desertions and anguish of spirit expecting all should work together for the best according to the promise if you can strengthen your selves in God when you are weakest believe when you see no hope and entertain no jealousies or suspicions of God though you see nothing to make you confident then and then only you have Faith which in conjunction with its other parts is able to save your Souls For in this precise duty of trusting God there are the rays of hope and great proportions of Charity and Resignation 17. The summ is that pious and most Christian sentence of the Author of the ordinary Gloss To believe in God through Jesus Christ is by believing to love him to adhere to him to be united to him by Charity and Obedience and to be incorporated into Christ ' s mystical body in the Communion of Saints I conclude this with a collation of certain excellent words of S. Paul highly to the present purpose Examine your selves Brethren whether ye be in the Faith prove your own selves Well but how Know you not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be Reprobates There 's the touchstone of Faith If Jesus Christ dwells in us then we are true Believers if he does not we are Reprobates we have no Faith But how shall we know whether Christ be in us or no Saint Paul tells us that too If Christ be in you the body is dead by reason of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousness That 's the Christian's mark and the Characteristick of a true Believer A death unto sin and a living unto righteousness a mortified body and a quickned spirit This is plain enough and by this we see what we must trust to A man of a wicked life does in vain hope to be saved by his Faith for indeed his Faith is but equivocal and dead which as to his purpose is just none at all and therefore let him no more deceive himself For that I may still use the words of S. Paul This is a faithful saying and these things I will that thou affirm constantly that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works For such and such only in the great scrutiny for Faith in the day of Doom shall have their portion in the bosom of faithful Abraham The PRAYER I. O Eternal GOD 〈◊〉 of all Truth and Holiness in whom to believe is life eternal let thy Grace descend with a mighty power into my Soul beating down every strong hold and vainer imagination and bringing every proud thought and my confident and ignorant understanding into the obedience of Jesus Take from me all disobdience and refractoriness of spirit all ambition and private and baser interests remove from me all prejudice and weakness of perswasion that I may wholly resign my Understanding to the perswasions of Christianity acknowledging Thee to be the principle of Truth and thy Word the measure of Knowledge and thy Laws the rule of my life and thy Promises the satisfaction of my hopes and an union with thee to be the consummation of Charity in the fruition of Glory Amen II. HOly JESUS make me to acknowledge thee to be my Lord and Master and my self a Servant and Disciple of thy holy Discipline and Institution let me love to sit at thy feet and suck in with my ears and heart the sweetness of thy holy Sermons Let my Soul be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace with a peaceable and docile disposition Give me great boldness in the publick Confession of thy Name and the Truth of thy Gospel in despite of all hostilities and temptations And grant I may always remember that thy Name is called upon me and I may so behave my self that I neither give scandal to others nor cause disreputation to the honour of Religion but that thou mayest be glorified in me and I by thy mercies after a strict observance of all the holy Laws of Christianity Amen III. O Holy and ever-Blessed SPIRIT let thy gracious influences be the perpetual guide of my rational Faculties Inspire me with Wisdom and Knowledge spiritual Understanding and a holy Faith and sanctifie my Faith that it may arise up to the confidence of Hope and the adherencies of Charity and be fruitful in a holy Conversation Mortifie in me all peevishness and pride of spirit all heretical dispositions and whatsoever is contrary to sound Doctrine that when the eternal Son of God the Author and Finisher of our Faith shall come to make scrutiny and an inquest for Faith I may receive the Promises laid up for them that believe in the Lord Jesus and wait for his coming in holiness and purity to whom with the Father and thee O Blessed Spirit be all honour and eternal adoration payed with all sanctity and joy and Eucharist now and for ever Amen SECT XI Of CHRIST's going to Jerusalem to the Passeover the first time after his Manifestation and what followed till the expiration of the Office of John the Baptist. The Visitation of the Temple Marke 11. 15. And Iesus went into y e Temple began to cast out them that sold bought in y e Temple and overthrew the tables of the money changers 16. And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the Temple The Conference with Nicodemus Iohn 3. 9. Nicodemus answered said unto him How can these things be 10. Iesus answered and sayd unto him Art thou a Master of Israel and knowest not these things 1. IMmediately after this Miracle Jesus abode a few days in Capernaum but because of the approach of the great Feast of Passeover he ascended to Jerusalem and the first publick act of record that he did was an act of holy Zeal and Religion in behalf of the honour of the Temple For divers Merchants and Exchangers of money made the Temple to be the Market and the Bank and brought Beasts thither to be sold for sacrifice against the great Paschal Solemnity At the sight of which Jesus being moved with zeal and indignation made a whip of cords and drave the Beasts out of the Temple overthrew the accounting Tables and commanded them that sold the Doves to take them from thence For his anger was holy and he would mingle no injury with it and therefore the Doves which if let loose would be detrimental to the owners he caused to be fairly removed and published the Religion of Holy places establishing their Sacredness for ever by his first Gospel-Sermon that he made at Jerusalem Take these things hence Make not my Father's House a house of merchandise for it shall be called a house of Prayer to all Nations And being required to give a sign of his Vocation for this being an action like the Religion of the Zelots among the Jews if it was not attested by something extraordinary might be abused into an excess of liberty he only foretold the
pursuance of this the same Apostle declares that the several states of sin are so many recessions from the state of Baptismal grace and if we arrive to the direct Apostasie and renouncing of or a contradiction to the state of Baptism we are then unpardonable because we are fallen from our state of Pardon This S. Paul conditions most strictly in his Epistle to the Hebrews This is the Covenant I will make in those days I will put my Laws in their hearts And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more Now where remission of these is there is no more offering for sin that is our sins are so pardoned that we need no more oblation we are then made partakers of the death of Christ which we afterwards renew in memory and Eucharist and representment But the great work is done in Baptism for so it follows Having boldness to 〈◊〉 into the Holiest by the bloud of Jesus by a new and living way that is by the veil of his flesh his Incarnation But how do we enter into this Baptism is the door and the ground of this confidence for ever for so he adds Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water This is the consignation of this blessed state and the gate to all this mercy Let us hold fast the profession of our faith that is the Religion of a Christian the Faith into which we were baptized for that is the Faith that justifies and saves us Let us therefore hold fast this profession of this Faith and do all the intermedial works in order to the conservation of it such as are assembling in the Communion of Saints the use of the Word and Sacrament is included in the Precept mutual Exhortation good Example and the like For if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth that is if we sin against the profession of this Faith and hold it not fast but let the Faith and the profession go wilfully which afterwards he calls a treading under foot the Son of God accounting the bloud of the Covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing and a doing despite to the spirit of grace viz. which moved upon those waters and did illuminate him in Baptism if we do this there is no more sacrifice for sins no more deaths of Christ into which you may be baptized that is you are fallen from the state of Pardon and Repentance into which you were admitted in Baptism and in which you continue so long as you have not quitted your baptismal Rights and the whole Covenant Contrary to this is that which S. Peter calls making our Calling and Election sure that is a doing all that which may continue us in our state of Baptism and the grace of the Covenant And between these two states of absolute Apostasie from and intirely adhering to and securing this state of Calling and Election are all the intermedial sins and being overtaken in single faults or declining towards vicious habits which in their several proportions are degrees of danger and insecurity which S. Peter calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a forgetting our Baptism or purification from our sins And in this sence are those words The just shall live by Faith that is by that profession which they made in Baptism from which if they swerve not they shall be supported in their spiritual life It is a Grace which by virtue of the Covenant consigned in Baptism does like a centre 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to all the periods and portions of our life our whole life all the periods of our succeeding hopes are kept alive by this This consideration is of great use besides many other things to reprove the folly of those who in the Primitive Church deferred their Baptism till their death-bed because Baptism is a Laver of Sanctification and drowns all our sins and buries them in the grave of our Lord they thought they might sin securely upon the stock of an after-Baptism for unless they were strangely prevented by a sudden accident a death-bed Baptism they thought would secure their condition but early some of them durst not take it much less in the beginning of their years that they might at least gain impunity for their follies and heats of their youth Baptism hath influence into the pardon of all our sins committed in all the days of our folly and infirmity and so long as we have not been baptized so long we are out of the state of Pardon and therefore an early Baptism is not to be avoided upon this mistaken fancy and plot upon Heaven it is the greater security towards the pardon of our sins if we have taken it in the beginning of our days 20. Fifthly The next benefit of Baptism which is also a verification of this is a Sanctification of the baptized person by the Spirit of Grace Sanctus in hunc coelo descendit Spiritus amnem Coelestique sacras fonte maritat aquas Concipit unda Deum sanctámque liquoribus almis Edit ab aeterno semine progeniem The Holy Ghost descends upon the waters of Baptism and makes them prolifical apt to produce children unto God and therefore S. Leo compares the Font of Baptism to the Womb of the Blessed Virgin when it was replenished with the Holy Spirit And this is the Baptism of our dearest Lord his Ministers baptize with Water our Lord at the same time verifies their Ministery with giving the Holy Spirit They are joyned together by S. Paul We are by one Spirit baptized into one body that is admitted into the Church by baptism of Water and the Spirit This is that which our Blessed Lord calls a being born of Water and of the Spirit by Water we are sacramentally dead and buried by the Spirit we are made alive But because these are mysterious expressions and according to the style of Scripture high and secret in spiritual significations therefore that we may understand what these things signifie we must consider it by its real effects and what it produces upon the Soul of a man 21. First It is the suppletory of original Righteousness by which Adam was at first gracious with God and which he lost by his prevarication It was in him a principle of Wisdom and Obedience a relation between God and himself a title to the extraordinary mercies of God and a state of Friendship When he fell he was discomposed in all the links of the golden chain and blessed relation were broken and it so continued in the whole life of Man which was stained with the evils of this folly and the consequent mischiefs and therefore when we began the world again entring into the Articles of a new life God gave us his Spirit to be an instrument of our becoming gracious persons and of being in a condition of obtaining that supernatural End which
justifie that a holy life and a persevering Sanctity is enjoyned by the Covenant of the Gospel if I say in its first intention it be declared that we may as well and upon the same terms hope for Pardon upon a Recovery hereafter as upon the perseverance in the present condition 13. From these premisses we may soon understand what is the Duty of a Christian in all his life even to pursue his own undertaking made in Baptism or his first access to Christ and redemption of his person from the guilt and punishment of sins The state of a Christian is called in Scripture Regeneration Spiritual life Walking after the Spirit Walking in newness of life that is a bringing forth fruits meet for Repentance That Repentance which tied up in the same ligament with Faith was the disposition of a Christian to his Regeneration and Atonement must have holy life in perpetual succession for that is the apt and proper fruit of the first Repentance which John the Baptist preached as an introduction to Christianity and as an entertaining the Redemption by the bloud of the Covenant And all that is spoken in the New Testament is nothing but a calling upon us to do what we promised in our Regeneration to perform that which was the design of Christ who therefore redeemed us and bare our sins in his own body that we might die unto sin and live unto righteousness 14. This is that saying of S. Paul Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you Plainly saying that unless we pursue the state of Holiness and Christian communion into which we were baptized when we received the grace of God we shall fail of the state of Grace and never come to see the glories of the Lord. And a little before Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of Faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water That 's the first state of our Redemption that 's the Covenant God made with us to remember our sins no more and to put his laws in our hearts and minds And this was done when our bodies were washed with water and our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience that is in Baptism It remains then that we persist in the condition that we may continue our title to the Covenant for so it follows Let us hold fast the profession of our Faith without wavering For if we sin wilfully after the profession there remains no more sacrifice that is If we hold not fast the profession of our Faith and continue not the condition of the Covenant but fall into a contrary state we have forfeited the mercies of the Covenant So that all our hopes of Blessedness relying upon the Covenant made with God in Jesus Christ are ascertained upon us by holding fast that profession by retaining our hearts still sprinkled from an evil conscience by following peace with all men and holiness For by not failing of the grace of God we shall not fail of our hopes the mighty price of our high calling but without all this we shall never see the face of God 15. To the same purpose are all those places of Scripture which intitle us to Christ and the Spirit upon no other condition but a holy life and a prevailing habitual victorious Grace Know you not your own selves Brethren how that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be reprobates There are but two states of being in order to Eternity either a state of the Inhabitation of Christ or the state of Reprobation Either Christ is in us or we are reprobates But what does that signifie to have Christ dwelling in us That also we learn at the feet of the same Doctor If Christ be in you the body is dead by reason of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousness The body of Sin is mortified and the life of Grace is active busie and spiritual in all them who are not in the state of Reprobation The Parallel with that other expression of his They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts If sin be vigorous if it be habitual if it be beloved if it be not dead or dying in us we are not of Christ's portion we belong not to him nor he to us For whoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God that is every Regenerate person is in a condition whose very being is a contradiction and an opposite design to Sin When he was regenerate and born anew of water and the spirit the seed of God the original of Piety was put into him and bidden to encrease and multiply The seed of God in S. John is the same with the word of God in S. James by which he begat us and as long as this remains a Regenerate person cannot be given up to sin for when he is he quits his Baptism he renounces the Covenant he alters his relation to God in the same degree as he enters into a state of sin 16. And yet this discourse is no otherwise to be understood than according to the design of the thing it self and the purpose of God that is that it be a deep ingagement and an effectual consideration for the necessity of a holy life but at no hand let it be made an instrument of Despair nor an argument to lessen the influences of the Divine Mercy For although the nicety and limits of the Covenant being consigned in Baptism are fixed upon the condition of a holy and persevering uninterrupted Sanctity and our Redemption is wrought but once compleated but once we are but once absolutely intirely and presentially forgiven and reconciled to God this Reconciliation being in virtue of the Sacrifice and this Sacrifice applied in Baptism is one as Baptism is one and as the Sacrifice is one yet the Mercy of God besides this great Feast hath fragments which the Apostles and Ministers spiritual are to gather up in baskets and minister to the afterneeds of indigent and necessitous Disciples 17. And this we gather as fragments are gathered by respersed sayings instances and examples of the Divine mercy recorded in Holy Scripture The Holy Jesus commands us to forgive our brother seventy times seven times when he asks our pardon and implores our mercy and since the Divine mercy is the pattern of ours and is also procured by ours the one being made the measure of the other by way of precedent and by way of reward God will certainly forgive us as we forgive our brother and it cannot be imagined God should oblige us to give pardon oftner than he will give it himself especially since he hath expressed ours to be a title of a
have coveted after they have pierced themselves with many sorrows Vice makes poor and does ill endure it 10. For he that in the School of Christ hath learned to determine his desires when his needs are served and to judge of his needs by the proportions of nature hath nothing wanting towards Riches Vertue makes Poverty become rich and no Riches can satisfie a covetous mind or rescue him from the affliction of the worst kind of Poverty He only wants that is not satisfied And there is great infelicity in a Family where Poverty dwells with discontent There the Husband and Wife quarrel for want of a full table and a rich wardrobe and their love that was built upon false arches sinks when such temporary supporters are removed they are like two Milstones which set the Mill on fire when they want corn and then their combinations and society were unions of Lust or not supported with religious love But we may easily suppose S. Joseph and the Holy Virgin-Mother in Egypt poor as hunger forsaken as banishment disconsolate as strangers and yet their present lot gave them no afflicton because the Angel fed them with a necessary hospitality and their desires were no larger than their tables and their eyes look'd only upwards and they were careless of the future and careful of their duty and so made their life pleasant by the measures and discourses of Divine Philosophy When Elisha stretched himself upon the body of the child and laid hands to hands and applied mouth to mouth and so shrunk himself into the posture of commensuration with the child he brought life into the dead trunk and so may we by applying our spirits to the proportions of a narrow fortune bring life and vivacity into our dead and lost condition and make it live till it grows bigger or else returns to health and salutary uses 11. And besides this Philosophical extraction of gold from stones and Riches from the dungeon of Poverty a holy life does most probably procure such a proportion of Riches which can be useful to us or consistent with our felicity For besides that the Holy Jesus hath promised all things which our heavenly Father knows we need provided we do our duty and that we find great securities and rest from care when we have once cast our cares upon God and placed our hopes in his bosome besides all this the temperance sobriety and prudence of a Christian is a great income and by not despising it a small revenue combines its parts till it grows to a heap big enough for the emissions of Charity and all the offices of Justice and the supplies of all necessities whilest Vice is unwary prodigal and indiscreet throwing away great revenues as tributes to intem perance and vanity and suffering dissolution and forfeiture of estates as a punishment and curse Some sins are direct improvidence and ill husbandry I reckon in this number Intemperance Lust Litigiousness Ambition Bribery Prodigality Caming Pride Sacrilege which is the greatest spender of them all and makes a fair estate evaporate like Camphire turning it into nothing no man knows which way But what the 〈◊〉 gave as an estimate of a rich man saying He that can maintain an Army is rich was but a short account for he that can maintain an Army may be beggered by one Vice and it is a vast revenue that will pay the debt-books of Intemperance or Lust. 12. To these if we add that Vertue is honourable and a great advantage to a fair reputation that it is praised by them that love it not that it is honoured by the followers and family of Vice that it forces glory out of shame honor from contempt that it reconciles men to the fountain of Honour the Almighty God who will honour them that honour him there are but a few more excellencies in the world to make up the Rosary of temporal Felicity And it is so certain that Religion serves even our temporal ends that no great end of State can well be served without it not Ambition not desires of Wealth not any great design but Religion must be made its usher or support If a new Opinion be commenced and the Author would make a Sect and draw Disciples after him at least he must be thought to be Religious which is a demonstration how great an instrument of reputation Piety and Religion is and if the pretence will do us good offices amongst men the reality will do the same besides the advantages which we shall receive from the Divine Benediction The power of godliness will certainly do more than the form alone And it is most notorious in the affairs of the Clergy whose lot it hath been to fall from great riches to poverty when their wealth made them less curious of their duty but when Humility and Chastity and exemplary Sanctity have been the enamel of their holy Order the people like the Galatians would pull out their own eyes to do them benefit And indeed God hath singularly blessed such instruments to the being the only remedies to repair the breaches made by Sacrilege and Irreligion But certain it is no man was ever honoured for that which was esteemed vicious Vice hath got mony and a curse many times and Vice hath adhered to the instruments and purchaces of Honour But among all Nations whatsoever those called Honourable put on the face and pretence of Vertue But I chuse to instance in the proper cognisance of a Christian Humility which seems contradictory to the purposes and reception of Honour and yet in the world nothing is a more certain means to purchase it Do not all the world hate a proud man And therefore what is contrary to Humility is also contradictory to Honour and Reputation And when the Apostle had given command that in giving honour we should one go before another he laid the foundation of praises and Panegyricks and Triumphs And as Humility is secure against affronts and tempests of despight because it is below them so when by imployment or any other issue of Divine Providence it is drawn from its 〈◊〉 and secrecy it shines clear and bright as the purest and most polished metals Humility is like a Tree whose Root when it sets deepest in the earth rises higher and spreads fairer and stands surer and lasts longer every step of its descent is like a rib of iron combining its parts in unions indissoluble and placing it in the chambers of security No wise man ever lost any thing by cession but he receives the hostility of violent 〈◊〉 into his embraces like a stone into a lap of wooll it rests and sits down soft and innocently but a stone falling upon a stone makes a collision and extracts fire and finds no rest and just so are two proud persons despised by each other contemned by all living in perpetual dissonancies always fighting against asfronts 〈◊〉 of every person disturbed by every accident
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his School or place of institution was at Tiberias and nothing more commonly shewed to Travellers than Job's well in the way between Ramah and Jerusalem others place it in Syria near Damascus so called from 〈◊〉 the supposed Founder of that City others a little more Northward at Apamea now called Hama where his house is said to be shewed at this day Most make it to be part of Idumaea near mount 〈◊〉 or else Arabia the Desart probably it was in the confines of both this part of Arabia being nearest to the Sabaeans and Chaldaeans who invaded him and most applicable to his dwelling among the Sons of the East to the situation of his friends who came to visit him and best corresponding with those frequent Arabisms discernable both in the Language and Discourses of Job and his Friends not to say that this Country produced persons exceedingly addicted to Learning and Contemplation and the studies of natural Philosophy whence the wise men who came out of the East to worship Christ are thought by many to have been Arabians For his kindred and his friends we find four taken notice of who came to visit him in his distress Eliphaz the Temanite the son probably of Teman and grandchild of Esau by his eldest son Eliphaz the Country deriving its name Teman from his Father and was situate in Idumaea in the borders of the Desart Arabia Bildad the Shuhite a descendant in all likelihood of Shuah one of the sons of Abraham by his wife Keturah whose seat was in this part of Arabia Zophar the Naamathite a Country lying near those parts And Elihu the Buzite of the off-spring of Buz the son of Nahor and so nearly related to Job himself He was the son of Barachel of the kindred of Ram who was the head of the Family and his habitation was in the parts of Arabia the Desart near Euphrates or at least in the Southern part of 〈◊〉 bordering upon it As for Job himself he is made by some a Canaanite of the posterity of Cham by others to descend from Sem by his son Amram whose eldest sons name was 〈◊〉 by most from Esau the Father of the Idumaean Nations but most probably either from Nahor Abraham's brother whose sons were Huz Buz Chesed c. or from Abraham himself by some of the sons which he had by his wife Keturah whereby an account is most probably given how Job came to be imbued with those seeds of Piety and true Religion for which he was so eminently remarkable as deriving them from those Religious principles and instructions which Abraham and Nahor had bequeathed to their posterity His quality and the circumstances of his External state were very considerable a man rich and honourable His substance was seven thousand Sheep and three thousand Camels and five hundred yoke of Oxen and five hundred she-Asses and a very great houshold so that he was the greatest of all the men of the East himself largely describes the great honour and prosperity of his fortunes that he washed his steps in Butter and the rock poured out rivers of Oil when he went out to the gate through the City and prepared his seat in the street the young men saw him and hid themselves the aged arose and stood up the Princes refrained talking and laid their hand on their mouth c. He delivered the poor that cried and the fatherless and him that had none to help him the blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon him c. He brake the jaws of the wicked and pluckt the spoil out of their teeth c. Indeed so great his state and dignity that it has led many into a perswasion that he was King of Idumaea a powerful and mighty Prince a fancy that has received no small encouragement from the common but groundless confounding of Job with Jobab King of Edom of the race of Esau. For the story gives no intimation of any such royal dignity to which Job was advanced but always speaks of him as a private person though exceeding wealthy and prosperous and thereby probably of extraordinary power and estimation in his Country Nay that he might not want fit Companions in his Regal capacity three of his friends are made Kings as well as he the LXX Translators themselves stiling Eliphaz King of the Temanites Bildad of the Suchites and Zophar King of the Minaeans though with as little probably less reason than the former 21. BUT whatever his condition was we are sure he was no less eminent for Piety and Religion he was a man perfect and upright one that feared God and eschewed evil Though living among the Idolatrous Gentiles he kept up the true and sincere worship of God daily offered up Sacrifices and Prayers to Heaven piously instructed his Children and Family lived in an intire dependence upon the Divine Providence in all his discourses expressed the highest and most honourable sentiments and thoughts of God and such as best became the Majesty of an Infinite Being in all transactions he was just and righteous compassionate and charitable modest and humble indeed by the character of God himself who knew him best There was none like him in the Earth a perfect and an upright man fearing God and eschewing evil his mind was submissive and compliant his patience generous and unshaken great even to a Proverb You have heard of the Patience of Job And enough he had to try it to the utmost if we consider what sufferings he underwent those evils which are wont but singly to seise upon other men all centred and met in him Plundered in his Estate by the Sabaean and Chaldaean Free-booters whose standing livelihood were spoils and robberies and not an Oxe or Asse left of all the Herd not a Sheep or a Lamb either for Food or Sacrifice Undone in his Posterity his Seven Sons and Three Daughters being all slain at once by the fall of one House blasted in his credit and good name and that by his nearest friends who traduced and challenged him for a dissembler and an hypocrite Ruined in his health being smitten with sore boiles from the crown of the Head to the sole of the Foot till his Body became a very Hospital of Diseases tormented in his mind with sad and uncomfortable reflections The arrows of the Almighty being shot within him the poyson whereof drank up his spirit the terrours of God setting themselves in array against him All which were aggravated and set home by Satan the grand Engineer of all those torments and all this continuing for at least Twelve Months say the Jews probably for a much longer time and yet endured with great courage and fortitude of mind till God put a period to this tedious Trial and crowned his sufferings with an ample restitution We have seen who this excellent Person was we are next to enquire when he lived And here we meet with almost an infinite variety of
manner that they might be able to apprehend the will of God which they presently did upon their awaking out of sleep These Divine Dreams the Jews distinguish into two sorts Monitory such as were sent only by way of instruction and admonition to give Men notice of what they were to do or warning of what they should avoid such were the Dreams of Pharaoh Abimelech Laban c. or else they were Prophetical when God by such a powerful energy acted upon the mind and imagination of the Prophet as carried the strength and force of a Divine evidence along with it This was sometimes done by a clear and distinct impression of the thing upon the mind without any dark or aenigmatical representation of it such as God made to Samuel when he first revealed himself to him in the Temple sometimes by apparition yet so as the Man though a-sleep was able to discern an Angel conversing with him By Visions God usually communicated himself two ways First when something really appeared to the sight thus Moses beheld the Bush burning and stood there while God conversed with him Manoah and his 〈◊〉 saw the Angel while he took his leave and in a flaming Pyramid went up to Heaven the three Angels appeared to Abraham a little before the fatal ruine of Sodom all which apparitions were unquestionably true and real the Angel assuming an humane shape that he might the freelier converse with and deliver his message to those to whom he was sent Secondly by powerful impressions upon the imagination usually done while the Prophet was awake and had the free and uninterrupted exercise of his reason though the Vision oft over-powered and cast him into a trance that the Soul being more retired from sensible objects might the closer intend those Divine notices that were represented to it Thus all the Prophets had the Ideas of those things that they were to deliver to the People the more strongly impressed upon their fancies and this commonly when they were in the greatest solitude and privacy and their powers most called in that the Prophetical influx might have the greater force upon them In some such way S. Paul was caught up into the third Heaven probably not so much by any real separation of his Soul from his Body or local translation of his Spirit thither as by a profound abstraction of it from his corporeal Senses God during the time of the trance entertaining it with an internal and admirable 〈◊〉 of the glory and happiness of that state as truly and effectually as if his Soul had been really conveyed thither 14. THIRDLY God was wont to communicate his mind by immediate Inspirations whereby he immediately transacted with the understandings of Men without any relation to their sancy or their senses It was the most pacate and serene way of Prophecy God imparting his mind to the Prophet not by Dreams or Visions but while they were awake their powers active and their minds calm and undisturbed This the Jews call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Holy Spirit or that kind of Revelation that was directly conveyed into the mind by the most efficacious irradiation and inspiration of the Holy Spirit God by these Divine illapses enabling the Prophet clearly and immediately to 〈◊〉 the things delivered to him And in this way the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or holy Writings 〈◊〉 dictated and conveyed to the World in which respect the Apostle says that all 〈◊〉 is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 given by divine inspiration The highest pitch of this Prophetical revelation was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the gradus Mosaicus or that way of Prophecy that God used towards Moses of whom it is particularly said that the Lord spake unto Moses face to face as a Man speaketh unto his friend and elsewhere it is evidently distinguished from all inferiour ways of Prophecy If there be a Prophet among you I the Lord will make my self known unto him in a Vision and will speak unto him in a Dream 〈◊〉 Servant Moses is not so with him I will speak mouth to mouth even apparently and not in dark speeches and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold Clearly implying a mighty 〈◊〉 in God's way of revelation to Moses above that of other Prophets which the Jewish Writers make to have lyen in four things First that in all God's communications to Moses 〈◊〉 immediately spake to his understanding without any impressions upon fancy any visible appearances any Dreams or Visions of the Night Secondly that Moses had prophecies conveyed to him without any fears or consternations whereas the other Prophets were astonished and weakned at the sight of God Thirdly that Moses had no previous dispositions or preparations to make him capable of the Divine revelation but could directly go to God and consult him as a man speaketh with his friend other Prophets being forced many times by some preparatory arts to invite the Prophetick spirit to come upon them Fourthly that Moses had a freedom and liberty of spirit to prophecy at all times and could when he pleased have recourse to the Sacred Oracle But as to this the Scripture intimates no such thing the spirit of Prophecy retiring from him at some times as well as from the rest of the Prophets And indeed the Prophetick spirit did not reside in the holy men by way of habit but occasionally as God saw fitting to pour it out upon them it was not in them as light is in the Sun but as light in the Air and consequently depended upon the immediate irradiations of the Spirit of God 15. THESE Divine Communications were so conveyed to the minds of the Prophets and inspired 〈◊〉 that they always knew them to be Divine revelations so mighty and 〈◊〉 was the evidence that came along with them that there could be no doubt but they were the birth of Heaven It 's true when the Prophetick spirit at any time seised upon wicked men they understood not its effect upon them nor were in the least improved and bettered by it the revelation passed through them as a sound through a Trunk or water through a Leaden-pipe without any particular and distinct apprehension of the thing or useful impression made upon their minds as is evident besides others in the case of Caiaphas and Balaam of which last the Jews say expresly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he prophesied according to the will of God but understood not what he prophesied But it was otherwise with the true Prophets they always knew who 't was that acted them what was the meaning of that intelligence that was communicated to them In the Gentile world when the Daemon entred into the inspired person he was usually carried out to the furious transports of rage and madness But in the Prophets of God although the impulse might sometimes be very strong and violent whence the Prophet Jeremy complains Mine heart within me is broken all my bones shake I am like a
were of considerable standing and great account in the time of our Saviour To be sure strangely wide of the mark are those Jewish Chronologists who say that the Sect of the Pharisees arose in the times of Tiberius Caesar and 〈◊〉 the AEgyptian under whom the Septuagint translation was accomplished as if Ptolomy Philadelphus and Tiberius Caesar had been Contemporaries between whom there is the distance of no less than CCLX years But when ever it began a bold and daring Sect it was not fearing to affront Princes and persons of the greatest quality crafty and insinuative and who by a shew of great zeal and infinite strictness in Religion beyond the rate of other men had procured themselves a mighty reverence from the people so strict that as a Learned man observes Pharisee is used in the 〈◊〉 writings to denote a pious and holy man and Benjamin the Jew speaking of R. Ascher says he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a truly devout man separate from the affairs of this world And yet under all this seeming severity they were but Religious villains spiteful and malicious griping and covetous great oppressors merciless dealers heady and seditious proud and scornful indeed guilty of most kinds of immorality of whose temper and manners I say the less in this place having elsewhere given an account of them They held that the Oral Law was of infinitely greater moment and value than the written Word that the Traditions of their fore Fathers were above all things to be embraced and followed the strict observance whereof would entitle a man to Eternal Life that the Souls of men are Immortal and had their dooms awarded in the Subterraneous Regions that there is a Metempsuchosis or Transmigration of pious Souls out of one Body into another that things come to pass by fate and an inevitable necessity and yet that Man's will is free that by this means men might be rewarded and punished according to their works I add no more concerning them than that some great men of the Church of Rome say with some kind of boasting that such as were the Pharisees among the Jews such are the Religious they mean the Monastical Orders of their Church among Christians Much good may it do them with the comparison I confess my self so far of their mind that there is too great a conformity between them 23. NEXT the Pharisees come the Sadducees as opposite to them in their temper as their principles so called as Epiphanius and some others will have it from 〈◊〉 justice as pretending themselves to be very just and righteous men but this agrees not with the account given of their lives They are generally thought to have been denominated from Sadock the Scholar of Antigonus Sochaeus who flourished about the year of the World MMMDCCXX CCLXXXIV years before the Nativity of our Saviour They pass under a very ill character even among the writers of their own Nation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 impious men and of very loose and debauched manners which is no more than what might be expected as the natural consequence of their principles this being one of their main dogmata or opinions that the Soul is not Immortal and that there is no future state after this life The occasion of which desperate principle is said to have been a mistake of the doctrine of their Master Antigonus who was wont to press his Scholars not to be like 〈◊〉 Servants who serve their Masters merely for what they can get by them but to serve God for himself without expectation of rewards This Sadock and Baithos two of his disciples misunderstanding thought their Master had peremptorily denied any state of future rewards and having laid this dangerous foundation these unhappy superstructures were built upon it that there is no Resurrection for if there be no reward what need that the Body should rise again that the Soul is not Immortal nor exists in the separate state for if it did it must be either rewarded or punished and if not the Soul then by the same proportion of reason no spiritual substance neither Angel nor Spirit that there is no Divine Providence but that God is perfectly placed as beyond the commission so beyond the inspection and regard of what sins or evils are done or happen in the World as indeed what great reason to believe a wise and righteous Providence if there be no reward or punishment for vertue and vice in another life These pernicious and Atheistical opinions justly exposed them to the reproach and hatred of the people who were wont eminently to stile them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Hereticks 〈◊〉 Epicureans no words being thought bad enough to bestow upon them They rejected the Traditions so vehemently asserted by the Pharisees and taught that men were to keep to the Letter of the Law and that nothing was to be imposed either upon their belief or practice but what was expresly owned and contained in it Josephus observes that they were the fewest of all the Sects 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but usually men of the better rank and quality as what wonder if rich and great men who tumble in the pleasures and advantages of a prosperous fortune be willing to take sanctuary at those opinions that afford the greatest patronage to looseness and debauchery and care not to hear of being called to account in another World for what they have done in this For this reason the Sadducees ever appeared the greatest sticklers to preserve the peace and were the most severe and implacable Justicers against the Authors or fomenters of tumults and seditions lest they should disturb and interrupt their soft and easie course of life the only happiness their principles allowed them to expect 24. THE Essenes succeed a Sect probably distinct from either of the former Passing by the various conjectures concerning the derivation of their name which when dressed up with all advantages are still but bare conjectures they began about the times of the 〈◊〉 when the violent persecutions of Antiochus forced the Jews for their own safety to retire to the Woods and Mountains And though in time the storm blew over yet many of them were too well pleased with these undisturbed solitudes to return and therefore combined themselves into Religious societies leading a solitary and contemplative course of life and that in very great numbers there being usually above four thousand of them as both Philo and Josephus tell us Pliny takes notice of them and describes them to be a solitary generation remarkable above all others in this that they live without Women without any embraces without money conversing with nothing but Woods and Palm-trees that their number encreased every day as fast as any died persons flocking to them from all quarters to seek repose here after they had been wearied with the inquietudes of an improsperous fortune They paid a due reverence to the Temple by sending gifts and presents
