it is not easily apprehended to be the portion of her care to give it spiritual milk and therefore it intrenches very much upon Impiety and positive relinquishing the education of their Children when Mothers expose the spirit of the Child either to its own weaker inclinations or the wicked principles of an ungodly Nurse or the carelesness of any less-obliged person 12. And then let me add That a Child sucks the Nurse's milk and digests her conditions if they be never so bad seldom gets any good For Vertue being superaddition to Nature and Perfections not radical in the body but contradictions to and meliorations of natural indispositions does not easily convey it self by ministrations of food as Vice does which in most instances is nothing but mere Nature grown to Custom and not mended by Grace so that it is probable enough such natural distemperatures may pass in the rivulets of milk like evil spirits in a white garment when Vertues are of harder purchase and dwell so low in the heart that they but rarely pass through the fountains of generation And therefore let no Mother venture her child upon a stranger whose heart she less knows than her own And because few of those nicer women think better of others than themselves since out of self-love they neglect their own bowels it is but an act of improvidence to let my Child derive imperfections from one of whom I have not so good an opinion as of my self 13. And if those many blessings and holy prayers which the Child needs or his askings or sicknesses or the Mother's fears or joyes respectively do occasion should not be cast into this account yet those principles which in all cases wherein the neglect is vicious are the causes of the exposing the Child are extremely against the Piety and Charity of Christian Religion which prescribes severity and austere deportment and the labours of love and exemplar tenderness of affections and piety to children which are the most natural and nearest relations the Parents have That Religion which commands us to visit and to tend sick strangers and wash the feet of the poor and dress their ulcers and sends us upon charitable embassies into unclean prisons and bids us lay down our lives for one another is not pleased with a niceness and sensual curiosity that I may not name the wantonnesses of lusts which denies suck to our own children What is more humane and affectionate than Christianity and what is less natural and charitable than to deny the expresses of a Mother's affection which certainly to good women is the greatest trouble in the world and the greatest violence to their desires if they should not express and minister 14. And it would be considered whether those Mothers who have neglected their first Duties of Piety and Charity can expect so prompt and easie returns of Duty and Piety from their Children whose best foundation is Love and that love strongest which is most natural and that most natural which is conveyed by the first ministeries and impresses of Nourishment and Education And if Love descends more strongly than it ascends and commonly falls from the Parents upon the Children in Cataracts and returns back again up to the Parents but in gentle Dews if the Child's affection keeps the same proportions towards such unkind Mothers it will be as little as atoms in the Sun and never express it self but when the Mother needs it not that is in the Sun-shine of a clear fortune 15. This then is amongst those Instincts which are natural heightned first by Reason and then exalted by Grace into the obligation of a Law and being amongst the Sanctions of Nature its prevarication is a crime very near those sins which Divines in detestation of their malignity call Sins against Nature and is never to be excused but in cases of Necessity or greater Charity as when the Mother cannot be a Nurse by reason of natural disability or is afflicted with a disease which might be 〈◊〉 in the milk or in case of the publick necessities of a Kingdom for the securing of Succession in the Royal Family And yet concerning this last Lycurgus made a Law that the Noblest amongst the Spartan women though their Kings Wives should at least nurse their Eldest son and the Plebeians should nurse all theirs and Plutarch reports that the second son of King Themistes inherited the Kingdom in Sparta only because he was nursed with his Mother's milk and the eldest was therefore rejected because a stranger was his Nurse And that Queens have suckled and nursed their own children is no very unusual kindness in the simplicity and hearty affections of elder Ages as is to be seen in Herodotus and other Historians I shall only remark one instance out of the Spanish Chronicles which Henry Stephens in his Apology for Herodotus reports to have heard from thence related by a noble personage Monsieur Marillac That a Spanish Lady married into France nursed her child with so great a tenderness and jealousie that having understood the little Prince once to have suck'd a stranger she was unquiet till she had forced him to vomit it up again In other cases the crime lies at their door who inforce neglect upon the other and is heightned in proportion to the motive of the omission as if Wantonness or Pride be the parent of the crime the Issue besides its natural deformity hath the excrescencies of Pride or Lust to make it more ugly 16. To such Mothers I propound the example of the Holy Virgin who had the honour to be visited by an Angel yet after the example of the Saints in the Old Testament she gave to the Holy Jesus drink from those bottles which himself had filled for his own drinking and her Paps were as surely blessed for giving him suck as her Womb for bearing him and reads a Lecture of Piety and Charity which if we deny to our children there is then in the world left no argument or relation great enough to kindle it from a cinder to a flame God gives dry breasts for a curse to some for an affliction to others but those that invite it to them by voluntary arts love not blessing therefore shall it be far from them And I remember that it was said concerning Annius Minutius the Censor that he thought it a prodigy and extremely ominous to Rome that a Roman Lady refused to nurse her Child and yet gave suck to a Puppy that her milk might with more safety be dried up with artificial applications Let none therefore divide the interests of their own Children for she that appeared before Solomon and would have the Child divided was not the true Mother and was the more culpable of the two The PRAYER O Holy and Eternal God Father of the Creatures and King of all the World who hast imprinted in all the sons of thy Creation principles and abilities to serve the end of their own preservation and to Men
is indeed presumed so but it was instituted to be a Seal of a Covenant between God and Abraham and Abraham's posterity a seal of the righteousness of Faith and therefore was not improper for him to suffer who was the child of Abraham and who was the Prince of the Covenant and the author and finisher of that Faith which was consigned to 〈◊〉 in Circumcision But so mysterious were all the actions of Jesus that this one served many ends For 1. It gave demonstration of the verity of Humane nature 2. So he began to fulfil the Law 3. And took from himself the scandal of Uncircumcision which would eternally have prejudiced the Jews against his entertainment and communion 4. And then he took upon him that Name which declared him to be the Saviour of the World which as it was consummate in the bloud of the Cross so was it inaugurated in the bloud of Circumcision For when the eight days were accomplished for circumcising of the Child his name was called JESUS 3. But this holy Family who had laid up their joys in the eyes and heart of God longed till they might be permitted an address to the Temple that there they might present the Holy Babe unto his Father and indeed that he who had no other might be brought to his own house For although while he was a child he did differ nothing from a servant yet he was the Lord of the place It was his Father's house and he was the Lord of all and therefore when the days of the Purification were accomplished they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord to whom he was holy as being the first-born the first-born of his Mother the only-begotten son of his Father and the first-born of every creature And they did with him according to the Law of Moses offering a pair of Turtle-doves for his redemption 4. But there was no publick act about this Holy Child but it was attended by something miraculous and extraordinary And at this instant the Spirit of God directed a holy person into the Temple that he might feel the fulfilling of a Prophecy made to himself that he might before his death behold the Lord 's CHRIST and imbrace the glory and consolation of Israel and the light of the Gentiles in his arms for old Simeon came by the Spirit into the Temple and when the Parents brought in the Child Jesus then took he him up in his arms and blessed God and prophesied and spake glorious things of that Child and things sad and glorious concerning his Mother that the Child was set for the rising and falling of many in Israel for a sign that should be spoken against and the bitterness of that contradiction should pierce the heart of the holy Virgin-Mother like a Sword that her joy at the present accidents might be attempered with present revelation of her future trouble and the excellent favour of being the Mother of God might be crowned with the reward of Martyrdom and a Mother's love be raised up to an excellency great enough to make her suffer the bitterness of being transfixed with his love and sorrow as with a Sword 5. But old Anna the Prophetess came also in full of years and joy and found the reward of her long prayers and fasting in the Temple the long-looked-for redemption of Israel was now in the Temple and she saw with her eyes the Light of the World the Heir of Heaven the long-looked-for Messias whom the Nations had desired and expected till their hearts were faint and their eyes dim with looking farther and apprehending greater distances She also prophesied and gave thanks unto the Lord. But Joseph and his Mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him Ad SECT V. Considerations upon the Circumcision of the Holy Child JESVS 1. WHen eight days were come the Holy Jesus was circumcised and shed the first-fruits of his Bloud offering them to God like the prelibation of a Sacrifice and earnest of the great seas of effusion designed for his Passion not for the expiation of any stain himself had contracted for he was spotless as the face of the Sun and had contracted no wrinkle from the aged and polluted brow of Adam but it was an act of Obedience and yet of Choice and voluntary susception to which no obligation had passed upon him in the condition of his own person For as he was included in the vierge of Abraham's posterity and had put on the common outside of his Nation his Parents had intimation enough to pass upon him the Sacrament of the National Covenant and it became an act of excellent Obedience but because he was a person extraordinary and exempt from the reasons of Circumcision and himself in person was to give period to the Rite therefore it was an act of Choice in him and in both the capacities becomes a precedent of Duty to us in the first of Obedience in the second of Humility 2. But it is considerable that the Holy Jesus who might have pleaded his exemption especially in a matter of pain and dishonour yet chose that way which was more severe and regular so teaching us to be strict in our duties and sparing in the rights of priviledge and dispensation We pretend every indisposition of body to excuse us from penal duties from Fasting From going to Church and instantly we satisfie our selves with saying God will have mercy and not sacrifice so making our selves Judges of our own privileges in which commonly we are parties against God and therefore likely to pass unequal sentence It is not an easie argument that will bring us to the severities and rigours of Duty but we snatch at occasions of dispensation and therefore possibly may mistake the justice of the opportunities by the importunities of our desires However if this too much easiness be in any case excusable from sin yet in all cases it is an argument of infirmity and the regular observation of the Commandment is the surer way to Perfection For not every inconvenience of body is fit to be pleaded against the inconvenience of losing spiritual advantages but only such which upon prudent account does intrench upon the Laws of Charity or such whose consequent is likely to be impediment of a duty in a greater degree of loss than the present omission For the Spirit being in many perfections more eminent than the Body all spiritual improvements have the same proportions so that if we were just estimators of things it ought not to be less than a great incommodity to the Body which we mean to prevent by the loss of a spiritual benefit or the omission of a Duty he were very improvident who would lose a Finger for the good husbandry of saving a Ducat and it would be an unhandsome excuse from the duties of Repentance to pretend care of the Body The proportions and degrees of this are so nice and of so difficult determination that men are more apt to
adore thy glorious Name whereby thou hast shut up the abysses and opened the gates of Heaven restraining the power of Hell and discovering and communicating the treasures of thy Father's mercies O Jesu be thou a JESUS unto me and save me from the precipices and ruines of sin from the expresses of thy Father's wrath from the miseries and unsufferable torments of accursed spirits by the power of thy Majesty by the sweetnesses of thy Mercy and sacred influences and miraculous glories of thy Name I adore and worship thee in thy excellent Obedience and Humility who hast submitted thy Innocent and spotless flesh to the bloudy Covenant of Circumcision Teach me to practise so blessed and holy a precedent that I may be humble and obedient to thy sacred Laws severe and regular in my Religion mortified in my body and spirit of circumcised heart and tongue that what thou didst represent in symbol and mysterie I may really express in the exhibition of an exemplar pious and mortified life cutting off all excrescences of my spirit and whatsoever may minister to the flesh or any of its ungodly desires that now thy holy Name is called upon me I may do no dishonour to the Name nor scandal to the Institution but may do thee honour and worship and adorations of a pure Religion O most Holy and ever-Blessed JESU Amen DISCOURSE II. Of the Vertue of Obedience 1. THere are certain Excellencies either of habit or consideration which Spiritual persons use to call General ways being a dispersed influence into all the parts of good life either directing the single actions to the right end or managing them with right instruments and adding special excellencies and formalities to them or morally inviting to the repetition of them but they are like the general medicaments in Physick or the prime instruments in Mathematical Disciplines such as are the consideration of the Divine presence the Example of JESUS right Intention and such also is the vertue of Obedience which perfectly unites our actions to God and conforms us to the Divine will which is the original of goodness and sanctifies and makes a man an holocaust to God which contains in it eminently all other Graces but especially those Graces whose essence consists in a conformity of a part or the whole such are Faith Humility Patience and Charity which gives quietness and tranquillity to the spirit and is an Antepast of Paradise where their Jubilee is the perpetual joys of Obedience and their doing is the enjoying the Divine pleasure which adds an excellency and lustre to pious actions and hallows them which are indifferent and lifts up some actions from their unhallowed nature to circumstances of good and of acceptation If a man says his prayers or communicates out of custome or without intuition of the Precept and divine Commandment the act is like a Ship returning from her voyage without her venture and her burthen as unprofitable as without stowage But if God commands us either to eat or to abstain to sleep or to be waking to work or to keep a Sabbath these actions which are naturally neither good nor evil are sanctified by the Obedience and rank'd amongst actions of the greatest excellency And this also was it which made Abraham's offer to kill his Son and the Israelites spoiling the Egyptians to become acts laudable and not unjust they were acts of Obedience and therefore had the same formality and essence with actions of the most spiritual Devotions God's command is all our rule for practice and our Obedience united to the Obedience of Jesus is all our title to acceptance 2. But by Obedience I do not here mean the exteriour execution of the work for so Obedience is no Grace distinct from the acting any or all the Commandments but besides the doing of the thing for that also must be presupposed it is a sacrifice of our proper Will to God a chusing the duty because God commands it For beasts also carry burthens and do our commands by compulsion and the fear of slaves and the rigour of task-masters made the number of bricks to be compleated when Israel groaned and cried to God for help But sons that labour under the sweet paternal regiment of their Fathers and the influence of love they love the precept and do the imposition with the same purposes and compliant affections with which the Fathers made it When Christ commanded us to renounce the World there were some that did think it was a hard saying and do so still and the young rich man forsook him upon it but Ananias and Sapphira upon whom some violences were done by custome or the excellent Sermons of the Apostles sold their possessions too but it was so against their will that they retain'd part of it but St. Paul did not only forsake all his secular fortunes but counted all to be dross that he might gain Christ he gave his Will made an offertory of that as well as of his goods chusing the act which was enjoyned This was the Obedience the Holy Jesus paid to his heavenly Father so voluntary that it was meat to him to do his Father's will 3. And this was intended always by God My son give me thy heart and particularly by the Holy Jesus for in the saddest instance of all his Precepts even that of suffering persecution we are commanded to rejoyce and to be exceeding glad And so did those holy Martyrs in the primitive Ages who upon just grounds when God's glory or the 〈◊〉 of the Church had interest in it they offered themselves to Tyrants and dared the violence of the most cruel and bowelless hang-men And this is the best oblation we can present to God To offer Gold is a present fit to be made by young beginners in Religion not by men in Christianity yea Crates the Theban threw his gold away and so did Antisthenes but to offer our Will to God to give our selves is the act of an Apostle the proper act of Christians And therefore when the Apostles made challenge of a reward for leaving all their possessions Christ makes no reply to the instance nor says You who have left all but You who have followed me in the regeneration shall sit upon twelve thrones and judge the twelve Tribes of Israel meaning that the quitting the goods was nothing but the obedience to Christ that they followed Jesus in the Regeneration going themselves in pursuit of him and giving themselves to him that was it which intitled them to a Throne 4. And this therefore God enjoyns that our offerings to him may be intire and complete that we pay him a holocaust that we do his work without murmuring and that his burthen may become easie when it is born up by the wings of love and alacrity of spirit For in effect this obedience of the Will is in true speaking and strict Theology nothing else but that Charity which gives excellency to Alms and energy to Faith and
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
poison to make experiment of the antidote and at the best it is but a running back to come just to the same place again for he that is not tempted does not sin but he that invites a Temptation that he might overcome it or provokes a Passion that he may allay it is then but in the same condition after his pains and his 〈◊〉 He was not sure he should come so far The PRAYER O Dearest God who hast framed Man of Soul and Body and fitted him with Faculties and proportionable instruments to serve thee according to all our capacities let thy holy Spirit rule and sanctifie every power and member both of Soul and Body that they may keep that beautious order which in our creation thou didst intend and to which thou dost restore thy people in the renovations of Grace that our Affections may be guided by Reason our Understanding may be enlightned with thy Word and then may guide and perswade our Will that we suffer no violent transportation of Passions nor be overcome by a Temptation nor consent to the impure solicitations of Lust that Sin may not reign in our mortal bodies but that both Bodies and Souls may be conformable to the Sufferings of the Holy Jesus that in our Body we may bear the marks and dying of our Lord and in our spirits we may be humble and mortified and like him in all his imitable perfections that we may die to sin and live to righteousness and after our suffering together with him in this world we may reign together with him hereafter to whom in the unity of the most mysterious Trinity be all glory and dominion and praise for ever and ever Amen SECT IX Of JESVS being Baptized and going into the Wilderness to be Tempted The Baptisme of Iesus S. MAT. 3. 17. And lo a voice from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased Luc. 3 23. And Iesus himselfe began to be about thirty yeares of age The Temqtation of Iesus S. MAT. 4 10 Get thee behind me Satan For it is written Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou sarue 1. NOW the full time was come Jesus took leave of his Mother and his Trade to begin his Father's work and the Office Prophetical in order to the Redemption of the World and when John was baptizing in Jordan Jesus came to John to be baptized of him The Baptist had never seen his face because they had been from their infancy driven to several places designed to several imployments and never met till now But immediately the Holy Ghost inspired S. John with a discerning and knowing spirit and at his first arrival he knew him and did him worship And when Jesus desired to be baptized John forbad him saying I have need to be baptized of thee and comest thou to me For the Baptism of John although it was not a direct instrument of the Spirit for the collation of Grace neither find we it administred in any form of words not so much as in the name of Christ to come as many dream because even after John had baptized the Pharisees still doubted if he were the Messias which they would not if in his form of Ministration he had published Christ to come after him and also because it had not been proper for Christ himself to have received that Baptism whose form had specified himself to come hereafter neither could it consist with the Revelation which John had and the confession which he made to baptize in the name of Christ to come whom the Spirit marked out to him to be come already and himself pointed at him with his 〈◊〉 yet it was a ceremonious consignation of the Doctrine of Repentance which was one great part of the Covenant Evangelical and was a Divine Institution the susception of it was in order to the fulfilling all righteousness it was a sign of Humility the persons baptized confessed their sins it was a sacramental disposing to the Baptism and Faith of Christ but therefore John wondred why the Messias the Lamb of God pure and without spot who needed not the abstersions of Repentance or the washings of Baptism should demand it and of him a sinner and his servant And in the Hebrew Gospel of S. Matthew which the 〈◊〉 used at 〈◊〉 as S. Hierom reports these words are added The Mother of the Lord and his brethren said unto him John Baptist baptizeth to the Remission of sins let us go and be baptized of him He said to them 〈◊〉 have I sinned that I should go and be baptized of him And this part of the Story is also told by Justin Martyr But Jesus wanted not a proposition to consign by his Baptism proportionable enough to the analogy of its institution for as others professed their return towards Innocence so he avowed his perseverance in it and though he was never called in Scripture a Sinner yet he was made Sin for us that is he did undergo the shame and the punishment and therefore it was proper enough for him to perform the Sacrament of Sinners 2. But the Holy Jesus who came as himself in answer to the Baptist's question professed to sulfil all rightcousness would receive that Rite which his Father had instituted in order to the manifestation of his Son For although the Baptist had a glimpse of him by the first irradiations of the Spirit yet John professed That he therefore came baptizing with water that Jesus might be manifested to Israel and it was also a sign given to the Baptist himself that on whomsoever he saw the Spirit descending and remaining he is the person that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost And God chose to actuate the sign at the waters of Jordan in great and religious assemblies convened there at John's Baptism and therefore Jesus came to be baptized and by this Baptism became known to John who as before he gave to him an indiscriminate testimony so now he pointed out the person in his Sermons and Discourses and by calling him the Lamb of God prophesied of his Passion and preached him to be the World's Redeemer and the Sacrifice for mankind He was now manifest to Israel he confirmed the Baptism of John he 〈◊〉 the water to become sacramental and ministerial in the remission of sins he by a real event declared that to them who should rightly be baptized the Kingdom of Heaven should certainly be opened he inserted himself by that Ceremony into the society and participation of holy people of which communion himself was Head and Prince and he did in a symbol purifie Humane nature whose stains and guilt he had undertaken 3. As soon as John had performed his Ministery and Jesus was baptized he prayed and the heavens were opened and the air clarified by a new and glorious light and the holy Ghost in the manner of a Dove alighted upon his sacred head and God the Father gave
a voice from Heaven saying Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased This was the inauguration and proclamation of the Messias when he began to be the great Prophet of the new Covenant And this was the greatest meeting that ever was upon earth where the whole Cabinet of the mysterious Trinity was opened and shewn as much as the capacities of our present imperfections will permit the Second Person in the veil of Humanity the Third in the shape or with the motion of a Dove but the First kept his primitive state and as to the Israelites he gave notice by way of caution Ye saw no shape but ye heard a voice so now also God the Father gave testimony to his Holy Son and appeared only in a voice without any visible representment 4. When the Rite and the Solemnity was over Christ ascended up out of the waters and left so much vertue behind him that as Gregorius Turonensis reports that creek of the River where his holy body had been baptized was indued with a healing quality and a power of curing Lepers that bathed themselves in those waters in the faith and with invocation of the holy Name of Jesus But the manifestation of this power was not till afterwards for as yet Jesus did no Miracles 5. As soon as ever the Saviour of the World was baptized had opened the Heavens which yet never had been opened to Man and was declared the Son of God Jesus was by the Spirit driven into the Wilderness not by an unnatural violence but by the efficacies of Inspiration and a supernatural inclination and activity of resolution for it was the Holy Spirit that bare him thither he was led by the good Spirit to be tempted by the evil whither also he was pleased to retire to make demonstration that even in an active life such as he was designed to and intended some recesses and temporary dimissions of the world are most expedient for such persons especially whose office is Prophetical and for institution of others that by such vacancies in prayer and contemplation they may be better enabled to teach others when they have in such retirements conversed with God 6. In the Desart which was four miles 〈◊〉 the place of his Baptism and about twenty miles from Jerusalem as the common computations are he did abide forty days and forty nights where he was perpetually disturbed and assaulted with evil spirits in the midst of wild beasts in a continual fast without eating bread or drinking water And the Angels ministred to him being Messengers of comfort and sustentation sent from his Father for the support and service of his Humanity and imployed in resisting and discountenancing the assaults and temporal hostilities of the spirits of darkness 7. Whether the Devils 〈◊〉 in any horrid and affrighting shapes is not certain but it is more likely to a person of so great Sanctity and high designation they would appear more Angelical and immaterial in representments intellectual in words and Idea's temptations and inticements because Jesus was not a person of those low weaknesses to be affrighted or troubled with an ugly 〈◊〉 which can do nothing but abuse the weak and imperfect conceptions of persons nothing extraordinary And this was the way which Satan or the Prince of the Devils took whose Temptations were reserved for the last assault and the great day of trial for at the expiration of his forty days Jesus being hungry the Tempter invited him only to eat bread of his own providing which might refresh his Humanity and prove his Divinity hoping that his hunger and the desire of convincing the Devil might tempt him to eat before the time appointed But Jesus answered It is written Man shall not live by Bread alone but by every word that 〈◊〉 out of the mouth of God meaning that in every word of God whether the Commandment be general or special a promise is either expressed or implied of the supply of all provisions necessary for him that is doing the work of God and that was the present case of Jesus who was then doing his Father's work and promoting our interest and 〈◊〉 was sure to be provided for and therefore so are we 8. The Devil having failed in this assault tries him again requiring but a demonstration of his being the Son of God He sets him upon the battlement of the Temple and invites him to throw himself down upon a pretence that God would send his Angels to keep his Son and quotes Scripture for it But Jesus understood it well and though he was secured of God's protection yet he would not tempt God nor solicite his Providence to a dereliction by tempting him to an unnecessary conservation This assault was silly and weak But at last he unites all his power of stratagem and places the Holy Jesus upon an exceeding high mountain and by an Angelical power draws into one Centre Species and Idea's from all the Kingdoms and glories of the World and makes an admirable Map of beauties and represents it to the eyes of Jesus saying that all that was put into his power to give and he would give it him if he would fall down and worship him But then the Holy Lamb was angry as a provoked Lion and commanded him away when his temptations were violent and his demands impudent and blasphemous Then the Devil leaveth him and the Angels came and ministred unto him bringing such things as his necessities required after he had by a forty days Fast done penance for our sins and consigned to his Church the Doctrine and Discipline of Fasting in order to a Contemplative life and the resisting and overcoming all the Temptations and allurements of the Devil and all our ghostly enemies Ad SECT IX Considerations upon the Baptizing Fasting and Temptation of the Holy JESVS by the Devil 1. WHen the day did break and the Baptist was busie in his Offices the Sun of Righteousness soon entred upon our Hemisphere and after he had lived a life of darkness and silence for thirty years together yet now that he came to do the greatest work in the World and to minister in the most honourable Embassie he would do nothing of singularity but fulfil all righteousness and satisfie all Commands and joyn in the common Rites and Sacraments which all people innocent or penitent did undergo either as deleteries of 〈◊〉 or instruments of Grace For so he would needs be baptized by his servant and though he was of Purity sufficient to do it and did actually by his Baptism purifie the Purifier and sanctifie that and all other streams to a holy ministery and effect yet he went in bowing his head like a sinner uncloathing himself like an imperfect person and craving to be washed as if he had been crusted with an impure Leprosie thereby teaching us to submit our selves to all those Rites which he would institute and although 〈◊〉 of them be like the
operate not to the first sanction or entring into the Covenant The seed may lie long in the ground and produce fruits in its due season if it be refreshed with the former and the later rain that is the Repentance that first changes the state and converts the man and afterwards returns him to his title and recalls him from his wandrings and keeps him in the state of Grace and within the limits of the Covenant and all the way Faith gives efficacy and acceptation to this Repentance that is continues our title to the Promise of not having Righteousness exacted by the measures of the Law but by the Covenant and promise of Grace into which we entred in Baptism and walk in the same all the days of our life 8. Sixthly The Holy Spirit which descends upon the waters of Baptism does not instantly produce its effects in the Soul of the baptized and when he does it is irregularly and as he pleases The Spirit bloweth where it listeth and no man knoweth whence it cometh nor whither it goeth and the Catechumen is admitted into the Kingdom yet the Kingdom of God cometh not with observation and this saying of our Blessed Saviour was spoken of the Kingdom of God that is within us that is the Spirit of Grace the power of the Gospel put into our hearts concerning which he affirmed that it operates so secretly that it comes not with outward shew neither shall they say Lo here or lo there Which thing I desire the rather to be observed because in the same discourse which our Blessed Saviour continued to that assembly he affirms this Kingdom of God to belong unto little children this Kingdom that cometh not with outward significations or present expresses this Kingdom that is within us For the present the use I make of it is this That no man can conclude that this Kingdom of Power that is the Spirit of Sanctification is not come upon Infants because there is no sign or expression of it It is within us therefore it hath no signification It is the seed of God and it is no good Argument to say Here is no seed in the bowels of the earth because there is nothing green upon the face of it For the Church gives the Sacrament God gives the Grace of the Sacrament But because he does not always give it at the instant in which the Church gives the Sacrament as if there be a secret impediment in the suscipient and yet afterwards does give it when the impediment is removed as to them that repent of that impediment it follows that the Church may administer rightly even before God gives the real Grace of the Sacrament and if God gives this Grace afterwards by parts and yet all of it is the effect of that Covenant which was consigned in Baptism he that desers some may defer all and verifie every part as well as any part For it is certain that in the instance now made all the Grace is deferred in Infants it is not certain but that some is collated or infused however be it so or no yet upon this account the administration of the Sacrament is not hindred 9. Seventhly When the Scripture speaks of the effects of or dispositions to Baptism it speaks in general expressions as being most apt to signifie a common duty or a general effect or a more universal event or the proper order of things but those general expressions do not supponere universaliter that is are not to be understood exclusively to all that are not so qualified or universally of all suscipients or of all the subjects of the Proposition When the Prophets complain of the Jews that they are fallen from God and turned to Idols and walk not in the way of their Fathers and at other times the Scripture speaks the same thing of their Fathers that they walked perversly toward God starting aside like a broken bow in these and the like expressions the Holy Scripture uses a Synecdoche or signifies many only under the notion of a more large and indesinite expression for neither were all the Fathers good neither did all the sons prevaricate but among the Fathers there were enough to recommend to posterity by way of example and among the Children there were enough to stain the reputation of the Age but neither the one part nor the other was true of every single person S. John the Baptist spake to the whole audience saying O generation of 〈◊〉 and yet he did not mean that all Jerusalem and Judaea that went out to be baptized of him were such but he under an undeterminate reproof intended those that were such that is especially the Priests and the Pharisees And it is more considerable yet in the story of the event of Christ's Sermon in the Synagogue upon his Text taken out of Isaiah All wondred at his gracious words and bare him witness and a little after All they in the Synagogue were filled with wrath that is it was generally so but hardly to be supposed true of every single 〈◊〉 in both the contrary humors and usages Thus Christ said to the Apostles To have abidden with me in my temptations and yet Judas was all the way a follower of interest and the bag rather than Christ and afterwards none of them all did abide with Christ in his greatest Temptations Thus also to come nearer the present Question the secret effects of Election and of the Spirit are in Scripture attributed to all that are of the outward Communion So S. Peter calls all the Christian strangers of the Eastern dispersion Elect according to the sore-knowledge of God the Father and S. Paul saith of all the Roman Christians and the same of the 〈◊〉 that their Faith was spoken of in all the world and yet amongst them it is not to be supposed that all the 〈◊〉 had an unreproveable Faith or that every one of the Church of 〈◊〉 was an excellent and a charitable person and yet the 〈◊〉 useth this expression 〈◊〉 faith groweth exceedingly and the charity of every one of you all towards each other aboundeth These are usually significant of a general custom or order of things or duty of men or design and natural or proper expectation of events Such are these also in this very Question As many of you as are baptized into Christ have put on Christ that is so it is regularly and so it will be in its due time and that is the order of things and the designed event but from hence we cannot conclude of every person and in every period of time This man hath been baptized therefore now he is 〈◊〉 with Christ he hath put on Christ nor thus This person cannot in a spiritual sence as yet put on Christ therefore he hath not been baptized that is he hath not put him on in a 〈◊〉 sence Such is the saying of S. Paul Whom he hath predestinated them he also called and whom he
