all the evils of the Church and all the good that happens to evil men every day of danger the periods of sicknesse and the day of death are dayes of tempest and storm and our faith wil suffer shipwrack unlesse it be strong and supported and directed But who shall guide the vessel when a stormy passion or a violent imagination transports the man who shall awaken his reason and charm his passion into slumber instruction How shal a man make his fears confident and allay his confidence with fear and make the allay with just proportions and steere evenly between the extremes or call upon his sleeping purposes or actuate his choices or binde him to reason in all the wandrings and ignorances in his passion and mistakes For suppose the man of great skil and great learning in the wayes of religion yet if he be abused by accident or by his own will who shall then judge his cases of conscience and awaken his duty and renew his holy principle and actuate his spiritual powers For Physitians that prescribe to others do not minister to themselves in cases of danger and violent sicknesses and in matter of distemperature we shall not finde that books alone will do all the work of a spiritual Physitian more then of a natural I will not go about to increase the dangers and difficulties of the soul to represent the assistance of a spiritual man to be necessary But of this I am sure our not understanding and our not considering our soul make us first to neglect and then many times to lose it But is not every man an unequal judge in his own case and therefore the wisdom of God and the laws hath appointed tribunals and Judges and arbitrators and that men are partial in the matter of souls it is infinitely certain because amongst those milions of souls that perish not one in ten thousand but believes himself in a good condition and all sects of Christians think they are in the right and few are patient to enquire whether they be or no then adde to this that the Questions of souls being clothed with circumstances of matter and particular contingency are or may be infinite and most men are so infortunate that they have so intangled their cases of conscience that there where they have done something good it may be they have mingled half a dozen evils and when interests are confounded and governments altered and power strives with right and insensibly passes into right and duty to God would fain be reconciled with duty to our relatives will it not be more then necessary that we should have some one that we may enquire of after the way to heaven which is now made intricate by our follies and inevitable accidents But by what instrument shall men alone and in their own cases be able to discern the spirit of truth from the spirit of illusion just confidence from presumption fear from pusillanimity are not all the things and assistances in the world little enough to defend us against pleasure and pain the two great fountains of temptation is it not harder to cure a lust then to cure a feaver and are not the deceptions and follies of men and the arts of the Devil and inticements of the world the deceptions of a mans own heart and the evils of sin more evil and more numerous then the sicknesses and diseases of any one man and if a man perishes in his soul is it not infinitely more sad then if he could rise from his grave and die a thousand deaths over Thus we are advanced a second step in this prudential motive God used many arts to secure our souls interest and there is infinite dangers and infinite wayes of miscarriage in the souls interest and therefore there is great necessity God should do all those mercies of security and that we should do all the under-ministeries we can in this great work But what advantage shall we receive by a spiritual Guide much every way For this is the way that God hath appointed who in every age hath sent a succession of spiritual persons whose office is to minister in holy things and to be stewards of Gods houshold shepherds of the flock dispensers of the mysteries under mediators and ministers of prayer preachers of the law expounders of questions monitors of duty conveiances of blessings and that which is a good discourse in the mouth of another man is from them an ordinance of God and besides its natural efficacy and perswasion it prevails by the way of blessing by the reverence of his person by divine institution by the excellency of order by the advantages of opinion and assistances of reputation by the influence of the spirit who is the president of such ministeries and who is appointed to all Christians according to the despensation that is appointed to them to the people in their obedience and frequenting of the ordinance to the Priest in his ministery and publick and privat offices To which also I adde this consideration that as the Holy Sacraments are hugely effective to spiritual purposes not onely because they convey a blessing to the worthy suscipients but because men cannot be worthy suscipients unlesse they do many excellent acts of vertue in order to a previous disposition so that in the whole conjunction and transaction of affaires there is good done by way of proper efficacy and divine blessing so it is in following the conduct of a spiritual man and consulting with him in the matter of our souls we cannot do it unless we consider our souls and make religion our businesse and examine our present state and consider concerning our danger and watch and designe for our advantages which things of themselves wil set a man much forwarder in the way of Godlinesse besides thath naturally every man will lesse dare to act a sin for which he knows he shall feel a present shame in his discoveries made to the spiritual Guide the man that is made the witnesse of his conversation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Holy men ought to know all things from God and that relate to God in order to the conduct of souls and there is nothing to be said against this if we do not suffer the devil in this affaire to abuse us as he does many people in their opinions teaching men to suspect there is a designe and a snake under the plantain But so may they suspect Kings when they command obedience or the Levites when they read the law of tithes or Parents when they teach their children temperance or Tutors when they watch their charge However it is better to venture the worst of the designe then to lose the best of the assistance and he that guides himself hath much work and much danger but he that is under the conduct of another his work is easy little and secure it is nothing but diligence and obedience and though it be a hard thing to rule well yet
nights intemperance much lesse for the torments of eternity Then we are quick to discern that the itch and scab of lustful appetites is not worth the charges of a Surgeon much lesse can it pay for the disgrace the danger the sicknesse the death and the hell of lustfull persons Then we wonder that any man should venture his head to get a crown unjustly or that for the hazard of a victory he should throw away all his hopes of heaven certainly A man that hath tasted of Gods Spirit can instantly discern the madnesse that is in rage the folly and the disease that is in envy the anguish and tediousnesse that is in lust the dishonor that is in breaking our faith and telling a lie and understands things truly as they are that is that charity is the greatest noblenesse in the world that religion hath in it the greatest pleasures that temperance is the best security of health that humility is the surest way to honour and all these relishes are nothing but antepasts of heaven where the quintessence of all these pleasures shall be swallowed for ever where the chast shall follow the Lamb and the virgins sing there where the Mother of God shall reign and the zealous converters of souls and labourers in Gods vineyard shall worship eternally where S. Peter and S. Paul do wear their crown of righteousnesse and the patient persons shall be rewarded with Job and the meek persons with Christ and Moses and all with God the very expectation of which proceeding from a hope begotten in us by the spirit of manifestation and bred up and strengthened by the spirit of obsignation is so delicious an entertainment of all our reasonable appetites that a spirituall man can no more be removed or intied from the love of God and of religion then the Moon from her Orb or a Mother from loving the son of her joyes and of her sorrows This was observed by S. Peter As new born babes desire the sincere milk of the word that ye may grow thereby if so be that ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious When once we have tasted the grace of God the sweetnesses of his Spirit then no food but the food of Angels no cup but the cup of Salvation the Divining cup in which we drink Salvation to our God and call upon the Name of the Lord with ravishment and thanksgiving and there is no greater externall testimony that we are in the spirit and that the spirit dwels in us then if we finde joy and delight and spirituall pleasures in the greatest mysteries of our religion if we communicate often and that with appetite and a forward choice and an unwearied devotion and a heart truly fixed upon God and upon the offices of a holy worship He that loaths good meat is sick at heart or neer it and he that despises or hath not a holy appetite to the fooâ— of Angels the wine of elect souls is fit to succeed the Prodigal at his banquet of sinne and husks and to be partaker of the taâ—le of Devis but all they who have Gods Spirit love to feast at the supper of the Lamb and have no appetites but what are of the spirit or servants to the spirit I have read of a spiritual person who saw heaven but in a dream but such as made great impression upon him and was represented with vigorous and pertinacious phantasmes not easily disbanding and when he awaked he knew not his cell he remembred not him that slept in the same dorter nor could tell how night and day were distinguished nor could discern oyl from wine but calâ—d out for his vision again Redde mihi campos meos floridos columnam auream comitem Hieronymum assistentes Angelos Give me my fields again my most delicious fields my pillar of a glorious light my companion S. Jerome my assistant Angels and this lasted till he was told of his duty and matter of obedience and the fear of a sin had disincharmed him and caused him to take care lest he lose the substance out of greedinesse to possesse the shadow And if it were given to any of us to see Paradise or the third heaven as it was to S. Paul could it be that ever we should love any thing but Christ or follow any Guide but the Spirit or desire any thing but Heaven or understand any thing to be pleasant but what shall lead thither Now what a vision can do that the Spirit doth certainly to them that entertain him They that have him really and not in pretence onely are certainly great despisers of the things of the world The Spirit doth not create or enlarge our appetites of things below Spirituall men are not designd to reign upon earth but to reign over their lusts and sottish appetites The Spirit doth not enflame our thirst of wealth but extinguishes it and makes us to esteem all things as lâ—sse and as dung so that we may gain Christ No gain then is pleasant but goalâ—nesse no ambition but longings after heaven no revenge but against our selves for sinning nothing but God and Christ Deus meus omnia and date nobis ammas caetera vobis tollite as the king of Sodom said to Abraham Secure but the souls to us and take our goods Indeed this is a good signe that we have the Spirit S. John spake a hard saying but by the spirit of manifestation we are also taught to understand it Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God The seed of God is the spirit which hath a plastic power to efform us in similitudinem filiorum Dei into the image of the sons of God and as long as this remains in us while the Spirit dwels in us We cannot sin that is it is against our natures our reformed natures to sin And as we say we cannot endure such a potion we cannot suffer such a pain that is we cannot without great trouble we cannot without doing violence to our nature so all spirituall men all that are born of God and the seed of God remains in them they cannot sin cannot without trouble and doing against our natures and their most passionate inclinations A man if you speak naturally can masticate gums and he can break his own legs and he can sip up by little draughts mixtures of Aloes and Rhubarb of Henbane or the deadly Nightshade but he cannot do this naturally or willingly cheerfully or with delight Every sin is against a good mans nature he is ill at case when he hath missed his usual prayers he is amazd if he have fallen into an errour he is infinitely ashamed of his imprudence he remembers a sin as he thinks of an enemy or the horrors of a midnight apparition for all his capacities his understanding and his choosing faculties are filled up with the opinion and perswasions with the love and with the
desires of God and this I say is the Great benefit of the Spirit which God hath given to us as an antidote against worldly pleasures And therefore S. Paul joynes them as consequent to each other For it is impossible for those who were once enlightned and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come c. First we are enlightned in Baptisme and by the Spirit of manifestation the revelations of the Gospel then we relish and taste interiour excellencies and we receive the Holy Ghost the Spirit of confirmation and he gives us a taste of the powers of the world to come that is of the great efficacy that is in the Article of eternall life to perswade us to religion and holy living then we feel that as the belief of that Article dwels upon our understanding and is incorporated into our wils and choice so we grow powerfull to resist sin by the strengths of the Spirit to desie all carnall pleasure and to suppresse and mortifie it by the powers of this Article those are the powers of the world to come 2. The Spirit of God is given to all who truly belong to Christ as an anidote against sorrows against impatience against the evil accidents of the world and against the oppression and sinking of our spirits under the crosse There are in Scripture noted two births besides the naturall to which also by analogy we may adde a third The first is to be born of water and the Spirit It is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one thing signified by a divided appellative by two substantives water and the Spirit that is Spiritus aqueus the Spirit moving upon the waters of Baptisme The second is to be born of Spirit and fire for so Christ was promised to baptize us with the Holy Ghost and with fire that is cum spiritu igneo with a fiery spirit the Spirit as it descended in Pentecost in the shape of fiery tongues And as the watry spirit washed away the sins of the Church so the spirit of fire enkindles charity and the love of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sayes Plutarch the Spirit is the same under both the titles and it enables the Church with gifts and graces And from these there is another operation of the new birth but the same Spirit the spirit of rejoycing or spiritus exultans spiritus laetitiae Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in beleeving that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost There is a certain joy and spirituall rejoycing that accompanies them in whom the Holy Ghost doth dwell a joy in the midst of sorrow a joy given to allay the sorrows of saecular troubles and to alleviate the burden of persecution This S. Paul notes to this purpose And ye became followers of us and of the Lord having received the word in much afâ—liction with joy of the Holy Ghost Worldly afflictions and spirituall joyes may very well dwell together and if God did not supply us out of his storehouses the sorrows of this world would be mere and unmixt and the troubles of persecution would be too great for naturall considences For who shall make him recompence that lost his life in a Duel fought about a draught of wine or a cheaper woman What arguments shall invite a man to suffer torments in testimony of a proposition of naturall Philosophy And by what instruments shall we comfort a man who is sick and poor and disgracâ—d and vitious and lies cursing and despairs of any thing hereafter That mans condition proclaims what it is to want the Spirit of God the Spirit of comfort Now this Spirit of comfort is the hope and confidence the certain expectation of partaking in the inheritance of Jesus This is the faith and patience of the Saints this is the refreshment of all wearied travellers the cordiall of all languishing sinners the support of the scrupulous the guide of the doubtfull the anchor of timorous and fluctuating souls the confidence and the staff of the penitent He that is deprived of his whole estate for a good conscience by the Spirit he meets this comfort that he shall finde it again with advantage in the day of restitution and this comfort was so manifest in the first dayes of Christianity that it was no infrequent thing to see holy persons court a Martyrdom with a fondnesse as great as is our impatience and timorousnesse in every persecution Till the Spirit of God comes upon us we are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inopis nos atque pusilli finxerunt animi we have little souls little faith and as little patience we fall at every stumbling block and sink under every temptation and our hearts fail us and we die for fear of death and lose our souls to preserve our estates or our persons till the Spirit of God fills us with joy in beleeving and a man that is in a great joy cares not for any trouble that is lesse then his joy and God hath taken so great care to secure this to us that he hath turn'd it into a precept Rejoyce evermore and Rejoyce in the Lord always and again I say rejoyce But this rejoycing must be onely in the hope that is laid up for us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so the Apostle Rejoycing in hope For although God sometimes maks a cup of sensible comfort to overflow the spirit of a man and thereby loves to refresh his sorrows yet that is from a secret principle not regularly given not to be waitd for not to be prayed for and it may fail us if we think upon it but the hope of life eternall can never fail us and the joy of that is great enough to make us suffer any thing or to do any thing ibimus ibimus utcunque praecedes supremum Carpere iter comites parati To death to bands to poverty to banishment to tribunals any whither in hope of life eternall as long as this anchor holds we may suffer a storm but cannot suffer shipwrack And I desire you by the way to observe how good a God we serve and how excellent a Religion Christ taught when one of his great precepts is that we should rejoyce and be exceeding glad and God hath given as the spirit of rejoycing not a sullen melancholy spirit not the spirit of bondage or of a slave but the Spirit of his Son consigning us by a holy conscience to joyes unspeakable and full of glory And from hence you may also infer that those who sink under a persecution or are impatient in a sad accident they put out their own fires which the Spirit of the Lord hath kindled and lose those glories which stand behinde the cloud Part II. 3. THe Spirit of God is given us as an antidote against evil concupiscences and sinfull desires and is
to take it very ill if at a great expence we should purchase a pardon for a servant and he out of a peevish pride or negligence shall refuse it the scorne payes it self the folly is its own scourge and sets down in an inglorious ruine After the enumeration of these glories these prodigies of mercies loving kindnesses of Christs dying for us and interceding for us and merely that we may repent and be saved I shall lesse need to instance those other particularities wherby God continues as by so many arguments of kindnesse to sweeten our natures and make them malleable to the precepts of love and obedience the twinne daughters of holy repentance but the poorest person amongst us besides the blessing and graces already reckoned hath enough about him and the accidents of every day to shame him into repentance Does not God send his angels to keep thee in all thy wayes are not they ministring spirits sent forth to wait upon thee as thy guard art not thou kept from drowing from fracture of bones from madnesse from deformities by the riches of the divine goodnesse Tell the joynts of thy body dost thou want a finger and if thou doest not understand how great a blessing that is do but remember how ill thou canst spare the use of it when thou hast but a thorn in it The very privative blessings the blessings of immunity safeguard and integrity which we all enjoy deserve a thanksgiving of a whole life If God should send a cancer upon thy face or a wolf into thy brest he if should spread a crust of leprosie upon thy skin what wouldest thou give to be but as now thou art wouldest thou not repent of thy sins upon that condition which is the greater blessing to be kept from them or to be cured of them and why therfore shall not this greater blessing lead thee to repentance why do we not so aptly promise repentance when we are sick upon the condition to be made well and yet perpetually forget it when we are well as if health never were a blessing but when we have it not rather I fear the reason is when we are sick we promised to repent because then we cannot sin the sins of our former life but in health our appetites return to their capacity and in all the way we despise the riches of the divine goodnesse which preserves us from such evils which would be full of horror and amazement if they should happen to us Hath God made any of you all chapfallen are you affrighted with spectars and â—llusions of the spirits of darknesse how many earthquakes have you been in how many dayes have any of you wanted bread how many nights have you been without sleep are any of you distracted of your senses and if God gives you meat and drink health and sleep proper seasons of the year intire senses and an useful understanding what a great unworthynesse it is to be unthankful to so good a God so benigne a Father so gracious a Lord All the evils and basenesse of the world can shew nothing baser and more unworthy then ingratitude and therefore it was not unreasonably said of Aristottle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prosperity makes a man love God supposing men to have so much humanity left in them as to love him from whom they have received so many favours And Hippocrates said that although poor men use to murmur against God yet rich men will be offering sacrifice to their Diety whose beneficiaries they are Now since the riches of the divine goodnesse are so poured out upon the meanest of us all if we shal refuse to repent which is a condition so reasonable that God requiers it onely for our sake and that it may end in our felicity we do our selves despite to be unthankful to God that is we become miserable by making our selves basely criminal And if any man with whom God hath used no other method but of his sweetnesse and the effusion of mercies brings no other fruits but the apples of Sodom in return for all his culture and labours God wil cut off that unprofitable branch that with Sodom it may suffer the flames of everlasting burning 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If here we have good things and a continual shower of blessings to soften our stony hearts and we shall remain obdurat against those sermons of mercy which God makes us every day there will come a time when this shall be upbraided to us that we had not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a thankful minde but made God to sowe his seed upon the sand or upon the stones without increase or restitution It was a sad alarum which God sent to David by Nathan to upbraid his ingratitude I anointed thee king over Israel I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul I gave thee thy masters house and wives into thy bosom and the house of Israel and Judah and if this had been too little I would have given thee such and such things wherefore hast thou despised the name of the Lord but how infinitely more can God say to all of us then all this came to he hath anointed us kings and priests in the royal priâ—sthood of Christianity he hath given us his holy spirit to be our guide his angels to be our protectors his creatures for our food and raiment he hath delivered us from the hands of Sathan hath conquered death for us hath taken the sting out and made it harmlesse and medicinal and proclaimed us heires of heaven coheires with the eternal Jesus and if after all this we despise the commandment of the Lord and defer and neglect our repentance what shame is great enough what miseries are sharp enough what hell painful enough for such horrid ingratitude Saint Lewis the King having sent â—vo Bishop of Chartres on an embassy the Bishop met a woman on the way grave sad Phantastick malancholy with fire in one hand and water in the other he asked what those symbols ment she answered my purpose is with fire to burn Paradise and with my water to quench the flames of hell that men may serve God without the incentives of hope and fear purely for the love of God But this woman began at the wrong end the love of God is not produced in us after we have contracted evil habits til God with his fan in his hand hath throughly purged the floore till he hath cast out all the devils and swept the house with the instrument of hope and fear and with the atchieuments and efficacy of mercies and judgements But then since God may truely say to us as of old to his rebellious people Am I a dry tree to the house of Israel that is do I bring them no fruit do they serve me for nought and he expects not our duty till first we feel his goodnesse we are now infinitely inexcusable to throw away so great
had need pray that we be not led into temptation that is not onely into the possession but not into the allurements and neighbour-hood of it least by little and little our strongest resolutions be untwist and crack in sunder like an easie cord severed into single threds but if we by the necessity of our lives and manner of living dwell where a temptation will assault us then to resist is the signe of a great grace but such a signe that without it the grace turns into wantonnesse and the man into a beast and an angel into a Devil R. Moses will not allow a man to be a true penitent untill he hath left all his sin and in all the like circumstances refuses those temptations under which formerly he sinned and died and indeed it may happen that such a trial onely can secure our judgement concerning our selves and although to be tried in all the same accidents be not safe nor alwayes contingent and in such cases it is sufficient to resist all the temptations we have and avoid the rest and decree against all yet if it please God we are tempted as David was by his eyes or the Martyrs by tortures or Joseph by his wanton Mistris then to stand sure and to ride upon the temptation like a ship upon a wave or to stand like a rock in an impetuous storm that 's the signe of a great grace and of a well-grown Christian 10. No man is grown in grace but he that is ready for every work that chooses not his employment that refuses no imposition from God or his superiour a ready hand an obedient heart and a willing cheerful soul in all the work of God and in every office of religion is a great index of a good proficient in the wayes of Godlinesse The heart of a man is like a wounded hand or arme which if it be so cured that it can onely move one way and cannot turn to all postures and natural uses it is but imperfect and still half in health and half wounded so is our spirit if it be apt for prayer and close fisted in almes if it be sound in faith and dead in charity if it be religious to God and unjust to our neighbour there wants some integral part or there is a lamenesse and the deficiency in any one duty implyes the guilt of all said Saint James and bonum ex integrâ causâ malum exquâlibet particulari every fault spoils a grace But one grace alone cannot make a good man But as to be universal in our obedience is necessary to the being in the state of grace so readily to change imployment from the better to the worse from the honourable to the poor from usefull to seemingly unprofitable is a good Character of a well grown Christian if he takes the worst part with indifferency and a spirit equally choosing all the events of the divine providence Can you be content to descend from ruling of a province to the keeping of a herd from the work of an Apostle to be confined into a prison from disputing before Princes to a conversation with Shepherds can you be willing to all that God is willing and suffer all that he chooses as willingly as if you had chosen your own fortune In the same degree in which you can conform to God in the same you have approached towards that perfection whether we must by degrees arrive in our journey towards heaven This is not to be expected of beginners for they must be enticed with apt imployments and it may be their office and work so fits their spirits that it makes them first in love with it and then with God for giving it and many a man goes to heaven in the dayes of peace whose faith and hopes and patience would have been dashed in pieces if he had fallen into a storm or persecution Oppression will make a wise man mad saith Solomon there are some usages that will put a sober person out of all patience such which are besides the customes of this life and contrary to all his hopes and unworthy of a person of his quality and when Nero durst not die yet when his servants told him that the Senators had condemned him to be put to death more Majorum that is by scourging like a slave he was forced into a preternatural confidence and fel upon his own sword but when God so changes thy estate that thou art fallen into accidents to which thou art no otherwise disposed but by grace and a holy spirit and yet thou canst passe through them with quietnesse and do the work of suffering as well as the works of a prosperous imployment this is an argument of a great grace and an extraordinary spirit For many persons in a change of fortune perish who if they had still been prosperous had gone to heaven being tempted in a persecution to perjuries and Apostacy and unhandsome complicances and hypocricy and irreligion and many men are brought to vertue and to God and to felicity by being persecuted and made unprosperous and these are effects of a more absolute and irrespective predestination but when the grace of God is great and prudent and masculine and well grown it is unalter'd in all changes save onely that every accident that is new and violent brings him neerer to God and makes him with greater caution and severity to dwell in vertue 11. Lastly some there are who are firme in all great and foreseen changes and have laid up in the store-houses of the spirit reason and religion arguments and discourses enough to defend them against all violencies and stand at watch so much that they are safe where they can consider and deliberate but there may be something wanting yet and in the direct line in the strait progresse to heaven I call that an infallible signe of a great grace and indeed the greatest degree of a great grace when a man is prepared against sudden invasions of the spirit surreptions and extemporary assaults Many a valiant person dares sight a battle who yet will be timorous and surprised in a mid-night alarme or if he falls into a river And how many discreet persons are there who if you offer them a sin and give them time to consider and tell them of it before hand will rather die then be perjured or tell a deliberate lie or break a promise who it may be tell many sudden lies and excuse themselves and break their promises and yet think themselves safe enough and sleep without either affrightments or any apprehension of dishonour done to their persons or their religion Every man is not armed for all sudden arrests of passions few men have cast such fetters upon their lusts and have their passions in so strict confinement that they may not be over run with a midnight flood or an unlooked for inundation He that does not start when he is smitten suddenly is a constant person and that is it which I intend
restrained by an imperfect feared shame so long as they think there is a reserve of reputation which they may secure then they can be with all the furious declamations of the world when themselves are represented ugly and odious full of shame and actually punished with the worst of temporâ—â—â— evils beyond which he fears not here to suffer and from whence because he knows it will be hard for him to be redeemed by an afterâ—game of reputation it makes him desperate and incorrigible bâ— fraternall correption A zealous man hath not done his duty when he calls his brother drunkard and beast and he may better do it by telling him he is a man and sealed with Gods Spirit and honoured with the title of a Christian and is or ought to be reputed as a discreet person by his friends and a governour of a family or a guide in his countrey or an example to many and that it is huge pity so many excellent things should be sullied and allayed with what is so much below all this Then a reprover does his duty when he is severe against the vice and charitable to the man and carefull of his reputation and sorry for his reall dishonour and observant of his circumstances and watchfull to surprize his affections and resolutions there where they are most tender and most tenable and men will not be in love with vertue whither they are forced with rudenesse and incivilities but they love to dwell there whither they are invited friendly and where they are treated civilly and feasted liberally and lead by the hand and the eye to honour and felicity 6. It is a duty of Christian prudence not to suffer our souls to walk alone unguarded unguided and more single then in other actions and interests of our lives which are of lesse concernment Vae soli singulari said the Wise man Wo to him that is alone and if we consider how much God hath done to secure our souls and after all that how many wayes there are for a mans soul to miscarry we should think it very necessary to call to a spirituall man to take us by the hand to walk in the wayes of God and to lead us in all the regions of duty and thorow the labyrinths of danger For God who best loves and best knows how to value our souls set a price no lesse upon it then the life-blood of his Holy Son he hath treated it with variety of usages according as the world had new guises and new necessities he abates it with punishment to make us avoid greater he shortned our life that we might live for ever he turns sicknesse into vertue he brings good out of evil he turns enmities to advantages our very sins into repentances and stricter walking he defeats all the follies of men and all the arts of the Devil and layes snares and uses violence to secure our obedience he sends Prophets and Priests to invite us and to threaten us to felicities he restrains us with lawes and he bridles us with honour and shame reputation and society friends and foes he layes hold on us by the instruments of all the passions he is enough to fill our love he satisfies our hope he affrights us with fear he gives us part of our reward in hand and entertains all our faculties with the promises of an infinite and glorious portion he curbs our affections he directs our wills he instructs our understandings with Scriptures with perpetuall Sermons with good books with frequent discourses with particular observations and great experience with accidents and judgements with rare events of providence and miracles he sends his Angels to be our guard and to place us in opportunities of vertue and to take us off from ill company and places of danger to set us neer to good example he gives us his holy Spirit and he becomes to us a principle of a mighty grace descending upon us in great variety and undiscerned events besides all those parts of it which men have reduced to a method and an art and after all this he forgives us infinite irregularities and spares us every day and still expects and passes by and waits all our dayes still watching to do us good and to save that soul which he knowes is so precious one of the chiefest of the works of God and an image of divinity Now from all these arts and mercies of God besides that we have infinite reason to adore his goodnesse we have also a demonstration that we ought to do all that possibly we can and extend all our faculties and watch all our opportunities and take in all assistances to secure the interest of our soul for which God is pleased to take such care and use so many arts for its security If it were not highly worth it God would not do it If it were not all of it necessary God would not do it But if it be worth it and all of it be necessary why should we not labour in order to this great end If it be worth so much to God it is so much more to us for if we perish his felicity is undisturbed but we are undone infinitely undone It is therefore worth taking in a spirituall guide so far we are gone But because we are in the question of prudence we must consider whether it be necessary to do so For every man thinks himself wise enough as to the conduct of his soul and managing of his eternal interest and divinity is every mans trade and the Scriptures speak our own language and the commandments are few and plain and the laws are the measure of justice and if I say my prayers and pay my debts my duty is soon summed up and thus we usually make our accounts for eternity and at this rate onely take care for heaven but let a man be questioned for a portion of his estate or have his life shaken with diseases then it will not be enough to employ one agent or to send for a good woman to minister a potion of the juices of her country garden but the ablest Lawyers and the skilfullest Physitians the advice of friends and huge caution and diligent attendances and a curious watching concerning all the accidents and little passages of our disease and truly a mans life and health is worth all that and much more and in many cases it needs it all But then is the soul the onely safe and the onely trifling thing about us Are not there a thousand dangers and ten thousand difficulties and innumerable possibilities of a misadventure Are not all the congregations in the world divided in their doctrines and all of them call their own way necessary and most of them call all the rest damnable we had need of a wise instructor and a prudent choice at our first entrance and election of our side and when we are well in the matter of Faith for its object and jnstitution all the evils of my self and
