that Wealth that Honour that is in God that is God himselfe The other blinde man that importuned Christ Mark 10.46 Iesus thou Son of David have mercy on me when Christ asked him What wilt thou that I shall doe unto thee Had presently that answer Lord that I may receive my sight And we may easily think that if Christ had asked him a second question What wouldst thou see when thou hast received thy sight he would have answered Lord I would see thee For when he had his sight and Christ said to him Goe thy way he had no way to goe from Christ but as the Text sayes there He followed him All that he cared for was seeing all that he cared to see was Christ Whether he would see a Peace or a Warre may be a States-mans Probleme whether he would see plenty or scarcity of some commodity may be a Merchants Probleme whether he would see Rome or Spaine grow in greatnesse may be a Jesuits Probleme But whether I had not rather see God then any thing is no Problematicall matter All sight is blindnesse that was our first all knowledge is Ignorance till we come to God that is our next Consideration The first act of the will is love sayes the Schoole for till the will love till it would have something it is not a will But then Amare nisi nota non possumus Scientia Aug. It is impossible to love any thing till we know it First our Understanding must present it as Verum as a Knowne truth and then our Will imbraces it as Bonum as Good and worthy to be loved Therefore the Philosopher concludes easily as a thing that admits no contradiction That naturally all men desire to know that they may love But then as the addition of an honest man varies the signification with the profession and calling of the man for he is a honest man at Court that oppresses no man with his power and at the Exchange he is the honest man that keeps his word and in an Army the Valiant man is the honest man so the Addition of learned and understanding varies with the man The Divine the Physitian the Lawyer are not qualified nor denominated by the same kinde of learning But yet as it is for honesty there is no honest man at Court or Exchange or Army if he beleeve not in God so there is no knowledge in the Physitian nor Lawyer if he know not God Neither does any man know God except he know him so as God hath made himselfe known that is In Christ Therefore as S. Paul desires to know nothing else so let no man pretend to know any thing but Christ Crucified that is Crucified for him made his In the eighth verse of this Chapt. he sayes Prophesie shall faile and Tongues shall faile and Knowledge shall vanish but this knowledge of God in Christ made mine by being Crucified for me shall dwell with me for ever And so from this generall consideration All sight is blindnesse all knowledge is ignorance but of God we passe to the particular Consideration of that twofold sight and knowledge of God expressed in this Text Now we see through a glasse c. First then we consider 2. Part. Visio before we come to our knowledge of God our sight of God in this world and that is sayes our Apostle In speculo we see as in a glasse But how doe we see in a glasse Truly that is not easily determined The old Writers in the Optiques said That when we see a thing in a glasse we see not the thing it selfe but a representation onely All the later men say we doe see the thing it selfe but not by direct but by reflected beames It is a uselesse labour for the present to reconcile them This may well consist with both That as that which we see in a glasse assures us that such a thing there is for we cannot see a dreame in a glasse nor a fancy nor a Chimera so this sight of God which our Apostle sayes we have in a glasse is enough to assure us that a God there is This glasse is better then the water The water gives a crookednesse and false dimensions to things that it shewes as we see by an Oare when we row a Boat and as the Poet describes a wry and distorted face Qui faciem sub aqua Phoebe natant is habes That he looked like a man that swomme under water But in the glasse which the Apostle intends we may see God directly that is see directly that there is a God And therefore S. Cyrils addition in this Text is a Diminution Videmus quasi in fumo sayes he we see God as in a smoak we see him better then so for it is a true sight of God though it be not a perfect sight which we have this way This way our Theatre where we sit to see God is the whole frame of nature our medium our glasse in which we see him is the Creature and our light by which we see him is Naturall Reason Aquinas calls this Theatre Theatrum Mundus where we sit and see God the whole world And David compasses the world and findes God every where and sayes at last Whither shall I flie from thy presence Psal 138.8 If I ascend up into heaven thou art there At Babel they thought to build to heaven but did any men ever pretend to get above heaven above the power of winds or the impression of other malignant Meteors some high hils are got But can any man get above the power of God If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Sea there thy right hand shall hold me and lead me If we saile to the waters above the Firmament it is so too Nay take a place which God never made a place which grew out of our sins that is Hell yet If we make our bed in hell God is there too It is a wofull Inne to make our bed in Hell and so much the more wofull as it is more then an Inne an everlasting dwelling But even there God is and so much more strangely then in any other place because he is there without any emanation of any beame of comfort from him who is the God of all consolation or any beame of light from him who is the Father of all lights In a word whether we be in the Easterne parts of the world from whom the truth of Religion is passed or in the Westerne to which it is not yet come whether we be in the darknesse of ignorance or darknesse of the works of darknesse or darknesse of oppression of spirit in sadnesse The world is the Theatre that represents God and every where every man may nay must see him The whole frame of the world is the Theatre Medium Creatura and every creature the stage the medium the glasse in which we may see God Moses made
to doe as the salvation of soules he would make use of my tongue And being to save the world by his word that I should speak that word Docendo vos quod per se faciliùs suaviùs posset That he calls me up hither to teach you that which he could teach you better and sooner at home by his Spirit Indulgentia ejus est non indigentia It is the largenesse of his mercy towards you not any narrownesse in his power that he needs me And so have you this Angel in our text in all the acceptations in which our Expositors have delivered him It is Christ It is the Angels of heaven It is the Ministery of the Gospel And this Angell whosoever whatsoever S. Iohn saw come from the East I saw an Angel come from the East which was our second Branch and fals next into consideration This addition is intended for a particular addition to our comfort Ab oriente it is a particular endowment or inlargement of strength and power in this Angel that he comes from the East If we take it to goe the same way that we went before first of naturall Angels even the Westerne Angels Qui habuere occasum Those Angels which have had their Sun-set their fall they came from the East too Quomodo cecidisti decoelo Lucifer filius orientis Esay 14 12. How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer the Son of the morning He had his begetting his Creation in the East in the light and there might have stayed for any necessity of falling that God laid upon him Take the Angel of the text to be the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus and his name is The East he cannot be knowne he cannot bee said to have any West Zech. 6.12 Ecce vir Oriens nomen ejus so the vulgat reads that place Behold the Man whose name is the East you can call him nothing else for so the other Zachary the Zachary of the New Testament cals him too Luke 1.78 Per viscera misericordiae Through the tender bowels of his mercy Visitavit nos Oriens The East the day spring from on high hath visited us And he was derived à Patre luminum He came from the East begotten from all eternity of the Father of lights Iohn 16.28 I came out from the Father and came into the world Take this Angel to be the Preacher of the Gospel literally really the Gospell came out of the East where Christ lived and dyed and Typically figuratively Paradise which also figured the place to which the Gospel is to carry us Heaven that also was planted in the East and therefore S. Basil assignes that for the reason why in the Church service we turne to the East when we pray Quia antiquam requirimus patriam Wee looke towards our ancient country where the Gospel of our salvation was literally acted and accomplished and where Heaven the end of the Gospel was represented in Paradise Every way the Gospel is an Angel of the East But this is that which we take to be principally intended in it That as the East is the fountaine of light so all our illumination is to be taken from the Gospell Spread we this a little thinner and we shall better see through it If the calamities of the world or the heavy consideration of thine own sins have benummed and benighted thy soule in the vale of darknesse and in the shadow of death If thou thinke to wrastle and bustle through these strong stormes and thick clouds with a strong hand If thou thinke thy money thy bribes shall conjure thee up stronger spirits then those that oppose thee If thou seek ease in thy calamities that way to shake and shipwrack thine enemies In these crosse winds in these countermines to oppresse as thou art oppressed all this is but a turning to the North to blow away and scatter these sadnesses with a false an illusory and a sinfull comfort If thou thinke to ease thy selfe in the contemplation of thine honour thine offices thy favour thy riches thy health this is but a turning to the South the Sun-shine of worldly prosperity If thou sinke under thy afflictions and canst not finde nourishment but poyson in Gods corrections nor justice but cruelty in his judgements nor mercy but slacknesse in his forbearance till now If thou suffer thy soule to set in a cloud a dark cloud of ignorance of Gods providence and proceedings or in a darker of diffidence of his performance towards thee this is a turning to the West and all these are perverse and awry But turne to the East and to the Angel that comes from thence The Ministery of the Gospel of Christ Jesus in his Church It is true thou mayst find some darke places in the Scriptures Basil and Est silentii species obscuritas To speake darkly and obscurely is a kinde of silence I were as good not be spoken to as not be made to understand that which is spoken yet fixe thy selfe upon this Angel of the East the preaching of the Word the Ordinance of God and thine understanding shall be enlightned and thy beliefe established and thy conscience thus far unburthened that though the sins which thou hast done cannot be undone yet neither shalt thou bee undone by them There where thou art afraid of them in judgement they shall never meet thee but as in the round frame of the World the farthest West is East where the West ends the East begins So in thee who art a World too thy West and thy East shall joyne and when thy Sun thy soule comes to set in thy death-bed the Son of Grace shall suck it up into glory Our Angel comes from the East Angelus Ascendens a denotation of splendor and illustration of understanding and conscience and there is more he comes Ascending I saw an Angel ascend from the East that is still growing more cleare and more powerfull upon us Take the Angel here of naturall Angels 1 Sam. 28.13 and then when the Witch of Endor though an evill Spirit appeared to her yet saw him appeare so Ascending she attributes that glory to it I see gods Ascending out of the earth Take the Angel to be Christ and then his Ascension was Foelix clausula totius itinerarii Bernar. The glorious shutting up of all his progresse and though his descending from Heaven to earth and his descending from earth to hell gave us our title his Ascending by which he carried up our flesh to the right hand of his Father gave us our possession His Descent his humiliation gave us Ius ad rem but his Ascension Ius in re But as this Angel is the Ministery of the Gospel God gave it a glorious ascent in the Primitive Church Psal 19.6 when as this Sun Exultavit ut gigas ad currendam viam ascended quickly beyond the reach of Heretiques wits and Persecutors swords and as glorious an ascent in the
afflictionis Verse 16. Studied and premeditated plots and practises swallowe mee possesse me intirely In all these dayes I shall not onely have a Zoar to flie to if I can get out of Sodom joy if I can overcome my sorrow There shall not be a Goshen bordering upon my Egypt joy if I can passe beyond or besides my sorrow but I shall have a Goshen in my Egypt nay my very Egypt shall be my Goshen I shall not onely have joy though I have sorrow but therefore my very sorrow shall be the occasion of joy I shall not onely have a Sabbath after my six dayes labor but Omnibus diebus a Sabbath shall enlighten every day and inanimate every minute of every day And as my soule is as well in my foot as in my hand though all the waight and oppression lie upon the foot and all action upon the hand so these beames of joy shall appeare as well in my pillar of cloud as in theirs of fire in my adversity as well as in their prosperity And when their Sun shall set at Noone mine shall rise at midnight they shall have damps in their glory and I joyfull exaltions in my dejections And to end with the end of all In die mortis In the day of my death and that which is beyond the end of all and without end in it selfe The day of Judgement If I have the testimony of a rectified conscience that I have accustomed my selfe to that accesse to God by prayer and such prayer as though it have had a body of supplication and desire of future things yet the soule and spirit of that prayer that is my principall intention in that prayer hath been praise and thanksgiving If I be involved in S. Chrysostoms Patent Orantes non natura sed dispensatione Angeli fiunt That those who pray so that is pray by way of praise which is the most proper office of Angels as they shall be better then Angels in the next world for they shall be glorifying spirits as the Angels are but they shall also be glorified bodies which the Angels shall never bee so in this world they they shall be as Angels because they are employed in the office of Angels to pray by way of praise If as S. Basil reads those words of that Psalme not spiritus meus but respiratio mea laudet Dominum Not onely my spirit but my very breath not my heart onely but my tongue and my hands bee accustomed to glorifie God In die mortis in the day of my death when a mist of sorrow and of sighes shall fill my chamber and a cloude exhaled and condensed from teares shall bee the curtaines of my bed when those that love me shall be sorry to see mee die and the devill himselfe that hates me sorry to see me die so in the favour of God And In die Iudicii In the day of Judgement when as all Time shall cease so all measures shall cease The joy and the sorrow that shall be then shall be eternall no end and infinite no measure no limitation when every circumstance of sinne shall aggravate the condemnation of the unrepentant sinner and the very substance of my sinne shall bee washed away in the blood of my Saviour when I shall see them who sinned for my sake perish eternally because they proceeded in that sinne and I my selfe who occasioned their sin received into glory because God upon my prayer and repentance had satisfied me early with his mercy early that is before my transmigration In omnibus diebus In all these dayes the dayes of youth and the wantonnesses of that the dayes of age and the tastlesnesse of that the dayes of mirth and the sportfulnesse of that and of inordinate melancholy and the disconsolatenesse of that the days of such miseries as astonish us with their suddennesse and of such as aggravate their owne waight with a heavy expectation In the day of Death which pieces up that circle and in that day which enters another circle that hath no pieces but is one equall everlastingnesse the day of Judgement Either I shall rejoyce be able to declare my faith and zeale to the assistance of others or at least be glad in mine owne heart in a firme hope of mine owne salvation And therefore beloved as they whom lighter affections carry to Shewes and Masks and Comedies As you your selves whom better dispositions bring to these Exercises conceive some contentment and some kinde of Joy in that you are well and commodiously placed they to see the Shew you to heare the Sermon when the time comes though your greater Joy bee reserved to the comming of that time So though the fulnesse of Joy be reserved to the last times in heaven yet rejoyce and be glad that you are well and commodiously placed in the meane time and that you sit but in expectation of the fulnesse of those future Joyes Returne to God with a joyfull thankfulnesse that he hath placed you in a Church which withholds nothing from you that is necessary to salvation whereas in another Church they lack a great part of the Word and halfe the Sacrament And which obtrudes nothing to you that is not necessary to salvation whereas in another Church the Additionall things exceed the Fundamentall the Occasionall the Originall the Collaterall the Direct And the Traditions of men the Commandements of God Maintaine and hold up this holy alacrity this religious cheerfulnesse For inordinate sadnesse is a great degree and evidence of unthankfulnesse and the departing from Joy in this world is a departing with one piece of our Evidence for the Joyes of the world to come SERM. LXXX Preached at the funerals of Sir William Cokayne Knight Alderman of London December 12. 1626. JOH 11.21 Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not died GOd made the first Marriage and man made the first Divorce God married the Body and Soule in the Creation and man divorced the Body and Soule by death through sinne in his fall God doth not admit not justifie not authorize such Super-inductions upon such Divorces as some have imagined That the soule departing from one body should become the soule of another body in a perpetuall revolution and transmigration of soules through bodies which hath been the giddinesse of some Philosophers to think Or that the body of the dead should become the body of an evill spirit that that spirit might at his will and to his purposes informe and inanimate that dead body God allowes no such Super-inductions no such second Marriages upon such divorces by death no such disposition of soule or body after their dissolution by death But because God hath made the band of Marriage indissoluble but by death farther then man can die this divorce cannot fall upon man As farre as man is immortall man is a married man still still in possession of a soule and a body too And man is for ever immortall in both Immortall in
sacrifice to his memory For whilst his conversation made me and many others happy below I know his humility and gentleness was eminent And I have heard Divines say those vertues that are but sparks on earth become great and glorious flames in heaven He was borne in LONDON of good and vertuous Parents And though his own learning and other multiplied merits may justly seeme sufficient to dignifie both himselfe and posteritie yet Reader be pleased to know that his Father was masculinely and lineally descended from a very ancient Family in Wales where many of his name now live that have and deserve great reputation in that Countrey By his Mother he was descended from the Family of the famous Sir Thomas More sometimes Lord Chancellor of England and also from that worthy and laborious Judge Rastall who left behind him the vast Statutes of the Lawes of this Kingdome most exactly abridged He had his first breeding in his Fathers house where a private Tutor had the care of him till he was nine yeares of age he was then sent to the Universitie of Oxford having at that time a command of the French and Latine Tongues when others can scarce speak their owne There he remained in Hart Hall having for the advancement of his studies Tutors in severall Sciences to instruct him till time made him capable and his learning exprest in many publique Exercises declared him fit to receive his first Degree in the Schooles which he forbore by advise from his friends who being of the Romish perswasion were conscionably averse to some parts of the Oath alwayes tendred and taken at those times About the fourteenth yeare of his age he was transplanted from Oxford to Cambridge where that he might receive nourishment from both soiles he staid till his seventeenth yeare All which time he was a most laborious Student often changing his studies but endeavouring to take no Degree for the reasons formerly mentioned About his seventeenth yeare he was removed to London and entred into Lincolnes Inne with an intent to study the Law where he gave great testimonies of wit learning and improvement in that profession which never served him for any use but onely for ornament His Father died before his admission into that Society and being a Merchant left him his Portion in money which was 3000. li. His Mother and those to whose care he was committed were watchful to improve his knowledge and to that end appointed him there also Tutors in severall Sciences as the Mathematicks and others to attend and instruct him But with these Arts they were advised to instill certaine particular principles of the Romish Church of which those Tutors though secretly profest themselves to be members They had almost obliged him to their faith having for their advantage besides their opportunity the example of his most deare and pious Parents which was a powerfull perswasion and did work upon him as he professeth in his PREFACE to his Pseudo-Martyr He was now entred into the nineteenth yeare of his age and being unresolved in his Religion though his youth and strength promised him a long life yet he thought it necessary to rectifie all scruples which concerned that And therefore waving the Law and betrothing himselfe to no art or profession that might justly denominate him he began to survey the body of Divinity controverted between the Reformed and Roman Church Preface to Pseudo-Martyr And as Gods blessed Spirit did then awaken him to the search and in that industry did never forsake him they be his owne words So he calls the same Spirit to witness to his Protestation that in that search and disquisition he proceeded with humility and diffidence in himselfe by the safest way of frequent Prayers and indifferent affection to both parties And indeed Truth had too much light about her to be hid from so sharp an Inquirer and he had too much ingenuity not to acknowledge he had seen her Being to undertake this search he beleeved the learned Cardinal Bellarmine to be the best defender of the Roman cause and therefore undertook the examination of his reasons The cause was waighty and wilfull delaies had been inexcusable towards God and his own conscience he therfore proceeded with all moderate haste And before he entred into the twentieth yeare of his age did shew the Deane of Gloucester all the Cardinalls Works marked with many waighty Observations under his own hand which Works were bequeathed by him at his death as a Legacy to a most deare friend About the twentieth yeare of his age he resolved to travell And the Earle of Essex going to Cales and after the Iland voyages he took the advantage of those opportunities waited upon his Lordship and saw the expeditions of those happy and unhappy imployments But he returned not into England till he had staid a convenient time first in Italy and then in Spaine where he made many usefull Observations of those Countries their Lawes and Government and returned into England perfect in their Languages Not long after his returne that exemplary pattern of gravity and wisdome the Lord Elsmore Lord Keeper of the great Seale and after Chancellor of England taking notice of his Learning Languages and other abilities and much affecting both his person and condition received him to be his chiefe Secretarie supposing it might be an Introduction to some more waighty imployment in the State for which his Lordship often protested he thought him very fit Nor did his Lordship account him so much to be his servant as to forget hee had beene his friend and to testifie it hee used him alwayes with much curtesie appointing him a place at his owne Table unto which he esteemed his company and discourse a great ornament He continued that employment with much love and approbation being daily usefull and not mercenary to his friends for the space of five yeares In which time he I dare not say unfortunately fell into such a liking as with her approbation increased into a love with a young Gentlewoman who lived in that Family Neece to the Lady Elsmore Daughter to Sir George More Chancellor of the Garter and Lieutenant of the Tower Sir George had some immation of their increasing love and the better to prevent it did remove his Daughter to his owne house but too late by reason of some faithfull promises interchangeably past and inviolably to be kept between them Their love a passion which of all other Mankind is least able to command and wherein most errors are committed was in them so powerfull that they resolved and did marry without the approbation of those friends that might justly claime an interest in the advising and disposing of them Being married the newes was in favour to M. Donne and with his allowance by the Right Honourable Henry then Earle of Northumberland secretly and certainly intimated to Sir George More to whom it was so immeasurably unwelcome that as though his passion of anger and inconsideration should
addition of comelinesse His aspect was cheerfull and such as gave a silent testimony of a cleere knowing soule and of a conscience at peace with it selfe His melting eye shewed he had a soft heart full of noble pity of too brave a spirit to offer injuries and too much a Christian not to pardon them in others His fancie was un-imitable high equalled by his great wit both being made usefull by a commanding judgement His mind was liberall and unwearied in the search of knowledge with which his vigorous soule is now satisfied and employed in a continuall praise of that God that first breathed it into his active body which once was a Temple of the holy Ghost and is now become a small quantity of Christian dust But I shall see it re-inanimated Iz Wa IOHANNES DONNE SAC THEOL PROFESSOR POST VARIA STUDIA QVIBUS AB ANNIS TENERRIMIS FIDELITER NEC INFELICITER INCUBUIT INSTINCTU ET IMPULSU SPIR S ti MONITU ET HORTATU REGIS IACOBI ORDINES SACROS AMPLEXUS Aº SUI JESU 1614. ET SUAE AETATIS 42. DECANATU HUJUS ECCLESIAE INDUTUS XXVII NOVEMBRIS 1621. EXUTUS MORTE ULTIMO DIE MARTII 1631. Hic licet in Occiduo Cinere Aspicit Eum Cujus Nomen est ORIENS A Table directing to the severall Texts of SCRIPTURE handled by the Author in this BOOK SERM. I. COLOS. 1.19 20. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulnesse dwell And having made peace through the bloud of his Crosse by Him to reconcile all things to himselfe by Him whether they be things in earth or things in heaven page 1 SERM. II. ESAIAH 7.14 Therefore the Lord shall give you a signe Behold a Virgin shall conceive and beare a Son and shall call his name Immanuel pa. 11 SERM. III. GALAT. 4.4 5. But when the fulnesse of time was come God sent forth his Sonne made of a woman made under the Law to redeeme them that were under the Law that we might receive the adoption of Sons pa. 20 SERM. IV. LUKE 2.29 30. Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word For mine eyes have seene thy salvation pa. 29. SERM. V. EXOD. 4.13 O my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send pa. 39 SERM. VI. Lord who hath beleeved our report pa. 52 SERM. VII JOHN 10.10 I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly pa. 62 SERM. VIII MAT. 5.16 Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in heaven pa. 77 SERM. IX ROM 13.7 Render therefore to all men their dues pa. 86 SERM. X. ROM 12.20 Therefore if thine enemie hunger feed him if he thirst give him drink for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head pa. 96 SERM. XI MAT. 9.2 And Iesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsie My son be of good chear thy sins be forgiven thee pa. 102 SERM. XII MAT. 5.2 Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God pa. 112 SERM. XIII JOB 16. ver 17 18 19. Not for any injustice in my hands Also my prayer is pure O earth cover thou not my bloud and let my cry have no place Also now behold my Witnesse is in heaven and my Record is on high pa. 127 SERM. XIV AMOS 5.18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord what have ye to doe with it the day of the Lord is darknesse and not light pa. 136 SERM. XV. 1 COR 15.26 The last Enemie that shall be destroyed is Death pa. 144 SERM. XVI JOHN 11.35 Iesus wept pa. 153 SERM. XVII MAT. 19.17 And he said unto him Why callest thou me Good There is none Good but One that is God pa. 163 SERM. XVIII ACTS 2.36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly That God hath made that same Iesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ pa. 175 SERM. XIX APOC. 20.6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection pa. 183 SERM. XX. JOHN 5.28 29. Marvell not at this for the houre is comming in the which all that are in the graves shall heare his voice And shall come forth they that have done good unto the Resurrection of life And they that have done evill unto the Resurrection of damnation pa. 192 SERM. XXI 1 COR. 15.29 Else what shall they do that are baptized for dead If the dead rise not at all why are they then baptized for dead pa. 120 SERM. XXII HEB. 11.35 Women received their dead raised to life againe And others were tortured not accepting a deliverance that they might obtaine a better Resurrection pa. 213 SERM. XXIII 1 COR. 13.12 For now we see through a glasse darkly But then face to face Now I know in part But then I shall know even as also I am knowne pa. 224 SERM. XXIV JOB 4.18 Behold he put no trust in his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly pa. 233 SERM. XXV MAT. 28.6 He is not here for he is risen as he said Come See the place where the Lord lay pa. 242 SERM. XXVI 1 THES 4.17 Then we which are alive and remaine shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the ayre and so shall we be ever with the Lord. pa. 254 SERM. XXVII PSAL. 89.47 What man is he that liveth and shall not see death pa. 267 SERM. XXVIII XXIX JOHN 14.26 But the Comforter which is the holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you pa. 277. 286 SERM. XXX JOHN 14.20 At that day shall ye know That I am in my Father and you in me and I in you pa. 294 SERM. XXXI GEN. 1.2 And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters pa. 303 SERM. XXXII 1 COR. 12.3 Also no man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost p. 312 SERM. XXXIII ACTS 10.44 While Peter yet spake these words the holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the Word pa. 321 SERM. XXXIV ROM 8.16 The Spirit it selfe beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God pa. 332 SERM. XXXV MAT. 12.31 Wherefore I say unto you All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men But the Blasphemy against the holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men pa. 341 SERM. XXXVI XXXVII JOHN 16.8 9 10 11. And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousnesse and of judgement Of sin because ye beleeve not on me Of righteousnesse because I goe to my Father and ye see me no more Of judgement because the Prince of this world is judged pa. 351. 361 SERM. XXXVIII 2 COR. 1.3 Blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ
if we consider those who are in heaven and have been so from the first minute of their creation Angels why have they or how have they any reconciliation How needed they any and then how is this of Christ applyed unto them They needed a confirmation for the Angels were created in blessednesse but not in perfect blessednesse They might fall they did fall To those that fell can appertaine no reconciliation no more then to those that die in their sins for Quod homini mors Angelis casus August The fall of the Angels wrought upon them as the death of a man does upon him They are both equally incapable of change to better But to those Angels that stood their standing being of grace and their confirmation being not one transient act in God done at once but a continuall succession and emanation of daily grace belongs this reconciliation by Christ because all matter of grace and where any deficiency is to be supplyed whether by way of reparation as in man or by way of confirmation as in Angels proceeds from the Crosse from the Merits of Christ They are so reconciled then as that they are extra lapsus periculum out of the danger of falling but yet this stability this infallibility is not yet indelibly imprinted in their natures yet the Angels might fall if this reconciler did not sustain them for if those words reperit in Angelis iniquitatem that God found folly Job 4.18 weaknesse infirmity in his Angels be to be understood of the good Angels that stand confirmed as procul dubio de diabolo intelligi non potest Calvin without all doubt they cannot be understood of the ill Angels the best service of the best Angels devested of that successive grace that supports them if God should exacta rigorous account of it could not be acceptable in the sight of God So the Angels have a pacification and a reconciliation lest they should fall Thus things in heaven are reconciled to God by Christ and things on earth too In terra First the creature as S. Paul speakes that is other creatures then men For at the generall resurrection which is rooted in the resurrection of Christ and so hath relation to him the creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption Rom. 8.21 into the glorious liberty of the children of God for which the whole creation groanes and travailes in paine yet This deliverance then from this bondage the whole creature hath by Christ and that is their reconciliation And then are we reconciled by the blood of his Crosse when having crucified our selves by a true repentance we receive the seale of reconciliation in his blood in the Sacrament But the most proper and most litterall sense of these words is that all things in heaven and earth be reconciled to God that is to his glory to a fitter disposition to glorifie him by being reconciled to another in Christ that in him as head of the Church they in heaven and we upon earth be united together as one body in the Communion of Saints For this text hath a conformity and a harmony with that to the Ephesians and in sense as well as in words is the same Ephes 1.10 That God might gather together in one all things in Christ both which are in heaven and which are on earth even in him where the word which we translate to gather doth properly signifie recapitulare to bring all things to their first head to Gods first purpose which was that Angels and men united in Christ Jesus might glorifie him eternally in the Kingdome of heaven Then are things in heaven restored and reconciled sayes S. Augustine Cum quod ex Angelis lapsum est ex hominibus redditur when good men have repaired the ruine of the bad Angels and filled their places And then are things on earth restored and reconciled Cum praedestinati à corruptionis vetustate renovantur when Gods elect children are delivered from the corruptions of this world to which even they are subject here Gregor Cum humiliati homines redeunt unde Apostatae superbiendo ceciderunt when men by humility are exalted to those places from which Angels fell by pride then are all things in heaven and earth reconciled in Christ The blood of the sacrifices was brought by the high priest Tostat in Levit 16. in sanctum sanctorum into the place of greatest holinesse but it was brought but once in festo expiationis in the feast of expiation but in the other parts of the Temple it was sprinkled every day The blood of the Crosse of Christ Jesus hath had his effect in sancto sanctorum even in the highest heavens in supplying their places that fell in confirming them that stood and in uniting us and them in himselfe as Head of all In the other parts of the Temple it is to be sprinkled daily Here in the militant Church upon earth there is still a reconciliation to be made not only toward one another in the band of charity but in our selves In our selves we may finde things in heaven and things on earth to reconcile There is a heavenly zeale but if it be not reconciled to discretion there is a heavenly purity but if it be not reconciled to the bearing of one anothers infirmities there is a heavenly liberty but if it be not reconciled to a care for the prevention of scandall All things in our heaven and our earth are not reconciled in Christ In a word till the flesh and the spirit be reconciled this reconciliation is not accomplished For neither spirit nor flesh must be destroyed in us a spirituall man is not all spirit he is a man still But then is flesh and spirit reconciled in Christ when in all the faculties of the soule and all the organs of the body we glorifie him in this world for then in the next world wee shall be glorified by him and with him in soule and in body too where we shall bee thoroughly reconciled to one another no suits no controversies and thoroughly to the Angels Mat. 22.30 Luc. 20.36 when we shall not only be sieut Angeli as the Angels in some one property but aequales Angelis equall to the Angels in all for Non erunt duae societates Angelorum hominum Men and Angels shall not make two companies sed omnium beatitudo erit uni adhaerere Deo August this shall be the blessednesse of them both to be united in one head Christ Jesus And these reconcilings are reconcilings enow for these are all that are in heaven and earth If you will reconcile things in heaven and earth with things in hell that is a reconciling out of this Text. If you will mingle the service of God and the service of this world there is no reconciling of God and Mammon in this Text. If you will mingle a true religion and a false religion there is no reconciling of God and
