofs and evidences by which he may convict us and that they may be in a readiness Lam. 1.14 hath bound our transgressions by his hands And lastly in our own memories are the very same bills and accusations which are in the register of God Nam qui peccat peccati sui
shall be forgiven must be interpreted by other places For the whole Scripture is as it were but one copulative proposition saith the devout Schoolman knitting and uniting all parts together and confirming and expounding one by another And therefore vve must not take every proposition as it lieth and in that sense it first representeth but compare one part with another He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved saith our Saviour Hence saith S. Augustine some vvere ready to collect that Faith in Baptism was abundantly sufficient to remission of sins although it vvere naked and alone and destitute of all other vertues Others upon this Forgive and ye shall be forgiven inferred that to forgive others vvas enough Others upon that of our Saviour Luke 11.41 Give alms of such things as ye have and behold all things are clean unto you concluded that to open our hands was to vvash them that alms vvere enough But this is to be vâ—ise against the Scriptures vvhich is the greatest folly in the vvorld This is to be too familiar and bold vvith the Scripture vvhose language vve knovv not This is to vvalk in darkness vvith a light in our hands and make that a stone of offence vvhich should be our foundation to build on For this manner of expression is common in Scripture simply to attribute the effect to that thing which cannot produce it alone but is very prevalent to help it forward So If ye shall forgive your Father will forgive you doth not shew what is sufficient but what is necessarily required to the expiation of sin And when Christ telleth the Pharisees that if they give alms all shall be clean unto them we cannot conceive that Alms is a sufficient cause in it self to make them clean who give them since it is very possible that a man may give alms even all he hath which peradventure Christ meaneth by Alms in that place and yet notwithstanding be dead in those trespasses and sins which make him unclean and consequently make all things unclean unto him Tit. 1.15 Dan. 4.27 as the Apostle speaketh For as our Saviour bespeaketh the Pharisees so doth Daniel the great King Nebuchadnezzar that he should redimere peccata eleemosynis or as it is rendred out of the Fountain abrumpere abscindere redeem that is break and cut off his sins by shewing mercy to the poor Not that these acts of mercy taken by themselves can break off sins although they have some force and power to forward the work But our Saviour speaketh to the hypocritical Pharisees who have this mark set upon them in Scripture to be Covetous and Cruel and the Prophet to an oppressing Tyrant And what could Christ more properly oppose to their outward washings then Alms or the Prophet to his cruelty then Mercy Give alms was a precept shot home to the mark and rightly directed to them both to strike the Corban out of the Pharisees mouth and as fitly to the Assyrian Tyrant who did eat up God's people as he did eat bread For a general receipt will never work a particular cure Non curamuâ— hominem sed Socratem saith the Philosopher All cures are done upon particulars and the Physician tempereth his potion to the constitution of his patient If we will do a cure upon the Pharisee we must bespeak him to break off his sins by alms If we will purge his soul we must teach him to empty his purse because his disease is Covetousness If we will reclaim the wanton we must forbid him to look upon a woman If we will quiet the revenger we must tell him that Forgiveness is the price with which he may purchase heaven And we attribute to every one the act of all because it standeth in opposition and fighteth against that sin which hath the largest power and kingdom in him What profit then hath Mercy and Compassion and what doth it avail I may answer with the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Much every manner of way For it is that vertue in respect of which we come nearest to God and most resemble him who is a God that blotteth out transgressions and therefore it worketh a kind of complacency in him When we are angry and discontented when our countenance falleth and we push as it were with the horn I know not what we are We are not Men we are driven on as it were by a Fury and are Furies our selves and blast every one that cometh near us We are the children of that father who was a murtherer from the beginning We have eyes and see not ears and hear not understandings and will not understand but Malice is as our form or soul and actuateth us biddeth us go and we go do this and we do it Or rather it is that dumb spirit that teareth us and maketh us wallow fome and gnash with the teeth The mildest censure can be past upon us is that we are like to the beasts that perish But when we condescend to our brother's infirmity and lift him up when our Mercy is alwaies awake and cannot be so surprized with injury as to keep it back when we are more troubled at the sin our brother committeth then at the wrong he doth and so at once forgive and pray for him we are as God unto him For Majesty sheweth it self more gloriously in love then in power yea it is most powerful in love There peradventure it layeth an enemy at our feet here it maketh an enemy a friend There it destroyeth a body here it conquereth a soul There it beateth down a man here a strong imagination There it is managed by a mad passion here it followeth the wisdom of God There it beateth back a few injuries here it covereth a multitude of sins That maketh men as beasts this maketh them Gods one to another Last of all this Christian-like disposition by which we forgive one another is seldom I may say never alone For we must pass through more tentations then Mithras Priests did torments before we can attain to this heavenly perfection We pass through the glory of the world and slight it the persuasions of the flesh and deny them the grudgings of the mind and silence them we must learn to be poor to be contemned to be diminshed a lesson which we can never take out till the flesh be subdued to the spirit till the world be conquered and all those our spiritual enemies trode under foot For can he that thinketh he hath never enough suffer himself to be spoiled can he that doteth on honour put up a disgrace can he who is immersed in pleasure bear with any thing that sowreth it Will covetousness lose a penny can Ambition spare a leg can Pride receive a check can Luxury endure a restraint Castigat qui dissentit Not onely he that standeth in my way to honour or wealth or that crosseth me in my pleasure but also he that casteth not his lot in with me troubleth me
heart can make lawful for us unless we will conclude that the Law can make us perfect and that which is so weak and unprofitable bring us to the kingdom of God Hebr. 7.18 There is a third kind of Righteousness mentioned in Sc ipture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees the learnedest amongst the Jews and those who were most famous for sanctity and strictness of life Christ himself speaketh of their Righteousness and the Righteousness of some of them was true according to the Law Matth. 5.20 For where our Saviour telleth us that except our righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees we shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven he meaneth not hypocritical but real righteousness saith Chrysostom Otherwise he had compared not Righteousness with Righteousness but Righteousness with Hypocrisie which is the greatest unrighteousness And yet all this will not reach home nor make up that which the Christian is to seek For even these wise and righteous persons did come short of true wisdom and righteousness The sons of Levi who did purifie others were to be purified themselves that they might offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness Mal. 3.3 S. Paul himself who was a Pharisee and had sate at the feet of Gâ—maliel where he learned the Law telleth us That he was unblameable Phil. 3.6 but touching the righteousness which is by the Law And what Seneca speaketh is true in this case also Angusta est innocentia ad legem bonum esse That righteousness is but of a narrow compass which looketh no further then the Laws which restraineth no more then the outward man Therefore the Apostle in many places calleth the Law the Law of works not onely in opposition to the Law of faith but to that better and more perfect Law which doth not onely bind the hand but the thought The Righteousness which was by the Law was indeed justifiable but before men and had no other reward but of the Basket of temporal blessings And in plain terms we read of none else But the Righteousness which hath the promise of this life and of that which is to come whose reward is eternity of bliss is more spiritual and offereth up no other sacrifice then the man himself is busie in purging and cleansing the soul in rooting out those evils which are visible and naked to God though the eye of flesh cannot behold them in curing those diseases which neither Jew nor Gentile were sensible of but rejoyced in them as in health it self For this is it with which Christ and his blessed servant S. