die but if ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live This first Mortification is the way of life if it continues but its continuance is not fecured till we are advanced towards life by one degree more of this Death For this condition is a state of a daily and dangerous warfare and many inrodes are made by sin and many times hurt is done and booty carried off for he that is but thus far mortified although his dwelling be within the Kingdom of Grace yet it is in the borders of it and hath a dangerous neighbourhood If we mean to be safe we must remove into the heart of the Land or carry the war farther off 6. Secondly We must not only be strangers here but we must be dead too dead unto the World that is we must not only deny our Vices but our Passions not only contradict the direct immediate Perswasion to a sin but also cross the Inclination to it So long as our Appetites are high and full we shall never have peace or safety but the dangers and insecurities of a full War and a potent Enemy we are always disputing the Question ever strugling for life but when our Passions are killed when our desires are little and low then Grace reigns then our life is hid with Christ in God then we have fewer interruptions in the way of Righteousness then we are not so apt to be surprised by sudden eruptions and transportation of Passions and our Piety it self is more prudent and reasonable chosen with a freer election discerned with clearer understanding hath more in it of Judgment than of Fancy and is more spiritual and Angelical He that is apt to be angry though he be habitually careful and full of observation that he sin not may at some time or other be surprised when his guards are undiligent and without actual expectation of an enemy but if his Anger be dead in him and the inclination lessened to the indisferency and gentleness of a Child the man dwells safe because of the impotency of his Enemy or that he is reduced to Obedience or hath taken conditions of peace He that hath refused to consent to actions of Uncleanness to which he was strongly tempted hath won a victory by sine force God hath blessed him well but an opportunity may betray him instantly and the sin may be in upon him unawares unless also his desires be killed he is betrayed by a party within David was a holy person but he was surprised by the sight of Bathsheba for his freer use of permitted beds had kept the fire alive which was apt to be put into a flame when so fair a beauty reflected through his eyes But Joseph was a Virgin and kept under all his inclinations to looser thoughts opportunity and command and violence and beauty did make no breach upon his spirit 7. He that is in the first state of Pilgrimage does not mutiny against his Superiors nor publish their faults nor envy their dignities but he that is dead to the world sees no fault that they have and when he hears an objection he buries it in an excuse and rejoyces in the dignity of their persons Every degree of Mortification endures reproof without murmur but he that is quite dead to the world and to his own will feels no regret against it and hath no secret thoughts of trouble and unwillingness to the suffering save only that he is sorry he deserv'd it For so a dead body resists not your violence changes not its posture you plac'd it in strikes not his striker is not moved by your words nor provoked by your scorn nor is troubled when you shrink with horror at the sight of it only it will hold the head downward in all its situations unless it be hindred by violence And a mortified spirit is such without indignation against scorn without revenge against injuries without murmuring at low offices not impatient in troubles indifferent in all accidents neither transported with joy nor deprest with sorrow and is humble in all his thoughts And thus he that is dead saith the Apostle is justified from sins And this is properly a state of life in which by the grace of Jesus we are restored to a condition of order and interiour beauty in our Faculties our actions are made moderate and humane our spirits are even and our understandings undisturbed 8. For Passions of the sensitive Soul are like an Exnalation hot and dry born up from the earth upon the wings of a cloud and detained by violence out of its place causing thunders and making eruptions into lightning and sudden fires There is a Tempest in the Soul of a passionate man and though every wind does not shake the earth nor rend trees up by the roots yet we call it violent and ill weather if it only makes a 〈◊〉 and is harmless And it is an inordination in the spirit of a man when his Passions are tumultuous and mighty though they do not determine directly upon a sin they discompose his peace and disturb his spirit and make it like troubled waters in which no man can see his own figure and just 〈◊〉 portions and therefore by being less a man cannot be so much a Christian in the midst 〈◊〉 so great indispositions For although the Cause may hallow the Passion and if a man be very angry for God's cause it is Zeal not Fury yet the Cause cannot secure the Person from violence transportation and inconvenience When Elisha was consulted by three Kings concerning the success of their present Expedition he grew so angry against idolatrous soram and was carried on to so great degrees of disturbance that when for Jehosaphat's sake he was content to enquire of the Lord he called for a minstrel who by his harmony might re-compose his disunited and troubled spirit that so he might be apter sor divination And sometimes this zeal goes besides the intention of the man and beyond the degrees of prudent or lawful and ingages in a sin though at first it was Zeal for Religion For so it happened in Moses at the waters of Massah and Meribah he spake foolishly and yet it was when he was zealous for God and extremely careful of the people's interest For his Passion he was hindred from entring into the Land of Promise And we also if we be not moderate and well-tempered even in our 〈◊〉 for God may like Moses break the Tables of the Law and throw them out of our hands with zeal to have them preserved for Passion violently snatches at the Conclusion but is inconsiderate and incurious concerning the Premises The summ and purpose of this Discourse is that saying of our Blessed Saviour He that will be my Disciple must deny himself that is not only desires that are sinful but desires that are his own pursuances of his own affections and violent motions though to things not evil or in themselves
look upon my miseries thy holy Hands be stretched out to my relief and succour let some of those precious distilling Tears which nature and thy compassion and thy Sufferings did cause to distill and drop from those sacred fontinels water my stony heart and make it soft apt for the impressions of a melting obedient and corresponding love and moisten mine eyes that I may upon thy stock of pity and weeping mourn for my sins that so my tears and sorrows being drops of water coming from that holy Rock may indeed be united unto thine and made precious by such holy mixtures Amen 3. BLessed Jesus now that thou hast sanctified and exalted Humane nature and made even my Body precious by a personal uniting it to the Divinity teach me so reverently to account of it that I may not dare to prophane it with impure lusts or caitive affections and unhallow that ground where thy holy feet have troden Give to me ardent desires and efficacious prosecutions of these holy effects which thou didst design for us in thy Nativity and other parts of our Redemption give me great confidence in thee which thou hast encouraged by the exhibition of so glorious favours great sorrow and confusion of face at the sight of mine own imperfections and estrangements and great distances from thee and the perfections of thy Soul and bring me to thee by the strictnesses of a Zealous and affectionate imitation of those Sanctities which next to the hypostatical Union added lustre and excellency to thy Humanity that I may live here with thee in the expresses of a holy life and die with thee by mortification and an unwearied patience and reign with thee in immortal glories world without end Amen DISCOURSE I. Of Nursing Children in imitation of the Blessed Virgin-Mother 1. THese later Ages of the world have declined into a Softness above the effeminacy of Asian Princes and have contracted customes which those innocent and healthful days of our Ancestors knew not whose Piety was natural whose Charity was operative whose Policy was just and valiant and whose Oeconomy was sincere and proportionable to the dispositions and requisites of Nature And in this particular the good women of old gave one of their instances the greatest personages nurst their own Children did the work of Mothers and thought it was unlikely women should become vertuous by ornaments and superadditions of Morality who did decline the laws and prescriptions of Nature whose principles supply us with the first and most common rules of Manners and more perfect actions In imitation of whom and especially of the Virgin Mary who was Mother and Nurse to the Holy Jesus I shall endeavour to correct those softnesses and unnatural rejections of Children which are popular up to a custom and fashion even where no necessities of Nature or just Reason can make excuse 2. And I cannot think the