his Holy Spirit as aforesaid because upon many accounts there was then extraordinary necessity for it and also the Spirit then given was so plainly miraculous and gave such proof of it self that there could be no suspicion of cheat in the case yet forasmuch as both these things fail now viz. both the occasion and the discrimination they think it safer to reject all such pretensions then admitting them to lay open a way for so much cheating and imposture as may be reasonably expected when there is no certain way of detecting it NOW therefore if in the first place I can give a plain account how it may come to pass that such men as are supposed in the first objection may be destitute of such advantages of the Holy Spirit as we have asserted to be the tokens of his residence and then secondly if I shew also how to prevent all imposture by distinguishing the operations of the Spirit from fancy and other allusions then both the objections will be answered and the Reader will not be offended with the digression § III. AND to dispatch all briefly I begin with the first to which I say That as it is not usual with God to precipitate or prevent the course of natural causes but to blesse and succeed them in their due and proper order so neither in his especial providence or in the acts of his grace doth he delight to work per saltum but gradually according to the condition of the subject and its fitness to receive his impressions accordingly though he be always ready to bestow his Spirit with all the comforts and advantages thereof yet he expects and requires all due qualifications and preparations before he confer it Now there are these three especial qualifications for the reception of the Holy Ghost in the sense we speak of 1. AS I have intimated already That a man be not only purged from grosser pollutions and begin to have a love of holiness but that he be singularly pure so as at least not to admit of any voluntary transgression and especially be above all sensuality of what kind soever It is observable in that sad miscarriage of David which we have often had occasion to refer to that it made him justly fear and therefore earnestly pray Psal 51. that God would not thereupon take his Holy Spirit from him and the Apostle when he is earnestly persuading the Ephesians Not to grieve the Holy Spirit whereby they were seald to the day of redemption solemnly warns them in the verse before That no corrupt or obscene and filthy communication proceed out of their mouths as that which would assuredly argue their hearts to be no temple for the Holy Ghost and again in the verse after the aforesaid exhortation he with the same earnestness gives them caution against all bitterness and wrath and clamour c. as intimating that those also defiled the Soul and made it incapable of receiving the blessed Spirit To which purpose the Jews have a common saying Super animum turbidum non requiescit Spiritus Sanctus That the Spirit of God requires a sedate even temper as his quiet habitation 2. THE Spirit of God requires a lovely sweet and benign frame of Spirit and abhors that Hypochondriack sourness and austerity which yet some place a great deal of Religion in when men will be always sighing and complaining and peevishly refuse consolation Jonah confidently told God he did well to be angry and so these men seem to think they please God by grieving his Spirit frowardly or at least phantastically resisting his consolations But it is a mighty mistake to think the Spirit of God will comfort men whether they will or no he requires a persuadeable counsellable temper and such a disposition as will work with him for to make a black melancholist comfortable immediately is not to be done but by a phrenzy or a miracle and for this last we are not to expect it now at God's hands nay even the Prophet Elisha when he desired to call up the Spirit of Prophecy called for an Harp that he might put his mind in tune and dispose himself to become the instrument of the Spirit of God and so it is here an harmonious Soul added to the former qualification invites down the Spirit of God Especially if 3. IN the third place there be servent prayer joined herewith for since God expects we should make our acknowledgments of him and demonstrate he value we have of the mercy we seek by the importunity of our addresses to him even then when we address our selves to him for common favours with much less reason can we expect that he should bestow this great boon upon us unless it be sought by ardent and instant prayer so our Saviour hath told us Luk. 11. 13. that though he have a fatherly affection to give all good things to us yet it is upon condition that we ask him And St. James hath further explained to us the manner of asking Chap. 1. 6 7. that it must be in faith without wavering i. e. neither as doubtfull of God's goodness nor as if we were indifferent whether he granted our request or not for saith he Let not such a man think that he shall receive any thing at the hand of the Lord. NOW forasmuch as the comfortable portion of the Holy Spirit is not intailed upon all the Children which God receives to grace and pardon but that all these qualifications are pre-required since it is also evident that some who perhaps may passionately desire it yet have an unhappy temper that unfits them for the entertainment of this heavenly Guest and many others that have some good measure of sincerity which God will mercifully accept in order to eternal life are not yet raised to such a measure of holiness as to be capable of this favour at the present It cannot seem strange that such should remain strangers to this most happy priviledge nor can it yet be reasonable that their want of experience of it should be any argument that there is no such thing to be