expounded dilated by Orators The Father of Orators testifies Nihil tam perspicuum there is nothing so evident as that there is a soveraigne power that made and governes all Dost thou love learning as it is contracted brought to a quintessence wrought to a spirit by Philosophers the eldest of all them in that whole book Quod Deus latens simul patens est testifies all that and nothing but that that as there is nothing so dark so there is nothing so cleare nothing so remote nothing so neare us as God Dost thou love learning as it is sweetned and set to musique by Poets the King of the Poets testifies the same Mens agitat molem magno se corpore miscet that is a great an universall spirit that moves a generall soule that inanimates and agitates every peece of this world But Saint Paul is a more powerfull Orator then Cicero and he says The invisible things of God are seen by things which are made and thereby man is made inexcuseable Moses is an ancienter Philosopher then Trismegistus and his picture of God is the Creation of the world David is a better Poet then Virgil and with David Coeli enarrant the heavens declare the glory of God The power of oratory in the force of peâ—swasion the strength of conclusions in the pressing of Philosophy the harmony of Poetry in the sweetnesse of composition never met in any man so fully as in the Prophet Esay nor in the Prophet Esay more then where he says Levate Oculos Lift up your eyes on high and behold who hath created these things behold them therefore to know that they are created and to know who is their creator All other authors we distinguish by tomes by parts by volumes but who knowes the volumes of this Author how many volumes of Spheares involve one another how many tomes of Gods Creatures there are Hast thou not room hast thou not money hast thou not understanding hast thou not leasure for great volumes for the bookes of heaven for the Mathematiques nor for the books of Courts the Politiques take but the Georgiques the consideration of the Earth a farme a garden nay seven foot of earth a grave and that will be book enough Goel lower every worme in the grave lower every weed upon the grave is an abridgement of all nay lock up all doores and windowes see nothing but thy selfe nay let thy selfe be locked up in a close prison that thou canst not see thy selfe and doe but feel thy pulse let thy pulse be intermitted or stupefied that thou feel not that doe but thinke and a worme a weed thy selfe thy pulse thy thought are all testimonies that All this All and all the parts thereof are opus a work made and opus ejus his work made by God He that made a Clock or an Organ will be sure to ingrave his Me fecit such a man made me he that builds a faire house takes it ill if a passenger will not aske whose house is it he that bred up his Sonne to a capacity of noble employments looks that the world should say he had a wise and an honourable Father Can any man look upon the frame of this world and not say there is a powerfull upon the administration of this world and not say there is a wise and a just hand over it Thus is the object 't is but Illud the world but such a world as may well justifie Saint Hieromes translation who renders it Illum not onely that every man may see it the work the world but may see him God in that work That 's the object not onely the work but the workman God in the work and the meanes is that man may see it that is by that spectacle he may see God what of God how much of God Is it his essence For that the resolution of the School is sufficient Nulla visio naturalis in terris no man can see God in this world and live but no man can see God in the next world and dye there visio is beatitudo sight is salvation Yet Nulla visio corporalis in Coelis These bodily eyes even then when they are glorified shall not see the Essence of God our mortal eyes do not see bodies here they see no substance they see onely quantities and dimensions our glorified bodily eyes shall see the glory shed out of God but the very essence of God those glorified bodily eyes shall not see but the eyes of our soul shall be so enlightned as that they shal see God Sicuti est even in his essence which the best illumined most sanctified men are very far from in this life Now the sight of God in this text is the knowledge of God to see God is but to know that there is a God And can man as a naturall man doe that See God so as to know that there is a God Can hee doe it Nay can he chuse but doe it The question hath divided the School those two great and well known families of the School whom we call Thomists and Scotists the first say that this proposition Deus est is per se nota evident in it selfe and the others deny that But yet they differ but thus far that Thomas thinks that it is so evident that man cannot chuse but know it though he resist it The other thinks in it selfe it is but so evident as that a man may know it if he imploy his naturall faculties without going any farther thus much indeed thus little they differ Now the holy Ghost is the God of Peace and doth so far reconcile these two in this text as that first in our reading it is That man may see God and that Scotus does not deny but in the Originall in the Hebrew it is Casu and Casu is viderunt not every man may but every man hath seen God Though it goe not absolutely so far as Thomas every man must no man can chuse but see God yet it goes so far further then Scotus who ends in every man may as that it says every man hath seen God So that our labour never lies in this to prove to any man that he may see God but onely to remember him that he hath seen God not to make him beleeve that there is a God but to make him see that he does beleeve it Quid habes quod non accepisti And hast thou received any thing and not seen not known him that gave it Who hath infused comfort into thee into thy distresses Thine own Morall constancy Who infused that Who hath imprinted terrors in thee A dampe in thine owne heart Who imprinted it Sweare to me now that thou beleevest not in God and before midnight thou wilt tell God that thou dost Miserable distemper not to see God in the light and see him in the darke not to see him at noon and see him fearfully at
Fifty SERMONS PREACHED BY THAT LEARNED AND REVEREND DIVINE JOHN DONNE D r IN DIVINITY Late Deane of the Cathedrall Church of S. PAULS London The Second Volume LONDON Printed by Ia. Flesher for M. F. I. Marriot and R. Royston MDCXLIX TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BASIL EARLE OF DENBY My very good Lord and Patron My Lord IN a season so tempestuous it is a great encouragement to see your Lordship called to the Helme who in your publique negociations having spent so many yeares in that so famed Common-wealth of Venice must of necessity have brought home such excellent Principles of Government that if our Fate doe not withstand your Directions we may reasonably at last expect to see our new Brittish Lady excell that ancient Adriatique Queene Neither can I offend much against the State in begging your Patronage and perusall of this Book knowing that your Lordship first mastered all the Learning of Padoa before you did adventure upon that wise Senate who amongst all her other greatnesses has ever had a principall care that Learning might not be diminished When these Sermons were preached they were terminated within the compasse of an houre but your acceptance may make them outlive the very Churches that they were preached in and give them such a perpetuity that Nec Jovis Ira nec Amor edacior multò poterit abolere For though a fiery zeale in succeeding ages hath often both ruined the Temples and casheired the gods that were worshipped in them Yet such sacrifices as these have beemy laies kept unburnt and we are suffered to know those religions that we are not allowed to practice Nor can I expect any greater advantage for the paines I have taken in publishing this Book then that posterity may know I did it when I had the favor and protection of your Lordship and was allowed to stile my selfe Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BOLSTRED WHITLOCK RICHARD KEEBLE 〈◊〉 JOHN LEILE Lords Commissioners of the Great Seale THe reward that many yeares since was proposed for the publishing these Sermons having been lately conferred upon me under the authority of the Great Seale I thought my selfe in gratitude bound to deliver them to the world under your Lordships protection both to show how carefull you are in dispensing that part of the Churches treasure that is committed to your disposing and to encourage all men to proceed in their industry when they are sure to find so just and equall Patrons whose fame and memory must certainely last longer then Bookes can find so noble Readers and whose present favors doe not onely keep the Living alive but the Dead from dying Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE A Table directing to the severall Texts of SCRIPTURE handled in this Book Sermons preached at Mariages Sermon I. Preached at the Earl of Bridgwaters house in London on MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven p. 1. Serm ' II. GEN. 2. 18. And the Lord God said It is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a Help meet for him p. 9. Serm. III. HOSEA 2. 19. And I will mary thee unto me for ever p. 15 Sermons preached at Christnings Serm. IV. REVEL 7. 17. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall governe them and shall leade them unto the lively fountaines of waters and God shall wipe away all teares from their eyes p. 23 Serm. V. EPHES. 5. 25 26 27. Husbands love your wives even at Christ loved the Church and gave himselfe for it that he might sanctifie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the Word That he might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinckle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blame p. 31 Serm. VI. 1 JOH 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the blood and these three agree in one p. 39 Serm. VII GAL. 3. 27. For all yee that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. p. 50. Sermons preached at Churchings Serm. VIII CANT 5. 3. I have washed my feet how shall I defile them p. 59. Serm. IX MICAH 2. 10. Arise and depart for this is not your rest p. 67. Serm. X. A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 74. Sermons preached at Lincolns-Inne Serm. XI GEN. 28. 16 17. Then Iacob awoke out of his sleep and said Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware And he was afraid and said How fearefull is this place This is none other but the House of God and this is the gate of Heaven p. 83 Serm. XII JOH 5. 22. The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgement to the Sonne p. 94. Serm. XIII JOH 8. 15. I judge no man p. 101. Serm. XIIII JOB 19. 26. And though after my skin wormes destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God p. 106. Serm. XV. 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God p. 118. Serm. XVI COLOS. 1. 24. Who now rejoyce in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his bodies sake which is the Church p. 128. Serm. XVII MAT. 18. 7. Wo unto the world because of offences p. 136. Serm. XVIII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 142 Serm. XIX PSAL. 38. 2. For thine arrowes stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore p. 158. Serm. XX. PSA 38. 3. There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne p. 162. Serm. XXI PSAL. 38. 4. For mine iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me p. 174. Serm. XXII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 186. Serm. XXIII A third Serm. on the same Text. p. 192. Sermons preached at White-Hall Serm. XXIV EZEK 34. 19. And as for my flocke they eate that which ye have trodden with your feet and they drink that which yee have fouled with your feet 199. Serm. XXV A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 208. Serm. XXVI ESAI 65. 20. For the childe shall die a hundred yeers old but the sinner being a hundred yeers old shall be accursed p. 218 Serm. XXVII MARK 4. 24. Take heed what you hear p. 228 Serm. XXVIII GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our own Image after our likenesse p. 239. Serm. XXIX A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 250 Sermons preached to the Nobility Serm. XXX JOB 13. 15. Loe though he slay me yet will I trust in him p. 262. Serm. XXXI JOB 36.
25. Every man may see it man may behold it afar off p. 271. Serm. XXXII APOC. 7 9. After this I beheld and loe a great multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lambe clothed with white robes and Palmes in their hands p. 279. Serm. XXXIII CANT 3. 11. Go forth ye daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart p. 288. Serm. XXXIIII LUKE 23. 34. Father forgive them for they know not what they doe p. 304. Serm. XXXV MAT. 21. 44. Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken but on whosoever it shall fall it will grinde him to powder p. 311. Sermons preached at S. Pauls Sermon XXXVI JOH 1. 8. He was not that Light but was sent to beare witnesse of that Light p. 320. Serm. XXXVII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 334. Serm. XXXVIII A third Ser. on the the same Text. p. 343. Serm. XXXIX PHIL. 3. 2. Beware of the Concision p. 356. Serm. XL. 2 COR. 5. 20. We pray yee in Christs stead Be ye reconciled to God p. 364. XLI HOSEA 3. 4. For the Children of Israel shall abide many dayes without a King and without a Prince and without a Sacrifice and without an Image and without an Ephod and without Teraphim p. 375. Serm. XLII PROV 14. 31. He that oppresseth the poor reprocheth his Maker but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the 〈◊〉 p. 385. Serm. XLIII LAMENT 4. 20. The breath of our nostrils the Anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits p. 396. Serm. XLIV MAT. 11. 6. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me p. 411. Sermons preached at S. Dunstans Serm. XLV DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them dye and have no childe the Wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her p. 422. Serm. XLVI PSAL. 34. 11. Come ye children Hearken unto me I will teach you the feare of the Lord. p. 430. Ser. XLVII GEN. 3. 24. And dust shalt thou eate all the dayes of thy life p. 439. Ser. XLVIII LAMENT 3. 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath p. 445. Serm. XLIX GEN. 7. 24. Abraham himself was ninety nine yeeres old when the foreskin of his flesh was Circumcised p. 456. Serm. L. 1 THES 5. 16. Rejoyce evermore p. 466. A SERMON PREACHED At the Earl of Bridgewaters house in London at the mariage of his daughter the Lady Mary to the eldest sonne of the L. Herbert of Castle-iland Novemb. 19. 1627. The Prayer before the Sermon O Eternall and most gracious God who hast promised to hearken to the prayers of thy people when they pray towards thy house though they be absent from it worke more effectually upon us who are personally met in this thy house in this place consecrated to thy worship Enable us O Lord so to see thee in all thy Glasses in all thy representations of thy selfe to us here as that hereafter we may see thee face to face and as thou art in thy self in thy kingdome of glory Of which Glasses wherein we may see thee Thee in thine Unity as thou art One God Thee in thy Plurality as thou art More Persons we receive this thy Institution of Mariage to be one In thy first work the Creation the last seale of thy whole work was a Mariage In thy Sonnes great work the Redemption the first seale of that whole work was a miracle at a Mariage In the work of thy blessed Spirit our Sanctification he refreshes to us that promise in one Prophet That thou wilt mary thy selfe to us for ever and more in another That thou hast maryed thy selfe unto us from the beginning Thou hast maryed Mercy and Iustice in thy selfe maryed God and Man in thy Sonne maryed Increpation and Consolation in the Holy Ghost mary in us also O Lord a Love and a Fear of thee And as thou hast maryed in us two natures mortall and immortall mary in us also the knowledge and the practise of all duties belonging to both conditions that so this world may be our Gallery to the next And mary in us the Spirit of Thankfulnesse for all thy benefits already bestowed upon us and the Spirit of prayer for the continuance and enlargement of them Continue and enlarge them O'God upon thine universall Church c. SERM. I. MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven OF all Commentaries upon the Scriptures Good Examples are the best and the livelyest and of all Examples those that are nearest and most present and most familiar unto us and our most familiar Examples are those of our owne families and in families the Masters of families the fathers of families are most conspicuous most appliable most considerable Now in exercises upon such occasions as this ordinarily the instruction is to bee directed especially upon those persons who especially give the occasion of the exercise that is upon the persons to bee united in holy wedlock for as that 's a difference betweene Sermons and Lectures that a Sermon intends Exhortation principally and Edification and a holy stirring of religious affections and then matters of Doctrine and points of Divinity occasionally secondarily as the words of the text may invite them But Lectures intend principally Doctrinall points and matter of Divinity and matter of Exhortation but occasionally and as in a second place so that 's a difference between Christening sermons and Mariage sermons that the first at Christnings are especially directed upon the Congregation and not upon the persons who are to be christened and these at mariages especially upon the parties that are to be united and upon the congregation but by reflexion When therefore to these persons of noble extraction I am to say something of the Duties and something of the Blessing of Mariage what God Commands and what God promises in that state in his Scriptures I lay open to them the best exposition the best Commentaries upon those Scriptures that is Example and the neerest example that is example in their own family when with the Prophet Esay I direct them To look upon the Rock from whence they are hewen to propose to themselves their own parents and to consider there the performance of the duties of mariage imposed by God in S. Paul and the blessings proposed by God in David Thy Wife shall be a fruitfull Vine by the sides of thy House The children like olive plants round about the table For to this purpose of edifying children by example such as are truly religious fathers