powers to reject any proposition and to believe well is an effect of a singular predestination and is a Gift in order to a Grace as that Grace is in order to Salvation But the insufficiency of an argument or disability to prove our Religion is so far from disabling the goodness of an ignorant man's Faith that as it may be as strong as the Faith of the greatest Scholar so it hath full as much excellency not of nature but in order to Divine acceptance For as he who believes upon the only stock of Education made no election of his Faith so he who believes what is demonstrably proved is forced by the demonstration to his choice Neither of them did 〈◊〉 and both of them may equally love the Article 3. So that since a 〈◊〉 Argument in a weak understanding does the same work that a strong Argument in a more 〈◊〉 and learned that is it convinces and makes Faith and yet neither of them is matter of choice if the thing believed be good and matter of 〈◊〉 or necessity the Faith is not rejected by God upon the weakness of the first nor accepted upon the strength of the latter principles when we are once in it will not be enquired by what entrance we passed thither whether God leads us or drives us in whether we come by Discourse or by Inspiration by the guide of an Angel or the conduct of Moses whether we be born or made Christians it is indifferent so we be there where we should be for this is but the gate of Duty and the entrance to Felicity For thus far Faith is but an act of the Understanding which is a natural Faculty serving indeed as an instrument to Godliness but of it self no part of it and it is just like fire producing its act inevitably and burning as long as it can without power to interrupt or suspend its action and therefore we cannot be more pleasing to God for understanding rightly than the fire is for burning clearly which puts us evidently upon this consideration that Christian Faith that glorious Duty which gives to Christians a great degree of approximation to God by Jesus Christ must have a great proportion of that ingredient which makes actions good or bad that is of choice and effect 4. For the Faith of a Christian hath more in it of the Will than of the Understanding Faith is that great mark of distinction which separates and gives formality to the Covenant of the Gospel which is a Law of Faith The Faith of a Christian is his Religion that is it is that whole conformity to the Institution or Discipline of Jesus Christ which distinguishes him from the believers of false Religions And to be one of the faithful signifies the same with being a Disciple and that contains Obedience as well as believing For to the same sense are all those appellatives in Scripture the Faithful Brethren Believers the Saints Disciples all representing the duty of a Christian A Believer and a Saint or a holy person is the same thing Brethren signifies Charity and Believers Faith in the intellectual sence the Faithful and Disciples signifie both for besides the consent to the Proposition the first of them is also used for Perseverance and Sanctity and the greatest of Charity mixt with a confident Faith up to the height of Martyrdom Be faithful unto the death said the Holy Spirit and I will give thee the Crown of life And when the Apostles by way of abbreviation express all the body of Christian Religion they call it Faith working by Love which also S. Paul in a parallel place calls a New Creature it is a keeping of the Commandments of God that is the Faith of a Christian into whose desinition Charity is ingredient whose sence is the same with keeping of God's Commandments so that if we desine Faith we must first distinguish it The faith of a natural person or the saith of Devils is a 〈◊〉 believing a certain number of Propositions upon conviction of the Understanding But the Faith of a Christian the Faith that justifies and saves him is Faith working by Charity or Faith keeping the Commandments of God They are distinct Faiths in order to different ends and therefore of different constitution and the instrument of distinction is Charity or Obedience 5. And this great Truth is clear in the perpetual testimony of Holy Scripture For Abraham is called the Father of the Faithful and yet our Blessed Saviour told the Jews that if they had been the sons of Abraham they would have done the works of Abraham and therefore Good works are by the Apostle called the sootsteps of the Faith of our Father Abraham For Faith in every of its stages at its first beginning at its increment at its greatest perfection is a Duty made up of the concurrence of the Will and the Understanding when it pretends to the Divine acceptance Faith and Repentance begin the Christian course Repent and believe the Gospel was the summ of the Apostles Sermons and all the way after it is Faith working by Love Repentance puts the first spirit and life into Faith and Charity preserves it and gives it nourishment and increase it self also growing by a mutual supply of spirits and nutriment from Faith Whoever does heartily believe a Resurrection and Life eternal upon certain Conditions will certainly endeavour to acquire the Promises by the Purchase of Obedience and observation of the Conditions For it is not in the nature or power of man directly to despise and reject so 〈◊〉 a good So that Faith supplies Charity with argument and maintenance and Charity supplies Faith with life and motion Faith makes Charity reasonable and Charity makes Faith living and effectual And therefore the old Greeks called Faith and Charity a miraculous Chariot or Yoke they bear the burthen of the Lord with an equal consederation these are like 〈◊〉 twins they live and die together Indeed Faith is the first-born of the twins but they must come both at a birth or else they die being strangled at the gates of the womb But if Charity like Jacob lays hold upon his elder brother's heel it makes a timely and a prosperous birth and gives certain title to the eternal Promises For let us give the right of primogeniture to Faith yet the Blessing yea and the Inheritance too will at last fall to Charity Not that Faith is disinherited but that Charity only enters into the possession The nature of Faith passes into the excellency of Charity before they can be rewarded and that both may have their estimate that which justifies and saves us keeps the name of Faith but doth not do the deed till it hath the nature of Charity For to think well or to have a good opinion or an excellent or a fortunate understanding entitles us not to the love of God and the consequent inheritance but to chuse the ways of the Spirit and
else Faith and Hope are not two distinct Graces God's 〈◊〉 and vocation are without repentance meaning on God's part but the very people concerning whom S. Paul used the expression were reprobate and cut off and in good time shall be called again in the mean time many single persons perish There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus God will look to that and it will never fail but then they must secure the following period and not walk after the Flesh but after the Spirit Behold the goodness of God towards thee saith S. Paul if thou continue in his goodness otherwise thou also shalt be cut off And if this be true concerning the whole Church of the Gentiles to whom the Apostle then made the address and concerning whose election the decree was publick and manifest that they might be cut off and their abode in God's favour was upon condition of their perseverance in the Faith much more is it true in single persons 〈◊〉 election in particular is shut up in the abyss and permitted to the condition of our Faith and Obedience and the revelations of Dooms-day 7. Certain it is that God hath given to holy persons the Spirit of adoption enabling them to cry Abba Father and to account themselves for sons and by this Spirit we know we dwell in him and therefore it is called in Scripture the earnest of the Spirit though at its first mission and when the Apostle wrote and used this appellative the Holy Ghost was of greater signification and a more visible earnest and endearment of their hopes than it is to most of us since For the visible sending of the Holy Ghost upon many Believers in gifts signs and prodigies was infinite argument to make them expect events as great beyond that as that was beyond the common gifts of men just as Miracles and Prophecy which are gifts of the Holy Ghost were arguments of probation for the whole Doctrine of Christianity And this being a mighty verification of the great Promise the promise of the Father was an apt instrument to raise their hopes and confidences concerning those other Promises which Jesus made the promises of Immortality and eternal life of which the present miraculous Graces of the Holy Spirit were an earnest and in the nature of a contracting peny and still also the Holy Ghost though in another manner is an earnest of the great price of the heavenly calling the rewards of Heaven though not so visible and apparent as at first yet as certain and demonstrative where it is discerned or where it is believed as it is and ought to be in every person who does any part of his duty because by the Spirit we do it and without him we cannot And since we either feel or believe the presence and gifts of the Holy Ghost to holy purposes for whom we receive voluntarily we cannot casily receive without a knowledge of his reception we cannot but entertain him as an argument of greater good hereafter and an earnest-peny of the perfection of the present Grace that is of the rewards of Glory Glory and Grace differing no otherwise than as an earnest in part of payment does from the whole price the price of our high calling So that the Spirit is an earnest not because he always signifies to us that we are actually in the state of Grace but by way of argument or reflexion we know we do belong to God when we receive his Spirit and all Christian people have received him if they were rightly baptized and confirmed I say we know by that testimony that we belong to God that is we are the people with whom God hath made a Covenant to whom he hath promised and intends greater blessings to which the present gifts of the Spirit are in order But all this is conditional and is not an immediate testimony of the certainty and future event but of the event as it is possibly future and may without our fault be reduced to act as certainly as it is promised or as the earnest is given in hand And this the Spirit of God oftentimes tells us in secret visitations and publick testimonies and this is that which S. Paul calls tasting of the heavenly gift and partaking of the Holy Ghost and tasting of the good word of God and the powers of the world to come But yet some that have done so have fallen away and have quenched the Spirit and have given back the earnest of the Spirit and contracted new relations and God hath been their Father no longer for they have done the works of the Devil So that if new Converts be uncertain of their present state old Christians are not absolutely certain they shall persevere They are as sure of it as they can be of future acts of theirs which God hath permitted to their own power But this certainty cannot exclude all fear till their Charity be perfect only according to the strength of their habits so is the confidence of their abodes in Grace 8. Beyond this some holy persons have degrees of perswasion superadded as Largesses and acts of grace God loving to bless one degree of Grace with another till it comes to a Confirmation in Grace which is a state of Salvation directly opposite to Obduration and as this is irremediable and irrecoverable so is the other inamissible as God never saves a person obdurate and obstinately impenitent so he never loses a man whom he hath confirmed in grace whom he so loves he loves unto the end and to others indeed he offers his persevering love but they will not entertain it with a persevering duty they will not be beloved unto the end But I insert this caution that every man that is in this condition of a confirmed Grace does not always know it but sometimes God draws aside the curtains of peace and shews him his throne and visits him with irradiations of glory and sends him a little star to stand over his dwelling and then again covers it with a cloud It is certain concerning some persons that they shall never fall and that God will not permit them to the danger or probability of it to such it is morally impossible but these are but few and themselves know it not as they know a demonstrative proposition but as they see the Sun sometimes breaking from a cloud very brightly but all day long giving necessary and sufficient light 9. Concerning the multitude of Believers this discourse is not pertinent for they only take their own accounts by the imperfections of their own duty blended with the mercies of God the cloud gives light on one side and is dark upon the other and sometimes a bright ray peeps through the fringes of a shower and immediately hides it self that we might be humble and diligent striving forwards and looking upwards endeavouring our duty and longing after Heaven working out our Salvation with fear and trembling and
helped by none comforted by none and he makes himself a companion of Devils to everlasting ages but in the judgment of Repentance and Tribunal of the Church the penitent sinner is prayed for by a whole army of militant Saints and causes joy to all the Church triumphant And to establish this Tribunal in the Church and to transmit pardon to penitent sinners and a salutary judgment upon the person and the crime and to appoint Physicians and Guardians of the Soul was one of the designs and mercies of the Resurrection of Jesus And let not any Christian man either by false opinion or an unbelieving spirit or an incurious apprehension undervalue or neglect this ministery which Christ hath so sacredly and solemnly established Happy is he that dashes his sins against the rock upon which the Church is built that the Church gathering up the planks and fragments of the shipwreck and the shivers of the broken heart may re-unite them pouring Oil into the wounds made by the blows of sin and restoring with meekness gentleness care counsel and authority persons overtaken in a fault For that act of Ministery is not ineffectual which God hath promised shall be ratified in Heaven and that Authority is not contemptible which the Holy Jesus conveyed by breathing upon his Church the Holy Ghost But Christ intended that those whom he had made Guides of our Souls and Judges of our Consciences in order to counsel and ministerial pardon should also be used by us in all cases of our Souls and that we go to Heaven the way he hath appointed that is by offices and ministeries Ecclesiastical 17. When our Blessed Lord had so confirmed the Faith of the Church and appointed an Ecclesiastical Ministery he had but one work more to do upon earth and that was the Institution of the holy Sacrament of Baptism which he ordained as a solemn Initiation and mysterious Profession of the Faith upon which the Church is built making it a solemn Publication of our Profession the rite of Stipulation or entring Covenant with our Lord the solemnity of the Paction Evangelical in which we undertake to be Disciples to the Holy Jesus that is to believe his Doctrine to fear his Threatnings to rely upon his Promises and to obey his Commandments all the days of our life and he for his part actually performs much and promises more he takes off all the guilt of our preceding days purging our Souls and making them clean as in the day of innocence promising withall that if we perform our undertaking and remain in the state in which he now puts us he will continually assist us with his Spirit prevent and attend us with his Grace he will deliver us from the power of the Devil he will keep our Souls in merciful joyful and safe custody till the great Day of the Lord he will then raise our Bodies from the Grave he will make them to be spiritual and immortal he will re-unite them to our Souls and beatifie both Bodies and Souls in his own Kingdom admitting them into eternal and unspeakable glories All which that he might verifie and prepare respectively in the presence of his Disciples he ascended into the bosome of God and the eternal comprehensions of celestial Glory The PRAYER O Holy and Eternal Jesus who hast overcome Death and triumphed over all the powers of Hell Darkness Sin and the Grave manifesting the truth of thy Promises the power of thy Divinity the majesty of thy Person the rewards of thy Glory and the mercies and excellent designs of thy Evangelical Kingdom by thy glorious and powerful Resurrection preserve my Soul from eternal death and make me to rise from the death of Sin and to live the life of Grace loving thy Perfections adoring thy Mercy pursuing the interest of thy Kingdom being united to the Church under thee our Head conforming to thy holy Laws established in Faith entertained and confirmed with a modest humble and certain Hope and sanctified by Charity that I engraving thee in my heart and submitting to thee in my spirit and imitating thee in thy glorious example may be partaker of thy Resurrection which is my hope and my desire the support of my Faith the object of my Joy and the strength of my Confidence In thee Holy Jesus do I trust I confess thy Faith I believe all that thou hast taught I desire to perform all thy injunctions and my own undertaking my Soul is in thy hand do thou support and guide it and pity my infirmities and when thou shalt reveal thy great Day shew to me the mercies and effects of thy Advocation and Intercession and Redemption Thou shalt answer for me O Lord my God for in thee have I trusted let me never be confounded Thou art just thou 〈◊〉 merciful thou art gracious and compassionate thou hast done miracles and prodigies of favour to me and all the world Let not those great actions and sufferings be ineffective but make me capable and receptive of thy Mercies and then I am certain to receive them I am thine O save me thou art mine O Holy Jesus O dwell with me for ever and let me dwell with thee adoring and praising the eternal glories of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost Amen THE END 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 THE TABLE OF The Life of CHRIST Where are more Numbers than one the first Number denotes the Page the latter the Number of the Section A. ABsolution of dying Persons of what benefit 407. 23. Whether to be given to all that desire it 408. 24. Acceptable Year of the Lord what it means 186. 22. Actions of Jesus confuted his Accusers 390. 2. Acts of Vertue to be done by sick and dying Persons 405 406. 19 20. Accusation of Criminals not to be aggravated odiously 393. 8. It ought to be onely for purposes of Charity ibid. Accusation of innocent persons ought to be born patiently by the innocent 393. 9. Accusation of Jesus 352. 24. Adam buried in Golgotha 354. 31. Adoption of Sons 316. 7. Advent of our Lord must be entertained with joy 156. 3. Adultery made more criminal under the Gospel than under the Law 249. 37 c. Adultery of the eyes 250. 36. Adrian the Emperour built a Temple to Venus and Adonis in the place of Christ's Birth 14. 6. Agony of Jesus in the Garden 350. 20. Agesilaus was more commended for his modesty and obedience than for his prosperous good Conduct 50. 25. Albes or white garments wore by the Church and why 393. 9 10. Alms intended for a defensative against Covetousness 258. 1. Ordinarily to be according to our ability ibid. Sometimes beyond in what cases ibid. Necessities of all indigent people are the object of our Alms 259. 3. Manner of Alms an office of Christian prudence ibid. The two Altars in Solomon's Temple what they did represent 83. 4. Ambitious seeking Ecclesiastical Dignities very criminal 96. 2. Ambition is
theirs earnestly pressing and perswading the Pastors and Governours of it To feed the flock of God To take upon them the Rule and Inspection of it freely and willingly not out of a sinister end merely of gaining advantages to themselves but out of a sincere design of doing good to Souls that they would treat them mildly and gently and be themselves examples of Piety and Religion to them as the best way to make their Ministery successful and effectual And because he could not be always present to teach and warn men he ceased not by Letters to stir up their minds to the remembrance and practice of what they had been taught A course he tells them which he was resolved to hold as long as he lived as thinking it meet while he was in this Tabernacle to stir them up by putting them in mind of these things that so they might be able after his decease to have them always in remembrance And this may lead us to the consideration of those Writings which he left behind him for the benefit of the Church 5. NOW the Writings that entitle themselves to this Apostle were either genuine or supposititious The genuine Writings are his two Epistles which make up part of the Sacred Canon For the first of them no certain account can be had when it was written Though Baronius and most Writers commonly assign it to the year of Christ Forty Four But this cannot be Peter not being at Rome from whence it is supposed to have been written at that time as we shall see anon He wrote it to the Jewish Converts dispersed through Pontus Galatia and the Countries thereabouts chiefly upon the occasion of that persecution which had been raised at Jerusalem And accordingly the main design of it is to confirm and comfort them under their present sufferings and persecutions and to direct and instruct them how to carry themselves in the several states and relations both of the Civil and the Christian life For the place whence it was written 't is expresly dated from Babylon But what or where this Babylon is is not so easie to determine Some think it was Babylon in Egypt and probably 〈◊〉 and that there Peter preached the Gospel Others will have it to have been Babylon the Ancient Metropolis of Assyria and where great numbers of Jews dwelt ever since the times of their Captivities But we need not send Peter on so long an Errand if we embrace the Notion of a Learned man who by Babylon will figuratively understand Jerusalem no longer now the holy City but a kind of spiritual Babylon in which the Church of God did at this time groan under great servitude and captivity And this Notion of the Word he endeavours to make good by calling in to his assistance two of the Ancient Fathers who so understand that of the Prophet We have healed Babylon but she was not healed Where the Prophet say they by Babylon means Jerusalem as differing nothing from the wickedness of the Nations nor conforming it self to the Law of God But generally the Writers of the Romish Church and the more moderate of the Reformed party acquiescing herein in the Judgment of Antiquity by Babylon understand Rome And so 't is plain S. John calls it in his Revelation either from its conformity in power and greatness to that ancient City or from that great Idolatry which at this time reign'd in Rome And so we may suppose S. Peter to have written it from Rome not long after his coming thither though the precise time be not exactly known 6. AS for the Second Epistle it was not accounted of old of equal value and authority with the First and therefore for some Ages not taken into the Sacred Canon as is expresly affirmed by 〈◊〉 and many of the Ancients before him The Ancient Syriack Church did not receive it and accordingly it is not to be found in their ancient Copies of the New Testament Yea those of that Church at this day do not own it as Canonical but only read it privately as we do the Apocryphal Books The greatest exception that I can find against it was the difference of its style from the other Epistle and therefore it was presumed that they were not both written by the same hand But S. 〈◊〉 who tells us the objection does elsewhere himself return the answer That the difference in the style and manner of writing might very well arise from hence that S. Peter according to his different circumstances and the necessity of affairs was forced to use several Amanuenses and Interpreters sometimes S. Mark and after his departure some other person which might justly occasion a difference in the style and character of these 〈◊〉 Not to say that the same person may vastly alter and vary his style according to the times when or the persons to whom or the subjects about which he writes or the temper and disposition he is in at the time of writing or the care that is used in doing it Who sees not the vast difference of Jeremie's writing in his Prophecy and in his Book of Lamentations between S. John's in his Gospel his 〈◊〉 and Apocalypse How oft does S. Paul alter his style in several of his Epistles in some more lofty and elegant in others more rough and harsh Besides hundreds of instances that might be given both in Ecclesiastical and Foreign Writers too obvious to need insisting on in this place The Learned Grotius will have this Epistle to have been written by Symeon S. James his immediate Successor in the Bishoprick of Jerusalem and that the word Peter was inserted into the Title by another hand But as a Judicious person of our own observes these were but his Posthume Annotations published by others and no doubt never intended as the deliberate result of that great man's Judgment especially since he himself tacitly acknowledges that all Copies extant at this day read the Title and Inscription as it is in our Books And indeed there is a concurrence of circumstances to prove S. Peter to be the Author of it It bears his name in the Front and Title yea somewhat more expresly than the former which has only one this both his Names There 's a passage in it that cannot well relate to any but him When he tells us that he was present with Christ in the holy Mount When he received from God the Father honour and glory Where he heard the voice which came from Heaven from the excellent glory This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased This evidently refers to Christs Tranfiguration where none were present but Peter and the two Sons of Zebedee neither of which were ever thought of to be the Author of this Epistle Besides that there is an admirable consent and agreement in many passages between these two Epistles as it were easie to show in particular instances Add to this that
following APPARATUS is only to present the Reader with a short Scheme of the state of things in the preceding periods of the Church to let him see by what degrees and measures the Evangelical state was introduc'd and what Methods God in all Ages made use of to conduct Mankind in the paths of Piety and Vertue In the Infancy of the World he taught men by the Dictates of Nature and the common Notices of Good and Evil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo calls them the most Ancient Law by lively Oracles and great Examples of Piety He set forth the Holy Patriarchs as Chrysostom observes as Tutors to the rest of Mankind who by their Religious lives might train up others to the practice of Vertue and as Physicians be able to cure the minds of those who were infected and overrun with Vice Afterwards says he having sufficiently testified his care of their welfare and happiness by many instances of a wise and benign Providence towards them both in the land of Canaan and in Egypt he gave them Prophets and by them wrought Signs and Wonders together with innumerable other expressions of his bounty At last finding that none of these Methods did succeed not Patriarchs not Prophets not Miracles not daily Warnings and Chastisements brought upon the World he gave the last and highest instance of his love and goodness to Mankind he sent his only begotten Son out of his own bosom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the great Physician both of Soul and Body who taking upon him the form of a Servant and being born of a Virgin conversed in the World and bore our sorrows and infirmities that by rescuing Humane Nature from under the weight and burden of Sin he might exalt it to Eternal Life A brief account of these things is the main intent of the following Discourse wherein the Reader will easily see that I considered not what might but what was fit to be said with respect to the end I designed it for It was drawn up under some more disadvantageous circumstances than a matter of this nature did require which were it worth the while to represent to the Reader might possibly plead for a softer Censure However such as it is it is submitted to the Readers Ingenuity and Candor W. C. IMPRIMATUR THO. TOMKYNS Ex AEd. Lambeth Feb. 25. 1674. AN APPARATUS OR Discourse Introductory TO THE Whole WORK concerning the Three Great Dispensations OF THE CHURCH PATRIARCHAL MOSAICAL and EVANGELICAL SECT I. Of the PATRIARCHAL Dispensation The Tradition of Elias The three great Periods of the Church The Patriarchal Age. The Laws then in force natural or positive Natural Laws what evinced from the testimony of natural conscience The 〈◊〉 Precepts of the Sons of Noah Their respect to the Law of Nature Positive Laws under that dispensation Eating Blood why prohibited The mystery and signification of it Circumcision when commanded and why The Laws concerning Religion Their publick Worship what Sacrifices in what sence natural and how far instituted The manner of God's testifying his acceptance What the place of their publick Worship Altars and Groves whence Abraham's Oke its long continuance and destruction by Constantine The Original of the Druids The times of their religious Assemblies In process of time Genes 4. what meant by it The Seventh Day whether kept from the beginning The Ministers of Religion who The Priesthood of the first-born In what cases exercised by younger Sons The state of Religion successively under the several Patriarchs The condition of it in Adam's Family The Sacrifices of Cain and Abel and their different success whence Seth his great Learning and Piety The face of the Church in the time of Enosh What meant by Then began Men to call upon the Name of the Lord. No Idolatry before the Flood The Sons of God who The great corruption of Religion in the time of Jared Enoch's Piety and walking with God His translation what The incomparable sanctity of Noah and his strictness in an evil Age. The character of the men of that time His preservation from the Deluge God's Covenant with him Sem or 〈◊〉 whether the Elder Brother The confusion of Languages when and why Abraham's Idolatry and conversion His eminency for Religion noted in the several instances of it God's Covenant with him concerning the Messiah The Piety of Isaac and Jacob. Jacob's blessing the twelve Tribes and foretelling the Messiah Patriarchs extraordinary under this dispensation Melchisedeck who wherein a type of Christ. Job his Name Country Kindred Quality Religion Sufferings when he lived A reflection upon the religion of the old World and its agreement with Christianity GOD who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past to the Fathers by the Prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son For having created Man for the noblest purposes to love serve and enjoy his Maker he was careful in all Ages by various Revelations of his Will to acquaint him with the notices of his duty and to shew him what was good and what the Lord did require of him till all other Methods proving weak and ineffectual for the recovery and the happiness of humane nature God was pleased to crown all the former dispensations with the Revelation of his Son There is among the Jews an ancient Tradition of the House of Elias that the World should last Six Thousand Years which they thus compute 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Two Thousand Years empty little being recorded of those first Ages of the World Two Thousand Years the Law and Two Thousand the Days of the Messiah A Tradition which if it minister to no other purposes does yet afford us a very convenient division of the several Ages and Periods of the Church which may be considered under a three-fold Oeconomy the Patriarchal Mosaical and Evangelical dispensation A short view of the two former will give us great advantage to survey the later that new and better dispensation which God has made to the World 2. THE Patriarchal Age 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Jews call it the days of emptiness commenced from the beginning of the World and lasted till the delivery of the Law upon Mount Sinai And under this state the Laws which God gave for the exercise of Religion and the Government of his Church were either Natural or Positive Natural Laws are those innate Notions and Principles whether speculative or practical with which every Man is born into the World those common sentiments of Vertue and Religion those Principia justi decori Principles of fit and right that naturally are upon the minds of Men and are obvious to their reason at first sight commanding what is just and honest and forbidding what is evil and uncomely and that not only in the general that what is good is to be embraced and what is evil to be avoided but in the particular instances of duty according to their conformity or repugnancy