Question despicable and the Duty of meanest consideration although it be specified in an office of small esteem and suggested to us by the principles of Reason and not by express sanctions of Divinity For although other actions are more perfect and spiritual yet this is more natural and humane other things being superadded to a full Duty rise higher but this builds stronger and is like a part of the foundation having no lustre but much strength and however the others are full of ornament yet this hath in it some degrees of necessity and possibly is with more danger and irregularity omitted than actions which spread their leaves fairer and look more gloriously 3. First here I consider that there are many sins in the scene of the Body and the matter of Sobriety which are highly criminal and yet the Laws of God expressed in Scripture name them not but men are taught to distinguish them by that Reason which is given us by nature and is imprinted in our understanding in order to the conservation of humane kind For since every creature hath something in it sufficient to propagate the kind and to conserve the individuals from perishing in confusions and general disorders which in Beasts we call Instinct that is an habitual or prime disposition to do certain things which are proportionable to the End whither it is designed Man also if he be not more imperfect must have the like and because he knows and makes reflexions upon his own acts and understands the reason of it that which in them is Instinct in him is natural Reason which is a desire to preserve himself and his own kind and differs from Instinct because he understands his Instinct and the reasonableness of it and they do not But Man being a higher thing even in the order of creation and designed to a more noble End in his animal capacity his Argumentative Instinct is larger than the Natural Instinct of Beasts for he hath Instincts in him in order to the conservation of Society and therefore hath Principles that is he hath natural desires to it for his own good and because he understands them they are called Principles and Laws of Nature but are no other than what I have now declared for Beasts do the same things we do and have many the same inclinations which in us are the Laws of Nature even all which we have in order to our common End But that which in Beasts is Nature and an impulsive force in us must be duty and an inviting power we must do the same things with an actual or habitual designation of that End to which God designs Beasts supplying by his wisdom their want of understanding and then what is mere Nature in them in us is Natural reason And therefore Marriage in men is made sacred when the mixtures of other creatures are so merely natural that they are not capable of being vertuous because men are bound to intend that End which God made And this with the superaddition of other Ends of which Marriage is representative in part and in part effective does consecrate Marriage and makes it holy and mysterious But then there are in marriage many duties which we are taught by Instinct that is by that Reason whereby we understand what are the best means to promote the End which we have assigned us And by these Laws all unnatural mixtures are made unlawful and the decencies which are to be observed in Marriage are prescribed us by this 4. Secondly Upon the supposition of this Discourse I consider again that although to observe this Instinct or these Laws of Nature in which I now have instanced be no great vertue in any eminency of degree as no man is much commended for not killing himself or for not degenerating into beastly Lusts yet to prevaricate some of these Laws may become almost the greatest sin in the world And therefore although to live according to Nature be a testimony fit to give to a sober and a temperate man and rises no higher yet to do an action against Nature is the greatest
will not be stopt by purposes and easie desires 13. Since therefore the Body is the instrument of sins the fewel and the incentive our Mortification must reach thither also at least in some degrees or it will be to small purpose to think of mortifying our spirit in some instances of Temptation In vain does that man think to keep his honour and Chastity that invites his Lust to an activeness by soft beds and high diet and idleness and opportunity Make the Soul's instrument unapt and half the work is done And this is true in all instances of Carnality or natural desires whose scene lies in the lower region of Passions and are acted by the Body but the operation of the cure must be in proportion to the design as the mortification of the Spirit is in several degrees so the mortification of the Body also hath its several parts of prudence injunction and necessity For the prescribing all sorts of Mortifications corporal indefinitely and indiseriminately to all persons without separation of their ends and distinct capacities is a snare to mens Consciences makes Religion impertinently troublesome occasions some men to glory in corporal Austerity as if of it self it were an act of Piety and a distinction of the man from the more imperfect persons of the world and is all the way unreasonable and inartificial 14. First Therefore such whose ingagements in the world or capacities of person confine them to the lowest and first step of Mortification those who fight only for life and liberty not for priviledges and honour that are in perpetual contestation and close fightings with sin it is necessary that their Body also be mortified in such a degree that their desires transport them not beyond the permissions of Divine and humane Laws let such men be strict in the rules of Temperance and Sobriety be chaste within the laws of Marriage cherish their body to preserve their health and their health to serve God and to do their offices To these persons the best instruments of Discipline are the strict laws of Temperance denying all transgressions of the appetite boiling over its margent and proper limit assiduous Prayer and observation of the publick laws of 〈◊〉 which are framed so moderate and even as to be proportionable to the common manner of living of persons secular and incumbred For though many persons of common imployments and even manner of living have in the midst of worldly avocations undertaken Austerities very rude and rigorous yet it was in order to a higher mortification of spirit and it is also necessary they should if either naturally or habitually or easily they suffer violent transportation of Passions for since the occasions of anger and disturbance in the world frequently occur if such Passions be not restrained by greater violence than is competent to the ordinary offices of a moderate Piety the cure is weaker than the humour and so leaves the work imperfect 15. Secondly But this is coincident to the second degree of Mortification for if either out of desire of a farther step towards perfection or out of the necessities of nature or evil customs it be necessary also to subdue our Passions as well as the direct invitations to sin in both these cases the Body must suffer more Austerities even such as directly are contrariant to every passionate disturbance though it be not ever sinful in the instance All Mortifiers must abstain from every thing that is unlawful but these that they may abstain from things unlawful must also deny to themselves satisfaction in things lawful and pleasant and this is in a just proportion to the End the subduing the Passions lest their liberty and boldness become licentious And we shall easier deny their importunity to sin when we will not please them in those things in which we may such in which the fear of God and the danger of our Souls and the convictions of Reason and Religion do not immediately cooperate And this was the practice of David when he had thirsted for the water of Bethlehem and some of his Worthies ventured their lives and brought it he refused to drink it but poured it upon the ground unto the Lord that is it became a Drink-offering unto the Lord an acceptable Oblation in which he 〈◊〉 his desires to God denying himself the satisfaction of such a desire which was natural and innocent save that it was something nice delicate and curious Like this was the act of the Fathers in the mountain Nitria to one of which a fair cluster of dried grapes being sent he refused to taste them lest he should be too sensual and much pleased but sent them to another and he to a third and the same consideration transmitted the Present through all their Cells till it came to the first man again all of them not daring to content their appetite in a thing too much desired lest the like importunity in the instance of a sin should prevail upon them To these persons the best instruments of Discipline are subtractions rather than imposition of Austerities let them be great haters of corporal pleasures eating for necessity diet 〈◊〉 and cheap abridging and making short the opportunities of natural and permitted solaces refusing exteriour comforts not chusing the most pleasant object nor suffering delight to be the end of eating and therefore separating delight from it as much as prudently they may not being too importunate with God to remove his gentler hand of paternal correction but inuring our selves to patient suffering and indifferent acceptation of the Cross that God lays upon us at no hand living delicately or curiously or impatiently And this was the condition of S. Paul suffering with excellent temper all those persecutions and inconveniences which the enemies of Religion loaded him withall which he called bearing the marks of the Lord Jesus in his body and carrying about in his body the dying or mortification of the Lord Jesus it was in the matter of Persecution which because he bare patiently and was accustomed to and he accepted with indifference and renunciation they were the mortifications and the marks of Jesus that is a true 〈◊〉 to the Passion of Christ and of great effect and interest for the preventing sins by the mortification of his natural desires 16. Thirdly But in the pale of the Church there are and have been many tall Cedars 〈◊〉 tops have reached to Heaven some there are that chuse afflictions of the Body that by turning the bent and inclination of their affections into sensual 〈◊〉 they may not only cut off all pretensions of Temptation but grow in spiritual Graces and perfections intellectual and beatified To this purpose they served themselves with the instances of Sack-cloth Hard lodging long Fasts Pernoctation in prayers Renunciation of all secular possessions great and expensive Charity bodily Labours to great weariness and affiction and many other prodigies of voluntary suffering which Scripture and the