word that is without understanding or considering the institution vertue of baptisime expressed in Gods word and so receive baptisme onely for temporall and naturall respects they are not led to the waters but they fall into them and so as a Man may be drowned in a wholsome bath so such a Man may perish eternally in baptisme if he take it for satisfaction of the State or any other by respect to which that Sacrament is not ordained in the word of God He shall lead Men of years by Instruction and he shall lead young children in good company and with a strong guard he shall lead them by the faith of his Church by the faith of their Parents by the faith of their sureties and undertakers He shall lead them and then when he hath taken them into his government for first it is Reget he shall govern them and then Deducet that is he shall lead them in his Church and therefore they that are led to baptisme any other way then by the Church they are misled nay they are miscarried misdriven Spiritu vertiginis with the spirit of giddinesse They that joyne any in commission with the Trinity though but as an asstsant for so they say in the Church of Rome baptisme may be administred in the name of the Father Sonne and holy Ghost and the virgin Mary they follow not as Christ led in his Church Non fuit sic ab initio it was not so from the beginning for quod extra hos tres est totum Conservum est though much dignity belong to the memory of the Saints of God yet whosoever is none of the three Persons Conservus est he is our fellow-servant though his service lie above staires and ours below his in the triumphant ours in the militant Church Conservus est yet he or she is in that respect but our fellow-servant and not Christs fellow-redeemer So also if we be led to Marah to the waters of bitternesse that we bring a bitter taste of those institutions of the Church for the decency and signification in Sacramentall things things belonging to Baptisme if we bring a misinterpretation of them an indisposition to them an aversnesse from them and so nourish a bitternes and uncharitablenesse towards one another for these Ceremonies if we had rather crosse one another and crosse the Church then crosse the child as God shewed Moses a tree which made those waters in the wildernesse sweet when it was cast in so remember that there is the tree of life the crosse of Christ Iesus and his Merits in this water of baptisme when we all agree in that that all the vertue proceeds from the crosse of Christ the God of unity and peace and concord let us admit any representation of Christs crosse rather then admit the true crosse of the devill which is a bitter and schismaticall crossing of Christ in his Church for it is there in his Church that he leads us to these waters Well then they to whom these waters belong have Christ in his Church to lead them and therefore they need not stay till they can come alone till they be of age and years of discretion as the Anabaptists say for it is Deducet and Deducet cos generally universally all that are of this government all that are appointed for the Seal all the one hundred and forty foure thousand all the Innumerable multitudes of all Nations Christ leads them all Be Baptized every one of you in the name of Iesus Christ for the remission of sinnes for the promise is made unto you and your children Now all promises of God are sealed in the holy Ghost To whom soever any promise of God belongs he hath the holy Ghost and therefore Nunquid aquam quis prohibere potest Can any Man forbid water that these should not be baptized which havereceived the holy Ghost as well as we says S. Peter And therfore the Children of the Covenant which have the promise have the holy Ghost all they are in this Regiment Deducet cos Christ shall lead them all But whither unto the lively says our first edition unto the living says our last edition fountaines of waters In the originall unto the fountaines of the water of life now in the Scriptures nothing is more ordianry then by the name of waters to designe and meane tribulations so amongst many other God says of the City of Tyre that he would make it a desolate City and bring the deep upon it and great waters should cover it But then there is some such addition as leads to that sense either they are called Aqua multae great waters or Profunda aquarum deep waters or Absorbebit aqua whirlepooles of waters or Tempestas aquae tempestuous waters or Aqua Fellis bitter water God bath mingled gall in our water but we shall never read fontes aquarum fountaines of waters but it hath a gratious sense and presents Gods benefits So they have forsaken me the fountaine of living waters So the water that I shall give shall be in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life and so every where else when we are brought to the fountaines to this water in the fountaine in the institution howsover we puddle it with impertinent questions in disputation however we soule it with our finnes and all conversation the fountaine is pure Baptisme presents and offers grace and remission of sinnes to all Nay not onely this fountaine of water but the greatest water of all the flood it selfe Saint Basil understands and applies to Baptisme as the Apostle himselfe does Baptisme was a figure of the flood and the Arke for upon that place The Lord sitseth upon the flood and the Lord doth remaine King for ever he says Baptismi gratiam Diluvium nominat nam deles purgat David calls Baptisme the flood because it destroyes all that was sinfull in us and so also he referrs to Baptisme those words when David had confessed his sinnes I thought I would confesse against my selfe my wickednesse unto the Lord and when it is added Surely in the flood of great waters they shall not come near him peccato non appropinquabunt says he originall sinne shall not come neare him that is truly baptized nay all the actuall sinnes in his future life shall be drowned in this baptisme as often as he doth religiously and repentantly consider that in Baptisme when the merit of Christ was communicated to him he received an Antidote against all poyson against all sinne if he applied them together sinne and the merit of Christ for so also he says of that place God will subdue all our iniquities and cast our sinnes into the bottome of the Sea Hoc est in mare Baptismi says Basil into the Sea of Baptisme There was a Brasen Sea in the Temple and there is a golden Sea in the Church of
joyned to the element or to the Action then there is a true Sacrament are ill understood by two sorts of Menâ— first by them that say that it is not verbum Deprecatorium nor verbum Conciâ—natâ—riuâ— not the word of Prayer nor the word of preaching but verbum Consecratorium and verbum Sacramentale that very phrase and forme of words by which the water is sanctified and enabled of it selfe to cleanse our Soules and secondly these words are ill understood by them who had rather their children dyed unbaptized then have them baptized without a Sermon whereas the use of preaching at baptisme is to raise the whole Congregation to a consideration what they promised by others in their baptisme and to raise the Father and the Sureties to a consideration what they undertake for the childe whom they present then to be baptized for therefore says Saint Augustine Acoedaâ— verbum there is a necessity of the word Non quâ—a dicitur sed quia creditur not because the word is prâ—ached but because it is beleeved and That Beleese faith belongs not at all to the incapacity of the child but to the disposition of the rest A Sermon is usefull for the congregation not necessary for the child and the accomplishment of the Sacrament From hence then arises a convenience little lesse then necessary in a kind that this administration of the Sacrament be accompanied with preaching but yet they that would evict an absolute necessity of it out of these words force them too much for here the direct meaning of the Apostle is That the Church is cleansed by water through the word when the promises of God expressed in his word are sealed to us by this Sacrament of Baptisme for so Saint Augustine answers himselfe in that objection which he makes to himselfe Cum per Baptisâ—â—â— fundati sint quare sermoni tribuit radicem He answers In Sermone intelligendus Baptismusâ— Quia sine Sermone non perficitur It is rooted it is grounded in the word and therefore true Baptisme though it be administred without the word that is without the word preached yet it is never without the word because the whole Sacrament and the power thereof is rooted in the word in the Gospell And therefore since this Sacrament belongs to the Church as it is said here that Christ doth cleanse his Church by Baptisme as it is argued with a strong probability That because the Apostles did baptize whole families therefore they did baptize some children so we argue with an invincible certainty that because this Sacrament belongs generally to the Church as the initiatory Sacrament it belongs to children who are a part and for the most part the most innocent part of the Church To conclude As all those Virgins which were beautifull were brought into Susan Ad domum mulierum to be anointed and persumed and prepared there for Assuerus delight and pleasure though Assuerus tooke not delight and pleasure in them all so we admit all those children which are within the Covenant made by God to the elect and their seed In domum Sanctorum into the houshold of the faithfull into the communion of Saints whom he chooseth for his Mariage day that is for that Church which he will settle upon himselfe in heaven we know not but we know that he hath not promised to take any into that glory but those upon whom he hath first shed these fainter beames of glory and sanctification exhibited in this Sacrament Neither hath he threatned to exclude any but for sinne after And therefore when this blessed child derived from faithfull parents and presented by sureties within the obedience of the Church shall have been so cleansed by the washing of water through the word it is presently sealed to the possession of that part of Christs purchase for which he gave himselfe which are the meanes of preparing his Church in this life with a faithfull assurance I may say of it and to it Iam mundus es Now you are cleanâ— through the word which Christ hath spoken unto you The Seale of the promises of his Gospell hath sanctified and cleansed you but yet Mandatus mundandus says Saint Augustine upon that place It is so sanctified by the Sacrament here that it may be farther sanctified by the growth of his graces and be at last a member of that glorious Church which he shall settle upon himselfe without spot or wrinkle which was the principall and final purpose of that great love of his whereby he gave himselfe for us and made that love first a patterne of Mens loves to their wives here and then a meanes to bring Man and wife and child to the kingdome of heaven Amen SERMON VI. Preached at a Christning 1 JOHN 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one IN great and enormous offences we find that the law in a well governed State expressed the punishment upon such a delinquent in that form in that curse Igni aqua interdicitor let him have no use of fire and water that is no use of any thing necessary for the sustentation of life Beloved such is the miserable condition of wretched Man as that we come all into the world under the burden of that curse Aqua igni interdicimâ—r we have nothing to doe naturally with the spirituall water of life with the fiery beames of the holy Ghost till he that hath wrought our restitution from this banishment restore us to this water by powring out his owne bloud and to this lively fire by laying himselfe a cold and bloudlesse carcasse in the bowels of the Earth till he who haptized none with waâ—er direct his Church to doe that office towards us and he without whom none was baptized with fire perfect that Ministeriall worke of his Church with the effectuall seales of his grace for this is his testimony the witnesse of his love Yea that law in cases of such great offences expressed it selfe in another Malediction upon such offenders appliable also to us Intestabiles sunte let them be Intestable Now this was a sentence a Condemnation so pregnant so full of so many heavy afflictions as that he who by the law was made intestable was all these ways intestable First he was able to make no Testament of his owne he had lost all his interest in his owne estate and in his owne will Secondly he could receive no profit by any testament of any other Man he had lost all the effects of the love and good disposition of other Men to him Thirdly he was Intestable so as that he could not testifie he should not be beleeved in the behalfe of another and lastly the testimony of another could doe him no good no Man could be admitted to
before his Gospell was written principally and purposely against the opposers of Christs humanity but occasionally also in defence of his divine nature too Because there is Solutio Iesu a dissolving of Jesus a taking of Jesus in peeces a dividing of his Natures or of his Offices which overthrowes all the testimonies of these six great witnesses when Christ said Solvite templum hoc destroy dissolve this temple and in three dayes I will raise it he spoke that but of his naturall body there was Solutio corporis Christs body and soule were parted but there was not Solutio Iesu the divine nature parted not from the humane no not in death but adhered to and accompanied the soule even in hell and accompanied the body in the grave And therefore says the Apostle Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum ex deo non est for so Irenaeus and Saint Augustine and Saint Cyrill with the Grecians read those words That spirit which receives not Jesus intirely which dissolves Jesus and breakes him in peeces that spirit is not of God All this then is the subject of this testimony first that Christ Jesus is come in the flesh there is a Recognition of his humane nature And then that this Jesus is the sonne of God there is a subscription to his divine nature he that separates these and thereby makes him not able or not willing to satisfie for Man he that separates his Nature or he that separates the worke of the Redemption and says Christ suffered for us onely as Man and not as God or he that separates the manner of the worke and says that the passive obedience of Christ onely redeemed us without any respect at all to his active obedience onely as he died and nothing as he died innocently or he that separates the perfection and consummation of the worke from his worke and findes something to be done by Man himselfe meritorious to salvation or he that separates the Prince and the Subject Christ and his members by nourishing Controversies in Religion when they might be well reconciled or he that separates himselfe from the body of the Church and from the communion of Saints for the fashion of the garments for the variety of indifferent Ceremonies all these do Solvere Iesum they slacken they dissolve that Jesus whose bones God provided for that they should not be broken whose flesh God provided for that it should not see Corruption and whose garments God provided that they should not bee divided There are other luxations other dislocations of Jesus when we displace him for any worldly respect and prefer preforment before him there are other woundings of Jesus in blasphemous oathes and exerations there are other maimings of Jesus in pretending to serve him intirely and yet retaine one particular beloved sinne still there are other rackings and extendings of Jesus when we delay him and his patience to our death-bed when we stretch the string so farre that it cracks there that is appoint him to come then and he comes not there are other dissolutions of Jesus when men will melt him and powre him out and mold him up in a waser Cake or a peece of bread there are other annihilations of Jesus when Men will make him and his Sacraments to be nothing but bare signes but all these will be avoided by us if we be gained by the testimony of these six witnesses to hold fast that integrity that intirensse of Jesus which is here delivered to us by this Apostle In which we beleeve first Iâ—sum a Saviour which implies his love and his will to save us and then we beleeve Christum the anointed that is God and man able and willing to doe this great worke and that he is anointed and sealed for that purpose and this implies the decree the contract and bargaine of acceptation by the Father that Pactum salis that eternall covenant which seasons all by which that which he meant to doe as he was Iesus should be done as he was Christ. And then as the intirenesse of Jesus is expressed in the verse before the text we beleeve Quod venit that as all this might be done if the Father and Sonne would agree as all this must be done because they had agreed it so all this was done Quâ—a venit because this Jesus is already come and that for the father intirenesse for the perfection and consummation and declaration of all venit per aquam sanguinem He came by water and bloud Which words Saint Bernard understands to imply but a difference between the comming of Christ and the comming of Moses who was drawen out of the water and therefore called by that name of Moses But before Moses came to be a leader of the people he passed through bloud too through the bloud of the Egyptian whom he slew and much more when he established all their bloudy sacrifices so that Mases came not onely by water Neither was the first Testament ordained without bloud Others understand the words onely to put a difference between Iohn Baptist and Christ because Iohn Baptist is still said to baptize with waterâ— Because he should be declared to Israel therefore am I come baptizing with water but yet Iohn Baptists baptisme had not onely a relation to bloud but a demonstration of it when still he pointed to the Lambe Ecce Agnus for that Lambe was slâ—ine from the beginning of the world So that Christ which was this Lambe came by water and bloud when he came in the risuall types and figures of Moses and when he came in the baptisme of Iohn for in the Law of Moses there was so frequent use of water as that we reckon above fifty severall Immunditi as uncleannesses which might receive their expiation by washing without being put to their bloudy sacrifies for them And then there was so frequent use of bloud that almost all things are by the Law purged with bloud and without shedding of bloud is no Remission But this was such water and such bloud as could not perfect the worke but therefore was to be renewed every day The water that Jesus comes by is such a water as he that arinketh of it shall thirst no more nay there shall spring up in him a well of water that is his example shall worke to the satisfaction of others we doe not say to a satisfaction for others And then this is that bloud that perfected the whole worke at once By his own bloud entred he once into the holy place and obtained eternall Redemption for us So that Christ came by water and bloud according to the old ablutions and old sacrifices when he wept when he sweat when he powred out bloud pretious incorruptible inestimable bloud at so many channels as he did all the while that he was upon the altar sacrificing himselfe in his passion But after the immolation of this sacrifice after his Consummatum est when Christ
was come and gone for so much as belonged to the accomplishing of the types of the old law then Christ came againe to us by water and bloud in that wound which he received upon his side from which there flowed out miraculously true water true bloud This wound Saint Augustine calls Ianuam utriusque Sacramenti the doore of both sacraments where we see he acknowledges but two and both presented in this water and bloud and so certainely doe most of the fathers make this wound if not the foundation yet at least a sacrament of both the sacraments And to this water and bloud doth the Apostle here without doubt aime principally which he onely of all the Evangelists hath recorded and with so great asseveration and assurednesse in the recording thereof He that saw it bare record and his record is true and he knoweth that he saith truth that yee might beleeve it Here then is the matter which these six witnesses must be beleeved in here is Integritas Iesu quae non solvenda the intirenesse of Christ Jesus which must not be broken That a Saviour which is Iesus appointed to that office that is Christ figured in the law by ablutions of water and sacrifices of bloud is come and hath perfected all those figures in water and bloud too and then that he remaines still with us in water and bloud by meanes instituted in his Church to wash away our uncleannesses and to purge away our iniquities and to apply his worke unto our Soules this is Integritas Iesu Iesus the sonne of God in heaven Jesus the Redeemer of man upon earth Jesus the head of a Church to apply that to the end this is Integritas Iesu all that is to be beleeved of him Take thus much more that when thou comest to hearken what these witnesses shall say to this purpose thou must finde something in their testimony to prove him to be come not onely into the world but into thee He is a mighty prince and hath a great traine millions of ministring spirits attend him and the whole army of Martyrs follow the Lambe wheresoever he goes Though the whole world be his Court thy soule is his bedchamber there thou maist contract him there thou maist lodge and entertaine Integrum Iesum thy whole Saviour And never trouble thy selfe how another shall have him if thou have him all leave him and his Church to that make thou sure thine owne salvation When he comes to thee he comes by water and by bloud If thy heart and bowels have not yet melted in compassion of his passion for thy soule if thine eyes have not yet melted in tears of repentancâ— and contrition he is not yet come by water into thee If thou have suffered nothing for sinne nor found in thy selfe a chearfull disposition to suffer if thou have found no wresting in thy selfe no resistance of Concupiscences he that comes not to set peace but to kindle this war is not yet come into thee by bloud Christ can come by land by purchases by Revenues by temporall blessings for so he did still convey himselfe to the Jewes by the blessing of the land of promise but here he comes by water by his owne passion by his sacraments by thy tears Christ can come in a mariage and in Musique for so he delivers himselfe to the spouse in the Canticles but here he comes in bloud which comming in water and bloud that is in meanes for the salvation of our soules here in the militant Church is the comming that he stands upon and which includes all the Christian Religion and therefore he proves that comming to them by these three great witnesses in heaven and three in earth For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the word and the holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which bear record in the earth The spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be confirmed says Christ out of the law That 's as much as can be required in any Civill or Criminall businesse and yet Christ gives more testimony of himselfe for here he produces not Duos testes but Duas Classes two rankes of witnesses and the fullest number of each not two but three in heaven and three in earth And such witnesses upon earth as are omni exceptione majores without all exception It is not the testimony of earthly men for when Saint Paul produces them in abundance The Patriarch the Iudges the Prophets the elders of the old times of whom he exhibits an exact Catalogue yet he calls all them but Nubes testium cloudes of witnesses for though they be cloudes in Saint Chrysostomes sense that they invest us and enwrap us and so defend us from all diffidence in God we have their witnesse what God did for them why should we doubt of the like though they be cloudes in Athanasius sense they being in heaven showre downe by their prayers the dew of Gods grace upon the Church Though they be cloudes they are but cloudes some darkenesse mingled in them some controversies arising from them but his witnesses here are Lux inaccessibilis that light that no eye can attaine to and Pater Luminum the father of lights from whom all these testimonies are derived When God imployed a man to be the witnesse of Christ because men might doubt of his testimony God was content to assigne him his Compurgators when Iohn Baptist must preach that the kingdome of God was at hand God fortifies the testimony of his witnesse then Hic enim est for this is he of whom that is spoken by the prophet Esay and lest one were not enough he multiplies them as it is written in the prophets Iohn Baptist might be thought to testifie as a man and therefore men must testifie for him but these witnesses are of a higher nature these of heaven are the Trinity and those of earth are the sacraments and seales of the Church The prophets were full of favor with God Abraham full of faith Stephen full of the Holy Ghost many full of grace and Iohn Baptist a prophet and more then a prophet yet never any prophet never any man how much soever interessed in the favor of Almighty God was such an instrument of grace as a sacrament or as Gods seales and institutions in his Church and the least of these six witnesses is of that nature and therefore might be beleeved without more witnesses To speake then first of the three first the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost it was but a poore plot of the devill to goe about to rob us of their testimony for as long as we have the three last the spirit the water and bloud we have testimony enough of Christ because God is involved in his ordinance and though he be not tyed to the worke of the
