Grave between the ashes of a man and of a Beast 2. But there is 2. a death before this a death of the soul before the death of the body and the much worser of the twain The teeth of Sin says the Son of Syrach are as the teeth of a Lion slaying the souls of men Ecclus. xxi 2. the very souls The separation of the body from the soul which is the temporal death is but a trifle to the separation of the soul from God which is the spiritual This sin brings upon the soul in the very act if it rather be not it it self the very act of sin commits the murther and slays the soul whilst it is in doing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says the Apostle of the voluptuous Widow that lives in sin or pleasure she is dead whilst she is alive 1 Tim. v. 6. A meer walking carkase a sinner is a meer motion and engine without life and spirit when Gods Spirit and Grace as by sin it does is departed from him The fall of the body into the dust of the Grave is nothing so bad as the fall of the soul into the dirt of sin When our souls are but once deprived of Grace and Goodness Gods presence so taken from us they do but wither and dwindle and die away and we only walk like so many Ghosts among the Graves in the shades of night and darkness Did we but consider or understand how miserably the soul crawls along in this condition when the eternal Spirit is departed from it seal'd up as it were by her transgressions in the grave of a customary wickedness adding still one iniquity to another wholly insensible of any good as the dead body we would say the natural death were nothing like it the Grave but a bed of rest and sleep whilst sin were the very torments of death it self Nay the very pangs and horrors of death that make way to it but little flea-bitings to the stings and terrors of Conscience that often follow upon our sins upon the loss of Gods favour and presence And yet there is a third death worse than both these eternal Death from the two former we may rise again The dust will one day breath again and the soul after the departure of Gods Spirit may again retrive it and recover but once within the regions of eternal death and there for ever Body lost and Soul lost and God lost for ever An end indeed without an end an end of good but no end of evil where the worm is ever dying yet ever gnawing the fire dark as the most dismal night yet ever burning the body eternally separated from all the comforts of the soul yet the soul ever in it the soul for all eternity cast out of the land of the living separated irreconcilably from Gods presence the only fountain of joy and life and being and yet continually and everlastingly feeling the horrors of this intolerable parting from him Go ye cursed into everlasting fires is the sentence long since past upon the ungodly and the sinner by our Blessed Saviour St. Matth. xxv 41. The very Heathen notwithstanding the ignorance they were in they were not ignorant of this that they that commit such things are worthy of death so says the Apostle Rom. i. 32. And be the sinner who it will and be his way never so plain and easie never so specious yet at the end thereof is the pit of Hell says the son of Syrach Eâ—clus xxi 10. He that now promises himself any better end of his sins or sinful courses he that flatters and feeds himself with any other end of his Ambition or his Treason of his Faction or his Sedition of his Covetousness or his Sacriledge of his uncleanness or his unjustice or any other sin I name no more for I leave every one to reckon up his own he that flatters himself I say with any other end of any of them to make himself forget this does but deceive himself and fool away his soul beyond recovery Here 's all the fruit he is like to get the only end he will certainly find at last everlasting Death an end without an end without any thing in life to sweeten the approaches of death without any thing in death fruit or leaves to garnish up the Chambers of the Grave or any bud of hope to allay the misery and sadness of it And we need no other witness of all this neither of the little or no fruit nor of the great and horrid shame nor of the vast and miserable ruine that comes of sin but our own selves What had ye says our Apostle ye can shew no fruit ye are now asham'd and ye cannot be ignorant that death is coming on I here refer it to you say what you can in the behalf of it I desire none other witnesses nor judges than your selves What fruit had ye then in those things whereof you are now asham'd tell me if you can IV. Indeed there is none can tell so well as the sinner can himself what he has gotten by his sin whether we consider him as one reflecting upon his ways only as a person of reason should or else as a Christian will For 1. let any of us as men of reason lay together the weary steps the hard adventures the vexatious troubles the ordinary disappointments the impertinent visits the thoughtful nights the busie days the tumultuous uproars of our fears our jealousies our hopes our despairs the unworthy condiscentions the base disparagements the dishonourable enterprizes that a lust that a humour that a vanity puts us to or puts upon us and then compare them with the lightness the shortness the unprofitableness the unsatisfactoriness the eternal shame and confusion we yet after all purchase with all that toil and we must both needs confess that we have done brutishly and unreasonably and cannot but be asham'd we have so unman'd our selves and betrayed the very essence and glory of our nature not done like men But 2. let us renew the same reflections and view them over again by the light of Grace look upon our selves as Christians thus wretchedly betraying our God for a Lust Christ for an Interest our Religion for a Fancy our obedience for a Humour our Charity for a Ceremony our Peace for a Punctilio our duty to God and man for a little vain applause of peradventure ungodly men our Innocence for Dirt and Pleasure our eternal Glory and Salvation for Toys and Trifles and will we not without more ado confess we are asham'd infinitely asham'd of it Hear but those brave ranting blades those gallant sinners Wisdom v. 8. what they say themselves What hath pride profited us say they or what good have riches with our vaunting brought us as if in sum they had said what have all our sins procured us Why all those are passed away like a shadow ver 9. and we are consumed in our own wickedness ver 13. Now indeed though
to wait upon their Lord that had now set them at liberty from the Grave and divulge the greatness and glory of his Resurrection When Moses and Elias appeared upon the holy Mount at Christs transfiguration talking with him St. Luke tells us they spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Hierusalem St. Luke ix 31. And 't is highly credible the discourse of these Saints with those to whom they appeared was of his Resurrection Their going into the City was not meerly to shew themselves nor their appearance meerly to appear but to appear Witnesses and Companions of their Saviours Resurrection Nor is it probable that the Saints whose business is to sing praise and glory to their Lord should be silent at this point of time of any thing that might make to the advancement of his glory Yet you may do well to take notice that it is not to all but to many only that they appeared to such as St. Peter tells us of Christs own appearance after his Resurrection as were chosen before of God witnesses chosen for that purpose Acts x. 41. that we may learn indeed to prize Gods favours yet not all to look for particular revelations and appearances 'T is sufficient for us to know so many Saints that slept arose to tell it that so many Saints that are now asleep St. Peter and the Twelve St. Paul and five hundred brethren at once all saw him after he was risen so many millions have faln asleep in this holy Faith so many slept and died for it that it is thus abundantly testified both by the dead and living both by life and death even standing up and dying for it and a Church raised upon this faith through all the corners of the earth and to the very ends of the world But to know the truth of it is not enough unless we know the benefits of Christs Resurrection they come next to be considered and there is in the words evidence sufficient of four sorts of them 1. The victory over sin and death both the Graves were opened 2. The Resurrection of the soul and body the one in this life the other at the end of it many dead bodies that slept arose 3. The sanctification and glorification of our souls and bodies the dead bodies that arose out of the graves went into the holy City 4. The establishing us both in grace and glory they appeared unto many All these says the Text after his Resurrection by the force and vertue of it Indeed it seems the graves were opened death almost vanquished and the grave near overcome whilst he yet hung upon the Cross before he was taken thence deaths sting taken out by the death of Christ and all the victories of the grave now at an end that it could no longer be a perpetual prison yet for all that the victory was not complete all the Regions of the Grave not fully ransackt nor the forces of it utterly vanquisht and disarm'd nor its Prisoners set at liberty and it self taken and led captive till the Resurrection 'T is upon this Point St. Paul pitches the victory and calls in the Prophets testimony 1 Cor. xv 54. upon this 't is he proclaims the triumph ver 55. O Death where is thy sting O Grave where is thy victory even upon the Resurrection of Iesus Christ which he has been proving and proclaiming the whole Chapter through with all its benefits and concludes it with his thanks for this great victory ver 57. So it is likewise for the death and grave of sin the chains of sin were loosed the dominion of it shaken off the Grave somewhat opened that we might see some light of grace through the cranies of it by Christs Passion but we are not wholly set at liberty not quite let out of it the Grave-stone not perfectly removed from the mouth of it till the Angel at the Resurrection or rather the Angel of the Covenant by his Resurrection remove it thence remove our sins and iniquities clean from us 2. Then indeed 2. the dead soul arises then appears the second benefit of his Resurrection then we rise to righteousness and live 1 Pet. ii 24. then we awake to righteousness and sin no more So St. Paul infers it That like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father even so should we also walk in newness of life Rom 6. 4. This Resurrection one of the ends of his our righteousness attributed to that as our Redemption to his death From it it comes that our dead bodies arise too Upon that Iob grounds it his Resurrection upon his Redeemers Iob xix 25. I know that my Redeemer liveth well What then Why I know too therefore that though after my skin worms destroy this body yet in my flesh I shall see God The Apostle interweaves our Resurrection with Christs and Christs with ours his as the cause of ours ours as the effect of his a good part of 1 Cor. 15. If Christ be risen then we if we then he if not he not we if not we not he And in the Text 't is evident no rising from the dead how open soever the graves be till after his Resurrection that we may know to what Article of our faith we owe both our deliverance from death and our deliverance into life here in soul and hereafter in our bodies by what with holy Iob to uphold our drooping spirits our mangled martyr'd crazy bodies by the faith of the Resurrection that day the day of the Gospel of good tidings to be remembred for ever 3. So much the rather in that 't is a Day yet of greater joy a messenger of all fulness of grace and glory to us of the means of our sanctification 3. of our rising Saints living the lives of Saints holy lives and of our glorification our rising unto glory both doors opened to us now and not till now liberty and power given us to go into the holy City both this below and that above now after his Resurrection and through it He rose again says St. Paul for our justification Rom. iv 25. to regenerate us to a lively hope blessed be God for it says St. Pet. i. 3. that we might be planted together in the likeness of his Resurrection says St. Paul Rom. vi 5. grow up like him in righteousness and true holiness and when the day of the general Resurrection comes rise then also after his likeness be conformed to his Image bear his Image who is the heavenly as we have born the Image of the earthly our vile body chang'd and fashioned like his glorious body according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself Phil. iii. 21. whereby in the day of his Resurrection he subdued death and grave and sin and all things to him 4. And to shew the power of his Resurrection to the full there is an appearing purchast to us by it an appearing here in the fulness
and lustre of grace such as may appear unto all men to be such not a few but many many graces all graces obtained by it nay it does not yet appear what we shall be by it but when we shall appear we shall be like him says St. Iohn 1 Ioh. iii. 2. our righteousness and glory last for ever He died once says the Apostle but being raised he dies no more no more did these in the Text no more shall we but live for ever Not only grace and glory but perseverance in the one and eternity in the other apparently no less accruing to us by the vertue and efficacy of his Resurrection good news from the grave the while and from the late rais'd Prisoners of it who are now thirdly as well the pledges of the certainty of our Resurrection as the evidences of the power of Christs A double Pledge we have here of our Resurrection one from the many dead bodies of the Saints that slept arising out of their graves The other from their going into the holy City and their appearng unto many In the first then are four particulars to assure us of it 1. We find dead bodies here arising to assure us such a thing there may be such a thing there is as a Resurrection of the body that bodies be they never so dead may be quickned never so corrupted may rise incorruptible you may see them rising here And 2. Many of them there are that we may see it belongs not only to a few to some particular persons this many is but the usher to St. Pauls all We shall all arise and stand before the judgment Seat of Christ Rom. xiv 10. 3. Saints bodies they are said to be and they are our fellows members of the same body and if one member be honoured all the other members are honoured with it says St. Paul 1 Cor. xii 26. Indeed the bodies of the Saints only shall rise with Christ rise to enter into the holy City but all shall rise for all shall appear every one to receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad 2 Cor. v. 10. they that have done good to the Resurrection of life and they that have done evil unto the Resurrection of damnation says he that rose himself to day St. Ioh. v. 29. For all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth ver 28. none be left behind though the best come first The Saints have only the prerogative not the only priviledge of the Resurrection For 4. 't is said the bodies of them that slept that we may know that all that sleep that all that die shall awake again and rise at last He that lies down only to sleep lies down to rise and good and bad how sad soever the ones dreams be how full of terror soever be the wicked mans sleep in death are both said to sleep Ieroboam and Rehoboam Baasha and Omri and Ahab and Ioram are said all of them to sleep with the Fathers as well as David and Solomon and Ioash and Hezekiah obdormierunt simul they all sleep together the sleep of death and so shall likewise arise together though as there is difference in sleep some sweet some horrible so in rising too some sad some joyful when they awake but sleep necessarily intimates and supposes some awaking and rising after it 't is else somewhat more than sleep Thus by the rising of the dead bodies of these Saints so many rising rising as men out of their sleep not as Saints out of a priviledge we have one strong pledge of our Resurrection of which they only lead the van after our great Captain the Lord Iesus Christ. A second we have given us from both their going into the holy City and their appearing unto many It was not in obscuro this thing was not as St. Paul speaks done in a corner not in a house or Church-yard where are all the apparitious we now hear of not in a Country Village no not an ordinary City neither but in the great Metropolis Ierusalem it self call'd holy for what it had been not what it was for it was now the most sinful City or called holy yet for the Temples sake that yet stood firm an item by the way to tell us how long a City may be stil'd holy so long as the Church stands sacred and inviolate in it and no whit longer But be the City holy or not that which is done there by many is not likely a private business has witnesses enow to give credit to it But to put all out of question the there appearing unto many will certifie it was no phantasm no particular fansie or imagination of some silly simple or timorous persons but a business of the greatest certainty whether you take many for the many or many people and folk together or for such who were before chosen as the Apostle speaks to be witnesses to whom the Resurrection should be reveal'd as to men of credit repute and understanding Nor does the word appearing any way prejudice but confirm it the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to make plain and certifie to give us a full knowledge and manifestation of a thing so us'd St. Iohn xiv 21. Acts xxiii 21. and xxiv 1. when either persons or things really and truly appear before us So the publickness of the place the number and fitness of the persons and the way and manner of appearance is evidence enough of their real Resurrection and a second pledge to us that it concerns more than themselves though themselves were many even the many they appeared to too whole Cities all Cities holy and unholy all the world of which that City was but an emblem and signification a place from whence God did as it were out of his own house and palace dispence his providence through all the earth and the Saints besides thus going after the Resurrection into the holy City an intimation whether the Saints go when they are risen the whole action a Symbol of what is done in both the first and second Resurrection what we are to do in the one and expect in the other or what is done both in the one and the other and so lastly we now consider it For the similitude the first Resurrection or the Resurrection of the soul from sin to righteousness bears to this of the dead bodies in the Text we have it very like both for thing and order The Graves in which the souls lie buried are either our corruptible bodies or corrupt passions or stony hearts or continued ill customs which so entomb the spirit that it lies dead without any spiritual life and operation The opening of the Graves is the loosing the chains of those earthly affections bodily depressions wicked habits and hardned hearts The souls that are dead in trespasses and sins are those dead bodies fuller of
of dead mens mouths and shall not our Cities and Temples resound of it shall they tell the wonders of the day and we neither mind the day nor wonders of it surely some evil will befal us as said the Lepers at the Gates of Samaria if we hold our peace 'T is a day of good of glorious tidings and we must not lest the Grave in indignation shut her mouth upon us and the holy City bar us out Open we then our mouths to day and sing praises to him who made the day made it a joyful day indeed the very seal of happiness unto us Open we our mouths and take the cup of salvation as the Prophet calls it the cup of thanksgiving the Apostle stiles it and call upon the name of the Lord. Open our mouths now as the grave and he will fill them Open our mouths as the grave and be not satisfied give not over our prayers until he do Raise we all our thoughts and desires and endeavours to entertain him go which way he shall send us appear what he would have us attend him whither soever he shall lead us and when he himself shall appear he will lead our souls out of the death of sin to the life of righteousness our bodies out of the dust of death into the land of life both souls and bodies into the holy City the new Ierusalem where there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying nor any more pain but all tears shall be wip'd away all joys come into our hearts and eyes and we sing merrily and joyfully all honour and glory be unto him that hath redeemed us from death and raised us to life by the power and vertue of his Resurrection All blessing and glory and praise and honour and power be unto him with the Father and Holy Spirit for ever and ever THE THIRD SERMON UPON Easter Day PSAL. CXViii 24. This is the day which the Lord hath made We will rejoyce and be glad in it THis is the day which the Lord hath made And if ever day made to rejoyce and be glad in this is the day And the Lord made it made it to rejoyce in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as holy Ignatius a day of days not only a high day as the Iewish Easter St. Ioh. xix 31. but the highest of high days highest of them all A Day in which the Sun it self rejoyced to shine came forth like a Bridegroom in the robes and face of joy and rejoyced like a Giant with the strength and violence of joy exultavit leapt and skipt for joy to run his course Psal. xix 5. as if he never had seen day before only a little day spring from on high as old Zachary saw and sung never full and perfect day the Kingdom and power of darkness never fully and wholly vanquished till this morning light till this day-star or this day's Sun arose till Christ rose from the grave as the Sun from his Eastern bed to give us light the light of grace and the light of glory light everlasting And this Suns rising this Resurrection of our Lord and Master entitles it peculiarly the Lords making This day of the week from this day of our Lords Resurrection stil'd Lords Day ever since And of this day of the Resurrection the Fathers the Church the Scriptures understand it Not one of the Fathers says that devout and learned Bishop Andrews that he had read and he had read many but interpret it of Easter day The Church picks out this Psalm to day as a piece of service proper to it This very verse in particular was anciently used every day in Easter week evidence enough how she understood it And for the Scriptures The two verses just before The stone which the builders refused the same is become the head of the corner This is the Lords doing and it is marvelous in our eyes to which this day comes in presently and refers applied both of them by Christ himself unto himself in three several places St. Mat. xxi 42. St. Mar. xii 10. St. Luk. xx 17 rejected by the builders in his Passion made 〈◊〉 head of the corner in his Resurrection the first of the verses applied again twice by St. Peter Acts iv 10. and 1 Pet. ii 7. to the Resurrection For these doings these marvelous doings a day was made made to remember it and rejoyce in it as in the chiefest of his marvelous works And being such let us do it Let not the Jews out-do us let not them here rejoyce more in the figure than we in the substance they in the shadow than we in the Sun 'T is now properly Sunday this day ever since a day lighted upon on purpose for us by the Sun himself to see wonderful things in and as wonderfully to rejoyce in Abraham saw this day of Christs as well as Christmas St. Ioh. viii 56. saw it in Isaacs rising from under his hand from death as in a figure says the Apostle Heb. xi 19. saw it and was glad to see it exceeding glad as much at least to see Christ and Isaac delivered from death as delivered in to life Abrahams children all the faithful will be so too to see the day when ere it comes It now is come by the circle of the year let us rejoyce and be glad in it I require no more of you than is plainly in the Text to confess the day and express the joy Both are here as clear as day Dies Gaudii Gaudium Diei A day of joy the joy of the day Easter day and Easter joy A day made and joy made on it A day ordained and joy appointed God making the day we making the joy upon it Or if you please Ordo Diei Officium Diei An Order for the day and an Office for the day The Order for the day This is the day which the Lord hath made order'd and ordain'd The Office for it We will or let us rejoyce and be glad in it Exultemus laetemur An office of thanksgiving and joy ordained and taken up upon it The first is Gods doings the second ours And ours order'd to follow his our duty his day the Lords day requires sure the Servants duty Both together Gods day and mans duty make up the Text and must the Sermon But I take my rise from the days rising The Lords order for the day This is the day which the Lord hath made Wherein we have 1. The Day design'd 2. The Institution made 3. the Preeminence given it 4. The Institutor exprest 5. The ground intimated 6. The End annext This is designs the day Gods making that institutes it The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the The gives it the Preeminence the Lord is the institutor The ground is understood in the This this day when that was done that went before ver 22. and the End by the annexing joy and gladness to it Of these particularly and in order then of the
close puts me in mind now of the third Particular The Effect of all these If-Hopes these but supposed vain hopes Misery and the worst the most misery We are then of all men most miserable Miserable But what should make us so What but that which makes up misery Pain and Loss Lost joyes deluded hopes and real pains troubles and infelicities We shall not need to go out of this very Chapter which has given us the Text to find enough to make up a bulk of Misery 1. For Loss 1. We have lost our head Christ is not risen if our hope be only here He is dead still if there be no Resurrection and we are at the best but walking Ghosts horrours to others and to our selves We may well go with the Disciples to Emaus a word that signifies forlorn people go among forlorn people indeed if he be dead still We have lost our spirits our senses our life and all if our head be gone we are a generation of senseless liveless silly people to be Christians still 2. We have lost our labours and our sufferings too What availeth it that we stand in jeopardy every hour if the dead rise not at all ver 30. If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus what advantageth it me if the dead rise not ver 32. What are all St. Pauls labours and travels watchings and fastings whippings and imprisonments his suffering cold and nakedness hunger and thirst contumelies and reproaches his journeys and his shipwracks his so many perils both by Sea and Land his chastening his body and keeping it under his so often perils of death by treachery by hostility many other ways his so many persecutions and after them even death it self To what purpose all these if there be no place or opportunity hereafter to reward them What mean these foolish Christians so to subject themselves to cruel mockings and scourgings to bonds and imprisonments to stoning burning sawing in sunder to Swords and Racks and Gibbets What mean they to wander up and down in Sheep-skins and Goat-skins when they may have better clothing far cheaper To wander up and down from house to house when they may at an easier rate have houses of their own To wander up and down in Deserts and Mountains in Dens and Caves of the earth when they may with greater ease have stately buildings and glorious Palaces to dwell in Why are they so foolish to be thus tortured and tormented and accept of no deliverance if it were not that they might obtain a better Resurrection as the Apostle speaks Heb. xi 35. and so on Else if there be no such business Let 's eat and drink says St. Paul for tomorrow we die Let 's crown our heads with rose-buds in the the spring and take our fill of loves let 's stretch our selves upon our beds and drench our selves in pleasures deny nothing to our desires abridge our selves of no delights care not by what means we rush into Riches Pleasures Lusts and Honours If there be no other World let 's take our portion here and let 's not be such fools and mad men to lose all here and hereafter too This is better doctrine then the cold Precepts of Christianity if there be no other hope than what is here But be not deceived for all this says our Apostle ver 33. 't is but evil communication this though so it were not but good wise counsel rather if there were nothing beyond this life But awake awake to righteousness for there is a Resurrection where both our labours and our sufferings shall be remembred all 3. We have lost our Faith if our hope in Christ be only here Your faith is vain ver 14. Our Religion 's gone there 's no such thing as that in Christianity then Religion is our busines towards God but if Christ be not risen as he is not if we can hope in him no further than this life only then he is no God so our Religion is but foolery and we miserable fools to busie our heads so much about it about the name and nature and worship and service and trusting of a dead Redeemer that can neither help himself nor us no nor hear a Prayer nor grant a Request nor reward a Duty nor punish an Injury done to him Nay 4. we have lost our very hope too If we have no hope but here we have none at all we can hope for nothing that flees not from us Do we hope for honours or riches by following Christ We see daily we are deluded Do we hope for happiness by it upon earth We see nothing but misery about us and death before us Nay do we hope indeed for any good by Christ yet lying in the Grave What is it that a dead Saviour can give us more than the dead Idols of the Heathen We see and feel our hopes in this life already vain and for hereafter we can see nothing at all without a Resurrection Yes say some now adays If the soul live we may be happy without a Resurrection though the body rise not if the soul be but immortal Fond men who consider not how if the body rise not then Christ is not risen the Apostles own way of arguing ver 15. and then our faith which was in Christ being perished as being no other than in a helpless hopeless man the soul can neither enjoy nor expect a happiness from or by him and has lost all other by following him already Not considering again how the greatest misery that can betide the soul is to wander desolate and disconsolate for ever without both her body and her Christ depriv'd eternally of all kinds of hopes Not considering lastly that the souls immortality necessarily infers a Resurrection it being but a fore-runner and a harbinger for the body to which it hath so natural a reference and inclination that happiness it could have none when separated from the body if it did not perceive the certainty of its bodies rising a while after to accompany it It could not without that certificate but be incessantly tormented with its own unsatisfied and ever to be unsatisfied longings which it could throw off no more than it could its own nature and essence it being essentially created and deputed to the body But Loss makes not all our misery Not only loss of good but sense of evil concurs also to make us miserable And here 's enough of this too for us if in this life only be our hope You are yet in your sins that first And what greater evil I pray than sin What greater misery than to be under the dominion of it To be torn in pieces with the distractions of our sins to be tormented with inordinate desires to be hurried up and down with exorbitant lusts to be enslaved to the drudgeries of so base commands to be rackt with the terrors of a wounded conscience to be distracted quite with the
comfort and that such a one as he affords not to other Nations to give us by his word the knowledge of his Laws to reveal unto us his whole will and pleasure 6. 'T is a comfort to a miracle that he will yet draw nearer to us and draw us nearer to himself by the mysterious communication of himself his very Blood and Body to us No greater establishment to our souls no higher solace to our spirits no firmer hopes of the Resurrection of our bodies then by his thus not only being at hand but in our hands and in our mouths I speak mysteries in the spirit but the comfort never a whit the less the joy of the Spirit far the greater ever But all these comforts heapt together what comfort in the world like the faithful Christians all so great so certain so nigh at hand And yet if I take hint from the Churches choice of this Text for the front of her Epistle this day to her Children and say the Lord may be said to be at hand too because the Feast of his coming that coming which gave rise to all the rest the original of all the rest of his gracious comings is at hand to us I shall not strain much and to those that truly love his appearance that can really endure to hear of his coming any day that shall put 'um in mind of his being at hand must needs be a comfort a day of good tidings and this as well as any of the rest will afford us an argument to perswade to moderation to make it known to all men whatsoever at the time when the Grace of God appeared to all men whatsoever Which passes me over to the third general the connexion of the Christians Duty and his comfort or the perswasion to the duty from the comfort of the Lords coming And so many perswasive arguments there are from it as there are comings so many reasons to perswade moderation as there are ways of our Lords being at hand nay one more and it shall go first because it stand so The Lord it is we do it to to the Lord and not unto men let that go for the first reason 'T is to him and for his sake we are enjoyn'd it St. Paul thought it a good argument to perswade Servants to their duties Eph. vi 7. to do their service with a good will too and we all are Servants and here is our Lord. Here 2. and at hand on every hand We cannot go out of his presence Let that teach us righteousness and equity modesty and moderation to do all things as in his presence Would we but think this when we go about any thing did we but consider seriously the Lord was so near us heard us and look'd upon us our words would be wiser and our actions better We durst not look an immodest look nor speak an uncivil word nor do any iniquity or any thing out of order The Lord is at hand and sees what we are doing let all then be done with moderation 3. The Lord has taken on our nature and come nearer yet given us by it an example so to do to be so moderate as to wash even Iudas's feet to do good to be civil and modest and moderate even towards them that are ready to betray us who will do so the next hour have bargain'd for 't already he came so nigh us in our nature that we might so come nigh him in his Graces took up our nature that we might take up his example drew so nigh us that we might not draw off our affection from our brethren but serve them in love how ill soever they serve us he took hands and feet to be at hand to teach our hands and feet how to behave and moderate themselves towards others 4. He is at hand with his Grace to help us there is no excuse of impossibility By him I can do all things says the Apostle by Christ that strengthens me Phil. iv 13. Be it never so hard his grace is sufficient for us sufficient to enable us to all grace and vertue even the hardest and in the most difficult exigencies and occasions This he offers to us offers it abundantly more abundant grace Let us accept it then and walk-worthy of it in all modesty and moderation 5. He is at hand to our Prayers let us then desire the grace we just now spake of Deny us he will not do but knock and he comes presently To him that knocks says he it shall be opened Let us but come with meek and patient spirits in love and charity with all men forgiving them that we may be forgiven and speed we shall be merciful and moderate towards them so will God be merciful and moderate towards us moderate at least the punishments due to our iniquities The Lord is at hand always to hear such a mans prayers learn we therefore moderation 6. The Lord is near us in his word This is his command and will must therefore be performed If the will of the Lord be so that we must suffer for righteousness sake let every answer to our persecutors be with meekness and fear says S. Peter 1 Pet. iii. 15. for happy are you says he and therefore be not afraid of their terror neither be troubled ver 14. moderate your passions and your fears and esteem your selves happy by so suffering by so doing 'T is your Masters revealed will that so it should be 't is his way to draw you nearer to himself by working you to the image of his sufferings 7. The Lord is at hand the Iudge is coming At hand to reward us for all our sufferings all our patience and moderation all our modest and civil conversation all our righteousness and mercy Not one Sparrow not the least feather of a good work shall fall to the ground not one half farthing be lost not a hair of any righteous action perish he is at hand to take all up that nothing be lost At hand he is 2. to deliver us out of the hands of all that hate us if temporal deliverance be best to give us that if not to deliver us however over into glory At hand 3. to take revenge upon his enemies to repay his adversaries He came presently after this Epistle to do so to Ierusalem to destroy the incredulous Iews and Apostate Hereticks those persecutors of the Christian Faith came with a heavy hand that they fell to their utter ruine and desolation Thus he being at hand to reward and punish may well serve as an argument to perswade us to be patient for so short a while to be moderate both in our fears and desires in our words and in our actions to bear a while and say nothing to endure a while and do nothing for one there is a coming nay now at hand to deliver us to plead our cause to revenge our quarrel let us commit it to him He is the Judge of all the world and