our nature or an appendage to it for whereas our constitution is weak our souls apt to diminution and impedite faculties our bodies to mutilation and imperfection to blindnesse and crookednesse to stammering and sorrows to baldnesse and deformity to evil conditions and accidents of body and to passions and sadnesse of spirit God hath in his infinite mercy provided for every condition rare suppletories of comfort and usefulnesse to make recompence and sometimes with an overrunning proportion for those natural defects which were apt to make our persons otherwise contemptible and our conditions intolerable God gives to blinde men better memories For upon this account it is that Rufinus makes mention of Didymus of Alexandria who being blinde was blessed with a rare attention and singular memory and by prayer and hearing and meditating and discoursing came to be one of the most excellent Divines of that whole age And it was more remarkable in Nicasius Machliniensis who being blockish at his book in his first childhood fell into accidental blindnesse and from thence continually grew to so quick an apprehension and so tenacious a memory that he became the wonder of his contemporaries and was chosen Rector of the College at Mechlin and was made licentiate of Theology at Lovaine and Doctor of both the laws at Colein living and dying in great reputation for his rare parts and excellent learning At the same rate also God deals with men in other instances want of children he recompences with freedom from care and whatsoever evil happens to the body is therefore most commonly single and unaccompanied because God accepts that evil as the punishment of the sin of the man or the instrument of his vertue or his security and is reckoned as a sufficient cure or a sufficient Antidote God hath laid laid a severe law upon all women thâ—â— in sorrow they shall bring forth children yet God hath so attempeâ—ed that sorrow that they think themselves more accursed if they want that sorrow and they have reason to rejoyce in that state the trouble of which is alleviated by a promise that they shall be saved in bearing children He that wants one eye hath the force and vigorousnesse of both united in that which is left him and when ever any man is afflicted with sorrow his reason and his religion himself and all his friends persons that are civil and persons that are obliged run into comfort him and he may if he will observe wisely finde so many circumstances of ease and remission so many designes of providence and studied favours such contrivances of collateral advantage and certain reserves of substantial and proper comforâ— that in the whole sum of affaires it often happens that a single crosse is a double blessing that even in a temporal sense it is better to go to the house of mourning then of joyes and festival egressions Is not the affliction of â—overty better then the prosperity of a great and tempting fortune does not wisdom dwell in a mean estate and a low spirit retired thoughts and under a sad roof and is it not generally true that sicknesse it self is appayed with religion and holy thoughts with pious resolutions and penitential prayers with returns to God and to sober councels and if this be true that God sends sorrow to cure sin and affliction be the hand-maid to grace it is also certain that every sad contingency in nature is doubly recompenced with the advantages of religion besides those intervening refreshments which support the spirit and refresh its instruments I shall need to instance but once more in this particular God hath sent no greater evil into the world then that in the sweat of our brows we shall eat our bread and in the difficulty and agony in the sorrows and contention of our souls we shall work out our salvation But see how in the first of these God hath out done his own anger and defeated the purposes of his wrath by the inundation of his mercy for this labour and sweat of our brows is so far from being a curse that without it our very bread would not be so great a blessing It is not labour that makes the Garlick and the pulse the Sycamore and the Cresses the cheese of the Goats and the butter of the sheep to be savoury and pleasant as the flesh of the Roe-buck or the milk of the Kine the marrow of Oxen or the thighs of birds If it were not for labour men neither could eat so much nor relish so pleasantly nor sleep so soundly nor be so healthful nor so useful so strong nor so patient so noble or so untempted and as God hath made us beholding to labour for the purchase of many good things so the thing it self ows to labour many degrees of its worth and value and therefore I need not reckon that besides these advantages the mercies of God have found out proper and natural remedies for labour Nights to cure the sweat of the day sleep to ease our watchfulnesse rest to alleviate our burdens and dayes of religion to procure our rest and things are so ordered that labour is become a duty and an act of many vertues and is not so apt to turne into a sin as is its contrary and is therefore necessary not onely because we need it for making provisions of our life but even to ease the labour of our rest there being no greater tediousnesse of spirit in the world then want of imployment and an unactive life and the lasie man is not onely unprofitable but also accursed and he groans under the load of his time which yet passes over the active man light as a dreame or the feathers of a bird while the disimployed is a desease and like a long sleeplesse night to himself and a load unto his country And therefore although in this particular God hath been so merciful in this infliction that from the sharpnesse of the curse a very great part of mankinde are freed and there are myriads of people good and bad who do not eat their bread in the sweat of their brows yet this is but an overrunning and an excesse of the divine mercy God did more for us then we did absolutely need for he hath disposed of the circumstances of this curse that mans affections are so reconciled to it that they desire it and are delighted in it and so the Anger of God is ended in loving Kindnesse and the drop of water is lost in the full chalice of the wine and the curse is gone out into a multiplied blessing But then for the other part of the severe law and laborious imposition that we must work out our spiritual interest with the labours of our spirit seems to most men to be so intolerable that rather then passe under it they quit their hopes of heaven and passe into the portion of Devils and what can there be to alleviate this sorrow that a man shall be perpetually sollicited with an
The foolish exchange fol. 224. 237. Matth. 16. ver 26. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul Sermon 20 21. 22. The Serpent and the Dove or a discourse of Christian Prudence fol. 251. 263. 274. Matth. 10. latter part of ver 16. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmlesse as doves Sermon 23. 24. Of Christian simplicity 289. 301. Matth. 10. latter part of ver 16. And harmlesse as doves Sermon 25. 26. 27. The miracles of the Divine Mercy fol. 313. 327. 340. Psal. 86. 5. For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee A Funerall Sermon preached at the Obsequies of the Right Honourable the Countesse of Carbery fol. 357. 2 Sam. 14. 14. For we must needs die and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again neither doth God respect any person yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled from him A Discourse of the Divine Institution necessity sacrednesse and separation of the Office Ministeriall Sermon I. VVHITSVNDAY OF THE SPIRIT OF GRACE 8. Romans v. 9. 10. But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his * And if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of righteousnesse THe day in which the Church commemorates the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles was the first beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This was the first day that the Religion was professed now the Apostles first openâ—d their commission and read it to all the people The Lord gave his Spirit or the Lord gave his word and great was the company of the Preachers For so I make bold to render that prophesie of David Christ was the word of God verbum aeternum but the Spirit was the word of God verbum Patefactum Christ was the word manifested in the flesh the Spirit was the word manifested to flesh and set in dominion over and in hostility against the flesh The Gospel and the Spirit are the same thing not in substance but the manifestation of the Spirit is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and because he was this day manifested the Gospel was this day first preached and it became a law to us called the law of the Spirit of life that is a law taught us by the Spirit leading us to life eternal But the Gospel is called the Spirit 1. Because it contains in it such glorious mysteries which were revealed by the immediate inspirations of the Spirit not onely in the matter it self but also in the manner and powers to apprehend them For what power of humane understanding could have found out the incarnation of a God that two natures a finite and an infinite could have been concentred into one hypostasis or person that a virgin should be a Mother that dead men should live again that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the ashes of dissolved bones should become bright as the Sun blessed as Angels swift in motion as thought clear as the purest Noone that God should so love us as to be willing to be reconcil'd to us and yet that himself must dye that he might pardon us that Gods most Holy Son should give us his body to eat and his bloud to crown our chalices and his Spirit to sanctifie our souls to turn our bodies into temperance our souls into mindes our mindes into Spirit our Spirit into glory that he who can give us all things who is Lord of Men and Angels and King of all the Creatures should pray to God for us without intermission that he who reigns over all the world should at the day of judgement give up the Kingdom to God the Father and yet after this resignation himself and we with him should for ever reign the more gloriously that we should be justified by Faith in Christ and that charity should be a part of faith and that both should work as acts of duty and as acts of relation that God should Crown the imperfect endeavours of his Saints with glory and that a humane act should be rewarded with an eternal inheritance that the wicked for the transient pleasure of a few minutes should be tormented with an absolute eternity of pains that the waters of baptisme when they are hallowed by the Spirit shall purge the soul from sin and that the Spirit of a man shall be nourished with the consecrated and mysterious elements and that any such nourishment should bring a man up to heaven and after all this that all Christian People all that will be saved must be partakers of the Divine nature of the Nature the infinite nature of God and must dwell in Christ and Christ must dwell in them and they must be in the Spirit and the Spirit must be for ever in them these are articles of so mysterious a Philosophy that we could have inferred them from no premises discours'd them upon the stock of no naturall or scientificall principles nothing but God and Gods spirit could have taught them to us and therefore the Gospel is Spiritus patefactus the manifestation of the Spirit ad aedificationem as the Apostle calls it for edification and building us up to be a Holy Temple to the Lord. 2. But when we had been taught all these mysterious articles we could not by any humane power have understood them unlesse the Spirit of God had given us a new light and created in us a new capacity and made us to be a new creature of another definition Animalis homo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is as S. Jude expounds the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the animal or the naturall man the man that hath not the Spirit cannot discern the things of God for they are spiritually discerned that is not to be understood but by the light proceeding from the Sun of righteousnesse and by that eye whose bird is the Holy Dove whose Candle is the Gospel Scio incapacem te sacramenti Impie Non posse coecis mentibus mysterium Haurire nostrum nil diurnum nox capit He that shall discourse Euclids elements to a swine or preach as Venerable Bede's story reports of him to a rock or talk Metaphysicks to a Bore will as much prevail upon his assembly as S. Peter and S. Paul could do upon uncircumcised hearts and ears upon the indisposed Greeks and prejudicate Jews An Ox will relish the tender flesh of Kids with as much gust and appetite as an unspirituall and unsanctified man will do the discourses of Angels or of an Apostle if he should come to preach the secrets of the Gospel And we finde it true by a sad experience How many times doth God
speak to us by his servants the Prophets by his Son by his Apostles by sermons by spirituall books by thousands of homilies and arts of counsell and insinuation and we sit as unconcerned as the pillars of a Church and hear the sermons as the Athenians did a story or as we read a gazet and if ever it come to passe that we tremble as Felix did when we hear a sad story of death of righteousnesse and judgement to come then we put it off to another time or we forget it and think we had nothing to do but to give the good man a hearing and as Anacharsis said of the Greeks they used money for nothing but to cast account withall so our hearers make use of sermons and discourses Evangelical but to fill up void spaces of our time to help to tell an hour with or without tediousnesse The reason of this is a sad condemnation to such persons they have not yet entertained the Spirit of God they are in darknesse they were washed in water but never baptized with the Spirit for these things are spiritually discerned They would think the Preacher rude if he should say they are not Christians they are not within the Covenant of the Gospel but it is certain that the spirit of Manifestation is not yet upon them and that is the first effect of the Spirit whereby we can be called sons of God or relatives of Christ. If we do not apprehend and greedily suck in the precepts of this holy Discipline as aptly as Merchants do discourse of gain or Farmers of fair harvests we have nothing but the Name of Christians but we are no more such really then Mandrakes are men or spunges are living creatures 3. The Gospel is called Spirit because it consists of Spiritual Promises and Spiritual precepts and makes all men that embrace it truly to be Spiritual men and therefore S. Paul addes an Epithete beyond this calling it a quickening Spirit that is it puts life into our Spirits which the law could not The law bound us to punishment but did not help us to obedience because it gave not the promise of Eternal life to its Disciples The Spirit that is the Gospel onely does this and this alone is it which comforts afflicted mindes which puts activenesse into wearyed Spirits which inflames our cold desires and does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 blows up sparks into live coles and coles up to flames and flames to perpetual burnings and it is impossible that any man who believes and considers the great the infinite the unspeakable the unimaginable the never ceasing joyes that are prepared for all the sons and daughters of the Gospel should not desire them and unlesse he be a fool he cannot but use means to obtain them effective hearty pursuances For it is not directly in the nature of a man to neglect so great a good there must be something in his manners some obliquity in his will or madnesse in his intellectuals or incapacity in his naturals that must make him sleep such a reward away or change it for the pleasure of a drunken feaver or the vanity of a Mistresse or the rage of a passion or the unreasonablenesse of any sin However this promise is the life of all our actions and the Spirit that first taught it is the life of our soules 4. But beyond this is the reason which is the consummation of all the faithful The Gospel is called the Spirit because by and in the Gospel God hath given to us not onely the Spirit of manifestation that is of instruction and of Catechisme of faith and confident assent but the Spirit of Confirmation or obsignation to all them that believe and obey the Gospel of Christ that is the power of God is come upon our hearts by which in an admirable manner we are made sure of a glorious inheritance made sure I say in the nature of the thing and our own persuasions also are confirmed with an excellent a comfortable a discerning and a reasonable hope in the strength of which and by whose ayde as we do not doubt of the performance of the promise so we vigorously pursue all the parts of the condition and are inabled to work all the work of God so as not to be affrighted with fear or seduced by vanity or oppressed by lust or drawn off by evil example or abused by riches or imprison'd by ambition and secular designes This the Spirit of God does work in all his Servants and is called the spirit of obsignation or the confirming spirit because it confirms our hope and assures our title to life eternall and by means of it and other its collateral assistances it also confirms us in our duty that we may not onely professe in word but live lives according to the Gospel And this is the sense of the Spirit mentionâ—d in the Text ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you That is if ye be made partakers of the Gospel or of the spirit of manifestation if ye be truly intitled to God and have received the promise of the Father then are ye not carnal men ye are spirituall ye are in the Spirit if ye have the Spirit in one sense to any purpose ye have it also in another if the Spirit be in you you are in it if it hath given you hope it hath also inabled and ascertainâ—d your duty For the Spirit of manifestation will but upbraid you in the shame and horrours of a sad eternity if you have not the Spirit of obsignation if the Holy Ghost be not come upon you to great purposes of holinesse all other pretences are vain ye are still in the flesh which shall never inherit the kingdom of God In the Spirit that is in the power of the spirit so the Greeks call him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who is possessed by a spirit whom God hath filled with a coelestial immission he is said to be in God when God is in him and it is a similitude taken from persons encompassed with guards they are in custodiâ that is in their power under their command moved at their dispose they rest in their time and receive laws from their authority and admit visiters whom they appoint and must be employed as they shall suffer so are men who are in the Spirit that is they beleeve as he teaches they work as he inables they choose what he calls good they are friends of his friends and they hate with his hatred with this onely difference that persons in custody are forced to do what their keepers please and nothing is free but their wils but they that are under the command of the Spirit do all things which the Spirit commands but they do them cheerfully and their will is now the prisoner but it is in liberâ custodiâ the will is where it ought to be and where it desires to be and it cannot easily
choose any thing else because it is extreamly in love with this as the Saints and Angels in their state of Beatific vision cannot choose but love God and yet the liberty of their choice is not lessenâ—d because the object fils all the capacities of the will and the understanding Indifferency to an object is the lowest degree of liberty and supposes unworthinesse or defect in the object or the apprehension but the will is then the freest and most perfect in its operation when it intirely pursues a good with so certain determination and clear election that the contrary evil cannot come into dispute or pretence Such in our proportions is the liberty of the sons of God it is an holy and amiable captivity to the Spirit the will of man is in love with those chains which draws to God and loves the fetters that confine us to the pleasures and religion of the kingdom And as no man will complain that his temples are restraind and his head is prisoner when it is encircled with a crown So when the Son of God had made us free and hath onely subjected us to the service and dominion of the Spirit we are free as Princes within the circles of their Diadem and our chains are bracelets and the law is a law of liberty and his service is perfect freedom and the more we are subjects the more we shall reign as Kings and the faster we run the easier is our burden and Christs yoke is like feathers to a bird not loads but helps to motion without them the body fals and we do not pity birds when in summer we wish them unfeathered and callow or bald as egges that they might be cooler and lighter such is the load and captivity of the soul when we do the work of God and are his servants and under the Government of the spirit They that strive to be quit of this subjection love the liberty of out-laws and the licentiousness of anarchy and the freedom of sad widows and distressed Orphans For so Rebels and fools and children long to be rid of their Princes and their Guardians and their Tutors that they may be accursed without law and be undone without control and be ignorant and miserable without a teacher and without discipline He that is in the Spirit is under Tutours and Governours untill the time appointed of the Father just as all great Heirs are onely the first seizure the Spirit makes is upon the will He that loves the yoke of Christ and the discipline of the Gospel he is in the Spirit that is in the spirits power Upon this foundation the Apostle hath built these two propositions 1. Whosoever hath not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his he does not belong to Christ at all he is not partaker of his Spirit and therefore shall never be partaker of his glory 2. Whosoever is in Christ is dead to sin and lives to the Spirit of Christ that is lives a Spirituall a holy and a sanctifyed life These are to be considered distinctly 1. All that belong to Christ have the Spirit of Christ Immediately before the ascension our blessed Saviour bid his Disciples tarry in Jerusalem till they should receive the promise of the Father Whosoever stay at Jerusalem and are in the actuall Communion of the Church of God shall certainly receive this promise For it is made to you and to your children saith S. Peter and to as many as the Lord our God shall call All shall receive the Spirit of Christ the promise of the Father because this was the great instrument of distinction between the Law and the Gospel In the Law God gave his Spirit 1. to some to them 2. extraregularly 3. without solennity 4. in small proportions like the dew upon Gideons fleece a little portion was wet sometime with the dew of heaven when all the earth besides was dry And the Jewes calld it filiaâ— voois the daughter of a voice still and small and seldom and that by secret whispers and sometimes inarticulate by way of enthusiasme rather then of instruction and God spake by the Prophets transmitting the sound as thorough an Organ pipe things which themselves oftentimes understood not But in the Gospel the spirit is given without measure first powred forth upon our head Christ Jesus then descending upon the beard of Aaron the Fathers of the Church and thence falling like the tears of the balsam of Judea upon the foot of the plant upon the lowest of the people And this is given regularly to all that ask it to all that can receive it and by a solemn ceremony and conveyed by a Sacrament and is now not the Daughter of a voice but the Mother of many voices of divided tongues and united hearts of the tongues of Prophets and the duty of Saints of the Sermons of Apostles and the wisdom of Governours It is the Parent of boldness and fortitude to Martyrs the fountain of learning to Doctors an Ocean of all things excellent to all who are within the ship and bounds of the Catholike Church so that Old men and young men maidens and boyes the scribe and the unlearned the Judge and the Advocate the Priest and the people are full of the Spirit if they belong to God Moses's wish is fulfilled and all the Lords people are Prophets in some sense or other In the wisdom of the Ancient it was observed that there are four great cords which tye the heart of Man to inconvenience and a prison making it a servant of vanity and an heir of corruption 1. Pleasure and 2. Pain 3. Fear and 4. Desire 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These are they that exercise all the wisdom and resolutions of man and all the powers that God hath given him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Agathon These are those evil Spirits that possess the heart of man mingle with al his actions so that either men are tempted to 1. lust by pleasure or 2. to baser arts by covetousness or 3. to impatience by sorrow or 4. to dishonourable actions by fear and this is the state of man by nature and under the law and for ever till the Spirit of God came and by four special operations curâ—d these four inconveniences and restrained or sweetned these unwholesome waters 1. God gave us his Spirit that we might be insensible of worldly pleasures having our souls wholly filâ—d with spiritual and heavenly relishes For when Gods Spirit hath entred into us and possessed us as his Temple or as his dwelling instantly we begin to taste Manna and to loath the diet of Egypt we begin to consider concerning heaven and to prefer eternity before moments and to love the pleasures of the soul above the sottish and beastly pleasures of the body Then we can consider that the pleasures of a drunken meeting cannot make recompence for the pains of a surfet and that
then called the spirit of prayer and supplication For ever since the affections of the outward man prevailâ—d upon the ruins of the soul all our desires were sensuall and therefore hurtfull for ever after our body grew to be our enemy In the loosnesses of nature and amongst the ignorance or imperfection of Gentile Philosophy men used to pray with their hands full of rapine and their mouths of blood and their hearts of malice and they prayed accordingly for an opportunity to steal for a fair body for a prosperous revenge for a prevailing malice for the satisfaction of whatsoever they could be tempted to by any object by any lust by any Devil whatsoever The Jews were better taught for God was their teacher and he gave the spirit to them in single rayes But as the spirit of obsignation was given to them under a seal and within a veile so the spirit of Manifestation or patefaction was like the gem of a vine or the bud of a rose plain indices and significations of life and principles of juice and sweetnesse but yet scarce out of the doors of their causes they had the infancy of knowledge and revelations to them were given as Catechisme is taught to our children which they read with the eye of a bird and speak with the tongue of a bee and understand with the heart of a childe that is weakly and imperfectly and they understood so little that 1. They thought God heard them not unlesse they spake their prayers at least efforming their words within their lips and 2. Their forms of prayer were so few and seldome that to teach a forme of prayer or to compose a collect was thought a worke fit for a Prophet or the founder of an institution 3. Adde to this that as their promises were temporal so were their hopes as were their hopes so were their desires and according to their desires so were their prayers And although the Psalms of David was their Great office and the treasury of devotion to their Nation and very worthily yet it was full of wishes for temporals invocations of GOD the Avenger on GOD the Lord of Hosts on God the Enemy of their Enemies and they desired their Nation to be prospered and themselves blessed and distinguished from all the world by the effects of such desires This was the state of prayer in their Synagogue save onely that it had also this allay 4. That their addresses to GOD were crasse material typical and full of shadows and imagery paterns of things to come and so in its very being and constitution was relative and imperfect But that we may see how great things the Lord hath done for us God hath powred his spirit into our hearts the spirit of prayer and supplication and now 1. Christians pray in their spirit with sighs and groans and know that GOD who dwells within them can as clearly distinguish those secret accents and read their meaning in the Spirit as plainly as he knows the voice of his own thunder or could discern the letter of the law written in the tables of stone by the finger of God 2. likewise the spirit helpeth our infirmities for we know not what we should pray for as we ought That is when God sends an affliction or persecution upon us we are indeed extreme apt to lay our hand upon the wound and never take it off but when we lift it up in prayer to be delivered from that sadnesse and then we pray fervently to be cured of a sicknesse to be delivered from a Tyrant to be snatched from the grave not to perish in the danger But the spirit of God hath from all sad accidents drawn the veil of errour and the cloud of intolerablenesse and hath taught us that our happinesse cannot consist in freedom or deliverances from persecutions but in patience resignation and noble sufferance and that we are not then so blessed when God hath turn'd our scourges into ease and delicacy as when we convert our very scorpions into the exercise of vertues so that now the spirit having helped our infirmities that is comforted our weaknesses and afflictions our sorrows and impatience by this proposition that All things work together for the good of them that fear God he hath taught us to pray for grace for patience under the crosse for Charity to our persecutors for rejoycing in tribulations for perseverance and boldnesse in the faith and for whatsoever will bring us safely to Heaven 3. Whereas onely a Moses or a Samuel a David or a Daniel a John the Baptist or the Messias himself could describe and indite formes of prayer and thanksgiving to the time and accent of Heaven now every wise and good Man is instructed perfectly in the Scriptures which are the writings of the spirit what things he may and what things he must ask for 4. The Spirit of God hath made our services to be spiritual intellectual holy and effects of choice and religion the consequents of a spiritual sacrifice and of a holy union with God The prayer of a Christian is with the effects of the spirit of Sanctification and then we pray with the Spirit when we pray with Holinesse which is the great fruit the principal gift of the spirit And this is by Saint James called the prayer of faith and is said to be certain that it shall prevail Such a praying with the spirit when our prayers are the voices of our spirits and our spirits are first taught then sanctified by Gods spirit shall never fail of its effect because then it is that the spirit himself maketh intercession for us that is hath enabled us to do it upon his strengths we speak his sense we live his life we breath his accents we desire in order to his purposes and our persons are Gracious by his Holinesse and are accepted by his interpellation and intercession in the act and offices of Christ. This is praying with the spirit To which by way of explication I adde these two annexes of holy prayer in respect of which also every good man prayes with the spirit 5. The spirit gives us great relish and appetite to our prayers and this Saint Paul calls serving of God in his spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is with a willing minde not as Jonas did his errand but as Christ did die for us he was straitned till he had accomplished it And they that say their prayers out of custome onely or to comply with external circumstances or collateral advantages or pray with trouble and unwillingnesse give a very great testimony that they have not the spirit of Christ within them that spirit which maketh intercession for the Saints but he that delighteth in his prayers not by a sensible or phantastic pleasure but whose choice dwells in his prayers and whose conversation is with God in holy living and praying accordingly that man hath the spirit of Christ and therfore belongs to Christ for by this spirit it is