but every poore soule in the Church may heare all these three witnesses testifying to him Integrum Iesum suum that all which Christ Jesus hath done and suffered appertaines to him but yet to bring it nearer him in visible and sensible things There are tres de terra three upon earth too The first of these three upon earth is the Spirit which Saint Augustine understands of the spirit the soule of Christ for when Christ commended his spirit into the hands of his Father this was a testimony that he was Verus hemo that he had a soule and in that he laid downe his spirit his soule for no Man could take it from him and tooke it againe at his pleasure in his resurrection this was a testimony that he was Verus Deus true God And so says Saint Augustine Spiritus The spirit that is anima Christi the soule of Christ did testifie De integritate Iesu all that belonged to Jesus as he was God and as he was Man But this makes the witnesses in heaven and the witnesses in earth all one for the personall testimony of Christs preaching and living and dying the testimony which was given by these three Persons of the Trinity was all involv'd in the first rank of witnesses Those three which are in heaven Other later Men understand by the Spirit here the Spirit of every Regenerate Man and that in the other heavenly witnesses the spirit is Spiritus sanctus the spirit that is holy in it selfe the holy Ghost and here it is Spiritus sanctificatus that spirit of Man which is made holy by the holy Ghost according to that The same spirit beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God But in this sense it is too particular a witnesse too singular to be intended here for that speakes but to one Man at once The spirit therefore here is Spiritus oris the word of God the Gospell and the preaching and ministration thereof We are made Ministers of the New testament of the spirit that giveth life And if the ministration of death were glorious how shall not the ministration of the spirit be more glorious It is not therefore the Gospell meerly but the preaching of the Gospell that is this spirit Spiritus sacerdotis vehioulum Spiritus Dei The spirit of the Minister is not so pure as the spirit of God but it is the chariot the meanes by which God will enter into you The Gospell is the Gospell at home at your house and there you doe well to read it and reverence it as the Gospell but yet it is not Spiritus it is not this Spirit this first witnesse upon earth but onely there where God hath blessed it with his institution and ordinance that is in the preaching thereof The stewardship and the dispensation of the graces of God the directing of his threatnings against refractary and wilfull sinners the directing of his promises to simple and supple and conâ—rite penitents the breaking of the bread the applying of the Gospell according to their particular indigences in the preaching thereof this is the first witnesse The second witnesse here is The water and I know there are some Men which will not have this to be understood of the water of Baptisme but onely of the naturall effect of water that as the abtutions of the old law by water did purge us so we have an inward testimony that Christ doth likewise wash us cleane so the water here must not be so much as water but a metaphoricall and figurative water These men will not allow water in this place to have any relation to the sacrament and Saint Ambrose was so far from doubting that water in this place belonged to the sacrament that he applies all these three witnesses to the Sacrament of Baptisme Spiritus mentem renovat All this is done in Baptisme says he The Spirit renewes and disposes the mind Aqua perficit ad Lavacrum The water is applied to cleanse the body Sanguis Spectat ad preâ—lium and the bloud intimates the price and ransome which gives force and virtue to this sacrament And so also says he in another place In sanguine mors in the bloud there is a representation of death in the water of our buriall and in the spirit of our owne life Some will have none of these witnesses on earth to belong to baptisme not the water and Ambrose will have all spirit and water and bloud to belong to it Now both Saint Ambrose who applies all the three witnesses to Baptisme and those later men which deny any of the witnesses to belong to baptisme doe both depart from the generall acceptation of these words that water here and onely that signifies the Sacrament of baptisme For as in the first creation the first thing that the spirit of God is noted to have moved upon was the waters so the first creature that is sanctified by Christs institution to our Salvation is this element of water The first thing that produced any living sensible creature was the water Primus liquor qnod viveret edidit ne mirum sit quod in Baptismo aquae aâ—nimare noverunt water brought forth the first creatures says Tertullian That we should not wonder that water should bring forth Christians The first of Gods afficting miracles in Egypt was the changing of water into bloud and the first miracle of grace in the new Testament was the changing of water into wine at the mariage So that water hath still been a subject and instrument of Gods conversation with man So then Aqua janua ecclesiae we cannot come into the Church but by water by baptisme for though the Church have taken knowledge of other Baptismes Baptisma sanguinis which is Martyrdome and Baptisma Flaminis which is a religious desire to be baptized when no meanes can be got yet there is no other sacrament of Baptisme but Baptisma Fluminis the Baptisme of water for the rest Conveniunt in causando sed non in significando says the Schoole that is God doth afford a plentifull retribution to the other baptismes Flaminis and Sanguinis but God hath not ordained them to be outward seales and significations of his grace and to be witnesses of Iesus his comming upon earth as this water is And therefore they that provide not duly to bring their children to this water of life not to speake of the essentiall necessity thereof they take from them one of the witnesses that Iesus is come into them and as much as they can they shut the Church dore against them they leave them out of the Arke and for want of this water cast them into that generall water which overflowes all the rest of the world which are not brought within the Covenant by this water of baptisme For though in the first Translation of the new Testament into Syriaque that be said in the sixth verse that Jesus is come per manus
of his word or in scantler measure not to be always a Christian but then when thou hast use of being one or in a different fashion to be singular and Schisâ—aticall in thy opinion for this is one but an ill manner of putting on of Christ as a garment The second and the good way is to put on his righteousnesse and his innocency by imitation and conforming our selves to him Now when we goe about earnestly to make our selves Temples and Altars and to dedicate our selves to God we must change our clothes As when God bad Iacob to goe up to Bethel to make an Altar he commanded all his family to change their clothes In which work we have two things to doe first we must put off those clothes which we had and appeare naked before God without presenting any thing of our owne for when the Spirit of God came upon Saul and that he prophecyed his first act was to strip himselfe naked And then sâ—condly we come to our transfiguration and to have those garments of Christ communicated to us which were as white as the light and we shall be admitted into that little number of which it is said Thou hast a few Namees in Sardis which have not defiled their garments and they shall walke with â—e in white And from this which is Induere vestem from this putting on Christ as a garment we shall grow up to that perfection as that we shall Inâ—â—ere personam put on hiâ— his person That is we shall so appeare before the Father as that he shall take us for his owne Christ we shall beare his name and person and we shall every one be so accepted as if every one of us were all Mankind yea as if we were he himselfe He shall find in all our bodies his woundes in all our mindes his 〈◊〉 in all our hearts and actions his obedience And as he shall doe this by impâ—tation so really in all our Agonies he shall send his Angels to minister unto us as he did to Eliâ—s In all our tentations he shall furnish us with his Scriptures to confoâ—â—d the Tempter as be in person did in his tentation and in our heaviest tribulation which may exâ—â—â—â— from us the voice of diffidence My God My God why hast 〈◊〉 forsaken me He shall give us the assurance to say In manus tuas câ— Into thy â—ands O Lord have I coâ—â—â—â—nded my spirit and there I am safe He shall use us in all things as his sonne and we shall find restored in us the Image of the whole Trinity imprinted at our creation for by this Regeneration we are adopted by the Father in the bloud of the Sonne by the sanctification of the holy Ghost Now this putting on of Christ whereby we stand in his place at Gods Tribunall implies as I said both our Election and our sanctification both the eternall purpose of God upon us and his execution of that purpose in us And because by the first by our Election we are members of Christ in Gods purpose before baptisme and the second which is sanctification is expressed after baptisme in our lives and conversation therefore Baptisme intervenes and comes between both as a seale of the first of Election and as an instrument and conduit of the second Sanctification Now Abscendita Dominâ— Dea nostro quae manifesta suâ—s nobis let no Man be too curiously busie to search what God does in his hedchamber we have all enough to answer for that which we have done in our bedchamber For Gods eternall decree himselfe is master of those Rolls but out of those Rolls he doth exemplifie those decrees in the Sacrament of baptisme by which Copy and exemplification of his invisible and unsearchable decree we plead to the Church that we are Gods children we plead to our owne consciences that we have the Spirit of adoption and we plead to God himselfe the obligation of his own promise that we have a right to this garment Christ Iesus and to those graces which must sanctifie us for from thence comes the reason of this text for all yeâ— that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. As we cannot see the Essence of God but must see him in his glasses in his Images in his Creatures so we cannot see the decrees of God but must see them in their duplicats in their exemplification in the sacraments As it would doe him no good that were condemned of treason that a Bedchamber man should come to the Judge and swear he saw the king signe the prisoners pardon except he had it to pleade so what assurance soever what priâ—y marke soever those men which pretend to be so well acquainted and so familiar with the decrees of God to give thee to know that thou art elect to eternall salvation yea if an Angel from heaven comedowne and tell thee that he saw thy name in the booke of life if thou have not this Exemplification of the decree this seale this Sacrament if thou beest not baptized never delude thy selfe with those imaginary assurances This Baptisme then is so necessary that first as Baptisme in a large acceptation signifies our dying and buriall with Christ and all the acts of our regeneration so in that large sense our whole life is a baptisme But the very sacrament of Baptismeâ— the actuall administration and receiving thereof was held so necessary that even for legall and Civill uses as in the law that child that dyed without circumcision had no interest in the family no participation of the honor nor name thereof So that we see in the reckning of the Genealogy and pedegree of David that first sonne of his which he had by Bathshebae which dyed without circumcision is never mentioned nor toucht upon So also since the time of Mâ—ses law in the Imperiall law by which law a posthume child borne after the fathers death is equall with the rest in division of the state yet if that child dye before he be baptized no person which should derive a right from him as the mother might if he dyed can have any title by him because he is not considered to have been at all if he dye unbaptized And if the State will not beleeve him to be a full Man shall the Church beleeve him to be a full Christian before baptisme Yea the apprehension of the necessity of this Sacrament was so common and so generall even in the beginning of the Christian Church that out of an excessive advancing of that trnth they came also to a falshoodâ— to an error That even they that dyed without baptisme might have the benefit of baptisme if another were baptized in their name after their deathâ— And so out of a mistaking of those words Else what shall they doe Qui baptizantur pro mortuis which is that are ready to dye when they are baptized the Marcionites induc'd a custome to lay one under the dead bodyes
we draw a corrupt Nature from our parents and we have lamed the other foot by crooked and perverse customes Now as God provided a liquor in his Church for Originall sinne the water of Baptisme so hath he provided another for those actuall sinnes that is the bloud of his owne body in the other Sacrament In which Sacrament besides the naturall union that Christ hath taken our Nature and the Mysticall union that Christ hath taken us into the body of his Church by a spirituall union when we apply faithfully his Merits to our soules and by a Sacramentall union when we receive the visible seales thereof worthily we are so washed in his bloud as that we stand in the sight of his Father as cleane and innocent as himselfe both because he and we are thereby become one body and because the garment of his righteousnesse covers us all But for a preparation of this washing in the bloud of Christ in that Sacrament Christ commended to his Apostles and in them to all the world by his practise and by his precept too ablutionem pedam a washing of their feet before they came to that Sacrament he washed their feet And in that exemplary action of his his washing of their feet he powred water into a Bason says the text Aqua spiritus sanctus pelvis Ecclesia These preparatory waters are the gift of the holy Ghost the working of his grace in repentance but pelvis Ecclesia the bason is the Church that is these graces are distributed and dispensed to us in his institution and ordinance in the Church No Man can wash himselfe at first by Baptisme no Man can baptize himselfe no Man can wash in the second liquor no Man that is but a Man can administer the other Sacrament to himselfe Pelvis ecclesia the Church is the bason and Gods Minister in the Church washes in both these cases And in this ablutione pedum in the preparatory washing of our feet by a survey of all our sinfull actions and repentance of them no Man can absolve himselfe but pelvis ecclesia the bason of this water of absolution is in the Church and in the Minister thereof First then this washing of the feet which prepares us for the great washing in the bloud of Christ requires a stripping of them a laying of them naked covering of the feet in the Scriptures is a phrase that denotes a foule and an uncleane action Saul was said to cover his feet in the Cave and Eglon was said to cover his feet in his Parler and we know the uncleane action that is intended here but for this cleane action for washing our feet we must discover all our sinfull steps in a free and open confession to almighty God This may be that which Solomon calls sound wisdome My sonne keep sound wisdome and discretion There is not a more silly folly then to thinke to hide any sinfull action from God Nor sounder wisdome then to discover them to him by an humble and penitent confession This is sound wisdome and then discretion is to wash and discerne and debate and examine all our future actions and all the circumstances that by this spirit of discretion we may see where the sting and venome of every particular action lies My sonne keep sound wisdome and discretion says he And then shalt thou walke in thy way safely and thy foot shall not stumble If thy discretion be not strong enough if thou canst not always discerne what is and what is not sinne he shall give his Angells charge over thee that thou dash not thy foot against a stone and that 's good security and if all these faile though thou doe fall thou shalt not be utterly cast downe for the Lord shall uphold thee with his hand says David God shall give that Man that loves this found wisdome humble confession of sinnes past this spirituall discretion the spirit of discerning spirits that is power to discerne a tentation and to overcome it confesse that which is past with true sorrow that is sound wisdome and God shall enlighten thee for the future and that 's holy discretion The washing of our feet then being a cleane and pure and sincere examination of all our actions we are to wash all the instruments of our actions in repentance Lavanda facies we are to wash our face as Ioseph did after he had wept before he looked upon his brethren againe If we have murmured and mourned for any crosse that God hath laid upon us we must returne to a cheerfull countenance towards him in embracing whatsoever he found best for us we must wash our Intestina our bowels as it is after commanded in the law when our bowels which should melt at the relation and contemplation and application of the passion of our Saviour doe melt at the apprehension or expectation or fruition of any sinfull delight Lavanda intestina we must wash those bowells Lavanda vestimenta we must wash our clothes when we apparell and palliate our sinnes with excuses of our owne infirmity or of the example of greater Men these clothes must be washed these excuses Lavanda currus arma as Ahabs chariot and armour were washed If the power of our birth or of our place or of our favour have armed us against the power of the law or against the clamour of Men justly incensed Lavandi currus these chariots and armes this greatnesse must be washed Lavanda retia what Nets soever we have fished with by what meanes soever we raise or sustaine our fortune Lavanda retia These nets must be washed Saint Bernard hath drawn a great deale of this heavenly water together for the washing of all when he presents as he cals it Martyrium sine sanguine triplex a threefold Martyrdome all without bloud and that is Largitas in paupertate a bountifull disposition even in a low fortune parcitas in ubertate a frugall disposition in a full fortune and Castitas in Iuventute a pure and chaste disposition in the years and places of tentation These are Martyrdomes without bloud but not without the water that washes our feet This is sound wisdome and discretion to strip and lay open our feet our sinfull actions by Confession To cover them and wrap them up by precaution from new uncleannesse and then to tye and bind up all safe by participation of the bloud of Christ Jesus in the Sacrament for that 's the seale of all And Christ in the washing of his disciples feet tooke a towell to dry them as well as water to wash them so when he hath brought us to this washing of our feet to a serious consideration of our actions and to repentant teares for them Absterget omnem lachrymam he will wipe all teares from our eyes all teares of confusion towards Men or of diffidence towards him Absterget omnem lachrymam and deliver us over to a setled peace of
