they have brought it nearer to the understanding nay even to the very sense by producing some such things as even in nature doe not only resemble but as they apprehend evict a resurrection yet when all is done and all the reasons of Athenogaras and the Schoole and of S. Paul himselfe are waighed they determine all in this that they are faire and pregnant and convenient illustrations of that which was beleeved before and that they have force and power to encline to an assent and to create and beget such a probability as a discreet and sad and constant man might rest in and submit to But yet we shall finde also that though no man may speak a word or conceive a thought against the resurrection because for the matter we are absolutely and expresly concluded by the Scriptures yet a man may speak probably and dangerously against any particulur argument that is produced for the resurrection We beleeve it immediately intirely cheafully undisputably because we see it expresly delivered by the Holy Ghost And we embrace thankfully that sweetnesse and that fulnesse of that blessed Spirit that as he laies an obligation upon our faith by delivering the article positively to us so he is also pleased to accompany that Article with reasons and arguments proportionable to our reason and understanding for though those reasons do not so conclude us as that nothing might be said to the contrary or nothing doubted after yet the Holy Ghost having first begotten the faith of this Article Per ea augescit fides pinguescit as Luther speaks in another case By those reasons and arguments and illustrations that faith is nourished and maintained in a good habitude and constitution And of that kind are all the reasons brought by S. Paul here Argumentae Apostols The matter is positively delivered by him and so apprehended by us and his reasons as we said before issue out of two Topiques Be pleased to looke upon both The first is our patterne Christ Jesus He is risen therefore we shall In which though I have a faire illustration and consolation in that The Head is risen therefore the Body shall yet this reaches not to make my Resurrection like his for I shall not rise as he did And then from his other Topique his reasons rise thus If there be no Resurrection we that suffer thus much for the prefession of Christ are the miserablest men in the world Why so have not all Philosophers had Scholars and all Heretiques Disciples and all great Men flatterers and every private man affections And hath there not been as much suffered by occasion of these as S. Paul argues upon here and yet no imagination no expectation of a resurrection Leave out the consideration of Philosophers many of which suffered more then the Turks doe and yet the Turks suffer infinitely more in their Mortifications then the Papists doe Leave out the Heretiques which were so hungry of suffering that if they could not provoke others to kill them they would kill themselves Leave out the pressures of our own affections and concupiscencies and yet the covetous man is in a continuall starving and the licentious man in a continuall Consumption Take onely into your consideration the miserable vexation of the flatterer and humourer and dependant upon great persons that their time is not their owne nor their words their owne their joyes are not their owne nay their sorrowes are not their owne they might not smile if they would nor they may not sigh when they would they must doe all according to anothers mind and yet they must not know his minde consider this and you cannot say but that there is as much suffered in the world as this upon which S. Paul argues by them who place not their consolation nor their retribution in the hope of a resurrection He argues farther Edamus bibamus If there be no resurrection let us dissolve our selves into the pleasures of this world and enjoy them Why so too Have we not stories full of exemplar men that might be our patterns for sobriety and continency and denying themselves the sweetnesses of this life and yet never placed Consolation nor Retribution upon a Resurrection Would not S. Pauls own Pondus gloriae That there is an exceeding waight of eternall glory attending our afflictions serve our turne though that were determined in the salvation of the soule though there were no resurrection of the body It is strongly and wisely said by Aquinas Derogant fidei Christianae rationes non cogentes To offer reasons for any Article of faith which will not convince a man therein derogates from the dignity of that Article Therefore we must consider S. Pauls reasons as they were intended to Christians that had received the Article of the Resurrection into their faith before And then as God gave Adam a body immediately from himself but then maintained and nourished that body by other meanes so the holy Ghost by S. Paul gives the article of the Resurrection to our faith positively and then enables us to declare to our own consciences and to other mens understandings that we beleeve no impossible thing in beleeving the Resurrection for as it is the candle that lights me but yet I take a lanthorne to defend that candle from the wind so my faith assures me of the Resurrection but these reasons and illustrations assist that faith And so we have done with our first part How this assurance accrues unto us and passe in order to the other The consolation which we have from this resurrection of the body not onely in it selfe but as it gives us a sense of the spirituall resurrection of our soules from sinne by Grace We are assured then of a Resurrection and we see how that assurance growes 2. Part. But of what Of all Body and soule too For Quod cadit resurgit sayes S. Hierome All that is falne receives a resurrection and that is suppositum sayes the Schoole that is The person the whole man not taken in pieces soule alone or body alone but both For as Damascen expresses the same that S. Hierome intends Resurrectio est ejus quod cecidit iterata surrectio The Resurrection is a new rising of that which fell and Man fell A man is not saved a sinner is not redeemed I am not received into heaven if my body be left out The soule and the body concurred to the making of a sinner and body and soule must concur to the making of a Saint So it is in the last Resurrection so it is in the first which we consider now by Grace from sin And therefore we receive into comparison Triplicem casum a threefold fall and a threefold resurrection as in the naturall and bodily death so in the spirituall death of the soule also For first in naturall death there is Casus in separationem The man the person falls into a separation a divorce of body and soul and the resurrection from
this fall is by Re-union the soule and body are re-united at the last day A second fall in naturall death is Casus in dissolutionem The dead body falls by putrifaction into a dissolution into atoms and graines of dust and the resurrection from this fall is by Re-efformation God shall re-compact and re-compile those atoms and graines of dust into that Body which was before And then a third fall in naturall death is Casus in Dispersionem This man being falne into a divorce of body and soule this body being falne into a dissolution of dust this dust falls into a dispersion and is scattered unsensibly undiscernibly upon the face of the earth and the resurrection from this death is by way of Re-collection God shall recall and re-collect all these Atoms and grains of dust and re-compact that body and re-unite that soule and so that resurrection is accomplished And these three falls Into a Divorce into a Separation into a Dispersion And these three Resurrections By Re-union by Re-efformation by Re-collecting we shall also finde in our present state The spirituall death of the soule by sinne First then Casus in separationem the first fall in the spirituall death is the divorce of body and soule That whereas God hath made the body to be the Organ of the soule and the soule to be the breath of that Organ and bound them to a mutuall relation to one another Man sometimes withdrawes the soule from the body by neglecting the duties of this life for imaginary speculations and oftner withdrawes the body from the soule which should be subject to the soule but does maintain a war and should be a wife to the soule and does stand out in a divorce Now the Resurrection Resurrectie a casu in separationem from this first fall into a Divorce is seriously and wisely that is both piously and civilly to consider that Man is not a soule alone but a body too That man is not placed in this world onely for speculation He is not sent into this world to live out of it but to live in it Adam was not put into Paradise onely in that Paradise to contemplate the future Paradise but to dresse and to keep the present God did not breathe a soule towards him but into him Not in an obsession but a possession Not to travaile for knowledge abroad but to direct him by counsell at home Not for extasies but for an inherence for when it was come to that in S. Paul we see it is called a rapture he was not in his proper station nor his proper motion He was transported into the third heaven but as long as we are in our dwelling upon earth though we must love God with all our soule yet it is not with our soule alone Our body also must testifie and expresse our love not onely in a reverentiall humiliation thereof in the dispositions and postures and motions and actions of the body when we present our selves at Gods Service in his house but in the discharge of our bodily duties and the sociable offices of our callings towards one another Not to run away from that Service of God by hiding our selves in a superstitious Monastery or in a secular Monastery in our owne house by an unprofitable retirednesse and absenting our selves from the necessary businesses of this world Not to avoid a Calling by taking none Not to make void a Calling by neglecting the due offices thereof In a word To understand and to performe in the best measure we can the duties of the body and of the soule this is the resurrection from the first fall The fall into a divorce of body and soule And for the advancing of this knowledge and the facilitating of this performance of these duties be pleased a little to stop upon the consideration of both both of Spirituall and Divine and then of secular and sociable duties so far as concerns this subject in hand First for the duties of the soule Officium animae God was never out of Christs sight He was alwaies with him alwaies within him alwaies he himself yet Christ at some times applyed himself in a nearer distance and stricter way of prayer to God then at other times Christs whole life was a continuall abstinence a perpetuall sobriety yet Christ proposed and proportioned a certaine time and a certaine number of dayes for a particular fast upon particular occasion This is the harmony this is the resurrection of a Christian in this respect That his soule be alwayes so fixed upon God as that he doe nothing but with relation to his glory principally and habitually That he think of God at all times but that besides that he sepose some times to think of nothing but God That he pray continually so far as to say nothing to wish nothing that he would not be content God should heare but that besides that he sepose certaine fixed times for private prayer in his chamber and for publique prayer in the Congregation For though it be no where expresly written that Christ did pray in the Congregation or in company yet all that Christ did is not written and it is written that he went often into the Temples and into the Synagogues and it is written that even the Pharisee and the Publican that went to those places went thither to pray But howsoever Christ was never so alone but that if he were not in the Church the Church was in him All Christians were in him as all Men were in Adam This then is our first Resurrection for the duty that belongs to the soule Officium corporis That the soule doe at all times think upon God and at some times think upon nothing but him And for that which in this respect belongs to the body That we neither enlarge and pamper it so nor so adorne and paint it as though the soule required a spacious and specious palace to dwell in Of that excesse Porphyrie who loved not Christ nor Christians said well out of meer Morality That this enormous fatning and enlarging our bodies by excessive diet was but a shoveling of more and more fat earth upon our soules to bury them deeper Dum corpus augemus mortaliores efficimur sayes he The more we grow the more mortall we make our selves and the greater sacrifice we provide for death when we gather so much flesh with that elegancy speaks he speaking out of Nature and with this simplicity and homelinesse speaks S. Hierom speaking out of Grace Qui Christum desiderat illo pane vescitur de quà m preciesis cibis stercus conficiat non quaerit He that can rellish Christ and feed upon that Bread of life will not be so diligent to make precious dung and curious excrements to spend his purse or his wit in that which being taken into him must passe by so ignoble a way from him The flesh that God hath given us is affliction enough but the flesh that
is there comfort in that state why that is the state of hell it self Eternall dying and not dead But for this there is enough said by the Morall man that we may respite divine proofes for divine points anon for our severall Resurrections for this death is meerly naturall and it is enough that the morall man sayes Mors lex tributum officium mortalium First it is lex you were born under that law upon that condition to die Sencea so it is a rebellious thing not to be content to die it opposes the Law Then it is Tributum an imposition which nature the Queen of this world layes upon us and which she will take when and where se lift here a yong man there an old man herea happy there a miserable man And so itis a seditious thing not to be content to die it opposes the prerogative And lastly it is Officium men are to have rheir turnes to take their time and then to give way by death to successors and so it is Incivile inofficiosum not to be content to die it opposes the frame and form of government It comes equally to us all and makes us all equall when it comes The eshes of an Oak in the Chimney are no Epitaph of that Oak to tell me how high or how large that was It tels me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood nor what men it hurt when it fell The dust of great persons graves is speechlesse too it sayes nothing it distinguishes nothing As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest not as of a Prince whom thou couldest not look upon will trouble thine eyes if the winde blow it thither and when a whirle-winde hath blowne the dust of the Church-yard into the Church and the man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Church-yard who will undertake to sift those dusts again and to pronounce This is the Patrician this is the noble flowre and this the yeomanly this the Plebeian bran Sois the death of Iesabel Ieabel was a Queen expressed They shall not say this is Iesabel not only not wonder that it is not pity that it should be but they shall not say they shall not know This is Iesabel It comes to all to all alike but not alike welcome to all To die too willingly out ofimpatience to wish or out of violence to hasten death or to die too unwillingly to murmure at Gods purpose reveled by age or by sicknesse are equall distempers and to harbour a disobedient loathnesse all the way or to entertain it at last argues but an irreligious ignorance An ignorance that death is in nature but Expiratio a breathing out and we do that every minute An ignorance that God himself took a day to rest in and a good mans grave is his Sabbath An ignorance that Abel the best of those whom we can compare with him was the first that dyed Howsoever whensoever all times are Gods times Vocantur obni ne diutiús vexentur á noxiis mali ne diutiús bonos persequantur God cals the good to take them from their dangers and God takes the bad to take them from their trumph And therefore neither grudge that thou goest nor that worse stay for God can make his profit of both Aut ideo vivit ut corrigatur aut utper allum bonus exerceatur God reprieves him to mend him or to make another better by his exercise and not to exult in the misery of another but to glorifie God in the wayes of his justice let him know Quantumcunque seró subitó ex hac óitatollitur qui finem praevidere nescivit How long soever he live how long soever he lie sick that man dies a sudden death who never thought of it If we consider death in S. Pauls Statutum est It is decréed that all men must die there death is indifferent If we consider it in his Mori lucrum that is an advantage to die there death is good and so much the vulgat Edition seemes to intimate when Deut. 30. 19 whereas we reade I have set before you life and death that reades it Vitam honum Life and that which is good If then death be at the worst indifferent and to the good good how is it Hostis an enemy to the Kingdome of Christ for that also is Vestigium quintum the fift and next step in this paraphrase First God did not make death saies the Wiseman And therefore S. Augustine makes a reasonable prayer to God Ne permittas Domine quod nonfecisti dominari Creatur ae quam fecisti Suffer not O Lord death whom thou didst not make to have dominion over me whom thou didst Whence then came death The same Wiseman hath shewed us the father Through envy of the devill came death into the world and a wiser then he the holy Ghost himselfe hath shewed us the Mother By sin came death into the world But yet if God have naturalized death taken death into the number of his servants and made Death his Commissioner to punish sin and he doe but that how is Death an enemy First he was an enemy in invading Christ who was not in his Commission because he had no sin and still he is an enemie because still he adheres to the enemy Death hangs upon the edge of every persecutors sword and upon the sting of every calumniators and accusers tongue In the Bull of Phalaris in the Bulls of Basan in the Buls of Babylon the shrewdest Buls of all in temporall in spirituall persecutions ever since God put an enmity between Man and the Serpent from the time of Cain who began in a murther to the time of Antichrist who proceeds in Massacres Death hath adhered to the enemy and so is an enemy Death hath a Commission Stipendium peccati mors est The reward of sin Death but where God gives a Supersedeas upon that Commission Vivo Ego nolo mortem As I live saith the Lord I would have no sinner dye not dye the second death yet Death proceeds to that execution And where as the enemy whom he adheres to Serpent himselfe hath power but In calcaneo upon the heele the lower the mortall part the body of man Death is come up into our windowes saith the Prophet into our best lights Jer. 9.21 our understandings and benights us there either with ignorance before sin or with senselesnesse after And a Sheriffe that should burne him who were condemned to be hanged were a murderer though that man must have dyed To come in by the doore by the way of sicknesse upon the body is but to come in at the window by the way of sin is not deaths Commission God opens not that window So then he is an enemy for they that adhere to the enemy are enemies And adhering is not only a present subministration of supply to the enemy for that death doth not but it is also a disposition to assist the enemy then when he shall
be strong enough to make benefit of that assistance And so death adheres when sin and Satan have weakned body and minde death enters upon both And in that respect he is Vltimus hostis the last enemy and that is Sextum vestigium our sixth and next step in this paraphrase Death is the last and in that respect the worst enemy In an enemy Novisssnsâ—s hostis that appeares at first when we are or may be provided against him there is some of that which we call Honour but in the enemie that reserves himselfe unto the last and attends our weake estate there is more danger Keepe it where I intend it in that which is my spheare the Conscience If mine enemie meet me betimes in my youth in an object of tentation so Iosephs enemie met him in Putifars Wife yet if I doe not adhere to this enemy dwell upon a delightfull meditation of that sin if I doe not fuell and foment that sin assist and encourage that sin by high diet wanton discourse other provocation I shall have reason on my side and I shall have grace on my side and I shall have the History of thousand that have perished by that sin on my side Even Spittles will give me souldiers to fight for me by their miserable example against taht sin nay perchance sometimes the vertue of that woman whom I sollicite will assist me But when I lye under the hands of that enemie that hath reserved himselfe to the last to my last bed then when I shall be able to stir no limbe in any other measure then a Feaver or a Palsie shall shake them when everlasting darknesse shal have an inchoation in the present dimnesse of mine eyes and the everlasting gnashing in the present chattering of my teeth and the everlasting worme in the present gnawing of the Agonies of my body and anguishes of my minde when the last enemie shall watch my remedilsse body and my desconsolate soule there there where not the Physitian in his way perchance not the Priist in hi shall be able to give any assistance And when he hath sported himselfe with my misery upon that stage my death-bed shall shift the Scene and throw me from that bed into the grave and there triumph over me God knowes how many generations till the Redeemer my Redeemer the Redeemer of all me body aswell as soule come againe As death is Novissimus hostis the enemy which watches me at my last weaknesse and shall hold me when I shall be no more till that Angel come Who shall say and sweare that time shall be no more in that consideration in that apprehension he is the powerfullest the fearefulest enemy and yet evern there this enemy Abolebitur he shall be destroyed which is Septimum vestigium our seventh and last step in this paraphrase This destruction this abolition of this last enemy is by the Resurrection Abolebieur for the Text is part of an argument for the Resurrection And truly it is a faire intimation and testimony of an everlasting end in that state of the Resurrection that no time shall end it that we have it presented to us in all the parts of time in the past in the present and in the future We had a Resurrection in prophecy we have a Resurrection in the present working of Gods Sprit we shall have a Resurrection in the finall consummation The Prophet speaks in the furture He will swallow up death in victory there it is Abolebit Esay 25.8 All the Erangelists speak historically of matter of fact in them it is Abolevit And here in this Apostle it is in the present Aboletur now he is destroyed And this exhibites unto us a threefold occasion of advancing our devotion in considering a threefold Resurrection First a Resurrection from dejections and calamities in this world a Temporary Resurrection Secondly a Resurrection from sin a Spirituall Resurrection and then a Resurrection Secondly a Resurrection A calamitate When the Prophets speak of a Resurrection in the old Testament 1. A calamitate for the most part their principall intention is upon a temporall restitution from calamities that oppresse them then Neither doth Calvin carry those emphaticall words which are so often cited for a proofe of the last Resurrection Job 19.25 That he knows his Redeemer lives that he knows he shall stand the last man upon earth that though his body be destroyed yet in his flesh and with his eyes he shall see God to any higher sense then so that how low soeve he bee brought to what desperate state soever he be reducedin the eyes of the world yet he assures himself of a Resurrection a reparation a restitution to his former bodily health and worldly fortune which he had before And such a Resurrection we all know Iob had In that famous and most considerable propheticall vision which God exhibited to Ezekiel where God set the Prophet in a valley of very many and very dry bones and invites the severall joynts to knit again tyes them with their old sinews and ligaments clothes them in their old flest wraps them in their old skin and cals life into them again Gods principall intention in that vision was thereby to give them an assurance of a Resurrection from their present calamity not but that there is also good evidence of the last Resurrection in that vision too Thus far God argues with them áre nota from that which they knew before the finall Resurrection he assures them that which they knew not till then a present Resurrection from those pressures Remember by this vision that which you all know already that at last I shall re-unite the dead and dry bones of all men in a generall Resurrection And them if you remember if you consider if you look upon that can you doubt but that I who can do that can also recollect you from your present desperation and give you a Resurrection to your former temporall happinesse And this truly arises pregnantly necessarily out of the Prophets answer God asks him there Son of man cna these bones live And he answers Domine tu nósti O Lord God thou knowest The Prophet answers according to Gods intention in the question If that had been for their living in the last Resurrection Ezekiel would have answered God as Martha answered Christ John 11.24 when he said Thy brother Lazarus shall rise again I know that he shall rise again at the Resurrection at the last day but when the question was whether men so macerated so seattered in this world could have a Resurrection to their former temprorall happinesse here that puts the Prophet to his Domine tu nósti It is in thy breast to proposeit itis in thy hand to execute it whether thou do it or do it not thy name be glorisied It fals not within our conjecture which way it shall please thee to take for this Resurrection Domine tu nósti Thou
the figurative exposition of those places of Scripture which require that way oft to be figuratively expounded that Expositor is not to be blamed who not destroying the literall sense proposes such a figurative sense as may exalt our devotion and advance our edification And as no one of those Expositors did ill in proposing one such sense so neither do those Expositors ill who with those limitations that it destroy not the literall sense that it violate not the analogy of faith that it advance devotion do propose another and another such sense So doth that preacher well also who to the same end and within the same limit makes his use of both of all those expositions because all may stand and it is not evident in such figurative speeches which is the literall that is the principall intention of the Holy Ghost Of these words of this first Resurrection which is not the last of the body but a spirituall Resurrection there are three expositions authorized by persons of good note in the Church Alcazar First that this first Resurrection is a Resurrection from that low estate to which persecution had brought the Church and so it belongs to this whole State and Church August nostri and Blessed are we who have our part in this first Resurrection Secondly that it is a Resurrection from the death of sin of actuall and habituall sin so it belongs to every particular penitent soul and Blessed art thou blessed am I if we have part in this first Resurrection And then thirdly because after this Resurrection it is said That we shall raign with Christ a thousand yeares Ribera which is a certain for an uncertain a limited for a long time it hath also been taken for the state of the soul in heaven after it is parted from the body by death for though the soul cannot be said properly to have a Resurrection because properly it cannot die yet to be thus delivered from the danger of a second death by future sin to be removed from the distance and latitude and possibility of tentations in this world is by very good Expositors called a Resurrection and so it belongs to all them who are departed in the Lord Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection And then the occasion of the day which we celebrate now being the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus invites me to propose a fourth sense or rather use of the words not indeed as an exposition of the words but as a convenient exaltation of our devotion which is that this first Resurrection should be the first fruits of the dead The first Rising is the first Riser Christ Jesus for as Christ sayes of himself that He is the Resurrection so he is the first Resurrection the root of the Resurrection He upon whom our Resurrection all ours all our kindes of Resurrections are founded and so it belongs to State and Church and particular persons alive and dead Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection And these foure considerations of the words A Resurrection from persecution by deliverance a Resurrection from sin by grace a Resurrection from tentation to sin by the way of death to the glory of heaven and all these in the first Resurrection in him that is the roote of all in Christ Jesus These foure steps these foure passages these foure transitions will be our quarter Clock for this houres exercise First then 1. Part. From persecution we consider this first Resurrection to be a Resurrection from a persecution for religion for the profession of the Gospell to a forward glorious passage of the Gospell And so a learned Expositor in the Romane Church carries the exposition of this whole place though not indeed the ordinary way yet truly not incommodiously not improperly upon that deliverance which God afforded his Church from those great persecutions which had otherwise supplanted her in her first planting in the primitive times Then sayes he and in part well towards the letter of the place The devill was chained for a thousand yeares and then we began to raign with Christ for a thousand yeares reckoning the time from that time when God destroyed Idolatry more fully and gave peace and rest and free exercise of the Christian religion under the Christian Emperours till Antichrist in the height of his rage shall come and let this thousand yeares prisoner Satan loose and so interrupt our thousand yeares raign with Christ with new persecutions In that persecution was the death of the Church in the eye of the world In that deliverance by Christian Emperours was the Resurrection of the Church And in Gods protecting her ever since is the chaining up of the devill and our raigning with Christ for those thousand yeares And truly beloved if we consider the low the very low estate of Christians in those persecutions tryed ten times in the fire ten severall and distinct persecutions in which ten persecutions God may seem to have had a minde to deale eavenly with the world and to lay as much upon his people whom he would try then as he had laid upon others for his people before and so to equall the ten plagues of Aegypt in ten persecutions in the primitive Church if we consider that low that very low estate we may justly call their deliverance a Resurrection For as God said to Jerusalem I found thee in thy blood and washed thee so Christ Jesus found the Church the Christian Church in her blood and washed her and wiped her washed her in his own blood which washes white and wiped her with the garments of his own righteousnesse that she might be acceptable in the sight of God and then wiped all teares from her eyes took away all occasions of complaint and lamentation that she might be glorious in the eyes of man and chearefull in her own such was her Resurrection We wonder and justly at the effusion at the pouring out of blood in the sacrifices of the old Law that that little countrey scarce bigger then some three of our Shires should spend more cattle in some few dayes sacrifice at some solemnities and every yeare in the sacrifices of the whole yeare then perchance this kingdome could give to any use Seas of blood and yet but brooks tuns of blood and yet but basons compared with the sacrifices the sacrifices of the blood of men in the persecutions of the Primitive Church For every Oxe of the Jew the Christian spent a man and for every Sheep and Lamb a Mother and her childe and for every heard of cattle sometimes a towne of Inhabitants sometimes a Legion of Souldiers all martyred at once so that they did not stand to fill their Martyrologies with names but with numbers they had not roome to say such a day such a Bishop such a day such a Generall but the day of 500. the day of 5000. Martyrs and the martyrdome of
from sin Inter abjectos abjectissimus peccator Grego No man falls lower then he that falls into a course of sin Sin is a fall It is not onely a deviation a turning out of the way upon the right or the left hand but it is a sinking a falling In the other case of going out of the way a man may stand upon the way and inquire and then proceed in the way if he be right or to the way if he be wrong But when he is fallen and lies still he proceeds no farther inquires no farther To be too apt to conceive scruples in matters of religion stops and retards a man in the way to mistake some points in the truth of religion puts a man for that time in a wrong way But to fall into a course of sin this makes him unsensible of any end that he hath to goe to of any way that he hath to goe by God hath not removed man not with-drawne man from this Earth he hath not given him the Aire to flie in as to Birds nor Spheares to move in as to Sun and Moone he hath left him upon the Earth and not onely to tread upon it as in contempt or in meere Dominion but to walk upon it in the discharge of the duties of his calling and so to be conversant with the Earth is not a falling But as when man was nothing but earth nothing but a body he lay flat upon the earth his mouth kissed the earth his hands embraced the earth his eyes respected the earth And then God breathed the breath of life into him and that raised him so farre from the earth as that onely one part of his body the soles of his feet touches it And yet man so raised by God by sin fell lower to the earth againe then before from the face of the earth to the womb to the bowels to the grave So God finding the whole man as low as he found Adams body then fallen in Originall sin yet erects us by a new breath of life in the Sacrament of Baptisme and yet we fall lower then before we were raised from Originall into Actuall into Habituall sins So low as that we think not that we need know not that there is a resurrection and that is the wonderfull that is the fearfull fall Though those words Quomodo cecidisti de Coelo Lucifer Esay 14.12 How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer the Son of the morning be ordinarily applied to the fall of the Angels yet it is evident that they are literally spoken of the fall of a man It deserves wonder more then pity that man whom God had raised to so Noble a heighth in him should fall so low from him Man was borne to love he was made in the love of God but then man falls in love when he growes in love with the creature he falls in love As we are bid to honour the Physitian and to use the Physitian but yet it is said in the same Chapter Ecclus. 38.1 V. 15. He that sinneth before his Maker let him fall into the hands of the Physitian It is a blessing to use him it is a curse to rely upon him so it is a blessing to glorifie God in the right use of his creatures but to grow in love with them is a fall For we love nothing that is so good as our selves Beauty Riches Honour is not so good as man Man capable of grace here of glory hereafter Nay as those things which we love in their nature are worse then we which love them so in our loving them we endeavour to make them worse then they in their own nature are by over-loving the beauty of the body we corrupt the soule by overloving honour and riches we deflect and detort these things which are not in their nature ill to ill uses and make them serve our ill purposes Man falls as a fall of waters that throwes downe and corrupts all that it embraces Nay beloved when a man hath used those wings which God hath given him and raised himselfe to some heighth in religious knowledge and religious practise Acts 29.9 as Eutichus out of a desire to hear Paul preach was got up into a Chamber and up into a window of that Chamber and yet falling asleep fell downe dead so we may fall into a security of our present state into a pride of our knowledge or of our purity and so fall lower then they who never came to our heighth So much need have we of a resurrection So sin is a fall and every man is affraid of falling even from his temporall station Mâ—rs Clem. Alex. more affraid of falling then of not beeing raised And Qui peccat quatenus peccat fit seipso deterior In every sin a man falls from that degree which himselfe had before In every sin he is dishonoured he is not so good a man as he was impoverished he hath not so great a portion of grace as hee had Infatuated hee hath not so much of the true wisedome of the feare of God as he had disarmed he hath not that interest and confidence in the love of God that he had and deformed he hath not so lively a representation of the Image of God as before In every sin we become prodigals but in the habit of sin we become bankrupts affraid to come to an account A fall is a fearfull thing that needs a raising a help but sin is a death and that needs a resurrection and a resurrection is as great a work as the very Creation it selfe It is death in semine in the roote it produces it brings forth death It is death in arbore in the body in it selfe death is a divorce and so is sin and it is death in fructu in the fruit thereof sin plants spirituall death and this death produces more sin Obduration Impenitence and the like Be pleased to returne and cast one halfe thought upon each of these Sin is the roote of death Death by sin entred and death passed upon all men for all men have sinned Rom. 5.12 It is death because we shall dye for it But it is death in it selfe We are dead already dead in it Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead was spoken to a whole Church Apoc. 3.1 It is not evidence enough to prove that thou art alive to say I saw thee at a Sermon that spirit that knowes thy spirit he that knowes whether thou wert moved by a Sermon melted by a Sermon mended by a Sermon he knows whether thou be alive or no. That which had wont to be said That dead men walked in Churches is too true Men walk out a Sermon or walk out after a Sermon as ill as they walked in they have a name that they live Iohn 5.25 and are dead But the houre is come and now is when the dead shall heare the voyce of the Son of God That is at
these houres they may heare if they will and till they doe heare they are dead Sin is the root of death the body of death and then it is the fruit of death August S. Augustine confesses of himselfe that he was Allisus intra parietes in celebritate solemnitatum tuarum that in great meetings upon solemne dayes in the Church there within the walls of Gods house Egit negotium procurandi fructus mortis he was not buying and selling doves but buying and selling soules by wanton lookes cheapning and making the bargaine of the fruits of death as himselfe expresses it Sin is the root and the tree and the fruit of death The mother of death death it selfe and the daughter of death and from this death this threefold death death past in our past sins present death in our present in sensiblenesse of sin future death in those sins with which sins God will punish our former and present sins if he proceed meerly in justice God affords us this first resurrection How Resurrectio Thus. Death is the Divorce of body and soule Resurrection is the Re-union of body and soule And in this spirituall death and resurrection which we consider now and which is all determined in the soule it selfe Grace is the soule of the soule and so the departing of grace is the death and the returning of grace is the resurrection of this sinfull soule But how By what way what meanes Consider Adam Adam was made to enjoy an immortality in his body He induced death upon himselfe And then as God having made Marriage for a remedy against uncleannesse intemperate men make even Marriage it selfe an occasion of more uncleannesse then if they had never married so man having induced and created death by sin God takes death and makes it a means of the glorifying of his body in heaven God did not induce death death was not in his purpose Cyril Alex. but veluti medium opportunum quo vas confractum rursus fingeretur As a means whereby a broken vessell might be made up againe God tooke death and made it serve for that purpose That men by the grave might be translated to heaven So then to the resurrection of the body there is an ordinary way The grave To the resurrection of the soule there is an ordinary way too The Church In the grave the body that must be there prepared for the last resurrection hath wormes that eat upon it In the Church the soule that comes to this first resurrection must have wormes The worme the sting the remorse the compunction of Conscience In those that have no part in this first resurrection the worme of conscience shall never die but gnaw on to desperation but those that have not this worme of conscience this remorse this compunction shall never live In the grave which is the furnace which ripens the body for the last resurrection there is a putrefaction of the body and an ill savour In the Church the wombe where my soule must be mellowed for this first resurrection my soul which hath the savour of death in it as it is leavened throughout with sin must stink in my nostrils and I come to a detestation of all those sins which have putrified her And I must not be afraid to accuse my selfe to condemne my selfe to humble my selfe lest I become a scorne to men Augusâ— Nemo me derideat ab eo medico aegrum sanari à quo sibi praestitum est ne aegrotaret Let no man despise me or wonder at me that I am so humbled under the hand of God or that I fly to God as to my Physitian when I am sick since the same God that hath recovered me as my Physitian when I was sick hath been his Physitian too and kept him from being sick who but for that Physitian had been as ill as I was At least he must be his Physitian if ever he come to be sick and come to know that he is sick and come to a right desire to be well Spirituall death was before bodily sinne before the wages of sin God hath provided a resurrection for both deaths but first for the first This is the first resurrection Reconciliation to God and the returning of the soule of our soule Grace in his Church by his Word and his seales there Now every repentance is not a resurrection It is rather a waking out of a dreame then a rising to a new life Nay it is rather a startling in our sleep then any awaking at all Ephes 5.14 Esay â—0 1 to have a sudden remorse a sudden flash and no constant perseverance Awake thou that sleepest sayes the Apostle out of the Prophet First awake come to a sense of thy state and then arise from the dead sayes he from the practise of dead works and then Christ shall give thee light life and strength to walk in new wayes It is a long work and hath many steps Awake arise and walke and therefore set out betimes At the last day in those which shall be found alive upon the earth we say there shall be a sudden death and a sudden resurrection In raptu in transitu in ictu oculi In an instant in the twinckling of an eye but do not thou trust to have this first Resurrection In raptu in transitu in ictu oculi In thy last passage upon thy death-bed when the twinckling of the eye must be the closing of thine eyes But as we assign to glorified bodies after the last Resurrection certaine Dotes as we call them in the Schoole certaine Endowments so labour thou to finde those endowments in thy soule here if thou beest come to this first Resurrection Amongst those Endowments we assigne Subtilitatem Agilitatem The glorified bodie is become more subtile more nimble not encumbred not disable for any motion that it would make So hath that soule which is come to this first Resurrection by grace a spirituall agility a holy nimblenesse in it that it can slide by tentations and passe through tentations and never be polluted follow a calling without taking infection by the ordinary tentations of that calling So have those glorified bodies Claritatem a brightnesse upon them from the face of God and so have these soules which are come to this first resurrection a sun in themselves an inherent light by which they can presently distinguish betweene action and action what must what may what must not bee done But of all the endowments of the glorified body we consider most Impassibilitatem That that body shall suffer nothing and is sure that it shall suffer nothing And that which answers that endowment of the body most in this soule that is come to this first resurrection is as the Apostle speaks That neither persecution sicknesse nor death Rom. 8. shall separate her from Christ Iesus In Heaven we doe not say that our bodies shall devest their mortality so as that naturally they could not dye
the devill gives us is affliction upon affliction and to that there belongs a woe Per tenuitatem assimilamur Deo saies the same Author The attenuation the slendernesse the deliverance of the body from the encumbrance of much flesh gives us some assimilation some conformity to God and his Angels The lesse flesh we carry the liker we are to them who have none That is still the lesse flesh of our owne making for for that flesh which God and his instrument Nature hath given us in what measure or proportion soever that does not oppresse us to this purpose neither shall that be laid to our charge but the flesh that we have built up by curious diet by meats of provocation and witty sawces or by a slothfull and drowsie negligence of the works of our calling All flesh is sinfull flesh sinfull so as that it is the mother of sin it occasions sin naturall flesh is so But this artificiall flesh of our owne making is sinfull so as that it is also the daughter of sin It is indeed the punishment of former sins and the occasion of future The soule then requires not so large so vast a house of sinfull flesh to dwell in Macerationes corporis But yet on the other side we may not by inordinate abstinencies by indiscreet fastings by inhumane flagellations by unnaturall macerations and such Disciplines as God doth not command nor authorize so wither and shrinke and contract the body as though the soule were sent into it as into a prison or into fetters and manacles to wring and pinch and torture it Nihil interest saies S. Hierome It is all one whether thou kill thy selfe at one blow or be long in doing it if thou do it All one whether thou fall upon thine own sword or sterve thy selfe with such a fasting as thou discernest to induce that effect for saies he Descendit a dignitate viri not as insaniae incurrit He departs from that dignity which God hath imprinted in man in giving him the use and the dominion over his creatures and he gives the world just occasion to thinke him mad And as Tertullian adds Respuit datorem qui datum deserit He that does not use a benefit reproaches the Benefactor and he is ungratefull to God that does not accept at his hands the use of his blessings Therefore is it accepted as a good interpretation which is made of Christs determining his fast in forty daies Ne sui homicida videretur Lest if he continued it longer he might have seemed to have killed himselfe by being the author of his owne death And so do they interpret aright his Esuriit That then he began to be hungry that he began to languish to faint to finde a detriment in his body for else a fasting when a man is not hungry is no fasting but then he gave over fasting when he found the state of his body empaired by fasting And therefore those mad doctrines so S. Hierom cals them Notas insaniae habent yea those devilish doctrines so S. Paul cals them that forbid certaine meats and that make un-commanded macerations of the body meritorious that upon a supposititious story of an Ermit that lived 22. yeares Abbasll sperg without eating any thing at all And upon an impertinent example of their S. Francis that kept three Lents in the yeare which they extoll and magnifie in S. Francis and S. Hierom condemned and detested in the Montanists who did so too have built up those Carthusian Rules That though it appeare that that and nothing but that would save the patients life yet he may not eat flesh that is a Carthusian And have brought into estimation those Apocryphall and bastardly Canons which they father upon the Apostles That a man must rather sterve then receive food from the hand of a person excommunicate or otherwise detected of any mortall sin And that all that can be done with the almes of such a person is that it be spent in wood and coales and other fuell that so as the subtile philosophy of their Canon is it may be burnt and consumed by fire for to save a mans life it must not be spent upon meat or drink or such sustentation These Doctrines are not the Doctrines of this Resurrection by which man considered in Composito as he consists of soule and body by a sober and temperate life makes his body obsequious and serviceable to his soule but yet leaves his soule a body to worke in and an Organ to praise God upon both in a devout humiliation of his body in Gods service and in a bodily performance of the duties of some calling for this is our first Resurrection A casu separationis from having falne into a separation of body and soule for they must serve God joyntly together because God having joyned them man may not separate them but as God shall re-unite them at the last Resurrection so must we in our Resurrections in this life And farther we extend not this Resurrection from this separation this divorce The second fall of man in naturall death Casus in dissolutionem is Casus in dissolutionem The man being fallen into a divorce of soule and body the body fals by putrefaction into a dissolution of dust and the Resurrection from this fall is a re-efformation when God shall recompact that dust into that body This fall and this resurrection we have in our spirituall death too for we fall into daily customes and continuall habits of those sins and we become not onely as that Lazarus in the parable to have sores upon us but as that Lazarus in the Gospell that was dead Domine jam faetemus quatriduani sumus Lord we stinke in thy nostrils and we have beene buried foure dayes All the foure changes of our life Infancy Youth Middle Age and Old have beene spent and worne out in a continuall and uninterrupted course of sin In which we shall best consider our fall and best prepare our Resurrection by looking from whence we are fallen and by what steps and they are three First Nardus nostra Cant. 1.12 Perdidimus nardum nostrā We have lost the sweet savour of our own Spikenard for so the Spouse saies Nardus mea dedit odorem suum My Spikenard hath given forth her sweet savour There was a time when we had a Spikenard and a sweet savour of our own when our own Naturall faculties in that state as God infused them in Adam had a power to apprehend and lay hold upon the graces of God Man hath a reasonable soule capable of Gods grace so hath no creature but man man hath naturall faculties which may be employed by God in his service so hath no creature but man Onely man was made so as that he might be better whereas all other creatures were but to consist in that degree of goodnesse in which they entred Miserable fall Only man was made to mend and only man does grow
as all sin is a violating of God God being the God of mercy and the God of life because it deprives us of both those of mercy and of life in opposition to mercy Ephes 2.3 Rom. 5.12 it is called anger and wrath We are all by nature the children of wrath And in opposition to life it is called death Death enters by sin and death is gone over all men And as originall sin hath relation to our souls It is called that indeleble foulnesse and uncleannesse which God discovers in us all Jer. 2.22 Though thou wash thee with nitre and take thee much sope yet thine iniquity is marked before me saith the Lord And which every man findes in himself as Iob did If I wash my self in Snow-water Job 9. and purge my hands never so cleane yet mine own clothes shall make me filthy As it hath relation to our bodies so it is not only called Lex carnis A law which the flesh cannot disobey And Lex in membris A law written and imprinted naturally in our bodies and inseparably inherent there but it is a law that hath got Posse comitatus All our strength and munition into her own hands all our powers and faculties to execute her purposes against us and as the Apostle expresses it fully Hath force in our members to bring forth fruits unto death Rom. 7.5 Consider our originall weaknesse as God lookes upon it so it is inexcusable sin consider it as our soules suffer by it so it is an indeleble foulnesse consider it as our bodies contribute to it and harbour it and retain it and so it is an unquenchable fire and a brand of hell it self It hath banished me out of my self It is no more I that do any thing but sin that dwelleth in me It doth not only dwell but reign in these mortall bodies not only reign but tyrannize and lead us captives under the law of sin which is in our members Ver. 23. So that we have utterly lost Bonum possibilitatis for as men we are out of all possibility not only of that victorious and triumphant gratulation and acclamation to our selves as for a delivery I thank God through Iesus Christ but we cannot come to that sense of our misery Ver. ult as to cry out in the Apostles words immediately preceding O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death Now as this death hath invaded every part and faculty of man understanding and will and all for though originall sin seem to be contracted without our will yet Sicut omnium natura ita omnium voluntates fuere originaliter in Adam sayes S. Augustine As the whole nature of mankinde and so of every particular man was in Adam so also were the faculties and so the will of every particular man in him so this death hath invaded every particular man Death went over all men for as much as all men had sinned And therefore they that do blasphemously exempt some persons from sin they set them not above the Law but without the Law They out-law them in taking from them the benefit of the new Law the Gospel and of the author of that Law Christ Jesus who came a Physitian to the sick and was sent only to save sinners for them that are none it is well that they need no Redeemer for if they did they could have no part in ours for he came only to redeem sinners and they are none God brought his Son out of Aegypt not out of Goshen in Aegypt not out of a priviledged place in Aegypt but out of Aegypt God brought his Son Christ Jesus out of the Virgin Mary without sin but he brought not her so out of her mother If they might be beleeved that the blessed Virgin and Iohn Baptist and the Prophet Ieremy were without all sin they would goe about at last to make us beleeve that Ignatius were so too For us in the highest of our sanctification still let us presse with that Dimitte nobis debita nostra O Lord forgive us our trespasses and confesse that we needed forgivenesse even for the sins which we have not done Dimissa fateor quae mea sponte feci quae te duce non feci sayes S. Augustine I confesse I need thy mercy both for the sins which I have done and for those which if thy grace had not restrained me I should have done And therefore if another think he hath scaped those sins that I have committed August Non me derideat ab eo medico aegrum sanari à quoei praestitum ne aegrotaret Let him not despise me who am recovered since it is the same physitian who hath wrought upon us both though by a diverse method for he hath preserved him and he hath recovered me for for himselfe we say still with the same Father Perdiderat bonum possibilitatis As well he as I had lost all possibility of standing or rising after our fall This was our first branch Quid homo potest The universall impotency And our second is That this is In homine In man no man as man can make this profession That Iesus is the Lord and therefore we consider first wherein and how far man is disabled In every Age some men have attributed to the power of nature more then a naturall man can doe and yet no man doth so much as a naturall man might doe For the over-valuing of nature and her power there are impressions in the Fathers themselves which whether mis-understood by the Readers or by the Authors have led and prevailed much When Iustin Martyr sayes Ratio pro fide Graecis Barbaris That rectified reason did the same office in the Gentiles as faith did in the Christians when Clement sayes Philosophia per sese justi ficavit Graecos That the Gentiles to whom the Law and Gospell was not communicated were justified by their Philosophy when Chrysostome sayes Satis fuit Gentibus abstinuisse ab Idololatria It was sufficient for the Gentiles if they did not worship false gods though they understood not the true when S. Augustine sayes Rectè facis nihil quaerere ampliùs quà m quod docet ratio He doth well that seeks no farther then his reason leads them these impressions in the Fathers have transported later men farther so far as that Andradius in the Romane Church saves all honest Philosophers that lived morally well without Christ And Tostatus takes all impediments out of their way That originall sin is absolutely remitted to them In prima bona operatione in charitate In their first good morall work that they do So that they are in an easier way then we who are but Christians for in the opinion of Tostatus himselfe and that whole Church we cannot be delivered from originall sin but by baptisme nothing lesse then a Sacrament would deliver us from originall sin and any good worke shall deliver any of the Gentiles
