not Gods enemy for if a vice be incorporated into our nature that is if our natural imperfections be chang'd into evil customs it is a threefold cord that is not easily broken it is a legion of Devils and not to be cast out without a mighty labour and all the arts and contentions of the Spirit of God 67. II. In prosecution of this propound to thy self as the great business of thy life to fight against thy passions We see that sin is almost unavoidable to young men because passion seises upon their first years The days of our youth is the reign of passion and sin rides in triumph upon the wheels of desire which run infinitely when the boy drives the chariot But the religion of a Christian is an open war against passion and by the grace of meekness if we list to study and to acquire that hath plac'd us in the regions of safety 68. III. Be not uncertain in thy resolutions or in chusing thy state of life because all uncertainties of mind and vagabond resolutions leave a man in the tyranny of all his follies and infirmities every thing can transport him and he can be forc'd by every temptation and every fancy or new accident can ruine him He that is not resolv'd and constant is yet in a state of deliberation and that supposes contrary appetites to be yet in the ballance and sin to be as strong as grace But besides this there are in every state of life many little things to be overcome and objections to be master'd and proper infirmities adherent which are to be cured in the progression and growth of a man and after experiment had of that state of life in which we are ingaged but therefore it is necessary that we begin speedily lest we have no time to begin that work which ought in some measure to be finish'd before we die Dum quid sis dubitas jam potes esse nihil He that is uncertain what to do shall never do any thing well and there is no infirmity greater than that a man shall not be able to determine himself what he ought to do 69. IV. In contentions against sin and infirmities let your force and your care be applied to that part of the wall that is weakest and where it is most likely the enemy will assault thee and if he does that he will prevail If a lustful person should bend all his prayers and his observations against envy he hath cur'd nothing of his nature and infirmity Some lusts our temper or our interest will part withal but our infirmities are in those desires which are hardest to be master'd that is when after a long dispute and perpetual contention still there will abide some pertinacious string of an evil root when the lust will be apt upon all occasions to revert when every thing can give fire to it and every heat can make it stir that is the scene of our danger and ought to be of greatest warfare and observation 70. V. He that fights against that lust which is the evil spring of his proper infirmities must not do it by single instances but by a constant and universal mortal fight He that does single spights to a lust as he that opposes now and then a fasting day against carnality or some few alms against oppression or covetousness will find that these single acts if nothing else be done can do nothing but cosen him they are apt to perswade easie people that they have done what is in them to cure their infirmity and that their condition is good but it will not do any thing of that work whither they are design'd We must remember that infirmities are but the reliques and remains of an old lust and are not cured but at the end of a lasting war They abide even after the conquest after their main body is broken and therefore cannot at all be cured by those light velitations and pickqueerings of single actions of hostility 71. VI. When a violent temptation assaults thee remember that this violence is not without but within Thou art weak and that makes the burden great Therefore whatever advices thou art pleased to follow in opposition to the temptation without be sure that thou place the strongest guards within and take care of thy self And if thou dost die or fall foully seek not an excuse from the greatness of the temptation for that accuses thee most of all the bigger the temptation is it is true that oftentimes thou art the more to blame but at the best it is a reproof of thy imperfect piety He whose religion is greater than the temptation of a 100. l. and yet falls in the temptation of a 1000. l. sets a price upon God and upon Heaven and though he will not sell Heaven for a 100. l. yet a 1000. l. he thinks is a worthy purchase 72. VII Never think that a temptation is too strong for thee if thou givest over fighting against it for as long as thou didst continue thy contention so long it prevail'd not but when thou yieldest basely or threwest away thy arms then it forraged and did mischief and slew thee or wounded thee dangerously No man knows but if he had stood one assault more the temptation would have left him Be not therefore pusillanimous in a great trial It is certain thou canst do all that which God requires of thee if thou wilt but do all that thou canst do 73. VIII Contend every day against that which troubles thee every day For there is no peace in this war and there are not many infirmities or principles of failing greater than weariness of well doing for besides that it proclaims the weakness of thy resolution and the infancy of thy piety and thy undervaluing religion and thy want of love it is also a direct yielding to the Enemy for since the greatest scene of infirmities lies in the manner of our piety he that is religious only by uncertain periods and is weary of his duty is not arriv'd so far as to plead the infirmities of willing people for he is in the state of death and enmity 74. IX He that would master his infirmities must do it at Gods rate and not at his own he must not start back when the burden pinches him nor refuse his repentances because they smart nor omit his alms because they are expensive for it is vain to propound to our selves any end and yet to decline the use of those means and instruments without which it is not to be obtained He that will buy must take it at the sellers price and if God will not give thee safety or immunity but upon the exchange of labour and contradictions fierce contentions and mortification of our appetites we must go to the cost or quit the purchase· 75. X. He that will be strong in grace and triumph in good measures over his infirmities must attempt his remedy by an active prayer For prayer without labour is like
elaborentur gratiora tamen quae suâ sponte nascuntur And a garment may as well be made to fit the Moon as that one form of Prayer should be made apt and proportionable to all men or to any man at all times Sect. 52. THIS Discourse relies wholly upon these two grounds A liberty to use variety of forms for prayer is more for the edification of the Church Secondly it is part of that liberty which the Church hath and part of the duty of the Church to preserve the liberty of the Spirit in various forms Sect. 53. BEFORE I descend to consideration of the particulars I must premise this that the gift or ability of prayer given to the Church is used either in publick or in private and that which is fit enough for one is inconvenient in the other and although a liberty in private may be for edification of good people when it is piously and discreetly used yet in the publick if it were indifferently permitted it would bring infinite inconvenience and become intolerable as a sad experience doth too much verifie Sect. 54. BUT now then this distinction evacuates all the former discourse and since it is permitted that every man in private use what forms he please the Spirit hath all that liberty that is necessary and so much as can be convenient the Church may be edified by every mans gift the affections of all men may be complied withall words may be fitted to their fancies their devotions quickned their weariness helped and supported and whatsoever benefit may be fancied by variety and liberty all that may be enjoyed and every reasonable desire or weaker fancy be fully satisfied Sect. 55. BUT since these advantages to devotion are accidental and do consult with weakness and infirmity and depend upon irregular variety for which no antecedent rule can make particular provision it is not to be expected the publick constitution and prescribed forms which are regular orderly and determin'd can make provision for particulars for chances and for infinite varieties And if this were any objection against publick forms it would also conclude against all humane Laws that they did not make provision for all particular accidents and circumstances that might possibly occurr All publick sanctions must be of a publick spirit and design and secure all those excellent things which have influence upon societies and communities of men and publick obligations Sect. 56. THUS if publick forms of Prayer be describ'd whose matter is pious and holy whose design is of universal extent and provisionary for all publick probable fear'd or foreseen events whose frame and composure is prudent and by authority competent and high and whose use and exercise is instrumental to peace and publick charity and all these hallowed by intention and care of doing glory to God and advantages to Religion express'd in observation of all such rules and precedents as are most likely to teach us best and guide us surest such as are Scriptures Apostolical Tradition Primitive practice and precedents of Saints and holy Persons the publick can do no more all the duty is performed and all the care is taken Sect. 57. NOW after all this there are personal necessities and private conveniencies or inconveniencies which if men are not so wise as themselves to provide for by casting off all prejudice and endeavouring to grow strong in Christianity men in Christ and not for ever to be Babes in Religion but frame themselves to a capacity of receiving the benefit of the publick without needing other provisions than what will fit the Church in her publick capacity the Spirit of God and the Church taught by him hath permitted us to comply with our own infirmities while they are innocent and to pray in private in any form of words which shall be most instrumental to our devotion in the present capacity Neque hoc ego ago ut ex tempore dicere malit sed ut possit Sect. 58. AND indeed sometimes an exuberant and an active affection and overflowing of Devotion may descend like anointing from above and our cup run over and is not to be contained within the margent of prescribed forms And though this be not of so great consideration as if it should happen to a man in publick that it is then fit for him or to be permitted to express it in forms unlimited and undetermin'd For there was a case in the dayes of the inundation of the Spirit when a man full of the Spirit was commanded to keep silence in the Church and to speak to himself and to God yet when this grace is given him in private he may compose his own Liturgy pectus enim est quod disertos facit vis mentis Ideoque imperitis quoque si modò sint aliquo affectu concitati verba non desunt Only when in private devotion we use forms of our own making or chusing we are concern'd to see that the matter be pious apt for edification and the present necessity and without contempt of publick prescriptions or irreverence to God and in all the rest we are at liberty only in the Lord that is according to the rule of faith and the analogy of Christian Religion For supposing that our devotion be fervent our intention pious and the petition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to the will of God Whatsoever our expressions are God reads the petition in the Character of the spirit though the words be brevia concisa singultantium modo ejecta But then these accidental advantages and circumstances of profit which may be provided for in private as they cannot be taken care of in publick so neither is it necessary they should for those pleasures of sensible devotion are so far from being necessary to the acceptation of prayer that they are but compliances with our infirmities and suppose a great weakness in him that needs them say the Masters of spiritual life and in the strongest prayers and most effectual devotions are seldomest found such as was Moses prayer when he spake nothing and Hannah's and our blessed Saviour's when he called upon his Father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with strong cries in that great desertion of spirit when he prayed in the Garden In these prayers the spirit was bound up with the strictness and violence of intention but could not ease it self with a flood of language and various expression A great devotion is like a great grief not so expressive as a moderate passion tears spend the grief and variety of language breaths out the devotion and therefore Christ went thrice and said the same words he could just speak his sence in a plain expression but the greatness of his agony was too big for the pleasure of a sweet and sensible expression of devotion Sect. 59. SO that let the devotion be never so great set forms of prayer will be expressive enough of any desire though importunate as extremity it self but when the spirit is
restraint Certainly then this pretended restraint is no such formidable thing These men themselves do it by directing all of the matter and much of the manner and Christ himself did it by prescribing both the matter and the words too Sect. 123. SIXTHLY These restraints as they are called or determinations of the Spirit are made by the Spirit himself For I demand when any Assembly of Divines appoint the matter of prayers to all particular Ministers as this hath done is that appointment by the Spirit or no If no then for ought appears this directory not being made by Gods Spirit may be an enemy to it But if this appointment be by the Spirit then the determination and limitation of the Spirit is by the spirit himself and such indeed is every pious and prudent constitution of the Church in matters spiritual Such as was that of St. Paul to the Corinthians when he prescribed orders for publick Prophesying and Interpretation and speaking with Tongues The Spirit of some he so restrained that he bound them to hold their peace he permitted but two or three to speak at one meeting the rest were to keep silence though possibly six or seven might at that time have the spirit Sect. 124. SEVENTHLY Is it not a restraint of the spirit to sing a Psalm in Metre by appointment Clearly as much as appointing Forms of prayer or Eucharist And yet that we see done daily and no scruple made Is not this to be partial in judgment and inconsiderate of what we do Sect. 125. EIGHTHLY And now after all this strife what harm is there in restraining the spirit in the present sence What prohibition What law What reason or revelation is against it What inconvenience in the nature of the thing For can any man be so weak as to imagine a despite is done to the spirit of grace when the gifts given to his Church are used regularly and by order As if prudence were no gift of Gods spirit as if helps in Government and the ordering spiritual matters were none of those graces which Christ when he ascended up on high gave unto men But this whole matter is wholly a stranger to reason and never seen in Scripture Sect. 126. FOR Divinity never knew any other vitious restraining the spirit but either suppressing those holy incitements to vertue and good life which God's Spirit ministers to us externally or internally or else a forbidding by publick authority the Ministers of the Word and Sacraments to speak such truths as God hath commanded and so taking away the liberty of prophesying The first is directly vitious in materia speciali The second is tyrannical and Antichristian And to it persecution of true Religion is to be reduced But as for this pretended limiting or restraining the Spirit viz. by appointing a regular Form of prayer it is so very a Chimaera that it hath no footing or foundation upon any ground where a wise man may build his confidence Sect. 127. NINTHLY But lastly how if the Spirit must be restrained and that by precept Apostolical That calls us to a new account But if it be not true what means Saint Paul by saying The spirits of the Prophets must be subject to the Prophets What greater restraint than subjection If subjected then they must be ruled if ruled then limited prescribed unto and as much under restraint as the spirits of the superiour Prophets shall judge convenient I suppose by this time this Objection will trouble us no more But perhaps another will Sect. 128. FOR Why are not the Ministers to be left as well to their liberty in making their Prayers as their Sermons I answer the Church may if she will but whether she doth well or no let her consider This I am sure there is not the same reason and I fear the experience the world hath already had of it will make demonstration enough of the inconvenience But however the differences are many Sect. 129. FIRST Our Prayers offered up by the Minister are in behalf and in the name of the People and therefore great reason they should know beforehand what is to be presented that if they like not the message they may refuse to communicate especially since people are so divided in their opinions in their hopes and in their faiths it being a duty to refuse communion with those prayers which they think to have in them the matter of sin or doubting Which reason on the other part ceases For the Minister being to speak from God to the people if he speaks what he ought not God can right himself however is not a partner of the sin as in the other case the people possibly may be Sect. 130. SECONDLY It is more fit a liberty be left in Preaching than Praying because the address of our discourses and exhortations are to be made according to the understanding and capacity of the audience their prejudices are to be removed all advantages to be taken and they are to be surprized that way they lie most open But being crafty I caught you saith St. Paul to the Corinthians And discourses and arguments ad hominem upon their particular principles and practises may more move them than the most polite and accurate that do not comply and wind about their fancies and affections St. Paul from the absurd practise of being baptized for the dead made an excellent Argument to convince the Corinthians of the Resurrection But this reason also ceases in our prayers For God understandeth what we say sure enough he hath no prejudices to be removed no infirmities to be wrought upon and a fine figure of Rhetorick a pleasant cadence and a curious expression move not him at all No other twinings and compliances stir him but charity and humility and zeal and importunity which all are things internal and spiritual It was observed by Pliny Deos non tam accuratis adorantium precibus quà m innocentiâ sanctitate laetari gratiorémque existimari qui delubris eorum puram castámque mentem quà m qui meditatum carmen intulerit And therefore of necessity there is to be great variety of discourses to the people and permissions accordingly but not so to God with whom a Deus miserere prevails as soon as the great Office of forty hours not long since invented in the Church of Rome or any other prayers spun out to a length beyond the extension of the office of a Pharisee Sect. 131. THIRDLY I fear it cannot stand with our reverence to God to permit to every spirit a liberty of publick address to him in behalf of the people Indeed he that is not fit to pray is not always fit to preach but it is more safe to be bold with the people than with God if the persons be not so fit In that there may be indiscretion but there may be impiety and irreligion in this The people may better excuse and pardon an indiscretion or a rudeness if any such should happen than
meaning nothing to the giving of life So that here we have besides his authority an excellent Argument for us Christ said he that eateth my flesh hath life but the flesh that is the fleshly sence of it profits nothing to life but the Spirit that is the spiritual sence does therefore these words are to be understood in a spiritual sence 9. And because it is here opportune by occasion of this discourse let me observe this that the Doctrine of Transubstantiation is infinitely useless and to no purpose For by the words of our Blessed Lord by the Doctrine of Saint Paul and the sence of the Church and the confession of all sides the natural eating of Christ's flesh if it were there or could so be eaten alone or of it self does no good does not give life but the spiritual eating of him is the instrument of life to us and this may be done without their Transubstantiated flesh it may be done in Baptisme by Faith and Charity by Hearing and understanding and therefore it may also in the blessed Eucharist although there also according to our Doctrine he be eaten only Sacramentally and Spiritually And hence it is that in the Mass-book anciently it is prayed after consecration Quaesumus Omnipotens Deus ut de perceptis muneribus gratias exhibentes beneficia potiora sumamus We beseech thee Almighty God that we giving thanks for these gifts received may receive greater gifts which besides that it concludes against the Natural Presence of Christ's body for what greater thing can we receive if we receive that it also declares that the grace and effect of the Sacramental communion is the thing designed beyond all corporal sumption and as it is more fully express'd in another Collect Vt terrenis affectibus expiati ad superni plenitudinem Sacramenti cujus libavimus sancta tendamus that being redeemed from all earthly affections we may tend to the fulness of the Heavenly Sacrament the Holy things of which we have now begun to taste And therefore to multiply so many miracles and contradictions and impossibilities to no purpose is an insuperable prejudice against any pretence less than a plain declaration from God Add to this that this bodily presence of Christ's body is either for corporal nourishment or for spiritual Not for Corporal for Natural food is more proper for it and to work a Miracle to do that for which so many Natural means are already appointed is to no purpose and therefore cannot be supposed to be done by God neither is it done for spiritual nourishment because to the spiritual nourishment vertues and graces the word and the efficacious signs faith and the inward actions and all the emanations of the Spirit are as proportion'd as meat and drink are to natural nourishment and therefore there can be no need of a Corporal Presence 2. Corporal manducation of Christ's body is apparently inconsistent with the nature and condition of a body 1. Because that which is after the manner of a spirit and not of a body cannot be eaten and drunk after the manner of a body but of a spirit as no man can eat a Cherubin with his mouth if he were made apt to nourish the soul but by the confession of the Roman Doctors Christ's body is present in the Eucharist after the manner of a spirit therefore without proportions to our body or bodily actions 2. That which neither can feel or be felt see or be seen move or be mov'd change or be changed neither do or suffer corporally cannot certainly be eaten corporally but so they affirm concerning the body of our blessed Lord it cannot do or suffer corporally in the Sacrament therefore it cannot be eaten corporally any more than a man can chew a spirit or eat a meditation or swallow a syllogism into his belly This would be so far from being credible that God should work so many Miracles in placing Christ's Natural body for spiritual nourishment that in case it were revealed to be placed there to that purpose it self must need one great Miracle more to verifie it and reduce it to act and it would still be as difficult to explain as it is to tell how the material fire of Hell should torment spirits and souls And Socrates in Plato's Banquent said well Wisdom is not a thing that can be communicated by local or corporal contiguity 3. That the Corporal presence does not nourish spiritually appears because some are nourished spiritually who do not receive the Sacrament at all and some that do receive yet fall short of being spiritually nourished and so do all unworthy Communicants This therefore is to no purpoose and therefore cannot be supposed to be done by the wise God of all the World especially with so great a pomp of Miracles 4. Cardinal Perron affirms that the Real Natural presence of Christ in the Sacrament is to greatest purpose because the residence of Christ's Natural body in our bodies does really and substantially joyn us unto God establishing a true and real Unity between God and Men. And Bellarmine speaks something like this de Euchar. l. 3. c. 9. But concerning this besides that every faithful soul is actually united to Christ without the actual residence of Christ's body in our bodies since every one that is regenerated and born a new of water and of the Spirit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same plant with Christ as Saint Paul calls him Rom. 6.5 He hath put on Christ he is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh Galat. 3.27 Ephes. 5.30 and all this by Faith by Baptism by regeneration of the Spirit besides this I say this corporal union of our bodies to the body of God incarnate which these great and witty Dreamers dream of would make man to be God For that which hath a real and substantial unity with God is consubstantial with the true God that is he is really substantially and truly God which to affirm were highest blasphemy 5. One device more there is to pretend an usefulness of the Doctrine of Christ's Natural presence viz. that by his contact and conjunction it becomes the cause and the seed of the Resurrection But besides that this is condemn'd by Vasquez as groundless and by Suarez as improbable and a novel temerity it is highly confuted by their own Doctrine For how can the contact or touch of Christ's body have that or any effect on ours when it can neither be touch'd nor seen nor understood but by faith which Bellarmine expresly affirms But to return from whence I am digressed Tertullian adds in the same place Quia sermo caro erat factus proinde in causam vitae appetendus devorandus auditu ruminandus intellectu fide digerendus Nam paulò antè carnem suam panem quoque coelestem pronunciârat urgens usquequaque per allegoriam necessariorum pabulorum memoriam Patrum qui panes carnes Egyptiorum praeverterant
THUS I have by very many arguments taken from the words and circumstances and annexes of the Institution or Consecration proved that the sence of this mystery is mysterious and spiritual that Christs body is eaten only sacramentally by the body but really and effectively only by faith which is the mouth of the soul that the flesh profiteth nothing but the words which Christ spake are spirit and life And let it be considered Whether besides a pertinacious resolution that they will understand these words as they found in the letter not as they are intended in the spirit there be any thing or indeed can be in the nature of the thing or circumstances of it or usefulness or in the different forms of words or the Analogy of the other discourses of Christ that can give colour to their literal sence against which so much reason and Scripture and arguments from Antiquity do contest This only I observe that they bring no pretence of other Scriptures to warrant this interpretation but such which I have or shall wrest out of their hands and which to all mens first apprehensions and at the very first sight do make against them and which without curious notion and devices cannot pretend on their side as appears first in the tenth Chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians Verses 16 17. 2. Out of which I have already proved that Christs body is not taken in the natural sence but in the spiritual But when Bellarmine had out of the same words forced for himself three arguments proving nothing to save any man the labour of answering them he adds at the end of them these words Sed tota difficultas est as corporaliter realiter propriè sumatur sanguis caro an solùm significativè spiritualiter Quod autem corporaliter propriè probari posset omnibus argumentis quibus suprà probavimus propriè esse intelligenda verba illa institutionis Hoc est corpus meum That is after his arguments out of the first Epistle to the Corinthians were ended all the difficulty of the question still remained and that he was fain to prove by Hoc est corpus meum and the proper arguments of that but brings nothing from the words of S. Paul in this Chapter But to make up this also he does corrodere scrape together some things extrinsecal to the words of this authority as 1. That the literal sence is to be presumed unless the contrary be proved which is very true but I have evidently proved the contrary concerning the words of Institution and for the words in this Chapter if the literal sence be preferred then the bread remains after Consecration because it is called bread 2. So the Primitive Saints expounded it which how true it is I shall consider in his own place 3. The Apostle calling the Gentiles from their sacrificed flesh proposes to them a more excellent banquet but it were not more excellent if it were only a figure of Christs body so Bellarmine which is a fit cover for such a dish for 1. We do not say that in the Sacrament we only receive the sign and figure of Christs body but all the real effects and benefits of it 2. If we had yet it is not very much better than blasphemy to say that the Apostles had not prevailed upon that account For if the very figure and sacrament of Christs body be better than sacrifices offered to Devils the Apostle had prevailed though this sentence were true that in the Sacrament we receive only the figure And thus I have for all that is said against it made it apparent that there is nothing in that place for their corporal presence 3. There is one thing more which out of Scripture they urge for the corporal presence viz. He that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself not discerning the Lords body and he shall be guilty of the body and blood of Christ. Where they observe that they that eat unworthily do yet eat Christs body because how else could they be guilty of it and condemned for not discerning it 4. To this I answer many things 1. S. Paul does not say He that eateth and drinketh Christs body and blood unworthily c. but indefinitely He that eateth and drinketh c. yet it is probable he would have said so if it had been a proper form of speech because by so doing it would have layed a greater load upon them 2. Where S. Paul does not speak indefinitely he speaks most clearly against the Article in the Roman sence for he calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The cup of the Lord and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this bread and he that eats this bread unworthily is guilty of the body and blood of Christ and now these comminatory phrases are quitted from their pretence but yet they have their proper consideration Therefore 3. Not discerning the Lords body is not separating it from profane and common usages not treating it with addresses proper to the mystery To which phrase Justin gives light in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we do not receive it as common bread and common drink but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. but nourishment made Eucharistical or blessed by the word of Prayer and so it is the body and blood of the Lord. 4. It is the body of the Lord in the same sence here as in the words of institution which I have evinced to be exegetical sacramental and spiritual and by despising the sacrament of it we become guilty of the body and blood of Christ. Reus erit corporis sanguinis Christi qui tanti mysterii sacramentum despexerit saith S. Hierome And it is in this as Severianus said concerning the statutes of Theodosius broken in despight by the Antiochians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If you abuse the Kings Image the affront relates to your Prince 5. The unworthy receiver is guilty of the body and blood of Christ not naturally for that cannot now be and nothing is a greater probation of the spiritual sence of the words in this place than this which they would intice into their party For Christs body is glorified and not capable of natural injury but the evil communicant is guilty of the body and blood of Christ just as relapsing Christians are said by the same Apostles to crucifie the Lord of life again and put him to an open shame which I suppose they cannot do naturally or corporally One is as the other that is both are tropical or figurative 5. These are all that they pretend from Scripture and all these are nothing to their purpose but now besides what I have already said I shall bring arguments from other Scriptures which will not so easily be put off SECT IX Arguments from other Scriptures proving Christs Real Presence in the Sacrament to be only Spiritual not Natural 1. THE first is taken from those words of our