expected § IV. BUT then for the other difficultie viz. how to distinguish the moti on of God's Spirit from either the impressions of Sathan or the results of a man 's own temper and constitution I answer there are these properties of the Holy Spirit which if they be attended to and laid together will infallibly distinguish it from any other motion and secure us from all illusion 1. THE Spirit of God never moves any man but in an action or course warrantable by the word of God for since the Holy Scripture is given for a rule of our actions and as such confirmed in the most ample manner by the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit should notoriously contradict it self if it should contradict that INDEED in former Ages whilst the mind of God was not intierly delivered and consigned in holy Writ there were frequent intimations of his pleasure by the
passage from the brink of Hell to the gates of Heaven More particularly he will observe the unhappy onset and beginnings the crooked and anfractuous proceedings the dangerous precipices and the horrid and fatall mischiefs of a sinfull course graphically described He will also descry the direct but laborious the sorrowfull but certain way of recovery And lastly the glorious triumph the comfortable condition and the sure station of him that hath happily conquered the aforesaid difficulties and is arrived at the serene top of Vertue together with the general applause and universal Jubilee of Heaven and Earth upon such an atchievement And in confidence that all these things are pointed at and intended in the scene before us as I do not doubt but will be evident by and by I do design to take occasion from hence to discourse somewhat fully and practically of these three very important particulars viz. 1. Of the nature of Sin and the mischiefs of a wicked course 2. Of the nature and admirable efficacy of Repentance Lastly Of the exorableness of the Divine Majesty and the unexpressible benignity and graciousness with which he entertains returning sinners And provided the management prove answerable to the design I cannot in the least mistrust the acceptableness of a work of this nature to any sort of men who have so much seriousness and manly sense in them as to value things in proportion to their real usefulness forasmuch as there is not that subject to be treated of which comes more close and home to the greatest concerns of all mankind For In the first place There are scarcely any so prodigiously vain as not to acknowledge themselves to be sinners and what can be of more use to him that makes that acknowledgement then to understand what it is which makes Sin to be sinfull what gives it its malignity and makes guilt inseparably to adhere to it what are the several states of sin and sinners and especially what is the natural course and tendency the sudden growth and unhappy progress of sin since hereby his conscience being inlightned will be both better able to make just reflexions upon what is past and also be made more cautious and diligent for the time to come And although it be true that every man hath not run the same mad risk of sin which is here decyphered in the Prodigal Son yet as that is owing to the especial providence and preventing grace of God where-ever the case is such so that happy person will by observing the wild extravagancies the extreme follies and horrid mischiefs which others incurr before conversion be the more provoked to adore the Divine Goodness in his own preservation Again What can be of more moment to those that are apprehensive of the Majesty and Purity of God of the holiness of his Laws of the certainty of a Judgement to come and withall are sensible of the frailty of humane nature and conscious of their own many and great miscarriages then to behold the nature of Repentance plainly described and to be instructed in the methods of making good their retreat of redintegrating themselves and successfully recommending their deplorable estate and condition to the Divine Philanthropy and mercy Lastly What can be more ravishingly comfortable to a contrite sinner then to understand the efficacy of true Repentance to see a door of hope open to the worst of sinners upon their coming to themselves and returning to their duty to be assured of the hearty compassions of the Divine Majesty to see the arms of the Almighty open to receive and embrace returning Children and all this as it were in perspective lively represented § II. But in regard it is a Parable which we have in hand I think my self obliged in order to the laying a good foundation of what we shall afterwards build upon it here in our entrance to premise something briefly first touching the ancient use of this Schematical and Figurative way of expression and the Reason of such usage secondly touching the Explication and Application of such kind of discourses And for the first of these I cannot reasonably imagine that any man who shall peruse these papers should be so great a stranger to all that hath past in former times as not to be aware that it was the general custome of Wise men of old to deliver their Sentiments after this manner and in such a style and this not onely in meer humane and common Writings but even in Sacred Writ it self To say nothing of the famous Oracles of the Gentiles which in other circumstances as well as in this of Mysteriousness have been observed to Ape and imitate those of the true God And to pass by the ancient Poets who were reputed as both the Divines and the Philosophers of the Ages in which they lived and who were well known to have affected an Oracular obscurity as much as the Oracles affected their way of versifying If we take notice of the ancient Proverbs of Nations which are supposed to carry the marks of the wisedom