rubies adorn the necks and cheeks of women Pudicitia est pater eos magnificare qui nos socias sumpserunt sibi said the maiden in the comedy It is modesty to advance and highly to honour them who have honoured us by making us to be the companions of their dearest excellencies for the woman that went before the man in the way of death is commanded to follow him in the way of love and that makes the society to be perfect and the union profitable and the harmony compleat Inferior Matrona suo sit Sexte marito Non aliter fiunt foemina virque pares For then the soul and body make a perfect man when the soul commands wisely or rules lovingly and cares profitably and provides plentifully and conducts charitably that body which is its partner and yet the inferiour But if the body shall give lawes and by the violence of the appetite first abuse the understanding and then possesse the superior portion of the will and choice the body and the soul are not apt company and the man is a fool and miserable If the soul rules not it cannot be a companion either it must govern or be a slave Never was King deposed and suffered to live in the state of peerage and equall honour but made a prisoner or put to death and those women that had rather lead the blinde then follow prudent guides rule fools and easie men then obey the powerfull and the wise never made a good society in a house a wife never can become equall but by obeying but so her power while it is in minority makes up the authority of the man integrall and becomes one government as themselves are one man Male and Female created he them and called their name Adam saith the holy Scripture they are but one and therefore the severall parts of this one man must stand in the place where God appointed that the lower parts may do their offices in their own station and promote the common interest of the whole A ruling woman is intolerable Faciunt graviora coacta Imperio sexus But that 's not all for she is miserable too for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a sad calamity for a woman to be joyned to a fool or a weak person it is like a guard of geese to keep the Capitoll or as if a flock of sheep should read grave lectures to their shepherd and give him orders where he shall conduct them to pasture O verè Phyrgiae neque enim Phryges It is a curse that God threatned sinning persons Devoratum est robur eorum facti sunt quasi mulieres Effeminati dominabuntur eis To be ruled by weaker people 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to have a fool to ones master is the fate of miserable and unblessed people and the wife can be no waies happy unlesse she be governed by a prudent Lord whose commands are sober counsels whose authority is paternall whose orders are provisions and whose sentences are charity But now concerning the measures and limits of this obedience we can best take accounts from Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Apostle in all things ut Domino as unto the Lord and that 's large enough as unto a Lord ut Ancilla Domino so St. Hierom understand it who neither was a friend to the sexe nor to marriage But his mistake is soon confuted by the text It is not ut Dominis be subject to your husbands as unto Lords but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is in all religion in reverence and in love in duty and zeal in faith and knowledge or else 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signifie wives be so subject to your husbands but yet so that at the same time ye be subject to the Lord. For that 's the measure of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in all things and it is more plain in the parallell place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it is fit in the Lord Religion must be the measure of your obedience and subjection intra limites disciplinae so Tertullian expresses it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so Clemens Alex. In all things let the wise be subject to the husband so as to do nothing against his will those only things excepted in which he is impious or refractary in things pertaining to wisdome and piety But in this also there is some peculiar caution For although in those things which are of the necessary parts of faith and holy life the woman is only subject to Christ who only is and can be Lord of consciences and commands alone where the conscience is instructed and convinced yet as it is part of the mans office to be a teacher and a prophet and a guide and a Master so also it will relate very much to the demonstration of their affections to obey his counsels to imitate his vertues to be directed by his wisdome to have her perswasion measured by the lines of his excellent religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It were hugely decent saith Plutarch that the wife should acknowledge her husband for her teacher and her guide for then when she is what he please to efform her he hath no cause to complain if she be no better 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his precepts and wise counsels can draw her off from vanities and as he said of Geometry that if she be skill'd in that she will not easily be a gamester or a dancer may perfectly be said of Religion If she suffers her self to be guided by his counsell and efformed by his religion either he is an ill master in his religion or he may secure in her and for his advantage an excellent vertue And although in matters of religion the husband hath no empire and command yet if there be a place lest to perswade and intreat and induce by arguments there is not in a family a greater endearment of affections then the unity of religion and anciently it was not permitted to a woman to have a religion by her self Eosdem quos maritus nosse Deos colere solos uxor debet said Plutarch And the rites which a woman performes severally from her husband are not pleasing to God and therefore Pomponia Graecina because she entertain'd a stranger religion was permitted to the judgement of her husband Plantius And this whole affair is no stranger to Christianity For the Christian woman was not suffered to marry an unbelieving man and although this is not to be extended to different opinions within the limits of the common faith yet thus much advantage is won or lost by it that the complyance of the wife and submission of her understanding to the better rule of her husband in matters of Religion will help very much to warrant her though she should be misperswaded in a matter lesse necessary yet nothing can warrant her in her separate rites and manners of worshippings but an invincible necessity of conscience and a curious infallible
is There is a yet in the Text For all this yet doth God devise means that his banished be not expelled from him All this sorrow and trouble is but a phantasme and receives its account and degrees from our present conceptions and the proportion to our relishes and gust When Pompey saw the Ghost of his first Lady Julia who vexed his rest and his conscience for superinducing Cornelia upon her bed within the ten moneths of mourning he presently fancied it either to be an illusion or else that death could be no very great evil Aut nihil est sensus animis in morte relictum Aut morsipsa nihil Either my dead wife knows not of my unhandsome marriage and forgetfulnesse of her or if she does then the dead live longae canitis si cognita vitae Mors media est Death is nothing but the middle point between two lives between this and another concerning which comfortable mystery the holy Scripture instructs our faith and entertains our hope in these words God is still the God of Abraham Isaak and Jacob for all do live to him and the souls of Saints are with Christ I desire to be dissolved saith S. Paul and to be with Christ for that is much better and Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord they rest from their labours and their works follow them For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God a house not made with hands eternall in the heavens and this state of separation S. Paul calls a being absent from the body and being present with the Lord This is one of Gods means which he hath devised that although our Dead are like persons banished from this world yet they are not expelled from God They are in the hands of Christ they are in his presence they are or shall be clothed with a house of Gods making they rest from all their labours all tears are wiped from their eyes and all discontents from their spirits and in the state of separation before the soul be reinvested with her new house the spirits of al persons are with God so secured and so blessed and so sealed up for glory that this state of interval and imperfection is in respect of its certain event and end infinitely more desirable then all the riches and all the pleasures and all the vanities and all the Kingdoms of this world I will not venture to determine what are the circumstances of the aboad of Holy Souls in their separate dwellings and yet possibly that might be easier then to tell what or how the soul is and works in this world where it is in the body tanquam in alienâ domo as in a prison in fetters and restraints for here the soal is discomposed and hindered it is not as it shall be as it ought to be as it was intended to be it is not permitted to its own freedom and proper operation so that all that we can understand of it here is that it is so incommodated with a troubled and abated instrument that the object we are to consider cannot be offered to us in a right line in just and equal propositions or if it could yet because we are to understand the soul by the soul it becomes not onely a troubled and abused object but a crooked instrument and we here can consider it just as a weak eye can behold a staffe thrust into the waters of a troubled river