of my Election and I depose for the seales and marks of that Decree These two witnesses The Spirit and My spirit induce a third witnesse the world it selfe to testifie that which is the testimony of this text That I am the child of God And so we passe from the two former parts The persons The Spirit and our spirit And their office to witnesse and to agree in their witnesse and we are fallen into our third part The Testimony it selfe That we are the Children of God This part hath also two branches 3. Part. First That the Testimony concernes our selves We are And then That that which we are is this We are the Children of God And in the first branch there will be two twiggs two sub-considerations 1 Wee A personall appropriation of the grace of God to our selves 2 We are we are now a present possession of those Graces First consider we the Consolation in the particle of appropriation Wee In the great Ant-hill of the whole world I am an Ant I have my part in the Creation I am a Creature But there are ignoble Creatures God comes nearer In the great field of clay of red earth that man was made of mankind I am a clod I am a man I have my part in the Humanity But Man was worse then annihilated again When satan in that serpent was come as Hercules with his club into a potters shop and had broke all the vessels destroyed all mankind And the gracious promise of a Messias to redeeme all mankind was shed and spread upon all I had my drop of that dew of Heaven my sparke of that fire of heaven in the universall promise in which I was involved But this promise was appropriated after in a particular Covenant to one people to the Jewes to the seed of Abraham But for all that I have my portion there for all that professe Christ Jesus are by a spirituall engrafting and transmigration and transplantation in and of that stock and that seed of Abraham and I am one of those But then of those who doe professe Christ Jesus some grovell still in the superstitions they were fallen into and some are raised by Gods good grace out of them and I am one of those God hath afforded me my station in that Church which is departed from Babylon Now all this while my soule is in a cheerefull progresse when I consider what God did for Goshen in Egypt for a little parke in the midst of a forest what he did for Jury in the midst of enemies as a shire that should stand out against a Kingdome round about it How many Sancerraes he hath delivered from famins how many Genevaes from plots and machinations against her all this while my soule is in a progresse But I am at home when I consider Buls of excommunications and solicitations of Rebellions and pistols and poysons and the discoveries of those There is our Nos We testimonies that we are in the favour and care of God We our Nation we our Church There I am at home but I am in my Cabinet at home when I consider what God hath done for me and my soule There is the Ego the particular the individuall I. This appropriation is the consolation We are But who are they or how are we of them Testimonium est clamor ipse sayes S. Chrysostome to our great advantage Even this that we are able to cry Abba Ver. 15. Father by the Spirit of Adoption is this testimony that we are his Children if we can truly do that that testifies for us The Spirit testifies two wayes Directly expresly personally Luke 5.20 as in that Man thy sins are forgiven thee And so to David by Nathan Transtulit The Lord hath taken away thy sin And then he testifies Per indicia by constant marks and infallible evidences We are not to looke for the first for it is a kind of Revelation nor are we to doubt of the second for the marks are infallible And therefore as S. Augustine said of the Maniches concerning the Scriptures Insani sunt adversus Antidotum quo sani esse possunt They are enraged against that which onely can cure them of their rage that was the Scriptures so there are men which will still be in ignorance of that which might cure them of their ignorance because they will not labour to finde in themselves the marks and seales of those who are ordained to salvation they will needs thinke that no man can have any such testimony They say Sumus It is true there is a blessed comfort in this appropriation if we could be sure of it They may we are we are already in possession of it The marks of our spirituall filiation are lesse subject to error then of temporall Shall the Mothers honesty be the Evidence Alas we have some such examples of their falshood as will discredit any argument built meerely upon their truth He is like the Father Is that the evidence Imagination may imprint those Characters He hath his land A supposititious child may have that Spirituall marks are not so fallible as these They have so much in them as creates even a knowledge 1 Iohn 3.2 Iohn 5.19 Now we are the Sons of God and we know that we shall be like him And we know that we are of God Is all this but a conjecturall knowledge but a morall certitude No tincture of faith in it Can I acquire and must I bring Certitudinem fidei an assurance out of faith That a Councell cannot erre And then such another faithfull assurance That the Councell of Trent was a true councell And then another That the Councell of Trent did truly and duly proceed in all wayes essentiall to the truth of a Councell in constituting their Decree against this doctrine And may I not bring this assurance of faith to S. Paul and S. Iohn when they say the contrary Is not S. Pauls sumus and S. Iohns scimus as good a ground for our faith as the servile and mercenary voices of a herd of new pensionary Bishops shovelled together at Trent for that purpose are for the contrary A particular Bishop in the Romane Church cites an universall Bishop Catarinus a Pope himselfe in this point and he sayes well Legem credendi statuit lex supplicandi Whatsoever we may pray for we may we must beleeve Certitudine fidei With an assurance of faith If I may pray and say Pater noster if I may call God Father I may beleeve with a faithfull assurance that I am the childe of God Stet invicta Pauli sententia Idem Let the Apostles doctrine sayes that Bishop remain unshaked Et velut sagitta sayes he This doctrine as an arrow shot at them will put out their eyes that think to see beyond S. Paul It is true sayes that Bishop there are differences Inter Catholicos Amongst Catholiques themselves in this point And then why do they charge us
fainting with that After his weeping and dissolving with that After his consuming and withering with that foresees no rescue no escape Inveteravit he waxes old amongst his enemies Who were his enemies and what was this age that he speaks of It is of best use to pursue the spirituall sense of this Psalme and so his enemies were his sins And David found that he had not got the victory over any one enemy any one sin Anothers bloud did not extinguish the lustfull heat of his owne nor the murther of the husband the adultery with the wife Change of sin is not an overcomming of sin He that passes from sin to sin without repentance which was Davids case for a time still leaves an enemy behind him and though he have no present assault from his former enemie no tentation to any act of his former sin yet he is still in the midst of his enemies under condemnation of his past as well as of his present sins as unworthy a receiver of the Sacrament for the sins of his youth done forty yeares agoe if those sins were never repented though so long discontinued as for his ambition or covetousnesse or indevotion of this present day These are his enemies and then this is the age that growes upon him the age that David complaines of I am waxenold that is growne into habits of these sins There is an old age of our naturall condition We shall waxe old as doth a garment Psal 102.26 David would not complaine of that which all men desire To wish to be old and then grudge to be old when we are come to it cannot consist with morall constancy There is an old age expressed in that phrase The old man which the Apostle speaks of which is that naturall corruption and disposition to sin cast upon us by Adam Rom. 6.6 But that old man was crucified in Christ sayes the Apostle and was not so onely from that time when Christ was actually crucified one thousand six hundred yeares agoe but from that time that a second Adam was promised to the first in Paradise And so that Lambe slaine from the beginning of the world from the beginning delivered all them to whom the means ordained by God as Circumcision to them Baptisme to us were afforded and in that respect David was not under that old age but was become a new creature Nor as the Law was called the old Law which is another age also for to them who understood that Law aright the New Law the Gospel was enwrapped in the Old And so David as well as we might be said to serve God in the newnesse of spirit and not in the oldnesse of the Letter Rom. 7.6 so that this was not the age that opprest him The Age that oppresses the sinner is that when he is growne old in sin he is growne weak in strength and become lesse able to overcome that sin then then he was at beginning Blindnesse contracted by Age doth not deliver him from objects of tentations He sees them though he be blind Deafnesse doth not deliver him from discourses of tentation he heares them though he be deafe Nor lamenesse doth not deliver him from pursuit of tentation for in his owne memory he sees and heares and pursues all his former sinfull pleasures and every night every houre sins over all the sins of many yeares that are passed That which waxeth old is ready to vanish sayes the Apostle Heb. 8.13 If we would let them goe they would goe and whether we will or no they leave us for the ability of practise But Thesaurizamus we treasure them up in our memories Rom. 2.5 and we treasure up the wrath of God with them against the day of wrath And whereas one calling of our sins to our memories by way of confession would doe us good and serve our turnes this often calling them in a sinfull delight in the memory of them exceeds the sin it selfe when it was committed because it is more unnaturall now Ezek. 23.19 then it was then and frustrates the pardon of that sin when it was repented To end this branch and this part So humble was this holy Prophet and so apprehensive of his own debility and so far from an imaginary infallibility of falling no more as that after all his agonies and exercises and mortifications and prayer and sighs and weeping still he finds himselfe in the midst of enemies and of his old enemies for not onely tentations to new sins but even the memory of old though formerly repented arise against us arise in us and ruine us And so we passe from these pieces which constitute our first Part Quid factum what David upon the sense of his case did to the other Quid faciendum what by his example we are to doe and what is required of us after we have repented and God hath remitted the sin Out of this passage here in this Psalme and out of that history 2 Part. where Nathan sayes to David The Lord hath put away thy sin and yet sayes after 2. Sam. 12.13 The child that is borne to thee shall surely dye and out of that story where David repents earnestly his sin committed in the numbring of his people and sayes Now now that I have repented 2 Sam. 24.10 Now I beseech thee O Lord take away the iniquity of thy servant for I have done very foolishly yet David was to indure one of those three Calamities of Famine Warre or Pestilence And out of some other such places as these some men have imagined a Doctrine that after our repentance and after God hath thereupon pardoned our sin yet he leaves the punishment belonging to that sin unpardoned though not all the punishment not the eternall yet say they there belongs a temporary punishment too and that God does not pardon but exacts and exacts in the nature of a punishment and more by way of satisfaction to his Justice Now Stipendium peccati mors est There is the punishment for sin The reward of sin is death If there remaine no death there remaines no punishment For the reward of sin is death And death complicated in it selfe death wrapped in death and what is so intricate so intangling as death Who ever got out of a winding sheet It is death aggravated by it selfe death waighed downe by death And what is so heavy as death Who ever threw off his grave stone It is death multiplied by it selfe And what is so infinite as death Who ever told over the dayes of death It is Morte morieris A Double death Eternall and Temporary Temporall and Spirituall death Now the Temporary the Naturall death God never takes away from us he never pardons that punishment because he never takes away that sin that occasioned it which is Originall sin To what Sanctification soever a man comes Originall sin lives to his last breath And therefore Heb 9.27 Statutum est That Decree stands
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
had been well if Bathsheba had bathed within doores and with more caution but yet these errors alone we should not be apt to condemne in such persons except by Gods permitting greater sins to follow upon these we were taught that even such things as seeme to us in their nature to be indifferent have degrees of naturall and essentiall ill in them which must be avoyded even in the probability nay even in the possibility that they may produce sin And as from this Example we draw that Conclusion That sins which are but the Children of indifferent actions become the Parents of great sins which is the industry of sin to exalt it selfe and as it were ennoble it selfe above the stocke from which it was derived The next sin will needs be a better sin then the last So have we also from David this Conclusion that this generation of sin is infinite infinite in number infinite in duration So infinite both waies as that Luther who seldome checks himselfe in any vehement expression could not forbeare to say Si Nathan non venisset If Nathan had not come to David David had proceeded to the sin against the Holy Ghost O how impossible a thing is it then for us to condition and capitulate with God or with our owne Nature and say to him or to our selves We will sin thus long and no longer Thus far and no farther this sin and no more when not onely the frailty of man but even the justice of God provokes us though not as Author or cause of sin to commit more and more sins after wee have entangled and enwrapped our selves in former Who can doubt but that in this yeares space in which David continued in his sin but that he did ordinarily all the externall acts of the religious Worship of God who can doubt but that he performed all the Legall Sacrifices and all the Ceremoniall Rites Yea we see that when Nathan put Davids case in another name of a rich man that had taken away a poore mans onely sheepe David was not onely just but he was vehement in the execution of Justice Hee was saies the text exceeding wroth and said As the Lord liveth that man shall dye But yet for all this externall Religion for all this Civill justice in matter of government no mention of any repentance in all this time How little a thing then is it nay how great a thing that is how great an aggravating of thy sin if thou thinke to bribe God with a Sabboth or with an almes And as a criminall person would faine come to Sanctuary not because it is a consecrated place but because it rescues him from the Magistrate So thou comest to Chuch not because God is here but that thy being here may redeeme thee from the imputation of prophanenesse At last Nathan came David did not send for him but God sent him But yet David laid hold upon Gods purpose in him And he confesses to God he confesses to the Prophet he confesses to the whole Church for before he pleads for mercy in the body of the Psalme in the title of the Psalme which is as Canonicall Scripture as the Psalme it selfe hee confesses himselfe plainly A Psalme of David when the Prophet Nathan came to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba Audiunt male viventes quaerunt sibi patrocinia peccandi Wee heare of Davids sin August and wee justifie our sins by him Si David cur non ego If David went in to a Bathsheba why may not I That Father tels you why Qui facit quia David fecit id facit quod David non fecit He that does that because David did it does not doe that which David did Quia nullum exemplum proposuit For David did not justifie his sin by any precedent example So that he that sins as David did yet sins worse then David did and hee that continues as unsensible of his sin as David was is more unsensible then David was Quia ad te mittitur ipse David For God sends Nathan to thee August with David in his hand He sends you the Receit his invitations to Repentance in his Scriptures and he sends you a Probatum est a personall testimony how this Physicke hath wrought upon another upon David And so having in this first Part which is the Consideration of the persons in our Text God and David brought them by Nathans mediation together consider wee also for a conclusion of this Part the personall applications that David scatters himselfe upon none but God Tu me and hee repeats it doe Thou purge mee doe Thou wash mee Damascen hath a Sermon of the Assumption of the blessed Virgin which whole Sermon is but a Dialogue in which Eve acts the first part and the blessed Virgin another Tu. It is but a Dialogue yet it is a Sermon If I should insist upon this Dialogue between God and David Tu me Tu me Doe thou worke upon me it would not be the lesse a profitable part of a Sermon for that For first when we heare David in an anhelation and panting after the mercy of God cry out Domine Tu Lord doe thou that that is to be done doe Thou purge doe Thou wash and may have heard God thereby to excite us to the use of his meanes say Purget natura purget lex I have infused into thee a light and a law of nature and exalted that light and that law by a more particular law and a clearer light then that by which thou knowest what is sin and knowest that in a sinfull state thou canst not be acceptable to me Purget natura purget lex let the light of nature or of the law purge thee and rectifie thy selfe by that Doe but as much for thy selfe as some naturall men some Socrates some Plato hath done we may heare David reply Domine Tu Lord put me not over to the catechizing of Nature nor to the Pedagogie of the Law but take me into thine owne hands do Thou Thou that is to be done upon me When we heare God say Purget Ecclesia I have established a Church settled constant Ordinances for the purging and washing of souls there Purget Ecclesia Let the Church purge thee we may heare David reply Domine Tu Alas Lord how many come to that Bath and goe foule out of it how many heare Sermons and receive Sacraments and when they returne returne to their vomit Domine Tu Lord except the power of thy Spirit make thine Ordinance effectuall upon me even this thy Jordan will leave me in my leprosie and exalt my leprosie even this Sermon this Sacrament will aggravate my sin If we heare God say Shall I purge thee Doest thou know what thou askest what my method in purging is That if I purge I shall purge thee with fire with seaven fires with tribulations nay with tentations with temporall nay with spirituall calamities with wounds in thy fortune wounds
be delivered of a fever in my spirits and to have my spirit troubled with the guiltinesse of an adultery To be delivered of Cramps and Coliques and Convulsions in my joynts and sinewes and suffer in my soule all these from my oppressions and extortions by which I have ground the face of the poore It is but lost labour and cost to give a man a precious cordiall when he hath a thorne in his foote or an arrow in his flesh for as long as the sinne which is the cause of the sicknesse remaines Deterius sequetur A worse thing will follow we may be rid of a Fever and the Pestilence will follow rid of the Cramp and a Gout will follow rid of sicknesse and Death eternall death will follow That which our Saviour prescribes is Noli peccare ampliùs sinne no more first non ampliùs sinne no more sins take heed of gravid sins of pregnant sinnes of sins of concomitance and concatentation that chaine and induce more sins after as Davids idlenesse did adultery and that murder the losse of the Lords Army and Honor in the blaspheming of his name Noli ampliùs sin no more no such sin as induces more And Noli ampliùs sinne no more that is sin thy owne sin thy beloved sin no more times over And still Noli ampliùs sin not that sin which thou hast given over in thy practise in thy memory by a sinfull delight in remembring it And againe Noli ampliùs sin not over thy former sins by holding in thy possession such things as were corruptly gotten by any such former practises for Deterius sequetur a worse thing will follow A Tertian will be a Quartan and a Quartan a Hectique and a Hectique a Consumption and a Consumption without a consummation that shall never consume it selfe nor consume thee to an unsensiblenesse of torment And then after these three lessons in this Catechisme Sanitas spiritualis That God gives before we aske That he gives better then we aske That he informes us in the true cause of sicknesse sinne He involves a tacit nay he expresses an expresse rebuke and increpation and in beginning at the Dimittuntur peccata at the forgivenesse of sinnes tels him in his eare that his spirituall health should have beene prefer'd before his bodily and the cure of his soule before his Palsie that first the Priest should have beene and then the Physitian might bee consulted That which Christ does to his new adopted Sonne here the Wiseman saies to his Son Ecclus. 38.9 My Son in thy sicknesse be not negligent But wherein is his diligence required or to be expressed in that which followes Pray unto the Lord and he will make thee whole But upon what conditions or what preparations Leave off from sin order thy hands aright and cleanse thy heart from all wickednesse Is this all needs there no declaration no testimony of this Yes Give a sweet savour and a memoriall of fine floure and make a fat offering as not beeing that is as though thou wert dead Give and give that which thou givest in thy life time as not beeing And when all this is piously and religiously done thou hast repented restor'd amended and given to pious uses Then saies he there give place to the Physitian for the Lord hath created him For if we proceed otherwise if wee begin with the Physitian Physick is a curse He that sinneth before his Maker V. 15. let him fall into the hands of the Physitian saies the Wiseman there It is not Let him come into the hands of the Physitian as though that were a curse but let him fall let him cast and throw himselfe into his hands and rely upon naturall meanes and leave out all consideration of his other and worse disease and the supernaturall Physick for that 2. Chron. 16. Asa had had a great deliverance from God when the Prophet Hanani asked him Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubins a huge Host but because after this deliverance he relied upon the King of Syria and not upon God the Judgement is From henceforth thou shalt have wars That was a sicknesse upon the State then he fell sick in his own person and in that sicknesse saies that story He sought not to the Lord but to the Physitian and then he dyed To the Lord and then to the Physitian had beene the right way If to the Physitian and then to the Lord though this had beene out of the right way yet hee might have returned to it But it was to the Physitian and not to the Lord and then he died Omnipotenti medico nullus languor insanabilis saies S. Ambrose there is but one Almighty and none but the Almighty can cure all diseases because hee onely can cure diseases in the roote that is in the forgivenesse of sins We are almost at an end when we had thus Catechised his Convertite thus rectified his patient Scribae Pharisci hee turnes upon them who beheld all this and were scandaliz'd with his words the Scribes and Pharisees And because they were scandaliz'd onely in this that he being but man undertooke the office of God to forgive sins he declares himselfe to them to be God Christ would not leave even malice it selfe unsatisfied And therefore do not thou thinke thy selfe Christian enough for having an innocence in thy selfe but be content to descend to the infirmities and to the very malice of other men and to give the world satisfaction Nec paratum habeas illud ètrivio sayes S. Hierome do not arm thy self with that vulgar and triviall saying Sufficit mihi conscientia mea nec curo quid loquantur homines It suffices me that mine own conscience is cleare and I care not what all the world sayes thou must care what the world sayes and thinks Christ himself had that respect even towards the Scribes and Pharisees For first he declared himself to be God in that he took knowledge of their thoughts for they had said nothing and he sayes to them why reason you thus in your hearts and they themselves did not could not deny but that those words of Solomon appertained only to God 2 Chron. 6.30 Thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men And those of Ieremy The heart is deceitfull above all things Jer. 17.9 and desperately wicked who can know it I the Lord search the heart and I try the reines Let the Schoole dispute infinitely for he that will not content himself with means of salvation till all Schoole points be reconciled will come too late let Scotus and his Heard think That Angels and separate soules have a naturall power to understand thoughts though God for his particular glory restraine the exercise of that power in them as in the Romane Church Priests have a power to forgive all sins though the Pope restraine that power in reserved cases And the Cardinals by their Creation have a voice in the
and he from a Rabbi of the Jews Aben Ezra takes this to be an adjuration of the Earth as Gregory does but not as Gregory does in the person of Christ but of Iob himselfe That Iob adjures the earth not to cover his blood that is not to cover the shedding of his blood not to conspire with the malice of his enemies so much as to deny him buriall when he was dead that they which trod him downe alive might not triumph over him after his death or conclude that God did certainly forsake him alive since he continued these declarations against him when he was dead And this also may have good use but yet it is too narrow and too shallow to bee the sense of this phrase this elegancy this vehemency of the Holy Ghost in the mouth of Iob. S. Chrysostome I think was the first that gave light to the sense of this place He saies that such men as are as they thinke over-punished have naturally a desire that the world knew their faults that so by comparing their faults with their punishments there might arise some pitty and commiseration of their state And surely this that Chrysostome sayes is true and naturall for if two men were to be executed together by one kinde of death the one for stealing a Sheep perchance in hunger the other for killing his Father certainly he that had but stollen the Sheep would be sorry the world should think their cases alike or that he had killed a Father too And in such an affection Iob sayes I am so far from being guilty of those things that are imputed to me that I would be content that all that ever I have done were knowne to all the world This light which S. Chrysost gave to this place shined not out I think till the Reformation for I have not observed any Author between Chrysostome and the Reformation that hath taken knowledge of this interpretation nor any of the Reformation as from him from Chrysostome But since our Authors of the Reformation have somewhat generally pursued that sense Calvin hath done so and so Tremellius and so Piscator and many many more now one Author of the Romane Church one as curious and diligent in interpreting obscure places of Scripture as any amongst them and then more bold and confident in departing from their vulgar and frivolous and impertinent interpretations of Scriptures then any amongst them the Capuchin Bolduc hath also pursued that sense That sense is that in this adjuration or imprecation O Earth cover not thou my blood Blood is not literally bodily blood but spirituall blood the blood of the soule exhausted by many and hainous sins such as they insimulated Iob of For in this signification is that word Blood often taken in the Scriptures When God sayes when you stretch forth your hands Esay 1.15 Psal 51.14 they are full of blood there blood is all manner of rapine of oppression of concussion of violence When David prayes to be delivered from blood-guiltinesse it is not intended onely of an actuall shedding of blood for it is in the Originall à sanguinibus in the plurall other crimes then the actuall shedding of blood are bloody crimes Ezech 7.23 Therefore sayes one Prophet the land is full of bloody crimes And another blood toucheth blood Hosea 4.2 whom the Chalde Paraprase expresses aright Aggregant peccata peccatis blood toucheth blood when sin induces sin Which place of Hosea S. Gregory interprets too then blood touches blood cum ante oculos Dei adjunctis peccatis cruentatur anima Then God sees a soule in her blood when she wounds and wounds her selfe againe with variation of divers or iteration of the same sins This then being thus established that blood in this Text is the blood of the soule exhausted by sin for every sin is an incision of the soule a Lancination a Phlebotomy a letting of the soule blood and then a delight in sin is a going with open veines into a warme bath and bleeding to death This will be the force of Iobs Admiration or Imprecation O Earth cover not thou my blood I am content to stand as naked now as I shall doe at the day of Judgement when all men shall see all mens actions I desire no disguise I deny I excuse I extenuate nothing that ever I did I would mine enemies knew my worst that they might study some other reason of Gods thus proceeding with me then those hainous sinnes which from these afflictions they will necessarily conclude against me But had Iob been able to have stood out this triall Was Iob so innocent as that he need not care though all the world knew all Perchance there may have been some excesse some inordinatenesse in his manner of his expressing it we cannot excuse the vehemence of some holy men in such expressions We cannot say that there was no excesse in Moses his Dele me Pardon this people or blot my name out of thy booke or that there was no excesse in S. Pauls Anathema pro fratribus That he wished to be accursed to be separated from Christ for his brethren But for Iob we shall not need this excuse for either we may restraine his words to those sins which they imputed to him and then they have but the nature of that protestation which David made so often to God Iudge me O Lord according to my righteousnesse according to mine innocency according to the cleannesse of my hands which was not spoken by David simply but respectively not of all his sins but of those which Saul pursued him for Or if we enlarge Iobs words generally to all his sins we must consider them to be spoken after his repentance and reconciliation to God thereupon If they knew may Iob have said how it stood between God and my soule how earnestly I have repented how fully he hath forgiven they would never say these afflictions proceeded from those sins And truly so may I so may every soule say that is rectified refreshed restored re-established by the seales of Gods pardon and his mercy so the world would take knowledge of the consequences of my sins as well as of the sins themselves and read my leafes on both sides and heare the second part of my story as well as the first so the world would look upon my temporall calamities the bodily sicknesses and the penuriousnesse of my fortune contracted by my sins and upon my spirituall calamities dejections of spirit sadnesse of heart declinations towards a diffidence and distrust in the mercy of God and then when the world sees me in this agony and bloody sweat in this agony and bloody sweat would also see the Angels of heaven ministring comforts unto me so they would consider me in my Peccavi and God in his Transtulit Me in my earnest Confessions God in his powerfull Absolutions Me drawne out of one Sea of blood the blood of mine owne soule and cast into another Sea the
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