with Water and then with Bloud and afterwards built it up by the hands of the Spirit Himself enter'd at that door by which his Disciples for ever after were to follow him for therefore he went in at the door of Baptism that he might hallow the entrance which himself made to the House he was now building 2. As it was in the old so it is in the new Creation out of the waters God produced every living creature and when at first the Spirit moved upon the waters and gave life it was the type of what was designed in the Renovation Every thing that lives now is born of Water and the Spirit and Christ who is our Creator and Redeemer in the New birth opened the fountains and hallowed the stream Christ who is our Life went down into the waters of Baptism and we who descend thither find the effects of life it is living Water of which whose drinks needs not to drink of it again for it shall be in him a Well of water springing up to life eternal 3. But because every thing is resolved into the same principles from whence they are taken the old World which by the power of God came from the Waters by their own sin fell into the Waters again and were all drowned and only eight persons were saved by an Ark and the World renewed upon the stock and reserves of that mercy consigned the Sacrament of Baptism in another figure for then God gave his sign from Heaven that by water the World should never again perish but he meant that they should be saved by water for Baptism which is a figure like to this doth also now save us by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 4. After this the Jews report that the World took up the doctrine of Baptisms in remembrance that the iniquity of the old world was purged by water and they washed all that came to the service of the true God and by that Baptism bound them to the observation of the Precepts which God gave to Noah 5. But when God separated a Family for his own special service he gave them a Sacrament of Initiation but it was a Sacrament of bloud the Covenant of Circumcision and this was the fore-runner of Baptism but not a Type when that was abrogated this came into the place of it and that consigned the same Faith which this professes But it could not properly be a Type whose nature is by a likeness of matter or ceremony to represent the same Mystery Neither is a Ceremony as Baptism truly is properly capable of having a Type it self is but a Type of a greater mysteriousness And the nature of Types is in shadow to describe by dark lines a future substance so that although Circumcision might be a Type of the effects and graces bestowed in Baptism yet of the Baptism or Ablution it self it cannot be properly because of the unlikeness of the symbols and configurations and because they are both equally distant from substances which Types are to consign and represent The first Bishops of Jerusalem and all the Christian Jews for many years retained Circumcision together with Baptism and Christ himself who was circumcised was also baptized and therefore it is not so proper to call Circumcision a Type of Baptism it was rather a Seal and Sign of the same Covenant to Abraham and the Fathers and to all Israel as Baptism is to all Ages of the Christian Church 6. And because this Rite could not be administred to all persons and was not at all times after its institution God was pleased by a proper and specifick Type to consign this Rite of Baptism which he intended to all and that for ever and God when the family of his Church grew separate notorious numerous and distinct sent them into their own Countrey by a Baptism through which the whole Nation pass'd for all the Fathers were under the Cloud and all passed through the Sea and were all baptized unto Moses in the Cloud and in the Sea so by a double figure foretelling that as they were initiated to Moses's Law by the Cloud above and the Sea beneath so should all the persons of the Church men women and children be initiated unto Christ by the Spirit from above and the Water below for it was the design of the Apostle in that discourse to represent that the Fathers and we were equal as to the priviledges of the Covenant he proved that we do not exceed them and it ought therefore to be certain that they do not exceed us nor their children ours 7. But after this something was to remain which might not only consign the Covenant which God made with Abraham but be as a passage from the Fathers through the Synagogue to the Church from Abraham by Moses to Christ and that was Circumcision which was a Rite which God chose to be a mark to the posterity of Abraham to distinguish them from the Nations which were not within the Covenant of Grace and to be a Seal of the righteousness of Faith which God made to be the spirit and life of the Covenant 8. But because Circumcision although it was ministred to all the males yet it was not to the females although they and all the Nation were baptized and initiated into Moses in the Cloud and in the Sea therefore the Children of Israel by imitation of the Patriarchs the posterity of Noah used also Ceremonial Baptisms to their Women and to their Proselytes and to all that were circumcised and the Jews deliver That Sarah and Rebecca when they were adopted into the family of the Church that is of Abraham and Isaac were baptized and so were all strangers that were married to the sons of Israel And that we may think this to be typical of Christian Baptism the Doctors of the Jews had a Tradition that when the Messias would come there should be so many Proselytes that they could not be circumcised but should be baptized The Tradition proved true but not for their reason But that this Rite of admitting into Mysteries and Institutions and Offices of Religion by Baptisms was used by the posterity of Noah or at least very early among the Jews besides the testimonies of their own Doctors I am the rather induced to believe because the Heathens had the same Rite in many places and in several Religions so they initiated disciples into the Secrets of Mithra and the Priests of 〈◊〉 were called 〈◊〉 because by Baptism they were admitted into the Religion and they thought Muther Incest Rapes and the worst of crimes were purged by dipping in the Sea or fresh Springs and a Proselyte is called in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Baptized person 9. But this Ceremony of Baptizing was so certain and usual among the Jews in their admitting Proselytes and adopting into Institutions that to baptize and to make Disciples are all one and when John the Baptist by an order from Heaven went to
confession and undertaking a holy life and therefore in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are conjoyned in the significations as they are in the mystery it is a giving up our names to Christ and it is part of the foundation or the first Principles of the Religion as appears in S. Paul's Catechism it is so the first thing that it is for babes and Neophytes in which they are matriculated and adopted into the house of their Father and taken into the hands of their Mother Upon this account Baptism is called in antiquity 〈◊〉 janua porta Gratiae primus introitus Sanctorum adaeternam Dei Ecclesiae consuetudinem The gate of the Church the door of Grace the first entrance of the Saints to an eternal conversation with God and the Church Sacramentum initiationis intrantium Christianismum investituram S. Bernard calls it The Sacrament of initiation and the investiture of them that enter into the Religion And the person so entring is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one of the Religion or a Proselyte and Convert and one added to the number of the Church in imitation of that of S. Luke 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God added to the Church those that should be saved just as the Church does to this day and for ever baptizing Infants and Catechuments 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are added to the Church that they may be added to the