attributes he hath he is called the Spirit of Adoption Rom. 8.15 the Spirit of Faith 2 Cor. 4.13 the Spirit of Grace of Love of Joy of Zeale for where he worketh Grace is operative our Love is without dissimulation our Joy is like the joy of heaven as true though not so great our Faith a working faith and our Zeal a coale from the Altar kindled from his fire not mad and raging but according to knowledge he makes no shadowes but substances no pictures but realities no appearances but truths a Grace that makes us highly favoured a precious and holy Faith full and unspeakable Love ready to spend it self and zeal to consume us of a true existence being from the spirit of God who alone truly is but here the spirit of Truth yet the same spirit that planteth grace and faith in our hearts that begets our Faith cilates our Love works our Joy kindles our Zeal and adopts us in Regiam familiam into the Royall Family of the first-born in Heaven but now the spirit of Truth was more proper for to tell men perplext with doubts that were ever and anon and sometimes when they should not asking questions of such a Teacher was a seal to the promise a good assurance they should be well taught that no difficulty should be too hard no knowledge too high no mystery too dark and obscure for them but Omnis veritas all truth should be brought forth and unfolded to them and have the vayle taken from it and be laid open and naked to their understanding Let us then look up upon and worship this spirit of Truth as he thus presents and tenders himself unto us as he stands in opposition to two great enemies to Truth as 1. Dissimulation 2. Flattery and then as he is true in the lessons which he teacheth that we may pray for his Advent long for his coming and so receive him when he comes And first dissemble he doth not he cannot for dissimulation is a kind of cheat or jugling by which we cast a mist before mens eyes that they cannot see us it brings in the Divel in Samuel's mantle and an enemy in the smiles and smoothness of a friend it speakes the language of the Priest at Delphos playes in ambiguities promises life As to King 〈◊〉 who a 〈…〉 slew when death is neerest and bids us beware of a chariot when it means a sword No this spirit is an enemy to this because a spirit of truth and hates these in volucra dissimulationis this folding and involvednesse these clokes and coverts these crafty conveyances of our own desires to their end under the specious shew of intending good to others and they by whom he speaks are like him and speak the truth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2 Cor. 3.12 in the simplicity and godly sincerity of the spirit not in craftinesse not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 handling the Word of God deceitfully 2 Cor. 4.2 Eph. 4.14 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not in the slight of men throwing a Die what cast you would have them noting their Doctrine to men and the times that is not to men and the times but to their own ends telling them of Heaven Wisdom 1.5 when their thoughts are in their purse This holy spirit of Truth flies all such deceit and removes himself far from the thoughts which are without understanding and will not acquit a dissembler of his words there is nothing of the Divels method nothing of the Die or hand no windings nor turnings in what he teacheth but verus vera dicit being a spirit of truth he speaks the truth and nothing but he truth and for our behoof and advantage that we may believe it and build upon it and by his discipline raise our selves up to that end for which he is pleased to come and be our teacher And as he cannot dissemble so in the next place flatter us he cannot the inseparable mark and character of the evill spirit qui arridet ut saeviat who smiles upon us that he may rage against us lifts us up that he may cast us down whose exaltations are foiles whose favours are deceits whose smiles and kisses are wounds for flattery is as a glasse for a fool to look upon and so become more fool than before it is the fools eccho by which he hears himself at the rebound and thinks the wiseman spoke unto him and it proceeds from the father of lies not from the spirit of truth who is the same yesterday and to day and for ever who reproves drunkennesse though in a Noah adultery though in a David want of faith though in a Peter and layes our sins in order before us his precepts are plain his law is in thunder his threatnings earnest and vehement he calls Adam from behind the bush strikes Ananias dead for his hypocrisie and for lying to the holy Spirit deprives him of his own Thy excuse to him is a libell thy pretence fouler than thy sin thy false worship of him is blasphemy and thy form of godlinesse open impiety and where he enters the heart Sin which is the greatest errour the grossest lye removes it self heaves and pants to go out knocks at our breast and runs down at our eyes and we hear it speak in sighs and grones unspeakable and what was our delight becomes our torment In a word he is a spirit of truth and neither dissembles to decieve us nor flatters that we