soul and call the will ours we usurp the soul it self and call it ours and then deliver all to everlasting bondage Would the King suffer his picture to be used as we use the Image of God in our soules or his Hall to be used as we use the Temple of the Holy Ghost our Bodies We have nothing but that which we have received and when we come to think that our own we have not that For God will take all from that man that sacrifices to his own nets When thou commest to Church come in anothers name When thou givest an Almes give it in anothers name that is feele all thy devotion and all thy charity to come from God For if it be not in his name it will be in a worse Thy devotion will contract the name of hypocrisie and thine Almes the name of Vain-glory. The Holy Ghost came in anothers name in Christs name but not so as Montanus the Father of the Montanists came in the Holy Ghosts name Montanus said he was the Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost did not pretend to be Christ There is a man the man of sin at Rome that pretends to be Christ to all uses And I would he would be content with that and stop there and not be a Hyper-Christus Above Christ more then Christ I would he would no more trouble the peace of Christendome no more occasion the assassinating of Christian Princes no more binde the Christian liberty in forbidding Meats and Marriage no more slacken and dissolve Christian bands by Dispensations and Indulgences then Christ did But if he will needs be more if he will needs have an addition to the name of Christ let him take heed of that addition which some are apt enough to give him however he deserve it that he is Antichrist Now in what sense the Holy Ghost is said to have come in the name of Christ S. Basil gives us one interpretation that is that one principall name of Christ belongs to the Holy Ghost For Christ is Verbum The Word and so is the Holy Ghost sayes that Father Quia interpres filii sicut filius patris Because as the Son manifested the Father so the Holy Ghost manifests the Son S. Augustine gives another sense Societas Patris Filii est Spiritus Sanctus The Holy Ghost is the union of the Father and the Son As the body is not the man nor the soul is not the man but the union of the soul and body by those spirits through which the soul exercises her faculties in the Organs of the body makes up the man so the union of the Father and Son to one another and of both to us by the Holy Ghost makes up the body of the Christian Religion And so this interpretation of S. Augustine comes neare to the fulnesse in what sense the Holy Ghost came in Christs name John 17.12 For when Christ sayes I am come in my Fathers name that was to execute his Decree to fulfill his Will for the salvation of man by dying so when Christ sayes here the Holy Ghost shall come in my name that is to perfect my work to collect and to govern that Church in which my salvation by way of satisfaction may be appropriated to particular soules by way of application And for this purpose to do this in Christs name his own name is Paracletus The Comforter which is our last circumstance The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost The Comforter is an Euangelicall name The Comforter Athanasius notes that the Holy Ghost is never called Paracletus The Comforter in the old Testament He is called Spiritus Dei The Spirit of God in the beginning of Genesis And he is called Spiritus sanctus The holy Spirit and Spiritus principalis The principall Spirit in divers places of the Psalmes but never Paracletus never the Comforter A reason of that may well be first that the state of the Law needed not comfort and then also that the Law it self afforded not comfort so there was no Comforter Their Law was not opposed by any enemies as enemies to their Law If they had not by that warrant which they had from God invaded the possession of their neighbours or grown too great to continue good neighbours their neighbours had not envyed them that Law So that in the state of the Law in that respect they were well enough and needed no Comforter Whereas the Gospell as it was sowed in our Saviours blood so it grew up in blood for divers hundreds of yeares and therefore needed the sustentation and the assurance of a Comforter And then for the substance of the Law it was Lex interficiens non perficiens sayes S. Augustine A Law that told them what was sin and punisht them if they did sin but could not conferre Remission for sin which was a discomfortable case Whereas the Gospel and the Dispensation of the Gospel in the Church by the Holy Ghost is Grace Mercy Comfort all the way and in the end Therefore Christ v. 17. cals the Holy Ghost Spiritum veritatis The Spirit of truth In which he opposes him and preferres him above all the remedies and all the comforts of the Law Not that the Holy Ghost in the Law did not speak truth but that he did not speak all the truth in the Law Origen expresses it well The Types and Figures of the Law were true Figures and true Types of Christ in the Gospel but Christ and his Gospel is the truth it self prefigured in those Types Therefore the Holy Ghost is Paracletus The Comforter in the Gospel which he was not in the Law In the Records and Stories and so in the Coynes and Medals of the Romane Emperours we see that even then when they had gotten the possession of the name of Emperours yet they forbore not to adde to their style the name of Consul and the name of Pontifex maximus still they would be called Consuls which was an acceptable name to the people and High-Priests which carried a reverence towards all the world Where Christ himselfe is called by a name appliable to none but Christ by a name implying the whole nature and merit of Christ that is The Propitiation of the sins of the whole world 1 John 2.2 yet there in that place he is called by the name of this Text too Paracletus the Comforter He would not forbeare that sweet that acceptable that appliable name that name that concernes us most and establishes us best Paracletus the Comforter And yet he does not take that name in that full and whole sense in which himselfe gives it to the Holy Ghost here For there it is said of Christ If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father There Paracletus though placed upon Christ is but an Advocate But here Christ sends Paracletum in a more intire and a more internall and more viscerall sense A Comforter Upon which Comforter Christ imprints these two marks of
to speak to others This therefore is the comming and this is the teaching of the Holy Ghost Acts 2.3 promised and intended in this Text and performed upon this Day that he by his power enables and authorises other men to teach thee That he establishes a Church and Ordinances and a Ministery by which thou maist be taught how to apply Christs Merits to thy soul He needed not to have invested and taken the form of a Tongue if he would have had thee think it enough to heare the Spirit at home alone but to let thee see that his way of teaching should be the ministery of men he came in that organ of speech the Tongue And therefore learn thou by hearing what he sayes And that that he sayes he sayes here here in his Ordinance And therefore heare what he hath declared inquire not what he hath decreed Heare what he hath said there where he hath spoken ask not what he meant in his unrevealed will of things whereof he hath said nothing For they that do so mistake Gods minde often God protests It never came into my minde that they should sin thus God never did it God never meant it that any should sin necessarily Ier. 32.35 without a willing concurrence in themselves or be damned necessarily without relation to sin willingly committed Therefore is S. Augustine vehement in that expostulation Quis tam stultè curiosus est qui filium suum mittat in scholam ut quid magister cogitat discat Doth any man put his son to schoole to learn what his Master thinks The Holy Ghost is sent to Teach he teaches by speaking he speaks by his Ordinance and Institution in his Church All knowledge and all zeale that is not kindled by him by the Holy Ghost and kindled here at first is all smoke and then all flame Zeale without the Holy Ghost is at first cloudy ignorance all smoke and after all crackling and clambering flame Schismaticall rage and distemper Here we we that are naturally ignorant we we that are naturally hungry of knowledge are taught a free Schoole is opened unto us and taught by him by the Holy Ghost speaking in his Delegates in his Ministers which were the pieces that constituted our first part And the second to which we are now come is the manner of the Holy Ghosts comming and teaching in his Ordinance that is by remembring He shall bring to your remembrance c. They had wont to call Pictures in the Church 2 Part. Reminiscentia the lay-mans book because in them he that could not reade at all might reade much The ignorantest man that is even he that cannot reade a Picture even a blinde man hath a better book in himself In his own memory he may reade many a history of Gods goodnesse to him Quid ab initio How it was in the beginning is Christs Method To determine things according to former precedents And truly the Memory is oftner the Holy Ghosts Pulpit that he preaches in then the Understanding How many here would not understand me or not rest in that which they heard if I should spend the rest of this houre in repeating and reconciling that which divers authors have spoken diversly of the manner of Christs presence in the Sacrament or the manner of Christs descent into Hell or the manner of the concurrence and joynt-working of the grace of God and the free-will of man in mens actions But is there any man amongst us that is not capable of this Catechisme Remember to morrow but those good thoughts which you have had within this houre since you came hither now Remember at your last houre to be but as good as you are this minute I would scarce ask more in any mans behalf then that he would alwayes be as good as at some times he is If he would never sink below himself I would lesse care though he did not exceed himself If he would remember his own holy purposes at best he would never forget God If he would remember the comfort he had in having overcome such a tentation yesterday he would not be overcome by that tentation to day The Memory is as the conclusion of a Syllogisme which being inferred upon true propositions cannot be denied He that remembers Gods former blessings concludes infallibly upon his future Therefore Christ places the comfort of this Comforter the Holy Ghost in this that he shall work upon that pregnant faculty the Memory He shall bring things to your remembrance And then Omnia All those things which I have said unto you Christ gave the Holy Ghost to the Apostles Omnia Mat. 18.18 John 20.22 John 15.15 when he gave them the power of absolution in his life time He gave them the Holy Ghost more powerfully when after his Resurrection He breathed on them and said Receive ye the Holy Ghost He opened himself to them in a large fulnesse when he said All things that I have heard of my Father I have made knowen unto you But in a greater largenesse then that when upon this day according to the promise of this Text the holy Ghost was sent unto them for this was in the behalf of others And upon this fulnesse out of Tertullian it is argued Nihilignorarunt crgo nihil non docuerunt As the Apostles were taught all things by Christ so they taught the Church all things There is then the spheare and the compasse and the date of our knowledge not what was thought or taught in the tenth or fourteenth Century but what was taught in Christ and in the Apostles time Christ taught all things to his Apostles and the Holy Ghost brought all things to their remembrance that he had taught them that they might teach them to others and so it is derived to us But it is Omnia Sola Sola John 15.26 It is All but it is Only those things He shall testifie of me saith Christ concerning the Holy Ghost Now the office of him that testifies of a witnesse is to say all the truth but nothing but the truth When the Romane Church charges us not that all is not truth which we teach but that we do not teach all the truth And we charge them not that they do not teach all the truth but that all is not truth that they teach so that they charge us with a defective we them with a superfluous religion our case is the safer because all that we affirm is by confession of all parts true but that which they have added requires proofe and the proofe lies on their side and it rests yet unproved And certainly many an Indian who is begun to be catechized and dies is saved before he come to beleeve all that we beleeve But whether any be saved that beleeve more then we beleeve and beleeve it as equally fundamentall and equally necessary to salvation with that which we from the expresse word of God do beleeve is a Probleme not easily
an emphaticall denotation for to this purpose Ille and Ipse is all one And then you know the Emphasis of that Ipse Ipse conteret He or It shall bruise the Serpents head denotes the Messias though there be no Messias named This Ipse is so emphaticall a denotation as that the Church of Rome and the Church of God strives for it for they will needs reade it Ipsa and so refer our salvation in the bruising of the Serpents head to the Virgin Mary we refer it according to the truth of the doctrine and of the letter to Christ himselfe and therefore reade it Ipse He. If there were no more but that in David Psal 100.3 Rom. 8.16 It is He that hath made us every man would conclude that that He is God And if S. Paul had said Ipse alone and not Ipse spiritus That He and not He the Spirit beares witnesse with our spirit every spirit would have understood this to be the holy Spirit the holy Ghost If in our text there had been no more but such a denotation of a person that should speak to the hearts of all the world that that I lle that He would proceed thus we must necessarily have seen an Almighty power in that denotation But because that denotation might have carried terrour in it being taken alone therefore we are not left to that but have a relation to a former name and specification of the holy Ghost The Comforter For the establishment of Christs divinity Esay 9.6 Christ is called The mighty God for his relation to us he hath divers names As we were all In massa damnata Forfeited lost he is Redemptor Esay 59.20 A Redeemer for that that is past The Redeemer shall come to Sion sayes the Prophet Job 19.2 and so Iob saw His Redeemer one that should redeem him from those miseries that oppressed him As Christ was pleased to provide for the future so he is Salvator Mat. 1.21 A Saviour Therefore the Angel gave him that name Iesus For he shall save his people from their sins So because to this purpose Christ consists of two natures God and man he is called our Mediator 1 Tim. 2.5 There is one Mediator between God and man the man Christ Iesus Because he presents those merits which are his as ours and in our behalfe he is called an Advocate 1 John 2.1 Rom. 2.6 Acts 10.42 1 Cor. 12.3 If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father Iesus Christ the righteous And because every man is to expect according to his actions he is called the Judge We testifie that it is he that is ordained of God to bee the Iudge of quick and dead Now for Christs first name which is the roote of all which is The mighty God No man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost And there is our first comfort in knowing that Christ is God for he were an Intruder for that which is past no Redeemer he were a weak Saviour for the future an insufficient Mediator a silenced Advocate and a Judge that might be misinformed if he were not God And though he were God he might be all these to my discomfort if there were not a holy Ghost to make all these offices comfortable unto me To be a Redeemer and not a Saviour is but to pay my debts and leave me nothing to live on To be a Mediator a person capable by his composition of two natures to intercede between God and man and not to be my Advocate is but to be a good Counsellor but not of counsell with me To be a Judge of quick and dead and to proceed out of outward evidence and not out of his bosome mercy is but an acceleration of my conviction I were better lie in Prison still then appeare at that Assize better lye in the dust of the grave for ever then come to that judgement But as there is Mens in anima There is a minde in the soule and every man hath a soule but every man hath not a minde that is a Consideration an Actuation an Application of the faculties of the soule to particulars so there is Spiritus in Spiritu a Holy Ghost in all the holy offices of Christ which offices being in a great part directed upon the whole world are made comfortable to me by being by this holy Spirit turned upon me and appropriated to me for so even that name of Christ which might most make me afraid 〈◊〉 The name of Judge becomes a comfort to me To this purpose does S. Baesil call the holy Ghost Verbum Dei quia interpres filii The Son of God is the word of God because he manifests the Father and the Holy Ghost is the word of God because he applies the Son Esay 62.11 Christ comes with that loud Proclamation Ecce auditum fecit Behold the Lord hath proclaimed it to the end of the world Ecce Salvator and Ecce Merces Behold his Salvation Behold thy Reward This is his publication in the manifest Ordinances of the Church And then the Holy Ghost whispers to thy soule as thou standest in the Congregation in that voyce that he promises Sibilabo populum meum I will hisse Zach. 10.8 I will whisper to my people by soft and inward inspirations Christ came to tell us all That to as many as received him he gave power to become the Sons of God Iohn 1.12 The Holy Ghost comes to tell thee that thou art one of them The Holy Ghost is therefore Legatus and Legatum Christi He is Christs Ambassadour sent unto us and he is his Legacy bequeathed unto us by his Will his Will made of force by his death and proved by his Ascension Now when those dayes were come that the Bridegroome was to bee taken from them Christ Jesus to be removed from their personall sight and conversation and therefore even the children of the mariage Chamber were to mourne and fast Mat. 9.15 Cant. when that Church that mourned and lamented his absence when she was but his Spouse must necessarily mourn now in a more vehement manner when she was to be in some sense his Widow when that Shepheard was not onely to be smitten and so the flock dispersed Mat. 26.21 this was done in his passion but he was to be taken away in his Ascension what a powerfull Comforter had that need to be that should be able to recompence the absence of Christ Jesus himselfe and to infuse comfort into his Orphans the children of his mariage Chamber into his Widow the desolate and disconsolate Church into his flock his amazed his distressed and as we may properly enough say in this case his beheaded Apostles and Disciples Quantus ergo Deus qui dat Deum Aug. Lesse then God could not minister this comfort How great a God is he that sends a God to comfort us and how powerfull a Comforter hee who
This is my beloved Son this day have I begotten him And with such Copies it seemes both Iustin Martyr and Irenaeus met for they reade these words so and interpret them accordingly But these words are misplaced and mis-transferred out of the second Psalme where they are And as they change the words and in stead of In quo complacui In whom I am well pleased reade This day have I begotten thee S. Cyprian addes other words to the end of these which are Hunc audite Heare him Which words when these words were repeated at the Transfiguration were spoken but here at the Baptisme they were not what Copy soever misled S. Cyprian or whether it were the failing of his own memory But S. Chrysostome gives an expresse reason why those words were spoken at the Transfiguration and not here Because saies he Here was onely a purpose of a Manifestation of the Trinity so farre as to declare their persons who they were and no more At the Trans-figuration where Moses and Elias appeared with Christ there God had a purpose to preferre the Gospel above the Law and the Prophets and therefore in that place he addes that Hunc audite Heare him who first fulfills all the Law and the Prophets and then preaches the Gospel He was so well pleased in him as that he was content to give all them that received him Eph. 1.6 power to become the Sons of God too as the Apostle sayes By his grace he hath made us accepted in his beloved Beloved That you may be so Come up from your Baptisme as it is said that Christ did Rise and ascend to that growth which your Baptisme prepared you to And the heavens shall open as then even Cataractae coeli All the windowes of heaven shall open and raine downe blessings of all kindes in abundance And the Holy Ghost shall descend upon you as a Dove in his peacefull comming in your simple and sincere receiving him And he shall rest upon you to effect and accomplish his purposes in you If he rebuke you as Christ when he promises the Holy Ghost though he call him a Comforter John 16.7 sayes That he shall rebuke the world of divers things yet he shall dwell upon you as a Dove Quae si mordet osculando mordet sayes S. Augustine If the Dove bite it bites with kissing if the Holy Ghost rebuke he rebukes with comforting And so baptized and so pursuing the contract of your Baptisme and so crowned with the residence of his blessed Spirit in your holy conversation hee shall breathe a soule into your soule by that voyce of eternall life You are my beloved Sonnes in whom I am well pleased SERM. XLIV Preached at S. Dunstanes upon Trinity-Sunday 1627. REV. 4.8 And the foure Beasts had each of them sixe wings about him and they were full of eyes within And they rest not day and night saying Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty which was and is and is to come THese words are part of that Scripture which our Church hath appointed to be read for the Epistle of this day This day which besides that it is the Lords day the Sabbath day is also especially consecrated to the memory and honour of the whole Trinity The Feast of the Nativity of Christ Christmas day which S. Chrysostome calls Metropolin omnium festorum The Metropolitane festivall of the Church is intended principally to the honour of the Father who was glorified in that humiliation of that Son that day because in that was laid the foundation and first stone of that house and Kingdome in which God intended to glorifie himselfe in this world that is the Christian Church The Feast of Easter is intended principally to the honour of the Son himselfe who upon that day began to lift up his head above all those waters which had surrounded him and to shake off the chaines of death and the grave and hell in a glorious Reserrection And then the Feast of Pentecost was appropriated to the honour of the Holy Ghost who by a personall falling upon the Apostles that day inabled them to propagate this Glory of the Father and this death and Resurrection of the Son to the ends of the world to the ends in Extention to all places to the ends in Duration to all times Now as S. Augustine sayes Nullus eorum extra quemlibet eorum est Every Person of the Trinity is so in every other person as that you cannot think of a Father as a Father but that there falls a Son into the same thought nor think of a person that proceeds from others but that they from whom he whom ye think of proceeds falls into the same thought as every person is in every person And as these three persons are contracted in their essence into one God-head so the Church hath also contracted the honour belonging to them in this kinde of Worship to one day in which the Father and Son and Holy Ghost as they are severally in those three severall dayes might bee celebrated joyntly and altogether It was long before the Church did institute a particular Festivall to this purpose For before they made account that that verse which was upon so many occasions repeated in the Liturgy and Church Service Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost had a convenient sufficiency in it to keep men in a continuall remembrance of the Trinity But when by that extreame inundation and increase of Arians these notions of distinct Persons in the Trinity came to be obliterated and discontinued the Church began to refresh her selfe in admitting into to the formes of Common Prayer some more particular notifications and remembrances of the Trnity And at last though it were very long first for this Festivall of this Trinity-Sunday was not instituted above foure hundred yeares since they came to ordaine this day Which day our Church according to that peacefull wisedome wherewithall the God of Peace of Unity and Concord had inspired her did in the Reformation retaine and continue out of her generall religious tendernesse and holy loathnesse to innovate any thing in those matters which might bee safely and without superstition continued and entertained For our Church in the Reformation proposed not that for her end how shee might goe from Rome but how she might come to the Truth nor to cast away all such things as Rome had depraved but to purge away those depravations and conserve the things themselves so restored to their first good use For this day then were these words appointed by our Church Divisic And therefore we are sure that in the notion and apprehension and construction of our Church these words appertaine to the Trinity In them therefore we shall consider first what these foure creatures were which are notified and designed to us in the names and figures of foure Beasts And then what these foure creatures did Their Persons and their Action will be our two