Lord and the number of the Inhabitants of Heaven 15. Secondly The next step beyond this is Adoption into the Convenant which is an immediate consequent of the first Presentation this being the first act of man that the first act of God And this is called by S. Paul a being baptized in one spirit into one body that is we are made capable of the Communion of Saints the blessings of the faithful the priviledges of the Church by this we are as S. Luke calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ordained or disposed put into the order of Eternal Life being made members of the mystical Body under Christ our Head 16. Thirdly And therefore Baptism is a new birth by which we enter into the new world the new Creation the blessings and spiritualities of the Kingdom and this is the expression which our Saviour himself used Nicodemus Unless a man be born of Water and the Spirit and it is by S. Paul called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the laver of Regeneration for now we begin to be reckoned in new Census or account God is become our Father Christ our elder Brother the Spirit the earnest of our Inheritance the Church our Mother our food is the body and bloud of our Lord Faith is our learning Religion our employment and our whole life is spiritual and Heaven the object of our Hopes and the mighty price of our high Calling And from this time forward we have a new principle put into us the Spirit of Grace which besides our Soul and body is a principle of action of one nature and shall with them enter into the portion of our Inheritance And therefore the Primitive Christians who consigned all their affairs and goods and writings with some marks of their Lord usually writing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jesus Christ the Son of God our Saviour made it an abbreviature by writing only the Capitals thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Heathens in mockery and derision made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a Fish and they used it for Christ as a name of reproach but the Christians owned the name and turned it into a pious Metaphor and were content that they should enjoy their pleasure in the Acrostich but upon that occasion Tertullian speaks pertinently to this Article Nos pisciculi sccundùm 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nostrum Jesum Christum in aqua nascimur Christ whom you call a Fish we knowledge to be our Lord and Saviour and we if you please are the little fishes for we are born in water thence we derive our spiritual life And because from henceforward we are a new Creation the Church uses to assign new relations to the Catechumens Spiritual Fathers and Susceptors and at their entrance into Baptism the Christians and Jewish Proselytes did use to cancel all secular affections to their temporal relatives Nec quicquam priùs 〈◊〉 quà m contemnere Deos exuere patriam parentes liberos fratres vilia habere said Tacitus of the Christians which was true in the sence only that Christ said He that doth not hate father or mother for my sake is not worthy of me that is he that doth not hate them praeme rather than forsake me forsake them is unworthy of me 17. Fourthly In Baptism all our sins are pardoned according to the words of a Prophet I will sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness The Catechumen descends into the Font a Sinner he arises purified he goes down the son of Death he comes up the son of the Resurrection he enters in the son of Folly and prevarication he returns the son of Reconciliation he stoops down the child of Wrath and ascends the heir of Mercy he was the child of the Devil and now he is the servant and the son of God They are the words of Venerable Bede concerning this Mystery And this was ingeniously signified by that Greek inscription upon a Font which is so prettily contriv'd that the words may be read after the Greek or after the Hebrew manner and be exactly the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lord wash my sin and not my face only And so it is intended and promised Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins and call on the Name of the Lord said Ananias to Saul for Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it that he might sanctifie and cleanse it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the washing of water in the word that is Baptism in the Christian Religion and therefore Tertullian calls Baptism lavacrum compendiatum a compendious Laver that is an intire cleansing the Soul in that one action justly and rightly performed In the rehearsal of which Doctrine it was not an unpleasant Etymology that 〈◊〉 Sinaita gave of Baptism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in which our sins are thrown off and they fall like leeches when they are full of bloud and water or like the chains from S. Peter's hands at the presence of the Angel Baptism is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an intire full forgiveness of sins so that they shall never be called again to scrutiny Omnia Daemonis armae His merguntur aquis quibus ille renascitur Infans Qui captivus erat The captivity of the Soul is taken away by the bloud of Redemption and the fiery darts of the Devil are quenched by these salutary waters and what the flames of Hell are expiating or punishing to eternal
ages that is washed off quickly in the Holy Font and an eternal debt paid in an instant For so sure as the Egyptians were drowned in the Red Sea so sure are our Sins washed in this Holy floud for this is a Red Sea too these waters signifie the bloud of Christ These are they that have washed their Robes and made them white in the bloud of the Lamb. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Bloud of Christ cleanseth us the Water cleanseth us the Spirit purifies us the Bloud by the Spirit the Spirit by the Water all in Baptism and in pursuance of that Baptismal state These three are they that bear record in Earth the Spirit the Water and the Bloud 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these three agree in one or are to one purpose they agree in Baptism and in the whole pursuance of the assistances which a Christian needs all the days of his life And therefore S. Cyrill calls Baptism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Antitype of the Passions of Christ it does preconsign the death of Christ and does the infancy of the work of Grace but not weakly it brings from death to life and though it brings us but to the birth in the New life yet that is a greater change than is in all the periods of our growth to manhood to a perfect man in Christ Jesus 18. Fifthly Baptism does not only pardon our sins but puts us into a state of Pardon for the time to come For Baptism is the beginning of the New life and an admission of us into the Evangelical Covenant which on our parts consists in a sincere and timely endeavour to glorifie God by Faith and Obedience and on God's part he will pardon what is past assist us for the future and not measure us by grains and scruples or exact our duties by the measure of an Angel but by the span of a man's hand So that by Baptism we are consigned to the mercies of God and the Graces of the Gospel that is that our Pardon be continued and our Piety be a state of Repentance And therefore that Baptism which in the Nicene Creed we 〈◊〉 to be for the remission of sins is called in the Jerusalem 〈◊〉 The Baptism of Repentance that is it is the entrance of a new life the gate to a perpetual change and reformation all the way continuing our title to and hopes of forgiveness of sins And this excellency is clearly recorded by S. Paul The kindness and love of God our Saviour towards man hath appeared Not by works of righteousness which we have done that 's the formality of the Gospel-Covenant not to be exacted by the strict measures of the Law but according to his mercy he saved us that is by gentleness and remissions by pitying and pardoning us by relieving and supporting us because he remembers that we are but dust and all this mercy we are admitted to and is conveyed to us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the laver of Regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost And this plain evident Doctrine was observed explicated and urged against the Messalians who said that Baptism was like a razor that cuts away all the sins that were past or presently adhering but not the sins of our future life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This Sacrament promises more and greater things It is the earnest of future good things the type of the Resurrection the communication of the Lord's Passion the partaking of his Resurrection the robe of Righteousness the garment of Gladness the vestment of Light or rather Light it self And for this reason it is that Baptism is not to be repeated because it does at once all that it can do at an hundred times for it admits us to the condition of Repentance and Evangelical mercy to a state of Pardon for our infirmities and sins which we timely and effectually leave and this is a thing that can be done but once as a man can begin but once he that hath once entred in at this gate of Life is always in possibility of Pardon if he be in a possibility of working and doing after the manner of a man that which he hath promised to the Son of God And this was expresly delivered