child is borne unto us a Son is given He was not given he was not borne in six hundred yeares after that but such is the clearenesse of a Prophets sight such is the infallibility of Gods declared purpose So then if the Prophet could have made the King beleeve with such an assurednesse as if he had seene it done that God would give a deliverance to all mankinde by a Messias that had beene signe enough evidence enough to have argued thereupon That God who had done so much a greater worke would also give him a deliverance from that enemy that pressed him then If I can fixe my selfe with the strength of faith upon that which God hath done for man I cannot doubt of his mercy in any distresse If I lacke a signe I seeke no other but this That God was made man for me which the Church and Church-writers have well expressed by the word Incarnation for that acknowledges and denotes that God was made my flesh It were not so strange that he who is spirit should be made my spirit my soule but he was made my flesh Therefore have the Fathers delighted themselves in the variation of that word so far as that Hilarie cals it Corporationem That God assumed my Body And Damascen cals it Inhumanationem That God became this man soule and body And Irenaeus cals it Adunationem and Nysen Contemperationem A mingling says one an uniting saies the other of two of God and man in one person Shall I aske what needs all this what needed God to have put himselfe to this I may say with S. Augustine Alio modo poterat Deus nos liberare sed si aliter faceret similiter vestrae stultitiae displiceret What other way soever God had taken for our salvation our curiosity would no more have beene satisfied in that way than in this But God having chosen the way of Redemption which was the way of Justice God could do no otherwise Si homo non vicisset inimicum hominis non justè victus esset inimicus saies Irenaeus As if a man should get a battaile by the power of the Devill without fighting this were not a just victory so if God in mans behalfe had conquered the devill without man without dying it had not beene a just conquest I must not aske why God tooke this way to Incarnate his Son And shall I aske how this was done I doe not aske how Rheubarb or how Aloes came by this or this vertue to purge this or this humour in my body In talibus rebus tota ratio facti est potentia facientis Even in naturall things all the reason of all that is done August is the power and the will of him who infused that vertue into that creature And therefore much more when we come to these supernaturall points such as this birth of Christ we embrace S. Basils modesty and abstinence Nativitas ista silentio honoretur This mysterie is not so well celebrated with our words and discourse as with a holy silence and meditation Immo potius ne cogitationibus permittatur Nay saies that Father there may be danger in giving our selves leave to thinke or study too much of it Ne dixer is quando saies he praeteri hanc interrogationem Aske not thy selfe overcuriously when this mystery was accomplished be not over-vehement over-peremptory so far as to the perplexing of thine owne reason and understanding or so far as to the despising of the reasons of other men in calculating the time the day or houre of this nativity Praeteri hanc interrogationem passe over this question in good time and with convenient satisfaction Quando when Christ was borne But noli inquirere Quomodo saies S. Basil still never come to that question how it was done cum ad hoc nihil sit quod responderi possit for God hath given us no faculties to comprehend it no way to answer it That 's enough which we have in S. Iohn Every spirit that confesses that Iesus is come in the flesh is of God 1 Ioh. 4.2 for since it was a comming of Iesus Iesus was before so he was God and since he came in the flesh hee is now made man And that God and Man are so met is a signe to mee that God and I shall never bee parted This is the signe in generall That God hath had such a care of all men Virgo is a signe to me That he hath a care of me But then there are signes of this signe Divers All these A Virgin shall conceive A Virgin shall bring forth Bring forth a Son And whatsoever have been prophesied before she shall call his name Immanuel First a Virgin shall be a mother which is a very particular signe and was seene but once That which Gellius and Plinie say that a Virgin had a child almost 200. yeares before Christ that which Genebrard saies that the like fell out in France in his time are not within our faith and they are without our reason our faith stoopes not downe to them and our Reason reaches not up to them of this Virgin in our text If that be true which Aquinas cites out of the Roman story that in the times of Constantine and Irene upon a dead body found in a sepulchre there was found this inscription in a plate of gold Christus nascetur ex Virgine ego credo in eum Christ shall be borne of a Virgin and I beleeve in that Christ with this addition in that inscription O Sol sub Irenae Constantini temporibus iterum me videbis Though I be now buried from the sight of the sun yet in Constantines time the sun shall see me againe If this be true yet our ground is not upon such testimonie If God had not said it I would never have beleeved it And therefore I must have leave to doubt of that which some of the Roman Casuists have delivered That a Virgin may continue a virgin upon earth and receive the particular dignity of a Virgin in Heaven and yet have a child by the insinuation and practise of the Devill so that there shall be a father and a mother and yet both they Virgins That this Mother in our text was a Virgin is a peculiar a singular signe given as such by God never done but then and it is a singular testimony how acceptable to God that state of virginity is Hee does not dishonour physick that magnifies health nor does hee dishonour marriage that praises Virginity let them embrace that state that can and certainly many more might doe it then do if they would try whether they could or no and if they would follow S. Cyprians way Virgo non tantum esse sed intelligi esse debet credi It is not enough for a virgin to bee a virgin in her owne knowledge but she must governe her selfe so as that others may see that she is one and see that shee hath a desire and a
fornications and goes very farre in carnall And yet for all this we are capable of this Conception Christ may be borne in us for all this As God said unto the Prophet Take thee a wife of fornications and children of fornications so is Christ Jesus content to take our soules though too often mothers of fornications As long as we are united and incorporated in his beloved Spouse the Church conforme our selves to her grow up in her hearken to his word in her feed upon his Sacraments in her acknowledge a seale of reconciliation by the absolution of the Minister in her so long how unclean soever we have bin if wee abhorre and forsake our uncleannesse now wee participate of the chastity of that Spouse of his the Church and in her are made capable of this conception of Christ Jesus and so it is as true this houre of us as it was when the Apostle spoke these words This is the fulnesse of time when God sent his Son c. Now you remember Sub lege that in this second part the manner of Christs comming we proposed two degrees of humiliation One which we have handled in a double respect as he is made filius mulieris non Dei the son of a woman and not the Son of God the other as he is filius mulieris non Virginis The son of a woman and not called the son of a Virgin The second remaines that he was sub lege under the law now this phrase to be under the law is not alwayes so narrowly limited in the Scriptures as to signifie onely the law of Moses for so onely the Jews were under the law and so Christs comming for them who were under the law his Death and Merits should belong onely to the Jews But St. Augustine observes that when Christ sent the message of his birth to the wise men in the East by a starre and to the shepheards about Bethlem by an Angel In pastoribus Iudaei in magis Gentes vocatae The Jews had their calling in that manifestation to the shepheards and the Gentiles in that to the wise men in the East But besides that Christ did submit himselfe to all the waight even of the Ceremoniall law of Moses he was under a heavyer law then that under that lex decreti the contract and covenant with God the Father under that oportuit pati This he ought to suffer before he could enter into glory So that his being under the law may be accounted not a part of his Humiliation as his being made of a woman was but rather the whole history and frame of his humiliation All that concernes his obedience even to that law which the Father had laid upon him for the life and death of Christ from the Ave Maria to the consummatum est from his comming into this World in his Conception to his transmigration upon the Crosse was all under this law heavier then any law that any man is under the law of the contract and covenant between the Father and him Though therefore we may think judging by the law of reason that since Christ came to gather a Church and to draw the world to him it would more have advanced that purpose of his to have been borne at Rome where the seat of the Empire and the confluence of all Nations was then in Iury and if he would offer the Gospel first to the Jews better to have been borne at Ierusalem where all the outward publique solemne worship of the Jews was then at obscure Bethlem and in Bethlem in some better place then in an Inne in a Stable in a Manger though we may think thus in the law of reason yet non cogitationes meae cogitationes vestrae sayes God in the Prophet Esay 55. My thoughts are not your thoughts nor my lawes your lawes for I am sub lege decreti under another manner of law then falls within your reading under an obedience to that covenant which hath passed betweene my Father and me and by those Degrees and no other way was my humiliation for your Redemption to be expressed Though we may thinke in the law of Reason that his work of propagating the Gospel would have gone better forward if he had taken for his Apostles some Tullies or Hortensii or Senecaes great and perswading Orators in stead of his Peter and Iohn and Matthew and those Fishermen and tent-makers and toll-gatherers Though we might think in reason and in piety too that when he would humble himselfe to take our salvation into his care it had beene enough to have beene under the law of Moses to live innocently and righteously without shedding of his bloud If he would shed bloud it might have beene enough to have done so in the Circumcision and scourging without dying If he would die it might have been enough to have dyed some lesse accursed and lesse ignominious death then the death of the Crosse though we might reasonably enough and piously enough think thus yet non cogitationes vestrae cogitationes meae sayes the Lord your way is not my way your law is not my law for Christ was sub lege decreti and thus as he did and no other way it became him to fulfill all righteousnesse that is all that Decree of God which he had accepted and acknowledged as Righteous He was so much under Moses law as he would be so much under that law as that he suffered that law to be wrested against him and to bee pretended to be broken by him and to be endited and condemned by that law The Jews pressed that law non sines veneficū vivere Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live Exod. 22. when they attributed all his glorious miracles to the power of the devil and the Romans were incensed against him for treason and sedition as though he aliened and withdrew the people from Caesar But he was under a heavyer law then Jews or Romanes the Law of his Father and his owne eternall Decree so farre as that he came to that sense of the waight thereof Eli Eli My God My God why hast thou forsaken me and was never delivered from the burden of this law till he pleaded the performance of all conditions between his Father and him and delivered up all the evidence thereof in those words In manus tuas Into thy hands O Lord I give my spirit and so presented both the righteousnesse of his soule which had fulfilled the law and the soule it selfe which was under the law He dyed in Execution and so discharged all And so we have done with our second part The manner of his comming We are come now in our Order to our third part The purpose of Christs comming 3. Part. and in that we consider two objects that Christ had and two subjects to work upon two kindes of work and two kindes of persons First to Redeeme and then to Adopt Those are his works his objects And then To redeeme
judgements did God shew Adam Iudicia pessimorum spirituum sayes he the better to containe Adam in his duty God declared to him the judgement that he had executed upon those disobedient Angels So that as Adam if he had made a right use of Gods grace had been immortall in his body and yet not immortall then by nature as our bodies in the state of glory in the resurrection shall be immortall and yet not immortall then by nature so no Angell after this Confirmation that is the mediation of Christ applied to him shall fall For Quis Catholicus ignorat Aug. nullum novum Diabolum ex bonis Angelis futurum Who can pretend to be a Catholique and beleeve that ever there shall be any new Devill from amongst the good Angels And yet by the way many of the Ancient Fathers thought that those words That the sons of God saw the daughters of men to be faire and fell in love with them were meant of good Angels who fell in love with those women that were committed to their charge and that they sinned in so doing and that they never returned to heaven but fell to the first fallen Angels So that those Fathers have more then implied a possibility of falling into sin and punishment for sin in the good Angels But this none sayes now nor with any probability ever did It is enough that they stand confirmed confirmed by the grace of God in Christ Jesus so that now being in possession of the sight of God and the light of Gâ—ry their understanding is perfectly illustrated so that they can apprehend nothing erroneously and therefore their will is perfectly rectified so that they can desire nothing irregularly and therefore they cannot sin and therefore they cannot die for all sin is from the perversenesse of the will and all disorder in the will from errour in the understanding In heaven they are and we by our assimilation to them shall be free from both and impeccable and impassible by the continuall grace of God Though if they or we were left to our selves even there God could put no trust in his servants nor leave his Angels uncharged with folly And so we have done with the pieces which constitute our first part De quibus of whom these words are spoken First that they were spoken of Angels rejecting that single Capuccin who only denies it and then of good Angels accepting Calvins interpretation because though he be singular in applying this Text to that Doctrine yet in the Doctrine it self he hath authority enough and faire reasons for the Text it selfe and lastly how that which we call Confirmation in those Angels accrewes to them and how it works in them And so we passe to our second Part what is inferred upon these premisses what concluded upon these propositions what by our assimilation to Angels reflects upon us And here 2. Part. Testis Eliphaz because the matter is of much consideration we proposed first to be considered the waight and validity of the testimony in the person of him that gives it for many times the credit of the restimony depends much upon the credit of the witnesse And here it is not Iob himself it is but Eliphaz Eliphaz the Temanite an Alien a stranger to the Covenant and Church of God But surely no greater a stranger then those secular Poets whose sentences S. Paul cites not only in his Epistles but in his Sermons too Certainly not so great a stranger as the Devill and yet in how many places of Scripture are words spoken by the Devill himself inserted into the Scriptures and thereby so farre made the word of God as that the word of God the Bible were not perfect norintire to us if we had not those words of those Poets those words of the Devill himself in it How can I doubt but that God can draw good out of ill and make even some sin of mine some occasion of my salvation when the God of truth can make the word of the father of lies his word There is but one place in all this Book of Iob cited in the New Testament Job 5.13 that is He taketh the wise in their owne craft and those words are not spoken by Iob himself but by this very friend of Iob this Eliphaz that speaks in our Text 1 Cor. 3.19 and yet they are cited in the phrase and manner in which holy Scripture is ordinarily cited It is written sayes the Apostle there and so the Holy Ghost that spoke in S. Paul hath canonized the words spoken by Eliphaz But besides the credit which these words have Visio à posteriori that they are after inserted into the word of God which is another manner of credit and authentiquenesse then that which the Canonists speak of that when any sentence of a Father is cited and inserted into a Decretall Epistle of a Pope or any part of the Canon Law that sentence is thereby made authenticall and canonicall these words have their credit à priori for before be spake them to Iob he received them in a vision from God I had a vision in the night Ver. 12. sayes he and feare and trembling came upon me and a spirit stood before me and I heard this voyce Neither is there any necessity no nor reason to charge Eliphaz with a false relation or counterfaiting a revelation from God which he had not had as some Expositors have done For howsoever in some argumentations and applyings of things to Iobs particular case we may finde some errors in Eliphaz in modo probandi in the manner of his proceeding yet we shall not finde him to proceed upon false grounds and therefore we beleeve Eliphaz to have received this that he sayes from God in a vision and for the instruction of a man more in Gods favour then himself of Iob. Balaam had the reputation of a great Wizard and yet God made his Asse wiser then he and able to instruct and catechize him Generally we are to receive our instructions from Gods established Ordinances from his ordinary meanes afforded to us in his Church And where those meanes sufficient in themselves are duly exhibited to us we are not to hearken after revelations nor to beleeve every thing that may have some such apparance to be a revelation But yet we are not so to conclude God in his Law as that he should have no Prerogative nor so to binde him up in his Ordinances as that he never can or never does work by an extraordinary way of revelation Neither must the profusion of miracles the prodigality and prostitution of miracles in the Romane Church where miracles for every naturall disease may be had at some Shrine or miracle-shop better cheap then a Medicine a Drugge a Simple at an Apothecaries bring us to deny or distrust all miracles done by God upon extraordinary causes and to important purposes Eliphaz was a prophane person and yet received a Vision from
dignity First The Father shall send you another Comforter Another then my selfe For Ver. 16. howsoever Christ were the Fountain of comfort yet there were many drammes many ounces many talents of discomfort mingled in that their Comforter was first to depart from them by death and being restored to them again by a Resurrection was to depart againe by another Transmigration by an Ascension And therefore the second mark by which Christ dignifies this Comforter is That he shall abide with us for ever And in the performance of that promise he is here with you now And therefore as we begun with those words of Esay which our Saviour applyed to himselfe The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me Esay 61.1 to binde up the broken hearted and to comfort all them that mourne So the Spirit of the Lord is upon all us of his Ministery in that Commandement of his in the same Prophet Consolamini Esay 40.1 consolamini Comfort ye comfort yee my people and speak comfortably unto Ierusalem Receive the Holy Ghost all ye that are the Israel of the Lord in that Doctrine of comfort that God is so farre from having hated any of you before he made you as that he hates none of you now not for the sins of your Parents not for the sins of your persons not for the sins of your youth not for your yester-dayes not for your yester-nights sins not for that highest provocation of all your unworthy receiving his Son this day Onely consider that Comfort presumes Sadnesse Sin does not make you incapable of comfort but insensiblenesse of sin does In great buildings the Turrets are high in the Aire but the Foundations are deep in the Earth The Comforts of the Holy Ghost work so as that only that soule is exalted which was dejected As in this place where you stand there bodies lie in the earth whose soules are in heaven so from this place you carry away so much of the true comfort of the Holy Ghost as you have true sorrow and sadnesse for your sins here Almighty God erect this building upon this Foundation Such a Comfort as may not be Presumption upon such a Sorrow as may not be Diffidence in him And to him alone but in three Persons Father Son and Holy Ghost be ascribed all Honour c. SERMON XXIX Preached at S. Pauls upon Whitsunday 1628. JOHN 14.26 But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name Hee shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you WE Eipasse from the Person to his working we come from his comming to his operation from his Mission and Commission to his Executing thereof from the Consideration who he is to what he does His Specification his Character his Title Paracletus The Comforter passes through all Therefore our first comfort is Docebimur we shall be Taught He shall teach you As we consider our selves The Disciples of the Holy Ghost so it is a meere teaching for we in our selves are meerly ignorant But wen we consider the things we are to bee taught so it is but a remembring a refreshing of those things which Christ in the time of his conversation in this world had taught before He shall bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you These two then The comfort in the Action we shall be Taught and the comfort in the Way and Manner we shall not be subject to new Doctrines but taught by remembring by establishing us in things formerly Fundamentally laid will be our two parts at this time And in each of these these our steps First in the first we shall consider the persons that is the Disciples who were to learne not onely they who were so when Christ spoke the words but we All who to the end of the world shall seek and receive knowledge from him Vos ye first Vos ignorantes you who are naturally ignorant and know nothing so as you should know it of your selves which is one Discomfort And yet Vos ye Vos appetentes you that by nature have a desire to know which is another Discomfort To have a desire and no meanes to performe it Vos docebimini ye ye that are ignorant and know nothing ye ye that are hungry of knowledge and have nothing to satisfie that hunger ye shall be fed ye shall be taught which is one comfort And then Ille docebit He shall teach you He who cannot onely infuse true and full knowledge in every capacity that he findes but dilate that capacity where he findes it yea create it where he findes none The Holy Ghost who is not onely A Comforter but The Comforter and not onely so but Comfort it selfe He shall teach you And in these we shall determine our first Part. In our second Part The Way and Manner of this Teaching By bringing to our remembrance all things whatsoever Christ had said unto us there is a great largenesse but yet there is a limitation of those things which we are to learne of the Holy Ghost for they are Omnia All things whatsoever Christ hath taught before But then Sola ea Only those things which Christ had taught before and not new Additaments in the name of the Holy Ghost Now this largenesse extending it self to the whole body of the Christian Religion for Christ taught all that all that being not reducible to that part of an houre which will be left for this exercise as fittest for the celebration of the day in which we arenow we shall binde our selves to that particular consideration what the Holy Ghost being come from the Father in Christs Name that is Pursuing Christs Doctrine hath taught us of Himselfe concerning Himselfe That so ye may first see some insolencies and injuries offered to the Holy Ghost by some ancient Heretiques and some of later times by the Church of Rome For truly it is hard to name or to imagine any one sin nearer to that emphaticall sin that superlative sin The sin against the Holy Ghost then some offers of Doctrines concerning the Holy Ghost that have been obtruded though not established and some that have beene absolutely established in that Church And when we shall have delivered the Holy Ghost out of their hands we shall also deliver him into yours so as that you may feele him to shed himselfe upon you all here and to accompany you all home with a holy peace and in a blessed calme in testifying to your soules that He that Comforter who is the holy Ghost whom the Father hath sent in his Sons name hath taught you all things that is awakened your memories to the consideration of all that is necessary to your present establishment And to these divers particulars which thus constitute our two generall parts in their order thus proposed we shall now proceed As when our Saviour Christ received that confession of
to others in the plurall to many others But now it is Visum est mihi Spiritui Sancto It seemes good unto me to one man alone and when it does so it shall seeme good to the Holy Ghost too And of these two Hereticall violences to the Holy Ghost we complaine against that Church first that they put the Holy Ghost in a Rebellion against the Son of God from whom he proceeds And then as for the most part the end of them who pretend right to a Kingdome and cannot prove it is to lie in Prison That they have imprisoned the Holy Ghost in one mans breast and not suffered that winde to breathe where it will as Christ promised the Holy Ghost should doe For neither did the Holy Ghost bring any such thing to their remembrance as though Christ had taught any such Doctrine neither can they that teach it come nearer the sin The unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost then thus to make him a supplanter of Christ or supplanted by Antichrist But we hold you no longer in this ill Aire Charismata Spiritus blasphemous and irksome contumelies against the Holy Ghost we promised at first to dismisse you at last in a perfume with the breath of the Holy Ghost upon you and that is to excite you to a rectified sense and knowledge August that he offers himselfe unto you and is received by you Facies Dei est qua nobis innotescit That is alwaies the face of God to us by which God vouchsafes to manifest himselfe to us So his Ordinance in the Church is his face And Lux Dei qua nobis illucescit The light of God to us is that light by which he shines upon us Lex Dei Lux Dei his word in his Church And then the Evidence the Seale the Witnesse of all that this face which I see by this light is directed upon me for my comfort is The Testimony of the Holy Ghost when that Spirit beares witnesse with our spirit that he is in us And therefore in his blessed Name and in the participation of his power I say to you all Accipite Spiritum sanctum Receive ye the holy Ghost Not that I can give it you 2 Cor. 3.5 but I can tell you that he offers to give himselfe to you all Our sufficiency is of God sayes the Apostle Acknowledge you a sufficiency in us a sufficient power to be in the Ministery for as the Apostle addes He hath made us able Ministers of the New Testament Not able onely in faculties and gifts requisite for that function those faculties and gifts whether of nature or of acquisition be in as great measure in some that have not that function but able by his powerfull Ordinance as it is also added there to minister not the letter not the letter onely but The Spirit the Spirit of the New Testament that is the holy Ghost to you Therefore as God said to Moses I will come downe Numb 11.17 and talk with thee and I will take of the Spirit which is upon thee and put it upon them God in his Spirit does come downe to us in his Ministery and talke with us his Ministers at home that is assist us in our Meditations and lucubrations and preparations for this service here and then here in this place he takes of that Spirit from us and sheds upon you imparts the gifts of the holy Ghost to you also and makes the holy Ghost as much yours by your hearing as he made him ours by our study Be not deceived by the letter by the phrase of that place God does not say there that he will take of the Spirit from us and give it you that is fill you with it and leave us without it but he will take of that Spirit that is impart that Spirit so to you as that by us and our present Ministery he will give you that that shall be sufficient for you to day and yet call you to us againe in his Ordinance another day Learne as much as you can every day and never thinke that you have learnt so much as that you have no more need of a Teacher for though you need no more of that man you may be perchance as learned as he yet you need more of that Ordinance We give you the holy Ghost then when we open your eyes to see his offers Those words of the Apostle Our selves have the first fruits of the Spirit Rom. 8.23 S. Ambrose interprets so Our selves we the Ministers of God have the first fruits of the Spirit the pre-possession the pre-inhabitation but not the sole possession nor sole inhabitation of the Holy Ghost but we have grace for grace the Spirit therefore to shed the Spirit upon you that that precious Oyntment Psal 133.2 the Holy Ghost is this Unction which was poured upon the Head upon Christ may run downe upon Aarons beard and from those gray and grave and reverend haires of his Ministers may also go downe to the skirts of his garments to every one of you who doe not onely make up the garment that is the visible but the mysticall body it selfe of Christ Jesus Ver. 3. The dew of Hermon descends upon the mountaines of Sion But the waters that fall upon the mountaines fall into the valleyes too from thence The Holy Ghost fals through us upon you also so as that you may so as that you must finde it in your selves The Holy Ghost was the first Person that was declared in the Creation The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters Gen. 1.2 that was the first motion This is eternall life to know God and him whom he sent Christ Iesus But this you cannot doe but by him whom they both sent the Holy Ghost 1 Cor. 12.3 No man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost Iohn Baptist who was to baptize Christ was filled with the holy Ghost from the wombe You who were baptized in Christ were filled in your measure with the holy Ghost from that wombe from the time that the Church conceived you in Baptisme And therefore as the Twelve said to the multitude Acts 6.3 Looke yee among ye seven men full of the holy Ghost So we say to the whole Congregation Looke every man to himselfe that he be one of the seven one of that infinite number which the holy Ghost offers to fall upon That as ye were baptized in the holy Ghost and as your bodies are Temples of the holy Ghost so your soules may be Priests of the holy Ghost and you altogether a lively and reasonable sacrifice to God in the holy Ghost Eph. 1.13 That as you have beene sealed with the holy Spirit of promise you may finde in your selves the performance of that promise finde the seale of that promise in your love to the Scriptures for as S. Chrysostome argues usefully Christ gave the Apostles no Scriptures but
by emission of beames from within And yet no man doubts whether he see or no. The holy Ghost shall tell you when he tels you the most that ever he shall tell you in that behalf That the Son is in the Father but he will not tell you how Our second portion in this Legacy of knowledge Incarnatio is That we are in Christ And this is the mystery of the Incarnation For since the devill had so surprized us all as to take mankinde all in one lump in a corner in Adams loynes and poysoned us all there in the fountain in the roote Christ to deliver us as intirely took all mankinde upon him and so took every one of us and the nature and the infirmities and the sins and the punishment of every singular man So that the same pretence which the devill hath against every one of us you are mine for you sinned in Adam we have also for our discharge we are delivered for we paid our debt in Christ Jesus In all his tentations send him to look upon the Records of that processe of Christs passion and he shall finde there the names of all the faithfull recorded That such a day that day when Christ dyed I and you and all that shall be saved suffered dyed and were crucified and in Christ Jesus satisfied God the Father for those infinite sins which we had committed And now Second death which is damnation hath no more title to any of the true members of his mysticall body then corruption upon naturall or violent death could have upon the members of his naturall body The assurance of this grows from the third part of this knowledge Redemptio That Christ is in us for that is such a knowledge of Christs generall Redemption of mankinde as that it is also an application of it to us in particular For for his Incarnation by which we are in him Cyril that may have given a dignity to our humane nature But Quae beneficiorum magnitudo fuisset erganos si hominem solummodo quem assumpserat salvaret What great benefit how ever the dignity had been great to all mankinde had mankinde had if Christ had saved no more then that one person whom he assumed The largenesse and bounty of Christ is to give us of his best treasure knowledge and to give us most at last To know Christ in me For to know that he is in his Father this may serve me to convince another that denies the Trinity To know that we are in Christ so as that he took our nature this may shew me an honour done to us more then the Angels But what gets a lame wretch at the poole how soveraign soever the water be if no body put him in What gets a naked beggar by knowing that a dead man hath left much to pious uses if the Executors take no knowledge of him What get I by my knowledge of Christ in the Father and of us in Christ so if I finde not Christ in me How then is Christ in us Here the question De modo How it is is lawfull for he hath revealed it to us It is by our obedience to his inspiration and by our reverent use of those visible meanes which he hath ordained in his Church his Word and Sacraments As our flesh is in him by his participation thereof so his flesh is in us by our communication thereof And so is his divinity in us by making us partakers of his divine nature and by making us one spirit with himself which he doth at this Pentecost that is whensoever the holy Ghost visits us with his effectuall grace for this is an union in which Christ in his purpose hath married himself to our souls inseparably and Sine solutione vinculi Without any intention of divorce on his part But if we will separate him à mensa toro If either we take the bed of licentiousnesse or the board of voluptuousnesse or if when we eat or drink or sleep or wake we do not all to the glory of God if we separate he will divorce If then we be thus come to this knowledge let us make Ex scientia conscientiam Enlarge science into conscience for Conscientia est Syllogismus practicus Conscience is a Syllogisme that comes to a conclusion Then only hath a man true knowledge when he can conclude in his own conscience that his practise and conversation hath expressed it Who will beleeve that we know there is a ditch and know the danger of falling into it and drowning in it if he see us run headlong towards it and fall into it and continue in it Who can beleeve that he that separates himself from Christ by continuing in his sin hath any knowledge or sense or evidence or testimony of Christs being in him As Christ proceeds by enlarging thy knowledge and making thee wiser and wiser so enlarge thy testimony of it by growing better and better and let him that is holy bee more holy If thou have passed over the first heats of the day the wantonnesses of youth and the second heat the fire of ambition if these be quenched in thee by preventing venting grace or by repenting grace be more and more holy for thine age will meet another sin of covetousnesse or of indevotion that needs as much resistance God staid not in any lesse degree of knowledge towards thee then in bringing himselfe to thee Doe not thou stay by the way neither not in the consideration of God alone for that Coeli enarrant all creatures declare it stay not at the Trinity Every comming to Church nay thy first being brought to Church at thy Baptisme is and was a profession of that stay not at the Incarnation That the Devill knowes and testifies But come to know that Christ is in thee and expresse that knowledge in a sanctified life For though he be in us all in the work of his Redemption so as that he hath poured out balme enough in his blood to spread over all mankinde yet onely he can enjoy the chearfulnesse of this unction and the inseparablenesse of this union who as S. Augustine pursues this contemplation Habet in memoria servat in vita who alwayes remembers that he stands in the presence of Christ and behaves himselfe worthy of that glorious presence Qui habet in Sermonibus servat in operibus That hath Christ alwaies at his tongues end and alwaies at his fingers ends that loves to discourse of him and to act his discourses Que habet audiendo servat faciendo That heares Gods will here in his house and does his will at home in his owne house Qui habet faciendo servat perseverando who having done well from the beginning persevers in well doing to the end he and he onely shall finde Christ in him SERMON XXXI Preached at S. Pauls upon Whitsunday 1629. GEN. 1.2 And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters THe