unreasonable doctrine in relation to motion and quantity I need not instance in those collateral absurdities which are appendent to some of the foregoing particulars as how it should be credible that Christ in his sumption of the last Supper should eat his own flesh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Simplicius Nothing can receive it self nothing can really participate of it self and properly figuratively and Sacramentally this may be done but not in a natural and physical sence for as S. Cyril of Alexandria argues Si verè idem est quod participat quod participatur quid opus est participatione What need he partake of himself what need he receive a part of that which he is already whole and if the partaker and the thing partaken be naturally the same then the Sacrament did as much eat Christ as Christ did eat the Sacrament * It would also follow from hence that the soul of Christ should enter into his body though it were there before it entred and yet it would now be there twice at the same time for it is but one soul and yet enters after it is there it never having gone forth * Nay further yet upon supposition that Christ did eat the Sacrament as it is most likely he did and we are sure he might have done then the soul of Christ which certainly went along with his body which surely was then alive should be in his body in two contrary and incompatible manners by one of which he does operate freely and exercise all the actions of life by the other he exercises none by one he is visible by the other invisible by one moveable by the other immovable by one after the manner of a body by the other after the manner of a Spirit The one of these being evident in it self the other by their own affirmation But these are by the by there are whole Categories of fond and impossible consequents from this doctrine 36. Eleventhly But if I should also consider the change of consecration i. e. the conversion of bread into Christs body and their rare stratagems and devices in ridiculous affirmatives and negatives as to that particular it would afford a new heap of matter 37. For this conversion is not generation it is not corruption it is not creation because Christs body already is and cannot be produced again it is not after the manner of natural conversions it differs from the supernatural there is no change of one form into another the same first matter does not remain under * several forms first of bread then of Christs body It is turned into the substance of Christs body and yet nothing of the bread becomes any thing of the body of Christ. It is turned into Christ and yet it is turned into nothing the substance is not annihilated for then it were not turned into Christs body and yet it is annihilated or turned to nothing for it does not become Christs body it is determined upon Christs body and yet does not become it though it be changed into it for if bread could become Christs body then bread could receive a greater honour than any of the servants of Christ for it could be glorified with the biggest glorification it would be exalted far above all Angels bread should reign for ever and be King of all the world which are honours not communicable to meer man and by no change can be wrought upon him and if they may upon bread then bread is exalted higher than the sons of men and yet so it is if it be naturally and substantially changed into the body of Christ. I cannot insist upon any thing of this the absurdity being so vast the labour would be as great as needless Only I shall transcribe part of a disputation by which Tertullian proves the resurrection of our bodies by such words which do certainly confute the Roman fancies of Transubstantiation Cap. 55. de resurrectione carnis Discernenda est autem demutatio ab omni argumento perditionis c. Change must be distinguished from perdition But they are not distinguished if the flesh be so changed that it perishes As that which is lost is not changed so that which is changed is not lost or perished For it suffered change not perdition for to perish is wholly not to be that which it was but to be changed is only to be otherwise Moreover while it is otherwise it can be the same thing or it self for it hath his being which did not perish Now how it is possible that these words should be reconciled with Transubstantiation in which they affirm the bread to be changed and yet totally to have perished that is that nothing of it remains neither matter nor form it concerns them to take care for my part I am satisfied that it is impossible and I chuse to follow the Philosophy of Tertullian by which he fairly confirms the Article of the resurrection rather than the impossible speculations of these men which render all notices of men to be meer deceptions and all Articles of Faith in many things uncertain and nothing to be certain but that which is impossible This consideration so moved Durand and their Doctor Fundatissimus Egidius Romanus that they thought to change the word Transubstantiation and instead of it that they were obliged to use the word of Transformation simply affirming that other to be unintelligible But I proceed By this doctrine Christs body is there where it was not before and yet not by change of place for it descends not nor by production for it was produced before not by natural mutation for Christ himself is wholly immutable and though the bread be mutable it can never become Christ. * That which is now and was always begins to be and yet it cannot begin which was so long before And by this Doctrine is affirmed that which even themselves * judge to be simply and absolutely impossible For if after a thing hath his being and during the first being it shall have every day many new beginnings without multiplying the beings then the same thing is under two times at the same time it is but a day old and yet was six days ago and six ages and sixteen * The body of Christ obtains to be what it was not before and yet it is wholly the same without becoming what it was not * It obtains to be under the form of bread and that which it is now and was not before is neither perfective of his being nor destructive nor alterative nor augmentative nor diminutive nor conservative It is as it were a production as it were a creation as a conservation as an adduction that is it is as it were just nothing for it is not a creation not a generation not an adduction not a conservation It is not a conversion productive for no new individual is produced It is not a conversion conservative That 's a child of Bellarmines but it is perfect non-sence
found out a remedy for those of old so he will also for the poor misled people of Ireland and will take away the evil minds or the opportunities of the Adversaries hindring the people from Instruction and make way that the Truths we have here taught may approach to their ears and sink into their hearts and make them wise unto Salvation Amen A DISSUASIVE FROM POPERY To the People of IRELAND PART I. The INTRODVCTION THE Questions of difference between Our Churches and the Church of Rome have been so often disputed and the evidences on both sides so often produc'd that to those who are strangers to the present constitution of affairs it may seem very unnecessary to say them over again and yet it will seem almost impossible to produce any new matter or if we could it will not be probable that what can be newly alledged can prevail more than all that which already hath been so often urged in these Questions But we are not deterr'd from doing our duty by any such considerations as knowing that the same Medicaments are with success applied to a returning or an abiding Ulcer and the Preachers of God's Word must for ever be ready to put the People in mind of such things which they already have heard and by the same Scriptures and the same Reasons endeavour to destroy their sin or prevent their danger and by the same word of God to exstirpate those errors which have had opportunity in the time of our late disorders to spring up and grow stronger not when the Keepers of the field slept but when they were wounded and their hands cut off and their mouths stopp'd lest they should continue or proceed to do the work of God thoroughly A little warm Sun and some indulgent showers of a softer Rain have made many weeds of erroneous Doctrine to take root greatly and to spread themselves widely and the Bigots of the Roman Church by their late importune boldness and indiscreet forwardness in making Proselytes have but too manifestly declar'd to all the World that if they were rerum potiti Masters of our affairs they would suffer nothing to grow but their own Colocynths and Gourds And although the Natural remedy for this were to take away that impunity upon the account of which alone they do encrease yet because we shall never be Authors of such Counsels but confidently rely upon God the Holy Scriptures right Reason and the most venerable and prime Antiquity which are the proper defensatives of truth for its support and maintenance yet we must not conceal from the People committed to our charges the great evils to which they are tempted by the Roman Emissaries that while the King and the Parliament take care to secure all the publick interests by instruments of their own we also may by the word of our proper Ministery endeavour to stop the progression of such errors which we know to be destructive of Christian Religion and consequently dangerous to the interest of Souls In this procedure although we shall say some things which have not been alwayes plac'd before their eyes and others we shall represent with a fittingness to their present necessities and all with Charity too and zeal for their souls yet if we were to say nothing but what hath been often said already we are still doing the work of God and repeating his voice and by the same remedies curing the same diseases and we only wait for the blessing of God prospering that importunity which is our duty according to the advice of Solomon In the Morning sow thy seed and in the Evening withhold not thy hand for thou knowest not whether shall prosper either this or that or whether they both shall be alike good CHAP. I. The Doctrine of the Roman Church in the Controverted Articles is neither Catholick Apostolick nor Primitive SECT I. IT was the challenge of Saint Augustine to the Donatists who as the Church of Rome does at this day inclos'd the Catholick Church within their own circuits Ye say that Christ is Heir of no Lands but where Donatus is Co-heir Read this to us out of the Law and the Prophets out of the Psalms out of the Gospel it self or out of the Letters of the Apostles Read it thence and we believe it Plainly directing us to the Fountains of our Faith the Old and New Testament the words of Christ and the words of the Apostles For nothing else can be the Foundation of our Faith whatsoever came in after these foris est it belongs not unto Christ To these we also add not as Authors or Finishers but as Helpers of our Faith and Heirs of the Doctrine Apostolical the Sentiments and Catholick Doctrine of the Church of God in the Ages next after the Apostles Not that we think them or our selves bound to every private Opinion even of a Primitive Bishop and Martyr but that we all acknowledge that the whole Church of God kept the Faith entire and transmitted faithfully to the after-Ages the whole faith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the form of doctrine and sound words which was at first delivered to the Saints and was defective in nothing that belong'd unto salvation and we believe that those Ages sent millions of Saints to the bosome of Christ and seal'd the true Faith with their lives and with their deaths and by both gave testimony unto Jesus and had from him the Testimony of his Spirit And this method of procedure we now chuse not only because to them that know well how to use it to the Sober and Moderate the Peaceable and the Wise it is the best the most certain visible and tangible most humble and satisfactory but also because the Church of Rome does with greatest noises pretend her Conformity to Antiquity Indeed the present Roman Doctrines which are in difference were invisible and unheard-of in the first and best Antiquity and with how ill success their Quotations are out of the Fathers of the first three Ages every inquiring Man may easily discern But the noises therefore which they make are from the Writings of the succeeding Ages where secular interest did more prevail and the Writings of the Fathers were vast and voluminous full of controversie and ambiguous sences fitted to their own times and questions full of proper Opinions and such variety of sayings that both sides eternally and inconfutably shall bring sayings for themselves respectively Now although things being thus it will be impossible for them to conclude from the sayings of a number of Fathers that their Doctrine which they would prove thence was the Catholick Doctrine of the Church because any number that is less than all does not prove a Catholick consent yet the clear sayings of one or two of these Fathers truly alledged by us to the contrary will certainly prove that what many of them suppose it do affirm and which but two or three as good Catholicks as the other do deny was not then
can be understood where it is said who shall endure the day of his coming c. 3. Saint Austin speaks things expresly against the Doctrine of Purgatory Know ye that when the soul is pluck'd from the body presently it is plac'd in Paradise according to its good deservings or else for her sins is thrown headlong in inferni Tartara into the hell of the damned for I know not well how else to render it And again the soul retiring is receiv'd by Angels and plac'd either in the bosom of Abraham if she be faithful or in the custody of the infernal prison if it be sinful until the appointed day comes in which she shall receive her body pertinent to which is that of Saint Austin if he be Author of that excellent Book de Eccles. dogmatibus which is imputed to him After the ascension of our Lord to the Heavens the souls of all the Saints are with Christ and going from the body go unto Christ expecting the resurrection of their body But I shall insist no further upon these things I suppose it very apparent that Saint Austin was no way confident of his fancy of Purgatory and that if he had fancied right yet it was not the Roman Purgatory that he fancied There is only one Objection which I know of which when I have clear'd I shall pass on to other things Saint Austin speaking of such who have liv'd a middle kind of an indifferent pious life saith Constat autem c. but it is certain that such before the day of judgment being purg'd by temporal pains which their spirits suffer when they have receiv'd their bodies shall not be deliver'd to the punishment of Eternal fire here is a positive determination of the Article by a word of confidence and a full certificate and therefore Saint Austin in this Article was not a doubting person To this I answer it may be he was confident here but it lasted not long this fire was made of straw and soon went out for within two Chapters after he expresly doubts as I have provâ—d 2. These words may refer to the purgatory fire at the general conflagration of the world and if they be so referred it is most agreeable to his other sentiments 3. This Constat or decretory phrase and some lines before or after it are not in the old Books of Bruges and Colein nor in the Copies printed at Friburg and Ludovicus Vives supposes they were a marginal note crept since into the Text. Now this Objection being remov'd there remains no ground to deny that Saint Austin was a doubting person in the Article of Purgatory And this Erasmus expresly affirm'd of him and the same is said of him by Hofmeister but modestly and against his doubting in his Enchiridion he brings only a testimony in behalf of prayer for the dead which is nothing to the purpose and this is also sufficiently noted by Alphonsus à Castro and by Barnesius Well! but suppose Saint Austin did doubt of Purgatory This is no warranty to the Church of England for she does not doubt of it as Saint Austin did but plainly condemns it So one of my Adversaries objects To which I answer That the Church of England may the rather condemn it because Saint Austin doubted of it for if it be no Catholick Doctrine it is but a School point and without prejudice to the Faith may be rejected But 2. I suppose the Church of England would not have troubled her self with the Doctrine if it had been left as Saint Austin left it that is but as a meer uncertain Opinion but when the wrong end of the Opinion was taken and made an Article of Faith and damnation threatned to them that believed it not she had reason to consider it and finding it to be chaff wholly to scatter it away 3. The Church of England is not therefore to be blamed if in any case she see more than Saint Austin did and proceed accordingly for it is certain the Church of Rome does decree against divers things of which Saint Austin indeed did not doubt but affirm'd confidently I instance in the necessity of communicating Infants and the matter of appeals to Rome The next Authority to be examin'd is that of Otho Frisingensis concerning which there is a heavy quarrel against the Dissuasive for making him to speak of a Purgatory before whereas he speaks of one after the day of Judgment with a Quidam asserunt some affirm it viz. that there is a place of Purgatory after death nay but you are deceiv'd sayes E. W. and the rest of the Adversaries he means that some affirm there is a place of Purgatory after the day of judgment Now truly that is more than I said but that Otho said it is by these men confess'd But his words are these I think it ought to be search'd whether the judgment being pass'd besides the lower hell there remain a place for lighter punishments for that there is below or in hell a Purgatory place in which they that are to be savâ—d are either affected afficiantur invested punish'd with darkness only or else are boiled in the fire of expiation some do affirm What is or can be more plainly said of Purgatory for the places of Scripture brought to confirm this Opinion are such which relate to the interval between death and the last judgment Juxta illud Patriarchae lugens descendam ad inferos illud Apostoli ipse autem salvus erit sic tamen quasi per ignem I hope the Roman Doctors will not deny but these are meant of Purgatory before the last day and therefore so is the Opinion for the proof of which these places are brought 2. By post judicium in the title and transacto judicio in the Chapter Otho means the particular judgment passing upon every one at their death which he in a few lines after calls terminatis in judicio causis singulorum 3. He must mean it to be before the last great day because that which he sayes some do affirm quidam asserunt is that those which are salvandi to be sav'd hereafter are either in darkness or in a Purgatory fire which therefore must be meant of the interval for after the day of judgment is pass'd and the books shut and the sentence pronounc'd none can be sav'd that are not then acquitted unless Origen's Opinion of the salvation of Devils and damned souls be reintroduc'd which the Church before Otho many Ages had exploded and therefore so good and great a person would not have thought that fit to be then disputed and it was not then a Question nor a thing Undetermin'd in the Church 4. Whether Otho means it of a Purgatory before or after the day of the last judgment it makes very much against the present Roman Doctrine for Otho applies the Question to the case of Infants dying without Baptism now if their Purgatory be before the day of judgment
a perfect grace * We must be ready to part with all for a good conscience and to die for Christ that 's perfect obedience and the most perfect love * We must conform to the Divine Will in doing and suffering that 's perfect patience we must live in all holy conversation and godliness that 's a perfect state * We must ever be going forward and growing in godliness that so we may be perfect men in Christ. * And we must persevere unto the end that 's perfection and the crown of all the rest If any thing less than this were intended it cannot be told how the Gospel should be a holy institution or that God should require of us to live a holy life but if any thing more than this were intended it is impossible but all mankind should perish 52. To the same sence are we to understand those other severe Precepts of Scripture of being pure unblameable without spot or wrinkle without fault that is that we be honest and sincere free from hypocrisie just in our purposes and actions without partiality and unhandsome mixtures S. Paul makes them to expound each other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sincere that is without fault pure and clear in Conscience 53. Like to this is that of Toto corde loving and serving God with all our heart and with all our strength That this is possible is folly to deny For he that saith he cannot do a thing with all his strength that is that he cannot do what he can do knows not what he says and yet to do this is the highest measure and sublimity of Christian perfection and of keeping the Commandments But it signifies two things 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without hypocrisie sincerely and heartily opposite to that of Corde corde in the Psalmist Corde corde loquuti sunt they spake with a double heart but the men of Zebulon went out to battel absque corde corde they were not of a double heart so S. Hierome renders it but heartily or with a whole heart they did their business 2. It signifies diligence and labour earnestness and caution Totus in hoc sum so the Latines use to speak I am earnest and hearty in this affair I am wholly taken up with it 54. Thus is the whole design of the Gospel rarely abbreviated in these two words of Perfection and Repentance God hath sent Jesus to bless you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whilest or so that every one of you turn from your iniquities He blesses us and we must do our duty He pardons us and we obey him He turns us and we are turned And when S. Peter had represented the terrors of the day of Judgment he infers What manner of persons ought we to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in holy living and holy worshippings This he calls a giving diligence to be found 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without spot and unblameable that 's Christian perfection and yet this very thing is no other than what he calls a little before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a coming to repentance Living in holy conversation and piety in the faith of Christ is the extent and burthen of repentance and it is the limit and declaration of the spotless and unblameable This is no more and that is no less 55. Upon this account the Commandments are not only possible but easie necessary to be observed and will be exacted at our hands as they are imposed That is 1. That we abstain from all deliberate acts of sin 2. That we never contract any vicious habit 3. That if we have we quite rescind and cut them off and make amends for what is past 4. That our love to God be intire hearty obedient and undivided 5. That we do our best to understand Gods will and obey it allowing to our selves deliberately or by observation not the smallest action that we believe to be a sin Now that God requires no more and that we can do thus much and that good men from their conversion do thus much though in differing degrees is evident upon plain experience and the foregoing considerations I conclude with the words of the Arausican Council Omnes baptizati Christo auxiliante cooperante possunt debent quae ad salutem pertinent si fidelitèr laborare voluerint adimplere All baptized Christians may by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ if they will faithfully labour perform and fulfil all things that belong to their salvation 56. The summ of all is this The state of regeneration is perfection all the way even when it is imperfect in its degrees The whole state of a Christians life is a state of perfection Sincerity is the formality or the Soul of it A hearty constant endeavour is the Body or material part of it And the Mercies of God accepting it in Christ and assisting and promoting it by his Spirit of Grace is the third part of its constitution it is the Spirit This perfection is the perfection of Men not of Angels oand it is as in the perfection of Glory where all are perfect yet all are not equal Every regenerate man hath that perfection without which he cannot be accepted but some have this perfection more some less It is the perfection of state but the perfection of degrees is not yet Here men are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 made perfect according to the measure of their Fathers as Porphyrie express'd it that is by the measures of mortality or as it pleases God to enable and accept them SECT IV. The former Doctrine reduc'd to Practice 1. THE Law is either taken for the Law of Moses or the Law of Works The Law of Works is that Empire and Dominion which God exercised over man using his utmost right and obliging man to the rigorous observation of all that Law he should impose upon him And in this sence it was a law of death not of life for no man could keep it and they that did not might not live This was impos'd on Adam only 2. But when God brought Israel out of Egypt he began to make a Covenant with them with some compliance to their infirmities For because little things could not be avoided Sacrifices were appointed for their expiation which was a mercy as the other was a misery a repentance as the sin But for great sins there was no Sacrifice appointed no repentance ministred And therefore still we were in the ministration of death for this mercy was not sufficient as yet it was not possible for a man to be justified by the Law It threatned sinners with death it inflicted death it did not promise eternal life it ministred no grace but fear and temporal hope It was written in Tables of stone not in their hearts that is the material parts of the Law of Moses were not consonant to natural and essential reason but arbitrary impositions they were not perfective of a man but
of Gods love to us enabling us to call him Father as well as Lord. Thus this Parable or one like it is told in the book of Hermas The Lord commanded his servant to put pales about his vineyard He did so and digg'd a ditch besides and rooted out all the weeds which when his Lord observ'd he made him coheir with his son When S. Paul exhorted the Corinthians to give a free contribution to the poor Saints at Jerusalem he invites to do it nobly and cheerfully not as of constraint for Gods Commandment nam'd not the summ neither can the degree of affection be nam'd but yet God demands all our affection Now in all the affirmative Precepts the duty in the lowest degree is that which is now made necessary under the loss of all our hopes of Eternity but all the further degrees of the same duty are imposed upon the condition of greater rewards and other collateral advantages of duty When Hystaspes ask'd Cyrus the Persian why he preferr'd Chrysantas before him since he did obey all his Commands The Prince answered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrysantas does not stay till he is called and he does not only what is commanded but what is best what he knows is most pleasing to me So does every perfect man according to the degrees of his love and his perfection 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The righteousness of a perfect man consists not in legal innocence but in love and voluntary obedience This is that charity which is the glory of Christianity the crown of all other graces that which makes all the external works of obedience to be acceptable and every act of the most excellent piety and devotion is a particular of that grace and therefore though it is highly acceptable yet it is also commanded in the general and in the sence before explicated and he that does no more than he is particularly commanded obeys God as a Lion obeys his keeper meat and stripes are all the endearments of his peace and services Qui manet ut moneatur semper servos homo officium suum Non voluntate id facere meminit servos is habitu haud probus est The servant that must be called upon at every step is but an unprofitable and unworthy person To do only what we are commanded will never bring us to the portion and inheritance of Sons We must do this chearfully and we must do more even contend to please God with doing that which is the righteousness of God striving for perfection till perfection it self becomes perfect still obeying that law of Sons Love the Lord with all thy heart till our charity it self is crown'd Therefore 19. XIII Let no man propound to himself a limit of duty saying he will go so far and go no further For the Commandment is infinite and though every good man obeys it all the way of his holy conversation yet it shall not be finish'd till his life is done But he that stints himself to a certain measure of love hath no love at all for this grace grows for ever and when the object is infinite true love is not at rest till it hath possess'd what is infinite and therefore towards that there must be an infinite progression never stopp'd never ceasing till we can work no more 20. XIV Let every man be humbled in the sense of his failings and infirmities Multum in hâc vitâ ille profecit qui quà m longè sit à perfectione justitiae proficiendo cognovit said S. Austin It is a good degree of perfection to have proceeded so far as well to know and observe our own imperfections The Scripture concludes all under sin not only because all have fail'd of the Covenant of Works of the exactness of obedience but by reason of their prevarication of that law which they can obey And indeed no man could be a sinner but he that breaks that law which he could have kept We were all sinners by the Covenant of works but that was in those instances where it might have been otherwise For the Covenant of Works was not impossible because it consisted of impossible Commandments for every Commandment was kept by some or other and all at some times but therefore it was impossible to be kept because at some time or other men would be impotent or ignorant or surpris'd and for this no abatement was made in that Covenant But then since in what every man could help he is found to be a sinner he ought to account it a mighty grace that his other services are accepted In pursuance of this 21. XV. Let no man boast himself in the most glorious services and performances of Religion Qui in Ecclesiâ semper gloriosè granditer operati sunt opus suum Domino nunquam imputaverunt as S. Cyprian's expression is They who have greatly serv'd God in the Church and have not been forward to exact and challenge their reward of God they are such whom God will most certainly reward For humility without other external works is more pleasing to God than pride though standing upon heaps of excellent actions It is the saying of S. Chrysostome * For if it be as natural to us to live according to the measures of reason as for beasts to live by their nature and instinct what thanks is due to us for that more than to them for this And therefore one said well Ne te jactes si benè servisti Obsequitur Sol obtemperat Luna Boast not if thou hast well obeyed The Sun and the Moon do so and shall never be rewarded * But when our selves and all our faculties are from God he hath power to demand all our services without reward and therefore if he will reward us it must wholly be a gift to us that he will so crown our services * But he does not only give us all our being and all our faculties but makes them also irriguous with the dew of his Divine Grace sending his holy Son to call us to repentance and to die to obtain for us pardon and resurrection and eternal life sending his holy Spirit by rare arguments and aids external and internal to help us in our spiritual contentions and difficulties So that we have nothing of our own and therefore can challenge nothing to our selves * But besides these considerations many sins are forgiven to us and the service of a whole life cannot make recompence for the infinite favour of receiving pardon * Especially since after our amendment and repentance there are remaining such weaknesses and footsteps of our old impieties that we who have daily need of the Divine Mercy and Pity cannot challenge a reward for that which in many degrees needs a pardon for if every act we do should not need some degrees of pardon yet our persons do in the periods of our imperfect workings * But after all this all that we can do is no advantage to God he is not