sin no lesser covering serves then God in his Church It was the prayer against them Nehem. 4.5 August who hindered the building of the Temple Cover not their iniquity neither let their sin be put out in thy presence Our prayer is Peccata nostra non videat ut nos videat Lord looke not upon our sins that thou maist looke upon us And since amongst our selves 1 Pet. 4.8 Prov. 10.12 it is the effect of Love to cover Multitudinem peccatorum The multitude of sins yea to cover Vniversa delicta Lovè covereth all sins much more shall God who is Love it selfe cover our sins so as he covered the Egyptians in a red Sea in the application of his blood by visible meanes in his Church That therefore thou mayest be capable of this covering Psal 37.6 Commit thy wayes unto the Lord that is show unto him by way of confession what wrong wayes thou hast gone and inquire of him by prayer what wayes thou art to go and as it is in the same Psalme He shall bring forth thy righteousnesse as the light and thy judgement as the noone day And so there shall be no guile found in thy spirit which might hinder this covering of thy sin which is the application of Christs merits in the Ordinances of his Church nor the Not imputing of thine iniquity which is our last consideration and the conclusion of all This not imputing Imputing is that serenity and acquiescence which a rectified conscience enjoyes when the Spirit of God beares witnesse with my spirit that thus reconciled to my God I am now guilty of nothing S. Bernard defines the Conscience thus Inseparabilis gloria vel confusio uniuscujusque pro qualitate depositi It is that inseparable glory or that inseparable confusion which every soule hath according to that which is deposited and laid up in it Now what is deposited and laid up in it Naturally hereditarily patrimonially Con-reatus sayes that Father from our first Parents a fellow-guiltinesse of their sin and they have left us sons and heires of the wrath and indignation of God and that is the treasure they have laid up for us Against this God hath provided Baptisme and Baptisme washes away that sin for as we doe nothing to our selves in Baptisme but are therein meerely passive so neither did we any thing our selves in Originall sin but therein are meerely passive too and so the remedy Baptisme is proportioned to the disease Originall sin But originall sin being thus washed away we make a new stocke we take in a new depositum a new treasure Actuall and habituall sins and therein much being done by our selves against God into the remedy there must enter something to be done by our selves and something by God And therefore we bring water to his wine true teares of repentance to his true blood in the Sacrament and so receive the seales of our reconciliation and having done that we may boldly say unto God Doe not condemne me Iob 10.2 shew me wherefore thou contendest with me When we have said as he doth I have sinned Iob 7.20 what shall I doe to thee And have done that that he hath ordained we may say also as he doth O thou preserver of men why dost thou not pardon my transgression and take away mine iniquity Why doest thou suffer me to faint and pant under this sad apprehension that all is not yet well betweene my soule and thee We are far from encouraging any man to antidate his pardon to presume his pardon to be passed before it is But when it is truly passed the seales of Reconciliation there is Dolus in spiritu Guile and deceit in that spirit nay it is the spirit of falshood and deceit it selfe that will not suffer us to injoy that pardon which God hath sealed to us but still maintaine jealousies and suspition between God and us My heart is not opener to God then the bowels of his mercy are to me And to accuse my selfe of sin after God hath pardoned me were as great a contempt of God as to presume of that pardon before he had granted it and so much a greater as it is directed against his greatest attribute his Mercy Si apud Deum deponas injuriam Tertul. ipse ultor erit Lay all the injuries that thou sufferest at Gods feet and hee will revenge them Si damnum ipse restituet Lay all thy losses there and he will repaire them Si dolorem ipse medicus Lay downe all thy diseases there and he shall heale thee Si mortem ipse resuscitator Dye in his armes and he shall breath a new life into thee Add wee to Tertullian Si peccata ipse sepeliet lay thy sins in his wounds and he shall bury them so deepe that onely they shall never have resurrection The Sun shall set and have a to morrows resurrection Herbs shall have a winter death and a springs resurrection Thy body shall have a long winters night and then a resurrection Onely thy sins buried in the wounds of thy Saviour shall never have resurrection And therefore take heed of that deceit in the spirit of that spirit of deceit that makes thee impute sins to thy selfe when God imputes them not But rejoyce in Gods generall forgiving of Transgressions That Christ hath dyed for all multiply thy joy in the covering of thy sin That Christ hath instituted a Church in which that generall pardon is made thine in particular And exalt thy joy in the not imputing of iniquity in that serenity that tranquillity that God shall receive thee at thy last houre in thy last Bath the sweat of death as lovingly as acceptably as innocently as he received thee from thy first Bath the laver of Regeneration the font in Baptisme Amen SERM. LVII Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 32.3 4. When I kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me my moysture is turned into the drought of Summer Selah ALL wayes of teaching are Rule and Example And though ordinarily the Rule be first placed yet the Rule it selfe is made of Examples And when a Rule would be of hard digestion to weake understandinge Example concocts it and makes it easie for Example in matter of Doctrine is as Assimilation in matter of Nourishment The Example makes that that is proposed for our learning and farther instruction like something which we knew before as Assimilation makes that meat which we have received and digested like those parts which are in our bodies before David was the sweet singer of Israel shall we say Gods Precentor His sonne Solomon was the powerfull Preacher of Israel shall we say Gods Chaplain Both of them excellent abundantly super-abundantly excellent in both those wayes of Teaching Poet and Preacher proceed in these wayes in both Rule and Example the body and soule of Instruction So this Psalme is qualified in the Title
possesse immortality and impossibility of dying onely in a continuall dying when as a Cabinet whose key were lost must be broken up and torne in pieces before the Jewell that was laid up in it can be taken out so thy body the Cabinet of thy soule must be shaked and shivered by violent sicknesse before that soule can goe out And when it is thus gone out must answer for all the imperfections of that body which body polluted it And yet though this soule be such a loser by that body it is not perfectly well nor fully satisfied till it be reunited to that body againe when thou remembrest Mat. 26.36 and oh never forget it that Christ himselfe was heavy in his soule unto Death Mat. 26.39 That Christ himselfe came to a Si possibile If it be possible let this Cup passe That he came to a Quare dereliquisti Mat. 27.46 a bitter sense of Gods dereliction and forsaking of him when thou considerest all this compose thy selfe for death but thinke it not a light matter to dye Death made the Lyon of Judah to roare and doe not thou thinke that that which we call going away like a Lambe doth more testifie a conformity with Christ then a strong sense and bitter agony and colluctation with death doth Christ gave us the Rule in the Example He taught us what we should doe by his doing it And he pre-admitted a fearfull apprehension of death A Lambe is a Hieroglyphique of Patience but not of stupidity And death was Christs Consummatum est All ended in death yet he had sense of death How much more doth a sad sense of our transmigration belong to us to whom death is no Consummatum est but an In principio our account and our everlasting state begins but then Apud te propitiatio Psal 130.4 ut timearis In this knot we tie up all With thee there is mercy that thou mightest be feared There is a holy feare that does not onely consist with an assurance of mercy Pro. 21.15 but induces constitutes that assurance Pavor operantibus iniquitatem sayes Solomon Pavor horror and servile feare jealousie and suspition of God diffidence and distrust in his mercy and a bosome-prophecy of self-destruction Destruction it selfe so we translate it be upon the workers of iniquity Pavor operantibus iniquitatem And yet sayes that wise King Pro. 28.14 Beatus qui semper Pavidus Blessed is that man that alwayes fears who though he alwayes hope and beleeve the good that God will shew him yet also feares the evills that God might justly multiply upon him Blessed is he that looks upon God with assurance but upon himselfe with feare For though God have given us light by which we may see him even in Nature for He is the confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them that are a far of upon the Sea Though God have given us a clearer light in the Law and experience of his providence upon his people throughout the Old Testament Though God have abundantly infinitely multiplied these lights and these helpes to us in the Christian Church where he is the God of salvation yet as he answers us by terrible things in that first acceptation of the words which I proposed to you that is Gives us assurances by miraculous testimonies in our behalfe that he will answer our patient expectation by terrible Judgements and Revenges upon our enemies In his Righteousnesse that is In his faithfulnesse according to his Promises and according to his performances of those Promises to his former people So in the words considered the other way In his Holinesse that is in his wayes of imprinting Holinesse in us He answers us by terrible things in all those particulars which we have presented unto you By infusing faith but with that terrible addition Damnabitur He that beleeveth not shall be damned He answers us by composing our manners and rectifying our life and conversation but with terrible additions of censures and Excommunications and tearings off from his own body which is a death to us and a wound to him He answers us by enabling us to speake to him in Prayer but with terrible additions for the matter for the manner for the measure of our Prayer which being neglected our very Prayer is turned to sin He answers us in Preaching but with that terrible commination that even his word may be the savor of death unto death He answers us in the Sacrament but with that terrible perplexity and distraction that he that seemes to be a Iohn or a Peter a Loving or a Beloved Disciple may be a Iudas and he that seems to have received the seale of his reconciliation may have eat and drunke his own Damnation And he answers us at the houre of death but with this terrible obligation That even then I make sure my salvation with feare and trembling That so we imagine not a God of wax whom we can melt and mold when and how we will That we make not the Church a Market That an over-homelines and familiarity with God in the acts of Religion bring us not to an irreverence nor indifferency of places But that as the Militant Church is the porch of the Triumphant so our reverence here may have some proportion to that reverence which is exhibited there Revel 4.10 where the Elders cast their Crownes before the Throne and continue in that holy and reverend acclamation Thou art worthy O Lord to receive Glory and Honor and Power for as we may adde from this Text By terrible things O God of our salvation doest thou answer us in righteousnesse SERM. LXIX The fifth of my Prebend Sermons upon my five Psalmes Preached at S. Pauls PSAL. 66.3 Say unto God How terrible art thou in thy works Through the greatnesse of thy Power shall thine Enemies submit themselves unto thee IT is well said so well as that more then one of the Fathers seeme to have delighted themselves in having said it Titulus Clavis The Title of the Psalme is the Key of the Psalme the Title opens the whole Psalme The Church of Rome will needs keepe the Key of heaven and the key to that Key the Scriptures wrapped up in that Translation which in no case must be departed from There the key of this Psalm the Title thereof hath one bar wrested that is made otherwise then he that made the Key the Holy Ghost intended it And another bat inserted that is one clause added which the Holy Ghost added not Where we reade in the Title Victori To the chiefe Musician they reade In finem A Psalme directed upon the end I think they meane upon the later times because it is in a great part a Propheticall Psame of the calling of the Gentiles But after this change they also adde Resurrectionis A Psalme concerning the Resurrection and that is not in the Hebrew nor any thing in the place thereof And after one Author
afflictionis Verse 16. Studied and premeditated plots and practises swallowe mee possesse me intirely In all these dayes I shall not onely have a Zoar to flie to if I can get out of Sodom joy if I can overcome my sorrow There shall not be a Goshen bordering upon my Egypt joy if I can passe beyond or besides my sorrow but I shall have a Goshen in my Egypt nay my very Egypt shall be my Goshen I shall not onely have joy though I have sorrow but therefore my very sorrow shall be the occasion of joy I shall not onely have a Sabbath after my six dayes labor but Omnibus diebus a Sabbath shall enlighten every day and inanimate every minute of every day And as my soule is as well in my foot as in my hand though all the waight and oppression lie upon the foot and all action upon the hand so these beames of joy shall appeare as well in my pillar of cloud as in theirs of fire in my adversity as well as in their prosperity And when their Sun shall set at Noone mine shall rise at midnight they shall have damps in their glory and I joyfull exaltions in my dejections And to end with the end of all In die mortis In the day of my death and that which is beyond the end of all and without end in it selfe The day of Judgement If I have the testimony of a rectified conscience that I have accustomed my selfe to that accesse to God by prayer and such prayer as though it have had a body of supplication and desire of future things yet the soule and spirit of that prayer that is my principall intention in that prayer hath been praise and thanksgiving If I be involved in S. Chrysostoms Patent Orantes non natura sed dispensatione Angeli fiunt That those who pray so that is pray by way of praise which is the most proper office of Angels as they shall be better then Angels in the next world for they shall be glorifying spirits as the Angels are but they shall also be glorified bodies which the Angels shall never bee so in this world they they shall be as Angels because they are employed in the office of Angels to pray by way of praise If as S. Basil reads those words of that Psalme not spiritus meus but respiratio mea laudet Dominum Not onely my spirit but my very breath not my heart onely but my tongue and my hands bee accustomed to glorifie God In die mortis in the day of my death when a mist of sorrow and of sighes shall fill my chamber and a cloude exhaled and condensed from teares shall bee the curtaines of my bed when those that love me shall be sorry to see mee die and the devill himselfe that hates me sorry to see me die so in the favour of God And In die Iudicii In the day of Judgement when as all Time shall cease so all measures shall cease The joy and the sorrow that shall be then shall be eternall no end and infinite no measure no limitation when every circumstance of sinne shall aggravate the condemnation of the unrepentant sinner and the very substance of my sinne shall bee washed away in the blood of my Saviour when I shall see them who sinned for my sake perish eternally because they proceeded in that sinne and I my selfe who occasioned their sin received into glory because God upon my prayer and repentance had satisfied me early with his mercy early that is before my transmigration In omnibus diebus In all these dayes the dayes of youth and the wantonnesses of that the dayes of age and the tastlesnesse of that the dayes of mirth and the sportfulnesse of that and of inordinate melancholy and the disconsolatenesse of that the days of such miseries as astonish us with their suddennesse and of such as aggravate their owne waight with a heavy expectation In the day of Death which pieces up that circle and in that day which enters another circle that hath no pieces but is one equall everlastingnesse the day of Judgement Either I shall rejoyce be able to declare my faith and zeale to the assistance of others or at least be glad in mine owne heart in a firme hope of mine owne salvation And therefore beloved as they whom lighter affections carry to Shewes and Masks and Comedies As you your selves whom better dispositions bring to these Exercises conceive some contentment and some kinde of Joy in that you are well and commodiously placed they to see the Shew you to heare the Sermon when the time comes though your greater Joy bee reserved to the comming of that time So though the fulnesse of Joy be reserved to the last times in heaven yet rejoyce and be glad that you are well and commodiously placed in the meane time and that you sit but in expectation of the fulnesse of those future Joyes Returne to God with a joyfull thankfulnesse that he hath placed you in a Church which withholds nothing from you that is necessary to salvation whereas in another Church they lack a great part of the Word and halfe the Sacrament And which obtrudes nothing to you that is not necessary to salvation whereas in another Church the Additionall things exceed the Fundamentall the Occasionall the Originall the Collaterall the Direct And the Traditions of men the Commandements of God Maintaine and hold up this holy alacrity this religious cheerfulnesse For inordinate sadnesse is a great degree and evidence of unthankfulnesse and the departing from Joy in this world is a departing with one piece of our Evidence for the Joyes of the world to come SERM. LXXX Preached at the funerals of Sir William Cokayne Knight Alderman of London December 12. 1626. JOH 11.21 Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not died GOd made the first Marriage and man made the first Divorce God married the Body and Soule in the Creation and man divorced the Body and Soule by death through sinne in his fall God doth not admit not justifie not authorize such Super-inductions upon such Divorces as some have imagined That the soule departing from one body should become the soule of another body in a perpetuall revolution and transmigration of soules through bodies which hath been the giddinesse of some Philosophers to think Or that the body of the dead should become the body of an evill spirit that that spirit might at his will and to his purposes informe and inanimate that dead body God allowes no such Super-inductions no such second Marriages upon such divorces by death no such disposition of soule or body after their dissolution by death But because God hath made the band of Marriage indissoluble but by death farther then man can die this divorce cannot fall upon man As farre as man is immortall man is a married man still still in possession of a soule and a body too And man is for ever immortall in both Immortall in
from the tyran to cancell the covenant betweene hell and them and restore them so far to their liberty as that they might come to their first Master if they would this was Redeeming But in his other worke which is Adoption and where the persons were more particular Adoptio not all but wee Christ hath taken us to him in a straiter and more peculiar title then Redeeming For A servando Servi men who were by another mans valour saved and redeemed from the enemy or from present death they became thereby servants to him that saved and redeemed them Redemption makes us who were but subjects before for all are so by creation servants but it is but servants but Adoption makes us who are thus made servants by Redemption sons 〈◊〉 for Adoption is verbum forense though it be a word which the Holy Ghost takes yet he takes it from a civill use and signification in which it expresses in divers circumstances our Adoption into the state of Gods children First he that adopted another must by that law be a man who had no children of his owne And this was Gods case towards us Hee had no children of his owne wee were all filii irae The children of wrath not one of us could be said to bee the child of God by nature if we had not had this Adoption in Christ Secondly he who Eph. ◠by that law might Adopt must be a Man who had had or naturally might have had children for an Infant under yeares or a man who by nature was disabled from having children could not Adopt another And this was Gods case towards us too for God had had children without Adoption for by our creation in Innocence we were the sons of God till we died all in one transgression and lost all right and all life and all meanes of regaining it but by this way of Adoption in Christ Jesus Againe no man might adopt an elder man then himselfe and so our Father by Adoption is not onely Antiquus dierum The ancient of Daies but Antiquior diebus ancienter then any Daies before Time was he is as Damascene forces himselfe to expresse it Super-principale principium the Beginning and the first Beginning and before the first beginning He is saies he aeternus and prae-aeternus Eternall and elder then any eternity that we can take into our imagination So likewise no man might adopt a man of better quality then himselfe and here we are so far from comparing as that we cannot comprehend his greatnesse and his goodnesse of whom and to whom S. Augustin saies well Quid mihi es If I shall goe about to declare thy goodnesse not to the world in generall but Quid mihi es how good thou art to me Miserere ut loquar saies he I must have more of thy goodnesse to be able to tell thy former goodnesse Be mercifull unto me againe that I may bee thereby able to declare how mercifull thou wast to me before except thou speake in me I cannot declare what thou hast done for me Lastly no man might be adopted into any other degree of kindred but into the name and right of a son he could not be an adopted Brother nor cosin nor nephew And this is especially our dignity wee have the Spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba Father So that as here is a fulnesse of time in the text so there is a fulnesse of persons All and a fulnesse of the worke belonging to them Redeeming Emancipation delivering from the chaines of Satan we were his by Creation we sold our selves for nothing and he redeemed us without money that is Esa 52. without any cost of ours but because for all this generall Redemption we may turne from him and submit our selves to other services therefore he hath Adopted us drawne into his family and into his more especiall care those who are chosen by him to be his Now that Redemption reached to all there was enough for all this dispensation of that Redemption this Adoption reaches onely to us all this is done That wee might receive the Adoption of Sonnes But who are this Wee why they are the elect of God But who are they Nos who are these elect Qui timidè rogat docet negare If a man aske me with a diffidence Can I be the adopted son of God that have rebelled against him in all my affections that have troden upon his Commandements in all mine actions that have divorced my selfe from him in preferring the love of his creatures before himselfe that have murmured at his corrections and thought them too much that have undervalued his benefits and thought them too little that have abandoned and prostituted my body his Temple to all uncleannesse and my spirit to indevotion and contempt of his Ordinances can I be the adopted son of God that have done this Ne timidè roges aske me not this with a diffidence and distrust in Gods mercy as if thou thoughtst with Cain thy iniquities were greater then could be forgiven But aske me with that holy confidence which belongs to a true convert Am not I who though I am never without sinne yet am never without hearty remorce and repentance for my sinnes though the weaknesse of my flesh sometimes betray mee the strength of his Spirit still recovers me though my body be under the paw of that lion that seekes whom hee may devoure yet the lion of Judah raises againe and upholds my soule though I wound my Saviour with many sinnes yet all these bee they never so many I strive against I lament confesse and forsake as farre as I am able Am not I the child of God and his adopted son in this state Roga fidenter aske me with a holy confidence in thine and my God doces affirmare thy very question gives me mine answer to thee thou teachest me to say thou art God himselfe teaches me to say so by his Apostle The foundation of God is sure and this is the Seale God knoweth who are his and let them that call upon his name depart from all iniquity He that departs so far as to repent former sinnes and shut up the wayes which he knows in his conscience doe lead him into tentations he is of this quorum one of us one of them who are adopted by Christ to be the sonnes of God I am of this quorum if I preach the Gospell sincerely and live thereafter for hee preaches twice a day that followes his owne doctrine and does as he saies And you are of this quorum if you preach over the Sermons which you heare to your owne soules in your meditation to your families in your relation to the world in your conversation If you come to this place to meet the Spirit of God and not to meet one another If you have sate in this place with a delight in the Word of God and not in the words of any speaker If you goe out of this
in our dayes and performe it upon our children but God will speake and strike together we shall heare him and feele him at once if wee be not seriously affected with his predictions The same way God goes in Ieremy Jer. 7.23 as in Esay and in Ezechiel I have sent unto you all my servants the Prophets sayes God there God hath no other servants to this purpose but his Prophets If your dangers have beene by Gods appointment preached to you God hath done You must not as Dives did in the behalfe of his brethren looke for Messengers from the state of the dead you must not stay for instruction nor for amendment till you be Pro mortuis 1 Cor. 15. as the Apostle speakes as good as dead ready to dye you must not stay till a Judgement fall and then presume of understanding by that vexation or of repentance by that affliction for this is to hearken after Messengers from the state of the dead to think of nothing till we be ready to joyne with them But as Abraham sayes there to Dives Thy brethren have the Law and the Prophets and that is enough that is all so God sayes here I have sent them all my servants the Prophets that is enough that is all especially when as God addes there He hath risen early and sent his Prophets that is given us warning time enough before the calamity come neare our owne gates But when they rejected and despised all his Prophesies and denunciations of future Judgements V. 29. then followes the sentence the finall and fearfull sentence The Lord hath forsaken and rejected them Them whom as it followes in the sentence The Lord hath forsaken and rejected the generation of his wrath The generation of his wrath There is more horrour more consternation in that manner of expressing that rejection then in the rejection it selfe There is an insupportable waight in that word His wrath but even that is infinitely aggravated in the other The generation of his wrath God hath forgot that Israel is his Son Exod. 4.22 and his first borne So he avowed him to be in Moses commission to Pharaoh God hath forgot that He rebuked Kings for his sake that he testifies to have done in his behalfe Psal 105.15 Gal. 3.29 in David God hath forgot that they were heires according to the promise that is their dignification in the Apostle forgot that they were the apple of his own eye Deut. 32.10 Agg. 2.23 Jer. 31.20 that they were as the signet upon his own hand forgot that Ephraim is his deare Son that he is a pleasing child a child for whom his bowels were troubled God hath forgot all these paternities all these filiations all these incorporatings all these inviscerations of Israel into his owne bosome and Israel is become the generation of his wrath Not the subject of his wrath A people upon whom God would exercise some one act of indignation in a temporall calamity as captivity or so or multiply acts of indignation in one kinde as adding of penury or sicknesse to their captivity nor is it onely a multiplying of the kinds of calamity as the aggravating of temporall calamities with spirituall oppression of body and state with sadnesse of heart and dejection of spirit for all these as many as they are are determined in this life but that which God threatens is that he will for their grievous sinnes multiply lifes upon them and make them immortall for immortall torments They shall bee a generation of his wrath they shall dye in this world in his displeasure and receive a new birth a new generation in the world to come in a new capacity of new miseries they shall dye in the next world every minute in the privation of the sight of God and every minute receive a new generation a new birth a new capacity of reall and sensible torments When God hath sent all his servants the Prophets and so done all that is necessary for premonition and risen early to send those Prophets warned them time enough to avoid the danger and they are not affected with the sense of these predictions God shall make them us any State any Church the generation of his wrath God shall forget his former paternities and our former filiations forget his mercies exhibited to us in the reformation of Religion in the preservation of our State in the augmenting and adorning of our Church and after all this make us the generation of his wrath And this may well be conceived to be the lamentable state deplored in this text as the words are considered in their first place the Prophet Esay Lord who hath beleeved our report But this is brought nearer to us in the second place as wee have the words in S. Iohn where we doe not consider things in a remote distance Iohn 12.38 but Christ was in a personall and actuall exercise of his works of power and soveraignty and yet the Evangelist comes to this Lord who hath beleeved this report That 's true in a great part which Irenaeus saies Prophetiae antequam effectum habent 2 Part. aenigmata sunt ambiguitates hominibus That prophecies till they come to be fulfilled are but clouds in the eyes and riddles in the understanding of men So many particulars concerning the calling of the Jews concerning the time and place and person and duration and actions of Antichrist concerning the generall Judgement and other things that lye yet as an Embryon as a child in the mothers wombe embowelled in the wombe of prophecie are yet but as clouds in the eyes as riddles in the understandings of the learnedst men Daniel himselfe found that which he found in the Prophet Ieremy concerning the deliverance of Israel from Babylon to be wrapped up in such a cloud as that it is fairely collected by some that Daniel himselfe at that time did not clearly understand the Prophet Ieremy But these clouds for the most part arise in us out of our curiosity that wee will needs know the time when these prophecies shall be fulfilled when the Jews shall be called when Antichrist shall be fully manifested when the day of Judgement shall be And so for such questions as these Christ enwraps not onely his Apostles but himselfe in a cloud for that cloud which he casts upon them Non est vestrum It belongs not to you to know times and seasons he spreads upon himselfe also Non est meum It belongs not to me not to me as the Son of man to know when the day of Judgment shall be But for that use of a prophecy that the prediction of a future Judgement should induce a present repentance that was never an enigmaticall a cloudy doctrine but manifest to all in all prophecies of that kinde But this this commination of future judgements for present repentance wrought not upon these men but Psal 55.19 Eccles 8.11 because they have no changes therefore they feare
bottomelesse Sea of the blood of Christ Jesus so they would know as well what God hath done for my soule as what my soule and body have done against my God so they would reade me throughout and look upon me altogether I would joyne with Iob in his confident adjuration O Earth cover not thou my blood Let all the world know all the sins of my youth and of mine age too and I would not doubt but God should receive more glory and the world more benefit then if I had never sinned This is that that exalts Iobs confidence he was guilty of nothing that is no such thing as they concluded upon of nothing absolutely because he had repented all And from this his confidence rises to a higher pitch then this Nec clamor O Earth cover not thou my blood and let my cry have no place What meanes Iob in this Doubtfull Expositors make us doubt too Some have said Clamor that Iob desires his cry might have no place that is no termination no resting place but that his just complaint might be heard over all the world Stunnica the Augustinian interprets it so Some have said that he intends by his cry his crying sins that they might have no place that is no hiding place but that his greatest sins and secret sins might be brought to light Bolduc the Capuchin interprets it so according to that use of the word Clamor God looked for righteousnesse ecce clamorem behold a cry that is Esay 5.7 sins crying in the eares of God But there is more then so in this phrase in this elegancy in this vehemency of the Holy Ghost in Iobs mouth Let my cry have no place In the former part Iobs Protestation he considered God and man righteousnesse towards man in cleane hands and in pure prayers devotion towards God In this part his Manifest he pursues the same method he considers man and God Though men knew all my sins that should not trouble me sayes he and that we have considered yea though my cry finde no place no place with God that should not trouble me I should be content that God should seeme not to heare my prayers but that hee laid me open to that ill interpretation of wicked men Tush he prayes but the Lord heares him not he cries but God relieves him not And yet when wilt thou relieve me O thou reliever of men if not upon my cries upon my prayers Yet S. Augustine hath repeated that more then once more then twice Non est magnum exaudiri ad voluntatem non est magnum Be not over-joyed when God grants thee thy prayer Exauditi ad voluntatem Daemones sayes that Father The Devill had his prayer granted when he had leave to enter into the Heard of Swine And so he had sayes he exemplifying in our present example when he obtained power from God against Iob. But all this aggravated the Devils punishment so may it doe thine to have some prayers granted And as that must not over-joy thee if it be so if thy prayer be not granted it must not deject thee God suffered S. Paul to pray and pray and pray yet after his thrice praying granted him not that he prayed for God suffered that si possibile if it be possiblle and that Transeat calix Let this Cup passe to passe from Christ himselfe yet he granted it not But in many of these cases a man does easilier satisfie his owne minde then other men If God grant me not my prayer I recover quickly and I lay hold upon the hornes of that Altar and ride safely at that Anchor God saw that that which I prayed for was not so good for him nor so good for me But when the world shall come to say Where is now your Religion where is your Reformation doe not all other Rivers as well as the Tiber or the Poe does not the Seine and the Rhene and the Maene too begin to ebbe back and to empty it selfe in the Sea of Rome why should not your Thames doe so as well as these other Rivers Where is now your Religion your Reformation Were not you as good run in the same channell as others doe This is a shrewd tentation and induces opprobrious conclusions from malicious enemies when our cries have no place our religious service no present acceptation our prayers no speedy return from God But yet because even in this God may propose farther glory to himselfe more benefit to me and more edification even to them at last who at first made ill constructions of his proceedings I admit as Iob admits O Earth cover not thou my blood let all the world see all my faults and let my cry have no place let them imagine that God hath forsaken me and does not heare my prayers my satisfaction my acquiescence arises not out of their opinion and interpretation that must not be my triall but testis in coelis My witnesse is in heaven and my record is on high which is our third and last Consideration We must doe in this last as we have done in our former two parts crack a shell 3 Part. to tast the kernell cleare the words to gaine the Doctrine I am ever willing to assist that observation That the books of Scripture are the eloquentest books in the world that every word in them hath his waight and value his taste and verdure And therefore must not blame those Translators nor those Expositors who have with a particular elegancy varied the words in this last clause of the Text my witnesse and my record The oldest Latine Translation received this variation and the last Latine even Tremellius himselfe as close as he sticks to the Hebrew retaines this variation Testis and Conscius And that collection which hath been made upon this variation is not without use that conscius may be spoken de interno that God will beare witnesse to my inward conscience and testis de externo that God will in his time testifie to the world in my behalfe But other places of Scripture will more advance that observation of the elegancy thereof then this for in this the two words signifie but one and the same thing it is but witnesse and witnesse and no more Not that it is easie to finde in Hebrew nor perchance in any language two words so absolutely Synonymous as to signifie the same thing without any difference but that the two words in our Text are not both of one language not both Hebrew For the first word Gned is an Hebrew word but the other Sahad is Syriaque and both signifie alike Levit. 5.1 and equally testem a witnesse He that heares the voyce of swearing and is a witnesse sayes Moses in the first word of our Text and then the Chalde Paraphrase intending the same thing expresses it in the other word Sahad So in the contract between Laban and Jacob Gen. 31.47 Laban calls that heap of stones which he had
time to seek him in the clouds of affliction and heavinesse of heart Experience teacheth us that if we be reading any book in the evening if the twilight surprise us and it growes dark yet we can reade longer in that book which we were in before then if we took a new book of another subject into our hands If we have been accustomed to the contemplation of God in the Sun-shine of prosperity we shall see him better in the night of misery then if we began but then Vae desiderantibus If you seem to desire that day of the Lord because you doe not beleeve that that day will come or because you beleeve that when that day comes it will be time enough to rectifie your selves then Vi quod vobis this day shall be good for nothing to either of you for to both you it shall be darknesse and not light The dayes which God made for man were darknesse and then light still the evening and the morning made up the day The day which the Lord shall bring upon secure and carnall men is darknesse without light judgements without any beames of mercy shine through them such judgements as if we will consider the vehemency of them we shall finde them expressed in such an extraordinary heighth as scarce anywhere else in Iercmy Men shall ask one of another if they be in labour whether they travell with childe Ier. 3◠7 Wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loines as a woman in travell Alas because that day is great and none is like it This is the unexpected and unconsidered strangenesse of that day if we consider the vehemency and if we consider the suddennesse the speed of bringing that day upon secure man That is intimated very sufficiently in another story of the same Prophet that when he had said to the Prophet Hananiah Jer 28.16 That he should die within a year when God saith his judgements shall come shortly if then we consider the vehemency or the nearnesse of the day of the Lord the day of his visitation we shall be glad to say with that Prophet Ier. 17.16 As for me I have not desired that wofull day thou knowest that is I have neither doubted but that there shall be such a day nor I have not put off my repentance to that day for what can that do good to either of those dispositions when to them it shall be darknesse and not light Now this Woe of this Prophet thus denounced against contemptuous scorners of the day of the Lord 2 Part. as that day signifies afflictions in this life have had no subject to work upon this congregation as by Gods grace there is none of that distemper here it is a piece of a Sermon well lost and God be blessed that it hath had no use that no body needed it But as the Woe is denounced in the second acceptation against Hypocrites so it is a chain-shot and in every congregation takes whole rankes and here Dies Domini is the last day of Judgement and the desire in the Text is not as before a denying that any such day should be but it is an hypocriticall pretence that we have so well performed our duties as that we should be glad if that day would come and then the darknesse of the Text is everlasting condemnation For this day of the Lord then the last day of judgement consider only or reflect only upon these three circumstances First there is Lex violata a law given to thee and broken by thee Secondly there is Testis prolatus Evidence produced against thee and confessed by thee And then there is Sententia lata A judgement given against thee and executed upon thee For the Law first when that Law is To love God with all thy power not to scatter thy love upon any other creature when the Law is not to do not to covet any ill wilt thou say this Law doth not concern me because it is impossible in it self for this coveting this first concupiscence is not in a mans own power Why this Law was possible to man when it was given to man for it was naturally imprinted in the heart of man when man was in his state of innocency and then it was possible and the impossibility that is grown into it since is by mans own fault Man by breaking the Law hath made the Law impossible and himself inexcusable wilt thou say with that man in the Gospell Omnia haec à juventute I have kept all this Law from my youth From thy youth remember thy youth well and what Law thou keptst then and thou wilt finde it to be another Law Lex in membris A Law of the flesh warring against the Law of the minde nay thou wilt finde that thou didst never maintain a war against that Law of the flesh but wast glad that thou camest to the obedience of that Law so soon and art sorry thou canst follow that Law no longer This is the Law and wilt thou put this to triall Wilt thou say who can prove it Who comes in to give evidence against me All those whom thy sollicitations have overcome and who have overcome thy sollicitations good and bad friends and enemies Wives and Mistresses persons most incompatible and contrary here shall joyne together and be of the Jury If S. Pauls case were so far thy case as that thou wert in righteousnesse unblameable no man no woman able to testifie against thee yet when the records of all thoughts shall be laid open and a retired and obscure man shall appeare to have been as ambitious in his Cloister as a pretending man at the Court and a retired woman in her chamber appeare to be as licentious as a prostitute woman in the Stews when the heart shall be laid open and this laid open too that some sins of the heart are the greatest sins of all as Infidelity the greatest sin of all is rooted in the heart and sin produced to action is but a dilatation of that sin and all dilatation is some degree of extenuation The body sometimes grows weary of acting some sin but the heart never grows weary of contriving of sin When this shall be that Law and this the Evidence what can be the Sentence but that Itemaledicti Go ye accursed into ever lasting fire where it is not as in the form of our judgement here You shall be carried to the place of execution but Ite Goe our own consciences shall be our executioners and precipitate us into that condemnation It is not a Captivity of Babylon for 70. yeares and yet 70. yeares is the time of mans life and why might not so many yeares punishment expiate so many yeares sinfull pleasure but it is 70. millions of millions of generations for they shall live so long in hell as God himself in heaven It is not an imprisonment during the Kings pleasure but during the Kings displeasure whom nothing can please
in the warfare Mat. 26.38 so we have our example in our great Generall Christ Jesus Who though his soul were heavy and heavy unto death though he had a baptisme to be baptised with coarctabatur he was straightned and in paine till it were accomplished and though he had power to lay down his soul Iohn 10.18 and take it up againe and no man else could take it from him yet he sought it out to the last houre and till his houre came he would not prevent it nor lay downe his soule Vae desiderantibus woe unto them that desire any other end of Gods correction but what he hath ordained and appointed for ut quid vobis what shall you get by choosing your owne wayes Tenebrae non lux They shall passe out of this world in this inward darknesse of melancholy and dejection of spirit into the outward darknesse which is an everlasting exclusion from the Father of lights and from the Kingdome of joy their case is well expressed in the next verse to our Text they shall flie from a Lyon and a Beare shall meet them they shall leane on a wall and a Serpent shall bite them they shall end this life by a miserable and hasty death and out of that death shall grow an immortall life in torments which no wearinesse nor desire nor practice can ever bring to an end And here in this acceptation of these words this vae falls directly upon them who colouring and apparelling treason in martyrdome expose their lives to the danger of the Law Scribanius embrace death these of whom one of their own society saith that the Scevolaes the Caves the Porciaes the Cleopatraes of the old time were nothing to the Jesuites for saith he they could dye once but they lacked courage ad multas mortes perchance hee meanes that after those men were once in danger of the Law and forfeited their lives by one comming they could come again and again as often as the plentifull mercy of their King would send them away Rapiunt mortem spontanea irruptione sayes he to their glory they are voluntary and violent pursuers of their own death and as he expresses it Crederes morbo adesos Baron Martyrâ—â— 29. Decemb you would think that the desire of death is a disease in them A graver man then he mistakes their case and cause of death as much you are saith he incouraging those of our Nation to the pursuit of death in sacris septis ad martyrium saginati fed up and fatned here for martyrdome Sacramento sanguinem spospondistis they have taken an oath that they will be hanged but that he in whom as his great patterne God himselfe mercy is above all his works out of his abundant sweetnesse makes them perjured when they have so Tworne and vowed their owne ruine But those that send them give not the lives of these men so freely so cheaply as they pretend But as in dry Pumps men poure in a little water that they may pump up more so they are content to drop in a little blood of imaginary but traiterous Martyrs that by that at last they may draw up at last the royall blood of Princes and the loyall blood of Subjects vae desiderantibus woe to them that are made thus ambitious of their owne ruine ut quid vobis Tenebrae non lux you are kept in darknesse in this world and sent into darknesse from heaven into the next and so your ambition ad multas mortes shall be satisfied you dye more then one death morte moriemini this death delivers you to another from which you shall never be delivered We have now past through these three acceptations of these words Conclusion which have falne into the contemplation and meditation of the Ancients in their Expositions of this Text as this dark day of the Lord signifies his judgements upon Atheisticall scorners in this world as it signifies his last irrevocable and irremediable judgements upon hypocriticall relyers upon their own righteousnesse in the next world and between both as it signifies their uncomfortable passage out of this life who bring their death inordinately upon themselves and we shall shut up all with one signification more of the Lords day That that is the Lords day of which the whole Lent is the Vigil and the Eve All this time of mortification and our often meeting in this place to heare of our mortality and our immortality which are the two reall Texts and Subjects of all our Sermons All this time is the Eve of the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ That is the Lords day when all our mortification and dejection of spirit and humbling of our soules shall be abundantly exalted in his resurrection and when all our fasts and abstinence shall be abundantly recompenced in the participation of his body his bloud in the Sacrament Gods Chancery is alwayes open and his seale works alwaies at all times remission of sins may be sealed to a penitent soule in the Sacrament That clause which the Chancellors had in their Patents under the Romane Emperours Vt praerogativamgerat conscientiae nostrae is in our commission too for God hath put his conscience into his Church whose sins are remitted there are remitted in heaven at all times but yet dies Domini the Lords resurrection is as the full Terme a more generall application of this seale of reconciliation But vae desiderantibus woe unto them that desire that day only because they would have these dayes of preaching and prayer and fasting and trouble some preparation past and gone Vae desiderantibus woe unto them who desire that day onely that by receâ—â—ing the Sacrament day that they might delude the world as though they were not of a contrary religion in their heart vae desiderantibus woe unto them who present themselves that day without such a preparation as becomes so fearful and mystesious an action upon any carnall or collaterall respects Before that day of the Lord comes comes the day of his crucifying before you come to that day if you come not to a crucifying of your selves to the world and the world to you ut quid vobis what shall you get by that day you shall prophane that day and the Author of it as to make that day of Christs triumph the triumph of Satan and to make even that body and bloud of Christ Jesus Vehiculum Satanae his Chariot to enter into you as he did into Iudas That day of the Lord will be darknesse and not light and that darknesse will be that you shall not discerne the Lords body you shall scatter all your thoughts upon wrangling and controversies de modo how the Lords body can be there and you shall not discerne by the effects nor in your owne conscience that the Lords body is there at all But you shall take it to be onely an obedience to civill or Ecclesiasticall
