Soul may be purified No doubt of this Refiners Art or Skill Is his Will doubted of It is one with the Will of God and Gods Will is that we be purified 1 Thess. 4. 3. And Christ is no teacher of loosness but of the height of Righteousness 'T is not the privilege of the Gospel that we may sin securely because Christus solvit but that we may live more exactly because Christ requires it and doth inwardly enable us to perform it See also Rom. 8. 1 2 3 4. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Iesus who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Iesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit Here we will acknowledge that God is able his Spirit is willing but we are uncapable of so great a good by reason of the infirmity of the Flesh But answer me O vain man what is this infirmity of the Flesh is it not the strength of Sin And is there any strength that can withstand the powerful operation of the Spirit of God The weakness or strength if you will of the Body bears it towards the Earth but the fire and activity of the Natural Spirits bears it above and enables it to walk upright on the Earth contrary to be bend of its own Essence and Nature Shall not the Spirit of God then be as able to actuate and lead the Soul contrary to its accidental and ascititious Principles as the Natural Spirits to actuate the Body contrary to its innate and essential Principles Certainly if it be not effectual in us we our selves are in fault who abuse our shuffling Phansie and Reason to fend off the stroke and power of Truth that at once would cleave our hearts that 's a tender place the seat of Life it self and any Religion but that which kills us and mortifies us The Devil knew well enough what he said and his Children make it good Skin for skin and all that a man has will he give for his life This is the shuffling hypocrisie of the Natural Spirit of man and the root of infidelity But let us make better use of this precious Scripture Seeing ye obeyed the Truth through the Spirit 1 st For the encrease of Faith and Confidence and Courage in the wayes of Obedience sith we have so strong assistance as the Spirit of our God with true Christian Fortitude to conflict with all our Spiritual Enemies wearing that Motto in our Minds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2 dly For hearty Thankfulness to God when ever we find our selves successful in our Spiritual Warfare as to the only giver of Victory 3 dly and lastly For Humility AEquanimity and Christian Patience and expectancy towards our Neighbours that are not yet reclaim'd from their evil ways being compassionate over them not to insult in other mens weaknesses and miscarriages sith we our selves stand not by our own power but by the gracious assistance of our Saviour Jesus Christ And certainly Purification arrived at its full end will easily afford us this for the end of Purification is Brotherly Love which is the Fourth Doctrine Doct. IV. That this Purification of the Soul and Obedience to the Truth through the Spirit is for this end viz. the eliciting of Brotherly Love and Sincerity in the Soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I know sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are distinguished as 2 Pet. 1. 7. But that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here may be as large as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I know nothing considerable to the contrary The word is capable of that Sense 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being used in as great a latitude as Proximus and Alter including all that descended from our Father Adam So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the love of our Neighbour and this Love is the end and height of our Purification and Obedience the aim and scope of it as much as concerns the Second Table Rom. 13. 9 10. and 1 Tim. 1. 5. Who is able to express so Divine an excellency For certainly the unfeigned Love of men is the very Divine Love it self whereby God loves himself and all things and we also love God and all things in reference to him This is that Love of whom the whole Universe was begotten and that rock'd the cradle of the Infant World the very Spirit of God whose Splendour none can behold and live for he must first be dead to himself and extinguish the love of himself before he can be touch'd and quickened by this Spirit of Life and Love THUS much for the Doctrines included in the First main Argument In the Second are these viz. Doctrine I. That there is a Regeneration of the Soul By understanding what Generation is we may better know what is Regeneration 1. The notion in general of Generation according to Aristotle implies no more than a right and fit union of a form substantial with some capable subject whether that form be elicited of the subject or matter or be brought in from elsewhere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle speaks of the Rational Soul 2. There may be more Forms substantial than one in one subject so they be but subordinate one to the other and that a new Species doth not arise so much from the destruction of the pre-existent Form as by addition of a new one which might actuate the whole that doth pre-exist As the numerus ternarius is not made by taking from the numerus binarius but by adding an Unite thereto Thus Aristotle seems to speak Metaph. 7. Cap. 3. 3. Observe That one Soul actuating a Body if any part of that Body be cut off and lose the benefit of information suppose an Hand or Foot that is then said to be but equivocally what it was before which implies it is then of another Nature or Species as much of it as there is though it be not an entire substance if compared with the whole and consequently that the Soul actuating it did then specificate it another way We have now a tolerable insight into Generation and Regeneration is but this twice told That which is this specifical substance now by adding a new substantial Form thereto becomes something else This is Regeneration And to apply it to our selves We are already once born according to Nature our Bodies and Souls being fitly united together by him that is the Father of all Life and the Lord of Nature But though we be thus specificated yet we are not thence perfected but this Binary of Body and Soul the Pythagoreans would
in and drown the Soul and choak all Life of Vertue and Goodness This is that great Deity of the Heaten This is the Idol of the Daughters of Moab whose stay and confidence is in this visible World whose joy and pleasure is in the Life of the Flesh. I will conclude with the Conclusion of the Psalmist Save us O Lord our God and gather us from among the Heathen to give thanks unto thy holy name and to triumph in thy praise Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting and let all the people say Amen Praise ye the Lord. DISCOURSE XV. COL iii. 1. If you then be risen with Christ seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God THIS Text contains in it that precious mystery of the internal or inward Resurrection of Christ in our Hearts or Souls which is the chief if not only saving Knowledge of that part of our Christian Religion For alas Beloved what will that outward Resurrection of our Saviour according to the flesh profit us though we have the History of it never so accurately nay though we had seen it with our own eyes We may lye in the grave of sin our selves for all that We may sink like a dead stone into the bottomless pit and have our portion with the damned Devils who have an Historical Faith of all the passages of Christs doings or sufferings here on Earth it may be better than our selves And those wicked Souldiers that watched his Sepulchre were perfectly convinced that he had escaped the jawes of Death But what was this to them who were yet dead in their trespasses and sins Surely nothing at all And as little is it to us Beloved if we be dead in sin and have not risen from the strong holding bands of iniquity and vanity Wherefore it is not enough to say Christ dyed for our sins and rose again for our justification and so to imagine his Resurrection to be our raising from wickedness and corruption But we our selves also really and in truth are to rise from the grave of sin by the power of the enlivening Spirit of Jesus Christ. And whether we be thus risen indeed or no this present Text of Scripture will teach us If you be risen with Christ seek those things or you do seek those things which are above For the Greek Text will bear both senses I will first briefly run through the Sense of the words and then raise such Doctrines and Uses as shall most naturally flow from the Text and shall be most profitable for the promotion of that main work of our Salvation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If then you be risen with Christ That is If you be risen in your Souls as Christ in Body rose from the grave If your Souls have scaped the bands of the Spiritual Death which is the nature and life of Sin for that maketh us truly dead unto Righteousness and unto God as Christs Body broke from the Prison of the Sepulchre Then you seek those things that are above It must needs be understood of the Resurrection of the Soul from Sin because the Apostle did not Preach to dead men departed this Life once and again clothed with this Fleshly Tabernacle but to men who were alwayes alive from their first being born into this visible World In vain then had he taught them a sign of that which he knew would never come to pass till the Colossians were past his Preaching to to wit at the last day the time of the Resurrection of our Bodies And according to this manner doth the Apostle speak also of the Crucifixion of Christ making the outward Passion and Death of Christ a sign or resemblance of something in our Souls viz. our dying to Sin as here he hath made his Resurrection an emblem of our rising to Righteousness Rom. 6. 2 c.. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein Know you not that all we that have been baptised into Iesus Christ have been baptised into his death We are buried then with him by baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father so we also should walk in newness of life For if we be grafted with him into the similitude of his death even so shall we be into the similitude of his resurrection Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin The Apostle there plainly compares our dying to Sin to the Crucifixion of our Saviour and that as he dyed on the Cross Corporally so we ought to crucifie the body of Sin in us by the power of God in our Spirits Thus have we good warrant from the example of the Apostle to look upon the Mystery of Christianity with Spiritual eyes The Birth the Death the Resurrection and Ascension of our Saviour Bodily have their similitude Spiritually in our Souls The Birth of Christ a resemblance of Christs being born in us Gal. 4. 19. My little children of whom I travail in the birth again till Christ be formed in you His Death of our dying to Sin as I have already declared Or of Christs being dead in us For we are also said to crucifie Christ by our ungodliness and by extinguishing his Spirit of power and illumination in us Heb. 6. 4. For it is impossible that they which were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted of the good word of God and of the powers of the world to come If they fall away that they should be renewed by repentance seeing they have crucified again to themselves the Son of God and put him to an open shame Crucified again For verily Beloved from our very youth up we have laid dead the Son of God the suggestions of the Holy Life in our Consciences But yet it pleaseth God to raise his Son in us and recover him to Life by the Preaching of the powerful Messengers of God and the secret working of his Holy Spirit upon the Heart And here is Christ risen as it were from the grave But if we by loose and negligent courses destroy this Life of Christ in us and extinguish the Spirit of God in our Souls then do we crucifie the Son of God afresh and shame the profession of Regeneration and the Spirit of God and the true and living Christianism by our open revolting from the living God and taking part with the wicked of this World and their ungodly and sensual courses But now as Christ is thus in a Spiritual manner killed and crucified so when he is in us restor'd to Life it must needs be fittingly termed his Resurrection from Death And according to this sense may those words of my Text be understood also If you be risen with Christ That is If your Souls have become living
up from the dead by the glory of the Father so we also should walk in newness of life For if we be grafted with him into the similitude of his death even so shall we be into the similitude of his resurrection Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him c. The words do plainly describe the Spiritual Death of the Soul as also the inward Resurrection thereof from Sin to a newness of life as the Apostle speaks And so Rom. 8. 10. And if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is mortified for sin As we would say such an one is kill'd for Robbing or is let blood for an Ague So dead for sin is either the mortifying our Bodily and Carnal Affection in a just vengeance on our selves for the sin they suggest and made us commit Or dead or mortified for sin is that Sin may be quite dislodged of our Bodies as a man is said to be let blood for an Ague to rid himself quite of that disease or to prevent its unwelcome returns But the Spirit is life or righteousness that is the Spirit is our life vivification or the cause of our inward or Spiritual Resurrection 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for righteousness that is that we may be righteous or live righteously For Beloved if we take the sense of this place of Scripture in a natural meaning It will not prove true For those Romans bodies to whom the Apostle writes were not dead for if so they had not been able to read the Epistle or to have heard others read it And beside this the words would imply that Christs being in us destroyed this Body or the health of it when as Piety unfeigned preserves both Body and Soul in good temper much less doth Christs being in us make the Body dead unto Righteousness Therefore it is plain that this is the sense of this place viz. That if Christ be in us the Body or Flesh of a man is dead or mortified to sin and that our Life then is the Spirit of God to live in Righteousness Now mark the following Verse But if the spirit of him that raised up Iesus from the dead dwell in you he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you O behold the mighty power and dominion of the Spirit of God in a man Not only our Will and Understanding is swayed ruled and enlivened by it but it descends even to the enquickening of our Bodies too when they be once mortified that is the Passions and Lusts thereof destroyed so that we exercise not our Affections in the things of this World Then will God enliven it with better and more Divine Passions and Affections For Anger against our Brother unadvisedly it shall be moved with holy and discreet Zeal against all wickedness in every body For Sorrow and inordinate Grief for its own private crosses with a sweet and tender Compassion and Pitty toward all that be in any Affliction For Lust and Sensual or Carnal Love with Divine Charity and a large embracement of all the Creatures of God they having some resemblance of his lovely Wisdom and Beauty Thus shall a man exult and rejoyce in the ways of God both Body and Soul serving willingly and chearfully with the whole man For our mortal Bodies even those earthly tabernacles lyable to death and dissolution shall the Spirit of Christ enliven by his powerful working if so be that our Bodies be first made dead unto Sin and the Spirit of God be in us indeed As the Apostle doth plainly witness A further proof for this purpose may we gather out of Phil. 3. 10 11. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable to his death If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead Not as though I had already attained either were already perfect That this is meant of a Spiritual Resurrection seems reasonable from these grounds First because it is ranked with Spiritual sufferings and Spiritual conformableness unto the Death of Christ And then because the Apostle useth this way of apologizing Not as though I had already attained either were already perfect which caution he need not have put in about the Bodily Resurrection For could the Apostle think the Philippians to be so mad as to conceive that the Apostle had now risen out of the grave already clothed with his glorious Body which should be incorruptible Wherefore the Apostle speaks there of a Spiritual Resurrection And that this Doctrine want no Authority to confirm it I will add those words of our blessed Saviour Iohn 5. 25. Verily verily I say unto you The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live That Life and Resurrection from the dead can it be understood of the Resurrection of the Body out of the grave That was not then when our Saviour Christ spoke nor hath been yet fulfilled saving in one single example of Lazarus whom Christ called out of the grave But that was not the Life that is meant here for it is called everlasting life in the foregoing Verse which Lazarus was not raised up to else Lazarus would be alive at this very day which no man will acknowledge to be true But remember what our Saviour Christ saith Iohn 11. 25 26. I am the resurrection and the life he that believeth in me or trusts in me or my power though he dye or be mortified or though he be dead yet he shall live And whosoever liveth and believeth in me that is is alive in me or to me The everlasting Righteousness of God and trusteth this living power shall never dye but be ever alive to Righteousness and to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. This must be understood of a Spiritual Life or Resurrection or else it will follow that all true Believers in Christ shall not dye at all that their Bodies shall never descend into the grave And now Beloved if this Discourse of the Spiritual Resurrection of the Soul seem to us subtle nice or obscure it is our fault not the fault of Truth The Sun is clear enough and easie to be seen but he that is blind dead or asleep beholds it not Nor can the unbelieving and unregenerate while he lies dead or asleep in Sin discern the truth of the Spirit of God in the Holy Scripture But all things are discovered and made manifest by the light For whatsoever doth make manifest is light Wherefore he saith Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light Eph. 5. 13 14. Wherefore this point is plain to him whose eyes are open to behold it viz. That there is a Spiritual Resurrection or Vivification of the Soul But now if you be desirous to know what
scarce dare to name had not the Apostle himself taken notice of it That this Beastly Lustfulness has made Women change the natural use into that which is against Nature and likewise also the Men leaving the natural use of the Woman burned in their Lusts one towards another men with men working that which is unseemly Rom. 1. With such base and inglorious with such wretched and hideous Servilities do the Fleshly Lusts tyrannize over the Soul when they have once captivated her carrying her thus in triumph and exposing her to all baseness and lewdness and dragging her by her chains of captivity through all filthiness and unseemliness and having thus besmear'd and defac'd her with the filth of all manner of Sins in this Life fit her for a delivery to her fellow-Devils in the other to be reserv'd with them in everlasting chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day This is the lamentable success of that Warfare betwixt the Lusts of the Flesh and the Soul if she suffer her self to be overcome And therefore it is no wonder the Holy Apostle uses all the Reason and Rhetorick he has to make us stand upon our guard and defend our selves from so subtle and malicious Enemies Dearly beloved I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. DISCOURSE II. PSAL. lxxxiv 7. They go from strength to strength every one of them appeareth before God in Sion THE Text is a Presage of admirable Prosperity and Success to some sort of People so that it may well excite in us a desire of searching out who they may be And if we begin further off at first or go about yet it may according to the Proverb prove the nighest way home If any one therefore demand who these are I shall answer him out of the 24th Psalm the subject whereof seems to be the very same with this and in the words of the same Prophet This is the generation of them that seek him that seek thy face O Iacob the God of the People that prevail by their importunities and wrestlings with God as Iacob is said to do Gen. 32. whereby he purchased to himself the name of Israel because as a Prince he had power with God And David as being one of this extraction himself he seems to challenge a Blessing from God on that very account O Lord God of Hosts hear my prayer give ear O God of Iacob in the Verse immediately following my Text. In this present Psalm as also in the 24th and 15th Psalms the Holy Prophet so speaks of the Court Tabernacle Temple or House of God as of a place of the highest enravishments that the Soul of man can enjoy which Expositors generally and I doubt not but truly interpret of the Mosaical Tabernacle and Literal Temple But that the mind of the Prophet was carry'd up also to some higher matter I do not at all question And the first Verse of the 15th Psalm Lord who shall abide in thy Tabernacle who shall dwell in thy holy Hill which is almost verbatim repeated again in the 24th Psalm the Chaldee Paraphrast does expresly interpret of Heaven So warrantable is it not to be ty'd down to the Letter but to seek a further edifying Mystery in the Holy Oracles of God And such a Temple as the abode wherein will be more suitable to such earnest breathings and vehement expressions of the Prophet Ver. 1. 2. How amiable are thy tabernacles O Lord of Hosts My soul longeth yea even fainteth for the courts of the Lord my heart and my flesh cryeth out for the living God And again Ver. 4. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house they will be still praising thee These things do not suit so well methinks to a house that is made of any earthly materials into which the wicked can throng as well as the just Nor does God dwell in any House made with hands according to the Apostolick Philosophy Acts 7. Any yet according to their Doctrine We are the Temple of God at least design'd so to be And the Apostle Paul sayes expresly 1. Cor. 6. 19. What know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost And yet the same Apostle Rom. 7. 18. I know saith he that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing This Earthly Tabernacle is no House of God as being from the Earth From whence it is that we groan earnestly as the same Apostle speaks 2 Cor. 5. desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from Heaven For we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened not for that we would be unclothed but clothed upon or further clothed that mortality might be swallow'd up of life Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit That is to say He that works us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into this condition is God himself by the operation of his Spirit which is the Architect of its own House as it is said of the Soul the Builder of that Holy Temple in us in which all is fulfilled which the Prophet David sets out in such devotional and vehement Language For when we are come to this state we are then truly the Temple of the Living God and it is Strength to a mans Navel and Marrow to his Bones So that well may the Holy Prophet raise himself into so high expressions touching this condition Ver. 2. My soul longeth yea even fainteth for the courts of the Lord my heart and my flesh cryeth out for the living God For this Earthly Tabernacle destitute of this is but a burden or body of Vanity wherein are all the Seeds and Fruits of Sin and Misery But of this Heavenly House is that plentifully verify'd which the Prophet David presageth Blessed are they that dwell in thy house they will be still praising thee And they that are arrived to this condition will easily fulfil that Precept of the Apostle Eph. 5. 18 19. Be not drunk with wine but be filled with the Spirit speaking to your selves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. This is the real participation of the Body or Flesh of Christ the true Bread from Heaven which is the immediate receptacle of the Divine Spirit so that he that comes hither cannot fail to be replenish'd with Righteousness and Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost And this may serve for a brief intimation Who these Persons are to whom such good Success is promised in the Text and what the place is towards which they are journeying viz. the Tabernacle Temple or House of God mystically understood LET us now consider 1. The Country through which they pass 2. How well accoutred they are in their persons for the Journey 3. What Convoy to guard them safe 4. Under what Influences of Heaven they travel 5. What the
of the Soul not only for its loveliness but for its light which it so plentifully imparts unto her That his Godly Simplicity and Sincerity that is devoid of all Self-interest of all Self-reflection or Self-gloriation but pursues what is simply good meerly for the good 's sake is that which answers to the Single Eye in the Parable is plain from the preceding and subsequent Context where our Saviour gives Monitions against Hypocrisie that when we fast we should not be as the Hypocrites of a sad countenance disfiguring their faces that they may appear unto men to fast and that we should lay up our treasure in Heaven not in Earth that our Heart or Affection may not be distracted nor divided for where your treasure is there will your heart be also and likewise immediately after my Text he sayes No man can serve two Masters It is therefore that Oneness of purpose and affection that seems here to be aimed at as in several other Parables of our Saviour He that layes his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God Which implies that there should be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that our mind should be taken up with one thing only Martha is troubled with many things but Mary has chosen the better part which shall not be taken from her The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hid in the field for which a man selleth all that he hath that he may purchase it or like that Pearl of great price for which a Merchant parts with all that he hath that he may buy it To be at one therefore or to have the lively savour or relish of some one most excellent divine and indispensable Principle seems to be that which is figured out by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by this Single Eye in my Text. Which I conceive is this Not to seek a mans self in any thing but simply and entirely to follow the will and pleasure of God or that which is simply good not pleasing and grateful to our Animal relishes or corresponding with our personal interest and concerns but that which comports with the Interest of the Kingdom of God and the real good of Mankind To be thus affected is to have this Single Eye that is this pure and clear Eye for so the word will also signifie devoid of all self-tincture or self-colouring and therefore capable of receiving the pure Light as it is and every Object in that Hue and Circumstances that they are The being quit from our selves and all Selfishness and having our Desires sincerely bent to what is simply the Best in every thing this is here that Single Eye of the Soul which our Saviour Enigmatically indigitates by that of the Body but is not the Light it self as the Eye of the Body is not the Natural light but they both be that which receives the Light the one the Divine the other the Natural Nor yet is either this Natural or Spiritual Eye to be said to be altogether devoid of light But as Plato conceiv'd there was an innate light in the Eye and that by the conjunction of this with the external light which Union in Plutarch is termed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vision was performed So we may not deny but that in some sense this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we have described to be thus simply and sincerely affected as we have endeavoured to set forth as well as we can in words for what words can communicate the Sense of Life unless to them that have it that this sincere affection is the Inward Light of the Soul her diaphanous capacity of admitting Divine Truths whether suggested from without or from the Spirit of God within in vertue of the happy meeting together of which inwardly pure disposition of the Soul with those outward suggestions she is assured of the reality of the Divine and Spiritual Objects of the Understanding what is to be believed and what to be done as well as the Eye is assured of the truth of outward Natural Objects by the corradiation of its innate light with the external Rayes of the Sun What the Spirits are in the diaphanous Eye that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the relish of the Spirit in the pure Soul And this may suffice for the understanding the Second Analogy 3. From whence we shall easily understand the Third after we have taken notice what is meant in this place by an Evil Eye which is opposed to a Single one And the right meaning is easily fetch'd out from the Opposition For it is obvious to conceive that it is that kind of Evil of the Eye that is opposed to the clearness purity and diaphanousness thereof which is signify'd by the Single Eye For blindness obscureness or depravation of sight may come from sundry causes but the main is and the only here aimed at such as takes away the clearness and diaphanousness of the Eye whereby it ceases to be actuated by its own innate light and animal Spirits and becomes impervious and impenetrable by the Beams of the Sun or any other external lights or at least is so infected by some impure tincture that the rayes of light cannot enter without being soiled and contaminated by that internal infection Now as such an Evil Eye as this leaves the Body either wholly in the dark or obnoxious to perpetual errour touching the right hue of external Objects so the Carnal relish or Carnal-mindedness whereby we do so affectionately savour our personal concerns our Animal pleasure and interest this self-love self-respect self-desire self-will self-gloriation self-prelation or whatever touch of smack there is of selfishness be it brutish or diabolical pride or lust the inordinate desire of enjoying the pleasures of the Body or the desire of appearing some-body in the World and the impatience and abhorrence of being thrust below every body and to be in a worse condition than all other mortals though our ever-blessed Saviour submitted himself to that state this carnal relish I say which with the Apostle we will call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as we did the single Eye 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this Carnal-mindedness will in such sort leave the Soul to blindness and errour in things Spiritual to be believed and practised as the Evil Eye does the Body in things Natural Which is the Third Analogy 4. And the Fourth and last is this That as that Darkness which is the darkness of the Eye is in reference to the Body the most calamitous and deplorable darkness that is So the ignorance and insensibleness of the relish of the Spirit is the most hideous and miserable ignorance that can befal the Soul or which is all one to have no other light or sight but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the most hideous and miserable darkness that can possess the Mind If Carnal-mindedness become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Eye of the Soul for so the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will
signifie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What a dismal darkness will there be then For the blind then leading the blind both will fall into the Infernal Pit THE meaning of the Text I conceive is now abundantly plain and that the scope and end of our Saviours uttering this Parable to his Disciples was to stir them up to a constant and earnest endeavour of utterly disentangling themselves from all the attractions of the relish of the Flesh or Spirit of the World and of joyning themselves entirely and cordially with and of dwelling wholly in the relish sense and life of the Spirit of God or of that Divine Spirit whose suggestions are no dictates of self-love or partial interest but the substantial concerns of the Kingdom of God and the good of the whole World For which he who has this Divine relish will not stick to lay down his Life if need require according to that endearing Example of our ever-blessed and adored Saviour Let it be therefore my task at this time to exhort you earnestly to endeavour after this great and indispensable attainment of this Single Eye this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Wisdom of the Spirit which this Parable of our Saviour points to and is indeed the proper Spirit of Christ concerning which S. Paul expresly declares He that hath not the Spirit of Christ is none of his Which ought to be a rousing Argument to awaken us into a due sense of so great a want For unless we regain this Single Eye we shall never see the right way to Heaven There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus namely to such as walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Iesus hath freed me from the law of sin and of death For the relish of the flesh or carnal-mindedness is death But the relish of the spirit or spiritual-mindedness is life and peace But the carnal mind is enmity against God because it cannot submit it self to the law of God but is in perpetual opposition against it ever suggesting what is contrary to it Wherefore we must wholly withdraw our selves out of that Principle as we hope to attain to the glorious liberty of the Sons of God And assuredly whosoever has that Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Iesus it will free him and rid him from the power of all the urgings suggestions or subtil insinuations of that Law of the sinful flesh of self-love and self-interest Though he may feel these self-savouring suggestions and the more clearly discern them to be such by the perspicuity of the Single Eye the Spirit of Christ yet he is so freed from their power that he will never act according to them but constantly act according to the relish and suggestion of that pure Principle of the Spirit which has not the least tincture of self-love or carnal interest And there is a neceffity of perfectly clearing up at last into this Single-mindedness by reason of the war and enmity betwixt the Carnal Principle and this of the Spirit for without this there is no peace nor joy nor enjoyment in this Life nor in that which is to come The Law of the sinful life of the Flesh therefore is utterly to be abrogated nulled and annihilated and we are to judge and act in all things according to the discernments of that Single Eye or pure Principle of the Spirit of Christ. But I will rather confine the Arguments of my Exhortation to the Text and content my self with what it will afford namely the four Analogies I have produced and explained and so conclude 1. The light of the Body is the Eye What therefore the Eye is to the Body that is some vital and sensible leading Principle in the Soul to the Soul Is it not therefore of infinite consequence what this leading Principle is when it is of as much consequence to the Soul as the Eye is to the Body and the Soul of incomparably more worth than the Body What man would have the Eye of a Batt of an Owl or of a Mole for the guidance of his Body unless he were to have his abode under the Earth with the Mole or to venture abroad only in the Night with the Batt and Owl Every Animal is to have an Eye congenerous to its own Nature And therefore that Divine Animal which we call Man I mean the inward man the Soul is to have an Eye congenerous to hers she is to have this Single Spiritual Eye unless she will converse only with Brutes or Devils in their Kingdom of Darkness 2. Again The Single Eye makes the whole Body full of light that is it is a fit and faithful guide to it which way soever it goes And that is the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Iesus to the Soul Which assuredly is the Law of Divine love which is not the love of a mans self or any particular or partial Interest but the hearty love of God and a mans Neighbour that is of all mankind when with a single heart he wishes them and is ready to do them all the good they are capable of and himself in a capacity to administer to them This is that pure and lovely Eye of the Soul indeed which fills her full of Celestial light and enrolls her in the Book of Life and of the Children of Light This is that Vnction from the Holy one even from the Father of Lights whereby we know all things appertaining to Life and Godliness and that Iesus that stupendious Pattern of this Divine Love is the Lord and Christ And that that man of sin that exalts himself above all that is called God and supports his Power Pride and Pomp with gross Imposture and barbarous Bloodshed is that notorious Antichrist he that has this Single Eye easily discerns this and can hardly forbear to suspect that they that do not see it are blind through the Spirit of the World or else drunk with the steames of that Cup of abominations and see double This Simple and Unself-interested Spirit of Love is that Anointing of which S. Iohn saith that if it abide in us we need not that any man teach us but the same Anointing will teach us of all things and is truth and is no lie It is very Truth substantial and essential without any shadow of vanity or imposture in it and such as will seal our hearts with an eternal adhesion to our ever-blessed Saviour as being the communication of his own Spirit to us and be evermore a safe guide to us in our passage thorough this present life He that loveth his brother abideth in the light and there is no occasion of stumbling in him Wherefore as we tender our safe conduct through the wilderness of this World through all the dangers and perils of so difficult a journey we must earnestly endeavour the recovering of this Single-mindedness this amiable Eye of the pure love