for so is it twice taken in one verse Psal 58.4 Their poison is like the poison of a Serpent so that this Hot displeasure is that poison of the soule obduration here and that extention of this obduration a finall impenitence in this life and an infinite impenitiblenesse in the next to dye without any actuall penitence here and live without all possibility of future penitence for ever hereafter David therefore foresees that if God Rebuke in anger it will come to a Chastening in hot displeasure 1 Sam. 2.25 For what should stop him For If a man sinne against the Lord who will plead for him sayes Eli Plead thou my cause sayes David It is onely the Lord that can be of counsell with him and plead for him and that Lord is both the Judge and angry too So Davids prayer hath this force Rebuke me not in anger for though I were able to stand under that yet thou wilt also Chasten mee in thine hot displeasure and that no soule can beare for as long as Gods anger lasts so long he is going on towards our utter destruction In that State it is not a State in that Exinanition in that annihilation of the soule it is not an annihilation the soule is not so happy as to come to nothing but in that misery which can no more receive a name then an end all Gods corrections are borne with grudging with murmuring with comparing our righteousnesse with others righteousnesse Job 7.20 In Iobs impatience Quare posuisti me contrarium tibi Why hast thou set me up as a marke against thee O Thou preserver of men Thou that preservest other men hast bent thy bow I. am 3.12 and made me a mark for thine arrowes sayes the Lamentation In that state we cannot cry to him that he might answer us If we doe cry and he answer we cannot heare Job 9.16 if we doe heare we cannot beleeve that it is he Cum invocantem exaudierit sayes Iob If I cry and he answer yet I doe not beleeve that he heard my voyce We had rather perish utterly Ver. 23. then stay his leisure in recovering us Si flagellat occidat semel sayes Iob in the Vulgat If God have a minde to destroy me let him doe it at one blow Et non de poenis rideat Let him not sport himselfe with my misery Whatsoever come after we would be content to be out of this world so we might but change our torment whether it be a temporall calamity that oppresses our state or body or a spirituall burthen a perplexity that sinks our understanding or a guiltinesse that depresses our conscience Vt in inferno protegas Job 14.13 as Iob also speaks O that thou wouldest hide me In inferno In the grave sayes the afflicted soule but in Inferno In hell it selfe sayes the dispairing soule rather then keepe me in this torment in this world This is the miserable condition or danger that David abhors and deprecates in this Text To be rebuked in anger without any purpose in God to amend him and to be chastned in his hot displeasure so as that we can finde no interest in the gracious promises of the Gospel no conditions no power of revocation in the severe threatnings of the Law no difference between those torments which have attached us here and the everlasting torments of Hell it selfe That we have lost all our joy in this life and all our hope of the next That we would faine die though it were by our own hands and though that death doe but unlock us a doore to passe from one Hell into another This is Ira tua Domine faror tuus Thy anger O Lord and Thy hot displeasure For as long as it is but Ira patris the anger of my Father which hath dis-inherited me Gold is thine and silver is thine and thou canst provide me As long as it is but Ira Regis some mis-information to the King some mis-apprehension in the King Cor Regis in manu tua The Kings heart is in thy hand and thou canst rectifie it againe As long as it is but Furor febris The rage and distemper of a pestilent Fever or Furor furoris The rage of madnesse it selfe thou wilt consider me and accept me and reckon with me according to those better times before those distempers overtooke me and overthrew me But when it comes to be Ira tua furor tuus Thy anger and Thy displeasure as David did so let every Christian finde comfort if he be able to say faithfully this Verse this Text O Lord rebuke me not in thine anger neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure for as long as he can pray against it he is not yet so fallen under it but that he hath yet his part in all Gods blessings which we shed upon the Congregation in our Sermons and which we seale to every soule in the Sacrament of Reconcilation SERM. LI. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 6.2 3. Have mercy upon me O Lord for I am weake O Lord heale me for my bones are vexed My soule is also sore vexed But thou O Lord how long THis whole Psalme is prayer And the whole prayer is either Deprecatory as in the first verse or Postulatory Something David would have forborne and something done And in that Postulatory part of Davids prayer which goes through six verses of this Psalme we consider the Petitions and the Inducements What David asks And why of both which there are some mingled in these two verses which constitute our Text. And therefore in them we shall necessarily take knowledge of some of the Petitions and some of the Reasons For in the Prayer there are five petitions First Miserere Have mercy upon me Thinke of me looke graciously towards me prevent me with thy mercy And then Sana me O Lord heale me Thou didst create me in health but my parents begot me in sicknesse and I have complicated other sicknesses with that Actuall with Originall sin O Lord heale me give me physick for them And thirdly Convertere Returne O Lord Thou didst visit me in nature returne in grace Thou didst visit me in Baptisme returne in the other Sacrament Thou doest visit me now returne at the houre of my death And in a fourth petition Eripe O Lord deliver my soule Every blessing of thine because a snare unto me and thy benefits I make occasions of sinne In all conversation and even in my solitude I admit such tentations from others or I produce such tentations in my selfe as that whensoever thou art pleased to returne to me thou findest me at the brinke of some sinne and therefore Eripe me O Lord take hold of me and deliver me And lastly Salvum me fac O Lord save me Manifest thy good purpose upon me so that I may never be shaken or never overthrown in the faithfull hope of that salvation which thou hast preordained for me These are
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
thereof does not wholly extinguish Grace nor grieve the Spirit of God in us And such sinnes God covers saies David here Now what is his way of covering these sins As Sin in this notion is not so deepe a wound upon God as Transgression in the other Covering so Covering here extends not so far as Forgiving did there There forgiving was a taking away of sin by taking that way That Christ should beare all our sins it was a suffering a dying it was a penall part and a part of Gods justice executed upon his one and onely Son here it is a part of Gods mercy in spreading and applying the merits and satisfaction of Christ upon all them whom God by the Holy Ghost hath gathered in the profession of Christ and so called to the apprehending and embracing of this mantle this garment this covering the righteousnesse of Christ in the Christian Christ In which Church and by his visible Ordinances therein the Word and Sacraments God covers hides conceales even from the inquisition of his owne justice those smaller sins which his servants commit and does not turne them out of his service for those sins So the word the word is Casah which we translate Covering is used Prov. 12.23 A wise man concealeth knowledge that is Does not pretend to know so much as indeed he does So our mercifull God when he sees us under this mantle this covering Christ spread upon his Church conceales his knowledge of our sins and suffers them not to reflect upon our consciences in a consternation thereof So then as the Forgiving was Auferre ferendo a taking away of sin by taking all sin upon his owne person So this Covering is Tegere attingendo To cover sin by comming to it by applying himselfe to our sinfull consciences in the meanes instituted by him in his Church for they have in that language another word Sacac which signifies Tegere obumbrando To cover by overshadowing by refreshing This is Tegere obumbrando To cover by shadowing when I defend mine eye from the offence of the Sun by interposing my hand betweene the Sun and mine eye at this distance a far off But Tegere attingendo is when thus I lay my hand upon mine eye and cover it close by that touching In the knowledge that Christ hath taken all the sins of all the world upon himselfe that there is enough done for the salvation of all mankinde I have a shadowing a refreshing But because I can have no testimony that this generall redemption belongs to me who am still a sinner except there passe some act betweene God and me some seale some investiture some acquittance of my debts my sins therefore this second beame of Davids Blessednesse in this his Catechisme shines upon me in this That God hath not onely sowed and planted herbs and Simples in the world medicinall for all diseases of the world but God hath gathered and prepared those Simples and presented them so prepared to me for my recovery from my disease God hath not onely received a full satisfaction for all sinne in Christ but Christ in his Ordinances in his Church offers me an application of all that for my selfe and covers my sin from the eye of his Father not onely obumbrando as hee hath spread himselfe as a Cloud refreshing the whole World in the value of the satisfaction but Attingendo by comming to me by spreading himself upon me as the Prophet did upon the dead Child Mouth to mouth Hand to hand In the mouth of his Minister he speaks to me In the hand of the Minister he delivers himselfe to me and so by these visible acts and seales of my Reconciliation Tegit attingendo He covers me by touching me He touches my conscience with a sense and remorse of my sins in his Word and he touches my soule with a faith of having received him and all the benefit of his Death in the Sacrament And so he covers sin that is keepes our sins of infirmity and all such sins as do not in their nature quench the light of his grace from comming into his Fathers presence or calling for vengeance there Forgiving of transgressions is the generall satisfaction for all the world and restoring the world to a possibility of salvation in the Death of Christ Covering of sin is the benefit of discharging and easing the conscience by those blessed helps which God hath afforded to those whom he hath gathered in the bosome and quickned in the wombe of the Christian Church And this is the second beame of Blessedness cast out by David here and then the third is The not imputing of iniquity Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity In this also Impute as in the two former we did we consider this Imputing and then this Iniquity in the roote and Original signification of the two words When in this place the Lord is said not to impute sinne it is meant That the Lord shall not suffer me to impute sinne to my selfe The word is Cashab and Cashab imports such a thinking such a surmising as may be subject to error and mistaking To that purpose we finde the word where Hannah was praying 1 Sam. 1.12 and Eli the Priest who saw her lips move and heard no prayer come from her thought she had been drunke Imputed drunkennesse unto her and said How long wilt thou be drunke put away thy wine So that this Imputing is such an Imputing of ours as may be erronious that is an Imputing from our selves in a diffidence and jealousie and suspition of Gods goodnesse towards us To which purpose we consider also that this word which we translate here Iniquity Gnavah is oftentimes in the Scripture used for punishment as well as for sinne and so indifferently for both as that if we will compare Translation with Translation and Exposition with Exposition it will be hard for us to say Gen. 4.13 whether Cain said Mine iniquity is greater then can be pardoned or My punishment is greater then I can beare and our last Translation which seems to have been most carefull of the Originall takes it rather so My punishment in the Text and lays the other My sinne aside in the Margin So then this Imputing being an Imputing which arises from our selves and so may be accompanied with error and mistaking that we Impute that to our selves which God doth not impute And this mis-imputing of Gods anger to our selves arising out of his punishments and his corrections inflicted upon us That because we have crosses in the world we cannot beleeve that we stand well in the sight of God or that the forgiving of Transgressions or Covering of sinnes appertains unto us we justly conceive that this not Imputing of Iniquity is that Serenitas Conscientiae That brightnesse that clearnesse that peace and tranquillity that calme and serenity that acquiescence and security of the Conscience in which I am delivered from all scruples 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
last motive Iosh 7.19 must be the glory of God Therefore Ioshuah sayes to Achan My Son give I pray thee glory unto the Lord God of Israel and make Confession unto him Now the glory of God arises not out of the Confessing but because every true Confessing is accompanied with a detestation of the sin as it hath separated me from God and a sense of my re-union and redintegration with God in the abjuration of my former sins for to tell my sin by way of a good tale or by boasting in it though it be a revealing a manifesting is not a Confession in every true confession God hath glory because he hath a straid soule re-united to his Kingdome And to advance this Glory David confesses Peccata sins which is our next Consideration I said I will confesse my sins unto the Lord. First he resents his state All is not well Then he examines himselfe Peccata vera Thus and thus it stands with me Then he considers then he resolves then he executes He confesses so far we are gone and now he confesses sins For the Pharisees though he pretended a Confession was rather an exprobration how much God had beene beholden to him for his Sabbaths for his Almes for his Tithes for his Fasting David confesses sins first such things as were truly sins For as the element of Ayre that lyes betweene the Water and the Fire is sometimes condensed into water sometimes rarified into fire So lyes the conscience of man betweene two operations of the Devill sometimes he rarifies it evaporates it that it apprehends nothing feeles nothing to be sin sometimes he condenses it that every thing falls and sticks upon it in the nature and takes the waight of sin and he mis-interprets the indifferent actions of others and of his owne and destroyes all use of Christian liberty all conversation all recreation and out of a false feare of being undutifull to God is unjust to all the world and to his owne soule and consequently to God himselfe who of all notions would not be received in the notion of a Cruell or Tyrannicall God In an obdurate conscience that feeles no sin the Devill glories most but in the over-tender conscience he practises most That is his triumphant but this is his militant Church That is his Sabbath but this is his six dayes labour In the obdurate he hath induced a security in the scriptures which the Holy Ghost hath exprest in so many names as Sin Sin Wickednesse Iniquity Transgressions Offences Many many more And all this that thereby we might reflect upon our selves often and see if our particular actions fell not under some of those names But then lest this should over-intimidate us there are as many names given by the Holy Ghost to the Law of God Law Statutes Ordinances Covenants Testimony Precept and all the rest of which there is some one at least repeated in every verse of the hundred and nineteenth Psalme that thereby we might still have a Rule to measure and try our actions by whether they be sins or no. For as the Apostle sayes He had not knowne sinne if he had not knowne the Law So there had beene no sin if there had beene no Law And therefore that soule that feeles it selfe oppressed under the burden of a Vow must have recourse to the Law of God and see whether that Vow fall under the Rule of that Law For as an over-tender conscience may call things sins that are not and so be afraid of things that never were so may it also of things that were but are not now of such sins as were truly sins and fearfull sins but are now dead dead by a true repentance and buried in the Sea of the blood of Christ Jesus and sealed up in that Monument under the seale of Reconciliation the blessed Sacrament and yet rise sometimes in this tender conscience in a suspition and jealousie that God hath not truly not fully forgiven them And as a Ghost which we thinke we see afrights us more then an army that we doe see So these apparitions of sins of things that are not against any Law of God and so are not sins or sins that are dead in a true repentance and so have no being at all by the Devils practise worke dangerously upon a distempered conscience for as God hath given the Soule an Imagination and a Fancy as well as an Understanding So the Devill imprints in the conscience a false Imagination as well as a fearefull sense of true sin David confesses sins sins that were truly sins But the more ordinary danger is Omniae in our not calling those things which are truly sins by that name For as sometimes when the Baptisme of a Child is deferred for State the Child dyes unbaptized So the sinner defers the Baptisme of his sin in his teares and in the blood of his Saviour offered in the blessed Sacrament till he dye namelesse namelesse in the booke of Life It is a Character that one of the ancientest Poets gives of a well-bred and well-governed Gentleman That he would not tell such lyes as were like truths not probable lyes nor such truths as were like lyes not wonderfull not incredible truths It is the constancy of a rectified Christian not to call his indifferent actions sins for that is to slander God as a cruell God nor to call sins indifferent actions for that is to undervalue God as a negligent God God doth not keepe the Conscience of man upon the wrack in a continuall torture and stretching But God doth not stupifie the conscience with an Opiate in an insensiblenesse of any sin The law of God is the balance and the Criterium By that try thine actions and then confesse David did so Peccata he confessed sinnes nothing that was not so as such neither omitted he any thing that was so And then they were Peccata sua His sins I said I will confesse my sins unto the Lord. First Sua. Sua His sinnes that is à se perpetrata sins which he confesses to have been of his voluntary committing He might and did not avoyd them When Adam said by way of alienation and transferring his fault The woman whom thou gavest me And the woman said Gen. 3.12 The Serpent deceived me God tooke this by way of Information to finde out the Principall but not by way of extenuation or alleviation of their faults Every Adam eats with as much sweat of his browes and every Eve brings forth her Children with as much paine in her travaile as if there had been no Serpent in the case If a man sin against God who shall plead for him If a man lay his sins upon the Serpent upon the Devill it is no plea but if he lay them upon God it is blasphemy Iob finds some ground of a pious Expostulation with God in that My flesh is not brasse nor my strength stones And such as I am thou hast made me
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
next Quid in via What is to be done in the way for that counsell of the Apostle See that ye walk circumspectly presumes a man to be in the way Eph. 5.15 else he would have cried to have stopped him or to have turned him and not bid him goe on how circumspectly soever But In my path sayes David Psal 140.5 not making any doubt but that he was in a right path in my path the proud have laid a snare for me and spread a net with cords Ad manum orbitae sayes the Originall even at the hand of the path That path which should as it were reach out a hand to lead me hath a snare in it And therefore sayes David with so much vehemence in the entrance of that Psalme Deliver me O Lord from the evill man who purposeth to overthrow my goings Though I goe in the right way the true Church yet purposes to overthrow mee there This Evill man workes upon us The man of sin in those instruments that still cast that snare in our way in our Church There is a minority an invisibility and a fallibility in your Church you begun but yesterday in Luther and you are fallen out already in Calvin So also works this Evill man amongst us in those Scismatiques who cast that snare in our way Your way though it be in part mended hath yet impressions of the steps of the Beast and it is a circular and giddy way that will bring us back againe to Rome And therefore beloved though you be in the way see ye walk circumspectly for the snares that both these have cast in the way the reproaches and defamations that both these have cast upon our Church But when thou hast scaped both these snares of Papist and Scismatique pray still to be delivered from that Evill man that is within thee Non tantùm potest hominem decipere Hieron quà m per Organum hominis The Devill hath not so powerfull an instrument nor so subtile an engine upon thee as thy selfe August Quis in hoc seculo non patitur hominem malum Who in this world or if he goe so farre out of this world as never to see man but himselfe is not troubled with this evill man When thou prayest with David to be delivered from this evill man if God aske thee whom thou meanest must thou not say thy selfe Canst thou shew God a worse Chrysost Qui non est malus nihil à malo mali patitur If a man were not evill in himself the worst thing in the world could not hurt him the Devil would not offer to give fire if there were no powder in thy heart What that evill man is that is in another I cannot know I cannot alwayes discerne anothers snare for What man knoweth the things of a man 1 Cor. 2.11 save the spirit of a man which is in him Thy spirit knowes what the evill man that is in thee is Deliver thy selfe of that evill man that ensnares thee in thy way though thou come to Church yea even when thou art there David repeats this word A viro malo from the evill man twice in that Psalme In one place A viro malo is in that name Meish which is a name of man proper onely to the stronger sexe and intimates snares and tentations of stronger power As when feare or favour tempts a man to come to a superstitious and idolatrous service In the other it is but Meadam and that is a name common to men and women and children and intimates that omissions negligences infirmities may encumber us ensnare us though we be in the way even in the true place of Gods service and the eye may be ensnared as dangerously and as damnably in this place as the eare or the tongue in the Chamber As S. Hierome sayes Nugae in ore Sacerdotis sunt sacrilegium An idle word in a Church-mans mouth is sacriledge so a wanton look in the Church is an Adultery Now when God hath thus taught us the way what it is that is brought us to the true Church for till then all is diversion all banishment and taught us In via what to doe in that way To resist tentations to superstition from other imaginary Churches tentations to particular sins from the evill men of the world and from the worst man in the world our selfe the Instruction in our Text is carried a step farther that is to proceed and goe forward in that way Qua gradieris I will teach thee to walk in that way When S. Augustine saith upon this place Qua gradieris It is via qua gradieris non cui haerebis A way to walke in not to sticke upon he doth not meane That wee should ever change this way or depart from it that any crosse in this should make us hearken after another religion It is not that we should not sticke to it but that we should not sticke in it nor loyter in the way Thou hast beene in this way in the true Church ever since thy Baptisme and yet if a man that hath lived morally well all his life and no more then so finde by Gods grace a doore opened into the Christian Church and a short turning into this right way at the end of his life hee by the benefit of those good Morall actions shall be before thee who hast lived lazily though in the right way at his first step For though those good Morall actions were not good workes when hee did them yet then that grace which he layes hold upon at last shall reflect a tincture upon them and make them good in the eyes of God ab initio If thou have not beene lazie in thy way in thy Christian profession hitherto yet except thou proceed still except thou goe from hence now better then thou camest better in thy purpose and come hither next day better then thou wentest better in thy practise thou hast not learned this lesson in this Instruction I will teach thee to walke in this way A Christian hath no Solstice no highest point where he may stand still and goe no farther much lesse hath hee any Aequator where dayes and nights are equall that is a liberty to spend as much time ill as well as many houres in sinfull pleasures August as in religious exercises Quicquid citra Deum est via est nec immorandum in ea Hee doth not say praeter Deum much lesse contra Deum For whatsoever is against God nay whatsoever is besides God is altogether out of the way But citra Deum on this side of God Till we come to God in heaven all our best is but our way to him All the zeale of gathering knowledge all the growth of faith all the practise of sanctification is but via the way and non immorandum in ea since wee have here a promise of Gods assistance in it in the way we are sure there is an obligation upon
which part as it is the furnace of breath they place the seat of pride and opposition against the Truth making their use of that which is said of Saul Acts 9. That he breathed out threatnings and slaughter against the Disciples of the Lord. And by this interpretation Davids disease that he must be purged of should be pride But except as the Schoolemen when they have tyred themselves in seeking out the name of the sin of the Angels are content at last for their ease to call it Pride both because they thought they need goe no farther for where pride is other sins will certainly accompany it and because they extended the name of Pride to all refusals and resistances of the will of God and so pride in effect includes all sin Except I say the Fathers take Pride in so large a sense as that they would not prescribe Hyssop to purge Davids lungs for his disease lay not properly there They must have purged his liver the seate of blood the seat of concupiscence They must have purged his whole substance for the distemper was gone over all And to this rectifying of his blood by the application of better blood and David relation in this place All the sacrifices of Expiation of sin in the old Law were done by blood and that blood was sprinckled upon the people by an instrument made of a certain plant which because the word in Hebrew is Ezob for the nearnesse of the sound and for the indifferency of the matter for it imports us nothing to know of what plant that Aspergillum that Blood-sprinckler was made the Interpreters have ever used in all languages to call this word Hyssop And though we know no proper word for Hyssop in Hebrew for when they finde not a word in the Bible the Hebrew Rabbins will acknowledge no Hebrew word for any thing yet the other languages deduced from the Hebrew Syriaque and Arabique have clearly another word for Hyssop Zus And the Hebrew Rabbins think this word of our text Ezob to signifie any of three or foure plants rather then our Hyssop But be the plant what it will the forme and the use of that Blood-sprinkler is manifest Exod. 12. Levit. 14. In the institution of the Passeover Take a bunch of Hyssop and dip it in blood In the cleansing of the Leper there was to be the blood of a sparrow and then Cedar wood and scarlet lace and Hyssop And about that Cedar stick they bound this Hyssop with this lace and so made this instrument to sprinkle blood And so the name of the Hyssop because it did the principall office was after given to the whole Instrument all the sprinkler was called an Hyssop As we see when they reached up a sponge of vinegar to Christ upon the Crosse Ioh. 19.29 They put it sayes the text upon Hyssop that is upon an Hyssop not upon an Hyssop stalke as the old translation had it for no Hyssop hath such a stalke but they called such sticks of Cedar as ordinarily served for the sprinkling of blood Hyssops And whether this were such a Cedar stick or some other such thing Mat. 27.48 fit to reach up that spunge to Christ we cannot say For S. Matthew calls that that S. Iohn calls an Hyssop a Reed This then was Davids petition here first That hee might have the blood of Christ Jesus applied and sprinkled upon him David thought of no election hee looked for no sanctification but in the blood of Christ Jesus And then he desired this blood to be applied to him by that Hyssope by that Blood-sprinkler which was ordained by God for the use of the Church Home-infusions and inward inspirations of grace are powerfull seales of Gods love but all this is but the Privy seale David desired to bring it to the Great seale the publike Ordinance of the Church In a case of necessity God gave his children Manna and Quailes Iosh 5. In cases of necessity God allowes Sermons and Sacraments at home But as soone as ever they came to the Land of promise the same day both Manna and Quailes ceased God hath given us a free and publike passage of his Word and Sacraments the diet and the ordinary food of our souls and he purges us with that Hyssope with the application of his promises with the absolution of our sins with a redintegration into his mysticall body by the seales of reconciliation And this reconciliation to God by the blood of Christ applied in the Ordinances of the Church is that which David begs for his cleansing and is the last circumstance of this branch Purge me with Hyssope and I shall be cleane This Cleansing then implies that Cleansing which wee commonly call the enwrapping in the Covenant the breeding in the visible Church when God takes a Nation out of the Common and encloses it empailes it for his more peculiar use when God withdrawes us from the impossibility under which the Gentiles sterve who heare not Christ preached to live within the sound of his voyce and within the reach of our spirituall food the Word and Sacraments It is that state which the holy Ghost so elegantly expresses and enlarges Ezek. 16. That God found Jerusalem Her father an Amorite and her mother an Hittite none of the seed of the faithfull in her that he found her in Canaan not so much as in a place of true profession that he found her in her blood and her navell uncut still incorporated in her former stock And The time was a time of love sayes God and I covered thy nakednesse and sware unto thee and entred into a covenant with thee and thou becamest mine Will you say this could not be the subject of Davids petition this could not bee the cleansing that he begged at Gods hand to bee brought into that Covenant to bee a member of that Church for hee was in possession of that before Beloved how many are borne in this Covenant and baptized and catechized in it and yet fall away How many have taught and wrought and thought in their owne conscience that they did well in defence of the Covenant and yet fell away And from how many places which gave light to others hath God removed the Candlestick and left themselves in darknesse Psal 84.8 Though David say A day in thy Courts is better then a thousand then a thousand any where else yet he expresses his desire That hee might continue in that happinesse all the dayes of his life It is as fearefull a thing to be removed from the meanes of salvation as never to have had them This then is Cleansing To be continued in the distance and working of the meanes of cleansing that he may alwayes grow under the dew and breath in the ayre of Gods grace exhibited in his Ordinance Amongst the Jewes there were many uncleannesses which did not amount to sin They reckon in the Ceremoniall law at least fifty kinds of
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
into the Manichees error to make an Evill God So farre doth the Schoole follow this as that there one Archbishop of Canterbury out of another that is Bradwardin out of Anselme pronounces it Haereticum esse dicere Malum esse aliquid To say that any thing is naturally evill is an heresie But if I cannot finde a foundation for my comfort in this subtilty of the Schoole That sin is nothing no such thing as was created or induced by God much lesse forced upon me by him in any coactive Decree yet I can raise a second step for my consolation in this that be sin what it will in the nature thereof yet my sin shall conduce and cooperate to my good So Ioseph saies to his Brethren You thought evill against me Gen. 51.20 but God meant it unto good which is not onely good to Ioseph who was no partaker in the evill but good even to them who meant nothing but evill And therefore as Origen said Etsi novum Though it be strangely said yet I say it That Gods anger is good so saies S. Augustine Audeo dicere Though it be boldly said yet I must say it Vtile esse cadere in aliquod manifestum peccatum Many sinners would never have beene saved if they had not committed some greater sin at last then before for the punishment of that sin hath brought them to a remorse of all their other sins formerly neglected If neither of these will serve my turne neither that sin is nothing in it selfe and therefore not put upon me by God nor that my sin having occasioned my repentance hath done me good and established me in a better state with God then I was in before that sin yet this shall fully rectifie me and assure my consolation that in a pious sense I may say Christ Jesus is the sinner and not I. For though in the two and twentieth Session of the Councell of Basil that proposition were condemned as scandalous in the mouth of a Bishop of Nazareth Augustinus de Roma Christus quotidie peccat That Christ does sin every day yet Gregory Nazianzen expresses the same intention in equivalent termes when he saies Quamdiu inobediens ego tamdiu quantum ad me attinet inobediens Christus As long as I sin for so much as concernes me me who am incorporated in Christ me who by my true repentance have discharged my selfe upon Christ Christ is the sinner even in the sight and justice of his Father and not I. And as this consideration That the goodnesse of God in Christ is thus spread upon all persons and all actions takes me off from my aptnesse to mis-interpret other mens actions not to be hasty to call indifferent things sins not to call hardnesse of accesse in great Persons pride not to call sociablenesse of conversation in women prostitution not to call accommodation of Civill businesses in States prevarication or dereliction and abandoning of God and toleration of Religion as it takes me off from this mis-interpreting of others so for my selfe it puts me upon an ability to chide and yet to cheare my soule with those words of David O my Soule why art thou so sad why art thou so disquieted within me Since sin is nothing no such thing as is forced upon thee by God by which thy damnation should be inevitable or thy reconciliation impossible since of what nature soever sin be in it selfe thy sins being truly repented have advanced and emproved thy state in the favour of God since thy sin being by that repentance discharged upon Christ Christ is now the sinner and not thou O my Soule why art thou so sad why art thou disquieted within me And this consideration of Gods goodnesse thus derived upon me and made mine in Christ ratifies and establishes such a holy confidence in me as that all the morall constancy in the world is but a bulrush to this bulwark and therefore we end all with that historicall but yet usefull note That that Duke of Burgundy who was sirnamed Carolus Audax Charles the Bold was Son to that Duke who was sirnamed Bonus The Good Duke A Good one produced a Bold one True confidence proceeds onely out of true Goodnesse for The wicked shall flye Prov. 28.1 when no man pursueth but the righteous are bold as a Lion This constancy and this confidence and upon this ground Holy courage in a holy feare of him Almighty God infuse and imprint in you all for his Son Christ Jesus sake And to this glorious Son of God c. SERMONS Preached upon EASTER-DAY SERMON XVIII Preached at S. Pauls in the Evening upon Easter-day 1623. ACTS 2.36 Part of the second Lesson of that Evening Prayer Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly That God hath made that same Iesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ THe first word of the Text must be the last part of the Sermon Divisio Therefore Therefore let all know it Here is something necessary to be knowne And the Meanes by which we are to know it And these will be our two parts Scientia Modus Knowledge and the way to it For Qui testatur de scientia testatur de modo scientiae is a good rule in all Laws He that will testifie any thing upon his knowledge must declare how he came by that knowledge So then what we must conclude and upon what premisses what we must resolve and what must lead us to that resolution are our two stages our two resting places And to those two our severall steps are these In the first Let all the house of Israel know c. we shall consider first The Manner of S. Peter for the Text is part of a Sermon of S. Peters in imprinting this Knowledge in his Auditory which is first in that Compellation of love and honour Domus Israel The house of Israel But yet when hee hath raised them to a sense of their dignity in that attribute he doth not pamper them with an over-value of them he lets them know their worst as well as their best Though you be the house of Israel yet it is you that have crucified Christ Jesus That Iesus whom ye have crucified And from this his Manner of preparing them we shall passe to the Matter that he proposes to them When he had remembred them what God had done for them You are the house of Israel and what they had done against God You have crucified that Iesus He imparts a blessed message to them all Let all know it Let them know it and know it assuredly He exhibits it to their reason to their naturall understanding And what The greatest mystery the entire mystery of our salvation That that Iesus is both Lord and Christ But he is made so Made so by God Made both Made Christ that is anointed embalmed preserved from corruption even in the grave And made Lord by his triumph and by being made Head of the Church in the