so God hath blessed thee for ever Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ and blessed be our Lord Iesus Christ for all this grace for all this blessing If our Spouse so fair then we sure should be faithful if his lips so full of grace our lips as full of thanks if he blessed of God we again bless God and him for so great a blessing so great blessings so continually descending upon us so lasting so everlasting never sufficiently answered but by all our ways of blessing and so blessing him always all our days whilst we live for ever We to sing our parts and praise him in the Song sing or say Thou art fairer thou O Christ art fairer c. For this is the sum and whole meaning of the Text to give us a view of Christs Beauty and the Christians Duty both together so to shew and set forth to us the lustre and splendour of Christs incomparable Beauty and the overflowing fulness of his Grace as to make us really in love with him to ravish our 〈◊〉 and tongues and hands to his Service and praise that we may to 〈◊〉 and every day serve and praise and magnifie him all the day long 〈…〉 way to blessedness for ever I begin with his Beauty for that 's 〈…〉 attractive to him When I shall be lift up shall draw all men to me says he himself S. Iohn xii 32. That lifting up was upon the Cross and if that be so attractive if he be so powerful in his humiliation when his face is clouded with darkness his eyes with sadness his heart with sorrow when his body is so mangled with wounds deform'd with stripes besmear'd with blood and sweat and dust that will draw all men to him how infinitely prevalent then must he needs be when we see him in his excellence smooth and even and entire in all the parts of his soul and body For in both fair he is formosus fair formosus prae very fair formosus prae filiis fairer then the fairest and sweetest child in whom commonly is the sweetest beauty prae filiis hominum than the children of men when they come to their full strength and manly beauty By these degrees we shall arrive to the perfection of his beauty fair he is very fair fairer than the sweetest fairer than the perfectest beauty of the sons of men so in both his body and his soul. In his Body first And fair and comely sure must that Body be which was immediately and miraculously fram'd by the Holy Ghost pure flesh and blood that was stirred together by that pure Spirit out of the purest Blood and Spirits of the purest Virgin of the world The shadows of that face must needs be beautiful that were drawn by the very finger and shaddowing of the Holy Ghost those eyes must needs have quid sidereum as St. Ierome some star-like splendor in them which were so immediately of the heavenly making The whole frame of that body must needs be excellent which was made on purpose by God himself for the supreme excellence to dwell in to reside in to be united to so united by the union hypostatical A body without sin must needs be purely fair a body without concupiscence must needs be sweet without defect must needs be lovely without vacuity must needs be complete without superfluity must needs be so far handsom without inordination must needs be perfect without death must needs be firm without dust must needs be singular without corruption must needs be curious and delicate without any of them must needs be excellent And all these were Christs body without sin without concupisence without defect without vacuity without superfluity without inordination death and dust and corruption could not get the least dominion over it thou shalt not suffer my flesh to see corruption saies the Psalm he did not suffer it to see it saies the Gospel rais'd incorruptible it quickly was went down into the grave but staid not there came not into the dust at all into any corruption at all had none all the while it was upon the earth had none under it Fair he was in his conception conceived in purity and a fair Angel brought the news Fair 2. in his Nativity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the word in the Septuagint tempestivus in time that is all things are beautiful in their time Eccl. v. 11. And in the fulness of time it was that he was born and a fair star pointed to him Fair 3. in his childhood he grew up in grace and favour St. Luke ii 52. The Doctors were much taken with him 4. Fair in his manhood had he not been so says S. Ierome had there not been something admirable in his countenance and presence some heavenly beauty Nunque secuturi essent Apostoli c. The Apostles and the whole world as the Pharisees themselves confess would not so suddenly have gone after him Fair 5. in his Transfiguration white as the light or as the snow his face glittering as the Sun S. Mat. xvii 2. even to the ravishing the very soul of S. Peter that he knew not what he said could let his eyes dwell upon taht face for ever and never come down the Mount again 6. Fair in his Passion Nihil indecorum no uncomeliness in his nakedness his very wounds and the bloody prints of the whips and scourges drew an ecce from the mouth of Pilate Behold the man the sweetness of his countenance and carriage in the midst of filth and spittle whips and buffets his very comeliness upon the Cross and his giving up the Ghost made the Centurion cry out he was the Son of God there appeared so sweet a Majesty so heavenly a lustre in him through that very darkness that encompass'd him 7. Fair in his Resurrection so subtile a beauty that mortal eyes even the eyes of his own Disciples were not able to see or apprehend it but when he veil'd it for them 8. Fair in his Ascension made his Disciples stand gazing after him so long as if they never could look long enough upon him till an Angel is sent from Heaven to rebuke them to look home Acts i. 11. If you ask Eusebius Evagrius Nicephorus Damascen and some others how fair he was they will tell you so fair that the Painter sent from Agbarus King of Edessa to draw his Picture could not look so stedfastly upon him as to do it for the rays that darted from his face and though the Scripture mention no such thing 't is no greater wonder to believe then what we read of Moses his face which shone so glorious that the Children of Israel could not behold it 2 Cor. iii. 7. Lentulus the Roman President his Epistle to the Emperour Antonius describes him of very comely colour shape and figure and so do others Not such a beauty yet as that which darts from it wanton rays or warms the blood or stirs the spirits to vain desires
or secular respects and motions but a sweetness without sensual daintiness a lustre without lightness a modest look without dejectedness a grave countenance without severity a fair face without fancy eyes sparkling only heavenly flames cheeks commanding holy modesty lips distilling celestial sweetness beauty without its faults figure and proportion and all such as was most answerable and advantageous to the work he came about every way fitted to the most perfect operations of the reasonable and immortal soul the most beautiful then sure when beauty is nothing else but an exact order and proportion of things in relation to their nature and end both to themselves and to each other Take his description from the Spouses own mouth Cant. v. 10 11 12 c. My beloved is white and ruddy the chiefest among ten thousand His head is as the most fine gold his locks are bushy or curled and black as a Raven His eyes are as the eyes of Doves by the rivers of water washed with water and fitly set that is set in fulness fitly placed and as a precious stone in the soil of a Ring His cheeks are as a bed of Spices as sweet flowers his lips like Lillies dropping sweet smelling Myrrhe his hands are as gold Rings set with Beryl his belly as bright Ivory over-laid with Saphyrs His legs are as pillars of Marble set upon sockets of fine Gold His countenance like Lebanon excellent as the Cedars His mouth is most sweet yea he is altogether lovely This is my beloved and this is my friend O daughters of Ierusalem This is our beloved too Solomon indeed has poetically express'd it Yet something else there is in it besides a poetick phrase Beautiful he thus supposes he is to be who was to be this Spouse have the beauty of all beautiful things in the world conferr'd upon him at least to have the finest and subtilest part of all worldly beauties those imperceptible yet powerful species of them which make them really amiable and attractive a head and locks and eyes and hands and feet quantity colour and proportion such as darted from them not only a resemblance but the very spirit of heavenly beauty innocence purity strength and vigour Poets when they commend beauty call it divine and heavenly this of his it was truly so a kind of sensible Divinity through all his parts Shall I give you his colour to make up the beauty He was white pure white in his Nativity ruddy in his Passion bright and glistering in his life black in his death Azure-vein'd in his Resurrection No wonder now to see the Spouse sit down under his shadow with great delight Cant. ii 3. we sure our selves now can do less and yet this is but the shadow of his beauty The true beauty is the souls the beauty of the soul the very soul of beauty the beauty of the body but the body nay the carcase of it And this of the souls he had 2. in its prime perfection 2. Now beauty consists in three particulars the perfection of the lineaments the due proportion of them each to other and the excellency and purity of the colour They are all compleat in the soul of Christ. The lineaments of the soul are its faculties and powers the proportion of them is the due subordination of them to God and one another The colours are the vertues and graces that are in them His powers and faculties would not but be compleat which had nothing of old Adam in them His understanding without ignorance he knew all the very hearts of all thoughts as they rose what they thought within themselves S. Luke v. 22. thoughts before they rose what the Pharisees with other would have done to him had he committed himself unto them Now Tyre and Sidon would have repented had they had the mercy allowed to Corazin and Bethsaida S. Luke x. 13. His will without wilfulness or weakness his passions without infirmity or extravagance his inferiour powers without defect or maim his understanding clear his will holy his passions sweet all his powers vigorous Hear the Wise man describe him under the name of Wisdom Wisd. xvii 22 23 c. In her that is in him who is the Wisdom of the Father is an understanding Spirit holy one onely manifold subtile lively clear undefiled plain nor subject to hurt loving the thing that is good quick which cannot be letted ready to do good kind to man stedfast sure free from care having all power overseeing all things and going through all understanding pure and most subtile spirits and ver 25 26. A pure influence flowing from the Glory of the Almighty the brightness of the everlasting light the unspotted mirror of the power of God and the image of his goodness The powers of his soul being thus pure vigorous and unspotted they cannot 2. but be in order the will following his understanding the passions subordinate to them both all the inferiour powers obedient and ready at command and pleasure He had no sooner exprest a kind of grievance in his sensitive powers at the approach of those strange horrors of his death and sufferings but presently comes out Non mea sed tua Not my will but thine all in a moment at peace and in tranquillity No rash or idle word no unseemly passage no sowre look nor gesture or expression unsuitable to his Divinity throughout his life the very Devils to their own confusion cannot but confess it We know thee who thou art the Holy One of God S. Mark i. 24. To this add those heavenly colours and glances of grace and vertues and you have his soul compleatly beautiful Meekness and Innocence and Patience and Obedience even to the death Mercy and Goodness and Piety and what else is truly called by the name of good are all in him insomuch that the Apostle tells us the very fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily Col. ii 9. No Divine Grace or Vertue wanting in him In him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge ver 3. In him all sanctity and holiness not so much as the least guile in his mouth 1 S. Pet. ii 22. So holy that he is made holiness and sanctification unto us 1 Cor. i. 30. Sancti quasi sanguine uncti We Saints and holy become hallowed by the sprinkling of his blood In him lastly is all the power and vertue omnis virtus that is omnis potestas all the power in heaven and earth fully given to him S. Matth. xxviii 18. So that now we shall need to say little of the other particular of this first general point of Christs perfect beauty that he is not only Formosus but Formosus prae not only fair but very fair for where there is so much as you have heard exceeding and excellent it must needs be Where the body is compleat in all its parts the soul exact in all its powers the body without any ill inclination natural or habitual the soul without
the least stain of thought or glance of irregularity nothing to sully the soul or body all wisdom and holiness and power and vertue We can say no less of him then the Psalmist of Ierusalem Very excellent things are spoken of thee thou City of God thou miraculous habitation of the Almighty thou very dwelling not of God only but the very Godhead too Nor shall I need to say much of the third the prae filiis that his beauty is more sweet and innocent then the new-born babes Alas the sweetest fairest child comes sullied into the world with Adams guilt Some of that dust that God cast upon him when he told him Dust he was and into dust he should return sticks so upon the face and body the very soul and spirit too of the prettiest infant that it is nothing to this days child In omnibus sine peccato Heb. iv 15. In all without sin says the Apostle the very temptations he suffered were not from the sinfulness of his nature any original concupiscence non novit says the Apostle in another place 1 Cor. v. 21. he knew it not knew no sin at all in this he might use St. Peters phrase Man I know not what thou meanest I know not what this condition of man so much as means Prae filiis he is as much purer then the child we call innocent as much before it in purity and innocence as he is in time and being Nay yet again though we see the sweetest beauty is commonly that of children whilst they are so yet even that beauty must needs have some kind of stain or mole or some insensible kind of defect though we know not what nor how to term it which was not in him The very natural inordination of our powers must needs give a kind of dull shadow to our exactest beauty and silently speak the inward fault by some outward defect though we are too dull being of the same mold to apprehend it whilst there could be no such darkness in the face of Christ no Genius in it which was not perfectly attractive and exactly fitted to its place and office This perhaps may seem a subtlety to our duller apprehensions but 't is plain that I shall tell you though but briefly in the fourth particular that he is fairer then the children of men then men come to their perfect beauty Alas alas before that time long sin had so sullied them that we may read dark lines in all their faces the Physicgnomist will tell you all their faults our sins and deformities are by that time written in our foreheads engraven in our hands our beauty is almost clean lost into corruption Could we see as Angels do those eyes that seem to sparkle flames would look terrible as the fires of Hell Those cheeks that seem beauteous in their blushes would be seen to have no other than the colour of our sins those lips which we cry up for sweetness would stink in our conceit with rottenness the teeth that look white as Ivory we should behold black with calumny and slander as the â—oot of the foulest Chimneys the fair curled locks would look like snakes the young spawn of the great red Dragon the hands that look so white and delicate would appear filthy bloody and unclean We poor we are but blind moles and bats We see nothing We know not what is beautiful what is lovely If we did these earthly beauties would seem what I have said them nay worse Christ only would be beautiful no body but Christs body no body but that wherein Christ dwells in whose eyes and cheeks and lips and head and hands you might see Christs Beauty Meekness Love Charity Goodness Justice Mercy Innocence Piety with the rest of those lines of beauty which were in him But whatever we would then say of the bodies we can say no other even now of the souls of men thâ—t none are fair but that are well colour'd and proportion'd to those heavenly lines and in this point freely acknowledge the pre-eminence of Christ the prerogative of this Spouse And well may we say of him with the Psalmist that he is fairer then the children of men whom daily sins deform and render ugly when the Apostle sets him before the Sons of God the Angels the Cherubins and Seraphins which you will of them for to which of them says he has he said at any time Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee Heb. i. 5. begotten thee after mine own image the very express image of my person the brightness of my glory ver 3. Fairer then the children of men no doubt who is as fair and bright as God who is higher then all the Sons of men all the people by the head by the Godhead which is in him Which being in him there needs no more to say but that 't is of necessity he must be the fairest of the Sons of men through whose eyes and face and hands and whole body the rays of the Divine Beauty are continually darting from within Well may we now also expect some of it at his lips and so we find it here in the very next words very fully issuing there Full of grace are thy lips that 's the second general of the Text Gratia diffusa in labiis Grace in the lips as well as beauty in the forehead in face or other parts of soul and body Three degrees we observe in the words to make up this fulness Gratia est gratia diffusa diffusa in labiis that Grace there is in him as well as beauty 2. Grace abundant and in full measure And 3. so abundant and so full that it falls into the lips comes out full spout there there above all it issues and manifests and appears Grace first that 's good with beauty all beauty but deform'd without is a good hint to you by the way to get those souls fill'd with grace whose bodies God has made fine with beauty If God has given thee beauty beg of him that he would also give thee grace beautifie thy soul as well as body and strive thou also what thou canst possibly thy self to adorn thy beauty with grace and goodness or if thou hast little or no beauty in thy body make amends for it by the beauty and sweetness of thy soul though thy face be not fair thy lips may be gracious thou mayest be full of good words and works and thou mayest do God more service with the grace of thy lips than with the beauty of thy fairest face that so amazes and ravishes worldly lovers Now a threefold grace there is in Christ. And 1. The grace of his person or personal grace wherewith his own person was indued so far as to be free from all kind of sin The grace of the Head whereby he disperses his graces into all his Members as the Head of the Church into the Body into the souls of Christians and Believers And then the grace of Union that
by a Fire Here it was first he visited in person 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was but a looking down from heaven till now a looking on us at a distance and that was a blessing too that he would any way look upon such poor worms as we it could not be construed visiting properly till this day came Now first it is so without a figure Yet is not good old Zachary too quick Does he not cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 too soon our blessed Saviour was not yet born how says he then the Lord hath visited and redeemed his people Answer we might the good old man here prophesied 't is said so just the verse before and after the manner of Prophets speaks of things to come as done already But we need not this strain to help us out Christ was already really come down from heaven had been now three months incarnate had begun his visit had beheld the lowliness of his handmaid says his Blessed Mother ver 48. The Angel had told her twelve weeks since Her Lord was with her ver 28. of this Chapter Blessed Zachary understood it then no less than his Wife Elizabeth that proclaimed it ver 43. though he could not speak it As soon as he could he does and breaks out into a Song of Praise that was his prophesying for this new made Visit this new rais'd Salvation That word slipt e're I was aware comes in before the time But 't is well it did you might else perhaps have mistaken visiting for punishing so it went commonliest in Scripture till to day It does not here This business has alter'd it from its old acception And yet punishing sometimes is a blessing too 'T is a mercy we oft stand in need of to bring us home to God But it is infinitely a greater when he comes himself to fetch us home as now he does Shall I shew you how great it is Why then 1. It is a visit of Grace and honour that he made us here he visited us as great and noble persons do their inferiours to do them honour Hence Whence it is to me says St. Eliz. that the Mother of my Lord should come unto me c. ver 43. She good soul knew not how to value such an honour nor whence it was Whence then is this O Lord that the Lord of that Blessed Mother my Lord himself should come unto me That 's a far higher honour and no reason of it to be given but that so it shall be done to those whom this great King of Heaven and Earth delighteth thus to honour 'T is a blessing first this that we speak of by which God owns and honours us 2. It was a visit of Charity He visited his people as charitable men do the poor mans house to seek some occasion to bestow an Alms. He went about doing good says S. Peter Acts x. 38. As poor as he was and the Apostle tells us poor he was he had a bag for the poor S. Iohn xii 6. and for our sakes it was he became poor says S. Paul 2 Cor. viii 9. emptied bag and himself and all to make us rich His visit now 2. is a blessing that makes us rich 3. It was a visit of Service too He visited us as the Physician does his Patient to serve his necessity to cure and recover him The innumerable multitudes of the sick and lame and blind and deaf and dumb and Lepers and possessed that he daily healed and cured will sufficiently evince he visited them also as a Physician So 't was a blessing 3. that cures all diseases makes all sound and whole again 4. His visit 4. was a visit of brotherly love and kindness He visited us as David did his Brethren to supply their wants carry them provision and take their pledge 1 Sam. xvii 17. He did so and much more becomes himself by this visit our Provision makes his Body our meat and his Blood our drink and himself our pledge supplies all our defects and wants and enters himself body for body and soul for soul to make all good This a visiting no brother could do more no brother so much 5. His visit 5. was not of petty kindnesses but great mercies abundant mercies too He visited us as holy David says he does the earth Psal. lxv 9 11. Thou visitest the earth and blessest it thou makest it very plenteous Thou waterest her furrows thou sendest rain into the little Vallies thereof thou makest it soft with the drops of rain and blessest the increase of it He not only furnishes our necessities but replenishes us with abundances makes us soft and plump and fat and fruitful by his heavenly dews and showers This 5. a visit of abundant superabundant mercies 6. His visit 6. was a visit of Friendship and that 's more yet He visited us as blessed Mary did her Cousin Elizabeth came to us to rejoyce and be merry with us So acquainted has he now made himself with us by this visit that he now vouchsafes to call us friends S. Iohn xv 15. he eats and drinks and dwells and tarries with us makes it his delight to be among the sons of men This is a visit I know not a name good enough to give it And yet lastly his visit was not of a common and ordinary friendship neither but of a friendship that holds to death He visited us as the Priest or Confessor does the dying man When health and strength and mirth and Physicians and Friends have all given us over he stands by and comforts us and leaves us not till he has fitted us wholly to his own bosom A visit of everlasting friendship or an everlasting visit was this visit in the Text. Thus I have shewed you a seven-fold visit that our Lord has made us made Gods first blessing into seven A visit of Honour a visit of Charity a visit of Service a visit of Kindness a visit of Mercy a visit of Friendship and a visit of everlasting Love All these ways he visited his people and still visits them all the ways he can imagine to bless them and do them good And yet I should have thought I had forgot one if it did not fall in with the blessing we are to consider next Redeeming For he visited us also as he is said to do the children of Israel Gen. l. 24. to bring us out of the Land of Egypt out of the house of bondage He visited us to redeem us or visited and redeemed 2. Now if redeem'd Captives it seems we were And so we were under a fourfold Captivity To the World to Sin to Death and to the Devil The World 1. that had ensnared and fettered us so wholly taken us that it had taken away our names and we were called by the name of the World instead of that of Men as if we were grown such worldlings that we had even lost our natures and our names even the best of us the Elect are sometimes called
exceeding glory Wonder we 1. stand we and wonder or cast our selves upon the earth upon our faces in amazement at it that God should do all this for us thus remember thus visit thus crown such things as we That 2. he should pass by the Angels to crown us leave them in their sins and misery and lift us out of ours That 3. he should not take their nature at the least and honour those that stood among them but take up ours and wear it into heaven and seat it there And there is a visit he is now coming to day to make us as much to be wondred at as any that he should feed us with his Body and yet that be in Heaven that he should cheer us with his Blood and yet that shed so long ago that he should set his Throne and keep his Table and presence upon the Earth and yet Heaven his Throne and Earth his Foot-stool that he should here pose all our understandings with his mysterious work and so many ages of Christians after so many years of study and assistance of the Spirit not yet be able to understand it What is man or the Son of man O Blessed Iesu that thou shouldst thus also visit and confound him with the wonders of thy mercy and goodness Here also is glory and honour too to be admitted to his Table no where so great to be made one with him as the meat is with the body no glory like it Here is the crown of plenty fulness of pardon grace and heavenly Benediction Here 's the crown of glory nothing but rays and beauties Iustres and glories to be seen in Christ and darted from him into pious souls Come take your crowns come compass your selves with those eternal circlings Take now the cup of salvation and remember God for so remembring you call upon the name of the Lord and give glory to your God If you cannot speak out fully as who can speak in such amazements as these thoughts may seriously work in us cast your selves down in silence and utter out your souls in these or the like broken speeches What is man Lord what is man What am I How poor a thing am I How good art thou What hast thou done unto him How great things What glory what honour what crown hast thou reserved for me What shall I say How shall I sufficiently admire What shall I do again unto thee What shalt thou do Why 1. if God is so mindful of us men Let us be mindful of him again remember he is always with us and do all things as if we remembred that so he were 2. Is he so mindful of us Let us be mindful of our selves and remember what we are that we may be humbled at it 3. Does he remember us Let us then again remember him with our prayers and services 2. Has he visited us Let us in thankfulness visit him again visit him in his Temple visit him at his Table visit him in his poor members the sick the imprisoned 3. Has he made us lower then the Angels Let us make our selves lower and lower still in our own sights Is it yet but a little lower then the Angels Let us raise up thoughts and pieties and devotions to be equal with them 4. Has he crown'd us with glory Let us crown his Altars then with offerings and his name with praise let us be often in corona in the congregation of them that praise him among such as keep Holy-day Let us crown his Courts with beauty crown our selves with good works they should be our glory and our crown And for the worship that he crowns us with too let us worship and give him honour so remember so visit so crown him again so shall he as he has already so shall still remember us last and bring us to his own palace there to visit him face to face where he shall make us equal to the Angels we are now below and crown us with an incorruptible crown of glory through Christ c. THE NINTH SERMON ON Christmas-Day S. LUKE ii 30 31 32. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people A light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel SAlvation cannot but be a welcome then at any time I know no day amiss But in Die salutis at such a time as this on Christmas-day especially Then it first came down to bless this lower world But salvation so nigh as to be seen is more much more if we our selves have any interest in it if it be for the Gentiles too that we also may come in Far more if it be such salvation that our friends also may be saved with us none perish if it be omnium populorum to 'um all in whatsoever Nation Add yet if it be salvation by light not in the night no obscure deliverance we like that better and if it be to be saved not by running away but gloriously Salvation with Glory that 's better still Nay if it be all salvation on a day of salvation not afar off but within ken not heard of but seen to us and ours an universal salvation a gladsome a lightsome a notable a glorious salvation as it is without contradiction Verbum Evangelii good Gospel joyful tidings so it must needs be verbum diei too the happiest news in the most happy time These make the Text near enough the day and yet 't is nearer What say you if this salvation prove to be a Saviour and that Saviour Christ and that Christ new born the first time that viderunt oculi could be said of him no time so proper as Christmas to speak of Christ the Saviour born and sent into the world He it is that is here stiled salutare tuum Christ that blessed sight that restores Simeons decaying eyes to their youthful lustre that happy burthen that makes Simeon grasp heaven before he enter it Indeed the good old man begins not his Christmas till Candlemas 'T was not Christmas-day with him he did not see his Saviour till he was presented in the Temple The Feast of Purification was his Christmas This the Shepherds the worlds and ours This day first he was seen visibly to the world Being then to speak of salvation which is a Saviour or a Saviour who is salvation 1. First of the Salvation it self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. Then of its certainty and manifestation so plain and evident that the eye may see it Salvation to be seen More 2. prepared to be seen 3. Of the universality before the face of all people 4. Of the Benefits They are two 1. A light 2. A glory with the twofold parties 1. The Gentiles 2. The Iews Of each both severally and joyntly When we have done with the salvation then of the other sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Saviour himself that 's the prime meaning of salutare here 1. Of his natures
by the mouth of the Holy Spirit of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God himself now quitted of injustice and want of bowels of compassion You have a witness of it undeniable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 my eyes have seen it Salvation clear even to the sense and to the certain'st the sight The eye may see it 2. Viderunt oculi he might have added contractaverunt manus me◠and his hands handled it but if the eye see it we need not sue to the hand for certainty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these eyes No longer now the eyes of Prophesie those are grown dim and almost out Isaiah indeed could say is born is given so certain was he of it but never viderunt oculi for all that be never liv'd to see it one degree this above the infallibility of Prophesie Time was when this Salutare tuum was inveloped in clouds It was so till this day came a mystery kept secret since the world began lockt up in Heaven so close that mine eyes have wasted away with looking for thy saving health O Lord sighs David and the Church answers him with Vtinam disrumperes coelos Break the Heavens O Lord and come down O utinam O would thou wouldst But now as we have heard so have we seen thy salvation Nor need we any extraordinary piercing eye to see it so plain and manifest is the object that eyes almost sunk into their holes eyes over which the curtains of a long night are well nigh drawn eyes veiled with the mists of age eyes well near worn out with looking and expectation the dimmest aged'st sight may see it Mine eyes old Father Simeons Nor need the Manichee strain his eye-sight to discern it He need not as is usual when we look on curious pieces close one eye that the visual spirits being contracted we may see those things which else by reason of their curious subtilty scape the seeing 'T is no such aiery phantasm but that we may with open face and eyes behold it he may see it with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both his eyes without straining without that trouble But if our senses should play false with us yet my eyes the eyes of a Prophet a holy man inspir'd and detain'd a prisoner in the flesh on purpose for this spectacle cannot possibly deceive us Especially if you add but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That he did not perceive it only as a far off Balaams sight or had a glance or glimmering of it only but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saw it plain so plain as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to know it too Saw it in his arms and lookt near it nay into it by the quick lively eye of a firm faith for with both eyes he saw it the eyes of his body and the eyes of his soul the Saviour with the one Salvation with the other the child with those the God with these And what greater evidence then that of sight what greater certainty then that of faith If all this be yet too little if viderunt be to seek and oculi fail and mei be deceived yet parasti cannot but list it above the weakness of probability put all out of question It was not only seen but prepared to be seen It came not as the world thinks of other salvations by chance but was prepared Parasti Thou hast prepared it prepared by him that prepared the world Higher yet parasti thou hast prepared done it long since the preparation began not now had a higher beginning a beginning before the face of all people before the face of any people before the face of the waters before the face of the world appeared Chosen us in him says St. Paul then chosen and prepared him for us before the foundation of the world Ephes. i. 4. But this parasti is not the blessing of this day Parasti ab aterno so to the Patriarchs too but in conspectu before our faces made manifest in these last times manifested in the flesh that 's the blessing we this day commemorate A body thou hast prepared me that prepared then lo I come he will be born presently Christmas out of hand Parasti now compleat this day he was first made ready and drest in swadling-clothes And prepared So it came not at mans entreaty or desert Nay when he thought not of it When Adam was running away to hide himself then the promise of the womans seed stept in between and when Religion and Devotion lay at the last gasp ready to bid the world adieu then comes he himself who had been so long preparing and fulfilled the promise This a degree of certainty higher then our imaginations can follow it that relies wholly on Gods own parasti without mans uncertain preparation Yet something ado there was to bring this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this salvation to be seen A long preparation there was of Patriarchs Moses and the Prophets of Promises Types and Figures and Prophesies for the space of four thousand years This long train led the triumph then comes the Saviour then Salvation Sure and certain it must needs be to which there are so many agreeing witnesses This then so variously typified so many ways shadowed so often promised so clearly prophesied so constantly so fully testified so long expected so earnestly desired This is the Salvation prepared for us Whoever looks for any other may look his eyes out shall never see it This Name the only Name by which we shall be saved the Name of Iesus Yet notwithstanding all that 's said or can be said 't is but parasti still 'T is not Posuisti prepared for all not put set up for all as if all should be saved No posui te in casum set for the fall of many those that will not turn their eyes up hither that care not for viderunt neglect this sight slight this salvation But however this dismal success often comes about Parasti it is that cannot be lost and in conspectu omnium populorum for all it is prepared for all in general none excluded this parasti he that put parasti into this good Fathers mouth put in omnium populorum too Not only the certainty but the universality of this salvation that 's the third part of the Text and thither are we come Before the face of all people Prepared that 's a favour and for the people that 's an ample one and one step to an universal People are men a great company of men and for men and a multitude of men it is prepared nusquam Angelos not for Angels in no wise for them not one of them No they are still the Sons of darkness no day-spring from on high to visit them For men and not for the better or more honourable part of men alone but for the people too the meanest sinfulest men in more favour with God then the Apostate Angels And not to some few of those people neither
encouraged and confirmed him in it 4. His profession at it Behold said he I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God In those words he professed his faith and proclaimed his vision of it By this manner of considering it we shall do St. Stephen right and Christmas no wrong remember St. Stephens Martyrdom and yet not forget Christs being at it celebrate St. Stephens memory and yet no way omit Christs He being here to be lookt on as encourager of St. Stephens Martyrdom as much as St. Stephen for his Professor and Martyr By all together we shall fully understand the requisites of a Martyr what is required to make one such to be full of the Holy Ghost to look up stedfastly into heaven to look upon Christ as there and as boldly to profess it to be full of Grace and Spirit full of Piety and Devotion full of Faith and Hope full of Courage and Resolution all proportionably requisite to the spiritual Martyrdom of dying to the world and leaving all for Christ requisite too all of them in some measure to dye well at any time the very sum of the Text to be learn'd hence and practis'd by us If I add all requisite to keep Christmas too as it should be kept with Grace and Devotion with Faith and courage also against all that shall oppose it that our Christmas business be to be filled with the Spirit and not with meats and drinks to look up to Heaven to look up to Iesus and never to be afraid or ashamed to profess it there is nothing then in the Text to make it the least unseasonable I go on therefore to handle it part by part The first is St. Stephens accommodation to his Martyrdom how he stands fitted for it And surely he could not be better Full of the Holy Ghost Ghost is Spirit and what more necessary to a Martyr then a spirit The dreaming sluggish temper is not fit to make a Martyr he must have Spirit that dares look Death soberly in the face Yet every Spirit neither will not make a Martyr there are mad spirits in the world they call them brave ones though I know not why that rush headily upon the points of Swords and Rapiers yet bring these gallant fellows to a Scaffold or a Gibbet the common reward of their foolish rashness which they mis-reckon'd valour and you shall see how sheepishly they die how distractedly they look how without spirit The spirit that will bear out a shameful or painful death without change of countenance or inward horrour must be holy Where the Spirit is holy the Conscience pure the Soul clean the man dies with life and spirit in his looks as if he were either going to his bed or to a better place 'T is a holy life that fits men to be Martyrs But spirit and a holy Spirit is not enough to make a Martyr neither though the Martyrs spirit must be a holy one yet to dispose for martyrdom the holy Spirit must come himself with a peculiar power send an impulse and motion into the soul and spirit that shall even drive it to the stake And every degree of power will not do it it must be a full gale of holy wind that can cool the fiery Furnace into a pleasing walk that can make death and torments seem soft and easie Full of the Holy Ghost it is that Stephen is said to be e're we hear him promoted to the glory of a Martyr The Spirit of holiness will make a man die holily and the holy Spirit make him die comfortably but the fulness of him is required to make him die couragiously without fear of death or torment cruelty or rage By this you may now guess at Martys who they are not they that die for their folly and their humour not they 2. that die without holiness not every one 3. that dies as we say with valour and spirit not they that die upon the motion of any spirit but the holy one that one holy Spirit not they that die in Schism and Faction against the unity of this Holy Spirit the peace of his Holy Church none of these die Martyrs die Souldiers or valiant Heathen or men of spirit they may but men of the holy Spirit Martyrs they die not They only die such that have lived holily die in holy Cause in a holy Faith and in the peace of holy Church as in the Faith of one Holy Spirit ruling and directing it into unity upon good ground and warrant and a strong impulsion so to do without seeking for or voluntarily and unnecessarily thrusting themselves into the mouth of death And yet there are strange impulses I must tell you of the spirit of Martyrdom which ordinary souls or common pieties cannot understand Only we must know that the spirit of Martyrdom is the spirit of Love the very height of love to God which how that can consist with the spirit of Schism whereby we break the unity of Brethren or how a man can so highly love God as to dye for him and hate his Spouse the Church or his Brethren is inimaginable Some other engines there may be as vain-glory an obstinate humour of seeming constant to a false principle an ignorant and self-willed zeal which may sometimes draw a man to die but if the fulness of peace and charity does not appear there is no fulness of the Holy Ghost and they make themselves and their deaths but Martyrs that is witnesses of their own folly He that pretends to be a Martyr must have more then a pretence to the Spirit of charity II. And not to charity only but to devotion too He must 2. prepare himself for it stedfastly look up to Heaven nay into Heaven too fill his Spirit with divine and heavenly provision for it with St. Stephen here Who 1. looks up to Heaven as to his Country whither he was a going He longs earnestly to be there His soul with holy David's has a desire and longing to enter thither He that looks but seriously up to Heaven and beholds that glorious Building those starry Spangles those azure Curtains those lustrous bodies of the Sun and Moon that vast and splendid circumference of these glistering dwellings cannot but thirst vehemently to be there soul and flesh thirst for it O how brave a place is Heaven how brave even but to look on But if he can look as here it seems St. Stephen did into heaven too and contemplate the happy Choirs of blessed Saints and Angels the ineffable beauty of those inward Courts the ravishing Melody and Musick they make the quiet peace and happiness that pleasure joy and fulness of satisfaction and contentment there the majestick presence and blessed sight of God himself with all the store-houses of blessedness and glory full about him his very soul will be even ready to start with violence out of his body to fly up thither He that looks thus stedfastly looks