Christ and hath given to us the ministery of reconciliation * Now then we are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christs stead be ye reconciled to God * For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost for the promise is unto you and to your children and to all that are afar off and to as many as the Lord our God shall call And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law that the man which doth those things shall live by them But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise The word is nigh thee even in thy mouth and in thy heart that is the word of faith which we preach that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved Death is swallowed up in victory O death where is thy sting O grave where is thy victory The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the law But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. My yoke is easie and my burthen is light For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh hath for sin condemned sin in the flesh that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit His Commandments are not grievous If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life And not only so but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the attonement I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me My grace is sufficient for thee for my strength is made perfect in weakness Ask and you shall have seek and ye shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you To him that hath shall be given and he shall have more abundantly Having therefore these promises let us cleanse our selves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord. The PRAYER I. O Eternal God Lord of Heaven and Earth Father of Men and Angels we do adore thy infinite Goodness we revere thy Justice and delight in thy Mercies by which thou hast dealt with us not with the utmost right and dominion of a Lord but with the gentleness of a Father treating us like friends who were indeed thy enemies Thou O God didst see our follies and observe our weaknesses thou knowest the aversness of our nature to good and our proneness to commit vanity and because our imperfect obedience could not bring us to perfect felicity whither thou didst design us the great God of all the world was pleased to make a new Covenant with Man and to become a debtor to his servants Blessed be God and blessed be that Mercy which hath done so great things for us O be pleased to work that in us which thou expectest from us Let us not lose our title in the Covenant of Faith and Repentance by deferring the one or dishonouring the other but let us walk worthy of our vocation according to the Law of Faith and the Mercies of God and the Covenant of our Lord Jesus II. O Blessed Jesus never suffer us to abuse thy mercies or to turn thy Grace into wantonness Let the remembrance and sense of thy glorious favours endear our services and let thy goodness lead us to Repentance and our Repentance bring forth the fruits of godliness in our whole life Imprint deeply upon our hearts the fear and terror of thy Majesty and perpetually entertain our spirits with highest apprehensions of thy loving kindness that we may fear more and love more every day more and more hating sin crucifying all its affections and desires passionately loving holy things zealously following after them prudently conducting them and indefatigably persevering in them to the end of our lives III. O Blessed and Eternal God with thy spirit inlighten our understandings in the rare mysterious Secrets of thy Law Make me to understand all the most advantageous ways of duty and kindle a flame in my Soul that no difficulty or contradiction no temptation within or persecution without may ever extinguish Give me a mighty grace that I may design to please thee with my best and all my services to follow the best examples to do the noblest Charities to pursue all Perfection ever pressing forward to the mark of the high calling in Christ Jesus Let us rather choose to die than to sin against our Consciences Let us also watch that we may omit nothing of our duty nor pretermit any opportunity by which thou canst be glorified or any Christian instructed comforted or assisted not resting in the strictest measures of Command but passing forward to great and prudent significations of love doing heroick actions some things by which thou mayest be greatly pleased that thou mayest take delight to pardon to sanctifie and to preserve thy servants for ever Amen CHAP. II. Of the Nature and Definition of Repentance And what parts of duty are signified by it in Holy Scriptures SECT I. THE Greeks use two words to express this duty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 post factum angi cruciari to be afflicted in mind to be troubled for our former folly it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Phavorinus a being displeased for what we have done and it is generally used for all sorts of Repentance but more properly to signifie either the beginnings of a good or the whole state of an effective Repentance In the first sence we find it in S. Mathew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and ye seeing did not repent that ye might believe him Of the second sence we have example in Judas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he repented too but the end of it was he died with anguish and despair and of Esau it is said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he found no place for an effective repentance but yet he repented too for he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he fain would have had it otherwise and he sought it with tears which two do fully express all the meaning of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when it is distinguished from the better and effective Repentance There is in this Repentance a sorrow for what is done a
his children That ye should walk worthy of God who hath called you unto his Kingdom and glory * For this cause also thank we God without ceasing because when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us ye received it not as the word of men but as it is in truth the word of God which effectually worketh also in you that believe How much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God And having an High Priest over the house of God Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water * Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering for he is faithful that promised * And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works * Not forsaking the assembling of our selves together as the manner of some is but exhorting one another and so much the more as ye see the day approaching For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins * but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries * He that despised Moses's law died without mercy under two or three witnesses * Of how much sorer punishment suppose ye shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God and hath counted the blood of the Covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing and hath done despite unto the Spirit of Grace For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God and if it first begin at us what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure And whatsoever we ask we receive of him because we keep his Commandments and do those things which are pleasing in his sight And he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end to him will I give power over the Nations A Penitential Psalm collected out of the Psalms and Prophets HAVE mercy upon me O God according to thy loving kindness according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions For our transgressions are multiplied before thee and our sins testifie against us our transgressions are with us and as for our iniquities we know them In transgressing and lying against the Lord and departing away from our God speaking oppression and revolt conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falshood Our feet have run to evil our thoughts are thoughts of iniquity The way of peace we have not known we have made us crooked paths whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace Therefore do we wait for light but behold obscurity for brightness but we walk in darkness Look down from Heaven and behold from the habitation of thy Holiness and of thy Glory where is thy zeal and thy strength the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies towards me are they restrained We are indeed as an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags and we all do fade as a leaf and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away But now O Lord thou art our Father we are the clay and thou our potter and we all are the work of thy hand Be not wroth very sore O Lord neither remember iniquity for ever behold see we beseech thee we are thy people Thou O Lord art our Redeemer thy Name is from everlasting O Lord Father and Governour of my whole life leave me not to the sinful counsels of my own heart and let me not any more fall by them Set scourges over my thoughts and the discipline of wisdom over my heart lest my ignorances encrease and my sins abound to my destruction O Lord Father and God of my life give me not a proud look but turn away from thy servant always a haughty mind Turn away from me vain hopes and concupiscence and thou shalt hold him up that is always desirous to serve thee Let not the greediness of the belly nor the lust of the flesh take hold of me and give not thy servant over to an impudent mind There is a word that is clothed about with death God grant it be not found in the portion of thy servant For all such things shall be far from the godly and they shall not wallow in their sins Though my sins be as scarlet yet make them white as snow though they be red like crimson let them be as wooll For I am ashamed of the sins I have desired and am confounded for the pleasures that I have chosen Lord make me to know mine end and the measure of my days what it is that I may know how frail I am and that I may apply my heart unto wisdom Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me O Lord let thy loving kindness and thy truth continually preserve me For innumerable evils have compassed me about mine iniquities have taken hold upon me so that I am not able to look up for they are more than the hairs of my head therefore my heart faileth me But thou O Lord though mine iniquities testifie against me save me for thy Name sake for our backslidings are many we have sinned grievously against thee But the Lord God will help me therefore shall I not be confounded therefore have I set my face like a flint and I know that I shall not be ashamed He is near that justifieth me who will contend with me The Lord God will help me who is he that shall condemn me I will trust in the Lord and stay upon my God O let me have this of thine hand that I may not lie down in sorrow S. Paul's Prayers for a holy life I. I BOW my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ of whom the whole family in Heaven and Earth is named that he would grant unto me according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man that Christ may dwell in my heart by faith that being rooted and grounded in love I may be able to comprehend with all Saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge and may be filled with all the fulness of God through the same our most blessed Saviour Jesus Amen The Doxologie Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us Vnto him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages world without end Amen II. O MOST gracious God grant to thy servant to be filled with the knowledge of thy Will in all
venial sins they should esteem them little and inconsiderable and warn men of them with so little caution But to take this wonder off though they affright men with Purgatory at the end yet they make the bugbear nothing by their easy remedies and preventions in the way Venial sins may be taken off according to their doctrine at as cheap a rate as they may be committed but of this I shall give a fuller account in the 6. Sect. of this Chapter In the mean time to believe Purgatory serves the ends of the Roman Clergy and to have so much easiness and leave in venial sins serves the ends of their Laity but as truth is disserv'd in the former so is piety and the severities of a holy life very much slackned by the latter 40. But as care is taken that their doctrine do not destroy charity or good life by loosnes and indulgence so care must be taken that ours do not destroy hope and discountenance the endeavours of pious people for if the smallest sins be so highly punishable who can hope ever to escape the intolerable state of damnation And if God can be eternally angry for those things which we account small sins then no man is a servant or a friend of God no man is in the state of the Divine favour for no man is without these sins for they are such Quae non possit homo quisquam evitare cavendo a man by all his industry cannot wholly avoid Now because the Scripture pronounces some persons just and righteous as David and Josiah Zechary and Elizabeth who yet could not be innocent and pure from small offences either these little things are in their own nature venial or the godly have leave to do that which is punished in the ungodly or some other way must be found out how that which is in its own nature damnable can stand with the state of grace and upon what causes sins which of themselves are not so may come to be venial that is more apt and ready to be pardoned and in the next dispositions to receive a mercy SECT V. 41. I. NO just person does or can indulge to himself the keeping of any sin whatsoever for all sins are accounted of by God according to our affections and if a man loves any it becomes his poison Every sin is damnable when it is chosen deliberately either by express act or by interpretation that is when it is chosen regularly or frequently He that loves to cast over in his mind the pleasures of his past sin he that entertains all those instances of sin which he thinks not to be damnable this man hath given himself up to be a servant to a trifle a lover of little and phantastick pleasures Nothing of this can stand with the state of grace No man can love sin and love God at the same time and to think it to be an excuse to say the sin is little is as if an adulteress should hope for pardon of her offended Lord because the man whom she dotes upon is an inconsiderable person 42. II. In sins we must distinguish the formality from the material part The formality of sin is disobedience to God and turning from him to the Creature by love and adhesion The material part is the action it self The first can never happen without our will but the latter may by surprise and indeliberation and imperfection of condition For in this life our understanding is weak our attention trifling our advertency interrupted our diversions many our divisions of spirit irresistible our knowledge little our dulness frequent our mistakes many our fears potent and betrayers of our reason and at any one of these doors sin may enter in its material part while the will is unactive or the understanding dull or the affections busie or the spirit otherwise imployed or the faculties wearied or reason abused Therefore if you inquire for venial sins they must be in this throng of imperfections but they never go higher Let no man therefore say I have a desire to please my self in some little things for if he desires it he may not do it that very desire makes that it cannot be venial but as damnable as any in its proportion 43. III. If any man about to do an action of sin inquires whether it be a venial sin or no to that man at that time that sin cannot be venial for whatsoever a man considers and acts he also chooses and loves in some proportion and therefore turns from God to the sin and that is against the love of God and in its degree destructive or diminutive of the state of grace Besides this such a person in this enquiry asks leave to sin against God and gives a testimony that he would sin more if he durst But in the same degree in which the choice is lessened in the same degree the material part of the sin receives also diminution 44. IV. It is remarkable that amongst the Ancients this distinction of sins into Mortal and Venial or to use their own words Graviora Leviora or Peccata Crimina does not mean a distinction of kind but of degrees They call them mortal sins which shall never or very hardly be pardon'd not at all but upon very hard terms So Pacianus De modo criminum edisserens nequis existimet omnibus omnino peccatis summum discrimen impositum sedulòque requirens quae sint peccata quae crimina nequis existimet propter innumera delicta quorum fraudibus nullus immunis est me omne hominum genus indiscretâ poenitendi lege constringere The highest danger is not in every sin offences and crimes must be distinguished carefully for the same severe impositions are not indifferently to be laid upon Criminals and those whose guilt is in such instances from which no man is free Wherefore covetousness may be redeem'd with liberality slander with satisfaction morosity with cheerfulness sharpness with gentle usages lightness with gravity perverseness or peevishness with honesty and fair carriage But what shall the despiser of God do what shall the Murtherer do what remedy shall the Adulterer have Ista sunt capitalia Fratres ista mortalia These are the deadly sins these are capital crimes meaning that these were to be taken off by the severities of Ecclesiastical or publick Repentance of which I am afterwards to give account and would cost more to be cleansed To a good man and meliorum operum compensatione as Pacianus affirms by the compensation of good work that is of the actions of the contrary graces they are venial they are cured For by venial they mean such which with less difficulty and hazard may be pardon'd such as was S. Pauls blasphemy and persecuting the Church for that was venial that is apt for pardon because he did it ignorantly in unbelief and such are those sins saith Caesarius which are usual in the world though of their own nature very horrible as forswearing
in the Court of Conscience So Pacianus Haec est novi Testamenti tota conclusio despectus in multis Spiritus sanctus haec nobis capitalis periculi conditione legavit Reliqua peccata meliorum operum compensatione curantur Haec verò tria crimina ut basilisci alicujus afflatus ut veneni calix ut lethalis arundo meâ—uenda sunt non enim vitiare animam sed intercipere noverunt Some sins do pollute and some do kill the soul that is are very near approaches to death next to the unpardonable state and they are to be repented of just as habits are even by a long and a laborious repentance and by the piety and holiness of our whole ensuing life De peccato remisso noli esse securus said the son of Sirach Be not secure though your sin be pardoned when therefore you are working out and suing your pardon be not too confident 53. XI Those acts of sin which can once be done and no more as Parricide and such which destroy the subject or person against whom the sin is committed are to be cured by Prayer and Sorrow and entercourses with God immediately the effect of which because it can never be told and because the mischief can never be rescinded so much as by fiction of Law nor any supply be made to the injur'd person the guilty man must never think himself safe but in the daily and nightly actions of a holy Repentance 54. XII He that will repent well and truly of his single actual sins must be infinitely careful that he do not sin after his Repentance and think he may venture upon another single sin supposing that an act of contrition will take it off and so interchange his days by sin and sorrow doing to morrow what he was ashamed of yesterday For he that sins upon the confidence of Repentance does not repent at all because he repents that he may sin and these single acts so periodically returning do unite and become a habit He that resolves against a sin and yet falls when he is tempted is under the power of sin in some proportion and his estate is very suspicious though he always resolved against that sin which he always commits It is upon no other account that a single sin does not destroy a man but because it self is speedily destroyed if therefore it goes on upon its own strength and returns in its proper period it is not destroyed but lives and indangers the man 55. XIII Be careful that you do not commit a single act of sin toward the latter end of your life for it being uncertain what degrees of anger God will put on and in what periods of time he will return to mercy the nearer to our death such sins interâ—â—ne the more degrees of danger they have For although the former discourse is agreeable to the analogy of the Gospel and the Oeconomy of the Divine Mercy yet there are sad words spoken against every single sin Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offends in one instance he shall be guilty of all saith S. James plainly affirming that the admitting one sin much more the abiding in any one sin destroys all our present possession of Gods favour Concerning which although it may seem strange that one prevarication in one instance should make an universal guilt yet it will be certain and intelligible if we consider that it relates not to the formality but to the event of things He that commits an act of Murther is not therefore an Adulterer but yet for being a Murtherer he shall die He is as if he were guilty of all that is his innocence in the other shall not procure him impunity in this One crime is inconsistent with Gods love and favour 56. But there is something more in it than this For every one that breaks a Commandment let the instance be what it will is a transgressor of the same bond by which he was bound to all Non quòd omnia legis praecepta violârit sed quòd legis Authoreâ—â— contempserit eóque praemio meritò careat quod legis cultoribus propositum est saith Venerable Bede He did not violate all the Commandments but he offended him who is the giver of all the Commandments It is like letting one Bead fall from a Rosary or Corone of Bugles This or that or a third makes no difference the string iâ— as much broken if he lets one to slide as if he dropp'd twenty It was not an ill conceit of Meâ—edemus the Eretrian that there was but one vertue which had divers names Aristo Chius express'd the same conceit with a little difference affirming all vertues to be the same in reality and nature but to have a certain diversification or rational difference by relation to their objects As if one should call the sight when it looks upon a Crow 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if upon a Swan 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so is vertue When it moderates the affections it is Temperance when it balances contracts it is Justice when it considers what is and what is not to be done it is Prudence That which they call Vertue if we call it the grace of God or Obedience it is very true which they say For the same spirit the same grace of obedience is Chastity or Temperance or Justice according as is the subject matter The love of God if it be in us is productive of all worthiness and this is it which S. John said This is love that we keep his Commandments The love of God constraineth us It worketh all the works of God in us It is the fulfilling of the Commandments For this is a Catholicon an Universal Grace Charity gives being to all vertues it is the life and spirit of all holy actions Abstinence from feasts and inordination mingled with Charity is Temperance And Justice is Charity and Chastity is Charity and Humility is still but an instance of Charity This is that Transcendent that gives life and vertue to Alms to Preaching to Faith to Miracles it does all obedience to God all good offices to our Neighbours which in effect is nothing but the sentence of Menedemus and Aristo that there is an Universal Vertue that is there is one soul and essence of all vertue They call it Vertue S. Paul calls it Charity and this is that one thing which is necessary that one thing which every man that sins does violate He that is guilty of all is but guilty of that one and therefore he that is guilty of that one of the breach of Charity is guilty of all And upon this account it is that no one sin can stand with the state of grace because he that sins in once instance sins against all goodness not against all instances of duty but against that which is the life of all against Charity and Obedience A Prayer to be said in the days of Repentance for the commission of any great Crime O
is done in the same degree the repentance is perfect more or less For there is a latitude in this duty as there are degrees of perfection SECT II. 1. Every man is bound to repent of his sin as soon as he hath committed it 1. THAT this doctrine is of great usefulness and advantage to the necessity and perswasions of holy life is a good probable inducement to believe it true especially since God is so essential an enemy to sin since he hath used such rare arts of the Spirit for the extermination of it since he sent his holy Son to destroy it and he is perpetually destroying it and will at last make that it shall be no more at all but in the house of cursing the horrible regions of damnation But I will use this only as an argument to all pious and prudent persons to take off all prejudices against the severity of this doctrine For it is nothing so much against it if we say it is severe as it makes for it that we understand it to be necessary For this doctrine which I am now reproving although it be the doctrine properly of the Roman Schools yet it is their and our practice too We sin with greediness and repent at leisure Pars magna Italiae est si verum admittimus in quâ Nemo togam sumit nisi mortuus No man puts on his mourning garment till he be dead This day we seldom think it fit to repent but the day appointed for repentance is always To morrow Against which dangerous folly I offer these considerations 2. I. If the duty of repentance be indispensably requir'd in the danger of death and he that does not repent when he is arrested with the probability of so sad a change is felo de se uncharitable to himself and a murderer of his own soul then so is he in his proportion who puts it off one day because every day of delay is a day of danger and the same law of charity obliges him to repent to day if he sinn'd yesterday lest he be dead before to morrow The necessity indeed is not so great and the duty is not so urgent and the refusal is not so great a sin in health as in sickness and dangers imminent and visible But there are degrees of necessity as there are degrees of danger And he that considers how many persons die suddenly and how many more may and no man knows that he shall not cannot but confess that because there is danger there is also an obligation of duty and charity to repent speedily and that positively or carelesly to put it off is a new fault and increases Gods enmity against him He that is well may die to morrow He that is very sick may recover and live many years If therefore a periculum ne fiat a danger lest repentance be never done is a sufficient determination of the Divine Commandment to do it then it is certain that it is in every instant determinately necessary because in every instant there is danger In all great sicknesses there is not an equal danger yet in all great sicknesses it is a particular sin not to repent even by the confession of all sides it is so therefore in all the periods of an uncertain life a sin but in differing degrees And therefore this is not an argument of caution only but of duty For therefore it is of duty because it is of caution It could not be a caution unless there were a danger and if there be a danger then it is a duty For he that is very sick must do it But how if he escapes was he obliged for all that He was because he knew not that he should escape By the same reason is every one obliged because whether he shall or shall not escape the next minute he knows not And certainly it was none of the least reasons of Gods concealing the day of our death that we might ever stand ready And this is plainly enough taught us by our blessed Saviour laboriously perswading and commanding us not to defer our repentance by his parable of the rich man who promised to himself the pleasures of many years he reprov'd that folly with a Stulte hac nocte and it may be any mans case for Nemo tam felix Crastinum ut possit sibi polliceri But he adds a Precept Let your loyns be girded about and your lights shining and ye your selves like men that wait for their Lord. And blessed are those servants whom their Lord when he cometh shall find watching And much more to the same purpose Nay that it was the reason why God concealed the time of his coming to us that we might always expect him he intimated in the following Parable This know that if the good man of the house had known what hour the thief would come he would have watched Be ye therefore ready also for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not Nothing could better have improved this argument than these words of our blessed Saviour we must stand in procinctu ready girded 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ready for the service always watching as uncertain of the time but in perpetual expectation of the day of our Lord. I think nothing can be said fuller to this purpose But I add the words of S. Austin Verum quidem dicis quòd Deus poenitentiae tuae indulgentiam promisit sed huic dilationi tuae crastinum non promisit To him that repents God hath promised pardon but to him that defers repentance he hath not promised the respite of one day It is certain therefore he intended thou shouldest speedily repent and since he hath by words and deeds declar'd this to be his purpose he that obeys not is in this very delay properly and specifically a Transgressor 3. II. I consider that although the precept of repentance be affirmative yet it is also limited and the time sufficiently declared even the present and none else As soon as ever you need it so soon you are obliged To day if ye will hear his voice harden not your hearts That is defer not to hear him this day for every putting it off is a hardening your hearts For he that speaks to day is not pleased if you promise to hear him to morrow It was Felix his case to S. Paul Go away I will hear thee some other time He that calls every day means every day that we should repent For although to most men God gives time and leisure and expects and perseveres to call yet this is not because he gives them leave to defer it but because he still forbears to strike though their sin grows greater Now I demand when God calls us to repentance is it indifferent to him whether we repent to day or no Why does he call so earnestly if he desires it so coldly Or if he be not indifferent is he displeas'd if we repent speedily This no man thinks
constitution like the City that Sophocles speaks of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is full of joy and sorrow it sings and weeps together it triumphs in mourning and with tears wets the festival Chariot We are divided between good and evil and all our good or bad is but a disposition towards either but then the sin is arriv'd to its state and manhood when the joynts are grown stiff and firm by the consolidation of a habit So Plutarch defines a habit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A habit is a strength and confirmation to the brute and unreasonable part of man gotten by custome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The brutish passions in a man are not quickly master'd and reduc'd to reason 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Custome and studies efform the soul like wax and by assuefaction introduce a nature To this purpose Aristotle quotes the verses of Evenus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For as experience is to notices and Tutors to children so is Custome to the manners of men a fixing good or evil upon the spirit that as it was said of Alexander when he was a man he could not easily want the vices of his Tutor Leonidas which he suck'd into his manners and was accustom'd to in his youth so we cannot without trouble do against our habit and common usages Vsus Magister use is the greatest Teacher and the words in Jeremy 13.23 Ye which are accustomed to do evil are commonly read Ye which are taught to do evil and what we are so taught to do we believe infinitely and find it very hard to entertain principles of perswasion against those of our breeding and education For what the mind of man is accustomed to and throughly acquainted with it is highly reconcil'd to it the strangeness is removed the objections are consider'd or neglected and the compliance and entertainment is set very forward towards pleasures and union This habit therefore when it is instanc'd in a vice is the perfecting and improving of our enmity against God for it strengthens the lust as a good habit confirms reason and the grace of God 11. II. This mischief ought to be further expressed for it is bigger than is yet signified Not only an aptness but a necessity is introduc'd by Custome because by a habit sin seises upon the will and all the affections and the very principles of motion towards vertue are almost broken in pieces It is therefore called by the Apostle The law of sin Lex enim peccati est violentia consuetudinis quâ trahitur tenetur animus etiam invitus The violence of custome is the law of sin by which such a man is over-rul'd against his will Nam si discedas laqueo tenet ambitiosi Consuetudo mali in aegro corde senescit You cannot leave it if you would S. Austin represents himself as a sad instance of this particular I was afraid lest God should hear me when I prayed against my lust As I feared death so dreadful it was to me to change my custome Velle meum tenebat inimicus inde mihi catenam fecerat constrinxerat me Quippe ex voluntate perversâ facta est libido dum servitur libidini facta est consuetudo dum consuetudini non resistitur facta est necessitas The Devil had made a chain for him and bound his will in fetters of darkness His perverse will made his lust grow high and while he serv'd his lust he superinduc'd a custome upon himself and that in time brought upon him a necessity For as an old disease hath not only afflicted the part of its proper residence and by its abode made continual diminution of his strength but made a path also and a channel for the humours to run thither which by continual defluxion have digg'd an open passage and prevail'd beyond all the natural powers of resistance So is an habitual vice it hath debauch'd the understanding and made it to believe foolish things it hath abus'd the will and made it like a diseased appetite in love with filthy things it is like an evil stomach that makes a man eat unwholsome meat against his Reason 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That 's a sad calamity when a man sees what is good and yet cannot follow it nay that he should desire it and yet cannot lay hold upon it for his faculties are bound in fetters the habit hath taken away all those strengths of Reason and Religion by which it was hindred and all the objections by which it was disturbed and all that tenderness by which it was uneasie and now the sin is chosen and believed and lov'd it is pleasant and easie usual and necessary and by these steps of progression enters within the iron gates of death seal'd up by fate and a sad decree 12. And therefore Simplicius upon Epictetus speaking of Medea seeing and approving good things by her understanding but yet without power to do them says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is to no purpose for us to think and to desire well unless we add also deeds consonant to those right opinions and fair inclinations But that 's the misery of an evil habit in such as have them all may be well till you come to action Their principles good their discoursings right their resolutions holy their purposes strong their great interest understood their danger weighed and the sin hated and declaimed against for they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they have begun well and are instructed but because of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their intemperance and softness of spirit produc'd by vile customes there is as Plutarch observes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a fatal bestiality in the men they sin and can neither will nor choose They are driven to death and they see themselves crown'd with garlands for the Sacrifice and yet go to their ruine merry as the Minstrels and the temptations that entertain and attend those horrid rites Scibam ut esse me deceret facere non quibam miser said he in the Comedy I knew it well enough how I should comport my self but I was so wretched that I could not do it 13. Now all this being the effect of a vicious habit and not of sinful actions it being the product and sad consequent of a quality introduc'd first by actions so much evil cannot be caused and produc'd immediately by that which is innocent As the fruit is such is the tree But let us try further 14. III. A vicious habit makes our recovery infinitely difficult our vertues troublesome our restitution uncertain In the beginnings of his return it is most visible For even after we are entring into pardon and the favour of God we are forced to fight for life we cannot delight in Gods service or feel Christs yoke so easie as of it self it is For a vicious habit is a new Concupiscence and superinduces such contradictions to the
