proceedings by the benefit of those helps shall but aggravate our condemnation Alpha and Omega make up the Name of Christ and between Alpha and Omega are all the letters of the Alphabet included A Christian is made up of Alpha and Omega and all between He must begin well imbrace the true Church and live well according to the profession of that true Church and die well according to that former holy life and practise Truth in the beginning Zeale all the way and Constancie in the end make up a Christian. Otherwise for all this filiation children may be disinherited or submitted to such calamities as these which are interminated upon the children of Israel which constitute our second part They shall be without a King and without a Prince and without a Sacrifice and without an Ephod and without a Teraphim Disobedient children are not cast off but yet disobedience is not left uncorrected Be mercifull but mercifull so as your Father in Heaven is mercifull Be not so mercifull upon any private respect as to be thereby cruell to the publique And be Iust but just as your Father in Heaven is just Hate not the vice of a man so as thereby to hate the man himself God hath promised to be an enemy to our enemies an adversary to our adversaries but God is no irreconciliable enemy no implacable no inexorable Adversary For that hatred which David calls Odium perfectum I have hated them with a perfect hatred is not onely a vehement hatred but as Saint Hilary calls it Odium religiosum a hatred that may consist with religion That I hate not another man for his religion so as that I lose all religion in my self by such a hating of him And Saint Augustine calls it Odium Charitativum a hate that may consist with Charitie that I hate no man for his peremptory uncharitablenesse towards my religion so as to lose mine own Charity for I am come to one point of his religion if I come to be as uncharitable as he God and Kings are at a near distance All gods Magistrates and inferiour persons are at a near distance all dust As God proceeds with a King with Iehosaphat in that temper that moderation Shouldst thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord So men with men Magistrates with inferiour men learned men with ignorant men should proceed with Saint Pauls moderation If any man obey not but be refractary unconformable note that man saith the Apostle and have no company with him but yet count him not as an enemy The union of the two Natures in Christ give us a faire example that Divinity and Humanity may consist together No Religion induces Inhumanity no Piety no Zeal destroyes nature and since there is a time to hate and a time to love then is love most seasonable when other civill contracts civill alliances civill concurrences have soupled and intenerated the dispositions of persons or nations formerly farther asunder to a better possibility to a fairer probability to a nearer propinquity of hearkning to one another That Christ might reconcile both unto God in one body by the Crosse having slain the enmity thereby Civill Offices may worke upon religions too and where that may follow That our mildnesse in civill things may prevail upon their obduration in religion there is the time to love But in cases where civill peace and religious foundations are both shaked that the State and the Church as they are both in one bottome so they are chased by one Pirate I hate not with a perfect hatred not perfect towards God except I declare and urge and presse home the truth of God against their errours in my Ministery nor perfect towards man except I advance in my place the execution of those Lawes against their practises without which they are inabled nay incouraged nay perswaded nay intreated to goe forward in those practises God himself proceeds against his own children so farre and dearer then those children were to God can no friends be to us no allies to any Prince That they should be without King without Prince without Sacrifice without Image without Ephod without Teraphim that is without Temporall without Ecclesiasticall Government First then we presume we presuppose and that necessarily every peece of this part of our Text to fall under the Commination they were threatned with the losse of every particular and therefore they were the worse for every particular losse Not the worse onely because they thought themselves the worse because they had fixed their love and their delight upon these things but because they were really the better for having them it was really a curse a Commination that they should lose them as well that they should lose their Ephod and their Image and their Teraphim as that they should lose their Sacrifices But first though that other fall also within the Commination that they should be without a setled form of Religion without Sacrifice and Ephod and the rest the first thing that the Commination falls upon is That they should be without a Civill form of government without King and without Prince For though our Religion prepare us to our Bene esse our well-being our everlasting happinesse yet it is the State the civill and peaceable government which preserves our very Esse our very Being and there cannot be a Bene esse without an Esse a well and a happy Being except there be first a Being established It is the State the Law that constitutes Families and Cities and Propriety and Magistracy and Jurisdiction The State the Law preserves and distingâ—â—shes not onely the Meum Tuum the Possessions of men but the Me Te the very persons of men The Law tels me not onely whose land I must call every Acre but whose son I must call every man Therefore God made the Body before the Soule Therefore there is in man a vegetative and a sensitive soule before an immortall and reasonable soule enter Therefore also in this place God proposes first the Civil State the temporall Government what it is to have a King and a Prince before he proposes the happinesse of a Church and a Religion not but that our Religion conduces to the greater happinesse but that our Religion cannot be conserved except the Civil State and temporall Government be conserved too The first thing then that the Commination fals upon is the losse of their Temporall State But the Commination doth not fall so fully upon the exclusion of all formes of Government as upon the exclusion of Monarchy It does not so expresly threaten an Anâ—â—chy that they should have no Government no Governours It is not sine Regimine but sine Rege If they had any they should not have the best They should be without a King Now if with S. Hierome and others that accompany him in that interpretation we take the Prophecy of this Text to be fulfilled
their places A declination in the Kingdome of the Jewes in the body of the Kingdome in the soul of the State in the form of Government was such an Earth-quake as could leave nothing standing Of all things that are there was an Idea in God there was a modell a platform an examplar of every thing which God produced and created in Time in the mind and purpose of God before Of all things God had and Idea a preconception but of Monarchy of Kingdome God who is but one is the Idea God himselfe in his Unity â—s the Modell He is the Type of Monarchy He made but one World for this and the next are not two Worlds This is but the Morning and that the everlasting Noon of one and the same Day which shall have no Night They are not two Houses This is the Gallery and that the Bed-chamber of one and the same Palace which shall feel no ruine He made this one World but one Eye The Sunne The Moone is not another Eye but a Glasse upon which the Sunne reflects He made this one World but one Eare The Church He tells not us that he heares by a left Eare by Saints but by that right Eare the Church he doth There is One God One Faith One Baptisme and these lead us to the love of one Soveraign of Monarchy of Kingdome In that Name God hath convayed to us the state of Grace and the state of Glory too and he hath promised both in injoining that Petition Adveniat Regnum Thy Kingdome come Thy Kingdome of Grace here Thy Kingdome of Glory hereafter All forms of Government have one and the same Soul that is Soveraignty That resides somewhere in every form and this Soveraignty is in them all from one and the same Root from the Lord of Lords from God himself for all Power is of God But yet this form of a Monarchy of a Kingdome is a more lively and a more masculin Organe and Instrument of this Soul of Soveraigntie then the other forms are Wee are sure Women have Soules as well as Men but yet it is not so expressed that God breathed a Soule into Woman as hee did into Man All formes of Government have this Soule but yet God infuseth it more manifestly and more effectually in that forme in a Kingdome All places are alike neare to Heaven yet Christ would take a Hill for his Ascension All governments may justly represent God to mee who is the God of Order and fountaine of all government but yet I am more eased and more accustomed to the contemplation of Heaven in that notion as Heaven is a kingdome by having been borne and bred in a Monarchy God is a Type of that and that is a Type of Heaven This form then in nature the noblest in use the profitablest of all others God always intended to his best-beloved people God always meant that the Jews should have a King though he prepared them in other forms before As hee meant them peace at last though he exercised them in Warre and meant them the land of promise though he led them through the Wildernesse so he meant them a King though he prepared them by Iudges God intended it in himselfe and he declared it to them 400 yeares before he have them a King he instructed them what kinde of King they should set over them when they came to that kinde of government And long before that he made a promise by Iacob to Iudah of a Kingdome and that the Scepter should not depart from him till Siloh came And when God came neare the time in which he intended to them that government in the time of Samuel who was the immediate predecessor to their first King Saul God made way for a Monarchy for Samuel had a much more absolute authority in that State then any of the Judges had Samuel judged them and in their petition for a King they ask but that Make us a King to judge us Samuel was little lesse then a King and Sauls reign and his are reckoned both in one number and made as the reign of one man when it is said in the Acts that Saul reigned 40 yeares Samuels time is included in that number for all the yeares from the death of Eli â— to the beginning of David are but 40 years God meant them a Kingdome in himselfe promised them a kingdome in Iudah made Laws for their kingdome in Deuteronomy made way for the kingdome in Samuel and why then was God displeased with their petition for a Kingdome It was a greater fault in them then it could have been in any other people to ask a King not that it was not the most desirable form of government but that God governed them so immediately so presentially himselfe as that it was an ingratefull intemperance in them to turn upon any other meanes God had ever performed that which he promised them in that which comprehended all Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people And therefore Iosephus hath expressed it well All other people are under the forme of Democratiâ— or Aristocratiâ— or such other formes composed of men Sed noster Legislator Theocratiam instituit The Jews were onely under a Theocratiâ— an immediate government of God he judged them himselfe and hee himselfe fought their battels And therefore God says to Samuel They have not rejected thee Thou wast not King But they have rejected mee I was To bee weary of God is it enough to call it a levity But if they did onely compare forme with forme and not God himselfe with any forme if they did onely thinke Monarchy best and beleeve that God intended a Monarchy to them yet yet to limit God his time and to make God performe his promise before his day was a fault and inexcusable Daniel saw that the Messiah should come within seventy weekes Daniel did not say Lord let it bee within fifty weekes or let it bee this weeke The Martyrs under the Altar cry Vsqueque Domine How long Lord but then they leave it there Even as long as pleaseth thee Their petition should have been Adveniat regnum â—wordsâ— Let us have that Kingdome which because thou knowest it is good for us thou hast promised to us But yet Fiat voluntas tua Let us have it then when thy Wisdome sees it best for us You said to mee says Samuel by way of Reproofe and Increpation You said Nay but a King shall reigne over us Now that was not their fault but that which followes The unseasonablesse and inconsideration of their clamorous Petition You said a King shall reigne over us when the Lord your God was your King They would not trust Gods meanes there was their first fault And then though they desired a thing good in it selfe and a good intended to them yet they fixed God his time and they would not stay his leisure And either of these To aske other things then