the very water makes a refraction and the storm doubles the refraction and the water of the eye doubles the species and there is nothing right in the thing the object is out of its just place and the medium is troubled and the organ is impotent At cum exierit in liberum coelum quasi in domum suam venerit when the soul is entred into her own house into the free regions of the rest and the neighbourhood of heavenly joyes then its operations are more spiritual proper and proportioned to its being and though we cannot see at such a distance yet the object is more fitted if we had a capable understanding it is in it self in a more excellent and free condition Certain it is that the body does hinder many actions of the soul it is an imperfect body and a diseased brain or a violent passion that makes fools no man hath a foolish soul and the reasonings of men have infinite difference and degrees by reason of the bodies constitution Among beasts which have no reason there is a greater likenesse then between men who have as by faces it is easier to know a man from a man then a sparrow from a sparrow or a squirrel from a squirrel so the difference is very great in our souls which difference because it is not originally in the soul and indeed cannot be in simple and spiritual substances of the same species or kind it must needs drive wholly from the body from its accidents and circumstances from whence it follows that because the body casts fetters and restraints hindrances and impediments upon the soul that the soul is much freer in the state of separation and if it hath any any act of life it is much more noble and expedite That the soul is alive after our death S. Paul affirms Christ died for us that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with him Now it were strange that we should be alive and live with Christ and yet do no act of life the body when it is asleep does many and if the soul does none the principle is lesse active then the instrument but if it does any act at all in separation it must necessarily be an act or effect of understanding there is nothing else it can do But this it can For it is but a weak and an unlearned proposition to say That the Soul can do nothing of it self nothing without the phantasmes and provisions of the body For 1. In this life the soul hath one principle clearly separate abstracted immaterial I mean the Spirit of grace which is a principle of life and action and in many instances does not all at communicate with matter as in the infusion superinduction and the creation of spiritual graces 2. As nutrition generation eating and drinking are actions proper to the body and its state so extasies visions raptures intuitive knowledge and consideration of its self acts of volition and reflex acts of understanding are proper to the soul. 3. And therefore it is observable that S. Paul said that he knew not whether his visions and raptures were in or out of the body for by that we see his judgement of the thing that one was as likely as the other neither of them impossible or unreasonable and therefore that the soul is as capable of action alone as in conjunction 4. If in the state of blessednesse there are some actions of the soul which doe not passe through
the body such as contemplation of God and conversing with spirits and receiving those influences and rare immissions which coming from the Holy and mysterious Trinity make up the crown of glory it follows that the necessity of the bodies ministery is but during the state of this life and as long as it converses with fire and water and lives with corn and flesh and is fed by the satisfaction of material appetits which necessity and manner of conversation when it ceases it can be no longer necessary for the soul to be served by phantasmes and material representations 5. And therefore when the body shall be re-united it shall be so ordered that then the body shall confesse it gives not any thing but receives all its being and operation its manner and abode from the soul and that then it comes not to serve a necessity but to partake a glory For as the operations of the soul in this life begin in the body and by it the object is transmitted to the soul so then they shall begin in the soul and pass to the body and as the operations of the soul by reason of its dependence on the body are animal natural and material so in the resurrection the body shall be spiritual by reason of the preeminence influence and prime operation of the soul. Now between these two states stands the state of separation in which the operations of the soul are of a middle nature that is not so spirituall as in the resurrection and not so animal and natural as in the state of conjunction To all which I adde this consideration That our souls have the same condition that Christs soul had in the state of separation because he took on him all our nature and all our condition and it is certain Christs soul in the three dayes of his separation did exercise acts of life of joy and triumph and did not sleep but visited the souls of the Fathers trampled upon the pride of Devils and satisfied those longing souls which were Prisoners of hope and from all this we may conclude that the souls of all the servants of Christ are alive and therfore do the actions of life and proper to their state and therefore it is highly probable that the soul works clearer and understands brighter and discourses wiser and rejoyces louder and loves noblier and desires purer and hopes stronger then it can do here But if these arguments should fail yet the felicity of Gods Saints cannot fail For suppose the body to be a necessary instrument but out of tune and discomposed by sin and anger by accident and chance by defect and imperfections yet that it is better then none at all and that if the soul works imperfectly with an imperfect body that then she works not at all when she hath none and suppose also that the soul should be as much without sense or perception in death as it is in a deep sleep which is the image and shadow of death yet then God devises other means that his banished be not expelled from him For 2. God will restore the soul to the body and raise the body to such a perfection that it shall be an Organ fitt to praise him upon it shall be made spiritual to minister to the soul when the soul is turned into a Spirit then the soul shall be brought forth by Angels from her incomparable and easie bed from her rest in Christs Holy Bosome and be made perfect in her being and in all her operations And this shall first appear by that perfection which the soul shall receive as instrumental to the last judgement for then she shall see clearly all the Records of this world all the Register of her own memory For all that we did in this life is laid up in our memories and though dust and forgetfulnesse be drawn upon them yet when God shall lift us from our dust then shall appear clearly all that we have done written in the Tables of our conscience which is the souls memory We see many times and in many instances that a great memory is hindered and put out and we thirty years after come to think of something that lay so long under a curtain we think of it suddenly and without a line of deduction or proper consequence And all those famous memories of Simonides and Theodectes of Hortensius and Seneca of Sceptius Metrodorus and Carneades of Cyneas the Embassadour of Pyrrhus are onely the Records better kept and lesse disturbed by accident and desease For even the memory of Herods son of Athens of Bathyllus and the dullest person now alive is so great and by God made so sure a record of all that ever he did that assoon as ever God shall but tune our instrument and draw the curtains and but light up the candle of immortality there we shal finde it all there we shall see all and all the world shall see all then we shall be made fit to converse with God after the manner of Spirits we shall be like to Angels In the mean time although upon the perswasion of the former discourse it be highly probable that the souls of Gods servants do live in a state of present blessednesse and in the exceeding joyes of a certain expectation of the revelation of the day of the Lord and the coming of Jesus yet it will concern us onely to secure our state by holy living and leave the event to God that as S. Paul said whether present or absent whether sleeping or waking whether perceiving or perceiving not we may be accepted of him that when we are banished this world and from the light of the sun we may not be expelled from God and from the light of his countenance but that from our beds of sorrows our souls may passe into the bosome of Christ and from thence to his right hand in the day of sentence For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ then if we have done wel in the body we shal never be expelled from the beatifical presence of God but be domesticks of his family and heires of his Kingdom and partakers of his glory Amen I Have now done with my Text but yet am to make you another Sermon I have told you the necessity and the state of death it may be too largely for such a sad story I shal therefore now with a better compendium teach you how to live by telling you a plain narrative of a life which if you imitate and write after the copy it will make that death shall not be an evil but a thing to be desired and to be reckoned amongst the purchases and advantages of your fortune When Martha and Mary went to weep over the grave of their brother Christ met them there and preached a Funeral Sermon discoursing of the resurrection and applying to the purposes of faith and confession of Christ and glorification of God We have no other we can have no better precedent