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
Mission There fals lastly into this harmonious consort Dismissio occasioned by this Mission of the Holy Ghost a Dismission A dismissing out of this world Not onely in Simeons Nunc dimittis To be content that we might but in S. Pauls Cupio dissolvi To have a desire that we might be dissolved and be with Christ But whether the incumbrances of this World Psal 120.5 extort from thee Davids groane Heu mihi Woe is me that I so journe so long here Or a slipperinesse contracted by former habits of sin make every thing a tentation to thee so that thou canst not performe Iobs covenant with thine eyes of not looking upon a maid nor stop at Christs period which is Looke but doe not lust but that every thing is a tentation to thee and to be out of this haile-shot this batrery of tentations thou wouldst faine come to a dismission to a dissolution to a transmigration Or whether a vehement desire of the fruition of the presence and face of God in Heaven constitute this longing in thee yet all these reasons arise in thy selfe and determine in thy selfe and are referred but to thine owne ease and to thine owne happinesse and not primarily to the glory of God and therefore since the Holy Ghost staid for his Mission stay thou for thy Dismission too Gather up these scattered eares and binde up this loose sheafe Recollect these pieces of this branch The Holy Ghost was sent by the Son but the Son in his exemplar humility ascribes all to the Father The Holy Ghost had absolute power to come at his pleasure but he staid the order of the Decree and Gods leasure for his Mission Doe thou so too for thy Permission exercise not all thy liberty And for thy Commission execute not all thy authority And for thy Remission presume not upon thy pardon too soon And for thy Manumission hope not for an exemption from tentations till death And for thy Dismission practice not nay wish not thy death only in respect of thine own ease no nor only in respect of thine own salvation In this act of the Holy Ghost That he staid his Mission we have one instruction that we relie not upon our selves but accommodate our selves to the disposition of others And then another in the next That the Father should send him in the Sons name The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name The Holy Ghost comes not so in anothers name as that he hath not a full interest In nomine meo in all the names of Power and of Wisdome and of Essence it self that are attributed to God For not to extend to the particular attributes the Radicall name the name of Essence That name The name Iehovah is given to the Holy Ghost Iehovah sayes to Esay Go and tell this people this and this And then S. Paul making use of those words in the Acts sayes Well said the Holy Ghost by the Prophet Esay So that Esayes Iehovah Esay 6.9 Acts 28.5 is S. Pauls Holy Ghost And yet the Holy Ghost being in possession of the highest names and of the highest power implyed in those names comes in the name of another How much more then may the powerfullest men upon earth the greatest Magistrates the greatest Monarchs who though they be by God himself called gods are but representative gods but metaphoricall gods and God knows sometimes but ungodly gods confesse that they are sent in anothers name inanimated with anothers power and least of all their own or made that that they are for themselves How much more are we we considered in nature and not in office men and not Magistrates Wormes and not men Serpents and not Wormes For we are as S. Chrysostome speaks Spontanei daemones Serpents in our own bosomes devils in our own loynes bound to confesse that all the faculties of our soul are in us In nomine alieno In the name of another That will which we call Freewill is so far from being ours as that not only that Freedome but that Will it self is from another from God Not only the rectitude of the faculty but the faculty it self is his Nay though God have no part in the perversnesse and the obliquity of my will but that that perversnesse and that obliquity are intirely mine own yet I could not have that perversnesse and that obliquity but from him so far as that that faculty in which my perversnesse works is his and I could not have that perverse will from my self if I had not that will it self from God first And that very perversnesse and obliquity of the will is so much his as that though it were not his but mine in the making yet when it is made by me he makes it his that is he makes it his instrument and makes his use of it so far as to suffer it to flow out into a greater sin or to determine in a lesser sin then at first I in my perversnesse intended When I intended but an approach to a sin and meant to stop there to punish that exposing of my self to tentation God suffers me to proceed to the act of that sin And when I intend the act it self God interrupts me and cuts me off by some intervening occasion and determines me upon some approach to that sin that by going so far in the way of that sin I might see mine own infirmity and see the power of his mercy that I went no farther The faculties of my soule are his and the substance of my soul is his too And yet as I pervert the faculties I subvert the substance I damnifie the faculties but I damne the substance it self It would taste of uncharitablenesse to cast more coales of fire upon the devill himself then are upon him in hell now Or not to assist him with our prayers if it were not declared to us that he is incapable of mercy If the devill were now but under the guiltinesse of that sin which he committed at first and not under such an execution of judgement for that sin as induced or at least declared an obstination an obduration a desperation and impenitiblenesse if the devill were but as the worst sinner in this world can be but In via and not In exilio In the way to destruction and not under destruction it self we might pray for the devill himself And these poore souls of ours these glorious souls of ours none of ours but Gods own souls which now at worst God loves better then ever he did the devill when he was at best when he was an Angell uncorrupted and better then he doth those Angels which stand uncorrupted stil for he hath not taken the nature of Angels but our nature upon him we think those souls our own to do what we list with and when we have usurpt them we damne them As Pirates take other mens subjects and then make them slaves we usurp the faculties of the
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
root and bring that comfort to the fruit and confesse that God who is both is the God of all comfort Follow God in the execution of this good purpose upon thee to thy Vocation and heare him who hath left East and West and North and South in their dimnesse and dumnesse and deafnesse and hath called thee to a participation of himselfe in his Church Go on with him to thy justification That when in the congregation one sits at thy right hand and beleeves but historically It may be as true which is said of Christ as of William the Conquerour and as of Iulius Caesar and another at thy left hand and beleeves Christ but civilly It was a Religion well invented and keeps people well in order and thou betweene them beleevest it to salvation in an applying faith proceed a step farther to feele this fire burning out thy faith declared in works thy justification growne into sanctification And then thou wilt be upon the last staire of all That great day of thy glorification will breake out even in this life and either in the possessing of the good things of this world thou shalt see the glory and in possessing the comforts of this World see the joy of Heaven or else which is another of his wayes in the want of all these thou shalt have more comfort then others have or perchance then thou shouldest have in the possessing of them for he is the God of all comfort and of all the wayes of comfort And therefore Blessed be God even the Father c. SERM. XXXIX Preached upon Trinity-Sunday 1 PET. 1.17 And if ye call on the Father who without respect of persons judgeth according to every mans works passe the time of your sojourning here in feare YOu may remember that I proposed to exercise your devotions and religious meditations in these exercises with words which might present to you first the severall persons in the Trinity and the benefits which we receive in receiving God in those distinct notions of Father Son and holy Ghost And then with other words which might present those sins and the danger of those sins which are most particularly opposed against those severall persons Of the first concerning the person of the Father we spoke last and of the other concerning sins against the Father these words will occasion us to speak now It is well noted upon those words of David Psal 51.1 Have mercy upon me O God that the word is Elohim which is Gods in the plurall Have mercy upon me O Gods for David though he conceived not divers Gods yet he knew three divers persons in that one God and he knew that by that sin which he lamented in that Psalme that peccatum complicatum that manifold sin that sin that enwrapped so many sins he had offended all those three persons For whereas we consider principally in the Father Potestatem Power and in the Son Sapientiam Wisdome and in the holy Ghost Bonitatem Goodnesse David had sinned against the Father in his notion In potestate in abusing his power and kingly authority to a mischievous and bloody end in the murder of Vriah And he had sinned against the Son in his notion In sapientia in depraving and detorting true wisdome into craft and treachery And he had sinned against the holy Ghost in his notion In bonitate when he would not be content with the goodnesse and piety of Vriah who refused to take the eases of his owne house and the pleasure of his wifes bosome as long as God himselfe in his army lodged in Tents and stood in the face of the Enemy Sins against the Father then we consider especially to be such as are In potestate Either in a neglect of Gods Power over us or in an abuse of that power which we have from God over others and of one branch of that power particularly of Judgement is this Text principally intended If ye call on the Father who without respect of persons judgeth c. In the words we shall insist but upon two parts Divisio First A Counsaile which in the Apostles mouth is a commandement And then a Reason an inducement which in the Apostles mouth is a forcible an unresistible argument The Counsell that is The commandement is If ye call on the Father feare him stand in feare of him And the reason that is the Argument is The name of Father implyes a great power over you therefore feare him And amongst other powers a power of judging you of calling you to an account therefore feare him In which Judgement this Judge accepts no persons but judges his sons as his servants and therefore feare him And then he judges not upon words outward professions but upon works actions according to every mans works and therefore feare him And then as on his part he shall certainly call you to judgement when you goe hence so on your part certainly it cannot be long before you goe hence for your time is but a sojourning here it is not a dwelling And yet it is a sojourning here it is not a posting a gliding through the world but such a stay as upon it our everlasting dwelling depends And therefore that we may make up this circle and end as we begun with the feare of God passe that time that is all that time in fear In fear of neglecting and undervaluing or of over-tempting that great power which is in the Father And in feare of abusing those limnes and branches and beames of that power which he hath communicated to thee in giving thee power and authority any way over others for these To neglect the power of the Father or To abuse that power which the Father hath given thee over others are sinnes against the Father who is power If ye call on the Father c. First then for the first part the Counsell Si invocatis If ye call on the Father In timore 1. Part. Doe it in feare The Counsell hath not a voluntary Condition and arbitrary in our selves annexed to it If you call then feare does not import If you doe not call you need not feare It does not import That if you professe a particular forme of Religion you are bound to obey that Church but if you doe not but have fancied a religion to your selfe without precedent Or a way to salvation without any particular religion Or a way out of the world without any salvation or damnation but a going out like a candle if you can think thus you need not feare This is not the meaning of this If in this place If you call on the Father c. But this If implyes a wonder an impossibility that any man should deny God to be the Father If the author the inventer of any thing usefull for this life be called the father of that invention by the holy Ghost himselfe Gen. 4.20 Iabal was the father of such as dwell in Tents and Tubal his brother
tastlesse things Compare the Prophets with the Son and even the promises of God 2 King 4.34 in them are faint and dilute things Elishaes staffe in the hand of Gehazi his servant would not recover the Shunamites dead child but when Elisha himselfe came and put his mouth upon the childs mouth that did In the mouth of Christs former servants there was a preparation but effect and consummation in his owne mouth In the Old Testament at first God kissed man and so breathed the breath of life and made him a man In the New Testament Christ kissed man he breathed the breath of everlasting life the holy Ghost into his Apostles and so made the man a blessed man Love is as strong as death Cant. 8.6 As in death there is a transmigration of the soule so in this spirituall love and this expressing of it by this kisse there is a transfusion of the soule too And as we find in Gellius a Poëm of Platoes where he sayes he knew one so extremely passionate Vt parùm affuit quin moreretur in osculo much more is it true in this heavenly union expressed in this kisse as S. Ambrose delivers it Per osculum adhaeret anima Deo et transfunditur spiritus osculantis In this kisse where Righteousnesse and peace have kissed each other In this person where the Divine and the humane nature have kissed each other Psal 85.10 In this Christian Church where Grace and Sacraments visible and invisible meanes of salvation have kissed each other Love is as strong as death my soule is united to my Saviour now in my life as in death and I am already made one spirit with him and whatsoever death can doe this kisse this union can doe that is give me a present an immediate possession of the kingdome of heaven And as the most mountainous parts of this kingdome are as well within the kingdome as a garden so in the midst of the calamities and incommodities of this life I am still in the kingdome of heaven In the Old Testament it was but a contract but per verba de futuro Sponsabo I will marry thee Hos 2.19 Mat. 9.15 but now that Christ is come the Bride-groome is with us for ever and the children of the Bride-chamber cannot mourne Now by this we are slid into our fourth and last branch of our first part Exhortatic The perswasion to come to this holy kisse though defamed by treachery though depraved by licentiousnesse since God invites us to it by so many good uses thereof in his Word It is an imputation laid upon Nero That Neque adveniens neqùe profisciscens That whether comming or going he never kissed any And Christ himselfe imputes it to Simon as a neglect of him That when he came into his house he did not kisse him Luke 7.45 August This then was in use first among kinsfolks In illa simplicitate antiquorum propinqui propinquos osculabantur In those innocent and harmlesse times persons neare in bloud did kisse one another And in that right and not onely as a stranger Iacob kissed Rachel Gen. 29.12 and told her how near of kin he was to her There is no person so neare of kin to thee as Christ Jesus Christ Jesus thy Father as he created thee and thy brother as he took thy nature Thy Father as he provided an inheritance for thee and thy brother as he divided this inheritance with thee and as he dyed to give thee possession of that inheritance He that is Nutritius thy Foster-father who hath nursed thee in his house in the Christian Church and thy Twin-brother so like thee as that his Father and thine in him shall not know you from one another but mingle your conditions so as that he shall find thy sins in him and his righteousnesse in thee Osculamini Filium Kisse this Son as thy kinsman This kisse was also in use as Symbolum subjectionis A recognition of soveraignty or power Pharaoh sayes to Ioseph Thou shalt be over my house Gen. 41.40 and according to thy word shall all my people be ruled there the Originall is All my people shall kisse thy face This is the Lord Paramount the Soveraigne Lord of all The Lord Jesus Iesus Phil. 2.10 Mat. 28.18 at whose name every knee must bow in heaven in earth and in hell Iesus into whose hands all power in heaven and in earth is given Iesus who hath opened a way to our Appeal from all powers upon earth Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soule Iesus Mat. 10.28 who is the Lion and the Lambe too powerfull upon others accessible unto thee Osculamini Filium Kisse this Son as he is thy Soveraigne It was in use likewise In discessu friends parting kissed Gen. 31.15 Act. 20.37 Laban rose up early in the morning and kissed his sons and his daughters and departed And at Pauls departing they fell on his neck and wept and kissed him When thou departest to thy worldly businesses to thy six dayes labour kisse him take leave of him and remember that all that while thou art gone upon his errand and though thou worke for thy family and for thy posterity yet thou workest in his vineyard and dost his worke They kissed too In reditu Esau ran to meet his brother and fell on his neck and kissed him Gen. 33.4 When thou returnest to his house after thy six dayes labour to celebrate his Sabbath kisse him there and be able to give him some good account from Sabbath to Sabbath from week to week of thy stewardship and thou wilt never be bankrupt They kissed in reconciliation David kissed Absalon 2 Sam. 14.33 If thou have not discharged thy stewardship well Restore to man who is damnified therein Confesse to God who hath suffered in that sin Reconcile thy selfe to him and kisse him in the Sacrament in the seale of Reconciliation They kissed in a religious reverence even of false gods I have sayes God 2 King 19 18. seaven thousand knees that have not bowed unto Baal and mouths that have not kissed him Let every one of us kisse the true God in keeping his knees from bowing to a false his lips from assenting his hands from subscribing to an Idolatrous worship And as they kissed In Symbolum concordiae Rom. 16.16 which was another use thereof Salute one another with a holy kisse upon which custome Iustin Martyr sayes Osculum ante Eucharistiam before the Communion the Congregation kissed to testifie their unity in faith in him to whom they were then Sacramentally to be united as well as Spiritually And Tertullian calls it Osculum signaculum Orationis Because they ended their publique Prayers with that seale of unity and concord Let every Congregation kisse him so at every meeting to seale to him a new band a new vow that they will never break in departing from any part of his
the ordinary and outward meanes of our salvation When the anger of the Body the Church is thus heavy what is the anger of the Head of Christ himselfe who is Judge in his owne cause When an unjust judgement was executed upon him how was the frame of nature shaked in Eclipses in Earth-quakes in renting of the Temple and cleaving the Monuments of the dead When his pleasure is to execute a just judgement upon a Nation upon a Church upon a Man in the infatuation of Princes in the recidivation of the Clergy in the consternation of particular consciences Quis stabit who shall be able to stand in that Judgement Kisse the Son lest he be angry But when he is angry he will not kisse you nor be kissed by you but throw you into unquenchable fire if you be cold and if you be luke-warme spit you out of his mouth remove you from the benefit and comfort of his Word This is the anger of God that reaches to all the world and the anger of the Son Osculum amovet that comes home to us and all this is removed with this holy and spirituall kisse Osculamini Filium Kisse the Son lest he be angry implies this If ye kisse him he will not bee angry What this kisse is we have seene all the way It is to hang at his lips for the Rule of our life To depend upon his Word for our Religion and to succour our selves by the promises of his Gospel in all our calamities and not to provoke him to farther judgements by a perverse and froward use of those judgements which he hath laid upon us As it is in this point towards man it is towards God too Nihil mansuetudine violentius There is not so violent a thing as gentlenesse so forcible so powerfull upon man Chrysost or upon God This is such a saying as one would think he that said it should be ready to retract by the multiplicity of examples to the contrary every day Such Rules as this He that puts up one wrong invites and calls for another will shake Chrysostomes Rule shrewdly Nihil mansuetudine violentius That no battery is so strong against an enemy as gentlenesse Say if you will Nihilmelius There is no better thing then gentlenesse and we can make up that with a Comment that is nothing better for some purposes Say if you will Nihil frugalius There is not a thriftier thing then gentlenesse It saves charges to suffer It is a more expensive thing to revenge then to suffer whether we consider expense of soule or body or fortune And by the way that which we use to adde in this account opinion reputation that which we call Honour is none of the Elements of which man is made It may be the ayre that the Bird flies in It may be the water that the Fish swimmes in but it is none of the Elements that man is made of for those are onely soule and body and fortune Say also if you will Nihil accommodatius Nothing conformes us more to our great patterne Christ Jesus then mildnesse then gentlenesse for that is our lesson from him Discite à me quiamitis Learne of me for I am meeke All this Chrysostome might say but will he say Nihil violentius There is not so violent so forcible a thing as mildnesse That there is no such Bullet as a Pillow no such Action as Passion no such revenge as suffering an injury Yet even this is true Nothing defeats an anger so much as patience nothing reproaches a chiding so much as silence Reprehendis iratum accusas indignationem sayes that Father Art thou sorry to see a man angry Cur magis irasci vis Why dost thou adde thy anger to his Why dost thou fuell his anger with thine Quodigni aqua hoc irae mansuetudo As water works upon fire so would thy patience upon his anger S. Ambrose hath expressed it well too Haec sunt armajusti ut cedendo vincat This is the warre of the righteous man to conquer by yeelding Esay 36.21 It was Ezechiahs way when Rabshakeh reviled They held their peace where the very phrase affords us this note That silence is called holding of our peace we continue our peace best by silence They held their peace sayes that text and answered him not a word for the King had commanded them not to answer Why S. Hierom tels us why Ne ad majores blasphemias provocaret Lest the multiplying of cholerique words amongst men should have occasioned more blasphemies against God And as it is thus with man with God it is thus too Nothing spends his judgements and his corrections so soone as our patience nothing kindles them exasperates them so much as our frowardnesse and murmuring Kisse the Son and he will not be angry If he be kisse the rod and he will be angry no longer love him lest hee be feare him when hee is angry The preservative is easie and so is the restorative too The Balsamum of this kisse is all To suck spirituall milke out of the left breast as well as out of the right To finde mercy in his judgements reparation in his ruines feasts in his Lents joy in his anger But yet we have reserved it for our last Consideration what will make him angry what sins are especially directed upon the second Person the Sonne of God and then wee have done all Though those three Attributes of God Sapientia Power and Wisdome and Goodnesse he all three in all the three Persons of the Trinity for they are all as we say in the Schoole Co-omnipotentes they have all a joynt-Almightinesse a joynt-Wisdome and a joynt-Goodnesse yet because the Father is Principium The roote of all Independent not proceeding from any other as both the other Persons do and Power and Soveraignty best resembles that Independency therefore we attribute Power to the Father And because the Son proceeds Per modum intellectus which is the phrase that passes through the Fathers and the Schoole That as our understanding proceeds from our reasonable soule so the second Person the Son proceeds from the Father therefore we attribute Wisdome to the Son And then because the Holy Ghost is said to proceed Per modum voluntatis That as our soule as the roote and our understanding proceeding from that soule produce our will and the object of our will is evermore Bonum that which is good in our apprehension therefore we attribute to the Holy Ghost Goodnesse And therefore David formes his prayer Psal 51. in that manner plurally Miserere mei Elohim Be mercifull unto me all because in his sin upon Vriah which he laments in that Psalme he had transgressed against all the three Persons in all their Attributes against the Power and the Wisdome and the Goodnesse of God That then which we consider principally in the Son is Wisdome And truly those very many things which are spoken of Wisdome in the Proverbs of
in a peacefull unity of affections by the love and goodnesse of the holy Ghost Amen SERM. XLIX Preached on the Conversion of S. PAUL 1629. ACTS 23.6 7. But when Paul perceived that one part were Sadduces and the other Pharisees he cryed out in the Councel Men and Brethren I am a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee Of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question And when he had so said there arose a dissention between the Pharisees and the Sadduces and the multitude was divided WE consider ordinarily in the old Testament God the Father And in the Gospels God the Son And in this Book the Acts and in the Epistles and the rest God the Holy Ghost that is God in the Government and Administration of his Church as well in the ordinary Ministery and constant callings therein as in the extraordinary use of generall Councells of which we have the Modell and Platforme and precedent in the fifteenth Chapter of this Booke The Book is noted to have above twenty Sermons of the Apostles and yet the Book is not called The Sermons The Preaching of the Apostles but the Practise the Acts of the Apostles Our actions if they be good speak louder then our Sermons Our preaching is our speech our good life is our eloquence Preaching celebrates the Sabbath but a good life makes the whole week a Sabbath that is A savor of rest in the nostrils of God Gen. 8. Chrysost Hieron as it is said of Noahs Sacrifice when he came out of the Ark. The Book is called The Acts of the Apostles But sayes S. Chrysostome and S. Hierome too it might be called the Acts of S. Paul so much more is it conversant about him then all the rest In which respect at this time of the yeare and in these dayes when the Church commemorates the Conversion of S. Paul I have for divers yeares successively in this place determined my selfe upon this Book Once upon the very act of his Conversion in those words Acts 9.4 Acts 20.25 Saul Saul why persecutest thou me Once upon his valediction to his Ephesians at Miletus in those words Now I know that all ye shall see my face no more And once upon the escape from the Vipers teeth and the viperous tongues of those inconstant and clamorous beholders Acts 28.6 who first rashly cried out He is a murderer and then changed their mindes and said He is a God And now for the service of your devotions and the advancement of your edification I have laid my meditations upon this his Stratagem and just avoiding of an unjust Judgement When Paul percived that one part were Sadduces and the other Pharisees c. In handling of which words Divisio because they have occasioned a Disputation and a Probleme whether this that Paul did were well done To raise a dissention amongst his Judges we shall stop first upon that Consideration That all the actions of holy men of Apostles in the new Testament of Patriarchs in the old are not to be drawne into example and consequence for others no nor alwayes to be excused and justified in them that did them All actions of holy men are not holy that is first And secondly we shall consider this action of S. Paul in some circumstances that invest it and in some effects that it produced in our Text as dissention amongst his Judges and so a reprieving or rather a putting off of the triall for that time and these will determine our second Consideration And in a third we shall lodge all these in our selves and make it our owne case and finde that we have all Sadduces and Pharisees in our own bosomes contrary affections in our own hearts and finde an advantage in putting these home Sadduces and home Pharisees these contrary affections in our owne bosomes in colluctation and opposition against one another that they doe not combine and unite themselves to our farther disadvantage A Civill warre is in this case our way to peace when one sinfull affection crosses another we scape better then when all joyne without any resistance And in these three first the Generall How wee are to estimate all actions And then the Particular what wee are to thinke of S. Pauls Action And lastly the Individuall How wee are to direct and regulate our owne Actions wee shall determine all First then 1. Part. though it be a safer way to suspect an action to be sin that is not then to presome an action to be no sin that is so yet that rule holds better in our selves then in other men for in judging the actions of other men our suspition may soone stray into an uncharitable mis-interpretation and wee may sin in condemning that in another which was no sin in him that did it But in truth Transilire lineam To depart from the direct and straight line is sin as well on the right hand as on the left And the Devill makes his advantages upon the over-tender and scrupulous conscience as well as upon the over-confident and obdurate and many men have erred as much in justifying some actions of holy men as in calumniating or mis-condemning of others If we had not evidence in Scripture that Abraham received that Commandement from God who could justifie Abrahams proceeding with his son Isaac And therefore who shall be afraid to call Noahs Drunkennesse and his undecent lying in his Tent Or Lots Drunkennesse and his iterated Incest with his Daughters or his inconsiderate offer to prostitute his Daughters to the Sodomites Or to call Davids complicated and multiplied sin a sin When the Church celebrates Samsons death though he killed himself it is upon a tender holy supposition that he might do this not without some instinct and inspiration from the Spirit of God But howsoever the Church interprets such actions it is a dangerous and a fallacious way for any private man to argue so The Spirit of God directed this man in many actions therefore in all And dangerous to conclude an action to be good either because he that did it had a good purpose in doing it or because some good effects proceeded from it Bonum bene are the two horses that must carry us to heaven To do good things and to doe them well To propose good ends and to goe by good waies to those good ends The Mid-wives lie in the behalfe of the Israelites children was a lie and a sin howsoever God out of his own goodnesse found something in their piety to reward I should not venture to say as he said nor to say that hee said well when Moses said Dele me Forgive their finne or blot mee out of thy Booke Exod. 32.32 Rom. 9 3. Nor when S. Paul said Anathema pro fratribus I could wish that my selfe were separated from Christ for my Brethren I would not I could not without sin be content that my name should be blotted out of the Booke of
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.
