Noble and Pregnant place of Scripture John 8.58 Before Abraham was I am from being any Proof at all of Christ's Eternal Pre-existence to His Incarnation and so to give up one of the main Forts of the Christian Religion to the Socinians has yet been forced by the over-powering Evidence of this Chapter notwithstanding all his shifts too manifestly shewing what he would be at to express himself upon this Subject more agreeably to the sence of the Catholick Church than in many other places he had done And well indeed might he even for shame it self do so much when it is certain that he might have done a great deal more For such a Commanding Majesty is there in every Period almost of this Chapter that it has forced even Heathens and Atheists Persons who valued themselves not a little upon their Philosophy to submit to the Controlling truth of the Propositions here delivered and instead of contradicting or disputing to fall down and worship For the things here uttered were Mysteries kept hid from Ages and such as God had for Four Thousand Years together by all the Wise Arts and Methods of His Providence been preparing the World for before it could be fit or ripe to receive them and therefore a most Worthy subject they must needs have been for this beloved Apostle to impart to Mankind who having so long lain in the Bosom of Truth it Self received all things from that Great Original by more Intimate and Immediate Communications than any of the rest of the Apostles were honoured with In a Word He was of the Cabinet and therefore no wonder if He spake Oracles In the Text we have these two parts First Christ's Coming into the World in those Words He came to His Own Secondly Christ's entertainment being Come in those other Words His Own received Him not In the former of which there being an Account given us of one of the greatest and most Stupendious Actions that the World was ever yet Witness of there cannot I suppose be a Truer measure taken of the Nature of it than by a distinct Consideration of the several Circumstances belonging to it which are these First The Person Who came Secondly The Condition from which He came Thirdly The Persons to whom He came And Fourthly And Lastly the Time of His coming Of all which in their Order And 1. First for the Person who came It was the Second Person in the Glorious Trinity the Ever Blessed and Eternal Son of God Concerning Whom it is a miracle and a Kind of Paradox to our Reason Considering the Condition of his Person how He could be said to come at all for since all coming is motion or progression from a place in which we were to a place in which we were not before and since Infinity implies an actual comprehension of and a presence to all places it is hard to conceive how He Who was God could be said to come any whither Whose Infinity had made all Progression to or acquisition of a New place impossible But Christ who delighted to mingle every Mercy with miracle and wonder took a finite Nature into the Society and Union of His Person whereupon what was impossible to a Divine Nature was rendered very possible to a Divine Person which could rightfully and properly entitle it self to all the respective Actions and Properties of either Nature comprehended within its Personality So that being made Man He could do all things that Man could do except only Sin Every thing that was purely humane and had nothing of any Sinful deficiency or turpitude cleaving to it fell within the Verge and compass of His Actions But now was there ever any Wonder comparable to this to behold Divinity thus cloathed in Flesh the Creator of all things humbled not only to the Company but also to the Cognation of His Creatures It is as if we should imagine the whole World not only Represented upon but also contained in one of our little artificial globes or the body of the Sun invelop'd in a Cloud as big as a Man's hand all which would be lookt upon as astonishing Impossibilities and yet as short of the other as the greatest finite is of an infinite between which the Disparity is immeasurable For that God should thus in a manner Transform Himself and subdue and Master all His Glories to a possibility of humane apprehension and converse the best reason would have thought it such a thing as God could not do had it not seen it actually done It is as it were to cancel the Essential distances of things to remove the bounds of Nature to bring Heaven and Earth and what is more both ends of the Contradiction together And thereupon some who think it an Imputation upon their Reason to believe any thing but what they can demonstrate which is no thanks to them at all have invented several strange Hypotheses and Salvo's to clear up these things to their apprehensions As that the Divine Nature was never personally united to the humane but only passed through it in a kind of imaginary Phantastick way that is to speak plainly in some way or other which neither Scripture Sense nor Reason know any thing of And others have by one bold stroke cut off all such Relation of it to the Divine Nature and in much another sence than that of the Psalmist made Christ altogether such an one as themselves that is a meer Man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for Socinus would needs be as good a Man as his Saviour But this Opinion whatsoever ground it may have got in this latter Age of the Church yet no sooner was it vented and defended by Photinus Bishop of Sirmium but it was immediately crush'd and universally rejected by the Church So that although several other Heresies had their course and were but at length extinguished and not without some difficulty yet this like an indigested Meteor appeared and disappeared almost at the same time However Socinus beginning where Photinus had long before left off lick'd up his deserted forlorn opinion and lighting upon worse times has found much better success But is it true that Christ came into the World Then sure I am apt to think that this is a solid inference that He had an Existence and a Being before He came hither since every motion or passage from one place or condition to another supposes the thing or person so moving to have actually existed under both Terms to wit as well under that from which as that to which he passes But if Christ had nothing but an humane Nature which never existed till it was in the World how could that possibly be said to come into the World The fruit that grows upon a tree and so had the first moment of its existence there cannot with any Propriety or truth of speech be said to have come to that tree since that must suppose it to have been somewhere else before I am far from building so great and so