these are all old worn tatter'd things not worth the taking up nothing now worth any thing but Christ nothing but Christ and those new things those graces are in him Thus old things are past with the true Christian but 2. all things also are become new in him He has a new heart and a new spirit he has no more a heart of stone but a heart of flesh a soft tender pliable heart a meek and well disposed spirit a loving spirit he is no more what he was the old ego he has a new understanding things look not to him as they did of old he vilifies the world and worldly things His affections new he affects not what he did before he contemns all things below He is a King and rules over his passions he is a Priest and sanctifies them with his Prayers he lives under a new Law the Law of the Spirit and not the Flesh he makes every day new Covenants with God A Member of the Church he is and the Kingdom of God is now within him He is a great adorer of the Sacraments of the Church and daily offers up himself a Sacrifice to God his Soul and Body and all he has and pours out his praises His Body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost and the Altar of his Heart burns with the continual fires of Devotion and Charity He now lives no more but Christ lives in him that 's the new life he leads and it leads him into glory A new thing of which he has a glimpse and a kind of antipast here that makes him relish nothing else but cast all behind his back as old rags and dirt to press forward to the mark for the price of the high calling of God in Christ Iesus Phil. iii. 14. This is the new Creature the new man in whom old things are past away and all things become new And shall all things become new and not we shall all old things pass away and we remain in our old sins still every thing be cloth'd with a new lustre we only appear in our old rags still Certainly we cannot judge it reasonable Better use I hope we will make of this days Text of this New-years lesson Put off says the Apostle concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of our minds and put on that new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. iv 22 23 24. 'T is his counsel must be our practise The time past of our life may suffice us says S. Peter 1 Pet. iv 3. to have wrought the will of the Gentiles It is sufficient it is sufficient 'T is time now we unlearn our old lesson unravel our old work leave off our old course of life and begin a new to live henceford to righteousness and not to sin to God and not to men The new entred year calls for it the Text calls for it the Blood of Christ spent at his Circumcision lately past which yet this day and some days still to come commemorate cries for it that we would no longer count the blood of the new Covenant an unholy thing but betake us to it and live by it after a new fashion in newness of life I call you not to legal washings but the washings of Baptism and Repentance not to Iewish Feasts but Christian Festivals not to sacrifice Lambs and Sheep but your Souls and Bodies not to old Ceremonies but the new substance the Righteousness of Jesus Christ. Let him now begin his new reign in you let his new Commandment of Love be obeyed by you his Church purchased so dearly not be cowardly deserted by you keep his Covenant frequent his Temples adorn his Altars reverence his Priests follow the guidance of his Holy Spirit when he inspires good motions into your hearts amend your lives and become all new men in Jesus Christ. And when all these old things shall pass away and the new Heaven and Earth appear when he that sits upon the Throne Rev. xxi 5. shall make all things new then shall we be all made new again even these old decayed ruines of our bodies too and both souls and bodies clothed with the new Robes of Glory that shall never pass away but be ever new ever glorious for evermore THE SECOND SERMON ON THE Circumcision St. LUKE ii 21. His Name was called Iesus ANd to Day it was that He was called so when eight days were accomplished for his circumcising And they did well to call him so for it was the Name the Angel named him before he was conceived in the womb And he could be called by no better For Nomen super omne nomen says St. Paul of it Phil. ii 9. A name it is above every name for above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named not only in this world but also in that which is to come Eph. i. 21. A Name that has all things in it that brings all good things with it that speaks more in five letters than we can do in five thousand words speaks more in it than we can speak to day and yet we intend to day to speak of nothing else nothing but Iesus nothing but Iesus The sooner then we begin the better And to begin the sooner we shall set upon it without either the Circumstances before or after in the verse or the Ceremonies either of Preamble or of Division of the words Only for Method sake and memory I shall shew you the fulness and greatness of this Name in these seven Particulars 'T is a Name of Truth and Fidelity 'T is a Name of Might and Power 'T is a Name of Majesty and Glory 'T is a Name of Grace and Mercy 'T is a Name of Sweetness and Comfort 'T is a Name of Wonder and Admiration 'T is a Name of Blessing and Adoration A faithful mighty glorious gracious comfortable admirable blessed Name it is given Him to Day to be called by but to be called by and to be called upon by us for ever that we also may be filled with the truth and power and glory and grace and sweetness and wonder and all the blessings of it This is the sum of what we have to say of this Great Name and now we go on with the Particulars A Name it is first of veracity and fidelity of faithfulness and truth This Iesus is but the old Ieshua 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so much mentioned so often fortold so long expected all the Scripture thorow The Greek termination of◠only added that we might so understand that all those Types Prophesies and Promises were now terminated and at an end in this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this Iesus the Greeks and Gentiles taken in too to fulfill all that had been before named or spoken any way concerning him The testimony of Iesus is the very spirit of Prophesie Rev. xix
to do it then when we had wilfully departed from his conduct is so exceeding a grace and favour that no joy of ours be it never so exceeding can exceed it And if the Wise men for the direction of that singlâ— Star were so extremely affected with joy and gladness how infiniteâ—y should we be for so many Alas they saw nothing then in comparison of us The Child was then but in rags and swadling cloaths he is now in robes of glory He was then lying in an earthly Cottage he is now sitting in an heavenly Palace All the ways of Salvation were then but mysteries they are now revealed Salvation then was but in its Clouts 't is now in its perfection They saw Christ but once we daily see him See him and all his Stars see him amidst his Stars walking with some of them in his hands the Stars or Angels of the Churches amongst other of them his Saints with them in glory creating stars daily in our hearts shining to us every day in his Word and Sacraments there opening his glory unto us and us a door into it and all the while the material stars even under his feet Seeing all these so much above what they here saw our joy should be much above what they rejoyced with But theirs being exceeding ours can be no more when we have said all we can And that it may be so I shall only tell you It must exceed the joy we take in earthly things we must more rejoyce in Christ and in his Star than all the World besides more in the holiness of a Saint than in the highness of a Prince more in a faithful Pastor than in any Worldly Counsellor more in the Word of God than in all the Writings of men much more in the History of Christ than in all the Romances and Histories of the earth more in the Promises of the Gospel than in the promises of all earthly pleasures and felicities more in the inward work of grace and the inward comforts of the Spirit than any sensual satisfactions and contentments more in the meditation of Heaven and heavenly Glory than in all the glories of the World more in Christ than in all things or hopes together It must exceed them all And when it so exceeds it will bring us to an exceeding high condition make us exceed in grace exceed in glory do great and wonderful things by the power of grace to express our thankfulness and bring us by it to the reward of exceeding glory where we shall need no more Stars to guide us nor Sun or Moon to give us light but this eternal light now pointed at by the Star shall give us light both day and night shall fill us with joy such as neither heart can imagine nor tongue express that exceeds all we can speak or think give us joy for joy great for great exceeding for exceeding in his blessed Light and Presence for evermore THE THIRD SERMON ON THE EPIPHANY St. MATTH ii 11. And when they were come into the house they saw the young Child with Mary his Mother and fell down and worshipped him and when they had opened their treasures they presented unto him gifts Gold and Frankincense and Myrrhe OUR last years business from the Text was to see what the Wise men saw Philips counsel to Nathaniel S. Iohn 1. to come and see This years shall be to do what the Wise men did what all Wise-men will do still Holy Davids invitation to fall down and worship For having found this blessed Child the end of all our Journeys the crown of all our labours the sum of all our desires and wishes this infant-God this young King of Heaven and Earth what can we less then do our obeysance and pay our Homage All Wise men will do so adore the rising Sun make sure of somewhat or in the Psalmists phrase Rejoyce with reverence and kiss this Son lest he be angrâ— and so we perish fall down before him and even kiss his feet in an humble adoration that he may lift us up and advance us in his Kingdom at least remember us when he comes into it To come into the house else where Iesus is and there to see him to stand and look upon him only and no more is a journey and sight to little purpose The Oxe and the Ass saw him and many no doubt to as little purpose upon the Shepherds report and the rumour of these Wise mens coming from the East came to see and gaze upon him It is this worshipping that sanctifies prospers all our journeys we begin them but untowardly and finish them but unluckily without it If we fall not down upon our knees before we go out and bow not our selves and worship not in thankfulness when we come in we cannot assure our selves of any great good either of our goings out or of our comings in how successful soever they seem at first even to have obtained their ends even found Iesus too This same worshipping is both the end and blessing of all our journeys if they be blest nor see we or understand we any thing thorowly or comfortably where that is wanting where the worship and service of God and our Saviour is not both the aim and endeavour of all our motions Wise men they were here that now for these twelve days have made it theirs And the Ethiopian Eunuch Acts viii 27. a great Counsellour made it the only business of his Journey to Ierusalem to worship only and so return And in the devouter times of Christianity the devout Christians when their haste was such they could not stay out a Prayer or Collect would yet never pass a Church but they would in and bow themselves and worship and be gone Tantiest adorare so weighty a business it is to worship though but in transitu to prosper any thing we are about It was so thought then it would be so now did we not more study to make enquiries about Christ than to serve him to dispute about Christianity than to practise it Christianity here begins with it These first Christians I may call them thus profest their service to their Saviour thus addict themselves to the faith and obedience of Christ and were there no other reason in the world to perswade it it were certainly enough that the first Faith in Christ was after this fashion thus acknowledged and performed Three acts there are of it in the Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 falling down worshipping and offering The first the worship of the Body the second of the Soul the third of our goods With these three our Bodies our Souls our Goods we are to worship him with all these his worship is to be performed without them all it is but a lame and maimed Sacrifice neither fit for Wise men to give nor Christ to receive Two points of the Text we are gone through the Wise mens Iourney and success their coming and their seeing their labour and
their reward Three now we have to go through Procidentes Adorârunt Obtulêrunt the three acts or parts or points of Worship we are to perform to Christ each in its order as it lies and first of Procidentes their Prostration Here it is we first hear of any worship done to Christ and this falling down this prostration the first worship as if no other no lesser adoration could serve turn after so great a blessing as the sight of a Saviour as if his taking on a body challeng'd our whole bodies now his coming down from Heaven our falling down upon the earth his so great humiliation our greatest expression of our humility Many sorts of adoration have been observed greater and lesser Bowing the head Exod. i. 10. Bowing the body Gen. xviii 2. Bending the knee Isa. xlv 23. Worshipping upon the knee Psal. xcv 6. God thus worshipped by them all And falling down before him is no news to hear of neither in Scripture or Antiquity whatsoever niceness or laziness or profaneness of late have either said or practis'd against it They were Wise men here that did it yet it is well that the Scripture calls them so I know who have been counted fools superstitious fools for as little a matter for the same though I cannot but wonder to see as much done in a complement to a thing worse than a reasonable man whilst God himself is denied it Indeed it may be if we compare the persons we shall quickly see the reason These in the Text were Wise men of credit and reputation men of some quality men that understood themselves and knew the language of Heaven and can turn the Stars to their proper uses that think not much of much pains to find a Redeemer that know how to use a King and serve a God that run readily at the first call of Heaven to pay this worship Your selves can inform you what they are that deny it I shall not tell you Poor ignorant Shepherds may perhaps through ignorance or astonishment omit the Ceremony and be pardon'd so they go away praising and rejoycing but great learned Clerks cannot be excus'd if they pretermit it but neither the one nor the other if they deny it Ignorance will be no sufficient plea for the one nor a distinction or a pretence of scandal for the other in a point so plain as perpetual custom from the beginning of the world and plain words of Scripture make it Abraham falls upon his face in a thankful acceptance of Gods promise Gen. xvii 17. His servant Eleazar bows down and worships Gen. xxiv 26. Old Iacob did as much as he could towards it on his bed Gen. xxi 31. And the people of Israel Exod. iv 31. and this before the Law was given And Moses before the Law was written fell down before the Lord as he tells the people Deut. ix 18. So it was no Iewish Law or custom then but even a point of the Law of Nature though practis'd also by the Iew by David Ps. v. 7. by Solomon 2 Chron. vi 13. by Ezekiel ch xi 13. by Daniel ch vi 10. by all the Prophets by all the people all the children of Israel together bowed themselves with their faces to the ground upon the pavement and worshipped and praised the Lord 2 Chron. vii 3. Christ himself allows the people to do as much to him takes it and takes it kindly from them Iairus the Ruler of the Synagogue falls at his feet St. Mark v. 20. Mary does as much St. Iohn xi 31. Others often do the same and none forbidden it nay he himself does it to his Father St. Mark xiv 35. fell down and prayed and do we then think much to do it The very Saints in Heaven where there is nor shadow certainly nor Ceremony fall down before him even before the Lamb. Rev. v. 8. and xi 16. and xiv 4. and are we too good to do it Is the practice of all ages of Heaven of Earth and Christ too not strong enough to bow our stubborn necks Is there Iudaism and Superstition in Heaven in Christ too Oh then let me be superstitious I am content to be so to be called so by any generation upon earth But to make it yet more evident if it can be nature it self in the midst of its corruptions keeps yet this impression undefac'd and more plainly professes this Reverence due to the Deity than even the Deity it self Never did any the most blind and foolish Heathen yet acknowledge a God but presently they worshipped him with their bodies Nay never did any ever pretend either honour or respect to man but he exprest it some way by his body by some gesture or other of it And must God that made it and Christ that redeemed it only go without it must man be reverenc'd with the body and the Devil serv'd with it and God be put off with the worship of the soul which yet neither can express it self nor think nor do any thing without the body whilst it is in it It was thought a good argument by S. Paul to glorifie God in our body as well as in our spirits and in old Manuscripts I must tell you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not found 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the body only is because they are God's he hath bought them with a price 1 Cor. vi 20. good reason then that he should have them The body is for the Lord ver 13. of that Chapter Who then should have it but he 't is for no body else he only can claim it others do but borrow it or usurp it let him therefore have it 't is his own and it cannot be bestowed better he knows best to use it how to keep it fear we not Indeed it is so unreasonable to deny it him so unprofitable to the very body to keep it from him that I know not why we should expect to have it either safe or well when we deny it him Who can keep it better who can easier lift it up when it is down raise it up when it is fallen preserve it in health and strength than he And are we such fond fools then not to present it always to his protection and lay it at his feet who if he tread upon it does yet do it good Though we were Hereticks of the highest impudence and denied his God-head yet confessing his humanity we can do no less than give the worship of our bodies to him We can give him nothing less I may without breach of charity I fear suspect that this generation that are so violent against the worship of the body will e're long neither confess his God-head nor his Man-hood turn Arian and Manichee both together and prove a kind of mixed Hereticks unheard of hitherto beyond all the wickedness and folly of all their former predecessors come so far at last to think all done in a fancy or a dream make all the work of our redemption come
to nothing For certainly did they either seriously think him true God or true man we should see it by their bodies especially seeing we cannot see any thing by their spirits to the contrary Even men us'd to be thus worshipped 1 Kings i. 31. and Prophets 2 Kings ii 15. So that did they confess him any thing they would certainly fall down and worship him not deny it to be sure whether do it or no. For all falling down is not adoration It is the mind that makes that the intention of the soul that turns this outward expression of the body into adoration that makes it either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 either a religious or a civil worship as it pleases This is the reason together with the Authority of the Fathers St. Augustin St. Leo St. Bernard and others that I make adorârunt here this word worship to relate to the soul as procidentes falling down to the body Though I am not ignorant that both in the School and Grammar sense it is seldom or never found without the interest and posture of the body yet must it of necessity most refer to the soul that being able only to specifie the worship and give it both its nature and its name by either intending it religiously as to God or civilly only as to a creature where it gives it the outward posture being oft the same indifferently to God and man That these Wise men intended it as an act of Devotion and Religion as to an incarnate God not a meer carnal man is the general opinion of the Church and not without good ground For first Wise men who ever propound some end to all their motions would not have undertaken so long and tedious and troublesom a journey to have seen a child in a Cradle or in the mothers lap no not a Royal babe they were Kings themselves so the Antients delivered them to us and the 72 Psalm foretells them by that name and they had often seen such sights in as much pomp and glory as they could expect it in Iudea At least cui bono what good should they get by it that 's a thing Wise men consider by any King of Iudea what was such an one or his child to them who had nor dependance nor commerce with him or if they had needed not make such a needless journey themselves to no more purpose than in a complement to visit him But 2. They tell us they had seen his Star now we and they knew well enough that the Kings of the earth though they have the Spangles of the Earth have not the Spangles of the Heaven at their command though they have Courts and Courtiers beset with sparks of Diamonds and Rubies they have not yet one spark of Heaven in their attendance No King of Stars but the King of Heaven none under whose command or dominion they move or shine none that can call them his but God that made them to worship one then who not only can alone call all the Stars by their names but by his own too is certainly in any Wise mans language to worship God Our very Star-gazers who confess no King and for ought we can see worship no God will yet confess that in the Latin they have regit Astra Deus that the Stars are only Gods and though a Wise man may by his wisdom divert their influence he can in no wise either command or direct their motion 3. They tell us too they came to worship their whole business was nothing else and we would think they had little indeed if they came so far only to give a complement to a child that could neither answer them nor understand them We must certainly take them not for Wise men but very fools to do so And if worship be the end of their coming we may quickly understand by the phrase of Scripture that it is divine worship that is meant Of worship indeed and adoration we may read in other senses there but it is never made a business said to be any ones aim or purpose but when it is referr'd to God and his House The Eunuch is said to come to Ierusalem and worship Acts viii 27. David invites us to fall down and worship Psal. xcv 6. St. Paul comes to Ierusalem to worship Acts xxiv 11. and certain Greeks are said to come up to worship St. Iohn xii 20. but all this while it is to worship God never made a work to worship man To fall down before or bow or reverence to any man how great soever is but an occasional piece of business on set purpose never When we come before Kings and Princes we do it but never come before them to this end only for to do it 4. Had they conceived no other of him than as man or a Child of man that poor contemptible condition and unworshipful pickle they found him in the rags of poverty the place they saw him in would have made them have forborn their worship quite they would have been so far from procidentes adorârunt that it would have been dedignantes abiêrunt instead of falling down and worshipping they would have gone their ways disdaining at him But so powerful was his Star and so had the day-Star risen in their hearts so had the eternal light shined to them that they could see what others could not in carne Deum God in the Child He that led them without taught them within both whom they worshipped and how to worship And indeed he that knows and considers whom he worships will worship both in Spirit and in truth with his soul and with his body in truth else he does not worship Adorare adoration consists of both nay cannot be well conceived if you take away either the one or the other The word it self in its primitive signification is manum ad os admovere concerns the body and is no more than to kiss the hand and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is just the same So was the fashion of the Greeks to worship and it seems ancient through the East for it is an expression of holy Iob chap. xxxi 21. If I have beheld the Sun when it shined c. or my mouth hath kissed my hand that is if he had worshipped any other God But it falls out with this as with other words they enlarge their signification by time and custom and so adoration is come to be applied to all worship of the body bowing the head bending the knee falling on the face kneeling at the feet according as each particular Country perform their reverence Time yet hath enlarged it further and our Saviour that eternal word and therefore the best Expositor of any word hath applied it also to the soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 St. Iohn iv 23. nay more calls them the truest worshippers that worship in Spirit And indeed the Spirits the Souls part is the chiefest the worship
of the body is but the body of worship The soul that is it that enlivens it the spirit and soul of it that completes it the inward intention direction submission and reverence is that which makes all to be accepted To fall down in humility with the body and lift up the soul with pride to give an outward respect to him and inwardly neglect him to do the worship cursorily or in a complement without attention or good meaning is to use Christ as the Souldiers did worship him in a mockery cry Hail King and smite him to give a Crown of Thorns and a Scepter of a reed to make a puppet or a may-game of him or with Herod pretend to worship and mean nothing less seem devout forsooth in all haste but nourish profane and murtherous that is sinful careless or Atheistical thoughts against him They do best joyn'd God hath joyned them and one word hath joyned them and when joyned we best understand them and soul and body being so nearly joyn'd why should we go about to separate them The Prophesies foretel them both as to be solemnly performed to him All Kings shall fall down before him all Nations shall do him service Psal. lxxii 11. and ver 15. Prayer shall be made ever unto him and daily shall he be praised The Gospel that assures it was done and the Apostle tells us that God had so ordained it should be given him a name which is above every Name that at the Name of Iesus every knee should how of things in heaven things in earth and things under the earth Phil. ii 9 10. If all things in heaven and earth do do it then spirits and bodies too For bodies are things and spirits are things and in heaven and under the earth there be no bodies in earth there is both so there sure to be done by both And this name had not been long given before these wise men come to do it reverence before it was given they came not presently after they come not before that they might know how to call him they were to worship yet presently after that we might know it was in his name only that the Gentiles were to trust at which to bow and worship To worship him to worship his Name or at his Name is but the same in Scripture or little difference Yet if we owe him worship we owe also a respect unto his Name we are not to take it vainly or count it light but pay a reverence to it as to his for therein also we worship him As we worship his Humanity as it is united to his Divinity so his Name too we may well worship that is reverently esteem and speak of it and so express it spiritually rejoyce too at the hearing of it without fear of Superstition or Idolatry We else but poorly and lamely worship him God knows if we give no respect at all to his Name or any thing that belongs to him We may as well be afraid to worship him at all now since he hath taken on a body lest we should commit Idolatry to it being a creature as to fear Superstition in worshipping at his Name before his foot-stool as the Scripture sometimes speaks when the adoration on both hands is only directed to and terminated in his Godhead If any then as alas too many be so little Christians as to give to Iesus or his holy Name or his holy Altars and Sacraments no more reverence than does a Turk or Pagan let not us for Christs sake bear them company we have better examples here before us nay we have Angels too before us at the work When he brought his first-begotten into the world he said And let all the Angels of God worship him Heb. i. 6. and certainly they do it they fulfil his command and do his pleasure And are we then too holy to do it Is it a command upon them whom the benefit does no way so much concern and is it left at our pleasure who have the most reason in the world to do it to whom chiefly this Christ was born and given may we choose whether we will worship him or no and yet be the greatest gainers by it and the more holy by not doing it Faith 's the business they tell us no matter for any thing besides only believe and all is done Well but is Faith the business and is it not a strong belief indeed this that can bring men out of their own Country and that a far one too through Arabian Desarts in the depth of Winter only to worship and is it not as high a piece of Faith notwithstanding that poor outward contemptible appearance of Christ yet to fall down and worship him and believe him to be their God and Saviour and to trust the guidance of a Star or the word of an obscure Prophesie or an inward motion from Heaven before their own eyes and all sense and reason To leave his Country and to believe against hope and reason was counted to Abraham for Faith Heb. xi was so to these Wise men of the Text will be to all that follow their example Our Worship is but the expression of a Faith fides facta or fides faciens Faith done We worship therefore we believe or we believe and therefore worship And therefore thirdly offer too Open our treasures the treasures of our Faith and present our gifts And when they had opened their Treasures c. The ancient Fathers have here observed both Letter and Mystery and I am no wiser I shall do so too The Letter is plain enough to tell us that God looks to be worshipped with our Goods as well as with our Bodies and our Souls and that those whom he leads by his Star or Spirit any that will come to Christ must no more come empty handed than those that come to God Exod. xiii For God he is and God he gave us them God therefore every person in the God-head to be served with them the first-fruits it should be in all reason and in justice all it might be but some part or offering out of them howsoever I shall open the Wise mens treasures and shew you them the out-side of them the Letter first Treasures they are called before they are opened that we may learn God is not only to be served with mean things and ordinary ware Nothing can be too good for him the treasures of our Hearts and the treasures of our Cabinets and Coffers are never better opened than for him David would not offer what cost him nought and Araunah when he does but understand God's business toward gives like a King 2 Sam. xxiv 23. The Israelites hard hearted Israelites are yet so tender of Gods Service that they pluck off their Jewels and golden Ear-rings for the Service of the Tabernack The first Christian Emperours give their stately Halls to make Churches and nothing is thought too costly by pious souls for God's worship Are the treasures
natures his God-head by the Incense his Manhood by the Myrrhe 2. His Offices his Kingly Office by the Gold the very matter of the Crown that makes him King His Priestly Office by Incense the Priests Office being to offer Incense S. Luke i. 9. Levit. xvi 13. His Prophetical Office by the Myrrhe representing the bitter and mortified life of a Prophet 3. Here 's his Birth his Life his Death and Resurrection all acknowledged His Birth fitly resembled unto gold the purest metal his birth the purest without any sin at all of a Virgin pure as the most refined Gold his Life well represented by the Incense being nothing but a continual service of God and a perpetual doing of his Fathers business His Death the very manner of it evidently pointed at by the Myrrhe which in his Passion was given him in Wine to drink the usual draught of those that died upon the Cross. And his Resurrection easily enough understood by the same Myrrhe whose chief use is to preserve the dead body from Corruption out of an hope of a Resurrection and was even litterally done unto him by Nicodemus who brought a mixture of Myrrhe and Aloes to embalm him St. John xix 39. So now we see what it is to present Gold Francincense and Myrrhe to Christ even no less than to believe him to be God and Man our King and Priest and Prophet born of a Virgin without stain of sin living in all holiness without blame and dying for us yet not seeing Corruption but rising again to Incorruption This is the Faith we are to offer up this triple Faith Fear we not any adversaries or calamities he is our King to protect us King of Kings and Lord of Lords 1 Tim. vi 15. Despair we not though we be grievous sinners he is our Priest our High-Priest to offer for us and reconcile us Let not even Death affright us by his death Death hath lost its sting the Myrrhe of his embalming will preserve us and by his Resurrection he will revive and raise us up Let us thus think of Christ and trust upon him and we still offer this same offering of Gold Frankincense and Myrrhe This is the Allegory the Moral is behind and in the moral sense we offer Gold Frankincense and Myrrhe who present God with those vertues that resemble them First He offers Gold who patiently and constantly suffers for his Faith which is far more precious says St. Peter than of Gold that perisheth though it be tried with the fire 1 Pet. i. 7. The Martyrs flames are brighter than Gold and the constant Faith will endure the fire better than the Gold it self He 2. offers Gold who sets himself to keep Gods Commandments which in the Psalmists account Psal. xix 10. are more desirable than Gold yea than the finest Gold He 3. offers Gold who disperses it abroad and gives it to the poor he that gives Alms properly offers Gold to the poor indeed he gives it but to God it is he offers it an offering of a sweet savour to him 2. He offers Frankincense who offers Prayers whose Prayers ascend like Incense 'T is holy David's expression Prayers set forth as Incense Psal. â—xli 2. no Incense so sweet so acceptable to God as the devout Prayers of his servants He 2. presents Incense whose hope is only in the Lord his God whose desires and hopes are always ascending upward He 3. presents Incense who presents humility and obedience the nature of Frankincense is binding and restringent well imitated by obedience and humility the best binders and restrainers of our wills and passions 3. And lastly he offers Myrrhe who mortifies his affections which are upon the earth Myrrhe is a mortifier One quality of Myrrhe is to kill Worms he that kills these worms of our inordinate desires that come crawling on us those covetous desires that lie gnawing us those wrigling motions of any lusts that are ever tickling disturbing us he offers Myrrhe 2. He presents Myrrhe that presents his body chaste and pure Iudith that chaste Matron is said to wash her body and anoint it with Myrrhe Judith 10. as it were a preservative against lust and the Spouse in the Canticles so fair so pure so undefiled is much delighted with bundles of Myrrhe her very hands drop sweet smelling Myrrhe It is so great an Antidote against all impurity and corruption 3. He presents Myrrhe who though he hath not perhaps altogether kept his body pure or his affections in order yet begins now at last to take his Wine a little mingled with Myrrhe that takes of the bitter potion of repentance who in the bitterness of his soul repents him of his sins You know now how you may still offer Gold Frankincense and Myrrhe a constant Faith a regular Life Charity and Alms is as good as Gold devout Prayer a lively Hope an humble Obedience will pass for Incense a chaste body mortified affections and true repentance will be accepted instead of Myrrhe See we to it then that we have them always ready to present to Christ. Yet there is one mystery more to be observed when they had opened their treasures says the Text and it says it that we may know we are to open our treasures as well as offer them Now to open them before him is as it were to say take what he will we are content A voluntary resignation of our selves and all that is ours to his choice order and disposing to deny and renounce our selves and all that is ours our own desires our goods our good deeds our merits or to leave all to follow him if he so will have it is the most perfect of all our offerings and the perfection of them all It is both the beginning and end of Christianity so we begin our Christianity with the same resignedness we must continue it to the end And we may yet observe how to offer here as well as what to offer Open we our treasures first do it freely that we do all our treasures 2. Do it plentifully and largely Dorcas-like full of good works and alms-deeds let our good works and graces glitter like the refined Gold 3. Do them pure and sincerely 4. That they may ascend like Incense do them religiously and devoutly 5. Let them be wrapt up in Myrrhe to keep them from corouption 6. Let them all be like sweet smelling Myrrhe of good odour and report 7. Let them also be imbittered with Myrrhe with the bitter tears of repentance that we have presented God so little good and the tears of sorrow that we can present no better 8. Let them be done in order our incense in the middle our prayers wing'd on the one hand with the golden wing of Faith on the other with purity white as is says Pliny the purest Myrrhe a faithful heart and pure hands encompassed on the one side with Alms on the other with Mortification and Fasting First believe then pray then practise First believe