nothing to the Gospel and then Euangelium totum Preach the Gospel intirely defalke nothing forbeare nothing of that First then we are to preach you are to heare nothing but the Gospel And we may neither postdate our Commission nor interline it nothing is Gospel now which was not Gospel then when Christ gave his Apostles their Commission And no man can serve God and Mammon no man can preach those things which belong to the filling of Angels roomes in heaven and those things which belong to the filling of the Popes Coffers at Rome with Angels upon earth For that was not Gospel when Christ gave this commission And did Christ create his Apostles as the Bishop of Rome creates his Cardinals Cum clausura oris He makes them Cardinalls and shuts their mouths they have mouths but no tongues tongues but no voice they are Judges but must give no Judgement Cardinalls but have no interest in the passages of businesses till by a new favour he open their mouths againe Did Christ make his Apostles his Ambassadors and promise to send their instructions after them Did he give them a Commission and presently a Supersedeas upon it that they should not execute it Did he make a Testament a will and referre all to future Schedules and Codicills Did he send them to preach the Gospel and tell them You shall know the Gospel in the Epistles of the Popes and their Decretals hereafter You shall know the Gospel of deposing Princes in the Councell of Lateran hereafter and the Gospel in deluding Heretiques by safe conducts in the Gospel of Constance hereafter and the Gospel of creating new Articles of the Creed in the Councell of Trent hereafter If so then was some reason for Christs Disciples to thinke when Christ said Verily I say unto you there are some here who shall not taste death Mat. 16. ultim till they see the Sonne of man come in glory that he spake and meant to be understood literally that neither Iohn nor the rest of the Apostles should ever die if they must live to preach the Gospel and the Gospel could not be knowne by them till the end of the world And therefore it was wisely done in the Romane Church to give over preaching since the preaching of the Gospel that is nothing but the Gospel would have done them no good to their ends When all their preaching was come to be nothing but declamations of the vertue of such an Indulgence and then a better Indulgence then that to morrow and every day a new market of fuller Indulgences when all was but an extolling of the tendernesse and the bowells of compassion in that mother Church who was content to set a price and a small price upon every sinne So that if David were upon the earth againe and then when the persecuting Angel had drawne his sword would but send an appeale to Rome at that price he might have an inhibition against that Angel and have leave to number his people let God take it as he list Nay if Sodome were upon the earth againe and the Angel ready to set fire to that Towne if they could send to Rome they might purchase a Charter even for that sinne though perchance they would be loath to let that sinne passe over their hills But not to speake any thing which may savour of jeast or levity in so serious a matter and so deplorable a state as their preaching was come to with humble thankes to God that we are delivered from it and humble prayers to God that we never returne to it nor towards it let us chearfully and constantly continue this duty of preaching and hearing the Gospel that is first the Gospel onely and not Traditions of men And the next is of all the Gospel nothing but it and yet all it add nothing defalke nothing for as the Law is so the Gospel is Res integra a whole piece and as S. Iames sayes of the integrity of the Law Whosoever keeps the whole Law James 2.10 and offends in one point he is guilty of all So he that is afraid to preach all and he that is loath to heare all the Gospel he preaches none he heares none And therefore if that imputation which the Romane Church layes upon us were true That we preach no falshood but doe not teach all the truth we did lacke one of the true marks of the true Church that is the preaching of the Gospel for it is not that if it be not all that take therefore the Gospel as we take it from the Schoole that it is historia and usus the Gospel is the history of the Gospel the proposing to your understanding all that Christ did and it is the appropriation of the Gospel the proposing to your faith that all that he did he did for you and then if you hearken to them who will tell you that Christ did that which he never did that he came in when the doores were shut so that his body passed thorough the very body of the Tymber thereby to advance their doctrine of Transubstantiation or that Christ did that which he did to another end then he did it that when he whipt the buyers and sellers out of the Temple he exercised a secular power and soveraignty over the world and thereby established a soveraignty over Princes in his Vicar the Pope These men doe not preach the Gospel because the Gospel is Historia usus The truth of the History and of the application and this is not the truth of the History So also if you hearken to them who tell you that though the blood of Christ be sufficient in value for you and for all yet you have no meanes to be sure that he meant his blood to you but you must passe in this world and passe out of this world in doubt and that it is well if you come to Purgatory and be sure there of getting to heaven at last these men preach not the Gospel because the Gospel is the history and the use and this is not the true use And thus it is if wee take the Gospell from the Schoole but if we take it from the Schoole master from Christ himselfe the Gospell is repentance and remission of sinnes For he came That repentance and remission of sinnes should be preached in his Name Luk. 24.47 If then they will tell you that you need no such repentance for a sinne as amounts to a contrition to a sorrow for having offended God to a detestation of the sinne to a resolution to commit it no more but that it is enough to have an attrition as they will needs call it a servill feare and sorrow that you have incurred the torments of hell or if they will tell you that when you have had this attrition that the clouds of sadnesse and of dejection of spirit have met and beat in your conscience and that the allision of those clouds have brought forth a
baptized for the Dead As in the Old Testament there is no precept no precedent 2 Part no promise for prayer for the Dead So in the Old Testament they confesse there was no Purgatory no such place as could purifie a soule to that cleannesse as to deliver it up to Heaven For thither to Heaven no soule say they had accesse till after Christs ascension But as the first mention of prayer for the dead was in time of the Maccabees so much about the same time was the first stone of Purgatory laid and laid by the hands of Plato For Plato Tertul. Hareticorum Patriarchae Philosophi sayes Tertullian The Philosophers were the Patriarchs of Heretiques evermore they had recourse to them And then Plato being the Author of Purgatory we cannot deny but that the Greeke Church did acknowledge Purgatory that is that Greeke Church of which Plato is a Patriarch for for the Christian Greeke Church that never acknowledged Purgatory so as the Roman that is A place of torment from which our prayers here might deliver soules there But yet Platoes invention or his manner of expressing it Eusebius Anno 326. tooke such roote and such hold as that Eusebius when he comes to speake of Purgatory delivers it in the very words of Plato and makes Platoes words his words and Plato his Patriarch for the Greeke Church The Latin Church had Patriarchs too for this Doctrine though not Philosophers yet Poets for of that which Virgil sayes of Purgatory Virgil. Lactantius Anno 290. Lactantius sayes propemodum vera Virgil was very neere the truth Virgil was almost a Catholique but then later men say Haec prorsus vera This is absolutely true that Virgil sayes and Virgil is a perfect a downe-right Catholique for an upright Catholique in the point of Purgatory were hard to finde These then are the first Patriarchs of the Greek and Latin Church Philosophers and Poets And when it came farther to Christians it gained not much at first for the first mention of Purgatory amongst Christians hath this double ill lucke that first it is in a Booke which no side beleeves the Booke called Pastor whose Author is said to bee Hermes Hermes and he fancied to be S. Pauls Disciple And then that which is said of Purgatory in that Booke is put into an old womans mouth and so made an old wives tale she tels that she had a vision of stones fallen from a towre and then mended after they were fallen and laid in the building againe And this Towre must be the Church and these fallen stones must be soules in Purgatory and then they must be made fit to be placed in the uppermost part of the building in the Triumphant Church But to consider this plant in better grounds then Philosophers or Poets or old wives tales Clem. Alexan. or supposititious books amongst men of more waight and gravity Clement of Alexandria within little more then two hundred yeares after Christ spake doubtfully uncertainly suspiciously disputably of Purgatory And within twenty yeares after him Origen Origen who was evermore transported beyond the letter upon mysteries somewhat directly But yet when all is done Origens Purgatory is a purgatory that would do them no good for it would bring them in no money and they could be as well content that there were none as that it were nothing worth except they may have the letting and setting of Purgatory at their price they care not though it were pulled downe And Origens Purgatory is such a purgatory as the best men must come into it even Martyrs themselves that are re-baptized in their owne blood and will this purgatory serve their turnes And it is such a purgatory as the worst of all even the Devill himselfe may and shall get out of it And will this purgatory serve their turnes Neither is this an error peculiar to Origen That all soules must passe through Purgatory but common with others of the Fathers too Sive Paulus sive Petrus sayes Origen whether it be S. Paul or S. Peter Ambrose thither he must come And sive Petrus sive Iohannes sayes S. Ambrose whether it be the Disciple that loved Christ S. Peter or the Disciple whom Christ loved S. Iohn thither he must come And S. Hilary extends it farther he drawes in the blessed Virgin Mary her selfe into purgatory And that we may see cleerely that that Purgatory which the Fathers intended is not the Purgatory now erected in the Roman Church S. Ambrose consigns to his Purgatory even the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Testaments Igne filii Levi igne Ezekiel igne Daniel The holiest generation the Sons of Levi and the greatest of the Prophets must passe through this fire And will such a purgatory serve their turnes as was kindled in the Old Testament Well Interrogant nos They are very loath to be put to their speciall plea very loath to answer what Purgatory of the Fathers they will stand to They would not be put to answer They chuse rather to interrogate us and they ask us Since the Fathers are so pregnant so frequent in the name of Purgatory one Purgatory or other will you beleeve none None upon the strength of that argument that the Fathers mention Purgatory except they will assigne us a Purgatory in which those Fathers agree and agree it to be matter of faith to beleeve it for from how many things which passe through the Fathers by way of opinion and of discourse are they in the Romane Church departed onely upon that That the Fathers said it but said it not Dogmatically but by way of discourse or opinion But then they aske us againe Since it is cleare that they did use prayer for the dead what could they meane by those prayers but a Purgatory a place of torment where those soules needed helpe and from whence those prayers might helpe them What could they meane els Certainly we cannot tell them what they meant If they should aske them who made those prayers they could hardly tell them If a man should have surprized S. Ambrose at his prayers and stood behinde him and heard him say Non dubitamus Ambrose etiam Angelorum testimoniis credimus Lord I cannot doubt it for thou by thine Angels hast revealed it unto me Fide ablutum aeterna voluptate perfrui That my dead Master the Emperour was baptized in his faith and is now in possession of all the joyes of heaven and yet have heard S. Ambrose say sometimes to God sometimes to his dead Master Si quid preces if my prayers may prevaile with thee O God and then Oblationibus vos frequentabo I will waite upon you daily with my Oblations I will accompany you daily with my Sacrifices And for what Vt des Domine requiem That thou O Lord wouldest afford rest and peace and salvation to that soule And if this man after all this should have asked S. Ambrose What he meant to pray
pleasure of God In which first part you have also had the qualification of the person that came this day to establish Redemption for us that in Him there was fulnesse infinite capacity and infinite infusion and all fulnesse defective in nothing impassible and yet passible perfit God and perfit man and this fulnesse dwelling in Him in Him as he is Head of the Church that is visible sensible meanes of salvation to every soule in his Church And so we passe to our second part from this Qualification of the person It pleased the Father that in him all fulnesse should dwell to the Pacification it selfe for which it pleased the Father to doe all this that Peace might be made through the bloud of his Crosse In this Part St. Chrysostome hath made our steps our branches It is much sayes he 2 Part. that God would admit any peace magis per sanguinem more that for peace he should require effusion of bloud magis quod per ejus more that it must be His bloud his that was injured his that was to triumph Et adhuc magis quod per sanguinem Crucis ejus That it must be by the bloud of his Crosse his heart bloud his death and yet this was the case He made Peace through the bloud of his Crosse There was then a warre before and a heavy warre for the Lord of hosts was our enemy and what can all our musters come to Bellum ante if the Lord of Hosts of all Hosts have raised his forces against us There was a heavy war denounced in the Inimicitias ponam when God raised a warre betweene the Devill Gen. 3.15 and us For if we could consider God to stand neutrall in that warre and meddle with neither side yet we were in a desperate case to be put to fight against Powers and Principalities against the Devill How much more when God the Lord of Hosts is the Lord even of that Host too when God presses the Devill and makes the Devill his Soldier to fight his battles and directs his arrowes and his bullets and makes his approaches and his attempts effectuall upon us That which is fallen upon the Jews now Basil for their sinne against Christ that there is not in all the world a Soldier of their race not a Jew in the world that beares armes is true of all mankinde for their sin against God there is not a Soldier amongst them able to hurt his spirituall enemy or defend himselfe It is a strange warre where there are not two sides and yet that is our case for God uses the Devill against us and the Devill uses us against one another nay he uses every one of us against our selves so that God and the Devill and we are all in one Army and all for our destruction we have a warre and yet there is but one Army and we onely are the Countrey that is fed upon and wasted From God to the Devill we have not one friend and yet as though we lacked enemies we fight with one another in inhumane Duels Vbi morimur homicidae Ad milites Templa Ser. 1. 〈◊〉 as St. Bernard expresses it powerfully and elegantly that in those Duels and Combats he that is murdered dyes a murderer because he would have beene one Occisor laethaliter peccat occisus aeternaliter perit He that comes alive out of the field comes a dead man because he comes a deadly sinner and he that remaines dead in the field is gone into an everlasting death So that by this inhumane effusion of one anothers bloud we maintaine a warre against God himselfe and we provoke him to that which he expresses in Esay My sword shall be bathed in heaven Inebriabitur sanguine Esay 34.5 The sword of the Lord shall be made drunk with bloud Their land shall be soaked with bloud and their dust made fat with fatnesse The same quarrell which God hath against particular men and particular Nations for particular sinnes God hath against all Mankinde for Adams sin And there is the warre But what is the peace and how are we included in that That is our second and next disquisition That peace might be made A man must not presently think himselfe included in this peace Pax. because he feeles no effects of this warre If God draw none of his swords of warre or famine or pestilence upon thee no outward warre If God raise not a rebellion in thy selfe nor fight against thee with thine owne affections in colluctations betweene the flesh and the spirit The warre may last Gellius for all this Induciarum tempore bellum manet licet pugna cesset Though there be no blow striken the warre remaines in the time of Truce But thy case is not so good here is no Truce no cessation but a continuall preparation to a fiercer warre All this while that thou enjoyest this imaginary security the Enemy digges insensibly under ground all this while he undermines thee and will blow thee up at last more irrecoverably then if he had battered thee with outward calamities all that time So any State may be abused with a false peace present or with a fruitlesse expectation of a future peace But in this text there is true peace and peace already made present peace and and safe peace Bernard Pax non promissa sed missa sayes St. Bernard in his musicall and harmonious cadences not promised but already sent non dilata sed data not treated but concluded Non prophetata sed praesentata not prophesied but actually established There is the presentnesse thereof And then made by him who lacked nothing for the making of a safe peace Esay 9.6 For after his Names of Counsellor and of the Mighty God he is called for the consummation of all princeps pacis A Counsellor There is his wisdome A mighty God There is his Power and this Counsellor This Mighty God this wise and this powerfull Prince hath undertaken to make our peace But how that is next per sanguinem Peace being made by bloud Is effusion of bloud the way of peace Per sanguinem effusion of bloud may make them from whom bloud is so abundantly drawne glad of peace because they are thereby reduced to a weaknesse But in our warres such a weaknesse puts us farther off from peace and puts more fiercenesse in the Enemy But here mercy and truth are met together God would be true to his owne Justice bloud was forfeited and he would have bloud and God would be mercifull to us he would make us the stronger by drawing bloud and by drawing our best bloud Gen. 34. the bloud of Christ Jesus Simeon and Levi when they meditated their revenge for the rape committed upon their sister when they pretended peace yet they required a little bloud They would have the Sichemites circumcised but when they had opened a veyne they made them bleed to death when they were under
