dead Earth into Herbs and Flowers Such a wind is this Spirit that gives life to every one that comes into the world for he is the Spirit of Life Rom. viii 2. But that which adds somewhat still to the fuller glory of these effects and must not be pass'd without a note is that 't is Spirit still this wind blows still For however the winds are not always in a noise and bustle yet some spirit of air there is that moves in the deepest stillness Spiritus there is always though not ventus some tender breeze though no gale of wind there is always stirring And if there were not continually some such sweet breathings of the Holy Spirit upon us when those strong and louder blasts seem to be lull'd asleep we were but dead men and might sleep for ever but such there are and we live by them I might but I will not add any more to the Effects either of the Wind or of the Spirit I pass on to their Course and Compass to shew you how far their effects and powers reach The Wind bloweth where it listeth and the Spirit where he willeth And here I must tell you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vbi vult is a large circuit Vbi is where and Vbi is when and Vult is what you will especially when 't is his who worketh all things according to the counsel of his will Ephes. i. 11. So that 't will be no stretching to say either of the Wind or of the Spirit that it bloweth 1. Where it lists and 2. How it lists and 3. As much as it lists and 4. On whom it lists and 5. When it lists 1. The Wind blows where it lists on this side or on that side or on any side any where and every where The Spirit does so too only with more propriety to Vbi vult doing out of the liberty of its own will what the wind only does out of the subtilty of its nature No place lies exempted from the power of his will It finds St. Paul and Silas in the prison and blows up the organs of their voices into Songs and Hymns It finds Manasses in the dungeon blows there with his wind and the waters flow out of his eyes It finds St. Matthew at the receipt of Custom and blows him out of a Publican into an Apostle It blows St. Peter and St. Andrew out of their Boat to the stern of the Church of Christ. He blows upon some in their journey as upon St. Paul upon others at home as upon Cornelius upon one in the bed upon another at the Mill upon Ionas in the Whales belly No place beyond his compass not the Isles of the Gentiles not the land of Vz not the Deserts of Arabia Here and there even amongst them he blows some into his Kingdom In a word no chamber so secret but it can get into no place so remote but it can reach none so private but it can find none so strong but it can break through none so deep but it can fathom none so high but it can scale no place at all but it can come into and none so bad but some way or other it will vouchsafe to visit It makes Holy David cry out as in an extasie Psal. cxxxix 6. Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit or Whether shall I go then from thy Presence If I climb up into Heaven thou art there if I go down to Hell thou art there also If I take the wings of the morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the earth even there also shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me No place it seems in Heaven or Earth or Sea or Hell it self can hold him out Nor can any hold him to this or that way of working neither for He bloweth 2. How he lists sometimes louder sometimes softer sometimes after this manner sometimes after that He raises new inclinations or he cherishes the old He changes the tempers of men or disposes them He removes opportunities of doing ill or he propounds opportunities of doing good he scares us with threats or allures us with promises he drives us with judgments or he draws us with mercies he inflames us within or he moves us from without which way soever it pleases him No wind so various in its blowing Different ways he has to deal with divers men and diversities of gifts he has for them too differences of Administrations diversities of Operations 1 Cor. xii 5. To one he gives the word of wisdom to another the word of knowledge to another faith to another the gift of healing to another the working of miracles to another prophesie to another discerning of spirits to another divers kinds of tongues to another the interpretation of tongues all from the Spirit says the Apostle in the forecited Chapter Nor was this only for those times He still breaths diversities of gifts and graces as he pleases On some sanctifying graces on others edifying On others both To some he gives a cheerful to others a sad spirit to some a kind of holy lightness to others a religious gravity to one a power wholly to quit the World to another power to stand holy in it to one an ability to rule to another a readiness to obey to one courage to another patience to a third temperance and so to others other graces as he thinks fittest 3. Yet of these gifts to some more to some less not to all alike nay not to the same person always alike neither but 3. as much only as this Spirit will All have not faith alike nor hope alike nor charity alike nor courage alike nor patience alike neither all vertues nor any vertues all alike Upon some the abundance of the Spirit dwells upon others he breaths only some have had exstasies others but only moderate breathings Eliah had abundance of the Spirit yet Elisha has it doubled 2 Kings ii 9. And yet this very same Elisha that presently upon it divides Iordan with the wind of a Mantle and restores waters to their sweetness and earth to its fruitfulness by a cruse of Salt 2 Kings ii 21. in but the very next Chapter cannot so much as prophesie without a Minstrel ver 15. is not so much as in a disposition to receive this divine Spirit without the help of an Instrument of Musick to rally his spirits into harmony and order St. Paul who was but even now caught up into the third Heavens 2 Cor. xii 1. feels by and by such a thorn in the flesh ver 7. that of all that great extraordinary proportion he has no more left him than a poor pittance a mere sufficiency ver 9. 4. And the Person is as much in his own power as the measure is He blows not only what but upon whom he will He is no mans debtor Rom. xi 35. He will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy Rom. ix 18. What
if He to shew his justice will no longer breath upon some persons who have so long despised his mercy and yet to make known the riches of his glory will yet breath somewhat longer upon others that for ought we know may have deserv'd as little Who can complain seeing he blows sufficiently upon all and is not obliged either in justice or mercy to do more but justly may do all where or upon whom he will One Vbi there is behind He is free also for his own time for he 5. bloweth when he listeth Upon some in the womb as upon St. Iohn Baptist upon others in the Cradle upon some in their child-hood upon others in their youth upon others not till gray-hairs cover them In the morning at the third the sixt the ninth hour in the evening in the still of night in our sleep and when we are awake are all his times as he pleases to make them or dispose them In prosperity in adversity in the midst of tears or in the midst of smiles in health in sickness whensoever it pleases him He call'd Samuel in his childhood David in his youth St. Paul in his manhood Manasses in his age and that which without contradiction shews the unlimittedness of his power the Thief upon the Cross. I shall dismiss this Point if you please to take home with you these Corollaries or Lessons hence 1. If the Spirit bloweth where it listeth Wâ— are not certainly to exclude any place or Nation from these blessed gales or with the Donatists to confine him to any corner of the world or to the Church or Congregation we are of as if he could blow no where else Learn Charity 2. If the Spirit bloweth How he listeth We do but shew our folly to prescribe him his way He knows what best he has to do how best to mannage us to Salvation Learn Discretion 3. If it be as much too only as he lists 'T is not sure our merit or desert if we have more of him than others nor perhaps their demerit always who have less Whatever it is 't is more than we deserve both they and we Let that suffice to humble us and make us thankful Learn Humility 4. If it be only upon Whom he pleases 'T is certainly sometimes upon some we know not So we have no reason to pass a censure upon any mans soul. Learn to think well of all And so much the rather in that 5. he bloweth When he will If he has not already he may hereafter breath upon him or her thou doubtest most If thou perhaps thy self feel'st him not within thee now thou may'st ere long Learn hence to despair neither of thy self nor any one else In a word seeing all his actions are so free all his blessings and all the ways of them so wholly in his own breast Let us all resign up all our wills to his and submit them wholly to his pleasure for time and place and manner and measure and bid him do with us what he pleases Yet for all this Would we not now willingly know somewhat of these mysterious and stupendous operations There is somewhat I confess towards it in the next Point and I shall shew you it that though you cannot perfectly discern the motions of the Spirit you may yet hear the sound thereof that 's the third General of the Text the plainess of the sound both of the Wind and of the Spirit easie enough both of them to be heard And thou hearest the sound thereof III. For the Wind I need not tell you it it speaks loud enough sometimes to wake the drowsiest sleeper though we cannot see it we can hear it And so we may the Spirit too as invisible as he is Now two sounds there are of the Spirit An Outward and an Inward They that heard the Patriarchs the Prophets and Apostles preach they heard the outward so in St. Stevens case the Iews are said to resist the Spirit by which he spake Acts vi 10. They that now hear them read or preacht they still hear the sound of the Spirit For so Christ tells us It is not they the Prophets and the Apostles that speak but the Spirit that speaketh in them St. Matth. x. 20. The inward sound of the Spirit is to be heard too When thou perceivest pious and godly motions rise within thee when at any time good desires come upon thee when holy resolutions spring up within thy bosom when thou feelest thy soul overspread with heavenly light and the divine truth preaching to thine understanding then thou hearest the inward sound then this Holy Spirit begins to discourse and converse with thee And truly though none of these be properly sounds but only metaphorical yet they are plain expressions of the Spirit and may well go for the sounds of it to discern it by Yet that you may not mistake false sounds for true ones if you recollect what has been spoken scatteredly already in the discourse of the Nature Operations and Effects of the Spirit you will easily find the true ones to be these If the motion that at any time within us be pure and heavenly calm and gentle if it purifie our hearts if it cleanse our affections if it penetrate the bones and marrow if it cool the feavers of our lusts if it blow out the coals of our wrath if it blow down the fortresses of sin if it blow up good resolutions if it blow away the dust that hangs too often upon our good actions the interests and by respects if it refresh the wounded spirit if it warm us with holy flames if it quicken us to all obedience to God and Man if it cause the the fruits of the Spirit the Apostle speaks of Gal. v. to bud up in us then 't is doubtless from this Spirit and they are all as so many several kinds of sounds that loudly speak his being and breathing in us Whatever motion sound or language is not consonant to one or other of these let men talk of the Spirit what they will they are not of the Spirit in the Text nor does it make them spiritual men that have it Thus far our knowledge of the Spirit extends these are the sounds it makes within and without us But our ignorance of it extends further More of it there is that we know not than that we know for notwithstanding all this deciphering of the nature effects and sound of the Wind or Spirit The Obscurity of the course it takes and the Motion it moves in is far greater for thou canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth Nor wind nor spirit IV. For the Wind first They are but general notions we entertain of it God brings the winds out of his treasure says the Psalmist cxxv 7. Out of those hidden chambers they come but where those chambers are we cannot tell On a suddain they arise ere we are aware and away they go and who can follow them Who
the Spirit appears but why the Spirit appears now now first and not before now first visibly to the world is worth enquiry And 't is to shew the preheminence of the Gospel above the Law That stood only in meats and drinks and divers washings and carnal ordinances says the Apostle Heb. ix 10. was but the Law of a carnal Commandment Heb. vii 16. The Gospel is a Law of spirit and life the Law of Moses a dead a killing Letter but the Gospel of Christ a quickning Spirit 2 Cor. iii. 6. the Law a course of shadows the Gospel only the true light It will appear so by the next Particular we are to handle the manner of his appearing In tongues in cloven tongues in tongues as it were of fire I shall invert the order for the fire it is that gives light unto the tongues to make them for to appear of the fire then first to shew them the better For the Spirit to appear as wind or breath is nothing strange It carries them in its name Spiritus à spirando every one can tell you But that this breath should not only blow up a fire but be it self also blown into it the Spirit here appear as fire that 's somewhat hard at first perhaps to understand Yet you shall see many good reasons for it Four great ones I shall give you which comprehend more under them 1. To shew the Analogy and correspondence of Gods dealings and dispensations how they agree both with themselves and with one another 2. To insinuate to us the nature and condition of the holy Spirit 3. To signifie the several gifts and graces of it 4. To declare its operations also and effects 1. The Holy Ghost here appear'd like fire that we might see it is the same God that gave both Law and Gospel the same Spirit in both Testaments The Law was promulgated by fire Exod. xix 18. the Lord descended on Mount Sinai then in fire The Gospel also here is first divulged by tongues as it were of fire in Mount Sion The difference only is that there were here no lightnings thunders clouds or smoke as there were there nothing terrible nothing dark or gloomy here all light and peace and glory 2. Under the Old Testament the Prophets oft were Commissionated by fire to their Offices the Angel takes a live coal from off the Altar and lays it upon Isaiah's mouth Isa. vi 7. Elijah the Prophet stood up as fire Ecclus. xlviii 1. Ezekiels first Vision was of appearances of fire Ezek. i. 4 13. The Commissions therefore of the Apostles were drawn here also as it were with pens of fire that they might the more lively answer and the better express the Spirit of the Prophets 3. That the nature of the Law they were to preach might be exprest too It was the Law of love and the holy fire of Charity was it they were sent to kindle in the World 4. It was to teach them what they were to expect in the World themselves fire and faggot affliction and tribulation the lot and portion both of them and of their followers ever since 5. It was to teach them what they were to be burning and shining lights to lead others into heaven Lastly That so all righteousness Law and Prophets might be fulfilled the types of the one and the promises of the other from the first of them to the last to St. Iohn Baptists that they should be baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire that the fire that Christ came to send into the earth and was then already kindled might now burn out into the World And all this to shew the Almighty Wisdom who thus agreeably orders all his doings from the first unto the last that we might with the greater confidence embrace the Doctrine of the Gospel which so evenly consented with the Law and was added only to bring it to perfection to raise up the fire of devotion and charity to the height 2. But not only to manifest the wisdom of the Father and perform the promise of the Son but secondly to intimate the nature of the holy Spirit Fire is the purest Element The holy Spirit is pure and incorruptible thine incorruptible Spirit says the Wise man Wisd. xii 1. No evill can dwell with it It will not mingle with humane interests By this you may know it from all other Spirits They intermix with private humours and self-respects and great ones fancies The holy Spirit is a fire and will not mix it must dwell alone has not a tongue now for this and then for that to please men and ease it self but is always pure and incorrupt Fire 2. is the subtilest Element it pierces into every part And whither can I go then from thy Spirit says holy David Psal. cxxxix 6. If I climb up into heaven thou art there If I go down to hell thou art there also If I take the wings of the morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the Sea even there also will it find me out Darkness cannot cover me thick darkness cannot hide me night it self cannot conceal me from thee O thou divine Spirit O keep me therefore that I may do nothing that may make me ashamed and hide my self seeing thy eyes will quickly pierce into me 3. Fire is an active nature always stirring always moving Nothing can be found better to express the nature of the holy Spirit It mov'd from the beginning actuated the first matter into all the shapes we see breath'd an active principle into them all renew'd again the face of the Earth when the waters had defaced it blows and the waters flow blows again and dries them up guides the Patriarchs inspires the Prophets rests upon the Governours of the People from Moses to the seventy Elders gives spirit and courage to the Martyrs Non permanebit spiritus meus in vagina says God Gen. vi My Spirit will not endure to be always as in a rusty sheath it will be lightning the understanding it will be warming the affections it will be stirring of the passions it will be working in the heart it will be acting in the hand it will be moving in the feet it will be quickning all the powers to the service of the Almighty nothing so busie as this holy fire nothing so active as this Spirit Though the nature and essence of it cannot be full exprest it is thus very powerfully resembled 3. The gifts of it more easily by this fire Seven there are numbred of them out of Isa. xi 2. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding the Spirit of counsel and ghostly strength the Spirit of knowledge and true godliness and the Spirit of holy fear all very naturally represented to us by so many properties I shall observe to you of the fire Fire it ascends it penetrates it tries it hardens it enlightens it warms it melts You have all these again in the seven gifts of the Spirit For 1. the holy Spirit
which good and evil move on their courses I begin to examine St. Peters desire under a threefold consideration Of a man of a sinful of an humble man For all these St. Peter at this time was capable of and in which of these he speaks most feelingly will be perhaps anon the quere and how far they may pertain to us be used or not used by us will be the business we are to speak of If we take all we are sure to be right Then first of the desire as it is that of man or humane nature considered simply in its own imperfection unable to bear the presence of a supernatural honour Nature sometimes desires God to depart from it It loves not to be forced out of its course to be screw'd up beyond it self Miracles are burthens to Nature and however it be ready to serve the will of the Supreme Mover yet when it is diverted from its own way and strain'd to a service or quickness with which its innate slowness is unacquainted it does even by its hasting back to its old wont in a manner desire to be freed from the present command of its great Controuler 'T is so with man who being of a corruptible make cannot endure the presence of an incorruptible Essence Angels and Spirits bring affrightment to it when they come we are terrified at the presence of an Angel though he bring us nothing but tidings of the greatest joy Nay if we do but think we see a Spirit as the Disciples did when it was was no other than their beloved Master we are wholly frighted and amazed There is so great a distance between our corrupt Mortality and their immortal conditions that we desire not to see them Yea the body it self is so little delighted with the presence of its own best companion the incorruptible soul though it enjoy all its beauty and vigour by it that by continual reluctances against it and perpetually throwing off the commands of it and so daily withdrawing its imaginations from the thoughts of or converse with that nobler part it seems to wish it gone rather than to be bound to that observance which the presence of that divine parcel requires at our hands And if it fare no better with these natures of Angels and our own Spirits which are nearer mortality and imperfection and have more affinity to us and full natural engagements upon us because their excellencies breed either a kind of envy or terrour to us that we in a manner say to those that we cannot sunder from us our very souls go away trouble us not with these spiritual businesses how is it otherwise likely than that we should be ready to avoid the presence of that eternal Purity in whose sight our best purities cannot stand at all We love not to see our own imperfections that makes us unwilling to endure the presence of any thing that shews us them Now the divine excellencies above all the rest being that which by its exactness discovers the most insensible blemishes we labour with you cannot wonder that a creature so much in love with it self should desire the removal of that whose neerness of much debases it Nor is this all there is terrour besides at the approach of the Almighty When God drew near to his People upon the Mount and the People saw the thundrings and lightnings and the noise of the Trumpet and the mountain smoaking conceiving him to be at hand whose voice is terrible as the thunder at whose presence the mountains smoke they removed and stood afar off Exod. xx 18. And ver 19. they said unto Moses speak thou with us and we will hear but let not God speak with us lest we die Thus at least entreating God to withdraw somewhat farther from them even lest they should die for fear if he should come nearer them We cannot always say such desires are orderly and good yet such there are we may say in the best created nature Indeed we commonly desire what is worst for us as if we knew not our own good or did not study it Certainly Gods company can do us no harm In his presence is life says the Psalmist yet say we we die if we see him In him we live and move and have our being says the Apostle Acts xvii 28. yet say we if He come to nigh us or depart not from us we shall be no more Thus our thoughts and desires run counter to him Nay there is a Generation that the Prophet complains of that say plainly unto the Lord depart from us Isa. xxx 11. We will have none of thy Laws we desire not thy Precepts thy Word is a burthen to us thy solemn Worship we cannot away with we are weary of thy Sacraments we are sick of thy Truth thy Priests are a trouble to us thy Holy Days take too much time from us thy Holy Service and thy Holy Things they are too chargeable for us take them away and depart from us we will have none of them any longer This is more than the voice of Natures imperfection 't is the voice of sin and rebellion added to it but take we heed lest while we thus thrust God from us he go indeed and come no more go away and leave us in perpetual sin darkness and discomfort It may please God peradventure to construe what we have done hitherto as the rash hasty words only of affrighted or disturbed Nature not knowing which way to turn it self upon a sudden being amazed at the things that we know not how are come to pass in these days but if we shall persist to desire him to depart which of all sins has most unthankfulness and impiety I may add Atheism also in it he will go and he will not return then shall we seek him early but we shall not find him We shall seek him sighing and weeping and mourning as we go but we shall not find him we shall eat of the fruit of our own way and be filled with our own devices but we shall see him no more for ever then shall we beg for what we have rejected but he will not hear us he is departed from us and will not come again Thus it was not St. Peters desire He was not tired with Christs company nor glutted with it as the Israelites with their despised Manna only Christ by shewing a Miracle had so amazed his wits that he knew not how on a sudden to recollect his Spirits to entertain so great and holy a Guest does therefore not well considering what to say desire him to divert a little some whither else where he might be more honourably entertain'd or to stand off a while and give him breath that he might recover his Spirits and be able more worthily to entertain him But there was somewhat else which made St. Peter so express himself He was not only sensible of his mortal lot but of his sinful condition tion too Thus we are 2. to