of their respective times and people these we find for the most part obscure and Aenigmatical And for the ancient Philosophers and men of renown such as the Wise men of Greece distinctively so called or such as Pythagoras Socrates c. who were no whit inferiour to the former he knows nothing of them that is not sensible not onely of accidental but also of designed obscurity in their writings and sayings As for the Sacred Writings of the Old Testament though with all good men I worthily adore that Divine Spirit which made choice of and directed the Pen-men of Holy Scripture and readily acknowledge both the plainness and perspicuity thereof in the necessary rules of life without which it could not have answered the ends of the Divine Wisedom in the enditing of it and also that wheresoever it is abstruse it is as far from phantastry and affected obscurity as the Pagan Oracles were notoriously guilty thereof notwithstanding it cannot be denied but that as well the Prophets as other holy Pen-men do frequently make use of Metaphors Allegories and other Schematical forms which must needs be attended with competent obscurity these being as it were a veil drawn over the face of Divine Truth Hence it is that Solomon makes the words of the wise and their dark sayings to be two expressions denoting the same thing for as he in another place speaks their discourses are like Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver that is besides a truth and beauty in the outside or case of the letter they had a more rich and precious meaning within And accordingly we may observe the Apostles of our Lord in the New Testament frequently to fix upon and pursue a mystical sense of some of those passages in the Old Testament which would to an ordinary Reader have seemed most strictly and literally to be understood Yet I do not think this will prove a sufficient warrant for Philo
most frequent and most remarkable instances of such conversions In the Old Testament we have Manasses who was an Idolater a Witch and did evil in the sight of the Lord above all the abominations of the Amorites who seem to have been the most profligate people in the world and yet became at last a true penitent a holy and a vertuous person In the New Testament to omit St. Paul who saith of himself that from a blasphemer a persecutour and the chief of sinners he became an exemplary Christian and a zealous Apostle and Preacher of the Doctrine which before he destroyed We have great numbers of the most obstinate and wicked Jews converted and no less of Romans Corinthians Ephesians and of all other Cities and Countries who had grown old and hardened in a course of sin but became new and holy men Particularly the Apostle assures us of the Corinthians That they had been Fornicators Idolaters Adulterers Effeminate Thieves Covetous Drunkards And yet were washed were sanctified were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God 1 Cor. 6. 9 10 11. It is not therefore impossible saith the sinner but I may also recover my self out of the snares of the Devil I found it in my power to chuse evil why may I not hope to be able to chuse good nothing determined or necessitated me heretofore to sin why may I not then cast off the yoke of custome and by the grace of God apply my self to my duty This is a second consideration which inflames the Penitent to a resolution of amendment which when he hath in earnest entered upon he finds 3. AS his third inducement not onely to be possible but also easy at least far beyond what he heretofore imagined It was perhaps not an extenuating but a just reflection which the Historian makes upon all the famous exploits of Alexander the Great in Asia and in the Indies which had swelled his name to such a bulk Primus ausus est vana contemnere that it was not so much his more then humane courage or conduct which gave him those successes but that he had the luck or the sagacity to see through and despise the pageantry and empty shew of force and formidableness which those soft and luxurious Nations were only furnished with So it is in this case he that can but once despise those Ludibria oculorum those scare-crows and phantastical Ideas which men's own fear and cowardise represent to them he will presently find the business of Religion easy and expedite and that it is but resolving generously and the thing is done The way of vertue though through the folly of men it be an unfrequented path yet is it no sad and uncomfortable way no man abridges himself the delight of life by becoming vertuous no just contentment is denied him no power or so much as passion he hath that is altogether denied its proper satisfaction There is no inhumane austerity required of us no contradiction to our reason or violence to our nature imposed upon us God is no hard Pharaoh that seeks to break us with bitter bondage requiring the tale of bricks without straw He doth not bid us continue in the fire and not burn or require us to converse with the occasions of sin and escape the pollution but only to moderate our desires to mind our selves to set our intentions right and in a word to resolve to doe what we can both to avoid the occasion and to escape the infection AND as for that great bug-bear Custome why may we not break the fetters of our own making and dissolve an habit of our own beginning Sin it self was weak and timorous and bashfull at first but it got strength by time and by degrees and in the same manner it is to be supplanted oppose beginnings of good to beginnings of evil and an habit will be obtained and we shall confront one custome with another He that goeth forth weeping bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again rejoycing and bringing his sheaves with him THE way of vertue is therefore easy because it