and came on purpose to to prove by their own onely argument they had of providential Miracles they were not in the right but that destruction and misery were in their ways yet these chuse rather to deny their own conclusions and resist Gods goodness then to be convinced and repent For we have seen them as bold Martyrs to their Sin as ever any to Religion signalize their resolv'd impenitence with chearful suffering as if the fire they were condemn'd to were that Triumphal Chariot in which the Prophet mounted up to Heaven Others that did not go so far in condemnation nor guilt as they and therefore think they have no reason to repent of that do they repent of what they did contribute to it Of those that lifted up their hands to swear and fight how many are there that have made them fall and smite their own thigh saying What have I done Do not all rather justifie as far as they themselves proceeded And if all that were well why do not we repent of our Allegiance and Loyalty If all that were well what hath thy goodness done O Lord that hath reverst it all And for the rest those that do not partake the plenties of thy goodness murmur and repine at it are discontent at having what they pray'd for what they would have died for Those that have been partakers of it have turned it into wantonness have made it furnish them for base unworthy practices such as have not the generosity of Vice have not a noble manly wickedness are poltron sins have made it raise a cry on the Faithfullest party the best Cause and the purest Church in the World While we have debauched Gods own best Attribute made his goodness procure for our most wicked or self-ends and the face of things is so vicious in every order and degree and sex that But the Confession is onely fit for Litanies and we have need to make the burthen of ours be Lord give us some afflictions again send out thy Indignation for we do fear thy goodness it hath almost undone us and truly where it does not better it is the most fearful of Gods Attributes or Plagues for it does harden there St. Paul says so in the forecited place and Origen does prove this very thing did harden Pharaohs heart indulgence was his induration Now induration is the being put into Hell upon the Earth There is the same impenitence in both and judgment is pronounced already on the hardned and the life they lead is but the interval betwixt the Sentence and the Execution and all their sunshine of Prosperity is but kindled Brimstone onely without the stench And then to make the treasures of Gods bounty be treasures of wrath to us to make his kindness his long-suffering that is St. Peter says salvation condemn us his very goodness be Hell to us But sure so great a goodness as this we have tasted cannot have such deadly issues and it was great indeed so perfectly miraculous in such strange and continued successes resisting our contrivances and our sins too overcoming all opposition of our vices and our own policies that do not comport with it and in despight of all still doing us good it was fatality of goodness Now sure that which is so victorious will not be worsted by us But Oh! have we not reason so much more to fear the goodness The greater and more undeserved it is the more suspicious it is As if it were the last blaze of the Candle of the Lord when its light gasps its flash of shine before it do go out the dying struggles and extream efforts of goodness to see if at the last any thing can be wrought by it And if we did consider how some men manage the present goodness make use of this time of it and take and catch we would believe they did fear the departure of it But yet it is in our power to fix it here If we repent Gods gifts then are without repentance but one of us must change Bring Piety and Vertue into countenance and fashion and God will dwell among us Nay St. Paul says Goodness to thee if thou continue in his goodness If we our selves do not forsake it and renounce it not fear it so as to flie from it but with the fears of sinking men that catch and grasp lay fast dead hold upon it if as God promises he so put his fear in our hearts that we never depart from it fear that hath love in it and is as unitive as that then it shall never depart from us but we shall see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living and shall be taken thence to the eternal fulness of it This day shall be the Birth-day of Immortal Life the entring on a Kingdom that cannot be moved A Crown thus beautified is a Crown of Glory here and shall add weight and splendor to the Crown hereafter A Church thus furnished is a Church Triumphant in this World and such a Government is the Kingdom of Heaven upon Earth and then we shall all reign with him who is the King of Kings and who washed us in his Blood to make us Kings and Priests to God and his Father To whom be glory and dominion for ever Amen SERMON XVIII AT CHRIST'S-CHURCH IN OXFORD ON St STEVEN's Day MATH V. 44. But I say unto you love your Enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you I Need no Artifice to tie this Subject and this Day together The Saint whose memory we celebrate was the Martyr of this Text And 't is impossible to keep the Feast but by a resolution of obeying these Commands you being call'd together on this day to beseech God to grant that you by the Example of this first Martyr St. Stephen who pray'd for his Murderers may learn to love your Enemies and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you A strange command in an Age in which we scarcely can find men that love their Friends nor any thing but that which serves their interests or pleasures that indeed love nothing but themselves nor is it onely injury that works their hate and enmity but difference in opinion divides hearts and men are never to be reconcil'd that have not the same mind in every thing as if one Heaven should not hold them that have not one judgment in all things we see that one Church cannot hold them and they that have but one same God one Redeemer and Saviour one Holy Spirit of Suplication cannot agree yet in one Prayer to him though they have but one same thing to pray for to him will not meet in their Worship because they do not in some Sentiments and 't is no wonder all Christ's reasonings and upbraidings all the Advantages he does propose to them that love the shames he casts on them
cannot hope yet will in despite of that knowledge hope and do notwithstanding all think to come to Heaven Certainly while a man goes on to sin to hope for mercy is presumtion in him and so another sin added to the rest yea 't is a disbelieving of Gods threatning an affronting him in his veracity an imputing falsehood to his menaces and a putting himself almost out of the possibility of repenting For he that do's hope for Salvation in the condition he is in hath no temtation at all to change his condition but is likely to go on confidently and hopingly to eternal perdition it were a mercy to such a person to be struck into despair that he may be taught the wretchedness of his condition and hurried out it in which as long as he does hope there 's no reason to expect that he should leave it but by becoming hopeless in it may be frighted from it and the gates of hell is the onely probable means to let that man into the way of heaven O the Christians Hope it is the hope of righteousness Gal. 5. 5. Nothing else but holiness and righteousness can give a man ground for it And certainly my Brethren it is such a Hope as would countervail the trouble and the pains of reforming our selves What will not a man undertake which he can but hope to go thro and is assur'd of a large recompence for doing and surely Heaven is worth the endeavouring after and that blessed Hope worth purifying our selves for For it was worth the death of the Son of God Christ was content to be crucified to compass it and cannot we be content to purify our selves for it Will you see what hope can perswade a man to do See Abraham to whom God promis'd onely the Land of Canaan and that not to be enjoied by himself nor by his Son but onely by the Posterity of Isaac his Son and his Promises were further off than Heaven yet after that before Isaac had any Posterity when he was but a child God commands him to go and sacrifice his Isaac and go to cut off all hopes of ever enjoying it yet against hope he believed in hope saith St Paul and he that had receiv'd the promises of God offer'd up his onely begotten Son Heb. 11. 17. i. e. having entertain'd and embrac'd the promise of a numerous seed and people that should spring from him and having no other Son but this from whom they should spring nor possibility in nature nor promise above nature that he should have any more children but a plain affirmation that this People to whom the Promises belong'd should come from Isaac yet having once truly hop'd that God would perform his promise he absolutely obei'd that command of Gods resolving to kill the Son on whom all those Promises depended And now my Brethren there is no such puzles in our Hope nor no such hard thing requir'd of us no Sons to be sacrific'd but onely a few vices no doubtful perplext promise of a Canaan onely but plain assured Heaven and then had we but the least degree of his hope as we have infinitely greater reason how would we sacrifice any thing to Christs command how would we offer up a lust and think a sin a good exchange for the hopes of Heaven and he that had this hope would certainly purify himself as he is pure It is but now the Church hath celebrated the Ascension of our Lord Christ and the great Proposal of the Angels Acts 1. 11. to all those Disciples that beheld him going up to Heaven and gaz'd after him so wishly was that they should see him come again Now the particular comfort of that coming so again is when he shall appear we shall be like him 1 John 3. 2. and the hopes of being so St John thought a sufficient motive to set every man on purifying and that himself for this lustration cannot be perform'd by Proxy and be remitted to another for even our Saviors Righteousness will not be imputed unto those who will have none besides he redeems and saves none but them whom he has sav'd from their sins Reveal O Blessed God some of thy Glory which thou hast prepar'd for them that love thee some of that blessed Hope of a Christian calling to our hearts that it may stir our desires and longings and heat them into hopes and that we having the hopes of seeing thee may purify and may escape that day of fire which shall melt the Heavens and purge those glorious bodies which are not pure in thy sight Behold O God we tremble with horror of thy dreadful Judgment The Angels are not clean in thy sight and the Seraphims cover their faces what then shall become of us vile filthy Sinners whose daily impurities have so defil'd both our souls and bodies that we are but one mass and heap of uncleaness Blessed God we know that as long as we continue such we cannot hope to see thee in mercy we know that if we repent not we shall all perish we know that if we live after the Flesh we shall die eternally we know that neither fornicators c. shall have any inheritance O let this knowledg apply it self to our hearts and consciences that the terrors of it may fright us from the vain hopes that we do cherish of being happy notwithstanding we go on in our sinful courses for alas those hopes will perish with us and that those terrors may so work on us to set upon amendment Cleanse and wash we pray thee all our impurities in the bloud of thy Son bury them in his grave never to rise hereafter and melt our hearts into repentant tears that so our hearts may become purer O thou that didst cleanse us with thy bloud baptize us with thy Holy Spirit and with fire that it may purge out our dross and filthiness and be an earnest to us of that glorious Purity which we shall have in Heaven seeing thee as thou art and becoming like thee where we shall sin no more but for ever serve and praise thee SERMON VIII OF THE HIDING PLACE From Indignation Isaiah 26. 20. Come my people enter thou into thy chambers and shut thy doors about thee hide thy self as it were for a little moment until the Indignation be overpast UPON the Eve as it were and the Vigils to the day of Indignation when we cannot but look upon it as ready to be pour'd out on us in a full stream when we see destruction make close approches to us work round about us and punishment like our sin lies at the very door ready either to enter in upon us or seize us if we offer to come out to offer at a way to prevent all this that should discover to you a safe retreat from those threats that pursue this Nation in general open a shelter from the present storm cannot chuse but be seasonable yet such a thing the Text do's venture at
Tranquillity of the State is committed must have the power to judg and to determine what Faith shall be publiquely profess'd and priviledg'd by the State In which Judgment and administration if they err and priviledg a false Faith and inhibit the true they use their Power ill and are responsible to God for doing so but they do not invade or usurp a Power that is not their own Rather 't is most certain if the Principles of any Sect or else if not they yet the pursuance of any Principles do tend directly towards or are found to work Commotions and Treasonable enterprises the Supreme Power hath as much right to restrain yea and Punish them although with Death according to their several merits as he hath to punish those effects in any other instances wherein they do express themselves Nor must Religion secure those practices which it cannot sanctifie but does envenome For by putting an everlasting concern into mens Opinions and actions their undertakings are made by it more desperate and unreclaimable What Wounds and what Massacres must the State expect from them that stab and murder it with the same Zeal that the Priest kills a Sacrifice that go to act their Villanies with Devotion and go to their own Execution as to Martyrdom 'T were easie for me to deduce the practice of this Power from the best Magistrates in the best times if that were my business who had onely this temptation to say thus much that I might not seem to clash with the Magistrates Power of coercion in Religious causes when I did affirm that to destroy mens Lives or other temporal Rights on this account meerly because they are Apostates Schismaticks or otherwise reject the true Religion or Christ himself is inconsistent with the temper of the Gospel If you would discover what the temper of the Gospel is you may see it in its Prophecy and Picture in the Prophet Isay The Wolf shall dwell with the Lamb and the Leopard shall lye down with the Kid the sucking Child shall play on the hole of the Asp and the weaned Child shall put his hand on the Cockatrice den and the Serpent shall eat the dust Whatever mischief these have in themselves there 's nothing of devouring or of hurt to one another in this state 't is like Paradise restor'd the prospect of the Garden of the Lord. Rather whereas there these Creatures onely met here they lye down and dwell together And the Asp and Serpent that could poyson Paradise it self have now no venomous tooth to bite no not the heel nor spiteful tongue to hiss But to speak out of Figure the Gospel in it self requires not the Life of any for transgression against it self it calls all into it and waits their coming those that sin against it it useth methods to reform hath its Spiritual Penalties indeed whereby it would inflict amendment and Salvation on Offenders But because final impenitence and unbelief are the onely breaches of the Covenant of this Religion therefore it does wait till life and possibilities of Repentance are run out and then its Punishments indeed come home with interest but not till then The Law 't is true was of another temper it required the life of an Apostate to Idolatry whether 't were a single Person or a City Deut. xiii To the Jew that was a Child as S. Paul says and so not to be kept in awe by threats of future abdication things beyond the prospect of his care but must have present punishments the Rod still in his eye and was a refractory Child that seem'd to have the Amorite and Hivite derived into him a tincture of Idolatry in his Constitution that was as ready to run back into the superstitions as the Land of Egypt as eager for their Deities as their Onions and had the same appetite to the Calf and to the fleshpots to make the one a God the other a Meal to such a People Death that was the onely probable restraint was put into the Law by God who was himself Supream Magistrate in that Theocraty against whom 't was exact Rebellion and Treason to take another God and therefore was by him punish'd with Death But the Spirit whom Christ sends breaths no such threats for he can come on no Designs but such as Christ can join in but saith Christ I came not to destroy mens lives Secondly The temper of the Gospel is discovered in its Precepts I shall name but one Matth. v. 43 44. Ye have heard that it hath been said Thou shalt love thy Neighbour and hate thine Enemy But I say unto you love your Enemies c. Where if Enemy did not mean the man whom private quarrel had made such and Him it could not mean it being said to them that they must love that Enemy Exod. xxiii 4 5. But as the Jews neighbour was every one of his Religion and he liv'd near him that lived in the same Covenant with him so enemy being oppos'd to that must signifie one not of his Religion An Alien an Idolater with any of which they were indeed to have no exercise of love or friendship no commerce and to some Enemies the Canaanites no mercy but they were to hate them to destruction Deut. vii If so then our Saviours addition here But I say unto you love your Enemies does say that we must love even these the Christian hath no Canaanites but the most prosligated adversaries of his Religion he must love and pray for them although they persecute him Which makes appear it does at least include Enemies of Religion for Persecutions seldom were on any other ground and Religion which should have nothing else but Heaven in it as if it had the malice and the Flames of Hell breaths nothing else but Fire and Faggot to all those that differ in it But whether it be an addition and mean thus or no since it is sure that both they and we are bound to love the Neighbour and Christ hath prov'd Luke x. that the Samaritan he whom our two Disciples would consume that Schismatick and rejecter of Christ is yet a Neighbour therefore him also we must love and pray for Now 't is a strange way of affection to destroy them to love them thus to the death to get admission to their hearts with a Swords point to pray for them by calling for Fire down from Heaven to consume them S. Greg. Nazian calls the founder of that Faction that began this practice in the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and if so we know well of what Spirit he is that does call for fire to devour those that differ from him in Religion 't is sure one of this Legion or it rather is the leader of them that did dwell in Tombs and does in flames things which he loves so to inflict one that was the first Rebel too which leads me to my second Observation That Secondly To attempt upon or against the Prince on the