veneration for the holiness and purity of their lives When Seth came to lie upon his death-bed he summoned his Children their Wives and Families together blessed them and as his last Will commanded them to worship God adjuring them by the bloud of Abel their usual and solemn oath that they should not descend from the holy Mount to hold any correspondence or commerce with Cain or his wicked faction And then breathed his last A command say my Authors which they observed for seven generations and then came in the promiscuous mixtures 13. To Seth succeeded his Son Enos who kept up the glory and purity of Religion and the honour of the holy Line Of his time it is particularly recorded then began men to call upon the name of the Lord. The ambiguity of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying sometimes to prophane sometimes to begin hath begotten various apprehensions among learned men concerning this place and led them not only into different but quite contrary sences The words are by some rendred thus Then men prophaned in calling upon the name of the Lord which they thus explain that at that time when Enos was born the true worship and service of God began to sink and fail corruption and idolatry mightily prevailing by reason of Cains wicked and apostate Family and that as a sad memorial of this corrupt and degenerate Age holy Seth called his son's name Enosh which not only simply signifies a man but a poor calamitous miserable man And this way go many of the Jews and some Christian writers of great name and note Nay Maimonides one of the wisest and soberest of all the Jewish writers begins his Tract about Idolatry 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the times of Enosh referring to this very passage he tells us that men did then grievously erre and that the minds of the wise men of those days were grown gross and stupid yea that Enos himself was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 among those that erred and that their Idolatry consisted in this That they worshipped the Stars and the Host of Heaven Others there are who expresly assert that 〈◊〉 was the first that invented Images to excite the Spirit of the Creatures 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that by their mediation men might invocate and call upon God But how infirm a foundation this Text is to build all this upon is evident For besides what some have observed that the Hebrew phrase is not tolerably reconcileable with such a sence if it were yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as one of the Rabbins has well noted that there wants a foundation for any such exposition no mention being made in Moses his story of any such false Gods as were then worshipped no footsteps of Idolatry appearing in the World till after the Flood Nor indeed is it reasonable to suppose that the Creation of the World being yet fresh in memory and Divine Traditions so lately received from Adam and God frequently communicating himself to men that the case being thus men could in so short a time be fallen under so great an apostasie as wholly to forget and renounce the true God and give Divine honours to senseless and inanimate creatures I can hardly think that the Cainites themselves should be guilty of this much less Enosh and his Children The meaning of the words then is plainly this That in Enosh his time the holy Line being greatly multiplied they applied themselves to the worship of God in a more publick and remarkable manner either by framing themselves into more distinct societies for the exercise of publick worship or by meeting at more fixed and stated times or by invocating God under more solemn and peculiar rites than they had done before And this probably they did the rather to obviate that torrent of prophaneness and impiety which by means of the sons of Cain they saw flowing in upon the World This will be further confirmed if we take the words as by some they are rendred then men began to be called by the name of the Lord that is the difference and separation that was between the children of Seth and Cain every day ripening into a wider distance the posterity of Seth began to take to themselves a distinctive title that the World might the better distinguish between those who kept to the service of God and those who threw off Religion and let loose the reins to disorder and impiety And hereof we meet with clear intimation in the story of those times when we read of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sons of God who doubtless were the pious and devout posterity of Seth calling themselves after the name of the Lord whom they constantly and sincerely worshipped notwithstanding the fancy of Josephus and the Fathers that they were Angels or that of the Jewish Paraphrasts that they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sons of great men and Princes in opposition to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sons of men the impure and debauched posterity of Cain who made light of Religion and were wholly governed by 〈◊〉 and sensual inclinations And the matching of these sons of God with the daughters of men that is those of the Family of Cain and the fatal consequences of those unhappy marriages was that which provoked God to destroy the World I have no more to add concerning Enosh than that we are told that dying he gave the same commands to his Children which he had received of his Father that they should make Religion their great care and business and keep themselves pure from society and converse with the Line of Cain 14. AFTER Enosh was his son Kenan who as the Arabian Historian informs us ruled the people committed to him by a wise and excellent government and gave the same charge at his death that had been given to him Next Kenan comes Mahalcleel who carries devotion and piety in his very name signifying one that praises God of whom they say that he trained up the people in ways of justice and piety blessed his Children at his death and having charged them to separate from the Cainites appointed his son Jared to be his successor whose name denotes a descent probably either because of the notable decrease and declension of piety in his time or because in his days some of the Sethites descended from the holy Mountain to mix with the posterity of Cain For so the Oriental writers inform us that a great noise and shout coming up from the Valley an hundred of the holy Mountaineers agreed to go down to the sons of Cain whom Jared endeavoured to hinder by all the arts of counsel and perswasion But what can stop a mind bent upon an evil course down they went and being ravished with the beauty of the Cainite-women promiscuously committed folly and lewdness with them from whence sprang a race of Giants men of vast and robust bodies but of more vicious and ungovernable
yet in the midst of judgment he remembers mercy he tells them that though he would not suffer his patience to be eternally prostituted to the wanton humours of wicked men yet that he would bear with them CXX Years longer in order to their reformation So loth is God to take advantage of the sins of men not willing that any should perish but that all should come unto repentance In the mean time righteous Noah found favour with Heaven a good man hath a peculiar guardianship and protection in the worst of times and God orders him to prepare an Ark for the saving of his House An Hundred Years was this Ark in building not but that it might have been finished in a far less time but that God was willing to give them so long a space for wise and sober considerations Noah preaching all the while both by his doctrine and his practice that they would break off their sins by repentance and prevent their ruine But they that are filthy will be filthy still the hardned World persisted in their impieties till the wrath of God came upon them to the uttermost and destroyed the World of the ungodly God shut up Noah his Wife his three Sons and their Wives into the Ark together with provisions and so many Creatures of every sort as were sufficient not only for food but for reparation of the kind Miracles must not be expected where ordinary means may be 〈◊〉 and then opened the Windows of Heaven and broke up the Fountains of the Deep and brought in the Flood that swept all away Twelve months Noah and his Family continued in this floating habitation when the Waters being gone and the Earth dried he came forth and the first thing he did was to erect an Altar and offer up an Eucharistical Sacrifice to God for 〈◊〉 remarkable a deliverance some of the Jews tell us that coming out of the Ark he was bitten by a Lion and rendred unfit for Sacrifice and that therefore Sem did it in his room he did not concern himself for food or a present habitation but immediately betook himself to his devotion God was infinitely pleased with the pious and grateful sense of the good man and openly declared that his displeasure was over and that he would no more bring upon the World such effects of his severity as he had lately done and that the Ordinances of Nature should duly perform their constant motions and regularly observe their periodical revolutions And because Man was the principal Creature in this lower World he restored to him his Charter of Dominion and Soveraignty over the Creatures and by enacting some Laws against Murder and Cruelty secured the peace and happiness of his life and then established a 〈◊〉 with Noah and all Mankind that he would no more drown the World for the ratification and ensurance whereof he placed the Rain-bow in the Clouds as a perpetual sign and memorial of his Promise Noah after this betook himself to Husbandry and planting Vineyards and being unwarily overtaken with the fruit of the Vine became a scorn to C ham one of his own Sons while the two others piously covered their Fathers shame A wakeing out of his sleep and knowing what had been done he prophetically cursed Cham and his Posterity blessed Sem and in Japhet foretold the calling of the Gentiles to the worship of God and the knowledge of the Messiah that God should enlarge Japhet and that he should dwell in the Tents of Shem. He died in the DCCCCL Year of his Age having seen both Worlds that before the Flood and that which came after it 16. SEM and Japhet were the two good Sons of Noah in the assigning whose primogeniture though the Scripture be not positive and decretory yet do the most probable reasons appear for Japhet especially if we compute their Age. Sem was an Hundred Years old two Years after the Flood for 〈◊〉 he begat Arphaxad now the Flood hapned just in the DC Year of Noah's Age whence it follows that Sem was born when his Father was Five Hundred and Two Years old But Noah being expresly said to have begotten Sons in the Five Hundredth Year of his Age plain it is that there must be another Son two Years Elder than Sem which could be no other than Japhet Cham being acknowledged by all the Younger Brother And hence it is that Sem is called the Brother 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Japhet the Greater or as we render it the Elder They were both pious and devout Men having been brought up under the religious Institutions not only of their Father Noah but their Grand-father 〈◊〉 and their Great-grand-father Methuselah who had for some Hundreds of Years conversed with Adam The holy story records nothing concerning the state of Religion in their days and little heed 〈◊〉 to be given to the Eastern Writers when they tell us of Sem that according to the command of his Father he took the Body of Adam which Noah had secretly hidden in the Ark and joyning himself to Melchisedec they went and 〈◊〉 it in the heart of the Earth an Angel going before and conducting them to the placewith a great deal more with little truth and to as little purpose As for the 〈◊〉 born after the Flood little notice is taken of them besides the 〈◊〉 mention of their names Arphaxad Salah Eber. Of this last they say that he was a great 〈◊〉 that he instituted Schools and Seminaries for the advancement and propagation of 〈◊〉 and there was great reason for him to bestir himself if it be true what the Arabian Historians tell us that now Idolatry began mightily to prevail and men generally carved to themselves the Images of their Ancestors to which upon all occasions they addressed themselves with the most solemn veneration the Daemons giving answers through the Images wich they worshipped Heber was the Father of the Jewish Nation who from him are said to have derived the title of Hebrews 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Josephus tells us though there want not those who assign other reasons of the name and that the Hebrew Language was preserved in his family which till his time had been the mother-tongue and the common Language of the World To Eber succeeded his son Peleg a name given him out of a Prophetical foresight of that memorable division that hapned in his time For now it was that a company of bold daring persons combining themselves under the conduct and command of Nimrod resolved to erect a vast and stupendous Fabrick partly to raise themselves a mighty reputation in the World partly to secure themselves from the Invasion of an after-deluge and probably as a place of retreat and defence the better to enable them to put in practice that oppression and tyranny which they designed to exercise over the World But whatever it was God was displeased with the attempt and to shew how easily he can basfle the
and as to his posterity That therefore which seems most probable in the case is that he was one of the Reguli or petty Kings whereof there were many in the land of Canaan but a pious and devout man and a worshipper of the true God as there were many others in those days among the Idolatrous Nations he being extraordinarily raised up by God from among the Canaanites and brought in without mention of Parents original or end without any Predecessor or Successor in his office that he might be a fitter type of the Royal and Eternal Priesthood of Christ. And for any more particular account concerning his person it were folly and rashness over-curiously to enquire after what God seems industriously to have concealed from us The great character under which the Scripture takes notice of him is his relation to our blessed Saviour who is more than once said to be a Priest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 after the order in the same way and manner that Melchisedeck was or as the Apostle explains himself after the similitude of Melchisedeck Our Lord was such a Priest as Melchisedeck was there being a nearer similitude and conformity between them than ever was between any other Priests whatsoever A subject which S. Paul largely and particularly treats of Passing by the minuter instances of the parallel taken from the name of his person Melchisedeck that is King of righteousness and his title to his Kingdom King of Salem that is of Peace we shall observe three things especially wherein he was a type of Christ. First in the peculiar qualification of his person something being recorded of him uncommon to the rest of men and that is that he was without Father without Mother and without descent Not that Melchisedeck like Adam was immediately created or in an instant dropt down from Heaven but that he hath no kindred recorded in the story which brings him in without any mention of Father or Mother 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Chrysostom glosses we know not what Father or Mother he had He was says S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without genealogie without having any pedigree extant upon record whence the ancient Syriack Version truly expresses the sence of the whole passage thus Whos 's neither Father nor Mother are written 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 among the generations that is the genealogies of the ancient Patriarchs And thus he eminently typified Christ of whom this is really true He is without Father in respect of his humane nature begotten only of a pure Virgin without Mother in respect of his Divinity being begotten of his Father before all Worlds by an eternal and ineffable generation Secondly Melchisedeck typified our Saviour in the duration and continuance of his office for so 't is said of him that he was without descent having neither beginning of days nor end of life but made like unto the Son of God abideth a Priest continually By which we are not to understand that Melchisedeck never died for being a man he was subject to the same common Law of mortality with other men But the meaning is that as he is said to be without Father and Mother because the Scripture speaking of him makes no mention of his Parents his Genealogy and descent So he is said to abide a Priest for ever without any beginning of days or end of life because we have no account of any that either preceded or succeeded him in his office no mention of the time either when he took it up or laid it down And herein how lively and eminent a type of Christ the true Melchisedeck who as to his Divine nature was without beginning of days from Eternal Ages and who either in the execution or vertue of his office abides for ever There is no abolition no translation of his office no expectation of any to arise that shall succeed him in it He was made a Priest not after the Law of a carnal Commandment a transient and mutable dispensation but after the power of an endless life Thirdly Melchisedeck was a type of Christ in his excellency above all other Priests S. Paul's great design is to evince the preheminence and precedency of Melchisedeck above all the Priests of the Mosaick ministration yea above Abraham himself the Founder and Father of the Jewish Nation from whom they reckoned it so great an honour to derive themselves And this the Apostle proves by a double instance First that Abraham in whose loins the Levitical Priests then were paid tithes to Melchisedeck when he gave him the tenth of all his spoils as due to God and his Ministers thereby confessing himself and his posterity inferiour to him Now consider how great this man was unto whom even the Patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils Secondly that Melchisedeck conferred upon Abraham a solemn benediction it being a standing part of the Priests office to bless the people And this was an undeniable argument of his superiority He whose descent is not counted from them the legal Priests received tithes of Abraham and blessed him that had the promises And without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better Whereby it evidently appears that Melchisedeck was greater than Abraham and consequently than all the Levitical Priests that descended from him Now herein he admirably prefigured and shadowed out our blessed Saviour a person peculiarly chosen out by God sent into the World upon a nobler and a more important errand owned by more solemn and mighty attestations from Heaven than ever was any other person his office incomparably beyond that of the legal Oeconomy his person greater his undertaking weightier his design more sublime and excellent his oblation more valuable and meritorious his prayers more prevalent and successful his office more durable and lasting than ever any whose business it was to intercede and mediate between God and man 20. THE other extraordinary person under this 〈◊〉 is Job concerning whom two things are to be enquired into Who he was and when he lived For the first we find him described by his Name his Country his Kindred his Quality his Religion and his Sufferings though in many of them we are left under great uncertainties and to the satisfaction only of probable conjectures For his name among many conjectures two are especially considerable though founded upon very different reasons one that it is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying one that grieves or groans mystically presaging those grievous miseries and sufferings that afterwards came upon him the other more probably from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to love or to desire noting him the desire and delight of his Parents earnestly prayed for and affectionately embraced with the tenderest endearments His Country was the land of 〈◊〉 though where that was is almost as much disputed as about the source of Nilus Some will have it Armenia others Palestine or the land of Canaan and some of the Jewish Masters assure us that
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his School or place of institution was at Tiberias and nothing more commonly shewed to Travellers than Job's well in the way between Ramah and Jerusalem others place it in Syria near Damascus so called from 〈◊〉 the supposed Founder of that City others a little more Northward at Apamea now called Hama where his house is said to be shewed at this day Most make it to be part of Idumaea near mount 〈◊〉 or else Arabia the Desart probably it was in the confines of both this part of Arabia being nearest to the Sabaeans and Chaldaeans who invaded him and most applicable to his dwelling among the Sons of the East to the situation of his friends who came to visit him and best corresponding with those frequent Arabisms discernable both in the Language and Discourses of Job and his Friends not to say that this Country produced persons exceedingly addicted to Learning and Contemplation and the studies of natural Philosophy whence the wise men who came out of the East to worship Christ are thought by many to have been Arabians For his kindred and his friends we find four taken notice of who came to visit him in his distress Eliphaz the Temanite the son probably of Teman and grandchild of Esau by his eldest son Eliphaz the Country deriving its name Teman from his Father and was situate in Idumaea in the borders of the Desart Arabia Bildad the Shuhite a descendant in all likelihood of Shuah one of the sons of Abraham by his wife Keturah whose seat was in this part of Arabia Zophar the Naamathite a Country lying near those parts And Elihu the Buzite of the off-spring of Buz the son of Nahor and so nearly related to Job himself He was the son of Barachel of the kindred of Ram who was the head of the Family and his habitation was in the parts of Arabia the Desart near Euphrates or at least in the Southern part of 〈◊〉 bordering upon it As for Job himself he is made by some a Canaanite of the posterity of Cham by others to descend from Sem by his son Amram whose eldest sons name was 〈◊〉 by most from Esau the Father of the Idumaean Nations but most probably either from Nahor Abraham's brother whose sons were Huz Buz Chesed c. or from Abraham himself by some of the sons which he had by his wife Keturah whereby an account is most probably given how Job came to be imbued with those seeds of Piety and true Religion for which he was so eminently remarkable as deriving them from those Religious principles and instructions which Abraham and Nahor had bequeathed to their posterity His quality and the circumstances of his External state were very considerable a man rich and honourable His substance was seven thousand Sheep and three thousand Camels and five hundred yoke of Oxen and five hundred she-Asses and a very great houshold so that he was the greatest of all the men of the East himself largely describes the great honour and prosperity of his fortunes that he washed his steps in Butter and the rock poured out rivers of Oil when he went out to the gate through the City and prepared his seat in the street the young men saw him and hid themselves the aged arose and stood up the Princes refrained talking and laid their hand on their mouth c. He delivered the poor that cried and the fatherless and him that had none to help him the blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon him c. He brake the jaws of the wicked and pluckt the spoil out of their teeth c. Indeed so great his state and dignity that it has led many into a perswasion that he was King of Idumaea a powerful and mighty Prince a fancy that has received no small encouragement from the common but groundless confounding of Job with Jobab King of Edom of the race of Esau. For the story gives no intimation of any such royal dignity to which Job was advanced but always speaks of him as a private person though exceeding wealthy and prosperous and thereby probably of extraordinary power and estimation in his Country Nay that he might not want fit Companions in his Regal capacity three of his friends are made Kings as well as he the LXX Translators themselves stiling Eliphaz King of the Temanites Bildad of the Suchites and Zophar King of the Minaeans though with as little probably less reason than the former 21. BUT whatever his condition was we are sure he was no less eminent for Piety and Religion he was a man perfect and upright one that feared God and eschewed evil Though living among the Idolatrous Gentiles he kept up the true and sincere worship of God daily offered up Sacrifices and Prayers to Heaven piously instructed his Children and Family lived in an intire dependence upon the Divine Providence in all his discourses expressed the highest and most honourable sentiments and thoughts of God and such as best became the Majesty of an Infinite Being in all transactions he was just and righteous compassionate and charitable modest and humble indeed by the character of God himself who knew him best There was none like him in the Earth a perfect and an upright man fearing God and eschewing evil his mind was submissive and compliant his patience generous and unshaken great even to a Proverb You have heard of the Patience of Job And enough he had to try it to the utmost if we consider what sufferings he underwent those evils which are wont but singly to seise upon other men all centred and met in him Plundered in his Estate by the Sabaean and Chaldaean Free-booters whose standing livelihood were spoils and robberies and not an Oxe or Asse left of all the Herd not a Sheep or a Lamb either for Food or Sacrifice Undone in his Posterity his Seven Sons and Three Daughters being all slain at once by the fall of one House blasted in his credit and good name and that by his nearest friends who traduced and challenged him for a dissembler and an hypocrite Ruined in his health being smitten with sore boiles from the crown of the Head to the sole of the Foot till his Body became a very Hospital of Diseases tormented in his mind with sad and uncomfortable reflections The arrows of the Almighty being shot within him the poyson whereof drank up his spirit the terrours of God setting themselves in array against him All which were aggravated and set home by Satan the grand Engineer of all those torments and all this continuing for at least Twelve Months say the Jews probably for a much longer time and yet endured with great courage and fortitude of mind till God put a period to this tedious Trial and crowned his sufferings with an ample restitution We have seen who this excellent Person was we are next to enquire when he lived And here we meet with almost an infinite variety of
Their Oral and unwritten Law It s original and succession according to the mind of the Jews Their unreasonable and blasphemous preferring it above the written Law Their religious observing the Traditions of the Elders The Vow of Corban what The superseding Moral Duties by it The Sects in the Jewish Church The Pharisees their denomination rise temper and principles Sadducees their impious Principles and evil lives The Essenes their original opinions and way of life The Herodians who The Samaritans Karraeans The Sect of the Zealots The Roman Tyranny over the Jewes 1. THE Church which had hitherto lyen dispersed in private Families and had often been reduced to an inconsiderable number being now multiplied into a great and a populous Nation God was pleased to enter into Covenant not any longer with particular Persons but with the Body of the People and to govern the Church by more certain and regular ways and methods than it had hitherto been This Dispensation began with the delivery of the Law and continued till the final period of the Jewish state consisting only of meats and drinks and divers washings and carnal Ordinances imposed on them until the time of reformation In the survey whereof we shall chiefly consider what Laws were given for the Government of the Church by what Methods of revelation God communicated his mind and will to them and what was the state of the Church especially towards the conclusion of this Oeconomy 2. THE great Minister of this Dispensation was Moses the Son of Amram of the House of Levi a Person whose signal preservation when but an Infant presaged him to be born for great and generous undertakings Pharaoh King of Egypt desirous to suppress the growing numbers of the Jewish Nation had afflicted and kept them under with all the rigorous severities of tyranny and oppression But this not taking its effect he made a Law that all Hebrew Male-children should be drowned as soon as born knowing well enough how to kill the root if he could keep any more Branches from springing up But the wisdom of Heaven defeated his crafty and barbarous 〈◊〉 Among others that were born at that time was Moses a goodly Child and whom his Mother was infinitely desirous to preserve but having concealed him till the saving of his might endanger the losing her own life her affection suggested to her this little stratagem she prepared an Ark made of Paper-reeds and pitched within and so putting him a-board this little Vessel threw him into the River Nilus committing him to the mercy of the waves and the conduct of the Divine Providence God who wisely orders all events had so disposed things that Pharaohs daughter whose name say the Jews was Bithia Thermuth says Josephus say the Arabians Sihhoun being troubled with a distemper that would not endure the hot Bathes was come down at this time to wash in the Nile where the cries of the tender Babe soon reached her ears She commanded the Ark to be brought a-shore which was no sooner opened but the silent oratory of the weeping Infant sensibly struck her with compassionate resentments And the Jews add that she no sooner touched the Babe but she was immediately healed and cried out that he was a holy Child and that she would save his life for which say they she obtained the favour to be brought under the wings of the Divine Majesty and to be called the daughter of God His Sister Miriam who had all this while beheld the scene afar off officiously proffered her service to the Princess to call an Hebrew Nurse and accordingly went and brought his Mother To her care he was committed with a charge to look tenderly to him and the promise of a reward But the hopes of that could add but little where nature was so much concerned Home goes the Mother joyful and proud of her own pledge and the royal charge carefully providing for his tender years His infant state being pass'd he was restored to the Princess who adopted him for her own son bred him up at Court where he was polished with all the arts of a noble and ingenuous education instructed in the modes of civility and behaviour in the methods of policy and government Learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians whose renown for wisdom is not only once and again taken notice of in holy Writ but their admirable skill in all liberal Sciences Natural Moral and Divine beyond the rate and proportion of other Nations is sufficiently celebrated by foreign Writers To these accomplishments God was pleased to add a Divine temper of mind a great zeal for God not able to endure any thing that seemed to clash with the interests of the Divine honour and glory a mighty courage and resolution in God's service whose edge was not to be taken off either by threats or charms He was not afraid of the Kings commandment nor feared the wrath of the King for he endured as seeing him that is invisible His contempt of the World was great and admirable sleighting the honours of Pharoah's Court and the fair probabilities of the Crown the treasures and pleasures of that rich soft and luxurious Country out of a firm belief of the invisible rewards of another World He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter chusing rather to suffer 〈◊〉 with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt for he had respect unto the recompence of reward Josephus relates that when but a child he was presented by the Princess to her Father as one whom she had adopted for her son and designed for his successor in the Kingdom the King taking him up into his arms put his Crown upon his head which the child immediately pull'd off again and throwing it upon the ground trampled it under his feet An action which however looked upon by some Courtiers then present 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 portending a fatal Omen to the Kingdom did however evidently presage his generous contempt of the grandeur and honours of the Court and those plausible advantages of Soveraignty that were offered to him His patience was insuperable not tired out with the abuses and disappointments of the King of Egypt with the hardships and troubles of the Wilderness and which was beyond all with the cross and vexatious humors of a stubborn and unquiet generation He was of a most calm and treatable disposition his spirit not easily ruffled with passion he who in the cause of God and Religion could be bold and fierce as a Lion was in his own patient as a Lamb God himself having given this character of him That he was the meekest man upon the Earth 3. THIS great personage thus excellently qualified God made choice of him to be the Commander and conducter of the Jewish Nation and his Embassador to the King of Egypt to demand the enfranchisement of
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
