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 against me is intollerable but if I choose the state of a servant I am free in my minde Libertatis servaveris umbram Si quicquid jubeare velis certain it is that such a person who fain would but cannot choose but commit adultery or drunkennesse is the veriest slave to sin that can be imagined and not at all freed by the Spirit and by the liberty of the sons of God and there is no other difference but that the mistaken good man feels his slavery and sees his chains and his fetters but therefore it is certain that he is because he sees himself to be a slave No man can be a servant of sin and a servant of righteousnesse at the same time but every man that hath the Spirit of God is a servant of righteousnesse and therefore whosoever finde great sins to be unavoidable are in a state of death and reprobation as to the present because they willingly or unwillingly it matters not much whether of the two are servants of sin 2. Sins of infirmity as they are small in their instance so they put on their degree of excusablenesse onely according to the weaknesse or infirmity of a mans understanding So far as men without their own fault understand not their duty or are possessed with weaknesse of principles or are destitute and void of discourse or discerning powers and acts so far if a sin creeps upon them it is as naturall and as free from a law as is the action of a childe But if any thing else be mingled with it if it proceed from any other principle it is criminall and not excused by our infirmity because it is chosen and a mans will hath no
a sufficient stock of self love upon the strength of which he hath entertained principles strong enough to secure himself against voluntary mischiefs and from running into states of death and violence A man would think that this I have now said were in all cases certainly true and I would to God it were For that which is the greatest evil that which makes all evils that which turns good into evil and every naturall evil into a greater sorrow and makes that sorrow lasting and perpetual that which sharpens the edge of swords and makes agues to be fevers and fevers to turn into plagues that which puts stings into evâ—ry fly and uneasinesse to every trifling accident and strings every whip with scorpions you know I must needs mean sin that evil men suffer patiently and choose willingly and run after it greedily and will not suffer themselves to be divorced from it and therefore God hath hired servants to fight a-against this evil he hath set Angels with fiery swords to drive us from it he hath imployed Advocates to plead against it he hath made Laws and Decrees against it he hath dispatched Prophets to warn us of it and hath established an Order of men men of his own family and who are fed at his own charges I mean the whole Order of the Clergy whose office is like watchmen to give an alarum at every approach of sin with as much affrightment as if an enemy were neer or the sea broke in upon the flat Countrey and all this onely to perswade men not to be extremely miserable for nothing for vanity for a trouble for a disease for some sins naturally are diseases and all others are naturall nothings meer privations or imperfections contrary to goodnesse to felicity to God himself And yet God hath hedged sin round about with thorns and sin of it self too brings thorns and it abuses a man in all his capacities and it places poison in all those seats and receptions where he could possibly entertain happinesse For if sin pretend to please the sense it doth first abuse it shamefully and then humours it it can onely feed an impostume no naturall reasonable and perfective appetite and besides its own essentiall appendages and proprieties things are so ordered that a fire is kindled round about us and every thing within us above below us and on every side of us is an argument against and an enemy to sin and for its single pretence that it comes to please one of the senses one of those faculties which are in us the same they are in a Cow it hath an evil so communicative that it doth not onely work like poison to the dissolution of soul and body but it is a sicknesse like the plague it infects all our houses and corrupts the air and the very breath of heaven for it moves God first to jealousie and that takes off his friendship and kindnesse towards us and then to anger and that makes him a resolved enemy and it brings evil not onely upon our selves but upon all our relatives upon our selves and our children even the children of our Nephews Ad natos natorum qui nascentur ab illis to the third and fourth generation and therefore if a man should despise the eye or sword of man if he sins he is to contest with the jealousie of a provoked God If he doth not regard himself let him pity his pretty children If he be angry and hates all that he sees and is not solicitous for his children yet let him pitty the generations which are yet unborn let him not bring a curse upon his whole family and suffer his name to rot in curses and dishonours let not his memory remain polluted with an eternal stain if all this will not deter a man from sin there is no instrument left for thats mans vertue no hopes of his felicity no recovery of his sorrows and sicknesses but he must sink under the stroaks of a jealous God into the dishonour of eternal ages and the groanings of a never ceasing sorrow God is a jealous God that is the first great stroke he strikes against sin he speakes after the manner of men and in so speaking we know he that is jealous is suspicious he is inquisitive he is implacable 1. God is pleased to represent himself a person very suspicious both in respect of persons and things For our persons we give him cause enough for we are sinners from our Mothers womb we make solemn vows and break them instantly we cry for pardon and still renew the sin we desire God to try us once more and we provoke him ten times further we use the means of grace to cure us and we turn them into vices and opportunites of sin we curse our sins and yet long for them extremely we renounce them publickly and yet send for them in private and shew them kindnesse we leave little offiences but our faith and our charity is not strong enough to Master great ones and sometimes we are sham'd out of great ones but yet entertain little ones or if we disdain both yet we love to remember them and delight in their past actions and bring them home to us at least by fiction of imagination and we love to be betrayed into them we would fain have things so ordered by chance or power that it may seem necessary to sin or that it may become excusable and dressed fitly for our own circumstances and for ever we long after the flesh pots of Egypt the garlick and the Onions and we so little do esteeme Manna the food of Angels we so loath the bread of Heaven that any temptation will make us return to our fetters and our bondage and if we do not tempt our selves yet we do not resist a temptation or if we pray against it we desire not to be heard and if we be assisted yet we will not work together with those assistances so that unlesse we be forced nothing will be done we are so willing to perish and so unwilling to be saved that we minister to God reason enough to suspect us and therefore it is no wonder that God is jealous of us We keep company with Harlots and polluted persons we are kind to all Gods Enemies and love that which he hates how can it be otherwise but that we should be suspected Let us make our best of it and see if we can recover the good opinion of God for as yet we are but suspected persons 2. And therefore God is inquisitive he looks for that which he fain would never finde God sets spies upon us he looks upon us himself through the Curtains of a cloud and he sends Angels to espie us in all our wayes and permits the Devil to winnow us and to accuse us and erects a Tribunal and witnesses in our own consciences and he cannot want information concerning our smalest irregularities Sometimes the Devil accuses but he also sometimes accuses us falsly
of the Catholike Church and every person within its bosom who are the body of him that rules over all the world and commands them as he chooses 2. But that which is next to this and not much unlike the designe of this wonderfull mercy is that all the actions of religion though mingled with circumstances of differing and sometimes of contradictory relations are so concentred in God their proper centre and conducted in such certain and pure channels of reason and rule that no one duty does contradict another and it can never be necessary for any man in any case to sin They that bound themselves by an oath to kill Paul were not environed with the sad necessities of murder on one side and vow-breach on the other so that if they did murder him they were man-slayers if they did not they were perjured for God had made provision for this case that no unlawful oath should passe an obligation He that hath given his faith in unlawfull confederation against his Prince is not girded with a fatall necessity of breach of trust on one side or breach of allegeance on the other for in this also God hath secured the case of conscience by forbidding any man to make an unlawfull promise and upon a stronger degree of the same reason by forbidding him to keep it in case he hath made it He that doubts whether it be lawfull to keep the Sunday holy must not do it during that doubt because whatsoever is not of faith is sin But yet Gods mercy hath taken care to break this snare in sunder so that he may neither sin against the commandement nor against his conscience for he is bound to lay aside his errour and be better instructed till when the scene of his sin lies in something that hath influence upon his understanding not in the omission of the fact No man can serve two Masters but therefore he must hate the one and cleave to the other But then if we consider what infinite contradiction there is in sin and that the great long suffering of God is expressed in this that God suffered the contradiction of sinners we shall feel the mercy of God in the peace of our consciences and the unity of religion so long as we do the work of God It is a huge affront to a covetous man that he is the further off from fulnesse by having great heaps vast revenues and that his thirst increases by having that which should quench it and that the more he shall need to be satisfied the lesse he shall dare to do it and that he shall refuse to drink because he is dry that he dyes if he tasts and languishes if he does not and at the same time he is full and empty bursting with a plethory and consumed with hunger drowned with rivers of oyle and wine and yet dry as the Arabian sands but then the contradiction is multiplyed and the labyrinths more amazed when prodigality waits upon another curse and covetousnesse heaps up that prodigality may scatter abroad then distractions are infinite and a man hath two Devils to serve of contradictory designes and both of them exactâ—â—g obedience more unreasonably then the Egyptian task-masters then there is no rest no end of labours no satisfaction of purposes no method of things but they begin where they should end and begin again and never passe forth to content or reason or quietnesse or possession But the duty of a Christian is easie in a persecution it is clear under a Tyranny it is evident in despite of heresy it is one in the midst of schisme it is determined amongst infinite disputes being like a rock in the sea which is beaten with the tide and washed with retiring waters and encompassed with mists and appears in several figures but it alwayes dips its foot in the same bottom and remaines the same in calms and storms and survives the revolution of ten thousand tides and there shall dwell till time and tides shall be no more so is our duty uniform and constant open and notorious variously represented but in the same manner exacted and in the interest of our souls God hath not exposed us to uncertainty or the variety of any thing that can change and it is by the grace and mercy of God put into the power of every Christian to do that which God through Jesus Christ will accept to salvation and neither men nor Devils shall hinder it unlesse we list our selves 3. After all this we may sit down and reckon by great sums and conjugations of his gracious gifts and tell the minuts of eternity by the number of the Divine mercies God hath given his laws to rule us his word to instruct us his spirit to guide us his Angels to protect us his ministers to exhort us he revealed all our duty and he hath concealed whatsoever can hinder us he hath affrighted our follies with feare of death and engaged our watchfulnesse by its secret coming he hath exercised our faith by keeping private the state of souls departed and yet hath confirmed our faith by a promise of a resurrection and entertained our hope by some general significations of the state of interval His mercies make contemptible means instrumental to great purposes and a small herb the remedy of the greatest diseases he impedes the Devils rage and infatuates his counsels he diverts his malice and defeats his purposes he bindes him in the chaine of darknesse and gives him no power over the children of light he suffers him to walk in solitary places and yet fetters him that he cannot disturb the sleep of a childe he hath given him mighty power yet a young maiden that resists him shall make him flee away he hath given him a vast knowledge and yet an ignorant man can confute him with the twelve articles of his creed he gave him power over the winds and made him Prince of the air and yet the breath of a holy prayer can drive him as far as the utmost sea and he hath so restrained him that except it be by faith we know not whether there be any Devils yea or no for we never heard his noises nor have seen his affrighting shapes This is that great Principle of all the felicity we hope for and of all the means thither and of all the skill and all the strengths we haue to use those means he hath made great variety of conditions and yet hath made all necessary and all mutual helpers and by some instruments and in some respects they are all equal in order to felicity to content and final and intermedial satisfactions He gave us part of our reward in hand that he might enable us to work for more he taught the world arts for use arts for entertainment of all our faculties and all our dispositions he gives eternal gifts for temporal services and gives us whatsoever we want for asking and commands us to ask and theatens us if we will