beleeve in him and then obey him living such a life as Jesus taught and this is the summe totall of the whole design As we have liv'd to the flesh so we must hereafter live to the spirit as our nature hath been flesh not only in its originall but in habits and affection so our nature must be spirit in habit and choice in design and effectuall prosecutions for nothing can cure our old death but this new birth and this is the recovery of our nature and the restitution of our hopes and therefore the greatest joy of mankinde 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a fine thing to see the light of this sun and it is pleasant to see the storm allayed and turned into a smooth sea and a fresh gale our eyes are pleased to see the earth begin to live and to produce her little issues with particolour'd coats 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nothing is so beauteous as to see a new birth in a childlesse family And it is excellent to hear a man discourse the hidden things of Nature and unriddle the perplexities of humane notices and mistakes it is comely to see a wise man sit in the gates of the City and give right judgement in difficult causes But all this is nothing to the excellencies of a new birth to see the old man carryed forth to funerall with the solemn tears of repentance and buryed in the grave of Jesus and in his place a new creation to arise a new heart and a new understanding and new affections and excellent appetites for nothing lesse then this can cure all the old distempers 2. Our life and all our discourses and every observation and a state of reason and a union of sober counsels are too little to cure a peevish spirit and a weak reasoning and silly principles and accursed habits and evill examples and perverse affections and a whole body of sin and death It was well said in the Comedy Nunquam it a quisquam bene subductâ ratione ad vitam fuit Quin aetas usus semper aliquid apportet novi Aliquid moneat ut illa quae scire credas nescias Et quae tibi putas prima in experiundo repudies Men at first think themselves wise and are alwaies most confident when they have the least reason and to morrow they begin to perceive yesterdayes folly and yet they are not wise But as the little Embryo in the naturall sheet and lap of its mother first distinguishes into a little knot and that in time will be the heart and then into a bigger bundle which after some dayes abode grows into two little spots and they if cherished by nature will become eyes and each part by order commences into weak principles and is preserved with natures greatest curiosity that it may assist first to distinction then to order next to usefulnesse and from thence to strength till it arrive at beauty and a perfect creature so are the necessities and so are the discourses of men we first learn the principles of reason which breaks obscurely through a clond and brings a little light and then we discern a folly and by little and little leave it till that enlightens the next corner of the soul and then there is a new discovery but the soul is still in infancy and childish follies and every day does but the work of one day but therefore art and use experience and reason although they do something yet they cannot do enough there must be something else But this is to be wrought by a new principle that is by the Spirit of grace Nature and reason alone cannot do it and therefore the proper cure is to be wrought by those generall means of inviting and cherishing of getting and entertaining Gods Spirit which when we have observed we may account our selves sufficiently instructed toward the repair of our breaches and the reformation of our evill nature 1. The first great instrument of changing our whole nature into the state of grace flesh into the spirit is a firm belief and a perfect assent to and hearty entertainment of the promises of the Gospell for holy Scripture speaks great words concerning faith It quenches the fiery darts of the Devill saith St. Paul it overcomes the world saith St. John it is the fruit of the Spirit and the parent of love it is obedience and it is humility and it is a shield and it is a brestplate and a work and a mysterie it is a fight and it is a victory it is a pleasing God and it is that whereby the just do live by faith we are purified and by faith we are sanctified and by faith we are justified and by faith we are saved by this we have accesse to the throne of grace and by it our prayers shall prevail for the sick by it we stand and by it we walk and by this Christ dwels in our hearts and by it all the miracles of the Church have been done it gives great patience to suffer and great confidence to hope and great strength to do and infallible certainty to enjoy the end of all our faith and satisfaction of all our hopes and the reward of all our labours even the most mighty price of our high calling and if faith be such a magazine of spirituall excellencies of such universall efficacy nothing can be a greater antidote against the venome of a corrupted nature But then this is not a grace seated finally in the understanding but the principle that is designed to and actually productive of a holy life It is not only a beleeving the propositions of Scripture as we beleeve a proposition in the Metaphysicks concerning which a man is never the honester whether it be true of false but it is a beleef of things that concern us infinitely things so great that if they be so true as great no man that hath his reason and can discourse that can think and choose that can desire and work towards an end can possibly neglect The great object of our faith to which all other articles do minister is resurrection of our bodies and souls to eternall life and glories infinite Now is it possible that a man that beleeves this and that he may obtain it for himself and that it was prepared for him and that God desires to give it him that he can neglect and despise it and not work for it and perform such easie conditions upon which it may be obtained Are not most men of the world made miserable at a lesse price then a thousand pound a year Do not all the usurers and merchants all tradesmen and labourers under the Sun toil and care labour and contrive venture and plot for a little money and no man gets and scarce any man desires so much of it as he can lay upon three acres of ground not so much of will
Holinesse is the Sun and righteousnesse is the Moon in that region our society shall be Quires of singers and our conversation wonder contemplation shall be our food and love shall be the wine of elect souls and as to every naturall appetite there is now proportion'd an object crasse materiall unsatisfying and allayed with sorrow and uneasinesse so there be new capacities and equall objects the desires shall be fruition and the appetite shall not suppose want but a faculty of delight and an unmeasureable complacency the will and the understanding love and wonder joyes every day and the same forever this shall be their state who shall be accounted worthy of the resurrection to this life where the body shall be a partner but no servant where it shall have no work of its own but it shall rejoyce with the soul where the soul shall rule without resistance or an enemy and we shall be fitted to enjoy God who is the Lord and Father of spirits In this world we see it is quite contrary we long for perishing meat and fill our stomachs with corruption we look after white and red and the weaker beauties of the night we are passionate after rings and seals and inraged at the breaking of a Crystall we delight in the society of fools and weak persons we laugh at sin and contrive mischiefs and the body rebels against the soul and carries the cause against all its just pretences and our soul it self is above half of it earth and stone in its affections and distempers our hearts are hard and inflexible to the softer whispers of mercy and compassion having no loves for any thing but strange flesh and heaps of money and popular noises for misery and folly and therefore we are a huge way off from the Kingdome of God whose excellencies whose designs whose ends whose constitution is spirituall and holy and separate and sublime and perfect Now between these two states of naturall flesh and heavenly spirit that is the powers of darknesse and the regions of light the miseries of man and the perfections of God the imperfection of nature where we stand by our creation and supervening follies and that state of felicities whither we are designed by the mercies of God there is a middle state the Kingdome of grace wrought for us by our Mediator the man Christ Jesus who came to perfect the vertue of Religion and the designs of God and to reforme our Nature and to make it possible for us to come to that spirituall state where all felicity does dwell The Religion that Christ taught is a spirituall Religion it designs so far as this state can permit to make us spirituall that is so as the spirit be the prevailing ingredient God must now be worshipped in spirit and not only so but with a fervent spirit and though God in all religions did seise upon the spirit and even under Moses Law did by the shadow of the ceremony require the substantiall worship by cutting off the flesh intended the circumcision of the heart yet because they were to minde the outward action it took off much from the intention and activity of the spirit Man could not doe both busily And then they fail'd also in the other part of a spirituall Religion for the nature of a spirituall Religion is that in it we serve God with our hearts and affections and because while the spirit prevails we do not to evill purposes of abatement converse with flesh and bloud this service is also fervent intense active wise and busie according to the nature of things spirituall Now because God alwayes perfectly intended it yet because he lesse perfectly required it in the Law of Moses I say they fell