enemy It does not binde the Magistrate to favour Theeves and Murderers at land nor Pirates at Sea who are truly Inimici nostri our enemies even as we are men enemies to mankinde It does not binde Societies and Corporations Ecclesiasticall or Civill to sinke under such enemies as would dissolve them or impaire them in their priviledges for such are not onely Inimici vestri but Vestrorum enemies of you and yours of those that succeed you And all men are bound to transferre their jurisdictions and priviledges in the same integrity in which they received them without any prevarication In such cases it is true that Corporations have no soules that is they are not bound to such a tendernesse of conscience for there are divers lawes in this doctrine of patience that binde particular men that doe not binde States and Societies under those penalties Much lesse does the Commandment bind us to the Inimicus homo which is the devill Inimicus homo to farther him by fuelling and advancing his tentations by high dyet wanton company or licencious discourse and so upon pretence of maintaining our health Luk. 10.19 or our cheerefulnesse invite occasions of sinne S. Hierome tells us of one sense in which wee should favour that enemy the devill and that in this text we are commanded to doe so Benevolus est erga Diabolum saies he he is the devils best friend that resists him for by our yeelding to the devils tentations wesubmit him to greater torments then if he mist of his purpose upon us he should suffer But betweene this enemy and us God himselfe hath set such an enmity that as no man may separate those whom God hath joyned Gen. 3.15 so no man may joyne those whom God hath separated God created not this enmity in the devill he began it in himselfe but God created an enmity in us against him and upon no collaterall conditions may wee bee reconciled to him in admitting any of his superstitions It is not then Inimicus vester the common enemy the enemy of the State lesse Inimicus homo the spirituall enemy of Mankinde the devill least of all Inimicus Dei they who oppose God so as God can be opposed in his servants who professe his truth David durst not have put himselfe upon that issue with God Doe not I hate them Psal 139.21 that hate thee if hee had beene subject to that increpation which the Prophet Iehu laid upon Iehoshaphat Shouldst thou helpe the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord 2 Chron. 19.2 But David had the testimony of his conscience that hee hated them with a perfect hatred which though it may admit that interpretation that it is De perfectione virtutis that his perfect hatred was a hatred becomming a perfect man a charitable hatred yet it is De perfectione intentionis a perfect hatred is a vehement hatred and so the Chalde paraphrase expresses it Odio consummato a hatred to which nothing can be added Hilar. Odio religioso with a religious hatred not onely that religion may consist with it but that Religion cannot subsist without it a hatred that gives the tincture and the stampe to Religion it selfe The imputation that lyes upon them who doe not hate those that hate God is sufficiently expressed in S. Gregory He saw how little temporisers and worldly men were moved with the word Impiety and ungodlinesse and therefore he waves that He saw they preferred the estimation of wisdome before and above piety and therefore hee saies not Impium est but stultum est si illis placere quaerimus quos non placere domino scimus It is a foolish thing to endeavour to be acceptable to them who in our own knowledge doe not endeavour to be acceptable to God But yet Beloved even in those enemies that thus hate God Solomons rule hath place There is a time to hate and a time to love Though the person be the same Eccles 3.8 De singularit Cleric the affection may vary As S. Cyprian saies if that booke be not rather Origens then Cyprians for it is attributed to both Ama foeminas inter Sacra solennia Love a woman at Church that is love her comming to Church though as S. Augustine in his time did we in our times may complaine of wanton meetings there But Odio habe in communione privata Hate that is forbeare women in private conversation so for those that hate God in the truth of his Gospell and content themselves with an Idolatrous Religion we love them at Church we would be glad to see them here and though they come not hither wee love them so far as that we pray for them and we love them in our studies so far as we may rectifie them by our labours But wee hate them in our Convocations where wee oppose Canons against their Doctrines and we hate them in our Consultations where we make lawes to defend us from their malice and we hate them in our bed-chambers where they make children Idolaters and perchance make the children themselves We acknowledge with S. Augustine Perfectio odii est in charitate the perfect hatred consists with charity Cum nec propter vitia homines oderimus nec vitia propter homines amemut when the greatnesse of the men brings us not to love their religion nor the illnesse of their Religion to hate the men Moses in that place is S. Augustines example whom he proposes Orabat occidebat he prayed for the Idolaters and he slew them he hated saies he Iniquitatem quam puniebat that sin which he punished and he loved Humanitatem pro qua or abat that nature as they were men for whom he prayed for that saies he is perfectum odium quod facti sunt diligere quod fecerunt odiisse to love them as they are creatures to hate them as they are Traytors Thus much love is due to any enemy that if God be pleased to advance him De ejus profectu non dejiciamur sayes S. Gregory His advancement doe not deject us to a murmuring against God or to a diffidence in God And that when God in his time shall cast him downe againe Congaudeamus justitiae Iudicis condoleamus miseriae pereuntis Wee may both congratulate the justice of God and yet condole the misery of that person upon whom that judgement is justly fallen for though Inimicus vester the enemy that malignes the State and Inimicus Dei the enemy that opposes our religion be not so far within this text as that we are bound to feed them or to doe them good yet there are scarce any enemies with whom wee may not live peaceably and to whom we may not wish charitably We have done with all Ciba which was intended and proposed of the person we come to the duty expressed in this text Ciba feed him and give him drinke Here there might be use in noting the largenesse the fulnesse the abundance of
consideration upon David or upon the Jews Thereupon doe the Father truly I think more generally more unanimely then in any other place of Scripture take that place of Ezekile which we spake of before to be primarily intended of the last resurrection but secundarily of the Jews restitution But Gasper Sanctius a learned Jesuit that is not so rare but an ingenuous Jesuit too though he be bound by the Councel Trent to interpret Scriptures according to the Fathers yet he here ackowledges the whole truth that Gods purpose was to prove by that which they did know which was the generall resurrection that which they knew not their temporall restitution Tertullian is vehement at first but after more supple Allegoricae Scripturae saies he resurrectionem subradiant aliae aliae determinant Some figurative places of Scripture doe intimate a resurrection and some manifest it and of those manifest places he takes this vision of Ezekiel to be one But he comes after to this Sit corporum rerum meánihilinterest let it sighnifie a temporall resurrection so it may signifie the generall resurrection of our bodies too saies he and I am well satisfied and then the truth satisfies him for it doth signifie both It is true that Tertullian sayes De vacuo similitudo non competit If the vision be but a comparison if there were no such thing as a resurrection the comparison did not hold De nullo par abola non convenit saies he and truly If there were no resurrection to which that Parable might have relation it were no Parable All that is true but there was a resurrection alwaies knowne to them alwaies beleeved by them and that made their present resurrection from that calamity the more easie the more intelligible the more credible the more discernable to them Let therefore Gods method be thy method fixe thy self firmly upon that beliefe of the penerall resurrection and thou wilt never doubt of either of the particular resurrections either from sin by Gods grace or from worldly calamities by Gods power For that last resurrection is the ground of all By that Verévicta mors saies Irenaeus this Last enemy death is truly destroyed because his last spoile the body is taken out of his hands The same body eadem ovis as the same Father notes Christ did not fetch another sheep to the flock in the place of that which was lost but the same sheep God shall not give me another abetter body at the resurrection but the same body made better for Sinon haberet caro salvari neutiquam verbum Dei caro factum fuisset If the flesh of man were not to be saved Idem the Anchor of salvation would never have taken the flesh of man upon him The punishment that God laid upon Adam In dolore in sudore In sweat and in sorrow sbalt thou eate thy bread is but Donecreverteris till man returne to dust but when Man is returned to dust Gen. 3.17 God returnes to the remembrance of that promise Awake and sing yethat dwell in the dust A mercy already exhibited to us in the person of our Saviour Christ Jesus Esay 26.19 in whom Per primitias benedixit campo saies S. Chrysostome as God by taking a handfull for the first Fruits gave ablessing to the wholw field so he hath sealed the bodies of all mankind to his glory by pre-assuming the body of Christ to that glory For by that there is now Commercium inter Coelum terram there is a Trade driven a Staple established betweene Heaven and earth Bernard Ibi caronostra hic Spiritus ejus Thither have we sent our flest and hither hath he sent his Spirti This is the last abolition of this enemy Death for after this the bodies of the Saints he cannot touch the bodes of the damned he cannot kill and if he could hee were not therein their enemy but their friend This is that blessed and glorious State of which when all the Apostles met to make the Creed they could say no more but Credo Resurrectionem I heleeve the Resurrection of the body and when those two Reverend Fathers to whom it belongs shall come to speake of it upon the day proper for it in this place and if all the Bishops that ever met in Councels should meet them here they could but second the Apostles Credo with their Anathema We beleeve and woe be unto them that doe not beleeve the Resurrection of the body but in gong about to expresse it the lips of an Angell would be uncircumcised lips and the tongue of an Archangell would stammer I offer not therefore at it but in respect of and with relation to that blessed State according to the doctrine and practise of our Church we doe pray for the dead for the militant Church upon earth and the trimphant Church in Heaven and the whole Catholique Church in Heaveen and earth we doe pray that God will be pleased to hasten that Kingdome that we with all others departed in the true Faith of his holy Name may have this perfect consummation both of body and soule in his everlasting glory Amen SERMON XVI preached at VVhite-hall the first Friday in Lent 1622. JOHN 11.35 Iesus wept I Am now but upon the Compassion of Christ There is much difference between his Compassion and his Passion as much as between the men that are to handle them here But Lacryma pass ionis Chrisi est vicaria August A great personage may speake of his Passion of his blood My vicargae is to speake of his Compassion and his teares Let me chafe the wax and melt your soules in a bath of his Teares now Let him set to the great Seale of his effectuall passion in his blood then It is a Common place I know to speake of teares I would you knew as well it were a common practise to shed them Though it be not so yet bring S. Bernards patience Libenter audiam qui non sibi plausum sed mihi planctum moveat be willing to heare him that seeks not your acclamation to himselfe but your humiliation to his and your God not to make you praise with them that praise but to make you weepe with them that weepe And Iesus wept The Masorites the Masorites are the Critiques upon the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament cnnot tell us who divided the Chapters of the Old Testament into verses Neither can any other tell us who did it in the New Testament Whoever did it seemes to have stopped in an amazement in this Text and by making an intire verse of these two words Iesus wept and no more to intimate that there needs no more for the exalting of our devotion to a competent heighth then to consider how and where and when and why Iesus wept There is not a shorter verse in the Bible not a larger Text. There is another as short Semper gaudete Rejoyce evermore and of that holy Joy
your Master hath dealt thus mercifully with you all that to you all all he sends a message Sciant omnes Let all the house of Israel know this Needs the house of Israel know any thing Needs there any learning in persons of Honour We know this characterizes this distinguishes some whole Nations In one Nation it is almost a scorn for a gentleman to be learned in another almost every gentleman is conveniently and in some measure learned But I enlarge not my self I pretend not to comprehend Nationall vertues or Nationall vices For this knowledge which is proclaimed here which is the knowledge that the true Messias is come and that there is no other to bee expected is such a knowledge as that even the house of Israel it self is without a Foundation if it be without this knowledge Is there any house that needs no reparations Is there a house of Israel let it be the Library the depositary of the Oracles of God a true Church that hath the true word of the true God let it be the house fed with Manna that hath the true administration of the true Sacraments of Christ Jesus is there any such house that needs not a farther knowledge that there are alwaies thieves about that house that would rob us of that Word and of those Sacraments The Holy Ghost is a Dove and the Dove couples paires is not alone Take heed of singular of schismatical opinions what is more singular more schismaticall then when all Religion is confined in one mans breast The Dove is animal sociale a sociable creature and not singular and the Holy Ghost is that And Christ is a Sheep animal gregale they flock together Embrace thou those truths which the whole flock of Christ Jesus the whole Christian Church hath from the beginning acknowledged to be truths and truths necessary to salvation for for other Traditionall and Conditionall and Occasionall and Collaterall and Circumstantiall points for Almanack Divinity that changes with the season with the time and Meridionall Divinity calculated to the heighth of such a place and Lunary Divinity that ebbes and flowes and State Divinity that obeyes affections of persons Domus Israel the true Church of God had need of a continuall succession of light a contiuall assistance of the Spirit of God and of her own industry to know those things that belong to her peace And therefore let no Church no man think that he hath done enough or knowes enough If the Devill thought so too we might the better think so but since we see that he is in continuall practise against us let us be in a continuall diligence and watchfulnesse to countermine him We are domus Israel the house of Israel and it is a great measure of knowledge that God hath afforded us but if every Pastor look into his Parish and every Master into his own Family and see what is practising there sciat domus Israel let all our Israel know that there is more knowledge and more wisdome necessary Be every man farre from calumniating his Superiours for that mercy which is used towards them that are fallen but be every man as far from remitting or slackning his diligence for the preserving of them that are not fallen The wisest must know more though you be domus Israel the house of Israel already Crucifixistis and then Etsi Crucifixistis though you have crucified the Lord Jesus you may know it sciant omnes let all know it S. Paul saies once If they had known it they would not have crucified the Lord of life but he never saies if they have crucified the Lord of life 1 Cor. 2.8 they are excluded from knowledge I meane no more but that the mercy of God in manifesting and applying himself to us is above all our sins No man knowes enough what measure of tentations soever he have now he may have tentations through which this knowledge and this grace will not carry him and therefore he must proceed from grace to grace So no man hath sinned so deeply but that God offers himself to him yet Sciant omnes the wisest man hath ever something to learn he must not presume the sinfullest man hath God ever ready to teach him he must not despaire Now the universality of this mercy Sciant hath God enlarged and extended very farre in that he proposes it even to our knowledge Sciant let all know it It is not only credant let all beleeve it for the infusing of faith is not in our power but God hath put it in our power to satisfie their reason and to chafe that waxe to which he himself vouchsafes to set to the great seale of faith And that S. Hierome takes to be most properly his Commission Tentemus animas quae deficiunt a fide natur alibus rationibus adjuvare Let us indevour to assist them who are weak in faith with the strength of reason And truly it is very well worthy of a serious consideration that whereas all the Articles of our Creed are objects of faith so as that we are bound to receive them de fide as matters of faith yet God hath left that out of which all these Articles are to be deduced and proved that is the Scripture to humane arguments It is not an Article of the Creed to beleeve these and these Books to be or not to be Canonicall Scripture but our arguments for the Scripture are humane arguments proportioned to the reason of a naturall man God does not seale in water in the fluid and transitory imaginations and opinions of men we never set the seale of faith to them But in Waxe in the rectified reason of man that reason that is ductile and flexible and pliant to the impressions that are naturally proportioned unto it God sets to his seale of faith They are not continuall but they are contiguous they flow not from one another but they touch one another they are not both of a peece but they enwrap one another Faith and Reason Faith it self by the Prophet Esay is called knowledge Esay 53.11 By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justifie many sayes God of Christ that is by that knowledge that men shall have of him So Zechary expresses it at the Circumcision of Iohn Baptist That hee was to give knowledge of salvation Luke 1.77 for the remission of sins As therefore it is not enough for us in our profession to tell you Qui non crediderit damnabitur Except you beleeve all this you shall be damned without we execute that Commission before Ite praedicate go and preach work upon their affections satisfie their reason so it is not enough for you to rest in an imaginary faith and easinesse in beleeving except you know also what and why and how you come to that beliefe Implicite beleevers ignorant beleevers the adversary may swallow but the understanding beleever he must chaw and pick bones before he come to assimilate him
Church of God celebrates this day the third Person of the Holy Blessed and Glorious Trinity The Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost is the God the Spirit of Comfort A Comforter not one amongst others but the Comforter not the principall but the intire the onely Comforter and more then all that The Comfort it selfe That is an attribute of the Holy Ghost Comfort And then the office of the Holy Ghost is to gather to establish to illumine to governe that Church which the Son of God from whom together with the Father the Holy Ghost proceeds hath purchased with his blood So that as the Holy Ghost is the Comforter so is this Comfort exhibited by him to us and exercised by him upon us in this especially that he hath gathered us established us illumined us and does governe us as members of that body of which Christ Jesus is the Head that he hath brought us and bred us and fed us with the meanes of salvation in his application of the merits of Christ to our soules in the Ordinances of the Church In this Text is the first mention of this Third Person of the Trinity And it is the first mention of any distinct Person in the God-head In the first verse there is an intimation of the Trinity in that Bara Elohim That Gods Gods in the plurall are said to have made heaven and earth And then as the Church after having celebrated the memory of All Saints together in that one day which we call All Saints day begins in the celebration of particular Saints first with Saint Andrew who first of any applied himself to Christ out of Saint Iohn Baptists Schoole after Christs Baptisme so Moses having given us an intimation of God and the three Persons altogether in that Bara Eloim before gives us first notice of this Person the Holy Ghost in particular because he applies to us the Mercies of the Father and the Merits of the Son and moves upon the face of the waters and actuates and fecundates our soules and generates that knowledge and that comfort which we have in the knowledge of God Now the moving of the Holy Ghost upon the face of the waters in this Text cannot be literally understood of his working upon man for man was not yet made but when man is made that is made the man of God in Christ there in that new Creation the Holy Ghost begins again with a new moving upon the face of the waters in the Sacrament of Baptisme which is the Conception of a Christian in the wombe of the Church Therefore we shall consider these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters first literally in the first and then spiritually in the second Creation first how the Holy Ghost moved upon the face of the Waters in making this world for us And then how he moves upon the face of the Waters againe in making us for the other world In which two severall parts we shall consider these three termes in our Text both in the Macrocosme and Microcosme the Great and the Lesser world man extended in the world and the world contracted and abridged into man first Quid Spiritus Dei what this Power or this Person which is here called the Spirit of God is for whether it be a Power or a Person hath been diversly disputed And secondly Quid ferebatur what this Action which is here called a Moving was for whether a Motion or a Rest an Agitation or an Incubation of that Power or that Person hath been disputed too And lastly Quid super faciem aquarum what the subject of this Action the face of the waters was for whether it were a stirring and an awakening of a power that was naturally in those waters to produce creatures or whether it were an infusing a new power which till then those waters had not hath likewise beene disputed And in these three the Person the Action the Subject considered twice over in the Creation first and in our regeneration in the Christian Church after we shall determine all that is necessary for the literall and for the spirituall sense of these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters First then 1 Part. Aug Con. 11.2 undertaking the consideration of the literall sense and after of the spirituall we joyne with S. Augustine Sint castae deliciae meae Scripturae tuae Lord I love to be conversant in thy Scriptures let my conversation with thy Scriptures be a chast conversation that I discover no nakednesse therein offer not to touch any thing in thy Scriptures but that that thou hast vouchsafed to unmask and manifest unto me Nec fallar in eis nec fallam ex eis Lord let not me mistake the meaning of thy Scriptures nor mis-lead others Ibid. by imputing a false sense to them Non frustra scribuntur sayes he Lord thou hast writ nothing to no purpose thou wouldst be understood in all But not in all by all men at all times Confiteor tibi quicquid invenero in libris tuis Lord I acknowledge that I receive from thee whatsoever I understand in thy word for else I doe not understand it This that blessed Father meditates upon the word of God he speakes of this beginning of the Book of Genesis and he speaks lamenting Scripsit Moses abiit a little Moses hath said C. 3. and alas he is gone Si hic esset tonerem eum per te rogarem If Moses were here I would hold him here and begge of him for thy sake to tell me thy meaning in his words of this Creation But sayes he since I cannot speake with Moses Te quo plenus vera dixit Veritas rogo I begge of thee who art Truth it selfe as thou enabledst him to utter it enable me to understand what he hath said So difficult a thing seemed it to that intelligent Father to understand this history this mystery of the Creation But yet though he found that divers senses offered themselves he did not doubt of finding the Truth C. 18. For Deus meus lumen oculorum meorum in occulto sayes he O my God the light of mine eyes in this dark inquisition since divers senses arise out of these words and all true Quid mihi obest si alindego sensero quam sensit alius eum sensisse qui scripsit What hurt followes though I follow another sense then some other man takes to be Moses sense for his may be a true fense and so may mine and neither be Moses his C. 30. Hee passes from prayer and protestation to counsell and direction In diversitate sententiarum verarum concordiam pariat ipsa veritas Where divers senses arise and all true that is that none of them oppose the truth let truth agree them But what is Truth God And what is God Charity Therefore let Charity reconcile such differences 1.12 C. 30. Legitimè lege ut amur sayes he let us