Father and the influences of the Holy Ghost our souls are not onely recovered from the state of flesh and reduced back to the intirenesse of animall operations but they are heightned into spirit and transformâ—d into a new nature And this is a new Article and now to be considered S. Hierom tels of the Custome of the Empire When a Tyrant was overcome they usâ—d to break the head of his Statues and upon the same Trunk to set the head of the Conquerour and so it passed wholly for the new Prince So it is in the kingdom of Grace As soon as the Tyrant sin is overcome and a new heart is put into us or that we serve under a new head instantly we have a new Name given us and we are esteemed a new Creation and not onely changed in manners but we have a new nature within us even a third part of essentiall constitution This may seem strange and indeed it is so and it is one of the great mysteriousnesses of the Gospel Every man naturally consists of soul and body but every Christian man that belongs to Christ hath more For he hath body and soul and spirit My Text is plain for it If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his and by Spirit is not meant onely the graces of God and his gifts enabling us to do holy things there is more belongs to a good man then so But as when God made man he made him after his own image and breath'd into him the spirit of life and he was made in animam viventem into a living soul then he was made a man So in the new creation Christ by whom God made both the worlds intends to conform us to his image and he hath given us the spirit of adoption by which we are made sons of God and by the spirit of a new life we are made new creatures capable of a new state intitled to another manner of duration enabled to do new and greater actions in order to higher ends we have new affections new understandings new wils Vetera transierunt ecce omnia nova facta sunt All things are become new And this is called the seed of God when it relates to the principle and cause of this production but the thing that is produced is a spirit and that is as much in nature beyond a soul as a soul is beyond a body This great Mystery I should not utter but upon the greatest authority in the world and from an infallible Doctor I mean S. Paul who from Christ taught the Church more secrets then all the whole Colledge besides And the very God of peace sanctifie you wholly and I pray God that your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blamelesse unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified wholly nor preserved in safety unlesse besides our souls and bodies our spirit also be kept blamelesse This distinction nice and infinitely above humane reason but the word of God saith the same Apostle is sharper then a two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder the soul and the spirit and that hath taught us to distinguish the principle of a new life from the principle of the old the celestiall from the naturall and thus it is This spirit as I now discourse of it is a principle infused into us by God when we become his children whereby we live the life of Grace and understand the secrets of the Kingdom and have passions and desires of things beyond and contrary to our naturall appetites enabling us not onely to sobriety which is the duty of the body not onely to justice which is the rectitude of the soul but to such a sanctity as makes us like to God * For so saith the Spirit of God Be ye holy as I am be pure be perfect as your heavenly Father is pure as he is perfect which because it cannot be a perfection of degrees it must be in similitudine naturae in the likenesse of that nature which God hath given us in the new birth that by it we might resemble his excellency and holinesse And this I conceive to be the meaning of S. Peter According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and godlinesse that is to this new life of godlinesse through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and vertue whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the Divine nature so we read it But it is something mistaken it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Divine nature for Gods nature is indivisible and incommunicable but it is spoken participativè or per analogiant partakers of a Divine nature that is of this new and God-like nature given to every person that serves God whereby he is sanctified and made the childe of God and framed into the likenesse of Christ. The Greeks generally call this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a gracious gift an extraordinary superaddition to nature not a single gift in order to single purposes but an universall principle and it remains upon all good men during their lives and after their death and is that white stone spoken of in the Revelation and in it a new name written which no man knoweth but he that hath it And by this Gods sheep at the day of judgement shall be discerned from goats If their spirits be presented to God pure and unblameable this great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this talent which God hath given to all Christians to improve in the banks of grace and of Religion if they bring this to God increased and grown up to the fulnesse of the measure of Christ for it is Christs Spirit and as it is in us it is called the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ then we shall be acknowledged for sons and our adoption shall passe into an eternall inheritance in the portion of our elder Brother I need not to apply this Discourse The very mystery it self is in the whole world the greatest engagement of our duty that is imaginable by the way of instrument and by the way of thankfulnesse Quisquis magna dedit voluit sibi magna rependi He that gives great things to us ought to have great acknowledgements and Seneca said concerning wise men That he that doth benefit to others hides those benefits as a man layes up great treasures in the earth which he must never see with his eyes unlesse a great occasion forces him to dig the graves and produce that which he buried but all the while the man was hugely rich and he had the wealth of a great relation so it is with God and us For this huge benefit of the Spirit which God gives us is for our good deposited in our souls not made for forms and ostentation not to be looked upon or serve little ends but growing in the secret of our
souls and swelling up to a treasure making us in this world rich by title and relation but it shall be produced in the great necessities of doomesday In the mean time if the fire be quenched the fire of Gods Spirit God will kindle another in his anger that shall never be quenched but if we entertain Gods Spirit with our own purities and imploy it diligently and serve it willingly for Gods Spirit is a loving Spirit then we shall really be turned into spirits Irenaeus had a proverbiall saying Perfecti sunt qui tria sine querelâ Deo exhibent They that present three things right to God they are perfect that is a chast body a righteous soul and a holy spirit and the event shall be this which Maimonides expressed not amisse though he did not at all understand the secret of this mystery The soul of a man in this life is in potentiâ ad esse spiritum it is designed to be a spirit but in the world to come it shall be actually as very a spirit as an Angel is and this state is expressed by the Apostle calling it the earnest of the spirit that is here it is begun and given us as an antepast of glory and a principle of Grace but then we shall have it in plenitudine regit idem spiritus artus Orbe alio Here and there it is the same but here we have the earnest there the riches and the inheritance But then if this be a new principle and be given us in order to the actions of a holy life we must take care that we receive not the Spirit of God in vain but remember it is a new life and as no man can pretend that a person is alive that doth not alwayes do the works of life so it is certain no man hath the Spirit of God but he that lives the life of grace and doth the works of the Spirit that is in all holinesse and justice and sobriety Spiritus qui accedit animo vel Dei est vel Daemonis said Tertullian Every man hath within him the Spirit of God or the spirit of the devil The spirit of fornication is an unclean devil and extremely contrary to the Spirit of God and so is the spirit of malice or uncharitablenesse for the Spirit of God is the Spirit of love for as purities Gods Spirit sanctifies the body so by love he purifies the soul and makes the soul grow into a spirit into a Divine nature But God knows that even in Christian societies we see the devils walk up and down every day and every hour the devil of uncleannesse and the devil of drunkennesse the devil of malice and the devil of rage the spirit of filthy speaking and the spirit of detraction a proud spirit and the spirit of rebellion and yet all call Christian. It is generally supposed that unclean spirits walk in the night and so it used to be for they that are drunk are drunk in the night said the Apostle but Suidas tels of certain Empusae that used to appear at Noon at such time as the Greeks did celebrate the Funerals of the Dead and at this day some of the Russians fear the Noon-day Devil which appeareth like a mourning widow to reapers of hay and corn and uses to break their arms and legs unlesse they worship her The Prophet David speaketh of both kindes Thou shalt not be afraid for the terrour by night and a ruinâ daemonio meridiano from the Devil at noon thou shalt be free It were happy if we were so but besides the solemn followers of the works of darknesse in the times and proper seasons of darknesse there are very many who act their Scenes of darknesse in the face of the Sun in open defiance of God and all lawes and all modesty There is in such men the spirit of impudence as well as of impiety And yet I might have expressed it higher for every habituall sin doth not onely put us into the power of the devil but turns us into his very nature just as the Holy Ghost transforms us into the image of God Here therefore I have a greater Argument to perswade you to holy living then Moses had to the sons of Israel Behold I have set before you life and death blessing and cursing so said Moses but I adde that I have upon the stock of this Scripture set before you the good Spirit and the bad God and the devil choose unto whose nature you will be likened and into whose inheritance you will be adopted and into whose possession you will enter If you commit sin ye are of your father the Devil ye are begot of his principles and follow his pattern and shall passe into his portion when ye are led captive by him at his will and remember what a sad thing it is to go into the portion of evil and accursed spirits the sad and eternall portion of Devils But he that hath the Spirit of God doth acknowledge God for his Father and his Lord he despises the world and hath no violent appetites for secular pleasures and is dead to the desires of this life and his hopes are spirituall and God is his joy and Christ is his pattern and his support and Religion is his imployment and godlinesse 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 be 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
infirmity but when it wants the grace of God or is mastered with passâ—ons and sinfull appetites and that infirmity is the state of unregeneration 3. The violence or strength of a temptation is not sufficient to excuse an action or to make it accountable upon the stock of a pitiable and innocent infirmity if it leaves the understanding still able to judge because a temptation cannot have any proper strengths but from our selves and because we have in us a principle of basenesse which this temptation meets and onely perswades me to act because I love it Joseph met with a temptation as violent and as strong as any man and it is certain there are not many Christians but would fall under it and call it a sin of infirmity since they have been taught so to abuse themselves by sowing fig-leaves before their nakednesse but because Joseph had a strength of God within him the strength of chastity therefore it could not at all prevail upon him Some men cannot by any art of hell be tempted to be drunk others can no more resist an invitation to such a meeting then they can refuse to die if a dagger were drunk with their heart blood because their evil habits made them weak on that part And some man that is fortified against revenge it may be will certainly fall under a temptation to uncleannesse for every temptation is great or small according as the man is and a good word will certainly lead some men to an action of folly while another will not think ten thousand pound a considerable argument to make him tell one single lie against his duty or his conscience 4. No habituall sin that is no sin that returns constantly or frequently that is repented of and committed again and still repented of and then again committed no such sin is excusable with a pretence of infirmity Because that sin is certainly noted and certainly condemned and therefore returns not because of the weaknesse of nature but the weaknesse of grace the principle of this is an evil spirit an habituall aversation from God a dominion and empire of sin and as no man for his inclination and aptnesse to the sins of the flesh is to be called carnall if he corrects his inclinations and turns them into vertues so no man can be called spirituall for his good wishes and apt inclinations to goodnesse if these inclinations passe not into acts and these acts into habits and holy customs and walkings and conversation with God But as natural concupiscence corrected becomes the matter of vertue so these good inclinations and condemnings of our sin if they be ineffective and end in sinfull actions are the perfect signes of a reprobate and unregenerate estate The sum is this An animal man a man under the law a carnall man for as to this they are all one is sold under sin he is a servant of corruption he falls frequently into the same sin to which he is tempted he commends the Law he consents to it that it is good he does not commend sin he does some little things against it but they are weak and imperfect his lust is stronger his passions violent and unmortified his habits vitious his customs sinfull and he lives in the regions of sin and dies and enters into its portion But a spirituall man a man that is in the state of grace who is born anew of the Spirit that is regenerate by the Spirit of Christ he is led by the Spirit he lives in the Spirit he does the works of God cheerfully habitually vigorously and although he sometimes slips yet it is but seldom it is in small instances his life is such as he cannot pretend to be justified by works and merit but by mercy and the faith of Jesus Christ yet he never sins great sins If he does he is for that present falne from Gods favour and though possibly he may recover and the smaller or seldomer the sin is the sooner may be his restitution yet for the present I say he is out of Gods favour But he that remains in the grace of God sins not by any deliberate consultive knowing act he is incident to such a surprize as may consist with the weaknesse and judgement of a good man but whatsoever is or must be considered if it cannot passe without consideration it cannot passe without sin and therefore cannot enter upon him while he remains in that state For he that is in Christ in him the body is dead by reason of sin and the Gospel did not differ from the Law but that the Gospel gives grace and strength to do whatsoever it commands which the Law did not and the greatnesse of the promise of eternall life is such an argument to them that consider it that it must needs be of force sufficient to perswade a man to use all his faculties and all his strength that he may obtain it God exacted all upon this stock God knew this could do every thing Nihil non in hoc praesumpsit Deus said one This will make a satyr chast and Silenus to be sober and Dives to be charitable and Simon Magus himself to despise reputation and Saul to turn from a Persecutor to an Apostle For since God hath given us reason to choose and a promise to exchange for our temperance and faith and charity and justice for these I say happinesse exceeding great happinesse that we shall be Kings that we shall reigne with God with Christ with all the holy Angels for ever in felicities so great that we have not now capacities to understand it our heart is not big enough to think it there cannot in the world be a greater inducement to engage us a greater argument to oblige us to do our duty God hath not in heaven a bigger argument it is not possible any thing in the world should be bigger which because the Spirit of God hath revealed to us if by this strength of his we walk in his wayes and be ingrafted into his stock and bring forth his fruits the fruits of the Spirit then we are in Christ and Christ in us then we walk in the spirit and the Spirit dwels in us and our portion shall be there where Christ by the Spirit maketh intercession for us that is at the right hand of his Father for ever and ever Amen Sermon III. THE DESCENDING AND ENTAILED CVRSE Cut off Exodus 20. part of the 5. verse I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me 6. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my Commandements IT is not necessary that a Common-wealth should give pensions to Oratours to disswade men from running into houses infected with the plague or to intreat them to be out of love with violent torments or to create in men evil opinions concerning famine or painfull deaths Every man hath