affirming that some things are so vile and wicked that a man ought rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to undergoe death it self with the most grievons circumstances thereof than submit to the doing of them And is there any thing more base and vile than for a man knowingly and wittingly for the fear or favour of men to sin against his Maker and gracious Redeemer Which if he can do in any case how can he be secure but that he will do it in all cases where his Carnal Interest is highly concerned and that he may not at last be brought off even to worship the Devil himself For they whose guidance is by this Evil Eye this mixt Principle that worship God conditionally if it be safe if it be profitable if it be plausible when these conditions fail they are naturally left in the lurch and may easily apostatize to the grossest practises imaginable He that lives in this Principle it is impossible but that he must walk in dark and slippery places and can have no fast hold at all on Truth and Righteousness And therefore a man is never to rest till his Soul clear up into such a Simple principle of life that he is conscious to himself that neither security of his Person nor Fortunes nor the good opinion or applause of men nor any sinister respects or conditions whatsoever move him to do what he does but the plain and hearty love of the Truth and the sense of his indispensable duty to his gracious Maker and Redeemer according to which he will act and for which he will suffer though he have no witness of either but God and his own Conscience This is to be a true Single-eyed Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile But whatever is on this side of it is besmeared and smutted with rottenness and Hypocrisie 4. Fourthly and Lastly If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 how great is that darkness Indeed it will puzzle a man to say how great it is It is even infinite for space and so it will be for time if we be not timely cured of this blindness A man whose Eye is pure and entire in a dark Dungeon indeed he sees nothing and in a Winter-night cannot so much as discern his own hand but bring a Candle into the Dungeon or let but Day-light return he discerns all Objects very well for the light in him is not darkness that is he is not blind But travel with a blind man from Sun to Sun nay from one Vortex to another so that every Star may be as a Sun to him yet in this infinite and endless Journey he is still in the dark and discerns nothing Even so it is with him that has the Evil Eye in the Mystical Sense he that is Spiritually blind that instead of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is under the guidance of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Carnal mind he is every where in the dark there is nothing sincere in all his actions he can do no Duty as he ought neither to God nor Man but not sensible of any more enlarged Principle or Prospect hugs himself every where and seeks nothing ultimately but the satisfaction of his own Carnal Will and Pleasure Carry him from one Object to another from one Duty to another he is so blind that he will not fail of doing all things sordidly and basely in every place He may indeed endeavour to flatter God Almighty and crouch to him but he cannot sincerely worship him He may fear his Prince but not affectionately honour him and heartily wish him well as the Vicegerent of God He may be tickled with popularity and yet set as little by the common good and welfare of the people as he does by his meanest Cattle that he will not stick to kill and flea or sell away for his own advantage And lastly he may caress his Friend and Neighbour but it will be ever with an eye to Himself that he may lay the seeds of some Worldly advantage But if the service of these stand in any considerable competition with his own Interest he cannot fail having no better Principle but to betray both his God his Religion his Prince his Country and his Friend to serve himself These are his acts of darkness his abode in which will make him so blind that in the conclusion he will betray himself also to that everlasting darkness wherein is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth for evermore For to be carnally-minded is death but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace These short Intimations from our Saviours Parable methinks should be sufficient to well-disposed minds to quicken their speed towards this great and necessary attainment of that Single Eye of the Spirit that we may live according to that one simple Principle of the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Iesus casting out the spirit of the World that there may be no cross vibrations or Paralytical motions in our Soul but that our whole man may be throughly actuated by the Spirit of God we being born to this Divine State even to be members of God and Christ to whom till we be united we are in an unnatural diluxation from our Body and being devoid of this Spirit though we cannot but depend of him yet we hang off from him as dead or Paralytical members of which the Spirit of Life has left its due hold which must be to every discerning Eye a sad and calamitous Spectacle God of his infinite Mercy amend it in us all DISCOURSE IV. PROV i. 7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Philosopher in his Metaphysicks And indeed most men are so eager and vehement in the pursuit of Knowledge that they either afford not themselves time enough to consider and deliberate concerning the most efficacious means for obtaining it or have not the patience to use the means though they be well perswaded of it But in the heat of their pursuit make a God of their own industry and take it for the shortest cut to be their own carvers Not Line upon Line but Tractate upon Tractate Volume upon Volume Ossa upon Olympus Plainly according to the attempts of that sottish and boisterous generation of Giants thinking to hale away captive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 her that assists God on his Glorious Throne in Heaven by Spider-web fetters spun and twisted out of the corrupt apprehensions of Earthly-minded men Those did not the Lord choose neither gave he the way of Knowledge unto them But they were destroy'd because they had no Wisdom and perished through their own foolishness Who hath gone up to Heaven and taken her and brought her down from the clouds Who hath gone over the Sea and found her and will bring her for pure Gold No man knoweth her way nor thinketh on her path What then Is it impossible to attain unto her No. Her
such inestimable treasures of durable Wisdom before a fearful tryal hath been upon it Deut. 8. Thou shalt remember the way which the Lord thy God led thee in the wilderness that he might afflict thee and humble thee that he might try thee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the most secret penetrates of thy Heart might be laid open to discern whether thou wouldst keep the Commandments or no. Now if the Heart of a man be not right toward God nor endued with requisite previous dispositions if this great gift of God were confer'd upon them they would either Swine-like prefer dirt and mire before this precious Pearl and so quench the good Grace of God by Beastly Sensuality which God will not suffer he having taught Nature not prodigally to cast away any thing of hers that is good whose best things are not comparable to the meanest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit of God Or else if they did affect and could retain this exceeding great Grace they would notwithstanding wax excessively proud Gellius in his Noctes Atticae tells us of a Grammarian disputing of Genders and Cases of Nouns tam arduis superciliis with his Eye-brows so highly display'd and with so grave a composure of Voice and Countenance as though he had been interpreting some dark weighty Prophesie out of the Sibylline Oracles Now if the taking in of such superficial Learning as this doth so swell and puff up vain man surely more solid Knowledge would burst him If we be naturally given to conceit highly of our selves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Philosopher speaks so greatly to overvalue our selves for some small petty Notions how could we bear such a qualification of mind as that no sooner any obscurity or difficulty could appear in our Souls but the brightness of our Understanding would consume it as those thinner kind of Clouds vanish before the face of the Sun A third Inconvenience may be added to these There being no means so pregnant for the obtaining any end as a clear subtil quick Understanding a wicked man which makes Himself his End in all his actions besides this abuse he would make of Wisdom viz. that he might strut and take upon him with more confidence and be pointed at with an Hic est ille Demosthenes he might further abuse it for the obtaining of more mischievous and Divelish ends But be we assured that that Spirit that doth assert men into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God will not brook so unreasonable a bondage it self as to become vassal to the will of corrupt man So we see it strong enough from these inconveniences that the all-disposing power will not bestow this precious endowment upon unprepared persons 2. But here is another Argument that seems to strike deeper which is Incompossibility 1 Cor. 2. 14. The natural man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God For they are foolishness unto him Neither can he know them because they are Spiritually discerned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Platonist in the VI Book of his I. Ennead The Eye sees not the Sun unless it bear the image of the Sun in it nor could it receive that impression were it covered with dirt and filth So that it is plain that the necessary foundation of true Wisdom is unfeigned Righteousness and Pureness The Lights of Heaven were made on the fourth day Now it is observable saith that Learned Iew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the quaternary number is the first quadrate pariter par or equally equal the measure of Iustice and Equity And the Heavenly Light surely is begot in its holy quaternary as those Lights of Heaven on the fourth day But a further Illustration for this purpose might be gathered if we would further follow the explanation of this Symbol Which I am the bolder with because I make account it is no strange one it being Aristotles own expression of a good man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Homo quadratus sine culpa Now a Quadrate you know consisting of Right Angles is a very useful Instrument for taking the height depth length and breadth of bodies and all in vertue of a Right Angle which is nothing else but the demission of one streight Line upon another perpendicular so that it encline no way but stand exactly upright And there is an uprightness of heart and life resembled by this which is when a man enclines neither to the right hand nor to the left no less needful for the inabling us to comprehend with all Saints what is that spiritual breadth and length and depth and heigth as the Apostle speaks than that other is in Geometrical measurings So we see though in brief that both Ethicks Physicks and Mathematicks have conspired together for the establishing and confirming of this so wholesome and useful a Truth That clearness of Knowledge proceeds out of Purity of Life To descend to a more particular handling of this matter as to shew you how the purging of a mans Soul takes away those main impediments to truth of Knowledge as are Self-admiration doting upon that which we our selves conceive of before the apprehension of others Anger Envy Impatiency a pusillanimous over-estimation of others desire of Victory rather than of Truth blindness proceeding out of the love of Riches or Honour an heavy adhension of our minds to the sluggish inertness of Sense suffocation or smothering the active spark of Reason by Luxury and Intemperancy with many others which be general Impediments to whatsoever kind of Knowledge a man aimes at to descend I say to such particulars would ask more time than I am able to speak in or you have the patience to hear Wherefore I omit them and will only add this one Argument more to prove the Incompossibility of true Knowledge and Iniquity in one Subject And that is the Antipathy betwixt the Holy Spirit of Discipline and Unrighteousness What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness saith the Apostle and what communion hath light with darkness And what concord hath Christ with Belial There is such a mutual abhorrency in their Nature that they chace one another as the Night and Day about the Orb of the Earth the approach of one is the putting to flight of the other Wisdom cannot enter into a wicked heart nor dwell in a body that is subject unto sin For the Holy Spirit of Discipline fleeth from deceit and withdraweth himself from thoughts that are without understanding and is rebuked when wickedness cometh in By this time I hope it is sufficiently evicted That Piety is the only Key of true Knowledge And indeed I fear not but that all with one consent will confess it so they may have the interpretation of it and restrict it to that vvhich they call Saving Knovvledge vvhich they say simple ignorant Idiots are capable of Now what a conceit they frame out in their minds of Saving Knowledge I will not here discourse But if it be granted of all
abstain from fleshly and bodily Desires from their accomplishment I mean has some hidden Contentment within undiscover'd to the World The Heart knoweth his own bitterness and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy Our Saviour Christ himself could not with such ease have slighted the cravings of Nature for He was a man like to us in all things Sin only excepted and disregarded his seasonable Sustenance had it not been so as he professes it was in his Answer to his Disciples I have meat to eat you know not of AND thus much of the Occasion and Proposal of the Parable I come now to the double Consequent thereof viz. First The Disciples misapprehension or false collection Hath any man brought him to eat Secondly Our Saviours true interpretation of the Parable My meat is to do the will of him that sent me c. Hath any man brought him to eat It was obvious to think so I confess but not at all necessary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Has any man The Ravens fed Elijah the Tisbite by the Brook Cherith which is before Iordan They brought him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening 1 Kings 17. 6. And not the Fowls of the Air only but the winged Host of Heaven might have been employed for this purpose They owe more than this to the Son of God But the mistake was not so much in the manner of the conveyance of this Meat as in the nature of the Meat it self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Meats for the belly and the belly for meats but God will destroy both it and them He breaks and weakens that strong influence they have upon the minds of men that Circean Magick that metamorphozes the Souls of men into meer Beasts and changes their Understandings By the power of These the Disciples themselves seem stupid and are at a loss when their great Teacher utters himself in Heavenly Parables I have meat to eat you know not of For the unfolding of this dark Riddle They look no higher than a Sun-dyal or at farthest on the Sun and read there past Twelve and without any great subtilty can easily collect that it is Dinner-time which now compar'd with their lately bought Provision in the Cities of Samaria and the savoury suggestions of their own Stomachs their thoughts are circumscribed within the margins of a Platter they have animam in patinis as the Proverb goes and are not at leasure to think of any thing higher than Bodily Food Has any man brought him to eat I will observe two things from this passage and so leave it First The slowness of the Earthly Mind to apprehend Spiritual Mysteries There be two notable Instances of it One in those two Disciples that went to Emaus to whom Christ appeared and part of whose discourse was Luke 24. Concerning Iesus of Nazareth a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people And how the Chief Priests and their Rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and have crucified him But they trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel viz. from the Roman yoke according to that meer Terrene apprehension the Iewes it should seem then had and at this time have concerning the Messias making him a Temporal Prince and expecting a Temporal Happiness from him The other Instance is Iohn 6. 51 52. I am the living bread that came down from Heaven If any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever and the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world The Iews therefore strove amongst themselves saying How can this man give us his flesh to eat But the words our Saviour Christ here speaks are as he himself professes they are spirit and they are life and therefore Spiritually to be discerned and not by Carnal Eyes The other point that I would observe is the Vneffectualness of our Saviours presence according to the Flesh. If his Spirit had been in them as his Body was with them I make no question but their Minds had been so Heavenly disposed that our Saviours Speeches would not have proved such AEnigma's unto them It is true the very touch of Christs Garments healed the Bodies of the Sick sometime but nothing under his Spirit is effectual for recuring the Soul It is the Spirit that quickeneth the flesh profiteth nothing Ioh. 6. 63. I have many things to say unto you but you cannot bear them now Howbeit when the Spirit of Truth is come he will guide you into all truth Iohn 16. 12 13. Our Saviours Bodily presence could not convey those Divine Truths unto his Disciples that an inward principle of life when they were partakers thereof would convey to them And therefore he prefers the mission of the Holy Ghost before his own Bodily conversing with them at the 7th Verse of that Chapter I tell you the truth it is expedient for you that I go away for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you But if I depart I will send him unto you And this was S. Pauls pious boast 2. Cor. 5. 16 17. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh yea though we have known Christ after the flesh yet now henceforth know we him no more Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creature viz. if he be in Christ not after the Flesh but be regenerate of the Spirit I HAST on now to the last part of the Text our Saviours own Solution of this Parable proposed by him to his Disciples and by them misunderstood Therefore said the disciples one to another Hath any man brought him to eat There 's the Misinterpretation Iesus saith unto them My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work There 's our Saviours explication of his own mind The great Truth and Mystery not inferiour to any Mystery contained in this interpretation is this That the will of God is the food of the Soul This I conceive to be plainly exhibited to us in this Text. For the Divinity of Christ it cannot be said to feed of any thing it is self-sufficient and immutable according to those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Mankind has of God Such Spiritual food as the will of God cannot belong to the Body for those Bodies grow fat that have no relish thereof It remains therefore the Soul of Christ was that which was fed with the will of God And his Soul and ours are ejusdem speciei Christ being utterly like us in all things Sin only excepted Wherefore I conclude this Doctrine The will of God is the food of mans Soul I mean of Regenerate man I know the Carnal appetite will pronounce it a very slight and slender Sallet But I will answer that Objection in short The natural man is uncapable of the things of the Spirit of God 1. Cor. 2. 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
in the Law of God even the written Word that no Heathen durst venture to intersert any pieces of it into their Writings So Holy it was accounted that they durst not contaminate it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with their profane mouths as Iosephus writes from the testimony of Hecataeus Demetrius in the same Historian reports that one Theopompus grew distracted by being too bold and busie with these Writings And that Theodectes the Tragaedian lost his sight And no wonder for by Iosephus's relation these men sought rather for Flowers to adorn their Works than for wholesome Instructions to reform their Lives Theodectes it's likely spyed somewhat there that would grande sonare that would sound gravely and make a majestick noise fitting his Tragick buskin but the man had little mind to set his feet in those Lawes of God to do them And hence so much distraction phrensie and blindness possesseth us this very day Yet like bold impudent Flies we sieze confidently upon those precious Oyntment-pots of the Apothecary and in this plenty of wholesome refreshment have Wings and Feet clung together and lose our Life even in the very Book of Life Prov. 25. If thou hast found honey eat so much as is sufficient for thee That is as much as thou canst well digest into practice For so it is with the Word as it is with Meat Not taken it doth no good Taken in and not digested it brings but Diseases But taken in and perfectly digested by honest labour and exercise preserveth Life and Health 4. But these Considerations are more proper to the Fourth and last Reason why we should be Doers of the Word Which hath reference to us and is the Reward of keeping his Commandments By them is thy servant taught and in keeping of them there is great reward Psal. 19. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Threefold great Reward A reward in Estate a reward in Body and a reward in Soul 1. A reward in Estate Blessed shalt thou be in thy basket and in thy dough Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy ground and the fruit of thy cattle and the increase of thy kine and the flocks of thy sheep Deut. 28. But if we think Moses word not sufficient Christ himself will put in security for supply of all necessaries if we take but the condition of Obedience Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you Matth. 6. So the Psalmist The lyons rore and suffer hunger but they that fear the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good There are manifold Testimonies in Scripture to this purpose and so obvious that quotation is needless 2. The second reward is in a mans Body for Strength Health and Beauty Fear the Lord and depart from evil so health shall be to thy navel and marrow unto thy bones Prov. 3. Envy Anger Hatred and discontented Melancholly which reign in either proud or pusillanimous Souls weaken Nature and destroy the Body but Life and Vigour is in the perfect Law of Charity A chearful Conscience purifies and refines the Blood but disobeying the inward Light is the choaking of the Vital Spirits A sound heart is the life of the flesh saith Solomon but envy is the rottenness of the bones This for Health and Strength Now for Beauty The wisdom of a man doth make his face to shine Ecclesiastes 8. and Ecclesiasticus 25. The wickedness of a woman changeth her face and maketh her countenance black as a sack The heart of a man changeth his countenance saith the Wise Man whether it be in good or evil So if there be a continual vigorous habit in the heart of shining Vertue and lovely Charity it will issue even into the face of a man in all friendly amiableness Moses was so fill'd with this Heavenly Beauty that the Children of Israel could not look upon him for his glorious splendour But the works of darkness make the spirit of a man to set in gloomy obscurity and deadness 3. But now we come to the third reward which is in the Soul Psal. 19. 7. The law of the Lord is an undefiled law converting the Soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 say the Septuagint the word which the Platonists use For the clear understanding of the dignity of this Conversion we are to take notice of the nature thereof Conversion therefore includes two things a leaving and a making toward somewhat And here in this Christian Conversion that which is to be left is the Creature and that which is to be turned unto is God The leaving of the Creature is the forsaking of whatsoever is not God but especially the renouncing of our own selves For while we cleave unto the Creature we most of all cleave unto our own selves for we adhere unto it for our own sake Self-love is the hinge or centre upon which we turn from God to the Creature and upon which we begin to circle from the Creature to God again But the accomplishment of Conversion breaks this thing abolisheth this centre and then we have our fixation in God and all our motion and operation of will and affection is upon him and from him That AEgyptian King as Herodotus reports in his Second Book when he had prohibited his Subjects sacrificing to God and had shut up all the Temple doors in AEgypt he presently employes all his people in his own Service and sets them to leed Stones to build Pyramids for his own Honour and the lasting Memorial of himself No man would be so mad as to forsake the Service of God to be a drudge to an inferiour Master But without question the plot is to be his own God and his own Master and to employ all his strength for himself But how the Law of God doth convert the Soul from this Idolatry and that which we falsely seek after how it brings us truly more near unto will be seen from the manner of this Conversion of the Soul to God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Proclus in Plato's Theology The conversion of things to their causes or principles is to receive assimilating influence from them or to rise up and ascend nearer and nearer unto them and to become more and more like them To return therefore unto God is to become like to him by the recovery of the lost Image of Adam who was made according to the similitude of God Now the Image of God what it is seems not to be unknown even to the very Heathens The ancient Greek Poet brings in Vlysses musing with himself amongst his travels what a kind of People he had fallen among after this manner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What a kind of People be the Inhabitants of the Land into which I come Are they injurious barbarous and unjust Or are they of a loving disposition courteous unto strangers and of a Godlike mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
that Tyrannick Prince that rules in the Sons of Disobedience he shall be excluded from the everlasting light of God and his Holy Truth And thus briefly under one we have seen how we are said to deceive our selves and the way to escape this self-deceit God that commanded the light to shine out of darkness shine in our hearts and give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Iesus Christ that we may walk before him in the truth of Life To Him with the Father and the Blessed Spirit c. DISCOURSE VII PROV xv 15. All the dayes of the afflicted are evil but a good conscience is a continual feast THE Text is a description of the estate of the wicked man and the righteous man Which will be more evident if we consult with the Septuagints Translation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The eyes of the wicked continually expect evil but the Godly or good men are alwayes at rest Here do the LXX Interpreters express plainly that opposition of those persons and of their conditions Vngodly and good or godly unquietness of mind and perpetual rest As I pronounced concerning this Text at first that it is a description of the opposite conditions of those ever opposite off-springs of God and the Devil the Sons of Christ and the Sons of Belial the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness This Sense have the LXX put upon this portion of Scripture though the words themselves answer not so fitly to the Hebrew Text. To devise the occasion of their variation would be more easie though curious than profitable I intend not to mispend time or abuse your attention with the husks of words or fruitless discourse of Translations I will follow Symmachus in the first part of the Verse exactly answering to the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All the dayes of the poor are evil in the second part the Hebrew it self But a good heart is a continual feast or as the words will bear He that hath a good heart feasts continually Now therefore that this Poverty is not to be understood of outward poverty is plain out of the Text. Continual feasting and constant poverty or affliction are contrary So that we must either exclude the poor man from having a good Heart and Conscience whereby all sorrow is dispell'd and continual joy and chearfulness obtained or else if he hath these joyes make him rich in outward wealth But sith the poor upright honest man through the continual comfort of his own good Conscience Dives like fares deliciously every day though poor in estate then surely none of his dayes are evil though he poor outwardly in them all So that this present Text is to be understood of an inward kind of poverty that makes a mans life full of evil and misery This evil poverty and miserable want is described in the Revelation of S. Iohn Ch. 3. Thou sayest I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing and knowest not how thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked I counsel thee to buy of me gold tryed in the fire that thou mayst be made rich and white rayment that thou mayst be clothed and that thy filthy nakedness do not appear and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve that thou mayst see Here 's good store of penury a wardrobe of want want of Money want of Clothes to cover their shame want of Eye-sight to be able to do that which is but a misery to go from door to door to beg But hear what 's said Verse 21. To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me in my Throne even as I overcame and sit with my Father in his Throne See what a change From a Begger to a King from a Dunghil to a Throne from a blind Wretch to a Judge upon a Throne that shall discern the right that shall judge the Twelve Tribes of Israel He that is spiritual judgeth all things yet he himself is judged of no man We have by this time plainly seen what this poor man is whose dayes are said all to be full of evil That he is one that wants those white Robes which is the Righteousness of the Saints wants that old precious coin whose image and superscription is Righteousness and true Holiness the figure of Christ the Son of God the express Portraiture of his Father He wants his Eye-sight the true Spiritual Wisdom holy Discretion the sense of Spirits and discovery of the mysterious working of that Prince of Darkness and Deceit He 's plainly destitute though not of the necessaries of this Life yet of that main one and only necessary thing as our Saviour calls it that better part that Mary chose and could not be taken from her Virtus nec eripi nec surripi◠potest Nor force nor fraud can deprive a man of that inward good And now I have described this poor man I think it is not hard to prove that all his dayes are evil By how much better the Soul is than the Body by so much worse are the Defects of the Soul than those of the Body 1. Is an Vlcer or Wound grievous in the Body Much more grievous is it then in the Soul or Spirit The Spirit of a man will sustain his infirmities but a wounded Spirit who can bear Prov. 18. 14. 2. Is Blindness or Darkness an horrid thing to the Body then is Ignorance much more to the Soul As may appear from that excellent description of this AEgyptian darkness in the Book of Wisdom Chap. 17. When the unrighteous people thought to have thy holy people in subjection they were bound with the bands of darkness and long night and being shut up under the roof did lye there to escape the eternal providence But now that we think not only of outward darkness in the Air see what followes And while they thought to be hid in their dark sins they were scattered abroad in the dark covering of forgetfulness fearing horribly and troubled with visions For the den that hid them kept them not from fear But the sounds that were about them troubled them and terrible visions and horrible sights did appear No power of the fire might give light neither might the clear flames of the stars lighten the dreadful night And a few Verses after For it is a fearful thing when malice is condemned by her own testimony and a conscience that is touched doth ever forecast cruel things Thus having their eyes closed in misty sleep it doth not secure them from the trouble of fear For they that endure this intolerable night breath'd out of the dungeon of Hell as they sleep the same sleep so are they in like manner tortured with the same monstrous visions sounding for fear and perplexity of Spirit as is largely described in that Chapter But that this evil condition may appear more evil I will set the contrary by it God is light and in him
there is no darkness I am the light of the world saith our Saviour And the Apostle rouzing us out of this sleep of Sin saith Awake thou that sleepest that Christ may give thee light To walk therefore in the Light is to walk in the Life of Christ as in the Presence of the Father and he that thus walketh knoweth both whither he and others go But he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth because that darkness blindeth his eyes 1 Ioh. 2. And no wonder then that fear attends his footing that ever and anon he is afraid that the next step he stumbles into the pit of destruction The wicked fear where no fear is but God is in the generation of the righteous saith the Psalmist It fares so with them as with those that travel in Arabia who if they chance to set their foot upon Iron Stone or any cold thing by night they are even ready to dye with fear suspecting they have trodden upon a Serpent So ungodly men whose stay and trust is not on God are subject out of the suggestions of an ill Conscience in every harsh thing they meet with to think that God hath forsaken them and that they now have stumbled upon that Old Serpent the Devil The rising of the morning may restore the other to peace and security but what will chace away the terrour of this inward darkness Nor the glorious light of the Sun nor the beautiful aspect of the Moon nor the chearful collustration of the sparkling Stars can yield them light or refresh their troubled Spirit Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necesse est Non radii Solis nec lucida tela diei Discutiant sed naturae species ratioque As the Poet speaks and may be understood in a better sense than his earthly mind could ever reach to Till that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or idea or Truth of all things free us from this misery we shall not be truly freed from it But if not freed from it how evil do we think his dayes are whom the clearness of the day and common light cannot deliver from the tormenting fears of that continual night Vide qualis affectus sit timor saith Cardan qui crepitare cogit dentes c. See what a kind of passion Fear is that makes a mans teeth chatter in his head which symptom saith that Physitian is proper to those that labour with some deadly Disease But sure the Horrour of that Eternal Darkness is worse where is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth which is the Fear of the ungodly here and their Portion hereafter 3. Deformity in Body doth a little diminish ones Happiness But the Vgliness of Sin in a mans Soul if it could be seen with outward eyes it would even fright a man out of his wits to behold it For it is the very Impression or Character of that evil Fiend the ill shap'd Devil himself as Righteousness is the Image of God 4. Feebleness also of Body is a miserable thing But Weakness of Soul is worse when that every blast of vain Doctrine is able to blow us down when every Temptation makes us yield to our Enemy and to become a wretched Vassal of the Devils cruelty 5. But that I run not too much upon one point That which is most terrible is Death But the Death of the Body is but to be hid in the Grave but the Death of the Soul is to be excluded the Presence of God and not that only but to be vexed and tormented with those Spirits of torture which in their fury lay on sure strokes Thus it is manifest that every Evil of the Soul is worse than that of the Body that answers to it And so that Poverty which consists in the want of good things and the presence of evils that ensue from this want is a great deal worse in the Soul than in outward things concerning the Body Now when I say Poverty I know not what to add either for misery of Body or Soul it including all in both Hunger Thirst Nakedness Filthiness Sickness Heaviness Disconsolateness these and all manner of mischiefs accompany Poverty But be it what it will in the Body it is unspeakably worse in the Soul and a certain cause of making that poor mans life miserable so long as he continueth in that sense poor I but will some say how can this thing be When as dayly experience shows that men that are as destitute of all Spiritual and Heavenly Riches as they abound in Earthly live in all Jollity and Pleasure in all Mirth and Merriment But this is no good Argument if we believe the Wise Man Prov. 14. 13. Even in laughing the heart is sorrowful and the end of that mirth is heaviness So Eccles. 7. As the crackling of thorns under a pot so is the laughter of a fool The flame and the noise go away together and at last is nothing left but scorching coals or dead ashes Would a man count a man in good plight because the poyson he takes makes him dye laughing as it is said of that Herb in Sardo and of the biting of the Tarantula We commonly count the case of a sick man more miserable when upon his bed he sings merry songs and finds out fond toyes from the weakness and distemper of his troubled Brain These men are miserable enough though they think not nor perceive themselves to be so And so it fares with all them that be ungodly and yet seem to flow in all joyes pleasures and contentments It 's but the phansie of a sick Brain Wise men are sorry to see them in such Distemper to have such an ill Symptom upon them And surely that that is miserable in their judgments is miserable and not in theirs whom misery hath made mad false pleasure hath infatuated So we see now plain enough That the poor man that is he that is destitute of Grace and Vertue all his dayes are sufficiently evil sometime in the judgment both of himself and others other sometime or rather ever in the judgment of others that is of wise and holy men Or that this Truth may be the stronglyer established in the judgment of God himself who is the measure of all Truth Thou sayest that I am rich and increased with wealth but thou knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and blind and naked c. Rev. 3. But of poverty wretchedness and misery enough It would seem more desirable to point out some way to be enriched The same Spirit that tells the Church of Laodicea of her miserable poverty shews her a way how to become rich Vincenti dabitur To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne even as I overcame and sit with my Father in his throne Here 's no ordinary Riches Here 's the fulness of a Kingdom But take the condition I pray you Vincenti dabitur He that overcomes he shall be endued with large