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans upbraid the Jews that they would not yield their necks to Christ's yoke though it were easie nor put their shoulders to his burthen though it were light that they would not be obedient to the righteousness of God which is spiritual but set up and established and gloried in one of their own The Righteousness then neither of the Heathen nor of the Jew in general nor of the strictest Sect of them the Scribes and Pharisees is meant here in this place nor indeed doth it deserve that name There is then a fourth kind justitia Christianorum the Righteousness of Christians Which was revealed by the most exact Master that ever was and commanded by that Majesty which pierceth the very heart and reins and which cannot be contemned Now even Christians themselves do not agree about this Righteousness but have made and left the word ambiguous Some stand much upon an Imputed Righteousness and it is true which they say if they understood themselves and upon Christ's righteousness imputed to us which might be true also if they did not interpret what they say For this in a pleasing phrase they call to appear in our elder Brother's robes and apparel that as Jacob did we may steal away the blessing Thus the adulterer may say I am chast with Christ's chastity the intemperate I am sober with Christ's temperance the covetous I am poor with Christ's poverty the revenger I am quiet with Christ's meekness And if he please every wicked person may say that with Christ he is crucified dead and buried and that though he did nothing yet he did it though he did ill yet he did well because Christ did it For no better use can be drawn out of such doctrines as do not offer themselves unto us but are forced out of the word of God We have a story in Seneca of one Calvisius Sabinus who thought he did himself what any servant of his did Putabat se scire quod quisquam in domo suâ sciret Such an opinion possest him that he thought himself skilled in that which any of his family knew If his servant were a good Poet he was so too if his servant were well limbed he could wrastle if his servant were a good Grammarian he could play the Critick Now Christ we know took upon him the form of a servant he came not to be served but to serve and some men are we I content to be of Sabinus his mind to think that whatsoever Christ did they do also or at least that they may be said to do it If he fasted forty dayes and forty nights they fast as long though they never abstained from a meal If he overcame the Devil when he tempted him they are also victorious though they never resist him If Christ was as a sheep which opened not his mouth they also are sheep though they open theirs as a sepulchre Therefore what the Stoick speaketh of that man Nunquam vidi hominem beatum indecentiùs I never saw man whose happiness did less become him will fit and apply it self to these men This Righteousness if they have no other doth but ill become them because it had no artificer but the phansie to make it For that Christ's Righteousness is thus imputed to any we do not read no not so much as that it is imputed though in some sense the phrase may be admitted For what is done cannot be undone no not by Omnipotency it self for it implyeth a contradiction Deo qui omnia potest hoc impossibile saith Hierom God who can do all things cannot restore a lost virginity or make that to be no sin which was a sin He may forgive it blot it out bury it not impute it account of it as if it had never been but a sin it was We read indeed Rom. 4.3 that Faith was imputed to Abraham for righteousness And the Apostle interpreteth himself out of the 32. Psalm Blessed is the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works that is as followeth whose sins are forgiven to whom the Lord imputeth no sin And Abraham believed God Gal. 3.6 2 Cor. 5.21 and it was imputed to him for righteousness And We are made the righteousness of God in him that is we are counted righteous for his sake And it is more
then evident that it is one thing to say that Christ's righteousness is imputed to us another that faith is imputed for righteousness or which is the very same our sins are not imputed unto us Which two Imputation of faith for righteousness and Not-imputation of sin make up that which we call the Justification of a sinner For therefore are our sins blotted out by the hand of God because we believe in Christ and Christ in God 1 Cor. 1.30 That place where we are told that Christ of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification is not such a pillar of Christ's Imputed righteousness in that sense which they take it as they phansied when they first set it up For the sense of the Apostle is plain and can be no more then this That Christ by the will of God was the onely cause of our righteousness and justification and that for his sake God will justifie and absolve us from all our sins and will reckon or account us holy and just and wise not that he who hath loved the error of his life is wise or he that hath been unjust is righteous in that wherein he was unjust or he that was impure in that he was impure is holy because Christ was so but because God will for Christ's sake accept receive and embrace us as if we were so Unless we shall say that as we are wise with Christ and holy and righteous so with Christ also we do redeem our selves For he who is said to be our righteousness is said also to be our redemption in the next words I would not once have thought this worth so much as a salute by the way but because I see many understand not what they speak so confidently and many more and those the worst are too ready to misapply it are will be every thing in Christ when they are not in him and well content he should fight it out in his own gore then they though they fall under the enemy in him may be styled conquerours Why should not we content our selves with the language of the Holy Ghost That certainly is enough to quiet any troubled conscience unless you will say it is not enough for a sinner to be forgiven not enough to be justified not enough to be made heir of the kingdom of heaven But yet I am not so out of love with the phrase as utterly to cast it out but wish rather that it might either be laid aside or not so grosly misapplied as it is many times by those presumptuous sinners who die in their sins If any eye can pierce further into the letter and find more then Imputation of faith for righteousness and Not imputation of sins for Christ's righteousness sake let him follow it as he please to the glory but not to the dishonour of Christ let him attribute what he will unto Christ so that by his unseasonable piety he lose not his Saviour so that he neglect not his own soul because Christ was innocent nor take no care to bring so much as a mite into the Treasury because Christ hath flung in that talent which at the great day of accounts shall be reckoned as his So that men be wary of those dangerous consequences which may issue from such a conceit quisque abundet sensu suo let every man think and speak as he please and add this Imputation of Christ's righteousness to this which I am sure is enough and which is all we find in Scripture Forgiveness and Not-imputation of sins and the Imputation of faith for righteousness I pass then to this Righteousness the Righteousness of Faith which indeed is properly called Evangelical Righteousness because Christ who was the publisher of the Gospel was also authour and finisher of our Faith And here we may sit down and not move any further and call all eyes to behold it and say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is it Nec curiositate opus est post Jesum Christum When Christ hath spoken and told us what it is our curiosity need not make any further search The Righteousness of faith is that which justifieth a sinner Rom. 1.17 For the just shall live by faith or as some render it the just by faith shall live Mar. 9.23 If thou canst believe saith our Saviour and Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ Acts 16.31 and thou shalt be saved and thy houshould saith S. Paul to the Gaoler Isa 55.1 Ho every one that thirsteth come ye to these waters yea come buy wine and milk without money or money-worth I doubt not but every man is ready to come every man is ready to say I believe Lord help my unbelief But here it fareth with many men as it