either maliciously or ignorantly and we stand upright in that particular by innocence and sometimes by penitence and all this while our Conscinence is our friend Sometimes our conscience does accuse us unto God and then we stand convict by our own judgement Sometimes if our conscience acquit us yet we are not thereby justified For as Moses accused the Jews so do Christ and his Apostles accuse us not in their personss but by their works and by their words by the thing it self by confronting the laws of Christ and our practises Sometimes the Angels who are the observers of all our works carry up sad tidings to the Court of Heaven against us Thus two Angels were the informers against Sodom but yet these were the last for before that time the cry of their iniquity had sounded loud and sadly in Heaven and all this is the direct and proper effect of his jealousie which sets spies upon all the actions and watches the circumstances and telâ—s the steps and attends the businesses the recreations the publications and retirements of every man and will not suffer a thought to wander but he uses means to correct it's errour and to reduce it to himself For he that created us and daily feeds us he that intreats us to be happy with an opportunity so passionate as if not we but himself were to receive the favour he that would part with his onely Son from his bosome and the embraces of eternity and give him over to a shameful and cursed death for us Cannot but be supposed to love us with a great love and to own us with an intire title and therefore that he would fain secure us to himself with an undivided possession and it cannot but be infinitely reasonable for to whom else should any of us belong but to God Did the world create us Or did lust ever do us any good Did Sathan ever suffer one stripe for our advantage Does not he study all the wayes to ruine us Doe the Sun or the stars preserve us alive Or do we get understanding from the Angels Did ever any joynt of our body knit or our heart ever keep one true minute of a pulse without God Had not we been either nothing or worse that is infinitely eternally miserable but that God made us capable and then pursued us with arts and devices of great mercy to force us to be happy Great reason therefore there is that God should be jealous lest we take any of our duty from him who hath so strangely deserved it all and give it to a creature or to our enemy who cannot be capable of any But however it will concern us with much caution to observe our own wayes since we are made a spectacle to God to Angels and to Men God hath set so many spies upon us the blessed Angels and the accursed Devils good men and bad men the eye of Heaven and eye of that eye God himself all watching lest we rob God of his Honour and our selves of our hopes For by his prime intention he hath chosen so to get his own glory as may best consist with our felicity His great designe is to be glorified in our being saved 3. Gods jealousie hath a sadder effect then all this For all this is for mercy but if we provoke this jealousie if he findes us in our spiritual whoredoms he is implacable that is he is angry with us to eternity unlesse we returne in time and if we do it may be he will not be appeased in all instances and when he forgives us he will make some reserves of his wrath he will punish our persons or our estate he will chastise us at home or abroad in our bodies or in our children for he will visit our sins upon our children from generation to generation and if they be made miserable for our sins they are unhappy in such parents but we bear the curse and the anger of God even while they bear his rod God visits the sins of the Fathers upon the children Thatâ—s the second Great stroke he strikes against sin and is now to be considered That God doth so is certain because he saith he doth and that this is just in him so to do is also as certain therefore because he doth it For as his lawes are our measures so his actions and his own will are his own measures He that hath right over all things and all persons cannot do wrong to any thing He that is essentially just and there could be no such thing as justice or justice it self could not be good if it did not derive from him it is impossible for him to be unjust But since God is pleased to speak after the manner of men it may well consist with our duty to enquire into those manners of consideration whereby we may understand the equity of God in this proceeding and to be instructed also in our own danger if we persevere in sin 1. No man is made a sinner by the fault of another man without his own consent For to every one God gives his choice and sets life and death before every of the sons of Adam and therefore this death is not a consequent to any sin but our own In this sense it is true that if the fathers eat sowre grapes the childrens teeth shall not be set on edge and therefore the sin of Adam which was derived to all the world did not bring the world to any other death but temporall by the intermediall stages of sickness and temporal infelicities And it is not said that sin passed upon all men but death that also no otherwise but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in as much as al men have sinned as they have followed the steps of their father so they are partakers of this death And therefore it is very remarkable that death brought in by sin was nothing superinduced to man man onely was reduced to his own naturall condition from which before Adams fall he stood exempted by supernaturall favour and therefore although the taking away that extraordinary grace or priviledge was a punishment yet the suffering the naturall death was directly none but a condition of his creation naturall and therefore not primarily evil but if not good yet at least indifferent And the truth and purpose of this observation will extend it self if we observe that before any man died Christ was promised by whom death was to lose its sting by whom death did cease to be an evil and was or might be if we do belong to Christ a state of advantage So that we by occasion of Adams sin being returned to our naturall certainty of dying do still even in this very particular stand between the blessing and the cursing If we follow Christ death is our friend If we imitate the praevarication of Adam then death becomes an evil the condition of our nature becomes the punishment of our own sin not of Adams for although his sin brought death in
done more then to escape the punishment of his Fathers follies If sin doth abound and evils by sin are derived from his Parents much more shall grace super abound and mercy by grace If he was in danger from the crimes of others much rather shall he be secured by his own piety For if God punishes the sins of the fathers to four generations yet he rewards the piety of fathers to ten to hundreds and to thousands Many of the Ancestors of Abraham were persons not noted for religion but suffered in the publike impiety and almost universal idolatry of their ages and yet all the evils that could thence descend upon the family were wiped off and God began to reckon with Abraham upon a new stock of blessings and piety and he was under God the Original of so great a blessing that his family for 1500. years together had from him a title to many favours and what ever evils did chance to them in the descending ages were but single evils in respect of that treasure of mercies which the fathers piety had obtained to the whole nation And it is remarkable to observe how blessings did stick to them for their fathers sakes even whether they would or no. For first his Grand-childe Esau proved a naughty man and he lost the great blessing which was intailed upon the family but he got not a curse but a lesse blessing and yet because he lost the greater blessing God excluded him from being reckoned in the elder time for God foreseeing the event so ordered it that he should first lose his birth-right and then lose the blessing for it was to be certain the family must be reckoned for prosperous in the proper line and yet God blessed Esau into a great Nation and made him the Father of many Princes Now the line of blessing being reckoned in Jacob God blessed his family strangely and by miracle for almost five generations he brought them from Egypt by mighty signes and wonders and when for sin they all died in their way to Canaan two onely excepted God so ordered it that they were all reckoned as single deaths the Nation still descending like a river whose waters were drunk up for the beauvrage of an army but still it keeps its name and current and the waters are supplied by showers and springs and providence After this iniquity still increased and then God struck deeper and spread curses upon whole families he translated the Priesthood from line to line he removed the Kingome from one family to another and still they sinned worse and then we read that God smote almost a whole tribe the tribe of Benjmin was almost extinguished about the matter of the Levites Concubine but still God remembred his promise which he made with their forefathers and that breach was made up After this we finde a greater rupture made and ten tribes fell into idolatry and ten tribes were carried captives into Assyria and never came again But still God remembred his covenant with Abraham and left two Tribes but they were restlesse in their provocation of the God of Abraham and they also were carried captive But still God was the God of their fathers and brought them back and placed them safe and they grew again into a Kingdom and should have remained for ever but that they killed one that was greater then Abraham even the Messias and then they were rooted out and the old covenant cast off and God delighted no more to be called the God of Abraham but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As long as God kept that relation so long for the fathers sakes they had a title and an inheritance to a blessing for so saith Saint Paul As touching the election they are beloved for the Fathers sakes I did insist the longer upon this instance that I might remonstrate how great and how sure and how persevering mercies a pious Father of a family may derive upon his succeeding generations And if we do but tread in the footsteps of our Father Abraham we shall inherit as certain blessings But then I pray adde these considerations 1. If a great impiety and a clamorous wickednesse hath stained the honour of a family and discomposed its title to the Divine mercies and protection it is not an ordinary piety that can restore this family An ordinary even course of life full of sweetnesse and innocency will secure every single person in his own eternal interest but that piety which must be a spring of blessings and communicative to others that must plead against the sins of their Ancestors and begin a new bank of mercies for the Relatives that must be a great and excellent a very religious state of life A smal pension will maintain a single person but he that hath a numerous family and many to provide for needs a greater providence of God and a bigger provision for their maintenance and a small revenue will not keep up the dignity of a great house especially if it be charged with a great debt And this is the very state of the present question That piety that must be instrumental to take off the curse imminent upon a family to blesse a numerous posterity to secure a fair condition to many ages and to pay the debts of their Fathers sins must be so large as that all necessary expences and dutyes for his own soul being first discharged it may be remarkeable in great expressions it may be exemplar to all the family it may be of universal efficacie large in the extension of parts deep in the intension of degrees and then as the root of a tree receives nourishment not onely sufficient to preserve its own life but to transmit a plastick juice to the trunk of the tree and from thence to the utmost branch and smallest gem that knots in the most distant part So shall the great and exemplar piety of the father of a family not onely preserve to the interest of his own soul the life of grace and hopes of glory but shall be a quickning spirit active and communicative of ablessing not onely to the trunk of the tree to the body and rightly descending line but even to the collateral branches to the most distant relatives and all that shall claim a kinred shall have a title to a blessing And this was the way that was prescribed to the family of Eli upon whom a sad curse was intailed that there should not be an old man of the family for ever and that they should be beggers and lose the office of Priesthood by the counsel of R. Johanan the son of Zacheus all the family betook themselves to a great a strict and a severe religion and God was intreated to revoke his decree to be reconciled to the family to restore them to the common condition of men from whence they stood separate by the displeasure of God against the crime of Eli and his Sons Hophni and Phinehas This course is sure
his salvation but then if this sorrow and confession and strong purposes begin then when our life is declined towards the West and is now ready to set in darknesse and a dismall night because of themselves they could but procure an admission to repentance not at all to pardon and plenary absolution by shewing that on our death-bed these are too late and ineffectuall they call upon us to begin betimes when these imperfect acts may be consummate and perfected in the actuall performing those parts of holy life to which they were ordained in the nature of the thing and the purposes of God Lastly suppose all this be done and that by a long course of strictnesse and severity mortification and circumspection we have overcome all our vitious and baser habits contracted and grown upon us like the ulcers and evils of a long surfet and that we are clean and swept Suppose that he hath wept and fasted prayed and vowed to excellent purposes yet all this is but the one half of repentance so infinitely mistaken is the world to think any thing to be enough to make up repentance but to renew us and restore us to the favour of God there is required far more then what hath been yet accounted for See it in the second of S. Peter 1 Chap. 4 5. vers Having escaped the corruption that is in the world thorough lust And besides this giving all diligence adde to your faith vertue to vertue knowledge to knowledge temperance to temperance patience and so on to godlinesse to brotherly kindnesse and to charity These things must be in you and abound This is the summe totall of repentance We must not onely have overcome sin but we must after great diligence have acquired the habits of all those Christian graces which are necessary in the transaction of our affairs in all relations to God and our neighbour and our own person It is not enough to say Lord I thank thee I am no extortioner no adulterer not as this Publican all the reward of such a poenitent is that when he hath escaped the corruption of the world he hath also escaped those heavy judgements which threatned his ruine Nec furtum feci nec fugi si mihi dicat Servus habes precium loris non ureris aio Non hominem occidi non pasces in cruce corvos If a servant have not robâ—d his Master nor offered to fly from his bondage he shall scape the Furea his flesh shall not be exposed to birds or fishes but this is but the reward of innocent slaves it may be we have escaped the rod of the exterminating Angel when our sins are crucifyed but we shall never enter into the joy of our Lord unlesse after we have put off the old man with his affections and lusts we also put on the new man in righteousnesse and holinesse of life And this we are taught in most plain doctrine by S. Paul Let us lay aside the weight that doth so easily beset us that is the one half and then it follows Let us run with patience the race that is set before us These are the fruits meet for repentance spoken of by S. John Baptist that is when we renew our first undertaking in baptisme and return to our courses of innocence Parcus Deorum cultor infrequens Insanientis dum sapientiae consultus erro Nunc retrorsum vela dare atque iterare cursus Cogor relictos The sense of which words is well given us by S. John Remember whence thou art fallen repent and do thy first works For all our hopes of heaven rely upon that Covenant which God made with us in Baptisme which is That being redeemed from our vain conversation we should serve him in holinesse and righteousnesse all our dayes Now when any of us hath prevaricated our