cals the Firmament that great expansion from Gods chaire to his footstoole from Heaven to earth there was a defect which God did not supply that day nor the next but the fourth day he did for that day he made those bodies those great and lightsome bodies the Sunne and Moone and Starres and placed them in the Firmament So also the Heaven of Heavens the Presence Chamber of God himselfe expects the presence of our bodies No State upon earth can subsist without those bodies Men of their owne For men that are supplied from others may either in necessity or in indignation be withdrawne and so that State which stood upon forraine legs sinks Let the head be gold Dan. 2.31 and the armes silver and the belly brasse if the feete be clay Men that may slip and molder away all is but an Image all is but a dreame of an Image for forraine helps are rather crutches then legs There must be bodies Men and able bodies able men Men that eate the good things of the land their owne figges and olives Men not macerated with extortions They are glorified bodies that make up the kingdome of Heaven bodies that partake of the good of the State that make up the State Bodies able bodies and lastly bodies inanimated with one soule one vegetative soule all must be sensible and compassionate of one anothers miserie and especially the Immortall soule one supreame soule one Religion For as God hath made us under good Princes a great example of all that Abundance of Men Men that live like men men united in one Religion so wee need not goe farre for an example of a slippery and uncertaine being where they must stand upon others Mens men and must over-load all men with exactions and distortions and convulsions and earthquakes in the multiplicity of Religions The Kingdome of Heaven must have bodies Kingdomes of the earth must have them and if upon the earth thou beest in the way to Heaven thou must have a body too a body of thine owne a body in thy possession for thy body hath thee and not thou it if thy body tyrannize over thee If thou canst not withdraw thine eye from an object of tentation or withhold thy hand from subscribing against thy conscience nor turne thine eare from a popular and seditious Libell what hast thou towards a man Thou hast no soule nay thou hast no body There is a body but thou hast it not it is not thine it is not in thy power Thy body will rebell against thee even in a sin It will not performe a sin when and where thou wouldst have it Much more will it rebell against any good worke till thou have imprinted Stigmata Iesu Gal. 6.17 The Markes of the Lord Iesus which were but exemplar in him but are essentiall and necessary to thee abstinencies and such discreete disciplines and mortifications as may subdue that body to thee and make it thine for till then it is but thine enemy and maintaines a warre against thee and war and enemie is the Metaphore which the holy Ghost hath taken here to expresse a want a kind of imperfectnesse even in Heaven it selfe Bellum Symbolum mali As peace is of all goodnesse so warre is an embleme a Hieroglyphique of all misery And that is our second step in this paraphrase If the feete of them that preach peace be beautifull And Vestig 2. Pax bellum O how beautifull are the feete of them that preach peace The Prophet Isaiah askes the question 52.7 And the Prophet Nahum askes it 1.15 and the Apostle S. Paul askes it Rom. 10.15 They all aske it but none answers it who shall answer us if we aske How beautifull is his face who is the Author of this peace when we shall see that in the glory of Heaven the Center of all true peace It was the inheritance of Christ Jesus upon the earth he had it at his birth he brought it with him Glory be to God on high peace upon earth Luke 2.14 Colos 1.20 It was his purchase upon earth He made peace indeed he bought peace through the blood of his Crosse It was his Testament Iohn 14.27 when he went from earth Peace I leave with you my peace I give unto you Divide with him in that blessed Inheritance partake with him in that blessed Purchase enrich thy selfe with that blessed Legacy his Peace Let the whole world be in thy consideration as one house and then consider in that in the peacefull harmony of creatures in the peacefull succession and connexion of causes and effects the peace of Nature Let this Kingdome where God hath blessed thee with a being be the Gallery the best roome of that house and consider in the two walls of that Gallery the Church and the State the peace of a royall and a religious Wisedome Let thine owne family be a Cabinet in this Gallery and finde in all the boxes thereof in the severall duties of Wife and Children and servants the peace of vertue and of the father and mother of all vertues active discretion passive obedience and then lastly let thine owne bosome be the secret box and reserve in this Cabinet and then the best Jewell in the best Cabinet and that in the best Gallery of the best house that can be had peace with the Creature peace in the Church peace in the State peace in thy house peace in thy heart is a faire Modell and a lovely designe even of the heavenly Jerusalem which is Visio pacis where there is no object but peace And therefore the holy Ghost to intimate to us that happy perfectnesse which wee shall have at last and not till then chooses the Metaphor of an enemy and enmity to avert us from looking for true peace from any thing that presents it selfe in the way Neither truly could the holy Ghost imprint more horror by any word then that which intimates war as the word enemy does It is but a little way that the Poet hath got in description of war Iam seges est that now that place is ploughed where the great City stood for it is not so great a depopulation to translate a City from Merchants to husbandmen from shops to ploughes as it is from many Husbandmen to one Shepheard and yet that hath beene often done And all that at most is but a depopulation it is not a devastation that Troy was ploughed But when the Prophet Isaiah comes to the devastation to the extermination of a war Esay 7.23 he expresses it first thus Where there were a thousand Vineyards at a cheape rate all the land become briars and thornes That is much but there is more Esay 13.13 The earth shall be removed out of her place that Land that Nation shall no more be called that Nation nor that Land But yet more then that too Not onely not that people Esay 13.19 but no othe shall ever inhabit it It shall
Lord and thou only knowest Which is also the sense of those words Heb. 11.35 Others were tortured and accepted not a deliverance that they might obtain a better Resurrection A present deliverance had been a Resurrection but to be the more sure of a better hereafter they lesse respected that According to that of our Saviour Mat. 10.39 He that findes hi life shall lose it He that fixeth himself too earnestly upon this Resurrection shall lose a better This is then the propheticall Resurrection for the future but a future in this world That if Rulers take counsell against the Lord the Lord shall have their counsell in derision If they take armes against the Lord the Lord shall break their Bows and cut their Spears in sunder Psal 2.4 If they hisse and gnash their teeth and say we have swallowed him up If we be made their by-word their parable their proverb their libell the theame and burden of their songs as Iob complaines yet whatsoever fall upon me dmage distresse scorn or Hostis ultimus death it self that death which we consider here death of possessions death of estimation death of health death of contentment yet Abolebitur it sahll be destroyed in a Resurrection in the return of the light of Gods countenance upon me even in this world And this is the first Resurrection But this first Resurrection 2. Apeecatis which is but from temporall calamities doth so little concerne a true and established Christian whether it come or no for still Iobs Basis is his Basis and his Centre Etiamsi occiderit though he kill me kill me kill me in all these severall deaths and give me no Resurrection in this world yet I will trust in him as that as though this first resurrection were no resurrection not to be numbred among the rersurrections S. Iohn calls that which we call the second which is from sin the first resurrection Blessed and holy is be who hath part in the firstresurrection And this resurrection Christimplies Apoe 20.6 John 5.25 when he saies Verely verely I say unto you the houre is comming and now is when the dead shall heare the ovyce of the Son of God and they that heare it shall live That is by the voyce of the word of life the Gospell of repentance they shall have a spirituall resurrection to a new life S. Austine and Lactantius both were so hard in beleeving the roundnesse of the earth that they thought that those homines pensiles as they call them those men that hang upon the other cheek of the face of the earth those Antipodes whose feet are directly against ours must necessarily fall from the earth if the earth be round But whither should they fall If they fall they must fall upwards for heaven is above them too as it is to us So if the spirituall Antipodes of this world the Sons of God that walk with feet opposed in wayes contrary to the sons of men shall be said to fall when they fall to repentance to mortification to a religious negligence and contempt of the pleasures of this life truly their fall is up wards they fall towards heaven God gives breath unto the people upon the earth sayes the Prophet Et spiritum his qui calcant illam Esay 45.5 Our Translation carries that no farther but that God gives breath to people upon the earth and spirit to them that walk thereon But Irenaeus makes a usefull difference between afflatus and spiritus that God gives breath to all upon earth but his spirit onely to them who tread in a religious scorne upon earthly things Is it not a strange phrase of the Apostle Mortifie your members fornication uncleanenesse inordinate affections He does not say mortifie your members against those sins Col. 3.5 but he calls those very sins the members of our bodies as though we were elemented and compacted of nothing but sin till we come to this resurrection this mortification which is indeed our vivification Till we beare in our body the dying of our Lord Iesus that the life also of Iesus may be made manifest in our body 2 Cor. 4.10 God may give the other resurrection from worldly misery and not give this A widow may be rescued from the sorrow and solitarinesse of that state by having a plentifull fortune there she hath one resurrection but the widow that liveth in pleasure is dead while she lives 1 Tim. 5.6 shee hath no second resurrection and so in that sense even this Chappell may be a Church-yard men may stand and sit and kneele and yet be dead and any Chamber alone may be a Golgotha a place of dead mens bones of men not come to this resurrection which is the renunciation of their beloved sin It was inhumanely said by Vitellius upon the death of Otho when he walkedin the field of carcasses where the battle was fought O how sweet a perfume is a dead enemy But it is a divine saying to thy soule O what a savor of life unto life is the death of a beloved sin What an Angelicall comfort was that to Ioseph and Mary in Aegypt after the death of Herod Arise for they are dead that sought the childes life Mat. 2.20 And even that comfort is multiplied upon thy soul when the Spirit of God saies to thee Arise come to this resurrection for that Herod that sin that sought the life the everlasting life of this childe the childe of God thy soule is dead dead by repentance dead by mortification The highest cruelty that story relates or Poets imagine is when a persecutor will not afford a miserable man death not be so mercifull to him as to take his life Thou hast made thy sin thy soule thy life inanimated all thy actions all thy purposes with that sin Miserere animatuae be so mercifull to thy selfe as to take away that life by mortification by repentance and thou art come to this Resurrection and thugh a man may have the former resurrection and not this peace in his fortune and yet not peace in his conscience yet whosoever hath this second hath an infallible seale of the third resurrection too to a fulnesse of glory in body as well as in soule For Spiritus maturam efficit carnem capacem incorruptelae this resurrection by the spirit Irenaeus mellowes the body of man and makes that capable of everlasting glory which is the last weapon by which the last enemy death shall be destroyed A morte Upon that pious ground that all Scriptures were written for us as we are Christians that all Scriptures conduce to the proofe of Christ and of the Christian state 3. A morte it is the ordinary manner of the Fathers to make all that David speaks historically of himselfe and all that the Prophet speaks futurely of the Jews if those place may be referred to Christ to referre them to Christ primarily and but by reflection and in a second
1 Thes 5.16 I may have leave to speake here hereafter more seasonably in a more Festivall time by my ordinary service This is the season of generall Compunction of generall Mortification and no man priviledged for Iesus wept In that Letter which Lentulus in said to have written to the Senate of Rome Divisiâ— in which he gives some Characters of Christ he saies That Christ was never seene to laugh but to weepe often Now in what number he limits his often or upon what testimony he grounds him number we know not We take knowledgethat he wept thrice Hee wept here when he mourned with them that mourned for Lazarus He wept againe when he drew neare to Jerusalem and looked upon that City And he wept a third time in his Passion There is but one Euangelist but this S. Iohn that tells us of these first teares the rest say nothing of them There is but one Euangelist S. Luke Luke 19.41 Hcb. 5.7 that tells us of his second teares the rest speake not of those There is no Euangelist but there is an Apostle that tells us of his third teares S. Paul saies That in the daies of his flesh be offered up prayers with strong cries and teares And those teares Expositors of all sides referre to his Passion though some to his Agony in the Garden some to his Passion on the Corsse and these in my opinion most fitly because those words of S. Paul belong to the declaration of the Priesthood and of the Sacrifice of Christ and for that function of his the Crosse was the Altar and therefore to the Crosse we fixe those third teares The first were Humane teares the second were Propheticall the third were Pontificall appertaining to the Sarifice The first were shed in a Condolency of a humane and naturall calamity fallen upon one family Lazarus was dead The second were shed in Contemplation of future calamitie upon a Nation Jerusalem was to be destroyed The third in Contemplation of sin and the everlasting punishments due to sin and to such sinners as would make no benefit of that Sacrifice which he offered in offering himselfe His friend was dead and then Jesus wept He justified naturail affectins and such offices of piety Jerusalem was tobe destroyed and then Jesus wept He commiserated publique and nationall calamities though a private person His very giving of himselfe for sin was to become to a great many ineffectuall and then Jsus wept He declared how indelible the naturall staine of sin is that not such sweat as hi such teares such blood as his could absolutely wash it out of mans nature The teares of the text are as a Spring a Well belonging to onehoushold the Sisters of Lazarus The teares over Jerusalem are as a River belonging to a whole Country The teares upon the Crosse are as the Sea belonging to all the world and though literally there fall no more into our text then the Spring yet because the Spring flowes into the River and the River into the Sea and that wheresoever we find that Jesus wept we find our Text for our Text is but that Iisus wept therefore by the leave and light of his blessed Spirit we shall looke upon those lovely those heavenly eye through this glasse of his owne teares in all these three lines as he wept here over Lazarus as he wept there over Jerusalem as he wept upon the Crosse over all us For so often Jesus wept Fitst then 1 Part. Humanitus Jesus wept Humâ—nitus he tooke a necessary occasion to shew that he was true Man He was now in hand with the greatest Miracle that ever he did the raising of Lazarus so long dead Could we but do so in our spirituall raising what a blessed harvest were that What a comfort to finde one man here to day raised from his spirituall death this day twelve-month Christ did it every yeare and every yeare he improved his Miracle Mat. 9.25 In the first yeare he raised the Governours Daughter se was newly dead and as yetin the house In the beginning of sin and whilst in the house in the house of God in the Church in a glad obedience to Gods Ordinances and Institutions there for the reparation and resuscitation of dead soules the worke is not so hard In his second yeare Luke 7.15 Christ raised the Widows Son and him he found without ready to be buried In a man growne cold and stiffe in sin impenetrable inflexible by denouncing the Judgements of God almost buried in a stupidity and insensiblenesse of his being dead there is more difficultie But in his third yeare Christ raised this Lazarus he had been long dead and buried and in probability puttrified after foure daies This Miracle Christ meant to make a pregnant proofe of the Resurrection which was his principall intention therein For the greatest arguments against the Resurrection being for the most part of this kinde when a Fish eates a man and another man eates that fish or when one man eates another how shall both these men rise againe when a body is resolv'd in the grave to the first principles or is passed into other substances the case is somewhat neere the same and therefore Christ would worke upon a body neare that state abody putrified And truly in our srirituall raising of the dead to raise a sinner putrified in his owne earth resolv'd in his owne dung especially that hath passed many transformations from shape to shape from sin to sin hi hath beene a Salamander and lived in the fire in the fire successvely in the fire of lust in his youth and in his age in the fire of Ambition and then he hath beene a Serpent a Fish and lived in the waters in the water successively in the troubled water of sedition in his youth and in his age in the cold waters of indevotion how shall we raise this Salamander and this Serpent when this Serpent and this Salamander is all one person and must have contrary musique to charme him contrary physick to cure him To raise a man resolv'd into diverse substances scattered into diverse formes of severall sinnes is the greatest worke And there fore this Miracle which implied that S. Basil calls Miraculum in Miraculo a pregnant a double Miracle For here is Mortuus redivivus A dead man lives that had been done before but Alligatus ambulat saies Basil he that is settered and manacled and tyed with many difficulties he walks And therfore as this Miracle raised him most estmation so for they ever accompany one another it raised him most envy Envy that extended beyond him to Lazarus himselfe who had done nothing Iohn 12.10 and yet The chiefe Priests consulted how they might put Lizarus to death because by reason of him many beleeved in Iesus A disease a distemper a danger which no time shall ever be free from that whereforer there is a coldnesse a disaffection to Gods Cause those who are any way
may become incapable of their benefits Jesus would not give this family whom hee pretended to love occasion of jealousie of suspition that he neglected them and therefore though he came not presently to that great worke which hee intended tended at last yet hee left them not comfortlesse by the way Iesus wept And so that we may reserve some minutes for the rest we end this part applying to every man that blessed exclamation of S. Ambrose Ad monumentum hoc digner is accedere Domine Iesu Lord Jesus be pleased to come to this grave to weep over this dead Lazarus this soule in this body And though I come not to a present rising a present deliverance from the power of all sin yet if I can feele the dew of thy teares upon me if I can discern the eye of the compassion bent towards me I have comfort all the way and that comfort will flow into an infallibility in the end And be this the end of this part to which we are come by these steps Iesus wept That as he shewed himself to be God he might appeare to be man too he wept not in ordinately but he came nearer excesse then indolency He wept because he was dead and because all means for life had not been used he wept though he were far spent and he wept though he meant to raise him again We passe now from his humane to his propheticall teares from Jesus weeping in contemplation of a naturall calamity fallen upon one family Lazarus was dead 2 Part. to his weeping in contemplation of a Nationall calamity foreseen upon a whole people Jerusalem was to be destroyed His former teares had sOme of the spirit of prophecy in them for therefore sayes Epiphanius Christ wept there because he foresaw how little use the Jews would make of that miracle his humane teares were propheticall and his propheticall teares are humane too they rise from good affections to that people And therefore the same Author sayes That because they thought it an uncomely thing for Christ to weep for any temporall thing some men have expunged and removed that verse out of S. Lukes Gospell That Jesus when he saw that City wept But he is willing to be proposed and to stand for ever for an example of weeping in contemplation of publique calamities Therefore Iesuswept He wept first Inter acclamationes in the midst of the congratulations and acclamations of the people then when the whole multitude of his Disciples cried out Vivat Rex Inter accla mationes Luke 19.38 Blessed be the King that comes in the name of the Lord Jesus wept When Herod tooke to himselfe the name of the Lord when he admitted that grosse flattery It is a God and not a man that speakes It was no wonder that present occasion of lamentation fell upon him But in the best times and under the best Prince first such is the naturall mutability of all worldly things and then and that especially such is the infinitenesse and enormousnesse of our rebellious sin then is ever just occasion of feare of worse and so of teares Every man is but a spunge and but a spunge filled with teares and whether you lay your right hand or your left upon a full spunge it will weep Whether God lay his left hand temporall calamities or his right hand temporall prosperity even that temporall prosperity comes alwaies accompanied with so much anxiety in our selves so much uncertainty in it selfe and so much envy in others as that that man who abounds most that spunge shall weep Jesus wept Inter acclamationes when all went wee enough with him Inter judicia to shew the slipperinesse of worldly happinesse and then he wept Inter judicia then when himselfe was in the act of denouncing judgements upon them Jesus wept To shew with how ill a will he inflicted those judgements and that themselves and not he had drawne those judgements upon them How often doe the Prophets repeat that phrase Onus visionis O the burden of the judgements that I have seene upon this and this people It was a burden that pressed teares from the Prophet Esay I will water thee with my teares Esay 16.9 O Heshbon when he must pronounce judgements upon her he could not but weep over her No Prophet so tender as Christ nor so compassionate and therefore he never takes rod into his hand but with teares in his eyes Alas did God lack a footstoole that he should make man only to tread and trample upon Did God lack glory and could have it no other way but by creating man therefore to afflict him temporally here and eternally hereafter whatsoever Christ weeps for in the way of his mercy it is likely he was displeased with it in the way of his Justice If he weep for it he had rather it were not so If then those judgements upon Jerusalem were only from his owne primary and positive and absolute Decree without any respect to their sins could he be displeased with his owneact or weep and lament that which onely himselfe had done would God ask rael if God lay open to that answer We die therefore because you have killed us Jerusalem salem would not judge her selfe therefore Christ judged her Jerusalem would not weep for her self and therefore Jesus wept but in those teares of his he shewed that he had rather her own teares had averted and washed away those judgements He wept cum appropinquavit sayes the Text there when Iesus came near the City and saw it Cum appropinquavit then he wept not till then If we will not come neare the miseries of our brethren if we will not see them we will never weep over them never be affected towards them It was cum ille Non cumilli not cumilli when Christ himselfe not when his Disciples his followers who could doe Jerusalem no good tooke knowledge of it It was not cum illi nor it was not cum illa not when those judgements drew neare It is not said so neither is there any time limited in the Text when those judgements were to fall upon Jerusalem it is onely said generally indefinitely these dayes shall come upon her And yet Christ did not ease himselfe upon that that those calamities were remote and farre off but though they were so and not to fall till after his death yet he lamented future calamities then then Jesus wept Many such little Brookes as these fall into this River the consideration of Christs Propheticall teares but let it be enough to have sprinkled these drops out of the River That Jesus though a private person wept in contemplation of publique calamities That he wept in the best times fore-seeing worse That he wept in their miseries because he was no Author of them That he wept not till he tooke their miseries into his consideration And he did weep a good time before those miseries fell upon them There remaine
when wee cannot stay it from passing away wee passe away with it To mourne passionately for the love of this world which is decrepit and upon the deathbed or imoderately for the death of any that is passed out of this world is not the right use of teares That hath good use which Chrysologus notes that when Christ was told of Lazarus death he said he was glad when he came to raise him to life then hee wept for though his Disciples gained by it they were confirmed by a Miracle though the family gained by it they had their Lazarus againe yet Lazarus himselfe lost by it by being re-imprisoned re-committed re-submitted to the manifold incommodities of this world When our Saviour Christ forbad the women to weepe for him it was becausethere was nothing in him for teares to worke upon no sin Ordinem flendi docuit saies S. Bernard Christ did not absolutely forbid teares but regulate and order their teares that they might weepe in the right place first for sin David wept for Absolon He might imagine that he died in sin he wept not for the Child by Bathsheba he could not suspect so much danger in that Exitus aquarum saies David Rivers of waters ran downe from mine eyes why Quia illi Because they who are they not other men Psal 119.136 as it is ordinarily taken but Quia illi Because mine owne eyes so Hilary and Ambrose and August take it have not kept thy Lawes As the calamities of others so the sins of others may but our owne sins must be the object of our sorrow Thou shalt offer to me saies God Exod. 22.19 the first of thy ripe fruits and of thy liquors as our Translation hath it The word in the Originall ginall is Vedingnacha lachrymarum and of thy teares Thy first teares must be to God for sin The second and third may be to nature and civility and such secular offices But Liquore ad lippitudinem apto quisquamne ad pedes lavandos abutetur It is S. Chrysostomes exclamation and admiration will and wash his feet in water for sore eyes will any man embalme the Carcasse of the world which he treads under foote with those teares which should embalme his soule Did Ioseph of Arimathea bestow any of his perfumes though he brought a superfluous quantity a hundred pound waight for one body yet did he bestow any upon the body of either of the Thieves Teares are true sorrow that you heard before True sorrow is for sin that you have heard now All that remaines is how this sorrow works what is does The Fathers have infinitely delighted themselves in this descant the blessed effect of holy teares Quid operantur He amongst them that reemembers us that in the old Law all Sacrifices were washed he meanes That our best sacrifice even prayer it selfe receives an improvement a dignity by being washed in teares He that remembers us that if any roome of out house be on fire we run for water meanes that in all tentations we should have recourse to teares He that tels us that money being put into a bason is seene at a farther distance if there be water in the bason then if it be emptie meanes also that our most pretious devotions receive an addition a multiplication by holy teares S. Bernard meanes all that they all meane in that Cor lachrymas nesciens durum impurum A hard heart is a foule heart Would you shut up the devill in his owne channell his channell of brimstone and make that worse S. hierom tels the way Plus tua lachryma c. Thy teares torment him more then the fires of hell will you needs have holy water truly true teares are the holiest water Mend eza in 1. Sam. And for Purgatory it is liberally confessed by a Jesuit Non minùs efficax c. One teare will doe thee as much good as all the flames of Purgatory We have said more then once that man is a spunge And in Codice scripta all our sins are written in Gods Booke saies S. ChrysOstome If there I can fill my spunge with teares and so wipe out all my sins out of that Book it is a blessed use of the Spunge I might stand upon this the manifold benefits of godly teares long so long as till you wept and wept for sin and that might be very long I contract all to this one which is all To how many blessednesses must these teares this godly sorrow reach by the way when as it reaches to the very extreme to that which is opposed to it to Joy for godlie sorrow is Joy Iob 10.20 The words in Iob are in the Vulgat Dimitte meut plang am dolorem meum Lord spare me a while that I may lament my lamentable estate and so ordinarily the Expositors that follow that Translation make their use of them But yet it is in the Originall Lord spare me a while that I may take comfort That which one cals lamenting the other calls rejoycing To conceive true sorrow and true joy are things not onely contiguous but continuall they doe not onely touch and follow one another in a certaine succession Joy assuredly after sorrow but they consist together they are all one Joy and Sorrow My teares have beene my meat day and night Psal 42.3 saies David not that he had no other meate but that none relisht so well Mendoza It is a Grammaticall note of a Jesuit I doe not tell you it is true I have almost tole you that it is not true by telling you whose it is but that it is but a Grammaticall note That when it is said Tempus cantus The time offinging is come it might as well be rendred out of the Hebrew Cant. 2.12 Tempus plorationis The time of weeping is come 2 Sam. 22.50 And when it is said Nomini tuo cantabo Lord I will sing unto thy Name it might be as well rendred out of the Hebrew Plorabo I will weepe I will sacrifice my teares unto thy Name So equall so indifferent a thing is it when we come to godly sorrow whether we call it sorrow or joy weeping or singing To end all to weep for sin is not a damp of melancholy to sigh for sin is not a vapour of the spleene but as Monicaes Confessor said still unto her in the behalfe of her Son S. Augustine filius istarum lachrymarum the son of these teares cnnot perish so wash thy selfe in these three examplar bathes of Christs teares in his humane teares and be tenderly affected with humane accidents in his Propheticall teares and avert as much as in thee lieth the calamities imminent upon others but especially in his pontificall teares teares for sin and I am thy Confessor non ego sed Dominus not I but the spirit of God himself is thy Confessor and he absolves thee filius istarum lachrymarum the soule bathed in these teares cannot perish for this is
and make him like himself The implicite beleever stands in an open field and the enemy will ride over him easily the understanding beleever is in a fenced town and he hath out-works to lose before the town be pressed that is reasons to be answered before his faith be shaked and he will sell himself deare and lose himself by inches if he be sold or lost at last and therefore sciant omnes let all men know that is endeavour to informe themselves to understand That particular Iesum that generall particular if we may so say for it includes all which all were to know is that the same Jesus whom they Crucified was exalted above them all Suppose an impossibility S. Paul does so when he sayes to the Galatians If an Angell from heaven should preach any other Gospell for that is impossible If we could have been in Paradise and seen God take a clod of red earth and make that wretched clod of contemptible earth such a body as should be fit to receive his breath an immortall soule fit to be the house of the second person in the Trinity for God the Son to dwel in bodily fit to be the Temple for the third person for the Holy Ghost should we not have wondred more then at the production of all other creatures It is more that the same Jesus whom they had crucified is exalted thus to sit in that despised flesh at the right hand of our glorious God that all their spitting should but macerate him and dissolve him to a better mold a better plaister that all their buffetings should but knead him and presse him into a better forme that all their scoffes and contumelies should be prophesies that that Ecce Rex Behold your King and that Rex Iudaeorum This is the King of the Iews which words they who spoke them thought to be lies in their own mouthes should become truths and he be truly the King not of the Jews only but of all Nations too that their nayling him upon the Crosse should be a setling of him upon an everlasting Throne and their lifting him up upon the Crosse a waiting upon him so farre upon his way to heaven that this Jesus whom they had thus evacuated thus crucified should bee thus exalted was a subject of infinite admiration but mixt with infinite confusion too Wretched Blasphemer of the name of Jesus that Jesus whom thou crucifiest and treadest under thy feet in that oath is thus exalted Uncleane Adulterer that Jesus whom thou crucifiest in stretching out those forbidden armes in a strange bed thou that beheadest thy self castest off thy Head Christ Jesus that thou mightst make thy body the body of a Harlot that Jesus whom thou defilest there is exalted Let severall sinners passe this through their severall sins and remember with wonder but with confusion too that that Jesus whom they haue crucified is exalted above all How farre exalted Three steps which carry him above S. Pauls third heaven Factus He is Lord and he is Christ and he is made so by God God hath made him both Lord and Christ We return up these steps as they lie and take the lowest first Fecit Deus God made him so Nature did not make him so no not if we consider him in that Nature wherein he consists of two Natures God and Man We place in the Schoole for the most part the infinite Merit of Christ Jesus that his one act of dying once should be a sufficient satisfaction to God in his Justice for all the sins of all men we place it I say rather in pacto then in persona rather that this contract was thus made between the Father and the Son then that whatsoever that person thus consisting of God and Man should doe should onely in respect of the person bee of an infinite value and extention to that purpose for then any act of his his Incarnation his Circumcision any had been sufficient for our Redemption without his death But fecit Deus God made him that that he is The contract between the Father and him that all that he did should be done so and to that purpose that way and to that end this is that that hath exalted him and us in him If then not the subtilty and curiosity but the wisedome of the Schoole and of the Church of God have justly found it most commodious to place all the mysteries of our Religion in pacto rather then in persona in the Covenant rather then in the person though a person of incomprehensible value let us also in applying to our selves those mysteries of our Religion still adhaerere pactis and not personis still rely upon the Covenant of God with man revealed in his word and not upon the person of any man Not upon the persons of Martyrs as if they had done more then they needed for themselves and might relieve us with their supererogations for if they may work for us they may beleeve for us and Iustus fide sua vivet sayes the Prophet Habak 2.4 The righteous shall live by his owne faith Not upon that person who hath made himself supernumerary and a Controller upon the three persons in the Trinity the Bishop of Rome not upon the consideration of accidents upon persons when God suffers some to fall who would have advanced his cause and some to be advanced who would have throwne downe his cause but let us ever dwell in pacto and in the fecit Deus this Covenant God hath made in his word and in this we rest It is God then not nature not his nature that made him And what Christ Christus Christ is anointed And then Mary Magdalen made him Christ for she anointed him before his death And Ioseph of Arimathea made him Christ for he anointed him and embalmed him after his death But her anointing before kept him not from death nor his anointing after would not have kept him from putrefaction in the grave if God had not in a farre other manner made him Christ anointed him praeconsortibus above his fellows God hath anointed him embalmed him enwrapped him in the leaves of the Prophets That his flesh should not see corruption in the grave That the flames of hell should not take hold of him nor sindge him there so anointed him as that in his Humane nature He is ascended into heaven and set downe at the right hand of God For de eo quod ex Maria est Petrus loquitur sayes S. Basil That making of him Christ that is that anointing which S. Peter speakes of in this place is the dignifying of his humane nature that was anointed that was consecrated that was glorified in heaven But he had a higher step then that God made this Iesus Christ and he made him Lord Dominus He brought him to heaven in his own person in his humane nature so he shall all us but when we shall be all there he onely shall be Lord
no such power of thine own soul and life not for the time not for the means of comming to this first Resurrection by death Stay therefore patiently stay chearfully Gods leasure till he call but not so over-chearfully as to be loath to go when he cals Reliefe in persecution by power reconciliation in sin by grace dissolution and transmigration to heaven by death are all within this first Resurrection But that which is before them all is Christ Jesus And therefore as all that the naturall man promises himself without God is impious so all that we promise our selves though by God without Christ is frivolous God who hath spoken to us by his Son works upon us by his Son too He was our Creation he was our Redemption he is our Resurrection And that man trades in the world without money and goes out of the world without recommendation that leaves out Christ Jesus To be a good Morall man and refer all to the law of Nature in our hearts is but Diluculum The dawning of the day To be a godly man and refer all to God is but Crepusculum A twylight But the Meridionall brightnesse the glorious noon and heighth is to be a Christian to pretend to no spirituall no temporall blessing but for and by and through and in our only Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus for he is this first Resurrection and Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection SERMON XX. Preached at S. Pauls in the Evening upon Easter-day 1625. JOHN 5.28 29. Marvell not at this for the houre is comming in the which all that are in the graves shall heare his voice And shall come forth They that have done good unto the Resurrection of Life And they that have done evill unto the Resurrection of Damnation AS the Sun works diversly according to the diverse disposition of the subject for the Sun melts wax and it hardens clay so do the good actions of good men upon good men they work a vertuous emulation a noble and a holy desire to imitate upon bad men they work a vicious and impotent envy a desire to disgrace and calumniate And the more the good is that is done and the more it works upon good men the more it disaffects the bad for so the Pharisees expresse their rancor and malignity against Christ Jâ—â—n 11.48 in this Gospel If we let him thus alone all men will beleeve in him And that they foresaw would destroy them in their reputation And therefore they enlarged their malice beyond Christ himselfe to him upon whom Christ had wrought a Miracle John 12.10 to Lazarus They consulted to put him to death because by reason of him many beleeved in Iesus Our Text leads us to another example of this impotency in envious men Christ in this Chapter had by his only word cured a man that had been eight and thirty yeares infirm and he had done this work upon the Sabbath They envyed the work in the substance but they quarrell the circumstance And they envy Christ but they turn upon the man who was more obnoxious to them and they tell him John 5. â—â— That it was not lawfull for him to carry his bed that day He discharges himself upon Christ I dispute not with you concerning the Law This satisfies me He that made me whole Veâ— â— bad me take up my bed and walk Thereupon they put him to finde out Jesus And when he could not finde Jesus Jesus found him and in his behalf offers himself to the Pharisees Then they direct themselves upon him and as the Gospell sayes They sought to slay him because he had done this upon the Sabbath And V. 16. as the patient had discharged himself upon Christ Christ discharges himself upon his Father doth it displease you that I work upon the Sabbath be angry with God be angry with the Father for the Father works when I work V. 17. V. 18. And then this they take worse then his working of Miracles or his working upon the Sabbath That he would say that God was his Father And therfore in the averring of that that so important point That God was his Father Christ grows into a holy vehemence and earnestnesse and he repeats his usuall oath Verily verily three severall times First ver 19. That whatsoever the Father doth He the Son doth also And then ver 24. He that beleeveth on me and him that sent me hath life everlasting And then again ver 25. The houre is comming and now is when the dead shall heare the voice of the Son of God and they that heare it shall live At this that the dead should live they marvelled But because he knew that they were men more affected with things concerning the body then spirituall things as in another story when they wondered that he would pretend to forgive sins because he knew that they thought it a greater matter to bid that man that had the Palsie take up his bed and walk then to forgive him his sins therefore he took that way which was hardest in their opinion he did bid him take up his bed and walk So here when they wondred at his speaking of a spirituall Resurrection to heare him say that at his preaching the dead that is men spiritually dead in their sins should rise again to them who more respected the body and did lesse beleeve a reall Resurrection of the body then a figurative Resurrection of the soul he proceeds to that which was in their apprehension the more difficult Marvell not at this sayes he here in our Text not at that spirituall Resurrection by preaching for the houre is comming in the which all that are in the graves c. and so he establishes the Resurrection of the body That then which Christ affirmes and avows is That he is the Son of God Divisio and that is the first thing that ever was done in Heaven The eternall generation of the Son that by which he proves this to these men is That by him there shall be a resurrection of the body and that is the last thing that shall be done in Heaven for after that there is nothing but an even continuance in equall glory Before that saies he that is before the resurrection of the body there shall be another resurrection a spirituall resurrection of the soule from sin but that shall be by ordinary meanes by Preaching and Sacraments and it shall be accomplished every day but fix not upon that determin not your thoughts upon that marvaile not at that make that no cause of extraordinary wonder but make it ordinary to you feele it and finde the effect thereof in your soules as often as you heare as often as you receive and thereby provide for another resurrection For the houre is comming in which all that are in their graves c. Where we must necessarily make thus many steps though but short ones First the dignity of
accused in this case of torture Ignorantia Iudicis est calamitas plerumque innocentis sayes that Father for the most part even the ignorance of the Judge is the greatest calamity of him that is accused If the Judge knew that he were innocent he should suffer nothing If he knew he were guilty he should not suffer torture but because the Judge is ignorant and knowes nothing therefore the Prisoner must bee racked and tortured and mangled sayes that Father There is a whole Epistle in S. Hierome full of heavenly meditation and of curious expressions It is his forty ninth Epistle Ad Innocentium where a young man tortured for suspition of adultery with a certaine woman ut compendio cruciatus vitaret sayes he for his ease and to abridge his torment and that he might thereby procure and compasse a present death confessed the adultery though false His confession was made evidence against the woman and shee makes that protestation Tu testis Domine Iesu Thou Lord Jesus be my Witnesse Non ideo me negare velle ne peream sed ideo mentiri nolle ne peccem I doe not deny the fact for feare of death but I dare not belie my selfe nor betray mine innocence for feare of sinning and offending the God of Truth And as it followes in that story though no torture could draw any Confession any accusation from her she was condemned and one Executioner had three blowes at her with a Sword and another foure and yet she could not be killed And therefore because Storie abounds with Examples of this kinde how uncertaine a way of tryall and conviction torture is though S. Augustine would not say that torture was unlawfull yet he sayes It behoves every Judge to make that prayer Erue me Domine à necessitatibus meis If there bee some cases in which the Judge must necessarily proceed to torture O Lord deliver me from having any such case brought before me But what use soever there may be for torture for Confession in the Inquisition they torture for a deniall for the deniall of God and for the renouncing of the truth of his Gospell As men of great place think it concernes their honour to doe above that which they suffer to make their revenges not only equall but greater then their injuries so the Romane Church thinks it necessary to her greatnesse to inflict more tortures now then were inflicted upon her in the Primitive Church as though it were a just revenge for the tortures she received then for being Christian to torture better Christians then her selfe for being so In which tortures the Inquisition hath found one way to escape the generall clamour of the world against them which is to torture to that heighth that few survive or come abroad after to publish how they have been tortured And these first oppose Gods purpose in the making and preserving and dignifying the body of man Transgressors herein in the second kinde are they that defile the garment of Christ Jesus the body in which he hath vouchsafed to invest and enwrap himselfe and so apparell a Harlot in Christs cloathes and make that body which is his hers That Christ should take my body though defiled with fornication and make it his is strange but that I in fornication should take Christs body and make it hers is more Know ye not 1 Cor. 6.15 V. 16. sayes the Apostle that your bodies are the members of Christ And againe Know you not that he that is joyned to a harlot is one body Some of the Romane Emperours made it treason to carry a Ring that had their picture engraved in it to any place in the house of low Office What Name can we give to that sin to make the body of Christ the body of a harlot And yet the Apostle there as taking knowledge that we loved our selves better then Christ changes the edge of his argument and argues thus ver 18. He that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body If ye will be bold with Christs body yet favour your own No man ever hated his own body and yet no outward enemy is able so to macerate our body as our owne licentiousnesse Christ who tooke all our bodily infirmities upon him Hunger and Thirst and Sweat and Cold tooke no bodily deformities upon him he tooke not a lame a blinde a crooked body and we by our intemperance and licentiousnesse deforme that body which is his all these wayes The licentious man most of any studies bodily handsomenesse to be comely and gracious and acceptable and yet soonest of any deformes and destroyes it and makes that loathsome to all which all his care was to make amiable And so they oppose Gods purpose of dignifying the body Transgressors in a third kinde are they that sacrilegiously prophane the Temple of the Holy Ghost by neglecting the respect and duties belonging to the dead bodies of Gods Saints in a decent and comely accompanying them to convenient Funerals Heires and Executors are oftentimes defective in these offices and pretend better employments of that which would be say they vainly spent so But remember you of whom in much such a case that is said in S. Iohn John 12.6 This he said not because he cared for the poore but because he was a Thiefe and had the bagge and bore that which was put therein This Executors say not because they intend pious uses but because they beare and beare away the bagges Generally thy opinion must be no rule for other mens actions neither in these cases of Funerals must thou call all too much which is more then enough That womans Ointment poured upon Christs feet that hundred pound waight of perfumes to embalme his one body was more then enough necessarily enough yet it was not too much for the dignity of that person nor for the testimony of their zeale who did it in so abundant manner Now as in all these three waies men may oppose the purpose of God in dignifying the body so in concurring with Gods purpose for the dignifying thereof a man may exceed and goe beyond Gods purpose in all three God would not have the body torne and mangled with tortures in those cases but then hee would not have it pampered with wanton delicacies nor varnished with forraigne complexion It is ill when it is not our own heart that appeares in our words it is ill too when it is not our own blood that appeares in our cheekes It may doe some ill offices of blood it may tempt but it gives over when it should doe a good office of blood it cannot blush If when they are filling the wrinkles and graves of their face they would remember that there is another grave that calls for a filling with the whole body so even their pride would flow into a mortification God would not have us put on a sad countenance nor disfigure our face not in our fastings and other disciplines God would not have
Text which is a Resurrection to Judgement and to an account with God that God whom we have displeased exasperated violated wounded in the whole course of our life lest we should be terrified and dejected at the presence of that God the whole worke is referred to the Son of Man which hath himselfe formerly felt all our infirmities and hath had as sad a soule at the approach of death as bitter a Cup in the forme of Death as heavy a feare of Gods forsaking him in the agony of death as we can have And for sin it self I would not I do not extenuate my sin but let me have fallen not seven times a day but seventy seven times a minute yet what are my sins to all those sins that were upon Christ The sins of all men and all women and all children the sins of all Nations all the East and West and all the North and South the sins of all times and ages of Nature of Law of Grace the sins of all natures sins of the body and sins of the mind the sins of all growth and all extentions thoughts and words and acts and habits and delight and glory and contempt and the very sin of boasting nay of our belying our selves in sin All these sins past present and future were at once upon Christ and in that depth of sin mine are but a drop to his Ocean In that treasure of sin mine are but single money to his Talent And therefore that I might come with a holy reverence to his Ordinance in this place though it be but in the Ministery of man that first Resurrection is attributed to the Son of God to give a dignity to that Ministery of man which otherwise might have beene under-valued that thereby we might have a consolation and a cheerefulnesse towards it It is He that is the Son of God and the Son of man Christ which remembers us alfo that all that belongs to the expressing of the Law of God to man must be received by us who professe our selves Christians in and by and for and through Christ We use to ascribe the Creation to the Father but the Father created by the Word and his Word is his Son Christ When he prepared the Heavens I was there saies Christ Prov. 8.27 of himselfe in the person of Wisdome and when he appointed the foundations of the earth then was I by him as one brought up with him It is not as one brought in to him or brought in by him but with him one as old that is as eternall as much God as he We use to ascribe Sanctification to the Holy Ghost But the Holy Ghost sanctifies in the Church And the Church was purchased by the blood of Christ and Christ remaines Head of the Church usque in consummationem till the end of the world I looke upon every blessing that God affords me and I consider whether it be temporall or spirituall and that distinguishes the metall the temporall is my silver and the spirituall is my Gold but then I looke againe upon the Inscription Cujus Imago whose Image whose inscription it beares and whose Name and except I have it in and for and by Christ Jesus Temporall and Spirituall things too are but imaginary but illusory shadows for God convayes himselfe to us no other way but in Christ The benefit then in our Text the Resurrection is by him but it is limited thus Christum It is by hearing him They that are in their Graves shall heare c. So it is in the other Resurrection too the spirituall resurrection v. 25. There they must heare him that will live In both resurrections That in the Church now by Grace And that in the Grave hereafter by Power it is said They shall heare him They shall which seemes to imply a necessity though not a coaction But that necessity not of equall force not equally irresistible in both In the Grave They shall Though they be dead and senslesse as the dust for they are dust it selfe though they bring no concurrence no cooperation They shall heare that is They shall not chuse but heare In the other resurrection which is in the Church by Grace in Gods Ordinance They shall heare too that is There shall be a voice uttered so as that they may heare if they will but not whether they will or no as in the other cafe in the grave Therefore when God expresses his gathering of his Church in this world it is Sibilabo congregabo I will hisse or chirpe for them Zecha 10.8 and so gather them He whispers in the voyce of the Spirit and he speaks a little louder in the voice of a man Let the man be a Boanerges a Son of thunder never so powerfull a speaker yet no thunder is heard over all the world Mat. 24.31 But for the voyce that shall be heard at the Resurrection He shall send his Angels with a great sound of a Trumpet A great sound such as may be made by a Trumpet such as an Angell all his Angels can make in a Trumpet and more then all that 1 Thes 4.16 The Lord himselfe shall descend from Heaven and that with a shout and with the voice of an Archangel that is saies S. Ambrose of Christ himselfe And in the Trumpet of God that is also Christ himselfe So then you have the Person Christ The meanes A Voyce And the powerfulnesse of that voyce in the Name of an Archangell which is named but once more in all the Scriptures And therefore let no man that hath an holy anhelation and panting after the Resurrection suspect that he shall sleepe in the dust for ever for this is a voyce that will be heard he must rise Let no man who because he hath made his course of life like a beast would therefore be content his state in death might be like a beast too hope that he shall sleepe in the dust for ever for this is a voice that must be heard And all that heare shall come forth they that have done good c. He shall come forth Procedent even he that hath done ill and would not shall come forth You may have seene morall men you may have seen impious men go in confidently enough not afrighted with death not terrified with a grave but when you shall see them come forth againe you shall see them in another complexion That man that dyed so with that confidence thought death his end It ends his seventy yeares but it begins his seventy millions of generations of torments even to his body and he never thought of that Indeed Iudicii nisi qui vitae aeternae praedestinatus est non potest reminisci saies S. Ambrose No man can no man dares thinke upon the last Judgement but he that can thinke upon it with comfort he that is predestinated to eternall life Even the best are sometimes shaked with the consideration of the Resurrection because it