me my sinnes the sinnes of my youth and my present sinnes the sinne that my Parents cast upon me Originall sinne and the sinnes that I cast upon my children in an ill example Actuall sinnes sinnes which are manifest to all the world and sinnes which I have so laboured to hide from the world as that now they are hid from mine own conscience and mine own memory Forgive me my crying sins and my whispering sins sins of uncharitable hate and sinnes of unchaste love sinnes against Thee and Thee against thy Power O Almighty Father against thy Wisedome O glorious Sonne against thy Goodnesse O blessed Spirit of God and sinnes against Him and Him against Superiours and Equals and Inferiours and sinnes against Me and Me against mine own soul and against my body which I have loved better then my soul Forgive me O Lord O Lord in the merits of thy Christ and my Iesus thine Anointed and my Saviour Forgive me my sinnes all my sinnes and I will put Christ to no more cost nor thee to more trouble for any reprobation or malediction that lay upon me otherwise then as a sinner I ask but an application not an extention of that Benediction Blessed are they whose sinnes are forgiven Let me be but so blessed and I shall envy no mans Blessednesse say thou to my sad soul Sonne be of good comfort thy sinnes are forgiven thee and I shall never trouble thee with Petitions to take any other Bill off of the fyle or to reverse any other Decree by which I should be accurst before I was created or condemned by thee before thou saw'st me as a sinner For the object of malediction is but a sinner which was our first and an Inveterate sinner A sinner of a hundred yeares which is our next consideration First Quia centum annorum because he is so old so old in sinne He shall be accur sed And then Quamvis centum annorum though he be so old though God have spared him so long he shall be accursed God is not a Lion in his house nor frantick amongst his servants saith the Wiseman God doth not rore nor tear in pieces for every thing that displeaseth him But when God is prest under us as a cart is prest that is full of sheaves the Lord will grone under that burthen a while but he will cast it off at last That which is said by David is if it be well observed spoken of God himself Cum perverso pervertêris from our frowardnesse God will learn to be froward But he is not so of his own nature If you walk contrary unto me I will walk contrary unto you saith God But this is not said of one first wry step but it is a walking which implies a long and a considerate continuance And if man come to sinne so and will not walk with God God will walk with that man in his own pace and overthrow him in his own wayes Nay it is not onely in that place If you walk contrary to me In occursu as Calvin hath it ex adverso as the vulgate hath it which implies an Actuall Opposition against the wayes of God but the word is but Chevi and Chevi is but In accidente in contingente if you walk negligently inconsiderately if you leave out God pretermit and slight God if you come to call Gods Providence Fortune to call Gods Judgements Accidents or to call the Mercies of a God favours of great Persons if you walk in this neglect of God God shall proceed to a neglect of you and then though God be never the worse for your leaving him out for if it were in your power to annihilate this whole world God were no worse then before there was a World yet if God neglect you forget pretermit you it is a miserable annihilation a fearfull malediction But God begins not before sinne nor at the first sinne God did not curse Adam and Eve for their sinne it was there first and God foresaw they would not be sinners of a hundred yeares But him that was in the Serpent that inveterate sinner him who had sinned in Gods Court in Heaven before and being banished from thence fell into this transmarine treason in another land to seduce Gods other Subjects there him God accurs'd Who amongst us can say that he had a Fever upon his first excesse or a Consumption upon his first wantonnesse or a Commission put upon him for his first Briberie Till he be a sinner of a hundred yeares till he have brought age upon himself by his sinne before the time and thereby be a hundred yeares old at fourtie and so a sinner of a hundred yeares till he have a desire that he might and a hope that he shall be able to sinne to a hundred yeares and so be a sinner of a hundred yeares Till he sinne hungerly and thirstily and ambitiously and swiftly and commit the sinnes of a hundred yeares in ten and so be a sinner of a hundred yeares till he infect and poyson that age and spoile that time that he lives in by his exemplary sinnes till he be Pestis secularis the plague of that age peccator secularis the proverbiall sinner of that age and so be a sinner of a hundred yeares till in his actions he have been or in his desires be or in the fore-knowledge of God would be a sinner of a hundred yeares an inveterate an incorrigible an everlasting sinner God comes not to curse him But then Quamvis centum annorum though he have lived a hundred yeares though God have multiplied upon him Evidences and Seals and Witnesses and Possessions and Continuances and prescriptions of his favour all this hath not so riveted God to that man as that God must not depart from him God was crucified for him but will not be crucified to him still to hang upon this Crosse this perversnesse of this habituall sinner and never save himself and come down never deliver his own Honour by delivering that sinner to malediction It is true that we can have no better Title to Gods future Blessings then his Blessings formerly exhibited to us God former blessings are but his marks set up there that he may know that place and that man the better against another time when he shall be pleased to come thither again with a supply of more Blessings God gives not Blessings as payments but as obligations and becomes a debtor by giving If I can produce that Remember thy mercies of old I need ask no new for even that is a Specialty by which God hath bound himself to me for more But yet not so if I abuse his former Blessings and make them occasions of sinne How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathers her chickens saith Christ I know not how often surely very often for many hundreds of yeares But yet how often soever God left them open to the Eagle the Romane Eagle at last God gives
insupportable so inexpressible so in-imaginable as the curse and malediction of God And therefore let not us by our works provoke nor by our words teach God to curse Lest if with the same tongue that we blesse God we curse Men that is seem to be in Charity in our Prayers here and carry a ranckerous heart and venemous tongue home with us God come to say and Gods saying is doing As he loved cursing so let it come unto him as he clothed himself with cursing as with a garment so let it be as a girdle wherewith he is girded continually When a man curses out of Levity and makes a loose habit of that sinne God shall so gird it to him as he shall never devest it The Devils grammar is Applicare Activa Passivis to apply Actives to Passives where he sees an inclination to subminister a temptation where he seeth a froward choler to blow in a curse And Gods grammar is to change Actives into Passives where a man delights in cursing to make that man accursed And if God do this to them who do but curse men will he do lesse to them who blaspheme himself where man wears out Aeternum suum as Saint Gregory speaketh his own eternity his own hundred yeares that is his whole life in cursing and blaspheming God shall also extend his curse In aeterno suo in his eternity that is for ever Which is that that falls to the bottome as the heaviest of all and is our last consideration that all the rest that there is a curse deposited in the Scriptures denounced by the Church avowed by God reduced to execution and that insupportable in this life is infinitely aggravated by this that he shall be accursed for ever This is the Anathema Maran-atha accursed till the Lord come and when the Lord cometh he cometh not to reverse nor to alleviate but to ratifie and aggravate that curse As soon as Christ curst the fig-tree it withered and it never recovered for saith that Gospell he curst it Inaeternum for ever In the course of our sinne the Holy Ghost hath put here a number of yeares a hundred yeares We sinne long as long as we can but yet sinne hath an end But in this curse of God in the Text there is no number it is an indefinite future He shall be accursed A mile of cyphers or figures added to the former hundred would not make up a minute of this eternity Men have calculated how many particular graines of sand would fill up all the vast space butween the Earth and the Firmament and we find that a few lines of cyphers will designe and expresse that number But if every grain of sand were that number and multiplied again by that number yet all that all that inexpressible inconsiderable number made not up one minute of this eternity neither would this curse be a minute the shorter for having been indured so many Generations as there were grains of sand in that number Our Esse our Being is from Gods saying Dixit facti God spoke and we were made our Bene esse our well-being is from Gods saying too Bene-dicit God blesses us in speaking gratiously to us Even our ill-being our condemnation is from Gods saying also for Malediction is Damnation So far God hath gone with us that way as that our Being our well-being our ill-being is from his saying But God shall never come to a Non esse God shall never say to us Be nothing God shall never succour us with an annihilation nor give us the ease of resolving into nothing for this curse flowes on into an everlasting future He shall be accurst he shall be so for ever In a true sense we may say that Gods fore-knowledge growes lesse and lesse every day for his fore-knowledge is of future things and many things which were future heretofore are past or present now and therefore cannot fall under his fore-knowledge His fore-knowledge in that sense growes lesse and decaieth But his eternity decayeth in no sense and as long as his eternity lasts as long as God is God God shall never see that soul whom he hath accurst delivered from that curse or eased in it But we are now in the work of an houre and no more If there be a minute of sand left There is not If there be a minute of patience left heare me say This minute that is left is that eternitie which we speake of upon this minute dependeth that eternity And this minute God is in this Congregation and puts his eare to every one of your hearts and hearkens what you will bid him say to your selves whether he shall blesse you for your acceptation or curse you for your refusall of him this minute for this minute makes up your Century your hundred yeares your eternity because it may be your last minute We need not call that a Fable but a Parable where we heare That a Mother to still her froward childe told him she would cast him to the Wolf the Wolf should have him and the Wolf which was at the doore and within hearing waited and hoped he should have the childe indeed but the childe being still'd and the Mother pleased then she saith so shall we kill the Wolf the Wolf shall have none of my childe and then the Wolf stole away No metaphor no comparison is too high none too low too triviall to imprint in you a sense of Gods everlasting goodnesse towards you God bids your Mother the Church and us her Servants for your Souls to denounce his judgements upon your sinnes and we do it and the executioner Satan beleeves us before you beleeve us and is ready on his part Be you also ready on your part to lay hold upon those conditions which are annext to all Gods maledictions Repentance of former preclusion against future sinnes and we shall be alwayes ready on our part to assist you with the Power of our Intercession to deliver you with the Keies of our Absolution and to establish you with the seales of Reconciliation and so disappoint that Wolf that roaring Lion that seeks whom he may devour Go in Peace and be this your Peace to know this Maledictus qui pendet in Cruce God hath laid the whole curse belonging to us upon him that hangs upon the Crosse But Benedictus qui pendet in pendentem To all them that hang upon him that hangeth there God offereth now all those blessings which he that hangeth there hath purchased with the inestimable price of his Incorruptible blood And to this glorious Sonne of God who hath suffered all this and to the most Almighty Father who hath done all this and to the blessed Spirit of God who offereth now to apply all this be ascribed by us and by the whole Church All power praise might majesty glory and dominion now and for evermore Amen SERMON XXVII Preached to the King at White-Hall the first of April 1627. MARK 4.
people and gather them so So Christ tells us things in darknesse And so Christ speakes to us in our Ear And these low voices and holy whisperings and halfe-silences denote to us the inspirations of his Spirit as his Spirit beares witnesse with our spirit as the Holy Ghost insinuates himselfe into our soules and works upon us so by his private motions But this is not Gods ordinary way to be whispering of secrets The first thing that God made was light The last thing that he hath reserved to doe is the manifestation of the light of his Essence in our Glorification And for Publication of himselfe here by the way he hath constituted a Church in a Visibility in an eminency as a City upon a hill And in this Church his Ordinance is Ordinance indeed his Ordinance of preaching batters the soule and by that breach the Spirit enters His Ministers are an Earth-quake and shake an earthly soule They are the sonnes of thunder and scatter a cloudy conscience They are as the fall of waters and carry with them whole Congregations 3000 at a Sermon 5000 at a Sermon a whole City such a City as Niniveh at a Sermon and they are as the roaring of a Lion where the Lion of the tribe of Juda cries down the Lion that seekes whom he may devour that is Orthodoxall and fundamentall truths are established against clamorous and vociferant innovations Therefore what Christ tels us in the darke he bids us speake in the light and what he saies in our eare he bids us preach on the house top Nothing is Gospell not Evangelium good message if it be not put into a Messengers mouth and delivered by him nothing is conducible to his end nor available to our salvation except it be avowable doctrine doctrine that may be spoke alowd though it awake them that sleep in their sinne and make them the more froward for being so awaked God hath made all things in a Roundnesse from the round superficies of this earth which we tread here to the round convexity of those heavens w ch as long as they shal have any beeing shall be our footstool when we come to heaven God hath wrapped up all things in Circles and then a Circle hath no Angles there are no Corners in a Circle Corner Divinity clandestine Divinity are incompatible termes If it be Divinity it is avowable The heathens served their Gods in Temples sub dio without roofs or coverings in a free opennesse and where they could in Temples made of Specular stone that was transparent as glasse or crystall so as they which walked without in the streets might see all that was done within And even nature it self taught the naturall man to make that one argument of a man truly religious Aperto vivere voto That he durst pray aloud and let the world heare what he asked at Gods hand which duty is best performed when we joyne with the Congregation in publique prayer Saint Augustine hath made that note upon the Donatists That they were Clancularii clandestine Divines Divines in Corners And in Photius we have such a note almost upon all Heretiques as the Nestorian was called Coluber a snake because though he kept in the garden or in the meadow in the Church yet he lurked and lay hid to doe mischief And the Valentinian was called a Grashopper because he leaped and skipped from place to place and that creature the Grashopper you may hear as you passe but you shall hardly find him at his singing you may hear a Conventicle Schismatick heare him in his Pamphlets heare him in his Disciples but hardly surprize him at his exercise Publication is a fair argument of truth That tasts of Luthers holy animosity and zealous vehemency when he says Audemus gloriari Christum à nobis primo vulgatum other men had made some attempts at a Reformation and had felt the pulse of some persons and some Courts and some Churches how they would relish a Reformation But Luther rejoyces with a holy exultation That he first published it that he first put the world to it So the Apostles proceeded when they came in their peregrination to a new State to a new Court to Rome it selfe they did not enquire how stands the Emperour affected to Christ and to the preaching of his Gospel Is there not a Sister or a Wife that might be wrought upon to further the preaching of Christ Are there not some persons great in power and place that might be content to hold a party together by admitting the preaching of Christ This was not their way They only considered who sent them Christ Jesus And what they brough salvation to every soul that embraced Christ Jesus That they preached and still begunne with a Vae si non Never tell us of displeasure or disgrace or detriment or death for preaching of Christ. For woe be unto us if we preach him not And still they ended with a Qui non crediderit Damnabitur Never deceive your own souls He to whom Christ hath been preached and beleeves not shall be damned All Divinity that is bespoken and not ready made fitted to certaine turnes and not to generall ends And all Divines that have their soules and consciences so disposed as their Libraries may bee At that end stand Papists and at that end Protestants and he comes in in the middle as neare one as the other all these have a brackish taste as a River hath that comes near the Sea so have they in comming so neare the Sea of Rome In this the Prophet exalts our Consolation Though the Lord give us the bread of Adversity and the water of Affliction yes shall not our Teachers be removed into corners They shall not be silenced by others they shall not affect of themselves Corner Divinity But saies he there our eyes shall see our Teachers and our eares shall hear a word saying This is the way walke in it For so they shall declare that they have taken to heart this Commandement of him that sent them Christ Jesus All that you receive from me you must deliver to my people therefore Take heed what you hear forget none of it But then you must deliver no more then that and therefore in that respect also Take heed what you hear adde nothing to that and that is the other obligation which Christ laies here upon his Apostles That reading of those words of Saint Iohn Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum Every spirit that dissolves Jesus that takes him asunder in pieces and beleeves not all is a very ancient reading of that place And upon that Ancient reading the Ancients infer well That not onely that spirit that denies that Christ being God assumed our flesh not onely he that denies that Christ consists of two natures God and Mam but he also that affirmes this Christ thus consisting of two natures to consist also of two persons this man dissolves Iesus takes him asunder in