tentations to sin He shall eat up my dust so as that it shall fly into mine eys that is so work upon my carnall affections as that they shall not make me blinde nor unable to discern that it is he that works It is said of one kinde of Serpent that because they know by an instinct they have that their skin is good for the use of man for the falling sickness out of Envy they hide their skin when they cast it The Serpent is loth we should have any benefit by him but we have even his tentations arm us and the very falling exalts us when after a sin of infirmity we come to a true and scrutiny of our conscience So he hath nothing to eat but our dust and he eats up our dust so as that he contributes to our glory by his malice The Whale was Ionas Pilot The Crows were Elias caters The Lions were Daniels sentinels The Viper was Pauls advocate it pleaded for him brought the beholders in an instant from extreme to extreme from crying out that Paul was a murderer to cry that he was a god Though at any time the Serpent having brought me to a sin cry out Thou art a murderer that is bring me to a desperate sense of having murdred mine own soul yet in that darkness I shal see light by a present repentance effectual application of the merits of my Savior I shall make the Serpent see I am a God thus far a God that by my adhering to Christ I am made partaker of the Divine Nature For that which S. Chrysost. says of Baptism is true too in the second Baptism Repentance Deposui terram coelum indui then I may say to the Serpent Your meat is dust and I was dust but Deposui terram I have shak'd off my dust by true repentance for I have shak'd off my self and am a new creature and am not now meat for your Table Iam terra non sum sed sal says the same Father I am not now unsavoury dust but I am salt And Sal ex aqua vento says he Salt is made of water and winde I am made up of the water of Baptism of the water of Repentance of the water that accompanies the blood of Christ Jesus and of that winde that blows where it list and hath been pleased to blow upon me the Spirit of God the Holy Ghost and I am no longer meat for the Serpent for Dust must he eat all the days of his life I am a branch of that Vine Christ is the Vine and we are the branches I am a leafe of that Rose of Sharon and of that Lilly of the valleys I am a plant in the Orchard of Pomegranats and that Orchard of Pomegranats is the Church I am a drop of that dew that dew that lay upon the head of Christ. And this Vine and this Rose and Lilly and Pomegranats of Paradise and this Dew of heaven are not Dust And dust must thou eate all the dayes of thy life So then the Prophecy of Esay fulfils it self That when Christ shall reign powerfully over us The wolf and the lamb shall feed together Saul and Ananias shall meet in a house as S. Hierome expounds that and Ananias not be afraid of a Persecutor The Lion shall eate straw like the Bullock says that Prophet in that place Tradent se rusticitati Scripturarum says the same Father The strongest understandings shall content themselves with the homelinesse of the Scriptures and feed upon plain places and not study new dishes by subtilties and perplexities and then Dust shall be the Serpents meat says the Prophet there The power of Satan shall reach but to the body and touch a soul wrapt up in Christ. But then it is Totâ vitâ all his life His diet is impaired but it is not taken away He eats but dust but he shall not lack that as long as hee lives And how long lives the Serpent this Serpent The life of this Serpent is to seduce man to practise upon man to prevaile upon man as farre and as long as man is dust And therefore wee are not onely his dust whilst wee live all which time we serve in our carnall affections for him to feed upon but when we are dead we are his dust still Man was made in that state as that he should not resolve to dust but should have passed from this world to the next without corruption or resolution of the body That which God said to Adam Dust thou art belonged to all from the beginning he and all we were to be of dust in his best integrity but that which God adds there in terram revertêris dust thou art and to it thou shalt returne that the Serpent brought in that was induced upon man by him and his tentation So that when we are living dust here he eats us and when we are dead dust too in the grave he feeds upon us because it proceeds from him both that we die and that we are detained in the state of exinanition and ingloriousnesse in the dust of the earth and not translated immediately to the joyes of heaven as but for him we should have been But as though he do feed upon our living dust that is induce sicknesses and hunger and labour and cold and paine upon our bodies here God raises even that dust out of his hands and redeemes it from his jaws in affording us a deliverance or a â—â—â—â—itution from those bodily calamities here as he did abundantly to his servant and our example Iob so though he feed upon our dead dust and detain our bodies in the disconsolate state of the grave yet as the Godhead the divine nature did not depart from the body of Christ when it lay dead in the grave so neither doth the love and power of God depart from the body of a Christian though resolved to dust in the grave but in his due time shall recollect that dust and recompact that body and reunite that soul in everlasting joy and glory And till then the Serpent lives till the Judgement Satan hath power upon that part of man and that 's the Serpents life first to practise our death and then to hold us in the state of the dead Till then we attend with hope and with prayers Gods holy pleasure upon us and then begins the unchangeable state in our life in body and soul together then we beginne to live and then ends the Serpents life that is his earnest practise upon us in our life and his faint triumph in continuing over our dust That time the time of the generall Resurrection being not yet come the devills thought themselves wronged and complained that Christ came before the time to torment them and therefore Christ yeelded so much to their importunity as to give them leave to enter into the swine And therefore let not us murmur
in families are therein truly learned fathers of the Church A good father at home is a S â—ugustin and a S. Ambrose in himself and such a Thomas may have governed a 〈◊〉 as shall by way of example teach children and childrens children more to this purpose then any Thomas Aquinas can Since therefore these noble persons have so good a glasse to dresse themselves in the usefull as the powerfull example of Parents I shall the lesse need to apply my selfe to them for their particular instructions but may have leave to extend my selfe upon considerations more general and such as may be applyable to all who have or shall embrace that honourable state or shall any way assist at the solemnizing thereof that they may all make this union of Mariage a Type or a remembrancer of their union with God in Heaven That as our Genesis is our Exodus our proceeding into the world is a step out of the world so every Gospell may be a Revelation unto us All good tydings which is the name of Gospel all that ministers any joy to us here may reveal and manifest to us an Interest in the joy and glory of heaven and that our admission to a Mariage here may be our invitation to the Mariage Supper of the Lamb there where in the Resurrection we shall neither mary nor be given in mariage but shall be as the Angels of God in heaven These words our blessed Saviour spake to the Sadduces who not believing the Resurrection of the Dead put him a Case that one woman hath had seven husbands and then whose wife of those seven should she be in the Resurrection they would needs suppose and prefume that there could be no Resurrection of the body but that there must be to all purposes a Bodily use of the Body too and then the question had been pertinent whose wife of the seven shall she be But Christ shews them their errour in the weaknesse of the foundation she shall be none of their wives for In the Resurrection they neither mary c. The words give us this latitude when Christ sayes In the Resurrection they mary not c. The words give us this latitude when Christ sayes In the Resurrection they mary not c. from thence flowes out this concession this proposition too Till the Resurrection they shall mary and be given in mariage no inhibition to be laid upon persons no imputation no aspersion upon the state of mariage And when Christ saies Then they are as the Angels of God in heaven from this flowes this concession this proposition also Till then we must not look for this Angelicall state but as in all other states and conditions of life so in all mariages there will be some encumbrances betwixt all maried persons there will arise some unkindnesses some mis-interpretations or some too quick interpretations may sometimes sprinkle a little sournesse and spread a little a thin a dilute and washy cloud upon them Then they mary not till then they may then their state shall be perfect as the Angels till then it shall not These are our branches and the fruits that grow upon them we shall pull in passing and present them as we gather them First then Christ establishes a Resurrection A Resurrection there shall be for that makes up Gods circle The Body of Man was the first point that the foot of Gods Compasse was upon First he created the body of Adam and then he carries his Compasse round and shuts up where he began he ends with the Body of man againe in the glorification thereof in the Resurrection God is Alpha and Omega first and last And his Alpha and Omega his first and last work is the Body of man too Of the Immortality of the soule there is not an expresse article of the Creed for that last article of The life everlasting is rather de proemio poena what the soule shall suffer or what the soule shall enjoy being presumed to be Immortall then that it is said to be Immortall in that article That article may and does presuppose an Immortality but it does not constitute an Immortality in our soule for there would be a life everlasting in heaven and we were bound to beleeve it as we were bound to beleeve a God in heaven though our soules were not immortall There are so many evidences of the immortality of the soule even to a naturall mans reason that it required not an Article of the Creed to fix this notion of the Immortality of the soule But the Resurrection of the Body is discernible by no other light but that of Faith nor could be fixed by any lesse assurance then an Article of the Creed Where be all the splinters of that Bone which a shot hath shivered and scattered in the Ayre Where be all the Atoms of that flesh which a Corrasive hath eat away or a Consumption hath breath'd and exhal'd away from our arms and other Limbs In what wrinkle in what furrow in what bowel of the earth ly all the graines of the ashes of a body burnt a thousand years since In what corner in what ventricle of the sea lies all the jelly of a Body drowned in the generall flood What cohaerence what sympathy what dependence maintaines any relation any correspondence between that arm that was lost in Europe and that legge that was lost in Afrique or Asia scores of yeers between One humour of our dead body produces worms and those worms suck and exhaust all other humour and then all dies and all dries and molders into dust and that dust is blowen into the River that puddled water tumbled into the sea and that ebs and flows in infinite revolutions and still still God knows in what Cabinet every seed-Pearle lies in what part of the world every graine of every mans dust lies and sibilat populum suum as his Prophet speaks in another case he whispers he hisses he beckens for the 〈◊〉 of his Saints and in the twinckling of an eye that body that was fcattered over all the elements is sate down at the right hand of God in a glorious resurrection A Dâ—opsie hath extended me to an enormous corpulency and unwieldinesse a Consumption hath attenuated me to a feeble macilency and leannesse and God raises me a body such as it should have been if these infirmities had not interven'd and deformed it David could goe no further in his book of Psalms but to that Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord ye saies he ye that have breath praise ye the Lord and that ends the book But that my Dead body should come to praise the Lord this is that New Song which I shall learne and sing in heaven when not onely my soule shall magnify the Lord and my Spirit rejoyce in God my Saviour but I shall have mine old eies and eares and tongue and knees and receive such glory in my body
