may well resemble another And therefore he appears it seems in the shape of Man's imperfection either for age or deformity as like an old man for so the Witches say and perhaps it is not altogether false which is vulgarly affirmed That the Devil appearing in Humane shape hath always a deformity of some uncouth member or other as though he could not yet take upon him Humane shape entirely for that Man himself is not entirely and utterly fallen as he is By this time you see the difficulty of the Question is eased Now it appears why Eve wondered not to see a Spirit speak unto her in the shape of a Serpent because she knew the Law of Spirits apparitions better than we do Again when she saw the Spirit who talked with her to have taken upon him the shape though of a Beast yet of the most sagacious Beast of the field she concluded according to our forelaid suppositions That though he were one of the abased spirits yet the shape he had taken resembling his nature he must needs be a most crafty and sagacious one and so might pry farther into God's meaning than she was aware of And thus you may see at last how the opinion of the Serpent's subtilty occasioned Eve's fall as also why the Devil of all other Beasts of the field took the shape of a Serpent namely to gain this opinion of sagacity with the Woman as one who knew the Principles aforesaid Here I observe That overmuch dotage upon a conceived excellency whether of Wisdom or whatsoever else without a special eye to God's commandment hath ever been the Occasion of greatest Errors in the world and the Devil under this mask useth to blear our eyes and with this bait to inveigle our hearts that he may securely bring us to his lure It was the mask of the Serpent's wisdom and sagacity above the rest of the Beasts of the field whereby he brought to pass our first Parents ruin The admired wisdom of the long-living Fathers of the elder world having been for so many ages as Oracles their off-spring grown even to a People and Nation while they yet lived was the ground of the ancient Idolatry of mankind whilest they supposed that those to whom for wisdom they had recourse being living could not but help them when they were dâ—ad This we may learn out of Hesiâ—d The men saith he of the golden age being once dead became 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they became Godlings and Patrons of mortal men and Overseers of their good and evil works So the opinion of the blessed Martyrs superlative glory in Heaven was made the occasion of the new-found Idolatry of the Christian Churches wherewith they are for the greater part yet overwhelmed And the esteem which Peter had above the rest of the Apostles in regard of chief-dome even in the Apostles times was abused by the old Deceiver to instal the man of sin This made S. Paul to say The mystery of iniquity was even then working and therefore he laboured as far as he could to prevent it by as much depressing Peter as others exalted him Nay he puts the Churches in mind of this story of the Serpent's beguiling Eve that her mis-hap might be a warning to them 2 Cor. 11. 2 3. I am jealous over you saith he with a godly jealousie for I have esponsed you to one husband that I might present you as a chaste Virgin to Christ. But I fear lest by any means as the Serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. And to come a little nearer home Have not our Adversaries when they would get Disciples learned this of the Devil to possess them first with an opinion of superlative Learning in their Doctors surpassing any of ours I will say no more in this point but that we ought so to prize and admire the gifts and abilities of Learning which God hath bestowed upon men that the Pole-star of his Sacred Word may ever be in our eye THE next thing to be spoken of is The Action Guile And first I shall shew what it is To beguile is through a false faith and persuasion wrought by some argument of seeming good to bereave a man of some good he had or hoped for or to bring upon him some evil he expected not Practice hath made it so well known that I should not need to have given any definition or description thereof but only for a more distinct consideration Whereas therefore I said that Guile wrought by forelaying a false persuasion or belief I would intimate that it was nothing else but a Practical Sophism the Premisses whereof are counterfeit motives the Conclusion an erroneous execution Now as all Practice or Action consists in these two The choice of our End and The execution of Means to attain thereunto So is this Practical Sophism we call Guile found in them both either when an evil End is presented unto us in the counterfeit of a good and so we are made to embrace Nubem pro Iunone and find our selves deceiv'd in the event whatsoever the Means were we have used or else we apply such Means as are either unlawful or unsufficient to attain our End as being so mask'd that they appear unto us far otherwise than they are With both these sorts or parts of Guile the Devil wrought our first Parents ruin First by making it seem a thing desirable and by all means to be laboured for To be like unto God which was an ambition of that whereof man was not