the doctrine which these men taught that though they were to love their neighbours that is Jewes yet might they hate their enemies In these and such like instances they had notoriously abused and evacuated the Law and in a manner rendred it of no effect And therefore when our Lord as the great Prophet sent from God came into the World the first thing he did after the entrance upon his publick Ministry was to cleanse and purifie the Law and to remove that rubbish which the Jewish Doctors had cast upon it He rescued it out of the hands of their poysonous and pernicious expositions restored it to its just authority and to its own primitive sence and meaning he taught them that the Law did not only bind the external act but prescribe to the most inward motions of the mind and that whoever transgresses here is no less obnoxious to the Divine Justice and the penalties of the Law than he that is guilty of the most gross and palpable violations of it he shewed them how infinitely more pure and strict the command was than these Impostors had represented it and plainly told them that if ever they expected to be happy they must look upon the Law with an other-guise eye and follow it after another rate than their blind and deceitful Guides did For I say unto you Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees you can in no case enter into the Kingdome of God 20. THE other way by which they corrupted and dishonoured the Law and weakned the power and reputation of it was by preferring before it their Oral and unwritten Law For besides the Law consigned to Writing they had their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their Law delivered by word of mouth whose pedigree they thus deduce They tell us that when Moses waited upon God Fourty Days in the Mount he gave him a double Law one in Writing the other Traditionary containing the sence and explication of the former being come down into his Tent he repeated it first to Aaron then to Ithamar and Eleazar his Sons then to the Seventy Elders and lastly to all the People the same Persons being all this while present Aaron who had now heard it four times recited Moses being gone out again repeated it before them after his departure out of the Tent his two Sons who by this had heard it as oft as their Father made another repetition of it by which means the Seventy Elders came to hear it four times and then they also repeated it to the Congregation who had now also heard it repeated four times together once from Moses then from Aaron then from his Sons and lastly from the Seventy Elders after which the Congregation broke up and every one went home and taught it his Neighbour This Oral Law Moses upon his Death-bed repeated to 〈◊〉 he delivered it to the Elders they to the Prophets the Prophets to the men of the great Synagogue the last of whom was Symeon the Just who delivered it to Antigonus Sochaeus and he to his Successors the wise Men whose business it was to recite it and so it was handed through several Generations the names of the Persons who delivered it in the several Ages from its first rise under Moses till above an Hundred Years after Christ being particularly enumerated by Maimonides At last it came to R. Jehuda commonly stiled by the Jews 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our holy Master the Son of Rabban Symeon who flourished a little before the time of the Emperour Antoninus who considering the unsetled and tottering condition of his own Nation and how apt these traditionary Precepts would be to be forgotten or mistaken by the weakness of Mens memories or the perversness of their wits or the dispersion of the Jews in other Countries collected all these Laws and Expositions and committed them to Writing stiling his Book Mishnaioth or the Repetition This was asterwards illustrated and explained by the Rabbines dwelling about Babylon with infinite cases and controversies concerning their Law whose resolutions were at last compiled into another Volume which they called Gemara or Doctrin and both together constitute the intire Body of the Babylonish Talmud the one being the Text the other the Comment The folly and vanity of this account though it be sufficiently evident to need no confutation with any wise and discerning Man yet have the Jewes in all Ages made great advantage of it magnifying and extolling it above the written Law with Titles and Elogies that hyperbolize into blasphemy They tell us that this is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the foundation of the Law for whose sake it was that God entred into Covenant with the Israelites that without this the whole Law would lye in the dark yea be meer obscurity and darkness it self as being contrary and repugnant to it self and defective in things necessary to be known that it is joy to the heart and health to the bones that the words of it are more lovely and desirable than the words of the Law and a greater sin to violate the one than thé other that it 's little or no commendation for a Man to read the Bible but to study the Mishna is that for which a Man shall receive the reward of the other World and that no Man can have a peaceable and quiet conscience who leaves the study of the Talmud to go to that of the Bible that the Bible is like Water the Mishna like Wine the Talmud like spiced Wine that all the words of the Rabbins are the very words of the living God from which a Man might not depart though they should tell him his right hand were his left and his left his right nay they blush not nor tremble to assert 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that to study in the holy Bible is nothing else but to lose our time I will mention but one bold and blasphemous sentence more that we may see how far these desperate wretches are given over to a spirit of impiety and infatuation they tell us that he that dissents from his Rabbin or Teacher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dissents from the Divine Majesty but he that believes the words of the wise men believes God himself 21. STRANGE that Men should so far offer violence to their reason so far conquer and subdue their conscience as to be able to talk at this wild and prodigious rate and stranger it would seem but that we know a Generation of Men great Patrons of Tradition too in another Church who mainly endeavour to debase and suppress the Scriptures and value their unwritten Traditions at little less rate than this But I let them pass This is no novel and upstart humour of the Jews they were notoriously guilty of it in our 〈◊〉 days whom we find frequently charging them with their superstitious observances of many little rites and usages derived from the Traditions of the Elders wherein they placed the main of
Birth His austere Education and way of Life His Preaching what His initiating proselytes by Baptism Baptism in use in the Jewish Church It s Original whence His resolution and impartiality His Martyrdom The character given him by Josephus and the Jews The Evangelical Dispensation wherein it exceeds that of Moses It s 〈◊〉 and perfection It s agreeableness to humane nature The Evangelical promises better than those of the Law and in what respects The aids of the Spirit plentifully assorded under the Gospel The admirable confirmation of this Occonomy The great extent and latitude of it Judaism not capable of being communicated to all mankind The comprehensiveness of the Gospel The Duration of the Evangelical Covenant The Mosaical Statutes in what sence said to be for ever The Typical and transient nature of that State The great happiness of Christians under the Occonomy of the Gospel 1. GOD having from the very infancy of the World promised the Messiah as the great Redeemer of Mankind was accordingly pleased in all Ages to make gradual discoveries and manifestations of him the revelations concerning him in every Dispensation of the Church still shining with a bigger and more particular light the nearer this Sun of Righteousness was to his rising The first Gospel and glad tidings of him commenced with the fall of Adam God out of infinite tenderness and commiseration promising to send a person who should triumphantly vindicate and rescue mankind from the power and tyranny of their Enemies and that he should do this by taking the humane nature upon him and being born of the seed of the Woman No further account is given of him till the times of Abraham to whom it was revealed that he should proceed out of his loins and arise out of the Jewish Nation though both Jew and Gentile should be made happy by him To his Grandchild Jacob God made known out of what Tribe of that Nation he should rise the Tribe of Judah and what would be the time of his appearing viz. the departure of the Scepter from Judah the abrogation of the Civil and Legislative power of that Tribe and People accomplished in Herod the Idumaean set over them by the Roman power And this is all we find concerning him under that Oeconomy Under the Legal Dispensation we find Moses foretelling one main 〈◊〉 of his coming which was to be the great Prophet of the Church to whom all were to hearken as an extraordinary person sent from God to acquaint the World with the Councils and the Laws of Heaven The next news we hear of him is from David who was told that he should spring out of his house and family and who frequently speaks of his sufferings and the particular manner of his death by piercing his hands and his feet of his powerful Resurrection that God would not leave his Soul in Hell nor suffer his holy one to see corruption of his triumphant Ascension into Heaven and glorious session at God's right hand From the Prophet Isaiah we have an account of the extraordinary and miraculous manner of his Birth that he should be born of a Virgin and his name be Immanuel of his incomparable furniture of gifts and graces for the execution of his office of the entertainment he was to meet with in the World and of the nature and design of those sufferings which he was to undergo The place of his Birth was foretold by Micah which was to be 〈◊〉 the least of the Cities of Judah but honoured above all the rest with the nativity of a Prince who was to be Ruler in Israel whose goings forth had been from everlasting Lastly the Prophet Daniel 〈◊〉 the particular period of his coming expresly affirming that the Messiah should appear in the World and be cut off as a Victim and Expiation for the sins of the people at the expiration of LXX prophetical weeks or CCCCXC years which accordingly punctually came to pass 2. FOR the date of the prophetick Scriptures concerning the time of the 〈◊〉 's coming being now run out In the fulness of time God sent his Son made of a Woman made under the Law to 〈◊〉 them that were under the Law This being the truth of which God spake by the mouth of all his holy Prophets which have been since the World began But because it was not sit that so great a Person should come into the World without an eminent Harbinger to introduce and usher in his Arrival God had promised that he would send his Messenger who should prepare his way before him even 〈◊〉 the Prophet whom he would send before the coming of that great day of the Lord who should turn the hearts of the Fathers to the Children c. This was particularly accomplished in John the Baptist who came in the power and spirit of Elias He was the Morning-star to the Son of Righteousness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as S. Cyril says of him the great and eminent Fore-runner a Person remarkable upon several accounts First for the extraordinary circumstances of his Nativity his Birth foretold by an Angel sent on purpose to deliver this joyful Message a sign God intended him for great undertakings this being never done but where God designed the Person for some uncommon services his Parents aged and though both righteous before God yet hitherto Childless Heaven does not dispence all its bounty to the same Person Children though great and desirable blessings are yet often denied to those for whom God has otherwise very dear regards Elizabeth was barren and they were both well stricken in years But is any thing too hard for the Lord said God to Abraham in the same case God has the Key of the Womb in his own keeping it is one of the Divine Prerogatives that he makes the barren Woman to keep house and to be a joyful Mother of Children A Son is promised and mighty things said of him a promise which old Zachary had scarce faith enough to digest and therefore had the assurance of it sealed to him by a miraculous dumbness imposed upon him till it was made good the same Miracle at once confirming his faith and punishing his infidelity Accordingly his Mother conceived with Child and as if he would do part of his errand before he was born he leaped in her Womb at her salutation of the Virgin Mary then newly conceived with Child of our Blessed Saviour a piece of homage paid by one to one yet unborn 3. THESE presages were not vain and fallible but produced a Person no less memorable for the admirable strictness and austerity of his 〈◊〉 For having escaped Herod's butcherly and merciless Executioners the Divine providence being a shelter and a covert to him and been educated among the rudenesses and solitudes of the Wilderness his manners and way of life were very 〈◊〉 to his Education His Garments borrowed from no other Wardrobe than the backs
his leisure either we disrepute the infinity of his Wisdom or give clear demonstration of our own vanity 2. When God descended to earth he chose to be born in the Suburbs and retirement of a small Town but he was pleased to die at Jerusalem the Metropolis of Judaea Which chides our shame and pride who are willing to publish our gayeties in Piazza's and the corners of the streets of most populous places but our defects and the instruments of our humiliation we carry into desarts and cover with the night and hide them under ground thinking no secrecy dark enough to hide our shame nor any theatre large enough to behold our pompous vanities for so we make provisions for Pride and take great care to exclude Humility 3. When the Holy Virgin now perceived that the expectation of the Nations was arrived at the very doors of revelation and entrance into the World she brought forth the Holy Jesus who like Light through transparent glass past through or a ripe Pomegranate from a fruitful tree fell to the earth without doing violence to its Nurse and Parent She had no ministers to attend but Angels and neither her Poverty nor her Piety would permit her to provide other Nurses but her self did the offices of a tender and pious Parent She kissed him and worshipped him and thanked him that he would be born of her and she suckled him and bound him in her arms and swadling-bands and when she had 〈◊〉 to God her first scene of joy and Eucharist she softly laid him in the manger till her desires and his own necessities called her to take him and to rock him softly in her arms and from this deportment she read a lecture of Piety and maternal care which Mothers should perform toward their children when they are born not to neglect any of that duty which nature and maternal piety requires 4. Jesus was pleased to be born of a poor Mother in a poor place in a cold winter's night far from home amongst strangers with all the circumstances of humility and poverty And no man will have cause to complain of his course Robe if he remembers the swadling-clothes of this Holy Child nor to be disquieted at his hard Bed when he considers Jesus laid in a manger nor to be discontented at his thin Table when he calls to mind the King of Heaven and Earth was fed with a little breast-milk But since the eternal wisdom of the Father who knew to chuse the good and refuse the evil did chuse a life of Poverty it gives us demonstration that Riches and Honors those idols of the World's esteem are so far from creating true felicities that they are not of themselves eligible in the number of good things however no man is to be ashamed of innocent Poverty of which many wise men make Vows and of which the Holy Jesus made election and his Apostles after him made publick profession And if any man will chuse and delight in the affluence of temporal good things suffering himself to be transported with caitive affections in the pleasures of every day he may well make a question whether he shall speed as well hereafter since God's usual method is that they only who follow Christ here shall be with him for ever 5. The Condition of the person 〈◊〉 was born is here of greatest consideration For he that cried in the Manger that suck'd the paps of a Woman that hath exposed himself to Poverty and a world of inconveniences is the Son of the living God of the same substance with his Father begotten before all Ages before the Morning-stars he is GOD eternal He is also by reason of the personal Union of the Divinity with his Humane nature the Son of God not by Adoption as good Men and beatified Angels are but by an extraordinary and miraculous Generation He is the Heir of his Father's glories and possessions not by succession for his Father cannot die but by an equality of communication He is the express image of his Father's person according to both Natures the miracle and excess of his Godhead being as upon wax imprinted upon all the capacities of his Humanity And after all this he is our Saviour that to our duties of wonder and adoration we may add the affections of love and union as himself besides his being admirable in himself is become profitable to us Verè Verbum hoc est abbreviatum saith the Prophet The eternal Word of the Father is shortned to the dimensions of an infant 6. Here then are concentred the prodigles of Greatness and Goodness of Wisdom and Charity of Meekness and Humility and march all the way in mysterie and incomprehensible mixtures if we consider him in the bosome of his Father where he is seated by the postures of Love and essential Felicity and in the Manger where Love also placed him and an infinite desire to communicate his Felicities to us As he is God his Throne is in the Heaven and he fills all things by his immensity as he is Man he is circumscribed by an uneasie Cradle and cries in a Stable As he is God he is seated upon a super-exalted Throne as Man exposed to the lowest estate of uneasiness and need As God clothed in a robe of Glory at the same instant when you may behold and wonder at his Humanity wrapped in cheap and unworthy Cradle-bands As God he is incircled with millions of Angels as Man in the company of Beasts As God he is the eternal Word of the Father Eternal sustained by himself all-sufficient and without need and yet he submitted himself to a condition imperfect inglorious indigent and necessitous And this consideration is apt and natural to produce great affections of love duty and obedience desires of union and conformity to his sacred Person Life Actions and Laws that we resolve all our thoughts and finally determine all our reason and our passions and capacities upon that saying of St. Paul He that loves not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be accursed 7. Upon the consideration of these Glories if a pious soul shall upon the supports of Faith and Love enter into the Stable where this great King was born and with affections behold every member of the Holy Body and thence pass into the Soul of Jesus we may see a scheme of holy Meditations enough to entertain all the degrees of our love and of our understanding and make the mysterie of the Nativity as fruitful of holy thoughts as it was of Blessings to us And it may serve instead of a description of the Person of Jesus conveyed to us in imperfect and Apocryphal schemes If we could behold his sacred Feet with those affections which the Holy Virgin did we have transmitted to us those Mysteries in story which she had first in part by spiritual and divine infused light and afterwards by observation Those holy Feet tender and unable to support his sacred Body should bear him over
connivences there no protections or friendships or consideration or indulgences but Herod caus'd that his own child which was at nurse in the coasts of Bethlehem should bleed to death which made Augustus Caesar to say that in Heroa's house it were better to be a 〈◊〉 than a Child because the custome of the Nation did secure a Hog from Heroa's knife but no Religion could secure his Child The sword being thus made sharp by Herod's commission killed 14000 pretty Babes as the Greeks in their Calendar and the 〈◊〉 of AEthiopia do commemorate in their offices of Liturgy For Herod crafty and malicious that is perfectly Tyrant had caused all the Children to be gathered together which the credulous Mothers supposing it had been to take account of their age and number in order to some taxing hindred not but unwittingly suffered themselves and their Babes to be betrayed to an irremediable 〈◊〉 4. Then was 〈◊〉 that which was spoken by Jeremy the Prophet saying Lamentation and weeping and great mourning Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted All the synonyma's of sadness were little enough to express this great weeping when 14000 Mothers in one day saw their pretty Babes pouring forth their blood into that bosome whence not long before they had sucked milk and instead of those pretty smiles which use to entertain the fancy and dear affections of their Mothers nothing but affrighting shrieks and then gastly looks The mourning was great like the mourning in the valley of Hinnom and there was no comforter their sorrow was too big to be cured till it should lie down alone and rest with its own weariness 5. But the malice of Herod went also into the Hill-countrey and hearing that of John the son of Zachary great things were spoken by which he was designed to a great ministery about this young Prince he attempted in him also to rescind the Prophecies and sent a messenger of death towards him but the Mother's care had been early with him and sent him into desart places where he continued till the time appointed of his manifestation unto 〈◊〉 But as the Children of Bethlehem died in the place of Christ so did the Father of the Baptist die for his Child For Herod 〈◊〉 Zachary between the Temple and the Altar because he refused to betray his son to the fury of that rabid Bear Though some persons very eminent amongst the Stars of the Primitive Church report a Tradition that a place being separated in the Temple for Virgins Zachary suffered the Mother of our Lord to abide there after the Birth of her Holy Son affirming her still to be a Virgin and that for this reason not Herod but the Scribes and Pharisees did kill Zachary 6. Tertullian reports that the bloud of Zachary had so 〈◊〉 the stones of the pavement which was the Altar on which the good old Priest was sacrificed that no art or industry could wash the tincture out the dye and guilt being both indeleble as if because God did intend to exact of that Nation all the bloud of righteous persons from Abel to Zacharias who was the last of the Martyrs of the Synagogue he would leave a character of their guilt in their eyes to upbraid their Irreligion Cruelty and 〈◊〉 Some there are who affirm these words of our Blessed Saviour not to relate to any Zachary who had been already slain but to be a Prophecy of the last of all the Martyrs of the Jews who should be slain immediately before the destruction of the last Temple and the dissolution of the Nation Certain it is that such a Zachary the son of 〈◊〉 if we may believe Josephus was slain in the middle of the Temple a little before it was destroyed and it is agreeable to the nature of the Prophecy and reproof here made by our Blessed Saviour that from Abel to Zachary should take in all the righteous bloud from first to last till the iniquity was complete and it is not imaginable that the bloud of our Blessed Lord and of S. James their Bishop for whose death many of themselves thought God destroyed their City should be left out of the account which yet would certainly be left out if any other Zachary should be 〈◊〉 than he whom they last slew and in proportion to this Cyprian de 〈◊〉 expounds that which we read in the past tense to signifie the future ye slew i. e. shall slay according to the style often used by Prophets and as the Aorist of an uncertain signification will beat But the first great instance of the Divine vengeance for these Executions was upon Herod who in very few years after was smitten of God with so many plagues and tortures that himself alone seemed like an Hospital of the 〈◊〉 For he was tormented with a soft slow fire like that of burning Iron or the cinders of Yew in his body in his bowels with intolerable Colicks and Ulcers in his natural parts with Worms in his feet with Gout in his nerves with Convulsions 〈◊〉 of breathing and out of divers parts of his body issued out so impure and ulcerous a steam that the loathsomness pain and indignation made him once to snatch a knife with purpose to have killed himself but that he was prevented by a Nephew of his that stood there in his attendance 7. But as the flesh of Beasts grows callous by stripes and the pressures of the yoak so did the heart of Herod by the loads of Divine vengeance God began his Hell here and the pains of Hell never made any man less impious for Herod perceiving that he must now die first put to death his son Antipater under pretence that he would have poisoned him and that the last scene of his life might for pure malice and exalted spight out-do all the rest because he believed the Jewish nation would rejoyce at his death he assembled all the Nobles of the people and put them in prison giving in charge to his Sister Salome that when he was expiring his last all the Nobility should be slain that his death might be lamented with a perfect and universal sorrow 8. But God that brings to nought the counsels of wicked Princes turned the design against the intendment of Herod for when he was dead and could not call his Sister to account for disobeying his most bloudy and unrighteous commands she released all the imprisoned and despairing Gentlemen and made the day of her Brother's death a perfect Jubilee a day of joy such as was that when the Nation was delivered from the violence of Haman in the days of 〈◊〉 9. And all this while God had provided a Sanctuary for the Holy Child Jesus For God seeing the secret purposes of bloud which Herod had sent his Angel who appeared to Joseph in a dream saying Arise and take the young Child and his Mother and fly into Egypt and be thou there until I bring thee word
for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy him Then he arose and took the young Child and his Mother by night and departed into Egypt And they made their first abode in Hermopolis in the Countrey of Thebais whither when they first arrived the Child Jesus being by design or providence carried into a Temple all the Statues of the Idol-gods fell down like Dagon at the presence of the Ark and suffered their timely and just dissolution and dishonour according to the Prophecy of Isaiah Behold the Lord shall come into Egypt and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence And in the Life of the Prophet Jeremy written by Epiphanius it is reported that he told the Egyptian Priests that then their Idols should be broken in pieces when a Holy Virgin with her Child should enter into their Countrey which Prophecy possibly might be the cause that the Egyptians did besides their vanities worship also an Infant in a manger and a Virgin in her bed 10. From Hermopolis to Maturea went these Holy Pilgrims in pursuance of their safety and provisions where it was reported they dwelt in a garden of balsam till Joseph being at the end of seven years as it is commonly believed ascertain'd by an Angel of the death of Herod and commanded to return to the land of Israel he was obedient to the heavenly Vision and returned But hearing that Archelaus did reign in the place of his Father and knowing that the Cruelty and Ambition of Herod was 〈◊〉 or intail'd upon Archelaus being also warned to turn aside into the parts of Galilee which was of a distinct jurisdiction governed indeed by one of Herod's sons but not by Archelaus thither he diverted and there that Holy Family remained in the City of Nazareth whence the Holy Child had the appellative of a Nazarene Ad SECT VI. Considerations upon the Death of the Innocents and the Flight of the Holy JESVS into Egypt 1. HErod having called the Wise men and received information of their design and the circumstances of the Child pretended Religion too and desired them to bring him word when they had found the Babe that he might come and worship him meaning to make a Sacrifice of him to whom he should pay his Adoration and in stead of investing the young Prince with a Royal purple he would have stained his swadling-bands with his bloud It is ever dangerous when a wicked Prince pretends Religion his design is then foulest by how much it needs to put on a fairer out-side but it was an early policy in the world and it concerned mens interests to seem Religious when they thought that to be so was an abatement of great designs When Jezabel designed the robbing and destroying Naboth she sent to the Elders to proclaim a Fast for the external and visible remonstrances of Religion leave in the spirits of men a great reputation of the seeming person and therefore they will not rush into a furious sentence against his actions at least not judge them with prejudice against the man towards whom they are so fairly prepared but do some violence to their own understanding and either disbelieve their own Reason or excuse the fact or think it but an errour or a less crime or the incidencies of humanity or however are so long in decreeing against him whom they think to be religious that the rumour is abated or the stream of indignation is diverted by other laborious arts intervening before our zeal is kindled and so the person is unjudged or at least the design secured 2. But in this humane Policy was exceedingly infatuated and though Herod had trusted his design to no keeper but himself and had pretended fair having Religion for the word and called the Wise men privately and intrusted them with no imployment but a civil request an account of the success of their journey which they had no reason or desire to conceal yet his heart was opened to the eye of Heaven and the Sun was not more visible than his dark purpose was to God and it succeeded accordingly the Child was sent away the Wise men warned not to return Herod was mocked and enraged and so his crast became foolish and vain and so are all counsels intended against God or any thing of which he himself hath undertaken the protection For although we understand not the reasons of security because we see not that admirable concentring of infinite things in the Divine Providence whereby God brings his purposes to act by ways unlook'd for and sometimes contradictory yet the publick and perpetual experience of the world hath given continual demonstrations that all evil counsels have come to nought that the succeeding of an impious design is no argument that the man is prosperous that the curse is then surest when his fortune spreads the largest that the contradiction and impossibilities of deliverance to pious persons are but an opportunity and engagement for God to do wonders and to glorifie his power and to exalt his mercy by the instances of miraculous or extraordinary events And as the Afflictions happening to good men are alleviated by the support of God's good Spirit and enduring them here are but consignations to an honourable amends hereafter so the succeeding Prosperities of fortunate impiety when they meet with punishment in the next or in the third Age or in the deletion of a people five Ages after are the greatest arguments of God's Providence who keeps wrath in store and forgets not to do judgment for all them that are oppressed with wrong It was laid up with God and was perpetually in his eye being the matter of a lasting durable and unremitted anger 3. But God had care of the Holy Child he sent his Angel to warn Joseph with the Babe and his Mother to fly into Egypt Joseph and Mary instantly arise and without inquiry how they shall live there or when they shall return or how be secured or what accommodations they shall have in their Journey at the same hour of the night begin the Pilgrimage with the chearfulness of Obedience and the securities of Faith and the confidence of Hope and the joys of Love knowing themselves to be recompensed for all the trouble they could endure that they were instruments of the safety of the Holy Jesus that they then were serving God that they were encircled with the securities of the Divine Providence and in these dispositions all places were alike for every region was a Paradise where they were in company with Jesus And indeed that man wants many degrees of faith and prudence who is solicitous for the support of his necessities when he is doing the commandment of God If he commands thee to offer a Sacrifice himself will provide a Lamb or enable thee to find one and he would remove thee into a state of separation where thy body needs no supplies of provision if he meant thou shouldest serve him without provisions He will
prepare the way to the coming of our Blessed Lord he preached Repentance and baptized all that professed they did repent He taught the Jews to live good lives and baptized with the Baptism of a Prophet such as was not unusually done by extraordinary and holy persons in the change or renewing of Discipline or Religion Whether 〈◊〉 's Baptism was from heaven or os men Christ asked the Pharisees That it was from heaven the people therefore believed because he was a Prophet and a holy person but it implies also that such Baptisms are sometimes from men that is used by 〈◊〉 of an eminent Religion or extraordinary fame for the gathering of Disciples and admitting Proselytes and the Disciples of Christ did so too even before Christ had instituted the Sacrament for the Christian Church the Disciples that came to Christ were baptized by his Apostles 10. And now we are come to the gates of Baptism All these till John were but Types and preparatory Baptisms and John's Baptism was but the prologue to the Baptism of Christ. The Jewish Baptisms admitted Proselytes to Moses and to the Law of Ceremonies John's Baptism called them to 〈◊〉 in the Messias now appearing and to repent of their sins to enter into the Kingdom which was now at 〈◊〉 and preached that Repentance which should be for the 〈◊〉 os 〈◊〉 His Baptism remitted no sins but preached and consigned Repentance which in the belief of the 〈◊〉 whom he pointed to should pardon sins But because he was taken from his Office before the work was completed the Disciples of Christ 〈◊〉 it They went forth preaching the same Sermon of Repentance and the approach of the Kingdom and baptized or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Disciples as John did only they as it is probable baptized in the Name of Jesus which it is not so likely John did And this very thing might be the cause of the different forms of Baptism recorded in the Acts of baptizing in the Name of 〈◊〉 and at other times In the 〈◊〉 of the Father Son and 〈◊〉 Ghost the sormer being the manner of doing it in pursuance of the design of John's Baptism and the latter the form of Institution by Christ for the whole Christian Church appointed after his Resurrection the Disciples at first using promiscuously what was used by the same Authority though with some difference of Mystery 11. The Holy Jesus having found his way ready prepared by the Preaching of 〈◊〉 and by his Baptism and the 〈◊〉 manner of adopting Proselytes and Disciples into the Religion a way chalked out for him to initiate Disciples into his Religion took what was so prepared and changed it into a perpetual Sacrament He kept the Ceremony that they who were led only by outward things might be the better called in and easier enticed into the Religion when they entred by a Ceremony which their Nation always used in the like cases and therefore without change of the outward act he put into it a new spirit and gave it a new grace and a proper efficacy he sublimed it to higher ends and adorned it with Stars of Heaven he made it to signific greater Mysteries to convey greater Blessings to consign the bigger Promises to cleanse deeper than the skin and to carry Proselytes farther than the gates of the Institution For so he was pleased to do in the other Sacrament he took the Ceremony which he found ready in the Custom of the Jews where the Major-domo after the Paschal Supper gave Bread and Wine to every person of his family he changed nothing of it without but transferred the Rite to greater Mysteries and put his own Spirit to their Sign and it became a Sacrament Evangelical It was so also in the matter of Excommunication where the Jewish practice was made to pass into Christian discipline without violence and noise old things became new while he fulfilled the Law making it up in full measures of the Spirit 12. By these steps Baptism passed on to a Divine Evangelical institution which we find to be consigned by three Evangelists Go ye therefore and teach all Nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost It was one of the last Commandments the Holy Jesus gave upon the earth when he taught his Apostles the things which concerned his Kingdom For he that believes and is baptized shall be saved but 〈◊〉 a man be born of Water and the Holy Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven agreeable to the decretory words of God by Abraham in the Circumcision to which Baptism does succeed in the consignation of the same Covenant and the same Spiritual Promises The uncircumcised child whose flesh is not circumcised that soul shall be cut off from his people he hath broken my Covenant The Manichees Selencas Hermias and their followers people of a day's abode and small interest but of malicious doctrine taught Baptism not to be necessary not to be used upon this ground because they supposed that it was proper to John to baptize with water and reserved for Christ as his peculiar to baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire Indeed Christ baptized none otherwise he sent his Spirit upon the Church in Pentecost and baptized them with fire the Spirit appearing like a flame but he appointed his Apostles to baptize with water and they did so and their successors after them every-where and for ever not expounding but obeying the preceptive words of their Lord which were almost the last that he spake upon earth And I cannot think it needful to prove this to be necessary by any more Arguments for the words are so plain that they need no exposition and yet if they had been obscure the universal practice of the Apostles and the Church for ever is a sufficient declaration of the Commandment No Tradition is more universal no not of Scripture it self no words are plainer no not the Ten Commandments and if any suspicion can be superinduced by any jealous or less discerning person it will need no other refutation but to turn his eyes to those lights by which himself fees Scripture to be the Word of God and the Commandments to be the declaration of his Will 13. But that which will be of greatest concernment in this affair is to consider the great benefits are conveyed to us in this Sacrament for this will highly conclude that the Precept was 〈◊〉 ever which God so seconds with his grace and mighty blessings and the susception of it necessary because we cannot be without those excellent things which are the Graces of the Sacrament 14. First The first fruit is That in Baptism we are admitted to the Kingdom of Christ presented unto him consigned with his Sacrament enter into his Militia give up our Understandings and our choice to the obedience of Christ and in all senses that we can become his Disciples witnessing a good