of particular sins Now after all this there is in naturall death a third fall casus in dispersionem In dispersionem the man is fallen in separationem into a divorce of body and soule the body is fallen in dissolutionem to putrifaction and dissolution in dust and then this dust is fallen in dispersionem into a dispersion and scattering over the earth as God threatens Comminuam in pulverem I will break the wicked as small as dust and scatter them with the winde Psal 18. For after such a scattering no power but of God onely can recollect those grains of dust and re-compact them into a body and re-inanimate them into a man And such a state such a dispersion doth the heart and soule of an habituall sinner undergoe For Pro. 17.24 as the eyes of a foole are in the corners of the earth so is the heart and soule of a sinner The wanton and licentious man sighs out his soule weeps out his soule sweares out his soule in every place where his lust or his custome or the glory of victory in overcomming and deluding puts him upon such solicitations In the corrupt taker his soul goes out that it may leave him unsensible of his sin and not trouble him in his corrupt bargaine and in a corrupt giver ambitious of preferment his soule goes out with his money which he loves well but not so well as his preferment This yeare his soule and his money goes out upon one office and next yeare more soul and more money upon another He knowes how his money will come in againe for they will bring it that have need of his corruptnesse in his offices But where will this man finde his soule thus scattered upon every woman corruptly won upon every office corruptly usurped upon every quillet corruptly bought upon every fee corruptly taken Thus it is when a soule is scattered upon the daily practise of any one predominant and habituall sin but when it is indifferently scattered upon all how much more is it so In him that swallowes sins in the world as he would doe meats at a feast passes through every dish and never askes Physitian the nature the quality the danger the offence of any dish That baits at every sin that rises and poures himselfe into every sinfull mold he meets That knowes not when he began to spend his soule nor where nor upon what sin he laid it out no nor whether he have whether ever he had any soule or no but hath lost his soule so long agoe in rusty and in incoherent sins not sins that produced one another as in Davids case and yet that is a fearfull state that concatenation of sins that pedegree of sins but in sins which he embraces meerely out of an easinesse to sin and not out of a love no nor out of a tentation to that sin in particular that in these incoherent sins hath so scattered his soule as that he hath not soule enough left to seek out the rest And therefore David makes it the Title of the whole Psalme Domine ne disperdas O Lord doe not scatter us Psal 58. And he begins to expresse his sense of Gods Judgements in the next Psalme so O Lord thou hast cast us out thou hast scattered us turn again unto us for even from this aversion there may be conversion and from this last and lowest fall a resurrection But how In the generall resurrection upon naturall death God shall work upon this dispersion of our scattered dust as in the first fall which is the Divorce by way of Re-union and in the second which is Putrifaction by way of Re-efformation so in this third which is Dispersion by way of Re-collection where mans buried flesh hath brought forth grasse and that grasse fed beasts and those beasts fed men and those men fed other men God that knowes in which Boxe of his Cabinet all this seed Pearle lies in what corner of the world every atome every graine of every mans dust sleeps shall recollect that dust and then recompact that body and then re-inanimate that man and that is the accomplishment of all In this resurrection from this Dilpersion and scattering in sin the way is by Recollection too That this sinner recollect himselfe and his own history his own annalls his own journalls and call to minde where he lost his way and with what tendernesse of conscience and holy startling he entred into some sins at first in which he is seared up now and whereas his triumph should have been in a victory over the flesh he is come to a triumph in his victory over the spirit of God and glories in having overcome the Holy Ghost and brought his conscience to an unsensiblenesse of sin If hee can recollect himselfe thus and cast up his account so If he can say to God Lord we have sold our selves for nothing he shall heare God say to him as he does there in the Prophet You have sold your selves for nothing Esay 52.3 and you shall be redeemed without money But how is this recollecting wrought God hath intimated the way Ezek. 37. in that vision to the Prophet Ezekiel He brings the Prophet into a field of dead bones and dry bones sicca vehementer as it is said there as dry as this dust which we speak of And he asks him fili hominis thou that art but the son of man and must judge humanely Putasne vivent ossa ista Dost thou think that these bones can live The Prophet answers Domine tu nosti thou Lord who knowest whose names are written in the Book of Life and whose are not whose bones are wrapped up in the Decree of thy Election and whose are not knowest whether these bones can live or no for but in the efficacy and power of that Decree they cannot Yes they shall sayes God Almighty and they shall live by this meanes Dices eis Thou shalt say unto them O ye dry bones heare the word of the Lord As dry as desperate as irremediable as they are in themselves God shall send his servants unto them and they shall heare them And as it is added in that place Prophetante me factus sonitus commotio As I Prophesied there was a noyse and a shaking As whilst Peter spake The Holy Ghost fell upon all them that heard the word So whilst the Messengers of God speak in the presence of such sinners there shall be a noyse and a commotion a horrour of their former sins a wonder how they could provoke so patient and so powerfull a God a sinking down under the waight of Gods Judgements a flying up to the apprehension of his mercies and this noyse and commotion in their soules shall be setled with that Gospell in that Prophet Dabo super vos nervos I will lay sinewes upon you and will bring up flesh upon you and cover you with skin and put breath into you and you shall live and ye
dignity First The Father shall send you another Comforter Another then my selfe For Ver. 16. howsoever Christ were the Fountain of comfort yet there were many drammes many ounces many talents of discomfort mingled in that their Comforter was first to depart from them by death and being restored to them again by a Resurrection was to depart againe by another Transmigration by an Ascension And therefore the second mark by which Christ dignifies this Comforter is That he shall abide with us for ever And in the performance of that promise he is here with you now And therefore as we begun with those words of Esay which our Saviour applyed to himselfe The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me Esay 61.1 to binde up the broken hearted and to comfort all them that mourne So the Spirit of the Lord is upon all us of his Ministery in that Commandement of his in the same Prophet Consolamini Esay 40.1 consolamini Comfort ye comfort yee my people and speak comfortably unto Ierusalem Receive the Holy Ghost all ye that are the Israel of the Lord in that Doctrine of comfort that God is so farre from having hated any of you before he made you as that he hates none of you now not for the sins of your Parents not for the sins of your persons not for the sins of your youth not for your yester-dayes not for your yester-nights sins not for that highest provocation of all your unworthy receiving his Son this day Onely consider that Comfort presumes Sadnesse Sin does not make you incapable of comfort but insensiblenesse of sin does In great buildings the Turrets are high in the Aire but the Foundations are deep in the Earth The Comforts of the Holy Ghost work so as that only that soule is exalted which was dejected As in this place where you stand there bodies lie in the earth whose soules are in heaven so from this place you carry away so much of the true comfort of the Holy Ghost as you have true sorrow and sadnesse for your sins here Almighty God erect this building upon this Foundation Such a Comfort as may not be Presumption upon such a Sorrow as may not be Diffidence in him And to him alone but in three Persons Father Son and Holy Ghost be ascribed all Honour c. SERMON XXIX Preached at S. Pauls upon Whitsunday 1628. JOHN 14.26 But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name Hee shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you WE Eipasse from the Person to his working we come from his comming to his operation from his Mission and Commission to his Executing thereof from the Consideration who he is to what he does His Specification his Character his Title Paracletus The Comforter passes through all Therefore our first comfort is Docebimur we shall be Taught He shall teach you As we consider our selves The Disciples of the Holy Ghost so it is a meere teaching for we in our selves are meerly ignorant But wen we consider the things we are to bee taught so it is but a remembring a refreshing of those things which Christ in the time of his conversation in this world had taught before He shall bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you These two then The comfort in the Action we shall be Taught and the comfort in the Way and Manner we shall not be subject to new Doctrines but taught by remembring by establishing us in things formerly Fundamentally laid will be our two parts at this time And in each of these these our steps First in the first we shall consider the persons that is the Disciples who were to learne not onely they who were so when Christ spoke the words but we All who to the end of the world shall seek and receive knowledge from him Vos ye first Vos ignorantes you who are naturally ignorant and know nothing so as you should know it of your selves which is one Discomfort And yet Vos ye Vos appetentes you that by nature have a desire to know which is another Discomfort To have a desire and no meanes to performe it Vos docebimini ye ye that are ignorant and know nothing ye ye that are hungry of knowledge and have nothing to satisfie that hunger ye shall be fed ye shall be taught which is one comfort And then Ille docebit He shall teach you He who cannot onely infuse true and full knowledge in every capacity that he findes but dilate that capacity where he findes it yea create it where he findes none The Holy Ghost who is not onely A Comforter but The Comforter and not onely so but Comfort it selfe He shall teach you And in these we shall determine our first Part. In our second Part The Way and Manner of this Teaching By bringing to our remembrance all things whatsoever Christ had said unto us there is a great largenesse but yet there is a limitation of those things which we are to learne of the Holy Ghost for they are Omnia All things whatsoever Christ hath taught before But then Sola ea Only those things which Christ had taught before and not new Additaments in the name of the Holy Ghost Now this largenesse extending it self to the whole body of the Christian Religion for Christ taught all that all that being not reducible to that part of an houre which will be left for this exercise as fittest for the celebration of the day in which we arenow we shall binde our selves to that particular consideration what the Holy Ghost being come from the Father in Christs Name that is Pursuing Christs Doctrine hath taught us of Himselfe concerning Himselfe That so ye may first see some insolencies and injuries offered to the Holy Ghost by some ancient Heretiques and some of later times by the Church of Rome For truly it is hard to name or to imagine any one sin nearer to that emphaticall sin that superlative sin The sin against the Holy Ghost then some offers of Doctrines concerning the Holy Ghost that have been obtruded though not established and some that have beene absolutely established in that Church And when we shall have delivered the Holy Ghost out of their hands we shall also deliver him into yours so as that you may feele him to shed himselfe upon you all here and to accompany you all home with a holy peace and in a blessed calme in testifying to your soules that He that Comforter who is the holy Ghost whom the Father hath sent in his Sons name hath taught you all things that is awakened your memories to the consideration of all that is necessary to your present establishment And to these divers particulars which thus constitute our two generall parts in their order thus proposed we shall now proceed As when our Saviour Christ received that confession of
sayes Trismegistus 1. Part. Cognoscetis He doth not say it is the infirmity of the soule or the impotency of the soule but the iniquity the wickednesse of the soule consists in this that we are ignorant of those wayes and those ends upon which we should direct and by which we should govern our purposes And if ignorance be the corruption and dissolution certainly knowledge is the redintegration and consolidation of the soule From this corruption from this ignorance God delivered his people at first in some measure by the Law that is he gave them thereby a way to get out of this ignorance he put them to Schoole Lex Paedagogus sayes the Apostle The Law was their School-master But in the state of the Gospell in the shedding of the beames of the streames of his grace in the blood of Christ Jesus we are graduats and have proceeded so far as to a manifestation of things already done and so our faith is brought in a great part to consist in matter of fact and that which was but matter of prophecy to them in the old Testament they knew not when it should be done to us in the New is matter of History and we know when it was done In the old times God led his people sometimes with clouds sometimes with fire some lights they had but some hidings some withdrawings of those lights too the mysteries of their salvation were not fully revealed unto them To us all is holy fire all is evident light all is in the Epiphany in the manifestation of Christ and in the presence of the Holy Ghost who is delivered over to us to remain with us Vsque ad consummationem Till the end of the world God hath buried hidden from us the body of Moses he hath removed that cloud that vaile the ceremony the letter of the Law Yea he hath hidden that which benighted us more and kept us in more ignorance of him our infinite sins which are clouds of witnesses to our Consciences he hath hidden them in the wounds of his Son our Saviour so that there remaines nothing but clearnesse evident clearnesse The Gospell being brought to us all in that Christ is actually and really come and Christ being brought to me in that he is appliable in the Church to every particular soule so that this Legacy that is given in this text is not only in a possibility and in a probability and in a verisimilitude but in an assurance and in an infallibility in a knowledge we know it is thus and thus We shall therefore consider this knowledge first as it is opposed to ignorance secondly as it is opposed to inconsideration and thirdly as it is opposed to conclealing to smothering First we must have it and then we must know that we have it and after that we must publish it and declare it so that others may know that we know it Now Ignorantia as there is a profitable a wholesome a learned ignorance which is a modest and a reverent abstinence from searching into those secrets which God hath not revealed in his word whereupon S. Augustine sayes usefully Libenter ignoremus quae ignorare nos vult Deus Let not us desire to know that which God hath no will to reveale So also there is an unprofitable an infectious indeed an ignorant knowledge which puffes and swels us up that of which the Prophet sayes Stultus factus est omnis homo à scientia Jer. 12. Every mans knowledge makes him a foole when it makes him undervalue and despise another And this is one strange and incurable effect of this opinion of wit and knowledge that whereas every man murmurs and sayes to himself such a man hath more land then I more money then I more custome more practise then I when perchance in truth it is not so yet every man thinks that he hath more wit more knowledge then all the world beside when God knows it is very far from being so When the Prophet in that place cals this confident beleever in his own wisdome Foole he hath therein fastned upon him a name of the greatest reproach to man which the Holy Ghost in the mouth of a Prophet could choose As it appeares best in those gradations which Christ makes Mat. 5.22 where Whosoever is angry is made culpable of judgement whosoever sayes Racha that is expresses his anger in any contumelious speech is subject to a Councell but whosoever shall say Foole shall be worthy to be punished in hell fire For by calling him Foole sayes S. Chrysostome there he takes from him that understanding by which he is a man and so sayes he despoiles him of all interest in the creature in this life and all interest in God in the life to come It is the deepest indignation the highest abomination that Iob in his anguish conceived Iob 19. Stulti despiciebant me They that are but fooles themselves despised me And after that again They are the children of fooles and yet I am their song and their talk And in that comparison which God himself instituted and proposed in Deuteronomie They have moved me to jealousie Deut. 30. with that which is not God and I will move them to jealousie with those who are no people I will provoke them to anger with a foolish Nation God intimates so much That a Foole is no more a man then an Idoll is a God Now this foolishnesse which we speak of against which God gives us this Legacy of knowledge is not that bluntnesse that dulnesse that narrownesse of understanding which is opposed to sharpnesse of wit or readinesse of expressing and delivering any matter for very many very devout and godly men lack that sharpnesse and that readinesse and yet have a good portion of spirituall wisdome and knowledge Neither is this foolishnesse that weaknesse or inability to amasse and gather together particulars as they have fallen out in former times and in our times and thereby to judge of future occurrences by former precedents which is the wisdome of States-men and of civill contemplation to build up a body of knowledge from reading stories or observing actions for this wisdome Solomon cals vanity and vexation Nor is this foolishnesse that precipitation that over-earnestnesse that animosity that heat which some men have and which is opposed to discretion for sometimes zeale it self hath such a heat and such a precipitation in it and yet that zeale may not be absolutely condemned but may be sometimes of some use The dull man the weak man the hasty man is not this foole Prov. 28. but as the Wiseman who knew best hath told us The foole is he that trusteth in his own heart And therefore against this foolishnesse of trusting in our own hearts of confiding and relying upon our own plots and devices and from sacrificing to our own nets as the Prophet Habakkuk speaks from this attributing of all to our own industry from this
vehementi Spiritu semper habet diem Pentecostes He that-loves the exercise of prayer so earnestly as that in prayer he feeles this vehemence of the Holy Ghost that man dwels in an everlasting Whitsunday for so he does he hath it alwayes that ever had it aright Oditeos Deus qui unam putant diem festum Domini God hates that man saies Origen also that celebrates any Holy-day of his but one day that never thinks of the Incarnation of Christ but upon Christmas-day nor upon his Passion and Resurrection but upon Easter and Good-friday If you deale so with your soules as with your bodies and as you cloath your selves with your best habits to day but returne againe to your ordinary apparell to morrow so for this day or this houre you devest the thought of your sins but returne after to your vomit you have not celebrated this day of Pentecost you have not beene truly in this place for your hearts have beene visiting your profits or pleasures you have not beene here with one accord you have not truly and sincerely joyned with the Communion of Saints Christ hath sent no Comforter to you this day neither will he send any till you be better prepared for him But if you have brought your sins hither in your memory and leave them here in the blood of your Saviour alwaies flowing in his Church and ready to receive them if you be come to that heavenly knowledge that there is no comfort but in him and in him abundant consolation then you are this day capable of this great Legacy this knowledge which is all the Christian Religion That Christ is in the Father and you in him and he in you We are now come to our third part Our portion in this Legacy 3 Part. the measure of the knowledge of these mysteries which we are to receive of which S. Chrysostome sayes well Scientiae magnum argumentum est nolle omnia scire It is a good argument that that man knowes much who desires not to know all In pursuing true knowledge he is gone a good way that knowes where to give over When that great Manichean Felix would needs prove to S. Augustine that Manes was the holy Ghost because it was said that the holy Ghost should teach all truths and that Manes did so because he taught many things that they were ignorant of before concerning the frame and motion and nature of the heavens and their stars S. Augustine answered Spiritus sanctus facit Christianos non Mathematicos The Holy Ghost makes us Christians not Mathematicians If any man thinke by having his station at Court that it is enough for him to have studied that one booke and that if in that booke The knowledge of the Court he be come to an apprehension by what meanes and persons businesses are likeliest to be carried If he by his foresight have provided perspective glasses to see objects a far off and can make Almanacks for next yeare and tell how matters will fall out then and thinke that so he hath received his portion as much knowledge as he needs Spiritus sanctus facit Christianos non Politicos He must remember that the Holy Ghost makes Christians and not Politians So if a man have a good foundation of a fortune from his Parents and thinke that all his study must be to proceed in that and still to adde a Cyphar more to his accounts to make tens hundreds and hundreds thousands Spiritus sanctus facit Christianos non Arithmeticos The Holy Ghost makes Christians and not such Arithmeticians If men who desire a change in Religion and yet thinke it a great wisdome to disguise that desire and to temporise lest they should be made lesse able to effect their purposes if they should manifest themselves but yet hope to see that transmutation of Religion from that copper which they esteeme ours to be to that gold which perchance for the venality thereof they esteeme theirs If others who are also working in the fire though not in the fire of envy and of powder yet in the fire of an indiscreet zeale and though they pretend not to change the substance of the metall the body of our Religion yet they labour to blow away much of the ceremony and circumstances which are Vehicula and Adminicula if not Habitacula Religionis They are though not the very fuell yet the bellowes of Religion If these men I say of either kinde They who call all differing from themselves Error and all error damnable or they who as Tertullian expresses their humour and indisposition prophetically Qui vocant prostrationem Disciplinae simplicitatem which call the abolishing and extermination of all Discipline and Ceremony purenesse and holinesse If they thinke they have received their portion of this legacie their measure of true knowledge in labouring onely to accuse and reforme and refine others Spiritus sanctus facit Christianos non Chymistas The holy Ghost makes men Christians and not Alchymists To contract this If a man know wayes enow to disguise all his sins If no Exchequer take hold of his usurious contracts no High Commission of his licentiousnesse no Star-chamber of his misdemeanors If he will not to sleepe till he can hold up his eyes no longer for feare his sins should meet him in his bed and vexe his conscience there If he will not come to the Sacrament but at that time of the yeare when Laws compel him or good company invite him or other civill respects and reasons provoke him If he have avoydances to hide his sins from others and from himself too by such disguisings This is all but Deceptio visus a blinding of his owne internall eyes and Spirtus sanctus facit Christianos non Circulatores The Holy Ghost makes men Christians and not Jugglers This knowledge then which we speake of is to know the end and the way Heaven and Christ The Kingdome to which he is gone and the meanes which he hath taught us to follow Now in all our wayes in all our journies a moderate pace brings a man most surely to his journies end and so doth a sober knowledge in matters of Divinity and in the mysteries of Religion And therefore the Fathers say that this comming of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles this day though it were a vehement comming did not give them all kinde of knowledge a knowledge of particular Arts and Sciences But he gave them knowledge enough for their present worke and withall a faithfull confidence that if at any time they should have to doe with learned Heathens with Philosophers the Holy Ghost would either instantly furnish them with such knowledge as they had not before as wee see in many relations in the Ecclesiasticall Story That men spoke upon the sudden in divers cases otherwise then in any reason their education could promise or afford or else he would blunt the sharpnesse of the Adversaries weapons and cast a damp upon their understandings as wee
falls that does not lie in those round drops in which it falls but diffuses and spreads and inlarges it selfe He fell upon all But then it was because all heard They came not to see a new action preaching not a new Preacher Peter nor to see one another at a Sermon He fell upon all that heard where also I think it will not be impertinent to make this note That Peter is said to have spoke these words but they on whom the holy Ghost fell are said to have heard The word It is not Many words long Sermons nor good words witty and eloquent Sermons that induce the holy Ghost for all these are words of men and howsoever the whole Sermon is the Ordinance of God the whole Sermon is not the word of God But when all the good gifts of men are modestly employ'd and humbly received as vehicuia Spiritus as S. Augustine calls them The chariots of the holy Ghost as meanes afforded by God to convey the word of life into us in Those words we heare The word and there the word and the Spirit goe together as in our case in the Text While Peter yet spake those words the holy Ghost fell upon all them that heard The word 1 Part. Tempus When we come then to consider in the first place the Time of this miracle we may easily see that verified in S. Peters proceeding which S. Ambrose sayes Nescit tarda molimina Spiritus sancti gratia The holy Ghost cannot goe a slow pace It is the devill in the serpent that creeps but the holy Ghost in the Dove flyes And then in the proceeding with the Centurion we may see that verified which Leo sayes Vbi Deus Magister quà m citò discitur Where God teaches how fast a godly man learnes Christ did almost all his miracles in an instant without dilatory circumstances Christ sayes to the man sick of the palsey Mark 2.11 Tolle grabatum Take up thy bed and walk and immediately he did so To the deafe man he sayes Mark 7.34 Ephphatha Be thine eares opened and instantly they were opened He sayes to the woman with the issue of bloud Mark 5.34 Esto sana à plagatua and she was not onely well immediately upon that but she was well before when she had but touched the hem of his garment Upon him who had lyen in his infirmity thirty eight yeares at the poole Christ makes a little stop but it was no longer then to try his disposition with that question John 5.5 Mark 8. Vis sanus fieri Christ was sure what his answer would be and as soone as he gives that answer immediately he recovered Where Christ seems to have stayed longest which was upon the blind man yet at his first touch that man saw men walke though not distinctly but at the second touch he saw perfectly As Christ proceeds in his miracles Chrysost so doth the holy Ghost in his powerfull instructions It is true Scientiae sunt profectus There is a growth in knowledge and we overcome ignorances by degrees and by succession of more and more light Christ himselfe grew in knowledge as well as in stature But this is in the way of experimentall knowledge by study by conversation by other acquisitions But when the holy Ghost takes a man into his schoole he deales not with him as a Painter which makes an eye and an eare and a lip and passes his pencill an hundred times over every muscle and every haire and so in many sittings makes up one man but he deales as a Printer that in one straine delivers a whole story We see that in this example of S. Peter S. Peter had conceived a doubt whether it were lawfull for him to preach the Gospell to any of the Gentiles because they were not within the Covenant This was the sanus fieri This very scruple was the voyce and question of God in him to come to a doubt and to a debatement in any religious duty is the voyce of God in our conscience Would you know the truth Doubt and then you will inquire And facile solutionem accipit anima quae prius dubitavit sayes S. Chrysost As no man resolves of any thing wisely firmely safely of which he never doubted never debated so neither doth God withdraw a resolution from any man that doubts with an humble purpose to settle his owne faith and not with a wrangling purpose to shake another mans Ver. 11. God rectifies Peters doubt immediately and he rectifies it fully he presents him a Book and a Commentary the Text and the Exposition He lets downe a sheet from heaven with all kinde of beasts and fowles and tels him that Nothing is uncleane and he tells him by the same spirit Ver. 19. that there were three men below to aske for him who were sent by God to apply that visible Parable and that God meant in saying Nothing was uncleane that the Gentiles generally and in particular this Centurion Cornelius were not incapable of the Gospell nor unfit for his Ministery And though Peter had beene very hungry and would faine have eaten as appeares in the tenth verse yet after he received this instruction we heare no more mention of his desire to eat but as his Master had said Cibus meus est My meat is to doe my Fathers will that sent me so his meat was to doe him good that sent for him and so he made haste to goe with those Messengers The time then was Cum locutus when Peter thus prepared by the Holy Ghost was to prepare others for the Holy Ghost and therefore it was Cum locutus When he spoke that is preached to them For Si adsit palatum fidei cui sapiat mel Dei saies S. Augustine To him who hath a spirituall taste no hony is so sweet as the word of God preached according to his Ordinance If a man taste a little of this honey at his rods end as Ionathan did 1 Sam. 14.27 though he thinke his eyes enlightned as Ionathan did he may be in Ionathans case I did but taste a little honey with my rod Et ecce morior and behold I dye If a man read the Scriptures a little superficially perfunctorily his eyes seeme straight-waies enlightned and he thinks he sees every thing that he had pre-conceived and fore-imagined in himselfe as cleare as the Sun in the Scriptures He can finde flesh in the Sacrament without bread because he findes Hoc est Corpus meum This is my Body and he will take no more of that hony no more of those places of Scripture where Christ saies Ego vitis and Ego porta that he is a Vine and that he is a Gate as literally as he seemes to say that that is his Body So also he can finde wormewood in this honey because he finds in this Scripture Stipendium peccati mors est that The reward of sin is death and he will take no
whom they defame by the name of Heretiques with beginning this doctrine which was amongst themselves before we were at all if they did date us aright Attestatur spiritus ei damus fidem inde certi sumus sayes that Bishop The holy Ghost beares witnesse and our spirit with him and thereby we are sure but sayes he they will needs make a doubt whether this be a knowledge out of faith which doubt sayes he Secum fert absurditatem There is an absurdity a contradiction in the very doubt Ex Spiritu sancto humana Is it a knowledge from the holy Ghost and is it not a divine knowledge then But say they as that Bishop presses their objections The holy Ghost doth not make them know that it is the holy Ghost that assures them This is sayes he as absurd as the other For Nisi se testantem insinuet non testatur Except he make them discern that he is a witnesse he is no witnesse to them He ends it thus Sustinere coguntur quod excidit and that is indeed their case in very many things controverted Then when it conduced to their advantage in argument or to their profit in purse such and such things fell from them and now that opposition is made against such sayings of theirs their profit lyes at stake and their reputation too to make good and to maintain that which they have once how undiscreetly soever said Some of their severest later men even of their Jesuits acknowledges that we may know ourselves to be the children of God with as good a knowledge as that there is a Rome or a Constantinople And such an assurance as delivers them from all feare that they shall fall away Vegas Pererius and is not this more then that assurance which we take to our selves We give no such assurance as may occasion security or slacknesse in the service of God and they give such an assurance as may remove all feare and suspition of falling from God It was truly good counsell in S. Gregory when writing to one of the Empresses bed-chamber a religious Lady of his own name who had written to him that she should never leave importuning him till he sent her word that he had received a revelation from God that she was saved for sayes he Rem difficilem postulas inutilem It is a hard matter you require and an impertinent and uselesse matter for I am not a man worthy to receive revelations and besides such a revelation as you require might make you too secure And Mater negligentiae solet esse securitas sayes he Such a security might make you negligent in those duties which should make sure your salvation S. Augustine felt the witnesse of The Spirit but not of his spirit when he stood out so many solicitations of the holy Ghost and deferred and put off the outward meanes his Baptisme In that state when he had a disposition to Baptisme he sayes of himselfe Inferbui exultando sed inhorrui timendo Still I had a fervent joy in me because I saw the way to thee and intended to put my selfe into that way but yet because I was not yet in it I had a trembling a jealousie a suspition of my self Insinuati sunt mihi in profundo nutus tui In that halfe darknesse in that twi-light I discerned thine eye to be upon me Et gaudens in fide laudavi nomen tuum And this sayes he created a kinde of faith a confidence in me and this induced an inward joy and that produced a praising of thy goodnesse Sed ea fides securum me non esse sinebat But all this did not imprint and establish that security that assurance which I found as soon as I came to the outward seales and marks and testimonies of thine inseparable presence with me in thy Baptisme and other Ordinances S. Bernard puts the marks of as much assurance as we teach in these words of our Saviour Surge tolle grabatum ambula Arise Take up thy bed and walk Surge ad divina Raise thy thoughts upon the next world Tolle corpus ut non te ferat sed tu illud Take up thy body bring thy body into thy power that thou govern it and not it thee And then Ambula non retrospicias Walk on proceed forward and looke not backe with a delight upon thy former sins Remigius And a great deale an elder man then Bernard expresses it well Bene viventibus perhibet testimonium quòd jam sumus filii Dei To him that lives according to a right faith the Spirit testifies that he is now the childe of God Et quòd talia faciendo perseverabimus in ea filiatione He carries this testimony thus much farther That if we endeavour to continue in that course we shall continue in that state of being the children of God and never be cast off never disinherited Herein is our assurance an election there is The Spirit beares witnesse to our spirit that it is ours We testifie this in a holy life and the Church of God and the whole world joynes in this testimony That we are the children of God which is our last branch and conclusion of all The holy Ghost could not expresse more danger to a man then when he calls him Filium saeculi Luk. 16.18 Ephes 5.6 Acts 13.10 The childe of this world Nor a worse disposition then when he cals him Filium diffidentiae The childe of diffidence and distrust in God Nor a worse pursuer of that ill disposition then when he calls him Filium diaboli as S. Peter calls Elymas The childe of the devill Nor a worse possessing of the devill then when he calls him Filium perditionis John 17. Mat. 23.15 The childe of perdition Nor a worse execution of all this then when he calls him Filium gehennae The childe of hell The childe of this world The childe of desperation The childe of the devill The childe of perdition The childe of hell is a high expressing a deep aggravating of his damnation That his damation is not only his purchase as he hath acquired it but it is his inheritance he is the childe of damnation So is it also a high exaltation when the holy Ghost draws our Pedegree from any good thing and calls us the children of that Iohn 12.36 Mat. 9.15 As when he cals us Filios lucis The children of light that we have seen the day-star arise when he cals us Filios sponsi The children of the bride-chamber begot in lawfull marriage upon the true Church these are faire approaches to the highest title of all to be Filii Dei The children of God And not children of God Per filiationem vestigii so every creature is a childe of God by having an Image and impression of God in the very Beeing thereof but children so as that we are heires and heires so as that we are Co-heires with Christ as it follows in the next verse
Abrahams taske was an easie taske to tell the stars of Heaven so it were to tell the sands or haires or atomes in respect of telling but our owne sins And will God say to me Confide Fili My Son be of good cheere thy sins are forgiven thee Mat. 9.2 Does he meane all my sins He knowes what originall sin is and I doe not and will he forgive me sin in that roote and sin in the branches originall sin and actuall sin too He knowes my secret sins and I doe not will he forgive my manifest sins and those sins too He knowes my relapses into sins repented and will he forgive my faint repentances and my rebellious relapses after them will his mercy dive into my heart and forgive my sinfull thoughts there and shed upon my lips and forgive my blasphemous words there and bathe the members of this body and forgive mine uncleane actions there will he contract himselfe into himselfe and meet me there and forgive my sins against himselfe And scatter himselfe upon the world and forgive my sins against my neighbour and emprison himselfe in me and forgive my sins against my selfe Will he forgive those sins wherein my practise hath exceeded my Parents and those wherein my example hath mis-led my children Will he forgive that dim sight which I have of sin now when sins scarce appeare to be sins unto me and will he forgive that over-quick sight when I shall see my sins through Satans multiplying glasse of desperation when I shall thinke them greater then his mercy upon my death bed In that he said all he left out nothing Heb. 2.8 is the Apostles argument and he is not almighty if he cannot his mercy endures not for ever if he doe not forgive all Sin and all sin even blasphemy now blasphemy is not restrained to God alone Blasphemia other persons besides God other things besides persons may be blasphemed 1 Tim. 6.1 Iude 8 10. The word of God the Doctrine Religion may be blasphemed Magistracy and Dignities may be blasphemed Nay Omnia quae ignorant saies that Apostle They blaspheme all things which they know not And for persons the Apostle takes it to his owne person 1 Cor. 4.13 Being blasphemed yet we intreat and he communicates it to all men Neminem blasphemate Tit. 3.2 Blaspheme no man Blasphemy as it is a contumelious speech derogating from any man that good that is in him or attributing to any man that ill that is not in him may be fastned upon any man For the most part it is understood a sin against God and that directly and here by the manner of Christ expressing himselfe it is made the greatest sin All sin even blasphemy And yet a drunkard that cannot name God will spue out a blasphemy against God A child that cannot spell God will stammer out a blasphemy against God If we smart we blaspheme God and we blaspheme him if we be tickled If I lose at play I blaspheme and if my fellow lose he blasphemes so that God is alwayes sure to be a loser An Usurer can shew me his bags and an Extortioner his houses the fruits the revenues of his sinne but where will the blasphemer shew mee his blasphemy or what hee hath got by it The licentious man hath had his love in his armes and the envious man hath had his enemy in the dust but wherein hath the blasphemer hurt God In the Schoole we put it for the consummation of the torment of the damned Aquin. 221. q. 13. ar 4. that at the Resurrection they shall have bodies and so be able even verbally to blaspheme God herein we exceed the Devill already that we can speake blaspemously There is a rebellious part of the body that Adam covered with figge leaves that hath damned many a wretched soule but yet I thinke not more then the tongue And therefore the whole torment that Dives suffered in hell Luke 16.24 is expressed in that part Father Abraham have mercy upon me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and coole my tongue The Jews that crucified God will not sound the name of God and we for whom he was Crucified belch him out in our surfets and foame him out in our fury An Impertinent sin without occasion before and an unprofitable sin without recompence after and an incorrigible sin too for almost what Father dares chide his son for blasphemy that may not tell him Sir I learnt it of you or what Master his servant that cannot lay the same recrimination upon him How much then do we need this extent of Gods mercy that he will forgive sin and all sin and even this sin of blasphemy and which is also another addition blasphemy against the Son This emphaticall addition arises out of the connexion in the next verse In filium A word that is a blasphemous word against the Son shall be forgiven And here wee carry not the word Son so high as that the Son should be the eternall Son of God Though words spoken against the eternall Son of God by many bitter and blasphemous Heretiques have beene forgiven God forbid that all the Photinians who thought that Christ was not at all till he was borne of the Virgin Mary That all the Nativitarians that thought he was from all eternity with God but yet was not the Son of God That all the Arians that thought him the Son of God but yet not essentially not by nature but by grace and adoption God forbid that all these should be damned and because they once spoke against the Son therefore they never repented or were not received upon repentance We carry not the word Son so high as to be the eternall Son of God for it is in the text Filius hominis The Son of Man And in that acceptation we doe not meane it of all blasphemies that have beene spoken of Christ as the Son of man that is of Christ invested in the humane nature though blasphemies in that kind have beene forgiven too God forbid that all the Arians that thought Christ so much the Son of Man as that he tooke a humane body but not so much as that he tooke a humane soule but that the Godhead it selfe such a Godhead as they allowed him was his soule God forbid that all the Anabaptists that confesse he tooke a body but not a body of the substance of the Virgin That all the Carpocratians that thought onely his soule and not his body ascended into Heaven God forbid all these should be damned and never called to repentance or not admitted upon it There were fearfull blasphemies against the Son as the Son of God and as the Son of Man against his Divine and against his Humane Nature and those in some of them by Gods grace forgiven too But here we consider him onely as the Son of Man meerely as Man but as such a Man so good a
Man as to calumniate him to blaspheme him was an inexcusable sin To say of him who had fasted forty dayes and forty nights Mat. 11.19 Mar. 12.14 Ecce homo vorax Behold a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber To say of him of whom themselves had said elsewhere Master we know that thou art true and carest for no man that he was a friend of Publicans and sinners That this man who was The Prince of Peace Heb. 12.3 should indure such contradiction This was an inexcusable sin If any man therefore have had his good intentions mis-construed his zeale to assist Gods bleeding and fainting cause called Innovation his proceeding by wayes good in themselves to ends good in themselves called Indiscretion let him be content to forgive them any Calumniator against himselfe who is but a worme and no man since God himselfe forgave them against Christ who was so Filius hominis The Son of Man as that he was the Son of God too There is then forgivenesse for sin for all sin even for blasphemy Infuturo for blasphemy against the Son but it is Infuturo remittetur It shall be forgiven It is not Remittebatur It was forgiven Let no man antidate his pardon and say His sins were forgiven in an Eternall Decree and that no man that hath his name in the book of life hath the addition sinner that if he were there from the beginning from the beginning he was no sinner It is not in such a sense Remittebatur It was forgiven nor it is not Remittitur that even then when the sin is committed it is forgiven whether the sinner think of it or no That God sees not the sins of his Children That God was no more affected with Davids adultery or his murder then an indulgent Father is to see his child do some witty waggish thing or some sportfull shrewd turne It is but Remittetur Any sin shall be that is may be forgiven if the meanes required by God and ordained by him be entertained If I take into my contemplation the Majesty of God and the uglinesse of sin If I devest my selfe of all that was sinfully got and invest my self in the righteousnesse of Christ Jesus for else I am ill suted and if I clothe myself in Mammon the righteousnesse of Christ is no Cloke for that doublet If I come to Gods Church for my absolution and the seale of that reconciliation the blessed Sacrament Remittetur by those meanes ordained by God any sin shall be forgiven me But if I relie upon the Remittebatur That I had my Quietus est before hand in the eternall Decree or in the Remittuntur and so shut mine eyes in an opinion that God hath shut his and sees not the sins of his children I change Gods Grammer and I induce a dangerous solecisme for it is not They were forgiven before they were committed nor They are forgiven in the committing but They shall be by using the meanes ordained by God they may be And so They shall be forgiven unto men saies the Text and that is first unto every man The Kings of the earth are faire and glorious resemblances of the King of heaven Omni homini they are beames of that Sun Tapers of that Torch they are like gods they are gods The Lord killeth and maketh alive He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up 1 Sam. 2.6 This is the Lord of heaven The Lords anointed Kings of the earth do so too They have the dispensation of judgement and of mercy they execute and they pardon But yet with this difference amongst many other that Kings of the earth for the most part and the best most binde themselves with an oath not to pardon some offences The King of heaven sweares and sweares by himselfe That there is no sinner but he can and would pardon At first Illuminat omnem hominem He is the true light John 1.9 which lightneth every man that commeth into the world Let that light because many do interpret that place so let that be but that naturall light which only man and every man hath yet that light makes him capable of the super-naturall light of grace for if he had not that reasonable soule he could not have grace and even by this naturall light he is able to see the invisible God in the visible creature and is inexcusable if he do not so But because this light is though not put out brought to a dimnesse by mans first fall Therefore Iohn Baptist came to beare witnesse of that light that all men through him might beleeve Ver. 7. God raises up a Iohn Baptist in every man every man findes a testimony in himselfe that he draws curtaines between the light and him that he runs into corners from that light that he doth not make that use of those helpes which God hath afforded him as he might Thus God hath mercy upon all before by way of prevention thus he enlightneth every man that commeth into the world but because for all this men do stumble even at noon God hath given Collyrium an Eye-salve to all Apoc. 3.18 by which they may mend their eye-sight He hath opened a poole of Bethesda to all where not only he that comes at first but he that comes even at last he that comes washed with the water of Baptisme in his infancy and he that comes washed with the teares of Repentance in his age may receive health and cleannesse For the Font at first and the death-bed at last are Cisterns from this poole and all men and at all times may wash therein And from this power and this love of God is derived both that Catholique promise Quandocunque At what time soever a sinner repents And that Catholique and extensive Commission Quorum remiseritis Whose sins soever you remit shall be remitted All men were in Adam because the whole nature mankinde was in him and then can any be without sin All men were in Christ too because the whole nature mankinde was in him and then can any man be excluded from a possibility of mercy There were whole Sects whole bodies of Heretiques that denied the communication of Gods grace to others The Cathari denied that any man had it but themselves The Novatians denied that any man could have it again after he had once lost it by any deadly sin committed after Baptisme But there was never any Sect that denied it to themselves no Sect of despairing men We have some somewhere sprinkled One in the old Testament Cain and one in the new Iudas and one in the Ecclesiastique Story Iulian but no body no Sect of despairing men And therefore he that abandons himself to this sin of desperation sins with the least reason of any for he prefers his sin above Gods mercy and he sins with the fewest examples of any for God hath diffused this light with an evidence to all That all sins may be forgiven unto men that is
