imploy their power in promoting a doctrine so contrary to their interest For Heaven and Hell cannot be more distant than the whole design of Christianity is from all the contrivances of wicked Spirits How soon was the Devil's Kingdom broken his Temples demolished his Oracles silenced himself baffled in his great design of deceiving mankind when Christianity prevailed in the world Having thus far asserted the truth of the thing viz. that there was such an effusion of the Holy Spirit we now come to consider 2. The nature of it as it is represented to us by Rivers of living waters flowing out of them that believe by which we may understand 1. The plenty of it called Rivers of waters 2. The benefit and usefulness of it to the Church 1. The plentifulness of this effusion of the Spirit there had been some drops as it were of this Spirit which had fallen upon some of the Jewish nation before but those were no more to be compared with these Rivers of waters than the waters of Siloam which run softly with the mighty River Euphrates What was the Spirit which Bezaleel had to build the Tabernacle with if compared with that Spirit which the Apostles were inspired with for building up the Church of God What was that Spirit of Wisdom which some were filled with to make garments for Aaron if compared with that Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation which led the Apostles into the knowledge of all Truth What was that Spirit of Courage which was given to the Iudges of old if compared with that Spirit which did convince the world of sin of righteousness and of judgment What was that Spirit of Moses which was communicated to the 70 Elders if compared with that Spirit of his Son which God hath shed abroad in the hearts of his people What was that Spirit of Prophesie which inspired some Prophets in several Ages with that pouring out of the Spirit upon all flesh which the Apostle tells us was accomplished on the day of Pentecost But these Rivers of Waters though they began their course at Ierusalem upon that day yet they soon overflowed the Christian Church in other parts of the world The sound of that rushing mighty Wind was soon heard in the most distant places and the fiery tongues inflamed the hearts of many who never saw them These gifts being propagated into other Churches and many other tongues were kindled from them as we see how much this gift of tongues obtained in the Church of Corinth And so in the History of the Acts of the Apostles we find after this day how the Holy Ghost fell upon them which believed and what mighty signs and wonders were done by them 2. The benefit and usefulness of this effusion of the Spirit like the Rivers of Waters that both refresh and enrich and thereby make glad the City of God The coming down of the Spirit was like the pouring water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground Now God opened the Rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of the valleys that the poor and needy who seek water might be refreshed and they whose tongues failed for thirst might satisfie themselves with living waâ—er These are some of the loâ—ty expressions whereby the Courtly Prophet Isaiah sets sorth the great promise of the spirit none better befitting the mighty advantages the Church of God hath ever since enjoyed by the pouring out of the spirit than these For the fountain was opened in the Apostles but the streams of those Rivers of living water have run down to our Age not confined within the banks of Tiber nor mixing with the impure waters of it but preserved pure and unmixed in that sacred doctrine contained in the Holy Scripture Within those bounds we confine our faith and are not moved by the vain discourses of any who pretend to discover a new Fountain-head to these waters at Rome and would make it impossible for them to come down to us through any other Channel but theirs But supposing they had come to us through them have they thereby gotten the sole disposal of them that none shall tast but what and how much they please and must we needs drink down the filth and mud of their Channel too As long as they suffer us to do what Christ hath commanded us to do viz. to take of these waters of life freely we do our own duty and quarrel not with them But if they go about to stop the passage of them or adulterate them with some forrain mixture or strive with us as the Herdsmen of Gerar did with Isaac's Herdsmen saying the Water is ours then if the name of the Well be Esek if contentions do arise the blame is not ours we assert but our own just right against all their encroachments For as Isaac pleaded that he only digged again the wells of water which they had digged in the days of Abraham his Father and although the Philistins had stopped them after the death of Abraham yet that could be no hindrance to his right but he might open them again and call their names after the names by which his Father had called them So that is the substance of our Plea we pretend to nothing but to clear the passage which they have stopped up and was left free and open for us in the time of the Apostles and Fathers we desire not to be imposed upon by their later usurpations we plead for no more but that the Church of God may have the same purity and integrity which it had in the primitive times and that things may not only be called by the names by which the Fathers have called them but that they may be such as the Fathers have left them But otherwise let them boast never so much of the largeness of their Stream of the Antiquity of their Channel of the holiness of their Waters of the number of their Ports and the riches of their Trading nay and let them call their stream by the name of the Ocean too if they please yet we envy them not their Admah and Pharpar and all the Rivers of Damascus so we may sit down quietly by these living waters of Iordan We are contented with the miracles which the Apostles wrought without forging or believing new ones we are satisfied with the gift of strange tongues which they had we know no necessity now of speaking much less of praying in an unknown tongue we believe that Spirit infallible which inspired the Apostles in their holy Writings and those we acknowledge embrace and I hope are willing to die for But if any upstart Spirit pretend to sit in an infallible Chair we desire not to be brought under bondage to it till we see the same miracles wrought by vertue of it which were wrought by the Apostles to attest their infallibility 3. The last thing to be spoken to is the season that this effusion
