invested in the light of joy and my body in the light of glory How glorious is God as he looks down upon us through the Sunne How glorious in that glasse of his How glorious is God as he looks out amongst us through the king How glorious in that Image of his How glorious is God as he calls up our eyes to him in the beauty and splendor and service of the Church How glorious in that spoufe of his But how glorious shall I conceive this light to be cum sub loco viderim when I shall see it in his owne place In that Spheare which though a Spheare is a Center too In that place which though a place is all and every where I shall see it in the face of that God who is all face all manifestration all all Innotescence to me for facies Deiest qua Deus nobis innotescit that 's Gods face to us by which God manifests himselfe to us I shall see this light in his face who is all face and yet all hand all application and communication and delivery of all himselfe to all his Saints This is Beatitudo in Auge blessednesse in the Meridionall height blessednesse in the South point in a perpetuall Sommer solstice beyond which nothing can be proposed to see God so Then There And yet the farmers of heaven and hell the merchants of soules the Romane Church make this blessednesse but an under degree but a kinde of apprentiship after they have beatified declared a man to be blessed in the fruition of God in heaven if that man in that inferiour state doe good service to that Church that they see much profit will rise by the devotion and concurrence of men to the worship of that person then they will proceed to a Canonization and so he that in his Novitiat and years of probation was but blessed Ignatius and blessed Xavier is lately become Saint Xavier aud Saint Ignatius And so they pervert the right order and method which is first to come to Sanctification and then to Beatification first to holinesse and then to blessednesse And in this method our blessed God bee pleased to proceed with us by the operation of his holy Spirit to bring us to Sanctification here and by the merits and intercession of his glorious Sonne to Beatification hereafter That so not being offended in him but resting in those meanes and seales of reconciliation which thou hast instituted in thy Church wee may have life and life more abundantly life of grace here and life of glory there in that kingdome which thy Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud Amen SERMON XLV Preached at Saint Dunstans Aprill 11. 1624. The first sermon in that Church as Vicar thereof DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no Childe the Wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her FRom the beginning God intimated a detestation a dislike of singularity of beeing Alone The first time that God himselfe is named in the Bible in the first verse of Genesis hee is named plurally Creavit Dit Gods Gods in the plurall Created Heaven and Earth God which is but one would not appeare nor bee presented so alone but that hee would also manifest more persons As the Creator was not Singular so neither were the creatures First he created heaven and earth both together which were to be the generall parents and out of which were to bee produced all other creatures and then he made all those other creatures plurally too Male and female created hee them And when he came to make him for whose sake next to his own glory he made the whole world Adam he left not Adam alone but joyned an Eve to him Now when they were maried we know but wee know not when they were divorced we heare when Eve was made but not when shee dyed The husbands death is recorded at last the wives is not at all So much detestation hath God himselfe and so little memory would hee have kept of any singularity of being alone The union of Christ to the whole Church is not expressed by any metaphore by any figure so oft in the Scripture as by this of Mariageâ— and there is in that union with Christ to the whole Church neither husband nor wife can ever die Christ is immortall as hee is himselfe and immortall as hee is the head of the Church the Husband of that wife for that wife the Church is immortall too for as a Prince is the same Prince when he fights a battaile and when hee triumphs after the victory so the militant and the triumphant Church is the same Church There can bee no widower There can bee no Dowager in that case Hee cannot shee cannot die But then this Metaphore this spirituall Mariage holds not onely betweene Christ and the whole Church in which case thee can be no Widow but in the union between Christs particular Ministers and particular Churches and there in that case the husband of that wife may die The present Minister may die and so that Church be a Widow And in that case and for provision of such Widows wee consider the accommodation of this Law If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no childe the wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger c. This law was but a permissive law rather a dispensation then a law as the permitting of usury to bee taken of strangers and the permitting of divorces in so many cases were At most it was but a Iudiciall law and therefore layes no obligation upon any other nation then them to whom it was given the Iews And therefore wee enquire not the reasons of that law the reasons were determined in that people wee examine not the conveniences of the law the conveniences were determined in those times wee lay hold onely upon the Typique signification and appliablenesse of the law as that secular Mariage there spoken of may be appliable to this spirituall Mariage the Mariage of the Minister to the Church If brethren dwell together c. From these words then wee shall make our approaches and application to the present occasion by these steps First there is a mariage in the case The taking and leaving of a Church is not an indifferent an arbitrary thing It is a Mariage and Mariage implies Honour It is an honourable estate and that implies charge it is a burdensome state There is Honos and Onus Honour and labour in Mariage You must bee content to afford the honour wee must bee content to endure the labour And so in that point as our Incumbencie upon a Church is our Mariage to that Church wee shall as farre as the occasion admits see
he be put to give judgement upon a particular man that stands before him at the bar according to that Law That that man that stands there that day must that day be no man that that breath breathed in by God to glorify him must be suffocated and strangled with a halter or evaporated with an Axe he must be hanged or beheaded that those limbs which make up a Cabinet for that precious Jewell the image of God to be kept in must be cut into quarters or torne with horses that that body which is a consecrated Temple of the Holy Ghost must be chained to a stake and burnt to ashes hee that is not affected in giving such a judgment upon such a man hath no part in the bowels of Christ Jesus that melt in cōpassion when our sinnes draw and extort his Judgements upon us in the mouth of those Prophets those men whom God sends it is so and it is so in the mouth of God himself that sends them Heu vindicabor says God Alas I will revenge mee of mine enemies Alas I will is Alas I must his glory compels him to doe it the good of his Church and the sustentation of his Saints compell him to it and yet he comes to it with a condolency with a compassion Heu vindicabor Alas I will revenge mee of mine enemies so also in another Prophet Heu abominationes Alas for all the evill abominations of the house of Israel for as it is added there they shall fall that is they will fall by the sword by famine by pestilence and as it follows I will accomplish my fury upon them Though it were come to that height fury and accomplishment consummation of fury yet it comes with a condolency and compassion Heu abominationes Alas for all the evill abominations of the house of Israel I would they were not so ill that I might be better to them Men sent by God do so so does God that sends those men he that is both God and man Christ Jesus does so too We have but two clear records in the Scriptures of Christs weeping and both in compassion for others when Mary wept for her dead brother Lazarus and the Jews that were with her wept too Iesus also wept and he groan'd in the spirit and was troubled This was but for the discomfort of one family it was not a mortality over the whole Country It was but for one person in that family it was not a contagion that had swept or did threaten the whole house it was but for such a person in that family as he meant forthwith to restore to life again and yet Iesus wept groaned in the Spirits was trobled he would not lose that opportunity of shewing his tendernesse and compassion in the behalf of others How vehement how passionate then must we beleeve his other weeping to have been when hee had his glorious and beloved City Jerusalem in his sight and wept over that City and with that stream of tears powred out that Sea that tempestuous Sea those heavy judgements which though he wept in doing it he denounced upon that City that glorious that beloved City which City though Christ charge to have stoned them that were sent to her and to bee guilty of all the righteous blood shed upon the earth the holy Ghost cals the holy City for all that not onely at the beginning of Christs appearance The Devill took him up into the holy City for at that time she was not the unholyer for any thing that shee had done upon the person of Christ but when they had exercised all their cruelty even to death the death of the Crosse upon Christ himselfe the Holy Ghost calls still the holy City Many bodies of Saints which slept arose and went into the holy City When the Fathers take into their contemplation and discourse that passionate exclamation of our Saviour upon the Crosse My God my God why hast thou forsaken me those blessed Fathers that never thought of any such sense of that place that Christ was at that time actually in the reall torments of hell assign no fitter sense of those words then that the foresight of those insupportable and inevitable and imminent judgements upon his City and his people occasioned that passionate exclamation My God my God why hast thou forsaken me That as after he was ascended into heaven he said to Saul Cur me persequeris He called Sauls persecuting of his Church a persecuting of him so when hee considered that God had forsaken his people his Citie his Jerusalem he cryed out that God had forsaken him God that sent the Prophets the Prophets that were sent Christ who was both the person sent and the sender came to the inflicting and denouncing of judgements with this Vae dolentis a heart and voice of condoling and lamentation Grieve not then the holy Spirit of God says the Apostle extort not from him those Judgements which he cannot in justice forbear and yet is grieved to inflict How often doe we use that motive to divert young men from some ill actions and ill courses How will this trouble your friends how will this grieve your Mother this will kill your Father The Angels of heaven who are of a friendship and family with us as they rejoyce at our conversion so are they sorry and troubled at our aversion from God Our sins have grieved our Mother that is made the Church ashamed and blush that he hath washed us and clothed us in the whitenesse and innocency of Christ Jesus in our baptisme and given us his bloud to drinke in the other Sacrament Our sins have made our mother the Church ashamed in her selfe we have scandalized and offended the Congregation and our sinnes have defamed and dishonoured our mother abroad that is imprinted an opinion in others that that cannot be a good Church in which we live so dissolutely so falsely to our first faith and contract and stipulation with God in Baptisme Wee have grieved our brethren the Angels our mother the Church and we have killed our Father God is the father of us all and we have killed him for God hath purchased a Church with his bloud says Saint Paul And oh how much more is God grieved now that we will make no benefit of that bloud which is shed for us then he was for the very shedding of that bloud We take it not so ill pardon solow a comparison in so high a mystery for since our blessed Saviour was pleased to assume that metaphor and to call his passion a Cup and his death a drinking we may be admitted to that Comparison of drinking too we take it not so ill that a man go down into our Cellar and draw and drinke his fill as that he goe in and pierce the vessells and let them runne out in a wastfull wantonneste To satisfie the thirst of our soules there was a
people and gather them so So Christ tells us things in darknesse And so Christ speakes to us in our Ear And these low voices and holy whisperings and halfe-silences denote to us the inspirations of his Spirit as his Spirit beares witnesse with our spirit as the Holy Ghost insinuates himselfe into our soules and works upon us so by his private motions But this is not Gods ordinary way to be whispering of secrets The first thing that God made was light The last thing that he hath reserved to doe is the manifestation of the light of his Essence in our Glorification And for Publication of himselfe here by the way he hath constituted a Church in a Visibility in an eminency as a City upon a hill And in this Church his Ordinance is Ordinance indeed his Ordinance of preaching batters the soule and by that breach the Spirit enters His Ministers are an Earth-quake and shake an earthly soule They are the sonnes of thunder and scatter a cloudy conscience They are as the fall of waters and carry with them whole Congregations 3000 at a Sermon 5000 at a Sermon a whole City such a City as Niniveh at a Sermon and they are as the roaring of a Lion where the Lion of the tribe of Juda cries down the Lion that seekes whom he may devour that is Orthodoxall and fundamentall truths are established against clamorous and vociferant innovations Therefore what Christ tels us in the darke he bids us speake in the light and what he saies in our eare he bids us preach on the house top Nothing is Gospell not Evangelium good message if it be not put into a Messengers mouth and delivered by him nothing is conducible to his end nor available to our salvation except it be avowable doctrine doctrine that may be spoke alowd though it awake them that sleep in their sinne and make them the more froward for being so awaked God hath made all things in a Roundnesse from the round superficies of this earth which we tread here to the round convexity of those heavens w ch as long as they shal have any beeing shall be our footstool when we come to heaven God hath wrapped up all things in Circles and then a Circle hath no Angles there are no Corners in a Circle Corner Divinity clandestine Divinity are incompatible termes If it be Divinity it is avowable The heathens served their Gods in Temples sub dio without roofs or coverings in a free opennesse and where they could in Temples made of Specular stone that was transparent as glasse or crystall so as they which walked without in the streets might see all that was done within And even nature it self taught the naturall man to make that one argument of a man truly religious Aperto vivere voto That he durst pray aloud and let the world heare what he asked at Gods hand which duty is best performed when we joyne with the Congregation in publique prayer Saint Augustine hath made that note upon the Donatists That they were Clancularii clandestine Divines Divines in Corners And in Photius we have such a note almost upon all Heretiques as the Nestorian was called Coluber a snake because though he kept in the garden or in the meadow in the Church yet he lurked and lay hid to doe mischief And the Valentinian was called a Grashopper because he leaped and skipped from place to place and that creature the Grashopper you may hear as you passe but you shall hardly find him at his singing you may hear a Conventicle Schismatick heare him in his Pamphlets heare him in his Disciples but hardly surprize him at his exercise Publication is a fair argument of truth That tasts of Luthers holy animosity and zealous vehemency when he says Audemus gloriari Christum à nobis primo vulgatum other men had made some attempts at a Reformation and had felt the pulse of some persons and some Courts and some Churches how they would relish a Reformation But Luther rejoyces with a holy exultation That he first published it that he first put the world to it So the Apostles proceeded when they came in their peregrination to a new State to a new Court to Rome it selfe they did not enquire how stands the Emperour affected to Christ and to the preaching of his Gospel Is there not a Sister or a Wife that might be wrought upon to further the preaching of Christ Are there not some persons great in power and place that might be content to hold a party together by admitting the preaching of Christ This was not their way They only considered who sent them Christ Jesus And what they brough salvation to every soul that embraced Christ Jesus That they preached and still begunne with a Vae si non Never tell us of displeasure or disgrace or detriment or death for preaching of Christ. For woe be unto us if we preach him not And still they ended with a Qui non crediderit Damnabitur Never deceive your own souls He to whom Christ hath been preached and beleeves not shall be damned All Divinity that is bespoken and not ready made fitted to certaine turnes and not to generall ends And all Divines that have their soules and consciences so disposed as their Libraries may bee At that end stand Papists and at that end Protestants and he comes in in the middle as neare one as the other all these have a brackish taste as a River hath that comes near the Sea so have they in comming so neare the Sea of Rome In this the Prophet exalts our Consolation Though the Lord give us the bread of Adversity and the water of Affliction yes shall not our Teachers be removed into corners They shall not be silenced by others they shall not affect of themselves Corner Divinity But saies he there our eyes shall see our Teachers and our eares shall hear a word saying This is the way walke in it For so they shall declare that they have taken to heart this Commandement of him that sent them Christ Jesus All that you receive from me you must deliver to my people therefore Take heed what you hear forget none of it But then you must deliver no more then that and therefore in that respect also Take heed what you hear adde nothing to that and that is the other obligation which Christ laies here upon his Apostles That reading of those words of Saint Iohn Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum Every spirit that dissolves Jesus that takes him asunder in pieces and beleeves not all is a very ancient reading of that place And upon that Ancient reading the Ancients infer well That not onely that spirit that denies that Christ being God assumed our flesh not onely he that denies that Christ consists of two natures God and Mam but he also that affirmes this Christ thus consisting of two natures to consist also of two persons this man dissolves Iesus takes him asunder in
and our North and South at another tyde and another gale First then we looke towards our East the fountaine of light and of life There this world beganne the Creation was in the east And there our next world beganne too There the gates of heaven opened to us and opened to us in the gates of death for our heaven is the death of our Saviour and there he lived and dyed there and there he looked into our west from the east from his Terasse from his Pinacle from his exaltation as himselfe calls it the Crosse. The light which arises to us in this east the knowledge which we receive in this first word of our text Faciamus Let us where God speaking of himselfe speakes in the Plurall is the manifestation of the Trinity the Trinity which is the first letter in his Alphabet that ever thinks to read his name in the book of life The first note in his Gammut that ever thinks to sing his part in the Quire of the Triumphant Church Let him him have done as much as all the Worthies and suffered as much as all Natures Martyrs the penurious Philosophers let him have known as much as they that pretend to know Omne scibile all that can be known nay and in-intelligibilia In-investigabilia as Turtullian speakes un-understandable things unrevealed decrees of God Let him have writ as much as Aristotle writ or as is written upon Aristotle which is multiplication enough yet he hath not learnt to spel that hath not learnt the Trinity not learnt to pronounce the first word that cannot bring three Persons into one God The subject of naturall philosophy are the foure elements which God made the Subject of supernaturall philosophy Divinity are the three elements which God is and if we may so speake which make God that is constitute God notifie God to us Father Sonne and holy Ghost The naturall man that hearkens to his owne heart and the law written there may produce Actions that are good good in the nature and matter and substance of the worke He may relieve the poore he may defend the oppressed But yet he is but as an open field and though he be not absolutely barren he bears but grasse The godly man he that hath taken in the knowledge of a great and a powerfull God and enclosed and hedged in himselfe with the feare of God may produce actions better then the meere naturall man because he referres his actions to the glory of his imagined God But yet this man though he be more fruitfull then the former more then a grassy field yet he is but a ploughed field and he bears but corne and corne God knowes choaked with weeds But that man who hath taken hold of God by those handles by which God hath delivered and manifested himselfe in the notions of Father Sonne and holy Ghost he is no field but a garden a Garden of Gods planting a Paradise in which grow all things good to eate and good to see spirituall resection and spirituall recreation too and all things good to cure He hath his beeing and his diet and his physique there in the knowledge of the Trinity his beeing in the mercy of the Father his physique in the merits of the Sonne his diet his daily bread in the daily visitations of the holy Ghost God is not pleased not satisfied with our bare knowledge that there is a God For it is impossible to please God without faith and there is no such exercise of faith in the knowledge of a God but that reason and nature will bring a man to it When we professe God in the Creed by way of beleefe Credo in Deum I beleeve in God in the same article we professe him to be a Father too I beleeve in God the father Almighty And that notion the Father necessarily implies a second Person a Sonne And then we professe him to be maker of heaven and earth And in the Creation the holy Ghost the Spirit of God is expresly named So that we doe but exercise reason and nature in directing our selves upon God We exercise not faith and without faith it is impossible to please God till we come to that which is above nature till we apprehend a Trinity We know God we beleeve in the Trinity The Gentiles multiplyed Gods There were almost as many Gods as men that beleeved in them And I am got out of that thrust and out of that noise when I am come into the knowledge of one God But I am got above staires got in the Bedchamber when I am come to see the Trinity and to apprehend not onely that I am in the care of a great and a powerfull God but that there is a Father that made me a Sonne that Redeemed me a holy Ghost that applies this good purpose of the Father and Sonne upon me to me The root of all is God But it is not the way to receive fruits to dig to the root but to reach to the boughs I reach for my Creation to the Father for my Redemption to the Sonne for my sanctification to the holy Ghost and so I make the knowledge of God a Tree of life unto me and not otherwise Truly it is a sad Contemplation to see Christians scratch and wound teare one another with the ignominious invectives and uncharitable names of of Heretique and Schismatique about Ceremoniall and Problematicall and indeed but Criticall verball controversies and in the meane time the foundation of all the Trinity undermined by those numerous those multitudinous Anthills of Socinians that overflow some parts of the Christian world and multiply every where And therefore the Adversaries of the Reformation were wise in their generation when to supplant the credit of both those great assistants of the Reformation Luther and Calvin they impute to Calvin fundamentall error in the Divinity of the second Person of the Trinity the Sonne And they impute to Luther a detestation of the very word Trinity and an expunction thereof in all places of the Liturgy where the Church had received that word They knew well if that slander could prevaile against those persons nothing that they could say could prevaile upon any good Christians But though in our doctrine we keep up the Trinity aright yet God knowes in our practice we doe not I hope it cannot be said of any of us that he beleeves not the Trinity but who amongst us thinkes of the Trinity considers the Trinity Father and Sonne doe naturally imply and induce one another and therefore they fall oftner into our consideration But for the holy Ghost who feels him when he feels him Who takes knowledge of his working when he works Indeed our Fathers provided not well enough for the worship of the whole Trinity nor of the holy Ghost in particular in the endowments of the Church and Consecrations of Churches and possessions in their names What a spirituall dominion in the prayers and worship of
Fifty SERMONS PREACHED BY THAT LEARNED AND REVEREND DIVINE JOHN DONNE D r IN DIVINITY Late Deane of the Cathedrall Church of S. PAULS London The Second Volume LONDON Printed by Ia. Flesher for M. F. I. Marriot and R. Royston MDCXLIX TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BASIL EARLE OF DENBY My very good Lord and Patron My Lord IN a season so tempestuous it is a great encouragement to see your Lordship called to the Helme who in your publique negociations having spent so many yeares in that so famed Common-wealth of Venice must of necessity have brought home such excellent Principles of Government that if our Fate doe not withstand your Directions we may reasonably at last expect to see our new Brittish Lady excell that ancient Adriatique Queene Neither can I offend much against the State in begging your Patronage and perusall of this Book knowing that your Lordship first mastered all the Learning of Padoa before you did adventure upon that wise Senate who amongst all her other greatnesses has ever had a principall care that Learning might not be diminished When these Sermons were preached they were terminated within the compasse of an houre but your acceptance may make them outlive the very Churches that they were preached in and give them such a perpetuity that Nec Jovis Ira nec Amor edacior multò poterit abolere For though a fiery zeale in succeeding ages hath often both ruined the Temples and casheired the gods that were worshipped in them Yet such sacrifices as these have beemy laies kept unburnt and we are suffered to know those religions that we are not allowed to practice Nor can I expect any greater advantage for the paines I have taken in publishing this Book then that posterity may know I did it when I had the favor and protection of your Lordship and was allowed to stile my selfe Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BOLSTRED WHITLOCK RICHARD KEEBLE 〈◊〉 JOHN LEILE Lords Commissioners of the Great Seale THe reward that many yeares since was proposed for the publishing these Sermons having been lately conferred upon me under the authority of the Great Seale I thought my selfe in gratitude bound to deliver them to the world under your Lordships protection both to show how carefull you are in dispensing that part of the Churches treasure that is committed to your disposing and to encourage all men to proceed in their industry when they are sure to find so just and equall Patrons whose fame and memory must certainely last longer then Bookes can find so noble Readers and whose present favors doe not onely keep the Living alive but the Dead from dying Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE A Table directing to the severall Texts of SCRIPTURE handled in this Book Sermons preached at Mariages Sermon I. Preached at the Earl of Bridgwaters house in London on MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven p. 1. Serm ' II. GEN. 2. 18. And the Lord God said It is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a Help meet for him p. 9. Serm. III. HOSEA 2. 19. And I will mary thee unto me for ever p. 15 Sermons preached at Christnings Serm. IV. REVEL 7. 17. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall governe them and shall leade them unto the lively fountaines of waters and God shall wipe away all teares from their eyes p. 23 Serm. V. EPHES. 5. 25 26 27. Husbands love your wives even at Christ loved the Church and gave himselfe for it that he might sanctifie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the Word That he might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinckle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blame p. 31 Serm. VI. 1 JOH 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the blood and these three agree in one p. 39 Serm. VII GAL. 3. 27. For all yee that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. p. 50. Sermons preached at Churchings Serm. VIII CANT 5. 3. I have washed my feet how shall I defile them p. 59. Serm. IX MICAH 2. 10. Arise and depart for this is not your rest p. 67. Serm. X. A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 74. Sermons preached at Lincolns-Inne Serm. XI GEN. 28. 16 17. Then Iacob awoke out of his sleep and said Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware And he was afraid and said How fearefull is this place This is none other but the House of God and this is the gate of Heaven p. 83 Serm. XII JOH 5. 22. The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgement to the Sonne p. 94. Serm. XIII JOH 8. 15. I judge no man p. 101. Serm. XIIII JOB 19. 26. And though after my skin wormes destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God p. 106. Serm. XV. 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God p. 118. Serm. XVI COLOS. 1. 24. Who now rejoyce in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his bodies sake which is the Church p. 128. Serm. XVII MAT. 18. 7. Wo unto the world because of offences p. 136. Serm. XVIII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 142 Serm. XIX PSAL. 38. 2. For thine arrowes stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore p. 158. Serm. XX. PSA 38. 3. There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne p. 162. Serm. XXI PSAL. 38. 4. For mine iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me p. 174. Serm. XXII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 186. Serm. XXIII A third Serm. on the same Text. p. 192. Sermons preached at White-Hall Serm. XXIV EZEK 34. 19. And as for my flocke they eate that which ye have trodden with your feet and they drink that which yee have fouled with your feet 199. Serm. XXV A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 208. Serm. XXVI ESAI 65. 20. For the childe shall die a hundred yeers old but the sinner being a hundred yeers old shall be accursed p. 218 Serm. XXVII MARK 4. 24. Take heed what you hear p. 228 Serm. XXVIII GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our own Image after our likenesse p. 239. Serm. XXIX A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 250 Sermons preached to the Nobility Serm. XXX JOB 13. 15. Loe though he slay me yet will I trust in him p. 262. Serm. XXXI JOB 36.