and our North and South at another tyde and another gale First then we looke towards our East the fountaine of light and of life There this world beganne the Creation was in the east And there our next world beganne too There the gates of heaven opened to us and opened to us in the gates of death for our heaven is the death of our Saviour and there he lived and dyed there and there he looked into our west from the east from his Terasse from his Pinacle from his exaltation as himselfe calls it the Crosse. The light which arises to us in this east the knowledge which we receive in this first word of our text Faciamus Let us where God speaking of himselfe speakes in the Plurall is the manifestation of the Trinity the Trinity which is the first letter in his Alphabet that ever thinks to read his name in the book of life The first note in his Gammut that ever thinks to sing his part in the Quire of the Triumphant Church Let him him have done as much as all the Worthies and suffered as much as all Natures Martyrs the penurious Philosophers let him have known as much as they that pretend to know Omne scibile all that can be known nay and in-intelligibilia In-investigabilia as Turtullian speakes un-understandable things unrevealed decrees of God Let him have writ as much as Aristotle writ or as is written upon Aristotle which is multiplication enough yet he hath not learnt to spel that hath not learnt the Trinity not learnt to pronounce the first word that cannot bring three Persons into one God The subject of naturall philosophy are the foure elements which God made the Subject of supernaturall philosophy Divinity are the three elements which God is and if we may so speake which make God that is constitute God notifie God to us Father Sonne and holy Ghost The naturall man that hearkens to his owne heart and the law written there may produce Actions that are good good in the nature and matter and substance of the worke He may relieve the poore he may defend the oppressed But yet he is but as an open field and though he be not absolutely barren he bears but grasse The godly man he that hath taken in the knowledge of a great and a powerfull God and enclosed and hedged in himselfe with the feare of God may produce actions better then the meere naturall man because he referres his actions to the glory of his imagined God But yet this man though he be more fruitfull then the former more then a grassy field yet he is but a ploughed field and he bears but corne and corne God knowes choaked with weeds But that man who hath taken hold of God by those handles by which God hath delivered and manifested himselfe in the notions of Father Sonne and holy Ghost he is no field but a garden a Garden of Gods planting a Paradise in which grow all things good to eate and good to see spirituall resection and spirituall recreation too and all things good to cure He hath his beeing and his diet and his physique there in the knowledge of the Trinity his beeing in the mercy of the Father his physique in the merits of the Sonne his diet his daily bread in the daily visitations of the holy Ghost God is not pleased not satisfied with our bare knowledge that there is a God For it is impossible to please God without faith and there is no such exercise of faith in the knowledge of a God but that reason and nature will bring a man to it When we professe God in the Creed by way of beleefe Credo in Deum I beleeve in God in the same article we professe him to be a Father too I beleeve in God the father Almighty And that notion the Father necessarily implies a second Person a Sonne And then we professe him to be maker of heaven and earth And in the Creation the holy Ghost the Spirit of God is expresly named So that we doe but exercise reason and nature in directing our selves upon God We exercise not faith and without faith it is impossible to please God till we come to that which is above nature till we apprehend a Trinity We know God we beleeve in the Trinity The Gentiles multiplyed Gods There were almost as many Gods as men that beleeved in them And I am got out of that thrust and out of that noise when I am come into the knowledge of one God But I am got above staires got in the Bedchamber when I am come to see the Trinity and to apprehend not onely that I am in the care of a great and a powerfull God but that there is a Father that made me a Sonne that Redeemed me a holy Ghost that applies this good purpose of the Father and Sonne upon me to me The root of all is God But it is not the way to receive fruits to dig to the root but to reach to the boughs I reach for my Creation to the Father for my Redemption to the Sonne for my sanctification to the holy Ghost and so I make the knowledge of God a Tree of life unto me and not otherwise Truly it is a sad Contemplation to see Christians scratch and wound teare one another with the ignominious invectives and uncharitable names of of Heretique and Schismatique about Ceremoniall and Problematicall and indeed but Criticall verball controversies and in the meane time the foundation of all the Trinity undermined by those numerous those multitudinous Anthills of Socinians that overflow some parts of the Christian world and multiply every where And therefore the Adversaries of the Reformation were wise in their generation when to supplant the credit of both those great assistants of the Reformation Luther and Calvin they impute to Calvin fundamentall error in the Divinity of the second Person of the Trinity the Sonne And they impute to Luther a detestation of the very word Trinity and an expunction thereof in all places of the Liturgy where the Church had received that word They knew well if that slander could prevaile against those persons nothing that they could say could prevaile upon any good Christians But though in our doctrine we keep up the Trinity aright yet God knowes in our practice we doe not I hope it cannot be said of any of us that he beleeves not the Trinity but who amongst us thinkes of the Trinity considers the Trinity Father and Sonne doe naturally imply and induce one another and therefore they fall oftner into our consideration But for the holy Ghost who feels him when he feels him Who takes knowledge of his working when he works Indeed our Fathers provided not well enough for the worship of the whole Trinity nor of the holy Ghost in particular in the endowments of the Church and Consecrations of Churches and possessions in their names What a spirituall dominion in the prayers and worship of
plurall too And againe in that declaration of his Justice in the confusion of the builders of Babel Descendamus confundamus Let us doe it And then lastly in that great worke of mingling mercy with justice which if we may so speake is Gods master-peece when he says Quis ex nobis who will goe for us and publish this In these places and these onely and not all these neither if we take it exactly according to the originall for in the Second the making of Eve though the Vulgat have it in the plurall it is indeed but singular in the Hebrew God speakes as a King in his royall plurall still And when it is but so Reverenter pensandum est says that Father it behoves us to hearken reverently to him for Kings are Images of God such Images of God as have eares and can heare and hands and can strike But I would aske no more premeditation at your hands when you come to speake to God in this place then if you sued to speake with the King no more fear of God here then if you went to the King under the conscience of a guiltinesse towards him and a knowledge that he knew it And that 's your case here Sinners and manifest sinners For even midnight is noone in the sight of God and when your candles are put out his Sunne shines still Nec quid absconditum à calcre ejus says David there is nothing hid from the heate thereof not onely no sinne hid from the light thereof from the sight of God but not from the heate therof not from the wrath indignation of God If God speak plurally onely in the Majesty of a soveraign Prince still Reverenter pensandum that calls for reverence What reverence There are nationall differences in outward worships and reverences Some worship Princes and Parents and Masters in one some in another fashion Children kneele to aske blessing of Parents in England but where else Servants attend not with the same reverence upon Masters in other nations as with us Accesses to their Princes are not with the same difficulty nor the same solemnity in France as in Turkey But this rule goes thorough all nations that in that disposition and posture and action of the body which in that place is esteemed most humble and reverend God is to be worshipped Doe so then here God is your Father aske blessing upon your knees pray in that posture God is your King worship him with that worship which is highest in our use and estimation We have no Grandees that stand covered to the King where there are such though they stand covered in the Kings presence they doe not speake to him for matters of Grace they doe not sue to him so ancient Canons make differences of Persons in the presence of God where and how these and these shall dispose of themselves in the Church dignity and age and infirmity will induce differences But for prayer there is no difference one humiliation is required of all As when the King comes in here howsoever they sate diversly before all returne to one manner of expressing their acknowledgement of his presence So at the Oremus Let us pray let us all fall down and worship and kneel before the Lord our maker So he speakes in our text not onely as the Lord our King intimating his providence and administration but as the Lord our maker and then a maker so as that he made us in a councell Faciamus Let us and that that he speakes as in councell is another argument for reverence For what interest or freedome soever I have by his favour with any Counseller of State yet I should surely use another manner of behaviour towards him at the Councell Table then at his owne Table So does there belong another manner of consideration to this plurality in God to this meeting in Councell to this intimation of a Trinity then to those other actions in which God is presented to us singly as one God for so he is presented to the naturall man as well as to us And here enters the necessity of this knowledge Oportet denuo nasci without a second birth no salvation And no second birth without Baptisme no Baptisme but in the name of Father Sonne and holy Ghost It was the entertainment of God himselfe his delight his contemplation for those infinite millions of generations when he was without a world without Creatures to joy in one another in the Trinity as Gregory Nazianz a Poet as well as a Father as most of the Fathers were expresses it ille suae splendorem cernere formae Gaudebat It was the Fathers delight to looke upon himselfe in the Sonne Numenque suum triplicique parique Luce nitens and to see the whole Godhead in a threefold and an equall glory It was Gods owne delight and it must be the delight of every Christian upon particular occasions to carry his thoughts upon the severall persons of the Trinity If I have a bar of Iron that bar in that forme will not naile a doore If a Sow of Lead that Lead in that forme will not stop a leake If a wedge of Gold that wedge will not buy my bread The generall notion of a mighty God may lesse fit my particular purposes But I coine my gold into currant money when I apprehend God in the severall notions of the Trinity That if I have been a prodigall Sonne I have a Father in heaven and can goe to him and say Father I have sinned and be received by him That if I be a decayed Father and need the sustentation of mine own children there is a Sonne in heaven that will doe more for me then mine own of what good meanes or what good nature so ever they be can or will doe If I be dejected in spirit there is a holy Spirit in heaven which shall beare witnesse to my spirit that I am the child of God And if the ghosts of those sinners whom I made sinners haunt me after their deaths in returning to my memory and reproaching to my conscience the heavy judgements that I have brought upon them If after the death of mine own sinne when my appetite is dead to some particular sinne the memory and sinfull delight of passed sinnes the ghosts of those sinnes haunt me againe yet there is a holy Ghost in heaven that shall exorcise these and shall overshadow me the God of all Comfort and Consolation God is the God of the whole world in the generall notion as he is so God but he is my God most especially and most applyably as he receives me in the severall notions of Father Sonne and holy Ghost This is our East here we see God God in all the persons consulting concurring to the making of us But then my West presents it selfe that is an occasion to humble me in the next words He makes but Man A man that is but Adam but Earth
Halfe-pelagianisme to thinke grace once received to be sufficient Super-pelagianisme to thinke our actions can bring God in debt to us by merit and supererogation and Catarisme imaginary purity in Canonizing our selves as present Saints and condemning all that differ from us as reprobates All these are white spots and have the colour of goodnesse but are indications of leprosie So is that that God threatens Decorticatio ficus albi rami that the figtree shall be bark'd and the boughes thereof left white to be left white without barke was an indication of a speedy withering Ostensa candescunt arescunt says Saint Gregory of that place the bough that lies open without barke looks white but perishes the good works that are done openly to please men have their reward says Christ that is shall never have reward To pretend to doe good and not meane it To doe things good in themselves but not to good ends to goe towards good ends but not by good ways to make the deceiving of men thine end or the praise of men thine end all this may have a whiteness a colour of good but all this is a barking of the bough and an indication of a mischievous leprosie There is no good whiteness but a reflection from Christ Jesus in an humble acknowledgement that wee have none of our own and in a consident assurance that in our worst estate we may be made partakers of his We are all red earth In Adam we would not since Adam we could not avoid sinne and the Concomitants thereof miseries which we have called our West our cloud our darknesse But then we have a North that scatters these clouds in the next word Ad imaginem that we are made to another patterne in another likenesse then our own Faciamus hominem so far are we gone East and West which is halfe our Compasse and all this days voiage For we are strooke upon the sand and must stay another Tyde and another gale for our North and South SERMON XXIX Preached to the King at the Court. The second Sermon on GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our Image after our likenesse BY fair occasion from these words we proposed to you the whole Compasse of mans voyage from his lanching forth in this world to his Anchoring in the next from his hoysing sayle here to his striking sayle there In which Compasse we designed to you his foure quarters first his East where he must beginne the fundamentall knowledge of the Trinity for that we found to be the specification and distinctive Character of a Christian where though that be so we shewed you also why we were not called Trinitarians but Christians and we shewed you the advantage that man hath in laying hold upon God in these severall notions that the Prodigall sonne hath an indulgent Father that the decayed Father hath an abundant Sonne that the dejected spirit hath a Spirit of comfort to fly to in heaven And as we shewed you from Saint Paul that it was an Atheisme to be no Christian without God says he as long as without Christ so we lamented the slacknesse of Christians that they did not seriously and particularly consider the persons of the Trinity and especially the holy Ghost in their particular actions And then we came to that consideration whether this doctrine were established or directly insinuated in this plurall word of our text Faciamus Let us us make man and we found that doctrine to be here and here first of any place in the Bible And finding God to speake in the plurall we accepted for a time that interpretation which some had made thereof that God spake in the Person of a Soveraigne Prince and therefore as they do in the plurall We. And thereby having established reverence to Princes we claim'd in Gods behalfe the same reverence to him That men would demeane themselves here when God is spoken to in prayer as reverently as when they speake to the King But after this we found God to speake here not onely as our King but as our maker as God himselfe and God in Counsell Faciamus and we applied thereunto the difference of our respect to a Person of that honorable rank when we came before him at the Counsell Table and when we came to him at his own Table and thereby advanced the seriousnesse of this consideration God in the Trinity And farther we failed not with that our Eastern winde Our West we considered in the next word Hominem that though we were made by the whole Trinity yet the whole Trinity made us but men and men in this name of our text Adam and Adam is but earth and that 's our West our declination our Sunset We passed over the foure names by which man is ordinarily expressed in the Scriptures and we found necessary misery in three of them and possible nay likely misery in the fourth in the best name We insisted upon the name of our text Adam earth and had some use of these notes First that if I were but earth God was pleased to be the Potter If I but a sheep he a shepheard If I but a cottage he a builder So he worke upon me let me be what he will We noted that God made us earth not ayre not fire That man hath bodily and worldly duties to performe and is not all Spirit in this life Devotion is his soule but he hath a body of discretion and usefulnesse to invest in some calling We noted too that in being earth we are equall We tryed that equality first in the root in Adam There if any man will be nobler earth then I he must have more originall sinne then I for that was all Adams patrimony all that he could give And we tryed this equality in another furnace in the grave where there is no meanes to distinguish Royall from Plebeian nor Catholique from Hereticall dust And lastly we noted that this our earth was red earth and considered in what respect it was red even in Gods hands but found that in the bloud-rednesse of sinne God had no hand but sinne and destruction for sinne was wholly from our selves which consideration we ended with this that there was Macula alba a white spot of leprosie as well as a red and we found the over-valuation of our own purity and the uncharitable condemnation of all that differ from us to be that white spot And so far we sayled with that Western winde And are come to our third point in this our Compasse our North. In this point the North we place our first comfort The North is not always the comfortablest clime nor is the North always a type of happines in the Scriptures Many times God threatens stormes from the North. But even in those Northern stormes we consider that action that they scatter they dissipate those clouds which were gathered and so induce a serenity And so fair weather comes from the North. And
And at the judgement you shall stand but stand at the barre But when you stand before the Throne you stand as it is also added in this place before the Lamb who having not opened his mouth to save his owne fleece when he was in the shearers hand nor to save his own life when he was in the slaughterers hand will much lesse open his mouth to any repentant sinners condemnation or upbrayd you with your former crucifyings of him in this world after he hath nailed those sinnes to that crosse to which those sinnes nayled him You shall stand amicti stolis for so it follows covered with Robes that is covered all over not with Adams fragmentary raggs of fig-leafes nor with the halfe-garments of Davids servants Though you have often offered God halfe-confessions and halfe-repentances yet if you come at last to stand before the Lambe his fleece covers all hee shall not cover the sinnes of your youth and leave the sinnes of your age open to his justice nor cover your sinfull actions and leave your sinfull words and thoughts open to justice nor cover your own personall sinnes and leave the sinnes of your Fathers before you or the sinnes of others whose sins your tentations produced and begot open to justice but as he hath enwrapped the whole world in one garment the firmament so cloathed that part of the earth which is under our feet as gloriously as this which we live and build upon so those sinnes which we have hidden from the world and from our own consciences and utterly forgotten either his grace shall enable us to recollect and to repent in particular or we having used that holy diligence to examine our consciences so he shall wrap up even those sinnes which we have forgot and cover all with that garment of his own righteousnesse which leaves no foulnesse no nakednesse open You shall be covered with Robes All over and with white Robes That as the Angels wondred at Christ coming into heaven in his Ascension Wherefore art thou red in thine Apparell and thy garments like him that treadeth the wine fat They wondred how innocence it selfe should become red so shall those Angels wonder at thy coming thither and say Wherefore art thou white in thine apparell they shall wonder how sinne it selfe shall be clothed in innocence And in thy hand shall be a palm which is the last of the endowments specifyed here After the waters of bitternesse they came to seventy to innumerable palmes even the bitter waters were sweetned with another wood cast in The wood of the Crosse of Christ Jesus refreshes all teares and sweetnes all bitternesse even in this life but after these bitter waters which God shall wipe from all our eies we come to the seventy to the seventy thousand palms infinite seales infinite testimonies infinite extensions infinite durations of infinite glory Go in beloved and raise your own contemplations to a height worthy of this glory and chide me for so lame an expressing of so perfect a state and when the abundant spirit of God hath given you some measure of conceiving that glory here Almighty God give you and me and all a reall expressing of it by making us actuall possessors of that Kingdome which his Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen SERMON XXXIII Preached at Denmark house some few days before the body of King Iames was removed from thence to his buriall Apr. 26. 1625. CANT 3. 11. Goe forth ye Daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart IN the Creation of man in that one word Faciamus let Vs make man God gave such an intimation of the Trinity as that we may well enlarge and spread and paraphrase that one word so farre as to heare therein a councell of all the three Persons agreeing in this gracious designe upon Man faciamus let us make him make and him mend him and make him sure I the Father will make him by my power if he should fall Thou the Sonne shalt repayr him re-edify him redeem him if he should distrust that this Redemption belonged not to him Thou the Holy Ghost shalt apply to his particular soule and conscience this mercy of mine and this merit of the Sonnes and so let us make him In our Text there is an intimation of another Trinity The words are spoken but by one but the persons in the text are Three For first The speaker the Director of all is the Church the spouse of Christ she says Goe forth ye daughters of Sion And then the persons that are called up are as you see The Daughters of Sion the obedient children of the Church that hearken to her voice And then lastly the persons upon whom they are directed is Solomon crowned That is Christ invested with the royall dignity of being Head of the Church And in this especially is this applyable to the occasion of our present meeting All our meetings now are to confesse to the glory of God and the rectifying of our own consciences and manners the uncertainty of the prosperity and the assurednesse of the adversity of this world That this Crown of Solomons in the text will appear to be Christs crown of Thornes his Humiliation his Passion and so these words will dismisse us in this blessed consolation That then we are nearest to our crown of Glory when we are in tribulation in this world and then enter into full possession of it when we come to our dissolution and transmigration out of this world And these three persons The Church that calls The children that hearken and Christ in his Humiliation to whom they are sent will be the three parts in which we shall determine this Exercise First then the person that directs us is The Church no man hath seen God and lives but no man lives till he have heard God for God spake to him in his Baptisme and called him by his name then Now as it were a contempt in the Kings house for any servant to refuse any thing except he might heare the King in person command it when the King hath already so established the government of his house as that his commandements are to be signifyed by his great Officers so neither are we to look that God should speak to us mouth to mouth spirit to spirit by Inspiration by Revelation for it is a large mercy that he hath constituted an Office and established a Church in which we should heare him When Christ was baptized by Iohn it is sayd by all those three Evangelists that report that story in particular circumstances that there was a voice heard from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased and it is not added in any of those three