known It were strange to hear of equity or civility or modesty or moderation that could not be seen ridiculous to call him merciful or equitable that shews it not by some condescension to stile him civil whose behaviour is nothing less him modest who shews nothing but immodesty him meek who expresses nothing but fury and impatience These are vertues we must needs see where e're they be It is reported of S. Lucian the Martyr that he converted many by his modest cheerful and pious look and carriage and of S. Bernard that In carne ejus apparebat gratia quaedam spiritualis c. There appeared a kind of spiritual grace throughout his body there shone a heavenly brightness in his face there darted an Angelical purity and Dove-like simplicity from his eyes so great was the inward beauty of his inward man that it poured out it self in his whole outward man abundantly over all his parts and powers No motion in them but with Reason and Religion Where such vertue is it will be known must be too must so be exprest that men may know and feel the benefits and effects 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let your moderation speak for you whose servants you are what Lord you are under what is your expectation and your faith 3. Nor is it thirdly enough to have it known to one or two to a few or to the houshold of faith alone To all men says the Apostle Iew and Gentile Friend and Foe Brethren and Strangers the Orthodox and Hereticks good and bad Christian and Infidel Condescend to men of low estate the very lowest says our Apostle Rom. xii 16. Provide things honest in the sight of all men ver 17. live peaceably with all men ver 8. do all possible to live so having your conversation honest among the Gentiles that by your good works which they shall behold they may glorifie God in the day of visitation 1 Pet. ii 12. full of equity that they may not speak evil of you as rigorous and unmerciful full of courtesie and civility that the Doctrine of Christ be not blasphem'd for a Doctrine of rudeness and incivility full of modesty that the adversary speak not reproachfully of the word of truth have no occasion to do so by your immodesty full of moderation that all good men may glorifie God for your professed subjection to the Gospel of Christ to those hard points in hard times to meekness and moderation when your adversaries are so violent and immoderately set against you Known must our moderation be in all its parts that all may know the purity of our profession the soundness of our Religion the Grace of God appearing in us the adversary be convinced the Christian Brethren incited by our examples to the same grace and vertue One note especially we are to carry hence that it is no excuse for our impatience harshness or any immodest or immoderate fierceness against any that they are men of a contrary opinion we use so ill Men they are and even under that notion moderation to be used towards them much more if we acknowledge the same Lord or his being any way near either to reward or punish And so I pass to the second General the Christians comfort that holds up his head in the bitterest storms and makes him moderate quite through them all The Lord is at hand Now the Lord is several ways said to be at hand many ways to be near us He is at hand or near us by his divine essence not far says S. Paul from every one of us Acts xvii 27. he is every where we therefore no where but that he is near us He is near us 2. by his Humanity The taking that upon him has brought him nigh indeed to be bone of our bone and flesh of our slesh He is nearer us yet 3. by his Grace One with us and we with him one Spirit too he in us and we in him S. Iohn xiv 20. He is at hand and nigh us 4. in our Prayers So holy David The Lord is nigh unto them that call upon him all such as call upon him faithfully He is nigh us 5. in his Word in our Mouths and in our Hearts by the word of Faith that is preached to us Rom. x. 8. we need not up to heaven nor down to the deep says the Apostle to find out Christ that eternal word is nigh enough us in his word He is nigh us 6. in the Sacraments so near in Baptism as to touch and wash us especially so near in the Blessed Sacrament of his Body and Blood as to be almost touched by us there he is truly really miraculously present with us and united to us 'T is want of eyes if we discern not his Body there 1 Cor. xi 29. in that or see not his power in the other He is at hand 7. with his Iudgments Behold the Iudge standeth at the door S. James v. 9. Just before he had said the coming of the Lord draweth nigh but at the second look he even sees him at the door Now of this coming two sorts we find expected even in the Apostles times his coming in judgment against Ierusalem to destroy his Crucifiers the unbelieving Iews and the Apostate Christians the Gnostick Hereticks that together with the Iews persecuted the Church of Christ and his last coming at the general Judgment We may add a third his being always ready at hand to deliver his faithful servants out of their troubles and to revenge them in due time of all those that causlesly rise up against them The first kind of his coming to Judgment that against Ierusalem is the coming by which the Apostle comforts his Philippians that the Lord was now coming to deliver the persecuted Saints out of their hands The third is that by which our drooping spirits are supported in all distresses that he is near to help us in them all The second his coming at last in the general Judgment then howsoever to make a full amends for all is the great stay of all our hope all Christians from first to last No great matter how we are here from time to time driven to our shifts the time is coming will pay for all Nor do any of the other comings want their comfort 'T is a comfort that God is so near us in his essence so that in him we live and move and have our being our life and being are surely the better by it 2. 'T is a great comfort that our Lord would vouchsafe us so great an honour as to become like one of us to walk and speak and eat and drink and be weary and weep and live and die like one of us 3. 'T is an inward and inexpressible comfort that he will dwell in us by his Grace and Holy Spirit make us Holy as himself is Holy 4. 'T is a gracious comfort that he suffers us so ordinarily to discourse with him in our Prayers 5. 'T is an especial
comfort and that such a one as he affords not to other Nations to give us by his word the knowledge of his Laws to reveal unto us his whole will and pleasure 6. 'T is a comfort to a miracle that he will yet draw nearer to us and draw us nearer to himself by the mysterious communication of himself his very Blood and Body to us No greater establishment to our souls no higher solace to our spirits no firmer hopes of the Resurrection of our bodies then by his thus not only being at hand but in our hands and in our mouths I speak mysteries in the spirit but the comfort never a whit the less the joy of the Spirit far the greater ever But all these comforts heapt together what comfort in the world like the faithful Christians all so great so certain so nigh at hand And yet if I take hint from the Churches choice of this Text for the front of her Epistle this day to her Children and say the Lord may be said to be at hand too because the Feast of his coming that coming which gave rise to all the rest the original of all the rest of his gracious comings is at hand to us I shall not strain much and to those that truly love his appearance that can really endure to hear of his coming any day that shall put 'um in mind of his being at hand must needs be a comfort a day of good tidings and this as well as any of the rest will afford us an argument to perswade to moderation to make it known to all men whatsoever at the time when the Grace of God appeared to all men whatsoever Which passes me over to the third general the connexion of the Christians Duty and his comfort or the perswasion to the duty from the comfort of the Lords coming And so many perswasive arguments there are from it as there are comings so many reasons to perswade moderation as there are ways of our Lords being at hand nay one more and it shall go first because it stand so The Lord it is we do it to to the Lord and not unto men let that go for the first reason 'T is to him and for his sake we are enjoyn'd it St. Paul thought it a good argument to perswade Servants to their duties Eph. vi 7. to do their service with a good will too and we all are Servants and here is our Lord. Here 2. and at hand on every hand We cannot go out of his presence Let that teach us righteousness and equity modesty and moderation to do all things as in his presence Would we but think this when we go about any thing did we but consider seriously the Lord was so near us heard us and look'd upon us our words would be wiser and our actions better We durst not look an immodest look nor speak an uncivil word nor do any iniquity or any thing out of order The Lord is at hand and sees what we are doing let all then be done with moderation 3. The Lord has taken on our nature and come nearer yet given us by it an example so to do to be so moderate as to wash even Iudas's feet to do good to be civil and modest and moderate even towards them that are ready to betray us who will do so the next hour have bargain'd for 't already he came so nigh us in our nature that we might so come nigh him in his Graces took up our nature that we might take up his example drew so nigh us that we might not draw off our affection from our brethren but serve them in love how ill soever they serve us he took hands and feet to be at hand to teach our hands and feet how to behave and moderate themselves towards others 4. He is at hand with his Grace to help us there is no excuse of impossibility By him I can do all things says the Apostle by Christ that strengthens me Phil. iv 13. Be it never so hard his grace is sufficient for us sufficient to enable us to all grace and vertue even the hardest and in the most difficult exigencies and occasions This he offers to us offers it abundantly more abundant grace Let us accept it then and walk-worthy of it in all modesty and moderation 5. He is at hand to our Prayers let us then desire the grace we just now spake of Deny us he will not do but knock and he comes presently To him that knocks says he it shall be opened Let us but come with meek and patient spirits in love and charity with all men forgiving them that we may be forgiven and speed we shall be merciful and moderate towards them so will God be merciful and moderate towards us moderate at least the punishments due to our iniquities The Lord is at hand always to hear such a mans prayers learn we therefore moderation 6. The Lord is near us in his word This is his command and will must therefore be performed If the will of the Lord be so that we must suffer for righteousness sake let every answer to our persecutors be with meekness and fear says S. Peter 1 Pet. iii. 15. for happy are you says he and therefore be not afraid of their terror neither be troubled ver 14. moderate your passions and your fears and esteem your selves happy by so suffering by so doing 'T is your Masters revealed will that so it should be 't is his way to draw you nearer to himself by working you to the image of his sufferings 7. The Lord is at hand the Iudge is coming At hand to reward us for all our sufferings all our patience and moderation all our modest and civil conversation all our righteousness and mercy Not one Sparrow not the least feather of a good work shall fall to the ground not one half farthing be lost not a hair of any righteous action perish he is at hand to take all up that nothing be lost At hand he is 2. to deliver us out of the hands of all that hate us if temporal deliverance be best to give us that if not to deliver us however over into glory At hand 3. to take revenge upon his enemies to repay his adversaries He came presently after this Epistle to do so to Ierusalem to destroy the incredulous Iews and Apostate Hereticks those persecutors of the Christian Faith came with a heavy hand that they fell to their utter ruine and desolation Thus he being at hand to reward and punish may well serve as an argument to perswade us to be patient for so short a while to be moderate both in our fears and desires in our words and in our actions to bear a while and say nothing to endure a while and do nothing for one there is a coming nay now at hand to deliver us to plead our cause to revenge our quarrel let us commit it to him He is the Judge of all the world and
desires or place our affections upon earthly rubbish not to precount our lands or houses our clothes or furniture our full bags or our numerous stock and daily encrease our riches but to reckon Christ our riches his Grace our wealth his reproach our honour his poverty our plenty his glory the sum and crown of all our riches and glory For if you know the grace of the Lord Iesus Christ this you know also that 't is worth the seeking that 't is riches and honour and glory how poor soever it look to the eye of the world The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ it is only that makes us rich and poverty his way to enrich us by contrary to the way of the world and this ye know says the Apostle 'T is so plain and evident I need not tell you it for ye know it The third point the evidence of all that has been said 3. For ye know it for ye know nothing if you know not this It was a thing not done in a corner all the corners of the world rang of it from the utmost corners of Arabia to the ends of the earth The wise men came purposely from the East to see this poor little new-born Child tibi serviet ultima Thule sang the Poet the utmost confines of the West came in presently to serve him the whole world is witness of it long ago Nor were ever Christians ashamed either of this grace or poverty until of late It was thought a thing worth knowing worth keeping in remembrance by an anniversary too Indeed were it not a thing well known it would not be believed that the Lord of all should become so poor as to have almost nothing of it all But we saw it says St. Iohn i. 14. the word made flesh this great high Lord made little and low enough heard it saw it with our eyes lookt upon it and our hands too handled it 1 St. Iohn i. 1. had all the evidence possibly could be had the evidence of ear and eye and hand know it by them all And not we only not St. Iohn only but all men know it For this grace of God that bringeth salvation that is the true grace of our Lord Jesus Christ hath appeared unto all men says St. Paul Titus ii 11. So that they either know it or if they know it not 't is their own fault for it has appeared and has been often declared unto them so that 't is no wonder that the Apostle should tell the Corinthians that they know it they could not be Christians without knowing it nor it seems men in those days neither that knew it not And yet as generally as it was known it was a grace to know it one of the most special gifts and graces the knowledge of the grace of Christ. For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and that ye know it is his grace You could not know it without it none but they to whom it is given can know it as they should 4. That we may know it so as well as they we are now in the last place to consider what the Apostle would infer upon us by it what should be the issue of this knowledge 1. The acknowledgment of the grace and then 2. the practice of it For ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich yet he so lov'd the poor as to bestow all his riches freely upon them upon us that were poor and naked and miserable and being thrust out of our first home never since could find any certain dwelling-place And therefore we 2. after his example being now enricht by him should be rich in our mercy and bounty to the poor for if his grace was such to us when we were poor we should shew the like to the poor now we are rich But that we may be the readier to this we must first be sensible of the other throughly sensible of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ acknowledge it for a grace a thing meerly of his own good will and favour that he would thus become poor to make us rich Know we and acknowledge many graces in this one grace A grace to our humanity that he would grace it with putting on A grace to poverty that he would wear that too A grace to our persons as well as to our natures that it was for our sakes he did it A grace to our condition that it was only to enrich it Know we then again and acknowledge it from hence 1. That poverty is now become a grace a grace to which the Kingdom of God is promised St. Mat. v. 3. poverty of spirit Nay the poor and vile and base things too hath God chosen saith St. Paul 1 Cor. i. 28. the poor are now elect contrary quite to the fancy that the Iews had of them whose proverb it was that the Spirit never descended upon the poor answerable to which it was then the cry Can any good thing come out of Nazareth any Prophet or great good come out of so poor a place as that 2. Know we again that Christs poverty above all or poverty for his sake is a grace indeed for to you 't is given given as a great gift of grace and honour to suffer for his name Phil. i. 29. And 't is a part of our calling says St. Peter 1 S. Pet. ii 21. a specialty of that grace 3. Know we 3. that our Riches are his Grace too In vain we rise up early and go late to bed all our care and pains and labour is nothing to make us rich without his blessing The blessing of the Lord it is that maketh rich 4. Know we however these may prove the riches of Christ can prove no other All the vertues and graces of our souls all the spiritual joy fulness and contentment are meerly his they the proper Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ no grace above them no grace near them nothing can render us so gracious in the eyes of God as they they are above Gold and Rubies and precious Stones These and all the rest being acknowledged in the Text we may well acknowledge that there was good reason to put an Article an Emphasis upon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the grace Yet to make all up all these graces you must know all the several graces outward and inward come all from this one grace of Christs becoming poor being made man and becoming one of us To this it is we owe all we have or hope to the Grace of Christ at Christmas and therefore now are to add some practice to all this knowledge to return some grace again for all this grace Gratia is thanks let 's return that first thank God and our Saviour for this grace of his whence all grace flows and for all the several graces as they at any time flow down upon us Gratia Deo thanks to God 2. Gratia is good will and favour let 's shew
exceeding glory Wonder we 1. stand we and wonder or cast our selves upon the earth upon our faces in amazement at it that God should do all this for us thus remember thus visit thus crown such things as we That 2. he should pass by the Angels to crown us leave them in their sins and misery and lift us out of ours That 3. he should not take their nature at the least and honour those that stood among them but take up ours and wear it into heaven and seat it there And there is a visit he is now coming to day to make us as much to be wondred at as any that he should feed us with his Body and yet that be in Heaven that he should cheer us with his Blood and yet that shed so long ago that he should set his Throne and keep his Table and presence upon the Earth and yet Heaven his Throne and Earth his Foot-stool that he should here pose all our understandings with his mysterious work and so many ages of Christians after so many years of study and assistance of the Spirit not yet be able to understand it What is man or the Son of man O Blessed Iesu that thou shouldst thus also visit and confound him with the wonders of thy mercy and goodness Here also is glory and honour too to be admitted to his Table no where so great to be made one with him as the meat is with the body no glory like it Here is the crown of plenty fulness of pardon grace and heavenly Benediction Here 's the crown of glory nothing but rays and beauties Iustres and glories to be seen in Christ and darted from him into pious souls Come take your crowns come compass your selves with those eternal circlings Take now the cup of salvation and remember God for so remembring you call upon the name of the Lord and give glory to your God If you cannot speak out fully as who can speak in such amazements as these thoughts may seriously work in us cast your selves down in silence and utter out your souls in these or the like broken speeches What is man Lord what is man What am I How poor a thing am I How good art thou What hast thou done unto him How great things What glory what honour what crown hast thou reserved for me What shall I say How shall I sufficiently admire What shall I do again unto thee What shalt thou do Why 1. if God is so mindful of us men Let us be mindful of him again remember he is always with us and do all things as if we remembred that so he were 2. Is he so mindful of us Let us be mindful of our selves and remember what we are that we may be humbled at it 3. Does he remember us Let us then again remember him with our prayers and services 2. Has he visited us Let us in thankfulness visit him again visit him in his Temple visit him at his Table visit him in his poor members the sick the imprisoned 3. Has he made us lower then the Angels Let us make our selves lower and lower still in our own sights Is it yet but a little lower then the Angels Let us raise up thoughts and pieties and devotions to be equal with them 4. Has he crown'd us with glory Let us crown his Altars then with offerings and his name with praise let us be often in corona in the congregation of them that praise him among such as keep Holy-day Let us crown his Courts with beauty crown our selves with good works they should be our glory and our crown And for the worship that he crowns us with too let us worship and give him honour so remember so visit so crown him again so shall he as he has already so shall still remember us last and bring us to his own palace there to visit him face to face where he shall make us equal to the Angels we are now below and crown us with an incorruptible crown of glory through Christ c. THE NINTH SERMON ON Christmas-Day S. LUKE ii 30 31 32. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people A light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel SAlvation cannot but be a welcome then at any time I know no day amiss But in Die salutis at such a time as this on Christmas-day especially Then it first came down to bless this lower world But salvation so nigh as to be seen is more much more if we our selves have any interest in it if it be for the Gentiles too that we also may come in Far more if it be such salvation that our friends also may be saved with us none perish if it be omnium populorum to 'um all in whatsoever Nation Add yet if it be salvation by light not in the night no obscure deliverance we like that better and if it be to be saved not by running away but gloriously Salvation with Glory that 's better still Nay if it be all salvation on a day of salvation not afar off but within ken not heard of but seen to us and ours an universal salvation a gladsome a lightsome a notable a glorious salvation as it is without contradiction Verbum Evangelii good Gospel joyful tidings so it must needs be verbum diei too the happiest news in the most happy time These make the Text near enough the day and yet 't is nearer What say you if this salvation prove to be a Saviour and that Saviour Christ and that Christ new born the first time that viderunt oculi could be said of him no time so proper as Christmas to speak of Christ the Saviour born and sent into the world He it is that is here stiled salutare tuum Christ that blessed sight that restores Simeons decaying eyes to their youthful lustre that happy burthen that makes Simeon grasp heaven before he enter it Indeed the good old man begins not his Christmas till Candlemas 'T was not Christmas-day with him he did not see his Saviour till he was presented in the Temple The Feast of Purification was his Christmas This the Shepherds the worlds and ours This day first he was seen visibly to the world Being then to speak of salvation which is a Saviour or a Saviour who is salvation 1. First of the Salvation it self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. Then of its certainty and manifestation so plain and evident that the eye may see it Salvation to be seen More 2. prepared to be seen 3. Of the universality before the face of all people 4. Of the Benefits They are two 1. A light 2. A glory with the twofold parties 1. The Gentiles 2. The Iews Of each both severally and joyntly When we have done with the salvation then of the other sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Saviour himself that 's the prime meaning of salutare here 1. Of his natures