habit can equally in the merits of Christ be the disposition to a pardon as an act can for an act and is certainly much better than any one act can be because it includes many single acts of the same nature and it is all them and their permanent effect and change wrought by them besides So that it is certainly the better and the surer way But now the Question is not whether it be the better way but whether it be necessary and will not the lesser way suffice To this therefore I answer that since no man can be acceptable to God as long as sin reigns in his mortal body and since either sin must reign or the Spirit of Christ must reign for a man cannot be a Neuter in this war it is necessary that sins kingdom be destroyed and broken and that Christ rule in our hearts that is it is necessary that the first and the old habits be taken off and new ones introduc'd For although the moral revocation of a single act may be a sufficient disposition to its pardon because the act was transient and unless there be a habit or something of it nothing remains yet the moral revocation of a sinful habit cannot be sufficient because there is impressed upon the soul a viciousness and contrariety to God which must be taken off or there can be no reconciliation For let it be but considered that a vicious habit is a remanent aversation from God an evil heart the evil treasure of the heart a carnal mindedness an union and principle of sins and then let it be answered whether a man who is in this state can be a friend of God or reconcil'd to him in his Son who lives in a state so contrary to his holy Spirit of Grace The guilt cannot be taken off without destroying its nature since the nature it self is a viciousness and corruption 39. VI. Either it is necessary to extirpate and break the habit or else a man may be pardon'd while he is in love with sin For every vicious habit being radicated in the will and being a strong love inclination and adhesion to sin unless the natural being of this habit be taken off the enmity against God remains For it being a quality permanent and inherent and its nature being an aptness and easiness a desire to sin and longing after it to retract this by a moral retractation and not by a natural also is but hypocrisie for no man can say truly I hate the sin I have committed so long as the love to sin is inherent in his will and then if God should pardon such a person it would be to justifie a sinner remaining such which God equally hates as to condemn the innocent He will by no means acquit the guilty It was part of his Name which he caused to be proclaimed in the Camp of Israel And if this could be otherwise a man might be in the state of sin and the state of grace at the same time which hitherto all Theology hath believ'd to be impossible 40. VII This whole Question is clear'd by a large discourse of S. Paul For having under the person of an unregenerate man complain'd of the habitual state of prevailing sin of one who is a slave to sin sold under sin captive under a law of sin that is under vile inclinations and high pronenesses and necessities of sinning so that when he is convinc'd that he ought not to do it yet he cannot help it though he fain would have it help'd yet he cannot obey his own will but his accursed superinduc'd necessities and his sin within him was the ruler that and not his own better choice was the principle of his actions which is the perfect character of an habitual sinner he inquires after a remedy for all this which remedy he calls a being delivered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the body of this death The remedy is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the grace of God through Jesus Christ for by Christ alone we can be delivered But what is to be done the extermination of this dominion and Empire of concupiscence the breaking of the kingdom of sin That being the evil he complains of and of which he seeks remedy that is to be remov'd But that we may well understand to what sence and in what degree this is to be done in the next periods he describes the contrary state of deliverance by the parts and characters of an habit or state of holiness which he calls a walking after the Spirit opposed to a walking after the flesh It was a law in his members a law of sin and death Now he is to be made free by a contrary law the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus That is as sin before gave him law so now must the Spirit of God whereas before he minded the things of the flesh now he minds the things of the spirit that is the carnal-mindedness is gone and a spiritual-mindedness is the principle and ruler of his actions This is the deliverance from habitual sins even no other than by habitual graces wrought in us by the spirit of life by the grace of our Lord Jesus And this whole affair is rarely well summ'd up by the same Apostle As ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness If ye were servants before so ye must be now it is but justice and reason that at least as much be done for God as for the Devil It is not enough morally to revoke what is past by a wishing it had not been done but you must oppose a state to a state a habit to a habit And the Author of the Book of Baruch presses it further yet As it was your mind to go astray from God so being returned seek him ten times more It ought not to be less it must be as S. Chrysostom expresses it A custom against a custom a habit opposed to a habit that the evil may be driven out by the good as one nail is by another 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Procopius In those things where you have sinned to profit and to increase and improve to their contraries that is the more comely way to pardon 41. VIII Either a habit of vertue is a necessary disposition to the pardon of a habit of vice or else the doctrine of mortification of the lusts of the flesh of all the lusts of all the members of the old man is nothing but a counsel and a caution of prudence but it contains no essential and indispensable duty For mortification is a long contention and a course of difficulty it is to be done by many arts and much caution and a long patience and a diligent observation by watchfulness and labour the work of every day and the employment of all the prudence and all the advices of good men and the
therefore the Writers of the New Testament do frequently joyn these to be dead unto sin and to live unto righteousness This is that which was opposed to the righteousness of the law and is called the righteousness of God And a mistake in this affair was the ruine of the Jews For being ignorant of the righteousness of God they thought to be justified by their own righteousness which is of the law That is they thought it enough to leave off to sin without doing the contrary good and so hop'd for the promises This was the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees to be no adulterers no defrauders of the rights of the Temple no Publicans or exacters of Tribute But our blessed Saviour assur'd us that there is no hopes of Heaven for us unless our righteousness exceed this of theirs 46. Now then to apply this to the present argument Suppose a vicious person who hath liv'd an impious life plac'd upon his death-bed exhorted to repentance made sensible of his danger invited by the Sermons of his Priest to dress his soul with duty and sorrow if he obeys and is sorry for his sin supposing that this sorrow does really begin that part of his duty which consists in not sinning nay suppose he will never sin again which is the righteousness of the law yet how can he in that case do that good which is required by the Gospel Seek the kingdom of Heaven and the righteousness thereof The Gospel hath a peculiar righteousness of its own proper to it self without which there is no entrance into Heaven But the righteousness of the law is called our own righteousness that is such a righteousness which men by nature know for we all by the innate law of nature know that we ought to abstain from doing injury to Man from impiety to God But we only know by revelation the righteousness of the Kingdom which consists in holiness and purity chastity and patience humility and self-denial He that rests in the first and thinks he may be sav'd by it as S. Paul's expression is he establisheth his own righteousness that is the righteousness of the law and this he does whosoever thinks that his evil habits are pardon'd without doing that good and acquiring those graces which constitute the righteousness of the Gospel that is faith and holiness which are the significations and the vital parts of the new creature 47. X. But because this doctrine is highly necessary and the very soul of Christianity I consider further that without the superinducing a contrary state of good to the former state of evil we cannot return or go off from that evil condition that God hates I mean the middle state or the state of lukewarmness For though all the old Philosophy consented that vertue and vice had no medium between them but whatsoever was not evil was good and he that did not do evil was a good man said the old Jews yet this they therefore did unreprovably teach because they knew not this secret of the righteousness of God For in the Evangelical justice between the natural or legal good or evil there is a medium or a third which of it self and by the accounts of the Law was not evil but in the accounts of the Evangelical righteousness is a very great one that is lukewarmness or a cold tame indifferent unactive Religion Not that lukewarmness is by name forbidden by any of the laws of the Gospel but that it is against the analogy and design of it A lukewarm person does not do evil but he is hated by God because he does not vigorously proceed in godliness No law condemns him but the Gospel approves him not because he does not from the heart obey this form of doctrine which commands a course a habit a state and life of holiness It is not enough that we abstain from evil we shall not be crowned unless we be partakers of a Divine nature For to this S. Peter enjoyns us carefully Now then we partake of a Divine nature when the Spirit dwells in us and rules all our faculties when we are united unto God when we imitate the Lord Jesus when we are perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect Now whether this can be done by an act of contrition needs no further inquiry but to observe the nature of Evangelical Righteousness the hatred God bears to lukewarmness the perfection he requires of a Christian the design and great example of our blessed Lord the glories of that inheritance whither we are design'd and of the obtaining of which obedience to God in the faith of Jesus Christ is made the only indispensable necessary condition 48. For let it be considered Suppose a man that is righteous according to the letter of the Law of the Ten Commandments all of which two excepted were Negative this man hath liv'd innocently and harmlesly all his days but yet uselesly unprofitably in rest and unactive circumstances is not this person an unprofitable servant The servant in the Parable was just such he spent not his Masters talent with riotous living like the Prodigal but laid it up in a Napkin he did neither good nor harm but because he did no good he receiv'd none but was thrown into outer darkness Nec furtum feci nec fugi si mihi dicat Servus habes pretium loris non ureris ajo Non hominem occidi non pasces in cruce corvos An innocent servant amongst the Romans might scape the Furca or the Mill or the Wheel but unless he was useful he was not much made of So it is in Christianity For that which according to Moses was called righteousness according to Christ is poverty and nakedness misery and blindness as appears in the reproof which the Spirit of God sent to the Bishop and Church of Laodicea He thought himself rich when he was nothing that is he was harmless but not profitable innocent according to the measures of the law but not rich in good works So the Pharisees also thought themselves just by the justice of the Law that is by their abstinence from condemned evils and therefore they refus'd to buy of Christ the Lord gold purified in the fire whereby they might become rich that is they would not accept of the righteousness of God the justice Evangelical and therefore they were rejected And thus to this very day do we Even many that have the fairest reputation for good persons and honest men reckon their hopes upon their innocence and legal freedoms and outward compliances that they are no liars nor swearers no drunkards nor gluttons no extortioners or injurious no thieves nor murtherers but in the mean time they are unprofitable servants not instructed not throughly prepared to every good work not abounding in the work of the Lord but blind and poor and naked just but as the Pharisees innocent but as Heathens In the mean time they are only in that state to which Christ never
and labours of vertue as Nature doth the habits of vice And chuse whether you will Take any institution or course of life let it at first be never so violent use will make it pleasant And therefore we may make vertue as certain as vice is as pleasing to the spirit as hard to be removed as perfective of our nature as the other is destructive and make it by assuefaction as impossible to be vicious as we now think it difficult and impossible to overcome flesh and blood * But let him remember this also that it will be a strange shame that he can be in a state of sin and death from which it will be very hard to remove and to confess our natures so caitiff and base that we cannot as easily be united unto vertue that he can become a Devil and cannot be like an Angel that he can decline to the brutishness of beasts and yet never arise up to a participation of the excellent beauties of the intellectual world 3. III. He that undertakes the repentance of his vicious habits when he hath strength and time enough for the work must do it in kind that is he must oppose a habit to a habit every contrary to its contrary as Chastity to his Wantonness Temperance to his Gluttony or Drunkenness The reason is because if he had contracted the habit of a sin especially of youthful sins unless the habit of vertue be oppos'd to the instance of his sin he cannot be safe nor penitent For while the temptation and fierce inclinations remain it cannot be a cure to this to do acts of Charity he must do acts of Chastity or else he will fall or continue in his uncleanness which in old persons will not be Here the sin still tempts by natural inclination and commands by the habit and therefore as there can be no Repentance while the affections remain so neither can there be safety as long as the habit hath a natural being The first begins with a moral revocation of the sin and the same hath also its progression perfection and security by the extinction of the inherent quality 4. IV. Let the penitent seek to obstruct or divert the proper principles of evil habits for by the same by which they begin commonly by the same they are nursed up to their ugly bulk There are many of them that attend upon the Prince of Darkness and minister to the filthy production Evil examples Natural inclinations false propositions evil prejudices indulgence to our own infirmities and many more but especially a cohabitation with the temptation by which we fell and did enter into death and by which we use to fall * There are some men more in love with the temptation than with the sin and because this rushes against the Conscience rudely they see death stand at the end of the progression therefore they only love to stand upon Mount Ebal view it They resolve they will not commit the sin they will not be overcome but they would fain be tempted If these men will but observe the contingencies of their own state they shall find that when they have set the house on fire they cannot prescribe its measures of burning * But there is a secret iniquity in it For he that loves to stand and stare upon the fire that burnt him formerly is pleas'd with the warmth and splendor and the temptation it self hath some little correspondencies to the appetite The man dares not fornicate but loves to look upon the beauties of a woman or sit with her at the wine till his heart is ready to drop asleep He will not enter into the house because it is infected with the plague but he loves to stand at the door and fain would enter if he durst It is impossible that any man should love to abide by a temptation for a good end There is some little sensuality in being tempted And the very consideration concerning it sometimes strikes the fancy too unluckily and pleases some faculty or other as much as the man dares admit * I do not say that to be tempted is always criminal or in the neighbourhood of it but it is the best indication of our love to God for his sake to deny its importunity and to overcome it but that is only when it is unavoidable and from without against our wills or at least besides our purposes * For in the declination of sin and overcoming temptation there can be but these two things by which we can signifie our love to God 1. To stand in a temptation when we could not avoid it 2. And to run from it when we can This hath in it more of prudence and the other of force and spiritual strength and we can best signifie the sense of our weakness and our carefulness by avoiding the occasions but then we declare the excellency of our purposes and pertinacious love to God when we serve him in hard battels when we are tempted as before but fall not now as we did then Indeed this is the greatest trial and when God suffers us so to be tried we are accepted if we stand in that day and in such circumstances But he that will chuse that state and dwell near his danger loves not to be safe and either he is a vain person in the confidences of his own strength or else he loves that which is like a sin and comes as near it as he dare and very often the event of it is that at last he dies like a flie about a candle But he that hath fallen by such a neighbourhood and still continues the cause may as well hope to cure his feaver by full draughts of the new vintage as return to life upon that account * A vicious habit is maintain'd at an easie rate but not cur'd without a mighty labour and expence any thing can feed it but nothing can destroy it if there be anything near it whereby it can be kept alive If therefore you will cure a vicious habit dwell far from danger and tempt not death with which you have been so long in love 5. V. A vicious habit never could have come to that state and period but by impunity If God had smitten the sinner graciously in the beginning of his evil journey it is likely that as Balaam did he also would have offered to go back Now when God does not punish a sinner early though it hath in it more of danger and less of safety yet we may in some measure supply the want of Divine mercy smiting and hindring a sinner by considering that impunity is no mark of innocence but very often it is an indication of Gods extremest and final anger Therefore be sure ever to suspect a prosperous sin For of it self prosperity is a temptation and it is granted but to few persons to be prosperous and pious The poor and the despised the humble and necessitous he that daily needs God with a sharpness of
penitents and hath given an excellent indication of a true Repentance and conversion from sin to God Let old men if there be need be apt to learn and so mortifie that pride and morosity that usually do attend their age who think their gray hairs title enough to wisdom and sufficient notices of things Let them be gentle to others patient of the evil accidents of their state bountiful and liberal as full of good example as they can and it is more than probable that if they yield not to that by which they can then be tempted they have quit all their affections to sin and it is enough that they are found faithful in that in which they are now tried 20. IX Let old men be very careful that they never tell the story of their sins with any pleasure or delight but as they must recolligere annos in amaritudine call to mind their past years in the bitterness of their soul so when they speak of any thing of it they must not tell it as a merry story lest they be found to laugh at their own damnation Mutatus Dices Heu quoties te in speculo videris alterum Quae mens est hodie cur eadem non puero fuit Vel cur his animis incolumes non redeunt genae Trouble and sorrow will better become the spirit of an old sinner because he was a fool when he was young and weak when he is wise that his strengths must be spent in sin and that for God and wise courses nothing remains but weak hands and dim eyes and trembling knees 21. X. Let not an old sinner and young penitent ever think that there can be a period to his Repentance or that it can ever be said by himself that he hath done enough No sorrow no alms no affliction no patience no Sacraments can be said to have finish'd his work so that he may say with S. Paul I have fought a good fight I have finish'd my course nothing can bring consummation to his work till the day of his death because it is all the way an imperfect state having in it nothing that is excellent or laudable but only upon the account of a great necessity and misery on one side and a great mercy on the other It is like a man condemn'd to perpetual banishment he is always in his passive obedience but is a debtor to the Law until he be dead So is this penitent he hath not finish'd his work or done a Repentance in any measure proportionable to his sins but only because he can do no more and yet he did something even before it was too late 22. XI Let an old man in the mortification of his vicious habits be curious to distinguish nature from grace his own disability from the strengths of the Spirit and not think that he hath extirpated the vice of uncleanness when himself is disabled to act it any longer or that he is grown a sober person because he is sick in his stomach and cannot drink intemperately or dares not for fear of being sick His measures must be taken by the account of his actions and oppositions to his former sins and so reckon his comfort 23. XII But upon whatever account it come he is not so much to account concerning his hopes or the performance of his duty by abstaining from sin as by doing of good For besides that such a not committing of evil may be owing to weak or insufficient principles this not committing evil in so little a time cannot make amends for the doing it so long together according to the usual accounts of Repentance unless that abstaining be upon the stock of vertue and labour of mortification and resistance and then every abstinence is also a doing good for it is a crucifying of the old man with the affections and lusts But all the good that by the grace of God he superadds is matter of choice and the proper actions of a new life 24. XIII After all this done vigorously holily with fear and caution with zeal and prudence with diligence and an uninterrupted observation the old man that liv'd a vile life but repents in time though he staid as long as he could and much longer than he should yet may live in hope and die in peace and charity To this purpose they are excellent words which S. Austin said Peradventure some will think that he hath committed such grievous faults that he cannot now obtain the favour of God Let this be far from the conceits of all sinners O man whosoever thou art that attendest that multitude of thy sins wherefore dost thou not attend to the Omnipotency of the Heavenly Physician For since God will have mercy because he is good and can because he is Almighty he shuts the gate of the Divine Goodness against himself who thinks that God cannot or will not have mercy upon him and therefore distrusts either his Goodness or his Almightiness The proper Repentance and usage of sinners who repent not until their death-bed The inquiry after this Article consists in these particulars 1. What hopes are left to a vicious ill liv'd man that repents on his death-bed and not before 2. What advices are best or can bring him most advantage 25. That a good life is necessary * that it is required by God * that it was design'd in the whole purpose of the Gospel * that it is a most reasonable demand and infinitely recompensed by the very smallest portions of Eternity * That it was called for all our life and was exacted by the continual voice of Scripture of Mercies of Judgment of Prophets * That to this very purpose God offered the assistance of his holy Spirit and to this ministery we were supplied with preventing with accompanying and persevering grace that is powers and assistances to begin and to continue in well doing * That there is no distinct Covenant made with dying men differing from what God hath admitted between himself and living healthful persons * That it is not reasonable to think God will deal more gently with persons who live viciously all their lives and that at an easier rate they may expect salvation at the hands of God whom they have so provoked than they who have serv'd him faithfully according to the measures of a man * or that a long impiety should be sooner expiated than a short one * That the easiness of such as promise heaven to dying penitents after a vicious life is dangerous to the very being and constitution of piety * and scandalous to the honour and reputation and sanctity of the Christian Religion * that the grace of God does leave those that use it not * That therefore the necessity of dying men increases and their aids are lessen'd and almost extinguished * that they have more to do than they have either time or strength to finish * That all their vows and holy purposes are useless and ineffective as to their natural
shall all likewise perish Neither does God exacting or describing Repentance in several lines use any respect of persons but with the same measures he will deal with all For when there is a difference in the Divine mercy it is in giving time and grace to repent not in sparing one and condemning another who die equally criminal and impenitent Those little lines of hopes are not upon either of these foundations For whatsoever is known or revealed is against these persons and does certainly condemn them Why then are they bidden to hope and repent I answer once for all It is upon something that we know not And if they be not sav'd we know not how they cannot expect to be saved by any thing that is revealed in their particular When S. Peter had declar'd to Simon Magus that he was in the gall of bitterness and yet made him pray if peradventure the thought of his heart might be forgiven him he did not by any thing that was reveal'd know that he should be pardoned but by something that he did not know there might be hope It is at no hand to be dissembled out of tenderness and pity to such persons but to be affirmed openly there is not revealed any thing to them that may bid them be in any degree confident But he that hath a deadly wound whom the Chirurgeons affirm to be hopeless yet is willing to receive Cordials and to be dress'd 2. If in the measures of life and death which are described in large characters there be any lines so indefinite and comprehensive that they who preach and declare the doctrines do not fully take in all that God intends upon the account of our weakness and ignorance there may be some little rushes and twiggs to support their sinking hopes For although the matters of duty and the conditions of life and death are so plain and legible that we can all understand our obligation yet things are seldome so described that we can give the final sentence concerning others There is a secret in these things which nothing shall open but the day of Judgment No man may judge his brother that is no man can or ought to say This man is damn'd and yet we know that he that dies an impenitent Traytor or Rebel or adulterer is damn'd But yet that Adulterous Natta or the Rebel Cinna or the Traytor sâ—â—ti line is actually damn'd that we know not The reason is because our duty is described for us to guide and walk our selves by not to judge and sentence others And even the judgment of the Church who hath authority to judge and sentence yet it is only for amendment it is universal it is declarative it is conditional not personal final decretory and eternal For otherwise does man judge otherwise does God II. There is some variety in the case and in the person and in the degrees of Repentance There is a period beyond which God will not admit a man to pardon but when it is we know not There is a minimum Religionis the least measure of Religion the lowest degree of acceptability but what it is we cannot tell There is also a proper measure for every one but no man can fathom it And the duties and parts of Repentance consist in the terms of a great distance and latitude and we cannot tell when a man first begins to be safe and when he is newly escaped from the regions of sin and when he begins his state of grace Now as God abates great measures of his wrath and forgives all that is past if we return betimes and live twenty years in piety and repentance so he does if the man do so nineteen years and eighteen and still shortning till you come to a year or any the least time that can do the work of Repentance and exterminate his vicious habit Now because Abraham begg'd for the pardon of Sodom if there should be found fifty righteous there and then abated five and then five more and then ten more till he came to ten alone and it is supposed that Abraham first gave out and that God would have pardon'd the City for one righteous mans sake if Abraham had still persevered to ask if any man will suppose that it may be done so in the abatements of time to be made to a returning sinner though I say it is a strange diminution to come from years to one day yet I will say nothing against it but that length or shortness of time makes nothing to the mercies of God but it makes very much to the duty of man because every action requires some time and every habit much more Now we have reason to say that the condition of a dying penitent after a whole wicked life is desperate because so far as we understand things habits are not to be extinguish'd and the contraries acquir'd but with long time and study But if there be any secret way by which the Spirit of God does work faster and produce undiscerned miracles we ought to adore that goodness by which it is so and they that can believe this may hope the other In the mean time neither the one nor the other is revealed and so it stands as it did in the whole Question IV. We find in the instance of Abrahams faith that against hope he believed in hope that is that he had great arguments on both sides and therefore that in defiance of one he would hope in the other because this could not fail him but the other could If it can be brought to pass that a dying man can hope after a wicked life it is a hope against hope and of this all that I can say is that it is no contradiction in the thing to affirm that a dying penitent who hath contracted vicious habits hath not time left him to perform that repentance which God requires of habitual sinners under the pains of eternal death and yet to bid such a person do what he can do and pray if peradventure God will be intreated Because that little hopes which he is bid to have are not warranted or relying upon pretence of any particular revelation contrary to the so many expressions of severe duty and stricter conditions but are plac'd upon the foundation of the Divine Power and such little proportions and similitudes of things and guesses and conjectures of kind persons as can only be sufficient to make the dying man try what can be done V. The first ages of the Church did exactly use this method of Doctrine and Discipline In some cases whereof I shall afterwards give account they refus'd to declare them pardon'd to minister Gods pardon to dying penitents but yet would not bid them despair but refer them to the Divine judgment which if it be reduc'd to the causes of things if we believe they proceeded reasonably must mean this that they knew of no revelation concerning the pardon of such persons but whether God would or no pardon