only not capable but such as little beseemed him to aspire unto upon whom God had bestowed so great a measure of glorious perfections as he seem'd a God amongst the rest of the creatures What unthankfulness was this that he upon whom God bestowed so much as he was the glory of his workmanship should yet think that God should envy him any degree of excellency fit for him For this was the mask wherewith the Devil covered both the unfitness and impossibility of the End he insinuated but he beguiled them Secondly He put the same trick upon them in the choice of the Means to be used which was to transgress the severe commandment of Almighty God Had the Aim been allowable yet could not the Means have been taken for good but only of such as were beguiled in that the Devil made the Woman believe with his questioning the truth of God's commandment that the danger was not great nor so certain as it seemed or that evil which might be in the action would be countervailed with the excellency to be attained thereby the gloriousness of which End the Devil so strongly sounded that it drowned in her imagination the least conceit of evil in the Means And as a man which always looks upward sees not the danger in the patâ— and way he walks in until he tumbles into
with cattel and beasts of the field thereby accounting the Serpent one of that number Besides Satan they say was accursed before this time and some of the words in this Curse cannot well be applied to any but the brute Serpent as that he should eat the dust of the earth c. 2. Others would have this Curse pronounced only upon the Spiritual Serpent the Devil because the brute Serpent was only an Instrument abused by the Devil and neither knew what was done nor could do withal and why should it therefore be punished 3. Others would divide the Controversie applying the first part of the Curse in the 14. verse to the brute Serpent the latter in the 15. vers to the Devil or Spiritual Serpent because as the latter words Of the promised seed of the woman which should destroy the Serpent and his seed must needs be meant of Christ and Satan so the former words are most fitly appliable to the brute Serpent only But against this may be said That the same Thou and Thee spoken of in the first part of the Curse is all one with the Thou and Thee in the latter and therefore of whatsoever the first is meant of the same is also meant the latter 4. There is therefore a fourth opinion That this Curse is throughout pronounced upon both both upon the Serpent and the Devil In which though there be some difference about the manner how yet I embrace it as the truest as not only conceiving it may be so by the fitness of all the parts so applied to both but think moreover that this only ought to be the meaning and no other if it be conceived as I am now to shew For in the first place The Devil when he beguiled man came not as a naked Spirit but in the shape and figure of a Serpent as I have shew'd heretofore and therefore that his punishment in the manner might be sutable and answerable to his offence he was to receive his doom likewise under the figure of a Serpent and the style thereof framed unto a Serpent's condition For God useth in his wisdom to brand the Punishment with the stamp of the Sin that the offender thereby might not only know what he felt but also read why he suffered Why were Adonibezek's thumbs and great toes cut off but that he might read therein as he did his former cruelty Threescore and ten Kings having their thumbs and toes cut off gathered meat under my Table As I have done so God hath requited me Why was Pharaoh with his Host rather drowned in the Sea than slain in the Field but that all the world might read it was for his cruel Edict to drown all the male children of the Hebrews Why did Absalom lie with David's Concubines but to put David in mind that he had lien with Vriah's wife And why was the Curse of the Devil shaped here in and unto the condition of the Serpent but because he had beguiled man in a Serpent's shape Secondly For the Serpent The known excellency and subtilty of the Serpent above all the Beasts which God had made the Devil had abused to gain credit with the woman that he was an excellent and a most sagacious Spirit and therefore might be ably to pry farther into God's meaning than she could which was the cause of her attention and so of her ruin For I have shewed heretofore that the Woman in the state of Integrity knew well enough That as it was the Law of Spirits in their commerce with men to present themselves under the shape of some visible thing so it must be likewise under the shape of some such thing as may more or less resemble their condition And that as the glorious Spirits might take no other shape but of Man the glory of visible creatures so the fallen Spirits could not then afore Man's fall take any other shape but of a Beast thereby to bewray his abasement Yet because the Devil here took upon him the shape of the most wise and most excellent of Beasts he so bleared the Woman's eyes with an opinion of his Excellency and Sagacity that in a manner she forgot or regarded not that he was one of the evil and abased Spirits which was the ground of her