and our own consciences dear and be reconciled to the Judge by the severities of an early repentance and then we need to fear no accusers SERMON III. Part III. 3. IT remaines that we consider the Sentence it self We must receive according to what we have done in the body whether it be good or bad Judicaturo Domino lugubre mundus immugiet tribus ad tribum pectora ferient Potentissimi quondam reges nudo latere palpitabunt so St. Hierom meditates concerning the terror of this consideration The whole world shall groan when the Judge comes to give his Sentence tribe and tribe shall knock their sides together and through the naked breasts of the most mighty Kings you shall see their hearts beat with fearfull tremblings Tunc Aristotelis argumenta parum proderunt cum venerit filius pauperculae quaestuariae judicare orbem terra Nothing shall then be worth owning or the means of obtaining mercy but a holy conscience all the humane craft and trifling subtilties shall be uselesse when the Son of a poor Maid shall sit Judge over all the world When the Prophet Joel was describing the formidable accidents in the day of the Lords Judgement and the fearfull Sentence of an angry Judge he was not able to expresse it but flammered like a Childe or an amazed imperfect person A. A. A. diei quia propè est Dies Domini it is not sense at first he was so amazed he knew not what to say and the Spirit of God was pleased to let that signe remain like Agamemnon's sorrow for the death of Iphigenia nothing could describe it but a vail it must be hidden and supposed and the stammering tongue that is full of fear can best speak that terror which will make all the world to cry and shriek and speak fearfull accents and significations of an infinite sorrow and amazement But so it is there are two great days in which the fate of all the world is transacted This life is mans day in which man does what he please and God holds his peace Man destroys his Brother and destroyes himselfe and confounds Governments and raises Armies and tempts to sin and delights in it and drinks drunk and forgets his sorrow and heaps up great estates and raises a family and a name in the Annals and makes others fear him and introduces new Religions and confounds the old and changeth Articles as his interest requires and all this while God is silent save that he is loud and clamorous with his holy precepts and over-rules the event but leaves the desires of men to their owne choice and their course of life such as they generally choose But then God shall have his day too the day of the Lord shall come in which he shall speak and no man shall answer he shall speak in the voyce of thunder and fearfull noyses and man shall doe no more as he please but must suffer as he hath deserved When Zedekiah reigned in Jerusalem and persecuted the Prophets and destroyed the interests of Religion and put Jeremy into the Dungeon God held his peace save onely that he warned him of the danger and told him of the disorder but it was Zedekiah's day and he was permitted to his pleasure But when he was led in chains to Babylon and his eyes were put out with burning Basons and horrible circles of reflected fires then was Gods day and his voyce was the accent of a fearfull anger that broke him all in pieces It will be all our caâ—es unlesse we hear God speak now and doe his work and serve his interest and bear our selves in our just proportions that is as such the very end of whose being and all our faculties is to serve God and doe justice and charities to our Brother For if we doe the work of God in our own day wee shall receive an infinite mercy in the day of the Lord. But what that is is now to be inquired What wee have done in the body But certainly this is the greatest terror of all The thunders and the fires the earthquakes and the trumpets the brightnesse of holy Angels and the horror of accursed Spirits the voyce of the Archangel who is the Prince of the heavenly host and the Majesty of the Judge in whose service all that Army stands girt with holinesse and obedience all those strange circumstances which have been already reckoned and all those others which wee cannot understand are but little praeparatories and umbrages of this fearfull circumstance All this amazing Majesty and formidable praeparatories are for the passing of an eternall Sentence upon us according to what we have done in the body Woe and alas and God help us all All mankind is an enemy to God his nature is accursed and his manners are depraved It is with the nature of man and with all his manners as Philemon said of the nature of foxes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Every fox is crafty and mischievous and if you gather a whole herd of them there is not a good natur'd beast amongst them all so it is with man by nature he is the child of wrath and by his manners he is the child of the Devill wee call Christian and wee dishonour our Lord and we are Brethren but we oppresse and murther one another it is a great degree of sanctity now a-days not to be so wicked as the worst of men and wee live at the rate as if the best of men did design to themselves an easier condemnation and as if the generality of men consider'd not concerning the degrees of death but did beleeve that in hell no man shall perceive any ease or refreshment in being tormented with a slower fire For consider what we doe in the body 12 or 14 years passe before we choose good or bad and of that which remaines above halfe is spent in sleep and the needs of Nature for the other halfe it is divided as the Stag was when the beasts went a hunting the Lyon hath five parts of sixe The businesse of the world takes so much of our remaining portion that Religion and the service of God have not much time left that can be spar'd and of that which can if we consider how much is allowed to crafty arts of cousenage to oppression and ambition to greedy desires and avaritious prosecutions to the vanities of our youth and the proper sins of every age to the meer idlenesse of man and doing nothing to his fantastick imaginations of greatnesse and pleasures of great and little devices of impertinent law-suites and uncharitable treatings of our Brother it will be intolerable when we consider that we are to stand or fall eternally according to what we have done in the body Gather it all together and set it before thy eyes Almes and Prayers are the summe of all thy good Were thy prayers made in feare and holinesse with passion and
among the Jews yet wee must reckon our pardon by curing the spirituall If I have sinned against God in the shamefull crime of Lust then God hath pardoned my sins when upon my repentance and prayers he hath given me the grace of Chastity My Drunkennesse is forgiven when I have acquir'd the grace of Temperance and a sober spirit My Covetousnesse shall no more be a damning sin when I have a loving and charitable spirit loving to do good and despising the world for every further degree of sin being a neerer step to hell and by consequence the worst punishment of sin it follows inevitably that according as we are put into a contrary state so are our degrees of pardon and the worst punishment is already taken off And therefore we shall find that the great blessing and pardon and redemption which Christ wrought for us is called sanctification holinesse and turning us away from our sins So St. Peter Yee know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation that 's your redemption that 's your deliverance you were taken from your sinfull state that was the state of death this of life and pardon and therefore they are made Synonyma by the same Apostle According as his divine power hath given us all things that pertain to life and godlinesse to live and to be godly is all one to remain in sin and abide in death is all one to redeem us from sin is to snatch us from hell he that gives us godlinesse gives us life and that supposes pardon or the abolition of the rites of eternall death and this was the conclusion of St. Peter's Sermon and the summe totall of our redemption and of our pardon God having raised up his Son sent him to blesse us in turning away every one of you from your iniquity this is the end of Christs passion and bitter death the purpose of all his and all our preaching the effect of baptisme purging washing sanctifying the work of the Sacrament of the Lords Supper the same body that was broken and the same blood that was shed for our redemption is to conform us into his image and likenesse of living and dying of doing and suffering The case is plain just as we leave our sins so Gods wrath shall be taken from us as we get the graces contrary to our former vices so infallibly we are consign'd to pardon If therefore you are in contestation against sin while you dwell in difficulty and sometimes yeeld to sin and sometimes overcome it your pardon is uncertain and is not discernible in its progresse but when sin is mortified and your lusts are dead and under the power of grace and you are led by the Spirit all your fears concerning your state of pardon are causelesse and afflictive without reason but so long as you live at the old rate of lust or intemperance of covetousnesse or vanity of tyranny or oppression of carelesnesse or irreligion flatter not your selves you have no more reason to hope for pardon then a begger for a Crown or a condemned criminall to be made Heir apparent to that Prince whom he would traiterously have slain 4. They have great reason to fear concerning their condition who having been in the state of grace who having begun to lead a good life and give their names to God by solemne deliberate acts of will and understanding and made some progresse in the way of Godlinesse if they shall retire to folly and unravell all their holy vows and commit those evils from which they formerly run as from a fire or inundation their case hath in it so many evills that they have great reason to fear the anger of God and concerning the finall issue of their souls For return to folly hath in it many evils beyond the common state of sin and death and such evils which are most contrary to the hopes of pardon 1. He that falls back into those sins he hath repented of does grieve the holy Spirit of God by which he was sealed to the day of redemption For so the Antithesis is plain and obvious If at the conversion of a sinner there is joy before the beatified Spirits the Angels of God and that is the consummation of our pardon and our consignation to felicity then we may imagine how great an evill it is to grieve the Spirit of God who is greater then the Angels The Children of Israel were carefully warned that they should not offend the Angel Behold I send an Angel before thee beware of him and obey his voyce provoke him not for he will not pardon your transgressions that is he will not spare to punish you if you grieve him Much greater is the evill if we grieve him who sits upon the throne of God who is the Prince of all the Spirits and besides grieving the Spirit of God is an affection that is as contrary to his felicity as lust is to his holinesse both which are essentiall to him Tristitia enim omnium spirituum nequissima est pessima servis Dei omnium spiritus exterminat cruciat Spiritum sanctum said Hennas Sadnesse is the greatest enemy to Gods servants if you grieve Gods Spirit you cast him out for he cannot dwell with sorrow and grieving unlesse it be such a sorrow which by the way of vertue passes on to joy and never ceasing felicity Now by grieving the holy Spirit is meant those things which displease him doing unkindnesse to him and then the grief which cannot in proper sense seise upon him will in certain effects return upon us Ita enim dica said Seneca sacer intra nos Spiritus sedet bonorum malorúmque nostrorum observator custos hic prout à nobis tractatus est ita nos ipse tractat There is a holy spirit dwels in every good man who is the observer and guardian of all our actions and as we treat him so will he treat us Now we ought to treat him sweetly and tenderly thankfully and with observation Deus praecepit Spiritum sanctum utpote pro naturae suae bono tenerum delicatum tranquillitate lenitate quiete pace tractare said Tertullian de Spectaculis The Spirit of God is a loving and a kind Spirit gentle and easy chast and pure righteous and peaceable and when he hath done so much for us as to wash us from our impurities and to cleanse us from our stains and streighten our obliquities and to instruct our ignorances and to snatch us from an intolerable death and to consign us to the day of redemption that is to the resurrection of our bodies from death corruption and the dishonors of the grave and to appease all the storms and uneasynesse and to make us free as the Sons of God and furnished with the riches of the Kingdome and all this with innumerable arts with difficulty and in despite of our lusts
Paul * the zeal of souls * St. Paul's preaching to the Corinthian Church without wages remitting of rights and forgiving of debts when the obliged person could pay but not without much trouble * protection of calamitous persons with hazard of our own interest and a certain trouble concerning which and all other acts of zeal we are to observe the following measures by which our zeal will become safe and holy and by them also we shall perceive the excesses of Zeal and its inordinations which is the next thing I am to consider 1. The first measure by which our zeal may comply with our duty and its actions become laudable is charity to our neighbour For since God receives all that glorification of himself whereby we can serve and minister to his glory reflected upon the foundation of his own goodnesse and bounty and mercy and all the Allellujahs that are or ever shall be sung in heaven are praises and thank givings and that God himself does not receive glory from the acts of his Justice but then when his creatures will not rejoyce in his goodnesse and mercy it followes that we imitate this originall excellency and pursue Gods own method that is glorifie him in via misericordiae in the way of mercy and bounty charity and forgivenesse love and fair compliances There is no greater charity in the world then to save a soul nothing that pleases God better nothing that can be in our hands greater or more noble nothing that can be a more lasting and delightfull honour then that a perishing soul snatched from the flames of an intolerable Hell and born to Heaven upon the wings of piety and mercy by the Ministery of Angels and the graces of the holy Spirit shall to eternall ages blesse God and blesse thee Him for the Author and finisher of salvation and thee for the Minister and charitable instrument that bright starre must needs look pleasantly upon thy face for ever which was by thy hand plac'd there and had it not been by thy Ministery might have been a â—ooty coal in the regions of sorrow Now in order to this God hath given us all some powers and ministeries by which we may by our charity promote this Religion and the great interest of souls Counsels and prayers preaching and writing passionate desires and fair examples going before others in the way of godlinesse and bearing the torch before them that they may see the way and walk