those that hold the truth in unrighteousness the one sort of these have some checks at sin they doubt and they demur the other sort sin merely because they would please God and offend out of zeal but the other sin because they will sin If actions lawful otherwise will make up an indictment to our condemnation don but with a doubting mind what guilt and what damnation is there in those that are undertaken against known command and present full conviction that muster up and recollect all the forementioned guilts which when they were divided did make actions so ruining at once they defy God and their own heart if he that doubts is damn'd if he eat tho what he eat were lawful to him what will become of him that eats to surfetting and knows that such things call for condemnation with what face can he blast a deceiv'd honest Heathen with his Gods who in the face of God and of all Laws in view of a believ'd hell and in despite of heaven and of his own conscience that suggests all these to him yet by frequent intemperances makes his belly his god and by uncleaness that new testament idolatry sets up as many idols as his foul heats find objects and by dishonesty and frauds serves covetousness which is idolatry They who defy their conscience thus are in the ready way to a reprobate sense the last offence that I will name When the heart gives a false judgment of things calls evil good and good evil in the Prophets words 't is not uneasy to deduce how arrive at this There is no pains bestow'd upon the education of their childhood they are made indeed to renounce the Devil the evil Spirit is exorcis'd out of that hold he had of them on the account of being born children of wrath but no provision for the Holy Spirit taken care of rather all that 's possible is don to grieve him thence and so the evil one returns finds the house emty and takes to him seven spirits worse than himself and they dwell there or to speak out of parable there are no principles of virtue planted in them no labor us'd to make impressions of Religion and the fear of God the sense of duty aversation to all vice but as far as conversation with example of all lewdness can have influence they are bred and fitted for the Temter and when they and temtations are grown up it is no wonder if they tast then swallow down the bait and so are taken then they get to themselves principles that may stop the mouth of natural conscience either Religion do's not mean so strictly or against the strictness they oppose the custome of the age or honor or the like and these together with the conversations of sin do clean take off the aversation and so by degrees the sense the mind first leaves to be afraid and startle at it and then leaves to check at it and having don this long the custome stupifies the conscience and makes the sins seem necessary to them and they cannot be without them and the absolute necessity makes them conceit them little sins and in a while no sins at all stick not to say those terrors Clergy-men do talk of are but Mormo's but religious spectres We have this daily experience that loosness in practice quickly grows into irreligion in heart that they who with all might and main do long resist the power of Godliness do at last proceed to cast off even the very form and they who would not receive the love of the truth but did prefer the satisfaction of their humors prejudices passions lusts before the doctrine of piety and virtue tho it came with the greatest evidence of reasonableness that such I say are given over to strong delusions to believe lies even lies of so eternal unhappy a consequence as this that virtue and religion are but emty names that conscience is but prejudice such are those St Paul describes 1 Tim. 4. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 men of branded consciences Now we use to account that person infamous that 's branded onely in his hand or forehead but these are men of stigmatiz'd hearts there is a brand upon their soul and conscience and you will find some other characters upon them there they depart from the faith they give heed to seducing Spirits lay out for a Religion that will give them hopes of safety tho they sin on and to doctrines of Devils fit Scholars for such Tutors seeds of a blessed education they have that have such Instructors and such they have whose consciences are branded and the whole progress of their wickedness you will find Rom. 1. from v. 18. because they hold the truth in unrighteousness join'd impious lives with the profession of the true Religion were vicious in despite of their own understandings which told them they should not be so upon which great proficiency in guilt v. 24. God withdrew his grace left them to the pursuit of all their foul desires permetted them to break out into all reproachfull villanies sins that were violences contumelies to their nature yea v. 28. because they acted perfectly against all notions they had of God he gave them up to that abominable state of mind to have no sense of guilt to have a judgment so perverted as not to think things of the most forbidden and most detestable nature to be foul and then see what a shole of consequents break in from v. 29. feind vices things that do not onely merit hell but possess enjoy and make the place These are the entertainments of those Regions but none more essential than those v. 32. they not onely commit those things but have pleasure in those that do them do not onely favor themselves in the transgressions for to that men may have some temtation from the flesh but to evince their understandings are debauch'd their consciences corrupted and that they are of a reprobate mind they take pleasure in others committing them from which they have no pleasure can enjoy nothing but the villany of being glad that others are debauch'd and vitiated this recommends men to them And truly now I have no words for them they do outgo expression I may apply that which the Psalmist saith of the fool in his heart there is no God I am sure there is none in theirs that will not let his Deputy be there not suffer conscience his Vicegerent to be within them and it were well if they could exclude it for ever But alas when their sins and pleasures shall begin to die then conscience will revive and be their worm that never dies however they have stupifi'd it here then it will gnaw eternally then oh that they could have no conscience no sting no lash but it will be an immortal feind to them and that which they so much trample on now will then be their great hell And now I can prescribe no exercise will remove this offence when
9. 4. They shall not be pleasing unto him but their Sacrifices shall be as the bread of Mourners and as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those Sacrifices for their carcases shall not come into the house of the Lord. Yea he would not let those Melancholly people keep others company in his service but there was porta lugentium a gate for Mourners to enter by themselves into the Temple-service as if the mirth were among their precepts and to be sad were to be defil'd and unclean But it is not so with us in the Gospel where the onely Sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit a broken and contrite heart he will not despise but the bread of Mourners shall be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from which he will never turn away his face and a few penitent tears are the scope and the fulfilling of all the Jewish purifyings and the Spirit of the Lord moveth upon the face of these waters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he flutters and hovers over them and as he did out of the first waters so out of those tears he hatches a new creation they being the very first effects and signs of life in the new creature and the new birth also natural to both Infants and the Child of God also are born weeping and crying this being the very first throw in regeneration Yea so far is this sorrow from displeasing God that it is the great engagement to him to give us comfort both here and hereafter and it is put amongst Christs first beatitudes here Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted The words present either a bare description of persons or withall involve a duty the being Mourners Secondly import a designation of their condition that they are Blessed Thirdly they give the reason and the manner of that condition For they shall be comforted so that mourning may be doubly understood either as a duty or as an aphorisme in the later case mourning is taken not to be prescrib'd at all but onely Christ looking upon his Disciples who were in the worlds esteem in a sad low condition he does encourage them that notwithstanding their unequal estimate yet they are in a blessed condition for they shall be sure to be comforted And thus first it may be as an appendage to the former aphorisme in that he had by the assurance of a reward encourag'd them in the entertainment of poverty and calamities had advanc't the lowly into heaven and enrich't the patient poor with the inheritance of a Kingdom those that were poor in Spirit content with their condition and then this follows blessed are those that mourn for they shall be comforted as if it were after this manner but what if our calamities do grow upon us and we are not able to bear them with an even mind and a serene countenance but they cast us down we greive and mourn under them and cannot be comforted yet even for this condition there is promise Christ is so far from breaking this bruised reed that he confirms and strengthens it the greivousness of our calamities shall not exclude all hope of ease neither shall our weakness and infirmity exclude us from the number of the blessed he will neither impute our want of courage that groans and faints under the burthen provided that we be not heated by it into impatience at his dispensations nor chaft into wrath against them that lay it on us tho we do mourn if we do not vexe we are blessed neither will he suffer our calamities when he hath tried and purg'd us by them quite to oppress us but how greivous soever they be they shall find multitudes of comfort even the comfort of mitigation for to that Gods faithfulness is engag'd 1 Cor. 10. 13. God is faithful who will not suffer you to be temted above that ye are able but will with the temtation make a way also to escape that ye may be able to bear it Secondly the internal comforts of Gods grace 2 Cor. 1. 3 4. God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort who comforteth us in all our tribulations Thirdly the comfort of a joyful recompence even here for the most part John 16. 20 21. I say unto you ye shall weep and lament but the world shall rejoyce and ye shall be sorrowful but your sorrow shall be turned into joy A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow because her hour is come but as soon as she is deliver'd of the child she remembreth no more the anguish for joy that a man is born into the world Our afflictions may be throws but they shall end in birth and have the ease and joy of a delivery and therefore our Savior said of himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Luke 12. 50. how am I straitned as a woman in child to accomplish his Baptism that Baptism of agony sweat and bloud or certainly however an eternal recompence of joy hereafter everlasting consolations as St Paul saith 2 Thess. 2. 16. When instead of this hunger and thirst and tears the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither shall there be any more pain Rev. 7. 17. and 21. 4. And first we learn hence the compassion of our Savior who hath indulg'd us the infirmities of our nature he hath not made our weak affections to be sins but hath shew'd us a way to make them advantages towards blessedness God that was made flesh remembers that we are but flesh and does not require of us to be insensible it is not a vice not to be a stock such as the Stoicks requir'd their wise man should be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 no greif nor no sense of any external calamity tho you thrust his hand into the fire it must be no more to him than if you burn his staff for his body is but his organ his instrument no part at all of him but Christ requires no such hard tasks of us Had he deni'd us our tears and forbid us the ease of mourning in afflictions and made weeping to be cowardise and sin it had bin a hard saying we had had reason to have thought ourselves severely dealt withal but he gives us leave as it were to love the dear things of this world a little to weep when they leave us if we do not love them so as not to love our brother and our God leaving them if the world leave us and when by calamities our comforts are taken from us by frettings and vexations throwing off our God from us repining at him and casting his commands away of not envying not returning provided in our tears we have humble perfect submissions and resignations of our selves throwing our selves down at his feet and from our very souls
next Enter thou into thy chambers Whence we did observe that in times of storm and calamity the onely way to withdraw our selves from the violences of discontents and troubles is to retire to Praiers and Closet exercises of Devotion If I should go to prove this I might read you the whole book of Psalms the Psalter being but Davids Liturgy in time of sadness the service and the refreshments of his sorrows To tell you that he says In my trouble I will go call upon the Lord Psal. 18. 6. and when I was in trouble I called upon the Lord Psal. 120. 1. or again for the love that I bear unto them they take now my contrary part but I give my self unto praier Psal. 109. 4. this would be to no purpose for the whole book is but doing this And indeed to do it is the best counsel God himself do's give 't is that he do's invite us to in such a discourse come my people enter And for the comforts of it I shall enclose them in the application which shall pass by that strange mistake that is in some men who seek to quench the sorrows of calamity by the entertainments of sin to divert sad thoughts by vicious company to refresh themselves with the jollities of iniquity to choak the remembrance of their afflictions with riot and drown it in excesses Alas 't is not go abroad unto the open lodgings of intemperance and to the Inns of pleasure but come and enter thou into thy chambers And secondly it shall omit that very near as great mistake of them who in times of impending calamity busy themselves with the cares of the world whose hearts are then especially set on thriving and they immerse themselves in the wayes of gain looking on that as the thing that is to be their great security and that they shall provide against all sad events by that Strange that in the time of pungent troubles when they are encompassed with misery to run into the thorns and briars as our Savior calls them should be our onely hopeful refuge and retiring place that men should be then most griping after that the cares of keeping which and the fears of loosing it are the onely great things that make calamity grievous He who then makes himself Master of possessions gives pledges to Affliction Shall I then put my self further out into the world when Gods discretion bids me enter thou into thy chambers But thirdly I apply directly to the calamitous however destitute and unhappy When thou art brought at once low enough for pity but so unhappy as to be scorn'd ruin'd and contemn'd too come here and pour out thy soul into the bosom of him who thou art sure will not refuse thee nor turn away his face from thee but stands here to invite thee with all the compellations of love Here thou mayst lay open thy case to him that had so much kindness to thee as to die for thee and mingle thy own tears with the bloud of God that was shed for thee To have any friend whom to impart thy griefs to is in good measure to unlade and emty thy self of them thou hast here the most faithful bosom of thy Savior whom thou mayst behold in the same postures of affliction that thou thy self art in out of affection to thee and suffering for thee in Agonies of one and the other sweating as much with heats of love to thee as of pain for thee hanging down his head upon the cross with languishments of kindness and of weakness and his arms stretch'd into the posture of receiving thee to his embraces and his side open'd not onely to shed bloud and water for thee but to receive thy tears and give thee passage to his very heart Come then my People come to me if thy sad expectations be like plummets at thy heart and weigh it down yet lift up thy heart together with thy hands in assur'd confidence that that kindness which did thus express it self will never fail thee If notwithstanding this the pressure make thy thoughts to sink and thy soul to grovel let it be but a bowing down in submission to my will who certainly know what is best for thee come then and give thy self up into my hands as into the hands of a faithful Redeemer Now the devout soul doing so by often betaking himself to God upon these occasions becomes acquainted with his Maker and in all discontents he will strait run to his Acquaintance there to disburden himself and in all fears thither he hasts for shelter with the very same complacencies that our Savior says the young one does to the wings of the hen at the approach of danger there the soul nestles and is hugely pleas'd with the apprehensions of its comfortable warm security By frequent converses of this kind and other practices of Devotion and Meditations on the mercies of his providence and his protecting kindnesses besides the glories of his Preparations towards his future Estate the soul mounts up to great degrees of confidence and familiaritie with God and God does use when a heart does thus ply and follow him and become intimate with him to reveal himself also to that heart in the midst of his devotions when he is conversing with the Lord he will breathe into him the inspirations of Heaven and with soft whispers speak peace close to his heart break in upon him with flashes of joy warm him with gleams of comfort which ravish the soul with delight in the emploiment Hence grow strange intercourses betwixt them the Lord pours in of his Holy Spirit that bond and ligament of God and the soul that maintains perpetual commerce between them they do nothing but close and mingle as it were till the heart mount up to those extasies that we read of in devout persons that entertain themselves to miracle in the enjoyment of those Contemplations which these exercises do afford them The heart then melts no longer in the tears and sorrows of affliction but with the dissolvings of love when thro excess of complacency in God and in his joys the soul hath a kind of impotency of Spirit so as it cannot contain it self within it self but as a liquid thing hath its overflowings and is poured out into the bosom of the beloved and by an outgoing faints from it self into an union with the Object of its affections And the Soul that by the practices of Devotion is brought to be thus affected hath not onely fulfill'd the counsel of the Text retir'd into his chambers but is also brought into Gods chambers so the Spouse in the Canticles expresses c. 1. 4. The King hath brought me into his chambers and c. 2. 4. He brought me into his banquetting house and his banner over me was love and in c. 3. 10. she describ'd the bed-chamber whether she was brought the midst whereof was pav'd with love and all this means but the entertainments of devout Contemplations And Christ in
the Parable concerning importunate continuance in Praiers saith it opens the bed-chamber door and gets in thither And then my Brethren what need I be troubled how the world does go abroad when I am entertain'd in Gods banquetting house and in his bed-chamber It were easy for me to produce instances of them that were so taken up with the joys of Devotion that they had scarce any thoughts for any thing besides they even forgot that which was most necessary to their being it made all other passions to languish they had no appetites for other things at least there was no vigour in those appetites onely decaied desires from which the soul was quite retir'd and minded nothing but the Object of their Praiers being as it were in trance and swoons of Devotion Neither is this any strange thing or without reason that the Soul that loves should be so employ'd about and bent upon the Object of those desires as to neglect all other of its offices so impetuous in serving them that it abandons all its other business attends no faculty but that which is engag'd upon that Object does not so much as lend it self to any outward organ feeds and advances onely that affection but leaves the rest to decay and languish and being destitute of soul to die Just so if the love of those Contemplations which Devotions afford take possession of the heart it becomes heartless to all other functions careless and languid to every thing besides the Soul is so wholly bent upon the Object of those impatient desires that it does not animate any other inclinations they have no spirit in them but are weak and faint neither can they employ the heart so as to make him mind them but just as the enamour'd person that may be call'd and waken'd into some other business but let his thoughts alone and they run to his desires there they unite and center And to a Soul that is thus taken up what 's the world or the miscarriages that are therein Are there fears abroad They do but make me then withdraw into my chamber where there are all these joys Does judgment threaten an utter desolation make solitude about us and drive us into the place of dragons in Davids words I will retire that way into Gods bed-chamber Is the dimness of anguish and darkness as of the shadow of death coming upon the Land yet I am sure that in the little Oratory there is the light of Gods Countenance Does Calamity rifle all plunder the very bosom breasts and bowels the bosom of its dearest guest the breasts of their dear burden the bowels of their daily food and rob necessity Yea but how stands my Praier-chamber It is not quite so ill if they have left me the food of immortality the Body and Bloud of Christ it cannot plunder me of my Devotions and there is always blessed entertainment in Gods banquetting house If these comforts do seem too subtil and too notional for any tho this do happen merely by being unacquainted with the things that give them and I have shew'd you the way how you may certainly arrive at them of which this is the sum The devout Soul receives in times of discontent not onely liberty but invitation to go and bemoan his case to him that hath God-like compassions for him so much love to him as to die for him and to cast himself with confidence upon such a kindness submitting to his all-wise all-loving will These submissions are secondly rewarded by him with the great contents of having Gods will don upon him with the comforts of finding that it is indeed best for him And sure I am there are that have experience that never any sad thing happened to them but they found that it was for the best Thirdly the custom of this repairing to God and giving themselves up to his guidance begets a great acquaintance an intimacy with the Lord he reveals himself and his comforts to that soul it do's enjoy strange refreshings from enlightnings breathings inspirations evidences and assurances even tasts of promises and preparations Lastly the contemplations of these and familiarity with God begets transcendencies of love and joy which when they are once entertain'd their desires languish to all other things they seem low and of base alloy and consequently they take no content in them being swallowed up by the other Yet let others lower souls take the comfort of this consideration when things are so that if they look into the world they can see nothing round about them but the prospect of trouble and if they go on besides the loss of all the opportunities of Religion the labors of their whole life will but serve the ruins of an hour that they have provided onely for spoil heap't up for rapine and gather'd but a prey when the affliction of such an hours consideration shall have made them forget all their prosperity so that in the whole compass of things they cannot find one occasion of comfort why then those hours they have spent or shall go and lay out on devotion and the service of God they shall be sure will turn to their account both here as to the preservation of those opportunities and of their Church for sure if God be likely to be mov'd to the continuance of them 't is to those that will make use of them and 't is for them for what should others do with them that do not value them nor use them and will also turn to their account hereafter That Praiers and those other exercises go up for a memorial to God as the Angel told devout Cornelius and prepare them mansions there when they shall be divested of all other habitations and that with Mary here is the better part that cannot be taken from them that when their Riches have forsaken them taken the adverse party and gon to their enimies these will stick by them go along with them even up to Gods Tribunal and take their part at the day of Judgment when nothing dares appear for them but Christ and Piety Oh my Brethren when you or I have spent one hearty hour in humble zealous devotions the hopes of the issues of that hour the confidence that God hath heard your and my Praiers and do's accept this our service and will eternally reward it if we continue thus tho we be not able to raise our selves up to those heights of joy and love and complacency before recited yet those lower hopes and confidences have more comfort in them than all the hours of pleasure in my life for what have I of that when the frolick's over I may as well look for the footsteps of an impression on the water whose gliding streams instantly smooth themselves or search for the tracts of birds in the yeilding air that shuts and closes up it self in a little moment as seek for relicts of joy after the pleasure is past alas the delight did vanish with the laughter and
