faithfully or to divide the Word rightly or to deal as a Workman that needeth not to be asham'd Is this to press and to be instant in season out of season or to rebuke and exhort with all long suffering Is this to watch in all things to do the work of an Evangelist and to make full proof of the Ministery Is this to labour in the Word and Doctrine and so to be worthy of double honour Is this to give our selves continually to the Ministry of the Word to be fervant in spirit or to stir up the gift of God which is in us by the laying on of the Bishops Hands when the Harvest is plenteous and the Labourers are few The Lord of the Harvest is to be pray'd not that He will send forth Idle Truants but painful Labourers into his Harvest Mark 9. 37 38. And in the Day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Iesus Christ it will perhaps be more tolerable for a gifted Lay Brother who adventures to be busy in another mans Calling than for a giftless Ecclesiastick who chooseth rather to injoy than to use his own When God shall call us to a reckoning not only for our Evil but Idle Lives not only for our injurious but idle words a strict accompt is to be made of our Silence too For the Prophet's Dumb Dogs which cannot bark are the Apostle's Dumb Teachers who cannot speak And they that are Dumb ones in the tenth verse are also greedy ones in the eleventh whereby t is intimated unto us that such as deserve not the least Revenues are hardly satisfied with the greatest Wo to me saith the Apostle if I Preach not the Gospel And wo to me saith the Prophet because I Preach not the Law Because I am a man of unclean Lips that is in the Judgment of Learned Grotius because I have not dar'd to speak against the Iniquities of the Mighty I have either been so lazy as not to speak in my Course or else so cowardly and so base as to speak Placentia But the Apostles in my Text were not lyable to either The Love of Christ did so constrein them as St. Paul speaks to the Corinthians that they long'd to be deliver'd like a Woman in Travel and to that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does very properly allude They were not able to hold their Peace though Death it self lay before them with all its grim Train And yet they did not turn Preachers without Ability for the work As appears by the Order wherein the Narrative is express't For first they were fill'd with the Holy Ghost And then it follows in the Text They began to speak There are that speak whilst they are empty and that as well of Inspiration as human Learning Such Sermons do proceed from a private spirit and so at best they are but words and such words are but wind in proportion to the Spirit that gives them utterance When windy Vessels give Vent we know their Spirit cannot fill them unless with Wind. But These were fill'd with another Spirit a Spirit proving what he was by his miraculous Indowments For as our Saviour foretold that he would give them a Mouth and Wisdom not a Mouth only but Wisdom too and so much wisdom in such a Mouth as their Adversaries should not be able to resist Luk. 21 15 So here in answer to that Prophecy They did not only begin to speak but they spake with Tongues And with such Tongues too as were the Instruments of Wisdom as well as Knowledge And yet that Knowledge is another important Requisite to make a Professor of Divinity and such you know is every Doctor or a publick Preacher of the Gospel which every Doctor is not may appear by the Curse of the Foolish Shepherd whose Right Eye was darkned that is to say as the most learned do Interpret who had not the Knowledge of human Learning And as evident it is by what the Prophet Isaiah spake at once of himself and our blessed Saviour The Lord God hath given me the Tongue of the Learned And to what end hath he given it to the end that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary Isa. 50 4. This indeed should be the end of all our eloquence and Learning not the venting such things as smell of nothing but study and Affectation but The Glory of God and the good of Men. Of the first I shall speak in its proper place And here observe touching the Second That as Isaiah after Moses was the most Learned and the most eloquent of all the Prophets so his best use of both was to speak a word in Season to any Soul that should want it in any kind And this is certainly the Trade we are all to drive because for this end especially we were bound over unto the Muses and serv'd Apprentiships in the Schools that we might duly serve God by being eminently useful to all our Neighbours As by instructing the Ignorant by admonishing the negligent by reproving the guilty by counselling the doubtfull by comforting the Afflicted and by giving good example to each of These which way soever our Learning lies and whatsoever our skill in the Tongues may be we must put a right Byass and Bent upon it we must study to make it serve and not to rule us And we must study to make it serve not for ornament but use And but that there is use somtimes of Ornament not for an Ornament to our selves but the use of others In a word if we are sharers of any good parts whether natural or acquir'd we must not think them good enough until the use and the end have made them eminently better That is until they are employed as by God they are intrusted for the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the Ministry and for the edifying of the Body of Christ Eph. 4. 