said Tacitus out of Plato whose words are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is naturally certain that the Cruelty of Tyrants torments themselves and is a hook in their nostrils and a scourge to their spirit and the pungency of forbidden Lust is truly a thorn in the flesh full of anguish and secret vexation Quid demens manifesta negas En pectus inustae Deformant maculae vitiisque inolevit imago said Claudian of Rusinus And it is certain to us and verified by the experience and observation of all wise Nations though not naturally demonstrable that this secret punishment is sharpned and promoted in degrees by the hand of Heaven the finger of the same hand that writ the Law in our Understandings 17. But the prevarications of the natural Law have also their portion of a special punishment besides the scourge of an unquiet spirit The man that disturbs his neighbour's rest meets with disturbances himself and since I have naturally no more power over my neighbour than he hath over me unless he descended naturally from me he hath an equal priviledge to defend himself and to secure his quiet by disturbing the order of my happy living as I do his And this equal permission is certainly so great a sanction and signature of the law of Justice that in the just proportion of my receding from the reasonable prosecution of my End in the same proportion and degree my own Infelicity is become certain and this in several degrees up to the loss of all that is of Life it self for where no farther duration or differing state is known there Death is ordinarily esteemed the greatest infelicity where something beyond it is known there also it is known that such prevarication makes that farther duration to be unhappy So that an affront is naturally punished by an affront the loss of a tooth with the loss of a tooth of an eye with an eye the violent taking away of another man's goods by the losing my own For I am liable to as great an evil as I infer and naturally he is not unjust that inflicts it And he that is drunk is a fool or a mad-man for the time and that is his punishment and declares the law and the sin and so in proportions to the transgressions of sobriety But when the first of the natural laws is violated that is God is disobeyed or dishonoured or when the greatest of natural evils is done to our Neighbour then Death became the penalty to the first in the first period of the World to the second at the restitution of the World that is at the beginning of the second period He that did attempt to kill from the beginning of Ages might have been resisted and killed if the assaulted could not else be safe but he that killed actually as Cain did could not be killed himself till the Law was made in Noah's time because there was no person living that had equal power on him and had been naturally injured while the thing was doing the assailant and the assailed had equal power but when it was done and one was killed he that had the power or right of killing his murtherer is now dead and his power is extinguished with the man But after the Floud the power was put into the hand of some trusted person who was to take the forfeiture And thus I conceive these natural reasons in order to their proper end became Laws and bound fast by the band of annexed and consequent penalties Metum prorsus noxam conscientiae pro foedere haberi said Tacitus And that fully explains my sence 18. And thus Death was brought into the world not by every prevarication of any of the Laws by any instance of unreasonableness 〈◊〉 in proportion to the evil of the action would be the evil of the suffering which in all cases would not arrive at death as every injury every intemperance should not have been capital But some things were made evil by a superinduced prohibition as eating one kinde of fruit some things were evil by inordination the first was morally evil the second was evil naturally Now the first sort brought in death by a prime sanction the second by degrees and variety of accident For every disobedience and transgression of that Law which God made as the instance of our doing him honour and obedience is an integral violation of all the band between him and us it does not grow in degrees according to the instance and subject matter for it is as great a disobedience to eat when he hath forbidden us as to offer to climb to Heaven with an ambitious Tower And therefore it is but reasonable for us to fear and just in him to make us at once suffer Death which is the greatest of natural evils for disobeying him To which Death we may arrive by degrees in doing actions against the reasonableness of Sobriety and Justice but cannot arrive by degrees of Disobedience to God or Irreligion because every such act deserves the worst of things but the other naturally deserves no greater evil than the proportion of their own inordination till God by a superinduced Law hath made them also to become acts of Disobedience as well as Inordination that is morally evil as well as naturally For by the Law saith S. Paul sin became exceeding sinful that is had a new degree of obliquity added to it But this was not at first For therefore saith S. Paul Before or until the Law sin was in the world but sin is not imputed when there is no Law meaning that those sins which were forbidden by Moses's Law were actually in the manners of men and the customs of the world but they were not imputed that is to such personal punishments and consequent evils which afterwards those sins did introduce because those sins which were only evil by inordination and discomposure of the order of man's end of living happily were made unlawful upon no other stock but that God would have man to live happily and therefore gave him Reason to effect that end and if a man became unreasonable and did things contrary to his end it was impossible for him to be happy that is he should be miserable in proportion But in that degree and manner of evil they were imputed and that was sanction enough to raise natural Reason up to the constitution of a Law 19. Thirdly The Law of Nature being thus decreed and made obligatory was a sufficient instrument of making man happy that is in producing the end of his Creation But as Adam had evil discourses and irregular appetites before he fell for they made him fall and as the Angels who had no Original sin yet they chose evil at the first when it was wholly arbitrary in them to do so or otherwise so did Man God made man upright and he sought out many inventions Some men were Ambitious and by incompetent means would make their brethren to be their
the subject matter such are Blasphemy Perjury and the contempt of Authority To blaspheme God for the loss of an Asper or a peny to be forsworn in judgment for the rescuing of a few Maravides or a fivegroats fine is a worse crime than to be perjur'd for the saving ten thousand pounds and to despise Authority when the obedience is so easie as the wearing of a garment or doing of a posture is a greater and more impudent contempt than to despise Authority imposing a great burthen of a more considerable pressure where humane infirmity may tempt to a disobedience and lessen the crime And let this caution also be inserted that we do not at all neglect small Impositions if there be direct and signal injunction in the particular instance For as a great Body of Light transmitting his rays through a narrow hollowness does by that small Pyramis represent all the parts of its magnitude and glory so it may happen that a publick Interest and the concernments of Authority and the peace of a Church and the integral obedience of the Subjects and the conservation of a Community may be transferred to us by an instance in its own nature inconsiderable such as are wearing of a Cognizance remembring of a Word carrying a Branch in time of War and things of the same nature And therefore when the hand of Authority is stretced out and held forth upon a Precept and designs the duty upon particular reason or with actual intuition there is not the same facility of being dispensed with as in the neglected and unconsidered instances of other duties This onely I desire to be observed That if death or any violent accident imprisonment loss of livelihood or intolerable inconveniences be made accidentally consequent to the observing of a Law merely humane the Law binds not in the particular instance No man is bound to be a Martyr for a Ceremony or to die rather than break a Canon or to suffer Confiscation of goods for the pertinacious keeping of a civil Constitution And it is not to be supposed that a Law-giver would have decreed a Rite and bound the Lives of the subjects to it which are of a far greater value than a Rite not only because it were tyrannical and unreasonable but because the evil of the Law were greater than the good of it it were against the reason of all Laws and destroys the privileges of Nature and it puts a man into a condition as bad as the want of all Laws for nothing is civilly or naturally worse than Death to which the other evils arrive in their proportion This is to be understood in particular and positive Precepts introduced for reasons particular that is less than those are which combine all Societies and which are the cement of all Bodies political I mean Laws ritual in the Church and accidental and emergent in the State And that which is the best sign to distinguish these Laws from others is also the reason of the assertion Laws decreed with a Penalty to the transgressours cannot bind to an evil greater than that Penalty If it be appointed that we use a certain form of Liturgy under the forseiture of five pound for every omission I am bound in Conscience to obey it where I can but I am supposed legally to be disabled if any Tyrant-power shall threaten to kill me if I do or make me pay an hundred pound or any thing greater than the forfeiture of the Law For all the civil and natural power of the Law is by its coercion and the appendent punishment The Law operates by rewards and punishments by hope and fear and it is unimaginable that the Law under a less penalty can oblige us in any case or accident to suffer a greater For the compulsion of the Tyrant is greater than the coercion of the Law-giver and the Prince thinking the penalty annexed to be band sufficient intended no greater evil to the transgressour than the expressed penalty and therefore much less would he have them that obey the Law by any necessity be forced to a greater evil for then Disobedience should escape better than 〈◊〉 True it is every disobeying person that pays the penalty is not quite discharged from all his Obligation but it is then when his disobeying is criminal upon some other stock besides the mere breach of the Law as Contempt Scandal or the like for the Law binds the Conscience indirectly and by consequence that is in plain language God commands us to obey humane Laws the penalty will not pay for the contempt because that 's a sin against God it pays for the violation of the Law because that was all the direct transgression against Man And then who shall make him recompence for suffering more than the Law requires of him Not the Prince for it is certain the greatest value he set upon the Law was no bigger than the Penalty and the Common-wealth is supposed to be sufficiently secured in her interest by the Penalty or else the Law was weak impotent and unreasonable Not God for it is not an act of obedience to him for he binds us no farther to obey humane Laws than the Law-giver himself intends or declares who cannot reasonably be supposed so over-careful as to bind Hay with cords of Silk and Gold or sumptuary Laws with the threads of Life nor a Father commanding his Child to wait on him every Meal be thought to intend his Obligation even though the House be ready to fall on his head or when he is to pass a sudden or unfoordable floud before he can get to him And that it may appear Man ought not it is certain God himself doth not oblige us in all cases and in all circumstances to observe every of his positive Precepts For assembling together is a duty of God's commanding which we are not to neglect but if Death waits at the door of these Assemblies we have the practice of the Primitive and best Christians to warrant us to serve God in Retirements and Cells and Wildernesses and leave the assembling together till better opportunities If I receive more benefit or the Common-wealth or the Church and Religion any greater advantage by my particular obedience in these circumstances which cannot easily be supposed will be it is a great act of charity to do it and then to suffer for it But if it be no more that is if it be not expresly commanded to be done though with loss of life or confiscation it is a good charity to save my own life or my own estate And though the other may be better yet I am not in all cases obliged to do that which is simply the best It is a tolerable in 〈◊〉 and allowed amongst the very 〈◊〉 permissions of Nature that I may preserve my Life unless it be in a very few cases which are therefore clearly to be expressed or else the contrary is to be presumed as being a case most
Man if they pass through an even and an indifferent life towards the issues of an ordinary and necessary course they are little and within command but if they pass upon an end or aim of difficulty or ambition they duplicate and grow to a 〈◊〉 and we have seen the even and temperate lives of indifferent persons continue in many degrees of Innocence but the Temptation of busie designs is too great even for the best of dispositions 7. But these Temptations are crasse and material and soon discernible it will require some greater observation to arm against such as are more spiritual and immaterial For he hath Apples to cousen Children and Gold for Men the Kingdoms of the World for the Ambition of Princes and the Vanities of the World for the Intemperate he hath Discourses and fair-spoken Principles to abuse the pretenders to Reason and he hath common Prejudices for the more vulgar understandings Amongst these I chuse to consider such as are by way of Principle or Proposition 8. The first great Principle of Temptation I shall note is a general mistake which excuses very many of our crimes upon pretence of Infirmity calling all those sins to which by natural disposition we are inclined though by carelesness and evil customs they are heightned to a habit by the name of Sins of infirmity to which men suppose they have reason and title to pretend If when they have committed a crime their Conscience checks them and they are troubled and during the interval and abatement of the heats of desire resolve against it and commit it readily at the next opportunity then they cry out against the weakness of their Nature and think as long as this body of death is about them it must be thus and that this condition may stand with the state of Grace And then the Sins shall return periodically like the revolutions of a Quartan Ague well and ill for ever till Death surprizes the mistaker This is a Patron of sins and makes the Temptation prevalent by an authentick instrument and they pretend the words of S. Paul For the good that I would that I do not but the evil that I would not that I do For there is a law in my members 〈◊〉 against the law of my mind bringing me into captivity to the law of Sin And thus the 〈◊〉 of Sin is mistaken for a state of Grace and the imperfections of the Law are miscalled the affections and necessities of Nature that they might seem to be incurable and the persons apt for an excuse therefore because for Nature there is no absolute cure But that these words of S. Paul may not become a 〈◊〉 of death and instruments of a temptation to us it is observable that the Apostle by a siction of person as is usual with him speaks of himself not as in the state of Regeneration under the Gospel but under the 〈◊〉 obscurities insufficiencies and imperfections of the Law which indeed he there contends to have been a Rule good and holy apt to remonstrate our misery because by its prohibitions and limits given to natural desires it made actions before indifferent now to be sins it added many curses to the breakers of it and by an 〈◊〉 of contrariety it made us more desirous of what was now unlawful but it was a Covenant in which our Nature was restrained but not helped it was provoked but not sweetly assisted our Understandings were instructed but our Wills not sanctified and there were no suppletories of Repentance every greater sin was like the fall of an Angel irreparable by any mystery or express recorded or enjoyned Now of a man under this Govenant he describes the condition to be such that he understands his Duty but by the infirmities of Nature he is certain to fall and by the helps of the Law not strengthened against it nor restored after it and therefore he calls himself under that notion a miserable man sold under sin not doing according to the rules of the Law or the dictates of his Reason but by the unaltered misery of his Nature certain to prevaricate But the person described here is not S. Paul is not any justified person not so much as a Christian but one who is under a state of direct opposition to the state of Grace as will manifestly appear if we observe the antithesis from S. Paul's own characters For the Man here named is such as in whom sin wrought all concupiscence in whom sin lived and slew him so that he was dead in trespasses and sins and although he did delight in the Law after his inwardman that is his understanding had intellectual complacencies and satisfactions which afterwards he calls serving the Law of God with his mind that is in the first dispositions and preparations of his spirit yet he could act nothing for the law in his members did inslave him and brought him into captivity to the law of sin so that this person was full of actual and effective lusts he was a slave to sin and dead in trespasses But the state of a regenerate person is such as to have 〈◊〉 the flesh with the affections and lusts in whom sin did not reign not only in the mind but even also not in the mortal body over whom sin had no dominion in whom the old man was crucified and the body of sin was destroyed and sin not at all served And to make the antithesis yet clearer in the very beginning of the next Chapter the Apostle saith that the spirit of life in Christ Jesus had made him free from the law of sin and death under which law he complained immediately before he was sold and killed to shew the person was not the same in these so different and contradictory representments No man in the state of Grace can say The evil that I would not that I do if by evil he means any evil that is habitual or in its own nature deadly 9. So that now let no man pretend an inevitable necessity to sin for if ever it comes to a custom or to a great violation though but in a single act it is a condition of Carnality not of spiritual life and those are not the infirmities of Nature but the weaknesses of Grace that make us sin so frequently which the Apostle truly affirms to the same purpose The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other so that ye cannot or that ye do not do the things that ye would This disability proceeds from the strength of the flesh and weakness of the spirit For he adds But if ye be led by the Spirit ye are not under the Law saying plainly that the state of such a combate and disability of doing good is a state of a man under the Law or in the flesh which he accounts all one but every man that is sanctified
fall into hypocrisie or deceit or if a Christian Asseveration were not of value equal with an Oath And therefore Christ forbidding promissory Oaths and commanding so great simplicity of spirit and honesty did consonantly to the design and perfection of his Institution intending to make us so just and sincere that our Religion being infinite obligation to us our own Promises should pass for bond enough to others the Religion receive great honour by being esteemed a sufficient security and instrument of publick entercourse And this was intimated by our Lord himself in that reason he is pleased to give of the prohibition of swearing Let your communication be Yea yea Nay nay for whatsoever is more cometh of evil that is As good Laws come from ill manners the modesty of cloathing from the shame of sin Antidotes and Physick by occasion of poisons and diseases so is Swearing an effect of distrust and want of faith or honesty on one or both sides Men dare not trust the word of a Christian or a Christian is not just and punctual to his Promises and this calls for confirmation by an Oath So that Oaths suppose a fault though they are not faults always themselves whatsoever is more than Yea or Nay is not always evil but it always cometh of evil And therefore the Essenes esteemed every man that was put to his Oath no better than an infamous person a perjurer or at least suspected not esteemed a just man and the Heathens would not suffer the Priest of Jupiter to swear because all men had great opinion of his sanctity and authority and the Scythians derided Alexander's caution and timorous provision when he required an Oath of them Nos religionem in ipsa side novimus Our faith is our bond and they who are willing to deceive men will not stick to deceive God when they have called God to witness But I have a caution to insert for each which I propound as an humble advice to persons eminent and publickly interested 22. First That Princes and such as have power of decreeing the injunction of promissory Oaths be very curious and reserved not lightly enjoyning such Promises neither in respect of the matter trivial nor yet frequently nor without great reason enforcing The matter of such Promises must be only what is already matter of Duty or Religion for else the matter is not grave enough sor the calling of God to testimony but when it is a matter of Duty then the Oath is no other than a Vow or Promise made to God in the presence of men And because Christians are otherwise very much obliged to do all which is their duty in matters both civil and religious of Obedience and Piety therefore it must be an instant necessity and a great cause to superinduce such a confirmation as derives from the so sacredly invocating the Name of God it must be when there is great necessity that the duty be actually performed and when the Supreme power either hath not power sufficient to punish the delinquent or may miss to have notice of the delict For in these cases it is reasonable to bind the faith of the obliged persons by the fear of God after a more special manner but else there is no reason sufficient to demand of the subject any farther security than their own faith and contract The reason of this advice relies upon the strictness of the words of this Precept against promissory Oaths and the reverence we owe to the name of God Oaths of Allegiance are fit to be imposed in a troubled State or to a mutinous People But it is not so fit to tie the People by Oath to abstain from transportations of Metal or Grain or Leather from which by Penalties they are with as much security and less suspicion of iniquity restrained 23. Secondly Concerning assertory Oaths and Depositions in Judgment although a greater liberty may be taken in the subject matter of the Oath and we may being required to it swear in Judgment though the cause be a question of money or our interest or the rights of a Society and S. Athanasius purged himself by Oath before the Emperour Constantius yet it were a great pursuance and security of this part of Christian Religion if in no case contrary Oaths might be admitted in which it is certain one part is perjured to the ruine of their Souls to the intricating of the Judgment to the dishonour of Religion but that such rules of prudence and reasonable presumption be established that upon the Oath of that party which the Law shall chuse and upon probable grounds shall presume for the sentence may be established For by a small probability there may a surer Judgment be given than upon the confidence of contradictory Oaths and after the sin the Judge is left to the uncertainty of conjectures as much as if but one part had sworn and to much more because such an Oath is by the consent of all men accepted as a rule to determine in Judgment By these discourses we understand the intention of our Blessed Master in this Precept and I wish by this or any thing else men would be restrained 〈◊〉 that low cheap unreasonable and unexcusable vice of customary Swearing to which we have nothing to invite us that may lessen the iniquity for which we cannot pretend temptation nor alledge infirmity but it begins by wretchlesness and a malicious carelesness and is continued by the strength of habit and the greatest immensity of folly And I consider that Christian Religion being so holy an Institution to which we are invited by so great promises in which we are instructed by so clear revelations and to the performance of our duties compelled by the threatnings of a sad and insupportable eternity should more than sufficiently endear the performance of this Duty to us The name of a Christian is a high and potent antidote against all sin if we consider aright the honour of the name the undertaking of our Covenant and the reward of our duty The Jews eat no Swines flesh because they are of Moses and the Turks drink no Wine because they are Mahumetans and yet we swear for all we are Christians than which there is not in the world a greater conviction of our baseness and irreligion Is the authority of the Holy Jesus so despicable are his Laws so unreasonable his rewards so little his threatnings so small that we must needs in contempt of all this profane the great Name of God and trample under foot the Laws of Jesus and cast away the hopes of Heaven and enter into security to be possessed by Hell-torments for Swearing that is for speaking like a fool without reason without pleasure without reputation much to our disesteem much to the trouble of civil and wise persons with whom we joyn in society and entercourse Certainly Hell will be heat seven times hotter for a customary Swearer and every degree of
against the person of the man in us is pride and self-love and towards others ungentleness and an immorigerous spirit Which is to be understood when the cause is not sufficient or when the anger continues longer or is excessive in the degrees of its proportion 29. The causes of allowable Anger are when we see God dishonoured or a sin committed or any irregularity or fault in matter of Government a fault against the laws of a family or good manners disobedience or stubbornness which in all instances where they may be prudently judged such by the Governour yet possibly they are not all direct sins against God and Religion In such cases we may be angry But then we may also sin if we exceed in time or measure of degree 30. The proportion of time S. Paul expresses by not letting the Sun set upon 〈◊〉 anger Leontius Patricius was one day extremely and unreasonably angry with John the Patriarch of Alexandria at Evening the Patriarch sent a servant to him with this message Sir the Sun is set upon which Patricius reflecting and the grace of God making the impression deep visible and permanent he threw away his anger and became wholly subject to the counsel and ghostly aids of the Patriarch This limit S. Paul borrowed from the Psalmist for that which in the fourth Psalm verse 5. we read Stand in awe and sin not the Septuagint reads Be angry but sin not And this measure is taken from the analogy of the Law of the Jews that a malefactor should not hang upon the accursed tree after the Sun was set and if the Laws laid down their just anger against Malefactors as soon as the Sun descended and took off his beams from beholding the example much more is it reasonable that a private anger which is not warranted by authority not measured by laws not examined by solemnities of Justice not made reasonable by considering the degree of the causes not made charitable by intending the publick good not secured from injuriousness by being disinterest and such an anger in which the party is judge and witness and executioner it is I say but reason such an anger should unyoke and go to bed with the Sun since Justice and Authority laid by the Rods and Axes as soon as the Sun unteamed his chariot Plutarch reports that the Pythagoreans were strict observers of the very letter of this caution For if Anger had boiled up to the height of injury or reproach before Sun set they would shake hands salute each other and depart friends for they were ashamed that the same anger which had disturbed the counsels of the day should also trouble the quiet and dreams of the night lest anger by mingling with their rest and nightly fancies should grow natural and habitual Well anger must last no longer but neither may a Christian's anger last so long for if his anger last a whole day it will certainly before night sour into a crime A man's anger is like the Spleen at the first it is natural but in its excess and distemper it swells into a disease and therefore although to be angry at the presence of certain objects is natural and therefore is indifferent because he that is an essential enemy to sin never made sin essential to a man yet unless it be also transient and pass off at the command of Reason and Religion it quickly becomes criminal The meaning is that it be no more but a transient Passion not permanent at all but that the anger against the man pass into indignation against the crime and pity of the person till the pity grows up into endeavours to help him For an angry violent and disturbed man is like that white Bramble of Judaea of which Josephus reports that it is set on 〈◊〉 by impetuous winds consumes it self and burns the neighbour-plants and the evil effects of a violent and passionate Anger are so great so dangerous so known to all the world that the very consideration of them is the best argument in the world to dispute against it Families and Kingdomes have suffered horrid calamities and whatsoever is violent in art or nature hath been made the instrument of sadness in the hands of Anger 31. The measure of the degree is to be estimated by humane prudence that it exceed not the value of the cause nor the proportion of other circumstances and that it cause no eruption into indiscretions or undecencies For therefore Moses's anger though for God and Religion was reproved because it went forth into a violent and troubled expression and shewed the degree to be inordinate For it is in this passion as in Lightning which if it only breaks the cloud and makes a noise shews a tempest and disturbance in nature but the hurt is none but if it seises upon a man or dwells upon a house or breaks a tree it becomes a judgment and a curse And as the one is a mischief in chance and accident so the other is in morality and choice if it passes from passion into action from a transient violence to a permanent injury if it abides it scorches the garment or burns the body and there is no way to make it innocent but to remove and extinguish it and while it remains to tie the hands and pare the nails and muzzle it that it may neither scratch nor bite nor talk An anger in God's cause may become unhallowed if it sees the Sun rise and set and an anger in the cause of a man is innocent according to the degrees of its suddenness and discontinuance for by its quickness and volatile motion it shews that it was 1. unavoidable in its production or 2. that it was 〈◊〉 in the event or 3. quickly suppressed according to which several cases Anger is either 1. natural or 2. excusable or 3. the matter of a vertue 32. The Vulgar 〈◊〉 Bible in this Precept of our Blessed Saviour reads not the appendix without a cause but indefinitely he that is angry with his Brother and S. 〈◊〉 affirms that the clause without a cause is not to be found in the true Greek copies upon supposition of which because it is not to be imagined that all Anger in 〈◊〉 causes and in all degrees is simply unlawful and S. Paul distinguishes being angry from committing a sin Be angry but sin not these words are left to signifie such an anger as is the crime of Homicide in the heart like the secret Lusting called by Christ Adultery in the heart and so here is forbidden not only the outward act but the inward inclinations to 〈◊〉 that is an Anger with deliberation and purpose of revenge this being explicative and additional to the Precept forbidding Murther which also our Blessed Saviour seems to have intended by threatning the same penalty to this anger or spiritual Homicide which the Law inflicted upon the actual and external that is judgment or condemnation And because this prohibition of