which makes Death a miserable condition as it is the sting of the Serpent that makes him a poysonous creature so it is that which makes Death destructive For were Death the expiration of that little spark in the moving of our heart and if our spirit utterly vanisht as the soft air and were it as the Atheist in the Wise man says we are born at all adventure and shall be hereafter as tho we had never bin Death would be so far from all sting that it would be perfect rest and the end of troubles but Sin makes it onely the beginning of sorrows it changes the very nature of death by making that which seems to be the cessation of sensible function to be the very original of the sensibility of torments Then the Sinner doth begin indeed to feel when he dies Death were but the term of a miserable life did not Sin make it the birth of a more miserable life or death I know not whether to call it for it is of so strange a nature that the very uniting of a Sinner's body and soul which is the onely thing we call life God calls death Rev. 22. 13 14. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it and death and hell or the grave deliver'd up the dead which were in them that is the bodies to be joyn'd to the souls and they were judg'd every man according to their works and in that case all are cast into the lake of fire this is the second death Sin makes Resurrection to be dying and it must needs be so because as afflictions are in this life call'd death as St Paul saith in Deaths often so much more then may those torments of hell be call'd death So that in that death that Sin engages to it is necessary to live always that we may for ever die and it must be so because this makes us liable to the eternal indignation of the offended God which we were not capable of suffering were it not a death of this nature This is indeed death with a sting in it and it is the sense of this approaching that wounds the dying soul when it do's at once call to mind the wickedness of its past life and the wrath that do's await it when he recollects how sinful he hath bin and withall how hateful sin is to God so hateful that it was easier for God to send his Son to suffer death than to suffer sin to go unpunish'd then his own expectations sting and stab his very soul for if God did thus use his own Son how will he use me that have both sinn'd and trod under foot the death of that Son by going on wilfully in my sins Would you then my Brethren find out a way to make death easy and familiar to you you must pull out this sting The Jews say if Adam had continued righteous he should not have died but after a long happy life God would have taken up his soul to him with a kiss which they call osculum pacis he would have receiv'd that spirit which with his mouth he did inspire a kiss of taking leave here to meet in Heaven Wouldst thou have thy death to be the same thing 'T is but becoming righteous with the righteousness of Christ thro whom we have this Victory here in the Text the other part I am to speak to who giveth us the victory thro Jesus Christ our Lords where we have those that are partakers of the Victory and the means thro Jesus Christ our Lord and as to both these this I shall demonstrate over all those enimies in order who the us and how the Victory is gotten First the Law Now that Christ hath redeem'd us from the curse of the Law is said expresly and that by his being made a curse for us Gal. 3. 13. and what that curse of the Law was is set down in the tenth verse cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the Law to do them which no man besides Christ did ever or can do and consequently all mankind lay under that same dreadful curse obnoxious to the wrath of God and the effects of everlasting indignation but Christ by undergoing that curse and by that means satisfying that strict Law procur'd an easier to be set us upon gentler terms not perfect and unsinning strict obedience which was impossible but instead thereof the Law of Faith obsequious Faith that works by love endeavors honestly and heartily and where it fails repents that is grieves and amends and perseveres in doing so For as St Paul assures us we are not under the Law but under Grace Rom. 6. 14. tho we be under the directions of it the duty of it is most indispensable vertue always yet we are not under those strict terms of it according to the tenor of that curse but in a state of favor under terms of grace where there is mercy pardon to be had upon repentance thro faith and where there is encouragement and aid to work that faith and that amendment in us And thus far the Victory accrues to all mankind for all that will accept these terms of this remedying Law of grace the other killing strict Law hath no power over them For the Gospel was commanded to be preach'd to and its terms offer'd every creature under heaven all mankind a victory this that could not be obtain'd but by Christ's bloud the grace and favor of these easier terms for our obedience valued equal with his life for to take of this curse cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do it these strict terms he himself was made a curse and 't will be certainly a most unkind return if that which he thought worth the dying for to get us we shall not think worth the accepting slight these blessed terms and do not care unless we can be free from all necessity of an endeavor freed from vertue too as well as Law But secondly the Law being as we have shew'd it is the strength of Sin in giving it a power to condemn us that Law being taken off that power also cannot but be taken off from Sin and by that means the great strengths of that Enimy defeated Accordingly St Paul do's tell the Romans c. 6. v. 14. Sin shall not have dominion over you that is it shall not have by vertue of the Law a power to condemn you for you are not under the Law but under grace are in that state where men are not condemn'd for every gross or heinous sin altho too long continued in but there is pardon to be had for them that will but faithfully endeavor to amend turn from their sins return to Christ receive him and his pardon and where there is also help to do this 't is a true state of grace so that unless men will resolve to force their own
his Body and his Bloud is he himself Therefore thou didst receive him as verily as thou didst those and if the Sacramental food be thine then Christ is thine and thou maist say my God My Brethren it was the Bloud of Christ that purchased all the glorious mercies of the Gospel all the blessed expectations of a Christian that was the price of all the joys of Heaven that reconciled God to us bought us an interest in him and the happy enjoyments of himself for us and then if in the Sacrament Christ do give me his bloud when I can shew God that bring him the price of the remission of my sins the value of those glories even the bloud of Jesus come with the purchase-money in my hands that bought my interest in God cannot I say those are mine my Heaven and my God Yea when I can say O Lord Christ whom I have undertaken to obey my God whom I have vowed to serve and worship thou art even my flesh for there I ate thy flesh and thou becamest flesh of my flesh Thou art the portion of my cup when thy very bloud doth fill full my cup and so thou art my flesh and my bloud then surely I may say with Thomas here my Lord and my God O Holy and Eternal Savior who art made both Lord and Christ and by thy Resurrection didst manifest the Omnipotency of thy person the truth of thy Promises and open a way to the everlasting glory and salvation which thou hast prepared for them that give themselves up to serve and worship thee their Lord and God pour down that blessed influence of this thy Resurrection on our hearts in raising us from the death of sin to the life of Righteousness Be thou our Lord and Christ ruling us by thy laws saving us by thy grace and by thy Spirit applying the mercies of thy death and so making us partakers of thy Resurrection therein turning us from our iniquities hereafter in raising us to Glory O Lord we have this day made a Covenant of this with thee and signed the Articles of it in the bloud of our God swore to them at the Altar give us grace we beseech thee to use the strictest care and watchfulness in our endeavors to perform with thee Regard not how we have in times past onely mock'd thee sacredly in these performances O let it from this day be otherwise We have bin onely on a stage of Religion when we are at our devoutest performances and having turn'd our backs unto the Church turn'd them also to our duty put off the vizards of Religion and we untired our selves of all our Piety almost as soon as the exercises of it were don and howsoever we tied our selves our froward wills have bin too strong for all our obligations and burst out of them broke all thy bonds asunder and cast away thy cords from us altho we tied them with all things that were most solemn and most sacred vows and oaths and tied them before the body of our crucified Lord and Savior with the body and bloud of Christ in our hands as if we had no other desires no other cares that should do us good than as we were careful to keep those resolutions and vows and yet O Lord we did let them instantly loosen and slack pass by and fail Yea we did break them wilfully and would not be held in by thine or our own bonds O Lord if thou look upon us in this guilt sure thou wilt have no more to do with us such false and perjured vow-breakers But O look upon us in thine own bloud which thou hast bid us pour out still to establish and renew our Covenant with thee and let this Covenant wherein we have now taken thee to be our Lord and God and taken thee who art so in us remain inviolable be there then with thy Power and Autority subdue our hearts and our desires and bring them under the obedience of thy laws Thou that art God Almighty that didst conquer Death and Satan bring it to pass that none of them prevail against thee now in our Souls where thou art but use thy strength O Lord to drive their power thence that thy servants and thy people may not be enslaved to corruption and ruin nor thy Enimy gain souls from thee which thou hast purchased with thy bloud that we having attain'd thee for our Lord and God may claim the privileges of thy People here have the watches and cares and securities that thou laiest out upon thy Treasures and the Jewels of thy Crown and by thy body and thy bloud being made one with thee and thou being ours all things may be ours thy grace here and thy joys hereafter thy Spirit may be ours and thy Heaven ours and we in thee and thou in us may all enjoy thy Kingdom Power and Glory for ever SERMON XIII THE BELIEVERS CONCERN to pray for Faith Mark 9. 24. Lord I believe help thou my Vnbelief WHICH are the words of a poor parent passionately earnest and afflicted sadly for his child that from his infancy had bin tormented miserably by a Devil for which having sought help every way but finding none no not from Christ's Disciples at last he repairs to him himself beseeching him to have compassion on him and if he were able to relieve him To whom Christ replies that if he could believe then he could work the miracle and help his child all things being possible to be don for him that could believe but nothing otherwise whereupon strait way the father of the child cried out and said with tears Lord I believe help thou my unbelief In which words we have first the necessary Qualification that is to make all that had ever heard of Christ capable of having any benefit from Christ that is belief in him I believe And since Christ hath made this qualification absolutely necessary and by consequence must be suppos'd to have provided means sufficient to work in us that belief that he requires so peremtorily we shall then In the second place enquire how it comes to pass that they so often fail that men do either not believe or their Faith is so weak that much unbelief do's mix with it as in our Confessor here in the Text who tho he did profess he did believe yet withal acknowledges his unbelief And thirdly to prevent and remedy all that here is discovered whither we are to betake our selves for help and where alone 't is possible to find it and that is Christ himself who alone is able to repair in us whatever degree of true belief is wanting in us Lord help thou my unbelief and how he do's repair it And fourthly when it is repair'd to that due height what that degree is can make us capable of those benefits which he hath promis'd to bestow on true Believers and whether such believers can say with our man here I believe yet say too Help my unbelief First of
those few that allow it not Sardanapalus and yet place the Prophet Jonah not long after him must be put hard to it to find out then so great a City as he tells you Niniveh then was and so great a King of it But he altho as men of his vice possibly are apt to be somtimes a little tender hearted easily affected on some sudden passionate occasion yet that being as it mostly is a fit of penitence returning to his old abominable practices after a short Reign his Kingdom was quite rent in pieces and the City utterly destroied himself beginning it He had before inflam'd it with his lust then he set fire to it and left nothing after him besides his Epitaph a greater and more lively character of sensuality than his whole life had bin and so that City tho it did lay hold upon the time of acceptance seize the day of salvation yet it quickly let it go again And as for persons I shall need to give one onely instance since 't is of more than six hundred thousand men and each in their personal capacity All whom Males able to go out to war God brought from Egypt with a mighty hand on purpose to conduct them to the Land of Canaan and possess them of it every one of whom saw more of God's immediat presence and his Glory had more express miracle of grace and favor and forbearance also than yet ever any People in the world had yet these had their time of favor limited had their day for God's performance which time while it lasted he endur'd their provocations of the highest measure even when they made another God to lead them But when that day came and they were at the point to enter and he bid them go in and possess it and they would not make use of it being scar'd with news of Enimies taller than they and so distrusting God's help they repin'd they had not staid in Egypt rather then as I live saith God because all these men have seen my glory and my miracles which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness and have temted me now these ten times surely they shall not come into the Land concerning which I sware to make you dwell therein neither shall any of them that provoked me see it Num. 14. 22 23 30. And of all that number but two onely who provoked him not Joshua and Caleb enter'd it This very instance and the Prophe Davids application of it also Psalm 95. to the Jews of his time that they would not be as their Forefathers stubborn and untractable to all God's methods standing out against them till it was too late but that to day if they would hear his voice they should be flexible and plaint this I say St Paul in the third chapter to the Hebrews urges to the Christians that they should also be so while 't is called to day while that their â—odie their day that was allow'd them lasted least they should outstand it and they also be excluded from the everlasting rest in the Heavenly Canaan And he presses further in the sixth how God do's finally withdraw his grace from those who in the day of it resist it and makes no more tender of it to them and illustrates this in the twelfth chapter with the history of Esau who to satisfy a present appetite did sell his Birth-right and the Privileges and the Blessing that of course attended it and altho he sought it afterwards he was rejected and â—ound no place of Repentance nothing that could make his Father change his mind altho he sought it carefully with tears and with the Parable of ground which if when 't is long water'd with the dew of Heaven and hath drank that fatness which the clouds drop down it shall bring forth onely briars or continue barren 't is no longer cultivated but rejected reprobated no more fit to be water'd with the shours of Heaven but burnt up with scorching heat Our Savior's Parable about the Fig-tree too hath the same Apologue which if with three years husbandry it bear no fruit and in the fourth too being manur'd more expresly it fail also cut it down then least it cumber the ground Whether the term that limits this accepted time be meted out by years and months so much time I will bear with them and expect as the instance of the old world gives some color for or whether it be not set to days and hours but measured by their reckonings of iniquity when they have made up and filled the Epha their time shall be out as the Amorites example and the Israelites in the wilderness would evince or whether both ways as Jerusalems and Ninivehs seem plain for 't is not for me to determin Each or any of them does assure us that the time is bounded beyond which there is no term no day left if we do outstand that O that thou hadst known in this day saith he but that being expir'd then is the hour of darkness now they are hidden from thine eyes nor are they onely hidden from their eyes but God also shuts their eyes sends them the spirit of slumber on them that they may not see not perceive not understand nor be converted least he heal them The Predeterminations that do limit out the Age of mens Repentance seem much more unalterable than those are that bound the Age of Life Good Hezekiahs tears and praiers got him fifteen years accession to his days time did go back for him and he liv'd part of his Age over again But when the life that is allotted for the possibilities of Repentance is spun out when the day of God's expectation is once gon we have no instance to produce that he will call back or protract it to us death may let go its hold but obstinacy in sin does not marble Monuments have heard and bin obedient yielded up but the stony hard heart will not And indeed to be innexible arises from the very nature of that course and progress in sin that does weary out God's forbearances outstands all his offers wasts the whole day of salvation For to pass by the instances of the old World and of the Amorites of which we have no more account but that these Amorites were given up so to unnatural sin and uncleanesses that the Land spued them out in the other that the Daughters of men had effac'd all the thoughts and knowledg of God out of the very Sons of God that the wickedness of man was so great that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was onely evil continually But in Israel whom St Paul represents to us for caution thus their state was they had set their hearts on present satisfactions so eagerly and impotently that whenever there was the least want of any they repin'd that God had brought them out of Egypt that their Jehovah should be at that distance from them as in Heaven and their sustenance
