they their Beneficiaries in receiving Tithes or other provisions of maintenance they owe for it to none but to God himself and it would also be considered that in all sacrilegious detentions of Ecclesiastical rights God is the person principally injured 4. The Turtle-doves were offered also with the signification of another mystery In the sacred Rites of Marriage although the permissions of natural desires are such as are most ordinate to their ends the avoiding Fornication the alleviation of Oeconomical cares and vexations and the production of Children and mutual comfort and support yet the apertures and permissions of Marriage have such restraints of modesty and prudence that all transgression of the just order to such ends is a crime and besides these there may be degrees of inordination or obliquity of intention or too sensual complacency or unhandsom preparations of mind or unsacramental thoughts in which particulars because we have no determined rule but Prudence and the analogy of the Rite and the severity of our Religion which allow in some cases more in some 〈◊〉 and always uncertain latitudes for ought we know there may be lighter transgressions something that we know not of and for these at the Purification of the woman it is supposed the Offering was made and the Turtures by being an oblation did deprecate a supposed irregularity but by being a chast and marital Embleme they professed the obliquity if any were was within the protection of the sacred bands of Marriage and therefore so excusable as to be expiated by a cheap offering and what they did in Hieroglyphick Christians must do in the exposition be strict observers of the main rites and principal obligations and not neglectful to deprecate the lesser unhandsomenesses of the too sensual applications 5. God had at that instant so ordered that for great ends of his own and theirs two very holy persons of divers Sexes and like Piety 〈◊〉 and Anna the one who lived an active and secular the other a retired and contemplative life should come into the Temple by revelation and direction of the holy Spirit and see him whom they and all the World did look for the Lord 's CHRIST the consolation of Israel They saw him they rejoyced they worshipped they prophesied they sang Hymns and old Simeon did comprehend and circumscribe in his arms him that filled all the World and was then so satisfied that he desired to live no longer God had verified his promise had shewn him the Messias had filled his heart with joy and made his old age honourable and now after all this sight no object could be pleasant but the joys of Paradise For as a man who hath stared too freely upon the face and beauties of the Sun is blind and dark to objects of a less splendor and is forced to shut his eyes that he may through the degrees of darkness perceive the inferiour beauties of more proportioned objects so was old Simeon his eyes were so filled with the glories of this Revelation that he was willing to close them in his last night that he might be brought into the communications of Eternity and he could never more find comfort in any other object this world could minister For such is the excellency of spiritual things when they have once filled the corners of our hearts and made us highly sensible and apprehensive of the interiour beauties of God and of Religion all things of this World are flat and empty and unsatisfying vanities as unpleasant as the lees of Vineger to a tongue filled with the spirit of high Italick Wines And until we are so dead to the World as to apprehend no gust or freer complacency in exteriour objects we never have entertained Christ or have had our cups overflow with Devotion or are filled with the Spirit When our Chalice is filled with holy oyl with the Anointing from above it will entertain none of the waters of bitterness or if it does they are thrust to the bottom they are the lowest of our desires and therefore only admitted because they are natural and constituent 6. The good old Prophetess Anna had lived long in chast Widowhood in the service of the Temple in the continual offices of Devotion in Fasting and Prayer and now came the happy instant in which God would give her a great benediction and an earnest of a greater The returns of Prayer and the blessings of Piety are certain and though not dispensed according to the expectances of our narrow conceptions 〈◊〉 shall they so come at such times and in such measures as shall crown the Piety and 〈◊〉 the desires and reward the expectation It was in the Temple the same place where she had for so many years poured out her heart to God that God poured forth his heart to her sent his Son from his bosom and there she received his benediction Indeed in such places God does most particularly exhibit himself and Blessing goes along with him where-ever he goes In holy places God hath put his holy Name and to holy persons God does oftentimes manifest the interiour and more secret glories of his Holiness provided they come thither as old Simeon and Anna did by the motions of the holy Spirit not with designs of vanity or curiosity or sensuality for such spirits as those come to profane and desecrate the house and unhallow the person and provoke the Deity of the place and blast us with unwholsom airs 7. But Joseph and Mary wondred at these things which were spoken and treasured them in their hearts and they became matter of Devotion and mental Prayer or Meditation The PRAYER O Eternal God who by the Inspirations of thy Holy Spirit didst direct thy servants Simeon and Anna to the Temple at the instant of the Presentation of the Holy Child Jesus that so thou mightest verifie thy promise and manifest thy Son and reward the 〈◊〉 of holy people who longed for Redemption by the coming of the Messias give me the perpetual assistance of the same Spirit to be as a Monitor and a Guide to me leading me to all holy actions and to the embracements and possessions of thy glorious Son and remember all thy faithful people who wait for the consolation and redemption of the Church from all her miseries and persecutions and at last satisfie their desires by the revelations of thy mercies and Salvation Thou hast advanced thy Holy Child and set him up for a sign of thy Mercies and a representation of thy Glories Lord let no act or thought or word of mine ever be in contradiction to this blessed sign but let it be for the ruine of all my vices and all the powers the Devil imploys against the Church and for the raising up all those vertues and Graces which thou didst design me in the purposes of Eternity but let my portion never be amongst the 〈◊〉 or the scornful or the Heretical or the profane or any of those who stumble at this Stone
or mental Prayer is all one to God but in order to us they have their several advantages The sacrifice of the heart and the calves of the lips make up a holocaust to God but words are the arrest of the desires and keep the spirit fixt and in less permissions to wander from fancy to fancy and mental Prayer is apt to make the greater fervour if it wander not our office is more determined by words but we then actually think of God when our spirits only speak Mental Prayer when our spirits wander is like a Watch standing still because the spring is down wind it up again and it goes on regularly but in Vocal Prayer if the words run on and the spirit wanders the Clock strikes false the Hand points not to the right hour because something is in disorder and the striking is nothing but noise In mental Prayer we confess God's omniscience in vocal Prayer we call the Angels to witness In the first our spirits rejoyce in God in the second the Angels rejoyce in us Mental Prayer is the best remedy against lightness and indifferency of affections but vocal Prayer is the aptest instrument of communion That is more Angelical but yet fittest for the state of separation and glory this is but humane but it is apter for our present constitution They have their distinct proprieties and may be used according to several accidents occasions or dispositions The PRAYER O Holy and eternal God who hast commanded us to pray unto thee in all our necessities and to give thanks unto thee for all our instances of joy and blessing and to adore thee in all thy Attributes and communications thy own glories and thy eternal mercies give unto me thy servant the spirit of Prayer and Supplication that I may understand what is good for me that I may desire regularly and chuse the best things that I may conform to thy will and submit to thy disposing relinquishing my own affections and imperfect choice Sanctifie my heart and spirit that I may sanctifie thy Name and that I may be gracious and accepted in thine eyes Give me the humility and obedience of a Servant that I may also have the hope and confidence of a Son making humble and confident addresses to the Throne of grace that in all my necessities I may come to thee for aids and may trust in thee for a gracious answer and may receive satisfaction and supply II. GIve me a sober diligent and recollected spirit in my Prayers neither choaked with cares nor scattered by levity nor discomposed by passion nor estranged from thee by inadvertency but fixed fast to thee by the indissolvible bands of a great love and a pregnant Devotion And let the beams of thy holy Spirit descending from above enlighten and enkindle it with great servours and holy importunity and unwearied industry that I may serve thee and obtain thy blessing by the assiduity and Zeal of perpetual religious offices Let my Prayers come before thy presence and the lifting up of my hands be a daily sacrifice and let the fires of zeal not go out by night or day but unite my Prayers to the intercession of thy Holy Jesus and to a communion of those offices which Angels and beatified Souls do pay before the throne of the Lamb and at the celestial Altar that my Prayers being hallowed by the Merits of Christ and being presented in the phial of the Saints may ascend thither where thy glory dwells and from whence mercy and eternal benediction descends upon the Church III. LOrd change my sins into penitential sorrow my sorrow to petition my petition to 〈◊〉 that my Prayers may be consummate in the adorations of eternity and the glorious participation of the end of our hopes and prayers the fulness of never-failing Charity and fruition of thee O Holy and Eternal God Blessed Trinity and mysterious Unity to whom all honour and worship and thanks and confession and glory be ascribed for ever and ever Amen DISCOURSE XIII Of the Third additional Precept of Christ viz. Of the manner of FASTING 1. FAsting being directed in order to other ends as for mortifying the body taking away that fuel which ministers to the flame of Lust or else relating to what is past when it becomes an instrument of Repentance and a part of that revenge which S. Paul affirms to be the effect of godly sorrow is to take its estimate for value and its rules for practice by analogy and proportion to those ends to which it does cooperate Fasting before the holy Sacrament is a custom of the Christian Church and derived to us from great antiquity and the use of it is that we might express honour to the mystery by suffering nothing to enter into our mouths before the symbols Fasting to this purpose is not an act of Mortification but of Reverence and venerable esteem of the instruments of Religion and so is to be understood And thus also not to eat or drink before we have said our morning Devotions is esteemed to be a religious decency and preference of Prayer and God's honour before our temporal satisfaction a symbolical attestation that we esteem the words of God's mouth more than our necessary food It is like the zeal of Abraham's servant who would not eat nor drink till he had done his errand And in pursuance of this act of Religion by the tradition of their Fathers it grew to be a custom of the Jewish Nation that they should not eat bread upon their solemn Festivals before the sixth hour that they might first celebrate the rites of their Religious solemnities before they gave satisfaction to the lesser desires of nature And therefore it was a reasonable satisfaction of the objection made by the assembly against the inspired Apostles in Pentecost These are not drunk as ye suppose seeing it is but the third hour of the day meaning that the day being festival they knew it was not lawful for any of the Nation to break their fast before the sixth hour for else they might easily have been drunk by the third hour if they had taken their morning's drink in a freer proportion And true it is that Religion snatches even at little things and as it teaches us to observe all the great Commandments and significations of duty so it is not willing to pretermit any thing which although by its greatness it cannot of it self be considerable yet by its smallness it may become a testimony of the greatness of the affection which would not omit the least minutes of love and duty And therefore when the Jews were scandalized at the Disciples of our Lord for rubbing the ears of corn on the Sabbath-day as they walked through the fields early in the morning they intended their reproof not for breaking the Rest of the day but the Solemnity for eating before the publick Devotions were finished Christ excused it by the necessity and charity of the act they were
else Faith and Hope are not two distinct Graces God's 〈◊〉 and vocation are without repentance meaning on God's part but the very people concerning whom S. Paul used the expression were reprobate and cut off and in good time shall be called again in the mean time many single persons perish There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus God will look to that and it will never fail but then they must secure the following period and not walk after the Flesh but after the Spirit Behold the goodness of God towards thee saith S. Paul if thou continue in his goodness otherwise thou also shalt be cut off And if this be true concerning the whole Church of the Gentiles to whom the Apostle then made the address and concerning whose election the decree was publick and manifest that they might be cut off and their abode in God's favour was upon condition of their perseverance in the Faith much more is it true in single persons 〈◊〉 election in particular is shut up in the abyss and permitted to the condition of our Faith and Obedience and the revelations of Dooms-day 7. Certain it is that God hath given to holy persons the Spirit of adoption enabling them to cry Abba Father and to account themselves for sons and by this Spirit we know we dwell in him and therefore it is called in Scripture the earnest of the Spirit though at its first mission and when the Apostle wrote and used this appellative the Holy Ghost was of greater signification and a more visible earnest and endearment of their hopes than it is to most of us since For the visible sending of the Holy Ghost upon many Believers in gifts signs and prodigies was infinite argument to make them expect events as great beyond that as that was beyond the common gifts of men just as Miracles and Prophecy which are gifts of the Holy Ghost were arguments of probation for the whole Doctrine of Christianity And this being a mighty verification of the great Promise the promise of the Father was an apt instrument to raise their hopes and confidences concerning those other Promises which Jesus made the promises of Immortality and eternal life of which the present miraculous Graces of the Holy Spirit were an earnest and in the nature of a contracting peny and still also the Holy Ghost though in another manner is an earnest of the great price of the heavenly calling the rewards of Heaven though not so visible and apparent as at first yet as certain and demonstrative where it is discerned or where it is believed as it is and ought to be in every person who does any part of his duty because by the Spirit we do it and without him we cannot And since we either feel or believe the presence and gifts of the Holy Ghost to holy purposes for whom we receive voluntarily we cannot casily receive without a knowledge of his reception we cannot but entertain him as an argument of greater good hereafter and an earnest-peny of the perfection of the present Grace that is of the rewards of Glory Glory and Grace differing no otherwise than as an earnest in part of payment does from the whole price the price of our high calling So that the Spirit is an earnest not because he always signifies to us that we are actually in the state of Grace but by way of argument or reflexion we know we do belong to God when we receive his Spirit and all Christian people have received him if they were rightly baptized and confirmed I say we know by that testimony that we belong to God that is we are the people with whom God hath made a Covenant to whom he hath promised and intends greater blessings to which the present gifts of the Spirit are in order But all this is conditional and is not an immediate testimony of the certainty and future event but of the event as it is possibly future and may without our fault be reduced to act as certainly as it is promised or as the earnest is given in hand And this the Spirit of God oftentimes tells us in secret visitations and publick testimonies and this is that which S. Paul calls tasting of the heavenly gift and partaking of the Holy Ghost and tasting of the good word of God and the powers of the world to come But yet some that have done so have fallen away and have quenched the Spirit and have given back the earnest of the Spirit and contracted new relations and God hath been their Father no longer for they have done the works of the Devil So that if new Converts be uncertain of their present state old Christians are not absolutely certain they shall persevere They are as sure of it as they can be of future acts of theirs which God hath permitted to their own power But this certainty cannot exclude all fear till their Charity be perfect only according to the strength of their habits so is the confidence of their abodes in Grace 8. Beyond this some holy persons have degrees of perswasion superadded as Largesses and acts of grace God loving to bless one degree of Grace with another till it comes to a Confirmation in Grace which is a state of Salvation directly opposite to Obduration and as this is irremediable and irrecoverable so is the other inamissible as God never saves a person obdurate and obstinately impenitent so he never loses a man whom he hath confirmed in grace whom he so loves he loves unto the end and to others indeed he offers his persevering love but they will not entertain it with a persevering duty they will not be beloved unto the end But I insert this caution that every man that is in this condition of a confirmed Grace does not always know it but sometimes God draws aside the curtains of peace and shews him his throne and visits him with irradiations of glory and sends him a little star to stand over his dwelling and then again covers it with a cloud It is certain concerning some persons that they shall never fall and that God will not permit them to the danger or probability of it to such it is morally impossible but these are but few and themselves know it not as they know a demonstrative proposition but as they see the Sun sometimes breaking from a cloud very brightly but all day long giving necessary and sufficient light 9. Concerning the multitude of Believers this discourse is not pertinent for they only take their own accounts by the imperfections of their own duty blended with the mercies of God the cloud gives light on one side and is dark upon the other and sometimes a bright ray peeps through the fringes of a shower and immediately hides it self that we might be humble and diligent striving forwards and looking upwards endeavouring our duty and longing after Heaven working out our Salvation with fear and trembling and
in good time our calling and 〈◊〉 may be assured when we first according to the precept of the Apostle use all diligence S. Paul when he writ his first Epistle to the Corinthians was more fearful of being reprobate and therefore he used exteriour arts of mortification But when he writ to the Romans which was a good while after we find him more confident of his final condition perswaded that neither height nor depth Angel nor principality nor power could separate him from the love of God in Jesus Christ and when he grew to his latter end when he wrote to S. Timothy he was more confident yet and declared that now a crown of rightcousness was certainly laid up for him for now he had sought the fight and finished his course the time of his departure was at hand Henceforth he knew no more fear his love was perfect as this state would permit and that cast out all fear According to this precedent if we reckon our securities we are not likely to be reproved by any words of Scripture or by the condition of humane infirmity But when the confidence out-runs our growth in Grace it is it self a sin though when the confidence is equal with the Grace it is of it self no regular and universal duty but a blessing and a reward indulged by special dispensation and in order to personal necessities or accidental purposes For only so much hope is simply necessary as excludes despair and encourages our duty and glorifies God and entertains his mercy but that the hope should be without fear is not given but to the highest Faith and the most excellent Charity and to habitual ratified and confirmed Christians and to them also with some variety The summ is this All that are in the state of beginners and imperfection have a conditional Certainty changeable and fallible in respect of us for we meddle not with what it is in God's secret purposes changeable I say as their wills and resolutions They that are grown towards perfection have more reason to be confident and many times are so but still although the strength of the habits of Grace adds degrees of moral certainty to their expectation yet it is but as their condition is hopeful and promising and of a moral determination But to those few to whom God hath given confirmation in Grace he hath also given a certainty of condition and therefore if that be revealed to them their perswasions are certain and infallible If it be not revealed to them their condition is in it self certain but their perswasion is not so but in the highest kind of Hope an anchor of the Soul sure and stedfast The PRAYER O Eternal God whose counsels are in the great deep and thy ways past finding out thou hast built our Faith upon thy Promises our Hopes upon thy Goodness and hast described our paths between the waters of comfort and the dry barren land of our own duties and affections we acknowledge that all our comforts derive from thee and to our selves we owe all our shame and confusions and degrees of desperation Give us the assistances of the Holy Ghost to help us in performing our duty and give us those comforts and visitations of the Holy Ghost which thou in thy 〈◊〉 and eternal wisdom knowest most apt and expedient to encourage our duties to entertain our hopes to alleviate our sadnesses to refresh our spirits and to endure our abode and constant endeavours in the strictnesses of Religion and Sanctity Lead us dearest God from Grace to Grace from imperfection to strength from acts to habits from habits to confirmation in Grace that we may also pass into the regions of comfort receiving the earnest of the Spirit and the adoption of Sons till by such a signature we be consigned to glory and enter into the possession of the inheritance which we expect in the Kingdom of thy Son and in the fruition of the felicities of thee O gracious Father God Eternal Amen SECT XIV Of the Third Year of the Preaching of JESUS Five loaves satisfy so many Thousands Mat 14. 19. And he took the five loaves and the two fishes and looking up to Heaven he blessed and brake and gave the loaves to his Disciples and the Disciples to the Multitude 20. And they did all eat and were filled and they took up the fragments that remayned twelve baskets 21. And they that had eaten were about five Thousand men beside women and Children Lazarus at the rich glutton's gate Luk 16. 19. There was a certain rich man which was Clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously everey day 20. And there was a certain Begger named Lazarus which was layd at his gate full of sores 25. And in Hell he lift up his eyes being in Torments and seeth Abraham a far off and Lazarus in his Bosome 1. BUT Jesus knowing of the death of the Baptist Herod's jealousie and the envy of the Pharisees retired into a desert place beyond the Lake together with his Apostles For the people pressed so upon them they had not leisure to eat But neither there could he be hid but great multitudes flocked thither also to whom he preached many things And afterwards because there were no villages in the neighbourhood lest they should faint in their return to their houses he caused them to sit down upon the grass and with five loaves of barley and two small fishes he satisfied five thousand men besides women and children and caused the Disciples to gather up the fragments which being amassed together filled twelve baskets Which Miracles had so much proportion to the understanding and met so happily with the affections of the people that they were convinced that this was the 〈◊〉 who was to come into the world and had a purpose to have taken him by force and made him a King 2. But he that left his Father's Kingdom to take upon him the miseries and infelicities of the world fled from the offers of a Kingdom and their tumultuary election as from an enemy and therefore sending his Disciples to the ship before towards Bethsaida he ran into the mountains to hide himself till the multitude should scatter to their several habitations he in the mean time taking the opportunity of that retirement for the advantage of his Prayers But when the Apostles were far engaged in the Deep a great tempest arose with which they were pressed to the extremity of danger and the last refuges labouring in sadness and hopelesness till the fourth watch of the night when in the midst of their fears and labours Jesus comes walking on the sea and appeared to them which turned their fears into affrightments for they supposed it had been a spirit but he appeased their fears with his presence and manifestation who he was which yet they desired to have proved to them by a sign For Simon Peter said unto him Master if it be thou command me to come to thee
a quarrel unto them for that punishment is never sent upon pure designs of emendation or for direct and immediate purposes of the Divine glory but ever makes reflexion upon the past sin but when we descend to a judgment of the particulars God walks so in the dark to us that it is not discerned upon what ground he smote them Some say it was because they dishonoured the eternal Jesus in denying the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son And in this some thought themselves sufficiently assured by a sign from Heaven because the Greeks lost Constantinople upon Whitsunday the day of the Festival of the Holy Spirit The Church of Rome calls the Churches of the Greek Communion Schismatical and thinks God righted the Roman quarrel when he revenged his own Some think they were cut off for being Breakers of Images others think that their zeal against Images was a means they were cut off no sooner and yet he that shall observe what innumerable Sects Heresies and Factions were commenced amongst them and how they were wanton with Religion making it serve ambitious and unworthy ends will see that besides the ordinary conjectures of interested persons they had such causes of their ruine which we also now feel heavily incumbent upon our selves To see God adding eighteen years to the life of Hezekiah upon his Prayer and yet cutting off the young Son of David begotten in adulterous embraces to see him rejecting Adonijah and receiving Solomon to the Kingdom begotten of the same Mother whose Son God in anger formerly slew to observe his mercies to Manasses in accepting him to favour and continuing the Kingdom to him and his severity to Zedekiah in causing his eyes to be put out to see him rewarding Nebuchadnezzar with the spoils of Egypt for destroying Tyre and executing God's severe anger against it and yet punishing others for being executioners of his wrath upon Jerusalem even then when he purposed to chastise it to see 〈◊〉 raised from a Peasant to a Throne and Pompey from a great Prince reduced to that condition that a Pupil and an Eunuch passed sentence of death upon him to see great fortunes fall into the hand of a Fool and Honourable old persons and Learned men descend to unequal Beggery to see him strike a stroke with his own hand in the Conversion of Saul and another quite contrary in the cutting off of Judas must needs be some restraint to our judgments concerning the general state of those men who lie under the rod but it proclaims an infinite uncertainty in the particulars since we see contrary accidents happening to persons guilty of the same crime or put in the same indispositions God hath marked all great sins with some signal and express Judgments and hath transmitted the records of them or represented them before our eyes that is hath done so in our Age or it hath been noted to have been done before and that being sufficient to affright us from those crimes God hath not thought it expedient to do the same things to all persons in the same cases having to all persons produced instances and examples of fear by fewer accidents sufficient to restrain us but not enough to pass sentence upon the changes of Divine Providence 5. But sometimes God speaks plainer and gives us notice what crimes he punishes in others that we may the rather decline such rocks of offence If the Crime and the Punishment be symbolical and have proportion and correspondence of parts the hand of God strikes the Man but holds up one finger to point at the Sin The death of the child of Bathsheba was a plain declaration that the anger of God was upon David for the Adulterous mixture That Blasphemer whose Tongue was presently struck with an ulcerous tumour with his tongue declared the glories of God and his own shame And it was not doubted but God when he smote the Lady of Dominicus Silvius the Duke of Venice with a loathsome and unsavory disease did intend to chastise a remarkable vanity of hers in various and costly Perfumes which she affected in an unreasonable manner and to very evil purposes And that famous person and of excellent learning Giacchettus of Geneva being by his Wife found dead in the unlawful embraces of a stranger woman who also died at the same instant left an excellent example of God's anger upon the crime and an evidence that he was then judged for his intemperate Lust. Such are all those punishments which are natural consequents to a Crime as Dropsies Redness of eyes Dissolution of nerves Apoplexies to continual Drunkenness to intemperate Eating Short lives and Sudden deaths to Lust a Caitive slavish disposition and a Foul diseased body Fire and Sword and Depopulation of Towns and Villages the consequents of Ambition and unjust Wars Poverty to Prodigality and all those Judgments which happen upon Cursings and horrid Imprecations when God is under a Curse called to attest a Lie and to connive at impudence or when the Oppressed persons in the bitterness of their souls wish evil and pray for vengeance on their Oppressors or that the Church upon just cause inflicts Spiritual censures and delivers unto Satan or curses and declares the Divine sentence against sinners as S. Peter against Ananias and Sapphira and S. Paul against Elymas and of old Moses against Pharaoh and his Egypt of this nature also was the plague of a withered hand inflicted upon 〈◊〉 for stretching forth his hand to strike the Prophet In these and all such instances the off-spring is so like the parent that it cannot easily be concealed Sometime the crime is of that nature that it cries aloud for vengeance or is threatned with a special kind of punishment which by the observation and experience of the World hath regularly happened to a certain sort of persons such as are dissolutions of Estates the punishment of Sacrilege a descending curse upon posterity for four generations specially threatned to the crime of Idolatry any plague whatsoever to Oppression untimely death to Murther an unthriving estate to the detention of Tithes or whatsoever is God's portion allotted for the services of Religion untimely and strange deaths to the Persecutors of Christian Religion Nero killed himself Domitian was killed by his servants Maximinus and Decius were murthered together with their children Valerianus imprisoned flay'd and slain with tortures by Sapor King of Persia Diocletian perished by his own hand and his House was burnt with the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from above Antiochus the President under Aurelian while Agapetus was in his agony and sufferance of Martyrdom cried out of a flame within him and died Flaccus vomited out his entrails presently after he had caused Gregory Bishop of Spoleto to be slain and Dioscorus the father of S. Barbara accused and betrayed his Daughter to the Hangman's cruelty for being a Christian and he died by the hand of God by fire from Heaven These