is recommended by our own reason though sense oppose it for the present let us be true to the former and the latter must and will give way A Law enacted by our own consent uses to find a ready and chearfull compliance that which is voted within us and carried by the free suffrage of our minds surely can never be accounted harsh and difficult and such are all the laws of vertue the rules thereof are convenient for the community suitable to our own natures and as fit for us to consent to as for God to enact ALL the opposition which the Devil or the flesh can make to the determination of our minds will quickly cease if we stand firm to our selves reason is as able to restrain sense as that is to bewitch and fascinate our minds or at least if we stop our ears we shall avoid all its charms charm it never so cunningly Besides all the importunities of the flesh will from such time as they begin to be denied grow sensibly weaker and weaker And for the Devil there is nothing so much incourages his attempts as our irresolution and feeble opposition he is both a more proud and a more cunning enemy then to endure too many repulses without hopes of success He knows well enough he cannot force us and if he cannot corrupt us will not long labour in vain This the Apostle St. James assures us of Resist the Devil and he will flee from you St. James 4. 7. ABOVE all the Holy Spirit of God will not fail to set in with us and make all easy to us if we cease to resist and quench his motions How that worketh in and upon us is not easy to discover for As the wind bloweth where it listeth and we hear the sound thereof but know not whence it cometh nor whither it goeth so is every one that is born of the Spirit notwithstanding we are assured that God will give his Holy Spirit to them that ask it and that that Spirit hath a mighty influence upon us without doing any violence to us and that its aids are incomparably greater then the Devils opposition For greater is he that is in us then he that is in the world and this is our great incouragement to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling because God worketh in us to will and to doe of his good pleasure THE mischief of all is therefore our want of resolution that we do but dally and trifle in this great business and hence all the difficulty arises Quo minùs timoris eo minùs fermè periculi Cowards run the greatest dangers in war and irresolute men find the most opposition and the greatest difficulty in a course of vertue Did we but collect our selves we should quickly find the face of things altered and all discouragements vanish ALL
address of the Holy Spirit which we are considering of these are only the motions or visits which he vouchsafes to make pendente lite or whilst it is yet undetermined to whom men will ultimately belong That therefore which we are concerned about is the peculiar priviledge of very good men such as have cherished the motions entertained the visits and complied with the intimations of the Holy Spirit and when it is come to that from thenceforth he doth not visit them in transitu only or call upon them but resides and inhabits with them and becomes as it were a constant principle a Soul of their Souls in short they are the temples of the Holy Ghost THIS I take to be that which our Saviour means Jo. 14. 23. If any man love me he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with him and that also of St. John in the name of our Saviour Rev. 3. 20. Behold I stand at the door and knock which phrase signifies the previous and more ordinary motions of his grace And if any man open to me i. e. if men attend to my admonitions and invitations and break off their custom of sin which barrs the door of their Souls against me then I will come in and sup with him c. i. e. then I will be a familiar guest or inhabitant with him and this is both interpreted and confirmed by St. Paul 1 Cor. 3. 16. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you i. e. being sanctified and made fit for the residence of that heavenly Guest he hath taken possession of you as his house and temple and more expresly yet by St. John 1 Ep. 3 24. He that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him and he in him and hereby we know that he abideth with us by his Spirit which he hath given us § II. NOW this inhabitation or residence of the Holy Spirit is called a Seal and men are said to be sealed by the Holy Spirit because as seals use to denote propriety so God hereby marks out as it were such men for his own i. e. as those that he hath a peculiar concern about those that have an interest in him and he in them and this is of wonderfull comfort and advantage especially in these four respects 1. THE Spirit thus inhabiting men gives them a title not only to God's care and providence but to an inheritance of Sons to a participation of that unspeakable felicity wherewith himself is eternally happy and glorious So the Apostle concludes in the forementioned place Eph. 1. 13 14. After ye believed ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance untill the time of the purchased possession q. d. We are hereby assured of Heaven and glory hereafter though we are not yet in possession of it or this is the pledge of our adoption upon which the inheritance is intailed Hence it is that the same Apostle Rom. 8. 