enough by it to meet Davids question Quis homo what man with Christs answer Ego homo I am the man in whom whosoever abideth shall not see death SERMONS Preached upon WHITSUNDAY SERMON XXVIII Preached at S. Pauls upon Whitsunday 1627. JOHN 14.26 But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name Hee shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you THis day is this Scripture fulfilled in your cares saith our Saviour Christ having read for his Text that place of Esay Esay 61.1 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me And that day which we celebrate now was another Scripture fulfilled in their eares and in their eyes too For all Christs promises are Scripture They have all the Infallibility of Scripture And Christ had promised that that Spirit which was upon him when he preached should also be shed upon all his Apostles And upon this day he performed that promise when Acts 2.1 They being all with one accord in one place there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty winde and filled the house and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire and it sate upon each of them and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost And this very particular day in which we now commemorate and celebrate that performance of Christs promise in that Mission of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles are all these Scriptures performed again in our eares and eyes and in our hearts For in all those Congregations that meet this day to this purpose every Preacher hath so much of this Vnction which Vnction is Christ upon him as that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him and hath anointed him to that service And every Congregation and every good person in the Congregation hath so much of the Apostle upon him as that he feeles This Spirit of the Lord this Holy Ghost as he is this cloven tongue that sets one stemme in his eare and the other in his heart one stemme in his faith and the other in his manners one stemme in his present obedience and another in his perseverance one to rectifie him in the errours of life another to establish him in the agonies of death For the Holy Ghost as he is a Cloven tongue opens as a Compasse that reaches over all our Map over all our World from our East to our West from our birth to our death from our cradle to our grave and directs us for all things to all persons in all places and at all times The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name he shall teach you all things c. The blessed Spirit of God then the Holy Ghost the third person in the Trinity Divisio and yet not Third so as that either Second or First Son or Father were one minute before him in that Co-eternity that enwraps them all alike this Holy Ghost is here designed by Christ in his Person and in his Operation Who he is and what he does From whence he comes and why he comes And these two Hee and His office will constitute our two parts in this text In the first of which which will be the exercise of this day we shall direct you upon these severall Considerations First that the Person designed for this Mission and true Consolation is the Holy Ghost You shall not be without comfort saies Christ But mistake not false comforts for true nor deceitfull comforters for faithfull It is the Holy Ghost or it is none His Comfort or no comfort Him the Father will send sais Christ in a second branch though the Holy Ghost be God equall to the Father and so have all Missions and Commissions in his owne hand yet he applies himselfe accommodates himselfe to order and he comes when he hath a Mission from the Father and this Father saies Christ which is a third branch in this part sends him in my name Though he have as good interest in the name of Adonai which is all our Powerfull name and in the name of Iehâ—vah which is all our Essentiall name as I or my Father have the holy Ghost is as much Adonai and as much Ichovah as we are yet he is sent in my Name that is to proceed in my way to perfect my worke and to accomplish that Redemption by way of Application which I had wrought by way of Satisfaction And then lastly that which qualifies him for this Mission for this Imployment is his Title and Addition in this Text That he is the Comforter Discomfortable doctrines of a primary impossibility of Salvation to any man And that impossibility originally rooted in God and in Gods hating of that man and hating of that man not onely before he was a sinfull man but before he was any man at all not onely before an actuall making but before any intention to make him in Gods minde That God cannot save that man because he meant to damne him before he meant to make him are not the way in which the Holy Ghost is sent by the Father in the Sons Name For they that sent him and he that comes intend all that is done in that capacity as he is a Comforter as he is the Comforter And this is the Person and this will be the extent of our first part It is the Holy Ghost No deceiving Spirit He though as high as the Highest respects order attends a Mission staies till he be sent And thirdly he comes in anothers name in anothers way to perfect anothers worke And he does all in the quality and denomination of a Comforter not establishing not countenancing any discomfortable Doctrines First then 1. Part. Spiritus sanctus the Person into whose hands this whole worke is here recommended is the Holy Ghost The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost The manifestation of the mysterle of the Trinity was reserved for Christ Some intimations in the Old but the publication only in the New Testament Some irradiations in the Law but the illustration onely in the Gospell Some emanation of beames as of the Sun before it is got above the Horizon in the Prophets but the glorious proceeding thereof and the attaining to a Meridianall height only in the Euangelists And then the doctrine of the Trinity thus reserved for the time of the Gospell at that time was thus declared So God loved the World as that he sent his Son So the Son loved the World as that he would come into it and die for it So the Holy Ghost loved the World as that he would dwell in it and inable men in his Ministery and by his gifts to apply this mercy of the Father and this merit of the Son to particular souls and to whole Congregations The mercy of the Father that he would study such a way for the Redemption of our souls as the death of his only Son a way which
soul and call the will ours we usurp the soul it self and call it ours and then deliver all to everlasting bondage Would the King suffer his picture to be used as we use the Image of God in our soules or his Hall to be used as we use the Temple of the Holy Ghost our Bodies We have nothing but that which we have received and when we come to think that our own we have not that For God will take all from that man that sacrifices to his own nets When thou commest to Church come in anothers name When thou givest an Almes give it in anothers name that is feele all thy devotion and all thy charity to come from God For if it be not in his name it will be in a worse Thy devotion will contract the name of hypocrisie and thine Almes the name of Vain-glory. The Holy Ghost came in anothers name in Christs name but not so as Montanus the Father of the Montanists came in the Holy Ghosts name Montanus said he was the Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost did not pretend to be Christ There is a man the man of sin at Rome that pretends to be Christ to all uses And I would he would be content with that and stop there and not be a Hyper-Christus Above Christ more then Christ I would he would no more trouble the peace of Christendome no more occasion the assassinating of Christian Princes no more binde the Christian liberty in forbidding Meats and Marriage no more slacken and dissolve Christian bands by Dispensations and Indulgences then Christ did But if he will needs be more if he will needs have an addition to the name of Christ let him take heed of that addition which some are apt enough to give him however he deserve it that he is Antichrist Now in what sense the Holy Ghost is said to have come in the name of Christ S. Basil gives us one interpretation that is that one principall name of Christ belongs to the Holy Ghost For Christ is Verbum The Word and so is the Holy Ghost sayes that Father Quia interpres filii sicut filius patris Because as the Son manifested the Father so the Holy Ghost manifests the Son S. Augustine gives another sense Societas Patris Filii est Spiritus Sanctus The Holy Ghost is the union of the Father and the Son As the body is not the man nor the soul is not the man but the union of the soul and body by those spirits through which the soul exercises her faculties in the Organs of the body makes up the man so the union of the Father and Son to one another and of both to us by the Holy Ghost makes up the body of the Christian Religion And so this interpretation of S. Augustine comes neare to the fulnesse in what sense the Holy Ghost came in Christs name John 17.12 For when Christ sayes I am come in my Fathers name that was to execute his Decree to fulfill his Will for the salvation of man by dying so when Christ sayes here the Holy Ghost shall come in my name that is to perfect my work to collect and to govern that Church in which my salvation by way of satisfaction may be appropriated to particular soules by way of application And for this purpose to do this in Christs name his own name is Paracletus The Comforter which is our last circumstance The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost The Comforter is an Euangelicall name The Comforter Athanasius notes that the Holy Ghost is never called Paracletus The Comforter in the old Testament He is called Spiritus Dei The Spirit of God in the beginning of Genesis And he is called Spiritus sanctus The holy Spirit and Spiritus principalis The principall Spirit in divers places of the Psalmes but never Paracletus never the Comforter A reason of that may well be first that the state of the Law needed not comfort and then also that the Law it self afforded not comfort so there was no Comforter Their Law was not opposed by any enemies as enemies to their Law If they had not by that warrant which they had from God invaded the possession of their neighbours or grown too great to continue good neighbours their neighbours had not envyed them that Law So that in the state of the Law in that respect they were well enough and needed no Comforter Whereas the Gospell as it was sowed in our Saviours blood so it grew up in blood for divers hundreds of yeares and therefore needed the sustentation and the assurance of a Comforter And then for the substance of the Law it was Lex interficiens non perficiens sayes S. Augustine A Law that told them what was sin and punisht them if they did sin but could not conferre Remission for sin which was a discomfortable case Whereas the Gospel and the Dispensation of the Gospel in the Church by the Holy Ghost is Grace Mercy Comfort all the way and in the end Therefore Christ v. 17. cals the Holy Ghost Spiritum veritatis The Spirit of truth In which he opposes him and preferres him above all the remedies and all the comforts of the Law Not that the Holy Ghost in the Law did not speak truth but that he did not speak all the truth in the Law Origen expresses it well The Types and Figures of the Law were true Figures and true Types of Christ in the Gospel but Christ and his Gospel is the truth it self prefigured in those Types Therefore the Holy Ghost is Paracletus The Comforter in the Gospel which he was not in the Law In the Records and Stories and so in the Coynes and Medals of the Romane Emperours we see that even then when they had gotten the possession of the name of Emperours yet they forbore not to adde to their style the name of Consul and the name of Pontifex maximus still they would be called Consuls which was an acceptable name to the people and High-Priests which carried a reverence towards all the world Where Christ himselfe is called by a name appliable to none but Christ by a name implying the whole nature and merit of Christ that is The Propitiation of the sins of the whole world 1 John 2.2 yet there in that place he is called by the name of this Text too Paracletus the Comforter He would not forbeare that sweet that acceptable that appliable name that name that concernes us most and establishes us best Paracletus the Comforter And yet he does not take that name in that full and whole sense in which himselfe gives it to the Holy Ghost here For there it is said of Christ If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father There Paracletus though placed upon Christ is but an Advocate But here Christ sends Paracletum in a more intire and a more internall and more viscerall sense A Comforter Upon which Comforter Christ imprints these two marks of
Father in the Son by the Holy Ghost The verdict is That we are the children of God The Spirit beareth c. First then 1 Part. a slacknesse a supinenesse in consideration of the divers significations of this word Spirit hath occasioned divers errours when the word hath been intended in one sense and taken in another All the significations will fall into these foure for these foure are very large It is spoken of God or of Angels or of men or of inferiour creatures And first of God it is spoken sometimes Essentially sometimes Personally God is a Spirit Iohn 4.24 Esay 31.3 and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth So also The Aegyptians are men and not God and their horses flesh and not spirit For if they were God they were Spirit So God altogether and considered in his Essence is a Spirit but when the word Spir it is spoken not essentially of all but personally of one then that word designeth Spiritum sonctum The holy Ghost Goe and baptize Mar. 28.19 In the name of the Father and Sonne Spiritus sancti and the holy Ghost And as of God so of Angels also it is spoken in two respects of good Angels Sent farth to minister for them Heb. 1.14 1 King 22.22 Hosea 4.12 Esay 19.3 that shall be heires of salvation And evill Angels The lying Spirit that would deceive the King by the Prophet The Spirit of Whoredome spirituall whoredome when the people ask counsell of their stocks And Spiritus vertiginis The spirit of giddinesse of perversities as we translate it which the Lord doth mingle amongst the people in his judgement Of man also is this word Spirit spoken two wayes The Spirit is sometimes the soule Psal 31.5 Into thy hands I commend my Spirit sometimes it signifies those animall spirits which conserve us in strength and vigour The poyson of Gods arrowes drinketh up my spirit And also Job 6.4 Luke 1.47 the superiour faculties of the soule in a regenerate man as there My soule doth magnifie the Lord and my spirit rejoyceth in God my Saviour And then lastly of inferiour creatures it is taken two wayes too of living creatures The God of the spirits of all flesh Numb 16.22 Ezek. 1.21 and of creatures without life other then a metaphoricall life as of the winde often and of Ezckiels wheeles The Spirit of life was in the wheeles Now in this first Branch of this first Part of our Text it is not of Angels nor of men nor of other creatures but of God and not of God Essentially but Personally that is of the Holy Ghost Origen sayes Antecessores nostri The Ancients before him had made this note That where we finde the word Spirit without any addition it is alwayes intended of the Holy Ghost Before him and after him they stuck much to that note for S. Hierome makes it too and produces many examples thereof but yet it will not hold in all Didymus of Alexandria though borne blinde in this light saw light and writ so of the Holy Ghost as S. Hierome thought that work worthy of his Translation And hee gives this note That wheresoever the Apostles intend the Holy Ghost they adde to the word Spirit Sanctus Holy Spirit or at least the Article The The Spirit And this note hath good use too but yet it is not universally true If we supply these notes with this That whensoever any such thing is said of the Spirit as cannot consist with the Divine nature there it is not meant of the Holy Ghost but of his gifts or of his working as when it is said The Holy Ghost was not yet for his person was alwayes And where it is said Iohn 7.39 1 The fl 5.19 Quench not the Holy Ghost for the Holy Ghost himselfe cannot be quenched we have enough for our present purpose Here it is Spirit without any addition and therefore fittest to bee taken for the Holy Ghost And it is Spirit with that emphaticall article The The Spirit and in that respect also fittest to be so taken And though it be fittest to understand the Holy Ghost here not of his person but his operation yet it gives just occasion to looke piously and to consider modestly who and what this person is that doth thus worke upon us And to that purpose we shall touch upon foure things First His Universality He is All He is God Secondly His Singularity He is One One Person Thirdly His roote from whence he proceeded Father and Son And fourthly His growth his emanation his manner of proceeding for our order proposed at first leading us now to speak of this third person of the Trinity it will be almost necessary to stop a little upon each of these First then the Spirit mentioned here the Holy Ghost is God and if so Deus equall to Father and Son and all that is God He is God because the Essentiall name of God is attributed to him He is called Jehovah Iebovah sayes to Esay Goe and tell this people Esay 6.9 Acts 28.29 c. And S. Paul making use of these words in the Acts he sayes Well spake the Holy Ghost by the Prophet Esay The Essentiall name of God is attributed to him and the Essentiall Attributes of God He is Eternall so is none but God where we heare of the making of every thing else in the generall Creation we heare that the Spirit of God moved Gen. 1.2 but never that the Spirit was made He is every where so is none but God Psal 139.7 1 Cor. 2.10 whither shall Igoe from thy Spirit He knowes all things so doth none but God The Spirit searcheth all things yca the deep things of God He hath the name of God the Attributes of God and he does the works of God Is our Creator our Maker God Iob 33.4 The Spirit of God hath mademe Is he that can change the whole Creation and frame of nature in doing miracles God The Spirit lead the Israelites miraculously through the wildernesse Esay 63.14 Esay 48.16 Will the calling and the sending of the Prophets shew him to be God The Lord God and his Spirit hath sent me Is it argument enough for his God-head Esay 61.1 Luke 4.18 that he sent Christ himselfe Christ himselfe applies to himselfe that The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and hath anointed me to preach Acts 1.16 Iohn 16.13 He foretold future things The Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spoke before sayes S. Peter He establishes present things The Spirit of truth guides into all truth And he does this by wayes proper onely to God for our illumination is his He shall receive of me Ver. 14. 1 Cor. 6.11 Iohn 3.5 Iohn 16.8 sayes Christ and shew it you Our Justification is his Ye are justified in the name of the Lord Iesus by the Spirit of God Our regeneration is his There is a
of spirit though it were Wine in the beginning it is lees and tartar in the end Inordinate sorrow growes into sinfull melancholy and that melancholy into an irrecoverable desperation The Wise-men of the East by a lesse light found a greater by a Star they found the Son of glory Christ Jesus But by darknesse nothing By the beames of comfort in this life we come to the body of the Sun by the Rivers to the Ocean by the cheerefulnesse of heart here to the brightnesse to the fulnesse of joy hereafter For beloved Salvation it selfe being so often presented to us in the names of Glory and of Joy we cannot thinke that the way to that glory is a sordid life affected here an obscure a beggarly a negligent abandoning of all wayes of preferment or riches or estimation in this World for the glory of Heaven shines downe in these beames hither Neither can men thinke that the way to the joyes of Heaven is a joylesse severenesse a rigid austerity for as God loves a cheerefull giver so he loves a cheerefull taker that takes hold of his mercies and his comforts with a cheerefull heart not onely without grudging that they are no more but without jealousie and suspition that they are not so much or not enough But they must be his comforts that we take in Deus Gods comforts For to this purpose the Apostle varies the phrase It was The Father of mercies To represent to us gentlenesse kindnesse favour it was enough to bring it in the name of Father But this Comfort a power to erect and settle a tottering a dejected soule an overthrowne a bruised a broken a troden a ground a battered an evaporated an annihilated spirit this is an act of such might as requires the assurance the presence of God God knows all men receive not comforts when other men think they do nor are all things comforts to them which we present and meane should be so Your Father may leave you his inheritance and little knowes he the little comfort you have in this because it is not left to you but to those Creditors to whom you have engaged it Your Wife is officious to you in your sicknesse and little knowes she that even that officiousnesse of hers then and that kindnesse aggravates that discomfort which lyes upon thy soul for those injuries which thou hadst formerly multiplied against her in the bosome of strange women Except the God of comfort give it in that seale in peace of conscience Nec intus nec subtus nec circa te occurrit consolatio sayes S. Bernard Non subtus not from below thee from the reverence and acclamation of thy inferiours Non circa not from about thee when all places all preferments are within thy reach so that thou maist lay thy hand and set thy foote where thou wilt Non intus not from within thee though thou have an inward testimony of a morall constancy in all afflictions that can fall yet not from below thee not from about thee not from within thee but from above must come thy comfort or it is mistaken S. Chrysostome notes and Areopagita had noted it before him Ex beneficiis acceptis nomina Deo affingimus We give God names according to the nature of the benefits which he hath given us So when God had given David victory in the wars by the exercise of his power then Fortitudo mea Psal 18.2 Psal 27.1 and firmamentum The Lord is my Rock and my Castle When God discovered the plots and practises of his enemies to him then Dominus illuminatio The Lord is my light and my salvation So whensoever thou takest in any comfort be sure that thou have it from him that can give it for this God is Deus totius consolationis The God of all comfort Preciosa divina consolatio nec omnino tribuitur admittentibus alienam Totius Bernardâ— The comforts of God are of a precious nature and they lose their value by being mingled with baser comforts as gold does with allay Sometimes we make up a summe of gold with silver but does any man binde up farthing tokens with a bag of gold Spirituall comforts which have alwayes Gods stampe upon them are his gold and temporall comforts when they have his stampe upon them are his silver but comforts of our owne coyning are counterfait are copper Because I am weary of solitarinesse I will seeke company and my company shall be to make my body the body of a harlot Because I am drousie I will be kept awake with the obscenities and scurrilities of a Comedy or the drums and ejulations of a Tragedy I will smother and suffocate sorrow with hill upon hill course after course at a voluptuous feast and drown sorrow in excesse of Wine and call that sickness health and all this is no comfort for God is the God of all comfort and this is not of God We cannot say with any colour as Esau said to Iacob Hast thou but one blessing my Father Gen. 17.38 for he is the God of all blessings and hath given every one of us many more then one But yet Christ hath given us an abridgement Vnum est necessarium Luke 10.42 there is but one onely thing necessary And David in Christ tooke knowledge of that before when he said Vnum petii One thing have I desired of the Lord What is that one thing All in one Psal 27.4 That I may dwell in the house ef the Lord not be a stranger from his Covenant all the dayes of my life not disseised not excommunicate out of that house To behold the beauty of the Lord not the beauty of the place only but to inquire in his Temple by the advancement and advantage of outward things to finde out him And so I shall have true comforts outward and inward because in both I shall finde him who is the God of all comfort Iacob thought he had lost Ioseph his Son And all his Sons Gen. 37.35 and all his Daughters rose up to comfort him Et noluit consolationem sayes the Text He would not be comforted because he thought him dead Rachel wept for her children and would not be comforted Mat. 2.18 because they were not But what aylest thou Is there any thing of which thou canst say It is not perchance it is but thou hast it not If thou hast him that hath it thou hast it Hast thou not wealth but poverty rather not honour but contempt rather not health but daily summons of Death rather yet Non omnia possidet cui omnia cooperantur in bonum Bernard If thy poverty thy disgrace thy sicknesse have brought thee the nearer to God thou hast all those things which thou thinkest thou wantest because thou hast the best use of them 1 Cor. 3.23 All things are yours sayes the Apostle why by what title For you are Christs and Christ is Gods Carry back your comfort to the
sua How many men carry Sepulchres to the Sepulchre when they carry themselves to Jerusalem Non Hierosolymis vixisse saies he To have lived well at Jerusalem is praise-worthy but not to have lived there Non audeo concludere I dare not shut up that God whom the Heavens cannot containe in a corner of the earth and Jerusalem is but so Et de Britannia de Hierosolymis aequaliter patet aula coelestis Heaven is as neare England saies S. Hierom as it is to Jerusalem And Christ saies he was then in Jerusalem in that holy place when he said Abeamus hinc Iohn 14.31 Let us go from hence as holy as the place was he made haste out of it for as that Father adds it is a place full of mutinous Souldiers of licentious prostitutes of Players and Jesters and these are the elements of the holinesse of that place Gregory Nyssen in the same time with Hierom had a particular occasion to deliver his opinion of these pilgrimages to Jerusalem Nyssen for he had beene there himselfe though not as a Pilgrim Sunt aliqui There are some that make it a part of Religion to have beene at Jerusalem Sin praeter praeceptum Domini But saies he if Christ never commanded it that is his Rule I know not what can justifie that man that makes himselfe the Rule of his Religion Christ never called that Blessednesse saies he to have beene at Jerusalem nor ever called this Jerusalem the way to Heaven why any man should do so when Christ did not Qui mentem habet consideret saies that Father Let him that is not distracted consider Nay saies he there is not only no certaine profit but evident danger to a chaste soule in the unchaste conversation of those Pilgrims and he exemplifies and particularizes wherein but we forbeare that Shall I be asked then why I went to Jerusalem sayes that Father I went into those parts out of necessity sayes he being called to a Councell held in those parts And being so neare I was chosen as an Arbitrator between some Churches which were then at variance which differences were to be composed at Jerusalem and so I went thither Howsoever let no man be encouraged to go thither for my being there for I was never the better Christian for having been there but let every man think and beleeve me to be the more competent witnesse and judge of the dangers because I saw them I beleeved that Christ was risen before I saw the empty Sepulchre And though I thank God for it I lost none of my faith at Jerusalem yet I encreased it not there Si perversè vivas live Christianly or thou art as far from Christ in the Sepulchre and from all benefit of his Resurrection as they that were hired to watch the Sepulchre and to seale the Sepulchre to prevent the Resurrection or as if he that lay in the Sepulchre had never dyed Chrysost When we have remembred you of that which S. Chrysostome of the same time with Ierome and Nyssen sayes That there were some so vain as to go to Arabia to kisse that dunghill where Iob sate to be visited by his impertinent friends you have testimony enough concurrence enough for the detestation of these hypocriticall Pilgrimages and the manifold superstitions that grow from this tree and grew to a far greater inexcusablenesse when all was transferred to Rome where both the Indulgences were larger and the pestilent infections of the place more contagious then at Jerusalem Now to binde up our sheafe and lay it so upon you that you may easily carry it Conclusio you have seen That women though weak are capable of religious offices No understanding so weak but it may beleeve no body so weak but it may do something in some calling You have seen too that these women were early in their religious work they begun betimes we have but one Parable that tels us that they that came late to the labour were as well rewarded as the earliest So have you also seen that as they were early and forward so were they earnest and sedulous Cursed be he that doth the work of God that is any godly work negligently You have likewise seen upon what their devotion was carried upon things which could not intirely be done yet God accepted their devotion where the roote and substance of the work is piety God pretermits many times errours in circumstance You have heard the Angels information to them Non hîc that Christ was not there and yet comfort in that God raises comfort out of all things even out of discomfort it self to the godly You have heard the reason added Quia surrexit for he is risen And if this be a good reason there is no Transubstantiation no Ubiquitisme for then Christ might have been there though he were risen He is risen not only raised and therefore the Son of God and risen for our Instification therefere we are risen in him And this Sicut dixit As he had said before No word is certain not in the mouth of an Angel but as it is referred to the former word of God And it is Sicut dixit vobis As he had said to you Though all Scriptures be not proposed to all and Gods secret purposes proposed to none yet the fundamentall doctrines of the Christian faith are proposed to all the weakest of all These women had heard Christ Him this Angel calls The Lord His Lord How rebellious is that man of sin that makes Christ his servant and pretence of religion his instrument He avows him to be the Lord then when he lay dead in the grave Be truly a Christian and in the grave of persecution in the grave of putrifaction thou shalt retain the same name and even thy dust shall be Christian dust And lastly for the establishment of their comfort the Angel directs them to consider the place Ecce locus not to incline them to superstitious pilgrimages but yet to a holy reverence and estimation of places consecrated to Gods service And if these Meditations have raised you from the bed of sin in any holy purpose this is one of your Resurrections and you have kept your Easter-day well To which he whose name is Amen say Amen our blessed Saviour Christ Jesus in the power of his Father and in the operation of his Spirit SERMON XXVI Preached upon Easter-day 1 THES 4.17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the ayre and so shall we be ever with the Lord. IN this Epistle our Apostle according to his manner in all his Epistles first establishes those to whom he writes in those matters of faith in which he had formerly instructed them and then rectifies them in matter of manners of holinesse of life and the wayes and fruits of sanctification In this last part of this Chapter he involves he wraps up both together a
concealing which were the pieces that constitute our first Part in the second Part which is the time when this Legacy accrues to us is to be given us In die illo at that day At that day shall yee know c. It is the illumination the illustration of our hearts and therefore well referred to the Day The word it selfe affords cheerefulnesse For when God inflicted that great plague to kill all the first-borne in Aegypt Exod. 12. Luke 20. that was done at Midnight And when God would intimate both deaths at once spirituall and temporall he sayes O foole this night they will fetch away thy soule Against all supply of knowledge he cals him foole and against all sense of comfort in the day he threatens night It was In die Illo and In die illo in the day and at a certaine day and at a short day For after Christ had made his Will at this supper given strength to his Will by his death and proved his Will by his Resurrection and left the Church possest of his estate by his Ascension within ten dayes after that he poured out this Legacy of knowledge For though some take this day mentioned in the Text Calvin to be Tanqnam unius diei tenor à dato Spiritu ad Resurrectionem from the first giving of the Holy Ghost to the Resurrection And others take this day Osiand to bee from his Resurrection to the end of his second Conversation upon earth till his Ascension and S. Augustine referre it Ad perfectam visionem in Coelis to the perfect fruition of the sight of God in Heaven yet the most usefull and best followed acceptation is This Day of the comming of the Holy Ghost That day we celebrate this day and we can never finde the Christian Church so farre as we can judge by the evidence of Story to have been without this festivall day The reason of all Festivals in the Church was and is Ne volumine temporum ingrata subrepat oblivio August Lest after many ages involved and wrapped up in one another Gods particular benefits should bee involved and wrapped up in unthankfulnesse And the benefits received this day were such as should never be forgotten for without this day all the rest had been evacuated and uneffectuall If the Apostles by the comming of the Holy Ghost had not been established in an infallibility in themselves and in an ability to deale with all Nations by the benefit of tongues the benefit of Christs passion had not been derived upon all Nations And therefore to This day and to Easter-day all publike Baptismes in the Primitive Church were reserved None were baptized except in cases of necessity but upon one of these two dayes for as there is an Exaltation a Resurrection given us in Baptisme represented by Easter so there belongs to us a confirmation an establishing of grace and the increase thereof represented in Pentecost in the comming of the Holy Ghost As the Jews had an Easter in the memory of their deliverance from Aegypt and a Pentecost in the memory of the Law given at Mout Sinai So at Easter we celebrate the memory of that glorious Passeover when Christ passed from the grave and hell in his Resurrection and at this Feast of Pentecost we celebrate his giving of the Law to all Nations and his investing and possessing himselfe of his Kingdome the Church for this is Festum Adoptionis as S. Chrysostome cals it The cheerefull feast of our Adoption in which the Holy Ghost convaying the Son of God to us enables us to be the Sons of God and to cry Abba Father This then is that day Acts 2. when the Apostles being with one accord and in one place that is in one faith and in one profession of that faith not onely without Heresie but without Schisme too the Holy Ghost as a mighty winde filled them all and gave them utterance As a winde to note a powerfull working And he filled them to note the abundance And he gave them utterance to inferre that which we spoke of before The Communication of that knowledge which they had received to others This was that Spirit whom it concerned the Apostles so much to have as that Christ himselfe must goe from them to send him to them If I goe not away sayes Christ the Comforter will not come to you How great a comfort must this necessarily be which must so abundantly recompence the losse of such a comfort as the presence of Christ was This is that Spirit who though hee were to be sent by the Father and sent by the Son yet he comes not as a Messenger from a Superiour for hee was alwaies equall to Father and Son But the Father sent him and the Son sent him as a tree sends forth blossomes and as those blossomes send forth a sweet smell and as the Sun sends forth beames by an emanation from it selfe He is Spiritus quem nemo interpretari potest sayes S. Chrysostome hee hath him not that doth not see he hath him nor is any man without him who in a rectified conscience thinks he hath him Illo Prophetae illustrantur Illo idiotae condiuntur sayes the same Father The Prophets as high as their calling was saw nothing without this Spirit and with this Spirit a simple man understands the Prophets And therefore doth S. Basil attribute that to the Holy Ghost which seemes to be peculiar to the Son he cals him Verbum Dei because sayes he Spiritus interpres Filii sicut Filius Patris As the Son hath revealed to us the will of the Father and so is the Word of God to us so the Holy Ghost applies the promises and the merits of the Son to us and so is the Word of God to us too and enables us to come to God in that voyce of his blessed Servant S. Augustine O Deus secretissime patentissime Though nothing be more mysterious then the knowledge of God in the Trinity yet nothing is more manifest unto us then by the light of this person the Holy Ghost so much of both the other Persons as is necessary for our Salvation is Now it is not onely to the Apostles that the Holy Ghost is descended this day but as S. Chrysostom saies of the Annunciation Non ad unam tantùm animam It is not onely to one Person that the Angel said then The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and overshadow thee but sayes he that Holy Ghost hath said Super omnem Ioel 2. I will poure out my selfe upon all men so I say of this day This day if you be all in this place concentred united here in one Faith and one Religion If you be of one accord that is in perfect charity The Holy Ghost shall fill you all according to your measure and his purpose and give you utterance in your lives and conversations Qui ita vacat orationibus Origen ut dignus fiat illo