miserable ruin and overthrow Now because the Excellency and Sagacity of the Serpent had thus been the occasion of man's confusion by being made the lying counterfeit of the Devil's Excellency and Wisdom and the mask whereby he so covered his vileness that the Woman took him not to be as he was indeed therefore God in his wisdom thought good to change the copy and henceforth to bluâ—and deface that unhappy Physiognomical letter and by abasing the Serpent for the time to come to make him an everlasting embleme and monument wherein man might hieroglyphically read the malice vileness and execrable baseness of that wicked Spirit which had beguiled him to hate him as now we do the Serpent with mortal hatred and by his unlucky fortune to expect the Devil 's deadly destiny In a word that which was once used for a mask to cover the Devil's knavery should for the future be a glass wherein to behold his villany These being the Reasons which have led me to understand this Curse in an equal sense both of the brute Serpent and the Devil and in the literal sense applied unto the Serpent yet therein shaping out the Malediction of the Devil as truly as the Devil had taken upon him the Serpent's shape Let us now come to a more particular handling of the words And first we will consider them As they are the Curse of the unreasonable Serpent Secondly As they include the Devil's malediction But for the better understanding thereof before we can proceed two things are to be resolv'd First How it could be just with God to punish the brute Serpent who was Instrumentum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and had neither will to sin nor yet knowledge of what the Devil had done especially if we suppose as I have done hitherto that the Devil took only the shape of a Serpent which the Serpent could not do withal For this argument hath driven some to affirm That the whole Curse was to be understood only of the Spiritual Serpent and not at all of the Natural But why should this strumble them more as concerning the Iustness of God than that in Adam's censure in the 17. verse where the whole Earth is cursed for Adam's sake Cursed be the Earth for thy sake c. But what had the Earth done or how was it guilty of Adam's transgression Again Chap. 6. v. 5 7. it is expresly said That because God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth he said I will destroy both man and beast and the creeping things and the fowls of the air But how were the beasts the creeping things and the fowls of the air partakers of man's wickedness what had they
to commit it in God's Temple How impudently contumelious was this Sin therefore which was committed in God's very presence-chamber All these Aggravations are common to both our Parents which all laid together make their Sin as great as ever any was saving the sin against the Holy Ghost for so the best Divines do think But Eve adds one Aggravation more to her weight in that she was not content to sin her self alone but she allured and drew her husband also into the like horrible transgression with her whereby she was not only guilty of her own personal sin but of her husband 's also And this added so much unto her former sum that S. Paul 1 Tim. 2. 14. speaks of her as if she had been the only transgressour Adam was not deceived but the woman being deceived was in the transgression So great and horrible a thing it is in the Eye of God to be cause or mover of another's sin Wo be unto them who by any means are the cause of another's fall And justly might God say to Eve for this respect though there had been no more What is this that thou hast done NOW I come to the Woman's excuse The Serpent beguiled me In which words are three things considerable The Author The Serpent The Action Guile The Object Me. Concerning the Author The Serpent two things are inquirable First What the Serpent was indeed Secondly What Eve supposed him to be For the first I think none so unreasonable as to believe it was the unreasonable and brute Serpent For whence should he learn or how should he understand God's commandment to our first Parents and how is it possible a Serpent should speak and not only so but speak the language which Eve understood For though some there be who think that Beasts and Birds have some speech-like utterings of themselves yet none that a Beast should speak the language of Men. It remains therefore that according unto the Scriptures it was that old deceiver the Devil and Satan who abused brute Serpent either by entring into him or taking his shape upon him The last of which I rather incline unto supposing it as you shall hear presently to be the Law of Spirits when they have intercourse and commerce with men to take some visible shape upon them as the Devil here the Serpent's whence he becomes styled in Scripture The old Serpent Now for the Second question What Eve took him to be whether the Serpent or Satan If we say she thought him to be the brute Serpent how will this stand with the perfection of Man's knowledg in his integrity to think a Serpent could speak like a reasonable creature Who would not judge her a silly woman now that should think so and yet the wisest of us all is far short of Eve in