tastlesse things Compare the Prophets with the Son and even the promises of God 2 King 4.34 in them are faint and dilute things Elishaes staffe in the hand of Gehazi his servant would not recover the Shunamites dead child but when Elisha himselfe came and put his mouth upon the childs mouth that did In the mouth of Christs former servants there was a preparation but effect and consummation in his owne mouth In the Old Testament at first God kissed man and so breathed the breath of life and made him a man In the New Testament Christ kissed man he breathed the breath of everlasting life the holy Ghost into his Apostles and so made the man a blessed man Love is as strong as death Cant. 8.6 As in death there is a transmigration of the soule so in this spirituall love and this expressing of it by this kisse there is a transfusion of the soule too And as we find in Gellius a Poëm of Platoes where he sayes he knew one so extremely passionate Vt parùm affuit quin moreretur in osculo much more is it true in this heavenly union expressed in this kisse as S. Ambrose delivers it Per osculum adhaeret anima Deo et transfunditur spiritus osculantis In this kisse where Righteousnesse and peace have kissed each other In this person where the Divine and the humane nature have kissed each other Psal 85.10 In this Christian Church where Grace and Sacraments visible and invisible meanes of salvation have kissed each other Love is as strong as death my soule is united to my Saviour now in my life as in death and I am already made one spirit with him and whatsoever death can doe this kisse this union can doe that is give me a present an immediate possession of the kingdome of heaven And as the most mountainous parts of this kingdome are as well within the kingdome as a garden so in the midst of the calamities and incommodities of this life I am still in the kingdome of heaven In the Old Testament it was but a contract but per verba de futuro Sponsabo I will marry thee Hos 2.19 Mat. 9.15 but now that Christ is come the Bride-groome is with us for ever and the children of the Bride-chamber cannot mourne Now by this we are slid into our fourth and last branch of our first part Exhortatic The perswasion to come to this holy kisse though defamed by treachery though depraved by licentiousnesse since God invites us to it by so many good uses thereof in his Word It is an imputation laid upon Nero That Neque adveniens neqùe profisciscens That whether comming or going he never kissed any And Christ himselfe imputes it to Simon as a neglect of him That when he came into his house he did not kisse him Luke 7.45 August This then was in use first among kinsfolks In illa simplicitate antiquorum propinqui propinquos osculabantur In those innocent and harmlesse times persons neare in bloud did kisse one another And in that right and not onely as a stranger Iacob kissed Rachel Gen. 29.12 and told her how near of kin he was to her There is no person so neare of kin to thee as Christ Jesus Christ Jesus thy Father as he created thee and thy brother as he took thy nature Thy Father as he provided an inheritance for thee and thy brother as he divided this inheritance with thee and as he dyed to give thee possession of that inheritance He that is Nutritius thy Foster-father who hath nursed thee in his house in the Christian Church and thy Twin-brother so like thee as that his Father and thine in him shall not know you from one another but mingle your conditions so as that he shall find thy sins in him and his righteousnesse in thee Osculamini Filium Kisse this Son as thy kinsman This kisse was also in use as Symbolum subjectionis A recognition of soveraignty or power Pharaoh sayes to Ioseph Thou shalt be over my house Gen. 41.40 and according to thy word shall all my people be ruled there the Originall is All my people shall kisse thy face This is the Lord Paramount the Soveraigne Lord of all The Lord Jesus Iesus Phil. 2.10 Mat. 28.18 at whose name every knee must bow in heaven in earth and in hell Iesus into whose hands all power in heaven and in earth is given Iesus who hath opened a way to our Appeal from all powers upon earth Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soule Iesus Mat. 10.28 who is the Lion and the Lambe too powerfull upon others accessible unto thee Osculamini Filium Kisse this Son as he is thy Soveraigne It was in use likewise In discessu friends parting kissed Gen. 31.15 Act. 20.37 Laban rose up early in the morning and kissed his sons and his daughters and departed And at Pauls departing they fell on his neck and wept and kissed him When thou departest to thy worldly businesses to thy six dayes labour kisse him take leave of him and remember that all that while thou art gone upon his errand and though thou worke for thy family and for thy posterity yet thou workest in his vineyard and dost his worke They kissed too In reditu Esau ran to meet his brother and fell on his neck and kissed him Gen. 33.4 When thou returnest to his house after thy six dayes labour to celebrate his Sabbath kisse him there and be able to give him some good account from Sabbath to Sabbath from week to week of thy stewardship and thou wilt never be bankrupt They kissed in reconciliation David kissed Absalon 2 Sam. 14.33 If thou have not discharged thy stewardship well Restore to man who is damnified therein Confesse to God who hath suffered in that sin Reconcile thy selfe to him and kisse him in the Sacrament in the seale of Reconciliation They kissed in a religious reverence even of false gods I have sayes God 2 King 19 18. seaven thousand knees that have not bowed unto Baal and mouths that have not kissed him Let every one of us kisse the true God in keeping his knees from bowing to a false his lips from assenting his hands from subscribing to an Idolatrous worship And as they kissed In Symbolum concordiae Rom. 16.16 which was another use thereof Salute one another with a holy kisse upon which custome Iustin Martyr sayes Osculum ante Eucharistiam before the Communion the Congregation kissed to testifie their unity in faith in him to whom they were then Sacramentally to be united as well as Spiritually And Tertullian calls it Osculum signaculum Orationis Because they ended their publique Prayers with that seale of unity and concord Let every Congregation kisse him so at every meeting to seale to him a new band a new vow that they will never break in departing from any part of his
but Himselfe so as if they be lost he is lost How long will a Medall a piece of Coine lie in the water before the stampe be washed off and yet how soone is the Image of God of his patience his longanimity defaced in us by every billow every affliction But for the Saints of God it shall not be so Surely it shall not They shall stand against the waters Psal 11 43. And the Sea shall see it and fly and Iordan shall be turned backe And the world shall say What ayled thee O Sea that thou fleddest O Iordan that thou turnedst back For they that know not the power of the Almighty though they envy yet shall wonder and stand amazed at the deliverance of the righteous Sto pulso sayes God of himselfe I stand at the doore and knocke Rev. 3.22 God will not breake open doores to give thee a blessing as well as he loves thee and as well as he loves it but will have thee open to him much more will he keepe Tentations at the doore They shall not breake in upon thee except thou open This then was that which David elsewhere apprehended with feare The sorrowes of the grave compassed me about Psal 1â— 5. and the snares of death overtooke mee Here they were neare him but no worse Psal 69 15. This is that that hee prayes deliverance from Let not the water flood drowne mee neither let the deepe swallow me up And this is that God assures us all that are his Isâ—y 43.2 When thou passest through the waters I will bee with thee and through the floods that they doe not overflow thee Maintaine therefore a holy patience in all Gods visitations Accept your waters though they come in teares for hee that sends them Christ Jesus had his flood his inundation in Blood and whatsoever thou sufferest from him thou sufferest for him and glorifiest him in that constancy Upon those words Tres sunt There are three that beare witnesse That Spirit and water and blood Bernard S. Bernard taking water there by way of allusion for affliction saith Though the Spirit were witnesse enough without water or blood yet Vix aut nunquam inveniri arbitror Spiritum sine aqua sanguine we lack one of the seales of the Spirit if we lack Gods corrections We consider three waters in our blessed Saviour He wept over Jerusalem Doe thou so over thy finfull soule He sweat in the garden Doe thou so too in eating thy bread in the sweat of thy browes in labouring fincerely in thy Calling And then hee sent water and blood out of his side Argust being dead which was fons utriusque Sacramenti the spring head of both Sacraments Doe thou also refresh in thy soule the dignity which thou receivedst in the first Sacrament of Baptisme and thereby come worthily to the participation of the second and therein the holy Ghost shall give thee the seale of that security which he tenders to thee in this Text Non approximabunt How great water floods soever come they shall not come nigh thee not nigh that which is Thou that is thy faith thy soule and though it may swallow that by which thou art a man thy life it shall not shake that by which thou art a Christian thy Religion Amen SERM. LX. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 32.7 Thou art my hiding place Thou shalt preserve mee from trouble Thou shalt compasse me about with songs of deliverance AS Rhetorique is said to bee a fist extended and displayed into an open Hand And Logique a Hand recollected and contracted into a fist So the Church of God may be said to be a soule dilated and diffused into many Congregations and a soule may be said to be the Church contracted and condensed into one bosome So not onely the Canticle of Solomon is taken indifferently by the ancient and later Expositors by some for an Epithalamion and marriage Song betweene Christ and his Church by others for the celebration of the same union between every Christian soule and him but also many other places of Scripture have received such an indifferent interpretation and are left in suspence whether they be to be understood of the Church in generall or of particular soules And of this nature and number is this Text Thou art my hiding place c. For S. Hierom takes these words and the whole Psalme to be spoken collectively others distributively He in the person of the Church Hieron They of every or at least of some particular soules To examine their reasons is unnecessary and would bee tedious It will aske lesse time and afford more profit to consider the words both wayes In them therefore considered twice over wee shall see a threefold state of the Christian Church and a threefold mercy exhibited by God to every Christian soule First we shall see the Church under the clouds in her low estate in her obscurity in her inglorious state of contempt and persecution and yet then supported by an assurance that God overshadowed her Tu absconsio Tu latibulum Thou art my hiding place And in that first part wee shall consider the state of a timorous soule a soule that for feare of tentations dares scarce looke into the world or embrace a profession Secondly we shall see the Church emancipated enfranchised unfettered unmanacled delivered from her obscure and inglorious state and brought to splendor and beauty and peace blessing God in that acknowledgement Thou shalt preserveme from trouble And in that part wee shall consider the state of that soule exalted to a holy confidence and assurance that though she come into the world and partake of the dangers thereof in opening herselfe to such tentations as do necessarily and inseparably accompany every calling yet the Lord will preserve her from trouble And thirdly and lastly we shall see a kinde of Triumphant state in the Church in this world a holy exultation God shall compasse her with songs of deliverance In which part we shall also see the blessed state of that soule which is come not to a presumptuous security but to modest certainty of continuing in the same state still And these will bee our three parts in these words as they receive a publike accommodation to the Church and a more particular application to our selves Wee enter into these considerations with this observation 1 Part. That as God himselfe is eternall and cannot bee considered in the distinction of times so hath that language in which God hath spoken in his written word the Hebrew the least consideration of Time of any other language Evermore in expressing the mercies of God to man it is an indifferent thing to the holy Ghost whether he speak in the present or in the future or in the time that is past what mercies soever he hath given us he will give us over againe And whatsoever he hath done and will doe hee is alwayes ready to doe at
incorruptionem sicut anima per fidem Because our bodie shall be regenerated by glory there as our soules are by faith here Therefore Tertul. cals the Resurrection Exemplum spei nostrae The Originall out of which we copy out our hope and Clavem sepulchrorū nostrorum How hard soever my grave be locked yet with that key with the application of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus it will open And they are all names which expresse this well which Tertullian gives Christ Vadem obsidem fidejussorem resurrectionis nostrae That he is the pledge the hostage the surety of our Resurrection So doth that also which is said in the Schoole Sicut Adam forma morientium Theoph. it a Christus forma resurgentium Without Adam there had beene no such thing as death without Christ no such thing as a Resurrection But ascendit ille effractor as the Prophet speaks The breaker is gone up before and they have passed through the gate that is assuredly Mich. 2.13 infallibly they shall passe But what needs all this heat all this animosity all this vehemence about the Resurrection May not man be happy enough in heaven though his body never come thither upon what will ye ground the Resurrection upon the Omnipotence of God Asylum haereticorum est Omnipotentia Dei which was well said and often repeated amongst the Ancients The Omnipotence of God hath alwaies been the Sanctuary of Heretiques that is alwaies their refuge in all their incredible doctrines God is able to do it can do it You confesse the Resurrection is a miracle And miracles are not to be multiplied nor imagined without necessity and what necessity of bodies in Heaven Beloved we make the ground and foundation of the Resurrection to be not meerely the Omnipotency of God for God will not doe all that he can doe but the ground is Omnipotens voluntas Dei revelata The Almighty will of God revealed by him to us And therefore Christ joynes both these together Erratis Ye erre Mat. 22.29 not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God that is not considering the power of God as it is revealed in the Scriptures for there is our foundation of this Doctrine we know out of the Omnipotence of God it may be and we know out of the Scriptures it must be That works upon our faith this upon our reason That it is man that must be saved man that must be damned and to constitute a man there must be a body as well as a soule Nay the Immortality of the soule will not so well lie in proofe without a resuming of the body For upon those words of the Apostle If there were no Resurrection we were the miserablest of all men the Schoole reasons reasonably Naturally the soule and body are united when they are separated by Death it is contrary to nature which nature still affects this union and consequently the soule is the lesse perfect for this separation and it is not likely that the perfect naturall state of the soule which is to be united to the body should last but three or foure score yeares and in most much lesse and the unperfect state that in the separation should last eternally for ever so that either the body must be beleeved to live againe or the soule beleeved to die Never therefore dispute against thine own happinesse never say God asks the heart that is the soule and therefore rewards the soule or punishes the soule and hath no respect to the body Nec auferamus cogitationes a collegio carnis saies Tertullian Never go about to separate the thoughts of the heart from the colledge from the fellowship of the body Siquidem in carne cum carne per carnem agitur quicquid ab anima agitur All that the soule does it does in and with and by the body And therefore saies he also Caro abluitur ut anima emaculetur The body is washed in baptisme but it is that the soule might be made cleane Caro ungitur ut anima consecretur In all unctions whether that which was then in use in Baptisme or that which was in use at our transmigration and passage out of this world the body was anointed that the soule might be consecrated Caro signatur saies Tertullian still ut anima muniatur The body is signed with the Crosse that the soule might be armed against tentations And againe Caro de Corpore Christi vescitur ut anima de Deo saginetur My body received the body of Christ that my soule might partake of his merits He extends it into many particulars and summes up all thus Non possunt in mercede separari quae opera conjungunt These two Body and Soule cannot be separated for ever which whilst they are together concurre in all that either of them doe Never thinke it presumption saies S. Gregory Sperare in te quod in se exhibuit Deus homo To hope for that in thy selfe which God admitted when he tooke thy nature upon him And God hath made it saies he more easie then so for thee to beleeve it because not onely Christ himselfe but such men as thou art did rise at the Resurrection of Christ And therefore when our bodies are dissolved and liquefied in the Sea putrified in the earth resolv'd to ashes in the fire macerated in the ayre Velut in vasa sua transfunditur caro nostra Tertul. make account that all the world is Gods cabinet and water and earth and fire and ayre are the proper boxes in which God laies up our bodies for the Resurrection Curiously to dispute against our owne Resurrection is seditiously to dispute against the dominion of Jesus who is not made Lord by the Resurrection if he have no subjects to follow him in the same way Wee beleeve him to be Lord therefore let us beleeve his and our Resurrection This blessed day Ille Iohn 2.19 Iohn 10.17 which we celebrate now he rose he rose so as none before did none after ever shall rise He rose others are but raised Destroy this Temple saies he and I will raise it I without imploying any other Architect I lay downe my life saies he the Jewes could not have killed him when he was alive If he were alive here now the Jesuits could not kill him here now except his being made Christ and Lord an anointed King have made him more open to them I have a power to lay it downe saies he and I have a power to take it up againe This day Nos Iohn 2.3 we celebrate his Resurrection this day let us celebrate our owne Our own not our one Resurrection for we need many Upon those words of our Saviour to Nicodemus Oportet denuo nasci speaking of the necessity of Baptisme Non solum denuo sed tertiò nasci oportet saies S. Bernard He must be born againe and againe againe by baptisme for Originall sin and for actuall sin againe by repentance Infoelix homo ego
things as are problematicall if thou love the peace of Sion be not too inquisitive to know nor too vehement when thou thinkest thou doest know it Come then to ask this question 3. Part. not problematically as it is contracted to them that shall live in the last dayes nor peremptorily of man as he is subject to originall sin but at large so as the question may include Christ himself and then to that Quis homo What man is he We answer directly here is the man that shall not see death And of him principally August and literally S. Augustine as we said before takes this question to be framed Vt quaeras dictum non ut desperes saith he this question is moved to move thee to seek out and to have thy recourse to that man which is the Lord of Life not to make thee despaire that there is no such man in whose self and in whom for all us there is Redemption from death For sayes he this question is an exception to that which was said before the text which is Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain Consider it better sayes the Holy Ghost here and it will not prove so Man is not made in vain at first though he do die now for Perditio tua ex te This death proceeds from man himself and Quare moriemini domus Israel Why will ye die ô house of Israel God made not death â—ap 1.13 neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living The Wise man sayes it and the true God sweares it As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a sinner God did not create man in vain then though he die not in vain for since he will needs die God receives glory even by his death in the execution of his justice not in vaine neither because though he be dead God hath provided him a Redeemer from death in his mercy Man is not created in vain at all nor all men so neare vanity as to die for here is one man God and Man Christ Jesus which liveth and shall not see death And conformable to S. Augustines purpose 〈◊〉 speakes S. Hierome too Scio quòd nullus homo carneus evadet sed novi Deum sub velamento carnis latentem I know there is no man but shall die but I know where there is a God clothed in mans flesh and that person cannot die But did not Christ die then Shall we joyne with any of those Heretiques which brought Christ upon the stage to play a part and say he was born or lived or dyed In phantasmate In apparance only and representation God forbid so all men were created in vain indeed if we had not a regeneration in his true death Where is the contract between him and his Father that Oportuit pati All this Christ ought to suffer and so enter into glory Is that contract void and of none effect Must he not die Where is the ratification of that contract in all the Prophets 〈◊〉 53.4.9 Where is Esays Verè languores nostros tulit Surely he hath born our sorrows and he made his grave with the wicked in his death Is the ratification of the Prophets cancelled Shall he not must he not die Where is the consummation and the testification of all this Where is the Gospell Consummatum est And he bowed his head and gave up the ghost Is that fabulous Did he not die How stands the validity of that contract Christ must die the dignity of those Prophecies Christ will die the truth of the Gospell Christ did die with this answer to this question Here is a man that liveth and shall not see death Very well For though Christ Jesus did truly die so as was contracted so as was prophecied so as was related yet hee did not die so as was intended in this question so as other naturall men do die For first Christ dyed because he would dye other men admitted to the dignity of Martyrdome are willing to dye but they dye by the torments of the Executioners they cannot bid their soules goe out and say now I will dye And this was Christs case 〈◊〉 10.15 It was not only I lay down my life for my sheep but he sayes also No man can take away my soule And I have power to lay it down And De facto he did lay it down he did dye before the torments could have extorted his soule from him Many crucified men lived many dayes upon the Crosse The thieves were alive long after Christ was dead and therefore Pilate wondred that he was already dead His soule did not leave his body by force 〈…〉 but because he would and when he would and how he would Thus far then first this is an answer to this question Quis homo Christ did not die naturally nor violently as all others doe but only voluntarily Again the penalty of death appertaining only to them who were derived from Adam by carnall and sinfull generation Christ Jesus being conceived miraculously of a Virgin by the over-shadowing of the Holy Ghost was not subject to the Law of death and therefore in his person it is a true answer to this Quis homo Here is a man that shall not see death that is he need not see death he hath not incurred Gods displeasure he is not involved in a general rebellion and therfore is not involved in the generall mortality not included in the generall penalty He needed not have dyed by the rigour of any Law all we must he could not dye by the malice or force of any Executioner all we must at least by natures generall Executioners Age and Sicknesse And then when out of his own pleasure and to advance our salvation he would dye yet he dyed so as that though there were a dis-union of body and soule which is truly death yet there remained a Nobler and faster union then that of body and soule the Hypostaticall Union of the God-head not onely to his soule but to his body too so that even in his death both parts were still not onely inhabited by but united to the Godhead it selfe and in respect of that inseparable Union we may answer to this question Quis homo Here is a man that shall not see death that is he shall see no separation of that which is incomparably and incomprehensibly a better soul then his soule the God-head shall not be separated from his body But that which is indeed the most direct and literall answer to this question is That whereas the death in this Text is intended of such a death as hath Dominion over us and from which we have no power to raise our selves we may truly and fully answer to his Quis homo here is a man that shall never see death so but that he shall even in the jawes and teeth of death and in the bowels and wombe of the grave and in the sink and furnace of hell
his Gomer his explicite knowledge of Articles absolutely necessary to salvation The simplest man as well as the greatest Doctor is bound to know that there is one God in three persons That the second of those the Sonne of God tooke our nature and dyed for mankinde And that there is a Holy Ghost which in the Communion of Saints the Church established by Christ applies to every particular soule the benefit of Christs universall redemption But then for our Quails birds of higher pitch meat of a stronger digestion which is the knowledge how to rectifie every straying conscience how to extricate every entangled and scrupulous and perplexed soule in all emergent doubts how to defend our Church and our Religion from all the mines and all the batteries of our Adversaries and to deliver her from all imputations of Heresie and Schisme which they impute to us this knowledge is not equally necessary in all In many cases a Master of servants and a Father of children is bound to know more then those children and servants and the Pastor of the parish more then parishioners They may have their fulnesse though he have more but he hath not his except he be able to give them satisfaction This fulnesse then is not an equality in the measure our fulnesse in heaven shall not be so Abraham dyed sayes the text Plenus dierum full of yeares Gen. 25.8 It is not said so in the text of Methusalem that he dyed full of yeares and yet he had another manner of Gomer another measure of life then Abraham for he lived almost eight hundred yeares more then he But he that is best disposed to die is fullest of yeares One man may be fuller at twenty then another at seaventy David lived not the tithe of Methusalems yeares not ten to his hundred he lived lesse then Abraham and yet David is said to have dyed Plenus dierum full of yeares he had made himselfe agreeable to God 1 Chro. 29.28 and so was ripe for him So David is said there to have dyed full of honor God knowes David had cast shrowd aspersions upon his own and others honor but as God sayes of Israel Because I loved thee thou wast honorable in my sight so because God loved David and he persevered in that love to the end he dyed full of honor So also it is said of David that he dyed full of Riches for though they were very great additions which Solomon made yet because David intended that which he left for Gods service and for pious uses he dyed full of Riches fulnesse of riches is in the good purpose and the good employment not in the possession In a word the fulnesse that is inquired after and required by this prayer carry it upon temporall carry it upon spirituall things is such a proportion of either as is fit for that calling in which God hath put us And then the satisfaction in this fulnesse is not to hunt and pant after more worldly possessions by undue meanes or by macerating labour as though we could not be good or could doe no good in the world except all the goods of the world passed our hands nor to hunt and pant after the knowledge of such things as God by his Scriptures hath not revealed to his Church nor to wrangle contentiously and uncharitably about such points as doe rather shake others consciences then establish our own as though we could not possibly come to heaven except we knew what God meant to doe with us before he meant to make us S. Paul expresses fully what this fulnesse is Colos 4.12 and satisfies us in this satisfaction Vt sitis pleni in omni voluntate Dei That yee may be filled according to the will of God What is the will of God How shall I know the will of God upon me God hath manifested his will in my Calling and a proportion competent to this Calling is my fulnesse and should be my satisfaction Gen. 8.21 that so God may have Odorem quietis as it is said in Noahs sacrifice after he came out of the Arke that God smelt a savour of rest a sacrifice in which he might rest himselfe for God hath a Sabbath in the Sabbaths of his servants a fulnesse in their fulnesse a satisfaction when they are satisfied and is well pleased when they are so So then this Prayer is for fulnesse Nos and fulnesse is a competency in our calling And a prayer for satisfaction and satisfaction is a contentment in that competency And then this prayer is not onely a prayer of appropriation to our selves but of a charitable extention to others too Satura nos Satisfie us All us all thy Church Charity begins in our selves but it does not end there but dilates it selfe to others The Saints in heaven are full as full as they can hold and yet they pray Though they want nothing they pray that God would powre down upon us graces necessary for our peregrination here as he hath done upon them in their station there We are full full of the Gospel present peace and plenty in the preaching thereof and faire apparances of a perpetuall succession we are full and yet we pray we pray that God would continue the Gospel where it is restore the Gospel where it was and transfer the Gospel where it hath not yet been preached Charity desires not her own sayes the Apostle but much lesse doth charity desire no more then her own so as not to desire the good of others too True love and charity is to doe the most that we can all that we can for the good of others So God himselfe proceeds when he sayes What could I doe that I have not done And so he seems to have begun at first when God bestowed upon man his first and greatest benefit his making it is expressed so Faciamus hominem Let us All us make man God seems to summon himselfe to assemble himselfe to muster himselfe all himselfe all the persons of the Trinity to doe what he could in the favour of man So also when he is drawne to a necessity of executing judgement and for his own honor and consolidation of his servants puts himselfe upon a revenge he proceeds so too when man had rebelled and began to fortifie in Babel Gen. 11.7 then God sayes Venite Let us All us come together And Descendamus confundamus Let us all us goe down and confound their language and their machinations and fortifications God does not give patterns God does not accept from us acts of half-devotion and half-charities God does all that he can for us And therefore when we see others in distresse whether nationall or personall calamities whether Princes be dispossest of their naturall patrimony and inheritance or private persons afflicted with sicknesse or penury or banishment let us goe Gods way all the way First Faciamus hominem ad imaginem nostram Let us make that Man according