be they must be for it is not here as in Goods where we are permitted to use all or some and give what portion we please out of them but we cannot do our duty towards our Children unless we give them wholly to God and offer them to his service and to his grace The first does honour to God the second does charity to the Children The effects and real advantages will appear in the sequel In the mean time this Argument extends thus sar That Children may be presented to God acceptably in order to his service And it was highly preceptive when our Blessed Saviour commanded that we should 〈◊〉 little children to come to him and when they came they carried away a Blessing along with them He was desirous they should partake of his Merits he is not willing neither is it his Father's will that any of these little ones should perish And therefore he died for them and loved and blessed them and so he will now if they be brought to him and presented as Candidates of the Religion and of the Resurrection Christ hath a Blessing for our Children but let them come to him that is be presented at the doors of the Church to the Sacrament of Adoption and Initiation for I know no other way for them to come 13. Secondly Children may be adopted into the Covenant of the Gospel that is made partakers of the Communion of Saints which is the second Effect of Baptism parts of the Church members of Christ's Mystical body and put into the order of eternal life Now concerning this it is certain the Church clearly hath power to do her offices in order to it The faithful can pray for all men they can do their piety to some persons with more regard and greater earnestness they can admit whom they please in their proper dispositions to a participation of all their holy Prayers and Communions and Preachings and Exhortations and if all this be a blessing and all this be the actions of our own Charity who can hinder the Church of God from admitting Infants to the communion of all their pious offices which can do them benefit in their present capacity How this does necessarily infer Baptism I shall afterwards discourse But for the present I enumerate That the blessings of Baptism are communicable to them they may be admitted into a fellowship of all the Prayers and Priviledges of the Church and the Communion of Saints in blessings and prayers and holy offices But that which is of greatest perswasion and convincing efficacy in this particular is That the Children of the Church are as capable of the same Covenant as the children of the Jews But it was the same Covenant that Circumcision did consign a spiritual Covenant under a veil and now it is the same spiritual Covenant without the veil which is evident to him that considers it thus 14. The words of the Covenant are these I am the Almighty God walk before me and be thou perfect I will multiply thee exceedingly Thou shalt be a Father of many Nations Thy name shall not be Abram but Abraham Nations and Kings shall be out of thee I will be a God unto thee and unto thy seed after thee and I will give all the Land of Canaan to thy seed and All the Males shall be circumcised and it shall be a token of the Covenant between me and thee and He that is not circumcised shall be cut off from his people The Covenant which was on 〈◊〉 's part was To walk before God and to be perfect on God's part To bless him with a numerous issue and them with the Land of Canaan and the sign was Circumcision the token of the Covenant Now in all this here was no duty to which the posterity was obliged nor any blessing which 〈◊〉 could perceive or feel because neither he nor his posterity did enjoy the Promise for many hundred years after the Covenant and therefore as there was a duty for the posterity which is not here expressed so there was a blessing for Abraham which was concealed under the leaves of a temporal Promise and which we shall better understand from them whom the Spirit of God hath taught the mysteriousness of this transaction The argument indeed and the observation is wholly S. Paul's Abraham and the Patriarchs died in faith not having received the Promises viz. of a possession in Canaan They saw the Promises afar off they embraced them and looked through the Cloud and the temporal veil this was not it they might have returned to Canaan if that had been the object of their desires and the design of the Promise but they desired and did seek a Country but it was a better and that a heavenly This was the object of their desire and the end of their seach and the reward of their Faith and the secret of their Promise And therefore Circumcision was a seal of the righteousness of Faith which he had before his Circumcision before the making this Covenant and therefore it must principally relate to an effect and a blessing greater than was afterwards expressed in the temporal Promise which effect was forgiveness of sins a not imputing to us our infirmities Justification by Faith accounting that for righteousness and these effects or graces were promised to Abraham not only for his posterity after the flesh but his children after the spirit even to all that shall believe and walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham which he walked in being yet uncircumcised 15. This was no other but the Covenant of the Gospel though afterwards otherwise consigned for so the Apostle expresly affirms that Abraham was the father of Circumcision viz. by virtue of this Covenant not only to them that are circumcised but to all that believe for this promise was not through the Law of Works or of Circumcision but of Faith And therefore as S. Paul observes God promised that Abraham should be a father not of that Nation only but of many Nations and the heir of the world that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through Faith And if ye be Christ's then ye are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the Promise Since then the Covenant of the Gospel is the Covenant of Faith and not of Works and the Promises are spiritual not secular and Abraham the father of the faithful Gentiles as well as the circumcised Jews and the heir of the world not by himself but by his seed or the Son of Man our Lord Jesus it follows that the Promises which Circumcision did seal were the same Promises which are consigned in Baptism the Covenant is the same only that God's people are not impal'd in 〈◊〉 and the veil is taken away and the Temporal is passed into Spiritual and the result will be this That to
to relinquish the paths of darkness this is the way of the Kingdom and the purpose of the Gospel and the proper work of Faith 6. And if we consider upon what stock Faith it self is instrumental and operative of Salvation we shall find it is in it self acceptable because it is a Duty and commanded and therefore it is an act of Obedience a work of the Gospel a submitting the Understanding a denying the Affections a laying aside all interests and a bringing our thoughts under the obedience of Christ. This the Apostle calls the Obedience of Faith And it is of the same condition and constitution with other Graces all which equally relate to Christ and are as firm instruments of union and are washed by the bloud of Christ and are sanctified by his Death and apprehend him in their capacity and degrees some higher and some not so high but Hope and Charity apprehend Christ in a measure and proportion greater than Faith when it distinguishes from them So that if Faith does the work of Justification as it is a mere relation to Christ 〈◊〉 so also does Hope and Charity or if these are Duties and good works so also is Faith and they all being alike commanded in order to the same end and encouraged by the same reward are also accepted upon the same stock which is that they are acts of Obedience and relation too they obey Christ and lay hold upon Christ's merits and are but several instances of the great duty of a Christian but the actions of several faculties of the 〈◊〉 Creature But 〈◊〉 Faith is the beginning Grace and hath insluence and causality in the production of the other 〈◊〉 all the other as they are united in Duty are also united in their Title and appellative they are all called by the name of Faith because they are parts of Faith as Faith is taken in the larger sence and when it is taken in the strictest and distinguishing sence they are 〈◊〉 and proper products by way of natural emanation 7. That a good life is the genuine and true-born issue of Faith no man questions that knows himself the Disciple of the Holy Jesus but that Obedience is the same thing with Faith and that all Christian Graces are parts of its bulk and constitution is also the doctrine of the Holy Ghost and the Grammar of Scripture making Faith and Obedience to be terms coincident and expressive of each other For Faith is not a single Star but a Constellation a chain of Graces called by S. Paul the power of God unto salvation to every believer that is Faith is all that great instrument by which God intends to bring us to Heaven and he gives this reason In the Gospel the 〈◊〉 cousness of God is revealed from faith to faith for it is written The 〈◊〉 shall live by Faith Which discourse makes Faith to be a course of Sanctity and holy 〈◊〉 a continuation of a Christian's duty such a duty as not only gives the first breath but by which a man lives the life of Grace The just shall live by Faith that is such a Faith as grows from step to step till the whole righteousness of God be fulfilled in it From faith to faith saith the Apostle which S. 〈◊〉 expounds From Faith believing to Faith obeying from imperfect Faith to Faith made perfect by the animation of Charity that he who is justified may be justified still For as there are several degrees and parts of Justification so there are several degrees of Faith answerable to it that in all sences it may be true that by Faith we are justified and by Faith we live and by Faith we are saved For if we proceed from Faith to Faith from believing to obeying from Faith in the Understanding to Faith in the Will from Faith barely assenting to the revelations of God to Faith obeying the Commandments of God from the body of Faith to the soul of Faith that is to Faith sormed and made alive by Charity then we shall proceed from Justification to Justification that is from Remission of Sins to become the Sons of God and at last to an actual possession of those glories to which we were here consigned by the fruits of the Holy Ghost 8. And in this sence the Holy Jesus is called by the Apostle the Author and 〈◊〉 of our Faith he is the principle and he is the promoter he begins our Faith in Revelations and perfects it in Commandments he leads us by the assent of our Understanding and finishes the work of his grace by a holy life which S. Paul there expresses by its several constituent parts as laying aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us and running with patience the race that is set before us resisting unto bloud striving against sin for in these things Jesus is therefore made our example because he is the Author and Finisher of our Faith without these Faith is imperfect But the thing is something plainer yet for S. James says that Faith lives not but by Charity and the life or essence of a thing is certainly the better part of its constitution as the Soul is to a Man And if we mark the manner of his probation it will come home to the main point For he proves that Abraham's saith was therefore imputed to him for Righteousness because he was justified by Works Was not Abraham our Father justified by Works when he offered up his son And the Scripture was fulfilled saying Abraham believed God and it was imputed to him for righteousness For Faith wrought with his Works and made his Faith perfect It was a dead and an imperfect Faith unless Obedience gave it being and all its integral or essential parts So that Faith and Charity in the sence of a Christian are but one duty as the Understanding and the Will are but one reasonable Soul only they produce several actions in order to one another which are but divers 〈◊〉 and the same spirit 9. Thus S. Paul describing the Faith of the Thessalonians calls it that whereby they turned from Idols and whereby they served the living God and the Faith of the Patriarchs believed the world's Creation received the Promises did Miracles wrought Rightcousness and did and suffered so many things as make up the integrity of a holy life And therefore disobedience and unrighteousness is called want of Faith and Heresie which is opposed to Faith is a work of the flesh because Faith it self is a work of Righteousness And that I may enumerate no more particulars the thing is so known that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which in propriety of language signifies 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 is rendred disobedience and the not providing for our families is an act of 〈◊〉 by the same reason and analogy that 〈◊〉 or Charity and a holy life are the duties of a Christian of a justifying
Resurrection of his body after three days death but he expressed it in the metaphor of the Temple Destroy this Temple and I will build it again in three days He spake of the Temple of his Body and they understood him of the Temple at Jerusalem and it was never rightly construed till it was accomplished 2. At this publick Convention of the Jewish Nation Jesus did many Miracles published himself to be the Messias and perswaded many Disciples amongst whom was Nicodemus a Doctor of the Law and a Ruler of the Nation he came by night to Jesus and affirmed himself to be convinced by the Miracles which he had seen for no man could do those miracles except God be with him When Jesus perceived his understanding to be so far disposed he began to instruct him in the great secret and mysteriousness of Regeneration telling him that every production is of the same nature and condition with its parent from flesh comes flesh and corruption from the Spirit comes spirit and life and immortality and nothing from a principle of nature could arrive to a supernatural end and therefore the only door to enter into the Kingdom of God was Water by the manuduction of the Spirit and by this Regeneration we are put into a new capacity of living a spiritual life in order to a spiritual and supernatural end 3. This was strange Philosophy to Nicodemus but Jesus bad him not to wonder for this is not a work of humanity but a fruit of God's Spirit and an issue of Predestination For the Spirit bloweth where it listeth and is as the wind certain and notorious in the effects but secret in the principle and in the manner of production And therefore this Doctrine was not to be estimated by any proportions to natural principles or experiments of sense but to the secrets of a new Metaphysick and abstracted separate Speculations Then Christ proceeds in his Sermon telling him there are yet higher things for him to apprehend and believe for this in respect of some other mysteriousness of his Gospel was but as Earth in comparison of Heaven Then he tells of his own descent from Heaven foretells his Death and Ascension and the blessing of Redemption which he came to work for mankind he preaches of the Love of the Father the Mission of the Son the rewards of Faith and the glories of Eternity he upbraids the unbelieving and impenitent and declares the differences of a holy and a corrupt Conscience the shame and fears of the one the confidence and serenity of the other And this is the summ of his Sermon to Nicodemus which was the fullest of mystery and speculation and abstracted sences of any that he ever made except that which he made immediately before his Passion all his other Sermons being more practical 4. From Jerusalem Jesus goeth into the Country of Judaea attended by divers Disciples whose understandings were brought into subjection and obedience to Christ upon confidence of the divinity of his Miracles There his Disciples did receive all comers and baptized them as John at the same time did and by that Ceremony admitted them to the Discipline and Institution according to the custom of the Doctors and great Prophets among the Jews whose Baptizing their Scholars was the ceremony of their Admission As soon as John heard it he acquitted himself in publick by renewing his former testimony concerning Jesus affirming him to be the Messias and now the time was come that Christ must increase and the Baptist suffer diminution for Christ came from above was above all and the summ of his Doctrine was that which he had heard and seen from the Father whom God sent to that purpose to whom God had set his seal that he was true who spake the words of God whom the Father loved to whō he gave the Spirit without measure and into whose hands God had delivered all things this was he whose testimony the world received not And that they might know not only what person they sleighted but how great Salvation also they neglected he summs up all his Sermons and finishes his Mission with this saying He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not on the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him 5. For now that the Baptist had fulfilled his Office of bearing witness unto Jesus God was pleased to give him his writ of ease and bring him to his reward upon this occasion John who had so learned to despise the world and all its exteriour vanities and impertinent relations did his duty justly and so without respect of persons that as he reproved the people for their prevarications so he spared not Herod for his but abstaining from all expresses of the spirit of scorn and asperity mingling no discontents interests nor mutinous intimations with his Sermons he told Herod it was not lawful for him to have his Brother's wife For which Sermon he felt the furies and malice of a woman's spleen was cast into prison and about a year after was sacrificed to the scorn and pride of a lustful woman and her immodest daughter being at the end of the second year of Christ's Preaching beheaded by Herod's command who would not retract his promise because of his honour and a rash vow he made in the gayety of his Lust and complacencies of his riotous dancings His head was brought up in a dish and made a Festival-present to the young girl who gave it to her mother a Cruelty that was not known among the Barbarisms of the worst of people to mingle banquetings with bloud and sights of death an insolency and inhumanity for which the 〈◊〉 Orators accused Q. Flaminius of Treason because to satisfie the wanton cruelty of Placentia he caused a condemned slave to be killed at supper and which had no precedent but in the furies of Marius who caused the head of the Consul Antonius to be brought up to him in his Feasts which he handled with much pleasure and insolency 6. But God's Judgments which sleep not long found out Herod and marked him for a Curse For the Wise of Herod who was the Daughter of Aretas a King of Arabia Petraea being repudiated by paction with Herodias provoked her Father to commence a War with Herod who prevailed against Herod in a great Battel defeating his whole Army and forcing him to an inglorious flight which the Jews generally expounded to be a Judgment on him for the unworthy and barbarous execution and murther of John the Baptist God in his wisdom and severity making one sin to be the punishment of another and neither of them both to pass without the signature of a Curse And Nicephorus reports that the dancing daughter of Herodias passing over a frozen lake the ice brake and she fell up to the neck in water and her head was parted from her body by the violence of the fragments shaked by the water and
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
them not to retain them or invite them but as objects of displeasure to avert them from us 2. To resist all lustful desires and extinguish them by their proper correctories and remedies 3. To resuse all occasions opportunities and temptations to Impurity denying to please a wanton 〈◊〉 or to use a 〈◊〉 gesture or to go into a danger or to converse with an improper unsafe object hating the garment spotted with the flesh so S. Jude calls it and not to look upon a maid so Job not to sit with a woman that is a singer so the son of Sirach 4. To be of a liberal soul not mingling with affections of mony and inclinations of covetousness not doing any act of violence rapine or injustice 5. To be ingenuous in our thoughts purposes and professions speaking nothing contrary to our intentions but being really what we 〈◊〉 6. To give all our faculties and affections to God without dividing interests between God and his enemies without entertaining of any one crime in society with our pretences for God 7. Not to lie in sin but instantly to repent of it and return purifying our Conscience from dead works 8. Not to dissemble our faith or belief when we are required to its confession pretending a perswasion complying with those from whom 〈◊〉 we differ Lust Covetousness and Hypocrisie are the three great enemies of this Grace they are the motes of our eyes and the spots of our Souls The reward of Purity is the vision beatifical If we are pure as God is pure we shall also see him as he is When we awake up after his likeness we shall 〈◊〉 hold his presence To which in this world we are consigned by freedom from the cares of Covetousness the shame of Lust the fear of discovery and the stings of an evil Conscience which are the portion of the several Impurities here forbidden 17. Seventhly Blessed are the Peace-makers for they shall be called the children of God The wisdome of God is first pure and then peaceable that 's the order of the Beatitudes As soon as Jesus was born the Angels sang a Hymn Glory be to God on high and on earth peace good will towards men signifying the two great 〈◊〉 upon which Christ was dispatched in his Legation from Heaven to earth He is the Prince of Peace Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man ever shall see God The acts of this Grace are 1. To mortisie our Anger 〈◊〉 and fiery dispositions apt to enkindle upon every slight accident inadvertency or misfortune of a friend or servant 2. Not to be hasty rash provocative or upbraiding in our language 3. To live quietly and serenely in our families and neighbourhoods 4. Not to backbite slander misreport or undervalue any man carrying tales or sowing dissention between brethren 5. Not to interest our selves in the quarrels of others by abetting either part except where Charity calls us to rescue the oppressed and then also to do a work of charity without mixtures of uncharitableness 6. To avoid all suits of Law as much as is possible without intrenching upon any other collateral obligation towards a third interest or a necessary support for our selves or great conveniency for our families or if we be engaged in Law to pursue our just interests with just means and charitable maintenance 7. To endeavour by all means to reconcile disagreeing persons 8. To endeavour by affability and fair deportment to win the love of our neighbours 9. To offer satisfaction to all whom we have wronged or slandered and to remit the offences of others and in trials of right to find out the most charitable expedient to determine it as by indifferent arbitration or something like it 10. To be open free and ingenuous in reprehensions and fair expostulations with persons whom we conceive to have wronged us that no seed of malice or rancor may be latent in us and upon the breath of a new displeasure break out into a flame 11. To be modest in our arguings disputings and demands not laying great interest upon trifles 12. To moderate balance and temper our zeal by the rules of Prudence and the allay of Charity that we quarrel not for opinions nor intitle God in our impotent and mistaken fancies nor lose Charity for a pretence of an article of Faith 13. To pray heartily for our enemies real or imaginary always loving and being apt to benefit their persons and to cure their faults by charitable remedies 14. To abstain from doing all affronts disgraces slightings and 〈◊〉 jearings and mockings of our neighbour not giving him appellatives of scorn or irrision 15. To submit to all our Superiours in all things either doing what they command or suffering what they impose at no hand lifting our 〈◊〉 against those upon whom the characters of God and the marks of Jesus are imprinted in signal and eminent authority such as are principally the King and then the Bishops whom God hath set to watch over our Souls 16. Not to invade the possessions of our Neighbours or commence War but when we are bound by justice and legal trust to defend the rights of others or our own in order to our duty 17. Not to speak evil of dignities or undervalue their persons or publish their faults or upbraid the levities of our Governours knowing that they also are designed by God to be converted to us for castigation and amendment of us 18. Not to be busie in other mens affairs And then the peace of God will rest upon us The reward is no less than the adoption and inheritance of sons for he hath given unto us power to be called the sons of God for he is the Father of Peace and the Sons of Peace are the Sons of God and theresore have a title to the inheritance of Sons to be heirs with God and coheirs with Christ in the kingdom of Peace and essential and never-failing charity 18. Eightly Blessed are they which are Persecuted sor righteousness sake for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven This being the hardest command in the whole Discipline of Jesus is fortified with a double Blessedness for it follows immediately Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you meaning that all Persecution for a cause of Righteousness though the affliction be instanced only in reproachful language shall be a title to the Blessedness Any suffering for any good or harmless action is a degree of Martyrdom It being the greatest testimony in the world of the greatest love to quit that for God which hath possessed our most natural regular and orderly affections It is a preferring God's cause before our own interest it is a loving of Vertue without secular ends it is the noblest the most resigned ingenuous valiant act in the world to die for 〈◊〉 whom we never have seen it is the crown of Faith the confidence of Hope and our greatest Charity The Primitive
pro sua rererentâ—â— 1. THE Soul of a Christian is the house of God Ye are God's building saith S. Paul but the house of God is the house of Prayer and therefore Prayer is the work of the Soul whose organs are intended for instruments of the Divine praises and when every stop and pause of those instruments is but the conclusion of a Collect and every breathing is a Prayer then the Body becomes a Temple and the Soul is the Sanctuary and more private recess and place of entercourse Prayer is the great duty and the greatest priviledge of a Christian it is his entercourse with God his Sanctuary in troubles his remedy for sins his cure of griefs and as S. Gregory calls it it is the principal instrument whereby we minister to God in execution of the decrees of eternal Predestination and those things which God intends for us we bring to our selves by the mediation of holy Prayers Prayer is the ascent of the mind to God and a petitioning for such things as we need for our support and duty It is an abstract and summary of Christian Religion Prayer is an act of Religion and Dinine Worship confessing his power and his mercy it celebrates his Attributes and confesses his glories and reveres his person and implores his aid and gives thanks for his blessings it is an act of Humility condescension and dependence expressed in the prostration of our bodies and humiliation of our spirits it is an act of Charity when we pray for others it is an act of Repentance when it confesses and begs pardon for our sins and exercises every Grace according to the design of the man and the matter of the Prayer So that there will be less need to amass arguments to invite us to this Duty every part is an excellence and every end of it is a blessing and every design is a motive and every need is an impulsive to this holy office Let us but remember how many needs we have at how cheap a rate we may obtain their remedies and yet how honourable the imployment is to go to God with confidence and to fetch our supplies with easiness and joy and then without farther preface we may address our selves to the understanding of that Duty by which we imitate the imployment of Angels and beatified spirits by which we ascènd to God in spirit while we remain on earth and God descends on earth while he yet resides in Heaven sitting there on the Throne of his Kingdom 2. Our first enquiry must be concerning the Matter of our Prayers for our Desires are not to be the rule of our Prayers unless Reason and Religion be the rule of our Desires The old Heathens prayed to their Gods for such things which they were ashamed to name publickly before men and these were their private prayers which they durst not for their undecency or iniquity make publick And indeed sometimes the best men ask of God Things not unlawful in themselves yet very hurtful to them and therefore as by the Spirit of God and right Reason we are taught in general what is lawful to be asked so it is still to be submitted to God when we have asked lawful things to grant to us in kindness or to deny us in mercy after all the rules that can be given us we not being able in many instances to judge for our selves unless also we could certainly pronounce concerning future contingencies But the Holy Ghost being now sent upon the Church and the rule of Christ being left to his Church together with his form of Prayer taught and prescribed to his Disciples we have sufficient instruction for the matter of our Prayers so far as concerns the lawfulness or unlawfulness And the rule is easie and of no variety 1. For we are bound to pray for all things that concern our duty all that we are bound to labour for such as are Glory and Grace necessary assistances of the Spirit and rewards spiritual Heaven and Heavenly things 2. Concerning those things which we may with safety hope for but are not matter of duty to us we may lawfully testifie our hope and express our desires by petition but if in their particulars they are under no express promise but only conveniencies of our life and person it is only lawful to pray for them under condition that they may conform to God's will and our duty as they are good and placed in the best order of eternity Therefore 1 for spiritual blessings let our Prayers be particularly importunate perpetual and persevering 2 For temporal blessings let them be generally short conditional and modest 3 And whatsoever things are of mixt nature more spiritual than Riches and less necessary than Graces such as are gifts and exteriour aids we may for them as we may desire them and as we may expect them that is with more confidence and less restraint than in the matter of temporal requests but with more reservedness and less boldness of petition than when we pray for the graces of Sanctification In the first case we are bound to pray in the second it is only lawful under certain conditions in the third it becomes to us an act of zeal nobleness and Christian prudence But the matter of our Prayers is best taught us in the form our Lord taught his Disciples which because it is short mysterious and like the treasures of the Spirit full of wisdom and latent sences it is not improper to draw forth those excellencies which are intended and signified by every Petition that by so excellent an authority we may know what it is lawful to beg of God 3. Our Father which art in Heaven The address reminds us of many parts of our duty If God be our Father where is his fear and reverence and obedience If ye were Abraham's children ye would do the works of Abraham and Ye are of your father the Devil for his works ye do Let us not dare to call him Father if we be rebels and enemies but if we be obedient then we know he is our Father and will give us a Child's portion and the inheritance of Sons But it is observable that Christ here speaking concerning private Prayer does describe it in a form of plural signification to tell us that we are to draw into the communication of our prayers all those who are confederated in the common relation of Sons to the same Father Which art in Heaven tells us where our hopes and our hearts must be fixed whither our desires and our prayers must tend Sursum corda Where our treasure is there must our hearts be also 4. Hallowed be thy Name That is Let thy Name thy Essence and glorious Attributes be honoured and adored in all the world believed by Faith loved by Charity celebrated with praises thanked with Eucharist and let thy Name be hallowed in us as it is in it self