our life and he dwells in the body and the spirit of every one that eats Christ's flesh and drinks his bloud Happy is that man that sits at the Table of Angels that puts his hand into the dish with the King of all the Creatures and feeds upon the eternal Son of God joyning things below with things above Heaven with Earth Life with Death that mortality might be swallowed up of life and Sin be destroyed by the inhabitation of its greatest Conqueror And now I need not enumerate any particulars since the Spirit of God hath ascertained us that Christ enters into our hearts and takes possession and abides there that we are made Temples and celestial mansions that we are all one with our Judge and with our Redeemer that our Creator is bound unto his Creature with bonds of charity which nothing can dissolve unless our own hands break them that Man is united with God and our weakness is fortified by his strength and our miseries wrapped up in the golden leaves of glory 2. Hence it follows that the Sacrament is an instrument of reconciling us to God and taking off the remanent guilt and stain and obligations of our sins This is the 〈◊〉 that was shed for you for the remission of sins For there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus And such are all they who worthily eat the flesh of Christ by receiving him they more and more receive remission of sins redemption sanctification wisdom and certain hopes of glory 〈◊〉 as the Soul touching and united to the flesh of Adam contracts the stain of original misery and imperfection so much the 〈◊〉 shall the Soul united to the flesh of Christ receive pardon and purity and all those blessed emanations from our union with the Second Adam But this is not to be understood as if the first beginnings of our pardon were in the holy Communion for then a man might come with his impurities along with him and lay them on the holy Table to stain and pollute so bright a presence No first Repentance must 〈◊〉 the ways of the Lord and in this holy Rite those words of our Lord are verified He that is justified let him be justified 〈◊〉 that is here he may receive the increase of Grace and as it grows so sin dies and we are reconciled by nearer unions and approximations to God 9. Thirdly The holy Sacrament is the pledge of Glory and the earnest of Immortality for when we have received him who hath overcome Death and henceforth dies no more he becomes to us like the Tree of life in Paradise and the consecrated Symbols are like the seeds of an eternal duration springing up in us to eternal life nourishing our spirits with Grace which is but the prologue and the infancy of Glory and differs from it only as a Child from a Man But God first raised up his Son to life and by giving him to us hath also consigned us to the same state for our life is hid with Christ in God When we lay down and cast aside the impurer robes of flesh they are then but preparing for glory and if by the only touch of Christ bodies were redintegrate and restored to natural perfections how shall not we live for ever who eat his flesh and drink his bloud It is the discourse of S. Cyril Whatsoever the Spirit can convey to the body of the Church we may expect 〈◊〉 this Sacrament for as the Spirit is the instrument of life and action so the bloud of Christ is the conveyance of his Spirit And let all the mysterious places of holy Scripture concerning the effects of Christ communicated in the blessed Sacrament be drawn together in one Scheme we cannot but observe that although they are so expressed as 〈◊〉 their meaning may seem intricate and involved yet they cannot be drawn to any meaning at all but it is as glorious in its sense as it is mysterious in the expression and the more intricate they are the greater is their purpose no words being apt and proportionate to signifie this spiritual secret and excellent effects of the Spirit A veil is drawn before all these testimonies because the people were not able to behold the glory which they cover with their curtain and Christ dwelling in us and giving us his flesh to 〈◊〉 and his bloud to drink and the hiding of our life with God and the communication of the body of Christ and Christ being our life are such secret glories that as the fruition of them is the portion of the other world so also is the full perception and understanding of them for therefore God appears to us in a cloud and his glories in a veil that we understanding more of it by its concealment than we can by its open face which is too bright 〈◊〉 our weak eyes may with more piety also entertain the greatness by these indefinite and mysterious significations than we can by plain and direct intuitions which like the Sun in a direct ray enlightens the object but confounds the organ 10. I should but in other words describe the same glories if I should add That this holy Sacrament does enlighten the spirit of Man and clarifie it with spiritual discernings and as he was to the two Disciples at 〈◊〉 so also to other faithful people Christ is known in the breaking of bread That it is a great defence against the hostilities of our ghostly enemies this Holy Bread being like the Cake in 〈◊〉 's Camp overturning the tents of 〈◊〉 That it is the relief of our sorrows the antidote and preservative of Souls the viand of our journey the guard and passe-port of our death the wine of Angels That it is more healthful than Rhubarb more pleasant than Cassia That the Betele and 〈◊〉 of the 〈◊〉 the Moly or Nepenthe of Pliny the Lirinon of the 〈◊〉 the Balsam of 〈◊〉 the Manna of Israel the Honey of Jonathan are but weak expressions to tell us that this is excellent above Art and Nature and that nothing is good enough in Philosophy to become its 〈◊〉 All these must needs fall very short of those plain words of Christ This is my Body The other may become the ecstasies of Piety the transportation of joy and wonder and are like the discourse of S. 〈◊〉 upon mount Tabor he was resolved to say some great thing but he knew not what but when we remember that the Body of our Lord and his Bloud is communicated to us in the Bread and the Chalice of blessing we must sit down and rest our selves for this is the mountain of the Lord and we can go no farther 11. In the next place it will 〈◊〉 our enquiry to consider how we are to prepare our selves For at the gate of life a man may meet with death and although this holy Sacrament be like Manna in which the obedient find the relishes of Obedience the chaste of
Scepter from Judah and the Law-giver from between his feet when the number of Daniel's Years was accomplished and the Egyptian and Syrian Kingdoms had their period God having great compassion towards mankind remembring his Promises and our great Necessities sent his Son into the world to take upon him our Nature and all that guilt of Sin which stuck close to our Nature and all that Punishment which was consequent to our Sin which came to pass after this manner 2. In the days of Herod the King the Angel Gabriel was sent from God to a City of Galilce named Nazareth to a holy Maid called Mary espoused to Joseph and found her in a capacity and excellent disposition to receive the greatest Honour that ever was done to the daughters of men Her imployment was holy and pious her person young her years florid and springing her Body chaste her Mind humble and a rare repository of divine Graces She was full of grace and excellencies And God poured upon her a full measure of Honour in making her the Mother of the 〈◊〉 For the Angel came to her and said 〈◊〉 thou that art highly 〈◊〉 the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women 3. We cannot but imagine the great mixture of innocent disturbances and holy passions that in the first address of the Angel did rather discompose her settledness and interrupt the silence of her spirits than dispossess her dominion which she ever kept over those subjects which never had been taught to rebel beyond the mere possibilities of natural imperfection But if the Angel appeared in the shape of a Man it was an unusual arrest to the Blessed Virgin who was accustomed to retirements and solitariness and had not known an experience of admitting a comely person but a stranger to her closet and privacies But if the Heavenly Messenger did retain a Diviner form more symbolical to Angelical nature and more proportionable to his glorious Message although her daily imployment was a conversation with Angels who in their daily ministring to the Saints did behold her chaste conversation coupled with 〈◊〉 yet they used not any affrighting glories in the offices of their daily attendances but were seen only by spiritual discernings However so it happened that when she saw him she was troubled at his saying and cast in her mind what manner of Salutation this should be 4. But the Angel who came with designs of honour and comfort to her not willing that the inequality and glory of the Messenger should like too glorious a light to a weaker eye rather confound the Faculty than enlighten the Organ did before her thoughts could find a tongue invite her to a more familiar confidence than possibly a tender Virgin though of the greatest serenity and composure could have put on in the presence of such a Beauty and such a Holiness And the Angel said unto her Fear not Mary for thou hast found favour with God And behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a Son and shalt call his name JESUS 5. The Holy Virgin knew her self a person very unlikely to be a Mother For although the desires of becoming a Mother to the MESSIAS were great in every of the Daughters of Jacob and about that time the expectation of his Revelation was high and pregnant and therefore she was espoused to an honest and a just person of her kindred and family and so might not despair to become a Mother yet she was a person of a rare Sanctity and so mortified a spirit that for all this Desponsation of her according to the desire of her Parents and the custom of the Nation she had not set one step toward the consummation of her Marriage so much as in thought and possibly had set her self back from it by a vow of Chastity and holy Coelibate For Mary said unto the Angel How shall this be seeing I know not a man 6. But the Angel who was a person of that nature which knows no conjunctions but those of love and duty knew that the Piety of her Soul and the Religion of her chaste purposes was a great imitator of 〈◊〉 Purity and therefore perceived where the Philosophy of her question did consist and being taught of God declared that the manner should be as miraculous as the Message it self was glorious For the Angel told her that this should not be done by any way which our sin and the shame of Adam had unhallowed by turning Nature into a blush and forcing her to a retirement from a publick attesting the means of her own preservation but the whole matter was from God and so should the manner be For the Angel said unto her The Holy Ghost shall come upon 〈◊〉 and the power of the Highest shall over shadow thee therefore also that Holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God 7. When the Blessed Virgin was so ascertain'd that she should be a Mother and a Maid and that two Glories like the two Luminaries of Heaven should meet in her that she might in such a way become the Mother of her Lord that she might with better advantages be his Servant then all her hopes and all her desires received such satisfaction and filled all the corners of her Heart so much as indeed it was fain to make room for its reception But she to whom the greatest things of Religion and the transportations of Devotion were made familiar by the assiduity and piety of her daily practices however she was full of joy yet she was carried like a full vessel without the violent tossings of a tempestuous passion or the wrecks of a stormy imagination And as the power of the Holy Ghost did descend upon her like rain into a fleece of wool without any obstreperous noises or violences to nature but only the extraordinariness of an exaltation so her spirit received it with the gentleness and tranquillity fitted for the entertainment of the spirit of love and a quietness symbolical to the holy Guest of her spotless womb the Lamb of God for she meekly replied Behold the handmaid of the Lord be it unto me according unto thy word And the Angel departed from her having done his message And at the same time the holy Spirit of God did make her to conceive in her womb the immaculate Son of God the Saviour of the World Ad SECT I. Considerations upon the Annunciation of the Blessed MARY and the Conception of the Holy JESVS 1. THat which shines brightest presents it self first to the eye and the devout Soul in the chain of excellent and precious things which are represented in the counsel design and first beginnings of the work of our Redemption hath not 〈◊〉 to attend the twinkling of the lesser Stars till it hath stood and admired the glory and eminencies of the Divine Love manifested in the Incarnation of the Word eternal God had no necessity in order to the conservation or
prepare the way to the coming of our Blessed Lord he preached Repentance and baptized all that professed they did repent He taught the Jews to live good lives and baptized with the Baptism of a Prophet such as was not unusually done by extraordinary and holy persons in the change or renewing of Discipline or Religion Whether 〈◊〉 's Baptism was from heaven or os men Christ asked the Pharisees That it was from heaven the people therefore believed because he was a Prophet and a holy person but it implies also that such Baptisms are sometimes from men that is used by 〈◊〉 of an eminent Religion or extraordinary fame for the gathering of Disciples and admitting Proselytes and the Disciples of Christ did so too even before Christ had instituted the Sacrament for the Christian Church the Disciples that came to Christ were baptized by his Apostles 10. And now we are come to the gates of Baptism All these till John were but Types and preparatory Baptisms and John's Baptism was but the prologue to the Baptism of Christ. The Jewish Baptisms admitted Proselytes to Moses and to the Law of Ceremonies John's Baptism called them to 〈◊〉 in the Messias now appearing and to repent of their sins to enter into the Kingdom which was now at 〈◊〉 and preached that Repentance which should be for the 〈◊〉 os 〈◊〉 His Baptism remitted no sins but preached and consigned Repentance which in the belief of the 〈◊〉 whom he pointed to should pardon sins But because he was taken from his Office before the work was completed the Disciples of Christ 〈◊〉 it They went forth preaching the same Sermon of Repentance and the approach of the Kingdom and baptized or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Disciples as John did only they as it is probable baptized in the Name of Jesus which it is not so likely John did And this very thing might be the cause of the different forms of Baptism recorded in the Acts of baptizing in the Name of 〈◊〉 and at other times In the 〈◊〉 of the Father Son and 〈◊〉 Ghost the sormer being the manner of doing it in pursuance of the design of John's Baptism and the latter the form of Institution by Christ for the whole Christian Church appointed after his Resurrection the Disciples at first using promiscuously what was used by the same Authority though with some difference of Mystery 11. The Holy Jesus having found his way ready prepared by the Preaching of 〈◊〉 and by his Baptism and the 〈◊〉 manner of adopting Proselytes and Disciples into the Religion a way chalked out for him to initiate Disciples into his Religion took what was so prepared and changed it into a perpetual Sacrament He kept the Ceremony that they who were led only by outward things might be the better called in and easier enticed into the Religion when they entred by a Ceremony which their Nation always used in the like cases and therefore without change of the outward act he put into it a new spirit and gave it a new grace and a proper efficacy he sublimed it to higher ends and adorned it with Stars of Heaven he made it to signific greater Mysteries to convey greater Blessings to consign the bigger Promises to cleanse deeper than the skin and to carry Proselytes farther than the gates of the Institution For so he was pleased to do in the other Sacrament he took the Ceremony which he found ready in the Custom of the Jews where the Major-domo after the Paschal Supper gave Bread and Wine to every person of his family he changed nothing of it without but transferred the Rite to greater Mysteries and put his own Spirit to their Sign and it became a Sacrament Evangelical It was so also in the matter of Excommunication where the Jewish practice was made to pass into Christian discipline without violence and noise old things became new while he fulfilled the Law making it up in full measures of the Spirit 12. By these steps Baptism passed on to a Divine Evangelical institution which we find to be consigned by three Evangelists Go ye therefore and teach all Nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost It was one of the last Commandments the Holy Jesus gave upon the earth when he taught his Apostles the things which concerned his Kingdom For he that believes and is baptized shall be saved but 〈◊〉 a man be born of Water and the Holy Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven agreeable to the decretory words of God by Abraham in the Circumcision to which Baptism does succeed in the consignation of the same Covenant and the same Spiritual Promises The uncircumcised child whose flesh is not circumcised that soul shall be cut off from his people he hath broken my Covenant The Manichees Selencas Hermias and their followers people of a day's abode and small interest but of malicious doctrine taught Baptism not to be necessary not to be used upon this ground because they supposed that it was proper to John to baptize with water and reserved for Christ as his peculiar to baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire Indeed Christ baptized none otherwise he sent his Spirit upon the Church in Pentecost and baptized them with fire the Spirit appearing like a flame but he appointed his Apostles to baptize with water and they did so and their successors after them every-where and for ever not expounding but obeying the preceptive words of their Lord which were almost the last that he spake upon earth And I cannot think it needful to prove this to be necessary by any more Arguments for the words are so plain that they need no exposition and yet if they had been obscure the universal practice of the Apostles and the Church for ever is a sufficient declaration of the Commandment No Tradition is more universal no not of Scripture it self no words are plainer no not the Ten Commandments and if any suspicion can be superinduced by any jealous or less discerning person it will need no other refutation but to turn his eyes to those lights by which himself fees Scripture to be the Word of God and the Commandments to be the declaration of his Will 13. But that which will be of greatest concernment in this affair is to consider the great benefits are conveyed to us in this Sacrament for this will highly conclude that the Precept was 〈◊〉 ever which God so seconds with his grace and mighty blessings and the susception of it necessary because we cannot be without those excellent things which are the Graces of the Sacrament 14. First The first fruit is That in Baptism we are admitted to the Kingdom of Christ presented unto him consigned with his Sacrament enter into his Militia give up our Understandings and our choice to the obedience of Christ and in all senses that we can become his Disciples witnessing a good
God at first designed to us And therefore as our Baptism is a separation of us from unbelieving people so the descent of the Holy Spirit upon us in our Baptism is a consigning or marking us for God as the Sheep of his pasture as the Souldiers of his Army as the Servants of his houshold we are so separated from the world that we are appropriated to God so that God expects of us Duty and Obedience and all Sins are acts of Rebellion and Undutifulness Of this nature was the sanctification of Jeremy and John the Baptist from their mothers womb that is God took them to his own service by an early designation and his Spirit marked them to a holy Ministery To this also relates that of S. Paul whom God by a decree separated from his mother's womb to the Ministery of the Gospel the 〈◊〉 did antedate the act of the Spirit which did not descend upon him until the day of his Baptism What these persons were in order to exteriour Ministeries that all the faithful are in order to Faith and Obedience consigned in Baptism by the Spirit of God to a perpetual relation to God in a continual service and title to his Promises And in this sence the Spirit of God is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Seal In whom also after that ye believed ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of Promise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Water washes the body and the Spirit seals the Soul viz. to a participation of those Promises which he hath made and to which we receive a title by our Baptism 22. Secondly The second effect of the Spirit is Light or Illumination that is the holy Spirit becomes unto us the Author of holy thoughts and firm perswasions and sets to his seal that the Word of God is true into the belief of which we are then baptized and makes Faith to be a Grace and the Understanding resigned and the Will confident and the Assent stronger than the premises and the Propositions to be believed because they are beloved and we are taught the ways of Godliness after a new manner that is we are made to perceive the Secrets of the Kingdom and to love Religion and to long for Heaven and heavenly things and to despise the World and to have new resolutions and new perceptions and new delicacies in order to the establishment of Faith and its increments and perseverance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God sits in the Soul when it is illuminated in 〈◊〉 as if he sate in his Throne that is he rules by a firm perswasion and intire principles of Obedience And therefore Baptism is called in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the baptized 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illuminated Call to mind the former days in which you were illuminated and the same phrase is in the 6. to the Hebrews where the parallel places expound each other For that which S. Paul calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illuminated he calls after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a receiving the knowledge of the truth and that you may perceive this to be wholly meant of Baptism the 〈◊〉 expresses it still by Synonyma's Tasting of the heavenly gift and made partakers of the Holy Ghost sprinkled in our hearts from an evil conscience and washed in our bodies with pure water all which also are a syllabus or collection of the several effects of the graces bestowed in Baptism But we are now instancing in that which relates most properly to the Understanding in which respect the Holy Spirit also is called Anointing or Unction and the mystery is explicated by S. John The Anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you and ye need not that any man teach you but as the same Anointing teacheth you of all things 23. Thirdly The Holy Spirit descends upon us in Baptism to become the principle of a new life to become a holy seed springing up to Holiness and is called by S. John 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 of God and the purpose of it we are taught by him Whosoever is 〈◊〉 of God that is he that is regenerated and entred into this New birth doth not 〈◊〉 sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God The Spirit of God is the Spirit of life and now that he by the Spirit is born anew he hath in him that principle which if it be cherished will grow up to life to life eternal And this is the Spirit of Sanctification the victory over the World the deletery of Concupiscence the life of the Soul and the perpetual principle of Grace sown in our spirits in the day of our Adoption to be the sons of God and members of Christ's body But take this Mystery in the words of S. Basil. There are two Ends proposed in Baptism to wit to abolish the body of Sin that we may no more bring forth fruit unto death and to live in the Spirit and to have our fruit to Sanctification The Water represents the image of death receiving the body in its bosom as in a Sepulchre but the quickning Spirit sends upon us a vigorous 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 power or 〈◊〉 even from the beginning renewing our Souls from the death of sin unto life For as our Mortification is 〈◊〉 in the water so the Spirit works life in us To this purpose is the discourse of S. Paul having largely discoursed of our being baptized into the death of 〈◊〉 he adds this as the Corollary of all He that is dead is freed from sin that is being mortified and buried in the waters of Baptism we have a new life of Righteousness put into us we are quitted from the dominion of Sin and are planted together in the likeness of Christ's Resurrection that henceforth we should not serve sin 24. Fourthly But all these intermedial Blessings tend to a glorious Conclusion for Baptism does also consign us to a holy Resurrection It takes the sting of death from us by burying us together with Christ and takes 〈◊〉 Sin which is the sting of death and then we shall be partakers of a blessed Resurrection This we are taught by S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his Death For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his Death we shall be also in the likeness of his Resurrection That declares the real event in its due season But because Baptism consigns it and admits us to a title to it we are said with S. Paul to be risen with Christ in Baptism Buried with him in Baptism wherein also you are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God which hath raised him from the dead Which expression I desire to be remembred that by it we may better understand those other
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Be not pure in the laver but in the mind adds I suppose that an exact and a firm Repentance is a sufficient purification to a man if judging and considering our selves for the facts we have done before we proceed to that which is before us considering that which follows and cleansing or washing our mind from sensual affections and from former sins Just as we use to deny the effect to the instrumental cause and attribute it to the principal in the manner of speaking when our purpose is to affirm this to be the principal and of chief 〈◊〉 So we say It is not the good Lute but the skilful hand that makes the musick It is not the Body but the Soul that is the Man and yet he is not the man without both For Baptism is but the material part in the Sacrament it is the Spirit that giveth life whose work is Faith and Repentance begun by himself without the Sacrament and consigned in the Sacrament and actuated and increased in the cooperation of our whole life And therefore Baptism is called in the Jerusalem Creed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one Baptism of Repentance for the remission of sins and by Justin Martyr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Baptism of Repentance and the knowledge of God which was made for the sins of the people of God He explains himself a little after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Baptism that can only cleanse them that are penitent In Sacrament is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fides credentium professio quae apud Act a conficitur Angelorum 〈◊〉 miscentur 〈◊〉 spiritualia semina ut sancto germine nova possit renascentium indoles procreari ut dum Trinitas cum Fide concordat qui natus fuerit seculo renascatur spiritualiter Deo Sic fit hominum Pater Deus sancta fit Mater Ecclesia said Optatus The Faith and Profession of the Believers meets with the ever-blessed Trinity and is recorded in the Register of Angels where heavenly and spiritual seeds are mingled that from so holy a Spring may be produced a new nature of the Regeneration that while the Trinity viz. that is invocated upon the baptized meets with the Faith of the Catechumen he that was born to the world may be born spiritually to God So God is made a Father to the man and the holy Church a Mother Faith and Repentance stript the Old man naked and make him fit for Baptism and then the Holy Spirit moving upon the waters cleanses the Soul and makes it to put on the New man who grows up to perfection and a spiritual life to a life of glory by our verification of our undertaking in Baptism on our part and the Graces of the Spirit on the other For the waters pierce no farther than the skin till the person puts off his affection to the sin that he hath contracted and then he may say Aquae intraverunt 〈◊〉 ad animam meam The waters are entred even unto my Soul to purifie and cleanse it by the washing of water and the renewing by the Holy Spirit The summ is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Being baptized we are illuminated being illuminated we are adopted to the inheritance of sons being adopted we are promoted towards perfection and being perfected we are made immortal Quisquis in hos fontes vir venerit exeat indè Semideus tactis citò nobilitetur in undis 28. This is the whole Doctrine of Baptism as it is in it self considered without relation to rare Circumstances or accidental cases and it will also serve to the right understanding of the reasons why the Church of God hath in all Ages baptized all persons that were within her power for whom the Church could stipulate that they were or might be relatives of Christ sons of God heirs of the Promises and partners of the Covenant and such as did not hinder the work of Baptism upon their Souls And such were not only persons of age and choice but the Infants of Christian Parents For the understanding and verifying of which truth I shall only need to apply the parts of the former Discourse to their particular case premising first these Propositions Of Baptizing Infants Part II. 1. BAPTISM is the Key in Christ's hand and therefore opens as he opens and shuts by his rule and as Christ himself did not do all his Blessings and effects unto every one but gave to every one as they had need so does Baptism Christ did not cure all mens eyes but them only that were blind Christ came not to call the righteous but sinners to 〈◊〉 that is They that lived in the fear of God according to the Covenant in which they were debtors were indeed improved and promoted higher by Christ but not called to that Repentance to which he called the vicious Gentiles and the Adulterous persons among the Jews and the hypocritical Pharisees There are some so innocent that they need no repentance saith the Scripture meaning that though they do need Contrition for their single acts of sin yet they are within the state of Grace and need not Repentance as it is a Conversion of the whole man And so it is in Baptism which does all its effects upon them that need them all and some upon them that need but some and therefore as it pardons sins to them that have committed them and do repent and believe so to the others who have not committed them it does all the work which is done to the others above or besides that Pardon 2. Secondly When the ordinary effect of a Sacrament is done already by some other efficiency or instrument yet the Sacrament is still as obligatory as before not for so many reasons or necessities but for the same Commandment Baptism is the first ordinary Current in which the Spirit moves and descends upon us and where God's Spirit is they are the Sons of God for Christ's Spirit descends upon none but them that are his and yet Cornelius who had received the holy Spirit and was heard by God and visited by an Angel and accepted in his Alms and Fastings and Prayers was tied to the susception of Baptism To which may be added That the receiving the effects of Baptism before-hand was used as an argument the rather to administer Baptism The effect of which consideration is this That Baptism and its effect may be separated and do not always go in conjunction the effect may be before and therefore much rather may it be after its susception the Sacrament operating in the virtue of Christ even as the Spirit shall move according to that saying of S. Austin Sacrosancto lavacro inchoata innovatio novi hominis perficiendo perficitur in aliis citiùs in aliis tarà iùs and S. Bernard Lavari quidem citò possumus sed ad sanandum multâ curatione opus est The work of Regeneration that is begun in the ministery of Baptism is perfected in some sooner in some later We
