this Jesus a power to apply his merits and obedience we are no whit the safer no whit the better only we are so much the wiser to understand who shall condemn us This piece of the clause was spoken like a Saint Jesus the Son of the most high God the other piece like a Devil What have I to doe with thee If the disclamation were universall the latter words would impugne the former for whiles he confesses Jesus to be the Son of the most high God he withall confesses his own inevitable subjection Wherefore would he beseech if he were not obnoxious He cannot he dare not say What hast thou to doe with me but What have I to doe with thee Others indeed I have vexed thee I fear In respect then of any violence of any personal provocation What have I to doe with thee And dost thou ask O thou evil spirit what hast thou to doe with Christ whiles thou vexest a servant of Christ Hast thou thy name from knowledge and yet so mistakest him whom thou confessest as if nothing could be done to him but what immediately concerns his own person Hear that great and just Judge sentencing upon his dreadfull Tribunal Inasmuch as thou didst it unto one of these little ones thou didst it unto me It is an idle misprision to sever the sense of an injury done to any of the Members from the Head He that had humility enough to kneel to the Son of God hath boldnesse enough to expostulate Art thou come to torment us before our time Whether it were that Satan who useth to enjoy the torment of sinners whose musick it is to hear our shrieks and gnashings held it no small piece of his torment to be restrained in the exercise of his tyranny or whether the very presence of Christ were his rack for the guilty spirit projecteth terrible things and cannot behold the Judge or the executioner without a renovation of horrour or whether that as himself professeth he were now in a fearfull expectation of being commanded down into the deep for a further degree of actual torment which he thus deprecates There are tortures appointed to the very spiritual natures of evil Angels Men that are led by Sense have easily granted the body subject to torment who yet have not so readily conceived this incident to a spiritual substance The Holy Ghost hath not thought it fit to acquaint us with the particular manner of these invisible acts rather willing that we should herein fear then enquire But as all matters of Faith though they cannot be proved by Reason for that they are in a higher sphere yet afford an answer able to stop the mouth of all Reason that dares bark against them since truth cannot be opposite to it self so this of the sufferings of Spirits There is therefore both an intentional torment incident to Spirits and a reall For as in Blessedness the good Spirits finde themselves joyned unto the chief good and hereupon feel a perfect love of God and unspeakable joy in him and rest in themselves so contrarily the evil Spirits perceive themselves eternally excluded from the presence of God and see themselves setled in a wofull darkness and from the sense of this separation arises an horrour not to be expressed not to be conceived How many men have we known to torment themselves with their own thoughts There needs no other gibbet then that which their troubled spirit hath erected in their own heart And if some pains begin at the Body and from thence afflict the Soul in a copartnership of grief yet others arise immediately from the Soul and draw the Body into a participation of misery Why may we not therefore conceive mere and separate Spirits capable of such an inward excruciation Besides which I hear the Judge of men and Angels say Goe ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels I hear the Prophet say Tophet is prepared of old If with fear and without curiosity we may look upon those flames why may we not attribute a spiritual nature to that more then natural fire In the end of the world the Elements shall be dissolved by fire and if the pure quintessential matter of the skie and the element of fire it self shall be dissolved by fire then that last fire shall be of another nature then that which it consumeth What hinders then but that the Omnipotent God hath from eternity created a fire of another nature proportionable even to Spiritual essences Or why may we not distinguish of fire as it is it self a bodily creature and as it is an instrument of Gods justice so working not by any material virtue or power of its own but by a certain height of supernatural efficacy to which it is exalted by the Omnipotence of that supreme and righteous Judge Or lastly why may we not conceive that though Spirits have nothing material in their nature which that fire should work upon yet by the judgement of the Almighty Arbiter of the world justly willing their torment they may be made most sensible of pain and by the obedible submission of their created nature wrought upon immediately by their appointed tortures besides the very horrour which ariseth from the place whereto they are everlastingly confined For if the incorporeal Spirits of living men may be held in a lothed or painful body and conceive sorrow to be so imprisoned why may we not as easily yield that the evil spirits of Angels or men may be held in those direfull flames and much more abhor therein to continue for ever Tremble rather O my Soul at the thought of this wofull condition of the evil Angels who for one onely act of Apostasie from God are thus perpetually tormented whereas we sinfull wretches multiply many and presumptuous offences against the Majesty of our God And withall admire and magnifie that infinite Mercy to the miserable generation of man which after this holy severity of justice to the revolted Angels so graciously forbears our hainous iniquities and both suffers us to be free for the time from these hellish torments and gives us opportunity of a perfect freedome from them for ever Praise the Lord O my Soul and all that is within me praise his holy Name who forgiveth all thy sins and healeth all thine infirmities who redeemeth thy life from destruction and crowneth thee with mercy and compassions There is no time wherein the evil spirits are not tormented there is a time wherein they exspect to be tormented yet more Art thou come to torment us before our time They knew that the last Assises are the prefixed terme of their full execution which they also understood to be not yet come For though they knew not when the Day of Judgement should be a point concealed from the glorious Angels of Heaven yet they knew when it should not be and therefore they say Before the time Even the very evil spirits confesse and fearfully attend a set
earth then in a state of sin Be changed therefore if ye wish well to your own Souls that it may be said of you in S. Paul's words Such ye were What an enemy would upbraid by way of reproch is the greatest praise that can be Faults that were Oh happy men that can hear Ye were profane unclean idolatrous oppressive riotous Their very sins honour them as the very Devils that Mary Magdalen had are mentioned for her glory since we do not hear of them but when they were cast out As there are some carelesse nasty creatures that can abide to weare none but their old patched sordid rags such as that miscreant Cistercian Spanish Deist whom we saw walk in and pollute our streets men that out of sullennesse or affection are habited as the Gibeonites were out of craft so there are spiritually such natural men yea natural fools that please themselves in a false constancy and brag they are no changelings whose glory is their shame whose end if they go on so is damnation Let the great Bridegroom come in and finde one of these crept into his Feast he shall be sure to send him out with a mischief How camest thou in hither Binde him hand and foot and cast him into utter darkness there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Mat. 22. 13. Away with this frippery of our Nature Old things are passed if ever we look to have any party in God in Heaven we must be changed But secondly every change will not serve the turn The word is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 alteration nor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but Metamorphosis a word whose sound we are better acquainted with then the sense the meaning is There must be a change in our very form There is no motion no action we passe through without a change as there is no step wherein we change not our Meridian so there is no act which works not some mutation in us But there are slight changes wherein the places habits actions vary without any change of the form as Caelum non animum was an old word and we know the Body is the same whiles the Sutes are divers And again there are changes that reach to the very forms whence all actions arise as when of evil we are made good of carnal spiritual This is the Metamorphosis that is here called for Indeed it hath been a not more antient then true observation that the change of some things makes all things seem changed as when a man comes into an house wherein the partitions are pulled down the roof raised up the floor paved bay-windows set out the out-side rough-cast he shall think all the frame new and yet the old foundation beams studs roof stand still so it is here the very substance of the Soul holds still but the Dispositions and qualities and the very cast of it are altered as when a round piece of past is formed into a square or which is the highest of all patterns as our Blessed Saviour was transformed in the Mount Tabor His Deity was the same his Humanity the same the same Soul the same body yet he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is the very word that the Holy Ghost uses both there and here in that the Deity did put a glorious splendor upon his humane body which before it had not Thus it must be in our Transformation onwards the Spirit of God doth thus alter us through Grace whiles we are yet for essence the same Can a Leopard change his spots or a Blackmore his skin saith the Prophet See I beseech you how this change is not easie though not substantial The spots are not of the essence of that beast the blackness is not of the essence of an Aethiopian yet how hard these are to put off we know Our Mythologists tell us of many strange Metamorphoses of men turn'd into Beasts Birds Trees wherein doubtlesse they had morall allusions Let me tell you of a Metamorphosis as strange as theirs and as true as theirs fabulous They tell us of men turn'd into Swine by Circe I tell you of Swine turn'd into men when Drunkards and obscene persons turn sober and well-governed They tell you of men turn'd into Stones and of stones turn'd into men immediately upon their Deluge I tell you that of very stones Sons are raised up to Abraham They tell us of a Lycaon turn'd into a Wolf I tell you of a Wolf turn'd into a man when a ravenous Oppressor turns mercifull They tell us of men turn'd into Oaks and Rocks I tell you of the oaky rocky flinty hearts of men turn'd into flesh as Ezekiel speaks They tell us of an Actaeon turn'd into the beast which he loved to hunt and devoured of those beasts wherewith he was wont to hunt I tell you of a voluptuous beast abandoning those pleasures which had wont to spend him They tell us of a self-loving man turn'd to a Flower I tell you of a fading transitory creature changed into the image of the Son of God They tell us of a Proteus turn'd into all forms I tell you of a man of all hours all companies all religions turn'd into a constant Confessour and Martyr for the name of Christ They tell us lastly of their Jupiter and other Deities turn'd into the shape of beasts for the advantage of their Lust I tell of men naturally of a bestial disposition made the Sons of God partakers of the Divine nature as the Apostle speaketh These changes are not imaginary as in the case of Lycanthropie and delusions of jugling Sorcerers but reall and unfeigned truly wrought by God truly felt by us truly seen by others Not that we can alwaies judge of these things by the mere outsides for even Satan himself is transformed into an Angel of light neither do any faces look fairer then the painted But ex fructibus is the rule of our Saviour that will trie out the truth of all our Transformations Let us not flatter our selves Honourable beloved we are all born Wolves Bears Tigers Swine one beast or other It must needs be a notable change if of beasts we become men of men Saints Thus it must be else we are not transformed Neither is this transformation reall only but totall not resting in the parts but enlarged to the whole person and therefore the charge is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Be ye transformed not some pieces of you but the whole There are those which are changed in the face that look civil at least if not Saint-like but their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness and blasphemies There are those whose tongues are smooth-filed abounding not only with plausible words but holy and seemingly gracious too when their right hand is a right hand of wickedness If they have the faces and tongues of men they have the talons of Grisons full of rapine cruelty oppression There are those whose one half the upper part is man the lower is still Centaur-like
of a Blinde man ib. MED LVIII Upon a Beech-tree full of Nuts 470 MED LIX Upon the sight of a piece of Money under the Water ib. MED LX. Upon the first rumour of the Earthquake at Lime wherein a Wood was swallowed up with the fall of two Hills ib. MED LXI Upon the sight of a Dormouse 471 MED LXII Upon Bees fighting ib. MED LXIII Upon Wasps falling into a Glass ib. MED LXIV Upon a Spring in the wilde Forest 472 MED LXV Upon the sight of an Owle in the twilight ibid. MED LXVI Upon an Arm benummed 473 MED LXVII Upon the Sparks flying upward ib. MED LXVIII Upon the sight of a Raven ib. MED LXIX Upon a Worm 474 MED LXX Upon the putting on of his Cloaths ibid. MED LXXI Upon the sight of a great Library ibid. MED LXXII Upon the red Cross on a Door 475 MED LXXIII Upon the change of Weather ib. MED LXXIV Upon the sight of a Marriage ib. MED LXXV Upon the sight of a Snake 476 MED LXXVI Upon the Ruines of an Abby ib. MED LXXVII Upon the discharging of a Peece 477 MED LXXVIII Upon the tolling of a passing-Bell ib. MED LXXIX Upon a Defamation dispersed 478 MED LXXX Upon a ring of Bells ib. MED LXXXI Upon the sight of a full Table at a Feast ib. MED LXXXII Upon the hearing of a Lute well played on 479 MED LXXXIII Upon the sight and noise of a Peacock ib. MED LXXXIV Upon a penitent Malefactor ibid. MED LXXXV Upon the sight of a Lilly 480 MED LXXXVI Upon the sight of a Coffin stuck with Flowers ib. MED LXXXVII Upon the view of the World ib. MED LXXXVIII Upon the stinging of a Wasp 481 MED LXXXIX Upon the Arraignment of a Felon ib. MED XC Upon the Crowing of a Cock 482 MED XCI Upon the variety of Thoughts ib. MED XCII Upon the sight of an Harlot carted ibid. MED XCIII Upon the smell of a Rose 483 MED XCIV Upon a cancelled Bond. ib. MED XCV Upon the report of a great losse by Sea ib. MED XCVI Upon sight of a bright Skie full of Stars 484 MED XCVII Upon the rumours of Wars ib. MED XCVIII Upon a Childe crying 485 MED XCIX Upon the beginning of a Sicknesse ibid. MED C. Upon the challenge of a Promise 486 MED CI. Upon the sight of Flies ib. MED CII Upon the sight of a fantasticall Zelot ib. MED CIII Upon the sight of a Scavenger working in the Canell 487 MED CIV Upon a pair of Spectacles ib. MED CV Upon Moats in the Sun ib. MED CVI. Upon the sight of a Bladder ib. MED CVII Upon a man Sleeping 488 MED CVIII Upon the sight of a Deaths-head ib. MED CIX Upon the sight of a Left-handed man ib. MED CX Upon the sight of an old unthatched Cottage 489. MED CXI Upon the sight of a fair Pearl ib. MED CXII Upon a Screen ib. MED CXIII Upon a Bur-leaf ib. MED CXIV Upon the Singing of a Bird. ib. MED CXV Upon the sight of a man Yawning 490 MED CXVI Upon the sight of a Tree lopped ib. MED CXVII Upon a Scholar that offered violence to himself ib. MED CXVIII Upon the coming in of the Judge 491 MED CXIX Upon the sight of an Heap of stones ibid. MED CXX Upon sight of a Bat and Owle ib. MED CXXI Upon the sight of a well-fleeced Sheep 492 MED CXXII Upon the hearing of Thunder ib. MED CXXIII Upon the sight of an Hedg-hog ib. MED CXXIV Upon the sight of a Goat 493 MED CXXV Upon the sight of the Blinde and the Lame ib. MED CXXVI Upon the sight of a Map of the World ib. MED CXXVII Upon the sight of Hemlock 494 MED CXXVIII Upon a Flower-de-luce ib. MED CXXIX Upon the sight of two Trees one high the other broad ib. MED CXXX Upon the sight of a Drunken man ibid. MED CXXXI Upon the whetting of a Sithe 495 MED CXXXII Upon the sight of a Looking-glass ibid. MED CXXXIII Upon the shining of a piece of Rotten wood ib. MED CXXXIV Upon an Ivie tree 496 MED CXXXV Upon a Quartan ague ib. MED CXXXVI Upon the sight of a loaded Cart. ibid. MED CXXXVII Upon the sight of a Dwarf 497 MED CXXXVIII Upon an importunate Begger ibid. MED CXXXIX Upon a Medicinal potion ib. MED CXL Upon the sight of a Wheel 498 Occasionall MEDITATIONS I. Upon the sight of the Heavens moving I Can see nothing stand still but the Earth all other things are in motion Even the Water which makes up one Globe with the Earth is ever stirring in ebbes and flowings the Clouds over my head the Heavens above the clouds these as they are most conspicuous so are they the greatest patterns of perpetuall action What should we rather imitate then this glorious frame O God when we pray that thy will may be done in Earth as it is in Heaven though we mean chiefly the Inhabitants of that place yet we do not exclude the very Place of those Blessed inhabitants from being an example of our Obedience The motion of this thy Heaven is perpetuall so let me ever be acting somewhat of thy will the motion of thy Heaven is regular never swerving from the due points so let me ever walk steddily in the wayes of thy will without all diversions or variations from the line of thy Law In the motion of thine Heaven though some Stars have their own peculiar and contrary courses yet all yield themselves to the sway of the main circumvolution of that First mover so though I have a will of mine own yet let me give my self over to be ruled and ordered by thy Spirit in all my waies Man is a little World my Soul is Heaven my Body is Earth if this Earth be dull and fixed yet O God let my Heaven like unto thine move perpetually regularly and in a constant subjection to thine Holy Ghost II. Upon the sight of a Diall IF the Sun did not shine upon this Diall no body would look at it in a cloudy day it stands like an uselesse post unheeded unregarded but when once those beams break forth every passenger runs to it and gazes on it O God whiles thou hidest thy countenance from me methinks all thy Creatures passe by me with a willing neglect indeed what am I without thee And if thou have drawn in me some lines and notes of able endowments yet if I be not actuated by thy Grace all is in respect of use no bettter then nothing But when thou renewest the light of thy loving countenance upon me I finde a sensible and happy change of condition methinks all things look upon me with such chear and observance as if they meant to make good that Word of thine Those that honour me I will honour now every line and figure which it hath pleased thee to work in me serve for usefull and profitable direction O Lord all the glory is thine give thou me light I shall give others information both of us shall give thee praise III.
Saviour was not without the intention of a tryal Had not the Ruler gone home satisfied with that intimation of his sons life and recovery neither of them had been blessed with success Now the news of performance meets him one half of the way and he that believed somewhat ere he came and more when he went grew to more faith in the way and when he came home inlarged his faith to all the skirts of his family A weak faith may be true but a true faith is growing He that boasts of a full stature in the first moment of his assent may presume but doth not believe Great men cannot want Clients their Example swaies some their Authority more they cannot goe to either of the other worlds alone In vain do they pretend power over others who labour not to draw their Families unto God The Dumb Devil ejected THat the Prince of our Peace might approve his victories perfect wheresoever he met with the Prince of Darkness he foiled him he ejected him He found him in Heaven thence did he throw him headlong and verified his Prophet I have cast thee out of mine holy mountain And if the Devils left their first habitation it was because being Devils they could not keep it Their estate indeed they might have kept and did not their habitation they would have kept and might not How art thou faln from Heaven O Lucifer He found him in the heart of man for in that closet of God did the evil spirit after his exile from Heaven shrowd himself Sin gave him possession which he kept with a willing violence thence he casts him by his Word and Spirit He found him tyrannizing in the bodies of some possessed men and with power commands the unclean spirits to depart This act is for no hand but his When a strong man keeps possession none but a stronger can remove him In voluntary things the strongest may yield to the weakest Sampson to a Dalilah but in violent ever the mightiest carries it A spiritual nature must needs be in rank above a bodily neither can any power be above a Spirit but the God of Spirits No otherwise is it in the mental possession Whereever sin is there Satan is as on the contrary whosoever is born of God the seed of God remains in him That Evil one not onely is but rules in the sons of disobedience in vain shall we try to eject him but by the Divine power of the Redeemer For this cause the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the Devil Do we finde our selves haunted with the familiar Devils of Pride Self-love Sensual desires Unbelief None but thou O Son of the ever-living God can free our bosoms of these hellish guests Oh clense thou me from my secret sins and keep me that presumptuous sins prevail not over me O Saviour it is no Paradox to say that thou castest out more Devils now then thou didst whiles thou wert upon earth It was thy word When I am lifted up I will draw all men unto me Satan weighs down at the feet thou pullest at the head yea at the heart In every conversion which thou workest there is a dispossession Convert me O Lord and I shall be converted I know thy means are now no other then ordinary If we exspect to be dispossessed by miracle it would be a miracle if ever we were dispossessed Oh let thy Gospel have the perfect work in me so onely shall I be delivered from the powers of darkness Nothing can be said to be dumb but what naturally speaks nothing can speak naturally but what hath the instruments of speech which because spirits want they can no otherwise speak vocally then as they take voices to themselves in taking bodies This Devil was not therefore dumb in his nature but in his effect The man was dumb by the operation of that Devil which possessed him and now the action is attributed to the spirit which was subjectively in the man It is not you that speak faith our Saviour but the spirit of your Father that speaketh in you As it is in bodily Diseases that they do not infect us alike some seize upon the humours others upon the spirits some assalt the brain others the heart or lungs so in bodily and spiritual possessions in some the evil spirit takes away their senses in some their lims in some their inward faculties like as spiritually they affect to move us unto several sins one to lust another to covetousness or ambition another to cruelty and their names have distinguished them according to these various effects This was a dumb Devil which yet had possessed not the tongue only of this man but his ear not that only but as it seems his eyes too O subtile and tyrannous spirit that obstructs all wayes to the Soul that keeps out all means of Grace both from the door and windows of the heart yea that stops up all passages whether of ingress or egress of ingress at the eye or eare of egress at the mouth that there might be no capacity of redress What holy use is there of our tongue but to praise our Maker to confess our sins to inform our brethren How rife is this Dumb Devil every where whiles he stops the mouths of Christians from these useful and necessary duties For what end hath man those two privileges above his fellow-creatures Reason and Speech but that as by the one he may conceive of the great works of his Maker which the rest cannot so by the other he may express what he conceives to the honour of the Creator both of them and himself And why are all other creatures said to praise God and bidden to praise him but because they do it by the apprehension by the expression of man If the Heavens declare the glory of God how doe they it but to the eyes and by the tongue of that man for whom they were made It is no small honour whereof the envious spirit shall rob his Maker if he can close up the mouth of his onely rational and vocal creature and turn the best of his workmanship into a dumb Idol that hath a mouth and speaks not Lord open thou my lips and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise Praise is not more necessary then complaint praise of God then complaint of our selves whether to God or men The onely amends we can make to God when we have not had the grace to avoid sinne is to confess the sinne we have not avoided This is the sponge that wipes out all the blots and blurs of our lives If we confess our sinnes he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness That cunning man-slayer knows there is no way to purge the sick soul but upward by casting out the vicious humour wherewith it is clogged and therefore holds the lips close that the heart may not disburden it self by so wholesome evacuation When
waters and they could not but obey him now he speaks in the same language to the evil Spirit he intreats not he perswades not he commands Command argues Superiority He only is infinitely stronger then the strong one in possession Else where powers are matcht though with some inequality they tugge for the victory and without resistance yield nothing There are no fewer sorts of 〈◊〉 with Satan then with men Some have dealt with him by suit as the old Satanian hereticks and the present Indian Savages sacrificing to him that he hurt not Others by covenant conditioning their service upon his assistance as Witches and Magicians Others by insinuation of implicite compact as Charmers and Figure-casters Others by adjuration as the sons of Scaeva and modern Exorcists unwarrantably charging him by an higher name then their own None ever offered to deal with Satan by a direct and primary command but the God of Spirits The great Archangel when the strife was about the body of Moses commanded not but imprecated rather The Lord rebuke thee Satan It is only the God that made this Spirit an Angel of light that can command him now that he hath made himself the Prince of darkness If any created power dare to usurp a word of command he laughs at their presumption and knows them his vassals whom he dissembles to fear as his Lords It is thou only O Saviour at whose beck those stubborn Principalities of Hell yield and tremble No wicked man can be so much a slave to Satan as Satan is to thee The interposition of thy grace may defeat that dominion of Satan thy rule is absolute and capable of no lett What need we to fear whiles we are under so omnipotent a Commander The waves of the deep rage horribly yet the Lord is stronger then they Let those Principalities and Powers doe their worst Those mighty adversaries are under the command of him who loved us so well as to bleed for us What can we now doubt of His power or his will How can we professe him a God and doubt of his power How can we professe him a Saviour and doubt of his will He both can and will command those Infernal powers We are no lesse safe then they are malicious The Devil saw Jesus by the eyes of the Demoniack for the same saw that spake but it was the ill spirit that said I besecch thee torment me not It was sore against his will that he saw so dreadfull an object The over-ruling power of Christ dragged the soul spirit into his presence Guiltiness would fain keep out of sight The limmes of so wofull an head shall once call on the Hills and Rocks to hide them from the face of the Lamb such Lion-like terrour is in that milde face when it looks upon wickedness Neither shall it be one day the least part of the torment of the damned to see the most lovely spectacle that Heaven can afford He from whom they fled in his offers of Grace shall be so much more terrible as he was and is more gracious I marvel not therefore that the Devil when he saw Jesus cried out I could marvell that he fell down that he worshipped him That which the proud spirit would have had Christ to have done to him in his great Duell the same he now doth unto Christ fearfully servilely forcedly Who shall henceforth brag of the external homage he performs to the Son of God when he sees Satan himself fall down and worship What comfort can there be in that which is common to us with Devils who as they believe and tremble so they tremble and worship The outward bowing is the body of the action the disposition of the Soul is the soul of it therein lies the difference from the counterfeit stoopings of wicked men and spirits The religious heart serves the Lord in fear and rejoices in him with trembling What it doth is in way of service In service to his Lord whose Soveraignty is his comfort and protection in the fear of a son not of a slave in fear tempered with joy in a joy but allayed with trembling whereas the prostration of wicked men and Devils is only an act of form or of force as to their Judge as to their tormentor not as to their Lord in mere servility not in reverence in an uncomfortable dulness without all delight in a perfect horror without capacity of joy These worship without thanks because they fall down without the true affections of worship Whoso marvels to see the Devil upon his knees would much more marvel to hear what came from his mouth Jesu the Son of the most high God A confession which if we should hear without the name of the Author we should ask from what Saint it came Behold the same name given to Christ by the Devil which was formerly given him by the Angel Thou shalt call his name Jesus That awfull name whereat every knee shall bow in Heaven in earth and under the earth is called upon by this prostrate Devil And lest that should not import enough since others have been honoured by this name in Type he addes for full distinction The Son of the most high God The good Syrophenician and blind Bartimaeus could say The Son of David It was well to acknowledge the true descent of his pedigree according to the flesh but this infernall Spirit looks aloft and fetcheth his line out of the highest Heavens The Son of the most high God The famous confession of the prime Apostle which honoured him with a new name to immortality was no other then Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God and what other do I hear from the lips of a fiend None more Divine words could fall from the highest Saint Nothing hinders but that the veriest miscreant on earth yea the foulest Devil in Hell may speak holily It is no passing of judgment upon loose sentences So Peter should have been cast for a Satan in denying forswearing cursing and the Devil should have been set up for a Saint in confessing Jesus the Son of the most high God Fond hypocrite that pleasest thy self in talking well heare this Devil and when thou canst speak better then he look to fare better but in the mean time know that a smooth tongue and a foul heart carries away double judgments Let curious heads dispute whether the Devil knew Christ to be God In this I dare believe himself though in nothing else he knew what he believed what he believed that he confessed Jesus the Son of the most high God To the confusion of those semi-Christians that have either held doubtfully or ignorantly mis-known or blasphemously denied what the very Devils have professed How little can a bare speculation avail us in these cases of Divinity So far this Devil hath attained to no ease no comfort Knowledge alone doth but puffe up it is our love that edifies If there be not a sense of our sure interest in