house and deprehends himselfe in that sinfull purpose now This is his Advent this is his Pentecost As he came this day with a Manifestation so if he come into thee this evening he comes with a Declaration a Declaration in operation Pater meus usque modo operatur ego operor John 5.17 My Father works even now and I work was Christs answer when he was accused to have broken the Sabbath day that the Father wrought that day as well as he So also Christ assignes other reasons of working upon the Sabbath Luke 14.5 Cujus Bos Whose Oxe is in danger Mat. 12.3 5. and the owner will not relieve him Nonne legistis Have ye not read how David ate the Shew-bread And Annon legistis Did not the Priests breake the Sabbath in their service in the Temple But the Sabbath is the Holy Ghosts greatest working day The Holy Ghost works more upon the Sunday then all the week In other dayes he picks and chooses but upon these dayes of holy Convocation I am surer that God speakes to me Tertul. then at home in any private inspiration For as the Congregation besieges God in publique prayers Agmine facto so the Holy Ghost casts a net over the whole Congregation in this Ordinance of preaching and catches all that break not out If he be come into thee he is come to reprove thee to make thee reprove thy selfe But doe that Cum vencrit when the Holy Ghost is come If thou have beene slack in the outward acts of Religion and findest that thou art the worse thought of amongst men for that respect the more open to some penall Laws for those omissions and for these reasons onely beginnest to correct and reprove thy selfe this is a reproofe Antequam Spiritus vener it before the Holy Ghost is come into thee or hath breathed upon thee and inanimated thine actions If the powerfulnesse and the piercing of the mercies of thy Saviour have sometimes in the preaching thereof entendered and melted thy heart and yet upon the confidence of the readinesse and easinesse of that mercy thou returne to thy vomit to the re-pursuite of those halfe-repented sins and thinkest it time enough to goe forward upon thy death-bed this is a reproofe Postquam abierit Spiritus After the Holy Ghost is departed from thee If the burden of thy sins oppresse thee if thou beest ready to cast thy selfe from the Pinacle of the Temple from the participation of the comforts afforded thee in the Absolution and Sacraments of the Church If this appeare to thee in a kinde of humility and reverence to the Majesty of God That thou darest not come into his sight not to his table not to speake to him in prayer whom thou hast so infinitely offended this is a reproofe Cum Spiritus Sanctus simulatur when the Holy Ghost is counterfaited when Satan is transformed into an Angel of light and makes thy dismayed conscience beleeve that that affection which is truly a higher Treason against God then all thy other sins which is a diffident suspecting of Gods mercy is such a reverend feare and trembling as he looks for Reprove thy selfe but doe it by convincing not by a downe-right stupefaction of the conscience but by a consideration of the nature of thy sin and a contemplation of the infinite proportion between God and thee and so between that sin and the mercy of God for thou canst not be so absolutely so intirely so essentially sinfull as God is absolutely and intirely and essentially mercifull Doe what thou canst there is still some goodnesse in thee that nature that God made is good still Doe God what hee will hee cannot strip himselfe not devest himselfe of mercy If thou couldst doe as much as God can pardon thou wert a Manichaean God a God of evill as infinite as the God of goodnesse is Doe it Cum venerit Spiritus when the Holy Ghost pleads on thy side not cum venerit homo not when mans reason argues for thee and sayes It were injustice in God to punish one for another the soule for the body Much lesse Cum venerit inimicus homo when the Devill pleads and pleads against thee that thy sins are greater then God can forgive Reprove any over-bold presumption that God cannot forsake thee with remembring who it was that said My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Even Christ himselfe could apprehend a dereliction Reprove any distrust in God with remembring to whom it was said Hodiè mecum eris in Paradiso Even the thiefe himselfe who never saw him never met him but at both their executions was carryed up with him the first day of his acquaintance If either thy cheerefulnesse or thy sadnesse bee conceived of the Holy Ghost there is a good ground of thy Noli timere feare neither So the Angel proceeded with Ioseph Feare not to take Mary for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost Feare not thou that a chearefulnesse and alacrity in using Gods blessings feare not that a moderate delight in musique in conversation in recreations shall be imputed to thee for a fault for it is conceived by the Holy Ghost and is the off-spring of a peacefull conscience Embrace therefore his working Qui omnia opera nostra operatus est nobis Thou O Lord hast wrought all our works in us Esay 26.12 And whose working none shall be able to frustrate in us Operabitur quis avertit Esay 43.13 I will worke and who shall let it And as the Son concurred with the Father and the Holy Ghost with the Son in working in our behalfe so Operemur nos let us also worke out our Salvation with feare and trembling by reproving the errors in our understanding and the perversenesses of our conversation that way in which the Holy Ghost is our guide by reproving that is chiding and convincing the conscience but still with comfort that is stedfast application of the merits of Christ Jesus SERM. XXXVII Preached upon Whitsunday JOHN 16.8 9 10 11. And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousnesse and of judgement Of sin because ye beleeve not on me Of righteousnesse because I goe to my Father and ye see me no more Of judgement because the Prince of this world is judged IN a former Sermon upon these words we have established this That the Person whom our Saviour promises here being by himselfe promised in the verse before the text in the name and quality of The Comforter All that this Person is to do in this text is to be done so as the World upon which it is to be done may receive comfort in it Therfore this word Reproof admitting a double signification one by way of authority as it is a rebuke an increpation the other as it is a convincing by argument by way of instruction and information because the first way cannot be applied to all the
thought or said or done any thing offensive to him It is therefore onely in the third sense of this word as it is Verbum Ecclesiasticum A word which S. Paul and the other Scriptures and the Church and Ecclesiasticall Writers have used to expresse our Righteousnesse our Justification by And that is onely by the way of pardon and remission of sins sealed to us in the blood of Christ Jesus that what kinde of sinners soever we were before yet that is applied to us Such and such you were before But ye are justified by the name of the Lord Iesus and by the Spirit of our God 1 Cor. 6 11. Now the reproofe of the World the convincing of the World the bringing of the World to the knowledg that as they are all sub peccato under sin by the sin of another so there is a righteousnesse of another that must prevaile for all their Pardons this reproof this convincing this instruction of the World is thus wrought That the whole World consisting of Jews and Gentiles when the Holy Ghost had done enough for the convincing of both these enough for the overthrowing of all arguments which could either be brought by the Jew for the righteousnesse of the Law or by the Gentile for the righteousnesse of Works all which is abundantly done by the Holy Ghost in the Epistles of S. Paul and other Scriptures when the Holy Ghost had possessed the Church of God of these all-sufficient Scriptures Then the promise of Christ was performed and then though all the world were not presently converted yet it was presently convinced by the Holy Ghost because the Holy Ghost had provided in those Scriptures of which he is the Author that nothing could be said in the Worlds behalfe for any other Righteousnesse then by way of pardon in the blood of Christ Thus much the Holy Ghost tels us And if we will search after more then hee is pleased to tell us that is to rack the Holy Ghost to over-labour him to examine him upon such Intergatories as belongs not to us to minister unto him Curious men are not content to know That our debt is paid by Christ but they will know farther whether Christ have paid it with his owne hands or given us money to pay it our selves whether his Righteousness before it do us any good be not first made ours by Imputation or by Inhesion They must know whose money and then what money Gold or Silver whether his active obedience in fulfilling the Law or his passive obedience in shedding his blood But all the Commission of the Holy Ghost here is To reprove the World of righteousnesse To convince all Sects in the World that shall constitute any other righteousnesse then a free pardon by the incorruptible and invaluable and inexhaustible blood of Christ Jesus By that pardon his Righteousnesse is ours How it is made so or by what name we shall call our title or estate or interest in his Righteousnesse let us not enquire The termes of satisfaction in Christ of acceptation in the Father of imputation to us or inhesion in us are all pious and religious phrases and something they expresse but yet none of these Satisfaction Acceptation Imputation Inhesion will reach home to satisfie them that will needs inquire Quo modo by what meanes Christs Righteousnesse is made ours This is as far as we need go Ad eundem modum justi sumus coram Deo quo cor am eo Christus fuit peccator So as God made Christ sin for us 2 Cor. 5.21 we are made the righteousnesse of God in him so but how was that He that can finde no comfort in this Doctrine till he finde How Christ was made sin and we righteousnesse till he can expresse Quo modo robs himself of a great deale of peacefull refreshing which his conscience might receive in tasting the thing it selfe in a holy and humble simplicity without vexing his owne or other mens consciences or troubling the peace of the Church with impertinent and inextricable curiosities Those questions are not so impertinent but they are in a great part unnecessary which are moved about the cause of our righteousnesse our justification Alas let us be content that God is the cause and seeke no other We must never slacken that protestation That good works are no cause of our justification But we must alwaies keepe up a right signification of that word Cause For Faith it selfe is no cause no such cause as that I can merit Heaven by faith What doe I merit of the King by beleeving that he is the undoubted Heire to all his Dominions or by beleeving that he governes well if I live not in obedience to his Laws If it were possible to beleeve aright and yet live ill my faith should doe me no good The best faith is not worth Heaven The value of it grows Ex pacto That God hath made that Covenant that Contract Crede vives onely beleeve and thou shalt be safe Faith is but one of those things which in severall senses are said to justifie us It is truly saîd of God Deus solus justificat God only justifies us Efficienter nothing can effect it nothing can worke towards it but onely the meere goodnesse of God And it is truly said of Christ Christus solus justificat Christ onely justifies us Materialiter nothing enters into the substance and body of the ransome for our sins but the obedience of Christ It is also truly said Sola fides justificat Onely faith justifies us Instrumentaliter nothing apprehends nothing applies the merit of Christ to thee but thy faith And lastly it is as truly said Sola opera justificant Onely our works justifie us Declaratoriè Only thy good life can assure thy conscience and the World that thou art justified As the efficient justification the gracious purpose of God had done us no good without the materiall satisfaction the death of Christ had followed And as that materiall satisfaction the death of Christ would do me no good without the instrumentall justification the apprehension by faith so neither would this profit without the declaratory justification by which all is pleaded and established God enters not into our materiall justification that is onely Christs Christ enters not into our instrumentall justification that is onely faiths Faith enters not into our declaratory justification for faith is secret and declaration belongs to workes Neither of these can be said to justifie us alone so as that we may take the chaine in pieces and thinke to be justified by any one link thereof by God without Christ by Christ without faith or by faith without works And yet every one of these justifies us alone so as that none of the rest enter into that way and that meanes by which any of these are said to justifie us Consider we then our selves as men fallen downe into a darke and deepe pit and justification as a chaine consisting of
Levi from a moneth upward Agnosce sacerdos sayes he quanti te Deus tuus fecerit Take knowledge thou who art the Priest of the high God what a value God hath set upon thee that whereas he takes other servants for other affaires when they are men fit to doe him service he took thee to the Priesthood in thy cradle in thine infancie How much more then when the Priest is not Sacerdos infans A Priest that cannot or does not speake but continues watchfull in meditating and assiduous in uttering powerfully and yet modestly the things that concerne your salvation ought you to abstaine from violating the power of God the Father in dis-esteeming his power thus planted in the Priest So also doe we sin against the Father the roote of power Civilis in conceiving amisse of the power of the Civill Magistrate Whether where God is pleased to represent his unity in one Person in a King or to expresse it in a plurality of persons in divers Governours When God sayes Per me Reges regnant By me Kings raigne There the Per is not a Permission but a Commission It is not That they raigne by my Sufferance but they raigne by mine Ordinance A King is not a King because he is a good King nor leaves being a King Rom. 13.5 as soone as he leaves being good All is well summed by the Apostle You must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for conscience sake But then the greatest danger of sinning against the Father Iudiciaria in this notion of power is if you conceive not aright of his Judiciary power of that judgement which he executes not by Priests nor by Kings upon earth but by his owne Son Christ Jesus in heaven For not to be astonished at the Contemplation of that judgement where there shall be Information Examination Publication Hearing Judgement and Execution in a minute where they that never beleeved till they heard me may be taken in and I that Preached and wrought their salvation may be left out where those wounds which my Saviour received upon earth for me shall be shut up against me and those wounds which my blasphemies have made in his glorified body shall bleed out indignation upon sight of me the murtherer not to think upon not to tremble at this judgement is the highest sin against the Father and his power in the undervaluing of it But there is a sin against this power too Abusus in abusing that portion of that power which God hath deposited in thee Art thou a Priest and expectest the reverence due to that holy calling Ambr Ep. 6. ad Iren. Be holy in in that calling Quomodo potest observari à populo qui nihil habet secretum à populo How can the people reverence him whom they see to be but just one of them Quid in te miretur si sua in te recognoscit If they finde no more in thee then in one another what should they admire in thee Si quae in se erubescit in te quem reverendum arbitratur offendit If they discerne those infirmities in thee which they are ashamed of in themselves where is there any object any subject any exercise of their reverence psal 52.1 Art thou great in Civill Power Quid gloriaris in malo quiae potens es Why boastest thou thy selfe in mischiefe O mighty man Hast thou a great body therefore because thou shouldest stand heavy upon thine own feet and make them ake Or a great power therefore because thou shouldest oppresse them that are under thee use thy power justly Jes 1. ◠and call it the voyce of allegeance when the people say to thee as to Iosua All that thou commandest us we will doc and whither soever thou sendest us we will goe Abuse that power to oppression and thou canst not call that the voyce of sedition in which Peter and the other Apostles joyned together Acts 5.29 We ought to obey God rather then man Hast thou any judiciall place in this world here there belongs more feare then in the rest Some things God hath done in Christ as a Priest in this world some things as a King But when Christ should have been a Judge in civill causes he declined that he would not divide the Inheritance and in criminall causes he did so too he would not condemne the Adulteresse So that for thy example in judgement thou art referred to that which is not come yet to that to which thou must come The last the everlasting judgement Waigh thine affections there and then and think there stands before thee now a prisoner so affected as thou shalt be then Waigh the mercy of thy Judge then and think there is such mercy required in thy judgement now Be but able to say God be such to me at the last day as I am to his people this day and for that dayes justice in thy publique calling God may be pleased to cover many sins of infirmity And so you have all that we intended in this exercise to present unto you The first person of the Trinity God the Father in his Attribute of power Almighty and those sins which as farre as this Text leads us are directed upon him in that notion of Father The next day the Son will rise SERM. XL. Preached upon Trinity-Sunday 1 COR. 16.22 If any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha CHrist is not defined not designed by any name by any word so often as by that very word The Word Sermo Speech In man there are three kinds of speech Sermo innatus That inward speech which the thought of man reflecting upon it selfe produces within He thinks something And then Sermo illatus A speech of inference that speech which is occasioned in him by outward things from which he drawes conclusions and determins And lastly Sermo prolatus That speech by which he manifests himselfe to other men We consider also three kindes of speech in God and Christ is all three There is Sermo innatus His eternall his naturall word which God produced out of himselfe which is the generatiof the second Person in the Trinity And then there is Sermo illatus His word occasioned by the fall of Adam which is his Decree of sending Christ as a Redeemer And there is also Sermo prolatus His speech of manifestation and application of Christ which are his Scriptures The first word is Christ the second the Decree is for Christ the third the Scripture is of Christ Let the word be Christ so he is God Let the word be for Christ for his comming hither so he is man Let the word be of Christ so the Scriptures make this God and man ours Now If in all these if in any of these apprehensions any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha By most of those who from the perversenesse of Heretiques Divisio have taken
The naturall and essentiall word of God He hath his first name in the text He is the Lord As he is verbum illatum and Conceptum A person upon whom there is a Decree and a Commission that he shall be a person capable to redeem Man by death he hath this second name in the text He is Christ As he is The Lord he cannot die As he is Christ under the Decree he cannot chuse but die But as he is Iesus He is dead already and that is his other his third his last name in this Text If any man love not c. We have inverted a little the order of these names or titles in the Text Iesus because the Name of Christ is in the order of nature before the name of Iesus as the Commission is before the Execution of the Commission And in other places of Scripture to let us see how both the capacity of doing it and the actuall doing of it belongs onely to this person the Holy Ghost seems to convey a spirituall delight to us in turning and transposing the Names every way sometimes Iesus alone and Christ alone sometimes Iesus Christ and sometimes Christ Iesus that every way we might be sure of him Now we consider him as Iesus a reall an actuall Saviour And this was his Name The Angel said to his Mother Thou shalt call his name Iesus for he shall save his people And we say to you Call upon this name Iesus for he hath saved his people for Rom. 8.1 Now there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus As he was verbum conceptum and illatum The word which the Trinity uttered amongst themselves so he was decreed to come in that place The Lord of the vineyard that is Almighty God seeing the misery of Man Luk. 20.13 to be otherwise irremediable The Lord of the vineyard said what shall I doe I will send my beloved Sonne it may be they will reverence him when they see him But did they reverence him when they saw him This sending made him Christ a person whom though the Sonne of God they might see They did see him but then says that Gospell they drew him out and killed him And this he knew before he came and yet came and herein was Iesus a reall an actuall a zealous Saviour even of them that slew him And in this with piety and reverence we may be bold to say that even the Son of God was filius prodigus that powred out his blood even for his Enemies but rather in that acclamation of the prodigall childs Father This my sonne was dead and is alive againe he was lost and is found For but for this desire of our salvation why should he who was the Lord be ambitious of that Name the name of Iesus which was not Tam expectabile apud Iudaeos nomen Tertull. no such name as was in any especiall estimation amongst the Iews for we see in Ioscphus divers men of that name of no great honour of no good conversation But because the name implyes salvation Iosua who had another name before Idem Cum in hujus sacramenti imagine parabatur when he was prepared as a Type of this Iesus to be a Saviour a Deliverer of the people Etiam nominis Dominici inaugur atus est figurae Iesus cognominatus then he was canonized with that name of salvation and called Iosuae which is Iesus The Lord then the Son of God had a Sitio in heaven as well as upon the Crosse He thirsted our salvation there and in the midst of the fellowship of the Father from whom he came and of the Holy Ghost who came from him and the Father and all the Angels who came by a lower way from them all he desired the conversation of Man for Mans sake He that was God The Lord became Christ a man and he that was Christ became Iesus no man a dead man to save man To save man all wayes in all his parts And to save all men in all parts of the world To save his soule from hell where we should have felt pains and yet been dead then when we felt them and seen horrid spectacles and yet been in darknes and blindnes then when we saw them And suffered unsufferable torments yet have told over innumerable ages in suffering them To save this soule from that hell and to fill that capacity which it hath and give it a capacity which it hath not to comprehend the joyes and glory of Heaven this Christ became Iesus To save this body from the condemnation of everlasting corruption where the wormes that we breed are our betters because they have a life where the dust of dead Kings is blowne into the street and the dust of the street blowne into the River and the muddy River tumbled into the Sea and the Sea remaunded into all the veynes and channels of the earth to save this body from everlasting dissolution dispersion dissipation and to make it in a glorious Resurrection not onely a Temple of the holy Ghost but a Companion of the holy Ghost in the kingdome of heaven This Christ became this Iesus To save this man body and soule together from the punishments due to his former sinnes and to save him from falling into future sinnes by the assistance of his Word preached and his Sacrrments administred in the Church which he purchased by his bloud is this person The Lord the Christ become this Iesus this Saviour To save so All wayes In soule in body in both And also to save all men For to exclude others from that Kingdome is a tyrannie an usurpation and to exclude thy selfe is a sinfull and a rebellious melancholy But as melancholy in the body is the hardest humour to be purged so is the melancholy in the soule the distrust of thy salvation too Flashes of presumption a calamity will quench but clouds of desperation calamities thicken upon us But even in this inordinate dejection thou exaltest thy self above God and makest thy worst better then his best thy sins larger then his mercy Christ hath a Greek name and an Hebrew name Christ is Greeke Iesus is Hebrew He had commission to save all nations and he hath saved all Thou givest him another Hebrew name and another Greek Apoc. 9.11 when thou makest his name Abaddon and Apollyon a Destroyer when thou wilt not apprehend him as a Saviour and love him so which is our second Part in our order proposed at first If any man love not c. In the former part 2 Part. we found it to be one argument for the Deitie of Christ That he was Iehovah The Lord we have another here That this great branch nay this very root of all divine worship due to God is required to be exhibited to this person That is Love Cicero If any man love not c. If any man could see Vertue with his eye he would be
so but it is also to declare that there is none just and righteous Jerem. 5.1 Run to and fro through the streets of Ierusalem sayes God in the Prophet and seeke in the broad places If yee can finde a man if there be any that executeth Iudgement that seeketh Truth and I will pardon it Where God does not intimate that he were unjust if he did not spare those that were unjust but he declares the generall flood and inundation of unrighteousnesse upon Earth That upon Earth there is not a righteous man to be found If God had gone no farther in his promise to man then that if there were one righteous man he would save all this in effect had been nothing for there was never any man righteous in that sense and acceptation He promised and sent one who was absolutely righteous and for his sake hath saved us To collect all Conclusio and bind up all in one bundle and bring it home to your own bosomes remember That though he appeared in men it was God that appeared to Abraham Though men preach though men remit sins though men absolve God himself speakes and God works and God seales in those men Remember that nothing appeared to Abrahams apprehension but men yet Angels were in his presence Though we binde you not to a necessity of beleeving that every man hath a particular Angel to assist him enjoy your Christian liberty in that and think in that point so as you shall find your devotion most exalted by thinking that it is or is not so yet know that you do all that you doe in the presence of Gods Angels And though it be in it selfe and should be so to us a stronger bridle to consider that we doe all in the presence of God who sees clearer then they for he sees secret thoughts and can strike immediately which they cannot do without commission from him yet since the presence of a Magistrate or a Preacher or a father or a husband keeps men often from ill actions let this prevaile something with thee to that purpose That the Angels of God are alwayes present though thou discerne them not Remember that though Christ himself were not amongst the three Angels yet Abraham apprehended a greater dignity and gave a greater respect to one then to the rest but yet without neglecting the rest too Apply thy selfe to such Ministers of God and such Physitians of thy soule as thine owne conscience tels thee doe most good upon thee but yet let no particular affection to one defraud another in his duties nor empaire another in his estimation And remember too That though Gods appearing thus in three persons be no irrefragable argument to prove the Trinity against the Jews yet it is a convenient illustration of the Trinity to thee that art a Christian And therefore be not too curious in searching reasons and demonstrations of the Trinity but yet accustome thy selfe to meditations upon the Trinity in all occasions and finde impressions of the Trinity in the three faculties of thine owne soule Thy Reason thy Will and thy Memory and seeke a reparation of that thy Trinity by a new Trinity by faith in Christ Jesus by hope of him and by a charitable delivering him to others in a holy and exemplar life Descend thou into thy selfe as Abraham ascended to God and admit thine owne expostulations as God did his Let thine own conscience tell thee not onely thy open and evident rebellions against God but even the immoralities and incivilities that thou dost towards men in scandalizing them by thy sins And the absurdities that thou committest against thy selfe in sinning against thine owne reason And the uncleannesses and consequently the treachery that thou committest against thine owne body and thou shalt see that thou hadst been not onely in better peace but in better state and better health and in better reputation a better friend and better company if thou hadst finned lesse because some of thy sins have been such as have violated the band of friendship and some such as have made thy company and conversation dangerous either for tentation or at least for defamation Tell thy selfe that thou art the Judge as Abraham told God that he was and that if thou wilt judge thy selfe thou shalt scape a severer judgement He told God that he was Judge of all the earth Judge all that earth that thou art Judge both thy kingdomes thy soule and thy body Judge all the Provinces of both kingdomes all the senses of thy body and all the faculties of thy soule and thou shalt leave nothing for the last Judgement Mingle not the just and the unjust together God did not so Doe not thinke good and bad all one Doe not think alike of thy sins and of thy good deeds as though when Gods grace had quickned them still thy good works were nothing thy prayers nothing thine almes nothing in the sight and acceptation of God But yet spare not the wicked for the just continue not in thy beloved sin because thou makest God amends some other way And when all is done as in God towards Abraham his mercy was above all so after all Miserere animae tuae Be inercifull to thine owne soule And when the effectuall Spirit of God hath spoken peace and comfort and sealed a reconciliation to God to thy soule rest in that blessed peace and enter into no such new judgement with thy selfe againe as should overcome thine own Mercy with new distractions or new suspitions that thy Repentance was not accepted or God not fully reconciled unto thee God because he judges all the earth cannot doe wrong If thou judge thy earth and earthly affections so as that thou examine clearly and judge truly thou dost not doe right if thou extend not Mercy to thy selfe if thou receive not and apply not cheerfully and confidently to thy soul that pardon and remission of all thy sins which the holy Ghost in that blessed state hath given thee commission to pronounce to thine owne soul and to seale with his seale SERM. XLIII Preached at S. Dunstans upon Trinity-Sunday 1624. MAT. 3.17 And lo A voyce came from heaven saying This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased IT hath been the custome of the Christian Church to appropriate certaine Scriptures to certaine Dayes for the celebrating of certaine Mysteries of God or the commemorating of certaine benefits from God They who consider the age of the Christian Church too high or too low too soone or too late either in the cradle as it is exhibited in the Acts of the Apostles or bed-rid in the corruptions of Rome either before it was come to any growth when Persecutions nipped it or when it was so over-growne as that prosperity and outward splendor swelled it They that consider the Church so will never finde a good measure to direct our religious worship of God by for the outward Liturgies and Ceremonies of the Church But as
any subject a falling for for our bodies we say a man is falne sick And for his state falne poore And for his mind falne mad And for his conscience falne desperate we are borne low and yet we fall every way lower so universall is our falling sicknesse Sin it selfe is but a falling The irremediable sin of the Angels The undeterminable sinne of Adam is called but so The fall of Adam The fall of Angels And therefore the effectuall visitation of the holy Ghost to man is called a falling too we are fallen so low as that when the holy Ghost is pleased to fetch us againe and to infuse his grace he is still said to fall upon us But the fall which we consider in the Text is not a figurative falling not into a decay of estate nor decay of health nor a spirituall falling into sin a decay of grace but it is a medicinall falling a falling under Gods hand but such a falling under his hand as that he takes not off his hand from him that is falne but throwes him downe therefore that he may raise him To this posture he brings Paul now when he was to re-inanimate him with his spirit rather to pre-inanimate him for indeed no man hath a soule till he have grace Christ who in his humane nature hath received from the Father all Judgement and power and dominion over this world hath received all this upon that condition that he shall governe in this manner Psal 2.8 Aske of me and I shall give thee the Heathen for thine inheritance sayes the Father How is he to use them when he hath them Thus Thou shalt breake them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potters vessell Now God meant well to the Nations in this bruising and breaking of them God intended not an annihilation of the Nations but a reformarion for Christ askes the Nations for an Inheritance not for a triumph therefore it is intended of his way of governing them and his way is to bruise and beat them that is first to cast them downe before he can raise them up first to breake them before he can make them in his fashion August Novit Dominus vulnerare ad amorem The Lord and onely the Lord knowes how to wound us out of love more then that how to wound us into love more then all that to wound us into love not onely with him that wounds us but into love with the wound it selfe with the very affliction that he inflicts upon us The Lord knowes how to strike us so as that we shall lay hold upon that hand that strikes us and kisse that hand that wounds us Ad vitam interficit ad exaltationem prosternit sayes the same Father No man kills his enemy therefore that his enemy might have a better life in heaven that is not his end in killing him It is Gods end Therefore he brings us to death that by that gate he might lead us into life everlasting And he hath not discovered but made that Northerne passage to passe by the frozen Sea of calamity and tribulation to Paradise to the heavenly Jerusalem There are fruits that ripen not but by frost There are natures there are scarce any other that dispose not themselves to God but by affliction And as Nature lookes for the season for ripening and does not all before so Grace lookes for the assent of the soule and does not perfect the whole worke till that come It is Nature that brings the season and it is Grace that brings the assent but till the season for the fruit till the assent of the soule come all is not done Therefore God begun in this way with Saul and in this way he led him all his life Tot pertulit mortes quot vixit dies He dyed as many deaths as he lived dayes Chrysost for so himselfe sayes Quotidie morior I die daily God gave him sucke in blood and his owne blood was his daily drink He catechized him with calamities at first and calamities were his daily Sermons and meditations after and to authorize the hands of others upon him and to accustome him to submit himself to the hands of others without murmuring Christ himself strikes the first blow and with that Cecidit he fell which was our first consideration in his humiliation and then Cecidit in terram He fell to the ground which is our next I take no farther occasion from this Circumstance but to arme you with consolation In terram how low soever God be pleased to cast you Though it be to the earth yet he does not so much cast you downe in doing that as bring you home Death is not a banishing of you out of this world but it is a visitation of your kindred that lie in the earth neither are any nearer of kin to you then the earth it selfe and the wormes of the earth You heap earth upon your soules and encumber them with more and more flesh by a superfluous and luxuriant diet You adde earth to earth in new purchases and measure not by Acres but by Manors nor by Manors but by Shires And there is a little Quillet a little Close worth all these A quiet Grave And therefore when thou readest That God makes thy bed in thy sicknesse rejoyce in this not onely that he makes that bed where thou dost lie but that bed where thou shalt lie That that God that made the whole earth is now making thy bed in the earth a quiet grave where thou shalt sleep in peace till the Angels Trumpet wake thee at the Resurrection to that Judgement where thy peace shall be made before thou commest and writ and sealed in the blood of the Lamb. Saul falls to the earth So farre But he falls no lower God brings his servants to a great lownesse here but he brings upon no man a perverse sense or a distrustfull suspition of falling lower hereafter His hand strikes us to the earth by way of humiliation But it is not his hand that strikes us into hell by way of desperation Will you tell me that you have observed and studied Gods way upon you all your life and out of that can conclude what God meanes to doe with you after this life That God took away your Parents in your infancy and left you Orphanes then That he hath crossed you in all your labours in your calling ever since That he hath opened you to dishonours and calumnies and mis-interpretations in things well intended by you That he hath multiplied ficknesses upon you and given you thereby an assurance of a miserable and a short life of few and evill dayes nay That he hath suffered you to fall into sins that you your selves have hated To continue in sins that you your selves have been weary of To relapse into sins that you your selves have repented And will you conclude out of this that God had no good purpose upon you that if ever
Christ Ephes 2.12 for so S. Paul sayes to the Ephesians Absque Christo absque Deo If ye be without Christ ye are without God For as it is the same absurdity in nature to say There is no Sun and to say This that you call the Sun is not the Sun this that shines out upon you this that produces your fruits and distinguishes your seasons is not the Sun so is it the same Atheisme in these dayes of light to say There is no God and to say This Christ whom you call the Son of God is not God That he in whom God hath manifested himselfe He whom God hath made Head of the Church and Judge of the world is not God This then is our double Sadduce Davids Atheist that beleeves not God S. Pauls Atheist that beleeves not Christ And as our Sadduce is so is our Pharisee twofold also There is a Pharisee Duplex Pharisaeus that by following private expositions separates himselfe from our Church principally for matter of Government and Discipline and imagines a Church that shall be defective in nothing and does not onely think himself to be of that Church but sometimes to be that Church for none but himselfe is of that perswasion And there is a Pharisee that dreames of such an union such an identification with God in this life as that he understands all things not by benefit of the senses and impressions in the fancy and imagination or by discourse and ratiocination as we poore soules doe but by immediate and continuall infusions and inspirations from God himselfe That he loves God not by participation of his successive Grace more and more as he receives more and more grace but by a communication of God himselfe to him intirely and irrevocably That he shall be without any need and above all use of Scriptures and that the Scriptures shall be no more to him then a Catechisme to our greatest Doctors That all that God commands him to doe in this world is but as an easie walk downe a hill That he can doe all that easily and as much more as shall make God beholden to him and bring God into his debt and that he may assigne any man to whom God shall pay the arrerages due to him that is appoint God upon-what man he shall confer the benefit of his works of Supererogation For in such Propositions as these and in such Paradoxes as these doe the Authors in the Roman Church delight to expresse and celebrate their Pharisaicall purity as we find it frequently abundantly in them In a word some of our home-Pharisees will say That there are some who by benefit of a certaine Election cannot sin That the Adulteries and Blasphemies of the Elect are not sins But the Rome-Pharisee will say that some of them are not onely without sin in themselves but that they can save others from sin or the punishment of sin by their works of Supererogation and that they are so united so identified with God already as that they are in possession of the beatificall Vision of God and see him essentially and as he is in this life for that Ignatius the father of the Jesuits did so Sandaeus Theolog pâ—r 1. fo 760. some of his Disciples say it is at least probable if not certaine And that they have done all that they had to doe for their owne salvation long agoe and stay in the world now onely to gather treasure for others and to worke out their salvation So that these men are in better state in this life then the Saints are in heaven There the Saints may pray for others but they cannot merit for others These men here can merit for other men and work out the salvation of others Nay they may be said in some respect to exceed Christ himselfe for Christ did save no man here but by dying for him These men save other men with living well for them and working out their salvation These are our double Sadduces our double Pharisees now beloved Dissentio if we would goe so far in S. Pauls way as to set this two-fold Sadduce Davids Atheist without God and S. Pauls Atheist without Christ against our twofold Pharisee our home-Catharist and our Rome-Catharist If we would spend all our wit and all our time all our Inke and our gall in shewing them the deformities and iniquities of one another by our preaching and writing against them The truth and the true Church might as S. Paul did in our Text scape the better But when we we that differ in no such points tear and wound and mangle one another with opprobrious contumelies and odious names of sub-division in Religion our Home-Pharisee and our Rome-Pharisee maligners of our Discipline and maligners of our Doctrine gaine upon ns and make their advantages of our contentions and both the Sadduces Davids Atheist that denies God and S. Pauls Atheist that denies Christ joyne in a scornfull asking us Where is now your God Are not we as well that deny him absolutely as you that professe him with wrangling But stop we the floodgates of this consideration it would melt us into teares Sadducaei Pharisaei interni End we all with this That we have all all these Sadduces and Pharisees in our owne bosomes Sadduces that deny spirits carnall apprehensions that are apt to say Is your God all Spirit and hath bodily eyes to see sin All Spirit and hath bodily hands to strike for a sinne Is your soule all spirit and hath a fleshly heart to feare All spirit and hath sensible sinews to feele a materiall fire Was your God who is all Spirit wounded when you quarrelled or did your soule which is all spirit drink when you were drunk Sins of presumption and carnall confidence are our Sadduces and then our Pharisees are our sins of separation of division of diffidence and distrust in the mercies of our God when we are apt to say after a sin Cares God who is all Spirit for my eloquent prayers or for my passionate teares Is the giving of my goods to the poore or of my body to the fire any thing to God who is all Spirit My spirit and nothing but my spirit my soule and nothing but my soule must satisfie the justice the anger of God and be separated from him for ever My Sadduce my Presumption suggests that there is no spirit no soule to suffer for sin and my Pharisee my Desperation suggests That my soule must perish irremediably irrecoverably for every sinne that my body commits Now if I go S. Pauls way to put a dissention between these my Sadduces and my Pharisees Via Pauli to put a jealousie between my presumption my desperation to make my presumption see that my desperation lies in wait for her and to consider seriously that my presumption will end in desperation I may as S. Paul did in the Text scape the better for that But if without farther
troubling these Sadduces and these Pharisees I be content to let them agree and to divide my life between them so as that my presumption shall possesse all my youth and desperation mine age I have heard my sentence already The end of this man will be worse then his beginning How much soever God be incensed with me for my presumption at first he will be much more inexorable for my desperation at last And therefore interrupt the prescription of sin break off the correspondence of sin unjoynt the dependency of sin upon sin Bring every single sin as soon as thou committest it into the presence of thy God upon those two legs Confession and Detestation and thou shalt see that as though an intire Iland stand firme in the Sea yet a single clod of earth cast into the Sea is quickly washt into nothing so howsoever thine habituall and customary and concatenated sins sin enwrapped and complicated in sin sin entrenched and barricadoed in sin sin screwed up and riveted with sin may stand out and wrastle even with the mercies of God in the blood of Christ Jesus yet if thou bring every single sin into the sight of God it will be but as a clod of earth but as a graine of dust in the Ocean Keep thy sins then from mutuall intelligence That they doe not second one another induce occasion and then support and disguise one another and then neither shall the body of sin ever oppresse thee nor the exhalations and damps and vapors of thy sad soule hang between thee and the mercies of thy God But thou shalt live in the light and serenity of a peaceable conscience here and die in a faire possibility of a present melioration and improvement of that light All thy life thou shalt be preserved in an Orientall light an Easterne light a rising and a growing light the light of grace and at thy death thou shalt be super-illustrated with a Meridionall light a South light the light of glory And be this enough for the explication and application of these words and their complication with the day for the justifying of S. Pauls Stratagem in himselfe and the exemplifying and imitation thereof in us Amen That God that is the God of peace grant us his peace and one minde towards one another That God that is the Lord of Hosts maintaine in us that warre which himself hath proclaimed an enmity between the seed of the Woman and the seed of the Serpent between the truth of God and the inventions of men That we may fight his battels against his enemies without and fight his battels against our enemies within our own corrupt affections That we may be victorious here in our selves and over our selves and triumph with him hereafter in eternall glory SERMONS Preached upon the PENITENTIALL PSALMES SERM. L. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 6.1 O Lord Rebuke me not in thine Anger neither chasten me in thy het Displeasure GOD imputes but one thing to David but one sin The matter of Vriah the Hittite nor that neither but by way of exception not till he had first established an assurance that David stood well with him First he had said 1 King 25.5 David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord and turned not aside from any thing that he had commanded him all the dayes of his life Here was rectitude He did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord no obliquity no departing into by-wayes upon collaterall respects Here was integrity to Gods service no serving of God and Mammon Hee turned not from any thing that God commanded him And here was perpetuity perseverance constancy All the dayes of his life And then and not till then God makes that one and but that one exception Except the matter of Vriah the Hittite When God was reconciled to him he would not so much as name that sin that had offended him And herein is the mercy of God in the merits of Christ a sea of mercie that as the Sea retaines no impression of the Ships that passe in it for Navies make no path in the Sea so when we put out into the boundlesse Sea of the blood of Christ Jesus by which onely wee have reconciliation to God there remaines no record against us for God hath cancelled that record which he kept and that which Satan kept God hath nailed to the Crosse of his Son That man which hath seene me at the sealing of my Pardon and the seale of my Reconciliation at the Sacrament many times since will yet in his passion or in his ill nature or in his uncharitablenesse object to me the fins of my youth whereas God himselfe if I have repented to day knowes not the sins that I did yesterday God hath rased the Record of my sin in Heaven it offends not him it grieves not his Saints nor Angels there and he hath rased the Record in hell it advances not their interest in me there nor their triumph over me And yet here the uncharitable man will know more and see more and remember more then my God or his devill remembers or knowes or sees He will see a path in the Sea he will see my sin when it is drowned in the blood of my Saviour After the Kings pardon perchance it will beare an action to call a man by that infamous name which that crime which is pardoned did justly cast upon him before the pardon After Gods reconciliation to David he would not name Davids sin in the particular But yet for all this though God will be no example of upbraiding or reproaching repented sinnes when God hath so far exprest his love as to bring that sinner to that repentance and so to mercy yet that he may perfect his owne care he exercises that repentant sinner with such medicinall corrections as may inable him to stand upright for the future And to that purpose was no man evermore exercised then David David broke into anothers family he built upon anothers ground he planted in anothers Seminary and God broke into his family his ground his Seminary In no story can wee finde so much Domestick affliction such rapes and incests and murders and rebellions from their owne children as in Davids storie Under the heavy waight and oppression of some of those is David by all Expositors conceived to have conceived and uttered this Psalme Some take it to have beene occasioned by some of his temporall afflictions either his persecution from Saul or bodily sicknesse in himselfe of which traditionally the Rabbins speake much or Absoloms unnaturall rebellion Some others with whom wee finde more reason to joyne finde more reason to interpret it of a spirituall affliction that David in the apprehension and under the sense of the wrath and indignation of God came to this vehement exclamation or deprecation O Lord rebuke me not in thine anger neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure In which words we shall consider
Divisio first the person upon whom David turned for his succour and then what succour he seeks at his hands First his word and then his end first to whom and then for what he supplicates And in the first of these the Person we shall make these three steps first that he makes his first accesse to God onely O Lord rebuke me not doe not thou and though I will not say I care not yet I care the lesse who doe And secondly that it is to God by Name not to any universall God in generall notions so naturall men come to God but to God whom he considers in a particular name in particular notions and attributes and manifestations of himselfe a God whom he knowes by his former workes done upon him And then that name in which hee comes to him here is the name of Iehovah his radicall his fundamentall his primarie his essentiall name the name of being Iehovah For he that deliberately and considerately beleeves himselfe to have his very being from God beleeves certainely that he hath his well being from him too He that acknowledges that it is by Gods providence that he breathes beleeves that it is by his providence that he eates too So his accesse is to God and to God by name that is by particular considerations and then to God in the name of Iehovah to that God that hath done all from his first beginning from his Being And in these three we shall determine our first part First 1. Part. To God in this first branch of this part David comes to God but without any confidence in himselfe Here is Reus ad rostra sine patrono here is the prisoner at the Barre and no Counsell allowed him He confesses Indictments faster then they can be read If he heare himselfe indicted that he looked upon Bathsheba that he lusted after Bathsheba he cryes Alas I have done that and more dishonored her and my selfe and our God and more then that I have continued the act into a habit and more then that I have drowned that sinne in bloud lest it should rise up to my sight and more then all that I have caused the Name of God to be blasphemed and lest his Majesty and his greatnesse should be a terrour to me I have occasioned the enemy to undervalue him and speake despightfully of God himselfe And when he hath confest all all that he remembers he must come to his Ab occultis meis Lord cleanse me from my secret sinnes for there are sins which we have laboured so long to hide from the world that at last they are hidden from our selves from our own memories our own consciences As much as David stands in feare of this Judge he must intreat this Judge to remember his sinnes Remember them O Lord for els they will not fall into my pardon but remember them in mercy and not in anger for so they will not fall into my pardon neither Whatsoever the affliction then was temporall or spirituall we take it rather to be spirituall Davids recourse is presently to God 1 Sam. 16.14 He doth not as his predecessour Saul did when he was afflicted send for one that was cunning upon the Harp to divert sorrow so If his Subjects rebell he doth not say Let them alone let them goe on I shall have the juster cause by their rebellion of confiscations upon their Estates of executions upon their persons of revocations of their lawes and customes and priviledges which they carry themselves so high upon If his sonne lift up his hand against him he doth not place his hope in that that that occasion will cut off his sonne and that then the peoples hearts which were bent upon his sonne will returne to him againe David knew he could not retyre himselfe from God in his bedchamber Guards and Ushers could not keepe him out He knew he could not defend himselfe from God in his Army for the Lord of Hosts is Lord of his Hosts If he fled to Sea to Heaven to Hell he was sure to meet God there and there thou shalt meet him too if thou fly from God to the reliefe of outward comforts of musicke of mirth of drinke of cordialls of Comedies of conversation Not that such recreations are unlawfull the minde hath her physick as well as the body but when thy sadnesse proceeds from a sense of thy sinnes which is Gods key to the doore of his mercy put into thy hand it is a new and a greater sin to goe about to overcome that holy sadnesse with these prophane diversions to fly Ad consolatiunculas creaturulae as that elegant man Luther expresses it according to his naturall delight in that elegancy of Diminutives with which he abounds above all Authors to the little and contemptible comforts of little and contemptible creatures And as Luther uses the physick Iob useth the Physitian Luther calls the comforts Miserable comforts and Iob calls them that minister them Onerosos consolatores Miserable comforters are you all David could not drowne his adultery in blood never thinke thou to drowne thine in wine The Ministers of God are Sonnes of Thunder they are falls of waters trampling of horses and runnings of Chariots and if these voyces of these Ministers cannot overcome thy musick thy security yet the Angels trumpet will That Surgite qui dermitis Arise yee that sleepe in the dust in the dust of the grave is a Treble that over-reaches all That Ite maledicti Goe yee accursed into Hell fire is a Base that drowns all There is no recourse but to God no reliefe but in God and therefore David applied himselfe to the right method to make his first accesse to God It is to God onely and to God by name and not in generall notions To God by Name for it implies a nearer a more familiar and more presentiall knowledge of God a more cheerfull acquaintance and a more assiduous conversation with God when we know how to call God by a Name a Creator a Redeemer a Comforter then when we consider him onely as a diffused power that spreads it selfe over all creatures when we come to him in Affirmatives and Confessions This thou hast done for me then when we come to him onely in Negatives and say That that is God which is nothing els God is come nearer to us then to others when we know his Name For though it be truly said in the Schoole that no name can be given to God Ejus essentiam adaequatè repraesentans No one name can reach to the expressing of all that God is And though Trismegistus doe humbly and modestly and reverently say Non spere it never fell into my thought nor into my hope that the maker and founder of all Majesty could be circumscribed or imprisoned by any one name though a name compounded and complicated of many names as the Rabbins have made one name of God of all his names in the Scriptures Gen.