Church of God celebrates this day the third Person of the Holy Blessed and Glorious Trinity The Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost is the God the Spirit of Comfort A Comforter not one amongst others but the Comforter not the principall but the intire the onely Comforter and more then all that The Comfort it selfe That is an attribute of the Holy Ghost Comfort And then the office of the Holy Ghost is to gather to establish to illumine to governe that Church which the Son of God from whom together with the Father the Holy Ghost proceeds hath purchased with his blood So that as the Holy Ghost is the Comforter so is this Comfort exhibited by him to us and exercised by him upon us in this especially that he hath gathered us established us illumined us and does governe us as members of that body of which Christ Jesus is the Head that he hath brought us and bred us and fed us with the meanes of salvation in his application of the merits of Christ to our soules in the Ordinances of the Church In this Text is the first mention of this Third Person of the Trinity And it is the first mention of any distinct Person in the God-head In the first verse there is an intimation of the Trinity in that Bara Elohim That Gods Gods in the plurall are said to have made heaven and earth And then as the Church after having celebrated the memory of All Saints together in that one day which we call All Saints day begins in the celebration of particular Saints first with Saint Andrew who first of any applied himself to Christ out of Saint Iohn Baptists Schoole after Christs Baptisme so Moses having given us an intimation of God and the three Persons altogether in that Bara Eloim before gives us first notice of this Person the Holy Ghost in particular because he applies to us the Mercies of the Father and the Merits of the Son and moves upon the face of the waters and actuates and fecundates our soules and generates that knowledge and that comfort which we have in the knowledge of God Now the moving of the Holy Ghost upon the face of the waters in this Text cannot be literally understood of his working upon man for man was not yet made but when man is made that is made the man of God in Christ there in that new Creation the Holy Ghost begins again with a new moving upon the face of the waters in the Sacrament of Baptisme which is the Conception of a Christian in the wombe of the Church Therefore we shall consider these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters first literally in the first and then spiritually in the second Creation first how the Holy Ghost moved upon the face of the Waters in making this world for us And then how he moves upon the face of the Waters againe in making us for the other world In which two severall parts we shall consider these three termes in our Text both in the Macrocosme and Microcosme the Great and the Lesser world man extended in the world and the world contracted and abridged into man first Quid Spiritus Dei what this Power or this Person which is here called the Spirit of God is for whether it be a Power or a Person hath been diversly disputed And secondly Quid ferebatur what this Action which is here called a Moving was for whether a Motion or a Rest an Agitation or an Incubation of that Power or that Person hath been disputed too And lastly Quid super faciem aquarum what the subject of this Action the face of the waters was for whether it were a stirring and an awakening of a power that was naturally in those waters to produce creatures or whether it were an infusing a new power which till then those waters had not hath likewise beene disputed And in these three the Person the Action the Subject considered twice over in the Creation first and in our regeneration in the Christian Church after we shall determine all that is necessary for the literall and for the spirituall sense of these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters First then 1 Part. Aug Con. 11.2 undertaking the consideration of the literall sense and after of the spirituall we joyne with S. Augustine Sint castae deliciae meae Scripturae tuae Lord I love to be conversant in thy Scriptures let my conversation with thy Scriptures be a chast conversation that I discover no nakednesse therein offer not to touch any thing in thy Scriptures but that that thou hast vouchsafed to unmask and manifest unto me Nec fallar in eis nec fallam ex eis Lord let not me mistake the meaning of thy Scriptures nor mis-lead others Ibid. by imputing a false sense to them Non frustra scribuntur sayes he Lord thou hast writ nothing to no purpose thou wouldst be understood in all But not in all by all men at all times Confiteor tibi quicquid invenero in libris tuis Lord I acknowledge that I receive from thee whatsoever I understand in thy word for else I doe not understand it This that blessed Father meditates upon the word of God he speakes of this beginning of the Book of Genesis and he speaks lamenting Scripsit Moses abiit a little Moses hath said C. 3. and alas he is gone Si hic esset tonerem eum per te rogarem If Moses were here I would hold him here and begge of him for thy sake to tell me thy meaning in his words of this Creation But sayes he since I cannot speake with Moses Te quo plenus vera dixit Veritas rogo I begge of thee who art Truth it selfe as thou enabledst him to utter it enable me to understand what he hath said So difficult a thing seemed it to that intelligent Father to understand this history this mystery of the Creation But yet though he found that divers senses offered themselves he did not doubt of finding the Truth C. 18. For Deus meus lumen oculorum meorum in occulto sayes he O my God the light of mine eyes in this dark inquisition since divers senses arise out of these words and all true Quid mihi obest si alindego sensero quam sensit alius eum sensisse qui scripsit What hurt followes though I follow another sense then some other man takes to be Moses sense for his may be a true fense and so may mine and neither be Moses his C. 30. Hee passes from prayer and protestation to counsell and direction In diversitate sententiarum verarum concordiam pariat ipsa veritas Where divers senses arise and all true that is that none of them oppose the truth let truth agree them But what is Truth God And what is God Charity Therefore let Charity reconcile such differences 1.12 C. 30. Legitimè lege ut amur sayes he let us
use the Law lawfully Let us use our liberty of reading Scriptures according to the Law of liberty that is charitably to leave others to their liberty if they but differ from us and not differ from Fundamentall Truths Si quis quaerat ex me quid horum Moses senserit If any man ask me which of these which may be all true Moses meant Non sum sermones istiâ—â—onfessiones Lord sayes hee Ibid. This that I say is not said by way of Confession as I intend it should if I doe not freely confesse that I cannot tell which Moses meant But yet I can tell that this that I take to be his meaning is true and that is enough Let him that findes a true sense of any place rejoyce in it Let him that does not beg it of thee Vtquid mihi molest us est Why should any man presse me to give him the true sense of Moses here or of the holy Ghost in any darke place of Scripture Ego illuminem ullum hominen venientem in mundum 1.13 C. 10. saies he Is that said of me that I am the light that enlightned every man any man Iohn 1.9 that comes into this world So far I will goe saies he so far will we in his modesty and humility accompany him as still to propose Quod luce veritatis quod fruge utilitatis excellit such a sense as agrees with other Truths that are evident in other places of Scripture and such a sense as may conduce most to edisication For to those two does that heavenly Father reduce the foure Elements that make up a right exposition of Scripture which are first the glory of God such a sense as may most advance it secondly the analogie of faith such a sense as may violate no confessed Article of Religion and thirdly exaltation of devotion such a sense as may carry us most powerfully upon the apprehension of the next life and lastly extension of charity such a sense as may best hold us in peace or reconcile us if we differ from one another And within these limits wee shall containe our selves The glory of God the analogie of faith the exaltation of devotion the extension of charity In all the rest that belongs to the explication or application to the literall or spirituall sense of these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters to which having stopped a little upon this generall consideration the exposition of darke places we passe now Within these rules we proceed to enquire who this Spirit of God is or what it is Spiritus whether a Power or a Person The Jews who are afraid of the Truth lest they should meete evidences of the doctrine of the Trinity and so of the Messias the Son of God if they should admit any spirituall sense admit none but cleave so close to the letter as that to them the Scripture becomes Liter a occidens A killing Letter and the savour of death unto death They therefore in this Spirit of God are so far from admitting any Person that is God as they admit no extraordinary operation or vertue proceeding from God in this place but they take the word here as in many other places of Scripture it does to signifie onely a winde and then that that addition of the name of God The Spirit of God which is in their Language a denotation of a vehemency of a high degree of a superlative as when it is said of Saul Sopor Domini A sleepe of God was upon him it is intended of a deepe a dead sleepe inforces induces no more but that a very strong winde blew upon the face of the waters and so in a great part dryed them up And this opinion I should let flye away with the winde if onely the Jews had said it But Theodoret hath said it too and therefore we afford it so much answer That it is a strange anticipation that Winde which is a mixt Meteor to the making whereof divers occasions concurre with exhalations should be thus imagined before any of these causes of Winds were created or produced and that there should be an effect before a cause is somewhat irregular In Lapland the Witches are said to sell winds to all passengers but that is but to turne those windes that Nature does produce which way they will but in our case the Jews and they that follow them dreame winds before any winds or cause of winds was created The Spirit of God here cannot be the Wind. It cannot be that neither which some great men in the Christian Church have imagined it to be Operatio Dei The power of God working upon the waters so some or Efficientia Dei A power by God infused into the waters so others August And to that S. Augustine comes so neare as to say once in the negative Spiritus Dei hic res dei est sed non ipse Deut est The Spirit of God in this place is something proceeding from God but it is not God himselfe And once in the affirmative Posse esse vitalem creaturam quâ universus mundus movetur That this Spirit of God may be that universall power which sustaines and inanimates the whole world which the Platoniques have called the Soule of the world and others intend by the name of Nature and we doe well if we call The providence of God Spiritus Sanctus But there is more of God in this Action then the Instrument of God Nature or the Vice-roy of God Providence for as the person of God the Son was in the Incarnation so the person of God the Holy Ghost was in this Action though far from that manner of becomming one and the same thing with the waters which was done in the Incarnation of Christ who became therein perfect man That this word the Spirit of God is intended of the Person of the Holy Ghost in other places of Scripture is evident undeniable unquestionable and that therefore it may be so taken here Where it is said The Spirit of God shall rest upon him Esay 11.2 upon the Messiah where it is said by himselfe The Lord and his Spirit is upon me And the Lord and his Spirit hath anointed me there it is certainly and therefore here it may be probably spoken of the Holy Ghost personally It is no impossible sense it implies no contradiction It is no inconvenient sense it offends no other article it is no new sense nor can we assigne any time when it was a new sense Basil The eldest Fathers adhere to it as the ancientest interpretation Saint Basil saies not onely Constantissimè asseverandum est We must constantly maintaine that interpretation for all that might be his owne opinion not onely therefore Quia verius est for that might be but because he found it to be the common opinion of those times but Quia à majoribus nostris approbatum because it is accepted for the true
sense by the Ancients The Ancients saies that ancient Father Basil which reason prevailes upon S. Ambrose too Ambrose Nos cum sanctorum fidelium sententia congruentes We beleeve and beleeve it because the Ancients beleeved it to be so that this is spoken generally of the Holy Ghost Hieron S. Basil and S. Ambrose assume it as granted S. Hierom disputes it argues concludes it Vivificator ergo Conditor ergo Deus This Spirit of God gave life therefore this Spirit was a Creator therefore God S. Augustine prints his seale deepe Secundùm quod ego intelligere possum ita est as far as my understanding can reach it is so and his understanding reached far But he addes Nec ullomodo c. Neither can it possibly be otherwise Tertui Cypt. We cannot tell whether that Poem which is called Genesis be Tertullians or Cyprians It hath beene thought an honour to the learnedest of the Fathers to have beene the Author of a good Poem In that Poem this text is paraphrased thus Immensusque Deus super aequora vastameabat God God personally moved upon the waters Truly the later Schoole is as they have used it a more Poeticall part of divinity then any of the Poems of the Fathers are take in Lactantius his Poem of the Phenix and all the rest and for the Schoole there Aquinas saies Secundùm Sanctos intelligimus Spiritum sanctum As the holy Fathers have done we also understand this personally of the Holy Ghost To end this these words doe not afford such an argument for the Trinity or the third Person thereof the Holy Ghost as is strong enough to convert or convince a Jew because it may have another sense but we who by Gods abundant goodnesse have otherwise an assurance Psal 104.30 Iob 26.13 and faith in this doctrine acknowledge all those other places Thou sendest forth thy Spirit and they are created By his spirit he hath garnished the Heavens and the rest of that kinde to be all but ecchoes from this voyce returnes from Iob and from David and the rest of this doctrine of all comfort first and betimes delivered from Moses that there is a distinct person in the Godhead whose attribute is goodnesse whose office is application whose way is comfort And so we passe from our first That it is not onely the Power of God but the Person of God To the second in this branch His Action Ferebatur The Action of the Spirit of God Ferebatur the Holy Ghost in this place is expressed in a word of a double and very diverse signification for it signifies motion and it signifies rest And therefore Psal 139.2 as S. Augustine argues upon those words of David Thou knowest my downe sitting and my uprising That God knew all that he did betweene his downe sitting and his uprising So in this word which signifies the Holy Ghosts first motion and his last rest we comprehend all that was done in the production and creation of the Creatures Deut. 32.11 Hier. This word we translate As the Eagle fluttereth over her young ones so it is a word of Motion And S. Hierom upon our Text expresses it by Incubabat to sit upon her young ones to hatch them or to preserve them so it is a word of rest And so the Jews take this word to signifie Cyprian properly the birds hatching of eggs S. Cyprian unites the two significations well Spiritus sanctus dabat aquis motum limitem The Holy Ghost enabled the waters to move and appointed how and how far they should move The beginnings and the waies and the ends must proceed from God and from God the Holy Ghost That is by those meanes and those declarations by which God doth manifest himselfe to us for that is the office of the holy Ghost to manifest and apply God to us Now the word in our Text is not truly Ferebatur The Spirit moved which denotes a thing past but the word is Movens Moving a Participle of the present So that we ascribe first Gods manifestation of himself in the creation and then the continuall manifestation of himself in his providence to the holy Ghost for God had two purposes in the creation Vt sint ut maneant That the creature should be and be still August That it should exist at first and subsist after Be made and made permanent God did not mean that Paradise should have been of so small use when he made it he made it for a perpetuall habitation for man God did not mean that man should be the subject of his wrath when he made him he made him to take pleasure in and to shed glory upon him The holy Ghost moves he is the first author the holy Ghost perpetuates settles establishes he is our rest and acquiescence and center Beginning Way End all is in this word Recaph The Spirit of God moved and rested And upon what And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters S. Augustine observing aright That at this time of which this Text is spoken Facies aquarum The waters enwrapped all the whole substance the whole matter of which all things were to be created all was surrounded with the waters all was embowelled and enwombed in the waters And so the holy Ghost moving and resting upon the face of the waters moved and rested did his office upon the whole Masse of the world and so produced all that was produced and this admits no contradiction no doubt but that thus the thing was done and that this this word implies But whether the holy Ghost wrought this production of the severall creatures by himself or whether he infused and imprinted a naturall power in the waters and all the substance under the waters to produce creatures naturally of themselves hath received some doubt It need not for the worke ascribed to the holy Ghost here is not the working by nature but the creating of nature Not what nature did after but how nature her self was created at first In this action this moving and resting upon the face of the waters that is all involved in the waters the Spirit of God the holy Ghost hatched produced then all those creatures For no power infused into the waters or earth then could have enabled that earth then to have produced Trees with ripe fruits in an instant nor the waters to have brought forth Whales in their growth in an instant The Spirit of God produced them then and established and conserves ever since that seminall power which we call nature to produce all creatures then first made by himselfe in a perpetuall Succession And so have you these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters literally historically And now these three termes The Spirit of God Moved Vpon the face of the waters You are also to receive in a spirituall sense in the second world the Christian Church The Person the Action
the Subject the holy Ghost and him moving and moving upon the waters in our regeneration Here as before our first Terme and Consideration is the name The Spirit of God 2. Part. Spiritus sanctus And here God knows we know too many even amongst the outward professors of the Christian religion that in this name The Spirit of God take knowledge only of a power of God and not of a person of God They say it is the working of God but not God working Mira profunditas eloquiorum tuorum The waters in the creation Aug. Confess 12. c. 14. were not so deep as the word of God that delivers that creation Ecce ante nos superficies blandiens pueris sayes that Father We we that are but babes in understanding as long as we are but naturall men see the superficies the top the face the outside of these waters Sed mira profunditas Deus meus mira profunditas But it is an infinite depth Lord my God an infinite depth to come to the bottome The bottome is to professe and to feele the distinct working of the three distinct persons of the Trinity Father Son and holy Ghost Rara anima quae cum de illa loquitur sciat quid loquatur Not one man C. 30. not one Christian amongst a thousand who when he speaks of the Trinity knows what he himself meanes Naturall men will write of lands of Pygmies and of lands of giants and write of Phoenixes and of Unicornes But yet advisedly they do not beleeve at least confidently they do not know that there are such Giants or such Pygmies such Unicorns or Phoenixes in the world Christians speak continually of the Trinity and the holy Ghost but alas advisedly they know not what they mean in those names The most know nothing for want of consideration They that have considered it enough and spent thoughts enough upon the Trinity to know as much as needs be knowen thereof Contendunt dimicant C. 11. nemo sine pace vidit istam visionem They dispute and they wrangle and they scratch and wound one anothers reputations and they assist the common enemy of Christianity by their uncharitable differences Et sine pace And without peace and mildnesse and love and charity no man comes to know the holy Ghost who is the God of peace Id. l. 11.2 22. and the God of love Da quod amo amo enim nam hoc tu dedisti I am loath to part from this father and he is loath to be parted from for he sayes this in more then one place Lord thou hast enamoured mee made me in love let me enjoy that that I love That is the holy Ghost That as I feele the power of God which sense is a gift of the holy Ghost I may without disputing rest in the beliefe of that person of the Trinity that that Spirit of God that moves upon these waters is not only the power but a person in the Godhead This is the person Ferebatur without whom there is no Father no Son of God to me the holy Ghost And his action his operation is expressed in this word Ferebatur The Spirit of God moved Which word as before is here also a comprehensive word and denotes both motion and rest beginnings and wayes and ends We may best consider the motion the stirring of the holy Ghost in zeale and the rest of the holy Ghost in moderation If we be without zeale we have not the motion If we be without moderation we have not the rest the peace of the holy Ghost The moving of the holy Ghost upon me is as the moving of the minde of an Artificer upon that piece of work that is then under his hand A Jeweller if he would make a jewell to answer the form of any flower or any other figure his minde goes along with his hand nay prevents his hand and he thinks in himself a Ruby will conduce best to the expressing of this and an Emeraud of this The holy Ghost undertakes every man amongst us and would make every man fit for Gods service in some way in some profession and the holy Ghost sees that one man profits most by one way another by another and moves their zeal to pursue those wayes and those meanes by which in a rectified conscience they finde most profit And except a man have this sense what doth him most good and a desire to pursue that the holy Ghost doth not move nor stir up a zeale in him But then if God do afford him the benefit of these his Ordinances in a competent measure for him and he will not be satisfied with Manna but will needs have Quailes that is cannot make one meale of Prayers except he have a Sermon nor satisfied with his Gomer of Manna with those Prayers which are appointed in the Church nor satisfied with those Quailes which God sends the preaching of solid and fundamentall doctrines but must have birds of Paradise unrevealed mysteries out of Gods own bosome preached unto him howsoever the holy Ghost may seem to have moved yet he doth not rest upon him and from the beginning the office and operation of the holy Ghost was double He moved and rested upon the waters in the creation he came and tarried still upon Christ in his Baptisme He moves us to a zeale of laying hold upon the meanes of salvation which God offers us in the Church and he settles us in a peacefull conscience that by having well used those meanes we are made his A holy hunger and thirst of the Word and Sacraments a remorse and compunction for former sins a zeale to promove the cause and glory of God by word and deed this is the motion of the holy Ghost And then to content my self with Gods measure of temporall blessings and for spirituall that I do serve God faithfully in that calling which I lawfully professe as far as that calling will admit for he upon whose hand-labour the sustentation of his family depends may offend God in running after many working dayes Sermons This peace of conscience this acquiescence of having done that that belongs to me this is the rest of the Spirit of God And this motion and this rest is said to be done Super faciem And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters which is our last consideration In the moving of the Spirit of God upon the waters Facies aquarum we told you before it was disputed whether the Holy Ghost did immediatly produce those creatures of himselfe or whether he did fecundate and inanimate and inable those substances the water and all contained under the waters to produce creatures in their divers specifications In this moving of the Spirit of God upon the waters in our regeneration it hath also been much disputed How the Holy Ghost works in producing mans supernaturall actions whether so immediately as that it be altogether without
said also That the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine Ver. 2. Sin is wine at first so farre as to allure to intoxicate It is water at last so farre as to suffocate to strangle Christ Jesus way is to change water into wine sorrow into joy The Devils way is to change wine into water pleasure and but false pleasure neither into true bitternesse The watrish wine which is spoken of there and called fornication is idolatry and the like And in such a respect Jer. 2.18 God sayes to his people What hast thou to doe in the way of Egypt In the way of Egypt we cannot chuse but have something to doe some conversation with men of an Idolatrous religion we must needs have But yet What hast thou to doe in the way of Egypt to drinke of the waters of Sihor Or what hast thou to doe in the wayes of Assyria to drink the waters of the River Though we be bound to a peaceable conversation with men of an Idolatrous perswasion we are not bound to take in to drink to taste their errours For this facility and this indifferency to accompany men of divers religions in the acts of their religion Ver. 13. this multiplicity will end in a nullity and we shall hew to our selves Cisternes broken Cisternes that can hold no water We shall scatter one religion into many and those many shall vanish into none Praise we God therefore that the Spirit of God hath so moved upon these waters these sinfull waters of superstition and idolatry wherein our fore-Fathers were overwhelmed that they have not swelled over us Ecclus. 43.20 For then the cold North-winde blowes and the water is congealed into Ice Affliction overtakes us damps us stupifies us and we finde no Religion to comfort us Affliction is as often expressed in this word Tribulatio Esay 43.2 Waters as sin When thou passest through waters I will be with thee and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee But then the Spirit of God moves upon these waters too and grace against sin and deliverance from affliction is as often expressed in waters as either Where God takes another Metaphore for judgement Ezek. 36.5 Ver. 25. yet he continues that of water for his mercy In the fire of my jealousie have I spoken against them speaking of enemies but then speaking of Israel I will sprinkle cleane water upon you and you shall be cleane This is his way and this is his measure He sprinkles enough at first to make us cleane even the sprinkling of Baptisme cleanses us from originall sin but then he sets open the windowes of heaven and he inlarges his Flood-gates Esay 44.3 I will poure out water upon the thirsty and floods upon the dry ground To them that thirst after him he gives grace for grace that is present grace for an earnest of future grace of subsequent grace and concomitant grace and auxiliant grace and effectuall grace grace in more formes more notions and in more operations then the Schoole it selfe can tell how to name Thus the Spirit of God moves upon our waters Mat. 14. By faith Peter walked upon the waters so we prevent occasions of tentation to sin and sinke not in them but walke above them By godly exercises we swim through waters so the Centurion commanded that they that could swim Acts 27.43 should cast themselves into the sea Men exercised in holinesse can meet a tentation or tribulation in the face and not be shaked with it weaker men men that cannot swim must be more wary of exposing themselves to dangers of tentation A Court does some man no harme when another finds tentation in a Hermitage By repentance we saile through waters by the assistance of Gods ordinances in his Church which Church is the Arke we attaine the harbour peace of conscience after a sin But this Arke this helpe of the Church we must have God can save from dangers though a man went to Sea without art Sine rate saies the Vulgat without a Ship Wisd 14.4 But God would not that the worke of his Wisedome should be idle God hath given man Prudentiam navifactivam saies our Holkot upon that place and he would have that wisdome exercised God can save without Preaching and Absolution and Sacraments but he would not have his Ordinance neglected To end all with the end of all Death comes to us in the name Mors. 2 Sam. 14.14 and notion of waters too in the Scriptures The Widow of Tekoah said to David in the behalfe of Absalon by the Counsaile of Ioab The water of death overslowes all We must needs dye saies she and are as water spilt upon the ground which cannot be gathered up againe yet God devises meanes that his banished be not expelled from him So the Spirit of God moves upon the face of these waters the Spirit of life upon the danger of death Consider the love more then love the study more then study the diligence of God he devises meanes that his banished those whom sins or death had banished be not expelled from him I sinned upon the strength of my youth and God devised a meanes to reclaime me an enfeebling sicknesse I relapsed after my recovery and God devised a meanes an irrecoverable a helpless Consumption to reclaime me That affliction grew heavy upon me and weighed me down even to a diffidence in Gods mercy and God devised a meanes the comfort of the Angel of his Church his Minister The comfort of the Angel of the great Counsell the body and blood of his Son Christ Jesus at my transmigration Yet he lets his correction proceed to death I doe dye of that sicknesse and God devises a meanes that I though banished banished into the grave shall not be expelled from him a glorious Resurrection We must needs dye and be as water spilt upon the ground but yet God devises meanes that his banished shall not be expelled from him And this is the motion and this is the Rest of the Spirit of God upon those waters in this spirituall sense of these words He brings us to a desire of Baptisme he settles us in the sense of the obligation first and then of the benefits of Baptisme He suffers us to goe into the way of tentations for Coluber in via and every calling hath particular tentations and then he settles us by his preventing or his subsequent grace He moves in submitting us to tribulation he settles us in finding that our tribulations do best of all conforme us to his Son Christ Jesus He moves in removing us by the hand of Death and he settles us in an assurance That it is he that now lets his Servants depart in peace And he who as he doth presently lay our soules in that safe Cabinet the Bosome of Abraham so he keepes an eye upon every graine and atome of our dust whither soever it be blowne and keepes a
Learning Plato never stopped at any knowledge till he came to consider the holy Ghost Vnum inveni quod cuncta operatur I have saies Plato found One who made all things Et unum per quod cuncta efficiuntur And I have found another by whom all things were made Tertium autem non potui invenire A Third besides those two I could never finde Though all the mysteries of the Trinity be things equally easie to faith when God infuses that yet to our reason even as reason serves faith and presents things to that things are not so equall but that S. Basil himselfe saw that the eternall generation of the Son was too hard for Reason but yet it is in the proceeding of the Holy Ghost that he clearely professes his ignorance Si cuncta putarem nostra cogitatione posse comprehendi vererer fortè ignorantiam profiteri If I thought that all things might bee knowne by man I should bee as much afraid and ashamed as another man to be ignorant but saies he since we all see that there are many things whereof we are ignorant Cur non de Spiritu sancto absque rubore ignorantiam faterer Why should I be ashamed to confesse mine ignorance in many things concerning the Holy Ghost There is then a difficulty no lesse then an impossibility Possibilitas in searching after the Holy Ghost but it is in those things which appertain not to us But in others there is a possibility a facility and easinesse For there are two processions of the holy Ghost Aeterna and Temporaria his proceeding from the Father and the Son and his proceeding into us The first we shall never understand if we reade all the books of the world The other we shall not choose but understand if we study our own consciences In the first the darknesse and difficulty is recompenced in this That though it be hard to finde any thing yet it is but little that we are to seek It is only to finde that there is a holy Ghost proceeding from Father and Son for in searching farther the danger is noted by S. Basil to be thus great Qui quomodo interrogas ubi ut in loco quando ut in tempore interrogabis If thou give thy curiosity the liberty to ask How the holy Ghost proceeded thou wilt ask where it was done as though there were severall roomes and distinct places in that which is infinite And thou wilt ask when it was done as though there were pieces of time in that which is eternall Et quaeres non ut fidem sed ut infidelitatem invenias which is excellently added by that Father The end of thy enquiring will not be that thou mightest finde any thing to establish thy beliefe but to finde something that might excuse thine unbeliefe All thy curious questions are not in hope that thou shalt receive satisfaction but in hope that the weaknesse of the answer may justifie thy infidelity Thus it is if we will be over curious in the first the eternall proceeding of the Holy Ghost In the other the proceeding of the holy Ghost into us we are to consider that as in our naturall persons the body and soul do not make a perfect man except they be united except our spirits which are the active part of the blood do fit this body and soule for one anothers working So though the body of our religion may seem to be determined in these two our Creation which is commonly attributed to the Father Tanquam fonti Deitatis As the fountaine of the Godhead for Christ is God of God And our Redemption which belongs to the Son yet for this body there is a spirit that is the holy Ghost that takes this man upon whom the Father hath wrought by Creation and the Son included within his Redemption and he works in him a Vocation a Justification and a sanctification and leads him from that Esse which the Father gave him in the Creation And that Bene esse which he hath in being admitted into the body of his Son the visible Church and Congregation to an Optimè esse to that perfection which is an assurance of the inhabitation of this Spirit in him and an inchoation of eternall blessednesse here by a heavenly and sanctified conversation without which Spirit No man can say that Iesus is the Lord because he is not otherwise in a perfect obedience to him if he embrace not the means ordained by him in his Church So that this Spirit disposes and dispenses distributes and disperses and orders all the power of the Father and all the wisdome of the Son and all the graces of God It is a Center to all So S. Bernard sayes upon those words of the Apostle We approve our selves as the Ministers of God But by what By watching by fasting by suffering by the holy Ghost by love unfained Vide tanquam omnia ordinantem quomodo in medio virtutum sicut cor in medio corporis constituit Spiritum Sanctum As the heart is in the midst of the body so between these vertues of fasting and suffering before and love unfained after the Apostle places the holy Ghost who only gives life and soule to all Morall and all Theologicall vertues And as S. Bernard observes that in particular men so doth S. Augustine of the whole Church Quod in corpore nostro anima id in corpore Christi Ecclesia Spiritus Sanctus That office which the soule performes to our body the holy Ghost performes in the body of Christ which is the Church And therefore since the holy Ghost is thus necessary and thus neare as at the Creation the whole Trinity was intimated in that plurall word Elohim creavit Dii but no person of the Trinity is distinctly named in the Creation but the holy Ghost The Spirit of God moved upon the waters As the holy Ghost was first conveyed to our knowledge in the Creation so in our Regeneration by which we are new creatures though our Creation and our Redemption be religious subjects of our continuall meditation yet let us be sure to hold this that is nearest us to keep a neare a familiar and daily acquaintance and conversation with the holy Ghost and to be watchfull to cherish his light and working in us Homines docent quaerere solus ipse qui docet invenire habere frui Bernard Men can teach us wayes how to finde somethings The Pilot how to finde a Land The Astronomer how to finde a Star Men can teach us wayes how to finde God The naturall man in the book of creatures The Morall man in an exemplar life The Jew in the Law The Christian in generall in the Gospell But Solus ipse qui docet invenire habere frui Only the holy Ghost enables us to finde God so as to make him ours and to enjoy him 1 Cor. 2.14 First you must get more light then nature gives for The naturall man perceiveth not the things