my selfe as that in that body so glorifyed by God I also shall glorify him So very a body so perfectly a body shall we have there as that Mahomet and his followers could not consist in those heavenly functions of the body in glorifying God but mis-imagine a feasting and banqueting and all carnall pleasures of the body in heaven too But there Christ stoppes A Resurrection there shall be but in the Resurrection we shall not mary c. They shall not mary because they shall have none of the uses of mariage not as mariage is physicke against inordinate affections for every soule shall be a Consort in itselfe and never out of tune not as mariage is ordained for mutuall helpe of one another for God himself shall be intirely in every soul And what can that soul lack that hath all God Not as mariage is a second and a suppletory eternity in the continuation and propagation of Children for they shall have the first Eternity individuall eternity in themselves Therefore does S. Luke assigne that reason why they shall not mary Because they cannot dy Because they have an eternity in themselves they need not supply any defect by a propagation of children But yet though Christ exclude that of which there is clearely no use in Heaven Mariage because they need no physick no mutuall help no supply of children yet he excludes not our knowing or our loving of one another upon former knowledge in this world in the next Christ does not say expressely we shall yet neither does he say that we shall not know one another there Neither can we say we shall not because we know not how we should Adam who was asleep when Eve was made and neither saw nor felt any thing that God had done knew Eve upon the very first sight to be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh By what light knew he this And in the transfiguration of Christ Peter and James and John knew Moses and Elias and by what light knew they them whom they had never seen Nor can we or they or any be imagined to have any degree of knowledge of persons or actions though but occasionally and transeuntly in this life which we shall not have inherently and permanently in the next In the Types of the generall Resurrection which were particular Resuscitations of the dead in this world the Dead were restored to the knowledge of their friends when Christ raised the sonne of the widow of Naim he delivered him to his Mother when Peter raised Tabitha he called the Saints and the Widows and presented her alive unto them So God saies to Abraham Ibis ad patres thou shalt goe to thy fathers he should know that they were his fathers so to Moses Iungeris populis tuis Thou shalt dy and be gathered to thy people as Aaron thy brother dyed and was gathered to his people Iohn Baptist had a knowledge of Christ though they were both in their mothers wombes and Dives of Lazarus though in Hell and it is not easily told by what light these saw these Whatsoever conduces to Gods glory or our happinesse we shall certainly know in heaven And he that in a rectifyed conscience beleeves that it does so may piously beleeve that he shall know them there In things of this nature where no direct place of Scripture binds up thy faith beleeve so as most exalts thine own Devotion yet with this Caution too not to condemn uncharitably and peremptorily those that beleeve otherwise A Resurrection there shall be In the Resurrection there shall be no Mariage because it conduces to no end but if it conduce to Gods glory and my happinesse as it may piously be beleeved it does to know them there whom I knew here I shall know them Now from this In the Resurrection they mary not flows this also Till the Resurrection they doe they may they shall mary Nay in Gods first purpose and institution They must For God said It is not good that the man should be alone Every man is a naturall body every congregation is a politik body The whole world is a Catholik an universall body For the sustentation and aliment of the naturall body Man God hath given Meat for the Politik for societies God hath given Industry and severall callings and for the Catholik body for the sustentation and reparation of the world God hath given Mariage They that scatter themselves in various lusts commit wast and shall undergoe at last a heavy condemnation upon that Action of wast in their souls as they shal feel it before in their bodies which they have wasted They that mary not do not keep the world in reparation And the common law the law of nature and the generall law of God bindes man in generall to that reparation of the world to Mariage for Continency is Privilegtum a Privilege that is Privata lex when it is given it becomes a law too for he to whom God gives the gift of Continency is bound by it it is Privata lex a Law an Obligation upon that particular man And then Privilegium is Privatio Legis it is a dispensation upon that Law which without that privilege and dispensation would binde him so that all those who have not this privilege this dispensation this continency by immediate gift from God or other medicinall Disciplines and Mortifications which Disciplines and Mortifications every state and condition of life is not bound to exercise because such Mortifications as would overcome their Concupiscences would also overcome all their naturall strength and make them unable to doe the works of their callings all such are bound by the generall law to mary For from Nature and her Law we have that voice ut gignamus geniti Man is borne into the world that others might be born from him And from Gods generall Law we have that voice Crescite Multiplicamini Therefore God plac'd man here that he might repair and furnish the world He is gone at Common Law that maries not Not but that he may have reliefe but it is onely in Conscience and by way of Equity and as in Chancery that is If in a rectified Conscience he know that he should be the lesse disposed to religious Offices for mariage he does well to abstaine otherwise he must remember that the world is one Body and Mariage the aliment that the world is one Building and Mariage the Reparation Therefore the Emperor Augustus did not onely encrease the rewards and privileges which former Laws had given to maried persons but he laid particular penalties upon them that liv'd unmaryed And though that State seem to have countenanced single life because they afforded dignities to certaine Vestall Virgins yet the number of those Vestals was small not above six and then the dignities and privileges which those Vestals had were no other but that they were made equall in the state to maryed
washed in my own tears and either out of compunction for my self or compassion for others I passe through this world as through a valley of tears where tears settle and swell and when I passe out of this world I leave their eyes whose hands close mine full of tears too can these persons this Image of God this God himself this glorious God and this vessell of earth this earth it self this inglorious worm of the earth meet without disparagement They doe meet and make a mariage because I am not a body onely but a body and s oul there is a mariage and Christ maries me As by the Law a man might mary a captive woman in the Warres if he shaved her head and pared her nails and changed her clothes so my Saviour having fought for my soul fought to blood to death to the death of the Crosse for her having studied my soul so much as to write all those Epistles which are in the New Testament to my soul having presented my soule with his own picture that I can see his face in all his temporall blessings having shaved her head in abating her pride and pared her nails in contracting her greedy desires and changed her clothes not to fashion her self after this world my soul being thus fitted by himself Christ Jesus hath maried my soul maried her to all the three intendments mentioned in the secular mariage first in ustionem against burning That whether I burn my self in the fires of tentation by exposing my self to occasions of tentation or be reserved to be burnt by others in the fires of persecution and martyrdome whether the fires of ambition or envy or lust or the everlasting fires of hell offer at me in an apprehension of the judgements of God yet as the Spirit of God shall wipe all tears from mine eyes so the tears of Christ Jesus shall extinguish all fires in my heart and so it is a mariage In ustionem a remedy against burning It is so too In prolificationem for children first vae soli woe unto that single soul that is not maried to Christ that is not come into the way of having issue by him that is not incorporated in the Christian Church and in the true Church but is yet in the wildernesse of Idolatry amongst the Gentiles or in the Labyrinth of superstition amongst the Papists vae soli woe unto that single man that is not maried unto Christ in the Sacraments of the Church and vae sterili woe unto them that are barren after this spirituall mariage for that is a great curse in the Prophet Ieremy Scribe virum istum sterilem write this man childlesse that implied all calamities upon him And assoon as Christ had laid that curse upon the Fig-tree Let no fruit grow upon thee for ever presently the whole tree withered no fruit no leafes neither nor body left To be incorporated in the body of Christ Jesus and bring forth no fruits worthy of that profession is a wofull state too Vae soli woe unto the Gentiles not maried unto Christ and vae sterili woe unto inconsiderate Christians that think not upon their calling that conceive not by Christ but there is a vae praegnanti too wo unto them that are with child and are never delivered that have good conceptions religious dispositions holy desires to the advancement of Gods truth but for some collaterall respects dare not utter them nor bring them to their birth to any effect The purpose of his mariage to us is to have children by us and this is his abundant and his present fecundity that working now by me in you in one instant he hath children in me and grand children by me He hath maried me in ustionem and in prolem against burning and for children but can he have any use of me in adjutorium for a helper Surely if I be able to feed him and clothe him and harbour him and Christ would not condemne men at the last day for not doing these if man could not doe them I am able to help him too Great persons can help him over sea convey the name of Christ where it hath not been preached yet and they can help him home again restore his name and his truth where superstition with violence hath disseised him And they can help him at home defend his truth there against all machinations to displant and dispossesse him Great men can help him thus and every man can help him to a better place in his own heart and his own actions then he hath had there and to be so helped in me and helped by me to have his glory thereby advanced Christ hath maried my soul And he hath maried it in aeternum for ever which is the third and last Circumstance in this spirituall as it was in the secular mariage And here the aeternum is enlarged in the secular mariage it was an eternity considered onely in this life but this eternity is not begun in this world but from all eternity in the Book of life in Gods eternall Decree for my election there Christ was maried to my soul. Christ was never in minority never under years there was never any time when he was not as ancient as the Ancient of Days as old as his Father But when my soul was in a strange minority infinite millions of millions of generations before my soul was a soul did Christ mary my soul in his eternall Decree So it was eternall it had no beginning Neither doth he interrupt â—his by giving me any occasion of jealousie by the way but loves my soul as though there were no other soul and would have done and suffered all that he did for me alone if there had been no name but mine in the Book of life And as he hath maried me to him in aeternum for ever before all beginnings and in aeternum for ever without any interruptions so I know that whom he loves he loves to the end and that he hath given me not a presumptuous impossibility but a modest infallibility that no sin of mine shall divorce or separate me from him for that which ends the secular mariage ends not the spirituall not death for my death does not take me from that husband but that husband being by his Father preferr'd to higher titles and greater glory in another state I doe but goe by death where he is become a King to have my part in that glory and in those additions which he hath received there And this hath led us to our third and last mariage our eternall mariage in the triumphant Church And in this third mariage the persons are the Lamb and my soul The mariage of the Lamb is come and blessed are they that are called to the mariage Supper of the Lamb says S. Iohn speaking of our state in the generall Resurrection That Lamb that was brought to the slaughter and opened not his mouth
reuniting of body and soule in a blessed Resurrection Ite Surgite depart so as you may desire to rise Depart with an In manus tuas and with a Veni Domiâ—e Iesu with a willing surrendring of your soules and a cheerfull meeting of the Lord Jesus For else all hope of profit and permanent Rest is lost for as Saint Hierome interprets these very words Here we are taught that there is no rest in this life Sed quasiâ—â—â— mortuis resurgentes ad sublime tendere ambulare post Daminum Iesum we depart when we depart from sin and we rise when we raise our selves to a conformity with Christ And not onely after his example but after his person that is to hasten thither whither he is gone to prepare us a Room For this Rest in the Text though it may be understood of the Land of Promise and of the Church and of the Arke and of the Sabbath for if we had time to pursue them we might make good use of all these acceptations yet we accept Chrysostâ—me's acceptation best Requies est ipse Christus our rest is Christ himselfe Not onely that rest that is in Christ peace of conscience in him but that Rest that Christ is in eternall rest in his kingdome There remaineth a Rest to the people of God besides that inchoation of Rest which the godly have here there remains a fuller Rest. Iesus is entred into his Rest sayes the Apostle there his Rest was not here in this world and Let us study to enter into thatâ— Rest sayes he for no other can accomplish our peace It is righteousnesse with God is recompence tribulation to them that trouble you and to you which are troubled Rest but when in this world no when the Lord Iesus shall sheâ— himselfe from heaven with his mighty Angels then comes your Rest for for the grave the body lies still but it is not a Rest because it is not sensible of that lying still In heaven the body shall rest rest in the sense of that glory This Rest then is not here Not onely not Here at this Here was taken in the first interpretation Here in the Earth but not Here in the second interpretation not in Repentance it selfe for all the Rest of this life even the spirituall Rest is rather a Truce then a peace rather a Cessation then an end of the war For when these words I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians Every one shall fight against his brother and every one against his neighbour City against City and Kingdome against Kingdome may be interpreted and are so interpreted of the time of the Gospell of