with the thing it self which they supposed would be a federal Rite under the dispensation of the Messiah but only quarrelled with him for taking upon him to administer it when yet he denied himself to be one of the prime Ministers of this new state They said unto him why baptizest thou then if thou be not that Christ nor 〈◊〉 neither that 〈◊〉 Either of which had he owned himself they had not questioned his right to enter Proselytes by this way of Baptism It is called the Baptism of Repentance this being the main qualification that he required of those who took it upon them as the fittest means to dispose them to receive the Doctrine and Discipline of the Messiah and to intitle them to that pardon of sin which the Gospel brought along with it whence he is said to baptize in the Wilderness and to preach the Baptism of repentance for the remission of sins And the success was answerable infinite Multitudes flocking to it and were baptized of him in Jordan confessing their sins Nor is it the least part of his happiness that he had the honour to baptize his Saviour which though modestly declined our Lord put upon him and was accompanied with the most signal and miraculous attestations which Heaven could bestow upon it 5. AFTER his Preparatory Preachings in the Wilderness he was called to Court by Herod at least he was his frequent Auditor was much delighted with his plain and impartial Sermons and had a mighty reverence for him the gravity of his Person the strictness of his Manners the freedom of his Preaching commanding an awe and veneration from his Conscience and making him willing in many things to reform But the bluntness of the holy Man came nearer and touched the King in the tenderest part smartly reproving his adultery and incestuous embraces for that Prince kept Herodias his Brother Philip's Wife And now all corrupt interests were awakened to conspire his ruine Extravagant Lusts love not to be controll'd and check'd Herodias resents the asfront cannot brook disturbance in the pleasures of her Bed or the open challenging of her honour and therefore by all the arts of Feminine subtlety meditates revenge The issue was the Baptist is cast into Prison as the praeludium to a sadder fate For among other pleasures and scenes of mirth performed upon the King's Birth-day Herod being infinitely pleased with the Dancing of a young Lady Daughter of this Herodias promised to give her Her request and solemnly ratified his promise with an Oath She prompted by her Mother asks the Head of John the Baptist which the King partly out of a pretended reverence to his Oath partly out of a desire not to be interrupted in his unlawful pleasures presently granted and it was as quickly accomplished Thus died the Holy man a man strict in his conversation beyond the ordinary measures of an Anchoret bold and resolute faithful and impartial in his Office indued with the power and spirit of Elias a burning and a shining light under whose light the Jews rejoyced to sit exceedingly taken with his temper and principles He was the happy Messenger of the Evangelical tidings and in that respect more than a Prophet a greater not arising among them that were born of Women In short he was a Man loved of his Friends revered and honoured by his Enemies Josephus gives this character of him that he was a good man and pressed the Jews to the study of vertue to the practice of picty towards God and justice and righteousness towards men and to joyn themselves to his Baptism which he told them would then become effectual and acceptable to God when they did not only cleanse the body but purifie the mind by goodness and vertue And though he gives somewhat a different account of Herod's condemning him to dic from what is assigned in the Sacred History yet he confesses that the Jews universally looked upon the putting him to death as the cause of the miscarriage of Herod's Army and an evident effect of the Divine vengeance and displeasure The Jews in their Writings make honourable mention of his being put to death by Herod because reproving him for the company of his Brother Philip's Wife stiling him Rabbi Johanan the High-Priest and reckoning him one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the wise men of Israel Where he is called High-Priest probably with respect to his being the Son of Zachariah Head or Chief of one of the XXIV Families or courses of the Priests who are many times called Chief or High-Priests in Scripture 6. THE Evangelical state being thus proclaimed and ushered in by the Preaching and Ministry of the Baptist our Lord himself appeared next more fully to publish and confirm it concerning whose Birth Life Death and Resurrection the Doctrine he delivered the Persons he deputed to Preach and convey it to the World and its success by the Ministry of the Apostles large particular accounts are given in the following work That which may be proper and material to observe in this place is what the Scripture so frequently takes notice of the excellency of this above the preceding dispensations especially that brought in by Moses so much magnified in the Old Testament and so passionately admired and adhered to by the Jews at this day Jesus is the Mediator 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostle calls it of a better Covenant And better it is in several regards besides the infinite difference between the Persons who were imployed to introduce and settle them Moses and our Lord. The preheminence eminently appears in many instances whereof we shall remark the most considerable And first the Mosaick dispensation was almost wholly made up of types and shadows the Evangelical has brought in the truth and substance The Law was given by Moses but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Their Ordinances were but shadows of good things to come sensible representations of what was to follow after the Body is Christ the perfection and accomplishment of their whole ritual Ministration Their Ceremonies were Figures of those things that are true the Land of Canaan typified Heaven Moses and Joshua were types of the Blessed Jesus and the Israelites after the flesh of the true Israel which is after the Spirit and all their Expiatory Sacrifices did but represent that Great Sacrifice whereby Christ offered up himself and by his own bloud purged away the sins of mankind indeed the most minute and inconsiderable circumstances of the Legal Oeconomy were intended as little lights that might gradually usher in the state of the Gospel A curious Artist that designs a famous and excellent piece is not wont to complete and finish it all at once but first with his Pencil draws some rude lines and rough draughts before he puts his last hand to it By such a method the wise God seems to have delivered the first draughts and Images of those things by Moses to the Church the substance
is indeed presumed so but it was instituted to be a Seal of a Covenant between God and Abraham and Abraham's posterity a seal of the righteousness of Faith and therefore was not improper for him to suffer who was the child of Abraham and who was the Prince of the Covenant and the author and finisher of that Faith which was consigned to 〈◊〉 in Circumcision But so mysterious were all the actions of Jesus that this one served many ends For 1. It gave demonstration of the verity of Humane nature 2. So he began to fulfil the Law 3. And took from himself the scandal of Uncircumcision which would eternally have prejudiced the Jews against his entertainment and communion 4. And then he took upon him that Name which declared him to be the Saviour of the World which as it was consummate in the bloud of the Cross so was it inaugurated in the bloud of Circumcision For when the eight days were accomplished for circumcising of the Child his name was called JESUS 3. But this holy Family who had laid up their joys in the eyes and heart of God longed till they might be permitted an address to the Temple that there they might present the Holy Babe unto his Father and indeed that he who had no other might be brought to his own house For although while he was a child he did differ nothing from a servant yet he was the Lord of the place It was his Father's house and he was the Lord of all and therefore when the days of the Purification were accomplished they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord to whom he was holy as being the first-born the first-born of his Mother the only-begotten son of his Father and the first-born of every creature And they did with him according to the Law of Moses offering a pair of Turtle-doves for his redemption 4. But there was no publick act about this Holy Child but it was attended by something miraculous and extraordinary And at this instant the Spirit of God directed a holy person into the Temple that he might feel the fulfilling of a Prophecy made to himself that he might before his death behold the Lord 's CHRIST and imbrace the glory and consolation of Israel and the light of the Gentiles in his arms for old Simeon came by the Spirit into the Temple and when the Parents brought in the Child Jesus then took he him up in his arms and blessed God and prophesied and spake glorious things of that Child and things sad and glorious concerning his Mother that the Child was set for the rising and falling of many in Israel for a sign that should be spoken against and the bitterness of that contradiction should pierce the heart of the holy Virgin-Mother like a Sword that her joy at the present accidents might be attempered with present revelation of her future trouble and the excellent favour of being the Mother of God might be crowned with the reward of Martyrdom and a Mother's love be raised up to an excellency great enough to make her suffer the bitterness of being transfixed with his love and sorrow as with a Sword 5. But old Anna the Prophetess came also in full of years and joy and found the reward of her long prayers and fasting in the Temple the long-looked-for redemption of Israel was now in the Temple and she saw with her eyes the Light of the World the Heir of Heaven the long-looked-for Messias whom the Nations had desired and expected till their hearts were faint and their eyes dim with looking farther and apprehending greater distances She also prophesied and gave thanks unto the Lord. But Joseph and his Mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him Ad SECT V. Considerations upon the Circumcision of the Holy Child JESVS 1. WHen eight days were come the Holy Jesus was circumcised and shed the first-fruits of his Bloud offering them to God like the prelibation of a Sacrifice and earnest of the great seas of effusion designed for his Passion not for the expiation of any stain himself had contracted for he was spotless as the face of the Sun and had contracted no wrinkle from the aged and polluted brow of Adam but it was an act of Obedience and yet of Choice and voluntary susception to which no obligation had passed upon him in the condition of his own person For as he was included in the vierge of Abraham's posterity and had put on the common outside of his Nation his Parents had intimation enough to pass upon him the Sacrament of the National Covenant and it became an act of excellent Obedience but because he was a person extraordinary and exempt from the reasons of Circumcision and himself in person was to give period to the Rite therefore it was an act of Choice in him and in both the capacities becomes a precedent of Duty to us in the first of Obedience in the second of Humility 2. But it is considerable that the Holy Jesus who might have pleaded his exemption especially in a matter of pain and dishonour yet chose that way which was more severe and regular so teaching us to be strict in our duties and sparing in the rights of priviledge and dispensation We pretend every indisposition of body to excuse us from penal duties from Fasting From going to Church and instantly we satisfie our selves with saying God will have mercy and not sacrifice so making our selves Judges of our own privileges in which commonly we are parties against God and therefore likely to pass unequal sentence It is not an easie argument that will bring us to the severities and rigours of Duty but we snatch at occasions of dispensation and therefore possibly may mistake the justice of the opportunities by the importunities of our desires However if this too much easiness be in any case excusable from sin yet in all cases it is an argument of infirmity and the regular observation of the Commandment is the surer way to Perfection For not every inconvenience of body is fit to be pleaded against the inconvenience of losing spiritual advantages but only such which upon prudent account does intrench upon the Laws of Charity or such whose consequent is likely to be impediment of a duty in a greater degree of loss than the present omission For the Spirit being in many perfections more eminent than the Body all spiritual improvements have the same proportions so that if we were just estimators of things it ought not to be less than a great incommodity to the Body which we mean to prevent by the loss of a spiritual benefit or the omission of a Duty he were very improvident who would lose a Finger for the good husbandry of saving a Ducat and it would be an unhandsome excuse from the duties of Repentance to pretend care of the Body The proportions and degrees of this are so nice and of so difficult determination that men are more apt to
adore thy glorious Name whereby thou hast shut up the abysses and opened the gates of Heaven restraining the power of Hell and discovering and communicating the treasures of thy Father's mercies O Jesu be thou a JESUS unto me and save me from the precipices and ruines of sin from the expresses of thy Father's wrath from the miseries and unsufferable torments of accursed spirits by the power of thy Majesty by the sweetnesses of thy Mercy and sacred influences and miraculous glories of thy Name I adore and worship thee in thy excellent Obedience and Humility who hast submitted thy Innocent and spotless flesh to the bloudy Covenant of Circumcision Teach me to practise so blessed and holy a precedent that I may be humble and obedient to thy sacred Laws severe and regular in my Religion mortified in my body and spirit of circumcised heart and tongue that what thou didst represent in symbol and mysterie I may really express in the exhibition of an exemplar pious and mortified life cutting off all excrescences of my spirit and whatsoever may minister to the flesh or any of its ungodly desires that now thy holy Name is called upon me I may do no dishonour to the Name nor scandal to the Institution but may do thee honour and worship and adorations of a pure Religion O most Holy and ever-Blessed JESU Amen DISCOURSE II. Of the Vertue of Obedience 1. THere are certain Excellencies either of habit or consideration which Spiritual persons use to call General ways being a dispersed influence into all the parts of good life either directing the single actions to the right end or managing them with right instruments and adding special excellencies and formalities to them or morally inviting to the repetition of them but they are like the general medicaments in Physick or the prime instruments in Mathematical Disciplines such as are the consideration of the Divine presence the Example of JESUS right Intention and such also is the vertue of Obedience which perfectly unites our actions to God and conforms us to the Divine will which is the original of goodness and sanctifies and makes a man an holocaust to God which contains in it eminently all other Graces but especially those Graces whose essence consists in a conformity of a part or the whole such are Faith Humility Patience and Charity which gives quietness and tranquillity to the spirit and is an Antepast of Paradise where their Jubilee is the perpetual joys of Obedience and their doing is the enjoying the Divine pleasure which adds an excellency and lustre to pious actions and hallows them which are indifferent and lifts up some actions from their unhallowed nature to circumstances of good and of acceptation If a man says his prayers or communicates out of custome or without intuition of the Precept and divine Commandment the act is like a Ship returning from her voyage without her venture and her burthen as unprofitable as without stowage But if God commands us either to eat or to abstain to sleep or to be waking to work or to keep a Sabbath these actions which are naturally neither good nor evil are sanctified by the Obedience and rank'd amongst actions of the greatest excellency And this also was it which made Abraham's offer to kill his Son and the Israelites spoiling the Egyptians to become acts laudable and not unjust they were acts of Obedience and therefore had the same formality and essence with actions of the most spiritual Devotions God's command is all our rule for practice and our Obedience united to the Obedience of Jesus is all our title to acceptance 2. But by Obedience I do not here mean the exteriour execution of the work for so Obedience is no Grace distinct from the acting any or all the Commandments but besides the doing of the thing for that also must be presupposed it is a sacrifice of our proper Will to God a chusing the duty because God commands it For beasts also carry burthens and do our commands by compulsion and the fear of slaves and the rigour of task-masters made the number of bricks to be compleated when Israel groaned and cried to God for help But sons that labour under the sweet paternal regiment of their Fathers and the influence of love they love the precept and do the imposition with the same purposes and compliant affections with which the Fathers made it When Christ commanded us to renounce the World there were some that did think it was a hard saying and do so still and the young rich man forsook him upon it but Ananias and Sapphira upon whom some violences were done by custome or the excellent Sermons of the Apostles sold their possessions too but it was so against their will that they retain'd part of it but St. Paul did not only forsake all his secular fortunes but counted all to be dross that he might gain Christ he gave his Will made an offertory of that as well as of his goods chusing the act which was enjoyned This was the Obedience the Holy Jesus paid to his heavenly Father so voluntary that it was meat to him to do his Father's will 3. And this was intended always by God My son give me thy heart and particularly by the Holy Jesus for in the saddest instance of all his Precepts even that of suffering persecution we are commanded to rejoyce and to be exceeding glad And so did those holy Martyrs in the primitive Ages who upon just grounds when God's glory or the 〈◊〉 of the Church had interest in it they offered themselves to Tyrants and dared the violence of the most cruel and bowelless hang-men And this is the best oblation we can present to God To offer Gold is a present fit to be made by young beginners in Religion not by men in Christianity yea Crates the Theban threw his gold away and so did Antisthenes but to offer our Will to God to give our selves is the act of an Apostle the proper act of Christians And therefore when the Apostles made challenge of a reward for leaving all their possessions Christ makes no reply to the instance nor says You who have left all but You who have followed me in the regeneration shall sit upon twelve thrones and judge the twelve Tribes of Israel meaning that the quitting the goods was nothing but the obedience to Christ that they followed Jesus in the Regeneration going themselves in pursuit of him and giving themselves to him that was it which intitled them to a Throne 4. And this therefore God enjoyns that our offerings to him may be intire and complete that we pay him a holocaust that we do his work without murmuring and that his burthen may become easie when it is born up by the wings of love and alacrity of spirit For in effect this obedience of the Will is in true speaking and strict Theology nothing else but that Charity which gives excellency to Alms and energy to Faith and
favourable And it is considerable that nothing is worse than Death but Damnation or something that partakes of that in some of its worst ingredients such as is a lasting Torment or a daily great misery in some other kind And therefore since no humane Law can bind a man to a worse thing than Death if Obedience brings me to death I cannot be worse when I disobey it and I am not so bad if the penalty of death be not expressed And so for other penalties in their own proportions This Discourse is also to be understood concerning the Laws of Peace not of War not onely because every disobedience in War may be punished with death according as the reason may chance but also because little things may be of great and dangerous consequence But in Peace it is observable that there is no humane positive superinduced Law but by the practice of all the world which because the 〈◊〉 of the Prince is certainly included in it is the surest interpretation it is dispensed withall by ordinary necessities by reason of lesser inconveniences and common accidents thus the not saying of our Office daily is excused by the study of Divinity the publishing the banns of Matrimony by an ordinary incommodity the Fasting-days of the Church by a little sickness or a journey and therefore much rather if my Estate and most of all if my Life be in danger with it and to say that in these cases there is no interpretative permission to omit the particular action is to accuse the Laws and the Law-giver the one of unreasonableness the other of uncharitableness 22. Fourthly These Considerations are upon the execution of the duty but even towards Man our obedience must have a mixture of the Will and choice like as our injunction of obedience to the Divine Command With good will doing service saith the Apostle for it is impossible to secure the duty of inferiours but by conscience and good will unless provision could be made against all their secret arts and concealments and escapings which as no providence can foresee so no diligence can cure It is but an eye-service whatsoever is compelled and involuntary nothing rules a man in private but God and his own desires and they give Laws in a Wilderness and accuse in a Cloister and do execution in a Closet if there be any prevarication 23. Fifthly But obedience to humane Laws goes no farther we are not bound to obey with a direct and particular act of Understanding as in all Divine Sanctions for so long as our Superiours are fallible though it be highly necessary we conform our wills to their innocent Laws yet it is not a duty we should think the Laws most prudent or convenient because all Laws are not so but it may concern the interest of humility and self-denial to 〈◊〉 subject to an inconvenient so it be not a sinful Command for so we must chuse an affliction when God offers it and give God thanks for it and yet we may cry under the smart of it and call to God for ease and remedy And yet it were well if inferiours would not be too busie in disputing the prudence of their Governours and the convenience of their Constitutions Whether they be sins or no in the execution and to our particulars we are concern'd to look to I say as to our particulars for an action may be a sin in the Prince commanding it and yet innocent in the person executing as in the case of unjust Wars in which the Subject who cannot ought not to be a Judge yet must be a Minister and it is notorious in the case of executing an unjust sentence in which not the Executioner but the Judge is only the unjust person and he that serves his Prince in an unjust War is but the executioner of an unjust sentence But what-ever goes farther does but undervalue the person slight the Government and unloose the golden cords of Discipline For we are not intrusted in providing for degrees so we secure the kind and condition of our actions And since God having derived rays and beams of Majesty and transmitted it in parts upon several states of men hath fixed humane authority and dominion in the golden candlestick of Understanding he that shall question the prudence of his Governour or the wisdom of his Sanction does unclasp the golden rings that tie the purple upon the Prince's shoulder he tempts himself with a reason to disobey and extinguish the light of Majesty by overturning the candlestick and hiding the opinion of his wisdom and understanding And let me say this He that is confident of his own understanding and reasonable powers and who is more than he that thinks himself wiser than the Laws needs no other Devil in the neighbourhood no tempter but himself to pride and vanity which are the natural parents of Disobedience 24. But a man's Disobedience never seems so reasonable as when the Subject is forbidden to do an act of Piety commanded indeed in the general but uncommanded in certain circumstances And forward Piety and assiduous Devotion a great and undiscreet Mortifier is often tempted to think no Authority can restrain the fervours and distempers of zeal in such holy Exercises and yet it is very often as necessary to restrain the indiscretions of a forward person as to excite the remissness of the cold and frozen Such persons were the Sarabaites spoken of by 〈◊〉 who were greater labourers and stricter mortifiers than the Religious in Families and Colledges and yet they endured no Superiour nor Laws But such customs as these are Humiliation without Humility humbling the body and exalting the spirit or indeed Sacrifices and no Obedience It was an argument of the great wisdom of the Fathers of the 〈◊〉 when they heard of the prodigious Severities exercised by 〈◊〉 Stylites upon himself they sent one of the Religious to him with power to enquire what was his manner of living and what warrant he had for such a rigorous undertaking giving in charge to command him to give it over and to live in a community with them and according to the common institution of those Religious families The Messenger did so and immediately 〈◊〉 removed his foot from his Pillar with a purpose to descend but the other according to his Commission called to him to stay telling him his station and severity was from God And he that in so great a Piety was humble and obedient did not undertake that Strictness out of singularity nor did it transport him to vanity for that he had received from the Fathers to make judgment of the man and of his institution whereas if upon pretence of the great Holiness of that course he had refused the command the spirit of the person was to be declared caitive and imprudent and the man 〈◊〉 from his troublesom and ostentous vanity 25. Our Fasts our Prayers our Watchings our Intentions of duty our frequent Communions and
to be quitted But it is S. Chrysostom's Simile As a Lamb sucking the breast of its dam and Mother moves the head from one part to another till it hath found a distilling fontinel and then it fixes till it be satisfied or the 〈◊〉 cease dropping so should we in Meditation reject such materials as are barren like the tops of hills and six upon such thoughts which nourish and refresh and there dwell till the nourishment be drawn forth or so much of it as we can then temperately digest 14. Fifthly In Meditation strive rather for Graces than for Gifts for affections in the way of Vertue more than the overslowings of sensible Devotion and therefore if thou findest any thing by which thou mayest be better though thy spirit do not actually rejoyce or find any gust or relish in the manducation yet chuse it greedily For although the chief end of Meditation be Affection and not Determinations intellectual yet there is choice to be had of the Affections and care must be taken that the affections be desires of Vertue or repudiations and aversions from something criminal not joys and transportations spiritual comforts and complacencies for they are no part of our duty sometimes they are encouragements and sometimes rewards sometimes they depend upon habitude and disposition of body and seem great matters when they have little in them and are more bodily than spiritual like the gift of tears and yerning of the bowels and sometimes they are illusions and temptations at which if the Soul stoops and be greedy after they may prove like Hippomenes's golden Apples to Atalanta retard our course and possibly do some hazard to the whole race And this will be nearer reduced to practice if we consider the variety of matter which is fitted to the Meditation in several states of men travelling towards Heaven 15. For the first beginners in Religion are imployed in the mastering of their first Appetites casting out their Devils exterminating all evil customs lessening the proclivity of habits and countermanding the too-great forwardness of vicious inclinations and this which Divines call the Purgative way is wholly spent in actions of Repentance Mortification and Self-denial and therefore if a penitent person snatches at Comforts or the tastes of sensible Devotion his Repentance is too delicate it is but a rod of Roses and Jessamine If God sees the spirit broken all in pieces and that it needs a little of the oyl of gladness for its support and restitution to the capacities of its duty he will give it but this is not to be designed nor snatched at in the Meditation Tears of joy are not good expressions nor instruments of Repentance we must not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from thistles no refreshments to be looked for here but such only as are necessary for support and when God sees they are let not us trouble our selves he will provide them But the Meditations which are prompt to this Purgative way and practice of first beginners are not apt to produce delicacies but in the sequel and consequent of it Afterwards it brings forth the pleasant fruit of righteousness but for the present it hath no joy in it no joy of sense though much satisfaction to Reason And such are Meditations of the Fall of Angels and Man the Ejection of them from Heaven of our Parents from Paradise the Horrour and obliquity of Sin the Wrath of God the severity of his Anger Mortification of our body and spirit Self-denial the Cross of Christ Death and Hell and Judgment the terrours of an evil Conscience the insecurities of a Sinner the unreasonableness of Sin the troubles of Repentance the Worm and sting of a burthened spirit the difficulties of rooting out evil Habits and the utter abolition of Sin if these nettles bear honey we may fill our selves but such sweetnesses spoil the operations of these bitter potions Here therefore let your addresses to God and your mental prayers be affectionate desires of Pardon humble considerations of our selves thoughts of revenge against our Crimes designs of Mortification indefatigable solicitations for Mercy expresses of shame and confusion of face and he meditates best in the purgative way that makes these affections most operative and high 16. After our first step is taken and the punitive part of Repentance is resolved on and begun and put forward into good degrees of progress we then enter into the Illuminative way of Religion and set upon the acquist of Vertues and the purchase of spiritual Graces and therefore our Meditations are to be proportioned to the design of that imployment such as are considerations of the Life of Jesus Examples of Saints reasons of Vertue means of acquiring them designations of proper exercises to every pious habit the Eight Beatitudes the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost the Promises of the Gospel the Attributes of God as they are revealed to represent God to be infinite and to make us Religious the Rewards of Heaven excellent and select Sentences of holy persons to be as incentives of Piety These are the proper matter for Proficients in Religion But then the affections producible from these are love of vertue desires to imitate the Holy Jesus affections to Saints and holy persons conformity of choice subordination to God's will election of the ways of Vertue satisfaction of the Understanding in the ways of Religion and resolutions to pursue them in the midst of all discomforts and persecutions and our mental prayers or entercourse with God which are the present emanations of our Meditations must be in order to these affections and productions from those and in all these yet there is safety and piety and no seeking of our selves but designs of Vertue in just reason and duty to God and for his sake that is for his commandment And in all these particulars if there be such a sterility of spirit that there be no end served but of spiritual profit we are never the worse all that God requires of us is that we will live well and repent in just measure and right manner and he that doth so hath meditated well 17. From hence if a pious Soul passes to affections of greater sublimity and intimate and more immediate abstracted and immaterial love it is well only remember that the love God requires of us is an operative material and communicative love If ye love me keep my Commandments so that still a good life is the effect of the sublimest Meditation and if we make our duty sure behind us ascend up as high into the Mountain as you can so your ascent may consist with the securities of your person the condition of infirmity and the interests of your duty According to the saying of 〈◊〉 Our empty saying of 〈◊〉 and reciting verses in honour of his Name please not God so well as the imitation of him does advantage to us and a devout 〈◊〉 pleases the Spouse better than an idle Panegyrick Let your work
of Discipline and Society opportunities of Perfection Privacy is the best for Devotion and the Publick for Charity In both God hath many Saints and Servants and from both the Devil hath had some 8. His Sermon was an Exhortation to Repentance and an Holy life He gave particular schedules of Duty to several states of persons sharply reproved the 〈◊〉 for their Hypocrisie and Impiety it being worse in them because contrary to their rule their profession and institution gently guided others into the ways of Righteousness calling them the streight ways of the Lord that is the direct and shortest way to the Kingdom for of all Lines the streight is the shortest and as every Angle is a turning out of the way so every Sin is an obliquity and interrupts the journey By such 〈◊〉 and a Baptism he disposed the spirits of men for the entertaining the 〈◊〉 and the Homilies of the Gospel For John's Doctrine was to the Sermons of Jesus as a Preface to a Discourse and his Baptism was to the new Institution and Discipline of the Kingdom as the Vigils to a Holy-day of the same kind in a less degree But the whole Oeconomy of it represents to us that Repentance is the first intromission into the Sanctities of Christian Religion The Lord treads upon no paths that are not hallowed and made smooth by the sorrows and cares of Contrition and the impediments of sin cleared by dereliction and the succeeding fruits of emendation But as it related to the Jews his Baptism did signifie by a cognation to their usual Rites and Ceremonies of Ablution and washing Gentile Proselytes that the Jews had so far receded from their duty and that Holiness which God required of them by the Law that they were in the state of strangers no better than Heathens and therefore were to be treated as themselves received Gentile Proselytes by a Baptism and a new state of life before they could be fit for the reception of the 〈◊〉 or be admitted to his Kingdom 9. It was an excellent sweetness of Religion that had entirely 〈◊〉 the Soul of the Baptist that in so great reputation of Sanctity so mighty concourse of people such great multitudes of Disciples and confidents and such throngs of admirers he was humble without mixtures of vanity and confirmed in his temper and Piety against the strength of the most impetuous temptation And he was tried to some purpose for when he was tempted to confess himself to be the CHRIST he refused it or to be Elias or to be accounted that Prophet he refused all such great appellatives and confessed himself only to be a Voice the lowest of Entities whose being depends upon the Speaker just as himself did upon the pleasure of God receiving form and publication and imployment wholly by the will of his Lord in order to the manifestation of the Word eternal It were 〈◊〉 that the spirits of men would not arrogate more than their own though they did not lessen their own just dues It may concern some end of Piety or Prudence that our reputation be preserved by all just means but never that we assume the dues of others or grow vain by the spoils of an undeserved dignity Honours are the rewards of Vertue or engagement upon Offices of trouble and publick use but then they must suppose a preceding worth or a fair imployment But he that is a Plagiary of others titles or offices and dresses himself with their beauties hath no more solid worth or reputation than he should have nutriment if he ate only with their mouth and slept their slumbers himself being open and unbound in all the Regions of his Senses The PRAYER O Holy and most glorious God who before the publication of thy eternal Son the Prince of Peace didst send thy Servant John Baptist by the examples of Mortification and the rude Austerities of a penitential life and by the Sermons of Penance to remove all the impediments of sin that the ways of his Lord and ours might be made clear ready and expedite be pleased to let thy Holy Spirit lead me in the streight paths of Sanctity without deslections to either hand and without the interruption of deadly sin that I may with facility Zeal 〈◊〉 and a persevering diligence walk in the ways of the Lord. Be pleased that the Axe may be laid to the root of Sin that the whole body of it may be cut down in me that no fruit of Sodom may grow up to thy displeasure Throughly purge the floor and 〈◊〉 of my heart with thy Fan with the breath of thy Diviner Spirit that it may be a holy repository of Graces and full of benediction and Sanctity that when our Lord shall come I may at all times be prepared for the entertainment of so Divine a Guest apt to lodge him and to feast him that he may for ever delight to dwell with me And make me also to dwell with him sometimes retiring into his recesses and private rooms by Contemplation and admiring of his Beauties and beholding the Secrets of his Kingdom and at all other times walking in the Courts of the Lord's House by the diligences and labours of Repentance and an Holy life till thou shalt please to call me to a nearer communication of thy Excellencies which then grant when by thy gracious assistances I shall have done thy works and glorified thy holy Name by the strict and never-failing purposes and proportionable endeavours of Religion and Holiness through the merits and mercies of Jesus Christ. Amen DISCOURSE IV. Of Mortification and corporal Austerities 1. FRom the days of John the Baptist the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force said our Blessed Saviour For now that the new Covenant was to be made with Man Repentance which is so great a part of it being in very many actions a punitive duty afflictive and vindicative from the days of the Baptist who first by office and solemnity of design published this Doctrine violence was done to the inclinations and dispositions of Man and by such violences we were to be possessed of the Kingdom And his Example was the best 〈◊〉 upon his Text he did violence to himself he lived a life in which the rudenesses of Camel's hair and the lowest nutriment of Flies and Honey of the Desart his life of singularity his retirement from the sweetnesses of Society his resisting the greatest of Tentations and despising to assume false honours were instances of that violence and explications of the Doctrine of Self-denial and Mortification which are the Pedestal of the Cross and the Supporters of Christianity as it distinguishes from all Laws Religions and Institutions of the World 2. Mortification is the one half of Christianity it is a dying to the World it is a denying of the Will and all its natural desires An abstinence from pleasure and sensual complacencies that the 〈◊〉 being subdued to the spirit both may joyn in the
service of God and in the offices of holy Religion It consists in actions of Severity and Renunciation it refuses to give entertainment to any vanity nor uses a freer licence in things lawful lest it be tempted to things unlawful it kills the lusts of the flesh by taking away its fewel and incentives and by using to contradict its appetite does inure it with more facility to obey the superiour Faculties and in effect it is nothing but a great care we sin not and a prudent and severe using such remedies and instruments which in Nature and Grace are made apt for the production of our purposes And it consists in interiour and exteriour offices these being but instruments of the interiour as the Body is organical or instrumental to the Soul and no part of the Duty it self but as they are advantages to the End the mortification of the Spirit which by whatsoever means we have once acquired and do continue we are disobliged from all other exteriour 〈◊〉 unless by accident they come to be obligatory and from some other cause 3. Mortification of the Will or the Spirit of Man that 's the Duty that the Will of Man may humbly obey God and absolutely rule its inferiour Faculties that the inordinations of our natural desires begun by Adam's sin and continued and increased by our continuing evil customs may be again placed in the right order that since many of the Divine Precepts are restraints upon our natural desires we should so deny 〈◊〉 Appetites that covet after natural satisfactions that they may not serve themselves by disserving God For therefore our own Wills are our greatest dangers and our greatest enemies because they tend to courses contradictory to God God commands us to be humble our own desires are to be great considerable and high and we are never secure enough from contempt unless we can place our neighbours at our feet Here therefore we must deny our Will and appetites of Greatness for the purchase of Humility God commands Temperance and Chastity our desires and natural promptness breaks the bands asunder and entertains dissolutions to the licentiousness of Apicius or the wantonness of a Mahumetan Paradise sacrificing meat and drink-offerings to our appetites as if our stomachs were the Temples of 〈◊〉 and making Women and the opportunities of Lust to be our dwelling and our imployment even beyond the common loosenesses of entertainment Here therefore we must deny our own Wills our appetites of Gluttony and Drunkenness and our prurient beastly inclinations for the purchase of Temperance and Chastity And every other Vertue is either directly or by accident a certain instance of this great Duty which is like a Catholicon purgative of all distemperatures and is the best preparative and disposition to Prayer in the world 4. For it is a sad consideration and of secret reason that since Prayer of all Duties is certainly the sweetest and the 〈◊〉 it having in it no difficulty or 〈◊〉 labour no weariness of bones no dimness of eyes or hollow 〈◊〉 is directly consequent to it no natural desires of contradictory quality nothing of disease but much of comfort and more of hope in it yet we are infinitely averse from it weary of its length glad of an occasion to pretermit our offices and yet there is no visible cause of such 〈◊〉 nothing in the nature of the thing nor in the circumstances necessarily appendent to the duty Something is amiss in us and it wanted a name till the Spirit of God by enjoyning us the duty of Mortification hath taught us to know that Immortification of spirit is the cause of all our secret and spiritual indispositions we are so incorporated to the desires of sensual objects that we feel no relish or gust of the spiritual It is as if a Lion should eat hay or an Oxe venison there is no proportion between the object and the appetite till by mortification of our first desires our Wills are made spiritual and our Apprehensions supernatural and clarified For as a Cook told Dionysius the Tyrant the black Broth of Lacedaemon would not do well at Syracusa unless it be tasted by a Spartan's palate so neither can the Excellencies of Heaven be discerned but by a spirit disrelishing the sottish appetites of the world and accustomed to diviner banquets And this was mystically signified by the two Altars in Solomon's Temple in the outer Court whereof Beasts were sacrificed in the inner Court an Altar of incense the first representing Mortification or slaying of our beastly appetites the 〈◊〉 the offering up our Prayers which are not likely to become a pleasant offertory unless our impurities be removed by the attonement made by the first Sacrifices without 〈◊〉 spirit be mortified we neither can love to pray nor God love to hear us 5. But there are three steps to ascend to this Altar The first is to abstain from satisfying our carnal desires in the instances of sin and although the furnace flames with vehement emissions at some times yet to walk in the midst of the burning without being consumed like the Children of the Captivity that is the duty even of the most imperfect and is commonly the condition of those good persons whose interest in secular imployments speaks fair and solicits often and tempts highly yet they manage their affairs with habitual Justice and a Constant Charity and are temperate in their daily meals chast in the solaces of marriage and pure in their spirits unmingled with sordid affections in the midst of their possessions and enjoyments These men are in the world but they are strangers here They have a City but not an abiding one they are Proselytes of the House but have made no Covenant with the world 〈◊〉 though they desire with secular desires yet it is but for necessaries and then they are content they use the creatures with freedom and modesty but never to intemperance and transgression so that their hands are below tied there by the necessities of their life but their hearts are above lifted up by the abstractions of this first degree of Mortification And this is the first and nicest distinction between a man of the world and a man of God for this state is a denying our affections nothing but the sin it enjoys as much of the World as may be consistent with the possibilities of Heaven a little less than this is the state of Immortification and a being in the 〈◊〉 which 〈◊〉 the Apostle cannot inherit the Kingdom of God The flesh must first be separated and the adherences pared off from the skin before the parchment be fit to make a schedule for use or to transmit a Record whatsoever in the sence of the Scripture is 〈◊〉 or an enemy to the spirit if it be not rescinded and mortified makes that the Laws of God cannot be written in our hearts This is the Doctrine S. Paul taught the Church For if ye live after the flesh ye shall