concernment to God's glory to gain the Gentiles than to retain the Jews and yet if it had not the Apostles were bound to bend to the inclinations of the weaker rather than be mastered by the wilfulness of the stronger who had been sufficiently instructed in the articles of Christian liberty and in the adopting the Gentiles into the Family of God Thus if it be a question whether I should abate any thing of my external Religion or Ceremonies to satisfie an Heretick or a contentious person who pretends Scandal to himself and is indeed of another Perswasion and at the same time I know that good persons would be weakned at such forbearance and estranged from the good perswasion and Charity of Communion which is part of their Duty it more concerns Charity and the glory of God that I secure the right than twine about the wrong wilful and malicious persons A Prelate must rather fortifie and encourage Obedience and strengthen Discipline than by remisness toward refractory spirits and a desire not to seem severe weaken the hands of consciencious persons by taking away the marks of difference between them that obey and them that obey not and in all cases when the question is between a friend to be secured from Apostasie or an enemy to be gained from Indifferency S. Paul's rule is to be observed Do good to all but especially to the houshold of Faith When the Church in a particular instance cannot be kind to both she must first love her own children 12. Eighthly But when the question is between pleasing and contenting the fancies of a Friend and the gaining of an Enemy the greater good of the Enemy is infinitely to be preferred before the satisfying the unnecessary humour of the Friend and therefore that we may gain persons of a different Religion it is lawful to entertain them in their innocent customs that we may represent our selves charitable and just apt to comply in what we can and yet for no end complying farther than we are permitted It was a policy of the Devil to abuse Christians to the Rites of 〈◊〉 by imitating the Christian Ceremonies and the Christians themselves were before-hand with him in that policy for they facilitated the reconcilement of Judaism with Christianity by common Rites and invited the Gentiles to the Christian Churches because they never violated the Heathen Temples but loved the men and imitated their innocent Rites and only offered to reform their Errors and hallow their abused purposes and this if it had no other contradictory or unhandsome circumstance gave no offence to other Christians when they had learned to trust them with the government of Ecclesiastical affairs to whom God had committed them and they all had the same purposes of Religion and Charity And when there is no objection against this but the furies or greater heats of a mistaken Zeal the compliance with evil or unbelieving persons to gain them from their Errors to the ways of Truth and sincerity is great prudence and great Charity because it chuses and acts a greater good at no other charge or expence but the discomposing of an intemperate Zeal 13. Ninthly We are not bound to intermit a good or a lawful action as soon as any man tells us it is scandalous for that may be an easie stratagem to give me laws and destroy my liberty but either when the action is of it self or by reason of a publick known indisposition of some persons probably introductive of a sin or when we know it is so in fact The other is but affrighting a man this only is prudent that my Charity be guided by such rules which determine wise men to actions or omissions respectively And therefore a light fame is not strong enough to wrest my liberty from me but a reasonable belief or a certain knowledge in the taking of which estimate we must neither be too credulous and easie nor yet ungentle and stubborn but do according to the actions of wise men and the charities of a Christian. Hither we may refer the rules of abstaining from things which are of evil report For not every thing which is of good report is to be followed for then a false opinion when it is become popular must be professed for Conscience sake nor yet every thing that is of bad report is to be avoided for nothing endured more shame and obloquy than Christianity at its first commencement But by good report we are to understand such things which are well reported of by good men and wise men or Scripture or the consent of Nations And thus for a woman to marry within the year of mourning is scandalous because it is of evil report gives suspicion of lightness or some worse confederacy before the death of her husband the thing it self is apt to minister the suspicion and this we are bound to prevent And unless the suspicion be malicious or imprudent and unreasonable we must conceal our actions from the surprises and deprehensions of suspicion It was scandalous amongst the old Romans not to marry among the Christians for a Clergy-man to marry twice because it was against an Apostolical Canon but when it became of ill report for any Christian to marry the second time because this evil report was begun by the errors of Montanus and is against a permission of holy Scripture no Lay-Christian was bound to abstain from a second bed for fear of giving scandal 14. Tenthly The precept of avoiding Scandal concerns the Governours of the Church or State in the making and execution of Laws For no Law in things indifferent ought to be made to the provocation of the Subject or against that publick disposition which is in the spirits of men and will certainly cause perpetual irregularities and Schisms Before the Law be made the Superiour must comply with the subject after it is made the subject must comply with the Law But in this the Church hath made fair provision accounting no Laws obligatory till the people have accepted them and given tacite approbation for Ecclesiastical Canons have their time of probation and if they become a burthen to the people or occasion Schisms Tumults publick disunion of affections and jealousies against Authority the Laws give place and either fix not when they are not first approved or disappear by desuetude And in the execution of Laws no less care is to be taken for many cases occur in which the Laws can be rescued from being a snare to mens Consciences by no other way but by dispensation and slacking of the Discipline as to certain particulars Mercy and Sacrifice the Letter and the Spirit the words and the intention the general case and the particular exception the present disposition and the former state of things are oftentimes so repugnant and of such contradictory interests that there is no stumbling-block more troublesome or dangerous than a severe literal and rigorous exacting of Laws in all cases But when Stubbornness or a Contentious
and miserable to all eternity It was a sad calamity that fell upon the Man of Judah that returned to eat bread into the Prophet's house contrary to the word of the Lord He was abused into the act by a Prophet and a pretence of a command from God and whether he did violence to his own understanding and believed the man because he was willing or did it in sincerity or in what degree of sin or excuse the action might consist no man there knew and yet a Lion slew him and the lying Prophet that abused him escaped and went to his grave in peace Some persons joyned in society or interest with criminals have perished in the same Judgments and yet it would be hard to call them equally guilty who in the accident were equally miserable and involved And they who are not strangers in the affairs of the world cannot but have heard or seen some persons who have lived well and moderately though not like the 〈◊〉 of the Holocaust yet like the ashes of Incense sending up good perfumes and keeping a constant and slow fire of Piety and Justice yet have been surprised in the midst of some unusual unaccustomed irregularity and died in that sin A sudden gayety of fortune a great joy a violent change a friend is come or a marriage-day hath transported some persons to indiscretions and too bold a licence and the indiscretion hath betrayed them to idle company and the company to drink and drink to a fall and that hath hurri'd them to their grave And it were a sad sentence to think God would not repute the untimely death for a punishment great enough to that deflexion from duty and judge the man according to the constant tenor of his former life unless such an act was of malice great enough to outweigh the former habits and interrupt the whole state of acceptation and grace Something like this was the case of 〈◊〉 who espying the tottering Ark went to support it with an unhallowed hand God smote him and he died immediately It were too severe to say his zeal and indiscretion carried him beyond a temporal death to the ruines of Eternity Origen and many others have made themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdome of Heaven and did well after it but those that did so and died of the wound were smitten of God and died in their folly and yet it is rather to be called a sad consequence of their indiscretion than the express of a final anger from God Almighty For as God takes off our sins and punishments by parts remitting to some persons the sentence of death and inflicting the fine of a temporal loss or the gentle scourge of a lesser sickness so also he lays it on by parts and according to the proper proportions of the man and of the crime and every transgression and lesser deviation from our duty does not drag the Soul to death eternal but God suffers our Repentance though imperfect to have an imperfect effect knocking off the fetters by degrees and leading us in some cases to a Council in some to Judgment and in some to Hell-fire but it is not always certain that he who is led to the prison-doors shall there lie entombed and a Man may by a Judgment be brought to the gates of Hell and yet those gates shall not prevail against him This discourse concerns persons whose life is habitually fair and just but are surprised in some unhandsome but less criminal action and 〈◊〉 or suffer some great Calamity as the instrument of its expiation or amendment 3. Secondly But if the person upon whom the Judgment falls be habitually vicious or the crime of a clamorous nature or deeper tincture if the man sin a sin unto death and either meets it or some other remarkable calamity not so feared as death provided we pass no farther than the sentence we see then executed it is not against Charity or prudence to say this calamity in its own formality and by the intention of God is a Punishment and Judgment In the favourable cases of honest and just persons our sentence and opinions ought also to be favourable and in such questions to encline ever to the side of charitable construction and read other ends of God in the accidents of our neighbour than Revenge or express Wrath. But when the impiety of a person is scandalous and notorious when it is clamorous and violent when it is habitual and yet corrigible if we find a sadness and calamity dwelling with such a sinner especially if tho punishment be spiritual we read the sentence of God written with his own hand and it is not 〈◊〉 of opinion or a pressing into the secrets of Providence to say the same thing which God hath published to all the world in the 〈◊〉 of his Spirit In such cases we are to observe the severity of God on them that fall severity and to use those Judgments as instruments of the fear of God arguments to hate sin which we could not well do but that we must look on them as verifications of God's threatning against great and impenitent sinners But then if we descend to particulars we may easily be deceived 4. For some men are diligent to observe the accidents and chances of Providence upon those especially who differ from them in Opinion and whatever ends God can have or whatever sins man can have yet we lay that in fault which we therefore hate because it is most against our interest the contrary Opinion is our enemy and we also think God hates it But such fancies do seldom serve either the ends of Truth or Charity Pierre Calceon died under the Barber's hand there wanted not some who said it was a Judgement upon him for condemning to the fire the famous Pucelle of France who prophesied the expulsion of the English out of the Kingdom They that thought this believed her to be a Prophetess but others that thought her a Witch were willing to 〈◊〉 out another conjecture for the sudden death of the Gentleman Garnier Earl of Gretz kept the Patriarch of Jerusalem from his right in David's Tower and the City and died within three days and by Dabert the Patriarch it was called a Judgment upon him for his Sacrilege But the uncertainty of that censure appeared to them who considered that Baldwin who gave commission to Garnier to withstand the Patriarch did not die but Godsrey of 〈◊〉 did die immediately after he had passed the right of the Patriarch and yet when Baldwin was beaten at Rhamula some bold People pronounced that then God punished him upon the Patriarch's score and thought his Sacrilege to be the secret cause of his overthrow and yet his own Pride and Rashness was the more visible and the Judgment was but a cloud and passed away quickly into a succeeding Victory But I instance in a trisle Certain it is that God removed the Candlestick from the Levantine Churches because he had
concerning judgments or the administration of Justice that Judges and Magistrates should be appointed in every Place for the Order and Government of Civil Societies the determination of Causes and executing of Justice between Man and Man And that such there then were seems evident from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Job twice speaks of in one Chapter the judged iniquity which the Jewes expound and we truly render an iniquity to be punished by the Judges The seventh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning the member of any live-creature that is as God expresses it in the Precept to Noah they might not eat the blood or the flesh with the life thereof Whether these Precepts were by any solemn and external promulgation particularly delivered to the Ante-deluvian Patriarchs as the Jewes seem to contend I will not say for my part I cannot but look upon them the last only excepted as a considerable part of Nature's Statute-law as comprizing the greater strokes and lineaments of those natural dictates that are imprinted upon the souls of Men. For what more comely and reasonable and more agreeable to the first notions of our minds than that we should worship and adore God alone as the Authour of our beings and the Fountain of our happiness and not derive the lustre of his incommunicable perfections upon any Creature that we should entertain great and honourable thoughts of God and such as become the Grandeur and Majesty of his being that we should abstain from doing any wrong or injury to another from invading his right violating his priviledges and much more from making any attempt upon his life the dearest blessing in this World that we should be just and fair in our transactions and do to all men as we would they should do to us that we should live chastely and temperately and not by wild and extravagant lusts and sensualities offend against the natural modesty of our minds that Order and Government should be maintained in the World Justice advanced and every Man secured in his just possessions And so suitable did these Laws seem to the reason and understandings of Men that the Jewes though the most zealous People under Heaven of their Legal Institutions received those Gentiles who observed them as Proselytes into their Church though they did not oblige themselves to Circumcision and the rest of the Mosaic Rites Nay in the first Age of Christianity when the great controversie arose between the Jewish and Gentile-Converts about the obligation of the Law of Moses as necessary to salvation the observation only of these Precepts at least a great part of them was imposed upon the Gentile-Converts as the best expedient to end the difference by the Apostolical Synod at Jerusalem 4. BUT though the Law of Nature was the common Law by which God then principally governed the World yet was not he wanting by Methods extraordinary to supply as occasion was the exigencies and necessities of his Church communicating his mind to them by Dreams and Visions and other ways of Revelation which we shall more particularly remarque when we come to the Mosaical Oeconomy Hence arose those positive Laws which we meet with in this period of the Church some whereof are more expresly recorded others more obscurely intimated Among those that are more plain and obvious two are especially considerable the prohibition sor not eating blood and the Precept of Circumcision the one given to Noah the other to Abraham The prohibition concerning blood is thus recorded every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you but flesh with the life thereof which is the blood thereof shall you not eat The blood is the vehiculum to carry the spirits as the Veins are the channels to convey the blood now the animal 〈◊〉 give vital heat and activity to every part and being let out the blood presently cools and the Creature dies Not flesh with the blood which is the life thereof that is not flesh while it is alive while the blood and the spirits are yet in it The mystery and signification whereof was no other than this that God would not have Men train'd up to arts of cruelty or whatever did but carry the colour and aspect of a merciless and a savage temper lest severity towards Beasts should degenerate into fierceness towards Men. It 's good to defend the out-guards and to stop the remotest ways that lead towards sin especially considering the violent propensions of humane nature to passion and revenge Men commence bloody and inhumane by degrees and little approaches in time render a thing in it self abhorrent not only familiar but delightful The Romans who at first entertained the People in the 〈◊〉 only with wild Beasts killing one another came afterwards wantonly to sport away the Lives of the Gladiators yea to cast Persons to be devoured by Bears and Lions for no other end than the divertisement and pleasure of the People He who can please himself in tearing and eating the Parts of a living Creature may in short time make no scruple to do violence to the Life of Man Besides eating blood naturally begets a savage temper makes the spirits rank and fiery and apt to be easily inflamed and blown up into choler and fierceness And that hereby God did design to bar out ferity and to secure mercy and gentleness is evident from what follows after and surely your blood of your lives will I require at the hand of every beast will I require it and at the hand of Man at the hand of every Man's brother will I require the life of man whoso sheddeth Man's blood by Man shall his blood be shed The life of a Beast might not be wantonly sacrificed to Mens humours therefore not Man 's the life of Man being so sacred and dear to God that if kill'd by a Beast the Beast it self was to dye for it if by man that man's life was to go for retaliation by man shall his blood be shed where by man we must necessarily understand the ordinary Judge and Magistrate or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Jewes call it the lower Judicature with respect to that Divine and Superiour Court the immediate judgment of God himself By which means God admirably provided for the safety and security of Man's life and for the order and welfare of humane society and it was no more than necessary the remembrance of the violence and oppression of the Nephilim or Giants before the Flood being yet fresh in memory and there was no doubt but such mighty Hunters men of robust bodies of barbarous and inhumane tempers would afterwards arise This Law against eating blood was afterwards renewed under the Mosaic Institution but with this peculiar signification for the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the Altar to make an atonement for your souls for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul that is the blood might
up the Cross and laying down our lives whenever the honour of God and the interest of Religion calls for it he not only commands us to do no wrong but when we have done it to make restitution not only to retrench our irregular appetites but to cut off our right hand and pluck out our right eye and cast them from us that is mortifie and offer violence to those vicious inclinations which are as dear to us as the most useful and necessary parts and members of our body Besides all this had God intended the Decalogue for a perfect summary of the Laws of Nature we cannot suppose that he would have taken any but such into the collection whereas the Fourth Commandment concerning the Seventh day is unquestionably Typical and Ceremonial and has nothing more of a Natural and Eternal obligation in it than that God should be served and honoured both with publick and private worship which cannot be done without some portions of time set apart for it But that this should be done just at such a time and by such proportions upon the Seventh rather than the Sixth or the Eighth day is no part of natural Religion And indeed the reasons and arguments that are annexed to it to enforce the observance of it clearly shew that it is of a later date and of another nature than the rest of those Precepts in whose company we find it though it seems at first sight to pass without any peculiar note of discrimination from the rest As for the rest they are Laws of Eternal righteousness and did not derive their value and authority from the Divine sanction which God here gave them at Mount Sinai but from their own moral and internal goodness and equity being founded in the nature of things and the essential and unchangeable differences of good and evil By which means they always were always will be obligatory and indispensable being as Eternal and Immutable as the nature of God himself 5. THE second sort of Laws were Ceremonial Divine Constitutions concerning Ritual observances and matters of Ecclesiastical cognizance and relation and were instituted for a double end partly for the more orderly government of the Church and the more decent administration of the worship of God partly that they might be types and figures of the Evangelical state Shadows of good things to come visible and symbolical representments of the Messiah and those great blessings and priviledges which he was to introduce into the World which doubtless was the reason why God was so infinitely punctual and particular in his directions about these matters giving orders about the minutest circumstances of the Temple ministration because every part of it had a glance at a future and better state of things The number of them was great and the observation burdensom the whole Nation groaning under the servility of that yoke They were such as principally related to God's worship and may be reduced either to such as concerned the worship it self or the circumstances of time place and persons that did attend it Their worship consisted chiefly in three things Prayers Sacrifices and Sacraments Prayers were daily put up together with their Offerings and though we have very few Constitutions concerning them yet the constant practice of that Church and the particular forms of Prayer yet extant in their writings are a sufficient evidence Sacrifices were the constant and most solemn part of their publick worship yea they had their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their continual burnt-offering a Lamb offered Morning and Evening with a Measure of Flower Oil and Wine the charge whereof was defrayed out of the Treasury of the Temple The rest of their Sacrifices may be considered either as they were Expiatory or Eucharistical Expiatory were those that were offered as an atonement for the sins of the people to 〈◊〉 the Divine displeasure and to procure his pardon which they did by vertue of their Typical relation to that great Sacrifice which the Son of God was in the fulness of time to offer up for the sins of the World They were either of a more general relation for the expiation of sin in general whole burnt-offerings which were intirely the skin and the entrails only excepted burnt to ashes or of a more private and particular concernment designed for the redemption of particular offences whereof there were two sorts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the sin-offering for involuntary offences committed through errour or ignorance which according to the condition and capacity of the Person were either for the Priest or the Prince or the whole Body of the People or a private Person The other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the trespass-offering for sins done wittingly studied and premeditated transgressions and which the Man could not pretend to be the effects of surprize or chance Eucharistical Sacrifices were testimonies of gratitude to God for mercies received whereof three sorts especially 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the meat-offering made up of things without life oyl fine flower incense c. which the worshipper offered as a thankful return for the daily preservation and provisions of life and therefore it consisted only of the fruits of the ground 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the peace-offering this was done either out of a grateful sense of some blessing conferred or as a voluntary offering to which the Person had obliged himself by vow in expectation of some safety or deliverance which he had prayed for In this Sacrifice God had his part the fat which was the only part of it burnt by fire the Priest his as the instrument of the ministration the Offerer his that he might have wherewith to rejoyce before the Lord. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a thanksgivingoffering or a Sacrifice of praise it was a mixt kind of Sacrifice consisting of living Creatures and the fruits of the Earth which they might offer at their own will but it must be eaten the same day and none of it left until the morrow What other provisions we meet with concerning ceremonial uncleannesses first-fruits the first-born tenths c. are conveniently reducible to some of these heads which we have already mentioned The last part of their worship concerned their Sacraments which were two Circumcision and the Paschal Supper Circumcision was the federal Rite annexed by God as a Seal to the Covenant which he made with Abraham and his Posterity and accordingly renewed and taken into the Body of the Mosaical constitutions It was to be administred the eighth day which the Jews understand not of so many days compleat but the current time six full days and part of the other In the room of this Baptism succeeds in the Christian Church The Passover which was the eating of the Paschal Lamb was instituted as an Annual memorial of their signal and miraculous deliverance out of Egypt and as a typical representation of our spiritual Redemption by Christ from the bondage of sin and that
drunken man like a man whom wine hath overcome because of the Lord and because of the words of his holiness so as a little to ruffle their imagination yet never so as to discompose their reason or hinder them from a clear perception of the notices conveyed upon their minds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Epiphanius the Prophet had his Oracles dictated by the Holy Spirit which he delivered strenuously and with the most firm and unshaken consistency of his rational powers and afterwards 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Prophets were often in a bodily ecstasie but never in an ecstasie of mind their understandings never being rendred useless and unserviceable to them Indeed it was absolutely necessary that the Prophet should have a full satisfaction of mind concerning the truth and Divinity of his message for how else should they perswade others that the thing was from God if they were not first sufficiently assured themselves and therefore even in those methods that were most liable to doubts and questions such as communications by dreams we cannot think but that the same Spirit that moved and impressed the thing upon them did also by some secret and inward operations settle their minds in the firmest belief and perswasion of what was revealed and suggested to them All these ways of immediate revelation ceased some hundreds of years before the final period of the Jewish Church A thing confessed not only by Christians but by Jews themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There was no Prophet in the second Temple indeed they universally acknowledge that there were five things wanting in the second Temple built after their return from the Babylonish Captivity which had been in that of Solomon viz. the Ark of the Covenant the fire from Heaven that lay upon the Altar the Schekinah or presence of the Divine Majesty the 〈◊〉 and Thummim and the spirit of Prophecy which ceased as they tell us about the second year of Darius to be sure at the death of Malachy the last of that order after whom there arose no Prophet in Israel whom therefore the Jews call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the seal of the Prophets Indeed it is no wonder that Prophecy should cease at that time if we consider that one of the prime ends of it did then cease which was to be a seal and an assurance of the Divine inspiration of the holy Volumes now the Canon of the Old Testament being consigned and completed by Ezra with the assistance of Malachy and some of the last Prophets God did not think good any longer to continue this Divine and Miraculous gift among them But especially if we consider the great degeneracy into which that Church was falling their horrid and crying sins having made God resolve to reject them the departure of the Prophetick spirit shewed that God had written them a bill of divorce and would utterly cast them off that by this means they might be awakened to a more lively expectation of that new state of things which the Messiah was coming to establish in the World wherein the Prophetick spirit should revive and be again restored to the Church which accordingly came to pass as we shall elsewhere observe 16. THE third thing propounded was to consider the state of Religion and the Church under the successive periods of this 〈◊〉 And here we shall only make some general remarks a particular survey of those matters not consisting with the design of this discourse Ecclesiastical Constitutions being made in the Wilderness and the place for publick worship fram'd and erected no sooner did they come into the promised Land but the Tabernacle was set down at Gilgal where if the Jewish Chronology say true it continued fourteen years till they had subdued and divided the Land Then fixed at Shiloh and the Priests and Levites had Cities and Territories assigned to them where it is not to be doubted but there were Synagogues or places equivalent for prayer and the ordinary solemnities of Religion and Courts for the decision of Ecclesiastical causes Prosperity and a plentiful Country had greatly contributed to the depravation of mens manners and the corruption of Religion till the times of Samuel the great Reformer of that Church who erected Colledges and instituted Schools of the Prophets reduced the Societies of the Levites to their Primitive order and purity forced the Priests to do their duty diligently to minister in the affairs of God's worship and carefully to teach and instruct the people A piece of reformation no more than necessay For the word of the Lord was precious in those days there was no open vision CCCLXIX years say the Jews the Tabernacle abode at Shiloh from whence it was translated to Nob a City in the Tribe of Benjamin probably about the time that the Ark was taken thence after thirteen years to Gibeon where it remained fifty years and lastly by Solomon to Jerusalem The Ark being taken out to carry along with them for their more prosperous success in their War against the Philistines was ever after exposed to an ambulatory and unsetled course For being taken captive by the Philistines it was by them kept prisoner seven months thence removed to 〈◊〉 and thence to Kirtath-jearim where it remained in the house of Abinadab twenty years thence solemnly 〈◊〉 by David and after three months rest by the way in the house of Obed-Edom brought triumphantly to Jerusalem and placed under the covert of a Tent which he had purposely erected for it David being setled in the Throne like a pious Prince took especial care of the affairs of Religion he fixed the High Priest and his second augmented the courses of the Priests from eight to four and twenty appointed the Levites and Singers and their several turns and times of waiting assigned them their proper duties and ministeries setled the Nethinim or Porters the posterity of the 〈◊〉 made Treasurers of the revenues belonging to holy uses and of the vast summs contributed towards the building of a Temple as a more solemn and stately place for Divine worship which he was fully resolved to have erected but that God commanded it to be reserved for the peaceable and prosperous Reign of Solomon who succeeding in his Father's Throne accomplished it building so stately and magnificent a Temple that it became one of the greatest wonders of the World Under his son Rehoboam hapned the fatal division of the Kingdom when ten parts of twelve were rent off at once and brought under the Empire of Jeroboam who knew no better way to secure his new-gotten Soveraignty than to take off the people from hankering after the Temple and the worship at Jerusalem and therefore out of a cursed policy erected two Golden Calves at Dan and Bethel perswading the people there to pay their publick adorations appointing Chaplains like himself Priests of the lowest of the people and from this time Religion began visibly to ebb and decline in that Kingdom and