11. But then for the bringing of this about it is not enough that we speak with Tongues no nor with fiery Tongues neither nor yet with fiery cloven Tongues unless they are cleft and set on fire by the Spirit of Unity and Truth For it is many times don by the Spirit of Error and Division There are Tongues that are cloven even by him that is known by his cloven Feet And there are Tongues set on fire not from Heaven but of Hell such is the cloven and fiery Tongue wherewith a man does bless God and either Curse or belie his Neighbour v. 9. Nor is such a Tongue better'd by skill in Arabick or Hebrew in Coptick or Syriack in Greek or Latin but the more it is cloven 't is still the worse because by so much the abler to set on fire the Course of Nature 'T is never enough to be deplor'd and in this place especially That since the Iesuits and their Apes have made use of their
do not say it is the Cruelty but the Skill of the Chirurgeon to cut it off And if the Patient being angry shall expostulate with the Artist in such a Case or demand by what Authority he does such things St. Chrysostom tells him he may Answer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dost thou ask me honest friend why I cut thee off a Limb That which gave me this Authority was my Art and thy Disease My Art inform'd me 't was to be don and thy Disease bid me do it Crudelem Medicum Intemperans Aeger facit And then considering how much the Soul is more preferable to the Body than the Body can be to a single Member I cannot choose but assent to that Platonick Aphorism in Apuleius Gravius acerbius est omni supplicio si noxio impunitas deferatur that to the wicked in this world the greatest Punishment is Impunity For Remedy being by Nature very much better than Disease and so a desperate Remedy than a desperate Disease it must necessarily follow that to a sinner who is Incorrigible Death it self becomes a Curtesy The reason is because it renders him less unhappy than he would otherwise have been For that even in Hell there is Room for Curtesy is just as clear as that the greater infer's the lesser Damnation Mat. 23. 14. And as one Star differs from another Star in Glory so in the Territories of Darkness we are told of a difference between the Sodomites and the Iews Mat. 11. 23 24. and so we read of great difference between the punishments inflicted on several Servants some whereof shall be beaten with many stripes and some in comparison with but a few Luk. 12. 48. Now they who know what it is for the unjust to be reserv'd unto the Day of Judgment to be punished 2 Pet. 2 9 will soon confess it to be a Truth which is asserted by Boetius however an Infidel may be so dull as to believe it a Contradiction That wicked men are Then plagu'd with the more grievous kinds of punishment when they are thought by standers-by to escape unpunish'd And clear it is that That Tradition of the wandring Cartophilus who had been Ianitor saith Cluver to Pontius Pilate whether Truth or Fiction does shew a good part of Christendom to have been strongly of this Opinion For it seems they could not invent a severer Punishment to the Iew for his having contumeliously struck our Saviour as he was going from Pilate's House unto the Place of Execution than that our Saviour should condemn him to an Immortality upon Earth to wander up and down in several parts of this world beaping up wrath against the day of wrath and then only to fall when all the world must rise again And if 't is so in good earnest as it hath hetherto been contended That previous Punishments are conducing to the Amendment of a Sinner and conducing in such a measure that even Destruction is for his Interest when past Amendment sure God will not withhold it from the unworthiest Subjects of his Dominion much less from Them who are the Children of his Household If Pharaoh the Drudge be once admitted under his Cure sure Ioseph the Darling shall much more be so For the first and chiefest end of our being so judged as to be chasten'd in the world is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that we may not so be judged as to be damned with the world 1 Cor. 12. 