Christ Jesus when Christ himselfe says Nolite putare quod venerim mittere pacem in terrâ Never think that I came to settle peace or Rest in this world Nay when Christ sayes None of them that were bidden shall come to his supper and that may be verified of any Congregation none of us that are call'd now shall come to that Rest a Man may be at a security in an opinion of Rest and be far from it A man may be neerer Rest in a troubled Conscience then in a secure Here we have often Resurrections that is purposes to depart from sin but they are such Resurrections as were at the time of Christs Resurrection when as the strongest opinion is Resurrexerunt iterum morituri Many of the dead rose but they died again we rise from our sins here but here we fall again Monumenta aperta sunt it is Saint Hierome's note The graves were opened presently upon Christs death but yet the bodies did not arise till Christs Resurrection The godly have an opening of their graves they see some light some of their weight some of their Earth is taken from them but a Resurrection to enter into the City to follow the Lamb to come into an established security that they have not till they be united to Christ in heaven Here we are still subject to relapses and to looking back Memento uxoris Lâ—t Ipsa in loco manet transeuntes monet Shee is fixed to a place that she might settle those that are not fix'd Vt quid in statuam salis conversa si non homines ut sapiant condiat to teach us the danger of looking back till we be fix'd she is fix'd When the Prophetâ— Eliahâ— was at the dore of Desperation an Angell touch'd him and said Vp and eat and there was bread and water provided and he did eat but he slept again and we have some of these excitations and we come and eat and drink even the body and bloud of Christ but we sleep again we doe not perfect the work Our Rest Here then is never without a fear of losing it This is our best state To fear leâ—t at any time by forsaking the promise of entring into his rest we should seem to be depriv'd The Apostle disputes not neither doe I whether we can be depriv'd or no but he assures us that we may fall back so far as that to the Church and to our own Consciences we may seem to be depriv'd and that 's argument enough that here is no Rest. To end all though there be no Rest in all this world no not in our sanctification here yet this being a Consolation there must be rest some where And it is In superna Civitate unde amicus non exit quâ inimicus non intrat In that City in that Hierusalem where there shall never enter any man whom we doe not love nor any goe from us whom we doe love Which though we have not yet yet we shall have for upon those words because I live ye shall live also Saint Augustine sayes that because his Resurrection was to follow so soon Christ takes the present word because I doe live But because their life was not to be had here he says Vivetis you shall live in heaven not Vivitis for here we doe not live So as in Adam we all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive says the Apostle All our deaths are here present now now we dy our quickning is reserv'd for heaven that 's future And therefore let us attend that Rest as patiently as we doe the things of this world and not doubt of it therefore because we see it not yet even in this world we consider invisible things more then visible Vidimus pelagus non autem mercedem The Merchant sees the tempestuous Sea when he does not see the commodities which he goes for Videmus terram non autem messem The Husbandman sees the Earth and his labour when he sees no harvest and for these hopes that there will be a gain to the Merchant and a harvest to the Labourer Naturae fidimus we rely upon Creatures for our Resurrection fide usâ—orem habemus Coranatum Not Nature not Sea
death But upon that part of the sentence In pulverem reverteris To dust thou shalt return there is no Non obstante though thou turn to God thou must turn into the grave for hee that redeem'd thee from the other death redeem'd not himself from this Carry this consideration to the last minute of the world when we that remain shall bee caught up in the clouds yet even that last fire may be our fever those clouds our winding sheets that rapture our dissolution and so with Saint Augustine most of the ancients most of the latter men think that there shall be a sudden dissolution of body and soul which is death and a sudden re-uniting of both which is resurrection in that instant Quis Homeo is Davids question What man is he that liveth and shall not see death Let us adde Quis Deoram What god is he amongst the Gentiles that hath not seen death Which of their three hundred Iupiters which of their thousands of other gods have not seen death Mortibus morjuntur we may adde to that double death in Gods mouth another death The gods of the Gentiles have dyed thrice In body in soul and in fame for though they have been glorified with a Deification nor one of all those old gods is at this day worshipt in any part of the world but all those temporary and transitory Gods are worn out and dead in all senses Those gods who were but men fall under Davids question Quis Home And that man who was truly God fals under it too Christ Jesus He saw death though he saw not the death of this text Corruption And if we consider the effusion of his precious blood the contusion of his sacred flesh the extention of those sinews and ligaments which tyed heaven and earth together in a reconciliation the departing of that Intelligence from that sphear of that high Priest from that Temple of that Dove from that Arke of that soul from that body that dissolution which as an ordinary man he should have had in the grave but that the decree of God declar'd in the infallibility of the manifold prophesies preserv'd him from it had been but a slumber in respect of these tortures which he did suffer The Godhead staid with him in the grave and so he did not corrupt but though our souls be gone up to God our bodies shall Corruption in the skin says Iob In the outward beauty These be the Records of velim these be the parchmins the endictments and the evidences that shall condemn many of us at the last day our own skins we have the book of God the Law written in our own hearts we have the image of God imprinted in our own souls wee have the character and seal of God stamped in us in our baptism and all this is bound up in this velim in this parchmin in this skin of ours and we neglect book and image and character and feal and all for the covering It is not a clear case if we consider the originall words properly That Iesabel did paint and yet all translators and expositors have taken a just occasion out of the ambiguity of those words to cry down that abomination of painting It is not a clear case if we consider the propriety of the words That Absolon was hanged by the hair of the head and yet the Fathers and others have made use of that indifferency and verisimilitude to explode that abomination of cherishing and curling haire to the enveagling and ensnaring and entangling of others Iudicium patietur aeternum says Saint Hierome Thou art guilty of a murder though no body die Quia vinum attulisti si faisset qui bibisset Thou hast poyson'd a cup if any would drink thou hast prepar'd a tentation if any would swallow it Tertullian thought he had done enough when he had writ his book De Habitu muliâ—bri against the excesse of women in clothes but he was fain to adde another with more vehemence De cultu foeminarum that went beyond their clothes to their skin And he concludes Illud ambitionis crimen there 's vain-glory in their excesse of clothes but Hoc prostitutionis there 's prostitution in drawing the eye to the skin Pliny says that when their thin silke stuffes were first invented at Rome Excogitatum ad faeminas denudandas It was but an invention that women might go naked in clothes for their skins might bee seen through those clothes those thinne stuffes Our women are not so carefull but they expose their nakednesse professedly and paint it to cast bird-lime for the passengers eye Beloved good dyet makes the best Complexion and a good Conscience is a continuall feast A cheerfull heart makes the best blood and peace with God is the true cheerfulnesse of heart Thy Saviour neglected his skin so much as that at last hee scarse had any all was torn with the whips and scourges and thy skin shall come to that absolute corruption as that though a hundred years after thou art buryed one may find thy bones and say this was a tall man this was a strong man yet we shall soon be past saying upon any relique of thy skinne This was a fair man Corruption seises the skinne all outward beauty quickly and so it does the body the whole frame and constitution which is another consideration After my skinne my Body If the whole body were an eye or an ear where were the body says Saint Paul but when of the whole body there is neither eye nor ear nor any member left where is the body And what should an eye do there where there is nothing to be seen but loathsomnesse or a nose there where there is nothing to be smelt but putrefaction or an ear where in the grave they doe not praise God Doth not that body that boasted but yesterday of that priviledge above all creatures that it onely could goe upright lie to day as flat upon the earth as the body of a horse or of a dogge And doth it not to morrow lose his other priviledge of looking up to heaven Is it not farther remov'd from the eye of heaven the Sunne then any dogge or horse by being cover'd with the earth which they are not Painters have presented to us with some horrour the sâ—cleton the frame of the bones of a mans body but the state of a body in the dissolution of the grave no pencil can present to us Between that excrementall jelly that thy body is made of at first and that jelly which thy body dissolves to at last there is not so noysome so putrid a thing in nature This skinne this outward beauty this body this whole constitution must be destroy'd says Iobâ— in the next place The word is well chosen by which all this is expressed in this text Nakaph which is a word of as heavy a signification to expresse an utter abolition and annihilation as perchance can be
found in all the Scriptures Tremellius hath mollifyed it in his translation there it is but Confodere to pierce And yet it is such a piercing such a sapping such an undermining such a demolishing of a fort of Castle as may justly remove us from any high valuation or any great confidence in that skinne and in that body upon which this Confoderint must fall But in the great Bible it is Contriverint Thy skinne and thy body shall be ground away trod away upon the ground Aske where that iron is that is ground off of a knife or axe Aske that marble that is worn off of the threshold in the Church-porch by continuall treading and with that iron and with that marble thou mayst finde thy Fathers skinne and body Contrita sunt The knife the marble the skinne the body are ground away trod away they are destroy'd who knows the revolutions of dust Dust upon the Kings high-way and dust upon the Kings grave are both or neither Dust Royall and may change places who knows the revolutions of dust Even in the dead body of Christ Jesus himself one dram of the decree of his Father one sheet one sentence of the prediction of the Prophets preserv'd his body from corruption and incineration more then all Iosephs new tombs and fine linnen and great proportion of spices could have done O who can expresse this inexpreffible mystery The foul of Christ Jesus which took no harm by him contracted no Originall sin in coming to him was guilty of no more sin when it went out then when it came from the breath and bosome of God yet this soul left this body in death And the Divinity the Godhead incomparably better then that soul which soul was incomparably better then all the Saints and Angels in heaven that Divinity that God-head did not forsake the body though it were dead If we might compare things infinite in themselves it was nothing so much that God did assume mans nature as that God did still cleave to that man then when he was no man in the separation of body and soul in the grave But full we from incomprehensible mysteries for there is mortification enough and mortification is vivification and aedification in this obvious consideration skinne and body beauty and substance must be destroy'd And Destroyed by wormes which is another descent in this humiliation and exâ—anition of man in death After my skinne wormes shall destroy this body I will not insist long upon this because it is not in the Originall In the Originall there is no mention of wormes But because in other places of Iob there is They shal lye down alike in the dust and the worms shall cover them The womb shal forget them and the worm shal feed sweetly on them because the word Destroying is presented in that form number Contriverint when they shall destroy they and no other persons no other creatures named both our later translations for indeed our first translation hath no mention of wormes and so very many others even Tremellâ—s that adheres most to the letter of the Hebrew have filled up this place with that addition Destroyed by worms It makes the destruction the more contemptible Thou that wouldest not admit the beames of the Sunne upon thy skinne and yet hast admitted the pollutions of sinne Thou that wouldst not admit the breath of the ayre upon thy skinne and yet hast admitted the spirit of lust and unchast solicitations to breath upon thee in execrable oathes and blasphemies to vicious purposes Thou whose body hath as farre as it can putrefyed and corrupted even the body of thy Saviour in an