procession two and two in peace and unity together and with this solemnity and preparation we poor oxen and asses may come and approach to our Masters Crib The Crib is the outward elements wherein he lies wrapt up They are the Swadling-cloths and Mantles with which his body is covered when he is now offered up to God and taken up by us Take them and take him the candle of Faith will there shew you him and the candle of Charity will light him down into your arms that you may embrace him We embrace where we love we take into our arms whom we love so that love Iesus and embrace Iesus love Iesus and take Iesus love Iesus and take him into our hands and into our arms and into our mouths and into our hearts Take him and offer him again take him up and offer him up for our sanctification and redemption to redeem us from all our sins and sanctifie all our righteousnesses for without him nothing is righteous nothing is holy This day was his offering day is to be ours Offer we then him offer we our selves take we him up into our arms into our hands and hearts having first lighted a candle and swept our houses to receive and entertain him and having humbly and chearfully and devoutly and thankfully received him bless we God God be gracious unto us and purifie our hearts and hands that we may worthily receive him strengthen our arms that we may hold him open our mouths that we may bless him for him accept our offering and Christs offering for us his perfect sacrifice for our imperfect offerings that we may receive all the benefits of this great sacrifice the remission of our sins the cleansing of our souls the refreshing of our bodies the fulness of all graces the protection of our souls and bodies in this Kingdom af Grace and the saving them in the Kingdom of Glory that as we this day bless him here so we may bless and praise and glorifie him hereafter for evermore THE SECOND SERMON On the Day of the PURIFICATION OF THE Blessed Virgin St. LUKE ii 28. Then took he him up in his arms and blessed God ANd we have also this Day taken him and are now return'd again to bless God Taken him we have in our hands in our mouths Et dulcedine replentur viscera and our bowels are filled with his sweetness filled as the Moon at the Full and we cannot hold our peace we must needs give thanks after this holy Supper for so royal a Feast Indeed were the business either of the day or the taking or receiving done as soon as we had taken him up in our arms or down into our bowels Simeon might have spared his blessing and both you and I all further labour But receiving so glorious great things at the hands of God we cannot for shame but return him somewhat a Thanksgiving Sermon or an Anthem and being in the strength of this meat to walk not only forty days before we thus eat again of this kind of bread or drink of this rock but forty years perhaps some of us and all of us all our lives in the power and strength of this food in the vertue of this grace this day afforded us by the efficacy of the offering this day offered for us we cannot after it be such unclean beasts but that we 'll chew the cud the meat that this day we have taken and relish our mouths again with the taste and savour of this days food refresh our souls and selves with a thankful remembrance of this days mercy and offer our Evening Sacrifice of thanksgiving as we have already done our morning So that it will not be amiss to take Christ again into our arms though but to look upon him and see what we have taken what we have done that if we have taken him somewhat untowardly as people that are not used to handle children seldom but do as people that are not enough acquainted with the Child Iesus as many do him as the best handlers of him amongst us cannot altogether excuse our selves from much imperfection in the doing we may by a review amend what is amiss and what is past in much weakness in the time of receiving or before it in the preparation towards it may be corrected for the future by a continued taking him into our arms in a holy life and conversation For many ways there are of taking him and that is one which above all is not to be forgotten as without which all other taking him is to no purpose but to play with him or to mock him But I must first remember where I left and come to that in order as I go Four Particulars I pointed at in the words four parts of this second General of Christs Reception or Simeons gratulatory Acceptation of him Suscipiens suscipiendi modus susceptionis Tempus suscipientis benedictio The Taker or Receiver Simeon He. The manner of taking or receiving him Took him up in his arms The time of this taking Then when he was brought into the Temple and presented there The Takers or Receivers Gratulation or Thanksgiving for it and blessed God Then took he c. The Taker or Receiver of Christ He comes first to be taken notice of and Simeon was He. The common and most received opinion of him is that he was a Priest For the Priests Office it was to receive the Offerings of the Lord and behold here He it is that takes him into his arms and receives him at the hands of his Parents as Eli did Samuel of Elkanah and Anna 1 Sam. i. 25. And 2. their Office it was to bless the people Aarons and his Sons Num. vi 23. and that does Simeon ver 34. Takes the Child and blesses the Parents He But the Christian Priests does more blesses the Child too No Priest of the Law could do that 'T is the Minister of the Gospel only that can do that that has that Authority to consecrate and bless and take and all He it is that blesses the dead Elements and quickens them into holy things by the ministration of his Office by the vertue of his Function Till he blesses they are but common bread and wine when he has taken and offered them then they are holy then they are the means and pledges and seals of grace then they convey Christ unto the faithful Receivers soul. This is the mystery of the Gospel and so I speak it not literally of Christs Person but mystically of his body and bloud as offered and taken in the Sacrament But after the blessing the taking concerns us all and though perhaps it concerns us not whether Simeon was a Priest or not yet it both concerns us that he that blesses and offers be a Priest as much as it concerns us that it be the Sacrament we would have which cannot be offered but by the hands to which Christ committed that power and authority and 2. that
we our selves that take be some way qualified in the same respects as old Simeon here of whom we may be certain of his Sanctity whatever of his Priesthood The holy Spirit bears witness to him that He was a just man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ver 25. just and upright in his dealing in the righteousness which is by the Law unblameable as St. Paul of himself yet has even such a one need of Christ is not fully and compleatly righteous till he take Christ into his arms by faith till he add the righteousness which is by faith Yet is that other so good a disposition to this that whatever some men to excuse their own laziness or looseness and the devil to encourage it have ungodlily vented to the World that the moral righteous honest man is further off from Christ than the most dissolute and debauched sinner yet we see the first that takes hold on Christ is said to be a just that is a moral honest man who does all right and justice no wrong or injury to his neighbour and whoever he is that Christ suffers to take him into his arms has already cleansed his hands by some works of Repentance and at least stedfast resolution to be what is said of Simeon homo justus to be righteous and just without such purposes at least no taking him to be sure He is 2. stil'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 devout and pious homo timoratus the Latine renders it a man timorous to offend God and reverently respecting holy things And with such affections devotion and reverence and fear and trembling are we to approach the Table of the Lord to receive and take him we shall else take nothing but the rags he is wrapt in himself will vanish out of our hands He 3. was that He that waited for the consolation of Israel And none but such a He one that waits and looks and longs and thirsts and hungers after Christ the consolation of Israel and all the Isles of the Gentiles too none but he shall have the honour and happiness of Christs Embraces to them only that look for him will he appear either in grace or glory Vpon him 4. was the Holy Ghost and he only who is the Temple of the Holy Ghost whose soul is so whose body is so shall truly and really touch the Child Iesus He will not dwell or come into those arms which the Holy Ghost has not made holy Holy things must not be cast to dogs to the unclean and impure nor be laid up in unclean places nor indeed can any receive him or so much as call him by his name but by the Holy Ghost how fain soever he would call or come This Point would have done well to have been considered before your receiving and I hope you did but it is seasonable too now that if you have purified your selves before approach't in righteousness with devotion reverence with hungring and thirsting believing and hoping for him and in the power of the Holy Ghost you may so continue if you have been deficient in any you may re-enforce your selves ask pardon and set your selves the more strictly to righteousness and devotion good desires and holy practises hereafter As there is none too young to be brought to him so there is none too old to come and take him Old Simeon now ready to depart the World has yet strength enough to hold this Child in his aged arms him that by being held upholds him and all the World none too old for Christs company Though he be here a Child he is the Ancient of days elsewhere There 's no pretending age against his service In the old Law the Priests at fifty were exempted from the service of the Tabernacle the Mosaical service of the Law but nor fifty nor sixty nor a hundred nor any years can excuse us from the service of the Gospel Christs service nor debarr us from it To that the outward strength and vigour of the body was necessary To Christ the inward vivacity and action of of the soul will suffice where the body can do little And as there is no time too long for Christs Service not from our first childhood to our second so there is none too late if but strength to reach out a hand and take that which is no burthen but an ease to bear the greatest ease of the sick or weary or aged soul. This is a Point may comfort us when all worldly comforts are past us When like old Barzillai we have neither pleasure nor taste in our meat or drink we may find sweetness in Christs body and bloud When the Grashopper is a burden this Child is none when the keepers of the house tremble our hands may yet hold him full fast when they that look out of the windows be darkned we may stedfastly behold him when the grinders cease we may yet eat this bread of life he that rises at the voice of the bird may sleep soundly with this Child in his arms when all desire shall fail this desire of the Nations will not leave him when he is going to his long home this Child will both accompany and conduct him to his rest O the comfort of this Child in our old age when we are ready to go out of the World ready to depart no comfort like it no warmth like that which reflects from the flesh of this young Child his being flesh made and offered to us and taken by us When no Abishag can warm us this Shunamite can When none can cherish us he can stay us with flaggons and comfort us with Apples Cant. ii 5. when no earthly fire in our bosoms can give us heat with this Child in our arms we grow young again and renew our years unto eternity O comfortable and happy old age that has his arms furnished with the Child Iesus Forsake me not O Lord in mine old age nor draw thy self out of mine arms when I am gray-headed and I shall seek no other love no other embraces Thus have I shewed you Simeons silver head and golden hands Simeon with Iesus in his arms an old man holding of a Child a Priest embracing of his King a servant entertaining of his Lord the First Adam laying hold upon the Second the Law catching at the Gospel the Old World courting of the New Age and Youth State and Religion Humility and Greatness Weakness and Strength Rigonr and Mercy Time and Eternity embracing 'T is a happy day that makes this union where the imperfection of the one is helpt out and perfected by the perfections of the other And 't is the happier in that now in the next place it directs us how to bear a part in this union and communicate in this happiness Et ipse accepit eum in ulnas by taking him into our arms from whom comes all this peace upon earth and good will among men Several are the ways of taking Christ. We take him in at our ears when
death we sate in before St. Luke i. 78 79. His is the only time the time of the Gospel the only time of salvation Here it began and hence now it goes on 2. for ever for St. Iohn calls it Evangelium aeternum Rev. xiv 6. the everlasting Gospel the salvation not to end even with the world to the end of it sure to continue Moses his Law had but its time and vanished and whilst it had could not pretend so far as to make it day cloud and shadows and darkness all the while The times of the Gospel are the only lightsome day and a long one too it seems for our Sun has promised still to shine upon us and be with us ever to the end of the world St. Mat. xxviii 20. But some more remarkable points of this time there are we must confess that of the Apostles was 2. the very especial 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intended here the Now in the Text When the time of acceptation was at the fullest when whole families together Acts xvi 34. and xviii 8. thousands at a clap Acts ii 41. whole Towns and Countries came thronging in so fast as if this very now were now or never when Handkerchiefs and Aprons and the very shadow of an Apostle carried a kind of salvation with them Acts v. 15. and xix 12. when there was not only a large way opened for all sinners to come in but all ways and means made to bring them in when there were fiery tongues both to inflame the hearts of the believers and to devour the gain-sayers when there was a Divine Rhetorick always ready to perswade Miracles to confirm Prophesie to convince miraculous gifts and benefits to allure strange punishments to awe sinners into the obedience of Christ and the paths of salvation when the time of that great deliverance too from the destruction of Ierusalem and the enemies of the Cross of Christ so often reflected on through Saint Paul's Epistles was now nigh at hand and the fast adhering to Christ the only way to be accepted and taken into the number of such as should be saved from it Yet 3. this Now is not so narrow but it will take in our times too 'T is true those of the Apostles were furnished with greater means and power yet ours God be thanked want not sufficient We have the Word and Sacraments and Ministers and inward Motions daily calls and ready assistances of the Spirit It may be too somewhat more than they a long track of experimental truths and long sifted and banded reasons and an uninterrupted Tradition and a continued train of holy and devout examples a vast disseminating the Christian Principles and the perpetual protection of them we have to make them more easie to be accepted and tell us that 't is Now still the day of salvation And yet 4. even both in our times and the Apostles there has been a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some signal and peculiar time cull'd out of the rest and set apart for this Reconciliation the great affair that sets the Ecce upon it If I tell you but of St. Augustin's Tota Catholica Ecclesia or St. Leo's Institutio Apostolica or St. Ieromes Secundum traditionem Apostolorum or St. Ambrose's Quadragesimam nobis Dominus suo jejunio consecravit for this holy time we are in the time of Lent that they all call it Apostolical at the least and St. Ambrose fetches it from our Lord and consecrates it from Christ himself and that it was always purposely designed for the time of reconciling sinners and all the offices belonging to it I shall need say no more to prove this Now in the Text is not ill applied when applied to this very time Most reasonable it is 1. that some such there should be design'd some time or days determined for a business of so great weight we are not like else to have it done we would be apt enough to put it off from time to time and so for ever Were there not some set days I dare confidently affirm God would have but little worship paid him thousands would never so much as think of Heaven or God And if it be reasonable some time be set us there is 2. no time fitter than where we are 't is the very time of the year when all things begin to turn their course when Heaven and Earth begin to smooth their wrinkled brows and withered cheeks and look as if they were reconciled 'T is the spring and first-fruits of the year which upon that title is due to God and fittest to be dedicate to his Service and the business of our souls 3. 'T is the time when the blood begins to warm and the contest is now in rising between the Flesh and Spirit which now taken up at first and quell'd may be the easier reconciled to peace and the body subdued into obedience to the soul and so Gods grace not received in vain 4. The spring in which it is 't is tempus placitum the pleasant time o' th' year fittest then to fit with the tempus placitum in the Text fit to be employed to set our selves to please God in to make it perfectly such And sure we cannot be displeased that the Church 5. has thought so too chosen it as the fittest Surely it is or should be the more acceptable for that And if this time besides has all times in it that Solomon himself could think of Eccles. iii. 1. It must needs be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 too every way acceptable and all of them it has 1. There is says he a time to be born c. and so goes on this is both a time to be born in and a time to die in Lent a time to die unto the world and to be born and live to Christ. 2. 'T is a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted to plant vertue and to pluck up vice 3. 'T is a time to kill and a time to heal to kill and mortifie our earthly members and to heal the sores and ulcers that sin hath made by a diet of fasting and abstinence 4. 'T is a time to break down and a time to build to break down the Walls of Babilon the fortresses of sin and Satan and to build up the Walls of the New Ierusalem within us 5. 'T is a time to weep and a time to laugh to weep and bewail the years we have spent in vanities and yet rejoyce that we have yet time left to escape from them 6. 'T is a time to mourn and a time to dance to manifest our repentance by some outward expressions and thereby dispose our selves every day more and more for Easter Joys 7. 'T is a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together to remove every stone of offence and as lively stones to be built up as St. Peter speaks into a spiritual house 8. 'T is a
little by it but hard censures be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostle speaks 2 Cor. xiii 5. be half a Reprobate a Castaway himself for preaching it But seem we what you please be it how it will I venture on it upon St. Pauls account and both you and I as high as we bear our selves upon our assurances that we are the Elect if we will be sure indeed not to be Reprobates must be content to hear of it lest we be so 'T is a plain Text the words very plain need no Philip to expound them Nothing could be said nothing can be plainer For he that says I keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest I should be a Castaway says nor more nor less than unless I do so so I shall be for all my great flourish and appearance for all my other great performances And it being an Apostle without exception ver 1. 2. one who knew his Office and performed it beyond all that was required of him ver 14. 18. knew his Power and how to stand upon it ver 4. 5. understood well his Christian Liberty what he might do or leave undone ver 10. who notwithstanding all his power and liberty and priviledge and performances falls here to discipline his body lest after all he should prove a cast-away fall short of his Crown and lose the reward of all his labours If he can find no other means to avoid the one but by the doing of the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says St. Chrysostom what can we say for our selves Say I hope it concerns us and we will look to it will set about it Better Authority we need not than the Churches as for the time Better example we cannot desire than St. Pauls as to the thing and better Motive I know none to perswade either than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that we may save our selves from being Castaways I shall not obscure the business by any nice Division of the words Two general Parts shall serve the turn I. St. Pauls wholsom Discipline for his body And II. His godly fear for body and soul. Or I. His Disciplining and strict ordering of his body And II. The Ground and Reason why he does so The first is in those words I keep under my body and bring it into subjection The second in those Lest by any means when I have preached unto others I my self should be a Castaway In the first we have St. Paul his Body and the Work he makes with it or the Discipline he uses towards it Three Points to be considered In the second we have three more to make up the Reason why he does so use it Because 1. he would not be a Castaway 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lest I be Because 2. there may be many ways to make us so lest by any means I be so supposes by many I may be so Because 3. there is no avoiding being so without it all our preaching and doing will not do without it 1. Lest I be a Castaway 2. Lest by any means I be a Castaway 3. Lest when I have preacht to others I should be a Castaway notwithstanding I could give you the Parts perhaps in nearer terms applied to the Metaphor coucht in the words But the Text is plain and the Parts I would leave plain and I would be plain and understood Yet under whatever notions I should give you them This is and would be still the sum of all that the keeping under the body and the bringing it into subjection is a business to be mainly lookt to lookt to by the best and greatest the very St. Pauls among us and that under no less penalty and danger than being Castaways if we neglect it our highest priviledges our greatest services our most Christian Liberties no plea at all to exempt us from it I go on now with the Parts in order and begin with the first general St. Pauls disciplining and ordering of his body Where we have these three particulars to treat on Him his body and his ordering it But I begin with Him first for so I find him set set here before his body I would we would all set our selves so too set our selves above our bodies value and prize our souls for they chiefly are our selves before our bodies at least our selves that is the good of the whole man before the pleasing of that mortal part we would not then make our selves such slaves and drudges to it as we do face and brave damnation for a petty lust for a little meat or drink for the satisfaction of the belly Indeed could we pretend to know how to order our selves better than St. Paul I might have spared this Note but all the pretences we have against the strict ordering of the body that St. Paul here takes up are all answered in his person his very doing it if we well consider it For all the arguments or pretences we have against it are either 1. our business we cannot tend it or 2. our weakness we cannot bear it or 3. our holiness we do not need it or 4. our Christian Liberty it is against it or 5. other things will do as well we may well spare it or 6. a less matter will serve the turn we may be saved without it But all these shall I shew you might St. Paul plead yet it seems all would not serve to excuse him from this hard dealing with his body we read of in the Text. 1. We plead our weakness we are not able to use this rigour But I this I St. Paul was as full of weaknesses as any of us and yet he could Who is weak says he and I am not weak 2 Cor. xi 29. so weak sometimes that it cast him into a trembling much trembling 1. Cor. ii 3. And St. Paul took this way rather to cure it than to encrease it And indeed those very weaknesses we complain of rise from the pampering our bodies are cured by our strict ordering them Nay those impatiences and peevishnesses and nicenesses and sinful infirmities vvhich grovv so strong upon us in our sicknesses vvould not do so vvere the body kept but a little under vvhen vve vvere vvell But 2. though vve could bear it you 'l say vve cannot tend it Not tend it Why St. Paul upon vvhom the care of all the Churches lay vvho vvas in continual journeyings and labours for it 2 Cor. xi 23 25 28. full of vveariness and painfulness about it vvas yet in watchings often in fastings often ver 27. of the same Chapter keeping under his body still for all his business notvvithstanding all his other business forgets not this Will you say novv 3. you do not need it you are holy enough vvithout it you are Gods Elect and do not vvant it vvant no such poor beggarly means to help you out What are you holier than St. Paul What are you better than he that dares avovv he vvas not inferiour to the
chiefest Apostles Have you been in more Heavens than he Heard more Revelations than he Have you more assurances of your Election or Salvation than he that vvas arrived at that height to be perswaded that neither death nor life nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature could separate him from the love of God in Christ Iesus Rom. viii 38 39. are you better than he If you be not you had best take the course he did If you be you had best yet take his course to keep you so Yea but 4. our Christian Liberty is entrencht on by it We must not by this very same Apostles advice and counsel be subject to those Ordinances of touch not taste not handle not Col. ii 20 21. and yet those things seem to make much for the neglecting of the body and the not satisfying of the flesh ver 23. but that we must not be brought under the power of any 1 Cor. vi 11. No but the body must be brought under ours for all that says our Apostle Says he so He says no more than he does he does so too And yet he knew his power and Christian Liberty to the ful had power to eat and drink he tells us ver 4. and to do neither power to work and not to work to forbear working ver 6. was free ver 19. yet from this it seems he is not free unless he will fight as one that beats the air in the verse before the Text. He knows no liberty that can allow the liberty to his body not to be kept under and subjected unless it please Nor 5. does he whatever we think of it think he may spare it upon the account of other vertues as if it were enough to be diligent at our prayers to be frequent at Sermons to be orderly in our Families to be just in our dealings to be honest in our Callings to be charitable to the poor to be friendly to our neighbours or the like and let this subduing the body go whither it will St. Paul cannot be suspected to have been wanting in any of these yet he must needs add this grace also it seems to make all sure keep the body under that he may so keep those graces safe For a less matter lastly will not serve the turn St. Pauls labours and journeys and perils and stripes and prisons and deaths as great and as often as they were must have this also added to them the flesh must have some thorn or other to keep it in subjection If God send it not if the devil by his permission buffet not the flesh we must do it our selves lest we be exalted above measure those very performances which we think we have most reason to glory in will but puff us up and cast us sheer away if we preserve not our body in that lowliness and subjection that we should So now if we think good to guide our selves by St. Pauls authority and example there is none so weak none so busily employed none so holy that can exempt himself no Christian Liberty no other graces though never so many nor any other performances that can be pleaded against it All sorts of persons are included in St. Pauls and in this I all objections against it are sufficiently answered and we all included and obliged for if such a one as the glorious St. Paul could find no exemption I know not what Christian can expect it You 'l confess it perhaps when you have confidered what this body is you are to deal with the next Particular we are to handle And by the body here may be understood either the flesh it self or the fleshliness of it the body it self or the sinful passions and affections rising in it To be sure take we both And indeed we can neither be sure nor safe if 1. the passions and affections be not kept within their bounds if we suffer our appetites to rule us our angers to transport us our desires to harrow us our fears to distract us our hopes to abuse us or any other of that impetuous crew to over-bear us They must all be made underlings kept within rule and compass or we are lost Nay and to keep them so this very bulk of flesh 2. must be kept so too for keep this but high it is impossible to keep them low Stuff the body with meat and drink let it lodge soft and lie long let it have the fill of ease and pleasure facile despumat it froths into lust it boils into anger it swells into pride it rises into rebellion it leaks into looseness it mosses into idleness it fills the brain with fogs the heart with filth the liver with wanton heats the mouth with unsavoury language and all the members with disorder and confusion Do but take away the meat and let it fast a while take it from the bed and let it watch another while take it from ease and tenderness and set it to some hard and unpleasing work let it feel a little cold a little labour a little course and rough usage for a time and you shall see how humble it will grow how much under you shall have it how orderly it will be It will do any thing you would have it But to make all sure every part must have its share the eye must be watcht the heart kept under guard the tongue bridled the palate curbed the ears fenced the hands restrained the knees bow'd down the feet kept in and all the members under for they are all but one body 1 Cor. xii 14. this body that is to be brought into subjection make up but that Iumentum animae that beast that carries the soul and is therefore to be rid like a beast with bit and bridle with whip and rod lest it fall upon us or fall with us and cast us Be St. Pauls body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 never so good so orderly so chaste a body so it seems it must be used nay such it cannot be unless it be so used Let no man be so bold to think his body in better order than St. Pauls and yet here 's a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for his a kind of fear of some miscarriage a fear some evil may rise from it Yea even that very body of his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which had been at so many posts endured so many lashes already been in so many prisons so many perils so many storms and colds and shipwracks so many necessities and infirmities this very 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this very body as much as it has suffered and as much as it has done I must yet keep under says St. Paul still more and more keep under for all that My body says he and mine say I and mine must every one say though we were all St. Pauls as holy as he had done and suffered as much as he But what yet must it suffer more
our joy and comfort as if he come and find us watching find us thus markt in the eye with his own mark Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching St. Luke xii 37. But is there not 2. a blessing belongs to fasting too Sure they are blessed that are not Castavvays and fasting is a vvay to keep us that vve be not such if it but keep the body under the soul vvill surely soar to heaven and dvvell among the blessed and it is the second means vve have here pointed to us to keep that under by It vvas one of St. Pauls in the fore-cited places 2 Cor. vi 5. and xi 27. so proper to the purpose that it is called an humbling of it 1 Kings xxi 29. an humbling of the very soul too Hsal xxxv 13. a chastening of our selves Psal. lxix 10. vvell ansvvering to the Vulgar Latine castigo here Indeed turn'd it vvas the Prophet says to his reproof men laught at him for it as they do still commonly at those that do so yea and the drunkards made Songs upon him for it Yet do it he vvould for all that he vvould not be jeer'd out of his Religion by any of the Wits as they call them any of the Pot-companions or Trenchermen of them all And I knovv not vvhy Christians vvho are to pass through ill report as vvell as good 2 Cor. vi 8. should be so sensible of the scoffs of a profane buffoon as to be jeered out of their devotion by a little scurrilous froathy language any more than he We have 1. our Masters example for our fasting even for the Fast vve are in if vve have leave vvith the Ancients to dravv it thence for forty days together St. Mat. iv 2. We have 2. his Precept and Prediction for fasting too when he should be gone St. Mar. ii 20. We have 3. his order and direction how to do it St. Mat. vi 18. When you fast do thus and thus We have 4. St. Paul telling us of a giving our selves to it making a business of it 1 Cor. vii 5. We have 5. all the Ages of our Christianity severely using it We have 6. here an excellent end of it the keeping under of the body and indeed that I need not prove 't is the fault we find with it that it weakens the knees and dries up the flesh Psal. cix 23. that it agrees not with our bodies No more it should that 's the vertue of it And it being of that vertue and we having so good Example so plain Precept so sober direction so strict practice so long custom to commend us to it I know not where it sticks that it is perform'd no better Indeed were it for the destruction of the flesh though that the Spirit might be saved by it as the Apostle speaks 1 Cor. v. 5. we might peradventure boggle at it but it being only for the keeping it under rule and order that the spirit may be sav'd methinks we should not stick at it at least not stickle against it There are but two kinds of Fasts in Scripture a total and a partial a total from all kind of meat till even and that was Davids 2 Sam. iii. 23 a partial from some kinds only and that was Daniels Dan. x. 3. from Flesh and Wine and pleasant Meats For his three weeks mourning there ver 2. was his so long fasting according to tht Hebrew manner of expression Lugebam for jejunabam Neither of these so grievous especially if but for a time the latter of them mild and gentle And if that will do it if our abstinence from Flesh and Wine and Delicates will keep under the body the Church it may be by reason of our weakness will be content with that Somewhat sure it will do towards it and somewhat however should be done in the point We should do all of us as much as we can will do so too if we think Saint Paul worth following the soul worth saving the being castaways worth preventing But besides this watching and this fasting there is a third way to keep our bodies under by using them to some hardships and restraints Will you see St. Pauls way how he us'd his you may in the forementioned places 2 Cor. vi 4 5 6 8. and xi 26 27. He brings his up to labour and travel to weariness and painfulness to hunger and thirst to cold and nakedness And when we feel this beast of ours begin to kick or lest it do so we must take his way keep it down with labour and employment lash it hard tire it out and weary it with some busie work make it sometimes feel cold and pain we will the better understand what the poor man feels and the easier pitty him keep it sometimes at least hungry and a dry clothe it with course geer break its sleeps abate its provision displease it in the diet debar it sweet odours and perfumes deprive it of the fine dresses bring it out now and then in a mean garb and fashion and let it not continually please it self but be forc'd sometimes to sad and displeasing objects and to dwell upon them to see or feel or do something or other that will afflict and grieve it that it may learn to know it self and to submit This is a third way or rather many ways together a part of the business of those antient 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those severely Religious men of old to bring it under But when under it is we must have a care also to keep it so in subjection an eye to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to lead it away as the conquering combatant does his conquered Enemy for his Servant or his Captive for that 's the true meaning of the word and the second point of St. Paul's Discipline Now two ways there are to bring the body into this full subjection after that by fasting and watching and some severities we have first got it down and kept it under for a while The one is Temperance the other is Exercise both us'd by those that strive for masteries and taken up from them here by St. Paul in his spiritual combat with his body 1. They that strive for masteries are temperate in all things ver 25. And he that will have the full mastery of his body must possess it continually in temperance and sobriety must 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 get all into his power and resolve not to be mastered either by a stragling eye or a liquorish palate or an unruly tongue or a fond desire or a foolish fashion or an impetuous passion or any importunate temptation but make his body to foot and lackey it after his soul and think it glory enough that it may be allowed to serve it But to make it a good servant we are also 2. to exercise it exercise it to do and exercise it to suffer That can neither 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
〈◊〉 do like a servant nor we 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 use it like one else that cannot be a servant or we masters else Exercise it then 1. we must to do what we would have it accustom it to obey inure it to our commands habituate it to Gods service set it to good works and ply it hard tie it to order and bind it to rule bring it upon the knees employ it continually in some acts of vertue piety or obedience and let it never be idle Exercise it 2. to suffer too Use it to bear affronts to put up indignities to be crossed in the desires to be thwarted in the ways to be contraried in the sayings to be disobeyed in the commands to be diverted from the bent to be mortified in the lusts to be moderated in the passions to be straitned in the liberties to be delayed put off contradicted in all the motions of it a way St. Paul takes pleasure in 2 Cor. xii 10. This is the way to subject the body thorowly another part of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the holy men of the first ages of the way they took to bring their bodies into order and their souls to salvation a way for us to lead the body captive to our will to make an excellent servant of it too that shall both help us up and accompany us to heaven For it is not to destroy it 't is not to trample on it 't is not to tyrannize and triumph over it but to bring it thither not to hasten it to its Grave but to conduct it into the seats of rest that we use it thus that we preach to you to watch and fast and be severe upon your selves to be temperate in all things and keep all this ado 't is only that nor that nor we neither soul nor body prove castaways at last That 's my second general the ground and reason of keeping under the body and bringing it into subjection Lest when I have preached c. II. And a good reason too it is Take the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 castaway how you will it is so Take it first for such in the sight of men we would do much rather than be cast in their conceits A good report is worth all the pains we speak of necessary too to those that are to be employed in holy business Acts vi 3. 1 Tim. iii. 7. they should be men of good report Certainly our own doctrines should not reprove us or we think it hard to do our selves what we require of others 't is a point of honour we may be allowed to stand on not to be out-gone and cast by our own Scholars And I must confess watching and fasting are two of the ways by which Saint Paul approves himself to be a Minister of God 2 Cor. vi 4. But this falls short of the Apostles meaning Take it 2. for a castaway in the sight of God for a reprobate a wicked an extreamly wicked person that 's a second sense and nearer his the sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. i. 28. Tit. i. 16. 2 Tim. iii. 8. and other places And 't is a thing we must take heed of for if the body be not kept under but let have its swing wicked enough we may be quickly and lest we grow so by it a good reason I think to deal strictly and severely with it To be a castaway 3. from the sight of God that 's a third acception of the word and his fear indeed to fall short of that incorruptible Crown he strives for ver 25. This best answers to the Metaphor he is in of running and fighting and wrastling for the mastery where 't is not only reasonable but necessary to take care that the body be in order if we look to gain the prize and we may well fear to lose all if it be not But what can this great Saint after he has been caught up into the third Heaven fear any thing Can he be so poor spirited as to doubt of his salvation and fear to be a castaway It seems here he was and that after that time he had been there as may appear by the time of writing the Epistles He did not indeed much fear the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2 Cor. xiii 7. to be reprobated by men to be cast in their opinion but for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 indeed to be so by God to be a castaway in his lest his body should cast him into sin and his sin cast him of his reward and he be cast so from the face of God that fear he does And if it be possible after we are once enlightned and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted of the good word of God and of the very powers of the world to come after that to fall away and we find it is so Heb. vi 4 5 6. 'T is time for all of us to fear to pass the whole time of our sojourning here in it too as St. Peter counsels us 1 Pet. i. 17. and good reason we have to do all we can possible to prevent it not spare our bodies if we can so save our souls from being castaways 2. Especially having 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 next so much ground to fear it seeing there are many ways to be so for lest by any may suppose many by some or other of which we may miscarry Shall I name you some and not wholly out of the Text 1. The frailties of our nature 'T is a body here we have to deal with The multitude 2. of temptations some things there are suppos'd too here may some way or other get the power over it if we look not to it The uncertainty 3. of the strongest titles that we hold by this very I in the Text it seems a very Apostle may be a castaway else why does he set this lest upon it The very manner of the working 4. of Grace it self that this I must give its help any other way it will not do it Our bodies we may fear they want keeping under temptations we may fear they may 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lead them away This very I as great as he is may be led away too and overcome And the grace of God it seems will not hinder it but by the ordinary way of our working with it All which may tell us St. Paul fears all 2. upon good ground fears not being cast away for nothing fears these very grounds we are to speak of And The frailty of nature that 1. may well be fear'd so much flesh there is about us and so little spirit a weak and yet unruly body where there are so many natural weaknesses so many acquired infirmities so many necessities hang upon us so much dulness so much perverseness so mach disorder in all our powers that I cannot but wonder that any should be so