falls that does not lie in those round drops in which it falls but diffuses and spreads and inlarges it selfe He fell upon all But then it was because all heard They came not to see a new action preaching not a new Preacher Peter nor to see one another at a Sermon He fell upon all that heard where also I think it will not be impertinent to make this note That Peter is said to have spoke these words but they on whom the holy Ghost fell are said to have heard The word It is not Many words long Sermons nor good words witty and eloquent Sermons that induce the holy Ghost for all these are words of men and howsoever the whole Sermon is the Ordinance of God the whole Sermon is not the word of God But when all the good gifts of men are modestly employ'd and humbly received as vehicuia Spiritus as S. Augustine calls them The chariots of the holy Ghost as meanes afforded by God to convey the word of life into us in Those words we heare The word and there the word and the Spirit goe together as in our case in the Text While Peter yet spake those words the holy Ghost fell upon all them that heard The word 1 Part. Tempus When we come then to consider in the first place the Time of this miracle we may easily see that verified in S. Peters proceeding which S. Ambrose sayes Nescit tarda molimina Spiritus sancti gratia The holy Ghost cannot goe a slow pace It is the devill in the serpent that creeps but the holy Ghost in the Dove flyes And then in the proceeding with the Centurion we may see that verified which Leo sayes Vbi Deus Magister quà m citò discitur Where God teaches how fast a godly man learnes Christ did almost all his miracles in an instant without dilatory circumstances Christ sayes to the man sick of the palsey Mark 2.11 Tolle grabatum Take up thy bed and walk and immediately he did so To the deafe man he sayes Mark 7.34 Ephphatha Be thine eares opened and instantly they were opened He sayes to the woman with the issue of bloud Mark 5.34 Esto sana à plagatua and she was not onely well immediately upon that but she was well before when she had but touched the hem of his garment Upon him who had lyen in his infirmity thirty eight yeares at the poole Christ makes a little stop but it was no longer then to try his disposition with that question John 5.5 Mark 8. Vis sanus fieri Christ was sure what his answer would be and as soone as he gives that answer immediately he recovered Where Christ seems to have stayed longest which was upon the blind man yet at his first touch that man saw men walke though not distinctly but at the second touch he saw perfectly As Christ proceeds in his miracles Chrysost so doth the holy Ghost in his powerfull instructions It is true Scientiae sunt profectus There is a growth in knowledge and we overcome ignorances by degrees and by succession of more and more light Christ himselfe grew in knowledge as well as in stature But this is in the way of experimentall knowledge by study by conversation by other acquisitions But when the holy Ghost takes a man into his schoole he deales not with him as a Painter which makes an eye and an eare and a lip and passes his pencill an hundred times over every muscle and every haire and so in many sittings makes up one man but he deales as a Printer that in one straine delivers a whole story We see that in this example of S. Peter S. Peter had conceived a doubt whether it were lawfull for him to preach the Gospell to any of the Gentiles because they were not within the Covenant This was the sanus fieri This very scruple was the voyce and question of God in him to come to a doubt and to a debatement in any religious duty is the voyce of God in our conscience Would you know the truth Doubt and then you will inquire And facile solutionem accipit anima quae prius dubitavit sayes S. Chrysost As no man resolves of any thing wisely firmely safely of which he never doubted never debated so neither doth God withdraw a resolution from any man that doubts with an humble purpose to settle his owne faith and not with a wrangling purpose to shake another mans Ver. 11. God rectifies Peters doubt immediately and he rectifies it fully he presents him a Book and a Commentary the Text and the Exposition He lets downe a sheet from heaven with all kinde of beasts and fowles and tels him that Nothing is uncleane and he tells him by the same spirit Ver. 19. that there were three men below to aske for him who were sent by God to apply that visible Parable and that God meant in saying Nothing was uncleane that the Gentiles generally and in particular this Centurion Cornelius were not incapable of the Gospell nor unfit for his Ministery And though Peter had beene very hungry and would faine have eaten as appeares in the tenth verse yet after he received this instruction we heare no more mention of his desire to eat but as his Master had said Cibus meus est My meat is to doe my Fathers will that sent me so his meat was to doe him good that sent for him and so he made haste to goe with those Messengers The time then was Cum locutus when Peter thus prepared by the Holy Ghost was to prepare others for the Holy Ghost and therefore it was Cum locutus When he spoke that is preached to them For Si adsit palatum fidei cui sapiat mel Dei saies S. Augustine To him who hath a spirituall taste no hony is so sweet as the word of God preached according to his Ordinance If a man taste a little of this honey at his rods end as Ionathan did 1 Sam. 14.27 though he thinke his eyes enlightned as Ionathan did he may be in Ionathans case I did but taste a little honey with my rod Et ecce morior and behold I dye If a man read the Scriptures a little superficially perfunctorily his eyes seeme straight-waies enlightned and he thinks he sees every thing that he had pre-conceived and fore-imagined in himselfe as cleare as the Sun in the Scriptures He can finde flesh in the Sacrament without bread because he findes Hoc est Corpus meum This is my Body and he will take no more of that hony no more of those places of Scripture where Christ saies Ego vitis and Ego porta that he is a Vine and that he is a Gate as literally as he seemes to say that that is his Body So also he can finde wormewood in this honey because he finds in this Scripture Stipendium peccati mors est that The reward of sin is death and he will take no
castration in cutting off the eares There are certain veines behinde the eares which if they be cut disable a man from generation The Eares are the Aqueducts of the water of life and if we cut off those that is intermit our ordinary course of hearing this is a castration of the soul the soul becomes an Eunuch and we grow to a rust to a mosse to a barrennesse without fruit without propagation If then God have placed thee under such a Pastor as presents thee variety blesse God who enlarges himselfe to afford thee that spirituall delight in that variety even for the satisfaction of that holy curiosity of thine If he have placed thee under one who often repeates and often remembers thee of the same things blesse God even for that that in that he hath let thee see that the Christian Religion is Verbum abbreviatum A contracted doctrine and that they are but a few things which are necessary to salvation and therefore be not loath to heare them often Our errand hither then is not to see but much lesse not to be able to see to sleep Verbum It is not to talk but much lesse to snort It is to heare and to heare all the words of the Preacher but to heare in those words the Word that Word which is the soule of all that is said and is the true Physick of all their soules that heare The Word was made flesh that is assumed flesh but yet the Godhead was not that flesh The Word of God is made a Sermon that is a Text is dilated diffused into a Sermon but that whole Sermon is not the word of God But yet all the Sermon is the Ordinance of God Delight thy self in the Lord and he will give thee thy hearts desire Take a delight in Gods Ordinance in mans preaching and thou wilt finde Gods Word in that To end all in that Metaphor which we mentioned at beginning As the word of God is as hony so sayes Solomon Pleasant words are as the hony combe Prov. 16.24 And when the pleasant words of Gods servants have conveyed the saving word of God himselfe into thy soule then maist thou say with Christ to the Spouse I have caten my hony combe with my hony Cant. 5.1 mine understanding is enlightned with the words of the Preacher and my faith is strengthned with the word of God I glorifie God much in the gifts of the man but I glorifie God much more in the gifts of his grace I am glad I have heard him but I am gladder I have heard God in him I am happy that I have heard those words but thrice happy that in those words I have heard the Word Blessed be thou that camest in the name of the Lord but blessed be the Lord that is come to me in thee Let me remember how the Preacher said it but let me remember rather what he said And beloved all the best of us all all that all together all the dayes of our life shall be able to say unto you is but this That if ye will heare the same Jesus in the same Gospell by the same Ordinance and not seeke an imaginary Jesus in an illusory sacrifice in another Church If you will heare so as you have contracted with God in your Baptisme The holy Ghost shall fall upon you whilest you heare here in the house of God and the holy Ghost shall accompany you home to your own houses and make your domestique peace there a type of your union with God in heaven and make your eating and drinking there a type of the abundance and fulnesse of heaven and make every dayes rising to you there a type of your joyfull Resurrection to heaven and every nights rest a type of your eternall Sabbath and your very dreames prayers and meditations and sacrifices to Almighty God SERM. XXXIV Preached upon Whitsunday ROM 8.16 The Spirit it selfe beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God I Take these words to take occasion by them to say something of the holy Ghost Our order proposed at first requires it and our Text affords it Since we speak by Him let us love to speak of Him and to speak for Him but in both to speak with Him that is so as he hath spoken of himselfe to us in the Scriptures God will be visited but he will not be importuned He will be looked upon but he will not be pryed into A man may flatter the best man If he do not beleeve himself when he speaks well of another and when he praises him though that which he sayes of him be true yet he flatters So an Atheist that temporises and serves the company and seemes to assent flatters A man may flatter the Saints in heaven if he attribute to them that which is not theirs and so a Papist flatters A man may flatter God himself If upon pretence of magnifying Gods mercy he will say with Origen That God at last will have mercy upon the devill he flatters So though God be our businesse we may be too busie with God and though God be infinite we may go beyond God when we conceive or speak otherwise of God then God hath revealed unto us By his own light therefore we shall look upon him and with that reverence and modesty that That Spirit may beare witnesse to our spirit that we are the children of God That which we shall say of these words Divisio will best be conceived and retained best if we handle them thus That whereas Christ hath bidden us to judge our selves that we be not judged to admit a triall here lest we incurre a condemnation hereafter This text is a good part of that triall of that judiciall proceeding For here are first two persons that are able to say much The Spirit it self and Our spirit And secondly their office their service They beare witnesse And thirdly their testimony That we are the children of God And these will be our three parts The first will have two branches because there are two persons The Spirit and Our spirit And the second two branches They witnesse and They witnesse together for so the word is And the third also two branches They testifie of us their testimony concernes us and they testifie well of us That we are the children of God The persons are withour exception the Spirit of God cannot be deceived and the spirit of man will not deceive himself Their proceeding is Legall and faire they do not libell they do not whisper they do not calumniate They testifie and they agree in their testimony And lastly the case is not argued so as amongst practisers at the Law that thereby by the light of that they may after give Counsell to another in the like but the testimony concernes our selves it is our own case The verdict upon the testimony of the Spirit and our spirit is upon our selves whatsoever it bee And blessed be the
Father in the Son by the Holy Ghost The verdict is That we are the children of God The Spirit beareth c. First then 1 Part. a slacknesse a supinenesse in consideration of the divers significations of this word Spirit hath occasioned divers errours when the word hath been intended in one sense and taken in another All the significations will fall into these foure for these foure are very large It is spoken of God or of Angels or of men or of inferiour creatures And first of God it is spoken sometimes Essentially sometimes Personally God is a Spirit Iohn 4.24 Esay 31.3 and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth So also The Aegyptians are men and not God and their horses flesh and not spirit For if they were God they were Spirit So God altogether and considered in his Essence is a Spirit but when the word Spir it is spoken not essentially of all but personally of one then that word designeth Spiritum sonctum The holy Ghost Goe and baptize Mar. 28.19 In the name of the Father and Sonne Spiritus sancti and the holy Ghost And as of God so of Angels also it is spoken in two respects of good Angels Sent farth to minister for them Heb. 1.14 1 King 22.22 Hosea 4.12 Esay 19.3 that shall be heires of salvation And evill Angels The lying Spirit that would deceive the King by the Prophet The Spirit of Whoredome spirituall whoredome when the people ask counsell of their stocks And Spiritus vertiginis The spirit of giddinesse of perversities as we translate it which the Lord doth mingle amongst the people in his judgement Of man also is this word Spirit spoken two wayes The Spirit is sometimes the soule Psal 31.5 Into thy hands I commend my Spirit sometimes it signifies those animall spirits which conserve us in strength and vigour The poyson of Gods arrowes drinketh up my spirit And also Job 6.4 Luke 1.47 the superiour faculties of the soule in a regenerate man as there My soule doth magnifie the Lord and my spirit rejoyceth in God my Saviour And then lastly of inferiour creatures it is taken two wayes too of living creatures The God of the spirits of all flesh Numb 16.22 Ezek. 1.21 and of creatures without life other then a metaphoricall life as of the winde often and of Ezckiels wheeles The Spirit of life was in the wheeles Now in this first Branch of this first Part of our Text it is not of Angels nor of men nor of other creatures but of God and not of God Essentially but Personally that is of the Holy Ghost Origen sayes Antecessores nostri The Ancients before him had made this note That where we finde the word Spirit without any addition it is alwayes intended of the Holy Ghost Before him and after him they stuck much to that note for S. Hierome makes it too and produces many examples thereof but yet it will not hold in all Didymus of Alexandria though borne blinde in this light saw light and writ so of the Holy Ghost as S. Hierome thought that work worthy of his Translation And hee gives this note That wheresoever the Apostles intend the Holy Ghost they adde to the word Spirit Sanctus Holy Spirit or at least the Article The The Spirit And this note hath good use too but yet it is not universally true If we supply these notes with this That whensoever any such thing is said of the Spirit as cannot consist with the Divine nature there it is not meant of the Holy Ghost but of his gifts or of his working as when it is said The Holy Ghost was not yet for his person was alwayes And where it is said Iohn 7.39 1 The fl 5.19 Quench not the Holy Ghost for the Holy Ghost himselfe cannot be quenched we have enough for our present purpose Here it is Spirit without any addition and therefore fittest to bee taken for the Holy Ghost And it is Spirit with that emphaticall article The The Spirit and in that respect also fittest to be so taken And though it be fittest to understand the Holy Ghost here not of his person but his operation yet it gives just occasion to looke piously and to consider modestly who and what this person is that doth thus worke upon us And to that purpose we shall touch upon foure things First His Universality He is All He is God Secondly His Singularity He is One One Person Thirdly His roote from whence he proceeded Father and Son And fourthly His growth his emanation his manner of proceeding for our order proposed at first leading us now to speak of this third person of the Trinity it will be almost necessary to stop a little upon each of these First then the Spirit mentioned here the Holy Ghost is God and if so Deus equall to Father and Son and all that is God He is God because the Essentiall name of God is attributed to him He is called Jehovah Iebovah sayes to Esay Goe and tell this people Esay 6.9 Acts 28.29 c. And S. Paul making use of these words in the Acts he sayes Well spake the Holy Ghost by the Prophet Esay The Essentiall name of God is attributed to him and the Essentiall Attributes of God He is Eternall so is none but God where we heare of the making of every thing else in the generall Creation we heare that the Spirit of God moved Gen. 1.2 but never that the Spirit was made He is every where so is none but God Psal 139.7 1 Cor. 2.10 whither shall Igoe from thy Spirit He knowes all things so doth none but God The Spirit searcheth all things yca the deep things of God He hath the name of God the Attributes of God and he does the works of God Is our Creator our Maker God Iob 33.4 The Spirit of God hath mademe Is he that can change the whole Creation and frame of nature in doing miracles God The Spirit lead the Israelites miraculously through the wildernesse Esay 63.14 Esay 48.16 Will the calling and the sending of the Prophets shew him to be God The Lord God and his Spirit hath sent me Is it argument enough for his God-head Esay 61.1 Luke 4.18 that he sent Christ himselfe Christ himselfe applies to himselfe that The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and hath anointed me to preach Acts 1.16 Iohn 16.13 He foretold future things The Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spoke before sayes S. Peter He establishes present things The Spirit of truth guides into all truth And he does this by wayes proper onely to God for our illumination is his He shall receive of me Ver. 14. 1 Cor. 6.11 Iohn 3.5 Iohn 16.8 sayes Christ and shew it you Our Justification is his Ye are justified in the name of the Lord Iesus by the Spirit of God Our regeneration is his There is a
because the Son is the second and the holy Ghost the third person but the second was not before the third in time nor is above him in dignity There is processio corporalis such a bodily proceeding as that that which proceeds is utterly another thing then that from which it proceeds frogs proceed perchance of ayre and mise of dust and worms of carkasses and they resemble not that ayre that dust those carkasses that produced them There is also processio Metaphysica when thoughts proceed out of the minde but those thoughts remaine still in the mind within and have no separate subsistence in themselves And then there is processio Hyperphysica which is this which we seek and finde in our soules but not in our tongues a proceeding of the holy Ghost so from Father and Son as that he remaines a subsistence alone a distinct person of himselfe This is as far as the Schoole can reach Ortu qui relationis est non est à se Actu qui personae est per se subsistit Consider him in his proceeding so he must necessarily have a relation to another Consider him actually in his person so he subsists of himselfe And De modo for the manner of his proceeding we need we can say but this As the Son proceeds per modu intellectus so as the mind of man conceives a thought so the holy Ghost proceeds per modum voluntatis when the mind hath produced a thought that mind and that discourse and ratiocination produce a will first our understanding is setled and that understanding leads our will And nearer then this though God knows this be far off we cannot goe to the proceeding of the holy Ghost This then is The Spirit The third person in the Trinity but the first person in our Text Spiritus noster The other is our spirit The Spirit beareth witnesse with our spirit I told you before that amongst the manifold acceptations of the word spirit as it hath relation particularly to man it is either the soul it self or the vitall spirits the thin and active parts of the bloud or the superiour faculties of the soul in a regenerate man that is our spirit in this place So S. Paul distinguishes soul and spirit Heb. 4.12 The word of God pierces to the dividing asunder soule and spirit where The soule is that which inanimates the body and enables the organs of the senses to see and heare The spirit is that which enables the soule to see God and to heare his Gospel The samephrase hath the same use in another place 1 Thes 5.25 Calvin I pray God your spirit and soule and body may be preserved blamelesse Where it is not so absurdly said though a very great man call it an absurd exposition That the soule Anima is that qua animales homines as the Apostle calls them that by which men are men naturall men carnall men And the spirit is the spirit of Regeneration by which man is a new creature a spirituall man But that that Expositor himselfe hath said enough to our present purpose The soule is the seat of Affections The spirit is rectified Reason It is true this Reason is the Soveraigne these Affections are the Officers this Body is the Executioner Reason authorizes Affections command the Body executes And when we conceive in our mind desire in our heart performe in our body nothing that displeases God then have we had benefit of S. Pauls prayer That in body and soule and spirit we may be blamelesse In summe we need seek no farther for a word to expresse this spirit but that which is familiar to us The Conscience Rem 9.1 A rectified conscience is this spirit My conscience bearing me witnesse sayes the Apostle And so we have both the persons in this judiciall proceeding The Spirit is the holy Ghost Our spirit is our Conscience And now their office is to testifie to beare witnesse which is our second generall part The Spirit bears witnesse c. To be a witnesse 2 Part. is not an unworthy office for the holy Ghost himselfe Heretiques in their pestilent doctrines Tyrans in their bloody persecutions call God himselfe so often so far into question as that he needs strong and pregnant testimony to acquit him First against Heretiques we see the whole Scripture is but a Testament and Testamentum is Testatio ment is it is but an attestation a proofe what the will of God is And therefore when Tertullian deprehended himselfe to have slipped into another word and to have called the Bible Instrumentum he retracts and corrects himselfe thus Magìs usui est dicere Testamentum quà m Instrumentum It is more proper to call the Scripture a Testament then a Conveyance or Covenant All the Bible is Testament Attestation Declaration Proofe Apoc. 11.2 Evidence of the will of God to man And those two witnesses spoken of in the Revelation are very conveniently very probably interpreted to be the two Testaments And to the Scriptures Christ himselfe refers the Jews Iohn 5.39 Search them for they beare witnesse of me The word of God written by the holy Ghost is a witnesse and so the holy Ghost is a witnesse against Heretiques Against Tyrans and Persecuters the office of a witnesse is an honourable office too for that which we call more passionately and more gloriously Martyrdome is but Testimony A Martyr is nothing but a Witnesse He that pledges Christ in his own wine in his own cup in bloud He that washes away his sins in a second Baptisme and hath found a lawfull way of Re-baptizing even in bloud He that waters the Prophets ploughing and the Apostles sowing with bloud He that can be content to bleed as long as a Tyran can foame or an Executioner sweat He that is pickled nay embalmed in bloud salted with fire and preserved in his owne ashes He that to contract all nay to enlarge beyond all suffers in the Inquisition when his body is upon the rack when the rags are in his throat when the boots are upon his legs when the splinters are under his nailes if in those agonies he have the vigour to say I suffer this to shew what my Saviour suffered must yet make this difference He suffered as a Saviour I suffer but as a witnesse But yet to him that suffers as a Martyr as a witnesse a crowne is reserved It is a happy and a harmonious meeting in Stephens martyrdome Proto-martyr and Stephanus that the first Martyr for Christ should have a Crown in his name Such a blessed meeting there is in Ioash his Coronation Posuit super eum Diadema Testimonium 2 King 11.12 They put the Crowne upon his head and the Testimony that is The Law which testified That as he had the Crowne from God so he had it with a witnesse with an obligation that his Government his life and if need were his death should testifie his zeale to him
that gave him that Crowne Thus the holy Ghost himselfe is a witnesse against Heretiques in the word and those men who are full of the holy Ghost as Stephen was are witnesses against persecution in action in passion At this time and by occasion of these words we consider principally the first The testification of the holy Ghost himselfe and therein we consider thus much more That a witnesse ever testifies of some matter of fact of something done before The holy Ghost the Spirit here as we shall see anon witnesses that we are the children of God Now if a Witnesse prove that I am a Tenant to such Land or Lord of it I doe not become Lord nor Tenant by this Witnesse but his testimony proves that I was so before I have therefore a former right to be the child of God that is The eternall Election of God in Christ Jesus Christ Jesus could as well have disobeyed his Father and said I will not goe or disappointed his Father and said I will not goe yet as he could have dis-furnished his Father and said He would not redeem me The holy Ghost bears witnesse that is he pleads he produces that eternall Decree for my Election And upon such Evidence shall I give sentence against my selfe Chrysost Si testaretur Angelus vel Archangelus posset quisquam addubitare I should not doubt the testimony of an Angel or Archangel and yet Angels and Archangels all sorts of Angels were deceivers in the Serpent And therefore the Apostle presents it though impossible in it selfe as a thing that might fall into our mis-apprehension Gal. 1.8 If we that is the Apostles or if an Angel from heaven preach any other Gospel Anathema sit let him be accursed But Quando Deus testatur quis locus relinquitur dubitationi when God testifies to me it is a rebellious sin to doubt And therefore how hyperbolically soever S. Paul argue there If Apostles If Angels teach the contrary teach false Doctrine it never entred into his argument though an argument ab Impossibili to say If God should teach or testifie false doctrine Though then there be a former evidence for my being the child of God a Decree in heaven yet it is not enough that there is such a Record but it must be produced it must be pleaded it must be testified to be that it must have the witnesse of the Spirit and by that Innotescit though it doe not become my Election then it makes my election appeare then and though it be not Introductory it is Declaratory The Root is in the Decree the first fruits are in the testimony of the Spirit but even that spirit will not be testis singularis he will not be heard alone and single but it is Cum spiritu nostro The Spirit testifies with our spirit c. The holy Ghost will fulfill his owne law In ore duorum In the mouth of two witnesses Cum spiriou nostro Sometimes our spirit bears witnesse of somethings appertaining to the next world without the testimony of the holy Ghost Tertullian in that excellent Book of his De testimonio Animae Of the testimony which the soule of man gives of it selfe to it selfe where he speaks of the soule of a naturall an unregenerate man gives us just occasion to stop a little upon that consideration If sayes he we for our Religion produce your own Authors against you he speaks to naturall men secular Philosophers and shew you out of them what Passions what Vices even they impute to those whom you have made your Gods then you say they were but Poetae vani Those Authors were but vaine and frivolous Poets But when those Authors speake any thing which sound against our Religion then they are Philosophers and reverend and classique Authors And therefore sayes he I will draw no witnesse from them Perversae foelicitatis quibus in falso potiùs creditur quà m in vero Because they have this perverse this left-handed happinesse to be beleeved when they lye better then when they say true Novum testimonium adduco saies he I wayve all them and I call upon a new witnesse A witnesse Omni literaturi notius More legible then any Character then any text hand for it is the intimation of mine owne soule and conscience and Omni Editione vulgatius More publique more conspicuous then any Edition any impression of any Author for Editions may be called in but who can call in the testimony of his owne soule He proceeds Te simplicem Idioticum compello I require but a simple an unlearned soule Qualem te habent qui te solam habent Such a soule as that man hath who hath nothing but a soule no learning Imperitia tua mibiopus est quoniam aliquantulae peritiae tuae nemo credit I shall have the more use of thy testimony the more ignorant thou art for in such cases Art is suspicious and from them who are able to prove any thing we beleeve nothing And therefore saies he Nolo Academiis bibliothecis instructam I call not a soule made in an University or nursed in a Library but let this soule come now as it came to me in my Mothers wombe an inartificiall an unexperienced soule And then to contract Tertullians Contemplation he proceeds to shew the notions of the Christian Religion which are in such a soule naturally and which his spirit that is his rectified reason rectified but by nature is able to infuse into him And certainly some of that which is proved by the testimony mentioned in this text is proved by the testimony of our owne naturall soule in that Poet whom the Apostle cites that said Genus ejus We are the off-spring of God Acts 17.28 So then our spirit beares witnesse sometimes when the Spirit does not that is Nature testifies some things without addition of particular grace And then the Spirit the Holy Ghost oftentimes testifies when ours does not How often stands he at the doore and knocks How often spreads he his wings to gather us as a Hen her chickens How often presents he to us the power of God in the mouth of the Preacher and we beare witnesse to one another of the wit and of the eloquence of the Preacher and no more How often he bears witnesse that such an action is odious in the sight of God and our spirit beares witnesse that it is acceptable profitable honourable in the sight of man How often he beares witnesse for Gods Judgements and our spirit deposes for mercy by presumption and how often he testifies for mercy and our spirit sweares for Judgement in desperation But when the Spirit and our spirit agree in their testimony That he hath spoke comfortably to my soule and my soule hath apprehended comfort by that speech That to use Christs similitude He hath piped and we have danced He hath shewed me my Saviour and my Spirit hath rejoyced in God my Saviour He deposes for the Decree
repentance and so is thereby irremissible yet there arise no markes by which I can say This man is such a sinner not though hee himselfe would sweare to me that he were so now and that he would continue so till death The other places that doe not so directly concerne this sin and yet are sometimes used in this affaire 1 Iohn 5.16 are one in S. Iohn and this text another That in S. Iohn is There is a sin unto death I doe not say that he shall pray for it It is true that the Master of the Sentences and from him many of the Schoole and many of our later Interpreters too doe understand this of the sin against the Holy Ghost because we are almost forbidden to pray for it but yet we are not absolutely forbidden in that we are not bidden And if we were forbidden when God sayes to Ieremy Pray not thou for this people neither lift up cry Ier. 7.16 nor prayer for them neither make intercession to me for I will not heare thee And againe Ier. 11.14 Pray not for them for I will not heare them Not them though they should come to pray for themselves God forbid that we should therefore say that all that people had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost And for this particular place of S. Iohn that answer may suffice which very good Divines have given Pray not for them is indeed pray not with them admit them to no part in the publique prayers of the Congregation but if they sin a sin unto death a notorious an inexcusable sin let them be persons excommunicated to thee For the words in this text which seeme to many appliable to that great sin it is not cleare it is not much probable that they can be so applied Take the words invested in their circumstance in the context and coherence and it will appeare evident Christ speaks this to the Pharisees upon occasion of that which they had said to him and of him before and he carries it intends it no farther That appeares by the first word of out text Propterea Therefore I say unto you Therefore that is Because you have used such words unto me And S. Marke makes it more cleare He said this to them because they said Marke 3.30 He had an uncleane spirit because they said he did his Miracles by the power of the Devill Now this was certainely a sin against the Holy Ghost so far as that it was distinguished from the sins against the Son of Man But it was not the sin against the Holy Ghost for Christ being a mixt person God and Man did some things in which his Divinity had nothing to doe but were onely actions of a meere naturall man and when they slandered him in these they blasphemed the Son of Man Some things he did in the power of his God head in which his humanity contributed nothing as all his Miracles and when they attributed these works to the Devill they blasphemed the Holy Ghost And therefore S. Augustine sayes That Christ in this place did not so much accuse the Pharisees that they had already incurred the sin of the Holy Ghost they might at last fall into The sin that impenitible and therfore irremissible sin But that sin this could not be because the Pharisees had not embraced the Gospel before and so this could not be a falling from the Gospel in them Neither does it appeare to have continued to a finall impenitence so far from it as that S. Chrysost makes no doubt but that some of these Pharisees did repent upon Christs admonition Now beloved since we see by this collation of places that it is not safe to say of any man he is this sinner nor very constantly agreed upon what is this sin but yet we are sure that such a sin there is that captivates even God himself and takes from him the exercise of his mercy and casts a dumnesse a speechlesnesse upon the Church it selfe that she may not pray for such a sinner and since we see that Christ with so much earnestnesse rebukes the Pharisees for this sin in the text because it was a limbe of that sin and conduced to it let us use all religious diligence to keep our selves in a safe distance from it To which purpose be pleased to cast a particular but short and transitory glaunce upon some such sins as therefore because they conduce to that are sometimes called sins against the holy Ghost Sins against Power that is the Fathers Attribute sins of infirmity are easily forgiven sins against Wisdome that is the Sons Attribute sins of Ignorance are easily forgiven but sins against Goodnesse that is the Holy Ghosts Attribute sins of an hard and ill nature are hardly forgiven Not at all when it comes to be The sin not easily when they are Those sins those that conduce to it and are branches of it For branches the Schoolemen have named three couples which they have called sins against the Holy Ghost because naturally they shut out those meanes by which the Holy Ghost might work upon us The first couple is presumption and desperation for presumption takes away the feare of God and desperation the love of God And then they name Impenitence and hardnesse of heart for Impenitence removes all sorrow for sins past and hardnesse of heart all tendernesse towards future tentations And lastly they name The resisting of a truth acknowledged before and the envying of other men who have made better use of Gods grace then we have done for this resisting of a Truth is a shutting up of our selves against it and this envying of others is a sorrow that that Truth should prevaile upon them And truly to reflect a very little upon these three couples again To presume upon God that God cannot damne me eternally in the next world for a few half-houres in this what is a fornication or what is an Idolatay to God what is a jest or a ballad or a libel to a King Or to despaire that God will not save me how well soever I live after a sin what is a teare what is a sigh what is a prayer to God what is a petition to a King To be impenitent senslesse of sins past I past yesterday in riot and yesternight in wantonnesse and yet I heare of some place some office some good fortune fallen to me to day To be hardned against future sins shall I forbeare some company because that company leads me into tentation Why that very tentation wil lead me to preferment To forsake the truth formerly professed because the times are changed and wiser men then I change with them To envy and hate another another State another Church another man because they stand out in defence of the truth for if they would change I might have the better colour the better excuse of changing too al these are shrewd and slippery approaches towards the sin against the Holy Ghost and therefore