in it This is a charity that is prepared more or lesse for every one and by the way we should do well to consider what we have done towards it For as it will be a strange arrest at the day of Judgement to Dives that he fed high and sufferred Lazarus to starve and every garment that lies by thee and perishes while thy naked brother does so too for want of it shall be a bill of Inditement against thy unmercifull soul so it will be in every instance in what thou couldst profit thy brother and didst not thou art accountable and then tell over the times in which thou hast prayed for the conversion of thy sinning brother and compare the times together and observe whether thou hast not tempted him or betrayed him to a sin or encourag'd him in it or didst not hinder him when thou mightest more frequently then thou hast humbly and passionately and charitably and zealously bowed thy head and thy heart and knees to God to redeem that poor soul from hell whither thou seest him descending with as much indifferency as a stone into the bottome of a well In this thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is a good thing to be zealous and put forth all your strength for you can never go too far But then be carefull that this zeal of thy neighbours amendment be only expressed in waies of charity not of cruelty or importune justice He that strikes the Prince for justice as Solomons expression is is a companion of murderers and he that out of zeal of Religion shall go to convert Nations to his opinion by destroying Christians whose faith is intire and summ'd up by the Apostles this man breaks the ground with a sword and sowes tares and waters the ground with bloud and ministers to envie and cruelty to errors and mistake and there comes up nothing but poppies to please the eye and fancy disputes and hypocrisie new summaries of Religion estimated by measures of anger and accursed principles and so much of the religion as is necessary to salvation is laid aside and that brought forth that serves an interest not holinesse that fils the Schooles of a proud man but not that which will fill Heaven Any zeal is proper for Religion but the zeal of the sword and the zeal of anger this is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the bitternesse of zeal and it is a certain temptation to every man against his duty for if the sword turns preacher and dictates propositions by empire in stead of arguments and ingraves them in mens hearts with a ponyard that it shall be death to beleeve what I innocently and ignorantly am perswaded of it must needs be unsafe to try the spirits to try all things to make inquiry and yet without this liberty no man can justifie himself before God or man nor confidently say that his Religion is best since he cannot without a finall danger make himself able to give a right sentence and to follow that which he findes to be the best this may ruine souls by making Hypocrites or carelesse and complyant against conscience or without it but it does not save souls though peradventure it should force them to a good opinion This is inordination of zeal for Christ by reproving St. Peter drawing his sword even in the cause of Christ for his sacred and yet injured person 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Theophylact teaches us not to use the sword though in the cause of God or for God himself because he will secure his own interest only let him be served as himself is pleased to command and it is like Moses passion it throwes the tables of the Law out of our hands and breaks them in pieces out of indignation to see them broken This is the zeal that is now in fashion and hath almost spoyl'd Religion men like the Zelots of the Jewes cry up their Sect and in it their interest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they affect Disciples and fight against the opponents and we shall finde in Scripture that when the Apostles began to preach the meeknesse of the Christian institution salvations and promises charity and humility there was a zeal set up against them the Apostles were zealous for the Gospell the Jewes were zealous for the Law and see what different effects these two zeals did produce the zeal of the Law came to this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they stirred up the City they made tumults they persecuted this way unto the death they got letters from the
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 cur'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 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 intic d 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 food 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 table of Devils 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 phantasines 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 cal 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. Jereme 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 designâ—d 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 lesse and as dung so that we may gain Christ No gain then is pleasant but godlinesse 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 animas catera 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
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 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 temporal 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 after-game of reputation it makes him desperate and incorrigible by 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 Uae 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
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 spirits 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 sure enough 7. You may also watch whether they do not chose their proselyts amongst the rich and vitious that they may serve themselves upon his wealth and their disciple upon his vice 8. If their doctrines evidently and greatly serve the interest of wealth or honour and are ineffective to piety 9. If they strive to gain any one to their confession and are negligent to gain them to good life 10. If by pretences they lessen the severity of Christs precepts and are easy in dispensations and licencious glosses 11. If they invent suppletories to excuse an evil man and yet to reconcile his bad life with the hopes of heaven you have reason to suspect the whole and to reject these parts of errour and designe which in themselves are so unhandsom alwayes and somtimes criminal He that shal observe the Church of Rome so implacably fierce for purgatory and the Popes supremacy from clerical immunities and the Superiority of the Ecclesiastical persons to secular for indulgencies and precious and costly pardons and then so full of devises to reconcile an evil life with heaven requiring onely contrition even at the last for the abolition of eternal guilt and having a thousand wayes to commute and take off the temporal will see he hath reason to be jealous that interest is in these bigger then the religion and yet that the danger of the soul is greater then that interest and therefore the man is to do accordingly Here indeed is the great necessity that we should have the prudence and discretion the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of serpents ut cernamus acutum Quam aut aquila aut serpens Epidaurius For so serpents as they are curious to preserve their heads from contrition or a bruise so also to safeguard themselves that they be not charmed with sweet and enticing words of false prophets who charm not wisely but cunningly leading aside unstable souls against these we must stop our ears or lend our attention according to the foregoing measures and significations but here also I am to insert two or three cautions 1. We cannot expect that by these or any other signes we shall be inabled to discover concerning all men whether they teach an errour or no. Neither can a man by these reprove a Lutheran or a Zuinglian a Dominican or a Franciscan a Russian or a Greek a Muscovite or a Georgian because those which are certain signes of false teachers do signifie such men who destroy an article of faith or a commandment God was careful to secure us from death by removing the Lepers from the camp and giving certain notices of distinction and putting a term between the living and the dead but he was not pleased to secure every man from innocent and harmlesse errors from the mistakes of men and the failings of mortality The signes which can distinguish a living man from a dead will not also distinguish a black man from a brown or a pale from a white It is enough that we decline those guides that lead us to hell but not to think that we are inticed to death by the weaknesses of every disagreeing brother 2. In all discerning of sects we must be careful to distinguish the faults of men from the evils of their doctrine for some there are that say very well and do very ill 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Multos Thyrsigeros paucos est cernere Bacchos Many men of holy calling and holy religion that are of unholy lives homines ignavâ oper â Philosophâ sententiâ But these must be separated from the institution and the evil of the men is onely to be noted as that such persons be not taken to our single conduct and personal ministery I will be of the mans religion if it be good though he be not but I will not make him my confessor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If he be not wise for himself I will not sit down at his feet lest we mingle filthinesse instead of being cleansed and instructed 3. Let us make one separation more then we may consider and act according to the premises If we espie a designe or an evil mark upon one doctrine let us divide it from the other that are not so spotted for indeed the publick communions of men are at this day so ordered that they are as fond of their errours as of their truthes and somtimes moct zealous for what they have least reason to be so and if we can by any arts of prudence separate from an evil proposition and communicate in all the good then we may love colleges of religious persons though we do not worship images and we may obey our Prelates though we do no injury to princes and we may be zealous against a crime though we be not imperious over mens persons and we may be diligent in the conduct of souls
potion And most certainly it is the greatest of evils to destroy a soul for whom the Lord Jesus dyed and to undoe that grace which our Lord purchased with so much sweat and bloud pains and a mighty charity And because very many sins are sins of society and confederation such are fornication drunkennesse bribery simony rebellion schisme and many others it is a hard and a weighty consideration what shall become of any one of us who have tempted our Brother or Sister to sin and death for though God hath spar'd our life and they are dead and their debt-books are sealed up till the day of account yet the mischief of our sin is gone before us and it is like a murther but more execrable the soul is dead in trespasses and sins and sealed up to an eternall sorrow and thou shalt see at Dooms-day what damnable uncharitablenesse thou hast done That soul that cryes to those rocks to cover her if it had not been for thy perpetuall temptations might have followed the Lamb in a white robe and that poor man that is cloathed with shame and flames of fire would have shin'd in glory but that thou didst force him to be partner of thy basenesse And who shall pay for this losse a soul is lost by thy means thou hast defeated the holy purposes of the Lord 's bitter passion by thy impurities and what shall happen to thee by whom thy Brother dies eternally Of all the considerations that concern this part of the horrors of Dooms-day nothing can be more formidable then this to such whom it does concern and truly it concerns so many and amongst so many perhaps some persons are so tender that it might affright their hopes and discompose their industries and spritefull labours of repentance but that our most mercifull Lord hath in the midst of all the fearfull circumstances of his second coming interwoven this one comfort relating to this which to my sense seems the most fearfull and killing circumstance Two shall be grinding at one mill the one shall be taken and the other left Two shall be in a bed the one shall be taken and the other left that is those who are confederate in the same fortunes and interests and actions may yet have a different sentence for an early and an active repentance will wash off this account and put it upon the tables of the Crosse and though it ought to make us diligent and carefull charitable and penitent hugely penitent even so long as we live yet when we shall appear together there is a mercy that shall there separate us who sometimes had blended each other in a common crime Blessed be the mercies of of God who hath so carefully provided a fruitfull shower of grace to refresh the miseries and dangers of the greatest part of mankind Thomas Aquinas was used to beg of God that he might never be tempted from his low fortune to Prelacies and dignities Ecclesiasticall and that his minde might never be discomposed or polluted with the love of any creature and that he might by some instrument or other understand the state of his deceased Brother and the story sayes that he was heard in all In him it was a great curiosity or the passion and impertinencies of a uselesse charity to search after him unlesse he had some other personall concernment then his relation of kindred But truly it would concern very many to be solicitous concerning the event of those souls with whom we have mingled death and sin for many of those sentences which have passed and decreed concerning our departed relatives will concern us dearly and we are bound in the same bundles and shall be thrown into the same fires unlesse we repent for our own sins and double our sorrows for their damnation 5. We may consider that this infinite multitude of men and women Angels and Devils is not ineffective as a number in Pythagoras Tables but must needs have influence upon every spirit that shall there appear For the transactions of that court are not like Orations spoken by a Grecian Orator in the circles of his people heard by them that croud nearest him or that sound limited by the circles of aire or the inclosure of a wall but every thing is represented to every person and then let it be considered when thy shame and secret turpitude thy midnight revels and secret hypocrisies thy lustfull thoughts and treacherous designes thy falshood to God and startings from thy holy promises thy follies and impieties shall be laid open before all the world and that then shall be spoken by the trumpet of an Archangell upon the house top the highest battlements of Heaven all those filthy words and lewd circumstances which thou didst act secretly thou wilt find that thou wilt have reason strangely to be ashamed All the wise men in the world shall know how vile thou hast been and then consider with what confusion of face wouldst thou stand in the presence of a good man and a severe if peradventure he should suddenly draw thy curtain and finde thee in the sins of shame and lust it must be infinitely more when God and all the Angels of heaven and earth all his holy myriads and all his redeemed Saints shall stare and wonder at thy impurities and follies I have read a story that a young Gentleman being passionately by his mother disswaded from entring into the severe courses of a religious and single life broke from her importunity by saying Volo servare animam meam I am resolved by all means to save my soul. But when he had undertaken a rule with passion he performed it carelesly and remifly and was but lukewarm in his Religion and quickly proceeded to a melancholy and wearied spirit and from thence to a sicknesse and the neighbourhood of death but falling into an agony and a phantastick vision dream'd that he saw himself summon'd before Gods angry throne and from thence hurryed into a place of torments where espying his Mother full of scorn she upbraided him with his former answer and asked him Why he did not save his soul by all means according as he undertook But when the sick man awaked and recovered he made his words good indeed and prayed frequently and fasted severely and laboured humbly and conversed charitably and mortified himself severely and refused such secular solaces which other good men received to refresh and sustain their infirmities and gave no other account to them that asked him but this If I could not in my extasie or dream endure my Mothers upbraiding my follies and weak Religion how shall I be able to suffer that God should redargue me at Dooms-day and the Angels reproach my lukewarmnesse and the Devils aggravate my sins and all the Saints of God deride my follies and hypocrisies The effect of that mans consideration may serve to actuate a meditation in every one of us for we shall all be at that passe that unlesse our shame and sorrowes