contagious 9. Thirdly And yet there is a degree of Mortification of spirit beyond this for the condition of our security may require that we not only deny to act our temptations or to please our natural desires but also to seek opportunities of doing displeasure to our affections and violence to our inclinations and not only to be indifferent but to chuse a contradiction and a denial to our strongest appetites to rejoyce in a trouble and this was the spirit of S. Paul I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulations and We glory in it Which joy consists not in any sensitive pleasure any man can take in asflictions and adverse accidents but in a despising the present inconveniences and looking through the cloud unto those great felicities and graces and consignations to glory which are the effects of the Cross Knowing that tribulation worketh patience and patience experience and experience hope and hope maketh not ashamed that was the incentive of S. Paul's joy And therefore as it may consist with any degree of Mortification to pray for the taking away of the Cross upon condition it may consist with God's glory and our ghostly profit so it is properly an act of this vertue to pray for the Cross or to meet it if we understand it may be for the interest of the spirit And thus S. Basil prayed to God to remove his violent pains of Head-ach but when God heard him and took away his pain and Lust came in the place of it he prayed to God to restore him his Head-ach again that cross was gain and joy when the removal of it was so full of danger and temptation And this the Masters of spiritual life call being crucified with Christ because as Christ chose the death and desired it by the appetites of the spirit though his flesh smarted under it and groaned and died with the burthen so do all that are thus mortified they place misfortunes and sadnesses amongst things eligible and set them before the eyes of their desire although the flesh and the desires of sense are factious and bold against such sufferings 10. Of these three degrees of interiour or spiritual Mortification the first is Duty the second is Counsel and the third is Perfection We sin if we have not the first we are in danger without the second but without the third we cannot be perfect as our heavenly Father is but shall have more of humane infirmities to be ashamed of than can be excused by the accrescencies and condition of our nature The first is only of absolute necessity the second is prudent and of greatest convenience but the third is excellent and perfect And it was the consideration of a wise man that the Saints in Heaven who understand the excellent glories and vast differences of state and capacities amongst beatified persons although they have no envy nor sorrows yet if they were upon earth with the same notion and apprehensions they have in Heaven would not for all the world lose any degree of Glory but mortifie to the greatest 〈◊〉 that their Glory may be a derivation of the greatest ray of light every degree being of compensation glorious and disproportionably beyond the inconsiderable troubles of the greatest Self-denial God's purpose is that we abstain from sin there is no more in the Commandment and therefore we must deny our selves so as not to admit a sin under pain of a certain and eternal curse but the other degrees of Mortification are by accident so many degrees of Vertue not being enjoyned or counselled for themselves but for the preventing of crimes and for securities of good life and therefore are parts and offices of Christian prudence which whosoever shall positively reject is neither much in love with Vertue nor careful of his own safety 11. Secondly But Mortification hath also some designs upon the Body For the Body is the Shop and Forge of the Soul in which all her designs which are transient upon external objects are framed and it is a good servant as long as it is kept in obedience and under discipline but he that breeds his servant delicately will find him contumacious and troublesome bold and confident as his son and therefore S. Paul's practice as himself gives account of it was to keep his body under and bring it into subjection lest he should become a 〈◊〉 away for the desires of the Body are in the same things in which themselves are satisfied so many injuries to the Soul because upon every one of the appetites a restraint is made and a law placed sor Sentinel that if we transgress the bounds fixt by the divine 〈◊〉 it becomes a sin now it is hard for us to keep them within compass because they are little more than agents merely natural and therefore cannot interrupt their act but covet and desire as much as they can without suspension or coercion but what comes from without which is therefore the more troublesome because all such restraints are against nature and without sensual pleasure And therefore this is that that S. Paul said When we were in the flesh the 〈◊〉 of sin which were by the Law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto Death For these pleasures of the body draw us as loadstones draw iron not for love but for prey and nutriment it feeds upon the iron as the bodily pleasures upon the life of the spirit which is lessened and impaired according as the gusts of the flesh grow high and sapid 12. He that seeds a Lion must obey him unless he make his den to be his prison Our Lusts are as wild and as cruel Beasts and unless they feel the load of fetters and of Laws will grow unruly and troublesome and increase upon us as we give them food and satisfaction He that is used to drink high Wines is sick if he hath not his proportion to what degree soever his custom hath brought his appetite and to some men Temperance becomes certain death because the inordination of their desires hath introduced a custom and custom hath increased those appetites and made them almost natural in their degree but he that hath been used to hard diet and the pure stream his 〈◊〉 are much within the limits of Temperance and his desires as moderate as his diet S. Jerom affirms that to be continent in the state of Widowhood is barder than to keep our Firgin pure and there is reason that then the Appetite should be harder to be restrained when it hath not been accustomed to be denied but satisfied in its freer solicitations When a fontinel is once opened all the symbolical humours run thither and issue out and it is not to be stopped without danger unless the humour be purged or diverted So is the satisfaction of an impure desire it opens the issue and makes way for the emanation of all impurity and unless the desire be mortified
will not be stopt by purposes and easie desires 13. Since therefore the Body is the instrument of sins the fewel and the incentive our Mortification must reach thither also at least in some degrees or it will be to small purpose to think of mortifying our spirit in some instances of Temptation In vain does that man think to keep his honour and Chastity that invites his Lust to an activeness by soft beds and high diet and idleness and opportunity Make the Soul's instrument unapt and half the work is done And this is true in all instances of Carnality or natural desires whose scene lies in the lower region of Passions and are acted by the Body but the operation of the cure must be in proportion to the design as the mortification of the Spirit is in several degrees so the mortification of the Body also hath its several parts of prudence injunction and necessity For the prescribing all sorts of Mortifications corporal indefinitely and indiseriminately to all persons without separation of their ends and distinct capacities is a snare to mens Consciences makes Religion impertinently troublesome occasions some men to glory in corporal Austerity as if of it self it were an act of Piety and a distinction of the man from the more imperfect persons of the world and is all the way unreasonable and inartificial 14. First Therefore such whose ingagements in the world or capacities of person confine them to the lowest and first step of Mortification those who fight only for life and liberty not for priviledges and honour that are in perpetual contestation and close fightings with sin it is necessary that their Body also be mortified in such a degree that their desires transport them not beyond the permissions of Divine and humane Laws let such men be strict in the rules of Temperance and Sobriety be chaste within the laws of Marriage cherish their body to preserve their health and their health to serve God and to do their offices To these persons the best instruments of Discipline are the strict laws of Temperance denying all transgressions of the appetite boiling over its margent and proper limit assiduous Prayer and observation of the publick laws of 〈◊〉 which are framed so moderate and even as to be proportionable to the common manner of living of persons secular and incumbred For though many persons of common imployments and even manner of living have in the midst of worldly avocations undertaken Austerities very rude and rigorous yet it was in order to a higher mortification of spirit and it is also necessary they should if either naturally or habitually or easily they suffer violent transportation of Passions for since the occasions of anger and disturbance in the world frequently occur if such Passions be not restrained by greater violence than is competent to the ordinary offices of a moderate Piety the cure is weaker than the humour and so leaves the work imperfect 15. Secondly But this is coincident to the second degree of Mortification for if either out of desire of a farther step towards perfection or out of the necessities of nature or evil customs it be necessary also to subdue our Passions as well as the direct invitations to sin in both these cases the Body must suffer more Austerities even such as directly are contrariant to every passionate disturbance though it be not ever sinful in the instance All Mortifiers must abstain from every thing that is unlawful but these that they may abstain from things unlawful must also deny to themselves satisfaction in things lawful and pleasant and this is in a just proportion to the End the subduing the Passions lest their liberty and boldness become licentious And we shall easier deny their importunity to sin when we will not please them in those things in which we may such in which the fear of God and the danger of our Souls and the convictions of Reason and Religion do not immediately cooperate And this was the practice of David when he had thirsted for the water of Bethlehem and some of his Worthies ventured their lives and brought it he refused to drink it but poured it upon the ground unto the Lord that is it became a Drink-offering unto the Lord an acceptable Oblation in which he 〈◊〉 his desires to God denying himself the satisfaction of such a desire which was natural and innocent save that it was something nice delicate and curious Like this was the act of the Fathers in the mountain Nitria to one of which a fair cluster of dried grapes being sent he refused to taste them lest he should be too sensual and much pleased but sent them to another and he to a third and the same consideration transmitted the Present through all their Cells till it came to the first man again all of them not daring to content their appetite in a thing too much desired lest the like importunity in the instance of a sin should prevail upon them To these persons the best instruments of Discipline are subtractions rather than imposition of Austerities let them be great haters of corporal pleasures eating for necessity diet 〈◊〉 and cheap abridging and making short the opportunities of natural and permitted solaces refusing exteriour comforts not chusing the most pleasant object nor suffering delight to be the end of eating and therefore separating delight from it as much as prudently they may not being too importunate with God to remove his gentler hand of paternal correction but inuring our selves to patient suffering and indifferent acceptation of the Cross that God lays upon us at no hand living delicately or curiously or impatiently And this was the condition of S. Paul suffering with excellent temper all those persecutions and inconveniences which the enemies of Religion loaded him withall which he called bearing the marks of the Lord Jesus in his body and carrying about in his body the dying or mortification of the Lord Jesus it was in the matter of Persecution which because he bare patiently and was accustomed to and he accepted with indifference and renunciation they were the mortifications and the marks of Jesus that is a true 〈◊〉 to the Passion of Christ and of great effect and interest for the preventing sins by the mortification of his natural desires 16. Thirdly But in the pale of the Church there are and have been many tall Cedars 〈◊〉 tops have reached to Heaven some there are that chuse afflictions of the Body that by turning the bent and inclination of their affections into sensual 〈◊〉 they may not only cut off all pretensions of Temptation but grow in spiritual Graces and perfections intellectual and beatified To this purpose they served themselves with the instances of Sack-cloth Hard lodging long Fasts Pernoctation in prayers Renunciation of all secular possessions great and expensive Charity bodily Labours to great weariness and affiction and many other prodigies of voluntary suffering which Scripture and the
Ecclesiastical stories do frequently mention S. Lewis King of France wore Sack-cloth every day unless sickness hindred and S. Zenobius as long as he was a Bishop And when Severus Sulpitius sent a Sack-cloth to S. Panlinus Bishop of Nola he returned to him a letter of thanks and discoursed piously concerning the use of corporal Austerities And that I need not instance it was so general that this was by way of appropriation called the Garment of the Church because of the frequent use of such instruments of exteriour 〈◊〉 and so it was in other instances S. James neither are flesh nor drank wine S. Matthew lived upon acorns seeds and herbs and amongst the elder Christians some rolled themselves naked in snows some upon thorns some on burning coals some chewed bitter pills and masticated gumms and sipped frequently of horrid potions and wore iron upon their skin and bolts upon their legs and in witty torments excelled the cruelty of many of their persecutors whose rage determined quickly in death and had certainly less of torment than the tedious afflictions and rude penances of Simeon surnamed Stylites But as all great examples have excellencies above the ordinary Devotions of good people so have they some danger and much consideration 17. First therefore I consider that these Bodily and voluntary self 〈◊〉 can only be of use in carnal and natural Temptations of no use in spiritual for ascetick diet hard lodging and severe disciplines cannot be directly operative upon the spirit but only by mediation of the Body by abating its extravagancies by subtracting its maintenance by lessening its temptations these may help to preserve the Soul chaste or temperate because the scene of these sins lies in the Body and thence they have their maintenance and from thence also may receive their abatements But in actions which are less material such as Pride and Envy and Blasphemy and Impenitence and all the kinds and degrees of Malice external Mortifications do so little cooperate to their cure that oftentimes they are their greatest 〈◊〉 and incentives and are like Cordials given to cure a cold fit of an Ague they do their work but bring a hot fit in its place and besides that great Mortifiers have been soonest assaulted by the spirit of Pride we find that great Fasters are naturally angry and cholerick S. Hierom found it in himself and 〈◊〉 felt some of the effects of it And therefore this last part of corporal Mortification and the chusing such Afflictions by a voluntary imposition is at no hand to be applied in all cases but in cases of Lust only and Intemperance or natural Impatience or such crimes which dwell in the Senses and then it also would be considered whether or no rudeness to the Body applied for the obtaining Patience be not a direct temptation to Impatience a provoking the spirit and a running into that whither we pray that God would not suffer us to be led Possibly such Austerities if applied with great caution and wise circumstances may be an exercise of Patience when the Grace is by other means acquired and he that finds them so may use them if he dares trust himself but as they are dangerous before the Grace is obtained so when it is they are not necessary And still it may be enquired in the case of temptations to Lust whether any such Austerities which can consist with health will do the work So long as the Body is in health it will do its offices of nature if it is not in health it cannot do all offices of Grace nor many of our Calling And therefore although they may do some advantages to persons tempted with the lowest sins yet they will not do it all nor do it alone nor are they safe to all dispositions and where they are useful to these smaller and lower purposes yet we must be careful to observe that the Mortification of the spirit to the greatest and most perfect purposes is to be set upon by means spiritual and of immediate efficacy for they are the lowest operations of the Soul which are moved and produced by actions corporal the Soul may from those become lustful or chast chearful or sad timorous or confident but yet even in these the Soul receives but some dispositions thence and more forward inclinations but nothing from the Body can be operative in the begetting or increase of Charity or the Love of God or Devotion or in mortifying spiritual and 〈◊〉 Vices and therefore those greater perfections and heights of the Soul such as are designed in this highest degree of 〈◊〉 are not apt to be enkindled by corporal Austerities And Nigrinus in Lucian finds sault with those Philosophers who thought Vertue was to be purchased by cutting the skin with whips binding the nerves razing the 〈◊〉 with iron but he taught that 〈◊〉 is to be placed in the Mind by actions internal and immaterial and that from thence remedies are to be derived against perturbations and actions criminal And this is determined by the Apostle in fairest intimation Mortifie therefore your carthly members and he instances in carnal crimes fornication uncleanness inordinate affection evil concupiscence and covetousness which are things may be something abated by corporal Mortifications and that these are by distinct manner to be helped from other more spiritual Vices he adds But now therefore put off all these anger wrath malice blasphemy filthy communication and lying To both these sorts of sins Mortification being the general remedy particular applications are to be made and it must be only spiritual or also corporal in proportion to the nature of the sins he seems to distinguish the remedy by separation of the nature of the crimes and possibly also by the differing words of 〈◊〉 applied to carnal sins and put 〈◊〉 to crimes spiritual 18. Secondly But in the lesser degrees of Mortification in order to subduing of all Passions of the Sensitive appetite and the consequent and symbolical sins bodily Austerities are of good use if well understood and prudently undertaken To which purpose I also consider No acts of corporal Austerity or external Religion are of themselves to be esteemed holy or acceptable to God are no-where precisely commanded no instruments of union with Christ no immediate parts of Divine worship and therefore to suffer corporal Austerities with thoughts determining upon the external action or imaginations of Sanctity inherent in the action is against the purity the spirituality and simplicity of the Gospel And this is the meaning of S. Paul It is a good thing that the heart be established with Grace not with meats which have not profited them which have walked in them and The kingdom of God consists not in meat and drink but in righteousness and peace and joy in the holy Ghost and Bodily exercise profiteth little but Godliness is profitable unto all things Now if external Mortifications are not for themselves then they
poison to make experiment of the antidote and at the best it is but a running back to come just to the same place again for he that is not tempted does not sin but he that invites a Temptation that he might overcome it or provokes a Passion that he may allay it is then but in the same condition after his pains and his 〈◊〉 He was not sure he should come so far The PRAYER O Dearest God who hast framed Man of Soul and Body and fitted him with Faculties and proportionable instruments to serve thee according to all our capacities let thy holy Spirit rule and sanctifie every power and member both of Soul and Body that they may keep that beautious order which in our creation thou didst intend and to which thou dost restore thy people in the renovations of Grace that our Affections may be guided by Reason our Understanding may be enlightned with thy Word and then may guide and perswade our Will that we suffer no violent transportation of Passions nor be overcome by a Temptation nor consent to the impure solicitations of Lust that Sin may not reign in our mortal bodies but that both Bodies and Souls may be conformable to the Sufferings of the Holy Jesus that in our Body we may bear the marks and dying of our Lord and in our spirits we may be humble and mortified and like him in all his imitable perfections that we may die to sin and live to righteousness and after our suffering together with him in this world we may reign together with him hereafter to whom in the unity of the most mysterious Trinity be all glory and dominion and praise for ever and ever Amen SECT IX Of JESVS being Baptized and going into the Wilderness to be Tempted The Baptisme of Iesus S. MAT. 3. 17. And lo a voice from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased Luc. 3 23. And Iesus himselfe began to be about thirty yeares of age The Temqtation of Iesus S. MAT. 4 10 Get thee behind me Satan For it is written Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou sarue 1. NOW the full time was come Jesus took leave of his Mother and his Trade to begin his Father's work and the Office Prophetical in order to the Redemption of the World and when John was baptizing in Jordan Jesus came to John to be baptized of him The Baptist had never seen his face because they had been from their infancy driven to several places designed to several imployments and never met till now But immediately the Holy Ghost inspired S. John with a discerning and knowing spirit and at his first arrival he knew him and did him worship And when Jesus desired to be baptized John forbad him saying I have need to be baptized of thee and comest thou to me For the Baptism of John although it was not a direct instrument of the Spirit for the collation of Grace neither find we it administred in any form of words not so much as in the name of Christ to come as many dream because even after John had baptized the Pharisees still doubted if he were the Messias which they would not if in his form of Ministration he had published Christ to come after him and also because it had not been proper for Christ himself to have received that Baptism whose form had specified himself to come hereafter neither could it consist with the Revelation which John had and the confession which he made to baptize in the name of Christ to come whom the Spirit marked out to him to be come already and himself pointed at him with his 〈◊〉 yet it was a ceremonious consignation of the Doctrine of Repentance which was one great part of the Covenant Evangelical and was a Divine Institution the susception of it was in order to the fulfilling all righteousness it was a sign of Humility the persons baptized confessed their sins it was a sacramental disposing to the Baptism and Faith of Christ but therefore John wondred why the Messias the Lamb of God pure and without spot who needed not the abstersions of Repentance or the washings of Baptism should demand it and of him a sinner and his servant And in the Hebrew Gospel of S. Matthew which the 〈◊〉 used at 〈◊〉 as S. Hierom reports these words are added The Mother of the Lord and his brethren said unto him John Baptist baptizeth to the Remission of sins let us go and be baptized of him He said to them 〈◊〉 have I sinned that I should go and be baptized of him And this part of the Story is also told by Justin Martyr But Jesus wanted not a proposition to consign by his Baptism proportionable enough to the analogy of its institution for as others professed their return towards Innocence so he avowed his perseverance in it and though he was never called in Scripture a Sinner yet he was made Sin for us that is he did undergo the shame and the punishment and therefore it was proper enough for him to perform the Sacrament of Sinners 2. But the Holy Jesus who came as himself in answer to the Baptist's question professed to sulfil all rightcousness would receive that Rite which his Father had instituted in order to the manifestation of his Son For although the Baptist had a glimpse of him by the first irradiations of the Spirit yet John professed That he therefore came baptizing with water that Jesus might be manifested to Israel and it was also a sign given to the Baptist himself that on whomsoever he saw the Spirit descending and remaining he is the person that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost And God chose to actuate the sign at the waters of Jordan in great and religious assemblies convened there at John's Baptism and therefore Jesus came to be baptized and by this Baptism became known to John who as before he gave to him an indiscriminate testimony so now he pointed out the person in his Sermons and Discourses and by calling him the Lamb of God prophesied of his Passion and preached him to be the World's Redeemer and the Sacrifice for mankind He was now manifest to Israel he confirmed the Baptism of John he 〈◊〉 the water to become sacramental and ministerial in the remission of sins he by a real event declared that to them who should rightly be baptized the Kingdom of Heaven should certainly be opened he inserted himself by that Ceremony into the society and participation of holy people of which communion himself was Head and Prince and he did in a symbol purifie Humane nature whose stains and guilt he had undertaken 3. As soon as John had performed his Ministery and Jesus was baptized he prayed and the heavens were opened and the air clarified by a new and glorious light and the holy Ghost in the manner of a Dove alighted upon his sacred head and God the Father gave
condition and the greatest instance of their infelicity whom the Church upon sufficient reason and with competent authority delivers over to Satan by the infliction of the greater Excommunication 8. As soon as it was permitted to the Devil to tempt our Lord he like fire had no power to suspend his act but was as entirely determined by the fulness of his malice as a natural agent by the appetites of nature that we may know to whom we owe the happinesses of all those hours and days of peace in which we sit under the trees of Paradise and see no serpent encircling the branches and presenting us with fair fruit to ruine us It is the mercy of God we have the quietness of a minute for if the Devil's chain were taken off he would make our very beds a torment our tables to be a snare our sleeps phantastick lustful and illusive and every sense should have an object of delight and danger an Hyaena to kiss and to perish in its embraces But the Holy Jesus having been assaulted by the Devil and felt his malice by the experiments of Humanity is become so merciful a high Priest and so sensible of our sufferings and danger by the apprehensions of compassion that he hath put a hook into the nostrils of Leviathan and although the reliques of seven Nations be in our borders and fringes of our Countrey yet we live as safe as did the Israelites upon whom sometimes an inroad and invasion was made and sometimes they had rest forty years and when the storm came some remedy was found out by his grace by whose permission the tempest was stirred up and we find many persons who in seven years meet not with a violent temptation to a crime but their battels are against impediments and retardations of improvement their own rights are not directly questioned but the Devil and Sin are wholly upon the defensive Our duty here is an act of affection to God making returns of thanks for the protection and of duty to secure and continue the favour 9. But the design of the Holy Ghost being to expose Jesus to the Temptation he arms himself with Fasting and Prayer and Baptism and the Holy Spirit against the day of battel he continues in the Wilderness forty days and sorty nights without meat or drink attending to the immediate addresses and colloquies with God not suffering the interruption of meals but representing his own and the necessities of all mankind with such affections and instances of spirit love and wisdom as might express the excellency of his person and promote the work of our Redemption his conversation being in this interval but a resemblance of Angelical perfection and his Fasts not an instrument of Mortification for he needed none he had contracted no stain from his own nor his Parents acts neither do we find that he was at all hungry or asslicted with his 〈◊〉 till after the expiration of forty days He was afterwards an hungry said the Evangelist and his abstinence from meat might be a defecation of his faculties and an opportunity of Prayer but we are not sure it intended any thing else but it may concern the prudence of Religion to snatch at this occasion of duty so far as the instance is imitable and in all violences of Temptation to fast and pray Prayer being a rare antidote against the poison and Fasting a convenient disposition to intense actual and undisturbed Prayer And we may remember also that we have been baptized and consign'd with the Spirit of God and have received the adoption of Sons and the graces of Sanctification in our Baptisms and had then the seed of God put into us and then we put on Christ and entring into battel put on the whole armour of Righteousness and therefore we may by observing our strength gather also our duty and greatest obligation to fight manfully that we may triumph gloriously 10. The Devil 's first Temptation of Christ was upon the instances and first necessities of Nature Christ was hungry and the Devil invited him to break his fast upon the expence of a Miracle by turning the stones into bread But the answer Jesus made was such as taught us since the ordinary Providence of God is sufficient for our provision or support extraordinary ways of satisfying necessities are not to be undertaken but God must be relied upon his time attended his manner entertained and his measure thankfully received Jesus refused to be relieved and denied to manifest the Divinity of his Person rather than he would do an act which had in it the intimation of a diffident spirit or might be expounded a disreputation to God's Providence And therefore it is an improvident care and impious security to take evil courses and use vile instruments to furnish our Table and provide for our necessities God will certainly give us bread and till he does we can live by the breath of his mouth by the Word of God by the light of his countenance by the refreshment of his Promises for if God gives not provisions into our granaries he can feed us out of his own that is 〈◊〉 of the repositories of Charity If the flesh-pots be removed he can also alter the appetite and when our stock is 〈◊〉 he can also lessen the necessity or if that continues he can drown the sense of it in a deluge of patience and resignation Every word of God's mouth can create a Grace and every Grace can supply two necessities both of the body and the spirit by the comforts of this to support that that they may bear each others burthen and alleviate the pressure 11. But the Devil is always prompting us to change our Stones into Bread our sadnesses into sensual comfort our drinesses into inundations of fancy and exteriour sweetnesses for he knows that the ascetick Tables of Mortification and the stones of the Desart are more healthful than the fulnesses of voluptuousness and the corn of the valleys He cannot endure we should live a life of Austerity or Self-denial if he can get us but to satisfie our Senses and a little more freely to please our natural desires he then hath a fair Field for the Battel but so long as we force him to fight in hedges and morasses encircling and crowding up his strengths into disadvantages by our stone-walls our hardnesses of Discipline and rudenesses of Mortification we can with more facilities repell his flatteries and receive fewer incommodities of spirit But thus the Devil will abuse us by the impotency of our natural desires and therefore let us go to God for satisfaction of our wishes God can and does when it is good for us change our stones into bread for he is a Father so merciful that if we ask him a Fish he will not give us a Scorpion if we ask him bread he will not offer us a stone but will satisfie all our desires by ministrations of the Spirit making stones to become our
Man if they pass through an even and an indifferent life towards the issues of an ordinary and necessary course they are little and within command but if they pass upon an end or aim of difficulty or ambition they duplicate and grow to a 〈◊〉 and we have seen the even and temperate lives of indifferent persons continue in many degrees of Innocence but the Temptation of busie designs is too great even for the best of dispositions 7. But these Temptations are crasse and material and soon discernible it will require some greater observation to arm against such as are more spiritual and immaterial For he hath Apples to cousen Children and Gold for Men the Kingdoms of the World for the Ambition of Princes and the Vanities of the World for the Intemperate he hath Discourses and fair-spoken Principles to abuse the pretenders to Reason and he hath common Prejudices for the more vulgar understandings Amongst these I chuse to consider such as are by way of Principle or Proposition 8. The first great Principle of Temptation I shall note is a general mistake which excuses very many of our crimes upon pretence of Infirmity calling all those sins to which by natural disposition we are inclined though by carelesness and evil customs they are heightned to a habit by the name of Sins of infirmity to which men suppose they have reason and title to pretend If when they have committed a crime their Conscience checks them and they are troubled and during the interval and abatement of the heats of desire resolve against it and commit it readily at the next opportunity then they cry out against the weakness of their Nature and think as long as this body of death is about them it must be thus and that this condition may stand with the state of Grace And then the Sins shall return periodically like the revolutions of a Quartan Ague well and ill for ever till Death surprizes the mistaker This is a Patron of sins and makes the Temptation prevalent by an authentick instrument and they pretend the words of S. Paul For the good that I would that I do not but the evil that I would not that I do For there is a law in my members 〈◊〉 against the law of my mind bringing me into captivity to the law of Sin And thus the 〈◊〉 of Sin is mistaken for a state of Grace and the imperfections of the Law are miscalled the affections and necessities of Nature that they might seem to be incurable and the persons apt for an excuse therefore because for Nature there is no absolute cure But that these words of S. Paul may not become a 〈◊〉 of death and instruments of a temptation to us it is observable that the Apostle by a siction of person as is usual with him speaks of himself not as in the state of Regeneration under the Gospel but under the 〈◊〉 obscurities insufficiencies and imperfections of the Law which indeed he there contends to have been a Rule good and holy apt to remonstrate our misery because by its prohibitions and limits given to natural desires it made actions before indifferent now to be sins it added many curses to the breakers of it and by an 〈◊〉 of contrariety it made us more desirous of what was now unlawful but it was a Covenant in which our Nature was restrained but not helped it was provoked but not sweetly assisted our Understandings were instructed but our Wills not sanctified and there were no suppletories of Repentance every greater sin was like the fall of an Angel irreparable by any mystery or express recorded or enjoyned Now of a man under this Govenant he describes the condition to be such that he understands his Duty but by the infirmities of Nature he is certain to fall and by the helps of the Law not strengthened against it nor restored after it and therefore he calls himself under that notion a miserable man sold under sin not doing according to the rules of the Law or the dictates of his Reason but by the unaltered misery of his Nature certain to prevaricate But the person described here is not S. Paul is not any justified person not so much as a Christian but one who is under a state of direct opposition to the state of Grace as will manifestly appear if we observe the antithesis from S. Paul's own characters For the Man here named is such as in whom sin wrought all concupiscence in whom sin lived and slew him so that he was dead in trespasses and sins and although he did delight in the Law after his inwardman that is his understanding had intellectual complacencies and satisfactions which afterwards he calls serving the Law of God with his mind that is in the first dispositions and preparations of his spirit yet he could act nothing for the law in his members did inslave him and brought him into captivity to the law of sin so that this person was full of actual and effective lusts he was a slave to sin and dead in trespasses But the state of a regenerate person is such as to have 〈◊〉 the flesh with the affections and lusts in whom sin did not reign not only in the mind but even also not in the mortal body over whom sin had no dominion in whom the old man was crucified and the body of sin was destroyed and sin not at all served And to make the antithesis yet clearer in the very beginning of the next Chapter the Apostle saith that the spirit of life in Christ Jesus had made him free from the law of sin and death under which law he complained immediately before he was sold and killed to shew the person was not the same in these so different and contradictory representments No man in the state of Grace can say The evil that I would not that I do if by evil he means any evil that is habitual or in its own nature deadly 9. So that now let no man pretend an inevitable necessity to sin for if ever it comes to a custom or to a great violation though but in a single act it is a condition of Carnality not of spiritual life and those are not the infirmities of Nature but the weaknesses of Grace that make us sin so frequently which the Apostle truly affirms to the same purpose The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other so that ye cannot or that ye do not do the things that ye would This disability proceeds from the strength of the flesh and weakness of the spirit For he adds But if ye be led by the Spirit ye are not under the Law saying plainly that the state of such a combate and disability of doing good is a state of a man under the Law or in the flesh which he accounts all one but every man that is sanctified
confession and undertaking a holy life and therefore in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are conjoyned in the significations as they are in the mystery it is a giving up our names to Christ and it is part of the foundation or the first Principles of the Religion as appears in S. Paul's Catechism it is so the first thing that it is for babes and Neophytes in which they are matriculated and adopted into the house of their Father and taken into the hands of their Mother Upon this account Baptism is called in antiquity 〈◊〉 janua porta Gratiae primus introitus Sanctorum adaeternam Dei Ecclesiae consuetudinem The gate of the Church the door of Grace the first entrance of the Saints to an eternal conversation with God and the Church Sacramentum initiationis intrantium Christianismum investituram S. Bernard calls it The Sacrament of initiation and the investiture of them that enter into the Religion And the person so entring is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one of the Religion or a Proselyte and Convert and one added to the number of the Church in imitation of that of S. Luke 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God added to the Church those that should be saved just as the Church does to this day and for ever baptizing Infants and Catechuments 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are added to the Church that they may be added to the Lord and the number of the Inhabitants of Heaven 15. Secondly The next step beyond this is Adoption into the Convenant which is an immediate consequent of the first Presentation this being the first act of man that the first act of God And this is called by S. Paul a being baptized in one spirit into one body that is we are made capable of the Communion of Saints the blessings of the faithful the priviledges of the Church by this we are as S. Luke calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ordained or disposed put into the order of Eternal Life being made members of the mystical Body under Christ our Head 16. Thirdly And therefore Baptism is a new birth by which we enter into the new world the new Creation the blessings and spiritualities of the Kingdom and this is the expression which our Saviour himself used Nicodemus Unless a man be born of Water and the Spirit and it is by S. Paul called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the laver of Regeneration for now we begin to be reckoned in new Census or account God is become our Father Christ our elder Brother the Spirit the earnest of our Inheritance the Church our Mother our food is the body and bloud of our Lord Faith is our learning Religion our employment and our whole life is spiritual and Heaven the object of our Hopes and the mighty price of our high Calling And from this time forward we have a new principle put into us the Spirit of Grace which besides our Soul and body is a principle of action of one nature and shall with them enter into the portion of our Inheritance And therefore the Primitive Christians who consigned all their affairs and goods and writings with some marks of their Lord usually writing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jesus Christ the Son of God our Saviour made it an abbreviature by writing only the Capitals thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Heathens in mockery and derision made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a Fish and they used it for Christ as a name of reproach but the Christians owned the name and turned it into a pious Metaphor and were content that they should enjoy their pleasure in the Acrostich but upon that occasion Tertullian speaks pertinently to this Article Nos pisciculi sccundùm 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nostrum Jesum Christum in aqua nascimur Christ whom you call a Fish we knowledge to be our Lord and Saviour and we if you please are the little fishes for we are born in water thence we derive our spiritual life And because from henceforward we are a new Creation the Church uses to assign new relations to the Catechumens Spiritual Fathers and Susceptors and at their entrance into Baptism the Christians and Jewish Proselytes did use to cancel all secular affections to their temporal relatives Nec quicquam priùs 〈◊〉 quà m contemnere Deos exuere patriam parentes liberos fratres vilia habere said Tacitus of the Christians which was true in the sence only that Christ said He that doth not hate father or mother for my sake is not worthy of me that is he that doth not hate them praeme rather than forsake me forsake them is unworthy of me 17. Fourthly In Baptism all our sins are pardoned according to the words of a Prophet I will sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness The Catechumen descends into the Font a Sinner he arises purified he goes down the son of Death he comes up the son of the Resurrection he enters in the son of Folly and prevarication he returns the son of Reconciliation he stoops down the child of Wrath and ascends the heir of Mercy he was the child of the Devil and now he is the servant and the son of God They are the words of Venerable Bede concerning this Mystery And this was ingeniously signified by that Greek inscription upon a Font which is so prettily contriv'd that the words may be read after the Greek or after the Hebrew manner and be exactly the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lord wash my sin and not my face only And so it is intended and promised Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins and call on the Name of the Lord said Ananias to Saul for Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it that he might sanctifie and cleanse it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the washing of water in the word that is Baptism in the Christian Religion and therefore Tertullian calls Baptism lavacrum compendiatum a compendious Laver that is an intire cleansing the Soul in that one action justly and rightly performed In the rehearsal of which Doctrine it was not an unpleasant Etymology that 〈◊〉 Sinaita gave of Baptism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in which our sins are thrown off and they fall like leeches when they are full of bloud and water or like the chains from S. Peter's hands at the presence of the Angel Baptism is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an intire full forgiveness of sins so that they shall never be called again to scrutiny Omnia Daemonis armae His merguntur aquis quibus ille renascitur Infans Qui captivus erat The captivity of the Soul is taken away by the bloud of Redemption and the fiery darts of the Devil are quenched by these salutary waters and what the flames of Hell are expiating or punishing to eternal
God at first designed to us And therefore as our Baptism is a separation of us from unbelieving people so the descent of the Holy Spirit upon us in our Baptism is a consigning or marking us for God as the Sheep of his pasture as the Souldiers of his Army as the Servants of his houshold we are so separated from the world that we are appropriated to God so that God expects of us Duty and Obedience and all Sins are acts of Rebellion and Undutifulness Of this nature was the sanctification of Jeremy and John the Baptist from their mothers womb that is God took them to his own service by an early designation and his Spirit marked them to a holy Ministery To this also relates that of S. Paul whom God by a decree separated from his mother's womb to the Ministery of the Gospel the 〈◊〉 did antedate the act of the Spirit which did not descend upon him until the day of his Baptism What these persons were in order to exteriour Ministeries that all the faithful are in order to Faith and Obedience consigned in Baptism by the Spirit of God to a perpetual relation to God in a continual service and title to his Promises And in this sence the Spirit of God is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Seal In whom also after that ye believed ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of Promise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Water washes the body and the Spirit seals the Soul viz. to a participation of those Promises which he hath made and to which we receive a title by our Baptism 22. Secondly The second effect of the Spirit is Light or Illumination that is the holy Spirit becomes unto us the Author of holy thoughts and firm perswasions and sets to his seal that the Word of God is true into the belief of which we are then baptized and makes Faith to be a Grace and the Understanding resigned and the Will confident and the Assent stronger than the premises and the Propositions to be believed because they are beloved and we are taught the ways of Godliness after a new manner that is we are made to perceive the Secrets of the Kingdom and to love Religion and to long for Heaven and heavenly things and to despise the World and to have new resolutions and new perceptions and new delicacies in order to the establishment of Faith and its increments and perseverance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God sits in the Soul when it is illuminated in 〈◊〉 as if he sate in his Throne that is he rules by a firm perswasion and intire principles of Obedience And therefore Baptism is called in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the baptized 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illuminated Call to mind the former days in which you were illuminated and the same phrase is in the 6. to the Hebrews where the parallel places expound each other For that which S. Paul calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illuminated he calls after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a receiving the knowledge of the truth and that you may perceive this to be wholly meant of Baptism the 〈◊〉 expresses it still by Synonyma's Tasting of the heavenly gift and made partakers of the Holy Ghost sprinkled in our hearts from an evil conscience and washed in our bodies with pure water all which also are a syllabus or collection of the several effects of the graces bestowed in Baptism But we are now instancing in that which relates most properly to the Understanding in which respect the Holy Spirit also is called Anointing or Unction and the mystery is explicated by S. John The Anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you and ye need not that any man teach you but as the same Anointing teacheth you of all things 23. Thirdly The Holy Spirit descends upon us in Baptism to become the principle of a new life to become a holy seed springing up to Holiness and is called by S. John 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 of God and the purpose of it we are taught by him Whosoever is 〈◊〉 of God that is he that is regenerated and entred into this New birth doth not 〈◊〉 sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God The Spirit of God is the Spirit of life and now that he by the Spirit is born anew he hath in him that principle which if it be cherished will grow up to life to life eternal And this is the Spirit of Sanctification the victory over the World the deletery of Concupiscence the life of the Soul and the perpetual principle of Grace sown in our spirits in the day of our Adoption to be the sons of God and members of Christ's body But take this Mystery in the words of S. Basil. There are two Ends proposed in Baptism to wit to abolish the body of Sin that we may no more bring forth fruit unto death and to live in the Spirit and to have our fruit to Sanctification The Water represents the image of death receiving the body in its bosom as in a Sepulchre but the quickning Spirit sends upon us a vigorous 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 power or 〈◊〉 even from the beginning renewing our Souls from the death of sin unto life For as our Mortification is 〈◊〉 in the water so the Spirit works life in us To this purpose is the discourse of S. Paul having largely discoursed of our being baptized into the death of 〈◊〉 he adds this as the Corollary of all He that is dead is freed from sin that is being mortified and buried in the waters of Baptism we have a new life of Righteousness put into us we are quitted from the dominion of Sin and are planted together in the likeness of Christ's Resurrection that henceforth we should not serve sin 24. Fourthly But all these intermedial Blessings tend to a glorious Conclusion for Baptism does also consign us to a holy Resurrection It takes the sting of death from us by burying us together with Christ and takes 〈◊〉 Sin which is the sting of death and then we shall be partakers of a blessed Resurrection This we are taught by S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his Death For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his Death we shall be also in the likeness of his Resurrection That declares the real event in its due season But because Baptism consigns it and admits us to a title to it we are said with S. Paul to be risen with Christ in Baptism Buried with him in Baptism wherein also you are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God which hath raised him from the dead Which expression I desire to be remembred that by it we may better understand those other