way is an inconquerable difficulty a Lion when the souls business is to be gone about Hear but St. Austin chide you as once he chid himself Tu non poteris quod istae istae istae What says he canst not thou do that which so many weak and tender Women so many little Children so many of all sexes ages and conditions have so often done before thee and thought so easie 'T is a shame to say so But suppose thou art infirm indeed and canst not do so much as perhaps thou would'st do else canst thou do nothing If thou canst not watch canst thou not fast sometimes If thou canst not fast canst thou not endure a little hunger thirst or cold or pains for Heaven neither If all these seem hard canst thou not be temperate neither canst thou not bring thy self to it by degrees by exercise and practice neither Or if thou canst not watch a night canst thou not watch an hour do somewhat towards it if thou canst not fast from all kind of meat canst thou not abstain at least from some from dainties and delicates If not often canst thou not at such a time as this when all Christians ever used to do it Sure he that cannot fast a meal may yet feed upon courser fare He that cannot do any of these long may do all of them some time may exercise himself in a little time to the hardest of them all Let 's then however set a doing somewhat for God's sake let 's be Christians a little at the least let 's do somewhat that is a kin to the antient piety watch or fast or somewhat in some degree or other that the world may believe that we are Christians Why should we be castaways from the profession too But indeed he that will do nothing for fear of being a castaway in the Text I despair he should do any thing upon any other concernment He that ualues his body above his soul his ease and pleasure above Heaven his temporal satisfaction above his eternal salvation there is no more to be said of him if St. Paul say true he must be a castaway I am too long but I must not end with so sad a word All that has been said or preacht is not that any should be but that not any should be cast-away only lest they should 'T is in our own hands to hinder it 'T is but a few hours taken from our sleep and employedon Heaven 'T is but a little taken from our full Dishes and groaning Tables and gorged Stomachs taken from our own bodies and bestowed upon the poors 'T is but a little strictness to our bodies that sets all strait 'T is but the keeping the body under and the soul in awe and all is safe The keeping down the body now shall raise up both soul and body at the last the holy fear of being castaways shall keep you safe from ever being so the bringing the body into subjection here shall bring it hereafter into a Kingdom where all our fears shall be turned into joys our feasting into fasting our watching into rest all our hardships into ease and pleasure and these very corruptible bodies here kept under shall be there exalted into incorruption where we shall meet the full reward of all our pains and labours we of our preaching you of your hearing all of us of all the good works we have done all the sufferings that we shall suffer the everlasting Crown of Righteousness the incorruptible and eternal Crown of Glory Which he give us at that day who expects such things from us in these days to approve us at that God the Father Son and Holy Spirit To whom be all glory c. A SERMON ON THE Third Sunday in Lent ROM viii 21. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed For the end of those things is death THose things were sins and sinful courses These words an Argument to disswade from them St. Pauls great Argument to disswade from sin and the service of it An Argument then which there can be no greater nothing be said more or more home against it Nothing more against it than that nothing comes of it but shame and ruine nothing more home than that which comes home to our own bosoms makes our selves the Judges our own consciences and experiences the Umpires of the business What fruit had ye in those things whereof ye are now ashamed says our Apostle Ye your selves tell me if you can What had ye then says he to the Romans here What have ye now say I to you ye who ere you are still or what had ye ever any of you who have at any time given up your members to uncleanness or to any iniquity What have ye gotten by it Bring in your Accompt set down the Income reckon up the gains sum up the Expences and Receipts and tell me truly what it is Or if you be ashamed to tell it give the Apostle leave to do it Fruit ye had none of it that 's certain Shame ye have by it that 's too sure and death you shall have if you go on in it nothing surer for the end of those things is death What reason then to commit or continue in them That 's St. Pauls meaning by the question as if he had said Ye have no reason in the world at all to pursue a course so fruitless so dishonourable so desperate as your selves have found and will still find your sins to be Thus the Text you see is a disswasive from sin and all unrighteousness drawn here from these four Particulars 1. The fruitlesness and unprofitableness 2. The shame and dishonour 3. The mischief and damage of it And 4. our own experience of them all The unprofitableness in the enjoyment the shame in the remembrance the damage in the conclusion of every sin and our own experience call'd in to witness to it The unprofitableness 1. without fruit What fruit had ye That is no fruit had ye none at all There 's the fruitlesness of sin none for the time past None 2. for the present nothing but what ye are now ashamed of there 's the shame and dishonour of sin None 3. for the future neither unless it be death there 's the damage of sin no fruit past present or to come but shame and death And all this Ye know says St. Paul as well as I. I appeal to your selves and your own experience What fruit had ye I dare stand to your own confessions I dare make your selves the judges Now sum up the Argument and thus it runs Were there any profit O ye Romans in your trade of sin I might perhaps be thought too hard to press so much upon you to perswade you from it Or though there were no profit yet 2. if there were some credit in it something perhaps might be said for your continuance in it Or though there were neither profit nor credit for the
present yet if 3. there were some good might issue from it for the future or at least the issue not so bad as death somewhat peradventure might be pleaded in the case Or if this 4. were all only in other mens opinions and ye found it otherwise your selves ye might perchance have some excuse at least to go on in sin but to sin when there is neither profit nor credit nor hope nothing good at any time in it neither when 't is past nor while 't is present nor any yet to come but all contrary and we our selves can witness it by sad experience for to our own souls and consciences the Apostle here refers it that so it is when we can shew no good of what we have done are but ashamed of that which can be shewn and can see nothing but death and destruction at our heels after all this to sin still to sin again any sin again we have as little wit one would think in it as fruit of it as much senselesness as shame and are like to make but a sad end when all is done It would be otherwise would we sit down and think upon it Ye are set already set but your thoughts and hearts to ponder and consider what is here set before you the fruitlesness the shame the damage of sin and your own experiences of them all and I shall not doubt but you will make the Application St. Paul would have you of the Text no longer yield your selves servants unto unrighteousness or commit those things whereof ye cannot but presently be ashamed and be next door to be confounded Consider we then first the fruitlesness or unprofitableness of sin see what that will work upon us What fruit had ye then c. What fruit That is no fruit for so such kind of Questions commonly are resolved into the strongest Negatives No fruit then St. Paul means can be shew'd of sin For all fruit is either profitable for use or pleasurable to the taste or ot least delightful to the sight But sin is none of these Nothing so unprofitable so distasteful so ugly and unseemly as sin is so nothing so fruitless For profitable fruit 1. there is none in sin Let 's call those profitable and advantageous sins as men imagine them of fraud covetousness and sacriledge to a reckoning and see what comes in by them Our common Proverb tells us Covetousness brings nothing home The poor and the deceitful man meet together says the sacred Proverb Prov. xxix 13. Even in this sense true that the Deceiver cheats himself and grows poor by his own deceit they meet together thus The Prophet Haggai says 't is but put into a bag with holes that is taken or kept back or but spar'd from the House of God Hag. i. 6. Says Solomon too 'T is a snare to the man who devoureth that which is holy things dedicated to Gods service Prov. xx 25. And is all the fruit of it all the fruit of Sacriledge come to that to a snare or to a halter Little got by that But whether to that or no to a curse it comes Mal. iii. 9. Ye are cursed with a curse even no less than a whole Nation by it grown tatter'd and poor upon it so far are they from a blessing or enriching by it because 't is Gods blessing only that truly makes us rich Prov. x. 22. and all that is called riches but a curse without it But suppose this sin or any other got what it could desire even the whole World as wide and full and glorious as it is yet What shall it profit a man though says Christ St. Mark viii 36. What fruit has he of it all Less far than He that shall sell all he has or hopes for the point of a Pin or the leg of a Spider He shall not so much as rost that which he has got with all his hunting is as true of him as of the slothful man Prov. xii 27. Of all the fruit that he has gathered he has not it seems so much as to fill his belly But if he should eat of it till his guts crackt he would not thrive upon it no thriving for body or estate when the soul is lost for that thriving is worse than nothing Well yet if there be no profitable fruit of sin is there 2. no pleasurable neither Just as little Examine we the most sensual and delightful sins and they it must be if any yet not they Drunkenness that great voluptuous sin will you behold the goodly fruit it brings For profit it brings none let the Wise man satisfie you Prov. xxiii 29. Who hath woe Who hath sorrow Who hath contentions Who hath babling Who hath wounds without cause Who hath redness of eyes They that tarry long says he at the Wine they that go to seek mixt wine Woe and sorrow and contentions and reproach and wounds and sad mourning eyes at last are the fair fruits and issues of this rare pleasurable wickedness and sure there 's no pleasure in any of these Nay even what it pretends to most it misses The very wine as sweet as it relishes at the first bites at last says Solomon like a Serpent and stings like an Adder ver 32. little pleasure of all its former sweetnesses And as little in any other of those sins of sense which claim most to it The fruit of Gluttony what is it but dulness and unwieldiness gripings vomitings and collicks surfets aches and diseases Of Lust what but rottenness in the very bones and marrow Our very vanities tire and clog us and make us peevish at every trifle Spiritual wickednesses have less pleasure Envy and malice are their own tormentors Pride cannot so much as please it self Ambition is rackt with fears distracted with visits and crucified daily with its own greatness that little-inconsiderable point they intitle pleasure in any of these is no sooner nam'd than it is gone and seldom is where the name is given it But where at the highest so intermixt it is with bitterness and sorrow that you cannot discern it or so quickly follow'd with them that 't is forgotten in a moment Nay that sin which seems now adays to have all the profit pleasure and beauty in it Schism and Division upon the examination will find none They that make Divisions among you says St. Paul they do but serve their own belly Rom. xvi 18. And God shall destroy both it and them 1 Cor. vi 13. What 's gotten then Whatever it is the Kingdom of Heaven is lost by it Gal. v. 21. where 's then the profit pleasure or beauty of it But though there be neither profit nor pleasure no such fruits is there 3. no beauty neither no fair fruits in sin to look upon Are there not so much as the fruits of Sodom they tell us of goodly and and fair to see to without though dust and ashes all within No not so much as such Look again upon the
there too late they begin to talk like men to speak reason The Christian penitent after he has run the course of sin and is now returning talks somewhat higher calls it a Prison the Stocks the Dungeon the very nethermost Hell thinks no words bad enough to stile it by We need not put any such upon the rack for this confession they go mourning and sighing it all the day long they tell you sensibly by their tears and blushes by their sad countenances and down-cast looks by their voluntary confessions their willing restraints now put upon themselves their pining punishing afflicting of their souls and bodies their wards and watches now over every step lest they should fall again that never were any poor souls so gull'd into a course so vain so unprofitable so dishonourable so full of perplexities so fruitful of anxieties so bitter so unpleasant as sin has been nor any thing whereof they are so much asham'd No fruit of all you see even our selves being judges And yet I will not send you away without some fruit or other somewhat after all this that may do you good For methinks if sin have no better fruits if wickedness come no better off we may first learn to be asham'd and blush to think of it be ashamed of sin We may 2. learn to beat it off thus at its first assaults What thou sin thou lust what fruit shall I have in thee what good shall I reap of thee Do I not see shame attend thee and death behind thee I am asham'd already to think upon thee away away thou impudent solicitress I love no such fruit I love no such end And if 3. we be so unhappy as to be at any time unawares engaged in any sin let us strike off presently upon the arguments of the Text. For why should we be so simple to take a course that will not profit to take pains to weave a web that will not cover us to plant trees that will yield no fruit to range after fruit that has no pleasure to court that which has no loveliness If we can expect nothing from our sins as you have heard we cannot why do we sweat about them if they bring home nought but shame why are we not at first asham'd to commit them if they end in death why will ye die O foolish people and unwise Lastly you that have led a course of sin and are yet perhaps still in it sit down and reckon every one of you with himself what you have gotten Imprimis So much cost and charges Item so much pains and labour so much care and trouble so much loss and damage so much unrest and disquiet so much hatred and ill-will so much disparagement and discredit so many anxieties and perplexities so many weary walks so much waiting and attendance so many disappointments and discouragements so many griefs and aches so many infirmities and diseases so many watches and broken sleeps so many dangers and distresses so many bitter throbs and sharp stings and fiery scorchings of a wounded Conscience so much and so much and so much misery all for a few minutes of pleasure for a little white and yellow dirt for a feather or a fly a buzze of honour or applause a fansie or a humour for a place of business or vexation sum'd up all in air and wind and dust and nothing Learn thus to make a daily reflection upon your selves and sins But after all these remember lastly 't is Death eternal Death everlasting misery Hell and damnation without end that is the end of sin that all this everlasting is for a thing that 's never lasting a thing that vanishes often in its doing all this death for that only which is the very shame of life and even turns it into death and surely you will no longer yield your members your souls and bodies to iniquity unto iniquity but unto righteousness unto holiness So shall ye happily comply with the Apostles argument in the Text and draw it as he would have you to the head do what he intends and aims at by it and by so doing attain that which he desires you should make your selves the greatest gainers can be imagined gain good out of evil glory out of shame life out of death all things out of nothing eternal life everlasting glory Which c. A SERMON ON THE Fourth Sunday in Lent I COR. ix 24. So run that you may obtain THat Christianity is a Race and Heaven the Goal and we all of us they that are to run is an ordinary Allegory in Scripture and Sermons which you have none of you but heard And that in this Race all that run do not obtain no more than they do that run in other Races every one sees and every one can tell you Not every one we told you the last day not they that run only with their tongues run they Lord Lord never so fast not many others that run further than so you will hear anon and too common experience can inform you But how so to run as to obtain is not a piece of so common knowledge Hic labor hoc opus est This is the Apostles business a business ordinary Christians are not sufficiently skill'd in 't is to be fear'd or if sufficiently skill'd in not so practised in but that they want a voice both behind and before them to tell them this is the way they are to walk in This is the way walk in it so and so run that you may obtain Were we to run in those Olympick Games which St. Paul here seems to allude to they who were practised in those sports and exercises were fittest to instruct us how so to run as to be conquerours there But being now to run the true Olympick that is the heavenly Race the true Race to heaven that true Olympus which that Poetical did but shadow this our Apostle that great wrastler not against flesh and bloud though in another sense against that too but against Principalities and Powers against the Rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness whose whole life was nothing else but a continual exercise of all the hardships in the Christian course who so gloriously fought the good fight and finished his course can best teach us how to do so too With this Prerogative too above the cunningest of those Olympick Masters that they cannot so instruct their Schollars that they shall be sure of the prize they run for though they run never so accurately to their Rules many there running and but one obtaining but here by St. Paul's direction we may all run and all obtain For to that purpose only we are invited and directed to run that we may obtain Yet true it is as we may all obtain so we may not and it will be but a spur to us to fear it one spur to hasten and quicken us in our course St. Paul had such a one now and then to make him run He had run
consider the practise of those first Christian Saints and Martyrs those daily pains and cares their days and nights were spent in we would think our Race to heaven another-gates business Christianity another manner of thing than we make it now a days or are willing to conceive it Were there no other word than this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Text this run to express it we might understand it to be a work of labour and if we take it with that reference it has to the Olympick Races there are many things in the performance that will sufficiently shew it What a deal of pains and care did they take first to fit and prepare themselves And then with what might and main did they pursue their course How often have such Racers been taken up at the Goal so tired and spent that they have had much ado to recover their life or spirits Ah! did we but half so much for heaven there were no doubt of it Running take we it how we will is a violent exercise that for the time imploys all the parts and powers 'T is that the Apostle would have here that all the faculties and powers of our souls and bodies should be taken up in the business of heaven Our heads study it our hearts bend wholly to it our affections strive violently after it our hands labour for it our feet run the ways of Gods Commandments to come to it our eyes run down with water for it and our bodies with sweat about it 'T will cost somewhat more to come to heaven than a few good words at the last than a Lord forgive me and have mercy upon me when we are going out of the World or than a hot fit or two of Piety when we are in it or a cold and careless walking and stragling up and down in it throughout even all our lives Nay more 't is not running over whole Breviaries of Prayers 'T is not running over good Books only neither reading and studying of good things but running as we read that all that run may read in our running the Characters of heaven Would men but lay this to heart that it is no such easie or perfunctory business to get thither their courses would be better their lives holier themselves heavenlier than they are nor would so many put off the work to the last cast make a meer death-bed business of it as if they then were fit enough to run Gods ways when they cannot stir a hand or foot whereby 't is more then to be fear'd they deceive themselves and being then in no possibility to run they go they know not whither II. And yet for all the pains and running we talk of if now secondly it have not an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to rule and steer it if it be not a so running such a one as is right set to obtain we had as good sit still This so to run is 1. To run lawfully 2. To run carefully 3. To run speedily 4. To run willingly 5. To run stoutly 6. To run patiently 7. To run constantly and to the end To run 1. lawfully according to the Laws and Rules prescribed to obtain it 2. Carefully the way to obtain it 3. Speedily with the speed requisite to obtain it 4. Willingly with spirit to obtain it 5. Stoutly to endure any thing to obtain it 6. Patiently to expect to obtain it 7. Constantly not giving out till we obtain it 1. Lawfully according to the Laws and Rules of the Race we are to run we are not crowned else says our Apostle 2 Tim. ii 5. Now the Laws of the Christian Race are Gods Commandments according to which we are diligently to direct our steps Yet three Laws there are more particular and proper to it the Law of Faith the Law of Hope and the Law of Charity These the three more peculiar Rules of it We must run in a full belief of Gods Promises in Christ that in him they are yea and in him Amen that God will not let one tittle of them fall to the ground Looking unto Iesus the Author and finisher of our faith Heb. xii 2. of our course too We must secondly run in hope that through his grace we also even we though the most unworthy shall obtain laying hold upon the hope so set before us Heb. vi 18. And thirdly in Charity must be our course though we strive for the mastery it must not be in strife or envy but in love and charity in unity and peace in love unfeigned our selves 2 Cor. vi 6. and provoking one another to it Heb. x. 24. no other strifes or provocation but who shall go before one another in love so keeping the bond of peace which once broken our clothes and garments which were tied up to us with it as with a girdle fall all down about us and hinder us both in our Race and of our Crown Those who have broke this bond and rent the Churches Robes and their own souls by their unhappy separations will after all their labour with those in the Psalm sleep their sleep and find nothing nothing but that they have hindered both others and themselves of the Crown of glory Run we lawfully and orderly then that first And 2. run we carefully too neither to the right hand nor to the left neither looking after sensual pleasures or worldly profits or sinful lusts not turning aside after those golden balls which the Devil the Flesh and world are always casting in the way to hinder us but straight on our course carefully shunning all temptations stumbling-blocks and stones of offence which are likely to trip up our heels and throw us in our race what carefulness says St. Paul 2 Cor. vii 11. has your godly sorrow wrought will earnest desire of a heavenly Crown say I work in you if you would think upon it It would make you 3. gather up all your strength set to all your force put to all your speed you would think you could not come soon enough to so glorious a Goal Let us go speedily and pray before the Lord say they in Zachary viii 21. Make haste and come down says our Saviour to Zacheus St. Luke xix 6. as if he that meant to see Christ here at his own house or hereafter in his must make what haste he can Running is our speediest motion and the more haste to Heaven the better speed though to earthly things the proverb says it is not and the reason may be indeed because our swiftest motion is to be towards Heaven to be reserv'd for that Yet willingly 4. must it be we must do it without Whip or Spur they are for unreasonable Beasts and not for men in running We are not to look that God should force and drive us to his work he loves no such workmen A ready mind is Gods Sacrifice he accepts no other If I do it willingly says our Apostle ver 17. I have a reward no reward else to
there is to buffeting our selves keeping under our bodies and bringing them into subjection St. Pauls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ver 27. making our eyes and bodies as it were black and blew by watchings and fastings cuffing or buffeting our eyes for looking after our ears for listning to our bodies for doing punishing all our powers and senses for acting any thing that is evil a being buffeted too 2. by Satan when we forget to buffet our selves 2 Cor. xii 7. Cuffing and buffeting sufficient to be found in the Christians exercise 3. Quoiting or casting casting away any weight that hinders us any sin that does beset us Heb. xii 1. removing every stone of offence giving no offence to any in any thing that our Ministry be not blamed 2 Cor. vi 3. that nothing we do nothing we omit neither our doing or our not doing be a stone of stumbling whereby our brother may justly stumble or is offended or is made weak Rom. xiv 21. Throw all such stones out of the way and strive who shall so come nearest that great corner stone Christ Iesus or the mark of your high calling of God in Christ Iesus Phil. iii. 14. 4. Leaping also is to be found among the Christians exercises skipping and leaping for joy at the glad tidings of the Gospel leaping and praising God with the lame man that was healed Acts iii. 8. striving who shall leap farthest in it leaping with Abraham St. Ioh. viii for so the word signifies to see the day of Christ Leaping with holy David before the Ark 2 Sam. vi 16. rejoycing and leaping for joy in the day of our sufferings for Christ St. Luke vi 23. making it one of our daily exercises and businesses to praise and magnifie God and rejoyce in him in all his days and ways and dispensations strive with one another who shall do it most who shall go farthest in it 5. Running we every where meet in the Christians course running the race which is set before us Heb. xii 1. so running as we may obtain in the verse before the Text. Christianity it self is stiled a race the Christian Law the Law of it the Christian the runner his life the course heaven the goal nothing more ordinary Besides these five single exercises in the Grecian there was a sixth mixt or compounded of wrestling and cuffing both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they called it But in Christianity all are joyned all are sometimes exercised together the Christian must be skilled and well exercised in all wrestle against the World the Flesh and Devil wrestle with God cuff and buffet himself suffer the buffettings of Satan too sometimes cast away all weights and stones of hinderance and offence leap and run with joy and eagerness the race which is set before us looking unto Iesus always in all these looking unto him that is both the author and finisher of our faith Heb. xii 2. And being thus wholly to be kept in exercise it will be convenient nay necessary now to fit and prepare our selves so to diet and order our selves that we may so perform them as to obtain the day to get the victory to be temperate in all things as well as any wrestler or runner of them all There are four several interpretations of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we here render temperate The first is what here we find it to be temperate to keep a certain set diet whereby their bodies might be best strengthned and enabled made nimble and active so it signifieth to the Wrestlers To observe a spare and moderate diet such as may most advantage the souls business best subdue the body and quicken the spirit be it abstinence from some or sometimes from all kinds of meat and drink so it signifies to the Christian This the Christians as the other the Wrestlers diet Very exact and punctual were they that strove for the masteries in their observances kept their rules and times and kind of diet I would the Christian now were but half so much to his rule and order Indeed I must confess theirs was not sometimes a moral temperance it was sometimes to fulness yet still such as was prescribed and most conducible to their end If we would observe as much those abstinences which most make to the enabling us in our spiritual race or combat I shall desire no more there indeed fasting and all temperance will come in will be the Christians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Christians being temperate in all things A thing so necessary that St. Ierome says no less than Difficile imo impossibile est ut praesentibus quis futuris fruatur bonis ut his ventrem ibi mentem expleat ut de deliciis transeat ad delicias ut in utroque seculo primus sit ut in coelo in terrâ appareat gloriosus It is hard nay impossible no less says he to enjoy both present and future goods our good things here and hereafter too to fill the belly here and the soul hereafter to pass from pleasure into pleasure from fulness into fulness to be first in earth and heaven too glorious in both He must feed spare here that looks to be fed full there be temperate in all earthly delights and satisfactions that looks for heavenly either in the other world or in this either for the full body stifles the soul and we are not more unwieldy in body when the belly is over full then the soul is then Fulness oppresses even the natural spirits makes us we cannot even breath freely for the while enough to shew us our rational spirits are not likely to be freeer to breath or evaporate themselves to Heaven or Heaven-wards whilst the very natural ones themselves are so opprest From temperance and moderation we cannot be excused neither in meat nor drink nor any thing whatever weakness may excuse from fasting so necessary a disposing of us it is to all Christian piety and goodness yea and a Christian vertue too it self Gal. v. 23. The word may yet 2. be rendred continence so it seems to be taken Tit. i. 8. where 't is distinguished from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sober or temperate and joyn'd next to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 holy clean or pure A point observed by those agonothletae to abstain from Wine and Women for the time of their providing themselves against those games So the Poet. Qui cupit optatam cursu contingere metam abstinuit vino Venere And our Apostle tells us of such a kind of temporary continence very convenient for those Christians that more especially addict themselves to the Christian exercises particularly of Prayer and Fasting chap. 7. of this Epistle ver 5. But no time but commands Continence and Chastity to all Christians whosoever that no uncleanness be so much as named among them for it becomes not Saints Ephes. v. 3. it becometh not the Gospel of Christ which is a doctrine of all holiness and purity Nothing
more weakens and indisposes the body for vigorous and noble actions nothing more unfits the soul for the race of Christian piety nothing more blinds it from understanding nothing more keeps it from desiring nothing more disables it from performing it then inordinate and sensual lusts and indulging to them To run or wrestle or combate well we have as much need of continence as any that ever strove for secular mastery A third notion of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is to signifie a constancy of mind to abstain from all things that are hurtful Suidâ—s and Hesychius render it to abstain from evil And that not only things that are truly such but those things also sometimes that may hinder the greater good Thus St. Paul in this Chapter a little before the Text abstains from using his Christian liberty that he may so with the greater profit and success fulfil the course of his Ministry will not use the power he had to live upon preaching of the Gospel but voluntarily preaches to the Corinthians upon free cost that he might gain the more ver 19. becomes again all things to all men that by all means he might gain some ver 22. He saw the Corinthians were close and covetous forsaw it was like to hinder his preaching much if he put them to much charge he therefore supersedes his power and liberty though he convinces them from the beginning of the Chapter that such he had and just and natural and reasonable and ordinary it was lest he should not do so much good upon them as he desired But though we must not expect that all men should advance to this height they must yet resolve to remove all real and and faulty hindrances out of the way abstain from all occasions and appearances of evil which may at any time hinder or rob us of our Crown make us fall short of the Goal of Heaven and Glory Lastly It may signifie his having all things in his power 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the getting the mastery over himself getting the victory over one desire after another denying himself first one liberty then another till at last he has mastered all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 got all into his power Thus strove those Grecian Wrestlers and Racers ordered and tempered their bodies by degrees first to this exercise then another first to this height then a higher first to this then to a further till they had gotten a perfect mastery and command over all their powers and members to use them to the greatest advantage and agility This is the Christians business too to keep our soul and body in continual exercise always doing ever suffering somewhat now striving against that sin then a second now mortifying that lust then another now moderating this passion then sweetning that one while denying himself this liberty then another sometimes attempting this difficulty then some other sometimes running after good sometimes wrestling with evil sometimes cuffing and crucifying an inordinate desire sometimes throwing off such and such a habit sometimes leaping away in fear from an occasion or opportunity of doing ill sometimes leaping into a way or occasion of doing good sometimes leaping for joy when it is done whereby at length by continual exercise and custom we may happily come to a perfect temper in all our powers and faculties of soul and body bring them all to an exact obedience to the obedience of Christ to run the race to fight the fight that he has set before us Delicatus es miles si putes te posse sine pugna vincere sine certamine triumphare c. says St. Chrysost. Thou art too delicate a Souldier for Christ if thou thinkst thou canst overcome without striving triumph without fighting Exsere vires c. put out thy strength fight valiantly contend fiercely in the Christian warfare Remember thy covenant think upon thy condition consider thy warfare the covenant that thou madest the condition thou undertookest the warfare thou gavest thy name too at thy Baptism The Christians life is but a continual warfaring against the world the flesh and the Devil thy Captain calls and leads thee to it and thy crown expects thee not a Crown of corruptible leaves or flowers but an incorruptible Crown of Glory Be temperate and sober be chaste and continent be vigilant and constant be diligent and active in Christs holy work and business that thou mayest run without falling wrestle without being thrown cuff without being beaten quoit all thy labours near the mark out-leap all evil ways perform all thy exercises get happily at last to the end of thy way and labour snatch and carry away the Crown prepared for thee That 's the fourth and last point of the comparison between Crown and Crown the one corruptible the other incorruptible Here indeed first properly comes in the But the comparisons before have run somewhat even combatants and exercises and preparations much alike but here nothing but the name no comparison between mortal and immortal vanity and reality finite and infinite Yet let us a little compare them as we can The Crown these Gamesters strove for was but of leaves of Pine or Apple of Oak or Olive of Laurel nay or even Grass sometimes Corruptible these indeed nay and vain too to do so much Multa tulit fecitque puer sudavit alsit to run and sweat and toil and keep ado for such a toy as the best of these how vain and foolish The very Heathen themselves Anacharsis in Lucian sufficiently deride it Yet as ridiculous as it seems the greatest part even of the Christian world strive and labour for as little What is the aim of all the great ones of the world but leaves and grass What get they by all their labours and pursuits but some such business Let them all have their desires and it comes to no more Let the one obtain his so much desired honour another his beloved Mistriss pleasure a third his darling wealth of one of which three kinds of leaves all their Crowns are made and what get they but meer fading leaves neither fruit nor flower The Crown of honour what is it but a very leaf that withers presently the worm of envy consumes it presently the blast of jealousie nips it in its glory the breath of malice deads it in a trice The Crown of pleasure has a woe upon it Isa. xxviii 1 3. a woe that will consume them Woe to the crown of pride to the drunkards of Ephraim whose glorious beauty is a fading flower all that are drunk with any pleasure their very Crowns wither upon their heads the intemperate heat that both produces and rises from their sensual pleasures turns the colour of their beauty and will make their garlands e're long smell rank and stink with their own corruption The Crown of Riches has a worm commonly that breeds in the leaf this Oaken Garland in which we place so much strength and stedfastness has an oaken Apple