at the Kings table certain portions of bread are made bread of Essay to passe over every dish whether for safety or for Majesty not only so civilly changed but changed supernaturally no nor Theophylacts transformatus est which seemes to be the word that goes farthest of all for this transforming cannot be intended of the outward form and fashion for that is not changed but be it of that internall form which is the very essence and nature of the bread so it is transformed so the bread hath received a new form a new essence a new nature because whereas the nature of bread is but to nourish the body the nature of this bread now is to nourish the soule And therefore Cum non dubitavit Dominus dicere hoc est corpus meum August cum signum daret corporis Since Christ forbore not to say This is my body when he gave the sign of his body why should we forbeare to say of that bread this is Christs body which is the Sacrament of his body You would have said at noone this light is the Sun and you will say now this light is the Candle That light was not the Sun this light is not the Candle but it is that portion of aire which the Sun did then and which the Candle doth now enlighten We say the Sacramentall bread is the body of Christ because God hath shed his Ordinance upon it and made it of another nature in the use though not in the substance Almost 600. years agoe the Romane Church made Berengarius sweare sensualiter tangitur frangitur teritur corpus Christs That the body of Christ was sensibly handled and broken and chewed They are ashamed of that now and have mollified it with many modifications and God knowes whether 100. yeares hence they will not bee as much ashamed of their Transubstantiation and see as much unnaturall absurdity in their Trent Canon or Lateran Canoâ—â— â—s they doe in Berengarius oath As they that deny the body of Christ to be in the Sacrament lose their footing in departing from their ground the expresse Scriptures so they that will assign a particular manner how that body is there have no footing no ground at all no Scripture to Anchor upon And so diving in a bottomlesse sea they poppe sometimes above water to take breath to appeare to say something and then snatch at a loose preposition that swims upon the face of the waters and so the Roman Church hath catched a Trans and others a Con and a Sub and an In and varied their poetry into a Transubstantiation and a Consubstantiation and the rest and rymed themselves beyond reason into absurdities and heresies and by a young figure of similiter cadens they are fallen alike into error though the errors that they are fallen into be not of a like nature nor danger We offer to goe no farther then according to his Word In the Sacrament our eyes see his salvation according to that so far as that hath manifested unto us and in that light wee depart in peace without scruple in our owne without offence to other mens consciences Having thus seene Simeon in these his Dimensions with these holy impressions 2 Part. these blessed characters upon him first 1 A man in a reverend age then 2 In a holy function and calling and with that 3 Righteous in the eyes of men and withall 4 Devout in the eyes of God 5 And made a Prophet upon himselfe by the holy Ghost 6 still wayting Gods time and his leasure 7 And in that desiring that his joy might be spread upon the whole Israel of God 8 Frequenting holy places the Temple 9 And that upon holy motions and there 10 seeing the salvation of the Lord that is Discerning the application of salvation in the Ordinances of the Church 11 And lastly contenting himselfe with so much therein as was according to his word and not inquiring farther then God had beene pleased to reveale and having reflected all these severall beames upon every worthy Receiver of the Sacrament the whole Quire of such worthy receivers may joyne with Simeon in this Antiphon Nunc Dimittis Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace c. S. Ambrose reades not this place as we doe Nunc dimittis but Nunc dimitte not Lord thou doest so but Lord doe so and so he gives it the forme of a prayer and implyes not only a patience and a contentednesse but a desire and an ambition that he might die at least such an indifferency and equanimity as Israel had when he had seen Ioseph Gen. 46.30 Now let me die since I have seen thy face after he had seen his face the next face that he desired to see was the face of God For howsoever there may bee some disorder some irregularity in S. Pauls Anathema pro fratribus that he desired to be separated from Christ rather then his brethren should that may scarce be drawen into consequence or made a wish for us to imitate yet to S. Pauls Cupio dissolvi to an expresse and to a deliberate desire to be dissolved here and to be united to Christ in heaven still with a primary relation to the glory of God and a reservation of the will of God a godly a rectified and a well-disposed man may safely come And so I know not upon what grounds Nicephorus fayes Simeon did wish and had his wish he prayed that he might die and actually he did die then Neither can a man at any time be fitter to make and obtain this wish then when his eyes have seen his salvation in the Sacrament At least make this an argument of your having beene worthy receivers thereof that you are in Aequilibriâ—o in an evennesse in an indifferency in an equanimity whether ye die this night or no. For howsoever S. Ambrose seem to make it a direct prayer that he might die he intends but such an equanimity such an indifferency Quasi servus nonrefugit vitae obsequium quasi sapiem lucrum mortis amplectitur sayes that Father Simeon is so good a servant as that he is content to serve his old master still in his old place in this world but yet he is so good a husband too as that hee sees what a gainer he might be if he might be made free by death If thou desire not death that is the case of very few to doe so in a rectified conscience and without distemper if thou beest not equally disposed towards death that should be the case of all and yet we are far from condemning all that are not come to that equanimity yet if thou now feare death inordinately I should feare that thine eyes have not seen thy salvation to day who can feare the darknesse of death that hath had the light of this world and of the next too who can feare death this night that hath had the Lord of life in his hand to day It is a question of
sheep God and Man Him and Them Them indefinitely all them all men I came sayes Christ I alone that they all they might have life And secondly we consider the action it self as it is wrapped up in this word veni I came for that is first that he who was alwaies omnipresent every where before did yet study a new way of comming communicating himself with man veni I came that is novo modo veni I came by a new way And then that he who fed his former stock but with Prophesies and promises that he would come feeds us now with actuall performances with his reall presence and the exhibition of himself And lastly we shall consider the end the purpose the benefit of his comming which is life And first ut daret that he might give life bring life offer life to the world which is one mercy and then ut haberent that we might have it embrace it possesse it which is another and after both a greater then both that we might have this life abundantiùs more abundantly which is first abundantiùs illis more abundantly then other men of this world and then abundantiùs ipsis more abundantly then we our selves had it in this world in the world to come for therefore he came that we might have life and might have it more abundantly First then in our first part we consider the Persons The Shepheard and the Sheepe 1 Part. Persone Him and Them God and Man of which Persons the one for his Greatnesse God the other for his littlenesse man can scarce fall under any consideration What eye can fixe it self upon East and West at once And he must see more then East and West that sees God for God spreads infinitely beyond both God alone is all not onely all that is but all that is not all that might be if he would have it be God is too large too immense and then man is too narrow too little to be considered for who can fixe his eye upon an Atome and he must see a lesse thing then an Atome that sees man for man is nothing First for the incomprehensiblenesse of God the understanding of man Deus hath a limited a determined latitude it is an intelligence able to move that Spheare which it is fixed to but could not move a greater I can comprehend naturam naturatam created nature but for that natura naturans God himselfe the understanding of man cannot comprehend I can see the Sun in a looking-glasse but the nature and the whole working of the Sun I cannot see in that glasse I can see God in the creature but the nature the essence the secret purposes of God I cannot see there There is defatigatio in intellectualibus sayes the saddest and soundest of the Hebrew Rabbins R. Moses the soule may be tired as well as the body and the understanding dazeled as well as the eye It is a good note of the same Rabbi upon those words of Solomon fill not thy selfe with hony lest thou vomit it that it is not said that if thou beest cloyd with it thou maist be distasted Pro. 25.16 disaffected towards it after but thou maist vomit it and a vomit works so as that it does not onely bring up that which was then but that also which was formerly taken Curious men busie themselves so much upon speculative subtilties as that they desert and abandon the solid foundations of Religion and that is a dangerous vomit To search so farre into the nature and unrevealed purposes of God as to forget the nature and duties of man this is a shrewd surfet though of hony and a dangerous vomit It is not needfull for thee to see the things that are in secret sayes the wife man nonindiges Ecclus. 3.23 thou needest not that knowledge Thou maist doe well enough in this world and bee Gods good servant and doe well enough in the next world and bee a glorious Saint and yet never search into Gods secrets Ps 65.1 Te decet Hymnus so the vulgar reades that place To thee O Lord belong our Hymnes our Psalmes our Prayses our cheerefull acclamations and conformably to that we translate it Praise waiteth for thee O God in Sion But if we will take it according to the Originall it must be Tibi silentium laus est Thy praise O Lord consists in silence That that man praises God best that sayes least of him of him that is of his nature of his essence of his unrevealed will and secret purposes O that men would praise the Lord is Davids provocation to us all but how O that men would praise the Lord and declare his wondrous works to the sons of men but not to goe about to declare his unrevealed Decrees or secret purposes is as good a way of praising him as the other And therefore O that men would praise the Lord so forbeare his Majesty when he is retired into himselfe in his Decrees and magnifie his Majesty as he manifests himselfe to us in the execution of those Decrees of which this in our Text is a great one that he that is infinitely more then all descended to him that is infinitely lesse then nothing which is the other person whom we are to consider in this part ille illis I to them God to us The Hebrew Doctors almost every where repeat that adage of theirs lex loquitur linguam filiorum hominum Illis God speakes mens language that is the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures descends to the capacity and understanding of man and so presents God in the faculties of the minde of man and in the lineaments of the body of man But yet say they there is never braine nor liver nor spleene nor any other inward part ascribed to God but onely the heart God is all heart and that whole heart that inexhaustible fountaine of love is directed wholly upon man And then though in the Scriptures those bodily lineaments head and feet and hands and eyes and eares be ascribed to God God is never said to have shoulders for say they shoulders are the subjects of burdens and therein the figures of patience and so God is all shoulder all patience he heares patiently he sees patiently he speakes patiently he dyes patiently And is there a patience beyond that In Christ there is he suffers patiently a quotidian Crucifying we kill the Lord of Life every day every day we make a mock of Christ Jesus and tread the blood of the Covenant under our feet every day And as though all his passion and blood and wounds and heart were spent by our former oathes and blasphemies we crucifie him dayly by our dayly sins that we might have new blood and heart and wounds to sweare by and all this hee suffers patiently and after all this ille illis to this man this God comes He to us God to man all to nothing for upon that we insist first as the first
And even God himselfe who had that omni-sufficiency in himselfe conceived a conveniency for his glory to draw a Circumference about that Center Creatures about himselfe and to shed forth lines of love upon all them and not to love himselfe alone Selfe-love in man sinks deep but yet you see the Apostle in his order casts the other sin lower that is into a worse place To be without naturall affections S. Augustine extends these naturall affections to Religious affections because they are naturall to a supernaturall man to a regenerate man who naturally loves those that are of the houshold of the faithfull that professe the same truth of Religion and not to be affected with their distresses when Religion it selfe is distressed in them is impietie He extends these affections to Morall affections the love of Eminent and Heroicall vertues in any man we ought to be affected with the fall of such men And he extends them to civill affections the love of friends not to be moved in their behalfe is argument enough that we doe not much love them For our case in the Text These men whom Jesus found weeping and wept with them were none of his kindred They were Neighbours and Christ had had a conversation and contracted a friendship in that Family V. 5. He loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus saies the Storie and he would let the world see that he loved them for so the Jewes argued that saw him weepe V. 36. Behold how he loved them without outward declarations who can conclude an inward love to assure that Iesus wept To an inordinatenesse of affections it never came to a naturall tendernesse it did and so far as to teares Laerymae and then who needs be ashamed of weeping Look away far from me for I will weep bitterly sayes Hierusalem in Esay But look upon me sayes Christ in the Lamentations Behold and see if ever there were any sorrow any teares like mine Not like his in value but in the roote as they proceeded from naturall affection they were teares of imitation and we may we must weepe teares like his teares They scourged him they crowned him they nailed him they pierced him and then blood came but he shed teares voluntarily and without violence The blood came from their ill but the teares from his owne good nature The blood was drawne the teares were given We call it a childish thing to weepe and a womanish and perchance we meane worse in that then in the childish for therein we may meane falshood to be mingled with weaknesse Christ made it an argument of his being man to weepe for though the lineaments of mans bodie eyes and eares hands and feet be ascribed to God in the Scriptures though the affections of mans mind be ascribed to him even sorrow nay Repentance it selfe is attributed to God I doe not remember that ever God is said to have wept It is for man And when God shall come to that last Act in the glorifying of Man when he promises to wipe all teares from his eyes what shall God have to doe with that eye that never wept He wept out of a nuturall tendernesse in generall and he wept now out of a particular occasion What was that Quia mortuus because Lazarus was dead We stride over many steps at once waive many such considerable circumstances as these Lazarus his friend was dead therefore he wept Lazarus the staffe and sustentatio of that family was dead he upon whom his Sisters relied was dead therefore he wept But I stop onely upon this one step Quia mortuus that he was dead Now a good man is not the worse for dying that is true and capable of a good sense because he is established in a better world but yet when he is gone out of this world he is none of us he is no longer a man The stronger opinion in the Schoole is That Christ himselfe when he lay dead in the grave was no man Though the God head never departed from the Carcasse there was no divorce of that Hypostaticall union yet because the Humane soule was departed from it he was no man Hugo de S. Victor who thinks otherwise that Christ was a man then thinkes so upon a weak ground He thinkes that because the soule is the form of man the soul is man and that therefore the soul remaining the man remaines But it is not the soule but the union of the soul that makes the man The Master of the Sentences Peter Lombard that thinks so too that Christ was then a man thinkes so upon as weak a ground He thinkes that it is enough to constitute a man that there be a soul and body though that soul and body be not united but still it is the union that makes the man And therefore when he is disunited dead he is none of us he is no man and therefore we weep how well soever he be Abraham was loath to let go his wife though the King had her A man hath a naturall lothnesse to let go his friend though God take him to him S. Augustine sayes that he knew well enough that his mother was in heaven and S. Ambrose that he knew wel enough that his master Theodosius the emperor was in heaven but because they saw not in what state they were they thought that something might be asked at Gods hands in their behalf and so out of a humane and pious officiousnesse in a devotion perchance indigested uncocted and retaining yet some crudities some irresolutions they strayed into prayers for them after they were dead Lazarus his sisters made no doubt of their brothers salvation they beleeved his soul to be in a good estate And for his body they told Christ Lord we know that he shall rise at the last day And yet they wept Here in this world we who stay lack those who are gone out of it we know they shall never come to us and when we shall go to them whether we shall know them or no we dispute They who think that it conduces to the perfection of happinesse in heaven that we should know one another think piously if they think we shall For as for the maintenance of publique peace States and Churches may think diversly in points of Religion that are not fundamentall and yet both be true and Orthodoxall Churches so for the exaltation of private devotion in points that are not fundamentall divers men may think diversly and both be equally good Christians Whether we shall know them there or no is problematicall and equall that we shall not till then is dogmaticall and certain Therefore we weep I know there are Philosophers that will not let us weep nor lament the death of any And I know that in the Scriptures there are rules and that there are instructions convayed in that example that David left mourning as soon as the childe was dead And I know that there are Authors of a
into the Manichees error to make an Evill God So farre doth the Schoole follow this as that there one Archbishop of Canterbury out of another that is Bradwardin out of Anselme pronounces it Haereticum esse dicere Malum esse aliquid To say that any thing is naturally evill is an heresie But if I cannot finde a foundation for my comfort in this subtilty of the Schoole That sin is nothing no such thing as was created or induced by God much lesse forced upon me by him in any coactive Decree yet I can raise a second step for my consolation in this that be sin what it will in the nature thereof yet my sin shall conduce and cooperate to my good So Ioseph saies to his Brethren You thought evill against me Gen. 51.20 but God meant it unto good which is not onely good to Ioseph who was no partaker in the evill but good even to them who meant nothing but evill And therefore as Origen said Etsi novum Though it be strangely said yet I say it That Gods anger is good so saies S. Augustine Audeo dicere Though it be boldly said yet I must say it Vtile esse cadere in aliquod manifestum peccatum Many sinners would never have beene saved if they had not committed some greater sin at last then before for the punishment of that sin hath brought them to a remorse of all their other sins formerly neglected If neither of these will serve my turne neither that sin is nothing in it selfe and therefore not put upon me by God nor that my sin having occasioned my repentance hath done me good and established me in a better state with God then I was in before that sin yet this shall fully rectifie me and assure my consolation that in a pious sense I may say Christ Jesus is the sinner and not I. For though in the two and twentieth Session of the Councell of Basil that proposition were condemned as scandalous in the mouth of a Bishop of Nazareth Augustinus de Roma Christus quotidie peccat That Christ does sin every day yet Gregory Nazianzen expresses the same intention in equivalent termes when he saies Quamdiu inobediens ego tamdiu quantum ad me attinet inobediens Christus As long as I sin for so much as concernes me me who am incorporated in Christ me who by my true repentance have discharged my selfe upon Christ Christ is the sinner even in the sight and justice of his Father and not I. And as this consideration That the goodnesse of God in Christ is thus spread upon all persons and all actions takes me off from my aptnesse to mis-interpret other mens actions not to be hasty to call indifferent things sins not to call hardnesse of accesse in great Persons pride not to call sociablenesse of conversation in women prostitution not to call accommodation of Civill businesses in States prevarication or dereliction and abandoning of God and toleration of Religion as it takes me off from this mis-interpreting of others so for my selfe it puts me upon an ability to chide and yet to cheare my soule with those words of David O my Soule why art thou so sad why art thou so disquieted within me Since sin is nothing no such thing as is forced upon thee by God by which thy damnation should be inevitable or thy reconciliation impossible since of what nature soever sin be in it selfe thy sins being truly repented have advanced and emproved thy state in the favour of God since thy sin being by that repentance discharged upon Christ Christ is now the sinner and not thou O my Soule why art thou so sad why art thou disquieted within me And this consideration of Gods goodnesse thus derived upon me and made mine in Christ ratifies and establishes such a holy confidence in me as that all the morall constancy in the world is but a bulrush to this bulwark and therefore we end all with that historicall but yet usefull note That that Duke of Burgundy who was sirnamed Carolus Audax Charles the Bold was Son to that Duke who was sirnamed Bonus The Good Duke A Good one produced a Bold one True confidence proceeds onely out of true Goodnesse for The wicked shall flye Prov. 28.1 when no man pursueth but the righteous are bold as a Lion This constancy and this confidence and upon this ground Holy courage in a holy feare of him Almighty God infuse and imprint in you all for his Son Christ Jesus sake And to this glorious Son of God c. SERMONS Preached upon EASTER-DAY SERMON XVIII Preached at S. Pauls in the Evening upon Easter-day 1623. ACTS 2.36 Part of the second Lesson of that Evening Prayer Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly That God hath made that same Iesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ THe first word of the Text must be the last part of the Sermon Divisio Therefore Therefore let all know it Here is something necessary to be knowne And the Meanes by which we are to know it And these will be our two parts Scientia Modus Knowledge and the way to it For Qui testatur de scientia testatur de modo scientiae is a good rule in all Laws He that will testifie any thing upon his knowledge must declare how he came by that knowledge So then what we must conclude and upon what premisses what we must resolve and what must lead us to that resolution are our two stages our two resting places And to those two our severall steps are these In the first Let all the house of Israel know c. we shall consider first The Manner of S. Peter for the Text is part of a Sermon of S. Peters in imprinting this Knowledge in his Auditory which is first in that Compellation of love and honour Domus Israel The house of Israel But yet when hee hath raised them to a sense of their dignity in that attribute he doth not pamper them with an over-value of them he lets them know their worst as well as their best Though you be the house of Israel yet it is you that have crucified Christ Jesus That Iesus whom ye have crucified And from this his Manner of preparing them we shall passe to the Matter that he proposes to them When he had remembred them what God had done for them You are the house of Israel and what they had done against God You have crucified that Iesus He imparts a blessed message to them all Let all know it Let them know it and know it assuredly He exhibits it to their reason to their naturall understanding And what The greatest mystery the entire mystery of our salvation That that Iesus is both Lord and Christ But he is made so Made so by God Made both Made Christ that is anointed embalmed preserved from corruption even in the grave And made Lord by his triumph and by being made Head of the Church in the
from sin Inter abjectos abjectissimus peccator Grego No man falls lower then he that falls into a course of sin Sin is a fall It is not onely a deviation a turning out of the way upon the right or the left hand but it is a sinking a falling In the other case of going out of the way a man may stand upon the way and inquire and then proceed in the way if he be right or to the way if he be wrong But when he is fallen and lies still he proceeds no farther inquires no farther To be too apt to conceive scruples in matters of religion stops and retards a man in the way to mistake some points in the truth of religion puts a man for that time in a wrong way But to fall into a course of sin this makes him unsensible of any end that he hath to goe to of any way that he hath to goe by God hath not removed man not with-drawne man from this Earth he hath not given him the Aire to flie in as to Birds nor Spheares to move in as to Sun and Moone he hath left him upon the Earth and not onely to tread upon it as in contempt or in meere Dominion but to walk upon it in the discharge of the duties of his calling and so to be conversant with the Earth is not a falling But as when man was nothing but earth nothing but a body he lay flat upon the earth his mouth kissed the earth his hands embraced the earth his eyes respected the earth And then God breathed the breath of life into him and that raised him so farre from the earth as that onely one part of his body the soles of his feet touches it And yet man so raised by God by sin fell lower to the earth againe then before from the face of the earth to the womb to the bowels to the grave So God finding the whole man as low as he found Adams body then fallen in Originall sin yet erects us by a new breath of life in the Sacrament of Baptisme and yet we fall lower then before we were raised from Originall into Actuall into Habituall sins So low as that we think not that we need know not that there is a resurrection and that is the wonderfull that is the fearfull fall Though those words Quomodo cecidisti de Coelo Lucifer Esay 14.12 How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer the Son of the morning be ordinarily applied to the fall of the Angels yet it is evident that they are literally spoken of the fall of a man It deserves wonder more then pity that man whom God had raised to so Noble a heighth in him should fall so low from him Man was borne to love he was made in the love of God but then man falls in love when he growes in love with the creature he falls in love As we are bid to honour the Physitian and to use the Physitian but yet it is said in the same Chapter Ecclus. 38.1 V. 15. He that sinneth before his Maker let him fall into the hands of the Physitian It is a blessing to use him it is a curse to rely upon him so it is a blessing to glorifie God in the right use of his creatures but to grow in love with them is a fall For we love nothing that is so good as our selves Beauty Riches Honour is not so good as man Man capable of grace here of glory hereafter Nay as those things which we love in their nature are worse then we which love them so in our loving them we endeavour to make them worse then they in their own nature are by over-loving the beauty of the body we corrupt the soule by overloving honour and riches we deflect and detort these things which are not in their nature ill to ill uses and make them serve our ill purposes Man falls as a fall of waters that throwes downe and corrupts all that it embraces Nay beloved when a man hath used those wings which God hath given him and raised himselfe to some heighth in religious knowledge and religious practise Acts 29.9 as Eutichus out of a desire to hear Paul preach was got up into a Chamber and up into a window of that Chamber and yet falling asleep fell downe dead so we may fall into a security of our present state into a pride of our knowledge or of our purity and so fall lower then they who never came to our heighth So much need have we of a resurrection So sin is a fall and every man is affraid of falling even from his temporall station Mâ—rs Clem. Alex. more affraid of falling then of not beeing raised And Qui peccat quatenus peccat fit seipso deterior In every sin a man falls from that degree which himselfe had before In every sin he is dishonoured he is not so good a man as he was impoverished he hath not so great a portion of grace as hee had Infatuated hee hath not so much of the true wisedome of the feare of God as he had disarmed he hath not that interest and confidence in the love of God that he had and deformed he hath not so lively a representation of the Image of God as before In every sin we become prodigals but in the habit of sin we become bankrupts affraid to come to an account A fall is a fearfull thing that needs a raising a help but sin is a death and that needs a resurrection and a resurrection is as great a work as the very Creation it selfe It is death in semine in the roote it produces it brings forth death It is death in arbore in the body in it selfe death is a divorce and so is sin and it is death in fructu in the fruit thereof sin plants spirituall death and this death produces more sin Obduration Impenitence and the like Be pleased to returne and cast one halfe thought upon each of these Sin is the roote of death Death by sin entred and death passed upon all men for all men have sinned Rom. 5.12 It is death because we shall dye for it But it is death in it selfe We are dead already dead in it Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead was spoken to a whole Church Apoc. 3.1 It is not evidence enough to prove that thou art alive to say I saw thee at a Sermon that spirit that knowes thy spirit he that knowes whether thou wert moved by a Sermon melted by a Sermon mended by a Sermon he knows whether thou be alive or no. That which had wont to be said That dead men walked in Churches is too true Men walk out a Sermon or walk out after a Sermon as ill as they walked in they have a name that they live Iohn 5.25 and are dead But the houre is come and now is when the dead shall heare the voyce of the Son of God That is at