unworthy receiving thereof in this skinne in this body must be the food of worms the prey of destroying worms After a low birth thou mayst passe an honourable life after a sentence of an ignominious death thou mayst have an honourable end But in the grave canst thou make these worms silke worms They were bold and early worms that eat up Herod before he dyed They are bold and everlasting worms which after thy skinne and body is destroyed shall remain as long as God remains in an eternall gnawing of thy conscience long long after the destroying of skinne and body by bodily worms Thus farre then to the destroying of skinne and body by worms all men are equall Thus farre all 's Common law and no Prerogative so is it also in the next step too The Resurrection is common to all The prerogative lies not in the Rising but in the rising to the fruition of the sight of God in which consideration the first beam of comfort is the Postquam After all this destruction before by worms ruinous misery before but there is something else to be done upon me after God leaves no state without comfort God leaves some inhabitants of the earth under longer nights then others but none under an everlasting night and those whom he leaves under those long nights he recompenses with as long days after I were miserable if there were not an Antequam in my behalfe if before I had done well or ill actually in this world God had not wrapped me up in his good purpose upon me And I were miserable againe if there were not a Postquam in my behalfe If after my sinne had cast me into the grave there were not a lowd trumpet to call me up and a gracious countenance to looke upon me when I were risen Nay let my life have been as religious as the infirmities of this life can admit yet If in this life onely we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable For for the worldly things of this life first the children of God have them in the least proportions of any and besides that those children of God which have them in larger proportion do yet make the least use of them of any others because the children of the world are not so tender conscienced nor so much afraid lest those worldly things should become snares and occasions of tentation to them if they open themselves to a full enjoying thereof as the children of God are And therefore after my wanting of many worldly things after a penurious life and after my not daring to use those things that I have so freely as others doe after that holy and conscientious forbearing of those things that other men afford themselves after my leaving all these absolutely behind me here and my skin and body in destruction in the grace After all there remaines something else for me After but how long after That 's next When Christ was in the body of that flesh which we are in now sinne onely excepted he said in that state that he was in then Of that day and houre no man knoweth not the Angels not the Sonne Then in that state he excludes himselfe And when Christ was risen againe in an uncorruptible body he said even to his nearest followers Non est
one person in him My flesh shall no more be none of mine then Christ shall not be man as well as God SERMON XV. Preached at Lincolns Inne 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God SAint Gregory hath delivered this story That Eutychius who was Bishop of Constantinople having written a book of the Resurrection and therein maintained that errour That the body of Christ had not that our bodies in the Resurrection should not have any of the qualities of a naturall body but that those bodies were in subtilitatem redacta so rarifyed so refined so attenâ—ated and reduced to a thinnesse and subtlenesse that they were aery bodies and not bodies of flesh and blood This error made a great noise and raised a great dust till the Emperour to avoid scandall which for the most part arises out of publick conferences was pleased to hear Eutychius and Gregory dispute this point privately before himself and a small company And that upon conference the Emperour was so well satisfyed that hee commanded Eutychius his books to bee burnt That after this both Gregory and Eutychius fell sicke but Eutychius dyed and dyed with this protestation In hâc carne in this flesh taking up the flesh of his hand in the presence of them that were there in this flesh I acknowledge that I and all men shall arise at the day of Judgement Now the principall place of Scripture which in his book and in that conference Eutychius stood upon was this Text these words of Saint Paul This I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God And the directest answer that Gregory gave to it was Caro secundum culpam non regnabit sed Caro secundum naturam sinfull flesh shall not but naturall flesh that is flesh indued with all qualities of flesh all such qualities as imply no defect no corruption for there was flesh before there was sin such flesh and such blood shall inherit the Kingdome of God As there have been more Heresies about the Humanity of Christ then about his Divinity so there have been more heresies about the Resurrection of his body and consequently of ours then about any other particular article that concerns his Humiliation or Exaltation Simon Magus strook deepest at first to the root That there was no Resurrection at all The Gnosticks who took their name from knowledge as though they knew all and no body else any thing which is a pride transferr'd through all Heretickes for as that sect in the Roman Church which call themselves Ignorantes and seem to pretend to no knowledge doe yet believe that they know a better way to heaven then all other men doe so that sect amongst them which called themselves Nullanos Nothings thought themselves greater in the Kingdome of God then either of the other two sects of diminution the Minorits or the Minims did These Gnosticks acknowledged a Resurrection but they said it was of the soul onely and not of the body for they thought that the soul lay dead at least in a dead sleep till the Resurrection Those Heretickes that are called the Arabians did as the Gnosticks did affirm a temporary death of the soul as well as of the body but then they allowed a Resurrection to both soul and body after that death which the Gnostickes did not but to the soul onely Hymeneus and Philetus of whom Saint Paul speakes they restrained the Resurrection to the soule but then they restrained this Resurrection of the soule to this life and that in those who were baptized the Resurrection was accomplished already Eutychius whom wee mentioned before enlarged the Resurrection to the body as well as to the soul but enlarged the qualities of the body so far as that it was scarce a body The Armenian hereticks said that it was not onely Corpus humâ—num but Corpus masculinum That all should rise in the perfecter sex and none as women Origen allowed a Resurrection and allowed the Body to be a naturall body but the contracted the time he said that when we rose we should enjoy the benefits of the resurrection even in bodily pleasures for a thousand years and then be annihilated or absorpted and swallowed up into the nature and essence of God himselfe for it will be hard to state Origens opinion in this point Origen was not herein well understood in his owne time not doe we understand him now for the most part but by his accusers and those that have written against him Divers of these Heretiques for the maintenance of their severall heresies perverted this Scripture Flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God and that occasioned those Fathers who opposed those heresies so diverse from one another to interpret these words diversly according to the heresie they opposed All agree that they are an argument for the resurrection though they seem at first to oppose it For this Chapter hath three generall parts first Resurrectionem esse that there shall be a Resurrection which the Apostle proves by many and various arguments to the thirty fifth verse And then Quati corpore the body shall rise but some will say How are the dead raised and with what body doe they come in that thirty fifth verse And lastly Quid de superstitibus what shall become of them who shall be found alive at the day We shall all be changed verse fifty one Now this text is the knot and corollary or all the second part concerning the qualities of the bodies in the resurrection Now says the Apostle now that I have said enough to prove that a resurrection there is now now that I have said enough what kind of bodies shall arise now I show you as much in the Negative as I have done in the Affirmative now I teach you what to avoid as well as I have done what to affect now this I say brethren that flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God Now though those words be primarily principally intended of the last Resurrection yet in a secondary respect they are appliable in themselves and very often applied by the ancients to the first Resurrection our resurrection in this life Tertullian hath intimated and presented both together elegantly when he says of God Nobis arrhabonem spiritus reliquit arrhabonem à nobis accepit God hath given us his earnest and a pawn from him upon earth in giving us the holy Ghost and he hath received our earnest and a pawn from us into heaven by receiving our nature in the body of Christ Jesus there Flesh and bloud when it is conformed to the flesh and bloud of Christ now glorified and made like his by our resurrectien may inherite the kingdome of God in heaven Yea flesh and bloud being conformed to Christ by the sanctification of the holy Ghost here in this world may inherit the kingdome of God here upon earth for God hath a
kingdome here and there is a Communion in Armes as well as a communion in Triumph Leaving then that acceptation of flesh and bloud which many thinke to be intended in this text that is Animalis caro flesh and bloud that must be maintained by eating and drinking and preserved by propagation and generation that flesh and that bloud cannot inherit heaven where there is no marying nor giving in mariage but Erimus sicut Angeli we shall be as the Angels though such a heaven in part Mahomet hath proposed to his followers a heaven that should abound with worldly delights and such a heaven the Disciples of Origen and the Millenarians that look for one thousand years of all temporall felicity proposed to themselves And though amongst our latter men Cajetan doe thinke that the Apostle in this text bent himselfe upon that doctrine non caro non Animalis caro flesh and bloud that is no carnall no worldly delights are to be looked for in heaven leaving that sense as too narrow and too shallow for the holy Ghost in this place in which he hath a higher reach we shall determine our selves at this time in these too acceptations of this phrase of speech first non caro that is non caro corrupta flesh and bloud cannot sinfull flesh corrupt flesh flesh not discharged of sinfull corruption here by repentance and Sanctification and the operation of Gods spirit such flesh cannot inherit the kingdome of God here Secondly noncar◠is non car◠corruptibilis flesh and bloud cannot that is flesh that is yet subject to corruption and dissolution and naturall passions and impressions tending to defectivenesse flesh that is still subject to any punishment that God lays upon flesh for sinne such flesh cannot inherit the kingdome of God hereafter for our present possession of the kingdome of God here our corrupt flesh must be purged by Sanctification here for the future kingdome our naturall Corruptiblenesse must be purged by glorification there We will make the last part first as this flesh and this bloud by devesting the corruptiblenesse it suffers here by that glorification shall inherit that kingdome and not stay long upon it neither For of that we have spoken conveniently before of the resurrection it selfe Now we shall looke a little into the qualities of bodies in the resurrection and that not in the intricacies and subtilties of the Schoole but onely in that one patterne which hath been given us of that glory upon earth which is the Transfiguration of Christ for that Transfiguration of his was a representation of a glorified body in a glorified state And then in the second place we shall come to our first part what that flesh and bloud is that is denied to be capable of the inheritance of that kingdome here that is that earnest of heaven and that inchoation of heaven which may be had in this world and in that part we shall see what this inheritance what this title to heaven here and what this kingdome of God that heaven which is proposed to us here is First then for the first acceptation which is of the later resurrection no man denies that which Melancthon hath collected and established to be the summe of this text Statuit resurrectionem in corpore sed non quale jam corpus est The Apostle establishes a resurrection of the body but yet not such a body as this is It is the same body and yet not such a body which is a mysterious consideration that it is the same body and yet not such as it selfe nor like any other body of the same substance But what kind of body then We content ourselves with that Transfiguratio specimen appositissimum Resurrectionis the Transfiguration of Christ is the best glasse to see this resurrection and state of glory in But how was that transfiguration wrought We content our selves with Saint Hieromes expressing of it non pristinam amisit veritatem vel formam corporis Christ had still the same ture and reall body and he had the same forme and proportion and lineaments and dimensions of his body in it selfe Transfiguratio non faciem subtraxit sed splendorem ad