into that fearful estate merely by the desire and greediness of money Be warm in zeal and indifferent in thy temporalities For he that is zealous in temporals and cold in the spiritual he that doth the accessories of his calling by himself and the principal by his Deputies he that is present at the feast of Sheep shearing and puts others to feed the flock hath no signe at all upon him of a good Shepheard It is not fit for us to leave the word of God and to serve tables said the Apostles And if it be a less worthy office to serve the tables even of the poor to the diminution of our care in the dispensation of Gods word it must needs be an unworthy imployment to leave the word of God and to attend the rich and superfluous furniture of our own Tables Remember the quality of your charges Civitas est Vigilate ad custodiam concordiam sponsa est studete amari oves sunt intendite pastui The Church is a Spouse The Universal Church is Christs Spouse but your own Diocess is yours behave your selves so that ye be beloved Your people are as sheep and they must be fed and guided and preserved and healed and brought home The Church is a City and you are the watch man Take care that the City be kept at Vnity in it self be sure to make peace amongst your people suffer no hatreds no quarrels no suits at Law amongst the Citizens which you can avoid make peace in your Diocesses by all the ways of prudence piety and authority that you can and let not your own corrections of criminals be to any purpose but for their amendment for the cure of offenders as long as there is hope and for the security of those who are sound and whole Preach often and pray continually let your discipline be with charity and your censures slow let not Excommunications pass for trifles and drive not away the fly from your brothers forehead with a hatchet give counsel frequently and dispensations seldom but never without necessity or great charity Let every place in your Diocess say Invenerunt me vigiles the Watch men have found me out hassovevim They that walk the City round have sought me out and found me Let every one of us as St. Paul's expression is shew himself a workman that shall not be ashamed operarium inconfusibilem mark that such a labourer as shall not be put to shame for his illness or his unskilfulness his falseness and unfaithfulness in that day when the great Bishop of Souls shall make his last and dreadful visitation For be sure there is not a carkase nor a skin not a lock of wool nor a drop of milk of the whole flock but God shall for it call the Idol Shepheard to a severe account And how think you will his anger burn when he shall see so many Goats standing at his left hand and so few Sheep at his right and upon inquiry shall find that his ministering Shepheards were Wolves in Sheeps cloathing and that by their ill example or pernitious doctrines their care of money and carelesness of their flocks so many Souls perish who if they had been carefully and tenderly wisely and conscientiously handled might have shin'd as bright as Angels And it is a sad consideration to remember how many Souls are pittifully handled in this world and carelesly dismissed out of this world they are left to live at their own rate and when they are sick they are bidden to be of good comfort and then all is well who when they are dead find themselves cheated of their pretious and invaluable eternity Oh how will those Souls in their eternal prisons for ever curse those evil and false guides and how will those evil guides themselves abide in judgment when the Angels of wrath snatch their abused people into everlasting torments For will God bless them or pardon them by whom so many Souls perish shall they reign with Christ who evacuate the death of Christ and make it useless to dear Souls Shall they partake of Christs glories by whom it comes to pass that there is less joy in Heaven it self even because sinners are not converted and God is not glorifyed and the people is not instructed and the Kingdom of God is not filled Oh no! the curses of a false Prophet vvill fall upon them and the revvard of the evil Stevvard vvill be their portion and they vvho destroyed the Sheep or neglected them shall have their portion vvith Goats for ever and ever in everlasting burnings in vvhich it is impossible for a man to dvvell Can any thing be beyond this beyond damnation Surely a man would think not And yet I remember a severe saying of St. Gregory Scire debent Praelati quod tot mortibus digni sunt quot perditionis exempla ad subditos extenderunt One damnation is not enough for an evil Shepheard but for every Soul who dies by his evil example or pernitious carelesness he deserves a new death a new damnation Let us therefore be wise and faithful