for they shall have a composition still and every compounded thing may perish but they shal be so assured and with such a preservation as they shall alwaies know they shall never dye S. Augustine saies well Aug. Assit motio absit fatigatio assit potestas vescendi absit necessitas esuriendi They have in their nature a mortality and yet be immortall a possibility and an impossibility of dying with those two divers relations one to nature the other to preservation will consist together So in this soule that hath this first Resurrection from sin by grace a conscience of her owne infirmity that she may relapse and yet a testimony of the powerfulnesse of Gods Spirit that easily she shall not relapse may consist well together But the last seale of this holy confidence is reserved for that which is the third acceptation of this first Resurrection not from persecutions in this world nor from sin in this world but from all possibility of falling back into sin in the world to come and to this have divers Expositors referred these words this first resurrection Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection Now a Resurrection of the soule seemes an improper an impertinent an improbable 3 Part. an impossible forme of speech for Resurrection implies death and the soule does not dye in her passage to Heaven And therefore Damascen makes account De ortho sid l. 4. c. ult that he hath sufficiently proved the Resurrection of the body which seems so incredible if he could prove any Resurrection if there be any Resurrection at all saies he it must be of the body for the soule cannot dye therefore not rise Yet have not those Fathers nor those Expositors who have in this text acknowledged a Resurrection of the soule mistaken nor miscalled the matter Take Damascens owne definition of Resurrection Resurrectio est ejus quod cecidit secunda surrectio A Resurrection is a second rising to that state from which any thing is formerly fallen Now though by death the soule do not fall into any such state as that it can complaine for what can that lack which God fils yet by death the soule fals from that for which it was infused and poured into man at first that is to be the forme of that body the King of that Kingdome and therefore when in the generall Resurrection the soule returnes to that state for which it was created and to which it hath had an affection and a desire even in the fulnesse of the Joyes of Heaven then when the soule returnes to her office to make up the man because the whole man hath therefore the soule hath a Resurrection not from death but from a deprivation of her former state that state which she was made for and is ever enclined to But that is the last Resurrection and so the soule hath part even in that last Resurrection But we are in hand with the first Resurrection of the soule and that is when that soule which was at first breath'd from God and hath long suffered a banishment a close imprisonment in this body returnes to God againe The returning of the soule to him from whom it proceeded at first is a Resurrection of the soule Here then especially I feele the straitnesse of time two considerations open themselves together of such a largenesse as all the time from Moses his In principio when time began to the Angels Affidavit in this booke That shall say and sweare that time shall be no more were too narrow to contemplate these two Hemispheares of Man this Evening and Morning of Mans everlasting day The miseries of man in this banishment in this emprisonment in this grave of the soule the body And the glory and exaltation of that soule in her Resurrection to Heaven That soule which being borne free is made a slave to this body by comming to it It must act but what this body will give it leave to act according to the Organs which this body affords it and if the body be lame in any limme the soule must be lame in her operation in that limme too It must doe but what the body will have it doe and then it must suffer whatsoever that body puts it to or whatsoever any others will put that body to If the body oppresse it selfe with Melancholy the soule must be sad and if other men oppresse the body with injury the soule must be sad too Consider it is too immense a thing to consider it reflect but one thought but upon this one thing in the soule here and hereafter In her grave the body and in her Resurrection in Heaven That is the knowledge of the soule Here saies S. Augustine when the soule considers the things of this world Non veritate certior sed consuetudine securior She rests upon such things as she is not sure are true but such as she sees are ordinarily received and accepted for truths so that the end of her knowledge is not Truth but opinion and the way not Inquisition but ease But saies he when she proceeds in this life to search into heavenly things Verberatur luce veritatis The beames of that light are too strong for her and they sink her and cast her downe Et ad familiaritatem tenebrarum suarum non electione sed fatigatione convertitur and so she returnes to her owne darknesse because she is most familiar and best acquainted with it Non electione not because she loves ignorance but because she is weary of the trouble of seeking out the truth and so swallowes even any Religion to escape the paine of debating and disputing and in this lazinesse she sleeps out her lease her terme of life in this death in this grave in this body But then in her Resurrection her measure is enlarged and filled at once There she reads without spelling and knowes without thinking and concludes without arguing she is at the end of her race without running In her triumph without fighting In her Haven without sayling A free-man without any prentiship at full yeares without any wardship and a Doctor without any proceeding She knowes truly and easily and immediately and entirely and everlastingly Nothing left out at first nothing worne out at last that conduces to her happinesse What a death is this life what a resurrection is this death For though this world be a sea yet which is most strange our Harbour is larger then the sea Heaven infinitely larger then this world For though that be not true which Origen is said to say That at last all shall be saved nor that evident which Cyril of Alexandria saies That without doubt the number of them that are saved is far greater then of them that perish yet surely the number of them with whom we shall have communion in Heaven is greater then ever lived at once upon the face of the earth And of those who lived in our time how few did we
of particular sins Now after all this there is in naturall death a third fall casus in dispersionem In dispersionem the man is fallen in separationem into a divorce of body and soule the body is fallen in dissolutionem to putrifaction and dissolution in dust and then this dust is fallen in dispersionem into a dispersion and scattering over the earth as God threatens Comminuam in pulverem I will break the wicked as small as dust and scatter them with the winde Psal 18. For after such a scattering no power but of God onely can recollect those grains of dust and re-compact them into a body and re-inanimate them into a man And such a state such a dispersion doth the heart and soule of an habituall sinner undergoe For Pro. 17.24 as the eyes of a foole are in the corners of the earth so is the heart and soule of a sinner The wanton and licentious man sighs out his soule weeps out his soule sweares out his soule in every place where his lust or his custome or the glory of victory in overcomming and deluding puts him upon such solicitations In the corrupt taker his soul goes out that it may leave him unsensible of his sin and not trouble him in his corrupt bargaine and in a corrupt giver ambitious of preferment his soule goes out with his money which he loves well but not so well as his preferment This yeare his soule and his money goes out upon one office and next yeare more soul and more money upon another He knowes how his money will come in againe for they will bring it that have need of his corruptnesse in his offices But where will this man finde his soule thus scattered upon every woman corruptly won upon every office corruptly usurped upon every quillet corruptly bought upon every fee corruptly taken Thus it is when a soule is scattered upon the daily practise of any one predominant and habituall sin but when it is indifferently scattered upon all how much more is it so In him that swallowes sins in the world as he would doe meats at a feast passes through every dish and never askes Physitian the nature the quality the danger the offence of any dish That baits at every sin that rises and poures himselfe into every sinfull mold he meets That knowes not when he began to spend his soule nor where nor upon what sin he laid it out no nor whether he have whether ever he had any soule or no but hath lost his soule so long agoe in rusty and in incoherent sins not sins that produced one another as in Davids case and yet that is a fearfull state that concatenation of sins that pedegree of sins but in sins which he embraces meerely out of an easinesse to sin and not out of a love no nor out of a tentation to that sin in particular that in these incoherent sins hath so scattered his soule as that he hath not soule enough left to seek out the rest And therefore David makes it the Title of the whole Psalme Domine ne disperdas O Lord doe not scatter us Psal 58. And he begins to expresse his sense of Gods Judgements in the next Psalme so O Lord thou hast cast us out thou hast scattered us turn again unto us for even from this aversion there may be conversion and from this last and lowest fall a resurrection But how In the generall resurrection upon naturall death God shall work upon this dispersion of our scattered dust as in the first fall which is the Divorce by way of Re-union and in the second which is Putrifaction by way of Re-efformation so in this third which is Dispersion by way of Re-collection where mans buried flesh hath brought forth grasse and that grasse fed beasts and those beasts fed men and those men fed other men God that knowes in which Boxe of his Cabinet all this seed Pearle lies in what corner of the world every atome every graine of every mans dust sleeps shall recollect that dust and then recompact that body and then re-inanimate that man and that is the accomplishment of all In this resurrection from this Dilpersion and scattering in sin the way is by Recollection too That this sinner recollect himselfe and his own history his own annalls his own journalls and call to minde where he lost his way and with what tendernesse of conscience and holy startling he entred into some sins at first in which he is seared up now and whereas his triumph should have been in a victory over the flesh he is come to a triumph in his victory over the spirit of God and glories in having overcome the Holy Ghost and brought his conscience to an unsensiblenesse of sin If hee can recollect himselfe thus and cast up his account so If he can say to God Lord we have sold our selves for nothing he shall heare God say to him as he does there in the Prophet You have sold your selves for nothing Esay 52.3 and you shall be redeemed without money But how is this recollecting wrought God hath intimated the way Ezek. 37. in that vision to the Prophet Ezekiel He brings the Prophet into a field of dead bones and dry bones sicca vehementer as it is said there as dry as this dust which we speak of And he asks him fili hominis thou that art but the son of man and must judge humanely Putasne vivent ossa ista Dost thou think that these bones can live The Prophet answers Domine tu nosti thou Lord who knowest whose names are written in the Book of Life and whose are not whose bones are wrapped up in the Decree of thy Election and whose are not knowest whether these bones can live or no for but in the efficacy and power of that Decree they cannot Yes they shall sayes God Almighty and they shall live by this meanes Dices eis Thou shalt say unto them O ye dry bones heare the word of the Lord As dry as desperate as irremediable as they are in themselves God shall send his servants unto them and they shall heare them And as it is added in that place Prophetante me factus sonitus commotio As I Prophesied there was a noyse and a shaking As whilst Peter spake The Holy Ghost fell upon all them that heard the word So whilst the Messengers of God speak in the presence of such sinners there shall be a noyse and a commotion a horrour of their former sins a wonder how they could provoke so patient and so powerfull a God a sinking down under the waight of Gods Judgements a flying up to the apprehension of his mercies and this noyse and commotion in their soules shall be setled with that Gospell in that Prophet Dabo super vos nervos I will lay sinewes upon you and will bring up flesh upon you and cover you with skin and put breath into you and you shall live and ye
the consideration of that place where our soules should be for ever and we could consider God then but then wee could not see God in his Essence As it may be fairely argued that Christ suffered not the very torments of very hell because it is essentiall to the torments of hell to be eternall They were not torments of hell if they received an end So is it fairely argued too That neither Adam in his extasie in Paradise nor Moses in his conversation in the Mount nor the other Apostles in the Transfiguration of Christ nor S. Paul in his rapture to the third heavens saw the Essence of God because he that is admitted to that sight of God can never look off nor lose that sight againe Only in heaven shall God proceed to this patefaction this manifestation this revelation of himself And that by the light of glory The light of glory is such a light as that our School-men dare not say confidently Lux Cloris That every beam of it is not all of it When some of them say That some soules see some things in God and others others because all have not the same measure of the light of glory the rest cry down that opinion and say that as the Essence of God is indivisible and he that sees any of it sees all of it so is the light of glory communicated intirely to every blessed soul God made light first and three dayes after that light became a Sun a more glorious Light God gave me the light of Nature when I quickned in my mothers wombe by receiving a reasonable soule and God gave me the light of faith when I quickned in my second mothers womb the Church by receiving my baptisme but in my third day when my mortality shall put on immortality he shall give me the light of glory by which I shall see himself To this light of glory the light of honour is but a glow-worm and majesty it self but a twilight The Cherubims and Seraphims are but Candles and that Gospel it self which the Apostle calls the glorious Gospel but a Star of the least magnitude And if I cannot tell what to call this light by which I shall see it what shall I call that which I shall see by it The Essence of God himself and yet there is something else then this sight of God intended in that which remaines I shall not only see God face to face but I shall know him which as you have seen all the way is above sight and know him even as also I am knowne In this Consideration God alone is all in all the former there was a place Deus omnia solus and a meanes and a light here for this perfect knowledge of God God is all those Then sales the Apostle God shall be all in all Hic agit omnia in omnibus sayes S. Hierome 1 Cor. 15.28 Here God does all in all but here he does all by Instruments even in the infusing of faith he works by the Ministery of the Gospel But there he shall be all in all doe all in all immediately by himself for Christ shall deliver up the Kingdome to God even the Father Ver. 24. His Kingdome is the administration of his Church by his Ordinances in the Church At the resurrection there shall be an end of that Kingdome no more Church no more working upon men by preaching but God himself shall be all in all Ministri quasi larvae Dei saies Luther It may be somewhat too familiarly too vulgarly said but usefully The ministery of the Gospell is but as Gods Vizar for by such a liberty the Apostle here calls it aenigma a riddle or as Luther sayes too Gods picture but in the Resurrection God shall put of that Vizar and turne away that picture and shew his own face Therefore is it said That in heaven there is no Temple but God himselfe is the Temple God is Service Apoc. 21.22 August and Musique and Psalme and Sermon and Sacrament and all Erit vita de verbo sine verbo We shall live upon the word and heare never a word live upon him who being the word was made flesh the eternall Son of God Hîc nonest omnia in omnibus Hieron sed pars in singulis Here God is not all in all where he is at all in any man that man is well In Solomone sapientia saies that Father It was well with Solomon because God was wisdome with him and patience in Iob and faith in Peter and zeale in Paul but there was something in all these which God was not But in heaven he shall be so all in all Idem Vt singuli sanctorum omnes virtutes habeant that every soule shall have every perfection in it self and the perfection of these perfections shall be that their sight shall be face to face and their knowledge as they are known Since S. Augustine calls it a debt a double debt a debt because she asked it Facie ad faciem a debt because he promised it to give even a woman Paulina satisfaction in that high point and mystery how we should see God face to face in heaven it cannot be unfit in this congregation to aske and answer some short questions concerning that Is it alwaies a declaration of favour when God shewes his face No. I will set my face against that soule Levit. 17.10 that eateth blood and cut him off But when there is light joyned with it it is a declaration of favour This was the blessing that God taught Moses for Aaron to blesse the people with The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious to thee Numb 6.25 And there we shall see him face to face by the light of his countenance which is the light of glory What shall we see by seeing him so face to face not to inlarge our selves into Gregories wild speculation Qui videt videntem omnia oninia videt because we shall see him that sees all things we shall see all things in him for then we should see the thoughts of men rest we in the testimony of a safer witnesse a Councell Senon In speculo Divinit at is quicquid eorum intersit illucescet In that glasse we shall see whatsoever we can be the better for seeing First all things that they beleeved here they shall see there and therefore Discamus in terris Hicron quorum scicntia nobiscum perseveret in Caelis let us meditate upon no other things on earth then we would be glad to think on in heaven and this consideration would put many frivolous and many fond thoughts out of our minde if men and women would love another but so as that love might last in heaven This then we shall get concerning our selves by seeing God face to face but what concerning God nothing but the sight of the humanity of Christ which only is visible to the eye So Theodoret so some
Beatae vitae dulcedinem nongustaverunt nec fastidiverunt acceptam The Angels had not already fed upon Manna and then were weary of that Non ex eo quod acceperant ceciderunt sed ex eo quod si subdi Deo voluissent accepissent They fell not from that which they were come to but from that to which if they had applyed themselves to God they should have come So that then they were not created in a state of blessednesse but in a way to it and there was in them Pinguedo spiritus as S. Ierome sayes elegantly they were meere spirits In Oâ—â—am but if we compare them with God there was a certain fleshlinesse sayes he a certain fatnesse a slipprinesse of falling into a worse state for any thing that was in their nature and the nature of those that fell and those that stood is all one neither is their nature that do stand changed by the benefit of their confirmation Hence is it that the Fathers are both so evident and so concurrent in that assertion That an Angel is a spirit Gratiâ non Naturà immortalitatem suscipiens Damasc Just Mart. that is Immortall but Immortall by additionall Grace and not by Nature Take it in the eldest Immortalitas eorum ex aliena voluntate pendet they have an Immortality but dependant upon the will of another And agreeably to theÌ„ another Cyrill Alex. Quia ortum habuerunt occidere possunt Because the Angels were produced of nothing they may be reduced to nothing for Solus Deus naturaliter immortalis sayes that Father Only God is immortall in himself and by nature And bring it from the elder to later Fathers still we shall meet that which was said before by them and S. Bernard sayes after Non creati sed facti immortales they were not created at first but made immortall after Which S. Hierome carries even to a spirituall death the death of sin Licèt non peccent peccati tamen sunt capaces sayes he though Angels do not sin if they were left to themselves they might fin As S. Ambrose expresses the same thing elegantly Non in praejudicium trahas you must not draw that into consequence nor conclude so Non moritur Gabriel Vriel Raphael non moritur That the Angel Gabriel doth not die Raphael Vriel doth not die therefore an Angel and considered in his own nature cannot die for such an impossibility of dying as in the soul of man all agree to be in Angels for We shall be like the Angels which cannot die sayes Christ But how this Immortality and Infallibility accrues to them and works in them is still under our disquisition since In these his servants God puts no trust but charges these Angels with folly We have in the Ecclesiasticall Story An. Christi 512. a story of Alamandurus a King of the Saracens who having been converted and baptized and catechized in the true faith was after attempted by some Bishops in his Court of the Eutychian heresie The Eutychian heresie was That the divine nature in Christ the Godhead suffered aswell as the Humane and the good King providing a Packet of Intelligence to be delivered him or something to be whispered in his eare in the presence of those hereticall Bishops upon reading thereof he told them that he had received news That Michael the Archangell was dead And when those Bishops rejected that with a scorn Alas Sir Gabriel cannot die Angels cannot die The King replyed if an Angel cannot die if an Angel be impassible why would you make me beleeve that the God-head it self the Divine Nature suffered in Christ So we see that the piety of a religious King was able to maintain his holy station even against the reall practices of hereticall Court Bishops A pious and religious King should not easily be suspected of that levity to hearken to impious and hereticall motions though there were good evidence that that were practised upon him much lesse when the feares in himself and in those which should practise upon him are but imaginary and proceed as by Gods grace they doe rather out of zeale that it may not be so then out of evidence that it is so Zeale distempered and God knowes zeale is not alwaies well tempered will think an Alamandurus a constant and impregnable King easily shaked and zeale distempered will think an Athanasius a Nazianzen an Eutychian Bishop Woe when Gods sword is in the Devils hand zeale is Gods sword uncharitablenesse is the Devils When God gave a flaming sword to the Cherubims in Paradise they make good that place but that sword killed no body wounded no body God gives good men zeale zeale to make good their station zeale to conserve the integrity and the sincerity of Religion but this zeale should not wound not defame any man Faith comes by hearing by hearing Sermons and God sends us many of them Charity goes out by hearing by hearing rumours and the Devill sends many of them God continue our faith and restore our charity That Angels are impassible that they cannot sin that they cannot die all say but that if they were left to themselves without the support of additionall grace they might doe both not only the Ancient Fathers but both the first Schoole from Damascen and the middle Schoole from Lombard and the later Schoole if we except only those Authors that have writ since the Lateran Councell I meane the later Lateran Councell in our Fathers times under Leo the tenth in which Councell it was first determined that the soul of man and consequently Angels was immortall by nature doe waigh down the scale on that side That God does not so trust in those servants nor so discharge them of all weaknesse but that they might fall but for this support of grace which is their Confirmation Now how is this conferd upon them In Christ certainly In Christ the Father reconciled to himself all things in earth In Christo Coloss 1.12 and in heaven How Not as a Redeemer for those that fell and thereby needed a redemption never were never shall be redeemed but as a Mediator an Intercessor in their behalf that those that doe stand may stand for ever For therefore sayes S. Augustine doe the Angels refuse sacrifice at our hands Quia ipsis nohiscum sacrificium norunt Because they know that there is one sacrifice offered to God for them and for us too that is Christ Jesus a propitiation for them and us For us by way of redemption for them by way of Mediation and Intercession In such a sense as S. Augustine confesses that God had forgiven him the sins he never did because but for his grace he should have done them the Angels are well said to have received a reconciliation in Christ because but for his mediation they might have fallen into Gods displeasure Upon those words that God shewed Adam his judgements Quae judicia saies that Bishop Catharinus Eechâ— 27.12 what
never spoken of the Resurrection to them they were likely to have heard of it from them to whom Christ had spoken of it It was Cleophas his question to Christ though he knew him not then to be so when they went together to Emaus Art thou onely a stranger in Ierusalem that is hast thou been at Jerusalem and is this Luke 24.16 The death of Christ strange to thee So may we say to any that professes Christianity Art thou in the Christian Church and is this The Resurrection of Christ strange to thee Are there any amongst us that thrust to Fore-noones and After-noones Sermons that pant after high and un-understandable Doctrines of the secret purposes of God and know not this the fundamentall points of Doctrine Even these womens ignorance though they were in the number of the Disciples of Christ makes us affraid that some such there may be and therefore blessed be they that have set on foote that blessed way of Catechizing that after great professions we may not be ignorant of small things These things these women might have learnt of others who were to instruct them Luke 24. â—â— But for their better assurance the Angell tells them here that Christ himself had told them of this before Remember sayes he how Christ spoke to you whilst he was with you in Galile We observe that Christ spoke to his Disciples of his Resurrection five times in the Gospell Now these women could not be present at any of the five but one which was the third Mat. 17.22 And before that it is evident that they had applied themselves to Christ and ministred unto him The Angell then remembers them what Christ said to them there Luke 24.6 It was this The Sonne of man must be delivered into the hands of sinfull men and Crucified and the third day rise againe And they remembred his words sayes the Text there Then they remembred them when they heard of them again but not till then Which gives me just occasion to note first the perverse tendernesse and the supercilious and fastidious delicacy of those men that can abide no repetitions nor indure to heare any thing which they have heard before when as even these things which Christ himself had preached to these women in Galile had been lost if this Angel had not preached them over again to them at Jerusalem Remember how he spake to you sayes he to them And why shouldst thou be loath to heare those things which thou hast heard before when till thou heardst them again thou didst not know that is not consider that ever thou hadst heard them So have we here also just occasion to note their impertinent curiosity who though the sense be never so well observed call every thing a salfification if the place be not rightly cyphard or the word exactly cited and magnifie one another for great Text men though they understand no Text because they cite Book and Chapter and Verse and Words aright whereas in this place the Angel referres the women to Christs words and they remember that Christ spake those words and yet if we compare the places Mat. 17.22 Luke 24.6 that where Christ speaks the words and that where the Angell repeats them though the sense be intirely the same yet the words are not altogether so Thus the Angell erects them in the consternation Remember what was promised that in three dayes he would rise The third day is come and he is risen as he said and that your senses may be exercised as well as your faith Come and see the place where the Lord lay Even the Angell calls Christ Lord Dominus Angeli Heb. 1.6 and his Lord for the Lord and the Angell calls him so is Lord of all of men and Angels When God brings his Soninto the world sayes the Apostle he sayes let all the Angels of God worship him And when God caries his Son out of the world by the way of the Crosse they have just cause to worship him too Colâ—â—â— 1.20 for By the blood of his Crosse are all things reconciled to God both things in earth and things in heaven Men and Angels Therefore did an Angel minister to Christ before he was Luke 1. Mat. 1. Luke 2. Mat. 4. Luke 22. Acts 1.10 in the Annunciation to his blessed Mother that he should be And an Angel to his imaginary Father Ioseph before he was born And a Quire of Angels to the Shepheards at his birth An Angel after his tentation And in his Agony and Bloody-sweat more Angels Angels at his last step at his Ascension and here at his Resurrection Angels minister unto him The Angels of heaven acknowledged Christ to be their Lord. In the beginning some of the Angels would be Similes Altissimo like to the most High But what a transcendent what a super-diabolicall what a prae-Luciferian pride is his that will be supra Altissimum 2 Thes 2.4 superiour to God That not only exalteth himselfe above all that is called God Kings are called Gods and this Arch-Monarch exalts himselfe above all Kings but above God literally and in that wherein God hath especially manifested himself to be God to us that is in prescribing us a Law how he will be obeyed for in dispensing with this Law and adding to and withdrawing from this law he exalts himself above God as our Law-giver And as it is also said there He exalteth himself and opposeth himselfe against God There is no trusting of such neighbours as are got above us in power This man of sin hath made himselfe superiour to God and then an enemy to God for God is Truth and he opposes him in that for he is heresie and falshood and God is Love and he opposes him in that for he is envy and hatred and malice and sedition and invasion and rebellion The Angell confesses Christ to be The Lord his Lord Dominus mortuus and he confesses him to be so then when he lay dead in the grave Come seethe place where the Lord lay A West Indian King having beene well wrought upon for his Conversion to the Christian Religion and having digested the former Articles when he came to that He was crucified dead and buried had no longer patience but said If your God be dead and buried leave me to my old god the Sunne for the Sunne will not dye But if he would have proceeded to the Article of the Resurrection hee should have seene that even then when hee lay dead hee was GOD still Then when hee was no Man hee was GOD still Nay then when hee was no man hee was God and Man in this true sense That though the body and soule were divorced from one another and that during that divorce he were no man for it is the union of body and soule that makes a man yet the Godhead was not divided from either of these constitutive parts of man body or soule Psal 22.7 1