didit sayes he It gave him not another face but it super-immitted such a light such an illustration upon him as by that irradiation that coruscation the beames of their eys were scattered and disgregated dissipated so as that they could not collect them as at other times nor constantly and confidently discerne him Moses had a measure a proportion of this but yet when Moses came down with his shining face though they were not able to looke long upon him they knew him to be Moses When Christ was transfigured in the presence of Peter Iames and Iohn yet they knew him to be Christ. Transfiguration did not so change him nor shall glorification so change us as that we shall not be known There is nothing to convince a man of error nothing in nature nothing in Scriptures if he beleeve that he shall know those persons in heaven whom he knew upon earth and if he conceive soberly that it were a lesse degree of blessednesse not to know them then to know them he is bound to beleeve that he shall know them for he is bound to beleeve that all that conduces to blessednes shall be given him The School resolves that at the Judgement all the sins of all shall be manifested to all even those secret sinfull thoughts that never came out of the heart And when any in the School differs or departs from this cōmon opinion they say onely that those sins which have been in particular repented shall not be manifested all others shall And therefore it is a deep uncharitablenes to reproach any man of sins formerly repented and a deep uncharitablenesse not to beleeve that he whom thou seest at the Communion hath repented his former sins Reproach no man after thou hast seen him receive with last years sins except thou have good evidence of his Hypocrisie then or of his Relapsing after For in those two cases a man remaines or becomes againe guilty of his former sinnes Now if in heaven they shall know the hearts of one another whose faces they never knew before there is lesse difficulty in knowing them whom we did know before From this transfiguration of Christ in which the mortall eye of the Apostles did see that representation of the glory of Christ the Schooles make a good argument that in heaven we shall doe it much more And though in this case of the Transfiguration in which the eyes of mortall men could have no proportion with that glory of heaven this may bee well said to have been done either Moderando lumen that God abated that light of glory or Confortando visum that God exalted their sense of seeing supernaturally no such distinctions or modifications will bee needfull in heaven because how highly soever the body of my
Father or of my friend shall bee glorifyed there mine eyes shall be glorifyed as much and we are both kept in the same proportion there as wee had towards one another here here my naturall eye could see his naturall face and there mine eye is as much mended as his body is and my sense as much exalted as mine object And as well as I may know that I am I I may know that He is He for I shall not know my selfe nor that state of glory which I am then in by any light of Nature which I brought thither but by that light of Glory which I shall receive there When therefore a man finds that this consideration does him good in his conversation and retards him towards some sinnes how shall I stand then when all the world shall see that my solicitation hath brought such a woman to the stews to the Hospitall to hell who had scap'd all this if I had not corrupted her at first which no man in the world knew before and all shall know then Or that my whispering and my calumny hath overthrown such a man in his place in his reputation in his fortune which he himself knew not before and all shall know then Or that my counsell or my example hath been a furtherance to any mans spirituall edification here He that in rectified reason and a rectified conscience finds this in Gods name let him beleeve yea for Gods sake let him take heed of not beleeving that we shall know one another Actions and Persons in the Resurrection as the Apostles did know Christ at the Transfiguration which was a Type of it This Transfiguration then upon earth was the same glory which Christ had after in heaven Qualis venturus talis apparuit such as all eyes shall see him to be when he comes in glory at last those Apostles saw him then but of the particular circumstances even of this transfiguration upon earth there is but little said to us Let us modestly take that which is expressed in it and not search over-curiously farther into that which is signifyed and represented by it which is the state of glory in the Resurrection First his face shin'd as the Sunne says that Gospell he could not take a higher comparison for our Information and for our admiration in this world then the Sunne And then the Saints of God in their glorifyed state are admitted to the same comparison The righteous shall shine out as the Sunne in the Kingdome of the Father the Sunne of the firmament which should be their comparison will be gone But the Sun of grace and of glory the Son of God shall remain and they shall shine as he that is in his righteousnesse In this transfiguration his clothes were white says the text but how white the holy Ghost does not tell us at once as white as snow says Saint Mark as white as light says Saint Matthew Let the garments of the glorifyed Saints of God be their bodies and then their bodies are as white as snow as snow that fall's from heaven and hath touâ—ht no pollution of the earth For though our bodies have been upon earth and have touched pitch and have been defiled yet that will not lye in proof not be given in evidence Though he that drew me and I that was drawen too know in what unclean places and what unclean actions this body of mine hath been yet it lyes not in proof it shall not be given in evidence for Accusator fratrum The accuser of the brethren is cast down the Devill shall find nothing against me And if I had spontaneum Daemonem as Saint Chrysostome speaks a bosome Devill and could tempt my self though there had been no other tempter in this world so I have spontanâ—um Demonem a bosome accuser a conscience that would accuse me there if I accuse my self there I reproach the mercy of God who hath seal'd my pardon and made even my body what sins soever had discoloured it as white as snow As white as snow and as white as light says that Gospel Light implies an active power Light is operative and works upon others The bodies of the Saints of God shall receive all impressions of glory in themselves and they shall doe all that is to bee done for the glory of God there There they shall stand in his service and they shall kneel in his worship and they shall fall in his reverence and they shall sing in his glory they shall glorifie him in all positions of the body They shall be glorified in themselves passively and they shall glorifie God actively sicut Nix sicut Lux their beeing their doing shall be all for him Thus they shall shine as the Sun Thus their garments shall be white white as snow in being glorified in their own bodies white as light in glorifying God in all the actions of those bodies Now there is thus much more considerable and applyable to our present purpose in this tranfiguration of Christ that there was company with them Be not apt to think heaven in an Ermitage or a Monastery or the way to heaven a sullen melancholy Heaven and the way to it is a Communion of Saints in a holy cheerfulnesse Get thou thither make sure thine own salvation but be not too hasty to think that no body gets thither except he go thy way in all opinions and all actions There was company in the transfiguration but no other company then Moses and Elias and Christ and the Apostles none but they to whom God had manifested himself otherwise then to a meer naturall man otherwise then as a generall God For in the Law and in the Padagogie and Schoolmastership and instruction thereof God had manifested himself particularly by Moses In Elias and the Prophets whom God sent in a continuall succession to refresh that manifestation which he had given of himself in the Law before in the example of these rules in him who was the consummation of the Law and the Prophets Christ Iesus And then in the Application of all this by the Apostles and by the Church established by them God had more particularly manifested himself then to naturall men Moses Elias Christ and the Apostles make up the houshold of the faithfull and none have interest in the Resurrection but in and by these These to whom and by whom God hath exhibited himself to his Church by other notions then as one universall God For nothing will save a man but to believe in God so as God hath proposed himself in his Son in his Scriptures in his Christ. These were with him in the transfiguration and they talked with him says that text As there is a Communion of Saints so there is a Communication of Saints Think not heaven a Charter-house where men who onely of all creatures are enabled by God to speak must not speak to one another The Lord of heaven is
no persecutor could ever invent a sicknesse or a way to inflict a sicknesse upon a condemned man To a galley he can send him and to the gallows and command execution that hour but to a quartane fever or to a gâ—ut hee cannot condemn him In poverty I lack but other things In banishment I lack but other men But in sicknesse I lack my self And as the greatest misery of war is when our own Country is made the seat of the war so is it of affliction when mine own Body is made the subject thereof How shall I put a just value upon Gods great blessings of Wine and Oyle and Milke and Honey when my cast is gone or of Liberty when the gout fetters my feet The King may release me and say Let him goe whither he will but God says He shall not goe till I will God hath wrapped up all misery in that condemnation Morte morietur That the sinner shall die twice But if the second death did not follow the first death were an ease and a blessing in many sicknesses And no sicknesse can be worse then that which is intended here for it is all over Non sanitas no soundnesse no health in any part This consideration arises not onely from the Physicians Rule that the best state of Mans body is but a Neutrality neither well nor ill but Nulla sanitas a state of true and exquisit health say they no man hath But not onely out of this strictnesse of Art but out of an acknowledgment of Nature we must say sanitas hujus vitae bâ—ne intelligentibus sanitas non est It is but our mistaking when we call any thing Health But why so fames naturalis morbus est Hunger is a sicknesse And that 's naturally in us all Medicamentum famis cibus potus sitis fatigationis somnus when I eate I doe but take Physique for Hunger and for thirst when I drink and so is sleep my physique for wearinesse Detrahe medicamentum interficient for beare but these Physiques and these diseases Hunger and thirst and wearinesse will kill thee And as this sickness is upon us all and so non sanitas there is no Health in none of us so it is upon us all at all times and so Non sanitas there is never any soundness in us for saemper deficimus we are Borne in a Consumption and as little as we are then we grow less from that time Vita cursus ad mortem Before we can craule we runne to meet death urgemur ownes pari passu Though some are cast forward to death by the use which others have of their ruine and so throw them through Discontents into desperate enterprises and some are drawn forward to death by false Markes which they have set up to their own Ambitions and some are spurred forward to death by sharp Diseases contracted by their own intemperance and licentiousness and some are whip'd forward to death by the Miseries and penâ—ries of this life take away all these accidentall furtherances to death this drawing and driving and spurring and whipping pari paessu urgemur omnes we bring all with us into the world that which carries us out of the world a naturall unnaturall consuming of that radicall vertue which sustaines our life Non sanitas there is no health in any so universall is sickness nor at any time in any so universall and so universall too as that not in any part of any man at any time As the King was but sick in his feet and yet it killed him It was but in his fact yet it flew up into his head it affected his head as our former translation observed it in their margin that the disease did not onely grow to a great height in the disease but to the highest parts of the body It was at first but in the feet but it was presently all over Iosiah the King was shot with an arrow at the battail of Megiddo One book that reports the story says he was carried out of the field alive dyed at Ierusalem and another that he was carried out of the field dead Deadly wounds deadly sicknesses spread themselvs all over so fast as that the holy Ghost in relating it makes it all one to tell the beginning and the end thereof If a man doe but prick a finger and binde it above that part so that the Spirits or that which they call the Balsamum of the body cannot descend by reason of that ligature to that part it will gaâ—grene And which is an argument and an evidence that mischiefes are more operative more insinuating more penetrative more diligent then Remedies against mischâ—efes are when the Spirits and Balsamum of the body cannot passe by that ligature to that wound yet the Gangrene will passe from that wound by that ligature to the body to the Heart and destroy In every part of the body death can finde a door or make a breach Mortall diseases breed in every part But when every part at once is diseased death does not bsie ge him but inhabit him In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble and the strong men shall how themselves and the grinders cease because they are few and those that look out at the windows he darkned when age of Gods making age grown by many years or age of the Devills making age grown by many sinnes hath spred an universall debility upon me that all sicknesses are in me have all lost their names as all simples have in Triacle I am sick of sicknesse and not of a Fever or any particular distemper then is the misery of this Text fallen upon me Non sanitas no health none at any time none in any part non in Carne not in my flesh not in my whole substance which is also another circumstance of exaltation in humane misery Take flesh in the largest extent and signification that may be as Moses calls God The God of the spirits of all flesh that is of the Beeing of all Creatures and take all these Creatures to be ours in that Donation Subjicite dominamini subdue and rule all Creatures yet there is no soundnesse in our flesh for all these Creatures are corrupted and become worse then they were to us by the sinne of Adam Bring flesh to a nearer signification to our own there was Caro juxta naturam and there is Caro juxta culpam That flesh which was naturall to man that which God gave man at first that had health and soundnesse in it but yet not such a degree of soundnesse as that it needed no more then it then had That had been naturally enough if that had been preserved to carry that flesh it selfe to heaven but even that flesh if it had not sinned though it had an Immortality in it self yet must have received a glorification in heaven as well though in another measure