day of universal Sessions They believe lesse then Devils that either doubt of or deny that day of finall retribution Oh the wonderfull mercy of our God that both to wicked men and spirits respites the utmost of their torment He might upon the first instant of the fall of Angels have inflicted on them the highest extremity of his vengeance He might upon the first sins of our youth yea of our nature have swept us away and given us our portion in that fierie lake He staies a time for both though with this difference of mercy to us men that here not onely is a delay but may be an utter prevention of punishment which to the evil spirits is altogether impossible They do suffer they must suffer and though they have now deserved to suffer all they must yet they must once suffer more then they do Yet so doth this evil spirit expostulate that he sues I beseech thee torment me not The world is well changed since Satan's first onset upon Christ Then he could say If thou be the Son of God now Jesu the Son of the most high God then All these will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me now I beseech thee torment me not The same power when he lists can change the note of the Tempter to us How happy are we that have such a Redeemer as can command the Devils to their chains Oh consider this ye lawlesse sinners that have said Let us break his bonds and cast his cords from us However the Almighty suffers you for a judgement to have free scope to evil and ye can now impotently resist the revealed will of your Creator yet the time shall come when ye shall see the very masters whom ye have served the powers of darkness unable to avoid the revenges of God How much lesse shall man strive with his Maker man whose breath is in his nostrils whose house is clay whose foundation is the dust Nature teaches every creature to wish a freedome from pain The foulest spirits cannot but love themselves and this love must needs produce a deprecation of evil Yet what a thing is this to hear the Devil at his prayers I beseech thee torment me not Devotion is not guilty of this but fear There is no grace in the suit of Devils but nature no respect of Glory to their Creator but their own ease They cannot pray against sin but against torment for sin What news is it now to hear the profanest mouth in extremity imploring the Sacred Name of God when the Devils do so The worst of all creatures hates punishment and can say Lead me not into pain onely the good heart can say Lead me not into temptation If we can as heartily pray against sin for the avoiding of displeasure as against punishment when we have displeased there is true Grace in the Soul Indeed if we could fervently pray against Sin we should not need to pray against Punishment which is no other then the inseparable shadow of that body but if we have not laboured against our Sins in vain do we pray against Punishment God must be just and the wages of sin is death It pleased our Holy Saviour not only to let fall words of command upon this spirit but to interchange some speeches with him All Christ's actions are not for example It was the errour of our Grandmother to hold chat with Satan That God who knows the craft of that old Serpent and our weak simplicity hath charged us not to enquire of an evil spirit Surely if the Disciples returning to Jacob's Well wondred to see Christ talk with a woman well may we wonder to see him talking with an unclean Spirit Let it be no presumption O Saviour to ask upon what grounds thou didst this wherein we may not follow thee We know that sin was excepted in thy conformity of thy self to us we know there was no guile found in thy mouth no possibility of taint in thy nature in thine actions neither is it hard to conceive how the same thing may be done by thee without sin which we cannot but sin in doing There is a vast difference in the intention in the Agent For on the one side thou didst not ask the name of the spirit as one that knew not and would learn by inquiring but that by the confession of that mischief which thou pleasedst to suffer the grace of the Cure might be the more conspicuous the more glorious So on the other God and man might doe that safely which mere man cannot doe without danger Thou mightest touch the Leprosie and not be legally unclean because thou touchedst it to heal it didst not touch it with possibility of infection So mightest thou who by reason of the perfection of thy Divine nature wert uncapable of any stain by the interlocution with Satan safely conferre with him whom corrupt man pre-disposed to the danger of such a parlee may not meddle with without sin because not without perill It is for none but God to hold discourse with Satan Our surest way is to have as little to doe with that Evil one as we may and if he shall offer to maintain conference with us by his secret Tentations to turn our speech unto our God with the Archangel The Lord rebuke thee Satan It was the presupposition of him that knew it that not onely men but spirits have names This then he asks not out of an ignorance or curiosity nothing could be hid from him who calleth the Stars and all the hoasts of Heaven by their names but out of a just respect to the glory of the Miracle he was working whereto the notice of the name would not a little avail For if without inquiry or confession our Saviour had ejected this evil spirit it had passed for the single dispossession of one onely Devil whereas now it appears there was a combination and hellish champertie in these powers of darknesse which were all forced to vaile unto that Almighty command Before the Devil had spoken singularly of himself What have I to doe with thee and I beseech thee torment me not Our Saviour yet knowing that there was a multitude of Devils lurking in that breast who dissembled their presence wrests it out of the Spirit by this interrogation What is thy name Now can those wicked ones no longer hide themselves He that asked the question forced the answer My name is Legion The author of discord hath borrowed a name of war from that military order of discipline by which the Jews were subdued doth the Devil fetch his denomination They were many yet they say My name not Our name though many they speak as one they act as one in this possession There is a marvellous accordance even betwixt evil spirits That Kingdome is not divided for then it could not stand I wonder not that wicked men do so conspire in evil that there is such unanimity in the broachers and abettors of errors
the leg when they intend it at the head so doth this Devil whiles he drives at the Swine he aimes at the Souls of these Gadarens by this means he hoped well and his hope was not vain to work in these Gergesens a discontentment at Christ an unwillingnesse to entertain him a desire of his absence he meant to turn them into Swine by the losse of their Swine It was not the rafters or stones of the house of Job's children that he bore the grudge to but to the owners nor to the lives of the children so much as the Soul of their Father There is no Affliction wherein he doth not strike at the heart which whiles it holds free all other damages are light but a wounded spirit whether with sin or sorrow who can bear Whatever becomes of goods or limmes happy are we if like wise souldiers we guard the vital parts Whiles the Soul is kept sound from impatience from distrust our Enemy may afflict us he cannot hurt us They sue for a sufferance not daring other then to grant that without the permission of Christ they could not hurt a very Swine If it be fearfull to think how great things evil spirits can doe with permission it is comfortable to think how nothing they can doe without permission We know they want not malice to destroy the whole frame of God's work but of all man of all men Christians but if without leave they cannot set upon an Hog what can they doe to the living Images of their Creator They cannot offer us so much as a suggestion without the permission of our Saviour And can he that would give his own most precious blood for us to save us from evil wilfully give us over to evil It is no news that wicked spirits wish to do mischief it is news that they are allowed it If the owner of all things should stand upon his absolute command who can challenge him for what he thinks fit to doe with his creature The first Fole of the Asse is commanded under the Law to have his neck broken What is that to us The creatures doe that they were made for if they may serve any way to the glory of their Maker But seldome ever doth God leave his actions unfurnished with such reasons as our weaknesse may reach unto There were Sects amongst these Jews that denied Spirits They could not be more evidently more powerfully convinced then by this event Now shall the Gadarens see from what a multitude of Devils they were delivered and how easie it had been for the same power to have allowed these Spirits to seize upon their Persons as well as their Swine Neither did God this without a just purpose of their castigation His Judgements are righteous where they are most secret Though we cannot accuse these inhabitants of ought yet he could and thought good thus to mulct them And if they had not wanted Grace to acknowledge it it was no small favour of God that he would punish them in their Swine for that which he might have avenged upon their Bodies and Souls Our Goods are furthest off us If but in these we smart we must confesse to finde mercy Sometimes it pleaseth God to grant the suits of wicked men and spirits in no favour to the suitors He grants an ill suit and withholds a good He grants an ill suit in Judgement and holds back a good one in Mercy The Israelites ask meat he gives Quailes to their mouths and leannesse to their Souls The chosen vessel wishes Satan taken off and hears only My grace is sufficient for thee We may not evermore measure favours by condescent These Devils doubtless receive more punishment for that harmfull act wherein they are heard If we ask what is either unfit to receive or unlawfull to beg it is a great favour of our God to be denied Those spirits which would go into the Swine by permission go out of the man by command they had staied long and are ejected suddenly The immediate works of God are perfect in an instant and do not require the aid of time for their maturation No sooner are they cast out of the man then they are in the Swine They will lose no time but passe without intermission from one mischief to another If they hold it a pain not to be doing evil why is it not our delight to be ever doing good The impetuousnesse was no lesse then the speed The Herd was carried with violence from a steep-down place into the lake and was choaked It is no small force that could doe this but if the Swine had been so many Mountains these spirits upon God's permission had thus transported them How easily can they carry those Souls which are under their power to destruction Unclean beasts that wallow in the mire of sensuality brutish Drunkards transforming themselves by excesse even they are the Swine whom the Legion carries headlong to the pit of perdition The wicked spirits have their wish the Swine are choked in the waves What ease is this to them Good God that there should be any creature that seeks contentment in destroying in tormenting the good creatures of his Maker This is the diet of Hell Those Fiends feed upon spight towards man so much more as he doth more resemble his Creator towards all other living substances so much more as they may be more usefull to man The Swine ran down violently what marvell is it if their Keepers fled That miraculous work which should have drawn them to Christ drives them from him They run with the news the Country comes in with clamour The whole multitude of the Country about besought him to depart The multitude is a beast of many heads every head hath a several mouth and every mouth a several tongue and every tongue a several accent every head hath a several brain and every brain thoughts of their own so as it is hard to find a multitude without some division At least seldome ever hath a good motion found a perfect accordance it is not so infrequent for a multitude to conspire in evil Generality of assent is no warrant for any act Cōmon Errour carries away many who inquire not into the reason of ought but the practice The way to Hell is a beaten road through the many feet that tread it When Vice grows into fashion Singularity is a Vertue There was not a Gadarene found that either dehorted his fellows or opposed the motion It is a sign of people given up to judgment when no man makes head against projects of evil Alas what can one strong man do against a whole throng of wickednesse Yet this good comes of an unprevailing resistance that God forbears to plague where he findes but a sprinkling of Faith Happy are they who like unto the celestial bodies which being carried about with the sway of the highest sphere yet creep on their own waies keep on the courses of their own Holiness against the
God In vain shall the vassals of appetite challenge to be the servants of God Were it that the Kingdome of God did consist in eating and drinking in pampering and surfeits in chambering and wantonnesse in pranking and vanity in talk and ostentation O God how rich shouldst thou be of subjects of Saints But if it require abstinence humiliation contrition of heart subjugation of our flesh renunciation of our wills serious impositions of laboursome devotions O Lord what is become of true Christianity where shall we seek for a crucified man Look to our Tables there ye shall finde excesse and riot look to our Backs there ye shall finde proud disguises look to our Conversations there ye shall finde scurril and obscene jollity This liberty yea this licentiousnesse is that which opens the mouths of our adversaries to the censure of our reall impiety That slander which Julian could cast upon Constantine that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 led him to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 delicacie to intemperance the very same do they cast upon us They tell us of their strict Lents frequent Fastings Canonical hours sharp Penances their bashfull shrists their painfull scourgings their solitary Cells their woolward and barefoot walks their hard and tedious pilgrimages whiles we they say deny nothing to back or belly fare full lie soft sit warm and make a wanton of the flesh whiles we professe to tend the spirit Brethren hear a little the words of exhortation The brags of their penal will-worship shall no whit move us All this is blown away with a Baal's Priests did more then they yet were never the holier But for our selves in the fear of God see that we do not justifie their crimination Whiles they are in one extreme placing all Religion in the out-side in Touch not taste not handle not let us not be in the other not regarding the external acts of due Humiliation It is true that it is more ease to afflict the body then to humble the Soul a dram of remorse is more then an ounce of pain O God if whippings and hair-cloaths and watchings would satisfie thy displeasure who would not sacrifice the blood of this vassall his Body to expiate the sin of his Soul who would not scrub his skin to ease his Conscience who would not freez upon an hurdle that he might not frie in hell who would not hold his eyes open to avoid an eternall unrest and torment But such sacrifices and oblations O God thou desirest not The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit a broken and a contrite heart O God thou wilt not despise Yet it is as true that it is more easie to counterfeit mortification of spirit then humiliation of body there is pain in the one none in the other He that cares not therefore to pull down his body will much lesse care to humble his Soul and he that spares not to act meet and due penalties upon the Flesh gives more colour of the Souls humiliation Dear Christians it is not for us to stand upon niggardly terms with our Maker he will have both he that made both will have us crucified in both The old man doth not lie in a lim or faculty but is diffused through the whole extent of Body and Soul and must be crucified in all that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the chosen vessel I beat down my body my body as well as my spirit Give me leave ye Courtiers and Citizens Lent is wont to be a penitential time If ye have soundly and effectually thriven your selves to your God let me enjoyn you an wholsome and saving Penance for the whole year for your whole life Ye must curb your appetites ye must fast ye must stint your selves to your painfull Devotions ye must give peremptory denials to your own wills ye must put your knife to your throat in Solomon's sense Think not that ye can climb up to Heaven with full panches reaking ever of Indian smoak and the surfeits of your gluttonous crammings and quaffings Oh easie and pleasant way to Glory from our bed to our glasse from our glasse to our boord from our dinner to our pipe from our pipe to a visit from a visit to a supper from a supper to a play from a play to a banquet from a banquet to our bed Oh remember the quarrel against damned Dives He fared sumptuously every day he made neither Lents nor Embers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he said every day was gaudie and festival in rich sutes in dainty morsels and full draughts Intus mulso foris oleo Wine within oyle without as he said now all the world for a drop and it is too little Vae saturis woc to the full saith our Saviour but even Nature it self could abominate bis de die saturum one that is full twice a day One of the sins of our Sodom is fulnesse of bread What is the remedy It is an old word that Hunger cures the diseases of Gluttony Oh that my words could prevail so far with you Honourable and beloved Christians as to bring austere abstinence and sober moderation into fashion The Court and City have led the way to excesse your example shall prescribe yea administer the remedy The Heathen man could say He is not worthy of the name of a man that would be a whole day in pleasure what and we alwaies In fasting often saith S. Paul what and we never I fast twice a week saith the Pharisee and we Christians when I speak not of Popish mock-fasts in change not in forbearance in change of courser cates of the land for the curious dainties of the water of the flesh of beasts for the flesh of fish of untoothsome morsels for sorbitiunculoe delicatoe as Hierome calls them Let me never feast if this be fasting I speak of a true and serious maceration of our bodies by an absolute and totall refraining from sustenance which howsoever in it self it be not an act pleasing unto God for well may I invert Saint Paul neither if we eat not are we the better neither if we eat are we the worse 1 Cor. 8. 8. yet in the effect it is singulare Sanctitatis aratrum as that Father terms it The plow bears no Corn but it makes way for it it opens the soil it tears up the briers and turns up the furrows Thus doth holy Abstinence it chastises the flesh it lightens the spirit it disheartens our vitious dispositions it quickens our Devotion Away with all factious Combinations Every man is master of his own maw Fast at home and spare not leave publick exercises of this kinde to the command of Soveraign powers Blow the trumpet in Zion sanctifie a Fast saith Joel 2. 15. Surely this trumpet is for none but Royal breath And now that what I meant for a suit may be turned to a just gratulation how do we blesse the God of Heaven that hath put it into the heart of his Anointed to set this
Church cannot abide either Conventicles of Separation or pluralities of professions or appropriations of Catholicism Catholick Romane is an absurd Donatian Solecism This is to seek Orbem in urbe as that Council said well Happy were it for that Church if it were a sound lim though but the little toe of that mighty and precious body wherein no believing Jew or Indian may not challenge to be jointed Neither difference of time nor distance of place nor rigor of unjust censure nor any unessential errour can barre our interest in this blessed Unity As this flourishing Church of great Britain after all the spightfull calumniations of malicious men is one of the most conspicuous members of the Catholick upon earth so we in her Communion do make up one body with the holy Patriarchs Prophets Apostles Martyrs Confessors and faithfull Christians of all ages and times We succeed in their Faith we glory in their Succession we triumph in this Glory Whither go ye then ye weak ignorant seduced souls that run to seek this Dove in a forein cote She is here if she have any nest under Heaven Let me never have part in her or in Heaven if any Church in the world have more part in the Universal Why do we wrong our selves with the contradistinction of Protestant and Catholick We do only protest this that we are perfect Catholicks Let the pretensed look to themselves we are sure we are as Catholick as true Faith can make us as much one as the same Catholick Faith can make us and in this undoubted right we claim and injoy the sweet and inseparable communion with all the blessed members of that mystical body both in earth and Heaven and by virtue thereof with the glorious Head of that dear and happy body Jesus Christ the righteous the Husband to this one Wife the Mate to this one Dove to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit three Persons and one God be given all Praise Honour and Glory now and for ever Amen THE FASHIONS OF THE WORLD Laid forth in a SERMON at Grayes-Inne on Candlemas day By J. H. Rom. 12. 2. Fashion not your selves like to this World but be ye changed by the renewing of your minde c. THAT which was wont to be upbraided as a scorn to the English may be here conceived the Embleme of a Man whom ye may imagine standing naked before you with a paire of sheers in his hand ready to cut out his own fashion In this deliberation the World offers it self to him with many a gay misshapen fantasticall dresse God offers himself to him with one onely fashion but a new one but a good one The Apostle like a friendly monitor adviseth him where to pitch his choice Fashion not your selves like to this world but be ye changed by the renewing of your minde How much Christianity crosses Nature we need no other proof then my Text. There is nothing that Nature affects so much as the Fashion and no fashion so much as the worlds for our usuall word is Doe as the most And behold that is it which is here forbidden us Fashion not your selves like to this world All fashions are either in Device or Imitation There are vain heads that think it an honour to be the founders of Fashions there are servile fools that seek onely to follow the Fashion once devised In the first rank is the World which is nothing but a mint of Fashions yet which is strange all as old as mis-beseeming We are forbidden to be in the second If the World will be so vain as to mis-shape it self we may not be so foolish as to follow it Let us look a little if you please at the Pattern here damn'd in my Text The world As in extent so in expression the World hath a large scope yea there are more Worlds then one There is a world of creatures and within that there is a world of men and yet within that a world of believers and yet within all these a world of corruptions More plainly there is a good world an evil world an indifferent A good world as of the creatures in regard of their first birth so of men in regard of their second a world of renewed Souls in the first act of their renovation believing Joh. 17. 20. upon their belief reconciled 2 Cor. 5. 19. upon their reconcilement saved Joh. 3. 16. An evil world yea set in evil 1 Joh. 5. 19. a world of corrupt unregeneration that hates Christ and his Joh. 15. 18. that is hated of Christ Jam. 4. 4. An indifferent world that is good or evil as it is used whereof St. Paul Let those that use the world be as not abusing it 1 Cor. 7. 31. This indifferent world is a world of commodities affections improvement of the creature which if we will be wise Christians we must fashion to us framing it to our own bent whether in want or abundance The good world is a world of Saints whose Souls are purified in obeying the truth through the Spirit 1 Pet. 1. 22. To this world we may be fashioned The evil world is a world of mere men and their vicious conditions God hath made us the lords of the indifferent world himself is the Lord of the good Satan is lord of the evil Princeps hujus Seculi And that is most properly the world because it contains the most as it is but a chaffe-heap wherein some grains of wheat are scattered To this evil world then we may not fashion our selves in those things which are proper to it as such in natural in civil actions we may we must follow the world singularity in these things is justly odious herein the World is the true master of Ceremonies whom not to follow is no better then a Cynicall irregularity in things positively or morally evil we may not There is no material thing that hath not his form the outward form is the fashion the fashion of outward things is variable with the times so as every external thing cloaths building plate stuffe gesture is now in now out of fashion but the fashions of Morality whether in good or evil are fixed and perpetual The world passeth and the fashion of it but the evil of the fashions of the world is too constant and permanent and must be ever the matter of our detestation Fashion not your selves like to this world But because evils are infinite as wise Solomon hath observed it will be requisite to call them to their heads and to reduce these forbidden fashions to the several parts whereto they belong I cannot dream with Tertullian that the Soul hath a Body but I may well say that the Soul follows the body and as it hath parts ascribed to it according to the outward proportion so are these parts suited with severall fashions Let your patient attention follow me through them all Begin with the Head a part not more eminent in place then in power What is the
are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts Gal. 5. 24. Lo as impossible as it is for a dead man to come down from his gibbet or up from his coffin and to doe the works of his former life so impossible it is that a renewed man should doe the old works of his unregeneration If therefore you find your Hearts unclean your Hands idle and unprofitable your Ways crooked and unholy your Corruptions alive and lively never pretend any renewing you are the old men still and however ye may go for Christains yet ye have denied the power of Christianity in your lives and if ye so continue the fire of Hell shall have so much more power over you for that it finds the Baptismal water upon your faces Our last head is the subject of this Renewing The Minde There are that would have this Renovation proper to the inferiour which is the affective part of the Soul as if the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they call it the supreme powers of that Divine part needed it no◠These are met with here by out-Apostle who placeth this renewing upon the Mind There are contrarily that so appropriate this renewing to the Mind which is the highest lost of the Soul as that they diffuse it not to the lower rooms nor to the our houses of the body as if onely the Soul were capable as of Sin so of Regeneration Both these shoot too short and must know that as the Mind so not the Mind only must be renewed That part is mentioned not by way of exclusion but of principality It is the man that must be renewed not one piece of him Except ye please to say according to that old Philosophical Adage The Mind is the man and the Body as the wisest Ethnick had wont to say nothing but the Case of that rich Jewel To say as it is the most Saint-like Philosophy was somewhat injurious in disparaging the outward man Whatever they thought this Body is not the hung-by but the partner of the Soul no less interessed in the man then that Spirit that animates it no less open to the inhabitation of God's Spirit no less free of Heaven Man therefore that is made of two parts must be renewed in both but as in the first birth whole man is born onely the Body is seen so in the second whole man is renewed onely the Soul is instanced in Our Apostle puts both together 1 Thes 5. 23. The God of peace sanctifie you wholly that your whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless to the coming of our Lord Jesus Why then is the Mind thus specified Because it is the best part because as it enlivens and moves so it leads the rest If the Mind therefore be renewed it boots not to urge the renovation of the body For as in Nature we are wont to say that the Soul follows the temperature of the Body so in Spiritual things we say rather more truly that the Body follows the temper and guidance of the Soul These two companions as they shall be once inseparable in their final condition so they are now in their present dispositions Be renewed therefore in your Minds and if you can hold off your earthly parts No more can the Body live without the Soul then the Soul can be renewed without the Body First then the Mind then the Body All defilement is by an extramission as our Saviour tels us That which goeth into the body defileth not the man so as the spring of corruption is within That must be first cleansed else in vain do we scour the channels Ye shall have some Hypocrites that pretend to begin their renewing from without On foul hands they will wear white Gloves on foul hearts clean hands and then all is well Away with these Pharisaical dishes filthy within clean without fit onely for the service of unclean Devils To what purpose is it to lick over the skin with precious oyle if the Liver be corrupted the Lungs rotten To what purpose is it to crop the top of the weeds when the root and stalk remains in the earth Pretend what you will all is old all is naught till the Mind be renewed Neither is the Body more renewed without the Mind then the renewing of the Mind can keep it self from appearing in the renewing of the Body The Soul lies close and takes advantage of the secrecy of that Cabinet whereof none but God keeps the Key and therefore may pretend anything we see the man the Soul we cannot see but by that we see we can judge of that we see not He is no Christian that is not renewed and he is worse then a beast that is no Christian Every man therefore lays claim to that renovation whereof he cannot be convinced yea there want not those who though they have a ribaldish tongue and a bloody hand yet will challenge as good a Soul as the best Hypocrite when the Conduit-head is walled in how shall we judge of the spring but by the water that comes out of the pipes Corrupt nature hath taught us so much craft as to set the best side outward If therefore thou have obscene lips if bribing and oppressing hands if a gluttonous tooth a drunken gullet a lewd conversation certainly the Soul can be no other then abominably filthy It may be worse then it appears better it cannot lightly be The Mind then leads the Body the Body descries the Mind both of them at once are old or both at once new For us as we bear the face of Christians and profess to have received both Souls and Bodies from the same hand and look that both Bodies and Souls shall once meet in the same Glory let it be the top of all our care that we may be transformed in the renewing of our minds and let the renewing of our Minds bewray it self in the renewing of our Bodies Wherefore have we had the powerful Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ so long amongst us if we be still our selves What hath it wrought upon us if we be not changed Never tell me of a Popish Transubstantiation of men of an invisible insensible unfeisible change of the person whiles the species of his outward life and carriage are still the same These are but false Hypocritical juglings to mock fools withall If we be transformed and renewed let it be so done that not onely our own eyes and hands may see and feel it but others too that the by-standers may say How is this man changed from himself He was a blasphemous Swearer a profane Scoffer at goodness now he speaks with an awful reverence of God and holy things He was a Luxurious wanton now he possesseth his vessel in Holiness and honour He was an unconscionable Briber and abettor of unjust causes now the world cannot see him to speak for wrong He was a wild roaring Swaggerer now he is a sober Student He was a Devil now he is