invitations of his Promises the engagement of his Justice Truth and Faithfulness worth all the issues of his Goodness Mercy and Benignity worth the Incarnation Death and Passion of his Son worth Christ's Bloud to purchase worth the giving him all Power in Heaven and Earth exalting him to his own right hand a Prince and Savior to give us repentance and remission that we might be capable of that life and then to bestow it on us if this be not worth the while to strive for not in opposition to Hell eternal then indeed we know not whom we have believ'd Consider how it is this issue that such put it to a most fatal issue but the sure one of all those that will give credit to the suggestions of their flesh and this world Lord Christ we believe thee help our unbelief SERMON XVII THE CHILDREN OF THIS WORLD are wiser than the Children of Light Luke 16. 8. The Children of this world are in their Generation wiser than the Children of Light BY the Children of this World are meant those that look after and take care for onely the advantages and satisfactions of this World have no thought of or at most design for any other by the Children of Light all those that see farther into one to come and who look after that accordingly all Christians are called so 1 Thess. 5. 5. of whom howsoever some are more and some less Christian all yet are suppos'd to have bin visited by that day-spring from on high enlightned in some measure by the Gospel which brought Life and Immortality to light 2. Those former are said here in their generation in their own affairs of this World which alone they busy and concern themselves in or in their contrivance for their Age or time in this life to be wiser than those others Now Wisdom tho it import many offices and of highest concernment which have place in every serious action of our lives it weighs interests and obligations and considers circumstances which do somtimes make necessities and somtimes void them and which cannot all fall under Rules and Precepts and are therefore left to the decisions of Prudence which does judge of them and then accordingly direct and steer the actions yet these offices of Wisdom do not come directly into this comparison of our Savior It s main office in the general is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to consult and counsel well and rightly which acts since they cannot be emploi'd but about things that must be don in order to an end therefore 1. The Wise man always looks at and intends some end and 2. He pitches on such means as seem most useful and directly tending to that end yea 3. Since this Wisdom is not speculative but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is Ratio agibilium deals in things that must be don it therefore sets the man upon the use of those means in pursuit of that end it applies him to it and guides him in the execution and does all by Rules proper to each one of these Offices Now as to these three Offices of Wisdom we will try to find out how far and in what respect the Children of this World are wiser than the Children of Light the Worldling than the Christian than the most of them yea than the best and how this comes to pass that so if men will not be wrought upon by any Rules not by God's Precepts nor by means examples yet comparing themselves with themselves how much they fail of the observance of the Rules of Prudence that concern the next World in comparison of their observance of those very same Rules as to this World they may shame themselves into discretion and may learn to be a Rule and an Example to themselves which I must first enforce by that property of Wisdom which I mention'd in the first place that the wise man always looks at and intends some end I suppose this and I may well do so for the World allows the action that hath no end to be to no purpose vain and foolish Now the worldly man as such proposes as I told you to himself the satisfactions of this world either more particularly of some one kind or else all in general and the Child of Light so far as he is so designs especially the happiness of the world to come But then if in relation to their aims those men be wisest that propose the best end to themselves the Child of Light is as much wiser than the worldling as eternal Blessedness above is better than the little broken dying starts of satisfaction here below And truly 't is not in relation to their several ends in general that our Savior here compares them but the one saith he are wiser in their generation in their own concerns and that first in relation to their ends For the worldly man is intent upon his end his will is fixt to it and his affections all concenter in it We are most assur'd of this by the pains he takes to compass it all which are carried on and sweetned and made easy merely by his aims and expectation which his heart is therefore passionately set on for mens actions will be chearful vigorous and lively onely by those measures that the Soul breaths spirit into them If the will and outward faculties lookt several ways all his external motions would be force and violence not nature but since his pursuits are eager his affections are in them I should enter into an Abyss of matter and should find no end of the discourse should I attemt to shew this in the several states of men of this World in relation to their several inclinations to this World's advantages Some pour out and sell the bloud and souls both of their own and other Nations but to purchase some accession to their Territories to enlarge their bounds and glory And it is matter of astonishment how 't is possible that humane nature should attain to such a monstrous excess of barbarous bloudy villany to acquire their ends as Sylla and Marius practis'd Yet neither should men wonder and complain of these so much for every little great man that hath power would be enterprizing upon others outing and supplanting catching at more power cutting short diminishing the rights of others to extend their own and altho these Aggressors be not bloudy as the former which 't is possible they would be if they durst yet they are as unjust and false and they that are not able to do so much are not in a state to put a force on others force themselves break their own natures into soft compliances and servile attendances to reach their ends 'T is thus in all conditions the Soldier charges and storms fire and the Merchant storms the raging Sea and Tempests and if the man's heart be once bent on getting wealth he â—ells his meals his sleeps his sweat the whole emploiment of his life and his anxieties for that which onely
life and would see good daies let him eschew evil and do good But he hath a very obvious objection it is the most concerning part of wise men in the choice of means to pitch on such as are within their power for to deliberate about and to intend impossibilities is the most horrible instance of folly Now the man of this world chuseth such means as humanely speaking seem within man's power But the means whereby the Christian must attain his ends he thinks are not so and he is glad to think so 't is Apology and he had rather have the excuse of God's not giving grace to him than have the virtue and 't is certain truth that God must give it O God from whom all holy desires all good counsels all just works do proceed saith our Church All holy desires for he prepares the heart that his ear may hearken thereto his Spirit is the Spirit of supplication he must intercede in us with grones unutterable as if men need not set themselves to it but were to wait for inspiration for it from that Spirit who blows where he listeth All good counsels also and just works are from him For we are not able of our selves to think a good thought as of our selves all our sufficiency is of God 2 Cor. 3. 5. the very preparations of the heart are from him Psalm 10. 17. 't is he that does touch the heart 1 Sam. 10. 26. and open it Acts 16. 14. turn it Jer. 31. 18. he must draw us John 6. 44. which if he do not no man cometh to him and must give an heart to know him Jer. 24. 7. give a new heart Ezek. 36. 26. and in all variety of expression a new spirit I will put within you and will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and cause you to walk in my statute and ye shall keep my judgments and do them In a word he worketh in us both to will and to do Phil. 2. 13. Now since he onely does all this at his own pleasure as St Paul affirms there therefore 't is not in man's power I know O Lord saith Jeremy c. 10. 23. that the way of man is not in himself it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps no not to his main soveraign end And in this the worldling thinks he has advantage but does he not know that he must pray too as well as labor for his own bread Matt. 6. 11. it is God produceth all in order to it He bringeth food out of the earth and giveth wine that maketh man's heart glad and bread which strengthens it Psalm 104. 14 15. He that watereth the hills from his chambers v. 13. and his clouds drop fatness he prepares men corn Psalm 65. 9 10. c. 'T is he that gives us power to get what we have and he that does not know this knows not God Deut. 8. 14 17 18. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God and say in thy heart my power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth but thou shalt remember the Lord thy God for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth yea he gives it it self whatever labor we bestow in getting it 1 Chron. 29. 16. O Lord our God all this store cometh of thine hand and is all thine own riches and honor come of thee v. 12. 'T is I gave them corn and wine and oyl and multiplied her silver and her gold even that whereof they did make Baal made an Idol And God is so jealous of his honor in this particular that if men do not render this acknowledgment he threatens to take all away Therefore will I return and take away my corn in the time thereof and will recover my wooll and my flax given to cover her nakedness Hos. 2. 8 9. And if he do not take it he must bless it otherwise we shall not thrive shall have no comfort in it for the blessing of the Lord it maketh rich and he addeth no sorrow with it Prov. 10. 22. Without that bread may stuff us but not nourish we may have saturity but not have sustenance 1 Hag. 6. 9. for I did blow upon it saith the Lord. So that for ought appears if Scripture signify to the men of this world as here they appeal to it the means whereby they should attain their Ends seem no more in their power then the others For as in the order of Grace those general rules to which he hath determin'd the conversion of a sinner God must work with his means to make them effectual so in the order of Nature those general rules by which all things in nature are effected he must prepare the means and bestow the power and bless the endeavors yea and himself give all too otherwise they also cannot be effectual Thus he hath in both appointed that in one and the other we should live with constant application to and with entire dependence on him in the faithful use of means both in the one and the other order So that the objection is quite vanisht 'T is true tho somtimes God doth blast mens actions so that do they what they can they cannot prosper for some secret cause that 's unaccountable to us yet because for the most part in the sphere of Nature so far as the men of this world diligently use the means they attain their aims in some measure therefore notwithstanding all the interest God pleads in these things they make no doubt but they are sufficiently in their power much more then those in the sphere of Grace are in that of the Christians where they have express promises of not being disappointed and are requir'd by most strict and multiplied commands which represent the work of grace as duty For tho all good desires and Prayers come from God's good Spirit and from his preparing of the heart as we saw yet Before thou praiest prepare thy self and be not as one that temts God as one that waits for a particular inspiration to it one that will not pray without a Miracle Tho God is said to open Lydia's heart yet Rev. 3. 20. he dos only knock and we must open He turns the heart and therefore Ephraim praies turn thou me O God yet by Ezekiel he saies turn your selves from your transgressions and bids Judah Return now every one from his evil waies and make your waies and your doings good He promises to circumcise the heart Deut. 30. 6. but yet he bids them circumcise the foreskin of their hearts Deut. 10. 16. He dos engage to put a new heart and a new spirit in them Ezek. 18. 31. In fine altho he worketh in us both to will and to do as S. Paul says yet he therefore charges us Work out your own Salvation For it is God that worketh in you Now when the man of this world thinks all those expressions of Gods workings in the course of Nature are
which men by degrees cannot make plausible as custome renders vice necessary so by familiarity it becomes acceptable the first horrors are soon worn off and as it fares in War the enemy is made a servant and after grows up to be a favorite and is at length a master The progress from bad to worse is like that of heavy bodies downwards the native weight gains fresh accessions from the decent already made and the motion being continued grows still more rapid and irresistible That fool who said in his heart there is no God e're long emproves into a wit and loudly saies there neither is or can be one Conscience gall'd with perpetual ill usage contracts a callows hardness and becomes utterly insensible and by these unhappy steps ungodly men are dead while they live 1 Tim. 5. 6. are dead in trespasses and sins Eph. 2. 1. O thou the day-spring from on high that cam'st to visit us who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death in ignorance and sin and in the suburbs of eternal darkness shed thy light in our hearts we beseech thee and by the Illuminations of thy Holy Spirit give us enlightned minds and sanctified wills and affections Thou hast plac'd conscience in thy stead within us to do thy offices and to be thy Vicegerent to lay thy laws to us for our direction and to watch over all our actions to teach us to convince us to correct or comfort us Furnish we beseech thee then this thy commissioner within us with all qualifications necessary for thy offices endue it with the knowledg of all thy will that we may have a right judgment in all things and then endue us with obsequious hearts that may be alwaies ready to obey the dictats of our consciences willing to live piously and honestly in all things exercising our selves alwaies in this to have a conscience void of offence both towards God and towards man and when the good Lord delivers us from this sad state and the occasions of it and if at any time we do rebel against thy officer our conscience Lord arm it with thy terrors that it may whip and lash us back again into our duty and sting and goad and never let us rest till we return to our obedience and persevere therein unto the end then shall we have the blessed comforts of a good conscience here and the gladsome light of a clear heart in this world and in the world to come light and Glory with the in thy Kingdom c. SERMON XX. THE LIGHT OF THE BODY is the Eye Matt. 6. 22 23. The light of the body is the eye if therefore thy eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light But if thine eye be evill thy whole body shall be full of darkness If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness I Have drawn you the parallel betwixt the Eye and the Conscience to several of their objects and uses shew'd you how the clear eye is not a better guide to a mans walks nor finds more pleasure in the prospects of those beauties that are made to temt and entertain the sight then a pure conscience do's find in looking over the landshape of a life led righteously soberly and Godly which it must needs if it follow the guidance of this single eye this well-inform'd conscience I have lead you also to the confines of that more dismal prospect the dark of that sad state which an evil conscience do's lead into This I have done in one and that in the worst consideration that of a sear'd reprobate conscience there remain three that I propos'd to consideration the first that of an erring conscience second doubtful third scrupulous And now I am to shew how each of these do's lead a man into the dark the scrupulons raiseth a dust about him leads into error and discomfort too the doubtful do's instead of guiding him leave him so puzl'd that he knows not which way to betake himself and the erring conscience lights him into the pit and takes him by the hand only to thrust him down if in any of these waies the eye be evil the whole body shall be full of darkness Of these in their order 2. An erring conscience a conscience that gives false information of duty that either tells me I may or I must do that which either Gods Law or some Law in force upon me tells me I must not do or else tells I must not do that which I am bound to do or at the least may do Now that this is a light indeed like those deceitful ones that lead men over precipices into dark ruins like such lights that were so plac'd between the rocks as to guide the mariner into a shipwrack to make it necessary for him to be dasht against the one or the other is most certain for so it is here There is scarce such another infelicity as that this man lies under whose conscience tells him one thing when God's Law or that which is any way his duty do's require the contrary for if he do according to the Law of God he acts against his conscience and so sins and if he act according to his conscience he sins against the Law of God Poor soul Sin lies on the right and on the left hand which way soever he do's turn it seizes on him and all this I shall prove 1. That if he act against his conscience he sins tho the Law of God make it no sin Scripture and reason shall make good Rom. 14. 14. I know and am perswaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of it self but to him that esteemeth any thing unclean to him it is unclean God had once forbidden such and such meats under pain of sin to the Jews by Moses Law and made them unclean that is unlawful to their use Now Christ had taken off this obligation and made all meats lawful for any man S. Paul saith that he knew so I am assur'd that Christ hath so remov'd all obligation to the Law of Moses that to a Christian no meat is unlawful to be eaten but yet for all this 't is unlawful to him who thinks it still prohibited and if his erring conscience tell him he ought not eat it tho by Christ's certain Law he may he sins if he do eat against his conscience and that to such an height that he whose example wrought with him to eat against the perswasion of his mind destroyeth the man v. 15. Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died 't is therefore a destroying sin to do a lawful thing against a mans conscience The reason of all this is cleer because no Law of God or man no rule of duty can be applied unto us but by the mediation of conscience for till my conscience laies it to my heart and tells me such a thing is commanded and my duty it is to me as if there were
the eie is that the chief seat of those qualities is not the heart much rather 'T is true indeed that discontent and envy shed themselves into the eie they dwell there in a cloud the eie flags and is dull and do's so certainly betray a niggard envious heart that we may see it grudges spirits to its own eies and do's restrain that current that is to feed them with a vigorous life when bounty on the other side flows into the eies in a chearful stream of spirits that make them full and bright But this is not all the reason 't is not only the sign of these same inclinations that hangs out in the eie but the lust it self do's lodge and dwell there S. John calls covetousness the lust of the eie 1 John 2. 16. and that not only because the eie of the covetous is never satisfied with wealth but lusts still more and more but there is reason why it should be the lust of the eie for when goods increase they are increas'd that eat them and what good is there to the owners thereof saving the beholding them with their eies Ecclesiasticus 5. 11. When plenty do's stream in upon us with a torrent while we do lay it by and do not use it then it is clear that nothing but the eie enjoies it when we do lay it out if we dispose it to comply with fashions or to serve pomp and ostentation or to feed emulation because I will not be without what any other hath or else to entertain sports and delights it is clear that nothing but the eie is treated with the expence and with the magnificence of these neither the back nor belly hath the least relish of them nor hath the soul any other organ to imploy about them but the organ of seeing But if thy riches be expended in great provisions for the appetite unless a man can stretch his belly as he do's his barns and his demesnes and make all bigger enlarge his stomach as he do's his table pull out new sides of appetite and multiply his hungers as he do's his dishes the wealthy man himself devours but little more than when he had not such abundance only he sees more meat and sees more eaters of it so that muchness of wealth what is beyond sufficient competency nothing but the eie enjoies and it is therefore said that that lusts after it 't is the eie desires riches and with them we serve no other part And then my Brethren this expression of single eie or bountiful eie do s let us see that liberality is no great pressure to a man it do's require no inconveniences from him it do's retrench from nothing but his eie if we can but get this to be moderate in its objects get but a single eie an eie that is not covetous of every thing it likes and that delights it an eie that will be satisfied with competencies and then a man will have no other uses for much wealth but only those of doing good with it for if thine eie be not alwaies gaping after superfluities and daily novelties of entertainments pursuing every thing it fancies or any other man possesses and still ambitioning the heights of whatsoever it beholds that pleases it if he can keep it from thirsting after every thing that feeds its own pride or anothers envy keep I say but the eie in bounds of moderation and there is nothing else in man that do's require much for its satisfaction 'T is nothing else but the unlimited unwearied eie that looks thro all the world for entertainments and must have services from every part of the whole universe the Indians must dive into the depths of the Abyss and digg the rocks to get a Jewel that shall dash a little light into thine eie the Mariner must pass throughout all the variety of climes must cross the frozen and the torrid Zones to pick up those diversities of things that are to please thy sight with a new garment for thy self or for thy chamber or rather are to make a dress not for thy back indeed or for thy room but for thy eie which is not well except it see fine things that must have furniture out of the bowels of the worms and out of the bowels of the earth have gold and silver utensils and silken ornaments and have I know not what so also several nations must conspire to make up almost any one in the whole variety of sports which yet do but pass by and please the eie and move away as quick as sight it self It is the eie indeed that endears every excessive sin to us The Scripture do's most properly express it when it saies the Adulteries of the eie for its delights those of variety I mean for that too hath no other serve nothing but the eie So it is in the sin of pride and covetousness and pleasure it is that part spends almost all the riots and intemperances that drinks in objects minutely and thirsts for all diversities these consume Do but teach that to be content and there will be enough for charity If God had bid us rob our bowels for to feed the hungry divide necessity betwixt us and deny nature's cravings to hear those of the poor it had bin hard and tho the Lord emtied himself for us yet sure the croaking of our emty bowels would have sounded much like murmurings at such a precept but when he bids us only spare a little of the provisions of our eie which wants nothing at all of them do but deny thy sight some little portion of its excesses and lay out some of its unnecessary objects on the Poor and I will ask no more for charity This sure is no hard duty Get but a single eie an eie that is not niggardly and covetous that catches at and grasps at every thing that likes it do but moderate its desires and lusts and all the rest of thee thy back and belly will be easily contented will spare enough for liberality 't is nothing but an evil eie that hinders The pinching Miser he can deny all other appetites to gorge his eie he crucifies his flesh and almost starves his body to provide for his sight 't is this alone he cares for to have wealth to behold not use Could he cure this Wolf this canine appetite in his eie that is so greedy to look on wealth he might afford to give his heaps for he do's nothing else with them but see them And 't is the very same with them who are as covetous of pleasures for their sight or things to furnish out the pomps of pride or ostentation of vanity if their eie would abate in these bounty would have provisions And sure my Brethren among the lovely changes that the eie delights in this might come in for one handsom variety to see such and so many souls live cheerfully thro the help of thy liberality to see thy wealth not only feed the