25. Every man may see it man may behold it afar off p. 271. Serm. XXXII APOC. 7 9. After this I beheld and loe a great multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lambe clothed with white robes and Palmes in their hands p. 279. Serm. XXXIII CANT 3. 11. Go forth ye daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart p. 288. Serm. XXXIIII LUKE 23. 34. Father forgive them for they know not what they doe p. 304. Serm. XXXV MAT. 21. 44. Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken but on whosoever it shall fall it will grinde him to powder p. 311. Sermons preached at S. Pauls Sermon XXXVI JOH 1. 8. He was not that Light but was sent to beare witnesse of that Light p. 320. Serm. XXXVII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 334. Serm. XXXVIII A third Ser. on the the same Text. p. 343. Serm. XXXIX PHIL. 3. 2. Beware of the Concision p. 356. Serm. XL. 2 COR. 5. 20. We pray yee in Christs stead Be ye reconciled to God p. 364. XLI HOSEA 3. 4. For the Children of Israel shall abide many dayes without a King and without a Prince and without a Sacrifice and without an Image and without an Ephod and without Teraphim p. 375. Serm. XLII PROV 14. 31. He that oppresseth the poor reprocheth his Maker but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the 〈◊〉 p. 385. Serm. XLIII LAMENT 4. 20. The breath of our nostrils the Anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits p. 396. Serm. XLIV MAT. 11. 6. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me p. 411. Sermons preached at S. Dunstans Serm. XLV DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them dye and have no childe the Wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her p. 422. Serm. XLVI PSAL. 34. 11. Come ye children Hearken unto me I will teach you the feare of the Lord. p. 430. Ser. XLVII GEN. 3. 24. And dust shalt thou eate all the dayes of thy life p. 439. Ser. XLVIII LAMENT 3. 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath p. 445. Serm. XLIX GEN. 7. 24. Abraham himself was ninety nine yeeres old when the foreskin of his flesh was Circumcised p. 456. Serm. L. 1 THES 5. 16. Rejoyce evermore p. 466. A SERMON PREACHED At the Earl of Bridgewaters house in London at the mariage of his daughter the Lady Mary to the eldest sonne of the L. Herbert of Castle-iland Novemb. 19. 1627. The Prayer before the Sermon O Eternall and most gracious God who hast promised to hearken to the prayers of thy people when they pray towards thy house though they be absent from it worke more effectually upon us who are personally met in this thy house in this place consecrated to thy worship Enable us O Lord so to see thee in all thy Glasses in all thy representations of thy selfe to us here as that hereafter we may see thee face to face and as thou art in thy self in thy kingdome of glory Of which Glasses wherein we may see thee Thee in thine Unity as thou art One God Thee in thy Plurality as thou art More Persons we receive this thy Institution of Mariage to be one In thy first work the Creation the last seale of thy whole work was a Mariage In thy Sonnes great work the Redemption the first seale of that whole work was a miracle at a Mariage In the work of thy blessed Spirit our Sanctification he refreshes to us that promise in one Prophet That thou wilt mary thy selfe to us for ever and more in another That thou hast maryed thy selfe unto us from the beginning Thou hast maryed Mercy and Iustice in thy selfe maryed God and Man in thy Sonne maryed Increpation and Consolation in the Holy Ghost mary in us also O Lord a Love and a Fear of thee And as thou hast maryed in us two natures mortall and immortall mary in us also the knowledge and the practise of all duties belonging to both conditions that so this world may be our Gallery to the next And mary in us the Spirit of Thankfulnesse for all thy benefits already bestowed upon us and the Spirit of prayer for the continuance and enlargement of them Continue and enlarge them O'God upon thine universall Church c. SERM. I. MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven OF all Commentaries upon the Scriptures Good Examples are the best and the livelyest and of all Examples those that are nearest and most present and most familiar unto us and our most familiar Examples are those of our owne families and in families the Masters of families the fathers of families are most conspicuous most appliable most considerable Now in exercises upon such occasions as this ordinarily the instruction is to bee directed especially upon those persons who especially give the occasion of the exercise that is upon the persons to bee united in holy wedlock for as that 's a difference betweene Sermons and Lectures that a Sermon intends Exhortation principally and Edification and a holy stirring of religious affections and then matters of Doctrine and points of Divinity occasionally secondarily as the words of the text may invite them But Lectures intend principally Doctrinall points and matter of Divinity and matter of Exhortation but occasionally and as in a second place so that 's a difference between Christening sermons and Mariage sermons that the first at Christnings are especially directed upon the Congregation and not upon the persons who are to be christened and these at mariages especially upon the parties that are to be united and upon the congregation but by reflexion When therefore to these persons of noble extraction I am to say something of the Duties and something of the Blessing of Mariage what God Commands and what God promises in that state in his Scriptures I lay open to them the best exposition the best Commentaries upon those Scriptures that is Example and the neerest example that is example in their own family when with the Prophet Esay I direct them To look upon the Rock from whence they are hewen to propose to themselves their own parents and to consider there the performance of the duties of mariage imposed by God in S. Paul and the blessings proposed by God in David Thy Wife shall be a fruitfull Vine by the sides of thy House The children like olive plants round about the table For to this purpose of edifying children by example such as are truly religious fathers
word that is without understanding or considering the institution vertue of baptisime expressed in Gods word and so receive baptisme onely for temporall and naturall respects they are not led to the waters but they fall into them and so as a Man may be drowned in a wholsome bath so such a Man may perish eternally in baptisme if he take it for satisfaction of the State or any other by respect to which that Sacrament is not ordained in the word of God He shall lead Men of years by Instruction and he shall lead young children in good company and with a strong guard he shall lead them by the faith of his Church by the faith of their Parents by the faith of their sureties and undertakers He shall lead them and then when he hath taken them into his government for first it is Reget he shall govern them and then Deducet that is he shall lead them in his Church and therefore they that are led to baptisme any other way then by the Church they are misled nay they are miscarried misdriven Spiritu vertiginis with the spirit of giddinesse They that joyne any in commission with the Trinity though but as an asstsant for so they say in the Church of Rome baptisme may be administred in the name of the Father Sonne and holy Ghost and the virgin Mary they follow not as Christ led in his Church Non fuit sic ab initio it was not so from the beginning for quod extra hos tres est totum Conservum est though much dignity belong to the memory of the Saints of God yet whosoever is none of the three Persons Conservus est he is our fellow-servant though his service lie above staires and ours below his in the triumphant ours in the militant Church Conservus est yet he or she is in that respect but our fellow-servant and not Christs fellow-redeemer So also if we be led to Marah to the waters of bitternesse that we bring a bitter taste of those institutions of the Church for the decency and signification in Sacramentall things things belonging to Baptisme if we bring a misinterpretation of them an indisposition to them an aversnesse from them and so nourish a bitternes and uncharitablenesse towards one another for these Ceremonies if we had rather crosse one another and crosse the Church then crosse the child as God shewed Moses a tree which made those waters in the wildernesse sweet when it was cast in so remember that there is the tree of life the crosse of Christ Iesus and his Merits in this water of baptisme when we all agree in that that all the vertue proceeds from the crosse of Christ the God of unity and peace and concord let us admit any representation of Christs crosse rather then admit the true crosse of the devill which is a bitter and schismaticall crossing of Christ in his Church for it is there in his Church that he leads us to these waters Well then they to whom these waters belong have Christ in his Church to lead them and therefore they need not stay till they can come alone till they be of age and years of discretion as the Anabaptists say for it is Deducet and Deducet cos generally universally all that are of this government all that are appointed for the Seal all the one hundred and forty foure thousand all the Innumerable multitudes of all Nations Christ leads them all Be Baptized every one of you in the name of Iesus Christ for the remission of sinnes for the promise is made unto you and your children Now all promises of God are sealed in the holy Ghost To whom soever any promise of God belongs he hath the holy Ghost and therefore Nunquid aquam quis prohibere potest Can any Man forbid water that these should not be baptized which havereceived the holy Ghost as well as we says S. Peter And therfore the Children of the Covenant which have the promise have the holy Ghost all they are in this Regiment Deducet cos Christ shall lead them all But whither unto the lively says our first edition unto the living says our last edition fountaines of waters In the originall unto the fountaines of the water of life now in the Scriptures nothing is more ordianry then by the name of waters to designe and meane tribulations so amongst many other God says of the City of Tyre that he would make it a desolate City and bring the deep upon it and great waters should cover it But then there is some such addition as leads to that sense either they are called Aqua multae great waters or Profunda aquarum deep waters or Absorbebit aqua whirlepooles of waters or Tempestas aquae tempestuous waters or Aqua Fellis bitter water God bath mingled gall in our water but we shall never read fontes aquarum fountaines of waters but it hath a gratious sense and presents Gods benefits So they have forsaken me the fountaine of living waters So the water that I shall give shall be in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life and so every where else when we are brought to the fountaines to this water in the fountaine in the institution howsover we puddle it with impertinent questions in disputation however we soule it with our finnes and all conversation the fountaine is pure Baptisme presents and offers grace and remission of sinnes to all Nay not onely this fountaine of water but the greatest water of all the flood it selfe Saint Basil understands and applies to Baptisme as the Apostle himselfe does Baptisme was a figure of the flood and the Arke for upon that place The Lord sitseth upon the flood and the Lord doth remaine King for ever he says Baptismi gratiam Diluvium nominat nam deles purgat David calls Baptisme the flood because it destroyes all that was sinfull in us and so also he referrs to Baptisme those words when David had confessed his sinnes I thought I would confesse against my selfe my wickednesse unto the Lord and when it is added Surely in the flood of great waters they shall not come near him peccato non appropinquabunt says he originall sinne shall not come neare him that is truly baptized nay all the actuall sinnes in his future life shall be drowned in this baptisme as often as he doth religiously and repentantly consider that in Baptisme when the merit of Christ was communicated to him he received an Antidote against all poyson against all sinne if he applied them together sinne and the merit of Christ for so also he says of that place God will subdue all our iniquities and cast our sinnes into the bottome of the Sea Hoc est in mare Baptismi says Basil into the Sea of Baptisme There was a Brasen Sea in the Temple and there is a golden Sea in the Church of
joyned to the element or to the Action then there is a true Sacrament are ill understood by two sorts of Menâ— first by them that say that it is not verbum Deprecatorium nor verbum Conciâ—natâ—riuâ— not the word of Prayer nor the word of preaching but verbum Consecratorium and verbum Sacramentale that very phrase and forme of words by which the water is sanctified and enabled of it selfe to cleanse our Soules and secondly these words are ill understood by them who had rather their children dyed unbaptized then have them baptized without a Sermon whereas the use of preaching at baptisme is to raise the whole Congregation to a consideration what they promised by others in their baptisme and to raise the Father and the Sureties to a consideration what they undertake for the childe whom they present then to be baptized for therefore says Saint Augustine Acoedaâ— verbum there is a necessity of the word Non quâ—a dicitur sed quia creditur not because the word is prâ—ached but because it is beleeved and That Beleese faith belongs not at all to the incapacity of the child but to the disposition of the rest A Sermon is usefull for the congregation not necessary for the child and the accomplishment of the Sacrament From hence then arises a convenience little lesse then necessary in a kind that this administration of the Sacrament be accompanied with preaching but yet they that would evict an absolute necessity of it out of these words force them too much for here the direct meaning of the Apostle is That the Church is cleansed by water through the word when the promises of God expressed in his word are sealed to us by this Sacrament of Baptisme for so Saint Augustine answers himselfe in that objection which he makes to himselfe Cum per Baptisâ—â—â— fundati sint quare sermoni tribuit radicem He answers In Sermone intelligendus Baptismusâ— Quia sine Sermone non perficitur It is rooted it is grounded in the word and therefore true Baptisme though it be administred without the word that is without the word preached yet it is never without the word because the whole Sacrament and the power thereof is rooted in the word in the Gospell And therefore since this Sacrament belongs to the Church as it is said here that Christ doth cleanse his Church by Baptisme as it is argued with a strong probability That because the Apostles did baptize whole families therefore they did baptize some children so we argue with an invincible certainty that because this Sacrament belongs generally to the Church as the initiatory Sacrament it belongs to children who are a part and for the most part the most innocent part of the Church To conclude As all those Virgins which were beautifull were brought into Susan Ad domum mulierum to be anointed and persumed and prepared there for Assuerus delight and pleasure though Assuerus tooke not delight and pleasure in them all so we admit all those children which are within the Covenant made by God to the elect and their seed In domum Sanctorum into the houshold of the faithfull into the communion of Saints whom he chooseth for his Mariage day that is for that Church which he will settle upon himselfe in heaven we know not but we know that he hath not promised to take any into that glory but those upon whom he hath first shed these fainter beames of glory and sanctification exhibited in this Sacrament Neither hath he threatned to exclude any but for sinne after And therefore when this blessed child derived from faithfull parents and presented by sureties within the obedience of the Church shall have been so cleansed by the washing of water through the word it is presently sealed to the possession of that part of Christs purchase for which he gave himselfe which are the meanes of preparing his Church in this life with a faithfull assurance I may say of it and to it Iam mundus es Now you are cleanâ— through the word which Christ hath spoken unto you The Seale of the promises of his Gospell hath sanctified and cleansed you but yet Mandatus mundandus says Saint Augustine upon that place It is so sanctified by the Sacrament here that it may be farther sanctified by the growth of his graces and be at last a member of that glorious Church which he shall settle upon himselfe without spot or wrinkle which was the principall and final purpose of that great love of his whereby he gave himselfe for us and made that love first a patterne of Mens loves to their wives here and then a meanes to bring Man and wife and child to the kingdome of heaven Amen SERMON VI. Preached at a Christning 1 JOHN 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one IN great and enormous offences we find that the law in a well governed State expressed the punishment upon such a delinquent in that form in that curse Igni aqua interdicitor let him have no use of fire and water that is no use of any thing necessary for the sustentation of life Beloved such is the miserable condition of wretched Man as that we come all into the world under the burden of that curse Aqua igni interdicimâ—r we have nothing to doe naturally with the spirituall water of life with the fiery beames of the holy Ghost till he that hath wrought our restitution from this banishment restore us to this water by powring out his owne bloud and to this lively fire by laying himselfe a cold and bloudlesse carcasse in the bowels of the Earth till he who haptized none with waâ—er direct his Church to doe that office towards us and he without whom none was baptized with fire perfect that Ministeriall worke of his Church with the effectuall seales of his grace for this is his testimony the witnesse of his love Yea that law in cases of such great offences expressed it selfe in another Malediction upon such offenders appliable also to us Intestabiles sunte let them be Intestable Now this was a sentence a Condemnation so pregnant so full of so many heavy afflictions as that he who by the law was made intestable was all these ways intestable First he was able to make no Testament of his owne he had lost all his interest in his owne estate and in his owne will Secondly he could receive no profit by any testament of any other Man he had lost all the effects of the love and good disposition of other Men to him Thirdly he was Intestable so as that he could not testifie he should not be beleeved in the behalfe of another and lastly the testimony of another could doe him no good no Man could be admitted to
before his Gospell was written principally and purposely against the opposers of Christs humanity but occasionally also in defence of his divine nature too Because there is Solutio Iesu a dissolving of Jesus a taking of Jesus in peeces a dividing of his Natures or of his Offices which overthrowes all the testimonies of these six great witnesses when Christ said Solvite templum hoc destroy dissolve this temple and in three dayes I will raise it he spoke that but of his naturall body there was Solutio corporis Christs body and soule were parted but there was not Solutio Iesu the divine nature parted not from the humane no not in death but adhered to and accompanied the soule even in hell and accompanied the body in the grave And therefore says the Apostle Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum ex deo non est for so Irenaeus and Saint Augustine and Saint Cyrill with the Grecians read those words That spirit which receives not Jesus intirely which dissolves Jesus and breakes him in peeces that spirit is not of God All this then is the subject of this testimony first that Christ Jesus is come in the flesh there is a Recognition of his humane nature And then that this Jesus is the sonne of God there is a subscription to his divine nature he that separates these and thereby makes him not able or not willing to satisfie for Man he that separates his Nature or he that separates the worke of the Redemption and says Christ suffered for us onely as Man and not as God or he that separates the manner of the worke and says that the passive obedience of Christ onely redeemed us without any respect at all to his active obedience onely as he died and nothing as he died innocently or he that separates the perfection and consummation of the worke from his worke and findes something to be done by Man himselfe meritorious to salvation or he that separates the Prince and the Subject Christ and his members by nourishing Controversies in Religion when they might be well reconciled or he that separates himselfe from the body of the Church and from the communion of Saints for the fashion of the garments for the variety of indifferent Ceremonies all these do Solvere Iesum they slacken they dissolve that Jesus whose bones God provided for that they should not be broken whose flesh God provided for that it should not see Corruption and whose garments God provided that they should not bee divided There are other luxations other dislocations of Jesus when we displace him for any worldly respect and prefer preforment before him there are other woundings of Jesus in blasphemous oathes and exerations there are other maimings of Jesus in pretending to serve him intirely and yet retaine one particular beloved sinne still there are other rackings and extendings of Jesus when we delay him and his patience to our death-bed when we stretch the string so farre that it cracks there that is appoint him to come then and he comes not there are other dissolutions of Jesus when men will melt him and powre him out and mold him up in a waser Cake or a peece of bread there are other annihilations of Jesus when Men will make him and his Sacraments to be nothing but bare signes but all these will be avoided by us if we be gained by the testimony of these six witnesses to hold fast that integrity that intirensse of Jesus which is here delivered to us by this Apostle In which we beleeve first Iâ—sum a Saviour which implies his love and his will to save us and then we beleeve Christum the anointed that is God and man able and willing to doe this great worke and that he is anointed and sealed for that purpose and this implies the decree the contract and bargaine of acceptation by the Father that Pactum salis that eternall covenant which seasons all by which that which he meant to doe as he was Iesus should be done as he was Christ. And then as the intirenesse of Jesus is expressed in the verse before the text we beleeve Quod venit that as all this might be done if the Father and Sonne would agree as all this must be done because they had agreed it so all this was done Quâ—a venit because this Jesus is already come and that for the father intirenesse for the perfection and consummation and declaration of all venit per aquam sanguinem He came by water and bloud Which words Saint Bernard understands to imply but a difference between the comming of Christ and the comming of Moses who was drawen out of the water and therefore called by that name of Moses But before Moses came to be a leader of the people he passed through bloud too through the bloud of the Egyptian whom he slew and much more when he established all their bloudy sacrifices so that Mases came not onely by water Neither was the first Testament ordained without bloud Others understand the words onely to put a difference between Iohn Baptist and Christ because Iohn Baptist is still said to baptize with waterâ— Because he should be declared to Israel therefore am I come baptizing with water but yet Iohn Baptists baptisme had not onely a relation to bloud but a demonstration of it when still he pointed to the Lambe Ecce Agnus for that Lambe was slâ—ine from the beginning of the world So that Christ which was this Lambe came by water and bloud when he came in the risuall types and figures of Moses and when he came in the baptisme of Iohn for in the Law of Moses there was so frequent use of water as that we reckon above fifty severall Immunditi as uncleannesses which might receive their expiation by washing without being put to their bloudy sacrifies for them And then there was so frequent use of bloud that almost all things are by the Law purged with bloud and without shedding of bloud is no Remission But this was such water and such bloud as could not perfect the worke but therefore was to be renewed every day The water that Jesus comes by is such a water as he that arinketh of it shall thirst no more nay there shall spring up in him a well of water that is his example shall worke to the satisfaction of others we doe not say to a satisfaction for others And then this is that bloud that perfected the whole worke at once By his own bloud entred he once into the holy place and obtained eternall Redemption for us So that Christ came by water and bloud according to the old ablutions and old sacrifices when he wept when he sweat when he powred out bloud pretious incorruptible inestimable bloud at so many channels as he did all the while that he was upon the altar sacrificing himselfe in his passion But after the immolation of this sacrifice after his Consummatum est when Christ