comprehends all his Attributes all his Power upon the world and all his benefits upon him The Gentiles were not able to consider God so not so entirely not altogether but broke God in pieces and changed God into single money and made a fragmentarie God of every Power and Attribute in God of every blessing from God nay of every malediction and judgement of God A clap of thunder made a Iupiter a tempest at sea made a Neptune an earthquake made a Pluto Feare came to be a God and a Fever came to be a God Every thing that they were in love with or afraid of came to be canonized and made a God amongst them David considered God as a center into which from which all lines flowed Neither as the Gentiles did nor as some ignorants of the Roman Church do that there must be a stormie god S. Nicholas and a plaguie god S. Rook and a sheepshearing god a swineherd god a god for every Parish a god for every occupation God forbid Acknowledg God to be the Author of thy Being find him so at the spring-head then thou shalt easily trace him by the branches to all that belongs to thy well-being The Lord of Hosts and the God of peace the God of the mountaines and the God of the valleyes the God of noone and of midnight of all times the God of East West of all places the God of Princes and of Subjects of all persons is all one and the same God and that which we intend when we say Iehovah is all Hee And therefore hath S. Bernard a patheticall and usefull meditation to this purpose Every thing in the world sayes he can say Creator meus es tu Lord thou hast made me All things that have life and growth can say Pastor meus es tu Lord thou hast fed me increast me All men can say Redemptor meus es tu Lord I was sold to death through originall sin by one Adam and thou hast redeemed me by another All that have falne by infirmity and risen againe by grace can say Susceptor meus es tu Lord I was falne but thou hast undertaken me and dost sustaine me But he that comes to God in the name of Iehovah he meanes all this and all other things in this one Petition Let me have a Being and then I am safe for In him we live and move and have our Being If we solicite God as the Lord of Hosts that he would deliver us from our enemies perchance he may see it fitter for us to be delivered to our enemies If we solicite him as Proprietarie of all the world as the beasts upon a thousand mountaines are his as all the gold and silver in the earth is his perchance he sees that poverty is fitter for us If we solicite him for health or long life he gives life but he kills too he heales but he wounds too and we may be ignorant which of these life or death sicknesse or health is for our advantage But solicite him as Iehovah for a Being that Being which flowes from his purpose that Being which he knowes fittest for us and then we follow his owne Instructions Fiat voluntas tua thy will be done upon us and we are safe Now that which Iehovah was to David Iesus is to us Iesus Man in generall hath relation to God as he is Iehovah Being We have relation to Christ as he is Iesus our Salvation Salvation is our Being Iesus is our Iehovah And therfore as David delights himself with that name Iehovah for he repeats it eight or nine times in this one short Psalm and though he ask things of a diverse nature at Gods hands though he suffer afflictions of a diverse nature from Gods hands yet still he retains that one name he speaks to God in no other name in all this Psalm but in the name of Iehovah So in the New Testament he which may be compared with David because he was under great sins and yet in great favour with God S. Paul he delights himself with that name of Iesus so much as that S. Ierome says Quē superfluè diligebat extraordinariè nominavit As he loved him excessively so he named him superabundantly It is the name that cost God most and therefore he loves it best it cost him his life to be a Iesus a Saviour The name of Christ which is Anointed he had by office he was anointed as King as Priest as Prophet All those names which he had in Isaiah The Counsellor The Wonderfull The Prince of Peace Esay 9. and the name of Iehovah it self which the Jews deny ever to be given to him and is evidently given to him in that place Christ had by nature But his name of Iesus a Saviour he had by purchase that purchase cost him his bloud And therefore as Iacob preferred his name of Israel Gen. 32.28 before his former name of Iacob because he had that name upon his wrastling with God and it cost him a lamenesse so is the name of Iesus so precious to him who bought it so dearly that not only every knee bows at the name of Iesus here but Jesus himself and the whole Trinity bow down towards us to give us all those things which we ask in that name For even of a devout use of that veryname do some of the Fathers interpret that Oleū effusum Nomen tuu That the name of Iesus should be spread as an ointment breathed as perfume diffused as a soul over all the petitions of our prayers As the Church concludes for the most part all her Collects so Grant this O Lord for our Lord and Saviour Christ Iesus sake And so much does S. Paul abound in the use of this name as that he repeats it thrice in the superscription of one of his Letters the title of one of his Epistles his first to Timothy And with the same devotion S. August sayes even of the name Melius est mihi non esse quā sine Iesu esse I were better have no being then be without Jesus Melius est non vivere quam vivere sine vita I were better have no life then any life without him For as David could finde no beeing without Iehovah a Christian findes no life without Iesus Both these names imply that which is in this Text in our Translation The Lord Dominus to whom only and intirely we appertaine his we are And therefore whether we take Dominus to be Do minas to threaten to afflict us or to be Do manus to succour and relieve us as some have pleased themselves with those obvious derivations as David did still we must make our recourse to him from whom as he is Iehovah Beeing or being our wel-beeing our eternall beeing our Creation Preservation and Salvation is derived all is from him Now when he hath his accesse to the Lord 2 Part. to this Lord the Lord that hath all and gives all
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
came to put a war upon us The zeale of his glory and the course of this world fight against one another It is not against all warre nay it is not against all victory that David prayes He cannot hope that he should be overcome by no Tentations but against such a war and such a victory as should bring him to servility and bondage to sinne That sin entring by Conquest upon him should governe as a tyran over him against such a sicknesse as should induce a consumption it is that he directs this prayer Sana me Domine Not Lord make me impeccable but Lord make me penitent and then heale me And he comes not to take physick upon wantonnesse but because the disease is violent because the accidents are vehement so vehement so violent as that it hath pierced Ad ossa and Ad animam My bones are vexed and my soule is sore troubled Therefore heale me which is the Reason upon which he grounds this second petition Heale me because my bones are vexed c. We must necessarily insist a little upon these termes Ossa The Bones The Soule The Trouble or Vexation First Ossa Bones We know in the naturall and ordinary acceptation what they are They are these Beames and Timbers and Rafters of these Tabernacles these Temples of the Holy Ghost these bodies of ours But Immanebimus nativae significationi sayes S. Basil Shall we dwell upon the native and naturall signification of these Bones Et intelligentia passim obvia contenti erimus Shall we who have our conversation in heaven finde no more in these Bones then an earthly a worldly a naturall man would doe By S. Basils example we may boldly proceed farther Membra etiam animae sunt Esay 42. sayes he The soule hath her limbs as well as the body Surdi audite caeci aspicite sayes God in Esay If their soules had not eares and eyes the blinde could not see the deafe could not heare and yet God cals upon the deafe and blinde to heare and see As S. Paul sayes to the Ephesians The eyes of your understanding being enlightned so David sayes Psal 3.7 Dentes peccatorum contrivisti Thou hast broken the teeth That is the pride and the power the venom and malignity of the wicked Membra etiam animae sunt The soule hath her Bones too and here Davids Bones were the strongest powers and faculties of his soule and the best actions and operations of those faculties and yet they were shaken For this hereditary sicknesse Originall sinne prevayles so far upon us that upon our good dayes we have some grudgings of that Fever Even in our best actions we have some of the leaven of that sinne So that if we goe about to comfort our selves with some dispositions to Gods glory which we finde in our selves with some sparks of love to his precepts and his commandements with some good strength of faith with some measure of good works yea with having something for the Name and glory of Christ Jesus yet if we consider what humane and corrupt affections have been mingled in all these Conturbabuntur ossa our Bones will be troubled even those that appeared to be strong works and likely to hold out will need a reparation an exclamation Sana me Domine O Lord heale these too or els these are as weake as the worst Ossa non dolent The Bones themselves have no sense they feele no paine We need not say That those good works themselves which we doe have in their nature the nature of sinne That every good worke considered alone and in the substance of the act it selfe is sinne But membranae dolent Those little membrans those filmes those thin skins that cover and that line some bones are very sensible of paine and of any vexation Though in the nature of the worke it selfe the worke be not sinne yet in those circumstances that invest and involve the worke in those things which we mingle with the worke whether desire of glory towards men or opinion of merit towards God Whensoever those bones those best actions come to the examination of a tender and a diligent Conscience Si ossa non dolent membranae dolent If the worke be not sinfull the circumstances are and howsoever they may be conceived to be strong as they are Ossa Bones works in a morall consideration good yet as they are Ossa mea sayes David as they are My bones such good works as taste of my ill corruptions so long they are vexed and troubled and cannot stand upright nor appeare with any confidence in the sight of God Thus far then first David needed this sanation this health that he prayes for Anima that his best actions were corrupt But the corruption went farther to the very roote and fountaine of those actions Ad ipsam animam His very soule was sore vexed It is true that as this word Anima the soule is sometimes taken in the Scriptures this may seeme to goe no farther then the former no more that his soule was vexed then that his bones were so for Anima in many places is but Animalis Homo The soule signifies but the naturall man And so opponitur spiritui The soule is not onely said to be a diverse thing but a contrary thing to the Spirit When the Apostle sayes to the Thessalonians 1 Thes ult 23. Now the very God of peace sanctifie you throughout that your whole spirit and soule and body may be kept blamelesse unto the comming of our Lord Iesus Christ And where the same Apostle sayes to the Hebrews The word of God divideth asunder the soule and the spirit Heb. 4.12 here is a difference put between corrupt nature and the working of the Spirit of God the Holy Ghost in man for here the soule is taken for Animalis home The naturall man and the Spirit is taken for the Spirit of God But besides this these two words Soule and Spirit are sometimes used by the Fathers in a sense diverse from one another and as different things and yet still as parts of one and the same man Man is said by them not onely to have a body and a soule but to have a soule and a spirit not as Spirit is the Spirit of God and so an extrinsecall thing but as Spirit is a constitutive part of the naturall man So in particular amongst many Gregory Nyssen takes the Body to be spoken De nutribili The flesh and bloud of man And the soule De sensibili The operation of the senses And the Spirit De Intellectuali The Intellectuall the reasonable faculties of man That in the body Man is conformed to Plants that have no sense In the soule to Beasts that have no reason In the spirit to Angels But so The Spirit is but the same thing with that which now we doe ordinarily account the soule to be for we make account that the Image of God is imprinted in the soule and that gives him his
Begin with me againe as thou begunst with Adam in innocency and see if I shall husband and governe that innocency better then Adam did for for this heart which I have from him I have it in corruption and Job 4. who can bring a cleane thing out of uncleannesse Therefore Davids prayer goes farther in the same place Renew a constant spirit in me Present cleannesse cannot be had from my selfe but if I have that from God mine owne cloathes will make me foule againe and therefore doe not onely create a cleane spirit but renew a spirit of constancy and perseverance Therefore I have also another Prayer in the same Psalme Psal 51.12 Spiritu principali confirma me Sustaine me uphold me with thy free spirit thy large thy munificent spirit for thy ordinary graces will not defray me nor carry me through this valley of tentations not thy single money but thy Talents not as thou art thine owne Almoner but thine owne Treasurer It is not the dew but thy former and later raine that must water though it be thy hand that hath planted Not any of the Rivers though of Paradise but the Ocean it selfe that must bring me to thy Jerusalem Create a clean heart Thou didst so in Adam and in him I defiled it Renew that heart Thou didst so in Baptisme And thy upholding me with thy constant spirit is thy affording me means which are constant in thy Church But thy confirming me with thy principall spirit is thy making of those meanes instituted in thy Church effectuall upon me by the spirit of Application the spirit of Appropriation by which the merits of the Son deposited in the Church are delivered over unto me This then is the force of Davids reason in this Petition Ossa implentur vitiis Iob 20.11 as one of Iobs friends speaks My bones are full of the sins of my youth That is my best actions now in mine age have some taste some tincture from the habit or some sinfull memory of the acts of sin in my youth Adhaeret os meum carni as David also speaks Psal 102.5 Lam. 4.8 My bones cleave to my flesh my best actions taste of my worst And My skin cleaves to my bones as Ieremy laments That is My best actions call for a skin for something to cover them And Therefore not Therefore because I have brought my selfe into this state but because by thy grace I have power to bring this my state into thy sight by this humble confession Sana me Domine O Lord heale me Thou that art my Messias be my Moses Exod. 13.19 and carry these bones of thy Ioseph out of Egypt Deliver me in this consideration of mine actions from the terror of a self-accusing and a jealous and suspicious conscience 1 King 13.31 Bury my bones beside the bones of the man of God Beside the bones of the Son of God Look upon my bones as they are coffind and shrowded in that sheet the righteousnesse of Christ Jesus Accedant ossa ad ossa as in Ezekiels vision Let our bones come together Ezek. 37.7 bone to bone mine to his and looke upon them uno intuitu all together and there shall come sinews and flesh and skin upon them and breathe upon them and in Him in Christ Jesus I shall live My bones being laid by his though but gristles in themselves my actions being considered in his though imperfect in themselves shall bear me up in the sight of God And this may be the purpose of this prayer this sanation grounded upon this reason O Lord heale me for my bones are vexed c. But yet David must and doth stop upon this step he stayes Gods leisure and is put to his Vsquequo But thou O Lord how long David had cryed Miserere he had begged of God to look towards him Vsquequo and consider him He had revealed to him his weak and troublesome estate and he had entreated reliefe but yet God gave not that reliefe presently nor seemed to have heard his prayer nor to have accepted his reasons David comes to some degrees of expostulation with God but he dares not proceed far it is but usquequo Domine which if we consider it in the Originall and so also in our last Translation requires a serious consideration For it is not there as it is in the first Translation How long wilt thou delay David charges God with no delay But it is onely Et tu Domine usquequo But thou O Lord how long And there he ends in a holy abruptnesse as though he had taken himselfe in a fault to enterprise any expostulation with God He doth not say How long ere thou heare me If thou heare me how long ere thou regard me If thou regard me how long ere thou heale me How long shall my bones how long shall my soule be troubled He sayes not so but leaving all to his leisure he corrects his passion he breaks off his expostulation As long as I have that commission from God Dic animae tuae Salus tua sum Psal 35.3 Say unto thy soule I am thy salvation my soule shall keep silence unto God of whom commeth my salvation Silence from murmuring how long soever he be in recovering me not silence from prayer that he would come for that is our last Consideration David proposed his Desire Miserere and Sana Looke towards me and Heale me that was our first And then his Reasons Ossa Anima My bones my soule is troubled that was our second And then he grew sensible of Gods absence for all that which was our third Proposition for yet for all this he continues patient and solieites the same God in the same name The Lord But thou O Lord how long Need we then any other example of such a patience then God himselfe Domine who stayes so long in expectation of our conversion But we have Davids example too who having first made his Deprecation Ver. 1. That God would not reprove him in anger having prayed God to forbeare him he is also well content to forbeare God for those other things which he asks till it be his pleasure to give them But yet he neither gives over praying nor doth he encline to pray to any body else but still Domine miserere Have mercy upon me O Lord and Domine fana O Lord heale mee Industry in a lawfull calling favour of great persons a thankfull acknowledgement of the ministery and protection of Angels and of the prayers of the Saints in heaven for us all these concur to our assistance But the root of all all temporall all spirituall blessings is he to whom David leads us here Dominus The Lord Lord as he is Proprietary of all creatures He made All and therefore is Lord of All as he is Iehovah which is the name of Essence of Being as all things have all their being from him their very being and their well-being their Creation
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
they hide the marks and infect others and wrastle against Gods notifications of their former sinnes And then the last of these three words which is here rendred Griefe Indignatio does properly signifie Indignation and Anger And therefore S. Augustine upon this place puts himselfe to that question If Davids constitution be shaken if his complexion and countenance be decayed and withered Prae indignatione for Indignation for Anger from whom proceeds this Indignation and this Anger sayes that blessed Father If it proceede from God sayes he it is well that he is but Turbatus and not Extinctus that he is but troubled and not distracted but shaken and not overthrowne but overthrowne and not ground to powder not trodden as flat as durt in the streets as the Prophet speaks For David himselfe had told us but a few Psalmes before Psal 2. ult That when the Sonne is angry and when we speake of the Sonne we intend a person more sensible and so more compassionate of our miseries then when we speake of God of God considered in the height of his Majesty and but a little angry which amounts not to this provocation of God which David had falne into here we may perish and perish in the way perish in a halfe repentance before we perfect our Reconciliation In the way so before we come to our end or in the way in these outward actions of repentance if they be hypocritically or occasionally or fashionally or perfunctorily performed and not with a right heart towards God Though this be the way we may perish in the way Now Aquinas places this fury as the Vulgat calls it this indignation in Absolom and not in David He takes Davids sorrow to rise out of his sons rebellion and furious prosecution thereof That David was thus vehemently affected for the fault of another And truly it is a holy tendernesse and an exemplar disposition to be so sensible and compassionate for the sins of other men Though Absolom could not have hurt David David would have grieved for his unnaturall attempt to doe it So in Aquinas sense it is Excandescentia pro inimicis a sorrow for his enemies Not for his owne danger from them but for their sin in themselves But Gregory Nyssen takes it de excandescentia in inimicos for an indignation against his enemies And that David speaks this by way of confession and accusation of himselfe as of a fault that he was too soone transported to an impatience and indignation against them though enemies And taking that sense we see how quickly even the Saints of God put themselves beyond the hability of making that Petition sincerely Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespasse against us How hard it is even for a good man to forgive an enemy Heg And how hard it is Nihil in peccatore odisse nisi peccatum to sever the sin from the sinner and to hate the fault and not the man But leaving Thomas and Gregory Aquinas and Nyssen to that Exposition in which I think they are singularly singular either that this sorrow in David was a charitable and compassionate sense of others faults which is Aquinas way or that it was a confession of uncharitablenesse in himself towards others which is Gregories way the whole stream for the most part of ancient Expositors divide themselves into these two channels Either that this indignation conceived by David which withered and decayed him was a holy scorn and indignation against his owne sins that such wretched things as those should separate him from his God and from his inheritance according to that chaine of Affections which the Apostle makes 2 Cor. 7. That godly sorrow brings a sinner to a care He is no longer carelesse negligent of his wayes and that care to a clearing of himselfe not to cleare himselfe by way of excuse or disguise but to cleare himselfe by way of physick by humble confession and then that clearing brings him to an indignation to a kind of holy scorne and wonder how that tentation could worke so Such an affection as we conceive to have been in the Spouse when she said Lavi pedes I have washed my feet how shall I defile them I have emptied my soul by Confession is it possible I should charge it with new transgressions Or else they place this affection this indignation in God And then they say it was an apprehension of the anger of God to be expressed upon him in the day of Judgement And against this Vermination as the Originall denotes against this gnawing of the worme that may bore through and sink the strongest vessell that sailes in the seas of this world there is no other varnish no other liniment no other medicament no other pitch nor rosin against this worme but the bloud of Christ Jesus And therefore whensoever this worme this apprehension of Gods future indignation reserved for the Judgement bites upon thee be sure to present to it the bloud of thy Saviour Never consider the judgement of God for sin alone but in the company of the mercies of Christ It is but the hissing of the Serpent and the whispering of Satan when he surprises thee in a melancholy midnight of dejection of spirit and layes thy sins before thee then Looke not upon thy sins so inseparably that thou canst not see Christ too Come not to a confession to God without consideration of the promises of his Gospel Even the sense and remorse of sin is a dangerous consideration but when the cup of salvation stands by me to keep me from fainting David himselfe could not get off when he would but as he complaines there which is the last act of his sorrow to be considered in this which is all his part and all our first part Inveteravit He waxed old because of all his enemies The difference is not of much importance Inveteravit whether it be Inveteravi or Inveteravit in the first or in the third person Whether Davids eyes or David himselfe be thus decayed and waxen old imports little But yet that which Bellarmine collects upon this difference imports much For because the Vulgat Edition and the Septuagint such a Septuagint as we have now reade this in the first person of David himselfe Inveteravi and the Hebrew hath it in the third Inveteravit Bellarmine will needs think that the Hebrew the Originall is falsified and corrupted still in advancement of that dangerous Position of theirs That their Translation is to be preferred before the Originall and that is an unsufferable tyrannie and an Idolatrous servility The Translation is a reverend Translation A Translation to which the Church of God owes much but gold will make an Idol as well as wood and to make any Translation equall or better then the Originall is an Idolatrous servility It is true that that which is said here in the third person implyes the first And it is David that after his sighing and
Semel mori that every man must dye once but for any Bis mori for twice dying for eternall death upon any man as man if God consider him not as an impotent sinner there is no such invariable Decree for that death being also the punishment for actuall sin if he take away the cause the sin he takes away that effect that death also for this death it selfe eternall death we all agree that it is taken away with the sin And then for other calamities in this life which we call Morticulas Little deaths the children the issue the off-spring the propagation of death if we would speak properly no Affliction no Judgement of God in this life hath in it exactly the nature of a punishment not onely not the nature of satisfaction but not the nature of a punishment We call not Coyn base Coyne till the Allay be more then the pure Metall Gods Judgements are not punishments except there be more anger then love more Justice then Mercy in them and that is never for Miserationes ejus super omnia opera His mercies are above all his works In his first work in the Creation his Spirit the Holy Ghost moved upon the face of the waters and still upon the face of all our waters as waters are emblemes of tribulation in all the Scriptures his Spirit the Spirit of comfort moves too and as the waters produced the first creatures in the Creation so tribulations offer us the first comforts sooner then prosperity does God executes no judgement upon man in this life but in mercy either in mercy to that person in his sense thereof if he be sensible or at least in mercy to his Church in the example thereof if he be not There is no person to whom we can say that Gods Corrections are Punishments any otherwise then Medicinall and such as he may receive amendment by that receives them Neither does it become us in any case to say God layes this upon him because he is so ill but because he may be better But here our consideration is onely upon the godly and such as by repentance stand upright in his favour and even in them our Adversaries say that after the remission of their sins there remaines a punishment and a punishment by way of Satisfaction to be borne for that sin which is remitted But since they themselves tell us that in Baptisme God proceeds otherwise and pardons there all sin and all punishment of sinne which should be inflicted in the next world for children newly baptized doe not suffer any thing in Purgatory And that this holds not onely in Baptismo fluminis in the Sacrament of Baptisme but in Baptismo sanguinis in the Baptisme of blood too for in Martyrdome as S. Augustine sayes Injuriam facit Martyri He wrongs a Martyr that praies for a Martyr as though he were not already in Heaven so he suspects a Martyr that thinkes that Martyr goes to Purgatory And since they say that he can doe so in the other Sacrament too and in Repentance which they call and justly Secundam post naufragium tabulam That whereas Baptisme hath once delivered us from shipwrack in Originall sin this Repentance delivers us after Baptisme from actuall sinne Since God can pardon without reserving any punishment since God does so in Baptisme and Martyrdome since out of Baptisme or Martyrdome it appeares often that De facto he hath done so for he enjoyned no penance to the man sicke of the Palsie when he said Mat 9. Son be of good comfort thy sins are forgiven thee Sins and punishments too He intimated no such after reckoning to her of whom he said Many sins are forgiven her Sins and punishments too Luke 17. He left no such future Satisfaction in that Parable upon the Publican Luke 18. that departed to his house justified Justified from sins and punishments too And when he declared Zacheus to be the son of Abraham and said This day is Salvation come unto thy house Luke 19. He did not charge this blessed inheritance with any such encumbrance that he should still be subject to old debts to make satisfaction by bodily afflictions for former sins since God can doe this and does so in Baptisme and Martyrdome and hath done this very often out of Baptisme or Martyrdome in Repentance we had need of clearer evidence then they have offered to preduce yet that God does otherwise at any time that at any time he pardons the sin and retaines the punishment by way of satisfaction If their Market should faile that no man would buy Indulgences as of late yeares it was brought low when they vented ten Indulgencies in America for one in Europe If the fire of Purgatory were quenched or slackned that men would not be so prodigall to buy out Fathers or friends soules from thence If commutation of penance were so moderated amongst them that those penances and satisfactions which they make so necessary were not commuted to money and brought them in no profit they would not be perhaps so vehement in maintenance of this Doctrine To leave such imaginations with their Authors We see David did enjoyne himself penance and impose upon himselfe heavy afflictions after he had asked and no doubt received assurance of the mercy of God in the remission of his sins Why did he so S. Augustine observes out of the words of this Text that because some of Davids afflictions are expressed in the Preter tense as things already past and some in the Future as things to come for it is Laboravi I have mourned and it is Natare faciam I will wash my bed with teares so that something David confesses he had done and something he professes that he will doe therefore David hath a speciall regard to his future state and he proceeds with God not onely by that way of holy worship by way of confession what he had done but by another religious worship of God too by way of vow what he would doe David understood his own conscience well and was willing to husband it to manure and cultivate it well He knew what ploughing what harrowing what weeding and watring and pruning it needed and so perhaps might be trusted with himselfe and hee his owne spirituall Physitian This is not every ones case Those that are not so perfect in the knowledge of their owne estate as it is certaine the most are not the Church ever tooke into her care and therefore it is true that in the Primitive Church there were heavy penitentiall Canons and there were publique penances enjoyned to sinners Either Ad explorationem when the Church had cause to be jealous and to suspect the hearty repentance of the party They made this triall of their obedience to submit them to that heavy penance Or else Ad aedificationem to satisfie the Church which was scandalized by their sins before Or Ad Exercitationem to keepe them in continuall practise the better to resist