sayings of the Apostle of putting on Christ in Baptism putting on the new man c. for these only signifie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the design on God's part and the endeavour and duty on Man's we are then consigned to our Duty and to our Reward we undertake one and have a title to the other And though men of ripeness and Reason enter instantly into their portion of Work and have present use of the assistances and something of their Reward in hand yet we cannot conclude that those that cannot do it 〈◊〉 are not baptized rightly because they are not in capacity to put on the New man in Righteousness that is in an actual holy life for they may put on the New man in Baptism just as they are risen with Christ which because it may be done by Faith before it is done in real event and it may be done by Sacrament and design before it be done by a proper Faith so also may our putting on the New man be it is done sacramentally and that part which is wholly the work of God does only antedate the work of man which is to succeed in its due time and is after the 〈◊〉 of preventing grace But this is by the bye In order to the present Article Baptism is by 〈◊〉 called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a participation of the Lord's Resurrection 25. Fifthly and lastly By Baptism we are saved that is we are brought from death to life 〈◊〉 and that is the first Resurrection and we are brought from death to life hereafter by virtue of the Covenant of the state of Grace into which in Baptism we enter and are preserved from the second Death and receive a glorious and an eternal life He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved said our Blessed Saviour and According to his mercy he saved us by the washing of Regeneration and renowing of the Holy Ghost 26. After these great Blessings so plainly testified in Scripture and the Doctrine of the Primitive Church which are regularly consigned and bestowed in Baptism I shall less need to descend to temporal Blessings or rare contingencies or miraculous events or probable notices of things less certain Of this nature are those Stories recorded in the Writings of the Church that Constantine was cured of a Leprosie in Baptism Theodosius recovered of his disease being baptized by the Bishop of Thessalonica and a paralytick Jew was cured as soon as he became a Christian and was baptized by Atticus of CP and Bishop Arnulph baptizing a Leper also cured him said Vincentius Bellovacensis It is more considerable which is generally and piously believed by very many eminent persons in the Church that at our Baptism God assigns an Angel-Guardian for then the Catechumen being made a Servant and a Brother to the Lord of Angels is sure not to want the aids of them who pitch their tents round about them that fear the Lord and that this guard and ministery is then appointed when themselves are admitted into the inheritance of the Promises and their title to Salvation is hugely agreeable to the words of S. Paul Are they not all ministring spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of Salvation where it appears that the title to the inheritance is the title to this ministery and therefore must begin and end together But I insist not on this though it seems to me hugely probable All these Blessings put into one Syllabus have given to Baptism many honourable appellatives in Scripture and other Divine Writers calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sacramentum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 salutis A New birth a Regeneration a Renovation a Chariot carrying us to God the great Circumcision a Circumcision made without hands the Key of the Kingdom the Paranymph of the Kingdom the Earnest of our inheritance the Answer of a good Conscience the Robe of light the Sacrament of a new life and of eternal Salvation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is celestial water springing from the sides of the Rock upon which the Church was built when the Rock was smitten with the Rod of God 27. It remains now that we enquire what concerns our Duty and in what persons or in what dispositions Baptism produces all these glorious effects for the Sacraments of the Church work in the virtue of Christ but yet only upon such as are servants of Christ and hinder not the work of the Spirit of Grace For the water of the Font and the Spirit of the Sacrament are indeed to wash away our Sins and to purifie our Souls but not unless we have a mind to be purified The Sacrament works pardon for them that hate their sin and procures Grace for them that love it They that are guilty of sins must repent of them and renounce them and they must make a profession of the Faith of Christ and give or be given up to the obedience of Christ and then they are rightly disposed He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved saith Christ and S. Peter call'd out to the whole assembly Repent and be baptized every one of you Concerning this Justin Martyr gives the same account of the Faith and practice of the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Whosoever are perswaded and believe those things to be true which are delivered and spoken by us and undertake to live accordingly they are commanded to fast and pray and to ask of God remission for their former sins we also praying together with them and fasting Then they are brought to us where water is and are regenerated in the same manner of Regeneration by which we our selves are regenerated For in Baptism S. Peter observes there are two parts the Body and the Spirit that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the putting away the 〈◊〉 of the flesh that is the material washing and this is Baptism no otherwise than a dead corps is a man the other is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the answer of a good conscience towards God that is the conversion of the Soul to God that 's the effective disposition in which Baptism does save us And in the same sence are those sayings of the Primitive Doctors to be understood Anima non lavatione sed 〈◊〉 sancitur The Soul is not healed by washing viz. alone but by the answer the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in S. Peter the correspondent of our part of the Covenant sor that 's the perfect 〈◊〉 of this unusual expression And the effect is attributed to this and denied to the other when they are distinguished So Justin Martyr affirms The only Baptism that can heal us is Kepentance and the knowledge of God For what need is there of that Baptism that can only 〈◊〉 the flesh and the body Be washed in your flesh from wrath and 〈◊〉 from envy and hatred and behold the body is pure And Clemens Alexandrinus upon that Proverbial saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Be not pure in the laver but in the mind adds I suppose that an exact and a firm Repentance is a sufficient purification to a man if judging and considering our selves for the facts we have done before we proceed to that which is before us considering that which follows and cleansing or washing our mind from sensual affections and from former sins Just as we use to deny the effect to the instrumental cause and attribute it to the principal in the manner of speaking when our purpose is to affirm this to be the principal and of chief 〈◊〉 So we say It is not the good Lute but the skilful hand that makes the musick It is not the Body but the Soul that is the Man and yet he is not the man without both For Baptism is but the material part in the Sacrament it is the Spirit that giveth life whose work is Faith and Repentance begun by himself without the Sacrament and consigned in the Sacrament and actuated and increased in the cooperation of our whole life And therefore Baptism is called in the Jerusalem Creed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one Baptism of Repentance for the remission of sins and by Justin Martyr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Baptism of Repentance and the knowledge of God which was made for the sins of the people of God He explains himself a little after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Baptism that can only cleanse them that are penitent In Sacrament is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fides credentium professio quae apud Act a conficitur Angelorum 〈◊〉 miscentur 〈◊〉 spiritualia semina ut sancto germine nova possit renascentium indoles procreari ut dum Trinitas cum Fide concordat qui natus fuerit seculo renascatur spiritualiter Deo Sic fit hominum Pater Deus sancta fit Mater Ecclesia said Optatus The Faith and Profession of the Believers meets with the ever-blessed Trinity and is recorded in the Register of Angels where heavenly and spiritual seeds are mingled that from so holy a Spring may be produced a new nature of the Regeneration that while the Trinity viz. that is invocated upon the baptized meets with the Faith of the Catechumen he that was born to the world may be born spiritually to God So God is made a Father to the man and the holy Church a Mother Faith and Repentance stript the Old man naked and make him fit for Baptism and then the Holy Spirit moving upon the waters cleanses the Soul and makes it to put on the New man who grows up to perfection and a spiritual life to a life of glory by our verification of our undertaking in Baptism on our part and the Graces of the Spirit on the other For the waters pierce no farther than the skin till the person puts off his affection to the sin that he hath contracted and then he may say Aquae intraverunt 〈◊〉 ad animam meam The waters are entred even unto my Soul to purifie and cleanse it by the washing of water and the renewing by the Holy Spirit The summ is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Being baptized we are illuminated being illuminated we are adopted to the inheritance of sons being adopted we are promoted towards perfection and being perfected we are made immortal Quisquis in hos fontes vir venerit exeat indè Semideus tactis citò nobilitetur in undis 28. This is the whole Doctrine of Baptism as it is in it self considered without relation to rare Circumstances or accidental cases and it will also serve to the right understanding of the reasons why the Church of God hath in all Ages baptized all persons that were within her power for whom the Church could stipulate that they were or might be relatives of Christ sons of God heirs of the Promises and partners of the Covenant and such as did not hinder the work of Baptism upon their Souls And such were not only persons of age and choice but the Infants of Christian Parents For the understanding and verifying of which truth I shall only need to apply the parts of the former Discourse to their particular case premising first these Propositions Of Baptizing Infants Part II. 1. BAPTISM is the Key in Christ's hand and therefore opens as he opens and shuts by his rule and as Christ himself did not do all his Blessings and effects unto every one but gave to every one as they had need so does Baptism Christ did not cure all mens eyes but them only that were blind Christ came not to call the righteous but sinners to 〈◊〉 that is They that lived in the fear of God according to the Covenant in which they were debtors were indeed improved and promoted higher by Christ but not called to that Repentance to which he called the vicious Gentiles and the Adulterous persons among the Jews and the hypocritical Pharisees There are some so innocent that they need no repentance saith the Scripture meaning that though they do need Contrition for their single acts of sin yet they are within the state of Grace and need not Repentance as it is a Conversion of the whole man And so it is in Baptism which does all its effects upon them that need them all and some upon them that need but some and therefore as it pardons sins to them that have committed them and do repent and believe so to the others who have not committed them it does all the work which is done to the others above or besides that Pardon 2. Secondly When the ordinary effect of a Sacrament is done already by some other efficiency or instrument yet the Sacrament is still as obligatory as before not for so many reasons or necessities but for the same Commandment Baptism is the first ordinary Current in which the Spirit moves and descends upon us and where God's Spirit is they are the Sons of God for Christ's Spirit descends upon none but them that are his and yet Cornelius who had received the holy Spirit and was heard by God and visited by an Angel and accepted in his Alms and Fastings and Prayers was tied to the susception of Baptism To which may be added That the receiving the effects of Baptism before-hand was used as an argument the rather to administer Baptism The effect of which consideration is this That Baptism and its effect may be separated and do not always go in conjunction the effect may be before and therefore much rather may it be after its susception the Sacrament operating in the virtue of Christ even as the Spirit shall move according to that saying of S. Austin Sacrosancto lavacro inchoata innovatio novi hominis perficiendo perficitur in aliis citiùs in aliis tarà iùs and S. Bernard Lavari quidem citò possumus sed ad sanandum multâ curatione opus est The work of Regeneration that is begun in the ministery of Baptism is perfected in some sooner in some later We
parts concurring to his integral constitution Body and Soul and Spirit and all these have their proper activities and times but every one in his own order first that which is natural then that which is spiritual And what Aristotle said A man first lives the life of a Plant then of a Beast and lastly of a Man is true in this sence and the more spiritual the principle is the longer it is before it operates because more things concur to spiritual actions than to natural and these are necessary and therefore first the other are perfect and therefore last And who is he that so well understands the Philosophy of this third principle of a Christian's life the Spirit as to know how or when it is infused and how it operates in all its periods and what it is in its being and proper nature and whether it be like the Soul or like the faculty or like a habit or how or to what purposes God in all varieties does dispence it These are secrets which none but bold people use to decree and build propositions upon their own dreams That which is certain is * That the Spirit is the principle of a new life or a new birth * That Baptism is the Laver of this new birth * That it is the seed of God and may lie long in the furrows before it springs up * That from the faculty to the act the passage is not always sudden and quick * That the Spirit is the earnest of our Inheritance that is of Resurrection to eternal life which inheritance because Children we hope shall have they cannot be denied to have its Seal and earnest that is if they shall have all they are not to be denied a part * That Children have some effects of the Spirit and therefore do receive it and are baptized with the Spirit and therefore may with Water which thing is therefore true and evident because some Children are sanctified as Jeremy and the Baptist and therefore all may And because all Sanctification of persons is an effect of the Holy Ghost there is no peradventure but they that can be 〈◊〉 by God can in that capacity receive the Holy Ghost and all the ground of dissenting here is only upon a mistake because Infants do no act of Holiness they suppose them incapable of the grace of 〈◊〉 Now 〈◊〉 of Children is their Adoption to the Inheritance of sons their Presentation to Christ their Consignation to Christ's service and to Resurrection their being put into a possibility of being saved their restitution to God's favour which naturally that is as our Nature is depraved and punished they could not have And in short the case is this * Original righteousness was in Adam 〈◊〉 the manner of Nature but it was an act or effect of Grace and by it men were not made but born Righteous the inferiour Faculties obeyed the superiour the Mind was whole and right and conformable to the Divine Image the Reason and the Will always concurring the Will followed Reason and Reason followed the Laws of God and so long as a man had not lost this he was pleasing to God and should have passed to a more perfect state Now because this if Adam had stood should have been born with every child there was in Infants a principle which was the seed of holy life here and a blessed hereafter and yet the children should have gone in the road of Nature then as well as now and the Spirit should have operated at Nature's leisure God being the giver of both would have made them instrumental to and perfective of each other but not destructive Now what was lost by Adam is restored by Christ the same Righteousness only it is not born but superinduced not integral but interrupted but such as it is there is no difference but that the same or the like principle may be derived to us from Christ as there should have been from Adam that is a principle of Obedience a regularity of 〈◊〉 a beauty in the Soul and a state of acceptation with God And we see also in men of understanding and reason the Spirit of God 〈◊〉 in them which Tatianus describing uses these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soul is possessed with sparks or materials of the power of the Spirit and yet it is sometimes ineffective and unactive sometimes more sometimes less and does no more do its work at all times than the Soul does at all times understand Add to this that if there be in 〈◊〉 naturally an evil principle a proclivity to sin an ignorance and pravity of mind a disorder of affections as experience teacheth us there is and the perpetual Doctrine of the Church and the universal mischiefs issuing from mankind and the sin of every man does witness too much why cannot Infants have a good principle in them though it works not till its own season as well as an evil principle If there were not by nature some evil principle it is not possible that all the world should chuse sin In free Agents it was never heard that all individuals loved and chose the same thing to which they were not naturally inclined Neither do all men chuse to marry neither do all chuse to abstain and in this instance there is a natural inclination to one part But of all the men and women in the world there is no one that hath never sinned If we say that we have no sin we deceive our selves and the truth is not in us said an Apostle If therefore Nature hath in Infants an evil principle which operates when the child can chuse but is all the while within the Soul either Infants have by Grace a principle put into them or else Sin abounds where Grace does not superabound expresly against the doctrine of the Apostle The event of this discourse is That if Infants be capable of the Spirit of Grace there is no reason but they may and ought to be baptized as well as men and women unless God had expresly forbidden them which cannot be pretended and that Infants are capable of the Spirit of Grace I think is made very credible Christus infantibus infans 〈◊〉 sanctificans 〈◊〉 said Irenaeus Christ became an Infant among the Infants and does sanctifie Infants and S. Cyprian affirms Esse apud omnes 〈◊〉 Infantes 〈◊〉 majores 〈◊〉 unam divini muneris aequitatem There is the same dispensation of the Divine grace to all alike to Infants as well as to men And in this Royal Priesthood as it is in the secular Kings may be anointed in their Cradles Dat Deus sui Spiritûs 〈◊〉 gratiam quam etiam latenter infundit in parvulis God gives the most secret Grace of his Spirit which he also secretly infuses into Infants And if a secret infusion be rejected because it cannot be proved at the place and at the instant many men that hope for Heaven will be very much to 〈◊〉 for a
natural nor gracious neither original nor derivative And well may we lament the death of poor babes that are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning whom if we neglect what is regularly prescribed to all that enter Heaven without any difference expressed or case reserved we have no reason to be comforted over our dead children but may weep as they that have no hope We may hope when our neglect was not the hinderance because God hath wholly taken the matter into his own hand and then it cannot miscarry and though we know nothing of the Children yet we know much of God's goodness but when God hath permitted it to us that is offered and permitted Children to our ministery what-ever happens to the Innocents we may well fear 〈◊〉 God will require the Souls at our hands and we cannot be otherwise secure but that it will be said concerning our children which S. Ambrose used in a case like this Anima illa potuit salva fieri si habuisset purgationem This Soul might have gone to God if it had been purified and washed We know God is good infinitely good but we know it is not at all good to tempt his goodness and he tempts him that leaves the usual way and pretends it is not made for him and yet hopes to be at his journey's end or expects to meet his Child in Heaven when himself shuts the door against him which for ought he knows is the only one that stands open S. Austin was severe in this Question against unbaptized Infants therefore he is called durus Pater Infantum though I know not why the original of that Opinion should be attributed to him since S. Ambrose said the same before him as appears in his words before quoted in the margent 25. And now that I have enumerated the Blessings which are consequent to Baptism and have also made apparent that Infants can receive these Blessings I suppose I need not use any other perswasions to bring Children to Baptism If it be certain they may receive these good things by it it is certain they are not to be hindred of them without the greatest impiety and sacriledge and uncharitableness in the world Nay if it be only probable that they receive these Blessings or if it be but possible they may nay unless it be impossible they should and so declared by revelation or demonstratively certain it were intolerable unkindness and injustice to our pretty Innocents to let their crying be unpitied and their natural misery eternally irremediable and their sorrows without remedy and their Souls no more capable of relief than their bodies of Physick and their death left with the sting in and their Souls without Spirits to go to God and no Angel-guardian to be assigned them in the Assemblies of the faithful and they not to be reckoned in the accounts of God and God's Church All these are sad stories 26. There are in Scripture very many other probabilities to perswade the Baptism of Infants but because the places admit of divers interpretations the Arguments have so many diminutions and the certainty that is in them is too fine for 〈◊〉 understandings I have chosen to build the ancient Doctrines upon such principles which are more easie and certain and have not been yet sullied and rifled with the contentions of an adversary This only I shall observe That the words of our Blessed Lord Unless a man be born of Water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be expounded to the exclusion of Children but the same expositions will also make Baptism not necessary for men for if they be both necessary ingredients Water and the Spirit then let us provide water and God will provide the Spirit if we bring wood to the Sacrifice he will provide a Lamb. And if they signifie distinctly one is ordinarily as necessary as the other and then Infants must be baptized or not be saved But if one be exegetical and explicative of the other and by Water and the Spirit is meant only the purification of the Spirit then where is the necessity of Baptism 〈◊〉 men It will be as the other Sacrament at most but highly convenient not simply necessary and all the other places will easily be answered if this be avoided But however these words being spoken in so 〈◊〉 a manner are to be used with fear and reverence and we must be infallibly sure by some certain infallible arguments that 〈◊〉 ought not to be baptized or we ought to fear concerning the 〈◊〉 of these decretery words I shall only add two things by way of Corollary to this Discourse 27. That the Church of God ever since her 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath for very many Ages consisted almost wholly of Assemblies of them who have been 〈◊〉 in their Infancy and although in the 〈◊〉 callings of the Gentiles the chiefest and most frequent Baptisms were of converted and 〈◊〉 persons and believers yet from the beginning also the Church hath baptized the Infants of Christian Parents according to the Prophecy of Isaiah Behold I will list up my hands to the Gentiles and set up a standard to the people and they shall bring thy sons in their arms and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders Concerning which I shall not only bring the testimonies of the matter of 〈◊〉 but either a report of an Apostolical Tradition or some Argument from the Fathers which will make their testimony more effectual in all that shall relate to the Question 28. The Author of the Book of Ecclesiastical Hierarchy attributed to S. Denis the 〈◊〉 takes notice that certain unholy persons and enemies to the Christian Religion think it a ridiculous thing that Infants who as yet cannot understand the Divine Mysteries should be partakers of the Sacraments and that Professions and Abrenunciations should be made by others for them and in their names He answers that Holy men Governours of Churches have so taught having received a Tradition from their Fathers and Elders in Christ. By which answer of his as it appears that he himself was later than the Areopagite so it is so early by him affirmed that even then there was an ancient Tradition for the Baptism of Infants and the use of Godfathers in the ministery of the Sacrament Concerning which it having been so ancient a Constitution of the Church it were well if men would rather humbly and modestly observe than like scorners deride it in which they shew their own folly as well as immodesty For what 〈◊〉 or incongruity is it that our Parents natural or spiritual should stipulate for us when it is agreeable to the practice of all the laws and transactions of the world an effect of the Communion of Saints and of Christian Oeconomy For why may not Infants be stipulated for as well as we All were included in the stipulation made with Adam he made a losing bargain for himself and we smarted for his folly and if the
to him are forgiven not his own but the 〈◊〉 of another man None ought to be driven from Baptism and the Grace of God who is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 gentle and pious unto all and therefore much less Infants who more 〈◊〉 our aid and more need the Divine mercy because in the first beginning of their birth crying and 〈◊〉 they can do nothing but call for mercy and relief 〈◊〉 this reason it was saith 〈◊〉 that they to whom the secrets of the Divine 〈◊〉 were committed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their 〈◊〉 because there was born with them the impurities of sin which did need material Ablution as a Sacrament of spiritual purification For that it may appear that our sins have a proper analogy to this Sacrament the Body it self is called the 〈◊〉 of 〈◊〉 and therefore the washing of the Body is not ineffectual towards the great work of Pardon and abolition Indeed after this Ablution there remains 〈◊〉 or the material part of our misery and sin For Christ by his death only took away that which when he did die for us he bare in his own body upon the tree Now Christ only bare the punishment of our sin and therefore we shall not die for it but the material part of the sin Christ bare not Sin could not come so near him it might make him sick and die but not disordered and stained He was pure from Original and Actual sins and therefore that remains in the body though the guilt and 〈◊〉 be 〈◊〉 off and changed into advantages and grace and the Actual are 〈◊〉 by the Spirit of Grace descending afterwards upon the Church and sent by our Lord to the same purpose 33. But it is not rationally to be answered what S. Ambrose says Quia omnis peccato 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For it were strange that sin and misery should seize upon the innocent and most 〈◊〉 persons and that they only should be left without a Sacrament and an instrument of expiation And although they cannot consent to the present susception yet neither do they refuse and yet they consent as much to the grace of the Sacrament as to the prevarication of Adam and because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 under this it were but reason they should be relieved by that And it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Gregory 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they should be consigned and sanctified without their own knowledge than to die without their being sanctified for so it happened to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Israel and if the conspersion and washing the door-posts with the bloud of a Lamb did sacramentally preserve all the first-born of Goshen it cannot 〈◊〉 thought impossible or unreasonable that the want of understanding in Children should hinder them from the blessing of a Sacrament and from being redeemed and washed with the bloud of the Holy Lamb who was 〈◊〉 for all from the beginning of the world 34. After all this it is not inconsiderable that we say the Church hath great power and authority about the Sacraments which is observable in many instances She appointed what persons she pleased and in equal power made an unequal dispensation and ministery The Apostles first dispensed all things and then they left off exteriour ministeries to attend to the Word of God and Prayer and S. Paul accounted it no part of his office to Baptize when he had been separated by imposition of hands at Antioch to the work of Preaching and greater ministeries and accounted that act of the Church the act of Christ saying Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the Gospel They used various forms in the ministration of Baptism sometimes baptizing in the name of Christ sometimes expresly invocating the Holy and ever-Blessed Trinity one while 〈◊〉 baptize 〈◊〉 as in the Latine Church but in the Greek Let the servant of Christ be baptized And in all Ecclesiastical ministeries the Church invented the forms and in most things hath often changed them as in Absolution Excommunication And sometimes they baptized people under their profession of Repentance and then taught them as it happened to the Goaler and his family in whose case there was no explicit Faith 〈◊〉 in the mysteries of Religion so far as appears and yet he and not only he but all his house were baptized at that hour of the night when the Earthquake was terrible and the 〈◊〉 was pregnant upon them and this upon their Master's account as it is likely but others were baptized in the conditions of a previous Faith and a new-begun Repentance They baptized in Rivers or in Lavatories by dipping or by sprinkling for so we find that S. Laurence did as he went to martyrdom and so the Church did sometimes to Clinicks and so it is highly convenient to be done in Northern Countries according to the Prophecy of 〈◊〉 So shall 〈◊〉 sprinkle many Nations according as the typical expiations among the Jews were usually by sprinkling And it is fairly relative to the mystery to the sprinkling with the 〈◊〉 of Christ and the watering of the furrows of our Souls with the dew of Heaven to make them to bring forth fruit unto the Spirit and unto Holiness The Church sometimes dipt the Catechumen three times sometimes but once Some Churches use Fire in their Baptisms so do the Ethiopians and the custom was ancient in 〈◊〉 places And so in the other Sacrament sometimes they stood and sometimes kneeled and sometimes received it in the mouth and sometimes in the hand one while in 〈◊〉 another while in unlevened bread sometimes the wine and water were mingled sometimes they were pure and they admitted some persons to it sometimes which at other times they rejected sometimes the Consecration was made by one form sometimes by another and to conclude sometimes it was given to Infants sometimes not And she had power so to do for in all things where there was not a Commandment of Christ expressed or implied in the nature and in the end of the Institution the Church had power to alter the particulars as was most expedient or conducing to edification And although the after-Ages of the Church which refused to communicate Infants have 〈◊〉 some little things against the lawfulness and those Ages that used it found out some pretences for its 〈◊〉 yet both the one and the other had liberty to follow their own necessities so in all things they followed Christ. Certainly there is 〈◊〉 more reason why Insants may be Communicated than why they may not be Baptized And that this discourse may 〈◊〉 to its first intention although there is no record extant of any Church in the world and from the Apostles days inclusively to this very day ever refused to Baptize their Children yet if they had upon any present reason they might also change 〈◊〉 practice when the reason should be 〈◊〉 and therefore if there were nothing else in it yet the universal practice of all Churches in all Ages is abundantly sufficient to determine us and to
hand is heavy and his sword is sharp and pierces to the dividing the marrow and the bones and he that considers the infinite distance between God and us must tremble when he remembers that he is to feel the issues of that anger which he is not certain whether or no it will destroy him infinitely and eternally 4. But if the whip be given into our hands that we become executioners of the Divine wrath it is sometimes worse for we seldom strike our selves for emendation but add sin to sin till we perish miserably and inevitably God scourges us often into Repentance but when a Sin is the whip of another sin the rod is put into our hands who like blind men strike with a rude and undiscerning hand and because we love the punishment do it without intermission or choice and have no end but ruine 5. When the Holy Jesus had whipt the Merchants in the Temple they took away all the instruments of their sin For a Judgment is usually the commencement of Repentance Love is the last of Graces and 〈◊〉 at the beginning of a new life but is reserved to the perfections and ripeness of a Christian. We begin in Pear The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom 〈◊〉 hen he smote them then they turned and enquired early after God And afterwards the impresses of Fear continue like a hedge of thorns about us to restrain our dissolutions within the awfulness of the Divine Majesty that it may preserve what was from the same principle begun This principle of their emendation was from God and therefore innocent and holy and the very purpose of Divine Threatnings is that upon them as upon one of the great hindges the Piety of the greatest part of men should turn and the effect was answerable but so are not the actions of all those who follow this precedent in the tract of the letter For indeed there have been some reformations which have been so like this that the greatest alteration which hath been made was that they carried all things out of the Temple the Money and the Tables and the Sacrifice and the Temple it self went at last But these mens scourge is to follow after and Christ the Prince of the Catholick Church will provide one of his own contexture moresevere than the stripes which 〈◊〉 felt from the infliction of the exterminating Angel But the Holy Spirit of God by making provision against such a Reformation hath prophetically declared the aptnesses which are in pretences of religious alterations to degenerate into sacrilegious desires Thou that abhorrest Idols dost thou commit sacriledge In this case there is no amendment only one sin resigns to another and the person still remains under its power and the same dominion The PRAYER OEternal Jesu thou bright Image of thy Father's glories whose light did shine to all the world when thy heart was inflamed with zeal and love of God and of Religion let a coal from thine Altar fanned with the wings of the Holy Dove kindle in my Soul such holy flames that I may be zealous of thy honour and glory forward in Religious duties earnest in their pursuit prudent in their managing ingenuous in my purposes making my Religion to serve no end but of thy glories and the obtaining of thy promises and so sanctific my Soul and my Body that I may be a holy Temple fit and prepared for the inhabitation of thy ever-blessed Spirit whom grant that I may never grieve by admitting any impure thing to desecrate the place and unhallow the Courts of his abode but give me a pure Soul in a chaste and healthful 〈◊〉 a spirit full of holy simplicity and designs of great ingenuity and perfect Religion that I may intend what thou commandest and may with proper instruments 〈◊〉 what I so intend and by thy aids may obtain the end of my labours the rewards of obedience and holy living even the society and inheritance of Jesus in the participation of the joys of thy Temple where thou dwellest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost O Eternal Jesus Amen DISCOURSE VIII Of the Religion of Holy Places 1. THE Holy Jesus brought a Divine warrant for his Zeal The selling Sacrifices and the exchange of Money and every Lay-employment did violence and dishonour to the Temple which was hallowed to Ecclesiastical ministeries and set apart for Offices of Religion for the use of holy things for it was God's House and so is every house by publick designation separate for Prayer or other uses of Religion it is God's House My house God had a propriety in it and had set his mark on it even his own Name And therefore it was in the Jews Idiome of speech called the Mountain of the Lord's House and the House of the Lord by David frequently God had put his Name into all places appointed for solemn Worship In all places where I record my Name I will come unto thee and bless thee For God who was never visible to mortal eye was pleased to make himself presential by substitution of his Name that is in certain places he hath appointed that his Name shall be called upon and by promising and imparting such Blessings which he hath made consequent to the invocation of his Name hath made such places to be a certain determination of some special manner of his Presence For God's Name is not a distinct thing from himself not an Idea and it cannot be put into a place in literal signification the expression is to be resolved into some other sence God's Name is that whereby he is known by which he is invocated that which is the most immediate publication of his Essence nearer than which we cannot go unto him and because God is essentially present in all places when he makes himself present in one place more than another it cannot be understood to any other purpose but that in such places he gives special Blessings and Graces or that in those places he appoints his Name that is himself specially to be invocated 2. So that when God puts his Name in any place by a special manner it signifies that there himself is in that manner But in separate and hallowed places God hath expressed that he puts his Name with a purpose it should be called upon therefore in plain signification it is thus In Consecrate places God himself is present to be invok'd that is there he is most delighted to hear the Prayers we make unto him For all the expressions of Scripture of God's 〈◊〉 the Tabernacle of God God's Dwellings putting his Name there his Sanctuary are resolved into that saying of God to Solomon who prayed that he would hear the Prayers of necessitous people in that place God granting the request expressed it thus I have sanctified the House which thou hast built that is the House which thou hast designed for my Worship I have designed for your Blessing what you have
that Nation expressed by worshipping towards the Sanctuary by pulling off their shoes when they went into it by making it the determination of their Religious addresses by falling down low upon the earth in their accesses by opening their windows towards it in their private Devotions by calling it the glory of their Nation as is certain in the instances of David Daniel and the wife of Phinehas I shall not need to say that the devouter Christians in the first Ages did worship God with solemnities of address when-ever they entred into their Oratories It was a civility Jesus commanded his Disciples to use to common houses When ye enter into a house salute it I suppose he means the dwellers in it And it is certain what-ever those devouter people did in their religious approaches they designed it to God who was the Major-domo the Master of those Assemblies and thus did the convinced Christian in S. Paul's discourse when he came into the Church where they were prophesying in a known language The secrets of his heart are made manifest and so falling down on his face he will worship God 12. It was no unhandsome expression of reverencing God's Sanctuary that pious people ever used in bestowing costly and 〈◊〉 Ornaments upon it for so all the Christians did as soon as themselves came from contempt and scorn they raised Christian Oratories to an equal portion of their honour and by this way they thought they did honour to God who was the Numen of the place Not that a rich house or costly Offertory is better in respect of God for to him all is alike save that in equal abilities our Devotion is distinguished by them and be the Offering never so contemptible it is a rich Devotion that gives the best we have because although if all the wealth of the Levant were united into a Present it were short of God's infinity yet such an Offertory or any best we have makes demonstration that if we had an Offering infinitely better we should give it to express our love and our belief of God's infinite merit and perfection And therefore let not the widow's two mites become a Precedent to the instance and value of our Donation and because she who gave no more was accepted think that two farthings is as fit to be cast into the Corban as two thousand pound For the reason why our Blessed Saviour commended the Widow's oblation was for the greatness of it not the smallness she gave all she had even all her living therefore she was accepted And indeed since God gives to us more than enough beyond our necessities much for our conveniency much for ease much for repute much for publick compliances for variety for content for pleasure for ornament we should deal unworthily with God Almighty if we limit and restrain our returns to him by confining them within the narrow bounds of mere necessity Certainly beggerly services and cheapness is not more pleasing to God than a rich and magnificent address To the best of Essences the best of Presents is most proportionable and although the service of the Soul and Spirit is most delectable and esteemed by God yet because our Souls are served by things perishing and material and we are of that constitution that by the Body we serve the Spirit and by both we serve God as the Spirit is chiefly to be offered to God because it is better than the Body so the richest Oblation is the best in an equal power and the same person because it is the best of things material and although it hath not the excellency of the Spirit it hath an excellency that a cheap Oblation hath not and besides the advantage of the natural value it can no otherwise be spoiled than a meaner Offering may it is always capable of the same commendation from the Piety of the presenter's spirit and may be as much purified and made holy as the cheaper or the more contemptible God hath no-where expressed that he accepts of a cheaper Offering but when we are not able to give him better When the people brought Offerings more than enough for the Tabernacle Moses restrained their forwardness by saying it was enough but yet commended the disposition highly and wished it might be perpetual But God chid the people when they let his House lie waste without reparation of its decaying beauty and therefore sent famines upon the Land and a curse into their estate because they would not by giving a portion to Religion sanctifie and secure all the rest For the way for a man to be a saver by his Religion is to deposite one part of his estate in the Temple and one in the hands of the Poor for these are God's treasury and stewards respectively and this is laying up treasures in Heaven and besides that it will procure blessing to other parts it will help to save our Souls and that 's good husbandry that 's worth the saving 13. For I consider that those riches and beauties in Churches and Religious solemnities which add nothing to God add much Devotion to us and much honour and efficacy to Devotion For since impression is made upon the Soul by the intervening of corporal things our Religion and Devotion of the Soul receives the addition of many degrees by such instruments Insomuch that we see persons of the greatest fancy and such who are most pleased with outward fairnesses are most Religious Great Understandings make Religion lasting and reasonable but great Fancies make it more scrupulous strict operative and effectual And therefore it is strange that we shall bestow such great expences to make our own houses convenient and delectable that we may entertain our selves with complacency and appetite and yet think that Religion is not worth the ornament nor our fancies fit to be carried into the choice and prosecution of religious actions with sweetness entertainments and fair propositions If we say that God is not the better for a rich House or a costly service we may also remember that neither are we the better for rich Cloaths and the Sheep will keep us as modest as warm and as clean as the Silk-worm and a Gold chain or a carkenet of Pearl does no more contribute to our happiness than it does to the service of Religion For if we reply that they help to the esteem and reputation of our Persons and the distinction of them from the vulgar from the servants of the lot of Issachar and add reverence and veneration to us how great a shame is it if we study by great expences to get reputation and accidental advantages to our selves and not by the same means to purchase reverence and esteem to Religion since we see that Religion amongst persons of ordinary understandings receives as much external and accidental advantages by the accession of exteriour ornaments and accommodation as we our selves can by rich cloaths and garments of wealth ceremony and