into Heaven cannot now but look askew upon the earth To look up into Heaven is 2. to despise and trample upon all things under it He is not likely to be a Martyr that looks downward that values any thing below Nay he dies his natural death but unwillingly and untowardly whose eyes or heart or sences are taken up with the things about him Even to die chearfully though in a bed of Roses one must not have his mind upon them He so looks upon all worldly interests as dust and chaff who looks up stedfastly into heaven eyes all things by the by who eyes that well The covetous worldling the voluptuous Gallant the gaudy Butterflies of fashion will never make you Martyrs they are wholly fixt in the contemplation of their gold their Mistresses their Pleasures or their Fashions He scorns to look at these whose eyes are upon Heaven Yet to scorn there but especially to fit us against a tempest or a storm of stones there is a third looking up to Heaven in Prayer and Supplication It is not by our own strength or power that we can wade through streams of Blood or sing in flames we had need of assistance from above and he that looks up to Heaven seems so to beg it It was no doubt the spirit of Devotion that so fixt his sight he saw what was like to fall below he provides against it from above looks to that great Corner-stone to arm him against those which were now ready to shower upon his head It is impossible without our prayers and some aid thence to endure one petty pebble But to make it a compleat Martyrdom we must not look up only for our own interests for we are 4. to look up for our very enemies and beg Heavens pardon for them He that dies not in Charity dies not a Christian but he that dies not heart and hand and eyes and all compleat in it cannot die a Martyr Here we find S. Stephen lifting up his eyes to set himself to prayer 't is but two verses or three after that we hear his prayer Lord lay not this sin to their charge This was one thing it seems he lookt up so stedfastly to Heaven for A good lesson and fit for the occasion so to pass by the injuries of our greatest enemies as if we did not see them as if we had something else to look after then such petty contrasts as if we despis'd all worldly enmities as well as affections minded nothing but heaven and him that St. Stephen saw standing there All these ways we are to day to learn to look up to Heaven as 1. to our hop'd for Country as 2. from things that hinder us too long from coming to it as 3. for aid and help to bring us thither as 4. for mercy and pardon thence to our selves and enemies that we may all one day meet together there The posture it self is natural 'T is natural for men in misery to look up to Heaven nay the very insensible creature when it complains the Cow when it lows the Dog when he howls casts up its head according to its proportion after its fashion as if it naturally crav'd some comfort thence 'T is the general practice of Saints and holy persons Lift up your eyes says the Prophet Isa. xl 26. I will lift up my eyes says Holy David Psal. cxxi 1. And distrest Susanna lifts up her eyes and looks up towards Heaven ver 35. Nay Christ himself sighing or praying or sometimes working miracles looks up to Heaven who yet carried Heaven about him to teach us in all distresses to look up thither in all our actions to fetch assistance thence If we had those thoughts of Heaven we should I know how little of the eye the earth should have Vbi amor ibi oculus where the love is there 's the eye We may easiy guess what we love best by our looks if Heaven be it our eyes are there if any thing else our eyes are there 'T is easie then to tell you St. Stephens longings where his thoughts are fixt when we are told he so stedfastly lookt up to heaven And indeed it is not so much the looking up to Heaven as the stedfast and attentive doing it that fits us to die for Christ. 'T is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a a kind of stretching or straining the eye-sight to look inquisitively into the object To look carelesly or perfunctorily into Heaven it self to do it in a fit to be godly and pious now and then or by starts and girds will not serve turn to mind seriously what we are about that 's the only piety will carry it Plus vaâ—â—t hora fervens quam mensis tepens One hour one half hour spent with a warm attention at our prayers is worth a month a year an age of our cold Devotions 'T is good to be zealous says St. Paul somewhat hot and vehement in a good matter And it had need be a stedfast and attentive Devotion that can hold out with this But. To stand praying or looking up to Heaven when our enemies are gnashing their teath upon us and come running head-long on us to have no regard to their rushing fury nor interrupt our prayers nor omit any ceremony of them neither for all their savage malice now pressing fiercely on us but look up stedfastly still not quich aside this looks surely like a Martyr The little Boy that held Alexander the candle whilst he was sacrificing to his Gods so long that the wick burnt into his finger and yet neither cried nor shrunk at it lest he should disturb his Lords Devotions will find few fellows among Christians to pattern him in the exercise of their strictest pieties Let but a leaf stir a wind breathe a fly buzz the very light but dwindle any thing move or shake and our poor Religion alas is put off the hinge 't is well if it be not at an end too What would it do if danger and death were at our heels as here it was Oh this attentive stedfast fastning the soul upon the business of heaven were a rare piety if we could compass it This glorious Martyr has shew'd us an example the lesson is that we should practise it But all this is no wonder seeing he was full of the Holy Ghost That Almighty Spirit is able to blow away all diversions able to turn the shower of stones into the softness and drift of Snow able to make all the torments of Death fall light and easie If we can get our souls filled once with that we need fear nothing nothing will distract our thoughts or draw our eyes from Heaven Then it will be no wonder neither to see next the Glory of God and Iesus standing at the right hand of God I call'd this point St. Stephens confirmation or his encouragement to his death He that once comes to have a sight of God and Christ of Gods Glory and Christ at the right hand of
it of either the one or the other much more of both cannot want strength to die be the death of what kind it will It was a gallant speech of Luther when he was disswaded from appearing before the Council of Wormes I think it was that he would go thither though all the tiles of the houses were so many Devils Had every stone that was cast at the Martyr Stephen been a Devil he would not after this vision have been afraid The Lord is my light and my salvation whom then should I fear the Lord is the strength of my life of whom then shall I be afraid says David Psal. xxvii 1. and yet he saw nothing like this sight Gods presence is enough whether it be seen by the eye of sense or by the eye of Faith to keep us stedfast to make death hide its head for fear while we stand triumphing over it I conceive it impertinent to make it a business to enquire too solicitously what this glory was and how St. Stephen saw it That it was some glorious sight some high resplendent light or brightness such as God used to appear in as Exod. xxiv 17. Numb xiv 10. 1 Kings viii 10. to Moses and his Prophets there call'd his glory or some apparition of Angels in shining garments winging about a throne of glory visibly appearing to the eye of the Martyr Stephen is the probablest to conceive and the shining of his face as if it had been the face of an Angel chap. vi ver 15. is an evidence it was a visible appearance But no doubt his understanding saw further then his eye into Heaven that lookt and saw a glory there of which the sense though elevated to his height cannot be capable Divinum lumen says St. Gregory Nissen the inaccessible light Spem in re says St. Hilary His hope already Deum Divinitatem says St. Austin God and the Godhead Imo Trinitatem and that facie revelata says he again The blessed Trinity unveiled Futurae vita gaudia says Bede The joys of the other life These all he saw say they and we shall make no scruple to say in Spirit so he did as far as humane nature is capable in this condition But without question Christ he saw in his body standing amidst that glory the words are plain for that and that alone were enough to put courage into the most coward heart To see his Faith confirm'd by sight and Christs Glory with the Father visibly appear to see whom he had trusted and for whom he had laboured and disputed now with his own eyes in glory must needs make him kiss the hands that would now send him so soon to him To see him 2. standing at the right hand of God as if he were risen from his sitting there to behold the sufferings and courage of his Martyr that stood below now made a spectacle to Christ and all his Angels that 's an honour he may well glory in To see him 3. standing amidst his hosts as if he were coming down to help him that adds more spirit still To see him 4. standing at the right hand of God as if he suffered with him and was therefore pleading for him as friends and advocates used to do with the accused party at the Bar. This infuses yet a greater confidence that notwithstanding all his sins or weaknesses he shall now easily prevail To see him 5 standing as a Priest to offer him up a sweet smelling sacrifice to his Father that still increases it To see him lastly standing like a judge of masteries at the end of the race or goal to crown him with a crown of glory cannot but make him think long for the death that shall bring him to it All these ways Christ may be brought in here as standing for us In the Creed we profess him sitting thereby acknowledging his place in Heaven and his right to be our Judge yet when his Saints and Servants have need of him he stands up to see what it is they want how valiantly they behave themselves he stands up to shew them who it is they trust he stands up to help and aid them he stands up to plead and even suffer with them he stands up to present them to his Father he stands up to reward them with the garlands of Glory Sometimes it is oftner it has been when the beginning of Christianity needed it at first that by some visible comforts and discoveries he shews himself to the dying Saint Often it is that the soul ready to depart feels some sensible joys and ravishments to uphold its failing spirits But he is never wanting with inward assistances and refreshments to those who suffer for him We must not look all of us nor Confessors nor Martyrs now adays to see Visions and Revelations with St. Stephen we are set in a fixt way where Reason and Religion so long prov'd and practis'd is able to give us comfort in the saddest distresses God does not usually confirm our reason by our sense in the revelation of himself or what he expects from us It may be because the Devil grown cunning now by so many centuries of years has taken up of late as he is Gods ape a way to fetch off souls by some sensible delusions from the Faith for he can transform himself nay does so says the Apostle into an Angel of light For this it may be God sends us now to the word and to the testimony and leaves us to reason tradition and example of so many ages to expound it However this is sufficient that neither God nor Christ will leave us wholly comfortless but will surely stand by us when we need and supply us as there is Indeed he cannot look for such a profession upon it as we find here from St. Stephen yet to a stedfast profession of our Faith those assistances he still allows us are sufficient We will look a little upon Stephens though And first here is a kind of profession of the Blessed Trinity the Holy Ghost here at the beginning of the first verse of the Text God in the middle and Jesus at the end Here is 2. a profession of Christs manhood whilst he calls him the Son of Man Here is 3. a profession of his Faith in all of them by his so loud proclaiming Here is 4. a profession of Gods ready help Christs ready assistance to his Saints in trouble Here is 5. a profession of Gods owning the Christians cause and gloriously standing up to confirm and maintain Here is 6. a profession of Christs opening Heaven to all Believers that Heaven is always open to us if we could see it that Gods Glory shines upon us to shew us the way thither that Christ stands there to make our way to guide us thither Here lastly is a profession of his confidence and resolution that though his enemies stand pressing now about him and Death before him he will not eat his words will not renounce his faith
these are all old worn tatter'd things not worth the taking up nothing now worth any thing but Christ nothing but Christ and those new things those graces are in him Thus old things are past with the true Christian but 2. all things also are become new in him He has a new heart and a new spirit he has no more a heart of stone but a heart of flesh a soft tender pliable heart a meek and well disposed spirit a loving spirit he is no more what he was the old ego he has a new understanding things look not to him as they did of old he vilifies the world and worldly things His affections new he affects not what he did before he contemns all things below He is a King and rules over his passions he is a Priest and sanctifies them with his Prayers he lives under a new Law the Law of the Spirit and not the Flesh he makes every day new Covenants with God A Member of the Church he is and the Kingdom of God is now within him He is a great adorer of the Sacraments of the Church and daily offers up himself a Sacrifice to God his Soul and Body and all he has and pours out his praises His Body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost and the Altar of his Heart burns with the continual fires of Devotion and Charity He now lives no more but Christ lives in him that 's the new life he leads and it leads him into glory A new thing of which he has a glimpse and a kind of antipast here that makes him relish nothing else but cast all behind his back as old rags and dirt to press forward to the mark for the price of the high calling of God in Christ Iesus Phil. iii. 14. This is the new Creature the new man in whom old things are past away and all things become new And shall all things become new and not we shall all old things pass away and we remain in our old sins still every thing be cloth'd with a new lustre we only appear in our old rags still Certainly we cannot judge it reasonable Better use I hope we will make of this days Text of this New-years lesson Put off says the Apostle concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of our minds and put on that new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. iv 22 23 24. 'T is his counsel must be our practise The time past of our life may suffice us says S. Peter 1 Pet. iv 3. to have wrought the will of the Gentiles It is sufficient it is sufficient 'T is time now we unlearn our old lesson unravel our old work leave off our old course of life and begin a new to live henceford to righteousness and not to sin to God and not to men The new entred year calls for it the Text calls for it the Blood of Christ spent at his Circumcision lately past which yet this day and some days still to come commemorate cries for it that we would no longer count the blood of the new Covenant an unholy thing but betake us to it and live by it after a new fashion in newness of life I call you not to legal washings but the washings of Baptism and Repentance not to Iewish Feasts but Christian Festivals not to sacrifice Lambs and Sheep but your Souls and Bodies not to old Ceremonies but the new substance the Righteousness of Jesus Christ. Let him now begin his new reign in you let his new Commandment of Love be obeyed by you his Church purchased so dearly not be cowardly deserted by you keep his Covenant frequent his Temples adorn his Altars reverence his Priests follow the guidance of his Holy Spirit when he inspires good motions into your hearts amend your lives and become all new men in Jesus Christ. And when all these old things shall pass away and the new Heaven and Earth appear when he that sits upon the Throne Rev. xxi 5. shall make all things new then shall we be all made new again even these old decayed ruines of our bodies too and both souls and bodies clothed with the new Robes of Glory that shall never pass away but be ever new ever glorious for evermore THE SECOND SERMON ON THE Circumcision St. LUKE ii 21. His Name was called Iesus ANd to Day it was that He was called so when eight days were accomplished for his circumcising And they did well to call him so for it was the Name the Angel named him before he was conceived in the womb And he could be called by no better For Nomen super omne nomen says St. Paul of it Phil. ii 9. A name it is above every name for above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named not only in this world but also in that which is to come Eph. i. 21. A Name that has all things in it that brings all good things with it that speaks more in five letters than we can do in five thousand words speaks more in it than we can speak to day and yet we intend to day to speak of nothing else nothing but Iesus nothing but Iesus The sooner then we begin the better And to begin the sooner we shall set upon it without either the Circumstances before or after in the verse or the Ceremonies either of Preamble or of Division of the words Only for Method sake and memory I shall shew you the fulness and greatness of this Name in these seven Particulars 'T is a Name of Truth and Fidelity 'T is a Name of Might and Power 'T is a Name of Majesty and Glory 'T is a Name of Grace and Mercy 'T is a Name of Sweetness and Comfort 'T is a Name of Wonder and Admiration 'T is a Name of Blessing and Adoration A faithful mighty glorious gracious comfortable admirable blessed Name it is given Him to Day to be called by but to be called by and to be called upon by us for ever that we also may be filled with the truth and power and glory and grace and sweetness and wonder and all the blessings of it This is the sum of what we have to say of this Great Name and now we go on with the Particulars A Name it is first of veracity and fidelity of faithfulness and truth This Iesus is but the old Ieshua 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so much mentioned so often fortold so long expected all the Scripture thorow The Greek termination of◠only added that we might so understand that all those Types Prophesies and Promises were now terminated and at an end in this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this Iesus the Greeks and Gentiles taken in too to fulfill all that had been before named or spoken any way concerning him The testimony of Iesus is the very spirit of Prophesie Rev. xix
St. Paul seems to find a kind of delight and sweetness in the very repeating it he so often uses it begins and ends his Epistles with it garnishes them all through with it scarce uses the very name of Christ without it as if it even sweetned that at least made it sweeter and made the Oyl and Chrism with which Christ himself was anointed run more merrily and freely to the very skirts of his clothing So that now is there any one sad let him take Iesus into his heart and he will take heart presently and his joy will return upon him Is any one fallen into a sin let him call heartily upon this Name and it will raise him up Is any one troubled with hardness of heart or dulness of spirit or dejection of mind or drowsiness in doing well in the meditation of this Name Iesus a Saviour all vanish and flie away Who was ever in such fear that it could not strengthen who in any danger that it could not deliver who in so great anxiety that it did not quiet who in any despair that it could not comfort and revive That we are not sensible of it is our own dulness and experience If we would but seriously meditate upon it we should quickly find it otherwise Nothing would please us where this Name were not No discourse would please us where it was not sometimes to be heard No writings delight us if this Name were left out All the sweetest Rhetorick and neatest eloquence would be dull without it our very prayers would seem imperfect which ended not in this very Name Our days would look dark and heavy which were not lightned with the Name of the Son of Righteousness Our nights but sad and dolesom which we entred not with this sweet Name when we lay down without commending our selves to God in it Our very years would have been a thousand times more unhappy than even those which we have seen of late would be nothing but trouble discontent and misery did they not begin in this Name were they not yearly usher'd in under the protection of it Were not this His Name was called Iesus proclaimed to day to begin it with we might call the year what we would but good we could not call it This setting forth Iesus a Saviour in the front is that which saves us all the year through from all the unlucky and unfortunate days that men call in it All the ill Aspects of Heaven of all the Stars and Planets grow vain and idle upon it and our days run sweetly and pleasantly under it The Psalmist seems thus to prophesie and foretel it Psal. lxv 12. Thou crownest the year with thy goodness and thy clouds drop fatness This day crowns the year this Name crowns the day all our dwellings would be but a sad wilderness all the year without it but they rejoyce and laugh and sing Hills and Vallies too being thus blest in the entrance of the year with this happy Name I end this point though so sweet that I part with it unwillingly with a stave or two of devout Bernards Jubile or Hymn upon it Nil canitur suâ—vins auditur nil jucundius Nil cogitatur dulcius quam Iesus Dei filius c. Iesu dulcedo cordium Fons vivâ—s lumen mentium Excedens omne gaudium omne deâ—iderium Nec lingua valet dicere nec litera exprimere Expertus potest oredere quod siâ— Iesum diligere There is nothing sweeter to be sung of nothing more delightful to be heard nothing more pleasant to be thought of than this Iesus Iesus the delight of hearts the light of minds above all joy above all we can desire the tongue cannot tell words cannot express only he that feels it can believe what sweetness is in Iesus A long song he makes of it It would not be amiss that we also made some short ones some ejaculations and raptures now and then upon it Give us but a taste and relish of the sweetness of thy blessed Name O Iesus and we shall also sing of it all the day long and praise thy Name for ever and ever and sing with the same Father Iesu Decus Angelicum in aure dulce canâ—icum in ore mel mirâ—ficâ—m in csrde nectar coelicum O Jesu thou joy and glory of Men and Angels thy Name is Musick in our ears honey in our mouths heavenly nectar to our hearts all sweetness all pleasure to us throughout wonderful sweet VI. Nay wonderful in all for 't is a Name of wonder and admiration Wonderful is one of the names the Prophet calls him by Isa. ix 6. And Cabalistical wits have pickt wonders out of it from every letter in all three languages In the Hebrew there are four letters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and from the signification of these letters rise the mystery Iod signifies a hand Schin a tooth Vau a nail or hook and Ain an eye the hand is the instrument of power the teeth one of the instruments of voices and words the nail an instrument in his passion and the eye an instrument or great discoverer of mercy and pity By all these he is our Iesus by his power he overthrew our enemies which would have slain us by his word he revives our souls when they were slain and dead by his Passion he redeemed us from our sins and for his own mercy sake he did all these In the Greek there are six letters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which according to the old device of vailing names in numbers amount to the number of 888. the first letter is 10. the second 8. the third 200. the fourth 70. the fifth 400. and the last 300. which put all together make up that number and by reason that eight is the number they say of the Resurrection that falling out the eighth day the day after the Sabbath which is the seventh include this Mystery That in Iesus is our rest and Resurrection to eternal quiet The name of Antichrist is covered in the Revelation under the number of 666. Now the six days are days of labour pain and trouble the seventh is but a short day of rest whilst we are here 't is only the eighth day that follows after all which must close up all in everlasting glory free from all labour pain and troubâ—â— and this is found in no other name than in the Name of Iesus nor given us in any other And that it may not pass for a meer fancy the Cuman Sybills verses thus foretold his Name many years before Tunc ad mortales veniet mortalibus ipsis In terris similis natus patris omnipotentis Corpore vestitus vocales quatuor autem Fert non vocalesque duas binum geniorum Sed quae fit numeri totius summa docebo Namque octo monades totidem decades super ista Atque hecatontadas octo infidis significabit Hominibus nomen Tâ—â— vero mente teneto There shall come says she into the