shall escape for being secret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And all prejudices being laid aside it shall be considered concerning our evill rules and false principles Cum cepero tempus ego justitias judicabo when I shall receive the people I shall judge according unto right so we read When we shall receive time I will judge justices and judgements so the vulgar Latin reads it that is in the day of the Lord when time is put into his hand and time shall be no more he shall judge concerning those judgements when men here make of things below and the fighting man shall perceive the noises of drunkards and fools that cryed him up for daring to kill his Brother to have been evill principles and then it will be declared by strange effects that wealth is not the greatest fortune and ambition was not but an ill counsellor and to lye for a good cause was no piety and to do evill for the glory of God was but an ill worshipping him and that good nature was not well imploy'd when it spent it self in vicious company and evill compliances and that piety was not softnesse and want of courage and that poverty ought not to have been contemptible and that cause that is unsuccessefull is not therefore evill and what is folly here shall be wisdome there then shall men curse their evill guides and their accursed superinduced necessities and the evill guises of the world and then when silence shall be found innocence and eloquence in many instances condemned as criminall when the poor shall reign and Generals and Tyrants shall lye low in horrible regions when he that lost all shall finde a treasure and he that spoil'd him shall be found naked and spoil'd by the destroyer then we shall finde it true that we ought here to have done what our Judge our blessed Lord shall do there that is take our measures of good and evill by the severities of the word of God by the Sermons of Christ and the four Gospels and by the Epistles of S. Paul by Justice and charity by the Lawes of God and the lawes of wise Princes and Republicks by the rules of Nature and the just proportions of Reason by the examples of good men and the proverbs of wise men by severity and the rules of Discipline for then it shall be that truth shall ride in triumph and the holinesse of Christs Sermons shall be manifest to all the world that the Word of God shall be advanced over all the discourses of men and Wisdome shall be justified by all her children Then shall be heard those words of an evill and tardy repentance and the just rewards of folly We fools thought their life madnesse but behold they are justified before the throne of God and we are miserable for ever Here men think it strange if others will not run into the same excesse of riot but there they will wonder how themselves should be so mad and infinitely unsafe by being strangely and inexcusably unreasonable The summe is this The Judge shall appear cloathed with wisdome and power and justice and knowledge and an impartiall Spirit making no separations by the proportions of this world but by the measures of God not giving sentence by the principles of our folly and evill customes but by the severity of his own Laws and measures of the Spirit Non est judicium Dei sicut hominum God does not judge as Man judges 6. Now that the Judge is come thus arrayed thus prepared so instructed let us next consider the circumstances of our appearing and his sentence and first I consider that men at the day of Judgement that belong not to the portion of life shall have three sorts of accusers 1. Christ himself who is their Judge 2. Their own conscience whom they have injured and blotted with characters of death and foul dishonour 3. The Devill their enemy whom they served 1. Christ shall be their accuser not only upon the stock of those direct injuries which I before reckoned of crucifying the Lord of life once and again c. But upon the titles of contempt and unworthinesse of unkindnesse and ingratitude and the accusation will be nothing else but a plain representation of those artifices and assistances those bonds and invitations those constrainings and importunities which our dear Lord used to us to make it almost impossible to lye in sin and necessary to be sav'd For it will it must needs be a fearfull exprobration of our unworthinesse when the Judge himself shall bear witnesse against us that the wisdome of God himself was strangely imployed in bringing us safely to felicity I shall draw a short Scheme which although it must needs be infinitely short of what God hath done for us yet it will be enough to shame us * God did not only give his Son for an example and the Son gave himself for a price for us but both gave the holy Spirit to assist us in mighty graces for the verifications of Faith and the entertainments of Hope and the increase and perseverance of Charity * God gave to us a new nature he put another principle into us a third part of a perfective constitution we have the Spirit put into us to be a part of us as properly to produce actions of a holy life as the soul of man in the body does produce the naturall * God hath exalted humane nature and made it in the person of Jesus Christ to sit above the highest seat of Angels and the Angels are made ministring spirits ever since their Lord became our Brother * Christ hath by a miraculous Sacrament given us his body to eat and his bloud to drink he made waies that we may become all one with him * He hath given us an easie religion and hath established our future felicity upon naturall and pleasant conditions and we are to be happy hereafter if we suffer God to make us happy here and things are so ordered that a man must take more pains to perish then to be happy * God hath found out rare wayes to make our prayers acceptable our weak petitions the desires of our imperfect souls to prevail mightily with God and to lay a holy violence and an undeniable necessity upon himself and God will deny us nothing but when we aske of him to do us ill offices to give us poisons and dangers and evill nourishment and temptations and he that hath given such mighty power to the prayers of his servants yet will not be moved by those potent and mighty prayers to do any good man an evill turn or to grant him one mischief in that only God can deny us * But in all things else God hath made all the excellent things in heaven and earth to joyn towards holy and fortunate effects for he hath appointed an Angell to present the prayers of Saints and Christ makes intercession for us and the holy Spirit
and sorrow have an essence and proper being and are set there to be suffer'd intirely by every undone man that dies there for ever 2. The evils of this world are materiall and bodily the pressing of a shoulder or the straining of a joynt the dislocation of a bone or the extending of an artery a bruise in the flesh or the pinching of the skin a hot liver or a sickly stomach and then the minde is troubled because its instrument is ill at ease but all the proper troubles of this life are nothing but the effects of an uneasie body or an abused fancy and therefore can be no bigger then a blow or a cousenage then a wound or a dream only the trouble increases as the soul works it and if it makes reflex acts and begins the evill upon its own account then it multiplies and doubles because the proper scene of grief is open'd and sorrow peeps through the corners of the soul. But in those regions and daies of sorrow when the soul shall be no more depending upon the body but the perfect principle of all its actions the actions are quick and the perceptions brisk the passions are extreme and the motions are spirituall the pains are like the horrors of a Devill and the groans of an evill spirit not slow like the motions of a heavie foot or a loaden arme but quick as an Angels wing active as lightning and a grief then is nothing like a grief now and the words of mans tongue which are fitted to the uses of this world are as unfit to signifie the evils of the next as person and nature and hand and motion and passion are to represent the effects of the Divine attributes actions and subsistence 3. The evill portions of the next world is so great that God did not create or design it in the first intention of things and production of essences he made the Kingdome of Heaven 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the foundation of the world for so it is observable that Christ shall say to the Sheep at his right hand Receive the Kingdome prepared for you from the beginning of the world but to the Goats and accursed spirits he speaks of no such primitive and originall design it was accidentall and a consequent to horrid crimes that God was forced to invent and to after create that place of torments 4. And when God did create and prepare that place he did not at all intend it for man it was prepared for the Divill and his Angels so saith the Judge himself Go ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devill and his Angels 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which my Father prepared for the Devill so some copies read it God intended it not for man but man would imitate the Devils pride and listen to the whispers of an evill spirit and follow his temptations and rebell against his Maker and then God also against his first design resolved to throw such persons into that place that was prepared for the Devill for so great was the love of God to mankind that he prepared joyes infinite and never ceasing for man before he had created him but he did not predetermine him to any evill but when he was forced to it by mans malice he doing what God forbad him God cast him thither where he never intended him but it was not mans portion he designed it not at first and at last also he invited him to repentance and when nothing could do it he threw man into anothers portion because he would not accept of what was designed to be his own 5. The evill portion shall be continuall without intermission of evill no dayes of rest no nights of sleep no ease from labour no periods of the stroke nor taking off the hand no intervals between blow and blow but a continued stroke which neither shortens the life nor introduces a brawny patience or the toleration of an oxe but it is the same in every instant and great as the first stroke of lightning the smart is great for ever as at the first change from the rest of the grave to the flames of that horrible burning The Church of Rome amongst some other strange opinions hath inserted this one into her publick Offices that the perishing souls in hell may have sometimes remission and refreshment like the fits of an intermitting feaver for so it is in the Roman Missal printed at Paris 1626. in the Masse for the dead Ut quia de ejus vitae qualitate diffidimus si plenam veniam anima ipsius obtinere non potest saltem vel inter ipsa tormenta quae forsan patitur refrigerium de abundantia miserationum tuarum sentiat and something like this is that of Prudentius Sunt spiritibus saepè nocentibus Poenarum celebres sub Styge feriae c. The evill spirits have ease of their pain and he names their holiday then when the Resurrection of our Lord from the grave is celebrated Marcent suppliciis Tartara mitibus Exultátque sui carceris otio Umbrarum populus liber ab ignibus Nec fervent solito flumina sulphure They then thought that when the Paschall taper burn'd the flames of hell could not burn till the holy wax was spent but because this is a fancy without ground or revelation and is against the Analogie of all those expressions of our Lord Where the worm dyeth not and the fire is never quenched and divers others it is sufficient to have noted it without further consideration the pains of hell have no rest no drop of water is allowed to cool the tongue there is no advocate to plead for them no mercy belongs to their portion but fearfull wrath and continuall burnings 6. And yet this is not the worst of it for as it is continuall during its abode so its abode is for ever it is continuall and eternall Tertullian speaks something otherwise Pro magnitudine cruciatus non diuturni verùm sempiterni not continuall or the pains of every day but such which shall last for ever But Lactantius is more plain in this affair The same divine fire by the same power and force shall burn the wicked and shall repair instantly whatsoever of the body it does consume Ac sibi ipsi aeternum â—pabulum subministrabit and shall make for it self an eternall fuell Vermibus flammis discruciatibus aevum Immortale dedit senio ne poena periret Non pereunte animâ So Prudentius eternall wormes and unextinguished flames and immortall punishment is prepared for the ever-never dying souls of wicked men Origen is charged by the ancient Churches for saying that after a long time the Devils and the accursed souls shall be restored to the Kingdome of God and that after a long time again they shall be restored to their state and so it was from their fall and shall be forever and it may be that might be the meaning of Tertullians expression of cruciatus non