good But we may have a kind of communicated Omnipotency as to the affairs of our own Sphere in our own Microcosm or little World where we ought to rule with an absolute hand and never to be quiet till we can profess with S. Paul I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me Wherefore as God is Omnipotent in the great Universe and does curb and keep up the whole Corporeal Creation within the limits of certain Natural Laws which they cannot pass So also we are to set bounds and limits to our Bodily Passions and keep them in constant subjection to the Laws of right Reason or to the Rule of the Spirit of God And again in the second place Though we cannot be Omniscient yet we may become in a manner entirely Intellectual and throughly understand and as affectionately relish the true interest of our own Souls and perfectly discern all the concerns thereof and be accompanied with all those Divine Truths and Blissfull Speculations which are requisite for the perfecting of Humane Happiness which in our Sphere is an imitation of the Divine Omnisciency And lastly Though it is impossible that any Creature should be infinitely good yet it is capable of being filled with a Spirit of unexpressible Benignity and to be a faithful well-willer to the happiness and prosperity of every Creature of God and therefore to be in a perpetual promptness and readiness to help them that are in any distress and to rejoyce in the good and wellfare of every parcel of the Creation And this is briefly the amiable Face or Image of God as it is visible or communicable to us which we see by the beams of its own brightness as we see the Sun by its own Light though not in that real lustre nor bigness that it is And I hope now it will plainly appear That the recuperation of this Divine Image is the true expergefaction or resuscitation of the Soul from a state of Sleep or Death into the most full and ample functions of Life Of which the first degree was self-motion or self-activity For meer passivity or to be moved or acted by another either without a mans will or against it this is the condition of such as are either dead or asleep as to go of a mans self is a Symptom of one alive or awake Wherefore whatever is done in us by meer Passion or Ignorance seems rather to be acted upon us than acted by us and to be a defect of that degree of Life which we call self-motion or self-activity in such cases we seeming rather to be carried by surprize than to go of our own accords as men that are dead drunk may be haled or disposed of where others please And every one that is acted by Passion is drunk or if acted upon through Ignorance asleep and so are deprived of that degree of Life which is self-activity a doing things from an inward or thorough assent to them Which no man does in a wicked action because every one that commits wickedness does it to his own infinite disinterest and wrong which no man did ever yet nor even can assent to Whence it is plain that he is not in this regard self-active and that therefore he is in the state of Death out of which the Image of God awakes him namely the power of Christ in him which shews him his way clearly that he may make a choice never to be repented of and enables him to walk in that way and to bear strongly and victoriously against all the assaults of the Body or suggestions of this Worldly Life And so by the self-activity of that spiritual or immaterial Principle in him he rules this little World of his by irresistible Laws as God himself does the great one And this I think is one considerable degree of the evigilation of the Soul through the Divine Image And the Second is no less considerable and which we have touched upon already in the former For if Ignorance be Sleep the Intellectual state of the Soul must needs be an eminent evigilation of her And if to grow Corporeal be to become more inert more unactive and drousie then surely to become more Spiritual must be joyned with a greater measure of Life and Activity And what actions are more Spiritual than those which the Soul exerts her self into in rational disquisitions and divine speculations and in the search of the most noble and momentous Truths concerning God and Nature When she unravels all into certain immutable and indelible Ideas of things which she was taught by no touch from external matter but are the most inward hidden Life of the Soul that Adytum or Oracle that speaks truth from the deepest recess of her Essence into which she cannot enter but by a lusty rowzing up and rubbing her Eyes clean of all those mists and fumes that arise from Corporeal Phantasms or accustomary prejudices These operations certainly must be very intellectual and incorporeal and therefore very much raised above the Body that Sepulchre or Dormitory of the Soul and not to be performed but by the excitation of such kind of Spirits as are in some measure congenerous to that Heavenly Body that Luminous or AEthereal Vehicle in which the Soul shall ride as in her Triumphal Chariot at the general Appearance in the last day I say the closer and more noble intellectual Operations of the Soul are not to be performed but by the assistance of more tenuious and fiery Spirits whence the Oracles call the mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mentem igneam which are contrary to that phlegmatick sluggishness and drownedness that the Worldly and Carnally-minded are overflown with But besides that the Principle from whence these Intellectual actions flow argues a notorious excitation or expergefaction of the mind therein that which is Intellectual being plainly Divine or Godlike whom the Schools rightly define to be Actus purissimus pure Life and Essential Energy That the Soul in her Intellectual Operations is roused as it were out of a Sleep will farther appear if we compare the functions of the Terrestrial Life with those of the Intellectual The largest Operation of the former of which is that of our Eye which takes in but this Visible Hemisphere of the World and if it could take in the whole according to this contracted proportion it were a pitiful scant thing such as is infinitely lesser than what our Understanding conceives the Universe to be nay many thousand times less than the Earth which is but as a Mathematical point in comparison of the body of the World How contracted then is Touch and Taste and the other Senses For the love of which when the Soul is immersed into the Body and wholly given up to them it is plain that her functions of Life are infinitely contracted and that she lies asleep or dead to her largest Faculties and that therefore the excitation of them is her expergefaction into infinitely a more ample Sphere
the Spirit of Christ. For the First Eph. 6. 12. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickedness in high places Beloved The great work of Salvation is not then accomplished when we have through the power of God and the strength of Jesus Christ overcome the Lusts of the Body as Drunkenness Gluttony Whoredom and the like But we shall find a new task the taming of our proud Spirit For after our first conquest I mean the overcoming the Lusts of the Body then pride and haughtiness and contempt of our Neighbour the thinking of our selves some-body rigour and unmercifulness to our sinful Brother the magnifying of our selves in some conceited Opinions searching out and confidently concluding concerning the secrets of God censuring and contemning all men that are not of the same conceit in Divine Speculations with our selves These and many such like evil delusions the Devil will sow in our Hearts The Devil himself is neither Whoremaster nor Drunkard nor Glutton But he is Proud but he is Contemptuous but he is Hypocritical but he is a Blood-sucker a Murderer from the beginning full of self-love full of self-admiration full of cruelty under pretence of Religion full of deceit and injustice under pretence of Truth and maintenance of Godliness full of ambition and desire of rule even over the Souls and Consciences of men full of self-applause and arrogancy and strutting in his own supposed knowledge and power But true denyal of our selves and unfeigned deep humility a sensible apprehension of our nothingness as I may so say or real detestable vileness will cause such dreadful agonies in our Souls that no tongue can express nor heart conceive that hath not had experience of those bitter Sufferings With so great pain and torment are we torn and riven from our spiritual wickedness disjointed and dislimb'd as it were from our head that Prince of Pride and Father of Disobedience the Devil But I will now shew you the other kind of suffering which is the suffering in Spirit by reason of other mens wickedness When we are united to God and Christ in the union of Spirit then do those things that are contrary to the Spirit of God as all manner of sin trouble our Spirit Envious or cruel acts drunkenness deceit pride rigour fierceness folly and whatsoever else is sinful or vain our Spirit being enlivened by the Spirit of God is grieved and vext at these wickednesses or vanities Then we plainly see how Christ is cut and lash'd and hew'd and stab'd with our wicked deeds how he is crucified afresh as the Apostle speaketh Here may the true Church of God the Holy Ierusalem take up fitly that Lamentation in Ieremy Is it nothing to you all ye that pass by Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow See how the Prophet David was affected with the wickedness of men Psal. 119. Mine eyes gush out with water because men keep not thy law I beheld the transgressours and was grieved because men keep not thy word So Lot was tormented at the wickedness of Sodom 2 Pet. 2. 7. And delivered just Lot vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked For that righteous man dwelling among them in seeing and hearing vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds So God complains in the Spirit of his Prophet Amos. Behold I am pressed under you as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves Amos 2. 13. And surely there is good Reason it should be so a sure Necessity For Fire is not more contrary to Water nor Light to Darkness nor any enmity in Nature or among men so strong as that betwixt the Spirit of God and the Spirit of the Devil that is in evil wicked men according to which they live and act So then when that detestable ugliness flowes out in their words or actions it must needs offend the Children of God God being of pure eyes and not abiding to behold wickedness Hence are they driven into consuming zeal or deep inexpressible grief And this is the second kind of suffering in Spirit But Beloved take this in by the way That he that can be angry at other mens faults and not much more angry at his own is a dissembler an Hypocrite Herein let every man examine himself But he that is so stupid that he is not moved at all with the wickedness of others or of himself is perfectly dead in Sin and is in the full power of Satan and is covered with Eternal Death and Darkness THIS Second Doctrine is now sufficiently plain That they that would be Heirs of the Kingdom of Christ must suffer with Christ. I will again here stir you up to an examination and tryal of your Spiritual state whether you have any interest in the Heavenly Inheritance The Sign and infallible Seal is our suffering with Christ. But not any suffering For the fuffering in Estate if we escape it yet may we be inheritors of Heaven But to be evil spoken of for Christ is harder to efcape yet admit we escape that too we may for all that be secure of our Eternal Inheritance Nor have all that are now with God been whip'd and tortur'd and put to death or martyrdom But yet we ought to be so minded that we had rather endure all these things than depart from Christ. But all the other sufferings as abstinence from voluptuousness from the delights of the flesh from priding our selves in any thing that God hath bestowed upon us a suppressing our anger abstaining from the sweetness of revenge denying of the ever-craving appetite of covetousness keeping our tongues from the delight of defamation and evil reports our ears from hearing evil of our Neighbour These be necessary All which endeavours will surely afflict and vex the corrupt Natural Spirit of a man But he that will not undergo this suffering believe it Beloved he is none of Christs he hath neither part nor portion in the Kingdom of Christ and of God But he that doth though with great agony of Soul and affliction of Mind fight against all this corruption of Flesh and Spirit He may bless God for his good condition and with good reason lay hold of the hope of Heaven They that are troubled in Spirit for the wickedness of men the prophanation of Gods name and any manner of sin and iniquity these men may conclude that they have the Spirit of God and consequently that they are the Sons of God And if sons then heirs heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ If so be that we suffer with him Which our own Spirit together with Gods Spirit doth testifie to us that we do and that we shall be certainly glorified with him Let every man herein examine himself that he may find a true ground of his hope of Eternal Salvation For none shall be saved but they that are
the Children of God elect to this Inheritance none are the Children of God but those that have the Spirit of God none have the Spirit of God but those that suffer with Christ that mortifie their own sins and are grieved for the sins of others Be not deceived Beloved with flattering dreams and phansies This is the very Truth of God and according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And this Truth being so apparently true I need not exhort in many words to those Christian Sufferings Stand fast in the true Faith of the Power of God and quit your selves like men Cast away all softness and effeminateness and be so stout-hearted as to endure the pangs of Death of the mortification of your sinful flesh and carnal mind for his sake that dyed for you Resist unto Blood even unto the effusion of the wicked Life and unrighteous devilish Spirit that resideth in you For this is the good will of your God that you be mortified that you be thoroughly sanctified that you destroy all things contrary to God in you 1 Thess. 4. And let this be the First Motive to run with patience the race that is set before us Secondly These our Sufferings though great are not comparable to the rich Reward that Glorious Inheritance in Heaven 2 Cor. 4. For which cause we faint not but though our outward man perish yet the inward man is renewed day by day For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory Thirdly If we compare the future state of the Wicked and the Godly how all their Glory and Pleasure vanisheth and how the Children of God are received into Everlasting Happiness crown'd with Eternal Light it will more firmly establish us in our Christian resolutions It cannot be better described then it is in the Book of Wisdom The iniquities of the wicked shall convince them to their own face and they shall approach the tribunal of God with fear and quaking But then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such as have afflicted him and made no account of his labours When they see it they shall be troubled with terrible fear and shall be amazed at the strangeness of his salvation And they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say within themselves This is he whom we had some time in derision and a proverb of reproach We fools counted his life madness and his end to be without honour How is he numbred among the children of God and his lot is among the saints Wisd. 5. You may read the whole Chapter at your leasure Fourthly and Lastly The Inheritance of Heaven is conditional If we suffer with him we shall be glorified with him which implies if we do not suffer with him we shall not be glorified with him 2 Tim. 2. 11. This is a faithful saying that if we be dead with him we shall also live with him if we suffer with him we shall also reign with him Wherefore Beloved sooth not up your selves in vain hopes and flatteries For without killing of your sinful Lusts without Mortification there is no Salvation He that hath not the Spirit of Christ is none of his Now no body hath the Spirit of Christ unless he be dead unto sin For if he be dead unto Sin then shall he be raised from Death to Life by the Spirit of Christ that quickeneth us to Righteousness But if he be dead unto Righteousness and alive unto Sin he is a son of Belial a child of the Devil a vessel of perdition a faggot for Hell and the devouring Wrath of God remains upon him No Heir of God no Coheir with Christ but he shall have his portion with those infernal Fiends to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever Wherefore Beloved awake from your beds of ease shake off your idle dreams and bewitching phansies that either the Devil or his false Prophets have buz'd at any time into your heads If you will be the Sons of God and Disciples of Christ take up the Cross of Christ afflict your own carnal minds give not way to wrath to envy to anger to revenge to lust to wantonness to back-biting to swearing to revelling to drinking to pride to contemning to reproaching to fighting to contesting to censuring to defaming or whatsoever else Flesh and Blood is easily carried out to but deny your selves in abstaining from all those evil acts and so give no encouragement to the Devil to assault you Which if you shall do in the precious Christian Patience even to the mortification of all manner of Sin in you God shall stir up in you the Spirit of his Son and enrich you with the Power and Wisdom of the Holy Ghost And the Peace of God which passeth all understanding shall fill your hearts with all joy and you shall find in your selves an unexpressible taste of the delights of Heaven and receive an infallible earnest of your Eternal Inheritance Which God grant that we may all do through Iesus Christ our Lord to whom c. DISCOURSE X. JAM i. 27. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world THE Text is a description of pure and undefiled Religion And certainly if any thing Religion it is that wants the pointing out by the most evident plain and conspicuous descriptions that may be to be writ in Capital Letters in so large and visible Characters that he that runs may read it For indeed most men are but at leasure to read it running 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the by tanquam aliud agentes still keeping on their course in that broad way that beaten path that leads to the reward of impiety and irreligiousness But yet I know not how it comes to pass that though men make not Religion their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their main business and work yet they prove most-what far more fortunate in this than in their worldly occasions and employments where though they take a great deal more pains yet we shall more ordinarily hear them complain of ill success But as for Religion how few are there that find themselves at a loss therein nay that are not suited to their own hearts liking and from these slight and transient glances cast upon it are kindled into so hot a passion and inflammation of love and zeal for it that finding their own breasts too strait and narrow for such a violent heat would even force open the hearts of other men that there may be more room and freedom for so ample a flame Not content to keep alive this Vestal fire within the walls of its own Temple but to disthrone the Sun and ordain it the sole Lamp of the Universe where all other Religions and Worships must like the lesser Stars disappear and vanish Every rash Religion is Popery
point of Religion exerciz'd all the time God himself bears witness against them Ezekiel 33. They speak every one to his brother saying Come I pray you and hear what is the word that cometh from the Lord. They come unto thee and sit before thee as my people and they hear thy words but they will not do them with their mouth they shew much love but their heart goeth after covetousness And lo thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument for they hear thy words but they do them not And Reading of the Scripture privately is so like the publick Preaching of it that I need not take any new pains to refute the vanity of it if it be not accompanied with due obedience We may fetch that up to Divinity which Epictetus hath both wittily and gravely of Moral Theorems The Sheep tell not their keeper how much Fodder or Grass they eat but shew that they feed sufficiently by their Milk and Wooll Let us not therefore Beloved do as vain Limners they say have done drawn Venus and the Virgin Mary according to the feature of some Face they themselves love best Let us not I say picture out Religion to our own liking and then be in love with an Idol of our own making but love and like that which the Apostle has so plainly pourtray'd to us That whose description consists in visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction and keeping our selves unspotted of the world Which in two words is this Charity and Purity Of these two consists that true Religion acceptable to God For I conceive visiting the Fatherless and Widows in their affliction excludes not other good deeds from this definition but by a Synecdoche is put for the whole office of Charity 1. The First branch is Charity I will not curiously and artificially set out the bounds of this Vertue It will be enough to intimate that it is not confin'd to the relief of the Body only as he is not only Fatherless that wants his Natural Parent but he much more that has not God for his Father through the seed of the new birth Nor she alone a Widow that has lost her Natural Husband but every Soul is a Widow that is estranged and divorced from her God whose sins have made a separation betwixt her and her Maker Thy Maker is thy Husband Esa. 11. 54. He is so indeed to those that are not faithless and play the Harlot for of such saith the Lord She is not my Wife neither am I her Husband Hosea 2. 2. He therefore that can reconcile a Soul unto God doth not only relieve the Fatherless and Widow but procures an Husband and Father for them and wholly rids them out of their distressful estate These outward transient actions tending to the spiritual or temporal good of our Neighbour are fit testimonies of our sincere Religion before men but for every mans private satisfaction concerning himself there be divers inward and immanent motions of the Soul which will abundantly help on this confirmation I will reckon them up out of the mouth of the Apostle 1 Cor. 13. Where I will not balk those that be at ad extra too they being all very well worth our taking notice of Charity suffereth long and is kind Charity envieth not Charity vaunteth not it self is not puffed up Doth not behave it self unseemly seeketh not her own is not easily provoked thinketh no evil rejoyceth not in iniquity but rejoyceth in the truth Beareth all things believeth all things hopeth all things endureth all things 2. I pass on now to the Second branch Purity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to keep himself unspotted from the World 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word signifies properly such kind of spots as are in Clothes by spilling some liquid or oyly thing on them An hard task certainly to be Religious at this height Is it to be thought possible that we should wear this Garment of Mortality every day nay every hour and moment for thirty forty fifty sixty years together and soil it by no mischange or miscarriage either of careless Youth violent Manhood or palsied Old Age To pass through the hurry and tumult of this World and never be crouded into the dirt nor be spattered by them that post by us But verily this is not the meaning of the Apostle or of his description of Religion that no man is Religious but he that is absolutely spotless But he sets before us an Idea or Paradigme of true Religion that men having their eyes upon it may know how much or rather how little of Religion they have attained to By how much nearer conformable to this pattern by so much more Religious by how much further off by so much the less Religious He that is not so much as within the sight of it has not so much as seen the least glimpse or glance of Godliness but may be without any wrong to him writ down Atheist Let every man herein examine himself and ask his own Conscience how unspotted he has kept himself from the World And here as hard a difficulty represents it self if not harder than before To keep himself unspotted from the World Is it not pure Irreligiousness to think so Impossible to be so Who can keep himself pure I answer it may be a mistake in the Idiom of the Tongue 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is no more than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be kept unspotted from the World Hithpael for Niphai as there is elsewhere Niphal for Hithpael Acts 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So Beza Or to keep himself unspotted from the World is to be understood so far forth as is in our power which in truth is very little Here therefore steps in the power of Christ that strong Arm of God for our Salvation the stay and trust of all Nations and the hope of the ends of the Earth For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Iesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh condemned sin in the flesh that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us that walk not after the flesh but after the spirit Rom. 8. We walk though it be in the power of that Spirit of Life in Christ as our Body moves by vertue of our Natural Spirit But whether this act of purification or keeping our selves pure be so from God that it is not in any wise from us I leave to them to dispute that are more at leasure That it must be in us if there be any Religion in us is all that the Text affords me and 't is enough for the tryal of our Religion Pure Religion is to keep our selves unspotted from the World What to keep our selves
be bold to call but a miserable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 till that Third completing Vnite be added the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Divine Nature or Spirit of God This Doctrine of Regeneration is inculcated often enough in Scripture though not under this express name but it is strongly enough implyed in as many places as there is mention of being born of God For what is that but Regeneration or a Second Birth and how oft is that repeated in S. Iohns Writings Iohn 1. 12 13. But as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God even to them that believe on his name Which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God Chap. 3. 5. Iesus answered Verily verily I say unto thee Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God Regeneration is not a sleight tipping or colouring over with superficial qualities and habits but is from a substantial principle of Life that actuates the Soul as powerfully as the Soul doth the Body is the Souls true form or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Soul is the Bodies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and form For what doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imply but penetration and most intimate possession of the subject actuated or informed and power rule and command over the same to move it at pleasure And doth not the Divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Eternal Word thus penetrate and possess the Souls of Godly men even as the subtle Light doth the Air of it self but a dark and forlorn body There is so perfect a correspondency between Generation and Regeneration that unless prejudice and Sophistical curiosity keep it off mans Reason would forwardly assent that the Christian Regeneration is no dry Metaphor but full Truth And that the Regenerate man is even as specifically distinct from the mere Natural man as the Natural man from brute Beasts We made it good even out of Aristotle that the Species or Essences of things are as Numbers c. The Ternarius is not made by taking from the Binarius but by adding another Unite thereunto Therefore a man though he have one Form already viz. the Natural Soul it hinders not but he may have also another the quickening Spirit of God I will add a little more force to the Conclusion by taking notice of the grounds of our specificating things and essentially distinguishing the one from the other that we may discover the like grounds for our conclusion What small and slight intimations from accidentary differences in Natural Bodies have cast the Earth Water and Air into so many distinct Species and that they cannot put on one anothers outward qualities without the generation of some inward substantial form A little difference in weight and colour must imply a several Specification in Silver and Gold and upon a little more occasion than colour and taste must a Pigeon and a Partridge be distinct Species Not that these things are false but that there is as true grounds to find a real Specifical difference betwixt a Natural man and a man Regenerate For if several colour figure and weight though they be something near akin to one another be a sufficient cause of surmisal that some inward essential form is within surely then when we see the Soul of man figured and covered over with new Thoughts of Mind new Knowledge new Desires it is as good an Argument that it is actuated by a new Principle of Life But here it will be replyed Then any Chast man will Specifically differ from an Unchast man Just men from Unjust Philosophers from Idiots But it is not such an opposition as it seems at first sight The improvement of Nature is no sign of a new Specification A Horse that can go may also trot gallop pace swim and dance too and yet not cease to be an Horse But if I should see him flying in the Air I should take him to be no Horse but a Devil A Nightingal may vary with her voice into a multitude of interchangeable Notes and various Musical falls and risings and yet be but a Nightingal no Chorister But should she but sing one Hymn or Hallelujah I should deem her no Bird but an Angel So the highest improvement of Natural Knowledge or mere Morality will argue us no more than the Sons of Men But to be of one will completely with God will make us or doth argue us to be the Sons of God Stones Dirt Metals Minerals distinct enough one from another agree in tending downwards to the Earth and Fire is as much determinate to moving upward to the Natural Seat of that Element But if that either of them or Fiery or Earthy nature move of its pleasure upward downward to the right to the left this way and the other way even as it will no man any longer will suppose it either Fire or Earth but something else Specificated by a new internal principle To be always bent down to the desire of the body and worldly delights that motion is Bestial To be always reaching at high things that 's Diabolical To be disengag'd from a mans self and stand indifferent to what ere the Will of God is that 's Angelical or Divine But it is again objected If Regeneration imply a real new Generation that then it must also imply a real Corruption so that the Natural Soul shall be destroyed or at least Natural Knowledge Natural Principles of Reason Not a jot of this follows Neither the Soul it self nor its Natural Principles of Knowledge or Reason are destroyed or abated but made up and perfected Doth one Unite added to two pre-existent Unites destroy those Unites Or rather do they not all put together beget a new Number of another Species and Name Or to bring it more home doth the Soul of man coming into the organiz'd Body destroy the Body Or doth it not rather perfect and compleat it So doth also the Spirit of God coming into the Soul But as for the pre-existent qualities no more of those are destroy'd than are incompatible with the residence of that new Form the Divine Spirit Disobedience and wickedness be the only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with this new Birth Reason is no more incompatible with this state than phansie memory hearing seeing smelling c. Nor the improvement of Reason or Arts and Sciences then looking upon the Stars through a Galilaeos Glass or reading the Bible with an ordinary pair of Spectacles Doct. II. That the Soul is Regenerated of no corruptible Seed but incorruptible There needs no Descant upon this no Interpretation the Words are so clear no Proof the Truth is so unquestionable Doct. III. That this incorruptible Seed is the Word of God The Word of God has two or three Senses It signifies The written Word The Word spoken and Verbum mentis That which God conceives within himself
Christian such a State I say as the Resurrection from Death Then it is worth our pains to try our selves whether we be in that state or no. We have seen many Easter-Mornings God be praised but if the Sun of Righteousness hath not yet risen upon us with healing in his Wings all those solemnizations of the Resurrection of Christs Body from the grave is but Death and Darkness unto us is no Health no Light nor Life It was the manner of Primitive Christians to salute one another with this Salutation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Lord is risen If we could this Easter-Sunday and every Lords-day make such Salutations as this in the very Spiritual Truth The Lord is risen That is is risen from Death in our Souls and we by him become enlivened to all Righteousness O what Mutual Rejoycing and true Spiritual Triumph would there be in the Church of God! Verily Beloved if you partake not of the Mysteries of Christianity in the Spirit and Truth of them as well as in the History and Ceremony your Profession is but vain you are still in your Sins and dismal Sentence of Damnation remaineth still upon you DISCOURSE XVI Appendix to DISCOURSE XIII 1 PET. 1. 22 23. Seeing ye have purified your Souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently Being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever I Have already insisted upon the Doctrines or Truths which are as so many enforcements to the great Duty in the Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That which may be observed out of this Precept is a fourfold Doctrine 1. That we are to love one another 2. That we are to love one another out of a pure Heart 3. That we are to love one another fervently 4. That we are to love one another universally and continually The First of these I have done with I come now to Doct. II. That we are to love one another out of a pure Heart This Purity may be set out in these three Constitutives or at least Consecutives of Love viz. Complacentia Benevolentia Beneficentia 1. The Purity of Complacency consists in this that we love and like that of a man that is the adequate object of honest Love and that is Divine Beauty which is not in the Body but in the Soul adorn'd with all Moral and Divine Vertues He that loves not according to this in a man he loves after the same manner he may love an horse a dog or any beast that is fitted for the satisfying of his natural or extravagant humours For if there be no ground of right Friendship but Vertue then is there no Love in vain and leud men but after the manner of Brutes that is eating together as Sheep and Kine in one pasture or sporting together like young Greyhounds at their going out into the fields or better natur'd Spaniels or such like fond Animals I but the gaudes of Phansie and queint toyes of Wit or at least the subtilty thereof Art and accomplishment of the Intellectual parts these all of them put together at least may make up an object of Complacency and friendly delight Verily as much as a well proportioned Body clear Complexion a vigorous Eye gentle Deportment c. which are so far from that living object of Pure Love that by the same Law we may join Friendship with a well wrought Statue or some more curious Picture Complacency in any person saving for Vertues sake is as far removed from pure and Divine Love as the affections of Xerxes Glauca the Youth of Athens and that others of Sparta who loved trees statues rams geese c. were distant from Natural Vid. AElian lib. 1. cap. 39. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And as ridiculous and absurd will their Love prove in respect of that more pure and holy affection that can take Complacency in the person of men that have but the outward accomplishment of parts and abilities or outward artifice or natural well-favouredness their Souls being dead to Vertue and Righteousness For beside that these are as helpless to the best things as a dumb statue or a dead picture they are also very dangerous for either hindering the first shooting out of divine worth in the Soul of man or for corrupting and destroying what already is grown up of Vertue and Goodness For so it is with man that so soon as he is capable of Vertue he must either have it or the contrary Mans Nature is no barren Soil it brings forth or good grain or stinking weeds And where once corruption has taken hold it is even worse than a Gangrene it catches hold on the companion and is the very pest of the Souls of men But if the Love and Complacency of those be not pure that can love notwithstanding the foulness of their friends what pollution is there in theirs that can love for foulness it self viz. whose society pleaseth one another for some bad quality as for being a vain Gamester Swearer for their Lasciviousness or that delicious condiment of Friendship good Fellowship which some loving Souls are so taken with When as it s nothing but the similitude of their evil manners or equality of their enlarged bellies do thus joyn their affections Fellow-wine-bottles of the same size or Ale-tap-urinals c. And as this Impurity in Love is Bestial so there is also that is Devilish as when men like one another the better for being alike imbittered against this or the other party Such complyance as this is but like the twining together of Snakes and venomous Serpents in one bed A Paradox That that which is the most ugly of all the affections viz. embittering Malice and Hatred should make men so amiable one to another Thus Hags and Imps love one another And there is a knot of Friendship that is as Fond at least as this is Devilish viz. endearment from Identity of opinion Fellow-Thomist Fellow-Scotist c. And when it riseth no higher than Scholastick siding or Philosophical altercations it is not much worse than fondness or childishness But when this unskillful affection interweaves it self with matters of Religion and toucheth upon the Attributes actions or designs of the highest God where men are very loth to be deceiv'd though no where more subject to err Fondness is then too mild a term for that which is boil'd up to Fury and Fanaticalness For here men of the same Sect are not content with the pleasure and good-will they exhibit one to another but they grow to that heat as to scorch all gainsayers as well as warm themselves at these misguided flames God forbid that I should go about to slack any mans affection in the pursuit and profession of Divine Truth such as is plainly contained in the Scripture or evidenced by palpable experience in his heart But that which is but