enarrabit who shall declare this carries the answer with it Nemo enarrabit No man shall declare it But a manifestation of the Beeing of the Trinity they have alwayes apprehended in these words Hic est Filius This is my beloved Son To that purpose therefore we take first the words to be expressed by this Euangelist S. Matthew as the voyce delivered them rather then as they are expressed by S. Marke and S. Luke both which have it thus Tu es Thou art my beloved Son and not Hic est This is They two being onely carefull of the sense and not of the words as it fals out often amongst the Euangelists who differ oftentimes in recording the words of Christ and of other persons But where the same voice spake the same words againe in the Transfiguration there all the Euangelists expresse it so 2 Pet. 1.17 Hic est This is and not Tu es Thou art my beloved Son And so it is where S. Peter makes use by application of that history it is Hic est and not Tu es So that this Hic est This man designs him who hath that marke upon him that the holy Ghost was descended upon him and tarried upon him for so far went the signe of distinction given to Iohn The holy Ghost was to descend and tarry Manet sayes S. Hierome The holy Ghost tarryes upon him because he never departs from him sed operatur quando Christus vult quomodo vult The holy Ghost works in Christ when Christ will and as Christ will and so the holy Ghost tarryed not upon any of the Prophets They spoke what hee would but he wrought not when they would S. Gregory objects to himselfe that there was a perpetuall residence of the holy Ghost upon the faithfull out of those words of Christ The Comforter shall abide with you for ever But as S. Gregory answers himselfe This is not a plenary abiding and secundùm omnia dona in a full operation according to all his gifts as he tarried upon Christ Neither indeed is that promise of Christs to particular persons but to the whole body of the Church Now this residence of the holy Ghost upon Christ was his unction properly it was that by which he was the Messias That he was anointed above his fellowes And therefore S. Hierome makes account that Christ received his unction and so his office of Messias at this his Baptisme and this descending of the holy Ghost upon him And he thinks it therefore because presently after Baptisme he went to preach in the Synagogue and he took for his Text those words of the Prophet Esay Esay 61.1 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me that I should preach the Gospel to the poore And when he had read the Text he began his Sermon thus This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your eares But we may be bold to say that this is mistaken by S. Hierome for the unction of Christ by the holy Ghost by which he was anointed and sealed into the office of Messias was in the over-shadowing of the holy Ghost in his conception in his assuming our nature This Descending now at his baptisme and this Residence were onely to declare That there was a holy Ghost and that holy Ghost dwelt upon this person It is Hic Est This person And it is Hic est This is my Son It is not onely Fuit He was my Son when he was in my bosome Nor onely Erit He shall be so when he shall return to my right hand againe God does not onely take knowledge of him in Glory But Est He is so now now in the exinanition of his person now in the evacuation of his Glory now that he is preparing himselfe to suffer scorne and scourges and thornes and nailes in the ignominious death of the Crosse now he is the Son of the glorious God Christ is not the lesse the Son of God for this eclipse Hic est This is he who for all this lownesse is still as high as ever he was Filius and that height is Est Filius He is the Son He is not Servus The Servant of God or not that onely for he is that also Behold my servant Esay 41.1 sayes God of him in the Prophet I will stay upon him mine elect in whom my soule delighteth I have put my Spirit upon him and he shall bring forth judgement to the Gentiles But Christ is this Servant and a Son too And not a Son onely for so we observe divers filiations in the Schoole Filiationem vestigii That by which all creatures even in their very being are the sons of God as Iob cals God Pluviae patrem The father of the raine And so there are other filiations other wayes of being the sons of God But Hic est This person is as the force of the Article expresses it and presses it Ille Filius The Son That Son which no son else is neither can any else declare how he is that which he is This person then is still The Son And Meus Filius sayes God My Son Meus He is the sonne of Abraham and so within the Covenant as well provided by that inheritance as the son of man can be naturally He is the Son of a Virgin conceived without generation and therefore ordained for some great use He is the son of David and therefore royally descended But his dignity is in the Filius meus that God avows him to be his Son for Vnto which of the Angels said he at any time Thou art my sonne Heb. 1.5 But to Christ he sayes in the Prophet I have called thee by thy name And what is his name Meus es tu Thou art mine Quem à me non separat Deitas sayes Leo non dividit potestas non discernit aeternitas Mine so as that mine infinitenesse gives me no roome nor space beyond him hee reaches as far as I though I be infinite My Almightinesse gives me no power above him he hath as much power as I though I have all My eternity gives me no being before him though I were before all In mine Omnipotence in mine Omnipresence in mine Omniessence he is equall partner with me and hath all that is mine or that is my selfe and so he is mine My Son And My beloved Son but so we are all who are his sons Deliciae ejus Dilectus Prov. 8.31 sayes Solomon His delight and his contentment is to be with the sons of men But here the Article is extraordinarily repeated againe Ille dilectus That beloved Son by whom those who were neither beloved nor Sons became the beloved Sons of God For there is so much more added in the last phrase In quo complacui In whom I am well pleased Now these words are diversly read S. Augustine sayes In quo some Copies that he had seen read them thus Ego hodie genui te
not good to take knowledge of enemies Manifestat inimicos many times that is better forborne yet in all cases it is good to know them Especially in our case in the Text Eph. 6.12 because our enemies intended here are of themselves Princes of darknesse They can multiply clouds and disguisings their kingdome is in the darknesse Sagittant in obscuro Psal 11.2 Psal 143.3 They shoot in the darke I am wounded with a tentation as with the plague and I know not whence the arrow came Collocavit me in obscuris The enemy hath made my dwelling darknesse I have no window that lets in light but then this Angel of light shews me who they are But then Inimici Angeli if we were left to our selves it were but a little advantage to know who our enemies were when we knew those enemies to be Angels persons so far above our resistance Eph. 6.12 For but that S. Paul mollifies and eases it with a milder word Est nobis colluctatio That we wrestle with enemies that thereby we might see our danger is but to take a fall not a deadly wound if we look seriously to our worke we cannot avoyd falling into sins of infirmity but the death of habituall sin we may Quare moriemini domus Israel He does not say why would ye fall but why will ye die ye house of Israel it were a consideration inough to make us desperate of victory to heare him say that this though it be but a wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and spirituall wickednesses in high places None of us hath got the victory over flesh and blood and yet we have greater enemies then flesh and blood are Some disciplines some mortifications we have against flesh and blood we have S. Pauls probatum est his medicine if we will use it Castigo corpus 1 Cor. 9.27 I keep under my body and bring it into subjection for that we have some assistance Even our enemies become our friends poverty or sicknesse will fight for us against flesh and blood against our carnall lusts but for these powers and principalities I know not where to watch them how to encounter them I passe my time sociably and merrily in cheerful conversation in musique in feasting in Comedies in wantonnesse and I never heare all this while of any power or principality my Conscience spies no such enemy in all this And then alone between God and me at midnight some beam of his grace shines out upon me and by that light I see this Prince of darknesse and then I finde that I have been the subject the slave of these powers and principalities when I thought not of them Well I see them and I try then to dispossesse my selfe of them and I make my recourse to the powerfullest exorcisme that is I turne to hearty and earnest prayer to God and I fix my thoughts strongly as I thinke upon him and before I have perfected one petition one period of my prayer a power and principality is got into me againe Esay 29.10 Spiritus soporis The spirit of slumber closes mine eyes and I pray drousily Esa 19.14 Or spiritus vertiginis the spirit of deviation and vaine repetition and I pray giddily and circularly and returne againe and againe to that I have said before Luk. 9.55 and perceive not that I do so and nescio cujus spiritus sim as our Saviour said rebuking his Disciples who were so vehement for the burning of the Samaritans you know not of what spirit you are I pray and know not of what spirit I am I consider not mine own purpose in prayer And by this advantage this doore of inconsideration enters spiritus erroris 1 Tim. 4.1 The seducing spirit the spirit of error and I pray not onely negligently but erroniously dangerously for such things as disconduce to the glory of God and my true happinesse Hosea 4.12.5.4 if they were granted Nay even the Prophet Hosea's spiritus fornicationum enters into me The spirit of fornication that is some remembrance of the wantonnesse of my youth some mis-interpretation of a word in my prayer that may beare an ill sense some unclean spirit some power or principality hath depraved my prayer and slackned my zeale And this is my greatest misery of all that when that which fights for me and fights against me too sicknesse hath laid me upon my last bed then in my weakest estate these powers and principalities shall be in their full practise against me And therefore it is one great advancement of thy deliverance to be brought by this Angel that is by the Ministery of the Gospel of Christ to know that thou hast Angels to thine enemies And then another is to know their number and so the strength of their confederacy for in the verse before the Text they are expressed to be foure I saw foure Angels c. Foure legions of Angels foure millions nay Quatuor Angeli foure Creations of Angels could do no more harme then is intended in these foure for as it is said in the former verse They stood upon the foure corners of the earth they bestrid they cantoned the whole world Thou hast opposite Angels enow to batter thee every where and to cut off and defeat all succours all supplies that thou canst procure or propose to thy selfe absolute enemies to one another will meet and joyne to thy ruine and even presumption will induce desperation We need not be so literall in this as S. Hierome who indeed in that followed Origen to thinke that there is a particular evill Angel over every sin That because we finde that mention of the spirit of error and the spirit of slumber and the spirit of fornication we should therefore thinke that Christ meant by Mammon Mat. 6.24 a particular spirit of Covetousnesse and that there be severall princes over severall sins This needs not when thou art tempted never aske that Spirits name his name is legio for he is many Mar. 5.9 Take thy selfe at the largest as thou art a world there are foure Angels at thy foure corners Let thy foure corners be thy worldly profession thy calling and another thy bodily refection thy eating and drinking and sleeping and a third thy honest and allowable recreations and a fourth thy religious service of God in this place which two last that is recreation and religion God hath been pleased to joyn together in the Sabbath in which he intended his own glory in our service of him and then the rest of the Creature too let these foure thy calling thy sleeping thy recreation thy religion be the foure corners of thy world and thou shalt find an Angel of tentation at every corner even in thy sleep even in this house of God thou hast met them The Devill is no Recusant he will come to Church and he will lay his snares there When that day
comes Job 1.6 that the Sonnes of God present themselves before the Lord Satan comes also among them Not onely so as S. Augustin confesses he met him at Church to carry wanton glances between men and women but he is here sometimes to work a mis-interpretation in the hearer sometimes to work an affectation in the speaker and many times doth more harme by a good Sermon then by a weake by possessing the hearers with an admiration of the Preachers gifts and neglecting Gods Ordinance And then it is not onely their naturall power as they are Angels nor their united power as they are many nor their politique power that in the midst of that confusion which is amongst them yet they agree together to ruine us but as it follows in our text it is potestas data a particular power which besides their naturall power God at this time put into their hands He cryed to the foure Angels to whom power was given to hurt All other Angels had it not nor had these foure that power at all times which in our distribution at first we made a particular Consideration It was potestas data a speciall Commission that laid Iob open to Satans malice Potestas data It was potestas data a speciall Commission that laid the herd of swine open to the Devils tranportation Much more no doubt Mat. 8.32 have the particular Saints of God in the assistances of the Christian Church for Iob had not that assistance being not within the Covenant and most of all hath the Church of God her selfe an ability in some measure to defend it selfe against many machinations and practises of the Devill if it were not for this Potestas data That God for his farther glory in the tryall of his Saints and his Church doth enable the Devill to raise whole armies of persecutors whole swarmes of heretiques to sting and wound the Church beyond that ordinary power which the Devill in nature hath That place Curse not the King no not in thought Eccles 10.20 for that which hath wings shall tell the matter is ordinarily understood of Angels that Angels shall reveale disloyall thoughts now naturally Angels do not understand thoughts but in such cases there is Potestas data a particular power given them to do it and so to evill Angels for the accomplishment of Gods purposes there is Potestas data a new power given a new Commission that is beyond permission for though by Gods permission mine eye see and mine eare heare yet my hand could not see nor heare by Gods permission for permission is but the leaving of a thing to the doing of that which by nature if there be no hindrance interposed it could and would do This comfort then and this hope of deliverance hast thou here that this Angel in our text that is the Ministery of the Gospel tels thee that that rage which the Devill uses against thee now is but Potestas data a temporary power given him for the present for if thy afflictions were altogether from the naturall malice and power of the Devill inherent in him that malice would never end nor thy affliction neither if God should leave all to him And therefore though those our afflictions be heavier which proceed ex potestate data when God exalts that power of the Devill which naturally he hath with new Commissions besides his Permission to use his naturall strength and naturall malice yet our deliverance is the nearer too because all these accessory and occasionall Commissions are for particular ends and are limited how far they shall extend how long they shall endure Here the potestas data the power which was given to these Angels was large it was generall for as it is in the former verse it was a power to hold the foure winds of the earth that the winde should not blow on the earth nor on the sea nor on any tree What this withholding of the winde signifies and the damnification of that is our next Consideration By the Land Venti is commonly understood all the Inhabitants of the Land by the Sea Ilanders and Sea-faring men halfe inhabitants of the Sea and by the Trees all those whom Persecution had driven away and planted in the wildernesse The hinderance of the use of the wind being taken by our Expositors to be a generall impediment of the increase of the earth and of commerce at Sea But this Book of the Revelation must not be so literally understood as that the Winds here should signifie meerly naturall winds there is more in this then so Thus much more That this withholding of the winds is a withholding of the preaching and passage of the Gospel which is the heaviest misery that can fall upon a Nation or upon a man because thereby by the misery of not hearing he loses all light and meanes of discerning his owne misery Now as all the parts and the style and phrase of this Book is figurative and Metaphoricall so is it no unusuall Metaphor even in other Bookes of the Scripture too to call the Ministers and Preachers of Gods Word Cant. 4.16 by the name of winds Arise O North and come O South and blow on my Garden that the spices thereof may flow out hath alwayes been understood to be an invitation a compellation from Christ to his Ministers to dispense and convey salvation Psal 135.7 by his Gospel to all Nations And upon those words Producit ventos He bringeth winds out of his treasuries and Educit nubes He bringeth clouds from the ends of the earth Puto Praedicatores nubes ventos August sayes S. Augustine I think that the holy Ghost means both by his clouds and by his winds the Preachers of his Word the Ministers of the Gospel Nubes propter carnem ventos propter spiritum Clouds because their bodies are seen winds because their working is felt Nubes cernuntur venti sentiuntur as clouds they embrace the whole visible Church and are visible to it as winds they pierce into the invisible Church the soules of the true Saints of God and work though invisibly upon them Psal 18.10 So also those words God rode upon a Cherub and did fly He did fly upon the wings of the wind have been well interpreted of Gods being pleased to be carryed from Nation to Nation by the service of his Ministers Now this is the nature of this wind of the Spirit of God breathing in his Ministers Spirat ubi vult John 3.8 that it blowes where it lists and this is the malice of these evill Angels that it shall not doe so But this Angel which hath the seale of the living God that is the Ministery of the Gospel established by him shall keep the winds at their liberty And howsoever waking dreamers think of alterations and tolerations howsoever men that disguise their expectations with an outward conformity to us may think the time of declaring themselves growes on
to a particular consideration of the waight of his sins nor to a comparison betwixt his sin and the mercy of God yet he comes to a Miserere mei Domine To a sudden ejaculation O Lord be mercifull unto me how dare I doe this in the sight of my God It is much such an affection as is sometimes in a Felon taken in the manner or in a condemned person brought to execution One desires the Justice to be good to him and yet he sees not how he can Baile him the other desires the Sherife to be good to him and yet he knowes he must doe his Office A sinner desires God to have mercy upon him and yet he hath not descended to particular considerations requisite in that businesse But yet this spirituall Malefactor is in better case then the temporall are They desire them to be good to them who can doe them no good but God is still able and still ready to reprieve them and to put off the execution of his Judgements which execution were to take them out of this world under the guiltinesse and condemnation of unrepented sins And therefore as S. Basil sayes In scala prima ascensio est ab humo Basal He that makes but one step up a staire though he be not got much nearer to the top of the house yet he is got from the ground and delivered from the foulnesse and dampnesse of that so in this first step of prayer Miscrere mei O Lord be mercifull unto me though a man be not established in heaven yet he is stept from the world and the miserable comforters thereof He that committeth sin is of the Devill Yea he is of him in a direct line 1 Iohn 3.8 and in the nearest degree he is the Off-spring the son of the Devill Iohn 8.44 Ex patre vestro estis sayes Christ You are of your father the Devill Now Qui se à maligni patris affinitate submoverit He that withdraws himself from such a Fathers house though he be not presently come to meanes to live of himself Basil Quam feliciter patre suo orbatus How blessed how happy an Orphan is he become How much better shall he finde it to be fatherlesse in respect of such a father then masterlesse in respect of such a Lord as he turnes towards in this first ejaculation and generall application of the soule Miserere mei Have mercy upon me O Lord so much mercy as to looke graciously towards me And therefore as it was by infinite degrees a greater work to make earth of nothing then to make the best creatures of earth So in the regeneration of a sinner when he is to be made up a new creature his first beginning his first application of himselfe to God is the hardest matter But though he come not presently to looke God fully in the face nor conceive not presently an assurance of an established reconciliation a fulnesse of pardon a cancelling of all former debts in an instant Though hee dare not come to touch God and lay hold of himselfe by receiving his Body and Blood in the Sacrament yet the Euangelist calls thee to a contemplation of much comfort to thy soule in certaine preparatory accesses and approaches Behold sayes he that is Look up and consider thy patterne Behold Mat. 9.20 a woman diseased came behinde Christ and touched the hem of his garment for she said in her self If I may but touch the hem of his garment onely I shall be whole She knew there was vertue to come out of his Body and she came as neare that as she durst she had a desire to speake but she went no farther but to speak to her selfe she said to her selfe sayes that Gospel if I may but touch c. But Christ Jesus supplied all performed all on his part abundantly Presently he turned about sayes the Text And this was not a transitory glance but a full sight and exhibiting of himselfe to the fruition of her eye that she might see him He saw her sayes S. Matthew Her he did not direct himselfe upon others and leave out her And then hee spake to her to overcome her bashfulnesse he called her Daughter to overcome her diffidence He bids her be of comfort for she had met a more powerfull Physitian then those upon whom she had spent her time and her estate one that could cure her one that would one that had already for so he sayes presently Thy faith hath made thee whole From how little a spark how great a fire From how little a beginning how great a proceeding She desired but the hem of his garment and had all him Beloved in him his power and his goodnesse ended not in her Mat. 14.36 All that were sick were brought that they might but touch the hem of his garment and as many as touched it were made whole It was farre from a perfect faith that made them whole To have a desire to touch his garment seemes not was not much Neither was that desire that was alwayes in themselves but in them that brought them But yet come thou so farre Come or be content to be brought to be brought by example to be brought by a statute to be brought by curiosity come any way to touch the hem of his garment yea the hem of his servant of Aarons garment and thou shalt participate of the sweet ointment which flowes from the head to the hem of the garment Come to the house of God his Church Joyne with the Congregation of the Saints Love the body and love the garments too that is The Order the Discipline the Decency the Unity of the Church Love even the hem of the garment that that almost touches the ground that is Such Ceremonies as had a good use in their first institution for raising devotion and are freed and purged from that superstition which as a rust was growne upon them though they may seeme to touch the earth that is to have been induced by earthly men and not immediate institutions from God yet love that hem of that garment those outward assistances of devotion in the Church Bring with thee a disposition to incorporate thy selfe with Gods people here and though thou beest not yet come to a particular consideration of thy sins and of the remedies Though that spirit that possesses thee that sin that governes thee lie still a while and sleepe under all the thunders which wee denounce from this place so that for a while thou beest not moved nor affected with all that is said yet Appropinquas nescis as S. Augustine said when he came onely out of curiosity to heare S. Ambrose preach at Milan Thou doest come nearer and nearer to God though thou discerne it not and at one time or other this blessed exorcisme this holy Charme this Ordinance of God the word of God in the mouth of his servant shall provoke and awaken that spirit of security in
came to put a war upon us The zeale of his glory and the course of this world fight against one another It is not against all warre nay it is not against all victory that David prayes He cannot hope that he should be overcome by no Tentations but against such a war and such a victory as should bring him to servility and bondage to sinne That sin entring by Conquest upon him should governe as a tyran over him against such a sicknesse as should induce a consumption it is that he directs this prayer Sana me Domine Not Lord make me impeccable but Lord make me penitent and then heale me And he comes not to take physick upon wantonnesse but because the disease is violent because the accidents are vehement so vehement so violent as that it hath pierced Ad ossa and Ad animam My bones are vexed and my soule is sore troubled Therefore heale me which is the Reason upon which he grounds this second petition Heale me because my bones are vexed c. We must necessarily insist a little upon these termes Ossa The Bones The Soule The Trouble or Vexation First Ossa Bones We know in the naturall and ordinary acceptation what they are They are these Beames and Timbers and Rafters of these Tabernacles these Temples of the Holy Ghost these bodies of ours But Immanebimus nativae significationi sayes S. Basil Shall we dwell upon the native and naturall signification of these Bones Et intelligentia passim obvia contenti erimus Shall we who have our conversation in heaven finde no more in these Bones then an earthly a worldly a naturall man would doe By S. Basils example we may boldly proceed farther Membra etiam animae sunt Esay 42. sayes he The soule hath her limbs as well as the body Surdi audite caeci aspicite sayes God in Esay If their soules had not eares and eyes the blinde could not see the deafe could not heare and yet God cals upon the deafe and blinde to heare and see As S. Paul sayes to the Ephesians The eyes of your understanding being enlightned so David sayes Psal 3.7 Dentes peccatorum contrivisti Thou hast broken the teeth That is the pride and the power the venom and malignity of the wicked Membra etiam animae sunt The soule hath her Bones too and here Davids Bones were the strongest powers and faculties of his soule and the best actions and operations of those faculties and yet they were shaken For this hereditary sicknesse Originall sinne prevayles so far upon us that upon our good dayes we have some grudgings of that Fever Even in our best actions we have some of the leaven of that sinne So that if we goe about to comfort our selves with some dispositions to Gods glory which we finde in our selves with some sparks of love to his precepts and his commandements with some good strength of faith with some measure of good works yea with having something for the Name and glory of Christ Jesus yet if we consider what humane and corrupt affections have been mingled in all these Conturbabuntur ossa our Bones will be troubled even those that appeared to be strong works and likely to hold out will need a reparation an exclamation Sana me Domine O Lord heale these too or els these are as weake as the worst Ossa non dolent The Bones themselves have no sense they feele no paine We need not say That those good works themselves which we doe have in their nature the nature of sinne That every good worke considered alone and in the substance of the act it selfe is sinne But membranae dolent Those little membrans those filmes those thin skins that cover and that line some bones are very sensible of paine and of any vexation Though in the nature of the worke it selfe the worke be not sinne yet in those circumstances that invest and involve the worke in those things which we mingle with the worke whether desire of glory towards men or opinion of merit towards God Whensoever those bones those best actions come to the examination of a tender and a diligent Conscience Si ossa non dolent membranae dolent If the worke be not sinfull the circumstances are and howsoever they may be conceived to be strong as they are Ossa Bones works in a morall consideration good yet as they are Ossa mea sayes David as they are My bones such good works as taste of my ill corruptions so long they are vexed and troubled and cannot stand upright nor appeare with any confidence in the sight of God Thus far then first David needed this sanation this health that he prayes for Anima that his best actions were corrupt But the corruption went farther to the very roote and fountaine of those actions Ad ipsam animam His very soule was sore vexed It is true that as this word Anima the soule is sometimes taken in the Scriptures this may seeme to goe no farther then the former no more that his soule was vexed then that his bones were so for Anima in many places is but Animalis Homo The soule signifies but the naturall man And so opponitur spiritui The soule is not onely said to be a diverse thing but a contrary thing to the Spirit When the Apostle sayes to the Thessalonians 1 Thes ult 23. Now the very God of peace sanctifie you throughout that your whole spirit and soule and body may be kept blamelesse unto the comming of our Lord Iesus Christ And where the same Apostle sayes to the Hebrews The word of God divideth asunder the soule and the spirit Heb. 4.12 here is a difference put between corrupt nature and the working of the Spirit of God the Holy Ghost in man for here the soule is taken for Animalis home The naturall man and the Spirit is taken for the Spirit of God But besides this these two words Soule and Spirit are sometimes used by the Fathers in a sense diverse from one another and as different things and yet still as parts of one and the same man Man is said by them not onely to have a body and a soule but to have a soule and a spirit not as Spirit is the Spirit of God and so an extrinsecall thing but as Spirit is a constitutive part of the naturall man So in particular amongst many Gregory Nyssen takes the Body to be spoken De nutribili The flesh and bloud of man And the soule De sensibili The operation of the senses And the Spirit De Intellectuali The Intellectuall the reasonable faculties of man That in the body Man is conformed to Plants that have no sense In the soule to Beasts that have no reason In the spirit to Angels But so The Spirit is but the same thing with that which now we doe ordinarily account the soule to be for we make account that the Image of God is imprinted in the soule and that gives him his
conformity to Angels But divers others of the Ancients have taken Soule and Spirit for different things even in the Intellectuall part of man somewhat obscurely I confesse and as some venture to say unnecessarily if not dangerously It troubled S. Hierome sometimes Ad Hedibiam l. 12. Epist 150 how to understand the word Spirit in man but he takes the easiest way he dispatches himselfe of it as fast as he could that is to speake of it onely as it was used in the Scriptures Famosa quaestio sayes he sed brevi sermone tractanda It is a question often disputed but may be shortly determined Idem spiritus hic ac in iis verbis Nolite extinguere spiritum When we heare of the Spirit in a Man in Scriptures we must understand it of the gifts of the Spirit for so fully to the same purpose sayes S. Chrysostome Spiritus est charisma spiritus The Spirit is the working of the Spirit The gifts of the Spirit and so when we heare The Spirit was vexed The Spirit was quenched still it is to be understood The gifts of the Spirit And so as they restraine the signification of Spirit to those gifts onely though the word do indeed in many places require a larger extension so do many restraine this word in our text The Soule onely Ad sensum to the sensitive faculties of the soule that is onely to the paine and anguish that his body suffered But so far at least David had gone in that which he said before My bones are vexed Now Ingravescit morbus The disease festers beyond the bone even into the marrow it selfe His Bones were those best actions that he had produced and he saw in that Contemplation that for all that he had done he was still at best but an unprofitable servant if not a rebellious enemy But then when he considers his whole soule and all that ever it can do he sees all the rest will be no better The poyson he sees is in the fountaine the Canker in the roote the rancor the venom in the soule it selfe Corpus instrumentum anima ars ipsa sayes S. Basil The body and the senses are but the tooles and instruments that the soule works with But the soule is the art the science that directs those Instruments The faculties of the soule are the boughs that produce the fruits and the operations and particular acts of those faculties are the fruits but the soule is the roote of all And David sees that this art this science this soule can direct him or establish him in no good way That not onely the fruits his particular acts nor onely the boughs and armes his severall faculties but the roote it selfe the soule it selfe was infected His bones are shaken he dares not stand upon the good he hath done his soule is so too he cannot hope for any good he shall do He hath no merit for the past he hath no free-will for the future that is his case This troubles his bones Turbata this troubles his soule this vexes them both for the word is all one in both places as our last Translators have observed and rendred it aright not vexed in one place and troubled in the other as our former Translators had it But in both places it is Bahal and Bahal imports a vehemence both in the intensnesse of it and in the suddennesse and inevitablenesse of it And therefore it signifies often Praecipitantiam A headlong downfall and irrecoverablenesse And often Evanescentiam an utter vanishing away and annihilation David whom we alwayes consider in the Psalmes not onely to speake literally of those miseries which were actually upon himselfe but prophetically too of such measures and exaltations of those miseries as would certainly fall upon them as did not seeke their sanation their recovery from the God of all health looking into all his actions they are the fruits and into all his faculties they are the boughs and into the root of all the soule it selfe considering what he had done what he could do he sees that as yet he had done no good he sees he should never be able to doe any His bones are troubled He hath no comfort in that which is growne up and past And his soule is sore troubled for to the trouble of the soule there is added in the Text that particle Valde It is a sore trouble that falls upon the soule A troubled spirit who can beare because he hath no hope in the future He was no surer for that which was to come then for that which was past But he that is all considered in that case which he proposes he comes as the word signifies ad praecipitantiam That all his strength can scarce keepe him from precipitation into despaire And he comes as the word signifies too ad Evanescentiam to an evaporating and a vanishing of his soule that is even to a renouncing and a detestation of his immortality and to a willingnesse to a desire that he might die the death of other Creatures which perish altogether and goe out as a Candle This is the trouble the sore trouble of his soule who is brought to an apprehension of Gods indignation for not performing Conditions required at his hands and of his inability to performe them and is not come to the contemplation of his mercy in supply thereof There is Turbatio Timoris Mat. 2.3 Psal 107.27 A trouble out of feare of danger in this world Herods trouble When the Magi brought word of another King Herod was troubled and all Ierusalem with him There is Turbatio confusionis The Mariners trouble in a tempest Their soule melteth for trouble Luk. 10.41 Luk. 1.29 sayes David There is Turbatio occupationis Martha's trouble Martha thou art troubled about many things sayes Christ There is Turbatio admirationis The blessed Virgins trouble When she saw the Angel she was troubled at his saying To contract this John 11.33 There is Turbatio compassionis Christs own trouble When he saw Mary weepe for her brother Lazarus he groaned in the spirit and was troubled in himselfe But in all these troubles Herods feare The Mariners irresolution Martha's multiplicity of businesse The blessed Virgins sudden amazement Our Saviours compassionate sorrow as they are in us worldly troubles so the world administers some means to extemiate and alleviate these troubles for feares are overcome and stormes are appeased and businesses are ended and wonders are understood and sorrows weare out But in this trouble of the bones and the soule in so deepe and sensible impressions of the anger of God looking at once upon the pravity the obliquity the malignity of all that I have done of all that I shall doe Man hath but one step between that state and despaire to stop upon to turne to the Author of all temporall and all spirituall health the Lord of life with Davids prayer Psal 51.10 Cor mundum crea Create a cleane heart within me