will therefore that prayers and supplications and intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men and this is a duty that is prescrib'd to all them that are concern'd in the duty and in the blessings of Prayer but this is it which I say if their piety be but ordinary their prayer can be effectuall but in easy purposes and to smaller degrees but he that would work effectively towards a great deliverance or in great degrees towards the benefit or eaâ—e of any of his relatives can be confident of his successe but in the same degree in which his person is gracious There are strange things in heaven judgments there are made of things and persons by the measures of Religion and a plain promise produces effects of wonder and miracle and the changes that are there made are not effected by passions and interests and corporall changes and the love that is there is not the same thing that it is here it is more beneficiall more reasonable more holy of other designes and strange productions and upon that stock it is that a holy poor man that possesses no more it may be then an Ewe-lambe that eats of his bread and drinks of his cup and is a daughter to him and is all his temporall portion this poor man is ministred to by Angels and attended to by God and the Holy Spirit makes intercession for him and Christ joyns the mans prayer to his own advocation and the man by prayer shall save the City and destroy the fortune of a Tyrant army even then when God sees it good it should be so for he will no longer deny him any thing but when it is no blessing and when it is otherwise his prayer is most heard when it is most denyed 2ly That we should prevaile in intercessions for others we are to regard and to take care that as our piety so also must our offices be extraordinary He that prays to recover a family from an hereditary curse or to reverse a Sentence of God to cancell a Decree of heaven gone out against his friend hee that would heale the sick with his prayer or with his devotion prevaile against an army must not expect such great effects upon a Morning or Evening Collect or an honest wish put into the recollections of a prayer or a period put in on purpose Mamercus Bishop of Vienna seeing his City and all the Diocese in great danger of perishing by an earthquake instituted great Letanies and solemn supplications besides the ordinary devotions of his usuall hours of prayer and the Church from his example took up the practise and translated it into an anniversary solemnity and upon St. Mark 's day did solemnly intercede with God to divert or prevent his judgments falling upon the people majoribus Litani is so they are called with the more solemn supplications they did pray unto God in behalf of their people And this hath in it the same consideration that is in every great necessity for it is a great thing for a man to be so gracious with God as to be able to prevaile for himself and his friend for himself and his relatives and therefore in these cases as in all great needs it is the way of prudence and security that we use all those greater offices which God hath appointed as instruments of importunity and arguments of hope and acts of prevailing and means of great effect and advocation such as are separating days for solemn prayer all the degrees of violence and earnest addresse fasting and prayer almes and prayer acts of repentance and prayer praying together in publick with united hearts and above all praying in the susception and communication of the holy Sacrament the effects and admirable issues of which we know not and perceive not we loâ—e because we desire not and choose to lose many great blessings rather then purchase them with the frequent commemoration of that sacrifice which was offered up for all the needs of Mankind and for obtaining all favours and graces to the Catholick Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God never refuses to hear a holy prayer and our prayers can never be so holy as when they are offered up in the union of Christs sacrifice For Christ by that sacrifice reconcil'd God and the world And because our needs continue therefore we are commanded to continue the memory and to represent to God that which was done to satisfie all our needs Then we receive Christ we are after a secret and mysterious but most reall and admirable manner made all one with Christ and if God giving us his Son could not but with him give us all things else how shall he refuse our persons when we are united to his person when our souls are joined to his soul our body nourished by his body and our souls sanctified by his bloud and cloth'd with his robes and marked with his character and sealed with his Spirit and renewed with holy vows and consign'd to all his glories and adopted to his inheritance when we represent his death and pray in vertue of his passion and imitate his intercession and doe that which God commands and offer him in our manner that which he essentially loves can it be that either any thing should be more prevalent or that God can possibly deny such addresses and such importunities Try it often and let all things else be answerable and you cannot have greater reason for your confidence Doe not all the Christians in the world that understand Religion desire to have the holy Sacrament when they die when they are to make their great appearance before God and to receive their great consignation to their eternall sentence good or bad And if then be their greatest needs that is their greatest advantage and instrument of acceptation Therefore if you have a great need to be serv'd or a great charity to serve and a great pity to minister and a dear friend in a sorrow take Christ along in thy prayers in all thy ways thou canst take him take him in affection and take him in a solemnity take him by obedience and receive him in the Sacrament and if thou then offerest up thy prayers and makest thy needs known if thou nor thy friend be not relieved if thy party be not prevalent and the war be not appeased or the plague be not cured or the enemy taken off there is something else in it but thy prayer is good and pleasing to God and dressed with circumstances of advantage and thy person is apt to be an intercessor and thou hast done all that thou canst the event must be left to God and the secret reasons of the deniall either thou shalt find in time or thou maist trust with God who certainly does it with the greatest wisdome and the greatest charity I have in this thing onely one caution to insert viz. That in our importunity and extraordinary offices for others we must not make our accounts by multitude
under the eye of heaven that many Nations are marked for intemperance and that it is lesse noted because it is so popular and universall and that even in the midst of the glories of Christianity there are so many persons drunk or too full with meat or greedy of lust even now that the Spirit of God is given to us to make us sober and temperate and chaste we may well imagine since all men have flesh and all men have nor the spirit the flesh is the parent of sin and death and it can be nothing else And it is no otherwise when we are tempted with pain We are so impatient of pain that nothing can reconcile us to it not the laws of God not the necessities of nature not the society of all our kindred and of all the world not the interest of vertue not the hopes of heaven we will submit to pain upon no terms but the basest and most dishonorable for if sin bring us to pain or affront or sicknesse we choose that so it be in the retinue of a lust and a base desire but we accuse Nature and blaspheme God we murmur and are impatient when pain is sent to us from him that ought to send it and intends it as a mercy when it comes But in the matter of afflictions and bodily sicknesse we are so weak and broken so uneasie and unapt to sufferance that this alone is beyond the cure of the old Philosophy Many can endure poverty and many can retire from shame and laugh at home and very many can endure to be slaves but when pain and sharpnesse are to be endured for the interests of vertue we finde but few Martyrs and they that are suffer more within themselves by their fears and their temptations by their uncertain purposes and violences to Nature then by the Hang-mans sword the Martyrdome is within and then he hath won his Crown not when he hath suffered the blow but when he hath overcome his fears and made his spirit conqueror It was a sad instance of our infirmity when of the 40 Martyrs of Cappadocia set in a freezing lake almost consummate and an Angell was reaching the Crowne and placing it upon their brows the flesh fail'd one of them and drew the spirit after it and the man was called off from his Scene of noble contention and dyed in warm water Odi artus fragilémque hunc corporis usum Desertorem animi We carry about us the body of death and we bring evils upon our selves by our follies and then know not how to bear them and the flesh forsakes the spirit And indeed in sicknesse the infirmity is so very great that God in a manner at that time hath reduced all Religion into one vertue Patience with its appendages is the summe totall of almost all our duty that is proper to the days of sorrow and we shall find it enough to entertain all our powers and to imploy all our aids the counsels of wise men and the comforts of our friends the advices of Scripture and the results of experience the graces of God and the strength of our own resolutions are all then full of imployments and find it work enough to secure that one grace For then it is that a could is wrapped about our heads and our reason stoops under sorrow the soul is sad and its instrument is out of tune the auxiliaries are disorder'd and every thought sits heavily then a comfort cannot make the body feel it and the soule is not so abstracted to rejoyce much without its partner so that the proper joyes of the soul such as are hope and wise discourses and satisfactions of reason and the offices of Religion are felt just as we now perceive the joyes of heaven with so little relish that it comes as news of a victory to a man upon the Rack or the birth of an heir to one condemned to dye he hears a story which was made to delight him but it came when he was dead to joy and all its capacities and therefore sicknesse though it be a good Monitor yet it is an ill stage to act some vertues in and a good man cannot then doe much and therefore he that is in the state of flesh and blood can doe nothing at all 4. But in these considerations we find our nature in disadvantages and a strong man may be overcome when a stronger comes to disarme him and pleasure and pain are the violences of choice and chance but it is no better in any thing else for nature is weak in all its strengths and in its fights at home and abroad in its actions and passions we love some things violently and hate others unreasonably any thing can fright us when we should be confident and nothing can scare us when we ought to feare the breaking of a glasse puts us into a supreme anger and we are dull and indifferent as a Stoick when we see God dishonour'd we passionately desire our preservation and yet we violently destroy our selves and will not be hindred we cannot deny a friend when he tempts us to sin and death and yet we daily deny God when he passionately invites us to life and health we are greedy after money and yet spend it vainly upon our lusts we hate to see any man flatter'd but our selves and we can endure folly if it be on our side and a sin for our interest we desire health and yet we exchange it for wine and madnesse we sink when a persecution comes and yet cease not daily to persecute our selves doing mischiefs worse then the sword of Tyrants and great as the malice of a Devill 5. But to summe up all the evills that can be spoken of the infirmities of the flesh the proper nature and habitudes of men are so foolish and impotent so averse and peevish to all good that a mans will is of it self onely free to choose evils Neither is it a contradiction to say liberty and yet suppose it determin'd to one object onely because that one object is the thing we choose For although God hath set life and death before us fire and water good and evill and hath primarily put man into the hands of his owne counsell that he might have chosen good as well as evill yet because he did not but fell into an evill condition and corrupted manners and grew in love with it and infected all his children with vicious examples and all nations of the world have contracted some universall stains and the thoughts of mans hearts are onely evill and that continually and there is not one that doth good no not one that sinneth not since I say all the world have sinned we cannot suppose a liberty of indifferency to good and bad it is impossible in such a liberty that there should be no variety that all should choose the same thing but a liberty of complacency or delight we may suppose that is so that though naturally he might
things of God and all other duties to be the things of the world for it was a Pharisaicall device to cry Corban and to refuse to relieve their aged Parents it is good to give to a Church but it is better to give to the Poor and though they must be both provided for yet in cases of dispute Mercy carries the cause against Religion and the Temple And although Mary was commended for choosing the better part yet Mary had done worse if she had been at the foot of her Master when she should have relieved a perishing brother Martha was troubled with much serving that was more then need and therefore she was to blame and sometimes hearing in some circumstances may be more then needs and some women are troubled with over-much hearing and then they had better have been serving the necessities of their house 4. This rule is not to be extended to the relatives of Religion for although the things of the Spirit are better then the things of the World yet a spirituall man is not in humane regards to be preferred before Princes and noble personages Because a man is called spirituall in severall regards and for various measures and manners of partaking of the Spirit of grace or co-operating toward the works of the Spirit * A King and a Bishop both have callings in order to godlinesse and honesty and spirituall effects towards the advancement of Christs Kingdome whose representatives severally they are * But whether of these two works more immediately or more effectively cannot at all times be known and therefore from hence no argument can be drawn concerning doing them civill regards * and possibly the partaking the Spirit is a neerer relation to him then doing his ministeries and serving his ends upon others * and if relations to God and Gods Spirit could bring an obligation of giving proportionable civill honour every holy man might put in some pretence for dignities above some Kings and some Bishops * But as the things of the Spirit are in order to the affairs of another world so they naturally can inferre onely such a relative dignity as can be expressed in spirituall manners But because such relations are subjected in men of this life and we now converse especially in materiall and secular significations therefore we are to expresse our regards to men of such relations by proportionable expressions but because civill excellencies are the proper ground of receiving and exacting civill honors and spirituall excellencies doe onely claim them accidentally and indirectly therefore in titles of honour and humane regards the civill praeeminence is the appendix of the greatest civill power and imployment and is to descend in proper measures and for a