them use to pursue them as far as they are able and set no bounds to themselves but those of possibility will not be limited in their prosecutions by considerations of a vertue as this man's are and therefore he is too strong for these temtations and so hath overcome the world And now if we consider the advantages of this conquest either in gross it is a victory over such Enemies as were in Christ's opinion almost invincible such as did so block up all passages and avenues to blessedness that he affirms and repetes it is impossible for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Let men think what they will of those occasions of sin which their dislikes of a low condition or of poverty makes them believe it do's abound with but I tell you there are such ineluctable temtations to vice in an estate of plenty as that without a greater measure of God's grace than is sufficient for any other state of life a man will never overcome them It is so insuperable a temtation to have that which will furnish him with all his heart or lust can wish for to have every thing that is in his desires put into his power and so impossible to part with that which serves all his inclinations when God calls for it as he do's when we cannot at once keep the estate and obey Christ which was the occasion of our Savior's words and wealth it do's so sawce and invite every vice it do's so dress objects for lust and feed with those full plenties that heat men into it and strengthen for it do's so pour in provocatives by idleness and excesses it do's so fill with insolence or pride or ostentation and vain glory it do's so swell and so puff up with heights and scorns makes men contemn others and oppress them think any thing almost is lawful in their usage of them yea become careless of Religion and by degrees contemn it too wax insolent with God scoffers at piety rude in profaness any thing forsooth they may do and a whole shole of other such like qualities are the almost certain appendages of men in estate at least in some degree In a word it takes off the heart quite from the Love of God and those things that relate to him it fixes them so to these worldly satisfactions yea when it comes to such a pinch that a man must either wound his conscience do some great deliberate sin or part with this so forsooth happy utensil his estate break with all the duty in the world rather than part with that which furnisheth him with such convenience of sins that 't is no wonder if it be impossible for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven And then for a man to have overcome the General of this great Army of ruinous vices the only leader that can draw them up against him to have cut off the source that feeds this inundation of mischeifs these overflowings of ungodliness from the heart is a good strong evidence to a man's heart that he is well resolv'd against the vices when that he do's resolvedly deprive himself of the instrument of them the thing that do's advance them and hath perfectly divorc'd from them he needs not doubt but that if it please God to bring him to straits that he shall rather be content to part with a good portion of his estate than part with a good conscience who is content to give away good part of his estate merely to exercise a vertue in obedience to God He will give it if Christ call for it who gives it if the poor call for it He is well secur'd from feeding pride excesses and the other sins of fulness with his plenty who gives all superfluities away to feed the hungry his wealth is otherwise emploied than in ministring to vice and however 't is certain his heart is taken off from the sins that are occasioned by riches who heartily gives away the occasion of those sins and tho the gate of Heaven be as strait as any needle's eie yet this wealthy Man this Camel in one sense of the word as it do's signify a cable rope when his wealth is divided thus and scattered when the rope is separated into little threads then it will go thro the straitest needle's eie and this rich man enter inter into the Kingdom of Heaven And here were argument enough for the triumphs of comfort to an heart that can discern this sign of his Election this fruit of the Holy Spirit this instance of like-mindedness to Christ this assurance of his conquest over that same Enemy which is the Fleshes auxiliary and the Devil's instrument without which neither of them could much prevail upon us for they do it by the aids the World do's bring by the temtations and the baits which it do's minister A consequent fit for Christ to glory in I have overcome the World saith he Matt. 16. 33. and truly if any man the religiously sincerely bountiful man hath don so to a great degree He hath unglued his heart from it they part with ease you see how he distributes it and throws it from him and this is sure incouragement enough to set you upon searching whether you can find this Evidence within you if it were not a certain sign also of more things a sign of particular evidences and effects of having overcome the world For first it is a sign of a perfect contentedness in ones condition for apparently he is not unsatisfied with what he hath who not only is content but who contrives to have less and gives away good part of what he hath He cannot be discontented that he hath no more than he hath who is resolved not to have so much but searches for occasions to distribute what he hath And if this be an infallible sign of a contented mind still I speak of the liberal heart not only of a scattering hand it is an evidence of the greatest happiness in this world for God hath prescribed one certain remedy for all the evils in the world a contented heart This is the only aim of all the arts and all the plenties of the world it is for this alone men dig the mines of treasures search the whole circuit of delights run thro the hurry of an universe of pleasures wherein God knows they seldom find it but all intend only content Whether they would be great or rich or be luxurious or every thing it is because they seek content in these things which he that hath in whatsoever state he be he hath the scope the price of all the treasures in the world he hath the sum and comprehension of its felicities which therefore the liberal heart hath the sure sign of yea in this he hath the certain evidence of S. Pauls temper that he so much exults in Phil. 4. 11 12 13. I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content I know both how
they deny him most teaching his goodness to consute his being If they do look upon the wondrous restitution of Gods Service as but a shifting of the Scene of Worship only another and more gaudy draught and Landskip of Religion shot on the Stage and do accordingly esteem it as a variety and entertainment for their senses only for nothing higher is engag'd I doubt me in those Offices If they assist in them not out of Principle but meer indifference to all and therefore these at present It is not halting betwixt God and Baal this it is the bowing of the knee to both which they can do to each alike when either is the uppermost and truly count them Deities alike I fear Nay when the only Ordinance the Sermon is but a prize within the Temple the Preacher but Rhetor dicturus ad aram that comes to do his Exercise before the Altar in which men are concern'd no farther than to hear and judg not to be sentenc'd by If God endure all this and do continue still his Church his Worship and his other Mercies then I may well conclude that Truly God is good to Israel But I will not be this fastidious Remembrancer These arguments may prove his goodness but sure these qualities will not preserve it to us the limitation my next part must suggest them which tells us who they are God is good to Even to such as are of a clean Heart 1. Clean. Clean Pure and Holy are so essential Attributes of the Israel or Church of God that though I must not say the Church does take in none but such For there are Tares unwholsom Poppy too and Darnel with the Wheat yet I must say that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Church is but a Congregation of such as are called to be Saints 1 Cor. i. 2. In the first Israel almost the whole Discipline of their Religion was purity in type and all the Ceremonies of their Worship were but figures rather Doctrines of Cleanness when they came first to enter Covenant with God at Horeb and to receive their Law they were to sanctifie themselves and wash their cloaths What purity do those Commandments require which they must not hear with any thing that was unclean about them which they must wash all to receive and indeed nothing with them was enterprized without it they were to cleanse themselves from the impurities of meer Contingency yea they were bound to wash their Dreams and purifie their very sleeps and all this is expounded by the Prophet Isaiah i. 16 17. Wash ye make ye clean put away the evil of your doings cease to do evil learn to do well And in our Israel by our Covenant there is as much of this required for we were all initiated into our profession by Washing regenerated in a Laver and born again of Water becoming so Tertullians Sanctitatis designati set aside for Holiness consecrated to cleanness and made the votaries of purity How clean a thing then must a Christian be who must be wash'd into the Name nor is he thus wash'd only in the Font there was a more inestimable fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness Apoc. xi 5. Jesus Christ hath wash'd us in his own blood And Heb. ix 14. The blood of Christ did purge our Consciences from dead works to serve the living God How great is our necessity of being clean when to provide a means to make us so God opens his Sons side and our Laver is drawn out of the Heart of Christ yet we have more effusions to contribute to it 1 Cor. vi 11. But ye are wash'd but ye are sanctified by the Spirit of our God and we must be Baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire A Laver of flame also to wash away our Scurf as well as sullages and beyond all these some of us have been purg'd too with the fiery trial and molten in the furnace of Affliction to separate our dross and purifie us from alloy that we may be clean and refined too may become Christians of the highest Carrect Such among others are the Obligations such the Instruments of cleanness in a Christian Let us inquire next into the importance of the quality and the degree that is exacted And here I need not say that it stands in direct opposition to the licentious practices of Vice this Scripture calls corruption and pollution 2 Pet. ii 19 20. and the Sinner is there stiled the servant of corruption sure a worthy relation this a Servant is we know meaner than whom he serves at least he is in that consideration as he serves and then I pray you in what rank of things is he or she who is below and baser than Corruption David does also call such open Sepulchres things all whose horrour does not lie in this that they enclose rottenness and putrefaction but open Sepulcres are gaping frightful noisomness and they do also shed a killing stench A man that is ingaged in conversations with impure sinners is in a like condition with him who hath no air to draw into him but that of Funeral Vaults and does suck in only the breath of Pestilence But it is a small thing to say the cleanness of a Christian does abhor such licentious impurities for it is such that though it may consist with those little stains that come by slips and failings of infirmity these are the spots of Children and also with some single fouler acts into which the man may be surprized provided they be suddenly wash'd off in tears Yet can it not consist with continuance in a known sin though it be but a breach of a single Commandment And though the man be strict in other things yet if he do allow himself one Vice he is of the number of the unclean for partial obedience does imply also partial disobedience and to the worst and foulest mixture therefore no purity Herod feared John the Baptist knowing that he was a just man and an holy and observed him and when he heard him he did many things and heard him gladly Mark vi 20. Could you but pardon him one Crime he were a most Religious person but that indulg'd makes him the wicked Herod The matter of Vriah threw dirt perpetual sticking dirt into the Character of David that man after Gods heart There are few persons but some sin or other finds a particular engagement on and does insinuate especially above all others into them the vice of Constitution the Crime of my Bosom 't is my own flesh and blood I cannot tear that from me Or else another sin does get into my Coffers the profits of it bribe me to make much on 't and it brings such a reward with it I cannot be unkind to it Or else the custom of a Vice hath made it my acquaintance and my friend and then it is so joynted into me that there is no divulsion of it Now when a Vice hath got any of these relations
to me rather than use a violence upon my self I must find out some salve now to quiet Conscience and yet keep the Vice And truly if it be but one thing that a man transgresses in he is apt to be gentle to himself and finds plump grounds to be so The best man hath his fault and this is his only in this the Good Lord pardon him in other things he will be strict but this is his particular infirmity to which his very making did dispose him having been poysoned by its Principles without his fault or conspiration 'T is true indeed men have some one or other sinful inclination which is a weight and violence upon them and which they did derive from Adam whose sin like an infection taken in by divers men breaks out in several Diseases according to variety of Constitutions But truly Adam gave them no ill Customs and they have no Original habits themselves did educate their inclinations into Vices and for those inclinations that are derived into them the water of their Baptism was therefore poured upon them to cool those inbred heats and quench those flashings out of Nature wash away those foul innate tendencies in that Laver of Regeneration which therefore they who spare and are tender to because they are original and natural they spare them for that very reason for which they there engaged to ruin them and do renounce their Baptism as to the aims and uses of it There thou didst list thy self a Soldier to fight against the Devil World and Flesh now whichsoere of these gets most into thee wilt thou think fit to spare thy Enemy because he is thy bosom one the Risque is greatest when the Foe is Rebel and Traytor too is got in thy own Quarters shuffled with thy own Forces entred thy Holds and thy Defences and mixes in thy Counsels does counterfeit thy Guard so that thou but command'st and leadst on thy own ruin Sure here is need of strictest care to rid thy self of so much treacherous danger so far is it from a defence to say this is the single force and bent of Nature in me that if I no not therefore most resist it I am perjuriously confederate with my Destruction and howsoever pure I keep my self from other Vices I am not clean David will tell me when I am Psalm xviii 23. I was uncorrupt before him and eschewed my own wickedness God hath not given us Authority to pick and choose our duties observe him where we like and leave the rest and when in the severe contritions of Repentance we come to judg our Lives we have no leave to spare a Vice because custom hath made it our Companion and Intimate or 't is as near to us as the close inclinations of our hearts He that does so although he live a careful life in other things yet all his Innocence is only this he hath a mind to but one sin and those he does not care for he forbears but that which pleaseth him that he commits And sure God is beholden to him that there is but one way of provoking which does take him and therefore must allow him what he hath an inclination to and pardon him because he does abstain from those he does not like I shall now only add that in this case St James's Aphorism holds that Whosoever shall keep the whole Law and yet offend in one point only he is guilty of all he that allows himself to break one Precept does keep none but shall be reckoned guilty of those things which he does not commit For whosoever keepeth the whole Law and yet thus offendeth in one point is guilty of all And then I need not prove such have no Title to the goodness of the Text but may conclude if God be good to Israel it is to such as are of a Clean Heart And so I fall upon the subject Heart And here I must first caution not to think the Heart is set as if it were the entire and only Principle by which a judgment might be past upon our doings as if our Actions so wholly deriv'd denomination from it that they were pure which came from a clean upright heart In opposition to which I shall not doubt to put That the external actions may have guilts peculiar to themselves such as are truly their own not shed into them by an evil mind and a man may be wicked in the uprightness of his heart when he does not intend any such thing but rather the clean contrary Our Saviour tells his Apostles The time will come that whosoever killeth you will think he doth God service John xvi 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he does offer an Oblation or Worship shall think his Murder Sacrifice that that would propitiate for other faults his Crime should seem Religion and attonement to him We have seen guilts put on such colours too and yet by these same actions which their hearts pursued with Holy aims out of a Zeal to God as S. Paul says Rom. x. 2. they sacrificed themselves and their Nation to Gods Vengeance Once more St. Paul does find reason to call himself the chief of Sinners 1 Tim. i. 15. for the commissions of that time of which he says that he served God with a pure Conscience ver 3. did what he was persuaded in his heart he ought to do pursued sincere intentions and after says he had lived in all good conscience before God until that day Acts xxiii 1. So that here was enough of the clean heart a good and a pure conscience and could his fiery persecutions by vertue of that flame within be Christned Holy Zeal Could his Pure Conscience make his Bloody hands undefil'd Oh no! 't was blasphemy and persecution and injury for all 't was Conscience for all his heart was clean from such intentions I was before a Blasphemer and a Persecuter and Injurious ver 13. We may not think to shroud foul actions under handsom Meanings and an Innocent Mind a Conscientious man may yet be chief of Sinners St. Paul was so he says and a clean Heart will not suffice alone Therefore Heart is put here accumulatively as that whose cleanness must be added to the purity of Conversation to compleat it and it implies what elsewhere he does set down more expresly Clean Hands and a Pure Heart all which a clean Heart may be set to signifie because under Gods Holy Spirit it is the principal and only safe agent in the effecting of the rest as that which only can make the other real valuable and lasting When a Disease hath once insinuated it self into the Vitals spread through the Marrow and seised the garrisons of Life the Souls strong holds and after fallies out into the outer parts in little pustles and unhandsome Ulcers they who make application only to those outward Ulcers may perchance smooth and cure the skin make the unhandsomness remove and shift its seat but all that while the man decays