the Subject the holy Ghost and him moving and moving upon the waters in our regeneration Here as before our first Terme and Consideration is the name The Spirit of God 2. Part. Spiritus sanctus And here God knows we know too many even amongst the outward professors of the Christian religion that in this name The Spirit of God take knowledge only of a power of God and not of a person of God They say it is the working of God but not God working Mira profunditas eloquiorum tuorum The waters in the creation Aug. Confess 12. c. 14. were not so deep as the word of God that delivers that creation Ecce ante nos superficies blandiens pueris sayes that Father We we that are but babes in understanding as long as we are but naturall men see the superficies the top the face the outside of these waters Sed mira profunditas Deus meus mira profunditas But it is an infinite depth Lord my God an infinite depth to come to the bottome The bottome is to professe and to feele the distinct working of the three distinct persons of the Trinity Father Son and holy Ghost Rara anima quae cum de illa loquitur sciat quid loquatur Not one man C. 30. not one Christian amongst a thousand who when he speaks of the Trinity knows what he himself meanes Naturall men will write of lands of Pygmies and of lands of giants and write of Phoenixes and of Unicornes But yet advisedly they do not beleeve at least confidently they do not know that there are such Giants or such Pygmies such Unicorns or Phoenixes in the world Christians speak continually of the Trinity and the holy Ghost but alas advisedly they know not what they mean in those names The most know nothing for want of consideration They that have considered it enough and spent thoughts enough upon the Trinity to know as much as needs be knowen thereof Contendunt dimicant C. 11. nemo sine pace vidit istam visionem They dispute and they wrangle and they scratch and wound one anothers reputations and they assist the common enemy of Christianity by their uncharitable differences Et sine pace And without peace and mildnesse and love and charity no man comes to know the holy Ghost who is the God of peace Id. l. 11.2 22. and the God of love Da quod amo amo enim nam hoc tu dedisti I am loath to part from this father and he is loath to be parted from for he sayes this in more then one place Lord thou hast enamoured mee made me in love let me enjoy that that I love That is the holy Ghost That as I feele the power of God which sense is a gift of the holy Ghost I may without disputing rest in the beliefe of that person of the Trinity that that Spirit of God that moves upon these waters is not only the power but a person in the Godhead This is the person Ferebatur without whom there is no Father no Son of God to me the holy Ghost And his action his operation is expressed in this word Ferebatur The Spirit of God moved Which word as before is here also a comprehensive word and denotes both motion and rest beginnings and wayes and ends We may best consider the motion the stirring of the holy Ghost in zeale and the rest of the holy Ghost in moderation If we be without zeale we have not the motion If we be without moderation we have not the rest the peace of the holy Ghost The moving of the holy Ghost upon me is as the moving of the minde of an Artificer upon that piece of work that is then under his hand A Jeweller if he would make a jewell to answer the form of any flower or any other figure his minde goes along with his hand nay prevents his hand and he thinks in himself a Ruby will conduce best to the expressing of this and an Emeraud of this The holy Ghost undertakes every man amongst us and would make every man fit for Gods service in some way in some profession and the holy Ghost sees that one man profits most by one way another by another and moves their zeal to pursue those wayes and those meanes by which in a rectified conscience they finde most profit And except a man have this sense what doth him most good and a desire to pursue that the holy Ghost doth not move nor stir up a zeale in him But then if God do afford him the benefit of these his Ordinances in a competent measure for him and he will not be satisfied with Manna but will needs have Quailes that is cannot make one meale of Prayers except he have a Sermon nor satisfied with his Gomer of Manna with those Prayers which are appointed in the Church nor satisfied with those Quailes which God sends the preaching of solid and fundamentall doctrines but must have birds of Paradise unrevealed mysteries out of Gods own bosome preached unto him howsoever the holy Ghost may seem to have moved yet he doth not rest upon him and from the beginning the office and operation of the holy Ghost was double He moved and rested upon the waters in the creation he came and tarried still upon Christ in his Baptisme He moves us to a zeale of laying hold upon the meanes of salvation which God offers us in the Church and he settles us in a peacefull conscience that by having well used those meanes we are made his A holy hunger and thirst of the Word and Sacraments a remorse and compunction for former sins a zeale to promove the cause and glory of God by word and deed this is the motion of the holy Ghost And then to content my self with Gods measure of temporall blessings and for spirituall that I do serve God faithfully in that calling which I lawfully professe as far as that calling will admit for he upon whose hand-labour the sustentation of his family depends may offend God in running after many working dayes Sermons This peace of conscience this acquiescence of having done that that belongs to me this is the rest of the Spirit of God And this motion and this rest is said to be done Super faciem And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters which is our last consideration In the moving of the Spirit of God upon the waters Facies aquarum we told you before it was disputed whether the Holy Ghost did immediatly produce those creatures of himselfe or whether he did fecundate and inanimate and inable those substances the water and all contained under the waters to produce creatures in their divers specifications In this moving of the Spirit of God upon the waters in our regeneration it hath also been much disputed How the Holy Ghost works in producing mans supernaturall actions whether so immediately as that it be altogether without
Learning Plato never stopped at any knowledge till he came to consider the holy Ghost Vnum inveni quod cuncta operatur I have saies Plato found One who made all things Et unum per quod cuncta efficiuntur And I have found another by whom all things were made Tertium autem non potui invenire A Third besides those two I could never finde Though all the mysteries of the Trinity be things equally easie to faith when God infuses that yet to our reason even as reason serves faith and presents things to that things are not so equall but that S. Basil himselfe saw that the eternall generation of the Son was too hard for Reason but yet it is in the proceeding of the Holy Ghost that he clearely professes his ignorance Si cuncta putarem nostra cogitatione posse comprehendi vererer fortè ignorantiam profiteri If I thought that all things might bee knowne by man I should bee as much afraid and ashamed as another man to be ignorant but saies he since we all see that there are many things whereof we are ignorant Cur non de Spiritu sancto absque rubore ignorantiam faterer Why should I be ashamed to confesse mine ignorance in many things concerning the Holy Ghost There is then a difficulty no lesse then an impossibility Possibilitas in searching after the Holy Ghost but it is in those things which appertain not to us But in others there is a possibility a facility and easinesse For there are two processions of the holy Ghost Aeterna and Temporaria his proceeding from the Father and the Son and his proceeding into us The first we shall never understand if we reade all the books of the world The other we shall not choose but understand if we study our own consciences In the first the darknesse and difficulty is recompenced in this That though it be hard to finde any thing yet it is but little that we are to seek It is only to finde that there is a holy Ghost proceeding from Father and Son for in searching farther the danger is noted by S. Basil to be thus great Qui quomodo interrogas ubi ut in loco quando ut in tempore interrogabis If thou give thy curiosity the liberty to ask How the holy Ghost proceeded thou wilt ask where it was done as though there were severall roomes and distinct places in that which is infinite And thou wilt ask when it was done as though there were pieces of time in that which is eternall Et quaeres non ut fidem sed ut infidelitatem invenias which is excellently added by that Father The end of thy enquiring will not be that thou mightest finde any thing to establish thy beliefe but to finde something that might excuse thine unbeliefe All thy curious questions are not in hope that thou shalt receive satisfaction but in hope that the weaknesse of the answer may justifie thy infidelity Thus it is if we will be over curious in the first the eternall proceeding of the Holy Ghost In the other the proceeding of the holy Ghost into us we are to consider that as in our naturall persons the body and soul do not make a perfect man except they be united except our spirits which are the active part of the blood do fit this body and soule for one anothers working So though the body of our religion may seem to be determined in these two our Creation which is commonly attributed to the Father Tanquam fonti Deitatis As the fountaine of the Godhead for Christ is God of God And our Redemption which belongs to the Son yet for this body there is a spirit that is the holy Ghost that takes this man upon whom the Father hath wrought by Creation and the Son included within his Redemption and he works in him a Vocation a Justification and a sanctification and leads him from that Esse which the Father gave him in the Creation And that Bene esse which he hath in being admitted into the body of his Son the visible Church and Congregation to an Optimè esse to that perfection which is an assurance of the inhabitation of this Spirit in him and an inchoation of eternall blessednesse here by a heavenly and sanctified conversation without which Spirit No man can say that Iesus is the Lord because he is not otherwise in a perfect obedience to him if he embrace not the means ordained by him in his Church So that this Spirit disposes and dispenses distributes and disperses and orders all the power of the Father and all the wisdome of the Son and all the graces of God It is a Center to all So S. Bernard sayes upon those words of the Apostle We approve our selves as the Ministers of God But by what By watching by fasting by suffering by the holy Ghost by love unfained Vide tanquam omnia ordinantem quomodo in medio virtutum sicut cor in medio corporis constituit Spiritum Sanctum As the heart is in the midst of the body so between these vertues of fasting and suffering before and love unfained after the Apostle places the holy Ghost who only gives life and soule to all Morall and all Theologicall vertues And as S. Bernard observes that in particular men so doth S. Augustine of the whole Church Quod in corpore nostro anima id in corpore Christi Ecclesia Spiritus Sanctus That office which the soule performes to our body the holy Ghost performes in the body of Christ which is the Church And therefore since the holy Ghost is thus necessary and thus neare as at the Creation the whole Trinity was intimated in that plurall word Elohim creavit Dii but no person of the Trinity is distinctly named in the Creation but the holy Ghost The Spirit of God moved upon the waters As the holy Ghost was first conveyed to our knowledge in the Creation so in our Regeneration by which we are new creatures though our Creation and our Redemption be religious subjects of our continuall meditation yet let us be sure to hold this that is nearest us to keep a neare a familiar and daily acquaintance and conversation with the holy Ghost and to be watchfull to cherish his light and working in us Homines docent quaerere solus ipse qui docet invenire habere frui Bernard Men can teach us wayes how to finde somethings The Pilot how to finde a Land The Astronomer how to finde a Star Men can teach us wayes how to finde God The naturall man in the book of creatures The Morall man in an exemplar life The Jew in the Law The Christian in generall in the Gospell But Solus ipse qui docet invenire habere frui Only the holy Ghost enables us to finde God so as to make him ours and to enjoy him 1 Cor. 2.14 First you must get more light then nature gives for The naturall man perceiveth not the things
include S. Peters whole Sermon into one branch of one part of one of mine Only I refresh to your memories that which I presume you have often read in this Story and this Chapter that though S. Peter say That God is no such accepter of persons Ver. 35.36 but that in every Nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousnesse is accepted with him yet it is upon this ground Christ Jesus is Lord of all And as it is ver 42. He hath commanded us to preach that is he hath established a Church and therein visible meanes of salvation And then this is our generall text the subject of all our Sermons That through his name Ver. 43 whosoever beleeveth in him shall have remission of sins So that this is all that we dare avow concerning salvation that howsoever God may afford salvation to some in all nations yet he hath manifested to us no way of conveying salvation to them but by the manifeltation of Christ Jesus in his Ordinance of preaching And such a manifestation of Christ had God here ordained for this Centurion Cornelius But why for him I doe not ask reasons of Gods mercy to particular men for if I would do so when should I finde a reason why he hath shewed mercy to me But yet Audite omnes Chrysoft qui in Militia estis Regibus assistitis All that serve in Wars or Courts may finde something to imitate in this Centurion He was a devout man A Souldier and yet devout God forbid they were so incompatible as that courage and devotion might not consist A man that feared God A Souldiers profession is fearlesnesse And only he that feares God feares nothing else He and all his house A Souldier yet kept a house and did not alwayes wander He kept his house in good order and with good meanes He gave much almes Though Armes be an expensive profession for outward splendor yet hereserved for almes much almes And he prayed to God alwayes Though Armes require much time for the duties thereof yet he could pray at those times In his Trenches at the Assault or at the defence of a Breach he could pray All this the holy Ghost testifies of him together ver 2. And this was his generall disposition and then those who came from him to Peter adde this That he had a good report amongst all the Nation of the Iews ver 22. And this to a stranger for the Jews loved not strangers and one that served the State in such a place as that he could not choose but be heavy to the Jews was hard to have And then himself when Peter comes to him addes thus much more That this first mercy of God in having sent his Angel and that farther mercy that that Angel named a man and then that man came was exhibited to him then when he was fasting Ver. 30 And then this man thus humbled and macerated by fasting thus soupled and entendered with the feare of God thus burnt up and calcined with zeal and devotion thus united to God by continuall prayer thus tributary to God by giving almes thus exemplar in himself at home to lead all his house and thus diffusive of himselfe to others abroad to gain the love of good men this man prostrates himselfe to Peter at his comming in such an over-reverentiall manner as Peter durst not accept but took him up Ver. 26. and said I my selfe am also a man Sudden devotion comes quickly neare superstition This is a misery which our time hath been well acquainted with and had much experience of and which grows upon us still That when men have been mellowed with the feare of God and by heavy corrections and calamities brought to a greater rendernesse of conscience then before in that distemper of melancholy and inordinate sadnesse they have been easiliest seduced and withdrawne to a superstitious and Idolatrous religion I speak this because from the highest to the lowest place there are Sentinels planted in every corner to watch all advantages and if a man lose his preferment at Court or lose his childe at home or lose any such thing as affects him much and imprints a deep sadnesse for the losse thereof they work upon that sadnesse to make him a Papist When men have lived long from God they never think they come neare enough to him except they go beyond him because they have never offered to come to him before now when they would come they imagine God to be so hard of accesse that there is no comming to him but by the intervention and intercession of Saints and they thinke that that Church in which they have lived ill cannot be a good Church whereas if they would accustome themselves in a daily performing of Christian duties to an ordinary presence of God Religion would not be such a stranger nor devotion such an Ague unto them But when Peter had rectified Cornelius in this mistaking in this over-valuing of any person and then saw Cornclius his disposition who had brought materials to erect a Church in his house by calling his kinsmen and his friends together to heare Peter Peter spoke those words Which whilest he yet spake the holy Ghost fell upon all them that heard the word And so we are fallen into our second part In this 2. Part. the first Consideration falls upon the person that fell And as the Trinity is the most mysterious piece of our Religion and hardest to be comprehended So in the Trinity the Holy Ghost is the most mysterious person and hardest to be expressed We are called the houshold of God and the family of the faithfull and therefore out of a contemplation and ordinary acquaintance with the parts of families we are apter to conceive any such thing in God himself as we see in a family We seeme not to goe so farre out of our way of reason to beleeve a father and a son because father and son are pieces of families nor in beleeving Christ and his Church because husband and wife are pieces of families We goe not so farre in beleeving Gods working upon us either by ministring spirits from above or by his spirituall ministers here upon earth for master and servants are pieces of families But does there arise any such thing out of any of these couples Father and Son Husband and Wife Master and Servant as should come from them and they be no whit before neither Is there any thing in naturall or civill families that should assist our understanding to apprehend this That in heaven there should be a Holy Spirit so as that the Father and the Son being all Spirit and all Holy and all Holinesse there should be another Holy Spirit which had all their Essentiall holinesse in him and another holinesse too Sanctitatem Sanctificantem a holinesse that should make us holy It was a hard work for the Apostles and their successors at first to draw the Godhead into one into an unity
necessity of being borne againe of Water and the Spirit The holy sense of our naturall wretchednesse is his For It is he that reproves the world of Sin of Righteousnesse of Iudgement The sense oftrue comfort is his Acts 9.31 The Churches were multiplied in the comforts of the Holy Ghost All from the Creation to the Resurrection and the Resurrection it selfe is his Rom. 8.11 The Spirit of him that raised Iesus from the dead shall quicken your mortall bodies by the same Spirit 2 Cor. 1.22 Eph. 1.13 Iohn 4.14 Mat. 3.11 Zach. 12.10 Heb. 1.9 Rom. 8.26 He is Arrha The earnest that God gives to them now to whom he will give all hereafter He is Sigillum that seale of our evidence You are sealed with that holy Spirit of promise He is the water which whosoever drinks shall never thirst when Christ hath given it And he is that fire with which Christ baptizes who baptizes with fire and with the Holy Ghost He is Spiritus precum The Spirit of grace and supplication And he is Oleum laetitiae The oyle of gladnesse that anoints us when we have prayed He is our Advocate He maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered And when our groanings under the calamities of this world are uttered without remedy he is that Paracletus Iohn 16.7 The Comforter who when Christ himselfe seemes to be gone from us comes to us who is as Tertullian expresses it elegantly enough but not largely enough Dei Villicus Vicaria vis Christi The Vice-gerent of Christ and the Steward of God but he is more much more infinitely more for he is God himselfe All that which S. Iohn intends in the seaven Spirits which are about the Throne is in this One in this onely Spirit August 1 Cor. 12.4 who is Vnicus septiformis solus multiplex One and yet seaven that is infinite for Though there be diversity of gifts yet there is but one Spirit He is God because the essentiall name of God is his Therefore let us call upon his name And because the Attributes of God are his Therefore let us attribute to him All Might Majesty Dominion Power and Glory And he is God because the Works of God are his 1 Cor. 6.17 Therefore let us co-operate and work with this Spirit and we shall be the same Spirit with him He is God Persona That was our first step and our second is that he is a distinct Person in the God-head He is not Virtus à Deo in homine exaltata Not the highest and powerfullest working of God in man Not Afflatus Divinus The breathing of God into the soule of man These are low expressions for they are all but Dona Charismata The gifts of the Holy Ghost not the Holy Ghost himselfe But he is a distinct person as the taking of the shape of a Dove and the shape of fiery tongues doe declare which are acts of a distinct person It is not the Power of the King that signes a pardon but his Person When the power of the Government was in two Persons in the two Consuls at Rome yet the severall acts were done by their severall Persons Wilt thou ask me What needs these three Persons Is there any thing in the three Persons that is not in the one God Yes The Father the Son the Holy Ghost fals not in the bare consideration of that one God Wilt thou say What if they doe not What lack we if we have one Almighty God Though that God had no Son nor they two no Holy Ghost We lacked our redemption we lacked all our direction wee lacked the revealed will of God the Scriptures we have not God if we have him not as he hath delivered himselfe and he hath done that in the Scriptures and we imbrace him as we finde him there and we finde him there to be one God in three Persons and the Holy Ghost to bee one of those three and in them we rest He is one Ex filio but one that proceeds from two from the Father and from the Son Some in the Greek Church in later times denied the proceeding of the Holy Ghost from the Son but this was especially a jealousie in termes They thought that to make him proceed from two were to make duo principia two roots two beginnings from whence the Holy Ghost should proceed and that might not be admitted for the Father and the Son are but one cause of the Holy Ghost if we may use that word Cause in this my stery And therefore it is as suspiciously and as dangerously said by the Master of the Sentences and by the later Schoole That the Holy Ghost proceeds Minùs Principaliter Not so radically from the Son as from the Father for in this action The Father and the Son are but one roote and the Holy Ghost equally from both In the generation of the Son the Father is in order before the Son but in the procession of the holy Ghost he is not so He is from both for where he is first named he is called Spiritus Elohim The Spirit of Gods in the plurall In this Chapter in the ninth verse Gen. 1.2 he is the Spirit of the Son If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his And so in the Apostle God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts God sent him and Christ sent him Gal. 4.6 Iohn 16.17 Iohn 20.22 If I depart I will send the Comforter unto you He sent him after he went and he gave him when he was here He breathed upon his Apostles and said Receive ye the holy Ghost So he is of both But by what manner comes he from them By proceeding Processio That is a very generall word for Creation is proceeding and so is Generation too Creatures proceed from God and so doth God the Son proceed from God the Father what is this proceeding of the holy Ghost that is not Creation nor Generation Nazianz. Exponant cur quomodo Spiritus pulsat in arteriis tum in processionem Spiritus sancti inquirant When they are able clearly and with full satisfaction to tell themselves how and from whence that spirit proceeds which beats in their pulse let them inquire how this Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Sonne And let them think till they be mad and speak till they behoarce and reade till they be blind and write till they be lame they must end with S. Augustine Distinguere inter Processioncm Generationem nescio non valeo non sufficio I cannot distinguish I cannot assigne a difference between this Generation and this Proceeding We use to say they differ principio That the Son is from the Father alone the holy Ghost from both but when this is said that must be said too That both Father and Son are but one beginning We use to say They differ ordine
occasion to prove the Deity of Christ this text hath been cited and therefore I take it now when in my course proposed I am to speak of the second Person in the Trinity but as I said of the first Person the Father not as in the Schoole but in the Church not in a Chaire but in a Pulpit not to a Congregation that required proofe in a thing doubted but edification upon a foundation received not as though any of us would dispute whether Jesus Christ were the Lord but that all of us would joyne in that Excommunication If any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be c. Let this then be the frame that this exercise shall stand upon We have three parts The person upon whom our Religious worship is to be directed The Lord Iesus Christ And secondly we have the expression and the limitation of that worship as farre as it is expressed here Love the Lord Iesus Christ And lastly we have the imprecation upon them that doe not If any man doe not let him be Anathema Maranatha In the first we have Verbum naturale verbum innatum As he is the essentiall word The Lord a name proper only to God And then Verbum conceptum verbum illatum Gods Decree upon consideration of mans misery that Christ should be a Redeemer for to that intent he is Christus Anointed to that purpose And lastly Verbum prolatum verbum manifestatum That this Christ becomes Iesus That this Decree is executed that this person thus anointed for this office is become an actuall Saviour So the Lord is made Christ and Christ is made Iesus In the second Part we shall finde another argument for his Deity for there is such a love required towards the Lord Iesus Christ as appertaines to God onely And lastly we shall have the indeterminable and indispensable excommunication of them who though they pretend to love the Lord God in an universall notion yet doe not love the Lord Iesus Christ God in this apprehension of a Saviour and If any man love not c. First then in the first branch of the first part in that name of our Saviour The Lord 1 Part. Dominus we apprehend the eternall Word of God the Son of God the second Person in the Trinity for He is Persona producta Begotten by another and therefore cannot be the first And he is Persona spirans a Person out of whom with the Father another Person that is the Holy Ghost proceeds and therefore cannot be the last Person and there are but three Nazian and so he necessarily the second Shall we hope to comprehend this by reason Quid magni haberet Dei generatio si angusti is intellectus tui comprehenderetur How small a thing were this mystery of Heaven if it could be shut in in so narrow a piece of the earth Idem as thy heart Qui tuam ipsius generationē vel in totum nescis vel dicere sit pudor Thou that knowest nothing of thine owne begetting or art ashamed to speake that little that thou doest know of it wilt not thou be ashamed to offer to expresse the eternall generation of the Son of God It is true De modo How it was done our reason cannot but De facto that it was done our reason may be satisfied We beleeve nothing with a morall faith till something have wrought upon our reason and vanquished that and made it assent and subscribe Our divine faith requires evidence too and hath it abundantly for the works of God are not so good evidence to my reason as the Word of God is to my faith The Sun shining is not so good a proofe that it is day as the Word of God the Scripture is that that which is commanded there is a duty The roote of our beliefe that Christ is God is in the Scriptures but wee consider it spread into three branches 1 The evident Word it selfe that Christ is God 2 The reall declaration thereof in his manifold Miracles 3 The conclusions that arise to our understanding thus illumined by the Scriptures thus established by his miracles In every mouth Ex Scripturis in every pen of the Scriptures that delivers any truth the Holy Ghost speaks and therefore whatsoever is said by any there is the testimony of the Holy Ghost for the Deity of Christ And from the Father we have this testimony that he is his Son Mat. 3. ult Heb. 1.8 This is my beloved Son And this testimony that his Son is God Vnto his Son he saith Thy Throne O God is for ever and ever The Holy Ghost testifies and his Father and himselfe Apoc. 1.8 and his testimony is true I am Alpha and Omega the beginning and the ending saith the Lord which is which was and which is to come the Almighty Hee testifies with his Father Apoc. 22.16 and then their Angels and his Apostles testifie with him I Iesus have sent mine Angels to testifie unto you these things in the Church That I am the Roote and the Off-spring of David not the off-spring onely but the roote too and therefore was before David God and his Angels in Heaven testifie it And visible Angels upon earth his Apostles Acts 20.28 God hath purchased his Church with his owne blood sayes S. Paul He who shed his blood for his Church was God and no false God no mortall God as the gods of the Nations were 1 Iohn 5.20 Tit. 2.13 but This is the true God and cternall life and then no small God no particular God as the Gods of the Nations were too but We looke for the glorious appearing of our great God our Saviour Christ Iesus God that is God in all the Persons Angels that is Angels in all their acceptations Angels of Heaven Angels of the Church Angels excommunicate from both the fallen Angels Devils themselves testifie his Godhead Mar. 3.11 Vncleane Spirits fell downe before him and cryed Thou art the Sonne of God This is the testimony of his Word Miracula the testimony of his Works are his Miracles That his Apostles did Miracles in his name Acts 3.16 was a testimony of his Deity His name through faith in his Name hath made this man strong sayes S. Peter at the raysing of the Creeple But that he did Miracles in his own Name by his own Power is a nearer testimony Belssed be the Lord God of Israel Psal 72.18 sayes David Qui facit Mirabilia solus Which doth his Miracles alone without deriving power from any other or without using an other instrument for his Power Epipha For Mutare naturam nisi qui Dominus naturae est non potest Whosoever is able to change the course of nature is the Lord of nature And he that is so made it he that made it Tertul. that created it is God Nay Plus est it is more to change the course of Nature
the principall arguments against Confessions by Letter which some went about to set up in the Romane Church that that took away one of the greatest evidences and testimonies of their repentance which is this Erubescence this blushing this shame after sin if they should not be put to speak it face to face but to write it that would remove the shame which is a part of the repentance But that soule that goes not to confession to it selfe that hath not an internall blushing after a sin committed is a pale soule even in the palenesse of death and senslesnesse and a red soule red in the defiance of God And that whitenesse to avoid approaches to sin and that rednesse to blush upon a sin which does attempt us is the complexion of the soule which God loves and which the Holy Ghost testifies when he sayes Cant. 5.12 My Beloved is white and ruddy And when these men that David speaks of here had lost that whitenesse their innocency for David to wish that they might come to a rednesse a shame a blushing a remorse a sense of sin may have been no such great malediction or imprecation in the mouth of David but that a man may wish it to his best friend which should be his own soule and say Erubescam not let mine enemies but let me be ashamed with such a shame In the second word Conturbentur Let them be sore vexed he wishes his enemies no worse then himselfe had been For he had used the same word of himselfe before Ossa turbata My bones are vexed Ver. 2. 3. and Anima turbata My soule is vexed and considering that David had found this vexation to be his way to God it was no malicious imprecation to wish that enemy the same Physick that he had taken who was more sick of the same disease then he was For this is like a troubled Sea after a tempest the danger is past but yet the billow is great still The danger was in the calme in the security or in the tempest by mis-interpreting Gods corrections to our obduration and to a remorselesse stupefaction but when a man is come to this holy vexation to be troubled to be shaken with a sense of the indignation of God the storme is past and the indignation of God is blowne over That soule is in a faire and neare way of being restored to a calmnesse and to reposed security of conscience that is come to this holy vexation In a flat Map there goes no more to make West East though they be distant in an extremity but to paste that flat Map upon a round body and then West and East are all one In a flat soule in a dejected conscience in a troubled spirit there goes no more to the making of that trouble peace then to apply that trouble to the body of the Merits to the body of the Gospel of Christ Jesus and conforme thee to him and thy West is East Zoch 6.12 thy Trouble of spirit is Tranquillity of spirit The name of Christ is Oriens The East Esay 14.12 And yet Lucifer himselfe is called Filius Orientis The Son of the East If thou beest fallen by Lucifer fallen to Lucifer and not fallen as Lucifer to a senslesnesse of thy fall and an impenitiblenesse therein but to a troubled spirit still thy Prospect is the East still thy Climate is heaven still thy Haven is Jerusalem for in our lowest dejection of all even in the dust of the grave we are so composed so layed down as that we look to the East If I could beleeve that Trajan or Tecla could look East-ward that is towards Christ in hell I could beleeve with them of Rome that Trajan and Tecla were redeemed by prayer out of hell God had accepted sacrifices before but no sacrifice is call Odor quiet is Gen. 8.21 It is not said That God smelt a savor of rest in any sacrifice but that which Noah offered after hee had beene variously tossed and tumbled in the long hulling of the Arke upon the waters A troublesome spirit and a quiet spirit are farre asunder But a troubled spirit and a quiet spirit are neare neighbours And therefore David meanes them no great harme when hee sayes Let them be troubled For Let the winde be as high as it will so I sayle before the winde Let the trouble of my soule be as great as it will so it direct me upon God and I have calme enough And this peace Convertantur this calme is implyed in the next word Convertantur which is not Let them be overthrowne but Let them returne let them be forced to returne he prayes that God would do something to crosse their purposes because as they are against God so they are against their owne soules In that way where they are he sees there is no remedy and therefore he desires that they might be Turned into another way What is that way This. Turne us O Lord and we shall be turned That is turned the right way Towards God And as there was a promise from God to heare his people not onely when they came to him in the Temple but when they turned towards that Temple in what distance soever they were so it is alwaies accompanied with a blessing occasionally to turne towards God But this prayer Turne us that we may be turned is that we may be that is remaine turned that we may continue fixed in that posture Lots Wife turned her selfe and remained an everlasting monument of Gods anger God so turne us alwaies into right wayes as that we be not able to turne our selves out of them For God hath Viam rectam bonam as himselfe speakes in the Prophet A right way and then a good way which yet is not the right way that is not the way which God of himselfe would go For his right way is that we should still keepe in his way His good way is to beat us into his right way againe by his medicinall corrections when we put our selves out of his right way And that and that onely David wishes and we wish That you may Turne and Be turned stand in that holy posture all the yeare all the yeares of your lives That your Christmas may be as holy as your Easter even your Recreations as innocent as your Devotions and every roome in the house as free free from prophanenesse as the Sanctuary And this he ends as he begun with another Erubescant Let them be ashamed and that Valde volociter Suddenly for David saw that if a sinner came not to a shame of sin quickly he would quickly come to a shamelesnesse to an impudence to a searednesse to an obduration in it Now beloved this is the worst curse that comes out of a holy mans mouth even towards his enemie that God would correct him to his amendment And this is the worst harme that we meane to you when we denounce the judgements of
3.7 It is not onely Iob that complains That he was a burden to himselfe but even Absaloms haire was a burden to him till it was polled It is not onely Ieremy that complains Aggravavit compedes That God had made their fetters and their chains heavy to them but the workmen in harvest complaine That God had made a faire day heavy unto them Mat. 20.12 Pro. 27.3 We have borne the heat and the burden of the day Sand is heavy sayes Solomon And how many suffer so under a sand-hill of crosses daily hourely afflictions that are heavy by their number if not by their single waight And a stone is heavy sayes he in the same place And how many suffer so How many without any former preparatory crosse or comminatory or commonitory crosse even in the midst of prosperity and security fall under some one stone some grind-stone some mil-stone some one insupportable crosse that ruines them But then sayes Solomon there A fooles anger is heavier then both And how many children and servants and wives suffer under the anger and morosity and peevishnesse and jealousie of foolish Masters and Parents and Husbands though they must not say so David and Solomon have cryed out That all this world is vanity and levity And God knowes all is waight and burden and heavinesse and oppression And if there were not a waight of future glory to counterpoyse it we should all sinke into nothing I aske not Mary Magdalen whether lightnesse were not a burden for sin is certainly sensibly a burden But I aske Susanna whether even chast beauty were not a burden to her And I aske Ioseph whether personall comelinesse were not a burden to him I aske not Dives who perished in the next world the question but I aske them who are made examples of Solomons Rule Eccles 5.13 of that sore evill as he calls it Riches kept to the owners thereof for their hurt whether Riches be not a burden All our life is a continuall burden yet we must not groane A continuall squeasing yet we must not pant And as in the tendernesse of our childhood we suffer and yet are whipt if we cry so we are complained of if we complaine and made delinquents if we call the times ill And that which addes waight to waight and multiplies the sadnesse of this consideration is this That still the best men have had most laid upon them As soone as I heare God say that he hath found an upright man that feares God and eschews evill in the next lines I finde a Commission to Satan to bring in Sabeans and Chaldeans upon his cattell and servants and fire and tempest upon his children and loathsome diseases upon himselfe As soone as I heare God say That he hath found a man according to his own heart I see his sonnes ravish his daughters and then murder one another Mat. 3.17 and then rebell against the Father and put him into straites for his life As soone as I heare God testifie of Christ at his Baptisme This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased I finde that Sonne of his led up by the Spirit to be tempted of the Devill Matt. 4.1 Matt. 17.5 And after I heare God ratifie the same testimony againe at his Transfiguration This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased I finde that beloved Sonne of his deserted abandoned and given over to Scribes and Pharisees and Publicans and Herodians and Priests and Souldiers and people and Judges and witnesses and executioners and he that was called the beloved Sonne of God and made partaker of the glory of heaven in this world in his Transfiguration is made now the Sewer of all the corruption of all the sinnes of this world as no Sonne of God but a meere man as no man but a contemptible worme As though the greatest weaknesse in this world were man and the greatest fault in man were to be good man is more miserable then other creatures and good men more miserable then any other men But then there is Pondus Gloriae An exceeding waight of eternall glory Afflictio spiritualis and that turnes the scale for as it makes all worldly prosperity as dung so it makes all worldly adversity as feathers And so it had need for in the scale against it there are not onely put temporall afflictions but spirituall too And to these two kinds we may accommodate those words He that fals upon this stone upon temporall afflictions may be bruised Matt. 21.44 broken But he upon whom that stone falls spirituall afflictions is in danger to be ground to powder And then the great and yet ordinary danger is That these spirituall afflictions grow out of temporall Murmuring and diffidence in God and obduration out of worldly calamities And so against nature the fruit is greater and heavier then the Tree spirituall heavier then temporall afflictions They who write of Naturall story propose that Plant for the greatest wonder in nature Plin. l. 27.11 Lithospermus which being no firmer then a bull-rush or a reed produces and beares for the fruit thereof no other but an intire and very hard stone That temporall affliction should produce spirituall stoninesse and obduration is unnaturall yet ordinary Therefore doth God propose it as one of those greatest blessings which he multiplies upon his people I will take away your stony hearts and give you hearts of flesh And Ezek. 11.19 36.26 Plin. Plutar. Lord let mee have a fleshly heart in any sense rather then a stony heart Wee finde mention amongst the observers of rarities in Nature of hairy hearts hearts of men that have beene overgrowne with haire but of petrified hearts hearts of men growne into stone we read not for this petrefaction of the heart this stupefaction of a man is the last blow of Gods hand upon the heart of man in this world Revel 16. Those great afflictions which are powred out of the Vials of the seven Angels upon the world are still accompanied with that heavy effect that that affliction hardned them They were scorched with heats and plagues by the fourth Angel and it followes They blasphemed the name of God and repented not ver 9. to give him glory Darknesse was induced upon them by the fift Angel and it followes ver 11. They blasphemed the God of heaven and repented not of their deeds And from the seventh Angel there fell hailestones of the waight of talents ver 29. perchance foure pound waight upon men And yet these men had so much life left as to blaspheme God out of that respect which alone should have brought them to glorifie God Because the plague thereof was exceeding great And when a great plague brings them to blaspheme how great shall that second plague be that comes upon them for blaspheming Let me wither and weare out mine age in a discomfortable in an unwholesome in a penurious prison and