spirituall relation to challenge a temporall dignity is as if the best Musick should challenge the best cloathes or a Lute-string should contend with a Rose for the honour of the greatest sweetnesse * Adde to this that although temporall things are in order to spirituall and therefore are lesse perfect yet this is not so naturally for temporall things are properly in order to the felicity of man in his proper and present constitution and it is by a supernaturall grace that now they are thrust forward to a higher end of grace and glory and therefore temporall things and persons and callings have properly the chiefest temporall regard and Christ took nothing of this away from them but put them higher by sanctifying and ennobling them * But then the higher calling can no more suppose the higher man then the richest trade can suppose the richest man From callings to men the argument is fallacious and a Smith is a more usefull man then he that teaches Logick but not always to be more esteemed and called to stand at the chairs of Princes and Nobles * Holy persons and holy things and all great relations are to be valued by generall proportions to their correlatives but if wee descend to make minute and exact proportions and proportion an inch of temporall to a minute of spirituall we must needs be hugely deceived unlesse we could measure the motion of an Angell by a string or the progressions of the Spirit by weight and measure of the staple * And yet if these measures were taken it would be unreasonable that the lower of the higher kind should be preferr'd before the most perfect and excellent in a lower order of things A man generally is to be esteemed above a woman but not the meanest of her subjects before the most excellent Queen not alwayes this man before this woman Now Kings and Princes are the best in all temporall dignities and therefore if they had in them no spirituall relations and consequent excellencies as they have very many yet are not to be undervalu'd to spirituall relations which in this world are very imperfect weak partiall and must stay till the next world before they are in a state of excellency propriety and perfection and then also all shall have them according to the worth of their persons not of their calling * But lastly what men may not challenge is not their just and proper due but spirituall persons and the neerest relatives to God stand by him but so long at they dwell low and safe in humility and rise high in nothing but in labours and zeal of soules and devotion * In proportion to this rule a Church may be pull'd down to save a Town and the Vessels of the Church may be sold to redeem Captives when there is a great calamity imminent and prepared for reliefe and no other way to succour it But in the whole the duty of zeale requires that we neglect an ordinary visit rather then an ordinary prayer and a great profit rather then omit a required duty No excuse can legitimate a sin and he that goes about to distinguish between his duty and his profit and if he cannot reconcile them will yet tie them together like a Hyaena and a Dog this man pretends to Religion but secures the world and is indifferent and lukewarme towards that so he may be warme and safe in the possession of this 2. To that fervour and zeal that is necessary and a duty it is required that we be constant and persevering Esto fidelis ad mortem said the Spirit of God to the Angel of the Church of Smyrna Be faithfull unto death and I will give thee a crown of life For he that is warm to day and cold to morrow zealous in his resolution and weary in his practises fierce in the beginning and slack and easie in his progresse hath not yet well chosen what side he will be of he sees not reason enough for Religion and he hath not confidence enough for its contrary and therefore he is duplicis animi as St. James calls him of a doubtfull mind For Religion is worth as much to day as it was yesterday and that cannot change though we doe and if we doe we have left God and whither
its abode For some sins are so agreeable to the spirit of a fool and an abused person because he hath fram'd his affections to them and they comply with his unworthy interest that when God out of an angry kindnesse smites the man and punishes the sin the man does fearfully defend his beloved sin as the serpent does his head which he would most tenderly preserve But therefore God that knowes all our tricks and devices our stratagems to be undone hath therefore apportioned out his punishments by analogies by proportions and entaile so that when every sin enters into its proper portion we may discern why God is angry and labour to appease him speedily 2. The second appendage to this consideration is this that there are some states of sin which expose a man to all mischief as it can happen by taking off from him all his guards and defences by driving the good Spirit from him by stripping him of the guards of Angels But this is the effect of an habituall sin a course of an evill life and it is called in Scripture a grieving the good Spirit of God But the guard of Angels is in Scripture only promised to them that live godly The Angels of the Lord pitch their tents round about them that fear him and delivereth them said David 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And the Hellenists use to call the Angels 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 watchmen which custody is at first designed and appointed for all when by baptisme they give up their names to Christ and enter into the covenant of Religion And of this the Heathen have been taught something by conversation with the Hebrewes and Christians unicuique nostrum dare paedagogum Deum said Seneca to Lucilius non primarium sed ex eorum numero quos Ovidius vocat ex plebe deos There is a guardian God assigned to every one of us of the number of those which are of the second order such are those of whom David speaks before the Gods will I sing praise unto thee and it was the doctrine of the Stoicks that to every one there was assigned a Genius and a Juno Quamobrem major coelitum populus etiam quam hominum intelligi potest quum singuli ex semetipsis totidem Deos faciant Junones geniosque adoptando sibi said Pliny Every one does adopt Gods into his family and get a Gunius and a Juno of their own Junonem meam iratam habeam it was the oath of Quartilla in Petronius and Socrates in Plato is said to swear by his Juno though afterwards among the Romans it became the womans oath and a note of effeminacy But the thing they aim'd at was this that God took a care of us below and sent a ministring spirit for our defence but that this is only upon the accounts of piety they know not But we are taught it by the Spirit of God in Scripture For the Angels are ministring spirits sent forth to minister to the good of them who shal be heirs of salvation and concerning St. Peter the faithfull had an opinion that it might be his Angell agreeing to the Doctrine of our blessed Lord who spake of Angels appropriate to his little ones to infants to those that belong to him Now what God said to the sons of Israel is also true to us Christians Behold I send an Angell before thee beware of him and obey his voice provoke him not for he will not pardon your trangressions So that if we provoke the Spirit of the Lord to anger by a course of evill living either the Angell will depart from us or if he staies he will strike us The best of these is bad enough and he is highly miserable Qui non sit tanto hoc custode securus whom an Angell cannot defend from mischief nor any thing secure him from the wrath of God It was the description and character which the Erythrean Sibyl gave of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is Gods appellative to be a giver of excellent rewards to just and innocent persons but to assign to evill men fury wrath and sorrow for their portion If I should lanch further into this Dead sea I should finde nothing but horrid shriekings and the skuls of dead men utterly undone Fearfull it is to consider that sin does not only drive us into calamity but it makes us also impatient and imbitters our spirit in the sufferance * It cryes loud for vengeance and so torments men before the time even with such fearfull outcries and horrid alarms that their hell begins before the fire is kindled * It hinders our prayers and consequently makes us hopelesse and helplesse * It perpetually affrights the conscience unlesse by its frequent stripes it brings a callousnesse and an insensible damnation upon it * It makes us to lose all that which Christ purchased for us all the blessings of his providence the comforts of his spirit the aids of his grace the light of his countenance the hopes of his glory it makes us enemies to God and to be hated by him more then he hates a dog and with a dog shall be his portion to eternall ages with this only difference that they shall both be equally excluded from heaven but the dog shall not and the sinner shall descend into hell and which is the confirmation of all evill for a transient sin God shall inflict an eternall Death Well might it be said in the words of God by the Prophet ponam Babylonem in possessionem Erinacei Babylon shall be the possession of an Hedgehog that 's a sinners dwelling incompassed round with thornes and sharp prickles afflictions and uneasinesse all over So that he that wishes his sin big and prosperous wishes his Bee as big as a Bull and his Hedgehog like an Elephant the pleasure of the honey would not cure the mighty sting and nothing make recompense or be a good equall to the evill of an eternall ruine But of this there is no end I summe up all with the saying of Publius Mimus Tolerabilior est qui mori jubet quà m qui malè vivere He is more to be endured that puts a man to death then he that betrayes him into sin For the end of this is death eternall Sermon XXII THE GOOD and EVILL TONGUE Ephes. 4. 29. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth but that which is good to the use of edifying that it may minister grace unto the hearers HE that had an ill memory did wisely comfort himselfe by reckoning the advantages he had by his forgetfulnesse For by this means he was hugely secured against malice and ambition for his anger went off with the short notice and observation of the injury and he saw himself unfit for the businesses of other men or to make records in his head undertake to conduct the intrigues of affairs of a multitude who was apt to
forget the little accounts of his own seldom reading He also remembred this that his pleasures in reading books were more frequent while he remembred but little of yesterdays study and to morrow the book is newes and with its novelties gives him fresh entertainment while the retaining brain layes the book aside and is full already Every book is new to an ill memory and one long book is a Library and its parts return fresh as the morning which becomes a new day though by the revolution of the same sun Besides these it brought him to tell truth for fear of shame and in meer necessity made his speech little and his discourses short because the web drawn from his brain was soon spun out and his fountain grew quickly dry and left running throug◠forgetfulnesse * He that is not eloquent and faire spoken hath some of these comforts to plead in excuse of his ill fortune or defective nature For if he can but hold his peace he shall be sure not to be troublesome to his company not mark'd for lying or become tedious with multiplicity of idle talk He shall be presumed wise and oftentimes is so he shall not feel the wounds of contention nor be put to excuse an ill taken saying nor sigh for the folly of an irrecoverable word If his fault be that he hath not spoken that can at any time be mended but if he sinn'd in speaking it cannot be unspoken again Thus he escapes the dishonor of not being believed and the trouble of being suspected he shall never fear the Sentence of Judges nor the Decrees of Courts high reproaches or the angry words of the proud the contradiction of the disputing man or the thirst of talkers By these and many other advantages he that holds his peace and he that cannot speak may please themselves and he may at least have the rewards and effects of solitarinesse if he misses some of the pleasures of society But by the use of the tongue God hath distinguished us from beasts and by the well or ill using it we are distinguished from one another and therefore though silence be innocent as death harmlesse as a roses breath to a distant passenger yet it is rather the state of death then life and therefore when the Egyptians sacrificed to Harpocrates their god of Silence in the midst of their rites they cryed out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Tongue is an Angel good or bad that 's as it happens Silence was to them a god but the Tongue is greater it is the band of humane entercourse and makes men apt to unite in Societies and Republicks and I remember what one of the Ancients said that we are better in the company of a known dog then of a man whose speech is not known ut externus alieno non sit hominis vice a stranger to a stranger in his language is not as a man to a man for by voices and homilies by questions and answers by narratives and invectives by counsell and reproofe by praises and hymnes by prayers and glorifications we serve Gods glory and the necessities of men and by the tongue our Tables are made to differ from Mangers our Cities from Deserts our Churches from Herds of beasts and flocks of sheep Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God spoken by the tongues of men and Angels and the blessed Spirits in heaven cease not from saying night and day their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their song of glory to him that sitteth on the throne and to the Lambe for ever and ever and then our imployment shall be glorious as our state when our tongues shal to eternall ages sing Allelujahs to their Maker and Redeemer and therefore since Nature hath taught us to speak and God requires it and our thankfulnesse obliges us and our necessities engage us and charity sometimes calls for it and innocence is to be defended and we are to speak in the cause of the oppressed and open our mouths in the cause of God and it is alwayes a seasonable prayer that God would open our lips that our mouth may doe the work of heaven and declare his praises and shew forth his glory it concerns us to take care that nature be changed into grace necessity into choice that while we speak the greatnesse of God and minister to the needs of our neighbor and doe the works of life and religion of society and prudence we may be fitted to bear a part in the songs of Angels when they shall rejoyce at the feast of the marriage supper of the Lambe But the tongue is a fountain both of bitter waters and of pleasant it sends forth blessing and cursing it praises God and railes at men it is sometimes set on fire and then it puts whole Cities in combustion it is unruly and no more to be restrained then the breath of a tempest it is volatile and fugitive reason should go before it and when it does not repentance comes after it was intended for an organ of the divine praises but the Devill often playes upon it and then it sounds like the Scriech-owle or the groans of death sorrow and shame folly and repentance are the notes and formidable accents of that discord We are all naturally 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lovers of speech more or lesse and God reproves it not provided that we be also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wise and materiall usefull and prudent in our discourses For since speech is for conversation let it be also charitable and profitable let it be without sin but not without profit and grace to the hearers and then it is as God would have it and this is the precept of the text first telling us what we should avoyd and then telling us what we should pursue what our discourse ought not to be and 2ly what it ought to be there being no more variety in the structure of the words I shall 1. discourse of the vices of the tongue 2. of its duty and proper employment 1. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 corrupt or filthy communication so we read it and it seems properly to note such communication as ministers to wantonnesse such as are the Fescennines of Ausonius the excrement and spume of Martial's verse and the Ephesiaca of Xenophon indeed this is such a rudenesse as is not to be admitted into civill conversation and is wittily noted by the Apostle charging that fornication should not be once named among them as becometh Saints not meaning that the vice should not have its name and filthy character but that nothing of it be named in which it can be tempting or offensive nothing tending to it or teaching of it should be named we must not have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fornication in our talk that 's such a basenesse that it not onely grieves the Divine Spirit but dishonors all its channels and conveyances the proper language of the