distinction And as in Princes Courts the reverence to Princes is quickened and encreased by an outward state and glory so also it is in the service of God although the Understandings of men are no more satisfied by a pompous magnificence than by a cheap plainness yet the Eye is and the Fancy and the Affections and the Senses that is many of our Faculties are more pleased with Religion when Religion by such instruments and conveyances pleases them And it was noted by Sozomen concerning Valens the Arrian Emperor that when he came to Caesarea in Cappadocia he praised S. Basil their Bishop and upon more easie terms revoked his Banishment because he was a grave person and did his holy Offices with reverent and decent addresses and kept his Church-assemblies with much ornament and solemnity 14. But when I consider that saying of S. Gregory that the Church is Heaven within the Tabernacle Heaven dwelling among the sons of men and remember that God hath studded all the Firmament and paved it with stars because he loves to have his House beauteous and highly representative of his glory I see no reason we should not do as Apollinaris says God does In earth do the works of Heaven For he is the God of beauties and perfections and every excellency in the Creature is a portion of influence from the Divinity and therefore is the best instrument of conveying honour to him who made them for no other end but for his own honour as the last resort of all other ends for which they were created 15. But the best manner to reverence the Sanctuary is by the continuation of such actions which gave it the first title of Holiness Holiness becometh thine House for ever said David Sancta sanc̄tis Holy persons and holy rites in holy places that as it had the first relation of Sanctity by the consecration of a holy and reverend Minister and President of Religion so it may be perpetuated in holy Offices and receive the daily consecration by the assistance of sanctified and religious persons Foris canes dogs and criminal persons are unfit for Churches the best ornament and beauty of a Church is a holy Priest and a sanctified people For since Angels dwell in Churches and God hath made his Name to dwell there too if there also be a holy people that there be Saints as well as Angels it is a holy fellowship and a blessed communion But to see a Devil there would scare the most confident and bold fancy and disturb the good meeting and such is every wicked and graceless person Have I not chosen twelve of you and one of you is a Devil An evil Soul is an evil spirit and such are no good ornaments for Temples and it is a shame that a goodly Christian Church should be like an Egyptian Temple without goodly buildings within a Dog or a Cat for the Deity they adore It is worse if in our addresses to Holy Places and Offices we bear our Lusts under our garments For Dogs and Cats are of God's making but our Lusts are not but are God's enemies and therefore besides the Unholiness it is an affront to God to bring them along and it defiles the place in a great degree 16. For there is a defiling of a Temple by insinuation of impurities and another by direct and positive profanation and a third by express Sacriledge This defiles a Temple to the ground Every small sin is an unwelcome guest and is a spot in those Feasts of Charity which entertain us often in God's Houses but there are some and all great crimes are such which desecrate the place unhallow the ground as to our particulars stop the ascent of our Prayers obstruct the current of God's blessing turn Religion into bitterness and Devotion into gall such as are marked in Scripture with a distinguishing character as enemies to the peculiar dispositions of Religion And such are Unchastity which defiles the Temples of our Bodies Covetousness which sets up an Idol in stead of God and Unmercifulness which is a direct enemy to the Mercies of God and the fair return of our Prayers He that shews not the mercies of Alms of Forgiveness and Comfort is forbid to hope for comfort relief or forgiveness from the hands of God A pure Mind is the best manner of worship and the impurity of a crime is the greatest contradiction to the honour and religion of Holy Places And therefore let us imitate the Precedent of the most religious of Kings a I will wash my hands in innocency O Lord and so will I go to thine Altar always remembring those decretory and final words of b S. Paul He that defiles a Temple him will God destroy The PRAYER O Eternal God who dwellest not in Temples made with hands the Heaven of Heavens is not able to contain thee and yet thou art pleased to manifest thy presence amongst the sons of men by special issues of thy favour and benediction make my Body and Soul to be a Temple pure and holy apt for the entertainments of the Holy Jesus and for the habitation of the Holy Spirit Lord be pleased with thy rod of paternal discipline to cast out all impure Lusts all worldly affections all covetous desires from this thy Temple that it may be a place of Prayer and Meditation of holy appetites and chaste thoughts of pure intentions and zealous desires of pleasing thee that I may become also a Sacrifice as well as a Temple eaten up with the zeal of thy glory and consumed with the fire of love that not one thought may be entertained by me but such as may be like perfume breathing from the Altar of Incense and not a word may pass from me but may have the accent of Heaven upon it and sound pleasantly in thy ears O dearest God fill every Faculty of my Soul with impresses dispositions capacities and aptnesses of Religion and do thou hallow my Soul that I may be possest with zeal and religious affections loving thee above all things in the world worshipping thee with the humblest adorations and frequent addresses continually feeding upon the apprehensions of thy divine sweetness and consideration of thy infinite excellencies and observations of thy righteous Commandments and the feast of a holy Conscience as an antepast of Eternity and consignation to the joys of Heaven through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen SECT XII Of JESVS's departure into Galilee his manner of Life Miracles and Preaching his calling of Disciples and what happened until the Second Passeover Jesus and the Woman of Samaria Joh. 4. 5 6. 7. He cometh to a City of Samaria called Sychar now Iacob's well was there There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water Iesus saith etc. For his disciples were gone into the city to buy meat V. 27. His disciples came marvelled y t he talked with the woman yet no man said what seekest thou or why talkest thou with her
Souls let them have the diligence and the craft of Fishers the watchfulness and care of Shepherds the prudence of Politicks the tenderness of Parents the spirit of Government the wariness of Observation great knowledge of the dispositions of their people and experience of such advantages by means of which they may serve the ends of God and of Salvation upon their Souls 7. When Peter had received the fruits of a rich Miracle in the prodigious and prosperous draught of fishes he instantly falls down at the feet of Jesus and confesses himself a sinner and unworthy of the presence of Christ. In which confession I not only consider the conviction of his Understanding by the testimony of the Miracle but the modesty of his spirit who in his exaltation and the joy of a sudden and happy success retired into Humility and consideration of his own unworthiness lest as it happens in sudden joys the lavishness of his spirit should transport him to intemperance to looser affections to vanity and garishness less becoming the severity and government of a Disciple of so great a Master For in such great and sudden accidents men usually are dissolved and melted into joy and inconsideration and let fly all their severe principles and discipline of manners till as Peter here did though to another purpose they say to Christ Depart from me O Lord as if such excellencies of joys like the lesser Stars did disappear at the presence of him who is the fountain of all joys regular and just When the spirits of the Body have been bound up by the cold Winter air the warmth of the Spring makes so great an aperture of the passages and by consequence such dissolution of spirits in the presence of the Sun that it becomes the occasion of Fevers and violent diseases Just such a thing is a sudden Joy in which the spirits leap out from their cells of austerity and sobriety and are warmed into Fevers and wildnesses and forfeiture of all Judgment and vigorous understanding In these accidents the best advice is to temper and allay our joys with some instant consideration of the vilest of our sins the shamefulness of our disgraces the most dolorous accidents of our lives the worst of our fears with meditation of Death or the terrours of Dooms-day or the unimaginable miseries of damned and accursed spirits For such considerations as these are good instruments of Sobriety and are correctives to the malignity of excessive Joys or temporal prosperities which like Minerals unless allayed by art prey upon the spirits and become the union of a contradiction being turned into mortal medicines 8. At this time Jesus preached to the people from the Ship which in the fancies and tropical discoursings of the old Doctors signifies the Church and declares that the Homilies of order and authority must be delivered from the Oracle they that preach must be sent and God hath appointed Tutors and Instructors of our Consciences by special designation and peculiar appointment if they that preach do not make their Sermons from the Ship their discourses either are the false murmurs of Hereticks and false Shepherds or else of Thieves and invaders of Authority or corrupters of Discipline and Order For God that loves to hear us in special places will also be heard himself by special persons and since he sent his Angels Ministers to convey his purposes of old then when the Law was ordained by Angels as by the hands of a Mediatour now also he will send his servants the sons of men since the new Law was ordained by the Son of man who is the Mediatour between God and man in the New Covenant And therefore in the Ship Jesus preach'd but he had first caused it to put off from land to represent to us that the Ship in which we preach must be put off from the vulgar communities of men separate from the people by the designation of special appointment and of special Holiness that is they neither must be common men nor of common lives but consecrated by order and hallowed by holy living lest the person want authority in destitution of a Divine Character and his Doctrine lose its energy and power when the life is vulgar and hath nothing in it holy and extraordinary 9. The Holy Jesus in the choice of his Apostles was resolute and determined to make election of persons bold and confident for so the Galilaeans were observed naturally to be and Peter was the boldest of the Twelve and a good Sword-man till the spirit of his Master had fastened his sword within the scabbard and charmed his spirit into quietness but he never chose any of the Scribes and Pharisees none of the Doctors of the Law but persons ignorant and unlearned which in design and institutions whose divinity is not demonstrated from other Arguments would seem an art of concealment and distrust But in this which derives its raies from the fountain of wisdom most openly and infallibly it is a contestation against the powers of the world upon the interests of God that he who does all the work might have all the glory and in the productions in which he is fain to make the instruments themselves and give them capacity and activity every part of the operation and causality and effect may give to God the same honour he had from the Creation for his being the only workman with the addition of those degrees of excellency which in the work of Redemption of Man are beyond that of his Creation and first being The PRAYER O Eternal Jesu Lord of the Creatures and Prince of the Catholick Church to whom all Creatures obey in acknowledgment of thy supreme Dominion and all according to thy disposition cooperate to the advancement of thy Kingdom be pleased to order the affairs and accidents of the world that all things in their capacity may do the work of the Gospel and cooperate to the good of the Elect and retrench the growth of Vice and advance the interests of Vertue Make all the states and orders of men Disciples of thy holy Institution Let Princes worship thee and defend Religion let thy Clergy do thee honour by personal zeal and vigilancy over their Flocks let all the world submit to thy Scepter and praise thy Righteousness and adore thy Judgments and revere thy Laws and in the multitudes of thy people within the enclosure of thy Nets let me also communicate in the offices of a strict and religious duty that I may know thy voice and obey thy call and entertain thy Holy Spirit and improve my talents that I may also communicate in the blessings of the Church and when the Nets shall be drawn to the shore and the Angels shall make separation of the good Fishes from the bad I may not be rejected or thrown into those Seas of fire which shall afflict the enemies of thy Kingdom but be admitted into the societies of Saints and the everlasting communion of
intanglings of ten thousand thoughts and the impertinences of a disturbed fancy and the great hindrances of a sick body and a sad and weary spirit All these represent a Death-bed to be but an ill station for a Penitent If the person be suddenly snatched away he is not left so much as to dispute if he be permitted to languish in his sickness he is either stupid and apprehends nothing or else miserable and hath reason to apprehend too much However all these difficulties are to be passed and overcome before the man be put into a saveable condition From this consideration though perhaps it may infer more yet we cannot but conclude this difficulty to be as great as the former danger that is vast and ponderous and insupportable 45. Thirdly Suppose the Clinick or death-bed Penitent to be as forward in these employments and as successfull in the mastering many of the Objections as reasonably can be thought yet it is considerable that there is a Repentance which is to be repented of and that is a Repentance which is not productive of fruits of amendment of life that there is a period set down by God in his Judgment and that many who have been profane as Esau was are reduced into the condition of Esau and there is no place left for their Repentance though they seek it carefully with tears that they who have long refused to hear God calling them to Repentance God will refuse to hear them calling for grace and mercy that he will laugh at some men when their calamity comes that the five foolish Virgins addressed themselves at the noise of the Bridegroom 's coming and begg'd oil and went out to buy oil and yet for want of some more time and an early diligence came too late and were shut out for ever that it is no-where revealed that such late endeavours and imperfect practices shall be accepted that God hath made but one Covenant with us in Jesus Christ which is Faith and Repentance consigned in 〈◊〉 and the signification of them and the purpose of Christ is that we should henceforth no more serve sin but mortifie and kill him perpetually and destroy his kingdom and extinguish as much as in us lies his very title that we should live holily justly and soberly in this present world in all holy conversation and godliness and that either we must be continued or reduced to this state of holy living and habitual sanctity or we have no title to the Promises that every degree of recession from the state Christ first put us in is a recession from our hopes and an insecuring our condition and we add to our 〈◊〉 only as our Obedience is restored All this is but a sad story to a dying person who sold himself to work wickedness in an habitual iniquity and aversation from the conditions of the holy Covenant in which he was sanctified 46. And certainly it is unreasonable to plant all our hopes of Heaven upon a Doctrine that is destructive of all Piety which supposes us in such a condition that God hath been offended at us all our life long and yet that we can never return our duties to him unless he will unravel the purposes of his Predestination or call back time again and begin a new computation of years for us and if he did it would be still as uncertain For what hope is there to that man who hath fulfilled all iniquity and hath not fulfilled righteousness Can a man live to the Devil and die to God sow to the flesh and reap to the Spirit hope God will in mercy reward him who hath served his enemy Sure it is the Doctrine of the avail of a death-bed Repentance cannot easily be reconciled with God's purposes and intentions to have us live a good life for it would reconcile us to the hopes of Heaven for a few thoughts or words or single actions when our life is done it takes away the benefit of many Graces and the use of more and the necessity of all 47. For let it be seriously weighed To what purpose is the variety of God's Grace what use is there of preventing restraining concomitant subsequent and persevering Grace unless it be in order to a religious conversation And by deferring Repentance to the last we despoil our Souls and rob the Holy Ghost of the glory of many rays and holy influences with which the Church is watered and refreshed that it may grow from grace to grace till it be consummate in glory It takes away the very being of Chastity and Temperance no such Vertues according to this Doctrine need to be named among Christians For the dying person is not in capacity to exercise these and then either they are troublesome without which we may do well enough or else the condition of the unchaste and intemperate Clinick is sad and deplorable For how can he eject those Devils of Lust and Drunkenness and Gluttony from whom the disease hath taken all powers of election and variety of choice unless it be possible to root out long-contracted habits in a moment or acquire the habits of Chastity Sobriety and Temperance those self-denying and laborious Graces without doing a single act of the respective vertues in order to obtaining of habits unless it be so that God will infuse habits into us more immediately than he creates our reasonable Souls in an instant and without the cooperation of the suscipient without the working out our Salvation with fear and without giving all diligence and running with patience and resisting unto bloud and striving to the last and enduring unto the end in a long fight and a long race If God infuses such habits why have we laws given us and are commanded to work and to do our duty with such a succession and lasting diligence as if the habits were to be acquired to which indeed God promises and ministers his aids still leaving us the persons obliged to the law and the labour as we are capable of the reward I need not instance any more But this doctrine of a death-bed Repentance is inconsistent with the duties of Mortification with all the vindictive and punitive parts of Repentance in exteriour instances with the precepts of waiting and watchfulness and preparation and standing in a readiness against the coming of the Bridegroom with the patience of well-doing with exemplary living with the imitation of the Life of Christ and conformities to his Passion with the kingdom and dominion and growth of Grace And lastly it goes about to defeat one of God's great purposes for Cod therefore concealed the time of our death that we might always stand upon our guard the Holy Jesus told us so Watch for ye know not what hour the Lord will come but this makes men seem more crafty in their late-begun Piety than God was provident and mysterious in concealing the time of our dissolution 48. And now if
as all our happiness consists so God takes greatest complacency and delights in it above all his other Works He punishes to the third and fourth Generation but shews mercy unto thousands Therefore the Jews say that Michael 〈◊〉 with one wing and Gabriel with two meaning that the pacifying Angel the Minister of mercy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but the exterminating Angel the Messenger of wrath is slow And we are called to our approximation to God by the practice of this Grace we are made partakers of the Divine nature by being merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful This mercy consists in the affections and in the effects and actions In both which the excellency of this Christian Precept is eminent above the goodness of the moral precept of the old Philosophers and the piety and charity of the Jews by virtue of the Mosaic Law The Stoick Philosophers affirm it to be the duty of a wise man to succour and help the necessities of indigent and miserable persons but at no hand to pity them or suffer any trouble or compassion in our affections for they intended that a wise person should be dispassionate unmoved and without disturbance in every accident and object and concernment But the Blessed Jesus who came to reconcile us to his Father and purchase us an intire possession did intend to redeem us from sin and make our passions obedient and apt to be commanded even and moderate in temporal affairs but high and active in some instances of spiritual concernment and in all instances that the affection go along with the Grace that we must be as merciful in our compassion as compassionate in our exteriour expressions and actions The Jews by the prescript of their Law were to be merciful to all their Nation and confederates in Religion and this their Mercy was called Justice He hath dispersed abroad and given to the poor his righteousness or Justice 〈◊〉 for ever But the mercies of a Christian are to extend to all Do good to all men especially to the houshold of Faith And this diffusion of a Mercy not only to Brethren but to Aliens and Enemies is that which S. Paul calls goodness still retaining the old appellative for Judaical mercy 〈◊〉 For scarcely for a 〈◊〉 man will one die yet peradventure for a good man some will even dare to die So that the Christian Mercy must be a mercy of the whole man the heart must be merciful and the hand operating in the labour of love and it must be extended to all persons of all capacities according as their necessity requires and our ability permits and our endearments and other obligations dispose of and determine the order 14. The acts of this Grace are 1. To pity the miseries of all persons and all calamities spiritual or temporal having a fellow-feeling in their afflictions 2. To be afflicted and sad in the publick Judgments imminent or incumbent upon a Church or State or Family 3. To pray to God for remedy for all afflicted persons 4. To do all acts of bodily assistence to all miserable and distressed people to relieve the Poor to redeem Captives to forgive Debts to disabled persons to pay Debts for them to lend them mony to feed the hungry and clothe the naked to rescue persons from dangers to defend and relieve the oppressed to comfort widows and fatherless children to help them to right that suffer wrong and in brief to do any thing of relief support succour and comfort 5. To do all acts of spiritual 〈◊〉 to counsel the doubtful to admonish the erring to strengthen the weak to resolve the scrupulous to teach the ignorant and any thing else which may be instrumental to his Conversion Perseverance Restitution and Salvation or may rescue him from spiritual dangers or supply him in any ghostly necessity The reward of this Vertue is symbolical to the Vertue it self the grace and glory differing in nothing but degrees and every vertue being a reward to it self The merciful shall receive mercy mercy to help them in time of need mercy from God who will not only give them the great mercies of Pardon and Eternity but also dispose the hearts of others to pity and supply their needs as they have done to others For the present there is nothing more noble than to be beneficial to others and to lift up the poor 〈◊〉 of the mire and rescue them from misery it is to do the work of God and for the future nothing is a greater title to a mercy at the Day of Judgment than to have shewed mercy to our necessitous Brother it being expressed to be the only rule and instance in which Christ means to judge the world in their Mercy and Charity or their Unmercifulness respectively I was hungry and ye fed me or ye fed me not and so we stand or fall in the great and eternal scrutiny And it was the prayer of Saint Paul Onesiphorus shewed kindness to the great Apostle The Lord shew him a mercy in that day For a cup of charity though but full of cold water shall not lose its reward 15. Sixthly Blessed are the Pure 〈◊〉 heart for they shall see God This purity of heart includes purity of hands Lord who shall dwell in thy Tabernacle even he that is of clean hands and a pure heart that is he that hath not given his mind unto vanity nor sworn to deceive his Neighbour It signifies justice of action and candour of spirit innocence of manners and sincerity of purpose it is one of those great circumstances that consummates Charity For the end of the Commandment is Charity out of a pure heart and of a good Conscience and Faith unfeigned that is a heart free from all carnal affections not only in the matter of natural impurity but also spiritual and immaterial such as are Heresies which are theresore impurities because they mingle secular interest or prejudice with perswasions in Religion Seditions hurtful and impious Stratagems and all those which S. Paul enumerates to be works or fruits of the flesh A good Conscience that 's a Conscience either innocent or penitent a state of Grace 〈◊〉 a not having prevaricated or a being restored to our Baptismal purity Faith unfeigned that also is the purity of Sincerity and excludes Hypocrisie timorous and half perswasions neutrality and indifferency in matters of Salvation And all these do integrate the whole duty of Charity But Purity as it is a special Grace signifies only honesty and uprightness of Soul without hypocrisie to God and dissimulation towards men and then a freedom from all carnal desires so as not to be governed or led by them Chastity is the purity of the body Simplicity is the purity of the spirit both are the Sanctification of the whole Man for the entertainment of the Spirit of Purity and the Spirit of Truth 16. The acts of this Vertue are 1. To quit all Lustful thoughts not to take delight in
to divide it into portions one act of Charity in an heroical degree or an habitual Charity in the degree of Vertue This instance is probation enough that the opinion of such a necessity of doing the best action simply and indefinitely is impossible to be safely acted because it is impossible to be understood Two talents shall be rewarded and so shall five both in their proportions He that sows sparingly shall reap sparingly but he shall reap Every man as he purposes in his heart so let him give The best action shall have the best reward and though he is the happiest who rises highest yet he is not sasest that enters into the state of disproportion to his person I find in the Lives of the later reputed Saints that S. Teresa à Jesu made a vow to do every thing which she should judge to be the best I will not judge the person nor censure the action because possibly her intention and desires were of greatest Sanctity but whosoever considers the story of her Life and the strange repugnancies in the life of man to such undertakings must needs fear to imitate an action of such danger and singularity The advice which in this case is safest to be followed is That we employ our greatest industry that we fall not into sin and actions of forbidden nature and then strive by parts and steps and with much wariness in attempering our zeal to superadd degrees of eminency and observation of the more perfect instances of Sanctity that doing some excellencies which God hath not commanded he may be the rather moved to pardon our prevaricating so many parts of our necessary duty If Love transport us and carry us to actions sublime and heroical let us follow so good a guide and pass on with diligence and zeal and prudence as far as Love will carry us but let us not be carried to actions of great eminency and strictness and unequal severities by scruple and pretence of duty lest we charge our miscarriages upon God and call the yoak of the Gospel insupportable and Christ a hard Task-master But we shall pass from Vertue to Vertue with more fafety if a Spiritual guide take us by the hand only remembring that if the Angels themselves and the beatisied Souls do now and shall hereafter differ in degrees of love and glory it is impossible the state of imperfection should be confined to the highest Love and the greatest degree and such as admits no variety no increment or difference of parts and stations 13. Secondly Our Love to God consists not in any one determinate Degree but hath such a latitude as best agrees with the condition of men who are of variable natures different affectious and capacities changeable abilities and which receive their heightnings and declensions according to a thousand accidents of mortality For when a Law is regularly prescribed to perions whose varieties and different constitutions cannot be regular or uniform it is certain 〈◊〉 gives a great latitude of perfermance and binds not to just atomes and points The Laws of God are like universal objects received into the Faculty partly by choice partly by nature but the variety of perfection is by the variety of the instruments and disposition of the Recipient and are excelled by each other in several sences and by themselves at several times And so is the practice of our Obedience and the entertainments of the Divine Commandments For some are of malleable natures others are morese some are of healthful and temperate constitutions others are lustful full of fancy full of appetite some have excellent leisure and opportunities of retirement others are busie in an active life and cannot with advantages attend to the choice of the better part some are peaceable and timorous and some are in all instances serene others are of tumultuous and unquiet spirits and these become opportunities of Temptation on one side and on the other occasions of a Vertue But every change of faculty and variety of circumstance hath influence upon Morality and therefore their duties are personally altered and increase in obligation or are slackned by necessities according to the infinite alteration of exteriour accidents and interiour possibilities 14. Thirdly Our Love to God must be totally exclusive of any affection to sin and engage us upon a great assiduous and laborious care to resist all Temptations to subdue sin to acquire the habits of Vertues and live holily as it is already expressed in the Discourse of Repentance We must prefer God as the object of our hopes we must chuse to obey him rather than man to please him rather than satisfie our selves and we must do violence to our strongest Passions when they once contest against a Divine Commandment If our Passions are thus regulated let them be fixed upon any lawful object whatsoever if at the same time we prefer Heaven and heavenly things that is would rather chuse to lose our temporal love than our eternal hopes which we can best discern by our refusing to sin upon the solicitation or engagement of the temporal object then although we feel the transportation of a sensual love towards a Wife or Child or Friend actually more pungent and sensible than Passions of Religion are they are less perfect but they are not criminal Our love to God requires that we do his Commandments and that we do not sin but in other things we are permitted in the condition of our nature to be more sensitively moved by visible than by invisible and spiritual objects Only this we must ever have a disposition and a mind prepared to quit our sensitive and pleasant objects rather than quit a Grace or commit a sin Every act of sin is against the Love of God and every man does many single actions of hostility and provocation against him but the state of the Love of God is that which we actually call the state of Grace When Christ reigns in us and sin does not reign but the Spirit is quickned and the Lusts are mortified when we are habitually vertuous and do acts of Piety Temperance and Justice frequently easily chearfully and with a successive constant moral and humane industry according to the talent which God hath intrusted to us in the banks of Nature and Grace then we are in the love of God then we love him with all our heart But if Sin grows upon us and is committed more frequently or gets a victory with less difficulty or is obeyed more readily or entertained with a freer complacency then we love not God as he requires we divide between him and sin and God is not the Lord of all our faculties But the instances of Scripture are the best exposition of this Commandment For David followed God with all his heart to do that which was right in his eyes and Josiah turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might Both these Kings did it and
pro sua rererentâ—â— 1. THE Soul of a Christian is the house of God Ye are God's building saith S. Paul but the house of God is the house of Prayer and therefore Prayer is the work of the Soul whose organs are intended for instruments of the Divine praises and when every stop and pause of those instruments is but the conclusion of a Collect and every breathing is a Prayer then the Body becomes a Temple and the Soul is the Sanctuary and more private recess and place of entercourse Prayer is the great duty and the greatest priviledge of a Christian it is his entercourse with God his Sanctuary in troubles his remedy for sins his cure of griefs and as S. Gregory calls it it is the principal instrument whereby we minister to God in execution of the decrees of eternal Predestination and those things which God intends for us we bring to our selves by the mediation of holy Prayers Prayer is the ascent of the mind to God and a petitioning for such things as we need for our support and duty It is an abstract and summary of Christian Religion Prayer is an act of Religion and Dinine Worship confessing his power and his mercy it celebrates his Attributes and confesses his glories and reveres his person and implores his aid and gives thanks for his blessings it is an act of Humility condescension and dependence expressed in the prostration of our bodies and humiliation of our spirits it is an act of Charity when we pray for others it is an act of Repentance when it confesses and begs pardon for our sins and exercises every Grace according to the design of the man and the matter of the Prayer So that there will be less need to amass arguments to invite us to this Duty every part is an excellence and every end of it is a blessing and every design is a motive and every need is an impulsive to this holy office Let us but remember how many needs we have at how cheap a rate we may obtain their remedies and yet how honourable the imployment is to go to God with confidence and to fetch our supplies with easiness and joy and then without farther preface we may address our selves to the understanding of that Duty by which we imitate the imployment of Angels and beatified spirits by which we ascènd to God in spirit while we remain on earth and God descends on earth while he yet resides in Heaven sitting there on the Throne of his Kingdom 2. Our first enquiry must be concerning the Matter of our Prayers for our Desires are not to be the rule of our Prayers unless Reason and Religion be the rule of our Desires The old Heathens prayed to their Gods for such things which they were ashamed to name publickly before men and these were their private prayers which they durst not for their undecency or iniquity make publick And indeed sometimes the best men ask of God Things not unlawful in themselves yet very hurtful to them and therefore as by the Spirit of God and right Reason we are taught in general what is lawful to be asked so it is still to be submitted to God when we have asked lawful things to grant to us in kindness or to deny us in mercy after all the rules that can be given us we not being able in many instances to judge for our selves unless also we could certainly pronounce concerning future contingencies But the Holy Ghost being now sent upon the Church and the rule of Christ being left to his Church together with his form of Prayer taught and prescribed to his Disciples we have sufficient instruction for the matter of our Prayers so far as concerns the lawfulness or unlawfulness And the rule is easie and of no variety 1. For we are bound to pray for all things that concern our duty all that we are bound to labour for such as are Glory and Grace necessary assistances of the Spirit and rewards spiritual Heaven and Heavenly things 2. Concerning those things which we may with safety hope for but are not matter of duty to us we may lawfully testifie our hope and express our desires by petition but if in their particulars they are under no express promise but only conveniencies of our life and person it is only lawful to pray for them under condition that they may conform to God's will and our duty as they are good and placed in the best order of eternity Therefore 1 for spiritual blessings let our Prayers be particularly importunate perpetual and persevering 2 For temporal blessings let them be generally short conditional and modest 3 And whatsoever things are of mixt nature more spiritual than Riches and less necessary than Graces such as are gifts and exteriour aids we may for them as we may desire them and as we may expect them that is with more confidence and less restraint than in the matter of temporal requests but with more reservedness and less boldness of petition than when we pray for the graces of Sanctification In the first case we are bound to pray in the second it is only lawful under certain conditions in the third it becomes to us an act of zeal nobleness and Christian prudence But the matter of our Prayers is best taught us in the form our Lord taught his Disciples which because it is short mysterious and like the treasures of the Spirit full of wisdom and latent sences it is not improper to draw forth those excellencies which are intended and signified by every Petition that by so excellent an authority we may know what it is lawful to beg of God 3. Our Father which art in Heaven The address reminds us of many parts of our duty If God be our Father where is his fear and reverence and obedience If ye were Abraham's children ye would do the works of Abraham and Ye are of your father the Devil for his works ye do Let us not dare to call him Father if we be rebels and enemies but if we be obedient then we know he is our Father and will give us a Child's portion and the inheritance of Sons But it is observable that Christ here speaking concerning private Prayer does describe it in a form of plural signification to tell us that we are to draw into the communication of our prayers all those who are confederated in the common relation of Sons to the same Father Which art in Heaven tells us where our hopes and our hearts must be fixed whither our desires and our prayers must tend Sursum corda Where our treasure is there must our hearts be also 4. Hallowed be thy Name That is Let thy Name thy Essence and glorious Attributes be honoured and adored in all the world believed by Faith loved by Charity celebrated with praises thanked with Eucharist and let thy Name be hallowed in us as it is in it self
excused by our endeavours to cure it and by our after-acts either of sorrow or repetition of the Prayer and reinforcing the intention And certainly if we repeat our Prayer in which we have observed our spirits too much to wander and resolve still to repeat it as our opportunities permit it may in a good degree defeat the purpose of the Enemy when his own arts shall return upon his head and the wandring of our spirits be made the occasion of a Prayer and the parent of a new Devotion 6. Lastly according to the degrees of our actual attention so our Prayers are more or less perfect a present spirit being a great instrument and testimony of wisdome and apt to many great purposes and our continual abode with God being a great indearment of our persons by encreasing the affections 17. Secondly The second accessory is intension of spirit or fervency such as was that of our Blessed Saviour who prayed to his Father with strong cries and loud petitions not clamorous in language but strong in Spirit S. Paul also when he was pressed with a strong temptation prayed thrice that is earnestly and S. James affirms this to be of great value and efficacy to the obtaining blessings The effectual servent prayer of a just person avails much and 〈◊〉 though a man of like 〈◊〉 yet by earnest prayer he obtained rain or drought according as he desired Now this is properly produced by the greatness of our desire of heavenly things our true value and estimate of Religion our sense of present pressures our lears and it hath some accidental increases by the disposition of our body the strength of fancy and the tenderness of spirit and assiduity of the dropping of religious discourses and in all men is necessary to be so great as that we prefer Heaven and Religion before the world and desire them rather with the choice of our wills and understanding though there cannot always be that degree of sensual pungent or delectable affections towards Religion as towards the desires of nature and sense yet ever we must prefer celestial objects restraining the appetites of the world lest they be immoderate and heightning the desires of grace and glory lest they become indifferent and the fire upon the altar of incense be extinct But the greater zeal and servour of desire we have in our Prayers the sooner and the greater will the return of the Prayer be if the Prayer be for spiritual objects For other things our desires must be according to our needs not by a value derived from the nature of the thing but the usefulness it is of to us in order to our greater and better purposes 18. Thirdly Of the same consideration it is that we persevere and be importunate in our Prayers by repetition of our desires and not remitting either our affections or our offices till God overcome by our importunity give a gracious answer Jacob wrastled with the Angel all night and would not dismiss him till he had given him a blessing Let me alone saith God as if he felt a pressure and burthen lying upon him by our prayers or could not quit himself nor depart unless we give him leave And since God is detained by our Prayers and we may keep him as long as we please and that he will not go away till we leave speaking to him he that will dismiss him till he hath his blessing knows not the value of his benediction or understands not the energy and power of a persevering Prayer And to this purpose Christ spake a Parable that men ought always to pray and not to faint Praying without ceasing S. Paul calls it that is with continual addresses frequent interpellations never ceasing renewing the request till I obtain my desire For it is not enough to recommend our desires to God with one hearty Prayer and then forget to ask him any more but so long as our needs continue so long in all times and upon all occasions to renew and repeat our desires and this is praying continually Just as the Widow did to the unjust Judge she never left going to him she troubled him every day with her clamorous suit so must we pray always that is every day and many times every day according to our occasions and necessities or our devotion and zeal or as we are determined by the customs and laws of a Church never giving over through weariness or distrust often renewing our desires by a continual succession of Devotions returning at certain and determinate periods For God's blessings though they come infallibly yet not always speedily saving only that it is a blessing to be delayed that we may encrease our desire and renew our prayers and do acts of confidence and patience and ascertain and encrcase the blessing when it comes For we do not more desire to be blessed than God does to hear us importunate for blessing and he weighs every sigh and bottles up every tear and records every Prayer and looks through the cloud with delight to see us upon our knees and when he sees his time his light breaks through it and shines upon us Only we must not make our accounts for God according to the course of the Sun but the measures of Eternity He measures us by our needs and we must not measure him by our impatience God is not slack as some men count slackness saith the Apostle and we find it so when we have waited long All the elapsed time is no part of the tediousness the trouble of it is passed with it self and for the future we know not how little it may be for ought we know we are already entred into the cloud that brings the blessing However pray till it comes for we shall never miss to receive our desire if it be holy or innocent and safe or else we are sure of a great reward of our Prayers 19. And in this so determined there is no danger of blasphemy or vain repetitions For those repetitions are vain which repeat the words not the Devotion which renew the expression and not the desire and he that may pray the same Prayer to morrow which he said to day may pray the same at night which he said in the morning and the same at noon which he said at night and so in all the hours of Prayer and in all the opportunities of Devotion Christ in his agony went thrice and said the same words but he had intervals for repetition and his need and his Devotion pressed him forward and whenever our needs do so it is all one if we say the same words or others so we express our desire and tell our needs and beg the remedy In the same office and the same hour of Prayer to repeat the same things often hath but few excuses to make it reasonable and fewer to make it pious But to think that the Prayer is better for such repetition is the fault which the