TWELVE SERMONS UPON Several Subjects AND Occasions By ROBERT SOVTH D.D. The Third Volume Never before Printed LONDON Printed by Tho. Warren for Thomas Bennet at the Half-Moon in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1698. To the Most Reverend Father in GOD NARCISSUS Lord Archbishop of DVBLIN His Grace My Lord THE Particular Acquaintance and Friendship which your Grace was pleased to Honour me with while you lived at Oxford have emboldened me 〈◊〉 address my self to your Lordship at this great distance of Place and greater of Condition in hopes that by your Grace's Advancement to so high a Station in the Church That which before was onely Friendship may now Improve into Patronage and Protection And yet as Ambitious as I am of so ennobling a Patronage and as singular a Value as I have for your Grace's Favour I must needs own that the Design of my present Application to your Grace is not so much to Crave a Favour as to pay a Debt and in answer to the many obligations I lie under to Congratulate your Grace that height of Dignity and Greatness to which Providence has so happily raised you and your own Worth so justly entituled you and so without your seeking and much less sneaking for it made you to your great Honour to be sought for by it There being as from my heart I believe few Examples in the World of so much Merit and so much Modesty in Conjunction It is indeed no small Infelicity to the Church of England to have parted with so Extraordinary a Member but none at all I conceive to your Grace that you are placed where you are Especially if your Grace shall Consider the present estate of our Church here as through the Arts of her Enemies she stands divided against Her self and that only by Two or Three Odd New Terms of Distinction maliciously invented and Studiously made use of for that base Purpose such a Sovereign or at least such a peculiar method have some found out for preserving our Church if the best way to preserve a Body be by Cutting it a sunder For those of the Ancienter Members of Her Communion who have all along owned and contended for a strict Conformity to Her Rules and Sanctions as the surest Course to establish Her have been of late represented or rather Reprobà ted under the Inodiateing Character of High Churchmen and thereby stand marked out for all the discouragement that Spight and Power together can pas◠upon them while those of the Contrary Way and Principle are Distinguished or rather Sanctifyed by the fashionable Endearing Name of Low Churchmen not from their affecting we may be sure a Lower Condition in the Church than others since none lie so low but they can look as high but from the Low Condition which the Authors of this Distinction would fain bring the Church it self into A Work in which they have made no small Progress already And thus by these Vngenerous as well as Vnconscionable Practices a Fatal Rent and Division is made amongst us and being so I think those of the Concision who made it would do well to Consider whether that which our Saviour assures us will destroy a Kingdom be the likeliest way to settle and support a Church But I question not but these Dividers will very shortly receive Thanks from the Papists for the Good Services they have done them and in the mean time they may be sure of their Scoffs Never certainly were the Fundamental Articles of our Faith so boldly impugned nor the Honour of our Church so fouly blemished as they have been of late Years while the Socinians have had their full Vncontrolled Fling at Both and the Tritheists have injured and exposed them more by pretending to defend them against the Socinians than the Socinians themselves did or could do by opposing them For surely it would be thought a very odd way of ridding a Man of the Plague by running Him through with a Sword or of Curing Him of a Lethargy by casting Him into a Calenture a Disease of a Contrary Nature indeed but no less Fatal to the Patient who equally dies whether his Sickness or his Physick the malignity of his Distemper or the method of his Cure dispatches him And in like manner must it fare with a Church which feeling it self struck with the Poyson of Socinianism flies to Tritheism for an Antidote But at length happily steps in the Royal Authority to the Church's Relief with several Healing Injunctions in its Hand for the Composing and Ending the Disputes about the Trinity then on foot and those indeed so wisely framed so seasonably timed and by the King at least so graciously intended that they must in all Likelihood without any Other Irenicon have restored Peace to the Church had it not been for the Importunity and Partiality of some who having by the Awe of these Injunctions endeavoured to silence the opposite Party which by their Arguments they could not do and withal looking upon themselves as Privileged Persons and so above those Ordinances which others were to be subject to Resolved not to be silent themselves but renewing the Contest partly by throwing Muggleton and Rigaltius with some Other foul stuff in their Adversaries faces and partly by a shameless Reprinting without the least Reinforcing the same exploded Tritheistick Notions again and again they quite broke through the Royal Prohibitions and soon after began to take as great a Liberty in venting their Innovations and Invectives as ever they had done before so that He who shall Impartially Consider the Course taken by these Men with reference to those engaged on the other side of this Controversy about the Trinity will find that their whole Proceeding in it resembles nothing so much as a Thief 's binding the hands of an honest Man with a Cord much fitter for his own Neck But blessed be God matters stand not so with you in Ireland the Climate there being not more Impatient of Poysonous Animals than the Church of Poysonous Opinions An Vniversal Concurrent Orthodoxy shining all over it from the superiour Clergy who preside to the Inferiour placed under them so that we never hear from thence of any Presbyter and much less of any Dean who dares Innovate upon the Faith Received and least of all should such a Wretch chance to start up amongst you can I hear of any Bishop likely to debase his Style and Character so low as either to Defend the Man or Colour over his Opinions Nor lastly do we find that in the Iudgment of the Clergy there a Man'◠having wrote against one sort of Heresy or Heterodoxy ought to Iustifie or Excuse Him in Writing for Another and much less for a Worse The Truth is such Things as these make the Case with us here in England Come too near that of Poland about an Hundred and Twenty or Thirty Years ago Where the Doctrine of Three distinct infinite Spirits began and led the Dance and was quickly followed as the Design
design but this certainly and effectually does as being not only the Wisdom but Secondly The Power of God too the first Infallible the other Irresistible In a word the Wisdom here spoken of is a Messenger which always goes as far as sent an Instrument which never fails or lurches the Great Agent who imploys it either in Reaching the End He directs it to or in Finishing the Work He intends it for So that in short there could not be an higher and a nobler Elogy to express the Gospel by than by representing it to us as the Wisdom of God For as Wisdom in general is the Noblest and most Sublime Perfection of an Intellectual Nature and particularly in God Himself is the Leading Ruling Attribute prescribing to all the rest so a Commendation drawn from thence must needs be the most glorious that can possibly pass upon any Action or Design proceeding from such an One. And the Apostle seems here most peculiarly to have directed this Encomium of the Gopel as a Defiance to the Philosophers of his Time the Flustring Vain glorious Greeks who pretended so much to magnify and even Adore the Wisdom they professed and with great modesty no doubt confin'd wholly to themselves A Wisdom I think little to be envyed them being such as none who had it could be the better nor consequently the wiser for And thus much for the first Thing contained in the Words and proposed from them namely That the Gospel is the Wisdom of God I proceed now to the Second which we shall chiefly insist upon and that is concerning the Mysteriousness of it as That it is the Wisdom of God in a Mystery For the