11. makes this an assured argument of our resurrection But if the Spirit of him that raised Jesus from the dead dwell in you he that raised Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you q. d. You cannot lie under the power of death and the bonds of the grave but God will assert you to life and immortality because you have a principle of life the Holy Spirit in you which will as surely revive you as it raised Jesus from the dead for by his residence in you you are marked out as belonging to God and thereby he hath taken possession of you for himself WHEN God owned the Tabernacle amongst the Jews built by Moses and after that the Temple built by Solomon and solemnly dedicated to him for his House or Palace wherein to dwell amongst that people it pleased him as it were to take livery and seisin by the cloud which on the behalf of the Divine Majesty hovered over them and was therefore not improperly called by the Jews the Shekinah or dwelling presence and God was said to dwell between the Cherubims because there this symbol of the divine presence subsisted And as in the Christian Church all those miracles which the primitive Christians were inabled to perform were principally to assure their minds that God owned them and although they were destitute of humane help and persecuted both by Jews and Gentiles yet God was with them in which respect the Holy Ghost is called the Comforter so often by our Saviour I say in those miraculous effusions of the Holy Spirit the cloud as it were sate over the mercy-seat in the Christian Church which was now departed from the Temple of the Jews and denoted the collection of believers both of Jews and Gentiles united under Christ Jesus to be now God's peculiar houshold and family So also to all holy men in all Ages God is present by his Spirit by which they become Temples of the Holy Ghost upon which the Apostle pronounces peremptorily Rom. 8. 9. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his Which I understand in this sense q. d. He is not arrived at the excellent state of Christianity that hath not experience of the residence of God's Holy Spirit in him ONLY this is to be remembred that this residence of the Holy Spirit in good men which we speak of is not to be judged of by miraculous effects nor are such to be expected now because those were proper only for the first Ages when whilst the Church was under persecuting Emperors and in its infancy God thought fit by such prodigious displays of his power and presence to make all the world see his concern for it and that as I said before he had taken possession of it but ordinarily and especially in the case of private Christians the presence of the Spirit with them discovers it self by such effects as these following For 2. THE Spirit of God though he doth not work miracles now yet doth he not meerly take up his residence in the hearts of holy men but actuates them prompts them forward in all good actions helps and strengthens them in their duty and inflames their resolution and zeal in all brave and generous enterprizes in respect of which we are said to be lead by the Spirit to live and walk in the Spirit Which is not so to be understood as if what good was done the Spirit did it for men nor much less as if he hurried men on whensoever they did well and so for defect of such motion were liable to bear the blame of their irregularities when they did evil for as on the one side he never moves but to that which is certainly good and agreeable to the standing rules of Scripture and natural reason so neither on the other hand when he incites to any such thing doth he overpower
recollect himself to emerge out of his folly to remember his Father's house and to thirst after eternal life he is infinitely pleased with it and cherishes such blossoms THUS it was prophesied of the Messias and interpreted and applied to our Saviour by the Evangelist Matth. 12. 20. A bruised reed shall he not break and smoaking flax shall he not quench untill he send forth judgment into victory i. e. He will neither precipitate those upon utter ruine who are very near it and have cast themselves upon the brink of danger so long as there is any hopes remaining of their recovery nor much less will he despise and extinguish the least sparks and beginnings of good but incourage and promote them AND this we observe to be verified in the young man in the Gospel of whom we have taken notice before he made some Conscience of his ways and inquired after eternal life and was willing to do something to attain it wherefore though he was far from being generously good nevertheless the Text tells us Jesus look'd upon him and loved him IN short therefore whatsoever God's proceedings shall be with impenitent and incurable sinners in the other world who have withstood the whole day of grace and abused all his patience and kindness I say whatever severity his wisedom and justice may then require when men have treasured up wrath against the day of wrath and fitted themselves for destruction yet certainly in this life and whilst there is any hope God is compassionate towards them he pities those he cannot love and loves those that pity themselves and delights in those that love him But this pity of the Almighty which yet is one of the lowest instances of his benignity consists not as it doth often in men in a soft sympathy with the miserable or ineffective wishes of their good but is like himself great and powerfull in its effects For in the next place § IV. 3. As the Father not only admits his Son when he returns to him but runs to meet him so doth the Almighty help and bring on sinners in their way to himself St. Jerom I confess understands this passage in the mystical sense to point at the Incarnation of our Saviour wherein God may very properly be said to meet man taking our humane nature that he might make us partakers of his Divine But I rather apply it to the efficacious assistance which God gives by his Grace to all beginnings of good in men Miraris homines ad Deos ire saith Seneca Deus ad homines venit imò quod propiùs est in homines venit nulla sine Deo mens bona est And a little before he had said Non sunt dii fastidiosi non invidi admittunt ascendentibus manus porrigunt Which words of his may thus be rendred in a Scripture phrase God though he be the high and lofty one inhabiting eternity yet is not stately and disdainfull he neither envies nor grudges men's happiness and though he dwell in the high and holy place yet to this man will he look that is of a broken and contrite spirit and he will be so far from repulsing his endeavours of ascending up to him that he reaches out a hand of mercy to pull him up to himself Wonder not then that men attain to God when he vouchsafes to come down to them nay to come in to them for never was any vertuous mind without his help TO that purpose speaks the excellent Moralist but the Holy Scripture most expresly Phil. 2. 