use the Law lawfully Let us use our liberty of reading Scriptures according to the Law of liberty that is charitably to leave others to their liberty if they but differ from us and not differ from Fundamentall Truths Si quis quaerat ex me quid horum Moses senserit If any man ask me which of these which may be all true Moses meant Non sum sermones istiâ—â—onfessiones Lord sayes hee Ibid. This that I say is not said by way of Confession as I intend it should if I doe not freely confesse that I cannot tell which Moses meant But yet I can tell that this that I take to be his meaning is true and that is enough Let him that findes a true sense of any place rejoyce in it Let him that does not beg it of thee Vtquid mihi molest us est Why should any man presse me to give him the true sense of Moses here or of the holy Ghost in any darke place of Scripture Ego illuminem ullum hominen venientem in mundum 1.13 C. 10. saies he Is that said of me that I am the light that enlightned every man any man Iohn 1.9 that comes into this world So far I will goe saies he so far will we in his modesty and humility accompany him as still to propose Quod luce veritatis quod fruge utilitatis excellit such a sense as agrees with other Truths that are evident in other places of Scripture and such a sense as may conduce most to edisication For to those two does that heavenly Father reduce the foure Elements that make up a right exposition of Scripture which are first the glory of God such a sense as may most advance it secondly the analogie of faith such a sense as may violate no confessed Article of Religion and thirdly exaltation of devotion such a sense as may carry us most powerfully upon the apprehension of the next life and lastly extension of charity such a sense as may best hold us in peace or reconcile us if we differ from one another And within these limits wee shall containe our selves The glory of God the analogie of faith the exaltation of devotion the extension of charity In all the rest that belongs to the explication or application to the literall or spirituall sense of these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters to which having stopped a little upon this generall consideration the exposition of darke places we passe now Within these rules we proceed to enquire who this Spirit of God is or what it is Spiritus whether a Power or a Person The Jews who are afraid of the Truth lest they should meete evidences of the doctrine of the Trinity and so of the Messias the Son of God if they should admit any spirituall sense admit none but cleave so close to the letter as that to them the Scripture becomes Liter a occidens A killing Letter and the savour of death unto death They therefore in this Spirit of God are so far from admitting any Person that is God as they admit no extraordinary operation or vertue proceeding from God in this place but they take the word here as in many other places of Scripture it does to signifie onely a winde and then that that addition of the name of God The Spirit of God which is in their Language a denotation of a vehemency of a high degree of a superlative as when it is said of Saul Sopor Domini A sleepe of God was upon him it is intended of a deepe a dead sleepe inforces induces no more but that a very strong winde blew upon the face of the waters and so in a great part dryed them up And this opinion I should let flye away with the winde if onely the Jews had said it But Theodoret hath said it too and therefore we afford it so much answer That it is a strange anticipation that Winde which is a mixt Meteor to the making whereof divers occasions concurre with exhalations should be thus imagined before any of these causes of Winds were created or produced and that there should be an effect before a cause is somewhat irregular In Lapland the Witches are said to sell winds to all passengers but that is but to turne those windes that Nature does produce which way they will but in our case the Jews and they that follow them dreame winds before any winds or cause of winds was created The Spirit of God here cannot be the Wind. It cannot be that neither which some great men in the Christian Church have imagined it to be Operatio Dei The power of God working upon the waters so some or Efficientia Dei A power by God infused into the waters so others August And to that S. Augustine comes so neare as to say once in the negative Spiritus Dei hic res dei est sed non ipse Deut est The Spirit of God in this place is something proceeding from God but it is not God himselfe And once in the affirmative Posse esse vitalem creaturam quâ universus mundus movetur That this Spirit of God may be that universall power which sustaines and inanimates the whole world which the Platoniques have called the Soule of the world and others intend by the name of Nature and we doe well if we call The providence of God Spiritus Sanctus But there is more of God in this Action then the Instrument of God Nature or the Vice-roy of God Providence for as the person of God the Son was in the Incarnation so the person of God the Holy Ghost was in this Action though far from that manner of becomming one and the same thing with the waters which was done in the Incarnation of Christ who became therein perfect man That this word the Spirit of God is intended of the Person of the Holy Ghost in other places of Scripture is evident undeniable unquestionable and that therefore it may be so taken here Where it is said The Spirit of God shall rest upon him Esay 11.2 upon the Messiah where it is said by himselfe The Lord and his Spirit is upon me And the Lord and his Spirit hath anointed me there it is certainly and therefore here it may be probably spoken of the Holy Ghost personally It is no impossible sense it implies no contradiction It is no inconvenient sense it offends no other article it is no new sense nor can we assigne any time when it was a new sense Basil The eldest Fathers adhere to it as the ancientest interpretation Saint Basil saies not onely Constantissimè asseverandum est We must constantly maintaine that interpretation for all that might be his owne opinion not onely therefore Quia verius est for that might be but because he found it to be the common opinion of those times but Quia à majoribus nostris approbatum because it is accepted for the true
therefore proposed it to the Senate that so that honour which Jesus should have might bee derived from him And when the Senate had an inclination of themselves to have done Christ that honour but yet forbore it because the intimation came not from themselves but from the Emperour who still wrought and gained upon their priviledges neither of these though they meant collaterally and obliquely to doe Christ an honour neither of them did say Iesum Dominum that is professe Jesus so as is intended here for they had their owne ends and their own honors principally in Contemplation There is first an open profession of the tongue required And therefore the Holy Ghost descended in fiery tongues Et lingua propria Spiritui Sancto sayes S. Gregory The tongue is the fittest Instrument for the Holy Ghost to worke upon and to worke by Qui magnam habet cognationem cum Verbo sayes he The Son of God is the Word and the Holy Ghost proceeds from him And because that faith that unites us to God is expressed in the tongue howsoever the heart be the center in which the Holy Ghost rests the tongue is the Spheare in which he moves And therefore sayes S. Cyril as God set the Cherubim with a fiery sword to keep us out of Paradise so he hath set the Holy Ghost in fiery tongues to let us in againe As long as Iohn Baptist was unborne Zachary was dumbe when hee was borne Zachary spoke Christ is not borne in us we are not regenerate in him if we delight not to speake of his wondrous mercyes and infinite goodnesse to the sons of men as soone as he is borne in us his Spirit speakes in us and by us in which our first profession is Iesum esse That Jesus is That there is a Jesus This is to professe with Esay Iesus Esay 4.2 That he is Germen Iehovae The Bud of the Lord The Blossome of God himselfe for this Profession is a two-edged sword for it wounds the Arians on one side That Jesus is Jehovah because that is the name that signifies the very Essence of God And then it wounds the Jews on the other side because if Jesus be Germen Iehovae The Bud the Blossome the Off-spring of God then there is a plurality of Persons Father and Son in the God-head So that it is a Compendiary and Summary Abridgement and Catechisme of all our Religion to professe that Jesus is for that is a profession of his everlasting Essence that is his God-head It hath been denyed that he was such as he was pretended to be that is borne of a Virgin for the first Heretiques of all Gerinthus and Ebion who occasioned S. Iohns Gospel affirmed him to be a meere man made by ordinary generation between Ioseph and Mary It hath been denyed that he was such a man as those Heretiques allowed him to bee for Apelles his Heresie was That he made himselfe a Body out of the Elements as hee came downe from Heaven through them It hath been denyed that he had any Body at all Cerdon and Marcion said That he lived and dyed but in Phantasmate in apparance and onely in a forme and shape of a Body assumed but in truth no Body that did live or dye but did onely appeare and vanish It hath beene denyed that that Body which hee had though a true and a naturall Body did suffer for Basilides said That when he was led to Execution and that on the way the Crosse was laid upon Simon of Cyren Christ cast a mist before their eyes by which they tooke Simon for him and crucified Simon Christ having withdrawne himselfe invisibly from them as at other times he had done It hath been denyed though he had a true Body and suffered truly therein that he hath any Body now in Heaven or shall returne with any for hee that said hee made his Body of the Elements as hee came downe from Heaven sayes also that hee resolved that Body into those Elements againe at his returne It hath beene denyed That hee was That he is That he shall be but this Profession that Jesus is includes all for He of whom that is alwayes true Est He is He is Eternall and He that is Eternall is God This is therefore a Profession of the God-head of Christ Jesus Now Dominus A Lord. in the next as we professe him to be Dominus A Lord we professe him to be God and man we behold him as he is a mixt person and so made fit to be the Messias the Anointed high Priest King of that Church which he hath purchased with his blood And the anointed King of that Kingdome which he hath conquered with his Crosse As he is Germen Iehovae The off-spring of Jehovah so he must necessarily be Jehovah that is the name which is evermore translated The Lord So also as he is Jehovah which is the fountaine of all Essence and of all Beeing so he is Lord by his interest and his concurrence in our Creation It is a devoute exercise of the soule to consider how absolute a Lord he is by this Title of Creation If the King give a man a Creation by a new Title the King found before in that man some vertuous and fit disposition some preparation some object some subject of his favour The King gives Creations to men whom the Universities or other Societies had prepared They Created persons whom other lower Schooles had prepared At lowest he that deales upon him first finds a man begotten and prepared by Parents upon whom he may worke But remember thy Creator that called thee when thou wast not as though thou hadst beene and brought thee out of nothing which is a condition if we may call it a condition to be nothing not to be farther removed from Heaven then hell it selfe Who is the Lord of life and breathed this life into thee and sweares by that eternall life which he is that he would have this life of thine immortall As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a sinner This Contemplation of Jesus as a Lord by Creating us is a devout and an humble Contemplation but to contemplate him as Lord by Redeeming us and breeding us in a Church where that Redemption is applied to us this is a devout and a glorious Contemplation As he is Lord over that which his Father gave him his Father gave him all power in Heaven and in earth and Omne Iudicium His Father put all Judgement into his hands all judiciary and all military power was his He was Lord Judge and Lord of Hosts As he is Lord over his owne purchase Quod acquisivit sanguine Acts 20.28 That Church which he purchased with his owne blood So he is more then the Heretiques of our time have made him That he was but sent as a principall Prophet to explaine the Law and make that cleare to us in a Gospel Or as a Priest to sacrifice
repentance and so is thereby irremissible yet there arise no markes by which I can say This man is such a sinner not though hee himselfe would sweare to me that he were so now and that he would continue so till death The other places that doe not so directly concerne this sin and yet are sometimes used in this affaire 1 Iohn 5.16 are one in S. Iohn and this text another That in S. Iohn is There is a sin unto death I doe not say that he shall pray for it It is true that the Master of the Sentences and from him many of the Schoole and many of our later Interpreters too doe understand this of the sin against the Holy Ghost because we are almost forbidden to pray for it but yet we are not absolutely forbidden in that we are not bidden And if we were forbidden when God sayes to Ieremy Pray not thou for this people neither lift up cry Ier. 7.16 nor prayer for them neither make intercession to me for I will not heare thee And againe Ier. 11.14 Pray not for them for I will not heare them Not them though they should come to pray for themselves God forbid that we should therefore say that all that people had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost And for this particular place of S. Iohn that answer may suffice which very good Divines have given Pray not for them is indeed pray not with them admit them to no part in the publique prayers of the Congregation but if they sin a sin unto death a notorious an inexcusable sin let them be persons excommunicated to thee For the words in this text which seeme to many appliable to that great sin it is not cleare it is not much probable that they can be so applied Take the words invested in their circumstance in the context and coherence and it will appeare evident Christ speaks this to the Pharisees upon occasion of that which they had said to him and of him before and he carries it intends it no farther That appeares by the first word of out text Propterea Therefore I say unto you Therefore that is Because you have used such words unto me And S. Marke makes it more cleare He said this to them because they said Marke 3.30 He had an uncleane spirit because they said he did his Miracles by the power of the Devill Now this was certainely a sin against the Holy Ghost so far as that it was distinguished from the sins against the Son of Man But it was not the sin against the Holy Ghost for Christ being a mixt person God and Man did some things in which his Divinity had nothing to doe but were onely actions of a meere naturall man and when they slandered him in these they blasphemed the Son of Man Some things he did in the power of his God head in which his humanity contributed nothing as all his Miracles and when they attributed these works to the Devill they blasphemed the Holy Ghost And therefore S. Augustine sayes That Christ in this place did not so much accuse the Pharisees that they had already incurred the sin of the Holy Ghost they might at last fall into The sin that impenitible and therfore irremissible sin But that sin this could not be because the Pharisees had not embraced the Gospel before and so this could not be a falling from the Gospel in them Neither does it appeare to have continued to a finall impenitence so far from it as that S. Chrysost makes no doubt but that some of these Pharisees did repent upon Christs admonition Now beloved since we see by this collation of places that it is not safe to say of any man he is this sinner nor very constantly agreed upon what is this sin but yet we are sure that such a sin there is that captivates even God himself and takes from him the exercise of his mercy and casts a dumnesse a speechlesnesse upon the Church it selfe that she may not pray for such a sinner and since we see that Christ with so much earnestnesse rebukes the Pharisees for this sin in the text because it was a limbe of that sin and conduced to it let us use all religious diligence to keep our selves in a safe distance from it To which purpose be pleased to cast a particular but short and transitory glaunce upon some such sins as therefore because they conduce to that are sometimes called sins against the holy Ghost Sins against Power that is the Fathers Attribute sins of infirmity are easily forgiven sins against Wisdome that is the Sons Attribute sins of Ignorance are easily forgiven but sins against Goodnesse that is the Holy Ghosts Attribute sins of an hard and ill nature are hardly forgiven Not at all when it comes to be The sin not easily when they are Those sins those that conduce to it and are branches of it For branches the Schoolemen have named three couples which they have called sins against the Holy Ghost because naturally they shut out those meanes by which the Holy Ghost might work upon us The first couple is presumption and desperation for presumption takes away the feare of God and desperation the love of God And then they name Impenitence and hardnesse of heart for Impenitence removes all sorrow for sins past and hardnesse of heart all tendernesse towards future tentations And lastly they name The resisting of a truth acknowledged before and the envying of other men who have made better use of Gods grace then we have done for this resisting of a Truth is a shutting up of our selves against it and this envying of others is a sorrow that that Truth should prevaile upon them And truly to reflect a very little upon these three couples again To presume upon God that God cannot damne me eternally in the next world for a few half-houres in this what is a fornication or what is an Idolatay to God what is a jest or a ballad or a libel to a King Or to despaire that God will not save me how well soever I live after a sin what is a teare what is a sigh what is a prayer to God what is a petition to a King To be impenitent senslesse of sins past I past yesterday in riot and yesternight in wantonnesse and yet I heare of some place some office some good fortune fallen to me to day To be hardned against future sins shall I forbeare some company because that company leads me into tentation Why that very tentation wil lead me to preferment To forsake the truth formerly professed because the times are changed and wiser men then I change with them To envy and hate another another State another Church another man because they stand out in defence of the truth for if they would change I might have the better colour the better excuse of changing too al these are shrewd and slippery approaches towards the sin against the Holy Ghost and therefore
much as reproved disputed against or called in question As it must not be only a fancy Contra. an imagination but an opinion in which though there be not a Certò yet there is a Potiùs Though I be not sure yet I doe rather thinke it so we consider Contraria opinantem That it must be an opinion contrary to something that we are sure of that is to some received article or to some evident religious duty contrary to religion as religion is matter of faith or as religion is matter of obedience to lawfull Authority Though fancies grow to be opinions that men come to thinke they have reasons for their opinions and to know they have other men on their side in those opinions yet as long as these are but opinions of a little too much or a little too little in matter of Ceremony and Circumstance as long as they are but deflectings and deviations upon collaterall matters no foundation shaked no corner-stone displaced as long as they are but preteritions not contradictions but omissions not usurpations they are not worthy of a reproofe of a conviction and there may be more danger then profit in bringing them into an over-vehement agitation Those men whose end is schisme and sedition and distraction are brought so neare their owne ends and the accomplishment of their owne desires if they can draw other men together by the eares As some have all they desire if they can make other men drunke so have these if they can make sober men wrangle They must be Opinions not fancies and they must have a contrariety Tenenda an opposition to certaine truths and then they must be held persisted in before it be fit to give a reproofe either by calling in question or by confutation As some men are said to have told a lye so often as that at last they beleeve it themselves so a man admits sometimes an opinion to lodge so long as that Transit in intellectum It fastens upon his understanding Bernard and that that he did but think before now he seems to himself to know it and he beleeves it And then Fides si habet haesitationem infirma est Idem As that faith that admits a scruple is weake and so without scruple he comes peremptorily to beleeve it But so Opinio si habet assertionem temeraria est When that which is but an opinion comes to be published and avowed for a certaine and a necessary truth then it becomes dangerous And that growes apace for scarcely does any man beleeve an opinion to be true but he hath a certaine appetite and itch to infuse it into others too Now when these pieces meet when these atomes make up a body a body of Error Syllogismus that it come to an Opinion a halfe-assurance and that in some thing contrary to foundations and that it be held stiffely publiquely persisted in then enters this reproofe but yet even then reproofe is but Syllogismus it is but an argument it is but convincing it is not destroying it is not an Inquisition a prison a sword an axe a halter a fire It is a syllogisme not a syllogisme whose major is this Others your Ancestors beleeved it and the minor this We that are your Superiours beleeve it Ergo you must or else be banisht or burnt With such syllogismes the Arians abounded where they prevailed in the Primitive Church and this is the Logique of the Inquisition of Rome But our syllogisme must be a syllogisme within our Authors definition when out of some things which are agreed on all sides other things that are controverted are made evident and manifest Hell is presented to us by fire but fire without light Heaven by light and light without any ill effect of fire in it Where there is nothing but an Accuser perchance not that and fire citation and excommunication here is Satan who is an Accuser but an invisible one and here is Hell it selfe a devilish and a darke proceeding But when they to whom this reproofe belongs take Christs way not to tread out smoaking flaxe that a poore soule mis-led by ignorant zeale and so easily combustible and apt to take fire be not troden downe with too much power and passion when they doe not breake a bruised reed that is not terrifie a distracted conscience which perchance a long ill conversation with schismaticall company and a spirituall melancholy and over-tender sense of sin hath cast too low before then does this reproofe worke aright when it is brought in with light before fire with convenient instruction and not hasty condemnation We may well call this Viam Christi and Viam Spiritus sancti Christs way and the Holy Ghosts way for he had need be a very good Christian and a very sanctified man that can walke in that way Perfectorum est nihil in peccatore odisse praeter peccata August He that hates nothing in an Heretique or in a Schismatique but the Schisme or the Heresie He that sets bounds to that sea and hath said to his affections and humane passions Stay there go no farther hath got far in the steps of Christian perfection The slipperinesse the precipitation is so great on the other side that commonly we begin to hate the person first and then grow glad when he growes guilty of any thing worthy our hate and we make God himselfe the Devils instrument when we pretend zeale to his service in these reproofes and corrections and serve onely our owne impotent passion and inordinate ambition For therein Plerumque cum tibi videris odisse inimicum fratrem odisti August nescis Thou thinkest or pretendâ—â—t to hate an enemy and hatest thine owne brother and knowest it not Thou knowest not considerest not that he by good usage and instruction might have beene made thy Brother a fellow-member in the Visible Church by outward conformity and in the Invisible too by inward Cyprian Etiam fictilia vasa confringere Domino soli concessum If thou be a vessell of gold or silver and that other of clay thou of a cleere and rectified he of a darke and perverted understanding yet even vessels of clay are onely in the power of that Potters hand that made them or bought them to breake and no bodies else Still as long as it is possible proceed we with the moderation of that blessed Father Sic peccata Haereticorum compesce ut sint quos poeniteat peccasse August Take not away the subject of the error the perversenesse of the man so as that thou take away the subject of repentance the man himselfe If thou require fruit leave a tree If thou wouldst have him repent take not away his life sayes he We see the leasurely pace that Gods Justice walks in Dan 4.24 When Daniel had told Nebuchadnezzar his danger yea the Decree of God upon him as hee cals it yet he told him a way how to revoke it by workes