doth with those who first hear of some great place fallen unto them but afterwards find it is as painful as great The later part of the news sowreth and deadeth the joy of the former and the trouble taketh off the glory and dignity Believe and be saved is a messuage of joy but Believe and repent or Repent and believe is a bitter pill But we must joyn them together nor is it possible to separate them they both must meet and kiss each other in that Righteousness which is the way to the Kingdom of God It is true Faith is imputed for righteousness but it is imputed to those who forsake all unrighteousness Faith justifieth a sinner but a repentant sinner It must be vera fides quae hoc quod verbis dicit moribus non contradicit a faith which leaveth not our manners and actions as so many contradictions to that which we profess Faith is the cause and original of good actions and naturally will produce them and if we hinder not its casuality in this respect it will have its proper effect which is to Justifie a sinner This effect I say is proper to Faith alone and it hath this royal prerogative by the ordinance of God but it hath not this operation but in subjecto capaci in a subject which is capable of it In a word it is the Righteousness of a sinner but not of a sinner who continueth in his sin It is a soveraign medicine but will not cure his wounds who resolveth to bleed to death For to conceive otherwise were to entitle God to all the uncleanness and sins of our life past to make him a lover of iniquity and the justifier not of the sinner but of our sins Christ was the Lamb of God which took away our sins John 1.29 And he took them away not onely by a plaister but also by a purge not onely by forgiveness but also by restraint of sin He suffered those unknown pains that we should be forgiven and sin no more not that we should sin again and be forgiven He fulfilled the Law but not to the end that we should take the more heart break it at pleasure and adde rebâ—â—lion to rebellion because
it self the most disorderly thing in the world into order and maketh that which stands us against his law to meet with his Justice and that which runs from the order that his Mercy hath set up to be driven to the order of Equity For Sin is an offense against the Creation a breach and invertion of that order which the Wisdome of God did at first establish in the world My Adultery defileth my body my Oppression grindeth the poor my Anger rageth against my brother my particular sins have their particular objects but they all strike at the Universe and at that order which was at first set up Luke 15. Father I have sinned against thee and against heaven saith the Prodigal against thee and against thy Power and that Order which thou hast establisht in the highest heavens And therefore his Providence ruleth over all to reduce this inequality to an equality and this confusion into order to shew what harmony it can work in the greatest disorder what beauty he can raise out of the deformed and unnatural body of Sin striking them down by his hand who would not bow to his will Sin and Punishment are nothing of themselves but in us or rather in the wayes of Gods Providence they are something The one is voluntary that is Sin the other penal that is Smart That which is voluntary Sin is a foul deformity in nature and in that course which God hath set up and therefore the penal is added to order and place it there where it may be forced to serve for the grace and beauty of the whole that the punishment of Sin may wipe out the dishonour of Sin that he who against the will of God would tast the pleasure of Sin may against his own will drink deep of the cup of Bitterness Interest mundo Therefore it concerns the world and all that therein is that Sin be punished and that every thing be set in its own place This the whole creation seems to grone for this it earnestly expects this is the Creatures Jubilee Rom. 8. it is deliverance from the bondage of corruption Turpis est pars quae suo toti non convenit It is an ill member for which the whole body is the worse Vt in sermone litterae As Letters in a Word or Sentence so Men are the principles and parts which concur to make up a Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For Men are the World and Men are the City and Men are the Church Now every impertinent and unpunished Sinner is a letter too much or rather a blur in that sentence Let the hand of Providence therefore blot it out Let the whip be on the fools back and the sword in the murderers bowels Let Dives be in Hell let every seed have its own body and every work its proper wages and then every thing is in its own order and place and then the World is the work of Gods Hands the Church is the body of Christ and the composition is entire So this is an everlasting truth Gods Justice requires it his Providence works it the very Creature groans for it And deceive we our selves if we will and mock God if we dare If we do not well sin lyeth at the door Gen. 4.7 ready to break in with a whip and vengeance upon us For whatsoever a man sows that also shall he reap For in the next place God doth not onely punish sin but fits and proportions the punishment to the sin both in this life and in that which is to come He observes a kind of Arithmetical proportion and draws both parts together that the one may not crack of his purchase nor the other complain of his loss that the Sinner may not boast of his sin nor God lose any part of his glory The Prophet David hath fully exprest it He made a way to his anger LIBRAVlT ITER Psal 78 50. he weighed it as by the scales As they increased they sinned against me Hos 4.7 Therefore I will change their glory into shame Rom. 1.25 As they changed the truth of God into a lye so God delivered them up An Arithmetical and just proportion They took away Gods glory and they pay him with shame with the shame of a sinner which is Gods glory God under the Law did appoint particular punishments for particular sins as Famine by drought for Deteining of Tithes Pestilence for Injustice to destroy those that would not destroy the wicked nor plead the cause of the oppressed fierce and devouring Beasts for Perjury and Blasphemy and Captivity for Idolatry Lev. 10. Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire and were consumed by fire from Heaven Adonibezek had his thumbs cut off and his great toes Judg. 1.6 and in the next verse he confesseth Threescore and ten kings having their thumbs and great toes cut off gathered their meat under my table As I have done so God hath requited me Absalom's hearts desire was to get his Fathers crown and you may behold him with three darts thrust through his heart 2 Sam. 18 So in all ages it hath been observeable that men have been taken in their own net and been buried in the pit which they dig'd For this saith S. Basil is not onely a punishment but the very nature of Sin to make a net and to dig a pit for it self The Thief twists the halter that hangs him the Envious eateth out his own heart the Angry man slayeth himself the Wanton beast is burnt up with his own heat the Ambitious breaketh his own neck the Covetous pierceth his own soul and is choked as Crassus was with his own gold the Proud man breaks with his own swelling the Seditious is burnt with the fire he made So near doth Punishment follow Sin at the heels that in Scripture often one name and word serveth to signifie both and Sin is taken both for the guilt and the Punishment And this in this world But in the next Tophet is ordeined and prepared of old fitted and proportioned to every one that goes on in his sin as fit for an unrepentant sinner as a Throne is for a King or Heaven for an Angel For as there is some analogy between the joyes a good conscience yields on earth and thoss which we shall have at the right hand of God â—â—br 6.4 The Apostle calls it a tast of the heavenly gift and the Schoolmen tell us that Glory is the consummation of Grace which looked towards it and tended to it So is Sin an embleme of Hell carrying with it nothing but disorder confusion and torment Anselme thought it the uglier Hell of the two and more to be abhorred In Hell there is stench what more unsavory then Sin in Hell there is pain what more tormenting then Sin in Hell there is weeping what more lamentable then Sin in Hell there is a worm what more gnawing then Sin Sin entred in and then Hell was created Had