prosecution of which we shall enquire into and endeavour to give some Account of the Reasons so far as we may presume to judge of them why God should deliver to Mankind a Religion so full of Mysteries as the Christian Religion certainly is and was ever accounted to be Now the Reasons of this in general I conceive may be stated upon these two Grounds First The Nature and Quality of the Things treated of in the Christian Religion And Secondly The Ends to which all Religion both as to the General and Particular Nature of it is designed with relation to the Influence which it ought to have upon the minds of Men. And first of all For the Nature of the Things themselves which are the Subject matter of the Christian Religion there are in them these three Qualifications or Properties which do and must of Necessity render them Mysterious Obscure and of difficult Apprehension As First Their surpassing Greatness and Inequality to the mind of Man The Christian Religion as to a great part of it is but a kind of Comment upon the Divine Nature an Instrument to convey right Conceptions of God into the Soul of Man so far as it is capable of receiving them But now God we know is an Infinite Being without any Bounds or Limitations of His Essence Wonderful in His Actings Inconceivable in His Purposes and Inexpressible in His Attributes which yet as Great as they are if severally taken give us but an Incomplete Representation of Him He is another World in Himself too high for our Speculations and too great for our Descriptions For how can such Vast and Mighty things be crowded into a little finite Understanding Heaven I confess enters into us as we must into That by a very narrow Passage But how shall the King of Glory whom the Heavens themselves cannot contain enter in by these Doors by a Weak Imagination a slender Notion and a contracted Intellect How shall these poor short faculties measure the Lengths of His Eternity the Breadth and Expansions of His Immensity the Heights of His Prescience and the Depths of His Decrees and last of all that Unutterable Incomprehensible Mystery of Two Natures United into one Person and again of one and the same Nature diffused into a Triple Personality All which being some of the Prime Fundamental matters treated of in our Religion how can it be otherwise than a Systeme of Mysteries and a knot of dark inexplicable Propositions Since it exhibits to us such Things as the very Condition of our Nature renders us Uncapable of clearly understanding The Socinians indeed who would obtrude upon the World and of late more daringly than ever a New Christianity of their own Inventing will admit of nothing Mysterious in this Religion or such as the Natural Reason of Man cannot have a clear and Comprehensive perception of and this not only in defiance of the express Words of Scripture so frequently and fully affirming the contrary but also of the constant universal sense of all Antiquity Unanimously confessing an Incomprehensibility in many of the Articles of the Christian Faith So that these bold Persons stand alone by themselves upon a new bottom and an Upstart Principle not much above an Hundred years old spitting upon all Antiquity before them and as some have well observed of them who have wrote against them are the only Sect of Men in the World who ever pretended to set up or own a Religion without either a Mystery or a Sacrifice belonging to it For as we have shewn that they deny the first so they equally explode the latter by denying Christ to be properly a Priest or His Death to have been a Propitiatory Oblation for the Sins of the World And now are not these blessed New Lights think we fit to be encouraged courted and have Panegyricks made upon their Wonderful Abilities forsooth Whilst they on the other side are imploying the utmost of those abilities such as they are in Blaspheming our Saviour and Overturning our Religion But this is their hour and the Power of Darkness For it is a Truth too too manifest to be denied That there have been more Innovations upon and Blasphemies against the Chief Articles of our Faith published in this Kingdom and that after a more Audacious and Scandalous manner within these several years last past than have been known here for some Centuries of years before even those times of Confusion both in Church and State betwixt Forty One and Sixty not excepted And what this may produce and end in God only at present knows and I wish the whole Nation may not at length feel Secondly A second Qualification of the Chief Things treated of in our Religion and which must needs render them Mysterious is their Spirituality and Abstraction from all Sensible and Corporeal Matter Of which sort of Things it is impossible for the Understanding of Man to form to it self an exact Idea or Representation So that when we hear or read that God is a Spirit and that Angels and the Souls of Men are Spirits our Apprehensions are utterly at a loss how to frame any Notion or Resemblance of them but are put to float and wander in an endless Maze of Guesses and Conjectures and know not certainly what to fix upon For in this Case
Off-spring of his Body as of that of his Soul His Notions are his Darlings So that neither Children nor Self are half so Dear to him as the Only begotten of his Mind And therefore in the Dispensations of Religion God will have this only Begotten this Best-beloved this Isaac of our Souls above all other Offerings that a Man can bring Him to be sacrificed and given up to Him Thirdly God in great Wisdom has been pleased to put a Mysteriousness into the Greatest Articles of our Religion thereby to engage us in a closer and more diligent Search into them He would have them the Objects of our Study and for that Purpose has render'd them hard and difficult For no Man studies Things plain and Evident and such as by their Native clearness do even prevent our Search and of their own accord offer themselves to our Understandings The Foundation of all enquiry is the obscurity as well as Worth of the Thing enquired after And God has thought good to make the Constitution and Complexion of our Religion such as may fit it to be our Business and our Task to require and take up all our Intellectual strengths and in a word to try the force of our Best our Noblest and most Active Faculties For if it were not so then surely Humane Literature could no ways promote the Study of Divinity nor could skill in the Liberal Arts and Sciences be any step to raise us to those higher Speculations But so the Experience of the World maugre all Fanatick Pretences all Naked Truths and Naked Gospels or rather shameful Nakedness instead of either Truth or Gospel has ever yet found it to be For still the Schools are and must be the standing Nurseries of the Church And all the Cultivation and Refinement they can bestow upon the best Wits in the use of the most unwearied industry are but a means to facilitate their advance higher and to let them in more easily at the Strait Gate of those more hidden and involved Propositions which Christianity would employ and exercise the mind of Man with For suppose that we could grasp in the whole Compass of Nature as to all the Particulars and Varieties of Being and Motion yet we should find it a Vast if not an Impossible Leap from thence to ascend to the full Comprehension of any one of God's Attributes and much more from thence to the Mysterious Oeconomy of the Divine Persons and lastly to the astonishing Work of the Worlds Redemption by the