regard of her knowledg then Again If we say she knew him to be the Devil I will not ask why she would converse at all with a wicked spirit who she knew had fallen from his Maker but I would know how we should construe the meaning of the Holy Ghost in the beginning of this Chapter where he saith The Serpent was the subtillest of all the beasts of the field which God had made and so implies the woman's opinion of the Serpent's wisdom was the occasion why she was so beguiled otherwise to what end are those words spoken unless to shew that Satan chose the Serpent's shape that through the opinion and colour of his well-known wisdom and sagacity he might beguile the Woman For the assoiling of which difficulty I offer these Propositions following First I will suppose There is a Law in the commerce of Spirits and Men that a Spirit must present himself under the shape of some visible thing For as in natural and bodily things there is no entercourse of action and passion unless the things have some proportion each to other and unless they communicate in some Common Matter So it seems God hath ordained a Law that invisible things should converse with things visible in a shape as they are visible which is so true that the conversing presence of a Spirit is called a Vision or Apparition And Experience with the Scriptures will shew us that not only evil Angels but good yea God himself converseth in this manner with men And all this I suppose Eve knew Secondly I suppose further That as Spirits are to converse with men under some visible shape so is there a Law given them that it must be under the shape of some such thing as may less or more resemble their condition For as in nature we see every several thing hath a several and sutable Phisiognomy or figure as a badge of their inward nature whereby it is known as by a habit of distinction so it seems to be in the shapes and apparitions of Spirits And as in a well-governed Commonwealth every sort and condition of men is known by some differing habit agreeable to his quality so it seems it should be in God's great Commonwealth concerning the shapes which Spirits take upon them And he that gave the Law that a man should not wear the habit of a woman nor a woman the habit of a man because that as he had made them diverse so would he have them so known by their habits so it seems he will not suffer a good and a bad Spirit a noble and ignoble one to appear unto men after the same fashion And this also I suppose Eve knew Now from these grounds it will follow That good Angels can take upon them no other shape but the shape of Man because their glorious excellency is resembled only in the most excellent of all visible creatures the shape of an inferiour creature would be unsutable no other shape becoming those who are called the sons of God but his only who was created after God's own image And yet not his neither according as now he is but according as he was before his fall in his glorious beauty of his Integrity Age and deformity are the fruits of Sin and the Angel in the Gospel appears like a young man his countenance like lightning and his raiment white as snow as it were resembling the beauty of glorified bodies in immutability sublimity and purity Hence also it follows on the contrary That the Devil could not appear in humane shape whilest Man was in his integrity because he was a Spirit fallen from his first glorious perfection and therefore must appear in such shape which might argue his imperfection and abasement which was the shape of a Beast otherwise no reason can be given why he should not rather have appeared unto Eve in the shape of a Woman than of a Serpent for so he might have gained an opinion with her both of more excellency and knowledg But since the fall of man the case is altered now we know he can take upon him the shape of Man and no wonder since one falling star
example many other of the Iews of the best rank having married strange wives likewise and loth to forgo them betook themselves thither also Sanballat willingly entertains them and makes his son-in-Law Manasse their Priest For whose greater reputation and state when Alexander the Great subdued the Persian Monarchy he obtained leave of him to build a Temple upon Mount Garizim where his son-in-Law exercised the office of High Priest This was exceedingly prejudicious to the Iews and the occasion of a continual Schism whilst those that were discontented or excommunicated at Ierusalem were wont to betake themselves thither Yet by this means the Samaritans having now one of the sons of Aaron to be their Chief Priest and so many other of the Iews both Priests and others mingled amongst them were brought at length to cast off all their false gods and to worship the Lord the God of Israel only Yet so that howsoever they seemed to themselves to be true worshippers and altogether free from Idolatry nevertheless they retained a smack thereof inasmuch as they worshipped the true God under a visible representation to wit of a Dove and circumcised their Children in the name thereof as the Iewish Tradition tells us who therefore always branded their worship with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or spiritual