thou suffer the world to be deluded with these foul and pernicious impostures how long shall thy Church groan under the heavie yoke of their sinful impositions O thou that art the great Shepherd look down and visit thy wandring flock and at last let loose those silly sheep of thine that are fast intangled in the briars of Antichristian exaction And we why do not we as heartily labour to reclaim them as they to withdraw us why should they burn with zeal whiles we freeze with indifferency Oh let us spend our selves in prayers in tears in perswasions in unweariable endevours for the happy conversion of those ignorant mis-guided souls who having not our knowledge yet shame our affections Of Indignation lastly as on the one side at those practical revolters that having begun in the spirit will needs end in the flesh that having made a shew of godliness deny the power of it in their lives returning with that impure beast to their own vomit so on the other at those speculative relapsers that have out of policy or guiltiness abandoned a known and received truth Pity is for those silly creatures that could never be blessed with Divine Reason and upright formes but for a Gryllus that was once a man to quit his humanity and to be in love with four feet what stomack can but rise at so affected a transformation The Cameleon is for a time beautiful with all pleasing varieties of colours in the end no skin is more nasty Wo is me the swept house is repossessed with seven Devils This recidivation is desperate although indeed there would not be a revolt without an inward unsoundness Do ye see an apple fall untimely from the tree view it ye shall finde it worm-eaten else it had held Avolent quantum volent paleoe istae levis fidei as that Father said Let this light chaffe flie whither it will it shews it to be but chaffe God's heap shall be so much the purer and in the mean time what do they make themselves fit for but the fire What shall we say to these absurd changes Our fore-fathers thought themselves in Heaven when first the bright beams of the Gospel brake forth in their eyes and shall we like those fond subterraneous people that Rubruquis speaks of curse those glorious beams of the Sun now risen up to us and lay our eares close to the ground that we may not hear the harmony of that motion Our Fathers blessed themselves in this Angelical Manna and shall our mouths hang towards the onions and garlick of Aegypt Revertimini filii aversantes Return ye backsliding children return to the fountains of living waters which ye have exchanged for your broken cisternes Recordamini priorum as Esay speaks 46. 9. But if their will do lie still in their way it were happy for them if authority would deal with them as confident riders do with a startling horse spur them up and bring them back to the block they leap'd from But if still their obstinacy will needs in spight of contrary endeavours feoffe them in the style of filii desertores it is a fearfull word that God speaks to them Vae eis quoniam vagantur à me Wo to them for they have wandered from me Ose 7. 13. Now the God of Heaven reclaim them confirm us save both them and us in the day of the Lord Jesus to whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost one infinite God be given all Praise Honour and Glory now and for ever Amen St. PAUL'S COMBAT THE SECOND PART 1 Cor. 15. 32. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I Have carried you into S. Paul's Theatre at Ephesus I have shew'd you his Beasts you must now see his Fight It was his charge to Timothy that he should be an example know then that what he bids he practises It is an exemplary combat which S. Paul fought and that wherein we must follow him as Teachers as Christians Here he saies I have fought afterwards in imitation of him that saw his own works and approved them he saies I have fought a good fight doubtless as with principalities and powers elsewhere so even with these beasts at Ephesus Let it please you to see first the person of the combatant then secondly the manner of the fight In the former ye may not look at S. Paul as a common souldier but as a selected Champion of God not merely as Paul but as an Apostle as a publick person as the spiritual Leader of God's people so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have fought with beasts There is no trained man in the whole troup of God but must have his bout with the beasts of the Time Vita hominis militia super terram we are here in a militant Church As we have all received our press-money in Baptisme so we must every one according to our ingagement maintain this fight against the world But if a man be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as S. Paul singled out to a publick calling now he must think himself made for combats because for victories for Bellum durius contra victores as Gregory speaketh It was the charge of the Apostle that a Bishop should be no striker and Clericus percussor is an old brand of irregularity But if in this kind he strike not I must say of him as S. Paul to Ananias God shall smite thee thou whited wall All his whole life must be spent in these blows he must be as Jeremy speaks of himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a man of strife and contention there is no beast comes in his way but he must have a fling at him When Gregory Nazianzen speaks of Basil designed to the Bishoprick of Caesarea If any man saith he pretend his weakness non athletem sed doctorem creabitis But in this spiritual sense if he be a Doctor in the Chair he must be a Champion in the Theatre No S. Martin may plead here I am Christs Souldier I may not fight yea therefore must he fight because he is Christs Souldier Whosoever then would be a fit combatant for God to enter into these lists against the beasts of the world must be a S. Paul in proportion so must he be a follower of him as he is of Christ Will it please you to see him first qualified then armed Qualified first with Holiness Skill Courage Holiness For he must be a man of God and as the Apostle charges 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 irreprehensible otherwise he is a beast himself and had need of some body to bait him Wo be to those Champions of God that take upon them to wield the sword of the Spirit with unclean hands That divine weapon is not so fit to wound any as their own Souls Ex ore tuo serve nequam Let me say truly It were an happy and hopeful thing that even our external and secular Wars should be managed with pure and innocent hands I shall tell you that which perhaps few of you have either
they there is no cause why his greater gift should make me mutinous and malecontent I will thank my God for what I am for what I have and never quarrell with him for what I want CII Upon the sight of a fantasticall Zelot IT is not the intent of Grace to mould our Bodies anew but to make use of them as it findes us The Disposition of men much follows the temper of their bodily Humors This mixture of Humors wrought upon by Grace causeth that strange variety which we see in professions pretendedly Religious When Grace lights upon a sad Melancholick Spirit nothing is affected but Sullennesse and extreme Mortification and dislike even of lawfull Freedome nothing but Positions and Practices of severe Austerity when contrarily upon the Chearefull and lively all draws towards Liberty and Joy those thoughts do now please best which enlarge the heart to Mirth and contentation It is the greatest improvement of Christian wisdome to distinguish in all professions betwixt Grace and Humour to give God his own Glory and men their own Infirmities CIII Upon the sight of a Scavenger working in the Canell THE wise Providence of God hath fitted men with spirits answerable to their condition If mean men should bear the minds of great Lords no servile works would be done all would be Commanders and none could live If contrarily Great persons had the low spirits of drudges there could be no order no obedience because there should be none to command Now out of this discord of dispositions God hath contrived an excellent harmony of Government and Peace since the use which each sort must needs have of other bindes them to maintain the quality of their own ranks and to doe those offices which are requisite for the preservation of themselves and the publick As Inferiours then must blesse God for the Graces and Authority of their betters so must Superiours no lesse blesse him for the Humility and Serviceablenesse of the meaner and those which are of the mid rank must blesse him for both CIV Upon a pair of Spectacles I Look upon these not as Objects but as Helps as not meaning that my Sight should rest in them but passe through them and by their aide discern some other things which I desire to see Many such glasses my Soul hath and useth I look through the glasse of the Creatures at the power and wisdome of their Maker I look through the glasse of the Scriptures at the great Mystery of Redemption and the glory of an Heavenly inheritance I look through Gods Favours at his infinite Mercy through his Judgements at his incomprehensible Justice But as these Spectacles of mine presuppose a faculty in the Eye and cannot give me Sight when I want it but only clear that sight which I have no more can these glasses of the Creatures of Scriptures of Favours and Judgements inable me to apprehend those blessed Objects except I have an eye of Faith whereto they may be presented These helps to an unbelieving man are but as Spectacles to the blinde As the Natural Eyes so the Spirituall have their degrees of dimnesse But I have ill improved my Age if as my Naturall eyes decay my Spirituall eye be not cleared and confirmed but at my best I shall never but need Spectacles till I come to see as I am seen CV Upon Moats in the Sun HOW these little Moats move up and down in the Sun and never rest whereas the great Mountains stand ever still and move not but with an Earthquake Even so light and busie spirits are in continuall agitation to little purpose whiles great deep wits sit still and stir not but upon extreme occasions Were the motion of these little Atomes as usefull as it is restlesse I had rather be a Moat then a Mountain CVI. Upon the sight of a Bladder EVery thing must be taken in his meet time let this Bladder alone till it be dry and all the winde in the world cannot raise it up whereas now it is new and moist the least breath fills and enlarges it It is no otherwise in Ages and Dispositions inform the Childe in Precepts of Learning and Vertue whiles years make him capable how pliably he yieldeth how happily is he replenished with Knowledge and Goodnesse let him alone till time and ill example have hardned him till he be setled in an Habit of Evil and contracted and clung together with Sensuall delights now he becomes utterly indocible Sooner may that Bladder be broken then distended CVII Upon a man Sleeping I Do not more wonder at any mans Art then at his who professes to think of nothing to doe nothing And I do not a little marvell at that man who sayes he can sleep without a Dream for the Mind of man is a restlesse thing and though it give the Body leave to repose it self as knowing it is a mortal and earthly piece yet it self being a Spirit and therefore active and indefatigable is ever in motion Give me a Sea that moves not a Sun that shines not an open Eye that sees not and I shall yield there may be a Reasonable Soul that works not It is possible that through a naturall or accidentall stupidity a man may not perceive his owne Thoughts as sometimes the Eye or Eare may be distracted not to discern his own Objects but in the mean time he thinks that whereof he cannot give an account like as we many times dream when we cannot report our fancy I should more easily put my self to school unto that man who undertakes the profession of thinking many things at once Instantany motions are more proper for a Spirit then a dull rest Since my Minde will needs be ever working it shall be my care that it may alwaies be well imploy'd CVIII Upon the sight of a Deaths-head I Wonder at the practice of the ancient both Greeks and Romans whose use was to bring up a Deaths-head in the mids of their Feasts on purpose to stir up their Guests to drink harder and to frolick more the sight whereof one would think should have rather abated their courage and have tempered their jollity But however it was with them who believed there was nothing after death that the consideration of the short time of their pleasures and being spurred them on to a free and full fruition of that mirth and excesse which they should not long live to enjoy yet to us that are Christians and therefore know that this short life doth but make way for an eternity of Joy or Torment afterwards and that after the Feast we must account of a Reckoning there cannot be a greater cooler for the heat of our intemperate desires and rage of our Appetites then the meditation of the Shortness of Life and the Certainty of Death Who would over-pamper a body for the worms Who would be so mad as to let himself loose to that momentany pleasure of Sin which ere long must cost him everlasting pain and misery
Now our very Temptation affords us comfort in that we see the dearer we are unto God the more obnoxious we are to this triall neither can we be discouraged by the hainousnesse of those evils whereto we are moved since we see the Son of God solicited to Infidelity Covetousnesse Idolatry How glorious therefore was it for thee O Saviour how happy for us that thou wert tempted Where then wast thou tempted O Blessed Jesu or whither wentest thou to meet with our great Adversary I do not see thee led into the market-place or any other part of the City or thy home-stead of Nazareth but into the vast Wilderness the habitation of beasts a place that carrieth in it both horror and opportunity Why wouldst thou thus retire thy self from men But as confident Champions are wont to give advantage of ground or weapon to their Antagonist that the glory of their victory may be the greater so wouldest thou O Saviour in this conflict with our common Enemy yield him his own terms for circumstances that thine honour and his foile may be the more Solitariness is no small help to the speed of a Tentation Woe to him that is alone for if he fall there is not a second to lift him up Those that out of an affectation of Holiness seek for solitude in rocks and caves of the desarts do no other then run into the mouth of the danger of Tentation whiles they think to avoid it It was enough for thee to whose Divine power the gates of Hell were weakness thus to challenge the Prince of darkness Our care must be alwaies to eschew all occasions of spiritual danger and what we may to get us out of the reach of Tentations But O the depth of the Wisdome of God! How camest thou O Saviour to be thus tempted That Spirit whereby thou wast conceived as man and which was one with thee and the Father as God led thee into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan Whiles thou taughtest us to pray to thy Father Lead us not into temptation thou meantest to instruct us that if the same Spirit led us not into this perilous way we goe not into it We have still the same conduct Let the path be what it will how can we miscarry in the hand of a Father Now may we say to Satan as thou didst unto Pilate Thou couldst have no power over me except it were given thee from above The Spirit led thee it did not drive thee here was a sweet invitation no compulsion of violence So absolutely conformable was thy will to thy Deity as if both thy Natures had but one volition In this first draught of thy bitter potion thy Soul said in a reall subjection Not my will but thy will be done We imitate thee O Saviour though we cannot reach to thee All thine are led by thy Spirit Oh teach us to forget that we have wills of our own The Spirit led thee thine invincible strength did not animate thee into this combat uncalled What do we weaklings so far presume upon our abilities or success as that we dare thrust our selves upon Temptations unbidden unwarranted Who can pitty the shipwrack of those Marriners which will needs put forth and hoise fails in a Tempest Forty daies did our Saviour spend in the Wilderness fasting and solitary all which time was worn out in Temptation however the last brunt because it was most violent is only expressed Now could not the adversary complain of disadvantage whiles he had the full scope both of time and place to do his worst And why did it please thee O Saviour to fast forty daies and forty nights unless as Moses fasted forty daies at the delivery of the Law and Elias at the restitution of the Law so thou thoughtest fit at the accomplishment of the Law and the promulgation of the Gospel to fulfill the time of both these Types of thine wherein thou intendest our wonder not our imitation not our imitation of the time though of the act Here were no faulty desires of the flesh in thee to be tamed no possibility of a freer and more easie assent of the Soul to God that could be affected of thee who wast perfectly united unto God but as for us thou wouldst suffer death so for us thou wouldst suffer hunger that we might learn by fasting to prepare our selves for Tentations In fasting so long thou intendest the manifestation of thy power in fasting no longer the truth of thy manhood Moses and Elias through the miraculous sustentation of God fasted so long without any question made of the truth of their bodies So long therefore thou thoughtest good to fast as by the reason of these precedents might be without prejudice of thine Humanity which if it should have pleased thee to support as thou couldst without means thy very Power might have opened the mouth of cavils against the verity of thy Humane nature That thou mightest therefore well approve that there was no difference betwixt thee and us but sin thou that couldst have fasted without hunger and lived without meat wouldst both feed and fast and hunger Who can be discouraged with the scantnesse of friends or bodily provisions when he sees his Saviour thus long destitute of all earthly comforts both of society and sustenance Oh the policie and malice of that old Serpent when he sees Christ bewray some infirmity of nature in being hungry then he layes sorest at him by temptations His eye was never off from our Saviour all the time of his sequestration and now that he thinks he espies any one part to lye open he drives at it with all his might We have to do with an Adversary no lesse vigilant then malicious who will be sure to watch all opportunities of our mischief and where he sees any advantage of weaknesse will not neglect it How should we stand upon our guard for prevention that both we may not give him occasions of our hurt nor take hurt by those we have given When our Saviour was hungry Satan tempts him in matter of Food not then of Wealth or Glorie He well knows both what baits to fish withall and when and how to lay them How safe and happy shall we be if we shall bend our greatest care where we discern the most danger In every Temptation there is an appearance of good whether of the body of mind or estate The first is the lust of the flesh in any carnal desire the second the pride of heart and life the third the lust of the eyes To all these the first Adam is tempted and in all miscarried the second Adam is tempted to them all and overcometh The first man was tempted to Carnal appetite by the forbidden fruit to Pride by the suggestion of being as God to Covetousnesse in the ambitious desire of knowing good and evil Satan having found all the motions so successeful with the first Adam in his innocent estate will now tread the same
steps in his temptations of the second The stones must be made bread there is the motion to a Carnal appetite The guard and attendance of Angels must be presumed on there is a motion to Pride The Kingdomes of the Earth and the glory of them must be offered there to Covetousnesse and Ambition Satan could not but have heard God say This is my welbeloved Son he had heard the Message and the Carol of the Angels he saw the Star and the journey and Offerings of the Sages he could not but take notice of the gratulations of Zachary Simeon Anna he well knew the Predictions of the Prophets yet now that he saw Christ fainting with hunger as not comprehending how infirmities could consist with a Godhead he can say If thou be the Son of God Had not Satan known that the Son of God was to come into the World he had never said If thou be the Son of God His very supposition convinces him The ground of his Temptation answers it self If therefore Christ seemed to be a mere man because after forty daies he was hungry why was he not confessed more then a man in that for forty daies he hungred not The motive of the Temptation is worse then the motion If thou be the Son of God Satan could not chuse another suggestion of so great importance All the work of our Redemption of our Salvation depends upon this one Truth Christ is the Son of God How should he else have ransomed the World how should he have done how should he have suffered that which was satisfactory to his Fathers wrath how should his actions or Passion have been valuable to the sin of all the World What marvel is it if we that are sons by Adoption be assaulted with the doubts of our interest in God when the natural Son the Son of his Essence is thus tempted Since all our comfort consists in this point here must needs be laid the chief battery and here must be placed our strongest defence To turn Stones into Bread had been no more faulty in it self then to turn Water into Wine But to do this in a distrust of his Fathers Providence to abuse his power and liberty in doing it to work a Miracle of Satans choice had been disagreeable to the Son of God There is nothing more ordinary with our spiritual enemy then by occasion of want to move us to unwarrantable courses Thou art poor steal Thou canst not rise by honest means use indirect How easie had it been for our Saviour to have confounded Satan by the power of his Godhead But he rather chuses to vanquish him by the Sword of the Spirit that he might teach us how to resist overcome the powers of darknesse If he had subdued Satan by the Almighty power of the Deity we might have had what to wonder at not what to imitate now he useth that weapon which may be familiar unto us that he may teach our weaknesse how to be victorious Nothing in Heaven or earth can beat the forces of Hell but the word of God How carefully should we furnish our selves with this powerful munition how should our hearts and mouths be full of it Teach me O Lord the way of thy Statutes O take not from me the words of Truth Let them be my Songs in the house of my pilgrimage So shall I make answer to my Blasphemers What needed Christ to have answered Satan at all if it had not been to teach us that Temptations must not have their way but must be answered by resistance and resisted by the Word I do not hear our Saviour aver himself to be a God against the blasphemous insinuation of Satan neither do I see him working this miraculous Conversion to prove himself the Son of God but most wisely he takes away the ground of the Temptation Satan had taken it for granted that man cannot be sustained without bread and therefore infers the necessity of making bread of stones Our Saviour shews him from an infallible Word that he had mislayed his suggestion That man lives not by usual food only but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God He can either sustain without bread as he did Moses and Elias or with a miraculous bread as the Israelites with Manna or send ordinary means miraculously as food to his Prophet by the Ravens or miraculously multiply ordinary means as the Meal and Oyle to the Sareptan Widow All things are sustained by his Almighty Word Indeed we live by food but not by any virtue that is without God without the concurrence of whose Providence bread would rather choak then nourish us Let him withdraw his hand from his creatures in their greatest abundance we perish Why do we therefore bend our eyes on the means and not look up to the hand that gives the blessing What so necessary dependance hath the blessing upon the creature if our Prayers hold them not together As we may not neglect the means so we may not neglect the procurement of a blessing upon the means nor be unthankful to the hand that hath given the blessing In the first assault Satan moves Christ to doubt of his Fathers Providence and to use unlawful means to help himself in the next he moves him to presume upon his Fathers protection and the service of his blessed Angels He grounds the first upon a conceit of want the next of abundance If he be in extremes it is all to one end to mislead unto evil If we cannot be driven down to despair he labours to lift us up to presumption It is not one foil than can put this bold spirit out of countenance Temptations like waves break one in the neck of another Whiles we are in this warfare we must make account that the repulse of one Temptation doth but invite to another That Blessed Saviour of ours that was content to be led from Jordan into the Wildernesse for the advantage of the first Temptation yields to be led from the Wildernesse to Jerusalem for the advantage of the second The place doth not a little avail to the act The Wildernesse was fit for a Temptation arising from Want it was not fit for a Temptation moving to Vain-glory the populous City was the fittest for such a motion Jerusalem was the glory of the World the Temple was the glory of Jerusalem the Pinnacles the highest piece of the Pinnacle there is Christ content to be set for the opportunity of Tentation O Saviour of men how can we wonder enough at this Humility of thine that thou wouldest so farre abase thy self as to suffer thy pure and sacred Body to be transported by the presumptuous and malicious hand of that unclean Spirit It was not his Power it was thy Patience that deserves our admiration Neither can this seem over-strange to us when we consider that if Satan be the head of wicked men wicked men are the members of Satan What was Pilate or the Jews
that persecuted thine innocence but limbs of this Devil And why are we then amazed to see thee touched and locally transported by the head when we see thee yielding thy self over to be crucified by the members If Satan did the worse and greater mediately by their hands no marvel if he doe the lesse and easier immediately by his own yet neither of them without thy voluntary dispensation He could not have looked at thee without thee And if the Son of God did thus suffer his own holy and precious Body to be carried by Satan what wonder is it if that Enemy have sometimes power given him over the sinful bodies of the adopted sons of God It is not the strength of Faith that can secure us from the outward violences of that Evil one This difference I finde betwixt his spiritual and bodily assaults those are beaten back by the shield of Faith these admit not of such repulse As the best man may be lame blind diseased so through the permission of God he may be bodily vexed by an old Man-slayer Grace was never given us for a Target against externall Afflictions Methinks I see Christ hoised upon the highest battlements of the Temple whose very roof was an hundred and thirty Cubits high and Satan standing by him with this speech in his mouth Well then since in the matter of nourishment thou wilt needs depend upon thy Father's Providence that he can without means sustain thee take now further tryall of that Providence in thy miraculous preservation Cast thy self down from this height Behold thou art here in Jerusalem the famous and holy City of the World here thou art on the top of the pinnacle of that Temple which is dedicated to thy Father and if thou be God to thy self The eyes of all men are now fixt upon thee there cannot be devised a more ready way to spread thy glory and to proclaim thy Deity then by casting thy self headlong to the Earth All the World will say there is more in thee then a man And for danger there can be none What can hurt him that is the Son of God and wherefore serves that glorious Guard of Angels which have by Divine Commission taken upon them the charge of thine Humanity Since therefore in one act thou mayest be both safe and celebrated trust thy Father and those thy serviceable Spirits with thine assured preservation Cast thy self down And why didst thou not O thou malignant spirit endeavour to cast down my Saviour by those same presumptuous hands that brought him up since the descent is more easie then the raising up Was it for that it had not been so great an advantage to thee that he should fall by thy means as by his own Falling into sin was more then to fall from the pinnacle Still thy care and suit is to make us Authors to our selves of evil thou gainest nothing by our bodily hurt if the Soul be safe Or was it rather for that thou couldest not I doubt not but thy Malice could as well have served to have offered this measure to himself as to his holy Apostle soon after But he that bounded thy power tethers thee shorter Thou couldest not thou canst not do what thou wouldst He that would permit thee to carry him up bindes thy hands from casting him down And woe were it for us if thou wert not ever stinted Why did Satan carry up Christ so high but on purpose that his fall might be the more deadly So deals he still with us he exalts us that we may be dangerously abased he puffs them up with swelling thoughts of their own worthinesse that they may be vile in the eyes of God and fall into condemnation It is the manner of God to cast down that he may raise to abase that he may exalt Contrarily Satan raises up that he may throw down and intends nothing but our dejection in our advancement Height of place gives opportunity of Tentation Thus busie is that Wicked one in working against the members of Christ If any of them be in eminence above others those he labours most to ruinate They had need to stand fast that stand high There is both more danger of their falling and more hurt in their fall He that had presumed thus far to tempt the Lord of Life would fain now dare him also to presume upon his Deity If thou be the Son of God cast thy self down There is not a more tried shaft in all his quiver then this a perswasion to men to bear themselves too bold upon the favour of God Thou art the Elect and Redeemed of God sin because Grace hath abounded sin that it may abound Thou art safe enough though thou offend be not too much an adversary to thine own liberty False spirit it is no liberty to sinne but servitude rather there is liberty but in the freedome from sin Every one of us that hath the hope of Sons must purge himself even as he is pure that hath redeemed us We are bought with a price therefore must we glorifie God in our body and spirits for they are God's Our Sonship teaches us awe and obedience and therefore because we are Sons we will not cast our selves down into sin How idlely do Satan and wicked men measure God by the crooked line of their own misconceit Iwis Christ cannot be the Son of God unlesse he cast himself down from the Pinnacle unlesse he come down from the Crosse God is not merciful unlesse he honour them in all their desires not just unlesse he take speedy vengeance where they require it But when they have spent their folly upon these vain imaginations Christ is the Son of God though he stay on the top of the Temple God will be merciful though we miscarry and just though sinners seem lawlesse Neither will he be any other then he is or measured by any rule but himself But what is this I see Satan himself with a Bible under his arm with a Text in his mouth It is written He shall give his Angels charge over thee How still in that Wicked one doth Subtilty strive with Presumption Who could not but over-wonder at this if he did not consider that since the Devil dar'd to touch the sacred Body of Christ with his hand he may well touch the Scriptures of God with his tongue Let no man henceforth marvel to hear Hereticks or Hypocrites quote Scriptures when Satan himself hath not spared to cite them What are they the worse for this more then that holy Body wich is transported Some have been poisoned by their meats and drinks yet either these nourish us or nothing It is not the Letter of the Scripture that can carry it but the Sense if we divide these two we prophane and abuse that Word we alledge And wherefore doth this foul spirit urge a Text but for imitation for prevention and for successe Christ had alledged a Scripture unto him he re-alledges Scripture unto Christ