bloud of the Son of God himself condescending to be a Man that He might die for us All which were Things hidden from the Wise and Prudent in spight of all their Wisdom and Prudence as being Heights above the Reach and Depths beyond the Fathom of any Mortal Intellect We are Commanded by Christ to Search the Scriptures as the Great Repository of all the Truths and Mysteries of our Religion and whosoever shall apply himself to a through Performance of this high Command shall find Difficulty and Abstruseness enough in the Things Searched into to perpetuate his Search For they are a rich Mine which the greatest Wit and Diligence may dig in for ever and still find new matter to entertain the busiest Contemplation with even to the utmost Period of the most Extended life For no Man can out-live the Reasons of Enquiry so long as he carries any thing of Ignorance about him And that every Man must and shall do while he is in this State of Mortality For he who himself is but a part of Nature shall never compass or comprehend it all Truth we are told dwells Low and in a Bottom and the most Valued things of the Creation are conceal'd and hidden by the Great Creator of them from the common View of the World Gold and Diamonds with the most Precious Stones and Metals lie couched and covered in the Bowels of the Earth the very Condition of their Being giving them their Burial too So that Violence must be done to Nature before she will produce and bring them forth And then as for what concerns the mind of Man God has in His Wise Providence cast things so as to make the business of Men in this World Improvement that so the very Work of their condition may still remind them of the Imperfection of it For surely he who is still pressing forward has not yet obtain'd the Prize Nor has he who is only Growing in Knowledge yet arrived to the full stature of it Growth is Progress and all Progress designs and tends to the Acquisition of something which the Growing Person is not yet Possessed of Fourthly The fourth and Last Reason which I shall alledge of the Mysterious Dispensation of the Gospel here is That the full Entire knowledge of it may be one Principal Part of our Felicity and Blessedness hereafter All those Heights and Depths which we now stand so much amazed at and which so confound and baffle the subtlest and most Piercing Apprehension shall then be made Clear Open and Familiar to us God shall then display the Hidden Glories of His Nature and withal Fortify the Eye of the Soul so that it shall be able to behold and take them in so far as the Capacities of an humane Intellect shall enable it to do We shall then see the Mysteries of the Trinity and of the Incarnation of Christ and of the Resurrection of the Dead unriddled and made plain to us all the Knots of God's Deâ—rees and Providence untyed and made fit for our Vnderstanding as well as our Admiration We shall then be transported with a Nobler kind of Wonder not the Effect of Ignorance but the Product of a Clearer and more Advanced Knowledge We shall Admire and Adore the Works and Attributes of the Great God because we shall see the Glorious Excellency of the one and the Admirable Contrivances of the Other made evident to our very Reason So as to inform and satisfy that which before they could only astonish and amaze The Happiness of Heaven shall be an Happiness of Vision and of Knowledge and we shall there pass from the Darkness of our Native Ignorance from the Dusk and Twilight of our former Notions into the Broad Light of an Everlasting Day A Day which shall leave nothing Undiscovered to us which can be fit for us to know And therefore the Apostle comparing our Present with our Future Condition in respect of those different measures of Knowledge allotted to each of them 1 Cor. 13.12 tells us That here we see but darkly and in a glass and a glass we know often gives us a false but always a Faint representation of the Object but then saies he shall we see God face to face And again Here we know but in Part but there we shall know as we are known and that which is Perfect being come then that which is in Part shall be done away Reason being then unclogged from the Body shall have its full Flight
be Impossible This I say is a meer Fallacy and a Wretched Inconsequence and yet nothing occurs more commonly and that as a Principle taken for granted in the late Writings of some Heterodox Pert Unwary Men and particularly it is the main hinge upon which all the Socinian Arguments against the Mysteries of our Religion turn and depend but withal so extreamly remote is it from all Truth that there is not the least shew or shadow of Reason assignable for it but upon this one Supposition namely That the Reason or Mind of Man is capable of Comprehending or throughly Vnderstanding whatsoever it is possible for an Infinite Divine Power to do This I say must be supposed for no other Foundation can support the Truth of this Proposition to wit That whatsoever is humanly not Intelligible is and ought to be reckoned upon the same account also Impossible But then every one must needs see and explode the horrible falseness of the forementioned Supposition upon which alone this Assertion is built and consequently this Assertion it self must needs be altogether as false For who can comprehend or throughly understand how the Soul is united to and how it acts by and upon the Body Who can comprehend or give a full account how Sensation is performed Or who can lay open to us the whole Mechanism of Motion in all the Springs and Wheels of it Nay who can resolve and clear off all the Difficulties about the Composition of a continued Quantity as whether it is Compounded of Parts Divisible or Indivisible Both of which are attended with insuperable Objections And yet all these things are not only Possible but also Actually Existent in Nature From all which therefore and from a thousand more such Instances which might easily be produced I conclude That for any one to deny or reject the Mysteries of our Religion as Impossible because of the Incomprehensibleness of them is upon all true Principles both of Divinity and Philosophy utterly Inconsequent and Irrational Thirdly In the Third and last place we learn also from what has been discoursed the great Vanity and Extravagant Presumption of such as pretend to clear up all Mysteries and determine all Controversies in Religion The Attempts of which sort of Men I can liken to nothing so properly as to those Pretences to Infallible Cures which we daily see posted up in every corner of the Streets and I think it is great pity but that both these sort of Pretences were Posted up together For I know no Universal Infallible Remedy which certainly Cures or rather carries off all Diseases and puts an end to all Disputes but Death Which yet for all that is a Remedy not much in Request Quacks and Mountebanks are doubtless a very dangerous sort of Men in Physick but much more so in Divinity They are both of them always very large in Pretence and Promise but short in Performance and generally Fatal in their Practice For there are several Depths and Difficulties as I noted before both in Philosophy and Divinity which Men of Parts and solid Learning after all their Study find they cannot come to the bottom of but are forced to give them over as Things Unresolveable and will by no means be brought to Pronounce dogmatically on either side of the Question Amongst which said Difficulties perhaps there is hardly a greater and more undecideable Problem