and observed by S. Austin That which the Apostle says Cleansing him with the washing of water in the word is to be understood that in the same Laver of Regeneration and word of Sanctification all the evils of the regenerate are cleansed and healed not only the sins that are past which are all now remitted in Baptism but also those that are contracted afterwards by humane ignorance and infirmity not that Baptism be repeated as often as we sin but because by this which is once administred is brought to pass that pardon of all sins not only of those that are past but also those which will be committed afterwards is obtained The Messalians denied this and it was part of their Heresie in the undervaluing of Baptism and for it they are most excellently confuted by Isidore Pelusiot in his third Book 195 Epistle to the Count Hermin whither I refer the Reader 19. In proportion to this Doctrine it is that the Holy Scripture calls upon us to live a holy life in pursuance of this grace of Baptism And S. Paul recalls the lapsed Galatians to their Covenant and the grace of God stipulated in Baptism Ye are all children of God by faith in Jesus Christ that is heirs of the promise and Abraham's seed that promise which cannot be disannulled encreased or diminished but is the same to us as it was to Abraham the same before the Law and after Therefore do not you hope to be 〈◊〉 by the Law for you are entred into the Covenant of Faith and are to be justified thereby This is all your hope by this you must stand for ever or you cannot stand at all but by this you may for you are God's children by Faith that is not by the Law or the Covenant of Works And that you may remember whence you are going and return again he proves that they are the Children of God by 〈◊〉 in Jesus Christ because they have been baptized into Christ and so put on Christ. This makes you Children and such as are to be saved by Faith that is a Covenant not of Works but of Pardon in Jesus Christ the Author and Establisher of this Covenant For this is the Covenant made in Baptism that being justified by his grace we shall be heirs of life eternal for by grace that is by favour remission and forgiveness in Jesus Christ ye are saved This is the only way that we have of being justified and this must remain as long as we are in hopes of Heaven for besides this we have no hopes and all this is stipulated and consigned in Baptism and is of force after our 〈◊〉 into sin and risings again In
God at first designed to us And therefore as our Baptism is a separation of us from unbelieving people so the descent of the Holy Spirit upon us in our Baptism is a consigning or marking us for God as the Sheep of his pasture as the Souldiers of his Army as the Servants of his houshold we are so separated from the world that we are appropriated to God so that God expects of us Duty and Obedience and all Sins are acts of Rebellion and Undutifulness Of this nature was the sanctification of Jeremy and John the Baptist from their mothers womb that is God took them to his own service by an early designation and his Spirit marked them to a holy Ministery To this also relates that of S. Paul whom God by a decree separated from his mother's womb to the Ministery of the Gospel the 〈◊〉 did antedate the act of the Spirit which did not descend upon him until the day of his Baptism What these persons were in order to exteriour Ministeries that all the faithful are in order to Faith and Obedience consigned in Baptism by the Spirit of God to a perpetual relation to God in a continual service and title to his Promises And in this sence the Spirit of God is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Seal In whom also after that ye believed ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of Promise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Water washes the body and the Spirit seals the Soul viz. to a participation of those Promises which he hath made and to which we receive a title by our Baptism 22. Secondly The second effect of the Spirit is Light or Illumination that is the holy Spirit becomes unto us the Author of holy thoughts and firm perswasions and sets to his seal that the Word of God is true into the belief of which we are then baptized and makes Faith to be a Grace and the Understanding resigned and the Will confident and the Assent stronger than the premises and the Propositions to be believed because they are beloved and we are taught the ways of Godliness after a new manner that is we are made to perceive the Secrets of the Kingdom and to love Religion and to long for Heaven and heavenly things and to despise the World and to have new resolutions and new perceptions and new delicacies in order to the establishment of Faith and its increments and perseverance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God sits in the Soul when it is illuminated in 〈◊〉 as if he sate in his Throne that is he rules by a firm perswasion and intire principles of Obedience And therefore Baptism is called in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the baptized 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illuminated Call to mind the former days in which you were illuminated and the same phrase is in the 6. to the Hebrews where the parallel places expound each other For that which S. Paul calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illuminated he calls after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a receiving the knowledge of the truth and that you may perceive this to be wholly meant of Baptism the 〈◊〉 expresses it still by Synonyma's Tasting of the heavenly gift and made partakers of the Holy Ghost sprinkled in our hearts from an evil conscience and washed in our bodies with pure water all which also are a syllabus or collection of the several effects of the graces bestowed in Baptism But we are now instancing in that which relates most properly to the Understanding in which respect the Holy Spirit also is called Anointing or Unction and the mystery is explicated by S. John The Anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you and ye need not that any man teach you but as the same Anointing teacheth you of all things 23. Thirdly The Holy Spirit descends upon us in Baptism to become the principle of a new life to become a holy seed springing up to Holiness and is called by S. John 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 of God and the purpose of it we are taught by him Whosoever is 〈◊〉 of God that is he that is regenerated and entred into this New birth doth not 〈◊〉 sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God The Spirit of God is the Spirit of life and now that he by the Spirit is born anew he hath in him that principle which if it be cherished will grow up to life to life eternal And this is the Spirit of Sanctification the victory over the World the deletery of Concupiscence the life of the Soul and the perpetual principle of Grace sown in our spirits in the day of our Adoption to be the sons of God and members of Christ's body But take this Mystery in the words of S. Basil. There are two Ends proposed in Baptism to wit to abolish the body of Sin that we may no more bring forth fruit unto death and to live in the Spirit and to have our fruit to Sanctification The Water represents the image of death receiving the body in its bosom as in a Sepulchre but the quickning Spirit sends upon us a vigorous 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 power or 〈◊〉 even from the beginning renewing our Souls from the death of sin unto life For as our Mortification is 〈◊〉 in the water so the Spirit works life in us To this purpose is the discourse of S. Paul having largely discoursed of our being baptized into the death of 〈◊〉 he adds this as the Corollary of all He that is dead is freed from sin that is being mortified and buried in the waters of Baptism we have a new life of Righteousness put into us we are quitted from the dominion of Sin and are planted together in the likeness of Christ's Resurrection that henceforth we should not serve sin 24. Fourthly But all these intermedial Blessings tend to a glorious Conclusion for Baptism does also consign us to a holy Resurrection It takes the sting of death from us by burying us together with Christ and takes 〈◊〉 Sin which is the sting of death and then we shall be partakers of a blessed Resurrection This we are taught by S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his Death For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his Death we shall be also in the likeness of his Resurrection That declares the real event in its due season But because Baptism consigns it and admits us to a title to it we are said with S. Paul to be risen with Christ in Baptism Buried with him in Baptism wherein also you are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God which hath raised him from the dead Which expression I desire to be remembred that by it we may better understand those other