are nearest and clearest glasses for thee to see thy self in and such is this glasse which God hath proposed to thee in this house And therefore change the word of the Text in a letter or two from Egredimini to Ingredimini never go forth to see but Go in and see a Solomon crowned with his mothers crown c. And when you shall find that hand that had signed to one of you a Patent for Title to another for Pension to another for Pardon to another for Dispensation Dead That hand that settled Possessions by his Seale in the Keeper and rectified Honours by the sword in his Marshall and distributed relief to the Poore in his Almoner and Health to the Diseased by his immediate Touch Dead That Hand that ballanced his own three Kingdomes so equally as that none of them complained of one another nor of him and carried the Keyes of all the Christian world and locked up and let out Armies in their due season Dead how poore how faint how pale how momentany how transitory how empty how frivolous how Dead things must you necessarily thinke Titles and Possessions and Favours and all when you see that Hand which was the hand of Destinie of Christian Destinie of the Almighty God lie dead It was not so hard a hand when we touched it last nor so cold a hand when we kissed it last That hand which was wont to wipe all teares from all our eyes doth now but presse and squeaze us as so many spunges filled one with one another with another cause of teares Teares that can have no other banke to bound them but the declared and manifested will of God For till our teares flow to that Heighth that they might be called a murmuring against the declared will of God it is against our Allegiance it is Disloyaltie to give our teares any stop any termination any measure It was a great part of Annaes prayse That she departed not from the Temple day nor night visit Gods Temple often in the day meet him in his owne House and depart not from his Temples The dead bodies of his Saints are his Temples still even at midnight at midnight remember them who resolve into dust and make them thy glasses to see thy self in Looke now especially upon him whom God hath presented to thee now and with as much cheerfulnesse as ever thou heardst him say Remember my Favours or remember my Commandements heare him say now with the wise man Remember my Iudgement for thine also shall be so yesterday for me and to day for thee He doth not say to morrow but to Day for thee Looke upon him as a beame of that Sunne as an abridgement of that Solomon in the Text for every Christian truely reconciled to God and signed with his hand in the Absolution and sealed with his bloud in the Sacrament and this was his case is a beame and an abridgement of Christ himselfe Behold him therefore Crowned with the Crown that his Mother gives him His Mother The Earth In anâ—ient times when they used to reward Souldiers with particular kinds of Crowns there was a great dignity in Corona graminea in a Crown of Grasse That denoted a Conquest or a Defence of that land He that hath but Coronam Gramineam a turfe of grasse in a Church yard hath a Crown from his Mother and even in that buriall taketh seisure of the Resurrection as by a turfe of grasse men give seisure of land He is crowned in the day of his Marriage for though it be a day of Divorce of us from him and of Divorce of his body from his soul yet neither of these Divorces breake the Marriage His soule is married to him that made it and his body and soul shall meet again and all we both then in that Glory where we shall acknowledge that there is no way to this Marriage but this Divorce nor to Life but by Death And lastly he is Crowned in the day of the gladnesse of his heart He leaveth that heart which was accustomed to the halfe joyes of the earth in the earth and he hath enlarged his heart to a greater capacity of Joy and Glory and God hath filled it according to that new capacity And therefore to end all with the Apostles words I would not have you to be ignorant Brethren concerning them which are asleepe that ye sorrow not as others that have no hope for if ye beleeve that Iesus died and rose again even so them also which sleepe in him will God bring with him But when you have performed this Ingredimini that you have gone in and mourned upon him and performed the Egredimini you have gone forth and laid his Sacred body in Consecrated Dust and come then to another Egredimini to a going forth in many severall wayes some to the service of their new Master and some to the enjoying of their Fortunes conferred by their old some to the raising of new Hopes â— some to the burying of old and all some to new and busie endeavours in Court some to contented retirings in the Countrey let none of us goe so farre from him or from one another in any of our wayes but that all we that have served him may meet once a day the first time we see the Sunne in the eares of almighty God with humble and hearty prayer that he will be pleased to hasten that day in which it shall be an addition even to the joy of that place as perfect as it is and as infinite as it is to see that face againe and to see those eyes open there which we have seen closed here Amen SERMON XXXIIII LUKE â—â—â—â— Father forgive them for they know not what they do THe word of God is either the co-eternall and co-essentiall Sonne our Saviour which tooke flesh Verbum Caro factum est or it is the spirit of his mouth by which we live and not by bread onely And so in a large acceptation every truth is the word of God for truth is uniforme and irrepugnant and indivisible as God Omne verum est omni vero consentiens More strictly the word of God is that which God hath uttered either in writing as twice in the Tables to Moses or by ministery of Angels or Prophets in words or by the unborne in action as in Iohn Baptists exultation within his mother or by new-borne from the mouths of babes and sucklings or by things unreasonable as in Balaams Asse or insensible as in the whole booke of such creatures The heavens declare the glory of God c. But nothing is more properly the word of God to us then that which God himself speakes in those Organs and Instruments which himself hath assumed for his chiefest worke our redemption For in creation God spoke but in redemption he did and more he suffered And of that kinde are these words God in his chosen man-hood saith Father forgive them for they know not what they do
conscience and pinching the bowells by denouncing of Gods Judgements these beare witnesse of the light when otherwise men would sleep it out and so propter non intelligentes for those that lye in the suddes of nature and cannot or of negligence and will not come to heare sol lucernas this light requires testimony These testimonies Gods ordinances may have wakened a man yet he may winke and covet darknesse and grow weary of instruction and angry at increpation And as the eye of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight so the eare of this fastidious and impatient man longeth for the end of the Sermon or the end of that point in the Sermon which is a thorne to his conscience But as if a man wink in a cleare day he shall for all that discerne light thorough his eylids but not light enough to keep him from stumbling so the most perverse man that is either in faith or manners that winkes against the light of nature or light of the law or light of grace exhibited in the Christian Church the most determined Atheist that is discernes through all his stubbornnesse though not light enough to rectifie him to save him yet enough to condemne him though not enough to enable him to reade his owne name in the book of life yet so much as makes him afraid to read his own story by and to make up his owne Audit and account with God And doth not this light to this man need testimony That as he does see it is a light so he might see that there is warmth and nourishment in this light and so as well see the way to God by that light as to see by it that there is a God and this he may if he doe not sleep nor winke that is not forbeare comming hither nor resist the grace of God always offred here when he is here Propter incredulos for their sakes who though they doe heare heare not to beleeve sol lucernas this light requires testimony and it does so too propter infirmos for their sakes who though they doe heare and beleeue yet doe not Practise If he neither sleep nor wink neither forbeare nor resist yet how often may you surprise and deprehend a man whom you thinke directly to look upon such an object yet if you aske him the quality or colour of it he will tell you he saw it not That man sees as little with staring as the other with winking His eye hath seen but it hath returned nothing to the common sense We may pore upon books stare upon preachers yet if we reflect nothing nothing upon our conversation we shall still remaine under the increpation and malediction of Saint Paul out of Esay Seeing yee shall see and shall not perceive seeing and hearing shall but aggravate our condemnation and it shall be easier at the day of Judgement for the deaf and the blinde that never saw Sacrament never heard Sermon then for us who have frequented both propter infirmos for their sakes whose strength though it serve to bring them hither and to beleeve here doth not serve them to proceed to practise sol lucernas this light requires testimony Yet if we be neither dead nor asleep nor winke nor looke negligently but doe come to some degrees of holinesse in practise for a time yet if at any time we put our selves in such a position and distance from this light as that we suffer dark thick bodies to interpose and eclipse it that is sadnesse and dejection of spirit for worldly losses nay if we admit inordinate sadnesse for sinne it selfe to eclipse this light of comfort from us or if we suffer such other lights as by the corrupt estimation of the world have a greater splendour to come in As the light of Knowledge and Learning the light of Honour and Glory of popular Applause and Acclamation so that this light which we speake of the light of former Grace be darkned by the accesse of other lights worldly lights then also you shall finde that you need more and more Testimony of this light God is light in the Creature in nature yet the naturall Man stumbles and falls and lies in that ignorance Christ bears witnesse of this light in establishing a Chrishian Church yet many Christians fall into Idolatry and Superstition and lie and die in it The Holy Ghost hath born further witnesse of this light and if we may take so low a Metaphore in so high a Mystery hath snuffed this candle mended this light in the Reformation of Religion and yet there is a damp or a cloud of uncharitablenesse of neglecting of defaming one another we deprave even the fiery the claven tongues of the Holy Ghost Our tongues are fiery onely to the consuming of another and they are cloven onely in speaking things contrary to one another So that still there need more witnesses more testimonies of this light God the Father is Pater Luminum the Father of all Lights God the Sonne is Lumen de lumine Light of light of the Father God the Holy Ghost is Lumen de luminibus Light of lights proceeding both from the Father and the Sonne and this light the Holy Ghost kindles more lights in the Church and drops a coale from the Altar upon every lamp he lets fall beams of his Spirit upon every man that comes in the name of God into this place and he sends you one man to day which beareth witnesse of this light ad ignaros that bends his preaching to the convincing of the naturall man the ignorant soul and works upon him And another another day that bears witnesse ad incredulos that fixeth the promises of the Gospell and the merits of Christ Jesus upon that startling and timorous soul upon that jealous and suspicious soul that cannot beleeve that those promises or those merits appertain to him and so bends all the power of his Sermon to the binding up of such broken hearts and faint beleevers He sendeth another to bear witnesse ad infirmos to them who though they have shaked off their sicknesse yet are too weake to walke to them who though they doe beleeve are intercepted by tentations from preaching and his Sermon reduces them from their ill manners who thinke it enough to come to hear to beleeve And then he sendeth another ad Relapsos to bear witnesse of this light to them who have relapsed into former sinnes that the merits of Christ are inexhaustible and the mercies of God in him indefatigable As God cannot be deceived with a false repentance so he cannot resist a true nor be weary of multiplying his mercies in that case And therefore thinke not that thou hast heard witnesses enow of this light Sermons enow if thou have heard all the points preached upon which concerne thy salvation But because new Clouds of Ignorance of Incredulitie of Infirmitie of Relapsing rise every day and call this light in question
and may make thee doubt whether thou have it or no every day that is as often as thou canst heare more and more witnesses of this light and bless that God who for thy sake would submit himselfe to these Testimonia ab homine these Testimonies from men and being all light himselfe and having so many other Testimonies would yet require the Testimony of Man of Iohn which is our other branch of this first part Christ who is still the light of our Text That light the essentiall light had testimony enough without Iohn First he bore witness of himselfe And though he say of himself If I beare witnesse of my self my witnesse is not true yet that he might say either out of a legall and proverbiall opinion of theirs that ordinarily they thought That a witness testifying for himself was not to be beleeved whatsoever he said Or as Man which they then took him to be he might speake it of himselfe out of his own opinion that in Iudicature it is a good rule that a man should not be beleeved in his own case But after this and after he had done enough to make them see that he was more then man by multiplying of miracles then he said though I beare witnesse of my selfe my witnesse is true So the onely infallibility and unreproachable evidence of our election is in the inward word of God when his Spirit beares witnesse with our Spirit that we are the Sonnes of God for if the Spirit the Spirit of truth say he is in us he is in us But yet the Spirit of God is content to submit himselfe to an ordinary triall to be tried by God and the Countrey he allowes us to doubt and to be afraid of our regeneration except we have the testimony of sanctification Christ bound them not to his own testimony till it had the seale of workes of miracles nor must we build upon any testimony in our selves till other men that see our life testifie for us to the world He had also the testimony of his Father the Father himselfe which hath sent me beareth witnesse of me But where should they see the Father or heare the Father speak That was all which Philip asked at his hands Lord show us the Father and it sufficeth us He had the testimony of an Angel who came to the shepheards so as no where in all the Scriptures there is such an Apparition expressed the Angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them but where might a man talke with this Angel and know more of him As Saint Augustine says of Moses Scripsit abiit he hath written a little of the Creation and he is gone Si hîc esset tenerem rogarem if Moses were here says he I would hold him fast till I had got him to give me an exposition of that which he writ For beloved we must have such witnesses as we may consult farther with I can see no more by an Angel then by lightning A star testified of him at his birth But what was that star was it any of those stars that remaine yet Gregory Nissen thinkes it was and that it onely then changed the naturall course and motion for that service But almost all the other Fathers thinke that it was a light but then created and that it had onely the forme of a star and no more and some few that it was the holy Ghost in that forme And if it were one of the fixed stars and remaine yet yet it is not now in that office it testifies nothing of Christ now The wise men of the East testified of him too But what were they or who or how many or from whence were they for all these circumstances have put Antiquity it selfe into more distractions and more earnest disputations then circumstances should doe Simeon testified of him who had a revelation from the holy Ghost that he should not see death till he had seen Christ. And so did the Prophetess Anna who served God with fasting and prayer day and night Omnis sexus aetas both sexes and all ages testified of him and he gives examples of all as it was easie for him to doe Now after all these testimonies from himselfe from the Father from the Angel from the star from the wise men from Simeon from Anna from all what needed the testimony of Iohn All those witnesses had been thirty years before Iohn was cited for a witnesse to come from the wildernesse and preach And in thirty years by reason of his obscure and retired life in his father Iosephs house all those personall testimonies of Christ might be forgotten and for the most part those witnesses onely testified that he was borne that he was come into the world but for all their testimony he might have been gone out of the world long Before this he might have perished in the generall flood in that flood of innocent blood in which Herod drowned all the young children of that Countrey When therefore Christ came forth to preach when he came to call Apostles when he came to settle a Church to establish meanes for our ordinary salvation by which he is the light of our text the Essentiall light shining out in his Church by the supernaturall light of faith and grace then he admitted then he required Testimonium ab homine testimony from man And so for our conformity to him in using and applying those meanes which convay this light to us in the Church we must doe so too we must have the seale of faith and of the Spirit but this must be in the testimony of men still there must be that done by us which must make men testifie for us Every Christian is a state a common-wealth to himselfe and in him the Scripture is his law and the conscience is his Iudge And though the Scripture be inspired from God and the conscience be illumined and rectified by the holy Ghost immediately yet both the Scriptures and the Conscience admit humane arguments First the Scriptures doe in all these three respects first that there are certaine Scriptures that are the revealed will of God Secondly that these books which we call Canonicall are those Scriptures And lastly that this and this is the true sense and meaning of such and such a place of Scripture First that there is a manifestation of the will of God in certain Scriptures if we who have not power to infuse Faith into men for that is the work of the Holy Ghost onely but must deal upon the reason of men and satisfie that if we might not proceed per testimonia ab homine by humane Arguments and argue and infer thus That if God will save man for worshipping him and damne him for not worshipping him so as he will be worshipped certainly God hath revealed to man how he will be worshipped and