part of the Covenant we must return to that state and redeem the intermedial time spent in sin by our doubled industry in the wayes of grace we must be reduced to our first estate and make some proportionable returns of duty for our sad omissions and great violations of our Baptismal vow For God having made no covenant with us but that which is consigned in Baptisme in the same proportion in which we retain or return to that in the same we are to expect the pardon of our sins and all the other promises Evangelicall but no otherwise unlesse we can shew a new Gospel or be baptized again by Gods appointment He therefore that by a long habit by a state and continued course of sin hath gone so far from his baptismal purity as that he hath nothing of the Christian left upon him but his name that man hath much to do to make his garments clean to purifie his soul to take off all the stains of sin that his spirit may be presented pure to the eyes of God who beholds no impurity It is not an easie thing to cure a long contracted habit of sin Let any intemperate person but try in his own instance of drunkennesse or the swearer in the sweetning his unwholesome language but then so to command his tongue that he never swear but that his speech be prudent pious and apt to edifie the hearer or in some sense to glorifie God or to become temperate to have got a habit of sobriety or chastity or humility is the work of a life And if we do but consider that he that lives well from his younger yeers or takes up at the end of his youthfull heats and enters into the courses of a sober life early diligently and vigorously shall finde himself after the studies and labours of 20. or 30. yeers piety but a very imperfect person many degrees of pride left unrooted up many inroads of intemperance or beginnings of excesse much indevotion and backwardnesse in religion many temptations to contest against and some infirmities which he shall never say he hath master'd we shall finde the work of a holy life is not to be deferred till our dayes are almost done till our strengths are decayed our spirits are weak and our lust strong our habits confirmed and our longings after sin many and impotent for what is very hard to be done and is alwayes done imperfectly when there is length of time and a lesse work to do and more abilities to do it withall when the time is short and almost expired and the work made difficult and vast and the strengths weaker and the faculties are disabled will seem little lesse then absolutely impossible * I shall end this generall consideration with the question of the Apostle If the righteous scarcely be saved if it be so difficult to overcome our sins and obtain vertuous habits difficult I say to a righteous a sober and well living person where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear What shall become of him who by his evil life hath not onely removed himself from the affections but even from the possibilities of vertue He that
that period they had the whole wealth of the earth before them they need not fight for empires or places for their cattle to grase in they lived long and felt no want no slavery no tyrannie no war and the evils that happened were single personal and natural and no violences were then done but they were like those things which the law calls rare contingencies for which as the law can now take no care and make no provisions so then there was no law but men lived free and rich and long and they exercised no vertues but natural and knew no felicity but natural and so long their prosperity was just as was their vertue because it was a natural instrument towards all that which they knew of happinesse * But this publick easinesse and quiet the world turned into sin and unlesse God did compel men to do themselves good they would undoe themselves and then God broke in upon them with a flood and destroyed that generation that he might begin the government of the world upon a new stock and binde vertue upon mens spirits by new bands endeared to them by new hopes and fears Then God made new laws and gave to Princes the power of the sword and men might be punshed to death in certain cases and mans life was shortened and slavery was brought into the world and the state of servants and then war began and evils multiplied upon the face of the earth in which it is naturally certain that they that are most violent and injurious prevailed upon the weaker and more innocent and every tyranny that began from Nimrod to this day and every usurper was a peculiar argument to shew that God began to teach the world vertue by suffering and that therefore he suffered Tyrannies and usurpations to be in the world and to be prosperous and the rights of men to be snatched away from the owners that the world might be established in potent and setled governments and the sufferers be taught al the passive vertues of the soul. For so God brings good out of evil turning Tyranny into the benefits of Government and violence into vertue and sufferings into rewards and this was the second change of the world personal miseries were brought in upon Adam and his posterity as a punishment of sin in the first period and in the second publick evils were brought in by tyrants and usurpers and God suffered them as the first elements of vertue men being just newly put to schoole to infant sufferings But all this was not much Christs line was not yet drawn forth it began not to appear in what family the King of sufferings should descend till Abrahams time and therefore till then there were no greater sufferings then what I have now reckoned But when Abrahams family was chosen from among the many nations and began to belong to God by a special right and he was designed to be the Father of the Messias then God found out a new way to trie him even with a sound affliction commanding him to offer his beloved Isaac but this was accepted and being intended by Abraham was not intended by God for this was a type of Christ and therefore was also but a type of sufferings excepting the sufferings of the old periods and the sufferings of nature and accident we see no change made for a long while after but God having established a law in Abrahams family did build it upon promises of health and peace and victory and plenty and riches and so long as they did not prevaricate the law of their God so long they were prosperous but God kept a remnant of Cananites in the land like a rod held over them to vex or to chastise them into obedience in which while they persevered nothing could hurt them and that saying of David needs no other sence but the letter of its own expression I have been young and now am old and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging their bread The godly generally were prosperous and a good cause seldome had an ill end and a good man never died an ill death till the law had spent a great part of its time and it descended towards its declension and period But that the great prince of sufferings might not appear upon his stage of tragedies without some forerunners of sorrow God was pleased to choose out some good men and honour them by making them to become little images of suffering Isaiah Jeremy and Zachary were martyrs of the law but these were single deaths Shadrac Meshec and Abednego were thrown into a burning furnace and Daniel into a den of lions and Susanna was accused for adultery but these were but little arâ—ests of the prosperity of the Godly as the time drew neerer that Christ should be manifest so the sufferings grew bigger and more numerous and Antiochus raised up a sharp persecution in the time of the Maccabees in which many passed through the red sea of blood into the bosome of Abraham then Christ came and that was the third period in which the changed method of Gods providence was perfected for Christ was to do his great work by sufferings by sufferings was to enter into blessednesse by his passion he was made prince of the Catholickchurch and as our Head was so must the members be God made the same covenant with us that he did with his most holy Son Christ obtaind no better conditions for us then for himself that was not to be looked for the servant must not be above his master it is well if he be as his Master if the world persecuted him they will also persecute us and from the dayes of John the Baptist the kingdome of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force not the violent doers but the sufferers of violence for though the old law was established in the promises of temporal prosperity yet the gospel is founded in temporal adversity It is directly a covenant of sufferings and sorrows for now the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God that 's the sence and designe of the text and I intend it as a direct antinomy to the common perswasion of tyrannous carnal and vicious men who reckon nothing good out what is prosperous for though that proposition had many degrees of truth in the beginning of the law yet the case is now altered God hath established its contradictory and now every good man must look for persecution and every good cause must expect to thrive by the sufferings and patience of holy persons and as men do well and suffer evil so they are dear to God and whom he loves most he afflicts most and does this with a designe of the greatest mercy in the world 1. Then the state of the Gospel is a state of sufferings not of temporal prosperities this was foretold by the prophets a fountain shall go out of the house of the Lord
irrigahit torrentem spinarum so it is in the vulgar latin and it shall water the torrent of thorns that is the state or time of the gospel which like a torrent shall cary all the world before it and like a torrent shall be fullest in ill weather and by its banks shall grow nothing but thorns and briers sharp afflictions temporal infelicities and persecution This sense of the words is more fully explained in the book of the prophet Isa. upon the ground of my people shall thorns and briers come up how much more in all the houses of the city of rejoycing which prophecy is the same in the stile of the prophets that my text is in the stile of the Apostles the house of God shall be watered with the dew of heaven and there shall spring up briers in it judgement must begin there but how much more in the houses of the city of rejoycing how much more amongst them that are at ease in Sion that serve their desires that satisfie their appetites that are given over to their own hearts lust that so serves themselves that they never serve God that dwell in the city of rejoycing they are like Dives whose portion was in this life who went in fine linnen and fared deliciously every day they indeed trample upon their briers and thorns and suffer them not to grow in their houses but the roots are in the ground and they are reserved for fuel of wrath in the day of everlasting burning Thus you see it was prophesied now see how it was performed Christ was the captain of our sufferings and he began He entred into the world with all the circumstances of poverty he had a star to illustrate his birth but a stable for his bed chamber and a manger for his cradle the angels sang hymnes when he was born but he was cold and cried uneasy and unprovided he lived long in the trade of a carpenter he by whom God made the world had in his first years the businesse of a mean and an ignoble trade he did good where ever he went and almost where ever he went was abused he deserved heaven for his obedience but found a crosse in his way thither and if ever any man had reason to expect fair usages from God and to be dandled in lap of ease softnes and a prosperous fortune he it was onely that could deserve that or any thing that can be good But after he had chosen to live a life of vertue of poverty and labour he entred into a state of death whose shame and trouble was great enough to pay for the sins of the whole world And I shall choose to expresse this mystery in the vvords of scripture he died not by a single or a sudden death but he was the Lambe slain from the beginning of the world For he was massacred in Abel saith Saint Paulinus he was tossed upon the waves of the Sea in the person of Noah It was he that went out of his Countrey when Abraham was called from Charran and wandred from his native soil He was offered up in Isaac persecuted in Jacob betrayed in Joseph blinded in Sampson affronted in Moses sawed in Esay cast into the dungeon with Jeremy For all these were types of Christ suffering and then his passion continued even after his resurrection for it is he that suffers in all his members it is he that endures the contradiction of all sinners it is he that is the Lord of life and is crucified again and put to open shame in all the sufferings of his servants and sins of rebels and defiances of Apostates and renegados and violence of Tyrants and injustice of usurpers and the persecutions of his Church It is he that is stoned in Saint Stephen flayed in the person of Saint Bartholomew he was rosted upon Saint Laurence his Cridiron exposed to lyons in Saint Ignatius burned in Saint Polycarpe frozen in the lake where stood fourty Martyrs of Cappadocia Vnigenitus enim Dei ad peragendum mortis suae sacramentum consummavit omne genus humanarum passionum said Saint Hilary The Sacrament of Christs death is not to be accomplished but by suffering all the sorrows of humanity All that Christ came for was or was mingled with sufferings For all those little joyes which God sent either to recreate his person or to illustrate his office were abated or attended with afflictions God being more carefull to establish in him the Covenant of sufferings then to refresh his sorrows Presently after the Angels had finished their Halleluiahs he was forced to fly to save his life and the air became full of shrikes of the desolate mothers of Bethlehem for their dying Babes God had no sooner made him illustrious with a voyce from heaven and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him in the waters of Baptisme But he was delivered over to be tempted and assaulted by the Devil in the wildernesse His transfiguration was a bright ray of glory but then also he entred into a cloud and was told a sad story what he was to suffer at Jerusalem And upon Palme Sunday when he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem and was adorned with the acclamations of a King and a God he wet the Palmes with his tears sweeter then the drops of Mannah or the little pearls of heaven that descended upon mount Hermon weeping in the midst of this triumph over obstinate perishing and maliciour Jerusalem For this Jesus was like the rain-bowe which God set in the clouds as a sacrament to confirm a promise and establish a grace he was half made of the glories of the light and half of the moisture of a cloud in his best dayes he was but half triumph and half sorrow he was sent to tell of his Fathers mercies and that God intended to spare us but appeared not but in the company or in the retinue of a shower and of foul weather But I need not tell that Jesus beloved of God was a suffering person that which concerns this question most is that he made for us a covenant of sufferings His Doctrines were such as expressely and by consequent enjoyne and suppose sufferings and a state of affliction His very promises were sufferings his beatitudes were sufferings his rewards and his arguments to invite men to follow him were onely taken from sufferings in this life and the reward of sufferings hereafter For if we summon up the Commandements of Christ we shall finde humility mortification self-deniall repentance renouncing the world mourning taking up the crosse dying for him patience and poverty to stand in the chiefest rank of Christian precepts and in the direct order to heaven He that will be my Disciple must deny himself and take up his crosse and follow me We must follow him that was crowned with thorns and sorrows him that was drenchâ—d in Cedron nailed upon the Crosse that deserved all good and suffered all evil That is the summe of Christian Religion