hungry and therefore having so great need they might lawfully do it meaning that such particles and circumstances of Religion are not to be neglected unless where greater cause of charity or necessity does supervene 2. But when Fasting is in order to greater and more concerning purposes it puts on more Religion and becomes a duty according as it is necessary or highly conducing to such ends to the promoting of which we are bound to contribute all our skill and faculties Fasting is principally operative to mortification of carnal appetites to which Feasting and full tables do minister aptness and power and inclinations When I fed them to the full then they committed adultery and assembled by troups in the Harlots houses And if we observe all our own vanities we shall find that upon every sudden joy or a prosperous accident or an opulent fortune or a pampered body and highly spirited and inflamed we are apt to rashness levities inconsiderate expressions scorn and pride idleness wantonness curiosity niceness and impatience But Fasting is one of those afflictions which reduces our body to want our spirits to soberness our condition to sufferance our desires to abstinence and customes of denial and so by taking off the inundations of sensuality leaves the enemies within in a condition of being easier subdued Fasting directly advances towards Chastity and by consequence and indirect powers to Patience and Humility and Indifferency But then it is not the Fast of a day that can do this it is not an act but a state of Fasting that operates to Mortification A perpetual Temperance and frequent abstinence may abate such proportions of strength and nutriment as to procure a body mortified and 〈◊〉 in desires And thus S. Paul kept his body under using severities to it for the taming its rebellions and distemperatures And S. Jerom reports of S. Hilarion that when he had fasted much and used course diet and found his Lust too strong for such austerities he resolv'd to encrease it to the degree of Mastery lessening his diet and encreasing his hardship till he should rather think of food than wantonness And many times the Fastings of some men are ineffectual because they promise themselves cure too soon or make too gentle applications or put less proportions into their antidotes I have read of a Maiden that seeing a young man much transported with her love and that he ceased not to importune her with all the violent pursuits that passion could suggest told him she had made a Vow to fast forty days with bread and water of which she must discharge her self before she could think of corresponding to any other desire and desired of him as a testimony of his love that he also would be a party in the same Vow The young man undertook it that he might give probation of his love but because he had been used to a delicate and nice kind of life in twenty days he was so weakned that he thought more of death than love and so got a cure for his intemperance and was wittily cousened into remedy But S. Hierom's counsel in this Question is most reasonable not allowing violent and long fasts and then returns to an ordinary course for these are too great changes of diet to consist with health and too sudden and transient to obtain a permanent and natural effect but a belly always hungry a table never full a meal little and necessary no extravagancies no freer repast this is a state of Fasting which will be found to be of best avail to suppress pungent Lusts and rebellious desires And it were well to help this exercise with the assistences of such austerities which teach Patience and ingenerate a passive fortitude and accustome us to a despight of pleasures and which are consistent with our health For if Fasting be left to do the work alone it may chance either to spoil the body or not to spoil the Lust. Hard lodging 〈◊〉 garments laborious postures of prayer journies on foot sufferance of cold paring away the use of ordinary solaces denying every pleasant appetite rejecting the most pleasant morsels these are in the rank of bodily exercises which though as S. Paul says of themselves they profit little yet they accustome us to acts of self-denial in exteriour instances and are not useless to the designs of mortifying carnal and sensual lusts They have a proportion of wisdome with these cautions viz. in will-worship that is in voluntary susception when they are not imposed as necessary Religion in humility that is without contempt of others that use them not in neglecting of the body that is when they are done for discipline and mortification that the flesh by such handlings and rough usages become less satisfied and more despised 3. As Fasting hath respect to the future so also to the present and so it operates in giving assistence to Prayer There is a kind of Devil that is not to be ejected but by prayer and fasting that is Prayer elevated and made intense by a defecate and pure spirit not loaden with the burthen of meat and vapours S. Basil affirms that there are certain Angels deputed by God to minister and to describe all such in every Church who mortifie themselves by Fasting as if paleness and a meagre visage were that mark in the forehead which the Angel observed when he signed the Saints in Jerusalem to escape the Judgment Prayer is the wings of the Soul and Fasting is the wings of Prayer Tertullian calls it the nourishment of Prayer But this is a Discourse of Christian Philosophy and he that chuses to do any act of spirit or understanding or attention after a full meal will then perceive that Abstinence had been the better disposition to any intellectual and spiritual action And therefore the Church of God ever joyned Fasting to their more solemn offices of Prayer The Apostles fasted and prayed when they laid hands and invocated the Holy Ghost upon Saul and Barnabas And these also when they had prayed with fasting ordained Elders in the Churches of Lystra and Iconium And the Vigils of every Holy-day tell us that the Devotion of the Festival is promoted by the Fast of the Vigils 4. But when Fasting relates to what is past it becomes an instrument of Repentance it is a punitive and an 〈◊〉 action an effect of godly sorrow a testimony of contrition a judging of our selves and chastening our bodies that we be not judged of the Lord. The Fast of the Ninevites and the Fast the Prophet Joel calls for and the Discipline of the Jews in the rites of Expiation proclaim this usefulness of Fasting in order to Repentance And indeed it were a strange Repentance that had no sorrow in it and a stranger sorrow that had no affliction but it were the strangest scene of affliction in the world when the sad and afflicted person shall eat
freely and delight himself and to the banquets of a full table serve up the chalice of tears and sorrow and no bread of affliction Certainly he that makes much of himself hath no great indignation against the sinner when himself is the man And it is but a gentle revenge and an easie judgment when the sad sinner shall do penance in good meals and expiate his sin with sensual satisfaction So that Fasting relates to Religion in all variety and difference of time it is an antidote against the poison of sensual temptations an advantage to Prayer and an instrument of extinguishing the guilt and the affections of sin by judging our selves and representing in a Judicatory of our own even our selves being Judges that sin deserves condemnation and the sinner merits a high calamity Which excellencies I repeat in the words of Baruch the Scribe he that was Amanuensis to the Prophet Jeremy The soul that is greatly vexed which goeth stooping and feeble and the eyes that fail and the hungry soul will give thee praise and righteousness O Lord. 5. But now as Fasting hath divers ends so also it hath divers Laws If Fasting be intended as an instrument of Prayer it is sufficient that it be of that quality and degree that the spirit be clear and the head undisturbed an ordinary act of Fast an abstinence from a meal or a deferring it or a lessening it when it comes and the same abstinence repeated according to the solemnity and intendment of the offices And this is evident in reason and the former instances and the practice of the Church dissolving some of her Fasts which were in order only to Prayer by noon and as soon as the great and first solemnity of the day is over But if Fasting be intended as a punitive act and an instrument of Repentance it must be greater S. Paul at his Conversion continued three days without eating or drinking It must have in it so much affliction as to express the indignation and to condemn the sin and to judge the person And although the measure of this cannot be exactly determined yet the general proportion is certain for a greater sin there must be a greater sorrow and a greater sorrow must be attested with a greater penalty And Ezra declares his purpose thus I proclaimed a Fast that we might afflict our selves besore God Now this is no farther required nor is it in this sense 〈◊〉 useful but that it be a trouble to the body an act of judging and severity and this is to be judged by proportion to the sorrow and indignation as the sorrow is to the crime But this affliction needs not to leave any remanent effect upon the body but such transient sorrow which is consequent to the abstinence of certain times designed for the solemnity is sufficient as to this purpose Only it is to be renewed often as our Repentance must be habitual and lasting but it may be commuted with other actions of severity and discipline according to the Customs of a Church or the capacity of the persons or the opportunity of circumstances But if the Fasting be intended for Mortification then it is fit to be more severe and medicinal by continuance and quantity and quality To Repentance total abstinences without interruption that is during the solemnity short and sharp are most apt but towards the mortifying a Lust those sharp and short Fasts are not reasonable but a diet of Fasting an habitual subtraction of nutriment from the body a long and lasting austerity increasing in degrees but not violent in any And in this sort of Fasting we must be highly careful we do not violate a duty by sondness of an instrument and because we intend Fasting as a help to mortifie the Lust let it not destroy the body or retard the spirit or violate our health or impede us in any part of our necessary duty As we must be careful that our Fast be reasonable serious and apt to the end of our designs so we must be curious that by helping one duty uncertainly it do not certainly destroy another Let us do it like honest persons and just without artifices and hypocrisie but let us also do it like wise persons that it be neither in it self unreasonable nor by accident become criminal 6. In the pursuance of this Discipline of Fasting the Doctors of the Church and Guides of Souls have not unusefully prescribed other annexes and circumstances as that all the other acts of deportment be symbolical to our Fasting If we fast for Mortification let us entertain nothing of temptation or semblance to invite a Lust no sensual delight no freer entertainments of our body to countenance or corroborate a passion If we fast that we may pray the better let us remove all secular thoughts for that time for it is vain to alleviate our spirits of the burthen of meat and drink and to depress them with the loads of care If for Repentance we fast let us be most curious that we do nothing contrary to the design of Repentance knowing that a sin is more contrary to Repentance than Fasting is to sin and it is the greatest stupidity in the world to do that thing which I am now mourning for and for which I do judgment upon my self And let all our actions also pursue the same design helping one instrument with another and being so zealous for the Grace that we take in all the aids we can to secure the Duty For to fast from flesh and to eat delicate fish not to eat meat but to drink rich wines freely to be sensual in the objects of our other appetites and restrained only in one to have no dinner and that day to run on hunting or to play at cards are not handsome instances of sorrow or devotion or self-denial It is best to accompany our Fasting with the retirements of Religion and the enlargements of Charity giving to others what we deny to our selves These are proper actions and although not in every instance necessary to be done at the same time for a man may give his Alms in other circumstances and not amiss yet as they are very convenient and proper to be joyned in that society so to do any thing contrary to Religion or to Charity to Justice or to Piety to the design of the person or the design of the solemnity is to make that become a sin which of it self was no vertue but was capable of being hallowed by the end and the manner of its execution 7. This Discourse hath hitherto related to private Fasts or else to Fasts indefinitely For what rules soever every man is bound to observe in private for Fasting piously the same rules the Governours of a Church are to intend in their publick prescription And when once Authority hath intervened and proclaimed a Fast there is no new duty incumbent upon the private but that we obey the circumstances letting them
to chuse the time and the end for us and though we must prevaricate neither yet we may improve both we must not go less but we may enlarge and when Fasting is commanded only for 〈◊〉 we may also use it to Prayers and to Mortification And we must be curious that we do not obey the letter of the prescription and violate the intention but observe all that care in publick Fasts which we do in private knowing that our private ends are included in the publick as our persons are in the communion of Saints and our hopes in the common inheritance of sons and see that we do not fast in order to a purpose and yet use it so as that it shall be to no purpose Whosoever so fasts as that it be not effectual in some degree towards the end or so fasts that it be accounted of it self a duty and an act of Religion without order to its proper end makes his act vain because it is unreasonable or vain because it is superstitious The PRAYER O Holy and Eternal Jesu who didst for our sake fast forty days and forty nights and hast left to us thy example and thy prediction that in the days of thy absence from us we thy servants and children of thy Bride-chamber should fast teach us to do this act of discipline so that it may become an act of Religion Let us never be like Esau valuing a dish of meat above a blessing but let us deny our appetites of meat and drink and accustom our selves to the yoak and subtract the fuel of our Lusts and the incentives of all our unworthy desires that our bodies being free from the intemperances of nutriment and our spirits from the load and pressure of appetite we may have no desires but of thee that our outward man daily decaying by the violence of time and mortified by the abatements of its too free and unnecessary support it may by degrees resign to the intire dominion of the Soul and may pass from vanity to Piety from weakness to ghostly strength from darkness and mixtures of impurity to great transparences and clarity in the society of a beatified Soul reigning with thee in the glories of Eternity O Holy and Eternal Jesu Amen DISCOURSE XIV Of the Miracles which JESVS wrought for confirmation of his Doctrine during the whole time of his Preaching Mary Martha A woman named Martha received him into her house And her sister Mary sat at Iesus feet and heard his word But Martha was cumbred about much serving And Iesus said unto her Martha Martha thou art careful troubled about many things but one thing is needfull Mary hath chosen that good part Luk. 10. 38 39 40 41 42. The dried hand healed devil cast out Mat 12. 10 And behold There was a man which had his hand dryed up c. 13. Then said he unto the man stretch sorth thine hand c. 22. Then was brought to him one possessed with a Devill c. and he healed him 1. WHen Jesus had ended his Sermon on the Mount he descended into the valleys to consign his Doctrine by the power of Miracles and the excellency of a rare Example that he might not lay a yoak upon us which himself also would not bear But as he became the authour so also the finisher of our Faith what he designed in proposition he represented in his own practice and by these acts made a new Sermon teaching all Prelates and spiritual persons to descend from their 〈◊〉 of contemplation and the authority and business of their discourses to apply themselves to do more material and corporal mercies to afflicted persons and to preach by Example as well as by their Homilies For he that teaches others well and practises contrary is like a fair candlestick bearing a goodly and bright taper which sends forth light to all the house but round about it self there is a shadow and circumstant darkness The Prelate should be the light consuming and spending it self to enlighten others scattering his rays round about from the 〈◊〉 of Contemplation and from the 〈◊〉 of Practice but himself always tending upwards till at last he expires into the element of Love and celestial fruition 2. But the Miracles which Jesus did were next to infinite and every circumstance of action that passed from him as it was intended for Mercy so also for Doctrine and the impotent or diseased persons were not more cured than we instructed But because there was nothing in the actions but what was a pursuance of the Doctrines delivered in his Sermons in the Sermon we must look after our Duty and look upon his practice as a verification of his Doctrine instrumental also to other purposes Therefore in general if we consider his Miracles we shall see that he did design them to be a compendium of Faith and Charity For he chose to instance his Miracles in actions of Mercy that all his powers might especially determine upon bounty and Charity and yet his acts of Charity were so miraculous that they became an argument of the Divinity of his Person and Doctrine Once he turned water into wine which was a mutation by a supernatural power in a natural suscipient where a person was not the subject but an Element and yet this was done to rescue the poor Bridegroom from affront and trouble and to do honour to the holy rite of Marriage All the rest unless we except his Walking upon the waters during his natural life were actions of relief and mercy according to the design of God manifesting his power most chiefly in shewing mercy 3. The great design of Miracles was to prove his Mission from God to convince the world of sin to demonstrate his power of forgiving sins to indear his Precepts and that his Disciples might believe in him and that believing they might have life through his name For he to whom God by doing Miracles gave testimony from Heaven must needs be sent from God and he who had received power to restore nature and to create new organs and to extract from incapacities and from privations to reduce habits was Lord of Nature and therefore of all the world And this could not but create great confidences in his Disciples that himself would verifie those great Promises upon which he established his Law But that the argument of Miracles might be infallible and not apt to be reproved we may observe its eminency by divers circumstances of probability heightned up to the degree of moral demonstration 4. First The Holy Jesus did Miracles which no man before him or at that time ever did Moses smote the Rock and water gushed out but he could not turn that water into wine Moses cured no diseases by the empire of his will or the word of his mouth but Jesus healed all infirmities Elisha raised a dead Child to life but Jesus raised one who had been dead four
and therefore less likely to deceive for which reason it is said that he shall deceive if it were possible the very elect that is therefore not possible because that by which he insinuates himself to others is by the elect the Church and chosen of God understood to be his sign and mark of discovery and a warning And therefore as the Prophecies of Jesus were an infinite verification of his Miracles so also this Prophecy of Christ concerning Antichrist disgraces the reputation and faith of the Miracles he shall act The old Prophets foretold of the Messias and of his Miracles of power and mercy to prepare for his reception and entertainment Christ alone and his Apostles from him foretold of Antichrist and that he should come in all Miracles of deception and lying that is with true or false Miracles to perswade a lie and this was to prejudice his being accepted according to the Law of Moses So that as all that spake of Christ bade us believe him for the Miracles so all that foretold of Antichrist bade us disbelieve him the rather for his and the reason of both is the same because the mighty and surer word of Prophecy as S. Peter calls it being the greatest testimony in the world of a Divine principle gives authority or reprobates with the same power They who are the predestinate of God and they that are the praesciti the foreknown and marked people must needs stand or fall to the Divine sentence and such must this be acknowledged for no enemy of the Cross not the Devil himself ever foretold such a contingency or so rare so personal so voluntary so unnatural an event as this of the great Antichrist 12. And thus the Holy Jesus having shewed forth the treasures of his Father's Wisdom in Revelations and holy Precepts and upon the stock of his Father's greatness having dispended and demonstrated great power in Miracles and these being instanced in acts of Mercy he mingled the glories of Heaven to transmit them to earth to raise us up to the participations of Heaven he was pleased by healing the bodies of infirm persons to invite their spirits to his Discipline and by his power to convey healing and by that mercy to lead us into the treasures of revelation that both Bodies and Souls our Wills and Understandings by Divine instruments might be brought to Divine perfections in the participations of a Divine nature It was a miraculous mercy that God should look upon us in our bloud and a miraculous condescension that his Son should take our nature and even this favour we could not believe without many Miracles and so contrary was our condition to all possibilities of happiness that if Salvation had not marched to us all the way in Miracle we had perished in the ruines of a sad eternity And now it would be but reasonable that since God for our sakes hath rescinded so many laws of natural establishment we also for his and for our own would be content to do violence to those natural inclinations which are also criminal when they derive into action Every man living in the state of Grace is a perpetual Miracle and his Passions are made reasonable as his Reason is turned to Faith and his Soul to Spirit and his Body to a Temple and Earth to Heaven and less than this will not dispose us to such glories which being the portion of Saints and Angels and the nearest communications with God are infinitely above what we see or hear or understand The PRAYER O Eternal Jesu who didst receive great power that by it thou mightest convey thy Father's mercies to us impotent and wretched people give me grace to believe that heavenly Doctrine which thou didst ratifie with arguments from above that I may fully assent to all those mysterious Truths which integrate that Doctrine and Discipline in which the obligations of my duty and the hopes of my felicity are deposited And to all those glorious verifications of thy Goodness and thy Power add also this Miracle that I who am stained with Leprosie of sin may be cleansed and my eyes may be opened that I may see the wondrous things of thy Law and raise thou me up from the death of sin to the life of righteousness that I may for ever walk in the land of the living abhorring the works of death and darkness that as I am by thy miraculous mercy partaker of the first so also I may be accounted worthy of the second Resurrection and as by Faith Hope Charity and Obedience I receive the fruit of thy Miracles in this life so in the other I may partake of thy Glories which is a mercy above all Miracles Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean Lord I believe help mine unbelief and grant that no 〈◊〉 or incapacity of mine may hinder the wonderful operations of thy Grace but let it be thy first Miracle to turn my water into wine my barrenness into fruitfulness my aversations from thee into unions and intimate adhesions to thy infinity which is the fountain of mercy and power Grant this for thy mercie 's sake and for the honour of those glorious Attributes in which thou hast revealed thy self and thy Father's excellencies to the world O Holy and Eternal Jesu Amen The End of the Second Part. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 THE HISTORY OF THE Life and Death OF THE HOLY JESUS BEGINNING At the Second Year of his PREACHING until his ASCENSION WITH CONSIDERATIONS and DISCOURSES upon the several parts of the Story And PRAYERS fitted to the several MYSTERIES THE THIRD PART Seneca apud Lactant. lib. 6. c. 17. Hic est ille homo qui sive toto corpore tormenta patienda sunt sive flamma ore recipienda est sive extendenda per patibulum manus non quaerit quid patiatur sed quà m bene LONDON Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston 1675 TO The Right Honourable and Vertuous Lady The LADY FRANCES Countess of CARBERY MADAM SInce the Divine Providence hath been pleased to bind up the great breaches of my little fortune by your Charity and Nobleness of a religious tenderness I account it an excellent circumstance and handsomeness of condition that I have the fortune of S. Athanasius to have my Persecution relieved and comforted by an Honourable and Excellent Lady and I have nothing to return for this honour done to me but to do as the poor Paralyticks and infirm people in the Gospel did when our Blessed Saviour cured them they went and told it to all the Countrey and made the Vicinage full of the report as themselves were of health and joy And although I know the modesty of your person and Religion had rather do favours than own them yet give me leave to draw aside the curtain and retirement of your Charity for I had rather your vertue should blush than my unthankfulness make me ashamed Madam I intended by this Address not onely to return you spirituals for
that is to come That is plain And although Christ revealed his Father's mercies to us in new expresses and great abundance yet he took nothing from the world which ever did in any sense invite Piety or indear Obedience or cooperate towards Felicity And 〈◊〉 the Promises which were made of old are also presupposed in the new and mentioned by intimation and implication within the greater When our Blessed Saviour in seven of the Eight Beatitudes had instanced in new Promises and Rewards as Heaven Seeing of God Life eternal in one of them to which Heaven is as certainly consequent as to any of the rest he did chuse to instance in a temporal blessing and in the very words of the Old Testament to shew that that part of the old Covenant which concerns Morality and the rewards of Obedience remains firm and included within the conditions of the Gospel 16. To this purpose is that saying of our Blessed Saviour Man liveth not by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God meaning that besides natural means ordained for the preservation of our lives there are means supernatural and divine God's Blessing does as much as bread nay it is Every word proceeding out of the 〈◊〉 of God that is every Precept and Commandment of God is so for our good that it is intended as food and Physick to us a means to make us live long And therefore God hath done in this as in other graces and issues Evangelical which he purposed to continue in his Church for ever He first gave it in miraculous and extraordinary manner and then gave it by way of perpetual ministery The Holy Ghost appeared at first like a prodigy and with Miracle he descended in visible representments expressing himself in revelations and powers extraordinary but it being a Promise intended to descend upon all Ages of the Church there was appointed a perpetual ministery for its conveyance and still though without a sign or miraculous representment it is ministred in Confirmation by imposition of the Bishop's hands And thus also health and long life which by way of ordinary benediction is consequent to Piety Faith and Obedience Evangelical was at first given in a miraculous manner that so the ordinary effects being at first confirmed by miraculous and extraordinary instances and manners of operation might for ever after be confidently expected without any dubitation since it was in the same manner consigned by which all the whole Religion was by a voice from Heaven and a verification of Miracles and extraordinary supernatural effects That the gift of healing and preservation and restitution of life was at first miraculous needs no particular probation All the story of the Gospel is one entire argument to prove it and amongst the fruits of the Spirit S. Paul reckons gifts of healing and government and helps or exteriour assistences and advantages to represent that it was intended the life of Christian people should be happy and healthful for ever Now that this grace also descended afterwards in an ordinary ministery is recorded by S. James Is any man sick amongst you let him call for the Elders of the Church and let them pray over him anointing him with oyl in the name of the Lord that was then the ceremony and the blessing and effect is still for the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up For it is observable that the blessing of healing and recovery is not appendent to the Anealing but to the Prayer of the Church to manifest that the ceremony went with the first miraculous and extraordinary manner yet that there was an ordinary ministery appointed for the daily conveyance of the blessing the faithful prayers offices of holy Priests shall obtain life and health to such persons who are receptive of it and in spiritual and apt dispositions And when we see by a continual flux of extraordinary benediction that even some Christian Princes are instruments of the Spirit not only in the government but in the gifts of healing too as a reward for their promoting the just interests of Christianity we may acknowledge our selves convinced that a holy life in the faith and obedience of Jesus Christ may be of great advantage for our health and life by that instance to entertain our present desires and to establish our hopes of life eternal 17. For I consider that the fear of God is therefore the best antidote in the World against sickness and death because it is the direct enemy to sin which brought in sickness and death and besides this that God by spiritual means should produce alterations natural is not hard to be understood by a Christian Philosopher take him in either of the two capacities 2. For there is a rule of proportion and analogy of effects that if sin destroys not only the Soul but the Body also then may Piety preserve both and that much rather for if sin that is the effects and consequents of sin hath abounded then shall grace superabound that is Christ hath done us more benefit than the Fall of Adam hath done us injury and therefore the effects of sin are not greater upon the body than either are to be restored or prevented by a pious life 3. There is so near a conjunction between Soul and Body that it is no wonder if God meaning to glorifie both by the means of a spiritual life suffers spirit and matter to communicate in effects and mutual impresses Thus the waters of Baptism purifie the Soul and the Holy Eucharist not the symbolical but the mysterious and spiritual part of it makes the Body also partaker of the death 〈◊〉 Christ and a holy union The flames of Hell whatsoever they are torment accursed Souls and the stings of Conscience vex and disquiet the Body 4. And if we consider that in the glories of Heaven when we shall live a life purely spiritual our Bodies also are so clarified and made spiritual that they also become immortal that state of Glory being nothing else but a perfection of the state of Grace it is not unimaginable but that the Soul may have some proportion of the same operation upon the Body as to conduce to its prolongation as to an antepast of immortality 5. For since the Body hath all its life from its conjunction with the Soul why not also the perfection of life according to its present capacity that is health and duration from the perfection of the Soul I mean from the ornaments of Grace And as the blessedness of the Soul saith the Philosopher consists in the speculation of honest and just things so the perfection of the Body and of the whole Man consists in the practick the exercise and operations of Vertue 18. But this Problem in Christian Philosophy is yet more intelligible and will be reduced to certain experience if we consider good life in union and concretion with particular
chance of a Battel that although it be necessary for defence of the godly that a special Providence should intervene yet to confound the impious no special act is requisite If God exposes them to the ill aspect of a Planet or any other casualty their days are interrupted and they die And this is the meaning of the Prophet Jeremy Be not ye 〈◊〉 at the signs of Heaven for the Heathen are dismayed at them meaning that God will over-rule all inferiour causes for the safety of his servants but the wicked shall be exposed to chance and humane accidents and the signs of Heaven which of themselves do but signifie or at most but dispose and incline towards events shall be enough to actuate and consummate their ruine And this is the meaning of that Proverb of the Jews Israel hath no Planet which they expounded to mean If they observe the Law the Planets shall not hurt them God will over-rule all their influences but if they prevaricate and rebel the least Star in the firmament of Heaven shall bid them battel and overthrow them A 〈◊〉 shall lie in a wicked Man's way and God shall so expose him to it leaving him so unguarded and defenceless that he shall stumble at it and fall and break a bone and that shall 〈◊〉 a Fever and the Fever shall end his days For not onely every creature when it is set on by God can prove a ruine but if we be not by the Providence of God defended against it we cannot behold the least atome in the Sun without danger of losing an eye nor eat a grape without fear of choaking nor sneeze without breaking of a vein And Arius going to the ground purged his entrails forth and fell down unto the earth and died Such and so miserable is the great insecurity of a sinner And of this Job had an excellent meditation How oft is the candle of the wicked put out and how oft cometh their destruction upon them GOD distributeth sorrows in his anger For what pleasure hath he in his house after him when the number of his moneths is cut off in the midst This is he that dieth in his full strength being wholly at ease and quiet 25. I summe up this discourse with an observation that is made concerning the Family of Eli upon which for the remisness of Discipline on the Father's part and for the Impiety and Profaneness of his 〈◊〉 God sent this Curse All the increase of their house shall die in the flower of their age According to that sad malediction it happened for many generations the Heir of the Family died as soon as he begat a Son to succeed him till the Family being wearied by so long a Curse by the counsel of Rabbi Johanan Ben Zachary betook themselves universally to a sedulous and most devout meditation of the Law that is to an exemplar Devotion and strict Religion but then the Curse was turned into a Blessing and the line masculine lived to an honourable old age For the Doctors of the Jews said that God often changes his purposes concerning the death of man when the sick person is liberal in Alms or fervent in Prayer or changes his Name that is gives up his name to God by the serious purposes and religious vows of holy Obedience He that followeth after righteousness Alms it is in the vulgar 〈◊〉 and mercy findeth life that verifies the first and the fervent Prayer of Hezekiah is a great instance of the second and all the 〈◊〉 discourse was intended for probation of the third and proves that no disease is so deadly as a deadly Sin and the ways of Righteousness are therefore advantages of Health and preservatives of Life when health and life are good for us because they are certain title to all God's Promises and Blessings 26. Upon supposition of these premisses I consider there is no cause to wonder that tender persons and the softest women endure the violences of art and Physick sharp pains of Causticks and Cupping-glasses the abscission of the most sensible part for preservation of a mutilous and imperfect body but it is a wonder that when God hath appointed a remedy in Grace apt to preserve Nature and that a dying unto sin should prolong our natural life yet few men are willing to try the experiment they will buy their life upon any conditions in the world but those which are the best and easiest any thing but Religion and Sanctity although for so doing they are promised that immortality shall be added to the end of a long life to make the life of a mortal partake of the eternal duration of an Angel or of God himself 27. Fifthly The last testimony of the Excellency and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ's yoke the fair load of Christianity is the Reasonableness of it and the Unreasonableness of its contrary For whatsoever the wisest men in the world in all Nations and Religions did agree upon as most excellent in it self and of greatest power to make political or future and immaterial felicities all that and much more the Holy Jesus adopted into his Law for they receiving sparks or single irradiations from the regions of light or else having fair tapers shining indeed excellently in representations and expresses of Morality were all involved and swallowed up into the body of light the Sun of Righteousness Christ's Discipline was the breviary of all the Wisdome of the best men and a fair copy and transcript of his Father's Wisdome and there is nothing in the laws of our Religion but what is perfective of our spirits excellent rules of Religion and rare expedients of obeying God by the nearest ways of imitation and such duties which are the proper ways of doing benefits to all capacities and orders of men But I remember my design now is not to represent Christianity to be a better Religion than any other for I speak to Christians amongst whom we presuppose that but I design to invite all Christians in name to be such as they are called upon the interest of such arguments which represent the advantages of Obedience to our Religion as it is commanded us by God And this I shall do yet farther by considering that those Christian names who apprehend Religion as the Fashion of their Countrey and know no other use of a Church but customary or secular and profane that supposing Christian Religion to have come from God as we all profess to believe there are no greater fools in the world than such whose life conforms not to the pretence of their Baptism and Institution They have all the signs and characters of fools and undiscreet unwary persons 28. First Wicked persons like children and fools chuse the present whatsoever it is and neglect the infinite treasures of the future They that have no faith nor foresight have an excuse for snatching at what is now represented because it is that all which can move them but
satisfie his curiosity but is certain never to enter that way It is like enquiring into fortunes concerning which Phavorinus the Philosopher spake not unhandsomely They that foretell events of destiny and secret providence either foretell sad things or prosperous If they promise prosperous and deceive you are made miserable by a vain speculation If they threaten ill fortune and say false thou art made wretched by a false fear But if they foretell adversity and say true thou art made miserable by thy own apprehension before thou art so by destiny and many times the fear is worse than the evil feared But if they promise felicities and promise truly what shall come to pass then thou shalt be wearied by an impatience and a suspended hope and thy hope shall ravish and deflower the joys of thy possession Much of it is hugely applicable to the present Question and our Blessed Lord when he was petitioned that he would grant to the two sons of Zebedee that they might sit one on the right hand and the other on the left in his Kingdom rejected their desire and only promised them what concerned their duty and their suffering referring them to that and leaving the final event of men to the disposition of his Father This is the great Secret of the Kingdom which God hath locked up and sealed with the counsels of Eternity The sure foundation of God standeth having this seal The Lord knoweth who are his This seal shall never be broken up till the great day of Christ in the mean time the Divine knowledge is the only 〈◊〉 of the final sentences and this way of God is unsearchable and past finding out And therefore if we be solicitous and curious to know what God in the counsels of Eternity hath decreed concerning us he hath in two fair Tables described all those sentences from whence we must take accounts the revelations of Scripture and the book of Conscience The first recites the Law and the conditions the other gives in evidence the first is clear evident and conspicuous the other when it is written with large characters may also be discerned but there are many little accents periods distinctions and little significations of actions which either are there written in water or fullied over with carelesness or blotted with forgetfulness or not legible by ignorance or misconstrued by interest and partiality that it will be extremely difficult to read the hand upon the wall or to copy out one line of the eternal sentence And therefore excellent was the counsel of the Son of Sirach 〈◊〉 not out the things that are 〈◊〉 hard for thee 〈◊〉 search the things that are above thy strength 〈◊〉 what is 〈◊〉 thee think thereupon with reverence for it is not 〈◊〉 for thee 〈◊〉 see with thine eyes the things that are in secret For whatsoever God hath revealed in general concerning Election it concerns all persons within the pale of Christianity He hath conveyed notice to all Christian people that they are the sons of God that they are the 〈◊〉 of Eternity coheirs 〈◊〉 Christ partakers of the Divine nature meaning that such they are by the design of God and the purposes of the manifestation of his Son The Election 〈◊〉 God is disputed in Scripture to be an act of God separating whole Nations and rejecting others in each of which many particular instances there were contrary to the general and universal purpose and of the elect nations many particulars perished and many of the rejected people sate down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven and to those persons to whom God was more particular and was pleased to shew the scrowls of his eternal counsels and to reveal their particular Elections as he did to the twelve Apostles he shewed them wrapped up and 〈◊〉 and to take off their confidences or presumptions he gave probation in one instance that those scrowls may be cancelled that his purpose concerning particulars may be altered by us and 〈◊〉 that he did not discover the bottom of the Abysse but some purposes of special grace and 〈◊〉 design But his peremptory final 〈◊〉 Decree he keeps in the cabinets of the eternal ages never to be unlocked till the Angel of the Covenant shall declare the unalterable universal Sentence 3. But as we take the measure of the course of the Sun by the dimensions of the shadows made by our own bodies or our own instruments so must we take the measures of Eternity by the span of a man's hand and guess at what God decrees of us by considering how our relations and endearments are to him And it is observable that all the confidences which the Spirit of God hath created in the Elect are built upon Duty and stand or fall according to the strength or weakness of such supporters We know we are translated from death to life by our love unto the Brethren meaning that the performance of our duty is the best consignation to Eternity and the only testimony God gives us of our Election And therefore we are to make our judgments accordingly And here I consider that there is no state of a Christian in which by virtue of the Covenant of the Gospel it is effectively and fully declared that his sins are actually pardoned but only in Baptism at our first coming to Christ when he redeems us from our 〈◊〉 conversation when he makes us become Sons of God when he justifies us 〈◊〉 by his grace when we are purified by Faith when we make a Covenant with Christ to live 〈◊〉 ever according to his Laws And this I shall suppose I have already proved and explicated in the Discourse of Repentance So that whoever is certain he hath not offended God since that time and in nothing transgresseth the Laws of Christianity he is certain that he actually remains in the state of Baptismal purity but it is too certain that this certainty remains not long but we commonly throw some dirt into our waters of Baptism and stain our white robe which we then put on 4. But then because our restitution to this state is a thing that consists of so many parts is so divisible various and uncertain whether it be arrived to the degree of Innocence and our Innocence consists in a Mathematical point and is not capable of degrees any more than Unity because one stain destroys our being innocent it is therefore a very difficult matter to say that we have done all our duty towards our restitution to Baptismal grace and if we have not done all that we can do it is harder to say that God hath accepted that which is less than the conditions we entred into when we received the great Justification and Pardon of sins We all know we do less than our duty and we hope that God makes abatements for humane infirmities but we have but a few rules to judge by and they not infallible in themselves and we yet