take into their hands instruments of musick and sing Glory be to God on high First signifying to us that the Incarnation of the Holy Jesus was a very great instrument of the glorification of God and those divine Perfections in which he is chiefly pleased to communicate himself to us were in nothing manifested so much as in the mysteriousness of this work Secondly And in vain doth man satisfie himself with complacencies and ambitious designs upon earth when he sees before him God in the form of a servant humble and poor and crying and an infant full of need and weakness 4. But God hath pleased to reconcile his Glory with our eternal Benefit and that also was part of the Angels song In earth peace to men of good will For now we need not with Adam to fly from the presence of the Lord saying I heard thy voice and I was afraid and hid my self for he from whom our sins made us once to flie now weeps and is an infant in his Mother's arms seeking strange means to be reconciled to us hath forgotten all his anger and is swallowed up with love and 〈◊〉 with irradiations of amorous affections and good will and the effects of this good will are not referred only to persons of heroical and eminent graces and operations of vast and expensive charities of prodigious abstinencies of eremitical retirements of ascetical diet of perfect Religion and canoniz'd persons but to all men of good will whose Souls are hallowed with holy purposes and pious desires though the beauties of the Religion and holy thoughts were not spent in exterior acts nor called out by the opportunities of a rich and expressive fortune 5. But here we know where the seat and regiment of Peace is placed and all of it must pass by us and descend upon us as duty and reward It proceeds from the Word Incarnate from the Son of God undertaking to reconcile us to his Father and it is ministred and consigned unto us by every event and act of Providence whether it be decyphered in characters of paternal Indulgence or of Correction or Absolution For that is not Peace from above to have all things according to our humane and natural wishes but to be in favour with God that is Peace always remembring that to be chastised by him is not a certain testimony of his mere wrath but to all his servants a character of love and of paternal provision since he chastises every son whom he receives Whosoever seeks to avoid all this world's Adversity can never find Peace but he only who hath resolved all his Affections and placed them in the heart of God he who denies his own Will and hath killed Self-love and all those enemies within that make Afflictions to become Miseries indeed and full of bitterness he only enjoys this Peace and in proportion to every man's Mortification and Self-denial so are the degrees of his Peace and this is the Peace which the Angel proclaimed at the enunciation of that Birth which taught Humility and Contempt of things below and all their vainer glories by the greatest argument in the world even the Poverty of God incarnate And if God sent his own natural only-begotten and beloved Son in all the 〈◊〉 of Poverty and contempt that person is vain who thinks God will love him better than he loved his own Son or that he will express his love any other or gentler way than to make him partaker of the fortune of his eldest Son There is one other postern to the dwellings of Peace and that is good will to Men for so much Charity as we have to others such a measure of Peace also we may enjoy at home For Peace was only proclaimed to Men of good will to them that are at peace with God and all the World 6. But the Angel brought the Message to Shepherds to persons simple and mean and humble persons likely to be more apprehensive of the Mystery and less of the Scandal of the Poverty of the Messias for they whose custom or affections dwell in secular Pomps who are not used by Charity or Humility to stoop to an Evenness and consideration of their brethren of equal natures though of unequal fortunes are persons of all the world most indisposed and removed from the understanding of spiritual excellencies especially when they do not come clothed with advantages of the world and of such beauties which they admire God himself in Poverty comes in a prejudice to them that love Riches and Simplicity is Folly to crafty persons a Mean birth is an ignoble stain Beggery is a scandal and the Cross an unanswerable objection But the Angel's moral in the circumstance of his address and inviting the poor Shepherds to Bethlehem is That none are fit to come to Christ but those who are poor in spirit despisers of the world simple in their hearts without craft and secular designs and therefore neither did the Angel tell the story to Herod nor to the Scribes and Pharisees whose ambition had ends contradictory to the simplicity and poverty of the Birth of Jesus 7. These Shepherds when they conversed with Angels were watching over their flocks by night no Revellers but in a painful and dangerous imployment the work of an honest Calling securing their Folds against incursions of wild beasts which in those Countries are not seldom or infrequent And Christ being the great Shepherd and possibly for the analogie's sake the sooner manifested to Shepherds hath made his Ministers overseers of their Flocks distinguished in their particular Folds and conveys the mysteriousness of his Kingdom first to the Pastors and by their ministery to the Flocks But although all of them be admitted to the ministery yet those only to the interiour recesses and nearer imitations of Jesus who are watchful over their Flocks assiduous in their labours painful in their sufferings present in the dangers of the Sheep ready to interpose their persons and sacrifice their lives these are Shepherds who first converse with Angels and finally shall enter into the presence of the Lord. But besides this symbol we are taught in the significations of the letter That he that is diligent in the business of an honest Calling is then doing service to God and a work so pleasing to him who hath appointed the sons of men to labour that to these Shepherds he made a return and recompence by the conversation of an Angel and hath advanced the reputation of an honest and a mean imployment to such a testimony of acceptance that no honest person though busied in meaner offices may ever hereafter in the estimation of Christ's disciples become contemptible 8. The signs which the Angel gave to discover the Babe were no marks of Lustre and Vanity but they should find 1. a Babe 2. swadled 3. lying in a Manger the first a testimony of his Humility the second of his Poverty the third of his Incommodity and uneasiness for Christ came to combate
destroys not the love of God for although it may lessen the habit yet it takes not away its natural being nor interrupts its acceptation lest all the world should in all instants of time be in a damnable condition yet when these smaller obliquities are repeated and no repentance intervenes this repetition combines and unites the lesser till they be concentred and by their accumulation make a crime and therefore a careless reiterating and an incurious walking in mis-becoming actions is deadly and damnable in the return though it was not so much at the setting forth Every idle word is to be accounted for but we hope in much mercy and yet he that gives himself over to immoderate talking will swell his account to a vast and mountainous proportion and call all the lesser escapes into a stricter judgment He that extends his Recreation an hour beyond the limits of Christian prudence and the analogie of its severity and imployment is accountable to God for that improvidence and waste of Time but he that shall mis-spend a day and because that sin is not scandalous like Adultery or clamorous like Oppression or unusual like Bestiality or crying for revenge like detaining the portion of Orphans shall therefore mis-spend another day without revocation of the first by an act of repentance and redemption of it and then shall throw away a week still adding to the former account upon the first stock will at last be answerable for a habit of Idleness and will have contracted a vain and impertinent spirit For since things which in their own kind are lawful become sinful by the degree if the degree be heightned by intention or become great like a heap of sand by a coacervation of the innumerable atoms of dust the actions are as damnable as any of the natural daughters and productions of Hell when they are entertained without scruple and renewed without repentance and continued without dereliction 14. Thirdly Although some inadvertencies of our life and lesser disobediences accidentally become less hurtful and because they are entailed upon the infirmities of a good man and the less wary customes and circumstances of society are also consistent with the state of Grace yet all affection to the smallest sins becomes deadly and damnable He that loves his danger shall perish in it saith the Wise man and every friendly entertainment of an undecency invites in a greater Crime for no man can love a small sin but there are in the greater crimes of its kind more desirable flatteries and more satisfactions of sensuality than in those suckers and sprigs of sin At first a little Disobedience is proportionable to a man's temper and his Conscience is not fitted to the bulk of a rude Crime but when a man hath accepted the first insinuation of delight and swallowed it that little sin is past and needs no more to dispute for entrance then the next design puts in and stands in the same probability to succeed the first and greater than the first had to make the entry However to love any thing that God hates is direct enmity with him and whatsoever the Instance be it is absolutely inconsistent with Charity and therefore incompetent with the state of Grace So that if the sin be small it is not a small thing that thou hast given thy love to it every such person perishes like a Fool cheaply and ingloriously 15. Fourthly But it also concerns the niceness and prudence of Obedience to God to stand at farther distance from a Vice than we usually attend to For many times Vertue and Vice differ but one degree and the neighbourhood is so dangerous that he who desires to secure his Obedience and Duty to God will remove farther from the danger For there is a rule of Justice to which if one degree more of severity be added it degenerates into Cruelty and a little more Mercy is Remissness and want of discipline introduces licentiousness and becomes unmercifulness as to the publick and unjust as to the particular Now this Consideration is heightned if we observe that Vertue and Vice consist not in an indivisible point but there is a latitude for either which is not to be judged by any certain rules drawn from the nature of the thing but to be estimated in proportion to the persons and other accidental Circumstances He that is burthened with a great charge for whom he is bound under a Curse and the crime of Infidelity to provide may go farther in the acquisition and be more provident in the use of his mony than those persons for whom God hath made more ample provisions and hath charged them with fewer burthens and engagements oeconomical And yet no man can say that just beyond such a degree of Care stands Covetousness and thus far on this side is Carelesness and a man may be in the confines of death before he be aware Now the only way to secure our Obedience and duty in such cases is to remove farther off and not to dwell upon the confines of the enemies Countrey My meaning is that it is not prudent nor safe for a man to do whatsoever he lawfully may do 16. For besides that we are often mistaken in our judgments concerning the lawfulness or unlawfulness of actions he that will do all that he thinks he may lawfully do if ever he does change his station and increase in giving himself liberty will quickly arrive at doing things unlawful It is good to keep a reserve of our liberty and to restrain our selves within bounds narrower than the largest sense of the Commandment that when our affections wander and enlarge themselves as sometime or other they will do then they may enlarge beyond the ordinary and yet be within the bounds of lawfulness That of which men make a scruple and a question at first after an habitual resolution of it stirs no more but then their question is of something beyond it When a man hath accustomed himself to pray seven times a day it will a little trouble his peace if he omits one or two of those times but if it be resolved then that he may please God with praying devoutly though but thrice every day after he hath digested the scruples of this first question possibly some accidents may happen that will put his Conscience and Reason to dispute whether three times be indispensably necessary and still if he be far within the bounds of lawfulness 't is well but if he be at the margent of it his next remove may be into dissolution and unlawfulness He that resolves to gain all that he may lawfully this year it is odds but next year he will be tempted to gain something unlawfully He that because a man may be innocently angry will never restrain his passion in a little time will be intemperate in his anger and mistake both his object and the degree Thus facetiousness and urbanity entertained with an open hand will turn into jestings
with a private meal as Habakkuk came to Daniel yet he fills their hearts when the year of Jubilee returns and the people sing In convertendo the Song of joy for their redemption For as of all sorrows the deprivations and eclipses of Religion are the saddest and of the worst and most inconvenient consequence so in proportion are the joys of spiritual plenty and religious returns the Communion of Saints being like the Primitive Corban a 〈◊〉 to feed all the needs of the Church or like a Taper joyned to a Torch it self is kindled and increases the other's flames 2. They failed not to go to Jerusalem for all those holy prayers and ravishments of love those excellent meditations and entercourses with God their private readings and discourses were but entertainments and satisfaction of their necessities they lived with them during their retirements but it was a Feast when they went to Jerusalem and the freer and more indulgent resection of the Spirit for in publick Solemnities God opens his treasures and pours out his grace more abundantly Private Devotions and secret Offices of Religion are like refreshing of a Garden with the distilling and petty drops of a Water-pot but addresses to the Temple and serving God in the publick communion of Saints is like rain from Heaven where the Offices are described by a publick spirit heightned by the greater portions of assistance and receive advantages by the adunations and symbols of Charity and increment by their distinct title to Promises appropriate even to their assembling and mutual support by the piety of Example by the communication of Counsels by the awfulness of publick Observation and the engagements of holy Customs For Religion is a publick vertue it is the ligature of Souls and the great instrument of the conservation of Bodies politick and is united in a common object the God of all the World and is managed by publick ministeries by Sacrifice Adoration and Prayer in which with variety of circumstances indeed but with infinite consent and union of design all the sons of Adam are taught to worship God and it is a publication of God's honour its very purpose being to declare to all the World how great things God hath done for us whether in publick Donatives or private Missives so that the very design temper and constitution of Religion is to be a publick address to God and although God is present in Closets and there also distills his blessings in small rain yet to the Societies of Religion and publication of Worship as we are invited by the great blessings and advantages of Communion so also we are in some proportions more straitly limited by the analogy and exigence of the Duty It is a Persecution when we are forced from publick Worshippings no man can hinder our private addresses to God every man can build a Chappel in his breast and himself be the Priest and his heart the Sacrifice and every foot of glebe he treads on be the Altar and this no Tyrant can prevent If then there can be Persecution in the offices of Religion it is the prohibition of publick profession and Communions and therefore he that denies to himself the opportunities of publick rites and conventions is his own Persecutor 3. But when Jesus was twelve years old and his Parents had finished their Offices and returned filled with the pleasures of Religion they missed the Child and sought him amongst their kindred but there they found him not for whoever seeks Jesus must seek him in the Offices of Religion in the Temple not amongst the engagements and pursuit of worldly interests I forgat also mine own Father's house said 〈◊〉 the Father of this Holy Child and so must we when we run in an enquiry after the Son of David But our relinquishing must not be a dereliction of duty but of engagement our affections toward kindred must always be with charity and according to the endearments of our relation but without immersion and such adherencies as either contradict or lessen our duty towards God 4. It was a sad effect of their pious journey to lose the joy of their Family and the hopes of all the World but it often happens that after spiritual imployments God seems to absent himself and withdraw the sensible effects of his presence that we may seek him with the same diligence and care and holy fears with which the Holy Virgin-Mother sought the Blessed Jesus And it is a design of great mercy in God to take off the light from the eyes of a holy person that he may not be abused with complacencies and too confident opinions and reflexions upon his fair performances For we usually judge of the well or ill of our Devotions and services by what we feel and we think God rewards every thing in the present and by proportion to our own expectations and if we feel a present rejoycing of Spirit all is well with us the smoak of the Sacrifice ascended right in a holy Cloud but if we feel nothing of comfort then we count it a prodigy and ominous and we suspect our selves and most commonly we have reason Such irradiations of chearfulness are always welcom but it is not always anger that takes them away the Cloud removed from before the camp of Israel and stood before the host of Pharaoh but this was a design of ruine to the Egyptians and of security to Israel and if those bright Angels that go with us to direct our journeys remove out of our sight and stand behind us it is not always an argument that the anger of the Lord is gone out against us but such decays of sense and clouds of spirit are excellent conservators of Humility and restrain those intemperances and vainer thoughts which we are prompted to in the gayety of our spirits 5. But we often give God cause to remove and for a while to absent himself and his doing of it sometimes upon the just provocations of our demerits makes us at other times with good reason to suspect our selves even in our best actions But sometimes we are vain or remiss or pride invades us in the darkness and incuriousness of our spirits and we have a secret sin which God would have us to enquire after and when we suspect every thing and condemn our selves with strictest and most angry sentence then it may be God will with a ray of light break through the cloud if not it is nothing the worse for us for although the visible remonstrance and face of things in all the absences and withdrawings of Jesus be the same yet if a sin be the cause of it the withdrawing is a taking away his Favour and his love but if God does it to secure thy Piety and to enflame thy desires or to prevent a crime then he withdraws a Gift only nothing of his Love and yet the darkness of the spirit and sadness seem equal It is hard in these cases to discover the cause as
crime and are every day made still more infrequent because Grace growing stronger the observation and advertency of the spirit and the attendance of the inner man grows more effectual and busie this is a state of the imperfection of Grace but a state of Grace it is And it is more commonly observed to be expressed in the imperfection of our good actions than in the irregularity of bad actions and in this sence are those words of our Blessed Saviour The Spirit 〈◊〉 is willing but the flesh is weak which in this instance was not expressed in sin but in a natural imperfection which then was a recession from a civility a not watching with the Lord. And this is the only Infirmity that can consist with the state of Grace 12. So that now we may lay what load we please upon our Nature and call our violent and unmortified desires by the name of an imperfect Grace but then we are dangerously mistaken and flatter our selves into an opinion of Piety when we are in the gall of bitterness so making our misery the more certain and irremediable because we think it needs nothing but a perpetuity and perseverance to bring us to Heaven The violence of Passion and Desires is a misery of Nature but a perfect principle of Sin multiplying and repeating the acts but not lessening the malignity But sins of Infirmity when we mean sins of a less and lower malice are sins of a less and imperfect choice because of the unavoidable imperfection of the Understanding Sins of Infirmity are always infirm sins that is weak and imperfect in their principle and in their nature and in their design that is they are actions incomplete in all their capacities but then Passions and periodical inclinations consisting with a regular and determined and actual understanding must never be their principle for whatsoever proceeds thence is destructive of spiritual life and inconsistent with the state of Grace But sins of infirmity when they pretend to a less degree of malignity and a greater degree of excuse are such as are little more than sins of pure and inculpable ignorance for in that degree in which any other principle is mixt with them in the same degree they are criminal and inexcusable For as a sin of infirmity is pretended to be little in its value and malignity so it is certain if it be great in the instance it is not a sin of infirmity that is it is a state or act of death and absolutely inconsistent with the state of Grace 13. Secondly Another Principle of Temptation pregnant with sin and fruitful of monsters is a weaker pretence which less wary and credulous persons abuse themselves withall pretending as a ground for their confidence and incorrigible pursuance of their courses that they have a Good meaning that they intend sometimes well and sometimes not ill and this shall be sufficient to sanctifie their actions and to hallow their sin And this is of worse malice when Religion is the colour for a War and the preservation of Faith made the warrant for destruction of Charity and a Zeal for God made the false light to lead us to Disobedience to Man and hatred of Idolatry is the usher of Sacriledge and the 〈◊〉 of Superstition the introducer of Profaneness and Reformation made the colour for a Schism and Liberty of conscience the way to a 〈◊〉 and saucy Heresie for the End may indeed hallow an indifferent action but can never make straight a crooked and irregular It was not enough for Saul to cry for God and the Sacrifice that he spared the fat flocks of Amalek and it would be a strange zeal and forwardness that rather than the Altar of incense should not smoak will burn Assa foetida or the marrow of a man's bones For as God will be honoured by us so also in ways of his own appointment for we are the makers of our Religion if we in our zeal for God do what he hath forbidden us And every sin committed for Religion is just such a violence done to it as it seeks to prevent or remedy 14. And so it is if it be committed for an end or pretence of Charity as well as of Religion We must be curious that no pretence engage us upon an action that is certainly criminal in its own nature Charity may sometimes require our Lives but no obligation can endear a Damnation to us we are not bound to the choice of an eternal ruine to save another Indeed so far as an Option will go it may concern the excrescences of Piety to chuse by a tacite or express act of volition to become Anathema for our brethren that is by putting a case and fiction of Law to suppose it better and wish it rather that I should perish than my Nation Thus far is charitable because it is innocent for as it is great love to our Countrey so it is no uncharitableness to our selves for such Options always are ineffective and produce nothing but rewards of Charity and a greater glory And the Holy Jesus himself who only could be and was effectively accursed to save us got by it an exceeding and mighty glorification and S. Paul did himself advantage by his charitable Devotion for his Countreymen But since God never puts the question to us so that either we or our Nation must be damned he having xt every man's final condition upon his own actions in the vertue and obedience of Christ if we mistake the expresses of Charity and suffer our selves to be damned indeed for God's glory or our Brethrens good we spoil the Duty and ruine our selves when our Option comes to act But it is observable that although Religion is often pretended to justifie a sin yet Charity is but seldom which makes it full of suspicion that Religion is but the cover to the Death's-head and at the best is but an accusing of God that he is not willing or not able to preserve Religion without our irregular and impious cooperations But however though it might concern us to wish our selves rather 〈◊〉 than Religion or our Prince or our Country should perish for I find no instances that it is lawful so much as to 〈◊〉 it for the preservation of a single friend yet it is against Charity to bring such a 〈◊〉 to 〈◊〉 and by sin to damn our selves really for a good end either 〈◊〉 Religion or Charity 15. Let us therefore serve God as he hath 〈◊〉 the way for all our accesses to him being acts of his free concession and grace must be by his 〈◊〉 designation and appointment We might as well have chosen what shape our 〈◊〉 should be of as of what instances the substance of our Religion should consist 16. Thirdly a third Principle of Temptation is an opinion of prosecuting actions of Civility Compliance and Society to the luxation of a point of Piety and 〈◊〉 Duty and good natures persons of humane and sweeter dispositions are