Reformation by way of example though not by Doctrine have so much prevailed upon them as that they have now twenty Sermons in that Church for one that they had before Luther yet if a man could heare six Sermons a day all the days of his life he might die without having heard all the Scriptures explicated in Sermons But when men have a Christian liberty afforded to them to read the Scriptures at home and then are remembred of those things at Church and there taught to use that liberty modestly to establish their faith upon places of Scripture that are plain and to suspend their judgment upon obscurer places till they may by due meanes preaching or conference receive farther satisfaction therein from them who are thereunto authorized by God in his Church there certainly is this Rule of our Saviours Take heed what you hear preach all that you have received from me likelyer to be observed then there where the body of the conveyance the Scripture it self is locked up from us and the soule of the conveyance the sense and interpretation of the Scriptures is locked into one mans brest and the Great Seal of that conveyance the Sacrament of our Reconciliation is broken and mutilated and given us but by halfe But they do not onely stray on that hand in not giving all that the Scripture gives They doe not give the liberty of meates nor the liberty of mariage which the Scripture gives Nay they doe not give the liberty of trying whether the Scripture give it or no for they doe not give the liberty of reading the Scriptures But on the other hand they stray too and further That they deliver more then the Scriptures doe and make other Rules and Canons equall to Scriptures In which excesse they doe not onely make the Apocryphall Books Books that have alwaies had a favourable aspect and benigne countenance from the Church of God equall to Canonicall Scriptures But they make their decretall Epistles of their Popes and of their Extravagants as they call them and their occasionall Bulls nay their Bull-baitings their Buls fighting and crossing and contradicting one another equall to Canonicall Scripture So that these men have put the salvation of the world upon another science upon another profession It is not the Divine that is the Minister of salvation but the Canonist I must not determine my beleef in the Apostles Creed nor in Athanasius nor in that of the Nicen Fathers not onely not the Scriptures but not the Councels nor Fathers must give the Materials and Elements of my faith but the Canon law for so they rule it Gratian that hath collected the sentences of Fathers and Councels and digested them into heads of Divinity he is no rule of our beleef because say they he is no part of the body of the Canon law But they that first compiled the Decretals and the Extravagants and they who have since recompiled more Decretals and more Extravagants the Clementins and the Sextins and of late yeares the Septims with those of Iohn the 22. these make up the body of the Canon law and these must be our Rule what to beleeve How long Till they fall out with some State with whom they are friends yet or grown friends with some State that they are fallen out with now and then upon a new Decretall a new Extravagant I must contract a new or enlarge or restrain my old beleef Certainly as in naturall things the assiduity takes off the admiration The rising and the setting of the sunne would be a miracle to him that should see it but once and as in civill things the profusenesse and the communication and the indifferency takes off the Dignity for as gold is gold still the heaviest metall of all yet if it be beat into leaf gold I can blow it away so Honour is honour still the worthyest object of the worthyest spirits and the noblest reward of the greatest Princes yet the more have it the lesse every one hath of it So in the Roman Church they have not found a better way to justify their blasphemy of the insufficiency of the Scriptures then by making contemptible writings as sufficient as Scriptures equall to Scripture If they could make me beleeve the Scriptures were no more sufficient then their Decretals and Extravagants I should easily confesse there were no Scriptures sufficient for salvation And farther we presse not this evidence how farre they depart from this rule Take heed what you heare How much lesse and how much more then Christ gave they give but passe to the third acceptation of these words as in a fair accommodation they are spoken to you who are now as the Apostles were then Hearers Take heed what you heare And into this part I enter with such a protestation as perchance may not become me That this is the first time in all my life I date my life from my Ministery for I received mercy as I received the ministery as the Apostle speaks this is the first time that in the exercise of my Ministery I wished the King away That ever I had any kinde of loathnesse that the King should hear all that I sayd Here for a little while it will be a little otherwise because in this branch I am led to speak of some particular duties of subjects and in my poor way I have thought it somewhat an Eccentrique motion and off of the naturall Poles to speake of the Duties of subjects before the King or of the duties of Kings in publike and popular Congregations As every man is a world in himself so every man hath a Church in himself and as Christ referred the Church for hearing to the Scriptures so every man hath Scriptures in his own heart to hearken to Obedience to Superiours and charity to others are In-nate Scriptures Obedience and Charity are the Naturall mans the Civill mans the Morall mans Old and New Testament Take heed that is observe what you heare from them and they will direct you well And first Take heed what you heare is take heed that you hear That you do hearken to them whom you should hear Our Saviour saith He that is of God heareth his words ye therefore hear them not because you are not his Transferre this to a civill application to obedience to Superiors Christ makes account that he hath argued safely so If you heare him not you are none of his If you heare him not in his Lawes heare him not in his Proclamations heare him not in the Declarations of his wants and necessities you are none of his that is you had rather you were none of his There is a Nolumus hunc regnare smothered in our breasts if we will not hear and we had rather we might devest our Allegeance rather we might be no subjects By the Law he that was willing to continue in the service of his Master was willing to bee boared in the eare willing to testify a
for the New that there was an Old so the two testaments grow one Bible so in these two Affections if there were not a jealousie a fear of losing God we could not love him nor can we fear to lose him except we doe love him Place the affection by what name soever upon the right object God and I have in some measure done that which this Text directed Taught you the fear of the Lord if I send you away in either disposition Timorous or amorous possessed with either the fear or the love of God for this fear is inchoative love and this love is consummative fear The love of God begins in fear and the fear of God ends in love and that love can never end for God is love SERMON XLVII An Anniversary Sermon preached at St. Dunstans upon the commemoration of a Parishioner a Benefactor to that Parish GEN. 3. 24. And dust shalt thou eat all the dayes of thy life THis is Gods malediction upon the Serpent in Paradise There in the Region in the Store-house of all plenty he must starve This is the Serpents perpetuall fast his everlasting Lent Dust shalt thou eat all the dayes of thy life There is a generation derived from this Serpent Progenies viperarum a generation of Vipers that will needs in a great and unnecessary measure keep this Serpents Lent and binde themselves to performe his fact for the Carthusian will eat no flesh and yet I never saw better bodied men men of better habitudes and constitution howsoever they recompense their abstinence from flesh and the Fueillans will eat neither flesh nor fish but roots and fallets and yet amongst them amongst men so enfeebled by roots was bred up that man who was both malicious courage and bodily strength to kill the last King who was killed amongst them They will be above others in their fasts Fish and Roots will they eat all the dayes of their life but their Master will be above them in his fast Dust must he eat all the dayes of his life It is Luthers observation upon this place That in all Moses his Books God never spoke so long so much together as here upon this occasion Indeed the occasion was great It was the arraignment of all the world and more of mankinde and of Angels too of Adam and Eve and there were no more of them and then of the Serpent and of Satan in that and of all the fallen Angels in him For the sentence which God as Judge gave upon them upon all these Malefactors of that part which fell upon the woman all our mothers are experimentall witnesses they brought forth us in sorrow and in travaile Of that part of the sentence which fell upon man every one of us is an experimentall witnesse for in every calling in the sweat of our face we eat our bread And of that part of the Judgement which was inflicted upon the Serpent and Satan in him this dead brother of ours who lyes in this consecrated earth is an experimentall witnesse who being by death reduced to the state of dust for so much of him as is dust that is for his dead body and then for so long time as he is to remaine in that state of dust is in the portion and jurisdiction and possession of the Serpent that is in the state which the Serpent hath induced upon man and dust must he eat all the dayes of his life In passing thorough these words we shall make but these two steps first What the Serpent lost by this judgement inflicted upon him and secondly What man gained by it for these two considerations imbrace much involve much first That Gods anger is so intensive and so extensive so spreading and so vehement as that in his Justice he would not spare the Serpent who had no voluntary no innate no naturall ill disposition towards man but was onely made the instrument of Satan in the overthrow of man And then that Gods mercy is so large so overflowing so super-abundant as that even in his Judgement upon the Serpent he would provide mercy for man For as it is a great waight of judgement upon the Serpent that the Serpent must eat dust so is it a great degree of mercy to man that the Serpent must eate but dust because mans best part is not subject to be served in at his table the soule cannot become dust and dust must he eate all the dayes of his life O in what little sinne though but a sinne of omission though but a sinne of ignorance in what circumstance of sinne may I hope to scape Judgement if God punished the Serpent who was violently and involuntarily transported in this action And in what depth in what height in what hainousnesse in what multiplicity of sin can I doubt of the mercy of my God who makes judgement it self the instrument the engin the Chariot of his mercy What room is there left for presumption if the Serpent the passive Serpent were punished What room for desperation if in the punishment there be a manifestation of mercy The Serpent must eate dust that is his condemnation but he shall eate no better meat he shall eate but dust there is mans consolation First then as it is a fearefull thing to fall into the hands of the living God so is it an impossible thing to scape it God is not ashamed of being jealous he does not onely pronounce that he is a jealous God but he desires to be known by none other name The Lord whose name is jealous is a jealous God so jealous as that he will not have his name uttered in vaine not onely not blasphemed not sworne by but not used indifferently transitorily not Proverbially occasionally not in vaine And if it be what then Even for this he will visite to the third and fourth generation and three and foure are seven and seven is infinite So jealous as that in the case of the Angels not for looking upon any other Creatures or trusting in them for when they fell as it is ordinarily received there were no other creatures made but for not looking immedidiately directly upon God but reflecting upon themselves and trusting in their own naturall parts God threw those Angels into so irrecoverable and bottomelesse a depth as that the merits of Christ Jesus though of infinite super-infinite value doe not boye them up so jealous a God is God so jealous as that in Adams case for over-loving his own wife for his over tender compassion of her foreating the forbidden fruit ne contristaretur delicias suas as Saint Hierome layes his fault left he should deject her into an inordinate and desperate malancholy and so make her incapable of Gods mercy God threw the first man and in him all out of Paradise out of both Paradises out of that of rest and plenty here and that of Joy and Glory hereafter Consider Balaams sin about cursing Gods people or Moses sinne