either understand Religion or practice it that God still allows us the glory of these Stars though one differing in glory from another that he hath not yet totally darkned our heaven upon us nor removed our true lawful and faithful Pastors clean away that we wander not from Sea to Sea and from the North even to the East that we run not to and fro to seek the Word of God to see a Star and cannot find it but have them yet standing over us and directing us It will be a thousand to one but we miss of Christ when we lose this Star a thousand to one that we go into the wrong house instead of his when we lose our Bishops and Teachers the days we now see tell us so already For his House being undoubtedly the Church and the Church not to be seen or found but by the light and brightness of successive Bishops and Ministers who are the Churches glory and its Crown and joy nothing but sad and giddy errors can be expected where they are not A third Star is the Word of God and there first the sure Word of Prophecy a light as St. Peter stiles it shining in a dark place to which he tells us we do well if we take heed 2 Pet. i. 19. Then secondly the sure Promises of the Gospel of Grace and Truth and Pardon the comfortable and glorious light by which we are led to the knowledge of Christ full glad and merry with the hopes of such pardon and forgiveness of such grace and favour A fourth Star is inward Grace the light of the holy Spirit by which we are not only led to the place of this new-born Child but this Child it self even new-born in us This is a Star that rises in the very heart the Day-star rising there 2 Pet. i. 19. without which we should sit in perpetual shades the day never dawn upon us All the former Stars good Examples and Instructions and spiritual Predictions and Promises Pastors and Teachers can teach little without this Star St. Paul may plant and Apollos water and no increase the Preachers speak and preach into the air nothing stay behind good example be spilt as water on the ground divine Prophesies and Promises only strike the outward ear to little purpose all of them together unless the Spirit speak within and warm and lighten the soul with its fiery tongue and comfort it vvith invvard light and heat Hence is the joy that is unspeakable and full of glory which the Apostle speaks of 1 Pet. i. 8. A fifth Star which is heavenly glory a bright morning Star it is that Christ promises to give him that continues and holds out unto the end Rev. ii 28. I will give him the morning star that is eternal life the Star of glory This is a Star will shew us Christ as he is bring us to him not in his Cradle but in his Throne not in his Mothers lap but in his Fathers bosom A Star that will lead us both here and hereafter to his presence Here the great Star that most surely brings us and most effectually perswades to Christ and Christian Piety is the hope of Heaven the promise of Glory In the strength of this hope we suffer any thing for him we hunger and thirst endure cold and nakedness poverty and scorn whips and fetters halters and hatchets racks and tortures ignominy and death whilst this Star seems to open heaven unto us thus it brings us to him here and hereafter it fills us with the beatifical vision of him for ever I need not tell you this is a very sufficient ground of the greatest joy it self being almost nothing else And yet there is a sixth Star the Star that was foretold should come out of Iacob Num. xxiv 17. I am the bright morning Star Rev. xxii 16. I Iesus says he himself am the root and off-spring of David and the bright and morning Star He the Star that leads us to himself his own beauty the great attractive to him his mercy the sure convoy to himself his humility his being the root so low and humble the conduct to his Highness his Incarnation and Nativity his becoming the off-spring and Son of David being made man the only way above all to bring us unto himself Here 's the ground the very ground indeed of all our joy and comfort that he thus came into the World to save Sinners thus clouded his eternal brightness his starry nature his glorious Godhead with the dark rays of flesh and matter appearing at best but as a sublunary Star the Doctor and Bishop of our souls that we might so the easier come unto him and be comforted not confounded in his brightness Thus we have multiplied the Star in the Text by the perspective of the Spirit into Six or shew'd you the six spiritual rays which issue from it which reach to us and even shine God be thanked still though that be gone or shut up in the Treasuries of the Almighty all of these signal grounds of true Christian joy Good Examples good Teachers a good Word of God the good Spirit of Grace the good hope of glory the good of goods our good and gracious Saviour so good Stars and so good occasion of rejoycing that there can be no better 3. And yet a degree may be added from the third Consideration of the time when this Star appeared Indeed it had long before this day been seen had led the Wise men all the way comforted and cheer'd them up all their long journey through only at Hierusalem there it left them there where one would think the Star should shine the brightest But 1. What need Star-light when the Sun of righteousness is so near Or what 2. should need a Type when the Substance was so hard by Or what necessity 3. of a Star when they were now in a surer and brighter light so says St. Peter 1 Pet. i. 19. the Law and Prophets at hand to point out him they sought Or how 4. should we expect any special favour from the God of Heaven while we stay in Herod's Courts in Satan's territories in wicked company Or why 5. should we think the Star should stay upon us when we leave it That God should help us when we as it were renounce his direction to enquire for mens Go to the Iews and Herod for it How should we but lose God's grace if we neglect it 'T is the great ground here then of their rejoycing that after they had lost it they here recover it that they are now got out of Herods Court a place of sin and darkness and are now refresh'd again with the heavenly Light No joy in the World like that of recovering Heaven when it is almost lost No joy to the womans for finding again the Groat that she had lost No rejoycing like the Shepherds for the lost sheep when he has found it The joy reacheth up to heaven says Christ the very Angels rejoyce
at it when a sinner is returned from the error of his way when God lights anew this Star to him Truly when we have lost any of the afore-mentioned Stars and afterwards recover them whether they be the Examples of the Saints that have unluckily slipt out of our memories or our Bishops and Pastors that have been forced or driven from us or the truth of the holy Word which false glosses and corrupt interpretations have hidden from us or the inward comforts of the Spirit which our sins have for some time robb'd us of or the true relish of heavenly joy and eternal happiness which hath a while been lost by reason of our delighting our selves wholly in sensual pleasures or imployments or lastly the beauty of this holy Child which has been somewhat clouded from us through our weakness and infirmity in apprehending it which soever of them it is that we have first lost and then recovered when we either recover our memories or our Ministers or the truth or the holy Spirit or the sight of heaven or the beauty of Christ into us the joy is far greater than it was at the beginning Carendo magis quam fruendo intelligimus because we never throughly understand the comfort and benefit of any of them till we see the distress we are in with out them And 2. their seeing the Star again when they were as it were in most distress and when they were more like to be at a greater loss than ever amongst the Cottages of Bethlehem like utterly to be confounded by the horror of poverty and the sight of nothing but unkingly furnitures this it was that so rais'd their joy And it will do ours at any time to have help and succour come timely to us to be delivered and raised in the midst of distresses and despair 'T is the very nick of time to enhance a joy 'T is not less neither 3. to creatures compounded of flesh and bloud to have even some sensible comforts renew'd to stir us up To see a star to behold comfort with our eyes to have the inward comfort augmented by the outward to be led to Christ by a Star by prosperities and blessings rather than a cloud by crosses and distresses this is more welcome more gladsom to the heart and so it seems to the Wise men themselves that God though he had given them inward guidances and back'd them with Prophetical instructions out of his own Word and Prophets had not yet deserted them of his outward assistance but even added that also to all the former Now then thus to have star upon stat material and mystical time after time when we most desire it when we greatliest need it to want no guide no opportunity no occasion at also to advance our happiness and salvation how can we but with them in the Text rejoyce now and that with exceeding great joy Three degrees you see are apparent in the words all to be spent upon the Star that leads to Christ. We can never be too glad of him or of his Star any conduct or occasion to come to him joy and great joy and exceeding great joy is but sufficient Nor is any joy but spiritual that which is for Christ really capable of those degrees that only is truly called joy the joy in Christ only dilates the heart all other joys straiten and distress it fill it up with dirt and rubbish worldly joyes can never fill it otherwise 'T is only then enlarged when it opens up to heaven earthly comforts do but fetter and compress it That joy 2. is only great Earthly ones are petty and inconsiderable for petty things Heaven only hath great things in it Christ the only great one That only 3. is exceeding That 's the joy that passes understanding that exceeds all other that exceeds all measure that exceeds all power none can take it from us that exceeds all words and expression too no tongue whatever can express it So you see our joy that a spiritual joy it is because so great so exceeding Yet being so exceeding it will exceed also the narrow compass of the inward man will issue out also into the outward into the tongue and heads Joy is the dilatation the opening of the heart and sending out the Spirits into all the parts And if this joy we have it will open our hearts to praise him open our hearts to Heaven to receive its influence open our hearts to our needy brother to compassionate and relieve him it will send out life and heat and spirit into all our powers into our lips to sing unto him into our fingers to play to him into our feet even to leap for joy into our eyes perpetually to gaze upon him into our hands to open them for his sake plentifully to the poor into the whole body to devote it wholly to his service This is the Wise mens joy great and exceeding Give me leave to fit it to the parts to apply the joy to the several grounds Gaudium to videntes magnum to stellam valde to the autem of the Text. They saw and so rejoyced with joy They saw the Star and so rejoyced with great joy when they saw it saw it so opportunely they rejoyced with exceeding joy Let us then 1. rejoyce with them with a single joy for both the seers and their seeing make it our joy that neither our ignorances nor our sins can keep us always from Christs presence that our riches and honours our learning and wisdom may rather help than hinder us in the search of Iesus Christ. And rejoyce we then again that God hath given us eyes and sight to see the ways and means of salvation This will at least deserve our joy in the positive degree But the Star or Stars we mentioned will add this magnum to it Let us then 2. rejoyce greatly or with great joy that God thus vouchsafes to lead us to his Son both by outward and inward means That he hath given us so many lights of good examples to walk by That he hath lighted up his Stars Pastors and Teachers in the Church to direct and guide us That he continues to us the light and brightness of his truth That he enlightens us daily inwardly by his grace That he fills our hearts with hopes of glory That he is ready more and more to shew us Christ in all his beauty to give him to us with all his benefits to bring us to him in all his glory Great joy is but little enough certainly for such great things as these And 3. exceeding it must and will be if we but consider the time when such great things are done or doing for us 'T is when we had in a manner diverted from him gone aside out of our way left his Star for Herod For God then to renew his mercy to us to shine upon us in his former beauty to point us even to the very house and place to find Christ in
Hymn of his goodness an Anthem of his love a Psalm of his mercy and in sweet numbers carol forth his praise set our heads to do it our hearts to endite it our pens to write it our voices to sing it and with the three Children in their Song invite all the creatures in Heaven and Earth Angels and men all the sensible and insensible creatures to bear us company so to make a full noise of all kinds of Musick to set forth his praise Do it with our hands too do that which will exalt his praise Then 't is benedixit complete when it has benefecit next it We speak best when we do best when our lives and actions speak it Benedixit bene vixit are not so near of sound for nothing A holy life is not more truly Gods blessing to man than again it is mans chiefest and most acceptable blessing God Many ways may this blessing God be performed by us but as we stand now with some relation to this days blessing the blessed Eucharist the feast of blessing the cup of blessing as the Apostle stiles it I shall shew you now you have taken it what blessing is more peculiarly required after it Three acts of blessing there are to be performed after this act of so taking Christ into our arms and for it three points of blessing for this great blessing of the Holy Communion Thanksgiving Oblation and Petition Bless him and give thanks to him Bless him and offer up his Son to him again and our selves with him offer his Son in our own arms him and our selves Bless him and present our petitions to him our prayers as well as praises Or in the language of the Text Benedicamus Speak well of him do somewhat for him and bring our requests and petitions to him You see I need not run out of the Text for any kind of blessing First then Bless him with your tongues Speak good of his Name and let your lips speak forth his glory and wonderous works tell the world what he has done for you what great and mighty things Salutem ejus evangelizate Psal. xcvi 4. Tell it out for good tidings the tidings of great joy Be always speaking always telling it Call to all the creatures to bear you company every thing to rejoyce with you Tell your happiness to the Woods and Mountains in your solitary retirements tell it to the Towns and Villages speak of it in all companies tell it to the young Men and Maids old Men and Children all Sexes and Ages what God has done for your souls Tell it to the Summer and Winter both in your prosperity and adversity let nothing make you forget your thanks Tell it to the Frost and Fire in your coldnesses and in your fervencies and zeals to the Earth and to the Waters in your drinesses of soul and in the sorrows of your hearts praise him in all conditions Tell it to the Angels and Heavens as you are about your heavenly business Tell it to the Fowls of the Air even in the midst of your airy thoughts and projects that they may be such as may set forth his glory Tell it to the Priests and Servants of the Lord to solemnize your thanksgiving Tell it to the Spirits and Souls of the righteous to bear a part with you in your Song and intreat them all all estates and orders all conditions and things to bring in each their blessing to make up one great and worthyblessing for this days blessing to rejoyce and sing exult and triumph with you for this happy arm-full of eternal blessings this day bestowed upon you Begin we the blessing blessing and honour and power and glory and thanks and praise and worship and great glory be unto God for ever and ever and let all the creatures say Amen Bless we him secondly with our Offerings Hold we up first our hands and bless him hold we up our hands and vow and resolve to serve him from henceforth with hand and heart and all our members offer him our vows and resolutions holy ones strengthen our hands and renew our purposes to serve him now henceforward with a high hand maugre all the pleasures and profits of the world say what they will against it with a strong hand do they what they dare or can against us Bless him and resolve to bless him for ever and every day renew we still our resolutions that our hands may be so strengthened by them that none may be able to take him out of our hands 2. Catch we fast hold of him with our hands when we bless him clasp him fast by a lively hope as assured that all our hope is in him all our hope in holding him clasp we him fast and bless him 3. Spread your arms and bless him with your Faith Open your souls and every day more and more let him come in let it be your continual exercise more and more to trust him to rely upon him 4. Open your hands and cast down your blessings upon the poor He that blesses the poor blesses God What you have done to them says Christ you did to me St. Matth. xxv Open your hands and bless God 5. Cross your hands and beat your breasts Bless him with your hands a cross as humbly acknowledging your vileness and unworthiness of so great a favour as his presence as the seeing and touching and handling and â—asting him He truly blesses God on high that thus makes himself low 6. Fill your hands and bless him bless him with a full hand both your hands full of blessings blessings of all sorts all good works and vertues An universal obedience is the onliest blessing God Simeon being interpreted is obedient and he it is that here blesses the obedient soul that at any time only truly blesses God 7 Wash we yet our hands before we either open or spread or hold up or cross or clasp or fill them Wash we before we bless wash away our impurities with our tears bewail and bemoan our defects and weaknesses and imperfections which in our receiving have been too many that by this hand our oblation and blessing may be offered with pure and unspotted hands and hearts 8. Clap we then our hands and bless him do it with joy and not with grief we may do it well when we have so washt them first Let it be our way of blessing to do it chearfully to settle our selves to all the works of piety and obedience of faith and hope and charity and humility and in a word to an universal righteousness with all the purity we can with all the strength and resolution we are able Bless with a chearful and ready hand set our selves ever hereafter merrily to this work But remember we all this while we so use our hands to bless that we so open and shut so spread and cross them that we let not Christ go out the while Offer we up our selves and him together Resolve we
fortunate in our new Nativities or second Births or give us audience with the Almighty Alas these are but as the Star of Remphan and Moloch which only carry us into Babylon confound all the projects we build upon them The Star we are to look to is the Star of Iacob our Sol the Sun of Righteousness our Venus the Holy Spirit of love our Iupiter God the Father the great Iuvans Pater of the World These are the only Planets the Christian guides his motions by that make our business go well our time accepted our days lucky And That such a time there is in the great Affairs of souls a time of a readier acceptance with God and what it is that makes it so is now worth the considering That so it is the Scripture tells us plain The Prophet from whom our Apostle takes the words immediately before the Text and which he ushers in his own times and ours says as much Isa. xlix 8. calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tempus voluntatis a time not only when he will but when he is willing to hear us Tempus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we may render it the time of his good pleasure the Vulgar gives us it by tempore placito a time when he is pleased well pleased to hear us and be pleasant with us The same Prophet tells us too of a time not only when he may be found but when he is near ready and at hand to hear us Isa. lv 6. The Prophet David expresly Psal. lxix 13. speaks of an acceptable time to make our prayers in And To day if you will hear his voice in the Psalmist paraphrased by the Apostle to day while it is called to day shews there is a set day or days of audience with God wherein he sets himself as it were with all readiness to hear and help us an accepted time And will ye next know what it is that makes it so There are but two things that do Either Gods being in a good or pleasing disposition towards us or our being in a good and pleasing disposition towards him Come we but to him in either of these and we have nickt the time we are sure to be accepted 1. When he is looking upon him in whom he is always well pleased his beloved Son when he is propounding him to us in his Word or Sacraments scattering there as it were his gifts unto men then in those Solemnities is one sort of his accepted times wherein he is ready to do what we will desire him 2. But 2. when we our selves are in a good temper and disposition that 's another In tempore quo vos facitis voluntatem meam so the Chaldee paraphrases the Hebrew the tempus voluntatis or tempus placitum Isa. xlix 8. That time when you do what I would have you says God that 's the accepted time when I will hear you when our souls are in that order and obedience to our God that he would have them then will he be in that readiness to succour us that we would have him The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 goes for season And of seasons there are some you know more acceptable than others Two very acceptable and pleasant in the year the Spring and Summer There are the same in the souls of men A Spring when our graces and vertues begin to sprout and blossom bespread and cloth this earth we carry when the Sun of righteousness begins to smile and warm us when the air grows temperate our passions and affections moderate within us and all our powers breath nothing but Violets and Roses this as the Prophet stiles it the very time of love a disposition and time we cannot but be accepted in wherein God begins to be in love with us There is a Summer too when the hills the highest pitch and spirit of our souls stand thick with Corn and the valleys our lowest powers our inferiour passions laugh and sing when the bright raies of heaven shine hot upon us when we are hung full with all heavenly fruits when our hearts do even burn within us and the whole desires even of our flesh this dust that covers us are on fire for heaven when our hearts pant after the living brooks and our souls are a thirst for God to come unto him to appear before him This indeed is not only the time but the fulness of it when coming so replenisht with grace and righteousness we shall be fully accepted and be sure not to be sent empty away Indeed 't is sometimes an Autumn and a winter season with us A time when our leaves fall off our graces and vertues decay and wither when the fair beauty of a Summer-goodness either spent and dried away with too long a Sun-shine of prosperity or blasted by the first approach of some cold wind some touch of Winter some affliction now at hand makes the day look sad about us and melancholy too no way pleasing A time too there is when 't is high Winter with us our faith and charity grown cold and dead when the streams of our wonted Piety lie as it were chain'd up in icy fetters and the Sun of righteousness scarce appears above the Horizon to us These are times not to expect to be accepted in And such I told you were intimated here too Now is the accepted seems to say plain enough there is a time coming that will not be so that 's the third branch of our first Particular The one and twentieth year after the hundred and twentieth that God gave the Old World to repent in Gen. vi 3. was a year too late The next day after Ninivies forty given her would not have done her work Hierusalem our Saviour tells us had past her day Nunc autem abscondita the things of peace then hidden from her eyes were too sad a proof her day was set St. Luke xix 42. Nunc autem is full opposite to Nunc dies To day if you will hear his voice Heb. iii. shews if you will not you must not look for another They in the First of the Proverbs found no less they had passed their time refused Gods when he called upon them ver 24. They shall therefore call and he will not answer they shall seek him and that early too but he will not be found ver 28. he will but laugh at them for their pains ver 26. A shrewd Lesson to us not to neglect our day Indeed it is not in the power of Astrology to calculate this time nor of any humane judgment to define or point out the day when God has done accepting us but sure such a one there is or it were vain to fright us with a nunc autem with a But when there is no such matter if day after day would come and go and yet never bring on a night wherein no man could work Nay 't is requisite there should be so for were there no such time his very mercy would
it with the highest hand and needs not fear a contradiction or a power to controul or punish him why he varnishes over his wickedness with false colours and glosses all his actions either with the name of Piety and Religion Reformation and Purity Justice and Integrity Conscience and I know not what Why he sometimes excuses it with necessity sometimes extenuates it with infirmity sometimes pleads ignorance false information or mistake sometimes makes one pretence sometimes another Does he not evidently and plainly tell you by so doing he is even asham'd of the things that he has done though he bear it out with all the confidence he can He cannot utterly cast off shame though he has done shamefac'dness We may confidently say to him Those very things thou even seem'st to glory in thou art really no other than asham'd of Now there is a three-fold shame a natural a vertuous and a penal shame a shame that naturally and even against our wills attends every unhandsome action A godly shame 2. that should always follow upon it And 3. a shame that will else e're long pursue it The first or natural is that which through the modesty of nature not yet habituated to the impudence of wickedness rises e're we are aware from the guilt and foulness of sin either discovered or feared to be so That 's the reason that the eye of the Adulterer waiteth for the twi-light Job xxiv 15. to hide his reproach That the Drunkard us'd in former times though now grown gallant on it to be drunk in the night 1 Thess. v. 7. being asham'd as civility went then to be seen so disguised in the day That the Heretick and Schismatick us'd in the Apostles times though now grown confident to come creeping into Widows houses and hide themselves behind Curtains and Aprons asham'd of their Schisms and new Doctrines at the first 2 Tim. iii. 6. That still the Thief by night and the sly Cheat and covetous Extortioner by underhand dealing in the day strive to conceal the designs and practices which only night and darkness are thought fit to cover or give a tolerable shadow too Even our vanities within a while make us asham'd of them We are within a few days in a huge confusion to be seen in our finest Clothes and newest Fashions we were the other day so proud of rather naked than in a fashion that has another grown upon it Indeed when any of our sins great or little take hold upon us then as the Prophet David professes we are not able to look up Psal. xl 15. so asham'd they make us None but Absolom none but the wickedest sons of Rebellion sin upon the house top at noon day all the people looking on Yet even for all that there must be a Tent even for such as he some thin Veil or other some Silk or linen Scarf or Curtain to cover his wickedness in the upshot 2 Sam. xvi 22. So natural a fruit and companion is shame to any sin or sinner Sin is more than sin when shame is gone when that is lost 2. Yet if so be this kind of modest shame should be laid asleep a while through the custom and habit of a sin there is a second sort of shame that must be thought on the shame that accompanies repentance Sin must have repentance and repentance will have shame Yea what shame what or how great I cannot tell you but shame it must work if it be true Shame of our ingratitude to God shame of our unhandsomness to men shame of the disparagement we have done our nature shame of the dishonour we have done our selves in committing things so foul so brutish so unreasonable this the properest of the three shames we mentioned to this place which it seems the Romans were here come to and is a business we are obliged to to repent us and be ashamed of our sins to be ashamed and blush with Ezra to lift up our faces because our iniquities are increased over our head and our trespasses grown up into the Heavens Ezra ix 6. 3. And if this we be not there is another-gates shame will overtake us shame 3. and confusion of face if we be not ashamed of our sins we shall e're long be ashamed for them come to shame and dishonour by them such a kind of shame as the Prophet Isaiah speaks of Isa. i. 29. Ye shall be ashamed of the Oaks which ye have desired and ye shall be confounded for the gardens which ye have chosen your very enemies shall laugh you to scorn the very Oaks and Trees shake their heads at you in derision your Gardens bring you forth no other fruit All that pass by shall wag their heads and hiss at you Ier. xix 8. Ye shall be a curse and an astonishment and an hissing and a reproach to all Nations Ier. xxix 18. and a shameful spewing shall be on your glory Hab. ii 16. To this our ill courses will bring us at the last and yet to worse even to death too For the end of those things is death that 's the third Particular the third Argument against sin the mischief and damage of it in the end and comes next to be consider'd III. A sad end truly and but sorry wages for all the pains and drudgry that sins put us to St. Paul here thinks it not worth the name of fruit Yet what fruit sin brings if you will call it fruit 't is unto death Rom. vii 5. But if there were any other death so nigh at heels would devour it all Sin when it is finished when 't is at the height compleat and perfected it bringeth forth death says St. Iames i. 15. that 's the end God knows And a threefold death it brings a temporal a spiritual and an eternal death For the first Thou shalt die the death was threatned to it before it came into the world Gen. ii 17. And no sooner came it but death came by it death by sin Rom. v. 12. And it past thence upon all men too All men ever since have been subjected to it All have died and all must die for that one sin Ever after that first sinful morsel all are become like the beasts that perish Psal. xlix 12. So that the wisest of men had much ado to distinguish between their ends Eccles. iii. 19 20. As the one dieth says he so dieth the other yea they have all one breath so that a man hath no preheminence above a beast All go unto one place all are of the dust and all turn to dust again Only indeed a little after ver 21. he perceives a kind of glimmering as it were of the humane Spirits going upward yet with this lessening for all that of who knoweth it who can certainly demonstrate and distinguish and define the difference so deeply has sin engaged us unto death that there is no escaping and the shadows of it are so great that there is no discovering of differences in the