sayings of the Apostle of putting on Christ in Baptism putting on the new man c. for these only signifie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the design on God's part and the endeavour and duty on Man's we are then consigned to our Duty and to our Reward we undertake one and have a title to the other And though men of ripeness and Reason enter instantly into their portion of Work and have present use of the assistances and something of their Reward in hand yet we cannot conclude that those that cannot do it 〈◊〉 are not baptized rightly because they are not in capacity to put on the New man in Righteousness that is in an actual holy life for they may put on the New man in Baptism just as they are risen with Christ which because it may be done by Faith before it is done in real event and it may be done by Sacrament and design before it be done by a proper Faith so also may our putting on the New man be it is done sacramentally and that part which is wholly the work of God does only antedate the work of man which is to succeed in its due time and is after the 〈◊〉 of preventing grace But this is by the bye In order to the present Article Baptism is by 〈◊〉 called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a participation of the Lord's Resurrection 25. Fifthly and lastly By Baptism we are saved that is we are brought from death to life 〈◊〉 and that is the first Resurrection and we are brought from death to life hereafter by virtue of the Covenant of the state of Grace into which in Baptism we enter and are preserved from the second Death and receive a glorious and an eternal life He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved said our Blessed Saviour and According to his mercy he saved us by the washing of Regeneration and renowing of the Holy Ghost 26. After these great Blessings so plainly testified in Scripture and the Doctrine of the Primitive Church which are regularly consigned and bestowed in Baptism I shall less need to descend to temporal Blessings or rare contingencies or miraculous events or probable notices of things less certain Of this nature are those Stories recorded in the Writings of the Church that Constantine was cured of a Leprosie in Baptism Theodosius recovered of his disease being baptized by the Bishop of Thessalonica and a paralytick Jew was cured as soon as he became a Christian and was baptized by Atticus of CP and Bishop Arnulph baptizing a Leper also cured him said Vincentius Bellovacensis It is more considerable which is generally and piously believed by very many eminent persons in the Church that at our Baptism God assigns an Angel-Guardian for then the Catechumen being made a Servant and a Brother to the Lord of Angels is sure not to want the aids of them who pitch their tents round about them that fear the Lord and that this guard and ministery is then appointed when themselves are admitted into the inheritance of the Promises and their title to Salvation is hugely agreeable to the words of S. Paul Are they not all ministring spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of Salvation where it appears that the title to the inheritance is the title to this ministery and therefore must begin and end together But I insist not on this though it seems to me hugely probable All these Blessings put into one Syllabus have given to Baptism many honourable appellatives in Scripture and other Divine Writers calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sacramentum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 salutis A New birth a Regeneration a Renovation a Chariot carrying us to God the great Circumcision a Circumcision made without hands the Key of the Kingdom the Paranymph of the Kingdom the Earnest of our inheritance the Answer of a good Conscience the Robe of light the Sacrament of a new life and of eternal Salvation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is celestial water springing from the sides of the Rock upon which the Church was built when the Rock was smitten with the Rod of God 27. It remains now that we enquire what concerns our Duty and in what persons or in what dispositions Baptism produces all these glorious effects for the Sacraments of the Church work in the virtue of Christ but yet only upon such as are servants of Christ and hinder not the work of the Spirit of Grace For the water of the Font and the Spirit of the Sacrament are indeed to wash away our Sins and to purifie our Souls but not unless we have a mind to be purified The Sacrament works pardon for them that hate their sin and procures Grace for them that love it They that are guilty of sins must repent of them and renounce them and they must make a profession of the Faith of Christ and give or be given up to the obedience of Christ and then they are rightly disposed He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved saith Christ and S. Peter call'd out to the whole assembly Repent and be baptized every one of you Concerning this Justin Martyr gives the same account of the Faith and practice of the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Whosoever are perswaded and believe those things to be true which are delivered and spoken by us and undertake to live accordingly they are commanded to fast and pray and to ask of God remission for their former sins we also praying together with them and fasting Then they are brought to us where water is and are regenerated in the same manner of Regeneration by which we our selves are regenerated For in Baptism S. Peter observes there are two parts the Body and the Spirit that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the putting away the 〈◊〉 of the flesh that is the material washing and this is Baptism no otherwise than a dead corps is a man the other is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the answer of a good conscience towards God that is the conversion of the Soul to God that 's the effective disposition in which Baptism does save us And in the same sence are those sayings of the Primitive Doctors to be understood Anima non lavatione sed 〈◊〉 sancitur The Soul is not healed by washing viz. alone but by the answer the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in S. Peter the correspondent of our part of the Covenant sor that 's the perfect 〈◊〉 of this unusual expression And the effect is attributed to this and denied to the other when they are distinguished So Justin Martyr affirms The only Baptism that can heal us is Kepentance and the knowledge of God For what need is there of that Baptism that can only 〈◊〉 the flesh and the body Be washed in your flesh from wrath and 〈◊〉 from envy and hatred and behold the body is pure And Clemens Alexandrinus upon that Proverbial saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Be not pure in the laver but in the mind adds I suppose that an exact and a firm Repentance is a sufficient purification to a man if judging and considering our selves for the facts we have done before we proceed to that which is before us considering that which follows and cleansing or washing our mind from sensual affections and from former sins Just as we use to deny the effect to the instrumental cause and attribute it to the principal in the manner of speaking when our purpose is to affirm this to be the principal and of chief 〈◊〉 So we say It is not the good Lute but the skilful hand that makes the musick It is not the Body but the Soul that is the Man and yet he is not the man without both For Baptism is but the material part in the Sacrament it is the Spirit that giveth life whose work is Faith and Repentance begun by himself without the Sacrament and consigned in the Sacrament and actuated and increased in the cooperation of our whole life And therefore Baptism is called in the Jerusalem Creed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one Baptism of Repentance for the remission of sins and by Justin Martyr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Baptism of Repentance and the knowledge of God which was made for the sins of the people of God He explains himself a little after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Baptism that can only cleanse them that are penitent In Sacrament is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fides credentium professio quae apud Act a conficitur Angelorum 〈◊〉 miscentur 〈◊〉 spiritualia semina ut sancto germine nova possit renascentium indoles procreari ut dum Trinitas cum Fide concordat qui natus fuerit seculo renascatur spiritualiter Deo Sic fit hominum Pater Deus sancta fit Mater Ecclesia said Optatus The Faith and Profession of the Believers meets with the ever-blessed Trinity and is recorded in the Register of Angels where heavenly and spiritual seeds are mingled that from so holy a Spring may be produced a new nature of the Regeneration that while the Trinity viz. that is invocated upon the baptized meets with the Faith of the Catechumen he that was born to the world may be born spiritually to God So God is made a Father to the man and the holy Church a Mother Faith and Repentance stript the Old man naked and make him fit for Baptism and then the Holy Spirit moving upon the waters cleanses the Soul and makes it to put on the New man who grows up to perfection and a spiritual life to a life of glory by our verification of our undertaking in Baptism on our part and the Graces of the Spirit on the other For the waters pierce no farther than the skin till the person puts off his affection to the sin that he hath contracted and then he may say Aquae intraverunt 〈◊〉 ad animam meam The waters are entred even unto my Soul to purifie and cleanse it by the washing of water and the renewing by the Holy Spirit The summ is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Being