be seen but what may both please and allure Satan is still and ever like himself If Tentations might be but turn'd about and shewn on both sides the Kingdome of darkness would not be so populous Now whensoever the Tempter sets upon any poor soul all sting of conscience wrath judgment torment is concealed as if they were not nothing may appear to the eye but pleasure profit and a seeming happinesse in the enjoying our desires Those other woful objects are reserved for the farewell of sin that our misery may be seen and felt at once When we are once sure Satan is a Tyrant till then he is a Parasite There can be no safety if we do not view as well the back as the face of Tentations But oh presumption and impudence that Hell it self may be ashamed of The Devil dares say to Christ All these will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me That beggerly spirit that hath not an inch of earth can offer the whole world to the maker to the owner of it The slave of God would be adored of his Creator How can we hope he should be sparing of false boasts and of unreasonable promises unto us when he dares offer Kingdomes to him by whom Kings reign Tentations on the right hand are most dangerous How many that have been hardned with Fear have melted with Honour There is no doubt of that soul that will not bite at the golden hook False lyars and vain-glorious boasters see the top of their pedigree if I may not rather say that Satan doth borrow the use of their tongues for a time Whereas faithfull is he that hath promised who will also do it Fidelity and truth is the issue of Heaven If Idolatry were not a dear sin to Satan he would not be so importunate to compasse it It is miserable to see how he draws the world insensibly into this sin which they professe to detest Those that would rather hazard the fornace then worship Gold in a Statue yet do adore in it the stamp and finde no fault with themselves If our hearts be drawn to stoop unto an over-high respect of any creature we are Idolaters O God it is no marvel if thy jealousie be kindled at the admission of any of thine own works into a competition of honour with their Creator Never did our Saviour say Avoid Satan till now It is a just indignation that is conceived at the motion of a rivaltie with God Neither yet did Christ exercise his Divine power in this command but by the necessary force of Scripture drives away that impure Tempter It is written Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve The rest of our Saviours answers were more full and direct then that they could admit of a reply but this was so flat and absolute that it utterly daunted the courage of Satan and put him to a shameful flight and made him for the time weary of his trade The way to be rid of the troublesome solicitations of that Wicked one is continued resistance He that forcibly drove the Tempter from himself takes him off from us and will not abide his assaults perpetual It is our exercise and Triall that he intends not our Confusion Simon called AS the Sun in his first rising draws all eyes to it so did this Sun of Righteousness when he first shone forth into the world His miraculous cures drew Patients his Divine doctrine drew Auditors both together drew the admiring multitude by troops after him And why do we not still follow thee O Saviour through desarts and mountains over land and seas that we may be both healed and taught It was thy word that when thou wert lift up thou wouldst draw all men unto thee Behold thou art lift up long since both to the tree of shame and to the throne of heavenly glory Draw us and we shall run after thee Thy word is still the same though proclaimed by men thy virtue is still the same though exercised upon the spirits of men Oh give us to hunger after both that by both our souls may be satisfied I see the people not onely following Christ but pressing upon him even very unmannerliness findes here both excuse and acceptation They did not keep their distances in an awe to the Majesty of the Speaker whiles they were ravished with the power of the Speech yet did not our Saviour check their unreverent thronging but rather incourages their forwardness We cannot offend thee O God with the importunity of our desires It likes thee well that the Kingdome of Heaven should suffer violence Our slackness doth ever displease thee never our vehemency The throng of Auditors forced Christ to leave the shore and to make Peter's ship his pulpit Never were there such nets cast out of that fisher-boat before Whiles he was upon the Land he healed the sick bodies by his touch now that he was upon the Sea he cured the sick Souls by his doctrine and is purposely severed from the multitude that he may unite them to him He that made both Sea and Land causeth both of them to conspire to the opportunities of doing good Simon was busie washing his nets Even those nets that caught nothing must be washed no lesse then if they had sped well The nights toile doth not excuse his daies work Little did Simon think of leaving those nets which he so carefully washed and now Christ interrupts him with the favour and blessing of his gracious presence Labour in our calling how homely soever makes us capable of Divine benediction The honest fisher-man when he saw the people flock after Christ and heard him speak with such power could not but conceive a general and confuse apprehension of some excellent worth in such a Teacher and therefore is glad to honour his ship with such a Guest and is first Christ's Host by Sea ere he is his Disciple by land An humble and serviceable entertainment of a Prophet of God was a good foundation of his future honour He that would so easily lend Christ his hand and his ship was likely soon after to bestow himself upon his Saviour Simon hath no sooner done this service to Christ then Christ is preparing for his reward when the Sermon is ended the ship-room shall be paid for abundantly neither shall the Host exspect any other pay-master then himself Lanch forth into the deep and let down your Nets to make a draught That ship which lent Christ an opportunity of catching men upon the shore shall be requited with a plentiful draught of fish in the deep It had been as easie for our Saviour to have brought the fish to Peter's ship close to the shore yet as chusing rather to have the ship carried to the shole of fish he bids Lanch forth into the deep In his Miracles he loves ever to meet Nature in her bounds and when she hath done her best to supply the rest by his
when I see those Devils which are many in substance are one in name action habitation Who can too much brag of unity when it is incident unto wicked spirits All the praise of concord is in the subject if that be holy the consent is Angelical if sinfull devilish What a fearfull advantage have our spiritual enemies against us If armed troops come against single straglers what hope is there of life of victory How much doth it concern us to band our hearts together in a communion of Saints Our enemies come upon us like a torrent Oh let us not run asunder like drops in the dust All our united forces will be little enough to make head against this league of destruction Legion imports Order number conflict Order in that there is a distinction of regiment a subordination of Officers Though in Hell there be confusion of faces yet not confusion of degrees Number Those that have reckoned a Legion at the lowest have counted it six thousand others have more then doubled it Though here it is not strict but figurative yet the letter of it implies multitude How fearfull is the consideration of the number of Apostate Angels And if a Legion can attend one man how many must we needs think are they who all the world over are at hand to the punishment of the wicked the exercise of the good the tentation of both It cannot be hoped there can be any place or time wherein we may be secure from the onsets of these enemies Be sure ye lewd men ye shall want no furtherance to evil no torment for evil Be sure ye godly ye shall not want combatants to trie your strength and skill Awaken your courages to resist and stir up your hearts make sure the means of your safety There are more with us then against us The God of Heaven is with us if we be with him and our Angels behold the face of God If every Devil were a Legion we are safe Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death we shall fear no evil Thou O Lord shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of our enemies and thy right hand shall save us Conflict All this number is not for sight for rest but for motion for action Neither was there ever hour since the first blow given to our first Parents wherein there was so much as a truce betwixt these adversaries As therefore strong frontier Towns when there is a peace concluded on both parts break up their garrison open their gates neglect their Bulwarks but when they hear of the enemy mustering his forces in great and unequal numbers then they double their guard keep Sentinell repair their Sconces so must we upon the certain knowledge of our numerous and deadly enemies in continual aray against us addresse our selves alwaies to a wary and strong resistance I do not observe the most to think of this ghostly hostility Either they do not find there are Tentations or those Tentations hurtful they see no worse then themselves and if they feel motions of evil arising in them they impute it to fancy or unreasonable appetite to no power but Nature's and those motions they follow without sensible hurt neither see they what harm it is to sin Is it any marvell that carnal eyes cannot discern spiritual Objects that the World who is the friend the vassal of Satan is in no war with him Elisha's servant when his eyes were opened saw troops of spiritual souldiers which before he discerned not If the eyes of our Souls be once enlightned by supernatural knowledge and the clear beams of Faith we shall as plainly descry the invisible powers of wickednesse as now our bodily eyes see Heaven and Earth They are though we see them not we cannot be safe from them if we do not acknowledge not oppose them The Devils are now become great suitors to Christ That he would not command them into the deep that he would permit their entrance into the swine What is this deep but hell both for the utter separation from the face of God and for the impossibility of passage to the region of Rest and Glory The very evil spirits then fear and expect a further degree of torment they know themselves reserved in those chains of darknesse for the judgment of the great Day There is the same wages due to their sins to ours neither are the wages paid till the work be done They tempting men to sin must needs sin grievously in tempting as with us men those that mislead into sin offend more then the actors Not till the upshot therefore of their wickednesse shall they receive the full measure of their condemnation This day this deep they tremble at what shall I say of those men that fear it not It is hard for men to believe their own unbelief If they were perswaded of this fiery dungeon this bottomlesse deep wherein every sin shall receive an horrible portion with the damned durst they stretch forth their hands to wickednesse No man will put his hand into a fiery Crucible to fetch gold thence because he knows it will burn him Did we as truly believe the everlasting burning of that infernal fire we durst not offer to fetch Pleasures or Profits out of the midst of those flames This degree of torment they grant in Christ's power to command they knew his power unresistible had he therefore but said Back to hell whence ye came they could no more have stai'd upon earth then they can now climbe into Heaven O the wonderfull dispensation of the Almighty who though he could command all the evil spirits down to their dungeons in an instant so as they should have no more opportunity of Temptation yet thinks fit to retain them upon earth It is not out of weaknesse or improvidence of that Divine hand that wicked spirits tyrannize here upon earth but out of the most wise and most holy ordination of God who knows how to turn evil into good how to fetch good out of evil and by the worst instruments to bring about his most just decrees Oh that we could adore that awfull and infinite power and chearfully cast our selves upon that Providence which keeps the Keyes even of Hell it self and either lets out or returns the Devils to their places Their other suit hath some marvell in moving it more in the grant That they might be suffered to enter into the Herd of Swine It was their ambition of some mischief that brought forth this desire that since they might not vex the body of man they might yet afflict men in their goods The Malice of these envious spirits reacheth from us to ours It is sore against their wills if we be not every way miserable If the Swine were Legally unclean for the use of the table yet they were naturally good Had not Satan known them usefull for man he had never desired their ruine But as Fencers will seem to fetch a blow at
swinge of common corruptions they shall both deliver their own Souls and help to withhold judgment from others The Gadarenes sue to Christ for his departure It is too much favour to attribute this to their modesty as if they held themselves unworthy of so Divine a Guest Why then did they fall upon this suit in a time of their losse Why did they not taxe themselves and intimate a secret desire of that which they durst not beg It is too much rigour to attribute it to the love of their Hogs and an anger at their losse then they had not intreated but expelled him It was their fear that moved this harsh suit a servile fear of danger to their persons to their goods lest he that could so absolutely command the Devils should have set these tormentors upon them lest their other Demoniacks should be dispossessed with like losse I cannot blame these Gadarenes that they feared This power was worthy of trembling at Their fear was unjust They should have argued This man hath power over men beasts devils it is good having him to our friend his presence is our safety and protection Now they contrarily mis-infer Thus powerfull is he it is good he were further off What miserable and pernicious misconstructions do men make of God of Divine Attributes and actions God is omnipotent able to take infinite vengeance of sin Oh that he were not He is provident I may be carelesse He is merciful I may sin He is holy Let him depart from me for I am a sinful man How witty Sophisters are natural men to deceive their own Souls to rob themselves of a God O Saviour how worthy are they to want thee that wish to be rid of thee Thou hast just cause to be weary of us even whiles we sue to hold thee but when once our wretched unthankfulnesse grows weary of thee who can pity us to be punished with thy departure Who can say it is other then righteous that thou shouldst regest one day upon us Depart from me ye wicked Contemplations THE FOURTH BOOK Containing The faithfull Canaanite The deaf and dumb man cured Zacheus John Baptist beheaded The five loaves and two fishes The walk upon the waters The bloody issue healed Jairus and his daughter The motion of the two fiery Disciples repelled The ten Lepers The pool of Bethesda Christ transfigured The woman taken in adultery The thankfull Penitent Martha and Mary The begger that was born blinde cured The stubborn Devil ejected The Widows mites The ambition of the two sons of Zebedee The tribute-money payd Lazarus dead Lazarus raised Christ's procession to the Temple Christ betrayed The Agony Peter and Malchus or Christ apprehended Christ before Caiaphas Christ before Pilate The Crucifixion The Resurrection The Ascension To the onely honour and glory of God my Saviour and to the benefit and behoof of his blessed Spouse the Church I do in all humility devote my self and all my Meditations The weak and unworthy Servant of both J. E. To the READER THose few spare houres which I could either borrow or steale from the many imployments of my busie Diocese I have gladly bestowed upon these not more recreative then usefull Contemplations for which I have been some years a debter to the Church of God now in a care to satisfie the desires of many and my owne pre-ingagement I send them forth into the light My Reader shall finde the discourse in all these passages more large and in the latter as the occasion gives more fervent And if he shall misse some remarkable stories let him be pleased to know that I have purposely omitted those pieces which consist rather of speech then of act and those that are in respect of the matter coincident to these I have selected I have so done my task as fearing not affecting length and as carefull to avoid the cloying of my Reader with other mens thoughts Such as they are I wish them as I hope they shall be beneficiall to God's Church and in them intend to set up my rest beseeching my Reader that he will mutually exchange his prayers for and with me who am the unworthiest of the Servants of Christ J. E. The faithfull Canaanite IT was our Saviours trade to doe good Therefore he came down from Heaven to earth therefore he changed one station of earth for another Nothing more commends Goodnesse then generality and diffusion whereas reservednesse and close-handed restraint blemish the glory of it The Sun stands not still in one point of Heaven but walks his daily round that all the inferiour world may share of his influences both in heat and light Thy bounty O Saviour did not affect the praise of fixedness but motionâ— one while I finde thee at Jerusalem then at Capernaum soon after in the utmost verge of Galilee never but doing good But as the Sun though he daily compass the world yet never walks from under his line never goes beyond the turning points of the longest and shortest day so neither didst thou O Saviour passe the bounds of thine own peculiar people Thou wouldest move but not wildly not out of thine own sphear wherein thy glorified estate exceeds thine humbled as far as Heaven is above earth Now thou art lift up thou drawest all men unto thee there are now no lists no limits of thy gracious visitations but as the whole earth is equidistant from Heaven so all the motions of the world lie equally open to thy bounty Neither yet didst thou want outward occasions of thy removal perhaps the very importunity of the Scribes and Pharisees in obtruding their Traditions drave thee thence perhaps their unjust offence at thy Doctrine There is no readier way to lose Christ then to clog him with humane ordinances then to spurn at his heavenly instructions He doth not alwaies subduce his Spirit with his visible presence but his very outward withdrawing is worthy of our sighs worthy of our tears Many a one may say Lord if thou hadst been here my Soul had not died Thou art now with us O Saviour thou art with us in a free and plentifull fashion how long thou knowest we know our deservings and fear Oh teach us how happy we are in such a guest and give us grace to keep thee Hadst thou walked within the Phoenician borders we could have told how to have made glad constructions of thy mercy in turning to the Gentiles thou that couldest touch the Lepers without uncleannesse couldest not be defiled with aliens but we know the partition wall was not yet broken down and thou that didst charge thy Disciples not to walk into the way of the Gentiles wouldst not transgresse thine own rule Once we are sure thou camest to the utmost point of the bounds of Galilee as not ever confined to the heart of Jewry thou wouldest sometimes blesse the outer skirts with thy presence No angle is too obscure for the Gospel the land of Zabulon and the land of Nepthali by the
so daunt the heart of those which are free from their power what a terror shall it be to live perpetually in the sight yea under the torture of thousands of legions of millions of Devils Oh the madness of wilfull sinners that will needs run themselves headily into so dreadfull a damnation It was high time for our Saviour to speak What with the Tempest what with the Apparition the Disciples were almost lost with fear How seasonable are his gracious redresses Till they were thus affrighted he would not speak when they were thus affrighted he would not hold his peace If his presence were fearfull yet his word was comfortable Be of good chear it is I yea it is his word only which must make his presence both known and comfortable He was present before they mistook him and feared there needs no other erection of their drooping hearts but It is I. It is cordial enough to us in the worst of our afflictions to be assured of Christs presence with us Say but It is I O Saviour and let evils doe their worst thou needest not say any more Thy voice was evidence enough so well were thy Disciples acquainted with the tongue of thee their Master that It is I was as much as an hundred names Thou art the good Shepherd we are not of thy Flock if we know thee not by thy voice from a thousand Even this one is a great word yea an ample style It is I. The same tongue that said to Moses I am hath sent thee saith now to the Disciples It is I I your Lord and Master I the commander of windes and waters I the soveraign Lord of Heaven and earth I the God of Spirits Let Heaven be but as one scroll and let it be written all over with titles they cannot expresse more then It is I. Oh sweet and seasonable word of a gracious Saviour able to calm all tempests able to revive all hearts Say but so to my Soul and in spight of Hell I am safe No sooner hath Jesus said I then Peter answers Master He can instantly name him that did not name himself Every little hint is enough to Faith The Church sees her Beloved as well through the Lattice as through the open Window Which of all the Followers of Christ gave so pregnant testimonies upon all occasions of his Faith of his Love to his Master as Peter The rest were silent whiles he both owned his Master and craved accesse to him in that liquid way Yet what a sensible mixture is here of Faith Distrust It is Faith that said Master it was Distrust as some have construed it that said If it be thou It was Faith that said Bid me come to thee implying that his word could as well enable as command it was Faith that durst step down upon that watery pavement it was Distrust that upon the sight of a mighty winde feared It was Faith that he walked it was Distrust that he sunk it was Faith that said Lord save me Oh the imperfect composition of the best Saint upon earth as far from pure Faith as from mere Infidelity If there be pure earth in the center all upward is mixed with the other elements contrarily pure Grace is above in the glorified Spirits all below is mixed with infirmity with corruption Our best is but as the Aire which never was never can be at once fully enlightned neither is there in the same Region one constant state of light It shall once be noon with us when we shall have nothing but bright beams of Glory now it is but the dawning wherein it is hard to say whether there be more light then darkness We are now fair as the Moon which hath some spots in her greatest beauty we shall be pure as the Sun whose face is all bright and glorious Ever since the time that Adam set his tooth in the Apple till our mouth be full of mould it never was it never can be other with us Far be it from us to settle willingly upon the dregs of our Infidelity far be it from us to be disheartened with the sense of our defects and imperfections We believe Lord help our unbelief Whiles I finde some disputing the lawfulness of Peter's suit others quarrelling his If it be thou let me be taken up with the wonder at the Faith the fervour the Heroical valour of this prime Apostle that durst say Bid me come to thee upon the waters He might have suspected that the Voice of his Master might have been as easily imitated by that imagined Spirit as his Person he might have feared the blustering tempest the threatning billows the yielding nature of that devouring element but as despising all these thoughts of misdoubt such is his desire to be near his Master that he saies Bid me come to thee upon the waters He saies not Come thou to me this had been Christ's act and not his Neither doth he say Let me come to thee this had been his act and not Christ's Neither doth he say Pray that I may come to thee as if this act had been out of the power of either But Bid me come to thee I know thou canst command both the waves and me me to be so light that I shall not bruise the moist surface of the waves the waves to be so solid that they shall not yield to my weight All things obey thee Bid me come to thee upon the waters It was a bold spirit that could wish it more bold that could act it No sooner hath our Saviour said Come then he sets his foot upon the unquiet Sea not fearing either the softness or the roughness of that uncouth passage We are wont to wonder at the courage of that daring man who first committed himself to the Sea in a frail Bark though he had the strength of an oaken planck to secure him how valiant must we needs grant him to be that durst set his foot upon the bare sea and shift his paces Well did Peter know that he who bade him could uphold him and therefore he both sues to be bidden and ventures to be upholden True Faith tasks it self with difficulties neither can be dismaied with the conceits of ordinary impossibilities It is not the scattering of straws or casting of mole-hills whereby the virtue of it is described but removing of mountain Like some courageous Leader it desires the honour of a danger and sues for the first onset whereas the worldly heart freezes in a lazie or cowardly fear and only casts for safety and ease Peter sues Jesus bids Rather will he work Miracles then disappoint the suit of a faithful man How easily might our Saviour have turned over this strange request of his bold Disiple and have said What my Omnipotence can doe is no rule for thy weakness It is no lesse then presumption in a mere man to hope to imitate the miraculous works of God and man Stay thou in the ship and wonder
be insensible of so great an evil Where death hath once seized who can but doubt he will keep his hold No lesse hard was it not to grieve for the losse of an only Childe then not to fear the continuance of the cause of that grief In a perfect Faith there is no Fear by how much more we fear by so much lesse we believe Well are these two then coupled Fear not believe only O Saviour if thou didst not command us somewhat beyond Nature it were no thank to us to obey thee While the childe was alive to believe that it might recover it was no hard task but now that she was fully dead to believe she should live again was a work not easie for Jairus to apprehend though easie for thee to effect yet must that be believed else there is no capacity of so great a Mercy As Love so Faith is stronger then death making those bonds no other then as Sampson did his withes like threds of tow How much naturall impossibility is there in the return of these Bodies from the dust of their earth into which through many degrees of corruption they are at the last mouldred Fear not O my Soul believe onely it must it shall be done The sum of Jairus his first suit was for the Health not for the Resuscitation of his Daughter now that she was dead he would if he durst have been glad to have asked her Life And now behold our Saviour bids him expect both her Life and her Health Thy daughter shall be made whole alive from her death whole from her disease Thou didst not O Jairus thou daredst not ask so much as thou receivest How glad wouldest thou have been since this last news to have had thy Daughter alive though weak and sickly Now thou shalt receive her not living only but sound and vigorous Thou dost not O Saviour measure thy gifts by our petitions but by our wants and thine own mercies This work might have been as easily done by an absent command the Power of Christ was there whiles himself was away but he will goe personally to the place that he might be confessed the Author of so great a Miracle O Saviour thou lovest to goe to the house of mourning thy chief pleasure is the comfort of the afflicted What a confusion there is in worldly sorrow The mother shreeks the servants crie out the people make lamentation the minstrels howl and strike dolefully so as the eare might question whether the Ditty or the Instrument were more heavy If ever expressions of sorrow sound well it is when Death leads the quire Soon doth our Saviour charm this noise and turns these unseasonable mourners whether formal or serious out of doors Not that he dislikes Musick whether to condole or comfort but that he had life in his eye and would have them know that he held these Funeral ceremonies to be too early and long before their time Give place for the maid is not dead but sleepeth Had she been dead she had but slept now she was not dead but asleep because he meant this nap of death should be so short and her awakening so speedy Death and Sleep are alike to him who can cast whom he will into the sleep of Death and awake when and whom he pleaseth out of that deadly sleep Before the people and domesticks of Jairus held Jesus for a Prophet now they took him for a Dreamer Not dead but asleep They that came to mourn cannot now forbear to laugh Have we piped at so many Funerals and seen and lamented so many Corpses and cannot we distinguish betwixt Sleep and Death The eyes are set the breath is gone the limmes are stiffe and cold Who ever died if she do but sleep How easily may our Reason or Sense befool us in Divine matters Those that are competent Judges in natural things are ready to laugh God to scorn when he speaks beyond their compasse and are by him justly laughed to scorn for their unbelief Vain and faithlesse men as if that unlimited power of the Almighty could not make good his own word and turn either Sleep into Death or Death into Sleep at pleasure Ere many minutes they shall be ashamed of their errour and incredulity There were witnesses enough of her death there shall not be many of her restoring Three choice Disciples and the two Parents are only admitted to the view and testimony of this miraculous work The eyes of those incredulous scoffers were not worthy of this honour Our infidelity makes us incapable of the secret favours and the highest counsels of the Almighty What did these scorners think and say when they saw him putting the minstrels and people out of doors Doubtlesse the maid is but asleep the man fears lest the noise shall awake her we must speak and tread softly that we disquiet her not What will he and his Disciples doe the while Is it not to be feared they will startle her out of her rest Those that are shut out from the participation of God's counsels think all his words and projects no better then foolishnesse But art thou O Saviour ever the more discouraged by the derision and censure of these scornfull unbelievers Because fools jear thee dost thou forbear thy work Surely I do not perceive that thou heedest them save for contempt or carest more for their words then their silence It is enough that thine act shall soon honour thee and convince them He took her by the hand and called saying Maid arise and her spirit came again and she arose straightway How could that touch that Call be other then effectual He who made that hand touched it and he who shall once say Arise ye dead said now Maid arise Death cannot but obey him who is the Lord of life The Soul is ever equally in his hand who is the God of Spirits it cannot but goe and come at his command When he saies Maid arise the now-dissolved spirit knows his office his place and instantly reassumes that room which by his appointment it had left O Saviour if thou do but bid my Soul to arise from the death of Sin it cannot lie still if thou bid my Body to arise from the grave my Soul cannot but glance down from her Heaven and animate it In vain shall my sin or my grave offer to withhold me from thee The Maid revives not now to languish for a time upon her sick-bed and by some faint degrees to gather an insensible strength but at once she arises from her death and from her couch at once she puts off her fever with her dissolution she findes her life and her feet at once at once she findes her feet and her stomack He commanded to give her meat Omnipotency doth not use to goe the pace of Nature All God's immediate works are like himself perfect He that raised her supernaturally could have so fed her It was never the purpose of his Power to put ordinary
his O Saviour when we look into those sacred Acts and monuments of thine we finde many a life which thou preservedst from perishing some that had perished by thee recalled never any by thee destroyed Only one poor fig-tree as the reall Emblem of thy severity to the unfruitfull was blasted and withered by thy curse But to man how ever favourable and indulgent wert thou So repelled as thou wert so reviled so persecuted laid for sold betrayed apprehended arraigned condemned crucified yet what one man didst thou strike dead for these hainous indignities Yea when one of thine enemies lost but an eare in that ill quarrell thou gavest that eare to him who came to take life from thee I finde some whom thou didst scourge and correct as the sacrilegious money-changers none whom thou killedst Not that thou either lovest not or requirest not the duly-severe execution of justice Whose sword is it that Princes bear but thine Offenders must smart and bleed This is a just sequel but not the intention of thy coming thy will not thy drift Good Princes make wholesome Laws for the well-ordering of their people there is no authority without due coercion The violation of these good Laws is followed with death whose end was preservation life order and this not so much for revenge of an offence past as for prevention of future mischief How can we then enough love and praise thy mercy O thou preserver of men How should we imitate thy saving and beneficent disposition towards mankinde as knowing the more we can help to save the nearer we come to thee that camest to save all and the more destructive we are the more we resemble him who is Abaddon a murtherer from the beginning The Ten Lepers THE Samaritanes were tainted not with Schism but Heresie but Paganism our Saviour yet blaks them not but makes use of the way as it lies and bestows upon them the curtesie of some Miracles Some kind of commerce is lawfull even with those without Terms of intirenesse and leagues of inward amity are here unfit unwarrantable dangerous but civil respects and wise uses of them for our convenience or necessity need not must not be forborn Ten Lepers are here met those that are excluded from all other society seek the company of each other Fellowship is that we all naturally affct though even in Leprosie Ever Lepers will flock to their fellows where shall we finde one spiritual Leper alone Drunkards profane persons Hereticks will be sure to consort with their matches Why should not Gods Saints delight in an holy communion Why is it not our chief joy to assemble in good Jews and Samaritanes could not abide one another yet here in Leprosie they accord here was one Samaritane Leper with the Jewish community of passion hath made them friends whom even Religion disjoyned What virtue there is in misery that can unite even the most estranged hearts I seek not mystery in the number These Ten are met together and all meet Christ not casually but upon due deliberation they purposely waited for this opportunity No marvell if they thought no attendance long to be delivered from so loathsome and miserable a disease Great Naaman could be glad to come from Syria to Judaea in hope of leaving that hatefull guest behinde him We are all sensible enough of our bodily infirmities Oh that we could be equally weary of the sicknesses and deformities of our better part Surely our spiritual maladies are no lesse then mortal if they be not healed neither can they heal alone These men had died Lepers if they had not met with Christ Oh Saviour give us grace to seek thee and patience to wait for thee and then we know thou wilt finde us and we remedy Where do these Lepers attend for Christ but in a village and that not in the street of it but in the entrance in the passage to it The Cities the Towns were not for them the Law of God had shut them out from all frequence from all conversation Care of safety and fear of infection was motive enough to make their neighbours observant of this piece of the Law It is not the body only that is herein respected by the God of Spirits Those that are spiritually contagious must be still and ever avoided they must be separated from us we must be separated from them they from us by just censures or if that be neglected we from them by a voluntary declination of their familiar conversation Besides the benefit of our safety wickednesse would soon be ashamed of it self if it were not for the incouragement of companions Solitarinesse is the fittest antidote for spiritual infection It were happy for the wicked man if he could be separated from himself These Lepers that came to seek Christ yet finding him they stand afar off whether for reverence or for security God had enacted this distance It was their charge if they were occasioned to passe through the streets to cry out I am unclean It was no lesse then their duty to proclaim their own infectiousnesse there was not danger only but sin in their approach How happy were it if in those wherein there is more peril there were more remotenesse lesse silence O God we are all Lepers to thee overspred with the loathsome scurf of our own corruptions It becomes us well in the conscience of our shame and vileness to stand afar off We cannot be too awfull of thee too much ashamed of our selves Yet these men though they be far off in the distance of place yet they are near in respect of the acceptance of their Prayer The Lord is near unto all that call upon him in truth O Saviour whiles we are far off from thee thou art near unto us Never dost thou come so close to us as when in an holy bashfulnesse we stand furthest off Justly dost thou exspect we should be at once bold and bashfull How boldly should we come to the throne of Grace in respect of the grace of that throne how fearfully in respect of the awfulness of the Majesty of that throne and that unworthiness which we bring with us into that dreadfull presence He that stands near may whisper but he that stands afar off must cry aloud so did these Lepers Yet not so much distance as passion strained their throats That which can give voice to the Dumb can much more give loudness to the Vocal All cried together these ten voices were united in one sound that their conjoined forces might expugn that Gracious eare Had every man spoken singly for himself this had made no noise neither yet any shew of a servent importunity Now as they were all affected with one common disease so they all set out their throats together and though Jews and Samaritanes agree in one joynt supplication Even where there are ten tongues the word is but one that the condescent may be universal When we would obtain common favours we may not content our selves