welcome Come ye Blessed children of my Father receive the kingdome and Blessedness which was prepared for you from the beginning of the world The Five and Thirtieth SERMON COLOS. III. 1. If then you be risen with Christ seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God THe Resurrection of the dead is the prop and stay the very life and soul of a Christian Illam credentes sumus saith Tertullian By believing this we have our being and are that which we are and without this it were better for us not to be If there be no resurrection of the dead saith the Apostle then are we of all men most miserable Now much better were it for us not to be at all then to be miserable For let us take a general survay not as Solomon doth in the book of the Preacher of all the pleasures in the world but of all the virtues of a Christian onely deny the Resurrection of the dead and what are they else but extreme vanity and vexation of the spirit To cleanse our hearts and wash our hands in innocency to hold a strict watch over all our ways to deny unto our selves the joyes and pleasures of the world to pine our bodies with fasting to bestow our hours on devotion our goods on the poor and our bodies on the fire this and whatsoever else is so full of terrour to the outward man and so full of irksomness to the flesh what may it seem to be but a kind of madness if when this little span of our life be measured out there remain no crown no reward of it if after so many strivings with our selves so many agonies so many crucifyings of our selves so many pantings for life we must in the end breath out our last But beloved Christ is risen and our faith in his Resurrection is an infallible demonstration and a most certain pledge to us that we shall rise as he hath done Of which that we may the better assure our selves we must observe that as S. Paul tells us As we have born the image of the earthy so must we bear the image of the heavenly so on the contrary we must make an account that as we hope to bear the image of the heavenly so must we first bear the image of the earthy and if we will bear a part in the resurrection to glory which is a heavenly resurrection we must have our part in a resurrection to grace which is a resurrection here on earth S. John distinguishes for me in his Revelation Ch. 20.5.6 Blessed is he that hath his part in the first resurrection And he that hath none there shall bear at all no part in the second resurrection As it is with us in nature at the end of our dayes there is a death and after that a resurrection so is it with us in grace yet the days of sin can have an end in us there is a death For the Apostle tells us we are dead to sin and we are buried with him in Baptisme Then after this death to sin cometh the resurrection to newness of life Mors perire est resurgere restingui nisi mors mortem resurrectio resurrectionem antecedat To die is quite to perish to rise again worse then to have lien for ever rotting in the grave if this first death go not before a second death and this first resurrection before the second Secondly as in our life time we die and rise again with Christ so do we likewise in a manner ascend with him into heaven For to seek those things which are above is a kind of flight and ascension of the Soul into heavenly places And as God commanded Moses before he died to ascend up into the mountain Deut. 32.49 to see a far off and discover that good land which he had promised to the Jews So it it his pleasure that through holy conversation and newness of life we should raise our selves far above the rest of the world and in this life time 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Nazianzene speaks as it were from an exceeding high mountain discover and have some sight of that good land and of those good things which God hath laid up for those which are his Hebr. 6. So by the Apostle our regeneration and amendment of life that is our first resurrection is called a taste of the good spirit and word of God a relish and taste of the powers of the world to come Now of this first Resurrection doth our blessed Apostle speak in these words which I have read unto you If you be risen with Christ seek those things which are above Which speech though it go with an If and therefore seems to be conditional yet if we look neerer into it we shall find that indeed it is a peremptory and absolute command in effect as if he had said Rise with Christ and seek the things which are above Acts 12. And as the Angel said to Peter being in prison Arise up quickly at which words the chains fell off from Peters hands so God by his blessed Apostle comes to us who are in a stricter prison and commands us in the first words Arise quickly and in the next seek the things which are above and so makes as it were the chains fall off our hands and delivers us out of prison into the glorious liberty of the Saints of God For the things of this world and our love unto them are fetters to our feet and manacles to our hands holding us down groveling on the earth And except these chains fall off we can never Arise and follow the Angel as Peter did When Elias in a whirlwind went up to heaven the text tells us that his mantle fell from him And he that will go up into heaven with Elias 2 Kings 2. and seek the things that are above cannot go with his cloke thither he must be content to leave his mantle below forgo all things that are beneath and as S. Hierome speaks nudam crucem nudus sequi follow the naked cross naked and stript from all the glory and pomp of the world Now this part of Scripture which I have read is a part of the practice of our spiritual Logick for it teacheth us to frame an argument or reason by which we may conclude unto our selves that our first resurrection is past For if we seek the things which are above then are we risen with Christ if not we are in our graves still our souls are putrified and corrupt And again If we be risen with Christ then as Christ at his resurrection left in his grave the cloths wherein he was buried so these things of the world in which we lye as it were dead and buried at our resurrection to newness of life we must leave unto the world which was the grave in which we lay As it is in arched buildings all the stones do enterchangeably and mutually rest upon and hold
up one another and if you remove and take one away the rest will fall So it is here These two especial stones of our spiritual building our first Resurrection and our Seeking of things above do mutually hold up and mutually prove one another For take away but the stone of our first Resurrection and that of Seeking the things above will immediately fall and take away the Seeking of the things above and there is no first Resurrection Let us but grant that we are risen with Christ and certainly we shall seek the things above and if we find our minds fixed on the things above we may infallibly conclude unto our selves that we are risen with Christ But I must come to my Division These words as all other conditional speeches and propositions do naturally divide themselves into these two parts 1. the Antecedent or foregoing part If thou be risen with Christ 2. the Consequent or following part then seek those things which are above We shall limit and bound our discourse within these three considerations 1. That our conversion and newness of life is a Rising which we ground upon these words If you be risen 2. That this our conversion and rising must be early without delay for which we have warrant in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Apostle speaks in the time past For he saith not If you do rise or If you will rise but If you are risen as supposing it to be already done 3. Lastly That the manifestation of our conversion of this our rising with Christ consists in our seeking of those things which are above as Christs was by appearing to his Disciples and shewing to them his hands and his feet If you be then risen with Christ seek those things which are above Of these in their order Though there be many words in Scripture by which our Newness of life is exprest yet our Apostle in divers places of his writings makes especial choice of this of rising as Ephes 2.1 You hath he quickned who were dead in trespasses and sins and v. 5. even when we were dead in sins he hath quickned us together in Christ and hath raised us up together with Christ And again chap. 5. he maketh use of that of the Prophet Isaiah Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light Omnis causa eousque in Adam censetur donec in Christo râ—â—â—â—atur saith Tertullian Every soul is dead with the first Adam 〈◊〉 it be raised up to life with the second We may truly say of it that it is departed because God who is the life of the Soul is departed from it And it being destitute of the favour of God which should actuate and quicken it the stench of Sin seizeth upon it the worm of Conscience gnaws it the horrour of Infidility makes it like unto the fiends of Hell fit in sepulcro corporis vivo funus animae jam sepultum and a living body is made the sepulchre to a dead soul a soul that is dead and yet dies every moment multiplies as many deaths as sins and if that of the Schools be true Peccator peccat in suo infinito would be dead and dying to all eternity Son of man can these bones live as the Spirit of God says unto the Prophet Ezek. 