that Christ prayes in Heaven for us and if we do not pray on earth in the same manner according to our measures we had as good hold our peace our prayers are an abominable sacrifice and send up to God no better a perfume then if wee burned assa faetida or the raw flesh of a murdered man upon the altar of incense 6. The spirit of Christ and of prayer helps our infirmities by giving us confidence and importunity I put them together For as our faith is and our trust in God so is our hope and so is our prayer weary or lasting long or short not in words but in works and in desires For the words of prayer are no part of the spirit of prayer words may be the body of it but the spirit of prayer alwayes consists in holinesse that is in holy desires and holy actions words are not properly capable of being holy all words are in themselves seâ—vants of things and the holinesse of a prayer is not at all concerned in the manner of its expression but in the spirit of it that is in the violence of its desires and the innocence of its ends and the continuence of its imployment this is the verification of that great Prophecie which Christ made that in all the world the true worshippers should worship in spirit and in truth that is with a pure minde with holy desires for spiritual things according to the minde of the spirit in imitation of Christs intercession with perseverance with charity or love That is the spirit of God and these are the spiritualities of the Gospel and the formalities of prayer as they are Christian and Evangelicall 7. Some men have thought of a seventh way and explicate our praying in the spirit by a mere volubilty of language which indeed is a direct undervaluing the spirit of God and of Christ the spirit of manifestation and intercession it is to return to the materiality and imperfection of the law it is to worship God in outward forms and to think that Gods service consists in shels and rinds in lips and voices in shadows and images of things it is to retire from Christ to Moses and at the best it is a going from real graces to imaginary gifts and when praying with the spirit hath in it so many excellencies and consists of so many parts of holinesse and sanctification and is an act of the inner man we shall be infinitely mistaken if we let go this substance and catch at a shadow and sit down and rest in the imagination of an improbable unnecessary uselesse gift of speaking to which the nature of many men and the art of all learned men and the very use and confidence of ignorant men is too abundantly sufficient Let us not so despise the spirit of Christ as to make it no other then the breath of our lungs * For though it might be possible that at the first and when formes of prayer were few and seldome the spirit of God might dictatethe very words to the Apostles and first Christians yet it follows not that therfore he does so still to all that pretend praying with the spirit For if he did not then at the first dictate words as we know not whether he did or no why shall he be supposâ—d to do so now If he did then it follows that he does not now because his doing it then was sufficient for all men since for so the formes taught by the spirit were paternes for others to imitate in all the descending ages of the Church There was once an occasion so great that the spirit of God did think it a work â—it for him to teach a man to weave silke or embroider gold or woke in brasse as it happened to Besaleel and Aholiab But then every weaver or worker in brasse may by the same reason pretend that he works by the spirit as that he prayes by the spirit if by prayer he means forming the words For although in the ease of working it was certain that the spirit did teach in the ease of inditing or forming the words it is not certain whether he did or no yet because in both it was extraordinary if it was at all and ever since in both it is infinitely needlesse to pretend the Spirit in forms of every mans making even though they be of contrary religions and pray one against the other it may serve an end of a phantastic and hypochondriacal religion or a secret ambition but not the ends of God or the honour of the Spirit The Jews in their declensions to folly and idolatry did worship the stone of imagination that is certain smooth images in which by art magic pictures and little faces were represented declaring hidden things and stoln goods and God severely forbad this basenesse but we also have taken up this folly and worship the stone of imagination we beget imperfect phantasmes and speculative images in our phansy and we fall down and worship them never considering that the spirit of God never appears through such spectres Prayer is one of the noblest exercises of Christian religion or rather is it that duty in which all graces are concentred Prayer is charity it is faith it is a conformity to Gods will a desiring according to the desires of Heaven an imitation of Christs intercession and prayer must suppose all holinesse or else it is nothing and therefore all that in which men need Gods Spirit all that is in order to prayer Baptisme is but a prayer and the holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper is but a prayer a prayer of sacrifice representative and a prayer of oblation and a prayer of intercession and a prayer of thanksgiving and obedience is a prayer and begs and procures blessings and if the Holy Ghost hath sanctified the whole man then he hath sanctified the prayer of the man and not till then and if ever there was or could be any other praying with the spirit it was such a one as a wicked man might have and therefore it cannot be a note of distinction between the good and bad between the saints and men of the world But this onely which I have described from the fountains of Scripture is that which a good man can have and therefore this is it in which we ought to rejoyce that he that glories may glory in the Lord. Thus I have as I could described the effluxes of the Holy Spirit upon us in his great chanels But the great effect of them is this That as by the arts of the spirits of darknesse and our own malice our souls are turned into flesh not in the naturall sense but in the morall and Theologicall and animalis homo is the same with carnalis that is his soul is a servant of the passions and desires of the flesh and is flesh in its operations and ends in its principles and actions So on the other side by the Grace of God and the promise of the
Father and the influences of the Holy Ghost our souls are not onely recovered from the state of flesh and reduced back to the intirenesse of animall operations but they are heightned into spirit and transformâ—d into a new nature And this is a new Article and now to be considered S. Hierom tels of the Custome of the Empire When a Tyrant was overcome they usâ—d to break the head of his Statues and upon the same Trunk to set the head of the Conquerour and so it passed wholly for the new Prince So it is in the kingdom of Grace As soon as the Tyrant sin is overcome and a new heart is put into us or that we serve under a new head instantly we have a new Name given us and we are esteemed a new Creation and not onely changed in manners but we have a new nature within us even a third part of essentiall constitution This may seem strange and indeed it is so and it is one of the great mysteriousnesses of the Gospel Every man naturally consists of soul and body but every Christian man that belongs to Christ hath more For he hath body and soul and spirit My Text is plain for it If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his and by Spirit is not meant onely the graces of God and his gifts enabling us to do holy things there is more belongs to a good man then so But as when God made man he made him after his own image and breath'd into him the spirit of life and he was made in animam viventem into a living soul then he was made a man So in the new creation Christ by whom God made both the worlds intends to conform us to his image and he hath given us the spirit of adoption by which we are made sons of God and by the spirit of a new life we are made new creatures capable of a new state intitled to another manner of duration enabled to do new and greater actions in order to higher ends we have new affections new understandings new wils Vetera transierunt ecce omnia nova facta sunt All things are become new And this is called the seed of God when it relates to the principle and cause of this production but the thing that is produced is a spirit and that is as much in nature beyond a soul as a soul is beyond a body This great Mystery I should not utter but upon the greatest authority in the world and from an infallible Doctor I mean S. Paul who from Christ taught the Church more secrets then all the whole Colledge besides And the very God of peace sanctifie you wholly and I pray God that your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blamelesse unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified wholly nor preserved in safety unlesse besides our souls and bodies our spirit also be kept blamelesse This distinction nice and infinitely above humane reason but the word of God saith the same Apostle is sharper then a two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder the soul and the spirit and that hath taught us to distinguish the principle of a new life from the principle of the old the celestiall from the naturall and thus it is This spirit as I now discourse of it is a principle infused into us by God when we become his children whereby we live the life of Grace and understand the secrets of the Kingdom and have passions and desires of things beyond and contrary to our naturall appetites enabling us not onely to sobriety which is the duty of the body not onely to justice which is the rectitude of the soul but to such a sanctity as makes us like to God * For so saith the Spirit of God Be ye holy as I am be pure be perfect as your heavenly Father is pure as he is perfect which because it cannot be a perfection of degrees it must be in similitudine naturae in the likenesse of that nature which God hath given us in the new birth that by it we might resemble his excellency and holinesse And this I conceive to be the meaning of S. Peter According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and godlinesse that is to this new life of godlinesse through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and vertue whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the Divine nature so we read it But it is something mistaken it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Divine nature for Gods nature is indivisible and incommunicable but it is spoken participativè or per analogiant partakers of a Divine nature that is of this new and God-like nature given to every person that serves God whereby he is sanctified and made the childe of God and framed into the likenesse of Christ. The Greeks generally call this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a gracious gift an extraordinary superaddition to nature not a single gift in order to single purposes but an universall principle and it remains upon all good men during their lives and after their death and is that white stone spoken of in the Revelation and in it a new name written which no man knoweth but he that hath it And by this Gods sheep at the day of judgement shall be discerned from goats If their spirits be presented to God pure and unblameable this great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this talent which God hath given to all Christians to improve in the banks of grace and of Religion if they bring this to God increased and grown up to the fulnesse of the measure of Christ for it is Christs Spirit and as it is in us it is called the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ then we shall be acknowledged for sons and our adoption shall passe into an eternall inheritance in the portion of our elder Brother I need not to apply this Discourse The very mystery it self is in the whole world the greatest engagement of our duty that is imaginable by the way of instrument and by the way of thankfulnesse Quisquis magna dedit voluit sibi magna rependi He that gives great things to us ought to have great acknowledgements and Seneca said concerning wise men That he that doth benefit to others hides those benefits as a man layes up great treasures in the earth which he must never see with his eyes unlesse a great occasion forces him to dig the graves and produce that which he buried but all the while the man was hugely rich and he had the wealth of a great relation so it is with God and us For this huge benefit of the Spirit which God gives us is for our good deposited in our souls not made for forms and ostentation not to be looked upon or serve little ends but growing in the secret of our
souls and swelling up to a treasure making us in this world rich by title and relation but it shall be produced in the great necessities of doomesday In the mean time if the fire be quenched the fire of Gods Spirit God will kindle another in his anger that shall never be quenched but if we entertain Gods Spirit with our own purities and imploy it diligently and serve it willingly for Gods Spirit is a loving Spirit then we shall really be turned into spirits Irenaeus had a proverbiall saying Perfecti sunt qui tria sine querelâ Deo exhibent They that present three things right to God they are perfect that is a chast body a righteous soul and a holy spirit and the event shall be this which Maimonides expressed not amisse though he did not at all understand the secret of this mystery The soul of a man in this life is in potentiâ ad esse spiritum it is designed to be a spirit but in the world to come it shall be actually as very a spirit as an Angel is and this state is expressed by the Apostle calling it the earnest of the spirit that is here it is begun and given us as an antepast of glory and a principle of Grace but then we shall have it in plenitudine regit idem spiritus artus Orbe alio Here and there it is the same but here we have the earnest there the riches and the inheritance But then if this be a new principle and be given us in order to the actions of a holy life we must take care that we receive not the Spirit of God in vain but remember it is a new life and as no man can pretend that a person is alive that doth not alwayes do the works of life so it is certain no man hath the Spirit of God but he that lives the life of grace and doth the works of the Spirit that is in all holinesse and justice and sobriety Spiritus qui accedit animo vel Dei est vel Daemonis said Tertullian Every man hath within him the Spirit of God or the spirit of the devil The spirit of fornication is an unclean devil and extremely contrary to the Spirit of God and so is the spirit of malice or uncharitablenesse for the Spirit of God is the Spirit of love for as purities Gods Spirit sanctifies the body so by love he purifies the soul and makes the soul grow into a spirit into a Divine nature But God knows that even in Christian societies we see the devils walk up and down every day and every hour the devil of uncleannesse and the devil of drunkennesse the devil of malice and the devil of rage the spirit of filthy speaking and the spirit of detraction a proud spirit and the spirit of rebellion and yet all call Christian. It is generally supposed that unclean spirits walk in the night and so it used to be for they that are drunk are drunk in the night said the Apostle but Suidas tels of certain Empusae that used to appear at Noon at such time as the Greeks did celebrate the Funerals of the Dead and at this day some of the Russians fear the Noon-day Devil which appeareth like a mourning widow to reapers of hay and corn and uses to break their arms and legs unlesse they worship her The Prophet David speaketh of both kindes Thou shalt not be afraid for the terrour by night and a ruinâ daemonio meridiano from the Devil at noon thou shalt be free It were happy if we were so but besides the solemn followers of the works of darknesse in the times and proper seasons of darknesse there are very many who act their Scenes of darknesse in the face of the Sun in open defiance of God and all lawes and all modesty There is in such men the spirit of impudence as well as of impiety And yet I might have expressed it higher for every habituall sin doth not onely put us into the power of the devil but turns us into his very nature just as the Holy Ghost transforms us into the image of God Here therefore I have a greater Argument to perswade you to holy living then Moses had to the sons of Israel Behold I have set before you life and death blessing and cursing so said Moses but I adde that I have upon the stock of this Scripture set before you the good Spirit and the bad God and the devil choose unto whose nature you will be likened and into whose inheritance you will be adopted and into whose possession you will enter If you commit sin ye are of your father the Devil ye are begot of his principles and follow his pattern and shall passe into his portion when ye are led captive by him at his will and remember what a sad thing it is to go into the portion of evil and accursed spirits the sad and eternall portion of Devils But he that hath the Spirit of God doth acknowledge God for his Father and his Lord he despises the world and hath no violent appetites for secular pleasures and is dead to the desires of this life and his hopes are spirituall and God is his joy and Christ is his pattern and his support and Religion is his imployment and godlinesse is his gain and this man understands the things of God and is ready to die for Christ and fears nothing but to sin against God and his will is filled with love and it springs out in obedience to God and in charity to his brother and of such a man we cannot make judgement by his fortune or by his acquaintance by his circumstances or by his adherencies for they are the appendages of a naturall man but the spirituall is judged of no man that is the rare excellencies that make him happy do not yet make him illustrious unlesse we will reckon Vertue to be a great fortune and holinesse to be great Wisedom and God to be the best Friend and Christ the best Relative and the Spirit the hugest advantage and Heaven the greatest Reward He that knows how to value these things may sit down and reckon the felicities of him that hath the Spirit of God The purpose of this Discourse is this That since the Spirit of God is a new nature and a new life put into us we are thereby taught and enabled to serve God by a constant course of holy living without the frequent returns and intervening of such actions which men are pleased to call sins of infirmity Whosoever hath the Spirit of God lives the life of grace The Spirit of God rules in him and is strong according to its age and abode and allows not of those often sins which we think unavoidable because we call them naturall infirmities But if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousnesse The state of sin is a state of death the state of a man under
the law was a state of bondage and infirmity as S. Paul largely describes him in the seventh Chapter to the Romanes but he that hath the Spirit is made alive and free and strong and a conquerour over all the powers and violencies of sin such a man resists temptations falls not under the assault of sin returns not to the sin which he last repented of acts no more that errour which brought him to shame and sorrow but he that falls under a crime to which he still hath a strong and vigorous inclination he that acts his sin and then curses it and then is tempted and then sins again and then weeps again and calls himself miserable but still the inchantment hath confined him to that circle this man hath not the Spirit for where the Spirit of God is there is liberty there is no such bondage and a returning folly to the commands of sin But because men deceive themselves with calling this bondage a pitiable and excusable infirmity it will not be uselesse to consider the state of this question more particularly lest men from the state of a pretended infirmity fall into a reall death 1. No great sin is a sin of infirmity or excusable upon that stock But that I may be understood we must know that every sin is in some sense or other a sin of infirmity When a man is in the state of spirituall sicknesse or death he is in a state of infirmity for he is a wounded man a prisoner a slave a sick man weak in his judgement and weak in his reasoning impotent in his passions of childish resolutions great inconstancy and his purposes untwist as easily as the rude conjuncture of uncombining cables in the violence of a Northern tempest and he that is thus in infirmity cannot be excused for it is the aggravation of the state of his sin he is so infirm that he is in a state unable to do his duty Such a man is a servant of sin a slave of the Devil an heir of corruption absolutely under command and every man is so who resolves for ever to avoid such a sin and yet for ever falls under it for what can he be but a servant of sin who fain would avoid it but cannot that is he hath not the Spirit of God within him Christ dwels not in his soul for where the Son is there is liberty and all that are in the Spirit are sons of God and servants of righteousnesse and therefore freed from sin But then there are also sins of infirmity which are single actions intervening seldom in litle instances unavoidable or through a faultlesse ignorance Such as these are alwayes the allays of the life of the best men and for these Christ hath payd and they are never to be accounted to good men save onely to make them more wary and more humble Now concerning these it is that I say No great sin is a sin of excusable or unavoidable infirmity Because whosoever hath received the Spirit of God hath sufficient knowledge of his duty and sufficient strengths of grace and sufficient advertency of minde to avoid such things as do great and apparent violence to piety and religion No man can justly say that it is a sin of infirmity that he was drunk For there are but three causes of every sin a fourth is not imaginable 1. If ignorance cause it the sin is as full of excuse as the ignorance was innocent But no Christian can pretend this to drunkennesse to murder to rebellion to uncleannesse For what Christian is so uninstructed but that he knows Adultery is a sin 2. Want of observation is the cause of many indiscreet and foolish actions Now at this gap many irregularities do enter and escape because in the whole it is impossible for a man to be of so present a spirit as to consider and reflect upon every word and every thought but it is in this case in Gods laws otherwise then in mans the great flies cannot passe thorow without observation little ones do and a man cannot be drunk and never take notice of it or tempt his neighbours wife before he be aware therefore the lesse the instance be the more likely it is to be a sin of infirmity and yet if it be never so little if it be observed then it ceases to be a sin of infirmity 3. But because great crimes cannot pretend to passe undiscernably it follows that they must come in at the door of malice that is of want of Grace in the absence of the Spirit they destroy where ever they come and the man dies if they passe upon him It is true there is flesh and blood in every regenerate man but they do not both rule the flesh is left to tempt but not to prevail And it were a strange condition if both the godly and the ungodly were captives to sin and infallibly should fall into temptation and death without all difference saue onely that the godly sins unwillingly and the ungodly sins willingly But if the same things be done by both and God in both be dishonoured and their duty prevaricated the pretended unwillingnesse is the signe of a greater and a baser slavery and of a condition lesse to be endured For the servitude which is against me is intollerable but if I choose the state of a servant I am free in my minde Libertatis servaveris umbram Si quicquid jubeare velis certain it is that such a person who fain would but cannot choose but commit adultery or drunkennesse is the veriest slave to sin that can be imagined and not at all freed by the Spirit and by the liberty of the sons of God and there is no other difference but that the mistaken good man feels his slavery and sees his chains and his fetters but therefore it is certain that he is because he sees himself to be a slave No man can be a servant of sin and a servant of righteousnesse at the same time but every man that hath the Spirit of God is a servant of righteousnesse and therefore whosoever finde great sins to be unavoidable are in a state of death and reprobation as to the present because they willingly or unwillingly it matters not much whether of the two are servants of sin 2. Sins of infirmity as they are small in their instance so they put on their degree of excusablenesse onely according to the weaknesse or infirmity of a mans understanding So far as men without their own fault understand not their duty or are possessed with weaknesse of principles or are destitute and void of discourse or discerning powers and acts so far if a sin creeps upon them it is as naturall and as free from a law as is the action of a childe But if any thing else be mingled with it if it proceed from any other principle it is criminall and not excused by our infirmity because it is chosen and a mans will hath no
sin of one man is punished by the falling of a house or a wall upon him and then al the family are like to be crushed with the same ruine so dangerous so pestilential so infectious a thing is sin that it scatters the poison of its breath to all the neighbourhood and makes that the man ought to be avoided like a person infected with the plague Next I am to consider why this is so and why it is justly so To this I answer 1. Between Kings and their people Parents and their children there is so great a necessitude propriety and entercourse of nature dominion right and possession that they are by God and the laws of Nations reckoned as their Goods and their blessings The honour of a King is in the multitude of his people and children are a gift that cometh of the Lord and happy is that man that hath his quiver full of them and Lo thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord his wife shall be like the fruitful vine by the wals of his house his children like olive branches round about his Table Now if children be a blessing then to take them away in anger is a curse and if the losse of flocks and herds the burning of houses the blasting of fields be a curse how much greater is it to lose our children and to see God slay them before our eyes in hatred to our persons and detestation and loathing of our basenesse When Jobs Messengers told him the sad stories of fire from Heaven the burning his sheep and that the Sabeans had driven his Oxen away and the Chaldeans had stolne his Camels these were sad arrests to his troubled spirit but it was reserved as the last blow of that sad execution that the ruines of a house had crush'd his Sons and Daughters to their graves Sons daughters are greater blessings then sheep Oxen they are not servants of profit as sheep are but they secure greater ends of blesssing they preserve your Names they are so many titles of provision providence every new childe is a new title to Gods care of that family They serve the ends of honour of commonwealths and Kingdoms they are images of our souls and images of God and therefore are great blessings and by consequence they are great riches though they are not to be sold for mony and surely he that hath a cabinet of invaluable jewels will think himself rich though he never sells them Does God take care for Oxen said our blessed Saviour much more for you yea all and every one of your children are of more value then many Oxen when therefore God for your sin strikes them with crookednesse with deformity with foolishnesse with impertinent and caytive spirits with hasty or sudden deaths it is a greater curse to us then to lose whole herds of cattel of which it is certain most men would be very sensible They are our goods they are our blessings from God therefore we are striken when for our sakes they dye Therefore we may properly be punished by evils happening to our Relatives 2. But as this is a punishment to us so it is not unâ—ust as to them though they be innocent For all the calamities of this life are incident to the most Godly persons of the world and since the King of Heaven and earth was made a man of sorrows it cannot be called unjust or intolerable that innocent persons should be pressed with temporal infelicities onely in such cases we must distinguish the misery from the punishment for that all the world dyes is a punishment of Adams sin but it is no evil to those single persons that die in the Lord for they are blessed in their death Jonathan was killed the same day with his Father the King and this was a punishment to Saul indeed but to Jonathan it was a blessing for since God had appointed the kingdom to his neighbour it was more honourable for him to die fighting the Lords battel then to live and see himself the lasting testimony of Gods curse upon his Father who lost the Kingdom from his family by his disobedience That death is a blessing which ends an Honorable and prevents an inglorious life And our children it may be shall be sanctified by a sorrow and purified by the fire of affliction and they shall receive the blessing of it but it is to their Fathers a curse who shall wound their own hearts with sorrow and cover their heads with a robe of shame for bringing so great evil upon their house 3. God hath many ends of providence to serve in this dispensation of his judgements * 1. He expresses the highest indignation against sin and makes his examples lasting communicative and of great effect it is a little image of hell and we shall the lesse wonder that God with the pains of eternity punishes the sins of time when with our eyes we see him punish a transient action with a lasting judgement * 2. It arrests the spirits of men and surprises their loosenesses and restrains their gaiety when we observe that the judgements of God finde us out in all relations and turns our comforts into sadnesse and makes our families the scene of sorrows and we can escape him no where and by sin are made obnoxious not alone to personall judgements but that we are made like the fountains of the dead sea springs of the lake of Sodom in stead of refreshing our families with blessings we leave them brimstone and drought and poison and an evil name and the wrath of God and a treasure of wrath and their Fathers sins for their portion and inheritance * Naturalists say that when the leading goats in the Greek Islands have taken an Eryngus or sea holly into their mouths all the herd will stand still till the herds man comes and forces it out as apprehending the evil that will come to them all if any of them especially their Principals tast an unwholesome plant and indeed it is of a General concernment that the Master of a family or the Prince of a people from whom as from a fountain many issues do derive upon their Relatives should be springs of health and sanctity and blessing It is a great right and propriety that a King hath in his people or a Father in his children thaâ— even their sins can do these a mischiefe not onely by a direct violence but by the execution of Gods wrath God hath made strange bands and vessels or chanels of communication between them when even the anger of God shal be conveied by the conduits of such relations That would be considered It binds them neerer then our new doctrine will endure but it also binds us to pray for them and for their Holinesse and good Government as earnestly as we would be delivered from death or sicknesse or poverty or war or the wrath of God in any instance 3. This also will satisfie the fearfulnesse of such persons who
rather choose to die then to sin it is not so much as the beginning of repentance But in Holy Scripture when the people are called to repentance and sorrow which is ever the prologue to it marches sadly and first opens the seene it is ever expressed to be great clamorous and sad it is called a weeping sorely in the verse next after my text a weeping with the bitternesse of heart a turning to the Lord with weeping fasting and mourning a weeping day and night the sorrow of heart the breaking of the spirit the mourning like a dove and chattering like a swallow and if we observe the threnes and sad accents of the Prophet Jeremy when he wept for the sins of his Nation the heart-breakings of David when he mourned for his adultery and murder and the bitter tears of Saint Peter when he washed off the guilt and basenesse of his fall and the denying his Master we shall be sufficiently instructed in this praeludium or introduction to repentance and that it is not every breath of a sigh or moisture of a tender eye not every crying Lord have mercy upon me that is such a sorrow as begins our restitution to the state of grace and Divine favour but such a sorrow that really condemnes our selves and by an active effectual sentence declares us worthy of stripes and death of sorrow and eternall paines and willingly endures the first to prevent the second and weeps and mourns and fasts to obtain of God but to admit us to a possibility of restitution and although all sorrow for sins hath not the same expression nor the same degree of pungency and sensitive trouble which differs according to the temper of the body custome the sexe and accidental tendernesse yet it is not a Godly sorrow unlesse it really produce these effects that is 1. That it makes us really to hate 2. actually to decline sin and 3. produce in us a fear fo Gods anger a sense of the guilt of his displeasure and 4. Then such consequent trouble as can consist with such apprehension of the Divine displeasure which if it expresse not in tears and hearty complaints must be expressed in watchings and strivings against sin in confessing the goodnesse and justice of God threatning or punishing us in patiently bearing the rod of God in confession of our sins in accusation of our selves in perpetual begging of pardon and mean and base opinions of our selves and in al the natural productions from these according to our temper and constitution it must be a sorrow of the reasonable faculty the greatest in its kinde and if it be lesse in kinde or not productive of these effects it is not a godly sorrow not the exordium of repentance But I desire that it be observed that sorrow for sins is not Repentance not that duty which gives glory to God so as to obtain of him that he will glorifie us Repentance is a great volume of duty and Godly sorrow is but the frontispiece or title page it is the harbinger or first introduction to it or if you will consider it in the words of Saint Paul Godly sorrow worketh repentance sorrow is the Parent and repentance is the product and therefore it is a high piece of ignorance to suppose that a crying out and roaring for our sins upon our deathbed can reconcile us to God our crying to God must be so early and so lasting as to be able to teeme and produce such a daughter which must live long and grow from an Embryo to an infant from infancy to childhood from thence to the fulnesse of the stature of Christ and then it is a holy and a happy sorrow but if it be a sorrow onely of a death-bed it is a fruitlesse shower or like the rain of Sodom not the beginning of repentance but the kindling of a flame the comencement of an eternal sorrow For Ahab had a great sorrow but it wrought nothing upon his spirit it did not reconcile his affections to his duty and his duty to God Judas had so great a sorrow for betraying the innocent blood of his Lord that it was intolerable to his Spirit and he burst in the middle and if meer sorrow be repentance then hell is full of penitents for there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth for evermore Let us therefore beg of God as Calebs daughter did of her Father dedisti mihi terram aridam da etiam irrigâ—am thou hast given me a dry land give me also a land of waters a dwelling place in tears rivers of tears ut quoniam non sumus digni oculos orando ad coelum levare at simus digni oculos plorando caecare as Saint Austins expression is that because we are not worthy to lift up our eyes to heaven in prayer yet we may be worthy to weep our selves blinde for sin the meaning is that we beg sorrow of God such a sorrow as may be sufficient to quench the flames of lust and surmount the hills of our pride and may extinguish our thirst of covetousnesse that is a sorrow that shall be an effective principle of arming all our faculties against sin and heartily setting upon the work of grace and the persevering labours of a holy life * I shall onely adde one word to this That our sorrow for sin is not to be estimated by our tears and our sensible expressions but by our active hatred and dereliction of sin and is many times unperceived in outward demonstration It is reported of the Mother of Peter Lombard Gratian and Comestor that she having had three sons begotten in unhallowed embraces upon her death-bed did omit the recitation of those crimes to her confessour adding this for Apology that her three sons proved persons so eminent in the Church that their excellency was abundant recompence for her demerit and therefore she could not grieve because God had glorified himself so much by three instruments so excellent and that although her sin had abounded yet Gods grace did superabound Her Confessor replied at dole Saltem quod dolere non possis grieve that thou canst not grieve and so must we alwayes fear that our trouble for sin is nor great enough that our sorrow is too remisse that our affections are indifferent but we can onely be sure that our sorrow is a godly sorrow when it worketh repentance that is when it makes us hate and leave all our sin and take up the crosse of patience or penance that is confesse our sin accuse our selves condemn the action by hearty sentence and then if it hath no other emanation but fasting and prayer for its pardon and hearty industry towards its abolition our sorrow is not reproveable For sorrow alone will not do it there must follow a total dereliction of our sin and this is the first part of repentance Concerning which I consider that it is a sad mistake amongst many that do some things towards