short in both For 1. They so rested in the outward action that they thought themselves chast if they were no adulterers though their eyes were wanton as Kids and their thoughts polluted as the springs of the wildernesse when a Panther and a Lionesse descend to drink and lust and if they did not rob the Temple they accounted it no sin if they murmur'd at the riches of Religion and Josephus reproves Polybius for saying that Antiochus was punished for having a design of sacriledge and therefore Tertullian sayes of them they were nec plenae nec adeò timendae disciplinae ad innocentiae veritatem this was their righteousnesse which Christ said unlesse we will exceed we shall not enter into the Kingdome of heaven where all spirituall perfections are in state and excellency 2. The other part of a spirituall worship is a fervour and a holy Zeal of Gods glory greatnesse of desire and quicknesse of action of all this the Jewes were not carefull at all excepting the zealots amongst them and they were not only fervent but inflamed and they had the earnestnesse of passion for the holy warmth of Religion and in stead of an earnest charity they had a cruell discipline and for fraternall correction they did destroy a sinning Israelite and by both these evill states of Religion they did the work of the Lord deceitfully they either gave him the action without the heart or zeal without charity or religion without zeal or ceremony without religion or indifferency without desires and then God is served by the outward man and not the inward or by part of the inward and not all by the understanding and not by the will or by the will when the affections are cold and the body unapt and the lower faculties in rebellion and the superior in disorder and the work of God is left imperfect and our persons ungracious and our ends unacquired and the state of a spirituall kingdome not at all set forward towards any hope or possibility of being obtained All this Christ came to mend and by his Lawes did make provision that God should be served intirely according as God alwaies designed and accordingly required by his Prophets and particularly in my Text that his work be done sincerely and our duty with great affection and by these two provisions both the intension and the extension are secured our duty shall be intire and it shall be perfect we shall be neither lame nor cold without a limb nor without naturall heat and then the work of the Lord will prosper in our hands but if we fail in either we do the Lords work deceitfully and then we are accursed For so saith the Spirit of God Cursed be he that doth the work of the Lord deceitfully 1. Here then is the duty of us all 1. God requires of us to serve him with an integrall intire or a whole worship and religion 2. God requires of us to serve him with earnest and intense affections The intire purpose of both which I shall represent in its severall parts by so many propositions 3. I shall consider concerning the measures of zeal and its inordinations 1. He that serves God with the body without the soul serves God deceitfully My son give me thy heart
a despite of holy things a setting a low price to the things of God lazinesse and wretchlesnesse all which are evills superadded to the first state of coldnesse whither he is with all these loads and circumstances of death easily revolv'd 3. A state of lukewarmnesse is more incorrigible then a state of coldnesse while men flatter themselves that their state is good that they are rich and need nothing that their lamps are dressed and full of ornament There are many that think they are in their countrey as soon as ever they are weary and measure not the end of their hopes by the possession of them but by their precedent labour which they overvalue because they have easie and effeminate souls S. Bernard complains of some that say Sufficit nobis nolumus esse meliores quà m Patres nostri It is enough for us to be as our forefathers who were honest and usefull in their generations but be not over-righteous These men are such as think they have knowledge enough to need no teacher devotion enough to need no new fires perfection enough to need no new progresse justice enough to need no repentance and then because the spirit of a man and all the things of this world are in perpetuall variety and change these men decline when they have gone their period they stand still and then revert like a stone returning from the bosome of a cloud where it rested as long as the thought of a childe and fell to its naturall bed of earth and dwelt below for ever He that says he will take care he be no worse and that he desires to be no better stops his journey into heaven but cannot be secure against his descending into hell and Cassian spake a hard saying Frequentèr vidimus de frigidis carnalibus ad spiritualem venisse fervorem de tepidis animalibus omninò non vidimus Many persons from vicâ—â—us and dead and cold have passed into life and an excellent grace and a spirituall warmth and holy fires but from lukewarm and indifferent never any body came to an excellent condition and state of holynesse rarissimè S. Bernard sayes very extremely seldome and our blessed Saviour said something of this The Publicans and the Harlots goe before you into the Kingdome of heaven they are moved by shame and punished by disgrace and remarked by punishments and frighted by the circumstances and notices of all the world and separated from sober persons by laws and an intolerable character and the sense of honour and the care of their persons and their love of civill societie and every thing in the world can invite them towards vertues But the man that is accounted honest and does justice and some things of Religion unlesse he finds himselfe but upon his way and feels his wants and groans under the sense of his infirmities and sighs under his imperfections and accounts himself not to have comprehended but still presses towards the mark of his calling unlesse I say he still increases in his appetites of Religion as he does in his progression he will think he needs no counsellor and the spirit of God whispers to an ear that is already fill'd with noyses and cannot attend to the heavenly calling The stomach that is already full is next to loathing and that 's the prologue to sicknesse and a rejecting the first wholesome nutriment which was entertained to relieve the first naturall necessities Qui non proficit vult deficere said S. Bernard He that goes not forward in the love of God and of Religion does not stand still but goes for all that but whither such a motion will lead him himself without a timely care shall feel by an intolerable experiment In this sense and for these reasons it is that although a lukewarm Christian hath gone forward some steps towards a state of holynesse and is advanced beyond him that is cold and dead and unconcerned and therefore speaking absolutely and naturally is neerer the Kingdome of God then he that is not yet set out yet accidentally and by reason of these ill appendages he is worse in greater danger in a state equally unacceptable and therefore must either goe forward and still doe the work of God carefully and diligently with a Fervent spirit and an Active hand with a willing heart and a chearefull eye or it had been better he had never begun 2. It concerns us next to enquire concerning the duty in its proper instances that we may perceive to what parts and degrees of duty it amounts we shall find it especially in the duties of faith of prayer and of charity 1. Our faith must be strong vigorous active confident and patient reasonable and unalterable without doubting and feare and partiality For the faith of very many men seems a duty so weak and indifferent is so often untwisted by violence or ravel'd and intangled in weak discourses or so false and fallacious by its mixture of interest that though men usually put most confidences in the pretences of faith yet no pretences are more unreasonable 1. Our faith and perswasions in Religion is most commonly imprinted in us by our country and we are Christians at the same rate as we are English or Spaniards or of such a family our reason is first stained and spotted with the dye of our kindred and country and our education puts it in grain and whatsoever is against this we are taught to call a temptaiton in the mean time we call these accidentall and artificiall perswasions by the name of faith which is onely the aire of the countrey or an heireloome of the family or the daughter of a present interest Whatever it was that brought us in we are to take care that when we are in our faith be noble and stand upon its most proper and most reasonable foundation it concerns us better to understand that Religion which we call Faith and that faith whereby we hope to be saved 2. The faith and the whole Religion of many men is the production of fear Men are threatned into their perswasions and the iron rod of a Tyrant converts whole nations to his principles when the wise discourses of the Religion seems dull as sleep and unprevailing as the talk of childhood That 's but a deceitfull faith which our timorousnesse begot and our weaknesse nurses and brings up The Religion of a Christian is immortall and certaine and perswasive and infallible and unalterable and therefore needs not be received by humane and weake convoyes like worldly and mortall Religions that faith is lukewarm and easie and trifling which is onely a beleef of that which a man wants courage to disbeleeve 3. The faith of many men is such that they dare not trust it they will talk of it and serve vanity or their lust or their company or their interest by it but when the matter comes to a pinch they dare not trust it When Antisthenes was initiated into the mysteries of Orpheus the