32. And therefore ye that pretend to be none of their number who by being uncorrected are known to be Bastards rather than Sons Heb. 12 8 Audite Vos Virgam Hear Ye the Rod. § 4. The Second End of Punishment is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the Benefit of such as are Lookers-on And it tends to their Benefit in two respects First by removing an Example of Sin which might otherwise make them worse and next by shewing one of Punishment which hath an Aptitude at least to make them better § 5. For the first of these two there is very great Reason Because your Exemplary Sinners are such a publick sort of Mischiefs such Epidemical Diseases that Seneca looks upon them as on Venemous Beasts and professeth he would destroy them with the same temper of mind wherewith he would chop off a Vipers Head lest by permitting them to live and to fill the Aire with their poison they should happen to be contagious to all that neighbour within their stentch So that Seneca it seems was a kind of a Zelot though not a Iew and spake at the rate at which Phineas acted who finding Zimri and Cosbi in their openfac'd Villany dispach'd them both in as great hast as a man would have us'd to a couple of Serpents And indeed he had reason for what he did For as the rational kind of Viper is more malignant than any other so of that sort too the most destructive is the religious such I mean as are reckoned such by their putting on Godliness for a Disguise There are no such false fires for the leading of Passengers out of their way as the reputed People of God when they once turn straglers For as their good Conversation is the Decoy of Heaven and brings in Proselites to God so their scandalous example is the Pandar to Hell and makes Clients for the Devil If the People of God refuse the Love of the Truth how shall the Heathens then embrace it to whom it is but seldom if sometimes offer'd If Iudah her self become an Harlot Babylon is confirmed in all her Whoredoms And if Israel worship a Calf how shall Egypt not be Idolatrous when there ariseth a Dispute betwixt the Iews and the Gentiles as once betwixt Elijah and the Prophets of Baal whose God is the truest and so the fittest to be adored The Iews have need to prove Theirs as well by the Sanctity of their Lives as by the strangeness of their Miracles Else the Gentiles will conclude them not to have the truer Prophets but the skilfuller Magicians And all their signes which are drawn from Heaven will pass but for Sorcery fetch 't up from Hell David laid so great a stress upon this one consideration that when an evil Example was shewn in Israel it was his first and greatest Care to have the matter kept secret from those without 2 Sam. 1. 20. knowing well that the Example of a scandalous Israel would soon redound to the discredit of Him that had owned them for his People And that it is the usual Custome of the giddily-unjust and censorious world to pass their Judgment upon the Master by the Behaviour of his Servants to make an estimate of the Father by the Breeding of his Children and so to measure the God too by the practice of his Votaries § 6. Now since Experience it self as well as Scripture doth serve to prove it a disgrace to the Truth of God for the Professors of the
of Eucharist to have been necessary to Infants as well as to men of the ripest Age and yet as Maldonate confesseth at the very same time it was so plain and so grosse an Error that notwithstanding St Austin did endeavour to confute the Pelagians by it as by a Doctrin of Faith and of the whole Church of God yet the Council of Trent was of a contrary mind and did accordingly in a Canon declare against it 3. Pass we on to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation which if its Age may be measur'd by the very first date of its Definition may be allow'd to be as old as the Lateran Council a Council held under Pope Innocent the Third since whom are somewhat more then 400 years But from the beginning it was not so For besides that our Saviour just as soon as he had said This is my Blood explain'd himself in the same Breath by calling it expresly the fruit of the Vine and such as He would drink new in the kingdom of God Mat. 26. 29. Mark 14. 15. there needs no more to make the Romanists even asham'd of that Doctrine than the Concession of Aquinas and Bellarmine's Inference thereupon Aquinas so argues as to imply it is Impossible and imports a Contradiction for one body to be locally in more places than one and in all at once But Bellarmine at this is so very angry that in a kind of Revenge upon Aquinas though held to be the Angelical Doctor he needs will infer 't is as Impossible and equally implies a Contradiction for any one body at once to be so much as Sacramentally in more Places than one And therefore it cannot now be wonder'd concerning Transubstantiation if so long ago as in the time of Pope Nicolas the Second either the Novelty was not forg'd and hammer'd out into the shape in which we find it or not at all understood by the Pope Himself For one of the two is very clear by the famous Submission of Berengarius wherewith he satisfied the Synod then held at Rome and in which were 113 Bishops though not at all unto a Trans but rather a Consubstantiation Which divers Romanists themselves have not been able not to Censure though it was pen'd by a Cardinal and approved of by a Council and very glibly swallow'd down by the Pope himself 4. 