37. Can these broken sinews of the Soul come together and be one again Can such a disordered Clock where every whele is broken be set again Can this dead Soul be made a Saint and walk before God in the land of the living We may answer with the Prophet Lord God thou knowest Thou knowest that this dissolved putrified carcass may see the light again that Mary Magdelene may rise from sin as well as her brother Lazarus from the grave that as we are fallen with Adam so we may rise again with Christ that these Stones being formed into the faith of Abraham may be made the children of Abraham and this generation of vipers having spit out their venome may bring forth fruits worthy amendment of life And this our conversion may well be stiled a Rising for many reasons for many waies it resembles it First the World may well go not onely for a Prison but a Grave All the pomp and glory of it are but as dust and ashes wherein we are raked up and buried All the desires all the pleasures of it are but as the grave-cloths wherewith we are bound And in the midst of these allurements in the midst of these glories and sensual objects the Soul rots and corrupts and even stinketh in the nostrils of God In the midst of all the greatness the world can cast upon us the Soul becomes worse then nothing The Love of the world is as unsatiable as the Grave and devours souls as that doth bodies But when through the operation of the Spirit we are taken out of the world we have our resurrection Then it may be said of us as Christ said of his disciples They are not of the world for I have chosen them out of the world John 17. I have set them apart and made them my peculiar people that they may escape the pollutions of the world 2 Pet. 2.20 They are born in the world and in the world they are born again unto me In the world they are but not of the world In the world they are and in the world they traffick for another world passing by this as not worth the cheapning looking upon Beauty as upon a snare loathing Riches as dung and afraid of Pleasures as of Hell it self They have a being but not living in the world for their life is hid with Christ in God But as Christ when he was risen staid yet a while upon earth before he ascended so do Christians make a short abode and sojourn for a time in it as in a strange country looking for a city whose builder and maker is God In the world they have nothing for they have forsaken all surrendred all the things of the world to the world Matth. 16. Luke 14. earth to earth dust to dust ashes to ashes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are our Saviours own words by which not onely the act of forsaking is signified but such an affection of the mind as placeth all things under Christ is ready to fling them away if they cannot keep them with Christ having as if they had not possessing as if they possest not having stept into the world as mariners do sometimes out of their ship to the shore there gathering these cockles but ready upon the sign given to cast them away and return with hast into the ship So that in respect of the world it may be said of them as the Angel said of Christ Why seek you the living amongst the dead they are risen they are not here Secondly at our Resurrection there will be a great change For though we shall not all sleep we shall all be changed This corruptible
prince of this world above every high thing that exalteth it self against Christ and the knowledge of God He is not partiarius divinae sententiae a divider with God and the World in one part from the heaven heavenly and in the other part from the earth earthy but he is awake and alive and active in the performance of every good duty His obedience is universal and equal like unto a Circle and consists in an equality of life in every respect answering to the rule the command of God as a Circle doth in every part equally look upon the Point or Center And being thus qualified we may say of him as the Disciples did of Christ SVRREXIT VERE Luke 24.34 He is risen indeed Thus then you see our Regeneration is here expressed by our rising with Christ We might afford you many other resemblances but we must hasten But here some man may say How are the dead raised and by what power do their souls come to this state of life I will not say with the Apostle Thou fool But certainly there is no man so weak in faith but must confess that he that raiseth our vile bodies must also raise our vile and unclean souls he that calleth us from the dust of the grave must also call us from the death of sin he that changes our bodies must renew our minds In our corporal resurrection and in our spiritual resurrection God is all in all But yet the Soul doth not rise again as the Body which is dust and near to nothing but as a soul which hath an Understanding though darkned and a Will though perverted and Affections though disordered And as we pray Turn us so vve promise that vve vvill turn unto the Lord. He purgeth us and vve clense our selves He breaks our hearts and vve plow them up We are told that he createth a new heart in us and vve are exhorted to be renewed in our minds But solus Deus for all this God doth all For this New creature springeth up indeed out of the earth and groweth up and flourisheth illapsa maturantis gratia by the influence of Gods maturing and ripening grace vvhich drops upon our hearts as the rain and distills as the dew upon the tender herb Take if you please S. Bernards determination and it is this This our rising saith he is from God and from Man from Gods grace and from Mans will but not so as if these two were coordinate but subordinate Grace and our Will do not share the work between them sed totum singula peragunt but each of them perform the whole work Grace doth it wholly and our Will wholly God doth save us and vve vvork out our salvation sed ut totum in illo sic totum ex ipso but so that it is vvrought by the Will of man so is mans Will vvholly enabled thereunto by the Grace of God vvhich determineth the vvill if not physically at least morally And this may satisfie any but those qui vinci possunt persuaderi non possunt vvho may be overcome vvith the force of truth but not persuaded We may ask the question How we are raised Divines may dispute and determine at pleasure But it vvould be a more profitable question to ask our selves Whether we are willing to be raised Whether when God calls us and the Angel is ready to roll away the stone when his countenance shines upon us and when all lets and impediments are removed we had not rather still rot in our graves then be up and walking We may ask with the woman that went to the sepulchre Who shall roll away the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre but we must ask and examine our selves also Whether we are well content it should be removed and not rather defer our rising in hope that a time will come when we shall be pluckt out of our graves whether we will or no and vainly think that we had not lain so long in the dust had God been willing to raise us This is not to magnifie the Grace of God but to turn it as S. Jude speaks into wantonness v. 4. and in a manner to charge God with our death as if he were well pleased to see us in the grave who calleth on us and commands us to come out and threatens a worse place if we make not haste to come out To attribute good by our Rising to God is our duty and we deserve not his grace if we will not acknowledge it but to attribute our not Rising to him is a sin and a sin which we must rise from or we shall never rise Hos 13.14 Wherefore as he says I will ransome thee from the power of the grave I will redeem thee from death so he says also by the Prophet Esay and the Apostle repeats it Ephes 5. Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give the light That this our Conversion or our Rising with Christ must be like Christ's Resurrection early and without delay The Apostle's word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ye are risen with Christ This manner of speech which the Apostle uses is a most effectual persuasion In civil business we have a rule Fides habita saepe obligat fidem It is a good means to make one an honest man to pretend that we take him to be a very honest man and deal with him as if indeed he were so For shame to fail of that expectation which goes of a man many times makes him do better then he would With this art doth S. Paul deal with his Colossians and by pretending that he supposeth them to be already risen he doth most effectually persuade them to rise For they cannot rise too soon they cannot rise soon enough For it is not here as it is in other affairs It is a property of things belonging to the world not to be seasonable but at certain times and there is nothing which doth so much commend our actions as the choice of fit times and seasons in which they are done Therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intempestivenes and to be ignorant of times and occasions fitting every business is counted amongst men a great vice and imperfection For the World is like a Theatre in which all things cannot come at once upon the stage and every thing hath but its part its proper scene and time of action It is with the things of this world as with harps and other curious instruments of musick which are put out of order with every change of weather So the alteration of every circumstance brings them out of tune But the things of God are of another nature As himself is such are they alwayes the same Pietas omnium horarum res est omnium aetatum The practice of Godliness is at all times seasonable That precept of S. Paul Be instant in season and out of season concerns not onely the Preacher of the word but also every person that