he can goe that goes from God his owne sorrowes will soon enough instruct him This fire must never goe out but it must be like the fire of heaven it must shine like the starres though sometimes cover'd with a cloud or obscur'd by a greater light yet they dwell for ever in their orbs and walk in their circles and observe their circumstances but goe not out by day nor night and set not when Kings die nor are extinguish'd when Nations change their Government So must the zeal of a Christian be a constant incentive of his duty and though sometimes his hand is drawne back by violence or need and his prayers shortned by the importunity of businesse and some parts omitted by necessities and just complyances yet still the fire is kept alive it burns within when the light breaks not forth and is eternall as the orb of fire or the embers of the Altar of Incense 3. No man is zealous as he ought but he that delights in the service of God without this no man can persevere but must faint under the continuall pressure of an uneasie load If a man goes to his prayers as children goe to schoole or give alms as those that pay contribution and meditate with the same willingnesse with which young men die this man does personam sustinere he acts a part which he cannot long personate but will find so many excuses and silly devices to omit his duty such tricks to run from that which will make him happy he will so watch the eyes of men and be so sure to doe nothing in private he will so often distinguish and mince the duty into minutes and little particles he will so tie himself to the letter of the Law and be so carelesse of the intention and spirituall designe he will be punctuall in the ceremony and trifling in the secret and he will be so well pleased when he is hindred by an accident not of his own procuring and will have so many devices to defeat his duty and to cosuen himselfe that he will certainly manifest that he is afraid of Religion and secretly hates it he counts it a burthen and an objection and then the man is sure to leave it when his circumstances are so fitted But if we delight in it we enter into a portion of the reward as soon as we begin the worke and the very grace shall be stronger then the temptation in its very pretence of pleasure and therefore it must needs be pleasing to God because it confesses God to be the best Master Religion the best work and it serves God with choice and will and reconciles our nature to it and entertaines our appetite and then there is no ansa or handle left whereby we can easily be drawne from duty when all parties are pleased with the imployment But this delight is not to be understood as if it were alwayes required that we should feele an actuall cheerfulnesse and sensible joy such as was that of Jonathan when he had newly tasted honey and the light came into his eyes and he was refreshed and pleasant This happens sometimes when God please to intice or reward a mans spirit with little Antepasts of heaven but such a delight onely is necessary and a duty that we alwayes choose our duty regularly and undervalue the pleasures of temptation and proceed in the work of grace with a firme choice and unabated election our joy must be a joy of hope a joy at least of confident sufferers the joys of faith and expectation rejoycing in hope so the Apostle calls it that is a going forward upon such a perswasion as sees the joyes of God laid up for the Children of men and so the sun may shine under a cloud and a man may rejoyce in persecution and delight in losses that is though his outward man groanes and faints and dies yet his spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the inner man is confident and industrious and hath a hope by which it lives and works unto the end It was the case of our blessed Saviour in his agony his soule was exceeding sorrowfull unto death and the load of his Fathers anger crushed his shoulder and bowed his knees to the ground and yet he chose it and still went forward and resolved to die and did so and what wee choose wee delight in and wee thinke it to be eligible and therefore amiable and fit by its proper excellencies and appendages to be delighted in it is not pleasant to the flesh at all times for its dignity is spirituall and heavenly but therefore it is proportioned to the spirit which is as heavenly as the reward and therefore can feel the joys of it when the body hangs the head and is uneasie and troubled These are the necessary parts of zeale of which if any man failes he is in a state of lukewarmnesse and that is a spirituall death As a banished man or a condemned person is dead civilly he is diminutus capite he is not reckoned in the census nor partakes of the priviledges nor goes for a person but is reckoned among things in the possession of others so is a lukewarm person he is corde diminutus he is spiritually dead his heart is estranged from God his affections are lessened his hope diminished and his title cancell'd and he remains so unlesse 1. he prefers Religion before the world and 2. spiritually rejoyces in doing his duty and 3. doe it constantly and with perseverance These are the heats and warmth of life whatsoever is lesse then this is a disease and leads to the coldnesse and dishonors of the grave SERMON XIV Part III. 3. SO long as our zeal and forwardnesse in Religion hath only these constituent parts it hath no more then can keep the duty alive but beyond this there are many degrees of earnestnesse and vehemence which are progressions towards the state of perfection which every man ought to design and desire to be added to his portion of this sort I reckon frequency in prayer and almes above our estate Concerning which two instances I have these two cautions to insert 1. Concerning frequency in prayer it is an act of zeal so ready and prepared for the spirit of a man so easie and usefull so without objection and so fitted for every mans affairs his necessities and possibilities that he that prayes but seldome cannot in any sense pretend to be a religious person For in Scripture there is no other rule for the frequency of prayer given us but by such words which signifie we should do it alwaies Pray continually and Men ought alwayes to pray and not to faint And then men have so many necessities that if we should esteem our needs to be the circumstances and positive determination of our times of prayer we should be very far from admitting limitation of the former words but they must mean that we ought to pray frequently every day For in danger and trouble naturall Religion
Nereus and Achilleus the Eunuchs refused to marry Aurelianus to whom she was contracted if there were not some little envie and too sharp hostility in the Eunuchs to a marryed state yet Aurelianus thought himself an injur'd person and caus'd St. Clemens who vail'd her and his spouse both to dye in the quarrell St. Thecla being converted by St. Paul grew so in love with virginity that she leap'd back from the marriage of Tamyris where she was lately ingaged St. Iphigenia denyed to marry King Hirtacus and it is said to be done by the advice of St. Matthew And Susanna the Niece of Diocletian refus'd the love of Maximianus the Emperour and these all had been betrothed and so did St. Agnes and St. Felicula and divers others then and afterwards insomuch that it was reported among the Gentiles that the Christians did not only hate all that were not of their perswasion but were enemies of the chast lawes of marriage And indeed some that were called Christians were so forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats Upon this occasion it grew necessary for the Apostle to state the question right and to do honour to the holy rite of marriage and to snatch the mystery from the hands of zeal and folly and to place it in Christs right hand that all its beauties might appear and a present convenience might not bring in a false Doctrine and a perpetuall sin and an intolerable mischief The Apostle therefore who himself had been a marryed man but was now a widower does explicate the mysteriousnesse of it and describes it's honours and adornes it with rules and provisions of Religion that as it begins with honour so it may proceed with piety and end with glory For although single life hath in it privacy and simplicity of affaires such solitarinesse and sorrow such leasure and unactive circumstances of living that there are more spaces for religion if men would use them to these purposes and because it may have in it much religion and prayers and must have in it a perfect mortification of our strongest appetites is therefore a state of great excellency yet concerning the state of marriage we are taught from Scripture and the sayings of wise men great things and honourable Marriage is honourable in all men so is not single life for in some it is a snare and a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a trouble in the flesh a prison of unruly desires which is attempted daily to be broken Celibate or single life is never commanded but in some cases marriage is and he that burns sins often if he marries not he that cannot contain must marry and he that can contain is not tyed to a single life but may marry and not sin Marriage was ordained by God instituted in Paradise was the relief of a naturall necessity and the first blessing from the Lord he gave to Man not a friend but a wife that is a friend and a wife too for a good woman is in her soul the same that a man is and she is a woman only in her body that she may have the excellency of the one and the usefulnesse of the other and become amiable in both it is the seminary of the Church and daily brings forth sons and daughters unto God it was ministred to by Angels and Raphael waited upon a young man that he might have a blessed marriage and that that marriage might repair two fad families and blesse all their relatives Our blessed Lord