be not of an indifferent nature it becomes sinfull by giving countenance to a vice or making vertue to become ridiculous 5. If it be not watcht that it complies with all that heare it becomes offensive and injurious 6. If it be not intended to fair and lawfull purposes it is sowre in the using 7. If it be frequent it combines and clusters into a formall sinne 8. If it mingles with any sin it puts on the nature of that new unworthinesse beside the proper uglynesse of the thing it selfe and after all these when can it be lawfull or apt for Christian entertainment The Ecclesiasticall History reports that many jests passed between St. Anthony the Father of the Hermits and his Scholar St. Paul and St. Hilarion is reported to have been very pleasant and of a facete sweet and more lively conversation and indeed plaisance and joy and a lively spirit and a pleasant conversation and the innocent caresses of a charitable humanity is not forbidden plenum tamen suavitatis gratiae sermonem non esse indecorum St. Ambrose affirmed and here in my text our conversation is commanded to be such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it may minister grace that is favour complacence cheerfulnesse and be acceptable and pleasant to the hearer and so must be our conversation it must be as far from sullennesse as it ought to be from lightnesse and a cheerfull spirit is the best convoy for Religion and though sadnesse does in some cases become a Christian as being an Index of a pious minde of compassion and a wise proper resentment of things yet it serves but one end being useful in the onely instance of repentance and hath done its greatest works not when it weeps and sighs but when it hates and grows carefull against sin But cheerfulnesse and a festivall spirit fills the soule full of harmony it composes musick for Churches and hearts it makes and publishes glorifications of God it produces thankfulnesse and serves the ends of charity and when the oyle of gladnesse runs over it makes bright and tall emissions of light and holy fires reaching up to a cloud and making joy round about And therefore since it is so innocent and may be so pious and full of holy advantage whatsoever can innocently minister to this holy joy does set forward the work of Religion and Charity And indeed charity it selfe which is the verticall top of all Religion is nothing else but an union of joyes concentred in the heart and reflected from all the angles of our life and entercourse It is a rejoycing in God a gladnesse in our neighbors good a pleasure in doing good a rejoycing with him and without love we cannot have any joy at all It is this that makes children to be a pleasure and friendship to be so noble and divine a thing and upon this account it is certaine that all that which can innocently make a man cheerfull does also make him charitable for grief and age and sicknesse and wearinesse these are peevish and troublesome but mirth and cheerfulnesse is content and civil and compliant and communicative and loves to doe good and swels up to felicity onely upon the wings of charity In this account here is pleasure enough for a Christian in present and if a facete discourse and an amicable friendly mirth can refresh the spirit and take it off from the vile temptations of peevish despairing uncompâ—ying melancholy it must needs be innocent and commendable And we may as well be refreshed by a clean and a brisk discourse as by the aire of Campanian wines and our faces and our heads may as well be anointed and look pleasant with wit and friendy entercourse as with the fat of the Balsam tree and such a conversation no wise man ever did or ought to reprove But when the jest hath teeth and nails biting or scratching our Brother* when it is loose and wanton* when it is unseasonable* and much or many* when it serves ill purposes* or spends better time* then it is the drunkennesse of the soul and makes the spirit fly away seeking for a Temple where the mirth and the musick is solemne and religious But above all the abuses which ever dishonoured the tongues of men nothing more deserves the whip of an exterminating Angel or the stings of scorpions then profane jesting which is a bringing of the Spirit of God to partake of the follies of a man as if it were not enough for a man to be a foole but the wisdome of God must be brought into those horrible scenes He that makes a jest of the words of Scripture or of holy things playes with thunder and kisses the mouth of a Canon just as it belches fire and death he stakes heaven at spurnpoint and trips crosse and pile whether ever he shall see the face of God or no he laughs at damnation while he had rather lose God then lose his jest may which is the horror of all he makes a jest of God himselfe and the Spirit of the Father and the Son to become ridiculous Some men use to read Scripture on their knees and many with their heads uncovered and all good men with fear and trembling with reverence and grave attention Search the Scriptures for therein you hope to have life eternall and All Scripture is written by inspiration of God and is fit for instruction for reproofe for exhortation for doctrine not for jesting but he that makes that use of it had better part with his eyes in jest and give his heart to make a tennisball and that I may speak the worst thing in the world of it it is as like the materiall part of the sin against the holy Ghost as jeering of a man is to abusing him and no man can use it but he that wants wit and manners as well as he wants Religion 3. The third instance of the vain trifling conversation and immoderate talking is revealing secrets which is a dismantling and renting off the robe from the privacies of humane entercourse and it is worse then denying to restore that which was intrusted to our charge for this not onely injures his neighbors right but throws it away and exposes it to his enemy it is a denying to give a man his own arms and delivering them to another by whom he shall suffer mischief He that intrusts a secret to his friend goes thither as to sanctuary and to violate the rites of that is sacriledge and profanation of friendship which is the sister of Religion and the mother of secular blessing a thing so sacred that it changes a Kingdome into a Church and makes Interest to be Piety and Justice to become Religion But this mischief growes according to the subject matter and its effect and the tongue of a babbler may crush a mans bones or break his fortune upon her owne wheel and whatever the effect be yet of it self it is the betraying of a trust and by reproach oftentimes
a new name written which no man knoweth but he that hath it And by this Godssheep 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 by 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
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 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 drowning 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 thanks giving of a whole life If God should send a cancer upon thy face or a wolf into thy brest if he should spread a crust of leprosie upon thy skin what wouldest thou give to be but as now thou art it 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 illusions of the spirits of darknesse how many earthquakes have you been in how many dayes have any of you wanted ◠read how many nights have you been without sleep 〈◊〉 any of you distracted of your senses and if God gives you meat and drink health and sleep proper seasons of the year in the 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
oxe and mule more hardy and callous for our stripes and melted in the fire and frozen harder in the cold worse for all our afflictions and the worse for all Gods judgements not bettered by his goodnesse nor mollified by his threatnings and what is there more left for God to do unto us He that is not won by the sence of Gods mercy can never finde any thing in God that shall convert him and he whom fear and sense of pain cannot mend can never finde any argument from himself that shall make him wise This is sad that nothing from without and nothing from within shall move us nothing in Heaven and nothing in Hell neither love nor fear gratitude to God nor preservation of our selves shall make us to repent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that shall be his final sentence He shall never escape that ruine from which the greatest art of God could nor entice nor his terrour scare him he loved cursing therefore shall it happen to him he loved not blessing therefore shall it be far from him Let therefore every one of us take the account of our lives and read over the sermons that God hath made us besides that sweet language of his mercy and his still voice from Heaven consider what voices of thunder you have heard and presently that noise ceased and God was heard in the still voice again What dangers have any of you escaped were you ever assaulted by the rudenesse of an ill natur'd man have you never had a dangerous fall and escaped it did none of you ever scape drowning and in a great danger saw the forbearance of God have you never been sick as your feared unto death or suppose none of these things hath happened hath not God threatned you all and forborne to smite you or smitten you and forborne to kill you that is evident But if you had been a Privado and of the Cabinet councel with your Angel Guardian that from him you might have known how many dangers you have escaped how often you have been neer a ruine so neer that if you had seen 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 thee 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 rejoyce 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 site 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
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 scruting 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 over-lay thy infant-vertue or drown it with a flood of breast-milk Sermon XV. Of Growth in Grace Part II. 5. HE is well grown in or towards the state of grace who is more patient of a sharp reproof then of a secret flattery For a reprehension contains so much mortification to the pride and complacencies of a man is so great an affront to an easie and undisturbed person is so empty of pleasure and so full of profit that he must needs love vertue in a great degree who can take in that which onely serves her end and is displeasant to himself and all his gayeties A severe reprehendor of anothers vice comes dressed like Iacob when he went to cozen his brother of the blessing his outside is rough and hairy but the voice is Jacobs voice rough hands and a healthfull language get the blessing even against the will of him that shall feel it but he that is patient and even not apt to excuse his fault that is lesse apt to anger or to scorn him that snatches him rudely from the flames of hell he is vertues Confessor and suffers these lesser stripes for that interest which will end in spirituall and eternall benedictions They who are furious against their monitors are incorrigible but it is one degree of meeknesse to suffer discipline and a meek man cannot easily be an ill man especially in the present instance he appears at least to have a healthfull constitution he hath good flesh to heal his spirit is capable of medicine and that man can never be despaired of who hath a disposition so neer his health as to improve all physick and whose nature is relieved by every good accident from without But that which I observe is That this is not onely a good disposition towards repentance and restitution but is a signe of growth in grace according as it becomes naturall easie and habituall Some men chide themselves for all their misdemeanours because they would be represented to the censures and opinions of other men with a fair Character and such as need not to be reproved others out of inconsideration sleep in their own dark rooms and untill the charity of a Guide or of a friend draws the curtain and lets in a beam of light dream on untill the graves open and hell devours them But if they be called upon by the grace of God let down with a sheet of counsels and friendly precepts they are presently inclined to be obedient to the heavenly monitions but unlesse they be dressed with circumstances of honour and civility with arts of entertainment and insinuation they are rejected utterly or received unwillingly Therefore although upon any termes to endure a sharp reproof be a good signe of amendment yet the growth of grace is not properly signified by every such sufferance For when this disposition begins amendment also begins and goes on in proportion to the increment of this To endure a reproof without adding a new sin is the first step to amendments that is to endure it without scorn or hatred or indignation 2. The next is to suffer reproof without excusing our selves For he that is apt to excuse himself is onely desirous in a civill manner to set the reproof aside and to represent the charitable monitour to be too hasty in his judgement and deceived in his information and the fault to dwell there not with himself 3. Then he that proceeds in this instance admits the reprovers sermon or discourse without a private regret he hath no secret murmurs or unwillingnesses to the humiliation but is onely ashamed that he should deserve it but for the reprehension it self that troubles him not but he looks on it as his own medicine and the others charity 4. But if to this he addes that he voluntary confesses his own fault and of his own accord vomits out the loads of his own intemperance and eases his spirit of the infection then it is certain he is not onely a professed and hearty enemy against sin but a zealous and a prudent and an active person against all its interest and never counts himself at ease but while he rests upon the banks of Sion or at the gates of the temple never pleased but in vertue and religion Then he knows the state of his soul and the state of his danger he reckons it no objection to be abased in the face of man so he may be gracious in the eyes of God And that 's a signe of a good grace and a holy wisdom That man is grown in the grace of God and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Justus in principio sermonis est accusator sui said the Wise man The righteous accuseth himself in the beginning that is quickly lest he be prevented And certain it is he cannot be either wise or good that had rather have a