desertions and anguish of spirit expecting all should work together for the best according to the promise if you can strengthen your selves in God when you are weakest believe when you see no hope and entertain no jealousies or suspicions of God though you see nothing to make you confident then and then only you have Faith which in conjunction with its other parts is able to save your Souls For in this precise duty of trusting God there are the rays of hope and great proportions of Charity and Resignation 17. The summ is that pious and most Christian sentence of the Author of the ordinary Gloss To believe in God through Jesus Christ is by believing to love him to adhere to him to be united to him by Charity and Obedience and to be incorporated into Christ ' s mystical body in the Communion of Saints I conclude this with a collation of certain excellent words of S. Paul highly to the present purpose Examine your selves Brethren whether ye be in the Faith prove your own selves Well but how Know you not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be Reprobates There 's the touchstone of Faith If Jesus Christ dwells in us then we are true Believers if he does not we are Reprobates we have no Faith But how shall we know whether Christ be in us or no Saint Paul tells us that too If Christ be in you the body is dead by reason of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousness That 's the Christian's mark and the Characteristick of a true Believer A death unto sin and a living unto righteousness a mortified body and a quickned spirit This is plain enough and by this we see what we must trust to A man of a wicked life does in vain hope to be saved by his Faith for indeed his Faith is but equivocal and dead which as to his purpose is just none at all and therefore let him no more deceive himself For that I may still use the words of S. Paul This is a faithful saying and these things I will that thou affirm constantly that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works For such and such only in the great scrutiny for Faith in the day of Doom shall have their portion in the bosom of faithful Abraham The PRAYER I. O Eternal GOD 〈◊〉 of all Truth and Holiness in whom to believe is life eternal let thy Grace descend with a mighty power into my Soul beating down every strong hold and vainer imagination and bringing every proud thought and my confident and ignorant understanding into the obedience of Jesus Take from me all disobdience and refractoriness of spirit all ambition and private and baser interests remove from me all prejudice and weakness of perswasion that I may wholly resign my Understanding to the perswasions of Christianity acknowledging Thee to be the principle of Truth and thy Word the measure of Knowledge and thy Laws the rule of my life and thy Promises the satisfaction of my hopes and an union with thee to be the consummation of Charity in the fruition of Glory Amen II. HOly JESUS make me to acknowledge thee to be my Lord and Master and my self a Servant and Disciple of thy holy Discipline and Institution let me love to sit at thy feet and suck in with my ears and heart the sweetness of thy holy Sermons Let my Soul be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace with a peaceable and docile disposition Give me great boldness in the publick Confession of thy Name and the Truth of thy Gospel in despite of all hostilities and temptations And grant I may always remember that thy Name is called upon me and I may so behave my self that I neither give scandal to others nor cause disreputation to the honour of Religion but that thou mayest be glorified in me and I by thy mercies after a strict observance of all the holy Laws of Christianity Amen III. O Holy and ever-Blessed SPIRIT let thy gracious influences be the perpetual guide of my rational Faculties Inspire me with Wisdom and Knowledge spiritual Understanding and a holy Faith and sanctifie my Faith that it may arise up to the confidence of Hope and the adherencies of Charity and be fruitful in a holy Conversation Mortifie in me all peevishness and pride of spirit all heretical dispositions and whatsoever is contrary to sound Doctrine that when the eternal Son of God the Author and Finisher of our Faith shall come to make scrutiny and an inquest for Faith I may receive the Promises laid up for them that believe in the Lord Jesus and wait for his coming in holiness and purity to whom with the Father and thee O Blessed Spirit be all honour and eternal adoration payed with all sanctity and joy and Eucharist now and for ever Amen SECT XI Of CHRIST's going to Jerusalem to the Passeover the first time after his Manifestation and what followed till the expiration of the Office of John the Baptist. The Visitation of the Temple Marke 11. 15. And Iesus went into y e Temple began to cast out them that sold bought in y e Temple and overthrew the tables of the money changers 16. And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the Temple The Conference with Nicodemus Iohn 3. 9. Nicodemus answered said unto him How can these things be 10. Iesus answered and sayd unto him Art thou a Master of Israel and knowest not these things 1. IMmediately after this Miracle Jesus abode a few days in Capernaum but because of the approach of the great Feast of Passeover he ascended to Jerusalem and the first publick act of record that he did was an act of holy Zeal and Religion in behalf of the honour of the Temple For divers Merchants and Exchangers of money made the Temple to be the Market and the Bank and brought Beasts thither to be sold for sacrifice against the great Paschal Solemnity At the sight of which Jesus being moved with zeal and indignation made a whip of cords and drave the Beasts out of the Temple overthrew the accounting Tables and commanded them that sold the Doves to take them from thence For his anger was holy and he would mingle no injury with it and therefore the Doves which if let loose would be detrimental to the owners he caused to be fairly removed and published the Religion of Holy places establishing their Sacredness for ever by his first Gospel-Sermon that he made at Jerusalem Take these things hence Make not my Father's House a house of merchandise for it shall be called a house of Prayer to all Nations And being required to give a sign of his Vocation for this being an action like the Religion of the Zelots among the Jews if it was not attested by something extraordinary might be abused into an excess of liberty he only foretold the
in the same mystical Head is an adunation nearer to identity than those distances between Parents and Children which are only cemented by the actions of Nature as it is of distinct consideration from the spirit For Jesus pointing to his Disciples said Behold my Mother and my Brethren for whosoever doth the will of my Father which is in heaven he is my Brother and Sister and Mother 14. But the Pharisees upon the occasion of the Miracles renewed the old quarrel He casteth out Devils by Beelzebub Which senseless and illiterate objection Christ having confuted charged them highly upon the guilt of an unpardonable crime telling them that the so charging those actions of his done in the virtue of the Divine Spirit is a sin against the Holy Ghost and however they might be bold with the Son of Man and prevarications against his words or injuries to his person might upon Repentance and Baptism find a pardon yet it was a matter of greater consideration to sin against the Holy Ghost that would find no pardon here nor hereafter But taking occasion upon this discourse he by an ingenious and mysterious Parable gives the world great caution of recidivation and backsliding after Repentance For if the Devil returns into a house once swept and garnished he bringeth seven spirits more impure than himself and the last estate of that man is worse than the first 15. After this Jesus went from the house of the Pharisee and coming to the Sea of Tiberias or Genezareth for it was called the Sea of Tiberias from a Town on the banks of the Lake taught the people upon the shore himself sitting in the ship but he taught them by Parables under which were hid mysterious senses which shined through their veil like a bright Sun through an eye closed with a thin eye-lid it being light enough to shew their infidelity but not to dispell those thick Egyptian darknesses which they had contracted by their habitual indispositions and pertinacious aversations By the Parable of the Sower scattering his seed by the way side and some on stony some on thorny some on good ground he intimated the several capacities or indispositions of mens hearts the carelesness of some the frowardness and levity of others the easiness and softness of a third and how they are spoiled with worldliness and cares and how many ways there are to miscarry and that but one sort of men receive the word and bring forth the fruits of a holy life By the Parable of Tares permitted to grow amongst the Wheat he intimated the toleration of dissenting Opinions not destructive of Piety or civil societies By the three Parables of the Seed growing insensibly of the grain of Mustard-seed swelling up to a tree of a little Leven qualifying the whole lump he signified the increment of the Gospel and the blessings upon the Apostolical Sermons 16. Which Parables when he had privately to his Apostles rendred into their proper senses he added to them two Parables concerning the dignity of the Gospel comparing it to Treasure hid in a field and a Jewel of great price for the purchace of which every good Merchant must quit all that he hath rather than miss it telling them withall that however purity and spiritual perfections were intended by the Gospel yet it would not be acquired by every person but the publick Professors of Christianity should be a mixt multitude like a net inclosing fishes good and bad After which discourses he retired from the Sea side and went to his own City of Nazareth where he preached so excellently upon certain words of the Prophet 〈◊〉 that all the people wondred at the wisdom which he expressed in his Divine discourses But the men of Nazareth did not do honour to the Prophet that was their Countryman because they knew him in all the disadvantages of youth and kindred and trade and poverty still retaining in their minds the infirmities and humilities of his first years and keeping the same apprehensions of him a man and a glorious Prophet which they had to him a child in the shop of a Carpenter But when Jesus in his Sermon had reproved their infidelity at which he wondred and therefore did but few Miracles there in respect of what he had done at Capernaum and intimated the prelation of that City before 〈◊〉 they thrust him out of the City and led him to the brow of the hill on which the City was built intending to throw him down headlong But his work was not yet finished therefore he passing through the midst of them went his way 17. Jesus therefore departing from Nazareth went up and down to all the Towns and Castles of Galilce attended by his Disciples and certain women out of whom he had cast unclean spirits such as were Mary Magdalen Johanna wife to Chuza Herod's Steward Susanna and some others who did for him offices of provision and ministred to him out of their own substance and became parts of that holy Colledge which about this time began to be 〈◊〉 because now the Apostles were returned from their Preaching full of joy that the Devils were made subject to the word of their mouth and the Empire of their Prayers and invocation of the holy Name of Jesus But their Master gave them a lenitive to asswage the tumour and excrescency intimating that such priviledges are not solid foundations of a holy joy but so far as they cooperate toward the great end of God's glory and their own Salvation to which when they are consigned and their names written in Heaven in the book of Election and Registers of Predestination then their joy is reasonable holy true and perpetual 18. But when Herod had heard these things of Jesus presently his apprehensions were such as derived from his guilt he thought it was John the Baptist who was risen from the dead and that these mighty works were demonstrations of his power increased by the superadditions of immortality and diviner influences made proportionable to the honour of a Martyr and the state of separation For a little before this time Herod had sent to the Castle of Macheruns where John was prisoner and caused him to be beheaded His head Herodias buried in her own Palace thinking to secure it against a re-union lest it should again disturb her unlawful Lusts and disquiet Herod's conscience But the body the Disciples of John gathered up and carried it with honour and sorrow and buried it in Sebaste in the confines of Samaria making his grave between the bodies of 〈◊〉 and Abdias the Prophets And about this time was the Passeover of the Jews DISCOURSE XV. Of the Excellency Ease Reasonableness and Advantages of bearing Christ ' s Yoke and living according to his Institution Ecce agnus Dei gui toâ—lit peccata Mundi Iohn 1. 29. Behold the lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the World The Christian's Work and Reward Matth. 11. 29 30. Take my yoke upon
heathless body become fuel to a fever and increase the distemperature from indisposition to a sharp disease and from thence to the margent of the grave But it was otherwise in Saul whom Jesus threw to the ground with a more angry sound than these persecutors but Saul rose a Saint and they persisted Devils and the grace of God distinguished the events The PRAYER O Holy Jesus make me by thy example to conform to the will of that Eternal God who is our Father merciful and gracious that I may chuse all those accidents which his Providence hath actually disposed to me that I may know no desires but his commands and his will and that in all afflictions I may fly thither for mercy pardon and support and may wait for deliverance in such times and manners which the Father hath reserved in his own power and graciously dispenses according to his infinite wisdom and compassion Holy Jesus give me the gift and spirit of Prayer and do thou by thy gracious intercession supply my ignorances and passionate desires and imperfect choices procuring and giving to me such returns of favour which may support my needs and serve the ends of Religion and the Spirit which thy wisdom chuses and thy Passion hath purchased and thy grace loves to bestow upon all thy Saints and servants Amen II. ETernal God sweetest Jesu who didst receive Judas with the affection of a Saviour and sufferedst him to kiss thy cheek with the serenity and tranquillity of God and didst permit the souldiers to bind thee with Patience exemplary to all ages of Martyrs and didst cure the wound of thy enemy with the Charity of a Parent and the tenderness of an infinite pity O kiss me with the kisses of thy mouth embrace me with the entertainments of a gracious Lord and let my Soul dwell and feast in thee who art the repository of eternal sweetness and refreshments Bind me O Lord with those bands which tied thee fast the chains of Love that such holy union may dissolve the cords of vanity and confine the bold pretensions of usurping Passions and imprison all extravagancies of an impertinent spirit and lead Sin captive to the dominion of Grace and sanctified Reason that I also may imitate all the parts of thy holy Passion and may by thy bands get my liberty by thy kiss enkindle charity by the touch of thy hand and the breath of thy mouth have all my wounds cured and restored to the integrity of a holy Penitent and the purities of Innocence that I may love thee and please thee and live with thee for ever O Holy and sweetest Jesu Amen Considerations upon the Scourging and other Accidents happening from the Apprehension till the Crucifixion of JESUS Christ brought before the Highpreist Iohn 18 12. Then the Band and the Captain and the Officers of the Iews took Iesus and bound him 25. And lead him away to Annas first for he was Father-in-law to Cajaphas which was Highpreist that same yeare Christ arraigned before Herod Luk. 23. 7. 8. 11. And assoone as he knew that he belonged to Herods jurisdiction he sent him to Herod 8. And when Herod saw Iesus he was exceeding glad 11. And Herod with his men of war set him at nought and mocked him and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe and sent him againe to Pilate 1. THE house of Annas stood in the mount Sion and in the way to the house of Caiaphas and thither he was led as to the first stage of their triumph for their surprise of a person so feared and desired and there a naughty person smote the 〈◊〉 Jesus upon the face for saying to Annas that he had made his Doctrine publick and that all the people were able to give account of it to whom the Lamb of God 〈◊〉 as much meekness and patience in his answer as in his answer to Annas he had 〈◊〉 prudence and modesty For now that they had taken Jesus they wanted a crime to object against him and therefore were desirous to snatch occasion from his discourses to which they resolved to tempt him by questions and affronts but his answer was general and indefinite safe and true enough to acquit his Doctrine from suspicions of secret designs and yet secure against their present snares for now himself who always had the innocence of Doves was to joyn with it the prudence and wariness of Serpents not to prevent death for that he was resolved to suffer but that they might be destitute of all apparence of a just cause on his part Here it was that Judas received his money and here that holy Face which was designed to be that object in the beholding of which much of the celestial glory doth consist that Face which the Angels stare upon with wonder like infants at a bright Sun-beam was smitten extrajudicially by an incompetent person with circumstances of despight in the presence of a Judge in a full assembly and none reproved the insolency and the cruelty of the affront for they resolved to use him as they use Wolves and Tigres with all things that may be destructive violent and impious and in this the injury was heightned because the blow was said to be given by Malchus an Idumaean slave and therefore a contemptible person but far more unworthy by his ingratitude for so he repayed the Holy Jesus for working a Miracle and healing his ear But so the Scripture was fulfilled He shall give his body to the smiters and his cheeks to the nippers saith the Prophet Isay and They shall smite the cheek of the Judge of Israel saith Micah And this very circumstance of the Passion Lactantius affirms to have been foretold by the Erythraean Sibyll But no meekness or indifferency could engage our Lord not to protest his innocency and though following his steps we must walk in the regions of patience and tranquillity and admirable toleration of injuries yet we may represent such defences of our selves which by not resisting the sentence may testifie that our suffering is undeserved and if our Innocency will not preserve our lives it will advance our title to a better and every good cause ill judged shall be brought to another tribunal to receive a just and unerring sentence 2. Annas having suffered this unworthy usage towards a person so excellent sent him away to Caiphas who had formerly in a full council resolved he should die yet now palliating the design with the scheme of a tribunal they seek out for witnesses and the witnesses are to seek for allegations and when they find them they are to seek for proof and those proofs were to seek for unity and consent and nothing was ready for their purposes but they were forced to use the semblance of a judicial process that because they were to make use of Pilate's authority to put him to death they might perswade Pilate to accept of their examination and conviction without farther enquiry But such
Birth His austere Education and way of Life His Preaching what His initiating proselytes by Baptism Baptism in use in the Jewish Church It s Original whence His resolution and impartiality His Martyrdom The character given him by Josephus and the Jews The Evangelical Dispensation wherein it exceeds that of Moses It s 〈◊〉 and perfection It s agreeableness to humane nature The Evangelical promises better than those of the Law and in what respects The aids of the Spirit plentifully assorded under the Gospel The admirable confirmation of this Occonomy The great extent and latitude of it Judaism not capable of being communicated to all mankind The comprehensiveness of the Gospel The Duration of the Evangelical Covenant The Mosaical Statutes in what sence said to be for ever The Typical and transient nature of that State The great happiness of Christians under the Occonomy of the Gospel 1. GOD having from the very infancy of the World promised the Messiah as the great Redeemer of Mankind was accordingly pleased in all Ages to make gradual discoveries and manifestations of him the revelations concerning him in every Dispensation of the Church still shining with a bigger and more particular light the nearer this Sun of Righteousness was to his rising The first Gospel and glad tidings of him commenced with the fall of Adam God out of infinite tenderness and commiseration promising to send a person who should triumphantly vindicate and rescue mankind from the power and tyranny of their Enemies and that he should do this by taking the humane nature upon him and being born of the seed of the Woman No further account is given of him till the times of Abraham to whom it was revealed that he should proceed out of his loins and arise out of the Jewish Nation though both Jew and Gentile should be made happy by him To his Grandchild Jacob God made known out of what Tribe of that Nation he should rise the Tribe of Judah and what would be the time of his appearing viz. the departure of the Scepter from Judah the abrogation of the Civil and Legislative power of that Tribe and People accomplished in Herod the Idumaean set over them by the Roman power And this is all we find concerning him under that Oeconomy Under the Legal Dispensation we find Moses foretelling one main 〈◊〉 of his coming which was to be the great Prophet of the Church to whom all were to hearken as an extraordinary person sent from God to acquaint the World with the Councils and the Laws of Heaven The next news we hear of him is from David who was told that he should spring out of his house and family and who frequently speaks of his sufferings and the particular manner of his death by piercing his hands and his feet of his powerful Resurrection that God would not leave his Soul in Hell nor suffer his holy one to see corruption of his triumphant Ascension into Heaven and glorious session at God's right hand From the Prophet Isaiah we have an account of the extraordinary and miraculous manner of his Birth that he should be born of a Virgin and his name be Immanuel of his incomparable furniture of gifts and graces for the execution of his office of the entertainment he was to meet with in the World and of the nature and design of those sufferings which he was to undergo The place of his Birth was foretold by Micah which was to be 〈◊〉 the least of the Cities of Judah but honoured above all the rest with the nativity of a Prince who was to be Ruler in Israel whose goings forth had been from everlasting Lastly the Prophet Daniel 〈◊〉 the particular period of his coming expresly affirming that the Messiah should appear in the World and be cut off as a Victim and Expiation for the sins of the people at the expiration of LXX prophetical weeks or CCCCXC years which accordingly punctually came to pass 2. FOR the date of the prophetick Scriptures concerning the time of the 〈◊〉 's coming being now run out In the fulness of time God sent his Son made of a Woman made under the Law to 〈◊〉 them that were under the Law This being the truth of which God spake by the mouth of all his holy Prophets which have been since the World began But because it was not sit that so great a Person should come into the World without an eminent Harbinger to introduce and usher in his Arrival God had promised that he would send his Messenger who should prepare his way before him even 〈◊〉 the Prophet whom he would send before the coming of that great day of the Lord who should turn the hearts of the Fathers to the Children c. This was particularly accomplished in John the Baptist who came in the power and spirit of Elias He was the Morning-star to the Son of Righteousness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as S. Cyril says of him the great and eminent Fore-runner a Person remarkable upon several accounts First for the extraordinary circumstances of his Nativity his Birth foretold by an Angel sent on purpose to deliver this joyful Message a sign God intended him for great undertakings this being never done but where God designed the Person for some uncommon services his Parents aged and though both righteous before God yet hitherto Childless Heaven does not dispence all its bounty to the same Person Children though great and desirable blessings are yet often denied to those for whom God has otherwise very dear regards Elizabeth was barren and they were both well stricken in years But is any thing too hard for the Lord said God to Abraham in the same case God has the Key of the Womb in his own keeping it is one of the Divine Prerogatives that he makes the barren Woman to keep house and to be a joyful Mother of Children A Son is promised and mighty things said of him a promise which old Zachary had scarce faith enough to digest and therefore had the assurance of it sealed to him by a miraculous dumbness imposed upon him till it was made good the same Miracle at once confirming his faith and punishing his infidelity Accordingly his Mother conceived with Child and as if he would do part of his errand before he was born he leaped in her Womb at her salutation of the Virgin Mary then newly conceived with Child of our Blessed Saviour a piece of homage paid by one to one yet unborn 3. THESE presages were not vain and fallible but produced a Person no less memorable for the admirable strictness and austerity of his 〈◊〉 For having escaped Herod's butcherly and merciless Executioners the Divine providence being a shelter and a covert to him and been educated among the rudenesses and solitudes of the Wilderness his manners and way of life were very 〈◊〉 to his Education His Garments borrowed from no other Wardrobe than the backs
the injurious if I be not Judge my self is also within the moderation of an unblameable defence unless some accidents or circumstances vary the case but forgiving injuries is a separating the malice from the wrong the transient act from the permanent effect and it is certain the act which is passed cannot be rescinded the effect may and if it cannot it does no way alleviate the evil of the accident that I draw him that caused it into as great a misery since every evil happening in the world is the proper object of pity which is in some sense afflictive and therefore unless we become unnatural and without bowels it is most unreasonable that we should encrease our own afflictions by introducing a new misery and making a new object of pity All the ends of humane Felicity are secured without Revenge for without it we are permitted to restore our selves and therefore it is against natural Reason to do an evil that no way cooperates towards the proper and perfective End of humane nature And he is a miserable person whose good is the evil of his neighbour and he that revenges in many cases does worse than he that did the injury in all cases as bad For if the first injury was an injustice to serve an end of an advantage and real benefit then my revenge which is abstracted and of a consideration separate and distinct from the reparation is worse for I do him evil without doing my self any real good which he did not for he received advantage by it But if the first injury was matter of mere malice without advantage yet it is no worse than Revenge for that is just so and there is as much phantastick pleasure in doing a spight as in doing revenge They are both but like the pleasures of eating coals and toads and vipers And certain it is if a man upon his private stock could be permitted to revenge the evil would be immortal And it is rarely well discoursed by Tyndarus in Euripides If the angry Wife shall kill her Husband the Son shall revenge his Father's death and kill his Mother and then the Brother shall kill his Mother's murtherer and he also will meet with an avenger for killing his Brother 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What end shall there be to such inhumane and sad accidents If in this there be injustice it is against natural Reason and If it be evil and disorders the felicity and security of Society it is also against natural Reason But if it be just it is a strange Justice that is made up of so many inhumanities 41. And now if any man pretends specially to Reason to the ordinate desires and perfections of Nature and the sober discourses of Philosophy here is in Christianity and no-where else enough to satisfie and inform his Reason to perfect his Nature and to reduce to act all the Propositions of an intelligent and wise spirit And the Holy Ghost is promised and given in our Religion to be an eternal band to keep our Reason from returning to the darknesses of the old creation and to promote the ends of our natural and proper Felicity For it is not a vain thing that S. Paul reckons helps and governments and healings to be fruits of the Spirit For since the two greatest Blessings of the world personal and political consist that in Health this in Government and the ends of humane Felicity are served in nothing greater for the present interval than in these two Christ did not only enjoyn rare prescriptions of Health such as are Fasting Temperance Chastity and Sobriety and all the great endearments of Government and unless they be sacredly observed man is infinitely miserable but also hath given his Spirit that is extraordinary aids to the promoting these two and facilitating the work of Nature that as S. Paul says at the end of a discourse to this very purpose the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us 42. I shall add nothing but this single consideration God said to the children of Israel Ye are a royal Priesthood a Kingdom of Priests Which was therefore true because God reigned by the Priests and the Priests lips did then preserve knowledge and the people were to receive the Law from their mouths for God having by Laws of his own established Religion and the Republick did govern by the rule of the Law and the ministery of the Priests The Priests said Thus saith the LORD and the people obeyed And these very words are spoken to the Christian Church Ye are a Royal Priesthood an holy Nation a peculiar people that ye should shew forth the praises of him that hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light That is God reigns over all Christendom just as he did over the Jews He hath now so given to them and restored respectively all those reasonable Laws which are in order to all good ends personal oeconomical and political that if men will suffer Christian Religion to do its last intention if men will live according to it there needs no other coercion of Laws or power of the Sword The Laws of God revealed by Christ are sufficient to make all societies of men happy and over all good men God reigns by his Ministers by the preaching of the Word And this was most evident in the three first Ages of the Church in which all Christian Societies were for all their proper entercourses perfectly guided not by the authority and compulsion but by the Sermons of their Spiritual Guides insomuch that S. Paul sharply reprehends the Corinthians that Brother goeth to law with Brother and that before the unbelievers as if he had said Ye will not suffer Christ to be your Judge and his Law to be your Rule which indeed was a great fault among them not only because they had so excellent a Law so clearly described or where they might doubt they had infallible Interpreters so reasonable and profitable so evidently concurring to their mutual felicity but also because God did design Jesus to be their King to reign over them by spiritual regiment as himself did over the Jews till they chose a King And when the Emperors became Christian the case was no otherwise altered but that the Princes themselves submitting to Christ's yoke were as all other Christians are for their proportion to be governed by the Royal Priesthood that is by the Word preached by Apostolical persons the political Interest remaining as before save that by being submitted to the Laws of Christ it received this advantage that all Justice was turned to be Religion and became necessary and bound upon the Conscience by Divinity And when it happens that a Kingdom is converted to Christianity the Common-wealth is made a Church and Gentile Priests are Christian Bishops and the Subjects of the Kingdom are Servants of Christ the Religion of the Nation is turned Christian and the Law of the Nation made a part