omnem which undergoeth the shock of the whole war observeth the enemy in all his stratagems wiles and enterprises meeteth and encountereth him in all his assaults meeteth him as a Serpent and is not taken with with his flattery meeteth him as Lion and is not dismayed at his roarring but keepeth and guideth us in an even and constant course in the midst of all his noise and allurements and so bringeth us though shaken and weather-beaten unto our end to the haven of rest where we would be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We have need of patience Quid enim malum nisi impatientia boni saith Tertullian For what is Evil but an impatience of that which is good What is Vice but an impatience of vertue Pride will not suffer us to be brought low Covetousness will not suffer us to open our hand Intemperance will not suffer us to put our knife to our throat The Love of the world is impatient of God himself His Word is a sword and his commands thunderbolts At the sound of them we are afraid and go away sorrowful 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We have need of patience For we must run our race in a constant and uninterrupted course in an awful reverence to our Law-giver living and dying under the shadow of his wings that whether we live or die we may be the Lord's Non habitat nisi qui verè habitat say the Civilians He is not said to dwell in a place who continueth not in it And he doth not remain in the Gospel who is ready upon every change of weather upon every blast and breathing of discontent to change his seat He doth not remain in it who if the rain descend and the flouds come and the winds blow will leave and forsake it though it be a rock which will easily defend him against all these For what evil can there be against which it hath not provided an antidote what tempest will it not shroud us against Bring Principalites and Powers the Devil and all his artillery unus sufficit Christus the Gospel alone is sufficient for us And in this we see the difference between the World and the Church The world passeth away 1 Cor. 7.31 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The fashion of the world the scene is every day changed and presenteth things in another shape But the Church is built upon a Rock Matth. 16. upon CHRIST that is upon that Faith in Christ which worketh by charity And he who is built upon this Rock who is fully persuaded that Christ is the best Master and that those duties which he teacheth are from heaven heavenly and will bring us thither is sufficiently armed against the flattery of Pleasure the lowring countenance of Disgrace the terrours of Poverty and Death it self against all wind and weather whatsoever that might move him from his place Look into the world There all things are as mutable as it self Omnia in impia fluctuant All things ebbe and flow in wicked men flie as a shadow and continue not Their Righteousness is like the morning dew Hos 13.3 dried up with the first Sun their Charity like a rock which must be strook by some Moses some Prophet and then upon a fit or pang no gushings forth but some droppings peradventure and then a dry rock again their Vows and Promises like their shadows at noon behind them their Friendship like Job's winter-brooks overflowing with words and then in summer when it is hottest in time of need quite dried up consumed out of its place their Temperance scarce holding out to the next feast nor their Chastity to the next twilight The world and the fashion of it passeth away but on the contrary the Gospel is the eternal word of God And as the gifts and calling of God are without repentance Rom. 11.29 Prov. 8.18 so his graces are durable riches opes densae firm and well compacted such as may be held against all assaults like him from whom they descend yesterday and to day and the same for ever Faith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unfeigned Love abiding Hope an anchor He that is a true Gospeller doth remain and continue and not wander from that which is good to that which is evil is not this day a Confessor and to morrow an Apostate doth not believe to day and to morrow renounce his Creed doth not love to day and loath to morrow doth not hope to day and droop to morrow but unum hominem agit he is the same man and doth the same things assiduè aequaliter constantly and equally He remaineth not in the Gospel in a calm onely and leaveth it when the winds rise but here he will remain fixed to those principles and acting by them vvhen the Sun shineth and vvhen the storm is loudest By the Gospel he fixeth and strengthneth all his decrees and resolutions and determinations that they are ever the same and about the same now beating down one sin anon another now raising and exalting this vertue anon that If you ask him a question saith Aristides the Sophister of Numbers or Measures he vvill give you the same answer to day vvhich he vvill give you to morrow and the next day and at the last breath that he draweth In the next place if we do not remain in the Law of liberty vve do not obey it as we should For to remain in the Gospel and to be in Christ are words of stability and durance and perpetuity For vvhat being is that vvhich anon is not What stability hath that vvhich changeth every moment What durance and perpetuity hath that vvhich is but a vapour or exhalation drawn up on high to fall and stink To remain in the Gospel and to remain for ever may seem two different things but in respect of the race vve are to run in respect of our salvation they are the very same We vvill not here dispute Whether Perseverance be a vertue distinct from other graces Whether as the Angels according as some Divines teach vvhich stood after the fall of the rest had a confirming grace given them from God which now maketh them utterly uncapable of any rebellious conceit so also the saving graces of God's Spirit bring vvith them into the soul a necessary and certain preservation from final relapse For there be vvho violently maintain it and there be vvho vvith as great zele and more reason deny it To ask Whether we may totally and finally fall from the grace and favour of God is not so pertinent as it is necessary to hearken to the counsel of the Apostle and to take heed lest we fall to take heed lest we be cut off and to beware of those sins vvhich if vve commit vve cannot inherit the kingdom of God For vvhat vvill it avail if vve be to every good work reprobate to comfort our selves that vve are of the number of the elect What vvill it help us if by adultery and murther and pride
Israel and of England compared 422 423. J. JAmes St. James and St. Paul seem to contradict each other but do not 276. Jealousie vvhat in Man vvhat in God 381. 613. 643. Jer. xxv 18-29 299. JESUS how excellent a name 732 733. That JESUS is the Lord though Law and Custome and Education teach us yet vve cannot say it but by the holy Ghost 759 c. Many say so yet but few say it 763 764. He vvho saith it aright saith it vvith his Tongue 764. 770. with his Heart 765. 770. and vvith his Hand 766. 270 c. Oh vvhat pity and shame it is that Man should suffer the Flesh the World and the Devil to Lord it over him and not Jesus 768. Jews vvhy commanded to offer sacrifice 72. Why blamed sometimes for so doing 80. 82. They pleased themselves exceedingly in this and in other outward servics 108. v. Formality Their great privileges 418. Privileges of Christians greater then theirs 419. Many things vvere permitted to be done by the Jews vvhich are unlawful for a Christian 869. Their course of sinning 611. Jew a term of reproch 194. Job's case 292. 903. Joh. vi 63. 468. ¶ viii 36. 742. 1 Joh. ii 4. 723. ¶ 16. 280. ¶ iv 18. 398. ¶ v. 3. 112. St. John v. Charity St. John Baptist a burning and shining light 549 c. How the Jews at first admired him 553. but vvithin a vvhile disliked him 554. Joy good and bad 338. Sensitive and Rational 553. It is configured to the soul that receiveth it 860. God's Joy over us and our Joy in Him and in one another 861. Against them that rejoyce in the sins or calamities of others 862 863. Joy that ariseth from Contemplation of good is nothing to that which ariseth from Action 1125. True Joy floweth from Love 153. and from Obedience 113. 