may deceive our selves but verus vera dicit being truth it self tells us what we shall find to be most true to keep us from the dangerous by-paths of errour and misprision in which we may lose our selves and be lost for ever And this appears is visible in those lessons and precepts which he gives which are so harmonious so consonant so agreeing with themselves and so consonant and agreeable to that Image after which we were made to fit and beautifie it when it is defaced and repaire it when it is decayed that so it may become in some proportion measure like unto him that made it for this spirit doth not set up one precept against another nor one text against another doth not disanul his promises in his threats nor check his threats with his promises doth not forbid all Feare in confidence nor shake our confidence when he bids us feare doth not set up meeknesse to abate our zeale nor kindles zeale to consume our meeknesse doth not teach Christian liberty to shake off obedience to Government nor prescribes obedience to infringe and weaken our Christian liberty This spirit is a spirit of truth and never different from himself never contradicts himself but is equall in all his wayes the same in that truth which pleaseth thee and that which pincheth thee in that which thou consentest to and that which thou runnâ—st from in that which will rayse thy spirit and that which will wound thy spirit And the reason why men who
nothing more in nothing else say or thinke we are pilgrimes and sojourners and strangers in the earth 'T is true strangers we are for all are so and passing forward apace to our journeyes end but not to that end for which we were made and therefore that we may reach and attain to it we must make our selves so put off the old man which loves to dwell here take off our hopes and desires from it look upon all its glories as dung look upon the world as a strange place and upon our selves as strangers in it and look upon the place to which we are going and fling off every weight and shake off every vanity every thing that is of the earth earthy make haste and delay not but leave it behind us even while we are in it for a Christian mans life is nothing else but a going out of it And to this end in the last place you must take along with you your viaticum Hide not thy commandments from me your provision The Commandments of God Hide not thy commandments from me saith David and he spoke as a stranger and as in a strange place as in a place of danger as in a dark place where he could not walk with safety if this light did not shine upon him For here we meet with variety of objects here are serpents to flatter us and serpents to bite us here are pleasures and terrors all to deceive and detaine us Here we meet with that arch-enemy to all strangers and pilgrims in severall shapes now as a roaring Lion and sometimes as an Angel of light and though we try it not out at Fists with him as those foolish Monks boasted they had often tried this kind of hardiment though we meet him not as a Hyppocentaure Hieron de vita Pauli Eremitae Malchi Hilarionis as the story tells us Paul the Hermite did as a Satyre or shee-wolf as Hilarion did to whom were presented many fearefull things the roaring of lions the noise of an Army and chariots of fire coming upon him wolves and foxes and sword-plaiers and I cannot tell what Though we do not feel him as a Satyre yet we feel him as voluptuous though we do not see him as a wolf yet we apprehend him thirsting after blood though we meet him not in the shape of a fox yet non ignoramus versutias we are not ignorant of his wiles and enterprises though we do not see him in the tempest we may in our feare and though his hand be invisible yet we may feel him in our impatience and falling from the truth we cannot say in our affliction this is his blow but we may heare him roare in our murmuring or we may see him in that mungrell Christian made up of ignorance and fury of a man and a beast which is more monstrous then any centaure we may see him in that hypocrite that deceitfull man who is a fox and the worst of the cub we may meet him in that oppressor who is a wolf in that Tyrant and persecutor who is a roaring lion And in some of these shapes we meet him every day in this our Pilgrimage and here in the world we can find nothing to secure us against the world adversity may swallow up pleasure in victory but not the love of it impotency and inhability may bridle and stay my Anger but not quench it Providence may defend me from evil but not from feare of it nor can the world yield us any weapon against it self and therefore God hath opened his Armory of heaven and given us his commandments to be our light our provision our defence in our way to be as our Pilgrimes staff our Scrip our letters commendatory to be our Angels to keep us in all our waies and there is no safe walking for a stranger without them And as when the children of Israel were in the wildernesse he rained down Manna upon them and led them as it were by the hand till he brought them to the land of promise so he deales with them with all that call upon his name