in our warres but his peace and that after this fast which in the bodily and ghostly part too we performe to day and vow and promise for our whole lives he will bring us to the Marriage Supper of the Lambe in that Kingdome which our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud Amen SERM. LV. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 6.8 9 10. Depart from me all ye workers of iniquitie for the Lord hath heard the voyce of my weeping The Lord hath heard my supplication the Lord will receive my prayer Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed let them returne and be ashamed suddenly THis is Davids profligation and discomfiture of his enemies this is an act of true honour a true victory a true triumph to keepe the field to make good one station and yet put the enemy to flight A man may perchance be safe in a Retrait but the honour the victory the triumph lies in enforcing the enemy to fly To that is David come here to such a thankfull sense of a victory in which we shall first confider Davids thankfulnesse that is his manner of declaring Gods mercy and his security in that mercy which manner is that he durst come to an open defiance and protestation and hostility without modifications or disguises Depart from me all yee workers of iniquity And then secondly we shall see his reason upon which he grounded this confidence and this spirituall exultation which was a pregnant reason a reason that produced another reason The Lord hath heard my supplication the Lord will heare my prayer upon no premises doth any conclusion follow so Logically so sincerely so powerfully so imperiously so undeniably as upon this The Lord hath and therefore the Lord will But then what was this prayer that wee may know whether it were a prayer to be drawne into practise and imitation or no. It is not argument enough that it was so because God heard it then for we are not bound nay we are not allowed to pray all such prayers as good men have prayed and as God hath heard But here the prayer was this Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed let them returne and be ashamed suddenly But this is a malediction an imprecation of mischiefe upon others and will good men pray so or will God heare that Because that is an holy probleme and an usefull intergatory we shall make it a third part or a conclusion rather to enquire into the nature and into the avowablenesse and exemplarinesse of this in which David seemes to have been transported with some passion So that our parts will be three the building it selfe Davids thankesgiving in his exultation Divisie and declaration Depart from mee all yee workers of iniquitie and then the foundation of this building For God hath heard and therefore God will heare and lastly the prospect of this building David contemplates and lookes over againe the prayer that he had made and in a cleare understanding and in a rectified Conscience he finds that he may persist in that prayer and he doth so Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed let them returne and be ashamed suddenly First then we consider Davids thankfulnesse But why is it so long before David leads us to that consideration Why hath he deferred so primary a duty to so late a place 1. Part. to so low a roome to the end of the Psalme The Psalme hath a Deprecatory part that God would forbeare him and a Postulatory part that God would heare him and grant some things to him and a Gratulatory part a sacrifice of thankesgiving Now the Deprecatory part is placed in the first place Vers 1. For if it were not so if we should not first ground that That God should not rebuke us in his anger nor chasten us in his hot displeasure but leave our selves open to his indignation and his judgements wee could not live to come to a second petition our sinnes and judgements due to our sinnes require our first consideration therefore David begins with the deprecatory prayer That first Gods anger may be removed but then that deprecatory prayer wherein he desired God to forbeare him spends but one verse of the Psalme David would not insist upon that long When I have penitently confest my sinnes I may say with Iob My flesh is not brasse nor my bones stones that I can beare the wrath of the Lord but yet I must say with Iob too If the Lord kill me yet will I trust in him God hath not asked me What shall I doe for thee but of himselfe he hath done more then I could have proposed to my selfe in a wish or to him in a prayer Nor will I aske God Quousque how long shall my foes increase how long wilt thou fight on their side against me but surrender my selfe entirely in an adveniat regnum and a fiat voluntas thy kingdome come and thy will be done David makes it his first worke to stay Gods anger in a deprecatory prayer but he stayes not upon that long he will not prescribe his Physitian what he shall prescribe to him but leaves God to his own medicines and to his own methode But then the Postulatory prayer what he begs of God employes six verses as well to shew us that our necessities are many as also that if God doe not answer us at the beginning of our prayer our duty is still to pursue that way to continue in prayer And then the third part of the Psalme which is the Gratulatory part his giving of thanks is shall we say deferred or rather reserved to the end of the Psalme and exercises onely those three verses which are our Text. Not that the duty of thankesgiving is lesse then that of prayer for if we could compare them it is rather greater because it contributes more to Gods glory to acknowledge by thanks that God hath given then to acknowledge by prayer that God can give But therefore might David be later and shorter here in expressing that duty of thanks first because being reserved to the end and close of the Psalme it leaves the best impression in the memory And therefore it is easie to observe that in all Metricall compositions of which kinde the booke of Psalmes is the force of the whole piece is for the most part left to the shutting up the whole frame of the Poem is a beating out of a piece of gold but the last clause is as the impression of the stamp and that is it that makes it currant And then also because out of his abundant manner of expressing his thankfulnesse to God in every other place thereof his whole booke of Psalmes is called Sepher tehillim a booke of praise and thankesgiving he might reserve his thanks here to the last place And lastly because naturall and morall men are better acquainted with the duty of gratitude of thankesgiving
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
swore so many a man prayes and does not remember his own prayer As a Clock gives a warning before it strikes and then there remains a sound and a tingling of the bell after it hath stricken so a precedent meditation and a subsequent rumination make the prayer a prayer I must think before what I will aske and consider againe what I have askt and upon this dividing the hoofe and chewing the cud David avowes to his own conscience his whole action even to this consummation thereof Let mine enemies be ashamed c. Now these words whether we consider the naturall signification of the words Impreeatoria or the authority of those men who have been Expositors upon them may be understood either way either to be Imprecatoria words of Imprecation that David in the Spirit of anguish wishes that these things might fall upon his enemies or els Praedictoria words of Prediction that David in the spirit of Prophecy pronounces that these things shall fall upon them If they be Imprecatoria words spoken out of his wish and desire then they have in them the nature of a curse And because Lyra takes them to be so a curse he referres the words Ad Daemones To the Devill That herein David seconds Gods malediction upon the Serpent and curses the Devill as the occasioner and first mover of all these calamities and sayes of them Let all our enemies be ashamed and sore vexed c. Others referre these words to the first Christian times and the persecutions then and so to be a malediction a curse upon the Jewes and upon the Romans who persecuted the Primitive Church then Let them be ashamed c. And then Gregory Nyssen referres these words to more domesticall and intrinsicke enemies to Davids owne concupiscences and the rebellions of his owne lusts Let those enemies be ashamed c. For all those who understand these words to be a curse a malediction are loath to admit that David did curse his enemies meerly out of a respect of those calamities which they had inflicted upon him And that is a safe ground no man may curse another in contemplation of himselfe onely if onely himselfe be concerned in the case And when it concernes the glory of God our imprecations our maledictions upon the persons must not have their principall relation as to Gods enemies but as to Gods glory our end must be that God may have his glory not that they may have their punishment And therefore how vehement soever David seeme in this Imprecation and though he be more vehement in another place Let them be confounded and troubled for ever yea let them be put to shame Psal 83.17 and perish yet that perishing is but a perishing of their purposes let their plots perish let their malignity against thy Church be frustrated for so he expresses himselfe in the verse immediately before Fill their faces with shame but why and how That they may seeke thy Name O Lord that was Davids end even in the curse David wishes them no ill but for their good no worse to Gods enemies but that they might become his friends The rule is good which out of his moderation S. Augustine gives that in all Inquisitions and Executions in matters of Religion when it is meerly for Religion without sedition Sint qui poeniteant Let the men remaine alive or else how can they repent So in all Imprecations in all hard wishes even upon Gods enemies Sint qui convertantur Let the men remaine that they may be capable of conversion wish them not so ill as that God can shew no mercy to them for so the ill wish falls upon God himselfe if it preclude his way of mercy upon that ill man In no case must the curse be directed upon the person for when in the next Psalme to this David seemes passionate when hee asks that of God there which he desires God to forbear in the beginning of this Psalme when his Ne arguas in ira O Lord rebuke not in thine anger is turned to a Surge Domine in ira Arise O Lord in thine anger S. Augustine begins to wonder Quid illum quem perfectum dicimus ad iram provocat Deum Would David provoke God who is all sweetnesse and mildnesse to anger against any man No not against any man but Diaboli possessio peccator Every sinner is a slave to his beloved sin and therefore Misericors or at adver sus cum quitanque or at How bitterly soever I curse that sin yet I pray for that sinner David would have God angry with the Tyran not with the Slave that is oppressed with the sin not with the soule that is inthralled to it And so as the words may be a curse a malediction in Davids mouth we may take them into our mouth too and say Let those enemies be ashamed c. If this then were an Imprecation a malediction yet it was Medicinall and had Rationem boni a charitable tincture and nature in it he wished the men no harm as men But it is rather Pradictorium Praedictoria a Propheticall vehemence that if they will take no knowledge of Gods declaring himselfe in the protection of his servants if they would not consider that God had heard and would heare had rescued and would rescue his children but would continue their opposition against him heavy judgements would certainly fall upon them Their punishment should be certaine but the effect should be uncertaine for God only knowes whether his correction shall work upon his enemies to their mollifying or to their obduration Those bitter and waighty imprecations which David hath heaped together against Iudas Psal 109 Acts 1.16 seeme to be direct imprecations and yet S. Peter himselfe calls them Prophesies Oportet impleri Scripturam They were done sayes he that the Scripture might be fulfilled Not that David in his owne heart did wish all that upon Iudas but only so as fore-seeing in the Spirit of Prophesying that those things should fall upon him he concurred with the purpose of God therein and so farre as he saw it to be the will of God he made it his will and his wish And so have all those judgements which we denounce upon sinners the nature of Prophesies in them when we reade in the Church that Commination Cursed is the Idolater This may fall upon some of our owne kindred and Cursed is he that curseth Father or Mother This may fall upon some of our owne children and Cursed is he that perverteth judgement This may fall upon some powerfull Persons that we may have a dependance upon and upon these we doe not wish that Gods vengeance should fall yet we Prophesie and denounce justly that upon such such vengeances will fall and then all Prophesies of that kinde are alwaies conditionall they are conditionall if we consider any Decree in God they must be conditionall in all our denunciations if you repent they shall not fall upon you if
the principall arguments against Confessions by Letter which some went about to set up in the Romane Church that that took away one of the greatest evidences and testimonies of their repentance which is this Erubescence this blushing this shame after sin if they should not be put to speak it face to face but to write it that would remove the shame which is a part of the repentance But that soule that goes not to confession to it selfe that hath not an internall blushing after a sin committed is a pale soule even in the palenesse of death and senslesnesse and a red soule red in the defiance of God And that whitenesse to avoid approaches to sin and that rednesse to blush upon a sin which does attempt us is the complexion of the soule which God loves and which the Holy Ghost testifies when he sayes Cant. 5.12 My Beloved is white and ruddy And when these men that David speaks of here had lost that whitenesse their innocency for David to wish that they might come to a rednesse a shame a blushing a remorse a sense of sin may have been no such great malediction or imprecation in the mouth of David but that a man may wish it to his best friend which should be his own soule and say Erubescam not let mine enemies but let me be ashamed with such a shame In the second word Conturbentur Let them be sore vexed he wishes his enemies no worse then himselfe had been For he had used the same word of himselfe before Ossa turbata My bones are vexed Ver. 2. 3. and Anima turbata My soule is vexed and considering that David had found this vexation to be his way to God it was no malicious imprecation to wish that enemy the same Physick that he had taken who was more sick of the same disease then he was For this is like a troubled Sea after a tempest the danger is past but yet the billow is great still The danger was in the calme in the security or in the tempest by mis-interpreting Gods corrections to our obduration and to a remorselesse stupefaction but when a man is come to this holy vexation to be troubled to be shaken with a sense of the indignation of God the storme is past and the indignation of God is blowne over That soule is in a faire and neare way of being restored to a calmnesse and to reposed security of conscience that is come to this holy vexation In a flat Map there goes no more to make West East though they be distant in an extremity but to paste that flat Map upon a round body and then West and East are all one In a flat soule in a dejected conscience in a troubled spirit there goes no more to the making of that trouble peace then to apply that trouble to the body of the Merits to the body of the Gospel of Christ Jesus and conforme thee to him and thy West is East Zoch 6.12 thy Trouble of spirit is Tranquillity of spirit The name of Christ is Oriens The East Esay 14.12 And yet Lucifer himselfe is called Filius Orientis The Son of the East If thou beest fallen by Lucifer fallen to Lucifer and not fallen as Lucifer to a senslesnesse of thy fall and an impenitiblenesse therein but to a troubled spirit still thy Prospect is the East still thy Climate is heaven still thy Haven is Jerusalem for in our lowest dejection of all even in the dust of the grave we are so composed so layed down as that we look to the East If I could beleeve that Trajan or Tecla could look East-ward that is towards Christ in hell I could beleeve with them of Rome that Trajan and Tecla were redeemed by prayer out of hell God had accepted sacrifices before but no sacrifice is call Odor quiet is Gen. 8.21 It is not said That God smelt a savor of rest in any sacrifice but that which Noah offered after hee had beene variously tossed and tumbled in the long hulling of the Arke upon the waters A troublesome spirit and a quiet spirit are farre asunder But a troubled spirit and a quiet spirit are neare neighbours And therefore David meanes them no great harme when hee sayes Let them be troubled For Let the winde be as high as it will so I sayle before the winde Let the trouble of my soule be as great as it will so it direct me upon God and I have calme enough And this peace Convertantur this calme is implyed in the next word Convertantur which is not Let them be overthrowne but Let them returne let them be forced to returne he prayes that God would do something to crosse their purposes because as they are against God so they are against their owne soules In that way where they are he sees there is no remedy and therefore he desires that they might be Turned into another way What is that way This. Turne us O Lord and we shall be turned That is turned the right way Towards God And as there was a promise from God to heare his people not onely when they came to him in the Temple but when they turned towards that Temple in what distance soever they were so it is alwaies accompanied with a blessing occasionally to turne towards God But this prayer Turne us that we may be turned is that we may be that is remaine turned that we may continue fixed in that posture Lots Wife turned her selfe and remained an everlasting monument of Gods anger God so turne us alwaies into right wayes as that we be not able to turne our selves out of them For God hath Viam rectam bonam as himselfe speakes in the Prophet A right way and then a good way which yet is not the right way that is not the way which God of himselfe would go For his right way is that we should still keepe in his way His good way is to beat us into his right way againe by his medicinall corrections when we put our selves out of his right way And that and that onely David wishes and we wish That you may Turne and Be turned stand in that holy posture all the yeare all the yeares of your lives That your Christmas may be as holy as your Easter even your Recreations as innocent as your Devotions and every roome in the house as free free from prophanenesse as the Sanctuary And this he ends as he begun with another Erubescant Let them be ashamed and that Valde volociter Suddenly for David saw that if a sinner came not to a shame of sin quickly he would quickly come to a shamelesnesse to an impudence to a searednesse to an obduration in it Now beloved this is the worst curse that comes out of a holy mans mouth even towards his enemie that God would correct him to his amendment And this is the worst harme that we meane to you when we denounce the judgements of
God against sin and sinners Vt erubescatis that we might see blood in your faces the blood of your Saviour working in that shame for sin That that question of the Prophet might not confound you Were they ashamed when they committed abomination nay they were not ashamed Ier. 6.15 Erubescere nesciebāt they were never used to shame they knew not how to be ashamed Therefore sayes he they shall fall amongst them that fall they shall do as the world does sin as their neighbours sin and fall as they fall irrepentantly here and hereafter irrecoverably And then Vt conturbati sitis that you may be troubled in your hearts and not cry Peace Peace where there is no peace and flatter your selves because you are in a true Religion and in the right way for a Child may drowne in a Font and a Man may be poysoned in the Sacrament much more perish though in a true Church And also Vt revertamini that you may returne againe to the Lord returne to that state of purenesse which God gave you in Baptisme to that state which God gave you the last time you received his body and blood so as became you And then lastly Vt erubescatis velociter that you may come to the beginning of this and to all this quickly and not to defer it because God defers the judgement For to end this with S. Augustines words upon this word Velociter Quandocunque venit celerrimè venit quod desperatur esse venturum How late soever it come that comes quickly if it come at all which we beleeved would never come How long soever it be before that judgement come yet it comes quickly if it come before thou looke for it or be ready for it Whosoever labours to sleepe out the thought of that day His damnation sleepeth not sayes the Apostle It is not onely that his damnation is not dead that there shall never be any such day but that it is no day asleepe every midnight shall be a day of judgement to him and keepe him awake and when consternation and lassitude lend him or conterfait to him a sleep as S. Basil sayes of the righteous Etiam somnia justorum preces sunt That even their Dreames are prayers so this incorrigible sinners Dreames shall be not onely presages of his future but acts of his present condemnation SERM. LVI Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 32.1 2. Blessed is he whose trangression is forgiven whose sinne is covered Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquitie and in whose spirit there is no guile THis that I have read to you can scarce be called all the Text I proposed for the Text the first and second verses and there belongs more to the first then I have delivered in it for in all those Translators and Expositors who apply themselves exactly to the Originall to the Hebrew the Title of the Psalme is part of the first verse of the Psalme S. Augustine gives somewhat a strange reason why the Booke of Enoch cited by S. Iude in his Epistle and some other such ancient Books as that were never received into the body of Canonicall Scriptures Vt in Authoritate apud nos non essent nimia fecit eorum Antiquitas The Church suspected them because they were too Ancient sayes S. Augustine But that reason alone is so far from being enough to exclude any thing from being part of the Scriptures as that we make it justly an argument for the receiving the Titles of the Psalmes into the Body of Canonicall Scriptures that they are as ancient as the Psalmes themselves So then the Title of this Psalme enters into our Text as a part of the first verse And the Title is Davidis Erudiens where we need not insert as our Translators in all languages and Editions have conceived a necessity to do any word for the cleering of the Text more then is in the Text it selfe And therefore Tremellius hath inserted that word An Ode of David we A Psalme of David others others for the words themselves yeeld a perfect sense in themselves Le David Maschil is Davidis Erudiens that is Davidis Eruditio Davids Institution Davids Catechisme And so our Text which is the first and second verse taking in all the first verse in all accounts is now Davids Catechisme Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven c. In these words Divisio our parts shall be these first That so great a Master as David proceeded by way of Catechisme of instruction in fundamentall things and Doctrines of edification Secondly That the foundation of this Building the first lesson in this Art the first letter in this Alphabet is Blessednesse for Primus actus voluntatis est Amor Man is not man till he have produced some acts of the faculties of that soule that makes him man till he understand something and will something Till he know and till he would have something he is no man Now The first Act of the will is love and no man can love any thing but in the likenesse and in the notion of Happinesse of Blessednesse or of some degree thereof and therefore David proposes that for the foundation of his Catechisme Blessednesse The Catechisme of David Blessed is the Man But then in a third Consideration we lay hold upon S. Augustins Aphorisme Amare nisi nota non possumus We cannot truly love any thing but that we know And therefore David being to proceede Catechistically and for Instruction proposes this Blessednesse which as it is in Heaven and reserved for our possession there is in-intelligible as Tertullian speaks unconceivable he purposes it in such notions and by such lights as may enable us to see it and know it in this life And those lights are in this Text Three for The forgivenesse of Transgressions And then The Covering of sinnes And lastly The not imputing of Iniquity which three David proposes here are not a threefold repeating of one and the same thing But this Blessednesse consisting in our Reconciliation to God for we were created in a state of friendship with God our rebellion put us into a state of hostility and now we need a Reconciliation because we are not able to maintaine a war against God no nor against any other enemy of man without God this Blessednesse David doth not deliver us all at once in three expressings of the same thing but he gives us one light thereof in the knowledge that there is a Forgiving of Transgressions another in the Covering of sinnes and a third in the not Imputing of Iniquity But then that which will constitute a fourth Consideration when God hath presented himselfe and offered his peace in all these there is also something to be done on our part for though the Forgiving of Transgression The Covering of sinne The not Imputing of Iniquity proceed onely from God yet God affords these to none but him In whose spirit there is no guile And
Summum bonum this Happinesse this Blessednesse was For they considered only some particular fruits thereof and it is much easier how high soever a tree be to come to a taste of some of the fruits then to digge to the root of that tree They satisfied themselves with a little taste of Health and Pleasure and Riches and Honour and never considered that all these must have their root in heaven and must have a relation to Christ Jesus who is the root of all And as these Philosophers could never tell us what this blessednesse was so Divines themselves and those who are best exercised in the language of the Holy Ghost the Originall tongue of this Text cannot give us a cleare Grammaticall understanding of this first word in which David expresses this Blessednesse Ashrei which is here Translated Blessed They cannot tell whether it be an Adverb And then it is Bene viro Well is it for that man A pathetique a vehement acclamation Happily Blessedly is that man provided for Or whether it be a Plurall Noune and then it is Beatitudines such a Blessednesse as includes many all blessednesses in it And one of these two it must necessarily be in the Rules of their Construction That either David enters with an Admiration O how happily is that man provided for Or with a Protestation That there is no particular Blessednesse which that man wants that hath this This Reconciliation to God Eusebius observes out of Plato that he enjoyned the Poets and the Writers in his State to describe no man to be happy but the good men none to be miserable but the wicked And his Scholar Aristotle enters into his Book of Ethiques and Morall Doctrine with that Contemplation first of all That every man hath naturally a disposition to affect and desire happinesse David who is elder then they begins his Book of Psalmes so The first word of the first Psalme is the first word of this Text Blessed is the man He comprehends all that belongs to mans knowledge and all that belongs to mans practise in those two first in understanding true Blessednesse and then in praising God for it Davids Alpha is Beatus vir O the Blessednesse of righteous men And Davids Omega is Laudate Dominum O that men would therefore blesse the Lord And therefore as he begins this Book with Gods blessing of man so he ends it with mans praising of God For where the last stroak upon this Psaltery the last verse of the last Psalme is Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord Yet he addes one note more to us in particular Praise ye the Lord and there is the end of all And so also our Saviour Christ himselfe in his owne preaching observed that Method Mat. 5.3 He begun his great Sermon in the Mount with that Blessed are the poore inspirit Blessed are they that mourne Blessed are the pure in heart Blessednesse alone was an abundant recompence for all And so the subject of Iohn Baptists Commission before and of his Disciples Commission after Mat. 3.2 was still the same to preach this Blessednesse That the Kingdome of God that is Mat. 10.7 Reconciliation to God in his Visible Church was at hand was forthwith to be established amongst them Though then the Consummation of this Blessednesse be that Visio Dei That sight of God which in our glorified state we shall have in heaven yet because there is an inchoation thereof in this world which is that which we call Reconciliation it behooves us to consider the disposition requisite for that It is a lamentable perversenesse in us that we are so contentiously busie in inquiring into the Nature and Essence and Attributes of God things which are reserved to our end when we shall know at once and without study all that of which all our lives study can teach us nothing And that here where we are upon the way we are so negligent and lazy in inquiring of things which belong to the way Those things we learne in no Schoole so well as in adversity As the body of man and consequently health is best understood and best advanced by Dissections and Anatomies when the hand and knife of the Surgeon hath passed upon every part of the body and laid it open so when the hand and sword of God hath pierced our soul we are brought to a better knowledge of our selves then any degree of prosperity would have raised us to All creatures were brought to Adam and because he understood the natures of all those creatures he gave them names accordingly In that he gave no name to himselfe it may be by some perhaps argued that he understood himselfe lesse then he did other creatures If Adam be our example in the time and Schoole of nature how hard a thing the knowledge of our selves is till we feele the direction of adversity David is also another example in the time of the Law who first said in his prosperity Psal 30.6 He should never bee moved But When sayes he Thou hidest thy face from me I was troubled and then I cryed unto thee O Lord and I prayed unto my God Then but not till then The same Art the same Grammar lasts still and Peter is an example of the same Rule in the time of grace who was at first so confident as to come to that Si omnes scandalizati if all forsook him Si mori oportuit If he must die with him or dye for him he was ready and yet without any terror from an armed Magistrate without any surprizall of a subtile Examiner upon the question of a poore Maid he denied his Master But then the bitternesse of his soule taught him another temper and moderation when Christ asked him after Amas me Lovest thou me not to pronounce upon an infallible confidence I have loved and I doe and I will doe till death but Domine tu scis Lord thou knowest that I love thee My love to thee is but the effect of thy love to me and therefore Lord continue thine that mine may continue No study is so necessary as to know our selves no Schoole-master is so diligent so vigilant so assiduous as Adversity And the end of knowing our selves is to know how we are disposed for that which is our end that is this Blessednesse which though it be well collected and summed by S. Augustine Beatus qui habet quicquid vult nihil mali vult He onely is blessed that desires nothing but that which is good for him and hath all that we must pursue in those particulars which here in Davids Catechisme constitute this Blessednesse and constitute our third Part and are delivered in three Branches first The forgiving of our transgressions And then The covering of our sinnes And thirdly The not imputing of our iniquities First then that in this third Part we may see in the first Branch 3 Part. Transgression the first notification of this Blessednesse we