'T is very true that their withholding the Cup of blessing in the Lord's Supper from the secular part of their Communicants hath been in practice little lesse then 400 years But from the beginning it was not so For in our Saviour's Institution we find it intended for every Guest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the word Drink ye All of this Cup. Mat. 26. 27. And S. Paul to the Corinthians consisting most of Lay-men speaks as well of their drinking the mystical Blood as of their eating the Body of Christ. 1 Cor. 11. 26 27 28 29. Nay 't is confest by learned Vasquez as well as by Cassander and Aquinas Himself to be a Truth undeniable That the giving of both Elements in the Roman Church it self untill the time of Aquinas did still continue to be in use 5. The Church of Rome for several Ages hath restrain'd the holy Scriptures from the perusal of the People But from the beginning it was not so For Hebrew to the Iews was the Mother-Tongue and in That 't was read weekly before the People It pleased God the New Testament should be first written in Greek because a Tongue the most known to the Eastern world And to the end that this Candle might not be hid under a Bushel it was translated by St Ierome into the Dalmatick Tongue by Bishop Vulphilas into the Gothick by St Chrysostom into Armenian by Athelstan into Saxon by Methodius into Sclavonian by Iacobus de Voragine into Italian by Bede and Wiclef into English And not to speak of the Syriack Aethiopick Arabick Persian and Chaldee Versions which were all for the use of the common people of those Countries the Vulgar Latine was then the Vulgar Language of the Italians when the Old and New Testament were turn'd into it 6. The publick prayers of the Romanists have been a very long time in an unknown Tongue I mean unknown to the common people even as long as from the times of Pope Gregory the Great But from the beginning it was not so For 't is a scandalously opposite to the plain sense of Scripture as if it were done in a meer despight to the 14th Chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians especially from the 13 to the 17. vers Not to speak of what is said by the Primitive Writers Aquinas and Lyra do both confess upon the place that the common Service of the Church in the Primitive times was in the common language too And as the Christians of Dalmatia Habassia Armenia Muscovia Sclavonia Russia and all the Reformed parts of Christendom have the Service of God in their vulgar Tongues so hath it been in divers Places by Approbation first had from the Pope himself 7. Another instance may be given in their Prohibiting of Marriage to men in Orders which is deriv'd by some from the third Century after Christ by others from the eighth and in the rigour that now it is from Pope Gregory the Seventh But from the beginning it was not so For Priests were permitted to have wives both in the Old and New Testament as Maximilian the Second did rightly urge against the Pope And the blessed Apostles many of them were married men for so I gather from Eusebius out of Clemens Alexandrinus and from the Letter of Maximilian who did not want the Advice of the learnedst persons in all his Empire and from 1 Cor. 9. 5. where St Paul asserts his liberty to carry a Wife along with him as well as Cephas And 't is the Doctrine of that Apostle that a Bishop may be an Husband although he may not be the Husband of more then One Wife 1 Tim. 3. 2. Tit. 1. 6. Besides the Marriage of the Clergy was asserted by Paphnutius in the Council at Nice and even by one of those Canons which the Romanists themselves do still avow for Apostolical And the forbidding men to marry with Saturninus and the Gnosticks is worthily call'd by God's Apostle The Doctrine of Devils 1 Tim. 4. 1. 3. 8. I shall conclude with that Instance to which our Saviour in my Text does more peculiarly allude I mean the Liberty of Divorce betwixt Man and Wife for many more Causes than the Cause of Fornication For so I find it is decreed by the Church of Rome with an Anathema to all that shall contradict it But from the Beginning it was not so For 't is as opposite to the will of our Blessed Saviour revealed to us without a Parable