addition of comelinesse His aspect was cheerfull and such as gave a silent testimony of a cleere knowing soule and of a conscience at peace with it selfe His melting eye shewed he had a soft heart full of noble pity of too brave a spirit to offer injuries and too much a Christian not to pardon them in others His fancie was un-imitable high equalled by his great wit both being made usefull by a commanding judgement His mind was liberall and unwearied in the search of knowledge with which his vigorous soule is now satisfied and employed in a continuall praise of that God that first breathed it into his active body which once was a Temple of the holy Ghost and is now become a small quantity of Christian dust But I shall see it re-inanimated Iz Wa IOHANNES DONNE SAC THEOL PROFESSOR POST VARIA STUDIA QVIBUS AB ANNIS TENERRIMIS FIDELITER NEC INFELICITER INCUBUIT INSTINCTU ET IMPULSU SPIR S ti MONITU ET HORTATU REGIS IACOBI ORDINES SACROS AMPLEXUS Aº SUI JESU 1614. ET SUAE AETATIS 42. DECANATU HUJUS ECCLESIAE INDUTUS XXVII NOVEMBRIS 1621. EXUTUS MORTE ULTIMO DIE MARTII 1631. Hic licet in Occiduo Cinere Aspicit Eum Cujus Nomen est ORIENS A Table directing to the severall Texts of SCRIPTURE handled by the Author in this BOOK SERM. I. COLOS. 1.19 20. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulnesse dwell And having made peace through the bloud of his Crosse by Him to reconcile all things to himselfe by Him whether they be things in earth or things in heaven page 1 SERM. II. ESAIAH 7.14 Therefore the Lord shall give you a signe Behold a Virgin shall conceive and beare a Son and shall call his name Immanuel pa. 11 SERM. III. GALAT. 4.4 5. But when the fulnesse of time was come God sent forth his Sonne made of a woman made under the Law to redeeme them that were under the Law that we might receive the adoption of Sons pa. 20 SERM. IV. LUKE 2.29 30. Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word For mine eyes have seene thy salvation pa. 29. SERM. V. EXOD. 4.13 O my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send pa. 39 SERM. VI. Lord who hath beleeved our report pa. 52 SERM. VII JOHN 10.10 I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly pa. 62 SERM. VIII MAT. 5.16 Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in heaven pa. 77 SERM. IX ROM 13.7 Render therefore to all men their dues pa. 86 SERM. X. ROM 12.20 Therefore if thine enemie hunger feed him if he thirst give him drink for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head pa. 96 SERM. XI MAT. 9.2 And Iesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsie My son be of good chear thy sins be forgiven thee pa. 102 SERM. XII MAT. 5.2 Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God pa. 112 SERM. XIII JOB 16. ver 17 18 19. Not for any injustice in my hands Also my prayer is pure O earth cover thou not my bloud and let my cry have no place Also now behold my Witnesse is in heaven and my Record is on high pa. 127 SERM. XIV AMOS 5.18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord what have ye to doe with it the day of the Lord is darknesse and not light pa. 136 SERM. XV. 1 COR 15.26 The last Enemie that shall be destroyed is Death pa. 144 SERM. XVI JOHN 11.35 Iesus wept pa. 153 SERM. XVII MAT. 19.17 And he said unto him Why callest thou me Good There is none Good but One that is God pa. 163 SERM. XVIII ACTS 2.36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly That God hath made that same Iesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ pa. 175 SERM. XIX APOC. 20.6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection pa. 183 SERM. XX. JOHN 5.28 29. Marvell not at this for the houre is comming in the which all that are in the graves shall heare his voice And shall come forth they that have done good unto the Resurrection of life And they that have done evill unto the Resurrection of damnation pa. 192 SERM. XXI 1 COR. 15.29 Else what shall they do that are baptized for dead If the dead rise not at all why are they then baptized for dead pa. 120 SERM. XXII HEB. 11.35 Women received their dead raised to life againe And others were tortured not accepting a deliverance that they might obtaine a better Resurrection pa. 213 SERM. XXIII 1 COR. 13.12 For now we see through a glasse darkly But then face to face Now I know in part But then I shall know even as also I am knowne pa. 224 SERM. XXIV JOB 4.18 Behold he put no trust in his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly pa. 233 SERM. XXV MAT. 28.6 He is not here for he is risen as he said Come See the place where the Lord lay pa. 242 SERM. XXVI 1 THES 4.17 Then we which are alive and remaine shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the ayre and so shall we be ever with the Lord. pa. 254 SERM. XXVII PSAL. 89.47 What man is he that liveth and shall not see death pa. 267 SERM. XXVIII XXIX JOHN 14.26 But the Comforter which is the holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you pa. 277. 286 SERM. XXX JOHN 14.20 At that day shall ye know That I am in my Father and you in me and I in you pa. 294 SERM. XXXI GEN. 1.2 And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters pa. 303 SERM. XXXII 1 COR. 12.3 Also no man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost p. 312 SERM. XXXIII ACTS 10.44 While Peter yet spake these words the holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the Word pa. 321 SERM. XXXIV ROM 8.16 The Spirit it selfe beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God pa. 332 SERM. XXXV MAT. 12.31 Wherefore I say unto you All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men But the Blasphemy against the holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men pa. 341 SERM. XXXVI XXXVII JOHN 16.8 9 10 11. And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousnesse and of judgement Of sin because ye beleeve not on me Of righteousnesse because I goe to my Father and ye see me no more Of judgement because the Prince of this world is judged pa. 351. 361 SERM. XXXVIII 2 COR. 1.3 Blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ
had need be so for he found our measure full of sin towards God and Gods measure full of anger towards us for our parts as when a River swels at first it will finde out all the channels or lower parts of the bank and enter there but after a while it covers and overflowes the whole field and all is water without distinction so though we be naturally channels of concupiscencies for there sin begins and as water runs naturally in the veines and bowels of the earth Gen. 6.5 so run concupiscencies naturally in our bowels yet when every imagination of the thoughts of our heart is onely evill continually Then as it did there it induces a flood a deluge our concupiscence swells above all channels and actually overflowes all It hath found an issue at the eare we delight in the defamation of others and an issue at the eye Psal 50.18 Psal 12.4 If we see a thiefe we run with him we concurre in the plots of supplanting and destroying other men It hath found an issue in the tongue Our lips are our owne who is Lord over us We speak freely seditious speeches against superiours obscene and scurrile speeches against one another prophane and blasphemous speeches against God himselfe are growne to be good jests and marks of wit and arguments of spirit It findes an issue at our hands they give way to oppression by giving bribes and an issue at our feet They are swift to shed bloud and so by custome sin overflowes all Omnia pontus all our wayes are sea all our works are sin This is our fulnesse originall sin filled us actuall sin presses down the measure and habituall sins heap it up And then Gods measure of anger was full too from the beginning he was a jealous God and that should have made us carefull of our behaviour that a jealous eye watched over us But because wee see in the world that jealous persons are oftnest deceived because that distemper disorders them so as that they see nothing clearely and it puts the greater desire in the other to deceive because it is some kinde of Victory and Triumph to deceive a jealous and watchfull person therefore we have hoped to goe beyond God too and his jealousie But he is jealous of his honour jealous of his jealousie he will not have his jealousie despised nor forgotten for therefore he visits upon the children to the third and fourth generation when therefore the spirit of jealousie was come upon him Numb 5.14 and that he had prepared that water of bitternesse which was to rot our bowels that is when God had bent all his bowes drawne forth and whetted all his swords when he was justly provoked to execute all the Judgements denounced in all the Prophets upon all mankinde when mans measure was full of sin and Gods measure full of wrath then was the fulnesse of time and yet then Complacuit It pleased the Father that there should be another fulnesse to overflow all these in Christ Jesus But what fulnesse is that Omnis plenitudo all fulnesse And this was onely in Christ Omnis plenitudo 2 Reg. 2.9 Acts 6.5 Acts 9.36 Elias had a great portion of the spirit but but a portion Elizaeus sees that that portion will not serve him and therefore he asks a double portion of that spirit but still but portions Stephen is full of faith a blessed fulnesse where there is no corner for Infidelity nor for doubt for scruple nor irresolution Dorcas is full of good works a fulnesse above faith for there must be faith before there can be good works so that they are above faith as the tree is above the roote and as the fruit is above the tree The Virgin Mary is full of Grace and Grace is a fulnesse above both above faith and works too for that is the meanes to preserve both That we fall not from our faith Eccles 10.1 and that dead flyes corrupt not our ointment that worldly mixtures doe not vitiate our best works and the memory of past sins dead sins doe not beget new sins in us is the operation of Grace The seaven Deacons were full of the Holy Ghost and of Wisedome Acts 6.3 full of Religion towards God and full of such wisedome as might advance it towards men full of zeale and full of knowledge full of truth and full of discretion too And these were plenitudines fulnesses but they were not all Omnis plenitudo all fulnesse I shall bee as full as St. Paul in heaven I shall have as full a vessell but not so full a Cellar I shall be as full but I shall not have so much to fill Christ onely hath an infinite content and capacity an infinite roome and receipt and then an infinite fulnesse omnem capacitatem and omnem plenitudinem He would receive as much as could be infused and there was as much infused as he could receive But what shall we say Deus adimplendus was Christ God before and are these accessory supplementary additionall fulnesses to be put to him A fulnesse to be added to God To make him a competent person to redeeme man something was to be added to Christ though he were God wherein we see to our inexpressible confusion of face and consternation of spirit the incomprehensiblenesse of mans sin that even to God himselfe there was required something else then God before we could be redeemed there was a fulnesse to be added to God for this work to make it omnem plenitudinem for Christ was God before there was that fulnesse but God was not Christ before there lacked that fulnesse Not disputing therefore what other wayes God might have taken for our redemption but giving him all possible thanks for that way which his goodnesse hath chosen by the way of satisfying his justice for howsoever I would be glad to be discharged of my debts any way yet certainly I should think my selfe more beholden to that man who would be content to pay my debt for me then to him that should entreat my creditor to forgive me my debt for this work to make Christ able to pay this debt there was something to be added to him First he must pay it in such money as was lent in the nature and flesh of man for man had sinned and man must pay And then it was lent in such money as was coyned even with the Image of God man was made according to his Image That Image being defaced in a new Mint in the wombe of the Blessed Virgin there was new money coyned The Image of the invisible God the second person in the Trinity was imprinted into the humane nature And then that there might bee omnis plenitudo all fulnesse as God for the paiment of this debt sent downe the Bullion and the stamp that is God to be conceived in man and as he provided the Mint the womb of the Blessed Virgin so hath he provided an Exchequer where this
fornications and goes very farre in carnall And yet for all this we are capable of this Conception Christ may be borne in us for all this As God said unto the Prophet Take thee a wife of fornications and children of fornications so is Christ Jesus content to take our soules though too often mothers of fornications As long as we are united and incorporated in his beloved Spouse the Church conforme our selves to her grow up in her hearken to his word in her feed upon his Sacraments in her acknowledge a seale of reconciliation by the absolution of the Minister in her so long how unclean soever we have bin if wee abhorre and forsake our uncleannesse now wee participate of the chastity of that Spouse of his the Church and in her are made capable of this conception of Christ Jesus and so it is as true this houre of us as it was when the Apostle spoke these words This is the fulnesse of time when God sent his Son c. Now you remember Sub lege that in this second part the manner of Christs comming we proposed two degrees of humiliation One which we have handled in a double respect as he is made filius mulieris non Dei the son of a woman and not the Son of God the other as he is filius mulieris non Virginis The son of a woman and not called the son of a Virgin The second remaines that he was sub lege under the law now this phrase to be under the law is not alwayes so narrowly limited in the Scriptures as to signifie onely the law of Moses for so onely the Jews were under the law and so Christs comming for them who were under the law his Death and Merits should belong onely to the Jews But St. Augustine observes that when Christ sent the message of his birth to the wise men in the East by a starre and to the shepheards about Bethlem by an Angel In pastoribus Iudaei in magis Gentes vocatae The Jews had their calling in that manifestation to the shepheards and the Gentiles in that to the wise men in the East But besides that Christ did submit himselfe to all the waight even of the Ceremoniall law of Moses he was under a heavyer law then that under that lex decreti the contract and covenant with God the Father under that oportuit pati This he ought to suffer before he could enter into glory So that his being under the law may be accounted not a part of his Humiliation as his being made of a woman was but rather the whole history and frame of his humiliation All that concernes his obedience even to that law which the Father had laid upon him for the life and death of Christ from the Ave Maria to the consummatum est from his comming into this World in his Conception to his transmigration upon the Crosse was all under this law heavier then any law that any man is under the law of the contract and covenant between the Father and him Though therefore we may think judging by the law of reason that since Christ came to gather a Church and to draw the world to him it would more have advanced that purpose of his to have been borne at Rome where the seat of the Empire and the confluence of all Nations was then in Iury and if he would offer the Gospel first to the Jews better to have been borne at Ierusalem where all the outward publique solemne worship of the Jews was then at obscure Bethlem and in Bethlem in some better place then in an Inne in a Stable in a Manger though we may think thus in the law of reason yet non cogitationes meae cogitationes vestrae sayes God in the Prophet Esay 55. My thoughts are not your thoughts nor my lawes your lawes for I am sub lege decreti under another manner of law then falls within your reading under an obedience to that covenant which hath passed betweene my Father and me and by those Degrees and no other way was my humiliation for your Redemption to be expressed Though we may thinke in the law of Reason that his work of propagating the Gospel would have gone better forward if he had taken for his Apostles some Tullies or Hortensii or Senecaes great and perswading Orators in stead of his Peter and Iohn and Matthew and those Fishermen and tent-makers and toll-gatherers Though we might think in reason and in piety too that when he would humble himselfe to take our salvation into his care it had beene enough to have beene under the law of Moses to live innocently and righteously without shedding of his bloud If he would shed bloud it might have beene enough to have done so in the Circumcision and scourging without dying If he would die it might have been enough to have dyed some lesse accursed and lesse ignominious death then the death of the Crosse though we might reasonably enough and piously enough think thus yet non cogitationes vestrae cogitationes meae sayes the Lord your way is not my way your law is not my law for Christ was sub lege decreti and thus as he did and no other way it became him to fulfill all righteousnesse that is all that Decree of God which he had accepted and acknowledged as Righteous He was so much under Moses law as he would be so much under that law as that he suffered that law to be wrested against him and to bee pretended to be broken by him and to be endited and condemned by that law The Jews pressed that law non sines veneficū vivere Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live Exod. 22. when they attributed all his glorious miracles to the power of the devil and the Romans were incensed against him for treason and sedition as though he aliened and withdrew the people from Caesar But he was under a heavyer law then Jews or Romanes the Law of his Father and his owne eternall Decree so farre as that he came to that sense of the waight thereof Eli Eli My God My God why hast thou forsaken me and was never delivered from the burden of this law till he pleaded the performance of all conditions between his Father and him and delivered up all the evidence thereof in those words In manus tuas Into thy hands O Lord I give my spirit and so presented both the righteousnesse of his soule which had fulfilled the law and the soule it selfe which was under the law He dyed in Execution and so discharged all And so we have done with our second part The manner of his comming We are come now in our Order to our third part The purpose of Christs comming 3. Part. and in that we consider two objects that Christ had and two subjects to work upon two kindes of work and two kindes of persons First to Redeeme and then to Adopt Those are his works his objects And then To redeeme
from the tyran to cancell the covenant betweene hell and them and restore them so far to their liberty as that they might come to their first Master if they would this was Redeeming But in his other worke which is Adoption and where the persons were more particular Adoptio not all but wee Christ hath taken us to him in a straiter and more peculiar title then Redeeming For A servando Servi men who were by another mans valour saved and redeemed from the enemy or from present death they became thereby servants to him that saved and redeemed them Redemption makes us who were but subjects before for all are so by creation servants but it is but servants but Adoption makes us who are thus made servants by Redemption sons 〈◊〉 for Adoption is verbum forense though it be a word which the Holy Ghost takes yet he takes it from a civill use and signification in which it expresses in divers circumstances our Adoption into the state of Gods children First he that adopted another must by that law be a man who had no children of his owne And this was Gods case towards us Hee had no children of his owne wee were all filii irae The children of wrath not one of us could be said to bee the child of God by nature if we had not had this Adoption in Christ Secondly he who Eph. ◠by that law might Adopt must be a Man who had had or naturally might have had children for an Infant under yeares or a man who by nature was disabled from having children could not Adopt another And this was Gods case towards us too for God had had children without Adoption for by our creation in Innocence we were the sons of God till we died all in one transgression and lost all right and all life and all meanes of regaining it but by this way of Adoption in Christ Jesus Againe no man might adopt an elder man then himselfe and so our Father by Adoption is not onely Antiquus dierum The ancient of Daies but Antiquior diebus ancienter then any Daies before Time was he is as Damascene forces himselfe to expresse it Super-principale principium the Beginning and the first Beginning and before the first beginning He is saies he aeternus and prae-aeternus Eternall and elder then any eternity that we can take into our imagination So likewise no man might adopt a man of better quality then himselfe and here we are so far from comparing as that we cannot comprehend his greatnesse and his goodnesse of whom and to whom S. Augustin saies well Quid mihi es If I shall goe about to declare thy goodnesse not to the world in generall but Quid mihi es how good thou art to me Miserere ut loquar saies he I must have more of thy goodnesse to be able to tell thy former goodnesse Be mercifull unto me againe that I may bee thereby able to declare how mercifull thou wast to me before except thou speake in me I cannot declare what thou hast done for me Lastly no man might be adopted into any other degree of kindred but into the name and right of a son he could not be an adopted Brother nor cosin nor nephew And this is especially our dignity wee have the Spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba Father So that as here is a fulnesse of time in the text so there is a fulnesse of persons All and a fulnesse of the worke belonging to them Redeeming Emancipation delivering from the chaines of Satan we were his by Creation we sold our selves for nothing and he redeemed us without money that is Esa 52. without any cost of ours but because for all this generall Redemption we may turne from him and submit our selves to other services therefore he hath Adopted us drawne into his family and into his more especiall care those who are chosen by him to be his Now that Redemption reached to all there was enough for all this dispensation of that Redemption this Adoption reaches onely to us all this is done That wee might receive the Adoption of Sonnes But who are this Wee why they are the elect of God But who are they Nos who are these elect Qui timidè rogat docet negare If a man aske me with a diffidence Can I be the adopted son of God that have rebelled against him in all my affections that have troden upon his Commandements in all mine actions that have divorced my selfe from him in preferring the love of his creatures before himselfe that have murmured at his corrections and thought them too much that have undervalued his benefits and thought them too little that have abandoned and prostituted my body his Temple to all uncleannesse and my spirit to indevotion and contempt of his Ordinances can I be the adopted son of God that have done this Ne timidè roges aske me not this with a diffidence and distrust in Gods mercy as if thou thoughtst with Cain thy iniquities were greater then could be forgiven But aske me with that holy confidence which belongs to a true convert Am not I who though I am never without sinne yet am never without hearty remorce and repentance for my sinnes though the weaknesse of my flesh sometimes betray mee the strength of his Spirit still recovers me though my body be under the paw of that lion that seekes whom hee may devoure yet the lion of Judah raises againe and upholds my soule though I wound my Saviour with many sinnes yet all these bee they never so many I strive against I lament confesse and forsake as farre as I am able Am not I the child of God and his adopted son in this state Roga fidenter aske me with a holy confidence in thine and my God doces affirmare thy very question gives me mine answer to thee thou teachest me to say thou art God himselfe teaches me to say so by his Apostle The foundation of God is sure and this is the Seale God knoweth who are his and let them that call upon his name depart from all iniquity He that departs so far as to repent former sinnes and shut up the wayes which he knows in his conscience doe lead him into tentations he is of this quorum one of us one of them who are adopted by Christ to be the sonnes of God I am of this quorum if I preach the Gospell sincerely and live thereafter for hee preaches twice a day that followes his owne doctrine and does as he saies And you are of this quorum if you preach over the Sermons which you heare to your owne soules in your meditation to your families in your relation to the world in your conversation If you come to this place to meet the Spirit of God and not to meet one another If you have sate in this place with a delight in the Word of God and not in the words of any speaker If you goe out of this
no evill done in the City but I doe it we may be bold to say there is no good done in the world but hee does it The very calamities are from him the deliverance from those calamities much more All comes from Gods hand and from his hand by way of hand-writing by way of letter and instruction to us And therefore to ascribe things wholy to nature to fortune to power to second causes this is to mistake the hand not to know Gods hand But to acknowledge it to be Gods hand and not to read it to say that it is Gods doing and not to consider what God intends in it is as much a slighting of God as the other Now in every such letter in every judgement God writes to the King but it becomes not me to open the Kings letter nor to prescribe the King his interpretation of that judgement In every such letter in every judgement God writes to the State but I will not open their letter nor prescribe them their interpretation of that judgement God who of his goodnesse hath vouchsafed to write unto them in these letters of his abundant goodnesse interprets himselfe to their religious hearts But then in every such letter in every judgement God writes to me too and that letter I will open and read that letter I will take knowledge that it is Gods hand to me and I will study the will of God to me in that letter and I will write back again to my God and return him an answer in the amendment of my life and give him my reformation for his information Else I am fallen lower then under the Prophets increpation non credidi I have not beleeved comminations of future judgements under Christs increpation too non credidi I doe not beleeve judgements to be judgements or which is as dangerous an ignorance not to be instructive judgements medicinall and catechisticall judgements to me And this may well be the explication at least the application and accommodation of these words Lord who hath beleeved our report in those places the Prophet Esay and the Euangelist S. Iohn There remaines only the third place where we have these words in the Apostle S. Paul and in them there doe not consider a prophecy of a future Christ Rom. 10.16 as in Esay nor a history of a present Christ as in S. Iohn but we consider an application of all prophecy and history all that was foretold of Christ all that was done and suffered by Christ in this that there is a Church instituted by Christ endowed with meanes of reconciling us to God what judgements soever our sins have drawen God to threaten against us or to inflict upon us and yet for all these offers of all these helps the Minister is put to this sad expostulation Domine quis credidit Lord who hath beleeved our report Here then the Apostles expostulation with God and increpation upon the people may usefully be conceived to be thus carried from the light and notification of God 3. Part. which we have in nature to a clearer light which we have in the Law and Prophets and then a clearer then that in the Gospell and a clearer at least a nearer then that in the Church First then even the naturall man is inexcusable sayes this Apostle if he doe not see the invisible God in the visible creature inexcusable if he doe not reade the law written in his own heart But then Quis credidit auditui suo who hath beleeved his own report who does reade the Law written in his own heart who does come home to Church to himself or hearken to the motions of his own spirit what he should doe or what will become of him if he doe still as he hath done or who reades the history of his own conscience what he hath done and the judgements that belong to those former actions Therefore we have a clearer light then this Firmiorem propheticum sermonem sayes S. Peter We have a more sure word of the Prophets that is 2 Pet. 1.19 as S. Augustine reades that place clariorem a more manifest a more evident declaration in the Prophets then in nature of the will of God towards man and his rewarding the obedient and rejecting the disobedient to that will But then Quis credidit auditui prophetico who hath beleeved the report of the Prophet so far as to be so moved and affected with a prophecy as to suspect himselfe and apply that prophecy to himselfe and to say this judgement of his belongs to this sin of mine Therefore we have a clearer light then this God Heb. 1.1 who at sundry times and in divers manners spake to the Fathers by the Prophets hath in these last dayes spoke to us by his Son sayes the Apostle He spake personally and he spake aloud in the declaration of Miracles But Quis credidit auditui filii who beleeved even his report did they not call his preaching sedition and call his Miracles conjuring Therefore we have a clearer that is a nearer light then the written Gospell that is the Church For the principall intention in Christs Miracles even in the purpose of God was but thereby to create and constitute and establish an assurance that he that did those Miracles was the right man the true Messias that Son of God who was made man for the redemption and ransome of the whole world But then that which was to give them their best assistance that that was to supply all by that way to apply this generall redemption to every particular soule that was the establishing of a Church of a visible and constant and permanent meanes of salvation by his Ordinances there usque ad consummationem till the end of the world And this is done sayes this Apostle here Christ is come and gone and come again Born and dead and risen again Ascended and sate at the right hand of his Father in our nature and descended again in his Spirit the Holy Ghost that Holy Ghost hath sent us us the Apostles we have made Bishops they have made Priests and Deacons and so that body that family that houshold of the faithfull Ver. 14. by their Ministery is made up 'T is true sayes the Apostle here Men cannot be saved without calling upon God nor call upon him acceptably without Faith nor beleeve truly without Hearing nor heare profitably without Preaching nor preach avowably and with a blessing without sending All this is true sayes our Apostle in this place but all this is done such a sending such a preaching such a hearing is established For Ver. 19. I ask but this sayes he Have they not heard Yes verily their sound went into all the earth and their words unto the end of the world And for my selfe sayes he I have strived to preach the Gospell Rom. 15.20 where Christ was not named that is to carry the Church farther then the rest had carried it and now all
say there Domine credo Lord I beleeve this report I beleeve that I cannot be saved without beleeving nor beleeve without hearing And therefore whatsoever thou hast decreed to thy selfe above in heaven give me a holy assiduity of indevor and peace of conscience in the execution of thy Decrees here And let thy Spirit beare witnesse with my spirit that I am of the number of thine elect because I love the beauty of thy house because I captivate mine understanding to thine Ordinances because I subdue my wil to obey thine because I find thy Son Christ Jesus made mine in the preaching of thy word and my selfe made his in the administration of his Sacraments And keep me ever in the armes and bosome of that Church which without any tincture any mixture any leaven of superstition or Idolatry affords me all that is necessary to salvation and obtrudes nothing enforces nothing to be beleeved by any Determination or Article of hers that is not so And be this enough for the Explication and Application and Complication of these words in all these three places SERMON VII Preached upon Christmas day JOHN 10.10 I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly THe Church celebrates this day the Birth of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus blessed for ever And though it fall amongst the shortest dayes in the yeere yet of all the Festivals in the yeere it is the longest It is a day that consists of twelve dayes A day not measured by the naturall and ordinary motion of the Sun but by a supernaturall and extraordinary Star which appeared to the Wisemen of the East this day and brought them to Christ at Bethlem upon Twelfe day That day Twelfe day the Church now calls the Epiphany The ancient Church called this day Christmas day the Epiphany Both dayes together and all the dayes betweene This day when Christ was manifested to the Jews in the Shepheards by the Angels and Twelfe day when Christ was manifested to the Gentiles in those Wisemen of the East make up the Epiphany that is the manifestation of God to man And as this day is in such a respect a longer day then others so if we make longer houres in this day then in other dayes if I extend this Sermon if you extend your Devotion or your Patience beyond the ordinary time it is but a due and a just celebration of the Day and some accommodation to the Text for I am come as he in whose Name and Power I came came and he tels you that He came that you might have life and might have it more abundantly God who vouchsafed to be made Man for man for man vouchsafes also to doe all the offices of man toward man Mal. 2.10 He is our Father for he made us Of what Of clay So God is Figulus Esay 45.9 Rom. 9.21 Gen. 1.27 Gen. 3.21 Gen. 1.29 so in the Prophet so in the Apostle God is our Potter God stamped his Image upon us and so God is Statuarius our Minter our Statuary God clothed us and so is vestiarius he hath opened his wardrobe unto us God gave us all the fruits of the earth to eate and so is oeconomus our Steward God poures his oyle and his wine into our wounds Luke 10. 1 Cor. 3.6 Acts 20.32 Psal 127.1 Mat. 4.19 and so is Medicus and Vicinus that Physitian that Neighbour that Samaritan intended in the Parable God plants us and waters and weeds us and gives the increase and so God is Hortulanus our Gardiner God builds us up into a Church and so God is Architectus our Architect our Builder God watches the City when it is built and so God is Speculator our Sentinell God fishes for men for all his Iohns and his Andrews and his Peters are but the nets that he fishes withall God is the fisher of men And here in this Chapter God in Christ is our Shepheard The book of Iob is a representation of God in a Tragique-Comedy lamentable beginnings comfortably ended The book of the Canticles is a representation of God in Christ as a Bridegroom in a Marriage-song in an Epithalamion God in Christ is represented to us in divers formes in divers places and this Chapter is his Pastorall The Lord is our Shepheard and so called in more places then by any other name and in this Chapter exhibits some of the offices of a good Shepheard Be pleased to taste a few of them First he sayes The good Shepheard comes in at the doore Joh. 10.1 the right way If he come in at the window that is alwayes clamber after preferment If he come in at vaults and cellars that is by clandestin and secret contracts with his Patron he comes not the right way When he is in the right way Ver. 3. His sheep heare his voyce first there is a voyce He is heard Ignorance doth not silence him nor lazinesse nor abundance of preferment nor indiscreet and distempered zeale does not silence him for to induce or occasion a silencing upon our selves is as ill as the ignorant or the lazie silence There is a voyce and sayes that Text is is his voyce not alwayes another in his roome for as it is added in the next verse The sheep know his voyce which they could not doe if they heard it not often V. 4. if they were not used to it And then for the best testimony and consummation of all he sayes The good Shepheard gives his life for his sheep Every good Shepheard gives his life V. 11. that is spends his life weares out his life for his sheep of which this may be one good argument That there are not so many crazie so many sickly men men that so soon grow old in any profession as in ours But in this Christ is our Shepheard in a more peculiar and more incommunicable way that he is Pastor humani generis esca first Maxinus that he feeds not one Parish nor one Diocesse but humanum genus all Mankinde the whole world and then feeds us so as that he is both our Pastor and our Pasture he feeds us and feeds us with himselfe for His flesh is meat indeed and his bloud is drink indeed Joh. 6. Lro. And therefore Honor telebratur totius gregis per annua festa pastoris As often as wecome to celebrate the comming of this Shepheard in giving that honour we receive an honour because that is a declaration that we are the sheepe of that pasture and the body of that head And so much being not impertinently said for the connexion of the words and their complication with the day passe we now to the more particular distribution and explication thereof I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly In these words our parts will be three for first we must consider the Persons Divisie The Shepheard and the
swore by himselfe because he could propose no greater thing in himself no clearer notion of himself then life for his life is his eternity and his eternity is himselfe does therefore through all the Law and the Prophets still sweare in that form Vivo ego vivit Dominus As I live saith the Lord and as the Lord liveth still he sweares by his own life As that solemne Oath which is mentioned in Daniel is conceived in that form too He lift up his right hand and his left hand to heaven Dan. 12.7 and swore by him that liveth for ever that is by God and God in that notion as he is life All that the Queen and the Councell could wish and apprecate to the King was but that Life In sempiternum vive vive in aeternum O King live for ever God is life Dan. 5. and would not the death of any We are not sure that stones have not life stones may have life neither to speak humanely is it unreasonably thought by them that thought the whole world to be inanimated by one soule and to be one intire living creature and in that respect does S. Augustine prefer a fly before the Sun 1 Tim. 5.6 because a fly hath life and the Sun hath not This is the worst that the Apostle sayes of the young wanton widow That if she live in pleasure she is dead whilst she lives So is that Magistrate that studies nothing but his own honour and dignity in his place dead in his place And that Priest that studies nothing but his owne ease and profit dead in his living And that Judge that dares not condemne a guilty person And which is the bolder transgression dares condemne the innocent deader upon the Bench then the Prisoner at the Barre God hath included all that is good Dcut. 30.15 in the name of Life and all that is ill in the name of Death when he sayes See I have set before thee Vitam Bonum Life and Good Mortem Malum Death and Evill This is the reward proposed to our faith Hab. 2.4 Iustus fide sua vivit To live by our faith And this is the reward proposed to our works Fac hoc vives to live by our works All is life And this fulnesse this consummation of happinesse Life and the life of life spirituall life and the exaltation of spirituall life eternall life is the end of Christs comming I came that they might have life And first Vt daret ut daret that he might give life bring life into the world that there might be life to be had that the world might be redeemed from that losse which S. Augustine sayes it was falne into Perdidimus possibilitatem boni That we had all lost all possibility of life For the heaven and the earth and all that the Poet would call Chaos was not a deader lump before the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters then Mankind was before the influence of Christs comming wrought upon it But now that God so loved the world as that he gave his Son now that the Son so loved the world as that he gave himselfe Psal 19.6 as David sayes of the Sun of the firmament the father of nature Nihit absconditum there is nothing hid from the heat thereof so we say of this Son of God the Father of the faithfull in a far higher sense then Abraham was called so Nihilabsconditum there is nothing hid from him no place no person excluded from the benefit of his comming The Son hath paid the Father hath received enough for all not in fingle money for the discharge of thy lesser debts thy idle words thy wanton thoughts thy unchast looks but in massie talents to discharge thy crying debts the clamors of those poore whom thou hast oppressed and thy thundring debts those blasphemies by which thou hast torne that Father that made thee that Sonne that redeemed thee that boly Ghost that would comfort thee 1 Reg. 5. There is enough given but then as Hiram sent materials sufficient for the building of the Temple but there was something else to be done for the fitting and placing thereof so there is life enough brought into the world for all the world by the death of Christ but then there is something else to be done for the application of this life to particular persons intended in this word in our Text ut haberent I came that they might have life There is Ayre enough in the world Vt haberent to give breath to every thing though every thing doe not breath If a tree or a stone doe not breathe it is not because it wants ayre but because it wants meanes to receive it or to returne it All egges are not hatched that the hen sits upon Matt. 23.37 neither could Christ himselfe get all the chickens that were hatched to come and to stay under his wings That man that is blinde or that will winke shall see no more sunne upon S. Barnabies day then upon S. Lucies no more in the summer then in the winter solstice Psal 130.7 And therefore as there is copiosa redemptio a plentifull redemption brought into the world by the death of Christ so as S. Paul found it in his particular conversion there is copiosa lux Acts 22.6 a great a powerfull light exhibited to us that we might see and lay hold of this life in the Ordinances of the Church in the Confessions and Absolutions and Services and Sermons and Sacraments of the Church Christ came ut daret that he might bring life into the world by his death and then he instituted his Church ut haberent that by the meanes thereof this life might be infused into us and infused so as the last word of our Text delivers it Abundantiùs I came that they might have life more abundantly Dignaris Domine Abūdantiùs August ut eis quibus debita dimittis te promissionibus tuis debitorem facias This O Lord is thine abundant proceeding First thou forgivest me my debt to thee and then thou makest thy selfe a debter to me by thy large promises and after all performest those promises more largely then thou madest them Indeed God can doe nothing scantly penuriously singly Even his maledictions to which God is ever loth to come his first commination was plurall it was death and death upon death Morte morieris Death may be plurall but this benediction of life cannot admit a singular Chajim which is the word for life hath no singular number This is the difference betweene Gods Mercy and his Judgements that sometimes his Judgements may be plurall complicated enwrapped in one another but his Mercies are alwayes so and cannot be otherwise he gives them abundantiùs more abundantly More abundantly then to whom Illis gentibus The naturall man hath the Image of God imprinted in his soule eternity is God himselfe man hath not