Thy Name being called upon us let us walk worthy of that calling that our light may shine before men that they seeing our good works may glorifie thee our Father which art in heaven In order also to the sanctification of thy Name grant that all our praises hymns Eucharistical remembrances and representments of thy glories may be useful blessed and esfectual for the dispersing thy fame and advancing thy honour over all the world This is a direct and formal act of worshipping and adoration The Name of God is representative of God himself and it signifies Be thou worshipped and adored be thou thanked and celebrated with honour and Eucharist 5. Thy Kingdom come That is As thou hast caused to be preached and published the coming of thy Kingdom the peace and truth the revelation and glories of the Gospel so let it come verily and esfectually to us and all the world that thou mayest truly reign in our spirits exercising absolute dominion subduing all thine Enemies ruling in our Faculties in the Understanding by Faith in the Will by Charity in the Passions by Mortification in the Members by a chaste and right use of the parts And as it was more particularly and in the letter proper at the beginning of Christ's Preaching when he also taught the Prayer that God would hasten the coming of the Gospel to all the world so 〈◊〉 also and ever it will be in its proportion necessary and pious to pray that it may come still making greater progress in the world extending it self where yet it is not and intending it where it is already that the Kingdom of Christ may not only be in us in name and form and honourable appellatives but in effect and power This Petition in the first Ages of Christianity was not expounded to signifie a prayer for Christ's second coming because the Gospel not being preached to all the world they prayed for the delay of the day of Judgment that Christ's Kingdom upon earth might have its proper increment but since then every Age as it is more forward in time so it is more earnest in desire to accomplish the intermedial Prophecies that the Kingdom of God the Father might come in glories infinite And indeed the Kingdom of Grace being in order to the Kingdom of Glory this as it is principally to be desired so may possibly be intended chiefly which also is the more probable because the address of this Prayer being to God the Father it is proper to observe that the Kingdom of Grace or of the Gospel is called the Kingdom of the Son and that of Glory in the style of the Scripture is the Kingdom of the Father S. German Patriarch of Constantinople expounds it with some little difference but not ill Thy Kingdom come that is Let thy Holy Spirit come into us for the Kingdom of Heaven is within us saith the Holy Scripture and so it intimates our desires that the promise of the Father and the Prophecies of old and the Holy Ghost the Comforter may come upon us Let that anointing from above descend upon us whereby we may be anointed Kings and Priests in a spiritual Kingdom and Priesthood by a holy Chrism 6. Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven That is The whole Oeconomy and dispensation of thy Providence be the guide of the world and the measure of our desire that we be patient in all accidents conformable to God's will both in doing and in suffering submitting to changes and even to persecutions and doing all God's will which because without God's aid we cannot do therefore we beg it of him by prayer but by his aid we are 〈◊〉 we may do it in the manner of Angelical obedience that is promptly readily chearfully and with all our faculties Or thus As the Angels in Heaven serve thee with harmony concord and peace so let us all joyn in the service of thy Majesty with peace and purity and love unfeigned that as all the Angels are in peace and amongst them there is no persecutor and none persecuted there is none afflicting or afflicted none assaulting or assaulted but all in sweetness and peaceable serenity glorifying thee so let thy will be done on earth by all the world in peace and unity in charity and tranquillity that with one heart and one voice we may glorifie thee our universal Father having in us nothing that may displease thee having quitted all our own desires and pretensions living in Angelick conformity our Souls subject to thee and our Passions to our Souls that in earth also thy will may be done as in the spirit and Soul which is a portion of the heavenly substance These three Petitions are addressed to God by way of adoration In the first the Soul puts on the affections of a Child and devests it self of its own interest offering it self up wholly to the designs and glorifications of God In the second it puts on the relation and duty of a Subject to her legitimate Prince seeking the promotion of his Regal Interest In the third she puts on the affection of a Spouse loving the same love and chusing the same object and delighting in unions and conformities The next part descends lower and makes addresses to God in relation to our own necessities 7. Give us this day our daily bread That is Give unto us all that is necessary for the support of our lives the bread of our necessity so the Syriack Interpreter reads it This day give us the portion of bread which is day by day necessary Give us the bread or support which we shall need all our lives only this day minister our present part For we pray for the necessary bread or maintenance which God knows we shall need all our days but that we be not careful for to morrow we are taught to pray not that it be all at once represented or deposited but that God would minister it as we need it how he pleases but our needs are to be the measure of our desires our desires must not make our needs that we may be consident of the Divine Providence and not at all covetous for therefore God feeds his people with extemporary provisions that by needing always they may learn to pray to him and by being still supplied may learn to trust him for the future and thank him for that is past and rejoyce in the present So God rained down Manna giving them their daily portion and so all Fathers and Masters minister to their children and servants giving them their proportion as they eat it not the meat of a year at once and yet no child or servant fears want if his Parent or Lord were good and wise and rich And it is necessary for all to pray this Prayer the Poor because they want the bread and have it not deposited but in the hands of God mercy ploughing the 〈◊〉 of Heaven as Job's expression is brings them corn
your temporal's but to make your noble usages of me and mine to become like your other Charities productive of advantages to the standers by For although the beams of the Sun reflected from a marble return not home to the body and fountain of light yet they that walk below feel the benefit of a doubled heat so whatever reflexions or returns of your Favours I can make although they fall short of what your Worth does most reasonably challenge and can proceed but towards you with forward desires and distant approaches yet I am desirous to believe that those who walk between us may receive assistences from this entercourse and the following Papers may be auxiliary to the enkindling of their Piety as to the confirming and establishing yours For although the great Prudence of your most Noble Lord and the modesties of your own temperate and sweeter dispositions become the great endearments of Vertue to you yet because it is necessary that you make Religion the business of your life I thought it not an impertinent application to express my thankfulness to your Honour by that which may best become my duty and my gratitude because it may do you the greatest service Madam I must beg your pardon that I have opened the sanctuary of your retired Vertues but I was obliged to publish the endearments and favours of your Noble Lord and your self towards me and my relatives For as your hands are so clasp'd that one Ring is the ligature of them both so I have found emanations from that conjuncture of hands with a consent so forward and apt that nothing can satisfie for my obligations but by being in the greatest eminency of thankfulness and humility of person MADAM Your Honour 's most obliged and most humble Servant JER TAYLOR TO The Right Honourable and Vertuous Lady The LADY ALICE Countess of CARBERY MADAM BY the Divine Providence which disposes all things wisely and charitably you are in the affections of your Noblest Lord Successor to a very dear and most Excellent person designed to fill up those offices of Piety to her dear pledges which the hast which God made to glorify and secure her would not permit her to finish I have much ado to refrain from telling great stories of her Wisdom Piety Judgment Sweetness and Religion but that it would renew the wound and make our sins bleed afresh at the memory of that dear Saint and we hope that much of the storm of the Divine anger is over because he hath repaired the breach by sending you to go on upon her account and to give countenance and establishment to all those Graces which were warranted and derived from her example Madam the Nobleness of your Family your Education and your excellent Principles your fair dispositions affable Comportment have not only made all your servants confident of your Worthiness and great Vertues but have disposed you so highly and necessarily towards an active and a zealous Religion that we expect it should grow to the height of a great Example that you may draw others after you as the eye follows the light in all the angles of its retirement or open stages of its publication In order to this I have chosen your Honour into a new relation and have endeared you to this instrument of Piety that if you will please to do it countenance and imploy it in your counsels and pious offices it may minister to your appetites of Religion which as they are already fair and prosperous so they may swell up to a vastness large enough to entertain all the secrets and pleasures of Religion that so you may add to the Blessings and Prosperities which already dwell in that Family where you are now fixed new title to more upon the stock of all those Promises which have secured and entailed Felicities upon such persons who have no vanities but very many Vertues Madam I could not do you any service but by doing my self this honour to adorn my Book with this fairest title and inscription of your Name You may observe but cannot blame my ambition so long as it is instanced in a religious service and means nothing but this that I may signifie how much I honour that Person who is designed to bring new Blessings to that Family which is so Honourable in it self and for so many reasons dear to me Madam upon that account besides the stock of your own Worthiness I am Your Honour 's most humble and obedient Servant JER TAYLOR SECT XIII Of the Second Year of the Preaching of JESVS The poole of Bethesda IOH. 5. 8. 9. Iesus saith unto him Rise take up thy bed and walk and immediately the man was made whol and walked and on the same day was the Sabboath place this to the third Sunday in Advent Marie washing CHRISTS feet IOH. 12. 7 Then said Iesus let her alone Against the day of my burying hath she kept this 8 For the poore alwayes ye haue with you but me ye haue not alwayes Monday before Easter 1. WHEN the First Year of Jesus the year of Peace and undisturbed Preaching was expired there was a Feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem This Feast was the second Passeover he kept after he began to preach not the Feast of Pentecost or Tabernacles both which were passed before Jesus came last from Judaea whither when he was now come he finds an impotent person lying at the pool of Bethesda waiting till the Angel should move the waters after which whosoever first stepped in was cured of his infirmity The poor man had waited thirty eight years and still was prevented by some other of the Hospital that needed a Physician But Jesus seeing him had pity on him cured him and bade him take up his bed and walk This cure happened to be wrought upon the Sabbath for which the Jews were so moved with indignation that they thought to 〈◊〉 him And their anger was enraged by his calling himself the Son of God and making himself equal with God 2. Upon occasion of this offence which they snatched at before it was ministred Jesus discourses upon his Mission and derivation of his authority from the Father of the union between them and the excellent communications of power participation of dignity delegation of judicature reciprocations and reflexions of honour from the Father to the Son and back again to the Father He preaches of life and Salvation to them that believe in him prophesies of the resurrection of the dead by the efficacy of the voice of the Son of God speaks of the day of Judgment the differing conditions after of Salvation and Damnation respectively confirms his words and mission by the testimony of John the Baptist of Moses and the other Scriptures and of God himself And still the scandal rises higher for in the second Sabbath after the first that is in the first day of unleavened bread which happened the next day after the
Hypocrisie and vanities of the one and the Heresie of the other For Herod's leven was the pretence that he was the Messias which the Sect of the 〈◊〉 did earnestly and spitefully promote And after this 〈◊〉 of themselves by the way they came together to Bethsaida where Jesus cured a blind man with a collyrium of spittle salutary as Balsam or the purest Eyebright when his divine benediction once had hallowed it But Jesus staid not there but departing thence into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi out of Herod's power for it was in Philip's jurisdiction after he had prayed with his Disciples he enquired what opinion the world had of him and whom they reported him to be They answered Some say thou art John the Baptist some that thou art Elias or Jeremias or one of the Prophets for in 〈◊〉 especially the Sect of the Pharisees was mightily disseminated whose opinion it was that the Souls of dead men according to their several merits did transmigrate into other bodies of very perfect and excellent persons And therefore in all this variety none hit upon the right or fansied him to be a distinct person from the ancients but although they differed in the assignation of his name yet generally they agreed it was the Soul of a departed Prophet which had passed into another Body But Jesus asked the Apostles their opinion and Peter in the name of all the rest made an open and confident Confession Thou art CHRIST the Son of the living God 9. This Confession Jesus not only confirmed as true but as revealed by God and of fundamental necessity for after the blessing of Peter's person upon allusion of Peter's name Jesus said that upon this Rock the article of Peter's Confession he would build his Church promising to it assistances even to perpetuity insomuch that the gates of hell that is persecution and death and the grave should never prevail against it adding withall a promise to Peter in behalf of all the rest as he had made a Confession for them all that he would give unto him the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven so that whatsoever he should bind on earth should be bound in Heaven and whatsoever he should loose on earth should be loosed in Heaven a power which he never communicated before or since but to their successors greater than the large Charter of Nature and the donative of Creation in which all the creatures under Heaven were made subject to Man's Empire but till now Heaven it self was never subordinate to humane ministration 10. And now the days from hence forward to the Death of Jesus we must reckon to be like the Vigils or Eves of his Passion for now he began and often did ingeminate those sad predictions of his unhandsome usage he should shortly find that he 〈◊〉 be rejected of the Elders and chief Priests and Scribes and suffer many things at Jerusalem and be killed and be raised up the third day But Peter hearing that sad discourse so contrary to his hopes which he had blended with temporal expectances for he had learned the Doctrine of Christ's Advent but not the mystery of the Cross in great and mistaken civility took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him saying Be it far from thee Lord this shall not be unto thee But Jesus full of zeal against so soft and humane admonition that savoured nothing of God or of abstracted immaterial considerations chid Peter bitterly Get thee behind me Satan thou art an offence unto me And calling his Disciples to him told them a second part of a sad doctrine that not only himself but all they also must suffer For when the Head was to be crowned with thorns if the Members were wrapped in softnesses it was an unhansome undecency and a disunion too near an antipathy and therefore who ever will be the Disciple of Jesus must take up his Cross deny himself and his own fonder appetites and trace his Master's foot-steps marked out with bloud that he shed for our Redemption and restitution And that there be no escape from the participation of Christ's suffering Jesus added this Dilemma He that will save his life shall lose it and he that will lose it shall save it to eternity Which part soever we chuse there is a life to be lost but as the first are foolish to the extremest misery that will lose their Souls to gain the World so they are most wise and fortunate that will give their lives for him because when the Son of Man shall come in his own glory and his Father's and of his Angels he shall reward every man according to his works This discourse Jesus concluded with a Prophecy that some standing in that presence should not die till they saw the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom 11. Of the greater glories of which in due time to be revealed Jesus after eight days gave a bright and excellent probation For taking with him Peter and James and John he went up into the mountain Tabor to pray and while he prayed he was transfigured before them and his face did shine like the Sun and his garments were white and 〈◊〉 And there appeared talking with him Moses and Elias gloriously speaking of the decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem which glory these Apostles after they had awaked from sleep did behold And the Interlocutors with Jesus having finished their embassy of death which they delivered in forms of glory representing the excellencies of the reward together with the sharpness of the passage and interval departed leaving the Apostles full of fear and wonder and 〈◊〉 insomuch that Peter talked he knew not what but nothing amiss something Prophetical saying Master it is good to be here 〈◊〉 us build three tabernacles And some devout persons in memory of the mystery did 〈◊〉 three Churches in the same place in after-Ages But after the departure of those attendent Saints a cloud incircled Jesus and the Disciples and a voice came from the excellent glory This is my beloved Son hear him The cloud quickly disappeared and freed the Disciples from the fear it had put them in So they attended Jesus and descended from the mountain being commanded silence which they observed till the Resurrection 12. The next day came to Jesus a man praying in behalf of his son Lunatick and sore troubled with a Devil who sought oft to destroy him in fire and water that Jesus would be pleased to deliver him For his Apostles tried and could not by reason of the want of Faith for this Grace if it be true though in a less degree is of power to remove mountains to pluck up trees by the roots and to give them solid foundation in the waters And Jesus rebuked the Devil and 〈◊〉 departed out of him from that very hour Thence Jesus departed privately into Galilee and in his journey repeated those sadnesses of his approaching Passion Which so afflicted the spirits of the Disciples that they durst
hand or foot or extinguish the offending eye rather than upon the support of a troublesome soot and by the light of an offending eye walk into ruine and a sad eternity where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched And so Jesus ended this chain of excellent Discourses 18. About this time was the Jews Feast of Tabernacles whither Jesus went up as it were in secret and passing through Samaria he found the inhabitants of a little village so inhospitable as to refuse to give him entertainment which so provoked the intemperate zeal of James and John that they would fain have called for fire to consume them even as Elias did But Jesus rebuked the furies of their anger teaching them to distinguish the spirit of Christianity from the ungentleness of the decretory zeal of Elias For since the Son of man came with a purpose to seek and save what was lost it was but an indiscreet temerity suddenly upon the lightest umbrages of displeasure to destroy a man whose redemption cost the effusion of the dearest bloud from the heart of Jesus But contrariwise Jesus does a Miracle upon the ten Leprous persons which came to him from the neighbourhood crying out with sad exclamations for help But Jesus sent them to the Priest to offer for their cleansing Thither they went and but one only returned to give thanks and he a stranger who with a loud voice glorified God and with humble adoration worshipped and gave thanks to Jesus 19. When Jesus had finished his journey and was now come to Jerusalem for the first days he was undiscerned in publick conventions but heard of the various opinions of men concerning him some saying he was a good man others that he 〈◊〉 the people and the Pharisees sought for him to do him a mischief But when they despaired of finding him in the midst of the Feast and the people he made Sermons openly in the midst of the Temple whom when he had convinced by the variety and divinity of his Miracles and Discourses they gave the greatest testimony in the world of humane weakness and how prevalent a prejudice is above the confidence and conviction of a demonstration For a proverb a mistake an error in matter of circumstance did in their understandings outweigh multitudes of Miracles and arguments and because Christ was of Galilee because they knew whence he was because of the Proverb that 〈◊〉 of Galilee comes no Prophet because the Rulers did not believe in him these outweighed the demonstrations of his mercy and his power and Divinity But yet very many believed on him and no man durst lay hands to take him for as yet his time was not come in which he meant to give himself up to the power of the Jews and therefore when the Pharisees sent Officers to seise him they also became his Disciples being themselves surprised by the excellency of his Doctrine 20. After this Jesus went to the mount of Olivet on the East of Jerusalem and the next day returned again into the Temple where the Scribes and Pharisees brought him a woman taken in the act of Adultery tempting him to give sentence that they might accuse him of severity or intermedling if he condemned her or of remisness and popularity if he did acquit her But Jesus found out an expedient for their difficulty and changed the Scene by bidding the innocent person among them cast the first stone at the Adulteress and then stooping down to give them fair occasion to withdraw he wrote upon the ground with his finger whilest they left the woman and her crime to a more private censure Jesus was left alone and the woman in the midst whom Jesus dismissed charging her to sin no more And a while after Jesus begins again to discourse to them of his Mission from the Father of his Crucifixion and exaltation from the earth of the reward of Believers of the excellency of Truth of spiritual Liberty and Relations who are the sons of Abraham and who the children of the Devil of his own eternal generation of the desire of Abraham to see his day In which Sermon he continued adding still new excellencies and confuting their malicious and vainer calumnies till they that they also might 〈◊〉 him took up stones to cast at him but he went out of the Temple going through the midst of them and so passed by 21. But in his passage he met a man who had been born blind and after he had discoursed cursorily of the cause of that Blindness it being a misery not sent as a punishment to his own or his parents sin but as an occasion to make publick the glory of God he to manifest that himself was the light of the World in all sences said it now and proved it by a Miracle for sitting down he made clay of spittle and anointing the eyes of the blind man bid him go wash in Siloam which was a Pool of limpid water which God sent at the Prayer of Isaiah the Prophet a little before his death to satisfie the necessities of his people oppressed with thirst and a strict siege and it stood at the foot of the mount Sion and gave its water at first by returns and periods always to the Jews but not to the enemies And those intermitted springings were still continued but only a Pool was made from the frequent effluxes The blind man went and washed and returned seeing and was incessantly vexed by the Pharisees to tell them the manner and circumstances of the cure and when the man had averred the truth and named his Physician giving him a pious and charitable testimony the Pharisees because they could not force him to disavow his good opinion of Jesus cast him out of the 〈◊〉 But Jesus meeting him received him into the Church told him he was CHRIST and the man became again enlightned and he believed and worshipped But the Pharisees blasphemed for such was the dispensation of the Divine mysteries that the blind should see and they which think they see clearly should become blind because they had not the excuse of ignorance to lessen or take off the sin but in the midst of light they shut their eyes and doted upon darkness and therefore did their sin remain 22. But Jesus continued his Sermon among the Pharisees insinuating reprehensions in his dogmatical discourses which like light shined and discovered error For by discoursing the properties of a good Shepherd and the lawful way of intromission he proved them to be thieves and robbers because they refused to enter in by Jesus who is the door of the sheep and upon the same ground reproved all those false Christs which before him usurped the title of Messias and proved his own vocation and office by an argument which no other shepherd would use because he laid down his life for his sheep others would take the fleece and eat the flesh but none but himself would die for his sheep but he would first
die and then gather his sheep together into one fold intimating the calling of the Gentiles to which purpose he was enabled by his Father to lay down his life and to take it up and had also endeared them to his Father that they should be preserved unto eternal life and no power should be able to take them out of his hand or the hand of his Father for because Jesus was united to the Father the Father's care preserved the Son's flocks 23. But the Jews to requite him for his so divine Sermons betook themselves to their old argument they took up stones again to cast at him pretending he had blasphemed but Jesus proved it to be no blasphemy to call himself the son of God because they to whom the Word of God came are in Scripture called Gods But nothing could satisfie them whose temporal interest was concerned not to consent to such Doctrine which would save their souls by ruining their temporal concernments But when they sought again to take him Jesus escaped out of their hands and went away beyond Jordan where John at first baptized which gave the people occasion to remember that John did no Miracle but this man does many and John whom all men did revere and highly account of for his Office and Sanctity gave testimony to Jesus And many believed on him there 24. After this Jesus knowing that the harvest was great and as yet the labourers had been few sent out seventy two of his Disciples with the like commission as formerly the 12. Apostles that they might go before to those places whither himself meant to come Of which number were the Seven whom afterwards the Apostles set over the Widows and Matthias Mark and some say Luke Justus Barnabas Apelles Rufus Niger Cephas not Peter Thaddaeus Aristion and John The rest of the names could not be recovered by the best diligence of Eusebius and Epiphanius But when they returned from their journey they rejoyced greatly in the legation and power and Jesus also rejoyced in spirit giving glory to God that he had made his revelations to babes and the more imperfect 〈◊〉 like the lowest Valleys which receive from Heaven the greatest flouds of rain and blessings and stand thick with corn and flowers when the Mountains are unfruitful in their height and greatness 25. And now a Doctor of the Law came to Jesus asking him a Question of the greatest consideration that a wise man could ask or a Prophet answer Master what shall I do to inherit eternal life Jesus referred him to the Scriptures and declared the way to Heaven to be this only to love the Lord with all our powers and faculties and our neighbour as our self But when the Lawyer being captious made a scruple in a smooth rush asking what is meant by Neighbour Jesus told him by a Parable of a Traveller fallen into the hands of robbers and neglected by a Priest and by a Levite but relieved by a Samaritan that no distance of Countrey or Religion destroys the relation of Neighbourhood but every person with whom we converse in peace and charity is that Neighbour whom we are to love as our selves 26. Jesus having departed from Jerusalem upon the forementioned danger came to a village called Bethany where Martha making great and busie preparation for his entertainment to express her joy and her affections to his person desired Jesus to dismiss her Sister Mary from his feet who sate there feasting her self with the viands and sweetnesses of his Doctrine incurious of the provisions for entertainment But Jesus commended her choice and though he did not expresly disrepute Martha's Civility yet he preferred Mary's Religion and Sanctity of affections In this time because the night drew on in which no man could work Jesus hastened to do his Father's business and to pour out whole cataracts of holy Lessons like the fruitful Nilus swelling over the banks and filling all the trenches to make a plenty of corn and fruits great as the inundation Jesus therefore teaches his Disciples that Form of Prayer the second time which we call the Lord's Prayer teaches them assiduity and indefatigable importunity in Prayer by a Parable of an importunate Neighbour borrowing loaves at midnight and a troublesome Widow who forced an unjust Judge to do her right by her clamorous and hourly addresses encourages them to pray by consideration of the Divine goodness and fatherly affection far more indulgent to his Sons than natural Fathers are to their dearest issue and adds a gracious promise of success to them that pray He reproves Pharisaical ostentation arms his Disciples against the fear of men and the terrors of Persecution which can arrive but to the incommodities of the Body teaches the fear of God who is Lord of the whole Man and can accurse the Soul as well as punish the Body He refuses to divide the inheritance between two Brethren as not having competent power to become Lord in temporal jurisdictions He preaches against Covetousness and the placing felicities in worldly possessions by a Parable of a rich man whose riches were too big for his barns and big enough for his Soul and he ran over into voluptuousness and stupid complacencies in his perishing goods he was snatched from their possession and his Soul taken from him in the violence of a rapid and hasty sickness in the space of one night Discourses of divine Providence and care over us all and descending even as low as grass He exhorts to Alms-deeds to Watchfulness and preparation against the sudden and unexpected coming of our Lord to Judgment or the arrest of death tells the offices and sedulity of the Clergy under the Apologue of Stewards and Governours of their Lords houses teaches them gentleness and sobriety and not to do evil upon confidence of their Lord's absence and delay and teaches the people even of themselves to judge what is right concerning the signs of the coming of the Son of Man And the end of all these discourses was that all men should repent and live good lives and be saved 27. At this Sermon there were present some that told him of the Galileans whose bloud Pilate mingled with their sacrifices For the Galileans were a sort of people that taught it to be unlawful to pay tribute to strangers or to pray for the Romans and because the Jews did both they refused to communicate in their sacred Rites and would sacrifice apart at which Solemnity when Pilate the Roman Deputy had apprehended many of them he caused them all to be slain making them to die upon the same Altars These were of the Province of Judaea but of the same Opinion with those who taught in Galilee from whence the Sect had its appellative But to the story Jesus made reply that these external accidents though they be sad and calamitous yet they are no arguments of condemnation against the persons of the men to convince them of a greater guilt than others
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
and pleasure 2. Love desires to do all good to its beloved object and that is the greatest love which gives us the greatest blessings And the Sacrament therefore is the argument of his greatest love for in it we receive the honey and the honey-comb the Paschal Lamb with his bitter herbs Christ with all his griefs and his Passion with all the salutary effects of it 3. Love desires to be remembred and to have his object in perpetual representment And this Sacrament Christ designed to that purpose that he who is not present to our eyes might always be present to our spirits 4. Love demands love again and to desire to be beloved is of it self a great argument of love And as God cannot give us a greater blessing than his Love which is himself with an excellency of relation to us superadded so what greater demonstration of it can he make to us than to desire us to love him with as much earnestness and vehemency of desire as if we were that to him which he is essentially to us the author of our being and our blessing 5. And yet to consummate this Love and represent it to be the greatest and most excellent the Holy Jesus hath in this Sacrament designed that we should be united in our spirits with him incorporated to his body partake of his Divine nature and communicate in all his Graces and Love hath no expression beyond this that it desires to be united unto its object So that what Moses said to the men of Israel What nation is so great who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in all things for which we call upon him we can enlarge in the meditation of this Holy Sacrament for now the Lord our God calls upon us not only to be nigh unto him but to be all one with him not only as he was in the Incarnation flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone but also to communicate in spirit in grace in nature in Divinity it self 7. Upon the strength of the premisses we may sooner take an estimate of the Graces which are conveyed to us in the reception and celebration of this Holy Sacrament and Sacrifice For as it is a Commemoration and representment of Christ's Death so it is a commemorative Sacrifice as we receive the symbols and the mystery so it is a Sacrament In both capacities the benefit is next to infinite First For whatsoever Christ did at the Institution the same he commanded the Church to do in remembrance and repeated rites and himself also does the same thing in Heaven for us making perpetual Intercession for his Church the body of his redeemed ones by representing to his Father his death and sacrifice there he sits a high Priest continually and offers still the same one perfect sacrifice that is still represents it as having been once finished and consummate in order to perpetual and never-failing events And this also his Ministers do on earth they offer up the same Sacrifice to God the sacrifice of the Cross by prayers and a commemorating rite and representment according to his holy Institution And as all the effects of Grace and the titles of glory were purchased for us on the Cross and the actual mysteries of Redemption perfected on earth but are applied to us and made effectual to single persons and communities of men by Christ's Intercession in Heaven so also they are promoted by acts of Duty and Religion here on earth that we may be workers together with God as S. Paul expresses it and in virtue of the eternal and all-sufficient Sacrifice may offer up our prayers and our duty and by representing that sacrifice may send up together with our prayers an instrument of their graciousness and acceptation The Funerals of a deceased friend are not only performed at his first interring but in the monthly minds and anniversary commemorations and our grief returns upon the fight of a picture or upon any instance which our dead friend desired us to preserve as his memorial we celebrate and exhibite the Lora's death in sacrament and symbol and this is that great express which when the Church offers to God the Father it obtains all those blessings which that sacrifice purchased Themistocles snatch'd up the son of King Admetus and held him between himself and death to mitigate the rage of the King and prevailed accordingly Our very holding up the Son of God and representing him to his Father is the doing an act of mediation 〈◊〉 advantage to our selves in the virtue and efficacy of the Mediatour As Christ is a Priest in Heaven for ever and yet does not sacrifice himself afresh nor yet without a sacrifice could he be a Priest but by a daily ministration and intercession represents his sacrifice to God and offers himself as sacrificed so he does upon earth by the ministery of his servants he is offered to God that is he is by Prayers and the Sacrament represented or offered up to God as sacrificed which in effect is a celebration of his death and the applying it to the present and future necessities of the Church as we are capable by a ministery like to his in Heaven It follows then that the celebration of this Sacrifice be in its proportion an instrument of applying the proper Sacrifice to all the purposes which it first designed It is ministerially and by application an instrument propitiatory it is Eucharistical it is an homage and an act of adoration and it is impetratory and obtains for us and for the whole Church all the benefits of the sacrifice which is now celebrated and applied that is As this Rite is the remembrance and ministerial celebration of Christ's sacrifice so it is destined to do honour to God to express the homage and duty of his servants to acknowledge his supreme dominion to give him thanks and worship to beg pardon blessings and supply of all our needs And its profit is enlarged not only to the persons celebrating but to all to whom they design it according to the nature of Sacrifices and Prayers and all such solemn actions of Religion 8. Secondly If we consider this not as the act and ministery of Ecclesiastical persons but as the duty of the whole Church communicating that is as it is a 〈◊〉 so it is like the Springs of Eden from whence issue many Rivers or the Trees of celestial Jerusalem bearing various kinds of Fruit. For whatsoever was offered in the Sacrifice is given in the Sacrament and whatsoever the Testament bequeaths the holy Mysteries dispense 1. He that 〈◊〉 my 〈◊〉 and drinketh my bloud abideth in me and 〈◊〉 in him Christ in his Temple and his resting-place and the worthy Communicant is in Sanctuary and a place of protection and every holy Soul having feasted at his Table may say as S. Paul 〈◊〉 live yet not I but Christ liveth in me So that to live is Christ Christ is