say that those which sleep are dead to men those that are dead are asleep to God But I say those that sleep at Church are dead to God so we preach their Funeral Sermons in stead of hortatory And as he was wont to say he lost no time so much as that wherein he slept so let me adde there is no loss of time so desperate as of holy time Think that Christ saith to thee at every Sermon as he did to Peter Etiam Petre dormis Sleepest thou Peter couldst thou not wake with me one hour A slumbring and a drowsie heart do not become the business and presence of him that keepeth Israel and slumbers not These were the Attendants see the Companions of Christ As our glory is not consummate without Society no more would Christ have his therefore his Transfiguration hath two Companions Moses Elias As S. Paul saies of himself Whether in the body or out of the body I know not God knows so say I of these two Of Eliah there may seem less doubt since we know that his body was assumed to Heaven and might as well come down for Christs glory as go up for his own although some grave Authors as Calvin Oecolampadius Bale Fulk have held his body with Enoch's resolved into their elements sed ego non credulus illis Enoch translatus est in carne Elias carneus raptus est in coelum c. Enoch was translated in the flesh and Elias being yet in the flesh was taken into Heaven saith Hierome in his Epistle ad Pammachium And for Moses though it be rare and singular and Austin makes much scruple of it yet why might not he after death return in his body to the glory of Christ's Transfiguration as well as afterwards many of the Saints did to the glory of his Resurrection I cannot therefore with the Gloss think there is any reason why Moses should take another a borrowed body rather then his own Heaven could not give two fitter Companions more admirable to the Jews for their Miracles more gracious with God for their Faith and Holiness Both of them admitted to the conference with God in Horeb both of them Types of Christ both of them fasted fourty days both of them for the glory of God suffered many perils both divided the waters both the Messengers of God to Kings both of them marvellous as in their life so in their end A Chariot of Angels took away Elias he was sought by the Prophets and not found Michael strove with the Devil for the body of Moses he was sought for by the Jews and not found and now both of them are found here together on Tabor This Elias shews himself to the Royal Prophet of his Church this Moses shews himself to the true Michael Moses the publisher of the Law Elias the chief of the Prophets shew themselves to the God of the Law and Prophets Alter populi informator aliquando alter reformator quandoque One the informer once of the people the other the reformer sometimes saith Tertull. in 4. adver Marcionem Alter initiator Veteris Testamenti alter consummator Novi One the first Register of the Old Testament the other the shutter up of the New I verily think with Hilary that these two are pointed at as the Fore-runners of the second coming of Christ as now they were the Foretellers of his departure neither doubt I that these are the Two Witnesses which are alluded to in the Apocalyps howsoever divers of the Fathers have thrust Enoch into the place of Moses Look upon the place Apoc. 11. 5. Who but Elias can be he of whom is said If any man will hurt him fire proceedeth out of his mouth and devoureth his enemies alluding to 2 Kings 1 Who but Elias of whom is said He hath power to shut the Heaven that it rain not in the days of his prophesying alluding to 1 Kings 18 Who but Moses of whom it is said He hath power to turn the waters into blood and smite the earth with all manner of plagues alluding to Exod. 7 and 8 But take me aright let me not seem a friend to the Publicans of Rome an abettor of those Alcoran-like Fables of our Popish Doctors who not seeing the wood for trees do haerere in cortice stick in the bark taking all concerning that Antichrist according to the letter Odi arceo So shall Moses and Elias come again in those Witnesses as Elias is already come in John Baptist their Spirits shall be in these Witnesses whose Bodies and Spirits were witnesses both of the present Glory and future Passion of Christ Doubtless many thousand Angels saw this sight and were not seen these two both saw and were seen O how great an Happiness was it for these two great Prophets in their glorified flesh to see their glorified Saviour who before his Incarnation had spoken to them to speak to that Man God of whom they were glorified and to become Prophets not to men but to God And if Moses his face so shone before when he spoke to him without a body in Mount Sinai in the midst of the flames and clouds how did it shine now when himself glorified speaks to him a man in Tabor in light and majesty Elias hid his face before with a mantle when he passed by him in the Rock now with open face he beholds him present and in his own glory adores his Let that impudent Marcion who ascribes the Law and Prophets to another God and devises an hostility betwixt Christ and them be ashamed to see Moses and Elias not onely in colloquio but in consortio claritatis not onely in conference but in a partnership of brightness as Tertull. speaks with Christ whom if he had misliked he had his choice of all the Quire of Heaven and now chusing them why were they not in sordibus tenebris in rags and darkness Sic inalienos demonstrat illos dum secum habet sic relinquendos docet quos sibi jungit sic destruit quos de radiis suis exstruit So doth he shew them farre from strangeness to him whom he hath with him so doth he teach them to be forsaken whom he joyns with himself so doth he destroy those whom he graces with his beams of glory saith that Father His act verifies his word Think not that I come to destroy the Law or the Prophets I am not come to destroy but to fulfill them Mat. 5. 17. Oh what consolation what confirmation was this to the Disciples to see such examples of their future Glory such witnesses and adorers of the eternal Deity of their Master They saw in Moses and Elias what they themselves should be How could they ever fear to be miserable that saw such precedents of their insuing glory how could they fear to die that saw in others the happiness of their own change The rich Glutton pleads with Abraham that if one came to them from the dead they will amend
entertainment may deserve to lose our thanks Do we pray to thee do we hear thee preach to us now we make thee good chear in our house but if we perform not these things with the fit decency of our outward carriages we give thee not thy water thy kisses thy oyle Even meet rituall observances are requisite for thy full welcome Yet how little had these things been regarded if they had not argued the womans thankfull love to thee and the ground of that love sense of her remission and the Pharisees default in both Love and action do necessarily evince each other True love cannot lurk long unexpressed it will be looking out at the eyes creeping out of the mouth breaking out at the fingers ends in some actions of dearnesse especially those wherein there is pain and difficulty to the agent profit or pleasure to the affected O Lord in vain shall we professe to love thee if we doe nothing for thee Since our goodnesse cannot reach up unto thee who art our glorious head O let us bestow upon thy feet thy poor Members here below our teares our hands our oyntment and whatever our gifts or endevours may testifie our thankfulnesse and love to thee in them O happy word Her sins which are many are forgiven her Methinks I see how this poor Penitent revived with this breath how new life comes into her eyes new blood into her cheeks new spirits into her countenance like unto our Mother Earth when in that first confusion God said Let the earth bring forthgrasse the herb that beareth seed and the fruit-tree yielding fruit all runs out into flowers and blossomes and leaves and fruit Her former teares said Who shall deliver me from this body of death Now her chearfull smiles say I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord. Seldomeever do we meet with so perfect a Penitent seldome do we finde so gracious a dismission What can be wished of any mortall creature but Remission Safety Faith Peace All these are here met to make a contrite Soul happy Remission the ground of her Safety Faith the ground of her Peace Safety and Salvation the issue of her Remission Peace the blessed fruit of her Faith O Woman the persume that thou broughtest is poor and base in comparison of those sweet savours of rest and happinesse that are returned to thee Well was that ointment bestowed wherewith thy Soul is sweetned to all Eternity Martha and Mary WE may read long enough ere we find Christ in an house of his own The foxes have holes and the birds have nests he that had all possessed nothing One while I see him in a publican's house then in a Pharisee's now I finde him at Martha's His last entertainment was with some neglect this with too much solicitude Our Saviour was now in his way the Sun might as soon stand stil as he The more we move the liker we are to Heaven and to this God that made it His progresse was to Hierusalem for some holy Feast He whose Devotion neglected not any of those sacred Solemnities will not neglect the due opportunities of his bodily refreshing as not thinking it meet to travell and preach harbourlesse he diverts where he knew his welcome to the village of Bethanie There dwelt the two devout Sisters with their Brother his Friend Lazarus their roof receives him O happy house into which the Son of God vouchsafed to set his foot O blessed women that had the grace to be the Hostesses to the God of Heaven How should I envy your felicity herein if I did not see the same favour if I be not wanting to my self lying open to me I have two waies to entertain my Saviour in his Members and in himself In his Members by Charity and Hospitablenesse what I doe to one of those his little ones I doe to him In himself by Faith If any man open he will come in and sup with him O Saviour thou standst at the door of our hearts and knockst by the solicitations of thy Messengers by the sense of thy Chastisements by the motions of thy Spirit if we open to thee by a willing admission and faithfull welcome thou wilt be sure to take up our Souls with thy gracious presence and not to sit with us for a momentany meal but to dwell with us for ever Lo thou didst but call in at Bethany but here shall be thy rest for everlasting Martha it seems as being the elder Sister bore the name of the House-keeper Mary was her assistant in the charge A Blessed pair Sisters not more in Nature then Grace in Spirit no lesse then in flesh How happy a thing is it when all the parties in a family are joyntly agreed to entertain Christ No sooner is Jesus entred into the house then he falls to preaching that no time may be lost he staies not so much as till his meat be made ready but whiles his bodily repast was in hand provides spiritual food for his Hosts It was his meat and drink to doe the will of his Father he fed more upon his own diet then he could possibly upon theirs his best chear was to see them spiritually fed How should we whom he hath called to this sacred Function be instant in season and out of season We are by his sacred ordination the Lights of the world No sooner is the candle lighted then it gives that light which it hath and never intermits till it be wasted to the snuff Both the Sisters for a time sate attentively listening to the words of Christ Houshold occasions call Martha away Mary sits still at his feet and hears Whether shall we more praise her Humility or her Docility I do not see her take a stool and sit by him or a chair and sit above him but as desiring to shew her heart was as low as her knees she sits at his feet She was lowly set richly warmed with those Heavenly beams The greater submission the more Grace If there be one hollow in the valley lower then another thither the waters gather Martha's house is become a Divinity-school Jesus as the Doctor sits in the chair Martha Mary and the rest sit as Disciples at his feet Standing implies a readinesse of motion Sitting a setled composednesse to this holy attendance Had these two Sisters provided our Saviour never such delicates and waited on his trencher never so officiously yet had they not listened to his instruction they had not bidden him welcome neither had he so well liked his Entertainment This was the way to feast him to feed their ears by his Heavenly Doctrine his best chear is our proficiency our best chear is his Word O Saviour let my Soul be thus feasted by thee do thou thus feast thy self by feeding me this mutual diet shall be thy praise and my happinesse Though Martha was for the time an attentive hearer yet now her care of Christ's entertainment carries her into the Kitchin Mary sits still Neither was
fish of the sea was tributary to him How should this incourage our dependance upon that Omnipotent hand of thine which hath Heaven earth sea at thy disposing Still thou art the same for thy members which thou wert for thy self the Head Rather then offence shall be given to the world by a seeming neglect of thy dear Children thou wilt cause the very fowls of Heaven to bring them meat and the fish of the sea to bring them money O let us look up ever to thee by the eye of our Faith and not be wanting in our dependance upon thee who canst not be wanting in thy Providence over us LAZARUS Dead OH the Wisdome of God in penning his own Story The Disciple whom Jesus loved comes after his fellow-Evangelists that he might glean up those rich ears of History which the rest had passed over That Eagle soars high and towrs up by degrees It was much to turn water into wine but it was more to seed five thousand with five loaves It was much to restore the Rulers son it was more to cure him that had been thirty eight years a Cripple It was much to cure him that was born blind it was more to raise up Lazarus that had been so long dead As a stream runs still the stronger and wider the nearer it comes to the Ocean whence it was derived so didst thou O Saviour work the more powerfully the nearer thou drewest to thy Glory This was as one of thy last so of thy greatest Miracles when thou wert ready to die thy self thou raisedst him to life who smelt strong of the grave None of all the Sacred Histories is so full and punctual as this in the report of all circumstances Other Miracles do not more transcend Nature then this transcends other Miracles This alone was a sufficient eviction of thy Godhead O blessed Saviour none but an infinite power could so farre go beyond Nature as to recal a man four daies dead from not a mere privation but a setled corruption Earth must needs be thine from which thou raisest his body Heaven must needs be thine from whence thou fetchest his Spirit None but he that created man could thus make him new Sickness is the common preface to death no mortal nature is exempted from this complains even Lazarus whom Jesus loved is sick What can strength of Grace or dearness of respect prevail against disease against dissolution It was a stirring message that Mary sent to Jesus He whom thou lovest is sick as if she would imply that his part was no-less deep in Lazarus then hers Neither doth she say He that loves thee is sick but he whom thou lovest not pleading the merit of Lazarus his affection to Christ but the mercy and favour of Christ to him Even that other reflexion of love had been no weak motive for O Lord thou hast said Because he hath set his love upon me therefore will I deliver him Thy goodness will not be behinde us for love who professest to love them that love thee But yet the argument is more forcible from thy love to us since thou hast just reason to respect every thing of thine own more then ought that can proceed from us Even we weak men what can we stick at where we love Thou O infinite God art Love it self Whatever thou hast done for us is out of thy love the ground and motive of all thy mercies is within thy self not in us and if there be ought in us worthy of thy love it is thine own not ours thou givest what thou acceptest Jesus well heard the first groan of his dear Lazarus every short breath that he drew every sigh that he gave was upon account yet this Lord of Life lets his Lazarus sicken and languish and die not out of neglect or impotence but out of power and resolution This sickness is not to death He to whom the issues of death belong knows the way both into it and out of it He meant that sickness should be to death in respect of the present condition not to death in respect of the event to death in the process of Nature not to death in the success of his Divine power that the Son of God might be glorified thereby O Saviour thy usual style is the Son of man thou that wouldst take up our infirmities wert willing thus to hide thy Godhead under the course weeds of our Humanity but here thou saist That the Son of God might be glorified Though thou wouldst hide thy Divine glory yet thou wouldst not smother it Sometimes thou wouldst have thy Sun break forth in bright gleams to shew that it hath no less light even whiles it seems kept in by the clouds Thou wert now near thy Passion it was most seasonable for thee at this time to set forth thy just title Neither wâ—s this an act that thy Humanity could challenge to it self but farre transcending all finite powers To die was an act of the Son of man to raise from death was an act of the Son of God Neither didst thou say merely that God but that the Son of God might be glorified God cannot be glorified unless the Son be so In very natural Relations the wrong or disrespect offered to the child reflects upon the father as contrarily the parents upon the child how much more where the love and respect is infinite where the whole effence is communicated with the intireness of relation O God in vain shall we tender our Devotions to thee indefinitely as to a glorious and incomprehensible Majesty if we kiss not the Son who hath most justly said Ye believe in the Father believe also in me What an happy family was this I finde none upon earth so much honoured Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus It is no standing upon terms of precedency the Spirit of God is not curious in marshalling of places Time was when Mary was confessed to have chosen the better part here Martha is named first as most interessed in Christs love for ought appears all of them were equally dear Christ had familiarly lodged under their roof How fit was that to receive him whose in-dwellers were hospital pious unanimous Hospital in the glad entertainment of Jesus and his train Pious in their Devotions Unanimous in their mutual Concord As contrarily he balâ—s and hates that house which is taken up with uncharitableness profaneness contention But O Saviour how doth this agree thou lovedst this Family yet hearing of their distress thou heldest off two daies more from them Canst thou love those thou regardest not canst thou regard them from whom thou willingly absentest thy self in their necessity Behold thy love as it is above ours so it is oft against ours Even out of very affection art thou not seldome absent None of thine but have sometimes cryed How long Lord What need we instance when thine eternal Father did purposely estrange his face from thee so as thou cryedst out of
bring thee to our grave how should we lay open our deadness before thee and bewray to thee our impotence and senselesness Come Lord and see what a miserable carkass I am and by the power of thy mercy raise me from the state of my corruption Never was our Saviour more submisly dejected then now immediately before he would approve and exalt the Majesty of his Godhead To his groans and inward grief he adds his tears Anone they shall confess him a God these expressions of Passions shall onwards evince him to be a man The Jews construe this well See how he loved him Never did any thing but love fetch tears from Christ But they do foully misconstrue Christ in the other Could not he that opened the eyes of him that was born blinde have caused that even this man should not have died Yes know ye O vain and importune questionists that he could have done it with ease To open the eyes of a man born blind was more then to keep a sick man from dying this were but to uphold and maintain Nature from decaying that were to create a new sense and to restore a deficiency in Nature To make an eye was no whit less difficult then to make a man he that could doe the greater might well have done the less Ye shall soon see this was not for want of power Had ye said Why would he not why did he not the question had been fairer and the answer no less easie For his own greater glory Little do ye know the drift whether of God's acts or delaies and ye know as much as you are worthy Let it be sufficient for you to understand that he who can doe all things will doe that which shall be most for his own honour It is not improbable that Jesus who before groaned in himself for compassion of their tears now groaned for their incredulity Nothing could so much afflict the Saviour of men as the sins of men Could their external wrongs to his body have been separated from offence against his Divine person their scornful indignities had not so much affected him No injury goes so deep as our spiritual provocations of our God Wretched men why should we grieve the good Spirit of God in us why should we make him groan for us that died to redeem us With these groans O Saviour thou camest to the grave of Lazarus The door of that house of Death was strong and impenetrable Thy first word was Take away the stone Oh weak beginning of a mighty Miracle If thou meantest to raise the dead how much more easie had it been for thee to remove the grave-stone One grain of Faith in thy very Disciples was enough to remove mountains and dost thou say Take away the stone I wis there was a greater weight that lay upon the body of Lazarus then the stone of his Tomb the weight of Death and Corruption a thousand rocks and hils were not so heavy a load as this alone why then dost thou stick at this shovel-full Yea how easie had it been for thee to have brought up the body of Lazarus through the stone by causing that marble to give way by a sudden rarefaction But thou thoughtest best to make use of their hands rather whether for their own more full conviction for had the stone been taken away by thy Followers and Lazarus thereupon walked forth this might have appeared to thy malignant enemies to have been a set match betwixt thee the Disciples and Lazarus or whether for the exercise of our Faith that thou mightest teach us to trust thee under contrary appearances Thy command to remove the stone seemed to argue an impotence straight that seeming weakness breaks forth into an act of Omnipotent power The homeliest shows of thine humane infirmity are ever seconded with some mighty proofs of thy Godhead and thy Miracle is so much more wondred at by how much it was less exspected It was ever thy just will that we should doe what we may To remove the stone or to untie the napkin was in their power this they must doe to raise the dead was out of their power this therefore thou wilt doe alone Our hands must doe their utmost ere thou wilt put to thine O Saviour we are all dead and buried in the grave of our sinfull Nature The stone of obstination must be taken away from our hearts ere we can hear thy reviving voice we can no more remove this stone then dead Lazarus could remove his we can adde more weight to our graves O let thy faithful agents by the power of thy Law and the grace of thy Gospel take off the stone that thy voice may enter into the grave of miserable corruption Was it a modest kinde of mannerliness in Martha that she would not have Christ annoyed with the ill sent of that stale carcass or was it out of distrust of reparation since her brother had passed all the degrees of corruption that she saies Lord by this time he stinketh for he hath been dead four daies He that understood hearts found somewhat amiss in that intimation his answer had not endeavored to rectifie that which was utterly faultless I fear the good woman meant to object this as a likely obstacle to any further purposes or proceedings of Christ Weak faith is still apt to lay blocks of difficulties in the way of the great works of God Four days were enough to make any corps noisome Death it self is not unsavory immediately upon dissolution the body retains the wonted sweetness it is the continuance under death that is thus offensive Neither is it otherwise in our Spiritual condition the longer we lie under our sin the more rotten and corrupt we are He who upon the fresh commission of his sin recovers himself by a speedy repentance yields no ill sent to the nostrils of the Almighty The Candle that is presently blown in again offends not it is the snuffe which continues choaked with its own moisture that sends up unwholsome and odious fumes O Saviour thou wouldst yield to death thou wouldst not yield to corruption Ere the fourth day thou wert risen again I cannot but receive many deadly foils but oh do thou raise me up again ere I shall pass the degrees of rottenness in my sins and trespasses They that laid their hands to the stone doubtless held now still awhile and looked one while on Christ another while upon Martha to hear what issue of resolution would follow upon so important an objection when they finde a light touch of taxation to Martha Said not I to thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God That holy woman had before professed her belief as Christ had professed his great intentions both were now forgotten and now our Saviour is fain to revive both her memory and Faith Said not I to thee The best of all Saints are subject to fits of unbelief and oblivion the onely remedy whereof must
place to thy love and obedience How should we have known these evils so formidable if thou hadst not in half a thought inclined to deprecate them How could we have avoided so formidable and deadly evils if thou hadst not willingly undergone them We acknowledge thine holy fear we adore thy Divine fortitude Whiles thy Minde was in this fearfull agitation it is no marvell if thy Feet were not fixed Thy place is more changed then thy thoughts One while thou walkest to thy drouzy Attendants and stirrest up their needfull vigilancy then thou returnest to thy passionate Devotions thou fallest again upon thy face If thy body be humbled down to the earth thy Soul is yet lower thy prayers are so much more vehement as thy pangs are And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground O my Saviour what an agonie am I in whiles I think of thine What pain what fear what strife what horrour was in thy Sacred breast How didst thou struggle under the weight of our sins that thou thus sweatest that thou thus bleedest All was peace with thee thou wert one with thy coeternal and coessential Father all the Angels worshipped thee all the powers of Heaven and earth awfully acknowledged thine Infiniteness It was our person that feoffed thee in this misery and torment in that thou sustainedst thy Father's wrath and our curse If eternal death be unsufferable if every sin deserve eternal death what O what was it for thy Soul in this short time of thy bitter Passion to answer those millions of eternal deaths which all the sins of all mankinde had deserved from the just hand of thy Godhead I marvell not if thou bleedest a sweat if thou sweatest blood If the moisture of that Sweat be from the Body the tincture of it is from the Soul As there never was such another Sweat so neither can there be ever such a Suffering It is no wonder if the Sweat were more then natural when the Suffering was more then humane O Saviour so willing was that precious blood of thine to be let forth for us that it was ready to prevent thy Persecutors and issued forth in those pores before thy wounds were opened by thy Tormentors O that my heart could bleed unto thee with true inward compunction for those sins of mine which are guilty of this thine Agonie and have drawn blood of thee both in the Garden and on the Cross Woe is me I had been in Hell if thou hadst not been in thine Agonie I had scorched if thou hadst not sweat Oh let me abhor my own wickednesse and admire and blesse thy Mercy But O ye blessed Spirits which came to comfort my conflicted Saviour how did ye look upon the Son of God when ye saw him labouring for life under these violent temptations with what astonishment did ye behold him bleeding whom ye adored In the Wilderness after his Duell with Satan ye came and ministred unto him and now in the Garden whiles he is in an harder combat ye appear to strengthen him O the wise and marvellous dispensation of the Almighty Whom God will afflict an Angel shall relieve the Son shall suffer the Servant shall comfort him the God of Angels droupeth the Angel of God strengthens him Blessed Jesu if as Man thou wouldst be made a little lower then the Angels how can it disparage thee to be attended and cheared up by an Angel Thine Humiliation would not disdain comfort from meaner hands How free was it for thy Father to convey seasonable consolations to thine humbled Soul by whatsoever means Behold though thy Cup shall not passe yet it shall be sweetned What if thou see not for the time thy Fathers face yet thou shalt feel his hand What could that Spirit have done without the God of Spirits O Father of Mercies thou maiest bring thine into Agonies but thou wilt never leave them there In the midst of the sorrows of my heart thy comforts shall refresh my Soul Whatsoever be the means of my supportation I know and adore the Author Peter and Malchus or Christ Apprehended WHerefore O Saviour didst thou take those three choice Disciples with thee from their fellows but that thou expectedst some comfort from their presence A seasonable word may sometimes fall from the meanest attendant and the very society of those we trust carries in it some kinde of contentment Alas what broken reeds are men Whiles thou art sweating in thine Agonie they are snorting securely Admonitions threats intreaties cannot keep their eyes open Thou tellest them of danger they will needs dream of ease and though twice rouzed as if they had purposed this neglect they carelesly sleep out thy sorrow and their own peril What help hast thou of such Followers In the mount of thy Transfiguration they slept and besides fell on their faces when they should behold thy glory and were not themselves for fear in the garden of thine Agonie they fell upon the ground for drouzinesse when they should compassionate thy sorrow and lost themselves in a stupid sleepinesse Doubtlesse even this disregard made thy prayers so much more fervent The lesse comfort we finde on earth the more we seek above Neither soughtst thou more then thou foundest Lo thou wert heard in that which thou fearedst An Angel supplies men that Spirit was vigilant whiles thy Disciples were heavy The exchange was happy No sooner is this good Angel vanished then that domestick Devil appears Judas comes up and shews himself in the head of those miscreant troups He whose too much honour it had been to be a Follower of so Blessed a Master affects now to be the leader of this wicked rabble The Sheeps fleece is now cast off the Wolf appears in his own likenesse He that would be false to his Master would be true to his Chapmen Even evil spirits keep touch with themselves The bold Traitor dare yet still mix Hypocrisie with Villany his very salutations and kisses murder O Saviour this is no news to thee All those who under a shew of Godlinesse practise impiety do still betray thee thus Thou who hadst said One of you is a Devil didst not now say Avoid Satan but Friend wherefore art thou come As yet Judas it was not too late Had there been any the least spark of Grace yet remaining in that perfidious bosome this word had fetcht thee upon thy knees All this Sunshine cannot thaw an obdurate heart The sign is given Jesus is taken Wretched Traitor why wouldst thou for this purpose be thus attended and ye foolish Priests and Elders why sent you such a band and so armed for this apprehension One messenger had been enough for a voluntary prisoner Had my Saviour been unwilling to be taken all your forces with all the Legions of Hell to help them had been too little since he was willing to be attached two were too many When he did but