become like God and to aspire into the Throne which God had appointed to the Holy Jesus in eternal ages When God created Man presently the Devil rubbed his Leprosie upon him and he would needs be like God too and Satan promised him that he should As the evil Angels would have been like to God in Power and Majesty so Man would have been like him in Knowledge and have imitated the Wisdome of the Eternal Father But Man had the fate of Gehezi he would needs have the talent and garments of Lucifer and he had also his plague he lost Paradise for his Pride And now what might befit the Son of God to do seeing Man so lost and God so zealous of his honour I see saith he that by occasion of me the Father loses his Creatures for they have all aspired to be like me and are fallen into the greatest infelicities Behold I will go towards man in such a form that whosoever from henceforth would become like me shall be so and be a gainer by it And for this cause the Son of God came from Heaven and made himself a poor humble person and by all the actions of his life commented upon the present discourse Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart Blessed be that mercy and bounty which moved Almighty God to condescend to that so great appetite we had of being like him for now 〈◊〉 may be like unto God but it must be by Humility of which he hath given us an example powerful as Miracles and great as our own Pride and Misery 4. And indeed our Blessed Lord knowing that Examples are like Maps and perfect Schemes in which the whole Continent may at once be represented to the eye to all the purposes of art and benefit did in the latter end of his life draw up the dispersions and larger harvest of his Precepts binding them in the bundle of great Examples and casting them into actions as into summs total for so this act of Washing the feet of his own Ministers and then dying for them and for all his enemies did preach the three great 〈◊〉 of Evangelical Perfection with an admirable energy and abbreviature Humility and Charity and Sufferings being to Christianity as the Body and the Soul and the Spirit are to the whole man For no man brings a sad Funeral into the theatre to make his spectators merry nor can well preach Chastity in the impurity of the Bordelli or perswade Temperance when himself is full of wine and luxury and enters into the baths to boil his undigested meat that he may return to his second supper and breaths forth impure belchings together with his Homily a poor Eremite or a severely-living Philosopher into whose life his own Precepts have descended his Doctrin is mingled with his Soul mingles also effect and virtue with Homilies and incorporates his Doctrine in the hearts of his Disciples And this the Holy Jesus did in his own person bearing the burthen first upon his own shoulders that we may with better alacrity undergo what our Blessed Lord bears with us and for us But that we may the better understand what our Blessed Lord designed to us in this Lecture let us consider the proper acts of Humility which integrate the Vertue 5. The first is Christ's Humble man thinks meanly of himself and there is great reason every man should For his Body is but rottenness and infirmity covered with a fair mantle a dunghil overcast with snow and if we consider sadly that from Trees and Plants come oile balsam wine spices and aromatick odors and that from the sinks of our Body no such sweet or salutary emanations are observed we may at least think it unreasonable to boast our Beauty which is nothing but a clear and well-coloured skin which every thing in the world can spoil nor our Strength which an Ague tames into the infirmities of a child and in which we are excelled by a Bull nor any thing of our Body which is nothing but an unruly servant of the Soul marked with characters of want and dependence and begging help from all the elements and upon a little disturbance growing troublesome to it self by its own impurities And yet there is no reason in respect of the Soul for any man to exalt himself above his Brother because all reasonable Souls are equal and that one is wise and another is foolish or less learned is by accident and extrinsick causes God at first makes all alike but an indisposed Body or an mopportune Education or evil Customs superinduce variety and difference And if God discerns a man from his Brother by distinction of Gifts it alters not the case still the man hath nothing of himself that can call him excellent it is as if a Wall upon which the Sun reflects should boast it self against another that stands in the shadow Greater glory is to be paid to God for the discerning Gifts but to take any of it to our selves and rise higher than our Brother or advance our own opinion is as if a man should be proud of being in debt and think it the greater excellency that he is charged with heavier and more severe accounts 6. This act consists not in declamations and forms of Satyre against our selves saying I am a miserable sinful creature I am proud or covetous or ignorant For many men say so that are not willing to be thought so Neither is Humility a vertue made up of wearing old cloaths or doing servile and mean imployments by voluntary undertaking or of sullen gestures or demiss behaviour and artifice of lowly expressions for these may become snares to invite and catch at Honour and then they are collateral designs of Pride and direct actions of Hypocrisie But it consists in a true understanding of our own condition and a separating our own Nothing from the good we have received and giving to God all the glory and taking to our selves all the shame and dishonour due to our sinful condition He that thinks himself truly miserable and vilified by sin hates it perfectly and he that knows himself to be nothing cannot be exalted in himself and whatsoever is besides these two extremes of a natural Nothing and a superadded Sin must be those good things we have received which because they derive from God must make all their returns thither But this act is of greater difficulty in persons pious full of Gifts and eminent in Graces who being fellow-workers together with God sometimes grow tacitely and without notice given to 〈◊〉 in themselves and with some freer phancy ascribe too much of the good action to their own choice and diligence and take up their crowns which lie at the foot of the throne and set them upon their own heads For a Sinner to desire to be esteemed a sinner is no more Humility than it is for the son of a Plow-man to confess his Father but indeed it is hard for a
which we shall no more be at war with Reason nor so much with Sense and not at all with Faith And for persons of the contradictory perswasion who to avoid the natural sence affirm it only to be figurative since their design is only to make this Sacrament to be Christ's Body in the sence of Faith and not of Philosophy they may remember that its being really present does not hinder but that all that reality may be spiritual and if it be Christ's Body so it be not affirmed such in a natural sence and manner it is still only the object of Faith and spirit and if it be affirmed only to be spiritual there is then no danger to Faith in admitting the words of Christ's institution This is my Body I suppose it to be a mistake to think what soever is real must be natural and it is no less to think spiritual to be only figurative that 's too much and this is too little Philosophy and Faith may well be reconciled and whatsoever objection can invade this union may be cured by modesty And if we profess we understand not the manner of this Mystery we say no more but that it is a Mystery and if it had been necessary we should have construed it into the most latent sence Christ himself would have given a Clavis and taught the Church to unlock so great a Secret Christ said This is my Body this is my 〈◊〉 S. Paul said The bread of blessing that we break is the communication of the body of Christ and the Chalice which we bless is the communication of the bloud of Christ and We are all one body because we eat of one bread One proposition as well as the other is the matter of Faith and the latter of them is also of Sense one is as literal as the other and he that distinguishes in his belief as he may place the impropriety upon which part he please and either say it is improperly called Bread or improperly called Christ's Body so he can have nothing to secure his proposition from errour or himself from boldness in decreeing concerning Mysteries against the testimonies of Sense or beyond the modesty and simplicity of Christian Faith Let us love and adore the abyss of Divine Wisdom and Goodness and entertain the Sacrament with just and holy receptions and then we shall receive all those fruits of it which an earnest disputer or a peremptory dogmatizer whether he happen right or wrong hath no warrant to expect upon the interest of his Opinion 4. In the Institution of this Sacrament Christ manifested first his Almighty Power secondly his infinite Wisdome and thirdly his unspeakable Charity First his Power is manifest in making the Symbols to be the instruments of conveying himself to the spirit of the Receiver He nourishes the Soul with Bread and feeds the Body with a Sacrament he makes the Body spiritual by his Graces there ministred and makes the Spirit to be united to his Body by a participation of the Divine nature In the Sacrament that Body which is reigning in Heaven is exposed upon the Table of blessing and his Body which was broken for us is now broken again and yet remains impassible Every consecrated portion of bread and wine does exhibit Christ intirely to the faithful Receiver and yet Christ remains one while he is wholly ministred in 10000 portions So long as we call these mysterious and make them intricate to exercise our Faith and to represent the wonder of the Mystery and to encrease our Charity our being inquisitive into the abyss can have no evil purposes God hath instituted the Rite in visible Symbols to make the secret Grace as presential and discernible as it might that by an instrument of Sense our spirits might be accommodated as with an exteriour object to produce an internal act But it is the prodigy of a miraculous power by instruments so easie to produce effects so glorious This then is the object of Wonder and Adoration 5. Secondly And this effect of Power does also remark the Divine Wisdome who hath ordained such Symbols which not only like spittle and clay toward the curing blind eyes proclaim an Almighty Power but they are apposite and proper to signifie a Duty and become to us like the Word of Life and from Bread they turn into a Homily For therefore our wisest Master hath appointed Bread and Wine that we may be corporally united to him that as the Symbols becoming nutriment are turned into the substance of our bodies so Christ being the food of our Souls should assimilate us making us partakers of the Divine Nature It also tells us that from hence we derive life and holy motion for in him we live and move and have our being He is the staff of our life and the light of our eyes and the strength of our spirit He is the Viand for our journey and the antepast of Heaven And because this holy Mystery was intended to be a Sacrament of Union that Lesson is morally represented in the Symbols That as the salutary juice is expressed from many clusters running into one 〈◊〉 and the Bread is a mass made of many grains of Wheat so we also as the Apostie infers from hence himself observing the analogy should be one bread and one bodr because we partake of that one bread And it were to be wished that from hence also all Christians would understand a signification of another Duty and that they would 〈◊〉 communicate as remembring that the Soul may need a frequent ministration as well as the Body its daily proportion This consideration of the Divine Wisdome is apt to produce Reverence Humility and Submission of our understanding to the immensity of God's unsearchable abysses 6. Thirdly But the story of the Love of our dearest Lord is written in largest characters who not only was at that instant busie in doing Man the greatest good even then when man was contriving his death and his dishonour but contrived to represent his bitter Passion to us without any circumstances of horror in symbols of pleasure and delight that we may taste and see how gracious our LORD is who would not transmit the record of his Passion to us in any thing that might trouble us No Love can be greater than that which is so beatifical as to bestow the greatest good and no Love can be better expressed than that which although it is productive of the greatest blessings yet is curious also to observe the smallest circumstances And not only both these but many other circumstances and arguments of Love concur in the Holy Sacrament 1. It is a tenderness of affection that ministers wholsome Physick with arts and instruments of pleasure And such was the Charity of our Lord who brings health to us in a golden Chalice life not in the bitter drugs of Egypt but in spirits and quintessences giving us apples of Paradise at the same time yielding food and health
our life and he dwells in the body and the spirit of every one that eats Christ's flesh and drinks his bloud Happy is that man that sits at the Table of Angels that puts his hand into the dish with the King of all the Creatures and feeds upon the eternal Son of God joyning things below with things above Heaven with Earth Life with Death that mortality might be swallowed up of life and Sin be destroyed by the inhabitation of its greatest Conqueror And now I need not enumerate any particulars since the Spirit of God hath ascertained us that Christ enters into our hearts and takes possession and abides there that we are made Temples and celestial mansions that we are all one with our Judge and with our Redeemer that our Creator is bound unto his Creature with bonds of charity which nothing can dissolve unless our own hands break them that Man is united with God and our weakness is fortified by his strength and our miseries wrapped up in the golden leaves of glory 2. Hence it follows that the Sacrament is an instrument of reconciling us to God and taking off the remanent guilt and stain and obligations of our sins This is the 〈◊〉 that was shed for you for the remission of sins For there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus And such are all they who worthily eat the flesh of Christ by receiving him they more and more receive remission of sins redemption sanctification wisdom and certain hopes of glory 〈◊〉 as the Soul touching and united to the flesh of Adam contracts the stain of original misery and imperfection so much the 〈◊〉 shall the Soul united to the flesh of Christ receive pardon and purity and all those blessed emanations from our union with the Second Adam But this is not to be understood as if the first beginnings of our pardon were in the holy Communion for then a man might come with his impurities along with him and lay them on the holy Table to stain and pollute so bright a presence No first Repentance must 〈◊〉 the ways of the Lord and in this holy Rite those words of our Lord are verified He that is justified let him be justified 〈◊〉 that is here he may receive the increase of Grace and as it grows so sin dies and we are reconciled by nearer unions and approximations to God 9. Thirdly The holy Sacrament is the pledge of Glory and the earnest of Immortality for when we have received him who hath overcome Death and henceforth dies no more he becomes to us like the Tree of life in Paradise and the consecrated Symbols are like the seeds of an eternal duration springing up in us to eternal life nourishing our spirits with Grace which is but the prologue and the infancy of Glory and differs from it only as a Child from a Man But God first raised up his Son to life and by giving him to us hath also consigned us to the same state for our life is hid with Christ in God When we lay down and cast aside the impurer robes of flesh they are then but preparing for glory and if by the only touch of Christ bodies were redintegrate and restored to natural perfections how shall not we live for ever who eat his flesh and drink his bloud It is the discourse of S. Cyril Whatsoever the Spirit can convey to the body of the Church we may expect 〈◊〉 this Sacrament for as the Spirit is the instrument of life and action so the bloud of Christ is the conveyance of his Spirit And let all the mysterious places of holy Scripture concerning the effects of Christ communicated in the blessed Sacrament be drawn together in one Scheme we cannot but observe that although they are so expressed as 〈◊〉 their meaning may seem intricate and involved yet they cannot be drawn to any meaning at all but it is as glorious in its sense as it is mysterious in the expression and the more intricate they are the greater is their purpose no words being apt and proportionate to signifie this spiritual secret and excellent effects of the Spirit A veil is drawn before all these testimonies because the people were not able to behold the glory which they cover with their curtain and Christ dwelling in us and giving us his flesh to 〈◊〉 and his bloud to drink and the hiding of our life with God and the communication of the body of Christ and Christ being our life are such secret glories that as the fruition of them is the portion of the other world so also is the full perception and understanding of them for therefore God appears to us in a cloud and his glories in a veil that we understanding more of it by its concealment than we can by its open face which is too bright 〈◊〉 our weak eyes may with more piety also entertain the greatness by these indefinite and mysterious significations than we can by plain and direct intuitions which like the Sun in a direct ray enlightens the object but confounds the organ 10. I should but in other words describe the same glories if I should add That this holy Sacrament does enlighten the spirit of Man and clarifie it with spiritual discernings and as he was to the two Disciples at 〈◊〉 so also to other faithful people Christ is known in the breaking of bread That it is a great defence against the hostilities of our ghostly enemies this Holy Bread being like the Cake in 〈◊〉 's Camp overturning the tents of 〈◊〉 That it is the relief of our sorrows the antidote and preservative of Souls the viand of our journey the guard and passe-port of our death the wine of Angels That it is more healthful than Rhubarb more pleasant than Cassia That the Betele and 〈◊〉 of the 〈◊〉 the Moly or Nepenthe of Pliny the Lirinon of the 〈◊〉 the Balsam of 〈◊〉 the Manna of Israel the Honey of Jonathan are but weak expressions to tell us that this is excellent above Art and Nature and that nothing is good enough in Philosophy to become its 〈◊〉 All these must needs fall very short of those plain words of Christ This is my Body The other may become the ecstasies of Piety the transportation of joy and wonder and are like the discourse of S. 〈◊〉 upon mount Tabor he was resolved to say some great thing but he knew not what but when we remember that the Body of our Lord and his Bloud is communicated to us in the Bread and the Chalice of blessing we must sit down and rest our selves for this is the mountain of the Lord and we can go no farther 11. In the next place it will 〈◊〉 our enquiry to consider how we are to prepare our selves For at the gate of life a man may meet with death and although this holy Sacrament be like Manna in which the obedient find the relishes of Obedience the chaste of
little irregularities and so many great imperfections that it will appear the more necessary to repair the breaches and lesser ruines by such acts of Piety and Religion because every Communication is intended to be a nearer approach to God a 〈◊〉 step in Grace a progress towards glory and an instrument of perfection and therefore upon the stock of our spiritual interests for the purchase of a greater hope and the advantages of a growing Charity ought to be frequently received I end with the words of a pious and learned person It is a vain fear and an imprudent 〈◊〉 that procrastinates and desers going to the Lord that calls them they deny to go to the fire pretending they are cold and refuse Physick because they need it The PRAYER O Blessed and Eternal Jesus who gavest thy self a Sacrifice for our sins thy Body for our spiritual food thy 〈◊〉 to nourish our spirits and to quench the flames of Hell and Lust who didst so love us who were thine enemies that thou desiredst to reconcile us to thee and becamest all one with us that we may live the same life think the same thoughts love the same love and be partakers of thy Resurrection and Immortality open every window of my Soul that I may be full of light and may see the excellency of thy Love the merits of thy Sacrifice the bitterness of thy Passion the glories and virtues of the mysterious Sacrament Lord let me ever hunger and thirst after this instrument of Righteousness let me have no gust or relish of the unsatisfying delights of things below but let my Soul dwell in thee let me for ever receive thee spiritually and very frequently communicate with thee sacramentally and imitate thy Vertues pionsly and strictly and dwell in the pleasures of thy house eternally Lord thou hast prepared a table for me against them that trouble me let that holy Sacrament of the Eucharist be to me a defence and shield a nourishment and medicine life and health a means of sanctification and spiritual growth that I receiving the body of my dearest Lord may be one with his mystical body and of the same spirit united with indissoluble bonds of a strong Faith and a holy Hope and a never-failing Charity that from this veil I may pass into the visions of eternal clarity from eating thy Body to beholding thy face in the glories of thy everlasting Kingdom O Blessed and Eternal Jesus Amen Considerations upon the Accidents happening on the Vespers of the Passion The Prayer in the Garden Luk 22. 41. And he was withdrawn from them about a stones cast kneeled down prayed 42 Saying Father if thou be willing remove this Cup from me nevertheless not my will but thine be done 43 And there appeared an Angel from heaven strengthening him Iudas betrayeth Christ Mat 26. 47. And while he yet spake Lo. Iudas one of the twelue came and with him a great multitude with swords and staves from the chief Preists Elders of the people 48. Now he that be trayed him gave them a sign saying whomsoever I shall kiss that same is he hold him fast 49. And forthwith he came to Iesus and said Haile Master and kissed him 1. WHen Jesus had supped and sang a Hymn and prayed and exhorted and comforted his Disciples with a Farewell-Sermon in which he repeated 〈◊〉 of his former Precepts which were now apposite to the present condition and re-inforced them with proper and pertinent arguments he went over the brook Cedron and entred into a Garden and into the prologue of his Passion chusing that place for his Agony and satisfactory pains in which the first scene of humane misery was represented and where he might best attend the offices of Devotion preparatory to his Death Besides this he therefore departed from the house that he might give opportunity to his Enemies surprise and yet not incommodate the good man by whose hospitality they had eaten the Paschal Lamb so that he went like a Lamb to the slaughter to the Garden as to a prison as if by an agreement with his persecutors he had expected their arrest and stayed there to prevent their farther enquiry For so great was his desire to pay our Ransom that himself did assist by a forward patience and active opportunity towards the persecution teaching us that by an active zeal and a ready spirit we assist the designs of God's glory though in our own sufferings and secular infelicities 2. When he entred the Garden he left his Disciples at the entrance of it calling with him only Peter James and John he withdrew himself from the rest about a stone 's cast and began to be exceeding heavy He was not sad till he had called them for his sorrow began when he pleased which sorrow he also chose to represent to those three who had seen his Transfiguration the earnest of his future Glory that they might see of how great glory for our sakes he disrobed himself and that they also might by the confronting those contradictory accidents observe that God uses to dispense his comforts the irradiations and emissions of his glory to be preparatives to those sorrows with which our life must be allayed and seasoned that none should refuse to partake of the sufferings of Christ if either they have already felt his comforts or hope hereafter to wear his crown And it is not ill observed that S. Peter being the chief of the Apostles and Doctor of the Circumcision S. John being a Virgin and S. James the first of the Apostles that was martyred were admitted to Christ's greatest retirements and mysterious secrecies as being persons of so singular and eminent dispositions to whom according to the pious opinion of the Church especially Coronets are prepared in Heaven besides the great Crown of rightcousness which in common shall beautifie the heads of all the Saints meaning this that Doctors Virgins and Martyrs shall receive even for their very state of life and accidental Graces more eminent degrees of accidental Glory like as the Sun reflecting upon a limpid fountain receives its rays doubled without any increment of its proper and natural light 3. Jesus began to be exceeding sorrowful to be sore amazed and sad even to death And because he was now to suffer the pains of our sins there began his Passion whence our sins spring From an evil heart and a prevaricating spirit all our sins arise and in the spirit of Christ began his sorrow where he truly felt the full value and demerit of Sin which we think not worthy of a tear or a hearty sigh but he groaned and fell under the burthen But therefore he took upon him this sadness that our imperfect sorrow and contrition might be heightned in his example and accepted in its union and consederacy with his And Jesus still designed a farther mercy for us for he sanctified the passion of Fear and hallowed natural sadnesses that we might not
he bearing them upon his tender body with an even and excellent and dispassionate spirit offered up these beginnings of sufferings to his Father to obtain pardon even for them that injured him and for all the World 6. Judas now seeing that this matter went farther than he intended it repented of his fact For although evil persons are in the progress of their iniquity invited on by new arguments and supported by confidence and a careless spirit yet when iniquity is come to the height or so great a proportion that it is apt to produce Despair or an intolerable condition then the Devil suffers the Conscience to thaw and grow tender but it is the tenderness of a Bile it is soreness rather and a new disease and either it comes when the time of Repentance is past or leads to some act which shall make the pardon to be impossible and so it happened here For Judas either impatient of the shame or of the sting was thrust on to despair of pardon with a violence as hasty and as great as were his needs And Despair is very often used like the bolts and bars of Hell-gates it 〈◊〉 upon them that had entred into the suburbs of eternal death by an habitual sin and it secures them against all retreat And the Devil is forward enough to bring a man to Repentance provided it be too late and Esau wept bitterly and repented him and the five foolish Virgins lift up their voice aloud when the gates were shut and in Hell men shall repent to all eternity But I consider the very great folly and infelicity of Judas it was at midnight he received his money in the house of Annas betimes in that morning he repented his bargain he threw the money back again but his sin stuck close and it is thought to a 〈◊〉 eternity Such is the purchace of Treason and the reward of Covetousness it is cheap in its offers momentany in its possession unsatisfying in the fruition uncertain in the stay sudden in its 〈◊〉 horrid in the remembrance and a ruine a certain and miserable ruine is in the event When Judas came in that sad condition and told his miserable story to them that set him on work they 〈◊〉 him go away unpitied he had served their ends in betraying his Lord and those that hire such servants use to leave them in the disaster to shame and to sorrow and so did the Priests but took the money and 〈◊〉 to put it into the treasury because it was the price of bloud but they made no scruple to take it from the treasury to buy that bloud Any thing seems lawful that serves the ends of ambitious and bloudy persons and then they are scrupulous in their cases of Conscience when nothing of Interest does intervene for evil men make Religion the servant of Interest and sometimes weak men think that it is the 〈◊〉 of 〈◊〉 Religion and suspect that all of it is a design because many great Politicks make it so The end of the Tragedy was that Judas died with an ignoble death marked with the circumstances of a horrid Judgment and perished by the most infamous hands in the world that is by his own Which if it be confronted against the excellent spirit of S. Peter who did an act as contradictory to his honour and the grace of God as could be easily imagined yet taking sanctuary in the arms of his Lord he lodged in his heart for ever and became an example to all the world of the excellency of the Divine Mercy and the efficacy of a holy Hope and a hearty timely and an operative Repentance 7. 〈◊〉 now all things were ready for the purpose the High Priest and all his Council go along with the Holy Jesus to the house of Pilate hoping he would verifie their Sentence and bring it to execution that they might 〈◊〉 be rid of their fears and enjoy their sin and their reputation quietly S. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the High Priest caused the Holy Jesus to be led with a cord about his neck and in memory of that the Priests for many Ages 〈◊〉 a stole about theirs But the Jews did it according to the custom of the Nation to signifie he was condemned to death they desired Pilate that he would crucifie him they having 〈◊〉 him worthy And when Pilate enquired into the particulars they gave him a general and an indefinite answer If he were not guilty we would not have brought him 〈◊〉 thee they intended not to make Pilate Judge of the cause but 〈◊〉 of their cruelty But Pilate had not learned to be guided by an implicite faith of such persons which he knew to be malicious and violent and therefore still called for instances and arguments of their Accusation And that all the world might see with how great unworthiness they prosecuted the 〈◊〉 they chiefly there accused him of such crimes upon which themselves condemned him not and which they knew to be false but yet likely to move Pilate if he had been passionate or inconsiderate in his sentences He offered to make himself a King This 〈◊〉 happened at the entry of the Praetorium for the 〈◊〉 who made no conscience of killing the King of Heaven made a conscience of the external customs and ceremonies of their Law which had in them no interiour sanctity which were apt to separate them 〈◊〉 the Nations and remark them with characters of Religion and abstraction it would defile them to go to a Roman Forum 〈◊〉 a capital action was to be judged and yet the effusion of the best bloud in the world was not esteemed against their 〈◊〉 so violent and blind is the spirit of malice which turns humanity into 〈◊〉 wisdom into craft diligence into subornation and Religion into Superstition 8. Two other articles they alledged against him but the first concerned not Pilate and the second was involved in the third and therefore he chose to examine him upon this only of his being a King To which the Holy Jesus answered that it is true he was 〈◊〉 King indeed but not of this world his Throne is Heaven the Angels are his Courtiers and the 〈◊〉 Creation are his Subjects His Regiment is spiritual his 〈◊〉 are the Courts of Conscience and Church-tribunals and at Dooms-day the Clouds The Tribute which he demands are conformity to his Laws Faith 〈◊〉 and Charity no other Gabels but the duties of a holy Spirit and the expresses of a religious Worship and obedient Will and a consenting Understanding And in all this Pilate thought the interest of 〈◊〉 was not invaded For certain it is the Discipline of Jesus confirmed it much and supported it by the strongest pillars And here Pilate saw how impertinent and malicious their Accusation was And we who declaim against the unjust proceedings of the Jews against our dearest Lord should do well to take care that we in accusing any of our Brethren either with malicious purpose or with
their friends and consider not that their friends are bound to accept the trouble as themselves to accept the sickness that to tend the sick is at that time allotted for the portion of their work and that Charity receives it as a duty and makes that duty to be a pleasure And however if our friends account us a burthen let us also accept that circumstance of affliction to our selves with the same resignation and indifferency as we entertain its occasion the Sickness it self and pray to God to enkindle a flame of Charity in their breasts and to make them compensation for the charge and trouble we put them to and then the care is at an end But others excuse their discontent with a more religious colour and call the disease their trouble and affliction because it impedes their other parts of Duty they cannot preach or study or do exteriour assistences of Charity and Alms or acts of Repentance and Mortification But it were well if we could let God proportion out our work and set our task let him chuse what vertues we shall specially exercise and when the will of God determines us it is more excellent to endure afflictions with patience equanimity and thankfulness than to do actions of the most pompous Religion and laborious or expensive Charity not only because there is a deliciousness in actions of Religion and choice which is more agreeable to our spirit than the toleration of sickness can be which hath great reward but no present pleasure but also because our suffering and our imployment is consecrated to us when God chuses it and there is then no mixture of imperfection or secular interest as there may be in other actions even of an excellent Religion when our selves are the chusers And let us also remember that God hath not so much need of thy works as thou hast of Patience Humility and Resignation S. Paul was far a more considerable person than thou canst be and yet it pleased God to shut him in prison for two years and in that intervall God secured and promoted the work of the Gospel and although 〈◊〉 was an excellent Minister yet God laid a sickness upon him and even in his disease gave him work enough to do though not of his own chusing And therefore fear it not but the ends of Religion or Duty will well enough proceed without thy health and thy own eternal interest when God so pleases shall better be served by Sickness and the Vertues which it occasions than by the opportunities of Health and an ambulatory active Charity 18. When thou art resigned to God use fair and appointed means for thy Recovery trust not in thy spirit upon any instrument of health as thou art willing to be disposed by God so look 〈◊〉 for any event upon the stock of any other cause or principle be ruled by the Physician and the people appointed to tend thee that thou neither become troublesome to them nor give any sign of impatience or a peevish spirit But this advice only means that thou do not disobey them out of any evil principle and yet if Reason be thy guide to chuse any other aid or sollow any other counsel use it temperately prudently and charitably It is not intended for a Duty that thou shouldst drink Oil in stead of Wine if thy Minister reach it to thee as did Saint Bernard nor that thou shouldst accept a Cake tempered with Linseed-oil in stead of Oil of Olives as did F. Stephen mentioned by 〈◊〉 but that thou tolerate the defects of thy servants and accept the evil accidents of thy disease or the unsuccessfulness of thy Physician 's care as descending on thee from the hands of God Asa was noted in Scripture that in his sickness he sought not to the Lord but to the Physicians Lewis the XI of France was then the miserablest person in his Kingdom when he made himself their servant courting them with great pensions and rewards attending to their Rules as Oracles and from their mouths waited for the sentence of life or death We are in these great accidents especially to look upon God as the disposer of the events which he very often disposes contrary to the expectation we may have of probable causes and sometimes without Physick we recover and with Physick and excellent applications we grow worse and worse and God it is that makes the remedies unprosperous In all these and all other accidents if we take care that the sickness of the Body derive not it self into the Soul nor the pains of one procure impatience of the other we shall alleviate the burthen and make it supportable and profitable And certain it is if men knew well to bear their sicknesses humbly towards God charitably towards our Ministers and chearfully in themselves there were no greater advantage in the world to be received than upon a sick bed and that alone hath in it the benefits of a Church of a religious Assembly of the works of Charity and labour And since our Soul 's eternal well-being depends upon the Charities and Providence and Veracity of God and we have nothing to show for it but his word and Goodness and that is infinitely enough it is but reason we be not more nice and scrupulous about the usage and accommodation of our Body if we accept at God's hand sadness and driness of affection and spiritual desertion patiently and with indifferency it is unhandsome to express our selves less satisfied in the accidents about our body 19. But if the Sickness proceed to Death it is a new charge upon our spirits and God calls for a final and intire Resignation into his hands And to a person who was of humble affections and in his life-time of a mortified spirit accustomed to bear the yoke of the Lord this is easie because he looks upon Death not only as the certain condition of Nature but as a necessary transition to a state of Blessedness as the determination of his sickness the period of humane inselicities the last change of condition the beginning of a new strange and excellent life a security against sin a freedom from the importunities of a Tempter from the tyranny of an imperious Lust from the rebellion of Concupiscence from the disturbances and tempests of the Irascible faculty and from the fondness and childishness of the Concupiscible and S. Ambrose says well the trouble of this life and the dangers are so many that in respect of them Death is a remedy and a fair proper object of desires And we finde that many Saints have prayed for death that they might not see the Persecutions and great miseries incumbent upon the Church and if the desire be not out of Impatience but of Charity and with resignation there is no reason to reprove it Elias prayed that God would take his life that he might not see the evils of Ahab and Jezebel and their vexatious intendments against the
to God and even holy purposes are good actions of the Spirit and Principles of Religion and though alone they cannot do the work of Grace or change the state when they are ineffectual that is when either we will not bring them into act or that God will not let us yet to a Man already in the state of Grace they are the additions of something good and are like blowing of coals which although it can put no life into a dead coal yet it makes a live coal shine brighter and burn clearer and adds to it some accidental degrees of heat 23. Having thus disposed himself to the peace of God let him make peace with all those in whom he knows or suspects any minutes of anger or malice or displeasure towards him submitting himself to them with humility whom he unworthily hath displeased asking pardon of them who say they are displeased and offering pardon to them that have displeased him and then let him crave the peace of Holy Church For it is all this while to be supposed that he hath used the assistence and prayers the counsel and the advices of a spiritual man and that to this purpose he hath opened to him the state of his whole life and made him to understand what emendations of his faults he hath made what acts of Repentance he hath done how lived after his fall and reparation and that he hath submitted all that he did or undid to the discerning of a holy man whose office it is to guide his Soul in this agony and last offices All men cannot have the blessing of a wise and learned Minister and some die where they can have none at all yet it were a safer course to do as much of this as we can and to a competent person if we can if we cannot then to the best we have according as we judge it to be of spiritual advantage to us for in this conjuncture of accidents it concerns us to be sure if we may and not to be deceived where we can avoid it because we shall never return to life to do this work again And if after this entercourse with a Spiritual guide we be reconciled by the solemn prayer of the Church the prayer of Absolution it will be of great advantage to us we depart with our Father's blessing we die in the actual Communion of the Church we hear the sentence of God applied after the manner of men and the promise of Pardon made circumstantiate material present and operative upon our spirits and have our portion of the promise which is recorded by S. James that if the Elders of the Church pray over a sick person fervently and effectually add solemnly his sins shall be forgiven him that is supposing him to be in a capacity to receive it because such prayers of such a man are very prevalent 24. All this is in a spiritual sense washing the hands in innocency and then let him go to the altar let him not for any excuse less than impossibility omit to receive the holy Sacrament which the Father 's assembled in the great Nicene Council have taught all the Christian world to call the most necessary provisions for our last journey which is the memory of that Death by which we hope for life which is the seed of Immortality and Resurrection of our bodies which unites our spirit to Christ which is a great defensative against the hostilities of the Devil which is the most solemn Prayer of the Church united and made acceptable by the Sacrifice of Christ which is then represented and exhibited to God which is the great instrument of spiritual increase and the growth of Grace which is duty and reward food and Physick health and pleasure deletery and cordial prayer and thanksgiving an union of mysteries the marriage of the Soul and the perfection of all the Rites of Christianity dying with the holy Sacrament in us is a going to God with Christ in our arms and interposing him between us and his angry sentence But then we must be sure that we have done all the duty without which we cannot communicate worthily For else Satan comes in the place of Christ and it is a horrour not less than infinite to appear before God's Tribunal possessed in our Souls with the spirit of darkness True it is that by many Laws of the Church the Bishop and the Minister are bound to give the holy Eucharist to every person who in the article or apparent danger of death desires it provided that he hath submitted himself to the imposition and counsels of the Bishop or Guide of his Soul that in case he recovers he may be brought to the peace of God and his Church by such steps and degrees of Repentance by which other publick sinners are reconciled But to this gentleness of Discipline and easiness of Administration those excellent persons who made the Canons thought themselves compelled by the rigour of the 〈◊〉 and because they admitted not lapsed persons to the peace of the Church upon any terms though never so great so publick or so penal a Repentance therefore these not onely remitted them to the exercise and station of Penitents but also to the Communion But the Fathers of the Council of Eliberis denied this favour to persons who after Baptism were Idolaters either intending this as a great argument to affright persons from so great a crime or else believing that it was unpardonable after Baptism a contradiction to that state which we entred into by Baptism and the Covenant Evangelical However I desire all learned persons to observe it and the less learned also to make use of it that those more ancient Councils of the Church which commanded the holy Communion to be given to dying persons meant only such which according to the custome of the Church were under the conditions of Repentance that is such to whom punishment and Discipline of divers years were injoyned and if it happened they died in the intervall before the expiration of their time of reconciliation then they admitted them to the Communion Which describes to us the doctrine of those Ages when Religion was purer and Discipline more severe and holy life secured by rules of excellent Government that those only were fit to come to that Feast who before their last sickness had finished the Repentance of many years or at least had undertaken it I cannot say it was so always and in all Churches for as the Disciples grew slack or mens perswasions had variety so they were more ready to grant Repentance as well as Absolution to dying persons but it was otherwise in the best times and with severer Prelates And certainly it were great charity to deny the Communion to persons who have lived viciously till their death provided it be by competent authority and done sincerely prudently and without temporal interest to other persons who have lived good lives or repented of their bad
death even the death of the Cross Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a Name above every name Thus his present life was a state of merit and work and as a reward of it he was crowned with glory and immortality his Name was exalted his Kingdom glorified he was made the Lord of all the Creatures the first-fruits of the Resurrection the exemplar of glory and the Prince and Head of the Catholick Church and because this was his recompence and the fruits of his Humility and Obedience it is certain it was not a necessary consequence and a natural efflux of the personal union of the Godhead with the Humanity This I discourse to this purpose that we may not in our esteem lessen the suffering of our dearest Lord by thinking he had the supports of actual Glory in the midst of all his Sufferings For there is no one minute or ray of Glory but its fruition does outweigh and make us insensible of the greatest calamities and the spirit of pain which can be extracted from all the infelicities of this world True it is that the greatest beauties in this world are receptive of an allay of sorrow and nothing can have pleasure in all capacities The most beautious feathers of the birds of Paradise the Estrich or the Peacock if put into our throat are not there so pleasant as to the eye But the beatifick joys of the least glory of Heaven take away all pain wipe away all tears from our eyes and it is not possible that at the same instant the Soul of Jesus should be ravished with Glory and yet abated with pains grievous and 〈◊〉 On the other side some say that the Soul of Jesus upon the Cross suffered the pains of Hell and all the torments of the damned and that without such sufferings it is not imaginable he should pay the price which God's wrath should demand of us But the same that reproves the one does also reprehend the other for the Hope that was the support of the Soul of Jesus as it confesses an imperfection that is not consistent with the state of Glory so it excludes the Despair that is the torment proper to accursed souls Our dearest Lord suffered the whole condition of Humanity Sin only excepted and freed us from Hell with suffering those sad pains and merited Heaven for his own Humanity as the Head and all faithful people as the Members of his mystical Body And therefore his life here was only a state of pilgrimage not at all trimmed with beatifick glories Much less was he ever in the state of Hell or upon the Cross felt the formal misery and spirit of torment which is the 〈◊〉 of damned spirits because it was impossible Christ should despair and without Despair it is impossible there should be a Hell But this is highly probable that in the intension of degrees and present anguish the Soul of our Lord might feel a greater load of wrath than is incumbent in every instant upon perishing souls For all the sadness which may be imagined to be in Hell consists in acts produced from principles that cannot surpass the force of humane or Angelical nature but the pain which our Blessed Lord endured for the expiation of our sins was an issue of an united and concentred anger was received into the heart of God and Man and was commensurate to the whole latitude of the Grace Patience and Charity of the Word incarnate The Crucisixion Mark 15 25. Erat autem Hora tertia crucifixerunt eum Mark 15 25. And is was the third houre they crucified him The takeing down from the Cross. Luk. 23 50 And there was a man named Ioseph a Counsellour he was a good man a lust y e same had not consented to y e counsell deed of them 52. This man went unto Pilate begged y e Body of Iesus 53 And he took it down wrapped it in linen layd it in a Sepulehre that was hewn in stone wherein never man before was layd 6. And now behold the Priest and the Sacrifice of all the world laid upon the Altar of the Cross bleeding and tortured and dying to reconcile his Father to us and he was arrayed with ornaments more glorious than the robes of Aaron The Crown of Thorns was his Mitre the Cross his Pastoral staffe the Nails piercing his hands were in stead of Rings the ancient ornament of Priests and his flesh rased and checker'd with blew and bloud in stead of the parti-coloured Robe But as this object calls for our Devotion our Love and Eucharist to our dearest Lord so it must needs irreconcile us to Sin which in the eye of all the world brought so great shame and pain and amazement upon the Son of God when he only became engaged by a charitable substitution of himself in our place and therefore we are assured by the demonstration of sense and experience it will bring death and all imaginable miseries as the just expresses of God's indignation and hatred for to this we may apply the words of our Lord in the prediction of miseries to Jerusalem If this be done in the green tree what shall be done in the dry For it is certain Christ infinitely pleased his Father even by becoming the person made 〈◊〉 in estimate of Law and yet so great Charity of our Lord and the so great love and pleasure of his Father exempted him not from suffering pains intolerable and much less shall those escape who provoke and displease God and despise so great Salvation which the Holy Jesus hath wrought with the expence of bloud and so precious a life 7. But here we see a great representation and testimony of the Divine Justice who was so angry with sin who had so severely threatned it who does so essentially hate it that he would not spare his only Son when he became a conjunct person relative to the guilt by undertaking the charges of our Nature For although God hath set down in holy Scripture the order of his Justice and the manner of its manifestation that one Soul shall not perish for the sins of another yet this is meant for Justice and for Mercy too that is he will not curse the Son for the Father's fault or in any relation whatsoever substitute one person for another to make him involuntarily guilty But when this shall be desired by a person that cannot finally perish and does a mercy to the exempt persons and is a voluntary act of the suscipient and shall in the event also redound to an infinite good it is no deflection from the Divine Justice to excuse many by the affliction of one who also for that very suffering shall have infinite compensation We see that for the sin of Cham all his posterity were accursed the Subjects of David died with the Plague because their Prince numbred the people Idolatry is punished in the children of the fourth generation