constitutions or onely a testimony of outward conformity which should be signaculum viaticum a seale of pardon for past sins and a provision of grace against future But he that is well prepared for this strips himselfe of all these vae desiderantibus of all these comminations that belong to carnall desires and he shall be as Daniel was vir desideriorum a man of chast and heavenly desires onely hee shall desire that day of the Lord as that day signifies affliction here with David Psal 119.17 Bonum est mihi quòd humiliasti me I am mended by my sicknesse enriched by my poverty and strengthened by my weaknesse and with S. Bern. desire Irascar is mihi Domine O Lord be angry with me for if thou chidest me not thou considerest me not if I taste no bitternesse I have no Physick If thou correct me not I am not thy son And he shall desire that day of the Lord as that day signifies the last judgement with the desire of the Martyrs under the Altar Vsquequo Domine How long O Lord ere thou execute judgement And he shall desire this day of the Lord as this day is the day of his own death with S. Pauls desire Cupio dissolvi I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ And when this day of the Lord as it is the day of the Lords resurrection shall come his soule shall be satified as with marrow and with fatnesse in the body and bloud of his Saviour and in the participation of all his merits as intirely as if all that Christ Jesus hath said and done and suffered had beene said and done and suffered for his soule alone Enlarge our daies O Lord to that blessed day prepare us before that day seale to us at that day ratifie to us after that day all the daies of our life an assurance in that Kingdome which thy Son our Saviour hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud To which glorious Son of God c. SERMON XV. Preached at VVhite-hall March 8. 1621. 1 COR. 15.26 The last Enemie that shall be destroyed is Death THis is a Text of the Resurrection and it is not Easter yet but it is Easter Eve All Lent is but the Vigill the Eve of Easter to so long a Festivall as never shall end the Resurrection wee may well begin the Eve betimes Forty yeares long was God grieved for that Generation which he loved let us be content to humble our selves forty daies to be fitter for that glory which we expect In the Booke of God there are many Songs there is but one Lamentation And that one Song of Solomon nay some one of Davids hundred and fiftie Psalmes is longer then the whole booke of Lamentations Make way to an everlasting Easter by a short Lent to an undeterminable glory by a temporary humiliation You must weepe these teares teares of contrition teares of mortification before God will wipe all teares from your eyes You must dye this death this death of the righteous the death to sin before this last enemy Death shal be destroyed in you and you made partakers of everlasting life in soule and body too Our division shall be but a short Divisio and our whole exercise but a larger paraphrase upon the words The words imply first That the Kingdome of Christ which must be perfected must be accomplished because all things must be subdued unto him is not yet perfected not accomplished yet Why what lacks it It lacks the bodies of Men which yet lie under the dominion of another When we shall also see by that Metaphor which the Holy Ghost chooseth to expresse that in which is that there is Hostis and so Militia an enemie and a warre and therefore that Kingdome is not perfected that he places perfect happinesse and perfect glory in perfect peace But then how far is any State consisting of many men how far the state and condition of any one man in particular from this perfect peace How truly a warfare is this life if the Kingdome of Heaven it selfe have not this peace in perfection And it hath it not Quia hostis because there is an enemy though that enemy shall not overthrow it yet because it plots and workes and machinates and would overthrow it this is a defect in that peace Who then is this enemy An enemy that may thus far thinke himselfe equall to God that as no man ever saw God and lived so no man ever saw this enemy and lived for it is Death And in this may thinke himselfe in number superiour to God that many men live who shall never see God But Quis homo is Davids question which was never answered Is there any man that lives and shall not see death An enemie that is so well victualled against man as that he cannot want as long as there are men for he feeds upon man himselfe And so well armed against Man as that he cannot want Munition while there are men for he fights with our weapons our owne faculties nay our calamities yea our owne pleasures are our death And therefore he is Novissimus hostis saith the Text The last enemy We have other Enemies Satan about us sin within us but the power of both those this enemie shall destroy but when they are destroyed he shall retaine a hostile and triumphant dominion over us But Vsque quo Domine How long O Lord for ever No Abolebitur wee see this Enemy all the way and all the way we feele him but we shall see him destroyed Abolebitur But how or when At and by the resurrection of our bodies for as upon my expiration my transmigration from hence as soone as my soule enters into Heaven I shall be able to say to the Angels I am of the same stuffe as you spirit and spirit and therefore let me stand with you and looke upon the face of your God and my God so at the Resurrection of this body I shall be able to say to the Angel of the great Councell the Son of God Christ Jesus himselfe I am of the same stuffe as you Body and body Flesh and flesh and therefore let me sit downe with you at the right hand of the Father in an everlasting security from this last enemie who is now destroyed death And in these seven steps we shall passe apace and yet cleerely through this paraphrase We begin with this Vestig 1. Quia desunt Corpora That the Kingdome of Heaven hath not all that it must have to a consummate perfection till it have bodies too In those infinite millions of millions of generations in which the holy blessed and glorious Trinity enjoyed themselves one another and no more they thought not their glory so perfect but that it might receive an addition from creatures and therefore they made a world a materiall world a corporeall world they would have bodies In that noble part of that world which Moses
the Resurrection marvaile at nothing so much as at this nothing is so marvailous so wonderfull as this And secondly the approach of the Resurrection The houre is comming And thirdly The generality All that are in the graves And then the instrument of the resurrection The voice of Christ that shall be heard And lastly the diverse end of the resurrection They shall come forth they that have done good c. God hath a care of the Body of man that is first And he defers it not that is next And he extends it to all that is a third And a fourth is That he does that last act by him by whom he did the first The Creation and all betweene the Redemption that is by his Son by Christ And then the last is that this is an everlasting separation and divorce of the good and the bad The bad shall never be able to receive good from the Good nor to doe harme to the Good after that First then Christ saies Ne miremini Marvaile not at this Ne miremini not at your spirituall resurrection not that a Sermon should worke upon man not that a Sacrament should comfort a man make it not a miracle nor an extraordinary thing by hearing to come to repentance and so to such a resurrection For though S. Augustine say That to convert a man from sin is as great a miracle as Creation yet S. August speaks that of a mans first conversion in which the man himselfe does nothing but God all Then he is made of nothing but after God hath renewed him and proposed ordinary meanes in the Church still to worke upon him he must not looke for miraculous working but make Gods ordinary meanes ordinary to him This is Panis quotidianus The daily bread which God gives you as often as you meet here according to his Ordinances Ne miremini stand not to wonder as though you were not sure but come to enjoy Gods goodnesse in his ordinary way here But it is Hoc Ne miremini hoc Wonder not at this but yet there are things which we may wonder at Nil admirari is but the Philosophers wisdome He thinks it a weaknesse to wonder at any thing That any thing should be strange to him But Christian Philosophy that is rooted in humility tels us in the mouth of Clement of Alexand. Principium veritatis est res admirari The first step to faith is to wonder to stand and consider with a holy admiration the waies and proceedings of God with man for Admiration wonder stands as in the midst betweene knowledge and faith and hath an eye towards both If I know a thing or beleeve a thing I do no longer wonder but when I finde that I have reason to stop upon the consideration of a thing so as that I see enough to induce admiration to make me wonder I come by that step and God leads me by that hand to a knowledge if it be of a naturall or civill thing or to a faith if it be of a supernaturall and spirituall thing And therefore be content to wonder at this That God would have such a care to dignifie and to crown and to associate to his own everlasting presence the body of man God himself is a Spirit and heaven is his place my soul is a spirit and so proportioned to that place That God or Angels or our Soules which are all Spirits should be in heaven Ne miremini never wonder at that But since we wonder and justly that some late Philosophers have removed the whole earth from the Center and carried it up and placed it in one of the Spheares of heaven That this clod of earth this body of ours should be carried up to the highest heaven placed in the eye of God set down at the right hand of God Miremini hoc wonder at this That God all Spirit served with Spirits associated to Spirits should have such an affection such a love to this body this earthly body this deserves this wonder The Father was pleased to breathe into this body at first in the Creation The Son was pleased to assume this body himself after in the Redemption The Holy Ghost is pleased to consecrate this body and make it his Temple by his sanctisication In that Faciamus hominem Let us all us make man that consuitation of the whole Trinity in making man is exercised even upon this lower part of man the dignifying of his body So far as that amongst the ancient Fathers very many of them are very various and irresolved which way to pronounce and very many of them cleare in the negative in that point That the soule of man comes not to the presence of God but remaines in some out-places till the Resurrection of the body That observation that consideration of the love of God to the body of man withdrew them into that error That the soul it self should lack the glory of heaven till the body were become capable of that glory too They therefore oppose God in his purpose of dignifying the body of man first who violate and mangle this body which is the Organ in which God breathes And they also which pollute and defile this body in which Christ Jesus is apparelled and they likewise who prophane this body which the Holy Ghost as the high Priest inhabites and consecrates Trangressors in the first kinde that put Gods Organ out of tune that discompose and teare the body of man with violence are those inhumane persecutors who with racks and tortures and prisons and fires and exquisite inquisitions throw downe the bodies of the true Gods true servants to the Idolatrous worship of their imaginary Gods that torture men into hell and carry them through the inquisition into damnation S. Augustine moves a question and institutes a disputation and carries it somewhat problematically whether torture be to be admitted at all or no. That presents a faire probability which he sayes against it we presume sayes he that an innocent man should be able to hold his tongue in torture That is no part of our purpose in torture sayes he that hee that is innocent should accuse himselfe by confession in torture And if an innocent man be able to doe so why should we not thinke that a guilty man who shall save his life by holding his tongue in torture should be able to doe so And then where is the use of torture Res fragilis periculosa quaestio sayes that Lawyer who is esteemed the law alone Vlpian It is a slippery triall and uncertaine to convince by torture For many times sayes S. Augustine againe Innocens luit pro incerto scelere certissimas poenas He that is yet but questioned whether he be guilty or no before that be knowne is without all question miserably tortured And whereas many times the passion of the Judge and the covetousnesse of the Judge and the ambition of the Judge are calamities heavy enough upon a man that is
Text which is a Resurrection to Judgement and to an account with God that God whom we have displeased exasperated violated wounded in the whole course of our life lest we should be terrified and dejected at the presence of that God the whole worke is referred to the Son of Man which hath himselfe formerly felt all our infirmities and hath had as sad a soule at the approach of death as bitter a Cup in the forme of Death as heavy a feare of Gods forsaking him in the agony of death as we can have And for sin it self I would not I do not extenuate my sin but let me have fallen not seven times a day but seventy seven times a minute yet what are my sins to all those sins that were upon Christ The sins of all men and all women and all children the sins of all Nations all the East and West and all the North and South the sins of all times and ages of Nature of Law of Grace the sins of all natures sins of the body and sins of the mind the sins of all growth and all extentions thoughts and words and acts and habits and delight and glory and contempt and the very sin of boasting nay of our belying our selves in sin All these sins past present and future were at once upon Christ and in that depth of sin mine are but a drop to his Ocean In that treasure of sin mine are but single money to his Talent And therefore that I might come with a holy reverence to his Ordinance in this place though it be but in the Ministery of man that first Resurrection is attributed to the Son of God to give a dignity to that Ministery of man which otherwise might have beene under-valued that thereby we might have a consolation and a cheerefulnesse towards it It is He that is the Son of God and the Son of man Christ which remembers us alfo that all that belongs to the expressing of the Law of God to man must be received by us who professe our selves Christians in and by and for and through Christ We use to ascribe the Creation to the Father but the Father created by the Word and his Word is his Son Christ When he prepared the Heavens I was there saies Christ Prov. 8.27 of himselfe in the person of Wisdome and when he appointed the foundations of the earth then was I by him as one brought up with him It is not as one brought in to him or brought in by him but with him one as old that is as eternall as much God as he We use to ascribe Sanctification to the Holy Ghost But the Holy Ghost sanctifies in the Church And the Church was purchased by the blood of Christ and Christ remaines Head of the Church usque in consummationem till the end of the world I looke upon every blessing that God affords me and I consider whether it be temporall or spirituall and that distinguishes the metall the temporall is my silver and the spirituall is my Gold but then I looke againe upon the Inscription Cujus Imago whose Image whose inscription it beares and whose Name and except I have it in and for and by Christ Jesus Temporall and Spirituall things too are but imaginary but illusory shadows for God convayes himselfe to us no other way but in Christ The benefit then in our Text the Resurrection is by him but it is limited thus Christum It is by hearing him They that are in their Graves shall heare c. So it is in the other Resurrection too the spirituall resurrection v. 25. There they must heare him that will live In both resurrections That in the Church now by Grace And that in the Grave hereafter by Power it is said They shall heare him They shall which seemes to imply a necessity though not a coaction But that necessity not of equall force not equally irresistible in both In the Grave They shall Though they be dead and senslesse as the dust for they are dust it selfe though they bring no concurrence no cooperation They shall heare that is They shall not chuse but heare In the other resurrection which is in the Church by Grace in Gods Ordinance They shall heare too that is There shall be a voice uttered so as that they may heare if they will but not whether they will or no as in the other cafe in the grave Therefore when God expresses his gathering of his Church in this world it is Sibilabo congregabo I will hisse or chirpe for them Zecha 10.8 and so gather them He whispers in the voyce of the Spirit and he speaks a little louder in the voice of a man Let the man be a Boanerges a Son of thunder never so powerfull a speaker yet no thunder is heard over all the world Mat. 24.31 But for the voyce that shall be heard at the Resurrection He shall send his Angels with a great sound of a Trumpet A great sound such as may be made by a Trumpet such as an Angell all his Angels can make in a Trumpet and more then all that 1 Thes 4.16 The Lord himselfe shall descend from Heaven and that with a shout and with the voice of an Archangel that is saies S. Ambrose of Christ himselfe And in the Trumpet of God that is also Christ himselfe So then you have the Person Christ The meanes A Voyce And the powerfulnesse of that voyce in the Name of an Archangell which is named but once more in all the Scriptures And therefore let no man that hath an holy anhelation and panting after the Resurrection suspect that he shall sleepe in the dust for ever for this is a voyce that will be heard he must rise Let no man who because he hath made his course of life like a beast would therefore be content his state in death might be like a beast too hope that he shall sleepe in the dust for ever for this is a voice that must be heard And all that heare shall come forth they that have done good c. He shall come forth Procedent even he that hath done ill and would not shall come forth You may have seene morall men you may have seen impious men go in confidently enough not afrighted with death not terrified with a grave but when you shall see them come forth againe you shall see them in another complexion That man that dyed so with that confidence thought death his end It ends his seventy yeares but it begins his seventy millions of generations of torments even to his body and he never thought of that Indeed Iudicii nisi qui vitae aeternae praedestinatus est non potest reminisci saies S. Ambrose No man can no man dares thinke upon the last Judgement but he that can thinke upon it with comfort he that is predestinated to eternall life Even the best are sometimes shaked with the consideration of the Resurrection because it
is impossible to separate the consideration of the Resurrection from the consideration of the Judgement and the terrors of that may abate the joy of the other Sive comedoâ—sive bibo saies S. Hierom Whether I eate or drink still me thinks I heare this sound Surgite mortui venite ad Iudicium Arise you dead and come to Judgement When it cals me up from death I am glad when it cals me to Judgement that impaires my joy Can I thinke that God will not take a strict account or can I be without feare if I thinke he will Non expavescere requisiturum est dicere non requiret is excellently said by S. Bernard If I can put off all feare of that Judgement I have put off all imagination that any such Judgement shall be But when I begin this feare in this life here I end this feare in my death and passe away cheerefully But the wicked begin this feare when the Trumpet sounds to the Resurrection and then shall never end it but as a man condemned to be halfe hang'd and then quartered hath a fearfull addition in his quartering after and yet had no ease in his hanging before so they that have done ill when they have had their hanging when they have suffered in soule the torments of Hell from the day of their death to the day of Judgement shall come to that day with feare as to an addition to that which yet was insinite before And therefore the vulgat Edition hath rendred this well Procedent They shall proceed they shall go farther and farther in torment But this is not the object of our speculation Conâ—lusio the subject of our meditation now we proposed this Text for the Contemplation of Gods love to man and therefore we rather comfort our selves with that branch and refresh our selves with the shadow of that That they who have done good shall come forth unto the Resurrection of life Alas the others shall live as long as they Lucifer is as immortall as Michael and Iudas as immortall as S. Peter August But Vita damnatorum mors est That which we call immortality in the damned is but a continuall dying howsoever it must be called life it hath all the qualities of death saving the ease and the end which death hath and damnation hath not They must come forth they that have done evill must do so too Neither can stay in their house their grave for their house though that house should be the sea shall be burnt downe all the world dissolv'd with fire But then They who have done evill shall passe from that fire into a farther heat without light They who have done good into a farther light without heat But fix upon the Conditions and performe them They must have done Good To have knowne Good to have beleeved it to have intended it nay to have preached it to others will not serve They must have done good They must be rooted in faith and then bring forth fruit and fruit in season and then is the season of doing good when another needs that good at thy hands God gives the evening raine but he gave the morning rain before A good man gives at his death but he gives in his life time too To them belongs this Resurrection of the body to life upon which since our Text inclines us to marvell rather then to discourse I will not venture to say with David Narrabo omnia mirabilia tua I will shew all thy wondrous works Psal 9.2 Psal 105.5 Psal 119 18. an Angels tongue could not shew them but I will say with him Mementote mirabilium Remember the marvellous works he hath done And by that God will open your eyes that you may behold the wondrous things that he will do Remember with thankfulnesse the severall resurrections that he hath given you from superstition and ignorance in which you in your Fathers lay dead from sin and a love of sin in which you in the dayes of your youth lay dead from sadnesse and dejection of spirit in which you in your worldly crosses or spirituall tentations lay dead And assure your self that that God that loves to perfect his own works when you shall lye dead in your graves will give you that Resurrection to life which he hath promised to all them that do good and will extend to all them who having done evill do yet truly repent the evill they have done SERMON XXI The first Sermon upon this Text Preached at S. Pauls in the Evening upon Easter-day 1626. 1 COR. 15.29 Else what shall they do that are baptized for dead If the dead rise not at all why are they then baptized for dead O Dit Dominus qui festum Domini unum putat diem sayes Origen God hates that man that thinks any of his Holy dayes last but one day That is that never thinks of a Resurrection but upon Easter-day I have therefore proposed words unto you which will not be determined this day That so when at any other time we return to the handling of then we may also return to the meditation of the Resurrection To which we may best give a beginning this day in which we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus Aâ—d in his one Resurrection all those severall kinds of Resurrections which appertain unto us because howsoever these words have received divers good expositions from divers good Expositors and received one perverse exposition from our adversaries in the Romane Church who have detorted and deflected them to the maintenance of their Purgatory yet all agree that these words are an argument for the Resurrection and therefore proper to this day And yet this day we shall not so much inquire wherein and in what sense the words are an argument of the Resurrection as enjoy the assurance that they are so not so much distribute the Text into an explication of the particular words which is as the Mintage and Coyning of gold into severall lesser pieces as to lay up the whole wedge and ingot of Gold all at once in you that is the precious assurance of your glorious Resurrection In establishing whereof we shall this day make but this short passage Divisio by these two steps Glory in the end And Grace in the way The Glory of our bodies in the last Resurrection then And the Grace upon our souls in their present Resurrection now For as we do not dig for gold meerly and only for treasure but to dispense and issue it also for present provision and use not only for the future but for the present too So we doe not gather the doctrine of the Resurrection only for that dignity which the body shall receive in the Triumphant but also for the consolation which thereby our soules may receive in the Militant Church And therefore as in our first part which will be By what meanes the knowledge and assurance of the Resurrection of the body
Beatae vitae dulcedinem nongustaverunt nec fastidiverunt acceptam The Angels had not already fed upon Manna and then were weary of that Non ex eo quod acceperant ceciderunt sed ex eo quod si subdi Deo voluissent accepissent They fell not from that which they were come to but from that to which if they had applyed themselves to God they should have come So that then they were not created in a state of blessednesse but in a way to it and there was in them Pinguedo spiritus as S. Ierome sayes elegantly they were meere spirits In Oâ—â—am but if we compare them with God there was a certain fleshlinesse sayes he a certain fatnesse a slipprinesse of falling into a worse state for any thing that was in their nature and the nature of those that fell and those that stood is all one neither is their nature that do stand changed by the benefit of their confirmation Hence is it that the Fathers are both so evident and so concurrent in that assertion That an Angel is a spirit Gratiâ non Naturà immortalitatem suscipiens Damasc Just Mart. that is Immortall but Immortall by additionall Grace and not by Nature Take it in the eldest Immortalitas eorum ex aliena voluntate pendet they have an Immortality but dependant upon the will of another And agreeably to theÌ„ another Cyrill Alex. Quia ortum habuerunt occidere possunt Because the Angels were produced of nothing they may be reduced to nothing for Solus Deus naturaliter immortalis sayes that Father Only God is immortall in himself and by nature And bring it from the elder to later Fathers still we shall meet that which was said before by them and S. Bernard sayes after Non creati sed facti immortales they were not created at first but made immortall after Which S. Hierome carries even to a spirituall death the death of sin Licèt non peccent peccati tamen sunt capaces sayes he though Angels do not sin if they were left to themselves they might fin As S. Ambrose expresses the same thing elegantly Non in praejudicium trahas you must not draw that into consequence nor conclude so Non moritur Gabriel Vriel Raphael non moritur That the Angel Gabriel doth not die Raphael Vriel doth not die therefore an Angel and considered in his own nature cannot die for such an impossibility of dying as in the soul of man all agree to be in Angels for We shall be like the Angels which cannot die sayes Christ But how this Immortality and Infallibility accrues to them and works in them is still under our disquisition since In these his servants God puts no trust but charges these Angels with folly We have in the Ecclesiasticall Story An. Christi 512. a story of Alamandurus a King of the Saracens who having been converted and baptized and catechized in the true faith was after attempted by some Bishops in his Court of the Eutychian heresie The Eutychian heresie was That the divine nature in Christ the Godhead suffered aswell as the Humane and the good King providing a Packet of Intelligence to be delivered him or something to be whispered in his eare in the presence of those hereticall Bishops upon reading thereof he told them that he had received news That Michael the Archangell was dead And when those Bishops rejected that with a scorn Alas Sir Gabriel cannot die Angels cannot die The King replyed if an Angel cannot die if an Angel be impassible why would you make me beleeve that the God-head it self the Divine Nature suffered in Christ So we see that the piety of a religious King was able to maintain his holy station even against the reall practices of hereticall Court Bishops A pious and religious King should not easily be suspected of that levity to hearken to impious and hereticall motions though there were good evidence that that were practised upon him much lesse when the feares in himself and in those which should practise upon him are but imaginary and proceed as by Gods grace they doe rather out of zeale that it may not be so then out of evidence that it is so Zeale distempered and God knowes zeale is not alwaies well tempered will think an Alamandurus a constant and impregnable King easily shaked and zeale distempered will think an Athanasius a Nazianzen an Eutychian Bishop Woe when Gods sword is in the Devils hand zeale is Gods sword uncharitablenesse is the Devils When God gave a flaming sword to the Cherubims in Paradise they make good that place but that sword killed no body wounded no body God gives good men zeale zeale to make good their station zeale to conserve the integrity and the sincerity of Religion but this zeale should not wound not defame any man Faith comes by hearing by hearing Sermons and God sends us many of them Charity goes out by hearing by hearing rumours and the Devill sends many of them God continue our faith and restore our charity That Angels are impassible that they cannot sin that they cannot die all say but that if they were left to themselves without the support of additionall grace they might doe both not only the Ancient Fathers but both the first Schoole from Damascen and the middle Schoole from Lombard and the later Schoole if we except only those Authors that have writ since the Lateran Councell I meane the later Lateran Councell in our Fathers times under Leo the tenth in which Councell it was first determined that the soul of man and consequently Angels was immortall by nature doe waigh down the scale on that side That God does not so trust in those servants nor so discharge them of all weaknesse but that they might fall but for this support of grace which is their Confirmation Now how is this conferd upon them In Christ certainly In Christ the Father reconciled to himself all things in earth In Christo Coloss 1.12 and in heaven How Not as a Redeemer for those that fell and thereby needed a redemption never were never shall be redeemed but as a Mediator an Intercessor in their behalf that those that doe stand may stand for ever For therefore sayes S. Augustine doe the Angels refuse sacrifice at our hands Quia ipsis nohiscum sacrificium norunt Because they know that there is one sacrifice offered to God for them and for us too that is Christ Jesus a propitiation for them and us For us by way of redemption for them by way of Mediation and Intercession In such a sense as S. Augustine confesses that God had forgiven him the sins he never did because but for his grace he should have done them the Angels are well said to have received a reconciliation in Christ because but for his mediation they might have fallen into Gods displeasure Upon those words that God shewed Adam his judgements Quae judicia saies that Bishop Catharinus Eechâ— 27.12 what
straite may say to those gates Psal 24.7 Elevamini portae aeternales Be ye lifted up ye eternall gates and be ye enlarged that as the King of glory himself is entred into you for the farther glory of the King of glory not only that hundred and foure and forty thousand of the Tribes of the children of Israel but that multitude which is spoken or in that place which no man can number of all Nations and Kindreds Apoc. 7.19 and People and friends may enter with that acclamation Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lamb for ever And unto this City of the living God Heb. 12.22 23 24. the heavenly Ierusalem and to the innumerable company of Angels to the generall assembly and Church of the first bâ—â—n which are written in heaven and to God the Iudge of all and to the spirits of just men made perfect and to Iesus the Mediator of the new covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things then that of Abel Blessed God bring us all for thy Sons sake and by the operation of thy Spirit Amen SERMON XXV Preached at S. Pauls upon Easter-day 1630. MAT. 28.6 He is not here for he is risen as he said Come See the place where the Lord lay THese are words spoken by an Angel of heaven to certain devout Women who not yet considering the Resurrection of Christ came with a pious intention to do an office of respect and civill honour to the body of their Master which they meant to embalme in the Monument where they thought to finde it How great a compasse God went in this act of the Resurrection Here was God the God of life dead in a grave And here was man a dead man risen out of the grave Here are Angels of heaven imployed in so low an office as to catechize Women and Women imployed in so high an office as to catechize the Apostles I chose this verse out of the body of the Story of the Resurrection because in this verse the act of Christs rising which we celebrate this day is expresly mentioned Surrexit enim for he is risen Which word stands as a Candle that shews it self and all about it and will minister occasion of illustrating your understanding of establishing your faith of exalting your devotion in some other things about the Resurrection then fall literally within the words of this verse For from this verse we must necessarily reflect both upon the persons they to whom and they by whom the words were spoken and upon the occasion given I shall not therefore now stand to divide the words into their parts and branches at my first entring into them but handle them as I shall meet them again anon springing out and growing up from the body of the Story for the Context is our Text and the whole Resurrection is the work of the day though it be virtually implicitely contracted into this verse He is not here for he is risen as he said Come and see the place where the Lord lay Our first consideration is upon the persons Mulieres and those we finde to be Angelicall women and Euangelicall Angels Angels made Euangelists to preach the Gospell of the Resurrection Mal. 3.1 Apoc. 1.20 and Women made Angels so as Iohn Baptist is called an Angel and so as the seven Bishops are called Angels that is Instructers of the Church And to recompence that observation that never good Angel appeared in the likenesse of woman here are good women made Angels that is Messengers publishers of the greatest mysteries of our Religion For howsoever some men out of a petulancy and wantonnesse of wit and out of the extravagancy of Paradoxes and such singularities have called the faculties and abilities of women in question even in the roote thereof in the reasonable and immortall soul yet that one thing alone hath been enough to create a doubt almost an assurance in the negative whether S. Ambroses Commentaries upon the Epistles of S. Paul be truly his or no that in that book there is a doubt made whether the woman were created according to Gods Image Therefore because that doubt is made in that book the book it self is suspected not to have had so great so grave so constant an author as S. Ambrose was No author of gravity of piety of conversation in the Scriptures could admit that doubt whether woman were created in the Image of God that is in possession of a reasonable and an immortall soul The faculties and abilities of the soul appeare best in affaires of State and in Ecclesiasticall affaires in matter of government and in matter of religion and in neither of these are we without examples of able women For for State affaires and matter of government our age hath given us such a Queen as scarce any former King hath equalled And in the Venetian Story I remember that certain Matrons of that City were sent by Commission in quality of Ambassadours to an Empresse with whom that State had occasion to treate And in the Stories of the Eastern parts of the World it is said to be in ordinary practise to send women for Ambassadours And then in matters of Religion women have evermore had a great hand though sometimes on the left as well as on the right hand Sometimes their abundant wealth sometimes their personall affections to some Church-men sometimes their irregular and indiscreet zeale hath made them great assistants of great Heretiques as S. Hierome tels us of Helena to Simon Magus Hieror and so was Lucilia to Donatus so another to Mahomet and others to others But so have they been also great instruments for the advancing of true Religion as S. Paul testifies in their behalf at Thessolonica Of the chiefe women not a few Great and Many For Acts 17.4 many times women have the proxies of greater persons then themselves in their bosomes many times women have voices where they should have none many times the voices of great men in the greatest of Civill or Ecclesiasticall Assemblies have been in the power and disposition of women Hence is it that in the old Epistles of the Bishops of Rome when they needed the Court as at first they needed Courts as much as they brought Courts to need them at last we finde as many letters of those Popes to the Emperours Wives and the Emperours Mothers and Sisters and women of other names and interests in the Emperours favours and affections as to the Emperours themselves S. Hierome writ many letters to divers holy Ladies for the most part all of one stocke and kindred and a stock and kindred so religious as that I remember the good old man saies That if Iupiter were their Cousin of their kindred he beleeves Iupiter would be a Christian he would leave being such a God as he was to be their fellow-servant to the true God Now if women were brought up according to S.