corps such as if all the Powers of Darkness shall band against they shall finde themselves confounded In spight of all the gates of Hell that word shall stand Not a bone of him shall be broken Still the infallible Decree of the Almighty leads you on to his own ends through your own waies Ye saw him already dead whom ye came to dispatch those bones therefore shall be whole which ye had had no power to break But yet that no piece either of your cruelty or of Divine prediction may remain unsatisfied he whose bones may not be impaired shall be wounded in his flesh he whose Ghost was yielded up must yield his last blood One of the souldiers with a spear pierced his side and forthwith there came out blood and water Malice is wont to end with life here it overlives it Cruel man what means this so late wound what commission hadst thou for this bloody act Pilate had given leave to break the bones of the living he gave no leave to gore the side of the dead what wicked supererogation is this what a superfluity of maliciousness To what purpose did thy spear pierce so many hearts in that one why wouldst thou kill a dead man Methinks the Blessed Virgin and those other passionate associates of hers and the Disciple whom Jesus loved together with the other of his fellows the friends and followers of Christ and especially he that was so ready to draw his sword upon the troup of his Masters apprehenders should have work enough to contain themselves within the bounds of patience at so savage a stroke their sorrow could not chuse but turn to indignation and their hearts could not but rise as even mine doth now at so impertinent a villany How easily could I rave at that rude hand But O God when I look up to theee and consider how thy holy and wise Providence so overrules the most barbarous actions of men that besides their will they turn beneficial I can at once hate them and bless thee This very wound hath a mouth to speak the Messiahship of my Saviour and the truth of thy Scripture They shall look at him whom they have pierced Behold now the Second Adam sleeping and out of his side formed the Mother of the living the Evangelical Church Behold the Rock which was smitten and the waters of life gushed forth Behold the fountain that is set open to the house of David for sin and for uncleanness a fountain not of water only but of blood too O Saviour by thy water we are washed by thy blood we are redeemed Those two Sacraments which thou didst institute alive flow also from thee dead as the last memorials of thy Love to thy Church the water of Baptisme which is the laver of Regeneration the blood of the new Testament shed for remission of sins and these together with the Spirit that gives life to them both are the three Witnesses on earth whose attestation cannot fail us Oh precious and soveraign wound by which our Souls are healed Into this cleft of the rock let my Dove fly and enter and there safely hide her self from the talons of all the birds of prey It could not be but that the death of Christ contrived and acted at Jerusalem in so solemn a Festival must needs draw a world of beholders The Romans the Centurion and his band were there as actors as supervisors of the Execution Those strangers were no otherwise ingaged then as they that would hold fair correspondence with the Citizens where they were engarisoned their freedome from prejudice rendred them more capable of an ingenuous construction of all events Now when the Centurion and they that were with him that watched Jesus saw the Earthquake and the things that were done they feared greatly and glorified God and said Truely this was the Son God What a marvelous concurrence is here of strong and irrefragable convictions Meekness in suffering Prayer for his murderers a faithful resignation of his Soul into the hands of his Heavenly Father the Sun eclipsed the Heavens darkned the earth trembling the graves open the rocks rent the veile of the Temple torn who could goe less then this Truly this was the Son of God He suffers patiently this is through the power of Grace many good men have done so through his enabling The frame of Nature suffers with him this is proper to the God of Nature the Son of God I wonder not that these men confessed thus I wonder that any Spectator confessed it not these proofs were enough to fetch all the world upon their knees and to have made all mankind a Convert But all hearts are not alike no means can work upon the wilfully-obdured Even after this the Souldier pierced that Blessed side and whiles Pagans relented Jews continued impenitent Yet even of that Nation those beholders whom envie and partiality had not interessed in this slaughter were stricken with just astonishment and smote their breasts and shook their heads and by passionate gesture spake what their tongues durst not How many must there needs be in this universal concourse of them whom he had healed of diseases or freed from Devils or miraculously fed or some way obliged in their persons or friends These as they were deeply affected with the mortal indignities which were offered to their acknowledged Messiah so they could not but be ravished with wonder at those powerful demonstrations of the Deity of him in whom they believed and strangely distracted in their thoughts whiles they compared those Sufferings with that Omnipotence As yet their Faith and Knowledge was but in the bud or in the blade How could they chuse but think Were he not the Son of God how could these things be and if he were the Son of God how could he die His Resurrection his Ascension should soon after perfect their belief but in the mean time their hearts could not but be conflicted with thoughts hard to be reconciled Howsoever they glorifie God and stand amazed at the expectation of the issue But above all other O thou Blessed Virgin the Holy Mother of our Lord how many swords pierced thy Soul whiles standing close by his Cross thou sawest thy dear Son and Saviour thus indignely used thus stripped thus stretched thus nailed thus bleeding thus dying thus pierced How did thy troubled heart now recount what the Angel Gabriel had reported to thee from God in the message of thy blessed Conception of that Son of God How didst thou think of the miraculous formation of that thy Divine burden by the power of the Holy Ghost How didst thou recal those prophecies of Anna and Simeon concerning him and all those supernatural works of his the irrefragable proofs of his Godhead and laying all these together with the miserable infirmities of his Passion how wert thou crucified with him The care that he took for thee in the extremity of his torments could not chuse but melt thy heart into sorrow But
crack and the ship to sink with store so here when he threw forth his first drag-net of Heavenly Doctrine and reproof three thousand Souls were drawn up at once This Text was as the sacred Cord that drew the Net together and pull'd up this wondrous shoal of Converts to God It is the summe of Saint Peter's Sermon if not at a Fast yet at a general Humiliation which is more and better for wherefore fast we but to be humbled and if we could be duely humbled without fasting it would please God a thousand times better then to fast formally without true Humiliation Indeed for the time this was a Feast the Feast of Pentecost but for the estate of these Jews it was dies cinerum a day of contrition a day of deep hunger and thirst after righteousness Men and Brethren what shall we doe Neither doubt I to say that the Festivity of the season added not a little to their Humiliation like as we are never so apt to take cold as upon a sweat and that winde is ever the keenest which blows cold out of a warm coast No day could be more afflictive then an Ashwednesday that should light upon a solemn Pentecost so it was here every thing answered well The Spirit came down upon them in a mighty wind and behold it hath ratled their hearts together the house shoo◠in the descent and behold here the foundations of the Soul were moved Fiery tongues appeared and here their breasts were inflamed Cloven tongues and here their hearts were cut in sunder The words were miraculous because in a supernatural and sudden variety of language the matter Divine laying before them both the truth of the Messiah and their bloody measure offered to that Lord of Life and now Compuncti cordibus they were pricked in their hearts Wise Solomon says The words of the wise are like goads and nails here they were so Goads for they were compuncti pricked yea but the goad could not goe so deep that passeth but the skin they were Nails driven into the very heart of the Auditors up to the head the great Master of the Assembly the divine Apostle had set them home they were pricked in their hearts Never were words better bestowed It is an happy blood-letting that saves the life this did so here We look to the figne commonly in Phlebotomy it is a signe of our idle and ignorant Superstition S. Peter here saw the signe to be in the Heart and he strikes happily Compuncti cordibus they were pricked in their hearts and said Men and brethren what shall we doe Oh what sweet Musick was this to the Apostles ear I dare say none but Heaven could afford better What a pleasing spectacle was this anguish of their wounded Souls To see men come in their zealous Devotions and lay down their moneys the price of their alienated possessions at those Apostolick feet was nothing to this that they came in a bleeding contrition and prostrated their penitent and humbled Souls at the beautiful feet of the Messengers of Peace with Men and Brethren what shall we doe Oh when when shall our eyes be blessed with so happy a prospect How long shall we thunder out God's fearful judgements against wilful sinners How long shall we threaten the flames of Hell to those impious wretches who crucifie again to themselves the Lord of life ere we can wring a sigh or a tear from the rocks of their hearts or eyes Woe is me that we may say too truely as this Peter did of his other fishing Master we have travailed all the night and have caught nothing Surely it may well goe for night with us whiles we labour and prevail not Nothing not a Soul caught Lord what is become of the success of thy Gospel Who hath believed our report or to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed O God thou art ever thy self thy Truth is eternal Hell is where it was if we be less worthy then thy first Messengers yet what excuse is this to the besotted world that through obduredness and infidelity it will needs perish No man will so much as say with the Jews What have I done or with Saint Peter's Auditors What shall I doe Oh foolish sinners shall ye live here always care ye not for your Souls is there not an Hell that gapes for your stubborn impenitence Goe on if there be no remedy goe on and die for ever we are guiltless God is righteous your Damnation is just But if your life be fickle death unavoidable if an everlasting vengeance be the necessary reward of your momentany wickedness Oh turn turn from your evil waies and in an holy distraction of your remorsed Souls say with these Jews Men and Brethren what shall we doe This from the general view of the occasion we descend to a little more particularity Luke the beloved Physician describes Saint Peter's proceeding here much after his own trade as of a true spiritual Physician who finding his Country men the Jews in a desperate and deadly condition gasping for life struggling with death enters into a speedy and zealous course of their cure And first he begins with the Chirurgical part and finding them ranck of blood and that foul and putrified he lets it out compuncti cordibus Where we might shew you the incision the vein the lancet the orifice the anguish of the stroke The Incision compuncti they were pricked The Vein in their hearts Smile not now ye Physicians if any hear me this day as if I had passed a solecisme in telling you these men were pricked in the vein of the heart talk you of your Cephalica and the rest and tell us of another cistern from whence these tubuli sanguinis are derived I tell you again with an addition of more incongruities still that God and his Divine Physician do still let blood in the median vein of the heart The Lancet is the keen and cutting reproof of their late barbarous Crucifixion of their Holy and most innocent and benigne Saviour The Orifice is the ear when they heard this Whatever the local distance be of these parts spiritually the ear is the very surface of the heart and whosoever would give a medicinal stroke to the heart must pass it through the ear the sense of discipline and correction The Anguish bewrays it self in their passionate exclamation Men and brethren what shall we doe There is none of these which my speech might not well take up if not as an house to dwell in yet as an Inne to rest and lodge in But I will not so much as bait here onely we make this a through-fare to those other sacred prescriptions of saving remedies which are three in number The first is Evacuation of sins by a speedy repentance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The second the soveraign Bath or Laver of Regeneration Baptisme The third dietetical and prophylactical receipts of wholesome Caution which I mean with a determinate preterition of
but dead in sin Colos 2. 13. yea with Lazarus quatriduani and ill-senting yea if that will adde any thing as St. Jude's trees or as they say of acute Scotus twice dead Would ye arise It is only Godliness that can doe it Ye are risen up through the faith in the operation of God Col. 2. 12. This only can call us out of the grave of our sins Arise thou that sleepest and stand up from the dead and christ shall give thee life Christ is the Author Godliness is the means All ye that hear me this day either ye are alive or would be Life is sweet every one challenges it Do ye live willingly in your sins Let me tell you ye are dead in your sins This life is a death If you wish to live comfortably here and gloriously hereafter it is Godliness that must mortifie this life in sin that must quicken you from this death in sin Flatter your selves how you please ye great Gallants of both Sexes ye think your selves goodly pieces without Godliness ye are the worst kinde of carkasses for as death or not-being is the worst condition that can befall a creature so death in sin is so much the worst kind of death by how much Grace is better then Nature A living Dog or Toad is better then a thus-dead sinner Would ye rise out of this loathsome and woful plight it is Godliness that must breath Grace into your dead lims and that must give you the motions of holy Obedience Is it not a wonder to cast out Devils I tell you the corporal possession of ill spirits is not so rare as the spiritual is rise No natural man is free One hath the spirit of errour 1 Tim. 4. 1. another the spirit of fornications Ose 4. 12. another the spirit of fear 2 Tim. 1. 7. another the spirit of slumber another the spirit of giddiness another the spirit of pride all have spiritum mundi the spirit of the world 1 Cor. 2. 12. Our story in Guliel Neubrigensis tells us of a Countryman of ours one Kettle of Farnham in King Henry the Second's time that had the faculty to see spirits by the same token that he saw the Devils spitting over the Drunkards shoulders into their pots the same faculty is recorded of Antony the Eremite and Sulpitius reports the same of Saint Martin Surely there need none of these eyes to discern every natural mans Soul haunted with these evil Angels Let me assure you all ye that have not yet felt the power of Godliness ye are as truely though spiritually carried by evil spirits into the deeps of your known wickedness as ever the Gadarene hogs were carried by them down the precipice into the Sea Would you be free from this hellish tyranny only the power of Godliness can doe it 2 Tim. 2. 26 27. Is peradventure God will give them repentance that they may recover themselves out of the snares of the Devil and Repentance is you know a main part of Godliness If ever therefore ye be dispossessed of that Evil one it is the power of Godliness that must doe it What speak I of power I had like to have ascribed to it the acts of Omnipotencie And if I had done so it had not been much amiss for what is Godliness but one of those rayes that beams forth from that Almighty Deity what but that same Dextra Excelsi whereby he works mightily upon the Soul Now when I say the man is strong is it any derogation to say his arme is strong Faith and Prayer are no small pieces of Godliness and what is it that God can doe which Prayer and Faith cannot doe Will ye see some instances of the further acts of Godliness Is it not an act of Omnipotence to change Nature Jannes and Jambres the Aegyptian Sorcerers may juggle away the Staffe and bring a Serpent into the room of it none but a Divine power which Moses wrought by could change the Rod into a Serpent or the Serpent into a Rod. Nothing is above Nature but the God of Nature nothing can change Nature but that which is above it for Nature is regular in her proceedings and will not be crost by a finite power since all finite Agents are within her command Is it not a manifest change of the nature of the Wolf to dwell quietly with the Lamb of the Leopard to dwell with the Kid of the Lion to eat straw with the Oxe of the Aspe to play with the child How shall this be It is an idle conceit of the Hebrews that savage beasts shall forgo their hurtful natures under the Messias No but rational beasts shall alter their dispositions The ravenous Oppressor is the Wolf the tyrannical Persecutor is the Leopard the venemous Heretick is the Aspe these shall turn innocent and useful by the power of Godliness for then the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord Esay 11. 6 c. Is it not a manifest change of nature for the Ethiopian to turn white for the Leopard to turn spotless This is done when those doe good which are accustomed to evil Jer. 13. 23. And this Godliness can doe Is it not a manifest change of nature for the Camel to pass through a needles eye this is done when through the power of Godliness ye Great and rich men get to Heaven Lastly it is an easie thing to turn men into beasts a cup too much can doe it but to turn beasts into men men into Saints Devils into Angels it is no less then a work of Omnipotencie And this Godliness can doe But to rise higher then a change Is it not an act of Omnipotencie to create Nature can go on in her track whether of continuing what she actually finds to be or of producing what she finds to be potentially in pre-existing Causes but to make new matter transcends her power This Godliness can doe here is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a new Creature 2 Cor. 5. 17. There is in Nature no predisposition to Grace the man must be no less new then when he was made first of the dust of the earth and that earth of nothing Novus homo Eph. 4. 24. How is this done by Creation and how is he created in righteousness and holiness Holiness to God Righteousness to men both make up Godliness A Regeneration is here a Creation Progenuit is expressed by Creavit Jam. 1. 18. and this by the word of truth Old things are passed saith the Apostle all must be new If we will have ought to doe with God our bodies must be renewed by a glorious Resurrection ere they can enjoy Heaven our Souls must be renewed by Grace ere we can enjoy God on earth Are there any of us pained with our heart of stone We may be well enough the stone of the reines or bladder is a woful pain but the stone of the heart is more deadly He can by this power take it out and give us an
in that Heaven one uniform face of all that glorious Vault the nature of the holy Angels is one and simple as creatures can be the head of Angels and Saints one Saviour whose blessed Humanity if it carry some semblance of composition yet it is answered by a threefold Union of one and the same Subject a double union of the Deity with the Humanity a third union of the Humanity in it self So that as in the Deity there is one Essence and three Persons in Christ is one Person and three Essences united into that one If from Heaven we look to earth from God to men we have but one Earth one Church in that earth one King in that Church and for us one Deputy of that King one Scepter one Law of both one Baptism one Faith Cor unum viam unam and all these make up Columbam unam one Dove It would perhaps be no unnecessary excursion to take hereupon occasion to discourse of the perfectest form of Church-government and to dispute the case of that long and busie competition betwixt Monarchy and Aristocracy Ingenuous Richier the late eye-sore of the Sorbon hath made methinks an equal arbitration That the State is Monarchical the Regiment Aristocratical The State absolutely Monarchical in Christ dispensatively Monarchical in respect of particular Churches forasmuch as that power which is inherent in the Church is dispensed and executed by some prime Ministers like as the faculty of Seeing given to the man is exercised by the Eye which is given for this use to man And if for the Aristocratical Regiment there be in the native Senate of the Church which is a General Council a power to enact Canons for the wielding of this great body as more eyes see more then one yet how can this consist without Unity Concilium is not so much a concalando as Calepine hath mistaken as a conciliando or as Isidore à ciliis oculorum which ever move together In this Aristocracy there is an Unity for as that old word was long since Episcopatus unus est cujus à singulis in solidum pars tcnetur In a word no Regiment no State can have any form but deformity without Unity Neither is there more Perfection then Strength in Unity Large bodies if of a stronger composition yet because the spirits are diffused have not that vigor and activity which a well-knit body hath in a more slender frame The praise of the invincible strength of Jerusalem was not so much in the natural walls the hills round about it as in the mutual compactednesse within it self And Solomon tells us it is the twisted Cord that is not easily broken The Rule of Vegetius that he gives for his best stratagem is that which our Jesuites know too well to set strife where we desire ruine Our Saviour saies that of every City which one said anciently of Carthage That division was the best engine to batter it A City divided cannot stand On the contrary of every happy Church of every firm State is that verified which God speaks in the whirlewinde of Leviathan's scales una uni conjungitur one is joyned to another that the winde cannot passe between them they stick together that they cannot be sundred Job 41. 16 17. That there is Perfection and Strength in Unity cannot be doubted but how agrees this Unity to Christ's Dove his Church It shall be thus absolutely in patria at home but how is it in via in the passage Even here it is One too not divided not multiplied To begin with the former It hath been a stale quarrel that hath been raised from the divisions of the Christian world worn thredbare even by the pens and tongues of Porphyrie Libanius Celsus Julian and after them Valens the Emperour was puzzled with it till Themistius that memorable Christian Philosopher in a notable Oration of his convinced this idle cavil telling the Emperour He should not wonder at the dissensions of Christians that these were nothing in comparison of the differences of the Gentile Philosophers which had above three hundred severall Opinions in agitation at once and that God meant by this variety of judgments to illustrate his own Glory that every man might learn so much more to adore his Majesty by how much harder it is rightly to apprehend him The justice of this exception hath been confessed and bewailed of old by the antient Fathers St. Chrysostome shall speak for all Deridiculo facti sumus Gentibus Judaeis dum Ecclesia in mille partes scinditur We are made a scorn to Jews and Gentiles saith he whiles the Church is torn into a thousand pieces Little do these fools that stumble at these contentions know the weight of S. Paul's Oportet There must be heresies little are they acquainted with Gods fashions in all his works Hath he not set contrary motions in the very Heavens Are not the Elements the main stuffe of the world contrary to each other in their forms and qualities Hath he not made the natural Day to consist of light and darknesse the Year of seasons contrarily tempered yea all things according to the guesse of that old Philosopher ex lite amicitia And shall we need to teach God how to frame his Church Will these wise censurers accuse the Heavens of misplacing the Elements of mistemper or check the Day with the deformity of his darknesse or upbraid the fair beauty of the Year with ice-icles and wrinkles or condemn that reall Friendship that arises from debate If the wise and holy Moderator of all things did not know how by these fires of contradiction to trie men and to purifie his Truth and to glorifie himself how easie were it for him to quench them and confound their Authors Can they commend it in a wise Scipio that he would not have Carthage though their greatest enemy destroied ut timore libido premeretur libido pressa non luxuriaretur that riot might be curbed with fear as S. Austin expresses it and shall not the most wise God have leave to permit an exercise to keep his children in breath that they be not stuft up with the foggy unsound humors of the world When these presuming fools have stumbled and faln into the bottome of hell the Spouse of Christ shall be still his Dove in the clests or scissures of the Rocks and she shall call him her Roe or yong Hart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon the hills of Division Cant. 2. 17. But yet when all is done in spight of all dissentions the Church is Columba una one Dove The word is not more common then equivocal whether ye consider it as the aggregation of the outward visible particular Churches of Christian professors or as the inward secret universal company of the Elect it is still One. To begin with the former What is it here below that makes the Church one one Lord One Faith One Baptism One Lord so it is one in the Head One Faith so it is
one in the Heart One Baptism so it is one in the Face Where these are truly professed to be though there may be differences of administrations and ceremonies though there may be differences in opinions yet there is Columba una all those are but diversly-coloured feathers of the same Dove What Church therefore hath one Lord Jesus Christ the righteous one Faith in that Lord one Baptism into that Faith it is the One Dove of Christ To speak more short one Faith abridges all But what is that one Faith what but the main fundamental Doctrine of Religion necessary to be known to be believed unto Salvation It is a golden and usefull distinction that we must take with us betwixt Christian Articles and Theological Conclusions Christian Articles are the Principles of Religion necessary to a Believer Theological Conclusions are School-points fit for the discourse of a Divine Those Articles are few and essential these Conclusions are many and unimporting upon necessity to Salvation either way That Church then which holds those Christian Articles both in terms and necessary consequences as every visible Church of Christ doth however it vary in these Theological Conclusions is Columba una Were there not much latitude in this Faith how should we fetch in the antient Jewish Church to the unity of the Christian Theirs and ours is but one Dove though the feathers according to the colour of that fowl be changeable It is a fearfull account then that shall once be given before the dreadfull Tribunal of the Son of God the only Husband of this one Church by those men who not like the children of faithfull Abraham divide the Dove multiplying Articles of Faith according to their own fancies and casting out of the bosome of the Church those Christians that differ from their either false or unnecessary conclusions Thus have our great Lords of the Seven hills dared to doe whose faction hath both devoured their Charity and scorned ours to the great prejudice of the Christian world to the irreparable damage of the glorious Gospel of our Lord Jesus The God of Heaven judge in this great case betwixt them and us us who firmly holding the foundation of Christian Religion in all things according to the antient Catholick Apostolick Faith are rejected censured condemned accursed killed for refusing their gainfull Novelties In the mean time we can but lament their fury no lesse then their errours and send out our hopelesse wishes that the seamlesse coat might be darn'd up by their hands that tore it From them to speak to our selves who have happily reformed those errours of theirs which either their ambition or profit would not suffer them to part with since we are one why are we sundred One saies I am Luther's for Consubstantiation another I am Calvin's for Discipline another I am Arminius's for Predestination another I am Barrow's or Brown's for Separation What frenzy possesses the brains of Christians thus to squander themselves into Factions It is indeed an envious cavil of our common adversaries to make these so many Religions No every branch of different Opinion doth not constitute a several Religion were this true I durst boldly say old Rome had not more Deities then the modern Rome hath Religions These things though they do not vary Religions and Churches yet they trouble the quiet unity of the Church Brethren since our Religion is one why are not our tongues one why do we not bite in our singular conceits and binde our tongues to the common Peace But if from particular visible Churches which perhaps you may construe to be the threescore Queens here spoken of you shall turn your eyes to the true inward universal company of Gods Elect and secret ones there shall you more perfectly finde Columbam unam one Dove for what the other is in profession this is in truth that one Baptism is here the true Laver of Regeneration that one Faith is a saving reposal upon Christ that one Lord is the Saviour of his Body No natural body is more one then this mystical one Head rules it one Spirit animates it one set of joynts moves it one Food nourishes it one Robe covers it So it is one in it self so one with Christ as Christ is one with the Father That they may be one even as we are one I in them and thou in me John 17. 22. Oh blessed Unity of the Saints of God which none of the makebates of Hell can ever be able to dissolve And now since we are thus and every other way one why are we not united in Love why do we in our ordinary conversation suffer slight weaknesses to set off our Charity Mephibosheth was a cripple yet the perfect love of Jonathan either cures or covers his impotency We can no more want infirmities then not be men we cannot stick at infirmities if we be Christians It is but a poor love that cannot passe over small faults even quotidianae incursionis as that Father speaks It is an injurious niceness to condemn a good Face in each other for a little mole Brethren let us not aggravate but pity each others weaknesses and since we are but one Body let us have but one Heart one Way And if we be the Dove of Christ and his Dove is one oh let us be so one with each other as he is one with us And as the Church and Commonwealth are twins so should this be no lesse one with it self and with her temporal head Divisum est cor eorum Their heart is divided was the judgment upon Israel ose 10. 2. Oh how is every good heart divided in sunder with the grief for the late divisions of our Reuben We do not mourn we bleed inwardly for this distraction But I do willingly smother these thoughts yea my just sorrow choaks them in my bosome that they cannot come forth but in sighs and groans O thou that art the God of peace unite all hearts in Love to each other in loyal Subjection to their Soveraign Head Amen As the Church is one in not being divided so she is but one in not being multiplied Here is unus uni unam as the old word is He the true Husband of the Church who made and gave but one Eve to the first Adam will take but one wife to himself the second Adam There are many particular Churches all these make up but one universal as many distinct lims make up but one intire body many grains one bach many drops and streams one Ocean So many Regions as there are under Heaven that do truly professe the Christian name so many National Churches there are in all those Nations there are many Provincial in all those Provinces many Diocesan in all those Dioceses many Parochial Churches in all those Parishes many Christian Families in all those Families many Christian Souls now all those Souls Families Parishes Dioceses Provinces Nations make up but one Catholick Church of Christ upon earth The God of the