and excellent men do so much value above their lives and fortunes 12. That a mans nature is passible is its best advantage for by it we are all redeemed by the passivenesse and sufferings of our Lord and brother we were all rescued from the portion of Devils and by our suffering we have a capacity of serving God beyond that of Angels who indeed can sing Gods praise with a sweeter note and obey him with a more unabated will and execute his commands with a swifter wing and a greater power but they cannot die for God they can lose no lands for him and he that did so for all us and commanded us to do so for him is ascended farre above all Angels and is Heir of a greater glory 13. Do this and live was the covenant of the Law but in the Gospel it is suffer this and live He that forsaketh house and land friends and life for my sake is my disciple 14. By the sufferings of Saints God chastises their follies and levities and suffers not their errours to climbe up into heresies nor their infirmities into crimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Alteration makes a fool leave his folly If David numbers the people of Judea God punishes him sharply and loudly But if Augustus Caesar numbers all the world he is let alone and prospers Ille crucem pretium sceleris tulit hic diadema And in giving physick we alwayes call that just and sitting that is usefull and profitable no man complains of his Physitians Iniquity if he burns one part to cure all the body if the belly be punished to chastise the floods of humour and the evils of a â—urfet Punishments can no other way turn into a mercy but when they are designed for medicine and God is then very carefull of thy soul when he will suppresse every of its evils when it first discomposes the order of things and spirits And what hurt is it to thee if a persecution draws thee from the vanities of a former prosperity and forces thee into the sobrieties of a holy life What losse is it what misery Is not the least sin a greater evil then the great est of sufferings God smites some at the beginning of their sin Others not till a long while after it is done The first cannot say that God is slack in punishing and have no need to complain that the wicked are prosperous for they finde that God is apt enough to strike and therefore that he strikes them and strikes not the other is not deâ—â—ct of justice but because there is not mercy in store for them that sin and suffer not 15. For if God strikes the godly that they may repent it is no wonder that God is so good to his servants but then we must not call that a misery which God intends to make an instrument of saving them And if God forbears to strike the wicked out of anger and because he hath decreed death and hell against them we have no reason to envy that they ride in a gilded chariot to the gallows But if God forbears the wicked that by his long sufferance they may be invited to repentance then we may cease to wonder at the dispensation and argue comforts to the afflicted Saints thus 1. For if God be so gracious to the wicked how much more is he to the godly And if sparing the wicked be a mercy then smiting the godly being the expression of his greater kindnesse affliction is of it self the more eligible condition If God hath some degrees of kindnesse for the persecutor so much as to invite them by kindnesse how much greater is his love to them that are persecuted and therefore his entercourse with them is also a greater favour and indeed it is the surer way of securing the duty fair means may do it but severity will fix and secure it fair means are more apt to be abused then harsh physick that may be turned into wantonnesse but none but the impudent and grown sinners despise all Gods judgements and therefore God chooses this way to deal with his erring servants that they may obtain an infallible and a great salvation and yet if God spares not his children how much lesse the reprobates and therefore as the sparing the latter commonly is a sad curse so the smiting the former is a very great mercy 16 For by this Oeconomy God gives us a great argument to prove the resurrection since to his saints and servants he assignes sorrow for their present portion Sorrow cannot be the reward of vertue it may be its instrument and hand-maid but not its reward and therefore it may be intermedial to some great purposes but they must look for their portion in the other life For if in this life onely we had hope then we were of all men the most miserable It is Sain Pauls argument to prove a beatificall resurrection And we therefore may learn to estimate the state of the afflicted godly to be a mercy great in proportion to the greatnesse of that reward which these afflictions come to secure and to prove Nunc damna juvant sunt ipsa pericula tanti Stantia non poterant tecta probare Deos. It is a great matter an infinite blessing to escape the pains of hell and therefore that condition is also very blessed which God sends us to create and to confirm our hopes of that excellent mercy 17. The sufferings of the saints are the sum of Christian Philosophy they are sent to wean us from the vanâ—les and affections of this world and to create in us strong desires of heaven whiles God causes us to be here treated rudely that we may long to be in our Countrey where God shall be our portion and Angels our companions and Christ our perpetuall feast and a never ceasing joy shall be our condition and entertainment O death how bitter art thou to a man that is at ease and rest in his possessions but he that is uneasie in his body and unquiet in his possessions vexed in his person discomposed in his designes who findes no pleasure no rest here will be glad to fix his heart where onely he shall have what he can desire and what can make him happy As long as the waters of persecutions are upon the earth so long we dwell in the Ark but where the land is dry the Dove it self will be tempted to a wandring course of life and never to return to the house of her safety What shall I say more 18 Christ nourisheth his Church by sufferings 19 He hath given a single blessing to all other graces but to them that are persecuted he hath promised a double one It being a double favour first to be innocent like Christ and then to be afflicted like him 20. Without this the miracles of patience which God hath given to fortifie the spirits of the saints would signifie nothing Nemo enim tolerare tanta velit sine causâ nec potuit
authority and the person and the law and the religion The sin cannot grow to its height if it be crushed at the beginning unlesse it prosper in its progresse a man cannot easily fill up the measure of his iniquity but then that the sin swels to its fulnesse by prosperity and grows too big to be suppressed without a miracle it is so far from excusing or lessening the sin that nothing doth so nurse the sin as it It is not vertue because it is prosperous but if it had not been prosperous the sin could never be so great Facere omnia saevè Non impunè licet nisi dum facis A little crime is sure to smart but when the sinner is grown rich and prosperous and powerfull he gets impunity Jusque datum sceleri But that 's not innocence and if prosperity were the voice of God to approve an action then no man were vitious but he that is punished and nothing were rebellion but that which cannot be easily suppressed and no man were a Pirate but he that robs with a little vessell and no man could be a Tyrant but he that is no prince and no man an unjust invader of his neighbours rights but he that is beaten and overthrown Then the crime grows big and loud then it calls to Heaven for vengeance when it hath been long a growing when it hath thrived under the Devils managing when God hath long suffered it and with patience in vain expecting the repentance of a sinner he that treasures up wrath against the day of wrath that man hath been a prosperous that is an unpunished and a thriving sinner but then it is the sin that thrives not the man and that is the mistake upon this whole question for the sin cannot thrive unlesse the man goes on without apparent punishment and restraint And all that the man gets by it is that by a continual course of sin he is prepared for an intollerable ruine The Spirit of God bids us look upon the end of these men not the way they walk or the instrument of that pompous death When Epaminondas was asked which of the three was happiest himself Chalrias or Iphicrates bid the man stay till they were all dead for till then that question could not be answered He that had seen the Vandals besiege the city of Hippo and have known the barbarousnesse of that unchristned people and had observed that S. Augustine withall his prayers and vows could not obtain peace in his own dayes not so much as a reprieve for the persecution and then had observed S. Augustine die with grief that very night would have perceived his calamity more visible then the reward of his piety and holy religion When Lewis firnamed Pius went his voyage to Palestine upon a holy end and for the glory of God to fight against the Saracens and Turks and Mamalukes the world did promise to themselves that a good cause should thrive in the hands of so holy a man but the event was far otherwise his brother Robert was killed and his army destroyed and himself taken prisoner and the money which by his Mother was sent for his redemption was cast away in a storm and he was exchanged for the last town the Christians had in Egypt and brought home the crosse of Christ upon his shoulder in a real pressure and participation of his Masters sufferings When Charles the fifth went to Algier to suppresse pirates and unchristned villains the cause was more confident then the event was prosperous and when he was almost ruined in a prodigious storme he told the minutes of the clock expecting that at midnight when religious persons rose to Mattins he should be eased by the benefit of their prayers but the providence of God trod upon those waters and left no footstoops for discovery his navie was beat in pieces and his designe ended in dishonour and his life almost lost by the bargain Was ever cause more baffled then the Christian cause by the Turks in all Asia and Africa and some parts of Europe if to be persecuted and afflicted be reckoned a calamity What prince was ever more unfortunate then Henry the sixt of England and yet that age saw none more pious and devout and the title of the house of Lancaster was advanced against the right of York for three descents but then what was the end of these things the persecuted men were made Saints and their memories are preserved in honour and their souls shall reigne for ever and some good men were ingaged in a wrong cause and the good cause was sometimes managed by evil men till that the suppressed cause was lifted up by God in the hands of a young and prosperous prince and at last both interests were satisfied in the conjunction of two roses which was brought to issue by a wonderful chain of causes managed by the divine providence and there is no age no history no state no great change in the world but hath ministred an example of an afflicted truth and a prevailing sin For I will never more call that sinner prosperous who after he hath been permitted to finish his businesse shall die and perish miserably for at the same rate we may envie the happinesse of a poor fisherman who while his nets were drying slept upon the rock and dreamt that he was made a King on a sudden starts up and leaping for joy fals down from the rock and in the place of his imaginary felicities loses his little portion of pleasure and innocent solaces he had from the sound sleep and little cares of his humble cottage And what is the prosperity of the wicked to dwel in fine houses or to command armies or to be able to oppresse their brethren or to have much wealth to look on or many servants to feed or much businesse to dispatch and great cares to master these things are of themselves neither good nor bad but consider would any man amongst us looking and considering before hand kill his lawful King to be heire of all that which I have named would any of you choose to have God angry with you upon these terms would any of you be a perjured man for it all A wise man or a good would not choose it would any of you die an Atheist that you might live in plenty and power I belâ—â—ve you tremble to think of it It cannot therefore be a happinesse to thrive upon the stock of a great sin for if any man should contâ—act with an impure spirit to give his soul up at a certain day it may be 2â— years hence upon the condition he might for 20. years have his vain desires should we not think that person infinitely miserable every prosperous thriving sinner is in the same condition within these twenty years he shall be thrown into the portion of Devils but shall never come out thence in twenty millions of years His wealth must needs sit uneasie upon him that remembers that within a
mistaking the accounts of a man for the measures of God or dare not commit treason for fear of being blasted may come to be tempted when they see a sinner thrive and are scandalized all the way if they die before him or they may come to receive some accidentall hardnesses and every thing in the world may spoil such persons and blast their resolutions Take in all the aids you can and if the fancy of the standers by or the hearing a cock crow can adde any collaterall aids to thy weaknesse refuse it not But let thy state of sufferings begin with choice and be confirmed with knowledge and rely upon love and the aids of God and the expectations of heaven and the present sense of duty and then the action will be as glorious in the event as it is prudent in the enterprise and religious in the prosecution 6. Lastly when God hath brought thee into Christs school and entered thee into a state of sufferings remember the advantages of that state consider how unsavoury the things of the world appear to thee when thou art under the arrest of death remember with what comforts the Spirit of God assists thy spirit set down in thy heart all those entercourses which happen between God and thy own soul the sweetnesses of religion the vanity of sins appearances thy newly entertained resolutions thy longings after heaven and all the things of God and if God finishes thy persecution with death proceed in them if he restores thee to the light of the world and a temporall refreshment change but the scene of sufferings into an active life and converse with God upon the same principles on which in thy state of sufferings thou dost build all the parts of duty If God restores thee to thy estate be not lesse in love with heaven nor more in love with the world let thy spirit be now as humble as before it was broken and to what soever degree of sobriety or austerity thy suffering condition did enforce thee if it may be turned into vertue when God restores thee because then it was necessary thou shouldest entertain it by an after choice do now also by a praâ—election that thou mayest say with David It is good for me that I have been afflicted for thereby I have learned thy commandments and Paphnutius did not do his soul more advantage when he lost his right eye and suffered his left knee to be cut for Christianity and the cause of God then that in the dayes of Constantine and the Churches peace he lived not in the toleration but in the active piety of a Martyrs condition not now a confessor of the faith onely but of the charity of a Christian we may every one live to have need of these rules and I do not at all think it safe to pray against it but to be armed for it and to whatsoever degree of sufferings God shal call us we see what advantages God intends for us and what advantages we our selves may make of it I now proceed to make use of all the former â—â—scourse by removing it a little further even into its utmost spiritual sense which the Apostle does in the last words of the text If the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the wicked and the sinner appear These words are taken out of the proverbs * according to the translation of the 70. If the righteous scarcely â—s safe where the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implyes that he is safe but by intermedâ—â— difficulties and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is safe in the midst of his persecutions they may disturb his rest and discompose his fancy but they are like the firy charriot to Elias he is encircled with fire and rare circumstances