of mercy to the poore and breaking off his sinnes And after all this hee had a yeares space to consider himselfe Dan 26. before the judgement was executed upon him But now beloved Voluntas perversa all that we have said or can be said to this purpose conduces but to this That though this reproof which the Holy Ghost leads us to be rather in convincing the understanding by argument and other perswasions then by extending our power to the destruction of the person yet this hath a modification how it must be and a determination where it must end for there are cases in which we may we must go farther For for the understanding we know how to worke upon that we know what arguments have prevayled upon us with what arguments we have prevailed upon others and those we can use so far Vt nihil habeant contra si non assentiantur That though they will not be of our minde yet they shall have nothing to say against it So far we can go upon that faculty the understanding But the will of man is so irregular so unlimited a thing as that no man hath a bridle upon anothers will no man can undertake nor promise for that no Creature hath that faculty but man yet no man understands that faculty It hath beene the exercise of a thousand wits it hath beene the subject yea the knot and perplexity of a thousand disputations to find out what it is that determines that concludes the will of man so as that it assents thereunto For if that were absolutely true which some have said and yet perchance that is as far as any have gone that Vltimus actus intellectus est voluntas That the last act of the Understanding is the Will then all our labour were still to worke upon the Understanding and when that were rectified the Will must follow But it is not so As we feele in our selves that we doe many sins which our understanding and the soule of our understanding our conscience tels us we should not doe so we see many others persist in errors after manifest convincing after all reproofe which can be directed upon the understanding When therefore those errors which are to be reproved are in that faculty which is not subject to this reproofe by argument in a perverted will because this wilfull stubbornnesse is alwaies accompanied with pride with singularity with faction with schisme with sedition we must remember the way which the Holy Ghost hath directed us in Eccles 10.16 If the iron be blunt we must either put to more strength or whet the edge Now when the fault is in the perversenesse of the will we can put to no more strength no argument serves to overcome that And therefore the holy Ghost hath admitted another way To whet the iron Gal. 5.12 And in that way does the Apostle say Vtinam abscindantur I would they were even cut off which trouble you There is an incorrigibility in which when the reproofe cannot lead the will it must draw blood which is where pretences of Religion are made and Treasons and Rebellions and Invasions and Massacres of people and Assasinates of Princes practised And this is a reproofe which as we shall see of the rest in the following branches is from the Holy Ghost in his function in this text as he is a Comforter This therefore is our comfort That our Church was never negligent in reproving the Adversary but hath from time to time strenuously and confidently maintained her truths against all oppositions to the satisfying of any understanding though not to the reducing of some perverse wils So Gregor de Valentia professes of our arguments I confesse these reasons would conclude my understanding Nisi didicissem captivare intellectum meum ad intellectum Ecclesiae But that I have learnt to captivate my understanding to the understanding of the Church and say what they will to beleeve as the Church of Rome beleeves which is Maldonats profession too upon divers of Calvins arguments This argument would prevaile upon me but that he was an Heretique that found it So that here is our comfort we have gone so far in this way of Reproofe Vt nihil habeant contra etsi nobiscum non sentiant This is our comfort that as some of the greatest Divines in forraine parts so also in our Church at home some of the greatest Prelates who have beene traduced to favour Rome have written the most solidly and effectually against the heresies of Rome of any other But it must be a comfort upon them that are reproved And this is their comfort that the State never drew drop of blood for Religion But then this is our comfort still that where their perversnesse shall endanger either Church or State both the State and Church may by the holy Ghosts direction and will return to those means which God allows them for their preservation that is To whet the edge of the Iron in execution of the laws And so we passe from our second consideration The Action Reproofe to the subject of Reproofe The world He shall reprove the world It is no wonder that this word Mundus should have a larger signification then other words for it containes all embraces comprehends all But there is no word in Scripture Mundus that hath not only not so large but so diverse a signification for it signifies things contrary to one another It signifies commonly and primarily the whole frame of the world and more particularly all mankinde and oftentimes only wicked men and sometimes only good men As Dilexit mundum God loved the world John 3.16 John 4.42 Rom. 11.15 And Hic est verè salvator mundi This is the Christ the Saviour of the world And Reconciliatio mundi The casting away of the Iews is the reconciliation of the world The Jews were a part of the world but not of this world Now in every sense the world may well be said to bee subject to the reproofe of God as reproof is a rebuke for He rebuked the winde Luk. 8.14 Psal 106.17 Gen. 3.17 Psal 105.14 and it was quiet And He rebuked the red Sea and it was dryed up He rebuked the earth bitterly in that Maledicta terra for Adams punishment Cursed be the ground for thy sake And for the noblest part of earth man and the noblest part of men Kings He rebuked even Kings for their sakes and said Touch not mine anointed But this is not the rebuke of our Text for ours is a rebuke of comfort even to them that are rebuked Whereas the angry rebuke of God carries heavy effects with it Increpat fugiunt Esay 17.13 God shall rebuke them and they shall flie far off He shall chide them out of his presence and they shall never return to it Increpasti superbos maledicti isti Thou hast rebuked the proud Psal 119.21 and thy rebuke hath wrought upon them as a
of the Reformed Religion which are not likely to admit them but in the Dominions of the Turk himselfe And into the Councel of Trent they threw and thrust they shov'd and shoveld in such Bishops in abundance They created that their numbers might carry all new Titular Bishops of every place in the Eastern the Greek Church where there had ever been Bishops before though those very places were now no Cities Not onely not within his Jurisdiction but not at all upon the face of the earth But in better times then these though times in which the Church was much afflicted too S. Cyril of Alexandria mentions six thousand Bishops at once against Nestorius Now if the Church had six thousand Bishops at once certainly all of them had not Diocesses to reside upon sometimes collaterall necessities enforce a departing from exact regularity in matter of government So it did when S. Ambrose was chosen Bishop of Milan in the West and Nectarius Bishop of Constantinople in the East when they were both not onely Lay-men but unbaptized But yet though there be divers cases in which Bishops may justly be excused from residence for they are still resident upon the Church of God if not upon the Church of that City yet naturally and regularly an obligation falling upon them of Residence the Apostles were more bound to certaine limits by being Bishops then S. Paul was of whom it does not appeare that he was ever so I know some later men have thought S. Paul a Bishop And they have found some satisfaction in that That Niger Acts 13.3 and Lucius and Manaen laid their hands upon Barnabas and Paul and that Imposition of hands say they was a Consecration And this reason supplyes them too That Paul did consecrate other Bishops as Timothy of Ephesus and Titus of Crete But since Niger Tit. 1.5 and Lucius and Manaen that laid their hands upon Paul were not Bishops themselves Paul cannot therefore be concluded to be a Bishop because he laid his hands upon others Neither hath any of those few Authors which have imagined him to be a Bishop ever assigned or named any place of which he should be Bishop So that S. Paul had still another manner of liberty and universality over the Church then the rest had and therefore still avowes his Transivi his peregrination I have gone among you So then our blessed Saviour having declared this to be his way for the propagation of the Gospel that besides the men that reside constantly upon certaine places there should be Bishops that should spread farther then to a Parish and Apostles farther then to a Diocesse and a Paul farther then to a Nation As in the first Plantation Christ found this necessary so may it be still convenient that in some cases some persons at some times may be admitted to forbeare their service in some particular place so they doe not defraud the whole Church of God by that forbearance For so S. Paul though he accuse himselfe That he robbed other Churches taking wages of them 2 Cor. 11.11 and yet served the Corinthians thinks himselfe excusable in this That he did this service in some part of the Church of Christ though not alwayes to them in particular from whom he received that recompence Now as this condemnes our Brownists abroad that have published their opinion to be That no particular Church given to one mans cure may consist of more persons then may alwayes heare that man all together so neither doth this afford any favour to those men who absent themselves from their charge unnecessarily and every thing is unnecessary in a Church-man that is not done for the farther advancement of the Church of God in generall and doth prejudice or defraud a particular Church Therefore is S. Pauls Transivi in this Text accompanied with a Praedicavi I have not resided in one place I have gone among you but I have gone among you preaching Athanasius in his Epistle to Dracontius who refused to be Bishop sayes Praedicando If all men had been of your mind who should have made you a Christian who should have been enabled to have ministred Sacraments unto you if there had been no Bishop But when he saw that he refused it therefore because men when they come to that state give themselves more liberty then such as laboured in inferiour places did and Dracontius seemed loath to open himselfe to the danger of that tentation Athanasius sayes Licebit tibi in Episcopatu esurire sitire Feare not I warrant you you may be poore enough in a Bishoprick or if you be rich no man will hinder you from living soberly in a plentifull fortune Novimus Episcopos jejunantes sayes he Monachos comedentes I have knowne a Bishop fast when a Monke or an Hermit hath made a good meale Nec corona pro locis sed pro factis redditur God doth not crowne every man that comes to the place but him onely that doth the duties of the place when he is in it And here one of the Duties that induce our crowne is Preaching I have gone among you preaching Howsoever it be in practise in the Church of Rome that Church durst not appeare to the world but in that Declaration Praecipuum Episcoporum munus est praedicatio Conc. Trid. Sess 5. c. 2. The principall office of the Bishop is to preach And as there is no Church in Christendome nay let us magnifie God in the fulnesse of an evident truth not all the Churches of God in Christendome have more or more usefull preaching then ours hath from those to whom the Cure of Soules belongs so neither were there ever any times in which more men were preferred for former preaching nor that continued it more after their preferments then in these our times There may bee there should be a Transiverunt A passing from place to place but still it is as it should bee Praedicando A passing for Preaching and a passing to Preaching And then a Preaching conditioned so as S. Pauls was I have gone among you preaching the Kingdome of God The Kingdome of God Regnum Dei. is the Gospel of God that Gospel which the Apostle calls the glorious Gospel of God A Kingdome consists not of slaves slaves that have no will of their owne The children of the Kingdome have so a will of their own as that no man is damned but for that which he would not avoid nor saved against his will So wee preach a Kingdome A Kingdome acknowledges all their happinesse from the King So doe we all the good use of all our faculties will and all from the grace of the King of heaven so we preach a Kingdome A Kingdome is able to subsist of it selfe without calling in Forrainers The Gospel is so too without calling in Traditions and so we preach a Kingdome A Kingdome requires besides fundamentall subsistence grounded especially in offensive and defensive power a support also of honour
Life or that I should bee separated from Christ though all the world beside were to be blotted out and separated if I staid in The benefit that we are to make of the errors of holy men is not that That man did this therefore I may doe it but this God suffered that holy man to fall and yet loved that good soule well God hath not therefore cast me away though he have suffered me to fall too Bread is mans best sustenance yet there may be a dangerous surfet of bread Charity is the bread that the soule lives by yet there may be a surfet of charity I may mis-lead my selfe shrewdly if I say surely my Father is a good man my Master a good man my Pastor a good man men that have the testimony of Gods love by his manifold blessings upon them and therefore I may be bold to doe whatsoever I see them doe Be perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect Mat. 5.48 1 Cor. 11.1 is the example that Christ gives you Be yee followers of mee as I am of Christ is â—he example that the Apostle gives you Good Examples are good Assistances but no Example of man is sufficient to constitute a certaine and constant rule All the actions of the holiest man are not holy Hence appeares the vanity and impertinency of that calumny with which our adversaries of the Roman perswasion labour to oppresse us That those points in which we depart from them cannot be well established because therein we depart from the Fathers As though there were no condemnation to them that pretended a perpetuall adhering to the Fathers nor salvation to them who suspected any Father of any mistaking And they have thought that one thing enough to discredit and blast and annihilate that great and usefull labour which the Centuriators the Magdeburgenses tooke in compiling the Ecclesiasticall Story that in every age as they passe those Authors have laid out a particular section a particular Chapter De navis Patrum to note the mistakings of the Fathers in every age This they thinke a criminall and a hainous thing inough to discredit the whole worke As though there were ever in any age any Father that mistook nothing or that it were blasphemy against the Holy Ghost to note such a mistaking And yet if those blessed Fathers now in possession of heaven be well affected with our celebrating or ill with our neglecting their works certainly they finde much more cause to complaine of our adversaries then of us Never any in the Reformation hath spoken so lightly nay so heavily so negligently nay so diligently so studiously in diminution of the Fathers as they have done One of the first Jesuits proceeds with modesty and ingenuity and yet sayes Quaelibet aetas antiquitati detulit Salmeron Every age hath been apt to ascribe much to the Ancient Fathers Hoc autem asserimus sayes he Iuniores Doctores perspicaciores This we must necessarily acknowledge that our later Men have seen farther then the elder Fathers did His fellow Jesuit goes farther Hoc omnes dicunt Maldon sed non probant sayes he speaking of one person in the Genealogy of Christ This the Fathers say sayes he and later men too Catholiques and Heretiques All But none of them prove it He will not take their words not the whole Churches though they all agree But a Bishop of as much estimation and authority in the Council of Trent as any Cornel. Mussuâ— goes much farther Being pressed with S. Augustins opinion he sayes Nec nos tantillum moveat Augustinus Let it never trouble us which way S. Augustine goes Hoc enim illi peculiare sayes he ut alium errorem expugnans alteri ansam praebeat for this is inseparable from S. Augustine That out of an earnestnesse to destroy one error he will establish another Nor doth that Bishop impute that distemper onely to S. Augustine but to S. Hierome too Of him he sayes In medio positus certamine ar dore feriendi adversarios premit socios S. Hierome laies about him and rather then misse his enemy he wounds his friends also But all that might better be borne then this Turpiter errarunt Patres The Fathers fell foully into errors And this better then that Eorum opinio opinio Haereticorum The Fathers differ not from the Heretiques concurre with the Heretiques Who in the Reformation hath charged the Fathers so farre and yet Baronius hath If they did not oppresse us with this calumny of neglecting or undervaluing the Fathers we should not make our recourse to this way of recrimination for God knowes if it be modestly done and with the reverence in many respects due to them it is no fault to say the Fathers fell into some faults Yet it is rather our Adversaries observation then ours That all the Ancient Fathers were Chiliasts Millenarians and maintained that error of a thousand yeares temporall happinesse upon this earth betweene the Resurrection and our actuall and eternall possession of Heaven It is their observation rather then ours That all the Ancient Fathers denied the dead a fruition of the sight of God till the day of Judgement It is theirs rather then ours That all the Greek Fathers and some of the Latin assigned Gods foreknowledge of mans works to be the cause of his predestination It is their note That for the first six hundred yeares the generall opinion and generall practise of the Church was To give the Sacrament of the Lords Supper to Infants newly baptized as a thing necessary to their salvation They have noted That the opinion of the Ancient Fathers was contrary to the present opinion in the Church of Rome concerning the conception of the blessed Virgin without Originall sin These notes and imputations arise from their Authors and not from ours and they have told it us rather then we them Indeed neither we nor they can dissemble the mistakings of the Fathers The Fathers themselves would not have them dissembled Hieron De me sayes S. Hierom ubicunque de meo sensu loquor arguat me quilibet August For my part wheresoever I deliver but mine owne opinion every man hath his liberty to correct me It is true S. Augustine does call Iulian the Pelagian to the Fathers but it is to vindicate and redeeme the Fathers from those calumnies which Iulian had laid upon them that they were Multitudo caecorum a herd a swarme of blinde guides and followers of one another And that they were Conspiratio perditorum Damned Conspirators against the truth To set the Fathers in their true light and to restore them to their lustre and dignity and to make Iulian confesse what reverend persons they were S. Aug. cals him to the consideration of the Fathers but not to try matters of faith by them alone Lactant. For Sapientiam sibi adimit qui sine judicio majorum inventa probat That man devests himselfe of all discretion who