Shield of Faith in the power of God whereby we are enabled to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked And we must take the Helmet of Hope and sure expectation of Everlasting Life which will keep us from being easily knock'd down to the Earth by the fiercest Assaults of our Adversaries And lastly we must take to us the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God whereby we may divide betwixt Good and Evil and admit the one and reject the other And being thus appointed we must pray alwaies with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit watching thereunto with all perseverance And especially to watch in such a sense as this as to be extremely shy and careful how we admit any thing under the colour or upon the rellish of Animal pleasure but rather eo nomine to decline it Which is an impregnable Bulwark against the assaults of the Flesh and such as will ever defeat them If we do these things we shall never fall let the assaults of the Fleshly Lusts be as violent as they will 3. But if we be overcome let us now see what a lamentable spoil they will make of us and how cruelly and tyrannically they will use us For First They will rob us of whatever is precious that we have They will take down and carry away with them that chearful and delightful furniture of the Soul Peace and Tranquillity of mind For the mind of man is not of so base an Original as to enjoy it self in things so much below it self as are the Fleshly Lusts Whence it must needs be that she will be ever and anon disturbed with loathings and regrets of Conscience amidst her so base condition and practices and instead of that steady peace and chearfulness of Spirit which are enjoyed in our adherence to Holiness and Vertue be exposed to many horrours and distractions and confusions of thoughts and an ungrateful sense of inward shame and reproach which accompanies such unworthy actions Secondly They will disarm the Soul of that honest activity and diligence which we ought to have in our Affairs and make us more uncareful and more unable to pursue and manage our Business with that discretion and faithfulness we ought to do to the scandal of the World as well as to our own detriment This Lucretius notes of that notorious kind of Fleshly Lusts the being addicted to Women Languent officia atque aegrotat fama vacillans But takes place also in Gluttony in Drunkenness and whatever other pleasure has once overcome the Soul and subdued her to it self Thirdly These Fleshly Lusts rob a man of the safe use of his Reason They will make it wonderfully prevaricate in the behalf of themselves and commit such Paralogisms as the Soul cannot but be ashamed of so soon as she has got out of the reach of their power And they will in the conclusion so weaken the Faculties of the Mind that they shall very fondly dote in their Verdicts even touching such things as the Fleshly Lusts themselves are unconcerned in For these Lusts bereaving the Mind of her purity must needs dim and obscure her Faculties more or less in all uses of them where there is ordinarily any difference of Sentiments amongst men Fourthly and lastly These Lusts deprive us of the Life and Influence of the Divine Spirit and most dismally damp and dead the Power of Faith and Sense of Religion in the Soul which is of more consequence than even Reason it self which proves very weak in the assurance of these things when the sagacity of a better Life is extinguished or smothered by the soul impurities of the Lusts of the Flesh. But the Soul being once purged from these ipso facto unites with the Spirit of God and by an Holy and Divine Instinct is in a proneness and readiness to believe such things as God is truly said to have done or to intend to do concerning the sons of men by vertue of her union with the Divine Spirit or that Eternal Mind that immutably contains the whole Counsel of God touching things past present and to come This miserable spoil do the Fleshly Lusts make of the poor Soul when they overcome her and not only so but they use her cruelly to boot That they put out her Eyes I have already intimated in that I noted that they bereave her both of Faith and Reason And that they pluck all her Feathers out of her Wings it is as manifest since our being captivated with Fleshly Lusts keeps down the Soul and hinders all Holy and Heavenly Aspires and extinguishes the pure Flames of Devotion Nor are they content with this but they also crucifie and nail the captive Soul to this Earthly Body as Plato complains 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All Pleasure and Grief nails saith he the Soul to the Body Nor is it impertinent to name enormous Grief amongst the Lusts of the Flesh since no Grief is enormous but out of the enormity of Self-love or inordinate love of this Corporeal Personality of ours which if we could be sufficiently unconcerned for and love and esteem nothing but the Almighty Lord of Heaven and Earth and those Divine Laws and Holy Sentiments he has implanted in our Souls Enormity of Grief would not be able to seize upon us Nor do they only thus crucifie and kill that higher and Diviner Life of the Soul but by the exorbitant excitations of the contrary Life into several enormous modes and forms metamorphose men into so many abhorred Monsters whom they keep in the chains of this base servility and captivity and then let them loose upon the most villainous outrages or the basest and most contemptible actions imaginable Wrath and Revenge like a Bear robb'd of her Whelps makes them tear apieces and destroy all they meet with in their way Ambition and Avarice like an Evening-Wolf makes them fall upon the Sheepfolds and suck the blood of innocent Lambs to satisfie their thirst Superstition and false Zeal turnes them into such Furies or Devils that they destroy whole Cities and Countries with Fire and Sword out of pride and impatience that others do not submit to their Wisdom and give themselves up to their Guidance who yet have no Light but those Infernal Torches of an ignorant and bitter Zeal devoid of all Christian Charity which they could light no where but from the Flames of Hell nor conduct a Soul by this Light any whither but to the place of those Infernal Flames The sting of Lust transforms them into such Satyrs and Baboons that they fly upon all promiscuously not sparing their own Mothers Sisters nor Daughters Gluttony and Drunkenness as Circe did Vlysses his Companions changes their shapes into foul dirty Swine To say nothing of those ugly indecorums of Effeminacy that brings some into as base a Servility as Omphale did Hercules who made him put off his Lyons-Skin and sit amongst her Maids at the Distaff and Spindle Not to add what one would
Phancies suggest or our vacillant Reason blind or drunk with the foul steams of an impure and unsanctify'd Heart would pretend to coin for us Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee in whose heart are thy wayes The next is Faith By which I do not so much understand Faith in general as that which has for its proper Object the Power of God for the destroying of Sin and the erecting his Kingdom in us For out of this ariseth our Strength in God and our Victory over the World This is the victory that overcometh the world even our Faith as S. Iohn speaks Which Requisite is also hinted in this Psalm the last verse O Lord of Hosts blessed is the man that trusteth in thee And indeed sith our Faith and Trust and Confidence is in the Lord of Hosts how can we despair of the victory over any Sin whatsoever Cannot he that created Heaven and Earth by his Word create in us a pure Heart and renew a right Spirit within us I can do all things saith S. Paul through Christ that strengthens me Certainly it is a Contradiction that Omnipotency should not be able so effectually to assist a willing Soul as to bring all her enemies under her feet Can he that is the Lord of Hosts and has the power over all Nature be baffled in his assaults upon the corrupt Nature of any poor Creature so that he cannot reduce it if he will And can we possibly imagine God not to be willing to subdue Sin in the World who has given us such express Laws against it both within and without who expresses his Wrath and Vengeance against it so frequently in Scripture who is so irreconcileable an enemy unto it that nothing less than the Death of his only begotten Son could make an Atonement for it And lastly the Holiness of whose Nature is so contrary and diametrically opposite to the pollutedness of it Wherefore the fault most assuredly lyes at our own doors viz. because we are not sincerely willing to have our Sins vanquished and overcome by the Power of God Which therefore is the third and last Requisite which the Travellers in the Valley of Baca are said to be provided with namely Sincerity which comprehends not only a belief that all our Sins ought to be subdued and that they are all vanquishable through the assistance of Gods Spirit but also an unfeigned willingness to have them subdued and an hearty endeavour to the utmost of that power we have received to conquer them and subdue them He that is provided of all these three is fitly furnished for a prosperous Journey toward the House of God and the Almighty will be his safeguard in his travel 3. Which is the Third Particular we named What Convoy to guard them safe in their Iourney which is intimated in the Psalm also For the Lord is a sun and a shield the Lord will give grace and glory and no good thing will he with-hold from them that walk uprightly that is to say that walk sincerely In which Sincerity if they keep themselves he will also be faithful unto them and not suffer them to be tempted above what they are able and will deliver them from all straits and assaults of their enemies both inward and outward The Lord will be their fortress and tower their defence and shield a present help in the day of trouble The Angels of the Lord will encamp round about them and deliver them For such as these as it is said of those few names in Sardis Christ will confess their names before his Father and his holy Angels namely profess how dear they are to him and so commit them to their safe protection 4. And surely the Influences of Heaven which is the Fourth Particular cannot but be very benign to those that are thus dear to the God of Heaven And therefore for light and warmth and kindly dews and showres they shall not be destitute of these in this Journey of theirs to the Temple of God And therefore God is said as well to be a Sun to them as a Shield in the forecited Verse of this Psalm And in Ver. 6. They that pass through the valley of Baca are said to make it a well and that the rain filleth the pools Like that in Psalm 68. O God when thou wentest forth before thy people when thou didst march through the wilderness the clouds dropped at thy presence thou sentest a gracious rain upon thy inheritance and refreshedst it when it was weary But in this present Psalm the Rain is said to be received into some hollows of the Earth dug out the Latin renders it cisternas I suppose any fossae or hollows of what form soever will serve the turn made by the diging away the Earth that this Heavenly Liquor may supply the vacuity For that is a great mistake in the Carnal-minded that they think that when we empty our selves of the Old Adam and the comforts of that Life that we thus stand empty for ever and that Religion is a forlorn disconsolate condition No dig away thy Earth and God will fill the vacuity with a substance from Heaven Or starve away the fulsomness of thy Flesh by assiduous mortification and purification and thou shalt make this arid Soil this Valley of Baca a springing Well as it is suggested in the beginning of the Verse When our Terrestrial substance becomes a dry barren Soil as to the fruits of the Flesh then will those Well-springs of living Water bubble up in us as our Saviour has promised unto Eternal Life by which is understood the irrigation of the Spirit Non datur vacuum is a Maxime as true in Divinity as in Philosophy Empty thy self therefore of thy Earth and thou shalt most certainly be replenished with Heaven 5. Now for the Fifth Particular which occurs in my Text properly so called for I have made the whole Psalm in a manner my Text hitherto it is of the greatest importance of all throughly to consider it namely our gradual advance in this journey through the Valley of Baca. They go from strength to strength è virtute in virtutem the Latin has it from vertue to vertue And indeed this progress from strength to strength is nothing else but a proficiency in Vertue either from one vertue to another Add to your Faith Fortitude to your Fortitude Patience c. or from one Degree of vertue to another And this vertue is very significantly termed strength there being no true Vertue which is not such It is but the imagination of vertue if it be not accompanied with Life and Power And forasmuch as Vertue and Grace are all one let every one take notice that he that has no Vertue has no Grace as well as he that has no Power has no Vertue Which is a plain Note to examine a mans self by that he may not lye lusking in his softnesses and infirmities and in the mean time flatter himself that
of God For this Life and Spirit is not drawn into the Soul but with the Body of Christ which is the Holy Temple of God Wherefore when we come to that Dispensation which we call the Living Law or the Law that giveth Life this is a main progress indeed in our Journey through the Valley of Baca and in this especially is that verify'd that it is turned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into a springing Well which as I intimated before is to be understood of the Spirit This Spirit of Life in us the Soul being one with it she will cleanse her self of all dirtiness and uncleanness like a bubling Spring into which if a man fling any dirt it will work it out again And so will this Spirit of Life work out all filth and falshood out of the Soul it not enduring any such heterogeneous stuff in it Here therefore the Vertues become Cathartical in an eminent degree But when Corruption is laid aside and kept at a distance when Regeneration is compleated and the new man well knit and compacted together then is the House or Temple of God built which these Travellers in Baca seek after And this degree of Vertue you may if you will in Plotinus his Phrase call Paradigmatical though not in his Sense who understands thereby a sensless 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Soul as if she had to do with no Matter at all and was to be reduced to a perfect Apathy But the Body of Christ and the Temple of God though they be very Pure Holy and Heavenly yet they are not perfectly Immaterial And it is that Idea or Example that we are to imitate and according to which our perfection is and therefore when Vertue has arrived to this degree it may well in this solid Sense be called Paradigmatical for all things are here according to the Pattern in the Mount And we have now brought our Travellers through the Valley of Baca to Mount Sion or rather to that part of that Tract so called in which the Temple was built which is Mount Moriah the Mountain of Myrrhe as some would have it signifie which implies the dryness and sterility of the Soil as well as the Notation of Sion does which has its name from aridity or dryness For this Temperature wherein the lubricous and luxuriant moisture of the Concupiscible or Desires of the Flesh of what nature soever and pleasures thereof are dry'd up and consumed by that more heavenly heat and zealous desire after the House of God This is the true Terra Sancta the Consecrated Ground in which the Temple of God will at last be erected and wherein those Travellers through the Valley of Baca will at last to their unspeakable comfort find it and with it the most solid Happiness the Soul of man is capable of which is the last particular 6. The Entertainment of these Travellers at their Iourneys end It is no less than a Beatifick Vision They shall every one of them appear before God in Sion For these are the generation of them that seek him even them that seek the face of the God of Iacob And here they are said to appear before the God of Gods in Sion and so to see his face which is the greatest satisfaction that the Soul of man can either desire or find according to that in the 17th Psalm As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness I shall be satisfied when I awake into thy likeness Which men can never do till they are brought into this Terra Sancta the moist fumes and vapours of a foul lushious Blood and unsanctify'd and unpurify'd Body will keep them fast in an heavy Sleep accompanied at the best but with vain and frivolous Dreams and the false Pleasures and Joyes of this perishing Life till they enter seriously into this Journey through the Valley of Baca and ascend into the Mountain of Myrrh which will prove to them the Mountain of the Vision of God which is an indubitable Etymology of Mount Moriah in which the Temple and Presence of God was amongst the Iews in which God exhibits himself visible to his People Blessed are the pure in heart which is the true Terra Sancta for they shall see God Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness whose Soul thirsts after God as a thirsty land as the Psalmist speaks for these shall be satisfied These are arriv'd to Mount Sion that dry hungry and thirsty Soil and consequently to the Holy Temple And therefore will not fail of being satisfied with the fatness of Gods house and of drinking plentifully of the river of pleasures that flows there For with thee is the fountain of life and in thy light shall we see light that is to say we shall see God who is light by his communicating his Image to us and making us Deiform This will be the Entertainment of these Travellers through Baca when they are come to Mount Moriah the Mountain of the Vision of God as the word signifies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The God of Gods will appear to them in Sion The God of Gods the Summum Ronum O Lord our God other Lords besides thee have had dominion over us but in this thy Holy Temple we will make mention of thy name only It was our ignorance of thee and because we had not seen the beauty and comfort of thy Countenance that we have served other Gods before thee that we have sought satisfaction in the power or riches of this World in the honour or applause of Men in the lust and pleasures of the Flesh in needless and fruitless subtilities of Knowledge or from any self-reflections on our own conceited worth or precellency before others or whatever else is rellish'd by the mere Natural man It was our ignorance that we were any time servants to these or that they were any way the guides of our Life or the joy of our Hearts But they are dead dry'd up and withered and shall not live they are deceased and shall not rise to lord it again over us For thou only art Holy thou only art the Lord and thou only oughtest to possess us who only art able to satisfie us and fill us and so to fill us and satisfie us as that as there is no need so there is no room left for any worldly or carnal satisfactions that nothing unholy or unclean may crowd into this thy Holy Temple or approach this thy Holy Mountain wherein thou hast appointed that day of Feasting that Feast of fat things that Feast of refined Wines and of fat things full of Marrow as the Prophet Esay speaks This is the entertainment of our Travellers through the Valley of Baca when they are once arrived to the House of God God does not only show himself unto them but welcome them after their long travel with a joyful Feast and all delicious refreshments Behold I stand at the door and knock If any man hear my voice and
of the Truth and sincere purpose of doing what is absolutely best and of cleaving to what is absolutely best in all things without any self-relish or self-respect whatsoever A thing so lovely and desirable that even the better sort of Heathen seem vehemently to have breathed after it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O my dear Soul when wilt thou become One and naked and simple It is the Exhortation of that excellent Emperour Marcus Antoninus to his own Soul as that brief monition also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Simplifie thy self reduce thy self to perfect Sincerity and Single-mindedness These strains I confess are so near the Spirit and Genius of Christianity it self that I half suspect the Philosopher of playing the Plagiary and that he adorned himself at a distance with the Practical Philosophy of that Religion the truth of whose Mysteries either the shortness of his Reason made him dissent from or the Reason of State hinder'd him from making profession of But it may be a just reproach to the generality of Christians who though they publickly profess the Faith of Christ yet let the Life fall to the ground But I proceed 3. Thirdly But if thine Eye be evil thy whole Body will be full of Darkness that is If thou be carnally-minded and have not that Spiritual Eye above described thy Soul will be wholly left in the dark or closely surrounded with a Cimmerian mist or Egyptian fog thou wilt have no prospect nor be able to see thy way at all thou wilt be so closely besieged by the powers of darkness The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by that spiritual relish above-mentioned But he that is spiritual discerneth all things yet he himself is discerned of no man He has a full prospect of light a large Horizon lies open to his view so that where-ever he turns himself his way is plain before him But he that has not that holy divine and unself-interested Spirit of Love that Single Eye of the Soul he walks in the dark and knows not whither he goes because the darkness hath blinded his Eyes 1 Ioh. 2. 11. But in that the Apostle S. Paul saith Yet he himself is discerned of no man that is to be understood that no carnally-minded man can discern him according to what S. Iohn writes in his Gospel And the light shined in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not For that Maxime of the Ancientest Philosophers is most assuredly true here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There must be a corresponding Principle within to be able to discern what occurs to us from without As face answers to face so the heart of man to man And hence it is I mean from this darkness that the wicked give such rude justles against the truly-good namely because they cannot discern them For if they could duely discern them it were impossible that they should hate them as being Friends to every mans person and out of mere care and compassion to them being only Enemies to their Vices Needless broils and quarrels mistake upon mistake mischief after mischief this is the necessary condition of him that by reason of the Evil Eye of the Soul cannot see his way distinctly but is ever and anon caught in unexpected Angiports and tedious Labyrinths out of which he can find no exitus but is forc'd to go backwards and forwards and to make Indentures in his gate like a sot and drunkard 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways By reason of his want of that Single Eye he has not yet discovered that one simple and indispensable object that his heart is eternally to cleave to And therefore his Eye being tainted and infected with the impurities of the Animal life as the inward Complexion of his Body changes or the Circumstances of external affairs alter he adhering to nothing upon sincere grounds may be now a Reveller anon a superstitious Bigot now a Sceptick anon an inept and unskilful Dogmatist make profession of one Religion to day of another to morrow and next day of neither and at last if it prove plausible or fashionable of none at all Such wild contrary sallies is he subject to that is under the guidance of the Double Eye But that which is Single and One can never run contrary to it self but will ever act uniformly and correspondently to one End the Express whereof is the known will of God and what is simply and absolutely the best It is that only Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Iesus according to which we must act if we would walk as Children of the Light If we mingle any thing of the self-relish or Carnal Interest this will supplant our goings and we shall most certainly stumble in the dark and if the concerns in our Interest grow high we shall reel and stagger like a drunken man and be at our wits end Be things at other times never so plain yet all must be now obscure and uncertain we abhorring from all evidence that is evidently against our own worldly advantage to acknowledge and profess it Faithfulness and Uprightness towards God towards our Prince our Countrey our Friend it cannot be deny'd will some say but they are things very commendable and that this Justice is to be performed to them so far as it will consist with our private Interest and Security And Profession of Truth such especially as is of great concern to the Church of Christ and so Exemplarity of Life are things in themselves worthy and laudable and caeteris paribus to be embraced before their corrivals But if Truth and Vertue once become ridiculous and the object of reproach and obloquy or the indispensable Duties to God our Prince our Countrey or Friend hazardous to our fortunes liberty or life then the Evil or Carnal Eye does very gravely suggest that the great point of Wisdom and Prudence is to shift for one and save a mans own silly inconsiderable self whatever suffers through so base a perfidiousness No better possibly can come of this mixt and mongrel principle of Double-mindedness This is that ugly and hateful mode of plowing with an Oxe and an Ass or of wearing a Linsy-woolsy coat not more expresly forbidden by the letter of Moses than severely prohibited by that Law of the Spirit of life which is through Christ who has plainly declared in his Gospel that he that loves Father or Mother Son or Daughter more than him is not worthy of him And that he that loveth his life shall lose it but he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal Which Law of Christ notwithstanding let the Carnal mind judge of it as it will is not so rigorous but that some of the Heathen Philosophers have utter'd what is not much removed from it Aristotle himself
delight is with the sons of men as Solomon witnesseth of her And S. Iames bids us pray for her If any man want Wisdom let him ask it of God So that when the Prophet Baruch saith No man knoweth her way nor thinketh on her path is as much as if he should say No man by the Natural Spirit of a man can reach so far But S. Peter faith that we have precious promises of being made partakers of the Divine Nature And our Blessed Saviour argueth thus in the 11th of S. Luke If so be that men being evil know how to give good gifts to their children How much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him But what Shall therefore every one that saith Lord Lord or that can repeat their Pater noster receive the Holy Spirit of Wisdom No in no wise Only they that do the will of my Father which is in Heaven saith our Saviour If I encline to wickedness in my heart saith the Psalmist the Lord will not hear my prayer And indeed the old blind Poet could see so far into Divinity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that obeys God God hears him So that we see that the foundation or beginning of this great work of Wisdom is that which the present Text points at viz. The fear of God The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom The words are plain and without ambiguity In the English especially The Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not of so a determinate sense but that it may signifie the principal the first best or chiefest of Wisdom as well as the beginning of Wisdom But the latter I take to be the better if not the only sense For Fear hath torment saith the Apostle but perfect love casteth out fear Wherefore this Fear is not the choicest or chiefest of true Wisdom But if we compare this place with its parallel we shall yet more plainly see that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies merely a beginning or entrance Prov. 9. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The entrance or first impenetration into Wisdom is the fear of God For the word comes from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying to boar or pierce So that it is evident that the English Translation is the only sense of this place of Scripture In the handling whereof I will endeavour these two things 1. To shew somewhat more largely out of other places of Scripture the truth of this present Text That the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom 2. Why there is no other entrance than this into true Wisdom THE former is manifest out of many places of Scripture 1. Ecclesiastie 4. 17. For first she will walk with him by crooked wayes and bring him unto fear and dread and torment him with her discipline until she have tryed his soul and have proved him by her judgments Then will she return the streight way unto him and comfort him and shew him her secrets and heap upon him her treasures of Knowledge 2. Also Esai 66. at the beginning of the Chapter Thus saith the Lord The heaven is my throne and the earth is my foot-stool Where is that house that you will build unto me And where is that place of my rest Presently after he subjoineth To him will I look even to him that is of a poor and contrite spirit and trembleth at my words He therefore that fears the Lord shall become the Temple of God And it should seem no strange thing to us being the Apostle makes mention of the same more than once or twice Know you not that your bodies are the Temples of the Holy Ghost in the first Epistle to the Corinthians And in the same Epistle Know you not that you are the Temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you Now what Benefit accrues to us by being the Temple of God we may gather by the nature and use of these Material Temples these Temples made with hands In these we know amongst the Heathen were the Initiations into the Mysteries of whatsoever Deity the place was Consecrate to But we need not straggle We see the use of outward Temples dayly here among our selves They are for Prayers Hymns and for Instruction out of the Word of God the literal Word of God in a gross material Temple Therefore in analogy in the Temple of our Souls and Spirits shall the essential word the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Eternal Word of God or God himself teach and instruct us And who teacheth like him as is said in Iob. There was so great Vertue in the very presence of the Person of Socrates as you may see in Plato that his Scholars profited very much merely by being in the same Room with him though he spake not unto them How much more shall they profit with whom the Spirit of Christ abideth as in his own proper House and Temple With what joy and admiration shall they be taken when in the Synagogue of their Hearts he shall stand up and read as in that Synagogue at Nazareth He hath sent me that I should heal the broken-hearted that I should preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind When he shall begin to say This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears Then shall all the powers and faculties of a mans Soul bear him witness and wonder at the gracious words that proceed out of his mouth Such a Teacher shall all such have that truly fear God 3. Again That Wisdom is usherd in by terrour fear and horrour seems to be the subject of the 29th Psalm The voice of the Lord is upon the waters the God of glory maketh it to thunder the Lord is upon the great waters Now that Waters are an Emblem of the moveable and tumultuous flowings of the Earthly Nature that Learned Iew doth teach us when as he calls the Waters of Edom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Waters towards which the King of Egypt made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And the Platonists make but a sliding passing dream of corporeal and sensible things saying of them that they do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That they slide continually from the true essence by perpetual flowing So the Soul being united cum rebus fluxis caducis dissolved as it were and incorporate after a manner into their Watery nature and lost amongst it The mighty energy of the All-powerful Voice of God or Word of God doth operate upon these Waters for the producing of Light in them as in the first Creation And according to this Analogy speaks the Apostle 2 Cor. 4. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Iesus Christ. But to proceed further in the Psalm The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars yea the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon The voice of the Lord maketh
the wilderness to tremble the Lord maketh the wilderness of Kadesh to tremble The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to bring forth young and unbareth the thick bushes Every plant that my Heavenly Father hath not planted saith our Saviour shall be rooted out And indeed this was the end of his coming utterly to eradicate what so is evil And till he have his work in mans heart there be not a few ill Plants rather a Wilderness a Wood thick set with Trees not penetrable by any Star nothing capable of the light of Heaven But by the awful Voice of God the Hinds those fearful and timorous Creatures they bring forth the thick and shadowing Bushes are unbared And what follows In his Temple doth every man speak of his glory Now what is that Glory of God but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the glorious eradiation of the Father of Lights the Wisdom of God and the Power of God And the Hinds that is those that fear and tremble who they are and what they bring forth and how presently the thick Bushes are unbared so that they that were in darkness see a marvellous light I leave to any man to judge that is not as fraid of a Spiritual sense as of a night-Night-spirit But if they will in this Psalm so full of life and vigour have all Body and no Soul How shall we expound the next Verse The Lord sitteth upon the water-floods and shall sit King for ever What will you turn the God of Heaven and Earth to some Triton or Water-Nymph Or the great Pastour of Israel who feeds the Souls of his people like a Flock will you have him Proteus-like to feed Sea-monsters It is true that all things according to their several degrees have their dependance and expectancy from God Yet so narrow and straitend sense as the bare letter sutes not here I think with the Majesty and Divinity of the Spirit of David or rather the Spirit of God in David The Summe is this Fear and Honour goes before and the Light of God follows after 4. I will only add this Fourth Proof or Illustration more and so go on 1 Kings 19. And the Lord said unto Elias Go forth and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And behold the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord but the Lord was not in the wind and after the wind came an earthquake but the Lord was not in the earthquake and after the earthquake fire but the Lord was not in the fire and after the fire a still small voice the voice of him that spake as never man spake But I would not have any mistaken as if the Fear of God which is said to be the Beginning of Wisdom were but an hours amazement or at most but a wonder of nine dayes Tam de repente Which Errour will easily be wiped out of their phansie if they observe but the description of the Fear of God in Holy Scripture The Fear of the Lord is to hate evil as pride and arrogancy and the evil way Now that which a man truly hates he will do the utmost of his endeavour to destroy or else to sever himself from it and decline it So the Prophet David in Psal. 34. where he professeth the teaching of the Fear of the Lord Eschew evil and do good saith he So that a lazy inert sluggish hatred is not sufficient See how that Victorious King uses his enemies in Psal. 18. I have pursued mine enemies and taken them and have not returned again till I had consumed them I have wounded them that they are not able to rise they are fallen under my feet I did beat them small as the dust before the wind I did tread them flat as the clay in the streets Now a mans enemies are they of his own Houshold Corruption residing in a mans own breast which he will never leave fighting against till he have the victory if he truly hate them which he will truly hate if he unfeignedly fear God So that the Fear of God is the victory over Corruption Which victory over Corruption maketh us capable of the Divine Nature as S. Peter speaks which Divine Nature is nothing else but Christ the Wisdom of God Wherefore whosoever would attain unto Wisdom the way is laid open the Old way known to those Antients of Renown Trismegist long since could point it out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Be Godly my Son for he that is Godly philosophizeth in the highest degree or most efficacious manner Which Sentence of Trismegist puts me in mind of the Septuagints Paraphrastical variation of the Text For beside 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they add 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In which variation that which is most remarkable is the substitution of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sense for Wisdom No man I believe is so devoid of Reason as to think the Prerogative of the Godly to be to have a more exquisite sense than others Though too too many gape after as a reward of obedience that which proves too oft the fewel of Sensuality sensible things What 's then meant by Sense There is a swimmering superficial Knowledge a light phantastical impression or abortive imagination engendered of aery words which many times neither the hearer nor speaker rightly understand false phantasms elicited out of misunderstood writings notional conjectures vain and temerarious efformations of that which we have not yet attained to so unlike the thing we would have it that if we did not do as the old bungling Painters did in their uuskilfully scralled pieces write on it Knowledge it would be hard to find what to call it But this false-nam'd Knowledge the Fear of God doth not begin but consume As clear Light makes all those shadows and resemblances to vanish that by the Opticks skill had been convey'd into a dark close room But the Fear of God is the beginning of Sense Which is to be understood according to that in S. Iohns Epistle That which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life this declare we unto you This is true Science quieting and setling the moveable mind This is the right 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 even according to Aristotles Etymon which begets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a rest and steddy standing in the Soul and therefore is not to be found in Cains Progeny nor to be light upon in all the Land of Nod. AND thus much of the first part of my Discourse That the Fear of God is the Beginning of Wisdom I will now enter upon the Reasons Why this is the only way that God hath pointed out for the attaining to Wisdom 1. One Reason may be the Falseness of mans Spirit The Heart is deceitful above all things So that God will not trust it with