Saul's seven sons were hanged for breaking the League of Gibeon and Ahab's sin was punished in his posterity he escaping and the evil was brought upon his house in his son's days In all these cases the evil descended upon persons in near relation to the sinner and was a punishment to him and a misery to these and were either chastisements also of their own sins or if they were not they served other ends of Providence and led the afflicted innocent to a condition of recompence accidentally procured by that infliction But if for such relation's sake and oeconomical and political conjunction as between Prince and People the evil may be transmitted from one to another much rather is it just when by contract a competent and conjunct person undertakes to quit his relative Thus when the Hand steals the Back is whipt and an evil Eye is punished with a hungry Belly Treason causes the whole Family to be miserable and a Sacrilegious Grandfather hath sent a Locust to devour the increase of the Nephews 8. But in our case it is a voluntary contract and therefore no Injustice all parties are voluntary God is the supreme Lord and his actions are the measure of Justice we who had deserved the punishment had great reason to desire a Redeemer and yet Christ who was to pay the ransome was more desirous of it than we were for we asked it not before it was promised and undertaken But thus we see that Sureties pay the obligation of the principal Debtor and the Pledges of Contracts have been by the best and wisest Nations slain when the Articles have been broken The Thessalians slew 250 Pledges the Romans 300 of the Volsci and threw the Tarentines from the Tarpeian rock And that it may appear Christ was a person in all sences competent to do this for us himself testifies that he had power over his own life to take it up or lay it down And therefore as there can be nothing against the most exact justice and reason of Laws and punishments so it magnifies the Divine Mercy who removes the punishment from us who of necessity must have sunk under it and yet makes us to adore his Severity who would not forgive us without punishing his Son for us to consign unto us his perfect hatred against Sin to conserve the sacredness of his Laws and to imprint upon us great characters of fear and love The famous Locrian Zaleucus made a Law that all Adulterers should lose both their eyes his son was first unhappily surprised in the crime and his Father to keep a temper between the piety and soft spirit of a Parent and the justice and severity of a Judge put out one of his own eyes and one of his Sons So God did with us he made some abatement that is as to the person with whom he was angry but inflicted his anger upon our Redeemer whom he essentially loved to secure the dignity of his Sanctions and the sacredness of Obedience so marrying Justice and Mercy by the intervening of a commutation Thus David escaped by the death of his Son God chusing that penalty for the expiation and Cimon offered himself to prison to purchase the liberty of his Father Miltiades It was a filial duty in Cimon and yet the Law was satisfied And both these concurred in our great Redeemer For God who was the sole Arbitrator so disposed it and the eternal Son of God submitted to this way of expiating our crimes and became an argument of faith and belief of the great Article of Remission of sins and other its appendent causes and effects and adjuncts it being wrought by a visible and notorious Passion It was made an encouragement of Hope for he that spared not his own Son to reconcile us will with him give all things else to us so reconciled and a great endearment of our Duty and Love as it was a demonstration of his And in all the changes and traverses of our life he is made to us a great example of all excellent actions and all patient sufferings 9. In the midst of two Thieves three long hours the holy Jesus hung clothed with pain agony and dishonour all of them so eminent and vast that he who could not but hope whose Soul was enchased with Divinity and dwelt in the bosom of God and in the Cabinet of the mysterious Trinity yet had a cloud of misery so thick and black drawn before him that he complained as if God had forsaken him but this was the pillar of cloud which conducted Israel into Canaan And as God behind the Cloud supported the Holy Jesus and stood ready to receive him into the union of his Glories so his Soul in that great desertion had internal comforts proceeding from consideration of all those excellent persons which should be adopted into the fellowship of his Sufferings which should imitate his Graces which should communicate his Glories And we follow this Cloud to our Country having Christ for our Guide and though he trode the way leaning upon the Cross which like the staffe of Egypt pierced his hands yet it is to us a comfort and support pleasant to our spirits as the sweetest Canes strong as the pillars of the earth and made apt for our use by having been born and made smooth by the hands of our Elder Brother 10. In the midst of all his torments Jesus only made one Prayer of sorrow to represent his sad condition to his Father but no accent of murmur no syllable of anger against his enemies In stead of that he sent up a holy charitable and effective Prayer for their forgiveness and by that Prayer obtained of God that within 55 days 8000 of his enemies were converted So potent is the prayer of Charity that it prevails above the malice of men turning the arts of Satan into the designs of God and when malice occasions the Prayer the Prayer becomes an antidote to malice And by this instance our Blessed Lord consigned that Duty to us which in his Sermons he had preached That we should forgive our enemies and pray for them and by so doing our selves are freed from the stings of anger and the storms of a revengeful spirit and we oftentimes procure servants to God friends to our selves and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven 11. Of the two Thieves that were crucified together with our Lord the one blasphemed the other had at that time the greatest Piety in the world except that of the Blessed Virgin and particularly had such a Faith that all the Ages of the Church could never shew the like For when he saw Christ in the same condemnation with himself crucisied by the Romans accused and scorned by the Jews forsaken by his own Apostles a dying distressed Man doing at that time no Miracles to attest his Divinity or Innocence yet then he confesses him to be a Lord and a King and his Saviour He confessed his own
of prepared torments he died a natural death in a good old age 5. After this Jesus having appointed a solemn meeting for all the Brethren that could be collected from the dispersion and named a certain mountain in 〈◊〉 appeared to five hundred Brethren at once and this was his most publick and solemn manifestation and while some doubted Jesus came according to the designation and spake to the eleven sent them to preach to all the world Repentance and Remission of sins in his Name promising to be with them to the end of the world He appeared also unto James but at what time is uncertain save that there is something concerning it in the Gospel of S. Matthew which the Nazarens of 〈◊〉 used and which it is likely themselves added out of report for there is nothing of it in our Greek Copies The words are these When the Lord had given the linen in which he was wrapped to the servant of the High Priest he went and appeared unto James For James had vowed after he received the Lord's Supper that he would eat no bread till he saw the Lord risen from the grave Then the Lord called for bread he blessed it and brake it and gave it to James the Just and said My Brother eat bread for the Son of man is risen from the sleep of death So that by this it should seem to be done upon the day of the Resurrection But the relation of it by S. Paul puts it between the appearance which he made to the five hundred and that last to the Apostles when he was to ascend into Heaven Last of all when the Apostles were at dinner he appeared to them upbraiding their incredulity and then he opened their understanding that they might discern the sence of Scripture and again commanded them to preach the Gospel to all the world giving them power to do Miracles to cast out Devils to cure 〈◊〉 and instituted the Sacrament of Baptism which he commanded should together with the Sermons of the Gospel be administred to all Nations in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Then he led them into Judaea and they came to Bethany and from thence to the mount Olivet and he commanded them to stay in Jerusalem till the Holy Ghost the promise of the Father should descend upon them which should be accomplished in few days and then they should know the times and the seasons and all things necessary for their ministration and service and propagation of the Gospel And while he discoursed many things concerning the Kingdom behold a Cloud came and parted Jesus from them and carried him in their sight up into Heaven where he sits at the right hand of God blessed for ever Amen 6. While his Apostles stood gazing up to Heaven two Angels appeared to them and told them that Jesus should come in like manner as he was taken away viz. with glory and majesty and in the clouds and with the ministry of Angels Amen Come Lord JESUS come quickly Ad SECT XVI Considerations upon the Accidents happening in the intervall after the Death of the Holy JESUS untill his Resurrection Jesus and Mary in the Garden Joh. 20. 14. 15. 16. Mary turning about saw Jesus standing knew not y t it was Jesus Jesus saith woman whom seekest thou Shee supposing him to be the garidner saith sir if thou have born him hence tell me etc. Jesus saith unto her Mary she turned her self and saith unto him Rabboni which is Master Jesus saith unto her touch me not for etc. Mary Magdalen came and told the desciples that she had seen the Lord. Our Lords Ascension Acts. 1. 9. And when he had spoken these things while they beheld he was taken up a Cloud received him out of their sight 10. And while they stedfastly looked toward heaven behold two men stood by them in white apparell 11. Which also said this same Iesus shall so come as you have seen him go into heaven 1. THE Holy Jesus promised to the blessed Thief that he should that day be with him in Paradise which therefore was certainly a place or state of Blessedness because it was a promise and in the society of Jesus whose penal and afflictive part of his work of Redemption was finished upon the Cross. Our Blessed Lord did not promise he should that day be with him in his Kingdom for that day it was not opened and the everlasting doors of those interiour recesses were to be shut till after the Resurrection that himself was to ascend thither and make way for all his servants to enter in the same method in which he went before us Our Blessed Lord descended into Hell saith the Creed of the Apostles from the Sermon of Saint Peter as he from the words of David that is into the state of Separation and common receptacle of Spirits according to the style of Scripture But the name of Hell is no-where in Scripture an appellative of the Kingdom of Christ of the place of final and supreme Glory But concerning the verification of our Lord's promise to the beatified Thief and his own state of Separation we must take what light we can from Scripture and what we can from the Doctrine of the Primitive Church S. Paul had two great Revelations he was rapt up into Paradise and he was rapt up into the third Heaven and these he calls visions revelations not one but divers for Paradise is distinguished from the Heaven of the blessed being it self a receptacle of holy Souls made illustrious with visitation of Angels and happy by being a repository for such spirits who at the day of Judgment shall go forth into eternal glory In the interim Christ hath trod all the paths before us and this also we must pass through to arrive at the Courts of Heaven Justin Martyr said it was the doctrine of heretical persons to say that the Souls of the Blessed instantly upon the separation from their Bodies enter into the highest Heaven And Irenaeus makes Heaven and the intermediate receptacle of Souls to be distinct places both blessed but hugely differing in degrees Tertullian is dogmatical in the assertion that till the voice of the great Archangel be heard and as long as Christ sits at the right hand of his Father making intercession for the Church so long blessed Souls must expect the assembling of their brethren the great Congregation of the Church that they may all pass from their outer courts into the inward tabernacle the Holy of Holies to the Throne of God And as it is certain that no Soul could enter into glory before our Lord 〈◊〉 by whom we hope to have access so it is most agreeable to the proportion 〈◊〉 the mysteries of our Redemption that we believe the entrance into Glory to have been made by our Lord at his glorious Ascension and that his Soul went not thither before 〈◊〉 to come back again
which one who pretends to calculate his Nativity with ostentation enough has given of it we are told that he was born three years before the Blessed Virgin and just XVII before the Incarnation of our Saviour But let us view his account Nat. est Ann. ab Orbe Cond 4034 à Diluvio 2378 V. G. 734 Ann. Oct. August 8 à 10 ejus consul 24 à pugna Actiac 12 An. Herodis Reg. 20 ante B. Virg. 3 ante Chr. nat 17 When I met with such a pompous train of Epocha's the least I expected was truth and certainty This computation he grounds upon the date of S. Peter's death placed as elsewhere he tells us by Bellarmine in the LXXXVI year of his Age so that recounting from the year of Christ LXIX when Peter is commonly said to have suffered he runs up his Age to his Birth and spreads it out into so many several dates But alas all is built upon a sandy bottom For besides his mistake about the year of the World few of his dates hold due correspondence But the worst of it is that after all this Bellarmine upon whose single testimony all this fine fabrick is erected says no such thing but only supposes merely for arguments sake that S. Peter might very well be LXXXVI 't is erroneously printed LXXVI years old at the time of his Martyrdom So far will confidence or ignorance or both carry men aside if it could be a mistake and not rather a bold imposing upon the World But of this enough and perhaps more than it deserves 3. BEING circumcised according to the Rites of the Mosaic Law the name given him at his circumcision was Simon or Symeon a name common amongst the Jews especially in their latter times This was afterwards by our Saviour not abolished but additioned with the title of Cephas which in Syriack the vulgar Language of the Jéws at that time signifying a stone or rock was thence derived into the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and by us Peter so far was Hesychius out when rendring 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Expounder or Interpreter probably deriving it from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies to explain and interpret By this new imposition our Lord seemed to denote the firmness and constancy of his Faith and his vigorous activity in building up the Church as a spiritual house upon the the true rock the living and corner-stone chosen of God and precious as S. Peter himself expresses it Nor can our Saviour be understood to have hereby conferred upon him any peculiar Supremacy or Sovereignty above much less over the rest of the Apostles for in respect of the great trusts committed to them and their being sent to plant Christianity in the World they are all equally stiled Foundations nor is it accountable either to Scripture or reason to suppose that by this Name our Lord should design the person of Peter to be that very rock upon which his Church was to be built In a fond imitation of this new name given to S. Peter those who pretend to be his Successors in the See of Rome usually lay by their own and assume a new name upon their advancement to the Apostolick Chair it being one of the first questions which the Cardinals put to the new-elected Pope by what name he will please to be called This custome first began about the Year 844 when Peter di Bocca-Porco or Swines-mouth being chosen Pope changed his name into Sergins the Second probably not so much to avoid the uncomeliness of his own name as if unbefitting the dignity of his place for this being but his Paternal name would after have been no part of his Pontifical stile and title as out of a mighty reverence to S. Peter accounting himself not worthy to bear his name though it was his own baptismal name Certain it is that none of the Bishops of that See ever assumed S. Peter's name and some who have had it as their Christian name before have laid it aside upon their election to the Papacy But to return to our Apostle 4. HIS Father was Jonah probably a Fisherman of Bethsaida for the sacred story takes no further notice of him than by the bare mention of his Name and I believe there had been no great danger of mistake though Metaphrastes had not told us that it was not Jonas the Prophet who came out of the Belly of the Whale Brother he was to S. Andrew the Apostle and some question there is amongst the Ancients which was the elder Brother Epiphanius probably from some Tradition current in his time clearly adjudges it to S. Andrew herein universally followed by those of the Church of Rome that the precedency given to S. Peter may not seem to be put upon the account of his Seniority But to him we may oppose the authority of S. Chrysostome a Person equal both in time and credit who expresly says that though Andrew came later into life than Peter yet he first brought him to the knowledge of the Gospel which Baronius against all pretence of reason would understand of his entring into eternal life Besides S. Hierom Cassian Bede and others are for S. Peter being elder Brother expresly ascribing it to his Age that he rather than any other was President of the Colledge of Apostles However it was it sounds not a little to the honour of their Father as of Zebedee also in the like case that of but twelve Apostles two of his Sons were taken into the number In his Youth he was brought up to Fishing which we may guess to have been the staple-trade of Bethsaida which hence probably borrowed its name signifying an house or habitation of Fishing though others render it by Hunting the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 equally bearing either much advantaged herein by the Neighbourhood of the Lake of Gennesareth on whose banks it stood 〈◊〉 also the Sea of Galilee and the Sea of Tiberias according to the mode of the Hebrew language wherein all greater confluences of Waters are called Seas Of this Lake the Jews have a saying that of all the seven Seas which God created he made choice of none but the Sea of Gennesareth which however intended by them is true only in this respect that our blessed Saviour made choice of it to honour it with the frequency of his presence and the power of his miraculous operations In length it was an hundred furlongs and about XI over the Water of it pure and clear sweet and most fit to drink stored it was with several sorts of Fish and those different both in kind and taste from those in other places Here it was that Peter closely followed the exercise of his calling from whence it seems he afterwards removed to Capernaum probably upon his marriage at least frequently resided there for there we meet with his House and there
the Opinions of Men about him were various and different that some took him for John the Baptist lately risen from the dead between whose Doctrine Discipline and way of life in the main there was so great a Correspondence That others thought he was Elias probably judging so from the gravity of his Person freedom of his Preaching the fame and reputation of his Miracles especially since the Scriptures assured them he was not dead but taken up into Heaven and had so expresly foretold that he should return back again That others look'd upon him as the Prophet Jeremiah alive again of whose return the Jewes had great expectations in so much that some of them thought the Soul of Jeremias was re-inspired into 〈◊〉 Or if not thus at least that he was one of the more eminent of the ancient Prophets or that the Souls of some of these Persons had been breathed into him The Doctrine of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Transmigration of Souls first broached and propagated by Pythagoras being at this time current amongst the Jews and owned by the Pharisees as one of their prime Notions and Principles 2. THIS Account not 〈◊〉 our Lord comes closer and nearer to them tells them It was no wonder if the common People were divided into these wild thoughts concerning him but since they had been always with him had been hearers of his Sermons and Spectators of his Miracles he enquired what they themselves thought of him Peter ever forward to return an Answer and therefore by the Fathers frequently stiled The Mouth of the Apostles told him in the name of the rest That he was the Messiah The Son of the living God promised of old in the Law and the Prophets heartily desired and looked for by all good men anointed and set apart by God to be the King Priest and Prophet of his People To this excellent and comprehensive confession of Peter's Our Lord returns this great Eulogie and Commendation Blessed art thou Simon Bar Jonah Flesh and Blood hath not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in Heaven That is this Faith which thou hast now confessed is not humane contrived by Man's wit or built upon his testimony but upon those Notions and Principles which I was sent by God to reveal to the World and those mighty and solemn attestations which he has given from Heaven to the truth both of my Person and my Doctrine And because thou hast so freely made this Confession therefore I also say unto thee that thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it That is that as thy Name signifies a Stone or Rock such shalt thou thy self be firm solid and immoveable in building of the Church which shall be so orderly erected by thy care and diligence and so firmly founded upon that faith which thou hast now confessed that all the assaults and attempts which the powers of Hell can make against it shall not be able to overturn it Moreover I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven That is thou shalt have that spiritual authority and power within the Church whereby as with Keys thou shalt be able to shut and lock out obstinate and impenitent sinners and upon their repentance to unlock the door and take them in again And what thou shalt thus regularly do shall be own'd in the Court above and ratified by God in Heaven 3. UPON these several passages the Champions of the Church of Rome mainly build the unlimited Supremacy and Infallibility of the Bishops of that See with how much truth and how little reason it is not my present purpose to discuss It may suffice here to remark that though this place does very much tend to exalt the honour of Saint Peter yet is there nothing herein personal and peculiar to him alone as distinct from and preserred above the rest of the Apostles Does he here make confession of Christ's being the Son of God Yet besides that herein he spake but the sence of all the rest this was no more than what others had said as well as he yea besore he was so much as call'd to be a Disciple Thus Nathanael at his first coming to Christ expresly told him Rabbi thou art the Son of God Thou art the King of Israel Does our Lord here stile him a Rock All the Apostles are elsewhere equally called Foundations yea said to be the Twelve Foundations upon which the Wall of the new Jerusalem that is the Evangelical Church is 〈◊〉 and sometimes others of them besides Peter are called Pillars as they have relation to the Church already built Does Christ here promise the Keys to Peter that is Power of Governing and of exercising Church-censures and of absolving penitent sinners The very same is elsewhere promised to all the Apostles and almost in the very same termes and words If thine offending Brother prove obstinate tell it unto the Church but if he neglect to hear the Church let him be unto thee as an Heathen and a Publican Verily I say unto you whatsoever ye shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever ye shall loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven And elsewhere when ready to leave the World he tells them As my Father hath sent me even so send I you whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them and whose soever sins ye retain they are retained By all which it is evident that our Lord did not here give any personal prerogative to S. Peter as Universal Pastor and Head of the Christian Church much less to those who were to be his Successors in the See of Rome But that as he made this Confession in the name of the rest of the Apostles so what was here promised unto him was equally intended unto all Nor did the more considering and judicious part of the Fathers however giving a mighty reverence to S. Peter ever understand it in any other sence Sure I am that Origen tells us that every true Christian that makes this confession with the same Spirit and Integrity which S. Peter did shall have the same blessing and commendation from Christ conferr'd upon him 4. THE Holy Jesus knowing the time of his Passion to draw on began to prepare the minds of his Apostles against that fatal Hour telling them what hard and bitter things he should suffer at Jerusalem what affronts and indignities he must undergo and be at last put to death with all the arts of torture and disgrace by the Decree of the Jewish Sanhedrim Peter whom our Lord had infinitely incouraged and indeared to him by the great things which he had lately said concerning him so that his spirits were now afloat and his
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.
he was to undergo to drink of that bitter Cup which he was to drink of and to go through that Baptism wherein he was shortly to be baptized in his own blood Our Apostles were not yet cured of their ambitious humour but either not understanding the force of our Saviour's reasonings or too confidently presuming upon their own strength answered that they could do all this But he the goodness of whose nature ever made him put the best and most candid interpretation upon mens words and actions yea even those of his greatest enemies did not take the advantage of their hasty and inconsiderate reply to treat them with sharp and quick reproofs but mildly owning their forwardness to suffer told them that as for sufferings they should indeed suffer as well as he and so we accordingly find they did S. James after all dying a violent death S. John enduring great miseries and torments and might we believe Chrysostom and Theophylact Martyrdom it self though others nearer to those times assure us he died a natural death but for any peculiar honour or dignity he would not by an absolute and peremptory favour of his own dispose it any otherwise than according to those rules and instructions which he had received of his Father The rest of the Apostles were offended with this ambitious request of the Sons of Zebedee but our Lord to calm their passions discoursed to them of the nature of the Evangelick state that it was not here as in the Kingdoms and seignteuries of this World where the great ones receive homage and fealty from those that are under them but that in his service humility was the way to honour that who ever took most pains and did most good would be the greatest Person pre-eminence being here to be measured by industry and diligence and a ready condescension to the meanest offices that might be subservient to the Souls of Men and that this was no more than what he sufficiently taught them by his own Example being come into the World not to be served himself with any pompous circumstances of state and splendor but to serve others and to lay down his life for the redemption of Mankind With which discourse the storm blew over and their exorbitant passions began on all hands to be allayed and pacified 7. WHAT became of S. James after our Saviour's Ascension we have no certain account either from Sacred or Ecclesiastick stories Sophronius tells us that he preached to the dispersed Jews which surely he means of that dispersion that was made of the Jewish Converts after the death of Stephen The Spanish writers generally contend that having preached the Gospel up and down 〈◊〉 and Samaria after the death of Stephen he came to these Western parts and particularly into Spain some add Britain and Ircland where he planted Christianity and appointed some select Disciples to perfect what he had begun and then returned back to Jerusalem Of this are no footsteps in any Ancient writers earlier than the middle Ages of the Church when 't is mentioned by Isidore the Breviary of Toledo an Arabick Book of Anastasius Patriarch of Antioch concerning the Passions of the 〈◊〉 and some others after them Nay Baronius himself though endeavouring to render the account as smooth and plausible as he could and to remove what objections lay against it yet after all confesses he did it only to shew that the thing was not impossible nor to be accounted such a monstrous and extravagant Fable as some men made it to be as indeed elsewhere he plainly and peremptorily both denies and disproves it He could not but see that the shortness of this Apostle's Life the Apostles continuing all in one intire body at Jerusalem even after the dispersing of the other Christians probably not going out of the bounds of 〈◊〉 for many years after our Lord's Ascension could not comport with so tedious and difficult a voyage and the time which he must necessarily spend in those parts And therefore 't is 〈◊〉 to confine his ministry to Judaea and the parts thereabouts and to seek for him at Jerusalem where we are sure to find him 8. HEROD Agrippa son of Aristobulus and Grandchild of Herod the Great under whom Christ was born had been in great favour with the late Emperor Caligula but much more with his successor Claudius who confirmed his predecessors grant with the addition of Judaea Samaria and Abylene the remaining portions of his Grandfathers dominions Claudius being setled in the Empire over comes Herod from Rome to take possession and to manage the affairs of his new acquired Kingdom A Prince noble and generous prudent and politick throughly versed in all the arts of Courtship able to oblige enemies and to 〈◊〉 or decline the displeasure of the Emperor witness his subtil and cunning insinuations to Caligula when he commanded the Jews to account him a God he was one that knew let the wind blow which way it would how to gain the point he aimed at of a courteous and affable demeanour but withall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a mighty zealot for the Jewish Religion and a most accurate observer of the Mosaick Law keeping himself free from all legal impurities and suffering no day to pass over his head in which he himself was not present at sacrifice Being desirous in the entrance upon his sovereignty to insinuate himself into the favour of the populacy and led no less by his own zealous inclination he saw no better way than to fall heavy upon the Christians a sort of men whom he knew the Jews infinitely hated as a novel and an upstart Sect whose Religion proclaimed open desiance to the Mosaick Institutions Hereupon he began to raise a persecution but alas the commonalty were too mean a sacrifice to fall as the only victim to his zeal and popular designs he must have a fatter and more honourable sacrifice It was not long before S. James his stirring and active temper his bold reproving of the Jews and vigorous contending for the truth and excellency of the Christian Religion rendred him a sit object for his turn Him he commands to be apprehended cast into prison and sentence of death to be passed upon him As he was led forth to the place of Martyrdom the Souldier or Officer that had guarded him to the Tribunal or rather his Accuser and so Suidas expresly tells us it was having been convinced by that mighty courage and constancy which S. James shewed at the time of his trial repented of what he done came and fell down at the Apostle's feet and heartily begged pardon for what he said against him The holy man after a little surprise at the thing raised him up embraced and kissed him Peace said he my son peace be to thee and the pardon of thy faults Whereupon before them all he publickly professed himself to be a Christian and so both were
Rome and being put into a Caldron of boiling Oil by the command of Domitian His banishment into Patmos Transportation what kind of punishment Capitis Diminutio what His writing the Apocalypse there The tradition of his hand wherewith he wrote it being still kept there His return to Ephesus and governing the affairs of that Province His great Age and Death The fancy of his being still alive whence derived by the Ancients The Tradition of his going alive into his Grave and sleeping there Several counterfeits pretending themselves to be S. John His Celibacy whether he was ever married His humility His admirable love and charity and hearty recommending it to the last His charity to mens Souls His endangering himself to reclaim 〈◊〉 debauched young man His singular vigilancy against Hereticks and Seducers His publick disowning Cerinthus his company Cerinthus who and what his principles The Heresie of Ebion what Nicolaitans who whence their Original An account of Nicolas the Deacon's separating from his Wife The vile principles and practises of his pretended followers S. John's writings His Revelation Dionysius Alexandrinus his judgment concerning it and its Author Asserted and proved to be S. John's The ground of doubting what His Gospel when and where written The solemn 〈◊〉 and causes moving him to undertake it The subject of it sublime and mysterious Admired and cited by Heathen Philosophers It s Translation into Hebrew His first Epistle and the design of it His two other Epistles to whom written and why not admitted of old His 〈◊〉 and way of writing considered The great Encomium given of his writings by the ancient Fathers 1. SAINT John was a Galilean the Son of Zebedee and Salome younger Brother to S. James together with whom he was brought up in the Trade of Fishing S. 〈◊〉 makes him remarkable upon the account of his Nobility whereby he became acquainted with the High-Priest and resolutely ventured himself amongst the Jews at our Saviour's Trial prevailed to introduce Peter into the Hall was the only Apostle that attended our Lord at his Crucifixion and afterwards durst own his Mother and keep her at his own house But the nobility of his Family and especially that it should be such as to procure him so much respect from persons of the highest rank and quality seems not reconcileable with the meanness of his Father's Trade and the privacy of his fortunes And for his acquaintance with the High-Priest I should rather put it upon some other account especially if it be true what Nicephorus relates That he had lately sold his Estate left him by his Father in Galilee to Annas the High-Priest and had therewith purchased a fair house at Jerusalem about Mount Sion whence he became acquainted with him Before his coming to Christ he seems for some time to have been Disciple to John the Baptist being probably that other disciple that was with Andrew when they left the Baptist to follow our Saviour so particularly does he relate all circumstances of that transaction though modestly as in other parts of his Gospel concealing his own name He was at the same time with his Brother called by our Lord both to the Discipleship and Apostolate by far the youngest of all the Apostles as the Ancients generally affirm and his great Age seems to evince living near LXX years after our Saviour's suffering 2. THERE is not much said concerning him in the 〈◊〉 story more than what is recorded of him in conjunction with his Brother James which we have already remarked in his life He was peculiarly dear to his Lord and Master being the Disciple whom Jesus loved that is treated with more freedom and familiarity than the rest And indeed he was not only one of the Three whom our Saviour made partakers of the private passages of his life but had some instances of a more particular kindness and favour conferred upon him Witness his lying in our Saviour's bosom at the Paschal Supper it being the custom of those times to lie along at meals upon Couches so that the second lay with his head in the bosom of him that was before him this honourable place was not given to any of the Aged but reserved for our Apostle Nay when Peter was desirous to know which of them our Saviour meant when he told them that one of them should betray him and durst not himself propound the question he made use of S. John whose familiarity with him might best warrant such an enquiry to ask our Lord who thereupon made them understand 't was Judas whom he designed by the Traitor This favour our Apostle endeavoured in some measure to answer by returns of particular kindness and constancy to our Saviour staying with him when the rest deserted him Indeed upon our Lord's first apprehension he fled after the other Apostles it not being without some probabilities of reason that the Ancients conceive him to have been that young man that followed after Christ having a linen cloath cast about his naked body whom when the Officers laid hold upon he left the linen cloath and fled naked from them This in all likelihood was that garment that he had cast about him at Supper for they had peculiar Vestments for that purpose and being extremely affected with the Treason and our Lord 's approaching Passion had forgot to put on his other garments but followed him into the Garden in the same habit wherewith he arose from the Table it being then night and so less liable to be taken notice of either by himself or others But though he 〈◊〉 at present to avoid that sudden violence that was offered to him yet he soon recovered himself and returned back to seek his Master confidently entred into the High-Priests Hall and followed our Lord through the several passages of his Trial and at last waited upon him and for any thing we know was the only Apostle that did so at his Execution owning him as well as being own'd by him in the midst of arms and guards and in the thickest crowds of his most inveterate enemies Here it was that our Lord by his last Will and Testament made upon the Cross appointed him Guardian of his own Mother the Blessed Virgin When he saw his Mother and the Disciple standing by whom he loved he said unto his Mother Woman behold thy Son see here is one that shall supply my place and be to thee instead of a Son to love and honour thee to provide and take care for thee and to the Disciple he said Behold thy Mother Her whom thou shalt henceforth deal with treat and observe with that duty and honourable regard which the relation of an indulgent Mother challenges from a pious and obedient Son whereupon he took her into his own House her Husband Joseph being some time since dead and made her a principal part of his charge and care And certainly the Holy Jesus could not have given a more honourable testimony of his