despair and no man can hope for heaven without repentance And for such a man to despair is not the sin but the misery If such persons have a promise of heaven let them shew it and hope it and enjoy it if they have no promise they must thank themselves for bringing themselves into a condition without the Covenant without a promise hopelesse and miserable But will not trusting in the merits of Jesus Christ save such a man For that we must be tried by the word of God In which there is no contract at all made with a dying person that hath lived in Name a Christian in practise a Heathen and we shall dishonour the sufferings and redemption of our blessed Saviour if we make them to be a Umbrello to shelter our impious and ungodly living But that no such person may after a wicked life repose himself in his deathbed upon Christs merits observe but these two places of scripture Our Saviour Jesus Christ who gave himself for us what to do that we might lives as we list and hope to be saved by his merits No But that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works These things speak and exhort saith Saint Paul But more plainly yet in S. Peter Christ bare our sins in his own body on the tree To what end that we being dead unto sin should live unto righteousnesse since therefore our living a holy life is the end of Christs dying that sad and holy death for us he that trusts on it to evil purposes and to excuse his vicious life does as much as lies in him make void the very purpose and designe of Christs passion and dishonours the blood of the everlasting covenant which covenant was confirmed by the blood of Christ but as it brought peace from God so it requires a holy life from us But why may not we be saved as well as the thief upon the crosse even because our case is nothing alike When Christ dies once more for us we may look for such another instance not till then But this thiefe did but then come to Christ he knew him not before and his case was as if a Turk or heathen should be converted to Christianity and be baptized and enter newly into the Covenant upon his deathbed Then God pardons all his sins and so God does to Christians when they are baptized or first give up their names to Christ by a voluntarie confirmation of their baptismal vow but when they have once entred into the Covenant they must performe what they promise and to what they are obliged The thief had made no contract with God in Jesus Christ and therefore failed of none onely the defaillances of the state of ignorance Christ paid for at the thiefes admission But we that have made a covenant with God in baptisme and failed of it all our dayes and then returne at night when we cannot work have nothing to plead for our selves because we have made all that to be uselesse to us which God with so much mercy and miraculous wisdom gave us to secure our interest and hopes of heaven And therfore let no Christian man who hath covenanted with God to give him the service of his life think that God will be answered with the sighs and prayers of a dying man for all that great obligation which lies upon us cannot be transacted in an instant when we have loaded our souls with sin and made them empty of vertue we cannot so soon grow up to a perfect man in Christ Jesus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you cannot have an apple or a cherry but you must stay its proper periods and let it blossom and knot and grow and ripen and in due season we shall reap if we faint not saith the Apostle far much lesse may we expect that the fruits of repentance and the issues and degrees of holinesse shall be gathered in a few dayes or houres 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you must not expect such fruits in a little time nor with little labour Suffer therefore not your selves to be deceived by false principles and vain confidences for no man can in a moment root out the long contracted habits of vice nor upon his deathbed make use of all that variety of preventing accompanying and persevering grace which God gave to man in mercy because man would need it all because without it he could not be saved nor upon his death-bed can he exercise the duty of mortification nor cure his drunkennesse then nor his lust by any act of Christian discipline nor run with patience nor resist unto blood nor endure with long sufferance but he can pray and groan and call to God and resolve to live well when he is dying but this is but just as the Nobles of Xerxes when in a storm they were to lighten the ship to preserve their Kings life they did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they did their obeysance and leaped into the sea so I fear doe these men pray and mourn and worship and so leap overboard into an ocean of eternal and intolerable calamity From which God deliver us and all faithful people Hunc volo laudari qui sine morte potest Mart. ep l. 1. Vivere quod propero pauper nec inutilis annis Da veniam properat vivere nemo satis Differat hoc patrios optat qui vincere census Atriaque immodicis arctat imaginibus Mart. l. 2. ep 90. Sermon VII THE DECEITFVLNESSE Of the HEART 17. Jeremy 9. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperatly wicked who can know it FOlly and subtiltie divide the greatest part of mankinde and there is no other difference but this that some are crafty enough to deceive Others foolish enough to be cozened and abused And yet the scales also turn for they that are the most craftie to cozen others are the veriest Fools and most of all abused themselves They rob their neighbour of his mony and loose their own innocency they disturb his rest and vex their own Conscience they throw him into prison and themselves into Hell they make poverty to be their brothers portion and damnation to be their own Man entred into the world first alone but as soon as he met with one companion he met with three to cozen him The Serpent and Eve and himself all joyned first to make him a foole and to deceive him and then to make him miserable But he first cozened himself giving himself up to believe a lie and being desirous to listen to the whispers of a tempting spirit he sinned before he fell that is he had within him a false understanding and a depraved will and these were the Parents of his disobedience and this was the parent of his infelicity and a great occasion of ours And then it was that he entred for himself and his posterity into the condition of an ignorant credulous easie wilful passionate and
impotent person apt to be abused and so loving to have it so that if no body else will abuse him he will be sure to abuse himself by ignorance and evil principles being open to an enemy and by wilfulnesse and Sensuality doing to himself the most unpardonable injuries in the whole world So that the condition of Man in the rudenesses and first lines of its visage seemes very miserable deformed and accursed For a man is helplesse and vain of a condition so exposed to calamity that a raisin is able to kill him any trooper out of the Egyptian army a flie can do it when it goes on Gods errand the most contemptible accident can destroy him the smallest chance affright him every future contingency when but consideâ—ed as possible can amaze him and he is incompass'd with potent and malicious enemies subtle and implacable what shall this poor helplesse thing do trust in God Him he hath offended and he fear him as an enemy and God knows if we look onely on our selves and our own demerits we have to much reason so to doe Shall he rely upon Princes God help poor Kings they rely upon ther Subjects they fight with their swords levy forces with theâ—â— money consult with their Counsels hear with their ears and are strong onely in their union and many times they use all these things against them but however they can do nothing without them while they live and yet if ever they can die they are not to be trusted to Now Kings and Princes die so sadly and notoriously that it was used for a proverbe in holy scripture ye shall die like men and fall like one of the Princes Who then shall we trust in in our Friend Poor man he may help thee in one thing and need thee in ten he may pull thee out of the ditch and his foot may slip and fal into it himself he gives thee counsel to choose a wife and himself is to seek how prudently to choose his religion he counsels thee to abstain from a duel and yet slayes his own soul with drinking like a person void of all understanding he is willing enough to preserve thy interest and is very carelesse of his own for he does highly despise to betray or to be false to thee and in the mean time is not his own friend and is false to God and then his friendship may be useful to thee in some circumstances of fortune but no security to thy condition But what then shall we relie upon our patron like the Roman Clients who waited hourly upon their persons and daily upon their baskets and nightly upon their lusts and married their friendships and contracted also their hatred and quarrels This is a confidence will deceive us For they may lay us by justly or unjustly they may grow weary of doing benefits or their fortunes may change or they may be charitable in their gifts and burthensom in their offices able to feed you but unable to counsel you or your need may be longer then their kindnesses or such in which they can give you no assistance and indeed generally it is so in all the instances of men we have a friend that is wise but I â—eed not his counsel but his meat or my patron is bountiful in his largesses but I am troubled with a sad spirit and money and presents do me no more ease then perfumes do to a broken arme we seek life of a Physician that dies and go to him for health who cannot cure his own breath or gowt and so become vain in our imaginations abused in our hopes restlesse in our passions impatient in our calamity unsupported in our need exposed to enemies wandring and wilde without counsel and without remedy At last after the infatuating and deceiving all our confidences without we have nothing left us but to return home and dwell within our selves for we have a sufficient stock of self-love that we may be confident of our own affections we may trust our selves surely for what we want in skill we shall make up in diligence and our industry shall supply the want of other circumstances and no man vnderstands my own case so well as I do my self and no man will judge so faithfully as I shall do for my self for I am most concern'd not to abuse my self and if I do I shall be the loser and therefore may best rely upon my self Alas and God help us we shall finde it to be no such matter For we neither love our selves well nor understand our own case we are partial in our own questions deceived in our sentences carelesse of our interests and the most false persidious creatures to our selves in the whole world even the Heart of a man a mans own heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it And who can choose but know it And there is no greater argument of the deceitfulnesse of our Hearts then this that no man can know it all it cosens us in the very number of its cosenage But yet we can reduce it all to two heads We say concerning a false man trust him not for he will deceive you and we say concerning a weak and broken staffe lean not upon it for that will also deceive you The man deceives because he is false and the staffe because it is weak and the heart because it is both So that it is deceitful above all things that is failing and disabled to support us in many things but in other things where it can it is false and desperately wicked The first sort of deceitfulnesse is its calamitie and the second is its iniquity and that is the worst Calamitie of the two 1. The heart is deceitfull in its strength and when we have the groweth of a Man we have the weaknesses of a childe nay more yet and it is a sad consideration the more we are in age the weaker in our courage It appears in the heats and forwardnesses of new converts which are like to the great emissions of Lightning or like huge fires which flame and burn without measure even all that they can till from flames they descend to still fires from thence to smoak from smoak to embers from thence to ashes cold and pale like ghosts or the phantastick images of Death And the primitive Church were zealous in their Religion up to the degree of Cherubins and would run as greedily to the sword of the hangman to die for the cause of God as we do now to the greatest joy and entertainment of a Christian spirit even to the receiving of the holy Sacrament A man would think it reasonable that the first infancy of Christianity should according to the nature of first beginnings have been remisse gentle and unactive and that according as the object or evidence of faith grew which in every Age hath a great degree of Argument superadded to its confirmation so should the habit also and the grace the
popular noyses is the nicity of abstraction and requires an Angel to do it Some men are so kind-hearted so true to their friend that they will watch his very dying groans and receive his last breath and close his eyes And if this be done with honest intention it is well But there are some that do so and yet are vultures and harpyes they watch for the Carcasse and prey upon a Legacy A man with a true story may be malicious to his enemy and by doing himself right may also do him wrong And so false is the heart of man so clancular and contradictory are its Actions and Intentions that some men pursue vertue with great earnestnesse and yet cannot with patience look upon it in another It is Beauty in Themselves and Deformity in the Other Is it not plain that not the Vertue but its Reputation is the thing that is pursued And yet if you tell the man so he thinks he hath reason to complain of your malice or detraction Who is able to distinguish his fear of God from fear of punishment when from fear of punishment we are brought to fear God And yet the difference must be distinguishable in new Converts old Disciples And our fear of punishment must so often change its Circumstances that it must be at last a fear to offend out of pure Love and must have no formality left to distinguish it from Charity It is easie to distinguish these things in Precepts and to make the separation in the Schooles The Head can do it easily and the Tongue can do it But when the Heart comes to separate Alms from Charity Gods glory from Humane praise fear from fear and sincerity from Hypocrisie it does so intricate the questions and confound the ends and blend and entangle circumstances that a man hath reason to doubt that his very best Actions are fullied with some unhandsom excrescencie something to mak them very often to be criminal but alwayes to be imperfect Here a man would think were enough to abate our confidence and the spirit of pride and to make a man eternally to stand upon his guard and to keep as strict watch upon his own heart as upon his greatest enemy from without Custodi libera me de meipso Deus It was S. Augustines prayer Lord keep me Lord deliver me from my self If God will keep a man that he be not Felo de se that he lay no violent hands upon himself it is certain nothing else can do him mischief 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Agamemnon said Neither Jupiter nor Destinies nor the Furies but it is a mans self that does him the mischief The Devil can but Tempt and offer a dagger at the heart unlesse our hands thrust it home the Devil can do nothing but what may turne to our advantage And in this sence we are to understand the two seeming Contradictories in Scripture Pray that ye enter not into Temptation said our Blessed Saviour and Count it all joy when you enter into divers Temptations said one of Christs Disciples The case is easie When God suffers us to be tempted he means it but as a trial of our faith as the exercise of our vertues as the opportunity of reward and in such cases we have reason to count it all joy since the Trial of our faith worketh Patience and Patience experience and experience causeth hope and hope maketh not ashamed But yet for all this pray against temptations for when we get them into our hands we use them as blind men do their clubs neither distinguish person nor part as soone they strike the face of their friends as the back of the Enemie our hearts betray us to the enemie we fall in love with our mischief we contrive how to let the lust in and leave a port open on purpose and use arts to forget our duty and to give advantages to the Divel He that uses a temptation thus hath reason to pray against it and yet our hearts does all this and a thousand times more so that we may ingrave upon our hearts the epitaph which was digged into Thiestes grave-stone Nolite inquit hospites adire adme ilico istic Ne contagio mea umbrave obsit Tanta vis sceleris in corpore haeret There is so much falsenesse and iniquity in mans heart that it defiles all the members it makes the eyes lustful and the tongue slanderous it fills the head with mischief and the feet with blood and the hands with injury and the present condition of man with folly and makes his future state apt to inherit eternal miserie But this is but the beginning of those throws damnable impieties which proceed out of the heart of man and defile the whole constitution I have yet told but the weaknesses of the heart I shall the next time tel you the iniquities those inherent Divels which pollute and defile it to the ground and make it desperately wicked that is wicked beyond all expression The deceitfulnesse of the Heart Part II. 2 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is the beginning of wisdom to know a mans own weaknesses and failings in things of greatest necessitie and we have here so many objects to furnish out this knowledge that we finde it with the longest and latest before it be obtained A man does not begin to know him self till he be old and then he is well stricken in death A mans heart at first being like a plain table unspotted indeed but then there is nothing legible in it As soon as ever we ripen towards the imperfect uses of our reason we write upon this table such crooked characters such imperfect configurations so many fooleries and stain it with so many blots and vitious inspersions that there is nothing worth the reading in our hearts for a great while and when education and ripenesse reason and experience Christian philosophy and the grace of God hath made fair impressions and written the law in our hearts with the finger of Gods holy spirit we blot out this handwriting of Gods ordinances or mingle it with false principles and interlinings of our our own we disorder the method of God or deface the truth of God either we make the rule uneven we bribe or abuse our guide that we may wander with an excuse Or if nothing else will do it we turn head and professe to go against the laws of God Our Hearts are blind or our hearts are hardned for these are two great arguments of the wickednesse of our hearts they do not see or they will not see the wayes of God or if they do they make use of their seeing that they may avoid them 1. Our hearts are blinde wilfully blind I need not instance in the ignorance and involuntary nescience of men though if we speak of the necessary parts of religion no man is ignorant of them without his own fault such ignorance is alwayes a direct sin or the direct punishment of a
shall be intitled to all the quarrels of covetous and Ambitious persons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Demosthenes wittily complained of the Oracle An answer shall be drawn out of Scripture to countenance the designe God made to Rebel against his own Ordinances And then we are zealous for the Lord God of Hosts and will live and die in that quarrel But is it not a strange cozenage that our hearts shall be the main wheel in the engine and shall set all the rest on working The heart shall first put his own candle out then put out the eye of reason then remove the Land-mark and dig down the causeywayes and then either hire a blinde guide or make him so and all these Arts to get ignorance that they may secure impiety At first man lost his innocence onely in hope to get a little knowledge and ever since then left knowledge should discover his errour and make him returne to innocence we are content to part with that now and to kow nothing that may discover or discountenance our sins or discompose our secular designe And as God made great revelations and furnished out a wise Religion and sent his spirit to give the gift of Faith to his Church that upon the foundation of Faith he might build a holy life now our hearts love to retire into Blindnesse sneak under the covert of False principles and run to a cheape religion and an unactive discipline and make a faith of our own that we may build upon it ease and ambition and a tall fortune and the pleasures of revenge and do what we have a minde to scarce once in seven years denying a strong and an unruly appetite upon the interest of a just conscience and holy religion This is such a desperate method of impiety so certain arts and apt instruments for the Divel that it does his work intirley and produces an infallible damnation 3. But the heart of man hath yet another stratagem to secure its iniquity by the means of ignorance and that is Incogitancy or Inconsideration For there is wrought upon the spirits of many men great impression by education by a modest and temperate nature by humane Laws and the customes severities of sober persons and the fears of religion and the awfulnesse of a reverend man and the several arguments and endearments of vertue And it is not in the nature of some men to do an act in despite of reason and Religion and arguments and Reverence and modesty and fear But men are forced from their sin by the violence of the grace of God when they heare it speak But so a Roman Gentleman kept off a whole band of souldiers who were sent to murther him and his eloquence was stronger then their anger and designe But suddenly a rude trooper rushed upon him who neither had nor would heare him speak and he thrust his spear into that throat whose musick had charmed all his fellows into peace and gentlenesse So do we The Grace of God is Armour and defence enough against the most violent incursion of the spirits and the works of darknesse but then we must hear its excellent charms and consider its reasons and remember its precepts and dwell with its discourses But this the heart of man loves not If I be tempted to uncleannesse or to an act of oppression instantly the grace of God represents to me that the pleasure of the sin is transient and vain unsatisfying and empty That I shall die and then I shall wish too late that I had never done it It tells me that I displease God who made me who feeds me who blesses me who fain would save me It represents to me all the joyes of Heaven and the horrours and amazements of a sad eternity And if I will stay and heare them ten thousand excellent things besides sit to be twisted about my understanding forever But here the heart of man shuffles all these discourses into disorder and will not be put to the trouble of answering the objections but by a meer wildenesse of purpose and rudnesse of resolution ventures super totam materiam at all and does the thing not because it thinks it fit to do so but because it will not consider whether it be or no it is enough that it pleases a present appetite and if such incogitancy comes to be habitual as it is in very many men first by resisting the motions of the holy spirit then by quenching him we shall find the consequents to be first an Indifferencie then a dulnesse then a Lethargie then a direct Hating the wayes of God and it commonly ends in a wretchlessenesse of spirit to be manifested on our death-bed when the man shall passe hence not like the shadow but like the dog that departeth without sence or interest or apprehension or real concernment in the considerations of eternity and t is but just when we will not heare our king speak and plead not to save himself but us to speak for our peace and innocency and Salvation to prevent our ruine and our intolerable calamity certainly we are much in love with the wages of death when we cannot endure to heare God cal us back and stop our ears against the voice of the charmer charme he never so wisely Nay further yet we suffer the Arguments of Religion to have so little impression upon our spirits that they operate but like the discourses of childhood or the Problems of uncertain Philosophy A man talks of Religion but as of a dream and from thence he awakens into the Businesses of the world and acts them deliberately with perfect Action and full Resolution and contrives and considers and lives in them But when he falls asleep again or is taken from the Scene of his own employment and choice then he dreams again and Religion makes such Impressions as is the conversation of a Dreamer and he acts accordingly Theocritus tells of a Fisherman that dreamed he had taken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Fish of gold upon which being over-joyed he made a vow that he would never fish more But when he waked he soon declared his vow to be null because he found his golden Fish was scaped away through the holes of his eyes when he first opened them Just so we do in the purposes of Religion sometimes in a good mood we seem to see Heaven opened and all the streets of Heavenly Jerusalem paved with gold and precious stones and we are ravished with spirituall apprehensions and resolve never to return to the low affections of the world and the impute adherencies of sin but when this flash of lightning is gone and we converse again with the Inclinations and habituall desires of our false hearts those other desires and fine considerations disband and the Resolutions taken in that pious fit melt into Indifferency and old Customes He was prettily and fantastically troubled who having used to put his trust in Dreams one night dreamed that all
as it distinguishes from all the Religions of the world To which we may adde the expresse Precept recorded by Saint James Be afflicted and mourn and weep let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into weeping You see the Commandements Will you also see the Promises These they are In the world yee shall have tribulation in me ye shall have peace and through many tribulations ye shall enter into heaven and he that loseth father and mother wives and children houses and lands for my Names sake and the Gospel shall receive a hundred fold in this life with persecution that 's part of his reward And he chastiseth every son that he receiveth and if you be exempt from sufferings ye are bastards and not sons These are some of Christs promises will you see some of Christs blessings that he gives his Church Blessed are the poor Blessed are the hungry and thirsty Blessed are they that mourn Blessed are the humble Blessed are the persecuted Of the eight Peatitudes five of them have temporall misery and meannesse or an afflicted condition for their subject Will you at last see some of the reward which Christ hath propounded to his servants to invite them to follow him When I am lifted up I will draw all men after me when Christ is lifted up as Moses lift up the serpent in the wildernesse that is lifted upon the Crosse then he will draw us after him To you it is given for Christ saiâ—h Saint Paul when he went to sweeten and to flatter the Philippians Well what is given to them Some great favours surely true It is not onely given that you beleeve in Christ though that be a great matter but also that you suffer for him that 's the highest of your honour And therefore saith Saint James My brethren count it all joy when ye enter into divers temptations And Saint Peter Communicating with the sufferings of Christ rejoyce And Saint James again We count them blessed that have suffered And Saint Paul when he gives his blessing to the Thessalonians he uses this form of prayer Our Lord direct our hearts in the charity of God and in the patience and sufferings of Christ. So that if wee will serve the King of sufferings whose crown was of thorns whose scepter was a reed of scorne whose imperiall robe was a scarlet of mockery whose throne was the Crosse We must serve him in sufferings in poverty of spirit in humility and mortification and for our reward we shall have persecution and all its blessed consequents Atque hoc est esse Christianum Since this was done in the green-tree what might we expect should be done in the dry Let us in the next place consider how God hath treated his Saints and servants and the descending ages of the Gospel That if the best of Gods servants were followers of Jesus in this covenant of sufferings we may not think it strange concerning the fiery tryall as if some new thing had happened to us For as the Gospel was founded in sufferings we shall also see it grow in persecutions and as Christs blood did cement the corner stones and the first foundations So the blood and sweat the groans and sighings the afflictions and mortifications of saints and martyrs did make the superstructures and must at last finish the building If I begin with the Apostles who were to perswade the world to become Christian and to use proper Arguments of invitation we shall finde that they never offered an Argument of temporall prosperity they never promised Empires and thrones on earth nor riches nor temporall power and it would have been soon confuted if they who were whipt and imprisoned banished and scattered persecuted and tormented should have promised Sun-shine dayes to others which they could not to themselves Of all the Apostles there was not one that died a naturall death but onely Saint John and did he escape Yes But he was put into a Cauldron of scalding lead and oyl before the Port Latin in Rome and scaped death by miracle though no miracle was wrought to make him scape the torture And besides this he lived long in banishment and that was worse then Saint Peters chains Sanctus Petrus in vinculis Johannes ante portam latinam were both dayes of Martyrdom and Church Festivals and after a long and laborious life and the affliction of being detained from his crown and his sorrows for the death of his fellow-disciples he dyed full of dayes and sufferings And when Saint Paul was taken into the Apostolate his Commissions were signed in these words I will shew unto him how great things he must suffer for my Name and his whole life was a continuall suffering Quotidiè morior was his Motto I die daily and his lesson that he daily learned was to know Christ Jesus and him crucified and all his joy was to rejoyce in the Crosse of Christ and the changes of his life were nothing but the changes of his sufferings and the variety of his labours For though Christ hath finished his own sufferings for expiation of the world yet there are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 portions that are behinde of the sufferings of Christ which must be filled up by his body the Church and happy are they that put in the greatest symbol for in the same measure you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ in the same shall ye be also of the consolation And therefore concerning S. Paul as it was also concerning Christ there is nothing or but very little in Scripture relating to his person and chances of his private life but his labours and persecutions as if the holy Ghost did think nothing fit to stand upon record for Christ but sufferings And now began to work the greatest glory of the divine Providence here was the case of Christianity at stake The world was rich and prosperous learned and full of wise men the Gospel was preached with poverty and persecution in simplicity of discourse and in demonstration of the Spirit God was on one side and the Devil on the other they each of them dressed up their city Babylon upon Earth Jerusalem from above the Devils city was full of pleasure triumphs victories and cruelty good news and great wealth conquest over Kings and making nations tributary They bound Kings in chains and the Nobles with links of iron and the inheritance of the Earth was theirs the Romans were Lords over the greatest parts of the world and God permitted to the Devil the Firmament and increase the wars and the successe of that people giving to him an intire power of disposing the great changes of the world so as might best increase their greatnesse and power and he therefore did it because all the power of the Romane greatnesse was a professed enemy to Christianity and on the other side God was to build up Jerusalem and the kingdom of the Gospel and he chose
and excellent men do so much value above their lives and fortunes 12. That a mans nature is passible is its best advantage for by it we are all redeemed by the passivenesse and sufferings of our Lord and brother we were all rescued from the portion of Devils and by our suffering we have a capacity of serving God beyond that of Angels who indeed can sing Gods praise with a sweeter note and obey him with a more unabated will and execute his commands with a swifter wing and a greater power but they cannot die for God they can lose no lands for him and he that did so for all us and commanded us to do so for him is ascended farre above all Angels and is Heir of a greater glory 13. Do this and live was the covenant of the Law but in the Gospel it is suffer this and live He that forsaketh house and land friends and life for my sake is my disciple 14. By the sufferings of Saints God chastises their follies and levities and suffers not their errours to climbe up into heresies nor their infirmities into crimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Alteration makes a fool leave his folly If David numbers the people of Judea God punishes him sharply and loudly But if Augustus Caesar numbers all the world he is let alone and prospers Ille crucem pretium sceleris tulit hic diadema And in giving physick we alwayes call that just and sitting that is usefull and profitable no man complains of his Physitians Iniquity if he burns one part to cure all the body if the belly be punished to chastise the floods of humour and the evils of a â—urfet Punishments can no other way turn into a mercy but when they are designed for medicine and God is then very carefull of thy soul when he will suppresse every of its evils when it first discomposes the order of things and spirits And what hurt is it to thee if a persecution draws thee from the vanities of a former prosperity and forces thee into the sobrieties of a holy life What losse is it what misery Is not the least sin a greater evil then the great est of sufferings God smites some at the beginning of their sin Others not till a long while after it is done The first cannot say that God is slack in punishing and have no need to complain that the wicked are prosperous for they finde that God is apt enough to strike and therefore that he strikes them and strikes not the other is not deâ—â—ct of justice but because there is not mercy in store for them that sin and suffer not 15. For if God strikes the godly that they may repent it is no wonder that God is so good to his servants but then we must not call that a misery which God intends to make an instrument of saving them And if God forbears to strike the wicked out of anger and because he hath decreed death and hell against them we have no reason to envy that they ride in a gilded chariot to the gallows But if God forbears the wicked that by his long sufferance they may be invited to repentance then we may cease to wonder at the dispensation and argue comforts to the afflicted Saints thus 1. For if God be so gracious to the wicked how much more is he to the godly And if sparing the wicked be a mercy then smiting the godly being the expression of his greater kindnesse affliction is of it self the more eligible condition If God hath some degrees of kindnesse for the persecutor so much as to invite them by kindnesse how much greater is his love to them that are persecuted and therefore his entercourse with them is also a greater favour and indeed it is the surer way of securing the duty fair means may do it but severity will fix and secure it fair means are more apt to be abused then harsh physick that may be turned into wantonnesse but none but the impudent and grown sinners despise all Gods judgements and therefore God chooses this way to deal with his erring servants that they may obtain an infallible and a great salvation and yet if God spares not his children how much lesse the reprobates and therefore as the sparing the latter commonly is a sad curse so the smiting the former is a very great mercy 16 For by this Oeconomy God gives us a great argument to prove the resurrection since to his saints and servants he assignes sorrow for their present portion Sorrow cannot be the reward of vertue it may be its instrument and hand-maid but not its reward and therefore it may be intermedial to some great purposes but they must look for their portion in the other life For if in this life onely we had hope then we were of all men the most miserable It is Sain Pauls argument to prove a beatificall resurrection And we therefore may learn to estimate the state of the afflicted godly to be a mercy great in proportion to the greatnesse of that reward which these afflictions come to secure and to prove Nunc damna juvant sunt ipsa pericula tanti Stantia non poterant tecta probare Deos. It is a great matter an infinite blessing to escape the pains of hell and therefore that condition is also very blessed which God sends us to create and to confirm our hopes of that excellent mercy 17. The sufferings of the saints are the sum of Christian Philosophy they are sent to wean us from the vanâ—les and affections of this world and to create in us strong desires of heaven whiles God causes us to be here treated rudely that we may long to be in our Countrey where God shall be our portion and Angels our companions and Christ our perpetuall feast and a never ceasing joy shall be our condition and entertainment O death how bitter art thou to a man that is at ease and rest in his possessions but he that is uneasie in his body and unquiet in his possessions vexed in his person discomposed in his designes who findes no pleasure no rest here will be glad to fix his heart where onely he shall have what he can desire and what can make him happy As long as the waters of persecutions are upon the earth so long we dwell in the Ark but where the land is dry the Dove it self will be tempted to a wandring course of life and never to return to the house of her safety What shall I say more 18 Christ nourisheth his Church by sufferings 19 He hath given a single blessing to all other graces but to them that are persecuted he hath promised a double one It being a double favour first to be innocent like Christ and then to be afflicted like him 20. Without this the miracles of patience which God hath given to fortifie the spirits of the saints would signifie nothing Nemo enim tolerare tanta velit sine causâ nec potuit