was said Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee and how many women have no desire to their husbands how many over-rule them Hunger and thirst and wearinesse and sicknesse are denounced upon all and yet if you ask me Quis homo What is that man that hungers and thirsts not that labours not that sickens not I can tell you of many that never felt any of these but contract the question to that one of death Quis homo What man is he that shall not taste death And I know none Whether we consider the Summer Solstice when the day is sixteen houres and the night but eight or the Winter Solstice when the night is sixteen houres and the day but eight still all is but twenty foure houres and still the evening and morning make but a day The Patriarchs in the old Testament had their Summer day long lives we are in the Winter short lived but Quis homo Which of them or us come not to our night in death If we consider violent deaths casuall deaths it is almost a scornfull thing to see with what wantonnesse and sportfulnesse death playes with us We have seen a man Canon proofe in the time of War and slain with his own Pistoll in the time of peace We have seen a man recovered after his drowning and live to hang himselfe But for that one kinde of death which is generall though nothing be in truth more against nature then dissolution and corruption which is death we are come to call that death naturall death then which indeed nothing is more unnaturall The generality makes it naturall Moses sayes that Mans age is seventy Psal 90.10 and eighty is labour and pain and yet himselfe was more then eighty and in a good state and habitude when he said so No length no strength enables us to answer this Quis homo What man c. Take a flat Map a Globe in plano and here is East and there is West as far asunder as two points can be put but reduce this flat Map to roundnesse which is the true form and then East and West touch one another and are all one So consider mans life aright to be a Circle Pulvis es in pulverem reverâ—eris Dust thou art and to dust thou must return Nudus egressus Job 1. Nudus revertar Naked I came and naked I must go In this the circle the two points meet the womb and the grave are but one point they make but one station there is but a step from that to this This brought in that custome amongst the Greek Emperours that ever at the day of their Coronation they were presented with severall sorts of Marble that they might then bespeak their Tombe And this brought in that Custome into the Primitive Church that they called the Martyrs dayes wherein they suffered Natalitia Martyrum their birth dayes birth and death is all one Their death was a birth to them into another life into the glory of God It ended one Circle and created another for immortality and eternity is a Circle too not a Circle where two points meet but a Circle made at once This life is a Circle made with a Compasse that passes from point to point That life is a Circle stamped with a print an endlesse and perfect Circle as soone as it begins Of this Circle the Mathematician is our great and good God The other Circle we make up our selves we bring the Cradle and Grave together by a course of nature Every man does Mi Gheber sayes the Originall It is not Ishe which is the first name of man in the Scriptures and signifies nothing but a sound a voyce a word a Musicall ayre dyes and evaporates what wonder if man that is but Ishe a sound dye too It is not Adam which is another name of man and signifies nothing but red earth Let it be earth red with blood with that murder which we have done upon our selves let it be earth red with blushing so the word is used in the Originall with a conscience of our own infirmity what wonder if man that is but Adam guilty of this self-murder in himself guilty of this in-borne frailty in himself dye too It is not Enos which is also a third name of man and signifies nothing but a wretched and miserable creature what wonder if man that is but earth that is a burden to his Neighbours to his friends to his kindred to himselfe to whom all others and to whom himself desires death what wonder if he dye But this question is framed upon none of these names Not Ishe not Adam not Enos but it is Mi Gheber Quis vir which is the word alwayes signifying a man accomplished in all excellencies a man accompanied with all advantages fame and good opinion justly conceived keepes him from being Ishe a meere sound standing onely upon popular acclamation Innocency and integrity keepes him from being Adam red earth from bleeding or blushing at any thing hee hath done That holy and Religious Art of Arts which S. Paul professed That he knew how to want and how to abound keepes him from being Enos miserable or wretched in any fortune Hee is Gheber a great Man and a good Man a happy Man and a holy Man and yet Mi Gheber Quis homo this man must see death And therefore we will carry this question a little higher from Quis homo to Quis deorum Which of the gods have not seene death Aske it of those who are Gods by participation of Gods power of those of whom God saies Ego dixi dii est is and God answers for them and of them and to them You shall dye like men Aske it of those gods who are gods by imputation whom Creatures have created whom Men have made gods the gods of the Heathen and do we not know where all these gods dyed Sometimes divers places dispute who hath their tombes but do not they deny their godhead in confessing their tombes doe they not all answer that they cannot answer this text Mi Gheber Quis homo What man Quis deorum What god of mans making hath not seen death As Iustin martyr asks that question Why should I pray to Apollo or Esculapius for health Qui apud Chironem medicinam didicerunt when I know who taught them all that they knew so why should I looke for Immortality from such or such a god whose grave I finde for a witnesse that he himselfe is dead Nay carry this question higher then so from this Quis homo to quid homo what is there in the nature and essence of Man free from death The whole man is not for the dissolution of body and soule is death The body is not I shall as soone finde an immortall Rose an eternall Flower as an immortall body And for the Immortality of the Soule It is safelier said to be immortall by preservation then immortall by nature That God
Mission There fals lastly into this harmonious consort Dismissio occasioned by this Mission of the Holy Ghost a Dismission A dismissing out of this world Not onely in Simeons Nunc dimittis To be content that we might but in S. Pauls Cupio dissolvi To have a desire that we might be dissolved and be with Christ But whether the incumbrances of this World Psal 120.5 extort from thee Davids groane Heu mihi Woe is me that I so journe so long here Or a slipperinesse contracted by former habits of sin make every thing a tentation to thee so that thou canst not performe Iobs covenant with thine eyes of not looking upon a maid nor stop at Christs period which is Looke but doe not lust but that every thing is a tentation to thee and to be out of this haile-shot this batrery of tentations thou wouldst faine come to a dismission to a dissolution to a transmigration Or whether a vehement desire of the fruition of the presence and face of God in Heaven constitute this longing in thee yet all these reasons arise in thy selfe and determine in thy selfe and are referred but to thine owne ease and to thine owne happinesse and not primarily to the glory of God and therefore since the Holy Ghost staid for his Mission stay thou for thy Dismission too Gather up these scattered eares and binde up this loose sheafe Recollect these pieces of this branch The Holy Ghost was sent by the Son but the Son in his exemplar humility ascribes all to the Father The Holy Ghost had absolute power to come at his pleasure but he staid the order of the Decree and Gods leasure for his Mission Doe thou so too for thy Permission exercise not all thy liberty And for thy Commission execute not all thy authority And for thy Remission presume not upon thy pardon too soon And for thy Manumission hope not for an exemption from tentations till death And for thy Dismission practice not nay wish not thy death only in respect of thine own ease no nor only in respect of thine own salvation In this act of the Holy Ghost That he staid his Mission we have one instruction that we relie not upon our selves but accommodate our selves to the disposition of others And then another in the next That the Father should send him in the Sons name The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name The Holy Ghost comes not so in anothers name as that he hath not a full interest In nomine meo in all the names of Power and of Wisdome and of Essence it self that are attributed to God For not to extend to the particular attributes the Radicall name the name of Essence That name The name Iehovah is given to the Holy Ghost Iehovah sayes to Esay Go and tell this people this and this And then S. Paul making use of those words in the Acts sayes Well said the Holy Ghost by the Prophet Esay So that Esayes Iehovah Esay 6.9 Acts 28.5 is S. Pauls Holy Ghost And yet the Holy Ghost being in possession of the highest names and of the highest power implyed in those names comes in the name of another How much more then may the powerfullest men upon earth the greatest Magistrates the greatest Monarchs who though they be by God himself called gods are but representative gods but metaphoricall gods and God knows sometimes but ungodly gods confesse that they are sent in anothers name inanimated with anothers power and least of all their own or made that that they are for themselves How much more are we we considered in nature and not in office men and not Magistrates Wormes and not men Serpents and not Wormes For we are as S. Chrysostome speaks Spontanei daemones Serpents in our own bosomes devils in our own loynes bound to confesse that all the faculties of our soul are in us In nomine alieno In the name of another That will which we call Freewill is so far from being ours as that not only that Freedome but that Will it self is from another from God Not only the rectitude of the faculty but the faculty it self is his Nay though God have no part in the perversnesse and the obliquity of my will but that that perversnesse and that obliquity are intirely mine own yet I could not have that perversnesse and that obliquity but from him so far as that that faculty in which my perversnesse works is his and I could not have that perverse will from my self if I had not that will it self from God first And that very perversnesse and obliquity of the will is so much his as that though it were not his but mine in the making yet when it is made by me he makes it his that is he makes it his instrument and makes his use of it so far as to suffer it to flow out into a greater sin or to determine in a lesser sin then at first I in my perversnesse intended When I intended but an approach to a sin and meant to stop there to punish that exposing of my self to tentation God suffers me to proceed to the act of that sin And when I intend the act it self God interrupts me and cuts me off by some intervening occasion and determines me upon some approach to that sin that by going so far in the way of that sin I might see mine own infirmity and see the power of his mercy that I went no farther The faculties of my soule are his and the substance of my soul is his too And yet as I pervert the faculties I subvert the substance I damnifie the faculties but I damne the substance it self It would taste of uncharitablenesse to cast more coales of fire upon the devill himself then are upon him in hell now Or not to assist him with our prayers if it were not declared to us that he is incapable of mercy If the devill were now but under the guiltinesse of that sin which he committed at first and not under such an execution of judgement for that sin as induced or at least declared an obstination an obduration a desperation and impenitiblenesse if the devill were but as the worst sinner in this world can be but In via and not In exilio In the way to destruction and not under destruction it self we might pray for the devill himself And these poore souls of ours these glorious souls of ours none of ours but Gods own souls which now at worst God loves better then ever he did the devill when he was at best when he was an Angell uncorrupted and better then he doth those Angels which stand uncorrupted stil for he hath not taken the nature of Angels but our nature upon him we think those souls our own to do what we list with and when we have usurpt them we damne them As Pirates take other mens subjects and then make them slaves we usurp the faculties of the
soul and call the will ours we usurp the soul it self and call it ours and then deliver all to everlasting bondage Would the King suffer his picture to be used as we use the Image of God in our soules or his Hall to be used as we use the Temple of the Holy Ghost our Bodies We have nothing but that which we have received and when we come to think that our own we have not that For God will take all from that man that sacrifices to his own nets When thou commest to Church come in anothers name When thou givest an Almes give it in anothers name that is feele all thy devotion and all thy charity to come from God For if it be not in his name it will be in a worse Thy devotion will contract the name of hypocrisie and thine Almes the name of Vain-glory. The Holy Ghost came in anothers name in Christs name but not so as Montanus the Father of the Montanists came in the Holy Ghosts name Montanus said he was the Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost did not pretend to be Christ There is a man the man of sin at Rome that pretends to be Christ to all uses And I would he would be content with that and stop there and not be a Hyper-Christus Above Christ more then Christ I would he would no more trouble the peace of Christendome no more occasion the assassinating of Christian Princes no more binde the Christian liberty in forbidding Meats and Marriage no more slacken and dissolve Christian bands by Dispensations and Indulgences then Christ did But if he will needs be more if he will needs have an addition to the name of Christ let him take heed of that addition which some are apt enough to give him however he deserve it that he is Antichrist Now in what sense the Holy Ghost is said to have come in the name of Christ S. Basil gives us one interpretation that is that one principall name of Christ belongs to the Holy Ghost For Christ is Verbum The Word and so is the Holy Ghost sayes that Father Quia interpres filii sicut filius patris Because as the Son manifested the Father so the Holy Ghost manifests the Son S. Augustine gives another sense Societas Patris Filii est Spiritus Sanctus The Holy Ghost is the union of the Father and the Son As the body is not the man nor the soul is not the man but the union of the soul and body by those spirits through which the soul exercises her faculties in the Organs of the body makes up the man so the union of the Father and Son to one another and of both to us by the Holy Ghost makes up the body of the Christian Religion And so this interpretation of S. Augustine comes neare to the fulnesse in what sense the Holy Ghost came in Christs name John 17.12 For when Christ sayes I am come in my Fathers name that was to execute his Decree to fulfill his Will for the salvation of man by dying so when Christ sayes here the Holy Ghost shall come in my name that is to perfect my work to collect and to govern that Church in which my salvation by way of satisfaction may be appropriated to particular soules by way of application And for this purpose to do this in Christs name his own name is Paracletus The Comforter which is our last circumstance The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost The Comforter is an Euangelicall name The Comforter Athanasius notes that the Holy Ghost is never called Paracletus The Comforter in the old Testament He is called Spiritus Dei The Spirit of God in the beginning of Genesis And he is called Spiritus sanctus The holy Spirit and Spiritus principalis The principall Spirit in divers places of the Psalmes but never Paracletus never the Comforter A reason of that may well be first that the state of the Law needed not comfort and then also that the Law it self afforded not comfort so there was no Comforter Their Law was not opposed by any enemies as enemies to their Law If they had not by that warrant which they had from God invaded the possession of their neighbours or grown too great to continue good neighbours their neighbours had not envyed them that Law So that in the state of the Law in that respect they were well enough and needed no Comforter Whereas the Gospell as it was sowed in our Saviours blood so it grew up in blood for divers hundreds of yeares and therefore needed the sustentation and the assurance of a Comforter And then for the substance of the Law it was Lex interficiens non perficiens sayes S. Augustine A Law that told them what was sin and punisht them if they did sin but could not conferre Remission for sin which was a discomfortable case Whereas the Gospel and the Dispensation of the Gospel in the Church by the Holy Ghost is Grace Mercy Comfort all the way and in the end Therefore Christ v. 17. cals the Holy Ghost Spiritum veritatis The Spirit of truth In which he opposes him and preferres him above all the remedies and all the comforts of the Law Not that the Holy Ghost in the Law did not speak truth but that he did not speak all the truth in the Law Origen expresses it well The Types and Figures of the Law were true Figures and true Types of Christ in the Gospel but Christ and his Gospel is the truth it self prefigured in those Types Therefore the Holy Ghost is Paracletus The Comforter in the Gospel which he was not in the Law In the Records and Stories and so in the Coynes and Medals of the Romane Emperours we see that even then when they had gotten the possession of the name of Emperours yet they forbore not to adde to their style the name of Consul and the name of Pontifex maximus still they would be called Consuls which was an acceptable name to the people and High-Priests which carried a reverence towards all the world Where Christ himselfe is called by a name appliable to none but Christ by a name implying the whole nature and merit of Christ that is The Propitiation of the sins of the whole world 1 John 2.2 yet there in that place he is called by the name of this Text too Paracletus the Comforter He would not forbeare that sweet that acceptable that appliable name that name that concernes us most and establishes us best Paracletus the Comforter And yet he does not take that name in that full and whole sense in which himselfe gives it to the Holy Ghost here For there it is said of Christ If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father There Paracletus though placed upon Christ is but an Advocate But here Christ sends Paracletum in a more intire and a more internall and more viscerall sense A Comforter Upon which Comforter Christ imprints these two marks of
by emission of beames from within And yet no man doubts whether he see or no. The holy Ghost shall tell you when he tels you the most that ever he shall tell you in that behalf That the Son is in the Father but he will not tell you how Our second portion in this Legacy of knowledge Incarnatio is That we are in Christ And this is the mystery of the Incarnation For since the devill had so surprized us all as to take mankinde all in one lump in a corner in Adams loynes and poysoned us all there in the fountain in the roote Christ to deliver us as intirely took all mankinde upon him and so took every one of us and the nature and the infirmities and the sins and the punishment of every singular man So that the same pretence which the devill hath against every one of us you are mine for you sinned in Adam we have also for our discharge we are delivered for we paid our debt in Christ Jesus In all his tentations send him to look upon the Records of that processe of Christs passion and he shall finde there the names of all the faithfull recorded That such a day that day when Christ dyed I and you and all that shall be saved suffered dyed and were crucified and in Christ Jesus satisfied God the Father for those infinite sins which we had committed And now Second death which is damnation hath no more title to any of the true members of his mysticall body then corruption upon naturall or violent death could have upon the members of his naturall body The assurance of this grows from the third part of this knowledge Redemptio That Christ is in us for that is such a knowledge of Christs generall Redemption of mankinde as that it is also an application of it to us in particular For for his Incarnation by which we are in him Cyril that may have given a dignity to our humane nature But Quae beneficiorum magnitudo fuisset erganos si hominem solummodo quem assumpserat salvaret What great benefit how ever the dignity had been great to all mankinde had mankinde had if Christ had saved no more then that one person whom he assumed The largenesse and bounty of Christ is to give us of his best treasure knowledge and to give us most at last To know Christ in me For to know that he is in his Father this may serve me to convince another that denies the Trinity To know that we are in Christ so as that he took our nature this may shew me an honour done to us more then the Angels But what gets a lame wretch at the poole how soveraign soever the water be if no body put him in What gets a naked beggar by knowing that a dead man hath left much to pious uses if the Executors take no knowledge of him What get I by my knowledge of Christ in the Father and of us in Christ so if I finde not Christ in me How then is Christ in us Here the question De modo How it is is lawfull for he hath revealed it to us It is by our obedience to his inspiration and by our reverent use of those visible meanes which he hath ordained in his Church his Word and Sacraments As our flesh is in him by his participation thereof so his flesh is in us by our communication thereof And so is his divinity in us by making us partakers of his divine nature and by making us one spirit with himself which he doth at this Pentecost that is whensoever the holy Ghost visits us with his effectuall grace for this is an union in which Christ in his purpose hath married himself to our souls inseparably and Sine solutione vinculi Without any intention of divorce on his part But if we will separate him à mensa toro If either we take the bed of licentiousnesse or the board of voluptuousnesse or if when we eat or drink or sleep or wake we do not all to the glory of God if we separate he will divorce If then we be thus come to this knowledge let us make Ex scientia conscientiam Enlarge science into conscience for Conscientia est Syllogismus practicus Conscience is a Syllogisme that comes to a conclusion Then only hath a man true knowledge when he can conclude in his own conscience that his practise and conversation hath expressed it Who will beleeve that we know there is a ditch and know the danger of falling into it and drowning in it if he see us run headlong towards it and fall into it and continue in it Who can beleeve that he that separates himself from Christ by continuing in his sin hath any knowledge or sense or evidence or testimony of Christs being in him As Christ proceeds by enlarging thy knowledge and making thee wiser and wiser so enlarge thy testimony of it by growing better and better and let him that is holy bee more holy If thou have passed over the first heats of the day the wantonnesses of youth and the second heat the fire of ambition if these be quenched in thee by preventing venting grace or by repenting grace be more and more holy for thine age will meet another sin of covetousnesse or of indevotion that needs as much resistance God staid not in any lesse degree of knowledge towards thee then in bringing himselfe to thee Doe not thou stay by the way neither not in the consideration of God alone for that Coeli enarrant all creatures declare it stay not at the Trinity Every comming to Church nay thy first being brought to Church at thy Baptisme is and was a profession of that stay not at the Incarnation That the Devill knowes and testifies But come to know that Christ is in thee and expresse that knowledge in a sanctified life For though he be in us all in the work of his Redemption so as that he hath poured out balme enough in his blood to spread over all mankinde yet onely he can enjoy the chearfulnesse of this unction and the inseparablenesse of this union who as S. Augustine pursues this contemplation Habet in memoria servat in vita who alwayes remembers that he stands in the presence of Christ and behaves himselfe worthy of that glorious presence Qui habet in Sermonibus servat in operibus That hath Christ alwaies at his tongues end and alwaies at his fingers ends that loves to discourse of him and to act his discourses Que habet audiendo servat faciendo That heares Gods will here in his house and does his will at home in his owne house Qui habet faciendo servat perseverando who having done well from the beginning persevers in well doing to the end he and he onely shall finde Christ in him SERMON XXXI Preached at S. Pauls upon Whitsunday 1629. GEN. 1.2 And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters THe
as all sin is a violating of God God being the God of mercy and the God of life because it deprives us of both those of mercy and of life in opposition to mercy Ephes 2.3 Rom. 5.12 it is called anger and wrath We are all by nature the children of wrath And in opposition to life it is called death Death enters by sin and death is gone over all men And as originall sin hath relation to our souls It is called that indeleble foulnesse and uncleannesse which God discovers in us all Jer. 2.22 Though thou wash thee with nitre and take thee much sope yet thine iniquity is marked before me saith the Lord And which every man findes in himself as Iob did If I wash my self in Snow-water Job 9. and purge my hands never so cleane yet mine own clothes shall make me filthy As it hath relation to our bodies so it is not only called Lex carnis A law which the flesh cannot disobey And Lex in membris A law written and imprinted naturally in our bodies and inseparably inherent there but it is a law that hath got Posse comitatus All our strength and munition into her own hands all our powers and faculties to execute her purposes against us and as the Apostle expresses it fully Hath force in our members to bring forth fruits unto death Rom. 7.5 Consider our originall weaknesse as God lookes upon it so it is inexcusable sin consider it as our soules suffer by it so it is an indeleble foulnesse consider it as our bodies contribute to it and harbour it and retain it and so it is an unquenchable fire and a brand of hell it self It hath banished me out of my self It is no more I that do any thing but sin that dwelleth in me It doth not only dwell but reign in these mortall bodies not only reign but tyrannize and lead us captives under the law of sin which is in our members Ver. 23. So that we have utterly lost Bonum possibilitatis for as men we are out of all possibility not only of that victorious and triumphant gratulation and acclamation to our selves as for a delivery I thank God through Iesus Christ but we cannot come to that sense of our misery Ver. ult as to cry out in the Apostles words immediately preceding O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death Now as this death hath invaded every part and faculty of man understanding and will and all for though originall sin seem to be contracted without our will yet Sicut omnium natura ita omnium voluntates fuere originaliter in Adam sayes S. Augustine As the whole nature of mankinde and so of every particular man was in Adam so also were the faculties and so the will of every particular man in him so this death hath invaded every particular man Death went over all men for as much as all men had sinned And therefore they that do blasphemously exempt some persons from sin they set them not above the Law but without the Law They out-law them in taking from them the benefit of the new Law the Gospel and of the author of that Law Christ Jesus who came a Physitian to the sick and was sent only to save sinners for them that are none it is well that they need no Redeemer for if they did they could have no part in ours for he came only to redeem sinners and they are none God brought his Son out of Aegypt not out of Goshen in Aegypt not out of a priviledged place in Aegypt but out of Aegypt God brought his Son Christ Jesus out of the Virgin Mary without sin but he brought not her so out of her mother If they might be beleeved that the blessed Virgin and Iohn Baptist and the Prophet Ieremy were without all sin they would goe about at last to make us beleeve that Ignatius were so too For us in the highest of our sanctification still let us presse with that Dimitte nobis debita nostra O Lord forgive us our trespasses and confesse that we needed forgivenesse even for the sins which we have not done Dimissa fateor quae mea sponte feci quae te duce non feci sayes S. Augustine I confesse I need thy mercy both for the sins which I have done and for those which if thy grace had not restrained me I should have done And therefore if another think he hath scaped those sins that I have committed August Non me derideat ab eo medico aegrum sanari à quoei praestitum ne aegrotaret Let him not despise me who am recovered since it is the same physitian who hath wrought upon us both though by a diverse method for he hath preserved him and he hath recovered me for for himselfe we say still with the same Father Perdiderat bonum possibilitatis As well he as I had lost all possibility of standing or rising after our fall This was our first branch Quid homo potest The universall impotency And our second is That this is In homine In man no man as man can make this profession That Iesus is the Lord and therefore we consider first wherein and how far man is disabled In every Age some men have attributed to the power of nature more then a naturall man can doe and yet no man doth so much as a naturall man might doe For the over-valuing of nature and her power there are impressions in the Fathers themselves which whether mis-understood by the Readers or by the Authors have led and prevailed much When Iustin Martyr sayes Ratio pro fide Graecis Barbaris That rectified reason did the same office in the Gentiles as faith did in the Christians when Clement sayes Philosophia per sese justi ficavit Graecos That the Gentiles to whom the Law and Gospell was not communicated were justified by their Philosophy when Chrysostome sayes Satis fuit Gentibus abstinuisse ab Idololatria It was sufficient for the Gentiles if they did not worship false gods though they understood not the true when S. Augustine sayes Rectè facis nihil quaerere ampliùs quà m quod docet ratio He doth well that seeks no farther then his reason leads them these impressions in the Fathers have transported later men farther so far as that Andradius in the Romane Church saves all honest Philosophers that lived morally well without Christ And Tostatus takes all impediments out of their way That originall sin is absolutely remitted to them In prima bona operatione in charitate In their first good morall work that they do So that they are in an easier way then we who are but Christians for in the opinion of Tostatus himselfe and that whole Church we cannot be delivered from originall sin but by baptisme nothing lesse then a Sacrament would deliver us from originall sin and any good worke shall deliver any of the Gentiles
so disposed In all ages in all Churches there have been men who have been Ingrati gratiae as S. Augustine calls them that have been unthanfull to the grace of God and attributed that to nature Act. 17.26 which belonged to grace But we have an universall conclusion God hath made of one blood all mankinde And no man can adopt himselfe into the family of God man is excluded and all power in man and all assistance from man neither your owne reason nor the reason of your Masters whom you relie upon can raise you to this knowledge for Esay 31.3 Aegyptus homo non Deus The Egyptians are men and not Gods and their horses are flesh and not spirit and when the Lord shall stretch out his hand the helper shall fall and he that is holpen shall fall and they shall fall together The Atheist and all his Philosophy Helper and hee that is Holpen Horse and Man Nature and Art Reason mounted and advanced upon Learning shall never be able to leap over or breake thorough this wall No man no naturall man can doe any thing towards a supernaturall work This was our second Branch Quid homo facit That too much is ordinarily attributed by man to man And our third is That too little is done by any man and that is worse then the other When Nebuchadnezzar had made his Image of gold of sixtie Cubits it had been a madnesse in him not to have celebrated the Dedication thereof with all the pomp and solemnity that he did To have gone so farre and not to have made it serve his farther uses had been a strange impertinence So is it a strange contemplation to see a man set up a golden Image to attribute even Divinity to our nature and to imagine it to be able to doe whatsoever the grace of God can doe and yet with this Angelicall nature with this celestiall soule to contribute lesse to the glory of God then an Ant or a plant or a stone As the counsell of the Philosopher Epictetus directs thee if thou take any new action in hand consider what Socrates would doe in that case that is dispose thy selfe therein according to the example and precedent of some wise man So if thou wilt take this new action in hand that which is new but should be ordinary unto thee if thou wilt take a view of thy sins that are past doe but consider if ever thou didst any sin which Socrates or Seneca would not have forborne And whatsoever thou seest another can doe by the power of that reason and that perswasion which thou art able to minister who art not able to infuse faith nor inspire grace into him but must work by thy reason and upon his reason why shouldest not thou be as powerfull upon thy selfe and as strong in thine owne behalfe and obey that counsell from thy selfe which thou thinkest another man mad if he doe not obey when thou givest it Why shouldest thou pretend Reason why another should forbeare any particular sin and not present that Reason to thy selfe or not obey it To love the Scriptures of God better then any other booke to love the house of God better then any other Court to love the Communion of Saints better then any other Conversation to study to know the revealed will of God rather then the secrets of any Princes to consider the direct purposes of God against his enemies rather then the sinister supplantations of pretenders to places in Court briefly to Reade to Heare to Beleeve the Bible is a worke within the ability of nature within the power of a morall man He that attributes more to nature he that allowes her any ability of disposing her selfe before hand without prevention of grace or concurrence and co-operation after without continuall assistance of particular graces he sets up an Idoll and magnifies nature beyond that which appertaines unto her But he that goes not so farre as this That the reason of man and his naturall faculties are the Instruments and Organs that God works in by his grace howsoever he may in discourse and in argument exalt nature howsoever he may so give too much to her yet he does not so much with her as he might doe He hath made her a Giant and then as though he were afraid of her hee runs away from her He will not doe that which is in his power and yet he thinks it is in his power to repent when he lists and when he lists to apply the merits of Christ to himselfe and to doe all those duties which are implyed in our next Part To say that Iesus is the Lord. In this our first duty is an outward act Dicere to professe Christ Jesus 2. Part. Dicere Rom. 1.16 Luke 9.26 Non erubesco sayes S. Paul I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ Iesus for it is the power of God unto salvation And Qui erubuerit sayes Christ Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my word of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he shall come in glory This is a necessary duty but is it the duty of this place for here it is not non vult but non potest not that he is loath to professe Jesus but that he is not able to doe it We see that some could say that and say it aloud preach it and yet without the Holy Ghost Some sayes the Apostle preach Christ through envy and strife Philem. 15. supposing to adde more afflictions unto my bands Which may well be that some Jews and Gentiles to exasperate the State against Paul fained themselves also to be converted to his religion because when they had made him odious by drawing off others they who pretended to have been drawen by him could alwayes save themselves with recanting and renouncing their new profession So they could say Dominum Iesum That Iesus was the Lord and never meane it And of those twelve whom Christ chose to preach Iudas was one of whom Christ sayes John 6.70 Have I not chosen you twelve and one of you is a devill So that this devill Iudas and that devill that made him a devill the devill himself could say as much as this Iesus I know Acts 19.15 Luke 4.41 and Paul I know They said it they cryed it Thou art the Christ the Son of God and that incessantly Till Iesus rebuked them and suffered them not to say That they knew him to be The Christ But besides that even this confessing of Christ is not Sine omni impulsu Spiritus sancti Altogether without any motion of the holy Ghost for the holy Ghost even in these cases had a purpose to draw testimonies for Christ out of the mouthes of his adversaries this is not the professing required here When Tiberius had a purpose to canonize Christ Jesus and to admit him into the number of the Romane Gods and to make him beholden to him for that honour he