cure at one dressing And they were dry figs too sayes that story you must not looke for figs from the Tree for immediate Revelations for private inspirations from God but the medicinall preaching of the Word medicinall Sacraments medicinall Absolution are such dry figs as God hath preserved in his Church for all our diseases S. Paul had a strong desire and he expressed it in often prayer to God to have this peccant humour this malignity cleane purged out to have that Stimulus carnis that concupiscence absolutely taken away God would not do so but yet he applied his effectuall physick sufficient Grace This then is the soules Panacaea The Pharmacum Catholicum the Medicina omnimorbia The physick that cures all the sufficient Grace the seasonable mercy of God in the merits of Christ Jesus and in the love of the Holy Ghost This is the physick but then there are ever Vehicula medicinae certaine syrups and liquors to convey the physick water and wine in the Sacraments And certaine Physitians to ordaine and prescribe The Ministers of the Word and Sacraments The Father sends The Son makes The Holy Ghost brings The Minister laies on the plaister For Medicinae ars à Deo data Basil ut inde rationem animae curandae disceremus Gods purpose in giving us the science of bodily health was not determined in the body but his large and gracious purpose was by that restitution of the body to raise us to the consideration of spirituall health When Christ had said to him who was brought sick of the palsie Thy sins are forgiven thee Marke 2. and that the Scribes and Pharisees were scandalized with that as though he being but man had usurped upon the power of God Christ proves to them by an actuall restoring of his bodily health that he could restore his soule too in the forgivenesse of sins He asks them there Whether is it easier to say Thy sins are forgiven thee or to say Arise take up thy bed and walke Christus facit sanitatem corporalem argumentum spiritualis Bernar. Christ did not determine his doctrine in the declaration of a miraculous power exercised upon his body but by that established their beliefe of his spirituall power in doing that which in their opinion was the greater worke Pursue therefore his method of Curing And if God have restored thee in any sicknesse by such meanes as he of his goodnesse hath imprinted in naturall herbs and Simples thinke not that that was done onely or simply for thy bodies sake but that as it is as easie for God to say Thy sins are forgiven thee as Take up thy bed and walke so it is as easie for thee to have spirituall physick as bodily because as God hath planted all those medicinall Simples in the open fields for all though some do tread them under their feet so hath God deposited and prepared spirituall helps for all though all do not make benefit of those helps which are offered It is true that God sayes of his Church Hortus conclusus soror mea My sister Cant. 4.12 my Spouse is a Garden enclosed as a spring shut in and a fountaine sealęd up But therein is our advantage who by being enwrapped in the Covenant as the seed of the faithfull as the children of Christian Parents are borne if not within this walled Garden yet with a key in our hand to open the doore that is with a right and title to the Sacrament of Baptisme The Church is a Garden walled in for their better defence and security that are in it but not walled in to keepe any out who either by being borne within the Covenant inherit a right to it or by accepting the grace which is offered them acquire and professe a desire to enter thereinto For as it is a Garden full of Spikenard and of Incense and of all spices as the Text sayes there so that they who are in this Garden in the Church are in possession of all these blessed meanes of spirituall health So are these spices and Incense and Spikenard of a diffusive and spreading nature and breath even over the wals of the Garden Oleum effusum nomen ejus The name of Christ is unction Oyntment Cant. 1.3 4.16 but it is an Oyntment powred out an Oyntment that communicates the fragrancy thereof to persons at a good distance And as it is said there Christ cals up the North and the South to blow upon his Garden he raises up men to transport and propagate these meanes of salvation to all Nations so that in every Nation they that feare him are acceptable to him not that that feare of God in generall as one universall power is sufficient in it selfe to bring any man to God immediately but that God directs the Spikenard and Incense of this Garden upon that man and seconds his former feare of God with a love of God and brings him to a knowledg and to a desire and to a possession and fruition of our more assured meanes of salvation When he does so this is his method as in restoring bodily health he said Surge Tolle Ambula Arise Take up thy bed and Walke So to every sick soule whose cure he undertakes he sayes so too Surge Tolle Ambula Our beds are our naturall affections These he does not bid us cast away nor burne nor destroy since Christ vouchsafed Induere hominem wee must not Exuere hominem Since Christ invested the nature of man and became man we must not pretend to devest it and become Angels or flatter our selves in the merit of Mortifications not enjoyned or of a retirednesse and departing out of the world in the world by the withdrawing of our selves from the offices of mutuall society or an extinguishing of naturall affections But Surge sayes our Saviour Arise from this bed sleepe not lazily in an over-indulgency to these affections but Ambula walke sincerely in thy Calling and thou shalt heare thy Saviour say Non est infirmitas haec ad mortem These affections nay these concupiscencies shall not destroy thee David then doth not pray for such an exact and exquisite state of health as that he should have no infirmity Physitians for our bodies tell us that there is no such state The best degree of health is but Neutralitas He is well that is as well as Man can be that is not dangerously sick for absolutely well no man can be Spirituall Physitians will tell you so too He that sayes you have no sinne or that God sees not your sinne if you be of the Elect deceives you It is not for an Innocency that David prayes but it is against deadly diseases and against violent accidents of those diseases He doth not beg he cannot hope for an absolute peace Nature hath put awarre upon us True happinesse and apparant happinesse fight against one another sin hath put a war upon us The flesh and the Spirit fight against one another Christ Jesus himselfe
sighed and so he groaned he laboured he was affected bitterly with it himselfe And he declated it he made it exemplar and catechisticall that his dejection in himselfe might be an exaltation to others And then hee was not ashamed of it but as he said of his dancing before the Arke If this be to be vile I will be more vile So here if this passion be weaknesse I will yet be more weake for this winde brought raine These sighs brought teares All the night make I my bed to swim c. The concupiscencies of man are naturally dry powder combustible easily Lacrymae easily apt to take fire but teares dampe them and give them a little more leasure and us intermission and consideration David had laboured hard first Ad ruborem as Physitians advise to a rednesse to a blushing to a shame of his sin And now Ad sudorem Hilar. he had laboured to a sweat for Lacrymae sudor animae moerentis Teares are the sweat of a labouring soule and that soule that labours as David did will sweat as David did in the teares of contrition Till then till teares breake out and find a vent in outward declaration wee pant and struggle in miserable convulsions and distortions and distractions and earthquakes and irresolutions of the soule I can beleeve that God will have mercy upon me if I repent but I cannot beleeve that is repentance if I cannot weepe or come to outward declarations This is the laborious irresolution of the soule But Lacrymae diluvium Nazian evehunt animam These teares carry up our soule as the flood carried up the Arke higher then any hils whether hils of power and so above the oppression of potent adversaries or hils of our owne pride and ambition True holy teares carry us above all And therefore when the Angel rebuked the people for not destroying Idolatry They wept Iudg. 2.5 sayes the text there was their present remedy and they called the name of the place Bochim Teares that there might be a permanent testimony of that expressing of their repentance that that way they went to God and in that way God received them and that their Children might say to one another Where did God shew that great mercy to our Fathers Here here in Bochim that is Here in teares And so when at Samuels motions and increpation the people would testifie their repentance They drew water 1 Sam. 7.6 sayes the story and poured it out before the Lord and fasted and said We have sinned against the Lord. They poured water Vt esset symbolum lacrymarum That that might be a type and figure Nab. Oziel in what proportion of teares they desired to expresse their repentance For such an effusion of teares David may be well thought to intend when he sayes Effundite coram Deo animam vestram Poure out your soules before God poure them out in such an effusion in a continuall and a contrite weeping Still the Prophets cry out upon Idols and Idolaters Vlulate Sculptilia Howle ye Idols and Howle ye Idolaters He hath no hope of their weeping And so the devil and the damned are said to howle but not to weepe or when they are said to weepe it is with a gnashing of teeth which is a voyce of Indignation even towards God and not of humiliation under his hand So also sayes the Propher of an impenitent sinner Induratae super petram facies They have made their faces harder then stone Ier. 5.3 wherein Thou hast stricken them but they have not wept not sorrowed Out of a stone water cannot be drawne but by miracle though it be twice stricken Numb 20.11 as Moses stroke the Rock twice yet the water came by the miraculous power of God and not by Moses second stroke Though God strike this sinner twice thrice he will not weepe though inward terrors strike his conscience and outward diseases strike his body and calamities and ruine strike his estate yet he will not confesse by one teare that these are judgements of God but naturall accidents or if judgements that they proceeded not from his sin but from some decree in God or some purpose in God to glorifie himselfe by thus afflicting him and that if he had beene better he should have fared never the better for Gods purpose must stand Therefore sayes God of such in that place Surely they are poore that was plaine enough and they are foolish too sayes God there And God gives the reason of it for they know not the judgements of God They know not his judgements to be judgements They ascribe all calamities to other causes and so they turne upon other wayes and other plots and other miserable comforters But attribute all to the Lord never say of any thing This fals upon me but of all This is laid upon me by the hand of God and thou wilt come to him in teares Raine water is better then River water The water of Heaven teares for offending thy God are better then teares for worldly losses But yet come to teares of any kinde and whatsoever occasion thy teares Esay 25.8 Deus absterget omnem lacrymam there is the largenesse of his bounty He will wipe all teares from thine eyes But thou must have teares first first thou must come to this weeping or else God cannot come to this wiping God hath not that errand to thee to wipe teares from thine eyes if there be none there If thou doe nothing for thy selfe God finds nothing to doe for thee David wept thus Nocte thus vehemently and he wept thus thus continually In the Night sayes our Text Psal 42.3 Not that he wept not in the day He sayes of himselfe My teares have been my meate both day and night where though he name no fast you see his diet how that was attenuated Lament 1.2 And so when it is said of Jerusalem Shee weepeth continually in the night it is not that she put off her weeping till night but that she continued her dayes weeping to the night and in the night Plorando plorabit sayes the Originall in the place shee does weepe already and shee will weepe still shee puts it not off dilatorily I will weepe but not yet nor shee puts it not over easily suddenly I have wept and I neede no more but as God promises to his children Joel 1.23 the first and later raine so must his children give to him againe both raines teares of the day and teares of the night by washing the sinnes of the day in the evening and the sinnes of the night in the morning But this was an addition to Davids affliction in this night weeping that whereas the night was made for man to rest in David could not make that use of the night When he had proposed so great a part of his happinesse to consist in this Psal 4. ult That he would lay him downe and sleepe in peace we see
in the next Psalme but one he that thought to sleepe out the night come to weepe out the night When the Saints of God have that security which S. Hierome speaks of Vt sanctis ipse somnus sit oratio They sleepe securely for their very sleepe is a glorifying of God who giveth his beloved sleepe yet David could have none of this Euseb But why not he Noctem letiferam nocte compensat First for the place the sinne came in at those windowes at his eyes and came in in fire in lust And it must goe out at those windowes too and goe out in water in the water of repentant teares And then for the time as the night defiled his soule so the sinne must be expiated and the soule washed in the night too And this may be some Embleme some usefull intimation how hastily Repentance follows sinne Davids sinne is placed but in the beginning of the night in the Evening In the evening he rose and walked upon the Terase and saw Bathsheba and in the next part of time in the night he falls a weeping no more between the sweetnesse of sinne and the bitternesse of repentance then between evening and night no morning to either of them till the Sunne of grace arise and shine out and proceed to a Meridionall height and make the repentance upon circumstance to be a repentance upon the substance and bring it to be a repentance for the sinne it selfe which at first was but a repentance upon some calamity that that sinne induced He wept then Omni nocte and wept in the night in a time when he could neither receive rest in himselfe which all men had nor receive praise from others which all men affect And he wept Omni nocte which is not onely Omnibus noctibus sometime every night but it is Tota nocte cleane through the night And he wept in that abundance as hath put the Holy Ghost to that Hyperbole in Davids pen to expresse it Liquefecit stratum natare fecit stratum Hieron it drowned his bed surrounded his bed it dissolved it macerated it melted his bed with that brine Well Qui rigat stratum he that washes his bed so with repentant teares Non potest in cogitationem ejus libidinum pompa subrepere Tentations take hold of us sometimes after our teares after our repentance but seldome or never in the act of our repentance and in the very shedding of our teares At least Libidinum pompa The victory the triumph of lust breaks not in upon us in a bed so dissolved so surrounded so macerated with such teares Thy bed is a figure of thy grave Such as thy grave receives thee at death it shall deliver thee up to Judgement at last Such as thy bed receives thee at night it shall deliver thee in the morning If thou sleepe without calling thy selfe to an account thou wilt wake so and walke so and proceed so without ever calling thy selfe to an account till Christ Jesus call thee in the Clouds It is not intended that thou shouldest afflict thy selfe so grievously as some over-doing Penitents to put chips and shels and splints and flints and nayles and rowels of spurres in thy bed to wound and macerate thy body so The inventions of men are not intended here But here is a precept of God implied in this precedent and practise of David That as long as the sense of a former sinne or the inclination to a future oppresses thee thou must not close thine eyes thou must not take thy rest till as God married thy body and soule together in the Creation and shall at last crowne thy body and soule together in the Resurrection so they may also rest together here that as thy body rests in thy bed thy soule may rest in the peace of thy Conscience and that thou never say to thy head Rest upon this pillow till thou canst say to thy soule Rest in this repentance in this peace Now as this sorrow of Davids continued day and night Oculus in the day for the better edification of men and in the night for his better capitulation with God so there is a farther continuation thereof without any wearinesse expressed in the next clause Turbatus à furore oculus meus as the Vulgat reads it and Mine eye is dimmed for despight or indignation as our former or as this last Translation hath it Mine eye is consumed because of griefe and to speake neerest to the Originall Erosus est oculus Mine eye is eaten out with Indignation A word or two shall be inough of each of these words these three Termes What the eye which is the subject what this consuming or dimming which is the effect and what this Griefe or Indignation which is the affection imports and offers to our application First Oculus the Eye is ordinarily taken in the Scriptures Pro aspectu for the whole face the looks the countenance the ayre of a man and this ayre and looks and countenance declares the whole habitude and constitution of the man As he looks so he is So that the Eye here is the whole person and so this griefe had wrought upon the whole frame and constitution of David and decayed that though he place it in the eye yet it had growne over all the body Since thou wast not able to say to thy sinne The sinne shall come to mine eyes but no farther I will looke but not lust I will see but not covet thou must not say My repentance shall come to mine eyes and no farther I will shed a few teares and no more but with this Prophet David and with the Apostle S. Paul thou must beat downe thy body to that particular purpose and in that proportion as thou findest the rebellions thereof to require Thou couldest not stop the sin at thine eyes stop not thy repentance there neither but pursue it in wholesome mortification through all those parts in which the sinne hath advanced his dominion over thee and that is our use of the first word the Eye the whole frame For the second word which in our Translations is in one dimmed Turbatus Reuchlin in the other consumed and in the Vulgat troubled a great Master in the Originall renders it well elegantly and naturally out of the Originall Verminavit Tineavit which is such a deformitie as wormes make in wood or in books If Davids sorrow for his sinnes brought him to this deformitie what sorrow doe they owe to their sinnes who being come to a deformitie by their own licentiousnesse and intemperance disguise all that by unnaturall helpes to the drawing in of others and the continuation of their former sinnes The sinne it selfe was the Devils act in thee But in the deformity and debility though it follow upon the sinne God hath a hand And they that smother and suppresse these by paintings and pamperings unnaturall helps to unlawfull ends doe not deliver themselves of the plague but
he cannot discharge himselfe of that servant when he will and here the misery of that servant that at one time or other he will and he is a short liv'd man whose ruine a jealous Prince studies Because the Text invited us commanded and constrained us to do so we put this example in a Court but we need not dazle our selves with that height every man in his own house may finde it that to those servants which have served him in ill actions he dares not say Discedite Depart from me ye workers of iniquity Thus then it is if those whom David dismisses here were his owne servants Tentatores it was an expressing of his thankfulnesse to God and a duty that lay upon him to deliver himselfe of such servants But other Expositors take these men to be men of another sort men that came to triumph over him in his misery Psal 69.26 men that Persecuted him whom God had smitten and added to the sorrow of him whom God had wounded as himselfe complaines men that pretended to visit him yet when they came They spoke lies Psal 41.7 their hearts gathered iniquity to themselves and when they went abroad they told it Men that said to one another When shall he dye and his name perish Ver. 6. Here also was a Declaration of the powerfulnesse of Gods Spirit in him that he could triumph over the Triumpher and exorcise those evill spirits and command them away whose comming was to dishonour God in his dishonour and to argue and conclude out of his ruine that either his God was a weake God or a cruell God that he could not or would not deliver his servants from destruction That David could command them away whose errand was to blaspheme God and whose staying in a longer conversation might have given him occasion of new sins either in distrusting Gods mercy towards himselfe or in murmuring at Gods patience towards them or perchance in being uncharitably offended with them and expressing it with some bitternesse but that in respect of himselfe and not of Gods glory only this Discedite Depart from me all such men as do sin in yourselves and may make me sin too was an act of an heavenly courage and a thankfull testimony of Gods gracious visiting his soule inabling him so resolutely to teare himselfe from such persons as might lead him into tentation Neither is this separation of David and this company partiall Omnes he does not banish those that incline him to one sin a sin that perchance he is a weary of or growne unable to proceed in and retained them that concurre with him in some fresh sin to which he hath a new appetite David doth not banish them that suckt his Subjects blood or their money and retained them that solicite and corrupt their wives and daughters he doth not displace them who served the vices of his predecessor and supply those places with instruments of new vices of his owne but it is Discedite omnes Depart all yee workers of iniquity Now beloved when God begins so high as in Kings he makes this duty the easier to thee to banish from thee All the workers of iniquity It is not a Discede that will serve to banish one and retaine the rest Nor a Discedite to banish the rest and retaine one but Discedite omnes Depart all for that sinne staies in state that staies alone and hath the venome and the malignity of all the rest contracted in it It is nothing for a sick man that hath lost his taste to say Discedat gula Depart voluptuousnesse nothing in a consumption to say Discedat luxuria Depart wantonnesse nothing for a Client in Formapauperis to say Discedat corruptio I will not bribe but Discedant omnes Depart all and all together ye workers of iniquity But yet Davids generall discharge had Operantes and ours must have a restriction a limitation it is not as S. Ierom notes upon this place Omnes qui operati but Omnes operantes not all that have wrought iniquity but all that continue in doing so still David was not inexorable towards those that had offended what an example should he have given God against himselfe if he had beene so wee must not despise nor defame men because they have committed some sin When the mercie of God hath wrought upon their sin in the remission thereof that leprosie of Naaman cleaves to us their sinne is but transferred to us if we will not forgive that which God hath forgiven for it is but Omnes operantes all they that continue in their evill wayes All these must depart how far first Rom. 16.17 they must be avoided Declinate saith S. Paul I beseech you brethren marke them diligently which cause division and offences and avoid them And this corrects our desire in running after such men as come with their owne inventions Schismaticall Separatists Declinate avoid them if hee be no such but amongst our selves a brother but yet a worker of iniquity 1 Cor. 5.11 If any one that is called a brother be a Fornicator or covetous with such a one eate not If we cannot starve him out wee must thrust him out Put away from among you that wicked man No conversation at all is allowed to us with such a man as is obstinate in his sin 2 Iohn 1.10 and incorrigible no not to bid him God speed For he that bid deth him God speed is partaker of his evill deeds In this divorce both the generality and the distance is best exprest by Christ himselfe Mat. 5.28 If thine eye thine hand thy foote offend thee amputandi projiciendi with what anguish or remorse soever it be done they must bee cut off and being cut off cast away it is a divorce and no super-induction it is a separating and no redintegration Though thou couldest be content to goe to Heaven with both eyes thy selfe and thy companion yet better to goe into Heaven with one thy selfe alone then to endanger thy selfe to be left out for thy companions sake To conclude this first part Discedite David does not say Discedam but Discedite he does not say that he will depart from them but he commands them to depart from him Wee must not thinke to depart from the offices of society and duties of a calling and hide our selves in Monasteries or in retired lives for feare of tentations but when a tentation attempts us to come with that authority and that powerfull exorcisme of Nazianzen Fuge recede ne te cruce Christi ad quam omnia contremiscunt feriam Depart from me lest the Crosse of Christ in my hand overthrow you For a sober life and a Christian mortification and discreet discipline are crosses derived from the Crosse of Christ Jesus and animated by it and may be alwaies in a readinesse to crosse such tentations In the former descriptions of the manner of our behaviour towards workers of
consider the two termes in which it is expressed what this is which is translated Transgression and then what this Forgiving imports The Originall word is Pashang and that signifies sin in all extensions The highest the deepest the waightiest sin It is a malicious and a forcible opposition to God It is when this Herod and this Pilat this Body and this soule of ours are made friends and agreed that they may concurre to the Crucifying of Christ When not onely the members of our bodies but the faculties of our soul our will and understanding are bent upon sin when we doe not only sin strongly and hungerly and thirstily which appertain to the body but we sin rationally we finde reasons and those reasons even in Gods long patience why we should sin We sin wittily we invent new sins and we thinke it an ignorant a dull and an unsociable thing not to sin yea we sin wisely and make our sin our way to preferment Then is this word used by the Holy Ghost when he expresses both the vehemence and the waight and the largenesse and the continuance all extensions all dimensions of the sins of Damascus Amos 1.3 Thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Damascus and for foure I will not turne to it because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of Iron So then we consider sin here not as a staine such as Originall sin may be nor as a wound such as every actuall sin may be but as a burden a complication a packing up of many sins in an habituall practise thereof This is that waight that sunke the whole world under water in the first floud and shall presse downe the fire it selfe to consume it a second time It is a waight that stupifies and benums him that beares it August so as that the sinner feeles not the oppression of his owne sins Et quid miserius miscro non miserante seipsum What misery can be greater then when a miserable man hath not sense to commiserate his owne misery Our first errors are out of Levity and S. Augustin hath taught us a proper ballast and waight for that Amor Dei pondus animae The love of God would carry us evenly and steadily if we would embarke that But as in great tradings they come to ballast with Merchandise ballast and fraight is al one so in this habituall sinner all is sin plots and preparations before the act gladnesse and glory in the act sometimes disguises sometimes justifications after the act make up one body one fraight of sin So then Transgression in this place in the naturall signification of the word is a waight a burden and carrying it as the word requires to the greatest extension it is the sin of the whole World And that sinne is forgiven which is the second Terme The Prophet does not say here Forgiven Blessed is that man that hath no transgression for that were to say Blessed is that man that is no man All people all Nations did ever in Nature acknowledge not onely a guiltinesse of sin but some meanes of reconciliation to their Gods in the Remission of sins for they had all some formall and Ceremoniall Sacrifices and Expiations and Lustrations by which they thought their sins to be purged and washed away Whosoever acknowledges a God acknowledges a Remission of sins and whosoever acknowledges a Remission of sins acknowledges a God And therefore in this first place David does not mention God at all he does not say Blessed is he whose transgression the Lord hath forgiven for he presumes it to be an impossible tentation to take hold of any man that there can be any Remission of sin from any other person or by any other meanes then from and by God himselfe and therefore Remission of sins includes an Act of God But what kinde of Act is more particularly designed in the Originall word which is Nasa then our word forgiving reaches to for the word does not onely signifie Auferre but ferre not onely to take away sin by way of pardon but to take the sin upon himselfe and so to beare the sin and the punishment of the sin in his owne person And so Christ is the Lambe of God Qui tollit not onely that takes away Esay 53.4 but that takes upon himselfe the sins of the world Tulit portavit Surely he hath borne our griefes and carried our sorrowes Those griefes those sorrowes which we should he hath borne and carried in his owne person So that as it is all one never to have come in debt and to have discharged the debt So the whole world all mankinde considered in Christ is as innocent as if Adam had never sinned And so this is the first beame of Blessednesse that shines upon my soule That I beleeve that the justice of God is fully satisfied in the death of Christ and that there is enough given and accepted in the treasure of his blood for the Remission of all Transgressions And then the second beame of this Blessednesse is in The covering of sins Now to benefit our selves by this part of Davids Catechisme Sinne. we must as we did before consider the two termes of which this part of this Blessednesse consists sin and covering Sin in this place is not so heavy a word as Transgression was in the former for that was sin in all extensions sinne in all formes all sin of all men of all times of all places the sin of all the world upon the shoulders of the Saviour of the world In this place the word is Catah and by the derivation thereof from Nata which is to Decline to step aside or to be withdrawne and Kut which is filum a thread or a line that which we call sin here signifies Transilire lineam To depart or by any tentation to be withdrawne from the direct duties and the exact straightnesse which is required of us in this world for the attaining of the next So that the word imports sins of infirmity such sins as doe fall upon Gods best servants such sins as rather induce a cofession of our weaknesse and an acknowledgement of our continuall need of pardon for some thing passed and strength against future invasions then that induce any devastation or obduration of the conscience which Transgression in the former branch implied For so this word Catah hath that signification as in many other places there where it is said Iudg â—â— 16 That there were seven hundred left-handed Benjamits which would sling stones at a haires breadth and not faile that is not misse the marke a haires breadth And therefore when this word Catah sin is used in Scripture to expresse any weighty hainous enormous sin it hath an addition Peccatum magnum peccaverunt sayes Moses Exod. 32.31 when the people were become Idolaters These people have sinned a great sin otherwise it signifies such sin as destroyes not the foundation such as in the nature
there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in his spirit As then the Prophet Davids principall purpose in this Text is according to the Interpretation of S. Paul to derive all the Blessednesse of man from God so is it also to put some conditions in man comprehended in this That there be no guile in his spirit For in this repentant sinner that shall be partaker of these degrees of Blessednesse of this Forgiving of this Covering of this Not Imputing there is required Integrapoenitentia A perfect and intire repentance And to the making up of that howsoever the words and termes may have been mis-used and defamed we acknowledge that there belongs a Contrition a Confession and a Satisfaction And all these howsoever our Adversaries slander us with a Doctrine of ease and a Religion of liberty we require with more exactnesse and severity then they doe For for Contrition we doe not we dare not say as some of them That Attrition is sufficient that it is sufficient to have such a sorrow for sin as a naturall sense and fear of torment doth imprint in us without any motion of the feare of God We know no measure of sorrow great enough for the violating of the infinite Majesty of God by our transgression And then for Confession we deny not a necessity to confesse to man There may be many cases of scruple of perplexity where it were an exposing our selves to farther occasions of sin not to confesse to man And in Confession we require a particular detestation of that sin which we confesse which they require not And lastly for Satisfaction we imbrace that Rule Condigna satisfactio malè facta corrigere Our best Satisfaction is to be better in the amendment of our lives And dispositions to particular sins we correct in our bodies by Discipline and Mortifications And we teach that no man hath done truly that part of Repentance which he is bound to doe if he have not given Satisfaction that is Restitution to every person damnified by him If that which we teach for this intirenesse of Repentance be practised in Contrition and Confession and Satisfaction they cannot calumniate our Doctrine nor our practise herein And if it be not practised there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in their spirit that pretend to any part of this Blessednesse Forgiving or Covering or Not imputing without this For he that is sorry for sin onely in Contemplation of hell and not of the joyes of heaven that would not give over his sin though there were no hell rather then he would lose heaven which is that which some of them call Attrition He that confesses his sin but hath no purpose to leave it He that does leave the sin but being growne rich by that sin retaines and enjoyes those riches this man is not intire in his Repentanne but there is guile in his spirit He that is slothfull in his work Prov. 18.9 is brother to him that is a great waster He that makes half-repentances makes none Men run out of their estates as well by a negligence and a not taking account of their Officers as by their own prodigality Our salvation is as much indangered if we call not our conscience to an examination as if we repent not those sins which offer themselves to our knowledge and memory And therefore David places the consummation of his victory in that Psal 18.37 I have pursued mine enemies and overtaken them neither did I turne againe till they were consumed We require a pursuing of the enemy a search for the sin and not to stay till an Officer that is a sicknesse or any other calamity light upon that sin and so bring it before us We require an overtaking of the enemy That we be not weary in the search of our consciences And we require a consuming of the enemy not a weakning only a dislodging a dispossessing of the sin and the profit of the sin All the profit and all the pleasure of all the body of sin for he that is sorry with a godly sorrow he that confesses with a deliberate detestation he that satisfies with a full restitution for all his sins but one Dolus in spiritu There is guile in his spirit he is in no better case Berna◠then if at Sea he should stop all leaks but one and perish by that Si vis solvi solve omnes catenas If thou wilt be discharged cancel all thy Bonds one chain till that be broke holds as fast as ten And therfore suffer your consideration to turn back a little upon this object that there may be Dolus in spiritu Guile in the spirit in our pretence to all those parts of Blessednesse which David recommends to us in this Catechisme In the Forgivenesse of transgrestions In the Covering of sin In the Not imputing of iniquity First then Forgiving in this Forgiving of transgressions which is our Saviour Christs taking away the sins of the world by taking them in the punishment due to them upon himselfe there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in that mans spirit that will so farre abridge the great Volumes of the mercy of God so farre contract his generall propositions as to restrain this salvation not only in the effect but in Gods own purpose to a few a very few soules When Subjects complaine of any Prince that he is too mercifull there is Dolus in spiritu Guile and deceit in this complaint They doe but think him too mercifull to other mens faults for where they need his mercy for their own they never think him too mercifull And which of us doe not need God for all sins If we did not in our selves yet it were a new sin in us not to desire that God should be as mercifull to every other sinner as to our selves As in heaven the joy of every soule shall be my joy so the mercy of God to every soule here is a mercy to my soule By the extension of his mercies to others I argue the application of his mercy to my selfe This contracting and abridging of the mercy of God will end in despaire of our selves that that mercy reaches not to us or if we become confident perchance presumptuous of our selves we shall despaire in the behalfe of other men and think they can receive no mercy And when men come to allow an impossibility of salvation in any they will come to assigne that impossibility nay to assigne those men and pronounce for this and this sin This man cannot be saved There is a sin against the Holy Ghost and to make us afraid of all approaches towards that sin Christ hath told us that that sin is irremissible unpardonable But since that sin includes impenitiblenesse in the way and actuall impenitence in the end we can never pronounce This is that sin or This is that sinner God is his Father that can say Our Father which art in heaven And his God that can say I beleeve in God And
there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in his spirit the craft of the Serpent eyther the poyson of the Serpent in a self-despaire or the sting of the Serpent in an uncharitable prejudging and precondemning of others when a man comes to suspect Gods good purposes or contract Gods generall propositions for this forgiving of transgressions is Christs taking away the sins of all the world by taking all the sins of all men upon himselfe And this Guile this Deceit may also be in the second in the Covering of sins which is the particular application of this generall mercy by his Ordinances in his Church He then that without Guile will have benefit by this Covering must Discover Covering Qui tegi vult peccata detegat is S. Augustines way He that will have his sins covered let him uncover them He that would not have them known let him confesse them He that would have them forgotten let him remember them He that would bury them let him rake them up There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed and hid Mat. 10.26 that shall not be knowne It is not thy sending away a servant thy locking a doore thy blowing out a candle no not though thou blow out and extinguish the spirit as much as thou canst that hides a sin from God but since thou thinkest that thou hast hid it by the secret carriage thereof thou must reveale it by Confession If thou wilt not God will shew thee that he needed not thy Confession He will take knowledge of it to thy condemnation and he will publish it to the knowledge of all the world to thy confusion Tufecisti absconditè sayes God to David by Nathan Thou didst it secretly 2 Sam. 12.12 but I will doe this thing before all Israel and before the Sun Certainly it affects and stings many men more that God hath brought to light their particular sins and offences for which he does punish them then all the punishments that he inflicts upon them for then they cannot lay their ruine upon fortune upon vicissitudes and revolutions and changes of Court upon disaffections of Princes upon supplantations of Rivalls and Concurrents but God cleares all the world beside Perditio tua ex te God declares that the punishment is his Act and the Cause my sin This is Gods way and this he expresses vehemently against Jerusalem Behold I will gather all thy Lovers with whom thou hast taken pleasure Ezch. 16.37 and all them that thou hast loved with all them that thou hast hated and I will discover thy nakednesse to all them Those who loved us for pretended vertues shall see how much they were deceived in us Those that hated us because they were able to looke into us and to discerne our actions shall then say Triumphantly and publiquely to all Did not we tell you what would become of this man It was never likely to be better with him I will strip her naked and set her as in the day that she was borne Hos 2.3 Howsoever thou wert covered with the Covenant and taken into the Visible Church howsoever thou wert clothed by having put on Christ in Baptisme yet If thou sin against me sayes God and hide it from me I am against thee and I will shew the Nations thy nakednesse and the Kingdomes thy shame Nahum 3.5 To come to the covering of thy sins without guile first cover them not from thy self so as that thou canst not see yester-daies sin for to daies sin nor the sins of thy youth for thy present sins Cover not thy extortions with magnifique buildings and sumptuous furniture Dung not the fields that thou hast purchased with the bodies of those miserable wretches whom thou hast oppressed neither straw thine alleys and walks with the dust of Gods Saints whom thy hard dealing hath ground to powder There is but one good way of covering sins from our selves Si bona factamalis superponamus Gregor If we come to a habit of good actions contrary to those evils which we had accustomed our selves to and cover our sins so not that we forget the old but that we see no new There is a good covering of sins from our selves by such new habits and there is a good covering of them from other men for he that sins publiquely scandalously avowedly that teaches and encourages others to sin Esay 3.9 That declares his sin as Sodom and hides it not As in a mirror in a looking glasse that is compassed and set about with a hundred lesser glasses a man shall see his deformities in a hundred places at once so hee that hath sinned thus shall feele his torments in himselfe and in all those whom the not covering of his sins hath occasioned to commit the same sins Cover thy sins then from thy selfe so it be not by obduration cover them from others so it be not by hypocrisie But from God cover them not at all Prov. 28.13 He that covereth his sin shall not prosper but who so confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy Even in confessing without forsaking there is Dolus in spiritus Guile and deceit in that spirit Noluit agnoscere maluit ignoscere S. Augustine makes the case of a customary sinner He was ready to pardon himselfe alwaies without any confession But God shall invert it to his subversion Maluit agnoscere noluit ignoscere God shall manifest his sin and not pardon it Sin hath that pride that it is not content with one garment Adam covered first with fig-leaves then with whole trees He hid himselfe amongst the trees Then hee covered his sin with the woman she provoked him And then with Gods action Quam tu dedisti The Woman whom thou gavest me And this was Adams wardrobe David covers his first sin of uncleannesse with soft stuffe with deceit with falshood with soft perswasions to Vriah to go in to his Wife Then he covers it with rich stuffe with scarlet with the blood of Vriah and of the army of the Lord of Hosts And then he covers it with strong and durable stuffe with an impenitence and with an insensiblenesse a yeare together too long for a King too long for any man to weare such a garment And this was Davids wardrobe But beloved sin is a serpent and he that covers sin does but keepe it warme that it may sting the more fiercely and disperse the venome and malignity thereof the more effectually Adam had patched up an apron to cover him God tooke none of those leaves God wrought not upon his beginnings but he covered him all over with durable skins God saw that Davids severall coverings did rather load him then cover the sin and therefore Transtulit He tooke all away sin and covering for the coverings were as great sins as the radicall sin that was to be covered was yea greater as the armes and boughs of a tree are greater then the roote Now to this extension and growth and largenesse of
service Ecclus. 13.23 to Gods Angels to the Sonne of God Christ Jesus who is your High Priest and wee fellow-workmen with him in your salvation And as long as we can scape that Imputation Some man holdeth his tongue because he hath not to answer That either we know not what to say to a doubtfull conscience for our ignorance Ecclus. 20.6 or are afraid to reprehend a sinne because wee are guilty of that sinne our selves how farre States and Common-wealths may be silent in connivencies and forbearances is not our businesse now but for us the ministers of God Vaenobis si non evangelizemus Woe be unto us if we doe not preach the Gospel and we have no Gospel put into our hands nor into our mouths but a conditionall Gospel and therefore we doe not preach the Gospel except wee preach the Judgements belonging to the breach of those conditions A silence in that in us would fall under this complaint and confession Because I was silent these calamities fell upon me It becomes not us to thinke the worst of David Silentium malum that hee was fallen into the deepest degree of this silence and negligence of his duty to God But it becomes us well to consider that if David a man according to Gods heart had some degrees of this ill silence it is easie for us to have many For for the first degree wee have it and scarce discerne that we have it for our first silence is but an Omission a not doing of our religious duties or an unthankfulnes for Gods particular benefits Exod. 14.14 When Moses sayes to his people The Lord shall fight for you vos tacebit is And you shall hold your peace there Moses meanes you shall not need to speake the Lord will doe it for his owne glory you may be silent There it was a future thing But the Lord hath fought many battels for us He hath fought for our Church against Superstition for our land against Invasion for this City against Infection for every soule here against Presumption or else against Desperation Dominus pugnavit nos silemus The Lord hath fought for us and we never thank him A silence before a not praying hath not alwayes a fault in it because we are often ignorant of our owne necessities and ignorant of the dangers that hang over us but a silence after a benefit evidently received a dumbe Ingratitude is inexcusable There is another ill silence and an unnaturall one for it is a loud silence Pharisai It is a bragging of our good works It is the Pharisees silence when by boasting of his fastings and of his almes he forgot he silenced his sinnes This is the devils best Merchant By this Man the devill gets all for his ill deeds were his before and now by this boasting of them his good works become his too To contract this If we have overcome this inconsideration if we have undertaken some examination of our conscience yet one survey is not enough Psal 19.12 Delicta quis intelligit Who can understand his error How many circumstances in sin vary the very nature of the sin And then of how many coats and shels and super-edifications doth that sin which we thinke a single sin consist When we have passed many scrutinies many inquisitions of the conscience yet there is never roome for a silence we can never get beyond the necessity of that Petition Ab eccultis Lord cleanse me from my secret sins we shall ever be guilty of sins which we shall forget not onely because they are so little but because they are so great That which should be compunction will be consternation and the anguish which out of a naturall tendernesse of conscience we shall have at the first entring into those sins will make us dispute on the sins side and for some present ease and to give our heavy soule breath we will finde excuses for them and at last slide and weare into a customary practise of them and though wee cannot be ignorant that we doe them yet wee shall be ignorant that they are sins but rather make them things indifferent or recreations necessary to maintaine a cheerefulnesse and so to sin on for feare of dispairing in our sins and we shall never be able to shut our mouths against that Petition Aboccultis for though the sin be manifest the various circumstances that aggravate the sin will be secret And properly this was Davids silence Silentium Davidis He confesses his silence to have been Ex dolese spiritu Out of a spirit in which was deceit And David did not hope directly and determinately to deceive God But by endeavouring to hide his sin from other men and from his owne conscience he buried it deeper and deeper but still under more and more sins He silences his Adultery but he smothers it he buries it under a turfe of hypocrisie of dissimulation with Vriah that he might have gone home and covered his sin He silences this hypocrisie but that must have a larger turfe to cover it he buries it under the whole body of Vriah treacherously murdered He silences that murder but no turfe was large enough to cover that but the defeat of the whole army and after all the blaspheming of the name and power of the Lord of Hosts in the ruine of the army That sin which if he would have carried it upward towards God in Confession would have vanished away and evaporated by silencing by suppressing by burying multiplied as Corne buried in the earth multiplies into many Eares And though he might perchance for his farther punishment overcome the remembrance of the first sin he might have forgot the Adultery and feele no paine of that yet still being put to a new and new sin still the last sin that he did to cover the rest could not chuse but appeare to his conscience and call upon him for another sin to cover that Howsoever hee might forget last yeares sins yet yesterdayes sin or last nights sin will hardly be forgotten yet And therefore Hos 14.2 Tollite vobiscum verba sayes the Prophet O Israel returne unto the Lord But how Take unto you words and turne unto the Lord. Take unto you your words words of Confession Take unto you his word the words of his gracious promises breake your silence when God breaks his in the motions of his Spirit and God shall breake off his purpose of inflicting calamities upon you In the meane time Rugitus when David was not come so far but continued silent silent from Confession God suffers not David to enjoy the benefit of his silence though he continue his silence towards God yet God mingles Rugitum cum silentio for all his filence he comes to a voyce of roaring and howling when I was silent my roaring consumed me Theodor. so that here was a great noyse but no musique Now Theodoret calls this Rugitum compunctionis That
or of remporall blessings doe but destroy us But God begun the new world the Christian Church with water too with the Sacrament of Baptisme Pursue his Example begin thy Regeneration with teares If thou have frozen eyes thou hast a frozen heart too If the fires of the Holy Ghost cannot thaw thee in his promises the fire of hell will doe it much lesse which is a fire of obduration not of liquefaction and does not melt a soule to poure it out into a new and better form but hardens it nails it confirmes it in the old Christ bids you take heed Mat. 24.20 that your flight be not in winter That your transgmigration out of this world be not in cold dayes of Indevotion nor in short dayes of a late repentance Take heed too that your flight be not in such a summer as this That your transmigration out of this world be not in such a drought of summer as David speaks of here that the soule have lost her Humidum radicale all her tendernesse or all expressing of that tendernesse in the sense of her transgressions So did David see himselfe so did he more fore-see in others that should farther incurre Gods displeasure then he by Gods good nesse had done this exsiccatian this incineration of body and soule sinne burnes and turnes body and soule to a Cinder but not such a Cinder but that they can and shall both burne againe and againe and for ever And the dangerous effect of this silence and roaring Ossa Naturalia Drut 29.5 David expresses in another phrase too Inveter averunt ossa That his bones were waxen old and consumed for so that word Balah signifies Your Clothes are not waxed old upon you nor your shooes waxed old upon your feet In the Consuming of these Bones as our former Translation hath it the vehemence of the Affliction is presented and in the waxing old the continuance Here the Rule fayls Si longa levis sigravis brevis Calamities that last long are light and if they be heavy they are short both wayes there is some intimation of some ease But God suffers not this sinner to injoy that ease God will lay inough upon his body to kill another in a weeke and yet he shall pant many yeares under it As the way of his Blessing is Apprehendet tritura vindemiam Lâ—vit 26. Your vintage shall reach to your threshing and your threshing to your sowing So in an impenitent sinner his fever shall reach to a frenzy his frenzy to a consumption his consumption to a penury and his penury to a wearying and tyring out of all that are about him and all the sins of his youth shall meet in the anguish of his body But that is not all Ossa Spiricualia Etiam animae membra sunt sayes S. Basil The soule hath her Bones too And those are our best actions Those which if they had been well done might have been called Good works and might have met us in heaven But when a man continues his beloved sinne when he is in doloso spiritu and deals with God in false measures and false waights makes deceitfull Confessions to God his good works shall doe him no good his Bones are consumed not able to beare him upright in the sight of God This David sees in himselfe and foresees in others and he sees the true reason of all this Quia aggravata manus Because the hand of God lyes heavy upon him which is another branch of his Confession It was the safety of the Spouse Aggravata manus Câ—at 2.6 Gregor That his left hand was under her head and that his right hand embraced her And it might well be her safety for Per laevam vita pr aesens per dextram aeterna designatur sayes S. Gregory His left hand denotes this and his right the other life Our happinesse in this our assurance of the next consists in this that we are in the hands of God But here in our Text Gods hand was heavy upon him and that is an action of pushing away and keeping downe And then when we see the great power and the great indignation of God upon the Egyptians Exed 8.19 is expressed but so Digitus Dei the finger of God is in it how heavy an affliction must this of David be esteemed Quando aggravata manus when his whole hand was and was heavy upon him Here then is one lesson for all men and another peculiar to the children of God This appertains to all That when they are in silentio in a seared and stupid forgetting of their sinnes or in Doloso spiritu in half-Confessions half-abjurations half-detestations of their sinnes The hand of God will grow heavy upon them Tell you your children of it sayes the Prophet and let your children tell their children and let their children tell another generation for this belongs to all That which is left of the Palmer worme the Grashopper shall eat and that that he leaves the Canker worme shall eat and the residue of the Canker worme the Caterpiller The hand of God shall grow heavy upon a silent sinner in his body in his health and if he conceive a comfort that for all his sicknesse he is rich and therefore cannot fayle of helpe and attendance there comes another worme and devours that faithlesnesse in persons trusted by him oppressions in persons that have trusted him facility in undertaking for others corrupt Judges heavy adversaries tempests and Pirats at Sea unseasonable or ill Markets at land costly and expensive ambitions at Court one worme or other shall devoure his riches that he eased himselfe upon If he take up another Comfort that though health and wealth decay though he be poore and weake yet he hath learning and philosophy and morall constancy and he can content himselfe with himselfe he can make his study a Court and a few Books shall supply to him the society and the conversation of many friends there is another worme to devoure this too the hand of divine Justice shall grow heavy upon him in a sense of an unprofitable retirednesse in a disconsolate melancholy and at last in a stupidity tending to desperation This belongs to all to all Non-confitents That thinke not of confessing their sinnes at all To all Semi-confitents that confesse them to halfs without purpose of amendment Aggravabitur manus The hand of God will grow heavy upon them every way and stop every issue every posterne every saly every means of escape But that which is peculiar to the Children of God is That when the hand of God is upon them they shall know it to be the hand of God and take hold even of that oppressing hand and not let it goe till they have received a Blessing from it that is raysed themselves even by that heavy and oppressing hand of his even in that affliction Psal 82. Psal 77. Habak 3.16 That when God shall fill their faces with shame yet they