he gave them the holy Ghost in stead of Scriptures But to us who are weaker hee hath given both The holy Ghost in the Scriptures and if we neglect either we have neither If we trust to a private spirit and call that the holy Ghost without Scripture or to the Scriptures without the holy Ghost that is without him there where he hath promised to be in his Ordinance in his Church we have not the seale of that Promise the holy Ghost Finde then that promise in your holy love and sober studie of the Scriptures and finde the performance the fruits thereof in your conversation and then you have an Autumne better then any worldly Spring A vintage a gathering of those blessed fruits Gal. 5.22 The fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace long-suffering gentlenesse goodnesse faith meckenesse temperance where by the way these are not called severally the fruits of the Spirit as though they were so many severall fruits which might be had one without another but collectively all together they are called the fruit It is not Love alone nor Joy alone no nor Faith alone that is the fruit of the holy Ghost Love but not love alone but that love when betweene the holy Ghost and you you can joy in that love and not repent it Joy but not joy alone but that joy when betweene the holy Ghost and you you can finde peace in that joy that you be not the sadder after for having beene so merry before this these these and all the rest together are the fruit of the holy Ghost and therefore labour to have them all or you lacke all And then lastly as we pursuing Gods Ordinance have beene able to say to you Accipite Spiritum sanctum Behold the holy Ghost in your selves behold he appeared to you when he moved you to come hither behold he appeared to you as often as he hath opened the window of the Arke your hearts to take in this Dove this houre so we may say unto you as we say in the Schoole There is an infusion of the holy Ghost liquor is infused into a vessell if that vessell hold it though it doe but cover the bottome and no more The holy Ghost is infused into you if he have made any entry if he cover any part if he have taken hold of any corrupt affection There is also a diffusion of the holy Ghost Liquor is diffused into a vessell when it fils all the parts of the vessell and leaves no emptinesse no driness The holy Ghost is diffused into you if he overspread you and possesse you all and rectifie all your perversnesses But then in the Schoole we have also an effusion of the holy Ghost And liquor is effused then when it so fils the vessell as that that overflowes to the benefit of them who will participate thereof Receive therefore the holy Ghost so as that the holy Ghost may overflow flow from your example to the edification of others That you may go home and say to your children receive ye the holy Ghost in the Spirit of contentment and acquiescence and thankfulnesse to God and me in that portion that I can leave you And say to your servants receive ye the holy Ghost in the spirit of obedience and fidelity And say to your neigh bours receive ye the holy Ghost in the spirit of peace and quiemesse And say to your Creditors receive ye the holy Ghost in the spirit of patience and tendernesse and compassion and for bearing And to your debtors receive ye the holy Ghost in the spirit of industry and labour in your calling You see Preaching it selfe even the Preaching of Christ himselfe had beene lost if the holy Ghost had not brought all those things to their remembrance And if the holy Ghost do bring these things which we preach to your remembrance you are also made fishers of men and Apostles and as the Prophet speaks Salvatores mundi Obad. 1.21 men that assist the salvation of the world by the best way of preaching an exemplar life and holy convesation Amen SERMON XXX Preached upon Whitsunday Part of the Gospell of the Day JOHN 14.20 At that day shall ye know That I am in my Father and you in me and I in you THe two Volumes of the Scriptures are justly and properly called two Testaments for they are Testatio Mentis The attestation the declaration of the will and pleasure of God how it pleased him to be served under the Law and how in the state of the Gospell But to speake according to the ordinary acceptation of the word the Testament that is The last Will of Christ Jesus is this speech this declaration of his to his Apostles of which this text is a part For it was spoken as at his Death-bed his last Supper And it was before his Agony in the garden so that if we should consider him as a meere man there was no inordinatenesse no irregularity in his affection It was testified with sufficient witnesses and it was sealed in blood in the Institution of the Sacrament By this Wil then as a rich and abundant Ver. 3. and liberall Testator having given them so great a Legacy as a place in the kingdome of heaven yet he adds a codicill he gives more he gives them the evidence by which they should maintain their right to that kingdome that is the testimony of the Spirit The Comforter the Holy Ghost whom he promises to send to them Ver. 16. And still more and more abundant he promises them that that assurance of their right shall not be taken from them till he himself return again to give them an everlasting possession That he may receive us unto himself and that where he is we may also be The main Legacy Ver. 3. the body of the gift is before That which is given in this Text is part of that evidence by which it appeares to us that we have right and by which that right is maintained and that is knowledge that knowledge which we have of our interest in God and his kingdome here At that day ye shall know c. And in the giving of this we shall consider first the Legacy it self this knowledge Cognoscetis Ye shall know And secondly the time when this Legacy grows due to us In illo die At that day ye shall know And thirdly how much of this treasure is devised to us what portion of this heavenly knowledge is bequeathed to us and that is in three great summes in three great mysteries First ye shall know the mystery of the Trinity of distinct persons in the Godhead Ego in patre That I am in my Father And then the mystery of the Incarnation of God who took our flesh Vos in me That you are in me And lastly the mystery and working of our Redemption in our Sanctification Ego in vobis That Christ by his Spirit the Holy Ghost is in us Nequitia animae ignoratio
use the Law lawfully Let us use our liberty of reading Scriptures according to the Law of liberty that is charitably to leave others to their liberty if they but differ from us and not differ from Fundamentall Truths Si quis quaerat ex me quid horum Moses senserit If any man ask me which of these which may be all true Moses meant Non sum sermones istiâ—â—onfessiones Lord sayes hee Ibid. This that I say is not said by way of Confession as I intend it should if I doe not freely confesse that I cannot tell which Moses meant But yet I can tell that this that I take to be his meaning is true and that is enough Let him that findes a true sense of any place rejoyce in it Let him that does not beg it of thee Vtquid mihi molest us est Why should any man presse me to give him the true sense of Moses here or of the holy Ghost in any darke place of Scripture Ego illuminem ullum hominen venientem in mundum 1.13 C. 10. saies he Is that said of me that I am the light that enlightned every man any man Iohn 1.9 that comes into this world So far I will goe saies he so far will we in his modesty and humility accompany him as still to propose Quod luce veritatis quod fruge utilitatis excellit such a sense as agrees with other Truths that are evident in other places of Scripture and such a sense as may conduce most to edisication For to those two does that heavenly Father reduce the foure Elements that make up a right exposition of Scripture which are first the glory of God such a sense as may most advance it secondly the analogie of faith such a sense as may violate no confessed Article of Religion and thirdly exaltation of devotion such a sense as may carry us most powerfully upon the apprehension of the next life and lastly extension of charity such a sense as may best hold us in peace or reconcile us if we differ from one another And within these limits wee shall containe our selves The glory of God the analogie of faith the exaltation of devotion the extension of charity In all the rest that belongs to the explication or application to the literall or spirituall sense of these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters to which having stopped a little upon this generall consideration the exposition of darke places we passe now Within these rules we proceed to enquire who this Spirit of God is or what it is Spiritus whether a Power or a Person The Jews who are afraid of the Truth lest they should meete evidences of the doctrine of the Trinity and so of the Messias the Son of God if they should admit any spirituall sense admit none but cleave so close to the letter as that to them the Scripture becomes Liter a occidens A killing Letter and the savour of death unto death They therefore in this Spirit of God are so far from admitting any Person that is God as they admit no extraordinary operation or vertue proceeding from God in this place but they take the word here as in many other places of Scripture it does to signifie onely a winde and then that that addition of the name of God The Spirit of God which is in their Language a denotation of a vehemency of a high degree of a superlative as when it is said of Saul Sopor Domini A sleepe of God was upon him it is intended of a deepe a dead sleepe inforces induces no more but that a very strong winde blew upon the face of the waters and so in a great part dryed them up And this opinion I should let flye away with the winde if onely the Jews had said it But Theodoret hath said it too and therefore we afford it so much answer That it is a strange anticipation that Winde which is a mixt Meteor to the making whereof divers occasions concurre with exhalations should be thus imagined before any of these causes of Winds were created or produced and that there should be an effect before a cause is somewhat irregular In Lapland the Witches are said to sell winds to all passengers but that is but to turne those windes that Nature does produce which way they will but in our case the Jews and they that follow them dreame winds before any winds or cause of winds was created The Spirit of God here cannot be the Wind. It cannot be that neither which some great men in the Christian Church have imagined it to be Operatio Dei The power of God working upon the waters so some or Efficientia Dei A power by God infused into the waters so others August And to that S. Augustine comes so neare as to say once in the negative Spiritus Dei hic res dei est sed non ipse Deut est The Spirit of God in this place is something proceeding from God but it is not God himselfe And once in the affirmative Posse esse vitalem creaturam quâ universus mundus movetur That this Spirit of God may be that universall power which sustaines and inanimates the whole world which the Platoniques have called the Soule of the world and others intend by the name of Nature and we doe well if we call The providence of God Spiritus Sanctus But there is more of God in this Action then the Instrument of God Nature or the Vice-roy of God Providence for as the person of God the Son was in the Incarnation so the person of God the Holy Ghost was in this Action though far from that manner of becomming one and the same thing with the waters which was done in the Incarnation of Christ who became therein perfect man That this word the Spirit of God is intended of the Person of the Holy Ghost in other places of Scripture is evident undeniable unquestionable and that therefore it may be so taken here Where it is said The Spirit of God shall rest upon him Esay 11.2 upon the Messiah where it is said by himselfe The Lord and his Spirit is upon me And the Lord and his Spirit hath anointed me there it is certainly and therefore here it may be probably spoken of the Holy Ghost personally It is no impossible sense it implies no contradiction It is no inconvenient sense it offends no other article it is no new sense nor can we assigne any time when it was a new sense Basil The eldest Fathers adhere to it as the ancientest interpretation Saint Basil saies not onely Constantissimè asseverandum est We must constantly maintaine that interpretation for all that might be his owne opinion not onely therefore Quia verius est for that might be but because he found it to be the common opinion of those times but Quia à majoribus nostris approbatum because it is accepted for the true
dependance or relation to any faculty in man or man himselfe have some concurrence and co-operation therein There we found that in the first creation God wrought otherwise for the production of creatures then he does now At first he did it immediatly intirely by himselfe Now he hath delegated and substituted nature and imprinted a naturall power in every thing to produce the like So in the first act of mans Conversion God may be conceived to work otherwise then in his subsequent holy actions for in the first man cannot be conceived to doe any thing in the rest he may not that in the rest God does not all but that God findes a better disposition and souplenesse and maturity and mellowing to concurre with his motion in that man who hath formerly been accustomed to a sense and good use of his former graces then in him who in his first conversion receives but then the first motions of his grace But yet even in the first creation the Spirit of God did not move upon that nothing which was before God made heaven and earth But he moved upon the waters though those waters had nothing in themselves to answer his motion yet he had waters to move upon Though our faculties have nothing in themselves to answer the motions of the Spirit of God yet upon our faculties the Spirit of God works And as out of those waters those creatures did proceed though not from those waters so out of our faculties though not from our faculties doe our good actions proceed too All in all is from the love of God but there is something for God to love There is a man there is a soul in that man there is a will in that soul and God is in love with this man and this soul and this will Aug. would have it Non amor ita egenus indigus ut rebus quas diligit subjiciatur sayes S. Aug. excellently The love of God to us is not so poore a love as our love to one another that his love to us should make him subject to us as ours does to them whom we love but Superfertur sayes that Father and our Text he moves above us He loves us but with a Powerfull a Majesticall an Imperiall a Commanding love He offers those whom he makes his his grace but so as he sometimes will not be denyed So the Spirit moves spiritually upon the waters He comes to the waters to our naturall faculties but he moves above those waters He inclines he governes he commands those faculties And this his motion upon those waters we may usefully consider in some divers applications and assimilations of water to man and the divers uses thereof towards man We will name but a few Baptisme and Sin and Tribulation and Death are called in the Scripture by that name Waters and we shall onely illustrate that consideration how this Spirit of God moves upon these Waters Baptisme Sin Tribulation and Death and we have done The water of Baptisme is the water that runs through all the Fathers Baptismus All the Fathers that had occasion to dive or dip in these waters to say any thing of them make these first waters in the Creation the figure of baptisme Tertul. There Tertullian makes the water Primam sedem Spiritus Sancti The progresse and the setled house The voyage and the harbour The circumference and the centre of the Holy Ghost And therefore S. Hierome calls these waters Matrem Mundi The Mother of the World Hieron and this in the figure of Baptisme Nascentem Mundum in figura Baptismi parturiebat The waters brought forth the whole World were delivered of the whole World as a Mother is delivered of a childe and this In figura Baptismi To fore-shew that the waters also should bring forth the Church That the Church of God should be borne of the Sacrament of Baptisme So sayes Damascen Damase Basil And he establishes it with better authority then his owne Hoc Divinus asseruit Basilius sayes he This Divine Basil said Hoc factum quia per Spiritum Sanctum aquam voluit renovare hominem The Spirit of God wrought upon the waters in the Creation because he meant to doe so after in the regeneration of man And therefore Pristinam sedem recognoscens conquiescit Terrul Till the Holy Ghost have moved upon our children in Baptisme let us not think all done that belongs to those children And when the Holy Ghost hath moved upon those waters so in Baptisme let us not doubt of his power and effect upon all those children that dye so We know no meanes how those waters could have produced a Menow a Shrimp without the Spirit of God had moved upon them and by this motion of the Spirit of God we know they produce Whales and Leviathans We know no ordinary meanes of any saving grace for a child but Baptisme neither are we to doubt of the fulnesse of salvation in them that have received it And for our selves Mergimur emergimus Aug. In Baptisme we are sunk under water and then raised above the water againe which was the manner of baptizing in the Christian Church by immersion and not by aspersion till of late times Affectus ameres sayes he our corrupt affections Idem and our inordinate love of this world is that that is to be drowned in us Amor securitatis A love of peace and holy assurance and acquiescence in Gods Ordinance is that that lifts us above water Therefore that Father puts all upon the due consideration of our Baptisme And as S. Hierome sayes Hier. Certainly he that thinks upon the last Judgement advisedly cannot sin then Aug. So he that sayes with S. Augustine Procede in confessionc fides mea Let me make every day to God this confession Domine Deus meus Sancte Sancte Sancte Domine Deus meus O Lord my God O Holy Holy Holy Lord my God In nomine tuo Baptizatus sum I consider that I was baptized in thy name and what thou promisedst me and what I promised thee then and can I sin this sin can this sin stand with those conditions those stipulations which passed between us then The Spirit of God is motion the Spirit of God is rest too And in the due consideration of Baptisme a true Christian is moved and setled too moved to a sense of the breach of his conditions setled in the sense of the Mercy of his God in the Merits of his Christ upon his godly sorrow So these waters are the waters of Baptisme Sin also is called by that name in the Scriptures Aquae peccatum Water The great whore sitteth upon many waters she sits upon them as upon Egges and hatches Cockatrices venomous and stinging sins Apoc. 17. Aqum and yet pleasing though venomous which is the worst of sin that it destroyes and yet delights for though they be called waters yet that is
of my Election and I depose for the seales and marks of that Decree These two witnesses The Spirit and My spirit induce a third witnesse the world it selfe to testifie that which is the testimony of this text That I am the child of God And so we passe from the two former parts The persons The Spirit and our spirit And their office to witnesse and to agree in their witnesse and we are fallen into our third part The Testimony it selfe That we are the Children of God This part hath also two branches 3. Part. First That the Testimony concernes our selves We are And then That that which we are is this We are the Children of God And in the first branch there will be two twiggs two sub-considerations 1 Wee A personall appropriation of the grace of God to our selves 2 We are we are now a present possession of those Graces First consider we the Consolation in the particle of appropriation Wee In the great Ant-hill of the whole world I am an Ant I have my part in the Creation I am a Creature But there are ignoble Creatures God comes nearer In the great field of clay of red earth that man was made of mankind I am a clod I am a man I have my part in the Humanity But Man was worse then annihilated again When satan in that serpent was come as Hercules with his club into a potters shop and had broke all the vessels destroyed all mankind And the gracious promise of a Messias to redeeme all mankind was shed and spread upon all I had my drop of that dew of Heaven my sparke of that fire of heaven in the universall promise in which I was involved But this promise was appropriated after in a particular Covenant to one people to the Jewes to the seed of Abraham But for all that I have my portion there for all that professe Christ Jesus are by a spirituall engrafting and transmigration and transplantation in and of that stock and that seed of Abraham and I am one of those But then of those who doe professe Christ Jesus some grovell still in the superstitions they were fallen into and some are raised by Gods good grace out of them and I am one of those God hath afforded me my station in that Church which is departed from Babylon Now all this while my soule is in a cheerefull progresse when I consider what God did for Goshen in Egypt for a little parke in the midst of a forest what he did for Jury in the midst of enemies as a shire that should stand out against a Kingdome round about it How many Sancerraes he hath delivered from famins how many Genevaes from plots and machinations against her all this while my soule is in a progresse But I am at home when I consider Buls of excommunications and solicitations of Rebellions and pistols and poysons and the discoveries of those There is our Nos We testimonies that we are in the favour and care of God We our Nation we our Church There I am at home but I am in my Cabinet at home when I consider what God hath done for me and my soule There is the Ego the particular the individuall I. This appropriation is the consolation We are But who are they or how are we of them Testimonium est clamor ipse sayes S. Chrysostome to our great advantage Even this that we are able to cry Abba Ver. 15. Father by the Spirit of Adoption is this testimony that we are his Children if we can truly do that that testifies for us The Spirit testifies two wayes Directly expresly personally Luke 5.20 as in that Man thy sins are forgiven thee And so to David by Nathan Transtulit The Lord hath taken away thy sin And then he testifies Per indicia by constant marks and infallible evidences We are not to looke for the first for it is a kind of Revelation nor are we to doubt of the second for the marks are infallible And therefore as S. Augustine said of the Maniches concerning the Scriptures Insani sunt adversus Antidotum quo sani esse possunt They are enraged against that which onely can cure them of their rage that was the Scriptures so there are men which will still be in ignorance of that which might cure them of their ignorance because they will not labour to finde in themselves the marks and seales of those who are ordained to salvation they will needs thinke that no man can have any such testimony They say Sumus It is true there is a blessed comfort in this appropriation if we could be sure of it They may we are we are already in possession of it The marks of our spirituall filiation are lesse subject to error then of temporall Shall the Mothers honesty be the Evidence Alas we have some such examples of their falshood as will discredit any argument built meerely upon their truth He is like the Father Is that the evidence Imagination may imprint those Characters He hath his land A supposititious child may have that Spirituall marks are not so fallible as these They have so much in them as creates even a knowledge 1 Iohn 3.2 Iohn 5.19 Now we are the Sons of God and we know that we shall be like him And we know that we are of God Is all this but a conjecturall knowledge but a morall certitude No tincture of faith in it Can I acquire and must I bring Certitudinem fidei an assurance out of faith That a Councell cannot erre And then such another faithfull assurance That the Councell of Trent was a true councell And then another That the Councell of Trent did truly and duly proceed in all wayes essentiall to the truth of a Councell in constituting their Decree against this doctrine And may I not bring this assurance of faith to S. Paul and S. Iohn when they say the contrary Is not S. Pauls sumus and S. Iohns scimus as good a ground for our faith as the servile and mercenary voices of a herd of new pensionary Bishops shovelled together at Trent for that purpose are for the contrary A particular Bishop in the Romane Church cites an universall Bishop Catarinus a Pope himselfe in this point and he sayes well Legem credendi statuit lex supplicandi Whatsoever we may pray for we may we must beleeve Certitudine fidei With an assurance of faith If I may pray and say Pater noster if I may call God Father I may beleeve with a faithfull assurance that I am the childe of God Stet invicta Pauli sententia Idem Let the Apostles doctrine sayes that Bishop remain unshaked Et velut sagitta sayes he This doctrine as an arrow shot at them will put out their eyes that think to see beyond S. Paul It is true sayes that Bishop there are differences Inter Catholicos Amongst Catholiques themselves in this point And then why do they charge us
repentance and so is thereby irremissible yet there arise no markes by which I can say This man is such a sinner not though hee himselfe would sweare to me that he were so now and that he would continue so till death The other places that doe not so directly concerne this sin and yet are sometimes used in this affaire 1 Iohn 5.16 are one in S. Iohn and this text another That in S. Iohn is There is a sin unto death I doe not say that he shall pray for it It is true that the Master of the Sentences and from him many of the Schoole and many of our later Interpreters too doe understand this of the sin against the Holy Ghost because we are almost forbidden to pray for it but yet we are not absolutely forbidden in that we are not bidden And if we were forbidden when God sayes to Ieremy Pray not thou for this people neither lift up cry Ier. 7.16 nor prayer for them neither make intercession to me for I will not heare thee And againe Ier. 11.14 Pray not for them for I will not heare them Not them though they should come to pray for themselves God forbid that we should therefore say that all that people had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost And for this particular place of S. Iohn that answer may suffice which very good Divines have given Pray not for them is indeed pray not with them admit them to no part in the publique prayers of the Congregation but if they sin a sin unto death a notorious an inexcusable sin let them be persons excommunicated to thee For the words in this text which seeme to many appliable to that great sin it is not cleare it is not much probable that they can be so applied Take the words invested in their circumstance in the context and coherence and it will appeare evident Christ speaks this to the Pharisees upon occasion of that which they had said to him and of him before and he carries it intends it no farther That appeares by the first word of out text Propterea Therefore I say unto you Therefore that is Because you have used such words unto me And S. Marke makes it more cleare He said this to them because they said Marke 3.30 He had an uncleane spirit because they said he did his Miracles by the power of the Devill Now this was certainely a sin against the Holy Ghost so far as that it was distinguished from the sins against the Son of Man But it was not the sin against the Holy Ghost for Christ being a mixt person God and Man did some things in which his Divinity had nothing to doe but were onely actions of a meere naturall man and when they slandered him in these they blasphemed the Son of Man Some things he did in the power of his God head in which his humanity contributed nothing as all his Miracles and when they attributed these works to the Devill they blasphemed the Holy Ghost And therefore S. Augustine sayes That Christ in this place did not so much accuse the Pharisees that they had already incurred the sin of the Holy Ghost they might at last fall into The sin that impenitible and therfore irremissible sin But that sin this could not be because the Pharisees had not embraced the Gospel before and so this could not be a falling from the Gospel in them Neither does it appeare to have continued to a finall impenitence so far from it as that S. Chrysost makes no doubt but that some of these Pharisees did repent upon Christs admonition Now beloved since we see by this collation of places that it is not safe to say of any man he is this sinner nor very constantly agreed upon what is this sin but yet we are sure that such a sin there is that captivates even God himself and takes from him the exercise of his mercy and casts a dumnesse a speechlesnesse upon the Church it selfe that she may not pray for such a sinner and since we see that Christ with so much earnestnesse rebukes the Pharisees for this sin in the text because it was a limbe of that sin and conduced to it let us use all religious diligence to keep our selves in a safe distance from it To which purpose be pleased to cast a particular but short and transitory glaunce upon some such sins as therefore because they conduce to that are sometimes called sins against the holy Ghost Sins against Power that is the Fathers Attribute sins of infirmity are easily forgiven sins against Wisdome that is the Sons Attribute sins of Ignorance are easily forgiven but sins against Goodnesse that is the Holy Ghosts Attribute sins of an hard and ill nature are hardly forgiven Not at all when it comes to be The sin not easily when they are Those sins those that conduce to it and are branches of it For branches the Schoolemen have named three couples which they have called sins against the Holy Ghost because naturally they shut out those meanes by which the Holy Ghost might work upon us The first couple is presumption and desperation for presumption takes away the feare of God and desperation the love of God And then they name Impenitence and hardnesse of heart for Impenitence removes all sorrow for sins past and hardnesse of heart all tendernesse towards future tentations And lastly they name The resisting of a truth acknowledged before and the envying of other men who have made better use of Gods grace then we have done for this resisting of a Truth is a shutting up of our selves against it and this envying of others is a sorrow that that Truth should prevaile upon them And truly to reflect a very little upon these three couples again To presume upon God that God cannot damne me eternally in the next world for a few half-houres in this what is a fornication or what is an Idolatay to God what is a jest or a ballad or a libel to a King Or to despaire that God will not save me how well soever I live after a sin what is a teare what is a sigh what is a prayer to God what is a petition to a King To be impenitent senslesse of sins past I past yesterday in riot and yesternight in wantonnesse and yet I heare of some place some office some good fortune fallen to me to day To be hardned against future sins shall I forbeare some company because that company leads me into tentation Why that very tentation wil lead me to preferment To forsake the truth formerly professed because the times are changed and wiser men then I change with them To envy and hate another another State another Church another man because they stand out in defence of the truth for if they would change I might have the better colour the better excuse of changing too al these are shrewd and slippery approaches towards the sin against the Holy Ghost and therefore
sayes Praescribimus adulteris nostris Wee prescribe above them which counterfeit our doctrine for we had it before them and they have but rags and those torn from us Fabulae immissae quae fidem infirmarent veritatis They have brought part of our Scriptures into their Fables that all the rest might seem but Fables too Gehennam praedicantes iudicium ridemur decachinnamur They laugh at us when we preach of hell and judgement Et tamen Elysii campi fidem praeoccupaverunt And yet they will needs be beleeved when they talk of their Elysian fields Fideliora nostra quorum imagines fidem inveniunt Is it not safer trusting to our substance then their shadows To our doctrine of the judgement in the Scriptures then their allusions in their Poets So far Tertullian considers this But to say the truth and all the truth Howsoever the Gentiles had some glimmering of a judgement that is an account to be made of our actions after this life yet of this judgement which we speak of now which is a generall Judgement of all together And that judgement to be executed by Christ and to be accompanied with a Resurrection of the body of this the Gentiles had no intimation this was left wholly for the holy Ghost to manifest And of this all the world hath received a full convincing from him because he hath delivered to the world those Scriptures which do so abundantly so irrefragably establish it And therfore Ecclus. 7.36 Bernard Memorare novissima non peccabis Remember the end and thou shalt never do amisse Non dicitur memorare primordia aut media If thou remember the first reproofe that all are under sin that may give occasion of excusing or extenuating How could I avoid that that all men do If thou remember the second reproofe That there is a righteousnesse communicable to all that sin that may occasion so bold a confidence Since I may have so easie a pardon what haste of giving over yet But Memorare novissima consider that there is a judgement and that that judgement is the last thing that God hath to doe with man consider this and thou wilt not sin not love sin not doe the same sins to morrow thou didst yester-day as though this judgement were never the nearer but that as a thousand yeares are as one day with God so thy threescore yeares should be as one night with thee one continuall sleep in the practise of thy beloved sin Thou wilt not think so if thou remember this judgement Now in respect of the time after this judgement which is Eternity the time between this and it cannot be a minute and therefore think thy self at that Tribunall that judgement now Where thou shalt not onely â—â—are all thy sinfull workes and words and thoughts repeated which thou thy selfe hadst utterly forgot but thou shalt heare thy good works thine almes thy comming to Church thy hearing of Sermons given in evidence against thee because they had hypocrisie mingled in them yea thou shalt finde even thy repentance to condemne thee because thou madest that but a doore to a relapse There thou shalt see to thine inexpressible terror some others cast downe into hell for thy sins for those sins which they would not have done but upon thy provocation There thou shalt see some that occasioned thy sins and accompanied thee in them and sinned them in a greater measure then thou didst taken up into heaven because in the way they remembred the end and thou shalt sink under a lesse waight because thou never lookedst towards him that would have eased thee of it Bernard Quis non cogitans haec in desperationis rotetur abyssum Who can once thinke of this and not be tumbled into desperation But who can think of it twice maturely and by the Holy Ghost and not finde comfort in it when the same light that shewes mee the judgement shewes me the Judge too Knowing therefore the terrors of the Lord we perswade men 1 Cor. 5.15 but knowing the comforts too we importune men to this consideration That as God preceeds with judgement in this world to give the issue with the tentation and competent strength with the affliction as the Wiseman expresses it Wisd 12.21 That God punishes his enemies with deliberation and requesting as our former Translation had it and then with how great circumspection will he judge his children So he gives us a holy hope That as he hath accepted us in this first judgement the Church and made us partakers of the Word and Sacraments there So he will bring us with comfort to that place which no tongue but the tongue of S. Paul and that moved by the Holy Ghost could describe and which he does describe so gloriously and so pathetically You are come unto Mount Sion Heb. 12.22 and to the City of the living God The heavenly Ierusalem And to an innumerable company of Angels To the generall Assembly and Church of the first borne which are written in heaven and to God the Iudge of all and to Iesus the Mediator of the new Covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things then the blood of Abel And into this blessed and inseparable society The Father of lights and God of all comfort give you an admission now and an irremoveable possession hereafter for his onely Sons onely sake and by the working of his blessed Spirit whom he sends to work in you This reproofe of Sin of Righteousnesse and of Iudgement Amen SERMONS Preached upon Trinity-Sunday SERM. XXXVIII Preached upon Trinity-Sunday 2 COR. 1.3 Blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort THere was never Army composed of so many severall Nations the Towre of Babel it self in the confusion of tongues gave not so many severall sounds as are uttered and mustered against God and his Religion The Atheist denies God for though David call it a foolish thing to do so The foole hath said it in his heart And though David speake it in the singular number The foole as though there were not many so very fooles as to say and to say in their heart There is no God yet some such fooles there are that say it in their very heart and have made shift to think so indeed But for such fools as say it in their actions that is that live as though there were no God Stultorum plena sunt omnia We have seen fooles in the Court and fooles in the Cloister fooles that take no calling and fooles in all callings that can be taken fooles that heare and fooles that preach fooles at generall Councells and fooles at Councell-tables Stultorum plena sunt omnia such fooles as deny God so far as to leave him out are not in Davids singular number but super-abound in every profession So that Davids manner of expressing it is not so much singular as though there were but