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
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
thou be tempted with over-valuing thine owne purity finde an Example to answer that Job 14.27 Pro. 20.9 Quis mundum Who can bring a cleane thing out of uncleannesse Or that Who can say I have made my heart cleane I am pure from sinne There is no Example No man ever did it No man can say it If thou be tempted to worship God in an Image be able to answer God something to that To whom will yee liken God or what likenesse will yee compare unto him Esay 40.18 There can be no example no patterne to make God by for that were to make God a Copy and the other by which he were made the Originall If thou have a tentation to withdraw thy selfe from the Discipline of that Church in which God hath given thee thy Baptisme finde an Example to satisfie thy Conscience and Gods people in what age in what place there was any such Church instituted or any such Discipline practised as thou hast fancied to thy selfe Beleeve nothing for which thou hast not a Rule Doe nothing for which thou hast not an Example for there is not a more dangerous distemper in either Beliefe or Practise then singularity for there onely may we justly call for Miracles if men will present to us and binde us to things that were never beleeved never done before David therefore in this Psalme his Psalme of Instruction as himselfe calls it doth both He lays downe the Rule he establishes it by Example and that was our first Consideration and we have done with that Our second is That he goes not far for his Example 2 Part. Exemplum ipse He labors not to shew his reading but his feeling not his learning but his compunction his Conscience is his Library and his Example is himselfe and he does not unclaspe great Volumes but unbutton his owne breast and from thence he takes it Men that give Rules of Civill wisedome and wise Conversation amongst men use to say that a wise man must never speak much of himselfe It will argue say they a narrow understanding that he knows little besides his own actions or els that he overvalues his own actions if he bring them much into Discourse But the wise men that seeke Christ for there were such wise men in the world once Statesmen in the kingdome of heaven they goe upon other grounds and wheresoever they may finde them they seeke such Examples as may conduce most to the glory of God And when they make themselves Examples they doe not rather choose themselves then others but yet they doe not spare nor forbeare themselves more then other men David proposes his owne Example to his owne shame but to Gods glory For David was one of those persons Qui non potuit solus perire Bernar. He could not sin alone his sin authorized sin in others Princes and Prelates are Doctrinall men in this sense and acceptation that the subject makes the Princes life his Doctrine he learns his Catechisme by the eye he does what he sees done and frames to himselfe Rules out of his Superiors Example Therefore for their Doctrine David proposes truly his own Example and without disguising tells that of himselfe which no man else could have told Christ who could doe nothing but well proposes himselfe for an example of humility Iohn 3.15 Titus 2.7 I have given you an example Whom what That you should doe as I have done So S. Paul instructs Titus In all things shew a patterne of good works But whom for Titus might have shewed them many patternes but Shew thy selfe a patterne sayes the Apostle and not onely of assiduous and laborious preaching but of good works 1 Cor. 16.10 And this is that for which he recommends Timothy to the Church Hee works the work of the Lord And not without a patterne nor without that patterne which S. Paul had given him in himselfe He works so as I also doe S. Paul who had proposed Christ to himselfe to follow might propose himselfe to others and wish as he does I would all men were even as my selfe 1 Cor. 7.7 For though that Apostle by denying it in his owne practise 2 Cor. 4.5 seeme to condemne it in all others To preach our selves We preach not our selves but Christ Iesus the Lord yet to preach out of our owne history so farre as to declare to the Congregation to what manifold sins we had formerly abandoned our selves how powerfully the Lord was pleased to reclaime us how vigilantly he hath vouchsafed to preserve us from relapsing to preach our selves thus to call up the Congregation to heare what God hath done for my soule is a blessed preaching of my selfe And therefore Solomon does not speak of himselfe so much nor so much propose and exhibit himselfe to the Church in any Book as in that which he calls the Preacher Ecclesiastes In that Book he hides none of his owne sins none of those practises which he had formerly used to hide his sins He confesses things there which none knew but himselfe nor durst nor should have published them of him the King if they had knowne them So Solomon preaches himself to good purpose and poures out his owne soule in that Book Which is one of the reasons which our Interpreters assigne why Solomon cals himselfe by this name Lorin Proleg C. 5. Ecclesiastes Coheleth which is a word of the Foeminine gender and not Concionator but Concionatrix a Shee-preacher because it is Anima Concionatrix It is his soule that preaches he poures out his owne soule to the Congregation in letting them know how long the Lord let him run on in vanities and vexation of spirit and how powerfully and effectually he reclaimed him at last For from this Book the Preacher the she-Preacher the soule-Preacher Solomon preaching himselfe rather her selfe the Church raises convenient arguments and the best that are raised for the proofe of the salvation of Solomon of which divers doubted And though Solomon in this Book speak divers things not as his owne opinion but in the sense of worldly men yet as we have a note upon Plato's Dialogues that though he doe so too yet whatsoever Plato sayes in the name and person of Socrates that Plato alwayes meanes for his owne opinion so whatsoever Solomon sayes in the name of the Preacher the Preacher sayes this or sayes that that is evermore Solomons own saying When the Preacher preaches himselfe his owne sins and his owne sense of Gods Mercies or Judgements upon him as that is intended most for the glory of God so it should be applied most by the hearer for his own edification for he were a very ill natured man that should think the worse of a Preacher because he confesses himselfe to be worse then he knew him to be before he confessed it Therefore David thought it not enough to have said to his Confessor to Nathan in private Peccavi I have sinned but here before
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
it was the inchoation of his repentance which began diffidently and with fearefull vociferations Bellarm. And so some of our later men understand it That because David had continued long in his sin when the Ice brake it brake with the greater noyse when he returned to speake to God he spake with the more vehemence And truly the word Shaag Rugiit though it signifie properly the voyce of a Lyon yet David uses this word Roaring not onely of himselfe but of himselfe as he was a type of Christ for this very word is in the beginning of that Psalme which Christ repeated upon the Crosse Psal 22.1 or at least begun it My God my God why hast thou for saken me and why art thou so far from the voyce of my Roaring So that Roaring may admit a good sense and does not alwayes imply a distemper and inordinatenesse for in Christ it could not But does it not in our Text In our former Translation it might stand in a good sense where the two actions are distinguished in time thus When I held my tongue or when I roared whether I kept or broke silence all was one no more ease in one then the other But with the Originall and with our later Translation it cannot be so which is When I held my tongue through my roaring this and this fell upon me They were concomitant actions actions intermixt and at the same time when he was silent he roared too and therefore that that he calls Roaring is not a voyce of Repentance for if hee had beene come to that then hee had broke his former silence for that Silence was a not Confessing a not Repenting This is then that miserable condition which is expressed in Davids case though God delivered David from any deadly effect of it that he had occasion of Roaring of howling as the Scripture speaks often though he kept silence That he was at never the more ease for all his sins The eases that he laid hold on were new sins in themselves and yet they did not ease him of his other sins he kept silence and yet was put to exclamations And how many examples can we present to our selves in our owne memory where persons which have given themselves all liberty to forge writings to suborne witnesses to forsweare themselves to oppresse to murder others to make their wayes easier to their ends and yet have for all this though the hand of Justice have not fallen upon them seene their whole estates consume and moulder away When men out of their ill-grounded plots and perverse wisdome thinke themselves safe in the silence and secrecy of their sins God overtakes them and confounds them with those two fearefull blowes those two Thunderbolts He brings them to Exclamations to Vociferations upon Fortune upon Friends upon Servants upon Rivals and Competitors he brings them to a Roaring for their ruine Never man was thus dealt withall as I am never such a conspiracy as against me And this they do All day sayes David here Through my roaring all day Totadie It was long so with David A day as long as two of their dayes that have dayes of six months almost a yeare was David in this darke dead silence before he saw day or returned to speaking With those that continue their silence all day the roaring continues all day too All their lives they have new occasions of lamentations and yet all this reduces them not but they are benighted they end their life with fearefull voyces of desperation in a Roaring but still in a silence of their sins and transgressions And this is that that falls first under his Confession Roaring with Silence paine and shame and losse but all without Confession or sense of sin And then that which falls next under his acknowledgement is the vehement working the lamentable effect of this Silence and Roaring Inveteration of Bones incineration of his whole substance My Bones are waxen old and my moysture is turned into the drought of Summer Both these phrases in which David expresses his owne Humidum literale and prophecies of other such sinners misery have a literall and a spirituall a naturall and a morall sense For first this affliction of this silenced and impenitent finner though it proceed not from the sense of his sinne though it brought him not yet to a confession but to a roaring that is an impatient repining and murmuring yet it had so wrought upon his body and whole constitution as that it drunke up his naturall and vitall moysture Prov. 17.22 Psal 102.3.63.9 Spiritus tristis exsiccarat as Solomon speaks A broken spirit had dryed him up His dayes were consumed like smoake and his bones were burnt like a hearth and that Marrow and fatnesse in which hee sayes he had such sat is faction at other times was exhausted This is the misery of this impenitent sinner he is beggered but in the Devils service he is lamed but in the Devils wars his moysture his blood is dryed up but with licentiousnesse with his overwatchings either to deceive or to oppresse others for as the proverbe is true Plures gulae quà m gladius The Throate cuts more throates then the sword does and eating starves more men then fasting does because wastfulnesse induces penury at last so if all our Hospitals were well surveyed it would be found that the Devill sends more to Hospitals then God does and the Stewes more then the wars Thus his bodily moysture was wasted literally the sinner is sooner infirmed Humidum morale sooner deformed then another man But there is an Humidum radicale of the soulle too A tendernesse and a disposition to bewayle his sins with remorsefull teares When Peter had denied his Master and heard the Cocke crow he did not stay to make recantations he did not stay to satisfie them to whom he had denied Christ but hee looked into himselfe first Flevit amarè sayes the Holy Ghost He wept bitterly His soule was not withered his moysture was not dryed up like summer as long as he could weepe Horace The learned Poet hath given some character some expression of the desperate and irremediable state of the reprobate when he calls Plutonem illacrymabilem There is the marke of his incorrigiblenesse and so of his irrecoverablenesse That he cannot weepe A sinfull man an obdurate man a stony heart may weepe Marble and the hardest sorts of stones weepe most they have the most moysture the most drops upon them But this comes not out of them not from within them Extrinsecall occasions paine and shame and want may bring a sinner to sorrow enough but it is not a sorrow for his sins All this while the miserable sinner weeps not but the miserable man All this while though he have winter in his eyes his soule is turned into the drought of summer God destroyed the first world and all flesh with water Teares for the want or for the losse of friends
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
mine because I gave the example and we aggravate one anothers sin and both sin both But there is a publication of sin that both alleviates nay annihilates my sin and makes him that hates sin Almighty God love me the better for knowing me to be such a sinner then if I had not told him of it Therefore doe we speak of the mystery of Confession for it is not delivered in one Rule nor practised in one Act. In this Confession of Davids Divisie I acknowledged my sin unto thee c. We shall see more then so for though our two Parts be but the two Acts Davids Act and Gods Act Confession and Absolution yet is there more then one single action to be considered in each of them For first in the first there is a reflected Act that David doth upon himselfe before he come to his Confession to God Something David had done before he came to say I will confesse As he did confesse before God forgave the iniquity of his sin Now that which he did in himselfe and which preceded his Confession to God was the Notum feci I acknowledged my sin which was not his bringing it to the knowledge of God by way of Confession for as you see by the Method of the Holy Ghost in the frame of the Text it preceded his purpose of confessing but it was the taking knowledge of his sin in himselfe It was his first quickning and inanimation that grace gave his soul as the soule gives the child in the Mothers womb And then in Davids act upon himselfe followes the Non operui I have not hid mine iniquity none of mine iniquities from mine owne sight I have displayed to my selfe anatomized mine own conscience left no corner unsearched I am come to a perfect understanding of mine own case Non operui This is Davids act upon himselfe the recalling and recollecting of his sins in his own memory And then finding the number the waight and so the oppression of those sins there he considers where he may discharge himselfe of them And Dixi sayes David which is a word that implies both Deliberation and Resolution and Execution too I thought what was best to doe and I resolved upon this and I did it Dixi Confitebor That I would make a true a full a hearty Confession to God of all those sins for such we see the Elements and the Extent of his Confession to be He will confesse Peccata Transgressions Sins Neither by an over-tendernesse and diffidence and scrupulosity to call things sins that are not so nor by indulgent flattering and sparing of himself to forbear those things which are truly so He will confesse Peccata Sins and Peccata sua His sins First Sua that is A se perpetrata He will acknowledge them to have proceeded and to have been committed by himself he will not impute them to any other cause least of all to God And then Sua non aliena he will confesse sins that are his own sins and not meddle with the sins of other men that appertain not to him This is the subject of his Confession Sins His sins and then Peccata sua Domino His sins unto the Lord both in that consideration That all sins are committed against the Lord and in that also That Confession of all sins is to be made unto the Lord And lastly all this as S. Hierome reads this text and so also did our former Translation Adversum se Against himself that is without any hope of reliefe or reparation in himself He begins to think of his own sinfull state and he proceeds to a particular inquisition upon his conscience There is his preparation Then he considers and thereupon resolves and thereupon proceeds to confesse things that are truly sins And then all them as his own without imputing them to others If they be his own without medling with others And these to the Lord against whom all sin is committed and to whom all Confession is to be directed And all this still against himself without any hope from himself All this is in Davids action preparatorily in himself and then declaratorily towards God and doe but make up our first Part. In the other which is Gods Act towards David the Absolution the Remission the Forgivenesse we shall consider first the fulnesse for it is both of the sin and the punishment of the sin for the word imports both and our two Translations have expressed it between them for that which one Translation calls the Iniquity of the sin the other calls The punishment And then we shall consider the seasonablenesse the speed the acceleration of Gods mercy in the Absolution for in David it is but Actus inchoatus and Actus consummat as in God David did but say I will confesse and God forgave the iniquity and the punishment of his sin Now as this Distribution is Paraphrase enough upon the text so a little larger Paraphrase upon every piece of the Paraphrase will be as much as will fall into this exercise For as you see he branches are many and full of fruit and I can but shake them and leave every one to gather his own portion to apply those notes which may most advance his edification First then in this mystery of Confession 1 Part. Notum seci we consider Davids reflected act his preparatory act preceding his confession to God and transacted in himselfe of which the first motion is the Notum feci I acknowledged in my selfe I came to a feeling in my selfe what my sinfull condition was This is our quickning in our regeneration and second birth and til this come a sinner lies as the Chaos in the beginning of the Creation before the Spirit of God had moved upon the face of the waters Dark and voyd and without forme He lies as we may conceive out of the Authors of Naturall Story the slime and mud of the River Nilus to lie before the Sun-beames strike upon it which after by the heat of those beames produces severall shapes and formes of creatures So till this first beame of grace which we consider here strike upon the soule of a sinner he lies in the mud and slime in the dregs and lees and tartar of his sinne Hee cannot so much as wish that that Sunne would shine upon him he doth not so much as know that there is such a Sunne that hath that influence and impression But if this first beame of Grace enlighten him to himselfe reflect him upon himselfe notum facit as the Text sayes if it acquaint him with himselfe then as the creatures in the Creation then as the new creatures at Nilus his sins begin to take their formes and their specifications and they appeare to him in their particular true shapes and that which hee hath in a generall name called Pleasure or Wantonnesse now cals it selfe in his conscience a direct Adultery a direct Incest and that which he hath called Frugality and
providence for family and posterity tells him plainly My name is Oppression and I am the spirit of covetousnesse Many times men fall into company and accompany others to houses of riot and uncleannesse and doe not so much as know their sinfull companions names nay they doe not so much as know the names of the sins that they commit nor those circumstances in those sinnes which vary the very name and nature of the sin But then Gregor Oculos quos culpa claudit poena aperit Those eyes which sinne shut this first beame of Grace opens when it comes and works effectually upon us Till this season of grace Ier. 2.29 this sinner is blind to the Sunne and deafe to Thunder A wild Asse that is used to the wildernesse and snuffeth up wind at her pleasure in her occasion who can turne her away An habituall sinner that doth not stumble but tumble as a mighty stone downe a hill in the wayes of his sin in his occasion who can turne him in his rage of sin what law can withhold him But sayes the Prophet there of that wild Asse All they that seeke her will not weary themselves Friends Magistrates Preachers doe but weary themselves and lose their labour in endeavouring to reclaime that sinner But in her Month they shall finde her sayes the Prophet That is say our Expositors when she is great and unweildy Some such Moneth God of his goodnesse brings upon this sinner Some sicknesse some judgement stops him and then we find him God by his Ordinance executed by us brings him to this Notum feci into company with himselfe into an acquaintance and conversation with himselfe and hee sees his sinnes looke with other faces and he heares his sins speake with other voyces and hee findes then to call one another by other names And when hee is thus come to that consideration Lord how have I mistaken my selfe Am I that thought my selfe and passed with others for a sociable a pleasurable man and good company am I a leprous Adulterer is that my name Am I that thought my selfe a frugall man and a good husband I whom fathers would recommend to their children and say Marke how hee spares how hee growes up how he gathers am I an oppressing Extortioner is that my name Blessed be thy name O Lord that hast brought me to this notum feci to know mine own name mine owne miserable condition he will also say may that blessing of thine enlarge it selfe farther that as I am come to this notum feci to know that I mistooke my selfe all this while so I may proceed to the non operui to a perfit sifting of my conscience in all corners which is Davids second motion in his act of preparation and our next consideration I acknowledged my sin and I hid none disguised none non operui Sometimes the Magistrate is informed of an abuse Non operni and yet proceeds to no farther search nor inquisition This word implies a sifting of the conscience He doth not onely take knowledge of his sins then when they discover themselves of his riot and voluptuousnesse then when he burnes in a fever occasioned by his surfets nor of his licentiousnesse then when he is under the anguish and smart of corrosives nor of his wastfulnesse and pride then when hee is laid in prison for debt Hee doth not seeke his sinnes in his Belly nor in his Bones nor in his Purse but in his Conscience and he unfolds that rips up that and enters into the privatest and most remote corners thereof And there is much more in this negative circumstance non operui I hid nothing then in the former acknowledgement notum feci I tooke knowledge of my sinnes When they sent to sift Iohn Baptist whether he were The Christ because he was willing to give them all satisfaction Ioh. 1.20 hee expressed himselfe so Hee confessed and denied not and said I am not the Christ So when Ioshuah pressed Achan to confesse his trespasse Iosh 7.19 he presses him with this negative addition Shew mee what thou hast done and hide it not that is disguise nothing that belongs to it For the better to imprint a confidence and to remove all suspition Men to to their Masters Wives to their Husbands will confesse something but yet operiunt they hide more Those words In multitudine virtutis tuae Psal 66.3 Through the greatnesse of thy power thine enemies shall submit S. Ierome and the Septuagint before and Tremellius after and all that binde themselves to the Hebrew letter reade it thus Mentientur tibi inimici tui when thy power is shewed upon them when thy hand lies upon them thine enemies will lie unto thee They will counterfait a confession they will acknowledge some sins but yet operiunt they hide they cover others 1 Sam. 15. Saul in the defeat of the Amalekites reserved some of the fattest of the spoile and being deprehended and reprehended hee said hee intended it for sacrifice Many times men in great place abuse their owne soules with that imagination or palliation That they doe God good service in some sinne and that they should more hurt the cause of God if they should proceed earnestly to the punishment of those that oppose it then if they let them alone and so leave lawes unexecuted and Gods truth endangered But Davids issue was non iniquitas non operui I left none iniquity unsearched I hid none But any thing serves us for a cover of sin even from a Net that every man sees thorow to such a cloud of darkenesse as none but the prince of darkenesse that cast that cloud upon us can see us in it nor we see our selves That wee should hide lesser sinnes with greater is not so strange That in an Adultery wee should forget the circumstances in it and the practises to come to it But we hide greater sins with lesser with a manifold and multiplied throng and cloud of lesser sins all comes to an indifferency and so wee see not great sins Easines of conversation in a woman seemes no great harme Adorning themselves to please those with whom they converse is not much more To heare them whom they are thus willing to please praise them and magnifie their perfections is little more then that To allow them to sue and solicit for the possession of that which they have so much praised is not much more neither Nor will it seeme much at last to give them possession of that they sue for nay it will seeme a kinde of injustice to deny it them We hide lesser sinnes with greater greater with lesser Nay we hide the devill with God wee hide all the weeks sins with a Sabbaths solemnity And as in the Romane Church they poysoned God when they had made their Bread-god they poysoned the Emperour with that bread so this is a Possessing of God a making the devill to enter into God when we hide our sins
with an outward sanctity and call God to witnesse and testifie to the Congregation that we are saints when we are devils for this is a suborning of God and a drawing of God himselfe into a perjury We hide our sinnes in his house by hypocrisie all our lives and we hide them at our deaths perchance with an Hospitall And truely wee had need doe so when we have impoverished God in his children by our extorsions and wounded him and lam'd him in them by our oppressions wee had need provide God an Hospitall As men that rob houses thrust in a child at the window and he opens greater doores for them so lesser sins make way for greater De minimis non curat Lex The law is faine to passe over small faults but De minimis cur at lux That light of grace by which a sinner disposes himselfe to confession must discover every sinne and hide none suffer none to hide it selfe nor lie hidden under others When God speaks so much of Behemoth and Leviathan Iob 40. 41. the great land and seaoppressors he calls us to the consideration of the insupportablenesse of great sinnes but in the plaines of Egypt by haile and locusts and lice little and contemptible things hee calls us to the consideration of these vermine of the soule lesser and unconsidered sins David had not accomplished his work upon himselfe his reflected his preparatory Act till he had made both those steps notum feci non operui first I tooke knowledge of my sinfull condition and then I proceeded to a particular inquisition of my Conscience I tooke knowledge of my sinne and mine iniquity I have not hid and then he was fit to thinke of an accesse to God by confession Dixi confiteber c. This word Dixi meditando Dixi Amar I said is a word that implies first meditation deliberation considering and then upon such meditation a resolution too and execution after all When it is said of God dixit and dixit God said this and said that in the first Creation Cave ne cogites strepitum Basil Doe not thinke that God uttered any sound His speaking was inward his speaking was thinking So David uses this word in the person of another Dixit insipiens Psal 14.1 The foole hath said that is In corde said in his heart that is thought that there is no God There speaking is thinking and speaking is resolving too So Davids son Solomon uses the word 1 King 5.5 Behold I purpose to build a house unto the Lord where the word is I say I will doe it Speaking is determining and speaking is executing too Dixi custodiam I said I will take heed to my wayes Psal 39.1 that is I will proceed and goe forward in the paths of God And such a premeditation such a preconsideration doe all our approaches and accesses to God and all our acts in his service require God is the Rocke of our salvation God is no Occasionall God no Accidentall God neither will God be served by Occasion nor by Accident but by a constant Devotion Our communication with God must not be in Interjections that come in by chance nor our Devotions made up of Parentheses that might be left out They erre equally that make a God of Necessity and that make a God of Contingency They that with the Manichees make an ill God a God that forces men to doe all the ill that they doe And they that with the Epicures make an idle God an indifferent God that cares not what is done God is not Destiny Then there could be no reward nor punishment but God is not Fortune neither for then there were no Providence If God have given reason onely to Man it were strange that Man should exercise that reason in all his Morall and Civill actions and onely do the acts of Gods worship casually To go to Court to Westminster to the Exchange for ends and to come to Church by chance or for company or for some collaterall respects that have no relation to God Not to thinke of our Confession till the Priest have called upon us to say after him We have erred and straied from thy wayes like lost sheepe To come for Absolution Dan. 2.3 as Nebuchadnezzar came to Daniel for the interpretation of his Dreame who did not onely not understand his Dreame but not remember it Somnium ejus fugit ab eo He did not onely not know what his Dreame meant but hee did not know what his Dreame was Not to consider the nature of Confession and Absolution not to consider the nature of the sins we should confesse and be absolved of is a stupidity against Davids practise here Dixit He said he meditated he considered Gods service is no extemporall thing But then Dixit He resolved too for so the word signifies Consideration but Resolution upon it And then that he Resolved he Executed This is not only Davids dixit in corde Dixi statuendo Luke 15.12 where speaking is thinking nor only Solomons dixi adificabo I resolved how I might build but it is also the Prodigals Dixi revertar I said I will go to my Father A resolving and executing of that Resolution for that that execution crownes all How many thinke to come hither when they wake and are not ready when the houre comes And even this mornings omission is an abridgement or an essay of their whole lives They thinke to repent every day and are not ready when the bell tolls Cajetan It is well said of Gods speaking in the Creation It was Dictio practica diffinitiva Imperativa Ambrose It was an Actuall speaking a Definitive an Imperative speaking And Dicto absolvit negotium His saying he would doe it that is his meaning to doe it was the very doing of it Our Religious duties require meditations for God is no extemporall God Those produce determinations for God must not be held in suspence And they flow into executions for God is not an illusible God to be carried with promises or purposes onely And all those linkes of this religious Chaine Consideration Resolution Execution Thought Word and Practise are made out of this golden word Amar Dixi I said I will doe it And then Dixi confitebor I considered that my best way was to confesse and I resolved to doe so and I did it Dixi confitebor It is but a homely Metaphor Confitebor Origen but it is a wholesome and a usefull one Confessio vomitus Confession works as a vomit It shakes the frame and it breakes the bed of sin and it is an ease to the spirituall stomach to the conscience to be thereby disburdened It is an ease to the sinner to the patient but that that makes it absolutely necessary is that it is a glory to God for in all my spirituall actions Apprecations or Deprecations whether I pray for benefits or against calamities still my Alpha and Omega my first and