though he was born of a maiden yet she was vail'd under the cover of marriage and she was marryed to a widower for Joseph the supposed Father of our Lord had children by a former wife The first Miracle that ever Jesus did was to doe honour to a wedding marriage was in the world before sin and is in all ages of the world the greatest and most effective antidote against sin in which all the world had perished if God had not made a remedy and although sin hath sour'd marriage and stuck the mans head with cares and the womans bed with sorrowes in the production of children yet these are but throws of life and glory and she shall be saved in child-bearing if she be found in faith and righteousnesse Marriage is a Schoole and exercise of vertue and though Marriage hath cares yet the single life hath desires which are more troublesome and more dangerous and often end in sin while the cares are but instances of duty and exercises of piety and therefore if single life hath more privacy of devotion yet marriage hath more necessities and more variety of it and is an exercise of more graces In two vertues celibate or single life may have the advantage of degrees ordinarily and commonly that is in chastity and devotion but as in some persons this may fail and it does in very many and a marryed man may spend as much time in devotion as any virgins or widowes do yet as in marriage even those vertues of chastity and devotion are exercised so in other instances this state hath proper exercises and trials for those graces for which single life can never be crown'd Here is the proper scene of piety and patience of the duty of Parents and the charity of relatives here kindnesse is spread abroad and love is united and made firm as a centre Marriage is the nursery of heaven the virgin sends prayers to God but she carries but one soul to him but the state of marriage fils up the numbers of the elect and hath in it the labour of love and the delicacies of friendship the blessing of society and the union of hands and hearts it hath in it lesse of beauty but more of safety then the single life it hath more care but lesse danger it is more merry and more sad is fuller of sorrowes and fuller of joyes it lies under more burdens but it is supported by all the strengths of love and charity and those burdens are delightfull Marriage is the mother of the world and preserves Kingdomes and fils Cities and Churches and Heaven it self Celibate like the flie in the heart of an apple dwels in a perpetuall sweetnesse but sits alone and is confin'd and dies in singularity but marriage like the usefull Bee builds a house and gathers sweetnesse from every flower and labours and unites into societies and republicks and sends out colonies and feeds the world with delicacies and obeys their king and keeps order and exercises many vertues and promotes the interest of mankinde and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Single life makes men in one instance to be like Angels but marriage in very many things makes the chast pair to be like to Christ. This is a great mystery but it is the symbolicall and sacramentall representment of the greatest mysteries of our Religion
truth and if she be deceived alone she hath no excuse if with him she hath much pity and some degrees of warranty under the protection of humility and duty and dear affections and she will finde that it is part of her priviledge and right to partake of the mysteries and blessings of her husbands religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Romulus A woman by the holy Lawes hath right to partake of her husbands goods and her husbands sacrifices and holy things Where there is a schisme in one bed there is a nursery of temptations and love is persecuted and in perpetuall danger to be destroyed there dwell jealousies and divided interests and differing opinions and continuall disputes and we cannot love them so well whom we beleeve to be lesse beloved of God and it is ill uniting with a person concerning whom my perswasion tels me that he is like to live in hell to eternall ages 2. The next line of the womans duty is compliance which S. Peter cals the hidden man of the heart the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit and to it he opposes the outward and pompous ornament of the body concerning which as there can be no particular measure set down to all persons but the propositions are to be measured by the customes of wise people the quality of the woman and the desires of the man yet it is to be limited by Christian modesty and the usages of the more excellent and severe matrons Menander in the Comedy brings in a man turning his wife from his house because she stain'd her hair yellow which was then the beauty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A wise woman should not paint A studious gallantry in cloathes cannot make a wise man love his wife the better 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said the Comedy such gayeties are fit for tragedies but not for the uses of life decor occultus recta venustas that 's the Christian womans finenesse the hidden man of the heart sweetnesse of manners humble comportment fair interpretation of all addresses ready compliances high opinion of him and mean of her self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To partake secretly and in her heart of all his joyes and sorrowes to beleeve him comly and fair though the Sun hath drawn a cypresse over him for as marriages are not to be contracted by the hands and eye but with reason and the hearts so are these judgements to be made by the minde not by the sight and Diamonds cannot make the woman vertuous nor him to value her who sees her put them off then when charity and modesty are her brghtest ornaments 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. And indeed those husbands that are pleased with undecent gayeties of their wives are like fishes taken with ointments and intoxicating baits apt and easie for sport and mockery but uselesse for food and when Circe had turned Ulysses companions into hogs and monkies by pleasures and the inchantments of her bravery and luxury they were no longer usefull to her she knew not what to do with them but on wise Ulysses she was continually enamour'd Indeed the outward ornament is fit to take fools but they are not worth the taking But she that hath a wise husband must intice him to an eternall dearnesse by the vail of modesty and the grave robes of chastity the ornament of meeknesse and the jewels of faith and charity she must have no fucus but blushings her brightnesse must be purity and she must shine round about with sweetnesses and friendship and she shall be pleasant while she lives and desired when she dies If not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Her grave shall be full of rottennesse and dishonour and her memory shall be worse after she is dead after she is dead For that will be the end of all merry meetings and I choose this to be the last advice to both 3. Remember the dayes of darknesse for they are many The joyes of the bridal chambers are quickly past and the remaining portion of the state is a dull progresse without variety of joyes but not without the change of sorrowes but that portion that shall enter into the grave must be eternall It is fit that I should infuse a bunch of myrrhe into the festivall goblet and after the Egyptian manner serve up a dead mans bones at a feast I will only shew it and take it away again it will make the wine bitter but wholesome But those marryed pairs that live as remembring that they must part again and give an account how they treat themselves and each other shall at the day of their death be admitted to glorious espousals and when they shall live again be marryed to their Lord and partake of his glories with Abraham and Joseph S Peter and St. Paul and all the marryed Saints 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All those things that now please us shall passe from us or we from them but those things that concern the other life are permanent as the numbers of eternity and although at the resurrection there shall be no relation of husband and wife and no marriage shall be celebrated but the marriage of the Lambe yet then shall be remembred how men and women pass'd through this state which is a type of that and from this sacramentall union all holy pairs shall passe to the spirituall and eternall where love shall be their portion and joyes shall crown their heads and they shall lye in the bosome of Jesus and in the heart of God to eternall ages Amen Sermon XIX APPLES of SODOM OR The Fruits of Sinne. Part. I. Romans 6. 21. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed For the end of those things is death THe son of Sirach did prudently advise concerning making judgements of the felicity or infelicity of men Judge none blessed before his death for a man shall be known in his children Some men raise their fortunes from a cottage to the chaires of Princes from a sheep-coat to a throne and dwell in the circles of the Sun and in the lap of prosperity their wishes and successe dwell under the same roof and providence brings all events into their design and ties both ends together with prosperous successes and even the little conspersions and intertextures of evill accidents in their lives are but like a faing'd note in musick by an artificiall discord making the ear covetous and then pleased with the harmony into which the appetite was inticed by passion and a pretty restraint and variety does but adorn prosperity and make it of a sweeter relish and of more advantages and some of these men descend into their graves without a change of fortune Eripitur persona manet res Indeed they cannot longer dwell upon the estate but that remains unrifled and descends upon the heir