Fornication Iust as their predecessors the Ten Tribes worshipped the same God of Israel under the similitude of a Cals This was the condition of the Samaritan Religion in our Saviour's time and if we weigh the matter well we shall find his words here to the woman very pliable to be construed with reference thereunto You ask saith he of the true place of worship whether Mount Garizim or Ierusalem which is not now greatly material forasmuch as the time is at hand when men shall worship the Father at neither But there is a greater difference between you and us than of Place though you take no notice of it namely even about the Object of worship it self For ye worship what ye know not but we Iews worship what we know How is that Thus Ye worship indeed the Father the God of Israel as we do but you worship him under a corporeal representation wherein you shew you know him not But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and Truth In Spirit that is conceiving of him no otherwise than in Spirit and in Truth that is not under any corporeal or visible shape For God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and Truth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not fancying him as a Body but as indeed he is a Spirit For those who worship him under a corporeal similitude do beli◠him according as the Apostle speaks Rom. 1. 23. of such as changed the glory of the Incorruptible God into an Image made like to corruptible Man Birds or Beasts They changed saith he the truth of God into a lie and served the creature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 juxta Creatorem as or with the Creator who is blessed for ever v. 25. Hence Idols in Scripture are termed Lies as Amos 2. 4. Their Lies have caused them to erre after which their Fathers walked The Vulgar hath Seduxerunt eos Idola ipsorum Their Idols have caused them to erre And Esay 28. 15. We have made Lies our refuge And Ier. 16. 19 20. The Gentiles shall come from the ends of the earth and shall say Surely our Fathers have possessed the Chaldee hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 have worshipped a lie vanity wherein there is no profit Shall a man make Gods unto himself and they are no Gods This therefore I take to be the genuine meaning of this place and not that which is commonly supposed against external worship which I think this Demonstration will evince To worship what they know as the Iews are said to do and to worship in Spirit and Truth are taken by our Saviour for one and the same thing else the whole sense will be inconsequent But the Iews worshipped not God without Rites and Ceremonies who yet are supposed to worship him in Spirit and Truth Ergo To worship God without Rites and Ceremonies is not to worship him in Spirit and Truth according to the meaning here intended DISCOURSE XIII S. LUKE 24. 45 46. Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures And said unto them Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day OUR Blessed Saviour after he was risen from the dead told his Disciples not only that his Suffering of death and Rising again the third day was foretold in the Scriptures but also pointed out those Scriptures unto them and opened their understanding that they might understand them that is he expounded or explained them unto them Certain it is therefore that somewhere in the Old Testament these things were foretold should befall Messiah Yea S. Paul 1 Cor. 15. 3 4. will further assure us that they are I delivered unto you saith he first of all that which I also received how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures And that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures Both of them therefore are somewhere foretold in the Scriptures and it becomes not us to be so ignorant as commonly we are which those Scriptures be which foretell them It is a main point of our Faith and that which the Iews most stumble at because their Doctors had not observed any such thing foretold to Messiah The more they were ignorant thereof the more it concerns us to be confirmed therein I thought good therefore to make this the Argument of my Discourse at this time to inform both you and my self where these things are foretold and if I can to point out those very Scriptures which our Saviour here expounded to his Disciples Which that I may the better do I will make the words fore-going my Text to be as the Pole-star in this my search These are the things saith our Saviour which I spake unto you while I was yet with you That all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms concerning me Then follow the words I read Then opened he their understanding c. These two events therefore of Messiah's death and rising again the third day were foretold in these Three parts of Scripture In the Law of Moses or Pentateuch in the Nebiim or Prophets and in the Psalms and in these Three we must search for them And first for the First That Messiah should suffer death This was fore-signified in the Law or Pentateuch First in the story of Abraham where he was commanded to offer his son Isaac the son wherein his seed should be called and to whom the promise was entailed That in it should all the Nations