one or few such fooles but emphaticall because that foole that any way denies God is the foole the veryest foole of all kinds of foolishnesse Now as God himselfe so his religion amongst us hath many enemies Enemies that deny God as Atheists And enemies that multiply gods that make many gods as Idolaters And enemies that deny those divers persons in the Godhead which they should confesse The Trinity as Jews and Turks So in his Religion and outward worship we have enemies that deny God his House that deny us any Church any Sacrament any Priesthood any Salvation as Papists And enemies that deny Gods house any furniture any stuffe any beauty any ornament any order as non-Conformitans And enemies that are glad to see Gods house richly furnished for a while that they may come to the spoile thereof as sacrilegious usurpers of Gods part But for Atheisticall enemies I call not upon them here to answer me Let them answer their own terrors and horrors alone at mid-night and tell themselves whence that proceeds if there be no God For Papisticall enemies I call not upon them to answer me Let them answer our Laws as well as our Preaching because theirs is a religion mixt as well of Treason as of Idolatry For our refractary and schismaticall enemies I call not upon them to answer me neither Let them answer the Church of God in what nation in what age was there ever seen a Church of that form that they have dreamt and beleeve their own dream And for our sacrilegious enemies let them answer out of the body of Story and give one example of prosperity upon sacriledge But leaving all these to that which hath heretofore or may hereafter be said of them I have bent my meditations for those dayes which this Terme will afford upon that which is the character and mark of all Christians in generall The Trinity the three Persons in one God not by way of subtile disputation as to persons that doubted but by way of godly declaration as to persons disposed to make use of it not as though I feared your faith needed it nor as though I hoped I could make your reason comprehend it but because I presume that the consideration of God the Father and his Power and the sins directed against God in that notion as the Father and the consideration of God the Son and his Wisedome and the sins against God in that apprehension the Son and the consideration of God the Holy Ghost and his Goodnesse and the sins against God in that acceptation may conduce as much at least to our edification as any Doctrine more controverted And of the first glorious person of this blessed Trinity the Almighty Father is this Text Blessed be God c. In these words Divisio the Apostle having tasted having been fed with the sense of the power and of the mercies of God in his gracious deliverance delivers a short Catechisme of all our duties So short as that there is but one action Benedicamus Let us blesse Nor but one object to direct that blessing upon Benedicamus Deum Let us blesse God It is but one God to exclude an Idolatrous multiplicity of Gods But it is one God notified and manifested to us in a triplicity of persons of which the first is literally expressed here That he is a Father And him we consider In Paternitate aeterna As he is the eternall Father Even the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ sayes our Text And then In Paternitate interna as we have the Spirit of Adoption by which we cry Abba Father As he is Pater miserationum The Father of mercies And as he expresses these mercies by the seale and demonstration of comfort as he is the God of comfort and Totius consolationis Of all comfort Receive the summe of this and all that arises from it in this short Paraphrase The duty required of a Christian is Blessing Praise Thanksgiving To whom To God to God onely to the onely God There is but one But this one God is such◠tree as hath divers boughs to shadow and refresh thee divers branches to shed fruit upon thee divers armes to spread out and reach and imbrace thee And here hee visits thee as a Father From all eternity a Father of Christ Iesus and now thy Father in him in that which thou needest most A Father of mercy when thou wast in misery And a God of comfort when thou foundest no comfort in this world And a God of all comfort even of spirituall comfort in the anguishes and distresses of thy conscience Blessed bee God even the Father c. First then 1 Part. Benedictus the duty which God by this Apostle requires of man is a duty arising out of that which God hath wrought upon him It is not a consideration a contemplation of God sitting in heaven but of God working upon the earth not in the making of his eternall Decree there but in the execution of those Decrees here not in saying God knowes who are his and therefore they cannot faile but in saying in a rectified conscience God by his ordinary marks hath let me know that I am his and therefore I look to my wayes that I doe not fall S. Paul out of a religious sense what God had done for him comes to this duty to blesse him There is not a better Grammar to learne then to learne how to blesse God and therefore it may be no levity to use some Grammar termes herein God blesses man Dativè He gives good to him man blesses God Optativè He wishes well to him and he blesses him Vocativè He speaks well of him For though towards God as well as towards man 1 Sam. 25.27 2 King 5.15 reall actions are called blessings so Abigail called the present which she brought to David A blessing and so Naaman called that which he offered to Elisha A blessing though reall sacrifices to God and his cause sacrifices of Almes sacrifices of Armes sacrifices of Money sacrifices of Sermons advancing a good publique cause may come under the name of blessing yet the word here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is properly a blessing in speech in discourse in conference in words in praise in thanks The dead doe not praise thee sayes David The dead men civilly dead allegorically dead dead and buryed in an uselesse silence in a Cloyster or Colledge may praise God but not in words of edification as it is required here and they are but dead and doe not praise God so and God is not the God of the dead but of the living of those that delight to praise and blesse God and to declare his goodnesse We represent the Angels to our selves and to the world with wings they are able to flie and yet when Iacob saw them aseending and descending Gen. 28.12 even those winged Angels had a Ladder they went by degrees There is an immediate blessing of God by the heart but God
gods as there are Creatures from God and more then that as many gods as they could fancie or imagine in making Chimera's of their owne for not onely that which was not God but that which was not at all was made a God And then as in narrow channels that cannot containe the water the water over-flowes and yet that water that does so over flow flies out and spreads to such a shallownesse as will not beare a Boat to any use so when by this narrownesse in the Gentiles God had over-flowne this bank this limitation of God in an unity all the rest was too shallow to beare any such notion any such consideration of God as appertained to him They could not think him an Omnipotent God when if one God would not another would nor an Infinite God when they had appeales from one God to another and without Omnipotence and without Infinitenesse they could not truly conceive a God They had cantoned a glorious Monarchy into petty States that could not subsist of themselves nor assist another and so imagined a God for every state and every action that a man must have applied himselfe to one God when he shipped and when he landed to another and if he travailed farther change his God by the way as often as he changed coynes or post-horses Deut. 6.4 But Heare O Israel the Lord thy God is one God As though this were all that were to be heard all that were to be learned they are called to heare and then there is no more said but that The Lord thy God is one God There are men that will say and sweare they do not meane to make God the Author of sin but yet when they say That God made man therefore that he might have something to damne and that he made him sin therefore that he might have something to damne him for truly they come too neare making God the Author of sin for all their modest protestation of abstaining So there are men that will say and sweare they do not meane to make Saints Gods but yet when they will aske the same things at Saints hands which they do at Gods and in the same phrase and manner of expression when they will pray the Virgin Mary to assist her Son nay to command her Son and make her a Chancellor to mitigate his common Law truly they come too neare making more Gods then one And so do we too when we give particular sins dominion over us Quot vitia tot Deos recentes sayes Hierom As the Apostle sayes Covetousnesse is Idolatry so sayes that Father is voluptuousnesse and licentiousnesse and every habituall sin Non alienum sayes God Thou shalt have no other God but me But Quis similis sayes God too Who is like me Hee will have nothing made like him not made so like a God as they make their Saints nor made so like a God as we make our sins Wee thinke one King Soveraigne enough and one friend counsellor enough and one Wife helper enough and he is strangely insatiable that thinks not one God God enough especially since when thou hast called this God what thou canst Hâ—â—â—r he is more then thou hast said of him Cum definitur ipse sua definitione crescit When thou hast defined him to be the God of justice and tremblest he is more then that he is the God of mercy too and gives thee comfort When thou hast defined him to be all eye He sees all thy sins he is more then that he is all patience and covers all thy sins And though he be in his nature incomprehensible and inaccessible in his light yet this is his infinite largenesse that being thus infinitely One he hath manifested himselfe to us in three Persons to be the more easily discerned by us and the more closely and effectually applied to us Now these notions that we have of God as a Father as a Son as a Holy Ghost Trinitas as a Spirit working in us are so many handles by which we may take hold of God and so many breasts by which we may suck such a knowledge of God as that by it wee may grow up into him And as wee cannot take hold of a torch by the light but by the staffe we may so though we cannot take hold of God as God who is incomprehensible and inapprehensible yet as a Father as a Son as a Spirit dwelling in us we can There is nothing in Nature that can fully represent and bring home the notion of the Trinity to us There is an elder booke in the World then the Scriptures It is not well said in the World for it is the World it selfe the whole booke of Creatures And indeed the Scriptures are but a paraphrase but a comment but an illustration of that booke of Creatures And therefore though the Scriptures onely deliver us the doctrine of the Trinity clearely yet there are some impressions some obumbrations of it in Nature too Take but one in our selves in the soule The understanding of man that is as the Father begets discourse ratiocination and that is as the Son and out of these two proceed conclusions and that is as the Holy Ghost Such as these there are many many sprinkled in the Schoole many scattered in the Fathers but God knowes poore and faint expressions of the Trinity But yet Praemisit Deus naturam magistram Tertul. submissurus prophetiam Though God meant to give us degrees in the University that is increase of knowledge in his Scriptures after yet he gave us a pedagogy he sent us to Schoole in Nature before Vt faciliùs credas prophetiae discipulus naturae That comming out of that Schoole thou mightest profit the better in that University having well considered Nature thou mightest be established in the Scriptures He is therefore inexcusable that considers not God in the Creature that comming into a faire Garden sayes onely Here is a good Gardiner and not Here is a good God and when he sees any great change sayes onely This is a strange accident and not a strange Judgement Hence is it that in the books of the Platonique Philosophers and in others much ancienter then they if the books of Hermes Trismegistus and others be as ancient as is pretended in their behalfe we finde as cleare expressing of the Trinity as in the Old Testament at least And hence is it that in the Talmud of the Jews and in the Alcoran of the Turks though they both oppose the Trinity yet when they handle not that point there fall often from them as cleare confessions of the three Persons as from any of the elder of those Philosophers who were altogether dis-interested in that Controversie But because God is seene Per creaturas ut per speculum per verbum ut per lucem Aleus In the creature and in nature but by reflection In the Word and in the Scriptures directly we rest in the knowledge which we
have of the plurality of the persons in the Scriptures And because we are not now in a Congregation that doubts it nor in a place to multiply testimonies we content our selves being already possest with the beliefe thereof with this illustration from the old Testament That the name of our one God is expressed in the plurall number in that place which we mentioned before where it is said Deut. 6.4 The Lord thy God is one God that is Elohim unus Dii one Gods And though as much as that seem to be said by God to Moses Eris Aaroni in Elohim Thou shalt be as Gods to Aaron Exod. 4.16 Yet that was because Moses was to represent God all God all the Persons in God and therefore it might as well be spoken plurally of Moses so as of God But because it is said Gods appeared unto Iacob And againe Dii Sancti ipse est Hee is the Holy Gods Gen. 35.7 Ios 24.19 Iob 35.10 Gen. 1.26 Gen. 3 22. And so also Vbi Deus factores mei Where is God my Makers And God sayes of himselfe Faciamus hominem and Factus est sicut unus ex nobis God sayes Let us make man and he sayes Man is become as one of us We imbrace humbly and thankfully and profitably this shall we call it Effigiationem ansarum This making out of handles Or Protuberationem mammarum This swelling out of breasts Or Germinationem gemmarum This putting forth of buds and blossomes and fruits by which we may apprehend and see and taste God himself so as his wisedome hath chosen to communicate himself to us in the notion and manifestation of divers persons Of which in this Text we lay hold on him by the first handle by the name of Father Blessed be God even the Father c. Now we consider in God Pater Essentialiter a two-fold Paternity a two-fold Father-hood One as he is Father to others another as to us And the first is two-fold too One essentially by which he is a Father by Creation and so the name of Father belongs to all the three Persons in the Trinity Eph. 4.6 for There is one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all Which is spoken of God gathered into his Essence and not diffused into persons Esay 9.6 In which sense the Son of God Christ Jesus is called Father Vnto us a Son is given and his name shall be The Everlasting Father And to this Father even to the Son of God Mat. 9.2 in this sense are the faithfull made sons Son be of good cheare thy sins are forgiven thee Mark 5.34 sayes Christ to the Paralytique And Daughter thy faith hath made thee whole sayes he to the woman with the bloody issue Thus Christ is a Father And thus Per filiationem vestigii By that impression of God which is in the very beeing of every creature Iob 38.28 God that is the whole Trinity is the Father of every creature as in Iob Quis pluviae Pater Hath the raine a Father or who hath begotten the drops of dew And so in the Prophet Mal. 2.10 Have we not all one Father hath not one God created us But the second Paternity is more mysterious in it selfe and more precious to us as he is a Father not by Creation but by Generation Even the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ Now Personaliter Generationem istam quis enarrabit who shall declare this generation who shall tell us how it was who was there to fee it Since the first-borne of all creatures the Angels Esay 53.8 who are almost sixe thousand yeares old and much elder in the opinion of many of the Fathers who think the Angels to have been created long before the generall Creation since I say these Angels are but in their swathing clouts but in their cradle in respect of this eternall generation who was present Quis enarrabit who shall tell us how it was who shall tell us when it was when it was so long before any time was as that when time shall be no more and that after an end of time wee shall have lived infinite millions of millions of generations in heaven yet this generation of the Son of God was as long before that immortall life as that Immortality and Everlastingnesse shall be after this life It cannot be expressed nor conceived how long our life shall be after nor how long this generation was before This is that Father Nazian that hath a Son and yet is no elder then that Son for he is à Patre but not Post Patrem but so from the Father as he is not after the Father He hath from him Principium Originale Biel. but not Initiale A root from whence he sprung but no spring-time when he sprung out of that root Blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ Wherefore blessed Quia potuit Because he could have a Son Non generavit potentia sed natura God did not beget this Son because he had alwayes a power to doe so for then if this Son had ever been but in Potentia onely in such a condition as that he might have been then this had not been an eternall generation for if there were a time when only he might have been at that time he was not He is not blessed then because cause he could is he blessed that is to be blessed by us because he would beget this Son Non generavit voluntate sed natura God did not beget this Son then when he would that is had a will to doe so for if his will determined it now I will doe it then till that there had been no Son and so this generation had not been eternall neither But when it was or how it was Turatiocinare ego mirer sayes S. Augustine Let others discourse it let me admire it Tu disputa ego credam Let others dispute it let me beleeve it And when all is done you have done disputing and I have done wondring that that brings it nearer then either is this That there is a Paternity notby Creation by which Christ and the Holy Ghost are Fathers too nor by generation by which God is though inexpressibly the Father even of our Lord Jesus Christ but by Adoption as in Christ Jesus he is Father of us all notified in the next appellation Pater miserationum The Father of mercies In this alone Pater we discerne the whole Trinity here is the Father and here is Mercy which mercy is in the Son And the effect of this mercy is the Spirit of Adoption by which also we cry Rem 8.15 Abba Father too When Christ would pierce into his Father and melt those bowels of compassion he enters with that word Abba Father All things are possible to thee Mark 14.36 take away this Cup from me When Christ apprehended an absence a
dereliction on Gods part he cals not upon him by this name not My Father but My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Mat. 27.37 But when he would incline him to mercy mercy to others mercy to enemies he comes in that name wherein he could be denied nothing Father Father forgive them they know not what they doe He is the Lord of Hosts Luke 23.24 There hee scatters us in thunder transports us in tempests enwraps us in confusion astonishes us with stupefaction and consternation The Lord of Hosts but yet the Father of mercies There he receives us into his own bowels fills our emptinesse with the blood of his own Son and incorporates us in him The Lord of Hosts but the Father of mercy Sometimes our naturall Fathers die before they can gather any state to leave us but he is the immortall Father and all things that are as soone as they were were his Sometimes our naturall Fathers live to waste and dissipate that state which was left them to be left us but this is the Father out of whose hands and possession nothing can be removed and who gives inestimably and yet remaines inexhaustible Sometimes our naturall Fathers live to need us and to live upon us but this is that Father whom we need every minute and requires nothing of us but that poore rent of Benedictus sit Blessed praised glorified be this Father This Father of mercies of mercies in the plurall David calls God Miserationum Psal 59.17 Numb 14.19 Psal 51.1 Misericordiam suam His mercy all at once God is the God of my mercy God is all ours and all mercy Pardon this people sayes Moses Secundùm magnitudinem misericordiae According to the greatnesse of thy mercy Pardon me sayes David Have mercy upon me Secùndum multitudinem misericordiarum According to the multitude of thy mercies His mercy in largenesse in number extends over all It was his mercy that we were made and it is his mercy that we are not consumed David calls his mercy Multiplicatam and Mirificatam Psal 17.7 Psal 31.22 It is manifold and it is marvellous miraculous Shew thy marvellous loving kindnesse and therefore David in severall places carries it Super judicium above his judgements Super Coelos above the heavens Super omnia opera above all his works And for the multitude of his mercies for we are now upon the consideration of the plurality thereof Pater miserationum Father of mercies put together that which David sayes Psal 89.50 Vbi misericordiae tuae antiquae Where are thy ancient mercies His mercy is as Ancient as the Ancient of dayes who is God himselfe And that which another Prophet sayes Omni mane His mercies are new every morning And put betweene these two betweene Gods former and his future mercies his present mercy in bringing thee this minute to the consideration of them and thou hast found Multiplicatam and Mirificatam manifold and wondrous mercy But carry thy thoughts upon these three Branches of his mercy and it will be enough First that upon Adams fall and all ours in him he himselfe would think of such a way of mercy as from Adam to that man whom Christ shall finde alive at the last day no man would ever have thought of that is that to shew mercy to his enemies he would deliver his owne his onely his beloved Son to shame to torments to death That hee would plant Germen Iehovae in semine mulieris The blossome the branch of God in the seed of the woman This mercy in that first promise of that Messias was such a mercy as not onely none could have undertaken but none could have imagined but God himselfe And in this promise we were conceived In visceribus Patris In the bowels of this Father of mercies In these bowels in the womb of this promise we lay foure thousand yeares The blood with which we were fed then was the blood of the Sacrifices and the quickning which we had there was an inanimation by the often refreshing of this promise of that Messias in the Prophets But in the fulnesse of time that infallible promise came to an actuall performance Christ came in the flesh and so Venimus ad partum In his birth we were borne and that was the second mercy in the promise in the performance he is Pater miserationum Father of mercies And then there is a third mercy as great That he having sent his Son and having re-assumed him into heaven againe he hath sent his Holy Spirit to governe his Church and so becomes a Father to us in that Adoption in the application of Christ to us by the Holy Ghost and this as that which is intended in the last word Deus totius Consolationis The God of all Comfort I may know that there is a Messias promised and yet be without comfort Consolatio in a fruitlesse expectation The Jews are so in their dispersion When the Jews will still post-date the commings of Christ when some of them say There was no certaine time of his comming designed by the Prophets And others There was a time but God for their sins prorogued it And others againe God kept his word the Messiah did come when it was promised he should come but for their sins he conceales himselfe from Manifestation when the Jews will postdate his first comming and the Papists will antidate his second comming in a comming that cannot become him That he comes even to his Saints in torment before he comes in glory That when he comes to them at their dissolution at their death he comes not to take them to Heaven but to cast them into one part of hell That the best comfort which a good man can have at his death is but Purgatory Miserable comforters are they all How faire a beame of the joyes of Heaven is true comfort in this life If I know the mercies of God exhibited to others and feele them not in my self I am not of Davids Church Psal 59.1 not of his Quire I cannot sing of the mercies of God I may see them and I may sigh to see the mercies of God determined in others and not extended to me but I cannot sing of the mercies of God if I find no mercy But when I come to that Psal 94.19 Consolationes tuae laetificaverunt In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soule then the true Comforter is descended upon me and the Holy Ghost hath over-shadowed me Mat. 5.4 and all that shall be borne of me and proceed from me shall be holy Blessed are they that mourne sayes Christ But the blessednesse is not in the mourning but because they shall be comforted Blessed am I in the sense of my sins and in the sorrow for them but blessed therefore because this sorrow leads me to my reconciliation to God and the consolation of his Spirit Whereas if I sinke in this sorrow in this dejection
of Election or no by examining my selfe whether the marks of the Elect be upon me or no and so I appropriate the wisdome of the Scripture to my selfe A stupid negligence in the practicall things of this World To do nothing and an implicite credulity in doctrinall things To beleeve all and so also a crafty preventing and circumventing in the Practicall part and a subtile and perplexing intricacy in the Doctrinall part The first on this side The other beyond do both transgresse from that Wisdome of God which is the Sonne and in such a respect are sins especially against the second Person in the Trinity SERM. XLII Preached at Lincolns Inne upon Trinity-Sunday 1620. GEN. 18.25 Shall not the Iudge of all the Earth do right THese words are the entrance into that prayer and expostulation which Abraham made to and with God in the behalfe of Sodome and the other Cities He that is before Abraham was Christ Jesus himselfe in that prayer which he hath proposed to us hath laid such a foundation as this is such a religious insinuation into him to whom we make that prayer Before we aske any thing we say Our Father which art in heaven If he be our Father A Father when his sonne asks bread will not give him a stone Luk. 11.12 God hath a fatherly disposition towards us And if he be our Father in Heaven If evill fathers know how to give good things unto their children how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Spirit to them that aske him Shall your Father which is in heaven deny you any good thing sayes Christ there It is impossible Shall not the Iudge of all the Earth do right sayes Abraham here It is as impossible The history which occasioned and induced these words I know you know The Holy Ghost by Moses hath expressed plainly and your meditations have paraphrased to yourselves this history That God appeared to Abraham in the plaine of Mamre in the persons of three men three men so glorious as that Abraham gave them a great respect That Abraham spoke to those three as to one person That he exhibited all offices of humanity and hospitality unto them That after they had executed the first part of their Commission which was to ratifie and to reduce to a more certainty of time the promise of Isaac and consequently of the Messias though Abraham and Sara were past hope in one another that they imparted to Abraham upon their departure the indignation that God had conceived against the sins of Sodome and consequently the imminent destruction of that City That this awakened Abrahams compassion and put him into a zeale and vehemence for all the while he is said to have been with him that spoke to him and yet now it is said Abraham drew near he came up close to God and he sayes Ver. 23.24 Peradventure I am not sure of it but peradventure there may be some righteous in the City and if there should be so it should be absolutely unjust to destroy them but since it may be so it is too soone to come to a present execution Absit a te sayes Abraham Be that far from thee And he repeats it twice And upon the reason in our text Shall not the iudge of all the Earth do right First then The person who is the Iudge of all the Earth submits us to a necessity of seeking Divisis who it is that Abraham speaks to and so who they were that appeared to him whether they were three men or three Angels or two Angels and the third to whom Abraham especially addressed himselfe were Christ Or whether in these three persons whatsoever they were there were any intimation any insinuation given or any apprehension taken by Abraham of the three blessed Persons of the glorious Trinity And then in the second part in the expostulation it selfe we shall see first The descent and easinesse of God that he vouchfafes to admit an expostulation an admonition from his servant He is content that Abraham remember him of his office And the Expostulation lyes in this That he is a Iudge And shall not a Iudge do right But more in this That he is Iudge of all the Earth and if he do wrong there is no Appeal from him And shall not the Iudge of all the Earth do right And from thence we shall fall upon this consideration What was that Right which Abraham presses upon God here And we shall finde it twofold for first he thinks it unjust that God should wrap up just and unjust righteous and unrighteous all in one condemnation in one destruction Absit be this far from God And then he hath a farther ayme then that That God for the righteous sake should spare the unrighteous and so forbeare the whole City And though this Judge of the whole Earth might have done right though he had destroyed the most righteous persons amongst them much more though he had not spared the unrighteous for the righteous sake yet we shall see at last the abundant measure of Gods overflowing mercy to have declared it selfe so far as if there had been any righteous he had spared the whole City Our parts then are but two but two such as are high parts and yet growing rich and yet emproving so far as that the first is above Man and the extent of his Reason The mystery of the Trinity And the other is above God so as that it is above all his works The infinitenes of his Mercy To come to the severall branches of these two maine parts first in the first we aske 1. Part. An viri An viri whether these three that appeared to Abraham were men or no. Now between Abrahams apprehension who saw this done and ours who know it was done because we read it here in Moses relation there is a great difference Moses who informes us now what was done then sayes expresly Apparuit Dominus The Lord appeared and therefore we know they were more then ordinary men But when Moses tels us how Abraham apprehended it Ecce tres viri He lift up his eyes and he saw three men he took them to be but men and therefore exhibited to them all offices of humanity and curtesie Where we note also that even by the Saints of God civill behaviour and faire language is conveniently exercised A man does not therefore meane ill because he speaks well A man must not therefore be suspected to performe nothing because he promises much Such phrases of humilitie and diminution and undervaluing of himselfe as David utters to Saul such phrases of magnifying and glorifying the Prince as Daniel uses to the King perchance no secular story perchance no moderne Court will afford Neither shall you finde in those places more of that which we call Complement 1 Sam. 25. then in Abigails accesse to David in the behalfe of her foolish husband when she comes to intercede for him and to deprecate his
enarrabit who shall declare this carries the answer with it Nemo enarrabit No man shall declare it But a manifestation of the Beeing of the Trinity they have alwayes apprehended in these words Hic est Filius This is my beloved Son To that purpose therefore we take first the words to be expressed by this Euangelist S. Matthew as the voyce delivered them rather then as they are expressed by S. Marke and S. Luke both which have it thus Tu es Thou art my beloved Son and not Hic est This is They two being onely carefull of the sense and not of the words as it fals out often amongst the Euangelists who differ oftentimes in recording the words of Christ and of other persons But where the same voice spake the same words againe in the Transfiguration there all the Euangelists expresse it so 2 Pet. 1.17 Hic est This is and not Tu es Thou art my beloved Son And so it is where S. Peter makes use by application of that history it is Hic est and not Tu es So that this Hic est This man designs him who hath that marke upon him that the holy Ghost was descended upon him and tarried upon him for so far went the signe of distinction given to Iohn The holy Ghost was to descend and tarry Manet sayes S. Hierome The holy Ghost tarryes upon him because he never departs from him sed operatur quando Christus vult quomodo vult The holy Ghost works in Christ when Christ will and as Christ will and so the holy Ghost tarryed not upon any of the Prophets They spoke what hee would but he wrought not when they would S. Gregory objects to himselfe that there was a perpetuall residence of the holy Ghost upon the faithfull out of those words of Christ The Comforter shall abide with you for ever But as S. Gregory answers himselfe This is not a plenary abiding and secundùm omnia dona in a full operation according to all his gifts as he tarried upon Christ Neither indeed is that promise of Christs to particular persons but to the whole body of the Church Now this residence of the holy Ghost upon Christ was his unction properly it was that by which he was the Messias That he was anointed above his fellowes And therefore S. Hierome makes account that Christ received his unction and so his office of Messias at this his Baptisme and this descending of the holy Ghost upon him And he thinks it therefore because presently after Baptisme he went to preach in the Synagogue and he took for his Text those words of the Prophet Esay Esay 61.1 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me that I should preach the Gospel to the poore And when he had read the Text he began his Sermon thus This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your eares But we may be bold to say that this is mistaken by S. Hierome for the unction of Christ by the holy Ghost by which he was anointed and sealed into the office of Messias was in the over-shadowing of the holy Ghost in his conception in his assuming our nature This Descending now at his baptisme and this Residence were onely to declare That there was a holy Ghost and that holy Ghost dwelt upon this person It is Hic Est This person And it is Hic est This is my Son It is not onely Fuit He was my Son when he was in my bosome Nor onely Erit He shall be so when he shall return to my right hand againe God does not onely take knowledge of him in Glory But Est He is so now now in the exinanition of his person now in the evacuation of his Glory now that he is preparing himselfe to suffer scorne and scourges and thornes and nailes in the ignominious death of the Crosse now he is the Son of the glorious God Christ is not the lesse the Son of God for this eclipse Hic est This is he who for all this lownesse is still as high as ever he was Filius and that height is Est Filius He is the Son He is not Servus The Servant of God or not that onely for he is that also Behold my servant Esay 41.1 sayes God of him in the Prophet I will stay upon him mine elect in whom my soule delighteth I have put my Spirit upon him and he shall bring forth judgement to the Gentiles But Christ is this Servant and a Son too And not a Son onely for so we observe divers filiations in the Schoole Filiationem vestigii That by which all creatures even in their very being are the sons of God as Iob cals God Pluviae patrem The father of the raine And so there are other filiations other wayes of being the sons of God But Hic est This person is as the force of the Article expresses it and presses it Ille Filius The Son That Son which no son else is neither can any else declare how he is that which he is This person then is still The Son And Meus Filius sayes God My Son Meus He is the sonne of Abraham and so within the Covenant as well provided by that inheritance as the son of man can be naturally He is the Son of a Virgin conceived without generation and therefore ordained for some great use He is the son of David and therefore royally descended But his dignity is in the Filius meus that God avows him to be his Son for Vnto which of the Angels said he at any time Thou art my sonne Heb. 1.5 But to Christ he sayes in the Prophet I have called thee by thy name And what is his name Meus es tu Thou art mine Quem à me non separat Deitas sayes Leo non dividit potestas non discernit aeternitas Mine so as that mine infinitenesse gives me no roome nor space beyond him hee reaches as far as I though I be infinite My Almightinesse gives me no power above him he hath as much power as I though I have all My eternity gives me no being before him though I were before all In mine Omnipotence in mine Omnipresence in mine Omniessence he is equall partner with me and hath all that is mine or that is my selfe and so he is mine My Son And My beloved Son but so we are all who are his sons Deliciae ejus Dilectus Prov. 8.31 sayes Solomon His delight and his contentment is to be with the sons of men But here the Article is extraordinarily repeated againe Ille dilectus That beloved Son by whom those who were neither beloved nor Sons became the beloved Sons of God For there is so much more added in the last phrase In quo complacui In whom I am well pleased Now these words are diversly read S. Augustine sayes In quo some Copies that he had seen read them thus Ego hodie genui te