12. It is God that worketh both to will and to doe and Jo. 6. 44. No man cometh unto me except my Father which hath sent me draw him And this temper is that which the Prophet magnificently describes the Messias by Isai 40. 11. He shall feed his flock like a Shepheard he shall gather the Lambs with his arms and carry them in his bosome and shall gently lead those that are with young And thus also the Prophet Hosea sets forth God's dealing with his people Israel Hos 11. 3. I taught Ephraim to goe taking them by their arms I drew them with the cords of a man with the bands of love In which passages though God by the Prophets describe the way of his providence with literal Israel the Jewish Nation yet as that People was a type of the spiritual Israel so did God's methods with them resemble the gracious condescension he uses towards the Souls of men in their conversion to himself I cannot upon this occasion omit a most affecting and remarkable story which Eusebius reports upon the credit both of St. Irenaeus and Clemens Alexandrinus to this effect St. John the Apostle in his visitation of the Churches near about Ephesus happens there to fix his eyes upon a certain young man who he conjectured from the comeliness of his shape vigorous chearfullness of his eyes and other indications of a generous spirit might become an eminent and usefull person if effectual care was taken of his education He therefore calls to the Bishop of the place and solemnly conjures him in the presence of Christ and his Holy Church to spare no pains or care in cultivating the mind and manners of the young man The Bishop undertakes it and accordingly takes him into his own house uses him as his own Son instructs him baptizes and at length confirms him in the Christian Faith which having done he thinks now he might be a little more secure of him and trust him to his own conduct But he had no sooner done so but certain loose young men presently insinuate themselves into his acquaintance and first debauch him with light caresses and jovial assignations and then as it often happens to maintain those excesses they draw him into a confederacy of robbery and in that flagitious society this young man quickly becomes so great a proficient as to be Captain and leader of the Fraternity At this season as God would have it the Apostle returns again into those parts and presently requires an account from the Bishop of the young man committed to his trust the good old man with sorrow in his heart and tears in his eyes replies Alas he is dead dead I say to God and all goodness he is become a common Thief and cut-throat hath deserted the Church where I trained him up and now keeps his station in the Mountains hard by from whence he makes his frequent sallies to commit all kind of villany The Apostle aged as he was considers not his own infirmity but the recovery of the young man and therefore calling for an Horse and a Guide presently issues forth into the Mountains where he had been told his haunts were There he no sooner arrives but he is arrested by the Centinel Thief whereat he betraying no fear or surprizal as having in part attained what he sought Shew me saith he your Captain The Captain hearing this and wondring what should be the errand presents himself armed
to receive him till he soon perceived who it was but then seized with shame he makes from him with all the speed he could The Apostle forgetting his age and gravity follows him with all his might crying out My Son my Son dost thou fly thy Father thy aged unarmed Father Fear me not I come not armed to destroy thee but desirous to save thee I 'll pray for thee I 'll intercede with Christ Jesus on thy behalf I am ready to lay down my life to save thy Soul The revolted youth hearing this makes a stand and then with eyes cast down and weapons laid aside begins to tremble and at last weeping bitterly is in the words of the Historian Re-baptized in his own tears Then S. John embracing him prays for him fasts with him instructs him and leaves him not till he had not only restored him to the society of the Church but settled him in the publick Ministry thereof THE story is very admirable in all the parts of it as wherein amongst other things we may observe in the first place how quickly bad company insinuates its contagion and corrupts youthfull minds and that neither fine parts nor the best education are sufficient security for a vertuous course unless Apollos water as well as Paul plant and God also give the increase AGAIN it is worth observing how easy and sudden the transition is from a luxurious to a lawless life This young man began his risk in riot and ends it in robbery Although this be no strange thing for besides that intemperance makes men bold and rash and fit for any desperate enterprize they that are come to that that they care not what they spend are usually forced not to regard how they get it We note also from this story that great Wits and curious tempers are like razor mettle quickly turned and if they miscarry they become the most notorious Debauchees but if they be well