Duty tempts to the breaking of the Vow or at least makes the man impatient when he cannot persist with content nor retire with 〈◊〉 21. It therefore concerns all Spiritual Guides to manage their new Converts with sober counsels and moderate permissions knowing that sublime speculations in the Metaphysicks are not fit entertainment for an infant-understanding There is milk for babes and strong meat for men of riper Piety and it will imploy all the regular strength of young beginners to contest against the reliques of those mischiefs which remain since the expulsion of the Old man and to master those difficulties which by the nature of the state are certainly consequent to so late mutation And if we by the furies of Zeal and the impatience of mistaken Piety are violent and indiscreet in the destroying of our Enemies we probably may tread the thistle down and trample upon all its appearances and yet leave the root in the ground with haste and imprudent forwardness Gentle and soft counsels are the surest Enemies to your Vice and the best conservators and 〈◊〉 of a vertuous state but a hasty charge and the conduct of a young Leader may engage an early spirit in dangers and dishonours And this Temptation is of so much greater danger because it 〈◊〉 a face of Zeal and meets with all encouragements from without every man being apt to cherish a Convert and to enflame his new 〈◊〉 but few consider 〈◊〉 inconveniences that are consequent to indiscreet beginnings and the worse events usually appendent to 〈◊〉 inconveniences 22. Indeed it is not usual that Prudence and a new-kindled Zeal meet in the 〈◊〉 person but it will therefore concern the safety of new Converts who cannot guide themselves to give themselves up to the conduct of an experienced Spiritual person who being disinterest in those heats of the 〈◊〉 apprehensions and being long taught by the observation of the accidents of a spiritual life upon what rocks Rashness and Zeal usually do engage us can best tell what degrees and what instances of Religion they may with most safety undertake but for the general it is best in the addresses of Grace to follow the course of Nature let there be an Infancy and a Childhood and a vigorous Youth and by the divers and distant degrees of increment let the persons be established in Wisdom and Grace But above all things let them be careful that they do not lay upon themselves Necessities of any lasting course no Vows of perpetuity in any instance of uncommanded action or degree of Religion for he may alter in his capacity and exteriour condition he may see by experience that the particular engagement is imprudent he may by the virtue of Obedience be engaged on a duty inconsistent with the conveniences and advantages of the other and his very loss of liberty in an uncommanded instance may tempt him to inconvenience But then for the single and transient actions of Piety although in them the danger is less even though the imprudence be great yet it were well if new beginners in Religion would attempt a moderate and an even Piety rather than actions of eminency lest they retire with shame and be 〈◊〉 with scruple when their first heats are spent and expire in weariness and temptation It is good to keep within the circuits of a man's affections not stretching out all the degrees of fancy and desire but leaving the appetites of Religion rather unsatisfied and still desiring more than by stretching out the whole faculty leave no desires but what are fulfilled and wearied 23. Thirdly I shall not need here to observe such Temptations which are direct invitations to sin upon occasion of the Piety of holy persons such as are Security too much Confidence Pride and Vanity these are part of every man's danger and are to be considered upon their several arguments Here I was only to note the general instruments of mischief It remains now that I speak of such Remedies and general Antidotes not which are proportioned to Sins in special but such as are preventions or remedies and good advices in general 24. First Let every man abstain from all Occasions of sin as much as his condition will permit And it were better to do some violence to our secular affairs than to procure apparent or probable danger to our Souls For if we see not a way open and ready prepared to our iniquity our desires oftentimes are not willing to be troubled but Opportunity gives life and activeness to our appetites If David had not from his towers beheld the private beauties of Bathsheba Uriah had lived and his Wife been unattempted but sin was brought to him by that chance and entring at the casements of his eyes set his heart on fire and despoiled him of his robes of honour and innocence The riches of the wedge of gold and the beauty of the Babylonish garment made Achan sacrilegious upon the place who was innocent enough in his preceding purposes and therefore that Soul that makes it self an object to sin and invites an Enemy to view its possessions and live in the vicinage loves the sin it self and he that is pleased with the danger would willingly be betrayed into the necessity and the pleasure of the sin for he can have no other ends to entertain the hazards but that he hath a farther purpose to serve upon them he loves the pleasure of the sin and therefore he would make the condition of sinning certain and unavoidable And therefore Holy Scripture which is admirable and curious in the cautions and securities of Vertue does not determine its Precepts in the precise commands of vertuous actions but also binds up our senses obstructs the passage of Temptation blocks up all the ways and avenues of Vice commanding us to make a covenant with our eyes not to look upon a Maid not to sit with a woman that is a singer not to consider the wine when it sparkles and gives its colour rightly in the cup but to set a watch before our mouths to keep the door of our lips and many more instances to this purpose that sin may not come so near as to be repulsed as knowing sin hath then prevailed too far when we give the denial to its solicitations 25. We read a Story of a vertuous Lady that desired of S. Athanasius to procure for her out of the number of the Widows fed from the Ecclesiastical Corban an old woman morose peevish and impatient that she might by the society of so ungentle a person have often occasion to exercise her Patience her Forgiveness and Charity I know not how well the counsel succeeded with her I am sure it was not very safe and to invite the trouble to triumph over it is to wage a war of an uncertain issue for no end but to get the pleasures of the victory which oftentimes do not pay for the trouble never for the danger An Egyptian who acknowledged Fire for his God
one day doing his devotions kissed his God after the manner of Worshippers and burnt his lips It was not in the power of that false and imaginary Deity to cure the real hurt he had done to his devoutest worshipper Just such a fool is he that kisses a danger though with a design of vertue and hugs an opportunity of sin for an advantage of Piety he burns himself in the neighbourhood of the flame and twenty to one but he may perish in its embraces And he that looks out a danger that he may overcome it does as did the Persian who 〈◊〉 the Sun looked upon him when he prayed him to cure his sore eyes The Sun may as well cure a weak eye or a great burthen knit a broken arm as a danger can do him advantage that seeks such a combate which may ruine him and after which he rarely may have this reward that it may be said of him he had the good 〈◊〉 not to perish in his folly It is easier to prevent a mischief than to cure it and besides the pain of the wound it is infinitely more full of 〈◊〉 to cure a broken leg which a little care and observation would have preserved whole To recover from a sin is none of the 〈◊〉 labours that concern the sons of men and therefore it concerns them rather not to enter into such a narrow strait from which they can never draw back their head without leaving their hair and skin and their ears behind If God please to try us he means us no hurt and he does it with great reason and great mercy but if we go to try our selves we may mean well but not wisely For as it is simply unlawful for weak persons to seek a Temptation so for the more perfect it is dangerous We have enemies enough without and one of our own within but we become our own tempter when we run out to meet the World or invite the Devil home that we may throw holy water upon his flames and call the danger nearer that we may run from it And certainly men are more guilty of many of their temptations than the Devil through their incuriousness or 〈◊〉 doing as much mischief to themselves as he can For he can but offer and so much we do when we run into danger Such were those Stories of S. Antony provoking the Devil to battel If the Stories had been as true as the actions were rash ridiculous the Story had 〈◊〉 a note of indiscretion upon that good man though now I think there is nothing but a mark of 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 on the Writer 26. Secondly Possibly without 〈◊〉 we may be engaged in a 〈◊〉 but then we must be diligent to resist the first Beginnings For when our strength is yet intire and unabated if we suffer our selves to be overcome and consent to its 〈◊〉 and weakest attempts how shall we be able to resist when it hath tired our contestation and wearied our patience when we are weaker and prevailed upon and the Temptation is stronger and triumphant in many degrees of victory By how much a Hectick Feaver is harder to be cured than a Tertian or a Consumption of the Lungs than a little Distillation of Rheum upon the throat by so much is it harder to prevail upon a 〈◊〉 Lust than upon its first insinuations But the ways of resisting are of a different consideration proportionably to the nature of the crimes 27. First If the Temptation be to crimes of Pleasure and Sensuality let the resistance be by flight For in case of Lust even to consider the arguments against it is half as great Temptation as to press the arguments for it For all considerations of such allurements make the Soul perceive something of its relish and entertain the fancy Even the pulling pitch from our cloaths defiles the fingers and some adherences of pleasant and carnal sins will be remanent even from those considerations which stay within the circuit of the flames though but with purpose to quench the fire and preserve the house Chastity cannot suffer the least thought of the reproaches of the spirit of impurity and it is necessary to all that will keep their purity and innocence against sensual Temptations to avoid every thing that may prejudice decorum Libanius 〈◊〉 Sophister reports that a Painter being one day desirous to paint Apollo upon a Laurelboard the colours would not stick but were rejected out of which his fancy found out this extraction That the 〈◊〉 Daphne concerning whom the Poets feign that flying from Apollo who attempted to 〈◊〉 her she was turned into a Laurel-tree could not endure him even in painting and rejected him after the loss of her sensitive powers And indeed chaste Souls do even to death resent the least image and offer of impurity whatsoever is like a sin of uncleanness he that means to preserve himself chaste must avoid as he would avoid the sin in this case there being no difference but of degrees between the inward Temptation and the Crime 28. Secondly If the Temptation be to crimes of troublesome and preternatural desires or intellectual nature let the resistance be made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a perfect fight by the amassing of such arguments in general and remedies in particular which are apt to become deleteries to the Sin and to abate the Temptation But in both these instances the resistance must at 〈◊〉 be as soon as the attempt is lest the violence of the Temptation out-run our powers for if against our full strength it hath prevailed to the first degrees its progress to a complete victory is not so improbable as were its successes at the first beginnings But to serve this and all other ends in the resisting and subduing a Temptation these following Considerations have the best and most universal influence 29. First Consideration of the Presence of God who is witness of all our actions and a revenger of all Impiety This is so great an instrument of fear and Religion that whoever does actually consider God to be present and considers what the first consideration signifies either must be restrained from the present Temptation or must have thrown off all the possibilities and aptnesses for Vertue such as are Modesty and Reverence and holy Fear For if the face of a Man scatters all base machinations and we dare not act our crimes in the Theatre unless we be impudent as well as criminal much more does the sense of a present Deity fill the places of our heart with veneration and the awe of Religion when it is throughly apprehended and actually considered We see not God he is not in our thoughts when we run into darkness to act our impurities For we dare not commit Adultery if a Boy be present behold the Boy is sent off with an excuse and God abides there but yet we commit the crime it is because as Jacob said at Bethel God was in that place and we knew
It looked of a blew mould the bone of the nose laid bare the flesh of the neather lip quite fallen off his mouth full of worms and in his eye-pits two hungry Toads feasting upon the remanent portion of flesh and moisture and so he dwelt in his house of darkness And if every person tempted by an opportunity of Lust or intemperance would chuse such a room for his privacy that company for his witness that object to allay his appetite he would soon find his spirit more sober and his desires obedient I end this with the counsel of S. Bernard Let every man in the first address to his actions consider whether if he were now to die he might safely and prudently do such an act and whether he would not be infinitely troubled that death should surprise him in the present dispositions and then let him proceed accordingly For since our treasure is in earthen vessels which may be broken in pieces by the collision of ten thousand accidents it were not safe to treasure up wrath in them for if we do we shall certainly drink it in the day of recompence 37. Thirdly Before and in and 〈◊〉 all this the Blessed Jesus propounds Prayer as a remedy against Temptations Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation For besides that Prayer is the great instrument of obtaining victory by the grace of God as a fruit of our desires and of God's natural and essential goodness the very praying against a Temptation if it be hearty servent and devout is a denying of it and part of the victory for it is a 〈◊〉 the entertainment of it it is a positive rejection of the crime and every consent to it is a ceasing to pray and to desire remedy And we shall observe that whensoever we begin to listen to the whispers of a tempting spirit our Prayers against it lessen as the consent increases there being nothing a more direct enemy to the Temptation than Prayer which as it is of it self a professed hostility against the crime so it is a calling in auxiliaries from above to make the victory more certain If Temptation sets upon thee do thou set upon God for he is as soon overcome as thou art as soon moved to good as thou art to evil he is as quickly invited to pity thee as thou to ask him provided thou dost not finally rest in the petition but pass into action and endeavour by all means humane and moral to quench the 〈◊〉 newly kindled in thy bowels before it come to devour the marrow of the bones For a strong Prayer and a lazy incurious unobservant walking are contradictions in the discourses of Religion 〈◊〉 tells us a story of a young man solicited by the spirit of Uncleanness who came to an old Religious person and begged his prayers It was in that Age when God used to answer Prayers of very holy persons by more clear and familiar significations of his pleasure than he knows now to be necessary But after many earnest prayers sent up to the throne of Grace and the young man not at all bettered upon consideration and enquiry of particulars he found the cause to be because the young man relied so upon the Prayers of the old Eremite that he did nothing at all to discountenance his Lust or contradict the Temptation But then he took another course enjoyned him Austerities and exercises of Devotion gave him rules of prudence and caution tied him to work and to stand upon his guard and then the Prayers returned in triumph and the young man trampled upon his Lust. And so shall I and you by God's grace if we pray earnestly and frequently if we watch carefully that we be not surprised if we be not idle in secret nor talkative in publick if we read Scriptures and consult with a spiritual Guide and make Religion to be our work that serving of God be the business of our life and our designs be to purchase Eternity then we shall walk safely or recover speedily and by doing advantages to 〈◊〉 secure a greatness of Religion and spirituality to our spirits and understanding But remember that when Israel fought against Amalek Moses's prayer and Moses's hand secured the victory his Prayer grew ineffectual when his Hands were slack to remonstrate to us that we must cooperate with the grace of God praying devoutly and watching carefully and observing prudently and labouring with diligence and assiduity The PRAYER ETernal God and most merciful Father I adore thy Wisdom Providence and admirable Dispensation of affairs in the spiritual Kingdom of our Lord Jesus that thou who art infinitely good dost permit so many sadnesses and dangers to discompose that order of things and spirits which thou didst create innocent and harmless and dost design to great and spiritual perfections that the emanation of good from evil by thy over-ruling power and excellencies may force glory to thee from our shame and honour to thy Wisdom by these contradictory accidents and events Lord have pity upon me in these sad disorders and with mercy know my infirmities Let me by suffering what thou pleasest cooperate to the glorification of thy Grace and magnifying thy Mercy but never let me consent to sin but with the power of thy Majesty and mightiness of thy prevailing Mercy rescue me from those 〈◊〉 of dangers and enemies which daily seck to 〈◊〉 that Innocence with which thou didst cloath my Soul in the New birth Behold O God how all the Spirits of Darkness endeavour the extinction of our hopes and the dispersion of all those Graces and the prevention of all those 〈◊〉 which the Holy Jesus hath purchased for every loving and obedient Soul Our very 〈◊〉 and drink are full of poison our Senses are snares our 〈◊〉 is various Temptatio our sins are inlets to more and our good actions made occasions of sins Lord deliver me from the Malice of the Devil from the Fallacies of the World from my own Folly that I be not devoured by the first nor cheated by the second nor betrayed by my self but let thy Grace which is sufficient for me be always present with me let thy Spirit 〈◊〉 me in the spiritual 〈◊〉 arming my Understanding and securing my Will and 〈◊〉 my Spirit with resolutions of Piety and incentives of Religion and deleteries of Sin that the dangers I am encompassed withall may become unto me an occasion of victory and trimph through the aids of the Holy Ghost and by the Cross of the Lord Jesus who hath for himself and all his servants triumphed over Sin and Hell and the Grave even all the powers of Darkness from which by the mercies of Jesus and the merits of his Passion now and ever deliver me and all thy 〈◊〉 people Amen DISCOURSE VI. Of Baptism Part I. 1. WHen the Holy Jesus was to begin his Prophetical Office and to lay the foundation of his Church on the Corner-stone he first temper'd the Cement
pursuance of this the same Apostle declares that the several states of sin are so many recessions from the state of Baptismal grace and if we arrive to the direct Apostasie and renouncing of or a contradiction to the state of Baptism we are then unpardonable because we are fallen from our state of Pardon This S. Paul conditions most strictly in his Epistle to the Hebrews This is the Covenant I will make in those days I will put my Laws in their hearts And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more Now where remission of these is there is no more offering for sin that is our sins are so pardoned that we need no more oblation we are then made partakers of the death of Christ which we afterwards renew in memory and Eucharist and representment But the great work is done in Baptism for so it follows Having boldness to 〈◊〉 into the Holiest by the bloud of Jesus by a new and living way that is by the veil of his flesh his Incarnation But how do we enter into this Baptism is the door and the ground of this confidence for ever for so he adds Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water This is the consignation of this blessed state and the gate to all this mercy Let us hold fast the profession of our faith that is the Religion of a Christian the Faith into which we were baptized for that is the Faith that justifies and saves us Let us therefore hold fast this profession of this Faith and do all the intermedial works in order to the conservation of it such as are assembling in the Communion of Saints the use of the Word and Sacrament is included in the Precept mutual Exhortation good Example and the like For if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth that is if we sin against the profession of this Faith and hold it not fast but let the Faith and the profession go wilfully which afterwards he calls a treading under foot the Son of God accounting the bloud of the Covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing and a doing despite to the spirit of grace viz. which moved upon those waters and did illuminate him in Baptism if we do this there is no more sacrifice for sins no more deaths of Christ into which you may be baptized that is you are fallen from the state of Pardon and Repentance into which you were admitted in Baptism and in which you continue so long as you have not quitted your baptismal Rights and the whole Covenant Contrary to this is that which S. Peter calls making our Calling and Election sure that is a doing all that which may continue us in our state of Baptism and the grace of the Covenant And between these two states of absolute Apostasie from and intirely adhering to and securing this state of Calling and Election are all the intermedial sins and being overtaken in single faults or declining towards vicious habits which in their several proportions are degrees of danger and insecurity which S. Peter calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a forgetting our Baptism or purification from our sins And in this sence are those words The just shall live by Faith that is by that profession which they made in Baptism from which if they swerve not they shall be supported in their spiritual life It is a Grace which by virtue of the Covenant consigned in Baptism does like a centre 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to all the periods and portions of our life our whole life all the periods of our succeeding hopes are kept alive by this This consideration is of great use besides many other things to reprove the folly of those who in the Primitive Church deferred their Baptism till their death-bed because Baptism is a Laver of Sanctification and drowns all our sins and buries them in the grave of our Lord they thought they might sin securely upon the stock of an after-Baptism for unless they were strangely prevented by a sudden accident a death-bed Baptism they thought would secure their condition but early some of them durst not take it much less in the beginning of their years that they might at least gain impunity for their follies and heats of their youth Baptism hath influence into the pardon of all our sins committed in all the days of our folly and infirmity and so long as we have not been baptized so long we are out of the state of Pardon and therefore an early Baptism is not to be avoided upon this mistaken fancy and plot upon Heaven it is the greater security towards the pardon of our sins if we have taken it in the beginning of our days 20. Fifthly The next benefit of Baptism which is also a verification of this is a Sanctification of the baptized person by the Spirit of Grace Sanctus in hunc coelo descendit Spiritus amnem Coelestique sacras fonte maritat aquas Concipit unda Deum sanctámque liquoribus almis Edit ab aeterno semine progeniem The Holy Ghost descends upon the waters of Baptism and makes them prolifical apt to produce children unto God and therefore S. Leo compares the Font of Baptism to the Womb of the Blessed Virgin when it was replenished with the Holy Spirit And this is the Baptism of our dearest Lord his Ministers baptize with Water our Lord at the same time verifies their Ministery with giving the Holy Spirit They are joyned together by S. Paul We are by one Spirit baptized into one body that is admitted into the Church by baptism of Water and the Spirit This is that which our Blessed Lord calls a being born of Water and of the Spirit by Water we are sacramentally dead and buried by the Spirit we are made alive But because these are mysterious expressions and according to the style of Scripture high and secret in spiritual significations therefore that we may understand what these things signifie we must consider it by its real effects and what it produces upon the Soul of a man 21. First It is the suppletory of original Righteousness by which Adam was at first gracious with God and which he lost by his prevarication It was in him a principle of Wisdom and Obedience a relation between God and himself a title to the extraordinary mercies of God and a state of Friendship When he fell he was discomposed in all the links of the golden chain and blessed relation were broken and it so continued in the whole life of Man which was stained with the evils of this folly and the consequent mischiefs and therefore when we began the world again entring into the Articles of a new life God gave us his Spirit to be an instrument of our becoming gracious persons and of being in a condition of obtaining that supernatural End which
By which I also gather that it was so universal so primitive a practice to baptize Infants that it was greater than all pretences to the contrary for it would much have conduced to the introducing his opinion against Grace and Original Sin if he had destroyed that practice which seemed so very much to have its greatest necessity from the doctrine he denied But against Pelagins and against all that follow the parts of his opinion it is of good use which S. Austin Prosper and Fulgentius argue If Infants are punished for Adam's sin then they are also guilty of it in some sence Nimis enim impium est hoc de Dei sentire 〈◊〉 quòd à praevaricatione liberos cum reis 〈◊〉 esse 〈◊〉 So Prosper Dispendia quae slentes nascendo testantur dicito quo merito sub 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 judice 〈◊〉 sinullum peccatum 〈◊〉 arrogentur said S. Austin For the guilt of it signifies nothing but the obligation to the punishment and he that feels the evil consequent to him the sin is imputed not as to all the same dishonour or moral accounts but to the more material to the natural account and in Holy Scripture the taking off the punishment is the pardon of the sin and in the same degree the punishment is abolished in the same God is appeased and then the person stands upright being reconciled to God by his grace Since therefore Infants have the punishment of sin it is certain the sin is imputed to them and therefore they need being reconciled to God by Christ and if so then when they are baptized into Christ's Death and into his Resurrection their sins are pardoned because the punishment is taken off the sting of natural death is taken away because God's anger is removed and they shall partake of Christ's Resurrection which because Baptism does signifie and consign they also are to be baptized To which also add this appendent Consideration That whatsoever the Sacraments do consign that also they do convey and minister they do it that is God by them does it lest we should think the Sacraments to be mere illusions and abusing us by deceitful ineffective signs and therefore to Infants the grace of a title to a Resurrection and Reconciliation to God by the death of Christ is conveyed because it signifies and consigns this to them more to the life and analogy of resemblance than Circumcision to the Infant sons of Israel I end this Consideration with the words of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Our birth by Baptism does cut off every unclean appendage of our natural birth and leads us to a celestial life And this in Children is therefore more necessary because the evil came upon them without their own act of reason and choice and therefore the grace and remedy ought not to stay the leisure of dull Nature and the formalities of the Civil Law 18. Fifthly The Baptism of Insants does to them the greatest part of that benefit which belongs to the remission of sins For Baptism is a state of Repentance and Pardon for ever This I suppose to be already proved to which I only add this Caution That the Pelagians to undervalue the necessity of Supervening grace affirmed that Baptism did minister to us Grace sufficient to live perfectly and without sin for ever Against this S. Jerome sharply declaims and affirms Baptismum praeterita donare peccata non suturam servare justitiam that is non statim justum facit omni plenum justitiâ as he expounds his meaning in another place Vetera peccata conscindit novas virtutes non tribuit dimittit à carcere dimisso si laboraverit praemia pollicetur Baptism does not so forgive future sins that we may do what we please or so as we need not labour and watch and fear perpetually and make use of God's grace to actuate our endeavours but puts us into a state of Pardon that is in a Covenant of Grace in which so long as we labour and repent and strive to do our duty so long our infirmities are pitied and our sins certain to be pardoned upon their certain conditions that is by virtue of it we are capable of Pardon and must work for it and may hope it And therefore Infants have a most certain capacity and proper disposition to Baptism for sin creeps before it can go and little undecencies are soon learned and malice is before their years and they can do mischief and irregularities betimes and though we know not when nor how far they are imputed in every month of their lives yet it is an admirable art of the Spirit of grace to put them into a state of Pardon that their remedy may at least be as soon as their necessity And therefore Tertullian and Gregory Nazianzen advised the Baptism of Children to be at three or four years of age meaning that they then begin to have little inadvertencies and hasty follies and actions so evil as did need a Lavatory But if Baptism hath an influence upon sins in the succeeding portion of our life then it is certain that their being presently innocent does not hinder and ought not to retard the Sacrament and therefore Tertullian's Quid festinat innocens aetas ad remissionem peccatorum What need Innocents hasten to the remission of sin is soon answered It is true they need not in respect of any actual sins for so they are innocent but in respect of the evils of their nature derived from their original and in respect of future sins in the whole state of their life it is necessary they be put into a state of Pardon before they sin because some sin early some sin later and therefore unless they be baptized so early as to prevent the first sins they may chance die in a sin to the pardon of which they have â—â—t derived no title from Christ. 19. Sixthly The next great effect of Baptism which Children can have is the Spir it of Sanctification and it they can be baptized with Water and the Spirit it will be sacriledge to rob them of so holy treasures And concerning this although it be with them as S. Paul says of Heirs The Heir so long as he is a child differeth nothing from a Servant though he be Lord of all and Children although they receive the Spirit of Promise and the Spirit of Grace yet in respect of actual exercise they differ not from them that have them not at all yet this hinders not but they may have them For as the reasonable Soul and all its Faculties are in Children Will and Understanding Passions and Powers of Attraction and Propulsion yet these Faculties do not operate or come ahead till time and art observation and experience have drawn them forth into action so may the Spirit of Grace the principle of Christian life be infused and yet lie without action till in its own day it is drawn forth For in every Christian there are three