challenge a worse enemy then what we were and what in part we are and what without Gods mercy we should be Let degenerated Nature then fee her best Advocate at this barre he can but plead Shape Speech Ratiocination to make himself no beast and if these prove but some jugling mists to make him seem other then he is he shall be forced to grant himself other then he seems a beast To begin with the first The true essence of Humanity lies not in the outside God hath hid the Form of every creature deeper much more of him that should be reasonable Let us give leave to holy Austin's credulity that a man was by a piece of an inchanted Cheese turned into an Ass tell me now ye Philosophers what creature ye will call this His Soul is the same the Shape is altered Reason is where she was but otherwise attended If ye dare say it might be a beast with Reason your best fort is lost The Hide was now rough the Ears long the Hooves round and hard and the whole Habit bestial but if Reason had not more power to make him no beast then these outward parts had to make him no man I have what I would You must of force therefore say it was a man clothed with a beast and so shall fall upon that of Cleanthes which Epiphanius mentions that the Soul is the man What is the Body then but the Habit of this Spirit which it may change or put off without change as under divers sutes we still wear the same skin If we had been on the Scaffold to see a man challenging the dogs in the disguise of a Bears-hide would we have said Now two beasts are fighting The Shape therefore may well belie the Substance Our English Navigations report that on some Indian shores men have been seen with the faces of beasts and ye know the old verse Simia quà m similis Yea both our stories and the Netherlandish tell us of Sea-monsters that have been taken up in the full form of men if the outside seemed humane whiles the inside was mute and reasonless who would honour that creature with the style of man What should I tell you that evil spirits have not seldome appeared in the shipes of men as that Devil of Endor in Samuel's likeness If the outward Figure could have made the man the Prophet had survived his death To these let me adde that the Shape is changed with disease or casualty or age whiles the man is the same The Face that was fair is now distorted and morphew'd the Hair that was yellow or black turn'd white or vanished the Body that was erect bowed double the Skin that was white and smooth turn'd tawnie and writhel'd and the whole frame so altered as if it had been molded anew that whiles all others mis-know it he that dwels in that tenement can scarce know it to be his own and yet the owner will not say with that mortified spirit Ego non sum ego What shall we say of the proud Monarch of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar during the seven years of his transformation His outward Shape was not changed his heart was it was the word of his Vision Let his heart be changed from mans and let a beasts heart be given unto him Dan. 4. 16. What was he now for the time but a beast even in his own sense His diet was with the oxen his hair like Eagles fethers his nails like birds claws all was obbrutescebat animus his heart was bestial in a case of humane flesh It is not therefore the Shape that can forbid man to be a beast And it was not for nothing that the Cynick sought in the full streets for a man and would not allow that acclamation to Doxippus in the Olympian games Doxippus viros vicit Let us see what Speech and Reason can doe Ratio Oratio Every living creature hath a peculiar sound whereby to express it self and that not without some variety of signification and change of note If man onely speak articulately words of voluntary formation and arbitrary imposition yet even brutes have such natural language as whereby each of the same kind do mutually understand other and what can our words obtain more If an Apollonius Tyaneus could construe them in their sense it is all one as if he listened to his Gossips But besides the natural tone have we not heard Birds taught so to imitate the voice of men that they have received replies as not distinguished Do not our books tell us of the Hyaena that learns the Shepherds name and calls him forth to his cost so cunningly counterfeiting the voice that the man paies his blood for his credulity A dumb man is no less a man then a pratler Balaam's Ass was a beast still and yet not only spake but spake in a mans voice 2 Pet. 2. 16. Besides that man when he comes to his best shall have no use of Speech although there want not some as Gerson Salmeron and others that hold a vocal Quire in Heaven The Angels praise God and understand each other without use of a tongue once we shall be like them It is not Speech therefore that makes the man since man shall be most himself when he shall not speak It is Reason that mainly differenceth man from beast and the improvement of it in a free deduction of consequences and conclusions that Divine power dwells onely in the immortal Soul of man and is not communicable to the lower forme of creatures Let me have leave still to put you in mind that I speak not of man created in innocence I speak not of man as renewed by Grace and by that initiated in Glory I speak of man as depraved by sin Now he hath indeed the light of Reason but so dim and duskie that we may well say he looks through horn not through Crystal He that was an Eagle is now an Owle to this Sun As his best Graces are lost so his second powers are marr'd he is therefore now become like the beast that perisheth not in frailty only but in ignorance for it follows This their way is their folly Psal 49. 13. Besides we see the outside of those creatures we call brute we see not what is within them Not to speak of the excellency of their Common sense and strength of Memory surely their Phantasie yields such inferences as would seem to evince an inferiour and mungrel kind of Ratiocination Who that should see Plutarch's Crow coming to the pail to drink and finding it not full enough for her reach carrying stones to raise up the water who that should see the Beavers framing their den or some Birds building their nests who that should see the Lion plaining the impression of his paws with his sterne who that should see the Cranes ballasting themselves when they are to fly over the mountains who that shall see the wily tricks of the Fox or the witty feats of the Monkey or
not Gods that are made with hands Did ever any Ephesian beast bray out such another challenge Is it possible that humane reason should be so brutified as to think a man may make his own God as to seek a Deity in liveless metals as to bow his knees to what hath faln from his fingers O Idolatry the true Sorceress of the world what beasts do thine inchantments make of men Even the fine Athenian not the gross Theban wits were fain to be taught that the Godhead is not like to gold or silver or stone And would to God the modern Superstition were less foppish Hear this ye seduced souls that are taught to worship a pastry-God Ergo adeo stolidi opifices ab se fabrefieri Deos credunt saith our Jesuite Lorinus of these Ephesians These so foolish workmen think they can make their Gods And why not of Gold as well as of Grain why not the Smith as well as the Baker Change but the name the absurdity is but one To hold that a man can make his own fingers or that those fingers can make that wheat whereof the wafer is made were a strange folly but that a man can make the God that made him and eat the God that he hath made is such a monster of Paradoxes as puts down all the fancies of Paganisme and were enough to make a wavering soul say with Averroes Sit anima mea cum Philosophis I remember their learned Montanus upon Luke 22. 19. construes that Hoc est corpus meum thus Verum corpus meum in hoc Sacramento panis continetur sacramentaliter etiam corpus meum mysticum My true body is sacramentally contained in this Sacrament of bread as also my body mystical and withall as willing to say something if he durst speak out addes cujus arcanam mysteriis refertissimam rationem ut explicatiorem habeant homines Christiani dabit aliquando Dominus whose secret and most deeply-mystical meaning God will one day more clearly unfold to his Christian people Now the God of Heaven make good this honest Prophesie and open the eyes of poor mis-led souls that they may see to distinguish betwixt a slight corruptible wafer and an incomprehensible immortal God And if from this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Bread-worship I should lead you to their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cross-worship and from thence to their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Image-worship you would finde reason enough why that man of Sin the author of these Superstitions should be called the Beast The Violence and impetuosity of these Ephesians was answerable for here was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Trouble verse 23. then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Concourse verse 40. then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Confusion and that in the whole City verse 29 and more then that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a furious rushing into the Theatre and then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a boisterous snatching of those that were conceived opposites besides all their shouting and out-cries and savage uproar What should I need to tell you that this furious prosecution is no other then an ordinary symptom of Idolatry and to make it good what should I need to lay before your eyes all those turbulent effects that in our daies have followed malicious Superstition those instigations of publick Invasions those conspiracies against maligned Soveraignty those suffossions of walls those powder-trains those shameless Libels those patrocinations of Treasons and to make up all those late Bulls that bellow out prohibitions of justly-sworn allegeance those bold absolutions from sacred Oaths 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he said of the Lacedaemonians In all these we too well feel that we have to doe with the beast with S. John's beast no whit short of S. Paul's God knows how little pleasure I take in displaying the enormities of our fellow-Christians Although to say as it is not the Church but the Faction is it that by their practice thus merits the title of savageness Of that Faction let me say with sorrow of heart that their wilful opposition to truth their uncharitable and bloody courses their palpable Idolatry hath powred shame and dishonour and hath brought infinite loss and disadvantage to the blessed Name of Christ And now ye see by this time that in the generality natural and vicious men are no other then beasts that specially all contentious adversaries to the Truth and impetuous Idolaters are beasts of S. Paul's Theatre Wherefore then serves all this but to stir us up to a threefold use of holy Thankfulness of Pity of Indignation The two first are those duo ubera Sponsa the two breasts of Christs Spouse as Bernard calls them Congratulation and Compassion The former of Thankfulness to our good God that hath delivered us as from the wretchedness of our corrupt Nature so from blinde and gross misdevotion yea from the tyranny of Superstition Alas what are we better what other then our neighbours that our Goshen should be shined upon whiles their Aegypt is covered with darkness What are we that we should be renewed in the spirit of our mindes and be created according to the Image of God whiles they continue in the woful deformation of their bestial corruptions that our Understanding should be inlightned with the beams of Divine truth whereas those poor souls are left in the natural dungeon of their ignorance or groveling to base earthly unreasonable traditions O God of mercies had it pleased thee to give them our illumination and attraction and to have left us in their miserable darkness and indocility we had been as they are and they perhaps had been as we should be Non nobis Domine Not unto us Lord not unto us but to thy Name let the praise be given of this thy gracious sequestration and thou that onely hast done it take to thy self the glory and improvement of thine own work Of Pity and yearning of bowels whether to those careless unregenerates that cannot so much as complain of their too-pleasing corruptions but applaud themselves in the free scope of their own brutish sensuality as if they had made a covenant with death an agreement with hell or whether to our poor seduced brethren that are nursed up in an invincible ignorance of Truth and are held down with the imperious sway of Antichristian usurpation Alas it is too true which our learned Spalatensis why should I not call him ours who sealed up that truth of ours which his pen had so stoutly maintained with his last blood hath observed and published Nam plebem rudiorem c. that the ruder multitude under the Papacy are carried commonly with more inward religious affection toward the Blessed Virgin or some other Saint then towards Christ himself Whose heart would not bleed at the thought of this deplorable irreligion and yet these poor souls think they doe so well as that they cry out of our damnation for not accompanying them At tu Domine usque quò How long Lord how long wilt
place here not Probabilities How powerfully doth he convince the unbelieving Jews of Ephesus and Rome out of Moses and the Prophets Act. 28. 23. This this is the weapon whereby our grand Captain vanquished the great challenger of the bottomless pit Scriptum est All other blades are but Lead to this Steel Councils Fathers Histories are good helps but ad pompam rather then ad pugnam These Scriptures are they whereof S. Augustin justly Hac fundamenta haec firmamenta What do we multiply volumes and endlesly go about the bush That of Tertullian is most certain Aufer ab haereticis quaecunque Ethnici sapiunt ut de Scripturis solis questiones suas sistant stare non poterunt Take from Hereticks what they borrow of Pagans and hold them close to the trial by the Scriptures alone they cannot stand Bring but this fire to the wildest beast his eye will not indure it he must run away from it for these kind of creatures are all as that Father Lucifugae Scripturarum What worlds of volumes had been spared how infinite distractions of weak and wavering souls had been prevented if we had confined our selves to S. Paul's fence Our third rule must be To redouble our strokes uncessantly unweariably not giving breath to the beast not fainting for want of our own S. Paul laid on three months together in the Synagogue of Ephesus two years more in the school of Tyrannus Act. 19. 8 9. and accordingly gives us our charge State ergo Stand close to it Eph. 6. 14. If when we have dealt some few unsuccessful blows we throw up the bucklers or lean upon our pummels we lose our life with the day I could as the case might stand easily be of the minde of that souldier who when he heard Xenophantus by his musick stirring up Alexander to the fight wisht rather to hear a Musician that could take him off but since we have to doe with an enemy which nec victor nec victus novit quiescere as Annibal said of Marcellus there is no way but to fight it out Ye have not yet resisted unto blood faith the Apostle If need be we must do so Serpens sit is ardor arena Dulcia virtuti as he said Oh be constant to your own holy resolutions if ever ye look for an happy victory Well did the dying Prophet chide the King of Israel that he struck but thrice Thou shouldst have smitten often then thou shouldst have smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it 2 Kings 13. 19. Let neither buggs of fear nor suppalpations of favour weaken your hands from laying load upon the beast of Errour Fight zealously fight indefatigably and prevail In the battails of Christ as S. Chrysostome observes the issue is so assured that the crown goes before the victory but when ye once have it hold fast that you have that no man take your crown Revel 3. 11. Our last rule is To know our distance and where we find invincible resistance to come off fairly So did S. Paul in the Theatre of the Ephesian Synagogue when after three months disputation some were hardened and in stead of believing blasphemed the way of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he departed and separated Act. 19. 9. Those beasts we cannot master we must give up If Babylon will not be cur'd she must be left to her self To apply this to the Theatre of the times There is no challenge either more frequent or more heavy then that we have left that Church which they miscal our Mother Had we gone from her that is gone from her self we had but followed her in leaving her had we left her that hath blasphemed her forsaken truth we had but followed S. Paul but now let the world know we have not left her she hath abandon'd us Non fugimus sed fugamur as Casaubon cites from our late Learned Soveraign It is her violence not our choice that hath excluded us Because we could not but leave her errors she hath ejected our persons This schism shall one day before that great Tribunal of Heaven fall heavily upon those perverse spirits that had rather rend the Church then want their will and can be content to sacrifice both Truth and Peace together with millions of Souls to their own ambition Let this suffice for the beasts of Opinion which are Errours Turn your eyes now if you please to S. Paul's fight with the beast of Practice Vices And in the first place see how the Ephesian beasts fought with S. Paul Act. 19. 28 29. Ye find them as so many enraged Bulls scraping the earth with their feet and digging it with their horns snuffing up the aire with their raised nostrils rushing furiously into the Theatre tossing up Gaius and Paul's companions into the aire and with an impetuous violence carrying all before them This hath been ever the manner of wickedness to be headstrong in the pursuit of it's own courses impatient of opposition cruel in revenge of the opposers Doth Eliah cry out against the murders and Idolatries of Ahab the beast hath him in chace for his life and earths him in his cave Doth Michaiah cross the designes of the false Prophets in the expedition of Ramoth the beast with the iron-horns pusheth him in the face and beats him down into the dungeon Doth John Baptist bend his Non licet against Herodias's incest the beast flies in his throat and with one grasp tears his head from his shoulders So it ever was so it ever will be Am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth saith S. Paul Stetisse lego judicandos Apostolos saith Bernard If still therefore heart-burnings and malicious censures attend the faithful delivery of Gods sacred errand the Beast is like it self Sagittant in obscura luna rectos corde as St. Chrysostome reads that in the Psalm In the mean time what doth S. Paul Doth he give in doth he give out No here was still 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ephes 6. 20. He traverses his ground indeed for his advantage from Ephesus to Macedonia but still he galls the beast where-ever he is as Idolaters so all sorts of flagitious sinners felt the weight of his hand the dint of his stroke all which wheresoever he finds them he impartially pierces through with the darts of denounced Judgement that is the verbum asperum and sagitta volans in Psal 91. the curse of the Law Gal. 3. 13. See how he wouuds those other beasts of Ephesus No whoremonger nor unclean person nor covetous man which is an Idolater hath any inheritance in the Kingdome of God Ephes 5. 5. and For these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience verse 6. Tribulation and anguish to every soul that doth evil In flaming fire rendring vengeance to those that know not God and obey him not And why do not we in imitation of this noble champion of God strike through the loyns of wickedness whereever we finde it that if
for the Angel even after his Resurrection says He is not here for he is risen Sect. 3. Transubstantiation against Reason NEver did or can Reason triumph so much over any prodigious Paradox as it doth over this Insomuch as the Patrons of it are fain to disclaim the Sophistry of Reason and to stand upon the suffrages of Faith and the plea of Miracles We are not they who with the Manichees refuse to believe Christ unless he bring Reason we are not they who think to lade the Sea with an egge-shell to fadome the deep Mysteries of Religion with the short reach of natural apprehension We know there are wonders in Divinity fit for our adoration not fit for our comprehending But withall we know that if some Theological Truths be above right Reason yet never any against it for all Verity complies with it self as springing from one and the same Fountain This Opinion therefore we receive not not because it transcends our conceit but because we know it crosseth both true Reason and Faith It implies manifest contradiction in that it referres the same thing to it self in opposite relations so as it may be at once present and absent near and far off below and above It destroies the truth of Christ's humane body in that it ascribes Quantity to it without extension without locality turning the flesh into spirit and bereaving it of all the properties of a true body those properties which as Nicetas truely cannot so much as in thought be separated from the essence of the body insomuch as Cyril can say If the Deitie it self were capable of partition it must be a body and if it were a body it must needs be in a place and have quantity and magnitude and thereupon should not avoid circumscription It gives a false body to the Son of God making that every day of Bread by the power of words which was made once of the substance of the Virgin by the Holy Ghost It so separates Accidents from their Subjects that they not onely can subsist without them but can produce the full effects of Substances so as bare Accidents are capable of Accidents so as of them Substances may be either made or nourished It utterly overthrows which learned Cameron makes the strongest of all reasons the nature of a Sacrament in that it takes away at once the Signe and the Analogie betwixt the Signe and the thing signified The Signe in that it is no more Bread but accidents the Analogie in that it makes the Signe to be the thing signified Lastly it puts into the hands of every Priest power to doe every day a greater Miracle then God did in the Creation of the World for in that the Creator made the Creature but in this the creature daily makes the Creator Since then this Opinion is both New and convinced to be grossly Erroneous by Scripture and Reason justly have we professed our deterstation of it and for that are unjustly ejected CHAP. VIII The Newness of the Half-Communion THE Novelty of the Half-Sacrament or dry Communion delivered to the Laity is so palpable as that the Patrons of it in the presumptuous Council of Constance profess no less Licet Christus c. Although Christ say they after his Supper instituted and administred this venerable Sacrament under both kinds of Bread and Wine c. Licet in primitiva c. Although in the Primitive Church this Sacrament were received by the faithful under both kinds Non obstance c. Yet this custome for the avoiding of some dangers and scandals was upon just reason brought in that Laicks should receive onely under one kinde and those that stubbornly oppose themselves against it shall be ejected and punished as Hereticks Now this Council was but in the year of our Lord God 1453. Yea but these Fathers of Constance however they are bold to controll Christ's Law by Custome yet they say it was consuetudo diutissimè observata a custome very long observed True but the full age of this Diutissimè is openly and freely calculated by Cassander Satis constat It is apparent enough that the Western or Romane Church for a thousand years after Christ in the solemn and ordinary Dispensation of this Sacrament gave both kinds of Bread and Wine to all the members of the Church A point which is manifest by innumerable ancient Testimonies both of Greeks and Latines And this they were induced to doe by the example of Christs institution Quare non temerè c. It is not therefore saith he without cause that most of the best Catholicks and most conversant in the reading of Ecclesiastical Writers are inflamed with an earnest desire of obtaining the Cup of the Lord that the Sacrament may be reduced to that ancient custome and use which hath been for many Ages perpetuated in the universal Church Thus he We need no other Advocate Yea their Vasquez draws it yet lower Negare non c. We cannot deny that in the Latin Church there was the use of both kinds and that it so continued until the dayes of Saint Thomas which was about the year of God 1260. Thus it was in the Romane Church but as for the Greek the World knows it did never but communicate under both kinds These open Confessions spare us the labour of quoting the several testimonies of all Ages else it had been easie to shew how in the Liturgie of Saint Basil and Chrysostome the Priest was wont to pray Vouchsafe O Lord to give us thy Body and thy Blood and by us to thy people how in the order of Rome the Archdeacon taking the Chalice from the Bishops hand confirmeth all the receivers with the blood of our Lord and from Ignatius's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One Cup distributed to all to have descended along through the clear records of S. Cyprian Hierome Ambrose Augustine Leo Gelafius Paschasius and others to the very time of Hugo and Lombard and our Halensis and to shew how S. Cyprian would not deny the blood of Christ to those that should shed their blood for Christ how Saint Austin with him makes a comparison betwixt the blood of the Legal Sacrifices which might not be eaten and this blood of our Saviours Sacrifice which all must drink But what need allegations to prove a yielded truth So as this halfing of the Sacrament is a mere novelty of Rome and such a one as their own Pope Gelasius sticks not to accuse of no less then Sacriledge Sect. 2. Half-Communion against Scripture NEither shall we need to urge Scripture when it is plainly confessed by the last Councils of Lateran and Trent that this practice varies from Christs institution Yet the Tridentine Fathers have left themselves this evasion that however our Saviour ordained it in both kinds and so delivered it to his Apostles notwithstanding he hath not by any command enjoyned it to
doth not cease to be a Wife unless being despoiled of her marriage-ring she be manifestly divorced The Church of Rome therefore is yet the Church of Christ but what manner of Church Surely so corrupted and depraved and with so great tyrannie oppressed that you can neither with a good Conscience partake with them in their holy things nor safely dwell amongst them Thus he again wherein you see he speaks as home for me as I could devise to speak for my self and as appositely professeth to oppose the contrary Look now how this Learned Author may be reconciled to his own pen and by the very same way shall my pen be reconciled with others Either he agrees not with himself or else in his sense I agree with my gainsayers Nothing is more plain then that he in that former speech and all other Classick Authors that speak in that Key mean by a True Church a sound pure right-believing Church so as their vera is rather verax Zanchie explicates the terme whiles he joines veram puram together so as in this construction it is no true Church that is an unsound one as if truth of Existence were all one with truth of Doctrine In this sense whosoever shall say the Church of Rome is a true Church I say he calls evil good and is no better then a teacher of lyes But if we measure the true Being of a Visible Church by the direct maintenance of Fundamental Principles though by consequences indirectly overturned and by the possession of the Word of God and his Sacraments though not without foul adulteration what judicious Christian can but with me subscribe to Learned Zanchius that the Church of Rome hath yet the true Visibility of a Church of Christ What should I need to press the latitude and multiplicity of sense of the word Church there is no one term that I know in all use of Speech so various If in a large sense it be taken to comprehend the Society of all that profess Christian Religion through the whole world howsoever impured who can deny this title to the Roman If in a strict sense it be taken as it is by Zanchius here and all those Divines who refuse to give this style to the Synagogue of Rome for the Company of Elect Faithful men gathered into one mystical Body under one Head Christ washed by his Blood justified by his Merits sanctified by his Spirit conscionably waiting upon the true Ordinances of God in his pure Word and holy Sacraments who can be so shameless as to give this title to the Roman Church Both these sentences then are equally true The Church of Rome is yet a true Church in the first sense The Church of Rome long since ceased to be a true Church in the second As those friendly Souldiers therefore of old said to their fellows 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 why fight we Stay stay dear brethren for Gods sake for his Churches sake for your Souls sake stay these busie and unprofitable litigations put up on both sides your angry pens turn your Swords into Siths to cut down the rank corruptions of the Roman Church and your Spears into Mattocks to beat down the walls of this mystical Babylon There are enemies enough abroad let us be friends at home But if our sense be the same you will ask why our terms varie and why we have chosen to fall upon that manner of expression which gives advantage to the Adversary offence to our own Christian Reader let me beseech thee in the bowels of Christ to weigh well this matter and then tell me why such offence such advantage should be rather given by my words then by the same words in the mouth of Luther of Calvin of Zanchie Junius Plessee Hooker Andrews Field Crakenthorp Bedell and that whole cloud of Learned and Pious Authors who have without exception used the same language and why more by my words now then twentie years agoe at which time I published the same Truth in a more full and liberal expression Wise and charitable Christians may not be apt to take offence where none is given As for any advantage that is hereby given to the Adversaries they may put it in their eye and see never the worse Loe say they we are of the true visible Church this is enough for us why are we forsaken why are we persecuted why are we sollicited to a change Alas poor souls do they not know that Hypocrites leud persons Reprobates are no less members of the true visible Church what gain they by this but a deeper damnation To what purpose did the Jews cry The Temple of the Lord whiles they despited the Lord of that Temple Is the Sea-weed ever the less vile because it is drag'd up together with good fish They are of the visible Church such as it is what is this but to say they are neither Jews nor Turks nor Pagans but misbelievers damnably Heretical in opinion shamefully Idolatrous in practice Let them make their best of this just Eulogie and triumph in this style may we never prosper if we envie them this glorie Our care shall be that besides the Church sensible as Zuinglius distinguisheth we may be of the Church spiritual and not resting in a fruitless Visibility we may finde our selves lively lims of the mystical body of Christ which onely condition shall give us a true right to Heaven whiles fashionable Profession in vain cries Lord Lord and is barred out of those blessed gates with an I know you not Neither may the Reader think that I affect to goe by-waies of speech no I had not taken this path unless I had found it both more beaten and fairer I am not so unwise to teach the Adversary what disadvantage I conceive to be given to our most just Cause by the other manner of explication Let it suffice to say that this form of defence more fully stops the Adversaries mouth in those two main and envious Scandals which he casts upon our holy Religion Defection from the Church and Innovation then which no suggestion hath wont to be more prevalent with weak and ungrounded hearts What we further win by this not more charitable then safe Tenet I had rather it should be silently conceived by the judicious then blazoned by my free pen. Shortly in this state of the Question our gain is as clear as the Adversaries loss our ancient Truth triumphs over their upstart Errours our Charity over their merciless Presumptions Fear not therefore dear Brethren where there is no room for danger suspect not fraud where there is nothing but plain honest simplicity of intentions censure not where there is the same Truth clad in a different but more easie habit of words But if any mans fervent zeal shall rather draw him to the liking of that other rougher and harder way so as in the mean time he keep within the bounds of Christian Charity I tax him not let every man abound