let their strictnesses take in some temporal aim besides as Reputation with their Party or getting Praise or Wealth they serve Mammon or Fame with Gods Religion and make the very Worship of the Lord be the Idolatry of Covetousness or of Honour If Jehu in his Executions on Ahab and his Family intend the cutting off the Regal Line as well as Baals worship and with their Blood to purple his own Royalty though God did bid him shed that blood yet does it stain his Soul with crimson guilt and God will punish him for his Obedience I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the House of Jehu Hos. i. 4. But he that lets a vicious aim mix with his Vertue and does good to an ill end addresses Gods Religion to the Devil and makes Christ minister to Belial he does sin multipliedly both in his vicious intention and in debauching Vertue to serve Vice and he might much more innocently not have been Pious Neither is that Vertue or Heart sincere whose intentions are not purely and meerly vertuous but intend to compass some Religious end by means that are not lawful For such intentions are not clean but mixt with Vice and 't is sure I cannot please God with such kind of holy meanings If Saul will sacrifice with the Sheep and Oxen he was bid to destroy his very worship loseth him the Throne of Israel Nor an I serve God with such Pieties God never does require an action which he sees I cannot compass without sin for he requires no man to sin for that were to command me to break his Commands and I were bound to disobey him in obedience to him Shall I speak wickedly for God saith Job and then shall I do so Such Religious intentions the justice of those ends will never qualifie me for Gods goodness when it but makes Damnation just to me for so S. Paul affirms Rom. iii. 5 6 7 8. In fine if there be any wickedness in the heart it gives so foul a tincture to whatever pious actions we perform that they become sin to us 'T is true Prayer is as the Incense David says and the lifting up of our hands is like the Evening Sacrifice but if the heart of him that Prays have any heats of Malice in it truly that man does light his Incense with strange fire kindles his sacrifice with the flames of Hell for so S. James does call those heats He that gives God any of his performances and hath a naughty Heart like Nadab and Abihu he presents his Offering in an unhallowed Censer and all his holy worship will get nothing else from Heaven for him but a consuming fire as theirs did He that will offer any thing to God must take a care it be not tainted with such mixtures which spoil all the Religion making it not sincere and also spoil the Heart by making it not clean and undefiled The last remaining sense A Clean and undefiled Heart Of those things which our Saviour says defile the man some are meerly sins of the Heart such as may be consummated within the Soul and for the perpetration of which a spirit is sufficient to it self such are Pride especially spiritual pride the sin of those that think none holy as themselves and cast the black doom of Reprobation upon all that do not comply with their Opinions and interests such also are uncontentedness with our estates inward repinings at the dispositions of Providence concerning us black malice bitter envyings Now in these as the mind does need no outward members to consummate them requires no accessary Organs to work them out so neither does it require any outward accessary guilt to make them liable to condemnation we know 't was one sin of the spirit onely that made Angels Devils If a foul body be abominable to the Lord shall a foul spirit be less odious he that defiles his Soul offends God in a much nearer concern of his because that speaks nearer relation to him than the Body this was only his workmanship made out of Earth the Spirit was created out of himself a foul body is but filthy Clay but he that does pollute his Soul does putresie the Breath of God and stains a beam of the Divinity The other sort of things that are said to come from the Heart and to Defile are those which S. Paul calls works of the Flesh such as if they be committed must be committed outwardly Murders Drunkenness Revellings Revenge Wrath and Contentions Seditions Factions Schisms all Vncleannesses c. In these indeed the Heart can be but partial Actor the utmost it can do is to desire and to intend them and to contrive and manage the designs of compassing them which yet Providence or the Innocence of others may put out of the reach of mans power or his own temporal fears may make him not dare to set upon them though he do cherish the desires Now if they be obstructed from committing most men use to conclude gently of their guilts while they do keep within the Heart the Execution of them is the onely thing that does look mortal and till the sin be perfected there is no death in it And truly I confess that as it happens many times on a sudden surprize of soul when a bright gilded temptation strikes the heart and dazles the mind we see that the Will rushes on it instantly consents and wishes heartily yet within a while the Spirit does recover out of the surprize puts by the thrusts of fancy and the stabs of the temptation and that Will languishes and dies like a velleity as if it had been nothing but a woulding and now the man would not by any means consent to the commission In this case though there be a guilt to be repented of and cleansed with many tears yet this is Innocence in the comparison but if the Will purpose contrive and do its utmost it is the same to the man as if he had committed 'T were easie to demonstrate this that whatsoever evil thing a man intends and does fixedly resolve he is guilty of though he do nothing or though the thing he chance to do be never so much lawful Those sayings of St. Paul I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that there is no meat unclean of it self but to him that esteemeth any thing unclean to him it is unclean Rom. xiv 14. and he that doubteth is damned if he eat ver 23. These could have no truth in them unless the heart by choosing and pursuing to the utmost any thing that it does judg unlawful incurr'd the guilt of that unlawfulness even to Damnation and all that meerly by it self without the Action which in that case had nothing sinful in it A weight that is upheld by a mans hand and otherwise would rush down to the earth does surely gravitate as much it is as heavy though it do not fall quite down as if it did and were it let alone
it would A setled tendency a resolv'd inclination to sin that presseth with its utmost agitation is that weight which though it may perchance be stop'd in its career yet it tends to the Abysse its center and will not rest but in that Pit that hath nor rest nor bottom the Heart in this case is as liable as it can be because here it hath done its worst and such a Will shall be imputed to its self And now I need not tell those who are still designing sin or mischief in the heart although it never dares come out of those recesses how far they are removed from the goodness of God to Israel A Father finds a way to prove such souls have larger doses of Gods Vengeance who when he had asserted that the soul does not die with the body and then was ask'd what it did in that long interval for sure it is not reasonable that it should be affected with any anticipations of the future Judgment because the business of the day of Judgment should be reserved to its own day without all prelibation of the sentence and the restitution of the Flesh is to be waited for that so both soul and body may go hand in hand in their Recompences as they did in their demerits joynt Partners in the Wages as they were in the Works To this he answers The Soul does not divide all its operations with the Body some things it acts alone and if there were no other cause it were most just the Soul should there receive without the Body the dues of that which here it did commit without the Body That 's for the former sort of sins those meerly of the Heart And for the latter sort the Soul is first engaged in the commission that does conceive the sin lays the design of compassing and does contrive and carry on the machination and then why should not that be first in Punishment which is the first in the Offence Go now and reckon that thy outward gross Transgressions are the only dangerous and guilty ones and slight thy sins of Heart but know that while thy flesh is sleeping in the quiet Grave at rest and ease thy Spirit then 's in Torments sor thy Fleshes sins and feels a far severer Worm than that which gnaws thy Body Poor Soul Eternity of Hell from Resurrection to For-ever is not enough to punish it all that while it must suffer with the Body but it must have an age of Vengeance besides particularly for it self to plague it for those things it could not execute and punish it for what it did not really enjoy only because it did allow it self to desire and contrive them and it must be tormented for those unsatisfied desires And though indeed desires where they are violent if they be not allayed by satisfaction are but so much agony yet do they merit and pull on them more these Torments shall be plagued and the soul suffer for its very passion even from Death to the last Judgment and 't is but just that being it usurp'd upon the pleasures and the sins of Flesh it should also seize on and take possession of the Vengeance appointed for those sins it should invade and should usurp their condemnation But why do I stand pressing aggravations against uncleanness of Heart in an Age when God knows Vice hath not so much modesty or fear to keep within those close and dark restraints Instead of that same Cleanness which the Text requires we may find Purity indeed of several sorts but 't is either pure Fraud or pure Impiety the one of these does make a strange expression very proper pure Corruption for so it is sincere and without mixture nothing but it self no spots of Clean to chequer it but all stain The other is pure white indeed but it is that of whited Sepulcres a Life as clean as Light a bright pure Conversation but it shines with that light onely which Satan does put on when he transforms himself into an Angel of Light and it is but a glory about a fiend But yet this shines however whereas others do stand Candidates of Vice and would be glorious in wickedness and that is such a splendor as if Satan should dress himself with the shine of his own flaming Brimstone and make himself a glory with the streamings of his Lake of Fire And yet thus is the World we do not onely see men serve some one peculiar vicious inclination and cherish their own wickedness but they make every Vice their own as if the Root of bitterness branch'd out in each sort of Impiety in them such fertile soyls of sin they are here insincerity were to be wish'd and where there is not cleanness that there were a Mask that there were the Religion of Hypocrisie We may remember God was good to Israel of old by Obligation and performance the one as great as he could enter the other great to Miracle and astonishment when after seventy years Captivity and Desolation he did rebuild a Temple where there was no Monument of its Ruines and raised a Nation and Government of which there was no Reliques And yet at last when the Religion of some turned into Faction of others into Prophaneness when the strictest Sect of them the Pharisees became most holy outwardly to have the better means 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to mischief those that were not of their Party and got a great opinion of Sanctity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so as to be believed in whatsoever they did speak against the King or chief Priests and that so far as to be able openly to practise against both and raise Commotions They are Josephus's words of them and when another Sect the Zelots the most pernicious of all saith Bertram did commit Murders Sacriledg Prophanations and all kind of Villanies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with good Intentions saith the same Josephus and when those who did not separate into Sects but were the Church of Israel became lukewarm supine and negligent in their Profession yea and licentious and Prophane fit only to be joyned with Publicans in Christs expressions when sin grew generally Impudent when they did live as if they would be Scandalous as well as vicious as if they lov'd the guilt as much as the delights of sin and cared not to be wicked to themselves but must debauch as if they did enjoy the ruine of other persons sinning just as the Devil does who does not taste the sin but feasts upon the Sinners Condemnation Then did God execute a Vengeance whose prediction was fit to be mistaken for that of the Day of Judgment and whose event almost fulfill'd the terrors of that day I need not draw resemblances shew how Gods goodness to our Israel does equal that to them applying to our selves their Raptures how when the Lord turned the Captivity of our Sion we also were like them that dream surprized with Mercy Indeed as in a Dream Ideas
Bones Psal. Cix 17 18 19. And truly amongst those things which we did Curse there are that will fulfill all that most literally the Riots of thy gaudy bravery that make thee gripe extort spend thy own Wealth and other mens undo thy self and Creditors be sordid and in Debt meerly to furnish trappings to dress thy self for others eyes and may be sins these bring a Curse to cover thee as does thy Garment yea and they gird it to thee The draughts of thy Intemperance carry the malediction down into the Bowels like Water yea like the Wine into the very Spirits There is another of them too that will conveigh the Curse like Oil into the Bones till it eat out the marrow and leave nothing but it self to dwell within them yea till it putrefie the Bones till it prevent the Grave and Judgment too while the living Sinner invades the rottenness of the one and torments of the other and then the Lents and abstinencies that the sin prescribes shall be observed exactly onely to qualifie them for more sin and condemnation may be at the best but to recover them from what it hath inflicted when â—et alas they are too soft and tender the Lord knows to endure any â—rities to work out their Repentance and Atonement and yet sure â—se the Sinner does go through have nothing to commend them which these others do not much more abound with If those are not grievous to thee because they are so wholesom and though it be a miserable thing to go through all their painful squalid methods yet how disgustful soever by the benefit of their Cure they excuse their offensiveness and ingratiate the present injury they do the Flesh by the succeeding health they help thee to and by the Death they do secure thee from Why sure to omit that the other have all these advantages none have so calm and so establish'd health as the abstemious and continent and their mind is still serene their temper never clouded but besides this the Christians bitter Potions do purge away that sickness that would end in Death eternal his fastings starve that worm that otherwise would gnaw the Soul immortally his weepings quench the everlasting burnings yea there is chearful Pleasure in the midst of these severities when God breaks in in Comforts into them The Glory of the Lord appears in that Cloud too that is upon the penitent sad heart when he is drench'd in tears the Holy Ghost the Comforter does move upon those waters and breaths Life and Salvation into them and he who is the Vnction pours Oil into those wounds of the Spirit and we are never nearer Heaven than when we are thus prostrate in the lowest dust and when our Belly cleaveth unto the ground in humble penitence then we are at the very Throne of Grace And this our light afflicting of the Soul which is but for a moment does work for us a far more exceeding weight of Glory To which c. The Fourth SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL October 12. 1662. JOHN XV. 14. Ye are my Friends if ye do whatsoever I Command you THE words are a conditional Assertion of Christ's concerning his Apostles and in them all Christians And they do easily divide themselves into two parts The First is a positive part wherein there is a state of great and Blessed advantage which they are declared to be in present possession of In these words Ye are my Friends In which there are two things that make up that advantage 1. A Relation 2. The Person related to Friends and My Friends The Second is a Conditional part wherein there are the terms upon which that Possession is made over and which preserve the Right and Title to them in these words If ye do whatsoever I command you in which there are two things required as Conditions I. Obedience If ye do what I command you II. That Obedience Universal If ye do whatsoever I command you The first thing that offers it self to our consideration is the Relation Friends It is a known common-place Truth that a Friend is the most useful thing that is in whatsoever state we are It is the Soul of life and of content If I be in prosperity We know abundance not enjoy'd is but like Jewels in the Cabinet useless while they are there It is indeed nothing but the opinion of Prosperity But 't is not possible to enjoy abundance otherwise than by communicating it a man possesseth plenty onely in his Friends and hath fruition of it meerly by bestowing it If I be in adversity to have a person whom I may intrust a trouble to whose bosom is as open and as faithful to me as 't is to his own thoughts to which I may commit a swelling secret this is in a good measure to unlade and to pour out my sorrow from me thus I divide my grievances which would be insupportable if I did not disburthen my self of some part of them Now there is no bosom so safe as that where friendship lodges take Gods Opinion in the case Deut. xiii 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother or thy Son or thy Daughter or the Wife of thy bosom or thy Friend that is as thine own Soul This is the highest step in the Gradation And there is all the reason in the World for though Parent and Child are as near one to other as any thing can be to part of it self Husband and Wife are but two different names of the same one yet these may become bitter and unkind A Parent may grow cross or a Child refractory a Mother may be like the Ostrich in the Wilderness throw off her bowels with her burthen and an ungracious Son is constant pangs and travail to his Mother his whole life gives her after-throws which are most deadly Dislikes also may rest within the Marriage-Bed and lay their heads upon two wedded Pillows but none of these unkindnesses can untie the Relation that ends not where the bitterness begins he is a Parent still though froward and a Child though stubborn but a true Friend can be nothing but kind it does include a dearness in its essence which is so inseparable from it that they begin and end together A man may be an Husband without loving but cannot be a lover that is a Friend without loving And sure to have no one Friend in this Life no one that is concerned in any of my interests or me my self none that hath any cares or so much as good wishes for me is a state of a most uncomfortable prospect The Plague that keeps Friends at a distance from me while I live out of the sphere of my infection and after gives me Death hath yet less of Malignity than this that leaves me the Compassions the Prayers all the solitary Comforts all indeed but the outward entertainments of my Friends that though it shut the Door against all company yet puts a Lord have Mercy on the Door But this