Christ Ephes 2.12 for so S. Paul sayes to the Ephesians Absque Christo absque Deo If ye be without Christ ye are without God For as it is the same absurdity in nature to say There is no Sun and to say This that you call the Sun is not the Sun this that shines out upon you this that produces your fruits and distinguishes your seasons is not the Sun so is it the same Atheisme in these dayes of light to say There is no God and to say This Christ whom you call the Son of God is not God That he in whom God hath manifested himselfe He whom God hath made Head of the Church and Judge of the world is not God This then is our double Sadduce Davids Atheist that beleeves not God S. Pauls Atheist that beleeves not Christ And as our Sadduce is so is our Pharisee twofold also There is a Pharisee Duplex Pharisaeus that by following private expositions separates himselfe from our Church principally for matter of Government and Discipline and imagines a Church that shall be defective in nothing and does not onely think himself to be of that Church but sometimes to be that Church for none but himselfe is of that perswasion And there is a Pharisee that dreames of such an union such an identification with God in this life as that he understands all things not by benefit of the senses and impressions in the fancy and imagination or by discourse and ratiocination as we poore soules doe but by immediate and continuall infusions and inspirations from God himselfe That he loves God not by participation of his successive Grace more and more as he receives more and more grace but by a communication of God himselfe to him intirely and irrevocably That he shall be without any need and above all use of Scriptures and that the Scriptures shall be no more to him then a Catechisme to our greatest Doctors That all that God commands him to doe in this world is but as an easie walk downe a hill That he can doe all that easily and as much more as shall make God beholden to him and bring God into his debt and that he may assigne any man to whom God shall pay the arrerages due to him that is appoint God upon-what man he shall confer the benefit of his works of Supererogation For in such Propositions as these and in such Paradoxes as these doe the Authors in the Roman Church delight to expresse and celebrate their Pharisaicall purity as we find it frequently abundantly in them In a word some of our home-Pharisees will say That there are some who by benefit of a certaine Election cannot sin That the Adulteries and Blasphemies of the Elect are not sins But the Rome-Pharisee will say that some of them are not onely without sin in themselves but that they can save others from sin or the punishment of sin by their works of Supererogation and that they are so united so identified with God already as that they are in possession of the beatificall Vision of God and see him essentially and as he is in this life for that Ignatius the father of the Jesuits did so Sandaeus Theolog pâ—r 1. fo 760. some of his Disciples say it is at least probable if not certaine And that they have done all that they had to doe for their owne salvation long agoe and stay in the world now onely to gather treasure for others and to worke out their salvation So that these men are in better state in this life then the Saints are in heaven There the Saints may pray for others but they cannot merit for others These men here can merit for other men and work out the salvation of others Nay they may be said in some respect to exceed Christ himselfe for Christ did save no man here but by dying for him These men save other men with living well for them and working out their salvation These are our double Sadduces our double Pharisees now beloved Dissentio if we would goe so far in S. Pauls way as to set this two-fold Sadduce Davids Atheist without God and S. Pauls Atheist without Christ against our twofold Pharisee our home-Catharist and our Rome-Catharist If we would spend all our wit and all our time all our Inke and our gall in shewing them the deformities and iniquities of one another by our preaching and writing against them The truth and the true Church might as S. Paul did in our Text scape the better But when we we that differ in no such points tear and wound and mangle one another with opprobrious contumelies and odious names of sub-division in Religion our Home-Pharisee and our Rome-Pharisee maligners of our Discipline and maligners of our Doctrine gaine upon ns and make their advantages of our contentions and both the Sadduces Davids Atheist that denies God and S. Pauls Atheist that denies Christ joyne in a scornfull asking us Where is now your God Are not we as well that deny him absolutely as you that professe him with wrangling But stop we the floodgates of this consideration it would melt us into teares Sadducaei Pharisaei interni End we all with this That we have all all these Sadduces and Pharisees in our owne bosomes Sadduces that deny spirits carnall apprehensions that are apt to say Is your God all Spirit and hath bodily eyes to see sin All Spirit and hath bodily hands to strike for a sinne Is your soule all spirit and hath a fleshly heart to feare All spirit and hath sensible sinews to feele a materiall fire Was your God who is all Spirit wounded when you quarrelled or did your soule which is all spirit drink when you were drunk Sins of presumption and carnall confidence are our Sadduces and then our Pharisees are our sins of separation of division of diffidence and distrust in the mercies of our God when we are apt to say after a sin Cares God who is all Spirit for my eloquent prayers or for my passionate teares Is the giving of my goods to the poore or of my body to the fire any thing to God who is all Spirit My spirit and nothing but my spirit my soule and nothing but my soule must satisfie the justice the anger of God and be separated from him for ever My Sadduce my Presumption suggests that there is no spirit no soule to suffer for sin and my Pharisee my Desperation suggests That my soule must perish irremediably irrecoverably for every sinne that my body commits Now if I go S. Pauls way to put a dissention between these my Sadduces and my Pharisees Via Pauli to put a jealousie between my presumption my desperation to make my presumption see that my desperation lies in wait for her and to consider seriously that my presumption will end in desperation I may as S. Paul did in the Text scape the better for that But if without farther
godly men have declared this lothnesse to dye Beloved waigh Life and Death one against another and the balance will be even Throw the glory of God into either balance and that turnes the scale S. Paul could not tell which to wish Life or Death There the balance was even Then comes in the glory of God the addition of his soule to that Quire that spend all their time eternity it selfe only in glorifying God and that turnes the scale and then he comes to his Cupio dissolvi To desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ But then he puts in more of the same waight in the other scale he sees that it advances Gods glory more for him to stay and labour in the building of Gods Kingdome here and so adde more soules then his owne to that state then only to enjoy that Kingdome in himself and that turnes the scale againe and so he is content to live These Saints of God then when they deprecate death and complain of the approaches of death they are at that time in a charitable extasie abstracted and withdrawne from the consideration of that particular happinesse which they in themselves might haye in heaven and they are transported and swallowed up with this sorrow that the Church here and gods kingdome upon earth should lack those meanes of advancement or assistance which God by their service was pleased to afford to his Church Whether they were good Kings good Priests or good Prophets the Church lost by their death and therefore they deprecated that death Esay 38.18 and desired to live The grave cannot praise thee death cannot celebrate thee But the living the living he shall praise thee as I doe this day sayes Hezekias He was affected with an apprehension of a future barrennesse after his death and a want of propagation of Gods truth I shall not see the Lord even the Lord sayes he He had assurance that he should see the Lord in Heaven when by death he was come thither But sayes he I shall not see him in the land of the living Well even in the land of the living even in the land of life it selfe he was to see him if by death he were to see him in Heaven But this is the losse that he laments this is the misery that he deplores with so much holy passion I shall behold man no more with the Inhabitants of the world Howsoever I shall enjoy God my selfe yet I shall be no longer a meanes an instrument of the propagation of Gods truth amongst others And till we come to that joy which the heart cannot conceive it is I thinke the greatest joy that the soule of man is capable of in this life especially where a man hath been any occasion of sinne to others to assist the salvation of others And even that consideration that he shall be able to doe Gods cause no more good here may make a good man loath to die Quid facies magno nomini tuo Jos 7.9 sayes Ioshuah in his prayer to God if the Canaanites come in and destroy us and blaspheme thee What wilt thou do unto thy mighty Name What wilt thou doe unto thy glorious Church said the Saints of God in those Deprecations if thou take those men out of the world whom thou hadst chosen enabled qualified for the edification sustentation propagation of that Church In a word David considers not here what men doe or doe not in the next world but he considers onely that in this world he was bound to propagate Gods Truth and that that he could not doe if God tooke him away by death Consider then this horrour and detestation and deprecation of death in those Saints of the old Testament with relation to their particular and then it must be Quia promissiones obscurae Because Moses had conveyed to those men all Gods future blessings all the joy and glory of Heaven onely in the types of earthly things and said little of the state of the soule after this life And therefore the promises belonging to the godly after this life were not so cleere then not so well manifested to them not so well fixt in them as that they could in contemplation of them step easily or deliver themselves confidently into the jawes of death he that is not fully satisfied of the next world makes shift to be content with this and he that cannot reach or does not feele that will be glad to keepe his hold upon this Consider their horrour and â—etestation and deprecation of death not with relation to themselves but to Gods Church and then it will be Quia operarii pauci Because God had a great harvest in hand and few labourers in it they were loath to be taken from the worke And these Reasons might at least by way of excuse and extenuation in those times of darknesse prevaile somewhat in their behalfe They saw not whither they went and therefore were loath to goe and they were loath to goe because they saw not how Gods Church would subsist when they were gone But in these times of ours when Almighty God hath given an abundant remedy to both these their excuses will not be appliable to us We have a full cleernesse of the state of the soule after this life not onely above those of the old Law but above those of the Primitive Christian Church which in some hundreds of yeares came not to a cleere understanding in that point whether the soule were immortall by nature or but by preservation whether the soule could not die or onely should not die Or because that perchance may be without any constant cleernesse yet that was not cleere to them which concernes our case neerer whether the soule came to a present fruition of the sight of God after death or no. But God having afforded us cleernesse in that and then blest our times with an established Church and plenty of able work-men for the present and plenty of Schooles and competency of endowments in Universities for the establishing of our hopes and assurances for the future since we have both the promise of Heaven after and the promise that the gates of Hell shall not prevaile against the Church here Since we can neither say Promissiones obseurae That Heaven hangs in a Cloud nor say Operarii pauci That dangers hang over the Church it is much more inexcusable in us now then it was in any of them then to be loath to die or to be too passionate in that reason of the deprecation Quia non in morte Because in death there is no remembrance of thee c. Which words being taken literally may fill our meditation and exalt our devotion thus If in death there be no remembrance of God if this remembrance perish in death certainly it decayes in the neernesse to death If there be a possession in death there is an approach in age And therefore Remember now thy Creator in the dayes of thy youth
shall damne him but not a saving God a Iesus Beloved in the bowels of that Jesus not onely the riches and honours and pleasures of this world and the favour of Princes are as Iob speaks Onerosi consolatores Miserable comforters are they all all this world but even of God himselfe be it spoken with piety and reverence and far from misconstruction we may say Onerosa consolatio It is but a miserable comfort which we can have in God himselfe It is but a faint remembrance which we retaine of God himselfe It is but a lame confession which we make to God himselfe Si non Tui Si non Tibi If we remember not Thee If we confesse not Thee our onely Lord and Saviour Christ Iesus It is not halfe our worke to be godly men to confesse a God in generall we must be Christians too to confesse God so as God hath manifested himselfe to us I to whom God hath manifested himselfe in the Christian Church am as much an Atheist if I deny Christ as if I deny God And I deny Christ as much if I deny him in the truth of his Worship in my Religion as if I denyed him in his Person And therefore Si non Tui Si non Tibi If I doe not remember Thee If I doe not professe Thee in thy Truth I am falne into this Death and buried in this Grave which David deprecates in this Text For in death there is no remembrance of thee c. SERM. LIV. Preached to the KING at White-hall upon the occasion of the Fast April 5. 1628. PSAL. 6.6 7. I am weary with my groaning All the night make I my bed to swin I water my couch with my teares Mine eye is consumed because of griefe It waxeth old because of all mine-enemies THis is Davids humiliation and comming after his repentance and reconciliation Davids penance And yet here is no Fast It is true No Fast named David had had experience that as the wisest actions of Kings of Kings as Kings over Subjects so the devoutest actions of Kings of Kings as humble Subjects to the King of Kings the God of Heaven had been misinterpreted Of sighing and groaning and weeping and languishing as in this Text David speaks often very very often in the Psalmes and they let him sigh and groane and weepe and languish they neglect his Passion and are not affected with that but that is all they afflict him no farther But when he comes to fasting they deride him they reproach him Cares God whether you eat or fast But thrice in all the Psalmes does David speake of his fasting and in all three places it was mis-interpreted and reproachfully mis-interpreted I humbled my soule with fasting Psal 35.13 and my prayer returned into mine own bosome He did this as he sayes there for others that needed it and they would not thanke him for it but reproached him When I wept and chastned my soule with fasting Psal 69.10 Psal 109.24 that was to my reproach So also my bones are weake through fasting and I became a reproach unto them And therefore no wonder that David does not so often mention and publish his fasting as his other mortifications No wonder that in all his seaven penetentiall Psalmes which are the Churches Tropicks for mortification and humiliation there is no mention of his fasting But for his practise though he speak not so much of it in the Psalmes in his history where others not himselfe speake of him we know that when he mourned and prayed for his sick childe he fasted too And we doubt not 2 Sam. 2.15 but that when he was thus wearied I am weary with my groaning All the night make I my bed to swim I water my Couch with my teares Mine eye is consumed because of griefe It waxeth old because of all mine enemies he fasted too He fasted oftner then he tells us of it As S. Hierome sayes Iejunium non perfecta virtus sed caeterarum virtutum fundamentum Hieron If we must not call fasting as fasting is but a bodily abstinence a religious act an act of Gods worship yet it is a Basis and a foundation upon which other religious acts and acts of Gods worship are the better advanced It is so at all times but it is so especially when it is enjoyned by Soveraigne authority and upon manifest occasion as now to us Semper virtutis Cibus Iejunium fuit It is elegantly and usefully said At all times Leo. Religion feeds upon fasting and feasts upon fasting and grows the stronger for fasting But Quod pium est agere non indictum impium est negligere praedicatum Idem It is a godly thing to fast uncommanded but to neglect it being commanded is an ungodly an impious a refractary perversnesse sayes the same Father But then another carries it to a higher expression Desperationis genus est tunc manducare cum abstinere debeas Maximus de jejunio Ninevitarum Not to fast when the times require it and when Authority enjoynes it or not to beleeve that God will be affected and moved with that fasting and be the better enclined for it is desperationis genus a despairing of the State a despairing of the Church a despairing of the grace of God to both or of his mercy upon both And truly there cannot be a more disloyall affection then that desper are rem publicam to forespeak great Councels to be witch great actions to despaire of good ends in things well intended And in our distresses where can we hope but in God and how shall we have accesse to God but in humiliation We doubt not therefore but that this act of humiliation his fasting was spread over Davids other acts in this Text and that as a sinner in his private person and as a King in his publique and exemplar office he fasted also though he sayes not so when he said he was wearied I am weary with my groaning all the night make I my bed to swim I water my couch with my teares mine eye is consumed because of griefe It waxeth old because of all mine enemies But though this fasting and these other penall acts of humiliation be the body that carries and declares yet the soule that inanimates and quickens all is prayer and therefore this whole Psalme is a prayer And the prayer is partly Deprecatory In some things David desires that God would forbeare him as v. 1. Correct me not for if thou correct me others will trample upon me Rebuke me not for if thou rebuke me others will calumniate me And partly Postulatory that some things God would give him as Health and Deliverance and that which is all Salvation in the other verses Both parts of the prayer are as all prayer must be grounded upon reasons and the reasons are from divers rootes some from the consideration of himselfe and they argue his humiliation some from the contemplation of God and they testifie
yet this is still limited by the law of God so far as God hath instituted this power by his Gospel in his Church and far from inducing amongst us that torture of the Conscience that usurpation of Gods power that spying into the counsails of Princes supplanting of their purposes with which the Church of Rome hath been deeply charged And this usefull and un-mis-interpretable Confession which we speake of Adversum me is the more recommended to us in that with which David shuts up his Act as out of S. Hierome and out of our former translation we intimated unto you that he doth all this Adversum se I will confesse my sinnes unto the Lord against my selfe The more I finde Confession or any religious practise to be against my selfe and repugnant to mine owne nature the farther I will goe in it For still the Adversum me is Cum Deo The more I say against my selfe the more I vilifie my selfe the more I glorifie my God As S. Chry sostome sayes every man is Spontaneus Satan a Satan to himselfe as Satan is a Tempter every man can tempt himselfe so I will be Spontaneus Satan as Satan is an Accuser an Adversary I will accuse my selfe I consider often that passionate humiliation of S. Peter Exi à me Domine He fell at Iesus knees saying Depart from me for I am a sinfull man O Lord Luk. 5.8 And I am often ready to say so and more Depart from me O Lord for I am sinfull inough to infect thee As I may persecute thee in thy Children so I may infect thee in thine Ordinances Depart in withdrawing thy word from me for I am corrupt inough to make even thy saving Gospel the savor of death unto death Depart in withholding thy Sacrament for I am leprous inough to taint thy flesh and to make the balme of thy blood poyson to my soule Depart in withdrawing the protection of thine Angels from me for I am vicious inough to imprint corruption and rebellion into their nature And if I be too foule for God himselfe to come neare me for his Ordinances to worke upon me I am no companion for my selfe I must not be alone with my selfe for I am as apt to take as to give infection I am a reciprocall plague passively and actively contagious I breath corruption and breath it upon my selfe and I am the Babylon that I must goe out of Gen. 32.10 Mat. 8.8 or I perish I am not onely under Iacobs Non dignus Not worthy the least of all thy mercies nor onely under the Centurions Non dignus I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roofe That thy Spirit should ever speake to my spirit which was the forme of words in which every Communicant received the Sacrament in the Primitive Church Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roofe Nor onely under the Prodigals Non dignus Luke 15.21 Not worthy to be called thy sonne neither in the filiation of Adoption for I have deserved to be dis-inherited nor in the filiation of Creation for I have deserved to be annihilated Mark 1.7 But Non dignus procumbere I am not worthy to stoop down to fall down to kneele before thee in thy Minister the Almoner of thy Mercy the Treasurer of thine Absolutions So farre doe I confesse Adversum me against my selfe as that I confesse I am not worthy to confesse nor to be admitted to any accesse any approach to thee much lesse to an act so neare Reconciliation to thee as an accusation of my selfe or so neare thy acquitting as a self-condemning Be this the issue in all Controversies whensoever any new opinions distract us Be that still thought best that is most Adversum nos most against our selves That that most layes flat the nature of man so it take it not quite away and blast all vertuous indeavours That that most exalts the Grace and Glory of God be that the Truth And so have you the whole mystery of Davids Confession in both his Acts preparatory in resenting his sinfull condition in generall and survaying his conscience in particular And then his Deliberation his Resolution his Execution his Confession Confession of true sins and of them onely and of all them of his sins and all this to the Lord and all that against himselfe That which was proposed for the second Part must fall into the compasse of a Conclusion and a short one that is Gods Act Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin This is a wide doore 2 Part. and would let out Armies of Instructions to you but we will shut up this doore with these two leaves thereof The fulnesse of Gods Mercy He forgives the sin and the punishment And the seasonablenesse the acceleration of his mercy in this expression in our text that Davids is but Actus inchoatus He sayes he will confesse And Gods is Actus consummatus Thou forgavest Thou hadst already forgiven the iniquity and punishment of my sin These will be the two leaves of this doore and let the hand that shuts them be this And this Particle of Connection which we have in the text I said And thou didst For though this Remission of sin be not presented here as an effect upon that cause of Davids Confession It is not delivered in a Quia and an Ergo Because David did this God did that for mans wil leads not the will of God as a cause who does all his acts of mercy for his mercies sake yet though it be not an effect as from a cause yet it is at least as a consequent from an occasion so assured so infallible as let any man confesse as David did and he shall be sure to be forgiven as David was For though this forgivenesse be a flower of mercy yet the roote growes in the Justice of God If wee acknowledge our sin 1 John 1.9 he is faithfull and just to forgive us our sin It growes out of his faithfulnesse as he hath vouchsafed to binde himselfe by a promise And out of his Justice as he hath received a full satisfaction for all our sins So that this Hand this And in our Text is as a ligament as a sinew to connect and knit together that glorious body of Gods preventing grace and his subsequent grace if our Confession come between and tie the knot God that moved us to that act will perfect all Here enters the fulnesse of his mercy Plenitudo Rev. 3 20. at one leafe of this doore well expressed at our doore in that Ecce sto pulso Behold I stand at the doore and knock for first he comes here is no mention of our calling of him before He comes of himselfe And then he suffers not us to be ignorant of his comming he comes so as that he manifests himself Ecce Behold And then he expects not that we should wake with that light and look out of our selves but he knocks