was come and gone for so much as belonged to the accomplishing of the types of the old law then Christ came againe to us by water and bloud in that wound which he received upon his side from which there flowed out miraculously true water true bloud This wound Saint Augustine calls Ianuam utriusque Sacramenti the doore of both sacraments where we see he acknowledges but two and both presented in this water and bloud and so certainely doe most of the fathers make this wound if not the foundation yet at least a sacrament of both the sacraments And to this water and bloud doth the Apostle here without doubt aime principally which he onely of all the Evangelists hath recorded and with so great asseveration and assurednesse in the recording thereof He that saw it bare record and his record is true and he knoweth that he saith truth that yee might beleeve it Here then is the matter which these six witnesses must be beleeved in here is Integritas Iesu quae non solvenda the intirenesse of Christ Jesus which must not be broken That a Saviour which is Iesus appointed to that office that is Christ figured in the law by ablutions of water and sacrifices of bloud is come and hath perfected all those figures in water and bloud too and then that he remaines still with us in water and bloud by meanes instituted in his Church to wash away our uncleannesses and to purge away our iniquities and to apply his worke unto our Soules this is Integritas Iesu Iesus the sonne of God in heaven Jesus the Redeemer of man upon earth Jesus the head of a Church to apply that to the end this is Integritas Iesu all that is to be beleeved of him Take thus much more that when thou comest to hearken what these witnesses shall say to this purpose thou must finde something in their testimony to prove him to be come not onely into the world but into thee He is a mighty prince and hath a great traine millions of ministring spirits attend him and the whole army of Martyrs follow the Lambe wheresoever he goes Though the whole world be his Court thy soule is his bedchamber there thou maist contract him there thou maist lodge and entertaine Integrum Iesum thy whole Saviour And never trouble thy selfe how another shall have him if thou have him all leave him and his Church to that make thou sure thine owne salvation When he comes to thee he comes by water and by bloud If thy heart and bowels have not yet melted in compassion of his passion for thy soule if thine eyes have not yet melted in tears of repentancâ— and contrition he is not yet come by water into thee If thou have suffered nothing for sinne nor found in thy selfe a chearfull disposition to suffer if thou have found no wresting in thy selfe no resistance of Concupiscences he that comes not to set peace but to kindle this war is not yet come into thee by bloud Christ can come by land by purchases by Revenues by temporall blessings for so he did still convey himselfe to the Jewes by the blessing of the land of promise but here he comes by water by his owne passion by his sacraments by thy tears Christ can come in a mariage and in Musique for so he delivers himselfe to the spouse in the Canticles but here he comes in bloud which comming in water and bloud that is in meanes for the salvation of our soules here in the militant Church is the comming that he stands upon and which includes all the Christian Religion and therefore he proves that comming to them by these three great witnesses in heaven and three in earth For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the word and the holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which bear record in the earth The spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be confirmed says Christ out of the law That 's as much as can be required in any Civill or Criminall businesse and yet Christ gives more testimony of himselfe for here he produces not Duos testes but Duas Classes two rankes of witnesses and the fullest number of each not two but three in heaven and three in earth And such witnesses upon earth as are omni exceptione majores without all exception It is not the testimony of earthly men for when Saint Paul produces them in abundance The Patriarch the Iudges the Prophets the elders of the old times of whom he exhibits an exact Catalogue yet he calls all them but Nubes testium cloudes of witnesses for though they be cloudes in Saint Chrysostomes sense that they invest us and enwrap us and so defend us from all diffidence in God we have their witnesse what God did for them why should we doubt of the like though they be cloudes in Athanasius sense they being in heaven showre downe by their prayers the dew of Gods grace upon the Church Though they be cloudes they are but cloudes some darkenesse mingled in them some controversies arising from them but his witnesses here are Lux inaccessibilis that light that no eye can attaine to and Pater Luminum the father of lights from whom all these testimonies are derived When God imployed a man to be the witnesse of Christ because men might doubt of his testimony God was content to assigne him his Compurgators when Iohn Baptist must preach that the kingdome of God was at hand God fortifies the testimony of his witnesse then Hic enim est for this is he of whom that is spoken by the prophet Esay and lest one were not enough he multiplies them as it is written in the prophets Iohn Baptist might be thought to testifie as a man and therefore men must testifie for him but these witnesses are of a higher nature these of heaven are the Trinity and those of earth are the sacraments and seales of the Church The prophets were full of favor with God Abraham full of faith Stephen full of the Holy Ghost many full of grace and Iohn Baptist a prophet and more then a prophet yet never any prophet never any man how much soever interessed in the favor of Almighty God was such an instrument of grace as a sacrament or as Gods seales and institutions in his Church and the least of these six witnesses is of that nature and therefore might be beleeved without more witnesses To speake then first of the three first the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost it was but a poore plot of the devill to goe about to rob us of their testimony for as long as we have the three last the spirit the water and bloud we have testimony enough of Christ because God is involved in his ordinance and though he be not tyed to the worke of the
but every poore soule in the Church may heare all these three witnesses testifying to him Integrum Iesum suum that all which Christ Jesus hath done and suffered appertaines to him but yet to bring it nearer him in visible and sensible things There are tres de terra three upon earth too The first of these three upon earth is the Spirit which Saint Augustine understands of the spirit the soule of Christ for when Christ commended his spirit into the hands of his Father this was a testimony that he was Verus hemo that he had a soule and in that he laid downe his spirit his soule for no Man could take it from him and tooke it againe at his pleasure in his resurrection this was a testimony that he was Verus Deus true God And so says Saint Augustine Spiritus The spirit that is anima Christi the soule of Christ did testifie De integritate Iesu all that belonged to Jesus as he was God and as he was Man But this makes the witnesses in heaven and the witnesses in earth all one for the personall testimony of Christs preaching and living and dying the testimony which was given by these three Persons of the Trinity was all involv'd in the first rank of witnesses Those three which are in heaven Other later Men understand by the Spirit here the Spirit of every Regenerate Man and that in the other heavenly witnesses the spirit is Spiritus sanctus the spirit that is holy in it selfe the holy Ghost and here it is Spiritus sanctificatus that spirit of Man which is made holy by the holy Ghost according to that The same spirit beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God But in this sense it is too particular a witnesse too singular to be intended here for that speakes but to one Man at once The spirit therefore here is Spiritus oris the word of God the Gospell and the preaching and ministration thereof We are made Ministers of the New testament of the spirit that giveth life And if the ministration of death were glorious how shall not the ministration of the spirit be more glorious It is not therefore the Gospell meerly but the preaching of the Gospell that is this spirit Spiritus sacerdotis vehioulum Spiritus Dei The spirit of the Minister is not so pure as the spirit of God but it is the chariot the meanes by which God will enter into you The Gospell is the Gospell at home at your house and there you doe well to read it and reverence it as the Gospell but yet it is not Spiritus it is not this Spirit this first witnesse upon earth but onely there where God hath blessed it with his institution and ordinance that is in the preaching thereof The stewardship and the dispensation of the graces of God the directing of his threatnings against refractary and wilfull sinners the directing of his promises to simple and supple and conâ—rite penitents the breaking of the bread the applying of the Gospell according to their particular indigences in the preaching thereof this is the first witnesse The second witnesse here is The water and I know there are some Men which will not have this to be understood of the water of Baptisme but onely of the naturall effect of water that as the abtutions of the old law by water did purge us so we have an inward testimony that Christ doth likewise wash us cleane so the water here must not be so much as water but a metaphoricall and figurative water These men will not allow water in this place to have any relation to the sacrament and Saint Ambrose was so far from doubting that water in this place belonged to the sacrament that he applies all these three witnesses to the Sacrament of Baptisme Spiritus mentem renovat All this is done in Baptisme says he The Spirit renewes and disposes the mind Aqua perficit ad Lavacrum The water is applied to cleanse the body Sanguis Spectat ad preâ—lium and the bloud intimates the price and ransome which gives force and virtue to this sacrament And so also says he in another place In sanguine mors in the bloud there is a representation of death in the water of our buriall and in the spirit of our owne life Some will have none of these witnesses on earth to belong to baptisme not the water and Ambrose will have all spirit and water and bloud to belong to it Now both Saint Ambrose who applies all the three witnesses to Baptisme and those later men which deny any of the witnesses to belong to baptisme doe both depart from the generall acceptation of these words that water here and onely that signifies the Sacrament of baptisme For as in the first creation the first thing that the spirit of God is noted to have moved upon was the waters so the first creature that is sanctified by Christs institution to our Salvation is this element of water The first thing that produced any living sensible creature was the water Primus liquor qnod viveret edidit ne mirum sit quod in Baptismo aquae aâ—nimare noverunt water brought forth the first creatures says Tertullian That we should not wonder that water should bring forth Christians The first of Gods afficting miracles in Egypt was the changing of water into bloud and the first miracle of grace in the new Testament was the changing of water into wine at the mariage So that water hath still been a subject and instrument of Gods conversation with man So then Aqua janua ecclesiae we cannot come into the Church but by water by baptisme for though the Church have taken knowledge of other Baptismes Baptisma sanguinis which is Martyrdome and Baptisma Flaminis which is a religious desire to be baptized when no meanes can be got yet there is no other sacrament of Baptisme but Baptisma Fluminis the Baptisme of water for the rest Conveniunt in causando sed non in significando says the Schoole that is God doth afford a plentifull retribution to the other baptismes Flaminis and Sanguinis but God hath not ordained them to be outward seales and significations of his grace and to be witnesses of Iesus his comming upon earth as this water is And therefore they that provide not duly to bring their children to this water of life not to speake of the essentiall necessity thereof they take from them one of the witnesses that Iesus is come into them and as much as they can they shut the Church dore against them they leave them out of the Arke and for want of this water cast them into that generall water which overflowes all the rest of the world which are not brought within the Covenant by this water of baptisme For though in the first Translation of the new Testament into Syriaque that be said in the sixth verse that Jesus is come per manus
of his word or in scantler measure not to be always a Christian but then when thou hast use of being one or in a different fashion to be singular and Schisâ—aticall in thy opinion for this is one but an ill manner of putting on of Christ as a garment The second and the good way is to put on his righteousnesse and his innocency by imitation and conforming our selves to him Now when we goe about earnestly to make our selves Temples and Altars and to dedicate our selves to God we must change our clothes As when God bad Iacob to goe up to Bethel to make an Altar he commanded all his family to change their clothes In which work we have two things to doe first we must put off those clothes which we had and appeare naked before God without presenting any thing of our owne for when the Spirit of God came upon Saul and that he prophecyed his first act was to strip himselfe naked And then sâ—condly we come to our transfiguration and to have those garments of Christ communicated to us which were as white as the light and we shall be admitted into that little number of which it is said Thou hast a few Namees in Sardis which have not defiled their garments and they shall walke with â—e in white And from this which is Induere vestem from this putting on Christ as a garment we shall grow up to that perfection as that we shall Inâ—â—ere personam put on hiâ— his person That is we shall so appeare before the Father as that he shall take us for his owne Christ we shall beare his name and person and we shall every one be so accepted as if every one of us were all Mankind yea as if we were he himselfe He shall find in all our bodies his woundes in all our mindes his 〈◊〉 in all our hearts and actions his obedience And as he shall doe this by impâ—tation so really in all our Agonies he shall send his Angels to minister unto us as he did to Eliâ—s In all our tentations he shall furnish us with his Scriptures to confoâ—â—d the Tempter as be in person did in his tentation and in our heaviest tribulation which may exâ—â—â—â— from us the voice of diffidence My God My God why hast 〈◊〉 forsaken me He shall give us the assurance to say In manus tuas câ— Into thy â—ands O Lord have I coâ—â—â—â—nded my spirit and there I am safe He shall use us in all things as his sonne and we shall find restored in us the Image of the whole Trinity imprinted at our creation for by this Regeneration we are adopted by the Father in the bloud of the Sonne by the sanctification of the holy Ghost Now this putting on of Christ whereby we stand in his place at Gods Tribunall implies as I said both our Election and our sanctification both the eternall purpose of God upon us and his execution of that purpose in us And because by the first by our Election we are members of Christ in Gods purpose before baptisme and the second which is sanctification is expressed after baptisme in our lives and conversation therefore Baptisme intervenes and comes between both as a seale of the first of Election and as an instrument and conduit of the second Sanctification Now Abscendita Dominâ— Dea nostro quae manifesta suâ—s nobis let no Man be too curiously busie to search what God does in his hedchamber we have all enough to answer for that which we have done in our bedchamber For Gods eternall decree himselfe is master of those Rolls but out of those Rolls he doth exemplifie those decrees in the Sacrament of baptisme by which Copy and exemplification of his invisible and unsearchable decree we plead to the Church that we are Gods children we plead to our owne consciences that we have the Spirit of adoption and we plead to God himselfe the obligation of his own promise that we have a right to this garment Christ Iesus and to those graces which must sanctifie us for from thence comes the reason of this text for all yeâ— that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. As we cannot see the Essence of God but must see him in his glasses in his Images in his Creatures so we cannot see the decrees of God but must see them in their duplicats in their exemplification in the sacraments As it would doe him no good that were condemned of treason that a Bedchamber man should come to the Judge and swear he saw the king signe the prisoners pardon except he had it to pleade so what assurance soever what priâ—y marke soever those men which pretend to be so well acquainted and so familiar with the decrees of God to give thee to know that thou art elect to eternall salvation yea if an Angel from heaven comedowne and tell thee that he saw thy name in the booke of life if thou have not this Exemplification of the decree this seale this Sacrament if thou beest not baptized never delude thy selfe with those imaginary assurances This Baptisme then is so necessary that first as Baptisme in a large acceptation signifies our dying and buriall with Christ and all the acts of our regeneration so in that large sense our whole life is a baptisme But the very sacrament of Baptismeâ— the actuall administration and receiving thereof was held so necessary that even for legall and Civill uses as in the law that child that dyed without circumcision had no interest in the family no participation of the honor nor name thereof So that we see in the reckning of the Genealogy and pedegree of David that first sonne of his which he had by Bathshebae which dyed without circumcision is never mentioned nor toucht upon So also since the time of Mâ—ses law in the Imperiall law by which law a posthume child borne after the fathers death is equall with the rest in division of the state yet if that child dye before he be baptized no person which should derive a right from him as the mother might if he dyed can have any title by him because he is not considered to have been at all if he dye unbaptized And if the State will not beleeve him to be a full Man shall the Church beleeve him to be a full Christian before baptisme Yea the apprehension of the necessity of this Sacrament was so common and so generall even in the beginning of the Christian Church that out of an excessive advancing of that trnth they came also to a falshoodâ— to an error That even they that dyed without baptisme might have the benefit of baptisme if another were baptized in their name after their deathâ— And so out of a mistaking of those words Else what shall they doe Qui baptizantur pro mortuis which is that are ready to dye when they are baptized the Marcionites induc'd a custome to lay one under the dead bodyes