and strange usages but is carried up to Heaven in a robe of flames and so was Noah safe when the flood came and was the great type and instance too of the verification of this proposition he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was put into a strange condition perpetually wandring shut up in a prison of wood living upon faith having never had the experience of being safe in flouds And so have I often seen young and unskilful persons sitting in a little boat when every little wave sporting about the sides of the vessel and every motion and dancing of the barge seemed a danger and made them cling fast upon their fellows and yet all the while they wereas safe as if they sat under a tree while a gentle winde shaked the leaves into a refreshment and a cooling shade And the unskiful unexperienced Christian shrikes out when ever his vessel shakes thinking it alwayes a danger that the watry pavement is not stable and resident like a rock and yet all his danger is in himself none at all from without for he is indeed moving upon the waters but fastned to a rock faith is his foundation and hope is his anchor and deathis his harbour and Christ is his pilot and heaven is his countrey and all the evils of poverty or affronts of tribunals and evil judges of fears and sadder apprehensions are but like the loud wind blowing from the right point they make a noise and drive faster to the harbour and if we do not leave the ship and leap into the sea quit the interests of religion and run to the securities of the world cut our cables and dissolve our hopes grow impatient and hug a wave and die in its embraces we are as safe at sea safer in the storm which God sends us then in a calm when we are be friended with the world 2. But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may also signifie raro If the righteous is seldom safe which implyes that sometimes he is even in a temporal sense God sometimes sends Halcyon dayes to his Church and when he promised Kings and Queens to be their nurses he intended it for a blessing and yet this blessing does of teâ—imes so ill succeed that it is the greater blessing of the two not to give us that blessing too freely but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this is scarcly done and yet sometimes it is and God sometimes refreshes languishing piety with such arguments as comply with our infirmities and though it be a shame to us to need such allectives and infant gauds such which the heathen world and the first rudiments of the Israelites did need God who pitties us and will be wanting in nothing to us as he corroborates our willing spirits with proper entertainments so also he supports our weak flesh and not onely cheers an afflicted soul with beams of light and antepasts and earnests of glory but is kinde also to our man of flesh and weaknesse and to this purpose he sends thunder-bolts from heaven upon evil men dividing their tongues infatuating their counsels cursing their posterity and ruining their families 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sometimes God destroyes their armies or
that is he that repents him of his sins But theâ—e are a great many despisers all they that live in their sins they that have more blessings then they can reckon houres in their lives that are courted by the divine favour and woed to salvation as if mankinde were to give not to receive so great a blessing all they that answer not to so friendly summons they are despisers of Gods mercies and although God overflows with mercies and does not often leave us to the onely hopes of being cured by â—â—â—ctions and gentle cataplasmes but proceeds further and gives us stibium or prepared steele sharp arrows of his anger and the sword and the hand of sicknesse yet we are not sure of so much favour as to be entertained longer in Gods hospital but many be thrust forth among the incurabili Plutarch reports concerning swine that their optick nervs are so disposed to turne their eyes downwards that they cannot look upwards nor behold the face of heaven unlesse they be thrown upon their backs Such Swine are we we seldom can look up to heaven til God by his judgements throws us upon our backs till he humbles us softens us with showers of our own blood and tears of sorrow and yet God hath not promised that he will do so much for us but for ought we know as soon as ever the devil enters into our swinish and brutish hearts we shall run down the hill and perish in the floods and seas of intolerable miserie And therefore besides that it is a huge folly in us that we wil not be cured with pleasant medicines but must be longing for colliquintida and for vomits for knives and poniards instead of the gentle shoures of the divine refreshments besides that this is an imprudence and sottishnesse we do infinitely put it to the venture whether we shall be in a saverable condition or no after the rejection of the first state of mercies But however then begins the first step of the judgement and pungent misery we are perishing people or if not yet at the last not to be cured without the abscision of a member without the cutting of a hand or leg or the putting out of an eye we must be cut to take the stone out of our hearts and that is a state of a very great infelicity and if we scape the stone we cannot escape the surgeons knife if we scape death yet we have a sicknesse and though that be a great mercy in respect of death yet it is as great a misery in respect of health and that is the first punishment for the despite done to the first and most sensible mercies we are fallen into a sicknesse that cannot be cured but by disease and hardship But if this despite runs further and when the mercies look on us with an angry countenance and that God gives us onely the mercy of a punishment if we despise this too we increase but our misery as we increase our sin the summe of which is this that if Pharaoh will not be cured by one plague he shall have ten and if ten will not do it the great and tenth wave which is far bigger then all the rest the severest and the last arrow of the quiver then we shall perish in the red sea the sea of flames and blood in which the ungodly shall roule eternally But some of these despisers are such as are unmooved when God smites others like Gallio when the Jews took Softhenes and beat him in the pleading place he cared for none of these things he was not concerned in that interest and many Gallio's there are amongst us that understand it not to be a part of the divine method of Gods long sufferance to strike others to make us afraid But however we sleep in the midst of such alarums yet know that there is not one death in all the neighbour-hood but is intended to thee every crowing of the cock is to awake thee to repentance and if thou sleepest still the next turn may be thine God will send his Angel as he did to Peter and smite thee on thy side and wake thee from thy dead sleep of sin and sottishnesse But beyond this some are despisers still and hope to drown the noises of mount Sinai the sound of Canons of thunders and lightnings with a counternoise of revelling and clamorous roarings with merry meetings like the sacrifices to Moloch they sound drums and trumpets that they might not hear the sad shrikings of their children as they were dying in the cavety of the brazen idoll and when their conscience shrikes out or murmurs in a sad melancholy or something that is dear to them is smitten they attempt to drown it in a sea of drink in the heathenish noises of idle and drunen company and that which God sends to lead them to repentance leads them to a taverne not to refresh their needs of nature or for ends of a tolerable civility or innocent purposes but like the condemned persons among the Levantines they tasted wine freely that they might die and be insensible I could easily reprove such persons with an old Greek proverb mentioned by Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 You shall ill be cured of the knotted Gout if you have nothing else but a wide shoe But this reproof is too gentle for so great a madnesse it is not onely an incompetent cure to apply the plaister of a sin or vanity to cure the smart of a divine judgement but it is a great increaser of the misery by swelling the cause to bigger and monstrous proportions It is just as if an impatient fool feeling the smart of his medicine shall tear his wounds open and throw away the instruments of his cure because they bring him health at the charge of a little pain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that is full of stripes and troubles and decked round about with thorns he is neer to God But he that because he sits uneasily when he sits neer the King that was crowned with thorns shall remove thence or strew flowers roses and Jessamine the downe of thistles and the softest Gossamere that he may die without pain die quietly and like a lamb sink to the bottom of hell without noise this man is a fool because he accepts death if it arrest him in civil language is content to die by the sentence of an eloquent Judge and prefers a quiet passage to hell before going to heaven in a storm That Italian Gentleman was certainly a great lover of his sleep who was angry with the lizard that wak't him when a viper was creeping into his mouth when the Devil is entring into us to poison our spirits and steal our souls away while we are sleeping in the lethargy of sin God sends his sharp messages to awaken us and we call that the enemy and use arts to cure the remedy not to cure the disease There are some persons that will never be cured not because
over-lay thy infant-vertue or drown it with a flood of breast-milk Sermon XV. Of Growth in Grace Part II. 5. HE is well grown in or towards the state of grace who is more patient of a sharp reproof then of a secret flattery For a reprehension contains so much mortification to the pride and complacencies of a man is so great an affront to an easie and undisturbed person is so empty of pleasure and so full of profit that he must needs love vertue in a great degree who can take in that which onely serves her end and is displeasant to himself and all his gayeties A severe reprehender of anothers vice comes dressed like Jacob when he went to cozen his brother of the blessing his outside is rough and hairy but the voice is Jacobs voice rough hands and a healthfull language get the blessing even against the will of him that shall feel it but he that is patient and even not apt to excuse his fault that is lesse apt to anger or to scorn him that snatches him rudely from the flames of hell he is vertues Confessor and suffers these lesser stripes for that interest which will end in spirituall and eternall benedictions They who are furious against their monitors are incorrigible but it is one degree of meeknesse to suffer discipline and a meek man cannot easily be an ill man especially in the present instance he appears at least to have a healthfull constitution he hath good flesh to heal his spirit is capable of medicine and that man can never be despaired of who hath a disposition so neer his health as to improve all physick and whose nature is relieved by every good accident from without But that which I observe is That this is not onely a good disposition towards repentance and restitution but is a signe of growth in grace according as it becomes naturall easie and habituall Some men chide themselves for all their misdemeanours because they would be represented to the censures and opinions of other men with a fair Character and such as need not to be reproved others out of inconsideration sleep in their own dark rooms and untill the charity of a Guide or of a friend draws the curtain and lets in a beam of light dream on untill the graves open and hell devours them But if they be called upon by the grace of God let down with a sheet of counsels and friendly precepts they are presently inclined to be obedient to the heavenly monitions but unlesse they be dressed with circumstances of honour and civility with arts of entertainment and insinuation they are rejected utterly or received unwillingly Therefore although upon any termes to endure a sharp reproof be a good signe of amendment yet the growth of grace is not properly signified by every such sufferance For when this disposition begins amendment also begins and goes on in proportion to the increment of this To endure a reproof without adding a new sin is the first step to amendments that is to endure it without scorn or hatred or indignation 2. The next is to suffer reproof without excusing our selves For he that is apt to excuse himself is onely desirous in a civill manner to set the reproof aside and to represent the charitable monitour to be too hasty in his judgement and deceived in his information and the fault to dwell there not with himself 3. Then he that proceeds in this instance admits the reprovers sermon or discourse without a private regret he hath no secret murmurs or unwillingnesses to the humiliation but is onely ashamed that he should deserve it but for the reprehension it self that troubles him not but he looks on it as his own medicine and the others charity 4. But if to this he addes that he voluntary confesses his own fault and of his own accord vomits out the loads of his own intemperance and eases his spirit of the infection then it is certain he is not onely a professed and hearty enemy against sin but a zealous and a prudent and an active person against all its interest and never counts himself at ease but while he rests upon the banks of Sion or at the gates of the temple never pleased but in vertue and religion Then he knows the state of his soul and the state of his danger he reckons it no objection to be abased in the face of man so he may be gracious in the eyes of God And that 's a signe of a good grace and a holy wisdom That man is grown in the grace of God and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Justus in principio sermonis est accusator sui said the Wise man The righteous accuseth himself in the beginning that is quickly lest he be prevented And certain it is he cannot be either wise or good that had rather have a reall sin within him then that a good man should beleeve him to be a repenting sinner that had rather keep his crime then lose his reputation that is rather to be so then to be thought so rather be without the favour of God then of his neighbour Diogenes once spied a young man coming out of a Tavern or place of entertainment who perceiving himself observed by the Philosopher with some confusion stepped back again that he might if possible preserve his fame with that severe person But Diogenes told him Quanto magis intraveris tanto magis eris in cauponâ The more you go back the longer you are in the place where you are ashamed to be seen and he that conceals his sin still retains that which he counts his shame and his burden Hippocrates was noted for an ingenious person that he published and confessed his errour concerning the futures of the head and all ages since Saint Austin have called him pious for writing his book of retractations in which he published his former ignorances and mistakes and so set his shame off to the world invested with a garment of modesty and above half changed before they were seen I did the rather insist upon this particular because it is a consideration of huge concernment and yet much neglected in all its instances and degrees We neither confesse our shame nor endure it we are privately troubled and publikely excuse it we turn charity into bitternesse and our reproof into contumacy and scorne and who is there amongst us that can endure a personall charge or is not to be taught his personall duty by generall discoursings by parable and apologue by acts of insinuation and wary distances but by this state of persons we know the estate of our own spirits When God sent his Prophets to the people and they stoned them with stones and sawed them asunder and cast them into dungeons and made them beggers the people fell into the condition of Babylon Quam curavimus non est sanata We healed her said the Prophets But she would not be cured Derelinquamus eam that 's her