Kir-haraseth and went to their own Countrey The same and much more was God's design who took not his enemie's but his own Son his only begotten Son and God himself and offered him up in Sacrifice to make us leave our perpetual fightings against Heaven and if we still persist we are hardned beyond the wildnesses of the Arabs and Edomites and neither are receptive of the impresses of Pity nor Humanity who neither have compassion to the Suffering of Jesus nor compliance with the designs of God nor conformity to the Holiness and Obedience of our Guide In a dark night if an Ignis Fatuus do but precede us the glaring of its lesser flames do so amuse our eyes that we follow it into Rivers and Precipices as if the ray of that false light were designed on purpose to be our path to tread in And therefore not to follow the glories of the Sun of Righteousness who indeed leads us over rocks and difficult places but secures us against the danger and guides us into safety is the greatest both undecency and unthankfulness in the world 5. In the great Council of Eternity when God set down the Laws and knit fast the eternal bands of Predestination he made it one of his great purposes to make his Son like us that we also might be like his Holy Son he by taking our Nature we by imitating his Holiness God hath predestinated us to be conformable to the image of his Son saith the Apostle For the first in every kind is in nature propounded as the Pattern of the rest And as the Sun the Prince of all the Bodies of Light and the Fire of all warm substances is the principal the Rule and the Copy which they in their proportions imitate and transcribe so is the Word incarnate the great Example of all the Predestinate for he is the first-born among many brethren And therefore it was a precept of the Apostle and by his doctrine we understand its meaning Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ. The similitude declares the duty As a garment is composed and made of the same fashion with the body and is applied to each part in its true figure and commensuration so should we put on Christ and imitate the whole body of his Sanctity conforming to every integral part and express him in our lives that God seeing our impresses may know whose image and superscription we bear and we may be acknowledged for Sons when we have the air and features and resemblances of our elder Brother 6. In the practice of this duty we may be helped by certain considerations which are like the proportion of so many rewards For this according to the nature of all holy Exercises stays not for pay till its work be quite finished but like Musick in Churches is Pleasure and Piety and Salary besides So is every work of Grace full of pleasure in the execution and is abundantly rewarded besides the stipend of a glorious Eternity 7. First I consider that nothing is more honourable than to be like God and the Heathens worshippers of false Deities grew vicious upon that stock and we who have fondnesses of imitation counting a Deformity full of honour if by it we may be like our Prince for pleasures were in their height in Capreae because Tiberius there wallowed in them and a wry neck in Nero's Court was the Mode of Gallantry might do well to make our imitations prudent and glorious and by propounding excellent Examples heighten our faculties to the capacities of an evenness with the best of Precedents He that strives to imitate another admires him and confesses his own imperfections and therefore that our admirations be not flattering nor our consessions phantastick and impertinent it were but reasonable to admire Him from whom really all Perfections do derive and before whose Glories all our imperfections must confess their shame and needs of reformation God by a voice from Heaven and by sixteen generations of Miracles and Grace hath attested the Holy Jesus to be the fountain of Sanctity and the wonderful Counsellor and the Captain of our sufferings and the guide of our manners by being his beloved Son in whom he took pleasure and complacency to the height of satisfaction And if any thing in the world be motive of our affections or satisfactory to our understandings what is there in Heaven or Earth we can desire or imagine beyond a likeness to God and participation of the Divine Nature and Perfections And therefore as when the Sun arises every man goes to his work and warms himself with his heat and is refreshed with his influences and measures his labour with his course So should we frame all the actions of our life by His Light who hath shined by an excellent Righteousness that we no more walk in Darkness or sleep in Lethargies or run a-gazing after the lesser and imperfect beauties of the Night It is the weakness of the Organ that makes us hold our hand between the Sun and us and yet stand staring upon a Meteor or an inflamed jelly And our judgments are as mistaken and our appetites are as sottish if we propound to our selves in the courses and designs of Perfections any copy but of Him or something like Him who is the most perfect And lest we think his Glories too great to behold 8. Secondly I consider that the imitation of the Life of Jesus is a duty of that excellency and perfection that we are helped in it not only by the assistance of a good and a great Example which possibly might be too great and scare our endeavours and attempts but also by its easiness compliance and proportion to us For Jesus in his whole life conversed with men with a modest Vertue which like a well-kindled fire fitted with just materials casts a constant heat not like an inflamed heap of stubble glaring with great emissions and suddenly stooping into the thickness of 〈◊〉 His Piety was even constant unblameable complying with civil society without affrightment of precedent or prodigious instances of actions greater than the imitation of men For if we observe our Blessed Saviour in the whole story of his Life although he was without Sin yet the instances of his Piety were the actions of a very holy but of an ordinary life and we may observe this difference in the Story of Jesus from Ecclesiastical Writings of certain beatified persons whose life is told rather to amaze us and to create scruples than to lead us in the evenness and serenity of a holy Conscience Such are the prodigious Penances of Simeon Stylites the Abstinence of the Religious retired into the mountain Nitria but especially the stories of later Saints in the midst of a declining Piety and aged Christendom where persons are represented Holy by way of Idea and fancy if not to promote the interests of a Family and Institution But our Blessed Saviour though his eternal Union
all publick Societies of men one word or an intimation from Christ would have sounded an alarm and put us into postures of defence when all Christ's excellent Sermons and rare exemplar actions cannot tie our hands But it is strange now that of all men in the World Christians should be such fighting people or that Christian Subjects should lift up a thought against a Christian Prince when they had no intimation of encouragement from their Master but many from him to endear Obedience and Humility and Patience and Charity and these four make up the whole analogy and represent the chief design and meaning of Christianity in its moral constitution 11. But Jesus when himself was safe could also have secured the poor Babes of Bethlehem with thousands of diversions and avocations of Herod's purposes or by discovering his own Escape in some safe manner not unknown to the Divine wisedom but yet it did not so please God He is Lord of his Creatures and hath absolute dominion over our lives and he had an end of Glory to serve upon these Babes and an end of Justice upon Herod and to the Children he made such compensation that they had no reason to complain that they were so soon made Stars when they shined in their little Orbs and participations of Eternity for so the sense of the Church hath been that they having dyed the death of Martyrs though incapable of making the choice God supplied the defects of their will by his own entertainment of the thing that as the misery and their death so also their glorification might have the same Author in the same manner of causality even by a peremptory and unconditioned determination in these particulars This sense is pious and nothing unreasonable considering that all circumstances of the thing make the case particular but the immature death of other Infants is a sadder story for though I have no warrant or thought that it is ill with them after death and in what manner or degree of well-being it is there is no revelation yet I am not of opinion that the securing of so low a condition as theirs in all reason is like to be will make recompence or is an equal blessing with the possibilities of such an Eternity as is proposed to them who in the use of Reason and a holy life glorifie God with a free Obedience and if it were otherwise it were no blessing to live till the use of Reason and Fools and Babes were in the best because in the securest condition and certain expectation of equal glories 12. As soon as Herod was dead for the Divine Vengeance waited his own time for his arrest the Angel presently brought Joseph word The holy Family was full of content and indifferency not solicitous for return not distrustful of the Divine Providence full of poverty and sanctity and content waiting God's time at the return of which God delayed not to recall them from Exile out of Egypt he called his Son and directed Joseph's fear and course that he should divert to a place in the jurisdiction of Philip where the Heir of Herod's Cruelty Archelaus had nothing to do And this very series of Providence and care God expresses to all his sons by adoption and will determine the time and set bounds to every Persecution and punish the instruments and ease our pains and refresh our sorrows and give quietness to our fears and deliverance from our troubles and sanctifie it all and give a Crown at last and all in his good time if we wait the coming of the Angel and in the mean time do our duty with care and sustain our temporals with indifferency and in all our troubles and displeasing accidents we may call to mind that God by his holy and most reasonable Providence hath so ordered it that the spiritual advantages we may receive from the holy use of such incommodities are of great recompence and interest and that in such accidents the Holy Jesus having gone before us in precedent does go along with us by love and fair assistences and that makes the present condition infinitely more eligible than the greatest splendour of secular fortune The PRAYER O Blessed and Eternal God who didst suffer thy Holy Son to fly from the violence of an enraged Prince and didst chuse to defend him in the ways of his infirmity by hiding himself and a voluntary exile be thou a defence to all thy faithful people when-ever Persecution arises against them send them the ministery of Angels to direct them into ways of security and let thy holy Spirit guide them in the paths of Sanctity and let thy Providence continue in custody over their persons till the times of refreshment and the day of Redemption shall return Give O Lord to thy whole Church Sanctity and Zeal and the confidences of a holy Faith boldness of confession Humility content and resignation of spirit generous contempt of the World and unmingled desires of thy glory and the edification of thy Elect that no secular interests disturb her duty or discompose her charity or depress her hopes or in any unequal degree possess her affections and pollute her spirit but preserve her from the snares of the World and the Devil from the rapine and greedy desires of Sacrilegious persons and in all conditions whether of affluence or want may she still promote the interests of Religion that when plenteousness is within her palaces and peace in her walls that condition may then be best for her and when she is made as naked as Jesus to his Passion then Poverty may be best for her that in all estates she may glorifie thee and in all accidents and changes thou mayest sanctifie and bless her and at last bring her to the eternal riches and abundances of glory where no Persecution shall disturb her rest Grant this for sweet Jesus sake who suffered exile and hard journeys and all the inconveniences of a friendless person in a strange Province to whom with thee and the eternal Spirit be glory for ever and blessing in all generations of the World and for ever and ever Amen SECT VII Of the younger years of JESVS and his Disputation with the Doctors in the Temple The House of Prayer It is written My house shall be called of all Nations the house of prayer Mark 11. 17. If they return confess thy name and pray and make supplication before thee in this House Then hear thou in heaven and forgive 2. Chron 6. 24. 26. IESUS disputing with the Doctors S. LUKE 2. 46. 47. They found him in the Temple sitting in the midst of the Doctors both hearing them and asking them questions And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding answers 1. FRom the return of this holy Family to Judaea and their habitation in Nazareth till the blessed Child Jesus was twelve years of age we have nothing transmitted to us out of any authentick Record but that they went to
of Discipline and Society opportunities of Perfection Privacy is the best for Devotion and the Publick for Charity In both God hath many Saints and Servants and from both the Devil hath had some 8. His Sermon was an Exhortation to Repentance and an Holy life He gave particular schedules of Duty to several states of persons sharply reproved the 〈◊〉 for their Hypocrisie and Impiety it being worse in them because contrary to their rule their profession and institution gently guided others into the ways of Righteousness calling them the streight ways of the Lord that is the direct and shortest way to the Kingdom for of all Lines the streight is the shortest and as every Angle is a turning out of the way so every Sin is an obliquity and interrupts the journey By such 〈◊〉 and a Baptism he disposed the spirits of men for the entertaining the 〈◊〉 and the Homilies of the Gospel For John's Doctrine was to the Sermons of Jesus as a Preface to a Discourse and his Baptism was to the new Institution and Discipline of the Kingdom as the Vigils to a Holy-day of the same kind in a less degree But the whole Oeconomy of it represents to us that Repentance is the first intromission into the Sanctities of Christian Religion The Lord treads upon no paths that are not hallowed and made smooth by the sorrows and cares of Contrition and the impediments of sin cleared by dereliction and the succeeding fruits of emendation But as it related to the Jews his Baptism did signifie by a cognation to their usual Rites and Ceremonies of Ablution and washing Gentile Proselytes that the Jews had so far receded from their duty and that Holiness which God required of them by the Law that they were in the state of strangers no better than Heathens and therefore were to be treated as themselves received Gentile Proselytes by a Baptism and a new state of life before they could be fit for the reception of the 〈◊〉 or be admitted to his Kingdom 9. It was an excellent sweetness of Religion that had entirely 〈◊〉 the Soul of the Baptist that in so great reputation of Sanctity so mighty concourse of people such great multitudes of Disciples and confidents and such throngs of admirers he was humble without mixtures of vanity and confirmed in his temper and Piety against the strength of the most impetuous temptation And he was tried to some purpose for when he was tempted to confess himself to be the CHRIST he refused it or to be Elias or to be accounted that Prophet he refused all such great appellatives and confessed himself only to be a Voice the lowest of Entities whose being depends upon the Speaker just as himself did upon the pleasure of God receiving form and publication and imployment wholly by the will of his Lord in order to the manifestation of the Word eternal It were 〈◊〉 that the spirits of men would not arrogate more than their own though they did not lessen their own just dues It may concern some end of Piety or Prudence that our reputation be preserved by all just means but never that we assume the dues of others or grow vain by the spoils of an undeserved dignity Honours are the rewards of Vertue or engagement upon Offices of trouble and publick use but then they must suppose a preceding worth or a fair imployment But he that is a Plagiary of others titles or offices and dresses himself with their beauties hath no more solid worth or reputation than he should have nutriment if he ate only with their mouth and slept their slumbers himself being open and unbound in all the Regions of his Senses The PRAYER O Holy and most glorious God who before the publication of thy eternal Son the Prince of Peace didst send thy Servant John Baptist by the examples of Mortification and the rude Austerities of a penitential life and by the Sermons of Penance to remove all the impediments of sin that the ways of his Lord and ours might be made clear ready and expedite be pleased to let thy Holy Spirit lead me in the streight paths of Sanctity without deslections to either hand and without the interruption of deadly sin that I may with facility Zeal 〈◊〉 and a persevering diligence walk in the ways of the Lord. Be pleased that the Axe may be laid to the root of Sin that the whole body of it may be cut down in me that no fruit of Sodom may grow up to thy displeasure Throughly purge the floor and 〈◊〉 of my heart with thy Fan with the breath of thy Diviner Spirit that it may be a holy repository of Graces and full of benediction and Sanctity that when our Lord shall come I may at all times be prepared for the entertainment of so Divine a Guest apt to lodge him and to feast him that he may for ever delight to dwell with me And make me also to dwell with him sometimes retiring into his recesses and private rooms by Contemplation and admiring of his Beauties and beholding the Secrets of his Kingdom and at all other times walking in the Courts of the Lord's House by the diligences and labours of Repentance and an Holy life till thou shalt please to call me to a nearer communication of thy Excellencies which then grant when by thy gracious assistances I shall have done thy works and glorified thy holy Name by the strict and never-failing purposes and proportionable endeavours of Religion and Holiness through the merits and mercies of Jesus Christ. Amen DISCOURSE IV. Of Mortification and corporal Austerities 1. FRom the days of John the Baptist the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force said our Blessed Saviour For now that the new Covenant was to be made with Man Repentance which is so great a part of it being in very many actions a punitive duty afflictive and vindicative from the days of the Baptist who first by office and solemnity of design published this Doctrine violence was done to the inclinations and dispositions of Man and by such violences we were to be possessed of the Kingdom And his Example was the best 〈◊〉 upon his Text he did violence to himself he lived a life in which the rudenesses of Camel's hair and the lowest nutriment of Flies and Honey of the Desart his life of singularity his retirement from the sweetnesses of Society his resisting the greatest of Tentations and despising to assume false honours were instances of that violence and explications of the Doctrine of Self-denial and Mortification which are the Pedestal of the Cross and the Supporters of Christianity as it distinguishes from all Laws Religions and Institutions of the World 2. Mortification is the one half of Christianity it is a dying to the World it is a denying of the Will and all its natural desires An abstinence from pleasure and sensual complacencies that the 〈◊〉 being subdued to the spirit both may joyn in the
imitation of the whole action and the rite of Institution And the purpose of it is that we might secure the excellency and holiness of such predispositions and concomitant Graces which are necessary to the worthy and effectual susception of the external Rites of Christianity 4. After the Holy Jesus was baptized and had prayed the Heavens opened the holy Ghost descended and a voice from Heaven proclaimed him to be the Son of God and one in whom the Father was well pleased and the same 〈◊〉 that was cast upon the head of our High Priest went unto his 〈◊〉 and thence sell to the borders of his garment for as Christ our Head felt these effects in manifestation so the Church believes God does to her and to her meanest children in the susception of the holy Rite of Baptism in right apt and holy dispositions For the Heavens open too upon us and the Holy Ghost descends to 〈◊〉 the waters and to hallow the Catechumen and to pardon the passed and repented sins and to consign him to the inheritance of 〈◊〉 and to put on his military girdle and give him the Sacrament and oath of fidelity for all this is understood to be meant by those frequent expressions of Scripture calling Baptism the Laver of Regeneration Illumination a washing away the filth of the flesh and the Answer of a good conscience a being buried with Christ and many others of the like purpose and signification But we may also learn hence sacredly to esteem the Rites of Religion which he first sanctified by his own personal susception and then made necessary by his own institution and command and God hath made to be conveyances of blessing and ministeries of the Holy Spirit 5. The Holy Ghost descended upon Jesus in the manner or visible representment of a Dove either in similitude of figure which he was pleased to assume as the Church more generally hath believed or at least he did descend like a Dove and in his robe of fire hovered over the Baptist's head and then sate upon him as the Dove uses to sit upon the house of her dwelling whose proprieties of nature are pretty and modest Hieroglyphicks of the duty of spiritual persons which are thus observed in both Philosophies The Dove sings not but mourns it hath no gall strikes not with its bill hath no crooked talons and forgets its young ones soonest of any the inhabitants of the air And the effects of the Holy Spirit are symbolical in all the sons of Sanctification For the voice of the Church is sad in those accents which express her own condition but as the Dove is not so sad in her breast as in her note so neither is the interiour condition of the Church wretched and miserable but indeed her Song is most of it Elegy within her own walls and her condition looks sad and her joys are not pleasures in the publick estimate but they that afflict her think her miserable because they know not the sweetnesses of a holy peace and serenity which supports her spirit and plains the heart under a rugged brow making the Soul festival under the noise of a Threne and sadder groanings But the Sons of consolation are also taught their Duty by this Apparition for upon whomsoever the Spirit descends he teaches him to be meek and charitable neither offending by the violence of hands or looser language For the Dove is inoffensive in beak and foot and feels no disturbance and violence of passions when its dearest interests are destroyed that we also may be of an even spirit in the saddest accidents which usually discompose our peace and however such symbolical intimations receive their efficacy from the fancy of the contriver yet here whether this Apparition did intend any such moral representment or no it is certain that where-ever the holy Spirit does dwell there also Peace and Sanctity Meekness and Charity a mortisied will and an active dereliction of our desires do inhabit But besides this hieroglyphical representment this Dove like that which Noah sent out from the Ark did aptly signifie the World to be renewed and all to be turned to a new creation and God hath made a new Covenant with us that unless we provoke him he will never destroy us any more 6. No sooner had the voice of God pronounced Jesus to be the well-beloved Son of God but the Devil thought it of great concernment to attempt him with all his malice and his art and that is the condition of all those whom God's grace hath separated from the common expectations and societies of the world and therefore the Son of Sirach gave good advice My son if thou come to serve the Lord prepare thy Soul for temptation for not only the Spirits of darkness are exasperated at the declension of their own Kingdom but also the nature and constitution of vertues and eminent graces which holy persons exercise in their lives is such as to be easily assailable by their contraries apt to be lessened by time to be interrupted by weariness to grow flat and insipid by tediousness of labour to be omitted and grow infrequent by the impertinent diversions of society and secular occasions so that to rescind the 〈◊〉 of Vice made firm by nature and evil habits to acquire every new degree 〈◊〉 Vertue to continue the holy fires of zeal in their just proportion to 〈◊〉 the Devil and to reject the invitations of the World and the 〈◊〉 embraces of the Flesh which are the proper employment of the sons of God is a perpetual difficulty and every possibility of 〈◊〉 the strictness of a Duty is a Temptation and an insecurity to them who have begun to serve God in hard battels 7. The Holy Spirit did drive Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil And 〈◊〉 we are bound to pray instantly that we fall into no Temptation yet if by Divine permission or by an inspiration of the Holy Spirit we be engaged in an action or course of life that is full of Temptation and empty of comfort let us apprehend it as an issue of Divine Providence as an occasion of the rewards of Diligence and Patience as an instrument of Vertue as a designation of that way in which we must glorifie God but no argument of disfavour since our dearest Lord the most Holy Jesus who could have driven the Devil away by the Breath of his mouth yet was by the Spirit of his Father permitted to a trial and molestation by the spirits of Darkness And this is S. James's counsel My brethren count it all joy when ye enter into divers temptations knowing that the trial of your Faith worketh Patience So far is a Blessing when the Spirit is the instrument of our motion and brings us to the trial of our Faith but if the Spirit leaves us and delivers us over to the Devil not to be tempted but to be abused and ruined it is a sad
condition and the greatest instance of their infelicity whom the Church upon sufficient reason and with competent authority delivers over to Satan by the infliction of the greater Excommunication 8. As soon as it was permitted to the Devil to tempt our Lord he like fire had no power to suspend his act but was as entirely determined by the fulness of his malice as a natural agent by the appetites of nature that we may know to whom we owe the happinesses of all those hours and days of peace in which we sit under the trees of Paradise and see no serpent encircling the branches and presenting us with fair fruit to ruine us It is the mercy of God we have the quietness of a minute for if the Devil's chain were taken off he would make our very beds a torment our tables to be a snare our sleeps phantastick lustful and illusive and every sense should have an object of delight and danger an Hyaena to kiss and to perish in its embraces But the Holy Jesus having been assaulted by the Devil and felt his malice by the experiments of Humanity is become so merciful a high Priest and so sensible of our sufferings and danger by the apprehensions of compassion that he hath put a hook into the nostrils of Leviathan and although the reliques of seven Nations be in our borders and fringes of our Countrey yet we live as safe as did the Israelites upon whom sometimes an inroad and invasion was made and sometimes they had rest forty years and when the storm came some remedy was found out by his grace by whose permission the tempest was stirred up and we find many persons who in seven years meet not with a violent temptation to a crime but their battels are against impediments and retardations of improvement their own rights are not directly questioned but the Devil and Sin are wholly upon the defensive Our duty here is an act of affection to God making returns of thanks for the protection and of duty to secure and continue the favour 9. But the design of the Holy Ghost being to expose Jesus to the Temptation he arms himself with Fasting and Prayer and Baptism and the Holy Spirit against the day of battel he continues in the Wilderness forty days and sorty nights without meat or drink attending to the immediate addresses and colloquies with God not suffering the interruption of meals but representing his own and the necessities of all mankind with such affections and instances of spirit love and wisdom as might express the excellency of his person and promote the work of our Redemption his conversation being in this interval but a resemblance of Angelical perfection and his Fasts not an instrument of Mortification for he needed none he had contracted no stain from his own nor his Parents acts neither do we find that he was at all hungry or asslicted with his 〈◊〉 till after the expiration of forty days He was afterwards an hungry said the Evangelist and his abstinence from meat might be a defecation of his faculties and an opportunity of Prayer but we are not sure it intended any thing else but it may concern the prudence of Religion to snatch at this occasion of duty so far as the instance is imitable and in all violences of Temptation to fast and pray Prayer being a rare antidote against the poison and Fasting a convenient disposition to intense actual and undisturbed Prayer And we may remember also that we have been baptized and consign'd with the Spirit of God and have received the adoption of Sons and the graces of Sanctification in our Baptisms and had then the seed of God put into us and then we put on Christ and entring into battel put on the whole armour of Righteousness and therefore we may by observing our strength gather also our duty and greatest obligation to fight manfully that we may triumph gloriously 10. The Devil 's first Temptation of Christ was upon the instances and first necessities of Nature Christ was hungry and the Devil invited him to break his fast upon the expence of a Miracle by turning the stones into bread But the answer Jesus made was such as taught us since the ordinary Providence of God is sufficient for our provision or support extraordinary ways of satisfying necessities are not to be undertaken but God must be relied upon his time attended his manner entertained and his measure thankfully received Jesus refused to be relieved and denied to manifest the Divinity of his Person rather than he would do an act which had in it the intimation of a diffident spirit or might be expounded a disreputation to God's Providence And therefore it is an improvident care and impious security to take evil courses and use vile instruments to furnish our Table and provide for our necessities God will certainly give us bread and till he does we can live by the breath of his mouth by the Word of God by the light of his countenance by the refreshment of his Promises for if God gives not provisions into our granaries he can feed us out of his own that is 〈◊〉 of the repositories of Charity If the flesh-pots be removed he can also alter the appetite and when our stock is 〈◊〉 he can also lessen the necessity or if that continues he can drown the sense of it in a deluge of patience and resignation Every word of God's mouth can create a Grace and every Grace can supply two necessities both of the body and the spirit by the comforts of this to support that that they may bear each others burthen and alleviate the pressure 11. But the Devil is always prompting us to change our Stones into Bread our sadnesses into sensual comfort our drinesses into inundations of fancy and exteriour sweetnesses for he knows that the ascetick Tables of Mortification and the stones of the Desart are more healthful than the fulnesses of voluptuousness and the corn of the valleys He cannot endure we should live a life of Austerity or Self-denial if he can get us but to satisfie our Senses and a little more freely to please our natural desires he then hath a fair Field for the Battel but so long as we force him to fight in hedges and morasses encircling and crowding up his strengths into disadvantages by our stone-walls our hardnesses of Discipline and rudenesses of Mortification we can with more facilities repell his flatteries and receive fewer incommodities of spirit But thus the Devil will abuse us by the impotency of our natural desires and therefore let us go to God for satisfaction of our wishes God can and does when it is good for us change our stones into bread for he is a Father so merciful that if we ask him a Fish he will not give us a Scorpion if we ask him bread he will not offer us a stone but will satisfie all our desires by ministrations of the Spirit making stones to become our