sides that Obedience and the Fear of God is the Begetter of Saving Knowledge surely the practice of a Godly Life and Conversation will notwithstanding be exceeding abundantly worth our labour though it had not the promise of this Life as well as that which is to come But if I shall shew plainly that there is a further abundant luxuriancy of the goodness of God upon an Obedient mans Understanding intimated in this word Wisdom I hope there will be nothing wanting for the inflaming of our desires to a Godly Life and Conversation Prov. cap. 8. Wisdom is said there to cry and Vnderstanding to utter her voice to speak to men from the high places and by the way of the places of the path to cry unto them beside the gates of the city to speak unto them at the entry of the doors to take all occasions to be acquainted with them She would salute them at every turn For the good Spirit of Wisdom is loving and sincere aud would fain clasp with our Souls if they were pure that she might discourse with us of the wonders of the Almighty and shew unto us his Everlasting Glory Now that this Blessed Spirit would reside with us is plain What be her operations when she doth reside will anon be as plain I wisdom dwell with prudence and I find forth knowledge and counsels I have counsel and wisdom I am understanding and I have strength I love them that love me and they that seek me early shall find me This Wisdom therefore will make a man no Idiot when it stores a man with Prudence and Counsels But it affords not this only to the Souls of Holy men but it gives them a Theory of the hidden things of God This Wisdom was at the making of the World and so can best unfold the Mysteries of the whole Creation When he prepared the Heavens I was there when he set the compass upon the deep when he established the clouds above when he confirmed the fountains of the deep when he gave his decree to the sea when he laid the foundations of the earth then was I with him as his darling I was dayly his delight rejoycing alway before him and took my solace in the compass of his earth and my delight is with the sons of mens But it is yet more evident out of the 7th of Wisdom For he hath given me saith Solomon the true knowledge of the things that are So that I know how the World was made and the powers of the Elements the beginning and the end and the middes of times how the times alter and the change of seasons the course of the year and the situation of the stars the nature of living things the furiousness of beasts the powers of the winds and the imaginations of men the diversity of plants and the vertue of roots and all things both secret and known do I know For Wisdom the worker of all things hath taught me it It is very apposite to this purpose that which is in Philo Iudeus in his Tractate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon these words of Moses And God saw all that he made and behold it was very good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. For none else were able to discern and judge accurately of the things that were made but he that was the Maker of them Go to now saith he you seeming wife ones full-fraught with Pride Ostentation and Ignorance You that say not only you know every thing but dare so boldly and confidently avouch this or that to be the Causes of them as though you had been present at the making of the World and had seen the composure of all things as they were put together as though the Creator had consulted with you about the means and contrivements of his work A just increpation of the bold and blind attempts of those that pursue after Wisdom without the guidance of God the Giver of it Why What you will say must we think to get Wisdom as Solomon did Nay but I say rather is it to be thought that we are already wiser than Solomon that we should have found out a better way to trafick for Wisdom than he could light on Prayer and a serious seeking after God with industrious study was the way that he went to compass it And surely it is a way no whit mis-becoming any good Christian Neither ought we to be inwardly ashamed of doing of that which the Apostle openly exhorts us to Iames 1. 5. If any of you lack wisdom let him ask it of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not and it shall be given him But what true Christian can with patience think upon the stupid Atheism that is so rife in these wicked ungodly dayes When as in the highest attempts of men the power of Heaven is held but for a Cypher Their Philosophy certainly hath removed God into so high and remote an Excelsis that they think him out of the call of mans voice and man out of the reach of his sight He must sit upon the primum mobile 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so speaks Aristotle Afraid forsooth that the Godhead should be defiled if his Presence should be among men on the Earth So he confines him to that fine phantastick place the Eighth Sphere O goodly and profound Mystery Like to that of Mahomet that makes God clamber back to Heaven when he had finished here his six days work O high Divinity And now who shall rule among men I know well enough who doth rule among men Verily the Devil or that Devilish Natural Spirit of man who sets it self up for a Deity attributing all to its self with detestable arrogancy Our good Natural parts are our Gods Or if they chance to fail and not answer our desire in their performance whither go we Right readily to some Temple of Bacchus to the Sacred Tavern Where we do devoutly magnifie the miraculous power of that sparkling Deity enthron'd in his Crystalline Heaven and somewhat more largely partaking of that fiery aethereal Spirit our Eyes no question are so illuminated that vve see double All things are then augmented and seem bigger as the Horizontal Sun by reason of muddy Vapours We find then our selves and our Comrades such notable Wiselins as not vve our selves nor others could ever have suspected O the deplorable vanity of misled Youth When it hath cast off the memory of God and due respect to its careful Tutors and faithful Governours Is not this Idolatry in preferring the povver of Sack before the Spirit of God a greater shame than a timely practice of true Piety and adorning our minds vvith all manner of Vertues in the highest degree Fighting manfully against all manner of Passions to the utter suppression of that Life of Darkness in our lovver Spirit that the Spirit of Truth may shine in our purged Souls as the Sun in a pure diaphanous substance And what hurt can come of this Why surely
we may come to be temperate to be sober to be chast to be modest to be humble to study mortification of all wickedness in Flesh and Spirit being so persuaded that Wisdom will not inhabit where these be absent and in conclusion a dreadful thing to think of we may fall into the same Heresie with S. Iames and Solomon That Wisdom is the gift of God and that it is a point of Wisdom to think so But that no men rashly and arrogantly take upon them this gift before it be given I could wish that all that are forward to profess themselves the Scholars of God nay his Secretaries his Closet-counsel his only Children born and brought up of him the only wise and holy Off-spring of God full of Wisdom and Celestial Understanding that they would examine themselves by that Rule in S. Iames chap. 3. Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge amongst you Let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts glory not an lye not against the Truth This wisdom descendeth not from above but is earthly sensual devilish For where envying and strife is there is contention and every evil work But the wisdom that is from above is first pure then peaceable gentle and easie to be entreated full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisie Whosoever therefore is fervent and vehement in maintaining the Truth let him first be assured that he has the right Knowledge and the true mind of the Spirit of God And before he ascribes this Spirit of Wisdom or Heavenly Understanding to himself let him try if he have the qualifications of that Celestial Wisdom which are Meekness Purity Peaceableness Gentleness Affability Mercy Bounty Impartialness and Simplicity He that hath not these hath not the Truth but is liable to be made the habitation of seducing Devils and to create mischief to men and shame and eternal confusion to his own self As sure as God doth impart his Spirit of Truth and Divine Knowledge to his Children so surely true it is that that Spirit suggesteth no Cruelty nor Unrighteousness but Patience Benignity Compassion and boundless and unlimited Charity And if men otherwise qualified pretending to the Spirit as Histories testifie have plainly shewn that they were led by some Fanatick erroneous Fury lodging in spiritual pride and infernal bitterness and distemper yet this is no sufficient excuse of that common Civil Atheism in the World that excludeth the operation of Gods Spirit in the hearts of men and attributes all to Nature and Humane Industry For as nihil generat seipsum is true in Philosophy so that no man can regenerate himself is as true in Divinity But now that this New Creature born at this Second Birth should have its old Eyes and the same sight with the Earthly Adam seems to me a thing monstrous and prodigious Surely there is a renovation of the Understanding as well as the Will and both by the Divine Spirit the Wisdom of God that worketh all in all I but here some mischievous piece of modesty will object Can that Spirit be communicable to us also that hath such magnificent Titles in the 7th of Wisdom She is the breath of the power of God and a pure influence that floweth from the glory of the Almighty She is the brightness of the everlasting light the undefiled mirrour of the majesty of God and the image of his Goodness I Answer Here is the treasure of those precious promises S. Peter speaks of And hitherto may be referr'd that in the Psalms Glorious things are spoken of thee O thou city of God But I need not have gone out of the same Chapter an answer being so nigh at hand As there be many Epithets of Height and Majesty so there is one of Humanity and Courtesie But these words are too weak to express that affection which is attributed there to this good Spirit of Wisdom It is said in the Greek Text to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a lover of men Therefore you shall find this Spirit descending in the 27th of that Chapter even sliding down into the Souls of Holy and Humble men And that not once or twice as if it were afraid of such debasement but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from age to age But there is yet a more plentiful Testimony of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the 6th Chapter ver 16. She goeth about seeking such as are meet for her and sheweth her self chearfully unto them in the wayes and meeteth them in every thought And at the 12th Verse Wisdom shineth and never fadeth away and is easily seen of them that love her and found of such as seek her She preventeth them that desire her that she may first shew her self unto them Whoso awaketh to her betimes shall have no great travail For he shall find her sitting at his doors Blessed is the man that exerciseth himself in her and he that layeth up her commandments in his heart shall be wise If he do them he shall be strong in all things For he setteth his steps in the light of the Lord which giveth wisdom to the godly The Lord be praised for evermore So be it So be it AND here I should willingly end did I not suspect that that which hath been spoken might move some Scruples in the minds of the Younger Auditors As whether wicked men have any Knowledge at all or no whether this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exclude the use of Books with such others as misapprehension is the most ready and plentiful suggestor of doubts and difficulties But I will meddle only with these two I have named 1. And first with the former It would be a very distastful position to Flesh and Blood to say that wicked men are mere Ignaroes For there being not many that are not conscious to themselves of some dearly fosterd wickedness in their breast they would be put to a shreud strait for they must either undergo the doleful death of dying to their beloved Corruption or else be content to count themselves Fools so long as they live Both which are Gall and Wormwood to Natural Pride and Concupiscency But let us brook it as we can that Spirit in Esaiah dares give Sentence in this cause Behold all you that kindle a fire and are compassed about with sparks walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks that you have kindled This shall you have at my hand you shall lye down in sorrow 'T is true the Prophet here allowes them some light but a light of their own kindling And if Foolishness be the School-Mistress the Scholars are not likely to be very wise Weak quickly-dying sparks they have blindly and boldly mounting up though their Vehicle be but a filthy fuliginous vapour of darkness But the Sun of Righteousness hath not yet shone upon them Gross fire
they have for their light as lame and deformed as the Poets Vulcan It is fain to be underpropt with ill rubbish crass fewel to be fed with the foul oyl that sweats from that active body of sinful corruption and having so course a pabulum it is no wonder that it is as all Sublunary fires are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Bitter ebullitions and gross injuriousness are the proper effects of such illumination And although this fewel and blaze may transmit some strange steam into their Brains that they be drunkenly merry yet surely if they ever come to themselves they will fall into as deep and dull a Melancholly to see how horribly they have been deceived They shall lye down in sorrow An Emblem of this Knowledge may be that Egypt from which the Israelites were delivered This is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Earthly Wisdom as S. Iames stiles it and indeed it sutes well with the Emblem For AEgypt is watered by Nilus whose name is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Dionysius intimates in his Geographical Poem A River ever affording new mud For although it be as that Verse in Strabo calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a River come from Heaven as indeed every thing as much as is good of it is from the First Being yet it abounds so with the admixture of earthly filth that by its overflowing it begets nothing but half-formed or rather deform'd monsters glued to the slimy cloth of the earth Here is that numerous progeny of dirty ridiculous Opinions This is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the same Apostle calls it no better indeed than the uncertain conjectures of misty-minded Devils Whom I must needs confess I cannot conceive to be so great Clerks as they are vulgarly taken to be but rather wonder what madness possesseth mens minds that they should either say that the perversness of corruption is stronger than Gods Grace or the Devil wiser than Holy men But I fear such as cry up the power of Evil and the wisdom of that wicked Spirit so partially as if they had sworn confederacy with them ar become slaves to them magnifying them above the light and strength of God will then become Wise themselves when the Devil becomes Honest What commission or authority these men have to set him at liberty and enjoyment of the light of the Sun whom God hath prison'd up in the darkest dungeon I know not Sure I am they are not able to procure him bail they themselves being but fetter'd Vassals of foulest Ignorance But see how basely Disobedience contracts a mans Spirits that through the pusillanimity of his Soul he casts himself down before every petty Creature How doth honour riches or the dull and languid beauty of sensible forms subjugate and enslave him Nay how highly doth he admire and reverendly adore with more than American Superstition that piece of darkness and deformity the Devil So we see what small hope we have of attaining to Wisdom by any other means than that which that Wise King hath prescribed us The Fear of God 2. As for that other Query about Books I will dispatch it in a word It is said in Wisdom That it is not the increase of fruit that feedeth men But it is the Word that preserveth them that trust in God And yet no man abstains from these outward ordinary helps for his preservation Therefore that this Discourse beget in no man a lazy superstitious phrensie let them be Active in good and read such Books as conduce best for the finding of the truth of such Theories as they aim at having alwayes a special care that they never disjoin Knowledge from Righteousness but that they ever prize such Treatises as point a man to Obedience and purging a mans Soul from wickedness far above those that do but vex a mans Mind and consume his Body with unfruitful subtilties Which indeed would be no subtilties at all did not our dull and slow apprehension make them so for we are rather weak-brain'd than they hard Theories Or if you will they are so subtil that if a man could see clearly he would not see them at all they being indeed nothing or else worse And therefore rather to seek to have our eye-sight strengthen'd and clear'd by Purity of life than to weary and weaken them still more by unprofitable objects And alwayes to consider this That our Labour is nothing without the Benediction of God and his direction Nostra haec in literarum studiis peregrinatio sine supernâ luce miserabilis quaedam erratio est is the ingenuous Confession of that Great Scholar Scaliger And O! that we could sensibly feel as well as imagine that the Subsistence of all things is but liberum spiraculum a free breathing out of the mouth of the Almighty which if he revoke Things are closely again locked up and gathered in into their Centre of Darkness And that true Knowledge is nothing else but an arbitrarious emission of the pure rayes of God upon impolluted Souls And therefore wholly to depend upon him and wait upon him in Righteousness even upon the Fountain of all Truth and Father of Lights the only Wise God to whom be all Honour Glory Power Praise henceforth for ever Amen DISCOURSE V. JOHN iv 31. 32 33 34. In the mean time his disciples prayed him saying Master eat But he said unto them I have meat to eat that you know not of Therefore said the disciples one to another Hath any man brought him ought to eat Iesus saith unto them My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work OUR Saviour Christ here in the Text propounds a Riddle or Parable to his Disciples I have meat to eat that you know not of Whatever is in the Text may be hither refer'd as the Occasion or Consequent thereof The Occasion of the proposal of this AEnigma is in Ver. 31. In the mean time his disciples prayed him saying Master eat i. e. So soon as he had broken off his serious Discourse with the Samaritan Woman his Disciples then took occasion to invite him to his seasonable repast Which gives him occasion to propound something to them aenigmatically of more concernment and of an higher nature than this outward perishable food Ver. 32. I have meat to eat that you know not of There 's the proposal of the Riddle Of which there is a double Consequent The Disciples misinterpretation or false collection and then our Saviours own true solution Their misinterpretation Ver. 33. Has any man brought him ought to eat His true solution Ver. 34. My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work These parts I shall prosecute in the same order that they lye in the Text without further preface or more curious division First therefore of the Occasion In the mean time his disciples prayed him saying Master eat In the mean time i. e. in the Interim betwixt
etiam hic Dii sunt Come in Sir if God doth not lodge here also Sub sordido pallio latet Sapientia Wisdom sometimes is no better covered than with rags BUT I leave this point for your selves to enlarge upon I pass on from this first Part viz. the Occasion with all the Circumstances thereon depending to the Proposal of the Parable In the mean time his disciples prayed him saying Master eat But he made answer I have meat to eat that you know not of It is usual with our Saviour to ascend from sensible and Corporeal things to those things which are inward and Spiritual I need not look for instances far off Here in this very Chapter when as our Saviour had arriv'd at Iacobs Well at the heat of the day faint and thirsty and desired the Samaritan Woman that came to draw water that she would give him to drink and she reply'd How is it that thou being a Iew askest drink of me which am a woman of Samaria Iesus answered and said unto her if thou knewest the gift of God and who it is that saith unto thee Give me to drink thou wouldest have asked of him and he would have given thee living water Ver. 10 11. viz. the very same water that he speaks of Iohn 7. ver 37. where he is said in the last day that great day of the feast of Tabernacles to stand and cry If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink He that believeth in me out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water Which speech was occasion'd as is not without Reason conceiv'd from the custom of the day For upon this day by the Institution of Haggai the Prophet and Zacharias and such like they did with Joy and Solemnity bring great store of water from the River Siloah to the Temple where it being delivered to the Priests it was poured upon the Altar together with Wine the people singing that of the Prophet Esaiah Ch. 12. With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation From this visible Solemnity and Natural Water Christ took occasion to invite them to an invisible and Spiritual Water As he doth the Samaritan Woman here in this present Chapter shewing her that whosoever drinks of the water that he asked of her shall thirst again But whosoever should drink of the Water that he should give shall never thirst but the water shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life So at the 6th Chapter of this Gospel of S. Iohn when our Saviour had fed them with Natural Bread he endeavours to raise their desire and appetite to the Bread of Eternal Life Ver. 26. Ye seek me not because ye saw the miracles but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled Labour not for the meat that perisheth but for that meat which endureth to everlasting life And at the 32th Verse Moses gave you not that bread from Heaven but my Father giveth you the true bread from Heaven For the bread of God is he which cometh down from Heaven and giveth life unto the world I might instance in other Examples but this point is clear It remains only that we imitate that Pattern we understand so well Whether we would be Teachers of others or Instructers of our selves For indeed the whole World is ingens quoddam Sacramentum a large sign or symbol of some Spiritual Truths that nearly concern our Souls Methinks when the Morning Sun rises upon us the Eyes of our Souls should open at once with the Eyes of our Bodies and our Hearts should send out this Ejaculation Lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us and our minds presage that promised Happiness In thy light shall we see light When we breathe in the fresh Air it might mind us of something like that of the Emperours 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Not only to draw in the common Air but also to be of one mind with that Intellectual Spirit that fills all the World Solitude and darkness that makes our Hearts shrink within us and overwhelms our Souls with horrour and misdoubt what is it in Spirituals but a privation of perfect Love that casteth out fear as the Apostle speaks He that hateth his brother is in darkness and walketh in darkness and knoweth not whether he goeth 1 Ioh. cap. 2. There is nothing that the Natural man is sensible of in this outward World but the Spirit of God has made use of to prefigure and set out the condition and nature of Reward and Spiritual things that hence the Soul may receive hints to raise her self towards him that made her for to inherit Spirituality and not alwayes lye groveling on the Earth Whatsoever we see or hear or smell or taste or feel we may in all these even very sensibly feel some hidden mystery and find out in those shells and husks some more precious food than this that pleases our mortal Body and perishable Senses And he that doth not feel through these sensible Creatures something better than themselves certainly is exceedingly benum'd or rather Spiritually dead and has his Conversation in the World no otherwise than the Beasts of the field and Nebuchadnezzars Curse is upon him till such a Mind be restor'd unto him that he doth acknowledge the most High and find him residing even in this lower World the habitation of mortal men Beauty Riches Strength Agility Sweetness Pleasure Harmony these are all better relish'd in the Soul than in the Body Our Blessed Saviour in the midst of his thirst after the Water of Iacobs Well which he beg'd of the Samaritan Woman was so refreshed with the remembrance of the Spiritual and Living Waters which he enjoy'd within that he had forgot his first request his Soul being inebriate as it were with the sweetness of that hidden spring in his Heart And this Storehouse he found within afforded him not Drink only but Meat also it should seem by his ansvver to his Disciples when they invited him to eat He did not as those starvling Souls that not at all being able to entertain themselves with their own store no not for a moment so soon as the Bodies treasure is exhaust men of this world which have their portion in this life and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure as the Psalmist speaks so soon I say as the carnal or outward man is emptyed and impoverished have their desire strait way furiously kindled like a broad fiery Meteor that is swiftly wasted hither and thither accordingly as the earthly unctuous Vapour its proper Pabulum is scattered in the Air. And it is no wonder that they are thus furious and impatient For what is Desire but a living death or an actual non-entity It is for 't is Desire But it is not viz. that which it desires to be And what Soul can endure to be in such a case Wherefore it is too too probable that that mind that can
Saint that he will be mis-shapen'd and transform'd into the figure of an abhorred Fiend 2. Growth As Plants and Living Creatures spread and grow in bigness in vertue of their nourishment So the Soul is enlarged by forsaking her own Will and by continual meditating upon and endeavouring to do the Will of God For our own Will and Desire is a poor narrow contracted thing pinching us down next to nothing by confining us to our selves and our own scant bottoms But the Essential Will of God is free and large even boundless as himself and the work of it upon us when we receive it is like unto it Our drawing and concentring all in our own Will is like the gathering together of the free light and warmth of the Sun into a burning glass those rayes that before lay free mild and friendly in a larger room thus forc'd together become surly ireful and scorching Or like fire half-stifled in a bundle of green wood it fumes and glowes and is sad in it self and utterly uncomfortable to others but when it breaks out into a free flame how chearfully doth it shine and laugh and look pleasant filling the whole house with lightsomeness and joy That is mans Straiten'd Will This the Free Spirit and Will of God Pride and ambition and thirst after knowledge and the glory and applause of men do puff up the Soul when these are satisfied make her look big and bloat But that this Food is not wholesome nor the growth sound every small prick of adverse fortune or frowns of men do demonstrate the tumour of the mind then shriveling up like an emptyed bladder But that bulk and breadth that the Soul gets by feeding on Gods Will is sound and permanent as the Will of God is which nothing can wash away 3. And as Strong as large doth the Soul of man become by feeding on this Celestial Food In so much that it can bear all things and endure all things What makes the miseries and misfortunes of the World so tedious and irksome to men what makes their Souls sink and faint under this burden but eating of that poysonous fruit our own Will Which would not be if we had no Will of our own but fed meerly on the good pleasure of God giving thanks for whatever he brings upon us For in all outward things and to speak more fully in all things that befall us our Soul our Body our Friends or Estate in all these the Will of God is done so far as Sin intermeddles not So that if we relish no Will but the Will of God how strong shall we be to bear all these We shall be able 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 easily to digest either Fortune Good or Ill Life or Death Honour or Dishonour Riches or Poverty all will down save our own Will This will choak the Soul or poyson its complexion make it lye in weakness and languishment that it will be weak sickly peevish and infirm the whole Creature of God will be a burden to it nay the least of them may prove an importable AEtna 4. But I go on The Fourth thing considerable in Food is the Tast. And hitherto may be refer'd those affectionate expressions in the Psalmist who speaking of the Laws of God which is the interpretation of his Will giveth abundance of sweetness and pleasantness to them Psalm 19. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether more to be desired then gold yea then much fine gold sweeter also then honey and the honey-comb And hence it is that the Holy and Happy man so meditates and ruminates on the Laws of God Psalm 1. His delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law doth he meditate day and night Psal. 63. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips when I remember thee upon my bed and meditate on thee in the night-watches And certainly if the Will of the Flesh be sweet and to be longed after so by the Carnal-minded man the Will of the Spirit when it is once come is much more sweet For there is nothing in the Sensual Life of Good not so much as of seeming good but it is really and fully in the Life Spiritual Which we must believe for we cannot know till such time as we have experience of it and that will be when we leave off our commerce and conversation with the Will of the Flesh. The lips of a strange woman drop as an honey-comb and her mouth is sweeter than oyl This is thy Carnal-mind the Will of thy Flesh as Maimonides expounds it a subtil inticing Serpent lying ever in thy bosom and yet a strange Woman thy Harlot with whom thou feastest and sportest and forgettest thy Husband Christ Iesus the Will of God the Holy Spirit the Divine Life But her end is bitter as wormwood sharp as a two-edged sword Her feet go down to death her steps take hold on Hell And here is the great difference betwixt the sweetness of our own Will and the Will of God That ends in bitter choller in wrath and vengeance and death but this is wholesome as well as toothsome and is the very nexus and vinculum whereby vve are held in Eternal Life Lust is svveet Pride is svveet Revenge is exceeding svveet and above all svveetness is the svveetness of Craft and Carnal Policy But remember that as svveetly as thou lickest thy Lips in secret thou hast svvallovved dovvn poyson and it vvill burn in conclusion as the Fire of Hell God has brought thee into the wilderness that thou mayest enjoy the Promised Land offers thee Angels food would feed thee with Manna Let not thy mouth water after the Flesh-pots of AEgypt Say not with the grumbling Israelites Who shall give us flesh to eat Lest the Lord in his anger give you Flesh to eat not two days nor five days neither ten days nor twenty days but even a whole moneth until it come out at your nostrils and it become loathsome unto you and while the Flesh is betwixt your teeth the wrath of the Lord be kindled against you That you be so far engaged in your own Will and head-strong wayes that nothing but destruction can deal with you And thus much of the Taste of this Food 5. The Fifth and last thing is the Satisfying of the Stomach Bodinus tells us of a Story of a Noble of Aspremont who used to entertain those that came to his House with all Plenty and Magnificency that may be the Tables furnished with all variety of the most rare Delicates rich Furniture excellent Attendance every thing point device from the Stable to the Dining-room above desire or expectation But that which is strange so soon as they were gone out of his House both Horse and Man was ready to dye with hunger The like Magick and Imposture is there in all those things that our deceiv'd Souls feed upon in this life It is
but as the Prophet expresses it a meer dream of eating and drinking It is even as when a hungry man dreameth and behold he eateth but he awaketh and his soul is empty or as when a thirsty man dreameth and behold he drinketh but he awaketh and behold he is faint and his soul hath appetite Isa. 29. Such is the condition of all the adversaries of Sion the holy people of God that hunger and thirst after God and his Righteousness the fulfilling of the Will of God for this alone can fill the Soul of man He that feeds of any thing else sucks but in a rotten mist or fog of scarce so good as the Prodigals husks of no better than Mahomets Ezeck that infernal Tree whose fruit be but Devils heads and root streams with flames of fire and tracts of smoke of which who tasts feeds not but is fed upon ever consuming in unsatiable fiery appetite and restless desire But the sound and satisfying meal of the Soul is the Will of her Maker not when it is done without her but when her Life is that and she never finds her self to live but in that The very Life and Spirit of God drunk in by mans thirsty Soul that by continual repast from thence growes stronger and stronger and sucks so sweet delight from these breasts that she never hungers nor thirsts again never desires the tempting Poysons the pernicious Pleasures and false Contentments of this vain World This is Christ alive in us quite another Principle of Life and another Food from all that feeds our Eyes or Ears or worse than these our inordinate desires of Pleasure Profit or Honour This is that true Manna that Bread from Heaven Of this our Saviour witnesses viz. of himself I am the bread of life He that cometh to me shall never hunger and he that believeth on me shall never thirst Iohn 6. 35. DISCOURSE VI. JAM i. 22. Be ye Doers of the Word and not Hearers only deceiving your own selves NOT to be troublesome neither to you nor to my self by any tedious Preface or Introduction The Text will afford us at least these Three Doctrines 1. We must be Hearers of the Word 2. We must be Doers of the Word as well as Hearers 3. We are not to deceive our selves I. WE must be Hearers of the Word To exhort men to hear sith there is naturally in them such an itching Desire of hearing and knowing it may seem but a losing of time and labour But because some mens dispositions are low and groveling veluti pecorum quae natura prona atque ventri obedientia finxit as Salust speaks all their desires and imagination tending downward it will not be amiss to shew what good Causes there are that men should give their mind to the hearing of the Word 1. And surely no mean one is the Resuscitation of that better part of Mans Soul that lieth slumbering in a Trance which many times being strongly called upon by the Word with much adoe is reared up and slowly and heavily moves its dull sight that darkness so strongly had possessed before But if so be a man here be not propitious to himself and foster that Life which is then given him like one not perfectly recovered out of a swound he sinks down again out of the hands of him that held him and many such neglects may enter his name amongst the Dead whom Death gnaweth upon because he heard not the Monitions of his Teachers The eye that slighteth his fathers counsel and despiseth the instruction of his mother the ravens of the valley will pick it out He lying thus like a dead carryon exposed to the fowls of the Air the accursed Angels of darkness shall seize upon him and quite eradicate the principles of true light and sight in the valley of the shadow of death Wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Awake thou that sleepest that Christ may give thee light Surge ne longus tibi somnus unde Non times detur And indeed a man least of all suspects his Friend to be his deadly enemy Yet it fares so with foolish wicked men Righteousness is immortal But unrighteousness bringeth death and the ungodly call it unto them both with hands and words and while they think to have a friend of it they come to nought Wisd. 1. Which mischief might happily be prevented by giving due heed and attention to the Word 2. For this Word if we were grown fitly prepared for the receiving of it is the Seed of Eternal Life whereby we may be born again and regenerate into the image of Christ And it is our Saviours own gloss The seed is the word of God Luke 8. Wherefore as in Nature were it not for Seed there would be no Herbs no Plants no Living Creatures so without the Word there would be no generation of the New Creature which S. Paul also confirms For this is plain where no Salvation no Regeneration and without the calling upon the Lord no Salvation For so it is written in the 10th to the Romans Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved But how shall they call on him on whom they have not believed And how shall they believe on him of whom they have not heard And how shall they hear without a preacher And at last he concludes Then faith is by hearing and hearing by the word of God But here some for the infringing of the necessity of this Seed perhaps may demand otherwise than the Apostle for he presently annexeth But I demand have they not heard Some might be prone to say Have they heard But the Answer is indifferent to both No doubt their sound went through all the earth and their words to the end of the world And this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the voice of the Heavens or the voice of that vast expansum from the Earth upward For that no man too confidently restrict and straiten this Preaching and this Word that S. Paul speaks of in this place the Quotation is a part of the 19th Psalm which begins The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handy-work This 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Theon calls it in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon Aratus this far-stretched Firmament or all-incircling Air 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We never let rest ever anvelling out its Makers praise by Air-beating sounds and voices Yea that lower noise of the breathing of Men and Beasts call aloud unto us for obedient thankfulness to him that is the life and breath of all living things that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Life of the World as R. Moses the AEgyptian calls him who if he should draw in his rayes of livelihood out of this great Universe the World would be as a dead fabrick in silence and desolation But this by the way for the due extent of S. Pauls words in that place For I
conceive not that the Spirit of God writes in Lawyers lines a little in a great deal but a great deal in a little I could travel further in this seeming Digression upon the Apostles words and yet bring all home at the last but I will rather pull in the reins and put on strait to the place I left If then without Hearing at least in some sense or other no Faith without Faith no Calling upon God without Calling upon God no Salvation without Salvation from the Old Man and his deceitful Iust no Regeneration then surely it is very requisite that we give heed to the Word and hearken to it and dispose our selves aright for the receiving of it as the necessary Seed for our New Birth and Holy Regeneration According to this Analogy of calling the Word Seed the Auditors or Disciples of them that teach the Word are called Children as begotten of their Spiritual Parents by the effusion of this Seed of the Word So amongst the Hebrews 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sons of the wise men are as much as the Disciples or those that hear and are instructed of the wise men and so filii Prophetarum And accordingly S. Paul Gal. 4. 19. My little children of whom I travel in birth again till Christ be formed in you Ep. to Philemon ver 10. I beseech thee for Onesimus whom I have begotten in my bonds But we commonly take this expression to be metaphorical and the truth of every thing we ground in Sense and make account there is no generation but of Natural Bodies which we may touch and see making thus the visible World the idea and paradigm of better Essences and like Epicureans or Saducees we make nothing of invisibles or at least not conceiving aright of them set them in the scale of Truth at least a staff lower But if we could conceive that the spirit or life of every thing is the thing and that we look upon to be but the tabernacle or husk of it or any wise the vehicle or receptacle of it and not the thing it self We might very easily conceive that this Regeneration is as true and real generation as is in visible Nature and there is as it were rather a succession of a new Lord in this outward fabrick of our Bodies than the old new-clad with superficial accidentary habits Can the fig-tree my brethren bring forth olives either a vine figs So can no fountain make salt water and sweet So new actions in transient evolution must have a new centre or bottom of Essence which is the heart of life which is the being of every living creature Now the evolved life of man consists in this in knowledge or apprehension of things and a lively sympathy and antipathy with them whereby he doth either desire or abhor from them And if all the knowledge of these things which he now is perswaded of together with desire and abhorrency sympathy and antipathy fear or hope of future matters the memory of things past the sense of things present were utterly taken from him where would he be Or how would he feel out himself or find out himself This would be but turning man to destruction 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They would thus become a sleep a sleep that they sleep that descend into the chambers of darkness and whom God hath covered in the grave And in some sence those words of Iob are excellent O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave and keep me secret till thy wrath were past and wouldst give me time and remember me Thou shalt call me I shall answer thee thou lovest the work of thine own hands When this death is perfected in which there is no life but only a sense that we are utterly dead to all things then God makes a new man contrary to that of the Devils framing and inspires a new Life and a new Breath and loves this work of his own hands Thou turnest man to destruction again thou sayest return ye sons of men So then if this be destruction and death then must a new sense and apprehension of things new sympathy and antipathy new embracing and abhorrency be a new life a new generation a new creature Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creature Old things are passed away behold all things are become new Here is plainly a new species to speak in the Language of Philosophy For to distinguish species by outward figure and colour befits Children rather and Painters than Men of Understanding and true Philosophers The true and real inward difference betwixt a Stone Plant Brute and Man is that the second exceeds the first by the spirit of Vegetation the third the second by Sensation and the fourth the third by Reason And that a Regenerate man differs intrinsecally from a Natural man is that his sympathy sense and knowledge is in the life of the Spirit of God and the others in the spirit of the world 1 Cor. 2. So then the life of evolution or transient action in our Souls being utterly other from the Natural mans surely the original or centre of life is now quite another And here is generation of life ab intimo as deep as understanding can conceive of or apprehension penetrate to If then this Seed of the Word be of such efficacy that it beget a man into a new species even into the beautiful Image of Christ and that hereby we be linked into such Noble Kindred as to have to our Fathers such as are the Sons of God by Regeneration being born of God first themselves and so begetting Children in Christ. Otherwise they fling but Seed as Gardeners and Husbandmen do and that that grows is nothing like him that casts it Moreover we our selves being able after full age in the strength of Christ to propagate the lovely Image of the Life of God surely it should be a sufficient incitement to receive the Word with as much eagerness as the dry womb of the Earth doth the refreshing Rain after a long drought 3. But as the Word is Seed to beget so it hinders not but that it may be nourishment for the conservation and increase of that which is brought forth 1 Pet. 2. 2. As new born babes desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby 1 Cor. 3. I could not speak unto you brethren as unto spiritual but as unto carnal even as unto babes in Christ I gave you milk to drink and not meat for you were not yet able to bear it There 's Milk and Meat Iohn 6. And Iesus said unto them I am the bread of life he that cometh to me shall never hunger and he that believeth in me shall never thirst There 's Bread and Drink But this was such Bread as the Pharisees ill Stomachs could not digest neither as yet can they Is not this Iesus the son of Ioseph whose father and mother we know How then saith he I came down from Heaven