Drunkards heart to ake and hand to tremble and to let fall the supposed fatal mixture in the midst of all his jollity and excess How often have persons who have designed the greatest mischief to the lives and fortunes of others when all opportunities have fallen out beyond their expectation for accomplishing their ends through some sudden thoughts which have surprized them almost in the very act been diverted from their intended purposes Did ever any yet imagine that the charms of beauty and allurements of lust were so irresistible that if men knew before-hand they should surely dye in the embraces of an adulterous bed they could not yet withstand the temptations to it If then some considerations which are quite of another nature from all the objects which are presented to him may quite hinder the force and efficacy of them upon the mind of man as we see in Ioseph's resisting the importunate Caresses of his Mistress what reason can there be to imagine that man is a meer machine moved only as outward objects determine him And if the considerations of present fear and danger may divert men from the practice of evil actions shall not the far more weighty considerations of eternity have at least an equal if not a far greater power and efficacy upon mens minds to keep them from everlasting misery Is an immortal soul and the eternal happiness of it so mean a thing in our esteem and value that we will not deny our selves those sensual pleasures for the sake of that which we would renounce for some present danger Are the flames of another world such painted fires that they deserve only to be laughed at and not seriously considered by us Fond man art thou only free to ruine and destroy thy self a strange fatality indeed when nothing but what is mean and trivial shall determine thy choice when matters of the highest moment are therefore less regarded because they are such Hast thou no other plea for thy self but that thy sins were fatal thou hast no reason then to believe but that thy misery shall be so too But if thou ownest a God and Providence assure thy self that justice and righteousness are not meer Titles of his Honour but the real properties of his nature And he who hath appointed the rewards and punishments of the great day will then call the sinner to account not only for all his other sins but for offering to lay the imputation of them upon himself For if the greater abhorrency of mens evil ways the rigour of his laws the severity of his judgments the exactness of his justice the greatest care used to reclaim men from their sins and the highest assurance that he is not the cause of their ruine may be any vindication of the holiness of God now and his justice in the life to come we have the greatest reason to lay the blame of all our evil actions upon our selves as to attribute the glory of all our good unto himself alone 2. The frailty of humane Nature those who find themselves to be free enough to do their souls mischief and yet continue still in the doing of it find nothing more ready to plead for themselves than the unhappiness of mans composition and the degenerate state of the world If God had designed they are ready to say that man should lead a life free from sin why did he confine the soul of man to a body so apt to taint and pollute it But who art thou O man that thus findest fault with thy Maker Was not his kindness the greater in not only giving thee a soul capable of enjoying himself but such an habitation for it here which by the curiosity of its contrivance the number and usefulness of its parts might be a perpetual and domestick testimony of the wisdom of its Maker Was not such a conjunction of soul and body necessary for the exercise of that dominion whâ—ch God designed man for over the creatures endued only with sense and motion And if we suppose this life to be a state of tryal in order to a better as in all reason we ought to do what can be imagined more proper to such a state than to have the soul constantly employed in the Government of those sensual inclinations which arise from the body In the doing of which the proper exercise of that vertue consists which is made the condition of future happiness Had it not been for such a composition the differencâ— could never have been seen between good and bad men i. e. between those who maintain the Empire of reason assisted by the motives of Religion over all the inferiour faculties and such who dethrone their souls and make them slaves to every lust that will command them And if men willingly subject themselves to that which they were born to rule they have none to blame but themselves for it Neither is it any excuse at all that this through the degeneracy of mankind is grown the common custom of the world unless that be in it self so great a Tyrant that there is no resisting the power of it If God had commanded us to comply with all the customs of the world and at the same time to be sober righteous and good we must have lived in another age than we live in to have excused these two commands from a palpable contradiction But instead of this he hath forewarned us of the danger of being led aside by the soft and easie compliances of the world and if we are sensible of our own infirmities as we have all reason to be he hath offered us the assistance of his Grace and of that Spirit of his which is greater than the Spirit that is in the World He hath promised us those weapons whereby we may withstand the torrent of wickedness in the world with far greater success than the old Gauls were wont to do in the inundations of their Country whose custom was to be drowned with their arms in their hands But it will be the greater folly in us to be so because we have not only sufficient means of resistance but we understand the danger before-hand If we once forsake the strict rules of Religion and Goodness and are ready to yield our selves to whatever hath got retainers enough to set up for a custom we may know where we begin but we cannot where we shall make an end For every fresh assault makes the breach wider at which more enemies may come in still so that when we find our selves under their power we are contented for our own ease to call them Friends Which is the unhappy consequence of too easie yielding at first till at last the greatest slavery to sin be accounted but good humour and a gentile compliance with the fashions of the world So that when men are perswaded eithâ—r through fear or too great easiness to disuse that strict eye which they had before to their actions it oft-times falls out with them