walk warily and watch carefully and rule diligently and pray assiduously For God is more propense to rewards then to punishments and the good Steward that is wise and faithful in his dispensation shall be greatly blessed But how He shall be made ruler over the houshold What is that for he is so already True but he shall be much more Ex dispensatore faciet procuratorem God will treat him as Ioseph was treated by his Master he was first a Steward and then a Procurator one that rul'd his goods without account and without restraint Our ministry shall pass into Empire our labour into rest our watchfulness into fruition and our Bishoprick to a Kingdom In the mean time our Bishopricks are a great and weighty care and in a spiritual sense our dominion is founded in grace and our rule is in the hearts of the people and our strengths are the powers of the Holy Ghost and the weapons of our warfare are spiritual and the eye of God watches over us curiously to see if we watch over our Flocks by day and by night And though the Primitive Church as the Ecclesiastick Histories observe when they depos'd a Bishop from his office ever conceal'd his crime and made no record of it yet remember this that God does and will call us to a strict and severe account Take heed that you may never hear that fearful sentence I was hungry and ye gave me no meat If you suffer Christs little ones to starve it will be required severely at your hands And know this that the time will quickly come in which God shall say unto thee in the words of the Prophet VVhere is the Flock that was given thee thy beautiful Flock what wilt thou say when he shall visit thee God of his mercy grant unto us all to be so faithful and so wise as to convert Souls and to be so blessed and so assisted that we may give an account of our charges with joy to the glory of God to the edification and security of our Flocks and the salvation of our own Souls in that day when the great Shepheard and Bishop of our Souls shall come to judgment even our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be all Honour and Glory Love and Obedience now and for evermore Amen FINIS Ep. 69. Jerem. 9.1 Esa. 26.12 2 Thes. 3.1 * Cap. 24. 25. Epist. 73. ad Jubaâ—â— 1 Tim. 6.14 * Ro. 12.6 Ephe. 4.11 1 Cor. 12.28 * Acts 1.25 1 Tim. 5.19 1 Tit. 11. 2 Titus 15. Cap. 2. v. 2. Gal. 1.19 * 2 Cor. 8.23 Philip 2.25 Psalm 45.16 in 1 Cor. 12. in Psalm 44. Epist. 1. Simpronianum Epist. 65. ad Rogat Quaest. V. N.T.q. 197. Isai. 60.17 Hunc locum etiam citat S. Clemens Ep. ad Cor Neh. 11.10 2 Kin. 11.18 Numb 4.16 Epist. 2. ad Nepot Epistol ad Evagrium Hebr. 13.17 Acts 1. 25. Isaia 60.17 1 Pet. 5 1.5â— Luke 22.27 Mark 10.43 John 13.13 Lib. 3. Tit. 1 1 Tim. 1.19 2 Tim. 3.9 in Cap. 2. Zeph. Lib. 1. Ep. 4. Dial. adv Lucifer Eccl. 45.26 24. c. Concil Antioch 1 Cor. 4.1,2,3 Jer. 3.15 Hebr. 13.7 Zech. 11.7 Cap. 11. Prov. 6.3,4 D. Bernard ad Henr. Epise Senensem 2 Tim. 2. Jer. 13.20.21
Church a Bishop was never admitted to publick penance not onely because in them every crime is ten and he that could discern a publick shame could not discern a publick honor nor yet onely because every such punishment was scandalous and did more evil by the example of the crime then it could do good by the example of the punishment but also because no spiritual power is higher then the Episcopal and therefore they were to be referred to the Divine judgment which was likely to fall on them very heavily 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Lord will cut the evil Stewards asunder he will suffer Schisms and Divisions to enter in upon us and that will sadly cut us asunder but the evil also shall fall upon their persons like the punishment of quartering Traitors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 punnishment with the circumstances of detestation and exemplarity Consider therefore what is your great duty Consider what is your great danger The lines of duty I have already describ'd onely remember how dear and pretious Souls are to God since for their salvation Christ gave his bloud and therefore will not easily loose them whom though they had sin'd against him yet he so highly valued remember that You are Christs deputies in the care of Souls and that You succeed in the place of the Apostles Non est facilè stare loco Pauli tenere gradum Petri You have undertaken the work of St. Paul and the office of St. Peter and what think you upon this account will be required of us St. Hierom expresses it thus The wisdom and skill of a Bishop ought to be so great that his countenance his gesture his motion every thing should be vocal ut quicquid agit quicquid loquitur doctrina sit Apostolorum that whatever he does or speaks be doctrine Apostolical The Ancient Fathers had a pious