doom let her enjoy her sins and all the fruits of sin laid up in treasures of wrath against the day of vengeance and retribution 6. He that is grown in grace and the knowledge of Christ esteems no sin to be little or contemptible none fit to be cherished or indulged to For it is not onely inconsistent with the love of God to entertain any undecency or beginning of a crime any thing that displeases him but he alwayes remembers how much it cost him to arrive at the state of good things whether the grace of God hath already brought him He thinks of the prayers and tears his restlesse nights and his daily fears his late escape and his present danger the ruines of his former state and the difficult and imperfect reparations of this new his proclivity and aptnesse to vice and naturall aversnesse and uneasie inclinations to the strictnesse of holy living and when these are considered truly they naturally make a man unwilling to entertaine any beginnings of a state of life contrary to that which with so much danger and difficulty through so many objections and enemies he hath attained And the truth is when a man hath escaped the dangers of his first state of sin he cannot but be extreamly unwilling to return again thither in which he can never hope for heaven and so it must be for a man must not flatter himself in a small crime and say as Lot did when he begged a reprieve for Zoar Alas Lord is it not a little one and my soul shall live And it is not therefore to be entertained because it is little for it is the more without excuse if it be little the temptations to it are not great the allurements not mighty the promises not insnaring the resistance easie and a wise man considers it is a greater danger to be overcome by a little sin then by a great one a greater danger I say not directly but accidentally not in respect of the crime but in relation to the person for he that cannot overcome a small crime is in the state of infirmity so great that he perishes infallibly when he is arrested by the sins of a stronger temptation But he that easily can and yet will not he is in love with sin and courts his danger that he may at least kisse the apples of Paradise or feast himself with the parings since he is by some displeasing instrument affrighted from glutting himself with the forbidden fruit in ruder and bigger instances But the well-grown Christian is curious of his newly trimmed soul and like a nice person with clean clothes is carefull that no spot or stain fully the virgin whitenesse of his robe whereas another whose albes of baptisme are sullied in many places with the smoak and filth of Sodom and uncleannesse cares not in what paths he treads and a shower of dirt changes not his state who already lies wallowing in the puddles of impurity It makes men negligent and easie when they have an opinion or certain knowledge that they are persons extraordinary in nothing that a little care will not mend them that another sin cannot make them much worse But it is as a signe of a tender conscience and a reformed spirit when it is sensible of every alteration when an idle word is troublesom when a wandering thought puts the whole spirit upon its guard when too free a merriment is wiped off with a sigh and a sad thought and a severe recollection and a holy prayer Polycletus was wont to say That they had work enough to do who were to make a curuious picture of clay and dirt when they were to take accounts for the handling of mud and morter A mans spirit is naturally carelesse of baser and uncostly materials but if a man be to work in gold then he will save the filings and his dust and suffer not a grain to perish And when a man hath laid his foundations in precious stones he will not build vile matter stubble and dirt upon it So it is in the spirit of a man If he have built upon the rock Christ Jesus and is grown up to a good stature in Christ he will not easily dishonour his building nor lose his labours by an incurious entertainment of vanities and little instances of sin which as they can never satisfie any lust or appetite to sin so they are like a flie in a box of ointment or like little follies to a wise man they are extreamly full of dishonour and disparagement they disarray a mans soul of his vertue and dishonour him for cockle-shels and baubles and tempt to a greater folly which every man who is grown in the knowledge of Christ therefore carefully avoids because he fears a relapse with a fear as great as his hopes of heaven are and knowes that the entertainment of small sins do but entice a mans resolutions to disband they unravel and untwist his holy purposes and begin in infirmities and proceed in folly and end in death 7. He that is grown in grace pursues vertue for its own interest purely and simply without the mixture and allay of collateral designes and equally inclining purposes God in the beginning of our returns to him entertains us with promises and threatnings the apprehensions of temporal advantages with fear and shame and with reverence of friends and secular respects with reputation and coercion of humane laws and at first men snatch at the lesser and lower ends of vertue and such rewards are visible and which God sometimes gives in hand to entertain our weak and imperfect desires The young Philosophers were very forward to get the precepts of their sect and the rules of severity that they might discourse with Kings not that they might reform their own manners and some men study to get the ears and tongues of the people rather then to gain their souls to God and they obey good laws for fear of punishment or to preserve their own peace and some are worse they do good deeds out of spite and preach Christ out of envy or to lessen the authority and fame of others some of these lessen the excellency of the act others spoil it quite it is in some imperfect in others criminal in some it is consistent with a beginning infant-grace in others it is an argument of the state of sin and death but in all cases the well grown Christian he that improoves or goes forward in his way to heaven brings vertue forth not into discourses and panegyrickes but into his life and manners his vertue although it serves many good ends accidentally yet by his intention it onely suppresses his inordinate passions makes him temperate and chast casts out his devils of drunkennesse and lust pride and rage malice and revenge it makes him useful to his brother and a servant of God and although these flowers cannot choose but please his eye and delight his smell yet he chooses to gather honey and licks up
and intolerable and there is no soft counsels then to be entertained they are already in the fire but they may be saved for all that so great so infinite so miraculous is Gods mercy that he will not give a sinner over though the hairs of his head be singed with the flames of hell Gods desires of having us to be saved continue even when we begin to be damned even till we will not be saved and are gone beyond Gods method and all the revelations of his kindnesse And certainly that is a bold and a mighty sinner whose iniquity is sweld beyond all the bulk and heap of Gods revealed loving kindnesse If sin hath sweld beyond grace and superabounds over it that sin is gone beyond the measures of a man such a person is removed beyond all the malice of humane nature into the evil and spite of Devils and accursed spirits there is no greater sadnesse in the world then this God hath not appointed a remedy in the vast treasures of grace for some men and some sins they have sinned like the falling Angels and having over run the ordinary evil inclinations of their nature they are without the protection of the divine mercy and the conditions of that grace which was designed to save all the world was sufficient to have saved twenty This is a condition to be avoyded with the care of God and his Angels and all the whole industry of man In order to which end my purpose now is to remonstrate to you the several states of sin and death together with those remedies which God had proportioned out to them that we may observe the evils of the least and so avoid the intolerable mischiefs of the greater even of those sins which still are within the power and possibilities of recovery lest insensibly we fall into those sins and into those circumstances of person for which Christ never died which the Holy Ghost never means to cure and which the eternal God never will pardon for there are of this kinde more then commonly men imagine whilest they amuse their spirits with gaietyes and false principles till they have run into horrible impieties from whence they are not willing to withdraw their foot and God is resolved never to snatch and force them thence 1. Of some have compassion and these I shall reduce to four heads or orders of men and actions all which have their proper cure proportionable to their proper state gentle remedies to the lesser irregularities of the soul. The first are those that sin without observation of their particular state either because they are uninstructed in the special cases of conscience or because they do an evil against which there is no expresse commandment It is a sad calamity that there are so many milions of men and women that are entred into a state of sicknesse and danger and yet are made to believe they are in perfect health and they do actions concerning which they never made a question whether they were just or no nor were ever taught by what names to call them For while they observe that modesty is sometimes abused by a false name and called clownishnesse want of breeding and contentednesse and temperate living is suppressed to be want of courage and noble thoughts and severity of life is called imprudent and unsociable and simplicity and hearty honesty is counted foolish and unpolitick they are easily tempted to honour prodigality and foolish dissolution of their estates with the title of liberal and noble usages timorousnesse is called caution rashnesse is called quicknesse of spirit covetousnesse is fragality amorousnesse is society and gentile peevishnesse and anger is courage flattery is humane and courteous and under these false vails vertue slips away like truth from under the hand of theâ— that fight for her and leave vices dressed up withthe same imagâ—â—y and the fraud not discovered till the day of recompences when men are distinguished by their rewards But so men think they sleep freely when their spirits are loaden with a Lethargy and they call a hestick-feaver the vigour of a natural heat tell nature changes those lesse discerned states into the notorious images of death Very many men never consider whether they sin or no in 10000. of their actions every one of which is very disputable and do not think they are bound to consider these men are to be pitied and instructed they are to be called upon to use religion like a daily diet their consciences must be made tender and their Catechisme enlarged teach them and make them sensible and they are cured But the other in this place are more considerable Men sin without observation because their actions have no restraint of an expresse Commandment no letter of the law to condemn them by an expresse sentence And this happens when the crime is comprehended under a general notion without the instancing of particulars for if you search over all the Scripture you shall never finde incest named and marked with the black character of death and there are diveres sorts of uncleannesse to which Scripture therefore gives no name because she would have them have no being And it had been necessary that God should have described all particulars and all kindes if he had not given reason to man For so it is fit that a guide should point out every turning if he be to teach a childe or a fool to return under his fathers roof But he that bids us avoid intemperance for fear of a feaver supposes you to be sufficiently instructed that you may avoid the plague and when to look upon a woman with lust is condemned it will not be necessary to adde you must not do more when even the least is forbidden and when to uncover the nakednesse of Noah brought an universal plague upon the posterity of Cham it was not necessary that the law-giver should say you must not ascend to your fathers bed or draw the curtains from your sisters retirements When the Athenians forbad to transports figs from Athens there was no need to name the gardens of Alcibiades much lesse was it necessary to adde that Chabrias should send no plants to Sparta What so ever is comprised under the general notion and partakes of the common nature and the same iniquity needs no special prohibition unlesse we think we can mock God and elude his holy precepts with an absurd trick of mistaken Logick I am sure that will not save us harmlesse from a thunderbolt 2. Men sin without an expresse prohibition when they commit a thing that is like a forbidden evil And when Saint Paul had reckoned many works of the flesh he addes and such like all that have the same unreasonablenesse carnaâ—â—ty For thus poligamy is unlawful for if it be not lawful for a Christian to put away his wife and marry another unlesse for adultery much lesse may he keep a first and take a second when the first is not put away If a
a childe for playing with flies and preferring the present appetite before all the possibilities of to morrows event But men wondered when they saw Socrates ride upon a cane and when Solomon laid his wisdom at the foot of Pharaohs daughter and changed his glory for the interest of wanton sleep he became the discourse of heaven and earth and men think themselves abused and their expectation cousened when they see a wise man do the actions of a fool and a good man seized upon by the dishonours of a crime But the losse of his reputation is the least of his evil It is the greatest improvidence in the world to let a healthful constitution be destroyed in the surfet of one night For although when a man by the grace of God and a long endeavour hath obtained the habit of Christian graces every single sin does not spoil the habit of vertue because that cannot be lost but as it was gotten that is by parts and succession yet every crime interrupts the acceptation of the grace and makes the man to enter into the state of enmity and displeasure with God The habit is onely lessened naturally but the value of it is wholly taken away and in this sence is that of Josephus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Saint James well renders He that keeps the whole law and offends in one point is guilty of all that is if he prevaricates in any commandment the transgression of which by the law was capital shall as certainly die as if he broke the whole law and the same is the case of those single actions which the school calls deadly sins that is actions of choice in any sin that hath a name and makes a Kinde hath a distinct matter And sins once pardoned return again to al the purposes of mischief If we by a new sin forfeit Gods former loving kindnesse When the righteous man turneth from his righteousnesse and commiteth iniquity all his righteousnesse that he hath done shall not be remembred in the trespasse that he hath trespassed and in the sin that he hath sinned in them shall he die Now then consider how great a fool he is who when he hath with much labour by suffering violence contradicted his first desires when his spirit hath been in agony and care and with much uneasinesse hath denied to please the lower man when with many prayers and groans and innumerable sighs and strong cryings to God with sharp sufferances and a long severity he hath obtained of God to begin his pardon and restitution and that he is in some hopes to return to Gods favour and that he shall become an heire of heaven when some of his amazing fears and distracting cares begin to be taken off when he begins to think that now it is not certain he shall perish in a sad eternity but he hopes to be saved and he considers how excellent a condition that is he hopes when he dies to go to God and that he shall never enter into the possession of Devils and this state which is but the twilight of a glorious felicity he hath obtained with great labour and much care and infinite danger that this man should throw all this structure down and then when he is ready to reap the fruits of his labours by one indiscreet action to set fire upon his corn fields and destroy all his dearly