when the Gentiles had been long accustomed to make every power and attribute of God and to make every remarkable creature of God a severall God and so to worship God in a multiplicity of Gods it was a great work to limit and determine their superstitious and superfluous devotion in one God But when all these lines were brought into one center not to let that center rest but to draw lines out of that againe and bring more persons into that one centricall God-head this was hard forreason to digest But yet to have extended that from that unity to a duality was not so much as to a triplicity And thereupon though the Arians would never be brought to confesse an equality between the Son and the Father they were much farther from confessing it in the Holy Ghost They made sayes S. Augustine Filium creaturam Haeres 49. The Son they accounted to be but a creature but they made the Holy Ghost Creaturam Creaturae not onely a Creature and no God but not a Creature of Gods but a Creature a Messenger of the son who was himselfe with them but a Creature But these mysteries are not to be chawed by reason but to be swallowed by faith we professed three persons in one God in the simplicity of our infancy at our baptisme and we have sealed that contract in the other Sacrament often since and this is eternall life to die in that beliefe There are three that beare witnesse in heaven The Father the Word 1 John 5.7 and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And in that testimony we rest that there is a Holy Ghost and in the testimony of this text that this Holy Ghost falls down upon all that heare the word of God Now it is as wonderfull that this Holy Ghost should fall down from heaven Cecidit Esay 14.12 as that he should be in heaven Quomodo cecidisti How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer thou son of the morning was a question asked by the Propher of him who was so fallen as that he shall never returne againe But the Holy Ghost as mysterious in his actions as in his Essentiall or in his Personall beeing fell so from heaven as that he remained in heaven even then when he was fallen This Dove sent from heaven Gen 8.7 did more then that Dove which was sent out of the Arke That went and came but was not in both places at once Noah could not have shewed that Dove to his sons and daughters in the Arke then when the Dove was flowne out But now when this Dove the Holy Ghost fell upon these men at Peters Sermon Stephen who was then come up to heaven saw the same Dove the same Holy Ghost whom they whom he had left upon the earth felt upon the earth then As if the Holy Ghost fall upon any in this Congregation now now the Saints of God see that Holy Ghost in heaven whom they that are here feele falling upon them here In all his workings the Holy Ghost descends for there is nothing above him There is a third heaven but no such third heaven as is above the heaven of heavens above the seat and residence of the Holy Ghost so that whatsoever he doth is a descent a diminution a humiliation and an act of mercy because it is a Communication of himselfe to a person inferiour to himselfe But there is more in this Text then a descent When the Holy Ghost came upon Christ himselfe after his Baptisme there it is said He descended Though Christ as the Son of God were equall to him and so it was no descent for the Holy Ghost to come to him yet because Christ had a nature upon him in which he was not equall to the Holy Ghost here was a double descent in the Holy Ghost That he who dwells with the Father and the Son In luce inaccessibili In light inaccessible and too bright to be seene would descend in a visible form to be seene by men And that he descended and wrought upon a mortall man though that man were Christ Christ also had a double descending too He descended to be a man and he descended to be no man He descended to live amongst us and he descended to die amongst us He descended to the earth and he descended to hell Every operation of every person of the holy and blessed and glorious Trinity is a Descending But here the Holy Ghost is said to have fallen which denotes a more earnest communicating of himselfe a throwing a pouring out of himselfe upon those upon whom he falls He falls as a fall of waters that covers that it falls upon as a Hawk upon a prey it desires and it will possesse that it falls upon as an Army into a Countrey it Conquers and it Governes where it fals The Holy Ghost fals but farre otherwise Mat. 21.44 upon the ungodly Whosoever shall fall upon this stone shall be broken but upon whomsocver this stone shall fall it will grinde him to powder Indeed he fals upon him so as haile fals upon him he fals upon him so as he fals from him and leaves him in an obduration and impenitiblenesse and in an irrecoverable ruine of him that hath formorly despised and despighted the Holy Ghost But when the Holy Ghost fals not thus in the nature of a stone but puts on the nature of a Dove and a Dove with an Olive-branch and that in the Ark that is testimonies of our peace and reconciliation to God in his Church he fals as that kinde of lightning which melts swords and hurts not scabbards the Holy Ghost shall melt thy soule and not hurt thy body he shall give thee spirituall blessings and saving graces under the temporall seales of bodily health and prosperity in this world He shall let thee see that thou art the childe of God in the obedience of thy children to thee And that thou art the servant of God in the faithfulnesse of thy servants to thee And that thou standest in the favour of God bythe favor of thy superiours to thee he shall fall upon thy soul and not wound thy body give thee spirituall prosperity and yet not by worldly adversity and evermore over-shadow and refresh thy soul yet evermore keep thee in his Sunshine and the light of his countenance But there is more then this in this falling of the Holy Ghost in this Text. For it was not such a particular insinuation of the Holy Ghost as that he convaied himselfe into those particular men for their particular good and salvation and determined there but such a powerfull and diffusive falling as made his presence and his power in them to work upon others also So when he came upon Christ it was not to adde any thing to Christ but to informe others that that was Christ So when Christ breathed his spirit into the Apostles it was not meerly to infuse salvation into them but it was especially
that gave him that Crowne Thus the holy Ghost himselfe is a witnesse against Heretiques in the word and those men who are full of the holy Ghost as Stephen was are witnesses against persecution in action in passion At this time and by occasion of these words we consider principally the first The testification of the holy Ghost himselfe and therein we consider thus much more That a witnesse ever testifies of some matter of fact of something done before The holy Ghost the Spirit here as we shall see anon witnesses that we are the children of God Now if a Witnesse prove that I am a Tenant to such Land or Lord of it I doe not become Lord nor Tenant by this Witnesse but his testimony proves that I was so before I have therefore a former right to be the child of God that is The eternall Election of God in Christ Jesus Christ Jesus could as well have disobeyed his Father and said I will not goe or disappointed his Father and said I will not goe yet as he could have dis-furnished his Father and said He would not redeem me The holy Ghost bears witnesse that is he pleads he produces that eternall Decree for my Election And upon such Evidence shall I give sentence against my selfe Chrysost Si testaretur Angelus vel Archangelus posset quisquam addubitare I should not doubt the testimony of an Angel or Archangel and yet Angels and Archangels all sorts of Angels were deceivers in the Serpent And therefore the Apostle presents it though impossible in it selfe as a thing that might fall into our mis-apprehension Gal. 1.8 If we that is the Apostles or if an Angel from heaven preach any other Gospel Anathema sit let him be accursed But Quando Deus testatur quis locus relinquitur dubitationi when God testifies to me it is a rebellious sin to doubt And therefore how hyperbolically soever S. Paul argue there If Apostles If Angels teach the contrary teach false Doctrine it never entred into his argument though an argument ab Impossibili to say If God should teach or testifie false doctrine Though then there be a former evidence for my being the child of God a Decree in heaven yet it is not enough that there is such a Record but it must be produced it must be pleaded it must be testified to be that it must have the witnesse of the Spirit and by that Innotescit though it doe not become my Election then it makes my election appeare then and though it be not Introductory it is Declaratory The Root is in the Decree the first fruits are in the testimony of the Spirit but even that spirit will not be testis singularis he will not be heard alone and single but it is Cum spiritu nostro The Spirit testifies with our spirit c. The holy Ghost will fulfill his owne law In ore duorum In the mouth of two witnesses Cum spiriou nostro Sometimes our spirit bears witnesse of somethings appertaining to the next world without the testimony of the holy Ghost Tertullian in that excellent Book of his De testimonio Animae Of the testimony which the soule of man gives of it selfe to it selfe where he speaks of the soule of a naturall an unregenerate man gives us just occasion to stop a little upon that consideration If sayes he we for our Religion produce your own Authors against you he speaks to naturall men secular Philosophers and shew you out of them what Passions what Vices even they impute to those whom you have made your Gods then you say they were but Poetae vani Those Authors were but vaine and frivolous Poets But when those Authors speake any thing which sound against our Religion then they are Philosophers and reverend and classique Authors And therefore sayes he I will draw no witnesse from them Perversae foelicitatis quibus in falso potiùs creditur quà m in vero Because they have this perverse this left-handed happinesse to be beleeved when they lye better then when they say true Novum testimonium adduco saies he I wayve all them and I call upon a new witnesse A witnesse Omni literaturi notius More legible then any Character then any text hand for it is the intimation of mine owne soule and conscience and Omni Editione vulgatius More publique more conspicuous then any Edition any impression of any Author for Editions may be called in but who can call in the testimony of his owne soule He proceeds Te simplicem Idioticum compello I require but a simple an unlearned soule Qualem te habent qui te solam habent Such a soule as that man hath who hath nothing but a soule no learning Imperitia tua mibiopus est quoniam aliquantulae peritiae tuae nemo credit I shall have the more use of thy testimony the more ignorant thou art for in such cases Art is suspicious and from them who are able to prove any thing we beleeve nothing And therefore saies he Nolo Academiis bibliothecis instructam I call not a soule made in an University or nursed in a Library but let this soule come now as it came to me in my Mothers wombe an inartificiall an unexperienced soule And then to contract Tertullians Contemplation he proceeds to shew the notions of the Christian Religion which are in such a soule naturally and which his spirit that is his rectified reason rectified but by nature is able to infuse into him And certainly some of that which is proved by the testimony mentioned in this text is proved by the testimony of our owne naturall soule in that Poet whom the Apostle cites that said Genus ejus We are the off-spring of God Acts 17.28 So then our spirit beares witnesse sometimes when the Spirit does not that is Nature testifies some things without addition of particular grace And then the Spirit the Holy Ghost oftentimes testifies when ours does not How often stands he at the doore and knocks How often spreads he his wings to gather us as a Hen her chickens How often presents he to us the power of God in the mouth of the Preacher and we beare witnesse to one another of the wit and of the eloquence of the Preacher and no more How often he bears witnesse that such an action is odious in the sight of God and our spirit beares witnesse that it is acceptable profitable honourable in the sight of man How often he beares witnesse for Gods Judgements and our spirit deposes for mercy by presumption and how often he testifies for mercy and our spirit sweares for Judgement in desperation But when the Spirit and our spirit agree in their testimony That he hath spoke comfortably to my soule and my soule hath apprehended comfort by that speech That to use Christs similitude He hath piped and we have danced He hath shewed me my Saviour and my Spirit hath rejoyced in God my Saviour He deposes for the Decree
Abrahams taske was an easie taske to tell the stars of Heaven so it were to tell the sands or haires or atomes in respect of telling but our owne sins And will God say to me Confide Fili My Son be of good cheere thy sins are forgiven thee Mat. 9.2 Does he meane all my sins He knowes what originall sin is and I doe not and will he forgive me sin in that roote and sin in the branches originall sin and actuall sin too He knowes my secret sins and I doe not will he forgive my manifest sins and those sins too He knowes my relapses into sins repented and will he forgive my faint repentances and my rebellious relapses after them will his mercy dive into my heart and forgive my sinfull thoughts there and shed upon my lips and forgive my blasphemous words there and bathe the members of this body and forgive mine uncleane actions there will he contract himselfe into himselfe and meet me there and forgive my sins against himselfe And scatter himselfe upon the world and forgive my sins against my neighbour and emprison himselfe in me and forgive my sins against my selfe Will he forgive those sins wherein my practise hath exceeded my Parents and those wherein my example hath mis-led my children Will he forgive that dim sight which I have of sin now when sins scarce appeare to be sins unto me and will he forgive that over-quick sight when I shall see my sins through Satans multiplying glasse of desperation when I shall thinke them greater then his mercy upon my death bed In that he said all he left out nothing Heb. 2.8 is the Apostles argument and he is not almighty if he cannot his mercy endures not for ever if he doe not forgive all Sin and all sin even blasphemy now blasphemy is not restrained to God alone Blasphemia other persons besides God other things besides persons may be blasphemed 1 Tim. 6.1 Iude 8 10. The word of God the Doctrine Religion may be blasphemed Magistracy and Dignities may be blasphemed Nay Omnia quae ignorant saies that Apostle They blaspheme all things which they know not And for persons the Apostle takes it to his owne person 1 Cor. 4.13 Being blasphemed yet we intreat and he communicates it to all men Neminem blasphemate Tit. 3.2 Blaspheme no man Blasphemy as it is a contumelious speech derogating from any man that good that is in him or attributing to any man that ill that is not in him may be fastned upon any man For the most part it is understood a sin against God and that directly and here by the manner of Christ expressing himselfe it is made the greatest sin All sin even blasphemy And yet a drunkard that cannot name God will spue out a blasphemy against God A child that cannot spell God will stammer out a blasphemy against God If we smart we blaspheme God and we blaspheme him if we be tickled If I lose at play I blaspheme and if my fellow lose he blasphemes so that God is alwayes sure to be a loser An Usurer can shew me his bags and an Extortioner his houses the fruits the revenues of his sinne but where will the blasphemer shew mee his blasphemy or what hee hath got by it The licentious man hath had his love in his armes and the envious man hath had his enemy in the dust but wherein hath the blasphemer hurt God In the Schoole we put it for the consummation of the torment of the damned Aquin. 221. q. 13. ar 4. that at the Resurrection they shall have bodies and so be able even verbally to blaspheme God herein we exceed the Devill already that we can speake blaspemously There is a rebellious part of the body that Adam covered with figge leaves that hath damned many a wretched soule but yet I thinke not more then the tongue And therefore the whole torment that Dives suffered in hell Luke 16.24 is expressed in that part Father Abraham have mercy upon me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and coole my tongue The Jews that crucified God will not sound the name of God and we for whom he was Crucified belch him out in our surfets and foame him out in our fury An Impertinent sin without occasion before and an unprofitable sin without recompence after and an incorrigible sin too for almost what Father dares chide his son for blasphemy that may not tell him Sir I learnt it of you or what Master his servant that cannot lay the same recrimination upon him How much then do we need this extent of Gods mercy that he will forgive sin and all sin and even this sin of blasphemy and which is also another addition blasphemy against the Son This emphaticall addition arises out of the connexion in the next verse In filium A word that is a blasphemous word against the Son shall be forgiven And here wee carry not the word Son so high as that the Son should be the eternall Son of God Though words spoken against the eternall Son of God by many bitter and blasphemous Heretiques have beene forgiven God forbid that all the Photinians who thought that Christ was not at all till he was borne of the Virgin Mary That all the Nativitarians that thought he was from all eternity with God but yet was not the Son of God That all the Arians that thought him the Son of God but yet not essentially not by nature but by grace and adoption God forbid that all these should be damned and because they once spoke against the Son therefore they never repented or were not received upon repentance We carry not the word Son so high as to be the eternall Son of God for it is in the text Filius hominis The Son of Man And in that acceptation we doe not meane it of all blasphemies that have beene spoken of Christ as the Son of man that is of Christ invested in the humane nature though blasphemies in that kind have beene forgiven too God forbid that all the Arians that thought Christ so much the Son of Man as that he tooke a humane body but not so much as that he tooke a humane soule but that the Godhead it selfe such a Godhead as they allowed him was his soule God forbid that all the Anabaptists that confesse he tooke a body but not a body of the substance of the Virgin That all the Carpocratians that thought onely his soule and not his body ascended into Heaven God forbid all these should be damned and never called to repentance or not admitted upon it There were fearfull blasphemies against the Son as the Son of God and as the Son of Man against his Divine and against his Humane Nature and those in some of them by Gods grace forgiven too But here we consider him onely as the Son of Man meerely as Man but as such a Man so good a
gods as there are Creatures from God and more then that as many gods as they could fancie or imagine in making Chimera's of their owne for not onely that which was not God but that which was not at all was made a God And then as in narrow channels that cannot containe the water the water over-flowes and yet that water that does so over flow flies out and spreads to such a shallownesse as will not beare a Boat to any use so when by this narrownesse in the Gentiles God had over-flowne this bank this limitation of God in an unity all the rest was too shallow to beare any such notion any such consideration of God as appertained to him They could not think him an Omnipotent God when if one God would not another would nor an Infinite God when they had appeales from one God to another and without Omnipotence and without Infinitenesse they could not truly conceive a God They had cantoned a glorious Monarchy into petty States that could not subsist of themselves nor assist another and so imagined a God for every state and every action that a man must have applied himselfe to one God when he shipped and when he landed to another and if he travailed farther change his God by the way as often as he changed coynes or post-horses Deut. 6.4 But Heare O Israel the Lord thy God is one God As though this were all that were to be heard all that were to be learned they are called to heare and then there is no more said but that The Lord thy God is one God There are men that will say and sweare they do not meane to make God the Author of sin but yet when they say That God made man therefore that he might have something to damne and that he made him sin therefore that he might have something to damne him for truly they come too neare making God the Author of sin for all their modest protestation of abstaining So there are men that will say and sweare they do not meane to make Saints Gods but yet when they will aske the same things at Saints hands which they do at Gods and in the same phrase and manner of expression when they will pray the Virgin Mary to assist her Son nay to command her Son and make her a Chancellor to mitigate his common Law truly they come too neare making more Gods then one And so do we too when we give particular sins dominion over us Quot vitia tot Deos recentes sayes Hierom As the Apostle sayes Covetousnesse is Idolatry so sayes that Father is voluptuousnesse and licentiousnesse and every habituall sin Non alienum sayes God Thou shalt have no other God but me But Quis similis sayes God too Who is like me Hee will have nothing made like him not made so like a God as they make their Saints nor made so like a God as we make our sins Wee thinke one King Soveraigne enough and one friend counsellor enough and one Wife helper enough and he is strangely insatiable that thinks not one God God enough especially since when thou hast called this God what thou canst Hâ—â—â—r he is more then thou hast said of him Cum definitur ipse sua definitione crescit When thou hast defined him to be the God of justice and tremblest he is more then that he is the God of mercy too and gives thee comfort When thou hast defined him to be all eye He sees all thy sins he is more then that he is all patience and covers all thy sins And though he be in his nature incomprehensible and inaccessible in his light yet this is his infinite largenesse that being thus infinitely One he hath manifested himselfe to us in three Persons to be the more easily discerned by us and the more closely and effectually applied to us Now these notions that we have of God as a Father as a Son as a Holy Ghost Trinitas as a Spirit working in us are so many handles by which we may take hold of God and so many breasts by which we may suck such a knowledge of God as that by it wee may grow up into him And as wee cannot take hold of a torch by the light but by the staffe we may so though we cannot take hold of God as God who is incomprehensible and inapprehensible yet as a Father as a Son as a Spirit dwelling in us we can There is nothing in Nature that can fully represent and bring home the notion of the Trinity to us There is an elder booke in the World then the Scriptures It is not well said in the World for it is the World it selfe the whole booke of Creatures And indeed the Scriptures are but a paraphrase but a comment but an illustration of that booke of Creatures And therefore though the Scriptures onely deliver us the doctrine of the Trinity clearely yet there are some impressions some obumbrations of it in Nature too Take but one in our selves in the soule The understanding of man that is as the Father begets discourse ratiocination and that is as the Son and out of these two proceed conclusions and that is as the Holy Ghost Such as these there are many many sprinkled in the Schoole many scattered in the Fathers but God knowes poore and faint expressions of the Trinity But yet Praemisit Deus naturam magistram Tertul. submissurus prophetiam Though God meant to give us degrees in the University that is increase of knowledge in his Scriptures after yet he gave us a pedagogy he sent us to Schoole in Nature before Vt faciliùs credas prophetiae discipulus naturae That comming out of that Schoole thou mightest profit the better in that University having well considered Nature thou mightest be established in the Scriptures He is therefore inexcusable that considers not God in the Creature that comming into a faire Garden sayes onely Here is a good Gardiner and not Here is a good God and when he sees any great change sayes onely This is a strange accident and not a strange Judgement Hence is it that in the books of the Platonique Philosophers and in others much ancienter then they if the books of Hermes Trismegistus and others be as ancient as is pretended in their behalfe we finde as cleare expressing of the Trinity as in the Old Testament at least And hence is it that in the Talmud of the Jews and in the Alcoran of the Turks though they both oppose the Trinity yet when they handle not that point there fall often from them as cleare confessions of the three Persons as from any of the elder of those Philosophers who were altogether dis-interested in that Controversie But because God is seene Per creaturas ut per speculum per verbum ut per lucem Aleus In the creature and in nature but by reflection In the Word and in the Scriptures directly we rest in the knowledge which we
any subject a falling for for our bodies we say a man is falne sick And for his state falne poore And for his mind falne mad And for his conscience falne desperate we are borne low and yet we fall every way lower so universall is our falling sicknesse Sin it selfe is but a falling The irremediable sin of the Angels The undeterminable sinne of Adam is called but so The fall of Adam The fall of Angels And therefore the effectuall visitation of the holy Ghost to man is called a falling too we are fallen so low as that when the holy Ghost is pleased to fetch us againe and to infuse his grace he is still said to fall upon us But the fall which we consider in the Text is not a figurative falling not into a decay of estate nor decay of health nor a spirituall falling into sin a decay of grace but it is a medicinall falling a falling under Gods hand but such a falling under his hand as that he takes not off his hand from him that is falne but throwes him downe therefore that he may raise him To this posture he brings Paul now when he was to re-inanimate him with his spirit rather to pre-inanimate him for indeed no man hath a soule till he have grace Christ who in his humane nature hath received from the Father all Judgement and power and dominion over this world hath received all this upon that condition that he shall governe in this manner Psal 2.8 Aske of me and I shall give thee the Heathen for thine inheritance sayes the Father How is he to use them when he hath them Thus Thou shalt breake them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potters vessell Now God meant well to the Nations in this bruising and breaking of them God intended not an annihilation of the Nations but a reformarion for Christ askes the Nations for an Inheritance not for a triumph therefore it is intended of his way of governing them and his way is to bruise and beat them that is first to cast them downe before he can raise them up first to breake them before he can make them in his fashion August Novit Dominus vulnerare ad amorem The Lord and onely the Lord knowes how to wound us out of love more then that how to wound us into love more then all that to wound us into love not onely with him that wounds us but into love with the wound it selfe with the very affliction that he inflicts upon us The Lord knowes how to strike us so as that we shall lay hold upon that hand that strikes us and kisse that hand that wounds us Ad vitam interficit ad exaltationem prosternit sayes the same Father No man kills his enemy therefore that his enemy might have a better life in heaven that is not his end in killing him It is Gods end Therefore he brings us to death that by that gate he might lead us into life everlasting And he hath not discovered but made that Northerne passage to passe by the frozen Sea of calamity and tribulation to Paradise to the heavenly Jerusalem There are fruits that ripen not but by frost There are natures there are scarce any other that dispose not themselves to God but by affliction And as Nature lookes for the season for ripening and does not all before so Grace lookes for the assent of the soule and does not perfect the whole worke till that come It is Nature that brings the season and it is Grace that brings the assent but till the season for the fruit till the assent of the soule come all is not done Therefore God begun in this way with Saul and in this way he led him all his life Tot pertulit mortes quot vixit dies He dyed as many deaths as he lived dayes Chrysost for so himselfe sayes Quotidie morior I die daily God gave him sucke in blood and his owne blood was his daily drink He catechized him with calamities at first and calamities were his daily Sermons and meditations after and to authorize the hands of others upon him and to accustome him to submit himself to the hands of others without murmuring Christ himself strikes the first blow and with that Cecidit he fell which was our first consideration in his humiliation and then Cecidit in terram He fell to the ground which is our next I take no farther occasion from this Circumstance but to arme you with consolation In terram how low soever God be pleased to cast you Though it be to the earth yet he does not so much cast you downe in doing that as bring you home Death is not a banishing of you out of this world but it is a visitation of your kindred that lie in the earth neither are any nearer of kin to you then the earth it selfe and the wormes of the earth You heap earth upon your soules and encumber them with more and more flesh by a superfluous and luxuriant diet You adde earth to earth in new purchases and measure not by Acres but by Manors nor by Manors but by Shires And there is a little Quillet a little Close worth all these A quiet Grave And therefore when thou readest That God makes thy bed in thy sicknesse rejoyce in this not onely that he makes that bed where thou dost lie but that bed where thou shalt lie That that God that made the whole earth is now making thy bed in the earth a quiet grave where thou shalt sleep in peace till the Angels Trumpet wake thee at the Resurrection to that Judgement where thy peace shall be made before thou commest and writ and sealed in the blood of the Lamb. Saul falls to the earth So farre But he falls no lower God brings his servants to a great lownesse here but he brings upon no man a perverse sense or a distrustfull suspition of falling lower hereafter His hand strikes us to the earth by way of humiliation But it is not his hand that strikes us into hell by way of desperation Will you tell me that you have observed and studied Gods way upon you all your life and out of that can conclude what God meanes to doe with you after this life That God took away your Parents in your infancy and left you Orphanes then That he hath crossed you in all your labours in your calling ever since That he hath opened you to dishonours and calumnies and mis-interpretations in things well intended by you That he hath multiplied ficknesses upon you and given you thereby an assurance of a miserable and a short life of few and evill dayes nay That he hath suffered you to fall into sins that you your selves have hated To continue in sins that you your selves have been weary of To relapse into sins that you your selves have repented And will you conclude out of this that God had no good purpose upon you that if ever