parts concurring to his integral constitution Body and Soul and Spirit and all these have their proper activities and times but every one in his own order first that which is natural then that which is spiritual And what Aristotle said A man first lives the life of a Plant then of a Beast and lastly of a Man is true in this sence and the more spiritual the principle is the longer it is before it operates because more things concur to spiritual actions than to natural and these are necessary and therefore first the other are perfect and therefore last And who is he that so well understands the Philosophy of this third principle of a Christian's life the Spirit as to know how or when it is infused and how it operates in all its periods and what it is in its being and proper nature and whether it be like the Soul or like the faculty or like a habit or how or to what purposes God in all varieties does dispence it These are secrets which none but bold people use to decree and build propositions upon their own dreams That which is certain is * That the Spirit is the principle of a new life or a new birth * That Baptism is the Laver of this new birth * That it is the seed of God and may lie long in the furrows before it springs up * That from the faculty to the act the passage is not always sudden and quick * That the Spirit is the earnest of our Inheritance that is of Resurrection to eternal life which inheritance because Children we hope shall have they cannot be denied to have its Seal and earnest that is if they shall have all they are not to be denied a part * That Children have some effects of the Spirit and therefore do receive it and are baptized with the Spirit and therefore may with Water which thing is therefore true and evident because some Children are sanctified as Jeremy and the Baptist and therefore all may And because all Sanctification of persons is an effect of the Holy Ghost there is no peradventure but they that can be 〈◊〉 by God can in that capacity receive the Holy Ghost and all the ground of dissenting here is only upon a mistake because Infants do no act of Holiness they suppose them incapable of the grace of 〈◊〉 Now 〈◊〉 of Children is their Adoption to the Inheritance of sons their Presentation to Christ their Consignation to Christ's service and to Resurrection their being put into a possibility of being saved their restitution to God's favour which naturally that is as our Nature is depraved and punished they could not have And in short the case is this * Original righteousness was in Adam 〈◊〉 the manner of Nature but it was an act or effect of Grace and by it men were not made but born Righteous the inferiour Faculties obeyed the superiour the Mind was whole and right and conformable to the Divine Image the Reason and the Will always concurring the Will followed Reason and Reason followed the Laws of God and so long as a man had not lost this he was pleasing to God and should have passed to a more perfect state Now because this if Adam had stood should have been born with every child there was in Infants a principle which was the seed of holy life here and a blessed hereafter and yet the children should have gone in the road of Nature then as well as now and the Spirit should have operated at Nature's leisure God being the giver of both would have made them instrumental to and perfective of each other but not destructive Now what was lost by Adam is restored by Christ the same Righteousness only it is not born but superinduced not integral but interrupted but such as it is there is no difference but that the same or the like principle may be derived to us from Christ as there should have been from Adam that is a principle of Obedience a regularity of 〈◊〉 a beauty in the Soul and a state of acceptation with God And we see also in men of understanding and reason the Spirit of God 〈◊〉 in them which Tatianus describing uses these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soul is possessed with sparks or materials of the power of the Spirit and yet it is sometimes ineffective and unactive sometimes more sometimes less and does no more do its work at all times than the Soul does at all times understand Add to this that if there be in 〈◊〉 naturally an evil principle a proclivity to sin an ignorance and pravity of mind a disorder of affections as experience teacheth us there is and the perpetual Doctrine of the Church and the universal mischiefs issuing from mankind and the sin of every man does witness too much why cannot Infants have a good principle in them though it works not till its own season as well as an evil principle If there were not by nature some evil principle it is not possible that all the world should chuse sin In free Agents it was never heard that all individuals loved and chose the same thing to which they were not naturally inclined Neither do all men chuse to marry neither do all chuse to abstain and in this instance there is a natural inclination to one part But of all the men and women in the world there is no one that hath never sinned If we say that we have no sin we deceive our selves and the truth is not in us said an Apostle If therefore Nature hath in Infants an evil principle which operates when the child can chuse but is all the while within the Soul either Infants have by Grace a principle put into them or else Sin abounds where Grace does not superabound expresly against the doctrine of the Apostle The event of this discourse is That if Infants be capable of the Spirit of Grace there is no reason but they may and ought to be baptized as well as men and women unless God had expresly forbidden them which cannot be pretended and that Infants are capable of the Spirit of Grace I think is made very credible Christus infantibus infans 〈◊〉 sanctificans 〈◊〉 said Irenaeus Christ became an Infant among the Infants and does sanctifie Infants and S. Cyprian affirms Esse apud omnes 〈◊〉 Infantes 〈◊〉 majores 〈◊〉 unam divini muneris aequitatem There is the same dispensation of the Divine grace to all alike to Infants as well as to men And in this Royal Priesthood as it is in the secular Kings may be anointed in their Cradles Dat Deus sui Spiritûs 〈◊〉 gratiam quam etiam latenter infundit in parvulis God gives the most secret Grace of his Spirit which he also secretly infuses into Infants And if a secret infusion be rejected because it cannot be proved at the place and at the instant many men that hope for Heaven will be very much to 〈◊〉 for a
its own fall and so perished God having fitted a Judgment to the Analogy and representment of her Sin Herodias her self with her adulterous Paramour Herod were banished to Lions in France by decree of the Roman Senate where they lived ingloriously and died miserably so paying dearly for her triumphal scorn superadded to her crime of murther for when she saw the Head of the Baptist which her Daughter Salome had presented to her in a charger she thrust the tongue through with a needle as Fulvia had formerly done to Cicero But her self paid the charges of her triumph Ad SECT XI Considerations upon the first Journey of the Holy Jesus to Jerusalem when he whipt the Merchants out of the Temple 1. WHen the Feast came and Jesus was ascended up to Jerusalem the first place we find him in is the Temple where not only was the Area and Court of Religion but by occasion of publick Conventions the most opportune scene for transaction of his Commission and his Father's business And those Christians who have been religious and affectionate even in the circumstances of Piety have taken this for precedent and accounted it a good express of the regularity of their Devotion and order of Piety at their first arrival to a City to pay their first visits to God the next to his servant the President of Religious Rites first they went into the Church and worshipp'd then to the Angel of the Church to the Bishop and begg'd his blessing and having thus commenced with the auspiciousness of Religion they had better hopes their just affairs would succeed prosperously which after the rites of Christian Countries had thus been begun with Devotion and religious order 2. When the Holy Jesus entred the Temple and espied a Mart kept in the Holy Sept a Fair upon Holy ground he who suffered no transportations of Anger in matters and accidents temporal was born high with an ecstasie of Zeal and according to the custom of the Zelots of the Nation took upon him the office of a private insliction of punishment in the cause of God which ought to be dearer to every single person than their own interest and reputation What the exterminating Angel did to 〈◊〉 who came into the Temple upon design of Sacriledge that the meekest Jesus did to them who came with acts of Profanation he whipt them forth and as usually good Laws spring from ill Manners and excellent Sermons are occasioned by mens 〈◊〉 now also our great Master upon this accident asserted the Sacredness of Holy places in the words of a Prophet which now he made a Lesson Evangelical My House shall be called a house of Prayer to all Nations 3. The Beasts and Birds there sold were brought for Sacrifice and the Banks of money were for the advantage of the people that came from far that their returns might be safe and easie when they came to Jerusalem upon the employments of Religion But they were not yet fit for the Temple they who brought them thither purposed their own gain and meant to pass them through an unholy usage before they could be made Anathemata Vows to God and when Religion is but the purpose at the second hand it cannot hallow a Lay-design and make it fit to become a Religious ministery much less sanctifie an unlawful action When Rachel stole her Father's gods though possibly she might do it in zeal against her Father's Superstition yet it was occasion of a sad accident to her self For the Jews say that Rachel died in Child-birth of her second Son because of that imprecation of Jacob With whomsoever thou findest thy gods let him not live Saul pretended Sacrifice when he spared the fat cattel of Amalek and Micah was zealous when he made him an Ephod and a Teraphim and meant to make himself an Image for Religion when he stole his mother's money but these are colours of Religion in which not only the world but our selves also are deceived by a latent purpose which we are willing to cover with a remote design of Religion lest it should appear unhandsome in its own dressing Thus some believe a Covetousness allowable it they greedily heap treasure with a purpose to build Hospitals or Colledges and sinister acts of acquiring Church-livings are not so soon condemned if the design be to prefer an able person and actions of Revenge come near to Piety if it be to the ruine of an 〈◊〉 man and indirect proceedings are made sacred if they be for the good of the Holy Cause This is profaning the Temple with Beasts brought for Sacrifices and dishonours God by making himself accessary to his own dishonour as far as lies in them for it disserves him with a pretence of Religion and but that our hearts are deceitful we should easily perceive that the greatest business of the Letter is written in Postscript the great pretence is the least purpose and the latent Covetousness or Revenge or the secular appendix is the main engine to which the end of Religion is made but instrumental and pretended But men when they sell a Mule use to speak of the Horse that begat him not of the Ass that bore him 4. The Holy Jesus made a whip of cords to represent and to chastise the implications and enfoldings of sin and the cords of vanity 1. There are some sins that of themselves are a whip of cords those are the crying sins that by their degree and malignity speak loud for vengeance or such as have great disreputation and are accounted the basest issues of a caitive disposition or such which are unnatural and unusual or which by publick observation are marked with the signature of Divine Judgments Such are Murther Oppression of widows and orphans detaining the Labourer's hire Lusts against nature Parricide Treason Betraying a just trust in great instances and base manners Lying to a King Perjury in a Priest these carry Cain's mark upon them or Judas's sting or Manasses's sorrow unless they be made impudent by the spirit of Obduration 2. But there are some sins that bear shame upon them and are used as correctives of pride and vanity and if they do their cure they are converted into instruments of good by the great power of the Divine grace but if the spirit of the man grows impudent and hardned against the shame that which commonly follows is the worst string of the whip a direct consignation to a reprobate spirit 3. Other sins there are for the chastising of which Christ takes the whip into his own hand and there is much need when sins are the Customs of a Nation and marked with no exteriour disadvantage or have such circumstances of encouragement that they are unapt to disquiet a Conscience or make our beds uneasie till the pillows be softned with penitential showers In both these cases the condition of a sinner is sad and miserable For it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God his
nature and manner of the present communication Only this last because it is more malicious and a declension from a greater grace is something like the fall of Angels And of this the Emperour Julian was a sad example 19. But as these are degrees immediately next and a little less so the hopes of pardon are the more visible Simon Magiss spake a word or at least thought against the Holy Ghost he thought he was to be bought with mony Concerning him S. Peter pronounced Thou art in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity Yet repent pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee Here the matter was of great difficulty but yet there was a possibility 〈◊〉 at least no impossibility of recovery declared And therefore S. Jude bids us of some to have compassion making a difference and others save with fear pulling them out of the fire meaning that their condition is only not desperate And still in descent retaining the same proportion every lesser sin is easier pardoned as better consisting with the state of Grace the whole Spirit is not destroyed and the body of sin is not introduced Christ is not quite ejected out of possession but like an oppressed Prince still continues his claim and such is his mercy that he will still do so till all be lost or that he is provoked by too much violence or that Antichrist is put in substitution and sin reigns in 〈◊〉 mortal body So that I may use the words of Saint John These things I write unto you that ' you sin not But if any man sin we have an Advocate with the 〈◊〉 Jesus Christ the Righteous And he is a propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world That is plainly Although the design of the Gospel be that we should erect a Throne for Christ to reign in our spirits and this doctrine of Innocence be therefore preached that ye sin not yet if one be overtaken in a fault despair not Christ is our Advocate and he is the Propitiation he did propitiate the Father by his death and the benefit of that we receive at our first access to him but then he is our Advocate too and prays perpetually for our perseverance or restitution respectively But his purpose is and he is able so to do to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his Glory 20. This consideration I intend should relate to all Christians of the world And although by the present custom of the Church we are baptized in our infancy and do not actually reap that fruit of present Pardon which persons of a mature age in the primitive Church did for we yet need it not as we shall when we have past the calentures of Youth which was the time in which the wisest of our Fathers in Christ chose for their Baptism as appears in the instance of S. Ambrose S. Austin and divers others yet we must remember that there is a Baptism of the Spirit as well as of water and when-ever this happens whether it be together with that Baptism of water as usually it was when only men and women of years of discretion were baptized or whether it be ministred in the rite of Confirmation which is an admirable suppletory of an early Baptism and intended by the Holy Ghost for a corroborative of Baptismal grace and a defensative against danger or that lastly it be performed by an internal and merely spiritual Ministery when we by acts of our own election verifie the promise made in Baptism and so bring back the Rite by receiving the effect of Baptism that is when-ever the filth of our flesh is washt away and that we have the answer of a pure conscience towards God which S. Peter affirms to be the true Baptism and which by the purpose and design of God it is expected we should not defer longer than a great reason or a great necessity enforces when our sins are first explated and the sacrifice and death of Christ is made ours and we made God's by a more immediate title which at some time or other happens to all Christians that pretend to any hopes of Heaven then let us look to our standing and take heed lest we fall When we once have tasted of the heavenly gift and are made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come that is when we are redeemed by an actual mercy and presential application which every Christian that belongs to God is at some time or other of his life then a fall into a deadly crime is highly dangerous but a relapse into a contrary estate is next to desperate 21. I represent this sad but most true Doctrine in the words of S. Peter If after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ they are again entangled therein and overcome the latter end is worse with them than the beginning For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after they have known it to turn from the holy Commandment delivered unto them So that a relapse after a state of Grace into a state of sin into confirmed habits is to us a great sign and possibly in it self it is more than a sign even a state of reprobation and final abscission 22. The summ of all is this There are two states of like opposite terms First Christ redeems us from our vain conversation and reconciles us to God putting us into an intire condition of Pardon Favour Innocence and Acceptance and becomes our Lord and King his Spirit dwelling and reigning in us The opposite state to this is that which in Scripture is called a crucifying the Lord of Life a doing despite to the Spirit of grace a being entangled in the pollutions of the world the Apostasie or falling away an impotency or disability to do good viz. of such who cannot cease from sin who are slaves of sin and in whom sin reigns in their bodies This condition is a full and integral deletery of the first it is such a condition which as it hath no Holiness or remanent affections to Vertue so it hath no hope or revelation of a mercy because all that benefit is lost which they received by the death of Christ and the first being lost there remains no more sacrifice for sins but a certain fearful expectation of Judgment But between these two states stand all those imperfections and single delinquencies those slips and falls those parts of recession and apostasie those grievings of the Spirit and so long as any thing of the first state is left so long we are within the Covenant of grace so long we are within the ordinary limits of mercy and the Divine compassion we are in possibilities of
For there is an unpardonable estate by reason of its malice and opposition to the Covenant of Grace and there is a state unpardonable because the time of Repentance is past There are days and periods of Grace If thou hadst known at least in this thy day said the weeping Saviour of the world to foreknown and determined Jerusalem When God's decrees are gone out they are not always revocable and therefore it was a great caution of the Apostle that we should follow peace and holiness and look diligently that we fall not from the grace of God lest any of us become like 〈◊〉 to whose Repentance there was no place left though he sought it carefully with tears meaning that we also may put our selves into a condition when it shall be impossible we should be renewed unto Repentance and those are they who sin a sin unto death for whom we have from the Apostle no encouragement to pray And these are in so general and conclusive terms described in Scripture that every persevering sinner hath great reason to suspect himself to be in the number If he endeavours as soon as he thinks of it to recover it is the best sign he was not arrived so far but he that liveth long in a violent and habitual course of sin is at the margin and brim of that state of final reprobation and some men are in it before they be aware and to some God reckons their days swifter and their periods shorter The use I make of this consideration is that if any man hath reason to suspect or to be certain that his time of Repentance is past it is most likely to be a death-bed Penitent after a vicious life a life contrary to the mercies and grace of the Evangelical Covenant for he hath provoked God as long as he could and rejected the offers of Grace as long as he lived and refused Vertue till he could not entertain her and hath done all those things which a person rejected from hopes of Repentance can easily be imagined to have done And if there be any time of rejection although it may be earlier yet it is also certainly the last 31. Concerning the second I shall add this to the former discourse of it that perfect Pardon of sins is not in this world at all after the first emission and great efflux of it in our first Regeneration During this life we are in imperfection minority and under conditions which we have prevaricated and our recovery is in perpetual flux in heightnings and declensions and we are highly uncertain of our acceptation because we are not certain of our restitution and innocence we know not whether we have done all that is sufficient to repair the breach made in the first state of favour and Baptismal grace But he that is dead saith S. Paul is justified from sin not till then And therefore in the doctrine of the most learned Jews it is affirmed He that is guilty of the profanation of the Name of God he shall not interrupt the apparent malignity of it by his present Repentance nor make attonement in the day of Expiation nor wath the stains away by chastising of himself but during his life it remains wholly in suspence and before death is not extinguished according to the saying of the Prophet Esay This iniquity shall not be blotted out till ye die saith the LORD of Hosts And some wise persons have affirmed that Jacob related to this in his expression and appellatives of God whom he called the God of Abraham and the fear of his father Isaac because as the Doctors of the Jews tell us Abraham being dead was ascribed into the final condition of God's family but Isaac being living had apprehensions of God not only of a pious but also of a tremulous fear he was not sure of his own condition much less of the degrees of his reconciliation how far God had forgiven his sins and how far he had retained them And it is certain that if every degree of the Divine favour be not assured by a holy life those sins of whose pardon we were most hopeful return in as full vigour and clamorous importunity as ever and are made more vocal by the appendent ingratitude and other accidental degrees And this Christ taught us by a Parable For as the lord made his uncharitable servant pay all that debt which he had formerly forgiven him even so will God do to us if we from our hearts forgive not one another their trespasses Behold the goodness and severity of God saith S. Paul on them which fell severity but on thee goodness if thou continue in that goodness otherwise thou shalt be cut off For this is my Covenant which I shall make with them when I shall take away their sins And if this be true in those sins which God certainly hath forgotten such as were all those which were committed before our illumination much rather is it true in those which we committed after concerning whose actual and full pardon we cannot be certain without a revelation So that our pardon of sins when it is granted after the breach of our Covenant is just so secure as our perseverance is concerning which because we must ascertain it as well as we can but ever with fear and trembling so also is the estate of our Pardon hazardous conditional revocable and uncertain and therefore the best of men do all their lives ask pardon even of those sins for which they have wept bitterly and done the sharpest and severest penance And if it be necessary we pray that we may not enter into temptation because temptation is full of danger and the danger may bring a sin and the sin may ruine us it is also necessary that we understand the condition of our pardon to be as is the condition of our person variable as will sudden as affections alterable as our purposes revocable as our own good intentions and then made as ineffective as our inclinations to good actions And there is no way to secure our confidence and our hope but by being perfect and holy and pure as our heavenly Father is that is in the sence of humane capacity free from the habits of all sin and active and industrious and continuing in the ways of godliness For upon this only the Promise is built and by our proportion to this state we must proportion our confidence we have no other revelation Christ reconciled us to his Father upon no other conditions and made the Covenant upon no other articles but of a holy life in obedience universal and perpetual and the abatements of the rigorous sence of the words as they are such as may infinitely testifie and prove his mercy so they are such as must secure our duty and habitual graces an industry manly constant and Christian and because these have so great latitude and to what degrees God will accept our returns he hath
no-where punctually described he that is most severe in his determination does best secure himself and by exacting the strictest account of himself shall obtain the easier scrutiny at the hands of God The use I make of this consideration is to the same purpose with the former For if every day of sin and every criminal act is a degree of recess from the possibilities of Heaven it would be considered at how great distance a death-bed Penitent after a vicious life may apprehend himself to stand for mercy and pardon and since the terms of restitution must in labour and in extension of time or intension of degrees be of value great enough to restore him to some proportion or equivalence with that state of Grace from whence he is fallen and upon which the Covenant was made with him how impossible or how near to impossible it will appear to him to go so far and do so much in that state and in those circumstances of disability 32. Concerning the third particular I consider that Repentance as it is described in Scripture is a system of holy Duties not of one kind not properly consisting of parts as if it were a single Grace but it is the reparation of that estate into which Christ first put us a renewing us in the spirit of our mind so the Apostle calls it and the Holy Ghost hath taught this truth to us by the implication of many appellatives and also by express discourses For there is in Scripture a Repentance to be repented of and a Repentance never to be repented of The first is mere Sorrow for what is past an ineffective trouble producing nothing good such as was the Repentance of Judas he repented and hanged himself and such was that of Esau when it was too late and so was the Repentance of the five foolish Virgins which examples tell us also when ours is an impertinent and ineffectual Repentance To this Repentance Pardon is nowhere promised in Scripture But there is a Repentance which is called Conversion or Amendment of life a Repentance productive of holy fruits such as the Baptist and our Blessed Saviour preached such as himself also propounded in the example of the Ninivites they repented at the preaching of Jonah that is they fasted they covered them in sackcloth they cried mightily unto God yea they turned every one from his evil way and from the violence that was in their hands And this was it that appeased God in that instance God saw their works that they turned from their evil way and God repented of the evil and did it not 33. The same Character of Repentance we find in the Prophet Ezekiel When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed and doth that which is lawful and right If the wicked restore the pledge give again that he had robbed walk in the statutes of life without committing iniquity he hath done that which is lawful and right he shall surely live he shall not die And in the Gospel Repentance is described with as full and intire comprehensions as in the old Prophets For Faith and Repentance are the whole duty of the Gospel Faith when it is in conjunction with a practical grace signifies an intellectual Faith signifies the submission of the understanding to the Institution and Repentance includes all that whole practice which is the intire duty of a Christian after he hath been overtaken in a fault And therefore Repentance first includes a renunciation and abolition of all evil and then also enjoyns a pursuit of every vertue and that till they arrive at an habitual confirmation 34. Of the first sence are all those expressions of Scripture which imply Repentance to be the deletery of sins Repentance from dead works S. Paul affirms to be the prime Fundamental of the Religion that is conversion or returning from dead works for unless Repentance be so construed it is not good sence And this is therefore highly verified because Repentance is intended to set us into the condition of our first undertaking and articles covenanted with God And therefore it is a redemption of the time that is a recovering what we lost and making it up by our doubled industry Remember whence thou art fallen repent that is return and do thy first works said the Spirit to the Angel of the Church of Ephesus or else I will remove the Candlestick except thou repent It is a restitution If a man be overtaken in a fault restore such a one that is put him where he was And then that Repentance also implies a doing all good is certain by the Sermon of the Baptist Bring forth fruits meet for Repentance Do thy first works was the Sermon of the Spirit Laying aside every weight and the sin that easily encircles us let us run with patience the race that is set before us So S. Paul taught And S. Peter gives charge that when we have escaped the corruptions of the world and of lusts besides this we give all diligence to acquire the rosary and conjugation of Christian vertues And they are proper effects or rather constituent parts of a holy Repentance For godly sorrow worketh Repentance saith S. Paul not to be repented of and that ye may know what is signified by Repentance behold the product was carefulness clearing of themselves indignation fear vehement desires zeal and revenge to which if we add the Epithet of holy for these were the results of a godly sorrow and the members of a Repentance not to be repented of we are taught that Repentance besides the purging out the malice of iniquity is also a sanctification of the whole man a turning Nature into Grace Passions into Reason and the flesh into spirit 35. To this purpose I reckon those Phrases of Scripture calling it a renewing of our minds a renewing of the Holy Ghost a cleansing of our hands and purifying our hearts that is a becoming holy in our affections and righteous in our actions a a transformation or utter change a crucifying the flesh with the affections and lusts a mortified state a purging out the old leven and becoming a new conspersion a waking out of sleep and walking honestly as in the day a being born again and being born from above a new life And I consider that these preparative actions of Repentance such as are Sorrow and Confession of sins and Fasting and exteriour Mortifications and severities are but fore-runners of Repentance some of the retinue and they are of the family but they no more complete the duty of Repentance than the harbingers are the whole Court or than the Fingers are all the body There is more joy in Heaven said our Blessed Saviour over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety nine just persons who need no repentance There is no man but needs a tear and a sorrow even for