the advantage of his sufferings and compassion And we may observe that Poverty Predestination and Ambition are the three quivers from which the Devil drew his arrows which as the most likely to prevail he shot against Christ but now he shot in vain and gave probation that he might be overcome our Captain hath conquered for himself and us By these instances we see our danger and how we are provided of a remedy The PRAYER O Holy Jesus who didst fulfil all Righteousness and didst live a life of evenness and obedience and community submitting thy self to all Rites and Sanctions of Divine ordinance give me grace to live in the fellowship of thy holy Church a life of Piety and without singularity receiving the sweet influence of thy Sacraments and Rites and living in the purities and innocencies of my first Sanctification I adore thy goodness infinite that thou hast been pleased to wash my Soul in the Laver of Regeneration that thou hast consigned me to the participation of thy favours by the holy 〈◊〉 Let me not return to the infirmities of the Old Man whom thou hast crucified on thy Cross and who was buried with thee in Baptism nor 〈◊〉 the crimes of my sinsul years which were so many recessions from 〈◊〉 purities but let me ever receive the emissions of thy Divine Spirit and be a Son of God a partner of thine immortal inheritance and when thou seest it needful I may receive testimony from Heaven that I am thy servant and thy child And grant that I may so walk that I neither disrepute the honour of the Christian Institution nor stain the whitenesses of that Innocence which thou didst invest my Soul withall when I put on the Baptismal Robe nor break my holy Vow nor lose my right of inheritance which thou hast given me by promise and grace but that thou mayest love me with the love of a Father and a Brother and a Husband and a Lord and I serve thee in the communion of Saints in the susception of Sacraments in the actions of a holy life and in a never-failing love or uninterrupted Devotion to the glory of thy Name and the promotion of all those Ends of Religion which thou hast designed in the excellent Oeconomy of Christianity Grant this Holy Jesus for thy mercie 's sake and for the honour of thy Name which is and shall be adored for ever and ever Amen DISCOURSE V. Of Temptation 1. GOD who is the Fountain of good did chuse rather to bring good out of evil than not to suffer any evil to be not only because variety of accidents and natures do better entertain our affections and move our spirits who are transported and suffer great impressions by a circumstance by the very opposition and accidental lustre and eminency of contraries but also that the glory of the Divine Providence in turning the nature of things into the designs of God might be illustrious and that we may in a mixt condition have more observation and after our danger and our labour may obtain a greater reward for Temptation is the opportunity of Vertue and a Crown God having disposed us in such a condition that our Vertues must be difficult our inclinations 〈◊〉 and corrigible our avocations many our hostilities bitter our dangers proportionable that our labour might be great our inclinations suppressed and corrected our intentions be made actual our enemies be resisted and our dangers pass into security and honour after a contestation and a victory and a perseverance It is every man's case Trouble is as certainly the lot of our nature and inheritance and we are so sure to be tempted that in the deepest peace and silence of spirit oftentimes is our greatest danger not to be tempted is sometimes our most subtle Temptation It is certain then we cannot be secure when our Security is our enemy but therefore we must do as God himself does make the best of it and not be sad at that which is the publick portion and the case of all men but order it according to the intention place it in the eye of vertue that all its actions and motions may tend thither there to be changed into felicities But certain it is unless we first be cut and hewen in the mountains we shall not be fixed in the Temple of God but by incision and contusions our roughnesses may become plain or our sparks kindled and we may be either for the Temple or the Altar spiritual building or holy fire something that God shall delight in and then the Temptation was not amiss 2. And therefore we must not wonder that oftentimes it so happens that nothing will remove a Temptation no diligence no advices no labour no prayers not because these are ineffectual but because it is most fit the Temptation should abide for ends of God's designing and although S. Paul was a person whose prayers were likely to be prevalent and his industry of much prudence and efficacy toward the drawing out of his thorn yet God would not do it but continued his war only promising to send him succour My grace is sufficient for thee meaning he should have an enemy to try his spirit and improve it and he should also have God's grace to comfort and support it but as without God's grace the Enemy would spoil him so without an Enemy God's grace would never swell up into glory and crown him For the caresses of a pleasant Fortune are apt to swell into extravagancies of spirit and burst into the dissolution of manners and unmixt Joy is dangerous but if in our fairest Flowers we spie a Locust or feel the uneasiness of a Sackcloth under our fine Linen or our Purple be tied with an uneven and a rude Cord any little trouble but to correct our wildnesses though it be but a Death's-head served up at our Feasts it will make our Tables fuller of health and freer from snare it will allay our spirits making them to retire from the weakness of dispersion to the union and strength of a sober recollection 3. Since therefore it is no part of our imployment or our care to be free from all the attempts of an enemy but to be safe in despite of his hostility it now will concern us to inform our selves of the state of the War in general and then to make provisions and to put on Armour accordingly 4. First S. 〈◊〉 often observes and makes much of the discourse that the Devil when he intends a Battery first views the Strengths and Situation of the place His sence drawn out of the cloud of an Allegory is this The Devil first considers the Constitution and temper of the person he is to tempt and where he observes his natural inclination apt for a Vice he presents him with objects and opportunity and arguments 〈◊〉 to his caitive disposition from which he is likely to receive the smaller opposition since there is a party within that desires his
It looked of a blew mould the bone of the nose laid bare the flesh of the neather lip quite fallen off his mouth full of worms and in his eye-pits two hungry Toads feasting upon the remanent portion of flesh and moisture and so he dwelt in his house of darkness And if every person tempted by an opportunity of Lust or intemperance would chuse such a room for his privacy that company for his witness that object to allay his appetite he would soon find his spirit more sober and his desires obedient I end this with the counsel of S. Bernard Let every man in the first address to his actions consider whether if he were now to die he might safely and prudently do such an act and whether he would not be infinitely troubled that death should surprise him in the present dispositions and then let him proceed accordingly For since our treasure is in earthen vessels which may be broken in pieces by the collision of ten thousand accidents it were not safe to treasure up wrath in them for if we do we shall certainly drink it in the day of recompence 37. Thirdly Before and in and 〈◊〉 all this the Blessed Jesus propounds Prayer as a remedy against Temptations Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation For besides that Prayer is the great instrument of obtaining victory by the grace of God as a fruit of our desires and of God's natural and essential goodness the very praying against a Temptation if it be hearty servent and devout is a denying of it and part of the victory for it is a 〈◊〉 the entertainment of it it is a positive rejection of the crime and every consent to it is a ceasing to pray and to desire remedy And we shall observe that whensoever we begin to listen to the whispers of a tempting spirit our Prayers against it lessen as the consent increases there being nothing a more direct enemy to the Temptation than Prayer which as it is of it self a professed hostility against the crime so it is a calling in auxiliaries from above to make the victory more certain If Temptation sets upon thee do thou set upon God for he is as soon overcome as thou art as soon moved to good as thou art to evil he is as quickly invited to pity thee as thou to ask him provided thou dost not finally rest in the petition but pass into action and endeavour by all means humane and moral to quench the 〈◊〉 newly kindled in thy bowels before it come to devour the marrow of the bones For a strong Prayer and a lazy incurious unobservant walking are contradictions in the discourses of Religion 〈◊〉 tells us a story of a young man solicited by the spirit of Uncleanness who came to an old Religious person and begged his prayers It was in that Age when God used to answer Prayers of very holy persons by more clear and familiar significations of his pleasure than he knows now to be necessary But after many earnest prayers sent up to the throne of Grace and the young man not at all bettered upon consideration and enquiry of particulars he found the cause to be because the young man relied so upon the Prayers of the old Eremite that he did nothing at all to discountenance his Lust or contradict the Temptation But then he took another course enjoyned him Austerities and exercises of Devotion gave him rules of prudence and caution tied him to work and to stand upon his guard and then the Prayers returned in triumph and the young man trampled upon his Lust. And so shall I and you by God's grace if we pray earnestly and frequently if we watch carefully that we be not surprised if we be not idle in secret nor talkative in publick if we read Scriptures and consult with a spiritual Guide and make Religion to be our work that serving of God be the business of our life and our designs be to purchase Eternity then we shall walk safely or recover speedily and by doing advantages to 〈◊〉 secure a greatness of Religion and spirituality to our spirits and understanding But remember that when Israel fought against Amalek Moses's prayer and Moses's hand secured the victory his Prayer grew ineffectual when his Hands were slack to remonstrate to us that we must cooperate with the grace of God praying devoutly and watching carefully and observing prudently and labouring with diligence and assiduity The PRAYER ETernal God and most merciful Father I adore thy Wisdom Providence and admirable Dispensation of affairs in the spiritual Kingdom of our Lord Jesus that thou who art infinitely good dost permit so many sadnesses and dangers to discompose that order of things and spirits which thou didst create innocent and harmless and dost design to great and spiritual perfections that the emanation of good from evil by thy over-ruling power and excellencies may force glory to thee from our shame and honour to thy Wisdom by these contradictory accidents and events Lord have pity upon me in these sad disorders and with mercy know my infirmities Let me by suffering what thou pleasest cooperate to the glorification of thy Grace and magnifying thy Mercy but never let me consent to sin but with the power of thy Majesty and mightiness of thy prevailing Mercy rescue me from those 〈◊〉 of dangers and enemies which daily seck to 〈◊〉 that Innocence with which thou didst cloath my Soul in the New birth Behold O God how all the Spirits of Darkness endeavour the extinction of our hopes and the dispersion of all those Graces and the prevention of all those 〈◊〉 which the Holy Jesus hath purchased for every loving and obedient Soul Our very 〈◊〉 and drink are full of poison our Senses are snares our 〈◊〉 is various Temptatio our sins are inlets to more and our good actions made occasions of sins Lord deliver me from the Malice of the Devil from the Fallacies of the World from my own Folly that I be not devoured by the first nor cheated by the second nor betrayed by my self but let thy Grace which is sufficient for me be always present with me let thy Spirit 〈◊〉 me in the spiritual 〈◊〉 arming my Understanding and securing my Will and 〈◊〉 my Spirit with resolutions of Piety and incentives of Religion and deleteries of Sin that the dangers I am encompassed withall may become unto me an occasion of victory and trimph through the aids of the Holy Ghost and by the Cross of the Lord Jesus who hath for himself and all his servants triumphed over Sin and Hell and the Grave even all the powers of Darkness from which by the mercies of Jesus and the merits of his Passion now and ever deliver me and all thy 〈◊〉 people Amen DISCOURSE VI. Of Baptism Part I. 1. WHen the Holy Jesus was to begin his Prophetical Office and to lay the foundation of his Church on the Corner-stone he first temper'd the Cement
parts concurring to his integral constitution Body and Soul and Spirit and all these have their proper activities and times but every one in his own order first that which is natural then that which is spiritual And what Aristotle said A man first lives the life of a Plant then of a Beast and lastly of a Man is true in this sence and the more spiritual the principle is the longer it is before it operates because more things concur to spiritual actions than to natural and these are necessary and therefore first the other are perfect and therefore last And who is he that so well understands the Philosophy of this third principle of a Christian's life the Spirit as to know how or when it is infused and how it operates in all its periods and what it is in its being and proper nature and whether it be like the Soul or like the faculty or like a habit or how or to what purposes God in all varieties does dispence it These are secrets which none but bold people use to decree and build propositions upon their own dreams That which is certain is * That the Spirit is the principle of a new life or a new birth * That Baptism is the Laver of this new birth * That it is the seed of God and may lie long in the furrows before it springs up * That from the faculty to the act the passage is not always sudden and quick * That the Spirit is the earnest of our Inheritance that is of Resurrection to eternal life which inheritance because Children we hope shall have they cannot be denied to have its Seal and earnest that is if they shall have all they are not to be denied a part * That Children have some effects of the Spirit and therefore do receive it and are baptized with the Spirit and therefore may with Water which thing is therefore true and evident because some Children are sanctified as Jeremy and the Baptist and therefore all may And because all Sanctification of persons is an effect of the Holy Ghost there is no peradventure but they that can be 〈◊〉 by God can in that capacity receive the Holy Ghost and all the ground of dissenting here is only upon a mistake because Infants do no act of Holiness they suppose them incapable of the grace of 〈◊〉 Now 〈◊〉 of Children is their Adoption to the Inheritance of sons their Presentation to Christ their Consignation to Christ's service and to Resurrection their being put into a possibility of being saved their restitution to God's favour which naturally that is as our Nature is depraved and punished they could not have And in short the case is this * Original righteousness was in Adam 〈◊〉 the manner of Nature but it was an act or effect of Grace and by it men were not made but born Righteous the inferiour Faculties obeyed the superiour the Mind was whole and right and conformable to the Divine Image the Reason and the Will always concurring the Will followed Reason and Reason followed the Laws of God and so long as a man had not lost this he was pleasing to God and should have passed to a more perfect state Now because this if Adam had stood should have been born with every child there was in Infants a principle which was the seed of holy life here and a blessed hereafter and yet the children should have gone in the road of Nature then as well as now and the Spirit should have operated at Nature's leisure God being the giver of both would have made them instrumental to and perfective of each other but not destructive Now what was lost by Adam is restored by Christ the same Righteousness only it is not born but superinduced not integral but interrupted but such as it is there is no difference but that the same or the like principle may be derived to us from Christ as there should have been from Adam that is a principle of Obedience a regularity of 〈◊〉 a beauty in the Soul and a state of acceptation with God And we see also in men of understanding and reason the Spirit of God 〈◊〉 in them which Tatianus describing uses these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soul is possessed with sparks or materials of the power of the Spirit and yet it is sometimes ineffective and unactive sometimes more sometimes less and does no more do its work at all times than the Soul does at all times understand Add to this that if there be in 〈◊〉 naturally an evil principle a proclivity to sin an ignorance and pravity of mind a disorder of affections as experience teacheth us there is and the perpetual Doctrine of the Church and the universal mischiefs issuing from mankind and the sin of every man does witness too much why cannot Infants have a good principle in them though it works not till its own season as well as an evil principle If there were not by nature some evil principle it is not possible that all the world should chuse sin In free Agents it was never heard that all individuals loved and chose the same thing to which they were not naturally inclined Neither do all men chuse to marry neither do all chuse to abstain and in this instance there is a natural inclination to one part But of all the men and women in the world there is no one that hath never sinned If we say that we have no sin we deceive our selves and the truth is not in us said an Apostle If therefore Nature hath in Infants an evil principle which operates when the child can chuse but is all the while within the Soul either Infants have by Grace a principle put into them or else Sin abounds where Grace does not superabound expresly against the doctrine of the Apostle The event of this discourse is That if Infants be capable of the Spirit of Grace there is no reason but they may and ought to be baptized as well as men and women unless God had expresly forbidden them which cannot be pretended and that Infants are capable of the Spirit of Grace I think is made very credible Christus infantibus infans 〈◊〉 sanctificans 〈◊〉 said Irenaeus Christ became an Infant among the Infants and does sanctifie Infants and S. Cyprian affirms Esse apud omnes 〈◊〉 Infantes 〈◊〉 majores 〈◊〉 unam divini muneris aequitatem There is the same dispensation of the Divine grace to all alike to Infants as well as to men And in this Royal Priesthood as it is in the secular Kings may be anointed in their Cradles Dat Deus sui Spiritûs 〈◊〉 gratiam quam etiam latenter infundit in parvulis God gives the most secret Grace of his Spirit which he also secretly infuses into Infants And if a secret infusion be rejected because it cannot be proved at the place and at the instant many men that hope for Heaven will be very much to 〈◊〉 for a
legitimate the practice since Christ hath not forbidden it It is sufficient confutation to disagreeing people to use the words of S. Paul We have no such custom nor the Churches of God to suffer Children to be strangers from the Covenant of Promise till they shall enter into it as 〈◊〉 or Turks may enter that is by choice and disputation But although this 〈◊〉 to modest and obedient that is to Christian Spirits be sufficient yet this is more than the question did need It can stand upon its proper foundation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 recentes ab uteris matrum baptizandos negat anathema 〈◊〉 He that refuseth to baptize his Infants shall be in danger of the Council The PRAYER OHoly and Eternal Jesus who in thine own person wert pleased to sanctifie the waters of Baptism and by thy Institution and Commandment didst make them effectual to excellent purposes of grace and remedy be pleased to verifie the holy effects of Baptism to me and all thy servants whose names are dedicated to thee in an early and timely presentation and enable us with thy grace to verifie all our promises by which we are bound then when thou didst first make us thy own proportion and 〈◊〉 in the consummation of a holy Covenant O be pleased to pardon all those undecencies and unhandsome interruptions of that state of favour in which thou didst plant us by thy grace and admit us by the gates of Baptism and let that Spirit which moved upon 〈◊〉 holy Waters never be absent from us but call upon us and invite us by a perpetual argument and daily solicitations and inducements to holiness that we may never return to the 〈◊〉 of sin but by the answer of a good Conscience may please thee and glorifie thy name and do honour to thy Religion and Institution in this world and may receive the blessings and the rewards of it in the world to come being presented to thee pure and spotless in the day of thy power when thou shalt lead thy Church to a Kingdom and endless glories Amen Appendix ad Sect. 9. numb 3. of JESUS being Baptized c. Christ ' s Prayer at his Baptism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O Father according to the good pleasure of thy will I am made a Man and from the time in which I was born of a Virgin unto this day I have finished those things which are agreeing to the nature of Man and with due observance have perform'd all thy Commandments the mysteries and types of the Law and now truly I am baptized and so have I ordain'd Baptism that from thence as from the place of spiritual birth the Regeneration of men may be accomplish'd and as John was the last of the Legal Priests so am I the first of the Evangelical Thou therefore O Father by the mediation of my Prayer open the Heavens and from thence send thy Holy Spirit upon this womb of Baptism that as he did untie the womb of the Virgin and thence form me so also he would loose this Baptismal womb and so sanctifie it unto men that from thence new men may be begotten who may become thy Sons and my Brethren and Heirs of thy Kingdom And what the Priests under the Law until John could not do grant unto the Priests of the New Testament whose chief I am in the oblation of this Prayer that whensoever they shall celebrate Baptism or pour forth Prayers unto thee as the Holy Spirit is seen with me in open vision so also it may be made manifest that the same Spirit will adjoyn himself in their society a more secret way and will by them persorm the ministeries of the New Testament for which I am made a Man and as the High Priest I do offer these Prayers in thy sight This Prayer was transcrib'd out of the Syriack Catena upon the third Chapter of S. Luke's Gospel and is by the Author of that Catena reported to have been made by our Blessed Saviour immediately before the opening of the Heavens at his Baptism and that the Holy Spirit did 〈◊〉 upon him while he was thus praying and for it he cites the Authority of S. Philoxenus I cannot but foresee that there is one clause in it which will be us'd as an objection against the authority of this Prayer viz. as John was the last of Legal Priests For he was no Priest at all nor ever officiated in the Temple or at the Mosaick Rites But this is nothing because that the Baptist was of the family of the Priests his Father Zachary is a demonstration that he did not 〈◊〉 his being imployed in another Ministery is a sufficient answer that he was the last of the Priests is to be understood in this sence that he was the period of the Law the common term between the Law and the Gospel by him the Gospel was first preached solemnly and therefore in him the Law first ended And as he was the last of the Prophets so he was the last of the Priests not but that after him many had the gift of Prophecy and some did officiate in the Mosaical Priesthood but that his Office put the first period to the solemnity of Moses's Law that is at him the Dispensation Evangelical did first enter That the Ministers of the Gospel are here called Priests ought not to be a prejudice against this Prayer in the perswasions of any men because it was usual with our Blessed Saviour to retain the words of the Jews his Country-men before whom he spake that they might by words to which they were used be instructed in the notice of persons and things offices and ministeries Evangelical which afterwards were to be represented under other that is under their proper names And now all that I shall say of it is this 1. That it is not unlikely but our Blessed Saviour prayed when he was baptized and when the Holy Ghost descended upon him not only because it was an imployment symbolical to the Grace he was to receive but also to become to us a precedent by what means we are to receive the Holy Spirit of God 2. That it is very likely our Blessed Lord would consecrate the Waters of Baptism to those mysterious ends whither he design'd them as well as the Bread and Chalice of the Holy Supper 3. That it is most likely the Easterlings did preserve a record of many words and actions of the Holy Jesus which are not transmitted to us 4. It is certain that our Blessed Lord did do and say many more things than are in the Holy Scriptures and that this was one of them we have the credit of this ancient Author and the Authority of S. Philoxenus However it is much better to make such good use of it as the matter and piety of the Prayer will minister than to quarrel at it by the imperfection of uncertain conjectures The End of the First Part. THE HISTORY OF THE Life and Death OF THE HOLY JESUS BEGINNING At
holy and the scene of representing Prayers which in type intimates the same thing which is involved in the expression of the next words My House shall be called the House of Prayer to all Nations now and for ever to the Jews and to the Gentiles in all circumstances and variety of Time and Nation God's Houses are holy in order to holy uses the time as unlimited as the Nations were indefinite and universal Which is the more observable because it was of the outward Courts not whither Moses's Rites alone were admitted but the natural Devotion of Jews and Gentile-Proselytes that Christ affirmed it to be holy to be the House of God and the place of Prayer So that the Religion of publick places of Prayer is not a Rite of Levi but a natural and prudent circumstance and advantage of Religion in which all wise men agree who therefore must have some common principle with influence upon all the World which must be the univocal cause of the consent of all men which common principle must either be a dictate of natural or prime Reason or else some Tradition from the first Parents of mankind which because it had order in it beauty Religion and confirmation from Heaven and no reason to contest against it it hath surprised the understanding and practices of all Nations And indeed we find that even in Paradise God had that which is analogical to a Church a distinct place where he manifested himself present in proper manner For Adam and Eve when they had sinned hid themselves from the Presence of the Lord and this was the word in all descent of the Church for the being of God in holy places the Presence of the Lord was there And probably when Adam from this intimation or a greater direction had taught Cain and Abel to offer sacrifice to God in a certain place where they were observed of each in their several Offerings it became one of the rules of Religion which was derived to their posterity by tradition the only way they had to communicate the dictates of Divine commandment 8. There is no more necessary to be added in behalf of Holy Places and to assert them into the family and relatives of Religion our estimate and deportment towards them is matter of practice and therefore of proper consideration To which purpose I consider that Holy Places being the residence of God's Name upon earth there where he hath put it that by fiction of Law it may be the sanctuary and the last resort in all calamities and need God hath sent his Agents to possess them in person for him Churches and Oratories are regions and courts of Angels and they are there not only to minister to the Saints but also they possess them in the right of God There they are so the greatest and Prince of Spirits tells us the Holy Ghost I saw the Lord sitting upon his throne and his train filled the Temple Above it stood the Seraphim that was God's train and therefore holy David knew that his addresses to God were in the presence of Angels I will praise thee with my whole heart before the gods will i sing praise unto thee before the Angels so it is in the Septuagint And that we might know where or how the Kingly worshipper would pay this adoration he adds I will worship towards thy holy 〈◊〉 And this was so known by him that it became expressive of God's manner of presence in Heaven The Chariots of God are twenty thousand even thousands of Angels and the Lord is among them as in Sinai in the holy place God in the midst of Angels and the Angels in the midst of the 〈◊〉 place and God in Heaven in the midst of that holy circle as 〈◊〉 as he is amongst Angels in the recesses of his Sanctuary Were the rudiments of the Law worthy of an attendance of Angels and are the memorials of the Gospel destitute of so brave a retinue Did the beatisied Spirits wait upon the Types and do 〈◊〉 decline the office at the ministration of the Substance Is the nature of Man made worse since the Incarnation of the Son of God and have the Angels purchased an exemption from their ministery since Christ became our brother We have little reason to think so And therefore S. Paul still makes use of the argument to press women to modesty and humility in Churches because of the Angels And upon the same stock S. Chrysostome chides the people of his Diocese for walking and laughing and prating in Churches The Church is not a shop of manufactures or merchandise but the place of Angels and of Archangels the Court of God and the image or representment of Heaven it self 9. For if we consider that Christianity is something more than ordinary that there are Mysteries in our Religion and in none else that God's Angels are ministring spirits for 〈◊〉 good and especially about the conveyances of our Prayers either we must think very low of Christianity or that greater things are in it than the presence of Angels in our Churches and yet if there were no more we should do well to behave our selves there with the thoughts and apprehensions of Heaven about us always remembring that our business there is an errand of Religion and God is the object of our Worshippings and therefore although by our weakness we are fixt in the lowness of men yet because God's infinity is our object it were very happy if our actions did bear some few degrees of a proportionable and commensurate address 10. Now that the Angels are there in the right of God and are a manner and an exhibition of the Divine Presence is therefore certain because when-ever it is said in the Old Testament that God appeared it was by an Angel and the Law it self in the midst of all the glorious terrors of its manisestation was ordained by Angels and a word spoken by Angels and yet God is said to have descended upon the Mount and in the greatest glory that ever shall be revealed till the consummation of all things the instrument of the Divine splendour is the apparition of Angels for when the Holy Jesus shall come in the glory of his Father it is added by way of explication that is with an 〈◊〉 of Angels 11. The result is those words of God to his people Reverence my 〈◊〉 For what God loves in an especial manner it is most fit we should esteem accordingly God loves the gates of Sion more than all the 〈◊〉 of Jacob. The least turf of hallowed glebe is with God himself of more value than all the Champain of common possession it is better in all sences The Temple is better than gold said our Blessed Saviour and therefore it were well we should do that which is expressed in the command of giving reverence to it for we are too apt to pay undue devotions to gold Which precept the holiest of