opinion had been true and that accursed souls should have ease and a period to their tortures after a thousand years I pray let it be considered whether it be not a great madnesse to choose the pleasures or the wealth of a few years here with trouble with danger with uncertainty with labour with intervalls of sicknesse and for this to endure the flames of hell for a thousand yeers together The pleasures of the world no man can have for a hundred yeers and no man hath pleasure a hundred dayes together but he hath some trouble intervening or at least a wearinesse and a loathing of the pleasure and therefore to endure insufferable calamities suppose it be for a hundred yeers without any interruption without so much comfort as the light of a small candle or a drop of water amounts to in a fever is a bargain to be made by no man that loves himself or is not in love with infinite affliction If a man were condemned but to lie still or to lie a bed in one posture without turning for seven yeers together would he not buy it off with the losse of all his estate If a man were to be put upon the rack for every day three moneths together suppose him able to live so long what would he do to be quit of his torture Wouldany man curse the King to his face if he were sure to have both his hands burnt off and to be tormented with torments three yeers together Would any man in his wits accept of a hundred pound a yeer for fourty yeers if he were sure to be tormented in the fire for the next hundred yeers together without intermission Think then what a thousand yeers signifie Ten ages the age of two Empires but this account I must tell you is infinitely short though I thus discourse to you how great fools wicked men are though this opinion should be true A goodly comfort surely that for two or three yeers sottish pleasure a man shall be infinitely tormented but for a thousand yeers But then when we cast up the minutes and yeers and ages of eternity the consideration it self is a great hell to those persons who by their evil lives are consigned to such sad and miserable portions A thousand yeers is a long while to be in torment we finde a fever of 21. dayes to be like an age in length but when the duration of an intolerable misery is for ever in the height and for ever beginning and ten thousand yeers hath spent no part of its terme but it makes a perpetual efflux and is like the centre of a circle which ever transmits lines to the circumference this is a consideration so sad that the horrour of it and the reflexion upon its abode and duration make a great part of the hell for hell could not be hell without the despair of accursed souls for any hope were a refreshment and a drop of water which would help to allay those flames which as they burn intolerably so they must burn for ever And I desire you to consider that although the Scripture uses the word fire to expresse the torments of accursed souls yet fire can no more equal the pangs of hell then it can torment a material substance the pains of perishing souls being as much more afflictive then the smart of fire as the smart of fire is troublesome beyond the softnesse of Persian carpets or the sensuality of the Asian Luxury for the pains of hell and the perishing or losing of the soul is to suffer the wrath of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our God is a consuming fire that is the fire of hell when God takes away all comfort from us nothing to support our spirit is left us when sorrow is our food and tears our drink when it is eternal night without Sun or star or lamp or sleep when we burn with fire without light that is are loaden with sadnesse without remedy or hope or ease and that this wrath is to be expressed and to fall upon us in spiritual immateriall but most accursed most pungent and dolorous emanations then we feel what it is to lose a soul. We may guesse at it by the terrours of a guilty conscience those verbera laeniatus those secret lashings and whips of the exterminating Angel those thorns in the soul when a man is haunted by an evil spirit those butcheries which the soul of a Tyrant or a violent or a vitious person when he falls in to fear or any calamity does feel are the infinite arguments that Hell which is the consummation of the torment of conscience just as man-hood is the consummation of infancy or as glory is the perfection of grace is an affliction greater then the bulk of heaven and earth for there it is that God powrs out the treasures of his wrath and empties the whole magazin of thunder bolts and all the armory of God is imployed not in the chastising but in the tormenting of a perishing soul. Lucian brings in Radamanthus telling the poor wandring souls upon the banks of Elysium 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for every wickednesse that any man commits in his life when he comes to hell he hath stamped upon his soul an invisible brand and mark of torment and this begins here and is not cancelled by death but there is enlarged by the greatnesse of infinite and the aboads of eternity How great these tormens of conscience are here let any man imagine that can but understand what despair means despair upon just reason let it be what it will no misery can be greater then despaire and because I hope none here have felt those horrors of an evil conscience which are consignations to eternity you may please to learn it by your own reason or els by the sad instances of story It is reported of Petrus Ilosuanus A Polonian School-master that having read some ill managed discourses of absolute decrees and divine reprobation began to be Phantastick and melancholy and apprehensive that he might be one of those many whom God had decreed for hell from all eternity from possible to probable from probable to certain the temptation soon carried him and when he once began to believe himself to be a person inevitably perishing it is not possible to understand perfectly what infinite fears and agonies and despairs what tremblings what horrors what confusion and amazement the poor man felt within him to consider that he was to be tormented extremely without remedy even to eternal ages This in a short continuance grew insufferable and prevailed upon him so far that he hanged himself and left this account of it or to this purpose in writing in his study I am gone from hence to the flames of hell have forced my way thither being impatient to try what those great torments are which here I have heard with an insupportable amazement this instance may suffice to show what it is to lose a soul. But I will take
great experience and a strict observation and good company all which being either wholly or in part out of our power may be expected as free gifts but cannot be imposed as commandments To this I answer That Christian prudence is in very many instances a direct duty in some an instance and advice in order to degrees and advantages where it is a duty it is put into every mans power where it is an advice it is onely expected according to what a man hath and not according to what he hath not and even here although the events of prudence are out of our power yet the endeavours and the observation the diligence and caution the moral part of it and the plain conduct of our necessary duty which are portions of this grace are such things which God will demand in proportion to the talent which he hath intrusted into our Banks There are in indeed some Christians very unwary and unwise in the conduct of their religion and they cannot all help it at least not in all degrees but yet they may be taught to do prudent things though not to be prudent persons if they have not the prudence of advice and conduct yet they may have the prudence of obedience and of disciples and the event is this without prudence their vertue is unsafe and their persons defenselesse and their interest is unguarded for prudence is a hand-maid waiting at the production and birth of vertue It is a nurse to it in its infancy its patron an assaults its guide in temptations its security in all portions of chance and contingency And he that is imprudent if he have many accidents and varieties is in great danger of being none at all or if he be at the best he is but a weak and an unprofitable servant uselesse to his neighbour vain in himself and as to God the least in the kingdom his vertue is contingent and by chance not proportioned to the reward of wisdom and the election of a wise religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No purchase no wealth no advantage is great enough to 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 sordid 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 affections 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 Mistris 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
extraordinary spirit if they pretend to teach according to Scripture must be examined by the measures of Scripture and then their extraordinary must be judged by the ordinary spirit and stands or falls by the rules of every good mans religion and publike government and then we are well enough But if they speak any thing against Scripture it is the spirit of Antichrist and the spirit of the Devil For if an Angel from heaven he certainly is a spirit preach any other doctrine let him be accursed But this pretence of a single and extraordinary spirit is nothing else but the spirit of pride errour and delusion a snare to catch easie and credulous souls which are willing to die for a gay word and a distorted face it is the parent of folly and giddy doctrine impossible to be proved and therefore uselesse to all purposes of religion reason or sober counsels it is like an invisible colour or musick without a sound it is and indeed is so intended to be a direct overthrow of order and government and publike ministeries It is bold to say any thing and resolved to prove nothing it imposes upon willing people after the same manner that Oracles and the lying Daemons did of old time abusing men not by proper efficacy of its own but because the men love to be abused it is a great disparagement to the sufficiency of Scripture and asperses the Divine providence for giving to so many ages of the Church an imperfect religion expressely against the truth of their words who said they had declared the whole truth of God and told all the will of God and it is an affront to the Spirit of God the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge of order and publike ministeries But the will furnishes out malice and the understanding sends out levity and they marry and produce a phantastick dream and the daughter sucking winde instead of the milk of the word growes up to madnesse and the spirit of reprobation Besides all this an extraordinary spirit is extremely unnecessary and God does not give immissions and miracles from heaven to 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 portion 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 and 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 learnd 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
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 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 appretension 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 that in sorrow they shall bring forth children yet God hath so attempered 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 whic is alleviared 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 in to 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 comfort 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 poverty 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-buek 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
providence was measured by the ends of the religion and the religion which promised them plenty performed the promise till the Nation and the religion too began to decline that it might give place to a better ministery and a more excellent dispensation of the things of the world But when Christian religion was planted and had taken root and had filled all lands then all the nature of things the whole creation became servant to the kingdom of grace and the Head of the religion is also the Head of the creatures and ministers all the things of the world in order to the Spirit of grace and now Angels are ministring spirits sent forth to minister for the good of them that fear the Lord and all the violences of men and things of nature and choice are forced into subjection and lowest ministeries and to cooperate as with an united designe to verifie all the promises of the Gospel and to secure and advantage all the children of the kingdom and now he that is made poor by chance or persecution is made rich by religion and he that hath nothing yet possesses all things and sorrow it self is the greatest comfort not only because it ministers to vertue but because it self is one as in the case of repentance and death ministers to life and bondage is freedom and losse is gain and our enemies are our friends and every thing turns into religion and religion turns into felicity and all manner of advantages But that I may not need to enumerate any more particulars in this observation certain it is that Angels of light and darknesse all the influences of heaven and the fruits and productions of the earth the stars and the elements the secret things that lie in the bowels of the Sea and the entrails of the earth the single effects of all efficients and the conjunction of all causes all events foreseen and all rare contingencies every thing of chance and every thing of choice is so much a servant to him whos 's greatest desire and great interest is by all means to save our souls that we are thereby made sure that all the whole creation shall be made to bend in all the flexures of its nature and accidents that it may minister to religion to the good of the Catholike Church and every person within its bosom who are the body of him that rules over all the world and commands them as he chooses 2. But that which is next to this and not much unlike the designe of this wonderfull mercy is that all the actions of religion though mingled with circumstances of