we draw a corrupt Nature from our parents and we have lamed the other foot by crooked and perverse customes Now as God provided a liquor in his Church for Originall sinne the water of Baptisme so hath he provided another for those actuall sinnes that is the bloud of his owne body in the other Sacrament In which Sacrament besides the naturall union that Christ hath taken our Nature and the Mysticall union that Christ hath taken us into the body of his Church by a spirituall union when we apply faithfully his Merits to our soules and by a Sacramentall union when we receive the visible seales thereof worthily we are so washed in his bloud as that we stand in the sight of his Father as cleane and innocent as himselfe both because he and we are thereby become one body and because the garment of his righteousnesse covers us all But for a preparation of this washing in the bloud of Christ in that Sacrament Christ commended to his Apostles and in them to all the world by his practise and by his precept too ablutionem pedam a washing of their feet before they came to that Sacrament he washed their feet And in that exemplary action of his his washing of their feet he powred water into a Bason says the text Aqua spiritus sanctus pelvis Ecclesia These preparatory waters are the gift of the holy Ghost the working of his grace in repentance but pelvis Ecclesia the bason is the Church that is these graces are distributed and dispensed to us in his institution and ordinance in the Church No Man can wash himselfe at first by Baptisme no Man can baptize himselfe no Man can wash in the second liquor no Man that is but a Man can administer the other Sacrament to himselfe Pelvis ecclesia the Church is the bason and Gods Minister in the Church washes in both these cases And in this ablutione pedum in the preparatory washing of our feet by a survey of all our sinfull actions and repentance of them no Man can absolve himselfe but pelvis ecclesia the bason of this water of absolution is in the Church and in the Minister thereof First then this washing of the feet which prepares us for the great washing in the bloud of Christ requires a stripping of them a laying of them naked covering of the feet in the Scriptures is a phrase that denotes a foule and an uncleane action Saul was said to cover his feet in the Cave and Eglon was said to cover his feet in his Parler and we know the uncleane action that is intended here but for this cleane action for washing our feet we must discover all our sinfull steps in a free and open confession to almighty God This may be that which Solomon calls sound wisdome My sonne keep sound wisdome and discretion There is not a more silly folly then to thinke to hide any sinfull action from God Nor sounder wisdome then to discover them to him by an humble and penitent confession This is sound wisdome and then discretion is to wash and discerne and debate and examine all our future actions and all the circumstances that by this spirit of discretion we may see where the sting and venome of every particular action lies My sonne keep sound wisdome and discretion says he And then shalt thou walke in thy way safely and thy foot shall not stumble If thy discretion be not strong enough if thou canst not always discerne what is and what is not sinne he shall give his Angells charge over thee that thou dash not thy foot against a stone and that 's good security and if all these faile though thou doe fall thou shalt not be utterly cast downe for the Lord shall uphold thee with his hand says David God shall give that Man that loves this found wisdome humble confession of sinnes past this spirituall discretion the spirit of discerning spirits that is power to discerne a tentation and to overcome it confesse that which is past with true sorrow that is sound wisdome and God shall enlighten thee for the future and that 's holy discretion The washing of our feet then being a cleane and pure and sincere examination of all our actions we are to wash all the instruments of our actions in repentance Lavanda facies we are to wash our face as Ioseph did after he had wept before he looked upon his brethren againe If we have murmured and mourned for any crosse that God hath laid upon us we must returne to a cheerfull countenance towards him in embracing whatsoever he found best for us we must wash our Intestina our bowels as it is after commanded in the law when our bowels which should melt at the relation and contemplation and application of the passion of our Saviour doe melt at the apprehension or expectation or fruition of any sinfull delight Lavanda intestina we must wash those bowells Lavanda vestimenta we must wash our clothes when we apparell and palliate our sinnes with excuses of our owne infirmity or of the example of greater Men these clothes must be washed these excuses Lavanda currus arma as Ahabs chariot and armour were washed If the power of our birth or of our place or of our favour have armed us against the power of the law or against the clamour of Men justly incensed Lavandi currus these chariots and armes this greatnesse must be washed Lavanda retia what Nets soever we have fished with by what meanes soever we raise or sustaine our fortune Lavanda retia These nets must be washed Saint Bernard hath drawn a great deale of this heavenly water together for the washing of all when he presents as he cals it Martyrium sine sanguine triplex a threefold Martyrdome all without bloud and that is Largitas in paupertate a bountifull disposition even in a low fortune parcitas in ubertate a frugall disposition in a full fortune and Castitas in Iuventute a pure and chaste disposition in the years and places of tentation These are Martyrdomes without bloud but not without the water that washes our feet This is sound wisdome and discretion to strip and lay open our feet our sinfull actions by Confession To cover them and wrap them up by precaution from new uncleannesse and then to tye and bind up all safe by participation of the bloud of Christ Jesus in the Sacrament for that 's the seale of all And Christ in the washing of his disciples feet tooke a towell to dry them as well as water to wash them so when he hath brought us to this washing of our feet to a serious consideration of our actions and to repentant teares for them Absterget omnem lachrymam he will wipe all teares from our eyes all teares of confusion towards Men or of diffidence towards him Absterget omnem lachrymam and deliver us over to a setled peace of
there is but one place of this booke of Iob cited at all To the Corinthians the Apostle makes use of those words in Iob God taketh the wise in their owne craft And more then this one place is not I thinke cited out of this booke of Iob in the new Testament But the authority of Iob is established in another place you have heard of the patience of Iob and you have seen the end of the Lord says Saint Iames. As you have seen this so you have heard that seen and heard one way out of the Scripture you have hard that out of the booke of Iob you have seen this out of the Gospell And further then this there is no naming of Iobs person or his booke in the new Testament Saint Hierome confesses that both the Greeke and Latine Copies of this booke were so defective in his time that seven or eight hundred verses of the originall were wanting in the booke And for the originall it selfe he says Obliquus totus liber fertur lubricus it is an uncertaine and slippery book But this is onely for the sense of some places of the book And that made the authority of this book to be longer suspended in the Church and oftner called into question by particular men then any other book of the Bible But in those who have for many ages received this book for Canonicall there is an unanime acknowledgement at least tacitely that this peece of it this text When after my skin wormes shall destroy my body yet in my flesh I shall see God does establish the Resurrection Divide the expositors into three branches for so the world will needs divide them The first the Roman Church will call theirs though they have no other title to them but that they received the same translation that they doe And all they use this text for the resurrection Verba viri in gentilitate positi erubescamus It is a shame for us who have the word of God it selfe which Iob had not and have had such a commentary such an exposition upon al the former word of God as the reall and actuall and visible resurrection of Christ himselfe Erubescamus verba viri in gentilitate positi let us be ashamed and confounded if Iob a person that lived not within the light of the covenant saw the resurrection more clearly and professed it more constantly then we doe And as this Gregory of Rome so Gregory Nyssen understood Iob too For he considers Iobs case thus God promised Iob twofold of all that he had lost And in his sheep and camels and oxen and asses which were utterly destroyed and brought to nothing God performes it punctually he had all in a double proportion But Iob had seven sonnes and three daughters before and God gives him but seven sonnes and three daughters againe And yet Iob had twofold of these too for Postnati cum prioribus numerantur quia omnes deo vivunt Those which were gone and those which were new given lived all one life because they lived all in God Necquicquam aliud est mors nisi viti ositatis expiatio Death is nothing else but a devesting of those defects which made us lesse fit for God And therefore agreeably to this purpose says Saint Cyprian Scimus non amitti sed praemitti thy dead are not lost but lent Non recedere sed praecedere They are not gone into any other wombe then we shall follow them into nec acquirendae atrae vestes pro iis qui albis induuntur neither should we put on blacks for them that are clothed in white nor mourne for them that are entred into their Masters joy We can enlarge our selfes no farther in this consideration of the first branch of expositors but that all the ancients tooke occasion from this text to argue for the resurrection Take into your Consideration the other two branches of moderne expositors whom others sometimes contumeliously and themselves sometimes perversly have call'd Lutherans and Calvinists and you may know that in the first ranke Osiander and with him all his interpret these words so And in the other ranke Tremellius and Pellicanus heretofore Polanus lately and Piscator for the present All these and all the Translators into the vulgar tongues of all our neighbours of Europe do all establish the doctrine of the Resurrection by these words this place of Iob. And therefore though one and truly for any thing I know but one though one to whom we all owe much for the interpretation of the Scriptures do think that Iob intends no other resurrection in this place but that when he shall be reduc'd to the miserablest estate that can bee in this life still he will look upon God and trust in him for his restitution and reparation in this life let us with the whole Christian Church embrace and magnifie this Holy and Heroicall Spirit of Iob Scio says he I know it which is more in him then the Credo is in us more to know it then in that state then to believe it now after it hath been so evidently declar'd not onely to be a certain truth but to be an article of faith Scio Redemptorem says he I know not onely a Creator but a Redeemer And Redemptorem meum My Redeemer which implies a confidence and a personall application of that Redemption to himself Scio vivere says he I know that he lives I know that hee begunne not in his Incarnation I know he ended not in his death but it always was and is now and shall for ever be true Vivit that he lives still And then Scio venturum says he too I know hee shall stand at the last day to Judge me and all the world And after that and after my skinne and body is destroyed by worms yet in my flesh I shall see God And so have you as much as we proposed for our first part That the Jews do now that they always did believe a Resurrection That as naturall men and by naturall reason they might know it both in the possibility of the thing and in the purpose of God that they had better helpes then naturall reason for they had divers places of their Scripture and that this place of Scripture which is our text hath evermore been received for a proof of the Resurrection Proceed we now to those particulars which constitute our second part such instructions concerning the Resurrection as arise out of these words Though after my skinne worms destroy my body yet in my flesh I shall see God In this second part the first thing that was propos'd was That the Saints of God are not priviledg'd from this which fell upon Iob This Death this dissolution after death Upon the Morte morieris that double death interminated by God upon Adam there is a Non obstante Revertere turn to God and thou shalt not dy the death not the second
no persecutor could ever invent a sicknesse or a way to inflict a sicknesse upon a condemned man To a galley he can send him and to the gallows and command execution that hour but to a quartane fever or to a gâ—ut hee cannot condemn him In poverty I lack but other things In banishment I lack but other men But in sicknesse I lack my self And as the greatest misery of war is when our own Country is made the seat of the war so is it of affliction when mine own Body is made the subject thereof How shall I put a just value upon Gods great blessings of Wine and Oyle and Milke and Honey when my cast is gone or of Liberty when the gout fetters my feet The King may release me and say Let him goe whither he will but God says He shall not goe till I will God hath wrapped up all misery in that condemnation Morte morietur That the sinner shall die twice But if the second death did not follow the first death were an ease and a blessing in many sicknesses And no sicknesse can be worse then that which is intended here for it is all over Non sanitas no soundnesse no health in any part This consideration arises not onely from the Physicians Rule that the best state of Mans body is but a Neutrality neither well nor ill but Nulla sanitas a state of true and exquisit health say they no man hath But not onely out of this strictnesse of Art but out of an acknowledgment of Nature we must say sanitas hujus vitae bâ—ne intelligentibus sanitas non est It is but our mistaking when we call any thing Health But why so fames naturalis morbus est Hunger is a sicknesse And that 's naturally in us all Medicamentum famis cibus potus sitis fatigationis somnus when I eate I doe but take Physique for Hunger and for thirst when I drink and so is sleep my physique for wearinesse Detrahe medicamentum interficient for beare but these Physiques and these diseases Hunger and thirst and wearinesse will kill thee And as this sickness is upon us all and so non sanitas there is no Health in none of us so it is upon us all at all times and so Non sanitas there is never any soundness in us for saemper deficimus we are Borne in a Consumption and as little as we are then we grow less from that time Vita cursus ad mortem Before we can craule we runne to meet death urgemur ownes pari passu Though some are cast forward to death by the use which others have of their ruine and so throw them through Discontents into desperate enterprises and some are drawn forward to death by false Markes which they have set up to their own Ambitions and some are spurred forward to death by sharp Diseases contracted by their own intemperance and licentiousness and some are whip'd forward to death by the Miseries and penâ—ries of this life take away all these accidentall furtherances to death this drawing and driving and spurring and whipping pari paessu urgemur omnes we bring all with us into the world that which carries us out of the world a naturall unnaturall consuming of that radicall vertue which sustaines our life Non sanitas there is no health in any so universall is sickness nor at any time in any so universall and so universall too as that not in any part of any man at any time As the King was but sick in his feet and yet it killed him It was but in his fact yet it flew up into his head it affected his head as our former translation observed it in their margin that the disease did not onely grow to a great height in the disease but to the highest parts of the body It was at first but in the feet but it was presently all over Iosiah the King was shot with an arrow at the battail of Megiddo One book that reports the story says he was carried out of the field alive dyed at Ierusalem and another that he was carried out of the field dead Deadly wounds deadly sicknesses spread themselvs all over so fast as that the holy Ghost in relating it makes it all one to tell the beginning and the end thereof If a man doe but prick a finger and binde it above that part so that the Spirits or that which they call the Balsamum of the body cannot descend by reason of that ligature to that part it will gaâ—grene And which is an argument and an evidence that mischiefes are more operative more insinuating more penetrative more diligent then Remedies against mischâ—efes are when the Spirits and Balsamum of the body cannot passe by that ligature to that wound yet the Gangrene will passe from that wound by that ligature to the body to the Heart and destroy In every part of the body death can finde a door or make a breach Mortall diseases breed in every part But when every part at once is diseased death does not bsie ge him but inhabit him In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble and the strong men shall how themselves and the grinders cease because they are few and those that look out at the windows he darkned when age of Gods making age grown by many years or age of the Devills making age grown by many sinnes hath spred an universall debility upon me that all sicknesses are in me have all lost their names as all simples have in Triacle I am sick of sicknesse and not of a Fever or any particular distemper then is the misery of this Text fallen upon me Non sanitas no health none at any time none in any part non in Carne not in my flesh not in my whole substance which is also another circumstance of exaltation in humane misery Take flesh in the largest extent and signification that may be as Moses calls God The God of the spirits of all flesh that is of the Beeing of all Creatures and take all these Creatures to be ours in that Donation Subjicite dominamini subdue and rule all Creatures yet there is no soundnesse in our flesh for all these Creatures are corrupted and become worse then they were to us by the sinne of Adam Bring flesh to a nearer signification to our own there was Caro juxta naturam and there is Caro juxta culpam That flesh which was naturall to man that which God gave man at first that had health and soundnesse in it but yet not such a degree of soundnesse as that it needed no more then it then had That had been naturally enough if that had been preserved to carry that flesh it selfe to heaven but even that flesh if it had not sinned though it had an Immortality in it self yet must have received a glorification in heaven as well though in another measure
but look to that which is neare thee not so much to those Decrees which have no conditions as to be able to plead conditions performed or at least a holy sorrow that thou hast not performed them Videte Cavete see that you doe heare God else every rumor will scatter you But take heed what you heare else you may come to call conditionall things absolute And lastly since Satan will be speaking too Videte be sure you doe heare him be sure you discerne it to be his voice and know what leads you into tentation For you may hear a voice that shall say youth must have pleasures and greatnesse must have State and charge must have support And this voice may bring a young man to transfer all his wantonesse upon his years when it is the effect of high dyet or licentious discourse or wanton Images admitted and cherished in his fancy and this voice may bring great officers to transfer their inaccessiblenesse upon necessary State when it is an effect of their own lazinesse or indulgence to their pleasures and this voice may bring rich landlords to transfer all their oppression of tenants to the necessity of supporting the charge of wives and children when it is an effect of their profusenesse and prodigality Nay you may heare a voice that may call you to this place and yet be his voice which is that which Saint Augustine confesses and laments that even to these places persons come to look upon one another that can meet no where else Videte see you doe heare that you doe discerne the voice for that is never Gods voice that puts upon any man a necessity of sinning out of his years and constitution out of his calling and profession out of his place and station out of the age and times that he lives in out of the pleasure of them that he lives upon or out of the charge of them that live upon him But then Cavete take heed what you heare from him too especially then when he speakes to thee upon thy death-bed at thy last transmigration then when thine eares shall be deafe with the cryes of a distressed and a distracted family and with the found and the change of the found of thy last bell then when thou shalt heare a hollow voice in thy selfe upbraiding thee that thou hast violated all thy Makers laws worn out all thy Saviours merits frustrated all the endeavours of his blessed Spirit upon thee evacuated all thine own Repentances with relapses then when thou shalt see or seem to see his hand turning the streame of thy Saviours bloud into another channell and telling thee here 's enough for Iew and Turke but not a drop for thee then when in that multiplying glasse of Despaire which he shall present every sinfull thought shall have the proportion of an Act and every Act of a Habite when every Circumstance of every sin shall enter into the nature of the sin it selfe and vary the sinne and constitute a particular sinne and every particular sinne shall be a sinne against the holy Ghost Take heed what you heare and be but able to say to Satan then as Christ said to Peter in his name Vade retro Satan come after me Satan come after me tomorrow come a minute after my soule is departed from this body come to me where I shall be then and when thou seest me washed in the bloud of my Saviour clothed in the righteousnesse of my Saviour lodged in the bosome of my Saviour crowned with the merits of my Saviour confesse that upon my death-bed thou wast a lyer and wouldest have been a murderer and the Lord shall and I in him shall rebuke thee See that yee refuse not him that speaketh says the Apostle not any that speakes in his name but especially not him whom he names there that speakes better things then the bloud of Abel for the bloud of Abel speakes but by way of example and imitation the bloud of Christ Jesus by way of Ransome and satisfaction Heare what that bloud says for you in the eares of the Father and then no singing of the flatterer no lisping of the tempter no roaring of the accuser no thunder of the destroyer shall shake thy holy constancy Take heed what you heare remember what you have heard and the God of heaven for his Sonne Christ Jesus sake by the working of his blessed Spirit prosper and emprove both endeavours in you Amen SERMON XXVIII Preached to the King at the Court in April 1629. GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our Image after our likenesse NEver such a frame so soon set up as this in this Chapter For for the thing it selfe there is no other thing to compare it with For it is All it is the whole world And for the time there was no other time to compare it with for this was the beginning of time In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth That Earth which in some thousands of years men could not look over nor discern what form it had for neither Lactantius almost three hundred years after Christ nor Saint Augustine more then one hundred years after him would beleeve the earth to be round that earth which no man in his person is ever said to have compassed till our age That earth which is too much for man yet for as yet a very great part of the earth is unpeopled that earth which if we will cast it all but into a Mappe costs many Months labour to grave it nay if we will cast but a peece of an acre of it into a garden costs many years labour to fashion and furnish it All that earth and then that heaven which spreads so farre as that subtile men have with some appearance of probability imagined that in that heaven in those manifold Sphears of the Planets and the Starres there are many earths many worlds as big as this which we inhabite That earth and that heaven which spent God himselfe Almighty God six days in furnishing Moses sets up in a few syllables in one line In principio in the beginning God created heaven and earth If a Livy or a Guicciardine or such extensive and voluminous authors had had this story in hand God must have made another world to have made them a Library to hold their Books of the making of this world Into what Wire would they have drawn out this earth Into what leafe-gold would they have beate out these heavens It may assist our conjecture herein to consider that amongst those men who proceed with a sober modesty and limitation in their writing and make a conscience not to clogge the world with unnecessary books yet the volumes which are written by them upon this beginning of Genesis are scarce lesse then infinite God did no more but say let this and this be done And Moses does no more but say that upon Gods saying it was done God required not nature to help him to do