moved God to smite would also move him to forbear which were a strange Oeconomy The words therefore are not a reason of his forbearing but an aggravation of his kindness as if he had said Though man be continually evil yet I will not for all that any more drown the world for mans being so evil and so the Hebrews note that the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sometimes signifies although 49. But the great out-cry in this Question is upon confidence of the words of David Behold I was shapen in wickedness and in sin hath my mother conceived me To which I answer that the words are an Hebraism and signifie nothing but an aggrandation of his sinfulness and are intended for an high expression meaning that I am wholly and intirely wicked For the verification of which exposition there are divers parallel places in the holy Scriptures Thou wert my hope when I hanged yet upon my mothers breasts and The ungodly are froward even from their mothers womb as soon as they be born they go astray and speak lies which because it cannot be true in the letter must be an idiotism or propriety of phrase apt to explicate the other and signifying only a ready a prompt a great and universal wickedness The like to this is that saying of the Pharisees Thou wert altogether born in sin and dost thou teach us which phrase and manner of speaking being plainly a reproach of the poor blind man and a disparagement of him did mean only to call him a very wicked person but not that he had derived his sin originally and from his birth for that had been their own case as much as his and therefore S. Chrysostome explaining this phrase says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is as if they should say Thou hast been a sinner all thy life time To the same sence are those words of Job I have guided her the widow from my mothers womb And in this expression and severity of hyperbole it is that God aggravated the sins of his people Thou wast called a transgressor from the womb And this way of expressing a great state of misery we find us'd among the Heathen Writers for so Seneca brings in Oedipus complaining Infanti quoque decreta mors est Fata quis tam tristia sortitus unquam Videram nondum diem jam tenebar Mors me antecessit aliquis intra viscera Materna lethum praecocis fati tulit Sed numquid peccavit Something like S. Bernards Damnatus antequam natus I was condemn'd before I was born dead before I was alive and death seised upon me in my mothers womb Somebody brought in a hasty and a too forward death but did he sin also An expression not unlike to this we have in Lucian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pardon me that I was not born wicked or born to be wicked 2. If David had meant it literally it had not signified that himself was born in original sin but that his father and mother sinn'd when they begat him which the eldest son that he begat of Bathsheba for ought I know might have said truer than he in this sence And this is the exposition of Clemens Alexandrinus save only that by my mother he understands Eva 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Though he was conceived in sin yet he was not in the sin peccatrix concepit sed non peccatorem she sinn'd in the conception not David And in the following words he speaks home to the main article 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let them tell us where an infant did fornicate or how he who had done nothing could fall under the curse of Adam meaning so as to deserve the same evil that he did 3. If it did relate to his own person he might mean that he was begotten with that sanguine disposition and libidinous temper that was the original of his vile adultery and then though David said this truly of himself yet it is not true of all not of those whose temper is phlegmatick and unactive 4. If David had meant this of himself and that in regard of original sin this had been so far from being a penitential expression or a confessing of his sin that it had been a plain accusation of God and an excusing of himself As if he had said O Lord I confess I have sinn'd in this horrible murder and adultery but thou O God knowest how it comes to pass even by that fatal punishment which thou didst for the sin of Adam inflict on me and all mankind above 3000. years before I was born thereby making me to fall into so horrible corruption of nature that unless thou didst irresistibly force me from it I cannot abstain from any sin being most naturally inclin'd to all In this sinfulness hath my mother conceived me and that hath produc'd in me this sad effect Who would suppose David to make such a confession or in his sorrow to hope for pardon for upbraiding not his own folly but the decrees of God 5. But that David thought nothing of this or any thing like it we may understand by the preceding words which are as a preface to these in the objection Against thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight that thou mightest be justified in thy saying and clear when thou art judged He that thus acquits God cannot easily be supposed in the very next breath so fiercely to accuse him 6. To which also adde the following words which are a sufficient reproof of all strange sences in the other In sin hath my mother conceived me But loe thou requirest truth in the inward parts as if he had said Though I am so wicked yet thy laws are good and I therefore so much the worse because I am contrary to thy laws They require truth and sincerity in the soul but I am false and perfidious But if this had been natural for him so to be and unavoidable God who knew it perfectly well would have expected nothing else of him For he will not require of a stone to speak nor of fire to be cold unless himself be pleased to work a miracle to have them so 50. But S. Paul affirms that by nature we were the children of wrath True we were so when we were dead in sins and before we were quickned by the Spirit of life and grace We were so now we are not We were so by our own unworthiness and filthy conversation now we being regenerated by the Spirit of holiness we are alive unto God and no longer heirs of wrath This therefore as appears by the discourse of S. Paul relates not to our Original sin but to the Actual and of this sence of the word Nature in the matter of sinning we have Justin Martyr or whoever is the Author of the Questions and Answers ad Orthodoxos to be witness For answering those words of Scripture There is not any one clean who is born of a woman
Spirit and a man in that state cannot be sav'd because he wants a vital part he wants the spirit which is a part of the constitution of a Christian in that capacity who consists of Body and Soul and Spirit and therefore Anima without Spiritus the Soul without the Spirit is not sufficient * For as the Soul is a sufficient principle of all the actions of life in order to our natural end and perfection but it can bear us no further so there must be another principle in order to a supernatural end and that is the Spirit called by S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the new creation by S. Peter a divine nature and by this we become renewed in the inner man the infusion of this new nature into us is called Regeneration and it is the great principle of godliness called Grace or the Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The seed of God and by it we are begotten by God and brought forth by the Church to the hopes and beginnings of a new life and a supernatural end And although I cannot say that this is a third substance distinct from Soul and Body yet it is a distinct principle put into us by God without which we cannot work and by which we can and therefore if it be not a substance yet it is more than a Metaphor it is a real being permanent and inherent but yet such as can be lessen'd and extinguish'd But Carnality or the state of being in the flesh is not only privatively oppos'd but contrarily also to the spiritual state or the state of Grace But as the first is not a sin deriv'd from Adam so neither is the second The first is only an imperfection or want of supernatural aids The other is indeed a direct state of sin and hated by God but superinduc'd by choice and not descending naturally * Now to the spiritual state nothing is in Scripture oppos'd but these two and neither of these when it is sinful can be pretended upon the stock or argument of any Scriptures to descend from Adam therefore all the state of opposition to Grace is owing to our selves and not to him Adam indeed did leave us all in an Animal estate but this state is not a state of enmity or direct opposition to God but a state insufficient and imperfect No man can perish for being an Animal man that is for not having any supernatural revelations but for not consenting to them when he hath that is for being Carnal as well as Animal and that he is Carnal is wholly his own choice In the state of animality he cannot go to Heaven but neither will that alone bear him to Hell and therefore God does not let a man alone in that state for either God suggests to him what is spiritual or if he does not it is because himself hath superinduc'd something that is Carnal 54. Having now explicated those Scriptures which have made some difficulty in this Question to what Topick soever we shall return all things are plain and clear in this Article Noxa caput sequitur The soul that sinneth it shall die Neque virtutes neque vitia parentum liberis imputantur saith S. Hierome Neither the vices nor the vertues of the parents are imputed to the children And therefore when Dion Chrysostomus had reprov'd Solon's laws which in some cases condemn the innocent posterity he adds this in honour of Gods law 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That it does not like the law of the Athenians punish the children and kindred of the Criminal but every man is the cause of his own misfortune But concerning this it will not be amiss in order to many good purposes to observe the whole Oeconomy and dispensation of the Divine Justice in this affair SECT III. How God punishes the Fathers sin upon the Children 55. I. GOD may and does very often bless children to reward their fathers piety as is notorious in the famous descent of Abrahams family But the same is not the reason of favours and punishments For such is the nature of benefits that he in whose power they are may without injustice give them why and when and to whom he please 56. II. God never imputes the fathers sin to the son or relative formally making him guilty or being angry with the innocent eternally It were blasphemy to affirm so fierce and violent a cruelty of the most merciful Saviour and Father of mankind and it was yet never imagined or affirm'd by any that I know of that God did yet ever damn an innocent son though the father were the vilest person and committed the greatest evils of the world actually personally chusingly and maliciously and why it should by so many and so confidently be affirm'd in a lesser instance in so unequal a case and at so long a distance I cannot suspect any reason Plutarch in his book against Herodotus affirms that it is not likely they would meaning that it was unjust to revenge an injury which the Samians did to the Corinthians three hundred years before But to revenge it for ever upon all generations and with an eternal anger upon some persons even the most innocent cannot without trembling be spoken or imagined of God who is the great lover of Souls Whatsoever the matter be in temporal inflictions of which in the next propositions I shall give account yet if the Question be concerning eternal damnation it was never said never threatned by God to pass from father to the son When God punishes one relative for the sin of another he does it as fines are taken in our law salvo contenemento the principal stake being safe it may be justice to seise upon all the smaller portions at least it is not against justice for God in such cases to use the power and dominion of a Lord. But this cannot be reasonable to be used in the matter of eternal interest because if God should as a Lord use his power over Innocents and condemn them to Hell he should be Author to them of more evil than ever he conveyed good to them which but to imagine would be a horrible impiety And therefore when our blessed Saviour took upon him the wrath of God due to all mankind yet Gods anger even in that case extended no further than a temporal death Because for the eternal nothing can make recompence and it can never turn to good 57. III. When God inflicts a temporal evil upon the son for his fathers sin he does it as a Judge to the father but as a Lord only of the son He hath absolute power over the lives of all his creatures and can take it away from any man without injustice when he please though neither he nor his Parents have sinned and he may use the same right and power when either of them alone hath sinn'd But in striking the son he does not do to him as a Judge that is he is not angry with him but with the
unless they were his at his death If therefore they be confiscated before his death ours indeed is the inconvenience too but his alone is the punishment and to neither of us is the wrong But concerning the second I mean that which is superinduc'd it is not his fault alone nor ours alone and neither of us is innocent we all put in our accursed Symbol for the debauching of our spirits for the besotting our souls for the spoiling our bodies Ille initium induxit debiti nos foenus auximus posterioribus peccatis c. He began the principal and we have increas'd the interest This we also find well expressed by Justin Martyr for the Fathers of the first ages spake prudently and temperately in this Article as in other things Christ was not born or crucified because himself had need of these things but for the sake of mankind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which from Adam fell into death and the deception of the Serpent besides the evil which every one adds upon his own account And it appears in the greatest instance of all even in that of natural death which though it was natural yet from Adam it began to be a curse just as the motion of a Serpent upon his belly which was concreated with him yet upon this story was changed into a malediction and an evil adjunct But though Adam was the gate and brought in the head of death yet our sins brought him in further we brought in the body of death Our life was left by Adam a thousand years long almost but the iniquity of man brought it quickly to 500 years from thence to 250 from thence to 120 and at last to seventy and then God would no more strike all mankind in the same manner but individuals and single sinners smart for it and are cut off in their youth and do not live out half their days And so it is in the matters of the soul and the spirit Every sin leaves an evil upon the soul and every age grows worse and adds some iniquity of its own to the former examples And therefore Tertullian calls Adam mali traducem he transmitted the original and exemplar and we write after his copy Infirmitatis ingenitae vitium so Arnobius calls our natural baseness we are naturally weak and this weakness is a vice or defect of Nature and our evil usages make our natures worse like Butchers being used to kill beasts their natures grow more savage and unmerciful so it is with us all If our parents be good yet we often prove bad as the wild olive comes from the branch of a natural olive or as corn with the chaff come from clean grain and the uncircumcised from the circumcised But if our parents be bad it is the less wonder if their children are so a Blackamore begets a Blackamore as an Epileptick son does often come from an Epileptick father and hereditary diseases are transmitted by generation so it is in that viciousness that is radicated in the body for a lustful father oftentimes begets a lustful son and so it is in all those instances where the soul follows the temperature of the body And thus not only Adam but every father may transmit an Original sin or rather an Original viciousness of his own For a vicious nature or a natural improbity when it is not consented to is not a sin but an ill disposition Philosophy and the Grace of God must cure it but it often causes us to sin before our reason and our higher principles are well attended to But when we consent to and actuate our evil inclinations we spoil our natures and make them worse making evil still more natural For it is as much in our nature to be pleased with our artificial delights as with our natural And this is the doctrine of S. Austin speaking of Concupiscence Modo quodam loquendi vocatur peccatum quòd peccata facta est peccati si vicerit facit reum Concupiscence or the viciousness of our Nature is after a certain manner of speaking called sin because it is made worse by sin and makes us guilty of sin when it is consented to It hath the nature of sin so the article of the Church of England expresses it that is it is in eâdem materiâ it comes from a weak principle à naturae vitio from the imperfect and defective nature of man and inclines to sin But that I may again use S. Austins words Quantum ad nos attiâ—et sine peccato semper essemus donec sanaretur hoc malum si ei nunquam consentiremus ad malum Although we all have concupiscence yet none of us all should have any sin if we did not consent to this concupiscence unto evil Concupiscence is Naturae vitium but not peccatum a defect or fault of nature but not formally a sin which distinction we learn from S. Austin Non enim talia sunt vitia quae jam peccata dicenda sunt Concupiscence is an evil as a weak eye is but not a sin if we speak properly till it be consented to and then indeed it is the parent of sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so S. James it brings forth sin 85. This is the vile state of our natural viciousness and improbity and misery in which Adam had some but truly not the biggest share and let this consideration sink as deep as it will in us to make us humble and careful but let us not use it as an excuse to lessen our diligence by greatning our evil necessity For death and sin were both born from Adam but we have nurs'd them up to an ugly bulk and deformity But I must now proceed to other practical rules 86. II. It is necessary that we understand that our natural state is not a state in which we can hope for heaven Natural agents can effect but natural ends by natural instruments and now supposing the former doctrine that we lost not the Divine favour by our guilt of what we never did consent to yet we were born in pure naturals and they some of them worsted by our forefathers yet we were at the best born but in pure naturals and we must be born again that as by our first birth we are heirs of death so by our new birth we may be adopted into the inheritance of life and salvation 87. III. It is our duty to be humbled in the consideration of our selves and of our natural condition That by distrusting our own strengths we may take sanctuary in God through Jesus Christ praying for his grace entertaining and caressing of his holy Spirit with purities and devotions with charity and humility infinitely fearing to grieve him lest he leaving us we be left as Adam left us in pure naturals but in some degrees worsted by the nature of sin in some instances and the anger of God in all that is in the state of flesh and blood which shall never inherit the
or successors of the injur'd person for in those sins very often the curse descends with the wrong So long as the effect remains and the injury is complained of and the title is still kept on foot so long the son is tied to restitution But even after the possession is setled yet the curse and evil may descend longer than the sin as the smart and the aking remains after the blow is past And therefore even after the successors come to be lawful possessors it may yet be very fit for them to quit the purchase of their fathers sin or else they must resolve to pay the sad and severe rent-charge of a curse 98. VI. In such cases in which there cannot be a real let there be a verbal and publick disavowing their fathers sin which was publick scandalous and notorious We find this thing done by Andronicus Palaeologus the Greek Emperor who was the son of a bad Father and it is to be done when the effect was transient or irremediable 99. VII Sometimes no piety of the children shall quite take off the anger of God from a family or nation as it hapned to Josiah who above all the Princes that were before or after him turned to the Lord. Notwithstanding the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal In such a case as this we are to submit to Gods will and let him exercise his power his dominion and his kingdom as he pleases and expect the returns of our piety in the day of recompences and it may be our posterity shall reap a blessing for our sakes who feel a sorrow and an evil for our fathers sake 100. VIII Let all that have children endeavour to be the beginners and the stock of a new blessing to their family by blessing their children by praying much for them by holy education and a severe piety by rare example and an excellent religion And if there be in the family a great curse and an extraordinary anger gone out against it there must be something extraordinary done in the matter of religion or of charity that the remedy be no less than the evil 101. IX Let not the consideration of the universal sinfulness and corruption of mankind add confidence to thy person and hardness to thy conscience and authority to thy sin but let it awaken thy spirit and stir up thy diligence and endear all the watchfulness in the world for the service of God for there is in it some difficulty and an infinite necessity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Electra in the Tragedy Our nature is very bad in it self but very good to them that use it well Prayers and Meditations THE first Adam bearing a wicked heart transgressed and was overcome and so be all they that are born of him Thus infirmity was made permanent And the law also in the heart of the people with the malignity and root so that the good departed away and the evil abode still Lo this only have I found that God hath made man upright but they have sought many inventions For there is not a just man upon earth that doth good and sinneth not Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me Purge me with hysop and I shall be clean wash me and I shall be whiter than snow create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me The fool hath said in his heart There is no God they are corrupt they have done abominable works there is none that doth good The Lord looked down from Heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand and seek after God They are all gone aside they are all become filthy There is not one that doth good no not one O that the salvation of Israel were come out of Sion when the Lord bringeth back the captivity of his people Jacob shall rejoyce and Israel shall be glad Man dieth and wasteth away yea man giveth up the ghost and where is he For now thou numbrest my steps Dost thou not watch over my sin my transgression is seal'd up in a bag and thou sewest up iniquity Thou destroyest the hope of man Thou prevailest against him for ever and he passeth thou changest his countenance and sendest him away But his flesh upon him shall have pain and his soul within him shall mourn What is man that he should be clean and he that is born of a woman that he should be righteous Behold he putteth no trust in his Saints yea the Heavens are not clean in his sight How much more abominable and filthy is man which drinketh iniquity like water Trouble and anguish shall make him afraid They shall prevail against him as a King ready to battel For he stretcheth out his hand against God and strengthneth himself against the Almighty Let not him that is deceived trust in vanity for vanity shall be his recompence Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing no not one I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin and defiled my horn in the dust My face is foul with weeping and on my eye-lids is the shadow of death Not for any injustice in my hand also my prayer is pure Wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death I thank God I am delivered through Jesus Christ our Lord. But now being made free from sin and become servants of God ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life For the wages of sin is death But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin reign in your mortal bodies that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof For sin shall not have dominion over you for ye are not under the law but under grace The PRAYER O Almighty God great Father of Men and Angels thou art the preserver of men and the great lover of souls thou didst make every thing perfect in its kind and all that thou didst make was very good only we miserable creatures sons of Adam have suffered the falling Angels to infect us with their leprosie of pride and so we entred into their evil portion having corrupted our way before thee and are covered with thy rod and dwell in a cloud of thy displeasure behold me the meanest of thy servants humbled before thee sensible of my sad condition weak and miserable sinful and ignorant full of need wanting thee in all things and neither able to escape death without a Saviour nor to live a life of holiness without thy Spirit O be pleas'd to give me a portion in the new birth break off the bands and fetters of my sin cure my evil inclinations correct my indispositions and natural averseness
the image of the Earthly we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly Now this I say That flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of Heaven neither doth corruption inherit incorruption This Discourse of the Apostle hath in it all these propositions which clearly state this whole Article There are two great heads of Mankind the two Adams the first and the second The first was framed with an earthly body the second had viz. after his resurrection when he had died unto sin once a spiritual body The first was Earthly the second is Heavenly From the first we derive an Earthly life from the second we obtain a Heavenly all that are born of the first are such as he was naturally but the effects of the Spirit came only upon them who are born of the second Adam From him who is earthly we could have no more than he was or had the spiritual life and consequently the Heavenly could not be derived from the first Adam but from Christ only All that are born of the first by that birth inherit nothing but temporal life and corruption but in the new birth only we derive a title to Heaven For flesh and blood that is whatsoever is born of Adam cannot inherit the Kingdom of God And they are injurious to Christ who think that from Adam we might have inherited immortality Christ was the Giver and Preacher of it he brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel It is a singular benefit given by God to mankind through Jesus Christ. 3. Upon the affirmation of these premises it follows That if Adam had stood yet from him we could not have by our natural generation obtained a title to our spiritual life nor by all the strengths of Adam have gone to Heaven Adam was not our representative to any of these purposes but in order to the perfection of a temporal life Christ only is and was from eternal ages designed to be the head of the Church and the fountain of spiritual life And this is it which is affirmed by some very eminent persons in the Church of God particularly by Junius and Tilenus that Christus est fundamentum totius praedestinationis all that are or ever were predestinated were predestinated in Christ Even Adam himself was predestinated in him and therefore from him if he had stood though we should have inherited a temporal happy life yet the Scripture speaks nothing of any other event Heaven was not promised to Adam himself therefore from him we could not have derived a title thither And therefore that inquity of the School-men Whether if Adam had not sinned Christ should have been incarnate was not an impertinent Question though they prosecuted it to weak purposes and with trifling arguments Scotus and his Scholars were for the affirmative and though I will not be decretory in it because the Scripture hath said nothing of it nor the Church delivered it yet to me it seems plainly the discourse of the Apostle now alledged That if Adam had not sinned yet that by Christ alone we should have obtained everlasting life Whether this had been dispensed by his Incarnation or some other way of oeconomy is not signified 4. But then if from Adam we should not have derived our title to Heaven though he had stood then neither by his Fall can we be said to have lost Heaven Heaven and Hell were to be administred by another method But then if it be enquired what evil we thence received I answer That the principal effect was the loss of that excellent condition in which God placed him and would have placed his posterity unless sin had entred He should have lived a long and lasting life till it had been time to remove him and very happy Instead of this he was thrown from those means which God had designed to this purpose that is Paradise and the trees of life he was turned into a place of labour and uneasiness of briars and thorns ill air and violent chances nova febrium terris incubuit cohors the woman was condemned to hard labour and travel and that which troubled her most obedience to her Husband his body was made frail and weak and sickly that is it was leâ—t such as it was made and left without remedies which were to have made it otherwise For that Adam was made mortal in his nature is infinitely certain and proved by his very eating and drinking his sleep and recreation by ingestion and egestion by breathing and generating his like which immortal substances never do and by the very tree of life which had not been needful if he should have had no need of it to repair his decaying strength and health 5. The effect of this consideration is this that all the product of Adam's sin was by despoiling him and consequently us of all the superadditions and graces brought upon his nature Even that which was threatned to him and in the narrative of that sad story expressed to be his punishment was no lessening of his nature but despoiling him of his supernaturals And therefore Manuel Pelaeologus calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the common driness of our nature and he adds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by our Fathers sin we fell from our Fathers graces Now according to the words of the Apostle As is the earthly such are they that are earthly that is all his posterity must be so as his nature was left in this there could be no injustice For if God might at first and all the way have made man with a necessity as well as a possibility of dying though men had not sinned then so also may he do if he did sin and so it was but this was effected by disrobing him of all the superadded excellencies with which God adorned and supported his natural life But this also I add that if even death it self came upon us without the alteration or diminution of our nature then so might sin because death was in re naturali but sin is not and therefore need not suppose that Adam's nature was spoiled to introduce that 6. As the sin of Adam brought hurt to the body directly so indirectly it brought hurt to the soul. For the evils upon the body as they are only felt by the soul so they grieve and tempt and provoke the soul to anger to sorrow to envy they make weariness in religious things cause desires for ease for pleasure and as these are by the body always desired so sometimes being forbidden by God they become sins and are always apt to it because the body being a natural agent tempts to all it can feel and have pleasure in And this is also observed and affirmed by S. Chrysostom and he often speaks it as if he were pleased in this explication of the Article 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Together with death entred a whole troop of affections or passions For when the body became mortal then of necessity it did admit desires