in Natural Theology and which has not only Exercised but even Crucifyed the greatest Wits of all Ages than the Reconciling of the Immutable Certainty of God's fore-knowledge with the Freedom and Contingency of all Humane Acts both Good and Evil so fore-known by Him Both parts of which Problem are certainly true but how to explain and make out the Accord between them without overthrowing one of them has hitherto exceeded the force of Man's Reason And therefore Socinus very roundly or rather indeed very profanely denies any such Prescience of future Contingents to be in God at all But as profane as he was in thus cutting asunder this knot others have been as ridiculous in pretending to untie it For do not some in their Discourses about the Diâ—â—ne Attributes and Decrees promise the World such a clear account such an open explicite Scheme of these great Things as should make them plain and evident even to the meanest Capacities And the Truth is if to any Capacities at all it must be to the meanest for to those of an higher pitch and a larger compass these Things neither are nor will nor ever can be made evident And if such Persons could but obtain of Heaven a continuance of Life till they made good what they so confidently undertake they would be in a sure way to out-live not only Methusalah but even the World it self But then in come some other Vndertakers and promise us the same or greater Wonders in Christian Theology offering by some new whimsical explications of their own to make the deepest Mysteries of our Christian Faith as plain easy and intelligible forsooth as that two and two make four that is in other words they will represent and render them such Mysteries as shall have nothing at all Mystical in them And now is not this think we a most profound invention and much like the discovery of some New-found-land some O Brazile in Divinity with so much absurd confidence do some Discourse or rather Romance upon the most Mysterious Points of the Christian Faith that any Man of Sense and Sobriety would be apt to think such Persons not only beside their Subject but beside themselves too And the like censure we may justly pass upon all other such idle Pretenders the true Character of which sort of Men is That he who thinks and says he can understand all Mysteries and resolve all Controversies undeniably shews that he really understands none In the mean time we may here observe the true way by which these Great and Adorable Mysteries of our Religion come first to be Ridiculed and Blasphemed and at length totally laid aside by some and that is by their being first innovated upon and new modelled by the bold senseless and absurd Explications of others For first of all such Innovators break down those sacred Mounds which Antiquity had placed about these Articles and then Hereticks and Blasphemers rush in upon them trample them under foot and quite throw them out of our Creed This course we have seen taken amongst us and the Church God bless it and those who are over it has been hitherto profoundly silent at it but how long God whose Honour is most concerned will be so too none can tell For if some Novellists may put what sense they please upon the Writings of Moses and others do the like with the Articles of the Christian Church also and the greatest encouragement attend both I cannot see unless some extraordinary Providence prevent it but that both these Religions are in a direct way to be run down amongst us and that in a
his being the Son of David and King of the Jews So that unless this be evinced the whole Foundation of Christianity must totter and fall as being a cheat and an Imposture upon the World And therefore let us undertake to clear this great important Truth and to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth was the true seed of David and Rightful King of the Iews His Pedigree is drawn down by two of the Evangelists by St. Matth. in his 1 st Chapter and by St. Luke in his 3 d. from whence our adversaries oppose us with these two great difficulties First That these two Evangelists disagree in deducing of His Pedigree Secondly That supposing they were proved to agree yet both of their Pedigrees terminate in Ioseph and therefore belong not to Iesus who was not indeed the Son of Ioseph but of Mary In answer to which we are to observe that concerning this whole Matter there are two Opinions First That both in St. Matth. and St. Luke only the Pedigree of Ioseph is recounted in the first his Natural in the other his Legal For it being a known Custom among the Jews that a Man dying without issue his Brother should Marry his Widow and raise up seed to him Eli hereupon dying without any Child Iacob took his Wife and of her begat Ioseph who by this means was Naturally the Son of Iacob as St. Matth. deduces it and Legally or reputedly the Son of Eli as St. Luke And then to make Iacob and Eli Brothers who are there set down in different lines it is said that Matthan of the line of Solomon and Melchi of the line of Nathan successively Married the same Woman Estha by Name of whom Matthan begat Iacob and Melchi begat Eli Whereupon Iacob and Eli being Brothers by the Mother though of different Fathers Eli dying without issue Iacob was obliged by Law to Marry his Relict and so to raise up seed to his Brother Eli. Now all this is grounded upon an Antient story of one Iulius Africanus recorded by Eusebius in his first Book and seventh Chapter And of late Faustus Socinus who having denied Christ's Divine Nature was resolved to cut Him short both Root and Branch and to deny His Humane too at least as to the most Considerable circumstance of it which concerned the credit of His being the true Messias he I say catches at this forlorn story and ascribes much to it in that Book of his called his Lectiones Sacrae and though generally a profest despiser of Antiquity yet when he thinks it may make any thing for his purpose he can catch at every fabulous scrap of it and thereupon vouches this as Authentick even for its Antiquity From which Opinion it follows that Christ was only the Reputed Son of David that is to say because His Mother was Married to one who was really of David's Line And this the whole Sect of Socinus affirms to be sufficient to denominate and make Christ the Son of David and accordingly allow Him so to be upon no other or nearer Account But of the Authors and Assertors of this Opinion we may well demand that admitting Christ might upon this account be called the Son of David in the large and loose way of that Denomination yet how could He for this only reason be call'd the seed of David Nay and what is yet more full and express be said to be made of the seed of David as it is in Rom. 1.3 And further to be the Fruit of his loins As it is in Acts 2.30 I say with what propriety or accord with the common use of speaking could one Man be said to be another Man's seed and the fruit of his loins when he had no other Relation to him in the World than that his Mother only Married with a Person who stood so related to that Other I believe the Jews would desire no greater a Concession from us than this whereby to conclude and argue Iesus of Nazareth not to have been the true Messiah Let us therefore leave this Opinion to it self as destructive to the main foundation of our Religion and fit to be owned by none but the mortal Enemies of Christ and Christianity the Iews and the Socinians and so pass to the Second Opinion which is that both Ioseph and Mary came from David by true