baptized we are illuminated being illuminated we are adopted to the inheritance of sons being adopted we are promoted towards perfection and being perfected we are made immortal Quisquis in hos fontes vir venerit exeat indè Semideus tactis citò nobilitetur in undis 28. This is the whole Doctrine of Baptism as it is in it self considered without relation to rare Circumstances or accidental cases and it will also serve to the right understanding of the reasons why the Church of God hath in all Ages baptized all persons that were within her power for whom the Church could stipulate that they were or might be relatives of Christ sons of God heirs of the Promises and partners of the Covenant and such as did not hinder the work of Baptism upon their Souls And such were not only persons of age and choice but the Infants of Christian Parents For the understanding and verifying of which truth I shall only need to apply the parts of the former Discourse to their particular case premising first these Propositions Of Baptizing Infants Part II. 1. BAPTISM is the Key in Christ's hand and therefore opens as he opens and shuts by his rule and as Christ himself did not do all his Blessings and effects unto every one but gave to every one as they had need so does Baptism Christ did not cure all mens eyes but them only that were blind Christ came not to call the righteous but sinners to 〈◊〉 that is They that lived in the fear of God according to the Covenant in which they were debtors were indeed improved and promoted higher by Christ but not called to that Repentance to which he called the vicious Gentiles and the Adulterous persons among the Jews and the hypocritical Pharisees There are some so innocent that they need no repentance saith the Scripture meaning that though they do need Contrition for their single acts of sin yet they are within the state of Grace and need not Repentance as it is a Conversion of the whole man And so it is in Baptism which does all its effects upon them that need them all and some upon them that need but some and therefore as it pardons sins to them that have committed them and do repent and believe so to the others who have not committed them it does all the work which is done to the others above or besides that Pardon 2. Secondly When the ordinary effect of a Sacrament is done already by some other efficiency or instrument yet the Sacrament is still as obligatory as before not for so many reasons or necessities but for the same Commandment Baptism is the first ordinary Current in which the Spirit moves and descends upon us and where God's Spirit is they are the Sons of God for Christ's Spirit descends upon none but them that are his and yet Cornelius who had received the holy Spirit and was heard by God and visited by an Angel and accepted in his Alms and Fastings and Prayers was tied to the susception of Baptism To which may be added That the receiving the effects of Baptism before-hand was used as an argument the rather to administer Baptism The effect of which consideration is this That Baptism and its effect may be separated and do not always go in conjunction the effect may be before and therefore much rather may it be after its susception the Sacrament operating in the virtue of Christ even as the Spirit shall move according to that saying of S. Austin Sacrosancto lavacro inchoata innovatio novi hominis perficiendo perficitur in aliis citiùs in aliis tarà iùs and S. Bernard Lavari quidem citò possumus sed ad sanandum multâ curatione opus est The work of Regeneration that is begun in the ministery of Baptism is perfected in some sooner in some later We
as many persons and in as many capacities and in the same dispositions as the Promises were applied and did relate in Circumcision to the same they do belong and may be applied in Baptism And let it be remembred That the Covenant which Circumcision did sign was a Covenant of Grace and 〈◊〉 the Promises were of the Spirit or spiritual it was made before the Law and could not be rescinded by the Legal Covenant nothing could be added to it or taken from it and we that are partakers of this grace are therefore partakers of it by being Christ's servants united to Christ and so are become Abraham's seed as the Apostle at large and prosessedly proves in divers places but especially in the fourth to the 〈◊〉 and the third to the Galatians And therefore if Infants were then admitted to it and consigned to it by a Sacrament which they understood not any more than ours do there is not any reason why ours should not enter in at the ordinary gate and door of grace as well as they Their Children were circumcised the eighth day but were instructed afterwards when they could enquire what these things meant Indeed their Proselytes were first taught then circumcised so are ours baptized but their Infants were consigned first and so must ours 16. Thirdly In Baptism we are born again and this Infants need in the present circumstances and for the same great reason that men of age and reason do For our natural birth is either of it self insufficient or is made so by the Fall of Adam and the consequent evils that Nature alone or our first birth cannot bring us to Heaven which is a supernatural end that is an end above all the power of our Nature as now it is So that if Nature cannot bring us to Heaven Grace must or we can never get thither if the first birth cannot a second must but the second birth spoken of in Scripture is Baptism A man must be born of 〈◊〉 and the Spirit And therefore Baptism is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the laver of a new birth Either then Infants cannot go to Heaven any way that we know of or they must be baptized To say they are to be left to God is an excuse and no answer for when God hath opened the door and calls that the entrance into Heaven we do not leave them to God when we will not carry them to him in the way which he hath described and at the door which himself hath opened we leave them indeed but it is but helpless and destitute and though God is better than man yet that is no warrant to us what it will be to the children that we cannot warrant or conjecture And if it be objected that to the New birth are required dispositions of our own which are to be wrought by and in them that have the use of Reason Besides that this is wholly against the Analogy of a New birth in which the person to be born is wholly a passive and hath put into him the principle that in time will produce its proper actions it is certain that they that can receive the new birth are capable of it The effect of it is a possibility of being saved and arriving to a supernatural felicity If Infants can receive this effect then also the New birth without which they cannot receive the effect And if they can receive Salvation the effect of the New birth what hinders them but they may receive that that is in order to that effect and ordained only for it and which is nothing of it self but in its institution and relation and which may be received by the same capacity in which one may be created that is a passivity or a capacity obediential 17. Fourthly Concerning pardon of sins which is one great effect of Baptism it is certain that 〈◊〉 have not that benefit which men of sin and age may receive He that hath a sickly stomach drinks wine and it not only refreshes his spirits but cures his stomach He that drinks wine and hath not that disease receives good by his wine though it does not minister to so many needs it refreshes though it does not cure him and when oyl is poured upon a man's head it does not always heal a wound but sometimes makes him a chearful countenance sometimes it consigns him to be a King or a Priest So it is in Baptism it does not heal the wounds of actual sins because they have not committed them but it takes off the evil of Original sin whatsoever is imputed to us by Adam's prevarication is washed off by the death of the second Adam into which we are baptized But concerning original sin because there are so many disputes which may intricate the Question I shall make use only of that which is confessed on both sides and material to our purpose Death came upon all men by Adam's sin and the necessity of it remains upon us as an evil consequent of the Disobedience For though death is natural yet it was kept off from man by God's favour which when he lost the banks were broken and the water reverted to its natural course and our nature became a curse and death a punishment Now that this also relates to Infants so far is certain because they are sick and die This the Pelagians denied not But to whomsoever this evil descended for them also a remedy is provided by the second Adam That as in Adam all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive that is at the day of Judgment then death shall be destroyed In the mean time Death hath a sting and a bitterness a curse it is and an express of the Divine anger and if this sting be not taken away here we shall have no participation of the final victory over death Either therefore Infants must be for ever without remedy in this evil consequent of their Father's sin or they must be adopted into the participation of Christ's death which is the remedy Now how can they partake of Christ's death but by Baptism into his death For if there be any spiritual way 〈◊〉 it will by a stronger argument admit them to Baptism for if they can receive spiritual effects they can also receive the outward Sacrament this being denied only upon pretence they cannot have the other If there be no spiritual way extraordinary then the ordinary way is only left for them If there be an extraordinary let it be shewn and Christians will be at rest concerning their Children One thing only I desire to be observed That Pelagius denied Original Sin but yet denied not the necessity of Infants Baptism and being accused of it in an Epistle to Pope Innocent the First he purged himself of the suspicion and allowed the practice but denied the inducement of it which shews that their arts are weak that think Baptism to be useless to Infants if they be not formally guilty of the prevarication of Adam