This is my beloved Son this day have I begotten him And with such Copies it seemes both Iustin Martyr and Irenaeus met for they reade these words so and interpret them accordingly But these words are misplaced and mis-transferred out of the second Psalme where they are And as they change the words and in stead of In quo complacui In whom I am well pleased reade This day have I begotten thee S. Cyprian addes other words to the end of these which are Hunc audite Heare him Which words when these words were repeated at the Transfiguration were spoken but here at the Baptisme they were not what Copy soever misled S. Cyprian or whether it were the failing of his own memory But S. Chrysostome gives an expresse reason why those words were spoken at the Transfiguration and not here Because saies he Here was onely a purpose of a Manifestation of the Trinity so farre as to declare their persons who they were and no more At the Trans-figuration where Moses and Elias appeared with Christ there God had a purpose to preferre the Gospel above the Law and the Prophets and therefore in that place he addes that Hunc audite Heare him who first fulfills all the Law and the Prophets and then preaches the Gospel He was so well pleased in him as that he was content to give all them that received him Eph. 1.6 power to become the Sons of God too as the Apostle sayes By his grace he hath made us accepted in his beloved Beloved That you may be so Come up from your Baptisme as it is said that Christ did Rise and ascend to that growth which your Baptisme prepared you to And the heavens shall open as then even Cataractae coeli All the windowes of heaven shall open and raine downe blessings of all kindes in abundance And the Holy Ghost shall descend upon you as a Dove in his peacefull comming in your simple and sincere receiving him And he shall rest upon you to effect and accomplish his purposes in you If he rebuke you as Christ when he promises the Holy Ghost though he call him a Comforter John 16.7 sayes That he shall rebuke the world of divers things yet he shall dwell upon you as a Dove Quae si mordet osculando mordet sayes S. Augustine If the Dove bite it bites with kissing if the Holy Ghost rebuke he rebukes with comforting And so baptized and so pursuing the contract of your Baptisme and so crowned with the residence of his blessed Spirit in your holy conversation hee shall breathe a soule into your soule by that voyce of eternall life You are my beloved Sonnes in whom I am well pleased SERM. XLIV Preached at S. Dunstanes upon Trinity-Sunday 1627. REV. 4.8 And the foure Beasts had each of them sixe wings about him and they were full of eyes within And they rest not day and night saying Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty which was and is and is to come THese words are part of that Scripture which our Church hath appointed to be read for the Epistle of this day This day which besides that it is the Lords day the Sabbath day is also especially consecrated to the memory and honour of the whole Trinity The Feast of the Nativity of Christ Christmas day which S. Chrysostome calls Metropolin omnium festorum The Metropolitane festivall of the Church is intended principally to the honour of the Father who was glorified in that humiliation of that Son that day because in that was laid the foundation and first stone of that house and Kingdome in which God intended to glorifie himselfe in this world that is the Christian Church The Feast of Easter is intended principally to the honour of the Son himselfe who upon that day began to lift up his head above all those waters which had surrounded him and to shake off the chaines of death and the grave and hell in a glorious Reserrection And then the Feast of Pentecost was appropriated to the honour of the Holy Ghost who by a personall falling upon the Apostles that day inabled them to propagate this Glory of the Father and this death and Resurrection of the Son to the ends of the world to the ends in Extention to all places to the ends in Duration to all times Now as S. Augustine sayes Nullus eorum extra quemlibet eorum est Every Person of the Trinity is so in every other person as that you cannot think of a Father as a Father but that there falls a Son into the same thought nor think of a person that proceeds from others but that they from whom he whom ye think of proceeds falls into the same thought as every person is in every person And as these three persons are contracted in their essence into one God-head so the Church hath also contracted the honour belonging to them in this kinde of Worship to one day in which the Father and Son and Holy Ghost as they are severally in those three severall dayes might bee celebrated joyntly and altogether It was long before the Church did institute a particular Festivall to this purpose For before they made account that that verse which was upon so many occasions repeated in the Liturgy and Church Service Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost had a convenient sufficiency in it to keep men in a continuall remembrance of the Trinity But when by that extreame inundation and increase of Arians these notions of distinct Persons in the Trinity came to be obliterated and discontinued the Church began to refresh her selfe in admitting into to the formes of Common Prayer some more particular notifications and remembrances of the Trnity And at last though it were very long first for this Festivall of this Trinity-Sunday was not instituted above foure hundred yeares since they came to ordaine this day Which day our Church according to that peacefull wisedome wherewithall the God of Peace of Unity and Concord had inspired her did in the Reformation retaine and continue out of her generall religious tendernesse and holy loathnesse to innovate any thing in those matters which might bee safely and without superstition continued and entertained For our Church in the Reformation proposed not that for her end how shee might goe from Rome but how she might come to the Truth nor to cast away all such things as Rome had depraved but to purge away those depravations and conserve the things themselves so restored to their first good use For this day then were these words appointed by our Church Divisic And therefore we are sure that in the notion and apprehension and construction of our Church these words appertaine to the Trinity In them therefore we shall consider first what these foure creatures were which are notified and designed to us in the names and figures of foure Beasts And then what these foure creatures did Their Persons and their Action will be our two
a cloud of witnesses of his own infirmities Angelus and the manifold afflictions of this life for Dies diei eructat verbum Psal 19.2 Day unto day uttereth the same and night unto night teacheth knowledge The bells tell him in the night and fame tels him in the day that he himselfe melts and drops away piece-meal in the departing of parents and wife and children out of this world yea he heares daily of a worse departing he hears of the defection and back-sliding of some of his particular acquaintance in matter of religion or of their stifnesse and obduration in some course of sin which is the worse consumption Dies diei eructat every day makes him learneder then other in this sad knowledge And he knowes withall Quod cuiquam accidere potest cuivis potest that any of their cases may be his case too Man that is compassed with such a cloud of such witnesses had need of some light to shew him the right way and some strength to enable him to walk safely in it And this light and strength is here proposed in the assistance of an Angel Which being first understood of Angels in generall affords a great measure of comfort to us because the Angels are seduli animae pedissequae Bern. faithfull and diligent attendants upon all our steps They doe so they doe attend the service and good of man because it is illorum optimum It is the best thing that Angels as Angels can doe to doe so For evermore it is best for every thing to doe that for which it was ordained and made and they were made Angels for the service and assistance of man Bern. Vnum tui Angeli optimum est Man and Angels have one and the same thing in them which is better then any thing else that they have Nothing hath it but they and both they have it Deus nihil sui optimum habet unum optimum totus It is not so with God Idâ—â— God hath nothing in him that is Best but he is altogether one intire Best But Man and Angels have one thing common to them both which is the best thing that naturally either of them hath that is Reason understanding knowledge discourse consideration Angels and Men have grace too that is infinitely better then their Reason but though Grace be the principall in the nature and dignity thereof yet it is but accessory to an Angel or to man Grace is not in their nature at first but infused by God not to make them Angels and Men but to make them good Angels and good men This very reason then which is Illorum optimum The best thing that Angels as Angels naturally have teaches them that the best thing that they can doe is the performance of that for which they were made And then howsoever they were made spirits for a more glorious use to stand in the presence of God and to enjoy the fulnesse of that contemplation yet he made his spirits Angels for the love which he had to be with the sons of men Sufficit illis Bern. et pro magno habeant Let this content the Angels and let them magnifie God for this Quòd cum spiritus sint conditione ex gratia facti sunt Angeli That whereas by nature they are but spirits and the devill is so by favour and by office they are made Angels messengers from God to man Now as the Angels are not defective in their best part their Reason and therefore do their office in assisting us so also let us exalt our best part our Reason too to reverence them with a care of doing such actions onely as might not be unfit for their presence Both Angels and we have the Image of God imprinted in us the Angels have it not in summo though they have it in tuto They have it not in the highest degree for so Christ onely is the Image of the invisible God but they have it in a deep impression Colos 1.15 so as they can neither lose it nor deface it We have this Image of God so as that we cannot lose it but we may and doe deface it Vri potest non exuri The Devil hath this Image in him Bern. and it cannot be burnt out in hell for it is imprinted in the very naturall faculties of the soule But if we consider how many waters beat upon us in this world to wash off this Image how many rusty and habituall sins gnaw upon us to eat out this Image how many files passe over our souls in calamities and afflictions in which though God have a purpose Resculpere imaginem to re-engrave to refresh to polish this Image in us August by those corrections yet the devill hath a harsh file too that works a murmuring a comparing of our sinnes with other mens sinnes and our punishments with other mens punishments and at last either a denying of Providence That things so unequally carried cannot be governed by God or a wilfull renouncing of it in Desperation That his Providence cannot bee resisted and therefore it is all one what wee doe If wee consider this wee had need looke for Assistants Let us therefore looke first to that which is best in us naturally that is Reason For if we lose that our Reason our Discourse our Consideration and sinke into an incapable and barren stupidity there is no footing no subsistence for grace All the vertue of Corne is in the seed but that will not grow in water but onely in the earth All the good of man considered supernaturally is in grace but that will not grow in a washy soule in a liquid in a watery and dissolute and scattered man Grace growes in reason In that man and in that minde that considers the great treasure what it is to have the Image of God in him naturally for even that is our earnest of supernaturall perfection And this Image of God even in the Angels being Reason and the best act of rectified Reason The doing of that for which they were made It is that which the Angels are naturally inclined to doe to be alwayes present for the assistance of man for therefore they are Angels And since they have a joy at the Conversion of a sinner and every thing affects joy and therefore they indeavour our Conversion yea since they have an increase of their knowledge by being about us for S. Paul sayes That he was made a Preacher of the Gospel Eph. 3.10 to the intent that Angels might know by the Church the manifold wisedome of God And every thing affects knowledge these Saints of God upon earth intended in our Text might justly promise themselves a strong and a blessed comfort and a happy issue in all tribulations by this Scripture if there were no more intended in it but onely the assistance of Angels I saw an Angel But our security of deliverance is in a safer Angelus Christus and a
came to put a war upon us The zeale of his glory and the course of this world fight against one another It is not against all warre nay it is not against all victory that David prayes He cannot hope that he should be overcome by no Tentations but against such a war and such a victory as should bring him to servility and bondage to sinne That sin entring by Conquest upon him should governe as a tyran over him against such a sicknesse as should induce a consumption it is that he directs this prayer Sana me Domine Not Lord make me impeccable but Lord make me penitent and then heale me And he comes not to take physick upon wantonnesse but because the disease is violent because the accidents are vehement so vehement so violent as that it hath pierced Ad ossa and Ad animam My bones are vexed and my soule is sore troubled Therefore heale me which is the Reason upon which he grounds this second petition Heale me because my bones are vexed c. We must necessarily insist a little upon these termes Ossa The Bones The Soule The Trouble or Vexation First Ossa Bones We know in the naturall and ordinary acceptation what they are They are these Beames and Timbers and Rafters of these Tabernacles these Temples of the Holy Ghost these bodies of ours But Immanebimus nativae significationi sayes S. Basil Shall we dwell upon the native and naturall signification of these Bones Et intelligentia passim obvia contenti erimus Shall we who have our conversation in heaven finde no more in these Bones then an earthly a worldly a naturall man would doe By S. Basils example we may boldly proceed farther Membra etiam animae sunt Esay 42. sayes he The soule hath her limbs as well as the body Surdi audite caeci aspicite sayes God in Esay If their soules had not eares and eyes the blinde could not see the deafe could not heare and yet God cals upon the deafe and blinde to heare and see As S. Paul sayes to the Ephesians The eyes of your understanding being enlightned so David sayes Psal 3.7 Dentes peccatorum contrivisti Thou hast broken the teeth That is the pride and the power the venom and malignity of the wicked Membra etiam animae sunt The soule hath her Bones too and here Davids Bones were the strongest powers and faculties of his soule and the best actions and operations of those faculties and yet they were shaken For this hereditary sicknesse Originall sinne prevayles so far upon us that upon our good dayes we have some grudgings of that Fever Even in our best actions we have some of the leaven of that sinne So that if we goe about to comfort our selves with some dispositions to Gods glory which we finde in our selves with some sparks of love to his precepts and his commandements with some good strength of faith with some measure of good works yea with having something for the Name and glory of Christ Jesus yet if we consider what humane and corrupt affections have been mingled in all these Conturbabuntur ossa our Bones will be troubled even those that appeared to be strong works and likely to hold out will need a reparation an exclamation Sana me Domine O Lord heale these too or els these are as weake as the worst Ossa non dolent The Bones themselves have no sense they feele no paine We need not say That those good works themselves which we doe have in their nature the nature of sinne That every good worke considered alone and in the substance of the act it selfe is sinne But membranae dolent Those little membrans those filmes those thin skins that cover and that line some bones are very sensible of paine and of any vexation Though in the nature of the worke it selfe the worke be not sinne yet in those circumstances that invest and involve the worke in those things which we mingle with the worke whether desire of glory towards men or opinion of merit towards God Whensoever those bones those best actions come to the examination of a tender and a diligent Conscience Si ossa non dolent membranae dolent If the worke be not sinfull the circumstances are and howsoever they may be conceived to be strong as they are Ossa Bones works in a morall consideration good yet as they are Ossa mea sayes David as they are My bones such good works as taste of my ill corruptions so long they are vexed and troubled and cannot stand upright nor appeare with any confidence in the sight of God Thus far then first David needed this sanation this health that he prayes for Anima that his best actions were corrupt But the corruption went farther to the very roote and fountaine of those actions Ad ipsam animam His very soule was sore vexed It is true that as this word Anima the soule is sometimes taken in the Scriptures this may seeme to goe no farther then the former no more that his soule was vexed then that his bones were so for Anima in many places is but Animalis Homo The soule signifies but the naturall man And so opponitur spiritui The soule is not onely said to be a diverse thing but a contrary thing to the Spirit When the Apostle sayes to the Thessalonians 1 Thes ult 23. Now the very God of peace sanctifie you throughout that your whole spirit and soule and body may be kept blamelesse unto the comming of our Lord Iesus Christ And where the same Apostle sayes to the Hebrews The word of God divideth asunder the soule and the spirit Heb. 4.12 here is a difference put between corrupt nature and the working of the Spirit of God the Holy Ghost in man for here the soule is taken for Animalis home The naturall man and the Spirit is taken for the Spirit of God But besides this these two words Soule and Spirit are sometimes used by the Fathers in a sense diverse from one another and as different things and yet still as parts of one and the same man Man is said by them not onely to have a body and a soule but to have a soule and a spirit not as Spirit is the Spirit of God and so an extrinsecall thing but as Spirit is a constitutive part of the naturall man So in particular amongst many Gregory Nyssen takes the Body to be spoken De nutribili The flesh and bloud of man And the soule De sensibili The operation of the senses And the Spirit De Intellectuali The Intellectuall the reasonable faculties of man That in the body Man is conformed to Plants that have no sense In the soule to Beasts that have no reason In the spirit to Angels But so The Spirit is but the same thing with that which now we doe ordinarily account the soule to be for we make account that the Image of God is imprinted in the soule and that gives him his
Begin with me againe as thou begunst with Adam in innocency and see if I shall husband and governe that innocency better then Adam did for for this heart which I have from him I have it in corruption and Job 4. who can bring a cleane thing out of uncleannesse Therefore Davids prayer goes farther in the same place Renew a constant spirit in me Present cleannesse cannot be had from my selfe but if I have that from God mine owne cloathes will make me foule againe and therefore doe not onely create a cleane spirit but renew a spirit of constancy and perseverance Therefore I have also another Prayer in the same Psalme Psal 51.12 Spiritu principali confirma me Sustaine me uphold me with thy free spirit thy large thy munificent spirit for thy ordinary graces will not defray me nor carry me through this valley of tentations not thy single money but thy Talents not as thou art thine owne Almoner but thine owne Treasurer It is not the dew but thy former and later raine that must water though it be thy hand that hath planted Not any of the Rivers though of Paradise but the Ocean it selfe that must bring me to thy Jerusalem Create a clean heart Thou didst so in Adam and in him I defiled it Renew that heart Thou didst so in Baptisme And thy upholding me with thy constant spirit is thy affording me means which are constant in thy Church But thy confirming me with thy principall spirit is thy making of those meanes instituted in thy Church effectuall upon me by the spirit of Application the spirit of Appropriation by which the merits of the Son deposited in the Church are delivered over unto me This then is the force of Davids reason in this Petition Ossa implentur vitiis Iob 20.11 as one of Iobs friends speaks My bones are full of the sins of my youth That is my best actions now in mine age have some taste some tincture from the habit or some sinfull memory of the acts of sin in my youth Adhaeret os meum carni as David also speaks Psal 102.5 Lam. 4.8 My bones cleave to my flesh my best actions taste of my worst And My skin cleaves to my bones as Ieremy laments That is My best actions call for a skin for something to cover them And Therefore not Therefore because I have brought my selfe into this state but because by thy grace I have power to bring this my state into thy sight by this humble confession Sana me Domine O Lord heale me Thou that art my Messias be my Moses Exod. 13.19 and carry these bones of thy Ioseph out of Egypt Deliver me in this consideration of mine actions from the terror of a self-accusing and a jealous and suspicious conscience 1 King 13.31 Bury my bones beside the bones of the man of God Beside the bones of the Son of God Look upon my bones as they are coffind and shrowded in that sheet the righteousnesse of Christ Jesus Accedant ossa ad ossa as in Ezekiels vision Let our bones come together Ezek. 37.7 bone to bone mine to his and looke upon them uno intuitu all together and there shall come sinews and flesh and skin upon them and breathe upon them and in Him in Christ Jesus I shall live My bones being laid by his though but gristles in themselves my actions being considered in his though imperfect in themselves shall bear me up in the sight of God And this may be the purpose of this prayer this sanation grounded upon this reason O Lord heale me for my bones are vexed c. But yet David must and doth stop upon this step he stayes Gods leisure and is put to his Vsquequo But thou O Lord how long David had cryed Miserere he had begged of God to look towards him Vsquequo and consider him He had revealed to him his weak and troublesome estate and he had entreated reliefe but yet God gave not that reliefe presently nor seemed to have heard his prayer nor to have accepted his reasons David comes to some degrees of expostulation with God but he dares not proceed far it is but usquequo Domine which if we consider it in the Originall and so also in our last Translation requires a serious consideration For it is not there as it is in the first Translation How long wilt thou delay David charges God with no delay But it is onely Et tu Domine usquequo But thou O Lord how long And there he ends in a holy abruptnesse as though he had taken himselfe in a fault to enterprise any expostulation with God He doth not say How long ere thou heare me If thou heare me how long ere thou regard me If thou regard me how long ere thou heale me How long shall my bones how long shall my soule be troubled He sayes not so but leaving all to his leisure he corrects his passion he breaks off his expostulation As long as I have that commission from God Dic animae tuae Salus tua sum Psal 35.3 Say unto thy soule I am thy salvation my soule shall keep silence unto God of whom commeth my salvation Silence from murmuring how long soever he be in recovering me not silence from prayer that he would come for that is our last Consideration David proposed his Desire Miserere and Sana Looke towards me and Heale me that was our first And then his Reasons Ossa Anima My bones my soule is troubled that was our second And then he grew sensible of Gods absence for all that which was our third Proposition for yet for all this he continues patient and solieites the same God in the same name The Lord But thou O Lord how long Need we then any other example of such a patience then God himselfe Domine who stayes so long in expectation of our conversion But we have Davids example too who having first made his Deprecation Ver. 1. That God would not reprove him in anger having prayed God to forbeare him he is also well content to forbeare God for those other things which he asks till it be his pleasure to give them But yet he neither gives over praying nor doth he encline to pray to any body else but still Domine miserere Have mercy upon me O Lord and Domine fana O Lord heale mee Industry in a lawfull calling favour of great persons a thankfull acknowledgement of the ministery and protection of Angels and of the prayers of the Saints in heaven for us all these concur to our assistance But the root of all all temporall all spirituall blessings is he to whom David leads us here Dominus The Lord Lord as he is Proprietary of all creatures He made All and therefore is Lord of All as he is Iehovah which is the name of Essence of Being as all things have all their being from him their very being and their well-being their Creation
so you have all that belongs to the Master and his manner of teaching David Catechising And all that belongs to the Doctrine and the Catechisme Blessednesse That is Reconciliation to God notified in those three acts of his mercy And all that belongs to the Disciple that is to be Catechized A docile an humble a sincere heart In whose spirit there is no guile And to these particulars in their order thus proposed we shall now passe That then which constitutes our first part is this That David 1. Part. Catechismus then whom this world never had a greater Master for the next amongst the sonnes of men delivers himselfe by way of Catechising of fundamentall and easie teaching As we say justly and confidently That of all Rhetoricall and Poeticall figures that fall into any Art we are able to produce higher straines and livelier examples out of the Scriptures then out of all the Orators and Poets in the world yet we reade not we preach not the Scriptures for that use to magnifie their Eloquence So in Davids Psalmes we finde abundant impressions and testimonies of his knowledge in all arts and all kinds of learning but that is not it which he proposes to us Davids last words are and in that Davids holy glory was placed That he was not onely the sweet Psalmist That he had an harmonious a melodious 2 Sam. 23.1 a charming a powerfull way of entring into the soule and working upon the affections of men but he was the sweet Psalmist of Israel He employed his faculties for the conveying of the God of Israel into the Israel of God Ver. 2. The spirit of the Lord spake by me and his word was in my tongue Not the spirit of Rhetorique nor the spirit of Poetry Ver. 3. nor the spirit of Mathematiques and Demonstration But The spirit of the Lord the Rock of Israel spake by me sayes he He boasts not that he had delivered himselfe in strong or deepe or mysterious Arts that was not his Rock but his Rock was the Rock of Israel His way was to establish the Church of God upon fundamentall Doctrines Moses was learned in all the wisedome of the Egyptians sayes Stephen Likely to be so Act. 7.22 because being adopted by the Kings daughter he had an extraordinary education Exod. 2.10 And likely also because he brought so good naturall faculties for his Masters to worke upon Vt Reminisci potiùs videretur quà m discere Philo. That whatsoever any Master proposed unto him he rather seemed to remember it then then to learne it but then And yet in Moses books we meet no great testimonies or deepe impressions of these learnings in Moses He had as S. Ambrose notes well more occasions to speak of Naturall philosophy in the Creation of the world and of the more secret and reserved and remote corners of Nature in those counterfeitings of Miracles in Pharaohs Court then he hath laid hold of So Nebuchadnezzar appointed his Officers that they should furnish his Court Dan. 1.4 with some young Gentlemen of good bloud and families of the Jews And as it is added there well favoured youths in whom there was no blemish skilfull in all wisedome and cunning in knowledge and understanding science And then farther To be taught the tongue and the learning of the Chaldeans And Daniel was one of these and no doubt a great Proficient in all these and yet Daniel seemes not to make any great shew of these learnings in his writings S. Paul was in a higher Pedagogy and another manner of University then all this Caught up into the third heavens into Paradise as he sayes 2 Cor. 12.2 and there he learnt much but as he sayes too such things as it was not lawfull to utter That is It fell not within the lawes of preaching to publish them So that not onely some learning in humanity as in Moses and Daniels case but some points of Divinity as in S. Pauls case may be unfit to be preached Not that a Divine should be ignorant of either either ornaments of humane or mysteries of divine knowledge For sayes S. Augustine Every man that comes from Egypt must bring some of the Egyptians goods with him Quanto auro exivit suffarcinatus Cyprianus sayes he How much of the Egyptian gold and goods brought Cyprian and Lactantius and Optatus and Hilary out of Egypt That is what a treasure of learning gathered when they were of the Gentils brought they from thence to the advancing of Christianity when they applied themselves to it S. Augustine confesses that the reading of Cicero's Hortensius Mutavit affectum meum L. 3. c. 4. began in him a Conversion from the world Et ad teipsum Domine mutavit preces meas That booke sayes he converted me to more fervent prayers to thee my God Et surgere jam coeperam ut ad te redirem By that help I rose and came towards thee And so Iustin Martyr had his Initiation and beginning of his Conversion from reading some passages in Plato S. Basil expresses it well They that will dye a perfect colour dip it in some lesse perfect colour before To be a good Divine requires humane knowledge and so does it of all the Mysteries of Divinity too because as there are Devils that will not be cast out but by Fasting and Prayer so there are humours that undervalue men that lacke these helps But our Congregations are not made of such persons not of meere naturall men that must be converted out of Aristotle and by Cicero's words nor of Arians that require new proofes for the Trinity nor Pelagians that must be pressed with new discoveries of Gods Predestination but persons imbracing with a thankfull acquiescence therein Doctrines necessary for the salvation of their soules in the world to come and the exaltation of their Devotion in this This way David calls his a Catechisme And let not the greatest Doctor think it unworthy of him to Catechize thus nor the learnedest hearer to be thus catechized Christ enwraps the greatest Doctors in his Person and in his practise when he sayes Sinite parvulos Suffer little children to come unto me and we do not suffer them to come unto us if when they come we doe not speak to their understanding and to their edification for that is but an absent presence when they heare and profit not And Christ enwraps the learnedest hearers in the persons of his owne Disciples when he sayes Except yee become as these little children yee cannot enter into the Kingdome of heaven Except you nourish your selves with Catechisticall and Fundamentall Doctrines you are not in a wholesome diet Now in this Catechisme the first stone that David layes and that that supports all the first object that David presents and that that directs to all is Blessednesse Davids Catechisme Blessed is the man Philosophers could never bring us to the knowledge 2 Part. Beatitudo what this
yet this is still limited by the law of God so far as God hath instituted this power by his Gospel in his Church and far from inducing amongst us that torture of the Conscience that usurpation of Gods power that spying into the counsails of Princes supplanting of their purposes with which the Church of Rome hath been deeply charged And this usefull and un-mis-interpretable Confession which we speake of Adversum me is the more recommended to us in that with which David shuts up his Act as out of S. Hierome and out of our former translation we intimated unto you that he doth all this Adversum se I will confesse my sinnes unto the Lord against my selfe The more I finde Confession or any religious practise to be against my selfe and repugnant to mine owne nature the farther I will goe in it For still the Adversum me is Cum Deo The more I say against my selfe the more I vilifie my selfe the more I glorifie my God As S. Chry sostome sayes every man is Spontaneus Satan a Satan to himselfe as Satan is a Tempter every man can tempt himselfe so I will be Spontaneus Satan as Satan is an Accuser an Adversary I will accuse my selfe I consider often that passionate humiliation of S. Peter Exi à me Domine He fell at Iesus knees saying Depart from me for I am a sinfull man O Lord Luk. 5.8 And I am often ready to say so and more Depart from me O Lord for I am sinfull inough to infect thee As I may persecute thee in thy Children so I may infect thee in thine Ordinances Depart in withdrawing thy word from me for I am corrupt inough to make even thy saving Gospel the savor of death unto death Depart in withholding thy Sacrament for I am leprous inough to taint thy flesh and to make the balme of thy blood poyson to my soule Depart in withdrawing the protection of thine Angels from me for I am vicious inough to imprint corruption and rebellion into their nature And if I be too foule for God himselfe to come neare me for his Ordinances to worke upon me I am no companion for my selfe I must not be alone with my selfe for I am as apt to take as to give infection I am a reciprocall plague passively and actively contagious I breath corruption and breath it upon my selfe and I am the Babylon that I must goe out of Gen. 32.10 Mat. 8.8 or I perish I am not onely under Iacobs Non dignus Not worthy the least of all thy mercies nor onely under the Centurions Non dignus I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roofe That thy Spirit should ever speake to my spirit which was the forme of words in which every Communicant received the Sacrament in the Primitive Church Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roofe Nor onely under the Prodigals Non dignus Luke 15.21 Not worthy to be called thy sonne neither in the filiation of Adoption for I have deserved to be dis-inherited nor in the filiation of Creation for I have deserved to be annihilated Mark 1.7 But Non dignus procumbere I am not worthy to stoop down to fall down to kneele before thee in thy Minister the Almoner of thy Mercy the Treasurer of thine Absolutions So farre doe I confesse Adversum me against my selfe as that I confesse I am not worthy to confesse nor to be admitted to any accesse any approach to thee much lesse to an act so neare Reconciliation to thee as an accusation of my selfe or so neare thy acquitting as a self-condemning Be this the issue in all Controversies whensoever any new opinions distract us Be that still thought best that is most Adversum nos most against our selves That that most layes flat the nature of man so it take it not quite away and blast all vertuous indeavours That that most exalts the Grace and Glory of God be that the Truth And so have you the whole mystery of Davids Confession in both his Acts preparatory in resenting his sinfull condition in generall and survaying his conscience in particular And then his Deliberation his Resolution his Execution his Confession Confession of true sins and of them onely and of all them of his sins and all this to the Lord and all that against himselfe That which was proposed for the second Part must fall into the compasse of a Conclusion and a short one that is Gods Act Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin This is a wide doore 2 Part. and would let out Armies of Instructions to you but we will shut up this doore with these two leaves thereof The fulnesse of Gods Mercy He forgives the sin and the punishment And the seasonablenesse the acceleration of his mercy in this expression in our text that Davids is but Actus inchoatus He sayes he will confesse And Gods is Actus consummatus Thou forgavest Thou hadst already forgiven the iniquity and punishment of my sin These will be the two leaves of this doore and let the hand that shuts them be this And this Particle of Connection which we have in the text I said And thou didst For though this Remission of sin be not presented here as an effect upon that cause of Davids Confession It is not delivered in a Quia and an Ergo Because David did this God did that for mans wil leads not the will of God as a cause who does all his acts of mercy for his mercies sake yet though it be not an effect as from a cause yet it is at least as a consequent from an occasion so assured so infallible as let any man confesse as David did and he shall be sure to be forgiven as David was For though this forgivenesse be a flower of mercy yet the roote growes in the Justice of God If wee acknowledge our sin 1 John 1.9 he is faithfull and just to forgive us our sin It growes out of his faithfulnesse as he hath vouchsafed to binde himselfe by a promise And out of his Justice as he hath received a full satisfaction for all our sins So that this Hand this And in our Text is as a ligament as a sinew to connect and knit together that glorious body of Gods preventing grace and his subsequent grace if our Confession come between and tie the knot God that moved us to that act will perfect all Here enters the fulnesse of his mercy Plenitudo Rev. 3 20. at one leafe of this doore well expressed at our doore in that Ecce sto pulso Behold I stand at the doore and knock for first he comes here is no mention of our calling of him before He comes of himselfe And then he suffers not us to be ignorant of his comming he comes so as that he manifests himself Ecce Behold And then he expects not that we should wake with that light and look out of our selves but he knocks