the same Saint When we are judged we are chastened of the Lord but if we would judge our selves we should not be judged where he expounds judged by chastened if we were severer to our selves God would be gentle and 〈◊〉 And there are only these two cautions to be annexed and then the direction is sufficient 1. That when promise of Pardon is annexed to any of these or another Grace or any good action it is not to be understood as if alone it were effectual either to the abolition or pardon of sins but the promise is made to it as to a member of the whole body of Piety In the coadunation and conjunction of parts the title is firm but not at all in distinction and separation For it is certain if we fail in one we are guilty of all and therefore cannot be repaired by any one Grace or one action or one habit And therefore Charity hides a multitude of sins with men and God too Alms deliver from death 〈◊〉 pierceth the clouds and will not depart before its answer be gracious and Hope purifieth and makes not ashamed and Patience and Faith and Piety to parents and Prayer and the eight Beatitudes have promises of this life and of that which is to come respectively and yet nothing will obtain these promises but the harmony and uniting of these Graces in a holy and habitual confederation And when we consider the Promise as singularly relating to that one Grace it is to be understood comparatively that is such persons are happy if compared with those who have contrary dispositions For such a capacity does its portion of the work towards complete Felicity from which the contrary quality does estrange and disintitle us 2. The special and minute actions and instances of these three preparatives of Repentance are not under any command in the particulars but are to be disposed of by Christian prudence in order to those ends to which they are most aptly instrumental and designed such as are Fasting and corporal severities in Satisfaction or the punitive parts of Repentance they are either vindictive of what is past and so are proper acts or effects of Contrition and godly sorrow or else they relate to the present and future estate and are intended for correction or emendation and so are of good use as they are medicinal and in that proportion not to be omitted And so is Confession to a Spiritual person an excellent instrument of Discipline a bridle of intemperate Passions an opportunity of Restitution Ye which are spiritual 〈◊〉 such a person overtaken in a fault saith the Apostle it is the application of a remedy the consulting with a guide and the best security to a weak or lapsed or an ignorant person in all which cases he is 〈◊〉 to judge his own questions and in these he is also committed to the care and conduct of another But these special instances of Repentance are capable of suppletories and are like the corporal works of Mercy necessary only in time and place and in accidental obligations He that relieves the poor or visits the sick chusing it for the instance of his Charity though he do not redeem captives is charitable and hath done his Alms. And he that cures his sin by any instruments by external or interiour and spiritual remedies is penitent though his diet be not 〈◊〉 and afflictive or his lodging hard or his sorrow bursting out into tears or his expressions passionate and dolorous I only add this that acts of publick Repentance must be by using the instruments of the Church such as she hath appointed of private such as by experience or by reason or by the counsel we can get we shall learn to be most effective of our penitential purposes And yet it is a great argument that the exteriour expressions of corporal severities are of good benefit because in all Ages wise men and severe Penitents have chosen them for their instruments The PRAYER O Eternal God who wert pleased in mercy to look upon us when we were in our 〈◊〉 to reconcile us when we were enemies to forgive us in the midst of our provocations of thy infinite and eternal Majesty finding out a remedy for us which man-kind could never ask even making an atonement for us by the death of thy Son sanctifying us by the bloud of the everlasting Covenant and thy all-hallowing and Divinest Spirit let thy 〈◊〉 so perpetually assist and encourage my endeavours conduct my will and fortifie my intentions that 〈◊〉 may persevere in that holy condition which thou hast put me in by the grace of the Covenant and the mercies of the Holy Jesus O let me never fall into those sins and retire to that vain conversation from which the eternal and merciful Saviour of the World hath redeemed me but let me grow in Grace adding Vertue to vertue reducing my purposes to act and increasing my acts till they grow into habits and my habits till they be confirmed and still confirming them till they be consummate in a blessed and holy perseverance Let thy Preventing grace dash all Temptations in their approach let thy Concomitant grace enable me to resist them in the assault and overcome them in the fight that my hopes be never discomposed nor my Faith weakned nor my confidence made remiss or my title and portion in the Covenant be lessened Or if thou permittest me at any time to 〈◊〉 which Holy Jesu avert for thy mercy and compession sake yet let me not sleep in sin but recall me instantly by the clamours of a nice and tender Conscience and the quickning Sermons of the Spirit that I may never pass from sin to sin from one degree to another lest sin should get the dominion over me lest thou be angry with me and reject me from the Covenant and I perish Purifie me from all 〈◊〉 sanctifie my spirit that I may be holy as thou art and let me never provoke thy jealousie nor presume upon thy goodness nor distrust thy mercies nor 〈◊〉 my Repentance nor rely upon vain confidences but that I may by a constant sedulous and timely endeavour make my calling and election sure living to thee and dying to thee that having sowed to the Spirit I may from thy mercies reap in the Spirit bliss and eternal sanctity and everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Saviour our hope and our mighty and ever-glorious Redeemer Amen Vpon Christ ' s Sermon on the Mount and of the Eight Beatitudes Moses delivers the Law Joh. 1. 17. The Law was given by Moses but Grace and Truth came by Iesus Christ. These words the Lord spake unto all the Assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire with a great voice he wrote them in two Tables of stone delivered them unto me Deut. 5. 22. Christ preaches in the Mount He went up into a mountain opened his mouth taught them saying Blessed are the poor in
eternal Other acts of Religion such as are uncovering the head 〈◊〉 the knee falling upon our face stooping to the ground reciting praises are by the consent of Nations used as testimonies of civil or religious veneration and do not always pass for confessions of a Divinity and therefore may be without sin used to Angels or Kings or Governours or to persons in any sence more excellent than our selves provided they be intended to express an excellency no greater than is proper to their dignities and persons not in any sence given to an Idol or false Gods But the first sort are such which all the world hath consented to be actions of Divine and incommunicable Adoration and such which God also in several Religions hath reserved as his own appropriate regalities and are Idolatry if given to any Angel or man 9. The next Duties are 2. Love 3. and Obedience but they are united in the Gospel This is Love that we keep his Commandments and since we are for God's sake bound also to love others this Love is appropriate to God by the extension of parts and the intension of degrees The Extension signifies that we must serve God with all our Faculties for all division of parts is hypocrisie and a direct prevarication our Heart must think what our Tongue speaks our Hands act what we promise or purpose and God's enemies must have no share so much as in appearance or dissimulation Now no Creature can challenge this and if we do Justice to our neighbours though unwillingly we have done him no injury for in that case he only who sees the irregularity of our thoughts is the person injured And when we swear to him our heart must swear as well as our tongue and our hands must pay what our lips have promised or else we provoke him with an imperfect sacrifice we love him not with all our mind with all our strength and all our faculties 10. But the difficulty and question of this Commandment lies in the Intension For it is not enough to serve God with every Capacity Passion and Faculty but it must be every degree of every Faculty all the latitude of our Will all the whole intension of our Passions all the possibility and energy of our Senses and our Understanding which because it is to be understood according to that moderate sentence and account which God requires of us set in the midst of such a condition so attended and depressed and prejudiced the full sence of it I shall express in several Propositions 11. First The Intension of the Love to which we are obliged requires not the Degree which is absolutely the greatest and simply the most perfect For there are degrees of Grace every one of which is pleasing to God and is a state of Reconciliation and atonement and he that breaks not the bruised reed nor quenches the smoaking slax loves to cherish those endeavours which beginning from small principles pass through the variety of degrees and give demonstration that though it be our duty to contend for the best yet this contention is with an enemy and that enemy makes an abatement and that abatement being an imperfection rather than a sin is actually consistent with the state of Grace the endeavour being in our power and not the success the perfection is that which shall be our reward and therefore is not our present duty And indeed if to do the best action and to love God as we shall do in Heaven were a present obligation it would have been clearly taught us what is simply the best action whereas now that which is of it self better in certain circumstances is less perfect and sometimes not lawful and concerning those circumstances we have no rules nor any guide but prudence and probable inducements so that it is certain in our best endeavours we should only increase our scruples in stead of doing actions of the highest perfections we should crect a tyranny over our Consciences and no augmentation of any thing but the trouble And therefore in the Law of Moses when this Commandment was given in the same words yet that the sence of it might be clear the analogy of the Law declared that their duty had a latitude and that God was not so strict a task-master but that he left many instances of Piety to the voluntary Devotion of his servants that they might receive the reward of Free-will-offerings But if these words had obliged them to the greatest degree that is to all the degrees of our capacities in every instance every act of Religion had been duty and necessity 12. And thus also it was in the Gospel Ananias and Sapphira were killed by sentence from Heaven for not performing what was in their power at first not to have promised but because they brought an obligation upon themselves which God brought not and then prevaricated they paid the forfeiture of their lives S. Paul took no wages of the Corinthian Churches but wrought night and day with his own hand but himself says he had power to do otherwise There was laid upon him a necessity to preach but no necessity to preach without wages and support There is a good and a better in Virginity and Marriage and yet there is no command in either but that we abstain from sin we are left to our own election for the particular having no necessity but power in our will David prayed seven times a day and Daniel prayed three times and both were beloved of God The Christian masters were not bound to manumit their slaves and yet were commended if they did so Sometimes the Christians fled in Persecution S. Paul did so and S. Peter did so and S. Cyprian did so and S. Athanasius and many more But time was when some of these also chose to suffer death rather than to fly And if to fly be a permission and no duty there is certainly a difference of degrees in the choice to fly is not so great a suffering as to die and yet a man may innocently chuse the easier And our Blessed Lord himself who never failed of any degree of his obligations yet at some time prayed with more zeal and servour than at other times as a little before his Passion Since then at all times he did not do actions of that degree which is absolutely the greatest it is evident that God's goodness is so great as to be content with such a Love which parts no share between him and sin and leaves all the rest under such a liberty as is only encouraged by those extraordinary rewards and crowns proportioned to heroical endeavours It was a pretty Question which was moved in the Solitudes of Nitria concerning two Religious Brothers the one gave all his goods to the poor at once the other kept the inheritance and gave all the revenue None of all the Fathers knew which was absolutely the better at once to renounce all or by repetition of charitable acts
freely and delight himself and to the banquets of a full table serve up the chalice of tears and sorrow and no bread of affliction Certainly he that makes much of himself hath no great indignation against the sinner when himself is the man And it is but a gentle revenge and an easie judgment when the sad sinner shall do penance in good meals and expiate his sin with sensual satisfaction So that Fasting relates to Religion in all variety and difference of time it is an antidote against the poison of sensual temptations an advantage to Prayer and an instrument of extinguishing the guilt and the affections of sin by judging our selves and representing in a Judicatory of our own even our selves being Judges that sin deserves condemnation and the sinner merits a high calamity Which excellencies I repeat in the words of Baruch the Scribe he that was Amanuensis to the Prophet Jeremy The soul that is greatly vexed which goeth stooping and feeble and the eyes that fail and the hungry soul will give thee praise and righteousness O Lord. 5. But now as Fasting hath divers ends so also it hath divers Laws If Fasting be intended as an instrument of Prayer it is sufficient that it be of that quality and degree that the spirit be clear and the head undisturbed an ordinary act of Fast an abstinence from a meal or a deferring it or a lessening it when it comes and the same abstinence repeated according to the solemnity and intendment of the offices And this is evident in reason and the former instances and the practice of the Church dissolving some of her Fasts which were in order only to Prayer by noon and as soon as the great and first solemnity of the day is over But if Fasting be intended as a punitive act and an instrument of Repentance it must be greater S. Paul at his Conversion continued three days without eating or drinking It must have in it so much affliction as to express the indignation and to condemn the sin and to judge the person And although the measure of this cannot be exactly determined yet the general proportion is certain for a greater sin there must be a greater sorrow and a greater sorrow must be attested with a greater penalty And Ezra declares his purpose thus I proclaimed a Fast that we might afflict our selves besore God Now this is no farther required nor is it in this sense 〈◊〉 useful but that it be a trouble to the body an act of judging and severity and this is to be judged by proportion to the sorrow and indignation as the sorrow is to the crime But this affliction needs not to leave any remanent effect upon the body but such transient sorrow which is consequent to the abstinence of certain times designed for the solemnity is sufficient as to this purpose Only it is to be renewed often as our Repentance must be habitual and lasting but it may be commuted with other actions of severity and discipline according to the Customs of a Church or the capacity of the persons or the opportunity of circumstances But if the Fasting be intended for Mortification then it is fit to be more severe and medicinal by continuance and quantity and quality To Repentance total abstinences without interruption that is during the solemnity short and sharp are most apt but towards the mortifying a Lust those sharp and short Fasts are not reasonable but a diet of Fasting an habitual subtraction of nutriment from the body a long and lasting austerity increasing in degrees but not violent in any And in this sort of Fasting we must be highly careful we do not violate a duty by sondness of an instrument and because we intend Fasting as a help to mortifie the Lust let it not destroy the body or retard the spirit or violate our health or impede us in any part of our necessary duty As we must be careful that our Fast be reasonable serious and apt to the end of our designs so we must be curious that by helping one duty uncertainly it do not certainly destroy another Let us do it like honest persons and just without artifices and hypocrisie but let us also do it like wise persons that it be neither in it self unreasonable nor by accident become criminal 6. In the pursuance of this Discipline of Fasting the Doctors of the Church and Guides of Souls have not unusefully prescribed other annexes and circumstances as that all the other acts of deportment be symbolical to our Fasting If we fast for Mortification let us entertain nothing of temptation or semblance to invite a Lust no sensual delight no freer entertainments of our body to countenance or corroborate a passion If we fast that we may pray the better let us remove all secular thoughts for that time for it is vain to alleviate our spirits of the burthen of meat and drink and to depress them with the loads of care If for Repentance we fast let us be most curious that we do nothing contrary to the design of Repentance knowing that a sin is more contrary to Repentance than Fasting is to sin and it is the greatest stupidity in the world to do that thing which I am now mourning for and for which I do judgment upon my self And let all our actions also pursue the same design helping one instrument with another and being so zealous for the Grace that we take in all the aids we can to secure the Duty For to fast from flesh and to eat delicate fish not to eat meat but to drink rich wines freely to be sensual in the objects of our other appetites and restrained only in one to have no dinner and that day to run on hunting or to play at cards are not handsome instances of sorrow or devotion or self-denial It is best to accompany our Fasting with the retirements of Religion and the enlargements of Charity giving to others what we deny to our selves These are proper actions and although not in every instance necessary to be done at the same time for a man may give his Alms in other circumstances and not amiss yet as they are very convenient and proper to be joyned in that society so to do any thing contrary to Religion or to Charity to Justice or to Piety to the design of the person or the design of the solemnity is to make that become a sin which of it self was no vertue but was capable of being hallowed by the end and the manner of its execution 7. This Discourse hath hitherto related to private Fasts or else to Fasts indefinitely For what rules soever every man is bound to observe in private for Fasting piously the same rules the Governours of a Church are to intend in their publick prescription And when once Authority hath intervened and proclaimed a Fast there is no new duty incumbent upon the private but that we obey the circumstances letting them
Master gave the same reward though the times of their working were different as their calling and employment had determined the opportunity of their labours DISCOURSE XVII Of Scandal or Giving and taking Offence 1. A Sad curse being threatned in the Gospel to them who offend any of Christ's little ones that is such as are novices and babes in Christianity it concerns us to learn our duty and perform it that we may avoid the curse for Woe to all them by whom offences come And although the duty is so plainly explicated and represented in gloss and case by the several Commentaries of S. Paul upon this menace of our Blessed Saviour yet because our English word Offence which is commonly used in this Question of Scandal is so large and equivocal that it hath made many pretences and intricated this article to some inconvenience it is not without good purpose to draw into one body those Propositions which the Masters of Spiritual life have described in the managing of this Question 2. First By whatsoever we do our duty to God we cannot directly do offence or give scandal to our Brother because in such cases where God hath obliged us he hath also obliged himself to reconcile our duty to the designs of God to the utility of Souls and the ends of Charity And this Proposition is to be extended to our Obedience to the lawful Constitutions of our competent Superiours in which cases we are to look upon the Commandment and leave the accidental events to the disposition of that Providence who reconciles dissonancies in nature and concentres all the variety of accidents into his own glory And whosoever is offended at me for obeying God or God's Vicegerent is offended at me for doing my duty and in this there is no more dispute but whether I shall displease God or my peevish neighbour These are such whom the Spirit of God complains of under other representments They think it strange we run not into the same excess of riot Their eye is evil because their Master's eye is good and the abounding of God's grace also may become to them an occasion of falling and the long-suffering of God the encouragement to sin In this there is no difficulty for in what case soever we are bound to obey God or Man in that case and in that conjunction of circumstances we have nothing permitted to our choice and have no authority to remit of the right of God or our Superiour And to comply with our neighbour in such Questions besides that it cannot serve any purposes of Piety if it declines from Duty in any instance it is like giving Alms out of the portion of Orphans or building Hospitals with the money and spoils of Sacriledge It is pusillanimity or hypocrisie or a denying to confess Christ before men to comply with any man and to offend God or omit a Duty Whatsoever is necessary to be done and is made so by God no weakness or peevishness of man can make necessary not to be done For the matter of Scandal is a duty beneath the prime obligations of Religion 3. Secondly But every thing which is used in Religion is not matter of precise Duty but there are some things which indeed are pious and religious but dispensable voluntary and commutable such as are voluntary Fasts exteriour acts of Discipline and Mortification not enjoyned great degrees of exteriour Worship Prostration long Prayers Vigils and in these things although there is not directly a matter of Scandal yet there may be some prudential considerations in order to Charity and Edification By pious actions I mean either particular pursuances of a general Duty which are uncommanded in the instance such as are the minutes and expresses of Alms or else they are commended but in the whole kind of them unenjoyned such as Divines call the Counsels of perfection In both these cases a man cannot be scandalous For the man doing in charity and the love of God such actions which are aptly expressive of love the man I say is not uncharitable in his purposes and the actions themselves being either attempts or proceedings toward Perfection or else actions of direct Duty are as innocent in their productions as in themselves and therefore without the malice of the recipient cannot induce him into sin and nothing else is Scandal To do any pious act proceeds from the Spirit of God and to give Scandal from the Spirit of Malice or Indiscretion and therefore a pious action whose fountain is love and 〈◊〉 cannot end in Uncharitableness or Imprudence But because when any man is offended at what I esteem Piety there is a question whether the action be pious or no therefore it concerns him that works to take care that his action be either an act of Duty though not determined to a certain particular or else be something 〈◊〉 in Scripture or practised by a holy person there recorded and no-where reproved or a practice warranted by such precedents which modest prudent and religious persons account a sufficient inducement of such particulars for he that proceeds upon such principles derives the warrant of his actions from beginnings which secure the particular and quits the Scandal 4. This I say is a security against the Uncharitableness and the Sin of Scandal because a zeal of doing pious actions is a zeal according to God but it is not always a security against the Indiscretion of the Scandal He that reproves a foolish person in such circumstances that provoke him or make him impudent or blasphemous does not give Scandal and brings no sin upon himself though he occasioned it in the other But if it was probable such effects would be consequent to the reprehension his zeal was imprudent and rash but so long as it was zeal for God and in its own matter lawful it could not be an active or guilty Scandal but if it be no zeal and be a design to entrap a man's unwariness or passion or shame and to disgrace the man by that means or any other to make him sin then it is directly the offending of our Brother They that preach'd Christ out of envy intended to do offence to the Apostles but because they were impregnable the sin rested in their own bosom and God wrought his own ends by it And in this sence they are Scandalous persons who fast for Strife who pray for Rebellion who intice simple persons into the snare by colours of Religion Those very exteriour acts of Piety become an Offence because they are done to evil purposes to abuse Proselytes and to draw away Disciples after them and make them love the sin and march under so splendid and fair colours They who out of strictness and severity of perswasion represent the conditions of the Gospel alike to every person that is nicer than Christ described them in all circumstances and deny such liberties of exteriour desires and complacency which may be reasonably permitted to some
or dearest invitations to Vice and deny our selves lawful things than that lawful things should betray us to unlawful actions And this rule is the measure of Charity our neighbour's Soul ought to be dearer unto us than any temporal priviledge It is lawful for me to eat herbs or fish and to observe an ascetick diet But if by such austerities I lead others to a good opinion of Montanism or the practices of Pythagoras or to believe flesh to be impure I must rather alter my diet than teach him to sin by mistaking me S. Paul gave an instance of eating flesh sold in the shambles from the Idol Temples to eat it in the relation of an Idol-sacrifice is a great sin but when it is sold in the shambles the property is altered to them that understand it so But yet even this Paul would not do if by so doing he should encourage undiscerning people to eat all meat conveyed from the Temple and offered to Devils It is not in every man's head to distinguish formalities and to make abstractions of purpose from exteriour acts and to alter their devotions by new relations and respects depending upon intellectual and Metaphysical notions And therefore it is not safe to do an action which is not lawful but after the making distinctions before ignorant and weaker persons who swallow down the bole and the box that carries it and never 〈◊〉 their apple or take the core out If I by the law of Charity must rather quit my own goods than suffer my brother to perish much rather must I quit my priviledge and those superstructures of favour and grace which Christ hath given me beyond my necessities than wound the spirit and destroy the Soul of a weak man for whom Christ died It is an inordinate affection to love my own case and circumstances of pleasure before the soul of a Brother and such a thing are the priviledges of Christian liberty for Christ hath taken off from us the restraints which God had laid upon the Jews in meat and Holy-days but these are but circumstances of grace given us for opportunities and cheap instances of Charity we should ill die for our brother who will not lose a meal to prevent his sin or change a dish to save his Soul And if the thing be indifferent to us yet it ought not to be indifferent to us whether our brother live or die 8. Fourthly And yet we must not to please peevish or froward people betray our liberty which Christ hath given us If any man opposes the lawfulness and licence of indifferent actions or be disturbed at my using my priviledges innocently in the first case I am bound to use them still in the second I am not bound to quit them to please him For in the first instance he that shall cease to use his liberty to please him that says his liberty is unlawful encourages him that says so in his false opinion and by complying with him gives the Scandal and he who is angry with me for making use of it is a person that it may be is crept in to spy out and invade my liberty but not apt to be reduced into sin by that act of mine which he detests for which he despises me and so makes my person unapt to be exemplar to him To be angry with me for doing what Christ hath allowed me and which is part of the liberty he purchased for me when he took upon himself the form of a servant is to judge me and to be uncharitable to me and he that does so is beforehand with me and upon the active part he does the Scandal to me and by offering to deprive me of my liberty he makes my way to Heaven narrower and more encumbred than Christ left it and so places a stumbling-stone in my way I put none in his And if such peevishness and discontent of a Brother engages me to a new and unimposed yoke then it were in the power of my enemy or any malevolent person to make me never to keep Festival or never to observe any private Fast never to be prostrate at my Prayers nor to do any thing but according to his leave and his humour shall become the rule of my actions and then my Charity to him shall be the greatest uncharitableness in the world to my self and his liberty shall be my bondage Add to this that such complying and obeying the peevishness of discontented persons is to no end of Charity for besides that such concessions never satisfie persons who are unreasonably angry because by the same reason they may demand more as they ask this for which they had no reason at all it also incourages them to be peevish and gives fewel to the passion and seeds the wolf and so encourages the sin and prevents none 9. Fifthly For he only gives Scandal who induces his Brother directly or collaterally into sin as appears by all the discourses in Scripture guiding us in this Duty and it is called laying a stumbling-block in our Brother's way a wounding the Conscience of our weak Brother Thus Balaam was said to lay a Scandal before the sons of Israel by tempting them to Fornication with the daughters of Moab Every evil example or imprudent sinful and unwary deportment is a Scandal because it invites others to do the like leading them by the hand taking off the strangeness and insolency of the act which deters many men from entertaining it and it gives some offers of security to others that they shall escape as we have done besides that it is in the nature of all agents natural and moral to assimilate either by proper efficiency or by counsel and moral invitements others to themselves But this is a direct Scandal and such it is to give money to an idle person who you know will be drunk with it or to invite an intemperate person to an opportunity of excess who desires it always but without thee wants it Indirectly and accidentally but very criminally they give Scandal who introduce persons into a state of life from whence probably they pass into a state of sin so did the 〈◊〉 who married their daughters to the idolatrous Moabites and so do they who intrust a Pupil to a vicious Guardian For although God can preserve children in the midst of flames without scorching yet if they sindge their hair or scorch their flesh they that put them in are guilty of the burning And yet farther if persons so exposed to danger should escape by miracle yet they escape not who expose them to the danger They who threw the Children of the Captivity into the furnace were burnt to death though the Children were not hurt and the very offering a person in our trust to a certain or probable danger foreseen and understood is a likely way to pass sin upon the person so exposed but a certain way to contract it in our selves it is directly against Charity for no man