the Angel the Herauld of it 3. It intimates health as well as peace we were all sick till this day came the best with the Spouse sick of love Cant. v. 8. the worst sick of somewhat else none well till this news came till the next morning after this great Conception rose with healing in his wings Now all hail and whole and well again 4. It signifies a wish of salvation too Ave says one piously though not learnedly a vae all woe now away temporal and eternal Eva spell'd backwards all Eves ill spun web unravel'd undone roul'd backward by the Conception of this blessed Virgin here foretold temporal and eternal woes taken all away nothing but joy and salvation to us if we will hear it with the Blessed Virgin and accept it The second salutation is The Lord is with thee and it may be either an apprecation or wishing that he would be or an Annunciation or affirmation a declaring and affirming that he is or a prediction or foretelling that he will be with her It was an apprecation when Boaz gave it to the Reapers Ruth ii 4. that God would be with them It was an apprecation and an affirmation both when the Angel gave it to Gideon Judg. vi 12. The Lord is with thee thou mighty man of valour It is affirmation apprecation and prediction all three here to our Blessed Lady a wish that the Lord would an assurance that he is a prediction that he will be yet more signally and more particularly with her by and by 'T is somewhat to be saluted by an Angel and 't is not common we hear often of their coming with a message seldom with a salutation 't is sign of more then ordinary acquaintance and familiarity with God and of his respect particular unto us when he sends his Angels not only upon errands but how-do-yous to us With such a salutation too as the Lord is with thee The hand of the Lord was with him 't is said of St. Iohn Baptist and that was well his hand and not himself and yet the greatest of them that was born of women was not greater than he St. Matth. xi 11. But here 't is he himself with the greatest among women It is a great favour to have his hand but it is an high one to have himself with us Yet the Angel says to Gideon Judg. vi 12. The Lord be with thee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 't is here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Article an Emphasis put upon it he is not with her as he is with any else Tecum in mente tecum in ventre as the Fathers gloss it Tecum in spiritu tecum in carne with her he was or would be presently as well in her body as in her soul personally essentially nay bodily with her and take a body from her a way of being with any never heard before or since a being with her beyond any expression or conception whatsoever And the Lord thus being with her all good must needs be with her all the gracious ways of his being with us are comprehended in it so the salutation no way to be exceeded And well may he chuse to be with her even make haste and prevent the Angel as St. Bernard speaks to be with her He is with the pure in heart with the humble spirit and piously retired soul and she is all And though by the Angels words ver 31. we cannot conceive that the Lord was yet conceived in her he speaking in the future yet as sure it was even whilst the Angel was in his salutation as if he were already incarnate in her flesh upon this may well follow the third salutation Blessed art thou or be thou blessed Yet I shall not here say much of this I reserve it to be handled amongst the titles onely tell you it may as well pass for a salutation as the other We still sometimes use it in our salutations use to say God bless you when we salute sometimes so the mowers to Boaz return his salutation of the Lord be with you with The Lord bless thee Ruth ii 4. And Gen. xlvii 7. we read that Iacob blessed Pharaoh when he came before him that is saluted him in a form of blessing All the famous salutations now you see of all former and latter times are here rallied up in this Daniel's Live for ever for life and health and safety the Angels to Gideon The Lord is with thee Boaz his to Ruth Blessed be thou of the Lord my daughter Ruth iii. 10. Tobit's to the Angel Gaudium tibi Tob. v. 11. Ioy be unto thee Christ's to his Disciples Peace be unto you The Apostles grace and peace and salvation to their Churches all in this of the Angel to the Virgin now in treaty about Christs Incarnation To shew us 1. all these are in Christ all now coming to us by his coming to us to be found altogether no where but in him joy and peace and health and salvation and blessedness first rising on us by this days business his Incarnation To teach us 2. good forms of salutation blessing and not cursing though there are some so peevish to say no worse to tell us they had as lieve we should say the Devil take them as God bless them or God be with them It seems they had rather imitate the bad Angel than the good I hope we had not Good words if it be no more are fittest sure for Christian mouths but yet good wishes too for he that forbids to say to some God speed you 2 John x. intimates we should say so to others And though the Disciples are bid to salute no man by the way St. Luke x. 4. that is when it will retard or hinder their holy business they are yet bid when they come into a house say Peace be to it ver 5. And if the Angel do it and Christ bid it and do it too as he does St. Luke xxiv 35. I hope we may and will do too Nay and give good titles too upon the same account the Angel does so to the blessed Virgin and we hasten to them Thou that art highly favoured blessed blessed among women Thou that art highly favoured but why thou without a name why not Mary here as well as after ver 30. Why there he used her name so to dispel her fear as it were by a kind of friendly familiarity here he forbears it in his reverence to her We use not to salute great persons by their Names but by their Titles and the Mother of God is above the greatest we here meet with upon the earth We must not be too familiar with those whom God so highly favours that 's our lesson hence We are not to speak of the Blessed Virgin the Apostles and Saints as if we were speaking to our Servants Paul Peter Mary or the like 'T is a new fashion of Religion neither taken from Saints nor Angels nor any of Heaven or heavenly spirits
to unsaint the Saints to deny them their proper titles to level them with the meanest of our Servants We might learn better manners from the Angel here manners I say if it were nothing else for we dare not speak so to any here that are above us and we think much to be Thou'd without our titles by that new generation of possessed men who yet with more reason may call the best man thou then we the Apostles Iohn or Thomas But to descend to a particular survey of these Titles here Thou that art highly favoured so our new Translation renders it Full of grace so our old one hath it from the Latin Gratia plena and both right for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will carry both Grace is favour God's Grace is divine favour high in grace high in his favour full of his grace full of his favour all comes to one Now there is Gratia Creata and Increata Created grace and uncreated grace Created grace is either sanctifying or edifying the gifts of the Holy Spirit that sanctifie and make us holy or the gifts that make us serviceable to make others so The first to serve God in our selves as Faith Hope Charity and other graces The second to serve him in the Church such as the gift of Tongues of Prophesie of Healing and the like of each kind she had her fulness according to her measure and the designation that God appointed her For sanctifying Graces none fuller Solo Deo excepto God only excepted saith Epiphanius And 't is fit enough to believe that she vvho vvas so highly honoured to have her Womb filled vvith the body of the Lord had her soul as fully fill'd by the Holy Ghost For edifying Graces as they came not all into her measure she vvas not to preach to administer to govern to play the Apostle and therefore no necessity she should be full of all those gifts being those are not distributed all to any but unicuique secundum mensuram to every one according to his measure and employment and not at all times neither so neither is she said to be less ful for vvanting them There is one fulness of the Fountain another of the Brook another of a Vessel one fulnes of the Sea another of the River another of the Pond and yet all may be full Christ himself is said to be full of the Holy Ghost and St. Stephen is said to be full and others said to be full yet Christ as the Sea or Fountain they as the Rivulets or Rivers and yet all as they can hold 'T is so in Earth 't is so in Heaven And vvith such a fulness as the Brooks or Rivers is our Virgin full and with no other Where any edifying Grace vvas necessary for her she had it as well as others more perhaps than others Where it vvas not necessary it vvas no vvay to the impairing of her fulness though she had it not as the banks of the Rivers rose or the Channel was enlarged so were those graces but inter mulieres among women at the end makes me incline to think the fulness of Apostolick endowments do not any way belong to her women not being suffered in the times of the Apostles but to teach their children or servants at home never thought so full of the Spirit as to be sent to blow it all abroad And indeed it is not said here full of the Spirit but full of Grace and that is commonly understood of sanctifying Grace of which it is very convenient that we believe none fuller than she and the original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will not inforce it much higher in the business of created grace But in respect of the increated Grace that is of Christ with whom she was now so highly favoured as to be with Child none ever so filled with Grace indeed This was a grace of the highest nature of which created nature was never capable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 well rendred highly highly favoured for 't is most highly can be imagined and this is her first title O thou that art highly favoured high in Gods grace and favour so high as to be made his Mother then sure made a fit receptacle for so great so holy a guest by the fulness of all grace and goodness From this follows the second Title Blessed blessed of God blessed of men blessed in the City and blessed in the Field Cities and Countreys call her blessed Blessed in the fruit of her body in her blessed Child Iesus Blessed in the fruit of her Ground her Cattel her Kine and her Sheep in the inferiour faculties of her soul and body all fructifie to Christ. Blessed her Basket and her Store her Womb and her Breasts the Womb that bare him and the Paps that gave him suck Blessed in her going out and in her coming in the Lord still being with her The good treasure of Heaven still open to her showring down upon her and the Earth fill'd with the blessings which she brought into the world when she brought forth the Son of God Blessed she indeed that was the Conduit of so great blessings though blessed most in the bearing him in her soul much more than bearing him in her body So Christ intimates to the woman that began to bless the Womb that is the Mother that bear him St. Luke xi 27. yea rather says he they that hear the word of God and keep it As if he had said she is more blessed in bearing the word in her soul than in her body But blessed she is Elizabeth by the Holy Spirit fell a blessing her when she came to see her And she her self by the same Spirit tells us all generations shall call her blessed ver 28. So we have sufficient example and authority to do it And I hope we will not suffer the Scripture to speak false but do it And 3. do it to her above all women Benedicta tu in mulieribus That 's her third Title Most blessed none so blessed none ever had Child so blessed none ever bore or brought forth Child as she Benedicta in mulieribus Blessed among women She indeed only blessed all others subject to the curse of in dolore paries of conceiving and bringing forth in sorrow She wholly free from that she a perpetual Virgin before and in and after Child-birth Christ came into her Womb insensibly came forth as it were insensibly too without groan or sorrow to her Blessed 2. among women they all henceforth saved by her Child-bearing notwithstanding she that is woman shall be saved in child-bearing 1 Tim. ii ie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by her child-bearing says a learned Commentator not their own but hers by the Child she bore and they therefore shall call her blessed Blessed 3. among women that is none more blessed then the best the highest of them none above the Mother of God none sure so good as she which now brings me to consider the grounds of all this honour
away as the wind and empty air you are to come to it with prepared hearts to open your ears to spread your hearts to entertain it to bring the boughs of Olives peaceable and pliant dispositions boughs of Palms conquered passions bows of Cedar constant resolutions boughs of Myrtle loving affections to it and from Mount Olivet to Ierusalem remember it is from the Mount of Peace to the City of Peace that you may not forget to come in the unity of the Churches peace without Schism or Faction or schismatical and factious intentions if you look to meet Christ there 2. In both Olivet and Ierusalem you see there is a mystery the branches and garments cover mysteries all the way are kind of Sacraments and in the Blessed Sacraments it is we receive Christ Iesus Throw we then our garments in the way cast all our own from us that we may have none but Christ bring Palms and Pines and Olives Cedars and Myrtles and Willows all thick and all green verdant pleasing graces vertues and affections to them spread them all at the foot of the Altar that 's the Ass that Christ rides on the holy elements they that carry him they that convey him to us There 's our conquerour let us bring Palms there 's our peace-maker let us bring Olive-branches there 's the Lord our righteousness let us bring the upright Pine there 's our sweet-smelling savour in the eyes of God our eternal redemption let us bring Cedar-boughs there 's the great Physician of our souls let us bring him Balm there 's our love let 's bring him Myrtle there 's the well-spring of our life let 's bring Willows there 's the fulness of our good and happiness let 's bring him the branches of thick trees That we may do it better remember this way is the way to the Cross this procession to his passion This the way his Cross and Passion the meditation we are to receive him in Let us readily strip our selves of all our garments for him who is stript presently of all his for us Let us cover him with Palms and crown him with Olives let us make it our business and delight to be always strewing his way before him to be doing all our endeavours we can to entertain him Let us leave no branch of vertue out spread them as thick as possibly upon this earth of ours cover our selves with them that we may be the way our souls and bodies the way for him And now you see I hope how fit Palm-Sunday is to usher in the Passion to precede the receiving Christ the very Trees of the Wood have told you it I shall do no more spread the boughs no further 'T is you now must strew them or I have but hitherto strewed in vain The work is not to be done singly by the Preacher 't is the multitude that is to do it too 't is to be done in publick 't is to be done in private 't is to be done by the Apostles 't is to be done by the people 't is to be done by men women and children old and young poor and rich all to bear a part by the way if they hope to come to the happy end every one either to spread his garment or strew a branch or bring a sprig some one thing some another but all something to the honour of Christ to do it with much solemnity and respect outward and inward all of it as to one that deserves all that we can do to strew our souls to strew our bodies to fill our hands to spread all our powers and affections to entertain him to strew our souls with Palms and Olives Pines and Cedars Myrtles and Willows patience and meekness uprightness and constancy love and repentance and all holy vertues as thick as full as fair as may be think nothing too much nothing enough to do or suffer in his service Then shall our garments truly cover us and keep us warm then shall our trees bring forth fruit when boughs and garments are thus employed then shall our ways be strewed with peace every one sit under his own vine and drink the wine of it then shall our branches cover the hills and stretch out unto the River He that is the Branch in the Prophets stile shall so spread them for it give us the tree of life for these liveless boughs and for the spreading our garments over him spread his garment over us the robe of his righteousness the garment of glory where strewing our garments and branches with this great multitude in the Text we shall with that great multitude in the Revelation of all Nations which no man can number stand before the Throne and before the Lamb clothed with white garments and palms in our hands singing and saying Salvation unto our God which sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lamb Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be unto our God for ever and ever Amen A SERMON UPON Good Friday 1 COR ii 2. For I determined not to know any thing among you save Iesus Christ and him crucified ANd this being Passion day I am determined not to preach any thing among you to day but Iesus Christ and him crucified I cannot preach any thing more seasonable nor you hear any thing more comfortable nor any of us know any thing more profitable St. Paul himself thought nor he nor his Corinthians could determined so here ex Cathreda And the Holy Church has thought and determined so too to send no other Epistles to preach no other Gospels to us this week thorow than of Iesus Christ and him crucified as if the sum of the Gospel the Gospel it self were nothing else no other knowledge worth the knowing at least at this time these days to be thought of or intended Not but that we may lawfully have other knowledges besides intend other knowledges too at other times in their proper times not but that we may know more of Iesus Christ himself than his being crucified but that all the knowledges of him tend hither Iesus and Christ his salvation and Office clearest seen here best determined hence that all other knowledges are to be directed hither to Iesus Christ are but petty and inconsiderable in respect and only worth the knowing when Christ is in them and we with Christ crucified in them or affections mortified and humbled by them that especially at this time nothing is so fit to take up our thoughts to employ our meditations nothing not of Christ himself no act or story of him as his crucifixion And yet the Text affords us a plainer reason and account of this so determined knowledge from the two Pronouns I and You. None so fit for this I for an Apostle a Preacher a Divine to be determined to to determine from to be determined by as Christ and him crucified nothing so fit to fasten his resolutions against the crosses and thwartings he is like
Sun beams 'T is a day the fullest of all good tidings as the seal and assurance of all the good news we heard before it The Angels fly every where about to day even into the grave with comfortable messages Why Weepest thou says one Fear not says another St. Mat. xxviii 6. Why seek you among the dead says a third What do you at the Grave He is risen says the whole Choir He whose rising is all your risings who is your Saviour now compleat and the lifter up of all your heads and go but into Galilee and you shall see him But this only hearing of him must for this time content us we shall one day see him as he is till then if we hear of him with our ears and feel him in our hearts and see him in our conceits if so hear as to believe him risen and our hearts listen to it for the heart has two ears as well as the head nature has given to it such a form as has been observed in the dissections to teach us that our hearts within us as well as our ears without us are to give ear to him that made to him that saves 'um if they do we need not be the least perplexed for not visibly seeing him All believers that then were did not see him so five hundred indeed we read of all at once but they were not all that were then believers Not to all says St. Peter expresly but unto witnesses chosen before of God Acts x. 41. There is a blessedness and it seems by the manner of speaking somewhat greater for them that have not seen and yet have believed St. Ioh. xx 29. Be we then content to day to hear that he is risen with the first news and tidings of it From a good mouth it comes to good souls it comes in good time it comes From the mouths of Angels to good women and very seasonably when they were much perplexed much afraid and much cast down for want of such a message And though we cannot here see Christ as we desire yet be we pleas'd to see our selves our own sad condition upon the loss of him in these womens perplexities fears and down-cast looks our way to seek him humbly with our faces down as not worthy to look up reverently with fear and trembling as afraid to miss him solicitously much perplex'd to want him as they were in the Text. And that we may not give up our hope be afraid or cast down for ever look we upon the bright shining garments of the two Angels here for these men are no less 't is a joyful sight and rejoyce at the good success that always follows them that so seek him Angels and good news The women found it here heard the good news from the Angels lips You must be content to hear it from mine yet you know who says it Angelus Domini exercituum est the Priest is the Angel or Messenger that 's enough of the Lord of Hosts too much for me poor sinful wretch But look not upon me but upon them that here first told the news and see in the Text these three Particulars I. The sad condition for a while of those that either are without or cannot find their Saviour Christ in three Particulars They are perplexed they are afraid they bow down their faces to the earth they go all the while with down-cast looks II. The only ready way to find him after a while by being here perplexed for his loss and absence by being afraid to miss him by looking every where up and down to find him or nevvs of him going poring up and dovvn looking vvhere vve lookt before and casting down not our faces but our selves also to the earth in all humility to search after him III. The good success at last of them that thus diligently reverently and humbly seek him in three points more to see Angels to be directed right and be made partakers of the joyful news of a Resurrection of Christs Resurrection by them who is both the ground of ours and the first fruits of them that rise The sum of all is this That though it sometimes fall out to us that we lose Christ or cannot find him for a while and so fall into perplexities and fears and go up and down dejected with down-cast looks yet if we so seek him with a solicitous love a reverent fear and humble diligence we shall meet Angels after a while to comfort us and bring us news of our beloved Lord and find him risen or rising in us ere we are aware And the close of all will be our duty and the duty of the day 1. to make our selves sensible of the perplext and sad estate of those that are without Christ who have lost him in the Grave or know not where he is or how to find him and thereupon 2. so set our selves to seek him that we may be sure at last to hear of him and be made partakers of his Rerection 'T is a glad day I confess yet I begin with the gloomy morn that seem'd to usher it in to these poor women their sadness upon the imagined loss of their dear Lord truly representing to us the sad condition of those who are deprived of Christ or think they are so The glory of the day will appear brighter by this morning cloud the news of the Resurrection will be the welcomer when we first see what poor troubled frighted dejected pieces we are without it we will have the higher thoughts of him now risen when we feel how disconsolate a thing it is to be without him even without his body here though dead and buried And it came to pass says the Text that they were perplexed thereabout and it will quickly come to pass that the best of us all will be perplexed to lose any thing of our Lords much more his body if we love him They were good souls such whose devotion and affection death it self could neither quench nor alter that were so here that we might know even devout and pious souls may both err concerning Christ and sometimes want him too seek him sometimes vvith these here vvhere he is not vvhere vve falsly imagine him to be and not find him presently neither vvhen vve look him vvhere vve left him No vvonder they here poor vvomen vvere so perplext Men the great St. Peter knevv not vvhat to say to it ver 12. departed wondring Indeed it seems a vvonder at the first that such vvho love Christ so dearly seek him so early should yet miss of him that such too should be in so great an error about him as to think the Lord of life could be held in death but so poor a thing is man that as such he is perpetually subject to error and mistake and may thereupon easily lose the sight and presence of his Lord. The Spouse in the Canticles complains her Beloved had withdrawn himself and was gone she sought him but could
not find him she called to him but he gave her no answer Cant. v. 6. and thereupon tells the Daughters of Hierusalem ver 8. that she is sick of love that is so perplext and troubled at his absence that she is not able to hold up her head any longer no more than these are here Nothing certainly but doubts and perplexities can involve us vvhen vve have either lost our love or fear it to be sure nothing but doubts vvhen vve have lost him vvho is the only truth that can resolve us nothing but perplext ways when we have lost him who is the Way Which way can we resolve on when our way is gone What can we think can hold him whom the Grave cannot If in a seal'd Sepulchre under a mighty stone the dead body be not safe where can we think to sit down in security To lose a token or remembrance of a friends how are we troubled but to have his body stoll'n out of the Sepulchre his Grave rifled and his ashes violated how impatiently would we take it You cannot blame them for being much perplext for so great a loss I shall shew it greater in the Mystery The body is the Church and to have that taken from us the Church that glorious Candlestick removed and born away we know not whither what good soul is there that must not necessarily be perplexed at it What way shall we take when they have taken away that which is the Pillar of the truth and should lead us in it Whither shall we go when we know not whither that is gone where they have laid it or where to find it Poor ignorant women nay and men too may well now wander in uncertainties as they do full of doubts and perplexities full of cares and troubled thoughts which way to take what Religion to run to what to leave and what to follow seeing the body to which the Eagles use to flock the most Eagle-eyed the most subtile and learned used to be gathered is removed away and we have nothing to gather to scarce a place to be gathered together in Well may we now fear 2. what will become of us and what God means to do to us how he intends to deal with us having thus suffered our Lord to be taken from us Afraid they were that they had lost him quite I pray God we may have no cause to fear the same fear When Christ was but asleep the Apostles were afraid at a blast of wind that rose St. Mat. viii 25. and cry out they perish whilst he but sleeps Any thing scares us if Christ watch not over us not the visions only of the night but the very noises of the day any light air or report afrights us and blows us which way it please to any side any faction out of fear What hold then is there of us what little thing will not scare us when he is absent quite When his body the Church is removed from us where can we stay our wavering souls or fix our trembling feet Christ was no sooner dead and gone but away run all his Disciples into a room together and shut up themselves for fear of the Iews St. Ioh. xx 19. so coward-like and faint-hearted are we all when the Captain of our Salvation is slain before us nor can it be other all our life being hid in him and all our spirit only from his presence Part of these womens fear at least was at the sight and congress of the Angels Even Angels themselves do but scare us if the Lord of the Angels be not by us Nay even God himself is but a terror to us and a consuming fire without Christ 't is with him only under the shadow and shelter of his wings that we dare approach that inaccessible light that consuming fire Lose we Christ and we lose all our confidence in heaven all the ways of access to heavenly things all the pleasure and comfort of them we are nothing but agues and fears and frights not courage enough even to look up we with these perplexed souls go 3. bowing down our faces to the earth Thou didst hide thy face from me says holy David and I was troubled the very hiding of Gods face sore troubled him What think you to hide his whole body would do then Why then he goes mourning all the day long Psal. xxxviii 6. So did the two Disciples that went to Emaus ver 17. they walkt sadly and talkt sadly and lookt sadly like men disconsolate and forlorn such as were ashamed to shew their faces in the City after this was come to pass durst not look any body in the face upon it Alas how could it be otherwise with them All their hope was gone he that they lookt should have redeemed Israel could not redeem himself nay his body stoln out of the Grave and conveyed they knew not whither Well may they bow down their faces to the earth having now little hope above in heaven he being gone and lost by whom they only hoped and expected it Indeed if he be either so gone from us that we have no hope to find him or he be found in that condition in which there is no hope as there is none in a dead Saviour where ere he be no wonder if our faces then bend wholly to the earth if we look no further Let us take our portion in this life for we are like to have no other without Christ and Christ risen too hither it is we fall no looking higher not an eye to heaven so much as in a Prayer if we have not per Dominum Iesum Christ Iesus at the end of it in and thorough whom only we can with confidence look for a blessing thence and without whom at the end the Prayer is to no end or purpose II. Yet in as sad a Condition as this we speak of we are not utterly without hope if we again look upon the words at a second view For now 2. they as well decipher to us the condition of those that seek as of those that have lost their Lord and Master We may be as much perplext in our search as at our loss as vvell afraid to miss as startled at our loss as vvell bowdown our faces to the earth in seeking as in sorrovving And thus in the second vievv of the Text it is They had lost their Masters body and vvere now not only troubled at the loss but hovv to find it vvhere to look it Surely take but avvay his body the Church and the vvisest of us vvill scarce know to find him one vvill run this vvay another that vvay after him one vvill stand vveeping at the Sepulchre and think that a sad melancholy posture and business is Religion only another vvill run thence from the Sepulchre as fast as he can and think the finding Christ so easie a business that it does not require either a groan or a sigh others vvill be vvalking to Emaus up and dovvn
5. two of them together not one single comforter alone but comfort upon comfort deliverance upon deliverance spiritual and temporal one at the right hand and another at our left But lastly hereafter to be sure we shall meet them in full Choires when we rise out of our Sepulchres then like young men indeed both they and we then to be always so never die again never grow old nor our garments neither but have them always shining The next point of the good success is to receive direction from them Two parts of it there are first to recal us from the wrong and then secondly to set us right Why seek you the living among the dead he is not here that 's the correction of our judgments and affections He is risen that 's the setting them to the right For a Traveller when he is out of the way to be told he is so is a thing any of us would take well and when we are stragling out of the way to Heaven going out of that safe and fair and happy way into the bogs of the world and mires of lusts and ditches of Hell to have an Angel one of a thousand as Iob speaks but a messenger of the Lord of Hosts to call out to us that we are wrong is certainly a happiness if we understood it and such God sends always to them that seek him truly if they will but turn their heads at the call and look after him Well but what says he that so calls out to us Why why seek you the living among the dead what 's that I. They seek the living among the dead that seek salvation by the Law of Moses long since dead and buried II. They seek the living among the dead that seek it by the works of nature by the power of them Nature without Grace is dead Verebar omnia opera mea says holy Iob there is not in us one poor work to trust to III. They seek the living among the dead that seek salvation that think to be sav'd by a meer outward holiness by the outward body of Religion without the inward life by forms of godliness whether they be meerly ceremonial performances of Religion or great shows and pretences of godliness without the power of it in their lives and conversations They lastly seek the living among the dead that seek Christ upon worldly interests that take up their Religion upon by-respects that do it for carnal or worldly affections But say the Angels He is not here Christ is not here Christ the Saviour is not that is our salvation is not to be found in the Law of Moses or by the Law of Works or in meer external performances or great pretences or in worldly and carnal hearts they are but Graves and Sepulchres all which we too much and too often bury our souls in and stand weeping by and are much perplexed at if we cannot find it there but must be forc'd from thence to a new search as here are the women are to leave these kinds of seeking all of them and betake us now to think of him as risen thence For so the Angels say he is He is risen And in this he both tells us what to conceive of him and at the same time to put off all our perplexities and tears and sorrows to rejoyce with him He is risen Risen and not rais'd others indeed have been rais'd from death the Sareptans Child the Widows Son one of these Mary's Brother Lazarus but none risen but he he rais'd himself they did not so he rais'd them all must raise us all too will raise us by his Resurrection For Risen that is 2. his Body risen that is we members of it to have part also in his Resurrection for if our Head be risen the Members also will follow after Must 3. in the interim follow him so raise our thoughts above the earth as to seek him now above to seek those things which are above that 's it the Angel directs us to by telling us he is risen so pointing us where now to fix our thoughts to leave the Sepulchre to bemoan it self to cast off all the ways and paths of death to throw off all worldly perplexities fears and sorrows or in the midst of them to take a ray at least from their shining garments and put on the looks of joy and gladness This both the direction they give us and the joy they make us partakers of To tell us he is risen whom we seek he is alive whom we bemoan for dead he that is our head our hope our love our life our joy our comfort our crovvn of rejoycing he in vvhom vve trusted vve may trust still hope still joy in him still for he is risen and alive That 's the close vve are novv to make to day that the ansvver vve are to give to the Angels speech that the application of the Text to make it full run vve once more over it Grovv vve then first as sensible as we can of our sad condition vvithout Christ hovv the Grave the last place of rest from all troubles has nothing in it vvithout him hovv our souls cannot be at quiet vvithout him hovv our hearts cannot but tremble vvhen he is gone our spirits faint our faces look sad and heavy dull and earthy vvhen he is from us Let us upon this â—it dovvn and vveep and be troubled and tremble at it that we may not at any time give him occasion henceforvvard to desert us or leave us comfortless at the Grave but send his Angels thither to direct and to conduct us to his joyful presence When we are thus made sensible what we are without him we then secondly certainly will make after him with all care and reverence all earnestness and diligence all humility and devout repentance troubled at his absence fearful of our own unworthiness and truly humbled for our sins that drove him from us perplext to lose him fearful to offend him vigilant to seek him that so at last we may recover him for you see he is recovered from the Grave and may again be by us recovered to our souls This the duty both our own necessities and the opportunity of this great day require of us The business we are next to go about exacts as much We are with these women come here to seek the Lords body and I shall anon give you news of greater joy than here the Angels did the Women They say he is not here but he is risen I say but he is risen and is here will be here by and by in his very Body Your eye cannot see him but your souls may there see and taste him too Lift up then your heads O ye immortal gates and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors that the King of Glory may come in Look up and lift up your heads for your salvation draweth nigh Bow down your faces no longer to the earth neither look here as to an earthly