whilest they are in via in this their peregrination ever and anon beset with temptations which may detain and hinder them he raines down abundance of his grace which like that Manna will serve the appetite of him that takes it and is like to that which every man wants applies it self to every taste to all the callings and conditions to all the necessities of a stranger Thus we walk by faith 2 Cor. 7. Festina fides and faith is on the wing and leaves the world behind us is the substance and evidence of things not seen and looks not on those things which are seen and please a carnall eye or if it do looks upon them as Joshua did upon Ai and first turnes the back and then all its strength against them makes us fly from them that we may overcome them For this is the victory which overcometh the world even our faith And Festina spes hope too is in her flight and follows our fore-runner Jesus to enter with him that which is within the vaile Heb. 6.19 even the holy of holies heaven it self spe jam sumus in coelo we are already there by hope and to him that hath seen the beauty of holinesse the world is but a loathsome spectacle to him that truly trusteth in God it is lighter then vanity and he passeth from it And then our love of God is our going forth our peregrination it is a perishing a death of the soul to the world and if it be truely fixt no pleasure no terror nothing in the world can concern us but they are to us as those things which the travellour in his way sees and leaves every day and we think no more of the glory of them then they who have been dead long ago For we are dead saith the Apostle Coloss 3.3 and our life is hid hid from the world with Christ in God our temperance tasteth not our chastity toucheth not our poverty in spirit handleth not those things which lye in our way but passeth by them as impertinencies as dangers as those things which may pollute a soul more then a dead body could under the Law The stranger the pilgrime passeth by all his meeknesse makes injuries and his patience afflictions light and his Christian fortitude casteth down every strong hold every imagination which may hinder him in his course Every act of piety is a kind of sequestration and drives us if not from the right yet from the use of the world Every virtue is to us as the Angel was to Lot and bids arise and go out of it takes us by the hands and bids us haste and escape for our life and not to look behind us And with this provision as it were with the two Tables in our hand we come neerer and neerer to the end of our faith the end of our hope and the end of our
and that there is no such pleasing variety of colours there as we see so the pomp and riches glory of this world are of themselves nothing but are the work of our opinion and the creations of our fancy have no worth nor price but what our lusts and desires set upon them luxuria his pretium fecit 't is our luxury which hath raised the market and made them valuable and in esteem which of themselves have nothing to commend them and set them off My covetousnesse makes that which is but earth a God my ambition makes that which is but aire as heaven and my wantonnesse walks in the midst of pleasures as in a Paradise there is no such thing as Riches and Poverty Honour and Peasantry Trouble and pleasure but we have made them and we make the distinction there are no such plants grow up in this world of themselves but we set them and water them and they spread themselves and cast a shadow and we walk in this shadow and delight or disquiet our selves in vain Diogenes was a King in his tub when great Alexander was but a Slave in the world which he conquered how many heroick persons lie in chains whilest folly and basenesse walk at large and no doubt there have been many who have looked through the paint of the pleasures of this life and beheld them as monsters and then made it their pleasure and triumph to contemn them And yet we will not quite exclude and shut out riches and the things of this world from the summe for with Christ they are something and they are then most valuable when for his sake we can fling them away for it is he alone that can make Riches a gift and Poverty a gift Honour a gift and Dishonour a gift Pleasure a gift and Trouble a gift Life a gift and Death a gift by his power they are reconciled and drawn together and are but one and the same thing for if wee look up into heaven there we shall see them in a neer conjunction even the poor Lazar in the rich mans bosom In the night there is no difference to the eye between a Pearl and a Pibble-stone between the choicest beauty and most abhorred deformity In the night the deceitfulnesse of riches and the glory of affliction lie hid and are not seen or in a contrary shape in the false shape of terrour where it is not or glory where it is not to be found but when the light of Christs countenance shines upon them then they are seen as they are and we behold so much deceitfulnesse in the one that we dare not trust them and so much hope and advantage in the other that we begin to rejoyce in them and so make them both conducible to that