earned hopes for the madnesse and loose wandrings of an hour This man is an indiscreet gamester who doubles his stake as he thrives and at one throw is dispossessed of all the prosperities of a luckie hand They that are poor as Plutarch observes are carelesse of little things because by saving them they think no great moments can accrue to their estates and they despairing to be rich think such frugality impertinent But they that feele their banks swell and are within the possibilities of wealth think it useful if they reserve the smaller minuts of expence knowing that every thing will adde to their heap but then after long sparing in one night to throw away the wealth of a long purchase is an imprudence becoming none but such persons who are to be kept under Tutors and Guardians and such as are to be chastised by their servants and to be punished by them whom they clothe and feed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These men sowe much and gather little stay long and return empty and after a long voyage they are dashed in pieces when their vessels are laden with the spoils of provinces Every deadly sin destroyes the rewards of a seven years piety I adde to this that God is more impatient at a sin committed by his servants then at many by persons that are his enemies and an uncivil answer from a son to a Father from an obliged person to a benefactor is a greater undecency then if an enemy should storm his house or revile him to his head Augustus Caesar taxed all the world and God took no publick notices of it but when David taxed and numbered a petty province it was not to be expiated without a plague because such persons besides the direct sin adde the circumstance of ingratitude to God who hath redeemed them from their vain conversation and from death and from hell and consigned them to the inheritance of sons and given them his grace and his spirit and many periods of comfort and a certain hope and visible earnests of immortality nothing is baser then that such a person against his reason against his interest against his God against so many obligations against his custome against his very habits and acquired inclinations should do an action Quam nisi Seductis nequeas committere Divis Which a man must for ever be ashamed of and like Adam must run from God himself to do it and depart from the state in which he had placed all his hopes and to which he had designed all his labours The consideration is effective enough if we sum up the particulars for he that hath lived well and then falls into a deliberate sin is infinitely dishonoured is most imprudent most unsafe and most unthankful 2. Let persons tempted to the single instances of sin in the midst of a laudable life be very careful that they suffer not themselves to be drawn aside by the eminency of great examples For some think drunkennesse hath a little honesty derived unto it by the examples of Noah and Adultery is not so scandalous and intolerably dishonorable since Bathsheba bathed and David was defiled and men think a flight is no cowardise if a General turns his head and runs Pompeio fugiente timent Well might all the gowned Romans fear when Pompey fled and who is there that can hope to be more righteous then David or stronger then Samson or have lesse hypocrisy then Saint Peter or be more temperate then Noah These great examples bear men of weak discourses and weaker resolutions from the severity
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 opinion had been true and that accursed souls should have ease and a period to their tortures after a thousand years I pray let it be considered whether it be not a great madnesse to choose the pleasures or the wealth of a few years here with trouble with danger with uncertainty with labour with intervalls of sicknesse and for this to endure the flames of hell for a thousand yeers together The pleasures of the world no marâ—â—an have for a hundred yeers and no man hath pleasure a hundred dayes together but he hath some trouble intervening or at least a wearinesse and a loathing of the pleasure and therefore to endure insufferable calamities suppose it be for a hundred yeers without any interruption without so much comfort as the light of a small candle or a drop of water amounts to in a fever is a bargain to be made by no man that loves himself or is not in love with infinite affliction If a man were condemned but to lie still or to lie a bed in one posture without turning for seven yeers together would he not buy it off with the losse of all his estate If a man were to be put upon the rack for every day three moneths together suppose him able to live so long what would he do to be quit of his torture Wouldany man curse the King to his face if he were sure to have both his hands burnt off and to be tormented with torments three yeers together Would any man in his wits accept of a hundred pound a yeer for fourty yeers if he were sure to be tormented in the fire for the next hundred yeers together without intermission Think then what a thousand yeers signifie Ten ages the age of two Empires but this account I must tell you is infinitely short though I thus discourse to you how great fools wicked men are though this opinion should be true A goodly comfort surely that for two or three yeers sottish pleasure a man shall be infinitely tormented but for a thousand yeers But then when we cast up the minutes and yeers and ages of eternity the consideration it self is
the drinkings of the children and it is a long time before nature makes them capable of help for there are many deaths and very many diseases to which poor babes are exposed but they have but very few capacities of physick to shew that infancy is as liable to death as old age and equally exposed to danger and equally uncapable of a remedy with this onely difference that old age hath diseases incurable by nature and the diseases of child-hood are incurable by art and both the states are the next heirs of death 3. But all the middle way the case is altered Nature is strong and art is apt to give ease and remedy but still there is no security and there the case is not altered 1 For there are so many diseases in men that are not understood 2 So many new ones every year 3 The old ones are so changed in circumstance and intermingled with so many collateral complications 4 The Symptoms are oftentimes so alike 5 Sometimes so hidden and fallacious 6 Somtimes none at all as in the most sudden and the most dangerous imposthumations 7 And then the diseases in the inward parts of the body are oftentimes such to which no application can be made 8 They are so far off that the effects of all medicines can no otherwise come to them then the effect and juices of all meats that is not till after two or three alterations and decoctions which change the very species of the medicament 9 And after all this very many principles in the art of Physick are so uncertain that after they have been believed seven or eight ages and that upon them much of the practise hath been established they come to be considered by a witty man and others established in their stead by which men must practise and by which three or four generations of men more as happens must live or die 10. And all this while the men are sick and they take things that certainly make them sicker for the present and very uncertainly restore health for the future that it may appear of what a large extent is humane calamity when Gods providence hath not onely made it weak and miserable upon the certain stock of a various nature and upon the accidents of an infinite contingency but even from the remedies which are appointed our dangers and our troubles are certainly increased so that we may well be likened to water our nature is no stronger our aboad no more certain If the sluces be opened it falls away and runneth apace if its current be stopped it swells and grows troublesome and spils over with a greater diffusion If it be made to stand still it putrefies and all this we do For 4. In all the processe of our health we are running to our grave we open our own sluces by vitiousnesse and unworthy actions we pour in drink and let out life we increase diseases and know not how to bear them we strangle our selves with our own intemperance we suffer the feavers and the inflammations of lust and we quench our souls with drunkennesse we bury our understandings in loads of meat and surfets and then we lie down upon our beds and roar with pain and disquietnesse of our souls Nay we kill one anothers souls and bodies with violence and folly with the effects of pride and uncharitablenesse we live and die like fools and bring a new mortality upon our selves wars and vexatious cares and private duels and publike disorders and every thing that is unreasonable and every thing that is violent so that now we may adde this fourth gate to the grave Besides Nature and Chance and the mistakes of art men die with their own sins and then enter into the grave in haste and passion and pull the heavy stone of the monument upon their own heads And thus we make our selves like water spilt on the ground we throw away our lives as if they were unprofitable and indeed most men make them so we let our years slip through our fingers like water and nothing is to be seen but like a showr of tears upon a spot of ground there is a grave digged and a solemn mourning and a great talk in the neighbourhood and when the dayes are finished they shall be and they shall be remembred no more And that 's like water too when it is spilt it cannot be gathered up again There is no redemption from the grave inter se mortales mutua vivunt Et quasi cursores vitäi lampada tradunt Men live in their course and by turns their light burns a while and then it burns blew and faint and men go to converse with 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
her spirit she had a strange secret perswasion that the bringing this Childe should be her last scene of life and we have known that the soul when she is about to disrobe her self of her upper garment sometimes speaks rarely Magnifica verba mors propè admota excutit sometimes it is prophetical sometimes God by a superinduced perswasion wrought by instruments or accidents of his own serves the ends of his own providence and the salvation of the soul But so it was that the thought of death dwelt long with her and grew from the first steps of fancy and fear to a consent from thence to a strange credulity and expectation of it and without the violence of sicknesse she died as if she had done it voluntarily and by designe and for fear her expectation should have been deceived or that she should seem to have had an unreasonable fear or apprehension or rather as one said of Cato sic abiit è vitâ ut causam moriendi nactam se esse gauderet she died as if she had been glad of the opportunity And in this I cannot but adore the providence and admire the wisdom and infinite mercies of God For having a tender and soft a delicate and fine constitution and breeding she was tender to pain and apprehensive of it as a childs shoulder is of a load and burden Grave est tenerae cervici jugum and in her often discourses of death which she would renew willingly and frequently she would tell that she feared not death but she feared the sharp pains of death Emori nolo me esse mortuam non curo The being dead and being freed from the troubles and dangers of this world she hoped would be for her advantage and therefore that was no part of her fear But she believing the pangs of death were great and the use and aids of reason little had reason to fear lest they should do violence to her spirit and the decency of her resolution But God that knew her fears and her jealousie concerning her self fitted her with a death so easie so harmlesse so painlesse that it did not put her patience to a severe trial It was not in all appearance of so much trouble as two fits of a common ague so carefull was God to remonstrate to all that stood in that sad attendance that this soul was dear to him and that since she had done so much of her duty towards it he that began would also finish her redemption by an act of a rare providence and a singular mercy Blessed he that goodnesse of God who does so careful actions of mercy for the ease and security of his servants But this one instance was a great demonstration that the apprehension of death is worse then the pains of death and that God loves to reprove the unreasonablenesse of our fears by the mightiness and by the arts of his mercy She had in her sickness if I may so cal it or rather in the solemnities and graver preparations towards death some curious and well-becoming fears concerning the final state of her soul. But from thence she passed into a deliquium or a kinde of trance and as soon as she came forth of it as if it had been a vision or that she had conversed with an Angel and from his hand had received a label or scroll of the book of life and there seen her name enrolled she cried out aloud Glory be to God on high Now I am sure I shall be saved Concerning which manner of discoursing we are wholy ignorant what judgement can be made but certainly there are strange things in the other world and so there are in all the immediate preparation to it and a little glimps of heaven a minutes conversing with an Angel any ray of God any communication extraordinary from the spirit of comfort which God gives to his servants in strange and unknown manners are infinitely far from illusions and they shall then be understood by us when we feel them and when our new and strange needs shall be refreshed by such unusual visitation But I must be forced to use summaries and arts of abbreviature in the enumerating those things in which this rare Personage was dear to God and to all her Relatives If we consider her Person she was in the flower of her age Jucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret of a temperate plain and natural diet without curiosity or an intemperate palate she spent lesse time in dressing then many servants her recreations were little and seldom her prayers often her reading much she was of a most noble and charitable soul a great lover of honourable actions and as great a despiser of base things hugely loving to oblige others and very unwilling to be in arrear to any upon the stock of courtesies and liberality so free in all acts of favour that she would not stay to hear her self thanked as being unwilling that what good went from her to a needful or an obliged person should ever return to her again she was an excellent friend and hugely dear to very many especially to the best and most discerning persons to all that conversed with her and could understand her great worth and sweetnesse she was of an Honourable a nice and tender reputation and of the pleasures of this world which were laid before her in heaps she took a very small and inconsiderable share as not loving to glut her self with vanity or to take her portion of good things here below If we look on her as a Wife she was chast and loving fruitful and discreet humble and pleasant witty and complyant rich and fair wanted nothing to the making her a principal and a precedent to the best Wives of the world but a long life and a full age If we remember her as a Mother she was kinde and severe careful and prudent very tender not at al fond a greater lover of her childrens souls then of their bodies and one that would value them more by the strict rules of honour and proper worth then by their relation to her self Her servants found her prudent and fit to Govern and yet open-handed and apt to reward a just Exactor of their duty and a great Rewarder of their diligence She was in her house a comfort to her dearest Lord a guide to her children a Rule to her Servants an example to all But as she related to God in the offices of Religion she was even and constant silent and devout prudent and material she loved what she now enjoyes and she feared what she never felt and God did for her what she never did expect Her fears went beyond all her evil and yet the good which she hath received was and is and ever shall be beyond all her hopes She lived as we al should live and she died as I fain would die Et cum supremos Lachesis perneverit annos Non aliter cineres mando jacere meos I pray