become like God and to aspire into the Throne which God had appointed to the Holy Jesus in eternal ages When God created Man presently the Devil rubbed his Leprosie upon him and he would needs be like God too and Satan promised him that he should As the evil Angels would have been like to God in Power and Majesty so Man would have been like him in Knowledge and have imitated the Wisdome of the Eternal Father But Man had the fate of Gehezi he would needs have the talent and garments of Lucifer and he had also his plague he lost Paradise for his Pride And now what might befit the Son of God to do seeing Man so lost and God so zealous of his honour I see saith he that by occasion of me the Father loses his Creatures for they have all aspired to be like me and are fallen into the greatest infelicities Behold I will go towards man in such a form that whosoever from henceforth would become like me shall be so and be a gainer by it And for this cause the Son of God came from Heaven and made himself a poor humble person and by all the actions of his life commented upon the present discourse Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart Blessed be that mercy and bounty which moved Almighty God to condescend to that so great appetite we had of being like him for now 〈◊〉 may be like unto God but it must be by Humility of which he hath given us an example powerful as Miracles and great as our own Pride and Misery 4. And indeed our Blessed Lord knowing that Examples are like Maps and perfect Schemes in which the whole Continent may at once be represented to the eye to all the purposes of art and benefit did in the latter end of his life draw up the dispersions and larger harvest of his Precepts binding them in the bundle of great Examples and casting them into actions as into summs total for so this act of Washing the feet of his own Ministers and then dying for them and for all his enemies did preach the three great 〈◊〉 of Evangelical Perfection with an admirable energy and abbreviature Humility and Charity and Sufferings being to Christianity as the Body and the Soul and the Spirit are to the whole man For no man brings a sad Funeral into the theatre to make his spectators merry nor can well preach Chastity in the impurity of the Bordelli or perswade Temperance when himself is full of wine and luxury and enters into the baths to boil his undigested meat that he may return to his second supper and breaths forth impure belchings together with his Homily a poor Eremite or a severely-living Philosopher into whose life his own Precepts have descended his Doctrin is mingled with his Soul mingles also effect and virtue with Homilies and incorporates his Doctrine in the hearts of his Disciples And this the Holy Jesus did in his own person bearing the burthen first upon his own shoulders that we may with better alacrity undergo what our Blessed Lord bears with us and for us But that we may the better understand what our Blessed Lord designed to us in this Lecture let us consider the proper acts of Humility which integrate the Vertue 5. The first is Christ's Humble man thinks meanly of himself and there is great reason every man should For his Body is but rottenness and infirmity covered with a fair mantle a dunghil overcast with snow and if we consider sadly that from Trees and Plants come oile balsam wine spices and aromatick odors and that from the sinks of our Body no such sweet or salutary emanations are observed we may at least think it unreasonable to boast our Beauty which is nothing but a clear and well-coloured skin which every thing in the world can spoil nor our Strength which an Ague tames into the infirmities of a child and in which we are excelled by a Bull nor any thing of our Body which is nothing but an unruly servant of the Soul marked with characters of want and dependence and begging help from all the elements and upon a little disturbance growing troublesome to it self by its own impurities And yet there is no reason in respect of the Soul for any man to exalt himself above his Brother because all reasonable Souls are equal and that one is wise and another is foolish or less learned is by accident and extrinsick causes God at first makes all alike but an indisposed Body or an mopportune Education or evil Customs superinduce variety and difference And if God discerns a man from his Brother by distinction of Gifts it alters not the case still the man hath nothing of himself that can call him excellent it is as if a Wall upon which the Sun reflects should boast it self against another that stands in the shadow Greater glory is to be paid to God for the discerning Gifts but to take any of it to our selves and rise higher than our Brother or advance our own opinion is as if a man should be proud of being in debt and think it the greater excellency that he is charged with heavier and more severe accounts 6. This act consists not in declamations and forms of Satyre against our selves saying I am a miserable sinful creature I am proud or covetous or ignorant For many men say so that are not willing to be thought so Neither is Humility a vertue made up of wearing old cloaths or doing servile and mean imployments by voluntary undertaking or of sullen gestures or demiss behaviour and artifice of lowly expressions for these may become snares to invite and catch at Honour and then they are collateral designs of Pride and direct actions of Hypocrisie But it consists in a true understanding of our own condition and a separating our own Nothing from the good we have received and giving to God all the glory and taking to our selves all the shame and dishonour due to our sinful condition He that thinks himself truly miserable and vilified by sin hates it perfectly and he that knows himself to be nothing cannot be exalted in himself and whatsoever is besides these two extremes of a natural Nothing and a superadded Sin must be those good things we have received which because they derive from God must make all their returns thither But this act is of greater difficulty in persons pious full of Gifts and eminent in Graces who being fellow-workers together with God sometimes grow tacitely and without notice given to 〈◊〉 in themselves and with some freer phancy ascribe too much of the good action to their own choice and diligence and take up their crowns which lie at the foot of the throne and set them upon their own heads For a Sinner to desire to be esteemed a sinner is no more Humility than it is for the son of a Plow-man to confess his Father but indeed it is hard for a
though less perfectly it ought not to be denied and they less ought to neglect it 25. But as every man must put himself so also he must put his house in order make his Will if he have an Estate to dispose of and in that he must be careful to do Justice to every man and Charity to the poor according as God hath enabled him and though Charity is then very late if it begins not earlier yet if this be but an act of an ancient habit it is still more perfect as it succeeds in time and superadds to the former stock And among other acts of Duty let it be remembred that it is excellent Charity to leave our Will and desires clear plain and determinate that contention and Law-suits may be prevented by the explicate declaration of the Legacies At last and in all instances and periods of our following days let the former good acts be renewed let God be praised for all his Graces and Blessings of our life let him be intreated for Pardon of our sins let acts of Love and Contrition of Hope of Joy of Humility be the work of every day which God still permits us always remembring to ask remission for those sins we remember not And if the condition of our sickness permits it let our last breath expire with an act of Love that it may begin the Charities of Eternity and like a Taper burnt to its lowest base it may go out with a great emission of light leaving a sweet smell behind us to perfume our Coffin and that these lights newly made brighter or trimmed up in our sickness may shine about our Herse that they may become arguments of a pious sadness to our friends as the charitable Coats which Dorcas made were to the widows and exemplar to all those who observed or shall hear of our holy life and religious death But if it shall happen that the disease be productive of evil accidents as a disturbed phancy a weakned understanding wild discoursings or any deprivation of the use of Reason it concerns the sick persons in the happy intervalls of a quiet untroubled spirit to pray earnestly to God that nothing may pass from him in the rages of a Fever or worse distemper which may less become his duty or give scandal or cause trouble to the persons in attendance and if he shall also renounce and disclaim all such evil words which his disease may speak not himself he shall do the duty of a Christian and a prudent person And after these 〈◊〉 he may with Piety and confidence resign his Soul into the hands of God to be deposited in holy receptacles till the day of restitution of all things and in the mean time with a quiet spirit descend into that state which is the lot of Caesars and where all Kings and Conquerours have laid aside their glories The PRAYER O Eternal and Holy Jesus who by Death hast overcome Death and by thy Passion hast taken out its sting and made it to become one of the gates of Heaven and an entrance to Felicity have mercy upon me now and at the hour of my death let thy Grace accompany me all the days of my life that I may by a holy Conversation and an habitual performance of my Duty wait for the coming of our Lord and be ready to enter with thee at whatsoever hour thou shalt come Lord let not my death be in any sence unprovided nor untimely nor hasty but after the common manner of men having in it nothing extraordinary but an extraordinary Piety and the manifestation of a great and miraculous Mercy Let my Senses and Understanding be preserved intire till the last of my days and grant that I may die the death of the righteous having first discharged all my obligations of justice leaving none miserable and unprovided in my departure but be thou the portion of all my friends and relatives and let thy blessing descend upon their heads and abide there till they shall meet me in the bosom of our Lord. Preserve me ever in the communion and peace of the Church and bless my Death bed with the opportunity of a holy and a spiritual Guide with the assistence and guard of Angels with the perception of the holy Sacrament with Patience and dereliction of my own 〈◊〉 with a strong Faith and a firm and humble Hope with just measures of Repentance and great treasures of Charity to thee my God and to all the world that my Soul in the arms of the Holy Jesus may be deposited with safety and joy there to expect the revelation of thy Day and then to partake the glories of thy Kingdom O Eternal and Holy Jesus Amen Considerations upon the Crucifixion of the Holy JESUS He beareth his Cross Ioh 19. 16. 17. And they took Iesus and lead him away 17. And he bearing his Cross went forth into a place called the place of a Scult which is called in y e Hebrew Golgotha They Erect the Crucifixe Ioh 3. 14. 15. And as Moses lifted up the Serpent in y e wilderness even so must y e Son of man be lifted up 15. That whosoever believeth on him should not perish but haue eternall life 1. WHen the Sentence of Death pronounced against the Lord was to be put in execution the Souldiers pulled off the Robe of mockery the scarlet Mantle which in jest they put upon him and put on his own garments But as Origen observes the Evangelist mentioned not that they took off the Crown of thorns what might serve their interest they pursue but nothing of remission or mercy to the afflicted Son of man but so it became the King of Sufferings not to lay aside his Imperial thorns till they were changed into Diadems of Glory But now Abel is led forth by his brother to be slain A gay spectacle to satisfie impious eyes who would not stay behind but attended and waited upon the hangman to see the Catastrophe of this bloudy Tragedy But when Piety looks on she beholds a glorious mystery Sin laughed to see the King of Heaven and Earth and the great lover of Souls in stead of the Scepter of his Kingdom to bear a Tree of 〈◊〉 and shame But Plety wept tears of pity and knew they would melt into joy when she should behold that Cross which loaded the shoulders of her Lord afterward sit upon the Scepters and be engraved and signed upon the Foreheads of Kings 2. It cannot be thought but the Ministers of Jewish malice used all the circumstances of affliction which in any case were accustomed towards malefactors and persons to be crucified and therefore it was that in some old Figures we see our Blessed Lord described with a Table appendent to the fringe of his garment set full of nails and pointed iron for so sometimes they afflicted persons condemned to that kind of Death and S. Cyprian affirms that Christ did stick to the wood that he carried being
death even the death of the Cross Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a Name above every name Thus his present life was a state of merit and work and as a reward of it he was crowned with glory and immortality his Name was exalted his Kingdom glorified he was made the Lord of all the Creatures the first-fruits of the Resurrection the exemplar of glory and the Prince and Head of the Catholick Church and because this was his recompence and the fruits of his Humility and Obedience it is certain it was not a necessary consequence and a natural efflux of the personal union of the Godhead with the Humanity This I discourse to this purpose that we may not in our esteem lessen the suffering of our dearest Lord by thinking he had the supports of actual Glory in the midst of all his Sufferings For there is no one minute or ray of Glory but its fruition does outweigh and make us insensible of the greatest calamities and the spirit of pain which can be extracted from all the infelicities of this world True it is that the greatest beauties in this world are receptive of an allay of sorrow and nothing can have pleasure in all capacities The most beautious feathers of the birds of Paradise the Estrich or the Peacock if put into our throat are not there so pleasant as to the eye But the beatifick joys of the least glory of Heaven take away all pain wipe away all tears from our eyes and it is not possible that at the same instant the Soul of Jesus should be ravished with Glory and yet abated with pains grievous and 〈◊〉 On the other side some say that the Soul of Jesus upon the Cross suffered the pains of Hell and all the torments of the damned and that without such sufferings it is not imaginable he should pay the price which God's wrath should demand of us But the same that reproves the one does also reprehend the other for the Hope that was the support of the Soul of Jesus as it confesses an imperfection that is not consistent with the state of Glory so it excludes the Despair that is the torment proper to accursed souls Our dearest Lord suffered the whole condition of Humanity Sin only excepted and freed us from Hell with suffering those sad pains and merited Heaven for his own Humanity as the Head and all faithful people as the Members of his mystical Body And therefore his life here was only a state of pilgrimage not at all trimmed with beatifick glories Much less was he ever in the state of Hell or upon the Cross felt the formal misery and spirit of torment which is the 〈◊〉 of damned spirits because it was impossible Christ should despair and without Despair it is impossible there should be a Hell But this is highly probable that in the intension of degrees and present anguish the Soul of our Lord might feel a greater load of wrath than is incumbent in every instant upon perishing souls For all the sadness which may be imagined to be in Hell consists in acts produced from principles that cannot surpass the force of humane or Angelical nature but the pain which our Blessed Lord endured for the expiation of our sins was an issue of an united and concentred anger was received into the heart of God and Man and was commensurate to the whole latitude of the Grace Patience and Charity of the Word incarnate The Crucisixion Mark 15 25. Erat autem Hora tertia crucifixerunt eum Mark 15 25. And is was the third houre they crucified him The takeing down from the Cross. Luk. 23 50 And there was a man named Ioseph a Counsellour he was a good man a lust y e same had not consented to y e counsell deed of them 52. This man went unto Pilate begged y e Body of Iesus 53 And he took it down wrapped it in linen layd it in a Sepulehre that was hewn in stone wherein never man before was layd 6. And now behold the Priest and the Sacrifice of all the world laid upon the Altar of the Cross bleeding and tortured and dying to reconcile his Father to us and he was arrayed with ornaments more glorious than the robes of Aaron The Crown of Thorns was his Mitre the Cross his Pastoral staffe the Nails piercing his hands were in stead of Rings the ancient ornament of Priests and his flesh rased and checker'd with blew and bloud in stead of the parti-coloured Robe But as this object calls for our Devotion our Love and Eucharist to our dearest Lord so it must needs irreconcile us to Sin which in the eye of all the world brought so great shame and pain and amazement upon the Son of God when he only became engaged by a charitable substitution of himself in our place and therefore we are assured by the demonstration of sense and experience it will bring death and all imaginable miseries as the just expresses of God's indignation and hatred for to this we may apply the words of our Lord in the prediction of miseries to Jerusalem If this be done in the green tree what shall be done in the dry For it is certain Christ infinitely pleased his Father even by becoming the person made 〈◊〉 in estimate of Law and yet so great Charity of our Lord and the so great love and pleasure of his Father exempted him not from suffering pains intolerable and much less shall those escape who provoke and displease God and despise so great Salvation which the Holy Jesus hath wrought with the expence of bloud and so precious a life 7. But here we see a great representation and testimony of the Divine Justice who was so angry with sin who had so severely threatned it who does so essentially hate it that he would not spare his only Son when he became a conjunct person relative to the guilt by undertaking the charges of our Nature For although God hath set down in holy Scripture the order of his Justice and the manner of its manifestation that one Soul shall not perish for the sins of another yet this is meant for Justice and for Mercy too that is he will not curse the Son for the Father's fault or in any relation whatsoever substitute one person for another to make him involuntarily guilty But when this shall be desired by a person that cannot finally perish and does a mercy to the exempt persons and is a voluntary act of the suscipient and shall in the event also redound to an infinite good it is no deflection from the Divine Justice to excuse many by the affliction of one who also for that very suffering shall have infinite compensation We see that for the sin of Cham all his posterity were accursed the Subjects of David died with the Plague because their Prince numbred the people Idolatry is punished in the children of the fourth generation
as now it is that which we call natural death and supposing that God should preserve the Body for ever or restore it at the day of Judgment to its full substance and perfect organs yet the man would be dead for ever if the Soul for ever should continue separate from the Body So that the other life that is the state of Resurrection is a re-uniting Soul and Body And although in a Philosophical sence the Resurrection is of the Body that is a restitution of our flesh and bloud and bones and is called Resurrection as the entrance into the state of Resurrection may have the denomination of the whole yet in the sence of Scripture the Resurrection is the restitution of our life the renovation of the whole man the state of Re-union and untill that be the man is not but he is dead and onely his essential parts are deposited and laid up in trust and therefore whatsoever the Soul does or perceives in its incomplete condition is but to it as embalming and honourable funerals to the Body and a safe monument to preserve it in order to a living again and the felicities of the intervall are wholly in order to the next life And therefore if there were to be no Resurrection as these intermedial joys should not be at all so as they are they are but relative and incomplete and therefore all our hopes all our felicities depend upon the Resurrection without it we should never be persons men or women and then the state of Separation could be nothing but a phantasm trees ever in blossome never bearing fruit corn for ever in the blade eggs always in the shell a hope eternal never to pass into fruition that is for ever to be deluded for ever to be miserable And therefore it was an elegant expression of S. Paul Our life is hid with Christ in God that is our life is passed into custody the dust of our body is numbred and the Spirit is refreshed visited and preserved in celestial mansions but it is not properly called a Life for all this while the man is dead and shall then live when Christ produces this hidden life at the great day of restitution But our faith of all this Article is well wrapt up in the words of S. John Beloved now we are the Sons of God and it doth not yet appear what we shall be but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is The middle state is not it which Scripture hath propounded to our Faith or to our Hope the reward is then when Christ shall appear but in the mean time the Soul can converse with God and with Angels just as the holy Prophets did in their Dreams in which they received great degrees of favour and revelation But this is not to be reckoned any more than an entrance or a waiting for the state of our Felicity And since the glories of Heaven is the great fruit of Election we may consider that the Body is not predestinate nor the Soul alone but the whole Man and until the parts embrace again in an essential complexion it cannot be expected either of them should receive the portion of the predestinate But the article and the event of future things is rarely set in order by Saint Paul But ye are come into the mount Sion and to the City of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem and to an innumerable company of Angels To the general assembly and Church of the first born which are written in heaven and to God the Judge of all and then follows after this general assembly after the Judge of all appears to the spirits of just men made perfect that is re-united to their bodies and entring into glory The beginning of the contrary Opinion brought some new practices and appendent perswasions into the Church or at least promoted them much For those Doctors who receding from the Primitive belief of this Article taught that the glories of Heaven are fully communicated to the Souls before the day of Judgment did also upon that stock teach the Invocation of Saints whom they believed to be received into glory and insensibly also brought in the opinion of Purgatory that the less perfect Souls might be glorified in the time that they assigned them But the safer opinion and more agreeable to Piety is that which I have now described from Scripture and the purest Ages of the Church 16. When Jesus appeared to the Apostles he gave them his Peace for a Benediction and when he departed he left them Peace for a Legacy and gave them according to two former promises the power of making Peace and reconciling Souls to God by a ministerial act so conveying his Father's mercy which himself procured by his Passion and actuates by his Intercession and the giving of his Grace that he might comply with our infirmities and minister to our needs by instruments even and proportionate to our selves making our brethren the conduits of his Grace that the excellent effect of the Spirit might not descend upon us as the Law upon Mount Sinai in expresses of greatness and terrour but in earthen vessels and images of infirmity so God manifesting his power in the smalness of the instrument and descending to our needs not only in giving the grace of Pardon but also in the manner of its ministration And I meditate upon the greatness of this Mercy by comparing this Grace of God and the blessing of the Judgment and Sentence we receive at the hand of the Church with the Judgment which God makes at the hour of death upon them who have despised this mercy and neglected all the other parts of their duty The one is a Judgment of mercy the other of vengeance In the one the Devil is the Accuser and Heaven and earth bear witness in the other the penitent sinner accuses himself In that the sinner gets a pardon in the other he finds no remedy In that all his good deeds are remembred and returned and his sins are blotted out in the other all his evil deeds are represented with horrour and a sting and remain for ever In the first the sinner changes his state for a state of Grace and only smarts in some temporal austerities and acts of exteriour mortification in the second his temporal estate is changed to an eternity of pain In the first the sinner suffers the shame of one man or one society which is sweetned by consolation and homilies of mercy and health in the latter all his sins are laid open before all the world and himself confounded in eternal amazement and confusions In the judgment of the Church the sinner is honoured by all for returning to the bosome of his Mother and the embraces of his heavenly Father in the judgment of vengeance he is laughed at by God and mocked by accursed spirits and perishes without pity In this he is prayed for by none
it self but in order to certain ends 272. 1. Why Jesus fasted Forty Dayes 128. 9. Vide Disc. of Fasting per tot Fear hallowed by Christ's fear 384. 3. It is the first of Graces 171. 5. Farewell-Sermon made by Jesus 350. 19. Flaminius condemned to Death for wanton Cruelty 168. 5. Fornication against the Law of God in all Ages 249. 37. Permitted to Strangers among the Jews ibid. Forgiving Injuries a Christian duty 252. G. GAdara built by Pompey 184. 15. Full of Sepulchres and Witches ibid. Gabriel ministers to the exaltation of his inferiours 3. 4. Galilaeans why slain by Pilate and what they were 326. 27. Garden why chosen for the place of the Agony 364. 383. 2. Gentleness a duty of Christians 323. 16. Giacchetus of Geneva his Death in the midst of his Lust 338. 5. God his Gifts effects of Predestination 156. 5. Those Gifts how to be prayed for 261 264. Consideration of his Presence a good remedy against Temptations 112. 29. The Vision of God preserveth the Blessed Souls from Sin ibid. 30. GOD's method in bringing us to him and treating us after 32. 4. He gives his Servants more than they look for 155. He gives more Grace to them that use the first well ibid. 32. 6. He rejoyces in his own works of mercy 187. 1. And in ours 227. 13. He requires not always the greatest degree of Vertue 234. 11. He is never wanting in necessaries to us 32. He changeth his purpose of the death of a Man for several reasons 308. 24. He works his ends by unlikely means 427. GOD certainly supports those in their necessities who are doing his work 68. 3. Gold and Frankincense and Myrrhe what signification they had in the gift of the Magi 34. 11. 28. 12. Grace it helps our Faculties but creates no new ones 31. 2. It works severally at several times 32. Being refused it hardens our Hearts 387. 369. Government supported by Christianity 68. 7. Gospel and the Law how they differ 193. 3. 296. 232. 3. H. HAsty persons and actions always unreasonable sometimes criminal 15. 1. Herod mock'd by the Magi 65. 1. 84. 1. His stratagem to surprize all the male children 66. The cause why he slew Zecharias 66. 5. Caesar's saying concerning him 66. 3. He felt the Divine vengeance 67. 6. His Malice near his Death defeated 67. 7. He pretended Religion to his secret design 68. 1. He slew 14000 Infants 66. 4. Fear of the Child Jesus proceeded from his mistake 70. 7. The Tetrarch overthrown by the King of Arabia 169. 6. His reception of Christ 352. 26. Is careless of inquiring after Christ 393. 9. Herodians what they were 290. 3. Herodias Daughter beheaded with Ice 169. 6. She and Herod banished ibid. Heron the Monk abused with an illusion 61. 23. Herminigilda refused to communicate with an Arian Bishop 188. 2. Hereticks served their ends of Heresie upon Women upon whom also they served their Lust 189. 5. Heroical actions of Repentance at our Death-bed more prevalent than any other hope then left 217. 49. Health promised and consigned in the Gospel by Miracles and by an ordinary Ministery 304. 15 16. There were two High-Priests the one President of the Rites of the Temple the other of the great Council 351. 23. Honour done to us to be returned to God 9. 6. It is due to what the Supreme power separates from common usages 172. 3. How it is to be estimated 253. 5. Honourable and Sacred all one 173. S. Hilarion a great Faster 273. 2. S. Hierom's advice concerning Fasting ibid. Holy Ghost descending upon Jesus at his Baptism 94. 3. Holiness of Religious places 172. It is a great preservative of Life 302. 13. Hope of Salvation encreases according to degrees of holy walking 315. Necessary in our Prayers 267. House of John Mark consecrated into a Church 174. 5. Hosanna what it signifies 347. 6. Onely sung to God ibid. Humane Nature by the Incarnation exalted above the Angels 3. Humane infirmity to be pitied not to be upbraided 384. Humility of Jesus 14. The surest way to Heaven 37. Of the Baptist 68. It makes good men more honourable 186. Its excellencies 302. 11 12. 367. Its Properties and Acts 364. seq Humility of the young Mar. of Castilion 367. 9. Hunger after Righteousness 373. 11. Hunger and Thirst spiritual how they differ ibid. Its Acts and Reward ibid. Husbands converted by their Wives 189. 3. J. JAirus begs help of Jesus for his Daughter 185. 20. His Daughter restored to Life 186. 21. Jesus discoursing wonderfully with the Doctors 75. 1. He wrought in the Carpenter's Trade before and after Joseph's death 76. 6. Baptized by John 93. 1. Attended by good Angels in the Wilderness 95. Was angry when the Devil tempted him to dishonour God 95. 8. 101. 15. He slept in a Storm 184. 14. Preached the first Year in peace 186. 22. Appeared several times after his Resurrection 419. He was known in the breaking of Bread ibid. He had but two days of Triumph all his Life 359. 5. And they both allayed with Sorrow ibid. 360. He was used inhospitably at Jerusalem ibid. Infinitely loving 360. He received all his Disciples with a Kiss 386. 8. Civil to his Enemies and beneficial to his Friends ibid. He was stripp'd naked and why 394. 10. He came eating and drinking and why 291. He invites all to him ibid. The Pharisees report him mad 291. He refused to be made a King 319. 1. Transfigured 322. 13. He shamed the Accusers of the Adulteress 324. 20. He teaches his Disciples to pray the second time 326. 26. Refuses to judge a Title of Land ibid. Blesseth 〈◊〉 327. 30. The Price of him 349. 14. All his great Actions in his Life had a mixture of Divinity and Humanity 387. 9. He was not compelled to bear the transverse Beam of the Cross 354. 30. He wept for Lazarus 345. And over Jerusalem 347. 7. Answered the Pharisees concerning Tribute to Caesar 347. 10. Prayed against the bitter Cup 450. 20. Smitten upon the Face 351. Accused of Blasphemy before the High-Priest ibid. Of Treason bëfore Pilate 352. 26. Nailed with Four Nails 354. 31. Provided for his Mother after his Death 355. 33. Recited the two and twentieth Psalm or part of it upon the Cross ibid. He felt the first Recompence of his Sorrows in the state of Separation 426. At the Resurrection he did redintegrate all his Body but the five Wounds ibid. He arose with a glorified Body 427. But veil'd with a Cloud of common Appearance ibid. Jewish Women hoped to be the Mother of the Messias 2. 5. Jews looked to be justified by external Innocence 243. 26. They were scrupulous in Rites careless of Moral Duties 392. 7. Could not put any Man to Death at Easter 352. 26. They eat not till the Solemnities of their Festival is over 272. 1. Jezabel pretended Religion to her design of Murther and Theft 68. 1. Illusions come often in likeness