the Saints arising and coming out of their Graves 2. In their coming into the holy City and there appearing unto many telling and declaring it The Evidence of the power of his Resurrection to be seen 1. in opening the Graves 2. In raising the Saints bodies that slept there 3. In sending them into the holy City 4. sending them thither to appear to many The Pledge of our Resurrection it is 1. that they that rise are of those that slept Saints and members of the same body with us that 2. 't is no phantasm no phantastick or meer imagined business for they appeared to many The whole business of their Resurrection is a Symbol and signification of ours both of that to grace and that to glory 1. Of that to grace the grave and sleep the Symbols of sin and sleeping in it the bodies rising thence of the souls rising out of sin their going into the holy City of the souls passing from sin to righteousness and holiness their appearing to many of this righteousness manifested and appearing unto all A Symbol 2. it is of the Resurrection unto glory where the Grave first opens then the body rises then into the holy City into new Hierusalem it goes and there appears and shines for ever Thus you have the Text opened as well as the Graves we must now go on to raise such bodies of doctrine and comfort out of it as may bring us all into the holy City serve to make us holy here and happy hereafter partakers here of the First Resurrection and hereafter in the Second He that here opened the Graves and raised the dead bodies out of their sleep open your ears and hearts and raise your understandings and affections that we may all of us have our share in both rise first to righteousness then to glory Christs Resurrection is the pattern and ground of both we therefore begin with that with those words first that bear witness to the truth of it that Christ is risen A double Testimony we gather of it in the words from the rising of the dead Saints and from their appearing It was a sign indeed that the Resurrection was well towards when the Graves began to open we could not but see somewhat of it even in those dark Caverns when they once began to let in the light some hope of rising even when a body begins to yawn some hope the body might come ere long to recover its long lost liberty when the prison doors were wide set open and the shackles of death knockt off the legs some sign and hope I say it would be so that there would be a resurrection of some of some one or other by and by But the Graves being opened at Christs Passion they could be but hopeful prognosticks at most of his Resurrection a Testimony it could not be but when out of these opened Graves the Saints arose out of their sleep they could tell us more certain news of it than so And being but members of that body of which Christ Iesus was the head we must needs know the head is risen when the body is got up the head first ere any member could be it never so holy never so much Saint He is the head of the Church says the Apostle Eph. v. 23. and the Church the body and if any part of the body be raised to life the head you may be sure is first too For if Christ be the first fruits of them that sleep 1 Cor. xv â—0 and the first begotten from the dead as he is stiled Rev. â— 5. If we see others risen other dead bodies walking and alive there is no witness more true than that he is The first fruits ever before the crop Christ the first fruits afterwards they that are Christs says St. Paul 1 Cor. xv 23. out of order else and the first begotten ever before all the rest second and third and fourth and all witness the first begotten was before them the first begotten from the dead risen before the other dead And it seems 't is not a single witness they were many dead bodies here that rose and in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established Deut. xvii 6. much more in the mouths of many Witnesses And if these be from the dead surely then the most incredulous will believe Nay Father Abraham says Dives but if one come from the deaâ— they will believe yea and repent too Luke xvi 30. Here 's more than one here 's many that not so much as any of Dives his brethren the most voluptuous secure customary and obstinate sinner can be incredulous after this or have reason to doubt the truth or have the power to contradict it To satisfie either particular curiosity or infidelity God does not use to send us messengers from the dead he sends us to Moses and the Prophets there ver 29. for our instruction does not press men from hell or heaven or raise them out of their beds of rest to send them on an errand to us though perhaps little can be universally though ordinarily it perhaps may be defin'd in this particular for the ignorance we are under of the condition of the bounds and limits of the dead If they will not believe Moses and the Prophets says Father Abraham neither will they believe if one rise from the dead If they will not believe the living word the word of the living God no likelihood that they should believe the word of a dead man especially when they cannot be certain but it may be the devil the father of lies and falshood But not of one only rising from the dead that to be sure no man so simple to venture his faith upon a single Testimony and such a one as that Or if he would God does not use to do extraordinary miracles where the ordinary means of probation or information are sufficient But in this great business that concerns all mankind he is pleased to step out of his ordinary course to give us for once some extraordinary satisfaction that all Ages afterward might be sufficiently convinced of the truth of Christs Resurrection from heaven and earth by the Testimony of the dead and living that there might be no occasion hereafter to doubt for ever He raises therefore a great company to attend the triumph of his Sons Resurrection and to bear witness to it 2. And as it is not a single witness so it is not secondly a single testimony 't is not from their rising only but from their going into the City and there appearing unto many For sure neither their journey nor appearance was to tell stories of the dead what is done either in the grave or heaven or hell to satisfie the curious soul with a discovery of those Chambers of silence or the Land where all things are forgotten and therefore all forgotten that we may know they remember when they come thence to tell us nothing that is there their business was
stench and worms and rottenness then any dead body whatsoever full of infamous and stinking sins worms of conscience and worms of concupiscence rotten resolutions and performances continuance in sin is the sleep of death Holy purposes and resolutions are the rising out of it Walking thenceforward in the ways of righteousness is going into the holy City and the letting our righteousness so shine before men that God may be glorified is the appearing unto many And the order is as like our justification or spiritual Resurrection well resembled by it God first for the merits of Christs Death and Passion breaks ope the stony heart looses the fetters of our sins and lusts all worldly corruptible affections in us opens the mouth of it to confess its sins then the soul rises as it were out of its sleep by the favour of Gods exciting grace and comes out of sin by holy purposes and resolutions resolves presently to amend its courses then next it goes into the holy City by holy action endeavour and performance so goes and manifests its reconcilement to the Church of God and at last makes its Resurrection repentance and amendment evident and apparent to the world to as many as it any where converses with that all may bear witness to it that it is truly risen with Christ now lives with him This the order this the manner of our first Resurrection from the death of sin to the life of Grace Our second Resurrection to the life of Glory is but this very Resurrection in the Text acted over again As soon as the consummatum est is pronounced upon the world as soon as Christ shall say as he did upon the Cross all is finished the end is come the Arch-Angel shall blow his Trumpet the Graves open the earth and Sea give forth their dead and the dead in Christ shall rise first then they that be alive at his coming For if we believe that Iesus died and rose again even so them also that sleep in Iesus shall God bring with him 1 Thess iv 14. and they shall come out of their Graves and go into the Holy City the new Ierusalem that is above and there appear and shine like stars for ever Indeed the ungodly and the wicked shall arise too and appear before the great Tribunal but not like these Saints for into the holy City they shall not come Rise and come forth they shall but go away into some place of horror some gloomy valley of eternal sorrow some dark dungeon of everlasting night some den of Dragons and Devils never to appear before God but be for ever hid in the arms of confusion and damnation As for the godly the holy City is prepared for them for us if we be like them Saints and Angels are the inhabitants of this holy City no room there for any other if our bodies then be the bodies of holy Saints then into the holy City with them and not else no part in the new Ierusalem if no part in the old no portion above if none below no place there with Angels if no communion here with Saints no happiness in heaven if no holiness on earth They are the bodies of the Saints you hear that go into the holy City they that rise from the sleep of sin and awake to righteousness that rise from the dust of death to the rays of glory And this now may hint us of our duty to close with them for the close of all It has been shewed before what is the first Resurrection without which there is no second namely a life of holiness a dying to sin and a living unto God And this is a Resurrection we are not meerly passive in as in the other We must do somewhat here towards our own Resurrection at least to finish it We must open our mouths which are too often what David stiles the wicked mans throat even open Sepulchres and by confession send out our dead our dead works confessing our iniquities we must awake out of our sins and arise and stand up by holy vows and resolutions rear up our heads and eyes and hearts and hands to heaven seek those things that are above if we be risen with Christ get up upon our feet and be walking the way of Gods commandments walking to him get us into the holy City to the holy place make our humble appearance there express the power of Christs Resurrection in our life attend him through all the parts of it all our life long This the great business we are now going to requires of us more particularly to come to it like new rais'd bodies that had now shaken off all their dust all dusty earthly thoughts laid aside their Grave-cloths all corrupt affections that any way involv'd them and stood up all new all fitly composed for the holy City drest up in holiness and newness of life thus come forth to meet our new risen Saviour and appear before him This the way to meet the benefits of his Passion and Resurrection for coming so with these Saints out of their Graves Christs Grave also shall open and give him to us the Cup and Patine wherein his body lies as in a kind of Grave shall display themselves and give him to us the Spirit of Christ shall raise and and advance the holy Elements into lively Symbols which shall effectually present him to us and he will come forth from under those sacred shadows into our Cities our Souls and Bodies if they be holy and his grace and sweetness shall appear to many of us to all of us that come in the habit of the Resurrection in white Robes with pure and holy hearts Here indeed of all places and this way above all ways we are likeliest to meet our Lord now he is risen and gone before us this the chief way to be made partakers of his Resurrection and the fittest to declare both his Death and Resurrection the power of them till his coming again And to declare and speak of them is the very duty of the day the very Grave this day with open mouth professes Christ is risen and gives praise for it that it is no longer a land of darkness but has let in light no longer a bier of death but a bed of sleep But shall thy loving kindness O Lord be known in the dark or shall the dead rise up again and praise thee yes holy Prophet they shall they did to day and if his loving kindness shall not be known in the dark the dark places shall become light now the sun of righteousness has risen upon them But shall the dead rise up again and praise him and shall not we shall the graves open and shall not our hearts be opened to receive him nor our mouths to praise him for it Was it the business of the dead Saints to day to rise to wait upon their Lord and shall not the living rise to bear them company shall the whole City ring of it out
the body to make some expression in their way and order But not the powers of the body alone but all the powers of the soul too Praise the Lord O my soul and all that is within me praise his holy name Psal. ciii 1. Our souls magnifie the Lord our Spirits rejoyce in God our Saviour our memory recollect and call to mind his benefits and what he has done for us our hearts evaporate into holy flames and ardent affections and desires after him our wills henceforward to give up themselves wholly to him as to their only hope and joy 'T is no perfect joy where any of them is wanting 'T is but dissembled joy where all is outward 'T is but imperfect gladness where all is within It must be both God this day raised the body the body therefore must raise it self and rise up to praise him He this day gave us hope he would not leave our souls in hell fit therefore it is the soul should leave all to praise him that sits in heaven He is not worthy of the day or the benefit of the day worthy to be raised again who will not this day rise to praise not worthy to rise at the Resurrection of the just who will not rise to day in the Congregation of the righteous to testifie his joy and gladness in the Resurrection of his Saviour and his own He is worthy to lie down in darkness in the Land of darknes who loves not this day who stands not up this day to sing praises to him that made it And now I shall give you reason for it out of the last words In eâ in it In it and for it As short as they are they contain arguments and occasions as well as time and opportunity to rejoyce in Rejoyce first in it because this day it is a particular day of gladness and rejoycing Let us do what the day requires 'T is a day of joy designed for it let us therefore rejoyce in it Rejoyce 2. because the Lord made it All the works of the Lord are matters of joy to the spiritual man even sad Days too much more glad days such as this Rejoyce 3. because the Lords people have ever made it such God has always made them to rejoyce in it to contend and strive who should do it best or nearest to the point Be glad 4. for the occasion of it the Resurrection of our Lord and Master and the hopes thereby given us of our own all benefits of Christ were this day sealed unto us all his promises made good all so hang upon this day that without it we of all men says the Apostle had been most miserable none so fool'd so wretched so undone so miserable as we Rejoyce 5. because God bids us 't is an easie and pleasant Precept If we will not be glad when he commands us certainly we will do nothing that he commands us especially when he gives us so great occasion of joy when he commands it Rejoyce 6. because the very Jewish people do it here They had but little cause of joy compared to ours they saw but a glimmering of this joy at most saw the Resurrection but afar off and yet you hear they cry out We will rejoyce and be glad in it And is it not a shame that we Christians who see it clearly and pretend to believe it fully should not as much exceed them in our joy as in our sight in our gladness as in our faith Clearly so it is Rejoyce 7. because it is a good thing to rejoyce to rejoyce in Gods mercies and favours to us in Christs Crown and glory in his day and way The very Angels themselves put on this day the white garments of joy and gladness we find them in them St. Luke xxiv 4. Rejoyce lastly to day because this day is the first of all our Lords days ever since We count them feasts and days of joy and we meet together upon them to rejoyce in to give God praise and thanks and glory 'T is a piece of worse than non-sence to say we are to do it upon these days and not on this from which only and no other they had their rise and being All that we commemorate or rejoyce in on every Sunday is more eminently and first in this this the great yearly anniversary of that weekly Festival the time as near as the Paschal circle can bring it to the time that the Resurrection fell upon For these and for this day so made to mind us of all these let us now take up the resolution of these pious souls We will rejoyce and be glad in it in the day and on the day and for the day that 's the very work and business of the day opus diei in die suo the proper work of the day in the day it self And here is now a way particularly before us to rejoyce in Laetari is taken sometimes for laetè epulari To rejoyce is to eat and drink before the Lord in his House or Temple so Deut. xiv 26. And thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God and thou shalt rejoyce thou and thy houshold Here now we are before him the Table spread and our banquet ready let us eat drink and be merry and rejoyce before him only rejoyce in fear and be glad with reverence This is the day which the Lord made and all Christians observed for the celebration of this holy Banquet and Communion Never let the day pass without it excommunicated them that did not one day or other of or about Easter receive the blessed Sacrament the greatest expression of our Communion with God and Christ and all his Saints and our rejoycing in it You may see this people in the Psalm within one verse blessing him that cometh in the name of the Lord blessing the Minister that comes with it wishing him and all the rest that be of the House of the Lord good luck with their business Gods assistance in his Office and Administration And in the next verse calling out aloud God is the Lord which hath shewed us light Bind the Sacrifice with cords even to the horns of the Altar God has shewed us light and made us a day let us now bind the Sacrifice the living Sacrifice of our souls and bodies with all the cords of holy vows and resolutions even to the horns of the Altar and there sacrifice and offer up our selves even unto our blouds if God call to it all our fat and entrails the inwards of our souls our hearts and all our inward spirits the fat of our estates our good works and best actions the best we have the best we can do all we have or are even at the Altar of our God with joy and gladness glad that we have any thing to serve him with any thing that he will accept that we have yet day and time to serve him that he has not cut us off in the midst of our days but
and joyful Resurrection But Christs grave 2. or Sepulchre has more in it than any else There sit Angels to instruct and comfort us there lie cloths to bind up our wounds there lies a napkin to wrap up our aking heads there is the fine linnen of the Saints to make us bright white garments for the Resurrection You may now descend into the grave with confidence it will not hurt you Christs body lying in it has taken away the stench and filth and horrour of it 'T is but an easie quiet bed to sleep on now and they that die in Christ do but sleep in him says St. Paul 1 Thes. ix 14. and rest there from their labours says St. Iohn Revel xiv 13. Come then and see the place and take the dimensions of your own graves thence Learn there how to lie down in death and learn there also how to rise again to die with Christ and to rise with him T is the principal Moral of the Text and the whole business of the day In other words to die to sin and live to righteousness that when we must lie down our selves we may lie down in peace and rise in glory I have thus run through all the Parts of the Text. And now I hope I may say with the Angel I know ye also seek Iesus that was crucified and are come hither to that purpose But I must not say with the Angel He is not here He is here in his Word Here in his Sacraments Here in his poor members Ye see him go before you when ye see those poor ghosts walk you hear him when you hear his Word or read or preacht You even feel him in the blessed Sacraments when you receive them worthily The eyes and ears and hands of your bodies do not cannot but your souls may find see and him in them all Some of you I know are come hither even to seek his body too to pour out your souls upon it and at you holy Sepulchre revive the remembrance of the crucified Iesus yet take heed you there seek him as you ought Not the living among the dead I hope Not the dead elements only or them so as if they were corporally himself No He is risen and gone quite off the earth as to his corporal presence All now is spirit though Spirit and Truth too truly there though not corporally He is risen and our thoughts must rise up after him and think higher of him now then so and yet beleive truly he is there So that I may speak the last words of the Text with greater advantage then they are here Come see the place where the Lord lies And come see the place too where he lay go into the grave though not seek him there Go into the grave and weep there that our sins they were that brought him thither Go into the grave and die there die with him that died for us breath out your souls in love for him who out of love died so for us Go into his grave and bury all our sins and vanities in that holy dust â— Go we into the grave and dwell there for ever rather than come out and sin again and be content if he see it fit to lie down there for him who there lay down for us Fill your daily meditations but now especially with his death and passion his agony and bloudy sweat his stripes and wounds and griefs and pains But dwell not always among the Tombes You come to seek him seek him then 1. where you may find him and that is says the Apostle at the right hand of God He is risen and gone thither And seek him 2. so as you may be sure find him Not to run out of the story seek him as these pious women did 1. Get early up about it hence forward watch and pray a little better he that seeks hâ—m early shall be sure to find him Seek him 2. couragiously be not afraid of a guard of Souldiers be not frighted at a grave nor fear though the earth it self shake and totter under you Go on with courage do your work be not afraid of a crucified Lord nor of any office not to be crucified for his service Seek him 3. with your holy balms and spices the sweet odours of holy purposes and the perfume of strong Resolutions the bitter Aloes of Repentance the Myrrhe of a patient and constant Faith the Oil of Charity the spicie perfumes of Prayers and Praises bring not so much as the scent of earth or of an unrepented sin about you seek him so as men may know you seek him know by your eyes and know by your hands and know by your knees and feet and all your postures and demeanors that you seek Iesus that was crucified let there be nothing vain or light or loose about you nothing but what becomes his Faith and Religion whom you seek nothing but what will adorn the Gospel of Christ. You that thus seek Iesus which was crucified shall not want an Angel at every turn to meet you to stand by support and comfort you in all your fears and sorrows nor to encourage your endeavours nor to assist you in your good works nor to preserve you from errors nor to inform you in truths nor to advance your hopes nor to confirm your faiths nor to do any thing you would desire You shall be sure to find him too whom your souls seek and He who this day rose from his own Sepulchre shall also raise up you from the death of sin first to the life of righteousness and from the life of righteousness one day to the life of glory when the Angel shall no longer guide us into the grave but out of it out of our Graves and Sepulchres into Heaven where we shall meet whole Choires of Angels to welcome and conduct us into the place where the Lord is where we shall behold even with the eyes of our bodies Iesus that was crucified sitting at the right hand of God and sit down there with him together in the glory of the Father To which He bring us who this day rose again to raise us thither Iesus which was crucified To whom though crucified to whom for that he was crucified and this day rose again to lift us up out of the graves of sins and miseries and griefs be all honour and power praise and glory both by Angels and Men this day henceforward and for ever Amen THE FIFTH SERMON UPON Easter Day 1 COR. xv 19. If in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable ANd if this Day had not been we had been so Miserable indeed and without hope of being other If Christ had not risen there had been no Resurrection and if no Resurrection no hope but here then most miserable we Christians to be sure who were sure to find nothing but hard usage here tribulation in this World and could expect no other or no better
for the business of Christ. 3. Yet cloven they must be too 'T is not a single tongue will do it The Apostles were to preach to the world and in the world there were a world of tongues that they might therefore so preach as to be understood as many tongues were necessary to be given them as there were people with whom they were to deal Behold the greatness of Gods goodness here Tongues were divided for a curse at first lo he turns them into a blessing then they were sent to divide the world now they are given to unite it then they wrought confusion now they are given to unite it Thus God can turn our curses into blessings when he pleases And fit it is that we then should turn our tongues to his praise and glory This we may do with one tongue alone But they who would be Preachers and teach others had need of more Tongues though they come not now suddenly like the wind yet come they must as they can come by our industry and Gods blessing God would not have sent so many tongues if more then one had not been necessary for his work though not now perhaps to preach yet to understand surely what we preach 'T is a bold adventure to presume to the office of a Teacher with a single tongue He is not able to teach children to spell true that knows no more much less to spell the mysteries of the Gospel to men who understands not so much as that one tongue he speaks if he understand no more Unless we be wiser than Christ and his Holy Spirit we cannot think any sufficiently endued to preach them but such as have received the gift of tongues more then one or two the gift I say for though to speak with tongues be not given now miraculously as it was here yet given it is to us it is the gift still of the Holy Spirit as a blessing upon our labours But there are other tongues besides which come from this days mercy The tongue that speaks right things the tongue that comforts the afflicted soul the tongue that recals the wandring step the tongue that defends the fatherless and widow the tongue that pours it self out in prayers and praises the tongue that speaks continually of holy things the tongue that speaks no evil nor does no hurt the tongue that speaks nothing but a meek and humble and obedient spirit these are the tongues of the Holy Spirit and even from this day they have their rise these are for all orders and sorts of men and if those men who now take to themselves to be Teachers had but learnt to speak with these tongues they would have spoke to far better purpose and more to Gods acceptance than now they do in speaking as they do they had not thus blasphemed the Holy Spirit to entitle him to the extravagancy of their tongues Yet fire and tongues and tongues of fire are not all the wonders that this day produced These fell not only like a flash of Lightning upon the Apostles but they sate upon them or rather It sate upon them says the Text. All these tongues as divided and cloven as they were like so many flames or tongues of fire at top they were all united in one root below with one mouth Rom. xv 6. with one voice Chap. iv 24. they spake all but the same thing They are not the tongues of the Spirit that speak now one thing now another that agree not in the foundation at the least Nor is that fire of the Holy Ghosts enkindling that cannot sit for to the fire we may 2. refer this It. The holy flame is not like the fire of thorns that are always crackling making a noise it can sit quietly in the heart and on the lips and on the head sometimes in the one and sometimes on the other it sits upon the heads and singes not a hair it sits in the heart and scalds it not at all it sits upon the lips yet makes them not burst out into a heat the firy zeal that is so much cried up for spirit in the world is too unquiet too hot too raging to be of this days fire Yet 3. we may refer this It to the Holy Spirit it self That sate upon each of them too It sate first upon each of them as a crown of glory so St. Cyril The Apostles were the Crowns and Glory of the Churches and so this install'd them It sate 2. upon them as in a Chair of State to fix authority upon them to set them in their Chairs to give them power to govern and guide the Church It sate 3. upon them so to call into their mind the promise of their Master that he would send one to sit in counsel with them and be with them always to the end of the world for sitting is a posture to denote constancy establishment and continuance It sate 4. as it were to teach us to be setled and constant too to be establisht and grounded in our faith not to be wavering and carried about with every wind of doctrine There is no greater evidence against error then that it is not constant to it self no greater argument against these great pretended spirits then that they cannot sit know not where to fix are always moving as if the Psalmists curse had taken hold upon them as it does and will do without doubt upon all that take the houses of God in possession Psal. lxxxiii 12. that usurp upon the office or portion of the Church as if God had made them like a wheel and as stubble before the wind that can sit no where rest at nothing but turn about from one uncertainty to another The Holy Spirit is a Spirit that will sit still and be at peace continue and abide It sate 5. upon each to teach each of us peace and quiet in all our passions constancy and continuance in truth and goodness and a setled and composed behaviour in all conditions blow the winds never so high burn the fires of persecution never so hot against us It were well now if we could say as it follows next concerning the Apostles that we were filled with this Spirit that we were filled with the Holy Ghost that we might arrive at that point within our selves though we cannot now arrive at that particular in the Text. The only filling now that I have time to tell you of is that before us and 't is a good one the filling us with the body and bloud of Christ which is a signal filling us with the Spirit Go we will then about it so to fill our our souls The tongues and fire in the Text we may well apply to it we may have use of there For tongues are not to speak with only but tast with two O tast we then how good and gracious the Lord is there that vouchsafes so graciously to come under our roofs to come upon tongues And Tongues 2. are to help
only that meek and merciful man St. Gregory that valiant Lion St. Ambrose that laborious Oxe St. Ierome that sublime Eagle St. Augustine as some please to fancy these four beasts or the four first Patriarchates as others have interpreted them but all the four corners of the earth have since profest it and with the twenty four Elders faln down and worshipt it The lustre and glory of that glorious mystery has shone thorow all the quarters of the World and all his famous mercies to his people and his judgments against their enemies are still daily celebrated and magnified in all the Congregations of the Saints This St. Iohn foresaw and here foretels the poor persecuted Christians then that how hard soever things went with them then they should ere long turn all their sighs and lamentations into Songs of praise for their deliverance and salvation This they should and 3. we should as much It was foretold of them they should it is commanded us we should Therefore glorifie him says the Apostle 1 Cor. vi 20. glorifie him in your bodies and glorifie him in your spirits glorifie him with the bodies that glorifie him and glorifie him with the Spirits that glorifie him bear them all company in so doing do it all the ways you can you can neither do it too many nor too much Put on the faces of Eagles in the Temple and raise your souls up there and praise him Put on the faces of men at home and let the holiness of your conversation praise him there Put on the appearance of Oxen in your Callings and let the diligence of your Actions and Vocations praise him Put on the appearance of Lions abroad in all places of temptations and let your courage in the resisting and repelling them praise him there Thus we truly copy out our pattern Yet to transcribe it perfectly well we must now secondly also transcribe their earnestness For here they not only give praise and glory unto God but they do it earnestly they rest not doing it they rest not saying that is 1. They cannot rest unless they say it And I will not suffer mine eyes to sleep nor mine eye-lids to slumber neither the temples of my head to take any rest till I have found out a way to praise my God till I have offered up the service of my thanks and added something to his glory must be the Christians resolution 2. They rest not saying is they say it and say it again say it over and over Holy Holy Holy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is in some Copies nine times read Holy nine times repeated they think they can never say it enough No more it seems did David when he so oft repeated For his mercy endureth for ever in one single Psalm Psal. cxxxvi And hence it is the Church to imitate this holy fervour so often reiterates the Doxologie and inserts so many several Hymns and even either begins almost all its Prayers and Collects with an acknowledgment either of his Mercy Goodness and Providence or ends them with acknowledgment of his Majesty Power and Glory this both to imitate the glorious Saints and to obey the Apostles injunction of being fervent in Prayers and Praises 3. They rest not saying is they rest not but in so doing That 's their rest their joy their happiness to do so thus to be always praising God It would be ours too had we the same affections to it or the same senses of it We could not go to rest nor lie down to sleep could not sit down and take our rest till we had first lift up our eyes and hearts nay and voices too sometimes till we had first paid our thanks and given him praise for his protections in our ways and labours untill then 3. But to be thus eager and earnest at it is not all So we might be for a start and give over presently but 't is day and night that Angels and good men do it There is no night indeed properly with the Angels 'T is with them eternal day yet all that time which we call day and night they are still a saying it The Morning comes and they are at it the Night comes and they are at it still Let me go for the day breaketh says the Angel that strove with Iacob Gen. xxxii 26. And I must sing my Mattens adds the Chaldee Paraphrase as if he had said I can stay no longer I must go take my Morning course in the heavenly Choirs And in the depth of night we find them by whole hosts and multitudes at their Gloria in Excelsis Glory be to God in the highest St. Luke ii 13. The first fervours of Christian Piety were somewhat like this of the Angels You might have seen their Churches full at midnight all the Watches of the night you might have heard them chanting out the praises of their God and all the several hours of the day you might have found some or other continually praising God in his holy Temples as well as in their Closets Nay in the Iewish Temple they ceased not to do so Ye that by night stand in the House of the Lord Psal. cxiv 2. Praise him ye says holy David for indeed ye stand there to praise him and the Temple it self stood open all the day for all comers to that purpose when they would Therefore shall every good man sing of thy praise without ceasing says the Psalmist Psal. xxx 13. 'T is a good thing to do so Psal. xcii 1 2. To tell of thy loving kindness early in the morning and of thy Truth in the night season so good that David himself resolves upon it Psal. cxlv 2. Every day will I give thanks unto thee and praise thy Name for ever and ever prays also that his mouth may be filled with Gods praise that he may sing of his glory and honour all the day long Psal. lxxi 7. from morning to night and from night again to morning he would willingly do nothing else Nay be the night and day taken either in their natural or moral sense either properly for the spaces and intervals of light and darkness or morally for the sad hours of affliction and adversity and those bright ones of jollity and prosperity good men praise God in them both do not cease to do it if sorrows curtain up their eyes with tears and put out all their light of joy and comfort yet blessed be the Name of the Lord cry they out with patient Iob Chap. i. 21. Again if their paths be strow'd with light and the Sun gild all their actions with lustrous beams if Heaven shine full upon them they are not yet so dazell'd but they see and adore Gods mercy in them and in the mid'st of all their glories and successes they are still upon his praise and render all to him Neither the one night nor this other day make them at any time forget him A good item to us hence 1. not to suffer
which good and evil move on their courses I begin to examine St. Peters desire under a threefold consideration Of a man of a sinful of an humble man For all these St. Peter at this time was capable of and in which of these he speaks most feelingly will be perhaps anon the quere and how far they may pertain to us be used or not used by us will be the business we are to speak of If we take all we are sure to be right Then first of the desire as it is that of man or humane nature considered simply in its own imperfection unable to bear the presence of a supernatural honour Nature sometimes desires God to depart from it It loves not to be forced out of its course to be screw'd up beyond it self Miracles are burthens to Nature and however it be ready to serve the will of the Supreme Mover yet when it is diverted from its own way and strain'd to a service or quickness with which its innate slowness is unacquainted it does even by its hasting back to its old wont in a manner desire to be freed from the present command of its great Controuler 'T is so with man who being of a corruptible make cannot endure the presence of an incorruptible Essence Angels and Spirits bring affrightment to it when they come we are terrified at the presence of an Angel though he bring us nothing but tidings of the greatest joy Nay if we do but think we see a Spirit as the Disciples did when it was was no other than their beloved Master we are wholly frighted and amazed There is so great a distance between our corrupt Mortality and their immortal conditions that we desire not to see them Yea the body it self is so little delighted with the presence of its own best companion the incorruptible soul though it enjoy all its beauty and vigour by it that by continual reluctances against it and perpetually throwing off the commands of it and so daily withdrawing its imaginations from the thoughts of or converse with that nobler part it seems to wish it gone rather than to be bound to that observance which the presence of that divine parcel requires at our hands And if it fare no better with these natures of Angels and our own Spirits which are nearer mortality and imperfection and have more affinity to us and full natural engagements upon us because their excellencies breed either a kind of envy or terrour to us that we in a manner say to those that we cannot sunder from us our very souls go away trouble us not with these spiritual businesses how is it otherwise likely than that we should be ready to avoid the presence of that eternal Purity in whose sight our best purities cannot stand at all We love not to see our own imperfections that makes us unwilling to endure the presence of any thing that shews us them Now the divine excellencies above all the rest being that which by its exactness discovers the most insensible blemishes we labour with you cannot wonder that a creature so much in love with it self should desire the removal of that whose neerness of much debases it Nor is this all there is terrour besides at the approach of the Almighty When God drew near to his People upon the Mount and the People saw the thundrings and lightnings and the noise of the Trumpet and the mountain smoaking conceiving him to be at hand whose voice is terrible as the thunder at whose presence the mountains smoke they removed and stood afar off Exod. xx 18. And ver 19. they said unto Moses speak thou with us and we will hear but let not God speak with us lest we die Thus at least entreating God to withdraw somewhat farther from them even lest they should die for fear if he should come nearer them We cannot always say such desires are orderly and good yet such there are we may say in the best created nature Indeed we commonly desire what is worst for us as if we knew not our own good or did not study it Certainly Gods company can do us no harm In his presence is life says the Psalmist yet say we we die if we see him In him we live and move and have our being says the Apostle Acts xvii 28. yet say we if He come to nigh us or depart not from us we shall be no more Thus our thoughts and desires run counter to him Nay there is a Generation that the Prophet complains of that say plainly unto the Lord depart from us Isa. xxx 11. We will have none of thy Laws we desire not thy Precepts thy Word is a burthen to us thy solemn Worship we cannot away with we are weary of thy Sacraments we are sick of thy Truth thy Priests are a trouble to us thy Holy Days take too much time from us thy Holy Service and thy Holy Things they are too chargeable for us take them away and depart from us we will have none of them any longer This is more than the voice of Natures imperfection 't is the voice of sin and rebellion added to it but take we heed lest while we thus thrust God from us he go indeed and come no more go away and leave us in perpetual sin darkness and discomfort It may please God peradventure to construe what we have done hitherto as the rash hasty words only of affrighted or disturbed Nature not knowing which way to turn it self upon a sudden being amazed at the things that we know not how are come to pass in these days but if we shall persist to desire him to depart which of all sins has most unthankfulness and impiety I may add Atheism also in it he will go and he will not return then shall we seek him early but we shall not find him We shall seek him sighing and weeping and mourning as we go but we shall not find him we shall eat of the fruit of our own way and be filled with our own devices but we shall see him no more for ever then shall we beg for what we have rejected but he will not hear us he is departed from us and will not come again Thus it was not St. Peters desire He was not tired with Christs company nor glutted with it as the Israelites with their despised Manna only Christ by shewing a Miracle had so amazed his wits that he knew not how on a sudden to recollect his Spirits to entertain so great and holy a Guest does therefore not well considering what to say desire him to divert a little some whither else where he might be more honourably entertain'd or to stand off a while and give him breath that he might recover his Spirits and be able more worthily to entertain him But there was somewhat else which made St. Peter so express himself He was not only sensible of his mortal lot but of his sinful condition tion too Thus we are 2. to