iniquity there is one Declinate one word that implies a withdrawing of our selves for that must be done not out of the world but out of that ill ayre we must not put our selves in danger nor in distance of a tentation but all the other words are words of a more active vehemence Amputate and Projicite it is Discedite and not Discedam a driving away and not a running away Wee proceed now in our second part 2 Part. to the reasons of Davids confidence and his opennesse and his publique declaration why David was content to be rid of all his company and it was because he had better he sayes The Lord had heard him and first He had heard vocem fletus the voice of his weeping Here is an admirable readinesse in God that heares a voyce in that which hath none They have described God by saying he is all eye an universall eye that pierceth into every darke corner but in darke corners there is something for him to see but he is all eare too and heares even the silent and speechlesse man and heares that in that man that makes no sound histeares When Hezekias wept Esay 38. he was turned to the wall perchance because he would not be seene and yet God bad the Prophet Esay tell him Vidi lacrymam though the text say Hezekias weptsore yet Vidit lacrymam God saw every single teare his first teare and was affected with that But yet this is more strange God heard his teares And therefore the weeping of a penitent sinner Gregor is not improperly called Legatio lacrymarum An embassage of teares To Embassadours belongs an audience and to these Embassages God gives a gracious audience Abyssus abyssum invocat One depth cals upon another Psal 43.7 And so doth one kinde of teares call upon one another Teares of sorrow call upon teares of joy and all call upon God and bring him to that ready hearing which is implied in the words of this text Shamang a word of that largenesse in the Scriptures that sometimes in the Translation of the Septuagint it signifies hearing Shamang is audit God gives eare to our teares sometimes it is beleeving Shamang is Credit God gives faith and credit to our teares sometimes it is Affecting Shamang is Miseretur God hath mercy upon us for our teares sometimes it is Effecting Shamang is Respondet God answers the petition of our teares and sometimes it is Publication Shamang is Divulgat God declares and manifests to others by his blessings upon us the pleasure that he takes in our holy and repentant teares And therefore Lacrymae foenus sayes S. Basil Teares are that usury by which the joyes of Heaven are multiplied unto us the preventing Grace and the free mercy of God is our stock and principall but the Acts of obedience and mortification fasting and praying and weeping are Foenus sayes that blessed Father the interest and the increase of our holy joy That which we intend in all this is that when our heart is well disposed toward God God sees our prayers as they are comming in the way before they have any voyce in our words When Christ came to Lazarus house before Mary had asked any thing at his hands as soone as she had wept Christ was affected He groaned in the spirit Iohn 11. he was troubled and he wept too and he proceeded to the raysing of Lazarus before shee asked him her eyes were his glasse and he saw her desire in her tears There is a kind of simplicity in teares which God harkens to and beleeves Rom. 8.26 We know not what we should pray for as we ought Quid nescimus orationem dominicam Can we not say the Lords Prayer sayes S. Augustin Yes we can say that but Nescimus tribulationem prodesse sayes he we doe not know the benefit that is to be made of tribulation and tentation Et petimus liberari ab omni malo we pray to be delivered from all evill and we meane all tribulation and all tentation as though all they were alwaies evill but in that there may be much error The sons of Zebedee prayed but ambitionsly and were not heard Mat. 20.22 2 Cor. 12.8 S. Paul prayed for the taking away of the provocation of the flesh but inconsiderately and mist the Apostles made a request for fire against the Samaritans but uncharitably and were reproved But when Iehosaphat was come to that perplexity by the Moabites 2 Chro. 20.12 that he knew not what to doe nor what to say Hoc solum residui habemus sayes he ut oculos nostros dirigamus ad te This we can doe and we need doe no more wee can turne our eyes to thee Now whether he directed those eyes in looking to him or in weeping to him God heares the voyce of our looks God heares the voyce of our teares sometimes better then the voyce of our words for it is the Spirit it selfe that makes intercession for us Rom. 8.26 Gemitibus inenarrabilibus In those groanes and so in those teares which we cannot utter Ineloquacibus as Tertullian reads that place devout and simple teares which cannot speak speake aloud in the eares of God nay teares which we cannot utter not onely not utter the force of the teares but not utter the very teares themselves As God sees the water in the spring in the veines of the earth before it bubble upon the face of the earth so God sees teares in the heart of a man before they blubber his face God heares the teares of that sorrowfull soule which for sorrow cannot shed teares From this casting up of the eyes and powring out the sorrow of the heart at the eyes Supplicatio at least opening God a window through which he may see a wet heart through a dry eye from these overtures of repentance which are as those unperfect sounds of words which Parents delight in in their Children before they speake plaine a penitent sinner comes to a verball and a more expresse prayer To these prayers these vocall and verball prayers from David God had given eare and from this hearing of those prayers was David come to this thankfull confidence The Lord hath heard the Lord will heare Now Beloved this prayer which David speaks of here which our first translation calls a Petition is very properly rendred in our second translation a Supplication for Supplications were à Suppliciis Supplications amongst the Gentiles were such sacrifices as were made to the gods out of confiscations out of the goods of those men upon whom the State had inflicted any pecuniary or capitall punishment Supplicationes à Suppliciis and therefore this prayer which David made to God when his hand was upon him in that heavy correction and calamitie which occasioned this Psalme is truly and properly called a Supplication that is a Prayer or Petition that proceeds from suffering And if God have heard his supplication if God have regarded him
swore so many a man prayes and does not remember his own prayer As a Clock gives a warning before it strikes and then there remains a sound and a tingling of the bell after it hath stricken so a precedent meditation and a subsequent rumination make the prayer a prayer I must think before what I will aske and consider againe what I have askt and upon this dividing the hoofe and chewing the cud David avowes to his own conscience his whole action even to this consummation thereof Let mine enemies be ashamed c. Now these words whether we consider the naturall signification of the words Impreeatoria or the authority of those men who have been Expositors upon them may be understood either way either to be Imprecatoria words of Imprecation that David in the Spirit of anguish wishes that these things might fall upon his enemies or els Praedictoria words of Prediction that David in the spirit of Prophecy pronounces that these things shall fall upon them If they be Imprecatoria words spoken out of his wish and desire then they have in them the nature of a curse And because Lyra takes them to be so a curse he referres the words Ad Daemones To the Devill That herein David seconds Gods malediction upon the Serpent and curses the Devill as the occasioner and first mover of all these calamities and sayes of them Let all our enemies be ashamed and sore vexed c. Others referre these words to the first Christian times and the persecutions then and so to be a malediction a curse upon the Jewes and upon the Romans who persecuted the Primitive Church then Let them be ashamed c. And then Gregory Nyssen referres these words to more domesticall and intrinsicke enemies to Davids owne concupiscences and the rebellions of his owne lusts Let those enemies be ashamed c. For all those who understand these words to be a curse a malediction are loath to admit that David did curse his enemies meerly out of a respect of those calamities which they had inflicted upon him And that is a safe ground no man may curse another in contemplation of himselfe onely if onely himselfe be concerned in the case And when it concernes the glory of God our imprecations our maledictions upon the persons must not have their principall relation as to Gods enemies but as to Gods glory our end must be that God may have his glory not that they may have their punishment And therefore how vehement soever David seeme in this Imprecation and though he be more vehement in another place Let them be confounded and troubled for ever yea let them be put to shame Psal 83.17 and perish yet that perishing is but a perishing of their purposes let their plots perish let their malignity against thy Church be frustrated for so he expresses himselfe in the verse immediately before Fill their faces with shame but why and how That they may seeke thy Name O Lord that was Davids end even in the curse David wishes them no ill but for their good no worse to Gods enemies but that they might become his friends The rule is good which out of his moderation S. Augustine gives that in all Inquisitions and Executions in matters of Religion when it is meerly for Religion without sedition Sint qui poeniteant Let the men remaine alive or else how can they repent So in all Imprecations in all hard wishes even upon Gods enemies Sint qui convertantur Let the men remaine that they may be capable of conversion wish them not so ill as that God can shew no mercy to them for so the ill wish falls upon God himselfe if it preclude his way of mercy upon that ill man In no case must the curse be directed upon the person for when in the next Psalme to this David seemes passionate when hee asks that of God there which he desires God to forbear in the beginning of this Psalme when his Ne arguas in ira O Lord rebuke not in thine anger is turned to a Surge Domine in ira Arise O Lord in thine anger S. Augustine begins to wonder Quid illum quem perfectum dicimus ad iram provocat Deum Would David provoke God who is all sweetnesse and mildnesse to anger against any man No not against any man but Diaboli possessio peccator Every sinner is a slave to his beloved sin and therefore Misericors or at adver sus cum quitanque or at How bitterly soever I curse that sin yet I pray for that sinner David would have God angry with the Tyran not with the Slave that is oppressed with the sin not with the soule that is inthralled to it And so as the words may be a curse a malediction in Davids mouth we may take them into our mouth too and say Let those enemies be ashamed c. If this then were an Imprecation a malediction yet it was Medicinall and had Rationem boni a charitable tincture and nature in it he wished the men no harm as men But it is rather Pradictorium Praedictoria a Propheticall vehemence that if they will take no knowledge of Gods declaring himselfe in the protection of his servants if they would not consider that God had heard and would heare had rescued and would rescue his children but would continue their opposition against him heavy judgements would certainly fall upon them Their punishment should be certaine but the effect should be uncertaine for God only knowes whether his correction shall work upon his enemies to their mollifying or to their obduration Those bitter and waighty imprecations which David hath heaped together against Iudas Psal 109 Acts 1.16 seeme to be direct imprecations and yet S. Peter himselfe calls them Prophesies Oportet impleri Scripturam They were done sayes he that the Scripture might be fulfilled Not that David in his owne heart did wish all that upon Iudas but only so as fore-seeing in the Spirit of Prophesying that those things should fall upon him he concurred with the purpose of God therein and so farre as he saw it to be the will of God he made it his will and his wish And so have all those judgements which we denounce upon sinners the nature of Prophesies in them when we reade in the Church that Commination Cursed is the Idolater This may fall upon some of our owne kindred and Cursed is he that curseth Father or Mother This may fall upon some of our owne children and Cursed is he that perverteth judgement This may fall upon some powerfull Persons that we may have a dependance upon and upon these we doe not wish that Gods vengeance should fall yet we Prophesie and denounce justly that upon such such vengeances will fall and then all Prophesies of that kinde are alwaies conditionall they are conditionall if we consider any Decree in God they must be conditionall in all our denunciations if you repent they shall not fall upon you if
so you have all that belongs to the Master and his manner of teaching David Catechising And all that belongs to the Doctrine and the Catechisme Blessednesse That is Reconciliation to God notified in those three acts of his mercy And all that belongs to the Disciple that is to be Catechized A docile an humble a sincere heart In whose spirit there is no guile And to these particulars in their order thus proposed we shall now passe That then which constitutes our first part is this That David 1. Part. Catechismus then whom this world never had a greater Master for the next amongst the sonnes of men delivers himselfe by way of Catechising of fundamentall and easie teaching As we say justly and confidently That of all Rhetoricall and Poeticall figures that fall into any Art we are able to produce higher straines and livelier examples out of the Scriptures then out of all the Orators and Poets in the world yet we reade not we preach not the Scriptures for that use to magnifie their Eloquence So in Davids Psalmes we finde abundant impressions and testimonies of his knowledge in all arts and all kinds of learning but that is not it which he proposes to us Davids last words are and in that Davids holy glory was placed That he was not onely the sweet Psalmist That he had an harmonious a melodious 2 Sam. 23.1 a charming a powerfull way of entring into the soule and working upon the affections of men but he was the sweet Psalmist of Israel He employed his faculties for the conveying of the God of Israel into the Israel of God Ver. 2. The spirit of the Lord spake by me and his word was in my tongue Not the spirit of Rhetorique nor the spirit of Poetry Ver. 3. nor the spirit of Mathematiques and Demonstration But The spirit of the Lord the Rock of Israel spake by me sayes he He boasts not that he had delivered himselfe in strong or deepe or mysterious Arts that was not his Rock but his Rock was the Rock of Israel His way was to establish the Church of God upon fundamentall Doctrines Moses was learned in all the wisedome of the Egyptians sayes Stephen Likely to be so Act. 7.22 because being adopted by the Kings daughter he had an extraordinary education Exod. 2.10 And likely also because he brought so good naturall faculties for his Masters to worke upon Vt Reminisci potiùs videretur quà m discere Philo. That whatsoever any Master proposed unto him he rather seemed to remember it then then to learne it but then And yet in Moses books we meet no great testimonies or deepe impressions of these learnings in Moses He had as S. Ambrose notes well more occasions to speak of Naturall philosophy in the Creation of the world and of the more secret and reserved and remote corners of Nature in those counterfeitings of Miracles in Pharaohs Court then he hath laid hold of So Nebuchadnezzar appointed his Officers that they should furnish his Court Dan. 1.4 with some young Gentlemen of good bloud and families of the Jews And as it is added there well favoured youths in whom there was no blemish skilfull in all wisedome and cunning in knowledge and understanding science And then farther To be taught the tongue and the learning of the Chaldeans And Daniel was one of these and no doubt a great Proficient in all these and yet Daniel seemes not to make any great shew of these learnings in his writings S. Paul was in a higher Pedagogy and another manner of University then all this Caught up into the third heavens into Paradise as he sayes 2 Cor. 12.2 and there he learnt much but as he sayes too such things as it was not lawfull to utter That is It fell not within the lawes of preaching to publish them So that not onely some learning in humanity as in Moses and Daniels case but some points of Divinity as in S. Pauls case may be unfit to be preached Not that a Divine should be ignorant of either either ornaments of humane or mysteries of divine knowledge For sayes S. Augustine Every man that comes from Egypt must bring some of the Egyptians goods with him Quanto auro exivit suffarcinatus Cyprianus sayes he How much of the Egyptian gold and goods brought Cyprian and Lactantius and Optatus and Hilary out of Egypt That is what a treasure of learning gathered when they were of the Gentils brought they from thence to the advancing of Christianity when they applied themselves to it S. Augustine confesses that the reading of Cicero's Hortensius Mutavit affectum meum L. 3. c. 4. began in him a Conversion from the world Et ad teipsum Domine mutavit preces meas That booke sayes he converted me to more fervent prayers to thee my God Et surgere jam coeperam ut ad te redirem By that help I rose and came towards thee And so Iustin Martyr had his Initiation and beginning of his Conversion from reading some passages in Plato S. Basil expresses it well They that will dye a perfect colour dip it in some lesse perfect colour before To be a good Divine requires humane knowledge and so does it of all the Mysteries of Divinity too because as there are Devils that will not be cast out but by Fasting and Prayer so there are humours that undervalue men that lacke these helps But our Congregations are not made of such persons not of meere naturall men that must be converted out of Aristotle and by Cicero's words nor of Arians that require new proofes for the Trinity nor Pelagians that must be pressed with new discoveries of Gods Predestination but persons imbracing with a thankfull acquiescence therein Doctrines necessary for the salvation of their soules in the world to come and the exaltation of their Devotion in this This way David calls his a Catechisme And let not the greatest Doctor think it unworthy of him to Catechize thus nor the learnedest hearer to be thus catechized Christ enwraps the greatest Doctors in his Person and in his practise when he sayes Sinite parvulos Suffer little children to come unto me and we do not suffer them to come unto us if when they come we doe not speak to their understanding and to their edification for that is but an absent presence when they heare and profit not And Christ enwraps the learnedest hearers in the persons of his owne Disciples when he sayes Except yee become as these little children yee cannot enter into the Kingdome of heaven Except you nourish your selves with Catechisticall and Fundamentall Doctrines you are not in a wholesome diet Now in this Catechisme the first stone that David layes and that that supports all the first object that David presents and that that directs to all is Blessednesse Davids Catechisme Blessed is the man Philosophers could never bring us to the knowledge 2 Part. Beatitudo what this
all timorousnesse that my Transgressions are not forgiven or my sins not covered In the first Act we consider God the Father to have wrought He proposed he decreed he accepted too a sacrifice for all mankind in the death of Christ In the second The Covering of sinnes we consider God the Sonne to worke Incubare Ecclesiae He sits upon his Church as a Hen upon her Eggs He covers all our sinnes whom he hath gathered into that body with spreading himselfe and his merits upon us all there In this third The not Imputing of Iniquity we consider God the Holy Ghost to worke and as the Spirit of Consolation to blow away all scruples all diffidences and to establish an assurance in the Conscience The Lord imputes not that is the Spirit of the Lord The Lord the Spirit The Holy Ghost suffers not me to impute to my selfe those sinnes which I have truly repented The over-tendernesse of a bruised and a faint conscience may impute sinne to it selfe when it is discharged And a seared and obdurate Conscience may impute none when it abounds If the Holy Ghost work he rectifies both and if God doe inflict punishments according to the signification of this word Gnavah after our Repentance and the seals of our Reconciliation yet he suffers us not to impute those sinnes to our selves or to repute those corrections punishments as though he had not forgiven them or as though he came to an execution after a pardon but that they are laid upon us medicinally and by way of prevention and precaution against his future displeasure This is that Pax Conscientiae The peace of Conscience when there is not one sword drawne This is that Serenitas Conscientiae The Meridionall brightnesse of the Conscience when there is not one Cloud in our sky I shall not hope that Originall sin shall not be imputed but feare that Actuall sin may not hope that my dumbe sins shall not but my crying sins may not hope that my apparant sins which have therefore induced in me a particular sense of them shall not but my secret sins sins that I am not able to returne and represent to mine owne memory may for this Non Imputabit hath no limitation God shall suffer the Conscience thus rectified to terrifie it selfe with nothing which is also farther extended in the Originall where it is not Non Imputat but Non Imputabit Though after all this we doe fall into the same or other sins yet we shall know our way and evermore have our Consolation in this That as God hath forgiven our transgression in taking the sins of all mankinde upon himselfe for he hath redeemed us and left out Angels And as he hath covered our sin that is provided us the Word and Sacraments and cast off the Jews and left out the Heathen So he will never Impute mine Iniquity never suffer it to terrifie my Conscience Not now when his Judgements denounced by his Minister call me to him here Nor hereafter when the last bell shall call me to him into the grave Nor at last when the Angels Trumpets shall call me to him from the dust in the Resurrection But that as all mankinde hath a Blessednesse in Christs taking our sins which was the first Article in this Catechisme And all the Christian Church a Blessednesse in covering our sins which was the second So I may finde this Blessednesse in this worke of the Holy Ghost not to Impute that is not to suspect that God imputes any repented sin unto me or reserves any thing to lay to my charge at the last day which I have prayed may be and therefore hoped hath been forgiven before But then after these three parts which we have now in our Order proposed at first passed through That David applies himselfe to us in the most convenient way by the way of Catechisme and instruction in fundamentall things And then that he lays for his foundation of all Beatitude Blessednesse Happinesse which cannot be had in the consummation and perfection thereof but in the next world But yet in the third place gives us an inchoation an earnest an evidence of this future and consummate Blessednesse in bringing us faithfully to beleeve That Christ dyed sufficiently for all the world That Christ offers the application of all this to all the Christian Church That the Holy Ghost seals an assurance thereof to every particular Conscience well rectified After all this done thus largely on Gods part there remains something to be done on ours that may make all this effectuall upon us Vt non sit dolus in spiritu That there be no guile in our spirit which is our fourth part and Conclusion of all Of all these fruits of this Blessednesse there is no other root but the goodnesse of God himselfe but yet they grow in no other ground then in that man 4. Part. Dolus In cujus spiritu non est dolus The Comment and interpretation of S. Paul Rom. 4.5 hath made the sense and meaning of this place cleare To him that worketh the reward is of debt but to him that beleeveth and worketh not his faith is counted for righteousnesse Even as David describeth the blessednesse of Man sayes the Apostle there and so proceeds with the very words of this Text. Doth the Apostle then in this Text exclude the Co-operation of Man Differs this proposition That the man in whom God imprints these beames of Blessednesse must be without guile in his spirit from those other propositions Si vis ingredi Mat. 19.17 If thou wilt enter into life keepe the Commandements And Maledictus qui non Cursed is he that performes not all Grows not the Blessednesse of this Text from the same roote as the Blessednesse in the 119. Psal ver 1. Blessed are they who walke in the way of the Lord Or doth Saint Paul take David to speake of any other Blessednesse in our Text then himselfe speaks of If through the Spirit yee mortifie the deeds of the body yee shall live Rom. 8.13 Doth S. Paul require nothing nothing out of this Text to be done by man Surely he does And these propositions are truly all one Tantùm credideris Onely beleeve and you shall be saved And Fac hoc vives Doe this and you shall be saved As it is truly all one purpose to say If you live you may walke and to say If you stretch out your legges you may walke To say Eat of this Tree and you shall recover and to say Eat of this fruit and you shall recover is all one To attribute an action to the next Cause or to the Cause of that Cause is to this purpose all one And therefore as God gave a Reformation to his Church in prospering that Doctrine That Justification was by faith onely so God give an unity to his Church in this Doctrine That no man is justified that works not for without works how much soever he magnifie his faith
the face of the whole Church of God even to the end of the world for so long these Records are to last he proposes himselfe for an Exemplary sinner for a sinfull Example and for a subject of Gods Indignation whilst he remained so When I kept silence and yet roared Thy hand lay heavy upon me and my moysture was turned into the drought of Summer And so we are come to our third Part He teaches by Example He proposes himselfe for the Example and of himselfe he confesses those particulars which constitute our Text. Three things he confesses in this Example 3 Part. First that it was he himselfe that was in doloso spiritu that had deceit in his spirit Quia tacuit because he held his tongue he disguised his sins he did not confesse them And yet in the midst of this silence of his God brought him Ad Rugitum to voyces of Roaring of Exclamation To a sense of paine or shame or losse so farre he had a voyce But still he was in silence for any matter of repentance Secondly he confesses a lamentable effect of this silence and this roaring Inveteraverunt ossa His bones were consumed waxen old and his moisture dried up and then he takes knowledge of the cause of all this calamity the waight of Gods heavy hand upon him And to this Confession he sets to that seale which is intended in the last word Selah First then David confesses his silence therefore it was a fault And he confesses it Silentium as an instance as an example of his being In doloso spiritu That there was deceit in his spirit as long as he was silent he thought to delude God to deceive God and this was the greatest fault If I be afraid of Gods power because I consider that he can destroy a sinner yet I have his will for my Buckler I remember that he would not the death of a sinner If I be afraid that his will may be otherwise bent for what can I tell whether it may not be his will to glorifie himselfe in surprizing me in my sins I have his Word for my Buckler Miserationes ejus super omnia opera ejus God does nothing but that his Mercy is supereminent in that work whatsoever But if I think to scape his knowledge by hiding my sins from him by my silence I am In doloso spiritu if I think to deceive God I deceive my selfe and there is no truth in me When we are to deale with fooles we must or we must not answer Christi Prov. 26.4.5 as they may receive profit or inconvenience by our answer or our silence Answer not a foole according to his foolishnesse lest thou be like him But yet in the next verse Answer a foole according to his foolishnesse lest he be wise in his own conceit But answer God alwaies Though he speak in the foolishnesse of preaching as himselfe calls it yet he speaks wisedome that is Peace to thy soule We are sure that there is a good silence for we have a Rule for it from Christ whose Actions are more then Examples for his Actions are Rules His patience wrought so that he would not speak his afflictions wrought so that he could not He was brought as a sheep to the slaughter and he was dumb Esay 59. Psal 22.15 There he would not speake My strength is dried up like a potsheard and my tongue cleaveth to my jawes and thou hast brought me into the dust of death sayes David in the Person of Christ and here he could not speak Here is a good silence in our Rule So is there also in Examples derived from that Rule Reverentiae Hab. 2. ult There is Silentium reverentiae A silence of reverence for respect of the presence The Lord is in his holy Temple let all the world keep silence before him When the Lord is working in his Temple in his Ordinances and Institutions let not the wisdome of all the world dispute why God instituted those Ordinances the foolishnesse of preaching or the simplicity of Sacraments in his Church Let not the wisedome of private men dispute why those whom God hath accepted as the representation of the Church those of whom Christ sayes Dic Ecclesiae Tell the Church have ordained these or these Ceremonies for Decency and Uniformity and advancing of Gods glory and mens Devotion in the Church Let all the earth be silent In Sacramentis The whole Church may change no Sacraments nor Articles of faith and let particular men be silent In Sacramentalibus in those things which the Church hath ordained for the better conveying and imprinting and advancing of those fundamentall mysteries for this silence of reverence which is an acquiescence in those things which God hath ordained immediately as Sacraments or Ministerially as other Rituall things in the Church David would not have complained of nor repented And to this may well be referred Silentium subjectionis Subjectionis 1 Cor. 14.34 1 Tim. 2.11 That silence which is a recognition a testimony of subjection Let the women keep silence in the Church for they ought to be subject And Let the women learne in silence with all subjection As farre as any just Commandement either expresly or tacitly reaches in injoyning silence we are bound to be silent In Morall seales of secrets not to discover those things which others upon confidence or for our counsell have trusted us withall In charitable seales not to discover those sins of others which are come to our particular knowledge but not by a judiciall way In religious seales not to discover those things which are delivered us in Confession except in cases excepted in that Canon In secrets delivered under these seales of Nature of Law of Ecclesiasticall Canons we are bound to be silent for this is Silentium subjectionis An evidence of our subjection to Superiours But since God hath made man with that distinctive property that he can speak and no other creature since God made the first man able to speak as soone as he was in the world since in the order of the Nazarites instituted in the old Testament though they forbore wine and outward care of their comelinesse in cutting their haire and otherwise yet they bound not themselves to any silence since in the other sects which grew up amongst the Jews Pharisees and Sadduces and Esseans amongst all their superfluous and superstitious austerities there was no inhibition of speaking and Communication since in the twilight between the Old and New Testament Luk. 1.20 that dumbnesse which was cast upon Zacharic was inflicted for a punishment upon him because hee beleeved not that that the Angel had said unto him we may be bold to say That if not that silence which is enjoyned in the Romane Church yet that silence which is practised amongst them for the concealing of Treasons and those silences which are imposed upon some of their Orders That the Carthusians may never speake