Circumcision in the flesh after the spirituall Circumcision in the heart is established by the Gospell their end is not Circumcision but Concision they pretend Reformation but they intend Destruction a tearing a renting a wounding the body and frame and peace of the Church and by all means and in all cases Videte Concisionem Beware of Concision First then we shall from these words consider the lothnesse of God to lose us For first he leaves us not without a Law he bids and he forbids and then he does not surprise us with obsolete laws he leaves not his laws without proclamations he refreshes to our memories and represents to us our duties with such commonefactions as these in our Text Videte Cavete this and this I have commanded you Videte see that ye do it this and this will hinder you Cavete beware ye do it not Beware of Concision And this thus derived and digested into these three branches first Gods lothnesse to lose us and then his way of drawing us to him by manifestation of his will in a law and lastly his way of holding us with him by making that law effectuall upon us by these his frequent commonefactions Videte Cavete looke to it beware of it this will be our first part And then our second will be the thing it self that falls under this inhibition and caution which is Concision that is a tearing a renting a shredding in peeces that which should be intire In which second part we shall also have as we had in the former three branches for we shall consider first Concisionem corporis the shredding of the body of Christ into fragments by unnecessary wrangling in Doctrinall points and then Concisionem vestis the shredding of the garment of Christ into rags by unnecessary wrangling in matter of Discipline and ceremoniall points and lastly Concisionem spiritus which will follow upon the former two the concision of thine owne spirit and heart and minde and soule and conscience into perplexities and into sandy and incoherent doubts and scruples and jealousies and suspitions of Gods purpose upon thee so as that thou shalt not be able to recollect thy self nor reconsolidate thy self upon any assurance and peace with God which is onely to be had in Christ and by his Church Videte Concisionem beware of tearing the body the Doctrine beware of tearing the Garment the Discipline beware of tearing thine owne spirit and conscience from her adhaesion her agglutination her cleaving to God in a holy tranquillity and acquiescence in his promise and mercy in the merits of his Sonne applyed by the holy Ghost in the Ministry of the Church For our first consideration of Gods lothnesse to lose us this is argument enoughâ— That we are here now now at the participation of that grace which God alwayes offers to al such Congregations as these gathered in his name For I pray God there stand any one amongst us here now that hath not done something since yesterday that made him unworthy of being here to day and who if he had been left under the damp and mist of yesterdayes sinne without the light of new grace would never have found way hither of himself If God be weary of me and would faine be rid of me he needs not repent that he wrapped me up in the Covenant and derived me of Christian parents though he gave me a great help in that nor repent that he bred me in a true Church though he afforded me a great assistance in that nor repent that he hath brought me hither now to the participation of his Ordinances though thereby also I have a great advantage for if God be weary of me and would be rid of me he may finde enough in me now and here to let me perish A present levity in me that speake a present formality in you that heare a present Hypocrisie spread over us all would justifie God if now and here he should forsake us When our blessed Saviour sayes When the Son of man comes shall he finde faith upon earth we need not limit that question so if he come to a Westminster to an Exchange to an Army to a Court shall he finde faith there but if he come to a Church if he come hither shall he finde faith here If as Christ speaks in another sense That Iudgement should begin at his owne house the great and generall judgement should begin now at this his house and that the first that should be taken up in the clouds to meet the Lord Jesus should be we that are met now in this his house would we be glad of that acceleration or would we thank him for that haste Men of little faith I feare we would not There was a day when the Sonnes of God presented themselves before the Lord and Satan came also amongst them one Satan amongst many Sonnes of God Blessed Lord is not our case far otherwise do not we we who as we are but we are all the Sonnes of Satan present our selves before thee and yet thou Lord art amongst us Is not the spirit of slumber and wearinesse upon one and the spirit of detraction and mis-interpretation upon another upon one the spirit of impenitence for former sinnes and the spirit of recidivation into old or of facility and opennesse to admit tentations into new upon another We as we are but we are all the Sonnes of Satan and thou Lord the onely Sonne of God onely amongst us If thou Lord wert weary of me and wouldest be rid of me may many a soule here say Lord thou knowest and I know many a midnight when thou mightest have been rid of me if thou hadst left me to my selfe then But vigilavit Doninus the Lord vouchsafed to watch over me and deliciae ejus the delight of the Lord was to be with me And what is there in me but his mercy but then what is there in his mercy that that may not reach to all as well as to me The Lord is loth to lose any the Lord would not the death of any not of any sinner much lesse if he do not see him nor consider him so the Lord would not lose him though a sinner much lesse make him a sinner that he might be lost Vult omnes the Lord would have all men come unto him and be saved which was our first consideration and we have done with that and our second is The way by which he leads us to him that he declares and manifests his will unto us in a Law he bids and he forbids The laborers in the Vine-yard took it ill at the Stewards hand and at his Masters too that those which came late to the labour were made equall with them who had borne the heate and the burden of the day But if the Steward or the Master had never meant or actually never had given any thing at all to them that had borne the heate and the
shall feare the Lord and his goodnesse in the later dayes And beyond this land there is no more Sea beyond this mercy no more Judgement for with this mercy the Chapter ends Consider our text then as a whole Globe as an intire Spheare and then our two Hemispheares of this Globe our two parts of this text will bee First that no perversnesse of ours no rebellion no disobedience puts God beyond his mercy nor extinguishes his love still hee calls Israel rebellious Israel his Children nay his owne anger his owne Judgements then when hee is in the exercise thereof in the execution thereof puts him not beyond his mercy extinguishes not his love hee hides not his face from them then hee leaves them not then in the darke hee accompanies their calamity with a light hee makes that time though cloudy though overcast yet a day unto them the Children of Israel shall abide many days in this case But then as no disobedience removes God from himself for he is love and mercy so no interest of ours in God doth so priviledge us but that hee will execute his Judgements upon his Children too even the Children of Israel shall fall into these Calamities And from this first part wee shall passe to the second from these generall considerations That no punishments should make us desperate that no favours should make us secure we shall passe to the particular commination and judgements upon the children of Israel in this text without King without Prince c. In our first part we stop first upon this declaration of his mercy in this fatherly appellation Children the children of Israel He does not call them children of Israel as though hee disavowed them and put them off to another Father but therefore because they are the Children of Israel they are his Children for hee had maried Israel and maried her to himselfe for ever Many of us are Fathers and from God here may learne tendernesse towards children All of us are children of some parents and therefore should hearken after the name of Father which is nomen pietatis potestatis a name that argues their power over us and our piety towards them and so concernes many of us in a double capacity as we are children and parents too but all of us in one capacity as we are children derived from other parents God is the Father of man otherwise then he is of other creatures He is the Father of all Creatures so Philo calls all Creatures sorâ—res suas his sisters but then all those sisters of man all those daughters of God are not alike maried God hath placed his Creatures in divers rankes and in divers conditions neither must any man thinke that he hath not done the duty of a Father if he have not placed all his Sonnes or not matched all his daughters in a condition equall to himselfe or not equall to one another God hath placed creatures in the heavens and creatures in the earth and creatures in the sea and yet all these creatures are his children and when he looked upon them all in their divers stations he saw omnia valde bora that all was very well And that Father that imploies one Sonne in learning another to husbandry another to Merchandise pursues Gods example in disposing his children his creatures diversly and all well Such creatures as the Raine though it may seem but an imperfect and ignoble creature fallen from the wombe of a cloud have God for their Father God is the Father of the Raine And such creatures as light have but God for their Father God is Pater lâ—minum the Father of lights Whether we take lights there to be the Angels created with the light some take it so or to be the severall lights set up in the heavens Sun and Moon and Stars some take it so or to be the light of Grace in infusion by the Spirit or the light of the Church in manifestation by the word for all these acceptations have convenient Authors and worthy to be followed God is the Father of lights of all lights but so he is of raine and clouds too And God is the Father of glory as Saint Paul styles him of all glory whether of those beames of glory which he sheds upon us here in the blessings and preferments of this life or that waight of glory which he reserves for us in the life to come From that inglorious drop of raine that falls into the dust and rises no more to those glorious Saints who shall rise from the dust and fall no more but as they arise at once to the fulnesse of Essentiall joy so arise daily in accidentiall joyes all are the children of God and all alike of kin to us And therefore let us not measure our avowing or our countenancing of our kindred by their measure of honour or place or riches in the world but let us looke how fast they grow in the root that is in the same worship of the same God who is ours and their Father too He is nearest of kin to me that is of the same religion with me as they are creatures they are of kin to me by the Father but as they are of the same Church and religion by Father and mother too Philo calls all creatures his sisters but all men are his brothers God is the Father of man in a stronger and more peculiar and more masculine sense then of other Creatures Filius particeps con-dominus cum patre as the law calls the Sonne the partner of the Father and fellow-Lord joint-Lord with the Father of all the possession that is to descend so God hath made man his partner and fellow-Lord of all his other creatures in Moses his Dominamini when he gives man a power to rule over them and in Davids Omnia subjecisti when he imprints there a naturall disposition in the creature to the obedience of man So high so very high a filiation hath God given man as that having another Sonne by another filiation a higher filiation then this by an eternall generation yet he was content that that Sonne should become this Sonne that the Sonne of God should become the Sonne of Man God is the Father of all of man otherwise then of all the rest but then of the children of Israel otherwise then of all other men For he bought them and is not be thy Father that hath bought thee says God by Moses Not to speake of that purchase which he made by the death of his Sonne for that belongs to all the world he bought the Jews in particular at such a price such silver and such gold such temporall and such spirituall benefits such a Land and such a Church such a Law and such a Religion as certainly he might have had all the world at that price If God would have manifested himselfe poured out himselfe to the Nations as hee did to
Oppresse not that soule by violence by Fraud nor by Scorne which was the other signification of this word Oppression Hoc nos perdit quod divina quoque eloquia in facetias in dicteria vertamus Damnation is a serious thing and this aggravates it that we slight and make jests at that which should save us the Scriptures and the Ordinances of God For by this oppression of thy poore soule by this Violence this Fraud this Scorne thou wilt come to Reproach thy Maker to impute that losse of thy soule which thou hast incurred by often breach of Lawes evidently manifested to thee to his secret purpose and un-revealed will then which thou canst not put a greater Reproach a greater Contumely a greater Blasphemy upon God For God cannot bee God if hee bee not innocent nor innocent if hee draw bloud of mee for his owne Act. But if thou show mercy to this soule mercy in that signification of the word as it denotes an actuall performance of those things that are necessary for the making sure of thy salvation or if thou canst not yet attaine to those degrees of Sanctification mercy in that signification of the word as the word denotes hearty and earnest Prayer that thou couldest Lord I beleeve Lord help mine unbeliefe Lord I stand yet yet Lord raise mee when I fall Honorabis Deum thou shalt honour God in the sense of the word in this Text thou shalt enlarge God amplifie dilate God that is the Body of God the Church both here and hereafter For thou shalt adde a figure to the number of his Saints and there shall bee a Saint the more for thee Thou shalt adde a Theme of Joy to the Exultation of the Angels They shall have one occasion of rejoycing the more from thee Thou shalt adde a pause a stop to that Vsquequo of the Martyrs under the Altar who solicite God for the Resurrection for Thou shalt adde a step to the Resurrection it selfe by having brought it so much nearer as to have done thy part for the filling up of the number of the Saints upon which fulnesse the Resurrection shall follow And thou shalt adde a Voyce to that Old and ever-new Song that Catholique Hymne in which both Churches Militant and Triumphant shall joyne Blessing Honour Glory and Power bee unto him that sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lambe for ever and ever Amen SERMON XLIII A Sermon upon the fist of Novemb. 1622. being the Anniversary celebration of our Deliverance from the Powder Treason Intended for Pauls Crosse but by reason of the weather Preached in the Church LAMENT 4. 20. The breath of our nostrils the Anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits The Prayer before the Sermon O LORD open thou my lips and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise for thou O Lord didst make haste to help us Thou O Lord didst make speed to save us Thou that sittest in heaven didst not onely looke down to see what was done upon the Earth but what was done in the Earth and when the bowels of the Earth were with a key of fire ready to open and swallow us the bowels of thy compassion were with a key of love opened to succour us This is the day and these are the houres wherein that should have been acted In this our Day and in these houres We praise thee O God we acknowledge thee to bee the Lord All our Earth doth worship thee The holy Church throughout all this Land doth knowledge thee with commemorations of that great mercy now in these houres Now in these houres it is thus commemorated in the Kings House where the Head and Members praise thee Thus in that place where it should have been perpetrated where the Reverend Judges of the Land doe now praise thee Thus in the Universities where the tender youth of this Land is brought up to praise thee in a detestation of their Doctrines that plotted this Thus it is commemorated in many severall Societies in many severall Parishes and thus here in this Mother Church in this great Congregation of thy Children where all of all sorts from the Lievtenant of thy Lievtenant to the meanest sonne of thy sonne in this Assembly come with hearts and lippes full of thankesgiving Thou Lord openest their lippes that their mouth may shew forth thy prayse for Thou O Lord diddest make haste to helpe them Thou diddest make speede to save them Accept O Lord this Sacrifice to which thy Spirit giveth fire This of Praise for thy great Mercies already afforded to us and this of Prayer for the continuance and enlargement of them upon the Catholick Church by them who pretend themselves the onely sonnes thereof dishonoured this Day upon these Churches of England Scotland and Ireland shaked and threatned dangerously this Day upon thy servant our Soveraigne for his Defence of the true Faith designed to ruine this day upon the Prince and others derived from the same roote some but Infants some not yet Infants enwrapped in dust and annihilation this day upon all the deliberations of the Counsell That in all their Consultations they may have before their eyes the Record and Registers of this Day upon all the Clergie That all their Preaching and their Governement may preclude in their severall Iurisdictions all re-entrances of that Religion which by the Confession of the Actours themselves was the onely ground of the Treason of this day upon the whole Nobilitie and Commons all involved in one Common Destruction this Day upon both our Universities which though they lacke no Arguments out of thy Word against the Enemies of thy Truth shall never leave out this Argument out of thy Works The Historie of this Day And upon all those who are any wayes afflicted That our afflictions bee not multiplyed upon us by seeing them multiplyed amongst us who would have diminished thee and annihilated us this Day And lastly upon this Auditory assembled here That till they turne to ashes in the Grave they may remember that thou tookest them as fire-brands out of the fire this Day Heare us O Lord and hearken to us Receive our Prayers and returne them with Effect for his sake in whose Name and words wee make them Our Father which art c. The SERMON OF the Authour of this Booke I thinke there was never doubt made but yet that is scarce safely done which the Councell of Trent doth in that Canon which numbers the Books of Canonicall Scriptures to leave out this Book of Lamentations For though I make no doubt but that they had a purpose to comprehend and involve it in the name of Ieremy yet that was not enough for so they might have comprehended and involved Genesis and Deuteronomie and all between those two in one name of Moses and so they might have comprehended and involved the Apocalypse and some Epistles in the name of Iohn and have left out the Book it selfe in the number But one of their
without a pope they have made a problematicall a disputable matter and some of their Authours have diverted towards an affirmation of it but Aufleribilitas potestatis to imagine a King without Kingly Soveraignty never came into probleme into disputation We all lamented and bitterly and justly the losse of our Deborah though then we saw a Iosiah succeeding but if they had removed our Iosiah and his Royall children and so this form of government where or who or what had been an object of Consolation to us The cause of lamentation in the losse of a good King is certainly great and so it was if Ieremy lamented Iosiah but if it were but for zedekiah an ill King as the greater part of Expositors take it yet the lamentation you see is the same How ill a King was Zedekiah As ill as Iosiah was good that 's his measure He did evill in the sight of the Lord according to all that Iehoiakim had done Here is his sinne sinne by precedent and what had Iehoiakim done He had done evill in the sight of the Lord according to all that his Fathers had done It is a great and a dangerous wickednesse which is done upon pretext of Antiquity The Religion of our Fathers the Church of our Fathers the Worship of our Fathers is a pretext that colours a great deale of Superstition He did evill as his Fathers there was his comparative evill And his positive evill I meane his particular sinne was That he humbled not himself to Gods Prophets to Ieremy speaking from the mouth of the Lord there was irreligiousnesse And then He broke the Oath which he had sworne by God there was perâ—idiousnesse faithlesnsse And lastly He stiffned his neck and hardned his heart from turning to the Lord of Israel there was impenitiblenesse Thus evill was Zedekiah irreligious to God treacherous to man impenitible to himself and yet the State and men truly religious in the State the Prophet lamented him not his spirituall defections by sinne for they did not make themselves Judges of that but they lamented the calamities of the Kingdome in the losse even of an evill King That man must have a large comprehension that shall adventure to say of any King He is an ill King he must know his Office well and his actions well and the actions of other Princes too who have correspondence with him before he can say so When Christ sayes Let your communication be yea yea and nay nay for whatsoever is more then this that is when it comes to swearing that cometh of evill Saint Augustine does not understand that of the evill disposition of that man that sweares but of them who will not beleeve him without wearing Many times a Prince departs from the exact rule of his duty not out of his own indisposition to truth and clearnesse but to countermine underminers That which David sayes in the eighteenth Psalme David speaks not of man but of God himself Cum perverso perveriêris With the froward thou wilt show thy self froward God who is of no froward nêature may be made froward with crafty neighbours a Prince will be crafty and perchance false with the false Alas to looke into no other profession but our owne how often do we excuse Dispensations and pluralities and non-residencies with an Omnes faciunt I do but as other men of my profession do Allow a King but that That he does but as other Kings do Nay but this He does but as other Kings put him to a necessity to do and you will not hastily call a King an ill King When God gives his people for old shoes and sells them for nothing and at the same time gives his and their enemies abundance when God commands Abraham to sacrifice his own and onely Sonne and his enemies have Children at their pleasure as David speaks To give your selves the liberty of humane affection you would think God an ill God but yet for all this his children are to him a Royall Priesthood and a holy Nation and all their tears are in his bottles and registred in his booke for all this When Princes pretermit in some things the present benefit of their Subjects and confer favours upon others give your selves the liberty to judge of Princes actions with the affections of private men and you may think a King an ill King But yet we are to him as David sayes His brethren his bone his flesh and so reputed by him God himselfe cannot stand upright in a naturall mans interpretation nor any King in a private mans But then how soone our adversaries come to call Kings ill Kings we see historically when they boast of having deposed Kings Quia minus utiles Because some other hath seemed to them fitter for the Government and we see it prophetically by their allowing those Indictments and Attainders of Kings which stand in their books De Syndicatu That that King which neglects the duties of his place and they must prescribe the duty and judge the negligence too That King that exercises his Prerogative without just cause and they must prescribe the Prerogative and judge the cause That that King that vexes his Subjects That that King that gives himselfe to intemperate hunting for in that very particular they instance that in such cases and they multiply these cases infinitely Kings are in their mercy and subject to their censures and corrections We proceed not so in censuring the actions of Kings we say with St. Cyrill Impium est dicere Regi Iniquè agis It is an impious thing in him who is onely a private man and hath no other obligations upon him to say to the King or of the King He governs not as a King is bound to do we remit the judgement of those their actions which are secret to God and when they are evident and bad yet we must endevour to preserve their persons for there is a danger in the losse and a lamentation due to the losse even of Zedekiah for even such are uniti Domini The anoynted of the Lord and the breath of our nostrils First as it lies in our Text The King is spiritus narium the breath of our uostrills First Spiritus is a name most peculiarly belonging to that blessed Person of the glorious Trinity whose Office it is to convay to insinuate to apply to us the Mercies of the Father and the Merits of the Sonne He is called by this Name by the word of this Text Ruach even in the beginning of the Creation God had created Heaven and Earth and then The Spirit of God susâ—labat saith Pagnins translation and so saith the Chalde Paraphrase too it breathed upon the waters and so induced or deduced particular formes So God hath made us a little World of our own This Iland He hath given us Heaven and Earth The truth of his Gospel which is our earnest of Heaven and the abundance of the Earth a