Ordinary Means and Ministeries are to be used when they are to be had whereof the Star appearing to the Wise men was an emblem 33. 6. VVhat is signified by the Inheritance of the Earth in the reward of Meekness 224. 9. The Parts Actions and Reward of Meekness ibid. Mortification described its Parts Actions Rules Designs and Benefits 82. Master of the Feast his Office among the Jews 152. 5. Mercy a mark of Predestination 227. To be expressed in Affections and Actions ibid. Its Object Acts Reward ibid. Merope's answer to Polyphontes 254. 6. A Mason's withered hand cured by Jesus 290. 3. Members of Christ ought not to be soft and nice 393. 9. Miseries of this Life not always tokens of precedent Sin 325. 326. Miracles of Christ and his Apostles weakly imitated by the Devil 279. 〈◊〉 Greater than the pretences of their Enemies 280. 10. Which were done by Christ were primarily for conviction of the Jewes those by the Apostles for the Gentiles 279. 6. Vide 277. Were confirmed by Prophecies of Jesus ibid. Mount Olivet the place of the Romans first Incamping 347. 7. Mourning a duty its Acts Duty Reward 223. Multitudes fed by Christ 319. 321. 7. N. NAme of God put into H. places in what sence 172. 1. Name of Jesus its mysteriousness explicated 39. 8. It s excellency and efficacy ibid. Good Name to be sought after 367. Names of some of the LXXII 325. 24. Names of some that were supposed to rise after the Passion of Jesus 425. 3. Good Nature an Instrument of Vertue 91. 24. Nard pistick poured upon Jesus's Head and Feet 346. 5. 361. 11. Natural to love God when we understand him 296. 3. Natures of Christ communicated in Effects 387. 9. National Sins and Judgements 340. 8. Their Cure ibid. Necessity to Sin laid upon no Man 105. 9. Necessity to be obeyed before positive Constitutions 289. Necessity of Holy Living 204. 〈◊〉 Necessities of our selves and other men in several manner to be prayed for 265. 12. Nicodemus his 〈◊〉 with Jesus 167. New Creation at the Passion 431. Nero first among the Romans 〈◊〉 with Nard 291. 9. Nursing Children a duty of Mothers 19. O. OAths forbidden and how 240. Oaths 〈◊〉 Judicature if contradictory not to be admitted 241. Oaths promissory not to be exacted by Princes but in great necessity 240. Vide Swearing Obedience to God and Man its Parts Actions Necessity Definition and Constitution 41. 224. 205. Obedience in small instances stated 44. 12 13. Obedience to GOD our only security for defence and provisions 68. 3. Obedience of Jesus to his Parents 72. Obedience and Love 〈◊〉 in the holy Women and how reconciled 427. 9. Occasions of Sin to be avoided 110. 24. Offending Hand or Eye to be cut off or pull'd out 323. 17. Ordinary means of Salvation to be pursued 32. 5. Original Sin disputed to evil purposes 37. Considered and stated in order to Practice 38. 4. Opinion of our selves ought to be small and true 365. 5. It was the Duke of Candia's Harbinger 365. 6. In what mean opinion of our selves consists ibid. Oswy's Vow 270. 19. Outward 〈◊〉 addes reverence to Religion 177. 12. P. PAradise distinct from Heaven 424. 1. Place of GOD's special appearance in Paradise 175. 7. Patriarchs why desirous to be 〈◊〉 in the Land of Promise 425. 3. Pardon of Sins by Christ is most properly of Sins committed before Baptism 193. Pardon of Sins after Baptism how consigned 200. 201. It is more uncertain and difficult ibid. It is less and to fewer purposes 204. Alwayes imperfect after Baptism ibid. It is by Parts ibid. Possibility of Pardon hath a period in this life 210. Patrons to present able persons to their Benefices 194. 2. How far lawful to prefer their Kindred ibid. Parents in order of Nature next to God 244. 25. Duty to Parents the band of Republicks ibid. What it consists of ibid. Passion of Jesus 355. 412. Passions sanctified by Jesus 384. 3. Paschal Rites representative of moral Duties 364. Patience to be preserved by Innocents accused 393. And in Sickness 404. 17. Paul calling himself the greatest Sinner in what sence he understood it 264. 8. He hoped for Salvation more confidently towards his end 317. 9. Palms cut down for the Reception of Jesus 347. Persecution an earnest of future Bliss 229. 18. It is lawful to fly it 290. 69. 4. Not to fight against it 70. The Duty of Suffering explicated 229. 18. Peacefulness its Acts and Reward 228. 17. Peace 〈◊〉 from God by Christ 29. 5. Personal Priviledges not to be insisted upon so much as strict Duty 37. Personal Infirmity of Princes excuses not our Disobedience 46. Person of a Man first accepted and then his Gift in what sence true 33. Parental Piety of the Virgin Mary 15. Person of Christ of great excellency 15. Presentation of Jesus the only Present that was commensurate to God's excellency 52. Poverty of Christ's Birth in many circumstances 15. Christ chose his Portion among the poor of this World 52. 3. Poverty better than Riches ibid. 222. 3. No shame to be poor ibid. 29. 15. 4. Christ was revealed first to poor Men 29. Poverty of Spirit described 222. Its Parts Acts and Offices ibid. Peter for want of Faith ready to drown 320. Providence of God provides Bread for us It unites causes disparate in one event 13. Providence of GOD disposes evil Men to evil events 66. And good Men to good secretly but certainly ibid. It is wholly to be relied upon for provisions and defence 67. 71. 99. It supplies all our needs 358. 361. 371. Sometimes it shortens Man's life 264. 307. 22. S. Paphnutius converted a Harlot by the argument of the Divine Presence 113. 32. Plato's reproof of Diogenes 112. 30. Preachers ought to be of good Example 79. 2. Ambitious seeking of Prelacy hath been the Pest of the Church 96. 2. For liberty of Prophesying 187. 2. 233. 18. Presbyters have no power by Divine right to reject from the Communion those that present themselves and desire to receive it 376. 13. Passions if violent though for God are irregular 10. 270. Publick and private Devotions compared 75. 2. Presence of God an Antidote against Temptations 168. 29. Publication to be made of the Divine Excellencies 9. Prosperity dangerous how to be managed ibid. Podavivus his imitation of Wenceslaus 4. Exh. 10. Prodigies of Greatness and Goodness in Christ's Person 16. Prayer the easiest and most pleasant Duty and yet we are averse from it and why 83. A great Remedy against Temptation 115. 37. It must be joyned with our own endeavour ibid. Its Definition Conditions Matter Manner Efficacy Excellency Rules 267. Lord's Prayer explicated 267. Mental and Vocal Prayer compared 271. 23. Presumption in dying persons carefully to be distinguished from Confidence 403. 15. Means of curing it ibid. Presumption upon false Opinions in Religion how to be cured 402. Physicians to be obeyed
man in such circumstances with the least pretence of reason lay claim to merit or boast of his own archievements Hence the Apostle magnifies the Evangelical method of Justification above that of 〈◊〉 Law that it wholly excludes all proud 〈◊〉 upon our selves Where is 〈◊〉 then it is excluded By what Law of works Nay but by the Law of Faith The Mosaical Oeconomy fostered men up in proud and high thoughts of themselves they looked upon themselves as a peculiar people honoured above all other Nations of the World the seed of Abraham invested with mighty priviledges c. whereas the Gospel proceeding upon other principles takes away all foundations of pride by acknowledging our acceptance with God and the power whereby we are enabled to make good the terms and conditions of it to be the mere result of the Divine grace and mercy and that the whole scheme of our Salvation as it was the contrivance of the Divine wisdom so is the purchase of the merit and satisfaction of our crucified Saviour Nor is Faith it self less than other graces an act of Evangelical obedience and if separated from them is of no moment or value in the accounts of Heaven Though I have all Faith and have no Charity I am nothing All Faith be it of what kind soever To this may be added that no tolerable account can be given why that which is on all hands granted to be the condition of our Salvation such is Evangelical obedience should not be the condition of our Justification And at the great day Christians shall be acquitted or condemned according as in this World they have fulfilled or neglected the conditions of the Gospel The decretory sentence of absolution that shall then be passed upon good men shall be nothing but a publick and solemn declaration of that private sentence of Justification that was passed upon them in this World so that upon the same terms that they are justified now they shall be justified and acquitted then and upon the same terms that they shall then be judged and acquitted they are justified now viz. an hearty belief and a sincere obedience to the Gospel From all which I hope 't is evident that when S. Paul denies men to be justified by the works of the Law by works he either means works done before conversion and by the strength of mens natural powers such as enabled them to pride and boast themselves or which mostwhat includes the other the works of the Mosaick Law And indeed though the controversies on foot in those times did not plainly determine his reasonings that way yet the considerations which we have now suggested sufficiently shew that they could not be meant in any other sence 16. CONSECT II. That the doctrines of S. Paul and S. James about Justification are fairly consistent with each other For seeing S. Paul's design in excluding works from Justification was only to deny the works of the Jewish Law or those that were wrought by our own strength and in asserting that in opposition to such works we are justified by Faith he meant no more than that either we are justified in an Evangelical way or more particularly by Faith intended a practical belief including Evangelical obedience And seeing on the other hand S. James in affirming that we are justified by works and not by Faith only by works means no more than Evangelical obedience in opposition to a naked and an empty Faith these two are so far from quarrelling that they mutually embrace each other and both in the main pursue the same design And indeed if any disagreement seem between them 't is most reasonable that S. Paul should be expounded by S. James not only because his propositions are so express and positive and not justly liable to ambiguity but because he wrote some competent time after the other and consequently as he perfectly understood his meaning so he was capable to countermine those ill principles which some men had built upon S. Paul's assertions For 't is evident from several passages in S. Paul's Epistles that even then many began to mistake his doctrine and from his assertions about Justification by Faith and not by works to infer propositions that might serve the purposes of a bad life They slanderously reported him to say that we might do evil that good might come that we might continue in sin that the grace of the Gospel might the more abound They thought that so long as they did but believe the Gospel in the naked notion and speculation of it it was enough to recommend them to the favour of God and to serve all the purposes of Justification and Salvation however they shaped and steered their lives Against these men 't is beyond all question plain that S. James levels his Epistle to batter down the growing doctrines of Libertinism and Prophaneness to shew the insufficiency of a naked Faith and an empty profession of Religion that 't is not enough to recommend us to the Divine acceptance and to justifie us in the sight of Heaven barely to believe the Gospel unless we really obey and practise it that a Faith destitute of this Evangelical obedience is fruitless and unprofitable to Salvation that 't is by these works that Faith must appear to be vital and sincere that not only Rahab but Abraham the Father of the faithful was justified not by a bare belief of God's promise but an 〈◊〉 obedience to God's command in the ready offer of his Son whereby it appears that his Faith and Obedience did cooperate and conspire together to render him capable of God's favour and approbation and that herein the Scripture was fulfilled which saith That Abraham believed God and it was imputed to him for righteousness whence by the way nothing can be clearer than that both these Apostles intend the same thing by Faith in the case of Abraham's Justification and its being imputed to him for 〈◊〉 viz. a practical belief and obedience to the commands of God that it follows hence that Faith is not of it self sufficient to justifie and make us acceptable to God unless a proportionable Obedience be joyned with it without which Faith serves no more to these ends and purposes than a Body destitute of the Soul to animate and enliven it is capable to exercise the functions and offices of the natural life His meaning in short being nothing else than that good works or Evangelical obedience is according to the Divine appointment the condition of the Gospel-Covenant without which 't is in vain for any to hope for that pardon which Christ hath purchased and the favour of God which is necessary to Eternal Life The End of S. Paul's Life THE LIFE OF S. ANDREW St. ANDREW He was fastened to a Cross since distinguished by his name by y e Proconsul at Patrae a City of Achaia from which he preached severall dayes to y e Spectators S. Hierom. Baron Nov 29. St. Andrew's Crucifixion Matth. 23.
destroy himself but live and enjoy with him the pleasures of this life The Apostle told him that he should have with him eternal joys if renouncing his execrable idolatries he would heartily entertain Christianity which he had hitherto so successfully preached amongst them That answered the Proconsul is the very reason why I am so earnest with you to sacrifice to the Gods that those whom you have every where seduced may by your example be brought to return back to that ancient Religion which they have forsaken Otherwise I 'le cause you with exquisites tortures to be crucified The Apostle replied That now he saw it was in vain any longer to deal with him a person incapable of sober counsels and hardned in his own blindness and folly that as for himself he might do his worst and if he had one torment greater than another he might heap that upon him The greater constancy he shewed in his sufferings for Christ the more acceptable he should be to his Lord and Master AEgeas could now hold no longer but passed the sentence of death upon him and Nicephorus gives us some more particular account of the Proconsul's displeasure and rage against him which was that amongst others he had converted his wife Maximilla and his brother Stratocles to the Christian Faith having cured them of desperate distempers that had seised upon them 7. THE Proconsul first commanded him to be scourged seven Lictors successively whipping his naked body and seeing his invincible patience and constancy commanded him to be crucified but not to be fastned to the Cross with Nails but Cords that so his death might be more lingring and tedious As he was led to execution to which he went with a chearful and composed mind the people cried out that he was an innocent and good man and unjustly condemned to die Being come within sight of the Cross he saluted it with this kind of address That he had long desired and expected this happy hour that the Cross had been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it and adorned with his members as with so many inestimable Jewels that he came joyfull and triumphing to it that it might receive him as a disciple and follower of him who once hung upon it and be the means to carry him safe unto his Master having been the instrument upon which his Master had redeemed him Having prayed and exhorted the people to constancy and perseverance in that Religion which he had delivered to them he was fastned to the Cross whereon he hung two days teaching and instructing the people all the time and when great importunities in the mean while were used to the Proconsul to spare his life he earnestly begged of our Lord that he might at this time depart and seal the truth of his Religion with his bloud God heard his prayer and he immediately expired on the last of November though in what year no certain account can be recovered 8. THERE seems to have been something peculiar in that Cross that was the instrument of his martyrdom commonly affirmed to have been a Cross decussate two pieces of Timber crossing each other in the middle in the form of the letter X hence usually known by the name of S. Andrew's Cross though there want not those who affirm him to have been crucified upon an Olive Tree His body being taken down and embalmed was decently and honourably interred by Maximilla a Lady of great quality and estate and whom Nicephorus I know not upon what ground makes wise to the Proconsul As for that report of Gregory Bishop of Tours that on the Anniversary day of his Martyrdom there was wont to flow from S. Andrew's Tomb a most fragrant and precious oyl which according to its quantity denoted the scarceness or plenty of the following year and that the sick being anointed with this oyl were restored to their former health I leave to the Readers discretion to believe what he please of it For my part if any ground of truth in the story I believe it no more than that it was an exhalation and sweating sorth at some times of those rich costly perfumes and ointments wherewith his Body was embalmed after his crucisixion Though I must confess this conjecture to be impossible if it be true what my Author adds that some years the oyl burst out in such plenty that the stream arose to the middle of the Church His Body was afterwards by Constantine the Great solemnly removed to Constantinople and buried in the great Church which he had built to the honour of the Apostles Which being taken down some hundred years after by Justinian the Emperor in order to its reparation the Body was found in a wooden-Coffin and again reposed in its proper place 9. I SHALL conclude the History of this Apostle with that Encomiastick Character which one of the Ancients gives of him S. Andrew was the first-born of the Apostolick Quire the main and prime pillar of the Church a rock before the rock 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the foundation of that foundation the first-fruits of the beginning a caller of others before he was called himself he preached that Gospel that was not yet believed or entertained revealed and made known that life to his brother which he had not yet perfectly learn'd himself So great treasures did that one question bring him Master where dwellest thou which he soon perceived by the answer given him and which he deeply pondered in his mind come and see How art thou become a Prophet whence thus Divinely skilful what is it that thou thus soundest in Peter's ears We have found him c. why dost thou attempt to compass him whom thou canst not comprehend how can he be found who is Omnipresent But he knew well what he said We have found him whom Adam lost whom Eve injured whom the clouds of sin have hidden from us and whom our transgressions had hitherto made a stranger to us c. So that of all our Lord's Apostles S. Andrew had thus far the honour to be the first Preacher of the Gospel The End of S. Andrew's Life THE LIFE OF S. JAMES the Great St. Iames Major He being the Son of Zebedee was at the Command of Herod beheaded at Hierusalem Ad. 122 St. James the Great his Martyrdom Act. 12. 1 2. About that time Herod the King streched forth his hands to vex certain of the Church And he killed James the brother of John with y e sword S. James why surnamed the Great His Country and kindred His alliance to Christ. His Trade and way of Life Our Lord brought up to a Manual Trade The quick reparteé of a Christian Schoolmaster to Libanius His being called to be a Disciple and great readiness to follow Christ. His election to the Apostolick Office and peculiar favours from Christ. Why our Lord chose some few of the Apostles to be witnesses of the more private passages of his
him honours the Emperour Conrade the Second when he triumphed after the conquest of Italy had a joy bigger than their heart and their phancy swelled it till they burst and died Death can enter in at any door 〈◊〉 of Nice died with excessive laughter so did the Poet Philemon being provoked to it only by seeing an Asse eat sigs And the number of persons who have been found suddenly dead in their beds is so great that as it ingages many to a more certain and regular devotion for their Compline so it were well it were pursued to the utmost intention of God that is that all the parts of Religion should with zeal and assiduity be entertained and finished that as it becomes wise men we never be surprised with that we are sure will sometime or other happen A great General in Italy at the sudden death of Alsonsus of Ferrara and Lodovico 〈◊〉 at the sight of the sad accident upon Henry II. of France now mentioned turned religious and they did what God intended in those deaths It concerns us to be curious of single actions because even in those shorter periods we may expire and 〈◊〉 our Graves But if the state of life be contradictory to our hopes of Heaven it is like affronting of a Cannon 〈◊〉 a beleaguer'd Town a month together it is a contempt of safety and a rendring all Reason useless and unprofitable but he only is wise who having made Death familiar to him by expectation and daily apprehension does at all instants go forth to meet it The wise Virgins went forth to meet the Bridegroom for they were ready Excellent therefore is the counsel of the Son of Sirach Use Physick or ever thou be sick 〈◊〉 Judgment examine thy self and in the day of visitation thou shalt finde mercy Humble thy self before then be sick and in the time of sins shew Repentance Let nothing hinder thee to pay thy 〈◊〉 in due time and defer not until death to be justified 5. Secondly I consider that it osten happens that in those few days of our last visitation which many Men design for their Preparation and Repentance God hath expressed by an exteriour accident that those persons have deceived themselves and neglected their own Salvation S. Gregory reports of Chrysaurius a Gentleman in the Province of 〈◊〉 rich vicious and witty lascivious covetous and proud that being cast upon his Death-bed he phansied he saw evil spirits coming to arrest him and drag him to Hell He fell into great agony and trouble shrieked out called for his son who was a very religious person flattered him as willing to have been rescued by any thing but perceiving his danger increase and grown desperate he called loud with repeated clamours Give me respite but till the morrow and with those words he died there being no place left 〈◊〉 his Repentance though he sought it carefully with tears and groans The same was the case of a drunken Monk whom Venerable Bede mentions Upon his Death bed he seemed to see Hell opened and a place assigned him near to Caiaphas and those who crucified our dearest Lord. The religious persons that stood about his Bed called on him to repent of his sins to implore the mercies of God and to trust in Christ But he answered with reason enough This is no time to change my life the sentence is passed upon me and it is too late And it is very considerable and sad which Petrus Damianus tells of Gunizo a sactious and ambitious person to whom it is said the Tempter gave notice of his approaching death but when any Man preached Repentance to him out of a strange incuriousness or the spirit of reprobation he seemed like a dead and unconcerned person in all other discourses he was awake and apt to answer For God had shut up the gates of Mercy that no streams should issue forth to quench the flames of Hell or else had shut up the gates of reception and entertainment that it should not enter either God denies to give them pardon when they call or denies to them a power to call they either cannot pray or God will not answer Now since these stories are related by Men learned pious and eminent in their generations and because they served no design but the ends of Piety and have in them nothing dissonant from revelation or the frequent events of Providence we may upon their stock consider that God's Judgements and visible marks being set upon a state of Life although they happen but seldom in the instances yet they are of universal purpose and signfication Upon all Murtherers God hath not thrown a thunder-bolt nor broke all sacrilegious persons upon the wheel of an inconstant and ebbing estate nor spoken to every Oppressor from Heaven in a voice of thunder nor cut off all Rebels in the first attempts of insurrection But because he hath done so to some we are to look upon those Judgments as Divine accents and voices of God threatning all the same crimes with the like events and with the ruines of eternity For though God does not always make the same prologues to death yet by these few accidents happening to single persons we are to understand his purposes concerning all in the same condition it was not the person so much as the estate which God then remarked with so visible characters of his displeasure 6. And it seems to me a wonder that since from all the records of Scripture urging the uncertainty of the day of death the horrour of the day of Judgment the severity of God the dissolution of the world the certainty of our account still from all these premisses the Spirit of God makes no other inference but that we watch and stand in a readiness that we live in all holy conversation and godliness and that there is no one word concerning any other manner of an essentially-necessary Preparation none but this yet that there are Doctrines commenced and Rules prescribed and Offices set down and Suppletories invented by Curates of Souls how to prepare a vicious person and upon his Death-bed to reconcile him to the hopes and promises of Heaven Concerning which I desire that every person would but enquire where any one promise is recorded in Scripture concerning such addresses and what Articles CHRIST hath drawn up between his Father and us concerning a Preparation begun upon our Death-bed and if he shall find none as most certainly from Genesis to the Revelation there is not a word concerning it but very much against it let him first build his hopes upon this proposition that A holy life is the onely Preparation to a happy death and then we can without danger proceed to some other Considerations 7. When a good man or a person concerning whom it is not certain he hath lived in habitual Vices comes to die there are but two general ways of entercourse with him the one to keep him from
new sins the other to make some emendations of the old the one to fortifie him against special weaknesses and proper temptations of that estate and the other to trim his lamp that by excellent actions he may adorn his spirit making up the omissions of his life and supplying the imperfections of his estate that his Soul may return into the hands of its Creator as pure as it can every degree of perfection being an advantage so great as that the loss of every the least portion of it cannot be recompensed with all the good of this World Concerning the first The Temptations proper to this estate are either Weakness in Faith Despair or Presumption for whatsoever is besides these as it is the common infelicity of all the several states of life so they are oftentimes arguments of an ill condition of immortification of vicious habits and that he comes not to this combate well prepared such as are Covetousness unwillingness to make Restitution remanent affections to his former Vices an unresigned spirit and the like 8. In the Ecclesiastical story we finde many dying persons mentioned who have been very much afflicted with some doubts concerning an Article of Faith S. Gregory in an Epistle he writ to S. Austin instances in the temptation which Fusebius suffered upon his Death-bed And although sometimes the Devil chuses an Article that is not proper to that state knowing that every such doubt is well enough for his purpose because of the incapacity of the person to suffer long disputes and of the jealousie and suspicion of a dying and weak man fearing lest every thing should cozen him yet it is commonly instanced in the Article of the Resurrection or the state of Separation or re-union And it seems to some persons incredible that from a bed of sickness a state of misery a cloud of ignorance a load of passions a man should enter into the condition of a perfect understanding great joy and an intellectual life a conversation with Angels a fruition of God the change is greater than his Reason and his Faith being in conclusion tottering like the Ark and ready to fall seems a Pillar as unsafe and unable to rely on as a bank of turf in an Earth-quake Against this a general remedy is prescribed by Spiritual persons That the sick man should apprehend all changes of perswasion which happened to him in his sickness contradictory to those assents which in his clearest use of Reason he had to be temptations and arts of the Devil And he hath reason so to think when he remembers how many comforts of the Spirit of God what joys of Religion what support what assistences what strengths he had in the whole course of his former life upon the stock of Faith interest of the Doctrin of Christianity And since the disbelieving the Promises Evangelical at that time can have no end of advantage and that all wise men tell him it may have an end to make him lose the title to them and do him infinite disadvantage upon the stock of interest and prudence he must reject such fears which cannot help him but may ruine him For all the works of Grace which he did upon the hopes of God and the stock of the Divine revelations if he fails in his hold upon them are all rendred unprofitable And it is certain if there be no such thing as Immortality and Resurrection he shall lose nothing for believing there is but if there be they are lost to him for not believing it 9. But this is also to be cured by proper arguments And there is no Christian man but hath within him and carries about him demonstrations of the possibility and great instances of the credibility of those great changes which these tempted persons have no reason to distrust but because they think them too great and too good to be true And here not only the consideration of the Divine Power and his eternal Goodness is a proper Antidote but also the observation of what we have already received from God To be raised from nothing to something is a mutation not less than insinite and from that which we were in our first conception to pass into so perfect and curious bodies and to become discursive sensible passionate and reasonable and next to Angels is a greater change than from this state to pass into that excellency and perfection of it which we expect as the melioration and improvement of the present for this is but a mutation of degrees that of substance this is more sensible because we have perception in both states that is of greater distance because in the first term we were so far distant from what we are that we could not perceive what then we were much less desire to be what we now perceive and yet God did that for us unasked without any obligation on his part or merit on ours much rather then may we be confident of this alteration of accidents and degrees because God hath obliged himself by promise he hath disposed us to it by qualities actions and habits which are to the state of Glory as infancy is to manhood as 〈◊〉 are to excellent discourses as blossoms are to ripe fruits And he that hath wrought miracles for us preserved us in dangers done strange acts of Providence sent his Son to take our Nature made a Virgin to bear a Son and GOD to become Man and two Natures to be one individual Person and all in order to this End of which we doubt hath given us so many arguments of credibility that if he had done any more it would not have been lest in our choice to believe or not believe and then much of the excellency of our Faith would have been lost Add to this that we are not tempted to disbelieve the Roman story or that Virgil's AEneids were writ by him or that we our selves are descended of such Parents because these things are not only transmitted to us by such testimony which we have no reason to distrust but 〈◊〉 the Tempter cannot serve any end upon us by producing such doubts in us and therefore since we have greater testimony for every Article of Faith and to believe it is of so much concernment to us we may well suspect it to be an artifice of the Devil to rob us of our reward this proceeding of his being of the same nature with all his other Temptations which in our life-time like fiery darts he threw into our face to despoil us of our glory and blot out the Image of God imprinted on us 10. Secondly If the Devil tempts the sick person to Despair he who is by God appointed to minister a word of comfort must fortifie his spirit with consideration and representment of the Divine Goodness manifest in all the expresses of Nature and Grace of Providence and Revelation that God never extinguishes the smoaking slax nor breaks the bruised reed that a constant and a hearty