See how they go about to vilifie the Meat rather than any way suspect the foulness and weakness of their own ill Stomachs But as all are not to stretch out their hand to every dish and intemperately and unseemlyly to seize upon that which is not meant for them Seek not out the things that are too hard for thee saith Siracides neither search the things rashly that are too mighty for thee But that which God hath commanded think upon that with reverence c. Ecclesiasticus 3. I say as we are modestly to decline that which we are not as yet fitted for receiving So no man hath excuse from receiving some or other of the variety of meats that He hath prepared who feedeth with his goodness every living thing Old men and babes young men and children they all are sustained by the Word according to every ones necessity and capability Or else how could the young ones increase Or they of full age subsist Both which is the Will of God That which Theophrastus hath in his First Book of his History of Plants belongs indifferently to all kind of Generation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nature is not content with the bestowing of a being upon things but works them up to the perfection of that being As an little Plants that in time grow to their just bulk blooming and bearing Fruit plentifully And it is said of our Saviour that he shall grow up like a plant And our Saviour saith of the Kingdom of Heaven that it is like the growth of the mustard-seed tree Now as this new Life is called a Plant for its vegetation so is it also termed a Child for its tender sense and simplicity of meaning That therefore that hath knowledge and sense having also an appetite to nourishment and that a nourishment proper to sustain its own Nature and the Word being the proper nourishment of those spiritual new-born babes then if there be no such desire in us to this Word it 's a sign there is no such Principle of life in us or if there be that it is sick or the Stomach past by over-much fasting But if this Life by not giving it its due nutriment either for measure or quality come to be extinguished we prove our selves it's an horrible thing to think of it no better than Murderers of the Innocent and Just one For Murder is not the cutting and slashing of the Visible Body but the extinguishing of Life And thus we have seen in brief That for the raising of our Souls from Death for the begetting of the Holy Life and for the conservation and increase of the same we ought to be Hearers of the Word II. WE pass on now to that other Doctrine proposed That we ought not only to be Hearers but Doers also of the Word That awing sense of God which is impressed if not upon all yet at least upon most mens Souls together with a Natural desire of security and tranquillity of mind and every pleasing good That experience and acknowledgment of our own imbecillity and insufficiency walking in the fear of darkness and knowing not as the Apostle speaks whither we go doth easily induce even our Natural and Fleshly minds out of love to our selves to lay hold upon somewhat which we conceive stronger than our selves And this we call God and that outward erected form of Religion in all Churches as Hearing and saying of Prayers and giving Attention to the Word we call Gods Worship And a Worship it is surely too too easie and so fit for the vafrous and subdolous Spirit of the Natural man to play its wily pranks in that it being well instructed by the sly and subtle counsels of that Old Serpent the Devil and Satan it turns those good constitutions which should have been introductions to further Holiness into a strong fort or castle of false satisfaction of Conscience and most pernicious diabolical delusion whiles we take our selves to be distinguished from the wicked reprobate brood by outward performances of Ear-labour and Lip-labour without the practice of that which is taught us out of Moses or Christ plainly according to the Pharisees in our Saviours time whom the Holy Baptist sharply rebukes for such kind of imaginations Bring forth fruit worthy amendment of life saith he And think not to say within your selves we have Abraham to our father For I say unto you that God is able even of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham Surely it is out of the want of that feeling Knowledge of that which is so acceptable to God and a fond over-estimation of our own poor naked and contemptible Souls or a conceit that God would want persons if we Christians be excluded to make up the number of the Inheritors of Heaven that makes us think that such superficial performances will make us allowable before God But nothing is acceptable to him but a simple humble and unfeigned obedient Spirit Nothing glorious in his eyes but his own Life the Soul inacted and quickened by Christ. All flesh is grass and all the glory thereof as the flower of the field The grass withereth the flower fadeth but the word of our God endureth for ever This is the Word and Eternal Life on whom whosoever doth believe and by true Faith in his strength is Regenerate into shall obtain Everlasting Life otherwise he abideth in the Sentence of Death and the Wrath of God is upon him 'T is true there be notable Preheminences and Priviledges given even to the Natural Fleshly Adam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Hermes The whole World subsists for Mans sake But this Prerogative howsoever hath its condition which follows 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The World for Man but Man for God And how for God To wit that his Life may be in us that his Christ may be in us Not so many verbal points of Christianity not so many notions of Divinity not so many moon-shine imaginations from the Word heard or read in Books in our Hearts in the Visible World in Heaven in Earth in Men. Christ is not dead and unprofitable phansie but the vigorous ebullition of Life Which Life if it be not in us then are we not partakers of that we were destinate to for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Man was made for a Tabernacle for God he 's Materials for his Holy Temple But if we will not be living stones as the Apostle speaks we shall have the same doom that unprofitable trees or timber They are fit for nothing but to be hewn in pieces and cast into the fire This is the end of that frustraneous brood of the Sons of Belial the off-spring of unprofitableness that fall short of the end they were intended to by their own disobedient perversness The best of them fare no better Man being in honour hath no understanding but is like to the beasts that perish I but we learned Scholasticks have Vnderstanding enough or at least as much as any As much as we have
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Are they animo Dei formi Where the Poet plainly makes the form or image of God consist in Love in Righteousness or Iustice and Courteousnes they being contrary to Injury brutish Fierceness Cruelty and Injustice The Divine Philosopher speaks out more expresly though in fewer words To be like unto God is to be holy just and wise I might multiply words here for the setting forth of the manifold Benefits and Graces that accrue to the Soul of Man from his Conversion to God and Obedience to his Holy Word But nothing more can be said than this Image of Christ doth either express or at least imply Justice Holiness and Prudence comprize all Excellence That generous Magnanimity of mind that bears it self above all the contempt that can follow the practice of that which is Good or abstinence from that which is Evil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pure Temperance Manly and awful-eyed Fortitude Gravity and Modesty gently moving in all peaceful and steady tranquillity and a God-like Vnderstanding watering with showers of Light this flourishing Paradise of Piety and Vertue This and whatsoever else we can conceive that Good is is contained in this Divine Image nay more than we can conceive before we be transformed into that likeness The Wisdom of him that is regenerate into this image and conformity with God dives into the depth of Darkness unties the knots of that Old Serpents train breaks off the bonds of Death and Hell pierceth like Lightning into the inwardness of things stands before the Throne of Immortal Glory That Holiness winds it self from all corruption of the Flesh flyes above the bewitching attraction of the Body looks upon God in unspotted purity That Iustice gives every thing it s own That which is Caesars to Caesar and that which is Gods to God But nothing to it self seeketh nothing for it self exulteth not in it self But gives all to God seeks all for God rejoyceth alwayes in God Thou art worthy O Lord to receive honour and glory and power for thou hast created all things and for thy wills sake they are and have been created Rev. 4. Thus be they nothing in their own eyes as indeed they are nothing but in profound Humility and Gratitude which is the most exquisite act of Iustice give all to the Eternal and Everlasting Majesty This is that lovely beautiful and most desirable Image of Christ the Son of the Father Who hath part here is an Inheritor of Eternity But he that by false and lazy imagination and phansie remains in the Devils deformed Nature his doom is everlasting Death and unspeakable Misery AND thus much for the Reasons Why we should be Doers of the Word I will only speak a word or two of the Proposition that is left and so end this Text. The Proposition is this III. That we are not to deceive our selves Errare falli decipi c. To err or be deceived saith Tully turpe est And that methinks should be a sufficient Argument to avoid it But to deceive ones self is a double fault He that deceives himself is both Fool and Knave as we say both the gull and the cheater the deceived and the deceiver Though to say the truth he that is deceived by another was first deceived by himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The same defective Principles that expose a man to be deceived of another exposeth him as well to be deceived of himself No man is discovered to be a fool by another but he was so in himself first And who made him so then But how can this be That man should be so wise as to circumvent himself and so foolish as to be circumvented by himself Certainly it implies more Natures than one in a Man The Platonists reckon up three in general there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1. There is Vnderstanding that lamp of Heavenly Truths or Intellectual illumination 2. There is the Soul in the middle where Will and Reasoning is situated 3. In the last place there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Life which resides in the Body and is but a shadow of the Soul the darkened Cave of evil delusions falshood and deceit a den of all Serpentine Natures false Spectrums Magical Allurements thick Mists benumming Vapours execrable Whisperings vain Terrour false Delight bewitching Apparitions fair flitting Phantasms deceivable Suggestions besotting Attractions Here 's that damn'd cell where those three grand Impostors and Conspirators against the Soul plot their fraudulent mischiefs the Flesh the World the Devil Or rather here is a World of Devils in this Life of the Flesh where the Prince of Darkness rules Well hath Zoroastre described this place He calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a World whose light is the blackness of darkness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A World whose bottom is the depth of unfaithfulness It 's foundation is laid in Hell a Hell whose fense is pitchy clouds and thick darkness whose treasure is corruption inhabitants vanity and shadowes wisdom senslesness prudence precipitancy simplicity of heart inextricable labyrinths of deceit and hypocrisie constancy or steddiness a vertiginous circuit of glowing phrensie and gross madness He that here doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which those wise Oracles forbid He that looks down indangers his sight indangers being carryed away with this rapid course and hurrying flux of tumultuous motions It 's enough to turn his Brain to change his Understanding to bereave him of his right Senses Here 's the fountain of ignorance and well-spring of all evil deceits So long as the Soul leans toward this and its loving and liking is toward this shadow of falshood it carries its deceiver about with it self and no deceit there is without but it is from this first or in vertue of this That which the Platonists call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Scripture calls Spirit Soul and Flesh. This Flesh is that whorish Woman that Solomon speaks of so oft and describes her subtil carriage But all her fair speaking is but false allurement and her flattering utter destruction For a whore is a deep ditch and a strange woman a narrow pit saith the Wise Man Nay the high way to the very pit of Hell Her house are the wayes of hell whose descent is into the chambers of death Prov. 7. Now the Soul of man betwixt these two the Spirit and the Flesh Heaven and Hell God and the Devil is so placed that accordingly as it inclines or cleaves to so is its Wisdom and Life If it continually struggle to work it self upward toward God God will put out his merciful arm to draw it out of those Infernal Waters If it cleave unto the Flesh and its deceivable Lusts the warmth of wickedness will attract it down lower and lower till Satan hath insnared it in all his nests and hath chained it in his own chains So that being made an absolute Vassal of
meat and do all drink of the same spiritual drink and are all incorporate into one Body all quickened by the same Spirit all conspire into one Will through unity of the same Life so that all 's in peace and good order And thus much for the Persons assembled Which if you doubt of or are perswaded that you shall not continually enjoy their company yet I will shew you an assembly that so long as you enjoy a pure Conscience you shall alway enjoy their company in a true Paradise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An Holy Paradise where are assembled Vertue Wisdom and all Decency and Discretion And these are excellent companions tho' they were known to no body but him that lives with them And He lives with them that hath a pure Heart for the Father of them abides in the sincere Spirit 2. But it were time now to speak of the Provision had I not spoke already somewhat of it almost before due time But no tongue can declare it I will rather use the Psalmists words O taste ye and see how gracious the Lord is For they that fear him shall lack nothing The lyons do lack and suffer hunger but they that do seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good So then here is apparatus non neglectus at least no want if not redundancy Ay but it 's a poor Feast you 'll say where there is no overplus If any man suspect he shall come to such a slender Dinner I will use the words of our Saviour Mat. 16. O ye of little faith why think you thus within your selves Do you not perceive neither remember the five loaves when there were five thousand men and how many baskets were taken up neither the seven loaves when there were four thousand men and how many baskets were taken up If Christ could satisfie such multitudes of men with so few loaves so that so many fragments were left Surely we need not fear but when he feeds us with himself who is that Heavenly Bread and the foecundity or fulness of God but that we shall be unspeakably satisfied and superabundantly refreshed So we have plainly seen how excellent our company how good our chear shall be I will interfeit one accomplishment which Varro omits in his Feast And that is Musick The concent of Musicians at a Banquet is as a Signet of Carbunoles set in Gold As the Signet of an Emerald well trimmed with Gold so is the melody of Musick in a pleasant banquet Ecclesiasticus 32. 5 6. Now that this Feast is not devoid of Musick will thus appear For Righteousness is nothing else but an harmony of the lower parts of a mans Soul with the upper of the Affections with Reason as the Pythagorists define it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Polus the Pythagorean When as the inclinations of a mans Will or Desire answer the dictates of true Reason these are Heavenly responses indeed fit for a Celestial Quire When Reason begins the point and all the Affections chearfully follow it as Philo comments upon that Song of Moses and Miriam I will sing unto the Lord for he hath triumphed gloriously the horse and his rider he hath over-thrown in the Sea The Lord is my strength and praise and he is become my salvation Who is like unto thee O Lord among the gods Who is like unto thee so glorious in holiness fearful in praises doing wonders Then Miriam the rest of the women following her with Timbrels and with Dances takes up her Timbrel in her hand and answers Sing unto the Lord for he hath triumphed gloriously the horse and the rider hath he over-thrown in the Sea Such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as these such Triumphal Songs against our Spiritual Enemies will become this Feast well The same exultation of Spirit you shall find in the blessed Psalmist The Lord is my strength and my shield my heart hath trusted in him and I am helped Therefore my heart danceth with joy and in my song will I praise him Psalm 28. This is that which the Apostle exhorts to Eph. 5. Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess but be filled with the Spirit speaking unto your selves with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts Hitherto then is this Feasting very compleat good Companions good Chear good Musick 3. But what is all this if not in a good convenient place Iobs Children you know as they were making merry at their elder Brothers a strong Whirlwind took a corner of the house and buried them with the ruins in the midst of their merriment But whosoever dwelleth under the defence of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty that is under the protection of him that is able to keep them safe Ps. 91. And at the 90th Psalm Lord thou hast been our habitation from generation to generation Before the mountains were made and before thou hadst formed the earth even from everlasting to everlasting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thou art the strong God a more sure sustentation than the steddy Earth a more strong safeguard than the massy Hills So then this Holy Assembly feast under a safe roof far from the reach of any tumult or tempest God is our hope and strength a very present help in trouble Therefore will we not fear though the earth be moved and though the hills be carryed into the midst of the sea Though the waters thereof rage and swell and though the mountains shake at the tempest of the same Yet there is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God the holy place of the tabernacle of the most high In all this danger and stir you see here 's secure Feasting and Joy in the Tabernacle of the most High The voice of joy and gladness is in the dwelling of the righteous safe pleasure and never fading delight in the habitation of the upright in Heart and pure in Conscience But if any man be not contented with the Safeness of the place but would curiously inquire into the Beauty of it that Description is done to our hands in the 21th of S. Iohns Revelation Gold and pearl and precious stones is a slight glimpse of the Glory of that Habitation and the Beauty of God 4. I will pass now to the fourth thing considerable in a Feast The convenience of time And no time surely is inconvenient to these Feasters who have the preeminence exceedingly above them that enjoy any outward delight For these men be confined to Seasons and Opportunities which be but poor small parcels of time But all Time and Eternity too is but one entire Opportunity for those Spiritual Feasters to enjoy themselves in A good Heart or a pure Spirit is one continual everlasting Feast It was well said of Diogenes to one that was too much taken with the seldom solemnity of an outward Feast 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What saith
he doth not a good man count every day a Festival Surely if it be so he must needs count it so And that it is so my Text can witness Solomon hath asserted it and the Devil himself cannot deny it nor good men conceal it nor wicked men confute it for they have not experience of it But do I not seem to Tantalize you all this while by describing so desirable a Banquet and not shew you the way to be partakers of it Verily neither God nor good men do envy us it But to say the truth the way to it is as undesirable as the Feast is to be wished for Abstinence and emptyness is the way to be filled with this precious Food The full soul saith Solomon loatheth the honey-comb And if we be taken up with and filled with the delights of this sensible World and the pleasures of the Flesh we shall never relish the sweetness of this Banquet never so much as taste of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If false transitory pleasures get possession of the Soul they will exclude that true light and safe delight in God What 's the way then to this continual Happiness A contemptible thing they call Self-denyal or abstinence from our own Wills and Desires Upon which if I should enter a Discourse you especially of the younger sort might account it or a dull Melancholick Dream or a pretty solemn Night-piece but when you have viewed it immerse your selves again into the false light of this bewitching World and closely embrace that life and pleasure that I should wish you to part with But be you assured that he that is so slightly affected with the most solemn and solid Duties of Christianity is so far off from the good Conscience or good Heart named in the Text that he is not so much as in a preparation to it which is Contrition and Brokenness of Spirit But he that even now begins and sets himself seriously upon the curbing of his Lusts and denyal of his own wayes and endeavours cordially from the very depth of his Heart to perform whatsoever he conceives is the Will of God and allowes himself in no fault this man shall in due time be wrought into the Life and Spirit of Christ And shall continually enjoy in a more eminent manner whatsoever or Sight or Hearing or Smelling or Tasting shall judge pleasant and delectable such Beauty such Harmony such Fragrancy such Deliciousness as no man can conceive but he that hath it nor he that hath it can know how to utter it To this Happiness God grant that we may all arrive through Iesus Christ our Lord to whom c. DISCOURSE VIII PSAL. xvii 15. As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness THE Excellency of this Holy resolution and High aspires of the Prophet David will be better set off and more-savourly relished if we bring into view that lively character of men of a quite contrary dispensation in the foregoing Verse which are stiled men of the world which have their portion in this life who are very Belly-gods and Cormorants greedy devourers of the Temporary good things which God has treasured up in these lower Regions of the Universe These they dig out and rake up together and lay on heaps that they may satisfie their own Worldly Appetite and gratifie themselves in the lusts of the Flesh in the lusts of the Eyes and in the pride of Life that they may eat and drink plentifully yea riotously fill their Bellies with the choicest delicates and feed their Eyes with the inexhaustible store and plenty of their riches and their treasure being inexhaustible when they have lived in all the jollity and gayity of this World in all the affluency and felicity this present Life will afford bequeath or entail upon their Posterity the like Happiness themselves enjoy'd by leaving the rest of their Substance to their Babes as is described in the foregoing Verse This is the state of that Blessedness which the meer Natural man breaths after neither his foresight nor desire piercing any further But this Holy man of God who was inspired from above has a thirsty presage of matters of far greater moment whose mind is not fixt upon these hid treasures of the Earth but upon that treasure which is reserved in Heaven whose neither hopes nor enjoyments are in the things of this Life but deems this Life as Death or Sleep in comparison of that which is to come who evangelizes before the Gospel and speaks the language of Christians before the coming of the Messias as if he would anticipate the words of S. Paul Col. 3. 3. Our life is hid with Christ in God But when Christ which is our life shall appear then shall we also appear with him in glory Wherefore let others enjoy themselves as much as they will let these men of the World have all things succeed according to their desire and please themselves to the height in their Wealth Pleasure and Honours I do not at all envy their condition nor place my Happiness in these things While these mens Eyes and Minds while their Affection and Animadversion is wholly taken up with these Worldly Objects the pantings and breathings of my Soul are entirely directed towards God and to the blissful enjoyment of the Light of his Countenance As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness Or as the Psalms in our Liturgy have it When I awake up after thy likeness I shall be satisfied with it That Saying of Heraclitus in Clemens Alexandrinus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All that we see waking is Death and what we see dreaming Sleep which is the Brother of Death as another termed him as if in this Body whether sleeping or waking it were in the valley of the shadow of Death I say this Speech of Heraclitus may seem to savour much of a very deeply Melancholized Spirit yet if to speak conformably to inspired men were an Argument of Inspiration Heraclitus his Melancholly would approve it self Divine by the apparent conformity it bears with the most notable passages of those who certainly were inspired God forbid saith S. Paul that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Iesus Christ whereby the world is crucified to me and I unto the world What was it not sufficient that S. Paul was crucified to the World but the World must be also crucified unto him That he was dead to the World but the World must be also dead to him Or who ever except S. Paul ventur'd on such a Phrase as the Worlds being crucified or dead to us though we be rightly said to be crucified or dead to it Why yes Heraclitus said so long before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All these things which we see with these Bodily Eyes it is but a Scene of Death That vivid and chearful colour of the Heavens which
recreates the Eyes of ordinary Mortals seem'd to him not a bright azure but a funeral black nor Sun nor Moon real and true Lights but two painted Scutcheons Or and Argent hung upon the Melancholly Tapestry of this House of Mourning Wherefore to be buried in the Body with him is a real Death and this Terrestrial Region wherein we seem to live but one great Caemeterium or Dormitory No life no joy no pleasure is here no not amongst those that seem to enjoy most that have the greatest portion in this Life nay their only portion therein Wherefore what expectation of Happiness before that blessed Resurrection When we shall see the Face of God and be satisfied with his Likeness in whose presence there is fulness of joy and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore But for the present Interval that is the time of our Immersion into the Sense of this Body the Prophet David as well as Heraclitus does plainly deem it a state of Sleep or Death which are the same in Scripture every where as to any Mystical meanings or purposes As for me I shall behold thy face in righteousness I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness Munster piously and I believe truly paraphrases thus upon the Text. Egó verò omnes electi tui Domine non ita quaeremus has temporarias transitorias divitias ut in illis deliciemur sed justè piè vivemus in hoc seculo ut aliquando in futuro seculo videamus faciem tuam eâ satiemur cum scilicet è pulvere evigilaverimus reformati fuerimus ad similitudinem Christi tui And this may go for the Philosophical sense of the Text. But there is a Moral sense thereof which Castellio seems to reach at and is indeed the most easie to the words of the Text which run thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Of which the easie and accurate Sense is I will behold thy face in Righteousness at the awaking of thy image I shall be satisfied according as Castellio has also rendered it Tum satiandus cum tua experrecta fuerit imago And his Gloss is accordingly Per Christi resurrectionem qui Dei imago est plenam consecuturus justitiam foelicitatem For the Image of God is Christ who is called also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the brightness of the Glory of God answerably to the LXX Translation of my Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I shall be satisfied when I shall see thy Glory Which Glory like the beams of the Sun reach and touch the very eye-lids of him that is asleep but are not seen nor enjoy'd till he awake for then the image of the Sun is also awoke in him that is to say excited into actual being According to which Analogy is that Saying of the Apostle Awake thou that sleepest and Christ shall give thee light The Evigilation therefore or Resurrection of the Image of God in us is our Evigilation or Resurrection in a Mystical or Moral Sense into it which as soon as it does appear we also do appear in Glory with it but while Christ is thus hid or dead or asleep in us we are in a state of Death or Sleep and the true Life of our Soul is hid in him And this I would have the First Truth comprised in my Text viz. That the immersion of the Soul into the life of the Body and love of this present World which is the Image of the Earthly Adam is as it were the Sleep or Death of the Soul The Second That there is no true Satisfaction in this Worldly or Terrestrial Life which is but a torpid Sleep and the very shadow of Death The Third That the true Evigilation and real Life of the Soul is the recuperation of the Image of God the Resurrection of Christ in us according to the Spirit The Fourth That this Mystical Resurrection of Christ is the only solid Enjoyment and Satisfaction to the Souls of the Faithful even in this Life The Fifth and Last That the way to attain to this Satisfaction which arises from the Evigilation of that Divine Image in us which is also stiled the Face of God or if you will the Image thereof whereby we see his Face so far forth as he is visible to Man is Righteousness and Sincerity of Heart I shall behold thy face in righteousness These are the precious Truths comprized in the Text which I shall handle with all possible brevity 1. That the Image of the Earthly Adam is as it were the Sleep or Death of the Soul the very Text does apparently intimate especially that Translation in our Liturgy When I shall awake into thy Image which is the Image of the Heavenly Adam I shall be satisfied therewith which implies that till this awaking we are in a state of Sleep or Death For in that we can eat and drink and go up and down these are no Arguments that we are truly alive no more than the growing of the Hair and the Nails of them that have lain long buried in the ground is any Argument of Life in them I mean of the Sensitive Life Nor though the Flesh be full of Worms will the man be thought ever the more alive for that For neither is Sense the Life of a man nor meer Carnal and Worldly Reason the Life of the Child of God The Divine Image is the Soul of his Soul and the Life of his Life of which seeing every Soul is capable it is rightly deemed dead till it partake thereof till it be awaken'd into this Image of God But so long as the mind is addicted to the things of this World to the Law of the Body which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so long is she dead or asleep call it which you will Hierocles calls it Death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For the Death of every Rational Essence sayes he is the loss or suppression of her Divine and Intellectual excellencies Plotinus Sleep 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So far forth as the Soul is immerged into the Body so far she is asleep And therefore those that are wholly taken up with the concerns thereof as relishing nothing but what is Worldly and Carnal may justly be look'd upon as fallen into a deep Sleep And what if they can walk and talk and go up and down and do such things as men that are awake also do do not the Noctambuli do the same Whose eyes being shut yet unwittingly do they several exploits some hazardous others ridiculous other some as it some seldomer times happens safe and congruous if the chain of Phantasms that leads them attract luckily and to convenient Objects But in the mean time they know not what they do but without any free consultation or deliberation are carried out hoodwink'd to action by the meer suggestion of Dreams and Phansies And is not this the very condition of those who have arriv'd no higher than to the Image of the Earthly
in us And Israel is called the inheritance of God Wherefore God in a kind of Gratitude as I may so say will provide us an Inheritance sith that we as he himself testifieth are an Inheritance to him Now if any man be desirous to know what an Inheritance this is that God hath prepared It is no less than a Kingdom And how great an esteem is put upon an Earthly Kingdom is very well known to you all Which if it be so desirable how much more desirable is the Kingdom of Heaven that nor time nor tumult can ever demolish This Kingdom of Heaven of God or Christ is the Inheritance of the Sons of God with Christ. But if any one rest unsatisfied yet and would further know what the Kingdom of God is Let him listen to S. Paul Rom. 14. 17. The kingdom of God is not meat nor drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost But this will seem even nothing to him that hath not the Spirit of Righteousness Peace and Joy Wherefore saith the Apostle 1 Cor. 2. 7. c. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory Which none of the princes of this world knew for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory But as it is written Eye hath not seen nor ear heard neither have entred into the heart of man the things that God hath prepared for them that love him But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit For the Spirit searcheth all things even the deep things of God For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man that is in him Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the spirit that is of God that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God In a word therefore Beloved the Inheritance of the Children of God is the Spirit of God and all that it doth discover as the Sun is the lot and the inheritance of the Natural Eye and all visibles laid open by it in Nature And can any thing be wanting to them that are sharers in that Inheritance If I may call them sharers where every one is full possessour of the whole as the Sun is alike wholly in every eye Can our Souls be larger than the Life of God Or our Understanding not filled and satisfied by his all-knowing Spirit Can our Will wax restless or anxious where the Understanding finds out and feels the greatest good that any thing is capable of where the pure and undefiled Affection baths her silver plumes in eternal love and delight What is the Soul more than infinite that it should desire any Inheritance greater than God But it were now more seasonable to make some Vse to our selves from this Doctrine so infinitely plain or infinitely inexplainable First Who cannot hence condemn all Avarice Drunkenness Fleshly Lust Voluptuousness the bartering away this Glorious Inheritance of the Everlasting Kingdom of God for the Muck of this World choak'd with the Cares of this World undermining our Neighbours by false and treacherous practices over-reaching them in bargainings and cheating indeed our selves of Eternal LIfe by our own couzenages Instead of being filled with the Spirit to be full of base liquor drowning our Reason and Conscience and laying our selves open to the despight of the Devil and the shame of the World Chaffering away for a light momentany fit of Pleasure or some seducing wanton Lust the Inheritance of the good Spirit of God the sweet and comfortable Fellowship of the Holy Ghost the Joyes of Heaven the full Contentments and unspeakable Delights of that hidden Paradise that Garden of all sweetness and deliciousness Secondly The consideration of this future excellent state and glorious royal condition may afford much comfort to men of low degree and meaner fortune What though our Means be small our Calling base and dishonourable before men This time vvill certainly over and that quickly Though I be poor here a Servant and Bond-slave a Beggar Yet hereafter I shall be rich free noble a Prince a King an Emperour Then shall I be Lord not of a larger spot of Ground consisting of Dirt and Gravel and vvithering Grass and perishing Trees the sight of vvhich every nights sleep takes from me but of the boundless Heavens the everlasting Beauty of God vvhere vvith never-vvaking Eyes I shall alvvayes behold his excellent Glory This I say may comfort the poorer sort they being as capable if not more capable of this precious Inheritance than Lords and Princes of the Earth than Kings and Caesars than Dukes and Emperours Gal. 3. 26 c. For you are all the children of God by faith in Christ Iesus For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Iew nor Greek there is neither bond nor free there is neither male nor female For ye are all one in Christ Iesus And if ye be Christs then are you Abrahams seed and heirs according to promise But Thirdly and Lastly Is it so indeed that there is prepared for men of all conditions of Life such a rich Inheritance Let then all men of what condition soever examine themselves and try what assurance they find in themselves in their own Souls of this future Happiness What then is the Sign That brings me to my Second Doctrine viz. II. That the heirs of the Kingdom must suffer So saith the Text Heirs of God and joynt-heirs with Christ if so be that we suffer with him that we may be also glorified with him Which Truth is manifest out of sundry places of Scripture I will name only two Acts 14. 22. We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God And Coloss. 1. 10 11 12. That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God Strengthened with all might according to his glorious power unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light What Shall we think Beloved to obtain Heaven at a more easie rate than we purchase any Temporal Honour or Estate Multa tulit fecitque puer Those that are designed for some special piece of Earthly Preferment sweat and toil for it even from their very Childhood by industrious Education But we think to have Heaven for an old song as they say or for a lazily repeated Pater Noster for a word for an imagination for a phansie a thought an empty faith for nothing Who in the name of God told us so My Text contradicts it And Scripture will not contradict my Text because my Text is Scripture No verily It confirms it Be not deceived God is