it Moses required not reason to help him to be beleeved The holy Ghost hovered upon the waters and so God wrought The holy Ghost hovered upon Moses too and so he wrote And we beleeve these things to be so by the same Spirit in Moses mouth by which they were made so in Gods hand Onely beloved remember that a frame may be thrown down in much lesse time then it was set up A child an Ape can give fire to a Canon And a vapour can shake the earth And these fires and these vapours can throw down cities in minutes When Christ said Throw down this Temple and in three days I will raise it they never stopped upon the consideration of throwing it down they knew that might be soon done but they wondred at the speedy raising of it Now if all this earth were made in that minute may not all come to the generall dissolution in this minute Or may not thy acres thy miles thy Shires shrinke into feet and so few feet as shall but make up thy grave When he who was a great Lord must be but a Cottager and not so well for a Cottager must have so many acres to his Cottage but in this case a little peece of an acre five foot is become the house it selfe The house and the land the grave is all lower then that the grave is the Land and the Tenement and the Tenant too He that lies in it becomes the same earth that he lies in They all make but one earth and but a little of it But then raise thy selfe to a higher hope againe God hath made better land the land of promise a stronger city the new Ierusalem and inhabitants for that everlasting city Vs whom he made not by saying let there be men but by consultation by deliberation God said Let us make Man in our Image after our likenesse We shall pursue our great examples God in doing Moses in saying and so make hast in applying the parts But first receive them And since we have the whole world in contemplation consider in these words the foure quarters of the world by application by fair and just accommodation of the words First in the first word that God speaks here Faciamus Let us us in the plurall a denotation of divers Persons in one Godhead we consider our East where we must beginne at the knowledge and confession of the Trinity For though in the way to heaven we be travelled beyond the Gentiles when we come to confess but one God The Gentiles could not do that yet we are still among the Iews if we thinke that one God to be but one Person Christs name is Oriens the East if we will be named by him called Christians we must look to this East the confession of the Trinity There 's then our East in the Faciamus Let us us make man And then our West is in the next word Faciamus Hominem Though we be thus made made by the counsell made by the concurrence made by the hand of the whole Trinity yet we are made but men And man but in the appellation in this text and man there is but Adam and Adam is but earth but red earth earth dyed red in bloud in Soul-bloud the bloud of our own soules To that west we must all come to the earth The Sunne knoweth his going down Even the Sun for all his glory and heighth hath a going down and he knowes it The highest cannot devest mortality nor the discomfort of mortality When you see a cloud rise out of the west straightway you say there commeth a storme says Christ. When out of the region of your west that is your later days there comes a cloud a sicknesse you feele a storme even the best morall constancy is shaked But this cloud and this storme and this west there must be And that 's our second consideration But then the next words designe a North a strong and powerfull North to scatter and dissipate these clouds Ad imaginem similitudinem That we are made according to a pattern to an image to a likenesse which God proposed to himselfe for the making of man This consideration that God did not rest in that praeexistent matter out of which he made all other creatures and produced their formes out of their matter for the making of man but took a forme a patterne a modell for that work this is the North winde that is called upon to carry out of the perfumes of the garden to spread the goodnesse of God abroad This is that which is intended in Iob faire weather commeth out of the North. Our West our declination is in this that we are but earth our North our dissipation of that darknesse is in this that we are not all earth Though we be of that matter we have another forme another image another likenesse And then whose image and likenesse it is is our Meridionall height our noon our south point our highest elevation In Imagine nostra Let us make man in our Image Though our Sun set at noon as the Prophet Amos speakes though we die in our youth or fall in our height yet even in that Sunset we shall have a Noon For this Image of God shall never depart from our soule no not when that soule departs from our body And that 's our South our Meridionall height and glory And when we have thus seen this East in the faciamus That I am the workmanship and care of the whole Trinity And this West in the Hominem That for all that my matter my substance is but earth But then a North a power of overcomming that low and miserable state In Imagine That though in my matter the earth I must die yet in my forme in that Image which I am made by I cannot die and after all a South a knowledge That this Image is not the Image of Angels to whom we shall be like but it is by the same life by which those Angels themselves were made the Image of God himselfe When I am gone over this east and west and north and south here in this world I should be as sorry as Alexander was if there were no more worlds But there is another world which these considerations will discover and lead us to in which our joy and our glory shall be to see that God essentially and face to face after whose Image and likenesse we were made before But as that Pilot which had harbor'd his ship so farre within land as that he must have change of Winds in all the points of the Compasse to bring her out cannot hope to bring her our in one day So being to transport you by occasion of these words from this world to the next and in this world through all the Compasse all the foure quarters thereof I cannot hope to make all this voyage to day To day we shall consider onely our longitude our East and West
plurall too And againe in that declaration of his Justice in the confusion of the builders of Babel Descendamus confundamus Let us doe it And then lastly in that great worke of mingling mercy with justice which if we may so speake is Gods master-peece when he says Quis ex nobis who will goe for us and publish this In these places and these onely and not all these neither if we take it exactly according to the originall for in the Second the making of Eve though the Vulgat have it in the plurall it is indeed but singular in the Hebrew God speakes as a King in his royall plurall still And when it is but so Reverenter pensandum est says that Father it behoves us to hearken reverently to him for Kings are Images of God such Images of God as have eares and can heare and hands and can strike But I would aske no more premeditation at your hands when you come to speake to God in this place then if you sued to speake with the King no more fear of God here then if you went to the King under the conscience of a guiltinesse towards him and a knowledge that he knew it And that 's your case here Sinners and manifest sinners For even midnight is noone in the sight of God and when your candles are put out his Sunne shines still Nec quid absconditum à calcre ejus says David there is nothing hid from the heate thereof not onely no sinne hid from the light thereof from the sight of God but not from the heate therof not from the wrath indignation of God If God speak plurally onely in the Majesty of a soveraign Prince still Reverenter pensandum that calls for reverence What reverence There are nationall differences in outward worships and reverences Some worship Princes and Parents and Masters in one some in another fashion Children kneele to aske blessing of Parents in England but where else Servants attend not with the same reverence upon Masters in other nations as with us Accesses to their Princes are not with the same difficulty nor the same solemnity in France as in Turkey But this rule goes thorough all nations that in that disposition and posture and action of the body which in that place is esteemed most humble and reverend God is to be worshipped Doe so then here God is your Father aske blessing upon your knees pray in that posture God is your King worship him with that worship which is highest in our use and estimation We have no Grandees that stand covered to the King where there are such though they stand covered in the Kings presence they doe not speake to him for matters of Grace they doe not sue to him so ancient Canons make differences of Persons in the presence of God where and how these and these shall dispose of themselves in the Church dignity and age and infirmity will induce differences But for prayer there is no difference one humiliation is required of all As when the King comes in here howsoever they sate diversly before all returne to one manner of expressing their acknowledgement of his presence So at the Oremus Let us pray let us all fall down and worship and kneel before the Lord our maker So he speakes in our text not onely as the Lord our King intimating his providence and administration but as the Lord our maker and then a maker so as that he made us in a councell Faciamus Let us and that that he speakes as in councell is another argument for reverence For what interest or freedome soever I have by his favour with any Counseller of State yet I should surely use another manner of behaviour towards him at the Councell Table then at his owne Table So does there belong another manner of consideration to this plurality in God to this meeting in Councell to this intimation of a Trinity then to those other actions in which God is presented to us singly as one God for so he is presented to the naturall man as well as to us And here enters the necessity of this knowledge Oportet denuo nasci without a second birth no salvation And no second birth without Baptisme no Baptisme but in the name of Father Sonne and holy Ghost It was the entertainment of God himselfe his delight his contemplation for those infinite millions of generations when he was without a world without Creatures to joy in one another in the Trinity as Gregory Nazianz a Poet as well as a Father as most of the Fathers were expresses it ille suae splendorem cernere formae Gaudebat It was the Fathers delight to looke upon himselfe in the Sonne Numenque suum triplicique parique Luce nitens and to see the whole Godhead in a threefold and an equall glory It was Gods owne delight and it must be the delight of every Christian upon particular occasions to carry his thoughts upon the severall persons of the Trinity If I have a bar of Iron that bar in that forme will not naile a doore If a Sow of Lead that Lead in that forme will not stop a leake If a wedge of Gold that wedge will not buy my bread The generall notion of a mighty God may lesse fit my particular purposes But I coine my gold into currant money when I apprehend God in the severall notions of the Trinity That if I have been a prodigall Sonne I have a Father in heaven and can goe to him and say Father I have sinned and be received by him That if I be a decayed Father and need the sustentation of mine own children there is a Sonne in heaven that will doe more for me then mine own of what good meanes or what good nature so ever they be can or will doe If I be dejected in spirit there is a holy Spirit in heaven which shall beare witnesse to my spirit that I am the child of God And if the ghosts of those sinners whom I made sinners haunt me after their deaths in returning to my memory and reproaching to my conscience the heavy judgements that I have brought upon them If after the death of mine own sinne when my appetite is dead to some particular sinne the memory and sinfull delight of passed sinnes the ghosts of those sinnes haunt me againe yet there is a holy Ghost in heaven that shall exorcise these and shall overshadow me the God of all Comfort and Consolation God is the God of the whole world in the generall notion as he is so God but he is my God most especially and most applyably as he receives me in the severall notions of Father Sonne and holy Ghost This is our East here we see God God in all the persons consulting concurring to the making of us But then my West presents it selfe that is an occasion to humble me in the next words He makes but Man A man that is but Adam but Earth
to come to that light and that glory How then hath God doubled his mercies upon those persons to whom he hath afforded two great lights a Sunne to rule their day honour and prosperity and a Moone to rule their night humiliation and adversity to whom he hath given both Types in themselves to see this future glory by that is Titles and places of honour in this world and spectacles in themselves to see this glory by afflictions and crosses in this world And therefore since God gives both these no where so plentifully as in Courts the place of Honour and the place of Crosses too the place of rising and the place of falling too you you especially who by having your station there in the Court it selfe are in the Court exemplified and copied in your owne noble house you that have seen God characterized in his Types in titles of greatnesse you that have beheld God presented in his spectacle of Crosses and afflictions the daily bread of Courts Blesse ye the Lord praise him and magnifie him for ever and declare the wondrous workes that he hath done for the Sonnes of men for certainly many woes and invincible darknesse attend those to whom neither the hand of God in his works nor the hand of God upon themselves neither the greatnesse of this world nor the crâ—sses of this world can manifest God for what picture of God would they have that will neither have him in great nor litle SERMON XXXII Preached to the Earl of Exeter and his company in his Chappell at Saint Iohns 13. Iun. 1624. APOC. 7. 9. After this I beheld and loe a great Multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the Throne and before the Lambe clothed with white robes and Palmes in their hands WE shall have occasion by and by to say something of the danger of Curiosity and something of the danger of the broad way in which too many walk we will not therefore fall into either of these faults at first we will not be over curious nor we will not stray nor cast our selves into that broad and boundlesse way by entring into those various and manifold senses which Expositors have multiplyed in the handling of this place and this part of this book but we take the plainest way and that in which the best meet and concur that these words are spoken of the Ioyes and Glory reserved for them who overcome the fraud and the fury the allurements and the violences of Antichrist in whom in that name and person of Antichrist we consider all supplanters and all seducers all opposers of the kingdome of Christ in us for as every man hath spontaneum daemonem as S. Chrysostome speakes a devill of his own making which is some customary and habituall sin in him so every man hath spontaneuÌ„ Antichristum an Antichrist of his own making some objections in the weakness of his faith some oppositions in the perverseness of his manners against the kingdom of Christ in himself as if God would suspend the devill or slumber the devill a day I am afraid we should be as ill that day as if the devill were awake and in action so if those disputed problematical Antichrists Eastern Western Antichrist Antichrist of Rome and Antichrist of Constantinople Turk and Pope were removed out of the world we should not for all that be delivered of Antichrist that is of that opposition to the kingdome of Christ which is in our selvs This part of the book of the Revelation is literally and primarily the glorious victory of them who in the later end of the world having stood out the persecutions of the Antichrist enter into the triumph of heaven And it extends it self to all by way of fair accommodation who after a battel with their own Antichrists and victory over their owne enemies are also made partakers of those triumphs those joyes those glories of which S. Iohn in this propheticall glasse in this perspective of visions saw A great multitude which no man could number of all nations c. We are then upon the contemplation of the joyes of heaven which are everlasting must we wring them into the discourse of an houre of the glory of heaven which is intire and must we divide it into parts we must we will we doe into two parts first the number the great number of those that shall be saved And then the glorious qualities which shall be imprinted on them who are saved first that salvation is a more extensive thing more communicable then sullen cloystrall that have walled salvation in a monastery or in an ermitage take it to be or then the over-valuers of their own purity and righteousnesse which have determined salvation in themselves take it to be for It is a great multitude which no man can number of all nations c. And then in the second place salvation is the possession of such endowments as naturally invite all to the prosecution of that which is exposed and offered to all that we all labour here that we may all stand hereafter before the Throne and before the Lambe clothed in white robes c. In the first of these we shall passe by these steps first we shall consider the sociablenesse the communicablenesse of God himself who gives us the earth and offers us heaven and desires to have his kingdome well peopled he would have many he would have all he would have every one of them have all And then the first word of the text After this will carry us to the consideration of that which was done before which was first that they which were of this number were sealed and then they which were so sealed before were a great number one hundred forty four thousand but they who were made partakers of all this after were innumerable After this I beheld a great multitude which no man could number And therefore we shall shut up that first part with this consideration what sense what interpretation may belong unto those places where Christ says that the way to heaven is narrow and the gate straight of these peeces we shall make up our first part And for the particulars belonging to the second we shall fitliest open them then when we come to the handling of them Our first step then in this first part is the sociablenesse the communicablenesse of God He loves holy meetings he loves the communion of Saints the houshold of the faithfull Deliciae ejus says Solomon his delight is to be with the Sons of men and that the Sons of men should be with him Religion is not a melancholy the spirit of God is not a dampe the Church is not a grave it is a fold it is an Arke it is a net it is a city it is a kingdome not onely a house but a house that hath many mansions in it still it is a plurall thing consisting of
them all Grieve not the holy Ghost whereby you are sealed unto the day of Redemption says the Apostle they were sealed and yet might resist the Spirit and grieve the Spirit and quench the Spirit if by a continuall watchfulnesse over their particular actions they did not refresh those seales formerly received in their Creation in Christs incarnation in their Baptisme and in their beginnings of faith to themselves and plead them to the Church and to the world by such a declaration of a holy life But these seales being so many and so univesall that argues still that which we especially seek to establish that is the Accessiblenesse the communicablenesse the sociablenesse the affection shall I say the Ambition that God hath to have us all Now how is this extensivenesse declared here in our text It is declared in the great number of those who were sealed both before and after to the consideration of both which we are invited by this phrase which beginnes the text After this for before that Iohn saw this there were one hundred forty foure thousand sealed Is that then that one hundred forty foure thousand intended for a small number If it had been so it would rather have been said of such a Tribe but twelve thousand and but twelve thousand of such a Tribe but God as expressing a joy that there were so many repeats his number of twelve thousand twelve times over of Iuda twelve thousand of Levi twelve thousand and twelve thousand of every Tribe So that then we may justly take this number of twelve and twelve thousand for an indefinite and uncertain number and as Saint Augustine does wheresoever he finds that number of twelve as the twelve Thrones where the Saints shall judge the world and divers such we may take that number of twelve and twelve pro universitate salvandorum that that number signifies all those who shall be saved If we should take the number to be a certaine and exact number so many and no more yet this number hath relation to the Iews onely And of the Iews it is true that there is so long a time of their exclusion so few of them doe come in since Christ came into the world as that we may with Saint Augustine interpret that place of Genesis where Abrahams seed is compared both to the Starres of heaven and to the dust of the earth that the Stars of heaven signifie those that shall be saved in heaven and the dust of the earth those that perish and the dust of the earth may be more then the Stars of heaven though by the way there are an infinite number of Stars more then we can distinguish and so by Gods grace there may be an infinite number of soules saved more then those of whose salvation we discerne the ways and the meanes Let us embrace the way which God hath given us which is the knowledge of his Sonne Christ Iesus what other way God may take with others how he wtought upon Iob and Naaman and such others as were not in the Covenant let us not inquire too curiously determine too peremptorily pronounce too uncharitably God be blessed for his declaring his good-wil towards us his will be done his way upon others Truly even those places which are ordinarily understood of the paâ—city of the Iews that shall be saved will receive a charitable interpretation and extension God says in Ieremy I will take you one out of a City two out of a family yet he says he wil do this therefore because he is married to them so that this seems to be an act of his love And therefore I had rather take it that God would take a particular care of them one by one then that he would take in but one and one As it is in that place of Esay In that day ye shall be gathered one by one o yee children of Israel that is in the day of Christ of his comming to and toward Judgement Howsoever they come in but thinly yet by the way yet the Apostle pleads in their behalfe thus Hath God cast away his people God forbid At this present says he there is a Remnant then when they had newly crucified Christ God had a care of them God hath given them the spirit of slumber says he also it is but a slumber not a death not a dead sleep Have they stumbled that they should fall Fall utterly God forbid But says he as concerning the Gospell they are enemies for your sakes that is that room might be made for you the Gentiles but as touching election they are beloved for their Fathers sakes that is they have interest by an ancient title which God will never disannull And therefore a great part of the ancient and later men too doe interpret divers passages of Saint Paul of a generall salvation of the Iews that all shall be effectually wrought upon to salvation before the second comming of Christ. I end this concerning the Iews with this note that in all these Tribes which yeelded to this sealing twelve thousand a peece the Tribe of Dan is left out it is not said that any were sealed of the Tribe of Dan many have enquired the reason and satisfied themselves over easily with this that because Antichrist was to come of that Tribe that Tribe is forsaken It is true that very many of the Fathers Irenaeus Ambrose Augustine Gregory and more then these have thought so that Antichrist must be of that Tribe but yet for all that profession which they make in the Roman Church of adhering to the Fathers one amongst them says Incertum be the Fathers as clear and as unanimous as they will in it it is a very uncertain a very disputable thing and another says fabulosum est be the Fathers as earnest as they will it is but a poeticall and a fabulous thing that Antichrist must come of the Tribe of Dan. But he that hath most of the workes of Antichrist upon him of any person in the world now is thus far of the Tribe of Dan Dan signifies Iudgement And he will needs be the Judge of all faith and of all actions too and so severe a Judge as to give an irrevocable Judgement of Damnation upon all that agree not with them in all points Certainly this Tribe of Dan that is of such uncharitable Judges of all other men that will afford no salvation to any but themselves are in the greatest danger to be left out at this generall seale nothing hinders our own salvation more then to deny salvation to all but our selves This then which was done before though it concerne but the Iews was in a great number and was a great argument of Gods sociable application of himselfe to man but that which was after was more A great multitude which no man could number of all nations c. Gods mercy was not confined nor determined upon the Iews