to unsaint the Saints to deny them their proper titles to level them with the meanest of our Servants We might learn better manners from the Angel here manners I say if it were nothing else for we dare not speak so to any here that are above us and we think much to be Thou'd without our titles by that new generation of possessed men who yet with more reason may call the best man thou then we the Apostles Iohn or Thomas But to descend to a particular survey of these Titles here Thou that art highly favoured so our new Translation renders it Full of grace so our old one hath it from the Latin Gratia plena and both right for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will carry both Grace is favour God's Grace is divine favour high in grace high in his favour full of his grace full of his favour all comes to one Now there is Gratia Creata and Increata Created grace and uncreated grace Created grace is either sanctifying or edifying the gifts of the Holy Spirit that sanctifie and make us holy or the gifts that make us serviceable to make others so The first to serve God in our selves as Faith Hope Charity and other graces The second to serve him in the Church such as the gift of Tongues of Prophesie of Healing and the like of each kind she had her fulness according to her measure and the designation that God appointed her For sanctifying Graces none fuller Solo Deo excepto God only excepted saith Epiphanius And 't is fit enough to believe that she vvho vvas so highly honoured to have her Womb filled vvith the body of the Lord had her soul as fully fill'd by the Holy Ghost For edifying Graces as they came not all into her measure she vvas not to preach to administer to govern to play the Apostle and therefore no necessity she should be full of all those gifts being those are not distributed all to any but unicuique secundum mensuram to every one according to his measure and employment and not at all times neither so neither is she said to be less ful for vvanting them There is one fulness of the Fountain another of the Brook another of a Vessel one fulnes of the Sea another of the River another of the Pond and yet all may be full Christ himself is said to be full of the Holy Ghost and St. Stephen is said to be full and others said to be full yet Christ as the Sea or Fountain they as the Rivulets or Rivers and yet all as they can hold 'T is so in Earth 't is so in Heaven And vvith such a fulness as the Brooks or Rivers is our Virgin full and with no other Where any edifying Grace vvas necessary for her she had it as well as others more perhaps than others Where it vvas not necessary it vvas no vvay to the impairing of her fulness though she had it not as the banks of the Rivers rose or the Channel was enlarged so were those graces but inter mulieres among women at the end makes me incline to think the fulness of Apostolick endowments do not any way belong to her women not being suffered in the times of the Apostles but to teach their children or servants at home never thought so full of the Spirit as to be sent to blow it all abroad And indeed it is not said here full of the Spirit but full of Grace and that is commonly understood of sanctifying Grace of which it is very convenient that we believe none fuller than she and the original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will not inforce it much higher in the business of created grace But in respect of the increated Grace that is of Christ with whom she was now so highly favoured as to be with Child none ever so filled with Grace indeed This was a grace of the highest nature of which created nature was never capable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 well rendred highly highly favoured for 't is most highly can be imagined and this is her first title O thou that art highly favoured high in Gods grace and favour so high as to be made his Mother then sure made a fit receptacle for so great so holy a guest by the fulness of all grace and goodness From this follows the second Title Blessed blessed of God blessed of men blessed in the City and blessed in the Field Cities and Countreys call her blessed Blessed in the fruit of her body in her blessed Child Iesus Blessed in the fruit of her Ground her Cattel her Kine and her Sheep in the inferiour faculties of her soul and body all fructifie to Christ. Blessed her Basket and her Store her Womb and her Breasts the Womb that bare him and the Paps that gave him suck Blessed in her going out and in her coming in the Lord still being with her The good treasure of Heaven still open to her showring down upon her and the Earth fill'd with the blessings which she brought into the world when she brought forth the Son of God Blessed she indeed that was the Conduit of so great blessings though blessed most in the bearing him in her soul much more than bearing him in her body So Christ intimates to the woman that began to bless the Womb that is the Mother that bear him St. Luke xi 27. yea rather says he they that hear the word of God and keep it As if he had said she is more blessed in bearing the word in her soul than in her body But blessed she is Elizabeth by the Holy Spirit fell a blessing her when she came to see her And she her self by the same Spirit tells us all generations shall call her blessed ver 28. So we have sufficient example and authority to do it And I hope we will not suffer the Scripture to speak false but do it And 3. do it to her above all women Benedicta tu in mulieribus That 's her third Title Most blessed none so blessed none ever had Child so blessed none ever bore or brought forth Child as she Benedicta in mulieribus Blessed among women She indeed only blessed all others subject to the curse of in dolore paries of conceiving and bringing forth in sorrow She wholly free from that she a perpetual Virgin before and in and after Child-birth Christ came into her Womb insensibly came forth as it were insensibly too without groan or sorrow to her Blessed 2. among women they all henceforth saved by her Child-bearing notwithstanding she that is woman shall be saved in child-bearing 1 Tim. ii ie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by her child-bearing says a learned Commentator not their own but hers by the Child she bore and they therefore shall call her blessed Blessed 3. among women that is none more blessed then the best the highest of them none above the Mother of God none sure so good as she which now brings me to consider the grounds of all this honour
Virgin and all the Saints and Angels we may sing praise and honour and glory to him Father Son and Holy Ghost for ever and ever A SERMON ON Palm Sunday St. MAT. XXi. 8. And a very great multitude spread their Garments in the way others cut down branches from the Trees and strewed them in the way THe branches in the Text point you out what day it is St. Iohn calls some of them at least Palm branches St. Ioh. xii 13. and the Church calls the day Palm Sunday Dominica Palmarum the day wherein our Blessed Lord riding as Lord and Bishop of our souls his Visitation to Hierusalem upon an Ass was met with a kind of solemn Procession by the people a very great multitude of them says our Evangelist and had his way strewed with boughts and bespread with cloths the best they had as is usual in Princely Entertainments and Triumphs and Processions And 't is both a day and business worth remembring wherein we see the triumph of humility whereby we are taught both humility and its reward Christs mercy and mans rejoycing in it Christs way of coming to us and our way of going out to him to meet and entertain him Things worthy consideration All that was this day done were so but they are many and though they all concern us much yet our own duty concerns us most to know with what dispositions which way and how to meet and receive our Lord come he never so meanly never so slowly to us upon Horse or Ass by Mountain or Valley gloriously or humbly to us though come he how he will it will be humbly the greatest imaginable condescension even to come unto us I shall stir out neither of the Text nor time to mind us of our duty in the way of receiving Christ nor desire more matter to spend the hour than the words will give me Only I must take both the Letter and Spirit of them If we look to the History and Letter many remarkables we shall meet with If to the Mystery and Spirit more and more punctually to our purposes By both we shall be abundantly fitted against Christs coming to us and for our due receiving him the Sacramental within few days now at hand not excepted nay the Spirit of the words may be as fitly applied to that to the Sacramental receiving him as any other to teach us how to receive and meet him there as well as any where else Consider we the words then under both Notions what they did as to the Letter what we are taught to do by the Mystery and Spirit In each these three Particulars I. The Persons that go out to meet Christ and entertain him The multitude A very great multitude II. The Ceremony and respect they meet him and entertain him with Some spread their Garments in the way others cut down branches from the trees and strewd them in the way III. The Way and Place they meet and entertain him in both the one and the other in the way There they met him so they there entertained him so many hundred years ago in the literal sense in the same way and manner in the spiritual sense are we to entertain him every year and all our years and days to come And by thus canvasing the Text and taking both senses of it we shall plainly see we have good reason to remember a Palm Sunday the Church so to entitle it so to prepare us both to the Passion and the Resurrection by spreading still before us these branches of Palms and Olives by insinuating this way unto us as the properest to entertain our Saviour in to usher in the thoughts of both the Passion and Resurrection both his and ours and fit us for them both I begin with the Persons of the day and them I find the multitude A multitude for their quality a very great multitude for their number The multitude for their quality are the common people And Interdum vulgus rectum videt says the Poet Sometimes it seems the Common People see what is right No people of so low or mean understanding but may come to the knowledge of Christ and understand the ways of Salvation The Rabbins had a Proverb that Non requiescit Spiritus Domini super pauperem The Spirit of the Lord rests not upon the poor And the Pharisees had taken up somewhat like it when they give the people no better stile than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than of cursed and such as know not the Law St. Ioh. vii 49. Their blessing then comes by Christ it seems so they may well honour him upon that score 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the poor the Gospel is preacht is one of the tokens he sends St. Iohn Baptist to evidence himself the true Messiah quite contrary to the Pharisees Hic populus qui non novit this people that knoweth not the Law The Gospel the Law of Christ the far better Law is preacht it seems to the poor by him and spiritus is now joyn'd with pauperes The Spirit and poor together we find in his first Sermon and first beatitude the poor in Spirit St. Mat. v. 3. and a while after Quam difficile c. How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kindom of God St. Mark x. 23. The condition altered the poor advanc'd the rich deprest a good reason why the multitude should follow and respect him and a great testimony of our Saviours mercy and humility so to honour mean things Yet 2. that the multitude may not forget themselves as they are too prone to do to ride you know whither when they are set a horse back they may remember Christ would not commit himself unto them St. Ioh. ii 24. He needed not their honour he knew what they would do in a few days hence cry as many Crucifies as they did to day Hosannahs as fast to crucifie him as now to bless him Indeed they are easie to be seduced and led away by any wind of Doctrine new Teachers and Seducers We have found it so of late Christ and his Church and his Religion more dishonoured by the madness of the multitude than he was honoured here They have stript himself and his Church of all the Garments and Ornaments to cloath themselves instead of stripping themselves or spreading their own Garments to honour him Yet for all that of such giddy pieces as these Christ does not always refuse to be honoured that we may know he does not deal with us after our sins nor reject us for our weaknesses much less condemn or damn us for them before we have committed them Nay perhaps 3. he accepts this honour from this multitude that he might shew us what all worldly honour is how fickle how inconstant how vain it is to puff up our selves with the breath of men to feed our selves with their empty air They that are now ready to lick the dust of some great mans feet and spread not their Garments
only but their bodies for him to go over not only to cut down boughs to strew his way but to cut down every one that stands any way in his way if he would have it will within a few days upon a little change be as ready to trample upon that great one they so much honour and even cut his throat if he command any thing that pleases not their humour or crosses their private interests and designs This very multitude so eager to day to exalt Christ to the highest in their loud Hosannahs are as fair on Friday to exalt him to the Cross by their louder cryings He yet would suffer them to give him honour that you might know all earthly honour what it is But 4. he thus receives this honour from the multitude that he might provoke great ones by their example St. Paul tells us that Salvation was come unto the Gentiles to provoke the Iews to jealousie Rom. xi 11. that they might in a holy strife and indignation endeavour to outgo them 'T is the like intended here that we might think much that simple men and women should outstrip us the ignorant know more of Piety and Religion do more at least the poor and meanest bestow more much more on Christ than we with all our wit and wealth and greatness and honour And in this 5. appears as well his power as providence and wisdom that he should out of such stones as these raise up children unto Abraham that he should thus out of the mouths of babes and sucklings perfect his own praise make the Child as eloquent as the Orator the women as valiant in his service as the stoutest men the People understand that which the learned Doctors would not see Even so O Father for so it pleased thee to reveal those things to babes and sucklings and hide them from the wise St. Luke x. 21. his only doing it was neither their doing nor deserving and it is marvelous in our eyes an evidence of the freeness of his power that he can do what he pleases that he does what he lists no man can hinder him none able to contradict him This 6. shews his Omniscience and his truth that nothing that he foretels not a tittle of it shall fall any time to the ground He had foretold it by his Prophet Zech. ix 9. that the daughter of Sion should rejoyce and the daughter of Ierusalem shout for joy and here we have it to a tittle even their Sons and Daughters doing it a very great multitude it is and children and women in it Children in the Temple ver 15. and the whole City moved ver 10. all Sexes then that the Prophesie might be fulfilled to the last letter So punctual is he of his word Yet to fulfil it fuller 't is a very great multitude in the Text that we might know that he that was here met by so great a company was the Saviour of all as many as would come that would spread their garments to receive him make him any kind of entertainment though butstrew boughs and rushes for him that 2. the World might know that he was going to his Passion he went freely too he could as well have used these multitudes to preserve himself as thus strangely to do him honour made them have bespread him with Arms and Weapons as well as arms and boughs of trees strewd the way with their bodies in his defence as well as their Garments in his honour but he would suffer death and therefore would not suffer that To tell us 3. that he should be served hereafter by great multitudes and not by little handfuls of men and women this was but a forerunner of the great multitudes of those that should hereafter believe on him Upon such grounds as these it is that the Eternal Wisdom so uses this great multitude here to set forth his glory makes them do that which themselves yet do not understand to tell us he is a Saviour of the poor and needy as well as of the rich and wealthy That he does not 2. utterly refuse mans service though he know it is not to last long to teach us 3. all the glory and honour we receive from men is but transitory and quickly vanishing to provoke us 4. by their doings to a godly jealousie and contention to out-do them to ascertain us 5. of the exact performance of every 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of his promises To intimate lastly to us that he is the Saviour of us willingly comes to suffer that he may be so that he may purchase a Church great multitude by it to himself Thus you have some kind of glimmering light why this great multitude are employed in this way of honouring him by the way And yet there is a mystery beyond it This multitude throngs together to inform us 1. how Christ would be serv'd and honoured with full Assemblies and Congregations The places where he comes he loves to see crouded with devout Worshippers to hear them encouraging and heightning one another with O come let us worship and fall down and kneel before God our Maker and by outward reverence gestures and expressions provoking one another to his service It instructs us 2. that there is neither man nor woman Master nor Servant old man or child poor or rich to be out in giving glory to him all sexes ages and conditions to flow together to do him service the very children to lisp it out they that have not a rag to cover shame may have a leaf to honour him they that cannot are not able to cut down a bough may strew it yet that cannot lift a branch may hold a twig do somewhat or other to his entertainment It preaches 3. to us that there is nothing readier to serve him than the poor in spirit that the spirit which most does him honour which is ever most ready to do it to him is the poor and humble Spirit such as ranks it self lowest thinks meanest of it self none so mean in the meanest multitude Here 's the spirit of this very great multitude the spiritual sense it speaks a serving Christ with a poor and humble spirit and bringing our selves and all ours our very children to speak or point out his praise to do it too in the great Congregation as the Psalmist speaks to praise him among much people And not only so but with much ceremony too so we read in the next particular some spread their garments in the way others cut down branches from the trees and strewed them in the way II. These Ceremonies neither of them were strange among the Iews in the days of joy or triumph or the inauguration of Kings and Princes When Iehu was anointed King 2 Kings ix 12. we find every man hasting to take his own garment and put it under him spreading them as carpets for him to walk on ver 13. And in the Feast of Tabernacles it was commanded them to take boughs of goodly trees
to wait upon their Lord that had now set them at liberty from the Grave and divulge the greatness and glory of his Resurrection When Moses and Elias appeared upon the holy Mount at Christs transfiguration talking with him St. Luke tells us they spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Hierusalem St. Luke ix 31. And 't is highly credible the discourse of these Saints with those to whom they appeared was of his Resurrection Their going into the City was not meerly to shew themselves nor their appearance meerly to appear but to appear Witnesses and Companions of their Saviours Resurrection Nor is it probable that the Saints whose business is to sing praise and glory to their Lord should be silent at this point of time of any thing that might make to the advancement of his glory Yet you may do well to take notice that it is not to all but to many only that they appeared to such as St. Peter tells us of Christs own appearance after his Resurrection as were chosen before of God witnesses chosen for that purpose Acts x. 41. that we may learn indeed to prize Gods favours yet not all to look for particular revelations and appearances 'T is sufficient for us to know so many Saints that slept arose to tell it that so many Saints that are now asleep St. Peter and the Twelve St. Paul and five hundred brethren at once all saw him after he was risen so many millions have faln asleep in this holy Faith so many slept and died for it that it is thus abundantly testified both by the dead and living both by life and death even standing up and dying for it and a Church raised upon this faith through all the corners of the earth and to the very ends of the world But to know the truth of it is not enough unless we know the benefits of Christs Resurrection they come next to be considered and there is in the words evidence sufficient of four sorts of them 1. The victory over sin and death both the Graves were opened 2. The Resurrection of the soul and body the one in this life the other at the end of it many dead bodies that slept arose 3. The sanctification and glorification of our souls and bodies the dead bodies that arose out of the graves went into the holy City 4. The establishing us both in grace and glory they appeared unto many All these says the Text after his Resurrection by the force and vertue of it Indeed it seems the graves were opened death almost vanquished and the grave near overcome whilst he yet hung upon the Cross before he was taken thence deaths sting taken out by the death of Christ and all the victories of the grave now at an end that it could no longer be a perpetual prison yet for all that the victory was not complete all the Regions of the Grave not fully ransackt nor the forces of it utterly vanquisht and disarm'd nor its Prisoners set at liberty and it self taken and led captive till the Resurrection 'T is upon this Point St. Paul pitches the victory and calls in the Prophets testimony 1 Cor. xv 54. upon this 't is he proclaims the triumph ver 55. O Death where is thy sting O Grave where is thy victory even upon the Resurrection of Iesus Christ which he has been proving and proclaiming the whole Chapter through with all its benefits and concludes it with his thanks for this great victory ver 57. So it is likewise for the death and grave of sin the chains of sin were loosed the dominion of it shaken off the Grave somewhat opened that we might see some light of grace through the cranies of it by Christs Passion but we are not wholly set at liberty not quite let out of it the Grave-stone not perfectly removed from the mouth of it till the Angel at the Resurrection or rather the Angel of the Covenant by his Resurrection remove it thence remove our sins and iniquities clean from us 2. Then indeed 2. the dead soul arises then appears the second benefit of his Resurrection then we rise to righteousness and live 1 Pet. ii 24. then we awake to righteousness and sin no more So St. Paul infers it That like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father even so should we also walk in newness of life Rom 6. 4. This Resurrection one of the ends of his our righteousness attributed to that as our Redemption to his death From it it comes that our dead bodies arise too Upon that Iob grounds it his Resurrection upon his Redeemers Iob xix 25. I know that my Redeemer liveth well What then Why I know too therefore that though after my skin worms destroy this body yet in my flesh I shall see God The Apostle interweaves our Resurrection with Christs and Christs with ours his as the cause of ours ours as the effect of his a good part of 1 Cor. 15. If Christ be risen then we if we then he if not he not we if not we not he And in the Text 't is evident no rising from the dead how open soever the graves be till after his Resurrection that we may know to what Article of our faith we owe both our deliverance from death and our deliverance into life here in soul and hereafter in our bodies by what with holy Iob to uphold our drooping spirits our mangled martyr'd crazy bodies by the faith of the Resurrection that day the day of the Gospel of good tidings to be remembred for ever 3. So much the rather in that 't is a Day yet of greater joy a messenger of all fulness of grace and glory to us of the means of our sanctification 3. of our rising Saints living the lives of Saints holy lives and of our glorification our rising unto glory both doors opened to us now and not till now liberty and power given us to go into the holy City both this below and that above now after his Resurrection and through it He rose again says St. Paul for our justification Rom. iv 25. to regenerate us to a lively hope blessed be God for it says St. Pet. i. 3. that we might be planted together in the likeness of his Resurrection says St. Paul Rom. vi 5. grow up like him in righteousness and true holiness and when the day of the general Resurrection comes rise then also after his likeness be conformed to his Image bear his Image who is the heavenly as we have born the Image of the earthly our vile body chang'd and fashioned like his glorious body according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself Phil. iii. 21. whereby in the day of his Resurrection he subdued death and grave and sin and all things to him 4. And to shew the power of his Resurrection to the full there is an appearing purchast to us by it an appearing here in the fulness