differing and sometimes of contradictory relations are so concentred in God their proper centre and conducted in such certain and pure channels of reason and rule that no one duty does contradict another and it can never be necessary for any man in any case to sin They that bound themselves by an oath to kill Paul were not environed with the sad necessities of murder on one side and vow-breach on the other so that if they did murder him they were man-slayers if they did not they were perjured for God had made provision for this case that no unlawful oath should passe an obligation He that hath given his faith in unlawfull confederation against his Prince is not girded with a fatall necessity of breach of trust on one side or breach of allegeance on the other for in this also God hath secured the case of conscience by forbidding any man to make an unlawfull promise and upon a stronger degree of the same reason by forbidding him to keep it in case he hath made it He that doubts whether it be lawfull to keep the Sunday holy must not do it during that doubt because whatsoever is not of faith is sin But yet Gods mercy hath taken care to break this snare in sunder so that he may neither sin against the commandement nor against his conscience for he is bound to lay aside his errour and be better instructed till when the scene of his sin lies in something that hath influence upon his understanding not in the omission of the fact No man can serve two Masters but therefore he must hate the one and cleave to the other But then if we consider what infinite contradiction there is in sin and that the great long suffering of God is expressed in this that God suffered the contradiction of sinners we shall feel the mercy of God in the peace of our consciences and the unity of religion so long as we do the work of God It is a huge affront to a covetous man that he is the further off from fulnesse by having great heaps vast revenues and that his thirst increases by having that which should quench it and that the more he shall need to be satisfied the lesse he shall dare to do it and that he shall refuse to drink because he is dry that he dyes if he tasts and languishes if he does not and at the same time he is full and empty bursting with a plethory and consumed with hunger drowned with rivers of oyle and wine and yet dry as the Arabian sands but then the contradiction is multiplyed and the labyrinths more amazed when prodigality waits upon another curse and covetousnesse heaps up that prodigality may scatter abroad then distractions are infinite and a man hath two Devils to serve of contradictory designes and both of them exacting obedience more unreasonably then the Egyptian task-masters then there is no rest no end of labours no satisfaction of purposes no method of things but they begin where they should end and begin again and never passe forth to content or reason or quietnesse or possession But the duty of a Christian is easie in a persecution it is clear under a Tyranny it is evident in despite of heresy it is one in the midst of schisme it is determined amongst infinite disputes being like a rock in the sea which is beaten with the tide and washed with retiring waters and encompassed with mists and appears in several figures but it alwayes dips its foot in the same bottom and remaines the same in calms and storms and survives the revolution of ten thousand tides and there shall dwell till time and tides shall be no more so is our duty uniform and constant open and notorious variously represented but in the same manner exacted and in the interest of our souls God hath not exposed us to uncertainty or the variety of anything that can change and it is by the grace and mercy of God put into the power of every Christian to do that which God through Jesus Christ will accept to salvation and neither men nor Devils shall hinder it unlesse we list our selves 3. After all this we may sit down and reckon by great sums and conjugations of his gracious gifts and tell the minuts of eternity by the number of the Divine mercies God hath given his laws to rule us his
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 her spirit she had a strange secret perswasion that the bringing this Childe should be her last scene of life and we have known that the soul when she is about to disrobe her self of her upper garment sometimes speaks rarely Magnifica verba mors propè admota excutit sometimes it is prophetical sometimes God by a superinduced perswasion wrought by instruments or accidents of his own serves the ends of his own providence and the salvation of the soul But so it was that the thought of death dwelt long with her and grew from the first steps of faney and fear to a consent from thence to a strange credulity and expectation of it and without the violence of sicknesse she died as if she had done it voluntarily and by designe and for fear her expectation should have been deceived or that she should seem to have had an unreasonable fear or apprehension or rather as one said of Cato sic abiit è vitâ ut causam moriendi nactam se esse gauderet she died as if she had been glad of the opportunity And in this I cannot but adore the providence and admire the wisdom and infinite mercies of God For having a tender and soft a delicate and fine constitution and breeding she was tender to pain and apprehensive of it as a childs shoulder is of a load and burden Grave est tenerae cérvici jugum and in her often discourses of death which she would renew willingly and frequently she would tell that she feared not death but she feared the sharp pains of death Emori nolo me esse mortuam non curo The being dead and being freed from the troubles and dangers of this world she hoped would be for her advantage and therefore that was no part of her fear But she believing the pangs of death were great and the use and aids of reason little had reason to fear left they should do violence to her spirit and the decency of her resolution But God that knew her fears and her jealousie concerning her self fitted her with a death so easie so harmlesse so painlesse that it did not put her patience to a severe trial It was not in all appearance of so much trouble as two fits of a common ague so carefull was God to remonstrate to all that stood in that sad attendance that this soul was dear to him and that since she had done so much of her duty towards it he that began would also finish her redemption by an act of a rare providence and a singular mercy Blessed be that goodnesse of God who does so careful actions of mercy for the ease and security of his servants But this one instance was a great demonstration that the apprchension of death is worse then the pains of death and that God loves to reprove the unreasonablenesse of our fears by the mightiness and by the arts of his mercy She had in her sickness if I may so cal it or rather in the solemnities and graver preparations towards death some curious and well-becoming fears concerning the final state of her soul. But from thence she passed into a deliquium or a kinde of trance and as soon as she came forth of it as if it had been a vision or that she had conversed with an Angel and from his hand had received a label or scroll of the book of life and there seen her name enrolled she cried out aloud Glory be to God on high Now I am sure I shall be saved Concerning which manner of discoursing we are wholy ignorant what judgement can be made but certainly there are strange things in the other world and so there are in all the immediate preparation to it and a little glimps of heaven a minutes conversing with an Angel any ray of God any communication extraordinary from the spirit of comfort which God gives to his servants in strange and unknown manners are infinitely far from illusions and they shall then be understood by us when we feel them and when our new and strange needs shall be refreshed by such unusual visitations But I must be forced to use summaries and arts of abbreviature in the enumerating those things in which this rare Personage was dear to God and to all her Relatives If we consider her Person she was in the flower of her age Jucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret of a temperate plain and natural diet without curiosity or an intemperate palate she spent lesse time in dressing then many servants her recreations were little and seldom her prayers often her reading much she was of a most noble and charitable soul a great lover of honourable actions and as great a
garments they had it but in imperfection and unactive faculties So saith Theophylact He breathed not now giving to them the perfect gift of the Holy Ghost for that he intended to give at Pentecost but he prepared them for the fuller reception of it They had the gift before but not the perfect consummation of it that was reserved for the great day and because the power of consecration is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or perfection of the Priestly order it was the proper emanation of this days glory then was the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the perfection of what power Christ had formerly consigned For of all faculties that is not perfect which produces perfect and excellent actions in a direct line actions of a particular sort but that which produces the actions and enables others to doe so too for then the perfection is inherent not onely formally but virtually and eminently and that 's the crown of habits and naturall faculties Now besides the reasonablenesse of the thing this is also verified by a certainty that will not easily fail us by experience and ex postfacto For as we doe not find the Apostles had before Pentecost a productive power which made them call for a miracle or a speciall providence by lots so we are sure that immediately after Pentecost they had it for they speedily began to put it in execution and it is remarkable that the Apostles did not lay hands upon Mathias he being made Apostle before the descent of the Holy Ghost they had no power to doe it they were not yet made Ministers of the Spirit which because afterwards presently they did concludes fairly that at Pentecost they were amongst other graces made the ordinary Ministers of Ordination This I say is certain that the holy Ghost descending at Pentecost they instantly did officiate in their ministeriall offices they preached they baptized they confirmed and gave the holy Spirit of obsignation and took persons into the Lot of their Ministery doing of it by an externall rite and solemn invocation and now the extraordinary way did cease God was the fountain of the power but man conveyed it by an externall rite And of this Saint Paul who was the onely exception from the common way takes notice calling himself an Apostle not of man nor by man but by Jesus Christ implying that he had a speciall honour done to be chosen an Apostle in an extraordinary way therefore others might be Apostles and yet not so as he was for else his expression had been all one as if one should say Titius the sonne of a man not begotten of an Angell or Spirit nor produced by the Sunne or Starre but begotten by a man of a woman the discourse had been ridiculous for no man is born otherwise and yet he also had something of the ordinary too for in an extraordinary manner he was sent to be ordained in an ordinary ministery And yet because the ordinary ministery was setled Saint Paul was called to an account for so much of it as was extraordinary and was tyed to doe that which every man now is bound to doe that shall pretend a calling extraordinary viz. to give an extraordinary proof of his extraordinary calling which when he had done in the College of Jerusalem the Apostles gave him the right hand of fellowship and approved his vocation which also shews that now the way of Ordination was fixed and declared to be by humane ministery of which I need no other proof but the instances of Ordinations recorded in Scripture and the no instances to the contrary but of Saint Paul whose designation was as immediate as that of the 11 Apostles though his Ordination was not I end this with the saying of Job the Monk Concerning the Order of Priesthood it is supernaturall and unspeakable He that yesterday and the day before was in the form of Ideots and private persons to day by the power of the Holy Ghost and the voice of the chief Priest and laying on of hands receives so great an improvement and alteration that he handles and can consecrate the divine mysteries of the holy Church and becomes under Christ a Mediator Ministeriall between God and man and exalted to hallow himself and sanctifie others The same almost with the words of Gregory Nyssen in his book De sancto baptismate This is the summe of the preceding discourses God is the Consecrator man is the Minister the separation is mysterious and wonderfull the power great and secret the office to stand between God and the people in the ministery of the Evangelicall rites the calling to it ordinary and by a setled Ministery which began after the descent of the holy Ghost in Pentecost This great change was in nothing expressed greater then that Saul upon his Ordination changed his name which Saint Chrysostome observing affirms the same of S. Peter I conclude Differentiam inter ordinem plebem constituit Ecclesiae authoritas honor per ordin is consessum sanctificatus à Deo saith Tertullian The authority of the whole Church of God hath made distinction between the person ordained and the people but the honour and power of it is derived from the sanctification of God It is derived from him but conveyed by an ordinary Ministery of his appointing Whosoever therefore with unsanctified that is with unconsecrated hands shall dare to officiate in the ministerial office separate by God by gifts by graces by publick order by an established rite by the institution of Jesus by the descent of the holy Ghost by the word of God by the practise of the Apostles by the practise of sixteen ages of the Catholick Church by the necessity of the thing by reason by analogy to the discourse of all the wise men that ever were in the world that man like his predecessor Corah brings an unhallowed Censer which shall never send up a right cloud of incense to God but yet that unpermitted and disallowed smoak shall kindle a fire even the wrath of God which shall at least destroy the sacrifice His work shall be consumed and when upon his repentance himself escapes yet it shall be so as by fire that is with danger and losse and shame and trouble For our God is a consuming fire Remember Corah and all his company 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The End The Printer to the Reader THe absence of the Author and his inconvenient distance from London hath occasioned some lesser escapes in the impression of these Sermons and the Discourse annexed The Printer thinks it the best instance of pardon if his Escapes be not layd upon the Author and he hopes they are no greater then an ordinary understanding may amend and a little charity may forgive A Table to both the Volumes of Sermons A. WHo shall be the Accusers of sinners that belong not to life in the great judgement Vol. 1. p. 23 Almes wherein and how far our respects to