for so is it twice taken in one verse Psal 58.4 Their poison is like the poison of a Serpent so that this Hot displeasure is that poison of the soule obduration here and that extention of this obduration a finall impenitence in this life and an infinite impenitiblenesse in the next to dye without any actuall penitence here and live without all possibility of future penitence for ever hereafter David therefore foresees that if God Rebuke in anger it will come to a Chastening in hot displeasure 1 Sam. 2.25 For what should stop him For If a man sinne against the Lord who will plead for him sayes Eli Plead thou my cause sayes David It is onely the Lord that can be of counsell with him and plead for him and that Lord is both the Judge and angry too So Davids prayer hath this force Rebuke me not in anger for though I were able to stand under that yet thou wilt also Chasten mee in thine hot displeasure and that no soule can beare for as long as Gods anger lasts so long he is going on towards our utter destruction In that State it is not a State in that Exinanition in that annihilation of the soule it is not an annihilation the soule is not so happy as to come to nothing but in that misery which can no more receive a name then an end all Gods corrections are borne with grudging with murmuring with comparing our righteousnesse with others righteousnesse Job 7.20 In Iobs impatience Quare posuisti me contrarium tibi Why hast thou set me up as a marke against thee O Thou preserver of men Thou that preservest other men hast bent thy bow I. am 3.12 and made me a mark for thine arrowes sayes the Lamentation In that state we cannot cry to him that he might answer us If we doe cry and he answer we cannot heare Job 9.16 if we doe heare we cannot beleeve that it is he Cum invocantem exaudierit sayes Iob If I cry and he answer yet I doe not beleeve that he heard my voyce We had rather perish utterly Ver. 23. then stay his leisure in recovering us Si flagellat occidat semel sayes Iob in the Vulgat If God have a minde to destroy me let him doe it at one blow Et non de poenis rideat Let him not sport himselfe with my misery Whatsoever come after we would be content to be out of this world so we might but change our torment whether it be a temporall calamity that oppresses our state or body or a spirituall burthen a perplexity that sinks our understanding or a guiltinesse that depresses our conscience Vt in inferno protegas Job 14.13 as Iob also speaks O that thou wouldest hide me In inferno In the grave sayes the afflicted soule but in Inferno In hell it selfe sayes the dispairing soule rather then keepe me in this torment in this world This is the miserable condition or danger that David abhors and deprecates in this Text To be rebuked in anger without any purpose in God to amend him and to be chastned in his hot displeasure so as that we can finde no interest in the gracious promises of the Gospel no conditions no power of revocation in the severe threatnings of the Law no difference between those torments which have attached us here and the everlasting torments of Hell it selfe That we have lost all our joy in this life and all our hope of the next That we would faine die though it were by our own hands and though that death doe but unlock us a doore to passe from one Hell into another This is Ira tua Domine faror tuus Thy anger O Lord and Thy hot displeasure For as long as it is but Ira patris the anger of my Father which hath dis-inherited me Gold is thine and silver is thine and thou canst provide me As long as it is but Ira Regis some mis-information to the King some mis-apprehension in the King Cor Regis in manu tua The Kings heart is in thy hand and thou canst rectifie it againe As long as it is but Furor febris The rage and distemper of a pestilent Fever or Furor furoris The rage of madnesse it selfe thou wilt consider me and accept me and reckon with me according to those better times before those distempers overtooke me and overthrew me But when it comes to be Ira tua furor tuus Thy anger and Thy displeasure as David did so let every Christian finde comfort if he be able to say faithfully this Verse this Text O Lord rebuke me not in thine anger neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure for as long as he can pray against it he is not yet so fallen under it but that he hath yet his part in all Gods blessings which we shed upon the Congregation in our Sermons and which we seale to every soule in the Sacrament of Reconcilation SERM. LI. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 6.2 3. Have mercy upon me O Lord for I am weake O Lord heale me for my bones are vexed My soule is also sore vexed But thou O Lord how long THis whole Psalme is prayer And the whole prayer is either Deprecatory as in the first verse or Postulatory Something David would have forborne and something done And in that Postulatory part of Davids prayer which goes through six verses of this Psalme we consider the Petitions and the Inducements What David asks And why of both which there are some mingled in these two verses which constitute our Text. And therefore in them we shall necessarily take knowledge of some of the Petitions and some of the Reasons For in the Prayer there are five petitions First Miserere Have mercy upon me Thinke of me looke graciously towards me prevent me with thy mercy And then Sana me O Lord heale me Thou didst create me in health but my parents begot me in sicknesse and I have complicated other sicknesses with that Actuall with Originall sin O Lord heale me give me physick for them And thirdly Convertere Returne O Lord Thou didst visit me in nature returne in grace Thou didst visit me in Baptisme returne in the other Sacrament Thou doest visit me now returne at the houre of my death And in a fourth petition Eripe O Lord deliver my soule Every blessing of thine because a snare unto me and thy benefits I make occasions of sinne In all conversation and even in my solitude I admit such tentations from others or I produce such tentations in my selfe as that whensoever thou art pleased to returne to me thou findest me at the brinke of some sinne and therefore Eripe me O Lord take hold of me and deliver me And lastly Salvum me fac O Lord save me Manifest thy good purpose upon me so that I may never be shaken or never overthrown in the faithfull hope of that salvation which thou hast preordained for me These are
came to put a war upon us The zeale of his glory and the course of this world fight against one another It is not against all warre nay it is not against all victory that David prayes He cannot hope that he should be overcome by no Tentations but against such a war and such a victory as should bring him to servility and bondage to sinne That sin entring by Conquest upon him should governe as a tyran over him against such a sicknesse as should induce a consumption it is that he directs this prayer Sana me Domine Not Lord make me impeccable but Lord make me penitent and then heale me And he comes not to take physick upon wantonnesse but because the disease is violent because the accidents are vehement so vehement so violent as that it hath pierced Ad ossa and Ad animam My bones are vexed and my soule is sore troubled Therefore heale me which is the Reason upon which he grounds this second petition Heale me because my bones are vexed c. We must necessarily insist a little upon these termes Ossa The Bones The Soule The Trouble or Vexation First Ossa Bones We know in the naturall and ordinary acceptation what they are They are these Beames and Timbers and Rafters of these Tabernacles these Temples of the Holy Ghost these bodies of ours But Immanebimus nativae significationi sayes S. Basil Shall we dwell upon the native and naturall signification of these Bones Et intelligentia passim obvia contenti erimus Shall we who have our conversation in heaven finde no more in these Bones then an earthly a worldly a naturall man would doe By S. Basils example we may boldly proceed farther Membra etiam animae sunt Esay 42. sayes he The soule hath her limbs as well as the body Surdi audite caeci aspicite sayes God in Esay If their soules had not eares and eyes the blinde could not see the deafe could not heare and yet God cals upon the deafe and blinde to heare and see As S. Paul sayes to the Ephesians The eyes of your understanding being enlightned so David sayes Psal 3.7 Dentes peccatorum contrivisti Thou hast broken the teeth That is the pride and the power the venom and malignity of the wicked Membra etiam animae sunt The soule hath her Bones too and here Davids Bones were the strongest powers and faculties of his soule and the best actions and operations of those faculties and yet they were shaken For this hereditary sicknesse Originall sinne prevayles so far upon us that upon our good dayes we have some grudgings of that Fever Even in our best actions we have some of the leaven of that sinne So that if we goe about to comfort our selves with some dispositions to Gods glory which we finde in our selves with some sparks of love to his precepts and his commandements with some good strength of faith with some measure of good works yea with having something for the Name and glory of Christ Jesus yet if we consider what humane and corrupt affections have been mingled in all these Conturbabuntur ossa our Bones will be troubled even those that appeared to be strong works and likely to hold out will need a reparation an exclamation Sana me Domine O Lord heale these too or els these are as weake as the worst Ossa non dolent The Bones themselves have no sense they feele no paine We need not say That those good works themselves which we doe have in their nature the nature of sinne That every good worke considered alone and in the substance of the act it selfe is sinne But membranae dolent Those little membrans those filmes those thin skins that cover and that line some bones are very sensible of paine and of any vexation Though in the nature of the worke it selfe the worke be not sinne yet in those circumstances that invest and involve the worke in those things which we mingle with the worke whether desire of glory towards men or opinion of merit towards God Whensoever those bones those best actions come to the examination of a tender and a diligent Conscience Si ossa non dolent membranae dolent If the worke be not sinfull the circumstances are and howsoever they may be conceived to be strong as they are Ossa Bones works in a morall consideration good yet as they are Ossa mea sayes David as they are My bones such good works as taste of my ill corruptions so long they are vexed and troubled and cannot stand upright nor appeare with any confidence in the sight of God Thus far then first David needed this sanation this health that he prayes for Anima that his best actions were corrupt But the corruption went farther to the very roote and fountaine of those actions Ad ipsam animam His very soule was sore vexed It is true that as this word Anima the soule is sometimes taken in the Scriptures this may seeme to goe no farther then the former no more that his soule was vexed then that his bones were so for Anima in many places is but Animalis Homo The soule signifies but the naturall man And so opponitur spiritui The soule is not onely said to be a diverse thing but a contrary thing to the Spirit When the Apostle sayes to the Thessalonians 1 Thes ult 23. Now the very God of peace sanctifie you throughout that your whole spirit and soule and body may be kept blamelesse unto the comming of our Lord Iesus Christ And where the same Apostle sayes to the Hebrews The word of God divideth asunder the soule and the spirit Heb. 4.12 here is a difference put between corrupt nature and the working of the Spirit of God the Holy Ghost in man for here the soule is taken for Animalis home The naturall man and the Spirit is taken for the Spirit of God But besides this these two words Soule and Spirit are sometimes used by the Fathers in a sense diverse from one another and as different things and yet still as parts of one and the same man Man is said by them not onely to have a body and a soule but to have a soule and a spirit not as Spirit is the Spirit of God and so an extrinsecall thing but as Spirit is a constitutive part of the naturall man So in particular amongst many Gregory Nyssen takes the Body to be spoken De nutribili The flesh and bloud of man And the soule De sensibili The operation of the senses And the Spirit De Intellectuali The Intellectuall the reasonable faculties of man That in the body Man is conformed to Plants that have no sense In the soule to Beasts that have no reason In the spirit to Angels But so The Spirit is but the same thing with that which now we doe ordinarily account the soule to be for we make account that the Image of God is imprinted in the soule and that gives him his
godly men have declared this lothnesse to dye Beloved waigh Life and Death one against another and the balance will be even Throw the glory of God into either balance and that turnes the scale S. Paul could not tell which to wish Life or Death There the balance was even Then comes in the glory of God the addition of his soule to that Quire that spend all their time eternity it selfe only in glorifying God and that turnes the scale and then he comes to his Cupio dissolvi To desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ But then he puts in more of the same waight in the other scale he sees that it advances Gods glory more for him to stay and labour in the building of Gods Kingdome here and so adde more soules then his owne to that state then only to enjoy that Kingdome in himself and that turnes the scale againe and so he is content to live These Saints of God then when they deprecate death and complain of the approaches of death they are at that time in a charitable extasie abstracted and withdrawne from the consideration of that particular happinesse which they in themselves might haye in heaven and they are transported and swallowed up with this sorrow that the Church here and gods kingdome upon earth should lack those meanes of advancement or assistance which God by their service was pleased to afford to his Church Whether they were good Kings good Priests or good Prophets the Church lost by their death and therefore they deprecated that death Esay 38.18 and desired to live The grave cannot praise thee death cannot celebrate thee But the living the living he shall praise thee as I doe this day sayes Hezekias He was affected with an apprehension of a future barrennesse after his death and a want of propagation of Gods truth I shall not see the Lord even the Lord sayes he He had assurance that he should see the Lord in Heaven when by death he was come thither But sayes he I shall not see him in the land of the living Well even in the land of the living even in the land of life it selfe he was to see him if by death he were to see him in Heaven But this is the losse that he laments this is the misery that he deplores with so much holy passion I shall behold man no more with the Inhabitants of the world Howsoever I shall enjoy God my selfe yet I shall be no longer a meanes an instrument of the propagation of Gods truth amongst others And till we come to that joy which the heart cannot conceive it is I thinke the greatest joy that the soule of man is capable of in this life especially where a man hath been any occasion of sinne to others to assist the salvation of others And even that consideration that he shall be able to doe Gods cause no more good here may make a good man loath to die Quid facies magno nomini tuo Jos 7.9 sayes Ioshuah in his prayer to God if the Canaanites come in and destroy us and blaspheme thee What wilt thou do unto thy mighty Name What wilt thou doe unto thy glorious Church said the Saints of God in those Deprecations if thou take those men out of the world whom thou hadst chosen enabled qualified for the edification sustentation propagation of that Church In a word David considers not here what men doe or doe not in the next world but he considers onely that in this world he was bound to propagate Gods Truth and that that he could not doe if God tooke him away by death Consider then this horrour and detestation and deprecation of death in those Saints of the old Testament with relation to their particular and then it must be Quia promissiones obscurae Because Moses had conveyed to those men all Gods future blessings all the joy and glory of Heaven onely in the types of earthly things and said little of the state of the soule after this life And therefore the promises belonging to the godly after this life were not so cleere then not so well manifested to them not so well fixt in them as that they could in contemplation of them step easily or deliver themselves confidently into the jawes of death he that is not fully satisfied of the next world makes shift to be content with this and he that cannot reach or does not feele that will be glad to keepe his hold upon this Consider their horrour and â—etestation and deprecation of death not with relation to themselves but to Gods Church and then it will be Quia operarii pauci Because God had a great harvest in hand and few labourers in it they were loath to be taken from the worke And these Reasons might at least by way of excuse and extenuation in those times of darknesse prevaile somewhat in their behalfe They saw not whither they went and therefore were loath to goe and they were loath to goe because they saw not how Gods Church would subsist when they were gone But in these times of ours when Almighty God hath given an abundant remedy to both these their excuses will not be appliable to us We have a full cleernesse of the state of the soule after this life not onely above those of the old Law but above those of the Primitive Christian Church which in some hundreds of yeares came not to a cleere understanding in that point whether the soule were immortall by nature or but by preservation whether the soule could not die or onely should not die Or because that perchance may be without any constant cleernesse yet that was not cleere to them which concernes our case neerer whether the soule came to a present fruition of the sight of God after death or no. But God having afforded us cleernesse in that and then blest our times with an established Church and plenty of able work-men for the present and plenty of Schooles and competency of endowments in Universities for the establishing of our hopes and assurances for the future since we have both the promise of Heaven after and the promise that the gates of Hell shall not prevaile against the Church here Since we can neither say Promissiones obseurae That Heaven hangs in a Cloud nor say Operarii pauci That dangers hang over the Church it is much more inexcusable in us now then it was in any of them then to be loath to die or to be too passionate in that reason of the deprecation Quia non in morte Because in death there is no remembrance of thee c. Which words being taken literally may fill our meditation and exalt our devotion thus If in death there be no remembrance of God if this remembrance perish in death certainly it decayes in the neernesse to death If there be a possession in death there is an approach in age And therefore Remember now thy Creator in the dayes of thy youth
last motive Iosh 7.19 must be the glory of God Therefore Ioshuah sayes to Achan My Son give I pray thee glory unto the Lord God of Israel and make Confession unto him Now the glory of God arises not out of the Confessing but because every true Confessing is accompanied with a detestation of the sin as it hath separated me from God and a sense of my re-union and redintegration with God in the abjuration of my former sins for to tell my sin by way of a good tale or by boasting in it though it be a revealing a manifesting is not a Confession in every true confession God hath glory because he hath a straid soule re-united to his Kingdome And to advance this Glory David confesses Peccata sins which is our next Consideration I said I will confesse my sins unto the Lord. First he resents his state All is not well Then he examines himselfe Peccata vera Thus and thus it stands with me Then he considers then he resolves then he executes He confesses so far we are gone and now he confesses sins For the Pharisees though he pretended a Confession was rather an exprobration how much God had beene beholden to him for his Sabbaths for his Almes for his Tithes for his Fasting David confesses sins first such things as were truly sins For as the element of Ayre that lyes betweene the Water and the Fire is sometimes condensed into water sometimes rarified into fire So lyes the conscience of man betweene two operations of the Devill sometimes he rarifies it evaporates it that it apprehends nothing feeles nothing to be sin sometimes he condenses it that every thing falls and sticks upon it in the nature and takes the waight of sin and he mis-interprets the indifferent actions of others and of his owne and destroyes all use of Christian liberty all conversation all recreation and out of a false feare of being undutifull to God is unjust to all the world and to his owne soule and consequently to God himselfe who of all notions would not be received in the notion of a Cruell or Tyrannicall God In an obdurate conscience that feeles no sin the Devill glories most but in the over-tender conscience he practises most That is his triumphant but this is his militant Church That is his Sabbath but this is his six dayes labour In the obdurate he hath induced a security in the scriptures which the Holy Ghost hath exprest in so many names as Sin Sin Wickednesse Iniquity Transgressions Offences Many many more And all this that thereby we might reflect upon our selves often and see if our particular actions fell not under some of those names But then lest this should over-intimidate us there are as many names given by the Holy Ghost to the Law of God Law Statutes Ordinances Covenants Testimony Precept and all the rest of which there is some one at least repeated in every verse of the hundred and nineteenth Psalme that thereby we might still have a Rule to measure and try our actions by whether they be sins or no. For as the Apostle sayes He had not knowne sinne if he had not knowne the Law So there had beene no sin if there had beene no Law And therefore that soule that feeles it selfe oppressed under the burden of a Vow must have recourse to the Law of God and see whether that Vow fall under the Rule of that Law For as an over-tender conscience may call things sins that are not and so be afraid of things that never were so may it also of things that were but are not now of such sins as were truly sins and fearfull sins but are now dead dead by a true repentance and buried in the Sea of the blood of Christ Jesus and sealed up in that Monument under the seale of Reconciliation the blessed Sacrament and yet rise sometimes in this tender conscience in a suspition and jealousie that God hath not truly not fully forgiven them And as a Ghost which we thinke we see afrights us more then an army that we doe see So these apparitions of sins of things that are not against any Law of God and so are not sins or sins that are dead in a true repentance and so have no being at all by the Devils practise worke dangerously upon a distempered conscience for as God hath given the Soule an Imagination and a Fancy as well as an Understanding So the Devill imprints in the conscience a false Imagination as well as a fearefull sense of true sin David confesses sins sins that were truly sins But the more ordinary danger is Omniae in our not calling those things which are truly sins by that name For as sometimes when the Baptisme of a Child is deferred for State the Child dyes unbaptized So the sinner defers the Baptisme of his sin in his teares and in the blood of his Saviour offered in the blessed Sacrament till he dye namelesse namelesse in the booke of Life It is a Character that one of the ancientest Poets gives of a well-bred and well-governed Gentleman That he would not tell such lyes as were like truths not probable lyes nor such truths as were like lyes not wonderfull not incredible truths It is the constancy of a rectified Christian not to call his indifferent actions sins for that is to slander God as a cruell God nor to call sins indifferent actions for that is to undervalue God as a negligent God God doth not keepe the Conscience of man upon the wrack in a continuall torture and stretching But God doth not stupifie the conscience with an Opiate in an insensiblenesse of any sin The law of God is the balance and the Criterium By that try thine actions and then confesse David did so Peccata he confessed sinnes nothing that was not so as such neither omitted he any thing that was so And then they were Peccata sua His sins I said I will confesse my sins unto the Lord. First Sua. Sua His sinnes that is à se perpetrata sins which he confesses to have been of his voluntary committing He might and did not avoyd them When Adam said by way of alienation and transferring his fault The woman whom thou gavest me And the woman said Gen. 3.12 The Serpent deceived me God tooke this by way of Information to finde out the Principall but not by way of extenuation or alleviation of their faults Every Adam eats with as much sweat of his browes and every Eve brings forth her Children with as much paine in her travaile as if there had been no Serpent in the case If a man sin against God who shall plead for him If a man lay his sins upon the Serpent upon the Devill it is no plea but if he lay them upon God it is blasphemy Iob finds some ground of a pious Expostulation with God in that My flesh is not brasse nor my strength stones And such as I am thou hast made me
care is of the man and the soule is the man first a hedge about him and then about his house and about all that he had on every side Job 1.10 So day after day we shall finde arguments to establish our hearts in hope that the Lord hath compassed us and nothing shall breake in so as to take us from him but God shall say to us as to his former people Leva in circuitu oculos tuos Lift up thine eyes round about Esay 49.18 and behold which is one great comfort that he enables us to see and to know our enemies to discerne a tentation to be a tentation Omnes isti congregati sunt All these gather themselves together and come to thee which is another assistance that when we see our enemies multiply and that there is none that fighteth for us but onely thou O God we make a more present recourse to him But Vivo ego dicit Dominus As I live saith the Lord Velut ornamento vestieris thou shalt surely cloathe thee with them all as with an ornament and binde them on thee as a Bride doth which is the fulnesse of the mercy That as in another place he promises his children Panis vester sunt your enemies shall be your Bread Numb 14.9 you shall feed upon your enemies So here hee makes our enemies even our spirituall enemies our Cloathes and more then that our Jewels our Ornaments wee shall bee the stronger the warmer the richer by tribulations and tentations having overcome them as we shall if the Lord compasse us if he continue his watchfulnesse over us And that David sayes here first in the Churches behalfe God from the beginning carried a wall about his Church in that assurance Primitiva Mat. 16.18 Portae inferi The gates of hell shall not prevaile against it The Gentiles the Philosophers that were without the Church found a party Traitors Conspirators within The Heretiques and all these led and maintained by potent Princes that persecuted the Church The gates of hell were all opened and issued all her forces but Non praevaluerunt they never prevailed The Arians were sometimes more then the true Christians in all the world The Martyrians a sect that affected the name of Martyrdome could name more Martyrs then the true Church could but Evanuerunt yet they vanished The Emperours of Rome persecuted the Bishops of Rome to death yet when we looke upon the reckoning the Emperors died faster then Bishops Thou hast compassed me sayes the Primitive Church and so sayes the Reformed too Princes that hated one another have joyned in leagues against the Religion Reformata Princes that needed their Subjects have spent their Subjects by thousands in Massacres to extinguish the Religion Personall Assasinates Clandestine plots by poyson by fire by water have been multiplied against Princes that favour the Religion Inquisitions Confiscations Banishments Dishonours have overflowne them that professe the true Religion and yet the Lord compassing his Church she enjoyes a holy certainty arising out of these testimonies of his care that she shall never be forsaken And this may every good soule have too God comes to us without any purpose of departing from us againe Anima For the Spirit of life that God breated into man that departs from man in death but when God had assumed the nature of man the God-head never parted from that nature no not in death When Christ lay dead in the grave the God-head remained united to that body and that soule which were dis-united in themselves God was so united to man as that he was with man when man was not man in the state of death So when the Spirit of God hath invested compassed thy soule and made it his by those testimonies that Spirit establishes it in a kinde of assurance that he will never leave it Old Rome had as every City amongst the Heathen had certaine gods which they called their Tutelar gods gods that were affected to the preservation of that place But they durst never call upon those gods by their proper names for feare of losing them lest if their names should bee knowne by their enemies their enemies should winne away their gods from them by bestowing more cost or more devotion towards them then they themselves used So also is it said of them that when they had brought to Rome a forraigne god which they had taken in a conquered place Victory they cut the wings of their new god Victory lest he should flie from them againe This was a misery that they were not sure of their gods when they had them We are If he once come to us he never goes from us out of any variablenesse in himselfe but in us onely That promise reaches to the whole Church Esay 30.20 and to every particular soule Thy Teachers shall not bee removed into a corner any more but thine eye shall see thy Teachers which in the Originall as is appliably to our present purpose noted by Rabbi Moses is Non erunt Doctores tui alati Thy Teachers shall have no wings They shall never flie from thee and so the great Translation reads it Non avolabunt As their great god Victory could not flie from Rome so after this victory which God hath given his Church in the Reformation none of her Teachers should flie to or towards Rome Every way that God comes to us he comes with a purpose to stay and would imprint in us an assurance that he doth so and that Impression is this Compassing of thy soule with songs of deliverance in the signification and use of which word we shall in one word conclude all God hath given us this certitude Songs this faire assurance of his perpetuall residence with us in a word of a double signification The word is Ranan which signifies Joy exultation singing Lament 2.14 Psal 17.1 But it hath another sense too Arise Cry out in the night And Attend unto my cry which are voyces far from singing This God meanes therein That though he give us that comfort to sit and sing of our Deliverance yet hee would not have us fall asleepe with that musique but as when we contemplate his everlasting goodnesse wee celebrate that with a constant Joy so when we looke upon our owne weaknesse and unworthinesse we cry out Wretched men that wee are who shall deliver us from this body of death For though we have the Spirit of life in us we have a body of death upon us How loving soever my soule be it will not stay in a diseased body How loving soever the Spirit of life be it will not stay in a diseased soule My soule is loath to goe from my body but sicknesse and paine will drive it out so will sinne the Spirit of life from my soule God compasses us with Songs of Deliverance we are sure he would not leave us But he compasses us with Cries too we are afraid we are sure that we