or lust and anger and grief and all things else which need great constancy and wisdom lest the storm should drown reason in us in the gulf of sin For these affections or passions were not sin but the excess of them not being bridled did effect this The same he affirms in Homl. 11. ad 6. Rom. and the 12. Homil. on Rom. 7. And not much unlike this was that excellent discourse of Lactantius in his seventh Book de Divino praemio cap. 5. But Theodoret in his Commentaries upon the Romans follows the same discourse exactly And this way of explicating the entrance and facility of sin upon us is usual in antiquity affirming that because we derive a miserable and an afflicted body from Adam upon that stock sin enters Quae quia materiam peccati ex fomite carnis Consociata trahit nec non simul ipsa sodali Est incentivum peccaminis implicat ambas Vindex poena reas peccantes mente sub unâ PeccandÃque cremet socias cruciatibus aequis Because the soul joyned to the body draws from the society of the flesh incentives and arguments to sin therefore both of them are punished as being guilty by consociation But then thus it was also before the fall For by this it was that Adam fell So the same Prudentius Haec prima est natura animae sic condita simplex Decidit in vitium per sordida foedera carnis The soul was created simple and pure but fell into vice by the evil combination with the flesh But if at first the appetites and necessities and tendencies of the body when it was at ease and health and blessed did yet tempt the soul to forbidden instances much more will this be done when the body is miserable and afflicted uneasie and dying For even now we see by a sad experience that the afflicted and the miserable are not only apt to anger and envy but have many more desires and more weaknesses and consequently more aptnesses to sin in many instances than those who are less troubled And this is that which was said by Arnobius Proni ad culpas ad libidinis varios appetitus vitio sumus infirmitatis ingenitae By the fault of our natural infirmity we are prone to the appetites of lust and sins 7. From hence it follows that naturally a man cannot do or perform the Law of God because being so weak so tempted by his body and this life being the bodies day that is the time in which its appetites are properly prevailing to be born of Adam is to be born under sin that is under such inclinations to it that as no man will remain innocent so no man can of himself keep the Law of God Vendidit se prior ac per hoc omne semen subjectum est peccato Quamobrem infirmum esse hominem ad praecepta legis servanda said the Author of the Commentary on S. Paul's Epistles usually attributed to S. Ambrose But beyond this there are two things more considerable the one is that the soul of man being devested by Adam's fall by way of punishment of all those supernatural assistances which God put into it that which remained was a reasonable soul fitted for the actions of life and of reason but not of any thing that was supernatural For the soul being immerged in flesh feeling grief by participation of evils from the flesh hath and must needs have discourses in order to its own ease and comfort that is in order to the satisfaction of the bodies desires which because they are often contradicted restrained and curbed and commanded to be mortified and killed by the laws of God must of necessity make great inlets for sin for while reason judges of things in proportion to present interests and is less apprehensive of the proportions of those good things which are not the good things of this life but of another the reason abuses the will as the flesh abuses the reason And for this there is no remedy but the grace of God the holy Spirit to make us be born again to become spiritual that is to have new principles new appetites and new interests The other thing I was to note is this That as the Devil was busie to abuse mankind when he was fortified by many advantages and favours from God So now that man is naturally born naked and devested of those graces and advantages and hath an infirm sickly body and enters upon the actions of life through infancy and childhood and youth and folly and ignorance the Devil it is certain will not omit his opportunities but will with all his power possess and abuse mankind and upon the apprehension of this the Primitive Church used in the first admission of infants to the entrance of a new birth to a spiritual life pray against the power and frauds of the Devil and that brought in the ceremony of Exsufflation for ejecting of the Devil The ceremony was fond and weak but the opinion that introduced them was full of caution and prudence For as Optatus Milevitanus said Neminem fugit quod omnis homo qui nascitur quamvis de Christianis parentibus nascitur sine Spiritu immundo esse non possit quem necesse sit ante salutare lavacrum ab homine excludi ac separari It is but too likely the Devil will take advantages of our natural weaknesses and with his temptations and abuses enter upon children as soon as they enter upon choice and indeed prepossess them with imitating follies that may become customs of sinfulness before they become sins and therefore with rare wisdom it was done by the Church to prevent the Devils frauds and violences by an early Baptism and early offices 8. As a consequent of all this it comes to pass that we being born thus naked of the Divine grace thus naturally weak thus incumbred with a body of sin that is a body apt to tempt to forbidden instances and thus assaulted by the frauds and violences of the Devil all which are helped on by the evil guises of the world it is certain we cannot with all these disadvantages and loads soar up to Heaven but in the whole constitution of affairs are in sad dispositions to enter into the Devils portion and go to Hell Not that if we die before we consent to evil we shall perish but that we are evilly disposed to do actions that will deserve it and because if we die before our new birth we have nothing in us that can according to the revelations of God dispose us to Heaven according to these words of the Apostle In me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing But this infers not that in our flesh or that in our soul there is any sin properly inherent which makes God to be our present enemy that is the only or the principal thing I suppose my self to have so much reason to deny But that the state of the body is a
philosoph c. 2. Concupiscere 〈◊〉 concupiscere mentiri non mentiri quaecunque talia in quibus consistunt virtutis vitii opera haec sunt in nostro libero arbitrio B. Macarius Aegyptius hom 15. Caeterúmve semel omninò resonet permanea◠delectus arbitrii libertas quam primitus homini dedit Deus ea propter dispensatione suâ res administrantur corporum solutio sit ut in voluntate hominis situm sit ad bonum vel malum converti Marcus Heremita lib. de Baptismo ultra medium speaks more home to the particular question Haec similia cum sciat scriptura in nostrâ potestate positum esse ut haec agamus nec ne propterea non Satanam neque peccatum Adae sed nos increpat infra Primam conceptionem habemus ex dispensatione quemadmodum ille perinde ac ille pro arbitrio possumus obtemperare vel non obtemperare Julius Firmicus de erroribus profanarum religionum cap. 29. Liberum te Deus fecit in tuâ manu est ut aut vivas aut pereas quia te per abrupta praecipitas S. Ambros. in exposit Psalm 40. Homini dedit eligendi arbitrium quod sequatur ante hominem vita mors si deliqueris non natura in culpa est sed eligentis affectus Gaudentius Brixianus tertio tractat super Exod. Horum concessa semel voluntatis libertas non aufertur ne nihil de eo judicare possit qui liber non fuerit in agendo Boetius libro de consolatione philosophiae Quae cum ita sint manet intemerata mortalibus libertas arbitrii Though it were easie to bring very many more testimonies to this purpose yet I have omitted them because the matter is known to all learned Persons and have chosen these because they testifie that our liberty of choice remains after the fall that if we sin the fault is not in our Nature but in our Persons and Election that still it is in our powers to do good or evil that this is the sentence of the Church that he who denies this is not a Catholick believer 15. And this is so agreeable to nature to experience to the sentence of all wise men to the nature of laws to the effect of reward and punishments that I am perswaded no man would deny it if it were not upon this mistake For many wise and learned men dispute against it because they find it affirmed in H. Scripture every where that grace is necessary that we are servants of sin that we cannot come to God unless we be drawn and very many more excellent things to the same purpose Upon the account of which they conclude that therefore our free will is impaired by Adam's fall since without the grace of God we cannot convert our selves to Godliness and being converted without it we cannot stand and if we stand without it we cannot go on and going on without it we cannot persevere Now though all this be very true yet there is a mistake in the whole Question For when it is affirmed that Adam's sin did not could not impair our liberty but all that freedom of election which was concreated with his reason and is essential to an understanding creature did remain inviolate there is no more said but that after Adam's fall all that which was natural remained and that what Adam could naturally do all that he and we can do afterwards But yet this contradicts not all those excellent discourses which the Church makes of the necessity of Grace of the necessity and effect of which I am more earnestly perswaded and do believe more things than are ordinarily taught in the Schools of Learning But when I say that our will can do all that it ever could I mean all that it could ever do naturally but not all that is to be done supernaturally But then this I add that the things of the Spirit that is all that belongs to spiritual life are not naturally known not naturally discerned but are made known to us by the Spirit and when they are known they are not naturally amiable as being in great degrees and many regards contradictory to natural desires but they are made amiable by the proposition of spiritual rewards and our will is moved by God in wayes not natural and the active and passive are brought together by secret powers and after all this our will being put into a supernatural order does upon these presuppositions choose freely and work in the manner of Nature Our will is after Adam naturally as free as ever it was and in spiritual things it 's free when it is made so by the Spirit for Nature could never do that according to that saying of Celestine Nemo nisi per Christum libero arbitrio benè utitur Omnis sancta cogitatio motus bonae voluntatis ex Deo est A man before he is in Christ hath free-will but cannot use it well He hath motions and operations of will but without God's grace they do not delight in holy things But then in the next place there is another mistake also when it is affirmed in the writings of some Doctors that the will of man is depraved men presently suppose that Depravation is a Natural or Physical effect and means a diminution of powers whereas it signifies nothing but a being in love with or having chosen an evil object and not an impossibility or weakness to do the contrary but only because it will not For the powers of the will cannot be lessened by any act of the same faculty for the act is not contrary to the faculty and therefore can do nothing towards its destruction III. As a consequent of this I infer that there is no natural necessity of sinning that is there is no sinful action to which naturally we are determined but it is our own choice that we sin This depending upon the former stands or falls with it But because God hath super-induced so many Laws and the Devil super-induces temptations upon our weak nature and we are to enter into a supernatural state of things therefore it is that we need the Helps of supernatural grace to enable us to do a supernatural duty in order to a divine end so that the necessity of sinning which we all complain of though it be greater in us than it was in Adam before his fall yet is not absolute in either nor meerly natural but accidental and super-induced and in remedy to it God also hath superinduced and promised his Holy Spirit to them that ask Him SECT IV. Adam's Sin is not imputed to us to our Damnation 16. BUT the main of all is this that this sin of Adam is not imputed unto us to Eternal Damnation For Eternal Death was not threatned to Adam for his sin and therefore could not from him come upon us for that which was none of ours Indeed the Socinians affirm that the death which entered into the
succession were all circumcised and no arguments no authority could hinder them And for their fear it only produc'd caution and sneaking from the face of men and both together set them on work to corrupt the spirit of the law by expositions too much according to the letter so that by this means their natural desires their lustings and concupiscence were not cured 7. For as Lactantius brought in the Heathen complaining so does S. Paul bring in the Jew That which I do I allow not for what I would that I do not but what I hate that I do I say this is the state of a man under the law a man who is not regenerate and made free by the Spirit of Christ that is a man who abides in the infirmities of nature of which the law of nature warn'd him first and the superinduc'd law of God warn'd him more but there was not in these Covenants or Laws sufficient either to endear or to secure obedience they did not minister strength enough to conquer sin to overthrow its power to destroy the kingdom and reign of sin this was reserv'd for the great day of triumph it was the glory of the Gospel the power of Christ the strength of the Spirit which alone was able to do it and by this with its appendages that is the pardon of sin and a victory over it a conquest by the prevailing and rule of the Spirit by this alone the Gospel is the most excellent above all the covenants and states and institutions of the world 8. But then the Christian must not complain thus if he be advanced into the secrets of the Kingdom if he be a Christian in any thing beyond the name he cannot say that sin gives him laws that it reigns in his mortal body that he is led captive by Satan at his will that he sins against his will frequently and habitually and cannot help it But so it is men do thus complain and which is worse they make this to be their excuse and their incouragement If they have sinn'd foully they say It is true but it is not I but sin that dwelleth in me For that which I do I allow not for what I would that do I not and what I hate that do I. And if they be tempted to a sin they cannot be disswaded from it or incouraged to a noble and pertinacious resistance because they have this in excuse ready To will is present with me but how to perform that which is good I find not For the good which I would I do not but the evil which I would not that I do That is it is my infirmity give me leave to do it I am the child of God for all my sin for I do it with an unwilling willingness I shall do this always and shall never be quit of this tyranny of sin It was thus with S. Paul himself and I ought not to hope to be otherwise than he and a person more free from sin We find in the life of Andronicus written by Nicetas Choniates the same pretence made in excuse for sin they could not help it and we find it so in our daily experience and the thing it self warranted by many Interpreters of Scripture who suppose that S. Paul in the seventh Chapter to the Romans from the fourteenth verse to the end describes his own state of infirmity and disability or which is all one the state of a regenerate man that it is no other but an ineffective striving and strugling against sin a contention in which he is most commonly worsted and that this striving is all that he can shew of holiness to be a testimony of his regeneration SECT II. 9. HOW necessary it is to free the words of S. Paul from so dangerous a sence we may easily believe if we consider that to suppose a man who is regenerate by the Spirit of Christ to be still a slave under sin and within its power and that he fain would but cannot help it is very injurious to the power of Christ and the mightiness of the spirit of grace when all its effect is only said to be that it strives but can do nothing that is sin abounds more than grace and the man that is redeemed by Christ is still unredeem'd and a captive under sin and Satan this is not only an incouragement of evil life but a reproach and scorn cast upon the holy Spirit It is verbum dictum contrae Spiritum sanctum a word spoken against the holy Ghost And as S. Austin calls it it is tuba hostis non nostra unde ille incitetur non unde vincatur the Devils trumpet to encourage him in his war against poor mankind but by this means he shall never be overcome And therefore he gives us caution of it for speaking of these words The good which I would that do I not but the evil that I would not that I do advises thus Lectio Divina quae de Apostoli Pauli epistolâ recitata est quotiescunque legitur timendum est ne malè intellecta det hominibus quaerentibus occasionem When ever these words of S. Paul are read we must fear lest the misunderstanding of them should minister an occasion of sin to them that seek it For men are prone to sin and scarce restrain themselves When therefore they hear the Apostle saying I do not the good which I would but I do the evil which I hate they do evil and as it were displeasing themselves because they do it think themselves like the Apostle In pursuance of this caution I shall examine the expositions which are pretended 10. I. These words I do not the good which I would but I do the evil which I hate are not the words or character of a regenerate person in respect of actual good or bad A regenerate man cannot say that he does frequently or habitually commit the sin that he hates and is against his conscience 1. Because no man can serve two Masters if he be a servant of sin he is not a servant of the Spirit No man can serve Christ and Belial If therefore he be brought into captivity to the law of sin he is the servant of sin and such was he whom S. Paul describes in this Chapter Therefore this person is not a servant of Christ He that is a servant of righteousness is freed from sin and he who is a servant of sin is not a servant of but freed from righteousness A regenerate person therefore is a servant of the Spirit and so cannot at the same time be a servant or a slave and a captive under sin 11. II. When the complaint is made I do the evil which I hate the meaning is I do it seldom or I do it commonly and frequently If it means I do it seldom then a man cannot use these words so well as the contrary he can say The good which I would I do regularly
and ordinarily and the evil which I hate I do avoid sometimes indeed I am surpris'd and when I do neglect to use the aids and strengths of the spirit of grace I fall but this is because I will not and not because I cannot help it and in this case the man is not a servant or captive of sin but a servant of Christ though weak and imperfect But if it means I do it commonly or constantly or frequently which is certainly the complaint here made then to be a regenerate person is to be a vile person sold under sin and not Gods servant For if any man shall suppose these words to mean only thus I do not do so much good as I would and do sometimes fall into evil though I would fain be intirely innocent indeed this man teaches no false doctrine as to the state or duty of the regenerate which in this life will for ever be imperfect but he speaks not according to the sence and design of the Apostle here For his purpose is to describe that state of evil in which we are by nature and from which we could not be recovered by the law and from which we can only be redeemed by the grace of Jesus Christ and this is a state of death of being killed by sin of being captivated and sold under sin after the manner of slaves as will further appear in the sequel 12. III. Every regenerate man and servant of Christ hath the Spirit of Christ. But where the Spirit of God is there is liberty therefore no slavery therefore sin reigns not there Both the propositions are the words of the Apostle The conclusion therefore infers that the man whom S. Paul describes in this Chapter is not the regenerate man for he hath not liberty but is in captivity to the law of sin from which every one that is Christs every one that hath the Spirit of Christ is freed 13. IV. And this is that which S. Paul calls being under the law that is a being carnal and in the state of the flesh not but that the law it self is spiritual but that we being carnal of our selves are not cured by the law but by reason of the infirmity of the flesh made much worse curbed but not sweetly won admonished but assisted by no spirit but the spirit of bondage and fear This state is opposed to the spiritual state The giving of the law is called the ministery of death the Gospel is called the ministery of the Spirit and that is the ministration of life and therefore if we be led by the Spirit we are not under the law but if we be under the law we are dead and sin is revived and sin by the law brings forth fruit unto death From hence the argument of the Apostle is clear The man whom he here describes is such a one who is under the law but such a man is dead by reason of sin and therefore hath not in him the Spirit of God for that is the ministration of life A regenerate person is alive unto God he lives the life of righteousness but he that is under the law is killed by sin and such is the man that is here described as appears verse 9. and I shall in the sequel further prove therefore this man is not the regenerate 14. V. To which for the likeness of the argument I add this That the man who can say I do that which I hate is a man in whom sin is not mortified and therefore he lives after the flesh but then he is not regenerate for if ye live after the flesh ye shall die saith S. Paul but if ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live These arguments are taken from consideration of the rule and dominion of sin in the man whom S. Paul describes who therefore cannot be a regenerate person To the same effect and conclusion are other expressions in the same Chapter 15. VI. The man whom S. Paul here describes who complains That he does not the good which he would but the evil that he would not is such a one in whom sin does inhabit It is no more I but sin that dwelleth in me But in the regenerate sin does not inhabit My Father and I will come unto him and make our abode with him So Christ promised to his servants to them who should be regenerate and the Spirit of God dwelleth in them the Spirit of him that raised Jesus from the dead and therefore the Regenerate are called the habitation of God through the Spirit Now if God the Father if Christ if the Spirit of Christ dwells in a man there sin does not dwell The strong man that is armed keeps possession but if a stronger than he comes he dispossesses him If the Spirit of God does not drive the Devil forth himself will leave the place They cannot both dwell together Sin may be in the regenerate and grieve Gods Spirit but it shall not abide or dwell there for that extinguishes him One or the other must depart And this also is noted by S. Paul in this very place sin dwelleth in me and no good thing dwelleth in me If one does the other does not but yet as in the unregenerate there might be some good such as are good desires knowledge of good and evil single actions of vertue beginnings and dispositions to grace acknowledging of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ some lightnings and flashes of the holy Ghost a knowing of the way of righteousness but sanctifying saving good does not dwell that is does not abide with them and rule so in the regenerate there is sin but because it does not dwell there they are under the Empire of the Spirit and in Christs Kingdom or as S. Paul expresses it Christ liveth in them and that cannot be unless sin be crucified and dead in them The summ of which is thus in S. Paul's words Reckon your selves indeed to be dead unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof For sin shall not have dominion over you because we are not under the law but under grace 16. VII Lastly the man whom S. Paul describes is carnal but the regenerate is never called carnal in the Scripture but is spiritual oppos'd to carnal A man not only in pure naturals but even plac'd under the law is called carnal that is until he be redeemed by the Spirit of Christ he cannot be called spiritual but is yet in the flesh Now that the regenerate cannot be the carnal man is plain in the words of S. Paul The carnal mind is enmity against God and they that are in the flesh cannot please God To which he adds But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you
authorities to the same purpose may find them in S. Basil Theodoret S. Cyril Macarius S. Ambrose S. Hierom and Theophylact The words of the Apostle the very purpose and design the whole Oeconomy and Analogy of the sixth seventh and eighth Chapters do so plainly manifest it that the heaping up more testimonies cannot be useful in so clear a case The results are these I. The state of men under the law was but a state of carnality and of nature better instructed and soundly threatned and set forward in some instances by the spirit of fear only but not cured but in many men made much worse accidentally II. That to be pleased in the inner man that is in the Conscience to be convinc'd and to consent to the excellency of vertue and yet by the flesh that is by the passions of the lower man or the members of the body to serve sin is the state of Unregeneration III. To do the evil that I would not and to omit the good that I fain would do when it is in my hand to do what is in my heart to think is the property of a carnal unregenerate man And this is the state of men in nature and was the state of men under the law For to be under the law and not to be led by the Spirit are all one in S. Paul's account For if ye be led by the Spirit ye are not under the law saith he And therefore to be under the law being a state of not being under the Spirit must be under the government of the flesh that is they were not then sanctified by the Spirit of grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ they were not yet redeemed from their vain conversation Not that this was the state of all the sons of Israel of them that liv'd before the law or after but that the law could do no more for them or upon them Gods Spirit did in many of them work his own works but this was by the grace of Jesus Christ who was the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world this was not by the works of the law but by the same instruments and grace by which Abraham and all they who are his children by promise were justified But this is the consequent of the third proposition which I was to consider 27. III. From this state of evil we are redeemed by Christ and by the Spirit of his grace Wretched man that I am quis liberabit who shall deliver me from the body of this death He answers I thank God through Jesus Christ so S. Chrysostom Theodoret Theophylact S. Hierom the Greek Scholiast and the ordinary Greek copies do commonly read the words in which words there is an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and they are thus to be supplied I thank God through Jesus Christ we are delivered or there is a remedy found out for us But Irenaeus Origen S. Ambrose S. Austin and S. Hierom himself at another time and the Vulgar Latin Bibles instead of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gratia Domini Jesu Christi the grace of God through Jesus Christ. That is our remedy he is our deliverer from him comes our redemption For he not only gave us a better law but also the Spirit of grace he hath pardon'd all our old sins and by his Spirit enables us for the future that we may obey him in all sincerity in heartiness of endeavour and real events From hence I draw this argument That state from which we are redeemed by Jesus Christ and freed by the Spirit of his grace is a state of carnality of unregeneration that is of sin and death But by Jesus Christ we are redeemed from that state in which we were in subjection to sin commanded by the law of sin and obeyed it against our reason and against our conscience therefore this state which is indeed the state S. Paul here describes is the state of carnality and unregeneration and therefore not competent to the servants of Christ to the elect people of God to them who are redeemed and sanctified by the Spirit of Christ. The parts of this argument are the words of S. Paul and proved in the foregoing periods From hence I shall descend to something that is more immediately practical and cloth'd with circumstances SECT V. How far an Vnregenerate man may go in the ways of Piety and Religion 28. TO this inquiry it is necessary that this be premised That between the regenerate and a wicked person there is a middle state so that it is not presently true that if the man be not wicked he is presently Regenerate Between the two states of so vast a distance it is impossible but there should be many intermedial degrees between the Carnal and Spiritual man there is a Moral man not that this man shall have a different event of things if he does abide there but that he must pass from extreme to extreme by this middle state of participation The first is a slave of sin the second is a servant of righteousness the third is such a one as liveth according to Natural reason so much of it as is left him and is not abused that is lives a probable life but is not renewed by the Spirit of grace one that does something but not all not enough for the obtaining salvation For a man may have gone many steps from his former baseness and degenerous practices and yet not arrive at godliness or the state of pardon like the children of Israel who were not presently in Canaan as soon as they were out of Egypt but abode long in the wilderness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they begin to be instructed that is their state Thou art not far from the Kingdom of Heaven said our blessed Saviour to a well disposed person but he was not arrived thither he was not a subject of the Kingdom These are such whom our blessed Lord calls The weary and the heavy laden that is such who groan under the heavy pressure of their sins whom therefore he invites to come to him to be eased Such are those whom S. Paul here describes to be under the law convinced of sin pressed vexed troubled with it complaining of it desirous to be eased These the holy Scripture calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ordained disposed to life eternal but these were not yet the fideles or believers but from that fair disposition became believers upon the preaching of the Apostles 29. In this third state of men I account those that sin and repent and yet repent and sin again for ever troubled when they have sinn'd and yet for ever or most frequently sinning when the temptation does return 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They sin and accuse and hate themselves for sinning Now because these men mean well and fain would be quit of their sin at their own rate and are not scandalous and impious they flatter
clear ready and a prepared will he dies and disputes not 2. An animal man or a mere moral man that is one under the law one instructed and convinced by the letter but not sanctified by the Spirit he sins willingly because he considers and chuses it but he also sins unwillingly that is his inclinations to vice and his first choices are abated and the pleasures allayed and his peace disturbed and his sleeps broken but for all that he sins on when the next violent temptation comes The contention in him is between Reason and Passion the law of the mind and the law of the members between conscience and sin that weak this prevailing 3. But the Regenerate hath the same contention within him and the temptation is sometimes strong within him yet he overcomes it and seldom fails in any material and considerable instances Because the Spirit is the prevailing ingredient in the new Creature in the constitution of the regenerate and will prevail For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world and this is the victory that overcometh the world even your faith that is by the faith of Jesus Christ by him you shall have victory and redemption and again Resist the Devil and he will flee from you for he that is within you is stronger than he that is in the world and Put on the whole armor of God that ye may stand against the snares of the Devil that ye may resist in the evil day and having done all to stand for All things are possible to him that believes and Through Christ that strengthens me I can do all things and therefore in all these things we are more than conquerors for God is able to do above all that we can ask or think he can keep us from all sin and present us unblameable in the sight of his glory So that to deny the power of the Spirit in breaking the tyranny and subduing the lusts of the flesh besides that it contradicts all these and divers other Scriptures it denies the Omnipotency of God and of the Spirit of his grace making sin to be stronger than it and if grace abound to make sin superabound but to deny the willingness of the Spirit to redeem us from the captivity of sin is to lessen the reputation of his goodness and to destroy the possibility and consequently the necessity of living holily 34. But how happens it then that even the regenerate sins often and the flesh prevails upon the ruine or the declensions of the Spirit I answer It is not because that holy principle which is in the regenerate cannot or will not secure him but because the man is either prepossess'd with the temptation and overcome before he begins to oppose the arms of the Spirit that is because he is surpris'd or incogitant or it may be careless the good man is asleep and then the enemy takes his advantage and sows tares for if he were awake and considering and would make use of the strengths of the Spirit he would not be overcome by sin For there are powers enough that is arguments and endearments helps and sufficient motives to enable us to resist the strongest temptation in the world and this one alone of resurrection to eternal life which is revealed to us by Jesus Christ and ministred in the Gospel is an argument greater than all the promises and inticements of sin if we will attend to its efficacy and consequence But if we throw away our arms and begin a fight in the Spirit and end it in the flesh the ill success of the day is to be imputed to us not to the Spirit of God to whom if we had attended we should certainly have prevailed * The reliques and remains of sin are in the regenerate but that is a sign that sin is overcome and the kingdom of it broken and that is a demonstration that when ever sin does prevail in any single instances it is not for want of power but of using that power for since the Spirit hath prevailed upon the flesh in its strengths and hath crucified it there is no question but it can also prevail upon all its weaknesses 35. For we must be curious to avoid a mistake here The dominion of the Spirit and the remains of the flesh may consist together in the regenerate as some remains of cold with the prevailing heat but the dominion of one and the other are in every degree inconsistent as both cold and heat cannot in any sence be both said to be the prevailing ingredient A man cannot be said to be both free from sin and a slave to sin If he hath prevailed in any degree upon sin then he is not at all a servant of that portion from whence he is set free but if he be a captive of any one sin or regular degree of it he is not Gods freed man for the Spirit prevails upon all as well as upon one and that is not an infinite power that cannot redeem us from all our slavery But to be a slave of sin and at the same time to be a servant of righteousness is not only against the analogy of Scripture and the express signification of so many excellent periods but against common sence it is as if one should say that a man hath more heat than cold in his hand and yet that the cold should prevail upon and be stronger than the heat that is that the weaker should overcome the stronger and the less should be greater than that which is bigger than it 36. But as the choice of vertue is abated and as the temptation grows more violent and urges more vehemently is made less pleasant in the regenerate person so is the choice of vice in the Moral or Animal man The contention abates the pleasure in both their choices but in the one it ends in sin in the other it ends in victory So that there is an unwillingness to sin in all but in the impious and profane person in the far distant stranger But the unwillingness to sin that is in the Animal or Moral man is nothing else but a serving sin like a grumbling servant or like the younger son of the Farmer in the Gospel he said he would not but did it for all his angry words And therefore that the unregenerate man acts the sin against his mind and after a long contention against it does not in all cases lessen it but sometimes increases it Nec leviat crimen eorum magis verò auget quòd eos diù restitisse dixistis said Pope Pelagius To resist long and then to consent hath in it some aggravations of the crime as being a conviction of the mans baseness a violence to reason a breach of former resolutions a recession from fair beginnings and wholly without excuse * But if ever it comes to pass that in the contention of flesh and spirit the regenerate man does sin he does it unwillingly that is