is his gain and this man understands the things of God and is ready to die for Christ and fears nothing but to sin against God and his will is filled with love and it springs out in obedience to God and in charity to his brother and of such a man we cannot make judgement by his fortune or by his acquaintance by his circumstances or by his adherencies for they are the appendages of a naturall man but the spirituall is judged of no man that is the rare excellencies that make him happy do not yet make him illustrious unlesse we will reckon Vertue to be a great fortune and holinesse to be great Wisedom and God to be the best Friend and Christ the best Relative and the Spirit the hugest advantage and Heaven the greatest Reward He that knows how to value these things may sit down and reckon the felicities of him that hath the Spirit of God The purpose of this Discourse is this That since the Spirit of God is a new nature and a new life put into us we are thereby taught and enabled to serve God by a constant course of holy living without the frequent returns and intervening of such actions which men are pleased to call sins of infirmity Whosoever hath the Spirit of God lives the life of grace The Spirit of God rules in him and is strong according to its age and abode and allows not of those often sins which we think unavoidable because we call them naturall infirmities But if Christ he in you the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousnesse The state of sin is a state of death the state of a man under the law was a state of bondage and infirmity as S. Paul largely describes him in the seventh Chapter to the Romanes but he that hath the Spirit is made alive and free and strong and a conquerour over all the powers and violencies of sin such a man resists temptations falls not under the assault of sin returns not to the sin which he last repented of acts no more that errour which brought him to shame and sorrow but he that falls under a crime to which he still hath a strong and vigorous inclination he that acts his sin and then curses it and then is tempted and then sins again and then weeps again and calls himself miserable but still the inchantment hath confined him to that circle this man hath not the Spirit for where the Spirit of God is there is liberty there is no such bondage and a returning folly to the commands of sin But because men deceive themselves with calling this bondage a pitiable and excusable infirmity it will not be uselesse to consider the state of this question more particularly lest men from the state of a pretended infirmity fall into a reall death 1. No great sin is a sin of infirmity or excusable upon that stock But that I may be understood we must know that every sin is in some sense or other a sin of infirmity When a man is in the state of spirituall sicknesse or death he is in a state of infirmity for he is a wounded man a prisoner a slave a sick man weak in his judgement and weak in his reasoning impotent in his passions of childish resolutions great inconstancy and his purposes untwist as easily as the rude conjuncture of uncombining cables in the violence of a Northern tempest and he that is thus in infirmity cannot be excused for it is the aggravation of the state of his sin he is so infirm that he is in a state unable to do his duty Such a man is a servant of sin a slave of the Devil an heir of corruption absolutely under command and every man is so who resolves for ever to avoid such a sin and yet for ever falls under it for what can he be but a servant of sin who fain would avoid it but cannot that is he hath not the Spirit of God within him Christ dwels not in his soul for where the Son is there is liberty and all that are in the Spirit are sons of God and servants of righteousnesse and therefore freed from sin But then there are also sins of infirmity which are single actions intervening seldom in litle instances unavoidable or through a faultlesse ignorance Such as these are alwayes the allays of the life of the best men and for these Christ hath payd and they are never to be accounted to good men save onely to make them more wary and more humble Now concerning these it is that I say No great sin is a sin of excusable or unavoidable infirmity Because whosoever hath received the Spirit of God hath sufficient knowledge of his duty and sufficient strengths of grace and sufficient advertency of minde to avoid such things as do great and apparent violence to piety and religion No man can justly say that it is a sin of infirmity that he was drunk For there are but three causes of every sin a fourth is not imaginable 1. If ignorance cause it the sin is as full of excuse as the ignorance was innocent But no Christian can pretend this to drunkennesse to murder to rebellion to uncleannesse For what Christian is so uninstructed but that he knows Adultery is a sin 2. Want of observation is the cause of many indiscreet and foolish actions Now at this gap many irregularities do enter and escape because in the whole it is impossible for a man to be of so present a spirit as to consider and reflect upon every word and every thought but it is in this case in Gods laws otherwise then in mans the great flies cannot passe thorow without observation little ones do and a man cannot be drunk and never take notice of it or tempt his neighbours wife before he be aware therefore the lesse the instance be the more likely it is to be a sin of infirmity and yet if it be never so little if it be observed then it ceases to be a sin of infirmity 3. But because great crimes cannot pretend to passe undiscernably it follows that they must come in at the door of malice that is of want of Grace in the absence of the Spirit they destroy where ever they come and the man dies if they passe upon him It is true there is flesh and blood in every regenerate man but they do not both rule the flesh is left to tempt but not to prevail And it were a strange condition if both the godly and the ungodly were captives to sin and infallibly should fall into temptation and death without all difference saue onely that the godly sins unwillingly and the ungodly sins willingly But if the same things be done by both and God in both be dishonoured and their duty prevaricated the pretended unwillingnesse is the signe of a greater and a baser slavery and of a condition lesse to be endured For the servitude which is
bituminous matter and the Spirit of God knew right well the worst expression was not bad enough 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so our blessed Saviour calls it the outer darknesse that is not onely an abjection from the beatifick regions where God and his Angels and his Saints dwell for ever but then there is a positive state of misery expressed by darknesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as two Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Jude call it The blacknesse of darknesse for ever In which although it is certain that God whose Justice there rules will inflict but just so much as our sins deserve and not superadde degrees of undeserved misery as he does to the Saints of glory for God gives to blessed souls in heaven more infinitely more then all their good works could possibly deserve and therefore their glory is infinitely bigger glory then the pains of hell are great pains yet because Gods Justice in hell rules alone without the allayes and sweeter abatements of mercy they shall have pure and unmingled misery no pleasant thought to refresh their wearinesse no comfort in an other accident to alleviate their pressures no waters to cool their flames but because when there is a great calamity upon a man every such man thinks himself the most miserable and though there are great degrees of pain in hell yet there are none perceived by him that thinks he suffers the greatest It follows that every man that loses his soul in this darknesse is miserable beyond all those expressions which the tortures of this world could furnish to the Writers of holy Scripture But I shall choose to represent this consideration in that expression of our blessed Saviour Mark the 9. the 44. verse which himself took out of the Prophet Esay the 66. verse the 24. Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spoken of by Daniel the Prophet for although this expression was a prediction of that horrid calamity and abscision of the Jewish Nation when God poured out a full vial of his wrath upon the crucifiers of his Son and that this which was the greatest calamity which ever did or ever shall happen to a Nation Christ with great reason took to describe the calamity of accursed souls as being the greatest instance to signifie the greatest torment yet we must observe that the difference of each state makes the same words in the several cases to be of infinite distinction The worm stuck close to the Jewish Nation and the fire of Gods wrath flamed out till they were consumed with a great and unheard of destruction till many millions did die accursedly and the small remnant became vagabonds and were reserved like broken pieces after a storm to shew the greatnesse of the storm and misery of the shipwrack but then this being translated to signifie the state of accursed souls whose dying is a continual perishing who cannot cease to be it must mean an eternity of duration in proper and naturall significations And that we may understand it fully observe the places In the 34. Esa. 8. The Prophet prophecies of the great destruction of Jerusalem for all her great iniquities It is the day of the Lords vengeance and the yeer of recompences for the controversie of Sion and the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch and the dust thereof into brimstone and the land thereof shall become burning pitch It shall not be quenched night nor day the smoak thereof shall go up