992. 1125 1126. Sorrow is vvont to go before Joy 560. Judas's repentance 336. his despair 343. Judge neither others sinners because afflicted nor thy self a Saint because prosperous 295 c. 616. We may disannul our former Judgment upon better evidence vvithout inconstancie 676 c. The Judgment of God and of the World how different 964. God's J. and Man's differ much 616. That of Men for the most part corrupt and partial 246 247. Judgment Few believe there shall be a day of Judgment 926. Though scoffers say Nay it will assuredly come 237 238. Why it is so long in coming 238. It cannot be the object of a wicked man's hope 242. 737. v. CHRIST Curious enquiry after the time of the last Judgment condemned 248 c. We ought to exspect and wait for it 250. Signes of the day of Judgment 1043 c. Judgments Of God's temporal Judgements 611. Judgments justly fall even on God's own people vvhen they sin 290. In general J. many times the good are involved vvith the evil vvithout any prejudice to God's Justice 291. Reasons to prove that point 292. A fearful thing to be under J. and not to be sensible of them 643. Judgments should fright us from sin and drive us to God 364. 800. If they vvork not that effect they are forerunners of hell-torments 365. 801. We should especially be afraid of those sins vvhich are vvont to bring general J. on a Nation 297. It is the greatest judgement not to fear J. till they come 502. 615. We must studie God's J. 615. v. Punishment Judge The Judge's calling necessary 821. His office 120. How his autority may be lawfully made use of 822. Julian the Apostate 957. His liberality 143. His malitious slander of the Christians 148. He wounded Religion more with his wit then with his sword 959. His death 959. Justice of how large extent 119. What it is 120. Private J. is far larger then publick 121. Our common Nature obligeth to live justly 123. and so doth the Law of Nature 124. 126. c. 134. and Fear of God's Vengeance 125. and the written Law of God 128. especially Christ's Gospel 129. How strict observers of Justice some Heathens have been 128. How small esteem Justice hath in the world 131. Motives to live justly 134 c. That which is not Just can neither be pleasant nor profitable 126. v. Mercy Justification what 811. The Church of Rome's doctrine confuted 812 813. Faith justifieth but none but penitents 872. The several opinions about Justification may all be true 1074 c. But many nice and needless disputes there be about it 1075. Wherein Justification consisteth 1075. K. KEyes Power of the Keyes neither to be neglected nor contemned 47. Kingdomes v. Fate Kings though mighty Lords on the earth are but strangers in the earth 532. 535. K. love not to be too much beholding to their subjects 232. It is not expedient for the world to have onely one King 233. Kneeling in the service of God proved by Calvine to be of Divine autority 756. Knowledge Want of Knowledge many alledge to excuse themselves but without cause 437. Pretended K. how mischievous 556 557. Three impediments of K. 96 c. Four wayes to get K. 66. Of which Practice is the chief 68 69. K. is the daughter of Time and Industrie 956. What kind of K. it is that we have in this life 678. God's wayes are not to be known by us his will and our duty easily may 93. We should not studie to know things not revealed 248. Though the K. of what is necessary be easy and obvious 93. 95. yet it is to be sought for with all diligence 96. K. even in the Apostles grew by degrees 61. K. of all future things if we had it would do us no good 789. K. of Sin v. Sin K. of Nature Medicine Laws Husbandry is very excellent 656 657. Saving K. is onely necessary 59 60. 248. K. of Christ surpasseth all other K. 715 c. but it must be not a bare speculative K. but practical 723 c. Many know the Truth but love it not 549. 690. Knowledge Will Affections all to be employed in the walk of a Christian 516 c. Speculative K. availeth nothing without Love 517. It is but a phantasm a dream 518 519. 724 725. It is worse then Ignorance 518. 520. 523. 690. 723. Adde therefore to K. Practice 519 725. As K. directeth Practice so Practice encreaseth K. 520. 693. Words of Knowledge in Scripture imply the Affections 463. Love excelleth Knowledge 977. How God is said not to know the wicked 173. L. LAbour is the price of God's gifts 219. It is not onely necessary but honourable 220. No grace gotten by us no good wrought in us without Labour and pains 667 c. v industrie Sin is a laborious thing 927. more laborious then Virtue 928. It is sad to consider that many will not labour so much to be saved as thousands do to be damned 928. Law Whether going to Law be lawfull 821. Good men have alwayes scrupled the point 822. Cautions and rules to be observed 822. 824. Lawfull
we love him then we love also his appearance and his coming 2 Tim. 4.8 And our Love is a subscription to his promise by which we truly testifie our consent and sympathize with him and say Amen to the Angels promise Amen Even so come Lord Jesus That of Faith may be forced that of Hope may be groundless but this of Love is a free and voluntary subscription Though I know he will come yet I shall be unwilling he should come to me as an enemy that he should come to me when I sit in the chair of the scornful or lie in the bed of lust that he should come to me and find me with a strumpet in my arms or a sword in my hand fighting against that Power which is his ordinance For doth any condemned person hope for a day of execution But when I love him and bow before him when I have improved his Talent and brought my self to that temper and constitution that I can idem velle idem nolle will and nill the same things and be of the same mind with that Jesus who is to come when I have made my self the friend of the Judge then Spes festina then Hope is on the wing then substantia mea apud Christum as the Vulgar readeth it my expectation my substance my being is with Christ Nec pareo Deo sed assentior And I do not onely subscribe to the VENIET to his coming because he hath decreed and resolved it but because I can make an hearty acknowledgment that the will of Christ is just and good and I assent not of necessity but of a willing mind And as he who testifieth these things confirmeth the Angels promise with this last word Surely I come quickly so shall I be able truly to answer Even so come Lord Jesus In the last place this VENIET this foretelling of Christ's second coming hath another operation and is powerful to work in us Fear and Circumspection the very prop and foundation of those three Theological vertues 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the preservative of all the good we have It tempereth our Love that it be not too bold our Faith that it be not too forward and our Hope that it be not too confident It is as a watch and guard upon us to keep us in all our wayes VENIET is of the future tense and though it be most certain that Christ will come yet the time is not determined that we may so love Christ as that we may be fit to believe and hope and long for his coming The VENIET may end this moment and the promise be made good as well this day or the next as a thousand years hence The When God hath kept as a secret in his own breast ut pendulâ expectatione solicitudo fidei probetur saith Tertullian that by suspending our expectation and leaving us uncertain of the time he may make trial of the watchfulness of their faith whom he meaneth to place among the few but great examples of eternal happiness Semper diem observant qui semper ignorant semper timent qui quotidie sperant Whilest men are ignorant of the day they observe every day and fear that Christ may come this minute who they know will come at last Veniet fratres veniet sed vide quomodo te inveniet saith Augustine Brethren he will come he will come assuredly and we must be careful how he findeth us when he cometh He will come not as at the first in the form of a servant but as a King not as a sheep that openeth not his mouth but with a mighty voice shaking the heaven and earth with Angels and with Archangels by the power of his Trump raising the dead out of their graves and bringing them all to his seat of judgment He shall come in great majesty and glory So come say the Angels as ye have seen him go into heaven Which pointeth to the manner of Christ's coming and should now come to be handled But the time will not permit Onely for conclusion let us remember that he shall come and shall not keep silence that a fire shall devour before him and a tempest round about him that he shall come cum totius mundi motu cum horrore orbis cum planctu omnium si non Christianorum with an earthquake and the horrour of the world