And at the judgement you shall stand but stand at the barre But when you stand before the Throne you stand as it is also added in this place before the Lamb who having not opened his mouth to save his owne fleece when he was in the shearers hand nor to save his own life when he was in the slaughterers hand will much lesse open his mouth to any repentant sinners condemnation or upbrayd you with your former crucifyings of him in this world after he hath nailed those sinnes to that crosse to which those sinnes nayled him You shall stand amicti stolis for so it follows covered with Robes that is covered all over not with Adams fragmentary raggs of fig-leafes nor with the halfe-garments of Davids servants Though you have often offered God halfe-confessions and halfe-repentances yet if you come at last to stand before the Lambe his fleece covers all hee shall not cover the sinnes of your youth and leave the sinnes of your age open to his justice nor cover your sinfull actions and leave your sinfull words and thoughts open to justice nor cover your own personall sinnes and leave the sinnes of your Fathers before you or the sinnes of others whose sins your tentations produced and begot open to justice but as he hath enwrapped the whole world in one garment the firmament so cloathed that part of the earth which is under our feet as gloriously as this which we live and build upon so those sinnes which we have hidden from the world and from our own consciences and utterly forgotten either his grace shall enable us to recollect and to repent in particular or we having used that holy diligence to examine our consciences so he shall wrap up even those sinnes which we have forgot and cover all with that garment of his own righteousnesse which leaves no foulnesse no nakednesse open You shall be covered with Robes All over and with white Robes That as the Angels wondred at Christ coming into heaven in his Ascension Wherefore art thou red in thine Apparell and thy garments like him that treadeth the wine fat They wondred how innocence it selfe should become red so shall those Angels wonder at thy coming thither and say Wherefore art thou white in thine apparell they shall wonder how sinne it selfe shall be clothed in innocence And in thy hand shall be a palm which is the last of the endowments specifyed here After the waters of bitternesse they came to seventy to innumerable palmes even the bitter waters were sweetned with another wood cast in The wood of the Crosse of Christ Jesus refreshes all teares and sweetnes all bitternesse even in this life but after these bitter waters which God shall wipe from all our eies we come to the seventy to the seventy thousand palms infinite seales infinite testimonies infinite extensions infinite durations of infinite glory Go in beloved and raise your own contemplations to a height worthy of this glory and chide me for so lame an expressing of so perfect a state and when the abundant spirit of God hath given you some measure of conceiving that glory here Almighty God give you and me and all a reall expressing of it by making us actuall possessors of that Kingdome which his Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen SERMON XXXIII Preached at Denmark house some few days before the body of King Iames was removed from thence to his buriall Apr. 26. 1625. CANT 3. 11. Goe forth ye Daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart IN the Creation of man in that one word Faciamus let Vs make man God gave such an intimation of the Trinity as that we may well enlarge and spread and paraphrase that one word so farre as to heare therein a councell of all the three Persons agreeing in this gracious designe upon Man faciamus let us make him make and him mend him and make him sure I the Father will make him by my power if he should fall Thou the Sonne shalt repayr him re-edify him redeem him if he should distrust that this Redemption belonged not to him Thou the Holy Ghost shalt apply to his particular soule and conscience this mercy of mine and this merit of the Sonnes and so let us make him In our Text there is an intimation of another Trinity The words are spoken but by one but the persons in the text are Three For first The speaker the Director of all is the Church the spouse of Christ she says Goe forth ye daughters of Sion And then the persons that are called up are as you see The Daughters of Sion the obedient children of the Church that hearken to her voice And then lastly the persons upon whom they are directed is Solomon crowned That is Christ invested with the royall dignity of being Head of the Church And in this especially is this applyable to the occasion of our present meeting All our meetings now are to confesse to the glory of God and the rectifying of our own consciences and manners the uncertainty of the prosperity and the assurednesse of the adversity of this world That this Crown of Solomons in the text will appear to be Christs crown of Thornes his Humiliation his Passion and so these words will dismisse us in this blessed consolation That then we are nearest to our crown of Glory when we are in tribulation in this world and then enter into full possession of it when we come to our dissolution and transmigration out of this world And these three persons The Church that calls The children that hearken and Christ in his Humiliation to whom they are sent will be the three parts in which we shall determine this Exercise First then the person that directs us is The Church no man hath seen God and lives but no man lives till he have heard God for God spake to him in his Baptisme and called him by his name then Now as it were a contempt in the Kings house for any servant to refuse any thing except he might heare the King in person command it when the King hath already so established the government of his house as that his commandements are to be signifyed by his great Officers so neither are we to look that God should speak to us mouth to mouth spirit to spirit by Inspiration by Revelation for it is a large mercy that he hath constituted an Office and established a Church in which we should heare him When Christ was baptized by Iohn it is sayd by all those three Evangelists that report that story in particular circumstances that there was a voice heard from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased and it is not added in any of those three
go because none stayes behinde so when the holy Spirit which had made himself as a common soule to their foure soules directed one of them to say any thing all are well understood to have said it And therefore when to that place in Matth. 27. 8. where that Evangelist cites the Prophet Ieremy for words spoken by Zachary many medicines are applyed by the Fathers as That many copies have no name That Ieremy might be binominous and have both names a thing frequent in the Bible That it might be the error of a transcriber That there was extant an Apocryph booke of Ieremy in which these words were and sometimes things of such books were vouched as Iannes and Iambres by Paul St. Augustine insists upon and teaches rather this That it is more wonderfull that all the Prophets spake by one Spirit and so agreed then if any one of them had spoken all those things And therefore he adds Singula sunt omnium omnia sunt singulorum All say what any of them say And in this sense most congruously is that of St. Hierome applyable that the foure Evangelists are Quadriga Divina That as the foure Chariot wheeles though they looke to the foure corners of the world yet they move to one end and one way so the Evangelists have both one scope and one way Yet not so precisely but that they differ in words For as their generall intention common to them all begat that consent so a private reason peculiar to each of them for the writing of their Histories at that time made those diversities which seem to be for Matthew after he had preached to the Jewes and was to be transplanted into another vineyard the Gentiles left them written in their owne tongue for permanency which he had preached transitorily by word Mark when the Gospell fructified in the West and the Church enlarged her self and grew a great body and therefore required more food out of Peters Dictates and by his approbation published his Evangile Not an Epitome of Matthewes as Saint Ierome I know why imagines but a just and intire History of our blessed Saviour And as Matthewes reason was to supply a want in the Eastern Church Markes in the Western so on the other side Lukes was to cut off an excesse and superfluitie for then many had undertaken this Story and dangerously inserted and mingled uncertainties and obnoxious improbabilities and he was more curious and more particular then the rest both because he was more learned and because he was so individuall a companion of the most learned Saint Paul and did so much write Pauls words that Eusebius thereupon mistaketh the words 2 Tim. 2. 1. Christ is raised according to my Gospell to prove that Paul was author of this Gospell attributed to Luke Iohn the Minion of Christ upon earth and survivor of the Apostles whose books rather seem fallen from Heaven and writ with the hand which ingraved the stone Tables then a mans work because the heresies of Ebion and Cerinthus were rooted who upon this true ground then evident aud fresh that Christ had spoke many things which none of the other three Evangelists had Recorded uttered many things as his which he never spoke Iohn I say more diligently then the rest handleth his Divinity and his Sermons things specially brought into question by them So therefore all writ one thing yet all have some things particular And Luke most for he writ last of three and largeliest for himselfe 1 Act. 1. saith I have made the former Treatise of all that Iesus began to doe and teach untill the Day that he was taken up which speech lest the words in the last of Iohn If all were written which Iesus did the world could not contain the Bookes should condemne Ambrose and Chrysostome interpret well out of the words themselves Scripsit de omnibus non omnia He writ of all but not all for it must have the same limitation which Paul giveth his words who saith Acts 20. in one verse I have kept nothing back but have shewed you all the counsell of God and in another I kept back nothing that was profitable It is another peculiar singularity of Lukes that he addresseth his History to one man Theophilus For it is but weakely surmised that he chose that name for all lovers of God because the interpretation of the word suffereth it since he addeth most noble Theophilus But the work doth not the lesse belong to the whole Church for that no more then his Masters Epistles doe though they be directed to particulars It is also a singularitie in him to write upon that reason because divers have written In humane knowledge to abridge or suck and then suppresse other Authors is not ever honest nor profitable We see after that vast enterprise of Iustinian who distilled all the Law into one vessell and made one Booke of 2000. suppressing all the rest Alciate wisheth he had let them alone and thinketh the Doctors of our times would better have drawn usefull things from those volumes then his Trebonian and Dorothee did And Aristotle after by the immense liberality of Alexander he had ingrossed all Authors is said to have defaced all that he might be in stead of all And therefore since they cannot rise against him he imputes to them errours which they held not vouches onely such objections from them as he is able to answer and propounds all good things in his own name which he ought to them But in this History of Lukes it is otherwise He had no authority to suppresse them nor doth he reprehend or calumniate them but writes the truth simply and leaves it to outweare falshood and so it hath Moses rod hath devoured the Conjurers rods and Lukes Story still retains the majestie of the maker and theirs are not Other singularities in Luke of form or matter I omit and end with one like this in our Text. As in the apprehending of our blessed Saviour all the Evangelists record that Peter cut off Malchus eare but onely Luke remembers the healing of it again I think because that act of curing was most present and obvious to his consideration who was a Physician so he was therefore most apt to remember this Prayer of Christ which is the Physick and Balsamum of our Soule and must be applied to us all for we doe all Crucifie him and we know not what we do And therefore Saint Hierome gave a right Character of him in his Epistle to Paulinus Fuit Medicus pariter omnia verba illius Animae languentis sunt Medicinae As he was a Physitian so all his words are Physick for a languishing soule Now let us dispatch the last consideration of the effect of this Prayer Did Christ intend the forgivenesse of the Jewes whose utter ruine God that is himselfe had fore-decreed And which he foresaw and bewaild even then hanging upon the Crosse For those Divines which reverently forbeare to interpret the words
more then that too if we come to that inebriabo me lacrymis if we overflow and make our selves drunke with teares in a true sense and sorrow for those sinnes still it is more And more then all this if we can expostulate with God in an Vsque quo Domine How long O Lord shall I take counsell in my self having wearinesse in my heart These steps these gradations towards God do well warre is a degree of peace as it is the way of peace and these colluctations and wrestlings with God bring a man to peace with him But then is a man upon this stone of Iacob when in a faire and even and constant religious course of life he enters into his sheets every night as though his neighbours next day were to shrowd and wind him in those sheets he shuts up his eyes every night as though his Executors had closed them and lies downe every night not as though his man were to call him up next morning or to the next dayes sport or businesse but as though the Angels were to call him to the resurrection And this is our third benefit as Christ is a stone we have security and peace of conscience in him The next is That he is Lapis David the stone with which David slew Goliah and with which we may overcome all our enemies Sicut baculus crucis ita lapis Christi habuit typum Davids sling was a type of the Crosse and the stone was a type of Christ we will chuse to insist upon spirituall enemies sinnes And this is that stone that enables the weakest man to overthrow the strongest sinne if he proceed as David did David sayes to Goliah Thou comest to me with a speare and a shield but I come to thee in the name of the God of the hosts of Israel whom thou hast railed upon if thou watch the approach of any sinne any giant sinne that transports thee most if thou apprehend it to rayle against the Lord of Hosts that is that there is a loud and active blasphemy against God in every sinne if thou discerne it to come with a sword or a speare that is perswasions of advancement if thou do it or threatings of dishonour if thou do it not if it come with a shield that is with promises to cover and palliate it though thou do it If then this David thy attempted soule can put his hand into his bag as David did for quid cor hominis nisi sacculus Dei a mans heart is that bag in which God layes up all good directions if he can but take into his consideration his Jesus his Christ and sling one of his works his words his commandments his merits This Goliah this Giant sinne will fall to the ground and then as it is said of David that he slew him when he had no sword in his hand and yet in the next verse that he tooke his sword and slew him with that so even by the consideration of what my Lord hath done for me I shall give that sinne the first deaths wound and then I shall kill him with his owne sword that is his owne abomination his owne foulenesse shall make me detest him If I dare but looke my sinne in the face if I dare tell him I come in the name of the Lord if I consider my sinne I shall triumph over it Et dabit certanâ—â— victoriam qui dedit certandi audaciam That God that gave me courage to fight will give me strength to overcome The last benefit which we consider in Christ as he is a stone is That he is Petra a Rock The Rock gave water to the Israelites in the wildernesse and he gave them honey out of the stone and oyle out of the hard Rock Now when Saint Paul sayes That our Fathers dranke of the same Rock as we he adds that the same Rock was Christ So that all Temporall and all Spirituall blessings to us and to the Fathers were all conferred upon us in Christ but we consider not now any miraculous production from the Rock but that which is naturall to the Rock that it is a firme defence to us in all tempests in all afflictions in all tribulations and therefore Laâ—date Dominum habitatores petrae sayes the Prophet You that are inhabitants of this Rock you that dwell in Christ and Christ in you you that dwell in this Rock Prayse ye the Lord blesse him and magnifie him for ever If a sonne should aske bread of his father will he give him a stone was Christs question Yes O blessed Father we aske no other answer to our petition no better satisfaction to our necessity then when we say Da nobis panem Give us this day our daily bread that thou give us this Stone this Rock thy self in thy Church for our direction thy self in the Sacrament for our refection what hardnesse soever we finde there what corrections soever we receive there all shall be easie of digestion and good nourishment to usâ— Thy holy spirit of patience shall command That these stones be made bread And we shall finde more juice more marrow in these stones in these afflictions then worldly men shall do in the softnesse of their oyle in the sweetnesse of their honey in the cheerefulnesse of their wine for as Christ is our foundation we beleeve in him and as he is our corner-stone we are at peace with the world in him as he is Iacobs stone giving us peace in our selves and Davids stone giving us victory over our enemies so he is a Rock of stone no affliction no tribulation shal shake us And so we have passed through all the benefits proposed to be considered in this first part As Christ is a stone It is some degree of thankfulnesse to stand long in the contemplation of the benefit which we have received and therefore we have insisted thus long upon the first part But it is a degree of spirituall wisdome too to make haste to the consideration of our dangers and therefore we come now to them Wee may fall upon this stone and be broken This stone may fall upon us and grinde us to powder and in the first of these we may consider Quid cadere what the falling upon this stone is and secondly Quid frangi what it is to broken upon it and then thirdly the latitude of this unusquisque that whosoever fals so is so broken first then because Christ loves us to the end therefore will we never put him to it never trouble him till then as the wiseman sayd of Manna that it had abundance of all pleasure in it and was meat for all tasts that is as Expositors interpret it that Manna tasted to every one like that which every one liked best so this stone Christ Jesus hath abundance of all qualities of stone in it and is all the way such a stone to every man as he desires
conscience and pinching the bowells by denouncing of Gods Judgements these beare witnesse of the light when otherwise men would sleep it out and so propter non intelligentes for those that lye in the suddes of nature and cannot or of negligence and will not come to heare sol lucernas this light requires testimony These testimonies Gods ordinances may have wakened a man yet he may winke and covet darknesse and grow weary of instruction and angry at increpation And as the eye of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight so the eare of this fastidious and impatient man longeth for the end of the Sermon or the end of that point in the Sermon which is a thorne to his conscience But as if a man wink in a cleare day he shall for all that discerne light thorough his eylids but not light enough to keep him from stumbling so the most perverse man that is either in faith or manners that winkes against the light of nature or light of the law or light of grace exhibited in the Christian Church the most determined Atheist that is discernes through all his stubbornnesse though not light enough to rectifie him to save him yet enough to condemne him though not enough to enable him to reade his owne name in the book of life yet so much as makes him afraid to read his own story by and to make up his owne Audit and account with God And doth not this light to this man need testimony That as he does see it is a light so he might see that there is warmth and nourishment in this light and so as well see the way to God by that light as to see by it that there is a God and this he may if he doe not sleep nor winke that is not forbeare comming hither nor resist the grace of God always offred here when he is here Propter incredulos for their sakes who though they doe heare heare not to beleeve sol lucernas this light requires testimony and it does so too propter infirmos for their sakes who though they doe heare and beleeue yet doe not Practise If he neither sleep nor wink neither forbeare nor resist yet how often may you surprise and deprehend a man whom you thinke directly to look upon such an object yet if you aske him the quality or colour of it he will tell you he saw it not That man sees as little with staring as the other with winking His eye hath seen but it hath returned nothing to the common sense We may pore upon books stare upon preachers yet if we reflect nothing nothing upon our conversation we shall still remaine under the increpation and malediction of Saint Paul out of Esay Seeing yee shall see and shall not perceive seeing and hearing shall but aggravate our condemnation and it shall be easier at the day of Judgement for the deaf and the blinde that never saw Sacrament never heard Sermon then for us who have frequented both propter infirmos for their sakes whose strength though it serve to bring them hither and to beleeve here doth not serve them to proceed to practise sol lucernas this light requires testimony Yet if we be neither dead nor asleep nor winke nor looke negligently but doe come to some degrees of holinesse in practise for a time yet if at any time we put our selves in such a position and distance from this light as that we suffer dark thick bodies to interpose and eclipse it that is sadnesse and dejection of spirit for worldly losses nay if we admit inordinate sadnesse for sinne it selfe to eclipse this light of comfort from us or if we suffer such other lights as by the corrupt estimation of the world have a greater splendour to come in As the light of Knowledge and Learning the light of Honour and Glory of popular Applause and Acclamation so that this light which we speake of the light of former Grace be darkned by the accesse of other lights worldly lights then also you shall finde that you need more and more Testimony of this light God is light in the Creature in nature yet the naturall Man stumbles and falls and lies in that ignorance Christ bears witnesse of this light in establishing a Chrishian Church yet many Christians fall into Idolatry and Superstition and lie and die in it The Holy Ghost hath born further witnesse of this light and if we may take so low a Metaphore in so high a Mystery hath snuffed this candle mended this light in the Reformation of Religion and yet there is a damp or a cloud of uncharitablenesse of neglecting of defaming one another we deprave even the fiery the claven tongues of the Holy Ghost Our tongues are fiery onely to the consuming of another and they are cloven onely in speaking things contrary to one another So that still there need more witnesses more testimonies of this light God the Father is Pater Luminum the Father of all Lights God the Sonne is Lumen de lumine Light of light of the Father God the Holy Ghost is Lumen de luminibus Light of lights proceeding both from the Father and the Sonne and this light the Holy Ghost kindles more lights in the Church and drops a coale from the Altar upon every lamp he lets fall beams of his Spirit upon every man that comes in the name of God into this place and he sends you one man to day which beareth witnesse of this light ad ignaros that bends his preaching to the convincing of the naturall man the ignorant soul and works upon him And another another day that bears witnesse ad incredulos that fixeth the promises of the Gospell and the merits of Christ Jesus upon that startling and timorous soul upon that jealous and suspicious soul that cannot beleeve that those promises or those merits appertain to him and so bends all the power of his Sermon to the binding up of such broken hearts and faint beleevers He sendeth another to bear witnesse ad infirmos to them who though they have shaked off their sicknesse yet are too weake to walke to them who though they doe beleeve are intercepted by tentations from preaching and his Sermon reduces them from their ill manners who thinke it enough to come to hear to beleeve And then he sendeth another ad Relapsos to bear witnesse of this light to them who have relapsed into former sinnes that the merits of Christ are inexhaustible and the mercies of God in him indefatigable As God cannot be deceived with a false repentance so he cannot resist a true nor be weary of multiplying his mercies in that case And therefore thinke not that thou hast heard witnesses enow of this light Sermons enow if thou have heard all the points preached upon which concerne thy salvation But because new Clouds of Ignorance of Incredulitie of Infirmitie of Relapsing rise every day and call this light in question