why then doest thou set me up as a marke to shoot at But Iob never hopes for ease in any such allegation Thou hast made my soule a Cisterne and then powred tentations into it Thou hast enfeebled it with denying it thy Grace and then put a giant a necessitie of sinning upon it My sins are mine own The Sun is no cause of the shadow my body casts nor God of the sins I commit David confesses his sinnes that is he confesses them to be His And then he confesses His He meddles not with those that are other mens The Magistrate and the Minister are bound to consider the sins of others Non alienae for their sins become Qaodammodo nostra in some sort ours if we doe not reprove if the Magistrate doe not correct those sins All men are bound to confesse and lament the sins of the people It was then when Daniel was in that exercise of his Devotion Confessing his sinne Dan. 9.12 and the sinne of his people that he received that comfort from the Angel Gabriel And yet even then the first thing that fell under his Confession was his own sin My sin And then The sinne of my people When Iosephs brethren came to a sense of that sin in having sold him none of them transfers the sin from himselfe neither doth any of them discharge any of the rest of that sin Gen. 42.21 They all take all They said to one another sayes that Text we all we are verily guilty and therefore is this distresse come upon us upon us all Nationall calamities are induced by generall sins and where they fall we cannot so charge the Laity as to free the Clergy nor so charge the people as to free the Magistrate But as great summes are raysed by little personall Contributions so a little true sorrow from every soule would make a great sacrifice to God and a few teares from every eye a deeper and a safer Sea about this Iland then that that doth wall it Let us therefore never say that it is Aliena ambitio The immoderate ambition of a pretending Monarch that endangers us That it is Aliena perfidia The falshood of perfidious neighbours that hath disappointed us That it is Aliena fortuna The growth of others who have shot up under our shelter that may overtop us They are Peccata nostra our own pride our own wantonnesse our own drunkennesse that makes God shut and close his hand towards us withdraw his former blessings from us and then strike us with that shut and closed and heavy hand and multiply calamities upon us What a Parliament meets at this houre in this Kingdome How many such Committees as this how many such Congregations stand as we doe here in the presence of God at this houre And what a Subsidy should this State receive and what a sacrifice should God receive if every particular man would but depart with his own beloved sin We dispute what is our own as though we would but know what to give Alas our sins are our own let us give them Our sins are our own that we confesse And we confesse them according to Davids Method Domino to the Lord I will confesse my sinnes to the Lord. After he had deliberated Domino peecavi and resolved upon his course what he would doe he never stayed upon the person to whom His way being Confession he stayed not long in seeking his ghostly Father his Confessor Confitebor Domino And first Peccata Domino That his sins were sins against the Lord. For as every sin is a violation of a Law so every violation of a Law reflects upon the Law-maker It is the same offence to coyne a penny and a piece The same to counterfait the seale of a Subpoena as of a Pardon The second Table was writ by the hand of God as well as the first And the Majesty of God as he is the Law-giver is wounded in an adultery and a theft as well as in an Idolatry or a blasphemy It is not inough to consider the deformity and the foulnesse of an Action so as that an honest man would not have done it but so as it violates a law of God and his Majesty in that law The shame of men is one bridle that is cast upon us It is a morall obduration and in the suburbs next doore to a spirituall obduration to be Voyce-proofe Censure-proofe not to be afraid nor ashamed what the world sayes He that relyes upon his Plaudo domi Though the world hisse I give my selfe a Plaudite at home I have him at my Table and her in my bed whom I would have and I care not for rumor he that rests in such a Plaudite prepares for a Tragedy a Tragedy in the Amphitheater the double Theater this world and the next too Even the shame of the world should be one one bridle but the strongest is the other Peccata Domino To consider that every sin is a violation of the Majesty of God And then Confitebor Domino sayes David I will confesse my sinnes to the Lord Domino confitebor sinnes are not confessed if they be not confessed to him and if they be confessed to him in case of necessitie it will suffice though they be confessed to no other Indeed a confession is directed upon God though it be made to his Minister If God had appointed his Angels or his Saints to absolve me as he hath his Ministers I would confesse to them Ioshuah tooke not the jurisdiction out of Gods hands when he said to Achan Josh 7.19 Give glory unto the God of Israel in making thy confession to him And tell me now what thou hast done and hide it not from me Levit. 14.2 The law of the Leper is That he shall be brought unto the Priest Men come not willingly to this manifestation of themselves nor are they to be brought in chains as they doe in the Roman Church by a necessitie of an exact enumeration of all their sins But to be led with that sweetnesse with which our Church proceeds in appointing sicke persons if they seele their consciences troubled with any weighty matter to make a speciall confession and to receive absolution at the hands of the Priest And then to be remembred that every comming to the Communion is as serious a thing as our transmigration out of this world and we should doe as much here for the settling of our Conscience as upon our death-bed And to be remembred also that none of all the Reformed Churches have forbidden Confession though some practise it lesse then others If I submit a cause to the Arbitrement of any man to end it secundùm voluntatem sayes the Law How he will yet still Arbitrium est arbitrium boni viri his will must be regulated by the rules of common honesty and generall equity So when we lead men to this holy ease of discharging their heavy spirits by such private Confessions
lust to the mule both because the mule is Carne virgo Hieron but Mente impudicus which is one high degree of lust to have a lustfull desire in an impotent body And then he is engendred by unnaturall mixture which is another high degree of the same sin And these two vices we take to be presented here as the two principall enemies the two chiefe corrupters of mankinde pride to be the principall spirituall sin and lust the principall that works upon the body To avoid both consider we both in both these beasts It is not much controverted in the Schooles Superbia but that the first sin of the Angels was Pride But because as we said before the danger of man is more in sinking down then in climbing up in dejecting then in raising himselfe we must therefore remember that it is not pride August to desire to be better Angeli quaesiverunt id ad quod pervenissent si stetissent The Angels sin was pride but their pride consisted not in aspiring to the best degrees that their nature was capable of but in this that they would come to that state by other meanes then were ordained for it It could not possibly fall within so pure and cleare understandings as the Angels were to think that they could be God that God could be multiplied That they who knew themselves to be but new made could think not only that they were not made but that they made all things else To think that they were God is impossible this could not fall into them though they would be Similes Altissimo Like the most High But this was their pride and in this they would be like the most High That whereas God subsisted in his Essence of himselfe for those degrees of perfection which appertained to them they would have them of themselves They would stand in their perfection without any turning towards God without any farther assistance from him by themselves and not by meanes ordained for them This is the pride that is forbidden man not that he think well of himselfe In genere suo That hee value aright the dignity of his nature in the Creation thereof according to the Image of God and the infinite improvement that that nature received in being assumed by the Son of God This is not pride but not to acknowledge that all this dignity in nature and all that it conduces to that is grace here and glory hereafter is not onely infused by God at first but sustained by God still and that nothing in the beginning or way or end is of our selves this is pride Man may and must think that God hath given him the Subjicite and Dominamini A Majesticall Character even in his person to subdue and governe all the creatures in the world That he hath given him a nature already above all other creatures and a nature capable of a better then his owne is yet 2 Pet. 1.4 1 John 3.9 Acts 17.28 1 Cor. 6.17 Dan. 3.17 for By his precious promises we are made partakers of the Divine nature We are made Semen Dei The seed of God borne of God Genus Dei The off-spring of God Idem Spiritus cum Domino The same Spirit with the Lord He the same flesh with us and we the same spirit with him In Gods servants to have said to Nebuchadnezzar Our God is able to deliver us and he will deliver us but if he doe not yet we will not serve thy Gods In the Martyrs of the Primitive Church to have contemned torments and tormentors with personall scornes and affronts In all calamities and adversities of this life to rely upon that assurance I have a better substance in me then any man can hurt I have a better inheritance prepared for me then any man can take from me I am called to Triumph and I goe to receive a Crown of Immortality these high contemplations of Kingdomes and Triumphs and Crowns are not pride To know a better state and desire it is not pride for pride is onely in taking wrong wayes to it So that to think we can come to this by our own strength without Gods inward working a beliefe or to think that we can believe out of Plato where we may find a God but without a Christ or come to be good men out of Plutarch or Seneca without a Church and Sacraments to pursue the truth it selfe by any other way then he hath laid open to us this is pride and the pride of the Angels Now there is also a pride which is the Horses pride conversant upon earthly things To desire Riches and Honour and Preferment in this world is not pride for they have all good uses in Gods service but to desire these by corrupt meanes or to ill ends to get them by supplantation of others or for oppression of others this is pride and a Bestiall pride And this proud man is elegantly expressed in the Horse Job 39.19 The horse rejoyceth in his strength he goes forth to meet the armed man he mocks at feare he turnes upon the sword and he swallowes the ground The River is mine sayes Pharaoh Ezek. 29.3 and I have made it for my sefl They take all and they mistake all That which is but lent them for use they think theirs The River is mine That which God gave them they think of their own getting I made it And that which God placed upon them as his Stewards for the good of others they appropriate to themselves I have made it for my self But when time is Job 39.21 Zech. 12.4 Job 39.27 God mounteth on high and he mocks the horse and the rider In that day I will smite every horse with astonishment and his rider with madnesse The horse beleeveth not that it is the sound of the Trumpet When the Trumpet sounds to us in our last Bell for the last Bell that carries us out of this world and the Trumpet that cals us to the next is all one voyce to us for we heare nothing between the worldly man shall not beleeve that it is the sound of the Trumpet he shall not know it not take knowledge of it but passe away unsensible of his own condition So then is Pride well represented in the Horse and so is the other Lust Mulus licentiousnesse in the Mule For besides that reason of assimilation that it desires and cannot and that reason that it presents unnaturall and promiscuous lust for this reason is that vice well represented in that Beast because it is so apt to beare any burdens For certainly no man is so inclinable to submit himselfe to any burden of labour of danger of cost of dishonour of law of sicknesse as the licentious man is He refuses none to come to his ends Neither is there any tree so loaded with boughs any one sin that hath so many branches so many species as this Shedding of blood we can limit in murder and manslaughter
and a few more and other sins in as few names In this sin of lust the sexe the quality the distance the manner and a great many other circumstances create new names to the sin and make it a sin of another kinde And as the sin is a Mule to beare all these loads so the sinner in this kind is so too and as we finde an example in the Nephew of a Pope delights to take as many loads of this sin upon him as he could to vary and to multiply the kindes of this sin in one act He would not satisfie his lust by a fornication or adultery or incest these were vulgar but upon his own sex and that not upon an ordinary person but in their account upon a Prince And he a spirituall Prince A Cardinall And all this not by solicitation but by force for thus he compiled his sins He ravished a Cardinall This is the sin in which men pack up as much sin as they can and as though it were a shame to have too little they belie their own pack they bragge of sins in this kinde which they never did as S. Augustine with a holy and penitent ingenuity confesses of himselfe This sin then though one great mischiefe in it be that for the most part it destroyes two together the Devill will have his creatures come to his Arke by couples too two and two together yet this sin we are able to commit without a companion upon our own bodies yea without bodies in the weaknesse of our bodies our mindes can sin this sin This which the Wise-man cals a pit The mouth of a strange woman is as a deep pit Prov. 22.14 he with whom the Lord is angry shall fall therein And therefore he that pursues that sin is called to a double sad consideration both that he angers the Lord in committing that sinne then And that the Lord was angry with him before for some other sinne and for a punishment of that former sin God suffered him to fall into this And it is truely a fearefull condition when God punishes sin by sin other corrections bring us to a peace with God He will not be angry for ever he will not punish twice when hee hath punished a sin he hath done But when he punishes sin by sinne wee are not thereby the nearer to a peace or reconciliation by that punishment for still there is a new sin that continues us in his displeasure Punish me O Lord with all thy scourges with poverty with sicknesse with dishonour with losse of parents and children but with that rod of wyre with that scorpion to punish sin with sinne Lord scourge me not for then how shall I enter into thy rest And this is the condition of this sinne for He with whom the Lord is angry shall fall into it 2 Sam. 12. And when he is fallen he shall not understand his state but thinke himselfe well For Nathan presents Davids sinne to him in a parable of a feast of an entertainment of a stranger He tastes no sowrnesse no bitternesse in it not because there is none but because a carkasse a man already slain cannot feele a new wound A man dead in the habit of a sinne hath no sense of it This sinne of which S. Augustin who had beene overcome by it and was afraid that his case was a common case saith in the person of all Continua pugna victoria rara In a defensive warre where we are put to a continuall resistance it is hard comming to a victory what hope then where there is no resistance no defence but a spontaneous and voluntary opening our selves to all provocations yea provoking of provocations by high diet a tempting of tentations by exposing our selves to dangerous company Gen. 19.10 when as the Angels who were safe enough in themselves yet withdrew themselves from the uncleannesse of the Sodomits This sinne will not be overcome but by a league Iob 31.1 Iobs league Pepigi foedus I have made a covenant with mine eyes why then should I think upon a maid Since I have bound my senses why should my mind be at liberty to sinne This league should bind both I have taken a promise of mine eyes that they will not betray me by wanton glaunces by carying me to dangerous objects why should not I keepe covnant with them why should my thoughts be scattered upon such tentations The league must be kept on both parts the mind and the senses wee must not entertain tentations from without we must not create them within Eloquia Domini casta The words of the Lord are chaste words Psal 12.7 pure words and so must all the talke and conversation of him that loves God be And then Castificate animas vestras you must see that you keepe your minds pure and chaste 1 Pet. 1.22 If we have not both chaste minds and chast bodies we shall have neither And then follows the excommunication S. Augustine saith That according to most probability there were no Mules in the Arke but undisputably there are no Mules in the Church in the triumphant Church none of our metaphoricall Mules there 1 Cor. 6.8 The Apostle hath put it beyond a Problem Bee not deceived neither fornicators nor adulterers nor effeminate persons shall inherit the Kingdome of heaven there is the fearefull excommunication And therefore Nolite fieri sicut Be not made like the Horse or the Mule in pride or wantonnesse especially Quia non Intellectus because then you lose your understanding and so become absolutely irrecoverable and leave God nothing to worke upon For the understanding of man is the field which God sowes and the tree in which he engraffes faith it selfe and therefore take heed of such a descent as induces the losse of the understanding and that is the case here and our next consideration Non Intellectus They have no understanding This faculty of the understanding in man is not alwayes well understood by men Intellectus The whole Psalme is a Psalme to rectifie the understanding It is in the title thereof Davids Instruction ver 8. And that office God undertakes in the verse before our Text I will instruct thee which is in some Latin Copies Faciam te intelligere I will make thee understand and in others the vulgat Intellectum tibi dabo I will give thee understanding Now though this Instruction and this Vnderstanding which is intended in the Title and specified in the former verse bee not the same Vnderstanding as this in our Text for this is but of that naturall faculty of man Ioh. 1.9 wherewith God enlightneth every man that commeth into the world till hee make himselfe like the horse or the mule the other is God superedification upon this those other super-naturall Graces which God produces out of the understanding or infuses into the understanding yet this Vnderstanding in our Text though it be but the naturall faculty is
everlasting they have begun already here that which they shall never end there Deeis qui voluntatem Dei facere nolunt fit voluntas Dei It is Panis quotidianus A loafe of that bread which is to be distributed every day A saying of S. Augustine worthy to be repeated in every Sermon That upon them who will not doe the will of God the will of God is done And God executes his righteous sentence upon them and he executes his justice upon others also by giving them instructions from the impatience and obduration of these Fata fugiendo in fata ruant They chide and they wrangle they wrastle and they exclaime at their miseries in an intemperate sorrow and this intemperate sorrow is the heaviest part of the judgement of God upon them they are too sensible of their afflictions that is too tender too impatient and yet altogether unsensible without all sense of Gods purpose in those afflictions In hell it self they know that they are in hell And yet in this world there are Dolores inferni Sorrowes that have begun hell here and they that are under them are stupified and devested of all sense of them That sense that is bodily and carnall they abound in They feele them impatiently but of all spirituall sense they are absolutely destitute They understand not them nor Gods purpose in them at all yet they are Many and Great and Eternall For by all these heavy talents doth the Holy Ghost waigh them in these words They are Many Many Now the pride of the wicked is to conceale their sorrowes that God might receive no glory by the discovery of them And therefore if we should goe about to number their sorrowes they would have their victory still and still say to themselves yet for all his cunning he hath mist they would ever have some bosome-sorrowes which we could not light upon Yet we shall not easily misse nor leave out any if we remember those men that even this false and imaginary joy which they take in concealing their forrow and affliction is a new affliction a new cause of sorrow We shall make up the number apace if we remember these men that all their new sins and all their new shifts to put away their sorrowes are sorrowfull things and miserable comforters if their conscience doe present all their sins the number growes great And if their own conscience have forgotten them if God forget nothing that they have thought or said or done in all their lives are not their occasions of sorrow the more for their forgetting the more for Gods remembring Indgements are prepared for the scorners sayes Solomon Prov. 19.29 God foresaw their wickednesse from before all times and even then set himselfe on work To prepare judgements for them And as they are Prepared before so affliction followeth sinners Prov. 13.21 sayes the same Wise King It followes them and it knowes how to overtake them eyther by the sword of the Magistrate or by that which is nearer them Diseases in their owne bodies accelerated and complicated by their sins And then as affliction is Prepared and Followes and Overtakes so sayes that wise King still There shall be no end of plagues to the evill man We know the beginning of their plagues Prov. 24.20 they are Prepared in Gods Decree as soone as God saw their sins we know their continuance they shall Follow and they shall Overtake Their end we doe not know we cannot know for they have none Thus they are Many And if we consider farther the manifold Topiques and places from which the sorrowes of the wicked arise That every inch of their ground is overgrown with that venomous weed that every place and every part of time and every person buddes out a particular occasion of sorrow to him that he can come into no chamber but he remembers In such a place as this I finned thus That he cannot heare a Clock strike but he remembers At this hour I sinned thus That he cannot converse with few persons but he remembers With such a person I sinned thus And if he dare goe no farther then to himselfe he can look scarcely upon any limb of his body but in that he sees some infirmity or some deformity that he imputes to some sin and must say By this sin this is thus When he can open the Bible in no place but if he meet a judgement he must say Vindicta mihi This vengeance belongs to me and if he meet a mercy he must say Quid mihi What have I to doe to take this mercy into my mouth In this deluge of occasions of sorrow I must not say with God to Abraham Look up to heaven and number the Starres for this man cannot look up to heaven but I must say Continue thy dejected look and look downe to the earth thy earth and number the graines of dust there and the sorrowes of the wicked are more then they Many are the sorrowes And as the word as naturally denotes Great Great sorrowes are upon the wicked That Pill will choak one man which will slide down with another easily Great and work well That sorrow that affliction would strangle the wicked which would purge and recover the godly The coare of Adams apple is still in their throat which the blood of the Messias hath washt away in the righteous Adams disobedience works in them still and therefore Gods Physick the affliction cannot work So they are great to them as Cains punishment was to him greater then he could beare because he could not ease himselfe upon the consideration of Gods purpose in laying that punishment upon him But it is not onely their indisposition and impatience that makes their sorrowes and afflictions great They are truly so in themselves as the Holy Ghost expresses it Job 31.3 Is not destruction to the wicked and strange punishment to the workers of iniquity A punishment which we cannot tell how to measure how to waigh how to call A strange punishment Greater then former examples have presented There the greatnesse is exprest in the Word And in Esay it is exprest in the action When the scourge shall run over you Esay 28.18 and passe thorow you Eritis in conculcationem You shall be trodden to dust Which is as the Prophet cals it there Flagellum inundans An affliction that overflowes and surrounds all as a deluge a flood that shall wash away from thee even the water of thy Baptisme and all the power of that And wash away from thee the blood of thy Saviour and all his offers of grace to worthy receivers A flood that shall carry away the Ark it selfe out of thy sight and leave thee no apprehension of reparation by Gods institution in his Church A flood that shall dissolve and wash thee thy selfe into water Thy sorrowes shall scatter thee into drops into teares upon a carnall sense of thy torment And into drops into incoherent doubts and
perplexities and scruples in understanding and conscience and into desperation at last And this is the Greatnesse Solutis doloribus inferni In another sense then David speaks that of Christ There it is that the sorrowes of hell were loosed that is were slacked dissolved by him But here it is that the sorrowes of hell are loosed that is let loose upon thee and when thou shalt heare Christ say from the Crosse Behold and see if ever there were any sorrow like my sorrow thou shalt finde thy sorrow like his in the Greatnesse and nothing like his in the Goodnesse Christ bore that sorrow that every man might rejoyce and thou wouldest be the more sorry if every man had not as much cause of desperate sorrow as thou hast Many and great are the sorowes of the wicked and then eternall too which is more then intimated in that the Originall hath neither of those particles of supplement which are in our Translations no such shall come no such shall be nor no shall at all but onely Many sorrowes to the wicked Many and great now more and greater hereafter All for ever if they amend not It is not Eternall They have had sorrowes but they are overblown nor that they have them but patience shall outweare them nor that they shall have them but they have a breathing time to gather strength before hand But as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be Sorrowes upon them and upon them for ever Whatsoever any man conceives for ease in this case Esay 33.11 it is a false conception You shall conceive chaffe and bring forth stubble And this stubble is your vaine hope of a determination of this sorrow But the wicked shall not be able to lodge such a hope though this hope if they could apprehend it would be but an aggravating of their sorrowes in the end It is eternall no determination of time afforded to it Ibid. ver 14. For They shall bee as the burning of lime and as thornes cut up shall they bee burnt in the fire Who amongst us shall dwell with the devouring fire Who amongst us shall dwell with that everlasting burning It is a devouring fire and yet it is an everlasting burning The Prophet asks Who can dwell there In that intensenesse who can last Deut. 32.22 They that must and that is All the wicked Fire is kindled in my wrath saith God Yet may not teares quench it Teares might if they could be had But It shall burne to the bottome of hell saith God there And Dives that could not procure a drop of water to coole his tongue there can much lesse procure a repentant teare in that place There as S. Iohn speakes Revel 18.8 Plagues shall come in one day Death and Sorrow and Famine But it is in a long day Short for the suddennesse of comming for that is come already which for any thing we know may come this minute before we be at an end of this point or at a period of this sentence So it is sudden in comming but long for the enduring For it is that day Ibid. when They shall be burnt with fire for strong is the Lord God that will condemne them That is argument enough of the vehemence of that fire that the Lord God who is called the strong God makes it a Master-piece of his strength to make that fire Art thou able to dispute out this Fire and to prove that there can be no reall no materiall fire in Hell after the dissolution of all materiall things created If thou be not able to argue away the immortality of thine owne soule but that that soule must last nor to argue away the eternity of God himselfe but that that must last thou hast but little ease in making shift to give a figurative interpretation to that fire and to say It may be a torment but it cannot be a fire since it must be an everlasting torment nor to give a figurative signification to the Worme and to say It may bee a paine a remorse but it can bee no worme after the generall dissolution since that Conscience in which that remorse and anguish shall ever live must live ever If there bee a figure in the names and words of Fire and Wormes there is an indisputable reality in the sorrow in the torment and in the manifoldnesse and in the weightinesse and in the everlastingnesse thereof For in the inchoation of these sorrowes in this life and in the consummation of them in the life to come The sorrowes of the wicked are many and great and eternall This then is the portion prepared here The Person Psal 50.18 Thy portion was with the Adulterers as our last Translators have exprest that place in their Margin Thy portion was with them here in this world and thy portion shall be with them for ever for God expresses all kind of wickednesse carnall and spirituall in that name of Adultery throughout the body of the Scriptures And therefore when you meet judgements denounced against Adulterers never thinke that those judgements concerne not you if you have forborne that one sin and yet even that sinne may have beene committed in a looke in a letter in a word in a wish in a dreame when S. Iames saith Yee Adulterers and Adulteresses Iam. 4 4. know you not this Thinke not that S. Iames cals not upon you if you be but Covetous but Ambitious but Superstitious and no Adulteters for every aversion from the Creatour every converting to the creature is Adultery Even in nature you are made for that marriage In the covenant of God you were betroathed and affianced for that marriage In the Sacrament of Baptisme you were actually personally married and in the other Sacrament there is a consummation of that marriage And every departing from that contract which you made with God at your Baptisme and renewed at your receiving the other Sacrament is an Adultery Thus a Hermite is a husband and a Nun a wife and thus both may bee adulterers though in a Wildernesse though in a Cloyster August Si deseris Deum qui te fecit amas illa quae fecit adultera es If thou turne from God that made thee to those things that he made this is an adultery Therefore Christ calls them An evill and adulterous generation because they sought a signe Matt. 12.39 because they turned upon other wayes of satisfaction then he had ordained for them that was adultery And as David saith Thy portion was with adulterers here so as theirs is said to be Revel 21.8 Thy portion also shall be in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death Thou art this person if thou be this adulterer which is intended in this emphaticall word The wicked So then as these Sorrowes in our Text are an inchoative Hell The wicked they are such wounds as induce such pangs as precede
even the second death sorrowes that flow into desperation and impenitiblenesse and impenitiblenesse is hell As the torment is an inchoative hell so is the person the Wicked here an inchoated Devill It is S. Chrysostoms spontaneus daemon and voluntarius daemon He that is a devill to himselfe that could be and would be ambitious in a Spittle licentious in a Wildernesse voluptuous in a Famine and abound with tentations in himselfe though there were no devill Most of the names of the devill in the Scripture denote some action of his upon us As he is called The Prince of the power of the Ayre there he is called so because as it is added there Ephes 2.2 Hee works in the children of disobedience As the ayre works upon our bodies this Prince of the Ayre works upon our minds how works he hee deceives Revel 12.9 Hee deceived the whole world saith S. Iohn from this infinuation hee hath those other names there the great Dragon and the old Serpent When hee hath crept in as a Serpent then hee growes A roaring Lyon He professes his power he disguises not a tentation then he growes Satan an Adversary an Enemy he opposes all good endeavors in us then he growes Diabolus an Accuser an accuser to God an accuser to our owne conscience and when he hath made our sinne as great as it can be in our practise when by age or sicknesse or poverty he cannot multiply our sinnes for the present then by his multiplying glasse he multiplies the sins of our former times and presents them greater then even the mercies of God or the merits of Christ Jesus So he growes in mischievous names according to his mischievous actions and practises upon us but then out of himselfe arises the most vehement and the most collective name that is given him in all the Scriptures 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that with the emphaticall article The wicked one One that is all wickednesse one that is the wickednesse of all One who if he had no object to direct his wickednesse upon no subject to exercise his wickednesse in If God should proclaime so generall a Pardon That all men All should effectually be saved and so all hope to have enlarged his Kingdome be withdrawne yet would still be as wicked and as opposite to God as he is So then by this character of Multiplicity Plurality this emphaticall note of the wicked in our Text the person whose portion this sorrow is this sorrow which is a brand of Hell at least a match by which Hell fire it selfe is kindled is not hee that is an Adulterer or that is a Murtherer not hee that hath fallen into some particular sinnes though great and continued those great sinnes in habits though long for David fell so and yet found a holy sorrow a medicinall sorrow but it is the wicked he that runnes headlong into all wayes of wickednesse and usque ad finem precludes or neglects all wayes of recovery That is glad of a tentation and afraid of a Sermon that is dry wood and tinder to Satans fire if he doe but touch him and is ashes it selfe to Gods Spirit if he blow upon him That from a love of sinne at first because it is pleasing comes at last to a love of sinne because it is sinne because it is liberty because it is a deliverance of himselfe from the bondage as he thinks it of the law of God and from the remorse and anguish of considering sinne too particularly This is the person in whom at first by this emphaticall note the wicked we designe a Plurality as we called it that is a Complicated a Multiplied a Compact sinner a Body rather a Carkasse of Many of All sins all that have fallen within his reach And then in the word we noted also a Singularity That upon such a sinner upon every such sinner these Many these Great these Eternall sorrowes shall fall and tarry As in the former Circumstance Singularity we noted that it was the They that aggravated it it was not an An an Adulterer an Ambitious man but a The The wicked whom God enwrapped in this irrecoverable this undeterminable sorrow so here it is not a This or That This wicked or that wicked man but The wicked every wicked man is surrounded with this sorrow He can propose no comfort in a decimation as in popular Rebellions where nine may be spared and the tenth man hanged No nor so much hope as to have nine hanged and the tenth spared He is not in Sodoms case That a few righteous might have saved the wicked Ezek. 14.20 But he feeles a necessity of applying to himselfe that If Noah Daniel and Iob were in the midst of them as I live saith the Lord God they should deliver neither Son August nor Daughter Iussisti Domine sic est ut poena sit sibi omnis inordinatus animus It is thy pleasure O God and thy pleasure shall be infallibly accomplished that every wicked person should be his owne Executioner He is Spontaneus Daemon as S. Chrysostome speaks an In-mate an in-nate Devill a bosome devill a selfe-Devill That as he could be a tempter to himselfe though there were no Devill so he could be an Executioner to himselfe though there were no Satan and a Hell to himselfe though there were no other Torment Sometimes he staies not the Assises but prevents the hand of Justice he destroies himselfe before his time But when he staies he is evermore condemned at the Assises Let him sleepe out as much of the morning as securelyas he can embellish and adorne himselfe as gloriously as he can dine as largely and as delicately as he can weare out as much of the afternoone in conversation in Comedies in pleasure as hee can sup with as much distension and inducement of drousinesse as he can that he may scape all remorse by falling asleepe quickly and fall asleepe with as much discourse and musicke and advantage as he can he hath a conscience that will survive and overwatch all the company he hath a sorrow that shall joyne issue with him when he is alone and both God and the devill who doe not meet willingly shall meet in his case and be in league and be one the sorrowes side against him The anger of God and the malice of the devill shall concurre with his sorrow to his farther vexation No one wicked person by any diversion or cunning shall avoid this sorrow for it is in the midst and in the end of all his forced contentments Prov. 14.13 Even in laughing the heart is sorrowfull and the end of that mirth is heavinesse The person is The wicked Communication Every wicked person He hath no reliefe in a decimation that some may scape Nor reliefe in the communication of the torment It is no ease to him that so many beare a part with him In some afflictions in the world men lay hold
set in a Cloud of anger upon him The Martyrs that abounded with this Trust in God and this Righteousnesse and this Vprightnesse of heart abounded with these afflictions too They that bestowed themselves upon God and his Church 2 Cor. 12.15 as the Apostle expresses it had these sorrowes plentifully bestowed upon themselves And to passe from them to the Author of their constancy Christ himselfe He is Vir dolorum A man of sorrowes Esay 53.3 and acquainted with Griefe And now Whom he loveth he chastneth and he scourgeth every one that he receiveth Flagellat omnem He scourgeth every one Vis audire quem omneem August Will you know how generall and yet how particular this is Vnicus sine peccato non tamen sine flagello There was one Man without any sin but even that Man was not without punishment Christ Jesus himselfe So generall is correction as that in this case and in this sense it is more generall then sin it selfe It is not then that the godly shall no afflictions no sorrowes But mutant fortitudinem They that waite upon the Lord shall renue their strength Esay 40.31 say our Translators in the body of their Translation but in the Margin and neerer to the Originall They shall change their strength They that have been strong in sinning that have sinned with a strong hand when they feele a judgement upon them and finde that it is Gods hand and Gods hand for their sinnes they faint not they lose not their strength but mutant fortitudinem They change their strength they grow as strong in suffering as they were in sinning and invest the Prophets resolution I will beare the indignation of the Lord Mic. 7.9 Ezek. 2.10 because I have sinned against him The Booke which God gave Ezekiel to eate was written within and without with Lamentations and Mournings and Woes but when he eate it he found it in his mouth as sweet as honey When God offers the Booke which is the Register of our sinnes to our Consciences or the Decree of his Judgements to our understanding or to our sense it is writ in gall and wormwood and in the bitternesse of sorrow but if we can bring it to the first concoction the first digestion to that mastication that rumination which is the consideration of Gods purpose upon us in that Judgement we shall change our taste for we shall Taste and See Quam suavis Dominus Psal 34.9 How good and how sweet the Lord is for even this Judgement is Mercy Think not then thy valour sufficiently tried if thou canst take it patiently to have mist a fute long pursued or failed of a Preferment long expected no not if thou have stood in a haile of bullets without winking or sate the searching of a wound without starting but Muta fortitudinem Change thy valour and when thou commest to beare great crosses proportionable to thy great sins with a spirituall courage acknowledge that courage to be the mercy of God and not thine owne morall constancy God loves his owne example to doe as he hath done Omni quaestione severius à te interrogari It was said to a Romane Emperour who examined with Wisedome and Majesty too It is truer of God that it is more fearfull then any rack or torture when he comes to search and sift a conscience Yet God did come to that office upon Adam before he would condemne him He came to a worse place then Paradise hee came to Sodome to rack and torture them with that confession that there could not be found ten Righteous men amongst them But yet this he did before he condemned them God will visit thee in this wrack in this furnace in these trialls before he proceed to thy condemnation But when God doth so beleeve thou David in his Indulgence to his Son to have been a Type of Gods disposition to thy soule When he sent out his Army against Absalom he stood in the gate to survey the Muster and to every one of the Commanders Ioab and the rest still he said Servate mihi puerum Absalom Intreat the young man Absalom well for my sake The Lord of Hosts may send forth his Army against thee Sicknesse Losse Shame Paine Banishment Imprisonment which are all swords of his but he sayes to them all Servate mihi Absalom That soule that I have bought with my blood preserve for me Fight but against mine enemies his Pride his Security his Presumption but Servate Absalom Preserve his soule unshaken and un-offended God hath said it before Jer. 29.11 and he sayes againe to thee in all thy afflictions I know the thoughts that I think towards you the thoughts of peace and not of evill to give you an expected end God said this when a False Prophet had promised them deliverance in two yeares God prorogues the time he would doe it but he would not doe it under threescore and ten yeares Limit not God in his time nor in his meanes The mercy consists in relieving thee so as that thy soule suffer not though thou doe And if that be preserved this mercy is a Compassing mercy which is also another Circumstance in this Branch The Devill had Compast all the Earth Compasse and he was angry that God had Compast Iob. He sayes in indignation Job 1.9 Hast thou not made a hedge about him and about his house and about all that he hath on every side God did so for Iob and he will doe so for thee He redeemeth thy life from the grave Psal 103.4 and crowneth thee with mercy and compassion This is the Compassing in heaven when we come to be crowned there But there is a Compassing here Rom 8 28. and an empailing of Gods children in S. Pauls Co-operantur When all things work together for good to them that love God When Prosperity and Adversity Honour and Disgrace Profit and Losse the Lords Giving and the Lords Taking doe all concurre to the making up of this Paile that must Compasse us When we acknowledge that there must be nailes in the Paile as well as stakes there must be thornes in the hedge as well as fruit trees Crosses as well as Blessings when we leere not over the Paile neither into the Common that is to the Gentiles and Nations and begin to thinke that we might be saved by the light of nature without this burden of Christianity nor leere over into the Pastures and Corne of our neighbours that is to think that we are not well in our own Church but must needs hearken to the Doctrine or Discipline of another When we see all that comes to come from God and are content with that then Omnia co-operantur Every piece serves to the making up this Paile and his Mercy compasses us about This is the roote of our three Branches the foundation of our three Stories the bagge of our three summes in this portion Mercy Compassing mercy and then the Branches
greatnesse both of thy danger and of thy transgression For consider what a dangerous and slippery station thou art in if after a victory over Giants thou mayest be overcome by Pigmees If after thy soule hath beene Canon proofe against strong tentations she be slaine at last by a Pistoll And after she hath swom over a tempestuous Sea shee drowne at last in a shallow and standing ditch And as it showes the greatnesse of thy danger so it aggravates the greatnesse of thy fault That after thou hast had the experience that by a good husbanding of those degrees of grace which God hath afforded thee thou hast beene able to stand out the great batteries of strong tentations and seest by that that thou art much more able to withstand tentations to lesser sins if thou wilt yet by disarming thy selfe by devesting thy garisons by discontinuing thy watches meerely by inconsideration thou sellest thy soule for nothing for little pleasure little profit thou frustratest thy Saviour of that purchase which he bought with his precious blood and thou enrichest the Devils treasure as much with thy single money thy frequent small sins as another hath done with his talent for as God was well pleased with the widowes two farthings so is the Devill well pleased with the negligent mans lesser sins O who can be confident in his footing or in his hold when David that held out so long fell and if we consider but himselfe irrecoverably where the tempter was weake and afar off De longè vidit illam in qua captus est Berseba was far off Mulier longè libido prope August but Davids disposition was in his owne bosome Yet David came not up into the Teras with any purpose or inclination to that sin Here was no such plotting as in his son Hammons case to get his sister Tamar by dissembling himselfe to be sick to his lodging That man post-dates his sin and begins his reckning too late that dates his sin at that houre when he commits that sin You must not reckon in sin from the Nativity but the Conception when you conceived that sin in your purpose then you sinned that sin and in every letter in every discourse in every present in every wish in every dreame that conduces to that sin or rises from that sin you sin it over and over againe before you come to the committing of it and so your sin is an old an inveterate sin before it bee borne and that which you call the first is not the hundredth time that you have sinned that sinne It is not much that David contributed to this sin on his part He is onely noted in the Text to have beene negligent in the publique businesse and to have given himselfe too much ease in this particular 2 Sam. 11. that he lay in bed all day When it was evening David arose out of his bed and walked upon the Teras And it is true that the justice of God is subtile as searching as unsearchable and oftentimes punishes sins of Omission with other sins Actuall sins and makes their lazinesse who are slack in doing that they should an occasion of doing that they should not It was not much that Bathsheba contributed to this tentation on her part The Vulgat Edition of the Roman Church hath made her case somewhat the worse by a mis-translation Ex adverso super solarium suum as though she had beene washing her selfe upon her owne Teras and in the eye of the Court whereas indeed it is no more but that David saw her he upon his Teras not her upon hers For her washing it may well be collected out of the fourth verse that it was a Legall washing to which shee was bound by the Leviticall Law being a purification after her naturall infirmity and which it had beene a sin in her to have omitted But had it beene a washing of Refreshing or of Delicacy even that was never imputed to Susanna for a fault that she washed in a Garden and in the day and employed not onely sope but other ingredients and materials of more delicacy in that washing Certainly the limits of adorning and beautifying the body are not so narrow so strict as by some sowre men they are sometimes conceived to be Differences of Ranks of Ages of Nations of Customes make great differences in the enlarging or contracting of these limits in adorning the body and that may come neare sin at some time and in some places which is not so alwaies nor every where Amongst the women there the Jewish women it was so generall a thing to helpe themselves with aromaticall Oyles and liniments as that that which is said by the Prophets poore Widow to the Prophet Elisha 2 King 4 That she had nothing in the house but a pot of Oyle is very properly by some collected from the Originall word that it was not Oyle for meate but Oyle for unction aromaticall Oyle Oyle to make her looke better she was but poore but a Widow but a Prophets Widow and likely to be the poorer for that yet she left not that We see that even those women whom the Kings were to take for their Wives and not for Mistresses which is but a later name for Concubines had a certaine and a long time assigned to be prepared by these aromaticall unctions and liniments for beauty Neither do those that consider that when Abraham was afraid to lose his wife Sara in Egypt and that every man that saw her would fall in love with her Sara was then above threescore And when the King Abimelech did fall in love with her and take her from Abraham she was fourescore and ten they doe not assigne this preservation of her complexion and habitude to any other thing then the use of those unctions and liniments which were ordinary to that Nation But yet though the extent and limit of this adorning the body may be larger then some austere persons will allow yet it is not so large as that it should be limited onely by the intention and purpose of them that doe it So that if they that beautifie themselves meane no harme in it therefore there should be no harme in it for except they could as well provide that others should take no harme as that they should meane no harme they may participate of the fault And since we finde such an impossibility in rectifying and governing our owne senses we cannot take our owne eye nor stop our owne eare when we would it is an unnecessary and insupportable burden to put upon our score all the lascivious glances and the licentious wishes of other persons occasioned by us in over-adorning our selves And this may well have beene Bathshebaes fault That though she did not bathe with a purpose to be seene yet she did not enough to provide against the infirmity of others It had therefore been well if David had risen earlier to attend the affaires of the State And it