God and give him praise in their capacity and yet he gave them no speech no reason no immortall spirit or capacity of eternall blessednesse but he hath distinguished us from them by the absolute issues of his predestination and hath given us a lasting and eternall spirit excellent organs of perception and wonderfull instruments of expression that we may joyn in consort with the morning star and bear a part in the Chorus with the Angels of light to sing Alleluiah to the great Father of men and Angels But was it not a huge chain of mercies that we were not strangled in the regions of our own naturall impurities but were sustained by the breath of God from perishing in the womb where God formed us in secreto terrae told our bones and kept the order of nature and the miracles of creation and we lived upon that which in the next minute after we were born would strangle us if it were not removed but then God took care of us and his hands of providence clothed us and fed us But why do I reckon the mercies of production which in every minute of our being are alike and continued and are miracles in all senses but that they are common and usuall I onely desire you to remember that God made all the works of his hands to serve him and indeed this mercy of creating us such as we are was not to lead us to repentance but was a designe of innocence he intended we should serve him as the Sun and the Moon do as fire and water do never to prevaricate the laws he fixed to us that we might have needed no repentance But since we did degenerate and being by God made better and more noble creatures then all the inhabitants of the air the water and the earth besides we made our selves baser and more ignoble then any For no dog crocodile or swine was ever Gods enemy as we made our selves yet then from thence forward God began his work of leading us to repentance by the riches of his goodnesse He causeth us to be born of Christian parents under whom we were taught the mysteriousnesse of its goodnesse and designes for the redemption of man And by the designe of which religion repentance was taught to mankind and an excellent law given for distinction of good and evil and this is a blessing which though possibly we do not often put into our eucharisticall Letanies to give God thanks for yet if we sadly consider what had become of us if we had been born under the dominion of a Turkish Lord or in America where no Christians do inhabite where they worship the Devil where witches are their priests their prophets their phisitians and their Oracles can we choose but apprehend a visible notorious necessity of perishing in those sins which we then should not have understood by the glasse of a divine law to have declined nor by a revelation have been taught to repent of But since the best of men does in the midst of all the great advantages of lawes and examples and promises and threatnings do many things he ought to be ashamed of and needs to repent of we can understand the riches of the Divine goodnesse best by considering that the very designe of our birth and education in the Christian religion is that we may recover of and cure our follies by the antidote of repentance which is preached to us as a doctrine and propounded as a favour which was put into a law and purchased for us by a great expence which God does not more command to us as a duty then he gives us a blessing For now that we shall not perish for our first follies but be admitted to new conditions to be repaired by second thoughts to have our infirmities excused and our sins forgiven our habits lessened and our malice cured after we were wounded and sick and dead and buried and in the possession of the Devil this was such a blessing so great riches of the Divine goodnesse that as it was taught to no religion but the Christian revealed by no law-giver but Christ so it was a favour greater then ever God gave to the Angels and Devils for although God was rich in the effusion of his goodnesse towards them yet they were not admitted to the condition of second thoughts Christ never shed one drop of blood for them his goodnesse did not lead them to repentance but to us it was that he made this largesse of his goodnesse to us to whom he made himself a brother and sucked the paps of our mother he paid the scores of our sin and shame and death onely that we might be admitted to repent and that this repentance might be effectuall to the great purposes of felicity and salvation And if we would consider this sadly it might make us better to understand our madnesse and folly in refusing to repent That is to be sorrowfull and to leave all our sins and to make amends by a holy life For that we might be admitted and suffered to do so God was fain to pour forth all the riches of his goodnesse It cost our deerest Lord the price of his deerest blood many a thousand groans millions of prayers and sighes and at this instant he is praying for our repentance nay he hath prayed for our repentance these 1600. yeers incessantly night and day and shall do so till doomes-day He sits at the right hand of God making intercession for us And that we may know what he prayes for he hath sent us Embassadours to declare the purpose of all his designe for Saint Paul saith We are Embassadours for Christ as though he did beseech you by us we pray you in Christs stead to be reconciled to God The purpose of our Embassy and Ministery is a prosecution of the mercies of God and the work of Redemption and the intercession and mediation of Christ It is the work of atonement and reconciliation that God designed and Christ died for and still prayes for and we preach for and you all must labour for And therefore here consider if it be not infinite impiety to despise the riches of such a goodnesse which at so great a charge with such infinite labour and deep mysterious arts invites us to repentance that is to such a thing which could not be granted to us unlesse Christ should die to purchase it such a glorious favour that is the issue of Christs prayers in heaven and of all his labours his sorrows and his sufferings on earth if we refuse to repent now we do not so much refuse to do our own duty as to accept of a reward it is the greatest and the dearest blessing that ever God gave to Men that they may repent and therefore to deny it or to delay it is to refuse health brought us by the skill and industry of the Physitian it is to refuse liberty indulged to us by our gracious Lord and certainly we had reason
riches to despise such a goodnesse However that we may see the greatnesse of this treasure of goodnesse God seldom leaves us thus for he sees be it spoken to the shame of our natures and the dishonour of our manners he sees that his mercies do not allure us do not make us thankful but as the Roman said felicitate corrumpimur we become worse for Gods mercy and think it will be alwayes holiday and are like the Christal of Arabia hardned not by cold but made crusty and stubborn by the warmth of the divine fire by its refreshments and mercies therefore to demonstrate that God is good indeed he continues his mercise still to us but in another instance he is merciful to us in punishing us that by such instruments we may be led to repentance which will scare us from sin he delivers us up to the paedagogy of the divine judgements and there begins the second part of Gods method intimated in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or forbearance God begins his cure by causticks by incisions and instruments of vexation to try if the disease that will not yeild to the allectives of cordials and perfumes friction and baths may be forced out by deleteries scarifications and more salutary but least pleasing Physicke 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 forbearance it is called in the text which signifies laxamentum or inducias that is when the decrees of the divine judgements temporal are gone out either wholly to suspend the executio◠of them which is induciae or a reprieve or else when God hath struck once or twice he takes off his hand that is laxamentum an ease of remission of his judgment in both these although in judgement God remembers mercy yet we are under discipline we are brought into the paenitential chamber at least we are shewed the rod of God and if like Moses rod it turnes us into serpents and that we repent not but grow more Devils yet then it turnes into a rod again and finishes up the smiting or the first designed affliction But I consider it first in general the riches of the divine goodnesse is manifest in beginning this new method of curing us by severity and by a rod. And that you may not wonder that I expound this forbearance to be an act of mercy punishing I observe that besides that the word supposes the method changed and it is a mercy about judgements and their manner of execution it is also in the nature of the thing in the conjunction of circumstances and the designes of God a mercy when he threatens us or strike us into repentance We think that the way of blessings and prosperous accidents is the finer way of securing our duty and that when our heads are anointed our cups crowned and our tables full the very caresses of our spirits will best of all dance before the Ark and sing perpetual Anthemes to the honour of our Benefactor and Patron God and we are apt to dream that God will make his Saints raigne here as kings in a millenary kingdom and give them the riches and fortunes of this world that they may rule over men and sing psalms to God for ever But I remember what Xenophanes saies of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God is like to men neither in shape nor in counsel he knowes that his mercies confirm some and encourage more but they convert but few alone they lead men to dissolution of manners and forgetfulnesse of God rather then repentance not but that mercies are competent and apt instruments of grace if we would but because we are more dispersed in our spirits and by a prosperous accident are melted into joy and garishness and drawn off from the sobriety of recollection Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked Many are not able to suffer and endure prosperity it is like the light of the sun to a weak eye glorious indeed in it self but not proportioned to such an instrument Adam himself as the Rabbins say did not dwell one night in Paradise but was poisoned with prosperity with the beauty of his fair wife and a beauteous tree and Noah and Lot were both righteous and examplary the one to Sodom the other to the old world so long as they lived in a place in which they were obnoxious to the common suffering but as soon as the one of them had scaped from drowing and the other from burning and were put into security they fell into crimes which have dishonoured their memories for above thirty generations together the crimes of drunkennesse and incest wealth and a full fortune make men licenciously vitious tempting a man with power to act all that he can desire or designe vitiously Inde irae faciles Namque ut opes nimias mundo fortuna subacto Intulit et rebus mores cessere secundis Cultus gest are decoros vix nuribus rapuere mares totoque accersitur orbe Quo gens quaeque perit Lucan And let me observe to you that though there are in the new Testament many promises and provisions made for the poor in that very capacity they haveing a title to some certain circumstances and additionals of grace and blessing yet to rich men our blessed Saviour was pleased to make none at all but to leave them involved in general comprehensions and to have a title to the special promises onely by becomming poor in spirit and in preparation of minde though not in fortune and possession How ever it is hard for God to perswade us to this till we are taught it by a sad experience that those prosperities which we think will make us serve God cheerfully make us to serve the world and secular ends diligently and God not at all Repentance is a duty that best complies with affliction 〈◊〉 is a symbolical estate of the same complexion and constitution half the work of repentance is done by a sad accident our spirits are made sad our gayeties mortified our wildnesse corrected the water springs are ready to run over but if God should grant our desires and give to most men prosperity with a designe to lead them to repentance all his pompe and all his employment and all his affections and passions and all his circumstances are so many degrees of distance from the conditions and natures of repentance It was reported by Dio concerning Neros mother that she often wished that her Son might be Emperour and wished it with so great passion that upon that condition she cared not though her Son might kill her Her first wish and her second fear were both granted but when she began to fear that her Son did really designe to murder her she used all the art and instruments of diversion that a witty and a powerfull a timerous person and a woman could invent or apply Just so it is with us so we might have our wishes of prosperity we promise to undergo all the severities of repentance but when we are landed upon our desire then every degree of
your danger with a sober spirit the fear of it would have half killed you If he had but told you how often God had sent out his Warrants to the exterminating Angel and our Blessed Saviour by his intercession hath obtained a reprieve that he might have the content of rejoycing at thy conversion and repentance If you had known from him the secrets of that providence which governs us in secret and how many thousand times the Devil would have done thee hurt and how often himself as a ministring spirit of Gods goodnesse and forbearance did interpose and abate or divert a mischief which was falling on thy head it must needs cover thy head with a cloud of shame and blushing at that ingratitude and that folly that neither will give God thanks nor secure thy own well being Hadst thou never any dangerous fall in thy intemperance then God shewed thee thy danger and that he was angry at thy sin but yet did so pity thy person that he would forbear thee a little longer else that fall had been into thy grave When thy gluttony gave thee a surfet and God gave thee a remedy his meaning then was that thy gluttony rather should be cured then thy surfet that repentance should have been thy remedy and abstinence and fasting should be thy cure Did ever thy proud or revengefull spirit engage the upon a Duell or a vexatious Law-suit and God brought thee off with life or peace his purpose then was that his mercy should teach thee charity and he that cannot read the purposes of God written with the finger of judgement for as yet his whole hand is not laid on either is consigned to eternall ruine because God will no more endeavour his cure or if his mercy still continues and goes on in long-suffering it shall be by such vexatious instruments such causticks and corrosives such tormenting and desperate medicaments such which in the very cure will soundly punish thy folly and ingratitude For deceive not your selves Gods mercy cannot be made a patron for any mans impiety the purpose of it is to bring us to repentance and God will do it by the mercies of his mercies or by the mercies of his judgements he will either break our hearts into a thousand fragments of contrition or break our bones in the ruines of the grave and hell And since God rejoyces in his mercy above all his works he will be most impatient that we shall despise that in which he most delights and in which we have the greatest reason to delight the riches of that goodnesse which is essentiall and part of his glory and is communicated to us to bring us to repentance that we may partake of that goodnesse and behold that glory Sermon XIII The mercies of the Divine Judgements Part II. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 long-suffering in this one word are contained all the treasures of the Divine goodnesse here is the length and extension of his mercy pertrahit spiritum super nos Dominus so the Syrian Interpreter reads Luk. 18. 7. God holds his breath He retains his anger within him lest it should come forth and blast us and here is also much of the Divine justice For although God suffers long yet he does not let us alone he forbears to destroy us but not to punish us and in both he by many accidents gives probation of his power according to the prayer of the Wise man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thou art mercifull towards us all because thou canst do all things and thou passedst by the sins of men that they may repent And that God shall support our spirit and preserve our patience and nourish our hope and correct our stubbornnesse and mortifie our pride and bring us to him whether we will or no by such gracious violences and mercifull judgements which he uses towards us as his last remedies is not onely the demonstration of a mighty mercy but of an almighty power So hard a thing it is to make us leave our follies and become wise that were not the mercies of God an effective pity and clothed in all the way of its progresse with mightinesse and power every sinner should perish irrevocably But this is the fiery triall the last purgatory fire which God uses to burn the thistles and purifie the drosse When the gentle influence of a Sun-beam will not wither them nor the weeding hook of a short affliction cut them out then God comes with fire to burn us with the ax laid to the root of the tree but then observe that when we are under this state of cure we are so neer destruction that the same instrument that God uses for remedy to us is also prepared to destroy us the fire is as apt to burn us to ashes as to cleansing when we are so overgrown and the ax as instrumentall to cut us down for fewell as to square us for building in Gods temple and therefore when it comes thus far it will be hard discerning what the purpose of the ax is and whether the fire means to burn we shall know it by the change wrought upon our selves For what Plato said concerning his dream of Purgatory is true here Quicunque non purgatus migrat ad inferos jacebit in luto quicunque verò mitratus illuc accesserit habitabit cum Deis He that dies in his impurities shall lie in it for ever but he that descends to his grave purged and mitred that is having quitted his vices superinduens justitiam being clothed with righteousnesse shall dwell in light and immortality It is sad that we put God to such extremities and as it happens in long diseases those which Physitians use for the last remedies seldom prevail and when consumptive persons come to have their heads shaven they do not often escape So it is when we put God to his last remedies God indeed hath the glory of his patience and his long-suffering but we seldom have the benefit and the use of it For if when our sin was young and our strength more active and our habits lesse and vertue not so much a stranger to us we suffered sin to prevail upon us to grow stronger then the ruins of our spirit and to lesson us into the state of sicknesse and disability in the midst of all those remedies which God used to our beginning diseases much more desperate is our recovery when our disease is stronger and our faculties weaker when our sins raigne in us and our thoughts of vertue are not alive However although I say this and it is highly considerable to the purpose that we never suffered things to come to this extremity yet if it be upon us we must do as well as we can But then we are to look upon it as a designe of Gods last mercy beyond which if we protract our repentance our condition is desperately miserable The whole state of which mercy we understand by the parable of the King reckoning
the sicknesse is incurable but because they have ill stomacks and cannot keep the medicine lust so is his case that so despises Gods method of curing him by these instances of long-sufferance that he uses all the arts he can to be quit of his Physitian and to spill his physick and to take cordials as soon as his vomit begins to work There is no more to be said in this affair but to read the poor wretches sentence and to declare his condition As at first when he despised the first great mercies God sent him sharpnesses and sad accidents to ensober his spirits So now that he despises this mercy also the mercy of the rod God will take it away from him and then I hope all is well Miserable man that thou art this is thy undoing if God ceases to strike thee because thou wilt not mend thou art sealed up to ruine and reprobation for ever The Physitian hath given thee over he hath no kindnesse for thee This was the desperate estate of Judah Ah sinfull nation a people laden with iniquity they have forsaken the Lord they have provoked the Holy One of Israel why should ye be siricken any more This is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most bitter curse the greatest excommunication when the delinquent is become a heathen and a publicane without the covenant out of the pale of the Church the Church hath nothing to do with them for what have I to do with them that are without said Saint Paul It was not lawfull for the Church any more to punish them and this court Christian is an imitation and paralell of the justice of the court of heaven When a sinner is not mended by judgements at long running God cuts him off from his inheritance and the lot of sons he will chastise him no more but let him take his course and spend his portion of prosperity such as shall be allowed him in the great Oeconomy of the world Thus God did to his Vineyard which he took such pains to fence to plant to manure to dig to cut and to prune and when after all it brought forth wilde grapes the last and worst of Gods anger was this Auferam sepem ejus God had fenced it with a hedge of thorns and God would take away all that hedge he would not leave a thorn standing not one judgement to reprove or admonish them but all the wilde beasts and wilder and more beastly lusts may come and devour it and trample it down in scorn And now what shall I say but those words quoted by Saint Peter in his Sermon Behold ye despisers and wonder and perish perish in your own folly by stubbornesse and ingratitude For it is a huge contradiction to the nature and designes of God God calls us we refuse to hear he invites us with fair promises we hear and consider not he gives us blessings we take them and understand not his meaning we take out the token but read not the letter then he threatens us and we regard not he strikes our neighbours and we are not concerned then he strikes us gently but we feel it not then he does like the Physitian in the Greek Epigram who being to cure a man of a Lethargy locked him into the same room with a mad-man that he by dry beating him might make him at least sensible of blows but this makes us instead of running to God to trust in unskilfull Physitians or like Saul to run to a Pythonisse we run for cure to a crime we take sanctuary in a pleasant sin just as if a man to cure his melancholy should desire to be stung with a Tarantula that at least he may die merily what is there more to be done that God hath not yet done he is forced at last to break off with a Curavimus Babylonem non est sanata we dressed and tended Babylon but she was incurable there is no help but such persons must die in their sins and lie down in eternall sorrow Sermon XIV Of Growth in Grace 2 Pet. 3. 18. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ to whom be glory both now and for ever Amen WHen Christianity like the day spring from the East with a new light did not onely inlighten the world but amazed the mindes of men and entertained their curiosities and seized upon their warmer and more pregnant affections it was no wonder that whole Nations were converted at a Sermon and multitudes were instantly professed and their understandings followed their affections and their wills followed their understandings and they were convinced by miracle and overcome by grace and passionate with zeal and wisely governed by their Guides and ravished with the sanctity of the Doctrine and the holinesse of their examples And this was not onely their duty but a great instance of providence that by the great religion and piety of the first Professors Christianity might be firmly planted and unshaken by scandall and hardened by persecution and that these first lights might be actuall Precedents for ever and Copies for us to transcribe in all descending ages of Christianity that thither we might run to fetch oil to enkindle our extinguished lamps But then piety was so universall that it might well be enjoyned by Saint Paul that if a brother walked disorderly the Christians should avoid his company He forbad them not to accompany with the Heathens that walked disorderly for then a man must have gone out of the world But they were not to endure so much as to eat with or to salute a disorderly brother an ill living Christian But now if we should observe this canon of Saint Paul and refuse to eat or to converse with a fornicatour or a drunkard or a perjured person or covetous we must also go out of the world for a pious or a holy person is now as rare as a disorderly Christian was at first and as Christianity is multiplied every where in name and title so it is destroyed in life essence and proper operation and we have very great reason to fear that Christs name will serve us to no end but to upbraid our basenesse and his person onely to be our Judge and his lawes as so many bills of accusation and his graces and helps offered us but as aggravations of our unworthinesse and our baptisme but an occasion of vow-breach and the holy Communion but an act of hypocrisie formality or sacrilege and all the promises of the Gospel but as pleasant dreams and the threatnings but as arts of affrightment for Christianity lasted pure and zealous it kept its rules and observed its own lawes for three hundred yeers or thereabouts so long the Church remained a Virgin For so long they were warmed with their first fires and kept under discipline by the rod of persecution but it hath declined almost fourteen hundred yeers together prosperity and pride wantonnesse and great fortunes ambition
boyes that went to Athens the first year were wise men the second year Philosophers the third Orators and the fourth were but Plebeians and understood nothing but their own ignorance And just so it happens to some in the progresses of religion at first they are violent and active and then they satiate all the appetites of religion and that which is left is that they were soon weary and sat down in displeasure and return to the world and dwell in the businesse of pride or mony and by this time they understand that their religion is declined and passed from the heats and follies of youth to the coldnesse and infirmities of old age The remedies of which is onely a diligent spirit and a busie religion a great industry a full portion of time in holy offices that as the Oracle said to the Cirrheans noctes diesque belligerandum they could not be happy unlesse they waged war night and day that is unlesse we perpetually fight against our own vices and repell our Ghostly enemies and stand upon our guard we must stand for ever in the state of babes in Christ or else return to the first imperfections of an unchristened soul and an unsanctified spirit That 's the first particular 2. The second step of our growth in grace is when vertues grow habitual apt and easie in our manners and dispositions For although many new converts have a great zeal and a busie spirit apt enough as they think to contest against all the difficulties of a spiritual life yet they meet with such powerful oppositions from without and a false heart within that their first heats are soon broken and either they are for ever discouraged or are forced to march more slowly and proceed more temperately for ever after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is an easie thing to commit a wickednesse for temptation and infirmity are alwayes too neer us But God hath made care and sweat prudence and diligence experience and watchfulnesse wisdom and labour at home and good guides abroad to be instruments and means to purchase vertue The way is long and difficult at first but in the progresse and pursuit we finde all the knots made plain and the rough wayes made smooth jam monte potius Now the spirit of grace is like a new soul within him and he hath new appetites and new pleasures when the things of the world grow unsavory and the things of religion are delicious when his temptations to his old crimes return but seldom and they prevail not at all or in very inconsiderable instances and stay not at all but are reproached with a penitentiall sorrow and speedy amendment when we do actions of vertue quickly frequently and with delight then we have grown in grace in the same degree in which they can perceive these excellent dispositions Some persons there are who dare not sin they dare not omit their hours of prayer and they are restlesse in their spirits till they have done but they go to it as to execution they stay from it as long as they can and they drive like Pharoahs charets with the wheels off sadly and heavily and besides that such persons have reserved to themselves the best part of their sacrifice and do not give their will to God they do not love him with all their heart they are also soonest tempted to retire and fall off Sextius Romanus resigned the honours and offices of the city and betook himself to the severity of a Philosophical life But when his unusual diet and hard labour began to pinch his flesh and he felt his propositions smart and that which was fine in discourse at a Symposiack or an Academical dinner began to sit uneasily upon him in the practise he so despaired that he had like to have cast himself into the sea to appease the labours of his religion Because he never had gone further then to think it a fine thing to be a wise man he would commend it but he was loth to pay for it at the price that God and the Philosopher set upon it But he that his grown 〈◊〉 grace and hath made religion habitual to his spirit is not at ease but when he is doing the works of the new man he rests in religion and comforts his sorrows with thinking of his prayers and in all crosses of the world he is patient because his joy is at hand to refresh him when he list for he cares not so he may serve God and if you make him poor here he is rich there and he counts that to be his proper service his worke his recreation and reward 3. But â—â—cause in the course of holy living although the duty be regular and constant yet the sensible relishes and the flowrings of affections the zeal and the visible expressions do not alwayes make the same emission but sometimes by designe and sometimes by order somtimes by affection we are more busie more intire and more intent upon the actions of religion in such cases we are to judge of our growth in grace if after every interval of extraordinary piety the next return be more devout and more affectionate the labour be more cheerfull and more active and if religion returnes oftner and stayes longer in the same expressions and leaves more satisfaction upon the spirit Are your communions more frequent and when they are do ye approach neerer to God have you made firmer resolutions and entertained more hearty purposes of amendment Do you love God more dutifully and your neighbour with a greater charity do you not so easily return to the world as formerly are not you glad when the thing is done do you go to your secular accounts with a more weaned affection then before if you communicate well it is certain that you will still do it better if you do not communicate well every opportunity of doing it is but a new trouble easily excused readily omitted done because it is necessary but not because we love it and we shall finde that such persons in their old age do it worst of all And it was observed by a Spanish Confessor who was also a famous preacher that in persons not very religious the confessions which they made upon their deathbed were the coldest the most imperfect and with lesse contrition then all that he had observed them to make in many years before For so the Canes of Egypt when they newly arise from their bed of mud and slime of Nilus start up into an equal and continual length and are interrupted but with few knots and are strong and beauteous with great distances and intervals but when they are grown to their full length they lessen into the point of a pyramis and multiply their knots and joynts interrupting the finenesse and smoothnesse of its body so are the steps declensions of him that does not grow in grace at first when he springs up from his impurity by the waters of baptisme and