yet this is still limited by the law of God so far as God hath instituted this power by his Gospel in his Church and far from inducing amongst us that torture of the Conscience that usurpation of Gods power that spying into the counsails of Princes supplanting of their purposes with which the Church of Rome hath been deeply charged And this usefull and un-mis-interpretable Confession which we speake of Adversum me is the more recommended to us in that with which David shuts up his Act as out of S. Hierome and out of our former translation we intimated unto you that he doth all this Adversum se I will confesse my sinnes unto the Lord against my selfe The more I finde Confession or any religious practise to be against my selfe and repugnant to mine owne nature the farther I will goe in it For still the Adversum me is Cum Deo The more I say against my selfe the more I vilifie my selfe the more I glorifie my God As S. Chry sostome sayes every man is Spontaneus Satan a Satan to himselfe as Satan is a Tempter every man can tempt himselfe so I will be Spontaneus Satan as Satan is an Accuser an Adversary I will accuse my selfe I consider often that passionate humiliation of S. Peter Exi à me Domine He fell at Iesus knees saying Depart from me for I am a sinfull man O Lord Luk. 5.8 And I am often ready to say so and more Depart from me O Lord for I am sinfull inough to infect thee As I may persecute thee in thy Children so I may infect thee in thine Ordinances Depart in withdrawing thy word from me for I am corrupt inough to make even thy saving Gospel the savor of death unto death Depart in withholding thy Sacrament for I am leprous inough to taint thy flesh and to make the balme of thy blood poyson to my soule Depart in withdrawing the protection of thine Angels from me for I am vicious inough to imprint corruption and rebellion into their nature And if I be too foule for God himselfe to come neare me for his Ordinances to worke upon me I am no companion for my selfe I must not be alone with my selfe for I am as apt to take as to give infection I am a reciprocall plague passively and actively contagious I breath corruption and breath it upon my selfe and I am the Babylon that I must goe out of Gen. 32.10 Mat. 8.8 or I perish I am not onely under Iacobs Non dignus Not worthy the least of all thy mercies nor onely under the Centurions Non dignus I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roofe That thy Spirit should ever speake to my spirit which was the forme of words in which every Communicant received the Sacrament in the Primitive Church Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roofe Nor onely under the Prodigals Non dignus Luke 15.21 Not worthy to be called thy sonne neither in the filiation of Adoption for I have deserved to be dis-inherited nor in the filiation of Creation for I have deserved to be annihilated Mark 1.7 But Non dignus procumbere I am not worthy to stoop down to fall down to kneele before thee in thy Minister the Almoner of thy Mercy the Treasurer of thine Absolutions So farre doe I confesse Adversum me against my selfe as that I confesse I am not worthy to confesse nor to be admitted to any accesse any approach to thee much lesse to an act so neare Reconciliation to thee as an accusation of my selfe or so neare thy acquitting as a self-condemning Be this the issue in all Controversies whensoever any new opinions distract us Be that still thought best that is most Adversum nos most against our selves That that most layes flat the nature of man so it take it not quite away and blast all vertuous indeavours That that most exalts the Grace and Glory of God be that the Truth And so have you the whole mystery of Davids Confession in both his Acts preparatory in resenting his sinfull condition in generall and survaying his conscience in particular And then his Deliberation his Resolution his Execution his Confession Confession of true sins and of them onely and of all them of his sins and all this to the Lord and all that against himselfe That which was proposed for the second Part must fall into the compasse of a Conclusion and a short one that is Gods Act Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin This is a wide doore 2 Part. and would let out Armies of Instructions to you but we will shut up this doore with these two leaves thereof The fulnesse of Gods Mercy He forgives the sin and the punishment And the seasonablenesse the acceleration of his mercy in this expression in our text that Davids is but Actus inchoatus He sayes he will confesse And Gods is Actus consummatus Thou forgavest Thou hadst already forgiven the iniquity and punishment of my sin These will be the two leaves of this doore and let the hand that shuts them be this And this Particle of Connection which we have in the text I said And thou didst For though this Remission of sin be not presented here as an effect upon that cause of Davids Confession It is not delivered in a Quia and an Ergo Because David did this God did that for mans wil leads not the will of God as a cause who does all his acts of mercy for his mercies sake yet though it be not an effect as from a cause yet it is at least as a consequent from an occasion so assured so infallible as let any man confesse as David did and he shall be sure to be forgiven as David was For though this forgivenesse be a flower of mercy yet the roote growes in the Justice of God If wee acknowledge our sin 1 John 1.9 he is faithfull and just to forgive us our sin It growes out of his faithfulnesse as he hath vouchsafed to binde himselfe by a promise And out of his Justice as he hath received a full satisfaction for all our sins So that this Hand this And in our Text is as a ligament as a sinew to connect and knit together that glorious body of Gods preventing grace and his subsequent grace if our Confession come between and tie the knot God that moved us to that act will perfect all Here enters the fulnesse of his mercy Plenitudo Rev. 3 20. at one leafe of this doore well expressed at our doore in that Ecce sto pulso Behold I stand at the doore and knock for first he comes here is no mention of our calling of him before He comes of himselfe And then he suffers not us to be ignorant of his comming he comes so as that he manifests himself Ecce Behold And then he expects not that we should wake with that light and look out of our selves but he knocks
solicits us at least with some noyse at our doores some calamities upon our neighbours And againe he appeares not like a lightning that passes away as soon as it is seene that no man can reade by it nor work by it nor light a candle nor kindle a coale by it but he stands at the doore and expects us all day not only with a patience but with a hunger to effect his purpose upon us he would come in and sup with us Accept our diet our poore endeavours And then would have us sup with him as it is there added would feast us with his abundant Graces which he brings even home to our doores But those he does not give us at the doore not till we have let him in by the good use of his former grace And as he offers this fulnesse of his mercy by these meanes before so by way of Pardon and Remission if we have been defective in opening the doore upon his standing and knocking this fulnesse is fully expressed in this word of this Text as our two Translations neither departing from the naturall signification of the word have rendred it The word is the same here in Davids sweetnesse as in Cains bitternesse Gnavon Poena Gen 4.13 and we cannot tell whether Cain speake there of a punishment too great to be borne or of a sin too great to be pardoned Nor which David meanes here It fills up the measure of Gods mercy if we take him to meane both God upon Confession forgives the punishment of the sin So that the just terror of Hell and the imaginary terror of Purgatory for the next World is taken away and for this World what calamities and tribulations soever fall upon us after these Confessions and Remissions they have not the nature of punishments but they are Fatherly Corrections and Medicinall assistances against relapses and have their maine relation and prospect upon the future For not onely the sin it selfe but the iniquitie of the sin is said to be forgiven Iniquitas God keeps nothing in his minde against the last day But whatsoever is worst in the sin the venome The malignity of the sin The violation of his Law The affrontings of his Majesty residing in that Law though it have been a winking at his light a resisting of his light the ill nature the malignity the iniquity of the sin is forgiven Onely this remaines That God extinguishes not the right of a third Person nor pardons a Murder so as that he barres another from his Appeale Not that his pardon is not full upon a full Confession but that the Confession is no more full if it bee not accompanied with Satisfaction that is Restitution of all unjustly gotten then if the Confession lacked Contrition and true sorrow Otherwise the iniquity of the sin and the punishment of the sin are both fully pardoned And so we have shut one leafe of this doore The fulnesse The other is the speed and acceleration of his mercy and that leafe we will clap to in a word This is expressed in this David is but at his Dixit and God at his Remisit Promptitudo David was but Saying nay but Thinking and God was Doing nay Perfecting his work To the Lepers that cryed out for mercy Christ said Go shew your selves to the Priest Luke 17.11 So he put them into the way and they went sayes the text and as they went they were healed upon the way No man comes into the way but by the illumination and direction of God Christ put them into the way The way is the Church no man is cured out of the way no man that separates himselfe from the Church nor in the way neither except he goe If he live negligently and trust onely upon the outward profession nor though he goe except he goe according to Christ bidding except he conforme himself to that worship of God and to those means of sanctification which God hath instituted in his Church without singularities of his owne or Traditions of other mens inventing and imposing This this submitting and conforming our selves to God so as God hath commanded us the purposing of this and the endeavouring of this is our Dixit in the Text our saying that we will doe it and upon this Dixit this purposing this endeavouring instantly immediately infallibly follows the Remisit God will God does God hath forgiven the iniquity and the punishment of the sin Therefore to end all Poure out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lament 2.19 No liquor comes so clearly so absolutely from the vessel not oyle not milk not wine not hony as that it leaves no taste behind so may sweet sins and therefore poure out saies the Prophet not the liquor but the heart it selfe and take a new heart of Gods making for thy former heart was never so of Gods making as that Adam had not a hand in it and his Image was in it in Originall sin as well as Gods in the Creation As liquors poured out leave a taste and a smell behinde them unperfected Confessions And who perfects his Confession leave ill gottten goods sticking upon thine heire and they leave a taste and a delight to thinke and speake of former sins sticking upon thy selfe But poure out thy heart like water All ill impressions in the very roote And for the accomplishment of this great Mystery of Godlinesse by Confession fixe thy Meditations upon those words and in the strength of them come now or when thou shalt bee better strengthened by the Meditation of them to the Table of the Lord The Lord looketh upon men And if any say I have sinned Job 33.27 and perverted that which was right and it profited me not he will deliver his soule from going down into the pit and his life shall see light and it is added Loe all these things worketh God twice and thrice Here is a fulnesse of consolation first plenary and here is a present forgivenesse If man if any man say I have sinned God doth God forgives and here is more then that an iteration if thou fall upon infirmity againe God will on penitence more carefully performed forgive againe This hee will doe twice or thrice sayes the Hebrew our Translation might boldly say as it doth This God will doe often But yet if God finde dolum in spiritu an over-confidence in this God cannot be mocked And therefore take heed of trusting upon it too often but especially of trusting upon it too late And whatsoever the Holy Ghost may meane by the twice or thrice be sure to doe it once doe it now and receive thy Saviour there and so as he offers himselfe unto thee in these his Ordinances this day once and twice and thrice that is in prayer in preaching in the Sacrament For this is thy trinity upon earth that must bring thee to the Trinity in heaven To which Trinity c. SERM. LIX Preached upon the
to have beene Gods instrument for the conversion of others by the power of Preaching or by a holy and exemplar life in any calling And with this comfort David proceeds in the recommendation of this duty of Prayer Day and night I have felt thy hand upon me ver 4. I have acknowledged my sinne unto thee and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin thus it stood with me and by my example ver 5. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou maiest be found First then the person that hath any accesse allowed him any title to pray Omnis sanctus is he that is Godly holy Now Omnis Sanctus est omnis Baptismate sanctificatus Those are the holy ones whom God will heare who are of the houshold of the faithfull of the Communion of Saints matriculated engraffed enrolled in the Church Hierom. by that initiatory Sacrament of Baptisme for the house of God into which we enter by Baptisme is the house of Prayer And as out of the Arke whosoever swam best was not saved by his swimming no more is any morall man out of the Church by his praying He that swomme in the flood swomme but into more and more water he that prayes out of the Church prayes but into more and more sin because he doth not establish his prayer in that Grant this for our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus sake It is true then that these holy ones whose prayer is acceptable are those of the Christian Church Onely they but is it all they are all their prayers acceptable There is a second concoction necessary too Not onely to have beene sanctified by the Church in Baptisme but a sanctification in a worthy receiving of the other Sacrament too A life that pleads the first seale Baptisme and claimes the other seale The body and blood of Christ Jesus We know the Wise mans counsaile Ecclus. 5.5 concerning propitiation Be not without feare Though thou have received the propitiatory Sacrament of Baptisme be afraid that thou hast not all Will the milke that thou suckedst from a wholesome Nurse keepe thee alive now Or canst thou dine upon last yeares meat to day Hee that hath that first holinesse The holinesse of the Covenant the holinesse of Baptisme let him pray for more For Omnis Sanctus is Quantumcumque Sanctus How holy soever he be that holinesse will not defray him all the way but that holinesse is a faire letter of credit and a bill of exchange for more When canst thou thinke thy selfe holy enough when thou hast washed thy selfe in snow water In penitent teares Iob 9.30 as the best purity of this life is expressed why even then Abominabuntur te vestimenta tua Thine owne cloathes shall make thee abominable Is all well when thou thinkest all well Prov. 16.2 why All the wayes of a man are cleane in his owne eyes but the Lord weigheth the spirit If thine owne spirit thine owne conscience accuse thee of nothing 1 Cor. 3.4 Iob 4.18 nothing unrepented is all well why I know nothing by my selfe yet am I not thereby justified It is God onely that is Surveyor of thy holinesse And Behold he found no stedfastnesse in his Servants and laid folly upon his Angels how much more in them that dwell in houses of clay Gregor whose foundation is in the dust Sordet in conspectu aeterni Iudieis When that eternall Judge comes to value our transitory or imaginary our hollow and rusty and rotten holinesse Sordet quod in intentione fulget operantis Even that which had a good lustre a good speciousnesse not onely in the eyes of men that saw it who might be deceived by my hypocrisie but in the purpose of him that did it becomes base more allay then pure metall more corruption then devotion Though Iacob Gen. 31.31 when he fled from his Father in law Laban were free enough himselfe from the theft of Labans Idols yet it was dangerously pronounced of him With whomsoever thou findest thy gods let him not live For his owne Wife Rachel had stollen them August And Caro conjux Thy Wife thy flesh thy weaker part may insinuate much sin into thine actions even when thy spirit is at strongest and thou in thy best confidence Onely thus these two cases may differ Rachel was able to cover those stollen Idols from her Fathers finding with that excuse The custome of Women is come upon me But thou shalt not be able to cover thy stollen sins with saying The infirmity of man is come upon me I do but as other men do Though thou have that degree towards sanctification that thou sin not out of presumption but out of infirmity though thou mayest in a modified sense fall within Davids word Omnis sanctus A holy man yet every holy and godly man must pray that even those infirmities may be removed too Qui sanctificatur sanctificetur adhuc Apoâ— 22.11 He that is holy let him be holy still not onely so holy still but still more and more holy For beloved As in the firmament of those stars which are reduced into Constellations and into a certainty of shapes of figures and images we observe some to be of one greatnesse some of another wee observe divers magnitudes in all them but to all those other Stars which are not reduced into those formes and figures we allow no magnitude at all no proportion at all no name no consideration So for those blessed soules which are collected into their eternall dwelling in Heaven which have their immoveable possession position at the right hand of God as one Star differs from another in glory so do these Saints which are in Heaven But whilst men are upon this earth though they be stars Saints of God though they be in the firmament established in the true Church of God yet they have no magnitude no proportion no certainty no holinesse in themselves nor in any thing formerly done by God in their behalfe and declared to us but their present degrees of godlinesse give them but that qualification that they may pray acceptably for more He must be so godly before he pray and his prayer must be for more godlinesse and all directed to the right object of prayer To God Vnto Thee shall every one that is godly pray which is our next the second of our foure Considerations in this first part Ad Te Ad Te. To God because he can heare And then Ad te to God because he can give Certainely it were a strange distemper a strange singularity a strange circularity in a man that dwelt at Windsor to fetch all his water at London Bridge So is it in him that lives in Gods presence as he does that lives religiously in his Church to goe for all his necessities by Invocation to Saints David was willing bee our example for Prayer but he gives no example of scattering our prayers upon
any other then God Christ Jesus was willing to give us a Rule for Prayer but if hee had intended that his Rule should have beene deflected and declined to Saints he would have taught us to say Frater noster qui es in Coelis and not only Pater noster to pray to our Brethren which are there too and not onely to our Father which is in Heaven If any man have tasted at Court what it is to be ever welcome to the King himselfe and what it is to speake to another to speake for him he will blesse that happinesse of having an immediate accesse to God himselfe in his prayers They that come so low downe the streame as wee said before to London Bridge they will go lower and lower to Gravesend too They that come to Saints they will come to the Images and Reliques of Saints too They come to a brackish water betweene salt and fresh and they come at last to be swallowed up in that sea which hath no limit no bottome that is to direct all their devotions to such Saints as have no certainty not onely not in their ability we know not what those Saints can doe but not in their history we know not that such as they pray to are Saints nay we know not whether they ever were at all So that this may be Idolatry in the strictest acceptation of the word Idol Idolum nihil est let that be true which they say and in their sense Our Images are not Idols for an Idol is nothing represents nothing but our Images are the Images of Men that once were upon the earth But that is not throughout true for they worship Images of those who never were Christophers and other symbolicall and emblematicall Saints which never lived here but were and are yet nothing But let them be true Saints how will they make it appeare to us that those Saints can heare us What surety can we have of it Let us rather pray to him who we are sure can heare that is first and then sure he can give that we pray for that is next The prayer here is forgivenesse of sins And can Saints give that The Hosannaes Qui dant and the Allelujahs and the Gloria in Excelsis Glory in heaven peace upon earth good will amongst men these are good and cheerfull Notes in which the Quire of heaven are exercised Cherubims and Seraphims Prophets and Apostles Saints and Angels blesse God and benefit men by these But the Remittuntur peccata Thy sinnes are forgiven thee is too high a note for any creature in earth or heaven to reach to except where it is set by Gods own hand as it is by his Commission to his Minister in his Church and there onely in the absolution given by his Ordinance to every penitent sinner We see that phrase Dimittuntur peccata Thy sinnes are forgiven thee was a suspicious word even in the mouth of Christ himselfe amongst the Scribes that would not beleeve his Divinity when Christ said to him that had the Palsie My sonne be of good cheare thy sinnes are forgiven thee the Scribes cryed out he blasphemed It strikes any man to heare of forgivenesse of sins from any but God It was not a harder thing to say Fiat lux then to say Dimittuntur peccata Not harder to bring light out of darknesse by Creation then to bring a cleane thing out of uncleannesse by Conversion for who can doe that Iob 14. And therefore when the King of Aram sent Naaman to the King of Israel to take order for the curing of his bodily Leprosie the King of Israel rent his Clothes and said Am I a God 2 King 5.7 to kill and to give life The power even of temporall life and death is proper to God for as Witches thinke sometimes that they kill when they doe not and are therefore as culpable as if they did So a tyrannous persecutor so a passionate Judge so a perjured witnesse so a revengefull quarreller thinks he takes away the life of his enemy and is guilty of that murder in the eye of God though the blow be truly from God whose judgements are ever just though not ever declared Let them never say that they aske not these things temporall or spirituall at the hands of those Saints for expresly literally as the words stand and sound they do aske even those very things and if the Church have any other meaning in those prayers the mischiefe is that they never teach the people by Preaching what that their reserved meaning is but leave them to the very letter of the prayer to aske those things which if they could heare yet the Saints could not give And when the prayer is made aright directed to God himselfe yet here in our Text it is limited Propter hoc For this this that was spoken of before every one that is godly shall pray unto thee Now what is this This for that is our third Consideration Si à quo petenda sed non quae petenda petis If thou come to the right Market Propter boc August but buy unwholesome hearbs there If thou come to the Apothecaries shop and aske for nothing but poysons If thou come to God in thy prayer and aske onely temporall blessings which are blessings onely in their use and may be and are ordinarily snares and encumbrances then is this direction of Davids Propter hoc for this shall he pray transgressed For This as appeares in the words immediately before the Text is The forgivenesse of the punishment and of the iniquity of our sinne which is so inexpressible a comfort to that soule that hath wrastled with the indignation of God and is now refreshed and released as whosoever should goe about to describe it should diminish it He hath it not that thinks he can utter it It is a blessed comfort to find my soule in that state as when I last received the Sacrament with a good conscience If I enjoy that peace now that is the peace of a religious and of a wise conscience for there is a wisedome of the conscience not to run into infinite scruples and doubts but Imponere finem litibus to levy a fine in bar of all scruples and diffidences and to rest in the peace and assurednesse of remission of sinnes after due means for the obtaining thereof and therefore if I be as well now as when I received this is a blessed degree of blessednesse But yet there is one cloud in this case Ab occultis my secret sins which even mine own narrowest inquisition extends not to If I consider my selfe to be as well as I was at my Baptisme when I brought no actuall sin and had the hand of Christ to wash away the foulnesse of Originall sin can I pray for a better state then that Even in that there was a cloud too and a cloud that hath thunder and lightning in it that Fomes peccati that fuell and
those embers of sin that are but raked up and not trod out and doe breake forth upon every tentation that is presented and if they be not effectually opposed shall aggravate my condemnation more then if I had never been baptized But David conceives such a forgivenesse here as carries up the soule to the contemplation of that state which it had before the fall of Adam It is not this present sin of a cold delivering and a drowsie hearing of the messages of God It is not my yesterdayes sin nor my sins since my last repentance that are forgiven me but my sin committed six thousand yeares before I was borne my sin in Adam before any promise nay before any apprehension of any need of a Messias I am so restored that now by the application of the merits of my Redeemer I am as well as I should have been though there had never been any use of a Redeemer no occasion given by me in Adam of the incarnation and passion of Christ Jesus The comfort of being presented to God as innocent as Adam then when God breathed a soule into him yea as innocent as Christ Jesus himselfe when he breathed out his soule to God oh how blessed is that soule that enjoyes it and how bold that tongue that goes about to expresse it This is the blessednesse which the godly attaine to by prayer but not by every sudden Lord Lord or every occasionall holy interjection but by serious prayer invested as with the former so with that other circumstance that remains In tempore opportuno In a time when thou mayest be found This time is not those Horae stativae Horae canonicae In tempore those sixed houres in the Romane Church where men are bound to certaine prayers at certaine houres Not that it is inconvenient for men to binde themselves to certaine fixed times of prayer in their private Exercises and though not by such a vow as that it shall be an impiety yet by so solemne a purpose as that it shall be a levity to breake it I have known the greatest Christian Prince in Style and Title even at the Audience of an Ambassador at the sound of a Bell kneele downe in our presence and pray and God forbid he should be blamed for doing so But to place a merit in observing those times as they doe is not a right understanding of this time of finding Nor is it those transitory and interlocutory prayers which out of custome and fashion we make and still proceed in our sin when we pretend to speake to God but like Comedians upon a stage turne over our shoulder and whisper to the Devill Esay 1.15 When you stretch out your hands I will hide mine eyes when you make many prayers I will not heare for your hands are full of blood And if they be full of blood they can take in no more If they be full of the blood of oppression they can lay no hold upon the blood of propitiation Isâ—â—â— Irrisor est non poenitens qui adhuc agit quod poeniter He mocks God that repents and sins over those sins every night that every day he repents The Apostle sayes so too He makes a mock of the Sonne of God and crucifies him againe This onely is true Repentance Ambro. He makes a mock of the Sonne of God and crucifies him againe This onely is true Repentance Plangere plangenda non committere To bewayle our sins and forbeare the sins we have bewayled Neither alone will serve which deludes many Many thinke they doe enough if they repent and yet proceed in their sin and many thinke they doe enough if they forbeare their sin now though they never repent that which is past August both are illusory both deceitfull distempers Laoessit Iudicem qui post-posita satisfactione quaerit praemiis honorari He doth but provoke and exasperate the Judge that solicites him for heaven before he hath appeased his anger by repentance for former sins for this is to call for costs before he be discharged These then are not the times of finding God but what are Gospel August Generally it is Manifestatio Euangelii The time of the Gospel is the time of finding God now when God hath vouchsafed Induere hominem to put on us in his Incarnation and enabled us Induere Deum to put on him in the Sacraments to stay with us here upon Earth and to carry us up with him in his Ascension to Heaven when he is made one body with us and hath made us one Spirit with him how can we doubt of a fit time to finde him Christs time was alwayes for even under the law God sayes Esay 49.8 I have heard thee in an accepted time and in the day of Salvation have I succoured thee But this doth the Holy Ghost apply to the time of the Gospel Behold now the accepted time behold now the day of salvation 2 Cor. 2.6 Calamitie Psal 116.4 The time then of the Gospel is the time of finding But now all times are not alike Calamities are a good time When I found trouble and sorrow then I called upon the name of the Lord saying I beseech thee O Lord deliver my soule This is a good time but it is somewhat a darke time the withdrawing of Gods countenance from us Exod. 14.25 The Egyptians when they deprehended their danger said We will fly from the face of Israel But whither The Seareturned and the Egyptians fled against it and perished We may be benighted benummed by calamities and they may as well deject us as raise us Ioab pursued Abner hotly vehemently Abner asks What Vsque ad internecionem 2 Sam. 2.25 Shall the sword devoure for ever Ioab answered as the Vulgat reads those words Vivit dominus si locutus fuisses mane As the Lord liveth if thou hadst spoken in the morning in the morning every man had departed If we turne to the Lord in the morning in the beginning of an affliction the Lord turnes his fierce wrath from us but if we stand out long and bend not under his corrections he pursues Ad internecionem even to destruction by obduration So then the manifestation of the Gospel that is the helpes which God offers us Prosperitus more then Jews or Gentils in the Ministery of the Gospel and the Ordinances of his Church is the time of finding God And woe unto us if we seeke him not whilest he affords us these helpes And then the time of affliction when God threatens to hide his face but hath not yet hidden it but awakens us by a calamity is a time of finding God But the best and the clearest time is in the Sun-shine then when he appeares to us in the warme and chearefull splendor of temporall blessings upon us Then when thou hast a good estate and good children to let it descend upon Then when thou hast good health and a good profession to exercise