not mocked as a man sowes so shall he reap saith the same Apostle that wrote my Text. But I will prove by a threefold Reason That the heirs of the Kingdom of God shall suffer really themselves First From the Antipathy betwixt the World and the Children of God Wisd. 2. Let us lye in wait for the righteous because he is not for our turn and he is clean contrary to our doings He upbraideth us with offending the law and objecteth to our infamy the transgressings of our education He professeth that he hath the knowledge of God and he calleth himself the child of the Lord. He was made to reprove our thoughts He is grievous unto us even to behold for his life is not like other mens his wayes are of another fashion Hence do the Children of God oftentimes incurr much mischief by the wicked plots of the ungodly And however if they escape this outward evil they are grieved and vexed continually by their dayly misdeeds But Secondly The Will of God is that all that he admits to that Glorious Inheritance be tryed first and he chastiseth every Son that he doth receive 1 Pet. 1. 3. c. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Iesus Christ which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again to a lively hope by the resurrection of Iesus Christ from the dead unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away reserved in Heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time Wherein you greatly rejoyce though now for a season if need be ye are in heaviness through many temptations That the tryal of your faith being much more precious than of gold that perisheth though it be tryed with fire might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Iesus Christ. Thirdly and Lastly We cannot escape suffering and the exercise of our Christian Patience by reason of often assaults the Devil makes against us who like a roring lyon goes about seeking whom he may devour as also for the close siege that sin layes continually against us that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that sin that so easily besets us on every side Heb. 12. 1. But to display the Sufferings of the Heirs of the Kingdom more distinctly I will cast them into these four several kinds 1. In Estate or Fortune 2. In Name or Estimation 3. In Body 4. In Soul or Spirit 1. In Estate As if any man by his Pious Life his delight in the Word of God in Brotherly Conference or Community in Spiritual things by his rebuking his Neighbour for Swearing Profaning the Name of God or by his Frugality and Sobriety that he will not run to the same excess of riot with the rest of his Neighbours but lives temperately honestly and justly If this man as it is not improbable but he may bring on himself the envy of wicked men Sons of Belial or at least their dislike and so they having power or empair his Estate by unequal Mulcts or deny him his due Desires I say he suffers as an Heir of Heaven as a Member of Christ as a Child of God and Vengeance shall be poured out upon his enemies but his Happiness shall be increased 2. In Name As our Saviour who for his being in company with wicked men to convert them and heal them as he himself answered The whole have not need of the physitian but they that be sick he notwithstanding was termed a glutton a winebibber a friend of Publicans and Sinners Mat. 11. For his casting out Devils a Conjurer For doing good and healing on the Sabbath-day a Sabbath-breaker For telling the Iews that which was true that they were going about to kill him a Demoniack or one possessed of the Devil For teaching the people the mysteries of the Kingdom of God a Seducer And so S. Iohn the Baptist for his abstemiousness his temperance and severe manner of Life was counted also one possessed of the Devil S. Paul for preaching the Gospel a pestilent fellow one that turned the world upside down That young man one of the Sons of the Prophets whom Elisha sent to anoint Iehu King the Captains of Ioram counted him and call'd him a mad fellow Wherefore came this mad fellow to thee 2 Kings 9. The Frugal they 'll call Nigards The Conscientious Timorous or Superstitious The Humble base-Spirited or Silly The Harmless and Quiet Fools or Innocents The Charitable Papists The Zealous and fervent in Spirit Puritans Godly and Pious Professours Hypocrites The Devil hath found out a nick-name for whatsoever is good That Blasphemous Mouth can miscall every Attribute of God But let us not be discouraged for all the reproaches of the World For if we suffer in Name for well-doing our Shame here is nothing to that Honour and Glory that shall be revealed in us hereafter I will only raise one Vse from this point and so leave it Did our Saviour Christ his Apostles the Prophets of old and the Holy men of God undergoe such harsh Censures Were they branded with such notorious Names and undeserved Calumnies Then are not we to judge ill of any man merely from the report of men till we see his Life our selves They said of Iohn that he had a Devil They made the Son of man a man Gluttonous a Wine-bibber a Friend of Publicans and Sinners But Wisdom is justified of her children saith our Saviour Matth. 11. 19. That is by its fruits By their fruit you shall know them And if we find Purity of Life far be it from us Beloved that we should speak reproachfully against such as we are not able to judge Wherefore let us rather mortifie our sinful Lusts and purge our own Souls of Corruption that they may be a habitation for the Holy Ghost rather than to give ill Names or give credence to ill reports of others we do not know our selves being still in our Carnal condition Slaves of Sin and Satan Servants of Pride of Envy of Avarice of Drunkenness of Whoredom of Lasciviousness Which whosoever hath let him be assured that he hath not the Spirit of God for it will not abide in such a sink of Sin Wherefore he cannot judge But he that is spiritual judgeth all things and he himself is judged of no man 1 Cor. 2. And thus I have briefly run through the external Sufferings of the Heirs of the Kingdom of Christ in Fortune and Name The internal follow in Body and Spirit 3. In Body These kind of Sufferings you may read of Heb. 11. Others were tortured not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection And others had tryal of cruel mockings and scourgings yea moreover of bonds and imprisonments They were stoned they were sawn asunder were tempted were slain with the sword They wandered in sheep-skins and goat-skins being destitute afflicted tormented It would be a long task to reckon up all the
manners of the Sufferings of Holy Martyrs which they underwent under the tyranny of bloody salvage Heathen Heading and Hanging and Crucifying were nothing for the satisfaction of their fury They were broyl'd on Grid-irons they were fryed in Frying-pans they were boyl'd in Cauldrons they were put in the Brazen Bull they were fired at the Stake cast into Ovens fired in Ships and so thrust from the shore into the deep fired in their own Houses cast upon burning Coals made to walk upon burning Coals burnt under the Arm-pits with hot Irons They had their Hearts riven out of their warm Body had their Skin flean off from their live Flesh had their Feet tyed to boughs of two near Trees which boughs being at first forcibly brought together suddenly let go rent their Body in twain They were trodden down by Horses cast bound and naked into Vaults to be eaten of Rats and Mice They had their Flesh pulled off with Pinsers torn off with Iron-rakes were squeezed to death in Wine-presses were tyed upon Wheels which turning rub'd their naked Body against sharp pegs of Iron They were hung by their Hands and Feet with their Face downward over choaking Smoak They were set out on high in the Sun having their naked Skin besmeared with Honey to be stung with Bees and Waspes The Devil spent all the skill and malice he had in finding wayes and engines of Torture for them God make us truly thankful unto him for his Mercy so long continued to us that we have without terrour or torment so many years enjoy'd the Christian Religion in such Purity And give us Grace to repent us of our unworthy walking and unbeseemingly of so great a Light But as concerning these Sufferings of the Body Beloved such is the love of God to Mankind and so reasonable is his Service that he hath made it no necessary condition of Eternal Life actually to suffer them But we ought to be so minded that rather than to relinquish the true Christian Faith or do any thing which we know offends God we would rather dye a thousand deaths And this was S. Pauls resolution Acts 21. I am ready not only to be bound but also to dye for the name of the Lord Iesus But yet there is a Suffering in the Body that we must needs suffer if we will approve our selves the Children of God and Heirs of that Glorious Kingdom And this Suffering we must inflict upon our own selves 1 Cor. 9. 27. But I keep under my body and bring it into subjection These Sufferings are most acceptable to God and requisite fore-runners of Eternal Life If you live after the flesh you shall dye but if you through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body you shall live Verse 13. of this 8th Chapter to the Romans 1 Pet. 2. 11. Dearly beloved I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul. And Galat. 4. 24. They that are Christs have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts You see plainly then That we are not Christs nor Gods nor Heirs of God with Christ unless we suffer with Christ in mortifying all Bodily Lusts in curbing our inordinate Desire of eating or drinking unless we study to keep under the Body and live chastly and continently If we will be Heirs of that Heavenly Inheritance we must bring under all evil and carnal concupiscence If we will partake of that Eternal Glory in Heaven we must be content to suffer reproach and evil speeches amongst men If any man ask what Necessity what Reason is there I will briefly shew him how it comes about First For suffering in Name for I will step so much back There is no man loves to be disquieted in mind or vext But it would disquiet us and gall us exceedingly to be found fools so that we have not the heart to find our selves so it would so discontent our natural proud Spirit Hence we blame other men rather than our selves and say they be in the false way So did the Pharisees to our Saviour and to his Apostles And thus were the Prophets used before them because their wayes were of another sort their speeches and actions of another fashion from the World You will better understand it in some Examples A Carnal or Natural man that hath no Sense of the Spirit of God and is unacquainted with its Operations derides such performances as Prayers Exhortations or what so else may proceed from thence as truly and extraordinarily proceeding from the Spirit of God and counts those men that acknowledge Gods power in them in the performance of such things weak men crack'd-brain'd Enthusiasts Fanatical Fools silly Lunaticks But all this proceeds out of Pride Envy and Self-love he himself being not able to perform such Duties or at least not in that manner So some that have got the trick of Praying ex tempore by Custom the Mother of Confidence and Dexterity Ignorance and want of a true Sense of the Majesty of Heaven upholding them in their rash performance these men will vilifie Justice and Uprightness Humility and Patience and the mortification of our Sensual Lusts because they find in themselves no such Vertues nor intend to trouble themselves so much as to practise them Then for the upholding of their own credit they must give them poor contemptible terms that they are but Heathenish Vertues such as Socrates or Plato had and make but a Moral man and that there is no such need for a Christian to have them But Beloved be not so deceived but observe this Truth Though Moral Vertue carries us no higher than an Heathen yet without the exercise of Moral Vertue and inward life and liking of it we are no true Christians The Summe is this That the good ways of God are spoken against and miscall'd that wicked men may keep their credit and yet walk indeed in the wayes of the Devil To the Second I answer That it is necessary that we suffer in the Flesh because that if we do not keep down the Flesh and its suggestions the Spirit will be choaked and stifled by that filth and corruption The carnal mind is enmity against God for it is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be Ver. 7. The carnal mind that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the bent will intent liking or desire of the Flesh is enmity with God desires against the Will of God and will not be obedient to the Law of God nor indeed can be Wherefore we are to kill it to mortifie it to crucifie it that we may be dead to sin or the desire of the Flesh and alive to God by his enquickening Spirit through Jesus Christ our Lord. Here is the Patience of the Saints Here their great Suffering 4. But I go on to their last Affliction which is in Spirit And that is twofold 1. The wrestling or conflict with spiritual wickedness in Heavenly places 2. The suffering with
heart O God thou wilt not despise And Psal. 4. 5. Offer the sacrifice of righteousness and put your trust in the Lord. And Rom. 12. 1. I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice holy acceptable to God which is your spiritual service So Beza They were not to offer any dead or unclean Beast under the Law wherefore are we here under the Gospel to offer our selves a living and holy Sacrifice impolluted of the World and alive to Righteousness and to God Give me leave here a little to enlarge my self Who can doubt but that the Heart of a Christian from whence sweet odours of Prayers and Praises ascend up is a better Altar of Incense than that in Moses's Temple that God is more truly fed by relieving his living Members true and sincere Christians than by feeding the unsatiable fire by thousands of Holocausts that the seven Spirits the Spirit of the Lord the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding the Spirit of Counsel and Might the Spirit of Knowledge and the Fear of the Lord are a truer and clearer light than the Seven Golden Candlesticks of Moses that the Iewish Temple was but a strait prison in comparison of the enlarged Soul of man So many load of Sand or Gravel would have filled that up to the top but no less than God himself can fill the Heart of man which therefore is the meetest Temple or Mansion for him In brief what is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but as Nonnus speaks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to honour and worship God and what doth that consist in but in appropriating or consecrating unto him times or places or things persons also and solemnity of actions Is not this therefore to worship God in spirit and in truth truly and unfeignedly to devote our selves and dedicate all we have to the God of Heaven seeking his Will in all our actions and denying our selves and our own desires What comparison is there betwixt the offering the Firstlings of our Flock or the Fruit of our Ground whereby we acknowledge we hold all these things of God the great Lord of Heaven and Earth what comparison is there I say betwixt this and the not arrogating any thing to our selves of either knowledge and power but very sensibly and affectionately ascribing all to God whatsoever we can do think or speak which is the right Christian Humility and Spiritual Decimation to the true Melchizedek Christ Jesus And let me be yet bolder if there be any boldness in it What is Baptism or the washing of Water in respect of the real cleansing by the Spirit the being Baptized with the Holy Ghost and with Fire What is Bread and Wine in comparison of that true Bread from Heaven the Flesh and Blood of Christ Tell me therefore now is nothing of Religion left when I only consider the inward essence or substance of it abstracting from shell or husk Is the very heart or kernel of it nothing The pure and unpainted Religion is truly Religion if not the only true Religion And pardon me if I seem too careful and curious in reserving the name of Religion to it because that word strikes more powerfully upon the ears of men and summons at the very first alarm all the power we have both of Soul and Body to assist countenance and maintain it Wherefore I would under the name as the notion it self doth most eminently deserve it commend unto my self and all men this truth of Godliness that we may as heartily and zealously both aspire unto our selves and endeavour the same in others as ever we did or can do the opinions and institutions of men or yet the opposing of them For this will not be found pure and undefiled Religion in his eyes who is the judge thereof viz. God the Father Which is the Second Particular and upon which I would now fall did not another sense step between which must awhile hold me back 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hitherto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 have signified the pure and un-colour'd truth of Religion without Show or Ceremony The words are not incapable of another sense which our English Translation favours Pure impolluted or undefiled Religion is this Which implies that there are impure filthy and impious Religions in the World How it would make a noise to speak of the obscene Ceremonies of Baal-Peor the cruel Rites of Moloch and that most ridiculous Devil-service in India But we need not run back so much in time or travel to so remote places I do not see but the Invocation of Saints and Worshipping of Idols is impious enough and the relying on any one man or a multitude for infallible guides of his Faith and Religion mere Idolatry and Irreligiousness For what is this but to cut our selves off from the living God and free guidance of his gracious Spirit and to give up our selves to men blind guides to the sons of men that are found deceitful upon the weights lighter than vanity it self Is it not the Lord that hath made Heaven and Earth and filleth all things with his spirit and power Behold the nations are as a drop of a bucket and are counted as the small dust of the ballance All nations are before him even as nothing and they are counted of him less than nothing and vanity It is he alone that has established the mountains and has given laws to the measureless deep that has stretched out the Heavens as a curtain and spreadeth it out as a tent to dwell in that sitteth upon the circle of the earth and the inhabitants thereof are as grashoppers Which of these will you chuse for your God Or what number of them for the stay of your hearts Will you worship a Fly instead of your Maker Will you ask counsel of the God of Ekron Will you advise with Baal-Zebub concerning your Salvation Is not Christ the only Healer the only Saviour the only Recoverer of fallen man Is his Holiness at Rome infallible Or may not a many gray heads joyn'd together go astray together 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Elihu in Iob And I said days should speak and multitude of years should teach wisdom But there is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding Great men are not alwayes wise neither do the aged understand judgment Iob 32. It is the Lord that is the only wise God that Auncient of dayes alone it is that can instruct us in Prudence 't is God the Father alone that can guide us safely in his Truth And thus am I again cast upon the Second Particular viz. II. That God the Father is judge of what is true pure and undefiled Religion And indeed there is very good reason for it For what is Religion but the worship and service of God He therefore knows best how he would be worshipped and served And here it will not be unseasonable to
Eternal Spiritual Riches he will endue us with hereafter 3. The Third Motive is taken from the persons to whom we are to communicate The rich and the poor meet together and the Lord enlightens both their eyes Prov. 29. No difference between the greatest Prince and the poorest Beggar but the goods of Fortune or rather of Providence For they come not to us by chance but by the good will of God who hath made out of his Wisdom some Poor and some Rich that we may have occasion to exercise the acts of Mercy and tender Compassion to our Brethren who live by the same Air vvalk in the light of the same Sun vvere created by the same God are to be saved by the same Christ. There is one Body and one Spirit even as you are called in one hope of your calling One Lord one Faith one Baptism One God and Father of all which is above all and through all and in you all Eph. 4. What One Body and one Member despise and disregard another One Spirit and not sympathize one vvith another One Hope and not help one another One Lord and not one fellovv-servant acknovvledge another One Father and Brethren not relieve one another One God above all over-seeing us all in all our actions vvho though he be so high yet beholdeth things here belovv upon earth and vve poor earthly vvorms overlook one another One God in us all and no goodness in us all God vvho is Love it self pierce through us all and yet not those lovely shafts of holy Charity vvound any of our hearts God forbid If vve abide not in Love God abideth not in us If our hearts be contracted and darkened by frozen rigidness the light of God shineth not through us If our poor contemptible Neighbour be so far under us that vve disdain to stretch forth our armes to help him vve forget God above us If vve love not as Brethren God is not our Father If vve be asham'd of our Fellovv-servants the Lord is not our Master If vve be cold in mutual affection our Faith is dead and Hypocrisie is our Religion If vve have no sympathy or fellovv-feeling the Spirit vve boast of is but vanity or empty air If vve favour not one another as Members of the same Body vve are not Members of the same Body but disunited Dust vvhich the Wind blovves to and fro upon the face of the Earth and the Angel of God scatters it Community is but a name vvhere there is no communication of good Vnity but a deceivable phansie vvhere there is no real Mercy He that will endanger the Soul of his Brother by with-holding the sustenance of his Body which out of Brotherly affection he is to administer to him surely that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Brotherly Love which the Apostle calls for dwelleth not in him The very shame of Poverty will force a man to do or suffer any thing How much more will pinching hunger scorching thirst benumming cold Necessity hath no Law or at least necessitous persons are easily drawn to think so Give me not poverty saith the Wise Man Prov. 30. 8 9. lest I be poor and steal and take the name of my God in vain A good man is merciful to his beast and shall not we be so good as to have compassion upon men The miserable and penurious condition of the Poor man would afford me great store or plenty of Arguments to plead his cause but I will only name them Hunger thirst nakedness rags filth deformity pensiveness sickness torture contempt sighs tears groans fear despair disconsolateness assaults of the Devil hard-heartedness of the World dejectedness of his spirit weak and vain looks loss of limbs blindness and deafness I cannot name them all Poverty is attended with such a numerous regiment of defects and infirmities that they may win the most strong and stony heart to compassionate their miseries But because we are fallen into these ill latter times in which the Apostle hath foretold that the love of many or rather of most if not almost of all shall wax cold Mercy and Pity are not passions easily to be stirred up out of the representation of our Neighbours misery and ill plight These are poor contemptible vertues befitting the weak womanish sect A strong vigorous faith I would to God it were so or if you will a deep conceited phansie that we are Gods Children though we be not merciful as our Heavenly Father is merciful is altogether in request and fashion amongst us Christians So this conceit makes us abound with Love toward God as vve think But when all comes to all it will prove but false and adulterate Love It will not abide that touchstone If you love me keep my commandements Or that of S. Iohns Epistle Chap. 3. Whosoever hath this worlds good and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his compassion from him how dwelleth the love of God in him 4. But if we do love God so much and our Neighbour so little yet we may not evade or escape this duty of doing good for all that For say that all our time is to be spent in the duties of the First Table all our Piety to be shewed in performances toward God If I shew that these acts of Mercy and Bounty be acts of the First Table too I hope we will not shew our selves so ungrateful and impious as to decline this manner of Worship which he requires at our hands Now that acts of Mercy are duties of the First Table I need go no farther for proof than my Text which tells us that doing good and communicating is a sacrifice And Sacrificing you know is a duty of the First Table even the immediate service of God How fitly the Apostle hath framed his Argument for convincing of mens corrupt Consciences and discovering that mysterious hidden wickedness that lurks in our hypocritical hearts a strong perswasion that we are Gods though there be little of the inward power of Godliness in us This holy kind of irreligiousness that is so immerse and lost as it were in a false counterfeit love of God that it quite forgets all respect and duty to our Neighbour That foolish impudent Spirit that would so confidently father it self upon God and perswade him that he is his Child when it s nothing but the deceitful breath of the Devil A handsome slight to travel to Heaven at least charges The service of God that is a strong perswasion that we are one of them that God hath sign'd to be his though there be no other sure argument or sign saving that we do strongly perswade our selves so The hearing of the Word the saying of Prayers and such outward performances or outward deceivable phansies is a Religion so cheap and easie that it asks a man neither cost nor labour But to be crucified with Christ to suffer with him to undergo the deadly dolorous pangs of mortification to sweat drops of Blood and endure
the unspeakable agonies of dying to sin this is a harder way To give Alms and relieve the needy to furnish those living Temples of God the poor Christians Souls with necessaries this way is more chargeable Now which of those wayes be more pleasing to Flesh and Blood let any man judge Beloved be not deceived God is not mocked He that sowes nothing but words shall reap nothing but wind If we will serve God as we will he will recompense us as we would not I will have mercy saith he and not sacrifice as the Prophet speaketh Or in the Apostles Language If you will be sacrificing This is the true Christian Sacrifice and Holy Worship of God even to do good as we have opportunity As if the Apostle should thus speak I know that such is the quality of the natural man and the highness of his mind that he will easily be perswaded to be exercised in the immediate service of the great King of Heaven and Earth But he is not so easily induced to regard the state of his poor necessitous Neighbour Such his crafty and covetous disposition is that he will easily bestow some sugared words upon his Maker in publick or private Devotion so that hereby he may be excused from real good deeds to his fellow-creature He will easily sacrifice the calves of his Lips so it may exempt him from a chearful relieving or feeding the hungry and needy He will be very earnest and anxious in the intricate subtilties of Opinions so he may be cold or frozen in common Charity the only acceptable Religion Wherefore I knowing these slights and subtilties of the Devil and false and dangerous imaginations of the Flesh and abominable hypocrisie of the Natural man who takes all the hints and occasions he can to decline the true service of God and seeks false pacifications of Conscience for to retain his so dearly loved disobedience and following his own desires That you rest not our selves in a false pretended service to God and so neglect those Charitable Duties to your Neighbour I tell you that these good offices to your Neighbour are services to God the highest kind of service of his Sacred Majesty such service as is most acceptable to the God of Charity 5. Which is the Fifth and last Motive and brings to the second and third Propositions in my Text 2. That the doing of good and communicating is a sacrifice 3. That this doing of good is a sacrifice well pleasing unto God THESE I will now handle in an absolute way considering them in themselves And first of the former viz. II. That doing good is a Sacrifice I will first prove the truth of it out of other places of Scripture Then compare the doing of good with the nature of a Sacrifice and its kinds Lastly I will draw some practical Inferences from it 1. That doing of good is a Sacrifice may easily be gathered out of that in S. Iames 1. 27. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep our selves unspotted of the world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is The Worship of God which in the Old Law consisted of Sacrifices and Purifications external is this even offering or giving our Benevolence to the Poor and comforting every one in his distress as his misery requires and our ability will afford this is our Sacrificing And our Washing and Purification is not that of the Body but the Spirit the keeping our selves from the pollution of the wicked World the lust of the flesh the lust of the eye and the pride of life as S. Iohn glosses upon that word Purity from these is undefiled Religion in the sight of the Father To do good is that acceptable Sacrifice or Oblation to God Ecclesiasticus 35. Whoso keepeth the law bringeth offerings enough He that keeps the commandments offers an offering of salvation and he that gives alms sacrificeth praise S. Paul Phil. 4. 18. But I have all things and abound I am full having received of Epaphroditus the things that were sent from you an odour of a sweet smell a sacrifice acceptable well pleasing to God So this point is strong enough out of Divine Testimony that communicating good is a Sacrifice I but some will say it is not truly a Sacrifice but Metaphorically and improperly so called But the Answer is easie and yet beyond their expectation that it is more really and truly a Sacrifice than those in the Old Law As the living man is more truly and really a man than the picture of a man or his shadow in a glass It is well known and acknowledged of all true Christians that the service of the Old Law and its Ceremonies are but Types and Shadows of the Righteousness that is required of us Christians under the Gospel So then as the truth of the putting away the old leaven is the purging of our Souls of all malicious wickedness and hypocrisie 1 Cor. 5. 8. So our sacrificing or offering unto God is giving to our Brethren that be in need and not to God who hath no need of any thing I will not reprove thee saith God because of thy sacrifice and burnt-offerings I will take no bullock out of thy stall nor he-goat out of thy fold for all the beasts of the forest are mine and so are the cattle upon a thousand hills I know all the fowls upon the mountains and the wild beasts of the field are in my sight If I be hungry I will not tell thee for the whole world is mine and all that therein is Thinkest thou that I will eat bulls flesh or drink the blood of goats 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sacrifice unto God praise Psal. 50. But what shall we think then that he that professeth his own self-sufficiency so largely in this Psalm that he needs not the Flesh of Bulls or the Blood of Goats that he stands in need of the empty breath of mans mouth a thing so fading and transient that weak puff or perishing blast of man whose very substance is but a vapour a wind that passeth away and cometh not again Is this the change of Worship that God requires Is our vain breath the very Life and Soul of that Body of Moses the Ceremonies of the Old Law Has Aarons melodious Bells given place to sounding Brass or a tinkling Cymbal If good deeds as giving our Goods to the Poor and Body to the Fire if need be without Charity be such a disconsonant and harsh thing before God how will the praise of a wicked Worldling that hath neither inward Charity nor outward Munificency grate the ears of the Almighty But that you may know that this Sacrifice of praise is not a mere Lip-labour let us compare it with that of Ecclesiasticus in the fore-cited place He that gives almes sacrificeth praise And with that of our Saviour Let your light so shine before men that they seeing your good
Pet. 2. 5. And ye as living stones be made a spiritual house and holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Iesus Christ. Ver. 9. You are a chosen generation a royal priesthood And if we consider the qualification of the righteous man the unfeigned Christian we shall find him fit for this employment Who more gracious with God than he Who more loving to men than he Who therefore more fit to make Prayers and Supplications for the People than he That Life which is in him even the Spirit of Christ doth adopt him into an higher Order than the Order of Aaron Or rather Christ whose Spirit of Life is in him is that High-Priest higher than the Order of Aaron A Priest after the Order of Melchizedek A Kingly Priest who officiates in Everlasting Righteousness Here 's a Priest without exception above all commendation worthy all honour and admiration worthy to be heard of God worthy to be obeyed by Men worthy to be attended by Angels worthy to whom all power should be given in Heaven and Earth worthy of that Glorious Throne even the Right-hand of God the Father in the height of Heaven where he makes intercession for us his poor members wandering and toyling in the mire and mud of this wicked earth That vve being redeemed vvith his most precious Blood may be made Kings and Priests to his Father to offer Spiritual Sacrifices and first of all our selves in a sensible apprehension that vve are vvholly from him nothing at all of our selves and then an open and free-hearted love to our Neighbour in acknovvledgment that our fulness is not of our selves but of God And this contains the last and best requisite in that description of a Sacrifice the acknowledgment of our Humane infirmity and the praise and profession of the Divine Majesty HITHERTO we have compared this Christian Sacrifice with the general notion of a Sacrifice We will now see how it fits with the kinds of Sacrifice Which according to the Schoolmens Division are three 1. Sacrificing or slaying of living Creatures which is most properly called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and is the word in my Text. 2. Immolation which is a Sacrifice of inanimate things as of Meal Bread Salt Frankincense and such like Or 3. Libamentum a Drink-offering as of Wine or other liquid things How well some kinds of doing good will agree with that first kind of Sacrifice we should easily understand if we did but rightly apprehend how that the sundry lives of beasts lurk in the bodies of men as in some the Fox in others the Lyon in others the Bull in some one in some other in others many Our Saviour calls Herod Fox S. Paul his Persecutors Lyons So Eccles. 6. Be not proud in the device of thine own mind lest thy soul rend thee as a bull Where there is the living property of a Beast in a man no wonder that the Spirit of Truth that pierceth through the surface of things into the depth of Life calls them by that which they are within not by that which they seem without He therefore that can kill the Oxe the Bull the Goat in any mans Soul that is a stupid laborious toyl in the dirt an high raving unquietness of mind or that goatish nature that brutish sensual lust He that can exhibit these animalities dead before God who is Judge of the Quick and the Dead he offers of the first kind of Sacrifice which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the mortification of some Life that God was displeased with He that doth this either in himself or others doth sacrifice in this kind He that gives his Bread to the hungry sacrificeth an Immolation He that gives his Drink to the thirsty offers a Drink-offering As much as you did it to one of these little ones you did it unto me He that goes about doing good as our Saviour Christ that is He that lives not to himself but according to the Command of God and Example of his Son spends all his time power and ability in diffusing of that good which God hath bestowed on him offers Frankincense Or rather that precious composition of sweet odours which is mentioned Exod. 30. 34 35. And the Lord said unto Moses Take unto thee sweet spices Stacte and Onicha and Galbanum sweet spices with pure Frankincense of each like weight And thou shalt make of it a perfume c. Philo Iudaeus will have these four ingredients to be Emblems of the four general Principles or Elements of which this World consists and the evaporation of this fume to be that acceptable re-ascending of the Creature to God in holy thankfulness and evacuation of it self into that great ocean His words are very significant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a Life saith he well befitting the World to give uncessant thanks to its Father and Maker even quite exhausting it self in a continual ascent and grateful fume and simplifying it self into its Elements that all may see that it hoards up nothing for it self but consecrates it self wholly unto God that made it Such a Sacrifice doth every Microcosm or little World every particular man offer dayly unto God when he spends all his dayes and employes all the strength and faculties of his Soul and Body It is a thankful acknowledgment of what he hath received resunding that goodness that he is partaker of back again to God through those sure conduits or conveiances the poor necessitous Brethren But there is yet another Division of Sacrifices into three kinds as before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So Philo Which our Modern Writers call thus Holocausta Hostias pacificas Hostias pro peccato The reason of this Division Philo thus unfolds The two main and general causes of Sacrificing be these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The latter consists in two things The participation of good and the removing or preventing of evil Hence that Sacrifice that respects the profit of the Sacrificer is twofold A Sin-offering for the preventing the just punishment thereof and a Peace-offering which was either pro beneficio accepto or accipiendo for a benefit received or at least hoped for 1. That the doing or communicating good appertains to the first sort which Philo calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Holocaust which respects merely the Glory of God and not the Profit of the Sacrificer will appear out of places of Scripture concerning this Duty of communicating Let your light so shine before men that they seeing your good works may glorifie your Father which is in heaven Matth. 5. 16. There 's the Honour of God Now that we are not to participate our selves in this but that it be wholly to God and for God a true Holocaust Our Saviour shews Matth. 6. 3. When thou doest thine almes let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth That is We must not have any sinister respect but do it simply in obedience to God and for his Glory Consult