and real Descent and that as Ioseph's Genealogy and Pedigree is set down in that line which St. Matth. gives an account of so the Virgin Mary's lineage is recited in that which is recorded by St. Luke which Opinion as it has been generally received by Divines of the greatest note and best answers those difficulties and objections which the other is beset with so I shall endeavour fully to clear and set it down in these following Propositions I. First The first Proposition is this That the designs of the two Evangelists in their respective Deductions of our Saviour's Pedigree are very different For St. Matthew intends only to set down His Political or Royal Pedigree by which he had right to the Crown of the Jews but St. Luke shews his Natural Descent through the several successions of those from whom He took Flesh and Blood And that this is so besides that natural Reason taken from the impossibility of one and the same Person 's having two several Fathers as St. Matth. and St. Luke seem at first sight to import We have these farther Arguments for the said Assertion as First that St. Matth. begins his reckoning only from Abraham to whom the first promise of the Kingdom was made Gen. 17.6 But St. Luke runs his line up to Adam the first Head and Fountain of Humane Nature which fairly shews that one deduced only His Title to the Crown the other the Natural Descent of his Humanity And then in the Second Place that St. Matthew used the word begat only in a Political sence is further clear from this That he applies it to him who had no Child even to Ieconiah of whom it is expressly said in Ieremiah 22.33 that God wrote him Childless Whereupon being deposed by the King of Babylon Zedekiah his Uncle was made King and afterwards upon the removal of him also for his Rebellion there remaining no more of the Line of Solomon Sulatheil being next of Kin was declared King of the Jews Which Salathiel upon that account is said to be begot by Ieconiah in St. Matthew not because he was naturally his Son but Legally and Politically so as succeeding him in the Inheritance of the Crown For though in 1 Chron. 3. 17. there is mention of Assir and of Salathiel as it were of two Sons of Ieconiah yet in truth Assir there is not the proper name of a Person nor of any Son of Ieconiah but is only an Appellative of Ieconiah Himself signifying one under Captivity or in Bonds as Ieconiah then was in Babylon when Salathiel was declared King And that Salathiel is not there set down as his Son in a Natural
inward Man the Labours and Strivings of his restless Thoughts which cast his Body into that Prodigious Sweat For though it was the Flesh that Sweated it was the Spirit that took the Pains It was that which was then treading the Wine-Press of God's Wrath alone till it made him Red in his Apparel and dyed all his Garments with Blood What thought can reach or Tongue express what our Saviour then felt within his own Breast The Image of all the Sins of the World for which he was to suffer then appeared clear and lively and express to his Mind All the vile and horrid circumstances of them stood as it were particularly ranged before his Eyes in all their dismal Colours He saw how much the Honour of the Great God was abused by them and how many millions of Poor Souls they must inevitably have cast under the Pressures of a Wrath Infinite and Intolerable should he not have turn'd the Blow upon himself The horrour of which then fill'd and amazed his vast Apprehensive Soul and those Apprehensions could not but affect his tender Heart then brimful of the highest Zeal for God's Glory and the most relenting Compassion for the Souls of Men till it fermented and boyled over with Transport and Agony and even forced its way through all his Body in those strange Ebullitions of Blood not to be parallel'd by the sufferings of any Person recorded in any History whatsoever It was this which drew those doleful words from him My Soul is exceeding sorrowful c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It was surrounded and as it were besieged with an Army of Sorrows And believe it his Soul was too big and of too strong a make to bend under an ordinary Sorrow It was not any of those little things which make us put the Finger in the Eye as loss of Estate Friends Preferment Interest and the like things too mean to raise a tumult in the Breast of a resolved Stoick and much less in His who both placed and preached Happiness not only in the want but in the very defyance of them And now after this his Agony in the Garden I need not much insist upon the Wounds given his Reputation by the Sword of a Blaspheming Tongue the sharpest of all others and which like a Poysoned Dagger hurting both with Edge and Venom too at the same time both makes a Wound and prevents its Cure Even a guilty Person feels the sting of a malicious Report and if so much more must one who is innocent and yet infinitely more must He who was not only Innocent but Innocence it self Reputation is tender and for it to be blown upon is to be tainted like a Glass the clearer and finer it is the more it suffers by the least Breath And therefore for him who came to destroy the Kingdom of Satan to be traduced as a Partner with and an Agent for Beelzebub For Him whose greatest Repasts were Prayer and abstinence and the most rigid severities upon Himself to be taxed as a Wine-bibber and a Good-fellow For Him who came into the World both in Life and Death to bear Witness to the Truth to suffer as an Impostor and a Deceiver what could be more grievous and afflicting to a great Innocence joyned with as great an Apprehension However his Church gains this great Advantage of Comfort by it that the worst of sufferings comes sanctified to our Hands by the Person of our grand Example Who was reviled and slandered and tossed upon the Tongues of Men before us A greater Martyrdom questionless than to be cast as the Primitive Christians were to the Mouths of Lyons which are tender and merciful compared to the Mouths of Men whether we look upon that bitter Spirit which acted in those Jews or in some Christians now adays worse than Jews Men who seem to have out-done all before them in the Arts of a more refined Malice and improved Calumny Qualities lately sprung up out of the stock of a spreading Atheism and a domineering reigning Sensuality Sins now made National and Authentick and so much both Iudgment and Mercy-proof that it is well if we can be cured without being cut off But to return to the business before us We have now seen the first thing setting forth the greatness of this suffering to wit the Latitude and Extent of it as that it seized both Body and Soul and every Part and Faculty of both Second The next thing declaring its greatness was the intenseness and sharpness of it We have seen already how far it went we are now to consider how deep It fell not on him like a dew or mist which only wets the surface of the Ground but like a pouring soaking Rain which descends into the very Bowels of it There was pain enough in every single part to have been spread in lesser Proportions over the whole Man Christ suffered only the exquisiteness and heights of pain without any of those mitigations which God is pleased to temper and allay it with as it befalls other Men like a Man who drinks only the Spirits of a Liquor separated and extracted from the dull unactive Body of the Liquor it self All the force and activity the stings and fierceness of that troublesome thing were as it were drain'd and