elegant there being an accuracy in the contexture both of words and matter that runs through all the reasonings of his discourses but that in the Apocalypse the stile is nothing so pure and clear being frequently mixed with more barbarous and improper phrases Indeed his Greek generally abounds with Syriasms his discourses many times abrupt set off with frequent antitheses connected with copulatives passages often repeated things at first more obscurely propounded and which he is forced to enlighten with subsequent explications words peculiar to himself and phrases used in an uncommon sence All which concur to render his way of writing less grateful possibly to the Masters of eloquence and an elaborate curiosity S. Hierom observes that in citing places out of the Old Testament he more immediately translates from the Hebrew Original studying to render things word for word for being an Hebrew of the Hebrews admirably skill'd in the Language of his Country it probably made him less exact in his Greek composures wherein he had very little advantage besides what was immediately communicated from above But whatever was wanting in the politeness of his stile was abundantly made up in the zeal of his temper and the excellency and sublimity of his matter he truly answered his Name Boanerges spake and writ like a Son of Thunder Whence it is that his Writings but especially his Gospel have such great and honourable things spoken of them by the Ancients The Evangelical writings says S. Basil transcend the other parts of the Holy Volumes in other parts God speaks to us by Servants the Prophets but in the Gospels our Lord himself speaks to us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but among all the Evangelical Preachers none like S. John the Son of Thunder for the sublimeness of his speech and the heighth of his discourses beyond any Man's capacity duly to reach and comprehend S. John as a true Son of Thunder says Epiphanius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a certain greatness of speech peculiar to himself does as it were out of the Clouds and the dark recesses of wisdome acquaint us with Divine Doctrines concerning the Son of God To which let me add what S. Cyril of Alexandria among other things says concerning him that whoever looks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the sublimity of his incomprehensible notions the acumen and sharpness of his reason and the quick inferences of his discourses constantly succeeding and following upon one another must needs confess that his Gospel perfectly exceeds all admiration The End of S. John's Life THE LIFE OF S. PHILIP S t Philip After he had converted all Scythia he was at Hierapolis a City of Asia first crucified and then stoned to death Baron May. 1o. St. Philip's Martyrdom Act. 5. 30. Whom ye slew hanged on a tree Matth. 10. 24 25. The disciple is not above his master nor the servant above his Lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master and the servant as his Lord. Galilee generally despised by the Jews and why The honour which our Lord put upon it S. Andrew's birth-place His being first called to be a Disciple and the manner of it An account of his ready obedience to Christ's call What the 〈◊〉 relate concerning him considered The discourse between our Lord and him concerning the knowledge of the Father His preaching the Gospel in the upper Asia and the happy effects of his Ministry His coming to Hierapolis in Phrygia and successful confutation of their Idolatries The rage and fury of the Magistrates against him His Martyrdom Crucifixion and Burial His married condition The confounding him with Philip the Deacon The Gospel forged by the Gnosticks under his name 1. OF all parts of Palestine Galilee seem to have passed under the greatest character of ignominy and reproach The Country it self because bordering upon the Idolatrous 〈◊〉 Nations called Galilee of the Gentiles the people generally beheld as more rude and boisterous more unpolished and barbarous than the rest not remarkable either for Civility or Religion The Galileans received him having seen all the things that he did at Jerusalem at the Feast for they also went up unto the Feast as if it had been a wonder and a matter of very strange remark to 〈◊〉 so much devotion in them as to attend the solemnity of the Passeover Indeed both Jew and Gentile conspired in this that they thought they could not fix a greater title of reproach upon our Saviour and his followers than that of Galilean Can any good thing come out of Nazareth a City in this Province said Nathanael concerning Christ. Search and look say the Pharisees for out of Galilee ariseth no Prophet as if nothing but briers and thorns could grow in that soil But there needs no more to confute this ill-natured opinion than that our Lord not only made choice of it as the seat of his ordinary 〈◊〉 and retreat but that hencehe chose those excellent persons whom he made his Apostles the great instruments to convert the World Some of these we have already given an account of and more are yet behind 2. OF this number was S. Philip born at Bethsaida a Town near the Sea of Tiberias the City of Andrew and Peter Of his Parents and way of life the History of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 no notice though 〈◊〉 he was a Fisherman the Trade general of that 〈◊〉 He had the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 honour of being first called to the Discipleship 〈◊〉 thus came to pass Our Lord soon after his return from the wilderness having met with Andrew and his brother Peter after some short discourse parted from them And the very next day as he was passing through Galilee he found Philip whom he presently commanded to follow him the constant form which he used in making choice of his Disciples and those that did inseparably attend upon him So that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or prerogative of being first called evidently belongs to Philip he being the first-fruits of our Lord's Disciples For though Andrew and Peter were the first that came to and conversed with Christ yet did they immediately return to their Trade again and were not called to the Discipleship till above a whole year after when John was cast into prison Clemens 〈◊〉 tells us that it was Philip to whom our Lord said when he would have excused himself at present that he must go bury his Father Let the dead bury their dead but follow 〈◊〉 me But besides that he gives no account whence he derived this intelligence it is plainly inconsistent with the time of our Apostle's call who was called to be a Disciple a long time before that speech and passage of our Saviour It may seem justly strange that Philip should at first sight so readily comply with our Lord's command and turn himself over into his service having not yet seen any miracle that might evince his 〈◊〉 ship and
to John the Baptist. Hence reputed our Lord's Brother in the same sence that he was reputed the Son of Joseph Indeed we find several spoken of in the History of the Gospel who were Christ's Brethren but in what sence was controverted of old S. Hierom Chrysostom and some others will have them so called because the Sons of Mary Cousin-german or according to the custome of the Hebrew Language Sister to the Virgin Mary But Eusebius Epiphanius and the far greater part of the Ancients from whom especially in matters of fact we are not rashly to depart make them the Children of Joseph by a former Wife And this seems most genuine and natural the Evangelists seeming very express and accurate in the account which they give of them Is not this the Carpenter's Son Is not his Mother called Mary and his Brethren James and Joses and Simon and Jude and his Sisters whose Names says the foresaid Hippolytus were Esther and Thamar are they not all with us whence then hath this man these things By which it is plain that the Jews understood these Persons not to be Christ's Kinsmen only but his Brothers the same Carpenter's Sons having the same relation to him that Christ himself had though indeed they had more Christ being but his reputed they his natural Sons Upon this account the Blessed Virgin is sometimes called the Mother of James and Joses for so amongst the Women that attended at our Lord's Crucifixion we find three eminently taken notice of Mary Magdalen Mary the Mother of James and Joses and the Mother of Zebedees Children Where by Mary the Mother of James and Joses no other can be meant than the Virgin Mary it not being reasonable to suppose that the Evangelists should omit the Blessed Virgin who was certainly there and therefore S. John reckoning up the same Persons expresly stiles her the Mother of Jesus And though it is true she was but S. James his Mother-in-law yet the Evangelists might chuse so to stile her because commonly so called after Joseph's death and probably as Gregory of Nyssa thinks known by that Name all along chusing that Title that the Son of God whom as a Virgin she had brought forth might be better concealed and less exposed to the malice of the envious Jews nor is it any more wonder that she should be esteemed and called the Mother of James than that Joseph should be stiled and accounted the Father of Jesus To which add that Josephus eminently skilful in matters of Genealogy and descent expresly says that our S. James was the Brother of Jesus Christ. One thing there is that may seem to lye against it that he is called the Son of Alphaeus But this may probably mean no more than either that Joseph was so called by another Name it being frequent yea almost constant among the Jews for the same Person to have two Names Quis unquam prohibuerit duobus vel tribus nominibus hominem 〈◊〉 vocari as S. Augustin speaks in a parallel case or as a learned Man conjectures it may relate to his being a Disciple of some particular Sect or Synagogue among the Jews called Alphaeans from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 denoting a Family or Society of devout and learned Men of somewhat more eminency than the rest there being as he tells us many such at this time among the Jews and in this probably S. James had entred himself the great reputation of his Piety and strictness his Wisdom Parts and Learning rendring the conjecture above the censure of being trifling and contemptible 3. OF the place of his Birth the Sacred story makes no mention The Jewes in their Talmud for doubtless they intend the same Person stile him more than once 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a man of the Town of Sechania though where that was I am not able to conjecture What was his particular way and course of life before his being called to the Discipleship and Apostolate we find no intimations of in the History of the Gospel nor any distinct account concerning him during our Saviour's life After the Resurrection he was honoured with a particular Appearance of our Lord to him which though silently passed over by the Evangelists is recorded by S. Paul next to the manifesting himself to the Five Hundred Brethren at once he was seen of James which is by all understood of our Apostle S. Hierom out of the Hebrew Gospel of the Nazarens wherein many passages are set down omitted by the Evangelical Historians gives us a fuller relation of it viz. that S. James had solemnly sworn that from the time that he had drank of the Cup at the Institution of the Supper he would eat Bread no more till he saw the Lord risen from the dead Our Lord therefore being returned from the Grave came and appeared to him commanded Bread to be set before him which he took blessed and brake and gave to S. James saying Eat thy Bread my Brother for the Son of Man is truly risen from among them that sleep After Christ's Ascension though I will not venture to determine the precise time he was chosen Bishop of Jerusalem preferred before all the rest for his near relation unto Christ for this we find to have been the reason why they chose Symeon to be his immediate Successor in that See because he was after him our Lord's next Kinsman A consideration that made Peter and the two Sons of Zebedee though they had been peculiarly honoured by our Saviour not to contend for this high and honourable Place but freely chuse James the Just to be Bishop of it This dignity is by some of the Ancients said to have been conferred on him by Christ himself constituting him Bishop at the time of his appearing to him But it 's safest with others to understand it of its being done by the Apostles or possibly by some particular intimation concerning it which our Lord might leave behind him 4. TO him we find S. Paul making his Address after his Conversion by whom he was honoured with the right hand of fellowship to him Peter sent the news of his miraculous deliverance out of Prison Go shew these things unto James and to the Brethren that is to the whole Church and especially S. James the Bishop and Pastor of it But he was principally active in the Synod at Jerusalem in the great controversie about the Mosaick Rites for the case being opened by Peter and further debated by Paul and Barnabas at last stood up S. James to pass the final and decretory sentence that the Gentile-Converts were not to be troubled with the bondage of the Jewish Yoke only that for a present accommodation some few indifferent Rites should be observed ushering in the expedient with this positive conclusion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I thus judge or decide the matter this is my sentence and determination
untie the girdle of Discipline with the loose hands of dispensation and excuse than to strain her too hard by the strictures and bindings of severity but the errour were the surer on this side 3. The Blessed Jesus refused not the signature of this bloudy Covenant though it were the Character of a Sinner and did Sacramentally rescind the impure reliques of Adam and the contractions of evil customes which was the greatest descent of Humility that is imaginable that he should put himself to pain to be reckoned amongst sinners and to have their Sacraments and their Protestations though his Innocence was purer than the flames of Cherubim But we use arts to seem more righteous than we are desiring rather to be accounted holy than to be so as thinking the vanity of Reputation more useful to us than the happiness of a remote and far distant Eternity But if as it is said Circumcision was ordained besides the signing of the Covenant to abolish the guilt of Original sin we are willing to confess that it being no act of humiliation to confess a crime that all the world is equally guilty of that could not be avoided by our timeliest industry and that serves us for so many ends in the excuse and minoration of our actual impieties so that as Diogenes trampled upon Plato's pride with a greater fastuousness and humorous ostentation so we do with Original sin declaim against it bitterly to save the others harmless and are free in the publication of this that we may be instructed how to conceal the actual The Blessed Jesus had in him no principle of Sin original nor actual and therefore this designation of his in submitting himself to the bloudy Covenant of Circumcision which was a just express and Sacramental abscission of it was an act of glorious Humility yet our charging of our selves so promptly with Adam's fault what-ever truth it may have in the strictness of Theology hath forsitan but an ill end in Morality and so I now consider it without any reflexion upon the precise Question 4. For though the Fall of Adam lost to him all those supernatural assistences which God put into our Nature by way of Grace yet it is by accident that we are more prone to many sins than we are to Vertue Adam's sin did discompose his Understanding and Affections and every sin we do does still make us more unreasonable more violent more sensual more apt still to the multiplication of the same or the like actions the first rebellion of the inferiour Faculties against the Will and Understanding and every victory the Flesh gets over the Spirit makes the inferiour insolent strong tumultuous domineering and triumphant upon the proportionable ruines of the spirit blinding our Reason and binding our Will and all these violations of our Powers are increased by the perpetual ill customes and false principles and ridiculous guises of the World which makes the later Ages to be worse than the former unless some other accident do intervene to stop the ruine and declension of Vertue such as are God's Judgments the sending of Prophets new imposition of Laws messages from Heaven diviner Institutions such as in particular was the great Discipline of Christianity And even in this sense here is origination enough for sin and impairing of the reasonable Faculties of humane Souls without charging our faults upon Adam 5. But besides this God who hath propounded to Man glorious conditions and design'd him to an excellent state of Immortality hath required of him such a duty as shall put man to labour and present to God a service of a free and difficult obedience For therefore God hath given us Laws which come cross and are restraints to our natural inclinations that we may part with something in the service of God which we value For although this is nothing in respect of God yet to Man it is the greatest he can do What thanks were it to man to obey God in such things which he would do though he were not commanded But to leave all our own desires and to take up objects of God's propounding contrary to our own and desires against our Nature this is that which GOD design'd as a sacrifice of our selves to him And therefore God hath made many of his Laws to be prohibitions in the matter of natural pleasure and restraints of our sensitive appetite Now this being become the matter of Divine Laws that we should in many parts and degrees abstain from what pleases our senses by this supervening accident it happens that we are very hardly weaned from sin but most easily tempted to a Vice And then we think we have reason to lay the fault upon Original sin and natural aversation from goodness when this inclination to Vice is but accidental and occasional upon the matter and sanction of the Laws Our Nature is not contrary to Vertue for the Laws of Nature and right Reason do not only oblige us but incline us to it but the instances of some Vertues are made to come cross to our Nature that is to our natural appetites by reason of which it comes to pass that as S. Paul says we are by nature the children of wrath meaning that by our natural inclinations we are disposed to contradict those Laws which lay fetters upon them we are apt to satisfie the Lusts of the Flesh for in these he there instances 6. But in things intellectual and spiritual where neither the one nor the other 〈◊〉 the sensual part we are indifferent to Vertue or to Vice and when we do amiss it is wholly and in all degrees inexcusably our own fault In the Old Law when it was a duty to swear by the God of Israel in solemn causes men were apt enough to swear by him only and that sometimes the Israelites did swear by the Queen of Heaven it was by the ill example and desires to comply with the neighbour Nations whose Daughters they sometime married or whose armes they feared or whose friendship they desired or with whom they did negotiate It is indifferent to us to love our Fathers and to love strangers according as we are determined by custom or education Nay for so much of it as is natural and original we are more inclined to love them than to disrepute them and if we disobey them it is when any injunction of theirs comes cross to our natural desires and purposes But if from our infancy we be told concerning a stranger that he is our Father we frame our affections to nature and our nature to custome and education and are as apt to love him who is not and yet is said to be as him who is said not to be and yet indeed is our natural Father 7. And in sensual things if GOD had commanded Polygamy or promiscuous Concubinate or unlimited Eatings and Drinkings it is not to be supposed but that we should have been ready enough to have obeyed God in all such impositions
and the sons of Israel never murmured when God bad them borrow jewels and ear-rings and spoil the Egyptians But because God restrained these desires our duties are the harder because they are fetters to our Liberty and contradictions to those natural inclinations which also are made more active by evil custom and unhandsome educations From which Premisses we shall observe in order to practice That sin creeps upon us in our education so tacitely and undiscernibly that we mistake the cause of it and yet so prevalently and effectually that we judge it to be our very nature and charge it upon Adam to lessen the imputation upon us or to increase the licence or the confidence when every one of us is the Adam the man of sin and the parent of our own impurities For it is notorious that our own iniquities do so discompose our naturals and evil customs and examples do so incourage impiety and the Law of God enjoyns such Vertues which do violence to Nature that our proclivity to sin is occasioned by the accident and is caused by our selves what-ever mischief Adam did to us we do more to our selves We are taught to be revengeful in our Cradles and are taught to strike our Neighbour as a means to still our frowardness and to satisfie our wranglings Our Nurses teach us to know the greatness of our Birth or the riches of our Inheritance or they learn us to be proud or to be impatient before they learn us to know God or to say our Prayers And then because the use of Reason comes at no definite time but insensibly and divisibly we are permitted such acts with impunity too long deferring to repute them to be sins till the habit is grown strong natural and masculine and because from the infancy it began in inolinations and tender overtures and slighter actions Adam is laid in the fault and Original sin did all and this clearly we therefore confess that our faults may seem the less and the misery be pretended natural that it may be thought to be irremediable and therefore we not engaged to endeavour a cure so that the confession of our original sin is no imitation of Christ's Humility in suffering Circumcision but too often an act of Pride Carelesness Ignorance and Security 8. At the Circumcision his Parents imposed the Holy Name told to the Virgin by the Angel his Name was called JESUS a Name above every name For in old times God was known by names of Power of Nature of Majesty But his name of Mercy was reserved till now when God did purpose to pour out the whole treasure of his Mercy by the mediation and ministry of his Holy Son And because God gave to the Holy Babe the name in which the treasures of Mercy were deposited and exalted this name above all names we are taught that the purpose of his Counsel was to exalt and magnifie his Mercy above all his other works he being delighted with this excellent demonstration of it in the Mission and Manifestation and Crucifixion of his Son he hath changed the ineffable Name into a name utterable by man and desirable by all the world the Majesty is all arrayed in robes of Mercy the Tetragrammation or adorable Mystery of the Patriarchs is made fit for pronunciation and expression when it becometh the name of the Lord 's CHRIST And if JEHOVAH be full of majesty and terrour the name JESUS is full of sweetness and mercy It is GOD clothed with circumstances of facility and opportunities of approximation The great and highest name of GOD could not be pronounced truly till it came to be sinished with a Guttural that made up the name given by this Angel to the Holy Child nor God received or entertained by men till he was made humane and sensible by the adoption of a sensitive nature like Vowels pronunciable by the intertexture of a Consonant Thus was his Person made tangible and his Name utterable and his Mercy brought home to our necessities and the Mystery made explicate at the Circumcision of this Holy Babe 9. But now God's mercy was at full Sea now was the time when God made no reserves to the effusion of his mercy For to the Patriarchs and persons of eminent Sanctity and imployment in the elder Ages of the World God according to the degrees of his manifestation or present purpose would give them one letter of this ineffable Name For the reward that Abraham had in the change of his name was that he had the honour done him to have one of the letters of Jehovah put into it and so had Joshua when he was a type of Christ and the Prince of the Israelitish Armies and when God took away one of these letters it was a curse But now he communicated all the whole Name to this Holy Child and put a letter more to it to signifie that he was the glory of God the express image of his Father's person God Eternal and then manifested to the World in his Humanity that all the intelligent world who expected Beatitude and had treasured all their hopes in the ineffable Name of GOD might find them all with ample returns in this Name of JESUS which God hath exalted above every name even above that by which God in the Old Testament did represent the greatest awfulness of his Majesty This miraculous Name is above all the powers of Magical Inchantments the nightly rites of Sorcerers the Secrets of Memphis the Drugs of Thessaly the silent and mysterious Murmurs of the wise Chaldees and the Spells of Zoroastres This is the Name at which the Devils did tremble and pay their inforced and involuntary adorations by confessing the Divinity and quitting their possessions and usurped habitations If our prayers be made in this Name God opens the windows of Heaven and rains down benediction at the mention of this Name the blessed Apostles and Hermione the daughter of St. Philip and Philotheus the son of Theophila and St. Hilarion and St. Paul the Eremite and innumerable other Lights who followed hard after the Sun of Righteousness wrought great and prodigious Miracles Signs and wonders and healings were done by the Name of the Holy Child JESUS This is the Name which we should ingrave in our hearts and write upon our fore-heads and pronounce with our most harmonious accents and rest our faith upon and place our hopes in and love with the overflowings of charity and joy and adoration And as the revelation of this Name satisfied the hopes of all the World so it must determine our worshippings and the addresses of our exteriour and interiour Religion it being that Name whereby God and God's mercies are made presential to us and proportionate objects of our Religion and affections The PRAYER MOst Holy and ever-Blessed Jesu who art infinite in Essence glorious in Mercy mysterious in thy Communications affable and presential in the descents of thy Humanity I
and that that Cross stained with his bloud had been left as a memorial of these matters An interpretation that was afterwards confirmed by another grave and learned Bramin who expounded the Inscription to the very same effect The judicious Reader will measure his belief of these things by the credit of the Reporters and the rational probability of the things themselves which for my part as I cannot certainly affirm to be true so I will not utterly conclude them to be false 6. FROM these first plantations of Christianity in the Eastern India's by our Apostle there is said to have been a continued series and succession of Christians hence called S. Thomas-Christians in those parts unto this day The Portugals at their first arrival here found them in great numbers in several places no less as some tell us than fifteen or sixteen thousand Families They are very poor and their Churches generally mean and sordid wherein they had no Images of Saints nor any representations but that of the Cross they are governed in Spirituals by an High-Priest whom some make an Armenian Patriarch of the Sect of Nestorius but in truth is no other than the Patriarch of Muzal the remainder as is probable of the ancient 〈◊〉 and by some though erroneously stiled Babylon residing Northward in the Mountains who together with twelve Cardinals two Patriarchs and several Bishops disposes of all affairs referring to Religion and to him all the Christians of the East yield subjection They promiscuously admit all to the Holy Communion which they receive under both kinds of Bread and Wine though instead of Wine which their Country affords not making use of the juice of Raisons steep'd one night in water and then pressed forth Children unless in case of sickness are not baptized till the fortieth day At the death of Friends their kindred and relations keep an eight days feast in memory of the departed Every Lord's-day they have their publick Assemblies for prayer and preaching their devotions being managed with great reverence and solemnity Their Bible at least the New Testament is in the Syriack Language to the study whereof the Preachers earnestly exhort the people They observe the times of Advent and Lent the Festivals of our Lord and many of the Saints those especially that relate to S. Thomas the Dominica in Albis or Sunday after Easter in memory of the famous confession which S. Thomas on that day made of Christ after he had been sensibly cured of his unbelief another on the first of July celebrated not only by Christians but by Moors and Pagans the people who come to his Sepulchre on Pilgrimage carrying away a little of the red Earth of the place where he was interred which they keep as an inestimable treasure and 〈◊〉 it sovereign against diseases They have a kind of Monasteries of the Religious who live in great abstinence and chastity Their Priests are shaven in fashion of a Cross have leave to marry once but denied a second time No marriages to be dissolved but by death These rites and customs they solemnly pretend to have derived from the very time of S. Thomas and with the greatest care and diligence do observe them at this day The End of S. Thomas's Life THE LIFE OF S. JAMES the Less S. IAMES Minor This Apostle being a Kinsman of our Lord and having Sale first Bishop of Hierusalem was cast down from the top of the Temple and after killed with a Fuâ—â—ers club Baron â—â—â— 1 o The Martyrdom of St. James y e lesse Mauh 23. 37. O Jerusalem Jerusalem thou that killest the prophets stonest them which are sent unto thee S. James the Less proved to be the same with him that was Bishop of Jerusalem His Kindred and Relations The Son of Joseph by a former Wife The Brethren of our Lord who His Country what Our Lord's appearance to him after his Resurrection Invested in the See of Jerusalem by whom and why His authority in the Synod at Jerusalem His great diligence and fidelity in his Ministry The conspiracy of his Enemies to take away his Life His Discourse with the Scribes and Pharisees about the Messiah His Martyrdom and the manner of it His Burial where His Death resented by the Jews His strictness in Religion His Priesthood whence His singular delight in Prayer and efficacy in it His great love and charity to Men. His admirable Humility His Temperance according to the rules of the Nazarite Order The Love and respect of the People towards him His Death an inlet to the destruction of the Jewish Nation His Epistle when written What the design and purpose of it The Proto-evangelium ascribed to him 1. BEFORE we can enter upon the Life of this Apostle some difficulty must be cleared relating to his Person Doubted it has been by some whether this was the same with that S. James that was Bishop of Jerusalem three of this Name being presented to us S. James the Great this S. James the Less both Apostles and a third sirnamed the Just distinct say they from the former and Bishop of Jerusalem But this however pretending to some little countenance from antiquity is a very great mistake and built upon a sandy bottom For besides that the Scripture mentions no more than two of this Name and both Apostles nothing can be plainer than that that S. James the Apostle whom S. Paul calls our Lord's Brother and reckons with Peter and John one of the Pillars of the Church was the same that presided among the Apostles no doubt by vertue of his place it being his Episcopal Chair and determined in the Synod at Jerusalem Nor do either Clemens Alexandrinus or 〈◊〉 out of him mention any more than two S. James put to death by Herod and S. James the Just Bishop of Jerusalem whom they expresly affirm to be the same with him whom S. Paul calls the Brother of our Lord. Once indeed 〈◊〉 makes our S. James one of the Seventy though elsewere quoting a place of Clemens of Alexandria he numbers him with the Chief of the Apostles and expresly distinguishes him from the Seventy Disciples Nay S. Hierom though when representing the Opinion of others he stiles him the Thirteenth Apostle yet elsewhere when speaking his own sence sufficiently proves that there were but two James the Son of 〈◊〉 and the other the Son of Alphaeus the one sirnamed the Greater the other the Less Besides that the main support of the other Opinion is built upon the authority of Clemens his Recognitions a Book in doubtful cases of no esteem and value 2. This doubt being removed we proceed to the History of his Life He was the Son as we may probably conjecture of Joseph afterwards Husband to the Blessed Virgin and his first Wife whom S. Hierom from Tradition stiles Escha Hippolytus Bishop of Porto calls Salome and further adds that she was the Daughter of Aggi Brother to Zacharias Father