out his own Bowels and cut off his hopes will Sacrifice his onely Son and Sacrifice Gods Promises to his Commands And then he that will trust to Abraham's example of believing yet will not follow him at all in doing will obey no Commands that is so far from offering up an onely Son he will not slay an onely evil Custom nor part with one out of the herd of all his vicious Habits will not give up the satisfaction to any of his carnal worldly or ambitious appetites not sacrifice a Passion or a lust to all the Obligations that God and Christ can urge him with he hath nor faith nor friendship no nor forehead 'T is true indeed he that hath Abraham's faith may well assure himself he is Christs Friend but 't is onely on this account because he that believes as Abraham believed he will not stick to do whatever Christ commands which is that universality of obedience that is the next condition that entitles to Christs friendship and my last Part. Ye are my Friends if ye do whatsoever I Command you There is no quality so necessary to a Friend or so appropriate to friendship as sincerity They that have but one Soul they can have no reserves from one another But disobedience to one Precept is inconsistent with sincerity that hath respect unto all the Commandments and he that will not do whatever Christ prescribes hath reserves of affection for some darling sin and is false to his Saviour He is an Enemy indeed so that there is no friendship on either side S. Paul says so of any of one kind the minding of the flesh saith he whether it be providing for the Belly or any other of the Organs of Carnality is desperate incurable Rebellion Now such a Rebel is we know the worst of Enemies S. James does say as much of any of those vicious affections that are set on the World Whosoever will be a friend of the World is an Enemy of God James iv 4. And he calls them adulteresses and Adulterers who think to joyn great strict Religion to some little by-love of an Honour or a profit of this World Such Men are like a Wife that not contented with the partner of her Bed takes in another now and then she must not count her self her Husbands Friend though she give him the greatest share in her affections no she is but a bosom Enemy And so any one Vice allowed is a paramour sin is whoredom against Christ and our pretended friendship to him in all other obediences is but the kindness and the caresses of an Adulteress the meer hypocrisie and treachery of love If it be necessary to the gaining Christ's friendship that thou do his Commands 't is necessary that thou do them all that thou divorce thy self from thy beloved sin as well as any other Because his Friendship does no more require other obedience than it does that but is as inconsistent with thy own peculiar Vice as with the rest Indeed it is impossible that it should bear with any they being all his murderers If thou canst find one sin that had no hand in putting Christ to Death one Vice that did not come into the garden nor upon Mount Calvary that did not help to assassin thy Saviour even take thy fill of that But if each had a stab at him if no one of thy Vices could have been forgiven had not thy Jesus died for it canst thou expect he should have kindness for his Agony or friendship for the man that entertains his Crucifiers in his heart If worldly cares which he calls Thorns fill thy head with Contrivances of Wealth and Greatness of filling Coffers and of platting Coronets for thee as the thorns did make him a Câ—own too wouldst thou have him receive thee and these in his bosom to gore his Heart as they did pierce his Head If thou delight in that intemperance which filled his deadly Cup which Vomited Gall into it can he delight in thee That Cup which made him fall upon his face to deprecate will he partake in as the pledge of mutual love He that sunk under could not bear this load of thine when it was in his Cross upon his shoulders will he bear it and thee in his Arms when thou fallest under it When thou wilt cast a shameful spewing on his glory too if he own such a Friend Thou that art so familiar with his Name as thou wer't more his Friend than any in the World whose Oaths and imprecations Moses says strike through that Name which they so often call upon thou mayst as well think his Heart did attract the Spear that pierced it and the Wound close upon its head with Unions of Love as that he hath kindness for thee If Christ may make Friendship with him that does allow himself a sin he may have fellowship with Belial For him to dwell in any heart that cherisheth a Vice were to descend to Hell again But as far as those Regions of Darkness are from his Habitation of Glory and the Black Spirits of that place from being any of his Guard of holy Myriads so for is he from dwelling with or being friend to him that is a friend to any wickedness to him that will not do whatever he commands And now if these Conditions seem hard if any do not care to be his Friend upon these terms they may betake themselves to others Let such make themselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness A Friend indeed that hath not so much of the insincerities as many great ones have For this will furnish them with all that heart or lust can wish for all that necessity or wantonness proposeth to it self to dress out pomp or Vice But yet when with enjoyment the affections grow and become so unquiet work them so as not to let their thoughts or actions rest make them quicken themselves and like the motions of all things that go downwards tending to the Earth increase by the continuance grow stronger and more violent towards the end then when they are most passionate it fails them And having filled their life with most unsatisfied tormenting cares it leaves them nothing but the guilt of all When their great Wealth shall shrink into a single sheet no more of it be left but a thin shroud and all their vast Inheritances but six foot of Earth be gone yet the iniquity of all will stick close to them and this false Friend that does it Self forsake them will neither go along nor will let its pomp follow them raises a cry on them as high as Gods Tribunal the cry of all the Blood all the oppressed rights that bribery till then had stifled the groans of all those Poor that greatness covetousness or extortion had groun'd or crush'd the yellings of those Souls that were sâ—arv'd for want of the Bread of life which yet they payed for and the price of it made those heaps which will
kind when the sins therefore lie in the Attire and they may put them off without a Metaphor yet it is so hard that it cannot be done sometimes the worth of a whole Province hangs upon a slender thread about a Neck a Patrimony thrust upon one joint of one least Finger and these warts of a Rock or a Shell-fish with the appendages eat out Estates and starve poor Creditors for whom indeed they should command these stones to be made bread but that 's a Miracle too stubborn for their Vertue And then how will they proceed to the next expression of this Duty Circumcise your selves to the Lord and take away the foreskin of your hearts Jer. iv 4. These are harder and more bloody words they differ in the pain and anguish that they put us to as much as to uncloath and flea would do It appears indeed this punishment of fleaing often went before the Cross. To 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Ctesias of one having his Skin pull'd off he was Crucified And the scourges in some measure did inflict this on our Saviour when they put off his Cloaths they strip'd his Skin also left him no covering but some rags of that which whipping had torn from his flesh Yet this expression sounds harsher when it bids us circumcise the foreskin of our hearts and tear it from thence flea that When long Conversation with the pleasures of a sin hath not onely given them Regallias but hath made them necessary to us so as that we cannot be without them when Custom craves with greater feaver than our thirst when if we want it we have qualms saintings of Soul as if the life were in that blood of the grape when men can part as easily with their own bowels as the Luxuries that feed them if you take away their Dishes then you take their Souls which dwell in them when the sins of the Bed are as neâ—dful and refreshing as the sleeps of it when to bid a man not look not satisfie his lustful eye is every jot as cruel as that other Iâ— thine eye offend thee pluck it out For if he must no more find pleasure in his sight he hath no use of it yea if this be indeed a kindness not to leave him Eyes to be to him the same as Appetite to Tantalus that which he must not satisfie and is his hell 'T is easie if the Lust be got no further than the Eye to pull them out together but if through that it shoot into the Blood and Spirits mix heats with those if it enwrap the heart twist with its strings and warm the Soul with its desires so that it Spirit all the motions all the thoughts and wishes of the heart when it is thus to make the heart to stifle its own motions stab its thoughts and strangle all its wishes to untwist and disentangle and to tear it thence if this be to be Circumcised with the Circumcision of Christ and he that hath not the sign of this the Seal of the New Covenant as he that in the Old had not the other was must be cut off our long habituated hardned Sinners must not think that there is any thing of true Repentance in their easie perfunctory sleight performances there is something like Death in the Duty which yet is required of us farther under variety of more severe expressions for we are bid thirdly to slay the Body of Sin Rom. vi 6. to mortifie our members Col. iii. 5. and to Crucifie Gal. vi 14. which how it may be done the next consideration of S. Paul's condition in the Text and my next part declare I am Crucified with Christ that is first as he was by being made conformable to his Death And truly should we trace him through all the stages of his Passion we should hardly find one passage but is made to be transcribed by us in dealing with our sins First he began it with Agony when his Soul was exceeding heavy for it labour'd with such weight of indignation as did make the Son of God to sink under the meer apprehension And he was sorrowful unto Death so as that his whole Body did weep Blood The Sinners passion his Repentance is exactly like it it begins always with grief and sense of weight whoever is regenerate was conceiv'd in sorrow and brought forth with pangs and the Child of God too is born weeping And for loads the Church when she does call us to shew forth this Death of Christ as if she did prescribe that very Agony requires that we should find that Garden at the Altar makes us say we are heartily sorry for our misdoings the remembrance of them is grievous unto us the burden of them is intolerable So that the Sinner's Soul must be exceeding heavy too Secondly There he is betrayed by his own domestick sold for the poorest Price imaginable as a Slave for thirty pieces of silver I shall not mind you what unworthy things the love of Money does engage men to to sell a Christ a Saviour and a God! and rather than stand out at such a base rate as we scorn to buy a sin at every single act 's engagement to Damnation costs more than the Ransom of the World is sold for and the Blood of God is purchas'd cheaper than any one opportunity of Vice does stand us in But I onely mind you here that he shall have a better hire that will but be a Judas to his own iniquities do but betray the Regent sins deliver them up and thou shalt have everlasting Heaven Thirdly We find him next carried before the High Priest And the strictest times of Christianity would serve their sins so to receive his doom upon them to be excommunicated into Reformation But I shall not urge how we can discover to a Physician our shames all our most putrid Guilts as well as Ulcers and make him our Confessor in our most secret sins neither will I be inquisitive why the Physicians of our souls are balk'd but will pass this part of the Conformity and follow Christ to Pontius Pilate And for this part we our selves are fitted the whole furniture of a Judicial Court all that makes up both Bench and Bar is born within us God hath given us a Conscience whereby we are a Law to our selves Rom. ii We have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Jews did want such evidence as is sufficient to condemn us the same Conscience that is privy to our doings and stands by our thoughts and sees through our intentions is a thousand witnesses And that there may be a Prosecutor our own thoughts accuse us saith S. Paul and if we will give them way will aggravate each Circumstance of guilt and danger bark and howl and cry as loud against us as the Jews did against Christ for Sin is of so murthering a guilt it will be sure to slay it self and that he may not want his deserved Ruin the Sinner makes his
of this World can entertain and slatter Thus they did and thus they did prevail For the first Ages of the Church were but so many Centuries of Men that entertained Christianity with the Contempt of the World and Life it self They knew that to put themselves into Christ's Service and Religion was the same thing as to set themselves aside for spoil and Rapine dedicate themselves to Poverty and Scorn to Racks and Tortutes and to Butchery it self Yet they enter'd into it did not onely renounce the Pomps and Vanities of the World in their Baptism when they were new born to God quench their affections to them in those waters but renounc'd them even to the death drown'd their affections to them in their own heart bloud ran from the World into flames and fled faster from the satisfactions and delights of Earth than those flames mounted to their own Element and Sphere In fine they became Christians so as if they had been Candidates of death and onely made themselves Apprentises of Martyrdom Now if it were not possible it should be otherwise than thus as the World stood then it was necessary that the Captain of Salvation should lead on go before this noble Army of Martyrs if it were necessary that they must leave all who followed him then it was not possible that he should be here in a state of Plenty Splendor and Magnificence but of Poverty and Meanness giving an Example to his followers whose condition could not but be such To give which Example was it seems of more necessity than by being born in Royal Purple to prevent the fall of many in Israel who for his condition despis'd him I am not so vain as to hope to persuade any from this great Example here to be in love with Poverty and with a low condition by telling them this Birth hath consecrated meanness that we must not scorn those things in which our God did chuse to be install'd that Humility is it seems the proper dress for Divinity to shew it self in But when we consider if this Child had been born in a condition of Wealth and Greatness the whole Nation of the Jews would have received him whereas that he chose prov'd an occasion of falling to them Yet that God should think it much more necessary to give us an Example of Humility and Poverty below expression then it was necessary that that whole Nation should believe on him When of all the Virgins of that People which God had to chuse one out to overshadow and impregnate with the Son of God he chose one of the meanest for he hath regarded the low estate of his Handmaiden said she and one of the poorest too for she had not a Lamb to offer but was purified in formâ pauperis When he would reveal this Birth also that was to be the joy of the whole Earth he did it to none of that Nation but a few poor Shepherds who were labouring with midnight-watches over their Flocks none of all the great Ones that were then at ease and lay in softs was thought worthy to have notice of it Lastly when the Angels make that poverty a sign to know the Saviour by This shall be a sign unto you You shall â—ind the Babe wrap'd in swadling cloaths and laid in a Manger As if the Manger were sufficient testimony to the Christ and this great meanness were an evidence 't was the Messiah From all these together we may easily discover what the temper is of Christianity You see here the Institution of your Order the First born of the Sons of God born but to such an Estate And what is so original to the Religion what was born and bred with it cannot easily be divided from it Generatio Christi generatio populi Christiani natalis Capitis natalis Corporis The Body and the Head have the same kind of Birth and to that which Christ is born to Christianity it self is born Neither can it ever otherwise be entertain'd in the heart of any man but with poverty of spirit with neglect of all the scorns and the Calamities yea and all the gaudy glories of this World with that unconcernedness for it that indifference and simple innocence that is in Children He that receiveth not the Kingdom of Heaven as a little Child cannot enter thereinto saith Christ True indeed when the Son of God must become a little Child that he may open the Kingdom of Heaven to Believers Would you see what Humility and lowliness becomes a Christian see the God of Christians on his Royal Birth-day A Person of the Trinity that he may take upon him our Religion takes upon him the form of a Servant and He that was equal with God must make himself of no Reputation if he mean to settle and be the Example of our Profession And then when will our high spirits those that value an huâ—â— of Reputation more than their own Souls and set it above God himself when will these become Christian Is there any more uncouth or detestable thing in the whole World than to see the great Lord of Heaven become a little one and Man that 's less than nothing magnifie himself to see Divinity empty it self and him that is a Worm swell and be puffed up to see the Son of God descend from Heaven and the Sons of Earth climbing on heaps of Wealth which they pile up as the old Gyants did Hills upon Hills as if they would invade that throne which he came down from and as if they also were set for the fall of many throwing every body down that but stands near them either in their way or prospect Would you see how little value all those interests that recommend this World are of to Christians see the Founder of them chuse the opposite extream Not onely to discover to us that these are no accessions to felicity This Child was the Son of God without them But to let us see that we must make the same choice too when ever any of those interests affront a Duty or solicite a good Conscience whensoever indeed they are not reconcilable with Innocence Sincerity and Ingenuity It was the want of this disposition and temper that did make the Jews reject our Saviour They could not endure to think of a Religion that would not promise them to fill their basket and to set them high above all Nations of the Earth and whose appearance was not great and splendid but look'd thin and maigre and whose Principles and Promises shew'd like the Curses of their Law call'd for sufferings and did promise persecution therefore they rejected him that brought it and so this Child was for the fall of many in Israel 2. This Child is for the fall of many by the holiness of his Religion while the strictness of the Doctrine which he brings by reason of mens great propensions to wickedness and their inability to resolve against their Vices
are his incitations and motions In sum as to wickedness they are meer Demoniacks This therefore is his chief and the first Engine The second Instrument by which he does demolish whatsoever hopes of Vertue we are built up to is Want of Imployment And in order to this he hath so far prevail'd on the Opinions of the World that they believe some states of men not onely have no Obligation to be busied but to have no Calling is essential to their condition which is made more eminent upon this account that they have no business Wealth how great soever if with an imployment or Profession makes a man onely a more gentile Mechanick But Riches and nothing to do make a Person of quality As if God had made that state of men far the most generous part of the whole kind and best appointed for the noblest uses of the World to serve no other ends but what the Grashoppers and Locusts do to sing and dance among the Plants and Branches and devour the Fruits and Providence had furnished them with all advantages of Plenty for no better purposes Such persons think not onely to reverse Gods Curse and In the sweat of others faces eat their bread but reverse Nature too for Job saith Man is born to labour as the sparks fly upwards in his making hath a Principle to which Activity is as essential as it is to fire to mount from which nothing else but force can hinder it As if man did do violence to his making when he did do nothing and it were his hardest work and pressure not to be imployed it were like making flame go downwards I am sure it is one of the busiest ways of doing Satan's work Our Saviour in a Parable in the 12. Chap. of S. Matth. from the 43. ver saith When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man he goeth through dry places seeking rest and findeth none Then he saith I will return into my house from whence I came out and when he is come he findeth it empty swept and garnished Then goeth he and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself and they enter in and dwell there Where under the similitude of a man cast out of his habitation who while he wanders through none but desert places seeking for a dwelling he is sure to meet with none but if he find an House that 's empty swept and garnished he hath found out not a receptacle onely but an invitation an house dress'd on purpose to call in and to detain Inhabitants He signifies that when a Temptation of the Devil is repell'd and himself upon some working occasion by a resolute act of holy courage thrown out of the heart as he finds no rest in this condition every place is desert to him but the heart of man is indeed Hell to him for he calls it Torment to be cast out thence yea he accounts himself bound up in his eternal Chains of darkness when he is restrained from working and engaging man to sin so while he goeth to and fro seeking an opportunity to put in somewhere if he find that heart from which he was cast out or any other heart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so the word is idling not imploy'd or busied so it signifies such an heart is empty swept and garnished for him 't is a dwelling that 's dress'd properly to tempt the Devil fitted to receive him and his forces too prepared for him to Garrison and make a strong hold of whence he cannot be removed for he takes unto him seven other spirits more wicked than himself and they enter in and dwell there No doubt they are the Patron-Guardian spirits of the seven deadly Sins their Tuâ—elary Devils Some of those good qualities that are the attendants of Idleness you may find decypher'd in the Scripture S. Paul says when people learn to be idle they grow tatlers busie bodies speaking things which they ought not 'T is strange that Idleness should make men and women busie bodies yet it does most certainly in other folks affairs Faction than which nothing in the world can be more restless is nurs'd by it Where are States so censured so new modell'd as at certain of our Refectories places that are made meerly for men to spend their time in which they know not what to do with At those Tables our Superiours are dissected Calumny and Treason are the common are indeed the more peculiar entertainments of the places In fine where persons have no other employment for their time but talking and either have not so much Vertue as to find delight in talking good things or not so much skill as to speak innocent recreation there they talk of others censure and backbite and scoff This is indeed the onely picquant conversation Gall is sawce to all their Entertainments And that you may know these things proceed from that old Serpent they do nothing else but hiss and bite 'T is the poyson of Asps that is under their lips which gives rellish to their Discourses 't is the sting that makes them grateful venom that they are condited with More of the brood of this want of Imployment you may find at Sodom namely Pride and Luxury For saith Ezekiel This was the Iniquity of Sodom Pride fulness of bread and abundance of Idleness was in her and in her daughters And indeed the Idle person could not possibly know how to pass his hours if he had not Delicacies to sweeten some Wine to lay some asleep and the solicitous deckings of Pride to take up others But the studious gorgings of the inside and the elaborate trimmings of the outside help him well away with them Good God! that for so many hours my morning eyes should be lift up to nothing but a Looking-glass that that thin shadow of my self should be my Idol be my God indeed to which I pay all the devotions I perform And when with so much care and time I have arrayed and marshall'd my self that I should spend as much more too in the complacencies of viewing this with eager eyes and appetite surveying every part as if I had set out expos'd them to my self alone and only dress'd a prospect for my own sight and since Nature to my grief hath given me no eyes behind that I should fetch reliefs from Art and get vicarious sight and set my back parts too before my face that so I may enjoy the whole Scene of my self And why all this for nothing but to serve vain Ostentation or negotiate for Lust to dress a Temptation and start Concupiscence And that the half of each Day should be spent thus the best part of a reasonable Creatures and a Christians life be laid out upon purposes so far from Christian or reasonable And truly Luxury will easily eat the remainder up that sure Companion of Idleness For when the Israelites were in the Wilderness where they could not eat but by