distill'd and abridged into that Cup which Christ drank off There was something sharper than Vinegar and bitterer than Gall which that draught was prepared and made up with We cannot indeed say that the sufferings of Christ were long in duration for to be violent and lasting too is above the methods or measures of Nature But he who lived at that rate that he might be said to live an Age every hour was able to suffer so too and to comprize the greatest torments in the shortest space which yet by their shortness lost nothing of their Force and Keenness as a Pen-Knife is as sharp as a Spear though not so long That which promotes and adds to the Impressions of pain is the delicate and exact Crasis and Constitution of the Part or Faculty aggrieved And there is no doubt but the very Fabrick and Complexion of our Saviour's Body was a Master-piece of Nature a thing absolutely and exactly framed and of that fineness as to have the quickest and most sensible touches of every Object and withal to have these advanced by the communion of his admirably made Body with his high and vigorous Intellectuals All which made him drink in Pain more deeply feel every lash every wound with so much a closer and a more affecting sense For it is not to be doubted but a dull Fellow can endure the Paroxysms of a Fever or the Torments of the Gout or Stone much better than a Man of a quick mind and an exalted Fancy because in one Pain beats upon a Rock or an Anvil in the other it prints it self upon wax One is even born with a kind of Lethargy and stupefaction into the World armed with an Iron
to state and settle it upon Better For the doing of which the most effectual ways I conceive may be these Two 1. By Revelation 2. By Exemplification First As to the first whereof it must needs be either by an Immediate Declaration of this great Truth not discoverable by Reason by a Voice from Heaven or by God's Inspiring some certain Select Persons with the Knowledge of it and afterwards enabling them to Attest it to the World by Miracles And as this is undoubtedly sufficient in it self for such a Purpose so Providence has not been Wanting partly by Revelation and partly by Tradition thereupon to keep alive amongst Men some Perswasion at least of this Important Truth all along as appears even from those fabulous accounts and stories which the Heathen World still Cloathed or rather Corrupted it with Nevertheless such has been the Prevalence of Humane Corruption and Infidelity as in a great Degree to frustrate all the Impressions that bare Revelation or Tradition could make upon Men's Minds while they chiefly governed their Belief by the Observation of their Senses which from the Daily occurring Instances of Mortality shew them that as the Tree fell so it lay and that no Body was ever seen by them to return from the Mansions of the Dead but that for any thing they could find to the contrary all passed into Dust and Rottenness and Perpetual Oblivion Secondly The other way therefore of Convincing the World of this momentous Truth in comparison of which all Science and Philosophy are but Trifles must be by Exemplification That is to say by giving the World an Instance or Example of it in some Person or Persons who having been confessedly Dead should revive and return to Life again And this one would think should be as full and Unexceptionable a Proof that there may be a Resurrection of Men to a future Estate as could be desired Nothing striking the Mind of Man so powerfully as Instances and Examples which make a Truth not only Intelligible but even Palpable sliding it into the Understanding through the Windows of Sense and by the most familiar as well as most unquestionable perceptions of the Eye And accordingly this Course God thought fit to take in the Resurrection of Christ by which he Condescended to give the World the greatest satisfaction that Infidelity it self could rationally insist upon Howbeit notwithstanding so plain an Address both to Men's Reason and Sense too neither has this Course proved so successful for Convincing of the World of a Resurrection from the Dead and a future Estate consequent thereupon but that Unbelief has been still putting in its objections against it For it is not I confess the Interest of such as Live ill in this World to believe that there shall be another or that they shall be sensible of any Thing after Death has once done its Work upon them and therefore let Truth and Scripture and even Sense it self say what they will for a Resurrection Men for ought appears will for ever square their Belief to their Desires and their Desires to their Corruptions so that as we find it in the 16 th of Luke and last v. though they should even see one rise from the Dead they would hardly be perswaded of their own Resurrection Such a sad and deplorable hardness of Heart have Men Sinned themselves into that nothing shall convince them but what first pleases them be it never so much a Delusion Nevertheless the most Wise and Just God is not so to be mocked who knows that by Raising Christ from the Dead he has done all that rationally can or ought to be done for the Convincing of Mankind that there shall be a Resurrection whether they will be Convinced by it or no. But now if after all it should be asked How is Christ's Resurrection a Proof that the rest of Mankind shall rise from the Dead too I answer That considered indeed as a bare Instance or Example it proves no more than that there may be such a Thing since the same Infinite Power which effected the One may as well effect the Other but then if we consider it as an Argument and a Confirmation of that Doctrine whereof the Assertion of a General Resurrection makes a principal part I affirm that so taken it does not only prove that such a Thing may be but also That it actually shall be and that as certainly as it is Impossible for the Divine Power to set its seal to a Lye by ratifying an Imposture with such a Miracle And thus as Christ's Resurrection irrefragably proves the Resurrection of the rest of Mankind so it no less proves Christ himself to have been the Messiah for that having all along affirmed himself to be so he made good the Truth of what he had so affirmed by his miraculous rising again and so gave as strong a Proof of his Messiaship as Infinite Power joined with Equal Veracity could give And upon this Account we have his Resurrection alledged by St. Peter for the same Purpose here in the Text which was part of his Sermon to the Jews concerning Iesus Christ whom he proves to be their True and long expected Messiah against all the Cavils of Prejudice and Unbelief by this one invincible Demonstration In the Text then we have these Three Things Considerable First Christ's Resurrection and the Cause of it in these words Whom God hath raised up Secondly The manner by which it was effected which was by loosing the Pains of Death And Thirdly and Lastly The Ground of it which was its absolute Necessity expressed in these Words It was not possible that He should be holden of it and 1. For the first of these The Cause of the Resurrection set forth in this expression Whom God hath raised up It was such an Action as proclaimed an Omnipotent Agent and carried the hand of God writt upon it in broad Characters Legible to the meanest Reason Death is a disease which Art cannot Cure and the Grave a Prison which delivers back its Captives upon no humane summons To restore Life is only the Prerogative of him who gives it Some indeed have pretended by Art and Physical applications to recover the dead but the success has sufficiently upbraided the attempt Physick may repair and piece up Nature but not Create it Cordials Plaisters and Fomentations cannot always stay a Life when it is going much less can they remand it when it is gone Neither is it in the Power of a Spirit or Demon good or bad to inspire a new Life For it is a Creation and to Create is the incommunicable Prerogative of a Power infinite and unlimited Enter into a body they may and so act and move it after the manner of a Soul but it is one thing to move another to animate a Carcass You see the Devil could fetch up nothing of Samuel at the request of Saul but a shadow and a Resemblance his Countenance and his Mantle which yet