and may make thee doubt whether thou have it or no every day that is as often as thou canst heare more and more witnesses of this light and bless that God who for thy sake would submit himselfe to these Testimonia ab homine these Testimonies from men and being all light himselfe and having so many other Testimonies would yet require the Testimony of Man of Iohn which is our other branch of this first part Christ who is still the light of our Text That light the essentiall light had testimony enough without Iohn First he bore witness of himselfe And though he say of himself If I beare witnesse of my self my witnesse is not true yet that he might say either out of a legall and proverbiall opinion of theirs that ordinarily they thought That a witness testifying for himself was not to be beleeved whatsoever he said Or as Man which they then took him to be he might speake it of himselfe out of his own opinion that in Iudicature it is a good rule that a man should not be beleeved in his own case But after this and after he had done enough to make them see that he was more then man by multiplying of miracles then he said though I beare witnesse of my selfe my witnesse is true So the onely infallibility and unreproachable evidence of our election is in the inward word of God when his Spirit beares witnesse with our Spirit that we are the Sonnes of God for if the Spirit the Spirit of truth say he is in us he is in us But yet the Spirit of God is content to submit himselfe to an ordinary triall to be tried by God and the Countrey he allowes us to doubt and to be afraid of our regeneration except we have the testimony of sanctification Christ bound them not to his own testimony till it had the seale of workes of miracles nor must we build upon any testimony in our selves till other men that see our life testifie for us to the world He had also the testimony of his Father the Father himselfe which hath sent me beareth witnesse of me But where should they see the Father or heare the Father speak That was all which Philip asked at his hands Lord show us the Father and it sufficeth us He had the testimony of an Angel who came to the shepheards so as no where in all the Scriptures there is such an Apparition expressed the Angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them but where might a man talke with this Angel and know more of him As Saint Augustine says of Moses Scripsit abiit he hath written a little of the Creation and he is gone Si hîc esset tenerem rogarem if Moses were here says he I would hold him fast till I had got him to give me an exposition of that which he writ For beloved we must have such witnesses as we may consult farther with I can see no more by an Angel then by lightning A star testified of him at his birth But what was that star was it any of those stars that remaine yet Gregory Nissen thinkes it was and that it onely then changed the naturall course and motion for that service But almost all the other Fathers thinke that it was a light but then created and that it had onely the forme of a star and no more and some few that it was the holy Ghost in that forme And if it were one of the fixed stars and remaine yet yet it is not now in that office it testifies nothing of Christ now The wise men of the East testified of him too But what were they or who or how many or from whence were they for all these circumstances have put Antiquity it selfe into more distractions and more earnest disputations then circumstances should doe Simeon testified of him who had a revelation from the holy Ghost that he should not see death till he had seen Christ. And so did the Prophetess Anna who served God with fasting and prayer day and night Omnis sexus aetas both sexes and all ages testified of him and he gives examples of all as it was easie for him to doe Now after all these testimonies from himselfe from the Father from the Angel from the star from the wise men from Simeon from Anna from all what needed the testimony of Iohn All those witnesses had been thirty years before Iohn was cited for a witnesse to come from the wildernesse and preach And in thirty years by reason of his obscure and retired life in his father Iosephs house all those personall testimonies of Christ might be forgotten and for the most part those witnesses onely testified that he was borne that he was come into the world but for all their testimony he might have been gone out of the world long Before this he might have perished in the generall flood in that flood of innocent blood in which Herod drowned all the young children of that Countrey When therefore Christ came forth to preach when he came to call Apostles when he came to settle a Church to establish meanes for our ordinary salvation by which he is the light of our text the Essentiall light shining out in his Church by the supernaturall light of faith and grace then he admitted then he required Testimonium ab homine testimony from man And so for our conformity to him in using and applying those meanes which convay this light to us in the Church we must doe so too we must have the seale of faith and of the Spirit but this must be in the testimony of men still there must be that done by us which must make men testifie for us Every Christian is a state a common-wealth to himselfe and in him the Scripture is his law and the conscience is his Iudge And though the Scripture be inspired from God and the conscience be illumined and rectified by the holy Ghost immediately yet both the Scriptures and the Conscience admit humane arguments First the Scriptures doe in all these three respects first that there are certaine Scriptures that are the revealed will of God Secondly that these books which we call Canonicall are those Scriptures And lastly that this and this is the true sense and meaning of such and such a place of Scripture First that there is a manifestation of the will of God in certain Scriptures if we who have not power to infuse Faith into men for that is the work of the Holy Ghost onely but must deal upon the reason of men and satisfie that if we might not proceed per testimonia ab homine by humane Arguments and argue and infer thus That if God will save man for worshipping him and damne him for not worshipping him so as he will be worshipped certainly God hath revealed to man how he will be worshipped and
Circumcision in the flesh after the spirituall Circumcision in the heart is established by the Gospell their end is not Circumcision but Concision they pretend Reformation but they intend Destruction a tearing a renting a wounding the body and frame and peace of the Church and by all means and in all cases Videte Concisionem Beware of Concision First then we shall from these words consider the lothnesse of God to lose us For first he leaves us not without a Law he bids and he forbids and then he does not surprise us with obsolete laws he leaves not his laws without proclamations he refreshes to our memories and represents to us our duties with such commonefactions as these in our Text Videte Cavete this and this I have commanded you Videte see that ye do it this and this will hinder you Cavete beware ye do it not Beware of Concision And this thus derived and digested into these three branches first Gods lothnesse to lose us and then his way of drawing us to him by manifestation of his will in a law and lastly his way of holding us with him by making that law effectuall upon us by these his frequent commonefactions Videte Cavete looke to it beware of it this will be our first part And then our second will be the thing it self that falls under this inhibition and caution which is Concision that is a tearing a renting a shredding in peeces that which should be intire In which second part we shall also have as we had in the former three branches for we shall consider first Concisionem corporis the shredding of the body of Christ into fragments by unnecessary wrangling in Doctrinall points and then Concisionem vestis the shredding of the garment of Christ into rags by unnecessary wrangling in matter of Discipline and ceremoniall points and lastly Concisionem spiritus which will follow upon the former two the concision of thine owne spirit and heart and minde and soule and conscience into perplexities and into sandy and incoherent doubts and scruples and jealousies and suspitions of Gods purpose upon thee so as that thou shalt not be able to recollect thy self nor reconsolidate thy self upon any assurance and peace with God which is onely to be had in Christ and by his Church Videte Concisionem beware of tearing the body the Doctrine beware of tearing the Garment the Discipline beware of tearing thine owne spirit and conscience from her adhaesion her agglutination her cleaving to God in a holy tranquillity and acquiescence in his promise and mercy in the merits of his Sonne applyed by the holy Ghost in the Ministry of the Church For our first consideration of Gods lothnesse to lose us this is argument enoughâ— That we are here now now at the participation of that grace which God alwayes offers to al such Congregations as these gathered in his name For I pray God there stand any one amongst us here now that hath not done something since yesterday that made him unworthy of being here to day and who if he had been left under the damp and mist of yesterdayes sinne without the light of new grace would never have found way hither of himself If God be weary of me and would faine be rid of me he needs not repent that he wrapped me up in the Covenant and derived me of Christian parents though he gave me a great help in that nor repent that he bred me in a true Church though he afforded me a great assistance in that nor repent that he hath brought me hither now to the participation of his Ordinances though thereby also I have a great advantage for if God be weary of me and would be rid of me he may finde enough in me now and here to let me perish A present levity in me that speake a present formality in you that heare a present Hypocrisie spread over us all would justifie God if now and here he should forsake us When our blessed Saviour sayes When the Son of man comes shall he finde faith upon earth we need not limit that question so if he come to a Westminster to an Exchange to an Army to a Court shall he finde faith there but if he come to a Church if he come hither shall he finde faith here If as Christ speaks in another sense That Iudgement should begin at his owne house the great and generall judgement should begin now at this his house and that the first that should be taken up in the clouds to meet the Lord Jesus should be we that are met now in this his house would we be glad of that acceleration or would we thank him for that haste Men of little faith I feare we would not There was a day when the Sonnes of God presented themselves before the Lord and Satan came also amongst them one Satan amongst many Sonnes of God Blessed Lord is not our case far otherwise do not we we who as we are but we are all the Sonnes of Satan present our selves before thee and yet thou Lord art amongst us Is not the spirit of slumber and wearinesse upon one and the spirit of detraction and mis-interpretation upon another upon one the spirit of impenitence for former sinnes and the spirit of recidivation into old or of facility and opennesse to admit tentations into new upon another We as we are but we are all the Sonnes of Satan and thou Lord the onely Sonne of God onely amongst us If thou Lord wert weary of me and wouldest be rid of me may many a soule here say Lord thou knowest and I know many a midnight when thou mightest have been rid of me if thou hadst left me to my selfe then But vigilavit Doninus the Lord vouchsafed to watch over me and deliciae ejus the delight of the Lord was to be with me And what is there in me but his mercy but then what is there in his mercy that that may not reach to all as well as to me The Lord is loth to lose any the Lord would not the death of any not of any sinner much lesse if he do not see him nor consider him so the Lord would not lose him though a sinner much lesse make him a sinner that he might be lost Vult omnes the Lord would have all men come unto him and be saved which was our first consideration and we have done with that and our second is The way by which he leads us to him that he declares and manifests his will unto us in a Law he bids and he forbids The laborers in the Vine-yard took it ill at the Stewards hand and at his Masters too that those which came late to the labour were made equall with them who had borne the heate and the burden of the day But if the Steward or the Master had never meant or actually never had given any thing at all to them that had borne the heate and the
Oppresse not that soule by violence by Fraud nor by Scorne which was the other signification of this word Oppression Hoc nos perdit quod divina quoque eloquia in facetias in dicteria vertamus Damnation is a serious thing and this aggravates it that we slight and make jests at that which should save us the Scriptures and the Ordinances of God For by this oppression of thy poore soule by this Violence this Fraud this Scorne thou wilt come to Reproach thy Maker to impute that losse of thy soule which thou hast incurred by often breach of Lawes evidently manifested to thee to his secret purpose and un-revealed will then which thou canst not put a greater Reproach a greater Contumely a greater Blasphemy upon God For God cannot bee God if hee bee not innocent nor innocent if hee draw bloud of mee for his owne Act. But if thou show mercy to this soule mercy in that signification of the word as it denotes an actuall performance of those things that are necessary for the making sure of thy salvation or if thou canst not yet attaine to those degrees of Sanctification mercy in that signification of the word as the word denotes hearty and earnest Prayer that thou couldest Lord I beleeve Lord help mine unbeliefe Lord I stand yet yet Lord raise mee when I fall Honorabis Deum thou shalt honour God in the sense of the word in this Text thou shalt enlarge God amplifie dilate God that is the Body of God the Church both here and hereafter For thou shalt adde a figure to the number of his Saints and there shall bee a Saint the more for thee Thou shalt adde a Theme of Joy to the Exultation of the Angels They shall have one occasion of rejoycing the more from thee Thou shalt adde a pause a stop to that Vsquequo of the Martyrs under the Altar who solicite God for the Resurrection for Thou shalt adde a step to the Resurrection it selfe by having brought it so much nearer as to have done thy part for the filling up of the number of the Saints upon which fulnesse the Resurrection shall follow And thou shalt adde a Voyce to that Old and ever-new Song that Catholique Hymne in which both Churches Militant and Triumphant shall joyne Blessing Honour Glory and Power bee unto him that sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lambe for ever and ever Amen SERMON XLIII A Sermon upon the fist of Novemb. 1622. being the Anniversary celebration of our Deliverance from the Powder Treason Intended for Pauls Crosse but by reason of the weather Preached in the Church LAMENT 4. 20. The breath of our nostrils the Anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits The Prayer before the Sermon O LORD open thou my lips and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise for thou O Lord didst make haste to help us Thou O Lord didst make speed to save us Thou that sittest in heaven didst not onely looke down to see what was done upon the Earth but what was done in the Earth and when the bowels of the Earth were with a key of fire ready to open and swallow us the bowels of thy compassion were with a key of love opened to succour us This is the day and these are the houres wherein that should have been acted In this our Day and in these houres We praise thee O God we acknowledge thee to bee the Lord All our Earth doth worship thee The holy Church throughout all this Land doth knowledge thee with commemorations of that great mercy now in these houres Now in these houres it is thus commemorated in the Kings House where the Head and Members praise thee Thus in that place where it should have been perpetrated where the Reverend Judges of the Land doe now praise thee Thus in the Universities where the tender youth of this Land is brought up to praise thee in a detestation of their Doctrines that plotted this Thus it is commemorated in many severall Societies in many severall Parishes and thus here in this Mother Church in this great Congregation of thy Children where all of all sorts from the Lievtenant of thy Lievtenant to the meanest sonne of thy sonne in this Assembly come with hearts and lippes full of thankesgiving Thou Lord openest their lippes that their mouth may shew forth thy prayse for Thou O Lord diddest make haste to helpe them Thou diddest make speede to save them Accept O Lord this Sacrifice to which thy Spirit giveth fire This of Praise for thy great Mercies already afforded to us and this of Prayer for the continuance and enlargement of them upon the Catholick Church by them who pretend themselves the onely sonnes thereof dishonoured this Day upon these Churches of England Scotland and Ireland shaked and threatned dangerously this Day upon thy servant our Soveraigne for his Defence of the true Faith designed to ruine this day upon the Prince and others derived from the same roote some but Infants some not yet Infants enwrapped in dust and annihilation this day upon all the deliberations of the Counsell That in all their Consultations they may have before their eyes the Record and Registers of this Day upon all the Clergie That all their Preaching and their Governement may preclude in their severall Iurisdictions all re-entrances of that Religion which by the Confession of the Actours themselves was the onely ground of the Treason of this day upon the whole Nobilitie and Commons all involved in one Common Destruction this Day upon both our Universities which though they lacke no Arguments out of thy Word against the Enemies of thy Truth shall never leave out this Argument out of thy Works The Historie of this Day And upon all those who are any wayes afflicted That our afflictions bee not multiplyed upon us by seeing them multiplyed amongst us who would have diminished thee and annihilated us this Day And lastly upon this Auditory assembled here That till they turne to ashes in the Grave they may remember that thou tookest them as fire-brands out of the fire this Day Heare us O Lord and hearken to us Receive our Prayers and returne them with Effect for his sake in whose Name and words wee make them Our Father which art c. The SERMON OF the Authour of this Booke I thinke there was never doubt made but yet that is scarce safely done which the Councell of Trent doth in that Canon which numbers the Books of Canonicall Scriptures to leave out this Book of Lamentations For though I make no doubt but that they had a purpose to comprehend and involve it in the name of Ieremy yet that was not enough for so they might have comprehended and involved Genesis and Deuteronomie and all between those two in one name of Moses and so they might have comprehended and involved the Apocalypse and some Epistles in the name of Iohn and have left out the Book it selfe in the number But one of their