end for which he was delivered and our convoyes to happiness All things is of a large compasse large enough to take in the whole world but then it is the world transformed altered the world conquered by Faith the world in subjection to Christ All things are ours when we are Christs for there is a Civil Dominion and right to these things and this we have jure creationis by right of Creation for the earth is the Lords and he hath given it to the sons of men and there is an Evangelical Dominion not the power of having them but the power of using them to his glory that they may be a Gift and this we have jure adoptionis by right of Adoption as the sons of God begotten in Christ Christ came not into the world to purchase it for us or enstate us in it he did not suffer that we might be wanton nor was poor that we might be rich nor was brought to the dust of death that we might be set in high places such a Messias did the Jewes look for and such a Messias doe some Christians worse than the Jewes frame to themselves and in his name they beat their fellow-servants and strip them deceive and defraud them because they fancy themselves to be his in whom there was found no guile and they are in the world as the mad Athenian was on the shore every ship every house every Lordship is theirs and indeed they have as fair a title to their brothers estate as they have to the kingdome of Heaven for they have nothing to shew for either I remember in 2 Corinth 4.4 S. Paul calls the Divel the God of this world and these in effect make him the Saviour of the world for as if he had been lifted up and nailed to the Crosse for them to him every knee doth bow nor will they receive the true Messias but in this shape for thus they conceive him giving gifts unto men not spirituall but temporall not the Graces of the Spirit Humility Meeknesse and Contentednesse but Silver and Gold dividing Inheritances removing of Land-marks giving to Ziba Mephibosheths land making not Saints but Kings upon the earth and thus they of the Church of Rome have set it down for a positive truth that all civil Dominion is founded in Grace that is in Christ a Doctrine which brings with it a Pick-lock and a Sword and gives men power to defraud or spoyle whom they please and to take from them that which is theirs either by fraud or by violence and to do both in the name and power of Christ But let no man make his charter larger than it is and in the Gospel we finde none of such an extent which may reach to every man to every corner of the earth which may measure out the world and put into our hands any part of it that either our wit or our power can take in for Christ never drew any such conveyance the Gospel brought no such tidings but when labour and industry have brought them in sets a seal imprints a blessing on them sanctifies them unto us by the Word and by Prayer and so makes them ours our servants to minister unto and our friends to promote and lift us forward into everlasting habitations Our Charter is large enough and we need not interline it with those Glosses which the Flesh and the love of the World will soon suggest with Christ we have all things which work to that end for which he was delivered we have his commands which are the pledges of his love for he gave us them that he might give us more that he might give us a Crown we have his promises of immortality and eternall life Faciet hoc nam qui promisit est potens he shall do it for he is able to perform it with him every word shall stand he hath given us faith for that is the gift of God to apprehend and receive them and hope to lift us up unto them He hath given us his Pastors to teach us that is scarce looked upon as a gift but then he hath given us his Angels to minister unto us and he hath given us his Spirit fills us
ought to come and here quicken their Faith improve their Charity strengthen and fix their Resolutions and they who are so severe and over-rigid as to drive them from it do shut themselves out though not from the table yet from the feast and are more unfit then they because they want that charity which is required of a guest even that charity which will not bruise the broken reed nor quench the smoaking flaxe It was a pious wish of Moses Numb 11. would God all the Lords people were Prophets and it were as much piety to wish and with his spirit would all Christians were perfect that every one were as Saint Paul and knew nothing by himself But we are in via and as travellours on the way one man makes more hast then another walks with more ease and delight slips not falls not so often another walks after though not with the same speed and cheerfulnesse because he meets with rubs and difficulties which he every day contends with and both at last by the guidance of the same spirit and by the power of a compassionate Saviour come to their journeys end and he that goes before and he that comes more faintly and slowly after meet at last and sit down together in the same heaven And now in such variety of tempers such diversity of temptations amongst so many errors which some men quit themselves of with lesse some with