opinion that besides the Angel guardian which is appointed to the guard of every man there is to every Bishop a second Angel appointed to him at the Consecration and to this Origen alludes saying that every Bishoprick hath two Angels the one visible and the other invisible This is a great matter and shews what a precious thing that order and those persons are in the eyes of God but then this also means that we should live Angelick lives which the Church rarely well expresses by saying that Episcopal dignity is the Ecclesiastick state of perfection and supposes the persons to be so far advanc'd in holiness as to be in the state of confirmation in grace But I shall say nothing of these things because it may be they press too hard but the use I shall make of it upon occasion of the reward of the good and bad Steward is to remind you of your great danger For if it be required of Bishops to be so wise and so holy so industrious and so careful so buisy and so good up to the height of best examples if they be anointed of the Lord and are the Husbands of the Churches if they be the Shepheards of the flock and Stewards of the houshould it is very fit they consider their danger that they may be careful to do their duty St. Bernard considers it well in his epistle to Henry Archbishop of Sens If I lying in my Cell and smoaking under a Bushel not shining yet cannot avoid the breath of the winds but that my light is almost blown out what will becom of my Candle if it were plac'd on a candlestick and set upon a hill I am to look to my self alone and provide for my own salvation and yet I offend my self I am weary of my self I am my own scandal and my own danger my own eye and my own belly and my own appetite find me work enough and therefore God help them who besides themselves are answerable for many others Iacob kept the Sheep of Laban and We keep the Sheep of Christ and Iacob was to answer for every Sheep that was stoln and every lamb that was torn by the wild beast and so shall We too if by our fault one of Christs Sheep perish and yet it may be there are 100000. Souls committed to the care and conduct of some one Shepheard who yet will find his own Soul work enough for all his care and watchfulness If any man should desire me to carry a Frigat into the Indies in which a 100. men were imbarqued I vvere a mad man to undertake the charge vvithout proportionable skill and therefore vvhen there is more danger and more Souls and rougher Seas and more secret Rocks and horrible Storms and the Shipvvrack is an eternal loss the matter vvill then require great consideration in the undertaking and greatest care in the conduct Vpon this account vve find many brave persons in the first and in the middle ages of the Church vvith great resolution refusing Episcopacy I vvill not speak of those vvho for fear of Martyrdom declin'd it but those vvho for fear of damnation did refuse St. Bernard vvas by three rich Citties severally called to be their B p and by tvvo to be their Arch-Bp. and he refus'd them St. Dominicus refus'd four successively St. Thomas Aquinas refus'd the Archbishoprick of Naples and Vincentius Ferrerius vvould not accept of Valentia or Ilerda and Bernardinus Senensis refus'd the Bishopricks of Sens Vrbin and Ferrara They had reason and yet if they had done amiss in that office vvhich they declin'd it had been something more excusable but if they that seek it be as careless in the office as they are greedy of the honour that vvill be found intolerable Electus Episcopus ambulat in disco recusans volvitur in arcâ said the Hermit in St. Hierom. The Bp. walks upon round and trundling stones but he that refuses it stands upon a floor But I shall say no more of it because I suppose you have read it and considered it in St. Chrysostoms six books de sacerdotio in the Apologetie of St. Greg. Naz. in the pastoral of St. Greg. of Rome in St. Dionysius's 8th epistle to Demophilus in the Letters of Epiphanius to St. Hierom in St. Austins Epistle to Bp. Valerius in St. Bernards life of St. Malachy in St. Hieroms 138th Epistle to Fabiola These things I am sure you could not read without trembling and certainly if it can belong to any Christian then work out your Salvation with fear and trembling that 's the Bishops burden For the Bishop is like a man that is surety for his friend he is bound for many and for great sums what 's to be done in this case Solomons answer is the way Do this now my Son deliver thy self make sure thy friend give not sleep to thine eyes nor slumber to thine eye lids that is be sedulous to discharge thy trust to perform thy charge be zealous for Souls and careless of money and remember this that even in Christs Family there was one sad example of an Apostate Apostle and he fell