Paul in this present Epistle if so we may happily wind our selves out of this dangerous maze or labyrinth Whereas then he seems to nullifie or vilifie at least the Law in the advancing of that Righteousness that is by Faith Let us see what this Righteousness that is of Faith and what that of the Law is Chap. 2. 19. For I through the law am dead to the law that I might live unto God Ver. 20. I am crucified with Christ Nevertheless I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me I through the law am dead to the law What a riddle is this that the Law should deprive it self of its Disciples And yet it doth so For it is a Schoolmaster to Christ or rather an Usher Which when it hath well tutour'd us and castigated us removes us up higher to be made in Christ perfect who is the perfection of the Law But the Law it self makes nothing perfect And this is the reason that Righteousness is not of the Law And to this purpose speaks the Apostle in this very Epistle Chap. 3. Ver. 21. Is the law then against the promises of God God forbid For if there had been a law given which could have given life verily righteousness should have been by the law 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A Law that could enliven and enquicken us But that is beyond the power of the Law That 's the Title and Prerogative of Christ who is the way the truth and the life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I am the resurrection and the life He that believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live Iohn 11. 25. This therefore is the Righteousness of Faith or Belief far above the Righteousness of the Law or killing Letter Now when this Faith is come we are no longer under that Poedagog of Punie-boys the Low-master But are all the Children of God by Faith in Jesus Christ. And none are the Children of God but those that are led by the Spirit of God as the Apostle witnesseth in his Epistle to the Romans And those that have the Spirit of God what fruits they bring forth is amply set out by the Apostle in this to the Galatians Chap. 5. ver 22 23. But the fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace long-suffering gentleness goodness faith meekness temperance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Against such there is no Law For indeed there is no need of it they being a Law unto themselves So we see how those that are in Christ are not under the Law because their Obedience or that living Law in their Hearts are above it They do really and truly fulfil it through the Spirit that is by Faith For that Spirit is the begetter of Love and Love is the fulfilling of the Law For all the law is fulfilled in one word even in this Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self But if ye bite and devour one another take heed that ye be not consumed one of another This I say then Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh For the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other so that ye cannot do the things that ye would But if ye be led by the spirit ye are not under the law Ver. 14 15 16 17 18. Observe that If you be led by the Spirit For against such there is no Law as was said before Which implies if thou art not led by the Spirit thou art liable to the Curse of the Law to Death Hell and Damnation For so also speaks the Apostle when he hath reckoned up the works of the flesh ver 21. But here methinks I see some filching away an excuse for their own hypocrisie out of some of the foregoing words at the 6th Verse of that 5th Chapter The flesh and the spirit are contrary so that you cannot do that you would I but withal this is true too That if we will that which we do amiss we are then under the Curse of the Law For we are not then led by the Spirit of God but are servants of Sin and Satan We are not then in Christ no more than our bodies at Athens or Carthage but our phansies roving thither For they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts Ver. 24. So we see plainly Beloved that the Righteousness that is of Faith is not a mere Chimaera or phansie but a more excellent Righteousness than that of the Law For the Law is no quickening Spirit but a dead Letter But Christ is the resurrection and the life And he is God our Righteousness mighty to save and can with ease destroy the powers of Death Darkness and the Devil out of the Soul of man But we must have the patience to endure the work wrought in us by him I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me And if we will still cloak and cover our foul corrupt Hearts with forged conceits of Hypocrisies own making and excuse our selves from being good to one another or to our selves because God in Christ is so good to us Hear what the Apostle speaks in the last Chapter of this Epistle for it is now time to draw nearer to my Text Ver. 7 8. Be not deceived God is not mocked for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption But he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting The aim therefore of the Apostle is not to extenuate or discountenance real Vertue and Righteousness but to point us to it and tell us where it may be had Not in Days and Years not in New Moons or Festivals not in Circumcision nor in the dead Letter of the Law But in Christ and the Spirit of God in the renewed Image of God in the New Birth in the New life in the second Adam from Heaven in the New Creature in that stumbling block to all Flesh and Blood in the Cross of Christ. But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross c. THE Text contains briefly the Summ of the whole Discourse we may cast it into these Three parts 1. The Apostles Resolution He will not glory in any thing save in the cross of Christ whereby the man of Sin in his very Soul is crucified and made dead that the Life of Christ may abide in him 2. The Reason of his Resolution Because when a man hath given his name to Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision nor any of the Ceremonial Laws is any thing but a new creature 3. His Benediction or well-wishing to all that walk after the rule i. e. according to the new man that is fram'd in Righteousness and true Holiness the true Israel of God Peace be on them But I will rather fall upon the words themselves And in my passage point out such Observations as shall arise most
in thy Heart and sweetly shine in thee with her mild light Give not thine Anger vent it will be extinct like smothered fire Answer not thy Lust or Lasciviousness and it will cease to call unto thee but dye as a Weed kept under in the ground Dare to do good though thy base heart gainsay it God will look upon thee in pity and repay thee with a more noble Spirit and Covetousness being oft crost will even out of discontent quite leave thee But if thou be false to God and thine own Soul in these things which he hath put in thy power and he hath put the outward man plainly in thy power and neglectest the performance of them and yet doest complain of want of strength thou art in plain English an Hypocrite and the Devil and thy own false heart have deceived thee A man I confess cannot generate himself but he may kill himself So though we cannot regenerate our selves yet we may mortifie our own corruption if we be not wanting to our selves And this is the Cross that we with S. Paul are to bear and to dye upon that when we have suffered and been buried with Christ in this Baptism God may raise us up with him to Life and endue us with his Holy Spirit And this is the New Creature which is spoken of in the next Verse For in Christ Iesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision but a new creature In Christ Iesus i. e. When we have taken upon us the Profession of Christ have been made Members of the Christian Church by Baptism Circumcision availeth nothing And verily there is no reason why it should for it is a badge of Judaism not of Christianism and cannot no not in Judaism do much without the inward Circumcision of the heart and observation of the Commandments of God Rom. 2. 25. to the end For circumcision verily profiteth if thou keep the law But if thou be a breaker of the law thy circumcision is made uncircumcision Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature if it fulfil the law judge thee who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law For he is not a Iew which is one outwardly neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh But he is a Iew which is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter whose praise is not of men but of God And this also was known and propounded to the Iews under the Law Deut. 10. 16. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be not refractory And in Chap. 3. ver 6. And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul that thou mayst live And what else indeed doth God require of thee O man but that thou wouldst love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy strength and thy neighbour as thy self This if thou perform in thy Circumcision thy Circumcision is effectual to thee If thou do not it is but Concision and cutting off a piece of Flesh which God and Nature was not so overseen in making but it might well be left uncut off And if Circumcision without Obedience and an Holy Life availeth them nothing that are under the Law how could it possibly be any thing to us that live under the Gospel But to what purpose is this to us that do not bear the outward Circumcision nor are likely to prove so giddy as to revolt to Judaism Wherefore let us here turn aside awhile from the Circumcision of the Iews to that which is its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that answers to it among us Christians And that is Baptism Will that avail any thing without the New Creature What it may do to Children before they be actually sinful by their own misdeeds I leave to the censure of the Schools to dispute That concerns not us who are past Children were we got as far out of Foolishness as Childishness The Question is how much Baptism availeth us of grown Age without the New Creature Just as much as Circumcision without the keeping of the Law availeth a Iew. Can Water wash without the Spirits operation Doth the Spirit operate and effect nothing Are we suppressors and choakers of the Christian Life that should revive in us and yet stand justified before God Can we kill Christ within us and persist in that obstinate cruelty and yet be clean from the guilt or punishment of so hainous transgression by the sprinkling of that outward Water upon us in Baptism Ah nimiùm faciles qui tristia crimina caedis Flumineâ tolli posse putatis aquâ Foolish and too too credulous men they are indeed that think their being dipt in the Font shall vvash out the deep stain of this so horrible murder Yet there is a Baptism that vvill do it and vvithout it nothing is done It is Mortification If the Murderer dye that is that man of Sin the Old Adam or the blood-red Edom and Christ revive all is vvell Rom. 6 3 4. Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Iesus Christ were baptized into his death Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life Ver. 6 7. Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin For he that is dead is freed from sin Believe it though vve are called to Liberty vve are not invited to Libertinism But our true Liberty or Freedom is to become free from sin So you see that Outvvard Baptism vvithout the Invvard is as little available as Circumcision in the Flesh vvithout that in the Spirit If any here as it is not plainly immaterial ask of the efficacy of the Lords Supper So far it is from doing good vvithout an invvard qualification that it is Poyson to the unvvorthy Receiver or vvorse even Damnation it self as the Apostle vvitnesseth It is the New Creature then only or at least chiefly that a Christian must rest upon sith nothing is available without it The New Creature It is worth the enquiring into what this New Creature is that is of such efficacy and power and worth and price It is no more certainly than the New man Ephes. 4. 22 23 24. That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts And be renewed in the spirit of your mind And that ye put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness that is not in external Ceremonial holiness or outward Sanctimonious show but in the
God The righteous Nation in whom there is no guile As our Saviour saith of Nathanael Behold a true Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile And thus the Psalmist Surely God is good unto Israel even to such as are of an upright heart God continue his Goodness to them and encrease it sevenfold And encrease them in number above the Sands of the Sea and the Stars of Heaven that none may be able to count the dust of Jacob or to number the fourth part of Israel That the Heathen may be swallowed up of them and that the very memorial of wickedness may perish from off the Earth To the King of Saints the Holy one of Israel who inhabits Immortality and the Light inaccessible to the only Wise and All-powerful God be ascribed as is most due all Honour c. DISCOURSE XIII 1 PET. i. 22 23. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently Being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever THE Text is an Exhortation to Christian Love The Duty is enforced from a double Argument 1. From the end of our Sanctification in those words Seeing ye have purified your Souls in obeying the Truth through the Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unto or for unfeigned brotherly love And this ushers in the Precept or Duty Love one another with a pure heart fervently 2. The other Argument follows of no less force than the former which is drawn from the condition of our new Birth Being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever THE several Truths or Doctrines contained in the First Argument are these viz. Doctrine I. That the Christian mans Soul is Purified Purified 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the word synonymous to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both imply a purging or cleansing from filth They are both used together Iames 4. 8. in one signification But yet there is a more special sense belonging to them both they both signifie a Sacred and Ceremonial kind of cleansing and purification and after appropriation to God as Titus 2. 14. where the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with allusion to the Consecration of the Levites Numb 8. and their washing of their Cloths and sprinkling the Water of Purification is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So that the purifying of the Soul in the Text implies cleansing and appropriation But the Objects are not here express'd yet very safely supposed we cannot miss of them if we would For from what should the Soul be purified but from its filth What is the filth of the Soul but Sin To whom should the Soul thus purg'd be appropriated or consecrated To it self It is not purg'd if not purg'd from it self To the Creature It is the height of Impiety palpable Idolatry To Sin It is not Sense To what then but to God its Creator and Redeemer who gave himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he might purifie unto himself a peculiar people Tit. 2. 14. Thus is purified the Christians Soul which is true not only in that narrower sense of taking the Soul but also as it includes the Body or the Beast as the Platonists call it even the very Passions and more fiery motions which those Philosophers resemble to Horses drawing the Chariot of the Soul these also shall be Sanctified So that upon the reins of the Horses if I may speak with Zechary there is inscrib'd Holiness to the Lord. But certainly more properly and chiefly this Purification belongs to the Soul her self and from thence will sink through all the powers and faculties of the Body taking hold of them wielding them and ruling them at its own pleasure or at least not suffering it self to be over-ruled by them Now this purifying of a Christian implies that he was unholy and foul before And not only the whole man but also whole mankind is in this sinful state till wash'd and purified Rom. 3. 12. 1 Ioh. 1. 8 9 10. where we have both these points confirm'd 1. That we all have sinned and stand obnoxious before God 2. That by the worth and merit of Christ and the effectual working of the Divine Spirit we have forgiveness and that God doth cleanse us from all unrighteousness And this is the true Christian Mystery If we be Christians we must be as certainly purified as its certain we were once impure Doct. II. That the Christians Soul is purified in obeying the Truth Here meets us the unwelcome visage of Obedience but with its face turn'd upon a safe object the Truth Where we may note that it is not any Obedience that purifies but the Obedience to the Truth A man may toil like a Mill-horse in a circuir of Ceremonies and outward performances and yet but take his walk with the wicked unless the Truth be obey'd Again it is such a Truth as Obedience belongs to not an high aery speculative Truth not a Truth only to be believed but to be put in practice for we cannot be said properly to obey speculative Truth because the Soul there has no power to resist or disobey For the Devil himself would glady embrace and assent to all pure and inoffensive speculation that doth not touch his own interest and present condition and so would all his and Natures children the most wicked men that are And that the Devil is cast into a fit of trembling at this grand speculative Maxime There is a God is because his quick memory doth presently recollect that he is Just and that himself stands obnoxious to his Justice here is his interest toucht The Truth therefore here meant is not so much those general speculations of the Infinite Power and Wisdom of God the Incomprehensible Trinity c. which both good and bad men do easily spend their time in and promiscuously believe and yet sit securely upon their lees their hearts being untoucht unbroken unstir'd But the Truths which we are said most properly to obey are the Practical Truths such as Matth. 5. Chap. 16. 24. Chap. 11. ult Chap. 7. 13. c. The Purification of a Christian is in obedience to such Truths and Christ admits none for his that be disobedient workers of iniquity Matth. 7. 23. Doct. III. That the purified and obedient Soul is thus purged and obedient through the Spirit This is he of whom Malachi 3. 2 3. But who may abide the day of his coming and who shall stand when he appeareth for he is like a refiners fire and like fullers sope And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver and he shall purifie the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness We having then so powerful a Purifier what hinders but the Christian
This last is chiefly the Word The other but dead signs or shadows of it differing as much from this as a picture of a man from a living man nay much more as much at least as the shadow of the Garland hanging on a Sign-post and projected on the ground differs from the best Wine in the Inne The Word spoken perisheth with the speaking Vox audita perit The written Word is indeed longer-liv'd but Paper and Ink is not incorruptible and immortal For the heavens shall melt away with a noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burnt up 2 Pet. 3. 10. The Word of God then is safe no where but in his own bosom cypher'd within himself in his own mind This is his eternal Wisdom and incorruptible Word the only incorruptible Seed Preaching and hearing and reading and discoursing they may be a kind of plowing or harrowing or some such piece of Husbandry But it is an hand out of the Clouds that sets this Seed of everlasting Life in our hearts Those are but some hungry talk of the best dishes or spreading the table This is the real food Those but a note under the Physitians hand This is the very Physick that restores to health Doct. IV. That this Word of God which is the Seed of the Soul is a living and everlasting Word This Word is no other than the inward Word of God which is his first-born Son the everlasting Wisdom of the Father which sat in Counsel with him when he made the World Prov. 8. Iohn 1. This Second Hypostasis is so acknowledged by the Heathen to be everlasting they make it to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first Life That it is a living Word we have an ample testimony Heb. 4. 12 13. For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joynts and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do Can these Attributes be given to any dead letter or any transient hand Can Words or Writings be so penetrating as to divied asunder the Soul and Spirit c. 'T is true Authors both Divine and Profane give very quick operations to the Words of the Tongue Prov. 25. 15. By long forbearing is a prince perswaded and a soft tongue breaketh the bone Psal. 57. 4. My soul is among lions and I lie even among them that are set on fire even the sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword Psal. 64. 3. Who whet their tongue like a sword and bend their bows to shoot their arrows even bitter words And in Homer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to speak words that cut to the heart But for this consider that it is not the words that do then so wound the mind as the mind launceth it self and plagues it self by those unruly phantasms she then occasionally creates in her self upon such speeches One man being jear'd at a Comedy bears himself so carelesly and jollily that he walks cross the stage that all the people may take notice that he was the man that was so abused Another so used goes home and hangs himself which is a sure experiment to prove that it is not words but the Souls own thoughts that so wound and scorch her self Words of themselves are but empty shells and husks and can give no greater blow than the shadow of Hercule's Club lifted up in the Sun nor can no more administer comfort than an Ivy-bush can quench our thirst Wherefore it is plain that 't is the Soul her self that creates these joys or disturbances in things Natural or Moral But in real Conversion to God in unfeigned Repentance in the New Birth as the Letter or outward Word is excluded as has been cleared so the Soul her self is excluded as being unable to regenerate her self therefore what is left but God himself by his living Word That 's the immediate cause of Conversion and Regeneration the other but occasions If not there is no supernatural act at all in Conversion and Regeneration Again this Word of God is said to be a discerner of the thoughts c. all which are manifest Properties of Life Compareing therefore this place of the Hebrews with the Text it is plain that there is a living and everlasting Word and that that Word is meant in both these places And if so then it s the same with S. Iohns words In him was life and the life was the light of men THUS much for the Doctrines or Truths which are as so many enforcements to the great Duty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The substance of the Duty is mutual Love which is charged with a double modification viz. of quality 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and of quantity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which implies extension and is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or intension and is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Again this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or extension is either in reference to the object or else duration and implies an universal Love and continued But no English word will fully answer to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Therefore our Interpreters have been forc'd to make use but of one of these senses fervently And they have with more judgment pitcht upon the sense of intension than extension because that intension in some measure implies extension but not è contra for that which is ex gr very hot has also a further extended sphear of calefaction and doth last longer hot than that which is at first but more remisly heated as is manifested in heated Irons To make any subtle disquisition of the nature of Love is not much to the purpose Every one knows what it is to love himself how he is affected towards himself Let him but transfer that affection which he is so sensible of in himself to his Neighbour and the Duty is done more substantially and completely than all Scholastical definitions and curious circumscriptions can be able to set it out Be so affected to other men as you would they should be to you or as you are affected to your self This is the Law and the Prophets THE Incitements to this Duty are many But I will confine my self to the Text and cull out some three As 1. From the Seed of the New Birth For what is this Seed but the Son of God by union with whom we also become the Sons of God petty Deities But sith that the Deity it self is nothing else but a sufficient and overflowing Goodness creating all things and sustaining them from no other principle than the Spirit of Goodness though we cannot act as this absolute Deity yet we may will according
out the meaning of the latter words of my Text They ate the Offerings of the dead that is Offerings offered to dead men departed this life Est honor tumulis animas placare paternas Ovid. Fast. This piece of Superstition exhibited by Ninus to his Father Belus descended to his Posterity and over-spread that Country he being not a private Person but Lord of a Kingdom This worshipping of the Dead by Prayers and Sacrifices is as commonly known as ordinary School-books There 's a large description of these Rites in Homers Odyssees Where after three Libations or Drink-offerings of Wine and Honey of Wine of Water and Meal which were poured into a ditch of a cubit wide with promise of a further Sacrifice a barren Cow and a black Wether with a present immolation of Beast then prepared for Sacrifice upon the running down of the black Blood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 straight there were gathered together by whole flocks from out of Erebus the Souls of dead deceased Cardan also writes of Adrian that he erected a Temple and Oracle instituted Priests and Rites for his execrable Catamite Antinous when he was dead This is the Superstition of Necromancy Which tho' the Israelites aimed not at in their Sacrificing to the Ghost of Belus yet is their Idolatry as little if not less excusable For the end of the Necromancer is knowledge of future things or things past that lie hid The drift of the Israelites was the accomplishment of their wicked Lust their committing of Whoredom with the Daughters of Moab But more light than from any profane Writer may we gather out of the Book of Wisdom Chap. 14. A father afflicted with untimely mourning when he hath made an image of his child soon taken away now honoureth him as a God which was then a dead man and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and sacrifices Thus in process of time an ungodly custom grown strong was kept as a law and graven images were worshipped by commandment of Kings Here we see a Father making an Image for his Child and Deifying him with Ceremonies and Sacrifices Which makes Venerable Bedes opinion of the Childs Deifying the Father Ninus his erecting an Image in honour of his Father Belus sufficiently probable So an ungodly Custom got the strength of a Religious Law among the Children of Moab As also that among the Latins from the first Example of AEneas Ille Patris genio solennia dona ferebat Hinc populi ritus edidicere pios Ovid. Fast. Lib. 2. Where patris Genius may be very well for Anima patris the Soul of his Father or his Fathers Ghost as Hesiod also terms the Souls of them that dyed in the Golden Age 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is Genii in Latin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These be Genii Plutarch restricts it not to the Golden Age but speaks at large 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Souls freed from their Bodies become Genii according to Hesiod So Plutarch and he venters to shew how they be affected with things here below They love to be abettors though not actors as old men who have left off the more youthful sports love to set the younger sort to their games and exercises and to look on and encourage them as he expresseth it in his de Genio Socratis Maximus Tyrius doth endeavour at large to prove that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Genii be nought but the Souls of men who are occupied much what in such employments as they were in the flesh And Xenocrates in Aristotles Topicks makes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all one even when it is in the Body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As Xenocrates saith He 's happy that hath a good Soul for the Soul is the Genius of every one But I have not bestowed all this pains for a Distich in Ovid. If we be perswaded of the Identity of the Souls of the departed and Genii or Spirits way is made to that in S. Basil where he describes the nature of Sacrificing to these Genii Daemones or Souls of the deceased they being all one or little difference being betwixt them Which will be further confirmed if we consider that even all the Deities of the Heathen as Iupiter Mars Sol Luna and the rest have been Men upon earth as the Egyptians witness in Diodorus Sicalus from whence the Graecians had their Numina as the Egyptians contend and is not improbable Insomuch that we shall scarce find any Daemones or Daemonia among the Heathen but the Souls of them that have departed this life to whom Sacrifice hath been offered Statues Temples and Stars have been bestowed upon them as in that Story of Adrian and Antinous whom he placed also among the Stars the Constellation next the Eagle bears his name as all the Planets the names of men once here upon earth as I intimated out of Diodorus But to come at length to S. Basil out of whom we shall understand more fully this eating of the Sacrifices of the dead or of the Daemones or Daemonia The Statue consecrated to any Daemonium or Genius hath the assistence saith he of the Genii or Daemonia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. For as hungry dogs haunt the shambles where blood and gore use to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So the lickersome Daemonia seeking the enjoyment of the blood and nidour of the Sacrifices frequent the Altars and Statues consecrated to them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hence it is that the Apostle saith That they that eat things consecrated to Idols partake of the table of the Daemonia or Genii Or as was probably inferr'd before the Souls of the dead according to their apprehension For it is more incident to Natural Reason to think that the Souls of the departed men being rather forced out of their Bodies by fatal necessity than willingly following the call of Nature that they should delight rather in such provision as men can make them than those that we conceive never to have stooped so low as the descent into the flesh And so whatsoever S. Basil speaks of the Daemonia Natural Reason to be more prone to conceive of the Souls of the departed and accordingly to have provided for them in that worship they did to them So that they that have been joined to Baal-Peor that is that have been initiated into that Religion have worshipped the Soul of Belus and have been partakers of his Table eaten of the same Flesh with him accordingly as S. Basil explains the Daemonia And nor Reason nor Scripture nor the Mysteries of Nature do any thing clash against this II. BUT now that Israel was initiated into those Rites of Peor is manifest out of Numb 25. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Initiatusque est Israel Beelphegor Or as the Hebrew hath it Et adjunxit se Israel Baal-Peor But that we may see the abomination of this act more fully
this Resurrection of the Soul is I will also endeavour to satisfie you in that too but very briefly It is the inward Life of Righteousness it is the renewing of the Soul the shaping of it again into the image and similitude of God in a word it is the Life or Spirit of Christ whereby a mans Soul is alive to all Spiritual and Heavenly things I will explain it by a comparison When a mans Natural Life is gone all his imaginations and machinations perish He desires not any thing belonging to this Natural Life nor Food nor Clothing he feels not though his Body be rent or cut or rot away goes not about to preserve or recover the Health or Life of his dead Body thinks not of Wife nor Children nor any Natural thing else But when a man is alive according to Nature he desires Food Meat and Drink for the preservation of his Natural Life Cloths both for shelter and ornament is sensible of what hurts his living Body provides for his Health and Strength is active in the deeds of Nature and if he be a mere Natural man all his joy pleasure and content is in the same Just thus it is Beloved in the Death and Life of the Soul While the Soul is dead Spiritually it hath no true desire to the Word of God which is the Food of the Soul but doth come to the Church only for fashion sake gives no ear to the Voice of God rebuking her in her Conscience hath no unfeigned thirst after Righteousness nor is she sensible of the violent heat of Passion how wicked it is nor feels her self frozen and stark cold to all Charity and due Devotion she goes not about to obtain that saving Health even Jesus Christ that precious Balsam of the Soul nor is she a whit moved whatever mischief betides him But when the Soul hath risen from this Death and hath got the new Life of Christ being enquickened by his Spirit Then hath she a right healthful appeal to that Heavenly Bread and those Spiritual Waters those Refreshments from above the sweet Comforts of the Holy Ghost Then doth she heartily abhor all filth of Sin and keeps her Affections unspotted before her Lord and Husband Jesus Christ clothed in fine Linnen pure and white which is the Righteousness of the Saints Then is the living Law of God to her sweeter than the Honey and the Honey-comb so delightful and pleasant that she meditates thereon day and night She is very sensible of whatsoever is disgraceful to Christ or wounds or hurts his precious Body in any thing very tenderly loves the Communion of Saints and hath a very forward desire to propagate and enlarge the true and living Church of God She never falls by any infirmity or surprisal but is grieved and hurt as the Natural man is vexed when his Body chanceth to fall upon stones and is bruised Beloved where there is Life there is also Sense and where there in Sense there is also Grief and Joy Grief at such things as are contrary or destructive of the Life and Joy at such things as are agreeable and healthful for the same BY this time I hope you are sufficiently instructed concerning the Spiritual Resurrection both that it is and what it is Let us now make some Vses of this Doctrine That there is a Spiritual Resurrection belonging to every true Christian. 1. Then it is plain from hence That every Christian be he what he will that hath been made partaker of this Resurrection was once dead himself For as rising presupposeth a being down first so doth also a rising from death or being quickened presuppose a being dead Hence therefore it is plain That every Christian man or if you will even every man or was once or is at this present Spiritually dead Now the Nature of Death you know is such that nothing that is held therewith nothing that is Dead can recover it self to Life As it is also said in the Book of Psalms No man hath quickened his own Soul Wherefore Beloved this is the proper Vse we can make of this Consideration That if we find the fruits of the Resurrection of Christ Spiritually in our Souls we give God alone the Glory For it is he alone that killeth and maketh alive that leadeth down to Hell and bringeth up again He it is that is the death of deaths and a mighty destruction to the destroyer He it is that is the Resurrection and the Life as he himself witnesseth of himself He it is I mean the Spirit of Christ in us that fights against all the powers of Death and Darkness in our Souls and triumpheth gloriously over his and our enemies He is the strong arm of Salvation from God He hath wrought all our works in us Therefore not to us but unto God be the praise for his mercy and truths sake Nor only are we to praise God but also to live humbly and meekly before our Neighbour For thou whoever thou art that presumest thou hast attained to the Resurrection or enquickening or enlivening of the Spirit of Christ If hereby thou contemnest thy sinful Brother and settest him at nought and art not mercifully and kindly affected toward all men acknowledging very sensibly and inwardly that wherewith thou conceivest thy self to excel others or to be distinguished from them to be the Grace of God and his free work Thou art a lyar and a deceiver and jugglest with God and thine own Soul and art vainly puffed up in thy Carnal Mind For where Pride is there is not the saving Spirit of Christ where harshness of Mind is and contempt of our Neighbour there abides not the Love of God 2. If men be dead till they partake of the Resurrection of Christ then such neither can nor ought to take upon them any office of the living Who will make a Blind man judge of Colours or a Sick man of Tasts or a Deaf man of Musick But he that is Dead is worse than Sick or Blind or Deaf Wherefore no man that is devoid of the Resurrectiod of Christ in the Spirit is fit to judge in Spiritual things or in the secret Mysteries of God It is the Spiritual man that judgeth all the Heavenly man the Lord from Heaven and yet with man upon Earth the true Emanuel God with us and in us by his Spirit the true Judge of the Quick and the Dead As it is written The first man is of the earth earthly the second man is the Lord from heaven As is the earthly such are they that are earthly and as is the heavenly such are they that are heavenly Wherefore Beloved judge nothing before the time that is till the coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus till his glorious appearing from Heaven when he shall make every work of man manifest and shall judge with right judgment 3. I will only add an Vse of Examination and so conclude Is there such a State of the Soul belonging to every