and joyful Resurrection But Christs grave 2. or Sepulchre has more in it than any else There sit Angels to instruct and comfort us there lie cloths to bind up our wounds there lies a napkin to wrap up our aking heads there is the fine linnen of the Saints to make us bright white garments for the Resurrection You may now descend into the grave with confidence it will not hurt you Christs body lying in it has taken away the stench and filth and horrour of it 'T is but an easie quiet bed to sleep on now and they that die in Christ do but sleep in him says St. Paul 1 Thes. ix 14. and rest there from their labours says St. Iohn Revel xiv 13. Come then and see the place and take the dimensions of your own graves thence Learn there how to lie down in death and learn there also how to rise again to die with Christ and to rise with him T is the principal Moral of the Text and the whole business of the day In other words to die to sin and live to righteousness that when we must lie down our selves we may lie down in peace and rise in glory I have thus run through all the Parts of the Text. And now I hope I may say with the Angel I know ye also seek Iesus that was crucified and are come hither to that purpose But I must not say with the Angel He is not here He is here in his Word Here in his Sacraments Here in his poor members Ye see him go before you when ye see those poor ghosts walk you hear him when you hear his Word or read or preacht You even feel him in the blessed Sacraments when you receive them worthily The eyes and ears and hands of your bodies do not cannot but your souls may find see and him in them all Some of you I know are come hither even to seek his body too to pour out your souls upon it and at you holy Sepulchre revive the remembrance of the crucified Iesus yet take heed you there seek him as you ought Not the living among the dead I hope Not the dead elements only or them so as if they were corporally himself No He is risen and gone quite off the earth as to his corporal presence All now is spirit though Spirit and Truth too truly there though not corporally He is risen and our thoughts must rise up after him and think higher of him now then so and yet beleive truly he is there So that I may speak the last words of the Text with greater advantage then they are here Come see the place where the Lord lies And come see the place too where he lay go into the grave though not seek him there Go into the grave and weep there that our sins they were that brought him thither Go into the grave and die there die with him that died for us breath out your souls in love for him who out of love died so for us Go into his grave and bury all our sins and vanities in that holy dust â— Go we into the grave and dwell there for ever rather than come out and sin again and be content if he see it fit to lie down there for him who there lay down for us Fill your daily meditations but now especially with his death and passion his agony and bloudy sweat his stripes and wounds and griefs and pains But dwell not always among the Tombes You come to seek him seek him then 1. where you may find him and that is says the Apostle at the right hand of God He is risen and gone thither And seek him 2. so as you may be sure find him Not to run out of the story seek him as these pious women did 1. Get early up about it hence forward watch and pray a little better he that seeks hâ—m early shall be sure to find him Seek him 2. couragiously be not afraid of a guard of Souldiers be not frighted at a grave nor fear though the earth it self shake and totter under you Go on with courage do your work be not afraid of a crucified Lord nor of any office not to be crucified for his service Seek him 3. with your holy balms and spices the sweet odours of holy purposes and the perfume of strong Resolutions the bitter Aloes of Repentance the Myrrhe of a patient and constant Faith the Oil of Charity the spicie perfumes of Prayers and Praises bring not so much as the scent of earth or of an unrepented sin about you seek him so as men may know you seek him know by your eyes and know by your hands and know by your knees and feet and all your postures and demeanors that you seek Iesus that was crucified let there be nothing vain or light or loose about you nothing but what becomes his Faith and Religion whom you seek nothing but what will adorn the Gospel of Christ. You that thus seek Iesus which was crucified shall not want an Angel at every turn to meet you to stand by support and comfort you in all your fears and sorrows nor to encourage your endeavours nor to assist you in your good works nor to preserve you from errors nor to inform you in truths nor to advance your hopes nor to confirm your faiths nor to do any thing you would desire You shall be sure to find him too whom your souls seek and He who this day rose from his own Sepulchre shall also raise up you from the death of sin first to the life of righteousness and from the life of righteousness one day to the life of glory when the Angel shall no longer guide us into the grave but out of it out of our Graves and Sepulchres into Heaven where we shall meet whole Choires of Angels to welcome and conduct us into the place where the Lord is where we shall behold even with the eyes of our bodies Iesus that was crucified sitting at the right hand of God and sit down there with him together in the glory of the Father To which He bring us who this day rose again to raise us thither Iesus which was crucified To whom though crucified to whom for that he was crucified and this day rose again to lift us up out of the graves of sins and miseries and griefs be all honour and power praise and glory both by Angels and Men this day henceforward and for ever Amen THE FIFTH SERMON UPON Easter Day 1 COR. xv 19. If in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable ANd if this Day had not been we had been so Miserable indeed and without hope of being other If Christ had not risen there had been no Resurrection and if no Resurrection no hope but here then most miserable we Christians to be sure who were sure to find nothing but hard usage here tribulation in this World and could expect no other or no better
adore and magnifie him to day who this day gave us both the occasion and means to hear and understand them I begin now to compare the Nature of the Wind and Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word is and may be translated both It is so in the Text. Some are for Ventus some for Spiritus Breath they are both The one the breath of heaven the other of the air The one Gods the other the Worlds Indeed the wind is a kind of breath or spirit but a spirit in the nicest and subtilest sense it is not A body it is and not a spirit yet the nighest thing it is we have to liken the spirit to as near a simile as we can find for it but the Spirit of the Day is so a spirit as in no sort a body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with an Article and an Emphasis a Spirit above all Spirits the prime Spirit A Spirit by Essence an essential Spirit or essentially a Spirit A Spirit by Procession the Spirit proceeding personally that Spirit which proceedeth from the Father St. Iohn xv 26. and from the Son St. Iohn xvi 7. which was this Day breath'd first of all solemnly into the World to quicken it to a heavenly life Spiritus Dei and Spiritus Deus the Spirit of God and the Spirit which is God and the only Spirit that can bring us all to God But this great Nature is too great to comprehend too infinite to pursue Nor can the Simile reach it It falls short and so must I and you when we have done our utmost 'T is an easier Project for us both to fall upon the Power and Operations of it though I foresee we shall often there be at a stand too Yet to help our selves as well as we can we will consider the Operations first by themselves then by their Effects and then thirdly by their Course and Compass By themselves first II. The wind you hear blows and so the Spirit blows Yet the Spirit is not blows not neither like every wind There are whirlwinds that make a horrid noise that whirl every way about and turn the World up topsie turvy upside down the wind that is but Spiritus a direct and orderly breathing does not so Spiritus vertiginis is but Vertigo Spiritus the spirit of giddiness that the Prophet speaks of Isa. xix 14. is but the Vertigo or turning of the brain an abuse of the name not a spirit but a meer humour that makes us giddy has made this Nation so too long 2. Blustring and stormy winds there are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rather than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Graves violento flamine venti but this no such Spiritus rather than Ventus ours is here a calm and peaceable one a breath rather than a wind a Spirit proceeding from the God of peace bequeathed and sent us by the Prince of peace so still and even that it did not so much as disorder a wreath of that holy flame which this day encircled the heads of the Disciples but let that heavenly fire sit quietly upon them Acts ii 3. 3. Nor is it of this wind to which this Spirit is compared said flat here but spirat not said to blow by a word that signifies commonly only the ordinary and natural blowing All is supernatural here 'T is neither whirling we told you first nor blustring we said secondly nor puffing wind we tell you now 't is a meek an humble Spirit from the beginning it mov'd upon the waters Gen. 1. but did not swell them into waves or billows as natural winds commonly do not does it now but only guides all our waters passions and motions into their proper place with sweetness and order which is meerly a supernatural work 4. And yet as soft and smooth as it blows it is the Spirit of Power a mighty wind Acts ii 2. and rush in it does oft times at first with a little sudden and eager violence yet two syllables one single fiat and all is done strange things we know are done by a very little wind and that one word of this one Spirit made the World out of nothing and can as easily make a nothing of the World He can remove the greatest rocks and mountains not only with the breath of his displeasure but of his pleasure too his easiest breath He blew the Gods of the Heathen out of their Thrones and spake all their Oracles dumb blew all their spirits in a moment thence and yet the voice of his breathing was scarce heard He does so still throws down all the Holds and Fortresses of the devil in us sine strepitu without noise Some rushing mighty wind sometimes may go before it to rouze our dulness and awake us but the spirit is not there Some Earthquake of servile fear may shake us first and affright us from some ill action but the Spirit is not there Some fire or fiery trial may first burn or scorch us and thereby make us look about us or some kinder fire warm us into a better temper than formerly we were in but the Spirit is not there neither But when these outward dispensations have sufficiently disposed us to attention then comes the still small voice 1 Kings xix 12. and there 's the Spirit that silently glides into our souls as the small dew into a fleece of wool Such a still smooth sweet breath of wind is the true resemblance of the Spirit and when this comes it works wonders that minds me of the next Particular the Effects of both the Wind and Spirit Two especial effects the Wind has To purifie and to refresh These are the prime Effects of the Spirit too 1. When the holy Spirit enters into the heart it purifies and cleanses it from all pollution This made David pray Psal. li. 10. Create in me O Lord a clean heart Yea but how O blessed Prophet why as it follows by renewing a right spirit within me That 's the way to make him clean No way but that but that will For the Spirit is compar'd to fire Acts ii 3. and that purifies To water St. Iohn iv 10. and that cleanses And here to wind and that blows away all the chaff and dust that is either in us or about us 2. This Spirit refreshes too It renews the face of the Earth Psal. civ 30. It giveth rest and quiet Isai. lxiii 14. It upholds and establishes the faint and decaying spirit Psal. li 12. It refreshes us in our Bonds and sets us free Rom. viii 15. It comforts us in all distresses for he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Comforter that should come into the world St. Iohn xiv 26. 3. Nay I may add one thing more It not only refreshes us when we are faint and weary and almost dying but it revives us even when we are dead is a quickning Spirit St. Iohn vi 63. Like that wind the Naturalist tells us of which in the Spring time quickens the dull
sinneth not 1 John v. 18. He is able with Simeon to break all the cords of it to smite all such Philistims before him when this Spirit comes upon him Nor Death nor Life nor Angels nor Principalities nor Powers nor things present nor things to come nor Height nor Depth nor any other Creature can overcome him Rom. viii 38. Over all these he is more than Conquerour Those things which before we were regenerate seem'd impossible when we are once born again are light and easie we can do any thing then through his Spirit that dwelleth in us Stablish us once with this free Spirit and 't is not cold or nakedness hunger or thirst wearisome journeys or dangerous shipwracks stripes or imprisonments racks or gibbets fire or faggot that can force us from our hold or over-power us This very Spirit upholds us in all our pains and at length blows away every thing that troubles or offends us Nor is this Spirit only a Spirit of Power but 2. of Liberty also and where the Spirit is there there is Liberty says St. Paul 2. Cor. 3. 17. that is he that has it is free too Free he is 1. from the bondage of Moses Law redeem'd from under that Gal. iv 5 6. Free 2. though not from the Obligations yet from the Rigours of the Moral Law Gal. iii. 13. Rom. vii 6. Free 3. from Sin made free from that Rom. vi 18. from the Dominion of it Free 4. from the Captivity of the Devil recovered out of his snares 2 Tim. ii 26. Free lastly from the Dominion of Death the sting of it is lost the victory of it gone 1 Cor. xv 55. So is every one free that is born of the Spirit Well may now his fame go out into all the World and his name into all the corners of the earth And indeed it does so in the next words in the next Point of the similitude Thou hearest the sound thereof Evident it is and evident it is to any heard it may be and any one may hear it Thou and Thou and Thou every Thou that will Evident it is first The Spirit is not a fancy nor are the Operations of it so neither The Spirit though it cannot be seen it self yet something there is of it that may be heard heard somewhat of it by the hearing of the ear the effects not always in the understanding only these very ears we carry are oft refresht with the sound of it our very senses sensible of the strength and power of it And he that tells us of grace or Religion all within of so serving God in the Spirit that neither our own nor other bodies are the better for it or shew any signs of it has turn'd his Religion and Devotion into air and imagination and not to Spirit By his fruits you shall know as well the spiritual man as the Prophet Nor has he secondly one peculiar ear-mark one tone and canting Dialect to discern him by He that is born of the Spirit is a free and noble and generous Spirit uses a Language that every body may understand 'T is not the Mystery of the Spirit but the Mystery of Iniquity that thus invelops it self in a private and affected Phrase which sounds 't is to be fear'd the Spirit of Schism Singularity and Rebellion and not of Love and Peace And yet as plain a sound as the Spirits is it is not lastly without some obscurity but that is not of the sound that 's plain and open but of the motion and course of which we may have leave to be ignorant and in many things can be no other That 's the last point wherein the Spirit and spiritual man are like Thou canst no more tell whence or whither those great things the regenerate man acts are than whence the wind or Spirit comes or whither it goes 4. But that so it is the amazements and doubts that this Day possessed those who were the witnesses of the wonders of this days work and their several judgments and conjectures concerning the Apostles this day filled with this holy Spirit will make it without question Some said What meaneth this Others said mocking these men are full of new wine All were amazed and in doubt Acts ii 12 13. The Apostles seem'd such strange things to them now since the Holy Ghost had faln upon them that they knew not new what to make of them or of any thing they did In the progress afterward of their lives and courses they were as little understood as much misconstrued by the world They were thought fools and mad-men when most wise and sober Acts xxvi 24. condemn'd for wicked when they were most innocent reckon'd the scum and off-scouring of the world 1 Cor. iv 13. when they were the Treasures and Jewels of it judg'd as dying when they only truly liv'd accounted sorrowful yet were always rejoycing esteemed poor yet so far from being so that they made many rich thought to have nothing and yet possessed all things 2 Cor. vi 9 10. So it was then so it always was so it ever will be The World will never never can conceive the nature and way of him that is born of the Spirit 1 Cor. ii 14. We know not what to make even of his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Text whether to read it born or begotten for 't is both and how he should be both by the same Spirit or how the same Spirit should be both Father and Mother to him we cannot tell How he is begotten by the Spirit how he is new born the ways of his brith the ways of his life the way of his death how he is wrought and form'd and moulded out of his old stiff stubborn temper into mildness and softness how the old man is mortified in all his members how the new man rises and grows in all his parts how he resists so many strong temptations how he can so chearfully renounce the World how he can so wholly deny himself how he can so merrily pursue a troublesome and despised vertue why he should do all this when there appears nothing but trouble sorrow and disadvantage by it are all mysteries so obscure and dark that night it self is mid-day to them Nor is it less to see with what calmness and contentedness he passes hence through pains and tortures nor can we conceive the glory and happiness that attends him Thus is the spiritual Heroe's life and death a mystery so far above the apprehension of dull-ey'd earth that it knows no more of its course or motion than it does of the winds neither what it is nor whence it comes nor whither it goes But after all these mysteries I end in plainness 'T is a Day indeed as well as a Text of mysteries and wonders but both Day and Text and Wind and Spirit will be all satisfied if they can leave these plain Lestons upon our Spirits That 1. we now get us up with Elijâ—h 1 King xix
our own spirits within or be put into us by other spirits by the ministery of Angels from without but inspired truths from this Spirit alone Angels indeed are sometimes the messengers of it but never called the spirits of it they bring it they do not breath it When they have brought it and done their message be it never so true never so comfortable it will not comfort but amaze us it will not sink into us but ly only at our doors till this Spirit breath and work it in He alone Spiritus Veritatis the Inspirer of truth Hence it is that this Spirit of of all Spirits is only call'd the Comforter for that he only lets in the comfort to the heart whatever Spirit is the Messenger Be it the Angels those Spirits and Messengers of heaven or be it the Ministers those Messengers upon earth with all the life and spirit they can give their words no comfort from either unless this Spirit of truth blow open the doors inspire and breath in with them Truth it self cannot work upon our spirits but by the spiration of this Spirit of truth 'T is but a dead Letter a vanishing voice a meer piece of articulate air the best the greatest the soundest truth no other it has no spirit it has no life but from this Spirit of truth To conclude this Point It is not when the Spirit of truth is come or when He that is the Comforter is come though both be but one he shall guide you neither title single but He the Spirit of truth both together to teach us first That the truth which this Spirit brings is full of comfort always comfortable Startle us it may a little at the first but then presently Fear not comes presently to comfort us trouble us it may a little at the first nay and bring some tribulation with it as times may be but ere the verse be out ere the words be out almost Be of good chear says Christ 't is but in the world and I have overcome the world and in me ye shall have peace St. Iohn xvi 33. that came before so that tribulation is encompassed with comfort Ye shall be sorrowful indeed but your sorrow shall be turned into joy ver 20. the first is no sooner mentioned but the other follows as fast as the Comma will let it Christs truth and this Spirits truth is the Comforters truth as well as the Spirits and have not only spirit to act and do but comfort also in the doing and after it to be sure Nay Joyn'd so 2. He the Spirit of truth to teach us again that nothing can comfort us but the truth no Spirit hold up our Spirits but the Spirit of truth Lies and falshoods may uphold us for a time and keep up our Spirits but long they will not hold a few days will discover them and then we are sadder than at first To be deluded adds shame to our grief 't is this Spirit only that is the Spirit of our life that keeps us breathing and alive t is only truth that truly comforts us which even then when it appears most troublesome and at the worst has this comfort with it that we see it that we see the worst need fear no more whilst the joys that rise from false apprehensions or lying vanities indeed from any thing below this Spirit of truth and heaven bring so much fear of a change or close or too sudden an end that I may well say they have no comfort with them They flow not from this Comforter they come not from this Spirit that 's the reason they have no Comfort no Spirit in them It may well occasion us as soon as we can to look after this He the Spirit of truth and for our own sakes enquire where he is watch his motion what and whence and whither it is 2. To understand the motion and coming of the Spirit what it means we can take no better way than to peruse the Phrases of the holy Book under what terms it elsewhere does deliver it The first time we hear of it we read it moving Gen. i. 3. The next time striving with man Gen. vi 3. Then filling him Exod. xxxi 3. Then resting upon him Num. xi 25. Sometimes he is said to come Iudg. iii. 10. Sometimes to enter into us Ezek. ii 2. Sometimes to fall upon us Ezek. xi 5. Sometimes to be put upon us Num. xi 29. Sometimes to be put into us Ezek. xxxvi 27. Sometimes to breath sometimes to blow upon us Isa. xl 7. All these ways is he said to come whether he move us to good or strive with us against evil or fill us with sundry gifts and graces or rest upon us in their continuance whether he comes upon us in the power of his Administrations or whether he enter as it were and possess us wholly as his own whether he appear in us or without us whether he come upon us so suddenly and unusually that he seems even to fall upon us or be put upon us by ordinary ways and means whether by imposition on or breathing in whether by a softer breath or a stronger blast whether he come in the feathers of a Dove or on the wings of the wind whether in Fire or in Tongues whether in a visible shape or in an invisible power and grace they are his comings all sometimes one way sometimes another his comings they are all Yet but some not all of his comings for all his ways are past finding out and teach us a Lesson against curiosity in searching his out-goings And yet this word Come sounds somewhat hard for all this still Did we not say he was God And can God be said to come any whither who is every where Nay of this very Spirit expresly says the Psalmist Psal. cxxxix 7. Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit And if I cannot go from him what needs his coming Coming here is a word of grace and favour and certainly be we never so much under his eye we need that need his grace need his favour Nay so much the more because he is so near us that so we may do nothing unworthy of his presence But He speaks to us after the manner of men who if they be persons of quality and come to visit us we count it both a favour and honour So by inversion when God bestows either favours or honours on us when this holy Spirit bestows a grace or a gift or a truth upon us that we had not before then is he said to Come to us I need not now trouble my self much to find out whence he comes Every good and perfect gift comes from above says St. Iames Iam. i. 17. From heaven it is he comes from the Father he sends him St. Iohn xiv 26. From the Son he sends him too in this very Chapter ver 7. And this is not only the place whence he comes but here are the persons too whence he proceeds