narration of his servants he found to be true and that he recovered at the same time when Jesus spake these'salutary and healing words Upon which accident he and all his house became Disciples 7. And now Jesus left Nazareth and came to Capernaum a maritime Town and of great resort chusing that for his scene of Preaching and his place of dwelling For now the time was fulfilled the office of the Baptist was expired and the Kingdom of God was at hand He therefore preached the summ of the Gospel Faith and Repentance Repent ye and believe the Gospel And what that Gospel was the summ and series of all his Sermons afterwards did declare 8. The work was now grown high and pregnant and Jesus saw it convenient to chuse Disciples to his ministery and service in the work of Preaching and to be witnesses of all that he should say do or teach for ends which were afterwards made publick and excellent Jesus therefore as he walked by the Sea of Galilee called Simon and Andrew who knew him before by the preaching of John and now left all their ship and their net and followed him And when he was gone a little farther he calls the two sons of Zebedee James and John and they went after him And with this family he goes up and down the whole Galilee preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom healing all manner of diseases curing Demoniacks cleansing Lepers and giving strength to Paralyticks and lame people 9. But when the people pressed on him to hear the word of God he stood by the Lake of Genesareth and presently entring into Simon 's ship commanded him to lanch into the deep and from thence he taught the people and there wrought a Miracle for being Lord of the Creatures he commanded the fishes of the sea and they obeyed For when Simon who had fished all night in vain let down his net at the command of Jesus he inclosed so great a multitude of fishes that the Net brake and the fishermen were amazed and fearful at so prodigious a draught But beyond the Miracle it was intended that a representation should be made of the plenitude of the Catholick Church and multitudes of Believers who should be taken by Simon and the rest of the Disciples whom by that Miracle he consign'd to become fishers of men who by their artifices of prudence and holy Doctrine might gain Souls to God that when the Net should be drawn to shore and separation made by the Angels they and their Disciples might be differenced from the reprobate portion 10. But the light of the Sun uses not to be confined to a Province or a Kingdom so great a Prophet and so divine a Physician and so great Miracles created a same loud as thunder but not so full of sadness and presage Immediately the fame of Jesus went into all Syria and there came to him multitudes from Galilee Decapolis Jerusalem and Judaea And all that had any sick with divers deseases brought them to him and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them And when he cured the Lunaticks and persons possessed with evil spirits the Devils cried out and confessed him to be CHRIST the Son of God but he suffered them not chusing rather to work Faith in the perswasions of his Disciples by moral arguments and the placid demonstrations of the Spirit that there might in Faith be an excellency in proportion to the choice and that it might not be made violent by the conviction and forced testimonies of accursed and unwilling spirits 11. But when Jesus saw his assembly was grown full and his audience numerous he went up into a mountain and when his Disciples came unto him he made that admirable Sermon called the Sermon upon the Mount which is a Divine repository of such excellent Truths and mysterious Dictates of secret Theology that contains a Breviary of all those Precepts which integrate the Morality of Christian Religion pressing the Moral Precepts given by Moses and enlarging their obligation by a stricter sence and more severe exposition that their righteousness might exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees preaches Perfection and the doctrines of Meekness Poverty of spirit Christian mourning desire of holy things Mercy and Purity Peace and toleration of injuries affixing a special promise of blessing to be the guerdon and inheritance of those Graces and spiritual excellencies He explicates some parts of the Decalogue and adds appendices and precepts of his own He teaches his Disciples to Pray how to Fast how to give Alms contempt of the world not to judge others forgiving injuries an indifferency and incuriousness of temporal provisions and a seeking of the Kingdom of God and its appendent righteousness 12. When Jesus had finished his Sermon and descended from the mountain a poor leprous person came and worshipped and begged to be cleansed which Jesus soon granted engaging him not to publish it where he should go abroad but sending him to the Priest to offer an oblation according to the Rites of Moses's Law and then came directly to Capernaum and taught in their Synagogues upon the Sabbath-days where in his Sermons he expressed the dignity of a Prophet and the authority of a person sent from God not inviting the people by the soft arguments and insinuations of Scribes and Pharisees but by demonstrations and issues of Divinity There he cures a Demoniack in one of their Synagogues and by and by after going abroad he heals Peter's wives 〈◊〉 of a Fever insomuch that he grew the talk of all men and their wonder till they flocked so to him to see him to hear him to satisfie their curiosity and their needs that after he had healed those multitudes which beset the house of Simon where he cured his Mother of the Fever he retired himself into a desert place very early in the morning that he might have an opportunity to pray free from the oppressions and noises of the multitude 13. But neither so could he be hid but like a light shining by the fringes of a curtain he was soon discovered in his solitude for the multitude found him out imprisoning him in their circuits and undeniable attendances But Jesus told them plainly he must preach the Gospel to other Cities also and therefore resolved to pass to the other side of the Lake of Genesareth so to quit the throng Whither as he was going a Scribe offered himself a Disciple to his Institution till Jesus told him his condition to be worse than foxes and birds for whom an habitation is provided but none for him no not a place where to bow his head and find rest And what became of this forward Professor afterward we find not Others that were Probationers of this fellowship Jesus bound to a speedy profession not suffering one to go home to bid his Friends farewell nor another so much as to bury his dead 14. By the time Jesus got to the Ship it was late and
For Faith being the gift of God and an illumination the Spirit of God will not give this light to them that prefer their darkness before it either the Will must open the windows or the light of Faith will not shine into the chamber of the Soul How can ye believe said our Blessed Saviour that receive honour one of another Ambition and Faith believing God and seeking of our selves are incompetent and totally incompossible And therefore Serapion Bishop of Thmuis spake like an Angel saith Socrates saying that the Mind which feedeth upon spiritual knowledge must throughly be cleansed The Irascible faculty must first be cured with brotherly Love and Charity and the Concupiscible must be suppressed with Continency and Mortification Then may the Understanding apprehend the mysteriousness of Christianity For since Christianity is a holy Doctrine if there be any remanent affections to a sin there is in the Soul a party disaffected to the entertainment of the Institution and we usually believe what we have a mind to Our Understandings if a crime be lodged in the Will being like icterical eyes transmitting the species to the Soul with prejudice disaffection and colours of their own framing If a Preacher should discourse that there ought to be a Parity amongst Christians and that their goods ought to be in common all men will apprehend that not Princes and rich persons but the poor and the servants would soonest become Disciples and believe the Doctrines because they are the only persons likely to get by them and it concerns the other not to believe him the Doctrine being destructive of their interests Just such a perswasion is every persevering love to a vicious habit it having possessed the Understanding with fair opinions of it and surprised the Will with Passion and desires whatsoever Doctrine is its enemy will with infinite difficulty be entertained And we know a great experience of it in the article of the Messias dying on the Cross which though infinitely true yet because to the Jews it was a scandal and to the Greeks 〈◊〉 it could not be believed they remaining in that indisposition that is unless the Will were first set right and they willing to believe any Truth though for it they must disclaim their interest Their Understanding was blind because the Heart was hardened and could not receive the impression of the greatest moral demonstration in the world 8. The Holy Jesus asked water of the Woman unsatisfying water but promised that himself to them that ask him would give waters of life and satisfaction infinite so distinguishing the pleasures and appetites of this world from the desires and complacencies spiritual Here we labour but receive no 〈◊〉 we sow many times and reap not or reap and do not gather in or gather in and do not 〈◊〉 or possess but do not enjoy or if we enjoy we are still 〈◊〉 it is with 〈◊〉 of spirit and circumstances of vexation A great heap of riches make 〈◊〉 our 〈◊〉 warm nor our meat more nutritive nor our beverage more 〈◊〉 and it seeds the eye but never fills it but like drink to an hydropick person increases the thirst and promotes the torment But the Grace of 〈◊〉 though but like a grain of 〈◊〉 dseed fills the furrows of the heart and as the capacity increases it self grows up in equal degrees and never suffers any emptiness or dissatisfaction but carries content and fulness all the way and the degrees of augmentation are not steps and near approaches to satisfaction but increasings of the capacity the 〈◊〉 is satished all the way and receives more not because it wanted any but that it can now hold more is more receptive of 〈◊〉 and in every minute of 〈◊〉 there is so excellent a condition of joy and high satisfaction that the very calamities the afflictions and persecutions of the world are turned into 〈◊〉 by the activity of the prevailing ingredient like a drop of water falling into a tun of wine it is ascribed into a new family losing its own nature by a conversion into the more noble For now that all passionate desires are dead and there is nothing remanent that is vexatious the peace the 〈◊〉 the quiet sleeps the evenness of spirit and contempt of things below remove the Soul from all neighbourhood of displeasure and place it at the foot of the throne whither when it is ascended it is possessed of Felicities eternal These were 〈◊〉 waters which were given to us to drink when with the rod of God the Rock 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was smitten the Spirit of God moves for ever upon these waters and when the Angel of the Covenant hath stirred the pool who ever descends hither shall find health and peace joys spiritual and the satisfactions of Eternity The PRAYER O Holy Jesus Fountain of eternal life thou Spring of joy and spiritual satisfactions let the holy stream of bloud and water issuing from thy sacred side cool the thirst soften the hardness and refresh the barrenness of my desert Soul that I thirsting after thee as the wearied Hart after the cool stream may despise all the vainer complacencies of this world refuse all societies but such as are safe pious and charitable mortifie all 〈◊〉 appetites and may desire nothing but thee seek none but thee and rest in thee with intire 〈◊〉 of my own caitive inclinations that the desires of Nature may pass into desires of Grace and my thirst and my hunger may be spiritual and my hopes placed in thee and the expresses of my Charity upon thy relatives and all the parts of my life may speak thy love and obedience to thy Commandments that thou possessing my Soul and all its Faculties during my whole life I may possess thy glories in the fruition of a blessed Eternity by the light of thy Gospel here and the streams of thy Grace being guided to thee the fountain of life and glory there to be inebriated with the waters of Paradise with joy and love and contemplation adoring and admiring the beauties of the Lord for ever and ever Amen Considerations upon Christ's first Preaching and the Accidents happening about that time Jesus preaching to the people Mauh 4. 17. From that time Jesus began to preach saying Repent for the Kingodm of heaven is at hand V. 29. And he went about all Gallilee teaching preaching the Gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of sickness c. V. 25. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee and from Dâ—â—apolis and from Ierusalem etc. Christ sending forth his Apostles Mark 6. 7. And he called unto him y e twelve began to send them forth by two and two and gave them power over unclean spirits And conunanded them that they should take nothing for their journey etc. V. 12 And they went out and preached that men should repent 1. WHen John was cast into Prison then began Jesus to preach not only because the Ministery of John
the same Saint When we are judged we are chastened of the Lord but if we would judge our selves we should not be judged where he expounds judged by chastened if we were severer to our selves God would be gentle and 〈◊〉 And there are only these two cautions to be annexed and then the direction is sufficient 1. That when promise of Pardon is annexed to any of these or another Grace or any good action it is not to be understood as if alone it were effectual either to the abolition or pardon of sins but the promise is made to it as to a member of the whole body of Piety In the coadunation and conjunction of parts the title is firm but not at all in distinction and separation For it is certain if we fail in one we are guilty of all and therefore cannot be repaired by any one Grace or one action or one habit And therefore Charity hides a multitude of sins with men and God too Alms deliver from death 〈◊〉 pierceth the clouds and will not depart before its answer be gracious and Hope purifieth and makes not ashamed and Patience and Faith and Piety to parents and Prayer and the eight Beatitudes have promises of this life and of that which is to come respectively and yet nothing will obtain these promises but the harmony and uniting of these Graces in a holy and habitual confederation And when we consider the Promise as singularly relating to that one Grace it is to be understood comparatively that is such persons are happy if compared with those who have contrary dispositions For such a capacity does its portion of the work towards complete Felicity from which the contrary quality does estrange and disintitle us 2. The special and minute actions and instances of these three preparatives of Repentance are not under any command in the particulars but are to be disposed of by Christian prudence in order to those ends to which they are most aptly instrumental and designed such as are Fasting and corporal severities in Satisfaction or the punitive parts of Repentance they are either vindictive of what is past and so are proper acts or effects of Contrition and godly sorrow or else they relate to the present and future estate and are intended for correction or emendation and so are of good use as they are medicinal and in that proportion not to be omitted And so is Confession to a Spiritual person an excellent instrument of Discipline a bridle of intemperate Passions an opportunity of Restitution Ye which are spiritual 〈◊〉 such a person overtaken in a fault saith the Apostle it is the application of a remedy the consulting with a guide and the best security to a weak or lapsed or an ignorant person in all which cases he is 〈◊〉 to judge his own questions and in these he is also committed to the care and conduct of another But these special instances of Repentance are capable of suppletories and are like the corporal works of Mercy necessary only in time and place and in accidental obligations He that relieves the poor or visits the sick chusing it for the instance of his Charity though he do not redeem captives is charitable and hath done his Alms. And he that cures his sin by any instruments by external or interiour and spiritual remedies is penitent though his diet be not 〈◊〉 and afflictive or his lodging hard or his sorrow bursting out into tears or his expressions passionate and dolorous I only add this that acts of publick Repentance must be by using the instruments of the Church such as she hath appointed of private such as by experience or by reason or by the counsel we can get we shall learn to be most effective of our penitential purposes And yet it is a great argument that the exteriour expressions of corporal severities are of good benefit because in all Ages wise men and severe Penitents have chosen them for their instruments The PRAYER O Eternal God who wert pleased in mercy to look upon us when we were in our 〈◊〉 to reconcile us when we were enemies to forgive us in the midst of our provocations of thy infinite and eternal Majesty finding out a remedy for us which man-kind could never ask even making an atonement for us by the death of thy Son sanctifying us by the bloud of the everlasting Covenant and thy all-hallowing and Divinest Spirit let thy 〈◊〉 so perpetually assist and encourage my endeavours conduct my will and fortifie my intentions that 〈◊〉 may persevere in that holy condition which thou hast put me in by the grace of the Covenant and the mercies of the Holy Jesus O let me never fall into those sins and retire to that vain conversation from which the eternal and merciful Saviour of the World hath redeemed me but let me grow in Grace adding Vertue to vertue reducing my purposes to act and increasing my acts till they grow into habits and my habits till they be confirmed and still confirming them till they be consummate in a blessed and holy perseverance Let thy Preventing grace dash all Temptations in their approach let thy Concomitant grace enable me to resist them in the assault and overcome them in the fight that my hopes be never discomposed nor my Faith weakned nor my confidence made remiss or my title and portion in the Covenant be lessened Or if thou permittest me at any time to 〈◊〉 which Holy Jesu avert for thy mercy and compession sake yet let me not sleep in sin but recall me instantly by the clamours of a nice and tender Conscience and the quickning Sermons of the Spirit that I may never pass from sin to sin from one degree to another lest sin should get the dominion over me lest thou be angry with me and reject me from the Covenant and I perish Purifie me from all 〈◊〉 sanctifie my spirit that I may be holy as thou art and let me never provoke thy jealousie nor presume upon thy goodness nor distrust thy mercies nor 〈◊〉 my Repentance nor rely upon vain confidences but that I may by a constant sedulous and timely endeavour make my calling and election sure living to thee and dying to thee that having sowed to the Spirit I may from thy mercies reap in the Spirit bliss and eternal sanctity and everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Saviour our hope and our mighty and ever-glorious Redeemer Amen Vpon Christ ' s Sermon on the Mount and of the Eight Beatitudes Moses delivers the Law Joh. 1. 17. The Law was given by Moses but Grace and Truth came by Iesus Christ. These words the Lord spake unto all the Assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire with a great voice he wrote them in two Tables of stone delivered them unto me Deut. 5. 22. Christ preaches in the Mount He went up into a mountain opened his mouth taught them saying Blessed are the poor in
the flames of Hell that men may serve God without the incentives of hope and fear and purely for the love of God Whether the Woman were onely imaginative and sad or also zealous I know not But God knows he would have few Disciples if the arguments of invitation were not of greater promise than the labours of Vertue are of trouble And therefore the Spirit of God knowing to what we are inflexible and by what we are made most ductile and malleable hath propounded Vertue clothed and dressed with such advantages as may entertain even our Sensitive part and first desires that those also may be invited to Vertue who understand not what is just and reasonable but what is profitable who are more moved with advantage than justice And because emolument is more felt than innocence and a man may be poor for all his gift of 〈◊〉 the Holy Jesus to endear the practices of Religion hath represented Godliness unto us under the notion of gain and sin as unfruitful and yet besides all the natural and reasonable advantages every Vertue hath a supernatural reward a gracious promise attending and every Vice is not only naturally deformed but is made more ugly by a threatning and horrid by an appendent curse Henceforth therefore let no man complain that the Commandments of God are impossible for they are not onely possible but easie and they that say otherwise and do accordingly take more pains to carry the instruments of their own death than would serve to ascertain them of life And if we would do as much for Christ as we have done for Sin we should find the pains less and the pleasure more And therefore such complainers are without excuse for certain it is they that can go in foul ways must not say they cannot walk in fair they that march over rocks in despight of so many impediments can travel the even ways of Religion and Peace when the Holy Jesus is their Guide and the Spirit is their Guardian and infinite felicities are at their journey's end and all the reason of the world political oeconomical and personal do entertain and support them in the travel of the passage The PRAYER O Eternal Jesus who gavest Laws unto the world that man-kind being united to thee by the bands of Obedience might partake of all thy glories and felicities open our understanding give us the spirit of discerning and just apprehension of all the beauties with which thou hast enamelled Vertue to represent it beauteous and amiable in our eyes that by the allurements of exteriour decencies and appendent blessings our present desires may be entertained our hopes promoted our affections satisfied and Love entring in by these doors may dwell in the interiour regions of the Will O make us to love thee for thy self and Religion for thee and all the instruments of Religion in order to thy glory and our own felicities Pull off the visors of Sin and discover its deformities by the lantern of thy Word and the light of the Spirit that I may never be bewitched with sottish appetites Be pleased to build up all the contents I expect in this world upon the interests of a vertuous life and the support of Religion that I may be rich in Good works content in the issues of thy Providence my Health may be the result of Temperance and severity my Mirth in spiritual emanations my Rest in Hope my Peace in a good Conscience my Satisfaction and acquiescence in thee that from Content I may pass to an eternal Fulness from Health to Immortality from Grace to Glory walking in the paths of Righteousness by the waters of Comfort to the land of everlasting Rest to feast in the glorious communications of Eternity eternally adoring loving and enjoying the infinity of the ever-Blessed and mysterious Trinity to whom be glory and 〈◊〉 and dominion now and for ever Amen DISCOURSE XVI Of Certainty of Salvation 1. WHen the Holy Jesus took an account of the first Legation and voyage of his Apostles he found them rejoycing in priviledges and exteriour powers in their authority over unclean spirits but weighing it in his balance he found the cause too light and therefore diverted it upon the right object Rejoyce that your names are written in Heaven The revelation was confirmed and more personally applied in answer to S. Peter's Question We have for saken all and followed thee what shall we have therefore Their LORD answered Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel Amongst these persons to whom Christ spake Judas was he was one of the Twelve and he had a throne allotted for him his name was described in the book of life and a Scepter and a Crown was deposited for him too For we must not judge of Christ's meaning by the event since he spake these words to produce in them Faith comfort and joy in the best objects it was a Sermon of duty as well as a Homily of comfort and therefore was equally intended to all the Colledge and since the number of Thrones is proportioned to the number of men it is certain there was no exception of any man there included and yet it is as certain Judas never came to sit upon the throne and his name was blotted out of the book of life Now if we put these ends together that in Scripture it was not revealed to any man concerning his final condition but to the dying penitent Thief and to the twelve Apostles that twelve thrones were designed for them and a promise made of their inthronization and yet that no man's final estate is so clearly declared miserable and lost as that of Judas one of the Twelve to whom a throne was promised the result will be that the election of holy persons is a condition allied to duty absolute and infallible in the general and supposing all the dispositions and requisites concurring but fallible in the particular if we fall off from the mercies of the Covenant and prevaricate the conditions But the thing which is most observable is that if in persons so eminent and priviledged and to whom a revelation of their Election was made as a particular grace their condition had one weak leg upon which because it did rely for one half of the interest it could be no stronger than its supporters the condition of lower persons to whom no revelation is made no priviledges are indulged no greatness of spiritual eminency is appendent as they have no greater certainty in the thing so they have less in person and are therefore to work out their salvation with great fears and tremblings of spirit 2. The purpose of this consideration is that we do not judge of our final condition by any discourses of our own relying upon God's secret Counsels and Predestination of Eternity This is a mountain upon which whosoever climbs like Moses to behold the land of Canaan at great distances may please his eyes or
hand or foot or extinguish the offending eye rather than upon the support of a troublesome soot and by the light of an offending eye walk into ruine and a sad eternity where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched And so Jesus ended this chain of excellent Discourses 18. About this time was the Jews Feast of Tabernacles whither Jesus went up as it were in secret and passing through Samaria he found the inhabitants of a little village so inhospitable as to refuse to give him entertainment which so provoked the intemperate zeal of James and John that they would fain have called for fire to consume them even as Elias did But Jesus rebuked the furies of their anger teaching them to distinguish the spirit of Christianity from the ungentleness of the decretory zeal of Elias For since the Son of man came with a purpose to seek and save what was lost it was but an indiscreet temerity suddenly upon the lightest umbrages of displeasure to destroy a man whose redemption cost the effusion of the dearest bloud from the heart of Jesus But contrariwise Jesus does a Miracle upon the ten Leprous persons which came to him from the neighbourhood crying out with sad exclamations for help But Jesus sent them to the Priest to offer for their cleansing Thither they went and but one only returned to give thanks and he a stranger who with a loud voice glorified God and with humble adoration worshipped and gave thanks to Jesus 19. When Jesus had finished his journey and was now come to Jerusalem for the first days he was undiscerned in publick conventions but heard of the various opinions of men concerning him some saying he was a good man others that he 〈◊〉 the people and the Pharisees sought for him to do him a mischief But when they despaired of finding him in the midst of the Feast and the people he made Sermons openly in the midst of the Temple whom when he had convinced by the variety and divinity of his Miracles and Discourses they gave the greatest testimony in the world of humane weakness and how prevalent a prejudice is above the confidence and conviction of a demonstration For a proverb a mistake an error in matter of circumstance did in their understandings outweigh multitudes of Miracles and arguments and because Christ was of Galilee because they knew whence he was because of the Proverb that 〈◊〉 of Galilee comes no Prophet because the Rulers did not believe in him these outweighed the demonstrations of his mercy and his power and Divinity But yet very many believed on him and no man durst lay hands to take him for as yet his time was not come in which he meant to give himself up to the power of the Jews and therefore when the Pharisees sent Officers to seise him they also became his Disciples being themselves surprised by the excellency of his Doctrine 20. After this Jesus went to the mount of Olivet on the East of Jerusalem and the next day returned again into the Temple where the Scribes and Pharisees brought him a woman taken in the act of Adultery tempting him to give sentence that they might accuse him of severity or intermedling if he condemned her or of remisness and popularity if he did acquit her But Jesus found out an expedient for their difficulty and changed the Scene by bidding the innocent person among them cast the first stone at the Adulteress and then stooping down to give them fair occasion to withdraw he wrote upon the ground with his finger whilest they left the woman and her crime to a more private censure Jesus was left alone and the woman in the midst whom Jesus dismissed charging her to sin no more And a while after Jesus begins again to discourse to them of his Mission from the Father of his Crucifixion and exaltation from the earth of the reward of Believers of the excellency of Truth of spiritual Liberty and Relations who are the sons of Abraham and who the children of the Devil of his own eternal generation of the desire of Abraham to see his day In which Sermon he continued adding still new excellencies and confuting their malicious and vainer calumnies till they that they also might 〈◊〉 him took up stones to cast at him but he went out of the Temple going through the midst of them and so passed by 21. But in his passage he met a man who had been born blind and after he had discoursed cursorily of the cause of that Blindness it being a misery not sent as a punishment to his own or his parents sin but as an occasion to make publick the glory of God he to manifest that himself was the light of the World in all sences said it now and proved it by a Miracle for sitting down he made clay of spittle and anointing the eyes of the blind man bid him go wash in Siloam which was a Pool of limpid water which God sent at the Prayer of Isaiah the Prophet a little before his death to satisfie the necessities of his people oppressed with thirst and a strict siege and it stood at the foot of the mount Sion and gave its water at first by returns and periods always to the Jews but not to the enemies And those intermitted springings were still continued but only a Pool was made from the frequent effluxes The blind man went and washed and returned seeing and was incessantly vexed by the Pharisees to tell them the manner and circumstances of the cure and when the man had averred the truth and named his Physician giving him a pious and charitable testimony the Pharisees because they could not force him to disavow his good opinion of Jesus cast him out of the 〈◊〉 But Jesus meeting him received him into the Church told him he was CHRIST and the man became again enlightned and he believed and worshipped But the Pharisees blasphemed for such was the dispensation of the Divine mysteries that the blind should see and they which think they see clearly should become blind because they had not the excuse of ignorance to lessen or take off the sin but in the midst of light they shut their eyes and doted upon darkness and therefore did their sin remain 22. But Jesus continued his Sermon among the Pharisees insinuating reprehensions in his dogmatical discourses which like light shined and discovered error For by discoursing the properties of a good Shepherd and the lawful way of intromission he proved them to be thieves and robbers because they refused to enter in by Jesus who is the door of the sheep and upon the same ground reproved all those false Christs which before him usurped the title of Messias and proved his own vocation and office by an argument which no other shepherd would use because he laid down his life for his sheep others would take the fleece and eat the flesh but none but himself would die for his sheep but he would first