service Ecclus. 13.23 to Gods Angels to the Sonne of God Christ Jesus who is your High Priest and wee fellow-workmen with him in your salvation And as long as we can scape that Imputation Some man holdeth his tongue because he hath not to answer That either we know not what to say to a doubtfull conscience for our ignorance Ecclus. 20.6 or are afraid to reprehend a sinne because wee are guilty of that sinne our selves how farre States and Common-wealths may be silent in connivencies and forbearances is not our businesse now but for us the ministers of God Vaenobis si non evangelizemus Woe be unto us if we doe not preach the Gospel and we have no Gospel put into our hands nor into our mouths but a conditionall Gospel and therefore we doe not preach the Gospel except wee preach the Judgements belonging to the breach of those conditions A silence in that in us would fall under this complaint and confession Because I was silent these calamities fell upon me It becomes not us to thinke the worst of David Silentium malum that hee was fallen into the deepest degree of this silence and negligence of his duty to God But it becomes us well to consider that if David a man according to Gods heart had some degrees of this ill silence it is easie for us to have many For for the first degree wee have it and scarce discerne that we have it for our first silence is but an Omission a not doing of our religious duties or an unthankfulnes for Gods particular benefits Exod. 14.14 When Moses sayes to his people The Lord shall fight for you vos tacebit is And you shall hold your peace there Moses meanes you shall not need to speake the Lord will doe it for his owne glory you may be silent There it was a future thing But the Lord hath fought many battels for us He hath fought for our Church against Superstition for our land against Invasion for this City against Infection for every soule here against Presumption or else against Desperation Dominus pugnavit nos silemus The Lord hath fought for us and we never thank him A silence before a not praying hath not alwayes a fault in it because we are often ignorant of our owne necessities and ignorant of the dangers that hang over us but a silence after a benefit evidently received a dumbe Ingratitude is inexcusable There is another ill silence and an unnaturall one for it is a loud silence Pharisai It is a bragging of our good works It is the Pharisees silence when by boasting of his fastings and of his almes he forgot he silenced his sinnes This is the devils best Merchant By this Man the devill gets all for his ill deeds were his before and now by this boasting of them his good works become his too To contract this If we have overcome this inconsideration if we have undertaken some examination of our conscience yet one survey is not enough Psal 19.12 Delicta quis intelligit Who can understand his error How many circumstances in sin vary the very nature of the sin And then of how many coats and shels and super-edifications doth that sin which we thinke a single sin consist When we have passed many scrutinies many inquisitions of the conscience yet there is never roome for a silence we can never get beyond the necessity of that Petition Ab eccultis Lord cleanse me from my secret sins we shall ever be guilty of sins which we shall forget not onely because they are so little but because they are so great That which should be compunction will be consternation and the anguish which out of a naturall tendernesse of conscience we shall have at the first entring into those sins will make us dispute on the sins side and for some present ease and to give our heavy soule breath we will finde excuses for them and at last slide and weare into a customary practise of them and though wee cannot be ignorant that we doe them yet wee shall be ignorant that they are sins but rather make them things indifferent or recreations necessary to maintaine a cheerefulnesse and so to sin on for feare of dispairing in our sins and we shall never be able to shut our mouths against that Petition Aboccultis for though the sin be manifest the various circumstances that aggravate the sin will be secret And properly this was Davids silence Silentium Davidis He confesses his silence to have been Ex dolese spiritu Out of a spirit in which was deceit And David did not hope directly and determinately to deceive God But by endeavouring to hide his sin from other men and from his owne conscience he buried it deeper and deeper but still under more and more sins He silences his Adultery but he smothers it he buries it under a turfe of hypocrisie of dissimulation with Vriah that he might have gone home and covered his sin He silences this hypocrisie but that must have a larger turfe to cover it he buries it under the whole body of Vriah treacherously murdered He silences that murder but no turfe was large enough to cover that but the defeat of the whole army and after all the blaspheming of the name and power of the Lord of Hosts in the ruine of the army That sin which if he would have carried it upward towards God in Confession would have vanished away and evaporated by silencing by suppressing by burying multiplied as Corne buried in the earth multiplies into many Eares And though he might perchance for his farther punishment overcome the remembrance of the first sin he might have forgot the Adultery and feele no paine of that yet still being put to a new and new sin still the last sin that he did to cover the rest could not chuse but appeare to his conscience and call upon him for another sin to cover that Howsoever hee might forget last yeares sins yet yesterdayes sin or last nights sin will hardly be forgotten yet And therefore Hos 14.2 Tollite vobiscum verba sayes the Prophet O Israel returne unto the Lord But how Take unto you words and turne unto the Lord. Take unto you your words words of Confession Take unto you his word the words of his gracious promises breake your silence when God breaks his in the motions of his Spirit and God shall breake off his purpose of inflicting calamities upon you In the meane time Rugitus when David was not come so far but continued silent silent from Confession God suffers not David to enjoy the benefit of his silence though he continue his silence towards God yet God mingles Rugitum cum silentio for all his filence he comes to a voyce of roaring and howling when I was silent my roaring consumed me Theodor. so that here was a great noyse but no musique Now Theodoret calls this Rugitum compunctionis That
but Himselfe so as if they be lost he is lost How long will a Medall a piece of Coine lie in the water before the stampe be washed off and yet how soone is the Image of God of his patience his longanimity defaced in us by every billow every affliction But for the Saints of God it shall not be so Surely it shall not They shall stand against the waters Psal 11 43. And the Sea shall see it and fly and Iordan shall be turned backe And the world shall say What ayled thee O Sea that thou fleddest O Iordan that thou turnedst back For they that know not the power of the Almighty though they envy yet shall wonder and stand amazed at the deliverance of the righteous Sto pulso sayes God of himselfe I stand at the doore and knocke Rev. 3.22 God will not breake open doores to give thee a blessing as well as he loves thee and as well as he loves it but will have thee open to him much more will he keepe Tentations at the doore They shall not breake in upon thee except thou open This then was that which David elsewhere apprehended with feare The sorrowes of the grave compassed me about Psal 1â— 5. and the snares of death overtooke mee Here they were neare him but no worse Psal 69 15. This is that that hee prayes deliverance from Let not the water flood drowne mee neither let the deepe swallow me up And this is that God assures us all that are his Isâ—y 43.2 When thou passest through the waters I will bee with thee and through the floods that they doe not overflow thee Maintaine therefore a holy patience in all Gods visitations Accept your waters though they come in teares for hee that sends them Christ Jesus had his flood his inundation in Blood and whatsoever thou sufferest from him thou sufferest for him and glorifiest him in that constancy Upon those words Tres sunt There are three that beare witnesse That Spirit and water and blood Bernard S. Bernard taking water there by way of allusion for affliction saith Though the Spirit were witnesse enough without water or blood yet Vix aut nunquam inveniri arbitror Spiritum sine aqua sanguine we lack one of the seales of the Spirit if we lack Gods corrections We consider three waters in our blessed Saviour He wept over Jerusalem Doe thou so over thy finfull soule He sweat in the garden Doe thou so too in eating thy bread in the sweat of thy browes in labouring fincerely in thy Calling And then hee sent water and blood out of his side Argust being dead which was fons utriusque Sacramenti the spring head of both Sacraments Doe thou also refresh in thy soule the dignity which thou receivedst in the first Sacrament of Baptisme and thereby come worthily to the participation of the second and therein the holy Ghost shall give thee the seale of that security which he tenders to thee in this Text Non approximabunt How great water floods soever come they shall not come nigh thee not nigh that which is Thou that is thy faith thy soule and though it may swallow that by which thou art a man thy life it shall not shake that by which thou art a Christian thy Religion Amen SERM. LX. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 32.7 Thou art my hiding place Thou shalt preserve mee from trouble Thou shalt compasse me about with songs of deliverance AS Rhetorique is said to bee a fist extended and displayed into an open Hand And Logique a Hand recollected and contracted into a fist So the Church of God may be said to be a soule dilated and diffused into many Congregations and a soule may be said to be the Church contracted and condensed into one bosome So not onely the Canticle of Solomon is taken indifferently by the ancient and later Expositors by some for an Epithalamion and marriage Song betweene Christ and his Church by others for the celebration of the same union between every Christian soule and him but also many other places of Scripture have received such an indifferent interpretation and are left in suspence whether they be to be understood of the Church in generall or of particular soules And of this nature and number is this Text Thou art my hiding place c. For S. Hierom takes these words and the whole Psalme to be spoken collectively others distributively He in the person of the Church Hieron They of every or at least of some particular soules To examine their reasons is unnecessary and would bee tedious It will aske lesse time and afford more profit to consider the words both wayes In them therefore considered twice over wee shall see a threefold state of the Christian Church and a threefold mercy exhibited by God to every Christian soule First we shall see the Church under the clouds in her low estate in her obscurity in her inglorious state of contempt and persecution and yet then supported by an assurance that God overshadowed her Tu absconsio Tu latibulum Thou art my hiding place And in that first part wee shall consider the state of a timorous soule a soule that for feare of tentations dares scarce looke into the world or embrace a profession Secondly we shall see the Church emancipated enfranchised unfettered unmanacled delivered from her obscure and inglorious state and brought to splendor and beauty and peace blessing God in that acknowledgement Thou shalt preserveme from trouble And in that part wee shall consider the state of that soule exalted to a holy confidence and assurance that though she come into the world and partake of the dangers thereof in opening herselfe to such tentations as do necessarily and inseparably accompany every calling yet the Lord will preserve her from trouble And thirdly and lastly we shall see a kinde of Triumphant state in the Church in this world a holy exultation God shall compasse her with songs of deliverance In which part we shall also see the blessed state of that soule which is come not to a presumptuous security but to modest certainty of continuing in the same state still And these will bee our three parts in these words as they receive a publike accommodation to the Church and a more particular application to our selves Wee enter into these considerations with this observation 1 Part. That as God himselfe is eternall and cannot bee considered in the distinction of times so hath that language in which God hath spoken in his written word the Hebrew the least consideration of Time of any other language Evermore in expressing the mercies of God to man it is an indifferent thing to the holy Ghost whether he speak in the present or in the future or in the time that is past what mercies soever he hath given us he will give us over againe And whatsoever he hath done and will doe hee is alwayes ready to doe at
consider us study us And that with his eye which is the sharpest and most sensible organ and instrument soonest feeles if any thing be amisse and so inclines him quickly to rectifie us And so this third part is an Instruction De sperandis it hath evermore a relation to the future to the constancy and perseverance of Gods goodnesse towards us to the end and in the end he will guide us with his eye Except the eye of God can be put out we cannot be put out of his sight and his care So that both our fraight which we are to take in that is what we are to beleeve concerning God And the voyage which we are to make how we are to steere and governe our course that is our behaviour and conversation in the houshold of the faithfull And then the Haven to which we must goe that is our assurance of arriving at the heavenly Jerusalem are expressed in this Chart in this Map in this Instruction in this Text I will Instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt goe I will guide thee with mine eye And when you have done all this Beleeved aright and lived according to that beliefe and died according to that life in the last voyce Surgite you shall finde a Venite as soone as you are called from the dust of the grave you shall Enter into your Masters joy and be no more called servants but friends no more friends but sons no more sons but heires no more heires but coheires with the only Son of God no more coheires but Idem Spiritus The same Spirit with the Lord. First then 1. Part. Instruit the office which God by his blessed Spirit through us in his Church undertakes is to Instruct And this being done so by God himselfe God sending his Spirit his Spirit working in his Ministers his Ministers labouring in his Church it is strange that S. Paul speaking so in the name of God and his Spirit and his Ministers and his Church should be put to intreat his hearers To suffer a word of exhortation Yet he is Heb. 13.22 I besech yee brethren suffer a word of Exhortation And the strangenesse of the case is exalted in this that the word there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Solatii and so the Vulgat reads it and justly Vt sufferatis verbum solatii I bescech yee to suffer a word of Comfort What will yee heare willingly if yee doe not willingly heare words of Comfort With what shall we exercise your holy joy and chearfulnesse if even words of Comfort must exercise your patience And yet we must beseech you to suffer even our words of comfort for we can propose no true comfort unto you but such as carries some irkesomenesse some bitternesse with it we can create no true joy no true acquiescence in you without some exercise of your patience too We cannot promise you peace with God without a war in your selves nor reconciliation to him without falling out with your selves nor eternall joy in the next world without a solemne remorse for the sinfull abuses of this We cannot promise you a good to morrow without sending ye backe to the consideration of an ill yesterday for your hearing to day is not enough except ye repent yesterday But yet though with S. Paul we be put to beseech you Vt sufferatis That ye would suffer Instruction though we must sometimes exercise your patience yet it is but verbum instructionis a word of Instruction and though Instruction be Increpation for as the word is Solatium Comfort so we have told you it is it is Increpation too for all true comfort hath Increpation in it yet it may easily be suffered because it is but verbum but a word a word and away We would not dwell upon increpations and chidings and bitternesses we would pierce but so deepe as might make you search your wounds when you come home to your Chamber to bring you to a tendernesse there not to a palenesse or blushing here Wee never stay so long upon denouncing the judgements of God but that we would as faine as you be at an end of that Paragraph of that period of that point that we might come into a calme and into a Lee-shore and tell you of the mercies of God in Christ Jesus You may suffer Instruction though Instruction be increpation for it is but a word of instruction we have soone done and you may suffer them because they are but Verba not Verbera They are but words and not blowes It is not Traditio Satanae a delivering you up to Satan it is not the confusion of face nor consternation of spirit nor a jealousie and suspition of Gods good purpose upon you that we would induce by our Instruction though it be Increpation but onely a sense of your sins and of the Majesty of God violated by them and so to a better capacity of this Instruction which the Holy Ghost here presents In credendis in those things which you are bound to beleeve of which his first degree is Intelligere te faciam He will make ye understand he will worke upon your understanding for so much as we noted to you at first doth that word which we Translate here I will Instruct thee comprehend Oportet accedentem credere The Apostle seemes to make that our first step In intellectu Heb. 11.6 Hee that comes to God must beleeve So it is our first step to God To beleeve but there is a step towards God before it come to faith which is to understand God works first upon the understanding God proceeds in our conversion and regeneration as he did in our first Creation There man was nothing but God breathed not a soule into that nothing but of a clod of earth he made a body and into that body infused a soule Man in his Conversion is nothing does nothing His bodie is not verier dust in the grave till a Resurrection then his soule is dust in his body till a resuscitation by grace But then this grace does not worke upon this nothingnesse that is in man upon this meere privation but Grace finds out mans naturall faculties and exalts them to a capacity and a susciptiblenesse of the working thereof and so by the understanding infuses faith Therefore God begins his Instruction here at the understanding and he does not say at first Faciam te credere I will make thee to beleeve but Faciam te intelligere I will make thee understand That then being Gods Method To make us understand certainely those things which belong to our Salvation are not In-intelligibilia not In-intelligible un-understandable Tertul. un-conceiveavable things but the Articles of faith are discernible by Reason For though Reason cannot apprehend that a Virgin should have a Son or that God should be made Man and dye if we put our Reason primarily and immediately upon the Article single for so it is the object of faith
uncleannesses from which if they neglected to cleanse themselves by those ceremonies which were appropriated to them then those uncleannesses became sins and they were put to their sacrifices before they could be discharged of them Many levities many omissions many acts of infirmity might be prevented by consideration before or cleansed by consideration now if we did truly value the present grace that is alwayes offered us in these the Ordinances of God What sin can I be guilty of that is without example of mercy in that Gospel which is preached to me here But if you will not accept it when God offers it you can never have it so good cheape because hereafter you shall have this present sin of refusing that offer of grace added to your burthen Ezek. 24.13 Because I have purged thee thou wast not purged thou shalt not be purged any more til I have caused my fury to light upon thee But shall we be purged then Then when his fury in any calamity hath lighted upon us Is not this donec this untill such a donec as donec faciam Till I make thine cnemies thy footstoole Such a donec as the donec peperit shee was a Virgin Till shee brought forth her first sonne Is it not an everlasting donec That we shall not be purged till Gods Judgements fall upon us nor then neither Physicke may be ministred too late to worke and Judgements may fall too late to souple or entender the soule For as wee may die with that Physick in our stomach so may we be carried to the last Judgement with that former Judgement upon our shoulders And therefore our later Translation hath expressed it more fully Not that that fury shall light but shall rest upon us This cleansing therefore is that disposition which God by his grace infuses into us That we stand in the congregation and Communion of Saints capable of those mercies which God hath by his Ordinance annexed to these meetings That we may so feele at all times when we come hither such a working of his Hyssop such a benefit of his Ordinance as that we beleeve all our former sins to be so forgiven as that if God should translate us now this minute to another life this Dosis of this purging Hyssop received now had so wrought as that we should be assuredly translated into the Kingdome of heaven This cleansing applies to us those words of our Saviour My sonne be of good cheare thy sinnes are forgiven thee But yet there is a farther degree of cleanenesse expressed in Christs following words Goe and sin no more And that grace against relapses the gift of sanctification and perseverance is that that David askes in his other Petition Lava me Wash me and I shall be whiter then snow Here we proposed first the action Lava Wash me This is more then a sprinkling Lava A totall and intire washing More then being an ordinary partaker of the outward meanes The Word and Sacraments more then a temporary feeling of the benefit thereof in a present sense for it is a building up of habits of religious actions visible to others and it is a holy and firme confidence created in us by the Spirit of God that we shall keepe that building in reparation and goe forward with it to our lives end It is a washing like Naamans in Jordan to be iterated seaven times seaventy seaven times daily hourly all our life A washing begun in Baptisme pursued in sweat in the industry of a lawfull calling continued in teares for our deficiencies in the workes of our calling and perchance to bee consummated in blood at our deaths Not such a washing as the Washes have which are those sands that are overflowed with the Sea at every Tide and then lie dry but such a washing as the bottome of the Sea hath that is alwayes equally wet It is not a stillicidium a spout a showre a bucket powred out upon us when we come to Church a Sabbath-sanctification and no more but a water that enters into every office of our house and washes every action proceeding from every faculty of the soule And this is the washing A continuall succession of Grace working effectually to present Habits of religious acts and constituting a holy purpose of persevering in them that induces the Whitenesse the Candor the Dealbation that David begs here Lava Dealbabor The purging with Hyssope which we spoke of before Dealbabor which is the benefit which we have by being bred in a true Church delivers us from that rednesse which is in the earth of which wee are made from that guiltinesse which is by our naturall derivation from our Parents imprinted in us Baptisme doth much upon that but that that is not Red is not therefore White But this is our case Our first colour was white God made man righteous Our rednesse is from Adam and the more that rednesse is washed off 2 Cor. 7.1 the more we returne to our first whitenesse And this which is petitioned here is a washing of such perfection as cleanses us Ab omni inquinamento from all filthinesse of flesh and spirit Those inquinamenta which are ordinary are first in the flesh Concupiscence and Carnality Gal. 5.19 and those other of which the Apostle sayes The works of the flesh are manifest And in the spirit they are Murmuring Diffidence in God and such others But besides these as an over-diligent cleansing of the Body and additionall beauty of the Body is inquinamentum carnis one of S. Pauls filthinesses upon the flesh so an over purifying of the spirit in an uncharitable undervaluing of other men and in a schismaticall departing from the unity of the Church is Inquinamentum spiritus False beauties are a foulnesse of the body false purity is a foulnesse of the spirit But the washing that wee seeke cleanses us Ab omni inquinamento from all foulnesse of flesh and spirit All waters will not cleanse us nor all fires dry us so as wee may be cleane smoaky fires will not doe that I will poure cleane water upon you Ezek. 36.25 and you shall be cleane The Sunne produces sweat upon us and it dries us too Zeale cleanses us but it must be zeale impermixt as the Sun not mingled with our smoaky sooty factious affections Some Grammarians have noted the word Washing here to be derived from a word that signifies a Lambe we must be washed in the blood of the Lambe and we must be brought to the whitenesse the candor the simplicity of the Lambe no man is pure that thinks no man pure but himselfe And this whitenesse which is Sanctification in our selves and charitable interpretation of other men is exalted here to that Superlative Super Nivem Wash me and I shall be whiter then Snow Though your sins be as Scarlet Super nivem Esay 1.18 they shall be as white as snow Esay was an Euangelicall Prophet a propheticall Euangelist and speaks still
Cooke The other is a Physitian and though by bitter things provides for thy future health And such is the hony of Flatterers and such is the wormewood of better Counsellors I will not shake a Proverbe not the Ad Corvos That wee were better admit the Crowes that picke out our eyes after we are dead then Flatterers that blinde us whilst we live I cast justly upon others I take willingly upon my selfe the name of wicked if I blesse the covetous whom the Lord abhorreth or any other whom he hath declared to be odious to him But making my object goodnesse in that man and taking that goodnesse in that man to be a Candle set up by God in that Candlesticke God having engaged himselfe that that good man shall be praised I will be a Subsidy man so far so far pay Gods debts as to celebrate with condigne praise the goodnesse of that man for in that I doe as I should desire to be done to And in that I pay a debt to that man And in that I succour their weaknesse who as S. Gregory sayes when they heare another praised Gregâ—r Si non amore virtutis at delectatione laudis accenduntur At first for the love of Praise but after for the love of goodnesse it selfe are drawne to bee good Phil. 4.8 For when the Apostle had directed the Philippians upon things that were True and honest and just and purc and lovely and of a good report he ends all thus If there be any vertue and if there be any praise thinke on these things In those two sayes S. Augustine he divides all Vertue and Praise Vertue in our selves that may deserve Praise Praise towards others that may advance and propagate Vertue This is the retribution which God promises to all the upright in heart Gloriabuntur Laudabuntur They shall Glory they shall have they shall give praise And then it is so far from diminishing this Glory as that it infinitely exalts our consolation that God places this Retribution in the future Gloriabuntur If they doe not yet yet certainly they shall glory And if they doe now that glory shall not goe out still they shall they shall for ever glory In the Hebrew there is no Present tense In that language wherein God spake Futurum it could not be said The upright in heart Are praised Many times they are not But God speaks in the future first that he may still keepe his Children in an expectation and dependance upon him you shall be though you be not yet And then to establish them in an infallibility because he hath said it I know you are not yet but comfort your selves I have said it and it shall be As the Hebrew hath no Superlatives because God would keepe his Children within compasse and in moderate desires to content themselves with his measures though they be not great and though they be not heaped so considering what pressures and contempts and terrors the upright in heart are subject to it is a blessed reliefe That they have a future proposed unto them That they shall be praised That they shall be redeemed out of contempt This makes even the Expectation it selfe as sweet to them as the fruition would be This makes them that when David sayes Expecta viriliter Waite upon the Lord with a good courage Waite I say Psal 27.14 upon the Lord they doe not answer with the impatience of the Martyrs under the Altar Vsquequo How long Lord wilt thou defer it Rev. 6.10 Psal 40.1 Psal 52.9 But they answer in Davids owne words Expectans expectavi I have waited long And Expectabo nomen tuum still I will waite upon thy Name I will waite till the Lord come His kingdome come in the mean time His kingdome of Grace and Patience and for his Ease and his Deliverance and his Praise and his Glory to me let that come when he may be most glorified in the comming thereof Nay not onely the Expectation that is that that is expected shall be comfortable because it shall be infallible but that very present state that he is in shall be comfortable according to the first of our three Translations They that are true of heart shall be glad thereof Glad of that Glad that they are true of heart though their future retribution were never so far removed Nay though there were no future retribution in the case yet they shall finde comfort enough in their present Integrity Nay not onely their present state of Integrity but their present state of misery shall be comfortable to them for this very word of our Text Halal that is here translated Ioy and Glory and Praise in divers places of Scripture as Hebrew words have often such a transplantation signifies Ingloriousnesse and contempt and dejection of spirit Psal 75.4 Esa 44.25 Job 12.17 So that Ingloriousnesse and contempt and dejection of spirit may be a part of the retribution God may make Ingloriousnesse and Contempt and Dejection of spirit a greater blessing and benefit then Joy and Glory and Praise would have been and so reserve all this Glory and Praising to that time that David intends Psal 112.6 The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance Though they live and die contemptibly they shall be in an honorable remembrance even amongst men as long as men last and even when time shall be no more and men no more they shall have it in futuro aeterno where there shall be an everlasting present and an everlasting future there the upright in heart shall be praised and that for ever which is our conclusion of all If this word of our Text Halal shall signifie Ioy as the Service Booke Aeternum and the Geneva translation render it that may be somewhat towards enough which we had occasion to say of the Joyes of heaven in our Exercise upon the precedent Psalme when we say-led thorough that Hemispheare of Heaven by the breath of the Holy Ghost in handling those words Vnder the shadow of thy wings I will rejoyce So that of this signification of the word Gaudebunt in aeterno They shall rejoyce for ever we adde nothing now If the word shall signifie Glory as our last translation renders it consider with me That when that Glory which I shall receive in Heaven shall be of that exaltation as that my body shall invest the glory of a soule my body shall be like a soule like a spirit like an Angel of light in all endowments that glory it selfe can make that body capable of that body remaining still a true body when my body shall be like a soule there will be nothing left for my soule to be like but God himselfe 2 Pet. 1.4 1 Cor. 6.17 I shall be partaker of the Divine nature and the same Spirit with him Since the glory that I shall receive in body and in soule shall be such so exalted what shall that glory of God be which I shall
distempers both theirs that think That there are other things to be beleeved then are in the Scriptures and theirs that think That there are some things in the Scriptures which are not to bee beleeved For when our Saviour sayes Si quo minus If it were not so I would have told you he intends both this proposition I have told you all that is necessary to be beleeved and this also All that I have told you is necessary to bee beleeved so as I have told it you So that this excludes both that imaginary insufficiency of the Scriptures which some have ventured to averre for God shall never call Christian to account for any thing not notified in the Scriptures And it excludes also those imaginary Dolos bonos and fraudes pias which some have adventured to averre too That God should use holy Illusions holy deceits holy frauds and circumventions in his Scriptures and not intend in them that which he pretends by them This is his Rule Si quo minus If it were not so I would have told you If I have not told you so it is not so and if I have it is so as I have told you And in these two branches we shall determine the first part The Rule of Doctrines the Scripture The second part which is the particular Doctrine which Christ administers to his Disciples here will also derive and cleave it selfe into two branches For first wee shall inquire whether this proposition in our Text In my Fathers house are many Mansions give any ground or assistance or countenance to that pious opinion of a disparity and difference of degrees of Glory in the Saints in heaven And then if we finde the words of this Text to conduce nothing to that Doctrine wee shall consider the right use of the true and naturall the native and genuine the direct and literall and uncontrovertible sense of the words because in them Christ doth not say that in his Fathers house there are Divers Mansions divers for seat or lights or fashion or furniture but onely that there are Many and in that notion the Plurality the Multipliciry lies the Consolation First then 1 Part. for the first branch of our first part The generall Rule of Doctrines our Saviour Christ in these words involves an argument That hee hath told them all that was necessary Hee hath because the Scripture hath for all the Scriptures which were written before Christ and after Christ were written by one and the same Spirit his Spirit It might then make a good Probleme why they of the Romane Church not affording to the Scriptures that dignity which belongs to them are yet so vehement and make so hard shift to bring the books of other Authors into the ranke and nature and dignity of being Scriptures What matter is it whether their Maccabees or their Tobies be Scripture or no what get their Maccabees or their Tobies by being Scripture if the Scripture be not full enough or not plaine enough to bring me to salvation But since their intention and purpose their aime and their end is to under-value the Scriptures that thereby they may over-value their owne Traditions their way to that end may bee to put the name of Scriptures upon books of a lower value that so the unworthinesse of those additionall books may cast a diminution upon the Canonicall books themselves when they are made all one as in some forraigne States we have seene that when the Prince had a purpose to erect some new Order of Honour he would disgrace the old Orders by conferring and bestowing them upon unworthy and incapable persons But why doe we charge the Roman Church with this undervaluing of the Scriptures when as they pretend and that cannot well be denied them That they ascribe to all the books of Scripture this dignity That all that is in them is true It is true they doe so But this may be true of other Authors also and yet those Authors remaine prophane and secular Authors All may be true that Livy sayes and all that our Chronicles say may be true and yet our Chronicles nor Livy become Gospell for so much they themselves will confesse and acknowledge that all that our Church sayes is true that our Church affirmes no error and yet our Church must be a hereticall Church if any Church at all for all that Indeed it is but a faint but an illusory evidence or witnesse that pretends to cleare a point if though it speake nothing but truth yet it does not speake all the truth The Scriptures are our evidence for life or death Iohn 5.39 Search the Scriptures sayes Christ for in them ye thinke ye have eternall life Where ye thinke so is not ye thinke so but mistake the matter but ye thinke so is ye thinke so upon a well-grounded and rectified faith and assurance Now if this evidence the Scripture shall acquit me in one Article in my beliefe in God for I doe finde in the Scripture as much as they require of me to beleeve of the Father Son and Holy Ghost And then this evidence the Scripture shall condemne me in another Article The Catholique Church for I doe not finde so much in the Scripture as they require me to beleeve of their Catholique Church If the Scripture be sufficient to save me in one and not in the rest this is not onely a defective but an illusory evidence which though it speake truth yet does not speake all the truth Fratres sumus quare litigamus sayes S. Augustine Wee are all Brethren by one Father one Almighty God and one Mother one Catholique Church and then why do we goe to Law together At least why doe we not bring our Suits to an end Non intestatus mortuus est Pater sayes he Our Father is dead for Deut. 32.30 Is not he your Father that bought you is Moses question he that bought us with himselfe his blood his life is not dead intestate but hath left his Will and Testament and why should not that Testament decide the cause Silent Advocati Suspensus est populus Legant verba testamenti This that Father notes to be the end in other causes why not in this That the Counsell give over pleading That the people give over murmuring That the Judge cals for the words of the Will by that governs and according to that establishes his Judgement I would at last contentious men would leave wrangling and people to whom those things belonged not leave blowing of coales and that the words of the Will might try the cause since he that made the Will hath made it thus cleare Si quo minus If it were not thus I would have told you If there were more to be added then this or more clearnesse to bee added to this I would have told you In the fift of Matthew Christ puts a great many cases what others had told them Mat. 5. but he tels them that is not