the practice of those men who minding Earthly things and all their wisdom lying as to them they therefore think themselves concern'd to represent the Doctrines of the Cross which does so contradict their wisdom as meer madness and the Cross it self as the Ensign of folly And accordingly they do treat it en ridicul and make the proper Doctrines of it the strict duties of Religion matter for their jests and bitter scoffs They character Religion as a worship that befits a God whose shape the Primitive persecutors painted Christ in Deus Onochaetes as if Christianity were proper Homage onely to an Asses person as Tertullian words it And the Votaries transform'd by this their service and made like the God they worship were what they were call'd then Asinarii creatures onely fit for burthen to bear what they magnifie a Cross and scorns No persecutions are so mortal as those that Murther the reputation of a thing or person not so much because when that is fallen once then they cannot hope to stand as because those murder after death and poison memory killing to immortality They were much more kind to Religion and more innocent that cloath'd the Christians in the skins of Bears and Tygers that so they might be worried into Martyrdom Than they that cloath their Christianity in fools Coat that so it may be laugh'd to death go out in ignominy and into contempt If to sport with things of sacred and Eternal consequence were to be forgiven yet to do it with the Cross of Christ Thus to set that out as foolishness which is the greatest mystery the Divine wisdom hath contriv'd to make mercy and truth meet together righteousness and peace kiss each other to make sin be punish'd yet the Sinner pardoned Thus to play and sin upon those dire expresses of Gods indignation against sin are things of such a sad and dangerous concern that S. Paul could not give a caution against them but with tears For many walk saith he of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping c. Which calls me to my last Consideration Indeed the Cross of Christ does represent Almighty God in so severe a shape and gives the lineaments of so fierce displeasures against sin as do exceed all comprehension There was a passion in Christs Prayer to prevent his Passion when he deprecated it with strong cries and tears yea when his whole body wept tears as of bloud to deprecate it and yet he cryed more dreadfully when he did suffer it The Nails that bor'd his Hands the Spear that pierc'd his Heart and made out-lets for his Bloud and Spirits did not wound him as that sting of death and torments sin did which made out-lets for God to forsake him and which drove away the Lord that was himself out of him Neither did his God forsake him only but his most Almighty attributes were engag'd against him Gods Holiness and Justice were resolv'd to make Christ an example of the sad demerit of Iniquity and his hatred of it Demerit so great as was valuable with the everlasting punishment of the World fal'n Angels and fal'n Men for to that did it make them liable Now that God might appear to hate it at the rate of its deservings it was very necessary that it should be punish'd if not by the execution of that sentence on Mankind as on the Devils yet by something that might be proportionable to it so to let us see the measures God abhors it by to what degrees the Lord is just and holy by those torments torments answerable to those attributes Now truly when we do reflect on this we cannot wonder if the Sinner be an enemy to the Cross and hate the prospect of it which does give him such a perfect copy of his expectations when our Saviours draught which he so trembled at shall be the everlasting portion of his Cup For if God did so plague the imputation of Iniquity how will he torment the wilful and impenitent commission of it But then when we consider those torments were the satisfaction for the sins of man methinks the Sinner should be otherwise affected to them Christ by bearing the Cross gave God such satisfaction as did move him in consideration thereof to dispence with that strict Law which having broken we were forfeit to eternal Death and to publish an act of Grace whereby he does admit all to pardon of sins past and to a right to everlasting Life that will believe on him forsake their sins and live true Christians He there appears the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the World for that he does as being a Lamb slain then he was our Sacrifice and that Cross the Altar And the humbled Sinner that repents for notwithstanding satisfaction God will not accept a Sinner that goes on by all those Agonies his holiness would not be justified if when he had forsaken and tormented his own Son for taking sin upon him he should yet receive into his favour and his Heaven Sinners that will not let go but will retain their sins but the penitent may plead this expiation Lo here I poor Soul prostrate at the footstool of the Cross lay hold upon the Altar here 's my Sacrifice on which my fins are to be charg'd and not on me although so foul I am I cannot pour out tears sufficient to cleanse me yet behold Lord and see if there ever were any Sorrow like the sorrow of thy Son wherewith thou didst afflict him for these sins of mine And here is Bloud also his Bloud to wash me in and that Bloud is within the Vail too now and that my Offering taken from the Cross up to thy Throne thou hast accepted it and canst not refuse it now my Advocate does plead it and claims for me the advantage of the Cross. Now that men should be Enemies to this and when they are forfeit to eternal Ruine hate that which is to redeem the forfeiture that they should trample on the Cross whereon their satisfactions were wrought tread down the Altar which they have but to lay hold on and be safe wage war with beat off and pursue a Lamb that Lamb of God that comes to take away their sins and make a spoil and slaughter of their Sacrifice hostilely spill upon the ground that Bloud that was appointed for their Bloud upon the Altar for their blood of sprinkling and was to appear in Heaven for them If men resolve to be on terms of Duel with their God and scorn that Satisfaction shall be made for them by any other way than by defiance and although their God do make the satisfactions for them to himself yet not endure it but chuse quarrel rather this is so perverse and fatal an hostility as no tears are sufficient to bewail But possibly men sleight these satisfactions because some terms are put upon them which they know not how to comport with the merits of the
Benedictions of those Gods chiefest Officers of blessing those that are consecrated to bless in the Name of the Lord and will have them in love for his works sake Their Third work is Government which may be some do look upon as priviledge and not as work the expectation and delight of their ambitions and not the fear and burthen of their shoulders But ambition may as rationally fly at Miracles as Government and as hopefully gape after diversity of Tongues as at presiding in the Church the powers of each did come alike from Heaven and were the mere gifts of the Holy Ghost 1 Cor. 12. 18. It was so in the Law when God went to divide part of Moses burthen of Government amongst the Lxx he came down and took off the Spirit that was upon him and gave it to the Lxx Num. 11. 25. A work this that may have reason to supersede much of that which I first mentioned For notwithstanding all Saint Paul's Assistances of Spirit he does reckon that care that came upon him daily from the Churches amongst his persecutions and it summes up his Catalogue of sufferings 2 Cor. 11. Such various Necessities there are by which Government is distracted and knows not how to temper it self to them For sometimes it must condescend Paul notwithstanding Apostolical decrees made in full Council that abrogated Circumcision as the Holy Ghost had declared it void before yet is fain to comport so far with the violent humours of a party as to Circumcise Timothy at the very same time when he delivered those decrees to the Churches to keep Act. 16. 3 4. yet afterwards when Circumcision was lookt on as Engagement to the whole Law and to grant them that one thing was but to teach them to ask more and to be able to deny them nothing then he suffers not Titus to be Circumcised nor gave place to them by submission no not for an hour Gal. 2. 3 5. Thus the Spirit of Government is sometimes a Spirit of meekness does it work by soft yieldings and breaks the Adamant with Cushions which Anvils would not do The Ocean with daily billows and tides helpt on with storms of violence and hurried by tempests of roaring fury assaults a rock for many Ages and yet makes not the least impression on it but is beat back and made retire in empty some in insignificant passion when a few single drops that distil gently down upon a rock though of Marble or a small trickle of water that only wets and glides over the stone insinuate themselves into it and soften it so as to steal themselves a passage through it and yet Government hath a rod too which like Moses's can break the rock and fetch a stream out of the heart of quarre and which must be used also The Holy Spirit himself breathed tempest when he came blew in a mighty boisterous Wind nor does he always whisper soft things he came down first in a sound from heaven and spoke thunder nor did it want lightning the tongue was double flame Of some we knowwe must have a Compassion but others must be saved with terror Jude 22. 23. which drives me on to the last piece of their work The Censures of the Church the burthen of the Keys which passing by the private use of them in voluntary penitences and discipline upon the sick as they signifie publick exclusion out of the Church for scandalous Enormities and re-admission into it upon repentance have been sufficiently evinc'd to belong to the Governours of the Church The Exercise of these is so much their work that Saint Paul calls them the Weapons of their spiritual Warfare by which they do cast down imaginations and every high things that exalteth it self against the Knowledge of God and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ 2 Cor. 10. 4 5. A blessed victory even for the Conquered and these the only Weapons to atchieve it with If those who sin scandalously and will not hear the admonitions of the Church were cast out of the Church if not Religion Reputation would restrain them somewhat Not to be thought fit Company for Christians would surely make them proud against their Vices Shame the design'd Effect of these Censures hath great pungencies the fear of it does goad men into actions of the greatest hazard and the most unacceptable such as have nothing lovely in them but are wholly distastful There is a Sin whose face is bloody dismal and yet because t is countenanc'd by the Roysting Ruffian part of the World men will defie Reason and Conscience Man's and God's Law venture the ruine of all that is belov'd and dear to them in this World and assault death and charge and take Hell by violence rather then be asham'd before those valiant sinners Satans Hectors and they must â—ever come into such Company if they do not go boldly on upon the sin is of more force with them than all the indearments of this World than all their fear of God and Death and that which follows Now if Religion could but get such Countenance by the Censures of the Church and every open sinner had this certain fear I should be turn'd out of all Christian company shall be avoided as unfit for Conversation would it not have in some degree the like effect and if the motive beas much exactly would not men be chast or sober or obedient for that very reason for which they will now be kill'd and be damn'd Without all question Saint Peter's Censure on the intemperate 1 Cor. 5. must needs be reformation to him 'T is such a sentence to the drunkard not to company with him whose Vice is nothing but the sauce of Company and who does sin against his Body and against his faculties and against his Conscience is sick and is a Sott and goes to Hell meerly for Societies sake Now the infliction of these Censures is so much the work to which Church-governours are call'd by the Holy Ghost that they are equally call'd by him to it and to Himself both are alike bestow'd upon them Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins ye retain they are retained John 20. 22. And in the first derivations of this office it was performed with severities such as this Age I doubt will not believe and when they had no temporal sword to be auxiliary to these Spiritual weapons And now to make reflections on this is not for me to undertake in such a state of the Church as ours is wherein the very faults of some do give them an Indemnity who having drawn themselves out of the Church from under its authority are also got out of the power of its Censures So Children that do run away from their Fathers house they do escape the Rod but they do not consider that withal they run away from the inheritance And many times in those that do not do so but stay within the family long intermission of the Rod and
in these instances See pride and passions swoln up to an height which Christ's Mount cannot reach and which he must not level by his precepts For since he was not pleas'd to consider how inconsistent in this last age of the World his rules would be with those of honour and in making his Laws took no care of the reputation of a Gentleman 't is fit his Laws should give way to the constitutions ' of some Hectors and he must bear the violation of them And all this must be reasonable too Good God! what prodigy of age is this when Christ the Lord cannot be competent to judge either of right of honour or of realon When to be like God and to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect is to be most fordid and unworthy of a Gentleman and in the name of God these men that are too great for virtue that brave out Religion and will needs give rules to God what rank do they intend up stand in at Gods Judgment seat on the last day Lord God! grant us to stand among the week on that hand with the sheep and those that are too poor in spirit to defy their enemies and thy commands for however the â—eek maketh himself a prey and is so far from enjoying the promise of inheriting the Earth that the virtue is sacrce allow'd to sojourn in the Earth as if it had breath'd it's last in this our Martyrs prayer took it's flight with his spirit and those stones that flew him were the Monument of loving enemies of praying for those that persecute and murder and such Charity were not to be found among us any more yet sure I am these Charitable persons shall enjoy the friendship and the glories of that Lover that did Bless do good to Pray and Dye for Enemies and these meek men shall reign with the Lord who was stain and is worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing all which be ascribed to him and to the Father of all mercies the God of Consolation and to the Spirit of Love now and for evermore FINIS * John 20. 30 31. a Hil. l. 1. de Trinâ—t p. 53 54. Clemens Al. Strom. 6. p. 675. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vid. Justin. Mart. ad Diognetum p. 499. Athanas ad Serapionem tom 1. p. 191. 194 edit Par. 1672. c Justin. ex Trogo l. 36. Diod. Sicul. l. 1. Stâ—abo l. 16. Plin. 30. Tac. Hist. 5. Joseph contra Apionem mentions many others d Exod. 7 8 9 10. Chapters e Exod. 14. 21. f Exod. 16. 15. Deut. 8. 24. g Exod. 16. 20. h Exod. 16. 24. i Num. 11. 16. 20. 31 32. k Num. 20. 8. 11. l Exod. 20. m Jossh 6. 20. n Josh. 6. 20. o Num. 2. 32. Num. 11. 21. p Jer. 25. 11 12. q Isa. 44. 26. 21. 28. 45. 1. r Dan. 9. 24. c. s Tac. An. l. 15. t Vid. Raim Martin pugfid p. 2. c. 8. u Celsus apud Orig. l. 2. Julian Cyril contra ipsum 6. Origâ—n contra Cels. l. 2. c. 69. x Mat. 8. Mar. 1. Luc. 4. y Mat. 8. Mar. 5. Luc. 8. z Mat. 9. Mar. 2. Luc. 5. a Mar 5. Luc 8. b John 5. c Luc. 7. d Maâ— 14. Mar. 6. Luc. 9. John 6. e Mat. 15. Mar. 8. f Mat. 17. Mar. 9. Luc. 9. g John 11. h Mat. 24. Mar. 13. Luc. 21. i Mar. 26. Mar. 14. John 12. k Mat. 27. Mar. 15. Luc. 23. John 19. l â—hlegen apud Origen conâ—ra Cels. l. 2. p. 8â— Euseb. ad Olyn 20â— ann 4 〈◊〉 lop Georg. Syncd Thallâ—s apud African vid. Scal. ammad ad Euseb. Chron. p. 186 ad ann 2044. Etiam vide Just. Mart. p. 76. p. 84. Tertull. Aâ—pol c. 21. de isto terrae motu agere Tacitum Plin. l. 2. c. 84. scribit Oros. m Mat. â—8 Mar. 16. Luc. 29. John 24. n Mar. 16. 9. o Luc. 24. 5. p V. 33. q V. 13. r V. 36 37 41. s John 20. 24 t John 21. u Mat. 28. 16. Mar. 15. 6 x 1 Cor. 15. 7. y Luc. 24. 49. Acts 1. 4. 5. z Acts 1. 9. Luc. 24. 5â— a Acts 2. 6 7 8. b Luc. 1. 14. c 1 Cor. 4. 9. d 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Suidas in voce 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 e Whence Eusebius says l. 2. Eccl. hist. c. 14. they at Rome not thinking it enough to have heard the Gospel once 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not being contented with the preaching of the heavenly doctrine while it was but an unwritten doctrine earnestly entreat St Mark that he would leave in writing with them a monument of that doctrine which had bin delivered to them by preaching Nor did they give over till they had prevail'd which when St Peter knew by revelation of the H. G. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being extremly pleas'd with that desire and their earnestness in it He approv'd it and appointed it to be read in their assembly f Euseb. l. 3. c. 37. g l. 10. epist. 97. h Just. Mart. dial cum Tryph. Judaeo p. 247 302 311. Iren. l. 2. c. 56 57. i Excerpt ex Quadrat Apolog. ad Hadrianum apud Euseb. l. 4. c. 3. k Just. Mart. Apol. 2. p. 98. l Iren. l. 3. c. 1. m Just. Mart. Apol. 2. Eccl. Smyrnens apud Euseb. l. 4. c. 15. Ecclesiarum Viennen Lugdun comment de passiene Martyr suorum apud Euseb. l. 5. c. 1. Niceph. l. 3. 4. n Orig. contra Cels. l. 2. p. 62. p. 80. Tertul Apol. c. 23. o Niceph. l. 5. c. 29. p V. Euseb. l. 6. 7. fere integros de Sev. Spartian Tertul. de Decio S. Cypr. q Euseb. l. 8. c. 2. â— 6. Niceph. l. 7. c. 6. Euseb. l. 8. â— 11. c. 9. Sulp. Sev. l. 2. Oros. l. 7. c. 25. Ignatii Patr. Antioch literas apud Scalig. de emend temp l. 5. p. 496. Spond ad annum 302. n. 4. Luke 1. 4. r Ego quidem etiamsi non semel sed saepe id in sacris moniment is scriptum extaret non id circo tamen ita rem prorsus se habere crederem Socin de Jesu Chr. Servatore parte 3. c. 6. operum tom 2. p. 204. s John 10. 30. t 1. John 5. 7. The Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one 8. The Spirit and the Water and the Blood and these three agree in one u Heb. 1. 10 11 12. x Psal. 102. 25 26 27. y The reasonableness of this supposition might be demonstrated if there were any need of it z L. 1. de Sanct. Beatit c. 17. a Psal. 27. 8. b Psal. 4. 6. c Psal. 45. 12. d Concil tom 18. p. 295. e Sigon de regno Ital. ad annum 712. l. 3. p. 94. f Sigon de regno Ital. ad annum 726. l. 3. p. 103. g Leonis imperium respuerunt ac