is guilty of murder and cannot pretend infirmity for his excuse because in an action of so great consequence and effect it is supposed he had time to deliberate all the foregoing parts of his life whether such an action ought to be done or not or the very horror of the action was enough to arrest his spirit as a great danger or falling into a river will make a drunken man sober and by all the laws of God and Man he was immur'd from the probability of all transports into such violences and the man must needs be a slave of passion who could by it be brought to go so far from reason and to do so great evil * If a man in the careless time of the day when his spirit is loose with a less severe imployment or his heart made more open with an innocent refreshment spies a sudden beauty that unluckily strikes his fancy it is possible that he may be too ready to entertain a wanton thought and to suffer it to stand at the doors of his first consent but if the sin passes no further the man enters not into the regions of death because the Devil entred on a sudden and is as suddenly cast forth But if from the first arrest of concupiscence he pass on to an imperfect consent from an imperfect consent to a perfect and deliberate and from thence to an act and so to a habit he ends in death because long before it is come thus far The salt water is taken in The first concupiscence is but like rain water it discolours the pure springs but makes them not deadly But when in the progression the will mingles with it it is like the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or waters of brimstone and the current for ever after is unwholsome and carries you forth into the dead Sea the lake of Sodom which is to suffer the vengeance of Eternal fire But then the matter may be supposed little till the will comes For though a man may be surprised with a wanton eye yet he cannot sight a duel against his knowledge or commit adultery against his will A man cannot against his will contrive the death of a man but he may speak a rash word or be suddenly angry or triflingly peevish and yet all this notwithstanding be a good man still These may be sins of Infirmity because they are imperfect actions in the whole and such in which as the man is for the present surpris'd so they are such against which no watchfulness was a sufficient guard as it ought to have been in any great matter and might have been in sudden murders A wise and a good man may easily be mistaken in a nice question but can never suspect an article of his Creed to be false a good man may have many fears and doubtings in matters of smaller moment but he never doubts of Gods goodness of his truth of his mercy or of any of his communicated perfections he may fall into melancholy and may suffer indefinite fears of he knows not what himself yet he can never explicitely doubt of any thing which God hath clearly revealed and in which he is sufficiently instructed A weak eye may at a distance mistake a man for a tree but he who sailing in a storm takes the Sea for dry land or a mushrome for an oak is stark blind And so is he who can think adultery to be excusable or that Treason can be duty or that by persecuting Gods Prophets he does God good service or that he propagates Religion by making the Ministers of the Altar poor and robbing the Churches A good man so remaining cannot suffer infirmity in the plain and legible lines of duty where he can see and reason and consider I have now told which are sins of infirmity and I have told all their measures For as for those other false opinions by which men flatter themselves into Hell by a pretence of sins of infirmity they are as unreasonable as they are dangerous and they are easily reproved upon the stock of the former truths Therefore 55. VI. Although our mere natural inclination to things forbidden be of it self a natural and unavoidable infirmity and such which cannot be cured by all the precepts and endeavours of perfection yet this very inclination if it be heightned by carelesness or evil customs is not a sin of infirmity Tiberius the Emperor being troubled with a fellow that wittily and boldly pretended himself to be a Prince at last when he could not by questions he discovered him to be a mean person by the rusticity and hardness of his body not by a callousness of his feet or a wart upon a finger but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 His whole body was hard and servile and so he was discovered The natural superfluities and excrescencies that inevitably adhere to our natures are not sufficient indications of a servile person or a slave to sin but when our natures are abused by choice and custom when the callousness is spread by evil and hard usages when the arms are brawny by the services of Egypt then it is no longer infirmity but a superinduc'd viciousness and a direct hostility When nature rules grace does not When the flesh is in power the spirit is not Therefore it matters not from what corner the blasting wind does come from whence soever it is it is deadly Most of our sins are from natural inclinations and the negative precepts of God are for the most part restraints upon them Therefore to pretend nature when our selves have spoil'd it is no excuse but that state of evil from whence the Spirit of God is to rescue and redeem us 56. VII Yea but although it be thus in nature yet it is hop'd by too many that it shall be allowed to be infirmity when the violence of our passions or desires overcomes our resolutions Against this I oppose this proposition When violence of desire or passion engages us in a sin whither we see and observe our selves entring that violence or transportation is not our excuse but our disease and that resolution is not accepted for innocence or repentance but the not performing what we did resolve is our sin and the violence of passion was the accursed principle 57. For to resolve is a relative and imperfect duty in order to something else It had not been necessary to resolve if it had not been necessary to do do it and if it be necessary to do it it is not sufficient to resolve it And for the understanding of this the better we must observe that to resolve and to endeavour are several things To resolve is to purpose to do what we may if we will some way or other the thing is in our power either we are able of our selves or we are help'd No man resolves to carry an Elephant or to be as wise as Solomon or to destroy a vast Army with his own hands He may endeavour this for To endeavour sometimes
faith without charity dead and ineffective A working faith and a working prayer are the great instruments and the great exercise and the great demonstration of holiness and Christian perfection Children can sit down in a storm or in a danger and weep and die but men can labour against it and struggle with the danger and labour for that blessing which they beg Thou dost not desire it unless thou wilt labour for it He that sits still and wishes had rather have that thing than be without it but if he will not use the means he had rather lose his desire than lose his ease That is scarce worth having that is not worth labouring 76. XI In all contentions against sin and infirmity remember that what was done yesterday may be done to day and by the same instruments by which then you were conqueror you may also be so in every day of temptation The Italian General that quitted his vanity and his imployment upon the sight of one that died suddenly might upon the same consideration actually applied and fitted to the fancy at any time resist his lust And therefore Epictetus gives it in rule 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let death be always before thy eyes and then thou shalt never desire any base or low thing nor desire any thing too much That is the perpetual application of so great a consideration as is death is certainly the greatest endearment of holiness and severity And certain it is that at some time or other the greatest part of Christians have had some horrible apprehensions of Hell of Death and consequent Damnation and it hath put into them holy thoughts and resolutions of piety and if ever they were in a severe sickness and did really fear death they may remember with how great a regret they did then look upon their sins and then they thought Heaven a considerable interest and Hell a formidable state and would not then have committed a sin for the purchase of the world Now every man hath always the same arguments and endearments of piety and religion Heaven and Hell are always the same considerable things and the truth is the same still but then they are considered most and therefore they prevail most and this is a demonstration that the arguments themselves are sufficient and would always do the work of grace for us if we were not wanting to our selves It is impossible that any man can be mov'd by any argument in the world or any interest any hope or any fear who cannot be moved by the consideration of Heaven and Hell But that which I observe is this that the argument that wisely and reasonably prevail'd yesterday can prevail to day unless thou thy self beest foolish and unreasonable 77. XII If a wicked man sins it is never by a pitiable or pardonable infirmity but from a state of death that it proceeds or will be so imputed and it is all one as if it did But if a good man sins he hath the least reason to pretend infirmity for his excuse because he hath the strengths of the Spirit and did master sin in its strengths and in despight of all its vigorousness and habit and therefore certainly can do so much rather when sin is weak and grace is strong The result of which consideration is this That no man should please himself in his sin because it is a sin of infirmity He that is pleased with it because he thinks it is indulg'd to him sins with pleasure and therefore not of infirmity for that is ever against our will and besides our observation No sin is a sin of infirmity unless we hate it and strive against it He that hath gotten some strength may pretend some infirmity But he that hath none is dead 78. XIII Let no man think that the proper evil of his age or state or of his Nation is in the latitude and nature of it a sin of a pardonable infirmity The lusts of youth and the covetousness or pride of old age and the peevishness of the afflicted are states of evil not sins of infirmity For it is highly considerable that sins of infirmity are but single ones There is no such thing as a state of a pardonable infirmity If by distemper of the body or the vanity of years or the evil customs of a Nation a vice does creep upon and seise on the man it is that against which the man ought to watch and pray and labour it is a state of danger and temptation But that must not be called infirmity which corrupts Nations and states of life but that only which in single instances surprises even a watchful person when his guards are most remiss 79. XIV Whatsoever sin comes regularly or by observation is not to be excused upon the pretence of infirmity but is the indication of an evil habit Therefore never admit a sin upon hopes of excuse for it is certain no evil that a man chuses is excusable No man sins with a pardon about his neck But if the sin comes at a certain time it comes from a certain cause and then it cannot be infirmity for all sins of infirmity are sins of chance irregular and accidental 80. XV. Be curious to avoid all proverbs and propositions or odd sayings by which evil life is incouraged and the hands of the Spirit weakned It is strange to consider what a prejudice to a mans understanding of things is a contrary proverb Can any good thing come out of Galilee And when Christ cometh no man knoweth whence he is Two or three proverbs did in despight of all the miracles and holy doctrines and rare example of Christ hinder many of the Jews from believing in him The words of S. Paul misunderstood and worse applied have been so often abused to evil purposes that they have almost passed into a proverbial excuse The evil that I would not that I do Such sayings as these are to be tried by the severest measures and all such sences of them which are enemies to holiness of life are to be rejected because they are against the whole Oeconomy and design of the Gospel of the life and death of Christ. But a proverb being used by every man is supposed to contain the opinion and belief or experience of mankind and then that evil sence that we are pleased to put to them will be thought to be of the same authority I have heard of divers persons who have been strangely intic'd on to finish their revellings and drunken conventicles by a catch or a piece of a song by a humor and a word by a bold saying or a common proverb and whoever take any measures of good or evil but the severest discourses of reason and religion will be like a Ship turned every way by a little piece of wood by chance and by half a sentence because they dwell upon the water and a wave of the Sea is their foundation 81. XVI Let every man take heed of a
does but declare it so it effects it not 71. VIII And after all it is certain that the words of absolution effect no more than they signifie If therefore they do pardon the sin yet they do not naturally change the disposition or the real habit of the sinner And if the words can effect more they may be changed to signifie what they do effect for to signifie is less than to effect Can therefore the Church use this form of absolution I do by the power committed unto me change thy Attrition into Contrition The answer to this is not yet made for their pretence is so new and so wholly unexamined that they have not yet considered any thing of it It will therefore suffice for our institution in this useful material and practical question that no such words were instituted by Christ nor any thing like them no such were used by the Primitive Church no such power pretended And as this new doctrine of the Roman Church contains in it huge estrangements and distances from the spirit of Christianity is another kind of thing than the doctrine and practice of the Apostolical and succeeding ages of the Church did publish or exercise so it is a perfect destruction to the necessity of holy life it is a device only to advance the Priests office and to depress the necessity of holy dispositions it is a trick to make the graces of Gods holy Spirit to be bought and sold and that a man may at a price become holy in an instant just as if a Teacher of Musick should undertake to convey skill to his Scholar and fell the art and transmit it in an hour it is a device to make dispositions by art and in effect requires little or nothing of duty to God so they pay regard to the Priest But I shall need to oppose no more against it but those excellent words and pious meditation of Salvian Non levi agendum est contritione ut debita illa redimantur quibus mors aeterna debetur nec transitoriâ opus est satisfactione pro malis illis propter quae paratus est ignis aeternus It is not a light contrition by which those debts can be redeem'd to which eternal death is due neither can a transitory satisfaction serve for those evils for which God hath prepared the vengeance of eternal fire SECT VI. Of Penances or Satisfactions 72. IN the Primitive Church the word Satisfaction was the whole word for all the parts and exercises of repentance according to those words of Lactantius Poenitentiam proposuit ut si peccata nostra confessi Deo satisfecerimus veniam consequamur He propounded repentance that if we confessing our sins to God make amends or satisfaction we may obtain pardon Where it is evident that Satisfaction does not signifie in the modern sence of the word a full payment to the Divine Justice but by the exercises of repentance a deprecation of our fault and a begging pardon Satisfaction and pardon are not consistent if satisfaction signifie rigorously When the whole debt is paid there is nothing to be forgiven The Bishops and Priests in the Primitive Church would never give pardon till their satisfactions were performed To confess their sins to be sorrowful for them to express their sorrow to punish the guilty person to do actions contrary to their former sins this was their amends or Satisfaction and this ought to be ours So we find the word used in best Classick Authors So Plautus brings in Alcmena angry with Amphitruo Quin ego illum aut deseram Aut satisfaciat mihi atque adjuret insuper Nolle esse dicta quae in me insontem protulit i. e. I will leave him unless he give me satisfaction and swear that he wishes that to be unsaid which he spake against my innocence for that was the form of giving satisfaction to wish it undone or unspoken and to add an oath that they believe the person did not deserve that wrong as we find it in Terence Adelph Ego vestra haec novi nollem factum jusjurandum dabitur esse te indignum injuriâ hâc Concerning which who please to see more testimonies of the true sence and use of the word Satisfactions may please to look upon Lambinus in Plauti Amphitr and Laevinus Torrentius upon Suetonius in Julio Exomologesis or Confession was the word which as I noted formerly was of most frequent use in the Church Si de exomologesi retractas gehennam in corde considera quam tibi exomologesis extinguet He that retracts his sins by confessing and condemning them extinguishes the flames of Hell So Tertullian The same with that of S. Cyprian Deo patri misericordi precibus operibus suis satisfacere possunt They may satisfie God our Father and merciful by prayers and good works that is they may by these deprecate their fault and obtain mercy and pardon for their sins Peccatum suum satisfactione humili simplici confitentes So Cyprian confessing their sins with humble and simple satisfaction plainly intimating that Confession or Exomologesis was the same with that which they called Satisfaction And both of them were nothing but the publick exercise of repentance according to the present usages of their Churches as appears evidently in those words of Gennadius Poenitentiae satisfactionem esse causas peccatorum exscindere nec eorum suggestionibus aditum indulgere To cut off the causes of sins and no more to entertain their whispers and temptations is the satisfaction of repentance and like this is that of Lactantius Potest reduci liberari si eum poeniteat actorum ad meliora conversus satisfaciat Deo The sinner may be brought back and freed if he repents of what is done and satisfies or makes amends to God by being turned to better courses And the whole process of this is well described by Tertullian Exomologesis est quâ delictum Domino nostrum confitemur non quidem ut ignaro sed quatenus satisfactio confessione disponitur confessione poenitentia nascitur penitentiâ Deus mitigatur we must confess our sins to God not as if he did not know them already but because our satisfaction is dispos'd and order'd by confession by confession our repentance hath birth and production and by repentance God is appeased 73. Things being thus we need not immerge our selves in the trifling controversies of our later Schools about the just value of every work and how much every penance weighs and whether God is so satisfied with our penal works that in justice he must take off so much as we put on and is tied also to take our accounts Certain it is if God should weigh our sins with the same value as we weigh our own good works all our actions and sufferings would be found infinitely too light in the balance Therefore it were better that we should do what we can and humbly beg of God to weigh them both with vast allowances of
here also they are not to be confuted and as for the particular Scriptures unless we have the advantage of essential reason taken from the Divine Attributes they will oppose Scripture to Scripture and have as much advantage to expound the opposite places as the Jews have in their Questions of the Messias anâ— therefore si meos ipse corymbos necterem if I might make mine own arguments in their Society and with their leave I would upon that very account suspect the usual discourses of the effects and Oeconomy of Original sin 8. For where will they reckon the beginning of Predestination will they reckon it in Adam after the Fall or in Christ immediately promised If in Adam then they return to the Presbyterian way and run upon all the rocks before reckoned enough to break all the world in pieces If in Christ they reckon it and so they do then thus I argue If we are all reckoned in Christ before we were born then how can we be reckoned in Adam when we are born I speak as to the matter of Predestination to salvation or damnation For as for the intermedial temporal evils and dangers spiritual and sad infirmities they are our nature and might with Justice have been all the portion God had given to Adam and therefore may be so to us and consequently not at all to be reckoned in this enquiry But certainly as to the main 9. If God looks upon us all in Christ then by him we are rescued from Adam so much is done for us before we were born For if this is not to be reckoned till after we were born then Adams sin prevailed really in some periods and to some effects for which God in Christ had provided no remedy for it gave no remedy to children till after they were born but irremediably they were born children of wrath but if a remedy were given to Children before they were born then they are born in Christ not in Adam but if this remedy was not given to Children before they were born then it follows that we were not at first looked upon in Christ but in Adam and consequently he was caput praedestinationis the head of predestination or else there were two the one before we were born the other after So that haereâ—leâ—hâ—lis arundo The arrow sticks fast and it cannot be pulled out unless by other instruments than are commonly in fashion However it be yet methinks this a very good probable Argument As Adam sinned before any child was born so was Christ promised before and that our Redeemer shall not have more force upon children that they should be born beloved and quitted from wrath than Adam our Progenitor shall have to cause that we be born hated and in a damnable condition wants so many degrees of probability that it seems to dishonour the mercy of God and the reputation of his goodness and the power of his redemption For this serves as an Antidote and Antinomy of their great objection pretended by these learned persons for whereas they say they the rather affirm this because it is an honour to the redemption which our Saviour wrought for us that it rescued us from the sentence of damnation which we had incurred To this I say that the honour of our blessed Saviour does no way depend upon our imaginations and weak propositions and neither can the reputation and honour of the Divine goodness borrow aids and artificial supports from the dishonour of his Justice and it is no reputation to a Physician to say he hath cured us of an evil which we never had and shall we accuse the Father of mercies to have wounded us for no other reason but that the Son may have the Honour to have cured us I understand not that He that makes a necessity that he may find a remedy is like the Roman whom Cato found fault withall he would commit a fault that he might beg a pardon he had rather write bad Greek that he might make an apology than write good Latin and need none But however Christ hath done enough for us even all that we did need and since it is all the reason in the world we should pay him all honour we may remember that it is a greater favour to us that by the benefit of our blessed Saviour who was the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world we were reckoned in Christ and born in the accounts of the Divine favour I say it is a greater favour that we were born under the redemption of Christ than under the sentence and damnation of Adam and to prevent an evil is a greater favour than to cure it so that if to do honour to Gods goodness and to the graces of our Redeemer we will suppose a need we may do him more honour to suppose that the promised seed of the woman did do us as early a good as the sin of Adam could do us mischief and therefore that in Christ we are born quitted from any such supposed sentence and not that we bring it upon our shoulders into the world with us But this thing relies only upon their suppositions For if we will speak of what is really true and plainly revealed From all the sins of all mankind Christ came to redeem us He came to give us a supernatural birth to tell us all his Fathers will to reveal to us those glorious promises upon the expectation of which we might be enabled to do every thing that is required He came to bring us grace and life and spirit to strengthen us against all the powers of Hell and Earth to sanctifie our afflictions which from Adam by Natural generation descended on us to take out the sting of death to make it an entrance to immortal life to assure us of resurrection to intercede for us and to be an advocate for us when we by infirmity commit sin to pardon us when we repent Nothing of which could be derived to us from Adam by our natural generation Mankind now taken in his whole constitution and design is like the Birds of Paradise which travellers tell us of in the Molucco Islands born without legs but by a celestial power they have a recompence made to them for that defect and they always hover in the air and feed on the dew of Heaven so are we birds of Paradise but cast out from thence and born without legs without strength to walk in the Laws of God or to go to Heaven but by a power from above we are adopted in our new birth to a celestial conversation we feed on the dew of Heaven The just does live by faith and breaths in this new life by the spirit of God For from the first Adam nothing descended to us but an infirm body and a naked soul evil example and a body of death ignorance and passion hard labour and a cursed field a captive soul and an imprisoned body that is a soul naturally apt to comply with the
the faults and failings of humanity It is a famous saying of St. Gregory That he had the four first Councils in esteem and veneration next to the four Evangelists I suppose it was because he did believe them to have proceeded according to rule and to have judged righteous judgment but why had not he the same opinion of other Councils too which were celebrated before his death for he lived after the fifth General not because they had not the same Authority for that which is warrant for one is warrant for all but because he was not so confident that they did their duty nor proceeded so without interest as the first four had done and the following Councils did never get that reputation which all the Catholick Church acknowledged due to the first four And in the next Order were the three following Generals for the Greeks and Latines did never jointly acknowledge but seven Generals to have been authentick in any sence because they were in no sence agreed that any more than seven had proceeded regularly and done their duty So that now the Question is not whether General Councils have a promise that the holy Ghost will assist them For every private man hath that promise that if he does his duty he shall be assisted sufficiently in order to that end to which he needs assistance and therefore much more shall General Councils in order to that end for which they convene and to which they need assistance that is in order to the conservation of the Faith for the doctrinal rules of good life and all that concerns the essential duty of a Christian but not in deciding Questions to satisfie contentions or curious or presumptuous spirits But now can the Bishops so convened be factious can they be abused with prejudice or transported with interests can they resist the holy Ghost can they extinguish the Spirit can they stop their ears and serve themselves upon the holy Spirit and the pretence of his assistances and cease to serve him upon themselves by captivating their understandings to his dictates and their wills to his precepts Is it necessary they should perform any condition is there any one duty for them to perform in these Assemblies a duty which they have power to do or not to do If so then they may fail of it and not do their duty And if the assistance of the holy Spirit be conditional then we have no more assurance that they are assisted than that they do their duty and do not sin 2. Now let us suppose what this duty is Certainly if the Gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost and all that come to the knowledge of the truth must come to it by such means which are spiritual and holy dispositions in order to a holy and spiritual end They must be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace that is they must have peaceable and docible dispositions nothing with them that is violent and resolute to encounter those gentle and sweet assistances and the Rule they are to follow is the Rule which the holy Spirit hath consigned to the Catholick Church that is the holy Scripture either intirely or at least for the greater part of the Rule So that now if the Bishops be factious and prepossessed with perswasions depending upon interest it is certain they may judge amiss and if they recede from the Rule it is certain they do judge amiss And this I say upon their grounds who most advance the Authority of General Councils For if a General Council may err if a Pope confirm it not then most certainly if in any thing it recede from Scripture it does also err because that they are to expect the Popes confirmation they offer to prove from Scripture now if the Popes confirmation be required by authority of Scripture and that therefore the defailance of it does evacuate the Authority of the Council then also are the Councils Decrees invalid if they recede from any other part of Scripture So that Scripture is the Rule they are to follow and a man would have thought it had been needless to have proved it but that we are fallen into Ages in which no truth is certain no reason concluding nor is there any thing that can convince some men For Stapleton with extream boldness against the piety of Christendom against the publick sence of the ancient Church and the practice of all pious Assemblies of Bishops affirms the Decrees of a Council to be binding etiamsi non confirmetur ne probabilì testimonio Scripturarum nay though it be quite extra Scripturam but all wise and good men have ever said that sence which Saint Hilary expressed in these words Quae extra Evangelium sunt non defendam This was it which the good Emperour Constantine propounded to the Fathers met at Nice Libri Evangelici oracula Apostolorum veterum Prophetarum clarè nos instruunt quid sentiendum in Divinis And this is confessed by a sober man of the Roman Church it self the Cardinal of Cusa Oportet quòd omnia talia quae legere debent contineantur in Authoritatibus sacrarum Scripturarum Now then all the advantage I shall take from hence is this That if the Apostles commended them who examined their Sermons by their conformity to the Law and the Prophets and the men of Berea were accounted noble for searching the Scriptures whether those things which they taught were so or no I suppose it will not be denied but the Councils Decrees may also be tryed whether they be conform to Scripture yea or no and although no man can take cognisance and judge the Decrees of a Council pro Authoritate publicâ yet pro informatione privatâ they may the Authority of a Council is not greater than the Authority of the Apostles nor their dictates more sacred or authentick Now then put case a Council should recede from Scripture whether or no were we bound to believe its Decrees I only ask the Question For it were hard to be bound to believe what to our understanding seems contrary to that which we know to be the Word of God But if we may lawfully recede from the Councils Decrees in case they be contrariant to Scripture it is all that I require in this Question For if they be tyed to a Rule then they are to be examined and understood according to the Rule and then we are to give our selves that liberty of judgment which is requisite to distinguish us from beasts and to put us into a capacity of reasonable people following reasonable guides But however if it be certain that the Councils are to follow Scripture then if it be notorious that they do recede from Scripture we are sure we must obey God rather than men and then we are well enough For unless we are bound to shut our eyes and not to look upon the Sun if we may give our selves liberty to believe what seems most