and in the Cup of Salvation in the Sacrament for so much as concernes him is but spilt upon the ground as though his honey his worldly greamesse were his Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Prince and friends and all when that is lost by this vomit he mournes for all in a sad and everlasting mourning in such a disconsolate dejection of spirit as ends either in an utter inconsideration of God or in a desperation of his mercies This is that Incipiamte evomere as the Vulgat reads it in this vomit of worldly things Revel 3.16 God does begin to vomit him out of his mouth and then God does not returne to his vomit but leaves this impatient patient to his impenitiblenesse But we must not lanch into these wide Seas now to consider the scorne or the danger of this vomit but rather draw into the harbor and but repeat the text transferred from this world to the text from temporall to spirituall things Thus far we have beene In melle In honey upon honey but now Super mel Conclusio above honey Psal 19.10 The judgements of the Lord are Dulcia prae melle Sweeter then honey and the honey combe And the judgements of the Lord are that by which the Lord will judge us and this world it is his word His word the sincerity of the Gospel the truth of his Religion is our honey and honey combe our honey and our waxe our Covenant and our Seale we have him not if we have not his truth if we require other honey and wee trust him not if we require any other Seale if we thinke the word of God needs the traditions of men And Invenisti tu Hath God manifested to thee the truth of his Gospell Blesse thou the Lord praise him and magnifie him for ever whose day-spring from an high hath visited thee and left so many Nations in darknesse who shall never heare of Christ till they heare himselfe nor heare other voyce from him then then the Ite maledicti Pity them that have not this honey and confesse for thy selfe that though thou have it thou hast but found it couldst thou bespeake Christian Parents beforehand and say I will be borne of such Parents as shall give me a title to the Covenant to Baptisme or couldst thou procure Sureties that should bind themselves for thee at the entring into the Covenant in Baptisme Thou foundest thy selfe in the Christian Church and thou foundest meanes of salvation there thou broughtest none hither thou boughtest none here the Title of S. Andrew the first of the Apostles that came to Christ was but that Invenimus Mesiam We have found the Mesias It is onely Christ himselfe that sayes of himselfe Cant. 5.1 Comedi mel meum I have eat my honey his owne honey We have no grace no Gospel of our owne we find it here But since thou hast found it Comede Eat it do not drinke the cup of Babylon lest thou drink the cup of Gods wrath too but make this Honey Christs true Religion thy meate digest that assimilate that incorporate that and let Christ himself and his merit be as thy soul let the cleere and outward profession of his truth Religion be as thy body If thou give away that body be flattered out of thy Religion or threatned out of thy Religion If thou sell this body be bought and bribed out of thy Religion If thou lend this body discontinue thy Religion for a yeare or two to see how things will fall out if thou have no body thou shalt have no Resurrection and the cleere and undisguised profession of the truth is the body Eat therefore this honey Ad sufficientiam so much as is enough To beleeve implicitly as the Church beleeves and know nothing is not enough know thy foundations and who laid them Other foundations can no man lay then are laid Christ Jesus neither can other men lay those foundations otherwise then they are laid by the Apostles but eat Ad sufficientiam tuam that which is enough for thee for so much knowledge is not required in thee in those things as in them whose profession it is to teach them be content to leave a roome stil for the Apostles Aemulamini charismata meliora desire better gifts and ever think it a title of dignity which the Angel gave Daniel to be Vir desideriorum To have still some farther object of thy desires Do not thinke thou wantest all because thou hast not all for at the great last day we shall see more plead Catechismes for their salvation then the great volumes of Controversies more plead their pockets then their Libraries If S. Paul so great an Argosie held no more but Christum crucifixum what can thy Pinnace hold Let humility be thy ballast and necessary knowledge thy fraight for there is an over-fulnesse of knowledge which forces a vomit a vomit of opprobrious and contumelious speeches a belching and spitting of the name of Heretique and Schismatique and a losse of charity for matters that are not of faith and from this vomiting comes emptiness The more disputing Psal 90.14 the lesse beleeving but Saturasti nos benignitate tua Domine Thou hast satisfied us early with thy mercy Thou gavest us Christianity early and thou gavest us the Reformation early and therefore since in thee we have found this honey let us so eat it Levit. 18.25 and so hold it That the land do not vomit her Inhabitants nor spew us out as it spewed out the Nations that were before us Levit. 18.29 but that our dayes may be long in this land which the Lord our God hath given us and that with the Ancient of dayes we may have a day without any night in that land which his Son our Saviour hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood To which glorious Son of God c. SERM. LXXI At the Haghe Decemb. 19. 1619. I Preached upon this Text. Since in my sicknesse at Abrey-hatche in Essex 1630. revising my short notes of that Sermon I digested them into these two MAT. 4.18 19 20. And Iesus walking by the Sea of Galile saw two brethren Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother casting a net into the Sea for they were fishers And he saith unto them Follow me and I will make you fishers of men And they straightway left their nets and followed him SOLOMON presenting our Saviour Christ in the name and person of Wisdome in the booke of Proverbs puts by instinct of the Holy Ghost these words into his mouth Prov. 8.30 Deliciae meae esse cum filiis hominum Christs delight is to be with the children of men And in satisfaction of that delight he sayes in the same verse in the person of Christ That he rejoyced to be in the habitable parts of the Earth that is where he might converse with men Ludens in orbe terrarum so the Vulgat reads
heavy burden upon that place but that it was a heavy burden to them to denounce that judgement even upon Gods enemies Our errand our joy our Crowne is Consolation for if we consider the three Persons of the holy blessed and glorious Trinity and their working upon us a third part of their worke if we may so speake is consolation the Father is Power the Son Wisdome and the Holy Ghost Consolation for the Holy Ghost is not in a Vulture that hovers over Armies and infected Cities and feeds upon carcasses But the Holy Ghost is in a Dove that would not make a Congregation a slaughter-house but feeds upon corne corne that hath in nature a disposition to a reviviscence and a repullulation and would imprint in you al the consolation and sense of a possibility of returning to a new and a better life God found me nothing and of that nothing made me Adam left me worse then God found me worse then nothing the child of wrath corrupted with the leaven of Originall sin Christ Jesus found me worse then Adam left me not onely sowred with Originall but spotted and gangrened and dead and buried and putrified in actual and habitual sins and yet in that state redeemed me And I make my selfe worse then Christ found me and in an inordinate dejection of spirit conceive a jealousie and suspition that his merit concernes not me that his blood extends not to my sin And in this last and worst state the Holy Ghost finds me the Spirit of Consolation And he sends a Barnabas a son of Consolation unto me A Barnabas to my sick bed side A Physitian that comforts with hopes and meanes of health A Barnabas to my broken fortune A potent and a loving friend that assists the reparation and the establishing of my state A Barnabas into the Pulpit that restores and rectifies my conscience and scatters and dispels all those clouds that invested it and infested it before That un-imaginable worke of the Creation were not ready for a Sabbath though I be a Creature and a man I could have no Sabbath no rest no peace of conscience That un-expressible worke of the Redemption were not ready for that Seale which our Saviour set to it upon the Crosse in the Consummatum est All were not finished that concerned me if the Holy Ghost were not ready to deliver that which Christ sealed and to witnesse that which were so delivered that that Spirit might ever testifie to my spirit That all that Christ Jesus said and did and suffered was said and done and suffered for my soule Consolation is not all if we consider God but if I consider my selfe and my state Consolation is all Christs meaning then in this place was to establish in his Disciples this Consolation Consolatio vera but thus Si quo minus If it were not thus I would tell you If this were not true consolation I would not delude you I would not entertaine you with false for he is Deus omnium miserationum The God of all mercies and yet he will not shew mercy to them who sin upon presumption So he is Deus omnium Consolationum The God of all Comforts and yet will not comfort them who rely upon the false and miserable comforts of this world How many how very many of us doe otherwise Otherwise to others otherwise to our own Consciences Delude all with false Comforts They would not suffer Christ himselfe to sleepe upon a pillow in a storme but they waked him with that Master carest not thou though we perish When will we wake any Master Mar. 4.38 any upon whom we depend and say Master carest not thou though thou perish We suffer others whom we should instruct and we suffer our selves to passe on to the last gaspe and we never rebuke our Consciences till our Consciences rebuke us at last Alas it is otherwise and you never told us Christ comforts then he disputes not that is not his way He ministers true comfort Domus he flatters not that is not his way And in this true comfort the first beame is That that state which he promises them is a House In my Fathers House c. God hath a progresse house a removing house here upon earth His house of prayer At this houre God enters into as many of these houses as are opened for his service at this houre But his standing house his house of glory is that in Heaven and that he promises them God himselfe dwelt in Tents in this world and he gives them a House in Heaven A House in the designe and survay whereof the Holy Ghost himselfe is figurative the Fathers wanton and the School-men wilde The Holy Ghost in describing this House Rev. 21. fills our contemplation with foundations and walls and gates of gold of precious stones and all materialls that we can call precious The Holy Ghost is figurative And the Fathers are wanton in their spirituall elegancies such as that of S. Augustins if that booke be his Hiems horrens Aestas torrens And Virent prata vernant sata and such other harmonious and melodious and mellifluous cadences of these waters of life But the School-men are wild for as one Author who is afraid of admitting too great a hollownesse in the Earth Munster lest then the Earth might not be said to be solid pronounces that Hell cannot possibly be above three thousand miles in compasse and then one of the torments of Hell will be the throng for their bodies must be there in their dimensions as well as their soules so when the School-men come to measure this house in heaven as they will measure it and the Master God and all his Attributes and tell us how Allmighty and how Infinite he is they pronounce that every soule in that house shall have more roome to it selfe then all this world is We know not that nor see we that the consolation lyes in that we rest in this that it is a House It hath a foundation no Earth-quake shall shake it It hath walls no Artillery shall batter it It hath a roofe no tempest shall pierce it It is a house that affords security and that is one beame And it is Domus patris His Fathers house a house in which he hath interest and that is another beame of his Consolation It was his Fathers and so his And his and so ours Patris for we are not joynt purchasers of Heaven with the Saints but we are co-heires with Christ Jesus We have not a place there because they have done more then enough for themselves but because he hath done enough for them and us too By death we are gathered to our Fathers in nature and by death through his mercy gathered to his Father also Where we shall have a full satisfaction in that wherein S. Philip placed all satisfaction Ostende nobis patrem Lord shew us thy Father and it is enough We shall see his
are the People that be so Yea blessed are the People whose God is the Lord. THe first part of this Text hath relation to temporall blessings Blessed is the people that be so The second part to spirituall Yea blessed is the people whose God is the Lord. His left hand is under my head saith the Spouse Cant. 2.6 That sustaines me from falling into murmuring or diffidence of his Providence because out of his left hand he hath given me a competency of his temporall blessings But his right hand doth embrace mee saith the Spouse there His spirituall blessings fill me possesse me so that no rebellious fire breaks out within me no outward tentation breaks in upon me So also sayes Solomon againe Prov. 3.16 In her left hand is riches and glory temporall blessings and in her right hand length of dayes all that accomplishes and fulfils the eternall joyes of the Saints of heaven The person to whom Solomon attributes this right and left hand is Wisedome And a wise man may reach out his right and left hand to receive the blessings of both sorts And the person whom Solomon represents by Wisedome there is Christ himselfe So that not onely a worldly wiseman but a Christian wiseman may reach out both hands to both kinds of blessings right and left spirituall and temporall And therefore Interrogo vos filios regni coelorum saith S. Augustine Let mee ask you who are sonnes and heires of the Kingdome of Heaven Progeniem Resurrectionis in aeternum You that are the off-spring of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus and have your resurrection in his Membra Christi Templa Spiritus Sancti You that are the very body of Christ you that are the very temples of the Holy Ghost Interrogo vos Let me ask you for all your great reversion hereafter for all that present possession which you have of it in an apprehensive faith and in a holy conversation in this life for all that blessednesse Non est isba saelicitas Is there not a blessednesse in enjoying Gods temporall blessings here too Sit licèt sed sinistra saith that Father It is certainely a blessednesse but a left handed blessednesse a weaker a more imperfect blessednesse then spirituall blessings are As then there is dextra and sinistrabeatitudo a right handed and a left handed blessednesse in the Text so there is dextra and sinistra Interpretatio a right and a left Exposition of the Text. And as both these blessednesses temporall and spirituall are seales and testimonies of Gods love though not both of equall strength and equall evidence so both the Interpretations of these words are usefull for our edification though they bee not both of equall authority That which we call Sinistram Interpreiationem is that sense of these words which arises from the first Translators of the Bible the Septuagint and those Fathers which followed them which though it bee not an ill way is not the best because it is not according to the letter and then that which we call Dextram Interpretationem is that sense which arises pregnantly and evidently liquidly and manifestly out of the Originall Text it selfe The Authors and followers of the first sense reade not these words as we doe Beatus populus That people is blessed but Beatum dixerunt populum That people was esteemed blessed and so they referre this and all the temporall blessings mentioned in the three former Verses to a popular error to a generall mistaking to the opinions and words of wicked and worldly men that onely they desire these temporall things onely they taste a sweetnesse and apprehend a blessednesse in them whereas they who have truely their conversation in heaven are swallowed up with the contemplation of that blessednesse without any reflection upon earth or earthly things But the Author of the second sense which is God himselfe and his direct word presents it thus Beatus populus That people is truely blessed there is a true blessednesse in temporall things but yet this is but sinistra beatitudo a lesse perfect blessednesse For the followers of both Interpretations and all Translators and all Expositors meet in this That the perfect the accomplishing the consummatory blessednesse is onely in this That our God be the Lord. First then Interpretatio to make our best use of the first sense That temporall things conduce not at all to blessednesse S. Cyprians wonder is just Deum nobis solis contentum esse nobis non sufficere Deum That God should think man enough for him and man should not bee satisfied with God That God should be content with Fili da mihi cor My sonne give me thy heart and man should not be content with Pater da mihi Spiritum My God my Father grant me thy Spirit but must have temporall additions too Non est castum cor saith S. Augustine si Deum ad mercedem colit as he saith in another place Non est castauxor quae amat quia dives She is never the honester woman nor the lovinger wife that loves her husband in contemplation of her future joynture or in fruition of her present abundancies so hee sayes here Nonest castum cor That man hath not a chast a sincere heart towards God that loves him by the measure end proportion of his temporall blessings The Devill had so much colour for that argument that in prosperity there can bee no triall whether a man love God or no as that he presses it even to God himselfe in Iobs case Iob 1 Doth Iob serve God for nought hast not thou hedged him in and blessed the works of his hands and encreased his substance How canst thou tell whether he will love thee or feare thee if thou shouldst take away all this from him thou hast had no triall yet And this argument descended from that father to his children from the Devill there to those followers of his whom the Prophet Malachy reprehends for saying It is in vaine to serve God Mal. 3.14 for what profit is it that wee have kept his commandements When men are willing to prefer their friends we heare them often give these testimonies of a man He hath good parts and you need not be ashamed to speake for him hee hath money in his purse and you need not be sorry to speak for him he understands the world he knowes how things passe and he hath a discreet a supple and an appliable disposition and hee may make a fit instrument for all your purposes and you need not be afraid to speake for him But who ever casts into this scale and valuation of a man that waight that he hath a religious heart that hee feares God what profit is there in that if wee consider this world onely But what profits it a man if he get all the world and lose his owne soule And therefore that opinion That there was no profit at all no degree towards blessednesse in those temporall things
castration in cutting off the eares There are certain veines behinde the eares which if they be cut disable a man from generation The Eares are the Aqueducts of the water of life and if we cut off those that is intermit our ordinary course of hearing this is a castration of the soul the soul becomes an Eunuch and we grow to a rust to a mosse to a barrennesse without fruit without propagation If then God have placed thee under such a Pastor as presents thee variety blesse God who enlarges himselfe to afford thee that spirituall delight in that variety even for the satisfaction of that holy curiosity of thine If he have placed thee under one who often repeates and often remembers thee of the same things blesse God even for that that in that he hath let thee see that the Christian Religion is Verbum abbreviatum A contracted doctrine and that they are but a few things which are necessary to salvation and therefore be not loath to heare them often Our errand hither then is not to see but much lesse not to be able to see to sleep Verbum It is not to talk but much lesse to snort It is to heare and to heare all the words of the Preacher but to heare in those words the Word that Word which is the soule of all that is said and is the true Physick of all their soules that heare The Word was made flesh that is assumed flesh but yet the Godhead was not that flesh The Word of God is made a Sermon that is a Text is dilated diffused into a Sermon but that whole Sermon is not the word of God But yet all the Sermon is the Ordinance of God Delight thy self in the Lord and he will give thee thy hearts desire Take a delight in Gods Ordinance in mans preaching and thou wilt finde Gods Word in that To end all in that Metaphor which we mentioned at beginning As the word of God is as hony so sayes Solomon Pleasant words are as the hony combe Prov. 16.24 And when the pleasant words of Gods servants have conveyed the saving word of God himselfe into thy soule then maist thou say with Christ to the Spouse I have caten my hony combe with my hony Cant. 5.1 mine understanding is enlightned with the words of the Preacher and my faith is strengthned with the word of God I glorifie God much in the gifts of the man but I glorifie God much more in the gifts of his grace I am glad I have heard him but I am gladder I have heard God in him I am happy that I have heard those words but thrice happy that in those words I have heard the Word Blessed be thou that camest in the name of the Lord but blessed be the Lord that is come to me in thee Let me remember how the Preacher said it but let me remember rather what he said And beloved all the best of us all all that all together all the dayes of our life shall be able to say unto you is but this That if ye will heare the same Jesus in the same Gospell by the same Ordinance and not seeke an imaginary Jesus in an illusory sacrifice in another Church If you will heare so as you have contracted with God in your Baptisme The holy Ghost shall fall upon you whilest you heare here in the house of God and the holy Ghost shall accompany you home to your own houses and make your domestique peace there a type of your union with God in heaven and make your eating and drinking there a type of the abundance and fulnesse of heaven and make every dayes rising to you there a type of your joyfull Resurrection to heaven and every nights rest a type of your eternall Sabbath and your very dreames prayers and meditations and sacrifices to Almighty God SERM. XXXIV Preached upon Whitsunday ROM 8.16 The Spirit it selfe beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God I Take these words to take occasion by them to say something of the holy Ghost Our order proposed at first requires it and our Text affords it Since we speak by Him let us love to speak of Him and to speak for Him but in both to speak with Him that is so as he hath spoken of himselfe to us in the Scriptures God will be visited but he will not be importuned He will be looked upon but he will not be pryed into A man may flatter the best man If he do not beleeve himself when he speaks well of another and when he praises him though that which he sayes of him be true yet he flatters So an Atheist that temporises and serves the company and seemes to assent flatters A man may flatter the Saints in heaven if he attribute to them that which is not theirs and so a Papist flatters A man may flatter God himself If upon pretence of magnifying Gods mercy he will say with Origen That God at last will have mercy upon the devill he flatters So though God be our businesse we may be too busie with God and though God be infinite we may go beyond God when we conceive or speak otherwise of God then God hath revealed unto us By his own light therefore we shall look upon him and with that reverence and modesty that That Spirit may beare witnesse to our spirit that we are the children of God That which we shall say of these words Divisio will best be conceived and retained best if we handle them thus That whereas Christ hath bidden us to judge our selves that we be not judged to admit a triall here lest we incurre a condemnation hereafter This text is a good part of that triall of that judiciall proceeding For here are first two persons that are able to say much The Spirit it self and Our spirit And secondly their office their service They beare witnesse And thirdly their testimony That we are the children of God And these will be our three parts The first will have two branches because there are two persons The Spirit and Our spirit And the second two branches They witnesse and They witnesse together for so the word is And the third also two branches They testifie of us their testimony concernes us and they testifie well of us That we are the children of God The persons are withour exception the Spirit of God cannot be deceived and the spirit of man will not deceive himself Their proceeding is Legall and faire they do not libell they do not whisper they do not calumniate They testifie and they agree in their testimony And lastly the case is not argued so as amongst practisers at the Law that thereby by the light of that they may after give Counsell to another in the like but the testimony concernes our selves it is our own case The verdict upon the testimony of the Spirit and our spirit is upon our selves whatsoever it bee And blessed be the
there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in his spirit As then the Prophet Davids principall purpose in this Text is according to the Interpretation of S. Paul to derive all the Blessednesse of man from God so is it also to put some conditions in man comprehended in this That there be no guile in his spirit For in this repentant sinner that shall be partaker of these degrees of Blessednesse of this Forgiving of this Covering of this Not Imputing there is required Integrapoenitentia A perfect and intire repentance And to the making up of that howsoever the words and termes may have been mis-used and defamed we acknowledge that there belongs a Contrition a Confession and a Satisfaction And all these howsoever our Adversaries slander us with a Doctrine of ease and a Religion of liberty we require with more exactnesse and severity then they doe For for Contrition we doe not we dare not say as some of them That Attrition is sufficient that it is sufficient to have such a sorrow for sin as a naturall sense and fear of torment doth imprint in us without any motion of the feare of God We know no measure of sorrow great enough for the violating of the infinite Majesty of God by our transgression And then for Confession we deny not a necessity to confesse to man There may be many cases of scruple of perplexity where it were an exposing our selves to farther occasions of sin not to confesse to man And in Confession we require a particular detestation of that sin which we confesse which they require not And lastly for Satisfaction we imbrace that Rule Condigna satisfactio malè facta corrigere Our best Satisfaction is to be better in the amendment of our lives And dispositions to particular sins we correct in our bodies by Discipline and Mortifications And we teach that no man hath done truly that part of Repentance which he is bound to doe if he have not given Satisfaction that is Restitution to every person damnified by him If that which we teach for this intirenesse of Repentance be practised in Contrition and Confession and Satisfaction they cannot calumniate our Doctrine nor our practise herein And if it be not practised there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in their spirit that pretend to any part of this Blessednesse Forgiving or Covering or Not imputing without this For he that is sorry for sin onely in Contemplation of hell and not of the joyes of heaven that would not give over his sin though there were no hell rather then he would lose heaven which is that which some of them call Attrition He that confesses his sin but hath no purpose to leave it He that does leave the sin but being growne rich by that sin retaines and enjoyes those riches this man is not intire in his Repentanne but there is guile in his spirit He that is slothfull in his work Prov. 18.9 is brother to him that is a great waster He that makes half-repentances makes none Men run out of their estates as well by a negligence and a not taking account of their Officers as by their own prodigality Our salvation is as much indangered if we call not our conscience to an examination as if we repent not those sins which offer themselves to our knowledge and memory And therefore David places the consummation of his victory in that Psal 18.37 I have pursued mine enemies and overtaken them neither did I turne againe till they were consumed We require a pursuing of the enemy a search for the sin and not to stay till an Officer that is a sicknesse or any other calamity light upon that sin and so bring it before us We require an overtaking of the enemy That we be not weary in the search of our consciences And we require a consuming of the enemy not a weakning only a dislodging a dispossessing of the sin and the profit of the sin All the profit and all the pleasure of all the body of sin for he that is sorry with a godly sorrow he that confesses with a deliberate detestation he that satisfies with a full restitution for all his sins but one Dolus in spiritu There is guile in his spirit he is in no better case Berna◠then if at Sea he should stop all leaks but one and perish by that Si vis solvi solve omnes catenas If thou wilt be discharged cancel all thy Bonds one chain till that be broke holds as fast as ten And therfore suffer your consideration to turn back a little upon this object that there may be Dolus in spiritu Guile in the spirit in our pretence to all those parts of Blessednesse which David recommends to us in this Catechisme In the Forgivenesse of transgrestions In the Covering of sin In the Not imputing of iniquity First then Forgiving in this Forgiving of transgressions which is our Saviour Christs taking away the sins of the world by taking them in the punishment due to them upon himselfe there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in that mans spirit that will so farre abridge the great Volumes of the mercy of God so farre contract his generall propositions as to restrain this salvation not only in the effect but in Gods own purpose to a few a very few soules When Subjects complaine of any Prince that he is too mercifull there is Dolus in spiritu Guile and deceit in this complaint They doe but think him too mercifull to other mens faults for where they need his mercy for their own they never think him too mercifull And which of us doe not need God for all sins If we did not in our selves yet it were a new sin in us not to desire that God should be as mercifull to every other sinner as to our selves As in heaven the joy of every soule shall be my joy so the mercy of God to every soule here is a mercy to my soule By the extension of his mercies to others I argue the application of his mercy to my selfe This contracting and abridging of the mercy of God will end in despaire of our selves that that mercy reaches not to us or if we become confident perchance presumptuous of our selves we shall despaire in the behalfe of other men and think they can receive no mercy And when men come to allow an impossibility of salvation in any they will come to assigne that impossibility nay to assigne those men and pronounce for this and this sin This man cannot be saved There is a sin against the Holy Ghost and to make us afraid of all approaches towards that sin Christ hath told us that that sin is irremissible unpardonable But since that sin includes impenitiblenesse in the way and actuall impenitence in the end we can never pronounce This is that sin or This is that sinner God is his Father that can say Our Father which art in heaven And his God that can say I beleeve in God And
there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in his spirit the craft of the Serpent eyther the poyson of the Serpent in a self-despaire or the sting of the Serpent in an uncharitable prejudging and precondemning of others when a man comes to suspect Gods good purposes or contract Gods generall propositions for this forgiving of transgressions is Christs taking away the sins of all the world by taking all the sins of all men upon himselfe And this Guile this Deceit may also be in the second in the Covering of sins which is the particular application of this generall mercy by his Ordinances in his Church He then that without Guile will have benefit by this Covering must Discover Covering Qui tegi vult peccata detegat is S. Augustines way He that will have his sins covered let him uncover them He that would not have them known let him confesse them He that would have them forgotten let him remember them He that would bury them let him rake them up There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed and hid Mat. 10.26 that shall not be knowne It is not thy sending away a servant thy locking a doore thy blowing out a candle no not though thou blow out and extinguish the spirit as much as thou canst that hides a sin from God but since thou thinkest that thou hast hid it by the secret carriage thereof thou must reveale it by Confession If thou wilt not God will shew thee that he needed not thy Confession He will take knowledge of it to thy condemnation and he will publish it to the knowledge of all the world to thy confusion Tufecisti absconditè sayes God to David by Nathan Thou didst it secretly 2 Sam. 12.12 but I will doe this thing before all Israel and before the Sun Certainly it affects and stings many men more that God hath brought to light their particular sins and offences for which he does punish them then all the punishments that he inflicts upon them for then they cannot lay their ruine upon fortune upon vicissitudes and revolutions and changes of Court upon disaffections of Princes upon supplantations of Rivalls and Concurrents but God cleares all the world beside Perditio tua ex te God declares that the punishment is his Act and the Cause my sin This is Gods way and this he expresses vehemently against Jerusalem Behold I will gather all thy Lovers with whom thou hast taken pleasure Ezch. 16.37 and all them that thou hast loved with all them that thou hast hated and I will discover thy nakednesse to all them Those who loved us for pretended vertues shall see how much they were deceived in us Those that hated us because they were able to looke into us and to discerne our actions shall then say Triumphantly and publiquely to all Did not we tell you what would become of this man It was never likely to be better with him I will strip her naked and set her as in the day that she was borne Hos 2.3 Howsoever thou wert covered with the Covenant and taken into the Visible Church howsoever thou wert clothed by having put on Christ in Baptisme yet If thou sin against me sayes God and hide it from me I am against thee and I will shew the Nations thy nakednesse and the Kingdomes thy shame Nahum 3.5 To come to the covering of thy sins without guile first cover them not from thy self so as that thou canst not see yester-daies sin for to daies sin nor the sins of thy youth for thy present sins Cover not thy extortions with magnifique buildings and sumptuous furniture Dung not the fields that thou hast purchased with the bodies of those miserable wretches whom thou hast oppressed neither straw thine alleys and walks with the dust of Gods Saints whom thy hard dealing hath ground to powder There is but one good way of covering sins from our selves Si bona factamalis superponamus Gregor If we come to a habit of good actions contrary to those evils which we had accustomed our selves to and cover our sins so not that we forget the old but that we see no new There is a good covering of sins from our selves by such new habits and there is a good covering of them from other men for he that sins publiquely scandalously avowedly that teaches and encourages others to sin Esay 3.9 That declares his sin as Sodom and hides it not As in a mirror in a looking glasse that is compassed and set about with a hundred lesser glasses a man shall see his deformities in a hundred places at once so hee that hath sinned thus shall feele his torments in himselfe and in all those whom the not covering of his sins hath occasioned to commit the same sins Cover thy sins then from thy selfe so it be not by obduration cover them from others so it be not by hypocrisie But from God cover them not at all Prov. 28.13 He that covereth his sin shall not prosper but who so confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy Even in confessing without forsaking there is Dolus in spiritus Guile and deceit in that spirit Noluit agnoscere maluit ignoscere S. Augustine makes the case of a customary sinner He was ready to pardon himselfe alwaies without any confession But God shall invert it to his subversion Maluit agnoscere noluit ignoscere God shall manifest his sin and not pardon it Sin hath that pride that it is not content with one garment Adam covered first with fig-leaves then with whole trees He hid himselfe amongst the trees Then hee covered his sin with the woman she provoked him And then with Gods action Quam tu dedisti The Woman whom thou gavest me And this was Adams wardrobe David covers his first sin of uncleannesse with soft stuffe with deceit with falshood with soft perswasions to Vriah to go in to his Wife Then he covers it with rich stuffe with scarlet with the blood of Vriah and of the army of the Lord of Hosts And then he covers it with strong and durable stuffe with an impenitence and with an insensiblenesse a yeare together too long for a King too long for any man to weare such a garment And this was Davids wardrobe But beloved sin is a serpent and he that covers sin does but keepe it warme that it may sting the more fiercely and disperse the venome and malignity thereof the more effectually Adam had patched up an apron to cover him God tooke none of those leaves God wrought not upon his beginnings but he covered him all over with durable skins God saw that Davids severall coverings did rather load him then cover the sin and therefore Transtulit He tooke all away sin and covering for the coverings were as great sins as the radicall sin that was to be covered was yea greater as the armes and boughs of a tree are greater then the roote Now to this extension and growth and largenesse of