repentance he grows straight and strong and suffers but few interruptions of piety and his constant courses of religion are but rarely intermitted till they ascend up to a full age or towards the ends of their life then they are weak and their devotions often intermitted and their breaches are frequent and they seek excuses and labour for dispensations and love God and religion lesse and lesse till their old age instead of a crown of their vertue and perseverance ends in levity and unprofitable courses light and uselesse as the tufted feathers upon the cane every winde can play with it and abuse it but no man can make it useful When therefore our piety interrupts its greater and more solemn expressions and upon the return of the great â— offices and bigger solemnities we finde them to come upon ouâ— spirits like the wave of a tide which retired onely because it was natural so to do and yet came further upon the strand at the next rolling When every new confession every succeeding communion every time of separation for more solemn and intense prayer is better spent and more affectionate leaving a greater relish upon the spirit and possessing greater portions of our affections our reason and our choice then we may give God thanks who hath given us more grace to use that grace and a blessing to endeavour our duty and a blessing upon our endeavour 4. To discern our growth in grace we must inquire concerning our passions whether they be mortified and quiet complying with our ends of vertue and under command For since the passions are the matter of vertue and vice respectively he that hath brought into his power all the strengths of the enemy and the forts from whence he did infest him he onely hath secured his holy walking with God But because this thing is never perfectly done and yet must alwayes be doing grace grows according as we have finished our portions of this work And in this we must not onely inquire concerning our passions whether they be sinfull and habitually prevalent for if they be we are not in the state of grace But whether they return upon us in violences and undecencies in transportation and unreasonable and imprudent expressions for although a good man may be incident to a violent passion and that without sin yet a perfect man is not a well-grown Christian hath seldom such sufferings to suffer such things sometimes may stand with the being of vertue but not with its security For if passions range up and down and transport us frequently and violently we may keep in our forts and in our dwellings but our enemy is master of the field and our vertues are restrained and apt to be starved and will not hold out long a good man may be spotted with a violence but a wise man will not and he that does not adde wisedom to his vertue the knowledge of Jesus Christ to his vertuous habits will be a good man but till a storm comes But beyond this inquire after the state of your passions in actions of religion Some men fast to mortifie their iust and their fasting makes them peevish some reprove a vice but they do it with much inpatience some charitably give excellent counsell but they do that also with a pompous and proud spirit and passion being driven from open hostilities is forced to march along in the retinue and troops of vertue And although this be rather a deception and a cosenage then an imperfection and supposes a state of sin rather then an imperfect grace yet because it tacitly and secretly creeps along among the circumstances of pious actions as it spoils a vertue in some so it lessens it in others and therefore is considerable also in this question And although no man must take accounts of his being in or out of the state of grace by his being dispassionate and free from all the assaults of passion yet as to the securing his being in the state of grace he must provide that he be not a slave of passion so to declare his growth in grace he must be sure to take the measures of his affections and see that they be lessened more apt to be suppressed not breaking out to inconvenience and imprudencies not rifling our spirit and drawing us from our usuall and more sober tempers Try therefore if your fear be turned into caution your lust into chast friendships your imperious spirit into prudent government your revenge into justice your anger into charity and your peevishnesse and rage into silence and suppression of language Is our ambition changed into vertuous and noble thoughts can we emulate without envy is our covetousnesse lessen'd into good husbandry and mingled with alms that we may certainly discern the love of money to be gone do we leave to despise our inferiours and can we willingly endure to admit him that excels us in any gift or grace whatsoever and to commend it without abatement and mingling allayes with the commendation and disparagements to the man If we be arrived but thus farre it is well and we must go further But we use to think that all disaffections of the body are removed if they be changed into the more tolerable although we have not an athletick health or the strength of porters or wrastlers For although it be felicity to be quit of all passion that may be sinfull or violent and part of the happinesse of heaven shall consist in that freedom yet our growth in grace consists in the remission and lessening of our passions onely he that is incontinent in his lust or in his anger in his desires of money or of honour in his revenge or in his fear in his joyes or in his sorrows that man is not grown at all in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ This onely in the seruting and consequent judgement concerning our passions it will concern the curiosity of our care to watch against passions in the reflex act against pride or lust complacency and peevishnesse attending upon vertue For he was noted for a vain person who being overjoyed for the cure of his pride as he thought cried out to his wife Cerne Dionysia deposui fastum behold I have laid aside all my pride and of that very dream the silly man thought he had reason to boast but considered not that it was an act of pride and levity besides If thou hast given a noble present to thy friend if thou hast rejected the unjust desire of thy Prince if thou hast endured thirst and hunger for religion or continence if thou hast refused an offer like that which was made to Joseph sit down and rest in thy good conscience and do not please thy self in opinions and phantastick noises abroad and do not despise him that did not do so as thou hast done and reprove no man with an upbraiding circumstance for it will give thee but an ill return and a contemptible reward if thou shalt
and intolerable and there is no soft counsels then to be entertained they are already in the fire but they may be saved for all that so great so infinite so miraculous is Gods mercy that he will not give a sinner over though the hairs of his head be singed with the flames of hell Gods desires of having us to be saved continue even when we begin to be damned even till we will not be saved and are gone beyond Gods method and all the revelations of his kindnesse And certainly that is a bold and a mighty sinner whose iniquity is sweld beyond all the bulk and heap of Gods revealed loving kindnesse If sin hath sweld beyond grace and superabounds over it that sin is gone beyond the measures of a man such a person is removed beyond all the malice of humane nature into the evil and spite of Devils and accursed spirits there is no greater sadnesse in the world then this God hath not appointed a remedy in the vast treasures of grace for some men and some sins they have sinned like the falling Angels and having over run the ordinary evil inclinations of their nature they are without the protection of the divine mercy and the conditions of that grace which was designed to save all the world was sufficient to have saved twenty This is a condition to be avoyded with the care of God and his Angels and all the whole industry of man In order to which end my purpose now is to remonstrate to you the several states of sin and death together with those remedies which God had proportioned out to them that we may observe the evils of the least and so avoid the intolerable mischiefs of the greater even of those sins which still are within the power and possibilities of recovery lest insensibly we fall into those sins and into those circumstances of person for which Christ never died which the Holy Ghost never means to cure and which the eternal God never will pardon for there are of this kinde more then commonly men imagine whilest they amuse their spirits with gaietyes and false principles till they have run into horrible impieties from whence they are not willing to withdraw their foot and God is resolved never to snatch and force them thence 1. Of some have compassion and these I shall reduce to four heads or orders of men and actions all which have their proper cure proportionable to their proper state gentle remedies to the lesser irregularities of the soul. The first are those that sin without observation of their particular state either because they are uninstructed in the special cases of conscience or because they do an evil against which there is no expresse commandment It is a sad calamity that there are so many milions of men and women that are entred into a state of sicknesse and danger and yet are made to believe they are in perfect health and they do actions concerning which they never made a question whether they were just or no nor were ever taught by what names to call them For while they observe that modesty is sometimes abused by a false name and called clownishnesse want of breeding and contentednesse and temperate living is suppressed to be want of courage and noble thoughts and severity of life is called imprudent and unsociable and simplicity and hearty honesty is counted foolish and unpolitick they are easily tempted to honour prodigality and foolish dissolution of their estates with the title of liberal and noble usages timorousnesse is called caution rashnesse is called quicknesse of spirit covetousnesse is fragality amorousnesse is society and gentile peevishnesse and anger is courage flattery is humane and courteous and under these false vails vertue slips away like truth from under the hand of theâ— that fight for her and leave vices dressed up withthe same imagâ—â—y and the fraud not discovered till the day of recompences when men are distinguished by their rewards But so men think they sleep freely when their spirits are loaden with a Lethargy and they call a hestick-feaver the vigour of a natural heat tell nature changes those lesse discerned states into the notorious images of death Very many men never consider whether they sin or no in 10000. of their actions every one of which is very disputable and do not think they are bound to consider these men are to be pitied and instructed they are to be called upon to use religion like a daily diet their consciences must be made tender and their Catechisme enlarged teach them and make them sensible and they are cured But the other in this place are more considerable Men sin without observation because their actions have no restraint of an expresse Commandment no letter of the law to condemn them by an expresse sentence And this happens when the crime is comprehended under a general notion without the instancing of particulars for if you search over all the Scripture you shall never finde incest named and marked with the black character of death and there are diveres sorts of uncleannesse to which Scripture therefore gives no name because she would have them have no being And it had been necessary that God should have described all particulars and all kindes if he had not given reason to man For so it is fit that a guide should point out every turning if he be to teach a childe or a fool to return under his fathers roof But he that bids us avoid intemperance for fear of a feaver supposes you to be sufficiently instructed that you may avoid the plague and when to look upon a woman with lust is condemned it will not be necessary to adde you must not do more when even the least is forbidden and when to uncover the nakednesse of Noah brought an universal plague upon the posterity of Cham it was not necessary that the law-giver should say you must not ascend to your fathers bed or draw the curtains from your sisters retirements When the Athenians forbad to transports figs from Athens there was no need to name the gardens of Alcibiades much lesse was it necessary to adde that Chabrias should send no plants to Sparta What so ever is comprised under the general notion and partakes of the common nature and the same iniquity needs no special prohibition unlesse we think we can mock God and elude his holy precepts with an absurd trick of mistaken Logick I am sure that will not save us harmlesse from a thunderbolt 2. Men sin without an expresse prohibition when they commit a thing that is like a forbidden evil And when Saint Paul had reckoned many works of the flesh he addes and such like all that have the same unreasonablenesse carnaâ—â—ty For thus poligamy is unlawful for if it be not lawful for a Christian to put away his wife and marry another unlesse for adultery much lesse may he keep a first and take a second when the first is not put away If a
that the nature of these sins is such that they may increase in their weight and duration and malice and then they increase in mischief and fatality and so go beyond the Text. Cicero said well Ipsa consuetudo assentiendi periculosa esse videtur lubrica l. 4. Acad. Qu. The very custome of consenting in the matters of civility is dangerous and slippery and will quickly ingage us in errour and then we think we are bound to defend them or else we are made flatterers by it and so become vitious and we love our own vices that we are used to and keep them till they are incurable that is till we will never repent of them and some men resolve never to repent that is they resolve they will not be saved they tread under foot the blood of the everlasting covenant those persons are in the fire too but they will not be pulled out concerning whom Gods Prophets must say as once concerning Babylon Curavimus non est sanata derelinquamus eam We would have healed them but they would not be healed let us leave them in their sins and they shall have enough of it Onely this those that put themselves out of the condition of mercy are not to be endured in Christian societies they deserve it not and it is not safe that they should be suffered But besides all this I shall name one thing more unto you for nunquam adeò foedis adeoquè pudendis Vtimur exemplis ut non pejora supersint There are some single actions of sin of so great a malice that in their own nature they are beyond the limit of Gospel pardon they are not such things for the pardon of which God entered into covenant because they are such sins which put a man into perfect indispotisions and incapacities of entring into or being in the covenant In the first ages of the world Atheisme was of that nature it was against their whole religion and the sin is worse now against the whole religion still and against a brighter light In the ages after the flood idolatry was also just such another for as God was known first onely as the creator then he began to manifest himself in special contracts with men and he quickly was declared the God of Israel and idolatry perfectly destroyed all that religion and therefore was never pardoned intirely but God did visit it upon them that sinned and when he pardoned it in some degrees yet he also punished it in some and yet rebellion against the supreme power of Moses and Aaron was worse for that also is a perfect destruction of the whole religion because it refused to submit to those hands upon which God had placed all the religion and all the government And now if we would know in the Gospel what answers these precedent sins I answer first the same sins acted by a resolute hand and heart are worse now then ever they were and a third or fourth is also to be added and that is Apostacy or or a voluntary malicious renouncing the faith The Church hath often declared that sin to be unpardonable witchcraft or final impenitence and obstinacy in any sin are infallibly desperate and in general and by a certain parity of reason whatsoever does destroy charity or the good life of a Christian with the same general venom and deletery as Apostacy destroyes faith and he that is a Renegado from charity is as unpardonable as he that returns to solemn Atheisme or infidelity for all that is directly the sin against the holy Ghost that is a throwing that away wherby onely we can be Christians wherby onely we can hope to be saved to speak a word against the holy Ghost in the Pharisees was declared unpardonable because it was such a word which if it had been true or believed would have destroyed the whole religion for they said that Christ wrought by Beelzebub and by consequence did not come from God He that destroyes al the whole order of Priesthood destroyes one of the greatest parts of the religion one of the greatest effects of the holy Ghost He that destroyes government destroyes another part but that we may come neerer to our selves to quench the spirit of God is worse then to speak some words against him to grieve the spirit of God is a part of the same impiety to resist the holy Ghost is another part and if we consider that every great sin does this in its proportion it woâ—â—d concern us to be careful lest we fal into presumptuous sins lest they get the dominiâ—â— over us out of this that I have spoken you may easily gather what sort of men those are who cannot be snatched from the fire for whom as S. John saies we are not to pray and how neer men come to it that continue in any known sin if I should descend to particulars I might lay a snare to scrupulous and nice consciences This onely every confirmed habitual sinner does manifest the divine justice in punishing the sins of a short life with a never dying worm and a never quenched flame because we have an affection to sin that no time will diminish but such as would increase to eternal ages and accordingly as any man hath a degree of love so he hath lodged in his soul a spark which unless it be speedily effectively quenched will break forth into unquenchable fire Sermon XVIII THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE Matthew 16. Ver. 26. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul WHen the eternal mercy of God had decreed to resâ—ue mankinde from misery and infelicity and so triumphed over his own justice the excellent wisdom of God resolved to do it in wayes contradictory to the appetites and designes of man that it also might triumph over our weaknesses and imperfect conceptions So God decreeing to glorifie his mercy by curing our sins and to exalt his wisdome by the reproof of our ignorance and the representing upon what weak and false principals we had built our hopes and expectations of felicity Pleasure and profit victory over our enemies riches and pompous honours power and revenge desires according to sensual appetites and prosecutions violent and passionate of those appetites health and long life free from trouble without poverty or persecution Hac sunt jucundissime Martialis vitam quae faciunt beatiorem These are the measures of good and evil the object of our hopes and fears the securing our content and the portion of this world and for the other let it be as it may But the Blessed Jesus having made revelations of an immortal duration of another world and of a strange restitution to it even by the resurrection of the body and a new investiture of the soul with the same upper garment clarified and made pure so as no Fuller on earth can whiten it hath also preached a new Philosophy
of the worlds possessions produce such fruits vexation and care and want the ambitious requiring of great estates is but like the selling of a fountain to buy a fever a parting with content to buy necessity and the purchase of an unhandsome condition at the price of infelicity 4. He that enjoyes a great portion of this world hath most commonly the allay of some great crosse which although sometimes God designes in mercy to wean his affections from the world and for the abstracting them from sordid adherencies and cohabitation to make his eyes like stars to fix them in the orbs of heaven and the regions of felicity yet they were an inseparable appendant and condition of humanity Solomon observed the vanity of some persons that heaped up great riches for their heirs and yet knew not whether a wise man or a fool should possesse them this is a great evil under the Sun And if we observe the great crosses many times God permits in great families as discontent in marriages artificiall or naturall bastardies a society of man and wife like the conjunction of two politicks full of state and ceremony and designe but empty of those sweet caresses and naturall hearty complications and endearments usuall in meaner and innocent persons the perpetuall sicknesse fulnesse of diet fear of dying the abuse of flatterers the trouble and noise of company the tedious officiousnesse of impertinent and ceremonious visits the declension of estate the sadnesse of spirit the notoriousnesse of those dishonours which the meannesse of lower persons conceals but their eminency makes us visible as the spots in the moons face we shall finde him to be most happy that hath most of wisdom and least of the world because he onely hath the least danger and the most security 5. And lastly his soul so gets nothing that wins all this world if he loses his soul that it is ten to one but he that gets the one therefore shall lose the other For to a great and opulent fortune sin is so adherent and insinuating that it comes to him in the nature of civility It is a sad sight to see a great personage undertake an action passionately and upon great interest and let him manage it as indiscreetly let the whole designe be unjust let it be acted with all the malice and impotency in the world he shall have enough to tell him that he proceeds wisely enough to be servants of his interest and promoters of his sin instruments of his malice and actors of revenge But which of all his relatives shall dare to tell him of his indiscretion of his rage and of his folly he had need be a bold man and a severe person that shall tell him of his danger and that he is in a direct progresse towards â—ell and indeed such personages have been so long nourished up in softnes flattery and effeminancy that too often themselves are impatient of a monitor and think the charity and duty of a modest reprehension to be a rudenesse and incivility that Prince is a wise man that loves to have it otherwise and certainly it is a strange civility and dutifulnesse in friends and relatives to suffer him to go to hell uncontrolled rather then to seem unmannerly towards a great sinner But certainly this is none of the least infelicities of them who are Lords of the world and masters of great possessions I omit to speak of the habitual intemperance which is too commonly annexed to Festival and delicious tables where there is no other measure or restraint upon the appetite but its fulnesse and satiety and when it cannot or dare not eat more Oftentimes it happens that the intemperance of a poor table is more temperate and hath lesse of luxury in it then the temperance of a rich To this are consequent all the evil accidents and effects of fulnesse pride lust wantonnesse softnesses of disposition and dissolution of manners huge talking imperiousnesse despite and contempt of poor persons and at the best it is a great temptation for a man to have in his power whatsoever he can have in his sensual desires who then shall check his voracity or calm his revenge or allay his pride or mortify his lust or humble his spirit it is like as when a lustful young and tempted person lives perpetually with his amorous and delicious mistris if he soapes burning that is inflamed from within and set on fire from without it is a greater miracle then the escaping from the flames of the furnace by the three children of the captivity And just such a thing is the possession of the world it furnishes us with abilities to sin and opportunities of ruine and it makes us to dwell with poisons and dangers and enemies And although the grace of God is sufficient to great personages and masters of the world and that it is possible for a young man to be tyed upon a bed of flowers and fastned by the arms and band of a curtesan and tempted wantonly and yet to escape the danger and the crime and to triumph gloriously for so Saint Hierome reports of a son of the king of Nicomedia and riches and a free fortune are designed by God to be a mercy and an opportunity of doing noble things and excellent charity and exact justice and to protect innocence and to defend oppressed people yet it is a mercy mixt with much danger yet it is like the present of a whole vintage to a man in a hectick feaver he will be shrewdly tempted to drink of it and if he does he is inflamed and may chance to die with the kindnesse Happy are those persons who use the world and abuse it not who possesse a part of it and love it for no other ends but for necessities of nature and conveniencies of person and discharge of all their duty and the offices of religion and in charity to Christ and all Christs members but since he that hath all the world cannot command nature to do him one office extraordinary and enjoyes the best parts but in common with the poorest man in the world and can use no more of it but according to a limited and a very narrow capacity and whatsoever he can use or possesse cannot out-weigh the present pressure of a sharp disease nor can it at all give him content without which there can be nothing of felicity since a prince in the matter of usiing the world differs nothing from his subjects but in mere accedents and circumstances and yet these very many trifling differences are not to be obtained but by so much labour and care so great expence of time and trouble that the possession will not pay thus much of the price and after all this the man may die two hours after he hath made his troublesome and expensive purchase and is certain not to enjoy it long Adde to this last that most men get so little of the world that it is all together of a
be compared to a wise soul and a prudent spirit and he that wants it hath a lesse vertue and a defenselesse minde and will suffer a mighty hazard in the interest of eternity Its parts and proper acts consist in the following particulars 1. It is the duty of Christian prudence to choose the end of a Christian that which is perfective of a man satisfactory to reason the rest of a Christian and the beatification of his spirit and that is to choose and desire and propound to himself heaven and the fruition of God as the end of all his acts and arts his designes and purposes For in the nature of things that is most eligible and most to be pursued which is most perfective of our nature and is the acquiescence the satisfaction and proper rest of our most reasonable appetites Now the things of this world are difficult and uneasie full of thornes and empty of pleasures they fill a diseased faculty or an abused sense but are an infinite dissatisfaction to reason and the appetites of the soul they are short and transient and they never abide unlesse sorrow like a chain be bound about their leg and then they never stir till the grace of God and religion breaks it or else that the rust of time eats the chain in pieces they are dangerous and doubtfull few and difficult fordid and particular not onely not communicable to a multitude but not diffusive upon the whole man there being no one pleasure or object in this world that delights all the parts of man and after all this they are originally from earth and from the creatures onely that they oftentimes contract alliances with hell and the grave with shame and sorrow and all these put together make no great amability or proportion to a wise mans choice But on the other side the things of God are the noblest satisfactions to those desires which ought to be cherished and swelled up to infinite their deliciousnesse is vast and full of relish and their very appendant thorns are to be chosen for they are gilded they are safe and medicinall they heal the wound they make and bring forth fruit of a blessed and a holy life The things of God and of religion are easie and sweet they bear entertainments in their hand and reward at their back their good is certain and perpetual and they make us cheerfull to day and pleasant to morrow and spiritual songs end not in a sigh and a groan neither like unwholesome physick do they let loose a present humour and introduce an habitual indisposition But they bring us to the felicity of God the same yesterday and to day and for ever they do not give a private and particular delight but their benefit is publike like the incense of the altar it sends up a sweet smell to heaven and makes atonement for the religious man that kindled it and delights all the standers by and makes the very air wholesome there is no blessed soul goes to heaven but he makes a generall joy in all the mansions where the Saints do dwell and in all the chappels where the Angels sing and the joyes of religion are not univocal but productive of rare and accidental and praeternatural pleasures for the musick of holy hymnes delights the ear and refreshes the spirit and makes the very bones of the Saint to rejoyce and charity or the giving alms to the poor does not onely ease the poverty of the receiver but makes the giver rich and heals his sicknesse and delivers from death and temperance though it be in the matter of meat and drink and pleasures yet hath an effect upon the understanding and makes the reason sober and his will orderly and his â—ffections regular and does things beside and beyond their natural and proper efficacy for all the parts of our duty are watered with the showers of blessing and bring forth fruit according to the influence of heaven and beyond the capacities of nature And now let the voluptuous person go and try whether putting his wanton hand to the bosome of his Misâ—â—s will get half such honour as Scaevola put upon his head when he put his hand into the fire Let him see whether a drunken meeting will cure a fever or make him wise A hearty and a persevering prayer will Let him tell me if spending great summes of money upon his lusts will make him sleep soundly or be rich Charity will Alms will increase his fortune and a good conscience shall charme all his cares and sorrows into a most delicious slumber well may a full goblet wet the drunkards tongue and then the heat rising from the stomack will dry the spunge and heat it into the scorchings and little images of hell and the follies of a wanton bed will turn the itch into a smart and empty the reins of all their lustfull powers but can they do honour or satisfaction in any thing that must last and that ought to be provided for No All the things of this world are little and trifling and limited and particular and sometimes necessary because we are miserable wanting and imperfect but they never do any thing toward perfection but their pleasure dies like the time in which it danced a while and when the minute is gone so is the pleasure too and leaves no footstep but the impression of a sigh and dwells no where but in the same house where you shall finde yesterday that is in forgetfulnesse and annihilation unlesse its onely childe sorrow shall marry and breed more of its kinde and so continue its memory and name to eternall ages It is therefore the most necessary part of prudence to choose well in the main stake and the dispute is not much for if eternall things be better then temporall the soul more noble then the body vertue more honourable then the basest vices a lasting joy to be chosen before an eternall sorrow much to be preferred before little certainty before danger publike good things before private evils eternity before moments then let us set down in religion and make heaven to be our end God to be our Father Christ our elder Brother the Holy Ghost the earnest of our inheritance vertue to be our imployment and then we shall never enter into the portion of fools and accursed ill-choosing spirits Nazianzen said well Malim prudentiae guttam quà m foecundioris fortunae pelagus One drop of prudence is more usefull then an ocean of a smooth fortune for prudence is a rare instrument towards heaven and a great fortune is made oftentimes the high-way to hell and destruction However thus farre prudence is our duty every man can be so wise and is bound to it to choose heaven and a cohabitation with God before the possessions and transient vanities of the world 2. It is a duty of Christian prudence to pursue this great end with apt means and instruments in proportion to that end No wise man will sail to Ormus
disarm the Princes and it will be hard to perswade that Kings are bound to protect and nourish those that will prove ministers of their own exauctoration And no Prince can have juster reason to forbid nor any man have greater reason to deny communion to a family then if they go about to destroy the power of the one or corrupt the duty of the other The particulars of this rule are very many I shall onely instance in one more because it is of great concernment to the publike interest of Christendome There are some persons whose religion is hugely disgraced because they change their propositions according as their temporall necessities or advantages do return They that in their weaknesse and beginning cry out against all violence as against persecution and from being suffered swell up till they be prosperous and from thence to power and at last to Tyranny and then suffer none but themselves and trip up those feet which they humbly kissed that themselves should not be trampled upon these men tell all the world that at first they were pusillanimous or at last outragious that their doctrine at first served their fear and at last served their rage and that they did not at all intend to serve God and then who shall believe them in any thing else Thus some men declaim against the faults of Governours that themselves may governe and when the power was in their hands what was a fault in others is in them necessity as if a sin could be hallowed for comming into their hands Some Greeks at Florence subscribed the Article of Purgatory and condemned it in their own Diocesses And the Kings supremacy in causes Ecclesiastical was earnestly defended against the pretences of the Bishop of Rome and yet when he was thrust out some men were and are vâ—olent to submit the King to their Consistories as if he were Supreme in defiance of the Pope and yet not Supreme over his own Clergy These Articles are mannaged too suspitiously Omnia si perdas famam servare memento You lose all the advantages to your cause if you lose your reputation 5 It is a duty also of Christian prudence that the teachers of others by authority or reprovers of their vices by charity should also make their persons apt to do it without objection Lori pedem rectus derideat Aethiopem albus No man can endure the Gracchi preaching against sedition nor Verres prating against theevery or Milo against homicide and if Herod had made an oration of humility or Antiochus of mercy men would have thought it had been a designe to evil purposes He that means to gain a soul must not make his Sermon an ostentation of his Eloquence but the law of his own life If a Gramarian should speak solaecismes or a Musician sing like a bittern he becomes ridiculous for offending in the faculty he professes So it is in them who minister to the conversion of souls If they fail in their own life when they professe to instruct another they are defective in their proper part and are unskilfull to all their purposes and the Cardinal of Crema did with ill successe tempt the English priests to quit their chaste marriages when himself was deprehended in unchaste embraces For good counsel seems to be unhallowed when it is reached forth by an impure hand and he can ill be beleeved by another whose life so confutes his rules that it is plain he does not beleeve himself Those Churches that are zealous for souls must send into their ministeries men so innocent that evil persons may have no excuse to be any longer vitious When Gorgias went about to perswade the Greeks to be at peace he had eloquence enough to do advantage to his cause and reason enough to presse it But Melanthius was glad to put him off by telling him that he was not fit to perswade peace who could not agree at home with his wife nor make his wife agree with her maid and he that could not make peace between three single persons was unapt to prevail for the reuniting fourteen or fifteen Common-wealths And this thing Saint Paul remarks by enjoyning that a Bishop should be chosen such a one as knew well to rule his own house or else he is not fit to rule the Church of God And when thou perswadest thy brother to be chaste let not him deride thee for thy intemperance and it will ill become thee to be severe against an idle servant if thou thy self beest uselesse to the publike and every notorious vice is infinitely against the spirit of government and depresses the man to an evennesse with common persons Facinus quos inquinat aequat to reprove belongs to a Superiour and as innocence gives a man advantage over his brother giving him an artificiall and adventitious authority so the follies and scandals of a publike and Governing man destroyes the efficacy of that authority that is just and naturall Now this is directly an office of Christian prudence that good offices and great authority become not ineffective by ill conduct Hither also it appertains that in publike or private reproofs we observe circumstances of time of place of person of disposition The vices of a King are not to be opened publikely and Princes must not be reprehended as a man reproves his servant but by Categoricall propositions by abstracted declamations by reprehensions of a crime in its single nature in private with humility and arts of insinuation And it is against Christian prudence not onely to use a Prince or great Personage with common language but it is as great an imprudence to pretend for such a rudenesse the examples of the Prophets in the old Testament For their case was extraordinary their calling peculiar their commission special their spirit miraculous their authority great as to that single mission they were like thunder or the trump of God sent to do that office plainly for the doing of which in that manner God had given no commission to any ordinary minister And therefore we never finde that the Priests did use that freedom which the Prophets were commanded to use whose very words being put into their mouthes it was not to be esteemed an humane act or a lawfull manner of doing an ordinary office neither could it become a precedent to them whose authority is precarious and without coërcion whose spirit is allayed with Christian graces and duties of humility whose words are not prescribed but left to the conduct of prudence as it is to be advised by publike necessities and private circumstances in ages where all things are so ordered that what was fit and pious amongst the old Jews would be incivil and intolerable to the latter Christians He also that reproves a vice should also treat the persons with honour and civilities and by fair opinions and sweet addresses place the man in the regions of modesty and the confines of grace and the fringes of repentance For some men are more