still unseen and unheard or however expedit vobis it was expedient for them that Christ should go away that the Comforter might come for us it is not I am sure if we have none to come Settle we therefore this for an Article of our faith that he comes still I told you before how you should know it by his breathings inwardly in you good thoughts and desires his breathings outwardly good words and expressions by his workings with you good life and actions in a word by his gifts and graces But if this be all why is it now said When he is come Came he not thus before to the Patriarchs and Prophets were not they partakers of his gifts mov'd and stirr'd and actuated by him why then so much ado about Christs sending him now and of his coming now as if he was never sent never came before We read indeed in the Old Testament often of his coming never of his sending but by way of promise that God would send or of prophesie that he should be sent and that but once neither expresly Psal. civ 30. Emittes spiritum creabuntur So though come he did in those days of old yet voluntarily meerly we might conceive never sent never so distinct a notion of his person then then only as the Spirit of God now as the Spirit of the Father and the Son then only as the Power of God now as a Person in the God-head This the first difference between his coming then and now 2. Then he came as the Spirit of Prophesie now as the Spirit of Truth that is as the very truth and fulfilling of it of all the former Prophesies 3. Then upon Iudea and few else besides it may be Iob in the land of Vz and Rahab in Iericho and Ruth in Moab here and there now and then one now upon all flesh upon Iew and Gentile both alike the partition-wall like the walls of Iericho blown down by the breath of this Spirit by the blast of this horn of the most High 4. Then most in types and shadows now clearly and in truth 5. Then sparingly they only sprinkled with it now poured out Ioel's Effundam fulfilled Acts ii 1. a common phrase become now full of the Holy Ghost Acts vii 55. and filled with the Spirit Ephes. v. 18. 6. Then he came and went lighted a little but staid not motabat or volitabat flew or fluttered about mov'd and stirr'd them at times as it did Sampson Iudg. xiii 25. coming and going now 't is he is come He sate him down upon the Apostles Acts ii 3. sate him down in the Chair at their Synod Acts xv 28. Visum est Spiritui Sancto nobis calls us his Temples now not his Tabrnacles places of a during Habitation and is to abide with us for ever Lastly Then he came to help them in the observance of the Jewish and Moral Law now to plant and settle an obedience to the Christian Faith For Christ being to introduce a more perfect and explicate faith in the blessed Trinity and a Redeemer to wean men from the first elements and beggarly rudiments as the Apostle calls them to raise them from earthly to heavenly promises to elevate them to higher degrees of love and hope and charity and vertue and knowledge and being besides to arm them against those contradictions and oppositions that would be made against them by the world those persecutions and horrid ways of martyrdom they were to encounter with in the propagation of the Christian Faith for these ends it was necessary that the Spirit of Truth should come anew and come with power as it did at first with wonder that by its work and power those great and glorious truths might be readily received and embraced For this seems the very end of his coming to convince the world ver viii of this Chapter and to testifie of him Chap. xv 26. and to glorifie him in the very next verse to the text ver 14. to evince this new revealed truth to the souls and consciences of men that Messiah was come that Jesus was the Christ that the Iewish Sacrifices were now to have an end that the Prophesies were all fulfilled in him that his Law was now to succeed in the place of Moses's that he justified where the Law could not that through him now in his Name and in none other Salvation henceforth was to be preached to Iew and Gentile and God had open'd now that door of hope to all the world To bear witness to this and perswade this truth so opposite to Natural and Iewish reason or so much above the ordinary reach of the one and the received customs of the other thus to enhance Piety and Perfection thus to set up Christ above the Natural and Mosaick Law thus now to glorifie God in Christ and Christ as Christ need there was great need that the Spirit of Truth himself should come himself after a new fashion in a greater manifestation of his power than in former times bring greater grace because he required of us a greater work All this while we have given you but general notions of his coming either when he first came in his fulness on the Apostles and first Disciples or when secondly he comes on any as the Holy Spirit in good motions and affections We are yet to see when he comes as the Spirit of Truth to descend now thirdly to a distinct and particular enquiry When the Spirit of Truth is in us or come to us when we have him in us Nor is this way of consideration less necessary than the other though it may be harder far forsomuch as we daily see many a pious Christian Soul seduced into Error in whom yet we cannot doubt but the Holy Spirit has a dwelling many a good man also err in many opinions of whose portion of the good Spirit we make no question whilst some many others of less Piety it may be none more fully know the truth than either of the other Understand therefore there is a double way of knowing even divine truth 1. the one by the way of natural reason by principles and conclusions rationally and logically deduced out of the evidences of Scripture 2. the other by particular assents and dissents of the Understanding and Will purified and sanctified to all ready obedience to Christ. By the first it comes that the greatest Scholars the most learned and rational men know always the most truths both speculative and practick both in their Principles and Inferences and are therefore always fittest to determine doubts and give counsel and direction both what to believe and what to do in all particular controversies and debates which concern either Truth or Error or Justice and Injustice Right or Wrong the practices and customs of former times and Churches or their contraries and disuses and this may be done without the Spirit of Sanctification or the holy sanctifying Spirit under that title at least though indeed
ready and willing to guide us into all truth yet and 2. to shew us how he will do it that we may learn how to be guided by him This the sum And the Vse of all will be that we submit our selves to him and to his guidance to be taught and led and guided by him to his guiding and to his truth and to all of it without exception To guide and to be guided are relatives infer one another If we will have him guide us he will have us be guided by him and give up our selves to his way of guiding Oh that we would that there were but a heart in us to do so we should not then have so many spirits but more truth one Spirit would be all and all truth would be one this one single Spirit would be sufficient to guide us into all truth He would guide us into all truth But I must from my wishes to my words where we see first we have a guide that though Christ be ascended from us into Heaven yet we are not without a guide upon the Earth I. I will not leave you comfortless said he when he was going hence St. Ioh. xiv 18. Had he left us without a guide he had so comfortless indeed in a vast and howling wilderness this earth is little else But a Comforter he sends ver 7. such a one as shall teach us all things St. Iohn xiv 26. that 's a comfort indeed none like it to have one to guide us in a dangerous and uncertain way to teach us that our ignorance requires to do all the offices of a guide unto us to teach us our way to lead us if need be in it to protect and defend us through it to answer for us if we be questioned about it and to cheer us up encourage and sustain us all the way II. Such a guide as this is 2. this He we are next to speak of He the Spirit of Truth so 't is interpreted but immediately before He shall teach you teach you the way reveal Christ to you for unless he do you cannot know him teach you how to pray Rom. viii 26. teach you what to say how to answer by the way if you be called to question in it St. Luke xii give you a mouth and wisdom too St. Luke xxi 15. teach you not only to speak but to speak to purpose He 2. shall lead you too deducet lead you on be a prop and stay and help to you in your journey He 3. shall protect and defend you in it as a guide free you from danger set you at full liberty 2 Cor. iii. 17. be a cover to you by day and a shelter to you in the night the breath of the Holy Spirit will both refresh us and blow away all our enemies like the dust He 4 if we be charged with any thing will answer for us like a guide and governor 'T is not you says Christ but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you St. Matth. x. 20. He lastly it is that quicken our spirit with his Spirit that encourages and upholds us like a guide and leader for without him our spirits are but soft air and vanish at the least pressure He guides our feet and guides our heads and guides our tongues and guides our hands and guides our hearts and guides our spirits we have neither spirit nor motion nor action nor life without him III. But here particularly he comes to guides us into the Truth And God knows we need it for surely men of low degree are vanity says the Psalmist and men of high degree are a lie Psal. lxii 9. not lyars only but a very lye as far from truth as a lie it self things so distant from that conformity with God which is truth for truth is nothing else that no lie is further off it Nor soul nor body nor heart nor mind nor upper nor lower powers conformed to him neither our understandings to his understanding nor our wills to his will nor any thâ—ng of us really to him our actions and words and thoughts all lye to him to his face we think too low we speak too mean we deal too falsly with him pretend all his yet give most of it to our lusts and to our selves and we are so used to it we can do no other we are all either verbal or real lies need we had of one to guide us into the truth God is Truth to guide us to him Christ is the Truth St. Iohn xiv 6. to guide us to him His Word is Truth to guide us into that into the true understanding and practise of it His Promises are Truth very Yea and Amen to guide us to them to rest and hold upon them His way is the way of Truth to guide us into that into a Religion pure holy and undefiled that only is the true one Into none of these can any guide but this guide here He sheweth us of the Father He reveals to us the Son He interprets the Word and writes it in our hearts He leads and upholds us by his Promises seals them unto us seals us again to the day of Redemption the day of truth the day when all things shall appear truly as they are He sets our Religion right he only leads us into that Man cannot he can speak but to the ear there his words dye and end Angels cannot they are but ministring spirits at the best to this Spirit Nature cannot these truths are all above it are supernatural and no other truth is worth the knowing Nay into any truth this Spirit only can we only flatter and keep ado about this truth and that truth and the other but into them we cannot get make nothing of any truth without him unless he sanctifie it better else we had not known it Knowledge puffeth up all knowledge that comes not from this Spirit so the very truth of any truth that which truly confirms it to the divine will and understanding that makes truth the same with goodness is from this Spirit from his guiding and directing his breathing it or breathing into it or upon it IV. Thus we are faln upon the fourth particular that he will guide us into all truth Gods mercies and Christs are ever perfect and of the largest size and the conducts of the Spirit are so too into all goodness Gal. v. 9. into all fulness Ephes. iii. 19. into all truth here into all things That we are not full is from our selves that we are not led into all truth is for that all truth does not please us and we are loth to believe it such if it make not for us he for his part is as ready to guide us into all as into one For take we truth either for speculative or practical either for the substance against types and shadows or the discerning the substance through those shadows or take we it in opposition to obscurity and doubting understand we it
too yet in measure and order too no other then the Spirit gives them utterance 4. And lastly though first it be in the Text yet because it is but the circumstance and time of the story and not the main business or second of it and fittest to close up all in good time and order The Time when all this was done when these things came to pass when the Apostles were so dispos'd when the Holy Ghost thus descended when this strange issue fell out When the day of Pentecost was fully come in very good time the promis'd time Christs time Gods own time such as he had prefigur'd them in in the Law too at the fifty days Feast after the Passover a solemn day and somewhat more as you shall hear anon Thus we best join the History and the Moral the Doctrine and Use of Pentecost or Whitsunday nay the very Holy Spirit of the day and our souls to day together that we may not be like men that only come to hear news a story and away but such as hear the Word and profit by it Which that we may Come O mighty wind and blow upon us Descend O holy Fire and warm our hearts give me a tongue O blessed Spirit out of this days number and utterance give thy servants capacious spirits and remembrance that thy Word may rush in upon them as a sound from Heaven and fill the houses of all our souls with joy and gladness with holy fire of Piety and Devotion that we may with one accord one heart and mind speak forth thy praise and glory The first Point in the order I have set you is the disposition of them that the Holy Spirit will come and light upon 1. They are of one accord 2. in one place 3. sitting quietly and expecting there and that 4. also upon the solemn day when the day of Pentecost any solemn day or occasion is presented them They are first of one accord whom this Spirit vouchsafes to descend into This unity draws the Spirit to them that keeps it with them the house of unity is the only Temple of the Spirit of Unity That soul which breaks the bond of unity and divides it self from the Church of Christ from the company of the Apostles and their Successors the still Fathers of it cannot hold this holy wind cannot enclose this holy fire they are broken and crackt crack only of the Spirit but are really broken from that body in which only the Spirit moves Take and divide a member from the body be it the principal that in which most spirit was the heart or the head and once divided the Spirit vanishes from it will not sit nor dwell in it just so is it it in Christs Body the Church If one of the chiefest members of it one erst while of the devoutest and most religious in it once grow so proud of his own wisdom or gifts so singular in his conceits as to separate himself from his fellows from that body whereof Christ is the head he goes away like a member from the natural body and leaves the Spirit behind him that retires from him for it is one Spirit and cannot be divided from the body though it work diversly in it If this being of one accord of one mind be the temper for the receipt of the Holy Spirit as here you see it is and in reason it can be no otherwise it being the Spirit of love and unity What spirit are they of Whose Religion is Faction whose chief pretended Piety is Schism whose business is to differ from all the World Nothing can be more evident than that men are now adays much at a loss for the Spirit however every one claim to it seeing there is no accord but discord not diversities only but contrarieties but contradictions amongst them that most pretend the Spirit Indeed were this they any less a They than the Apostles themselves and the whole number of the then Disciples or had there been but the least division among them either about the manner of staying or expecting Christs Promise or which is less about the place to stay in It may be these men might have had a shadow for their separations but Apostles they were and in one place they were too altogether agreed in all were all in unity were all in uniformity not their minds only but their bodies too together Men thought it nothing a while since to withdraw themselves from the Houses of God as if no matter at all for the place they could for all that be of the same faith but too woful experience has prov'd it now that with the one place the one faith is vanisht with the ceremony the substance gone too with the uniformity of Worship the unanimity of our minds and the uniformity of our faith too blown into the air How shall we do O blessed Spirit in so many crackt vessels to retain thee Needs must the Spirit expire out of that body which has so many breaches and divisions in it so many divided houses so many broken Churches so many rotten Congregations I know if it be only necessity divides us and drives us into several dens and caves as it did the Primitive Christians in the days of those fiery persecutions that the Holy Spirit will ransack all the cranies and search out all the privatest corners be they above ground or under it but it is because the mind of all those several places is but one and in that respect they are no more than so many several cells of the one Catholick Church but where choice and not necessity wilfulness and not force singularity and not purity of Truth or Conscience makes the division and draws Disciples into Chambers Parlors Barns or Mills Woods or Desarts go not says Christ out after them say they what they will of Christ or Spirit there believe it not St. Matth. xxix 26. Two in a field and yet one taken and the other left two at the mill and one taken and the other left ver 40. So at the most I fear great hazard that any if they be no better no more orderly gather'd when the Master comes Or were they yet perhaps in several places sitting as they are here that is quietly and in true peace and faith expecting the promise of their Lord something might be said to excuse their separations but not only actually to break the unity of the Spirit and the bond of Peace but to breath out nothing but war contention and dispute to be so far from sitting down and either suffering for Christ or humbly expecting his time of assistance and deliverance out of their perplexities and discomforts as to take the matter into their own hands and prevent the coming of the Spirit of Peace by rising and raising spirits of war and confusion they must give me leave to tell them they know not what spirit they are of a heady guiddy furious spirit zeal I bear them witness with St. Paul
Rom. x. 2. without knowledge and spirit without holiness for the Spirit of the Prophets is subject to the Prophets 1 Cor. xiv 32. much more to the God of the Prophets to his time and order And yet there is another disposition to be observed in those upon whom the good Spirit lights to make either instruments of glory to the Church or Piety to God 'T is sitting and expecting if you mark it till the day or days of Pentecost be fully come and accomplisht souls willing to keep a holy-day or holy-days to the Lord neither to be scar'd from the attendance of their Master and their Devotions nor to be shortned and interrupted in their pious course of faith and piety by the now so terrible scare-crows of set Feasts as Iewish legal and superstitious observances as the new zelots are so wise to term them because they understand not terms or times The spiritual man if they be what they boast discerns the things of God though hidden in darker mysteries knows better to distinguish Iudaism from Christianity Piety from Superstition and is not only content but studies to wait upon his Lord upon any day glad to get it too Passover or Pentecost makes use of them all and turns them fairly from their old Iudaism and consecrates them anew to his Masters service and this doing the very Spirit himself authorizes and abets whilst he thus seems to pick out the time for his own coming at the Iewish Pentecost so to sanctifie a new Christian Pentecost the Christian Whitsuntide to all Christian Generations by this solemn glory of his benefits to day to be remembred for ever Thus we have the disposition he vouchsafes to descend upon unanimous uniform peaceable orderly expecting souls Such as set apart and keep days to God with faith and patience and in obedience and order the contrary tempers are too rough lodgings for the Spirit of meekness order and peace be we so prepar'd and he will come II. Now see we how he comes the manner of the Holy Spirits coming Double it is to the ear and to the eye To the ear first and that 1. suddenly from Heaven secondly 3. like a sound thence 4. the sound of a rushing mighty wind that 5. filled all the house yet 6. the house only where they sate thus to the ear Then 2. to the eye in the appearance of tongues cloven tongues tongues of fire tongues sitting and lastly sitting upon each of them We take first what came first the sound and that first was sudden suddenly says the Text yet as sudden as it came go it shall not so not without a note or two Suddenly then it came to shew the freeness of Gods grace so far above desert that it is also above apprehension it out-runs that and is upon us ere we are aware so little probability have we to deserve it that we commonly have not time to do it and when we have yet so suddain does it fall that we may well see it comes not from our selves so dull a piece as earth and sin has made us To shew 2. the readiness of his goodness beyond expectation readier far to give than we to take comes commonly upon us sooner then we expect or wish prevents us with his goodness as the Psalmist observes to us Psal. xxi 3. and runs very swiftly Psal. cxlvii 15. flying upon the wings of the wind Psal. civ To shew us 3. the vanity of men who think it comes with observation It does not says Christ St. Luke xvii 20. 'T is not at our command The Prophets themselves could not Prophesie when they listed 't was cecidit Spiritus the Spirit fell upon them the common phrase in Scripture and then they prophesied till that fell and fall it did but at times what times it pleased the motions of the Prophet were but as other mens Indeed I remember Elisha willing to prophesie to Iehoshaphat the King of Iudah 2 King iii. 14 15. calls for a Minstrel and it came to pass that while the Minstrel play'd the hand of the Lord came upon him Not that either the Spirit was at the will and under the power of the Minstrel or the Prophet but to shew the disposition that the holy Spirit vouchsafes soonest and suddenest to come to a sweet and tunable soul dispos'd to accord to love and peace and unity And by the way you may take notice Musick and the Spirit are at no discord as the late spiritual men forsooth would have us to believe the Prophet you see thought it the only way and medium to raise his spirits into heavenly raptures to make himself capable of new Inspirations to call for an Instrument of Musick and as it were to perswade the heavenly Spirit down by some grave and sober Musick which may make us wonder how these great pretenders to the Spirt and gapers for it should be so furious enemies against the Church Musick so ever employ'd and approv'd both by God and his Prophets and Apostles for singing with melody says St. Paul too Ephes. v. 19. to fit and sweeten and raise our dull and rougher spirits to the service of Heaven and the entertainment of the heavenly and gentle motions of the Spirit in those holy performances But all this while this is but to dispose our selves the Spirit it self is at its own disposal for all this and when he comes comes on a sudden Even to awake 4. and rouse us up We are drowsie souls to Heaven-ward want some sudden change to startleus things that come leisurely will not do it It must be a sudden turn that will turn us out of our selves or from our follies or so much upward And sudden 5. it is again to shew the activity of the Spirit of God how wonderful he is among the Children of men that he cannot only turn the world upside down when ere he please but assoon as he pleases does but blow with his wind and the waters flow casts but a sudden glance of an eye at St. Peter and out run the waters out of his he that was but just now afraid of the voice of a silly girl fears not presently the lightnings and thunders of the greatest Tyrants Nox ut tetigerit mentem docet solumque tetigisse docuisse est Mam humanum subito ut illustrat immutat affectum abnegat hoc repente quod erat exhibet repente quod non erat S. Greg. He does but touch the mind and teaches it shines into it and changes it together forgets immediately what it was and is what it was not All the quickest ways of men must have time and leisure be it but to cast an eye but O qualis est artifex iste Spiritus But how wonderful an Artist is thy Spirit O Lord that knows not the least hinderance or delay 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it comes so suddenly there is no appearance often of its coming not so much as a whiff or shadow before it to give us