it a Mysterie and a great mysterie yet he cals it a mysterie without controversie Without controversie great is the mysterie of God manifested in the flesh justified in the Spirit preached to the Gentiles beleeved in the world received into glory When he presents matter of consolation he would have it without controversie To establish a disconsolate soule there is alwaies Divinity enough that was never drawne into Controversie I would pray I finde the Spirit of God to dispose my heart and my tongue and mine eyes and hands and knees to pray Doe I doubt to whom I should pray To God or to the Saints That prayer to God alone was sufficient was never drawne into controversie I would have something to rely and settle and establish my assurance upon Doe I doubt whether upon Christ or mine owne or others merits That to rely upon Christ alone was sufficient was never drawne into Controversie At this time Christ disposed himselfe to comfort his Disciples in that wherein they needed comfort now their discomfort and their feare lay not in this whether there were different degrees of glory in Heaven but their feare was that Christ being gone and having taken Peter and none but him there should be no roome for them and thereupon Christ sayes Let not that trouble you for In my Fathers house are many mansions And so we have done with the former branch of this last part That it is piously done to beleeve these degrees of glory in Heaven That they have inconsiderately extended this probleme in the Roman Church That no Scriptures are so evident as to induce a necessity in it That this Scripture conduces not at all to it and therefore we passe to our last Consideration The right use of the right sense of these words First then Christ proposes in these words Consolation A worke Consolatio then which none is more divine nor more proper to God nor to those instruments whom he sends to worke upon the soules and consciences of others Who but my selfe can conceive the sweetnesse of that salutation when the Spirit of God sayes to me in a morning Go forth to day and preach and preach consolation preach peace preach mercy And spare my people spare that people whom I have redeemed with my precious Blood and be not angry with them for ever Do not wound them doe not grinde them do not astonish them with the bitternesse with the heavinesse with the sharpnesse with the consternation of my judgements David proposes to himselfe that he would Sing of mercy Psal 101.1 and of judgement but it is of mercy first and not of judgement at all otherwise then it will come into a song as joy and consolation is compatible with it It hath falne into disputation and admitted argument whether ever God inflicted punishments by his good Angels But that the good Angels the ministeriall Angels of the Church are properly his instruments for conveying mercy peace consolation never fell into question never admitted opposition How heartily God seemes to utter and how delightfully to insist upon that which he sayes in Esay Consolamini consolamini populum meum Comfort ye comfort ye my people Esay 40.1 And Loquimini ad cor Speake to the heart of Ierusalem and tell her Thine iniquities are pardoned How glad Christ seemes that he had it for him when he gives the sick man that comfort Fili confide My son be of good comfort thy sins are forgiven thee What a Coronation is our taking of Orders by which God makes us a Royall Priesthood And what an inthronization is the comming up into a Pulpit where God invests his servants with his Ordinance as with a Cloud and then presses that Cloud with a Vaesi non woe be unto thee if thou doe not preach and then enables him to preach peace mercy consolation to the whole Congregation That God should appeare in a Cloud upon the Mercy Seat as he promises Moses he will doe That from so poore a man as stands here Levit. 16.2 wrapped up in clouds of infirmity and in clouds of iniquity God should drop raine poure downe his dew and sweeten that dew with his honey and crust that honied dew into Manna and multiply that Manna into Gomers and fill those Gomers every day and give every particular man his Gomer give every soule in the Congregation consolation by me That when I call to God for grace here God should give me grace for grace Grace in a power to derive grace upon others and that this Oyle this Balsamum should flow to the hem of the garment even upon them that stand under me That when mine eyes looke up to Heaven the eyes of all should looke up upon me and God should open my mouth to give them meat in due season That I should not onely be able to say as Christ said to that poore soule Confide fili My son be of good comfort but Fratres Patres mei My Brethren and my Fathers nay Domini mei and Rex meus My Lords and my King be of good comfort your sins are forgiven you That God should seale to me that Patent Ite praedicate omni Creaturae Goe and preach the Gospell to every Creature be that creature what he will That if God lead me into a Congregation as into his Arke where there are but eight soules but a few disposed to a sense of his mercies and all the rest as in the Arke ignobler creatures and of brutall natures and affections That if I finde a licentious Goat a supplanting Fox an usurious Wolfe an ambitious Lion yet to that creature to every creature I should preach the Gospel of peace and consolation and offer these creatures a Metamorphosis a transformation a new Creation in Christ Jesus and thereby make my Goat and my Fox and my Wolfe and my Lion to become Semen Dei The seed of God and Filium Dei The child of God and Participem Divinae Naturae Partaker of the Divine Nature it selfe This is that which Christ is essentially in himselfe This is that which ministerially and instrumentally he hath committed to me to shed his consolation upon you upon you all Not as his Almoner to drop his consolation upon one soule nor as his Treasurer to issue his consolation to a whole Congregation but as his Ophir as his Indies to derive his gold his precious consolation upon the King himselfe What would a good Judge a good natured Judge give in his Circuit what would you in whose breasts the Judgements of the Star-chamber or other criminall Courts are give that you had a warrant from the King to change the sentence of blood into a pardon where you found a Delinquent penitent How rufully do we heare the Prophets groane under that Onus visionis which they repeat so often O the burden of my vision upon Judah or upon Moab or Damascus or Babylon or any place Which is not only that that judgement would be a
heavy burden upon that place but that it was a heavy burden to them to denounce that judgement even upon Gods enemies Our errand our joy our Crowne is Consolation for if we consider the three Persons of the holy blessed and glorious Trinity and their working upon us a third part of their worke if we may so speake is consolation the Father is Power the Son Wisdome and the Holy Ghost Consolation for the Holy Ghost is not in a Vulture that hovers over Armies and infected Cities and feeds upon carcasses But the Holy Ghost is in a Dove that would not make a Congregation a slaughter-house but feeds upon corne corne that hath in nature a disposition to a reviviscence and a repullulation and would imprint in you al the consolation and sense of a possibility of returning to a new and a better life God found me nothing and of that nothing made me Adam left me worse then God found me worse then nothing the child of wrath corrupted with the leaven of Originall sin Christ Jesus found me worse then Adam left me not onely sowred with Originall but spotted and gangrened and dead and buried and putrified in actual and habitual sins and yet in that state redeemed me And I make my selfe worse then Christ found me and in an inordinate dejection of spirit conceive a jealousie and suspition that his merit concernes not me that his blood extends not to my sin And in this last and worst state the Holy Ghost finds me the Spirit of Consolation And he sends a Barnabas a son of Consolation unto me A Barnabas to my sick bed side A Physitian that comforts with hopes and meanes of health A Barnabas to my broken fortune A potent and a loving friend that assists the reparation and the establishing of my state A Barnabas into the Pulpit that restores and rectifies my conscience and scatters and dispels all those clouds that invested it and infested it before That un-imaginable worke of the Creation were not ready for a Sabbath though I be a Creature and a man I could have no Sabbath no rest no peace of conscience That un-expressible worke of the Redemption were not ready for that Seale which our Saviour set to it upon the Crosse in the Consummatum est All were not finished that concerned me if the Holy Ghost were not ready to deliver that which Christ sealed and to witnesse that which were so delivered that that Spirit might ever testifie to my spirit That all that Christ Jesus said and did and suffered was said and done and suffered for my soule Consolation is not all if we consider God but if I consider my selfe and my state Consolation is all Christs meaning then in this place was to establish in his Disciples this Consolation Consolatio vera but thus Si quo minus If it were not thus I would tell you If this were not true consolation I would not delude you I would not entertaine you with false for he is Deus omnium miserationum The God of all mercies and yet he will not shew mercy to them who sin upon presumption So he is Deus omnium Consolationum The God of all Comforts and yet will not comfort them who rely upon the false and miserable comforts of this world How many how very many of us doe otherwise Otherwise to others otherwise to our own Consciences Delude all with false Comforts They would not suffer Christ himselfe to sleepe upon a pillow in a storme but they waked him with that Master carest not thou though we perish When will we wake any Master Mar. 4.38 any upon whom we depend and say Master carest not thou though thou perish We suffer others whom we should instruct and we suffer our selves to passe on to the last gaspe and we never rebuke our Consciences till our Consciences rebuke us at last Alas it is otherwise and you never told us Christ comforts then he disputes not that is not his way He ministers true comfort Domus he flatters not that is not his way And in this true comfort the first beame is That that state which he promises them is a House In my Fathers House c. God hath a progresse house a removing house here upon earth His house of prayer At this houre God enters into as many of these houses as are opened for his service at this houre But his standing house his house of glory is that in Heaven and that he promises them God himselfe dwelt in Tents in this world and he gives them a House in Heaven A House in the designe and survay whereof the Holy Ghost himselfe is figurative the Fathers wanton and the School-men wilde The Holy Ghost in describing this House Rev. 21. fills our contemplation with foundations and walls and gates of gold of precious stones and all materialls that we can call precious The Holy Ghost is figurative And the Fathers are wanton in their spirituall elegancies such as that of S. Augustins if that booke be his Hiems horrens Aestas torrens And Virent prata vernant sata and such other harmonious and melodious and mellifluous cadences of these waters of life But the School-men are wild for as one Author who is afraid of admitting too great a hollownesse in the Earth Munster lest then the Earth might not be said to be solid pronounces that Hell cannot possibly be above three thousand miles in compasse and then one of the torments of Hell will be the throng for their bodies must be there in their dimensions as well as their soules so when the School-men come to measure this house in heaven as they will measure it and the Master God and all his Attributes and tell us how Allmighty and how Infinite he is they pronounce that every soule in that house shall have more roome to it selfe then all this world is We know not that nor see we that the consolation lyes in that we rest in this that it is a House It hath a foundation no Earth-quake shall shake it It hath walls no Artillery shall batter it It hath a roofe no tempest shall pierce it It is a house that affords security and that is one beame And it is Domus patris His Fathers house a house in which he hath interest and that is another beame of his Consolation It was his Fathers and so his And his and so ours Patris for we are not joynt purchasers of Heaven with the Saints but we are co-heires with Christ Jesus We have not a place there because they have done more then enough for themselves but because he hath done enough for them and us too By death we are gathered to our Fathers in nature and by death through his mercy gathered to his Father also Where we shall have a full satisfaction in that wherein S. Philip placed all satisfaction Ostende nobis patrem Lord shew us thy Father and it is enough We shall see his
the true body and true soule true matter and true forme that is just possession for having and sober discretion for giving then enters the word of our Text literally The liberall man deviseth liberall things He devises studies meditates casts about where he may doe a noble action where he may place a benefit He seekes the man with as much earnestnesse as another man seeks the money And as God comes with an earnestnesse as though he thought it nothing to have wrought all the weeke to his Faciamus hominem Now let us make man So comes the liberall man to make a man and to redeeme him out of necessity and contempt the upper and lower Milstone of poverty And to returne to our former representations of Liberality Light and Sight As light comes thorough the glasse but we know not how and our sight apprehends remote objects but we know not how so the liberall man looks into darke corners even upon such as are loath to be looked upon loath to have their wants come into knowledge and visits them by his liberality when sometimes they know not from whence that showre of refreshing comes no more then we know how light comes thorough the glasse or how our sight apprehends remote objects So the liberall man deviseth liberall things And then which is our third terme and consideration in this civill and morall acceptation of the words By liberall things he shall stand Some of our later Expositors admit this phrase The liberall man shall stand to reach no further Shall stand nor to signifie no more but that The liberall man shall stand that is will stand will continue his course and proceed in liberall wayes And this is truely a good sense for many times men do some small actions that have some shew and tast of some vertue for collaterall respects and not out of a direct and true vertuous habit But these Expositors with whose narrownesse our former Translators complied will not let the Holy Ghost be as liberall as he would bee His liberality here is That the liberall man shall stand that is Prosper and Multiply and be the better established for his liberality He shall sowe silver and reape gold he shall sowe gold and reape Diamonds sowe benefits and reape honour not honour rooted in the opinion of men onely but in the testimony of a cheerfull conscience that powres out Acclamations by thousands And that is a blessed and a loyall popularity when I have a people in mine owne bosome a thousand voices in mine owne conscience that justifie and applaud a good action Therefore that Translation which we mentioned before reads this clause thus The liberall man imagineth honest things and commeth up by honesty still that which he calls Honesty is in the Originall Liberality and he comes up he prospers and thrives in the world by those noble and vertuous actions It is easie for a man of any largenesse in conversation or in reading to assigne examples of men that have therefore lost all because they were loath to part with any thing When Nazianzen sayes That man cannot be so like God in any thing as in giving he meanes that he shall be like him in this too that he shall not bee the poorer for giving But keeping the body and soule of liberality Giving his owne and giving worthily in soule and body too that is in conscience and fortune both By liberall things he shall stand that is prosper Now these three termes Liberality the vertue it selfe the studying of Liberality Rex this devising and the advantage of this Liberality this standing being yet in this first part still upon the consideration of civill and morall Liberality wee are to consider according to their Exposition that binde this Prophecy to an Hezckias or a Iosias in which Prophecy we finde mention of all those persons we are I say to consider them in the King in his Officers the Magistrate and in his Subjects For the King first this vertue of our Text is so radicall so elementary so essentiall to the King as that the vulgat Edition in the Romane Church reads this very Text thus Princeps verò ea quae principe digna sunt cogitabit The King shall exercise himselfe in royall Meditations and Actions Him whom we call a Liberall man they call a King and those actions that we call Liberall they call Royall A Translation herein excusable enough for the very Originall word which we translate Liberall is a Royall word Nadib and very often in the Scriptures hath so high a Royall signification The very word is in that place where David prayes to God to renew him spiritu Principali And this Psal 51.10 spiritus Principalis as many Translators call a Principall a Princely a Royall spirit as a liberall a free a bountifull spirit If it be Liberall it is Royall For when David would have bought a threshing-floore 2 Sam. 24.23 to erect an Altar upon of Araunah and Araunah offered so freely place and sacrifice and instruments and all the Holy Ghost expresses it so All these things did Araunah as a King offer to the King There was but this difference between the Liberall man and David A King and The King Higher then a King for an example and comparison of Liberality on this side of God hee could not goe The very forme of the Office of a King is Liberality that is Providence and Protection and Possession and Peace and Justice shed upon all And then this Prophecy considered still the first way morally Principes civilly carries this vertue not onely upon the King but upon the Princes too upon those persons that are great great in blood great in power great in place and office They must bee liberall of that which is deposited in them The Sunne does not enlighten the Starres of the Firmament meerly for an Omament to the Firmament though even the glory which God receives from that Ornament be one reason thereof but that by the reflection of those Starres his beames might be cast into some places to which by a direct Emanation from himselfe those beames would not have come So doe Kings transmit some beames of power into their Officers not onely to dignifie and illustrate a Court though that also be one just reason thereof for outward dignity and splendor must be preserved but that by those subordinate Instruments the royall Liberality of the King that is Protection and Justice might be transferred upon all And therefore Epistol ad Salvian S. Hierome speaking of Nebridius who was so gracious with the Emperor that he denied him nothing assignes that for the reason of his largenesse towards him Quòd sciebat non uni sed pluribus indulgeri Because he knew that in giving him he gave to the Publique Hee employed that which he received for the Publique And lastly our Prophecy places this Liberality upon the people Now Populus still this Liberality is that it
every day of holy Convocation All this at home and here yee have slept out and neglected Now upon the Sabbath and in these holy Exercises this Sonne shines out as at noone the Grace of God is in the Exaltation exhibited in the powerfullest and effectuallest way of his Ordinance and if you will but awake now rise now meet God now now at noone God will call even this early Have any of you slept out the whole day and are come in that drowsinesse to your evening to the closing of your eyes to the end of your dayes Yet rise now and God shall call even this an early rising If you can make shift to deceive your owne soules and say We never heard God call us If you neglected your former callings so as that you have forgot that you have been called yet is there one amongst you that denies that God calls him now If he neglect this calling now to morrow he may forget that he was called to day or remember it with such a terror as shall blow a dampe and a consternation upon his soule and a lethargy worse then his former sleepe but if he will wake now and rise now though this be late in his evening in his age yet God shall call this early Isai 26.9 Bee but able to say with Esay this night My soule hath desired thee in the night and thou maist be bold to say with David to morrow morning Satura nos mane Satisfie us early with thy mercy and he shall doe it But yet no prayer of ours howsoever made in the best disposition in the best testimony of a rectified conscience must limit God his time or appoint him in what morning or what houre in the morning God shall come to our deliverance The Sonne of man was not the lesse the Sonne of God nor the lesse a beloved Sonne though God hid from him the knowledge of the day of the generall Judgement Thou art not the lesse the servant of God nor the lesse rewarded by him though he keepe from thee the knowledge of thy deliverance from any particular calamity All Gods deliverances are in the morning because there is a perpetuall night and an invincible darknesse upon us till he deliver us God is the God of that Climate where the night is six Moneths long as well as of this where it is but halfe so many houres The highest Hill hinders not the roundnesse of the earth the earth is round for all that hill The lowest vaults and mines hinder not the solidnesse of the earth the earth is solid for all that Much lesse hath a yeare or ten yeares or all our threescore and ten any proportion at all to eternity And therefore God comes early in a sort to me though I lose abundance of my reward by so long lingring if he come not till hee open me the gate of heaven by the key of death There are Indies at my right hand in the East but there are Indies at my left hand too in the West There are testimonies of Gods love to us in our East in our beginnings but if God continue tribulation upon us to our West to our ends and give us the light of his presence then if he appeare to us at our transmigration certainly he was favourable to us all our peregrination and though he shew himselfe late hee was our friend early The Prayer is that he would come early but it is if it be rightly formed upon both these conditions first that I rise early to meet him and then that I magnifie his houre as early whensoever he shall be pleased to come All this I shall doe the better Tuâ— if I limit my prayer and my practise with the next circumstance in Davids prayer Tuâ Satisfie us early with that which is thine Thy mercy For there are mercies in a faire extent and accommodation of the word that is Refreshings Eases Deliverances that are not his mercies nor his satisfactions How many men are satisfied with Riches I correct my selfe few are satisfied but how many have enough to satisfie many and yet have never a peny of his mony Nothing is his that comes not from him that comes not by good meanes How many are there that are easie to admit scruples and jealousies and suspitions in matter of Religion Easie to think that that Religion and that Church in which they have lived ill cannot bee a good Religion nor a true Church In a troubled and distempered conscience they grow easie to admit scruples and then as over-easie to admit false satisfactions with a word whispered on one side in a Conventicle or a word whispered on the other side in a Confession and yet have never a dram of satisfaction from his word whose word is preached upon the house top and avowed and not in corners How many men are anguished with torturing Diseases racked with the conscience of ill-spent estates oppressed with inordinate melancholies and irreligious dejections of spirit and then repaire and satisfie themselves with wine with women with fooles with comedies with mirth and musique and with all Iobs miserable comforters and all this while have no beames of his satisfaction it is not Misericordia ejus his mercy his satisfaction In losses of worldly goods in sicknesses of children or servants or cattell to receive light or ease from Witches this is not his mercy It is not his mercy except we goe by good wayes to good ends except our safety be established by allyance with his friends except our peace may bee had with the perfect continuance of our Religion there is no safety there is no peace But let mee feele the effect of this Prayer as it is a Prayer of manifestation Let mee discerne that that that is done upon mee is done by the hand of God and I care not what it be I had rather have Gods Vinegar then mans Oyle Gods Wormewood then mans Manna Gods Justice then any mans Mercy for therefore did Gregory Nyssen call S. Basil in a holy sense Ambidextrum because he tooke every thing that came by the right handle and with the right hand because he saw it to come from God Even afflictions are welcome when we see them to be his Though the way that he would chuse and the way that this Prayer intreats be only mercy Satisfie us early with thy mercy That rod and that staffe with which we are at any time corrected is his Misâ—ricordia Esay 10.5 So God cals the Assyrians The rod of his anger and he sayes That the staffe that is in their hand is his Indignation He comes to a sharper execution from the rod and the staffe to the sword and that also is his It is my sword that is put into the hands of the King of Babylon Ezek. 30.24 and he shall stretch out my sword upon the whole land God will beat downe and cut off and blow up and blow out at his pleasure which is expressed in
certaine dayes Daniel would not onely not be bound by this Proclamation and so continue his set and stationary houres of private prayer in his chamber but he would declare it to all the world He would set open his chamber windows that he might be seen to pray for though some determine that act of Daniel in setting open his windows at prayer in this That because the Jewes were bound by their law wheresoever they were in war in captivity upon the way or in their sick beds to turne towards Jerusalem and so towards the Temple whensoever they prayed according to that stipulation which had passed between God and Solomon at the Dedication of the Temple When thy servants pray towards this house heare them in it Therefore as Hezekias in his sicke bed when he turned towards the wall to pray is justly thought to have done so therefore that he might pray towards the Temple which stood that way so Daniel is thought to have opened his windows to that purpose too that he might have the more free prospect towards Jerusalem from Babylon though some I say determine Daniels act in that yet it is by more and more usefully extended to an expressing of such a zeale as in so apparant a dishonor to his God could not be suffocated nor extinguished with a Proclamation In which act of his which was a direct and evident opposing and affronting of the State though I dare not joyne with them who absolutely and peremptorily condemne this act of Daniel because Gods subsequent act in a miraculous deliverance of Daniel seems to imply some former particular revelation from God to Daniel that he should proceed in that confident manner yet dare I much lesse draw this act of Daniels into consequence and propose it for an Example and precedent to private men least of all to animate seditious men who upon pretence of a necessity that God must be served in this and this and no other manner provoke and exasperate the Magistrate with their schismaticall conventicles and separations But howsoever that may stand and howsoever there may be Circumstances which may prevaile either upon humane infirmity or upon a rectified Conscience or howsoever God in his Judgements may cast a cloud upon his own Sunne and darken the glory of the Gospel in some place for some time yet though we lose our Ranan our publique Rejoycing we shall never lose our Shamach our inward gladnesse that God is our God and we his servants for all this God will never leave his servants without this internall joy which shall preserve them from suspicions of Gods power that he cannot maintaine or not restore his cause and from jealousies that he hath abandoned or deserted them in particular God shall never give them over to an indifferency nor to a stupidity nor to an absence of tendernesse and holy affections that it shall become all one to them how Gods cause prospers or suffers But if I continue that way prayer and prayer so qualified if I lose my Ranan my outward declarations of Rejoycing If I be tyed to a death-bed in a Consumption and cannot rejoyce in comming to these publique Congregations to participate of their prayers and to impart to them my Meditations If I be ruined in my fortune and cannot rejoyce in an open distribution to the reliefe of the poore and a preaching to others in that way by example of doing good works If at my last minute I be not able to edifie my friends nor Catechize my children with any thing that I can doe or say if I be not able so much as with hand or eye to make a signe though I have lost my Ranan all the Eloquence of outward declaration yet God shall never take from me my Shamach my internall gladnesse and consolation in his undeceivable and undeceiving Spirit that he is mine and I am his And this joy this gladnesse in my way and in my end shall establish me for that is that which is intended in the next and last word Omnibus diebus we shall Rejoyce and be Glad all our dayes Nothing but this testimony Omnibus diebus That the Spirit beares witnesse with my spirit that upon my prayer so conditioned of praise and prayer I shall still prevaile with God could imprint in me this joy all my dayes The seales of his favour in outward blessings fayle me in the dayes of shipwracke in the dayes of fire in the dayes of displacing my potent friends or raysing mine adversaries In such dayes I cannot rejoyce and be glad The seales of his favour in inward blessings and holy cheerfulnesse fayle me in a present remorse after a sinne newly committed But yet in the strength of a Christian hope as I can pronounce out of the grounds of Nature in an Eclipse of the Sunne that the Sunne shall returne to his splendor againe I can pronounce out of the grounds of Gods Word and Gods Word is much better assurance then the grounds of Nature for God can and does shake the grounds of Nature by Miracles but no Jod of his Word shall ever perish that I shall returne againe on my hearty penitence if I delay it not and rejoyce and be glad all my dayes that is what kinde of day soever overtake me In the dayes of our youth when the joyes of this world take up all the roome there shall be roome for this holy Joy that my recreations were harmelesse and my conversation innocent and certainly to be able to say that in my recreations in my conversation I neither ministred occasion of tentation to another nor exposed my selfe to tentations from another is a faire beame of this rejoycing in the dayes of my youth In the dayes of our Age when we become incapable insensible of the joyes of this world yet this holy joy shall season us not with a sinfull delight in the memory of our former sinnes but with a re-juveniscence a new and a fresh youth in being come so neere to another to an immortall life In the dayes of our mirth and of laughter this holy joy shall enter And as the Sunne may say to the starres at Noone How frivoulous and impertinent a thing is your light now So this joy shall say unto laughter Thou art mad and unto mirth Eccles 2.2 what dost thou And in the mid-night of sadnesse and dejection of spirit this joy shall shine out and chide away that sadnesse with Davids holy charme My soule why art thou cast downe why art thou disquieted within me In those dayes which Iob speaks of Iob 30.27 Praevenerunt me dies afflictionis meae Miseries are come upon me before their time My intemperances have hastned age my riotousnesse hath hastned poverty my neglecting of due officiousnesse and respect towards great persons hath hastned contempt upon me Afflictions which I suspected not thought not of have prevented my feares and then in those dayes which Iob speaks of againe Possident me dies
performe that sacred Work And when to the amazement of some beholders he appeared in the Pulpit many thought he presented himselfe not to preach mortification by a living voice but mortality by a decayed body and dying face And doubtlesse many did secretly ask that question in Ezekiel Doe these bones live Ezek. 37.3 Or can that soule organise that tongue to speak so long time as the sand in that glasse will move towards its center and measure out an houre of this dying mans unspent life Doubtlesse it cannot Yet after some faint pauses in his zealous Prayer his strong desires inabled his weak body to discharge his memory of his pre conceived Meditations which were of dying The Text being To God the Lord belong the issues from death Many that saw his teares and heard his hollow voice professing they thought the Text Prophetically chosen and that D. Donne had preacht his owne Funerall Sermon Being full of joy that God had inabled him to performe this desired duty he hastned to his house out of which he never moved untill like S. Stephen Acts 8. He was carried by devout men to his grave And the next day after his Sermon his spirits being much spent and he indisposed to discourse a friend asked him Why are you sad To whom he replyed after this manner I am not sad I am in a serious contemplation of the mercies of my God to me And now I plainly see it was his hand that prevented me from all temporall employment And I see it was his will that I should never settle nor thrive untill I entred into the Ministery in which I have now lived almost twenty yeares I hope to his glory and by which I most humbly thank him I have been enabled to requite most of those friends that shewed me kindnesse when my fortunes were low And as it hath occasioned the expression of my gratitude I thank God most of them have stood in need of my requitall I have been usefull and comfortable to my good Father in Law Sir George More whose patience God hath been pleased to exercise by many temporall crosses I have maintained my owne Mother whom it hath pleased God after a plentifull fortune in her former times to bring to a great decay in her very old age I have quieted the consciences of many that groaned under the burthen of a wounded spirit whose Prayers I hope are availeable for me I cannot plead innocencie of life especially of my youth but I am to be judged by a mercifull God who hath given me even at this time some testimonies by his holy Spirit that I am of the number of his Elect. I am ful of joy and shall die in peace Upon Munday following he took his last leave of his beloved Studie and being hourely sensible of his decay retired himselfe into his bed-chamber and that week sent at severall times for many of his most considerable friends of whom he tooke a solemne and deliberate Farewell commending to their considerations some sentences particularly usefull for the regulation of their lives and dismist them as * Gen. 49. Iacob did his sons with a spirituall benediction The Sunday following he appointed his servants that if there were any worldly businesse undone that concerned them or himselfe it should be prepared against Saturday next for after that day he would not mixe his thoughts with any thing that concerned the world Nor ever did Now he had nothing to doe but die To doe which he stood in need of no more time for he had long studied it and to such a perfection that in a former sicknesse he called God to witnesse Devot Prayer 23. he was that minute prepared to deliver his soule into his hands if that minute God would accept of his dissolution In that sicknesse he begged of his God the God of constancy to be preserved in that estate for ever And his patient expectation to have his immortall soule disrobed from her garment of mortality makes me confident he now had a modest assurance that his prayers were then heard and his petition granted He lay fifteene dayes earnestly expecting his hourely change And in the last houre of his last day as his body melted away and vapoured into spirit his soule having I verily beleeve some revelation of the Beatifical Vision he said I were miserable if I might not die And after those words closed many periods of his faint breath with these words Thy kingdome come Thy will be done His speech which had long been his faithfull servant remained with him till his last minute and then forsook him not to serve another master but died before him for that it was uselesse to him who now conversed with God on earth as Angels are said to doe in heaven onely by thoughts and looks Being speechlesse he did as S. Stephen look stedfastly towards heaven till he saw the Sonne of God standing at the right hand of his Father And being satisfied with this blessed sight as his soule ascended and his last breath departed from him he closed his owne eyes and then disposed his hands and body into such a posture as required no alteration by those that came to shroud him Thus variable thus vertuous was the life thus memorable thus exemplary was the death of this most excellent man He was buried in S. Pauls Church in that place which he had appointed for that use some yeares before his death and by which he passed daily to his devotions But not buried privately though he desired it For besides an unnumbred number of others many persons of Nobility and eminency who did love and honour him in his life did shew it at his Funerall by a voluntary and very sad attendance of his body to the grave To which after his buriall some mournfull friends repaired And as Alexander the Great did to the grave of the famous Achillis Plutarch so they strewed his with curious and costly flowers Which course they who were never yet knowne continued each morning and evening for divers dayes not ceasing till the stones that were taken up in that Church to give his body admission into the cold earth now his bed of rest were againe by the Masons art levelled and firmed as they had been formerly and his place of buriall undistinguishable to common view Nor was this though not usuall all the honour done to his reverend ashes for by some good body who t is like thought his memory ought to be perpetuated there was 100. marks sent to his two faithfull friends * D. Henry King D. Mountfort and Executors the person that sent it not yet known they look not for a reward on earth towards the making of a Monument for him which I think is as lively a representation as in dead marble can be made of him HE was of stature moderately tall of a straight and equally proportioned body to which all his words and actions gave an unexpressible