it as upon a duty in this way humbly and patiently and laboriously to walke towards him without stopping upon any thing in this world either preferments on the right or disgraces on the left hand for a Cart may stop us as well as a Coach low things as well as high with as much trouble and more anoyance Which is more especially intended in the last words of the Text Firmabo super te oculos meos I will settle my providence fixe mine eye upon thee I will guide thee with mine eye Thus farre hath our blessed Lord assured us That he will make us understand 3 Part. which is his Instruction de credendis what to Beleeve And that he will teach us to walke in his way which is his Instruction de agendis what to Doe how to avoide tentations This last is That hee will guide us with his eye which is his Instruction de sperandis what wee are to Hope for at his hand if in this way we doe stumble or fall into some sinnes of infirmities But it is but de sperandis not de praesumendis when by infirmity thou art fallen thy Hope must begin then but if the Hope begun before so as thou fellest upon hope that God would raise thee then it was presumption and there the Lords eye shuts in and guides thee no longer Otherwise he directs thee with his eye that is with his gracious and powerfull looking upon thee to the meanes of thy recovery Wee heare of no blowes wee heare of no chiding from him towards Peter but all that is said is Luke 22.65 The Lord turned back and looked upon Peter and then he remembred his case The eye of the Lord lightned his darknesse The eye of the Lord thawed those three crusts of Ice which were growne over his heart in his three denials of his Master A Candle wakes some men as well as a noyse The eye of the Lord works upon a good soule as much as his hand and hee is as much affected with this consideration The Lord sees me as with this The Lord strikes me Wee reade in Naturall story of some creatures Qui solo oculorum aspectu fovent ova Plin. l. 10. c. 9. which hatch their egges onely by looking upon them What cannot the eye of God produce and hatch in us Plus est quod probatur aspectu quà m quod sermone Ambrose A man may seeme to commend in words and yet his countenance shall dispraise His word infuses good purposes into us but if God continue his eye upon us it is a farther approbation for He is a God of pure eyes and will not looke upon the wicked Deut. 11.12 This land doth the Lord thy God care for and the eyes of the Lord are alwayes upon it from the beginning of the yeare even to the end thereof What a cheerefull spring what a fruitfull Autumne hath that soule that hath the eye of the Lord alwayes upon her The eye of the Lord upon mee makes midnight noone and S. Lucies day S. Barnabies It makes Capricorne Cancer and the Winters the Summers Solstice The eye of the Lord sanctifies nay more then sanctifies glorifies all the Eclipses of dishonour makes Melancholy cheerefulnesse diffidence assurance and turnes the jealousie of the sad soule into infallibility Upon his people his eye shined in the wildernesse his eye singled them in Egypt and in Babylon they were sustained by his eye They were and we are Ezra 5.5 Psal 33.18 The eye of their God was upon the Elders of Israel And Behold the eye of the Lord is upon all them that feare him The Proverb is not onely as old as Aristotle Oculus domini and Pes domini The eye of the Master fattens the horse and the foot of the Master marles the ground but it is as old as the Creation God saw all that he had made and so it was very good It was visio approbationis Hieron and his approbation was the exaltation thereof This guiding then with the eye we consider to be his particular care and his personall providence upon us in his Church For a man may be in the Kings presence and yet not in his eye and so he may in Gods Gods whole Ordinance in his Church is Gods face For that is the face of God by which God is manifested to us But then August that eye in that face by which he promises to guide us in this Text is that blessed Spirit of his by whose operation he makes that grace which does evermore accompany his Ordinances effectuall upon us The whole Congregation sees God face to face in the Service in the Sermon in the Sacrament but there is an eye in that face an eye in that Service an eye in that Sermon an eye in that Sacrament a piercing and an operating Spirit that lookes upon that soule and foments and cherishes that soule who by a good use of Gods former grace is become fitter for his present And this guiding us with his eye manifests it selfe in these two great effects Convertit conversion to him and union with him First his eye works upon ours His eye turnes ours to looke upon him Still it is so expressed with an Ecce Behold Psal 33.18 the eye of the Lord is upon all them that feare him His eye cals ours to behold that And then our eye cals upon his to observe our cheerefull readinesse Behold Psal 123.2 as the eye of a servant lookes to the hand of his Master so our eyes waite upon the Lord our God till he have mercy upon us Where the Donec Vntill is an everlasting Donec as the blessed Virgins was A Virgin Donec till she brought forth her first Son and a Virgin ever after So our eyes waite upon God till hee have mercy that is while he hath it and that he may continue his mercy for it was his mercifull eye that turned ours to him and it is the same mercy that we waite upon him And then when as a well made Picture doth alwaies looke upon him that lookes upon it this Image of God in our soule is turned to him by his turning to it it is impossible we should doe any foule any uncomely thing in his presence Will any man solicite a Wife or a Daughter and call the Father or Husband to looke on Will any man breake open thy house in the night and first wake thee and call thee up Can any man give his body to uncleannesse his tongue to prophanenesse his heart to covetousnesse and at the same time consider that his pure and his holy and his bountifull God hath his eye upon him Can he looke upon God in that line in that Angle upon God looking upon him and dishonour him Psal 25.15 August Upon those words of David Mine eyes are ever towards the Lord Quasi diceretur quid agitur depedibus as though it were objected Is all thy care of thine
sense of the word But as some of our Expositors have found reason to interpret them Ne approximent That they shall not come neare him not neare God in the service of his Church to do themselves any good his Corrections shall harden them and remove them farther from him and from all benefit by his Ordinances First then God armes him with a pre-increpation upon Descent Nolite fieri Descensus Goe no lesse be not made lower The first sin that ever was was an ascending a climing too high when the purest Understandings of all The Angels fell by their ascending when Lucifer was tumbled downe by his Similis ero Altissimo I will be like the most High Esay 14.14 then he tried upon them who were next to him in Dignity upon Man how that clambring would worke upon him He presents to man the same ladder He infuses into man the same Ambition and as he fell with a Similis ero Altissimo I will be like the most High So he overthrew man with an Eritis sicut Dii Ye shall be as Gods It seemes this fall hath broake the neck of Mans ambition and now we dare not be so like God as we should be Ever since this fall man is so far from affecting higher places then his nature is capable of that he is still groveling upon the ground and participates and imitates and expresses more of the nature of the Beast then of his owne There is no creature but man that degenerates willingly from his naturall Dignity Those degrees of goodnesse which God imprinted in them at first they preserve still As God saw they were good then so he may see they are good still They have kept their Talent They have not bought nor sold They have not gained nor lost They are not departed from their native and naturall dignity by any thing that they have done But of Man it seemes God was distrustfull from the beginning He did not pronounce upon Mans Creation as he did upon the other Creatures that He was good because his goodnesse was a contingent thing and consisted in the future use of his free will For that faculty and power of the will Dionys is Virtus transformativa by it we change our selves into that we love most and we are come to love those things most which are below us As God said to the Earth and it was enough to say so Germinet terra juxta genus suum Gen. 1. Let the Earth bring forth according to her kinde Ambro. So Vive juxta genus tuum sayes S. Ambrose to Man Live according to thy kinde Non adulteres genus tuum doe not abase doe not allay doe not betray do not abastardise that noble kinde that noble nature which God hath imparted to thee imprinted in thee Mundi moles liber est Basil This whole world is one Booke And is it not a barbarous thing when all the whole booke besides remains intire to deface that leafe in which the Authors picture the Image of God is expressed as it is in man God brought man into the world as the King goes in state Lords and Earles and persons of other ranks before him So God sent out light and Firmament and Earth and Sea and Sunne and Moone to give a dignity to mans procession and onely Man himselfe disorders all and that by displacing himselfe by losing his place The Heavens and Earth were finished Et omnis exercitus eorum Gen. 2.1 sayes Moses All the Host thereof and all this whole Army preserves that Discipline onely the Generall that should governe them mis-governs himselfe And whereas we see that Tygers and Wolves Beasts of annoyance doe still keepe their places and natures in the world and so doe Herbs and Plants even those which are in their nature offensive and deadly Ambrose for Alia esui alia usui Some herbs are made to eat some to adorne some to supply in Physick whilest we dispute in Schools whether if it were possible for Man to doe so it were lawfull for him to destroy any one species of Gods Creatures though it were but the species of Toads and Spiders because this were a taking away one linke of Gods chaine one Note of his harmony we have taken away that which is the Jewel at the chaine that which is the burden of the Song Man himselfe Partus sequitur ventrem We verifie the Law treacherously mischievously we all follow our Mother we grovell upon the earth whose children we are and being made like our Father Psal 8.4 in his Image we neglect him What is Man that thou art mindfull of him and the sonne of Man that thou visitest him David admires not so much mans littlenesse in that place as his greatnesse He is a little lower then Angels A little lower then God sayes our former Translation agreeably enough to the word and in a good sense too Gods Lievtenant his Vice-gerent over all Creatures Thou hast made him to have Dominion over the works of thy hands and Dominion is a great it is a supreme estate And thou hast put all things under his feet as it follows there And yet we have forfeited this Jurisdiction this Dominion and more our owne Essence we are not onely inferior to the Beasts and under their annoyance but we are our selves become Beasts Consider the dignitie of thy soule which onely of all other Creatures is capable susciptible of Grace If God would bestow grace any where els no creature could receive it but thou Thou art so necessary to God as that God had no utterance no exercise no employment for his grace and mercy but for thee And if thou make thy selfe incapable of this mercy and this grace of which nothing but thou is capable then thou destroyest thy nature And remember then that as in the Kingdome of Heaven in those orders which we conceive to be in those glorious Spirits there is no falling from a higher to a lower order a Cherubim or Seraphim does not fall and so become an Archangel or an Angel but those of that place that fell fell into the bottomlesse pit So if thou depart from thy nature from that susciptiblenesse that capacity of receiving Grace if thou degenerate so from a Man to a Beast thou shalt not rest there in the state and nature of a Beast whose soule breaths out to nothing and vanishes with the life thou shalt not be so happy but thy better nature will remain in despite of thee thine everlasting soule must suffer everlasting torment Now as many men when they see a greater piece of coyne then ordinary 2 Part. they doe not presently know the value of it though they know it to be silver but those lesser coyns which are in currant use and come to their hands every day they know at first sight so because this stamp this impression of the image of God in Man is not well and clearly understood by every Man
had been well if Bathsheba had bathed within doores and with more caution but yet these errors alone we should not be apt to condemne in such persons except by Gods permitting greater sins to follow upon these we were taught that even such things as seeme to us in their nature to be indifferent have degrees of naturall and essentiall ill in them which must be avoyded even in the probability nay even in the possibility that they may produce sin And as from this Example we draw that Conclusion That sins which are but the Children of indifferent actions become the Parents of great sins which is the industry of sin to exalt it selfe and as it were ennoble it selfe above the stocke from which it was derived The next sin will needs be a better sin then the last So have we also from David this Conclusion that this generation of sin is infinite infinite in number infinite in duration So infinite both waies as that Luther who seldome checks himselfe in any vehement expression could not forbeare to say Si Nathan non venisset If Nathan had not come to David David had proceeded to the sin against the Holy Ghost O how impossible a thing is it then for us to condition and capitulate with God or with our owne Nature and say to him or to our selves We will sin thus long and no longer Thus far and no farther this sin and no more when not onely the frailty of man but even the justice of God provokes us though not as Author or cause of sin to commit more and more sins after wee have entangled and enwrapped our selves in former Who can doubt but that in this yeares space in which David continued in his sin but that he did ordinarily all the externall acts of the religious Worship of God who can doubt but that he performed all the Legall Sacrifices and all the Ceremoniall Rites Yea we see that when Nathan put Davids case in another name of a rich man that had taken away a poore mans onely sheepe David was not onely just but he was vehement in the execution of Justice Hee was saies the text exceeding wroth and said As the Lord liveth that man shall dye But yet for all this externall Religion for all this Civill justice in matter of government no mention of any repentance in all this time How little a thing then is it nay how great a thing that is how great an aggravating of thy sin if thou thinke to bribe God with a Sabboth or with an almes And as a criminall person would faine come to Sanctuary not because it is a consecrated place but because it rescues him from the Magistrate So thou comest to Chuch not because God is here but that thy being here may redeeme thee from the imputation of prophanenesse At last Nathan came David did not send for him but God sent him But yet David laid hold upon Gods purpose in him And he confesses to God he confesses to the Prophet he confesses to the whole Church for before he pleads for mercy in the body of the Psalme in the title of the Psalme which is as Canonicall Scripture as the Psalme it selfe hee confesses himselfe plainly A Psalme of David when the Prophet Nathan came to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba Audiunt male viventes quaerunt sibi patrocinia peccandi Wee heare of Davids sin August and wee justifie our sins by him Si David cur non ego If David went in to a Bathsheba why may not I That Father tels you why Qui facit quia David fecit id facit quod David non fecit He that does that because David did it does not doe that which David did Quia nullum exemplum proposuit For David did not justifie his sin by any precedent example So that he that sins as David did yet sins worse then David did and hee that continues as unsensible of his sin as David was is more unsensible then David was Quia ad te mittitur ipse David For God sends Nathan to thee August with David in his hand He sends you the Receit his invitations to Repentance in his Scriptures and he sends you a Probatum est a personall testimony how this Physicke hath wrought upon another upon David And so having in this first Part which is the Consideration of the persons in our Text God and David brought them by Nathans mediation together consider wee also for a conclusion of this Part the personall applications that David scatters himselfe upon none but God Tu me and hee repeats it doe Thou purge mee doe Thou wash mee Damascen hath a Sermon of the Assumption of the blessed Virgin which whole Sermon is but a Dialogue in which Eve acts the first part and the blessed Virgin another Tu. It is but a Dialogue yet it is a Sermon If I should insist upon this Dialogue between God and David Tu me Tu me Doe thou worke upon me it would not be the lesse a profitable part of a Sermon for that For first when we heare David in an anhelation and panting after the mercy of God cry out Domine Tu Lord doe thou that that is to be done doe Thou purge doe Thou wash and may have heard God thereby to excite us to the use of his meanes say Purget natura purget lex I have infused into thee a light and a law of nature and exalted that light and that law by a more particular law and a clearer light then that by which thou knowest what is sin and knowest that in a sinfull state thou canst not be acceptable to me Purget natura purget lex let the light of nature or of the law purge thee and rectifie thy selfe by that Doe but as much for thy selfe as some naturall men some Socrates some Plato hath done we may heare David reply Domine Tu Lord put me not over to the catechizing of Nature nor to the Pedagogie of the Law but take me into thine owne hands do Thou Thou that is to be done upon me When we heare God say Purget Ecclesia I have established a Church settled constant Ordinances for the purging and washing of souls there Purget Ecclesia Let the Church purge thee we may heare David reply Domine Tu Alas Lord how many come to that Bath and goe foule out of it how many heare Sermons and receive Sacraments and when they returne returne to their vomit Domine Tu Lord except the power of thy Spirit make thine Ordinance effectuall upon me even this thy Jordan will leave me in my leprosie and exalt my leprosie even this Sermon this Sacrament will aggravate my sin If we heare God say Shall I purge thee Doest thou know what thou askest what my method in purging is That if I purge I shall purge thee with fire with seaven fires with tribulations nay with tentations with temporall nay with spirituall calamities with wounds in thy fortune wounds
of the state of the Christian Church There by the ordinary meanes exhibited there our Scarlet sins are made as white as Snow And the whitenesse of Snow is a whitenesse that no art of man can reach to So Christs garments in his Transfiguration are expressed to have beene as white as Snow Marke 9.3 so as no Fuller on earth could white them Nothing in this world can send me home in such a whitenesse no morall counsaile no morall comfort no morall constancy as Gods Absolution by his Minister as the profitable hearing of a Sermon the worthy receiving of the Sacrament do This is to be as white as snow In a good state for the present But David begs a whitenesse above Snow for Snow melts and then it is not white our present Sanctification withers and we lose that cheereful verdure the testimony of an upright conscience And Snow melted Snow water is the coldest water of all Devout men departed from their former fervor are the coldest and the most irreducible to true zeale true holinesse Therefore David who was metall tried seven times in the fire and desired to be such gold as might be laid up in Gods Treasury might consider that in transmutation of metals it is not enough to come to a calcination or a liquefaction of the metall that must be done nor to an Ablution to sever drosse from pure nor to a Transmutation to make it a better metall but there must be a Fixion a fettling thereof so that it shall not evaporate into nothing nor returne to his former nature Therefore he saw that he needed not only a liquefaction a melting into teares nor only an Ablution a Transmutation those he had by this purging and this washing this station in the Church of God and this present Sanctification there but he needed Fixionem an establishment which the comparison of Snow afforded not That as he had purged him with Hyssop and so cleansed him that is enwrapped him in the Covenant and made him a member of the true Church and there washed him so as that he was restored to a whitenesse that is made his Ordinances so effectuall upon him as that then he durst deliver his soule into his hands at that time So he would exalt that whitenesse above the whitenesse of Snow so as nothing might melt it nothing discolour it but that under the seale of his blessed Spirit he might ever dwell in that calme in that assurance in that acquiescence that as he is in a good state this minute he shall be in no worse whensoever God shall be pleased to translate him We end all the Psalmes in our service Conclusio those of Praise and those of Prayer too with a Gloria Patri Glory be to the Father c. For our conclusion of this Prayer in this Psalme we have reserved a Gloria Patri too This consideration for the glory of God that though in the first Part The Persons the persons were varied God and man yet in our second Part where we confider the worke the whole worke is put into Gods hand and received from Gods hand Let God be true and every man a liar Let God be strong and every man infirme Let God give and man but receive What man that hath no propriety therein can take a penny out of another mans house or a roote out of his Garden but the Law will take hold of him Hath any man a propriety in Grace what had he to give for it Nature Is Nature equivalent to Grace No man does refine and exalt Nature to the height it would beare but if naturall faculties were exalted to their highest is Nature a fit exchange for Grace and if it were is Nature our owne Why should we be loath to acknowledge to have all our ability of doing good freely from God and immediately by his grace when as even those faculties of Nature by which we pretend to do the offices of Grace we have from God himselfe too For that question of the Apostle involves all What hast thou that thou hast not received Thy naturall faculties are no more thine owne then the grace of God is thine owne I would not be beholden to God for Grace and I must be as much beholden to him for Nature if Nature do supply Grace Because he hath made thee to be a man he hath given thee naturall faculties because he hath vouchsafed thee to be a Christian he hath given thee meanes of Grace But as thy body conceived in thy Mothers wombe could not claime a soule at Gods hand nor wish a soule no nor know that there was a soule to be had So neither by being a man indued with naturall faculties canst thou claime grace or wish grace nay those naturall faculties if they be not pre-tincted with some infusion of Grace before cannot make thee know what Grace is or that Grace is To a child rightly disposed in the wombe God does give a soule To a naturall man rightly disposed in his naturall faculties God does give Grace But that Soule was not due to that child nor that grace to that man Therefore as we said at first David does not bring the Hyssop and pray God to make the potion but Doe thou purge me with Hyssop All is thine owne There was no pre-existent matter in the world when God made the world There is no pre-existent merit in man when God makes him his David does not say Do thou wash me and I will perfect thy worke Give me my portion of Grace and I will trouble thee for no more but deale upon that stocke But Qui sanctificatur sanctificetur adhuc Let him that is holy be more holy but accept his Sanctification from him of whom he had his Justification and except he can think to glorifie himself because he is sanctified let him not think to sanctifie himself because he is justified God does all Yet thus argues S. Augustin upon Davids words Tuus sum Domine Lord I am thine and therefore safer then they that thinke themselves their owne Every man can and must say I was thine Thine by Creation but few can say I am thine few that have not changed their Master But how was David his so especially sayes S. Augustine Quia quaesivi justificationes tuas as it followes there Because I sought thy Righteousnesse thy Justification But where did he seeke it Hee sought it and he found it in himselfe In himselfe as himselfe there was no good thing to be found how far soever he had sought But yet he found a Justification though of Gods whole making yet in himselfe So then this is our Act of Recognition we acknowledge God and God onely to doe all But we doe not so make him Soveraigne alone as that we leave his presence naked and empty Nor so make him King alone as that we depopulate his Country and leave him without Subjects Nor so leave all to Grace as that the naturall faculties
Cooke The other is a Physitian and though by bitter things provides for thy future health And such is the hony of Flatterers and such is the wormewood of better Counsellors I will not shake a Proverbe not the Ad Corvos That wee were better admit the Crowes that picke out our eyes after we are dead then Flatterers that blinde us whilst we live I cast justly upon others I take willingly upon my selfe the name of wicked if I blesse the covetous whom the Lord abhorreth or any other whom he hath declared to be odious to him But making my object goodnesse in that man and taking that goodnesse in that man to be a Candle set up by God in that Candlesticke God having engaged himselfe that that good man shall be praised I will be a Subsidy man so far so far pay Gods debts as to celebrate with condigne praise the goodnesse of that man for in that I doe as I should desire to be done to And in that I pay a debt to that man And in that I succour their weaknesse who as S. Gregory sayes when they heare another praised Gregâ—r Si non amore virtutis at delectatione laudis accenduntur At first for the love of Praise but after for the love of goodnesse it selfe are drawne to bee good Phil. 4.8 For when the Apostle had directed the Philippians upon things that were True and honest and just and purc and lovely and of a good report he ends all thus If there be any vertue and if there be any praise thinke on these things In those two sayes S. Augustine he divides all Vertue and Praise Vertue in our selves that may deserve Praise Praise towards others that may advance and propagate Vertue This is the retribution which God promises to all the upright in heart Gloriabuntur Laudabuntur They shall Glory they shall have they shall give praise And then it is so far from diminishing this Glory as that it infinitely exalts our consolation that God places this Retribution in the future Gloriabuntur If they doe not yet yet certainly they shall glory And if they doe now that glory shall not goe out still they shall they shall for ever glory In the Hebrew there is no Present tense In that language wherein God spake Futurum it could not be said The upright in heart Are praised Many times they are not But God speaks in the future first that he may still keepe his Children in an expectation and dependance upon him you shall be though you be not yet And then to establish them in an infallibility because he hath said it I know you are not yet but comfort your selves I have said it and it shall be As the Hebrew hath no Superlatives because God would keepe his Children within compasse and in moderate desires to content themselves with his measures though they be not great and though they be not heaped so considering what pressures and contempts and terrors the upright in heart are subject to it is a blessed reliefe That they have a future proposed unto them That they shall be praised That they shall be redeemed out of contempt This makes even the Expectation it selfe as sweet to them as the fruition would be This makes them that when David sayes Expecta viriliter Waite upon the Lord with a good courage Waite I say Psal 27.14 upon the Lord they doe not answer with the impatience of the Martyrs under the Altar Vsquequo How long Lord wilt thou defer it Rev. 6.10 Psal 40.1 Psal 52.9 But they answer in Davids owne words Expectans expectavi I have waited long And Expectabo nomen tuum still I will waite upon thy Name I will waite till the Lord come His kingdome come in the mean time His kingdome of Grace and Patience and for his Ease and his Deliverance and his Praise and his Glory to me let that come when he may be most glorified in the comming thereof Nay not onely the Expectation that is that that is expected shall be comfortable because it shall be infallible but that very present state that he is in shall be comfortable according to the first of our three Translations They that are true of heart shall be glad thereof Glad of that Glad that they are true of heart though their future retribution were never so far removed Nay though there were no future retribution in the case yet they shall finde comfort enough in their present Integrity Nay not onely their present state of Integrity but their present state of misery shall be comfortable to them for this very word of our Text Halal that is here translated Ioy and Glory and Praise in divers places of Scripture as Hebrew words have often such a transplantation signifies Ingloriousnesse and contempt and dejection of spirit Psal 75.4 Esa 44.25 Job 12.17 So that Ingloriousnesse and contempt and dejection of spirit may be a part of the retribution God may make Ingloriousnesse and Contempt and Dejection of spirit a greater blessing and benefit then Joy and Glory and Praise would have been and so reserve all this Glory and Praising to that time that David intends Psal 112.6 The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance Though they live and die contemptibly they shall be in an honorable remembrance even amongst men as long as men last and even when time shall be no more and men no more they shall have it in futuro aeterno where there shall be an everlasting present and an everlasting future there the upright in heart shall be praised and that for ever which is our conclusion of all If this word of our Text Halal shall signifie Ioy as the Service Booke Aeternum and the Geneva translation render it that may be somewhat towards enough which we had occasion to say of the Joyes of heaven in our Exercise upon the precedent Psalme when we say-led thorough that Hemispheare of Heaven by the breath of the Holy Ghost in handling those words Vnder the shadow of thy wings I will rejoyce So that of this signification of the word Gaudebunt in aeterno They shall rejoyce for ever we adde nothing now If the word shall signifie Glory as our last translation renders it consider with me That when that Glory which I shall receive in Heaven shall be of that exaltation as that my body shall invest the glory of a soule my body shall be like a soule like a spirit like an Angel of light in all endowments that glory it selfe can make that body capable of that body remaining still a true body when my body shall be like a soule there will be nothing left for my soule to be like but God himselfe 2 Pet. 1.4 1 Cor. 6.17 I shall be partaker of the Divine nature and the same Spirit with him Since the glory that I shall receive in body and in soule shall be such so exalted what shall that glory of God be which I shall