deliver thou my Soul from their crafty ambushes their poison is greater their webs both more strong and more insensibly woven Either teach me to avoid Tentation or make me to break through it by Repentance Oh let me not be a prey to those Fiends that lie in wait for my destruction XVI Upon the sight of a Rain in the Sun-shine SUch is my best condition in this life If the Sun of Gods Countenance shine upon me I may well be content to be wet with some Rain of Affliction How oft have I seen the Heaven overcast with Clouds and Tempest no Sun appearing to comfort me yet even those gloomy and stormy seasons have I rid out patiently only with the help of the common light of the day at last those beams have broken forth happily and cheared my Soul It is well for my ordinary state if through the mists of mine own dulness and Satans Tentations I can descry some glimpse of Heavenly comfort let me never hope while I am in this Veile to see the clear face of that Sun without a showre such Happiness is reserved for above that upper Region of Glory is free from these doubtfull and miserable vicissitudes There O God we shall see as we are seen Light is sown for the Righteous and joy for the upright in heart XVII Upon the Length of the way HOW far off is yonder great mountain My very eye is weary with the foresight of so great a distance yet time and patience shall overcome it this night we shall hope to lodge beyond it Some things are more tedious in their exspectation then in their performance The comfort is that every step I take sets me nearer to my end When I once come there I shall both forget how long it now seems and please my self to look back upon the way that I have measured It is thus in our passage to Heaven My weak nature is ready to faint under the very conceit of the length and difficulty of this Journey my eye doth not more guide then discourage me Many steps of Grace and true Obedience shall bring me insensibly thither Only let me move and hope and God's good leisure shall perfect my Salvation O Lord give me to possesse my Soul with patience and not so much to regard speed as certainty When I come to the top of thine Holy hill all these weary paces and deep sloughs shall either be forgotten or contribute to my Happinesse in their remembrance XVIII Upon the Rain and Waters WHat a sensible interchange there is in Nature betwixt union and division Many Vapours rising from the Sea meet together in one Cloud that cloud falls down divided into several Drops those drops run together and in many rills of water meet in the same Chanels those chanels run into the Brook those brooks into the Rivers those rivers into the Sea one receptacle is for all though a large one and all make back to their first and main originall So it either is or should be with Spiritual Gifts O God thou distillest thy Graces upon us not for our reservation but conveyance those manifold Faculties thou lettest fall upon several men thou wouldst not have drenched up where they light but wouldst have derived through the chanels of their special vocations into the common streams of publick Use for Church or Common-wealth Take back O Lord those few drops thou hast rained upon my Soul and return them into that great Ocean of the Glory of thine own Bounty from whence they had their beginning XIX Upon the same Subject MAny Drops fill the Chanels and many chanels swell up the Brooks and many brooks raise the Rivers over the banks the Brooks are not out till the Chanels be empty the Rivers rise not whiles the small Brooks are full but when the little Rivulets have once voided themselves into the main streams then all is overflown Great matters arise from small beginnings many littles make up a large bulk Yea what is the World but a composition of atomes We have seen it thus in Civil Estates the empairing of the Commons hath oft been the raising of the Great their streams have run low till they have been heightned by the confluence of many private inlets Many a mean chanell hath been emptied to make up their inundation Neither is it otherwise in my whether outward or Spiritual condition O God thou hast multiplied my drops into streams As out of many Minutes thou hast made up my Age so out of many Lessons thou hast made up my competency of Knowledge thou hast drained many beneficient friends to make me competently Rich by many holy motions thou hast wrought me to some measure of Grace Oh teach me wisely and moderately to injoy thy Bounty and to reduce thy streams into thy drops and thy drops into thy clouds humbly and thankfully acknowledging whence and how I have all that I have all that I am XX. Upon occasion of the Lights brought in WHat a change there is in the room since the Light came in yea in our selves All things seem to have a new form a new life yea we are not the same we were How goodly a creature is Light how pleasing how agreeable to the spirits of man No visible thing comes so near to the resembling of the nature of the Soul yea of the God that made it As contrarily what an uncomfortable thing is Darknesse insomuch as we punish the greatest malefactors with obscurity of Dungeons as thinking they could not be miserable enough if they might have the priviledge of beholding the Light Yea Hell it self can be no more horribly described then by outward Darkness What is Darkness but absence of Light The pleasure or the horror of light or darkness is according to the quality and degree of the cause whence it ariseth And if the light of a poor Candle be so comfortable which is nothing but a little inflamed aire gathered about a moistened snuffe what is the light of the glorious Sun the great lamp of Heaven But much more what is the light of that infinitely-resplendent Sun of Righteousnesse who gave that light to the Sun that Sun to the world And if this partial and imperfect Darkness be so dolefull which is the privation of a natural or artificial Light how unconceivable dolorous and miserable shall that be which is caused through the utter absence of the all-glorious God who is the Father of lights O Lord how justly do we pity those wretched Souls that sit in darkness and the shadow of death shut up from the light of the saving knowledge of thee the only true God But how am I swallowed up with horror to think of the fearfull condition of those damned Souls that are for ever shut out from the presence of God and adjudged to exquisite everlasting darkness The Egyptians were weary of themselves in their three daies darkness yet we do not finde any pain that accompanied their continuing night What
and seek to my window in the hardest Frost There is no triall of Friendship but Adversity He that is not ashamed of my bonds not daunted with my checks not aliened with my disgrace is a Friend for me One dram of that mans Love is worth a world of false and inconstant formality XXXIV Upon the sight of a Flie burning it self in the Candle WIse Solomon sayes the Light is a pleasant thing and so certainly it is but there is no true outward Light which proceeds not from Fire The light of that fire then is not more pleasing then the fire of that light is dangerous and that pleasure doth not more draw on our sight then that danger forbids our approach How foolish is this Flie that in a love and admiration of this light will know no distance but puts it self heedlesly into that flame wherein it perishes How many bouts it fetcht every one nearer then other ere it made this last venture and now that mercilesse fire taking no notice of the affection of an over-fond Client hath suddenly consumed it Thus doe those bold busie Spirits who will needs draw too near unto that inaccessible light and look into things too wonderfull for them So long do they hover about the secret Counsels of the Almighty till the wings of their presumptuous conceits be scorched and their daring Curiosity hath paid them with everlasting destruction O Lord let me be blessed with the knowledge of what thou hast revealed let me content my self to adore thy Divine Wisdome in what thou hast not revealed so let me enjoy thy Light that I may avoid thy Fire XXXV Upon the â—ight of a Lark flying up HOw nimbly doth that little Lark mount up singing towards Heaven in a right line whereas the Hawk which is stronger of body swifter of wing towres up by many graduall compasses to his highest pitch That bulk of body and length of wing hinders a direct ascent and requires the help both of aire and scope to advance his flight whiles that small bird cuts the aire without resistance and needs no outward furtherance of her motion It is no otherwise with the Souls of men in flying up to their Heaven some are hindred by those powers which would seem helps to their soaring up thither great Wit deep Judgement quick Apprehension send men about with no small labour for the recovery of their own incumbrance whiles the good affections of plain and simple souls raise them up immediatly to the fruition of God Why should we be proud of that which may slacken our way to Glory why should we be disheartned with the small measure of that the very want whereof may as the heart may be affected facilitate our way to Happiness XXXVI Upon the singing of the Birds in a Spring morning HOw chearfully do these little Birds chirp and sing out of the naturall joy they conceive at the approach of the Sun and entrance of the Spring as if their life had departed and returned with those glorious and comfortable beams No otherwise is the penitent and faithfull Soul affected to the true Sun of Righteousnesse the Father of lights When he hides his face it is troubled and silently mourns away that sad Winter of Affliction when he returns in his presence is the fulnesse of joy no Song is chearfull enough to welcome him O thou who art the God of all consolation make my heart sensible of the sweet comforts of thy gracious presence and let my mouth ever shew forth thy praise XXXVII Upon a Coal covered with Ashes NOthing appears in this heap but dead Ashes here is neither light nor smoak nor heat and yet when I stir up these embers to the bottome there are found some living gleeds which do but contain fire and are apt to propagate it Many a Christians breast is like this hearth no life of Grace appears there for the time either to his owne sense or to the apprehension of others whiles the season of Temptation lasteth all seems cold and dead yet still at the worst there is a secret coal from the Altar of Heaven rak'd up in their bosome which upon the gracious motions of the Almighty doth both bewray some remainders of that Divine fire and is easily raised to a perfect flame Nothing is more dangerous then to judge by appearances Why should I deject my self or censure others for the utter extinction of that Spirit which doth but hide it self in the Soul for a glorious advantage XXXVIII Upon the sight of a Blackmore LOE there is a man whose hue shews him to be far from home his very skin bewrays his Climate it is night in his face whiles it is day in ours What a difference there is in men both in their fashion and colour and yet all Children of one Father Neither is there lesse variety in their insides their Dispositions Judgements Opinions differ as much as their Shapes and Complexions That which is Beauty to one is Deformity to another We should be look'd upon in this mans Country with no lesse wonder and strange coynesse then he is here our Whitenesse would passe there for an unpleasing indigestion of form Outward Beauty is more in the eye of the beholder then in the face that is seen in every Colour that is fair which pleaseth The very Spouse of Christ can say I am black but comely This is our colour Spiritually yet the eye of our gracious God and Saviour can see that Beauty in us wherewith he is delighted The true Moses marries a Black-more Christ his Church It is not for us to regard the skin but the Soul If that be innocent pure holy the blots of an out-side cannot set us off from the love of him who hath said Behold thou art fair my Sister my Spouse if that be foul and black it is not in the power of an Angelicall brightnesse of our hide to make us other then a loathsome eye-sore to the Almighty O God make my inside lovely to thee I know that beauty will hold whiles weather casualty age disease may deforme the outer man and marre both colour and feature XXXIX Upon the small Stars in the Galaxie or milkie Circle in the Firmament WHat a clear lightsomnesse there is in yonder Circle of the Heaven above the rest What can we suppose the reason of it but that the light of many smaller Stars is united there and causes that constant brightness And yet those small Stars are not discerned whiles the splendor which ariseth from them is so notably remarkable In this lower Heaven of ours many a man is made conspicuous by his good qualities and deserts but I most admire the Humility and Grace of those whose Vertues and Merits are usefully visible whiles their Persons are obscure It is secretly glorious for a man to shine unseen Doubtlesse it is the height that makes those Stars so small and invisible were they lower they would be seen more There is no true
them that dwell therein Perhaps there wanted not some Sacriledge in the Demolishers In all the carriage of these businesses there was a just hand that knew how to make an wholsome and profitable use of mutuall sins Full little did the Builders or the in-dwellers think that this costly and warm fabrick should so soon end violently in a desolate rubbish It is not for us to be high-minded but to fear No Roof is so high no Wall so strong as that Sin cannot level it with the Dust Were any pile so close that it could keep out aire yet it could not keep out Judgement where Sin hath been fore-admitted In vain shall we promise stability to those Houses which we have made witnesses of and accessaries to our shamefull uncleannesses The firmnesse of any Building is not so much in the matter as in the owner Happy is that Cottage that hath an honest Master and wo be to that Palace that is viciously inhabited LXXVII Upon the discharging of a Peece GOod Lord how witty men are to kill one another What fine devices they have found out to murder afar off to slay many at once and so to fetch off lives that whiles a whole Lane is made of Carkasses with one blow no body knows who hurt him And what honour do we place in slaughter Those armes wherein we pride our selves are such as which we or our Ancestors have purchased with blood the monuments of our Glory are the spoils of a subdu'd and slain enemy Where contrarily all the titles of God sound of Mercy and gracious respects to Man God the Father is the Maker and Preserver of men God the Son is the Saviour of Mankind God the Holy Ghost styles himself the Comforter Alas whose image do we bear in this disposition but his whose true title is the Destroier It is easie to take away the life it is not easie to give it Give me the man that can devise how to save Troups of men from killing his name shall have room in my Calender There is more true Honour in a Civick Garland for the preserving of one Subject then in a Lawrell for the victory of many Enemies O God there are enough that bend their thoughts to undoe what thou hast made enable thou me to bestow my endeavours in reprieving or rescuing that which might otherwise perish O thou who art our common Saviour make thou me both ambitious and able to help to save some other besides my self LXXVIII Upon the tolling of a passing-Bell HOw dolefull and heavy is this summons of Death This sound is not for our eares but for our hearts it calls us not onely to our Prayers but to our preparation to our prayers for the departing Soul to our preparation for our own departing We have never so much need of Prayers as in our last Combat then is our great Adversary most eager then are we the weakest then Nature is so over-laboured that it gives us not leisure to make use of gracious motions There is no preparation so necessary â—s for this Confâ—ict all our Life is little enough to make ready for our last hour What am I better then my Neighbours How oft hath this Bell reported to me the farewell of many more strong and vigorous bodies then my own of many more chearfull and lively spirits And now what doth it but call me to the thought of my parting Here is no abiding for me I must away too O thou that art the God of comfort help thy poor Servant that is now struggling with his last enemy His sad Friends stand gazing upon him and weeping over him but they cannot succour him needs must they leave him to doe this great work alone none but thou to whom belong the issues of death canst relieve his distressed and over-matched Soul And for me let no man die without me as I die daily so teach me to die once acquaint me beforehand with that Messenger which I must trust to Oh teach me so to number my dayes that I may apply my heart to true wisdome LXXIX Upon a Defamation dispersed WEre I the first or the best that ever was slandered perhaps it would be somewhat difficult to command my self patience Grief is wont to be abated either by partners or precedents the want whereof dejects us beyond measure as men singled out for patterns of misery Now whiles I finde this the common condition of all that ever have been reputed vertuous why am I troubled with the whisperings of false tongues O God the Devil slandered thee in Paradise O Saviour men slandered thee on earth more then men or Devils can reproach me Thou art the best as thou art the best that ever was smitten by a lying and venomous tongue It is too much favour that is done me by malicious lips that they conform me to thy Sufferings I could not be so happy if they were not so spightfull O thou glorious pattern of reproached Innocence if I may not die for thee yet let me thus bleed with thee LXXX Upon a ring of Bels. WHiles every Bell keeps due time and order what a sweet and harmonious sound they make all the neighbour Villages are cheared with that common Musick But when once they jarre and check each other either jangling together or striking preposterously how harsh and unpleasing is that noise So that as we testifie our publick rejoycing by an orderly and wel-tuned peal so when we would signifie that the town is on fire we ring confusedly It is thus in Church and Commonwealth when every one knows and keeps their due ranks there is a melodious consort of Peace and contentment but when distances and proportions of respects are not mutually observed when either States or persons will be clashing with each other the discord is grievous and extremely prejudiciall such confusion either notifieth a fire already kindled or portendeth it Popular States may ring the changes with safety but the Monarchicall Government requires a constant and regular course of the set degrees of rule and inferiority which cannot be violated without a sensible discontentment and danger For me I do so love the Peace of the Church and State that I cannot but with the charitable Apostle say Would to God they were cut off that trouble them and shall ever wish either no jarres or no clappers LXXXI Upon the sight of a full Table at a Feast WHat great Variety is here of Flesh of Fish of both of either as if both Nature and Art did strive to pamper us Yet methinks enough is better then all this Excesse is but a burden as to the Provider so to the Guest It pities and grieves me to think what toile what charge hath gone to the gathering of all these Dainties together what pain so many poor creatures have been put to in dying for a needlesse Sacrifice to the Belly what a Penance must be done by every Accumbent in sitting out the passage through all these dishes
thou abasest thy self to behold the things both in Heaven and Earth It is our glory to look up even to the meanest piece of Heaven it is an abasement to thine incomprehensible Majesty to look down upon the best of Heaven Oh what a transcendent Glory must that needs be that is abased to behold the things of Heaven What an happinesse shall it be to me that mine eyes shall be exalted to see thee who art humbled to see the place and state of my blessednesse Yea those very Angels that see thy face are so resplendently glorious that we could not overlive the sight of one of their faces who are fain to hide their faces from the sight of thine How many millions attend thy Throne above and thy Footstool below in the ministration to thy Saints It is that thine invisible world the Communion wherewith can make me truely blessed O God if my body have fellowship here amongst Beasts of whose earthly substance it participates let my Soul be united to thee the God of Spirits and be raised up to enjoy the insensible society of thy blessed Angels Acquaint me before-hand with those Citizens and affairs of thine Heaven and make me no stranger to my future Glory LXXXVIII Upon the stinging of a Wasp HOW small things may annoy the greatest Even a Mouse troubles an Elephant a Gnat a Lion a very Flea may disquiet a Giant What weapon can be nearer to nothing then the sting of this Wasp Yet what a painfull wound hath it given me that scarce-visible point how it envenomes and ranckles and swells up the flesh The tenderness of the part addes much to the grief And if I be thus vexed with the touch of an angry File Lord how shall I be able to indure the sting of a tormenting Conscience As that part is both most active and most sensible so that wound which it receives from it self is most intolerably grievous there were more ease in a nest of Hornets then under this one Torture O God howsoever I speed abroad give me Peace at home and whatever my Flesh suffer keep my Soul free Thus pained wherein do I finde ease but in laying honey to the part infected That Medicine only abates the anguish How near hath Nature placed the remedy to the offence Whensoever my Heart is stung with the remorse for sin only thy sweet and precious Merits O blessed Saviour can mitigate and heal the wound they have virtue to cure me give me Grace to apply them that soveraign receipt shall make my pain happy I shall thus applaud my grief It is good for me that I was thus afflicted LXXXIX Upon the Arraignment of a Felon WIth what terrour doth this Malefactor stand at that Bar his Hand trembles whiles it is lift up for his triall his very Lips quake whiles he saith Not guilty his Countenance condemns him before the Judge and his fear is ready to execute him before his Hangman Yet this Judge is but a weak man that must soon after die himself that Sentence of Death which he can pronounce is already passed by Nature upon the most innocent that act of Death which the Law inflicteth by him is but momentany who knows whether himself shall not die more painfully O God with what horror shall the guilty Soul stand before thy dreadfull Tribunall in the day of the great Assizes of the World whiles there is the presence of an Infinite Majesty to daunt him a fierce and clamorous Conscience to give in evidence against him Legions of ugly and terrible Devils waiting to seize upon him a gulf of unquenchable Fire ready to receive him whiles the Glory of the Judge is no lesse confounding then the Cruelty of the Tormenters where the Sentence is unavoidable and the Execution everlasting Why do not these terrors of thee my God make me wise to hold a privy Sessions upon my Soul actions that being acquitted by my own heart I may not be condemned by thee and being judged by my self I may not be condemned with the World XC Upon the Crowing of a Cock. How harshly did this note sound in the eare of Peter yea pierced his very heart Many a time had he heard this Bird and was no whit moved with the noise now there was a Bird in his bosome that crowed lowder then this whose shrill accent conjoined with this astonished the guilty Disciple The wearie Labourer when he is awakened from his sweet sleep by this natural Clock of the Houshold is not so angry at this troublesome Bird nor so vexed at the hearing of that unseasonable sound as Peter was when this Fowl awakened his sleeping Conscience and called him to a timely repentance This Cock did but crow like others neither made or knew any difference of this tone and the rest there was a Divine hand that ordered this Mornings note to be a Summons of Penitence He that fore-told it had fore-appointed it that Bird could not but crow then and all the noise in the High Priests Hall could not keep that sound from Peter's eare But O Saviour couldst thou finde leisure when thou stoodst at the Bar of that unjust and cruell Judgment amidst all that bloody rabble of Enemies in the sense of all their fury and the exspectation of thine own Death to listen unto this Monitor of Peter's Repentance and upon the hearing of it to cast back thine eyes upon thy Denying Cursing Abjuring Disciple O Mercy without measure and beyond all the possibility of our admiration to neglect thy self for a Sinner to attend the Repentance of one when thou wert about to lay down thy life for all O God thou art still equally mercifull Every Elect Soul is no lesse dear unto thee Let the sound of thy faithfull Monitors smite my ears and let the beams of thy mercifull eyes wound my heart so as I may go forth and weep bitterly XCI Upon the variety of Thoughts WHen I bethink my self how Eternity depends upon this moment of life I wonder how I can think of any thing but Heaven but when I see the distractions of my Thoughts and the aberrations of my life I wonder how I can be so bewitched as whiles I believe an Heaven so to forget it All that I can doe is to be angry at mine own vanity My Thoughts would not be so many if they were all right there are ten thousand by-waies for one direct As there is but one Heaven so there is but one way to it that living way wherein I walk by Faith by Obedience All things the more perfect they are the more do they reduce themselves towards that Unity which is the Center of all Perfection O thou who art one and infinite draw in my heart from all these stragling and unprofitable Cogitations and confine it to thine Heaven and to thy self who art the Heaven of that Heaven Let me have no life but in thee no care but to injoy thee no ambition but thy Glory Oh make
make us to appear in the sight of God The Toad or the Serpent are lovely objects to us in comparison of these disguises to the pure eyes of the Almighty yea so perfectly doth God hate them that he professes those hate him that like them Whosoever will be a friend to the world is an enemy to God Jam. 4. 4. Oh then if we love our Souls let us hate those fashions that may draw us into the detestation of the Almighty for our God is a consuming fire Besides misbeseeming it is a just plea against any Fashion that it is painfull For though there be some Pain allowed in all Pride yet too much we indure not and behold these Fashions shall pinch and torture us to death to an everlasting death of body and Soul The ill guest in the Parable was thus clad Mat. 22. 12. the King abhorres his suit and after expostulation gives the sentence Binde him hand and foot and take him away and cast him into utter darkness where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Oh fear and tremble at the exspectation of this dreadfull doom all ye that will needs be in the fashion of the world If ye be so foolish as to flatter your selves here in the conceit of your Liberty there shall be binding in the conceit of a lightsome and resplendent Magnificence there shall be darknesse in the conceit of Pleasure and Contentment there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Lastly commonnesse and age are the usuall disparagements of Fashions The best may not goe like every body where a Fashion is taken up of the basest it is disdained of the eminent Behold these are the fashions if not of all I am sure of the worst the very scum of the world is thus habited Let us that are Christians in an holy pride scorn to be suited like them As common so old fashions are in disgrace That man would be shouted at that should come forth in his great-grandfires suit though not rent not discoloured Behold these are the overworn and misshapen rags of the old man Away with them to the frippery of darknesse yea to the brokery of Hell Let us be for a change Old things are passed all things are become new As we look to have these bodies once changed from vile to glorious so let us now change the fashions of our bodies and Souls from corrupt and worldly to spirituall and heavenly and loathing all these misbelieving painfull common old fashions of the world let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ that being clad with the robes of his Righteousnesse here we may be cloathed upon with the robes of his Glory in the highest Heavens Amen THE ESTATE OF A CHRISTIAN Laid forth In a SERMON preached at Grayes-Inne on Candlemas day By Jos. HALL Rom. 12. 2. But be ye changed or transformed by the renewing of your minds c. THE true method of Christian practice is first destructive then astructive according to the Prophet Cease to doe evil learn to doe good This our Apostle observes who first unteacheth us ill fashions and then teacheth good We have done with the negative duty of a Christian what he must not doe hear now the affirmative what he must doe wherein our speech treading in the steps of the blessed Apostle shall passe through these four heads First that here must be a change secondly that this change must be by transformation thirdly that this transformation must be by renewing fourthly that this renewing must be of the minde But be ye changed or transformed by the renewing of your minds All of them points of high and singular importance and such as do therefore call for your best and carefullest attention Nothing is more changing then the fashion of the world Mundus transit The world passeth away saith S. John Yet here that we may not fashion our selves to the world we must be changed we must be changed from these changeable fashions of the world to a constant estate of Regeneration As there must be once a perfect change of this mortall to immortality so must there be onwards of this sinfull to gracious and as holy Job resolves to wait all the daies of his appointed time for that changing so this change contrarily waits for us and may not be put off one day What creature is there wherein God will not have a change They needed not as he made them nothing could fall from him but good we marr'd them and therefore they both are changed and must be Even of the very Heavens themselves it is said As a vesture shalt thou change them and they shall be changed how much more these sublunary bodies that are never themselves We know the Elements are in a perpetual transmutation so are those bodies that are compounded of them as he said of the River we cannot step down twice into the same stream And every seven years as Philosophy hath observed our bodies are quite changed from what they were And as there is a natural change in our favours colour complexion temper so there is no lesse voluntary change in our diets in our dispositions in our delights With what scorn do we now look upon the Top which our Childhood was fond on how do we either smile or blush in our mature age to think of the humours and actions of our youth How much more must the depravedness of our spiritual condition call for a change It is a rule in Policy Not to alter a well-setled evil I am sure it holds not in the Oeconomy of the Soul wherein length of prescription pleads rather for a speedy removal no time can prejudice the King of Heaven In some cases indeed change is a sign of a weak unsetledness It is not for a wise man like Shel-fish to rise or fall with the Moon rather like unto the Heaven he must learn to move and be constant It was a good word of Basil to the Governour Utinam sempiterna sit hoec mea desipientia Let me dote thus alw aies It was not for nothing that Socrates had the reputation of Wisdome that famous Shrew of his Xantippe could say she never but saw him return with the countenance that he went out with Give me a man that in the changes of all conditions can frame himself to be like an Auditors counter and can stand either for a thousand or an hundred or if need be for one this man comes nearest to him in whom there is no shadow of turning But in case of present ill there can be no safety but in change I cannot blame the Angels and Saints in Heaven that they would not change I blesse them that they cannot because they are not capable of better and every motion is out of a kind of need I cannot wonder at the damned spirits that they would be any thing but what they are We that are naturally in the way to that damnation have reason to desire a change worse we cannot be upon