no purpose and to no necessities of his Church for the supplying of which he hath given Apostles and Evangelists Prophets and Pastors Bishops and Priests the spirit of Ordination and the spirit of instruction Catechists and Teachers Arts and Sciences Scriptures and a constant succession of Expositors the testimony of Churches and a constant line of tradition or delivery of Apostolical Doctrine in all things necessary to salvation And after all this to have a fungus arise from the belly of mud and darknesse and nourish a gloworm that shall challenge to out-shine the lantern of Gods word and all the candles which God set upon a hill and all that the Spirit hath set upon the candlesticks and all the starres in Christs right hand is to annull all the excellent established orderly and certain effects of the Spirit of God and to worship the false fires of the night He therefore that will follow a Guide that leads him by an extraordinary spirit shall go an extraordinary way and have a strange fortune and a singular religion and a portion by himself a great way off from the common inheritance of the Saints who are all led by the Spirit of God and have one heart and one minde one faith and one hope the same baptisme and the helps of the Ministery leading them to the common countrey which is the porâ—ion of all that are the sons of adoption consigned by the Spirit of God the earnest of their inheritance Concerning the pretence of a private spirit for interpretation of the confessed doctrine of God the holy Scriptures it will not so easily come into this Question of choosing our spirituall Guides Because every person that can be Candidate in this office that can be chosen to guide others must be a publike man that is of a holy calling sanctified or separate publikely to the office and then to interpret is part of his calling and imployment â—nd to do so is the work of a publike spirit he is ordained and designed he is commanded and inabled to do it and in this there is no other caution to be interposed but that the more publike the man is of the more authority his interpretation is and he comes neerest to a law of order and in the matter of government is to be observed but the more holy and the more learned the man is his interpretation in matter of Question is more likely to be true and though lesse to be pressed as to the publick confession yet it may be more effective to a private perswasion provided it be done without scandal or lessening the authority or disparagement to the more publick person 8. Those are to be suspected for evil guides who to get authority among the people pretend a great zeal and use a bold liberty in reproving Princes and Governours nobility and Prelates for such homilies cannot be the effects of a holy religion which lay a snare for authority and undermine power and discontent the people and make them bold against Kings and immodest in their own stations and trouble the government Such men may speak a truth or teach a true doctrine for every such designe does not unhallow the truth of God but they take some truthes and force them to minister to an evil end but therefore mingle not in the communities of such men for they will make it a part of your religion to prosecute that end openly which they by arts of the Tempter have insinuated privately But if ever you enter into the seats of those Doctors that speak reproachfully of their Superiours or detract from government or love to curse the King in their heart or slander him with their mouths or disgrace their persons blesse your self and retire quickly for there dwells the plague but the spirit of God is not president of the assembly and therefore you shall observe in all the characters which the B. Apostles of our Lord made for describing and avoiding societies of hereticks false guides and bringers in of strange doctrines still they reckon treason and rebellion so S. Paul In the last dayes perillous times shall come the men shall have the form of Godlinesse and denie the power of it they shall be Traitors heady high minded that 's their characteristic note So Saint Peter the Lord knoweth how to deliver the Godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgement to be punished But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleannesse and despise government presumptuous are they self willed they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities The same also is recorded and observed by Saint Jude likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh despise dominion and speak evil of dignities These three testimonies are but the declaration of one great contingency they are the same prophesy declared by three Apostolical men that had the gift of prophecy and by this character the Holy Ghost in all ages hath given us caution to avoid such assemblies where the speaking and ruling man shall be the canker of government and a preacher of sedition who shall either ungirt the Princes sword or unloose the button of their mantle 9. But the Apostles in all these prophecies have remarked lust to be the inseparable companion of these rebel prophets they are filthy dreamers they defile the flesh so Saint Jude they walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleannesse so Saint Peter they are lovers of pleasure more then lovers of God incontinent and sensual So Saint Paul and by this part of the character as the Apostles remarked the Nicolatians and Gnosticks the Carpocratians and all their impure branches which began in their dayes and multiplied after their deaths so they prophetically did foresignifie al such sects to be avoided who to catch silly women laden with sins preach doctrines of ease and licenciousnesse apt to countenance and encourage vile things and not apt to restrain a passion or mortifie a sin Such as those that God sees no sin in his children that no sin will take us from Gods favour that all of such a party are elect people that God requires of us nothing but faith and that faith which justifies is nothing but a meere believing that we are Gods chosen that we are not tied to the law of commandments that the law of grace is a law of liberty and that liberty is to do what we list that divorces are to be granted upon many and slight causes that simple fornication is no sin these are such doctrines that upon the belief of them men may doe any thing and will do that which shall satisfie their own desires and promote their interests and seduce their shee disciples and indeed it was not without great reason that these three Apostles joyned lust and treason together because the former is so shameful a crime and renders a mans spirit naturally averse to government that if it falls upon the person of a Ruler
it takes from him the spirit of government and render him diffident pusillanimous private and ashamed if it happen in the person of a subject it makes him hate the man that shall shame him and punish him it hates the light and the Sun because that opens him and therefore is much more against government because that publishes and punishes too One thing I desire to be observed that though the primitive heresies now named and all those others their successors practised and taught horrid impurities yet they did not invade government at all and therefore those sects that these Apostles did signifie by prophecy and in whom both these are concentred were to appear in some latter times and the dayes of the prophecy were not then to be fulfill'd what they are since every age must judge by its own experience for its own interest But Christian religion is so pure and holy that chastity is sometimes used for the whole religion and to do an action chastly signifies purity of intention abstraction from the world and separation from low and secular ends the virginity of the soul and its union with God and all deviations and estrangements from God and adhesion to forbidden objects is called fornication and adultery Those sects therefore that teach incourage or practise impious or unhallowed mixtures and shameful lusts are issues of the impure spirit and most contrary to God who can behold no unclean thing 10. Those prophets and Pastors that pretend severity and live loosely or are severe in small things and give liberty in greater or forbid some sins with extreme rigour and yet practise or teach those that serve their interest or constitute their sect are to be suspected and avoided accordingly Nihil est hominum ineptâ persuasione falsius nec fictâ severitate ineptius All ages of the Church were extremely curious to observe when any new teachers did arise what kinde of lives they lived and if they pretended severely and to a strict life then they knew their danger doubled for it is certain all that teach doctrines contrary to the established religion delivered by the Apostles all they are evil men God will not suffer a good man to be seduced damnably much lesse can he be a seducer of others and therefore you shall still observe the false Apostles to be furious and vehement in their reproofs and severe in their animadversions of others but then if you watch their private or stay till their numbers are full or observe their spiritual habits you shall finde them indulgent to themselves or to return from their disguises or so spiritually wicked that their pride or their revenge their envie or their detraction their scorn or their complacency in themselves their desire of preheminence and their impatience of arrival shall place them far enough in distance from a poor carnal sinner whom they shall load with censures and an upbraiding scorn but themselves are like Devils the spirits of darknesse the spiritual wickednesses in high places Some sects of men are very angry against servants for recreating and easing their labours with a lesse prudent and an unsevere refreshment but the patron of their sect shall oppresse a wicked man and an unbelieving person they shall chastise a drunkard and entertain murmurrers they shall not abide an oath and yet shal force men to break three or four This sect is to be avoided because although it is good to be severe against carnal or bodily sins yet it is not good to mingle with them who chastise a bodily sin to make way for a spiritual or reprove a servant that his Lord may sin alone or punish a stranger and a begger that will not approve their sins but will have sins of his own Concering such persons Saint Paul hath told us that they shall not proceed far but their folly shall be manifest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Lysias Cito ad naturam ficta reciderunt sua They that dissemble their sin and their manners or make severity to serve loosnesse and an imaginary vertue to minister to a real vice they that abhor Idols and would commit sacrilege chastise a drunkard and promote sedition declaime against the vanity of great persons and then spoil them of their goods reform manners and engrosse estates talk godly and do impiously these are teachers which the Holy spirit of God hath by three Apostles bid us to beware of and decline as we would run from the hollownesse of a grave or the despaires and sorrows of the damned 11. The substance of al is this that we must not chose our doctrine by our guide but our guide by the doctrine if we doubt concerning the doctrine we may judge of that by the lives and designes of the Teachers By their fruits you shall know them and by the plain words of the scripture by the Apostles Creed and by the commandments and by the certain known and established forms of government These are the great indices and so plain apt and easy that he that is deceived is so because he will be so he is betrayed into it by his own lust and a voluntary chosen folly 12 Besides these premises there are other little candles that can help to make the judgement clearer but they are such as do not signifie alone but in conjunction with some of the precedent characters which are drawn by the great lines of scripture Such as are 1. when the teachers of sects stir up unprofitable and uselesse Questions 2. when they causelesly retire from the universal customs of Christendom 3. And cancel all the memorials of the greatest mysteries of our redemption 4. When their confessions and Catechismes and their whole religion consist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in speculations and ineffective notions in discourses of Angels and spirits in abstractions and raptures in things they understand not and of which they have no revelation 5. Or else if their religion spends it self in ceremonies outward guises and material solemnities and imperfect formes drawing the heart of the vine forth into leaves and irregular fruitless suckers turning the substance into circumstances and the love of God into gestures and the effect of the spirit into the impertinent offices of a burdensom ceremonial For by these two particulars the Apostles reproved the Jews and the Gnostics or those that from the school of Pythagoras pretended conversation with Angels and great knowledge of the secrets of the spirit chosing tutelar Angels and assigning them offices and charges as in the Church of Rome to this day they do to Saints to these adde 6. that we observe whether the guides of souls avoid to suffer for their religion for then the matter is foul or the man not fit to lead that dares not die in cold blood for his religion will the man lay his life and his soul upon the proposition If so then you may consider him upon his proper grounds but if he refuses that refuse his conduct
the case of conscience into little particles and swallowed the lie by crumbs so that no one passage of it should rush against the conscience nor do hurt until it is all got into the belly and unites in the effect for by that time two men are abused the Merchant in his soul and the Contractor in his interest and this is the certain effect of much talking and little honesty but he that means honestly must speak but once that is one truth and hath leave to vary within the degrees of just prices and fair conditions which because they have a latitude may be enlarged or restrained according as the Merchant please save onely he must never prevaricate the measures of equity and the proportions of reputation and the publike But in all the parts of this traffick let our words be the significations of our thoughts and our thoughts designe nothing but the advantages of a permitted exchange In this case the severity is so great so exact and so without variety of case that it is not lawfull for a man to tell a truth with a collateral designe to cozen and abuse and therefore at no hand can it be permitted to lie or equivocate to speak craftily or to deceive by smoothnesse or intricacy or long discourses But this precept of simplicity in matter of contract hath one step of severity beyond this In matter of contract it is not lawfull so much as to conceal the secret and undiscernable faults of the merchandize but we must acknowledge them or else affix prices made diminute and lessened to such proportions and abatements as that fault should make Caveat emptor is a good caution for him that buyes and it secures the seller in publike Judicature but not in court of conscience and the old lawes of the Romans were as nice in this affair as the conscience of a Christian. Titus Claudius Centimalus was commanded by the Augures to pull down his house in the Coelian mountain because it hindred their observation of the flight of birds he exposes his house to sale Publius Calpurnius buyes it and is forced to pluck it down But complaining to the Judges had remedy because Claudius did not tell him the true state of the inconvenience He that sels a house infected with the plague or haunted with evil spirits sels that which is not worth such a price which it might be put to if it were in health and peace and therefore cannot demand it but openly and upon publication of the evil To which also this is to be added that in some great faults and such as have danger as in the cases now specified no diminution of the price is sufficient to make the Merchant just and sincere unlesse he tels the appendant mischief because to some persons in many cases and to all persons in some cases it is not at all valuable and they would not possesse it if they might for nothing Marcus Gratidianus bought a house of Sergius Orata which himself had sold before But because Sergius did not declare the appendant vassalage and service he was recompenced by the Judges for although it was certain that Gratidianus knew it because it had been his own yet Oportuit ex bonâ fide denunciari said the law it concerned the ingenuity of a good man to have spoken it openly In all cases it must be confessed in the price or in the words But when the evil may be personal and more then matter of interest and money it ought to be confessed and then the goods prescribed lest by my act I do my neighbour injury and I receive profit by his dammage Certain it is that ingenuity is the sweetest and easiest way there is no difficulty or cases of conscience in that and it can have no objection in it but that possibly sometimes we lose a little advantage which it may be we may lawfully acquire but still we secure a quiet conscience and if the merchandise be not worth so much to me then neither is it to him if it be to him it is also to me and therefore I have no losse no hurt to keep it if it be refused but he that secures his own profit and regards not the interest of another is more greedy of a full purse then of a holy conscience and prefers gain before justice and the wealth of his private before the necessity of publike society and commerce being a son of earth whose centre is it self without relation to heaven that moves upon anothers point and produces flowers for others and sends influence upon all the world and receives nothing in return but a cloud of perfume or the smell of a fat sacrifice God sent justice into the world that all conditions in their several proportions should be equall and he that receives a good should pay one and he whom I serve is obliged to feed and to defend me in the same proportions as I serve and justice is a relative terme and supposes two persons obliged and though fortunes are unequal and estates are in majority and subordination and men are wise or foolish honoured or despised yet in the entercourses of justice God hath made that there is no difference and therefore it was esteemed ignoble to dismisse a servant when corn was dear in dangers of shipwrack to throw out an unprofitable boy and keep a fair horse or for a wise man to snatch a plank from a drowning fool or if the Master of the ship should challenge the board upon which his passenger swims for his life or to obtrude false moneys upon others which we first took for true but at last discovered to be false or not to discover the gold which the merchant sold for alchimy The reason of all these is because the collateral advantages are not at all to be considered in matter of rights and though I am dearest to my self as my neighbour is to himself yet it is necessary that I permit him to his own advantages as I desire to be permitted to mine Now therefore simplicity and ingenuity in all contracts is perfectly and exactly necessary because its contrary destroys that equality which justice hath placed in the affaires of men and makes all things private and makes a man dearer to himself and to be preferred before Kings and republicks and Churches it destroyes society and it makes multitudes of men to be but like heards of beasts without proper instruments of exchange and securities of possession without faith and without propriety concerning all which there is no other account to be given but that the rewards of craft are but a little money and a great deal of dishonour and much suspicion and proportionable scorn watches and guards spies and jealousies are his portion But the crown of justice is a fair life and a clear reputation an inheritance there where justice dwells since she left the earth even in the kingdome of the just who shall call us to judgement for every word
our religion can charme the passion and enable the spirit to entertain and master a sorrow and when we have such rare supplies out of the store-houses of reason and religion we have lesse reason to use these arts and little deviees which are arguments of an infirmity as great as is the charity and therefore we are to keep our selves strictly to the foregoing measures Let every man speak the truth to his neighbour putting away lying for we are members one of another and be as harmlesse as doves saith our blessed Saviour in my text which contain the whole duty concerning the matter of truth and sincerity in both which places truth and simplicity are founded upon justice and charity and therefore wherever a lie is in any sense against justice and wrongs any thing of a man his judgement and his reason his right or his liberty it is expresly forbidden in the Christian religion what cases we can truly suppose to be besides these the law forbids not and therefore it is lawful to say that to my self which I believe not for what innocent purpose I please and to all those over whose understanding I have or ought to have right These cases are intricate enough and therefore I shall return plainly to presse the doctrine of simplicity which ought to be so sacred that a man ought to do nothing indirectly which it is not lawful to own to receive no advantage by the sin of another which I should account dishonest if the action were my own for whatsoever disputes may be concerning the lawfulnesse of pretending craftily in some rare and contingent cases yet it is on all hands condemned that my craft should do injury to my brother I remember that when some greedy and indigent people forged a will of Lucius Minutius Basilius and joyned M. Crassus and Q. Hortensius in the inheritance that their power for their own interest might secure the others share they suspecting the thing to be a forgery yet being not principals and actors in the contrivance alieni facinoris munus culum non repudiaverunt refused not to receive a present made them by anothers crime but so they entred upon a moiety of the estate and the biggest share of the dishonour we must not be crafty to anothers injury so much as by giving countenance to the wrong for Tortoises and the Estrich hatch their egges with their looks onely and some have designes which a dissembling face or an acted gesture can produce but as a man may commit adultery with his eye so with his eye also he may tell a lie and steal with one finger and do injury collaterally and yet designe it with a direct intuition upon which he looks with his face over his shoulder and by whatsoever instrument my neighbour may be abused by the same instrument I sin if I do designe it antecedently or fal upon it together with something else or rejoyce in it when it is done 7. One thing more I am to adde that it is not lawful to tell a lie in jest It was a vertue noted in Aristides and Epaminondes that they would not lie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not in sport and as Christian simplicity forbids all lying in matter of interest and serious rights so there is an appendix to this precept forbidding to lie in mirth for of every idle word a man shall speak he shall give account in the day of judgment and such are the jestings which S. Paul reckons amongst things uncomly But amongst these fables apologues parables or figures of Rhetorick and any artificial instrument of instruction or innocent pleasure are not to be reckoned But he that without any end of charity or institution shall tell lies onely to become ridiculous in himself or mock another hath set some thing upon his doomsday book which must be taken off by water or by fire that is by repentance or a judgement Nothing is easier then simplicity and ingenuity it is open and ready without trouble and artificial cares fit for communities and the proper vertue of men the necessary appendage of useful speech without which language were given to men as nails and teeth to Lions for nothing but to do mischief it is a rare instrument of institution and a certain token of courage the companion of goodnesse and a noble minde the preserver of friendship the band of society the security of merchants and the blessing of trade it prevents infinite of quarrels and appeals to Judges and suffers none of the evils of Jealousie men by simplicity converse as do the Angels they do their own work and secure their proper interest and serve the publick and do glory to God But hypocrites and liars and dissemblers spread darknesse over the face of affaires and make men like the blinde to walk softly and timorously and crafty men like the close aire suck that which is open and devour its portion and destroy its liberty and it is the guise of devils and the dishonour of the soul and the canker of society and the enemy of justice and truth and peace of wealth and honour of courage and merchandise He is a good man with whom a blind man may safely converse dignus quicum in tenebris mices to whom in respect of his fair treatings the darknesse and light are both alike But he that bears light upon the face and a dark heart is like him that transforms himself into an Angel of light when he means to do most mischief Remember this onely that false colours laid upon the face besmear the skin and durty it but they neither make a beauty nor mend it Apocal 22. 15. For without shall be dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and Murderers and idolaters and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie Sermon XXV THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY Psalm 86. 5 For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee MAN having destroyed that which God delighted in that is the beauty of his soul fell into an evil portion and being seized upon by the divine justice grew miserable and condemned to an incurable sorrow Poor Adam being banished and undone went and lived a sad life in the mountains of India and turned his face and his prayers towards Paradise thither he sent his sighes to that place he directed his devotions there was his heart now and his felicity sometimes had been but he knew not how to return thither for God was his enemy and by many of his attributes opposed himself against him Gods power was armed against him and poor man whom a fly or a fish could kill was assaulted and beaten with a sword of fire in the hand of a Cherubim Gods eye watched him his omniscience was mans accuser his severity was the Judge his justice the executioner It was a mighty calamity that man was to undergo when he that made him armed himself against his creature which would have died or turned
Jesus seated in the East called the sides or obliquity of the North and as the seating of his humane nature in that glorious seat brought to him all adoration and the Majesty of God and the greatest of his exaltation So it was so great an advancement to us that all the Angels of heaven take notice of it and feel a change in the appendage of their condition not that they are lessened but that we who in nature are lesse then Angels have a relative dignity greater and an equall honour of being fellow-servants This mystery is plain in Scripture and the reall effect of it we read in both the Testaments When Manoah the father of Sampson saw an Angel he worshipped him and in the old Testament it was esteemed lawfull for they were the lieutenants of God sent with the impresses of his Majesty and took in his Name the homage from us who then were so much their inferiours But when the man Christ Jesus was exalted and made the Lord of all the Angels then they became our fellow servants and might not receive worship from any of the servants of Jesus especially from Prophets and Martyrs and those that are ministers of the testimony of Jesus And therefore when an Angel appeared to Saint John and he according to the Custom of the Jews fell down and worshipped him as not yet knowing or not considering any thing to the contrary the Angell reproved him saying see thou do it not I am thy fellow servant and of thy brethren the prophets and of them which keep the sayings of this book worship God or as Saint Cyprian reads it worship Jesus God and man are now onely capable of worship but no Angel God essentially Man in the person of Christ and in the exaltation of our great Redeemer but Angels not so high and therefore not capable of any religious worship and this dignity of man Saint Gregory explicates fully Quid est quod ante Redemptoris adventum adorantur ab hominibus Angeli tacent postmodum vero adorarirefugiunt why did the Angels of old receive worshippings and were silent but in the new testament decline it and fear to accept it Nisi quod naturam nostram quam prius despexerant postquam hanc super se assumptam aspiciunt prostratam sibi videre pertimescunt nec jam sub se velut infirmam contemnere ausi sunt quam super se viz. in caeli Rege venerantur the reason is because they seeing our nature which they did so lightly value raised up above them they fear to see humbled under them neither do they any more despise the weaknesse which themselves worship in the King of heaven The same also is the sense of the Glosse of Saint Ambrose Ansbertus Haymo Rupertus and others of old and Ribera Salmeron and Lewis of Granada of late which being so plainly consonant to the words of the Angel and consigned by the testimony of such men I the rather note that those who worship Angels and make religious addresses to them may see what priviledge themselves lose and how they part with the honour of Christ who in his nature relative to us is exalted far above all thrones and principalities and dominions I need not adde lustre to this It is like the Sun the biggest body of light and nothing can describe it so well as its own beams and there is not in nature or the advantages of honour any thing greater then that we have the issues of that mercy which makes us fellow servants with Angels too much honoured to pay them a religious worship whose Lord is a man and he that is their King is our Brother 4. To this for the likenesse of the matter I adde that the divine mercy hath so prosecuted us with the enlargement of his favours that we are not onely fellow ministers and servants with the Angels and in our nature in the person of Christ exalted above them but we also shall be their Judges and if this be not an honour above that of Joseph or Mordecai an honour beyond all the measures of a man then there is in honour no degrees no priority or distances or characters of fame and noblenesse Christ is the great Judge of all the world his humane nature shall then triumph over evil men and evil spirits then shall the Devils those Angels that fel from their first originals be brought in their chains from their dark prisons and once be allowed to see the light that light that shall confound them while all that follow the lamb and that are accounted worthy of that resurrection shall be assessors in the judgment Know ye not saith S. Paul that ye shall judge Angels And Tertullian speaking concerning Devils and accursed spirits de cultu foeminarum saith Hi sunt Angeli quos judicaturi sumus Hi sunt Angeli quibus in lavacro renunciavimus Those Angels which we renounced in baptisme those we shall judge in the day of the Lords Glory in the great day of recompences And that the honour may be yet greater the same day of sentence that condemns the evil Angels shal also reward the good and increase their glory which because they derive from their Lord and ours from their King and our elder Brother the King of glories whose glorious hands shall put the crown upon all our heads we who shall be servants of that judgement and some way or other assist in it have a part of that honour to be judges of all Angels and of all the world The effect of these things ought to be this that we do not by base actions dishonour that nature that sits upon the throne of God that reigns over Angels that shall sit in judgement upon all the world It is a great undecency that the son of a King should bear water upon his head and dresse vineyards among the slaves or to see a wise man and the guide of his country drink-drunk among the meanest of his servants but when members of Christ shall be made members of an harlot and that which rides above a rain-bow stoopes to an imperious whorish woman when the soul that is sister to the Lord of Angels shall degenerate into the foolishnesse or rage of a beast being drowned with the blood of the grape or made mad with passion or ridiculous with weaker follies we shall but strip our selves of that robe of honour with which Christ hath invested and adorned our nature and carry that portion of humanity which is our own and which God had honoured in some capacities above Angels into a portion of an eternal shame and became lesse in all senses and equally disgraced with Devils The shame and sting of this change shall be that we turned the glories of the Divine mercy into the basenesse of ingratitude and the amazement of suffering the Divine vengeance But I passe on 5. The next order of Divine mercies that I shall remark is also an improvement of