spirit when Rebellion and Pride when secular Interest or ease and Licenciousness set men up against the Laws the Laws then are upon the defensive and ought not to give place It is ill to cure particular Disobedience by removing a Constitution decreed by publick wisdom for a general good When the evil occasioned by the Law is greater than the good designed or than the good which will come by it in the present constitution of things and the evil can by no other remedy be healed it concerns the Law-giver's charity to take off such positive Constitutions which in the authority are merely humane and in the matter indifferent and evil in the event The summ of this whole duty I shall chuse to represent in the words of an excellent person S. Jerome We must for the avoiding of Scandal quit everything which may be omitted without prejudice to the threefold truth of Life of Justice and Doctrine meaning that what is not expresly commanded by God or our Superiours or what is not expresly commended as an act of Piety and Perfection or what is not an obligation of Justice that is in which the interest of a third person or else our own Christian liberty is not totally concerned all that is to be given in sacrifice to Mercy and to be made matter of Edification and Charity but not of Scandal that is of danger and sin and falling to our neighbour The PRAYER O Eternal Jesus who art made unto us Wisdom Righteousness Sanctification and Redemption give us of thy abundant Charity that we may love the eternal benefit of our 〈◊〉 Soul with a true diligent and affectionate care and tenderness Give us a fellow-feeling of one another's calamities a readiness to bear each others burthens aptness to forbear wisdom to advise counsel to direct and a spirit of meekness and modesty trembling at our 〈◊〉 fearful in our Brother's dangers and joyful in his restitution and securities Lord let all our actions be pious and prudent our selves wise as Serpents and innocent as Doves and our whole life exemplar and just and charitable that we may like Lamps shining in thy Temple serve thee and enlighten others and guide them to thy Sanctuary and that shining clearly and burning zealously when the Bridegroom shall come to bind up his Jewels and beautifie his Spouse and gather his Saints together we and all thy Christian people knit in a holy fellowship may enter into the joy of our Lord and partake of the eternal refreshments of the Kingdom of Light and Glory where thou O Holy and Eternal Jesu livest and reignest in the excellencies of a Kingdom and the infinite durations of Eternity Amen DISCOURSE XVIII Of the Causes and Manner of the Divine Judgments 1. GOD's Judgments are like the Writing upon the wall which was a missive of anger from God upon Belshazzar it came upon an errand of Revenge and yet was writ in so dark characters that none could read it but a Prophet When-ever God speaks from Heaven he would have us to understand his meaning and if he declares not his sence in particular signification yet we understand his meaning well enough if every voice of God lead us to Repentance Every sad accident is directed against sin either to prevent it or to cure it to glorifie God or to humble us to make us go forth of our selves and to rest upon the centre of all Felicities that we may derive help from the same hand that smote us Sin and Punishment are so near relatives that when God hath marked any person with a sadness or unhandsome accident men think it warrant enough for their uncharitable censures and condemn the man whom God hath smitten making God the executioner of our uncertain or ungentle sentences Whether sinned this man or his parents that 〈◊〉 was born blind said the Pharisees to our blessed LORD Neither this man nor his parents was the answer meaning that God had other ends in that accident to serve and it was not an effect of wrath but a design of mercy both directly and collaterally God's glory must be seen clearly by occasion of the curing the blind man But in the present case the answer was something different Pilate slew the Galileans when they were sacrificing in their Conventicles apart from the Jews For they first had separated from Obedience and paying Tribute to Caesar and then from the Church who disavowed their mutinous and discontented Doctrines The cause of the one and the other are linked in mutual complications and endearment and he who despises the one will quickly disobey the other Presently upon the report of this sad accident the people run to the Judgment-seat and every man was ready to be accuser and witness and judge upon these poor destroyed people But Jesus allays their heat and though he would by no means acquit these persons from deserving death for their denying tribute to Caesar yet he alters the face of the tribunal and makes those persons who were so apt to be accusers and judges to act another part even of guilty persons too that since they will needs be judging they might judge themselves for Think not these were greater sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered such things I tell you nay but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish meaning that although there was great probability to believe such persons 〈◊〉 I mean and Rebels to be the greatest sinners of the world yet themselves who had designs to destroy the Son of God had deserved as great damnation And yet it is observable that the Holy Jesus only compared the sins of them that suffered with the estate of the other Galileans who suffered not and that also applies it to the persons present who told the news to consign this Truth unto us That when persons consederate in the same crimes are spared from a present Judgment falling upon others of their own society it is indeed a strong alarm to all to secure themselves by Repentance against the hostilities and eruptions of sin but yet it is no exemption or security to them that escape to believe themselves persons less sinful for God sometimes decimates or tithes delinquent persons and they die for a common crime according as God hath cast their lot in the decrees of Predestination and either they that remain are sealed up to a worse calamity or left within the reserves and mercies of Repentance for in this there is some variety of determination and undiscerned Providence 2. The purpose of our Blessed Saviour is of great use to us in all the traverses and changes and especially the sad and calamitous accidents of the world But in the misfortune of others we are to make other discourses concerning Divine Judgments than when the case is of nearer concernment to our selves For first when we see a person come to an unfortunate and untimely death we must not conclude such a man perishing
little irregularities and so many great imperfections that it will appear the more necessary to repair the breaches and lesser ruines by such acts of Piety and Religion because every Communication is intended to be a nearer approach to God a 〈◊〉 step in Grace a progress towards glory and an instrument of perfection and therefore upon the stock of our spiritual interests for the purchase of a greater hope and the advantages of a growing Charity ought to be frequently received I end with the words of a pious and learned person It is a vain fear and an imprudent 〈◊〉 that procrastinates and desers going to the Lord that calls them they deny to go to the fire pretending they are cold and refuse Physick because they need it The PRAYER O Blessed and Eternal Jesus who gavest thy self a Sacrifice for our sins thy Body for our spiritual food thy 〈◊〉 to nourish our spirits and to quench the flames of Hell and Lust who didst so love us who were thine enemies that thou desiredst to reconcile us to thee and becamest all one with us that we may live the same life think the same thoughts love the same love and be partakers of thy Resurrection and Immortality open every window of my Soul that I may be full of light and may see the excellency of thy Love the merits of thy Sacrifice the bitterness of thy Passion the glories and virtues of the mysterious Sacrament Lord let me ever hunger and thirst after this instrument of Righteousness let me have no gust or relish of the unsatisfying delights of things below but let my Soul dwell in thee let me for ever receive thee spiritually and very frequently communicate with thee sacramentally and imitate thy Vertues pionsly and strictly and dwell in the pleasures of thy house eternally Lord thou hast prepared a table for me against them that trouble me let that holy Sacrament of the Eucharist be to me a defence and shield a nourishment and medicine life and health a means of sanctification and spiritual growth that I receiving the body of my dearest Lord may be one with his mystical body and of the same spirit united with indissoluble bonds of a strong Faith and a holy Hope and a never-failing Charity that from this veil I may pass into the visions of eternal clarity from eating thy Body to beholding thy face in the glories of thy everlasting Kingdom O Blessed and Eternal Jesus Amen Considerations upon the Accidents happening on the Vespers of the Passion The Prayer in the Garden Luk 22. 41. And he was withdrawn from them about a stones cast kneeled down prayed 42 Saying Father if thou be willing remove this Cup from me nevertheless not my will but thine be done 43 And there appeared an Angel from heaven strengthening him Iudas betrayeth Christ Mat 26. 47. And while he yet spake Lo. Iudas one of the twelue came and with him a great multitude with swords and staves from the chief Preists Elders of the people 48. Now he that be trayed him gave them a sign saying whomsoever I shall kiss that same is he hold him fast 49. And forthwith he came to Iesus and said Haile Master and kissed him 1. WHen Jesus had supped and sang a Hymn and prayed and exhorted and comforted his Disciples with a Farewell-Sermon in which he repeated 〈◊〉 of his former Precepts which were now apposite to the present condition and re-inforced them with proper and pertinent arguments he went over the brook Cedron and entred into a Garden and into the prologue of his Passion chusing that place for his Agony and satisfactory pains in which the first scene of humane misery was represented and where he might best attend the offices of Devotion preparatory to his Death Besides this he therefore departed from the house that he might give opportunity to his Enemies surprise and yet not incommodate the good man by whose hospitality they had eaten the Paschal Lamb so that he went like a Lamb to the slaughter to the Garden as to a prison as if by an agreement with his persecutors he had expected their arrest and stayed there to prevent their farther enquiry For so great was his desire to pay our Ransom that himself did assist by a forward patience and active opportunity towards the persecution teaching us that by an active zeal and a ready spirit we assist the designs of God's glory though in our own sufferings and secular infelicities 2. When he entred the Garden he left his Disciples at the entrance of it calling with him only Peter James and John he withdrew himself from the rest about a stone 's cast and began to be exceeding heavy He was not sad till he had called them for his sorrow began when he pleased which sorrow he also chose to represent to those three who had seen his Transfiguration the earnest of his future Glory that they might see of how great glory for our sakes he disrobed himself and that they also might by the confronting those contradictory accidents observe that God uses to dispense his comforts the irradiations and emissions of his glory to be preparatives to those sorrows with which our life must be allayed and seasoned that none should refuse to partake of the sufferings of Christ if either they have already felt his comforts or hope hereafter to wear his crown And it is not ill observed that S. Peter being the chief of the Apostles and Doctor of the Circumcision S. John being a Virgin and S. James the first of the Apostles that was martyred were admitted to Christ's greatest retirements and mysterious secrecies as being persons of so singular and eminent dispositions to whom according to the pious opinion of the Church especially Coronets are prepared in Heaven besides the great Crown of rightcousness which in common shall beautifie the heads of all the Saints meaning this that Doctors Virgins and Martyrs shall receive even for their very state of life and accidental Graces more eminent degrees of accidental Glory like as the Sun reflecting upon a limpid fountain receives its rays doubled without any increment of its proper and natural light 3. Jesus began to be exceeding sorrowful to be sore amazed and sad even to death And because he was now to suffer the pains of our sins there began his Passion whence our sins spring From an evil heart and a prevaricating spirit all our sins arise and in the spirit of Christ began his sorrow where he truly felt the full value and demerit of Sin which we think not worthy of a tear or a hearty sigh but he groaned and fell under the burthen But therefore he took upon him this sadness that our imperfect sorrow and contrition might be heightned in his example and accepted in its union and consederacy with his And Jesus still designed a farther mercy for us for he sanctified the passion of Fear and hallowed natural sadnesses that we might not
think the infelicities of our nature and the calamities of our temporal condition to become criminal so long as they make us not omit a duty or dispose us to the election of a crime or force us to swallow a temptation nor yet to exceed the value of their impulsive cause He that grieves for the loss of friends and yet had rather lose all the friends he hath than lose the love of God hath the sorrow of our Lord for his precedent And he that fears death and trembles at its approximation and yet had rather die again than sin once hath not sinned in his fear Christ hath hallowed it and the necessitous condition of his nature is his excuse But it were highly to be wished that in the midst of our caresses and levities of society in our festivities and triumphal merriments when we laugh at folly and rejoyce in sin we would remember that for those very merriments our Blessed Lord felt a bitter sorrow and not one vain and sinful laughter but cost the Holy Jesus a sharp pang and throe of Passion 4. Now that the Holy Jesus began to taste the bitter Cup he betook him to his great Antidote which himself the great Physician of our Souls prescribed to all the world to cure their calamities and to make them pass from miseries into vertue that so they may arrive at glory he prays to his heavenly Father he kneels down and not only so but falls flat upon the earth and would in humility and fervent adoration have descended low as the centre he prays with an intension great as his sorrow and yet with a dereliction so great and a conformity to the Divine will so ready as if it had been the most indifferent thing in the world for him to be delivered to death or from it for though his nature did decline death as that which hath a natural horrour and contradiction to the present interest of its preservation yet when he looked upon it as his heavenly Father had put it into the order of Redemption of the World it was that Baptism which he was straitned till he had accomplished And now there is not in the world any condition of prayer which is essential to the duty or any circumstances of advantage to its performance but were concentred in this one instance Humility of spirit lowliness of deportment importunity of desire a fervent spirit a lawful matter resignation to the will of God great love the love of a Son to his Father which appellative was the form of his address perseverance he went thrice and prayed the same prayer It was not long and it was so retired as to have the advantages of a sufficient solitude and opportune recollection for he was withdrawn from the most of his Disciples and yet not so alone as to lose the benefit of communion for Peter and the two Boanerges were near him Christ in this prayer which was the most fervent that he ever made on earth intending to transmit to all the world a precedent of Devotion to be transcribed and imitated that we should cast all our cares and empty them in the bosom of God being content to receive such a portion of our trouble back again which he assigns us for our spiritual emolument 5. The Holy Jesus having in a few words poured out torrents of innocent desires was pleased still to interrupt his Prayer that he might visit his charge that little flock which was presently after to be scattered he was careful of them in the midst of his Agonies they in his sufferings were fast asleep He awakens them gives them command to watch and pray that is to be vigilant in the custody of their senses and obervant of all accidents and to pray that they may be strengthened against all incursions of enemies and temptations and then returns to prayer and so a third time his Devotion still encreasing with his sorrow And when his Prayer was full and his sorrow come to a great measure after the third God sent his Angel to comfort him and by that act of grace then only expressed hath taught us to continue our Devotions so long as our needs last It may be God will not send a Comsorter till the third time that is after a long expectation and a patient 〈◊〉 and a lasting hope in the interim God supports us with a secret hand and in his own time will refresh the spirit with the visitations of his Angels with the emissions of comfort from the Spirit the Comforter And know this also that the holy Angel and the Lord of all the Angels stands by every holy person when he prays and although he draws before his glories the curtain of a cloud yet in every instant he takes care we shall not perish and in a just season dissolves the cloud and makes it to distill in holy dew and drops sweet as Manna pleasant as Nard and wholsome as the breath of Heaven And such was the consolation which the Holy Jesus received by the ministery of the Angel representing to Christ the Lord of the Angels how necessary it was that he should die for the glory of God that in his Passion his Justice Wisdom Goodness Power and Mercy should shine that unless he died all the World should perish but his bloud should obtain their pardon and that it should open the gates of Heaven repair the ruine of Angels establish a holy Church be 〈◊〉 of innumerable adoptive children to his Father whom himself should make heirs of glory and that his Passion should soon pass away his Father hearing and granting his Prayer that the Cup should pass speedily though indeed it should pass through him that it should be attended and followed with a glorious Resurrection with eternal rest and glory of his Humanity with the exaltation of his Name with a supreme dominion over all the world and that his Father should make him King of Kings and Prince of the Catholick Church These or whatsoever other comforts the Angel ministred were such considerations which the Holy Jesus knew and the Angel knew not but by communication from that God to whose assumed Humanity the Angel spake yet he was pleased to receive comfort from his servant just as God receives glory from his creatures and as he rejoyces in his own works even because he is good and gracious and is pleased so to do and because himself had caused a voluntary sadness to be interposed between the habitual knowledge and the actual consideration of these discourses and we feel a pleasure when a friendly hand lays upon our wound the plaister which our selves have made and applies such instruments and considerations of comfort which we have in notion and an ineffective habit but cannot reduce them to act because no man is so apt to be his own comforter which God hath therefore permitted that our needs should be the occasion of a mutual Charity 6. It was a great season for
him honours the Emperour Conrade the Second when he triumphed after the conquest of Italy had a joy bigger than their heart and their phancy swelled it till they burst and died Death can enter in at any door 〈◊〉 of Nice died with excessive laughter so did the Poet Philemon being provoked to it only by seeing an Asse eat sigs And the number of persons who have been found suddenly dead in their beds is so great that as it ingages many to a more certain and regular devotion for their Compline so it were well it were pursued to the utmost intention of God that is that all the parts of Religion should with zeal and assiduity be entertained and finished that as it becomes wise men we never be surprised with that we are sure will sometime or other happen A great General in Italy at the sudden death of Alsonsus of Ferrara and Lodovico 〈◊〉 at the sight of the sad accident upon Henry II. of France now mentioned turned religious and they did what God intended in those deaths It concerns us to be curious of single actions because even in those shorter periods we may expire and 〈◊〉 our Graves But if the state of life be contradictory to our hopes of Heaven it is like affronting of a Cannon 〈◊〉 a beleaguer'd Town a month together it is a contempt of safety and a rendring all Reason useless and unprofitable but he only is wise who having made Death familiar to him by expectation and daily apprehension does at all instants go forth to meet it The wise Virgins went forth to meet the Bridegroom for they were ready Excellent therefore is the counsel of the Son of Sirach Use Physick or ever thou be sick 〈◊〉 Judgment examine thy self and in the day of visitation thou shalt finde mercy Humble thy self before then be sick and in the time of sins shew Repentance Let nothing hinder thee to pay thy 〈◊〉 in due time and defer not until death to be justified 5. Secondly I consider that it osten happens that in those few days of our last visitation which many Men design for their Preparation and Repentance God hath expressed by an exteriour accident that those persons have deceived themselves and neglected their own Salvation S. Gregory reports of Chrysaurius a Gentleman in the Province of 〈◊〉 rich vicious and witty lascivious covetous and proud that being cast upon his Death-bed he phansied he saw evil spirits coming to arrest him and drag him to Hell He fell into great agony and trouble shrieked out called for his son who was a very religious person flattered him as willing to have been rescued by any thing but perceiving his danger increase and grown desperate he called loud with repeated clamours Give me respite but till the morrow and with those words he died there being no place left 〈◊〉 his Repentance though he sought it carefully with tears and groans The same was the case of a drunken Monk whom Venerable Bede mentions Upon his Death bed he seemed to see Hell opened and a place assigned him near to Caiaphas and those who crucified our dearest Lord. The religious persons that stood about his Bed called on him to repent of his sins to implore the mercies of God and to trust in Christ But he answered with reason enough This is no time to change my life the sentence is passed upon me and it is too late And it is very considerable and sad which Petrus Damianus tells of Gunizo a sactious and ambitious person to whom it is said the Tempter gave notice of his approaching death but when any Man preached Repentance to him out of a strange incuriousness or the spirit of reprobation he seemed like a dead and unconcerned person in all other discourses he was awake and apt to answer For God had shut up the gates of Mercy that no streams should issue forth to quench the flames of Hell or else had shut up the gates of reception and entertainment that it should not enter either God denies to give them pardon when they call or denies to them a power to call they either cannot pray or God will not answer Now since these stories are related by Men learned pious and eminent in their generations and because they served no design but the ends of Piety and have in them nothing dissonant from revelation or the frequent events of Providence we may upon their stock consider that God's Judgements and visible marks being set upon a state of Life although they happen but seldom in the instances yet they are of universal purpose and signfication Upon all Murtherers God hath not thrown a thunder-bolt nor broke all sacrilegious persons upon the wheel of an inconstant and ebbing estate nor spoken to every Oppressor from Heaven in a voice of thunder nor cut off all Rebels in the first attempts of insurrection But because he hath done so to some we are to look upon those Judgments as Divine accents and voices of God threatning all the same crimes with the like events and with the ruines of eternity For though God does not always make the same prologues to death yet by these few accidents happening to single persons we are to understand his purposes concerning all in the same condition it was not the person so much as the estate which God then remarked with so visible characters of his displeasure 6. And it seems to me a wonder that since from all the records of Scripture urging the uncertainty of the day of death the horrour of the day of Judgment the severity of God the dissolution of the world the certainty of our account still from all these premisses the Spirit of God makes no other inference but that we watch and stand in a readiness that we live in all holy conversation and godliness and that there is no one word concerning any other manner of an essentially-necessary Preparation none but this yet that there are Doctrines commenced and Rules prescribed and Offices set down and Suppletories invented by Curates of Souls how to prepare a vicious person and upon his Death-bed to reconcile him to the hopes and promises of Heaven Concerning which I desire that every person would but enquire where any one promise is recorded in Scripture concerning such addresses and what Articles CHRIST hath drawn up between his Father and us concerning a Preparation begun upon our Death-bed and if he shall find none as most certainly from Genesis to the Revelation there is not a word concerning it but very much against it let him first build his hopes upon this proposition that A holy life is the onely Preparation to a happy death and then we can without danger proceed to some other Considerations 7. When a good man or a person concerning whom it is not certain he hath lived in habitual Vices comes to die there are but two general ways of entercourse with him the one to keep him from
their friends and consider not that their friends are bound to accept the trouble as themselves to accept the sickness that to tend the sick is at that time allotted for the portion of their work and that Charity receives it as a duty and makes that duty to be a pleasure And however if our friends account us a burthen let us also accept that circumstance of affliction to our selves with the same resignation and indifferency as we entertain its occasion the Sickness it self and pray to God to enkindle a flame of Charity in their breasts and to make them compensation for the charge and trouble we put them to and then the care is at an end But others excuse their discontent with a more religious colour and call the disease their trouble and affliction because it impedes their other parts of Duty they cannot preach or study or do exteriour assistences of Charity and Alms or acts of Repentance and Mortification But it were well if we could let God proportion out our work and set our task let him chuse what vertues we shall specially exercise and when the will of God determines us it is more excellent to endure afflictions with patience equanimity and thankfulness than to do actions of the most pompous Religion and laborious or expensive Charity not only because there is a deliciousness in actions of Religion and choice which is more agreeable to our spirit than the toleration of sickness can be which hath great reward but no present pleasure but also because our suffering and our imployment is consecrated to us when God chuses it and there is then no mixture of imperfection or secular interest as there may be in other actions even of an excellent Religion when our selves are the chusers And let us also remember that God hath not so much need of thy works as thou hast of Patience Humility and Resignation S. Paul was far a more considerable person than thou canst be and yet it pleased God to shut him in prison for two years and in that intervall God secured and promoted the work of the Gospel and although 〈◊〉 was an excellent Minister yet God laid a sickness upon him and even in his disease gave him work enough to do though not of his own chusing And therefore fear it not but the ends of Religion or Duty will well enough proceed without thy health and thy own eternal interest when God so pleases shall better be served by Sickness and the Vertues which it occasions than by the opportunities of Health and an ambulatory active Charity 18. When thou art resigned to God use fair and appointed means for thy Recovery trust not in thy spirit upon any instrument of health as thou art willing to be disposed by God so look 〈◊〉 for any event upon the stock of any other cause or principle be ruled by the Physician and the people appointed to tend thee that thou neither become troublesome to them nor give any sign of impatience or a peevish spirit But this advice only means that thou do not disobey them out of any evil principle and yet if Reason be thy guide to chuse any other aid or sollow any other counsel use it temperately prudently and charitably It is not intended for a Duty that thou shouldst drink Oil in stead of Wine if thy Minister reach it to thee as did Saint Bernard nor that thou shouldst accept a Cake tempered with Linseed-oil in stead of Oil of Olives as did F. Stephen mentioned by 〈◊〉 but that thou tolerate the defects of thy servants and accept the evil accidents of thy disease or the unsuccessfulness of thy Physician 's care as descending on thee from the hands of God Asa was noted in Scripture that in his sickness he sought not to the Lord but to the Physicians Lewis the XI of France was then the miserablest person in his Kingdom when he made himself their servant courting them with great pensions and rewards attending to their Rules as Oracles and from their mouths waited for the sentence of life or death We are in these great accidents especially to look upon God as the disposer of the events which he very often disposes contrary to the expectation we may have of probable causes and sometimes without Physick we recover and with Physick and excellent applications we grow worse and worse and God it is that makes the remedies unprosperous In all these and all other accidents if we take care that the sickness of the Body derive not it self into the Soul nor the pains of one procure impatience of the other we shall alleviate the burthen and make it supportable and profitable And certain it is if men knew well to bear their sicknesses humbly towards God charitably towards our Ministers and chearfully in themselves there were no greater advantage in the world to be received than upon a sick bed and that alone hath in it the benefits of a Church of a religious Assembly of the works of Charity and labour And since our Soul 's eternal well-being depends upon the Charities and Providence and Veracity of God and we have nothing to show for it but his word and Goodness and that is infinitely enough it is but reason we be not more nice and scrupulous about the usage and accommodation of our Body if we accept at God's hand sadness and driness of affection and spiritual desertion patiently and with indifferency it is unhandsome to express our selves less satisfied in the accidents about our body 19. But if the Sickness proceed to Death it is a new charge upon our spirits and God calls for a final and intire Resignation into his hands And to a person who was of humble affections and in his life-time of a mortified spirit accustomed to bear the yoke of the Lord this is easie because he looks upon Death not only as the certain condition of Nature but as a necessary transition to a state of Blessedness as the determination of his sickness the period of humane inselicities the last change of condition the beginning of a new strange and excellent life a security against sin a freedom from the importunities of a Tempter from the tyranny of an imperious Lust from the rebellion of Concupiscence from the disturbances and tempests of the Irascible faculty and from the fondness and childishness of the Concupiscible and S. Ambrose says well the trouble of this life and the dangers are so many that in respect of them Death is a remedy and a fair proper object of desires And we finde that many Saints have prayed for death that they might not see the Persecutions and great miseries incumbent upon the Church and if the desire be not out of Impatience but of Charity and with resignation there is no reason to reprove it Elias prayed that God would take his life that he might not see the evils of Ahab and Jezebel and their vexatious intendments against the