and with the lamentation of all except Christians Et qui nunc ventilat gentes per fidem tunc ventilabit per judicium And he that now winnoweth the nations and separateth them one from the other by faith will then search and divide the whole world by his last and decretory sentence And let this noise startle the Adulterer in his twilight strike the sword out of the hand of the Rebellious and awake the Atheist out of his deep sleep and lethargy For this Jesus this same Jesus shall so come who placed Adultery in the eye and Murther in the thought and commanded to give unto Caesar the things which are Caesar'◠and he shall judge the Adulterer and the seditious Rebel according to that Gospel which he preached in great humility and which many Christians Atheistical Christians trample under their feet with as great pride 2 Cor. 5.11 And let this terrour of the Lord as S. Paul calleth it persuade men to lay aside every weight and those sins which do so easily beset us our Covetous desires which fasten us to the dust our Pride which though it lift up our heads on high yet at last will have a fall our Ambibition which though it reach the pinnacle yet cannot build its nest in heaven our Seditious and Atheistical imaginations which can never enter that place where Obedience and Humility sit crowned for neither Covetousness nor Pride nor Rebellion can ascend with Christ who was humble and yet the Prince of peace But SURSUM CORDA Let us lift up our hearts even lift them up unto the Lord. Let our conversation be in heaven Imitemur quod futuri sumus Let our life be a type of the Ascension and our present holiness an imitation of our future bliss Let us mortifie our earthly members now that then they may be glorified Let us ascend in heart and with all the powers of our soul now in this life that when this Jesus shall come again in glory and great Majesty we may be caught up in the clouds and meet the Lord in the air and be with him for evermore The Fifteenth SERMON PART I. 1 COR. VI. 20. For ye are bought with a price therefore glorifie God in your body and in your spirit which are God's WE have in our last presented before your eyes the bloudy and victorious Passion and glorious Resurrection of Jesus Christ The later our Apostle mentioneth ver 14. And God hath both raised up the Lord and will also raise up us by his own power raise us not onely out of the grave but out of that deep prison and dungeon
wherein Sin and Satan have laid us For this is the end of both For this end Christ suffered and for this end he rose again For this end he payed down a price even his bloud to strike off those chains and bring us back into the glorious liberty of the sons of God to gain a title in us to have a right to our souls to guide them and a right to our bodies to command them as he pleaseth But though the price be payed yet we may be prisoners still if we love our fetters and will not shake them off if we count our prison a paradise and had rather sport out our span here in the wayes of darkness then dwell for ever in the light Christ hath done whatsoever belongeth to a Redeemer but there is something required at their hands who are redeemed namely when he knocketh at our graves and biddeth us come forth to fling off our grave-clothes and follow him not to stay in our enemy's hands and love our captivity but to present our selves before our Captain and shew him his own purchase a soul that is his and a body that is his a soul purged and renewed and a body obedient and instrumental to the soul both chearful and active in setting forth his glory This is the conclusion of the whole matter this is the end of all not onely of our Creation which the Apostle doth not mention here although even by that God hath the right of dominion over us but also of our Redemption which is later and more special and more glorious as one star differeth from another in glory Take all the Articles of the Creed take Christ's Birth his Death his Resurrection his Glory is the Amen to all Take all God's Precepts all his Promises and let them stand as they are for the Premisses and no other Conclusion can be so properly drawn from them as this That we should glorifie God The Premisses are drawn together within the compass of the first words of my Text EMPTI ESTIS PRETIO Ye are bought with a price and the Conclusâ—â—n in the last ERGO GLORIFICATE Therefore glorifie God in your body and in your spirit which are God's So the Parts you see are as the Persons are the Redeemer and the Redeemed two 1. a Benefit declared Ye are bought with a price 2. a Duty enjoyned Therefore glorifie God in your body and in your spirit which are God's The first remembreth us what God hath done for us the second calleth upon us to remember what we are to do for him to give unto God those things which are God's to glorifie him in our body and in our spirit which are God's These are the parts and of these we shall speak in their order First of the Benefit Ye are bought with a price This Purchase this Redeeming us supposeth we were alienated from Christ and in our enemy's hand and power 2 Tim 2.26 in the snare of the Devil and taken captive by him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 taken by him as it were in war And indeed till Christ bought us his we were even made servants to him as servants use to be venditione by sale and jure belli by right of war We had sold our selves as S. Paul speaketh unto him sold our birth-right for a mess of pottage sold our selves for that which is not bread for that Pleasure which is but a shadow for those Riches which are but dung for that Honour which is but air Every toy was the price of our bloud He opened his false wares and we pawned and prostituted our souls and gave up our hope of eternity for his pianted vanities and a glittering death His was but a profer and we might have refused it But we believed that Father of lies and so gave up our selves into his power and his we were by bargain and sale And as we were his by sale so we were his in a manner by right of war For he set upon us and overcame us not so much by valour as by stratagem by his wiles and devices as S. Paul calleth them For not onely the Sword but those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Polybius speaketh deceits and thefts of war work out a way to victory And he that faileth in the battel is as truly a captive when art and cunning as when force and violence maketh him bow the knee and yield This our enemy setteth upon a soul as a soul with forces proportioned to a soul which cannot be taken by force no though he were ten times more a Lion more roaring then he is He hath indeed rectas manus some blows he giveth directly striking at our very face And he hath aversas tectásque others he giveth cunningly and in secret But when we see the wounds and ulcers which he maketh we cannot be ignorant whose hand it is that smote us He is that great invisible Sophister of the world saith Basil He mingleth himself with our humour and inclination and so casteth a mist before us and cloudeth our understanding that we may be willing to lay hold of Falshood for Truth of Evil for Good and by a kind of legerdemain he maketh Vertue it self promote sin and Truth errour And as there so in his wiles and enterprises ipsa fallacia delectat we are willing to be deceived and taken because the sleights themselves are delightful to us The Devil's Temptations are in this like his Oracles full of ambiguities And as Demosthenes said of Apollo's Oracle that it did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 speak too much to the desire and mind of Philip so do these flatter each humour and inclination in us and at last persuade us that that which we would have true is true indeed And thus do we give up all into the Enemies hands and are taken captive and brought under the yoke sub reatu peccati under the guilt of sin which as a poisoned dart sticketh in our sides and galleth and troubleth us wheresoever we go I canâ—ot better call a bad conscience then flagellum Diaboli the Devil's whip with which he tormenteth his captives and maketh large furrows in their soul As the Roman lords did over their slaves in terga cervices saevire imprint marks and characters and as the Comedian speaketh letters on their backs so doth this laniatus ictus wounds and swellings and ulcers He is not so much a slave that is chained to an oar as he that liveth under a bad conscience Now empti estis From this slavery we are redeemed by Christ For being justified by faith we have peace with God and the noise of the whip is heard no more Next we were sub dominio peccati we were under the power and dominion of Sin so that it was a Tyrant and reigned in us If it did say Go we did go even in slippery places and dangerous precipices upon the point of the sword and death it self Like that evil spirit in the Gospel it rendeth and teareth us