impure tempter and shall carry a flame within him and all the world is on fire round about him and every thing brings fuel to the flame and full tables are a snare and empty tables are collateral servants to a lust and help to blow the fire and kindle the heap of prepared temptations and yet a man must not at all tast of the forbidden fruit and he must not desire what he cannot choose but desire and he must not enjoy whatsoever he does violently covet and must never satisfy his appetite in the most violent importunities but must therefore deny himself because to do so is extremely troublesome this seems to be an art of torture and a devise to punish man with the spirit of agony and a restlesse vexation But this also hath in it a great ingredient of mercy or rather is nothing else but a heap of mercy in its intire constitution For if it were not for this we had nothing of our own to present to God nothing proportionable to the great rewards of heaven but either all men or no man must go thither for nothing can distinguish man from man in order to beatitude but choice and election and nothing can enoble the choice but love and nothing can exercise love but difficulty and nothing can make that difficulty but the contradiction of our appetite and the crossing of our natural affections and therefore whenever any of you is tempted violently or grow weary in your spirits with resisting the petulancy of temptation you may be cured if you will please but to remember and rejoyce that now you have something of your own to give to God something that he will be pleased to accept something that he hath given thee that thou mayest give it him for our mony and our time our dayes of feasting and our dayes of sorrow our discourse and our acts of praise our prayers and our songs our vows and our offerings our worshippings and prostrations and whatsoever else can be accounted in the sum of our religion are onely accepted according as they bear along with them portions of our wil and choice of love and appendant difficulty Laetius est quoties magno tibi constat honestum So that whoever can complain that he serves God with pains and mortifications he is troubled because there is a distinction of things such as we call vertue and vice reward and punishment and if he will not suffer God to distinguish the first he will certainly confound the latter and his portion shall be blacknesse without variety and punishment shall be his reward 6. As an appendage to this instance of divine mercy we are to account that not onely in nature but in contingency and emergent events of providence God makes compensation to us for all the evils of chance and hostilities of accident brings good out of evil which is that solemn triumph which mercy makes over justice when it rides upon a cloud and crowns its darknesse with a robe of glorious light God indeed suffered Joseph to be sold a bondslave into Egypt but then it was that God intended to crown and reward his chastity for by that means he brought him to a fair condition of dwelling and there gave him a noble trial he had a brave contention and he was a conqueror Then God sent him to prison but still that was mercy it was to make way to bring him to Pharaohs court and God brought famine upon Canaan and troubled all the souls of Jacobs family and there was a plot laid for another mercy this was to bring them to see and partake of Josephs glory and then God brought a great evil upon their posterity and they groaned under task-masters but this God changed into the miracles of his mercy and suffered them to be afflicted that he might do ten miracles for their sakes and proclaim to all the world how dear they were to God And was not the greatest good to mankinde brought forth from the greatest treason that ever was committed the redemption of the world from the fact of Judas God loving to defeat the malice of man and the arts of the Devil by rare emergencies and stratagems of mercy It is a sad calamity to see a kingdom spoiled and a church afflicted the Priests slain with the sword and the blood of Nobles mingled with cheaper sand religion made a cause of trouble and the best men most cruelly persecuted Government confounded and laws ashamed Judges decreeing causes in fear and covetousnesse and the ministers of holy things setting themselves against all that is sacred and setting fire upon the fields and turning in little foxes on purpose to destroy the vineyards and what shall make recompence for this heap of sorrows when ever God shall send such swords of fire even the mercies of God which then will be made publick when we shall hear such afflicted people sing Inconvertendo captivitatem Sion with the voice of joy and festival eucharist among such as keep holy day and when peace shall become sweeter and dwell the longer and in the mean time it serves religion and the affliction shall try the children of God and God shall crown them and men shall grow wiser and more holy and leave their petty interstes and take sanctuary in holy living and be taught temperance by their want and patience by their suffering and charity by their persecution and shall better understand the duty of their relations and at last the secret worm that lay at the root of the plant shall be drawn forth and quite extinguished For so have I known a luxuriant Vine swell into irregular twigs and bold excrescencies and spend it self in leaves and little rings and affoord but trifling clusters to the wine-presse and a faint return to his heart which longed to be refreshed with a full vintage But when the Lord of the vine had caused the dressers to cut the wilder plant and made it bleed it grew temperate in its vain expense of uselesse leaves and knotted into fair and juicy bunches and made accounts of that losse of blood by the return of fruit So is an afflicted Province cured of its surfets and punished for its sins and bleeds for its long riot and is left ungoverned for its disobedience and chastised for its wantonnesse and when the sword hath let forth the corrupted blood and the fire hath purged the rest then it enters into the double joyes of restitution and gives God thanks for his rod and confesses the mercies of the Lord in making the smoke be changed into fire and the cloud into a perfume the sword into a staffe and his anger into mercy Had not David suffered more if he had suffered lesse and had he not been miserable unlesse he had been afflicted he understood it well when he said It is good for me that I have been afflicted He that was rival to Crassus when he stood candidate to command the Legions in the Parthians warre was
the drinkings of the children and it is a long time before nature makes them capable of help for there are many deaths and very many diseases to which poor babes are exposed but they have but very few capacities of physick to shew that infancy is as liable to death as old age and equally exposed to danger and equally uncapable of a remedy with this onely difference that old age hath diseases incurable by nature and the diseases of child-hood are incurable by art and both the states are the next heirs of death 3. But all the middle way the case is altered Nature is strong and art is apt to give ease and remedy but still there is no security and there the case is not altered 1 For there are so many diseases in men that are not understood 2 So many new ones every year 3 The old ones are so changed in circumstance and intermingled with so many collateral complications 4 The Symptoms are oftentimes so alike 5 Sometimes so hidden and fallacious 6 Somtimes none at all as in the most sudden and the most dangerous imposthumations 7 And then the diseases in the inward parts of the body are oftentimes such to which no application can be made 8 They are so far off that the effects of all medicines can no otherwise come to them then the effect and juices of all meats that is not till after two or three alterations and decoctions which change the very species of the medicament 9 And after all this very many principles in the art of Physick are so uncertain that after they have been believed seven or eight ages and that upon them much of the practise hath been established they come to be considered by a witty man and others established in their stead by which men must practise and by which three or four generations of men more as happens must live or die 10. And all this while the men are sick and they take things that certainly make them sicker for the present and very uncertainly restore health for the future that it may appear of what a large extent is humane calamity when Gods providence hath not onely made it weak and miserable upon the certain stock of a various nature and upon the accidents of an infinite contingency but even from the remedies which are appointed our dangers and our troubles are certainly increased so that we may well be likened to water our nature is no stronger our aboad no more certain If the sluces be opened it falls away and runneth apace if its current be stopped it swells and grows troublesome and spils over with a greater diffusion If it be made to stand still it putrefies and all this we do For 4. In all the processe of our health we are running to our grave we open our own sluces by vitiousnesse and unworthy actions we pour in drink and let out life we increase diseases and know not how to bear them we strangle our selves with our own intemperance we suffer the feavers and the inflammations of lust and we quench our souls with drunkennesse we bury our understandings in loads of meat and surfets and then we lie down upon our beds and roar with pain and disquietnesse of our souls Nay we kill one anothers souls and bodies with violence and folly with the effects of pride and uncharitablenesse we live and die like fools and bring a new mortality upon our selves wars and vexatious cares and private duels and publike disorders and every thing that is unreasonable and every thing that is violent so that now we may adde this fourth gate to the grave Besides Nature and Chance and the mistakes of art men die with their own sins and then enter into the grave in haste and passion and pull the heavy stone of the monument upon their own heads And thus we make our selves like water spilt on the ground we throw away our lives as if they were unprofitable and indeed most men make them so we let our years slip through our fingers like water and nothing is to be seen but like a showr of tears upon a spot of ground there is a grave digged and a solemn mourning and a great talk in the neighbourhood and when the dayes are finished they shall be and they shall be remembred no more And that 's like water too when it is spilt it cannot be gathered up again There is no redemption from the grave inter se mortales mutua vivunt Et quasi cursores vitäi lampada tradunt Men live in their course and by turns their light burns a while and then it burns blew and faint and men go to converse with Spirits and then they reach the taper to another and as the hours of yesterday can never return again so neither can the man whose hours they were and who lived them over once he shall never come to live them again and live them better When Lazarus and the widows son of Naim and Tabitha and the Saints that appeared in Jerusalem at the resurrection of our blessed Lord arose they came into this world some as strangers onely to make a visit and all of them to manifest a glory but none came upon the stock of a new life or entred upon the stage as at first or to perform the course of a new nature and therefore it is observable that we never read of any wicked person that was raised from the dead Dives would fain have returned to his brothers house but neither he nor any from him could be sent but all the rest in the New Testament one onely excepted were expressed to have been holy persons or else by their age were declared innocent Lazarus was beloved of Christ those souls that appeared at the resurrection were the souls of Saints Tabitha raised by Saint Peter was a charitable and a holy Christian and the maiden of twelve years old raised by our blessed Saviour had not entred into the regions of choice and sinfulnesse and the onely exception of the widows son is indeed none at all for in it the Scripture is wholly silent and therefore it is very probable that the same processe was used God in all other instances having chosen to exemplifie his miracles of nature to purposes of the Spirit and in spirituall capacities So that although the Lord of nature did break the bands of nature in some instances to manifest his glory to succeeding great and never failing purposes yet besides that this shall be no more it was also instanced in such persons who were holy and innocent and within the verge and comprehensions of the eternall mercy We never read that a wicked person felt such a miracle or was raised from the grave to try the second time for a Crown but where he fell there he lay down dead and saw the light no more This consideration I intend to you as a severe Monitor and an advice of carefulnesse that you order your affairs so that you may
that she might for ever be so far distant from a vice that she might onely see it and loath it but never tast of it so much as to be put to her choice whether she would be vertuous or no. God intending to secure this soul to himself would not suffer the follies of the world to seize upon her by way of too neer a trial or busie temptation 3. She was married young and besides her businesses of religion seemed to be ordained in the providence of God to bring to this Honourable family a part of a fair fortune and to leave behinde her a fairer issue worth ten thousand times her portion and as if this had been all the publick businesse of her life when she had so far served Gods ends God in mercy would also serve hers and take her to an early blessednesse 4. In passing through which line of providence she had the art to secure her eternal interest by turning her condition into duty expressing her duty in the greatest eminency of a vertuous prudâ—nt and rare affection that hath been known in any example I will not give her so low a testimony as to say onely that she was chast She was a person of that severity modesty and close religion as to that particular that she was not capable of uncivil temptation and you might as well have suspected the sun to smell of the poppy that he looks on as that she could have been a person apt to be sullyed by the breath of a foul question 5. But that which I shall note in her is that which I would have exemplar to all Ladies and to all women She had a love so great for her Lord so intirely given up to a dear affection that she thought the same things and loved the same loves and hated according to the same enmities and breathed in his soul and lived in his presence and languished in his absence and all that she was or did was onely for and to her Dearest Lord Si gaudet si flet si tacit hunc loquitur Coenat propinat poscit negat innuit unus Naevius est and although this was a great enamel to the beauty of her soul yet it might in some degrees be also a reward to the vertue of her Lord For she would often discourse it to them that conversed with her that he would improve that interest which he had in her affection to the advantages of God and of religion and she would delight to say that he called her to her devotions he encouraged her good inclinations he directed her piety he invited her with good books and then she loved religion which she saw was not onely pleasing to God and an act or state of duty but pleasing to her Lord and an act also of affection and conjugal obedience and what at first she loved the more forwardly for his sake in the using of religion left such relishes upon her spirit that she found in it amability enough to make her love it for its own So God usually brings us to him by instruments of nature and affections and then incorporates us into his inheritance by the more immediate relishes of Heaven and the secret things of the Spirit He only was under God the light of her eyes and the cordiall of her spirits and the guide of her actions and the measure of her affections till her affections swelled up into a religion and then it could go no higher but was confederate with those other duties which made her dear to God Which rare combination of duty and religion I choose to expresse in the words of Solomon She forsook not the guide of her youth nor brake the Covenant of her God 6. As she was a rare wife so she was an excellent Mother For in so tender a constitution of spirit as hers was and in so great a kindnesse towards her children there hath seldom been seen a stricter and more curious care of their persons their deportment their nature their disposition their learning and their customs And if ever kindnesse and care did contest and make parties in her yet her care and her severity was ever victorious and she knew not how to do an ill turn to their severer part by her more tender and forward kindnesse And as her custome was she turned this also into love to her Lord. For she was not onely diligent to have them bred nobly and religiously but also was carefull and solicitous that they should be taught to observe all the circumstances inclinations the desires and wishes of their Father as thinking that vertue to have no good circumstances which was not dressed by his copy and ruled by his lines and his affections And her prudence in the managing her children was so singular and rare that when ever you mean to blesse this family and pray a hearty and a profitable prayer for it beg of God that the children may have those excellent things which she designed to them and provided for them in her heart and wishes that they may live by her purposes and may grow thither whither she would fain have brought them All these were great parts of an excellent religion as they concerned her greatest temporal relations 7. But if we examine how she demeaned her self towards God there also you will finde her not of a common but of an exemplar piety She was a great reader of Scripture confining her self to great portions every day which she read not to the purposes of vanity and impertinent curiosities not to seem knowing or to become talking not to expound and Rule but to teach her all her duty to instruct her in the knowledge and love of God and of her Neighbours to make her more humble and to teach her to despise the world and all its gilded vanities and that she might entertain passions wholly in designe and order to heaven I have seen a female religion that wholly dwelt upon the face and tongue that like a wanton and an undressed tree spends all its juice in suckers and irregular branches in leafs and gumme and after all such goodly outsides you should never eat an apple or be delighted with the beauties or the perfumes of a hopefull blossome But the religion of this excellent Lady was of another constitution It took root downward in humility and brought forth fruit upward in the substantiall graces of a Christian in charity and justice in chastity and modesty in fair friendships and sweetnesse of society She had not very much of the forms and outsides of godlinesse but she was hugely carefull for the power of it for the morall essentiall and usefull parts such which would make her be not seem to be religious 8. She was a very constant person at her prayers and spent all her time which Nature did permit to her choice in her devotions and reading and meditating and the necessary offices of houshold government every one of which is an action of religion
some by nature some by adoption To these also God gave her a very great love to hear the word of God preached in which because I had sometimes the honour to minister to her I can give this certain testimony that she was a diligent watchfull and attentive hearer and to this had so excellent a judgement that if ever I saw a woman whose judgement was to be revered it was hers alone and I have sometimes thought that the eminency of her discerning faculties did reward a pious discourse and placed it in the regions of honour and usefulnesse and gathered it up from the ground where commonly such homilies are spilt or scattered in neglect and inconsideration But her appetite was not soon satisfied with what was usefull to her soul she was also a constant Reader of Sermons and seldome missed to read one every day and that she might be full of instruction and holy principles she had lately designed to have a large Book in which she purposed to have a stock of Religion transcribâ—d in such assistances as she would chuse that she might be readily furnished and instructed to every good work But God prevented that and hath filled her desires not out of cisterns and little aquaeducts but hath carried her to the fountain where she drinks of the pleasures of the river and is full of God 9. She alwayes lived a life of much Innocence free from the violences of great sins her person her breeding her modesty her honour her religion her early marriage the Guide of her soul and the Guide of her youth were as so many fountains of restraining grace to her to keep her from the dishonours of a crime Bonum est portare jugum ab adolescentî it is good to bear the yoak of the Lord from our youth and though she did so being guarded by a mighty providence and a great favour and grace of God from staining her fair soul with the spots of hell yet she had strange fears and early cares upon her but these were not onely for her self but in order to others to her neerest Relatives For she was so great a lover of this Honourable family of which now she was a Mother that she desired to become a chanel of great blessings to it unto future ages and was extremely jealous lest any thing should be done or lest any thing had been done though an age or two since which should intail a curse upon the innocent posterity and therefore although I do not know that ever she was tempted with an offer of the crime yet she did infinitely remove all sacrilege from her thoughts and delighted to see her estate of a clear and disintangled interest she would have no mingled rights with it she would not receive any thing from the Church but religion and a blessing and she never thought a curse and a sin far enough off but would desire it to be infinitely distant and that as to this family God had given much honour and a wise head to govern it so he would also for ever give many more blessings And because she knew that the sins of Parents descend upon Children she endeavoured by justice and religion by charity and honour to secure that her chanel should convey nothing but health and a fair example and a blessing 10. And though her accounts to God was made up of nothing but small parcels little passions and angry words and trifling discontents which are the allayes of the piety of the most holy persons yet she was early at her repentance and toward the latter end of her dayes grew so fast in religion as if she had had a revelation of her approaching end and therefore that she must go a great way in a little time her discourses more full of religion her prayers more frequent her charity increasing her forgiveness more forward her friendships more communicative her passion more under discipline and so she trimm'd her lamp not thinking her night was so neer but that it might shine also in the day time in the Temple and before the Altar of incense But in this course of hers there were some circumstances and some appendages of substance which were highly remarkable 1. In all her Religion and in all her actions of relation towards God she had a strange evennesse and untroubled passage sliding toward her Ocean of God and of infinity with a certain and silent motion So have I seen a river deep and smooth passing with a still foot and a sober face and paying to the Fiscus the great Exchequer of the Sea the Prince of all the watry bodies a tribute large and full and hard by it a little brook skipping and making a noise upon its unequall and neighbour bottom and after all its talking and bragged motion it payed to its common Audit no more then the revenues of a little cloud or a contemptible vessel So have I sometimes compar'd the issues of her religion to the solemnities and fam'd outsides of anothers piety It dwelt upon her spirit and was incorporated with the periodicall work of every day she did not beleeve that religion was intended to minister to fame and reputation but to pardon of sins to the pleasure of God and the salvation of souls For religion is like the breath of Heaven if it goes abroad into the open air it scatters and dissolves like camphyre but if it enters into a secret hollownesse into a close conveyance it is strong and mighty and comes forth with vigour and great effect at the other end at the other side of this life in the dayes of death and judgement 2. The other appendage of her religion which also was a great ornament to all the parts of her life was a rare modesty and humility of spirit a confident despising and undervaluing of her self For though she had the greatest judgement and the greatest experience of things and persons that I ever yet knew in a person of her youth and sex and circumstances yet as if she knew nothing of it she had the meanest opinion of her self and like a fair taper when she shined to all the room yet round about her own station she had cast a shadow and a cloud and she shined to every body but her self But the perfectnesse of her prudence and excellent parts could not be hid and all her humility and arts of concealment made the vertues more amiable and illustrious For as pride sullies the beauty of the fairest vertues and makes our understanding but like the craft and learning of a Devil so humility is the greatest eminency and art of publication in the whole world and she in all her arts of secrecy and hiding her worthy things was but like one that hideth the winde and covers the oyntment of her right hand I know not by what instrument it hapned but when death drew neer befor it made any shew upon her body or revealed it self by a naturall signification it was conveyed to
gives demonstration of his huge easinesse to redeem us from that intolerable evil that is equally consequent to the indulging to one or to twenty sinful habits 2. Gods readinesse to pardon appears in this that he pardons before we ask for he that bids us alk for pardon hath in designe and purpose done the thing already for what is wanting on his part in whose onely power it is to give pardon and in whose desire it is that we should be pardoned and who commands us to lay hold upon the offer he hath done all that belongs to God that is all that concerns the pardon there it lies ready it is recorded in the book of life it wants nothing but being exemplified and taken forth and the Holy spirit stands ready to consigne and passe the privy signet that we may exhibit it to devils and evil men when they tempt us to despair or sin 3. Nay God is so ready in his mercy that he did pardon us even before he redeemed us for what is the secret of the mysterie that the eternal Son of God should take upon him our nature and die our death and suffer for our sins and do our work and enable us to do our own he that did this is God he who thought it no robbery to be equal with God he came to satisfie himself to pay to himself the price for his own creature and when he did this for us that he might pardon us was he at that instant angry with us was this an effect of his anger or of his love that God sent his Son to work our pardon and salvation Indeed we were angry with God at enmity with the the Prince of life but he was reconciled to us so far as that he then did the greatest thing in the world for us for nothing could be greater then that God the Son of God should die for us here was reconciliation before pardon and God that came to die for us did love us first before he came this was hasty love But it went further yet 4. God pardoned us before we sinned and when he foresaw our sin even mine and yours he sent his son to die for us ouâ— pardon was wrought and effected by Christs death above 1600 years ago and for the sins of to morrow and the infirmities of the next day Christ is already dead already risen from the dead and does now make intercession and atonement And this is not onely a favour to us who were born in the due time of the Gospel but to all mankinde since Adam For God who is infinitely patient in his justice was not at all patient in his mercy he forbears to strike and punish us but he would not forbear to provide cure for us and remedy for as if God could not stay from redeeming us he â—romised the Redeemer to Adam in the beginning of the worlds sin Christ was the lamb slain from the begining of the world and the covenant of the Gospel though it was not made with man yet it was from the beginning performed by God as to his part as to the ministration of pardon The seed of the woman was set up against the dragon as soon as ever the Tempter had won his first battle and though God laid his hand and drew a vail of types and secresy before the manifestation of his mercies yet he did the work of redemption and saved us by the covenant of faith and the righteousnesse of believing and the mercies of repentance the graces of pardon and the blood of the slain lamb even from the fall of Adam to this very day and will do till Christs second coming Adam fell by his folly and did not perform the covenant of one little work a work of a single abstinence but he was restored by faith in the seed of the woman and of this righteousnesse Noah was a preacher and by faith Enoch was traslated and by faith a remnant was saved at the flood and to Abraham this was imputed for righteousnesse and to all the Patriarks and to all the righteous judges and holy Prophets and Saints of the old Testament even while they were obliged so far as the words of their covenant were expressed to the law of works their pardon was sealed kept with in the vail within the curtains of the sanctuary and they saw it not then but they feel it ever since and this was a great excellency of the Divine mercy unto them God had mercy on all mankinde before Christs manifestation even beyond the mercies of their covenant they were saved as we are by the seed of the woman by God incarnate by the lamb slain from the beginning of the world not by works for we all failed of them that is not by an exact obedience but by faith working by love by sincere hearty endeavours believing God and relying upon his infinite mercy revealed in part and now fully manifest by the great instrument and means of that mercy Jesus Christ. So that here is pardon before we asked it pardon before Christs coming pardon before redemption and pardon before we sinned what greater readinesse to forgive us can be imagined yes there is one degree more yet and that will prevent a mistake in this 5. For God so pardoned us once that we should need no more pardon he pardons us by turning every one of us away from our iniquities that 's the purpose of Christ that he might safely pardon us before we sinned and we might not sin upon the confidence of pardon he pardoned us not onely upon condition we would sin no more but he took away our sin cured our cursed inclinations instructed our understanding rectified our will fortified us against temptations and now every man whom he pardons he also sanctifies and he is born of God and he must not will not cannot sin so long as the seed of God remains within him so long as his pardon continues This is the consummation of pardon For if God had so pardoned us as onely to take away our evils which are past we should have needed a second Saviour and a redeemer for every month and new pardons perpetually But our blessed Redeemer hath taken away our sin not onely the guilt of our old but our inclinations to new sins he makes us like himself and commands us to live so that we shall not need a second pardon that is a second state of pardon for we are but once baptized into Christs death and that death was one and our redemption but one and our covenant the same and as long as we continue within the covenant we are still within the power and comprehensions of the first pardon 6. And yet there is a necessity of having one degree of pardon more beyond all this For although we do not abjure our covenant and renounce Christ and extinguish the spirit yet we resist him and we grieve him and we go off from the holinesse of the
covenant and return again and very often step aside and need this great pardon to be perpetually applyed and renewed and to this purpose that we may not have a possible need without a certain remedy the Holy Jesus the Author and finisher of our faith and pardon sits in heaven in a perpetual advocation for us that this pardon once wrought may be for ever applyed to every emergent need and every tumor of pride and every broken heart and every disturbed conscience and upon every true and sincere return of a hearty repentance And now upon this title no more degrees can be added it is already greater and was before all our needs and was greater then the old covenaut and beyond the revelations and did in Adams youth antidate the Gospel turning the publike miseries by secret grace into eternall glories But now upon other circumstances it is remarkable and excellent and swels like an hydropick cloud when it is fed with the breath of the morning tide till it fills the bosome of heaven and descends in dews and gentle showers to water and refresh the earth 7. God is so ready to forgive that himself works our dispositions towards it and either must in some degree pardon us before we are capable of pardon by his grace making way for his mercy or else we can never hope for pardon For unlesse God by his preventing grace should first work the first part of our pardon even without any dispositions of our own to receive it we could not desire a pardon nor hope for it nor work towards it nor ask it nor receive it This giving of preventing grace is a mercy of forgivenesse contrary to that severity by which some desperate persons are given over to a reprobate sense that is a leaving of men to themselves so that they cannot pray effectually nor desire holily nor repent truly nor receive any of those mercies which God designed so plenteously and the Son of God purchased so dearly for us When God sends a plague of warre upon a land in all the accounts of religion and expectations of reason the way to obtain our peace is to leave our sins for which the warre was sent upon us as the messenger of wrath and without this we are like to perish in the judgement But then consider what a sad condition we are in warre mends but few but spoils multitudes it legitimates rapine and authorizes murder and these crimes must be ministred to by their lesser relatives by covetousnesse and anger and pride and revenge and heats of blood and wilder liberty and all the evil that can be supposed to come from or run to such cursed causes of mischief But then if the punishment increases the sin by what instrument can the punishment be removed How shall we be pardoned and eased when our remedies are converted into causes of the sicknesse and our antidotes are poison Here there is a plain necessity of Gods preventing grace and if there be but a necessity of it that is enough to ascertain us we shall have it But unlesse God should begin to pardon us first for nothing and against our own dispositions we see there is no help in us nor for us If we be not smitten we are undone if we are smitten we perish and as young Damarchus said of his Love when he was made master of his wish Salvus sum quia pereo si non peream plane inteream we may say of some of Gods judgements We perish when we are safe because our sins are not smitten and if they be then we are worse undone because we grow worse for being miserable but we can be relieved onely by a free mercy for pardon is the way to pardon and when God gives us our peny then we can work for another and a gift is the way to a grace and all that we can do towards it is but to take it in Gods method and this must needs be a great forwardnesse of forgivenesse when Gods mercy gives the pardon and the way to finde it and the hand to receive it and the eye to search it and the heart to desire it being busie and effective as Elijah's fire which intending to convert the sacrifice into its own more spirituall nature of flames and purified substances stood in the neighbourhood of the fuell and called forth all its enemies and licked up the hindering moisture and the water of the trenches and made the Altar send forth a phantastick smoke before the sacrifice was enkindled So is the preventing grace of God it does all the work of our souls and makes its own way and invites it self and prepares its own lodging and makes its own entertainment it gives us precepts and makes us able to keep them it enables our faculties and excites our desires it provokes us to pray and sanctifies our heart in prayer and makes our prayer go forth to act and the act does make the desire valid and the desire does make the act certain and persevering and both of them are the works of God for more is received into the soul from without the soul then does proceed from within the soul It is more for the soul to be moved and disposed then to work when that is done as the passage from death to life is greater then from life to action especially since the action is owing to that cause that put in the first principle of life These are the great degrees of Gods forwardnesse and readinesse to forgive for the expression of which no language is sufficient but Gods own words describing mercy in all those dimensions which can signifie to us its greatnesse and infinity His mercy is great his mercies are many his mercy reacheth unto the heavens it fils heaven and earth it is above all his works it endureth for ever God pitieth as a Father doth his children nay he is our Father and the same also is the Father of mercy and the God of all comfort So that mercy and we have the same relation and well it may be so for we live and die together for as to man onely God shews the mercy of forgivenesse so if God takes away his mercy man shall be no more no more capable of felicity or of any thing that is perfective of his condition or his person But as God preserves man by his mercy so his mercy hath all its operations upon man and returns to its own centre and incircumscription and infinity unlesse it issues forth upon us And therefore besides the former great lines of the mercy of forgivenesse there is another chain which but to produce and tell its links is to open a cabinet of Jewels where every stone is as bright as a star and every star is great as the Sun and shines for ever unlesse we shut our eyes or draw the vail of obstinate and finall sins 1. God is long-suffering that is long before he be angry and yet God is provoked every day by