Death where is thy Sting So that when we come to resign back these frail Bodies these Vessels of Mortality to the Dust from whence they were taken we may yet say of our Souls as Christ did of the Damosel whom he raised up That she was not dead but only Slept for in like manner we shall as certainly rise out of the Grave and Triumph over the dishonours of its Rottenness and Putrefaction as we rise in the Morning out of our Beds with Bodies refreshed and advanced into Higher and Nobler Perfections For the Head being once risen we may be sure the Members cannot stay long behind And Christ is already risen and gone before to prepare Mansions for all those who belong to him under that High Relation That where He is They to their Eternal Comfort may be also rejoycing and singing Praises and Hallelujahs to him who sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lamb for Ever and Ever To Whom Be Rendered and Ascribed as is most due all Glory Might Majesty and Dominion to Eternal Ages Amen THE Christian Pentecost OR THE Solemn Effusion of the Holy Ghost IN THE Several Miraculous Gifts Conferred by Him upon the Apostles and first Christians Set forth in a SERMON Preached At Westminster-Abbey 1692. 1 COR. XII 4 Now there are diversities of Gifts but the same Spirit OUR Blessed Saviour having Newly Changed his Crown of Thorns for a Crown of Glory and ascending up on high took Possession of his Royal Estate and Soveraignty according to the Custom of Princes is here treating with this Lower World now at so great a distance from him by his Ambassador And for the greater Splendour of the Embassy and Authority of the Message by an Ambassador no ways Inferiour to Himself even the Holy Ghost the Third Person in the Blessed Trinity in Glory Equal in Majesty Co-eternal and therefore most peculiarly fit not only as a Deputy but as a kind of Alter Idem to supply his Place and Presence here upon Earth and indeed had he not been Equal to him in the Godhead he could no more have supplyed his Place than he could have filled it which we know in the Accounts of the World are Things extreamly different as by sad and scandalous Experience is too often found Now the summ of this his Glorious Negotiation was to Confirm and ratifie Christ's Doctrine to seal the New Charter of the Worlds Blessedness given by Christ Himself and drawn up by his Apostles and Certainly it was not a greater Work first to Publish than it was afterwards to Confirm it For Christianity being a Religion made up of Truth and Miracle could not Receive its Growth from any Power less than that which first gave it its Birth And being withal a Doctrine Contrary to Corrupt Nature and to those Things which Men most Eagerly Loved to wit their Worldly Interests and their Carnal Lusts it must needs have quickly decayed and withered and dyed away if not Watered by the same Hand of Omnipotence by which it was first planted Nothing could keep it up but such a standing mighty Power as should be able upon all occasions to Countermand and Controul Nature such an one as should at the same time both Instruct and Astonish and baffle the Disputes of Reason by the Obvious overpowering Convictions of Sense And this was the Design of the Spirit 's Mission That the same Holy Ghost who had given Christ his Conception might now give Christianity its Confirmation And this he did by that wonderful and various Effusion of his Miraculous Gifts upon the first Messengers and Propagators of this Divine Religion For as our Saviour himself said John 4.48 Vnless you see signs and wonders you will not believe So that Sight was to introduce Belief and accordingly the first Conquest and Conviction was made upon the Eye and from thence passed victorious to the Heart This therefore was their Rhetorick this their method of Perswasion Their Words were Works Divinity and Physick went together They Cured the Body and thereby Convinced the Soul They Conveyed and enforced all their Exhortations not by the Arts of Eloquence but by the Gift of Tongues These were the Speakers and Miracle the Interpreter Now in Treating of these Words I shall Consider these Three Things First What those Gifts were which were conferred by the Spirit both upon the Apostles and first Professors of Christianity Secondly What is Imported and to be understood by their Diversity and Thirdly And Lastly What are the Consequences of their Emanation from one and the same Spirit First And first for the first of them These Gifts are called in the Original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say Acts of Grace or favour and signifie here certain Qualities and Perfections which the Spirit of God freely bestowed upon Men for the better Enabling them to Preach the Gospel and to settle the Christian Religion in the World and accordingly we will Consider them under that known Dichotomy or Division by which they stand divided into Ordinary and Extraordinary And first for the Ordinary Gifts of the Spirit these he conveys to us by the mediation of our own Endeavours And as He who both makes the Watch and Winds up the Wheels of it may not Improperly be said to be the Author of its motion so God who first Created and since sustains the Powers and Faculties of the Soul may justly be called the Cause of all those Perfections and Improvements which the said faculties shall attain unto by their Respective Operations For that which gives the form gives also the Consequents of that form and the Principle with all its appendant Actions is to be referred to the same Donor But God forbid that I should determine God's Title to our Actions barely in his giving us the Power and Faculty of Acting Durandus indeed an Eminent Schoolman held so and so must Pelagius and his followers hold too if they will be True to and abide by their own Principles But undoubtedly God does not only give the Power but also vouchsafes an Active Influence and Concurrence to the production of every particular Action so far as it has either a Natural or a Moral goodness in it And therefore in all acquired Gifts or Habits such as are those of Philosophy Oratory or Divinity we are properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Co-workers with God And God ordinarily gives them to none but to such as Labour hard for them They are so his Gifts that they are also our own Acquisitions His assistance and our own study are the joint and adequate Cause of these Perfections And to imagine the Contrary is all one as if a Man should think to be a Scholar barely by his Master's Teaching without his own Learning In all these Cases God is ready to do his Part but not to do both His own and ours too Secondly The other sort of the Spirit 's Gifts are Extraordinary Which are so absolutely and entirely from God that the Soul