consider it as the voice of a sinful man of humane nature corrupted with sin Though all created Substances contract a kind of trembling or drawing back at the approach of God the very Seraphims covering their faces with their wings yet did not sin and folly cover them with a new confusion the weakest and poorest of them would draw a kind of solace and happiness from the beams of that Majesty that so afrighted them 'T is sin that speaks the Text in a louder key that more actually cries to him not softly and weakly out of weakness but aloud and strongly out of wilfulness to depart It does more then so It drives God from us not only bids him go but forces him It is not so mannerly as to intreat him it discourteosly and unthankfully thrusts him out of doors Exi a me Get you out says the sinful soul to God no obsecro no entreaty added not go out I pray thee or depart I beseech thee We should do well to think how uncivilly we deal with God we are not content to put him out of his own house and dwelling the temples of our bodies the altars of our souls by our sins nay and his holy Temples by sacriledges and profaneness but sometimes in ruder terms we bid him be gone and thrust him out by wilful and deliberate transgressions by solemn and legal sacriledges and profanenesses which we commit and reiterate in contempt of him as if expresly we said to him Go from us we will have nothing to do with thee any longer thou shalt not only not dwell but not stand or be amongst us The people of Gennesaret besought Christ to depart out of their Coasts These sinners will out with him whether he will or no and though he come again and knock to be let in and continue knocking till his head be wet with the dew and his locks with the drops of the night yet can he hear no other welcome from us then depart from us we are in bed well at ease in our accustom'd sins and we will not rise to let thee in we will not be troubled with thy company with a course so chargeable or dangerous as is thy wonted service Strange it is that we should thus deal with God but thus we do yet no man lays this unkind usage to his heart never considers how he thus dayly uses God If good motions arise within us we bid them be gone they trouble us they hinder our sports or projects our quiet or interest If good opportunities present themselves without we bid them go we are not at leisure to make use of them they come unseasonably If the Word preached desire to enter in if it touch our Consciences and strike home we bid that depart too it is not for our turn it crosses our interests or our profits or our pleasures we will not therefore have it stay any longer with us If God by any other way as of afflictions or of deliverances by blessings or curses or any other way come to us they are no sooner over nor these any sooner tasted but we send them gone to purpose and think of them again no more our sins return and send them going make us forget both his justice and his mercies This is the course the sinner treads to God-ward From whence it is that the soul thus ill apparell'd with its own sins dares not look God in the face without the mediation of a Redeemer She has driven God from her by her sins and having thus incens'd him flees away when he draws towards her Thus Adam and Eve having by sin disrob'd themselves of their original righteousness when they hear the voice of God though but gently walking towards them and calling to them they run away and hide themselves from the presence of the Lord amongst the trees of the Garden Gen. iii. 8. They felt it seems they wanted something to shelter them from the presence of God into the thickets therefore they hie themselves as if they then fore-saw they had need of the Rod out of the stem of Iesse the branch out of his roots as the Prophet calls Christ Isa. xi 1. to bear off the heat of Gods anger from them Under the leaves of this branch alone it is that we are covered sheltered from the wrath to come His leaves his righteousness it is that clothes our nakedness the very garments which our first Parents were fain to get to themselves before they durst venture again into his presence There is no enduring Gods presence still no coming nere him unless we look upon him through these leaves from under the shelter of this branch of Iesse Tell the sinner who keeps not under this shelter that lies not at this guard of Gods coming to him of his looking towards him of his approach to judgment and with Felix he trembles at it puts off the discourse to another time refuses to hear so terrible news as Gods coming is if Christ came not with him Such a one has sin made him that he desires not to see him whose eyes will not behold sin Depart from me O Lord in stead of Thy Kingdom come is his daily Prayer Yet as hardly or unadvisedly as nature or corruption may deliver this speech of St. Peter's it may be delivered in a softer sweeter tone and so it was by him It may 3. be the voice of the humble spirit casting himself down at the feet of Iesus and confessing himself altogether unworthy of so great a favour as his presence If we peruse the speeches of humble souls in Scripture by which they accosted their God or their Superiors we shall see variety of expression indeed but little difference in the upshot of the words I am but dust and ashes says father Abraham Gen. xviii 27. Now how can dust and ashes with their light scattering atoms endure the least breath of the Almighty The Prophet Isaiah saw the Lord in a Vision sitting upon a Throne and presently he cries out Wo is me for I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for mine eyes have seen the King the Lord of Hosts Isai. vi 5. What undone Isaiah Yes Wo is me I am undone for mine eyes have seen the Lord of Hosts who certainly cannot but consume me for so boldly beholding him I am not worthy says the Centurion to Christ St. Matth. viii 8. that thou should'st come under the roof of my house speak the word only as if his presence were so great he might not bear it And St. Paul assoon as he had told us that he had seen Christ 1 Cor. xv 8 tells us he was one born out of due time was the least of the Apostles and not meet to be called an Apostle as if the very seeing of Christ had made him worth nothing Indeed it makes us think our selves so of whom we ever think too much till we look up
to God Then it befals us as it fell out to Iob xlii 5 6. I have heard thee by the hearing of the ear but that was nothing now mine eye seeth thee Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes Hither it is always that the sight of God depresses us to think humbly of our selves that we profess our just deserts to be no other then to be deprived of his presence There are like expressions of humble minds towards our Superiours too in holy Writ When Rebeccah saw Isaac coming towards her she lighted down from her Camel and covered her self with her vail as if either her humility or her modesty would not suffer her suddenly to look upon his face who was presently to be her Lord Gen. xxiv 65. But Abigail's complemental humility surpasses 1 Sam. xxv 41. When David sent to take her to him to wife she arose and bowed her self to the â—arth and said behold let thine hand-maid be a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my Lord And Mephibosheth though not so courtly yet as deeply undervalues himself in the sight of his Lord and King when he thus answer's David's profer'd kindness 2 Sam. ix 8. What is thy servant that thou should'st look upon such a dead Dog as I am Now if Rebeccah descend from her Camel and veil her face at the sight of her designed husband if Abigail term her self the servant of the servants of David even to the meanest office to wash their feet if Mephibosheth count himself a Dog in the presence of King David each of these thus expressing their humility it is no wonder if St. Peter at the presence of his Saviour it is but just that we in the presence of our God and Saviour descend from our Camels from our Chairs of State from our seats of ease from the stools whereon we sit and bow down our eyes our hearts and bodies in all humility as unworthy to look up to Heaven to look him in the face whom we have so offended willing to wash the feet of his poorest servants to serve him in any thing in the poorest meanest way or office ready to profess our selves amongst the vilest of his creatures who cannot so much as expect a good look from him You may surely guess by the frame of speech though nature and sin may sometimes use some of the same words that the tenor of them altogether is no other then the expression of St. Peter's humble acknowledgment of his own vileness He confesses plainly he is a sinful man how could he more depress himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a man that was nothing but a sinner a very sinner Thence it is that he thinks himself unworthy that he should stay with him therefore desires him to quit his ship but much more his company as far unfit to receive him or be near about him And 3. whilst he thus confesses himself to be a sinful man he speaks somewhat doubtfully at least to him as if he conceived him to be the Lord his God thus much however he acknowledges so great a disproportion between himself and Christ that whilst he knows what to call himself he knows not well what to style him to be sure knows not how to speak speaks indeed but knows not what he says whilst humbly desiring him to depart he unwittingly parts with his own happiness not knowing what he desires or does in this distraction These three an acknowledgment of our own wretchedness a sensible apprehension of our our own unworthiness and Christ's greatness And 3. a kind of troubled expression of them without art or study are the signs and effects of true humility and are here caus'd by the consideration of Gods miraculous dealing with us which commonly shews us Gods Goodness and Grace his Glory and Majesty our own weakness sinfulness and misery and by so setting them so suddenly together render us unable to express either In some perverse natures there arises we must confess sometimes a pride upon the receipt of divine favours so that we may say St. Peter's behaviour after so great a miracle shewed towards him makes his humility the more commendable A great and wonderful draught of fish he had taken and he had laboured hard for it some body would have given at least part of the glory of so good success to his own labour or at least triumpht and gloried highly in it as if he had been the only favourite of Heaven the only Saint for his good success but St. Peter saw by his lost labour all the by-past night an the uncouth multitude of fishes now against hope taken up that his labour did but little here there was one with him in the boat he saw at whose command the fish came to it in such number So that now he sees little by himself or his own endeavour but that he was not fit company for the Lord that was with him neither worthy of that miracle nor of that Master Thus good men are humbled even in their prosperous successes whilst nothing but miraculous miscarriages can humble the ungodly and not then neither to think ere a whit the worse of themselves or the better of others or understand but that God himself is notwithstanding bound still to tarry with them before all the World besides He is truly humble whom prosperity humbles who in the midst of his accomplished desires casts himself below all acknowledging he is less than the least of Gods mercies or gracious looks towards him any ways There is yet a way that perfect souls souls elevated above the height of ordinary goodness have spoke these words There is sometimes a rapture in heroick souls over-born as it were with the torrent of the contemplations of the divine beauty and the delights flowing in abundance from it that some glorious Saints in their several times have been heard to say sometimes Depart from us O Lord We have enough We have enough oppress us not with pleasure which our earthen Vessels are not able to bear There have been those that have died with excess of joy but it was temporal joy spiritual joy is not so violent to rent the body yet it even sometimes oppresses the soul into a kind of death and wraps it beyond it self into an extasie and after that it is in danger to be strein'd into another excess of pride or vain-glory St. Paul was near it least I should be exalted above measure it seems there was great fear of it there was given him something to humble him to bring him down from so dangerous a height It is necessary it seems sometimes if not such a desire yet such a condition to the most perfect souls that Christ should depart from them now and then least they should be puff'd up with the multitude of those Revelations by which Christ reveals his presence in them and his favour towards them There are delights in heavenly joys which these old bottles are not yet
able to hold and here it is that some have desir'd God to depart a while to hold a while least they should over-flow at least and lose so pretious a liquor if not break in pieces and lose themselves in so vast a depth or at so forciblee a pouring in of heavenly pleasures upon them But I am too high now for that lean meagre creeping goodness which is only to be found among the sons of men in these latter days where we meet with this desire in a lower key if at all Our souls you know are the vessels of divine grace old crazie ones God wot and there is a danger least the new liquor of celestial grace should cause them to crack and break at its approach There is something which we are not able to bear away at first Christian Profession must come in to us by degrees Christ must come a little and go a little or come a little and hold a little line upon line precept upon precept here a little and there a little not all at once no go away a little turn aside a little O Lord and require not of us all at once but by degrees visit us and bear with us With this kind of entreaty we may desire him to withhold now and then in mercy from us for we are sinful men and not able to endure other fuller dealings with us And lastly in humility we may desire God to depart from us when he approaches to us in thunder and lightning when he comes armed like a man of war then we may cry and not without cause O come not to us or go from us for we are sinful men O Lord have thou therefore mercy up-upon us and forbear us We have seen by this time how we may use St. Peters words and how we must not use them We may in humility desire God to withdraw his Judgments to proportion his Mercies and to distill them by degrees to forbear to overthrow our nature or overwhelm our souls with a happiness above our mortal capacity We may lastly by such a kind of speech declare the sense of our own unworthiness to receive so glorious a Guest home to us so even wishing him to chuse a better house to be in or make ours such But we must not through natural imperfection or impatience draw back our selves from the service of God or desire him to draw back from us nor must we at any time by sin cause him to depart or by perverseness and iniquity thrust him out of doors nor yet lastly grow weary of the gracious effects and tenders of his Presence in his Sacraments Word and Worship For so we do not so much confess as profess and make our selves to be sinful men in humility you may sometimes use the words in impatience never We cannot now you see say always he does well that with St. Peter says to Christ Depart from me for I am a sinful man O Lord yet there is something to make the desire at least seem reasonable and often be so when he says it as St. Peter did And the first Reason why St. Peter desires Christ to depart here is for that he is a man and the first Reason why we are all so willing to have God gone from us is because we are men 1. mutable and inconstant pieces which are neither well when God is with us nor when he is from us If he be with us then presently Fac cessare sanctum Israel à nobis Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us Isa. xxx 11. We cannot away with that strictness and exactness he requires of us his ways are not pleasing to us As soon as he is departed then we are at another cue Thou turnedst away thy face and I was troubled Psal. xxx 7. Why art thou absent from us so long Why hidest thou thy face from me And the like Secondly Man is a mortal nature a piece of clay Now earth cannot contain heaven We cannot endure the thunder as it roars or lightnings as they glister much less him whose Presence is more terrible whose Voice more dreadful who even shakes the Wilderness with his breath at whose Presence the Earth removes and hail-stones and coals of fire tumble down Thirdly Flesh is grass we are but hay and stubble and God is a consuming fire well may mortality then desire him to depart lest it should consume it in a moment Fourthly It was the opinion of the Iew that man could not see God and live as apears by Manoah's speech Iudg. xiii 22. and several other places St. Peter it may be had such an imagination whence it is he desires Christ to depart from him being no other than God himself after whose sight he was perhaps afraid he had seen his last Thus man as man thinks he can spare the Presence of his Lord as feeling his earthly Cottage altogether unable in it self to entertain him But 2. reflecting upon his sin whereby he is yet made far more unfitting and undeserving such an honour he desires the absence of God by reason of his sin He loves his sin and is loth to forgo it and knows God will not be content to dwell with it so he wretchedly chuses rather the company of sin than of his God this is the way that men of the World only speak the Text. 2. Sin even bids defiance to the Almighty and turns him out of doors that 's the reason men so readily bid God depart from them 3. Sin so dis-enables the powers of soul and body to any handsom attendance upon heaven that neither of them know how to receive him if he should come and besides such a stench and filth there is from it in all the soul that the Divine Purity cannot endure them Thus sinful man bids God go from him because he is a sinful man Now comes the last reason why God is entreated to depart because he is the Lord our God A reason not readily conceived yet this it is Thou art the Lord a God of pure eyes a strickt Master over thy servants a person far above the reach and quality of thy Vassals under thee They are therefore no fit company for thee Thou so infinitely transcendest them These are the Reasons which St. Peter seems to alledge to perswade Christ from his poor wretched company because both his natural imperfections and his sinful weaknesses made him unfit for the company and unworthy the favour of his Savionrs glorious Presence If we consider the same Reasons they will serve to humble us as low as St. Peter did himself to think our selves unworthy of the least glance of our Saviours eye we will confess if we remember that we are but men that our frail inconstant corruptible nature is not answerable to the glory of so great a blessing we will acknowledge if we recollect we are sinful men that we are not worthy that those eyes should look upon us that infinite beauty come near
his Partners and have caught nothing So say I first for me and my Partners my Partners and Fellows in nature for all or most of the Sons of men and my Partners and Fellows in Office and Ministry the Ministers of Christ. We have toil'd c. I am to speak of all our labours that all of them even the best of them are first but toil and misery For the labours of the Sons of men that have nothing else to sweeten them but earth that they are toils you need ask no body but your selves Your very pleasures are toils and weariness tell me the sweetest and easiest of your delights and recreations if they do not quickly weary you and grow toilsom to you Let it be hunting or hawking or running or walking let it be any other exercise of the body let it be your more quiet and sedentary recreations let it be but talk and discourse you are weary often before the day runs out and out of wearisomness change your seats and stations and postures and discourses too And if your Pleasures prove in effect but toils what think you do your labours do To rise up early and go to bed late and eat the bread of carefulness To break your rests to wear out your bodies to consume your Spirits is it not a toil somewhat more than labour Yet thus is all our labour under the Sun when Christ is absent from us for what is there to sweeten any of our labours when God is gone Call up the choicest of those aims you propound as ends to your pains and rewards to your labours and tell us if you can whether they be able to take off the sorrow and trouble from your work or make amends for them at all Riches they are some mens aim and are not they as troublesome as the ways you got them by Do they not afflict as much in the keeping and disposing as they did in the getting Pleasures are others aims and I have told you already what they are whose very pursuit or enjoyment is as wearisom as your work Honours are other mens aims and what has honour in it that is not burthensom but a name Nay even that too sets a man upon the rack to behave and demean himself with a kind of niceness and scrupulous observance of a respect due to such a title or place in which he is as much pain'd sometimes as in little-ease or a narrow prison These ends then not being able to take off the nature of toil from the means and endeavours by which they are pursued there can be nothing said to quit our labours from the true titles of toils and miseries Miseries indeed as well as toils if God be not with them for without him we cannot but be miserable we and all we do we and all we have Samson grinding at his Mills is in more ease and happiness than we without Christ. All our works are like Spiders Webs good for nothing but to catch flies that is impudent and importunate desires which are the daily issues of our ill-spent hours for our desires and lusts encrease with our labours and add to their toil they suffer us to take no rest neither day nor night even upon our beds they trouble us and make our downy feathers as hard as rocks and marble the covetous man cannot sleep for the importunate buzzings of his desires nor the ambitious man for his nor the luxurious man for his their eye-lids cannot sleep nor can the temples of their head take any rest for the swarms and hummings of their inordinate passions The case is somewhat better with him whose labour is for God but it is somewhat alike when it finds no success a meer toiling of the Spirits Our studies and pains and preachings do but wear out our bodies and afflict our souls when we only go round as in a circle without fastning any where when we effect nothing with all our pains Men think the Ministers have an easie life of it but if they knew their down-sittings and their up-risings the travel of their pains even to a sickness the labour of their minds even to distraction the perplexity of Opinions that molest them the hard task of reconciling differences that daily lies sore upon them the diversity of Judgments that distracts them the care of their Pastoral Charge that night and day tortures them their toilings whole nights even without a figure that wear them out the little esteem after all this of all their pains and persons that dejects their spirits the less success of their endeavours that grieves them to the souls and heart if men would but understand the sad toil of these labouring thoughts as well as labours together with those indispositions of body that usually grow upon them and those forc'd retirements or debarments from those just pleasures and recreations that men of other conditions lawfully enough indulge themselves they would confess freely that our labour too if we abstract it from the relation it has to God is but toil and misery And 2. as uncomfortable too as yours as any else can be for what more uncomfortable then to see so many years of preaching and praying reading and studying return back upon us without success and yet 't is common to have imployed all our time and means and industry many years and to come at last to our Master with this heavy account Master we have fished all night all fishing time and have caught nothing and yet 't is usual Yet thus uncomfortable is all our work when God pleases to withdraw from us Hence it is that Moses draws back so fast and would fain avoid Gods embassie He fore-saw it would prove but an uncomfortable piece of work Exod. iii. 11. Chap. iv 10 13. Hence Isaiah cries out so complainingly Who has believed our report Isai. liii 1. Hence Ieremiah grows sad and out of heart and bemoans himself Ier. xv 10. Wo is me my mother that thou hast born me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth I have neither lent on usury nor have men lent to me on usury yet every one of them doth curse me Here 's something indeed to make our case less comfortable than any others that do we never so well live we never so justly if with Christ we live like other men after the ordinary fashion then behold friends of Publicans and Sinners if somewhat strictly with St. Iohn Baptist in fastings and rigours then behold they have a Devil we are Superstitious and Popish nothing pleases them use we people never so fairly we are always sure to be oppos'd to be contradicted to be evil spoken of even in those things wherein we deserve not and which is sadder yet to have those which are committed to our care seduced from us easily and by troops and seduced from God even by those who care not for their souls but for their fleece and for the glory of making Proselytes and
come Christ fish who will for them they 'l follow Christ not so much as stay to draw up their Nets be what will in them they care not let all go so they may catch him Nay more and if the Spirit of Christ be in us we will with him be pain'd and streightned till his business be accomplished though it be such a Baptism as he was then to be baptized with even suffering and dying for his name There can be no excuse from our attendance upon him with the first who will not at all stay with us if he be not the first in all our thoughts if we prefer any thing before him or any business before his Nay if we leave not secondly our nets too all our own business for his Regnum Dei tantum valet quantum habes says St. Gregory The kingdom of heaven is worth all we have must cost us so be it what it will And alas what have we the best the richest of us as highly as we think of our selves and ours more than St. Andrew and his brother a few old broken Nets What are all our honours but old Nets to catch the breath of the world where the oldest is the best and that which has most knots most alliances and genealogies the most honourable What are our Estates but Nets to entangle us 'T is more evident now than ever to entangle us in strange knots and obligations in vexations and disquiets in fears and dangers to entangle silly souls beside in vanities and follies What are all our ways and devices of thriving but so many several nets to catch a little yellow sand and mud and if you will have it in somewhat a finer Phrase a few silver scaled sishes in which yet God knows there are so many knots and difficulties so many rents and holes for the sish to slip out of that we may justly say they are but broken nets and old ones too the best of them that will scarce hold a pull all our new projects being but old ones new rubb'd over and no new thing under the Sun What are all those fine catching ways of eloquence knowledge good parts of mind and body but so many nets and snares to take men with It may be finely spun neately woven curiously knotted but so full of holes vanity and emptiness that no net is fuller than these things we take so much pride in so much delight in Nay this very body it self is but a net that entangles the soul and the rational soul it self too we too often make but a net to catch flies petty buzzing knowledges only few solid sober thoughts at the best but a net for fishes of that watry and inconstant element watry washy slimy notions of I know not what of flitting worldly things so full of holes too that all good things slip out of them Our very life lastly what is it but a few rotten threds knit together into veins and â—inews The strings and powers of a thin and immaterial soul knit to the threds of a feeble body so slender and full of holes and the knots so loose that the least stick or stone can unloose it or break it all to pieces And are not these pretty pieces think you now to stand so much upon the leaving That we will rather leave our Masters service than these broken nets that will bring us up nothing but slime mud a few fins and scales a few sticks and weeds a few stones and gravel things only that will dirty us or delude us or run into our hands and pierce them or into our feet like gravel and race them or at the utmost but a few fish slippery or watry comforts that will either quickly leave us or but slenderly comfort us whilst they stay Are not these fine things to quit heaven for Oh blessed Saint of the day that we could but leave these nets as thou didst thine that nothing might any longer entangle us or keep us from our Masters service Not that we must presently quit all honours estate and ways of gain bodies and souls and life and throw our selves into dishonour poverty and death in that instant we propose to follow Christ but that we must know we cannot follow him if we cast not off our inordinate affections to all of these use them as if we used them not enjoy them as if we had them not so humbly bear our honour as if we sought none else but Gods so manage our estates as to give an account to him for every farthing so use our trades as if our whole business were to trade for heaven so feed our bodies as if their chief food were the bread of heaven so employ our understandings as if they were to mind nothing but heavenly things and so live as if we had nothing else to do but die so cast away our nets as if we had nothing now to do with them now we had caught Christ or but to catch and hold him Worldly honour may consist with Christs our greatest estates with the true riches our lawful busiest Vocations with his service our secular learning with heavenly knowledge the care of our bodies with the salvation of our souls our lives with his death only they must not stand in competition for time and place but be all left to his disposing and when at any time they cannot either stand with his service or will hinder it then leave them all we must to follow him as occasions and opportunities shall require the forsaking any of them be it life it self Alas he loves not Christ at all that loves any thing above him any thing equal with him that prefers any thing to him or will not readily leave it for him We have read of many who have left their Thrones and cast away their Scepters many who have thrown away their riches and deserted their estates many who have given over all their thriving ways many who have bid adieu to all secular studies many who have in strange austerities and mortifications neglected nay crucified their bodies and others that have run to death as to a wedding that so they might the easier follow or the more happily attain to their Masters steps but these are singular and particular heights the ordinary course of Christianity is by a lower way Yet is the way good too Et omnia deserit qui voluntatem habendi deserit says St. Hierom he also verily forsakes all that desires none nothing but Iesus Christ who has crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts as the Apostle speaks Gal. v. 24. the world with all the desires thereof who though he has all he can desire yet desires nothing but what God will have him Sometimes it may fall out that we must leave our callings to go after him when they be either truly sinful or evidently dangerous and our wealth when it is unjustly gotten or unrighteously held we must restore and leave to the right owners of it
Obedience This then is the sum of that part of Gods commendation from their Persons that Rechabites Princes by their Tribe Holy by descent women and children after so many ages past over Ionadab neither pleaded their Descent nor their honour nor their claim to the Covenant nor their Age nor their Sex nor the Abrogation of Laws for Antiquity but without any contrary Plea whatsoever generally submitted to all Obedience Thus says God for them What say we for our selves In Civil Affairs Laws they say are Cobwebs Great men great flies that easily break through them mean men little enough to slip out at any hole women do what they please children are not old enough for any thing but sin and disobedience In Ecclesiasticals it is worse Though it be a matter of Reverence enjoyn'd to God himself Great ones are too good Others too perverse Women too tender Children not of age All too weakly to bend the knee or bare the head in Gods service so that what was said of Moses that God talked with him as man doth with his friend I may invert and say Man now talks with God as man doth with his friend so fellow-like that though our Fathers had not commanded the contrary all the world would say There is nothing like Reverence or Obedience in this Let me ask now Had the Rechabites the Law of Nature to guide them and have not we Were not they a righteous off-spring as well as we Had not they the tenderness of Wives and Children to plead for weakness of constitution and complexion greater hinderances to their strict kind of life as well as we Could not they have pleaded antiquated Laws as truly we Yet says God You have done all that was commanded you done it when others have not not mine own people he may add now not my Christian people Thus our negligence commends their Obedience We that have no more to excuse our selves than they not so much our task being easier our helps greater yet we have not They have Let that be an addition to their first Commendation raised a little by comparison with us You Rechabites I may almost say now You only have obeyed I pass now to the second ground of the Approbation The Expression of their Obedience Three Acts there are of it 1. Obedistis 2. Custodistis 3. Fecistis you have obeyed kept and done what was commanded you The first belongs to the Inward the two other to the outward man I begin with the Inward For without that Outward Obedience is of short service no continuance Four Acts flow from it To 1. Hear to 2. Hearken to 3. Submit to to 4. Acquiesce in the Commands of our Superiours All point blank against those Four grounds of Disobedience 1. Vntractableness 2. Impatience 3. Pride and 4. Murmuring To hear that against Untractableness that will not so much as endure the hearing To hearken that against Impatience that will not take pains to hear it out To submâ—t that against Pride that will veil to none To acquiesce or rest in that against murmuring that is never content with any thing imposed upon it Let me but ponder the word as I go I shall find all those and not go from the word In all three Languages the word whence comes Obedience comes from Hearing In auditu auris obedivit is King Davids Psal. xviii 43. The first duty God ever requires Hear O my people The Rechabites stumble not here They hear their Father speaking even out of his dust They are far enough from Untractableness that hear so easily Promptitudo Obedientiae that 's the first commendation of their Obedience the Readiness of it Yet he will give you little that will not give you the hearing The Son in the Gospel that did not mean to go and the Son that meant not to go both went thus far heard their Father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies more to attend and listen with a desire to it How this is you may understand out of Psal. xlv 11. Hearken O daughter and consider Hearken first then consider weigh and ponder the words then forget thine own people and thy Fathers house thy kindred and companions that alliance that uses by a kind of faction to draw too often from obedience those private and mutual interests that under a pretence of obedience beguile us of it To hearken then is to assent to in Gods own phrase 1 Sam. viii 9. to leave all private relations and intentions out of the meer desire of Obedience Thus the Rechabites hearkned neither to the tenderness of their Wives nor the cries of their Children nor their own commodities and conveniences to hearken to their Father This is Obedientiae Patientia the Approbation of their Obedience by their Patience This is a ready passage to the next To submit their judgments affections persons and estates to the will of their Father 'T is a hard Theme and I had best prove it to be Obedience before I venture to approve them for it The Latine and Greek words to obey sound nothing more than sub and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all under 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 subditi estote subjicimini the soul it self under that submitted Let every soul be subject Rom. xiii 1. As if St. Paul had foreseen the distinction the Body not the Soul The Soul says he not the Body alone and therefore put them in mind of it Tit. iii. 1. As if every body knew it well enough no no body were no body could be ignorant of it only want one to remember them Put them in mind therefore Wherefore We may gather something from the Reason he adds For we our selves also were sometimes foolish disobedient deceived serving divers lusts Tit. iii. 3. First foolish then disobedient none else are so how wise soever they think themselves Yea and deceived for just it is that he that will not trust his Superiours judgment especially where his own is as well inferiour as himself should be deceived by himself or those who have no power over him but to deceive him And he that will not obey their will just it is he should be given up to serve his own lusts And so they are mark it when you will nataral brute beasts says St. Peter None more sensual proud devillish so St. Iames finds them Iam. iii. 15. than those that thus proudly cast off the yoke of submission and obedience Their bodies then and passions scorn to obey them who by their own disobedience have taught their inferiour powers to rebell 'T is no wonder then if that follow in the verse Living in malice envy hateful and hating one another I need call nothing else but the dismal experience of these last tumultuous rebellious times to witness it wherein Tongues and Pens and Actions too have so horribly exprest it And give me leave a little to reason with you Authority us'd to be a Logical Argument to guide our reason and have we lost our Logick too as