there is wholesome meat before too The cleare light is in the Gospel but there is light in Nature too Revel 19.9 At the last Supper the Supper of the Lambe in Heaven there is no bill of fare there are no particular dishes named there It is impossible to tell us what we shall feed upon what we shall be feasted with at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb Our way of knowing God there cannot be expressed At that Supper of the Lambe which is here here in our way homewards that is in the Sacramentall Supper of the Lambe it is very hard to tell what we feed upon How that meat is dressed how the Body and Blood of Christ is received by us at that Supper in that Sacrament is hard to be expressed hard to be conceived for the way and manner thereof So also in the former meale that which we have called the Dinner which is The knowledge which the Jews had in the Law it was not easie to distinguish the taste and the nature of every dish and to finde the signification in every Type and in every Ceremony There are some difficulties if curious men take the matter in hand and be too inquisitive even in the Gospel more in the Law most of all in Nature But yet even in this first refection this first meale that God sets before man which is our knowledge of God in Nature because wee are then in Gods House all this World and the next make God but one House though God doe not give Marrow and fatnesse Psal 63.6 81.16 as David speaks though he doe not feed them with the fat of the wheat nor satisfie them with honey out of the Rock for the Gospel is the honey and Christ is the Rock yet even in Nature hee gives sufficient meanes to know him though they come to neither of the other Meales neither to the Jews Dinner The benefit of the Law nor to the Christians Supper either when they feed upon the Lamb in the Sacrament or when they feed with the Lamb in the possession and fruition of Heaven Though therefore the Septuagint in their Translation of the Psalms have in the Title of this Psalme added this A Psalme of Ieremy and Ezekiel when they were departing out of the Captivity of Babylon intimating therein that it is a Psalme made in contemplation of that blessed place which we are to go to as literally it was of their happie state in their restitution from Babylon to Jerusalem And though the ancient Church by appropriating this Psalme to the office of the dead to the service at Burials intimate also that this Psalme is intended of that fulnesse of knowledge and Joy and Glory which they have that are departed in the Lord yet the Holy Ghost stops as upon the way before we come thither and since we must lie in an Inne that is Lodge in this World he enables the World to entertaine us as well as to lodge us and hath provided that the World the very world it selfe before wee consider the Law in the World or the Church in the World or Glory in the next World This very World that is Nature and no more should give such an universall light of the knowledge of God as that he should bee The confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them that are a farre off upon the Sea And therefore as men that come to great places and preferments when they have entred by a faire and wide gate of Honour but yet are laid downe upon hard beds of trouble and anxiety in those places for when the body seemes in the sight of men to go on in an easie amble the minde is every day if not all day in a shrewd and diseasefull trot As those men will sometimes say It was better with me when I was in a lower place and fortune and will remember being Bishops the pleasures they had when they were Schoole-boyes and yet for all this intermit not their thankfulnesse to God who hath raised them to that height and those meanes of glorifying him so howsoever we abound with joy and thankfulnesse for these gracious and glorious Illustrations of the Law and the Gospel and beames of future Glory which we have in the Christian Church Let us reflect often upon our beginning upon the consideration of Gods first benefits which he hath given to us all in Nature That light Iohn 1.9 by which he enlighteneth every man that commeth into the World That he hath given us a reasonable soule capable of grace here that he hath denied no man and no other creature hath that That he hath given us an immortal soul capable of glory hereafter and that that immortality he hath denied no man and no other creature hath that Consider we alwaies the grace of God to be the Sun it selfe but the nature of man and his naturall faculties to be the Sphear in which that Sun that Grace moves Consider we the Grace of God to be the soule it self but the naturall faculties of man to be as a body which ministers Organs for that soule that Grace to worke by That so as how much soever I feare the hand of a mighty man that strikes yet I have a more immediate feare of the sword he strikes with So though I impute justly my sins and my feares of judgements for them to Gods withdrawing or to my neglecting his grace yet I looke also upon that which is next me Nature and naturall light and naturall faculties and that I consider how I use to use them whether I be as watchfull upon my tongue that that minister no tentation to others and upon mine eye that that receive no tentation from others as by the light of Nature I might and as some morall Men without addition of particular Grace have done That so first for my selfe I be not apt to lay any thing upon God and to say that hee starved me though he should not bid me to the Jews dinner in giving me the light of the Law nor bid me to the Christians Supper in giving me the light of the Gospell because he hath given me a competent refection even in Nature And then that for others I may first say with the Apostle Rom. 1.20 11.33 That they are without excuse who doe not see the invisible God in the visible Creature and may say also with him O altitudo The wayes of the Lord are past my finding out And therefore to those who doe open their eyes to that light of Nature in the best exaltation thereof God does not hide himselfe though he have not manifested to me by what way he manifests himselfe to them For God disappoints none and he is The confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them who are a farre off upon the Sea Commit thy way unto the Lord Psal 37.5 sayes David And he sayes more then our Translation seemes to expresse The Margin hath
it a Mysterie and a great mysterie yet he cals it a mysterie without controversie Without controversie great is the mysterie of God manifested in the flesh justified in the Spirit preached to the Gentiles beleeved in the world received into glory When he presents matter of consolation he would have it without controversie To establish a disconsolate soule there is alwaies Divinity enough that was never drawne into Controversie I would pray I finde the Spirit of God to dispose my heart and my tongue and mine eyes and hands and knees to pray Doe I doubt to whom I should pray To God or to the Saints That prayer to God alone was sufficient was never drawne into controversie I would have something to rely and settle and establish my assurance upon Doe I doubt whether upon Christ or mine owne or others merits That to rely upon Christ alone was sufficient was never drawne into Controversie At this time Christ disposed himselfe to comfort his Disciples in that wherein they needed comfort now their discomfort and their feare lay not in this whether there were different degrees of glory in Heaven but their feare was that Christ being gone and having taken Peter and none but him there should be no roome for them and thereupon Christ sayes Let not that trouble you for In my Fathers house are many mansions And so we have done with the former branch of this last part That it is piously done to beleeve these degrees of glory in Heaven That they have inconsiderately extended this probleme in the Roman Church That no Scriptures are so evident as to induce a necessity in it That this Scripture conduces not at all to it and therefore we passe to our last Consideration The right use of the right sense of these words First then Christ proposes in these words Consolation A worke Consolatio then which none is more divine nor more proper to God nor to those instruments whom he sends to worke upon the soules and consciences of others Who but my selfe can conceive the sweetnesse of that salutation when the Spirit of God sayes to me in a morning Go forth to day and preach and preach consolation preach peace preach mercy And spare my people spare that people whom I have redeemed with my precious Blood and be not angry with them for ever Do not wound them doe not grinde them do not astonish them with the bitternesse with the heavinesse with the sharpnesse with the consternation of my judgements David proposes to himselfe that he would Sing of mercy Psal 101.1 and of judgement but it is of mercy first and not of judgement at all otherwise then it will come into a song as joy and consolation is compatible with it It hath falne into disputation and admitted argument whether ever God inflicted punishments by his good Angels But that the good Angels the ministeriall Angels of the Church are properly his instruments for conveying mercy peace consolation never fell into question never admitted opposition How heartily God seemes to utter and how delightfully to insist upon that which he sayes in Esay Consolamini consolamini populum meum Comfort ye comfort ye my people Esay 40.1 And Loquimini ad cor Speake to the heart of Ierusalem and tell her Thine iniquities are pardoned How glad Christ seemes that he had it for him when he gives the sick man that comfort Fili confide My son be of good comfort thy sins are forgiven thee What a Coronation is our taking of Orders by which God makes us a Royall Priesthood And what an inthronization is the comming up into a Pulpit where God invests his servants with his Ordinance as with a Cloud and then presses that Cloud with a Vaesi non woe be unto thee if thou doe not preach and then enables him to preach peace mercy consolation to the whole Congregation That God should appeare in a Cloud upon the Mercy Seat as he promises Moses he will doe That from so poore a man as stands here Levit. 16.2 wrapped up in clouds of infirmity and in clouds of iniquity God should drop raine poure downe his dew and sweeten that dew with his honey and crust that honied dew into Manna and multiply that Manna into Gomers and fill those Gomers every day and give every particular man his Gomer give every soule in the Congregation consolation by me That when I call to God for grace here God should give me grace for grace Grace in a power to derive grace upon others and that this Oyle this Balsamum should flow to the hem of the garment even upon them that stand under me That when mine eyes looke up to Heaven the eyes of all should looke up upon me and God should open my mouth to give them meat in due season That I should not onely be able to say as Christ said to that poore soule Confide fili My son be of good comfort but Fratres Patres mei My Brethren and my Fathers nay Domini mei and Rex meus My Lords and my King be of good comfort your sins are forgiven you That God should seale to me that Patent Ite praedicate omni Creaturae Goe and preach the Gospell to every Creature be that creature what he will That if God lead me into a Congregation as into his Arke where there are but eight soules but a few disposed to a sense of his mercies and all the rest as in the Arke ignobler creatures and of brutall natures and affections That if I finde a licentious Goat a supplanting Fox an usurious Wolfe an ambitious Lion yet to that creature to every creature I should preach the Gospel of peace and consolation and offer these creatures a Metamorphosis a transformation a new Creation in Christ Jesus and thereby make my Goat and my Fox and my Wolfe and my Lion to become Semen Dei The seed of God and Filium Dei The child of God and Participem Divinae Naturae Partaker of the Divine Nature it selfe This is that which Christ is essentially in himselfe This is that which ministerially and instrumentally he hath committed to me to shed his consolation upon you upon you all Not as his Almoner to drop his consolation upon one soule nor as his Treasurer to issue his consolation to a whole Congregation but as his Ophir as his Indies to derive his gold his precious consolation upon the King himselfe What would a good Judge a good natured Judge give in his Circuit what would you in whose breasts the Judgements of the Star-chamber or other criminall Courts are give that you had a warrant from the King to change the sentence of blood into a pardon where you found a Delinquent penitent How rufully do we heare the Prophets groane under that Onus visionis which they repeat so often O the burden of my vision upon Judah or upon Moab or Damascus or Babylon or any place Which is not only that that judgement would be a
away I am sure that thou who art returned to him and hast re-manifested thy selfe to him who in the diffidence of his sad soule thought thee gone for ever wilt never depart from mee nor hide thy selfe from me who desire to dwell in thy presence And so by this liberality I stand by giving I receive comfort We follow our text Rex Christus in the Context our Prophet as he places this liberality in the King in the Magistrate in the People Here the King is Christ The Magistrate the Minister The People the people whether collectively that is the Congregation or distributively every particular soule Afford your devotions a minute to each of these and we have done When we consider the liberality of our King the bounty of God to man in Christ it is Species ingratitudinis It is a degree of ingratitude nay it is a degree of forgetfulnesse to pretend to remember his benefits so as to reckon them for they are innumerable Sicut in visibilibus est Sol Nazlan in intelligibilibus est Deus As liberall as the Sun is in Nature God is in grace Bonitas Dei ad extra liberalitas est It is the expressing of the Schoole and of much use That God is Essentiall Goodnesse within doores in himselfe But Ad extra when he comes abroad when this interiour Goodnesse is produced into action Barnard then all Gods Goodnesse is Liberality Deus est voluntas Omnipotens is excellently said by S. Bernard God is all Almightinesse all Power but he might be so and we never the better Therefore he is Voluntas omnipotens A Power digested into a Will as Willing as Able to doe us all all good What good Receive some drops of it in S. Bernards owne Manna his owne honey Creans mentes ad se participandum So good as that he hath first given us soules capable of him and made us so partakers of the Divine Nature Vivificans ad sentiendum So good as that he hath quickned those soules and made them sensible of having received him for Grace is not grace to me till it make me know that I have it Alliciens ad appetendum So good as that he hath given that soule an appetite and a holy hunger and thirst to take in more of him for I have no Grace till I would have more and then Dilatans ad capiendum So good as that he hath dilated and enlarged that soule to take in as much of God as he will And lest the soule should lose any of this by unthankfulnesse Luke 6.31 God is kind even to the unthankfull sayes God himselfe which is a degree of goodnesse in which God seldome is nay in which God scarce looks to be imitated To be kinde to the unthankfull But if the whole space to the Firmament were filled with sand and we had before us Clavius his number how many thousands would be If all that space were filled with water and so joyned the waters above with the waters below the Firmament and we had the number of all those drops of water And then had every single sand and every single drop multiplied by the whole number of both we were still short of numbring the benefits of God as God But then of God in Christ infinitely super-infinitely short To have been once nothing and to be now co-heire with the Son of God is such a Circle such a Compasse as that no revolutions in this world to rise from the lowest to the highest or to fall from the highest to the lowest can be called or thought any Segment any Arch any Point in respect of this Circle To have once been nothing and now to be co-heires with the Son of God That Son of God who if there had been but one soule to have been saved would have dyed for that nay if all soules had been to be saved but one and that that onely had sinned he would not have contented himselfe with all the rest but would have dyed for that And there is the goodnesse the liberality of our King our God our Christ our Jesus But we must looke upon this liberality as our Prophet leads us in the Magistrate too Magistratus that is in this part The Minister As I have received mercy I am one of them as S. Paul speaks And why should I deliver out this mercy to others in a scanter measure then I have received it my selfe from God Why should I deliver out his Talents in single farthings Or his Gomers in narrow and shallow thimbles Why should I defalke from his generall propositions and against all Grammar and all Dictionaries call his Omnes his All a few Why should I lie to the Holy Ghost Acts 5. as S. Peter charges Ananias Soldest thou the land for so much Yea for so much Did God make heaven for so few yes for so few Why should I say so If we will constitute a place for heaven above and a place for hell below even the capacity of the place will yeeld an argument that God as we can consider him in his first meaning meant more should be saved then cast away As oft as God tells us of painfull wayes and narrow gates and of Camels and needles all that is done to sharpen an industry in all not to threaten an impossibility to any If God would not have all why tooke he me And if he were sorry he had taken me or were wearied with the sins of my youth why did he not let me slide away in the change of sins in mine age or in my sinfull memory of old sins or in my sinfull sorrow that I could not continue in those sins but still make his mercies new to me every morning My King my God in Christ is liberall to all He bids us his Officers his Ministers to be so too and I am even thus far If any man doubt his salvation if any man thinke himselfe too great a sinner to attaine salvation let him repent and take mine for his with any true repentant sinner I will change states for God knowes his repentance whether it be true or no better then I know mine Therefore doth the Prophet here promise this liberality as in the King in Christ Populus and in the Magistrate the Minister so in the people too in every particular soule He cryes to us his Ministers Consolamini Consolamini Comfort O Comfort my people Esay 40.1 and he cryes to every one of you Miscrere animae tuae Have mercy upon thine own soule Ecclus. 30.24 and I will commiserate it too Be liberall to thy selfe and I will beare thee out in it God asks Quid potui What could have been done more to my Vineyard Doe but tell him Esay 5.4 and he will doe that Tell him that he can remove this dampe from thy heart Tell him as though thou wouldest have it done and he will doe it Tell him that he can bring teares into
Fundamentals every man is bound to have but not of the superstructure and superedification 807. B How Imperfect all our Knowledge is in Arts and Sciences 818. A Knowledge against over-much curiosity in attaining to it 63. E. 308. C. 319. A. B Whether wee shall Know one another in the next world 157. C Of sobriety in Knowledge 270. C. 701. A Knowing of our selves how hard a thing it is 563. C Knowing of God foure ordinary wayes of it in the Schooles 229. B L LAbour three-fold Labour in the Scripture 538. B Law and the Gospell of the severall state of either 284. E. 285. A Of the Law of Nature under which every man is 362. C How the Law is said to shew what is sinne 687. B Lawes of Temporall Princes whether or no they binde the conscience of the Subject wherefore never stated by the Pope or by any Councell 741. B Liberality and Bounty Civill and Spirituall what 759. E Liberality a vertue that begets a vertue ibid. The true body and true soule of Liberalitie what it is 760. C Life the excellencie of it 69. D. E. 70. A All that is good included in it 70. A Light the first creature 759. D Literae Formatae in the Primitive Church their Institution and use 415. A Lord whether God could be called the Lord before there were any creatures a disputable thing 757. A The Judgement of Tertullian and S. Augustine either way ibid. B Love the first Act of the Will 225. D How we may love the creatures 398. E 598. B Against the Love of the things of this world 187. C. 399. C Against loving of God for the Temporall blessings he bestowes upon us 750. C Loving our enemies six degrees observed in it 97. B Lust and Licentiousnesse the burdens that it makes men under goe 623. D Lying whether it be lawfull before one that is no competent Judge 491. B M Macchabees their torture and patience 221. E. 222. A. B. C. c. Man what Man is 64. D. E. 65. A. c. The dignitie and honour of Man 655. C. D Hee cannot deliberately wish himselfe an Angel for he should lose thereby ibid. E Of those helps and assistances which Man affords to Man 656. D. E. c. Man is called every creature in Scripture and why 770. C. D Mary the Crownes of England Scotland Denmark and Hungary much about one time fell upon women whose name was Mary 243. E It is a noble and a comprehensive name and why 244. A Marriage of second Marriages 216. D. E. c Masters of that esteeme and regard is to bee had to such as have taught us or have beene our Masters 288. E. 289. A why called Patres-familias 388. B Mediocrity of Estate the commendation of it 661. A. B. c. 685. D Orders in the Church of Rome from both extremes but not one from the Meane 661. B. What is a Mediocrity to one is not nor ought to be to another 714. C Memory the Holy Ghosts pulpit oftner than the Vnderstanding 290. B. C Of the sinfull Memory of past sins how dangerous it is 542. D Mercie of God how much above his judgements 12. B. 67. A. 71. A How full God is of it C Occasionall Mercies what and how many D The Devils capable of Mercy in the judgement of many Fathers 66. A. 262. D The proper difference betweene Mercy and Truth 530. D Against those that abridge the great volume of Gods Mercies 568. E Of severall Mercies and refreshments which are none of Gods 810. E. 811. A God can doe nothing but in Mercy 811. C Merits foreseene no cause of Graces in us 5. A Millenarii their errour what and how generall almost all the Fathers tainted with it 261. C Miracles against multiplying of them in the Roman Chuch 36. D Mirabilis or the man that workes Miracles the first of those great names given to Christ by the Prophet Esay 58. C Nothing dearer to God than a Miracle 215. A They are his owne Prerogative ibid. B It is more to change Nature by Miracles than to make Nature 394. E No man to ground his Faith upon a Miracle as it seemes to him 429. A How to judge of Miracles whether they bee true or false 429. B Dangerous putting of God to a Miracle in saving us 456. B What is properly a Miracle 683. D The Creation it selfe none ibid. Monuments not in Churches in the Primitive times 730 D Mortification outward Mortification and austerity a specious thing 492. E Mortification to be generall of all the parts and not of one onely 541. B Mosselim a kind of Doctors amongst the Jewes that taught the people by parables and obscure sayings 690. E The Multitude of their levity judgement and changing of opinions 482. B. D Against Murmuring at Gods blessings if they be not as great as we desire 576. C Mute against standing Mute at examinations 491. C Mysteries of two kinds in the Schooles 203. D Every Religion under heaven hath had her Mysteries and some things in-intelligible of all sorts of men 690. D N NAmes and Titles nothing puffeth men up more 734. D The Heathen never called their Tutelar Gods by their Names and why 608. A Of getting a good Name amongst men and against those that neglect it 680. A. E Of mens retaining those Names that are most acceptable 285. B Of the Name of Christian and when it was given and how 426. B Adam named all creatures but himselfe and why 563. B Natalitia Martyrum their dayes of suffering so called and why 268. C. 461. C Nativities three Nativities to every Christian and which they are 424. E Nature of that sight which wee have of God even by the light of Nature 227. B. 686. E Of that power which some of the Fathers attribute to Nature without Grace 314. C Men doe not halfe so much against sin as even by the power of Nature they are able to doe 315. B. C Of the testimony which a Naturall soule gives unto it selfe of it selfe 337. B Nature not equivalent to Grace 649 A Nature not our owne ibid. Nature and Grace how they co-operate ibid. D Neighbour-hood and evill Neighbour-hood and communicating with evill men 420. C Noctambulones men that walk in their sleep wake if they be called by their Names 467. A Nothing there is nothing more contrary to God than to be to doe or to thinke Nothing 265. B The Devill himselfe cannot wish himselfe deliberately to be nothing C An Order of Friars in the Roman Church that in humilitie called themselves Nullanos or Nothings 731. C Of the Numberlesse number of Gods benefits to Man 765. A O OCcasionall instruments of Gods glory what cold affections they meet with in the world amongst men disaffected to Gods cause 154. E Occasionall mercies offered what and how many 12. D Occasionall Convertites who 461. C God no Occasionall God and why 586. B Devotion no Occasionall thing and why 244. E A great
keepes it from dying then that it cannot dye We magnifie God in an humble and faithfull acknowledgment of the immortality of our soules but if we aske quid homo what is there in the nature of Man that should keepe him from death even in that point the question is not easily answered It is every mans case then every man dyes Videbit and though it may perchance be but a meere Hebraisme to say that every man shall see death perchance it amounts to no more but to that phrase Gustare mortem To taste death yet thus much may be implied in it too That as every man must dye so every man may see that he must dye as it cannot be avoided so it may be understood A beast dyes but he does not see death S. Basil sayes he saw an Oxe weepe for the death of his yoke-fellow Basil orat de Morte but S. Basil might mistake the occasion of that Oxes teares Many men dye too and yet doe not see death The approaches of death amaze them and stupifie them they feele no colluctation with Powers and Principalities upon their death bed that is true they feele no terrors in their consciences no apprehensions of Judgement upon their death bed that is true and this we call going away like a Lambe But the Lambe of God had a sorrowfull sense of death His soule was heavy unto death and he had an apprehension that his Father had forsaken him And in this text the Chalde Paraphrase expresses it thus Videbit Angelum mortis he shall see a Messenger a forerunner a power of Death an executioner of Death he shall see something with horror though not such as shall shake his morall or his Christian constancy So that this Videbunt They shall see implies also a Viderunt they have seene that is they have used to see death to observe a death in the decay of themselves and of every creature and of the whole World Almost fourteene hundred yeares agoe Cyprian ad Demetrianum S. Cyprian writing against Demetrianus who imputed all the warres and deaths and unseasonablenesses of that time to the contempt and irreligion of the Christians that they were the cause of all those ils because they would not worship their Gods Cyprian imputes all those distempers to the age of the whole World Canos videmus in pueris saies hee Wee see Children borne gray-headed Capilli deficiunt antequam crescant Their haire is changed before it be growne Nec aetas in senectute desinit sed incipit asenectute Wee doe not dye with age but wee are borne old Many of us have seene Death in our particular selves in many of those steps in which the morall Man expresses it Seneca Wee have seene Mortem infantiae pueritiam The death of infancy in youth and Pueritiae adolescentiam and the death of youth in our middle age And at last we shall see Mortem senectutis mortem ipsam the death of age in death it selfe But yet after that a step farther then that Morall man went Mortem mortis in morte Iesu We shall see the death of Death it self in the death of Christ As we could not be cloathed at first in Paradise till some Creatures were dead for we were cloathed in beasts skins so we cannot be cloathed in Heaven but in his garment who dyed for us This Videbunt this future sight of Death implies a viderunt they have seene they have studied Death in every Booke in every Creature and it implies a Vident they doe presently see death in every object They see the houre-glasse running to the death of the houre They see the death of some prophane thoughts in themselves by the entrance of some Religious thought of compunction and conversion to God and then they see the death of that Religious thought by an inundation of new prophane thoughts that overflow those As Christ sayes that as often as wee eate the Sacramentall Bread we should remember his Death so as often as we eate ordinary bread we may remember our death Bern. Aug. for even hunger and thirst are diseases they are Mors quotidiana a daily death and if they lasted long would kill us In every object and subject we all have and doe and shall see death not to our comfort as an end of misery not onely as such a misery in it selfe as the Philosopher takes it to be Mors omnium miseriarum That Death is the death of all miserie because it destroyes and dissolves our beeing Prov. 16.14 but as it is Stipendium peccati The reward of sin That as Solomon sayes Indignatio Regis nuncius mortis The wrath of the King is as a messenger of Death so Mors nuncius indignationis Regis We see in Death a testimony that our Heavenly King is angry for but for his indignation against our sinnes we should not dye And this death as it is Malum ill for if ye weigh it in the Philosophers balance it is an annihilation of our present beeing and if ye weigh it in the Divine Balance it is a seale of Gods anger against sin so this death is generall of this this question there is no answer Quis homo What man c. We passe then from the Morte moriemini 2 Part. to the fortè moriemini from the generality and the unescapablenesse of death from this question as it admits no answer to the Fortè moriemini perchance we shall dye that is to the question as it may admit a probable answer Of which we said at first that in such questions nothing becomes a Christian better then sobriety to make a true difference betweene problematicall and dogmaticall points betweene upper buildings and foundations betweene collaterall doctrines and Doctrines in the right line Aug. for fundamentall things Sine haesitatione credantur They must be beleeved without disputing there is no more to be done for them but beleeving for things that are not so we are to weigh them in two balances in the balance of Analogy and in the balance of scandall we must hold them so as may be analogall proportionable agreeable to the Articles of our Faith and we must hold them so as our brother be not justly offended nor scandalized by them wee must weigh them with faith for our own strength and we must weigh them with charity for others weaknesse Certainly nothing endangers a Church more then to draw indifferent things to be necessary I meane of a primary necessity of a necessity to be beleeved De fide not a secondary necessity a necessity to be performed and practised for obedience Without doubt the Roman Church repents now and sees now that she should better have preserved her selfe if they had not denied so many particular things which were indifferently and problematically disputed before to bee had necessarily De fide in the Councell of Trent Taking then this Text for a probleme Quis homo What man lives and shall not