to be contracted into the span of Humanity and dwell forty days in his body upon earth But that he should return from Paradise that is from the common receptacle of departed Spirits who died in the love of God to earth again had in it no lessening of his condition since himself in mercy called back Lazarus from thence and some others also returned to live a life of grace which in all senses is less than the least of glories Sufficient it is to us that all holy Souls departing go into the hands that is into the custody of our Lord that they rest from their labours that their works shall follow them and overtake them too at the day of Judgment that they are happy presently that they are visited by Angels that God sends as he pleases excellent irradiations and types of glory to entertain them in their mansions that their condition is secured but the crown of 〈◊〉 is laid up against the great day of Judgment and then to be produced and given to S. Paul and to all that love the coming of our Lord that is to all who either here in duty or in their receptacles with joy and certain hope long for the revelation of that day At the day of Judgment Christ will send the Angels and they shall gather together the elect from the four winds and all the refuse of men evil persons they shall throw into everlasting burning Then our Blessed Lord shall call to the elect to enter into the Kingdom and reject the cursed into the portion of Devils for whom the fire is but now prepared in the intervall For we must all appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ saith S. Paul that every man may receive in his body according as he hath done whether it be good or evil Out of the body the reception of the reward is not And therefore S. Peter affirms that God hath delivered the evil Angels into chains of darkness to be reserved unto Judgment And S. Jude saith that the Angels which kept not their first faith but left their first habitation he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the Judgment of the great day And therefore the Devils expostulated with our Blessed Saviour Art thou come to torment us before the time And the same also he does to evil men reserving the unjust unto the day of Judgment to be punished For since the actions which are to be judg'd are the actions of the whole man so also must be the Judicature And our Blessed Saviour intimated this to his Apostles In my Father's house are many mansions but I go to prepare a place for you And if I go away I will come again and take you unto me that where I am there ye may be also At Christ's Second coming this is to be performed Many Outer courts many different places or different states there may be and yet there is a place whither holy Souls shall arrive at last which was not then ready for us and was not to be entred into until the entrance of our Lord had made the preparation and that is certainly the highest Heaven called by S. Paul the third Heaven because the other receptacles were ready and full of holy Souls Patriarchs and Prophets and holy men of God concerning whom S. Paul affirms expresly that the Fathers received not the Promises God having provided some better thing for us that they without us should not be made perfect Therefore certain it is that their condition was a state of imperfection and yet they were placed in Paradise in Abraham's bosom and thither Christ went and the blessed Thief attended him And then it was that Christ made their condition better for though still it be a place of relation in order to something beyond it yet the term and object of their hope is changed they sate in the regions of darkness expecting that great Promise made to Adam and the Patriarchs the Promise of the Messias but when he that was promised came he preached to the spirits in Prison he communicated to them the Mysteries of the Gospel the Secrets of the Kingdom the things hidden from eternal Ages and taught them to look up to the glories purchased by his Passion and made the term of their expectation be his Second coming and the objects of their hope the glories of the beatifick vision And although the state of Separation is sometimes in Scripture called 〈◊〉 and sometimes 〈◊〉 for these words in Scripture are of large significations yet it is never called the third 〈◊〉 nor the Hell of the damned for although concerning it nothing is clearly revealed or what is their portion till the day of Judgment yet it is intimated in a Parable that between good and evil spirits even in the state of Separation there is distance of place certain it is there is great distance of condition and as the holy Souls in their regions of light are full of love joy hope and longing for the coming of the great Day so the accursed do expect it with an insupportable amazement and are presently tormented with apprehensions of the future Happy are they that through Paradise pass into the Kingdom who from their highest hope pass to the 〈◊〉 Charity from the state of a blessed Separation to the Mercies and gentle Sentence of the day of Judgment which S. Paul prayed to God to grant 〈◊〉 and more explicitely for the Thessalonians that their whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus And I pray God to grant the same to me and all faithful people whatsoever 2. As soon as the Lord had given up his spirit into the hands of God the veil of the Temple was rent the Angels Guardians of the place deserted it the Rites of Moses were laid open and the inclosures of the Tabernacle were dispark'd the earth trembled the graves were opened and all the old world and the old Religion were so shaken towards their first Chaos that if God had not supported the one and reserved the other for an honourable burial the earth had left to support her children and the Synagogue had been thrown out to an inglorious exposition and contempt But yet in these symbols these were changed from their first condition and passed into a new dominion all old things passed away and all things became new the Earth and the Heavens were reckoned as a new creation they passed into another kingdom under Christ their Lord and as before the creatures were servants of humane necessities they now become servants of election and in order to the ends of Grace as before of Nature Christ having now the power to dispose of them in order to his Kingdom and by the administration of his own Wisdom And at the instant of these accidents God so determined the perswasions of men that they referred these Prodigies of the honour to
parent of as great Religion as the good women make their fancy their softness and their passion 12. Our Blessed Lord appeared next to Simon and though he and John ran forthtogether and S. John outran Simon although Simon Peter had denied and forsworn his Lord and S. John never did and followed him to his Passion and his death yet Peter had the savour of seeing Jesus first Which some Spiritual persons understand as a testimony that penitent 〈◊〉 have accidental eminences and priviledges sometimes 〈◊〉 to them beyond the temporal graces of the just and innocent as being such who not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against the remanent and inherent evils even of repented sins and their aptnesses to relapse but also because those who are true Penitents who understand the infiniteness of the Divine mercy and that for a sinner to pass from death to 〈◊〉 from the state of sin into pardon and the state of Grace is a greater gift and a more excellent and improbable mutation than for a just man to be taken into glory out of gratitude to God and indearment 〈◊〉 so great a change added to a fear of returning to such danger and misery will re-enforce all their industry and double their study and 〈◊〉 more diligently and watch more carefully and redeem the 〈◊〉 and make amends for their omissions and oppose a good to the former evils beside the duties of the 〈◊〉 imployment and then commonly the life of a holy Penitent is more holy active zealous and impatient of Vice and more rapacious of Vertue and holy actions and arises to greater 〈◊〉 of Sanctity than the even and moderate affections of just persons who as our Blessed Saviour's expression is 〈◊〉 no Repentance that is no change of state nothing but a perseverance and an improvement of degrees There is more joy in heaven before the Angels of God over 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that 〈◊〉 than 〈◊〉 ninety nine just persons that need it not for where sin hath abounded there doth grace super abound and that makes joy in Heaven 13. The Holy Jesus having received the affections of his most passionate Disciples the women and S. 〈◊〉 puts himself upon the way into the company of two good men going to Emmaus with troubled spirits and a reeling faith shaking all its upper building but leaving some of its foundation firm To them the Lord discourses of the necessity of the Death and Resurrection of the 〈◊〉 and taught them not to take estimate of the counsels of God by the designs and proportions of man for God by ways contrary to humane judgment brings to pass the purposes of his eternal Providence The glories of Christ were not made pompous by humane circumstances his Kingdom was spiritual he was to enter into Felicities through the gates of Death he refused to do Miracles before 〈◊〉 and yet did them before the people he confuted his accusers by silence and did not descend from the Cross when they offered to believe in him if he would but 〈◊〉 them to be perswaded by greater arguments of his power the miraculous circumstances of his Death and the glories of his Resurrection and by walking in the secret paths of Divine election hath commanded us to adore his footsteps to admire and revere his Wisdom to be satisfied with all the events of Providence and to rejoyce in him if by Afflictions he makes us holy if by Persecutions he supports and enlarges his Church if by Death he brings us to life so we arrive at the communion of his Felicities we must let him chuse the way it being sufficient that he is our guide and our support and our exceeding great reward For therefore Christ preached to the two Disciples going to 〈◊〉 the way of the Cross and the necessity of that passage that the wisdom of God might be glorified and the conjectures of man ashamed But whilest his discourse lasted they knew him not but in the breaking of bread he discovered himself For he turned their meal into a Sacrament and their darkness to light and having to his Sermon added the Sacrament opened all their discerning faculties the eyes of their body and their understanding too to represent to us that when we are blessed with the opportunities of both those instruments we want no exteriour assistence to guide us in the way to the knowing and enjoying of our Lord. 14. But the Apparitions which Jesus made were all upon the design of laying the foundation of all Christian Graces for the begetting and establishing Faith and an active Confidence in their persons and building them up on the great fundamentals of the Religion And therefore he appointed a general meeting upon a mountain in Galilee that the number of witnesses might not only disseminate the same but establish the Article of the Resurrection for upon that are built all the hopes of a Christian and if the dead rise not then are we of all men most miserable in quitting the present possessions and entertaining injuries and affronts without hopes of reparation But we lay two gages in several repositories the Body in the bosome of the earth the Soul in the 〈◊〉 of God and as we here live by Faith and lay them down with hope so the 〈◊〉 is a restitution of them both and a state of re-union And therefore although the glory of our spirits without the body were joy great enough to make compensation for mere than the troubles of all the world yet because one shall not be glorified without the other they being of themselves incomplete substances and God having revealed nothing clearly concerning actual and complete felicities till the day of Judgment when it is promised our bodies shall rise therefore it is that the Resurrection is the great Article upon which we rely and which Christ took so much care to prove and ascertain to so many persons because if that should be disbelieved with which all our felicities are to be received we have nothing to establish our Faith or entertain our Hope or satisfie our desires or make retribution for that state of secular inconveniences in which by the necessities of our nature and the humility and patience of our Religion we are engaged 15. But I consider that holy Scripture onely instructs us concerning the life of this world and the life of the Resurrection the life of Grace and the life of Glory both in the body that is a life of the whole man and whatsoever is spoken of the Soul considers it as an essential part of man relating to his whole constitution not as it is of it self an intellectual and separate substance for all its actions which are separate and removed from the body are relative and incomplete Now because the Soul is an incomplete substance and created in relation to the Body and is but a part of the whole man if the Body were as eternal and incorruptible as the Soul yet the separation of the one from the other would be
as now it is that which we call natural death and supposing that God should preserve the Body for ever or restore it at the day of Judgment to its full substance and perfect organs yet the man would be dead for ever if the Soul for ever should continue separate from the Body So that the other life that is the state of Resurrection is a re-uniting Soul and Body And although in a Philosophical sence the Resurrection is of the Body that is a restitution of our flesh and bloud and bones and is called Resurrection as the entrance into the state of Resurrection may have the denomination of the whole yet in the sence of Scripture the Resurrection is the restitution of our life the renovation of the whole man the state of Re-union and untill that be the man is not but he is dead and onely his essential parts are deposited and laid up in trust and therefore whatsoever the Soul does or perceives in its incomplete condition is but to it as embalming and honourable funerals to the Body and a safe monument to preserve it in order to a living again and the felicities of the intervall are wholly in order to the next life And therefore if there were to be no Resurrection as these intermedial joys should not be at all so as they are they are but relative and incomplete and therefore all our hopes all our felicities depend upon the Resurrection without it we should never be persons men or women and then the state of Separation could be nothing but a phantasm trees ever in blossome never bearing fruit corn for ever in the blade eggs always in the shell a hope eternal never to pass into fruition that is for ever to be deluded for ever to be miserable And therefore it was an elegant expression of S. Paul Our life is hid with Christ in God that is our life is passed into custody the dust of our body is numbred and the Spirit is refreshed visited and preserved in celestial mansions but it is not properly called a Life for all this while the man is dead and shall then live when Christ produces this hidden life at the great day of restitution But our faith of all this Article is well wrapt up in the words of S. John Beloved now we are the Sons of God and it doth not yet appear what we shall be but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is The middle state is not it which Scripture hath propounded to our Faith or to our Hope the reward is then when Christ shall appear but in the mean time the Soul can converse with God and with Angels just as the holy Prophets did in their Dreams in which they received great degrees of favour and revelation But this is not to be reckoned any more than an entrance or a waiting for the state of our Felicity And since the glories of Heaven is the great fruit of Election we may consider that the Body is not predestinate nor the Soul alone but the whole Man and until the parts embrace again in an essential complexion it cannot be expected either of them should receive the portion of the predestinate But the article and the event of future things is rarely set in order by Saint Paul But ye are come into the mount Sion and to the City of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem and to an innumerable company of Angels To the general assembly and Church of the first born which are written in heaven and to God the Judge of all and then follows after this general assembly after the Judge of all appears to the spirits of just men made perfect that is re-united to their bodies and entring into glory The beginning of the contrary Opinion brought some new practices and appendent perswasions into the Church or at least promoted them much For those Doctors who receding from the Primitive belief of this Article taught that the glories of Heaven are fully communicated to the Souls before the day of Judgment did also upon that stock teach the Invocation of Saints whom they believed to be received into glory and insensibly also brought in the opinion of Purgatory that the less perfect Souls might be glorified in the time that they assigned them But the safer opinion and more agreeable to Piety is that which I have now described from Scripture and the purest Ages of the Church 16. When Jesus appeared to the Apostles he gave them his Peace for a Benediction and when he departed he left them Peace for a Legacy and gave them according to two former promises the power of making Peace and reconciling Souls to God by a ministerial act so conveying his Father's mercy which himself procured by his Passion and actuates by his Intercession and the giving of his Grace that he might comply with our infirmities and minister to our needs by instruments even and proportionate to our selves making our brethren the conduits of his Grace that the excellent effect of the Spirit might not descend upon us as the Law upon Mount Sinai in expresses of greatness and terrour but in earthen vessels and images of infirmity so God manifesting his power in the smalness of the instrument and descending to our needs not only in giving the grace of Pardon but also in the manner of its ministration And I meditate upon the greatness of this Mercy by comparing this Grace of God and the blessing of the Judgment and Sentence we receive at the hand of the Church with the Judgment which God makes at the hour of death upon them who have despised this mercy and neglected all the other parts of their duty The one is a Judgment of mercy the other of vengeance In the one the Devil is the Accuser and Heaven and earth bear witness in the other the penitent sinner accuses himself In that the sinner gets a pardon in the other he finds no remedy In that all his good deeds are remembred and returned and his sins are blotted out in the other all his evil deeds are represented with horrour and a sting and remain for ever In the first the sinner changes his state for a state of Grace and only smarts in some temporal austerities and acts of exteriour mortification in the second his temporal estate is changed to an eternity of pain In the first the sinner suffers the shame of one man or one society which is sweetned by consolation and homilies of mercy and health in the latter all his sins are laid open before all the world and himself confounded in eternal amazement and confusions In the judgment of the Church the sinner is honoured by all for returning to the bosome of his Mother and the embraces of his heavenly Father in the judgment of vengeance he is laughed at by God and mocked by accursed spirits and perishes without pity In this he is prayed for by none
Communication 94. 3. Triumphant riding of Jesus 359. 4. Thief upon the Cross pardoned and in what sence 200. 8. An excellent Penitent 354. 32. Themistocles appeased King Admetus by 〈◊〉 his Son to his sight 372. 7. Thomas's Infidelity 420. 3. Tongue-murther 247. V. VAin Repetitions in Prayer to be avoided 270. Value of the Silver pieces Judas had 349. 14. Value of Jesus in this World was always at a low rate 57. 4. Vespasian upon the Prophecies concerning the Messias 〈◊〉 himself into hopes of the Empire 25. 2. Vinegar and Gall offered to Jesus 355. 35. Virginity preserred before Marriage 327. Vertue is honourable 301. 11. Productive of 〈◊〉 299. 7. More pleasant than Vice 69. 6. The holy Virgin incouraged Joseph of Arimathea to a publick Confession of Jesus 356. 38. She caused Ministers to take her Son's Body from the Cross 356. Full of sorrow at the Passion 356. 37. She was saluted Blessed by a Capernaite 292. 12. Vice a great Spender 301. 9. It 〈◊〉 from Vertue sometimes but in one nice degree 45. 15. Why we are more prone to Vice than Vertue 37. 4. A Virgin shut her self up twelve Years in a Sepulchre to cure her Temptation 114. 34. Vicious persons not to be admitted to the Sacrament 374. 12. Unitive way of Religion to be practised with caution 60. 20. Vows are a good instance of Importunity in Prayer 270. 20. To be made with much caution and prudence ibid. Uncleanness of Body and Spirit forbidden to Christians 249 W. WAter-pots among the Jews at Feasts and why 152. 7. Way to Heaven narrow in what sence 297. Washing the Feet an hospitable civility to Strangers 350. 16. Washing the Disciples Feet ib. Wandring thoughts in Prayer to be prayed against 268. Watchfulness designed in the Parable of the ten Virgins 348. Want cannot be where God undertakes the Provision 77. Wenceslaus King of Bohemia led his Servant by a vigorous example 4. Exh. 10. Widows two Mites accepted 348. Widowhood harder to preserve Continence than Virginity 86. Wise-mens expectation lessened at the sight of the Babe lying in a Stable 28. But not 〈◊〉 ibid. They publickly consess him 33. Wilderness chosen by Christ he was not involuntarily driven by the evil Spirit 95. Works of Religion upon our Death-bed after a pious Life are of great concernment 403. Women must be lovers of Privacy 9. Instrumental to Conversion of Men 182. 3. To Heresie 189. 5. Not to be conversed withall too freely by Spiritual persons ibid. They 〈◊〉 Religious Friendships with Apostles and Bishops ibid. 6. Cautions concerning Conversation with Women ibid. They ministred to Christ 293. 17. Go early to the Sepulchre 419. Will for the Deed accepted how to be understood 213. 41. Will of God is to be chosen before our own 247. 267. World to be refused when the Devil offers it 100. Wine mixed with Myrrhe offered to Jesus 353. Y. YOak of Christianity easie 295. Yoak of Moses and Yoak of Sin broken by Christ 295. 1. Z. ZEal of Elias not imitable by us 324. 18. Zeal of Prayer of great efficacy 269. 18. It discomposed Moses and Elisha 85. 8. Zacchaeus his Repentance 346. 4. Zebedee's Sons Petition ibid. Zechary slain by Herod and why 66. 5. His Bloud left a Tincture in the Pavement for a long while after ibid. The End of the TABLE ERRATA PAge 85. Line 13. for Consulted by three things read Consulted by three Kings Antiquitates Apostolicae OR THE LIVES ACTS and MARTYRDOMS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES OF OUR SAVIOUR To which are added The Lives of the two EVANGELISTS SS MARK and LVKE By WILLIAM CAVE D. D. Chaplain in Ordinary to his MAJESTY 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Euseb. H. Eccl. lib. 1. cap. 10. pag. 28. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrysost. Praesat in Epist. ad Philem. pag. 1733. LONDON Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston Bookseller to his most Sacred Majesty at the Angel in Amen-Corner 1675. TO THE READER IT will not I suppose seem improbable to the Reader when I tell him with how much reluctancy and unwillingness I set upon this undertaking Besides the disadvantage of having this piece annexed to the Elaborate Book of that excellent Prelate so great a Master both of Learning and Language I was intimately conscious to mine own unfitness for such a Work at any time much more when clogg'd with many habitual Infirmities and Distempers I considered the difficulty of the thing it self perhaps not capable of being well managed by a much better Ten than mine few of the Ancient Monuments of the Church being extant and little of this nature in those few that are Indeed I could not but think it reasonable that all possible honour should be done to those that first Preached the Gospel of peace and brought glad tidings of good things that it was fit men should be taught how much they were obliged to those excellent Persons who were willing at so dear a rate to plant Christianity in the World who they were and what was that Piety and that Patience that Charity and that Zeal which made them to be reverenc'd while they liv'd and their Memories ever since to be honourably celebrated through the World infinitely beyond the glories of Alexander and the triumphs of a Pompey or a Caesar. But then how this should be done out of those few imperfect Memoires that have escaped the general shipwrack of Church-Antiquities and much more by so rude and unskilful a hand as mine appear'd I confess a very difficult task and next door to impossible These with some other considerations made me a long time obstinately resolve against it till being overcome by importunity I yielded to do it as I was able and as the nature of the thing would bear THAT which I primarily designed to my self was to draw down the History of the New Testament especially from our Lord's death to enquire into the first Originals and Plantations of the Christian Church by the Ministery of the Apostles the success of their Doctrine the power and conviction of their Miracles their infinite Labours and hardships and the dreadful Sufferings which they underwent to consider in what instances of Piety and Vertue they ministred to our imitation and served the purposes of Religion and an Holy Life Indeed the accounts that are left us of these things are very short and inconsiderable sufficient possibly to excite the appetite not to allay the hunger of an importunate Enquirer into these matters A consideration that might give us just occasion to lament the irreparable loss of those Primitive Records which the injury of time hath deprived us of the substance being gone and little left us but the shell and carcass Had we the Writings of Papias Bishop of Hierapolis and Scholar says Irenaeus to S. John wherein as himself tells us he set down what he had learnt from those who had familiarly conversed with the Apostles the sayings and discourses of Andrew and Peter of Philip and Thomas c.
acted herein by a Divine warrant and authority That therefore it might plainly appear to the World that they did not falsify in what they said or deliver any more than God had given them in commission he enabled them to do strange and miraculous operations bearing them witness both with signs and wonders and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost This was a power put into the first draught of their commission when confined only to the Cities of Israel As ye go preach saying The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand Heal the sick cleanse the lepers raise the dead cast out Devils freely you have received freely give but more fully confirmed upon them when our Lord went to Heaven then he told them that these signs should follow them that believe that in his Name they should cast out Devils and speak with new tongues that they should take up serpents and if they drank any deadly thing it should not hurt them that they should lay hands on the sick and they should recover And the event was accordingly for they went forth and preached every where the Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs following When Paul and Barnabas came up to the Council at Jerusalem this was one of the first things they gave an account of all the multitude keeping silence while they declared what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them Thus the very shadow of Peter as he passed by cured the sick thus God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons and the diseases departed from them and the evil spirits went out of them So that besides the innate characters of Divinity which the Christian religion brought along with it containing nothing but what was highly reasonable and very becoming God to reveal it had the highest external evidence that any Religion was capable of the attestation of great and unquestionable Miracles done not once or twice not privately and in corners not before a few simple and credulous persons but frequently and at every turn publickly and in places of the most solemn concourse before the wisest and most judicious enquirers and this power of miracles continued not only during the Apostles time but for some Ages after X. But because besides Miracles in general the Scripture takes particular notice of many gifts and powers of the Holy Ghost conferred upon the Apostles and first Preachers of the Gospel it may not be amiss to consider some of the chiefest and most material of them as we find them enumerated by the Apostle only premising this observation that though these gifts were distinctly distributed to persons of an inferiour order so that one had this and another that yet were they all conferr'd upon the Apostles and doubtless in larger proportions than upon the rest First we take notice of the gift of Prophecy a clear evidence of divine inspiration and an extraordinary mission the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy It had been for many Ages the signal and honourable priviledge of the Jewish Church and that the Christian Oeconomy might challenge as sacred regards from men and that it might appear that God had not withdrawn his Spirit from his Church in this new state of things it was revived under the dispensation of the Gospel according to that famous prophecy of Joel exactly accomplished as Peter told the Jews upon the day of 〈◊〉 when the miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost were so plentifully shed upon the Apostles and Primitive Christians This is that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel It shall come to pass in the last days saith God I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh and your Sons and your Daughters shall 〈◊〉 and your young Men shall see 〈◊〉 and your old Men shall dream Dreams and on my servants and on my Hand-maidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit and they shall prophesie It lay in general in revealing and making known to others the mind of God but discovered it self in particular instances partly in forctelling things to come and what should certainly happen in after-times a thing set beyond the reach of any finite understanding for though such effects as depend upon natural agents or moral and political causes may be foreseen by studious and considering persons yet the knowledge of futurities things purely contingent that meerly depend upon mens choice and their mutable and uncertain wills can only fall under his view who at once beholds things past present and to come Now this was conferred upon the Apostles and some of the first Christians as appears from many instances in the History of the Apostolick Acts and we find the Apostles writings frequently interspersed with prophetical predictions concerning the great apostasie from the 〈◊〉 the universal corruption and degeneracy of manners the rise of particular heresies the coming of Antichrist and several other things which the spirit said 〈◊〉 should come to pass in the latter times besides that S. John's whole Book of Revelation is almost intirely made up of prophecies concerning the future state and condition of the Church Sometimes by this spirit of prophecy God declared things that were of present concernment to the exigences of the Church as when he signified to them that they should set apart Paul and Barnabas for the conversion of the Gentiles and many times immediately designed particular persons to be Pastors and Governours of the Church Thus we read of the gift that was given to Timothy by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery that is his Ordination to which he was particularly pointed out by some prophetick designation But the main use of this prophetick gift in those times was to explain some of the more difficult and particular parts of the Christian doctrine especially to expound and apply the ancient prophecies concerning the 〈◊〉 and his Kingdom in their publick Assemblies whence the gift of prophecy is explained by understanding all mysteries and all knowledge that is the most dark and difficult places of Scripture the types and figures the ceremonies and prophecies of the Old Testament And thus we are commonly to understand those words Prophets and prophecying that so familiarly occur in the New Testament Having 〈◊〉 differing according to the grace that is given to us whether prophesie let us prophecy according to the proportion of faith that is expound Scripture according to the generally-received principles of Faith and Life So the Apostle elsewhere prescribing Rules for the decent and orderly managing of Divine worship in their publick Assemblies let the Prophets says he speak two or three that is at the same Assembly and let the other judge and if while any is thus expounding another has a Divine 〈◊〉 whereby he is more particularly enabled to explain some difficult and emergent
Christianity Indeed there is some cause why they are so zealous to keep both Scripture and their Divine Worship in a strange Language lest by reading the one the people should become wise enough to discover the gross errors and corruptions of the other Fifthly The Apostles had the gift of Healing of curing diseases without the arts of Physick the most inveterate distempers being equally removable by an Almighty power and vanishing at their speaking of a word This begot an extraordinary veneration for them and their Religion among the common sort of men who as they are strongliest moved with sensible effects so are most taken with those miracles that are beneficial to the life of man Hence the infinite Cures done in every place God mercifully providing that the Body should partake with the Soul in the advantages of the Gospel the cure of the one ushering in many times the conversion of the other This gift was very common in those early days bestowed not upon the Apostles only but the ordinary Governours of the Church who were wont to lay their hands upon the sick and sometimes to anoint them with oil a symbolick rite in use among the Jews to denote the grace of God and to pray over and for them in the name of the Lord Jesus whereby upon a hearty confession and forsaking of their sins both health and pardon were at once bestowed upon them How long this gift with its appendant ceremony of Unction lasted in the Church is not easie to determine that it was in use in Tertullian's time we learn from the instance he gives us of Proculus a Christian who cured the Emperor Severus by anointing him with oil for which the Emperor had him in great honour and kept him with him at Court all his life it afterwards vanishing by degrees as all other miraculous powers as Christianity gain'd firm sooting in the World As for Extreme 〈◊〉 so generally maintained and practised in the Church of Rome nay and by them made a Sacrament I doubt it will receive very little countenance from this Primitive usage Indeed could they as easily restore sick men to health as they can anoint them with oil I think no body would contradict them but till they can pretend to the one I think it unreasonable they should use the other The best is though founding it upon this Apostolical practice they have turn'd it to a quite contrary purpose instead of recovering men to life and health to dispose and fit them for dying when all hopes of life are taken from them XIII Sixthly The Apostles were invested with a power of immediately inflicting corporal punishments upon great and notorious sinners and this probably is that which he means by his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 operations of powers or working miracles which surely cannot be meant of miracles in general being reckoned up amongst the particular gifts of the Holy Ghost nor is there any other to which it can with equal probability refer A power to inflict diseases upon the body as when S. Paul struck Elymas the Sorcerer with blindness and sometimes extending to the loss of life it self as in the sad instance of Ananias and Saphira This was the Virga Apostolica the Rod mentioned by S. Paul which the Apostles held and shak'd over scandalous and insolent offenders and sometimes laid upon them What will ye shall I come to you with a rod or in love and the spirit of meekness Where observe says Chrysostom how the Apostle tempers his discourse the love and meekness and his desire to know argued care and kindness but the rod spake dread and terror a Rod of severity and punishment and which sometimes mortally chastised the offender Elsewhere he frequently gives intimations of this power when he has to deal with stubborn and incorrigible persons Having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled for though I should boast something more of our authority which the Lord hath given us for edification and not for your destruction I should not be ashamed that I may not seem as if I would terrifie you by letters And he again puts them in mind of it at the close of his Epistle I told you before and foretell you as if I were present the second time and being absent now I write to them which heretofore have sinned and to all others that if I come again I will not spare But he hop'd these smart warnings would supersede all further severity against them Therefore I write these things being absent lest being present I should use sharpness according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification and not to destruction Of this nature was the delivering over persons unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh the chastising the body by some present pain or sickness that the spirit might be saved by being brought to a seasonable repentance Thus he dealt with Hymeneus and Alexander who had made shipwrack of Faith and a good Conscience he delivered them unto Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme Nothing being more usual in those times than for 〈◊〉 excommunicate and cut off from the body of the Church to be presently arrested by Satan 〈◊〉 the common Serjeant and Executioner and by him either actually possessed or tormented in their bodies by some diseases which he brought upon them And indeed this severe discipline was no more than necessary in those times when Christianity was wholly destitute of any civil or coercive power to beget and keep up a due reverence and regard to the sentence and determinations of the Church and to secure the Laws of Religion and the holy censures from being sleighted by every bold and contumacious offender And this effect we find it had after the dreadful instance of 〈◊〉 and Saphira Great fear came upon all the Church and upon as many as heard these things To what has been said concerning these Apostolical gifts let me further observe That they had not only these gifts residing in themselves but a power to bestow them upon others so that by imposition of hands or upon hearing and embracing the Apostle's doctrine and being baptized into the Christian Faith they could confer these miraculous powers upon persons thus qualifisied to receive them whereby they were in a moment enabled to speak divers Languages to Prophecy to Interpret and do other miracles to the admiration and astonishment of all that heard and saw them A priviledge peculiar to the Apostles for we do not find that any inferiour Order of gifted persons were intrusted with it And therefore as Chrysostom well observes though Philip the Deacon wrought great miracles at Samaria to the conversion of many yea to the conviction of Simon Magus himself yet the Holy Ghost fell upon none of them only they were baptized in the Name of the Lord Jesus till Peter and John came down to them who having
engaged in the solemn celebration of Divine worship and binding his Feet with Cords dragged him through the streets and the most craggy places to the Bucelus a Precipice near the Sea and for that Night thrust him into Prison where his Soul was by a Divine Vision erected and encouraged under the ruines of his shattered Body Early the next Morning the Tragedy began again dragging him about in the same manner till his Flesh being raked off and his Blood run out his spirits failed and he expired But their malice died not with him Metaphrastes adds that they burnt his Body whose Bones and Ashes the Christians there decently intombed near the place where he was wont to Preach His Body at least the remains of it were afterwards with great pomp removed from Alexandria to Venice where they are religiously honoured and he adopted as the Tutelar Saint and Patron of that State and one of the richest and stateliest Churches erected to his Memory that the World can boast of at this Day He suffered in the Month Pharmuthi on the XXV of April though the certain Year of his Martyrdom is not precisely determined by the Ancients Kirstenius out of the Arabick Memoires of his Life says it was in the Fourteenth or the last Year of Claudius S. Hierom places it in the Eighth of Nero. But extravagantly wide is Dorotheus his computation who makes him to suffer in the time of Trajan with as much truth as Nicephorus on the other hand affirms him to have come into Egypt in the Reign of Tiberius If in so great variety of Opinions I may interpose my conjecture I should reckon him to have suffered about the end of Nero's Reign For supposing him to have come with S. Peter to Rome about the Fifth or Sixth Year of Nero he might thence be dispatched to Alexandria and spend the residue of his Life and of that Emperor's Reign in planting Christianity in those parts of the World Sure I am that Irenaeus reports S. Mark to have out-lived Peter and Paul and that after their decease he composed his Gospel out of those things which he had heard Peter preach But whatever becomes of that it is evident that Irenaeus supposed whose supposition certainly was not founded upon meer fancy and conjecture that S. Mark for some considerable time survived the Martyrdom of those two great Apostles A passage that so troubled Christophorson one of those who in these later Ages first translated Eusebius into Latin because crossing the accounts of their Writers in this matter that he chose rather to expunge the word decease and substitute another of a quite different sence expresly contrary to the faith of all ancient Copies and to the most ancient Version of Irenaeus it self But to return S. Mark as to his Person was of a middle size and stature his Nose long his Eye brows turning back his Eyes graceful and amiable his Head bald his Beard prolix and gray his Gate quick the constitution of his Body strong and healthful 5. HIS Gospel the only Book he left behind him was as before we observed written at the intreaty of the Converts at Rome who not content to have heard Peter preach pressed S. Mark his Disciple that he would commit to Writing an Historical account of what he had delivered to them which he performed with no less faithfulness than brevity all which S. Peter perused ratified with his Authority and commanded to be publickly read in their Religious Assemblies And though as we noted but now Irenaeus seems to intimate that it was written after Peter's death yet all that can be inferred hence will be what in it self is a matter of no great moment and importance that the Ancients were not agreed in assigning the exact time when the several Gospels were published to the World It was frequently stiled S. Peter's Gospel not so much because dictated by him to S. Mark as because he principally composed it out of that account which S. Peter usually delivered in his Discourses to the People Which probably is the reason of what Chrysostome observes that in his stile and manner of expression he delights to imitate S. Peter representing much in a few words Though he commonly reduces the story of our Saviour's Acts into a narrower compass than S. Matthew yet want there not passages which he relates more largely than he The last Chapter of his Gospel at least part of it was as Hierom informs us wanting in all ancient Greek Copies rejected upon pretence of some disagreement with the other Gospels though as he there shews they are fairly consistent with each other His great impartiality in his Relations appears from hence that he is so far from concealing the shameful lapse and denial of Peter his dear Tutor and Master that he sets it down with some particular circumstances and aggravations which the other Evangelists take no notice of Some dispute has been made in what Language it was written whether in Greek or Latin That which seems to give most countenance to the Latin Original is the note that we find at the end of the Syriac Version of this Gospel where it is said that Mark preached and declared his Holy Gospel at Rome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Roman or the Latin Tongue An evidence that with me would almost carry the force of a demonstration were I assured that this note is of equal value and authority with that Ancient Version generally supposed to come very few Centuries short of the Apostolick Age. But we know how usual it is for such additions to be made by some later hand And what credit is to be given to the subscriptions at the end of S. Paul's Epistles we have shewed elsewhere Besides that it is not here said that he wrote but that he Preached his Gospel at Rome in that Language The Advocates of the Romish Church plead that it 's very congruous and suitable that it should at first be consigned to Writing in that Language being principally designed for the use of the Christians at Rome An objection that will easily vanish when we consider that as the Convert Jewes there understood very little Latin so there were very few Romans that understood not Greek it being as appears from the Writers of that Age the gentile and fashionable Language of those Times Nor can any good reason be assigned why it should be more inconvenient for S. Mark to write his Gospel in Greek for the use of the Romans than that S. Paul should in the same Language write his Epistle to that Church The Original Greek Copy written with S. Mark' s own hand is said to be extant at Venice at this Day Written they tell us by him at Aquileia and thence after many Hundreds of Years translated to Venice where it is still preserved though the Letters so worn out with length of time that they are not capable of