a considerable thing and hath in part the nature of materials for God to worke upon That Instruction which is the subject of the whole Psalem is that saving Doctrine That there is no blessednesse but in the remission of sinnes That David establishes for his foundation in the first verse and would say nothing till he had said that But then though this remission of sinnes which onely constitutes Blessednesse proceed meerely from the goodnesse of God yet that goodnesse of God as it excites primarily so it works still upon that act of man penitent confession Notum feci I acknowledged my sinne and Dixi confitebor I prepared my selfe to confesse my sinne ver 5. and thou forgavest all This then S. Hierome delivers to be the Instruction of the Psalme Hominem Hieron non propriis meritis sed Dei gratia posse salvari si confiteatur admissa That man of himselfe is irrecoverable But yet there is a way opened to salvation in Christ Jesus But this way is onely open to them who enter by Confession And though S. Hierome and S. Augustin differ often in the exposition of the Psalmes yet here they speake almost the same words The Instruction of this Psalme is Intelligentia qua intelligitur non meritis operum August sed gratia Dei hominem liberari confitentem sua peccata That no man is saved by his owne merits That any man may bee saved by the mercy of God in the merits of Christ That no man attaines this mercy but by confession of his sinnes And that that rule In ore duorum aut trium may have the largest fulnesse adde wee a third witnesse Intellectus est Gregor This is the Instruction that David promises Nemo ante fidem Let no man presume of merits before faith But in all this they all three agree Every man must know that hee may bee saved And that by his owne merits hee cannot And lastly that the merits of Christ are applied to no man that doth nothing for himselfe Quid est Intellectus August saith he againe What is this understanding It is saith he no more but this Vt non jactes opera ante fidem Never to take confidence in works otherwise then as they are rooted in faith For as hee enlarges this Meditation if thou shouldst see a man pull at an Oare till his eye-strings and sinews and muscles broke and thou shouldst aske him whither he rowed If thou shouldst see a man runne himselfe out of breath and shouldst aske him whither hee ranne If thou shouldst see him dig till his backe broke and shouldst aske him what he sought And any of these should answer thee they could not tell wouldst not thou thinke them mad So are all Disciplines all Mortifications all whippings all starvings all works of Piety and of Charity madnesse if they have any other root then faith any other title or dignity then effects and fruits of a preceding reconciliation to God Multi pagani saith he Idem There are many Infidels that refuse to bee made Christians because they are so good already Sibi sufficiunt de sua bona vita They are the worse for being so good and they thinke they need no faith but are rich enough in their morall honesty And there are Christians that are the worse for thinking and beleeving that it is enough to Beleeve It is not faith to beleeve in grosse that I shall be saved but I must beleeve that I shall be saved by him that died for me If I consider that I cannot chuse but love him too And if I love him I shall doe his will Ama operaberis Idem whomsoever thou lovest thou wilt doe what thou canst to please him Da mihi vacantem amorem I would bee glad to see an idle love that that man that loved any thing in this world should not labour to compasse that that he loved But purga amorem saith hee I doe not forbid thee loving it is a noble affection but purge and purifie thy love Aquam fluentem in cloacam converte in hortum Turne that water which hath served thy stables and sewers before into thy gardens Turne those teares which thou hast spent upon thy love or thy losses upon thy sinnes and the displeasure of thy God and Quales impetus habebas ad mundum habebis ad Creatorem mundi Those passions which transported thee upon the creature will establish thee upon the Creator The Instruction then of the whole Psalme is peace with God in the merits of Christ declared in a holy life which being the summe of all our Christian profession is farre beyond this Vnderstanding in our Text They have no understanding but yet upon this Understanding God raises that great building and therefore wee take this faculty The Vnderstanding into a more particular consideration Here is the danger He that at ripe yeares hath no understanding hath no grace A little understanding may have much grace but he that hath none of the former can have none of this God therefore brings us to the consideration not of the greatest but of the first thing not of his superedifications but of his foundations our understanding our reason For though Animalis homo The naturall man perceiveth not the things that be of the Spirit of God 1 Cor. 2.14 yet let him bee what man he will Naturall or Supernaturall hee must bee a man that must probare spiritum prove and discerne the spirit let him have as much more as you will it is requisite hee have so much reason and understanding as to perceive the maine points of Religion not that he must necessarily have a naturall explicite reason for every Article of faith but it were fit he had reason to prove that those Articles need not reason to prove them If I beleeve upon the Authority of my Teacher or of the Church or of the Scripture very expedient it were to have reason to prove to my selfe that these Authorities are certaine and irrefragable And therefore Caeteris animalibus se ignorare natura est homini vitium If a Horse or a Mule understand not it selfe it is never the worse Horse nor Mule for it is borne with that ignorance But if man having opportunities both in respect of his parts and calling to be better instructed either by a negligent and lazy and implicite relying upon the opinion of others doe but lay himselfe downe as a leafe upon the water to be carried along with the tide or by a wilfull drowsinesse and security in his sins have given over the debatement the discussing the understanding of the maine of his beliefe and of his life if either he keepe not his understanding awake or over-watch it if he doe nothing with it or employ it too busily too fervently too eagerly upon the world I would it were true of them Facti sicut you are like the Horse and the Mule but Vtinam essetis I would
upon the Action on Gods part Lavabis Thou shalt wash mee and the Effect on our part Dealbabor I shall be white and the Degree the Extent the Exaltation of that Emundation that Dealbation that Cleansing supra nivem I shall be whiter then snow And then we shall conclude all with that consideration That though in the first part we finde two persons in action for God works but man prayes that God would worke yet in the other part the worke it selfe Though the worke bee divers a purging and then a washing of the soule the whole worke is Gods alone David doth not say no man can say Doe thou purge me and then I will wash my selfe nor doe thou make the Medicine and I will bring the Hyssope nor doe thou but wash mee begin the worke and I will goe forward with it and perfit it and make my selfe whiter then snow but the intire worke is his who onely can infuse the desire and onely accomplish that desire who onely gives the will and the ability to second and execute that will He He purges me or I am still a vessell of peccant humors His His is the hyssope or there is Mors in olla Death in the cup He He washes me or I am still in my blood He He exalts that cleannesse which his his washing hath indued or I returne againe to that red earth which I brought out of Adams bowels Therefore Doe thou purge mee with Hyssope and I shall be cleane Do thou wash me and I shal be whiter then snow First then 1. Part. for our first part wee consider the persons Of these God is the first Esay spoke boldly Deus saith the Apostle when hee said God is found by them that seeke him not But still we continue in that humble boldnesse Rom. 10.20 to say God is best found when we seeke him and observe him in his operation upon us God gives audiences and admits accesses in his solemne and publike and out-roomes in his Ordinances In his Cabinet in his Bed-chamber in his unrevealed purposes wee must not presse upon him It was ill taken in the Roman State when men enquired in Arcana Imperii the secrets of State by what wayes and meanes publike businesses were carried Private men were to rest in the generall effects peace and protection and Justice and the like and to enquire no more But to enquire in Arcana Domus what was done in the Bed-chamber was criminall capitall inexcusable We must abstaine from enquiring De modo how such or such things are done in many points in which it is necessary to us to know that such things are done As the maner of Christs presence in the Sacrament and the maner of Christs descent into Hell for these are Arcana Imperii secrets of State for the maner is secret though the thing bee evident in the Scriptures But the entring into Gods unrevealed and bosome-purposes are Arcana domus a man is as farre from a possibility of attaining the knowledge as from an excuse for offering at it That curiosity will bring a man to that blasphemy of Alfonsus King of Castile the great Astronomer who said That if hee had beene of Gods Counsell in the creation of the world hee could have directed him to have done many things better then he did They that looke too farre into Gods unrevealed purposes are seldome content with that that they thinke God hath done but stray either into an uncharitable condemning of other men or into a jealous a suspitious a desperate condemning of themselves Here in this first branch of this first part wee seeke God and because we seeke him where he hath promised to be we are sure to find him Because we joyne with David in an humble confession of our sins the Lord joyns us with David in a fruition of himselfe And more of that first Person God himselfe we say not but passe to the other to the petitioner to the penitent to the patient to David himselfe His example is so comprehensive so generall that as a well made David and well placed Picture in a Gallery looks upon all that stand in severall places of the Gallery in severall lines in severall angles so doth Davids history concerne and embrace all For his Person includes all states betweene a shepherd and a King and his sinne includes all sinne between first Omissions and complications of Habits of sin upon sin So that as S. Basil said hee needed no other Booke for all spirituall uses but the Psalmes so wee need no other Example to discover to us the slippery wayes into sin or the penitentiall wayes out of sin then the Author of that Booke David From his Example then we first deduce this That in the war-fare of this life there are no Emeriti milites none of that discipline that after certaine yeares spent in the warres a man should returne to ease and honour and security at home A man is not delivered from the tentation of Ambition by having overcome the heats and concupiscences of his youth nor from the tentation of Covetousnesse in his age by having escaped ambition and contented himselfe with a meane station in his middle yeares David whom neither a sudden growth into such degrees of greatnesse as could not have fallen into his thought or wish before nor the persecution of Saul which might have enraged him to a personall revenge considering how many advantages and occasions hee might have made shift to thinke that God had put into his hands to execute that revenge David whom neither the concourse and application of the people who tooke knowledge of him as of a rising Sun nor the interest and nearenesse in the love and heart of Ionathan the Kings Son which fals seldome upon a new and a popular man David whom not that highest place to which God had brought him in making him King nor that addition even to that highest place that he made him Successor to a King of whom the State was weary for as the Panegyrique sayes Onerosum est succedere bono principi It is a heavy thing and binds a Prince to a great diligence to come immediately after one whom his subjects loved So had David an ease in comming after one with whom the Kingdome was discontented David whom this sudden preferment and persecutions and popularity did not so shake but that wee may say of him as it is said of Iob That in all this height David did not sin nor in all these afflictions He did not charge God foolishly Though he had many victories he came not to a Triumph but him whom an Army and an armed Giant Goliah neare hand could not hurt a weaker person and naked and farre off overthrowes and ruines It is therefore but an imperfect comfort for any man to say I have overcome tentations to great sins and my sins have beene but of infirmity not of malice For herein more then in any other contemplation appeares the
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
in thine honor wounds in thy conscience yet we may heare David reply Josh 24.16 Tu Domine As the people said to Ioshuah God forbid we should forsake the Lord we will serve the Lord And when Ioshuah said You cannot serve the Lord for he is a jealous God and if yee turne from him he will turne and doe you hurt and consame you after he hath done you good The people replyed Nay but we will serve the Lord so whatsoever God threatens David of afflictions and tribulations and purgings in fire we may heare David reply Nay but Lord doe Thou doe it do it how Thou wilt but doe Thou do it Thy corrosives are better then others somentations Thy bitternesses sweeter then others honey Thy fires are but lukewarme fires nay they have nothing of fire in them but light to direct me in my way And thy very frowns are but as trenches cut out as lanes that leade me to thy grave or Rivers or Channels that lead me to the sea of thy bloud Let me go upon Crouches so I go to Heaven Lay what waight thou wilt even upon my foule that that be heavy and heavy unto death so I may have a cheerfull transmigration then Domine Tu Lord doe thou doe it and I shall not wish it mended And then when we heare David say Domine Me Lord purge Me wash Me and returne foure times in this short Text to that personall appropriation of Gods worke upon himselfe Purge Me that I may be cleane wash Me that I may be whiter then snow if we heare God say as the language of his mercy is for the most part generall As the Sea is above the Earth so is the blood of my Son above all sin Congregations of three thousand and of five thousand were purged and washed converted and baptized at particular Sermons of S. Peter whole legions of Souldiers that consisted of thousands were purged in their owne blood and became Martyrs in one day There is enough done to worke upon all Examples enow given to guide all we may heare David reply Domine Me Nay but Lord I doe not heare Peter preach I live not in a time or in a place where Crownes of Martyrdome are distributed nor am I sure my Constancy would make me capable of it if I did Lord I know that a thousand of these worlds were not worth one drop of thy blood and yet I know that if there had been but one some distressed and that soule distressed but with one sin thou wouldest have spent the last drop of that blood for that soule Blessed be thy Name for having wrapped me up in thy generall Covenants and made me partaker of thy generall Ordinances but yet Lord looke more particularly upon me and appropriate thy selfe to me to me not onely as thy Creature as a man as a Christian but as I am I as I am this sinner that confesses now and as I am this penitent that begs thy mercy now And now Beloved we have said so much towards enough of the persons God and David The accesse of David to God and the appropriation of God to David as that we may well passe to our other generall part the petitions which David in his own and our behalfe makes to God Purge me with Hyssop and I shall be cleane wash me and I shall be whiter then snow In this 2 Part. Purgabis the first is a great worke That which we translate Purge me And yet how soone David is come to it It is his first period The passage of a Spirit is very quick but it is not immediate Not from extreame to extreame but by passing the way between The Evill spirit passes not so no good soule was ever made very ill in an instant no nor so soone as some ill have been made good No man can give me Examples of men so soone perverted as I can of men converted It is not in the power of the Devill to doe so much harme as God can doe good Nay we may be bold to say it is not in the will not in the desire of the Devill to doe so much harme as God would doe good for illnesse is not in the nature of the Devill The Devill was naturally good made created good His first illnesse was but a defection from that goodnesse and his present illnesse is but a punishment for that defection but God is good goodnesse in his nature essentially eternally good and therefore the good motions of the Spirit of God worke otherwise upon us then the tentations of the evill Spirit doe How soone and to what a height came David here He makes his Petition his first Petition with that confidence as that it hath scarce the nature of a Petition for it is in the Originall Thou wilt purge me Thou wilt wash me Thou hadst a gracious will and purpose to doe it before thou didst infuse the will and the desire in me to petition it Nay this word may well be translated not onely Thou wilt but by the other denotation of the future Thou shalt Thou shalt purge me Thou shalt wash me Lord I doe but remember thee of thy debt of that which thy gracious promise hath made thy debt to shew mercy to every penitent sinner And then as the word implies confidence and acceleration infallibility and expedition too That as soone as I can aske I am sure to be heard so does it imply a totality an intirenesse a fulnesse in the worke for the roote of the word is Peccare to sin for purging is a purging of peccant humors but in this Conjugation in that language it hath a privative signification and literally signifies Expeccabis and if in our language that were a word in use it might be translated Thou shalt un-sin me that is look upon me as a man that had never sinned as a man invested in the innocency of thy Sonne who knew no sin David gives no man rule nor example of other assurance in God then in the remission of sins Not that any precontract or Election makes our sins no sins or makes our sins no hindrances in our way to salvation or that we are in Gods favour at that time when we sin nor returned to his favour before we repent our sin It is onely this expeccation this unsinning this taking away of sins formerly committed that restores me And that is not done with nothing David assignes proposes a meanes by which he looks for it Hyssop Thou shalt purge me with Hyssop The Fathers taking the words as they found them and fastning with a spirituall delight Hyssopo as their devout custome was their Meditations upon the figurative and Metaphoricall phrase of purging by Hyssop have found purgative vertues in that plant and made usefull and spirituall applications thereof for the purging of our soules from sin In this doe S. Ambrose and Augustine and Hierome agree that Hyssop hath vertue in it proper for the lungs in
upon beauty in that face that misleads thee or upon honour in that place that possesses thee And let the opening of thine eyes be to look upon God in every object to represent to thy self the beauty of his holinesse and the honour of his service in every action And in this rapture and in this twinkling of an eye will thy Resurrection soon though not suddenly speedily though not instantly be accomplished And if God take thee out of the world before thou think it throughly accomplished yet he shall call thine inchoation consummation thine endeavour performance and thy desire effect For all Gods works are intire and done in him at once and perfect as soon as begun And this spirituall Resurrection is his work and therefore quickned even in the Conception and borne even in the quickning and grown up even in the birth that is perfected in the eyes of God as soone as it is seriously intended in our heart And farther we carry not your consideration upon those two Branches which constitute our second Part That some shall be alive at Christs comming That they that are alive shall receive such a change as shall be a true death and a true Resurrection And so shall be caught up into the Clouds to meet the Lord in the Aire and so be with the Lord for ever which are the Circumstances of our third and last Part. In this last part we proposed it for the first Consideration 3 Part. Resurrectio justorum that the Apostle determines the Consideration of the Resurrection in those two Them and Us They that slept in Christ and We that expect the comming of Christ Of any Resurrection of the wicked here is no mention Not that there is not one but that the resurrection of the wicked conduced not to the Apostles purpose which was to minister comfort in the losse of the dead because they were to come again and to meet the Lord and to be with him for ever whereas in the Resurrection of the wicked who are only to rise that they may fall lower there is no argument of comfort And therefore our Saviour Christ determines his Commission in that This is the Fathers will that sent me John 6.39 that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing but should raise it up again at the last day This was his not losing if it were raised again but he hath only them in charge to raise at the last day whom the Father had given him given him so as that they were to be with him for ever for others he never mentions And upon this much very much depends For Chiliasts this forbearing to mention the resurrection of the wicked with the righteous gave occasion to many in the Primitive Church to imagine a two-fold a former and a later Resurrection which was furthered by their mistaking of those words in S. Iohn Apoc. 20.6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection which words being intended of the Resurrection from sin by grace in this life the Chiliasts the Millenarians interpreted of this Resurrection in our Text That at Christs comming the righteous should rise and live a thousand yeares as S. Iohn sayes in all temporall abundances with Christ here in recompence of those temporall calamities and oppressions which here they had suffered and then after those thousand yeares so spent with Christ in temporall abundances should follow the resurrection of the wicked and then the wicked and the righteous should be disposed and distributed and setled in those Mansions in which they should remain for ever And of this errour as very many of the Fathers persisted in it to the end S. Augustine himself had a touch and a tincture at beginning And this errour S. Hierome also though truly I think S. Hierome was never touched with it himselfe out of a reverence to those many and great men that were Irenaeus Tertullian Lactantius and the rest would never call an Heresie nor an Errour nor by any sharper name then an opinion which is no word of heavy detestation And as those blessed Fathers of tender bowels Pagani enlarged themselves in this distribution and apportioning the mercy of God that it consisted best with the nature of his mercy that as his Saints had suffered temporall calamities in this world in this world they should be recompenced with temporall abundances so did they inlarge this mercy farther and carry it even to the Gentiles to the Pagans that had no knowledge of Christ in any established Church You shall not finde a Trumegistus a Numa Pompilius a Plato a Socrates for whose salvation you shall not finde some Father or some Ancient and Reverend Author an Advocate In which liberality of Gods mercy those tender Fathers proceed partly upon that rule That in Trismegistus and in the rest they finde evident impressions and testimonies that they knew the Son of God and knew the Trinity and then say they why should not these good men beleeving a Trinity be saved and partly they goe upon that rule which goes through so many of the Fathers Facienti quod in se est That to that man who does as much as he can by the light of nature God never denies grace and then say they why should not these men that doe so be saved And upon this ground S. Dionyse the Areopagite sayes That from the beginning of the world God hath called some men of all Nations and of all sorts by the ministry of Angels though not by the ministry of the Church To me to whom God hath revealed his Son in a Gospel by a Church there can be no way of salvation but by applying that Son of God by that Gospel in that Church Nor is there any other foundation for any nor other name by which any can be saved but the name of Jesus But how this foundation is presented and how this name of Jesus is notified to them amongst whom there is no Gospel preached no Church established I am not curious in inquiring I know God can be as mercifull as those tender Fathers present him to be and I would be as charitable as they are And therefore humbly imbracing that manifestation of his Son which he hath afforded me I leave God to his unsearchable waies of working upon others without farther inquisition Neither did those tender Fathers then Angeli lopsi in Coelis much lesse the School after consist in carying this overflowing and inexhaustible mercy of God upon his Saints after their Resurrection in temporall abundances nor upon the Gentiles who had no solemne nor cleare knowledge of Christ Psal 138.2 Psal 17.7 which is Magnificare misericordiam to magnifie to extend to stretch the mercy of God but Mirificant misericordiam as David also speaks they stretch this mercy miraculously for they carry this mercy even to hell it self For first for the Angels that fell in heaven from the time that they
committed their first sin to the time that they were cast down into hell they whom we call the more subtile part of the Schoole say That In illa moâ—â— la during that space between their falling into their sin and their expulsion from heaven the Angels might have repented and been restored for so long say they those Angels were but in statu viatorum in the state and condition of persons as yet upon their way as all men are as long as they are alive and not In termino in their last and determined station And that which is so often cited out of Damascen concerning the fall of Angels Quod hominibus mors est Angelis casus That as death works upon man and concludes him and makes him impenitible for ever so works the fall upon the Angels and concludes them for ever too they interpret to have been intended by Damascen not of the Angels fall in heaven but their fall from heaven for till then they were not say they Intermino in their last state and so not impenitible Apoc. 12.7 And those Ancients which expound that battle in heaven between Michael and the Dragon and their severall Angels to have been fought at that time after their fall and between Lucifers rebellion and his expulsion as the Ancients abound much in that sense of that place argue rationally That that battle what kinde of battle soever it were must necessarily have spent some time They conceive it to have been a battle of Disputation of Argumentation of Perswasion and that those good Angels which are so glad of our Conversion would have been infinitely glad to have reduced their rebellious brethren to their obedience And during that time which could not be a sudden instant they were not Inadeptivi gratiae Hiesolom incapable of repentance and of mercy S. Cyril comes towards it comes neare it nay if it be well observed goes beyond it Of Gods longanimity and patience toward man sayes he we have in part spoken Quanta ille Angelis condonaverit nescimus how great transgressions he hath forgiven in the Angels we know not only this we know sayes he Solus qui peccdre non possit Iesus est There is none impeccable none that cannot sin Man nor Angel but only Christ Jesus Nay after the expulsion of the Angels Angels lapsi in Infernum not onely after their fall in Heaven but their fall from Heaven many of the Ancients seeme loath to exclude all wayes of Gods mercy even from hell it selfe De statu moti sed non irremediabiliter moti saies Origen The Angels are fallen fallen even into hell but not so irrecoverably fallen Vt Institutionibus bonorum Angelorum non possint restitui But that by the counsaile and labour of the good Angels they may be restored againe Origen is thought to be single singular in this doctrine Eph. 3.10 but he is not Even S. Ambrose interpreting that place That S. Paul saies He was made a Minister of the Gospel Vt innotesceret to the intent that the wisdome of God might by the Church be made knowne to Powers and Principalities interprets it of fallen Angels That they the fallen Angels might receive benefit by the preaching of the Gospell in the Church Prudentius saies not so but this he does say That upon this day when our blessed Saviour arose from hell Poenarum celebres sub Styge feriae And Suppliciis mitibus Nee forvent solito flumina sulphure Some relaxation some ease in their torments at some time some very good men have imagined even in hell And more then that they have not absolutely cryed downe for so much it deserves that fable of Traian That after that Emperour had beene some time in hell yet upon the prayers of Pope Gregory he was removed to Heaven 〈…〉 Nay more then that for that was but of one man But an Author of our age and much esteemed in the Roman Church delivers as his owne opinion and thinks he hath the subtiler part of the Schoole on his side That that which is so often said from hell there is no redemption is only to be understood of them whom God sends to hell as to their last place to them certainely there is no redemption But saies he God may send soules of the heathen who had not the benefit of any Christian Church and yet were good morall men to burne out certaine errors or ignorances or sins in hell and then remove them to Heaven for for so long time they are but Viatores they are but in their way and not concluded Beloved that we might have something in the balance to weigh downe the curelty and the petulancy and the pertinacy of those men who in these later times have so attenuated the mercy of God as that they have almost brought it to nothing for there is no mercy where there is no misery and they place all mercy to have beene given at once and that before man was fallen into misery by sin or before man was made and have pronounced that God never meant to shew mercy to all them nor but to a very few of them to whom he pretended to offer it that we might have something in the balance to weigh against these unmercifull men I have staid thus long upon these over-mercifull men that have carried mercy upon the Saints of God in temporall abundances after the Resurrection and upon the Heathen who never heard Gospell preached and upon the Angels fallen in Heaven and upon those Angels fallen from Heaven into hell and upon the soules of men there not onely in the ease of their torments but in their translation from thence to Heaven That so our later men might see that the Ancients thought God so far from beginning at Hate That God should first for his glory hate some and then make them that he might execute his hate upon them as that they thought god implacable inexorable irreconciliable to none therfore to these unmercifull have we opposed these overmercifull men But yet to them wee must say Numquid Deus indiget mendacio vestro Iob 13.7 ut pro eo Ioquamini dolos Shall wee lye for God or speake deceitfully for him deceive your soules with over-extending his mercy wee may derive mercy from hell though wee carry not mercy to hell Gehenna non solum eorum qui puniendi causa facta Origen sed eorum qui salvandi Hell was not onely made for their sakes who were to suffer in it but for theirs who were to be warned by it and so there is mercy in hell Cooperatur regno saies S. Chrysostome elegantly Hell hath a co-operation with Heaven Chrysost It works upon us in the advancement of our Salvation as well as Heaven Nec saevitiaeres est sed misericordiae Hell is not a monument of Gods cruelty but of his mercy Et nisi fuisset intentata gehenna in gehennam omnes cecidissemus If we were not told of hell we