prejudices Epiphanius makes Pride to be the onely cause of Heresies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pride and Prejudice cause them all the one criminally the other innocently And indeed S. Paul does almost make Pride the onely cause of Heresies his words cannot be expounded unless it be at least the principal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and consents not to sound words and the doctrine that is according to godliness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. The summe is this If ever an Opinion be begun with pride or manag'd with impiety or ends in a crime the man turns Heretick but let the errour be never so great so it be not against an Article of Creed if it be simple and hath no confederation with the personal iniquity of the man the Opinion is as innocent as the person though perhaps as false as he is ignorant and therefore shall burn though he himself escape But in these cases and many more for the causes of deception encrease by all accidents and weaknesses and illusions no man can give certain judgement upon the persons of men in particular unless the matter of fact and crime be accident and notorious The man cannot by humane judgement be concluded a Heretick unless his Opinion be an open recession from plain demonstrative Divine Authority which must needs be notorious voluntary vincible and criminal or that there be a palpable serving of an end accidental and extrinsecall to the Opinion 3. But this latter is very hard to be discerned because those accidental and adherent crimes which make the man a Heretick in Questions not simply fundamental or of necessary practice are actions so internall and spiritual that cognizance can but seldome be taken of them And therefore to instance though the Opinion of Purgatory be false yet to believe it cannot be Heresie if a man be abused into the belief of it invincibly because it is not a Doctrine either fundamentally false or practically impious it neither proceeds from the will nor hath any immediate or direct influence upon choice and manners And as for those other ends of upholding that Opinion which possibly its Patrons may have as for the reputation of their Churche's Infallibility for the advantage of Dirges Requiems Masses Monthly minds Anniversaries and other Offices for the dead which usually are very profitable rich and easie these things may possibly have sole influences upon their understanding but whether they have or no God onely knows If the Proposition and Article were true these ends might justly be subordinate and consistent with a true Proposition And there are some Truths that are also profitable as the necessity of maintenance to the Clergy the Doctrine of Restitution giving Alms Lending freely Remitting debts in cases of great necessity and it would be but an ill argument that the Preachers of these Doctrines speak false because possibly in these Articles they may serve their own ends For although Demetrius and the Craftsmen were without excuse for resisting the preaching of S. Paul because it was notorious they resisted the Truth upon ground of profit and personal emoluments and the matter was confessed by themselves yet if the Clergy should maintain their just Rights and Revenues which by pious dedications and donatives were long since ascertained upon them is it to be presumed in order of Law and charity that this end is in the men subordinate to truth because it is so in the thing itself and that therefore no judgement in prejudice of these truths can be made from that observation 4. But if aliunde we are ascertained of the truth or falshood of a Proposition respectively yet the judgement of the personal ends of the men cannot ordinarily be certain and judicial because most commonly the acts are private and the purposes internall and temporal ends may sometimes consist with truth and whether the purposes of the men make these ends principal or subordinate no man can judge and be they how they will yet they do not always prove that when they are conjunct with errour the errour was caused by these purposes and criminal intentions 5. But in Questions practical the Doctrine itself and the person too may with more ease be reproved because matter of fact being evident and nothing being so certain as the experiments of humane affairs and these being the immediate consequents of such Doctrines are with some more certainty of observation redargued then the speculative whose judgement is of itself more difficult more remote from matter and humane observation and with less curiosity and explicitness declared in Scripture as being of less consequence and concernment in order to God's and Man's great end In other things which end in notion and ineffective contemplation where neither the Doctrine is malicious nor the person apparently criminal he is to be left to the judgement of God and as there is no certainty of humane judicature in this case so it is to no purpose it should be judged For if the person may be innocent with his Errour and there is no rule whereby it can certainly be pronounced that he is actually criminal as it happens in matters speculative since the end of the Commandment is love out of a pure conscience and faith unfeigned and the Commandment may obtain its end in a consistence with this simple speculative Errour why should men trouble themselves with such Opinions so as to disturb the publick charity or the private confidence Opinions and persons are just so to be judged as other matters and persons criminal For no man can judge any thing else it must be a crime and it must be open so as to take cognizance and make true humane judgement of it And this is all I am to say concerning the causes of Heresies and of the distinguishing Rules for guiding of our judgements towards others 6. As for guiding our judgements and the use of our Reason in judging for ourselves all that is to be said is reducible to this one Proposition Since Errours are then made sins when they are contrary to charity or inconsistent with a good life and the honour of God that judgement is the truest or at least that opinion most innocent that 1. best promotes the reputation of God's Glory and 2. is the best instrument of holy life For in Questions and interpretations of dispute these two analogies are the best to make Propositions and conjectures and determinations Diligence and care in obtaining the best Guides and the most convenient assistances prayer and modesty of spirit simplicity of purposes and intentions humility and aptness to learn and a peaceable disposition are therefore necessary to finding out Truths because they are parts of good life without which our Truths will doe us little advantage and our errours can have no excuse But with these dispositions as he is sure to find out all that is necessary so what Truth he inculpably misses of he is sure is therefore not necessary because he could not find it when
it self I can only say what Secundus did to the wise Lupercus Quoties ad fastidium legentium deliciásque respicio intelligo nobis commendationem ex ipsa mediocritate libri petendam I can commend it because it is little and so not very troublesome And if it could have been written according to the worthiness of the Thing treated in it it would deserve so great a Patronage but because it is not it will therefore greatly need it but it can hope for it on no other account but because it is laid at the feet of a Princely Person who is Great and Good and one who not only is bound by Duty but by Choice hath obliged Himself to do advantages to any worthy Instrument of Religion But I have detain'd Your Grace so long in my Address that Your Pardon will be all the Favour which ought to be hop'd for by Your Grace's most Humble and Obliged Servant Jer. Dunensis A DISCOURSE OF CONFIRMATION THE INTRODVCTION NEXT to the Incarnation of the Son of God and the whole Oeconomy of our Redemption wrought by him in an admirable order and Conjugation of glorious Mercies the greatest thing that ever God did to the World is the giving to us the Holy Ghost and possibly this is the Consummation and Perfection of the other For in the work of Redemption Christ indeed made a new World we are wholly a new Creation and we must be so and therefore when S. John began the Narrative of the Gospel he began in a manner and style very like to Moses in his History of the first Creation In the beginning was the Word c. All things were made by him and without him was not any thing made that was made But as in the Creation the Matter was first there were indeed Heavens and Earth and Waters but all this was rude and without form till the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters So it is in the new Creation We are a new Mass redeem'd with the bloud of Christ rescued from an evil portion and made Candidates of Heaven and Immortality but we are but an Embryo in the regeneration until the Spirit of God enlivens us and moves again upon the waters and then every subsequent motion and operation is from the Spirit of God We cannot say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost By him we live in him we walk by his aids we pray by his emotions we desire we breath and sigh and groan by him he helps us in all our infirmities and he gives us all our strengths he reveals mysteries to us and teaches us all our duties he stirs us up to holy desires and he actuates those desires he makes us to will and to do of his good pleasure For the Spirit of God is that in our Spiritual life that a Man's Soul is in his Natural without it we are but a dead and liveless trunk But then as a Man's Soul in proportion to the several Operations of Life obtains several appellatives it is Vegetative and Nutritive Sensitive and Intellective according as it operates So is the Spirit of God He is the Spirit of Regeneration in Baptism of Renovation in Repentance the Spirit of Love and the Spirit of holy Fear the Searcher of the hearts and the Spirit of Discerning the Spirit of Wisdom and the Spirit of Prayer In one mystery he illuminates and in another he feeds us he begins in one and finishes and perfects in another It is the same Spirit working divers Operations For he is all this now reckoned and he is every thing else that is the Principle of Good unto us he is the Beginning and the Progression the Consummation and Perfection of us all and yet every work of his is perfect in its kind and in order to his own designation and from the beginning to the end is Perfection all the way Justifying and Sanctifying Grace is the proper entitative Product in all but it hath divers appellatives and connotations in the several rites and yet even then also because of the identity of the Principle the similitude and general consonancy in the Effect the same appellative is given and the same effect imputed to more than one and yet none of them can be omitted when the great Master of the Family hath blessed it and given it institution Thus S. Dionys calls Baptism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the perfection of the Divine birth and yet the baptized person must receive other mysteries which are more signally perfective 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Confirmation is yet more perfective and is properly the perfection of Baptism By Baptism we are Heirs and are adopted to the inheritance of Sons admitted to the Covenant of Repentance and engag'd to live a good Life yet this is but the solemnity of the Covenant which must pass into after-acts by other influences of the same Divine principle Until we receive the spirit of Obsignation or Confirmation we are but babes in Christ in the meanest sence Infants that can do nothing that cannot speak that cannot resist any violence expos'd to every rudeness and perishing by every Temptation But therefore as God at first appointed us a ministery of a new birth so also hath he given to his Church the consequent Ministery of a new strength The Spirit mov'd a little upon the waters of Baptism and gave us the Principles of Life but in Confirmation he makes us able to move our selves In the first he is the Spirit of Life but in this he is the Spirit of Strength and Motion Baptisma est nativitas Vnguentum verò est nobis actionis instar motûs said Cabasilas In Baptism we are intitled to the inheritance but because we are in our Infancy and minority the Father gives unto his Sons a Tutor a Guardian and a Teacher in Confirmation said Rupertus that as we are baptized into the Death and Resurrection of Christ so in Confirmation we may be renewed in the Inner man and strengthned in all our Holy vows and purposes by the Holy Ghost ministred according to God's Ordinance The Holy Rite of Confirmation is a Divine Ordinance and it produces Divine Effects and is ministred by Divine Persons that is by those whom God hath sanctified and separated to this ministration At first all that were baptiz'd were also confirm'd and ever since all good people that have understood it have been very zealous for it and time was in England even since the first beginnings of the Reformation when Confirmation had been less carefully ministred for about six years when the people had their first opportunities of it restor'd they ran to it in so great numbers that Churches and Church-yards would not hold them insomuch that I have read that the Bishop of Chester was forc'd to impose hands on the people in the Fields and was so oppressed with multitudes that he had almost been trode to death by the people and had died with the throng
Prophesying or Preaching which yet all Christians know does abide with the Church for ever 5. To every ordinary and perpetual Ministery at first there were extraordinary effects and miraculous consignations We find great parts of Nations converted at one Sermon Three thousand Converts came in at once Preaching of S. Peter and five thousand at another Sermon and persons were miraculously cured by the Prayer of the Bishop in his visitation of a sick Christian and Devils cast out in the conversion of a sinner and Blindness cur'd at the Baptism of S. Paul and Aeneas was healed of a Palsie at the same time he was cur'd of his Infidelity and Eutychus was restor'd to life at the Preaching of S. Paul And yet that now we see no such Extraordinaries it follows not that the Visitation of the sick and Preaching Sermons and Absolving Penitents are not ordinary and perpetual ministrations and therefore to fansy that invocation of the Holy Spirit and Imposition of hands is to cease when the extraordinary and temporary contingencies of it are gone is too trifling a fancy to be put in balance against so Sacred an Institution relying upon so many Scriptures 6. With this Objection some vain persons would have troubled the Church in S. Austin's time but he considered it with much indignation writing against the Donatists His words are these At the first times the Holy Spirit fell upon the Believers and they spake with Tongues which they had not learned according as the Spirit gave them utterance They were Signs fitted for the season for so the Holy Ghost ought to have signified in all Tongues because the Gospel of God was to run through all the Nations and Languages of the World so it was signified and so it pass'd through But is it therefore expected that they upon whom there is Imposition of hands that they might receive the Holy Ghost that they should speak with Tongues Or when we lay hands on Infants does every one of you attend to hear them speak with Tongues And when he sees that they do not speak with Tongues is any of you of so perverse a heart as to say They have not received the Holy Ghost for if they had received him they would speak with Tongues as it was done at first But if by these Miracles there is not now given any testimony of the presence of the Holy Spirit how doth any one know that he hath received the Holy Ghost Interroget cor suum Si diligit fratrem manet Spiritus Dei in illo It is true the Gift of Tongues doth not remain but all the greater Gifts of the Holy Spirit remain with the Church for ever Sanctification and Power Fortitude and Hope Faith and Love Let every man search his Heart and see if he belongs to God whether the love of God be not spread in his heart by the Spirit of God Let him see if he be not patient in Troubles comforted in his Afflictions bold to confess the Faith of Christ crucified zealous of Good works These are the miracles of Grace and the mighty powers of the Spirit according to that saying of Christ These signs shall follow them that believe In my Name shall they cast out Devils they shall speak with new Tongues they shall tread on Serpents they shall drink poison and it shall not hurt them and they shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall recover That which we call the Miraculous part is the less power but to cast out the Devil of Lust to throw down the Pride of Lucifer to tread on the great Dragon and to triumph over our Spiritual enemies to cure a diseased Soul to be unharmed by the poison of Temptation of evil Examples and evil Company these are the true signs that shall follow them that truly and rightly believe on the Name of the Lord Jesus this is to live in the Spirit and to walk in the Spirit this is more than to receive the Spirit to a power of Miracles and supernatural products in a natural matter For this is from a supernatural principle to receive supernatural aids to a supernatural end in the Diviner spirit of a man and this being more miraculous than the other it ought not to be pretended that the discontinuance of extraordinary Miracles should cause the discontinuance of an ordinary Ministration and this is that which I was to prove 7. To which it is not amiss to add this Observation that Simon Magus offered to buy this power of the Apostles that he also by laying on of hands might thus minister the Spirit Now he began this sin in the Christian Church and it is too frequent at this day but if all this power be gone then nothing of that sin can remain if the subject matter be removed then the appendant crime cannot abide and there can be no Simony so much as by participation and whatever is or can be done in this kind is no more of this Crime than Drunkenness is of Adultery it relates to it or may be introductive of it or be something like it But certainly since the Church is not so happy as to be intirely free from the Crime of Simony it will be hard to say that the power the buying of which was the principle of this sin and therefore the Rule of all the rest should be removed and the house stand without a foundation the relative without the correspondent the accessary without the principal and the accident without the subject This is impossible and therefore it remains that still there abides in the Church this power that by Imposition of the Hands of fit persons the Holy Ghost is ministred But this will be further cleared in the next Section SECT III. The Holy Rite of Imposition of Hands for the giving the Holy Spirit or Confirmation was actually continued and practised by all the succeeding Ages of the purest and Primitive Church NExt to the plain words of Scripture the traditive Interpretation and Practice of the Church of God is the best Argument in the World for Rituals and Mystical ministrations for the Tradition is universal and all the way acknowledged to be derived from Scripture And although in Rituals the Tradition it self if it be universal and primitive as this is were alone sufficient and is so esteemed in the Baptism of Infants in the Priests consecrating the Holy Eucharist in publick Liturgies in Absolution of Penitents the Lord's Day Communicating of Women and the like yet this Rite of Confirmation being all that and evidently derived from the practice Apostolical and so often recorded in the New Testament both in the Ritual and Mysterious part both in the Ceremony and Spiritual effect is a point of as great Certainty as it is of Usefulness and holy designation Theophilus Antiochenus lived not long after the death of S. John and he derives the name of Christian which was first given to the Disciples in his City from this Chrism or
the reception of the Holy Ghost they waxed valiant in the Faith and in all their spiritual combats 2. In Confirmation we receive the Holy Ghost as the earnest of our inheritance as the seal of our Salvation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Gregory Nazianzen we therefore call it a Seal or Signature as being a guard and custody to us and a sign of the Lord's dominion over us The Confirmed person is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a sheep that is mark'd which Thieves do not so easily steal and carry away To the same purpose are those words of Theodoret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Remember that holy mystagogâ—e in which they who were initiated after the renouncing that Tyrant the Devil and all his works and the confession of the true King Jesus Christ have received the Chrism of spiritual Vnction like a Royal signature by that Vnction as in a shadow perceiving the invisible grace of the most Holy Spirit That is Confirmation we are sealed for the service of God and unto the day of Redemption then it is that the seal of God is had by us The Lord knoweth who are his Quomodo verò dices Dei sum si notas â—on produxeris said S. Basil How can any may say I am God's sheep unless he produce the marks Signati estis Spiritu promissionis per Sanctâ—ssimum Divinum Spiritum Domini grex effecti sumus said Theophylact. When we are thus seal'd by the most Holy and Divine Spirit of promise then we are truly of the Lord's Flock and mark'd with his seal that is When we are rightly Confirm'd then he descâ—nds into our Souls and though he does not operate it may be presently but as the Reasonable Soul works in its due time and by the order of Nature by opportunities and new fermentations and actualities so does the Spirit of God when he is brought into use when he is prayed for with love assiduity when he is caressed tenderly when he is us'd lovingly when we obey his motions readily when we delight in his words greatly then we find it true that the Soul had a new life put into her a principle of perpetual actions but the tree planted by the waters side does not presently bear fruit but in its due season By this Spirit we are then seal'd that whereas God hath laid up an inheritance for us in the Kingdom of Heaven and in the faith of that we must live and labour to confirm this Faith God hath given us this Pledge the Spirit of God is a witness to us and tells us by his holy comforts by the peace of God and the quietness and refrâ—shments of a good Conscience that God is our Father that we are his Sons and Daughters and shall be co-heirs with Jesus in his eternal Kingdom In Baptism we are made the Sons of God but we receive the witness and testimony of it in Confirmation This is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Holy Ghost the Comforter this is he whom Christ promis'd and did send in Pentecost and was afterwards ministred and conveyed by Prayer and Imposition of hands and by this Spirit he makes the Confessors bold and the Martyrs valiant and the Tempted strong and the Virgins to persevere and Widows to sing his praises and his glories And this is that excellency which the Church of God called the Lord's seal and teaches to be imprinted in Confirmation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a perfect Phylactery or Guard even the Lord's seal so Eusebius calls it I will not be so curious as to enter into a discourse of the Philosophy of this But I shall say that they who are curious in the secrets of Nature and observe external signatures in Stones Plants Fruits and Shells of which Naturalists make many observations and observe strange effects and the more internal signatures in Minerals and Living bodies of which Chymists discourse strange secrets may easily if they please consider that it is infinitely credible that in higher essences even in Spirits there may be signatures proportionable wrought more immediately and to greater purposes by a Divine hand I only point at this and so pass it over as it may be not fit for every mans consideration And now if any man shall say we see no such things as you talk of and find the Confirm'd people the same after as before no better and no wiser not richer in Gifts not more adorned with Graces nothing more zealous for Christ's Kingdom not more comforted with Hope or established by Faith or built up with Charity they neither speak better nor live better What then Does it therefore follow that the Holy Ghost is not given in Confirmation Nothing less For is not Christ given us in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper Do not we receive his Body and his Blood Are we not made all one with Christ and he with us And yet it is too true that when we arise from that holy Feast thousands there are that find no change But there are in this two things to be considered One is that the changes which are wrought upon our souls are not after the manner of Nature visible and sensible and with observation The Kingdom of God cometh not with Observation for it is within you and is only discerned spiritually and produces its effects by the method of Heaven and is first apprehended by Faith and is endear'd by Charity and at last is understood by holy and kind Experiences And in this there is no more objection against Confirmation than against Baptism or the Lord's Supper or any other Ministery Evangelical The other thing is this If we do not find the effects of the Spirit in Confirmation it is our faults For he is receiv'd by Moral instruments and is intended only as a Help to our endeavours to our labours and our prayers to our contentions and our mortifications to our Faith and to our Hope to our Patience and to our Charity Non adjuvari dicitur qui nihil facit He that does nothing cannot be said to be help'd Unless we in these instances do our part of the work it will be no wonder if we lose his part of the co-operation and supervening blessing He that comes under the Bishops hands to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost will come with holy desires and a longing Soul with an open hand and a prepared heart he will purifie the House of the Spirit for the entertainment of so Divine a guest he will receive him with humility and follow him with obedience and delight him with purities and he that does thus let him make the objection if he can and tell me Does he say that Jesus is the Lord He cannot say this but by the Holy Ghost Does he love his Brother If he does then the Spirit of God abides in him Is Jesus Christ formed in him Does he live by the laws of the Spirit Does he obey his commands Does he attend his motions Hath he no
invalidity of their first pretended Baptism or their not using at all Confirmation in their Heretical Conventicles But the repetition of Confirmation is expresly forbidden by the Council of Tarracon cap. 6. and by P. Gregory the Second and sanctum Chrisma collatum altaris honor propter consecrationem quae per Episcopos tantùm exercenda conferenda sunt evelli non queunt said the Fathers in a Council at Toledo Confirmation and Holy Orders which are to be given by Bishops alone can never be annulled and therefore they can never be repeated And this relies upon those severe words of S. Paul having spoken of the foundation of the Doctrine of Baptisms and Laying on of hands he says if they fall away they can never be renewed that is the ministery of Baptism and Confirmation can never be repeated To Christians that sin after these ministrations there is only left a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Expergiscimini that they arise from slumber and stir up the Graces of the Holy Ghost Every man ought to be careful that he do not grieve the Holy Spirit but if he does yet let him not quench him for that is a desperate case 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Holy Spirit is the great conservative of the new Life only keep the Keeper take caâ—e that the Spirit of God do not depart from you for the great Ministery of the Spirit is but once for as Baptism is so is Confirmation I end this Discourse with a plain exhortation out of S. Ambrose upon those words of S. Paul He that confirmeth us with you in Christ is God Repete quia accepisti signaculum spirituale spiritum sapientiae intellectûs spiritum consilii atque virtutis spiritum cognitionis atque pietatis spiritum sancti timoris serva quod accepisti Signavit te Deus Pater confirmavit te Christus Dominus Remember that thou who hast been Confirmed hast receiv'd the Spiritual Signature the spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit of counsel and strength the spirit of knowledge and godliness the spirit of holy fear keep what thou hast receiv'd The Father hath sealâ—d thee and Christ thy Lord hath confirmed thee by his Divine Spirit and he will never depart from thee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unless by evil works we estrange him from us The same advice is given by Prudentius Cultor Dei memento Te fontis lavacri Rorem subiisse Sanctum Et Chrismate innotatum Remember how great things ye have received and what God hath done for you ye are of his Flock and his Militia ye are now to sight his battels and therefore to put on his armor and to implore his auxiliaries and to make use of his strengths and always to be on his side against all his and all our Enemies But he that desires Grace must not despise to make use of all the instruments of Grace For though God communicates his invisible Spirit to you yet that he is pleas'd to do it by visible instruments is more than he needs but not more than we do need And therefore since God descends to our infirmities let us carefully and lovingly address our selves to his Ordinances that as we receive Remission of sins by the washing of Water and the Body and Blood of Christ by the ministery of consecrated Symbols so we may receive the Holy Ghost sub Ducibus Christianae militiae by the Prayer and Imposition of the Bishops hands whom our Lord Jesus hath separated to this Ministery For if you corroborate your self by Baptism they are the words of S. Gregory Nazianzen and then take heed for the future by the most excellent and firmest aids consigning your mind and body with the Vnction from above viz. in the Holy Rite of Confirmation with the Holy Ghost as the Children of Israel did with the aspersion on the door-posts in the night of the death of the first-born of Egypt what evil shall happen to you meaning that no evil can invade you and what aid shall you get If you sit down you shall be without fear and if you rest your sleep shall be sweet unto you But if when ye have received the Holy Spirit you live not according to his Divine principles you will lose him again that is you will lose all the blessing though the impression does still remain till ye turn quite Apostates in pessimis hominibus manebit licèt ad judicium saith S. Austin the Holy Ghost will remain either as a testimony of your Vnthankfulness unto condemnation or else as a seal of Grace and an earnest or your inheritance of eternal Glory THE END A DISCOURSE OF The NATVRE OFFICES and MEASVRES OF FRIENDSHIP WITH Rules of conducting it In a Letter to the most Ingenious and Excellent M rs KATHARINE PHILIPS Madam THE wise Ben-Sirach advised that we should not consult with a Woman concerning her of whom she is jealous neither with a coward in matters of War nor with a Merchant concerning Exchange and some other instances he gives of interested persons to whom he would not have us hearken in any matter of Counsel For where-ever the interest is secular or vicious there the â—iass is not on the side of Truth or Reason because these are seldom serv'd by profit and low regards But to consult with a Friend in the matters of Friendship is like consulting with a Spiritual person in Religion they who understand the secrets of Religion or the Interior beauties of Friendship are the fittest to give answers in all inquiries concerning the respective subjects because Reason and Experience are on the side of interest and that which in Friendship is most pleasing and most useful is also most reasonable and most true and a Friends fairest interest is the best Measure of the Conducting Friendships and therefore you who are so eminent in Friendships could also have given the best answer to your own inquiries and you could have trusted your own Reason because it is not only greatly instructed by the direct notices of things but also by great experience in the matter of which you now inquire But because I will not use any thing that shall look like an excuse I will rather give you such an account which you can easily reprove than by declining your commands seem more safe in my prudence than open and communicative in my Friendship to you You first inquire How far a Dear and a perfect Friendship is authoriz'd by the principles of Christianity To this I answer That the word Friendship in the sence we commonly mean by it is not so much as named in the New Testament and our Religion takes no notice of it You think it strange but read on before you spend so much as the beginning of a passion or a wonder upon it There is mention of Friendship with the world and it is said to be enmity with God but the word is no where else named or to any other purpose in