set and hold right become most eminently usefull Moreover we may here also take notice how a sense of guilt and dis-ingenuity baffles a man's spirit dejects his courage disarms and subdues him whereas on the other side conscience of sincerity and good designs spirits and actuates a man above his age temper and common capacity But that which I principally remark in the story is the paternal affection in the aged Apostle toward this dissolute and lost young man how fresh the concern for him was in his thoughts when he came into those parts again where he left him with what strictness he requires the depositum of the Bishop how he forgets himself to recover him what charms there were in the countenance voice motion of the aged Father how strange a thing it was to be young Hector running away from an old Apostle an armed Captain not daring to stand before unarmed and infirm old age to observe the spirit the passion the flaming love of a good man to the Soul of a desperate sinner and in all this to see a lively resemblance of God's goodness to men For God doth not only as I have said before receive men upon their return but moves towards them invites nay draws them to himself He is so far from positively hardening sinners that he takes off their hardness he allures them by his promises prevents them by his grace way-lays them by his providence calls upon them by his word melts them by his kindness works upon them by his Spirit and this Spirit takes all advantageous seasons watches the mollia tempora fandi suggests thoughts to their minds holds their minds close and intent gives them a prospect of the other world and by several other ways without violence to their faculties helps forward their return to God § V. 4. LASTLY As the Earthly Father for joy of his Sons return forgets all his anger and the causes of it passes by his ingratitude and dissolution of manners and treats him with infinite demonstrations of kindness falling on his neck and kissing him So doth our Heavenly Father cast all the iniquities of the penitent ' behind his back blots them out of his book makes no severe reflections no bitter expostulations no upbraidings but passes an act of perfect amnesty and oblivion Justin Martyr in his Work against Trypho brings in our Saviour saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The words are no where to be found in the Gospel but the sense is That God takes men as they are and considers not how evil they have been so that now they become sincerely good This the Prophet Ezekiel frequently proclaims on the behalf of God Chap. 18. especially vers 22. All his sin that he hath committed shall not be once mentioned against him but in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live For as if men apostatize from hopefull and vertuous beginnings it shall not at all avail them that they set out well and began in the Spirit whenas they end in the Flesh upon which account it is a very vain thing for them to goe about to comfort themselves against their present looseness by remembring the time of their conversion and the great passion they have sometime had for Religion but which now they have apostatized from having lost their first love so on the contrary he that was a sinner but now is not i. e. is now sincerely returned from his licentiousness to his duty shall never have his former disobedience imputed to him by God THIS truth Philo represents handsomly in his Allegorical way when glossing upon what the Scripture saith of Enoch After his translation he was not found because God had translated him he paraphrases on this manner God saith he having changed him from an evil to a vertuous man the traces of his former wickedness were no more to be found then if no such thing had ever been committed BUT this gracious procedure of God with penitent sinners deserves to be more fully and particularly unfolded and if we diligently consider what the Scripture assures us of the greatness of God's pardoning mercy we shall observe these three remarkable circumstances all pregnant of unspeakable consolation 1. He pardons great and many sins not onely lighter provocations 2. He forgives repeated follies and relapsed sinners 3. His pardon is full and absolute 1. FIRST amongst men there are some sins that are scarcely if at all thought to be pardonable as where there is malice and treachery involved in the fact or where there is contumely added to the injury And sometimes the greatness of the person injured so inhances the offence as that it is not thought fit to pardon as for instance in Treason against the Supream Power But most certainly there are all these and many more aggravations in most voluntary sins committed against God and yet he pardons Exod. 34. 7. He pardons iniquity transgression and sin i. e. sin of all kinds and degrees whatsoever excepting only the sin against the Holy Ghost which our Saviour hath
spirit of Prophecy to supply that defect and several special directions given upon emergencies but then also it is to be observed that such extraordinary interpositions were attended with miraculous circumstances and thereby brought their credentials along with them and gave assurance of their divine authority but now those miraculous attestations being ceased as well as the reason of them whatsoever pretends to God and is contrary to the Holy Scripture is an illusion of the Devil To the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to this Rule it is because there is no light in them Isa 8. 