invested in the light of joy and my body in the light of glory How glorious is God as he looks down upon us through the Sunne How glorious in that glasse of his How glorious is God as he looks out amongst us through the king How glorious in that Image of his How glorious is God as he calls up our eyes to him in the beauty and splendor and service of the Church How glorious in that spoufe of his But how glorious shall I conceive this light to be cum sub loco viderim when I shall see it in his owne place In that Spheare which though a Spheare is a Center too In that place which though a place is all and every where I shall see it in the face of that God who is all face all manifestration all all Innotescence to me for facies Deiest qua Deus nobis innotescit that 's Gods face to us by which God manifests himselfe to us I shall see this light in his face who is all face and yet all hand all application and communication and delivery of all himselfe to all his Saints This is Beatitudo in Auge blessednesse in the Meridionall height blessednesse in the South point in a perpetuall Sommer solstice beyond which nothing can be proposed to see God so Then There And yet the farmers of heaven and hell the merchants of soules the Romane Church make this blessednesse but an under degree but a kinde of apprentiship after they have beatified declared a man to be blessed in the fruition of God in heaven if that man in that inferiour state doe good service to that Church that they see much profit will rise by the devotion and concurrence of men to the worship of that person then they will proceed to a Canonization and so he that in his Novitiat and years of probation was but blessed Ignatius and blessed Xavier is lately become Saint Xavier aud Saint Ignatius And so they pervert the right order and method which is first to come to Sanctification and then to Beatification first to holinesse and then to blessednesse And in this method our blessed God bee pleased to proceed with us by the operation of his holy Spirit to bring us to Sanctification here and by the merits and intercession of his glorious Sonne to Beatification hereafter That so not being offended in him but resting in those meanes and seales of reconciliation which thou hast instituted in thy Church wee may have life and life more abundantly life of grace here and life of glory there in that kingdome which thy Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud Amen SERMON XLV Preached at Saint Dunstans Aprill 11. 1624. The first sermon in that Church as Vicar thereof DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no Childe the Wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her FRom the beginning God intimated a detestation a dislike of singularity of beeing Alone The first time that God himselfe is named in the Bible in the first verse of Genesis hee is named plurally Creavit Dit Gods Gods in the plurall Created Heaven and Earth God which is but one would not appeare nor bee presented so alone but that hee would also manifest more persons As the Creator was not Singular so neither were the creatures First he created heaven and earth both together which were to be the generall parents and out of which were to bee produced all other creatures and then he made all those other creatures plurally too Male and female created hee them And when he came to make him for whose sake next to his own glory he made the whole world Adam he left not Adam alone but joyned an Eve to him Now when they were maried we know but wee know not when they were divorced we heare when Eve was made but not when shee dyed The husbands death is recorded at last the wives is not at all So much detestation hath God himselfe and so little memory would hee have kept of any singularity of being alone The union of Christ to the whole Church is not expressed by any metaphore by any figure so oft in the Scripture as by this of Mariageâ— and there is in that union with Christ to the whole Church neither husband nor wife can ever die Christ is immortall as hee is himselfe and immortall as hee is the head of the Church the Husband of that wife for that wife the Church is immortall too for as a Prince is the same Prince when he fights a battaile and when hee triumphs after the victory so the militant and the triumphant Church is the same Church There can bee no widower There can bee no Dowager in that case Hee cannot shee cannot die But then this Metaphore this spirituall Mariage holds not onely betweene Christ and the whole Church in which case thee can be no Widow but in the union between Christs particular Ministers and particular Churches and there in that case the husband of that wife may die The present Minister may die and so that Church be a Widow And in that case and for provision of such Widows wee consider the accommodation of this Law If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no childe the wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger c. This law was but a permissive law rather a dispensation then a law as the permitting of usury to bee taken of strangers and the permitting of divorces in so many cases were At most it was but a Iudiciall law and therefore layes no obligation upon any other nation then them to whom it was given the Iews And therefore wee enquire not the reasons of that law the reasons were determined in that people wee examine not the conveniences of the law the conveniences were determined in those times wee lay hold onely upon the Typique signification and appliablenesse of the law as that secular Mariage there spoken of may be appliable to this spirituall Mariage the Mariage of the Minister to the Church If brethren dwell together c. From these words then wee shall make our approaches and application to the present occasion by these steps First there is a mariage in the case The taking and leaving of a Church is not an indifferent an arbitrary thing It is a Mariage and Mariage implies Honour It is an honourable estate and that implies charge it is a burdensome state There is Honos and Onus Honour and labour in Mariage You must bee content to afford the honour wee must bee content to endure the labour And so in that point as our Incumbencie upon a Church is our Mariage to that Church wee shall as farre as the occasion admits see
dead without children as Tertullian expresses it in his particular elegancy Illiberis that is content to be his brother in that sense in that capacity to claime no children no spirituall children of his own begetting not to attribute to himself that holy generation of the Saints of God as though his learning or his wit or his labour had saved them but to content himselfe to have been the foster father and to have nursed those children whom the Spirit of God by over-shadowing the Church hath begot upon her for though it be with the word of truth in our preaching yet of his own will begot he us though by the word says the Apostle Saint Paul might say to the Corinthians Though you have tenne thousand instructors in Christ yet have yee not many fathers for in Christ Iesus I have begotten you through the Gospel And hee might say of his spirituall sonne Onesimus That he begot him in his bonds Those to whom he first of any presented the Gospel That had not heard of a Christ nor a holy Ghost before They into whom he infused a new religion new to them might well enough bee called his children and hee their father But we have no new doctrine to present no new opinion to infuse or miracles to amaze as in the Romane Church they are full of all these wee have no children to beget of our own Paul was not crucified for you nor were you baptized in the name of Paul sayes Paul himself as he sayes again who is Paul but a Minister by whom ye beleeved and that also not by him but as the Lord gave to every man Not as Paul preached to every man for he preached alike to every man but as the Lord gave to every man I have planted says he it is true but he that planteth is nothing says he also Only they that proceed as they proceed in the Romane Church Ex opere operato to tye the grace of God to the action of the man will venter to call Gods children their children in that sense My prayer shal be against that commination That God will not give us a miscarrying womb nor dry breasts that you may always suck pure milk from us and then not cast it up but digest it to your spirituall growth And I shall call upon God with a holy passion as vehement as Rachels to Iacob Da mihi liberos give me children or I die That God would give me children but his children that he by his Spirit may give you an inward regeneration as I by his ordinance shall present to you the outward means that so being begot by himselfe the father of life and of light you may be nursed and brought up in his service by me That so not attributing the work to any man but to Gods Ordinances you doe not tye the power of God nor the breath of life to any one mans lips as though there were no regeneration no begetting but by him but acknowledging the other to be but an instrument and the weakest to be that you may remember also That though a man can cut deeper with an Axe then with a knife with a heavy then with a lighter instrument yet God can pierce as far into a conscience by a plain as by an exquisite speaker Now this widow being thus maried This Church thus undertaken He must perform the duty of a husbands brother First it is a personall office he must doe it himself When Christ shall say at the Judgement I was naked and ye cloathed me not sick and ye visited me not it shall be no excuse to say When saw we thee naked when saw we thee sick for wee might have seen it wee should have seen it When we shall come to our accompt and see them whose salvation was committed to us perish because they were uninstructed and ignorant dare we say then we never saw them show their ignorance wee never heard of it That is the greatest part of our fault the heaviest weight upon our condemnation that we saw so little heard so little conversed so little amongst them because we were made watchmen and bound to see and bound to hear and bound to be heard not by others but by our selves My sheep may be saved by others but I save them not that are save so nor shall I my self be saved by their labour where mine was necessarily required The office is personall I must doe it and it is perpetuall I must perform it sayes the text goe through with it Lots wife looked backe and God never gave her leave to look forward again That man who hath put his hand to the plow and looks back Christ disables him for the kingdome of God The Galatians who had begun in the spirit and then relapsed before whose eyes Christ Iesus had been evidently set forth as the Apostle speaks fall under that reproach of the Apostle to bee called and called againe fooles and men bewitched If I beginne to preach amongst you and proceed not I shall fall under that heavy increpation from my God you beganne that you might for your owne glory shew that you were in some measure able to serve the Church and when you had done enough for your own glory you gave over my glory and the salvation of their souls to whom I sent you God hath set our eyes in our foreheads to look forward not backward not to be proud of that which we have done but diligent in that which we are to doe In the Creation if God had given over his worke the third or fift day where had man been If I give over my prayers due to the Church of God as long as God enables me to doe it service I lose my thanks nay I lose the testimony of mine own conscience for all My office is personall and it is perpetuall and then it is a duty He must perform the duty of a husbands brother unto her It is not of curtesie that we preach but it is a duty it is not a bounty given but it is a debt paid for though I preach the Gospel I have nothing to glory of for a necessity is laid upon me sayes Saint Paul himself It is true that as there is Vae si non Wo be unto mee if I doe not preach the Gospel so there is an Euge bone serve Well done good and faithfull servant to them that doe But the Vae is of Iustice the Euge is of Mercy If doe it not I deserve condemnation from God but if I doe it I deserve not thanks from him Nay it is a debt not onely to God but to Gods people to you and indeed there is more due to you then you can claime or can take knowledge of For the people can claime but according to the laws of that State and the Canons of that Church in which God hath placed them such preaching as those Laws and
God into the eyes of man that every man may see it men may behold it afar off there must necessarily arise many particulars to your consideration I threaten you but with two parts no farther tediousnesse but I aske roome for divers branches I can promise no more shortnesse The first part is a discovery a manifestation of God to man though that be undeniably true Posuit tenebra s latibulum God hath made darknesse his secret place yet it is as true which proceeds from the same mouth and the same pen Amictus tanquam pallio God covers himselfe with light as with a garment he will be seene through his works As we shall stand naked to one another and not be ashamed of our scars or morphews in the sight of God so God stands naked to the eyes of man and is not ashamed of that humiliation Every man may see it man may behold it afar off This proposition this discovery will be the first part and the other will be a tacite answer to a likely objection is not God far off and can man see at that distance yes he may Man may behold that afar off Every man may see it man may behold it afar off God is the subject of both parts God alone one God But in both parts there is a Trinity too three branches in each part for in each there is an object something to be apprehended there is a meanes of apprehending it it is to be seene there is a person enabled to see it Every man may see it man may behold it afar off But these three are not alike in each part for in the first that object is determined limited it is illud it God in his works In the second there is no object limited for it is not illud but there is more left to be seene not onely God in his works as here below but God in his glory above Man may behold but he does not offer to tell us what there is an object but another object In the second there is a difference too in the meanes of apprehending It is but Casah in the first it is Nibbat in the second in that every man may see in the other man may behold And in the third there is also a difference the man that may see God is Adam Adam is a man made of earth the weakest man even in nature may see God but the man that must behold afar off is Enoch and Enoch is homo aeger a miserable man a man that hath tasted affliction and calamity for that man lookes after God in the next world and as he feeles God with a rod in his hand here so he beholds God with a crown in his hand there And of those sticks of sweet wood of those drops of sweet gums shall we make up this present sacrifice In our first part the manifestation of God to man the first branch is the object the limited object illud Every man may see it what is that That which was proposed in the verse immediately before Remember that thou magnifie his worke which men behold First it is a worke and therefore it is made it hath an author a creator and then it is his worke the worke of God and therefore manifests him It is a worke a deliberate not a casuall matter this frame this world It is a worke it was begun and made up not an eternall matter this frame this world Epiphanius sayes well Omnis error à caecitate ad vanitatem that 's the progresse of error every error begins in blindnesse and ignorance but proceeds and ends in absurdity in frivolousnesse If men had not put out the light of nature they might discerne a creation in the world that that was made it is a worke but when they do put out that light and deny a creation into what frivolous opinions they scatter themselves what contradictory things men that seeme constant say what childish what ridiculous things men that seeme grave and sober fathers in Philosophy say of this world when they have said all this one thing will destroy all if the world be eternall it is God for whatsoever had no beginning whatsoever needed nothing to give it a beeing whatsoever was always of it selfe is God So that to build up their opinions in one part they destroy it in another and to overthrow our Hall they build up our Chappell by denying that the world was made they imply they confesse a God for if it had no Creator it is no Creature it is God so that they lose more then they gaine and they seek damnation unthriftily and perish prodigally they deny the Creation left by the Creation we should prove God and their very deniall of a Creation their making of the world eternall constitutes it to be God They deny any God and then make a worse God This world then is a work a limited a determined a circumscribed work and it is Opus ejus his work says Elihu there But whose Will you lay hold upon that upon that that Elihu onely says Remember his work but names none But two verses before with which this verse hath connexion he does name God But let the work be whose it will whosoever be this He this He must be God whosoever gave the first beeing to Creatures must be the Creator If you will thinke that Chance did it and fortune then fortune must be your God and destiny must be your God if you thinke destiny did it and therefore you were as good attribute it to the right God for a God it must have if it be a work it was made if it be a Creature there is a Creator and if it be his work that He must be God and there are no more Gods but one Every man hath a delight and complacency in knowledge and is ashamed of ignorance even in booklearning a man would have a Library pro supellectile even for a part of furniture a man would read for Ornament His house is not well furnished he is not well furnished without bookes Many a man who lets the Bible dust and rust because the Bible hath a kinde of majesty and prerogative and command over a man it will not be jested withall it will not be disputed against a man can very hardly devest the reverence that appertaines to that book and therefore he had rather deale with his fellowes more humane Authors that will hear reason and not binde his faith many a man can let the Fathers stand because they write out of a pious credulity and such anticipations and preconceptions as the Bible hath submitted them under and captivated them to But if thou let the Bible and Fathers alone and yet love bookes what book what kinde of book canst thou take into thy hand that proves not this world to be Opus a work made and opus ejus his work made by him by God Dost thou love learning as it is