the present This verse is especially an exultation for mercies past and yet the two last clauses are delivered in the future Thou shalt preserve me Thou shalt compasse me And the first is delivered without any limitation at all The present word Thou art is but inserted by our Translators In the Originall it is onely Tu refugium Thou my hiding place There is no fuisti nor es nor eris That he was or is or will be so but it is an expressing of a perpetuall and everlasting mercy for his mercy endureth for ever First then Ecclesia this is an acknowledgement of the Church contemplating her selfe in her low estate for the word Sether implies Tu absconsio Though I were in the darke it was thou that didst overshadow me Though I were in danger it was thou that didst hide mo from them This the Church hath had occasion to say more then once Once in the Primitive plantation thereof and againe in her Reformation At both times God shewed mercy to her that way in hiding her First then God hid the Primitive Church from the eye of envy Primitiva by keeping her poore and from the eye of jealousie and suspition by keeping her in an humble devotion towards him But yet even her poverty and her humility hid her not so but that persecution found her out and raged so against her as that those Emperours which raised the ten Persecutions against the Church seeme to have laboured to have gone beyond God in the ten Plagues of Egypt and to have done more at Rome then he did there All the power of the Roman world was bent against Christians more home-Christians slaine then forraine enemies All the criminall justice of the world bent upon them All other mens crimes even Neroes burning of Rome imputed to the Christians All the wit of the world bent against them All their Epigrammatists Satyrists having their wits exalted with rage with wine with rewards to multiply libels and calumnies and defamations upon the Christians All the Mechaniques of that world bent against them All the Enginiers employed to invent racks and tortures for the Christians Truly if I were to work upon Heathen men Westerne Americans or Easterne Chineses for their conversion to Christ I should scarce adventure to propose to them the histories of the Martyrs of the Primitive Church because to men that had no taste of Religion before they would rather seeme fables then truths and I should as soone be beleeved That a Virgin had a Son or in any maine Article of our Religion as that man could inflict or that man could beare such things as we are sure the Martyrs in the Primitive Church did Then God hid the Church He hid her in a great part in the Wildernesse in Ermitages and such retirings singlely one by one and after in penurious and obscure Monasteries many of these single Ermits gathering themselves together into one house when those Monasteries were both Schooles of learning and shops of Manufactures they taught and wrought in them August Nemo cuiquam onerosus No man was a burden to any others no man fed upon anothers labours nor drunke the sweat of anothers brow But Operabantur manibus ea quibus corpus pasci possit à Deo mens impediri non possit They laboured in such manufactures as might sustaine their bodies and not withdraw their minds from the service of God So God hid the Church not that the persecution did not finde and lop off many a great and top bough but he hid the roote and prevented the extirpation of that Tree which his owne right hand had planted Tu absconsio Reformata Thou art my hiding place sayes the Primitive Church and so may the Reformed Church say too For when the Roman Church had made this Latibulum this hiding place this refuge from Persecution Ermitages and Monasteries to be the most conspicuous the most glorious the most eminent the richest and most abundant places of the World when they had drawne these at first remote corners in the Wildernesse first into the skirts and suburbs then into the body and heart of every great City when for revenew and possession they will confesse that some one Monastery of the Benedictan had ten thousand of our pounds of yearely rent when they were come for their huge opulency to that height that they were formidable to those States that harboured them and for their numbers other Orders holding proportion with that one to reckon out of one Order fifty two Popes two hundred Cardinals seven thousand Archbishops and Bishops and almost three hundred Emperours and Kings and their children and fifty thousand declared and approved Saints when they were come to that over-valuation of their Religious Orders as to say That a Monke a Fryer merited more in his very sleep or meales then any secular man though a Church-man too did in his best works That to enter into any Order of Religion was a second Baptisme and wrought as much as the first Their revenew their number their dignity being come to this And then their viciousnesse their sensuality their bestiality to as great a height and exaltation as that yet in the midst of all these Tu absconsio mea may the Reformed Church say The Lord was their hiding place that mourned for this when they could not helpe and at all times and by all meanes that God afforded them endeavoured to advancea Reformation And though God exposed them as a wood to be felled to a slaughter of twenty of forty of sixty thousand in a day yet Ille absconsio He hath beene our hiding place He hath kept the roote alive all the way And though it hath beene with a cloud yet he hath covered us God came unto Moses though he came In caligine Nubis In a thick Cloud Exod. 19.9 when the glory of the Lord is said to have filled the Tabernacle even that glory was a Cloud Exod. 40.34 And so it was in the second place of his worship too in Solomons Temple 2 Chro. 5.13 that was filled with a Cloud S. Chrysostome when he considered that Christ ascended in a Cloud a Acts 1. Chrysost And that he shall returne againe in a Cloud b Mat. 24. Paternum Currum deligere voluit The Son would make use of his Fathers Chariot and shew mercy nay shew glory in a Cloud as his Father had done often The Primitive Church the Reformed Church must not complaine of having beene kept under Clouds for Ille absconsio God hath made those Clouds their hiding place and wrapped up the seed and the roote safe in that Cloud Though the Church were trodden upon like a worme of the earth yet still she might heare God in that Cloud Noli timere vermis Iacob Be not afraid thou worme of Iacob for I will keepe thee Esay 41.14 saith the Lord thy Redeemer the holy One of Israel God
that should worke their torment as he suspended the rage of the Lyons for Daniel and the heat of the fire in the furnace for the others Sometimes by imprinting a holy stupefaction and unsensiblenesse in the person that suffers So S. Laurence was not onely patient but merry and facetious when he lay broyling upon the fire and so we reade of many other Martyrs that they have beene lesse moved lesse affected with their torments then their Executioners or their Persecutors have beene That which troubled others never troubled them Or els the phrase must have this sense That though they be troubled with their troubles though God submit them so far to the common condition of men that they be sensible of them yet he shall preserve them from that trouble so as that it shall never overthrow them never sinke them into a dejection of spirit or diffidence in his mercy They shall finde stormes but a stout and strong ship under foote They shall feele Thunder and lightning but garlands of triumphant bayes shall preserve them They shall be trodden into the earth with scornes and contempts but yet as seed is buried to multiply to more So far this word of our Translators assist our devotion Thou shalt preserve me from trouble Thou shalt make me unsensible of it or thou shalt make me victorious in it But the Originall word Tzur hath a more peculiar sense Perplexity It signifies a straite a narrownesse a difficulty 2 Sam. 1.26 a distresse I am distressed for thee my brother Ionathan sayes David in this word when he lamented his irremediable his irrecoverable death So is it also Esa 21.3 Pangs have taken hold of me as the pangs of a woman that travaileth And so the word growes to signifie Psal 89.43 Aciem gladii Thou hast turned the edge of the sword and to signifie the top and precipice of a rock Psal 78.15 He clave the rocks in the wildernesse So that the word expresses Angustiam narrownesse pressure precipitation inextricablenesse in a word that will best fit us Perplexity and The Lord shall preserve me from perplexity And this may the Church and this may every good soule comfort it selfe in Thou shalt preserve me from perplexity Consider it first in the Church and then in our selves and first in the Primitive Ecclesia Primitiva and then in the reformed Church When God had brought his Church ex abscondito from his hiding place from poverty and contempt and solitarinesse and glorified it in the eyes of the world by many royall endowments and possessions with which Princes then become Christians and other great persons piously and graciously invested her though these were tentations to aspire to greater yet God preserved her from perplexities of all kinds from perplexing of Princes with her claims that they might not marry nor make leagues nor levy Armies but by her permission The Church called nothing her own but that which God had called His and given her that is Tithes All the rest shee acknowledged to have received from the bounty of pious benefactors This was her plea The Lord is my rock and my fortresse and my deliverer my strength my buckler Psal 18.2 and my high tower In all this Inventory in all this Armory and furniture of the Church there is never a sword Rocks and fortresses and bucklers and Towers but no sword no materiall sword in the Churches hand Arma nostra preces fletus Ambrose The Church fought with nothing but prayers and teares And as God delivered her from these perplexities from perplexing the affayres of Princes with her interest in their government so he delivered her from any perplexities in her own government No usurpation no offer of any Prince that attempted to invade or violate the true right of the Church no practise of any Heretiques how subtile how potent soever though they equalled though they exceeded the Church in number and in power as at some times the Arians did ever brought the Church to a perplexitie or to an apprehension of any necessitie of yeelding to sacrilegious Princes or to irreligious Heretiques in any point to procure their peace or to enjoy their rest but still they kept the dignitie of Priesthood intire and still they kept the truth of the Christian Religion intire no perplexity how they should subsist if they were so stiffe ever brought them to goe lesse to any prevarications or modifications either in matter of Religion towards Heretiques or in the execution of their religious function towards facrilegious usurpers So God preserved the Primitive Church from perplexitie shee was ever thankfull and submisse towards her benefactors shee was ever erect and constant against usurpers And this preservation from perplexity we consider in the reformed Church also When the fulnesse of time was come Ecclesia Reformata and that Church which lay in the bowels of the putative Church the specious Church the Romane Church that is those soules which groaned and panted after a Reformation were enabled by God to effect it when the Iniquity of Babylon was come to that height That whereas at first they tooke of Almes afterwards Monachi emunt Nobiles vendunt Monkes bought and Lords sold Hieron Ep. ad Demetr nay Monasteries bought and the Crowne sold when they went so far as to forgea Donation of Constantin by which they laid hold upon a great temporall state and after that so much farther as to renounce the Donation of Constantin by which for a long time the Roman Church claimed all their temporall state S. Peters patrimony and so at last came to say That all the states of all Christian Princes are held of the Church and really may be and actually are forfeited to her and may at her pleasure be re-assumed by her when for the art and science of Divinity it selfe they had buried it in the darknesse of the Schoole and wrapped up that that should save our soules in those perplexed and inextricable clouds of Schoole-divinitie and their Schoole-divinitie subject to such changes as that a Jesuit professes that in the compasse but of thirty yeares Tanner in Aquin p. 1. ad Lector since Gregory de Valentia writ Verè dici possit novam quodammodo Theologiam prognatam esse We may truly say that we have a new art of Divinity risen amongst us The Divinity of these times sayes he is not in our Church the same that it was thirty yeares since since all parts of the Christian Church were so incensed both with their heresie and their tyranny as that the Greeke Church which generally they would make the world beleeve is absolutely as they are is by some of their own Authors confessed to be more averse from them Stenartius Ep. Dedic ante Calecam and more bitter against them then Luther or Calvin since upon all these provocations God was pleased to bring this Church the Reformed Church not onely to light but
that he would make thee understand Not that the matter or subject in this Part is the greater for the former had relation to faith and this but to good works but that it intimates a more frequent recourse to us and a more studious care of us and a more provident vigilancy over us and a more familiar conversation with us that God accompanies us in all our way and directs us in all our particular actions then that by understanding he hath brought us to beleeve He that horses a man well for a journey or he that rewards a man well for a journey does a greater work then he that goes along with him as a guide but yet there is aliquid magis in the guide there is a more continuall a more incessant courtesie in him We see in the Romane Church they are not in their Beads without Credoes they beleeve enough and lest that should not be enough they have made a new Creed of more Articles then that in the Councell of Trent and to testifie a strong faith therein they must sweare they beleeve it And then they have to every Creed more Pater nosters they petition enough aske enough at Gods hands They have Credoes enow Pater nosters enow and Ave Maries more then enow But when we consider them in the Commandements what we are to doe as great Workers as they pretend to be though they inlarge their Credoes and multiply their Pater nosters they contract the Commandements and put two into one for feare of meeting one against Images This then expresses Gods daily care of us that he teaches us the way But then even that implies that we are all out of our way still all bends all conduces to that An humble acknowledgement of our own weaknesse a present recourse to the love and power of God The first thing I look for in the Exposition of any Scripture and the nearest way to the literall sense thereof is what may most deject and vilifie man what may most exalt and glorifie God We are all all out of our way but God deales not alike with all Psal 35.6 Esay 26.7 for for the wicked Their way is dark and slippery And then The Angel of the Lord persecutes them But for those whom he loves He will waigh the paths of the just sayes our later Translation And He will make the paths of the righteous equall and eaven sayes our former It shall be a path often beaten by him for it is not righteousnesse to be righteous once a yeare at Easter nor once a week upon Sunday An Anniversary righteousnesse an Hebdomadary righteousnesse a Sabbatarian righteousnesse is no righteousnesse But it is a path and so made eaven without occasions of stumbling that is he shall be able to walk in any profession and to make good any station and not be diverted by the power of any tentations incident to that calling The Angel of the Lord The evill Angel distrust and diffidence shall persecute the wicked in his darke and slippery way this is no teaching but because the godly have a teaching even their direction hath a correction too God beats his Scholars into their way too The difference is expressed in the Prophet Esay 30.21 When the Lord hath given you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction for in Gods Schoole that is Scholars fare yet sayes God Thy Teachers shall not be removed from thee into a corner Still in thine affliction thou shalt have a Teacher or even the affliction it selfe shall be Gods Usher and thou shalt have evidence of it Thy Teacher shall not be removed into a corner thou shalt see it and as it follows there Thine eares shall heare a voyce behinde thee that is a voyce arising even from that affliction that thou hast suffered and that voyce shall say This is the way walk ye in it As dark as affliction is it shall shew thee the way Haec est via This is the way as much as affliction enfeebles thee yet it shall enable thee to walk in it Ambulate in ea God is a Schoole-master not as the Law was to teach with a sword in his hand but yet he teaches with a rod in his hand though not with a sword Now in teaching us the way he instructs us De via and In via which is the way De via Psal 119.168 and what is to be done in it He sees all our wayes All my wayes are before thee sayes David And he sees them not so as though they belonged not to him for he considers them Does not he behold all my wayes and tell all my steps He sees them Job 31.4 Esay 24.17 and sees our irremediable danger in them Formido fovea laqueus Feare and a pit and snares are upon thee Upon whom There we see the generality of this single word Thee that it is all for so it followes there Vpon thee O Inhabitant of the earth The danger then is generall and the Lord knowes it Who then can teach us a better way but he But how doth he teach us this way When God had promised Moses to send an Angel to shew the people their way I will send an Angel before thee Moses sayes to God See Exod. 33.2 12. thou sayest Lead this people forth and thou hast not shewed me whom thou wilt send with me so those Translators thought good to render it God had told him of an Angel but that satisfied not Moses He must have something shewed to him he must see his guide Ver. 15. If thy presence goe not with me carry me not from hence sayes he to God For wherein shall it be known that I and thy people have found favour in thy sight shall it not be when thou goest up with us And therefore God satisfies him My presence shall goe with thee Goe but how sayes Moses Wilt thou bee pleased to shew mee thy glory Ver. 18. Shall we see any thing They did see that Pillar in which God was and that presence that Pillar shewed the way To us the Church is that Pillar in that God shewes us our way For strength it is a Pillar and a Pillar for firmnesse and fixation But yet the Church is neither an equall Pillar alwaies fire but sometimes cloud too The Church is more and lesse visible sometimes in splendor sometimes in an eclipse neither is it so a fixt Pillar as that it is not in divers places The Church is not so fixed to Rome as that it is not communicated to other Nations nor so limited in it selfe as that it may not admit changes in those things that appertain to Order and Discipline Our way that God teaches us is the Church That is a Pillar Fixed for Fundamentall things but yet a moveable Pillar for things indifferent and arbitrary Thus he teaches Quid via which is the way It is the Church the Pillar of Truth In via He teaches