Houses and Buildings nay rends the Mountains and breaks in pieces the Rocks before it 1 Kings xix 11. But never did Wind so tear up Foundations by the roots never did so strong Buildings fall before that tumultuous vapour as this rushing mighty Wind that this day came down from Heaven hath cast down before it All the high things of the earth Wisdom and Learning and Might and Majesty have faln as easily as so many Paper Turrets at its breath all have given up themselves and thrown all prostrate at the Word of this Spirit so that the whole World stood wondring and amaz'd to see it self so turn'd about by the meer words of a few simple Fishermen without force or eloquence or craft to see it self so tamely submit its glory to the humility of Christ its greatness to his littleness its majesty to his baseness its wisdom to the foolishness of his Cross its ease pleasure to the pains and patience of it But manus excelsi fecit hoc 't is the hand of the most Highest that has done it such a wind could come from none but God such a Spirit can be none but his none but he could do it and it is marvellous in our eyes his power as marvellous as his mercy both of them above any created ones whatsoever Well may such a Wind as this now fill the house as it follows in the fifth Consideration And yet commonly the wind fills the open air and not the houses Common winds do so indeed but this peculiar Wind fills the house and every corner comes in even when the doors are shut or else opens and shuts them as it pleases a sign 't is more than air or airy spirit 't is he only that searches the hearts and reins that can glide so into these close rooms of ours and 't is our happiness it is so that he thus blows into the house of his own accord and power For give me a Ship says St. Chrysostom with all its tackling sails and anchors spread all in order too and let the wind lie still let there be no gale stirring and all its furniture and men are nothing no more is the soul with all its preparations without the blowing of the Spirit nay no more is all our eloquence all our arguments and perswasions the subtilty of our understanding the richness of our conceipt and notion the sweetness of the voice the rhetorick of words the strength of reason the whole tackling and furniture of the Orator or Preacher unless the Spirit come and fill the sail and stretch the canvas and so drive on the Vessel 'T is this implevit we must hold by 't is his filling our empty house our lank and lither sails that blows comfort to us And 't is the enhancing of the benefit which is the last considerable in this similitude of the wind that it fills the house only where they are sitting It is no ordinary or common favour that God vouchsafes in filling our houses with the Spirit he hath not dealt so with any other Nation with any other people than the Christian people It is the Church only and the souls of Christians in it that this mighty wind as rushing and mighty as it is does content and contain it self in All other houses and places stand empty cannot get this Tenant 'T is the property of this Wind and no other to blow where it lists in this house and no other within doors all within the Church none without at all or the sound of it only passes out to call others in that they may see and wonder at the things that are come to pass this day that Iews and Proselytes Cretes and Arabians Parthians and Medes and all Nations under Heaven may beaâ— witness of the wonder and if they come in in some sort partake of it too of the wind though not of the tongues of some graces of the Spirit though not of the other Only come in they must into the Church of Christ which is his body before their veins be filled with this Spirit before they feel any motion of it Of the Wind I say such a portion of the Spirit as may breath into them the breath of life but tongues of fire are for those only who were sitting there before fitting as Governors of the Church to whom that baptism of fire was promised who were bid to tarry and expect it and when so enabled to go abroad then and use their tongues and blow the flames of divine love and charity through the World I should now proceed to these miraculous tongues the second representment of the Holy Spirit And me thinks I am unwilling to leave them unspoken of to which we ow our speech But your ears are already filled with the wind yet I hope 't is the proper wind of the day and the sound of it shall not vanish as the wind as ordinary winds and sounds nor my words as the soft air So much the rather in that this Point of the wind comes more home to us than that other of the tongues Tongues were for them that believe not says the Apostle but the Wind the rushing mighty Wind from Heaven to cast down all the strong holds of Sin and Satan for them that believe even for us all The fiery tongues concern the Apostles as a miraculous enabling of them to the work of the Apostleship to the preaching and divulging the Gospel of Christ but the breath and blowing of the Spirit concerns all Christians whatsoever under every notion To that our proper tenure is from this Wind nay so much the more because it is the breath of the Spirit not the tongue that makes us Christian the wind like that in Ezekiel quickens our dead bones into the life of Christ and by it we live to our own Salvation by the tongues only to anothers So having gotten our share already in this Wind from Heaven we may the easier bear the deferring of the discourse of the tongues thence And truly if we can now get the Spirit to blow upon these dead elements and quicken them to us into the body and blood of Christ we shall quickly by the vertue of that blood of the Vine speak with new tongues the Spirit will give utterance and we shall sing the praises of the Lord. That should be indeed the whole business of our tongues to day to be as loud as the loudest wind in our Thanksgivings O ye winds of God bless ye the Lord say the three Children in the fire O ye Children of the Lord bless ye the Lord in the Wind say I in this mighty rushing Wind acknowledge his goodness admire his power confess his praise who thus blows the sparks of grace up in us who clenses our souls from all impure airs and vapours who scatters the clouds of sorrow shews us the fairest face of Heaven who cools and refreshes and revives and purges us and wafts us to our heavenly Countrey by this holy
Word that I thy servant may have utterance this thy people give thee audience all of us obedience and all our hearts and tongues be so thorowly heated with thy holy fire that they may be filled with thy praise and honour all the day long That we may do so here are tongues given in the Text ver 3. Cloven tongues as it were of fire there we left there we begin again at the second Way and Manner of the holy Spirits coming down to day And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire and it sate upon each of them Where 1. of the Order 2. Of the Appearance 3. Of the Manner it self And lastly of the Continuance of it For the Order 't is the second way of the Spirits coming here first in the wind then in the fire The holy fire within us is not kindled but with a mighty wind The divine spark or soul cannot be blown up into a fire till some mighty wind has shaken all our powers blown off the dust and ashes those earthly worldly affections that choak'd and cover'd it till it has rais'd a tumult in all the corners of us dispers'd the vanities and irregularities of all our motions and scatter'd every thing that hinder'd it from the obedience to the Spirit then and not till then the fire bursts forth and as the Psalmist we speak with our tongues For the Order 2. is the same between the sound and the tongues The Sound first the tongues second We are first to hear before we speak so the Spirits order tells us here Not turn Teachers at the first dash not presume to teach others before we are thorowly taught our selves that 's none of the Spirits way of teaching how spiritual soever they think themselves that do so that speak what they have neither seen nor heard their own fancies and imaginations the divisings of their own hearts such as the Christian world never heard before whereof there is not so much as the sound or any thing sounding like it in all the Writings of the Church The sound too 3. before the fire The Spirit manifests it self by degrees first more obscurely to the ear then more evidently to the eye I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear says Iob Chap. xlii 5. that was a favour but now mine eye seeth thee that 's a greater The Spirit comes by degrees Gods favours rise upon us in order There comes first a great and strong wind that rends the mountains and breaks in pieces the rocks before him that throws down our mountainous thought and projects breaks them all in pieces crosses our designs thwarts them with some great affliction or some strange thing or other breaks our very hearts our stony hearts then follows an earthquake in all our faculties we begin to shake and tremble with the fear of the Almighty then comes the fire and burns up all the chaff scorches our very bones and warms us even at the heart whereupon presently there issues out a still small voice out of our lips the tongues follow upon the fire or are even with it This was signified to us thus by Gods appearing to Elijah 1 Kings xix 11 12. and the same order the holy Spirit of God uses here to the Apostles the same method still he keeps with us For he thrusts not in upon us unprepared he makes himself a way into us gives us not so clear an evidence as seeing him at the first not till the sound has well awaken'd us and the wind well brush'd and cleans'd our houses for him Yet then appear he does For we now presently hear of his appearance There appeared tongues The manifestation of the Spirit says St. Paul is given to every man to profit withal 1 Cor. xii 7. Not the Spirit only but the manifestation too No Spirit without some manifestation If the Spirit be an extraordinary Spirit the manifestation will be so too If it be but ordinary the manifestation will be no more 1. If God sends any with an extraordinary commission to preach or teach he enables them with an extraordinary Spirit appears with them after some extraordinary fashion tongues or miracles or some high heavenly fires come with them They but blaspheme the Spirit and usurp upon the Office who take it upon them without such a warrant they run without sending says God Ier. xxiii 21. their tongues are but their own and however those perverse fellows in the Psalm infer they are they that ought to speak who is Lord over them Psal. xii 4. they ought not to speak there is a Lord over them what ere they think that will one day call them to accompt and make them know it their fire they bring is but Nadabs and Abihu's their zeal without knowledge they have no tongue but what their mother taught them the holy Spirit has taught them none made no appearance to them either by fire or by tongues they are filled with some other Spirit the Spirit of Pride of Division or Rebellion or somewhat worse where the Spirit sends with an extraordinary commission it will appear by some gift extraordinary and miraculous somewhat will appear But 2. if our mission be but ordinary the ordinary way that the Spirit has now left in the power and authority of the Church will be sufficient yet that must appear too our authority appear thence our tongues serve to it too to the edifying of the Church 1 Cor. xiv 12. to the building of it up not to the pulling of it down Every gift of the holy Spirit is to have its manifestation tongues and interpretation and prayer and Prophesie and all the rest yet all in order Every one to employ not hide his talent he who has a ministery to waite on that he that is to exhort to attend to that he that is to teach to busie himself in that though all according to proportion Rom. xii 6 7 8. all to appear to the glory of God Yea even those saving graces of the Spirit are not always to be kept within they are to appear in tongues or fire so shine that others may glorifie so speak and act that others seeing our good conversation may be affected with it and perswaded to grace and vertue by it The Spirit is not given to be hid under a bushel the wind cannot the fire will not the tongue is not usual to be kept in so They all appear'd here after their way the wind after its way the tongues and fire after theirs in this verse to the fight the most certain of the senses that we might not be deceived by pretended Spirits might have somewhat manifest to judge by to tell us that the graces of the Spirit whether those for edification of others or sanctification of our selves are for manifestation to appear to others as well as to our selves we receive them to that purpose to profit others and to approve our selves These may serve for reasons why
elevates our souls by the Spirit of Wisdom coelestia sapere as it is Col. iii. 2. to those things that are above Sapientia est rerum altissimarum says the divine Philosopher Wisdom is of things of the higest nature of a high ascending strain 2. It penetrates and pierces like the fire by the Spirit of understanding understands that which the Spirit of man cannot understand 1 Cor. ii 11. the very things of God pierces into them all 3. It tries like fire by the Spirit of counsel and advice teaches us to prove all things and choose the best 4. It hardens us against all the evils that can befall us as fire does the brick against all weather by the spirit of fortitude and ghostly strength 5. It enlightens the darkness of our souls by the spirit of knowledge teaches us to know the things that belong unto our peace the ways and methods of salvation 6. It heats the coldness of our affections by the Spirit of piety and true godliness inflames us with devotion and zeal to Gods service And 7. it softens our obdurate hearts by the Spirit of holy fear that we melt into tears and sighs at the apprehension of Gods displeasure even as Wax melteth before the fire the highest hardest rockiest mountains melt and flow down at his presence when once his Spirit does but cast a ray upon them These are the seven gifts of the Spirit represented to us by so many properties of the fire 4. There are seven other operations and effects of the same Spirit as lively also exprest by it and make the fourth reason why the holy Ghost appears under the semblance of fire 1. Fire it burns and the Prophet Isaiah calls this Spirit a Spirit of burning Isa. iv 4. It makes our hearts burn within us as it did the Disciples going to Emaus St. Luke xxiv 32. puts us to a kind of pain raises sorrow and contrition in us makes the scalding water gush out of our eyes you may even feel it burn you 2. With this burning it purifies and purges too As things are purified by the fire so are our spirits and souls and bodies purified by the Spirit 3. For purifie it must needs for it devours all the dross the chaff the hay and stubble that is in us purges out our sins burns up every thing before it that offends is a consuming fire Heb. xii 29. so is God so is his Spirit 4. Yet as it is a consuming so it is a renewing fire Fire makes things new again And do but send out thy Spirit O Lord and they are made Psal. civ 30. We are all made for so it is that thou renewest the face of the earth the face of this dull earth of ours by putting into it the Holy Spirit 5. To this purpose it makes that like as fire it separates 5. things of divers natures silver from tin metals from dross Separare heterogenea is one of the effects of fire says the Philosopher to distinguish and divide between things of different kinds And Spiritus judicii discretionis the Prophet styles the Spirit a Spirit of judgment it is Isai. 4. 4. a discerning Spirit teaches us to discern between Dross and Gold Truth and Error between Good and Evil and without it we discern nothing This the Apostle reckons as a peculiar donation of it the discerning of spirits 1 Cor. xii 10. 6. Yet as it separates things of different natures so 6. it unites things of the same kind just as the fire does several pieces of the same metal into one body This holy Spirit is a Spirit of unity They that separate they have not the Spirit St. Iude 19. Schisms and Divisions Strife Heresies and Seditions are the works of the flesh not of the spirit Gal. v. 20. The fruit of the Spirit is love and peace says St. Paul there ver 22. And the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace we hear of too Ephes. iv 3. Into one Spirit we are baptiz'd all for there is but one one Spirit one Body one Hope one Lord one Faith one Baptism one God one all that are of God ver 5 6. nothing so contrary to the Holy Spirit as divisions of the members from the head or from one another a shrewd witness this against the spirits of our age and an evidence that to what spirit soever they lay claim they lay false claim to this they belong not to this Spirit which is so much for uniting all the parts of the body of Christ together 7. And this it can do when it s sees its time for lastly it is an invincible Spirit it bears down all before it turns all into it like the fire of all the Elements the most victorious and triumphant There is no standing out against this Spirit 't is an Almighty Spirit that can do what it will It inflames the air into a fire vain airy spirits into celestial flames of love and charity It dries up the water the raw waterish humors of our souls and fixes all waverings and inconstancies It burns up our earth and all the grass and hay and sprouts what ever that stand against it It sets whole houses all a fire sets us all a fire for Heaven and heavenly business Thus it burns it purifies it consumes and renews again it separates and it gathers and it caries all before it dees what it will in Heaven and Earth subdues Scepters vanquishes Kingdoms converts Nations throws down Infernal Powers and turns all into the obedience of Christ. To this purpose it is that it now also here comes in Tongues The second manner we noted of his appearance and that for three reasons 1. nothing more convenient to express either our business or him whose it is The Tongue is the instrument of speech the Word is express by it Christ is the Word the Holy Spirit as it were the Tongue to express him comes to day with an Host of tongues to send this Word abroad into all the World Nothing more necessary for the Apostles were to be the Preachers of it had receiv'd a Commission to go and preach St. Matth. xvi 15. wanted yet their tongues some new enablements went not therefore till they were this day brought them and a more necessary thing the Holy Ghost could not bring them for that purpose Yet they had need 2. be of fire sharp piercing tongues like the little flames of fire such as would pierce into the soul reveal the inmost secrets of the heart and spirits and it seems so they proved 1 Cor. xiv 25. piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit of the joints and marrow Heb. iv 12. Tongues of fire 3. to warm the cold affections of men into a love of Christ every tongue is not able to do that it must be a tongue set on fire from Heaven that can do that Tongues and tongues of fire sharp piercing tongues warm with heavenly heat are the only tongues
consider it as the voice of a sinful man of humane nature corrupted with sin Though all created Substances contract a kind of trembling or drawing back at the approach of God the very Seraphims covering their faces with their wings yet did not sin and folly cover them with a new confusion the weakest and poorest of them would draw a kind of solace and happiness from the beams of that Majesty that so afrighted them 'T is sin that speaks the Text in a louder key that more actually cries to him not softly and weakly out of weakness but aloud and strongly out of wilfulness to depart It does more then so It drives God from us not only bids him go but forces him It is not so mannerly as to intreat him it discourteosly and unthankfully thrusts him out of doors Exi a me Get you out says the sinful soul to God no obsecro no entreaty added not go out I pray thee or depart I beseech thee We should do well to think how uncivilly we deal with God we are not content to put him out of his own house and dwelling the temples of our bodies the altars of our souls by our sins nay and his holy Temples by sacriledges and profaneness but sometimes in ruder terms we bid him be gone and thrust him out by wilful and deliberate transgressions by solemn and legal sacriledges and profanenesses which we commit and reiterate in contempt of him as if expresly we said to him Go from us we will have nothing to do with thee any longer thou shalt not only not dwell but not stand or be amongst us The people of Gennesaret besought Christ to depart out of their Coasts These sinners will out with him whether he will or no and though he come again and knock to be let in and continue knocking till his head be wet with the dew and his locks with the drops of the night yet can he hear no other welcome from us then depart from us we are in bed well at ease in our accustom'd sins and we will not rise to let thee in we will not be troubled with thy company with a course so chargeable or dangerous as is thy wonted service Strange it is that we should thus deal with God but thus we do yet no man lays this unkind usage to his heart never considers how he thus dayly uses God If good motions arise within us we bid them be gone they trouble us they hinder our sports or projects our quiet or interest If good opportunities present themselves without we bid them go we are not at leisure to make use of them they come unseasonably If the Word preached desire to enter in if it touch our Consciences and strike home we bid that depart too it is not for our turn it crosses our interests or our profits or our pleasures we will not therefore have it stay any longer with us If God by any other way as of afflictions or of deliverances by blessings or curses or any other way come to us they are no sooner over nor these any sooner tasted but we send them gone to purpose and think of them again no more our sins return and send them going make us forget both his justice and his mercies This is the course the sinner treads to God-ward From whence it is that the soul thus ill apparell'd with its own sins dares not look God in the face without the mediation of a Redeemer She has driven God from her by her sins and having thus incens'd him flees away when he draws towards her Thus Adam and Eve having by sin disrob'd themselves of their original righteousness when they hear the voice of God though but gently walking towards them and calling to them they run away and hide themselves from the presence of the Lord amongst the trees of the Garden Gen. iii. 8. They felt it seems they wanted something to shelter them from the presence of God into the thickets therefore they hie themselves as if they then fore-saw they had need of the Rod out of the stem of Iesse the branch out of his roots as the Prophet calls Christ Isa. xi 1. to bear off the heat of Gods anger from them Under the leaves of this branch alone it is that we are covered sheltered from the wrath to come His leaves his righteousness it is that clothes our nakedness the very garments which our first Parents were fain to get to themselves before they durst venture again into his presence There is no enduring Gods presence still no coming nere him unless we look upon him through these leaves from under the shelter of this branch of Iesse Tell the sinner who keeps not under this shelter that lies not at this guard of Gods coming to him of his looking towards him of his approach to judgment and with Felix he trembles at it puts off the discourse to another time refuses to hear so terrible news as Gods coming is if Christ came not with him Such a one has sin made him that he desires not to see him whose eyes will not behold sin Depart from me O Lord in stead of Thy Kingdom come is his daily Prayer Yet as hardly or unadvisedly as nature or corruption may deliver this speech of St. Peter's it may be delivered in a softer sweeter tone and so it was by him It may 3. be the voice of the humble spirit casting himself down at the feet of Iesus and confessing himself altogether unworthy of so great a favour as his presence If we peruse the speeches of humble souls in Scripture by which they accosted their God or their Superiors we shall see variety of expression indeed but little difference in the upshot of the words I am but dust and ashes says father Abraham Gen. xviii 27. Now how can dust and ashes with their light scattering atoms endure the least breath of the Almighty The Prophet Isaiah saw the Lord in a Vision sitting upon a Throne and presently he cries out Wo is me for I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for mine eyes have seen the King the Lord of Hosts Isai. vi 5. What undone Isaiah Yes Wo is me I am undone for mine eyes have seen the Lord of Hosts who certainly cannot but consume me for so boldly beholding him I am not worthy says the Centurion to Christ St. Matth. viii 8. that thou should'st come under the roof of my house speak the word only as if his presence were so great he might not bear it And St. Paul assoon as he had told us that he had seen Christ 1 Cor. xv 8 tells us he was one born out of due time was the least of the Apostles and not meet to be called an Apostle as if the very seeing of Christ had made him worth nothing Indeed it makes us think our selves so of whom we ever think too much till we look up