20. SECONDLY the motions of the Holy Spirit particularly in comforting the hearts of holy men are rational and accountable and consequently of that are also even and constant It is very ordinary for some men to be sometimes marvellously cast down they know not for what and then raised up again they know not how and this they ignorantly call the accessions and recesses of the Holy Spirit or a Plerophory and a state of desertion Whilst there is nothing to alter the case no change in themselves neither of apostasy from God nor of improvement in piety yet their state of mind is altered as if God changed and not themselves BUT it is quite otherwise with the Holy Spirit that never causlesly withdraws from men it never grieves those who have not first grieved it nor doth it arbitrarily give joy and consolation to the minds of men but upon just ground and foundations when there is a root and cause of it within in their own Consciences So Erasmus well observes upon that passage of the Apostle Rom. 8. 16. The Spirit witnesseth with our Spirits that we are the Sons of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vt intelligas saith he geminum esse testimonium duorum Spirituum nostri Dei c. The Spirit doth not comfort against the sense of our Consciences but concurrs with and confirms the testimony of our own spirit so that we may see and understand and can give account of our own joys And consequently of this these comforts are not flashy and uncertain but stable and certain like those effects that proceed from known and certain causes The joy of such men is not a blaze like a meteor but as the shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day Prov. 4. 18. But on the contrary those that have their ebbings and flowings their sudden and unaccountable dejections and their as sudden ecstasies and transports very unworthily impute these motions to the Holy Spirit which are only fits of the body and the several disguises of hypochondriack passions THIRDLY the Spirit of God in all its impressions upon men is gentle sedate and governable puts not men into a rage nor disorders their reason but is manageable by it submits to all decorum and complies with all decency of circumstances This is that which is thought by the best Interpreters to be the meaning of that remarkable passage of the Apostle to the Corinthians 1 Ep. Chap. 14. vers 29 30 32 33. Let the Prophets speak two or three and let the rest judge If any thing be revealed to another that sitteth by let the first hold his peace For the spirits of the Prophets are subject to the Prophets For God is not the authour of confusion but of peace c. i. e. saith the Learned Dr. H. Hammond even in those effusions of the Holy Ghost and in the exercise of those extraordinary gifts you may observe method and order For the afflations or inspirations of the Prophets here spoken of may be ruled by the Prophets i. e. by them that have them these Christian gifts being not like the afflations of evil spirits which put men into ecstasies c. for the Spirit of God is not a violent ecstatical impetuous but a soft quiet spirit c. And if it was so in those extraordinary impulses in the primitive times much more must it needs be so now when all those miraculous and prodigious circumstances are ceased as I said before Therefore wherever men pretending to the Spirit are raving and furious and pervert all order and government or wheresoever such persons shall under such pretences thrust themselves into the Ministry or put the Magistrate out of office shall take upon them to be reformers of the world revile authority run upon desperate attempts or in short whereever there is a raging whirlwind instead of a still soft voice God is not there but either the Devil or at least a Phrenzy And so much for that CHAP. IV. Of the great honour God doth to a true Penitent putting him into his service and the peculiar usefullness of such a person THE CONTENTS § I. The great trust God reposes in those he pardons and their obligations to faithfullness and activity in his service § II. Several ways whereby all good men may be usefull towards the conversion of others without taking upon them to be publick Preachers and their incouragements thereunto § III. The peculiar aptness of Converts from an evil life to be serviceable to God in the reclaiming of others § IV. The Character of an accomplisht Christian according to all the ornaments forementioned § I. WE come now to the third Ornament which the Father invests his returned Son with He puts Shoes on his Feet which were the habit not of Slaves but of Free-men as we have noted before but what is the mystical sense of this passage or what favour on God's part towards penitent sinners is hereby denoted is not altogether so easy to resolve upon St. Chrysostom and Theophylact understand hereby the Grace of God which defends the Convert from the temptations of the Devil Put Shoes on his feet saith the former that the old Serpent may not find him naked so as to wound his heel and that he may be able to tread upon the serpent's head and have no disturbance in running the way of God's commandments But St. Jerom and St. Austin apprehend that hereby is signified the honour that is put upon eminent Converts to be employed by God as usefull instruments of propagating his Gospell and of drawing in others from the evill of their ways to submission and obedience To this purpose St. Jerom applies that circumstance of the Passeover that it was to be eaten with staves in their hands and shoes on their feet as well as with bitter herbs as if the mystical reach of that injunction was to teach us that a man delivered by the mighty power of God's grace out of Aegypt the state of servility to sin and Satan should not only solemnize the memorial of God's mercy with a sorrowfull and bitter reflection upon his former folly and misery but stand as in procinctu ready to run on God's errand and to call in others to him And indeed this same Metaphor is used in that very sense according to the judgment of the best interpreters Eph. 6. 16.