lust to the mule both because the mule is Carne virgo Hieron but Mente impudicus which is one high degree of lust to have a lustfull desire in an impotent body And then he is engendred by unnaturall mixture which is another high degree of the same sin And these two vices we take to be presented here as the two principall enemies the two chiefe corrupters of mankinde pride to be the principall spirituall sin and lust the principall that works upon the body To avoid both consider we both in both these beasts It is not much controverted in the Schooles Superbia but that the first sin of the Angels was Pride But because as we said before the danger of man is more in sinking down then in climbing up in dejecting then in raising himselfe we must therefore remember that it is not pride August to desire to be better Angeli quaesiverunt id ad quod pervenissent si stetissent The Angels sin was pride but their pride consisted not in aspiring to the best degrees that their nature was capable of but in this that they would come to that state by other meanes then were ordained for it It could not possibly fall within so pure and cleare understandings as the Angels were to think that they could be God that God could be multiplied That they who knew themselves to be but new made could think not only that they were not made but that they made all things else To think that they were God is impossible this could not fall into them though they would be Similes Altissimo Like the most High But this was their pride and in this they would be like the most High That whereas God subsisted in his Essence of himselfe for those degrees of perfection which appertained to them they would have them of themselves They would stand in their perfection without any turning towards God without any farther assistance from him by themselves and not by meanes ordained for them This is the pride that is forbidden man not that he think well of himselfe In genere suo That hee value aright the dignity of his nature in the Creation thereof according to the Image of God and the infinite improvement that that nature received in being assumed by the Son of God This is not pride but not to acknowledge that all this dignity in nature and all that it conduces to that is grace here and glory hereafter is not onely infused by God at first but sustained by God still and that nothing in the beginning or way or end is of our selves this is pride Man may and must think that God hath given him the Subjicite and Dominamini A Majesticall Character even in his person to subdue and governe all the creatures in the world That he hath given him a nature already above all other creatures and a nature capable of a better then his owne is yet 2 Pet. 1.4 1 John 3.9 Acts 17.28 1 Cor. 6.17 Dan. 3.17 for By his precious promises we are made partakers of the Divine nature We are made Semen Dei The seed of God borne of God Genus Dei The off-spring of God Idem Spiritus cum Domino The same Spirit with the Lord He the same flesh with us and we the same spirit with him In Gods servants to have said to Nebuchadnezzar Our God is able to deliver us and he will deliver us but if he doe not yet we will not serve thy Gods In the Martyrs of the Primitive Church to have contemned torments and tormentors with personall scornes and affronts In all calamities and adversities of this life to rely upon that assurance I have a better substance in me then any man can hurt I have a better inheritance prepared for me then any man can take from me I am called to Triumph and I goe to receive a Crown of Immortality these high contemplations of Kingdomes and Triumphs and Crowns are not pride To know a better state and desire it is not pride for pride is onely in taking wrong wayes to it So that to think we can come to this by our own strength without Gods inward working a beliefe or to think that we can believe out of Plato where we may find a God but without a Christ or come to be good men out of Plutarch or Seneca without a Church and Sacraments to pursue the truth it selfe by any other way then he hath laid open to us this is pride and the pride of the Angels Now there is also a pride which is the Horses pride conversant upon earthly things To desire Riches and Honour and Preferment in this world is not pride for they have all good uses in Gods service but to desire these by corrupt meanes or to ill ends to get them by supplantation of others or for oppression of others this is pride and a Bestiall pride And this proud man is elegantly expressed in the Horse Job 39.19 The horse rejoyceth in his strength he goes forth to meet the armed man he mocks at feare he turnes upon the sword and he swallowes the ground The River is mine sayes Pharaoh Ezek. 29.3 and I have made it for my sefl They take all and they mistake all That which is but lent them for use they think theirs The River is mine That which God gave them they think of their own getting I made it And that which God placed upon them as his Stewards for the good of others they appropriate to themselves I have made it for my self But when time is Job 39.21 Zech. 12.4 Job 39.27 God mounteth on high and he mocks the horse and the rider In that day I will smite every horse with astonishment and his rider with madnesse The horse beleeveth not that it is the sound of the Trumpet When the Trumpet sounds to us in our last Bell for the last Bell that carries us out of this world and the Trumpet that cals us to the next is all one voyce to us for we heare nothing between the worldly man shall not beleeve that it is the sound of the Trumpet he shall not know it not take knowledge of it but passe away unsensible of his own condition So then is Pride well represented in the Horse and so is the other Lust Mulus licentiousnesse in the Mule For besides that reason of assimilation that it desires and cannot and that reason that it presents unnaturall and promiscuous lust for this reason is that vice well represented in that Beast because it is so apt to beare any burdens For certainly no man is so inclinable to submit himselfe to any burden of labour of danger of cost of dishonour of law of sicknesse as the licentious man is He refuses none to come to his ends Neither is there any tree so loaded with boughs any one sin that hath so many branches so many species as this Shedding of blood we can limit in murder and manslaughter
our prayers In a Sermon God speaks to the Congregation but he answers onely that soule that hath been with him at Prayers before A man may pray in the street in the fields in a fayre but it is a more acceptable and more effectuall prayer when we shut our doores and observe our stationary houses for private prayer in our Chamber and in our Chamber when we pray upon our knees then in our beds But the greatest power of all is in the publique prayer of the Congregation It is a good remembrance that Damascene gives Non quia gentes quaedam faciunt Damase à nobis linquenda We must not forbeare things onely therefore because the Gentiles or the Jewes used them The Gentiles particularly the Romans before they were Christians had a set Service a prescribed forme of Common prayer in their Temples and they had a particular Officer in that State who was Conditor precum that made their Collects and Prayers upon emergent occasions And Omni lustro every five yeares there was a review and an alteration in their Prayers and the state of things was presumed to have received so much change in that time as that it was fit to change some of their Prayers and Collects It must not therefore seeme strange that at the first there were certaine Collects appointed in our Church nor that others upon just occasion be added Gods blessing here in the Christian Church for to that we limit this consideration is that here He will answer us Therefore here we must ask Here our asking is our communion at Prayer And therefore they that undervalue or neglect the prayers of the Church have not that title to the benefit of the Sermon for though God doe speake in the Sermon yet hee answers that is applies himselfe by his Spirit onely to them who have prayed to him before If they have joyned in prayer they have their interest and shall feele their Consolation in all the promises of the Gospel shed upon the Congregation in the Sermon Have you asked by prayer Is there no Balme in Gilead He answers you by me Yes there is Blame Esay 53.5 Hee was wounded for your transgressions and with his stripes you are healed His Blood is your Balme his Sacrament is your Gilead Have you asked by prayer Is there no Smith in Israel 1 Sam. 13.18 No meanes to discharge my selfe of my fetters and chaines of my temporall and spirituall Encumbrances God answers thee Yes there is He bids you but looke about and you shall finde your selfe in Peter case The Angel of the Lord present A light shining Act. 12.7 and his chaines falling off All your manacles locked upon the hands All your chaines loaded upon the legges All your stripes numbred upon the back of Christ Jesus You have said in your prayers here Lord from whom all good counsails doe proceed And God answers you from hence The Angel of the great Counsell shall dwell with you and direct you You have said in your prayers Lighten our darknesse and God answers you by mee Esay 60.19 as he did his former people by Esay The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light and thy God thy glory Petition God at prayers and God shall answer all your petitions at the Sermon There we begin if wee will make profit of a Sermon at Prayers And thither wee returne againe if we have made profit by a Sermon in due time to prayers For Confes l. 1. c. 1. that is S. Augustines holy Circle in which hee walkes from Prayers to the Sermon and from the Sermon next day to Prayers againe Invocat te fides mea sayes he to God Here I stand or kneele in thy presence and in the power of faith to pray to thee But where had I this faith that makes my prayer acceptable Dedisti mihi per ministerium Praedicatoris I had it at the Sermon I had it saith he by the ministery of the Preacher but I had it therefore because thy Spirit prepared me by prayer before And I have it therefore that is to that end that I might returne faithfully to prayers againe As hee is The God of our salvation that is As he works in the Christian Church he answers us If we aske by prayer he applies the Sermon And He answers by terrible things in righteousnesse These two words Terribilia per Iustitiam By Terrible things in Righteousnesse Terribilia per Iustitiam are ordinarily by our Expositors taken to intimate a confidence that God imprints by the Ordinance of his Church that by this right use of Prayer and Preaching they shall alwayes be delivered from their enemies or from what may bee most terrible unto them In which exposition Righteousnesse signifies faithfulnesse and Terrible things signifie miraculous deliverances from and terrible Judgements upon his and our enemies Therefore is God called Deus fidelis The faithfull God for Deut. 7.9 that faithfulnesse implies a Covenant made before and there entred his Mercy that hee would make that Covenant and it implies also the assurance of the performance thereof for there enters his faithfulnesse So he is called Fidelis Creator We commit our soules to God 1 Pet. 4.19 as to a faithfull Creator He had an eternall gracious purpose upon us to create us and he hath faithfully accomplished it So Fidelis quia vocavit Hee is faithfull in having called us 1 Thes 5.24 That he had decreed and that he hath done So Christ is called Fidelis Pontifex Heb. 2.17 A mercifull and a faithfull high Priest Mercifull in offering himselfe for us faithfull in applying himselfe to us So Gods whole word is called so often so very often Testimonium fidele A faithfull witnesse an evidence that cannot deceive nor mislead us Psal 19.8 Therefore we may be sure that whatsoever God hath promised to his Church And whatsoever God hath done upon the enemies of his Church heretofore those very performances to them are promises to us of the like succours in the like distresses he will performe re-performe multiply performances thereof upon us Esay 25.1 Thy counsails of old are faithfulnesse and truth That is whatsoever thou didst decree was done even then in the infallibility of that Decree And when that Decree came to be executed and actually done in that very execution of that former Decree was enwrapped a new Decree That the same should be done over and over againe for us when soever wee needed it So that then casting up our account from the destruction of Babel by all the plagues of Egypt through the depopulation of Canaan and the massacre in Sennacheribs Army to the swallowing of the Invincible Navy upon our Seas and the bringing to light that Infernall that subterranean Treason in our Land we may argue and assume That the God of our salvation will answer us by terrible things by multiplying of miracles and ministring supplies to the confusion of his and
distempers both theirs that think That there are other things to be beleeved then are in the Scriptures and theirs that think That there are some things in the Scriptures which are not to bee beleeved For when our Saviour sayes Si quo minus If it were not so I would have told you he intends both this proposition I have told you all that is necessary to be beleeved and this also All that I have told you is necessary to bee beleeved so as I have told it you So that this excludes both that imaginary insufficiency of the Scriptures which some have ventured to averre for God shall never call Christian to account for any thing not notified in the Scriptures And it excludes also those imaginary Dolos bonos and fraudes pias which some have adventured to averre too That God should use holy Illusions holy deceits holy frauds and circumventions in his Scriptures and not intend in them that which he pretends by them This is his Rule Si quo minus If it were not so I would have told you If I have not told you so it is not so and if I have it is so as I have told you And in these two branches we shall determine the first part The Rule of Doctrines the Scripture The second part which is the particular Doctrine which Christ administers to his Disciples here will also derive and cleave it selfe into two branches For first wee shall inquire whether this proposition in our Text In my Fathers house are many Mansions give any ground or assistance or countenance to that pious opinion of a disparity and difference of degrees of Glory in the Saints in heaven And then if we finde the words of this Text to conduce nothing to that Doctrine wee shall consider the right use of the true and naturall the native and genuine the direct and literall and uncontrovertible sense of the words because in them Christ doth not say that in his Fathers house there are Divers Mansions divers for seat or lights or fashion or furniture but onely that there are Many and in that notion the Plurality the Multipliciry lies the Consolation First then 1 Part. for the first branch of our first part The generall Rule of Doctrines our Saviour Christ in these words involves an argument That hee hath told them all that was necessary Hee hath because the Scripture hath for all the Scriptures which were written before Christ and after Christ were written by one and the same Spirit his Spirit It might then make a good Probleme why they of the Romane Church not affording to the Scriptures that dignity which belongs to them are yet so vehement and make so hard shift to bring the books of other Authors into the ranke and nature and dignity of being Scriptures What matter is it whether their Maccabees or their Tobies be Scripture or no what get their Maccabees or their Tobies by being Scripture if the Scripture be not full enough or not plaine enough to bring me to salvation But since their intention and purpose their aime and their end is to under-value the Scriptures that thereby they may over-value their owne Traditions their way to that end may bee to put the name of Scriptures upon books of a lower value that so the unworthinesse of those additionall books may cast a diminution upon the Canonicall books themselves when they are made all one as in some forraigne States we have seene that when the Prince had a purpose to erect some new Order of Honour he would disgrace the old Orders by conferring and bestowing them upon unworthy and incapable persons But why doe we charge the Roman Church with this undervaluing of the Scriptures when as they pretend and that cannot well be denied them That they ascribe to all the books of Scripture this dignity That all that is in them is true It is true they doe so But this may be true of other Authors also and yet those Authors remaine prophane and secular Authors All may be true that Livy sayes and all that our Chronicles say may be true and yet our Chronicles nor Livy become Gospell for so much they themselves will confesse and acknowledge that all that our Church sayes is true that our Church affirmes no error and yet our Church must be a hereticall Church if any Church at all for all that Indeed it is but a faint but an illusory evidence or witnesse that pretends to cleare a point if though it speake nothing but truth yet it does not speake all the truth The Scriptures are our evidence for life or death Iohn 5.39 Search the Scriptures sayes Christ for in them ye thinke ye have eternall life Where ye thinke so is not ye thinke so but mistake the matter but ye thinke so is ye thinke so upon a well-grounded and rectified faith and assurance Now if this evidence the Scripture shall acquit me in one Article in my beliefe in God for I doe finde in the Scripture as much as they require of me to beleeve of the Father Son and Holy Ghost And then this evidence the Scripture shall condemne me in another Article The Catholique Church for I doe not finde so much in the Scripture as they require me to beleeve of their Catholique Church If the Scripture be sufficient to save me in one and not in the rest this is not onely a defective but an illusory evidence which though it speake truth yet does not speake all the truth Fratres sumus quare litigamus sayes S. Augustine Wee are all Brethren by one Father one Almighty God and one Mother one Catholique Church and then why do we goe to Law together At least why doe we not bring our Suits to an end Non intestatus mortuus est Pater sayes he Our Father is dead for Deut. 32.30 Is not he your Father that bought you is Moses question he that bought us with himselfe his blood his life is not dead intestate but hath left his Will and Testament and why should not that Testament decide the cause Silent Advocati Suspensus est populus Legant verba testamenti This that Father notes to be the end in other causes why not in this That the Counsell give over pleading That the people give over murmuring That the Judge cals for the words of the Will by that governs and according to that establishes his Judgement I would at last contentious men would leave wrangling and people to whom those things belonged not leave blowing of coales and that the words of the Will might try the cause since he that made the Will hath made it thus cleare Si quo minus If it were not thus I would have told you If there were more to be added then this or more clearnesse to bee added to this I would have told you In the fift of Matthew Christ puts a great many cases what others had told them Mat. 5. but he tels them that is not
may easily make Purgatory of a Dreame and of Apparitions and imaginary visions of sick or melancholike men It may then be of use to insist upon the survey of this building of theirs Divisio in these three considerations First to looke upon the foundation upon what they raise it and that is Prayer for the Dead and that is the Grand-mother Error And then upon the Building it selfe Purgatory it selfe and that is the Mother And lastly upon the out-houses or the furniture of this Building and that is Indulgences which are the children the issue of this mother and not such children as draw their parents dry but support and maintaine their parents for but for these Indulgences their prayer for the Dead and their Purgatory would starve And starve they must all if they can draw their maintenance from no other place but this Why are these men baptized for the dead First then for the first of these three parts The foundation the Grand-mother 1 Part. Oratio pro mortuis Prayer for the Dead The most tender Mother the most officious Nurse cannot have a more particular care how a new-borne child shall be washed or swathed or fed when they consider every drop of water every clout every pin that belongs to it then God had of his Infant Church when he delivered it over to her foster-fathers her nursing-fathers her god-fathers Moses and Aaron and bound them by his instructions in every particular as he prescribed them How many directions he gave what they should eate what they should weare how often they should wash what they should doe in every religious in every civill action and yet never never any mention any intimation never any approach any inclination never any light no nor any shadow never any colour any colourablenesse of any command of prayer for the Dead In all the Law no precept for it And this might imply a weaknesse in Gods government in so particular a law no precept of so important a duty In all the History no example And this might imply ill luck at least in so large a story no Precedent of an Office so necessary In all the Gospell no promise annexed to it And this doth not imply but manifest a conclusion against it an exclusion of it There being then no precept no precedent no promise for it how came it into use and practise amongst the Jewes After the Jewes had been a long time conversant amongst the Gentiles Iudaei and that as fresh water approaching the Sea contracts a saltish a brackish tast so the Jewes received impressions of the customes of the Gentiles who were ever naturally enclined to this mis-devotion and left-handed piety of praying for the Dead In the faintnesse and languishing of their Religion when they were much declined from the exact observation thereof then in the time of the Maccabees entred that one example which hath raised such a dust and blinded so many eyes We have mention of many funeralls before that and after that of many too even in the time when Christ was upon the earth and yet never mention of prayer for the dead but in this one place of this booke I doe not say in this one story for in this story reported by Iosephus there is no mention of it but in this one booke That is true that I have read that after Christs time the Rabbins laid hold upon it and brought it into custome And that is true which I have seene that the Jewes at this day continue it in practise For when one dies for some certaine time after appointed by them his sonne or some other neere in blood or alliance comes to the Altar and there saith and doth some thing in the behalfe of his dead father or grandfather respectively But all this they have drawne into practise from this one place from this booke from which booke the same Rabbins draw a justification of a mans killing himselfe because in this booke they find an example of that in Razis 2 Macc. 14.37 The Rabbins tooke no better a ground for their prayer for the dead then for selfe-homicide onely matter of fact out of a Historicall booke which themselves did not beleeve to be Canonicall But how took this hold of Christians That which wrought upon the Jewes Christiani prevailed upon the new Christians too for the greatest part of them by much being Gentiles for few amongst the Jewes in comparison were converted to the Christian religion they which came from Gentilisme retained still many impressions of such things as they had been formerly accustomed unto And as the Fathers of the Church then out of an indulgence to these new Convertits did suffer and tolerate the practise of many things which these Gentiles brought with them as indeed a great part of the ceremonies of the Christian Church are of that nature and of such an admission Things which rather then avert their new Convertits from comming to them by an utter abolishing of all parts of their former religion and worship of their gods those blessed Fathers thought fitter to retaine and turne to some good use then altogether to take them away As in other things so also in this prayer for the dead to which they as Gentiles had been formerly accustomed the Fathers did not oppose it with any peremptory earnestnesse with any vehement diligence partly because the thing it selfe argued and testified a good and tender and pious affection and though God doe not ground his Decrees upon any disposition in mans nature yet in the execution of his Decrees God as hee works in his Church loves to work upon a good natur'd man and partly also because this practise being but a practise onely and no Dogmaticall constitution might be as it was in the first practise thereof without shaking any foundation or wounding any Article of the Christian Religion And lastly that wee may speake truth with that holy boldnesse which belongs to the truth because it was a long time before the Fathers came to a cleere understanding of the state of the soule departed out of this life for though they never doubted of the certaine performance of Gods promises That all that die in him do rest in him yet where and how this rest was communicated to them admitted more clouds then they could at all times dispell and scatter some arising from Philosophers some from Heretiques some from ignorance some from heat of Disputation So then Tertul. at first it was a weed that grew wild in the open field amongst the Gentiles Then because it bore a pretty flower the testimony of a good nature it was transplanted into some Gardens and so became a private opinion or at least a practise amongst some Christians And then it spred it selfe so far as that Tertullian and he first of any takes knowledge of it as of a custome of the Church And truly this of Tertullian is very early within little more then two hundred