Saul's seven sons were hanged for breaking the League of Gibeon and Ahab's sin was punished in his posterity he escaping and the evil was brought upon his house in his son's days In all these cases the evil descended upon persons in near relation to the sinner and was a punishment to him and a misery to these and were either chastisements also of their own sins or if they were not they served other ends of Providence and led the afflicted innocent to a condition of recompence accidentally procured by that infliction But if for such relation's sake and oeconomical and political conjunction as between Prince and People the evil may be transmitted from one to another much rather is it just when by contract a competent and conjunct person undertakes to quit his relative Thus when the Hand steals the Back is whipt and an evil Eye is punished with a hungry Belly Treason causes the whole Family to be miserable and a Sacrilegious Grandfather hath sent a Locust to devour the increase of the Nephews 8. But in our case it is a voluntary contract and therefore no Injustice all parties are voluntary God is the supreme Lord and his actions are the measure of Justice we who had deserved the punishment had great reason to desire a Redeemer and yet Christ who was to pay the ransome was more desirous of it than we were for we asked it not before it was promised and undertaken But thus we see that Sureties pay the obligation of the principal Debtor and the Pledges of Contracts have been by the best and wisest Nations slain when the Articles have been broken The Thessalians slew 250 Pledges the Romans 300 of the Volsci and threw the Tarentines from the Tarpeian rock And that it may appear Christ was a person in all sences competent to do this for us himself testifies that he had power over his own life to take it up or lay it down And therefore as there can be nothing against the most exact justice and reason of Laws and punishments so it magnifies the Divine Mercy who removes the punishment from us who of necessity must have sunk under it and yet makes us to adore his Severity who would not forgive us without punishing his Son for us to consign unto us his perfect hatred against Sin to conserve the sacredness of his Laws and to imprint upon us great characters of fear and love The famous Locrian Zaleucus made a Law that all Adulterers should lose both their eyes his son was first unhappily surprised in the crime and his Father to keep a temper between the piety and soft spirit of a Parent and the justice and severity of a Judge put out one of his own eyes and one of his Sons So God did with us he made some abatement that is as to the person with whom he was angry but inflicted his anger upon our Redeemer whom he essentially loved to secure the dignity of his Sanctions and the sacredness of Obedience so marrying Justice and Mercy by the intervening of a commutation Thus David escaped by the death of his Son God chusing that penalty for the expiation and Cimon offered himself to prison to purchase the liberty of his Father Miltiades It was a filial duty in Cimon and yet the Law was satisfied And both these concurred in our great Redeemer For God who was the sole Arbitrator so disposed it and the eternal Son of God submitted to this way of expiating our crimes and became an argument of faith and belief of the great Article of Remission of sins and other its appendent causes and effects and adjuncts it being wrought by a visible and notorious Passion It was made an encouragement of Hope for he that spared not his own Son to reconcile us will with him give all things else to us so reconciled and a great endearment of our Duty and Love as it was a demonstration of his And in all the changes and traverses of our life he is made to us a great example of all excellent actions and all patient sufferings 9. In the midst of two Thieves three long hours the holy Jesus hung clothed with pain agony and dishonour all of them so eminent and vast that he who could not but hope whose Soul was enchased with Divinity and dwelt in the bosom of God and in the Cabinet of the mysterious Trinity yet had a cloud of misery so thick and black drawn before him that he complained as if God had forsaken him but this was the pillar of cloud which conducted Israel into Canaan And as God behind the Cloud supported the Holy Jesus and stood ready to receive him into the union of his Glories so his Soul in that great desertion had internal comforts proceeding from consideration of all those excellent persons which should be adopted into the fellowship of his Sufferings which should imitate his Graces which should communicate his Glories And we follow this Cloud to our Country having Christ for our Guide and though he trode the way leaning upon the Cross which like the staffe of Egypt pierced his hands yet it is to us a comfort and support pleasant to our spirits as the sweetest Canes strong as the pillars of the earth and made apt for our use by having been born and made smooth by the hands of our Elder Brother 10. In the midst of all his torments Jesus only made one Prayer of sorrow to represent his sad condition to his Father but no accent of murmur no syllable of anger against his enemies In stead of that he sent up a holy charitable and effective Prayer for their forgiveness and by that Prayer obtained of God that within 55 days 8000 of his enemies were converted So potent is the prayer of Charity that it prevails above the malice of men turning the arts of Satan into the designs of God and when malice occasions the Prayer the Prayer becomes an antidote to malice And by this instance our Blessed Lord consigned that Duty to us which in his Sermons he had preached That we should forgive our enemies and pray for them and by so doing our selves are freed from the stings of anger and the storms of a revengeful spirit and we oftentimes procure servants to God friends to our selves and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven 11. Of the two Thieves that were crucified together with our Lord the one blasphemed the other had at that time the greatest Piety in the world except that of the Blessed Virgin and particularly had such a Faith that all the Ages of the Church could never shew the like For when he saw Christ in the same condemnation with himself crucisied by the Romans accused and scorned by the Jews forsaken by his own Apostles a dying distressed Man doing at that time no Miracles to attest his Divinity or Innocence yet then he confesses him to be a Lord and a King and his Saviour He confessed his own
as now it is that which we call natural death and supposing that God should preserve the Body for ever or restore it at the day of Judgment to its full substance and perfect organs yet the man would be dead for ever if the Soul for ever should continue separate from the Body So that the other life that is the state of Resurrection is a re-uniting Soul and Body And although in a Philosophical sence the Resurrection is of the Body that is a restitution of our flesh and bloud and bones and is called Resurrection as the entrance into the state of Resurrection may have the denomination of the whole yet in the sence of Scripture the Resurrection is the restitution of our life the renovation of the whole man the state of Re-union and untill that be the man is not but he is dead and onely his essential parts are deposited and laid up in trust and therefore whatsoever the Soul does or perceives in its incomplete condition is but to it as embalming and honourable funerals to the Body and a safe monument to preserve it in order to a living again and the felicities of the intervall are wholly in order to the next life And therefore if there were to be no Resurrection as these intermedial joys should not be at all so as they are they are but relative and incomplete and therefore all our hopes all our felicities depend upon the Resurrection without it we should never be persons men or women and then the state of Separation could be nothing but a phantasm trees ever in blossome never bearing fruit corn for ever in the blade eggs always in the shell a hope eternal never to pass into fruition that is for ever to be deluded for ever to be miserable And therefore it was an elegant expression of S. Paul Our life is hid with Christ in God that is our life is passed into custody the dust of our body is numbred and the Spirit is refreshed visited and preserved in celestial mansions but it is not properly called a Life for all this while the man is dead and shall then live when Christ produces this hidden life at the great day of restitution But our faith of all this Article is well wrapt up in the words of S. John Beloved now we are the Sons of God and it doth not yet appear what we shall be but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is The middle state is not it which Scripture hath propounded to our Faith or to our Hope the reward is then when Christ shall appear but in the mean time the Soul can converse with God and with Angels just as the holy Prophets did in their Dreams in which they received great degrees of favour and revelation But this is not to be reckoned any more than an entrance or a waiting for the state of our Felicity And since the glories of Heaven is the great fruit of Election we may consider that the Body is not predestinate nor the Soul alone but the whole Man and until the parts embrace again in an essential complexion it cannot be expected either of them should receive the portion of the predestinate But the article and the event of future things is rarely set in order by Saint Paul But ye are come into the mount Sion and to the City of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem and to an innumerable company of Angels To the general assembly and Church of the first born which are written in heaven and to God the Judge of all and then follows after this general assembly after the Judge of all appears to the spirits of just men made perfect that is re-united to their bodies and entring into glory The beginning of the contrary Opinion brought some new practices and appendent perswasions into the Church or at least promoted them much For those Doctors who receding from the Primitive belief of this Article taught that the glories of Heaven are fully communicated to the Souls before the day of Judgment did also upon that stock teach the Invocation of Saints whom they believed to be received into glory and insensibly also brought in the opinion of Purgatory that the less perfect Souls might be glorified in the time that they assigned them But the safer opinion and more agreeable to Piety is that which I have now described from Scripture and the purest Ages of the Church 16. When Jesus appeared to the Apostles he gave them his Peace for a Benediction and when he departed he left them Peace for a Legacy and gave them according to two former promises the power of making Peace and reconciling Souls to God by a ministerial act so conveying his Father's mercy which himself procured by his Passion and actuates by his Intercession and the giving of his Grace that he might comply with our infirmities and minister to our needs by instruments even and proportionate to our selves making our brethren the conduits of his Grace that the excellent effect of the Spirit might not descend upon us as the Law upon Mount Sinai in expresses of greatness and terrour but in earthen vessels and images of infirmity so God manifesting his power in the smalness of the instrument and descending to our needs not only in giving the grace of Pardon but also in the manner of its ministration And I meditate upon the greatness of this Mercy by comparing this Grace of God and the blessing of the Judgment and Sentence we receive at the hand of the Church with the Judgment which God makes at the hour of death upon them who have despised this mercy and neglected all the other parts of their duty The one is a Judgment of mercy the other of vengeance In the one the Devil is the Accuser and Heaven and earth bear witness in the other the penitent sinner accuses himself In that the sinner gets a pardon in the other he finds no remedy In that all his good deeds are remembred and returned and his sins are blotted out in the other all his evil deeds are represented with horrour and a sting and remain for ever In the first the sinner changes his state for a state of Grace and only smarts in some temporal austerities and acts of exteriour mortification in the second his temporal estate is changed to an eternity of pain In the first the sinner suffers the shame of one man or one society which is sweetned by consolation and homilies of mercy and health in the latter all his sins are laid open before all the world and himself confounded in eternal amazement and confusions In the judgment of the Church the sinner is honoured by all for returning to the bosome of his Mother and the embraces of his heavenly Father in the judgment of vengeance he is laughed at by God and mocked by accursed spirits and perishes without pity In this he is prayed for by none
not absolutely priviledg'd from failures and miscarriages in their lives these being of more personal and private consideration yet were they infallible in their Doctrine this being a matter whereupon the salvation and eternal interests of men did depend And for this end they had the spirit of truth promised to them who should guide them into all truth Under the conduct of this unerring Guide they all steer'd the same course taught and spake the same things though at different times and in distant places and for what was consign'd to writing all Scripture was given by inspiration of God and the holy men spake not but as they were moved by the Holy Ghost Hence that exact and admirable harmony that is in all their writings and relations as being all equally dictated by the same spirit of truth Thirdly They had been eye-witnesses of all the material passages of our Saviour's life continually conversant with him from the commencing of his publick ministery till his ascension into heaven they had survey'd all his actions seen all his miracles observ'd the whole method of his conversation and some of them attended him in his most private solitudes and retirements And this could not but be a very rational satisfaction to the minds of men when the publishers of the Gospel solemnly declared to the world that they reported nothing concerning our Saviour but what they had seen with their own eyes and of the truth whereof they were as competent Judges as the acutest Philosopher in the world Nor could there be any just 〈◊〉 to suspect that they impos'd upon men in what they delivered for besides their naked plainness and simplicity in all other passages of their lives they chearfully submitted to the most exquisire hardships tortures and sufferings meerly to attest the truth of what they published to the World Next to the evidence of our own senses no testimony is more valid and forcible than his who relates what himself has seen Upon this account our Lord told his Apostles that they should be witnesses to him both in Judaea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth And so necessary a qualification of an Apostle was this thought to be that it was almost the only condition propounded in the choice of a new Apostle after the fall of Judas Wherefore says Peter of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went 〈◊〉 and out among us beginning from the Baptism of John unto the same day that he was taken up from us must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his 〈◊〉 Accordingly we find the Apostles constantly making use of this argument as the most rational evidence to convince those whom they had to deal with We are witnesses of all things which Jesus did both in the Land of the Jews and in Jerusalem whom they slew and hanged on a tree Him God raised up the third day and shewed him openly not to all the people but unto witnesses chosen 〈◊〉 of God even to us who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead And he commanded us to preach unto the people and to testifie that it is he that is ordained of God to be Judge of the quick and dead Thus S. John after the same way of arguing appeals to sensible demonstration That which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have look'd upon and our hands have handled of the word of life For the life was manifested and we have seen it and bear witness and shew unto you that cternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us This to name no more S. Peter thought a sufficient vindication of the Apostolical doctrine from the suspicion of forgery and imposture We have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ but were eye-witnesses of his majesty God had frequently given testimony to the divinity of our blessed Saviour by visible manifestations and appearances from Heaven and particularly by an audible voice This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased Now this Voice which came from Heaven says he we heard when we were with him in the holy Mount IX Fourthly The Apostles were invested with a power of working Miracles as the readiest means to procure their Religion a firm belief and entertainment in the minds of men For Miracles are the great confirmation of the truth of any doctrine and the most rational evidence of a divine commission For seeing God only can create and controll the Laws of nature produce something out of nothing and call things that are not as if they were give eyes to them that were born blind raise the dead c. things plainly beyond all possible powers of nature no man that believes the wisdom and goodness of an infinite being can suppose that this God of truth should affix his seal to a lye or communicate this power to any that would abuse it to confirm and countenance delusions and impostures Nicodemus his reasoning was very plain and convictive when he concludes that Christ must needs be a teacher come from God for that no man could do those Miracles that he did except God were with him The force of which argument lies here that nothing but a Divine power can work Miracles and that Almighty God cannot be supposed miraculously to assist any but those whom he himself sends upon his own errand The stupid and barbarous Lycaonians when they beheld the Man who had been a Cripple from his Mothers womb cured by S. Paul in an instant only with the speaking of a word saw that there was something in it more than humane and therefore concluded that the Gods were come down to them in the likeness of men Upon this account S. Paul reckons Miracles among the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the signs and evidences of an Apostle whom therefore Chrysostom brings in elegantly pleading for himself that though he could not shew as the signs of his Priesthood and Ministry long Robes and gaudy Vestments with Bells sounding at their borders as the Aaronical Priests did of old though he had no golden Crowns or holy Mitres yet could he produce what was infinitely more venerable and regardable than all these unquestionable Signs and Miracles he came not with Altars and Oblations with a number of strange and symbolick Rites but what was greater raised the dead cast out Devils cured the blind healed the lame making the Gentiles obedient by word and deed thorough many signs and wonders wrought by the power of the spirit of God These were the things that clearly shewed that their mission and ministry was not from men nor taken up of their own heads but that they
acted herein by a Divine warrant and authority That therefore it might plainly appear to the World that they did not falsify in what they said or deliver any more than God had given them in commission he enabled them to do strange and miraculous operations bearing them witness both with signs and wonders and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost This was a power put into the first draught of their commission when confined only to the Cities of Israel As ye go preach saying The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand Heal the sick cleanse the lepers raise the dead cast out Devils freely you have received freely give but more fully confirmed upon them when our Lord went to Heaven then he told them that these signs should follow them that believe that in his Name they should cast out Devils and speak with new tongues that they should take up serpents and if they drank any deadly thing it should not hurt them that they should lay hands on the sick and they should recover And the event was accordingly for they went forth and preached every where the Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs following When Paul and Barnabas came up to the Council at Jerusalem this was one of the first things they gave an account of all the multitude keeping silence while they declared what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them Thus the very shadow of Peter as he passed by cured the sick thus God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons and the diseases departed from them and the evil spirits went out of them So that besides the innate characters of Divinity which the Christian religion brought along with it containing nothing but what was highly reasonable and very becoming God to reveal it had the highest external evidence that any Religion was capable of the attestation of great and unquestionable Miracles done not once or twice not privately and in corners not before a few simple and credulous persons but frequently and at every turn publickly and in places of the most solemn concourse before the wisest and most judicious enquirers and this power of miracles continued not only during the Apostles time but for some Ages after X. But because besides Miracles in general the Scripture takes particular notice of many gifts and powers of the Holy Ghost conferred upon the Apostles and first Preachers of the Gospel it may not be amiss to consider some of the chiefest and most material of them as we find them enumerated by the Apostle only premising this observation that though these gifts were distinctly distributed to persons of an inferiour order so that one had this and another that yet were they all conferr'd upon the Apostles and doubtless in larger proportions than upon the rest First we take notice of the gift of Prophecy a clear evidence of divine inspiration and an extraordinary mission the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy It had been for many Ages the signal and honourable priviledge of the Jewish Church and that the Christian Oeconomy might challenge as sacred regards from men and that it might appear that God had not withdrawn his Spirit from his Church in this new state of things it was revived under the dispensation of the Gospel according to that famous prophecy of Joel exactly accomplished as Peter told the Jews upon the day of 〈◊〉 when the miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost were so plentifully shed upon the Apostles and Primitive Christians This is that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel It shall come to pass in the last days saith God I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh and your Sons and your Daughters shall 〈◊〉 and your young Men shall see 〈◊〉 and your old Men shall dream Dreams and on my servants and on my Hand-maidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit and they shall prophesie It lay in general in revealing and making known to others the mind of God but discovered it self in particular instances partly in forctelling things to come and what should certainly happen in after-times a thing set beyond the reach of any finite understanding for though such effects as depend upon natural agents or moral and political causes may be foreseen by studious and considering persons yet the knowledge of futurities things purely contingent that meerly depend upon mens choice and their mutable and uncertain wills can only fall under his view who at once beholds things past present and to come Now this was conferred upon the Apostles and some of the first Christians as appears from many instances in the History of the Apostolick Acts and we find the Apostles writings frequently interspersed with prophetical predictions concerning the great apostasie from the 〈◊〉 the universal corruption and degeneracy of manners the rise of particular heresies the coming of Antichrist and several other things which the spirit said 〈◊〉 should come to pass in the latter times besides that S. John's whole Book of Revelation is almost intirely made up of prophecies concerning the future state and condition of the Church Sometimes by this spirit of prophecy God declared things that were of present concernment to the exigences of the Church as when he signified to them that they should set apart Paul and Barnabas for the conversion of the Gentiles and many times immediately designed particular persons to be Pastors and Governours of the Church Thus we read of the gift that was given to Timothy by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery that is his Ordination to which he was particularly pointed out by some prophetick designation But the main use of this prophetick gift in those times was to explain some of the more difficult and particular parts of the Christian doctrine especially to expound and apply the ancient prophecies concerning the 〈◊〉 and his Kingdom in their publick Assemblies whence the gift of prophecy is explained by understanding all mysteries and all knowledge that is the most dark and difficult places of Scripture the types and figures the ceremonies and prophecies of the Old Testament And thus we are commonly to understand those words Prophets and prophecying that so familiarly occur in the New Testament Having 〈◊〉 differing according to the grace that is given to us whether prophesie let us prophecy according to the proportion of faith that is expound Scripture according to the generally-received principles of Faith and Life So the Apostle elsewhere prescribing Rules for the decent and orderly managing of Divine worship in their publick Assemblies let the Prophets says he speak two or three that is at the same Assembly and let the other judge and if while any is thus expounding another has a Divine 〈◊〉 whereby he is more particularly enabled to explain some difficult and emergent
and adherences of love and obedience to his heavenly Father were next to infinite yet in his external actions in which only with the correspondence of the Spirit in those actions he propounds himself imitable he did so converse with men that men after that example might for ever converse with him We find that some Saints have had excrescencies and eruptions of Holiness in the instances of uncommanded Duties which in the same particulars we find not in the story of the Life of Jesus John Baptist was a greater Mortifier than his Lord was and some Princes have given more money than all Christ's Family did whilest he was alive but the difference which is observable is that although some men did some acts of Counsel in order to attain that perfection which in Jesus was essential and unalterable and was not acquired by degrees and means of danger and difficulty yet no man ever did his whole duty save only the Holy Jesus The best of men did sometimes actions not precisely and strictly requisite and such as were besides the Precept but yet in the greatest flames of their shining Piety they prevaricated something of the Commandment They that have done the most things beyond have also done some things short of their duty But Jesus who intended himself the Example of Piety did in manners as in the rule of Faith which because it was propounded to all men was fitted to every understanding it was true necessary short easie and intelligible So was his Rule and his Copy 〈◊〉 not only with excellencies worthy but with compliances possible to be imitated of glories so great that the most early and constant industry must confess its own imperfections and yet so sweet and humane that the greatest infirmity if pious shall find comfort and encouragement Thus God gave his children Manna from Heaven and though it was excellent like the food of Angels yet it conformed to every palate according to that appetite which their several fancies and constitutions did produce 9. But now when the Example of Jesus is so excellent that it allures and tempts with its facility and sweetness and that we are not commanded to imitate a Life whose story tells of 〈◊〉 in Prayer and Abstractions of senses and immaterial Transportations and Fastings to the exinanition of spirits and disabling all animal operations but a Life of Justice and Temperance of Chastity and Piety of Charity and Devotion such a Life without which humane Society cannot be conserved and by which as our irregularities are made regular so our weaknesses are not upbraided nor our miseries made a mockery we find so much reason to address our selves to a heavenly imitation of so blessed a Pattern that the reasonableness of the thing will be a great argument to chide every degree and minute of neglect It was a strange and a confident encouragement which Phocion used to a timorous Greek who was condemned to die with him Is it not enough to thee that thou must die with Phocion I am sure he that is most incurious of the issues of his life is yet willing enough to reign with Jesus when he looks upon the Glories represented without the Duty but it is a very great stupidity and unreasonableness not to live with him in the imitation of so holy and so prompt a Piety It is glorious to do what he did and a shame to decline his Sufferings when there was a God to hallow and sanctifie the actions and a Man clothed with infirmity to undergo the sharpness of the passion so that the Glory of the person added excellency to the first and the Tenderness of the person excused not from suffering the latter 10. Thirdly Every action of the Life of Jesus as it is imitable by us is of so excellent merit that by making up the treasure of Grace it becomes full of assistances to us and obtains of God Grace to enable us to its imitation by way of influence and impetration For as in the acquisition of Habits the very exercise of the Action does produce a Facility to the action and in some proportion becomes the cause of its self so does every exercise of the Life of Christ kindle its own fires inspires breath into it self and makes an univocal production of its self in a differing subject And Jesus becomes the fountain of spiritual Life to us as the Prophet Elisha to the dead child when he stretched his hands upon the child's hands laid his mouth to his mouth and formed his posture to the boy and breathed into him the spirit returned again into the child at the prayer of Elisha so when our lives are formed into the imitation of the Life of the Holiest Jesus the spirit of God returns into us not only by the efficacy of the imitation but by the merit and impetration of the actions of Jesus It is reported in the Bohemian Story that S. Wenceslaus their King one winter-night going to his Devotions in a remote Church bare-footed in the snow and sharpness of unequal and pointed ice his servant Podavivus who waited upon his Master's piety and endeavoured to imitate his affections began to faint through the violence of the snow and cold till the King commanded him to follow him and set his feet in the same footsteps which his feet should mark for him the servant did so and either fansied a cure or found one for he followed his Prince help'd forward with shame and zeal to his imitation and by the forming footsteps for him in the snow In the same manner does the Blessed Jesus for since our way is troublesome obscure full of objection and danger apt to be mistaken and to affright our industry he commands us to mark his footsteps to tread where his feet have stood and not only invites us forward by the argument of his Example but he hath troden down much of the difficulty and made the way easier and fit for our feet For he knows our infirmities and himself hath felt their experience in all things but in the neighbourhoods of sin and therefore he hath proportioned a way and a path to our strengths and capacities and like Jacob hath marched softly and in evenness with the children and the cattel to entertain us by the comforts of his company and the influences of a perpetual guide 11. Fourthly But we must know that not every thing which Christ did is imitable by us neither did he in the work of our Redemption in all things imitate his heavenly Father For there are some things which are issues of an absolute Power some are expresses of supreme Dominion some are actions of a Judge And therefore Jesus prayed for his enemies and wept over Jerusalem when at the same instant his Eternal Father laughed them to scorn for he knew that their day was coming and himself had decreed their ruine But it became the Holy Jesus to imitate his Father's mercies for himself was the great instrument of