his highest and most peculiar attributes thence he is said to resist the proud as though he made an attempt upon God himself and he loaths the Hypocrite in heart as one that mocks God as well as deceives men The first tendency to the destruction of this Nation of the Jews was the prevalency of the Pharisaical temper among them which was a compound of Pride and Hypocrisie and when the field was over-run with these tares it was then time for God to put in his sickle and cut them down God forbid that our Church and the Protestant Religion in it should be in danger of destruction for that would be a judgment beyond fire and sword and plague and any thing we have yet smarted by that would be the taking away the Kingdom of God from us and setting up the Kingdom of darkness that would be not only a punishment to our own Age but the heaviest curse next to renouncing Christianity we could entail upon posterity But however though God in mercy may design better thâ—ngs for us we cannot be sufficiently apprehensive of our danger not so much from the business of our enemies as those bad Symtoms we find among our selves When there is such monstrous pride and ingratitude among many who pretend to a purer worship of God than is established by Law as though there were little or no difference between the Government of Moses and Aaron and the bondage of Egypt O England England what will the Pride and unthankfulness of those who profess Religion bring thee to Will men still preferr their own reputation or the interest of a small party of Zealots before the common concernments of our Faith and Religion O that we did know at least in this our day the things that belong it our peace but let it never be said That they are hid from our eyes But if our common enemy should enter in at the breaches we have made among our selves then men may wish they had sooner known the difference between the reasonable commands of our own Church and the intolerable Tyranny of a foraign and usurped power between the soft and gentle hands of a Mother and the Iron sinews of an Executioner between the utmost rigour of our Laws and the least of an inquisition If ingratitude were all yet that were a sin high enough to provoke God to make ouâ— condition worse than it is but to whaâ— a strange height of spiritual pride are those arrived who ingross all true godliness to themselves as though it were not possible among us to go to Heaven and to Church together As though Christ had no Church for 1500 years and more wherein not one person can be named who thought it unlawful to pray by a prescribed form As though men could not love God and pray sinsincerely to him that valued the peace and order of the Church above the heats and conceptions of their own brains Where differences proceed meerly from ignorance and weakness they are less dangerous to themselves or others but where there is so much impatience of reproof such contempt of superiours such uncharitable censures of other men such invincible prejudices and stiffness of humour such scorn and reproach cast upon the publick worship among us What can such things spring from but a root of bitterness and spiritual pride I speak not these things to widen our differences or increase our animosities they are too large and too great already nor to condemn any humble and modest dissenters from us but I despair ever to see our divisions healed till Religion be brought from the fancies to the hearts of men and till men instead of mystical notions and unaccountable experiences instead of misapplying promises and mis-understanding the spirit of prayer instead of judging of themselves by mistaken signs of Grace set themselves to the practice of humility self-denial meekness patience charity obedience and a holy life and look on these as the greatest duties and most distinguishing characters of true Christianity And in doing of these there shall not only be a great reward in the liâ—e to come but in spight of all opposition from Atheism Profaneness or Superstition we may see our divisions cured and the Kingdom of God which is a Kingdom of peace and holiness to abide and flourish among us SERMON IX Preached at WHITE-HALL WHITSUNDAY 1669. JOHN VII 39. But this spake he of the Spirit which they that believe on him should receive For the Holy Ghost was noâ— yet given because that Iesus was not yet glorified WHat was said of old conceâ—ning the first Creation of the World that in order to the accomplishment of it the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters is in a sense agreeable to the nature of it as true of the renovation of the World by the doctrine of Christ. For whether by that we understand a great and vehâ—ment Mind as the Jews generally do or rather the Divine power manifesting it self in giving motion to the otherwise dull and unactive parts of matter we have it fully represented to us in the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost For that came upon them as a rushing mighty Wind and inspired them with a new life and motion whereby they became the most active instruments of bringing the World out of that state of confusion and darkness it lay in before by causing the glorious light of the Gospel to shine upon it And lest any part should be wanting to make up the parallel in the verse before the text we read of the Waters too which the Spirit of God did move upon and therefore called not a dark Abyss but flowing rivers of living water He that believeth on me as the Scripture hath said out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water Not as though the Apostles like some in the ancient Fables were to be turned into Fountains and pleasant Springs but the great and constant benefit which the Church of God enjoys by the plentiful effusion of the Holy Spirit upon them could not be better set forth than by rivers of living water flowing from them And this the Evangelist in these words to prevent all cavils and mistakes tells us was our Saviour's meaning But this spake he of the Spirit which they that believe on him should receive And lest any should think that our Blessed Saviour purposely affected to speak in strange metaphors we shall find a very just occasion given him for using this way of expression from a custom practised among the Jews at that time For in the solemnity of the feast of Tabernacles especially in the last and great day of the Feast mentioned v. 37. after the Sacrifices were offered upon the Altar one of the Priests was to go with a large Golden Tankard to the Fountain of Siloam and having filled it with water he brings it up to the water-gate over against the Altar where it was received