more trouble we may applaud those who are neer the top of perfection but we must not despise those who are in their ascent and labouring and striving forward after them not quench the spirit in any man though it burn not so brightly in some as it doth in others who are more fully enlightned not shut them out as unclean beasts because they discover something of the frailty of man even such as these 't is plain Saint Paul admitted in this chapter and he pleads for them Galat. vi.i. as for those who are to be restored with the spirit of meeknesse and we cannot shut them out from his table or presence whom Christ is so willing to meet when being weary and heavy laden they come unto him Nor doth this admitting weaker Christians open a door to let in wilfull offenders nor a gap to let in the goates to feed in the same green pastures with the sheep These Beasts if they come too neere will be thrust through with a dart But then all sinnes are not of the same malignity and we must put a difference between Judas's fall and Peter's All sinnes do not strike us out of the covenant and therefore do not drive us from Christs table where we are to renew and confirm it there be some sinnes which are devoratoria salutis and swallow up all hope of salvation whilest they remain in us there be peccata fortia Amos 5.12 boisterous and mighty sinnes which do urge the Justice of God and even weary and conquer his clemency there be others which weaker Christians through frailty fall into even in the state of grace and which God will not be extreame to punish though in Justice he might but remaines a Father still of those who seriously endeavour yet sometimes times faile for his covenant sake which he made in his Sonne Jesus Christ and of these sinnes Saint John speakes 1 John 2.2 If we sinne we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous and he is a propitiation four our sinnes In a word if all that sinne were excluded the feast were at an end and if some that sinne were not excluded the table were no more a table but an Altar for Theeves and murderers to fly to Feare then of infirmity is no excuse but we should shake it off with our sinne it is an evil spirit of our own raysing and we must conjure it down But there is another pretense and it is drawn from a high conceit of the Sacrament and an apprehension of an excessive and angelicall kind of perfection which some conceive is necessary to the due celebration of it and so they are going towards it but make no speed are in action but do nothing are coming but never come This may seeme to be great humility but as Bernard speaks Ista Humilitas tollit humilitatem this humility puts true humility from its office for it is she alone that takes us by the hand and leads us to this supper Dicendo se indignum fecit se dignum saith the same Father of the Centurion in the Gospel if we can truly say we are unworthy we make our selves worthy and thus we set forward towards it But groundlesse scrupulosity which many times is rather the issue of pride then the daughter of humility sees the way and then sits down in it and then makes every pibble a mountain puzzles and perplexes us sets us a framing and fashioning dangers to our selves and inconveniences and summing them up like the man in Lucian who sat on the Sea shore numbring each wave as it came towards him till at last the waves driving one another beat on and wrought themselves over his head and drown'd him In a word it weakens and disenables us in the performance of our duty and with it we are so good that as the Italian proverb is we are good for nothing This is but a scruple iudeed and it weighs no more and the least breath is strong enough to blow it away For upon the same inducement we must seale up our lips and never pray we must stay at home and not go to Church for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what mortall is fir for these things how can dust and ashes speak to the majesty of heaven what eare is purged enough to hear his word whose feet are clean enough to tread his courts And why do we pretend weaknesse or unworthinesse are we too weak are we too unworthy to do his will or can Christ command us that which our unworthinesse will make a sin for us to do when the trumpet hath sounded when the law is promulged this fear must vanish when our Saviour hath once spoken it take eat this is my Body shall we neglect to do it and make this our plea that we are not worthy to do it when he would cleanse and purge us shall we cry we are unworthy unfit to do his will but not unfit to break it unfit to be redeemed but not unfit to perish unfit to empty our selves of our pollution but not unfit to settle on our lees Oh 't is ill thus to apologize and dispute and fret our selves to destruction to lye sick and bed-rid in sin and say we are unfit and unworthy to be healed And what Reverence is that to Christ which crucifies him again and tramples his blood under our feet for not to receive it not to be purged and better'd by it I am sure is in the highest degree to dishonor it I shall insist the longer upon this for I see too many withdraw and put