afflictions of Christ and therefore must all fulfill his sufferings in our flesh And then secondly in this name of Exaltation Gheber man in the highest consideration of man is the subject of affliction And lastly in the person of Ieremy in whom we have made our use of those three observations First That no man is so necessary to God as that God cannot be without him Then That no man is excused of future calamities by former And lastly That he whom God hath exercised with afflictions is bound to glorifie God in the declaration thereof shut wee up this branch with that story of S. Ambrose who in a journey from Milan to Rome passing sometime in the evening with his Host and hearing him brag that he had never had any crosse in his life S. Ambrose presently removed from thence to another house with that protestation That either that man was very unthankfull to God that would not take knowledge of his corrections or that Gods measure was by this time full and hee would surely and soundly and suddenly poure down all together And so we passe to our other branch of this first part from the extent and generality of afflictions to the weight and vehemence of them expressed in three heavy circumstances That they are His the Lords That they are from his Rod That they are from the Rod of his wrath I am the man that have seen afflictions by the rod of his mouth First they are aggravated in that they are Ejus His The Lords It is ordinary in the Scriptures that when the Holy Ghost would expresse a superlative or the highest degree of any thing to expresse it by adding to it the name of God So in many places fortitudo Domini and timor Domini The power of the Lord and the fear of the Lord doe not import that power which is in the Lord nor that fear which is to be conceived by us of the Lord but the power of the Lord and the fear of the Lord denote the greatest power and the greatest fear that can be conceived As in particular when Saul and his company were in such a dead sleep as that David could enter in upon them and take his speare and his pot of water from under his head this is there called sopor Domini the sleep of the Lord was upon him the heaviest the deadliest sleep that could be imagined so may these Afflictions in our Text be conceived to bee exalted to a superlative heighth by this addition that They and the Rod and the wrath are said to be His The Lords But this cannot well be the sense nor the direct proceeding and purpose of the Holy Ghost in this place because where the addition of the name of God constitutes a superlative that name is evidently and literally expressed in that place as fortitudo Det sopor Dei and the rest But here the name of God is onely by implication by illation by consequence All necessary but yet but illation but implication but consequence For there is no name of God in this verse but because in the last verse of the former chapter the Lord is expresly named and the Lords Anger and then this which is the first verse of this chapter and connected to that refers these afflictions and rods and wrath to Him The rod of his wrath it must necessarily bee to him who was last spoken of The Lord They are Ejus His and therefore heavy Then is an Affliction properly Gods Affliction when thou in thy Conscience canst impute it to none but God When thou disorderest thy body with a surfeit nature will submit to sicknesse When thou wearest out thy selfe with licentiousnesse the sin it self will induce infirmities when thou transgressest any law of the State the Iustice of the State will lay hold upon thee And for the Afflictions that fall upon thee in these cases thou art able to say to thy selfe that they would have falne upon thee though there had been no God or though God had had no rod about him no anger in him Thou knowest in particular why and by whose or by what means these Afflictions light upon thee But when thou shalt have thy Conscience clear towards such and such men and yet those men shall goe about to oppresse thee when thou labourest uprightly in thy calling and yet doest not prosper when thou studiest the Scriptures hearkenest to Sermons observest Sabbaths desirest conferences and yet receivest not satisfaction but still remainest under the torture of scruples and anxieties when thou art in S. Pauls case Nihili conscius That thou knowest nothing by thy selfe and yet canst not give thy selfe peace Though all Afflictions upon Gods Children be from him yet take knowledge that this is from him more intirely and more immediately and that God remembers something in thee that thou hast forgot And as that fit of an Ague or that pang of the Gout which may take thee to day is not necessarily occasioned by that which thou hast eaten to day but may be the effect of some former disorder so the affliction which lights upon thee in thine age may be inflicted for the sinnes of thy youth Thy affliction is his The Lords And the Lord is infinite and comprehends all at once and ever finds something in thee to correct something that thou hast done or something that thou wouldest have done if the blessing of that correction had not restrained thee And therefore when thou canst not pitch thy affliction upon any particular sinne yet make not thy selfe so just as that thou make God unjust whose Judgements may be unsearchable but they cannot be unjust This then is the first weight that is laid upon our afflictions that they are His The Lords and this weight consists in this That because they are his they are inevitable they cannot be avoyded And because they are His they are certainly just and cannot be pleaded against nor can we ease our selves with any imagination of an innocency as though they were undeserved And the next weight that is laid upon them is that they are In virga ejus in his rod. For though this Metaphore the Rod may seeme to present but an easie correction such as that If thou beat thy childe with a rod be shall not dye It will not kill him yet there is more weight then so in this Rod for the word here is Shebet and Shebet is such a Rod as may kill If a man smite his servant with a Rod so that he dye under his hand he shall be surely punished Beloved whether Gods Rod and his correction shall have the savour of life unto life or of death unto death consists much in the hand that is to receive it and in the stomach that is to digest it As in Gods Temporall blessings that he raines downe upon us it is much in our gathering and inning and spending them whether it shall be frumenti or
vestruâ—â— it is not for you to know times and seasons Before in his state of mortality 〈…〉 ignor antibus he pretended to know no more of this then they that knew nothing After when he had invested immortality per sui exceptionem says that Father he excepts none but himselfe all the rest even the Apostles were left ignorant thereof For this non est vestrum it is not for you is part of the last sentence that ever Christ spake to them If it be a convenient answer to say Christ knew it not as man how bold is that man that will pretend to know it And if it be a convenient interpretation of Christs words that he knew it not that is knew it not so as that he might tell it them how indiscreet are they who though they may seem to know it will publish it For thereby they fill other men with scruples and vexations and they open themselves to scorne and reproach when their predictions prove false as Saint Augustine observed in his time and every age hath given examples since of confident men that have failed in these conjectures It is a poore pretence to say this intimation this impression of a certaine time prepares men with better dispositions For they have so often been found false that it rather weakens the credit of the thing it selfe In the old world they knew exactly the time of the destruction of the world that there should be an hundred twenty years before the flood came And yet upon how few did that prediction though from the mouth of God himselfe work to repentance Naâ—â— found grace in Gods eyes but it was not because he mended his life upon that prediction but he was grations in Gods sight before At the day of our death we write Pridiâ—râ—surrâ—ctioniâ— the day before the resurrection It is Vigilia resurectionis Our Easter Eve Adveniat regnum tuum possesse my soule of thy kingdome then And Fiâ—â— voluntas tua my body shall arise after but how soon after or how late after thy will bee done then by thy selfe and thy will bee knowne till then to thy selfe We passe on As in Massa damnata the whole lump of mankind is under the condemnation of Adams sinne and yet the good purpose of God severs some men from that condemnation so at the resurrection all shall rise but not all to glory But amongst them that doe Ego says Iob I shall I as I am the same man made up of the samebody and the same soule Shall I imagine a difficulty in my body because I have lost an Arme in the East and a leg in the West because I have left some bloud in the North and some bones in the South Doe but remember with what ease you have sate in the chaire casting an account and made a shilling on one hand a pound on the other or five shillings below ten above because all these lay easily within your reach Consider how much lesse all this earth is to him that sits in heaven and spans all this world and reunites in an instant armes and legs bloud and bones in what corners so ever they be scattered The greater work may seem to be in reducing the soul That that soule which sped so ill in that body last time it came to it as that it contracted Originall sinne then and was put to the slavery to serve that body and to serve it in the ways of sinne not for an Apprentiship of seven but seventy years after that that soul after it hath once got loose by death and liv'd God knows how many thousands of years free from that body that abus'd it so before and in the sight and fruition of that God where it was in no danger should willingly nay desirously ambitiously seek this scuttered body this Eastern and Western and Northern and Southern body this is the most inconsiderable consideration and yet Ego I I the same body and the same soul shall be recompact again and be identically numerically individually the same man The same integrity of body and soul and the same integrity in the Organs of my body and in the faculties of my soul too I shall be all there my body and my soul all my body all my soul I am not all here I am here now preaching upon this text and I am at home in my Library considering whether S. Gregory or S. Hierome have said best of this text before I am here speaking to you and yet I consider by the way in the same instant what it is likely you will say to one another when I have done you are not all here neither you are here now hearing me and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better Sermon somewhere else of this text before you are here and yet you think you could have heard some other doctrine of down-right Predestinations and Reprobation roundly delivered somewhere else with more edification to youâ— you are here and you remember your selves that now yee think of it This had been the fittest time now when every body else is at Church to have made such and such a private visit and because you would bee there you are there I cannot say you cannot say so perfectly so entirely now as at the Resurrection Ego I am here I body and soul I soul and faculties as Christ sayd to Peter Noli timere Ego sum Fear nothing it is I so I say to my selfe Noli timere My soul why art thou so sad my body why dost thou languish Ego I body and soul soul and faculties shall say to Christ Jesus Ego sum Lord it is I and hee shall not say Nescio te I know thee not but avow me and place me at his right hand Ego sum I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath Ego sum and I the same man shall receive the crown of glory which shall not fade Ego I the same person Ego videbo I shall see I have had no looking-glasse in my grave to see how my body looks in the dissolution I know not how I have had no houre-glasse in my grave to see how my time passes I know not when for when my eylids are closed in my death-bed the Angel hath said to me that time shall be no more Till I see eternity the ancient of days I shall see no more but then I shall Now why is Iob gladder of the use of this sense of seeing then of any of the other He is not He is glad of seeing but not of the sense but of the Object It is true that is said in the School Viciniùs se habent potentiae sensitivae ad animam quà m corpus Our sensitive faculties have more relation to the soul then to the body but yet to some purpose and in some measure all the senses shall be in our glorifyed bodies In actu or in potentiâ