for ever from generation to generation It shall lie wast none shall passe thorow it for ever and ever This is the final destruction of the Nation but this destruction shall have an end because the Nation shall end and the anger also shall end in its own period even then when God shall call the Jews into the common inheritance with the Gentiles and all the sons of God And this also was the period of their worme as it is of their fire The fire of the Divine vengeance upon the Nation which was not to be extinguished till they were destroyed as we see it come to passe And thus also in Saint Jude the Angels who kept not their first state are said to be reserved by God in everlasting chains under darknesse which word everlasting signifies not absolutely to eternity but to the utmost end of that period for so it follows unto the judgement of the great day that everlasting lasts no longer and in verse the seventh the word eternal is just so used The men of Sodom and Gomorrha are set forth for an example suffering the vengeance of eternal fire that is of a fire which burned till they were quite destroyed and the cities and the countrey with an irreparable ruine never to be rebuilt and reinhabited as long as this world continues The effect of which observations is this That these words for ever everlasting eternal the never-dying worme the fire unquenchable being words borrowed by our blessed Saviour and his Apostles from the stile of the old Testament must have a signification just proportionable to the state in which they signifie so that as this worme when it signifies a temporal infliction meanes a worme that never ceases giving torment till the body is consumed So when it is translated to an immortall state it must signifie as much in that proportion that eternal that everlasting hath no end at all because the soul cannot be killed in the natural sense but is made miserable and perishing for ever that is the worme shall not die so long as the soul shall be unconsumed the fire shall not be quenched till the period of an immortall nature comes and that this shall be absolutely for ever without any restriction appears unanswerably in this because the same for ever that is for the blessed souls the same for ever is for the accursed souls but the blessed souls that die in the Lord henceforth shall die no more death hath no power over them for death is destroyed it is swallowed up in victory saith Saint Paul and there shall be no more death saith Saint John Revel 21. 4. So that because for ever hath no end till the thing or the duration it self have end in the same sense in which the Saints and Angels give glory to God for ever in the same sense the lost souls shall suffer the evils of their sad inheritance and since after this death of nature which is a separation of soul and body there remains no more death but this second death this eternal perishing of miserable accursed souls whose duration must be eternall It follows that the worm of conscience and the unquenchable fire of hell have no period at all but shall last as long as God lasts or the measures of a proper eternity that they who provoke God to wrath by their base unreasonable and sottish practises may know what their portion shall be in the everlasting habitations and yet suppose that Origens
Spirits and then they reach the taper to another and as the hours of yesterday can never return again so neither can the man whose hours they were and who lived them over once he shall never come to live them again and live them better When Lazarus and the widows son of Naim and Tabitha and the Saints that appeared in Jerusalem at the resurrection of our blessed Lord arose they came into this world some as strangers onely to make a visit and all of them to manifest a glory but none came upon the stock of a new life or entred upon the stage as at first or to perform the course of a new nature and therefore it is observable that we never read of any wicked person that was raised from the dead Dives would fain have returned to his brothers house but neither he nor any from him could be sent but all the rest in the New Testament one onely excepted were expressed to have been holy persons or else by their age were declared innocent Lazarus was beloved of Christ those souls that appeared at the resurrection were the souls of Saints Tabitha raised by Saint Peter was a charitable and a holy Christian and the maiden of twelve years old raised by our blessed Saviour had not entred into the regions of choice and sinfulnesse and the onely exception of the widows son is indeed none at all for in it the Scripture is wholly silent and therefore it is very probable that the same processe was used God in all other instances having chosen to exemplifie his miracles of nature to purposes of the Spirit and in spirituall capacities So that although the Lord of nature did break the bands of nature in some instances to manifest his glory to succeeding great and never failing purposes yet besides that this shall be no more it was also instanced in such persons who were holy and innocent and within the verge and comprehensions of the eternall mercy We never read that a wicked person felt such a miracle or was raised from the grave to try the second time for a Crown but where he fell there he lay down dead and saw the light no more This consideration I intend to you as a severe Monitor and an advice of carefulnesse that you order your affairs so that you may be partakers of the first resurrection that is from sin to grace from the death of vitious habits to the vigour life and efficacy of an habituall righteousnesse For as it hapned to those persons in the New Testament now mentioned to them I say in the literall sense Blessed are they that have part in the first resurrection upon them the second death shall have no power meaning that they who by the power of Christ and his holy Spirit were raised to life again were holy and blessed souls and such who were written in the book of God and that this grace happened to no wicked and vitious person so it is most true in the spirituall and intended sense You onely that serve God in a holy life you who are not dead in trespasses and sins you who serve God with an early diligence and an unwearied industry and a holy religion you and you onely shall come to life eternall you onely shall be called from death to life the rest of mankind shall never live again but passe from death to death from one death to another to a worse from the death of the body to the eternall death of body and soul and therefore in the Apostles Creed there is no mention made of the resurrection of wicked persons but of the resurrection of the body to everlasting life The wicked indeed shall be haled forth from their graves from their everlasting prisons where in chains of darknesse they are kept unto the judgement of the great day But this therefore cannot be called in sensu favoris a resurrection but the solennities of the eternall death It is nothing but a new capacity of dying again such a dying as cannot signifie rest but where death means nothing but an intolerable and never ceasing calamity and therefore these words of my Text are otherwise to be understood of the wicked otherwise of the godly The wicked are spilt like water and shall never be gathered up again no not in the gatherings of eternity They shall be put into vessels of wrath and set upon the flames of hell but that is not a gathering but a scattering from the face and presence of God But the godly also come under the sense of these words They descend into their graves and shall no more be reckoned among the living they have no concernment in all that is done under the Sun Agamemnon hath no more to do with the Turks armies invading and possessing that part of Greece where he reigned then had the Hippocentaur who never had a beeing and Cicero hath no more interest in the present evils of Christendome then we have to do with his boasted discovery of Catilines conspiracie What is it to me that Rome was taken by the Gauls and what is it now to Camillus if different religions be tolerated amongst us These things that now happen concern the living and they are made the scenes of our duty or danger respectively and when our wives are dead and sleep in charnel houses they are not troubled when we laugh loudly at the songs sung at the next marriage feast nor do they envy when another snatches away the gleanings of their husbands passion It is true they envy not and they lie in a bosome where there can be no murmure and they that are consigned to Kingdoms and to the feast of the marriage-supper of the Lamb the glorious and eternall Bride-groom of holy souls they cannot think our marriages here our lighter laughings and vain rejoycings considerable as to them And yet there is a relation continued still Aristotle said that to affirm the dead take no thought for the good of the living is a disparagement to the laws of that friendship which in their state of separation they cannot be tempted to rescind And the Church hath taught in generall that they pray for us they recommend to God the state of all their Relatives in the union of the intercession that our blessed Lord makes for them and us and Saint Ambrose gave some things in charge to his dying brother Satyrus that he should do for him in the other world he gave it him I say when he was dying not when he was dead And certain it is that though our dead friends affection to us is not to be estimated according to our low conceptions yet it is not lesse but much more then ever it was it is greater in degree and of another kind But then we should do well also to remember that in this world we are something besides flesh and blood that we may not without violent necessities run into new relations but preserve the affections we bear to our dead when