there is wholesome meat before too The cleare light is in the Gospel but there is light in Nature too Revel 19.9 At the last Supper the Supper of the Lambe in Heaven there is no bill of fare there are no particular dishes named there It is impossible to tell us what we shall feed upon what we shall be feasted with at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb Our way of knowing God there cannot be expressed At that Supper of the Lambe which is here here in our way homewards that is in the Sacramentall Supper of the Lambe it is very hard to tell what we feed upon How that meat is dressed how the Body and Blood of Christ is received by us at that Supper in that Sacrament is hard to be expressed hard to be conceived for the way and manner thereof So also in the former meale that which we have called the Dinner which is The knowledge which the Jews had in the Law it was not easie to distinguish the taste and the nature of every dish and to finde the signification in every Type and in every Ceremony There are some difficulties if curious men take the matter in hand and be too inquisitive even in the Gospel more in the Law most of all in Nature But yet even in this first refection this first meale that God sets before man which is our knowledge of God in Nature because wee are then in Gods House all this World and the next make God but one House though God doe not give Marrow and fatnesse Psal 63.6 81.16 as David speaks though he doe not feed them with the fat of the wheat nor satisfie them with honey out of the Rock for the Gospel is the honey and Christ is the Rock yet even in Nature hee gives sufficient meanes to know him though they come to neither of the other Meales neither to the Jews Dinner The benefit of the Law nor to the Christians Supper either when they feed upon the Lamb in the Sacrament or when they feed with the Lamb in the possession and fruition of Heaven Though therefore the Septuagint in their Translation of the Psalms have in the Title of this Psalme added this A Psalme of Ieremy and Ezekiel when they were departing out of the Captivity of Babylon intimating therein that it is a Psalme made in contemplation of that blessed place which we are to go to as literally it was of their happie state in their restitution from Babylon to Jerusalem And though the ancient Church by appropriating this Psalme to the office of the dead to the service at Burials intimate also that this Psalme is intended of that fulnesse of knowledge and Joy and Glory which they have that are departed in the Lord yet the Holy Ghost stops as upon the way before we come thither and since we must lie in an Inne that is Lodge in this World he enables the World to entertaine us as well as to lodge us and hath provided that the World the very world it selfe before wee consider the Law in the World or the Church in the World or Glory in the next World This very World that is Nature and no more should give such an universall light of the knowledge of God as that he should bee The confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them that are a farre off upon the Sea And therefore as men that come to great places and preferments when they have entred by a faire and wide gate of Honour but yet are laid downe upon hard beds of trouble and anxiety in those places for when the body seemes in the sight of men to go on in an easie amble the minde is every day if not all day in a shrewd and diseasefull trot As those men will sometimes say It was better with me when I was in a lower place and fortune and will remember being Bishops the pleasures they had when they were Schoole-boyes and yet for all this intermit not their thankfulnesse to God who hath raised them to that height and those meanes of glorifying him so howsoever we abound with joy and thankfulnesse for these gracious and glorious Illustrations of the Law and the Gospel and beames of future Glory which we have in the Christian Church Let us reflect often upon our beginning upon the consideration of Gods first benefits which he hath given to us all in Nature That light Iohn 1.9 by which he enlighteneth every man that commeth into the World That he hath given us a reasonable soule capable of grace here that he hath denied no man and no other creature hath that That he hath given us an immortal soul capable of glory hereafter and that that immortality he hath denied no man and no other creature hath that Consider we alwaies the grace of God to be the Sun it selfe but the nature of man and his naturall faculties to be the Sphear in which that Sun that Grace moves Consider we the Grace of God to be the soule it self but the naturall faculties of man to be as a body which ministers Organs for that soule that Grace to worke by That so as how much soever I feare the hand of a mighty man that strikes yet I have a more immediate feare of the sword he strikes with So though I impute justly my sins and my feares of judgements for them to Gods withdrawing or to my neglecting his grace yet I looke also upon that which is next me Nature and naturall light and naturall faculties and that I consider how I use to use them whether I be as watchfull upon my tongue that that minister no tentation to others and upon mine eye that that receive no tentation from others as by the light of Nature I might and as some morall Men without addition of particular Grace have done That so first for my selfe I be not apt to lay any thing upon God and to say that hee starved me though he should not bid me to the Jews dinner in giving me the light of the Law nor bid me to the Christians Supper in giving me the light of the Gospell because he hath given me a competent refection even in Nature And then that for others I may first say with the Apostle Rom. 1.20 11.33 That they are without excuse who doe not see the invisible God in the visible Creature and may say also with him O altitudo The wayes of the Lord are past my finding out And therefore to those who doe open their eyes to that light of Nature in the best exaltation thereof God does not hide himselfe though he have not manifested to me by what way he manifests himselfe to them For God disappoints none and he is The confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them who are a farre off upon the Sea Commit thy way unto the Lord Psal 37.5 sayes David And he sayes more then our Translation seemes to expresse The Margin hath
edification to consider in some particulars in the Christian Church And first consider we it in our manners and conversation Christ sayes In moribus Iohn 15.14 Mat. 22.12 Henceforth I call you not servants but friends But howsoever Christ called him friend that was come to the feast without the wedding garment he cast him out because he made no difference of that place from another First then remember by what terrible things God answers thee in the Christian Church when he comes to that round and peremptory issue Marke 16.16 Qui non credider it damnabitur He that beleeves not every Article of the Christian faith with so stedfast a belief as that he would dye for it Damnabitur no modification no mollification no going lesse He shal be damned Consider too the nature of Excōmunication That it teares a man from the body of Christ Jesus That that man withers that is torne off and Christ himselfe is wounded in it Consider the insupportable penances that were laid upon sinners by those penitentiall Canons that went through the Church in those Primitive times when for many sins which we passe through now without so much as taking knowledge that they are sins men were not admitted to the Communion all their lives no nor easily upon their death-beds Consider how dangerously an abuse of that great doctrine of Predestination may bring thee to thinke that God is bound to thee and thou not bound to him That thou maiest renounce him and he must embrace thee and so make thee too familiar with God and too homely with Religion upon presumption of a Decree Consider that when thou preparest any uncleane action in any sinfull nakednesse God is not onely present with thee in that roome then but then tels thee That at the day of Judgement thou must stand in his presence and in the presence of all the World not onely naked but in that foule and sinfull and uncleane action of nakednesse which thou committedst then Consider all this and confesse that for matter of manners and conversation The God of thy Salvation answers thee by terrible things And so it is also if we consider Prayer in the Church God House is the house of Prayer In oratione It is his Court of Requests There he receives petitions there he gives Order upon them And you come to God in his House as though you came to keepe him company to sit downe and talke with him halfe an houre or you come as Ambassadors covered in his presence as though ye came from as great a Prince as he You meet below and there make your bargaines for biting for devouring Usury and then you come up hither to prayers and so make God your Broker You rob and spoile and eat his people as bread by Extortion and bribery and deceitfull waights and measures and deluding oathes in buying and selling and then come hither and so make God your Receiver and his house a den of Thieves His house is Sanctum Sanctorum The holiest of holies and you make it onely Sanctuarium It should be a place sanctified by your devotions and you make it onely a Sanctuary to priviledge Malefactors A place that may redeeme you from the ill opinion of men who must in charity be bound to thinke well of you because they see you here Offer this to one of your Princes as God argues in the Prophet and see if he will suffer his house to be prophaned by such uncivill abuses Psal 47.3 And Terribilis Rex The Lord most high is terrible and a great King over all the earth Psal 96.4 and Terribilis super omnes Deos More terrible then all other Gods Let thy Master be thy god or thy Mistresse thy god thy Belly be thy god or thy Back be thy god thy fields be thy god or thy chests be thy god Terribilis super omnes Deos The Lord is terrible above all gods Psal 95.3 Deut. 28.58 A great God and a great King above all gods You come and call upon him by his name here But Magnū terribile Glorious and fearefull is the name of the Lord thy God And as if the Son of God were but the Son of some Lord that had beene your Schoole-fellow in your youth and so you continued a boldnesse to him ever after so because you have beene brought up with Christ from your cradle and catechized in his name Psal 111.4 his name becomes lesse reverend unto you And Sanctum terribile Holy and reverend Holy and terrible should his name be Consider the resolution that God hath taken upon the Hypocrite and his prayer What is the hope of the Hypocrite Iob 27.8 Hos 7.14 when God taketh away his soule Will God heare his cry They have not cryed unto me with their hearts when they have howled upon their beds Consider that error in the matter of our prayer frustrates the prayer and makes it ineffectuall Zebedees Sons would have beene placed at the right hand Mat. 20.21 and at the left hand of Christ and were not heard Error in the manner may frustrate our prayer and make it ineffectuall too Iam. 4.3 Ye ask and are not heard because ye ask amisse It is amisse if it be not referred to his will Luke 5.12 Iam. 1.6 Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean It is amisse if it be not asked in faith Let not him that wavereth thinke he shall receive any thing of the Lord. It is amisse if prayer be discontinued 1 Thes 5.17 Luke 22.44 Esay 1.15 intermitted done by fits Pray incessantly And it is so too if it be not vehement for Christ was in an Agony in his prayer and his sweat was as great drops of blood Of prayers without these conditions God sayes When you spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes when you make many prayers I will not heare you Their prayer shall not only be ineffectuall Prov. 28.9 Psal 129.7 but even their prayer shall be an abomination And not only an abomination to God but destruction upon themselves for Their prayer shall be turned to sin And when they shall not be heard for themselves no body else shall be heard for them Though these three men Ezek. 14.14 Noah Iob Daniel stood for them they should not deliver thē Though the whole Congregation consisted of Saints they shall not be heard for him nay they shall be forbidden to pray for him forbidden to mentiō or mean him in their prayers as Ieremy was When God leaves you no way of reconciliation but prayer and then layes these heavy and terrible conditions upon prayer Confesse that though he be the God of your salvation and do answer you yet By terrible things doth the God of your salvation answer you And consider this againe as in manners and in prayer so in his other Ordinance of Preaching Thinke with your selves what God lookes for from you In
leave that And these are the pieces that constitute our first part the circumstances that invest these persons Peter and Andrew in their former condition before and when Christ called them SERM. LXXII MAT. 4.18 19 20. And Iesus walking by the Sea of Galile saw two brethren Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother casting a net into the Sea for they were fishers And he saith unto them Follow me and I will make you fishers of men And they straightway left their nets and followed him WE are now in our Order proposed at first come to our second part from the consideration of these persons Peter and Andrew in their former state and condition before and at their calling to their future estate in promise but an infallible promise Christs promise if they followed him Follow me and I will make you fishers of men In which part we shall best come to our end which is your edification by these steps First that there is an Humility enjoyned them in the Sequere follow come after That though they bee brought to a high Calling that doe not make them proud nor tyrannous over mens consciences And then even this Humility is limited Sequere me follow me for there may be a pride even in Humility and a man may follow a dangerous guide Our guide here is Christ Sequere me follow me And then we shall see the promise it selfe the employment the function the preferment In which there is no new state promised them no Innovation They were fishers and they shall be fishers still but there is an emprovement a bettering a reformation They were fisher-men before and now they shall bee fishers of men To which purpose wee shall finde the world to be the Sea and the Gospel their Net And lastly all this is presented to them not as it was expressed in the former part with a For it is not Follow me for I will prefer you he will not have that the reason of their following But yet it is Follow me and I will prefer you It is a subsequent addition of his owne goodnesse but so infallible a one as we may rely upon Whosoever doth follow Christ speeds well And into these considerations will fall all that belongs to this last part Follow me and I will make you fishers of men First then Sequere Humilitas here is an impression of Humility in following in comming after Sequere follow presse not to come before And it had need be first if we consider how early how primarie a sinne Pride is and how soone it possesses us Scarce any man but if he looke back seriously into himselfe and into his former life and revolve his owne history but that the first act which he can remember in himselfe or can be remembred of by others will bee some act of Pride Before Ambition or Covetousnesse or Licentiousnesse is awake in us Pride is working Though but a childish pride yet pride and this Parents rejoyce at in their children and call it spirit and so it is but not the best Wee enlarge not therefore the consideration of this word sequere follow come after so farre as to put our meditation upon the whole body and the severall members of this sinne of pride Nor upon the extent and diffusivenesse of this sinne as it spreads it selfe over every other sinne for every sinne is complicated with pride so as every sinne is a rebellious opposing of the law and will of God Nor to consider the waighty hainousnes of pride how it aggravates every other sin how it makes a musket a Canon bullet and a peble a Milstone but after we have stopped a little upon that usefull consideration That there is not so direct and Diametrall a contrariety between the nature of any sinne and God as between him and pride wee shall passe to that which is our principall observation in this branch How early and primary a sin pride is occasioned by this that the commandement of Humility is first given first enjoyned in our first word Sequere follow But first Nihil tam centrarium Deo wee exalt that consideration That nothing is so contrary to God as Pride with this observation That God in the Scriptures is often by the Holy Ghost invested and represented in the qualities and affections of man and to constitute a commerce and familiarity between God and man God is not onely said to have bodily lineaments eyes and eares and hands and feet and to have some of the naturall affections of man as Joy in particular Deut. 30.9 The Lord will rejoyce over thee for good as he rejoyced over thy Fathers And so pity too Gen. 39.21 The Lord was with Ioseph and extended kindnesse unto him But some of those inordinate and irregular passions and perturbations excesses and defects of man are imputed to God by the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures For so lazinesse drowsinesse is imputed to God Awake Lord why sleepest thou So corruptiblenesse and deterioration Psal 44.23 Psal 18.26 and growing worse by ill company is imputed to God Cum perverso perverteris God is said to grow froward with the froward and that hee learnes to go crookedly with them that go crookedly And prodigality and wastfulnesse is imputed to God Psal 44.12 Thou sellest thy people for naught and doest not increase thy wealth by their price So sudden and hasty choler Kisse the Son lest he be angry and ye perish Inira brevi Psal 2.12 though his wrath be kindled but a little And then illimited and boundlesse anger a vindicative irreconciliablenesse is imputed to God I was but a little displeased Zech. 1.15 but it is otherwise now I am very sore displeased So there is Ira devorans Exod. 15.4 Iob 10.17 Ier. 21.5 Psal 80.4 Wrath that consumes like stubble So there is Ira multiplicata Plagues renewed and indignation increased So God himselfe expresses it I will fight against you in anger and in fury And so for his inexorablenesse his irreconciliablenesse O Lord God of Hosts Quousque how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people Gods owne people Gods own people praying to their owne God and yet their God irreconciliable to them Scorne and contempt is imputed to God which is one of the most enormious and disproportioned weakenesses in man that a worme that crawles in the dust that a graine of dust that is hurried with every blast of winde should find any thing so much inferiour to it selfe as to scorne it to deride it to contemne it yet scorne and derision and contempt is imputed to God Psal 2.4 Prov. 1.26 He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh the Lord shall have them in derision and againe I will laugh at your calamity I will mock you when your feare commeth Nay beloved even inebriation excesse in that kinde Drunkennesse is a Metaphor which the Holy Ghost hath mingled in the expressing of Gods proceedings with man
proofe of the Resurrection of the body and the answer was easie and obvious We doe not baptize living men in the name and in the behalfe of the dead for any other respect then for the salvation of their soules and what is that to the resurrection of the body So that this sense of Tertullians of Baptisme by a Proxy by an Atturney seemes not to be the sense of this place and yet because it savours of charity to the dead though it were an heretical custome Bellarmine prefers this interpretation of Tertullian before any other but his owne which we handled before Theodoret interprets this Baptisme for the dead to be a baptisme of Representation Theodoret. That in baptisme by being put under the water and raised up againe we represent the death and resurrection of Christ for the dead is for Christ for the testimony of Christ And therefore that baptizing by immersion by covering the party with water was so exactly observed in those times as it came to be thought that no man was well baptized except he had received it so by Immersion as by many Treatises and many Consultations amongst the Fathers by way of Letters and the Acts of some Councels we perceive And of this representation of the death of Christ in our Baptisme administred in that manner by Immersion S. Paul is thought by some to have spoken when he sayes Know ye not that all we that have been baptized into Iesus Christ Rom. 6.3 have been baptized into his death That is say they by that representation of his death in Immersion Neither is any thing more evident then that Theodoret was so far in the right that our baptisme and the rather in that forme of Immersion is a representation of the death and buriall and resurrection of Christ but yet to call this Baptisme therefore because it was a representation of Christ who was dead a Baptisme for the dead is a phrase somewhat more hard and unusuall then may be easily admitted in such a matter of faith as this is And besides that Baptisme which is this Representation is a Baptisme common to all all that are baptized are baptized so But the Apostle in this place makes his argument from a particular kind of Baptisme which some did and some did not use Quid de illis sayes he what shall become of them and Quid illi what doe they meane that are baptized in this peculiar manner So that as not Tertullians baptisme by an Atturney so neither Theodorets baptisme by Representation seems to be the sense of this place S. Chrysostome much about the same time with Theodoret and long after them both Chrysost Theophylact. at least six hundred yeares Theophylact meet in a third sense That because at the taking of Baptisme they did usually rehearse the Creed which Creed concluded with those articles The resurrection of the body and life everlasting therefore this baptisme for the dead should onely signifie a baptisme for the hope of the Resurrection But since they rehearsed all the articles of the Christian beliefe as well as that at Baptisme it might as properly be said that they were baptized for Christ baptized for the holy Ghost baptized for the descent into hell as for the dead And besides that this was also a baptisme common to all all rehearsed the Articles of the Creed it was not such a peculiar baptisme as the Apostle hath respect to here in his Quid de illis and Quid illi what shall become of them and what doe they meane by this their Baptisme And therefore this seems not to be the sense That this Baptisme for the dead should onely be a profession of that article of the Resurrection of the dead though S. Chrysostome and Theophylact concur in or derive from or upon one other that interpretation To come lower and to a lower rank of witnesses from the Fathers to the Schoole Aquinas Aquinas hath another sense and certainly an usefull a devout and an appliable interpretation which is That Mortui here are peccata Those that are called Dead here are Dead works sins and so to be baptized for the dead is to be baptized for our sins for the washing away our sins in an acknowledgement That although we did contract a leprous sin even in our conception That we were subject to the wrath and indignation of God before we were able to conceive that there was a God That before our bones were hardned the canker and rust of Adams sin was in our bones That before we were a minute old we have a sin in us that is six thousand years old That though we be as blind after we come out of our mothers bellies as we were there Though we passe over our time without ever asking our owne consciences why we were sent hither Though our sins have hardned us against God and done a harder work then that in hardning God against us yet though we have turned God into a Rock there is water in that rock Num. 20. if we strike it if we solicite it affect it with our repentance As in the stone font in the Church there is water of Baptisme so in the Corner stone of the Church Christ Jesus whom we have hardned against us there is a tendernesse there is a Well of water springing up into everlasting life As we have changed this water into stone petrified Gods tendernesse towards us Psal 114.8 so convertit petram in stagna aquarum sayes David He hath turned that rock into a standing water water and water that stayes with us in his Church and the flint into a fountaine of waters that is sayes S. Augustine seipsum suam quandam duritiam liquefecit ad irrigandos fideles At the beames of his owne mercy God hath thawed that ice and dissolved that stone into which we had hardned him and he hath let in a River of Jordan into his Church the Sacrament of Baptisme in the present act and subsequent efficacy whereof we are washed from originall and from actuall sins All these sins are the fruits of death as they are opposed against the Lord of life and pro hisce mortuis baptizamur sayes Aquinas for the dead that is for these dead workes we are baptized And certainly for a second sense to exalt our devotion by I should prefer this before any other But the principall and literall sense of this place this cannot be because it is a figurative sense and though the figure be not in the word Baptisme where Bellarmine places it for Aquinas speaks literally of a Sacramentall Baptisme yet it is in the other word In mortuis Aquinas doth not speak literally but metaphorically of the Dead and that may as ill be admitted in a matter of faith of so great importance as the other And besides this seems to conclude nothing necessarily for the resurrection of the body that we are washed from our sins And lastly this is still a
in thy seeking of him If the Angels bee come downe to destroy Sodome If Ionas bee come to proclaime destruction to Nineveh wilt thou make thy selfe beleeve that thou art a Citizen of Sodom an inhabitant of Nineveh and must necessarily be wrapped up in that destruction If David say Non sic impii non sic The wicked shall not stand in judgement wilt thou needs be one of them As a wise and a discreet man will never beleeve that he that writes a Satyr meanes him though he touch upon his vices so whatsoever the Prophets say of an aversion and obduration in God against sinners yet they meane not thee nor doe thou assume it in an inevitablenesse upon thy selfe The Angel of God the Spirit of God shall deale with thee as he did with Lot in Sodom He told Lot over-night Gen. 19.12 that he would burne the City and bad him prepare God shall give thee some grudgings before he exalt thy fever and warne thee to consider thy state and consult with thy spirituall Physitian The Angel called him up in the morning and then hastned him and when he prolonged sayes the Text The Angel caught him and carried him forth and set him without the City Because though there was no cooperation in Lot yet there was no resisting neither God was pleased to doe all So in this death of diffidence and sense of Gods fearefull judgements God opens thy grave now and now he calls to thee Lazare veni for as Come forth Lazarus and hee offers his hand to pull thee out now Iosh 1.6 Onely Comfortare esto robustus as God said to Ioshuah Bee strong and have a good courage and as God addes there Comfortare esto robustus valde Multiply thy courage and God shall multiply thy strength in all dejections have a cheerefull apprehension of thy resurrection and thou shalt have it nay thou hast it But this death of desperation or diffidence in Gods mercy by Gods mercy hath swallowed none of us but the death of sinne hath swallowed us all and for our owne customary sinnes we all need a resurrection And what is that Resurrectio à peccato cessatio à peccato Durand non est idem Every cessation from sin is not a resurrection from sinne A man may discontinue a sinne intermit the practise of a sin by infirmity of the body or by satiety in the sinne or by the absence of that person with whom he hath used to communicate in that sin Damasc But Resurrectio est secunda ejus quod interiit statio A Resurrection is such an abstinence from the practise of the sin as is grounded upon a repentance and a detestation of the sin and then it is a setling and an establishing of the soule in that state and disposition It is not a sudden and transitory remorse nor onely a reparation of that which was ruined and demolished but it is a building up of habits contrary to former habits and customes in actions contrary to that sin that we have been accustomed to Else it is but an Intermission not a Resurrection but a starting not a waking but an apparition not a living body but a cessation not a peace of conscience Now this Resurrection is begun and well advanced in Baptismate lachrymarum In the baptisme of true and repentant teares But Beloved as S. Paul in this place hath a relation Ad baptismum clinicorum to death-bed-baptists death-bed-Christians to them that defer their Baptisme to their death but he gives no allowance of it So this Baptisma clinicorum this repentance upon the death-bed is a dangerous delay Even of them I will say with S. Paul here If there were no Resurrection no need to rise from sin by repentance why are they then thus baptized pro mortuis why doe they repent when they are as good as dead and have no more to suffer in this world But if there be such a resurrection a necessity of such a Baptisme by repentance why come they no sooner to it For is any man sure to have it or sure to have a desire to it then It is never impertinent to repeat S. Augustines words in this case Etiam hac animadversione percutitur peccator ut moriens obliviscatur sui qui dum viveret oblitus est Dei God begins a dying mans condemnation at this That as he forgot God in his life so he shall forget himselfe at his death Compare thy temporall and thy spirituall state together and consider how they may both stand well at that day If thou have set thy state in order and made a Will before and have nothing to doe at last but to adde a Codicil this is soone dispatched at last But if thou leave all till then it may prove a heavy businesse So if thou have repented before and setled thy selfe in a religious course before and have nothing to doe then but to wrastle with the power of the disease and the agonies of death God shall fight for thee in that weake estate God shall imprint in thee a Cupio dissolvi S. Pauls not onely contentednesse but desire to be dissolved And God shall give thee a glorious Resurrection yea an Ascension into Heaven before thy death and thou shalt see thy selfe in possession of his eternall Kingdome before thy bodily eyes be shut Be therefore S. Cyprians Peripatetique and not his Clinique Christian A walking and not a bed-rid Christian That when thou hast walked with God as Henoch did thou maist be taken with God as Henoch was and so walke with the Lamb as the Saints doe in Jerusalem and follow him whithersoever hee goes That even thy death-bed may bee as Elias Chariot to carry thee to heaven And as the bed of the Spouse in the Canticles which was Lectus floridus a greene and flourishing bed where thou maist find by a faithfull apprehension that thy sicknesse hath crowned thee with a crowne of thornes by participation of the sufferings of thy Saviour and that thy patience hath crowned thee with that crowne of glory which the Lord the righteous Judge shall impart to thee that day SERM. LXXIX Preached at S. PAULS PSAL. 90.14 O satisfie us early with thy mercy that we may rejoyce and be glad all our dayes THey have made a Rule in the Councel of Trent that no Scripture shall be expounded but according to the unanime consent of the Fathers But in this Book of the Psalms it would trouble them to give many examples of that Rule that is of an unanime consent of the Fathers in the interpretation thereof In this Psalme Bellarmine in his Exposition of the Psalms finds himselfe perplexed He sayes and sayes truly Hieronymus constanter affirmat Augustinus constanter negat S. Hierome doth confidently and constantly affirme and S. Augustine with as much confidence and constancy deny that this Psalme and all that follow to the hundredth Psalme are Moses Psalms and written by him And this diverse
with the Ancient Fathers 221. A. B. C Applause after Sermon given to the Primitive Fathers 48. D Applause of the people or popularity a dangerous and uncertaine thing not to be affected by any men especially not by the Clergie whom it usually deceiveth most ib. Approaches to Sinne how soone and easily they become Sinne 557. E Apostles why chosen out of simple fisher-men 719. C What things were called Apostles before Christs Apostles were so called 758 C Apostolicall Authority vainely claimed by the Pope 733. E Apostolicall Tradition what it is 781. E Articles of Faith how they are proved by Reason 178. A 611. D Atheist nothing so unnaturall as the Atheist 486. B Of the universall particular and practicall Atheist ibid. 487. A. B. vide 756. B. Authority of the Fathers not baulked by the Reformed Churches 557. A Though at the beginning of the Reformation our men were a little startled at it B. C B Balsame of the naturall Balsame in the body and in the soule 514. A Baptism of children how necessary 309. E. 425. B The Remembrance of our Baptisme a stop against sinne 310. A Christ why Baptised 425. A The Anabaptists argument against Baptisme of Children answered ibid. D The Baptisme of John whether the same with that of Christ 425. E The custome of late Baptising why tolerated in the Church 800. A Bees the manner of their working sub tecto 712. E Commended for their sedulity community secrecy and purity 713. A. B Beggers against ordinary Street-Beggers and relieving them Benedictines of their encrease and riches 602. E Benefactours and Founders their honorable commemoration and mention pleases God 85. D The Straights to which some of the Reformed Churches have been put about it ibid. The Benefits of this world seldom free 550. B Bishops not necessarily resident at their Sea 470. D Six thousand Bishops at one time in the Christian Church 471. A The passage between Athanasius and Dracontius who refused to be made a Bishop 471. D Bishop of Rome against his tyranny cruelty c. 284. B Against his Infallibility 698. C. 722. D His Imprisoning of the Holy Ghost 292. A His Universality 371. D Against his usurping Apostolicall Authority and not contenting himselfe with Episcopall 733. E Blasphemy not restrained to God alone other persons and things may be blasphemed 343. E No Blessing in this world without permanency and continuance 754. E Blessings of this world only Blessings in use 84. C How God blesseth man and man blesseth God 376. D Blessednesse what it is and what the Philosophers have thought of it 119. C. D. 752. A Whom Plato commanded the Poets and writers in his State to call Blessed 562. D. E That temporall Blessings doe not conduce at All to true Blessednesse 750. B The danger of Temporall Blessings without Spirituall 752. B What Plato thought Blessednesse 752. E Spirituall Blessednesse how it is superinduced upon Temporall as the reasonable soule upon that of sense 755. C. D Blood no Remission without it and why 6. D Christ shed it seven times 7. B The will the Blood of the Soule 7. A Blood taken for sin oftentimes in Holy Writ 132. A Bodies the Kingdome of heaven imperfect without them 145. A The little power we have over our own Bodies ibid. D Bodies glorified and their Dotes or Endowments 189. A. B Gods love to our Bodies 194. B. C Of sinning against our own Bodies by lust and licentiousnesse 195. D. E Bones what is meant by Bones in Scripture 516. C Bribery against it or receiving of Rewards 389. E Brothers the first enmity began in them 108. A Brownists their opinion that no particular Church may consist of more persons than may alwayes heare that man to whose charge that Church is given censured 471. C. D Building the Holy Ghost delights to use the name of Building and House 684. C Against Busy-bodies with other folks matters 721. E. 722. A Burthen how every thing even the least the Fly even the best as riches beauty comlinesse is a Burthen to us 664. C. D C CArd Cajetans reasons for not following the Judgement of the fathers in expounding Scripture 796. E. 79â— A. Calamities not to be jested at 478. E Not alwayes evidences of Gods displeasure ib. Calling the ordinary duties of our Calling not to be disputed but executed 41. A Such as are extraordinary may 42. A Against such as will take upon them no Calling 45. D. 411. B. 606. B How acceptable to God that labour is which is taken in an honest Calling 721. C Against Intruders and meddlers with other mens Callings ibid. E Calvin an approver of Ceremonies 80. D Candles the use of them in divine Service ancient 80. B Canonicall Houres no inconvenience in observing them so wee place no merit in them 596. D Catechizing the excellent use and benefit of it 250. A. 561. B. C. D. c. Cathedrall Churches why so called 115. C Censuring of Preachers and comparing one with another condemned 692. E Ceremonies of their antiquity and use 80. C They should differ from Mysteries ibid. Not hastily to be condemned ibid. E They are vehicula Religionis 300. B Against the Opposers of them ibid. How we are to love them 512. A Not to be disputed of by private men 575. C Changes of this world how many 481. D Of inconstancy and changing of minde 483. C Changes of sinne how dangerous 543. A Children of their love and duty to Parents 387 E CHRIST he came of women noted in Scripture for their incontinency 24. A He came to save All 26. C. 70. C. 66. B Learning at the height when hee was borne 72. C Whether hee was Man whilst in the Grave 157. A CHRIST his Death and Passion how necessary and how voluntary 7. D. 792. C Three remarkable Conjunctions at his Birth 11 B The world how full with expectation of it 21. D CHRIST shed blood seven times here on earth 7. B How effectually hee is present in the Sacrament 19. C His Incarnation no way so proper to deliver us as it 16. C His Humane Nature adunited to the Divine whether Impeccable 169. B The infinitnesse of his merits rather placed in Pacto than in Persona by the Schoole 179. B The difference betweene his Dying and other mens 272. E The severall Heresies concerning CHRIST 316. D CHRIST dyed for all men 741. E. 742. A. B Church the power of it in applying Christ to every particular soule 60. A The true Church which 61 A How soone multiplied and enriched 72. A. B The ten Persecutions of it 184 B. C The Church the ordinary place for knowledge and illumination of a Christian 228. A The Primitive Church how the whole world was bent against it 602. C The Church a Pillar and how 615. C What a losse it is to bee kept from Gods Church 664. A The care which God hath ever had of his Church 779. E Circle the proper Hieroglyphick of God and why 13.
E Citation of Scripture the words much more the Chapter and verse not alwayes observed in it 250. C. 325. D Complements of their abuse and use 176. A. B. C. 412. D Comforts how easily we mistake false Comforts for true 279. E. 382. D. 383. A. B 501. A Of the true Comfort of the Holy Ghost 353. D Of that Comfort and consolation which the Minister of the Gospell is to preach to all people 746. A. B C Confession to the Priest in some cases usefull and necessary 558. A 568. A. 589. B. C How necessary to Confesse 569. D. 586. E Confidence true Confidence proceeds onely from true goodnesse 171. E Confirmation whether a Sacrament 329. C The use and benefit of it ibid. D. E Continency that trial not made as should be whether young people can Conteine from marriage 217. B C Contrition Confession and Satisfaction three parts of true Repentance 568. A Conventicles against their private opinions 228. C Against them 455. A They are no Bodies 756. D Consideration of our selves and our insufficiencies how necessary 44. D. 45. A. c. Constitutions No sins to be layd and fathered upon them 90. A Corporations how they have no soules 99. A Covering of sinnes what good and what bad 569. E It is good to cover them from giving other men examples 570. A Counsell not to be given unlesse we love those to whom we give it 93. C How many miscarry in that poynt ibid. D Craft and that cunning and Craft which men affect in their severall Callings 411. D Creatures how farre we may love the Creatures and how farre not 398. E Curiosity against the excesse of it in matter of Knowledge 63. E. 64. A. 411. E. 563. B. 701. A Conscience obdurate and over-tender the effects of either 587. B. C. D Curses and Imprecations whether we may use them 401. C. D. 555. E D DAmned the consummation of their torment wherein it consisteth in the opinion of the Schoole 344. B More shall be saved than damned 765. C Of the torments of the damned 776. B. C The absence of God the greatest torment of the damned ibid. D Day of Judgement the manner of proceeding in it 140. B Fearefull even to the best 200. B. C The certainty and uncertainty of it 271. D To be had ever in remembrance and why 371. B. 389. C. 392. A Death how it may be desired of us and how not 38. A. B. C. D. 148. B. C. 531. D. E Against the ambition of it in the pseudomartyrs 142. C The word Fortasse hath place in all things but Death 147. C. D It is a law a tribute and a duty and how 147. E. 148. A We not to grudge if we dy soon or others live longer ibid. B Death how an enemy to mankinde and how not ibid E God made it not but maketh use of it 188. B Of undergoing Death for Christ 400. A B Not a banishment to good men but a visitation of their friends 463. C Death why so terrible to the good men of former times 532. D The often contemplation of Death takes much from the feare of it 473. E Debts of our Debts to God 87. C To our neighbours 93. E To our superiors 91. C To our selves 94. D Deceit and Deceiving the mischiefe of it 742. B The law will not suppose it either in a father or a master ibid. 42. Decrees of God to be considered only by the Execution 330. C None absolute considering man before a Sinner 675. C. D. E Departing from sinne to be generall 552. A We are not to retaine any one 568. D Deprecating of afflictions whether or no lawfull 504. B. C. D. E Desperation the sin of it greater and worse than that of presumption 398. C Severall sects there have been but never any of Despayring men 346. A Against it 360. D E God brings his servants to humiliation often but never to Desperation 464. Destroying whether man may lawfully destroy any one hurtfull species in the world 527. B 620. C De viâ the name of such as were Christians in the former times that is men of that way according to S. Chrysostome 426. B Devils capable of mercy according to many of the Fathers 66. A The Devils quoting of Scripture 338. C Devotion a serious sedulous and impatient thing 244. E It is good to accompany our selves to a generall Devotion 512 D It must be constant 586. B And not taken up by chance ibid. C Disciplining and mortifying Acts after God hath forgiven us our sinnes commended 546. E They inferre neither Purgatory nor Indulgences nor Satisfaction 547. A They are sharp arrows from a sweet hand ib. The necessity of them to make our Repentance entire 568. B Discretion the mother and nurse of all vertues 577. B What Discretion is to be used in telling people of their sinnes ibid. Division the fore-runner of destruction 138. D. E Not alwayes unlawfull to sow Division amongst men when they agree too well to ill purposes 493. D Doubting the way to know the truth 322. D Duels the inhumanity and sinne of them 5. E Duties of our calling not to be disputed but executed 41. A Of our generall weaknesse and impotency in spirituall Duties 513. C E EArly seeking of God what it is 245. C. D God is an Early God 809. A. B And we to seeke him Early ibid. D. E Eloquence required in the delivery of Gods Word 47. D Enemies profit to be made of them 98. A We come too soone to the name and then carry it too farre 98. C God and Religion both have Enemies 375 D 703. C How we may and how we may not hate our Enemies ibid. D. E Our Enemies are Gods Enemies 704. A Errours in the way almost as dangerous as Errours in the end 639. A. D Of the Errours of the Fathers of the Church 490. A About administring the Sacrament to children about the state of the soule after death c. 739. E Not good for the Church to play with small Errours and tolerate them when shee may as easily redresse them 782. B Esay rather an Evangelist than a Prophet 54. B Evill none from God 168. C. D Nothing is naturally Evill 171. A Example in all our actions and purposes wee to propose unto our selves some patterne or Example 667. D. Examples what power they have in matter of instruction 572. D. 593. A What care is to be taken in making the inordinate acts of some Holy men in Scripture our Examples 155. C. D. 488. D. E. 489. A. 526. E How farre Example works above precept or command 165. B Of giving good Examples to others 420. C God follows his own Examples 522. E Of giving bad Examples unto other men 570. A. 573. E Excommunication the use of it amongst the Druides and the Jewes 402. A Much tendernesse to be used in excommunicating any from the Church 667. A How many men excommunicare themselves without any Church-censure ib. B. C. 418.
constitutions or onely a testimony of outward conformity which should be signaculum viaticum a seale of pardon for past sins and a provision of grace against future But he that is well prepared for this strips himselfe of all these vae desiderantibus of all these comminations that belong to carnall desires and he shall be as Daniel was vir desideriorum a man of chast and heavenly desires onely hee shall desire that day of the Lord as that day signifies affliction here with David Psal 119.17 Bonum est mihi quòd humiliasti me I am mended by my sicknesse enriched by my poverty and strengthened by my weaknesse and with S. Bern. desire Irascar is mihi Domine O Lord be angry with me for if thou chidest me not thou considerest me not if I taste no bitternesse I have no Physick If thou correct me not I am not thy son And he shall desire that day of the Lord as that day signifies the last judgement with the desire of the Martyrs under the Altar Vsquequo Domine How long O Lord ere thou execute judgement And he shall desire this day of the Lord as this day is the day of his own death with S. Pauls desire Cupio dissolvi I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ And when this day of the Lord as it is the day of the Lords resurrection shall come his soule shall be satified as with marrow and with fatnesse in the body and bloud of his Saviour and in the participation of all his merits as intirely as if all that Christ Jesus hath said and done and suffered had beene said and done and suffered for his soule alone Enlarge our daies O Lord to that blessed day prepare us before that day seale to us at that day ratifie to us after that day all the daies of our life an assurance in that Kingdome which thy Son our Saviour hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud To which glorious Son of God c. SERMON XV. Preached at VVhite-hall March 8. 1621. 1 COR. 15.26 The last Enemie that shall be destroyed is Death THis is a Text of the Resurrection and it is not Easter yet but it is Easter Eve All Lent is but the Vigill the Eve of Easter to so long a Festivall as never shall end the Resurrection wee may well begin the Eve betimes Forty yeares long was God grieved for that Generation which he loved let us be content to humble our selves forty daies to be fitter for that glory which we expect In the Booke of God there are many Songs there is but one Lamentation And that one Song of Solomon nay some one of Davids hundred and fiftie Psalmes is longer then the whole booke of Lamentations Make way to an everlasting Easter by a short Lent to an undeterminable glory by a temporary humiliation You must weepe these teares teares of contrition teares of mortification before God will wipe all teares from your eyes You must dye this death this death of the righteous the death to sin before this last enemy Death shal be destroyed in you and you made partakers of everlasting life in soule and body too Our division shall be but a short Divisio and our whole exercise but a larger paraphrase upon the words The words imply first That the Kingdome of Christ which must be perfected must be accomplished because all things must be subdued unto him is not yet perfected not accomplished yet Why what lacks it It lacks the bodies of Men which yet lie under the dominion of another When we shall also see by that Metaphor which the Holy Ghost chooseth to expresse that in which is that there is Hostis and so Militia an enemie and a warre and therefore that Kingdome is not perfected that he places perfect happinesse and perfect glory in perfect peace But then how far is any State consisting of many men how far the state and condition of any one man in particular from this perfect peace How truly a warfare is this life if the Kingdome of Heaven it selfe have not this peace in perfection And it hath it not Quia hostis because there is an enemy though that enemy shall not overthrow it yet because it plots and workes and machinates and would overthrow it this is a defect in that peace Who then is this enemy An enemy that may thus far thinke himselfe equall to God that as no man ever saw God and lived so no man ever saw this enemy and lived for it is Death And in this may thinke himselfe in number superiour to God that many men live who shall never see God But Quis homo is Davids question which was never answered Is there any man that lives and shall not see death An enemie that is so well victualled against man as that he cannot want as long as there are men for he feeds upon man himselfe And so well armed against Man as that he cannot want Munition while there are men for he fights with our weapons our owne faculties nay our calamities yea our owne pleasures are our death And therefore he is Novissimus hostis saith the Text The last enemy We have other Enemies Satan about us sin within us but the power of both those this enemie shall destroy but when they are destroyed he shall retaine a hostile and triumphant dominion over us But Vsque quo Domine How long O Lord for ever No Abolebitur wee see this Enemy all the way and all the way we feele him but we shall see him destroyed Abolebitur But how or when At and by the resurrection of our bodies for as upon my expiration my transmigration from hence as soone as my soule enters into Heaven I shall be able to say to the Angels I am of the same stuffe as you spirit and spirit and therefore let me stand with you and looke upon the face of your God and my God so at the Resurrection of this body I shall be able to say to the Angel of the great Councell the Son of God Christ Jesus himselfe I am of the same stuffe as you Body and body Flesh and flesh and therefore let me sit downe with you at the right hand of the Father in an everlasting security from this last enemie who is now destroyed death And in these seven steps we shall passe apace and yet cleerely through this paraphrase We begin with this Vestig 1. Quia desunt Corpora That the Kingdome of Heaven hath not all that it must have to a consummate perfection till it have bodies too In those infinite millions of millions of generations in which the holy blessed and glorious Trinity enjoyed themselves one another and no more they thought not their glory so perfect but that it might receive an addition from creatures and therefore they made a world a materiall world a corporeall world they would have bodies In that noble part of that world which Moses
thereof A Psalme of David giving Instruction And having given his Instruction the first way by Rule in the two former verses That Blessednesse consisted in the Remission of sinnes but that this Remission of sinnes was imparted to none Cui dolus in spiritu In whose spirit there was any deceit he proceeds in this Text to the other fundamentall and constitutive element of Instruction Example And by Example he shews how far they are from that Blessednesse that consists in the Remission of sinnes that proceed with any deceit in their spirit And that way of Instruction by Example shall be our first Consideration And our second That he proposes himselfe for the Example I kept silence sayes he and so My Bones waxed old c. And then in a third part we shall see how far this holy Ingenuity goes what he confesses of himselfe And that third part will subdivide it selfe and flow out into many branches First That it was he himselfe that was In doloso spiritu In whose spirit there was deceit Quia tacuit because he held his tongue because he disguised his sinnes because he did not confesse them And yet in the midst of this silence of his God brought him Ad rugitum to voyces of Roaring of Exclamation to a sense of paine and a sense of shame so far he had a voyce but still he was in silence for any matter of repentance Secondly he confesses the effect of this his silence and this his Roaring Inveteraverunt Ossa My Bones waxed old and my moisture is turned into the drought of Summer And then thirdly he confesses the reason from whence this inveteration in his bones and this incineration in his body proceeded Quia aggravata manus because the hand of God lay heavy upon him heavy in the present waight and heavy in the long continuation thereof day and night And lastly all this he seals with that Selah which you finde at the end of the verse which is a kinde of Affidavit of earnest asseveration and re-affirming the same thing a kinde of Amen and ratification to that which was said Selah truly verily thus it was with me when I kept silence and deceitfully smothered my sinnes the hand of God lay heavy upon me and as truly as verily it will be no better with any man that suffers himselfe to continue in that case First then 1 Part. Exemplum for the assistance and the power that example hath in Instruction we see Christs Method Quid ab initio how was it from the beginning Doe as hath been done before We see Gods method to Moses for the Tabernacle Looke that thou make every thing Exod. 24.40 after thy patterne which was shewed thee in the Mount And for the Creation it selfe we know Gods method too for though there were no world that was elder brother to this world before yet God in his owne minde and purpose had produced and lodged certaine Idea's and formes and patterns of every piece of this world and made them according to those pre-conceived formes and Idea's When we consider the wayes of Instruction as they are best pursued in the Scriptures so are there no Books in the world that doe so abound with this comparative and exemplary way of teaching as the Scriptures doe No Books in which that word of Reference to other things that Sicut is so often repeated Doe this and doe that Sicut so as you see such and such things in Nature doe And Sicut so as you finde such and such men in story to have done So David deals with God himselfe he proposes him an Example I aske no more favour at thy hands for thy Church now then thou hast afforded them heretofore Doe but unto these men now Psal 83.3 Sicut Midianitis as unto the Midianites Sicut Siserae as unto Sisera as unto Iabin Make their Nobles Sicut Oreb like Oreb and like Zeb and all their Princes Sicut Zeba as Zeba and as Zalmana For these had been Examples of Gods justice And to be made Examples of Gods anger Num. 5.26 is the same thing as to be a Malediction a Curse For in that law of Jealousie that bitter potion which the suspected woman was to take was accompanied with this imprecation The Lord make thee a Curse among the people So we reade it But S. Hierome In Exemplum The Lord make thee an Example among the people that is deale with thee so as posterity may be afraid when it shall be said of any of them Lord deale with this woman so as thou didst with that Adulteresse And so the prayer of the people is upon Booz Ruth 4.11 Vt sit in Exemplum as S. Hierom also reads that place The Lord make thee an Example of vertue in Ephrata and in Bethlem that is that Gods people might propose him to themselves conforme themselves to him and walke as he did As on the other side the anger of God is threatned so Ezek. 5.15 Jer. 48.39 God shall make thee Exemplum stuporem An Example and a Consternation And Exemplum derisum An example and a scorne That posterity whensoever they should be threatned with Gods Judgements they might presently returne to such Examples and conclude if our sins be to their Example our Judgements will follow their Example too a judgement accompanied with a consternation a consternation aggravated with a scorne we shall be a prey to our enemies an astonishment to our selves a contempt to all the world We doe according to their Example and according to their Example we shall suffer is not a Conclusion of any Sorbon nor a decision of any Rota but the Logique of the universall Universitie Heaven it selfe Zech. 13.5 And so when the Prophet would be excused from undertaking the office of a Prophet he sayes Adam exemplum meum ab adolescentia Adam hath been the example that I have proposed to my selfe from my youth As Adam did so in the sweat of my browes I also have eat my bread I have kept Cattle I have followed a Country life and not made my selfe fit for the office and function of a Prophet Adam hath been my Example from my youth And when Solomon did not propose a Man he proposed something els for his Example an example he would have Pro. 24.32 He looked upon the ill husbands land and he saw it over-growne Et exemplo didici disciplinam By that example I learnt to be wiser Enter into the Armory search the body and bowells of Story for an answer to the question in Iob Quis periit Who ever perished being Innocent Job 4.7 or where were the righteous cut off There is not one example no where never Answer but that out of Records Quis restitit Job 9.4 Job 11.10 Who hath hardned himselfe against the Lord and prospered Or that Quis contradicet If he cut off who can hinder him There is no Example No man by no meanes So if