fruitfull Land but then he who is the Spirit of the Lord he who is the breath of our nostrills Incubat aquis as it is said there in the Creation he moves upon the waters by his royall and warlike Navy at Sea in which he hath expressed a speciall and particular care And by the breath and influence of his providence throughout the Land he preserves he applies he makes usefull those blessings unto us If this breath that is this power be at any time sourd in the passage and contract an il savor by the pipes that convay it so as that his good intentions are ill executed by inferiour Ministers this must not be imputed to him That breath that comes from the East the bed and the garden of spices when it is breathed out there is a persume but by passing over the beds of Serpents and puâ—refied Lakes it may be a breath of poyson in the West Princes purpose some things for ease to the people and as such they are sometimes presented to them and if they prove grievances they tooke their putrefaction in the way that is their corruption from corrupt executors of good and wholesome intentions The thing was good in the roote and the ill cannot be removed in an instant But then we carry not this word Ruach Spirit so high though since God hath said that Kings are Gods the Attribute of the Holy Ghost and his Office which is to apply to man the goodnesse of God belongs to Kings also for God gives but they apply all blessings to us But here we take the word literally as it is in the Text Ruach spirit is the Breath that we breathe the Life that we live The King is that Breath that Life and therefore that belongs to him First our Breath that is serme our speech belongs to him Be faithfull unto him and speake good of his Name is commanded by David of God To Gods Anointed we are not faithfull if we doe not speake good of his Name First there is an internall speech in the heart and God lookes to that the foole hath said in his heart there is no God though he say it but in his heart yet he is a foole for as wise as a Politician would thinke him for saying it in his heart and comming no further yet even that is an overt act with God for God seeth the heart It is the foole that saith in his heart there is no God and it is the foole that saith in his heart I would there were no King That enormous that infamous Tragedy of the Levites Concubins and her murder of which it is said there There was no such thing seen nor done before and many things are done which are never seen with that emphaticall addition Consider of it advise and say your minde hath this addition too In those dayes there was no King in Israel If there had beene any King but a Zedekiah it could not have been so Curse not the King not in thy thoughts for they are sinnes that tread upon the heels of one another and that induce one another to conceive ill of Gods Lievtenant and of God himselfe for so the Prophet joyneth them They shall fret themselves and curse their King and their God He that beginneth with the one will proceed to the other Thus then he is our Breath our Breath is his our speech must be contained not expressed in his dishonour not in misinterpretations of his Actions jealousies have often made women ill incredulitie suspiciousnesse jealousie in the Subject hath wrought ill effects upon Princes otherwise not ill We must not speake ill but our duty is not accomplished in that abstinence we must speake well And in those things which will not admit a good interpretation we must be apt to remove the perversenesse and obliquity of the act from him who is the first mover to those who are inferiour instruments In these divers opinions which are ventilated in the Schoole how God concurreth to the working of second and subordinate causes that opinion is I think the most antient that denies that God workes in the second cause but hath onely communicated to it a power of working and rest himselfe This is not true God does work in every Organ and in every particular action but yet though he doe work in all yet hee is no cause of the obliquity of the perversenesse of any action Now earthly Princes are not equall to God They doe not so much as work in particular actions of instruments many times they communicate power to others and rest wholly themselves and then the power is from them but the perversenesse of the action is not God does work in ill actions and yet is not guilty but Princes doe not so much as worke therein and so may bee excusable at least for any cooperation in the evill of the action though not for countenancing and authorising an evill instrument but that is another case They are our breath then Our breath is theirs in good interpretations of their actions and it is theirs especially in our prayers to Almighty God for them The Apostle exhorts us to pray for whom first for all men in generall but in the first particular that hee descends to for Kings And both Theodoret and Theophylact make that the onely reason why the Apostle did not name Kings first Vt non videatur adulari lest hee should seeme to flatter Kings Whether mankinde it selfe or Kings by whom mankinde is happy here be to be preferred in prayer you see both Theodoret and Theophylact make it a probleme And those prayers there enjoyned were for Infidel Kings and for persecuting Kings for even such Kings were the breath of their nostrils their breath their speech their prayers were due to them But then beloved a man may convey a Satir into a Prayer a man may make a prayer a Libell If the intention of the prayer be not so much to incline God to give those graces to the King as to tell the world that the King wants those graces it is a Libell We say sometimes in scorn to a man God help you and God send you wit and therein though it have the sound of a prayer wee call him foole So wee have seen of late some in obscure Conventicles institute certain prayers That God would keep the King and the Prince in the true Religion The prayer is always good always usefull but when that prayer is accompanied with circumstances as though the King and the Prince were declining from that Religion then even the prayer it selfe is libellous and seditious Saint Paul in that former place apparels a Subjects prayer well when hee sayes Let prayers bee given with thanks Let our prayers bee for continuance of the blessings which wee have and let our acknowledgement of present blessings bee an inducement for future pray and praise together pray thankfully pray not suspiciously for beloved in the bowels of Christ
dead without children as Tertullian expresses it in his particular elegancy Illiberis that is content to be his brother in that sense in that capacity to claime no children no spirituall children of his own begetting not to attribute to himself that holy generation of the Saints of God as though his learning or his wit or his labour had saved them but to content himselfe to have been the foster father and to have nursed those children whom the Spirit of God by over-shadowing the Church hath begot upon her for though it be with the word of truth in our preaching yet of his own will begot he us though by the word says the Apostle Saint Paul might say to the Corinthians Though you have tenne thousand instructors in Christ yet have yee not many fathers for in Christ Iesus I have begotten you through the Gospel And hee might say of his spirituall sonne Onesimus That he begot him in his bonds Those to whom he first of any presented the Gospel That had not heard of a Christ nor a holy Ghost before They into whom he infused a new religion new to them might well enough bee called his children and hee their father But we have no new doctrine to present no new opinion to infuse or miracles to amaze as in the Romane Church they are full of all these wee have no children to beget of our own Paul was not crucified for you nor were you baptized in the name of Paul sayes Paul himself as he sayes again who is Paul but a Minister by whom ye beleeved and that also not by him but as the Lord gave to every man Not as Paul preached to every man for he preached alike to every man but as the Lord gave to every man I have planted says he it is true but he that planteth is nothing says he also Only they that proceed as they proceed in the Romane Church Ex opere operato to tye the grace of God to the action of the man will venter to call Gods children their children in that sense My prayer shal be against that commination That God will not give us a miscarrying womb nor dry breasts that you may always suck pure milk from us and then not cast it up but digest it to your spirituall growth And I shall call upon God with a holy passion as vehement as Rachels to Iacob Da mihi liberos give me children or I die That God would give me children but his children that he by his Spirit may give you an inward regeneration as I by his ordinance shall present to you the outward means that so being begot by himselfe the father of life and of light you may be nursed and brought up in his service by me That so not attributing the work to any man but to Gods Ordinances you doe not tye the power of God nor the breath of life to any one mans lips as though there were no regeneration no begetting but by him but acknowledging the other to be but an instrument and the weakest to be that you may remember also That though a man can cut deeper with an Axe then with a knife with a heavy then with a lighter instrument yet God can pierce as far into a conscience by a plain as by an exquisite speaker Now this widow being thus maried This Church thus undertaken He must perform the duty of a husbands brother First it is a personall office he must doe it himself When Christ shall say at the Judgement I was naked and ye cloathed me not sick and ye visited me not it shall be no excuse to say When saw we thee naked when saw we thee sick for wee might have seen it wee should have seen it When we shall come to our accompt and see them whose salvation was committed to us perish because they were uninstructed and ignorant dare we say then we never saw them show their ignorance wee never heard of it That is the greatest part of our fault the heaviest weight upon our condemnation that we saw so little heard so little conversed so little amongst them because we were made watchmen and bound to see and bound to hear and bound to be heard not by others but by our selves My sheep may be saved by others but I save them not that are save so nor shall I my self be saved by their labour where mine was necessarily required The office is personall I must doe it and it is perpetuall I must perform it sayes the text goe through with it Lots wife looked backe and God never gave her leave to look forward again That man who hath put his hand to the plow and looks back Christ disables him for the kingdome of God The Galatians who had begun in the spirit and then relapsed before whose eyes Christ Iesus had been evidently set forth as the Apostle speaks fall under that reproach of the Apostle to bee called and called againe fooles and men bewitched If I beginne to preach amongst you and proceed not I shall fall under that heavy increpation from my God you beganne that you might for your owne glory shew that you were in some measure able to serve the Church and when you had done enough for your own glory you gave over my glory and the salvation of their souls to whom I sent you God hath set our eyes in our foreheads to look forward not backward not to be proud of that which we have done but diligent in that which we are to doe In the Creation if God had given over his worke the third or fift day where had man been If I give over my prayers due to the Church of God as long as God enables me to doe it service I lose my thanks nay I lose the testimony of mine own conscience for all My office is personall and it is perpetuall and then it is a duty He must perform the duty of a husbands brother unto her It is not of curtesie that we preach but it is a duty it is not a bounty given but it is a debt paid for though I preach the Gospel I have nothing to glory of for a necessity is laid upon me sayes Saint Paul himself It is true that as there is Vae si non Wo be unto mee if I doe not preach the Gospel so there is an Euge bone serve Well done good and faithfull servant to them that doe But the Vae is of Iustice the Euge is of Mercy If doe it not I deserve condemnation from God but if I doe it I deserve not thanks from him Nay it is a debt not onely to God but to Gods people to you and indeed there is more due to you then you can claime or can take knowledge of For the people can claime but according to the laws of that State and the Canons of that Church in which God hath placed them such preaching as those Laws and
reads those words speaking of the Christian Church here It is the house of all them who do as it were rejoyce who come nearest to true joy And so when the Lord turned againe the Captivity of Sion Facti sumus sicut consolati We were as it were comforted Quare sicut sayes that Father Why is it so modified with that diminution as it were Quia hic etiam in Sanctis non perfecta consolatio Because sayes he in this world even the Saints themselves have no perfect joy Where the Apostle compares the sorrow and the joy of this world then the Quasi lyes upon the sorrows side it is but a halfe sorrow Quasi tristes We are as it were sorrowfull but indeed rejoycing but compare the best ioy of this world with the next and the Quasi will fall upon the ioy of the world For though we be sealed with the holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance and this is the Tropique of Joy the farthest that Spirituall Joy goes in this Zodique in this world yet this carries us no farther but Vt ex arrabone aestimetur haereditas That by the proportion of the earnest we might value the whole bargaine For what a bargaine would we presume that man to have that would give 20000 l. for earnest what is the Joy of heaven hereafter if the earnest of it here be the Seale of the holy Ghost God proceeds with us as we do with other men Operariis in Saeculo cibus in opere merces in fine datur In this world we give labourers meat and drink by the way but wages at the end of their work God affords us refreshing here but joy hereafter The best Seale is the holy Ghost and the best matter that the holy Ghost seales in is in blood in the dignity of Martyrdome and even for that for Martyrdome we have a rule in the Apostle Rejoyce in as much as ye are partakers of Christs sufferings That as he suffered for you so you suffer for him but in what contemplation That when his glory shall be revealed ye may be made glad with exceeding Joy not with exceeding Joy till then For till then the Joyes of Heaven may be exceeded in the addition of the body There is the rule and the example is Christ himself Who for the joy that was set before him endured the Crosse in contemplation of the Propterea exaltatus that therefore he should be exalted above all in heaven Rejoyce and be glad why for great is your reward but where in heaven And therefore Ask and you shall receive Pray and you shall have answer but what answer but what answer That your joy shall be full It shall be in heaven For Quis sic delectat quam ille qui fecit omnia quae delectant In whom can we fully rejoyce but him who made all things in which we rejoyce by the way In thy Name shall we rejoyce all the day says David Si in nomine suo non tota die St. Augustine says not that to any particular person nor any particular calling but to any man to every man Any Prince any Counsellor any Prelate any Generall any Discoverer any that goes in any way of joy and glory Si nomine suo non tota die If they rejoyce in their own names their own wisdome their own strength they shall not rejoyce all the day but they shall be benighted with darke sadnesse before their dayes end And their sunne shall set at noon too as the Prophet Amos speaks And therefore that shall be Christs expressing of that joy at the last day Enter into thy Master Ioy and leave the joy of Servants though of good Servants behind thee for thou shalt have a better Joy then that Thy Masters Ioy. It is time to end but as long as the glasse hath a gaspe as long as I have one I would breathe in this ayre in this perfume in this breath of heaven the contemplation of this Joy Blessed is that man qui scit jubilationem says David that knowes the joyfull sound For Nullo modo beatus nisi scias unde gaudeas For though we be bound to rejoyce alwayes it is not a blessed joy if we do not know upon what it be grounded or if it be not upon everlasting blessednesse Comedite amici says Christ bibite inebriamini Eat and drink and be filled Joy in this life Vbi in sudore vescimur where grief is mingled with joy is called meat says Saint Bernard and Christ cals his friends to eat in the first word Potus in future says he Joy in the next life where it passes down without any difficulty without any opposition is called drink and Christ calls his friends to drink but the overflowing the Ebriet as animae that is reserved to the last time when our bodies as well as our souls shall enter into the participation of it Where when wee shall love every one as well as our selves and so have that Joy of our owne salvation multiplied by that number wee shall have that Joy so many times over as there shall bee soules saved because wee love them as our selves how infinitely shall this Joy be enlarged in loving God so far above our selves and all them Wee have but this to add Heaven is called by many pretious names Lifeâ— Simply and absolutely there is no life but that And Kingdome Simply absolutely there is no Kingdom that is not subordinate to that And Sabbaâ—uÌ„ex Sabbate A Sabbath flowing into a Sabbath a perpetuall Sabbath but the Name that should enamour us most is that that it is Satietas gaudâ—orum fulnesse of Joy Fulnesse that needeth no addition Fulnesse that admitteth no leake And then though in the Schoole we place Blessednesse in visione in the sight of God yet the first thing that this sight of God shall produce in us for that shall produce the Reformation of the Image of God in us and it shall produce our glorifying of God but the first thing that the seeing of God shall produce in us is Joy The measure of our seeing of God is the measure of Joy See him here in his Blessings and you shall ioy in those blessings here and when you come to see him Sicuti est in his Essence then you shall have this Joy in Essence and in fulnesse of which God of his goodnesse give us such an earnest here as may binde to us that inheritance hereafter which his Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen FINIS 51. 1. Psal. 128. 3. ◠〈◊〉 Egerton 〈◊〉 Chancellor grandfatheâ— to the Bridâ— Divisio 1 Part. Resurrectio Zech. 10. 8. Psal. 150. 6. Non nubent Luke 20. 35. Gen. 2. 23. Mat. 17. 3. Luke 7. 15. Acts 9. 41. Gen. 15. 1â— Deut. 32. 50. Luke 1. 41. Luke 16. 23.
company in the reformation of Religion A miracle scarce lesse then the first propagation thereof in the primitive Church In how few yeares did God make the number of learned â—riters the number of persons of all qualities the number of Kings in whose Dominions the reformed Religion was exercised equall to the number of them who adhered to the Roman Church And yet thou must not depart from this contemplation till thou have made thy self an argument of all this till thou have concluded out of this that God hath made love to thy soule thy weake soule thy sick and foule and sinfull soule That he hath written to thee in all his Scriptures sent Ambassage to thee in all his preachers presented thee in all his temporall and spirituall blessings That he hath come to thee even in actions of uncle annesse in actions of unfaithfulnesse towards men in actions of distrustfulnesse towards God and hath checked thy conscience and delivered thee from some sins even then when thou wast ready to commit them as all the rest That that God who is but one in himselfe is yet three persons That those three who were all-sufficient to themselves would yet make more make Angels make man make a Christ make him a Spouse a Church and first propagate that by so weake men in so hard a doctrine and in so short a space over all the world and then reforme that Church againe so soone to such a heighth as these I say are to all the world so be thou thy self and Gods exceeding goodnesse to thee an argument That that God who hath shewed himself so loath to lose thee is certainly loath to lose any other soule but as he communicates himself to us all here so he would have us all partake of his joy and glory hereafter he that fils his Militant Church thus would not have his Triumphant Church empty So far we consider the accessiblenesse the communicablenesse the conversation of our good and gracious God to us in the generall There is a more speciall manner intimated even in the first word of our Text After this After what After he had seene the servants of God sealed sealed This seale seales the contract betweene God and Man And then consider how generall this seale is First God sealed us in imprinting his Image in our soules and in the powers thereof at our creation and so every man hath this seale and he hath it as soone as he hath a soule The wax the matter is in his conception the seale the forme is in his quickning in his inanimation as in Adam the waxe was that red earth which he was made of the seale was that soule that breath of life which God breathed into him Where the Organs of the body are so indisposed as that this soule cannot exercise her faculties in that man as in naturall Idiots or otherwise there there is a curtaine drawn over this Image but yet there this Image is the Image of God is in the most naturall Idiot as well as in the wisest of men worldly men draw other pictures over this picture other images over this image The wanton man may paint beauty the ambitious may paint honour the covetous wealth and so deface this image but yet there this image is and even in hell it selfe it will be in him that goes down into hell uri potest in gehenna non exuri sayes St. Bernard The image of God may burne in hell but as long as the soule remaines that image remaines there too And then thou who wouldest not burne their picture that loved thee wilt thou betray the picture of the Maker thy Saviour thy Sanctifier to the torments of hell Amongst the manifold and perpetuall interpretations of that article He descended into hell this is a new one that thou senâ—est him to hell in thy soule Christ had his Consummatum est from the Iewes he was able to say at last All is finished concerning them shall he never have a Consummatum est from thee never be at an end with thee Never if his Image must burne eternally in thy soule when thou art dead for everlasting generations Thus then we were sealed all sealed all had his image in our creation in the faculties of our soules But then we were all sealed againe sealed in our very flesh our mortall flesh when the image of the invisible God Christ Iesus the onely Sonne of God tooke our nature for as the Tyrant wished that all mankinde were but one body that he might behead all mankinde at a blow so God tooke into his mercie all mankinde in one person As intirely as all mankinde was in Adam all mankinde was in Christ and as the seale of the Serpent is in all by originall sinne so the seale of God Christ Iesus is on us all by his assuming our nature Christ Jesus tooke our souls and our bodies our whole nature and as no Leper no person how infectiously soever he be diseased in his body can say surely Christ never tooke this body this Leprosie this pestilence this rottennesse so no Leprous soule must say Christ never tooke this pride this adultery this murder upon himself he sealed us all in soule and body when he tooke both and though both dye the soule in sin daily the body in sicknesse perchance this day yet he shall afford a resurrection to both to the soule here to the body hereafter for his seale is upon both These two seales then hath God set upon us all his Image in our soules at our making his Image that is his Sonne upon our bodies and soules in his incarnation And both these seales he hath set upon us then when neither we our selves nor any body else knew of it He sets another seale upon us when though we know not of it yet the world the congregation does in the Sacrament of Baptisme when the seale of his Crosse is a testimony not that Christ was borne as the former seale was but that also he dyed for us there we receive that seale upon the forehead that we should conforme our selves to him who is so sealed to us And after all these seales he offers us another and another seale Set me as a seale upon thy heart and as a seale upon thine arme says Christ to all us in the person of the spouse in the Heart by a constant faith in the Arme by a declaratory works for then are we sealed and delivered and witnessed that 's our full evidence then have we made sure our salvation when the works of a holy life doe daily refresh the contract made with God there at our Baptisme and testifie to the Church that we doe carefully remember what the Church promised in our behalfe at that time for otherwise beloved without this seale upon the arme that is a stedfast proceeding in the works of a holy life we may have received many of the other seales and yet deface