By which I also gather that it was so universal so primitive a practice to baptize Infants that it was greater than all pretences to the contrary for it would much have conduced to the introducing his opinion against Grace and Original Sin if he had destroyed that practice which seemed so very much to have its greatest necessity from the doctrine he denied But against Pelagins and against all that follow the parts of his opinion it is of good use which S. Austin Prosper and Fulgentius argue If Infants are punished for Adam's sin then they are also guilty of it in some sence Nimis enim impium est hoc de Dei sentire 〈◊〉 quòd à praevaricatione liberos cum reis 〈◊〉 esse 〈◊〉 So Prosper Dispendia quae slentes nascendo testantur dicito quo merito sub 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 judice 〈◊〉 sinullum peccatum 〈◊〉 arrogentur said S. Austin For the guilt of it signifies nothing but the obligation to the punishment and he that feels the evil consequent to him the sin is imputed not as to all the same dishonour or moral accounts but to the more material to the natural account and in Holy Scripture the taking off the punishment is the pardon of the sin and in the same degree the punishment is abolished in the same God is appeased and then the person stands upright being reconciled to God by his grace Since therefore Infants have the punishment of sin it is certain the sin is imputed to them and therefore they need being reconciled to God by Christ and if so then when they are baptized into Christ's Death and into his Resurrection their sins are pardoned because the punishment is taken off the sting of natural death is taken away because God's anger is removed and they shall partake of Christ's Resurrection which because Baptism does signifie and consign they also are to be baptized To which also add this appendent Consideration That whatsoever the Sacraments do consign that also they do convey and minister they do it that is God by them does it lest we should think the Sacraments to be mere illusions and abusing us by deceitful ineffective signs and therefore to Infants the grace of a title to a Resurrection and Reconciliation to God by the death of Christ is conveyed because it signifies and consigns this to them more to the life and analogy of resemblance than Circumcision to the Infant sons of Israel I end this Consideration with the words of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Our birth by Baptism does cut off every unclean appendage of our natural birth and leads us to a celestial life And this in Children is therefore more necessary because the evil came upon them without their own act of reason and choice and therefore the grace and remedy ought not to stay the leisure of dull Nature and the formalities of the Civil Law 18. Fifthly The Baptism of Insants does to them the greatest part of that benefit which belongs to the remission of sins For Baptism is a state of Repentance and Pardon for ever This I suppose to be already proved to which I only add this Caution That the Pelagians to undervalue the necessity of Supervening grace affirmed that Baptism did minister to us Grace sufficient to live perfectly and without sin for ever Against this S. Jerome sharply declaims and affirms Baptismum praeterita donare peccata non suturam servare justitiam that is non statim justum facit omni plenum justitiâ as he expounds his meaning in another place Vetera peccata conscindit novas virtutes non tribuit dimittit à carcere dimisso si laboraverit praemia pollicetur Baptism does not so forgive future sins that we may do what we please or so as we need not labour and watch and fear perpetually and make use of God's grace to actuate our endeavours but puts us into a state of Pardon that is in a Covenant of Grace in which so long as we labour and repent and strive to do our duty so long our infirmities are pitied and our sins certain to be pardoned upon their certain conditions that is by virtue of it we are capable of Pardon and must work for it and may hope it And therefore Infants have a most certain capacity and proper disposition to Baptism for sin creeps before it can go and little undecencies are soon learned and malice is before their years and they can do mischief and irregularities betimes and though we know not when nor how far they are imputed in every month of their lives yet it is an admirable art of the Spirit of grace to put them into a state of Pardon that their remedy may at least be as soon as their necessity And therefore Tertullian and Gregory Nazianzen advised the Baptism of Children to be at three or four years of age meaning that they then begin to have little inadvertencies and hasty follies and actions so evil as did need a Lavatory But if Baptism hath an influence upon sins in the succeeding portion of our life then it is certain that their being presently innocent does not hinder and ought not to retard the Sacrament and therefore Tertullian's Quid festinat innocens aetas ad remissionem peccatorum What need Innocents hasten to the remission of sin is soon answered It is true they need not in respect of any actual sins for so they are innocent but in respect of the evils of their nature derived from their original and in respect of future sins in the whole state of their life it is necessary they be put into a state of Pardon before they sin because some sin early some sin later and therefore unless they be baptized so early as to prevent the first sins they may chance die in a sin to the pardon of which they have â—â—t derived no title from Christ. 19. Sixthly The next great effect of Baptism which Children can have is the Spir it of Sanctification and it they can be baptized with Water and the Spirit it will be sacriledge to rob them of so holy treasures And concerning this although it be with them as S. Paul says of Heirs The Heir so long as he is a child differeth nothing from a Servant though he be Lord of all and Children although they receive the Spirit of Promise and the Spirit of Grace yet in respect of actual exercise they differ not from them that have them not at all yet this hinders not but they may have them For as the reasonable Soul and all its Faculties are in Children Will and Understanding Passions and Powers of Attraction and Propulsion yet these Faculties do not operate or come ahead till time and art observation and experience have drawn them forth into action so may the Spirit of Grace the principle of Christian life be infused and yet lie without action till in its own day it is drawn forth For in every Christian there are three
the time of his first MIRACLE until the Second Year of his PREACHING WITH CONSIDERATIONS and DISCOURSES upon the several parts of the Story And PRAYERS fitted to the several MYSTERIES THE SECOND PART Chrysost. ad Demet. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 LONDON Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston 1675. TO The Right Honourable and Excellent Lady THE LADY MARY Countess Dowager of NORTHAMPTON I AM now to present to your Honour part of that Production of which your great love to Sanctity was Parent and which was partly designed to satisfie those great appetites to Vertue which have made you hugely apprehensive and forward to entertain any Instrument whereby you may grow and encrease in the Service of God and the Communion and Charities of holy people Your Honour best knows in what Soil the first Design of these Papers grew and but that the Excellent Personage who was their first Root is transplanted for a time that he may not have his righteous Soul vexed with the impurer Conversation of ill-minded men I am confident you would have received the fruits of his abode to more excellent purposes But because he was pleased to leave the managing of this to me I hope your Honour will for his sake entertain what that rare Person conceived though I was left to the pains and danger of bringing forth and that it may dwell with you for its first relation rather than be rejected for its appendent imperfections which it contracted not in the fountain but in the chanels of its progress and emanation Madam I shall beg of God that your Honour may receive as great increment of Piety and ghostly strength in the reading this Book as I receive honour if you shall be pleased to accept and own this as a confession of your great Worthiness and a testimony of the Service which ought to be payed to your Honour by Madam Your Honour 's most humble and most obliged Servant JER TAYLOR SECT X. Of the first Manifestation of JESVS by the Testimony of John and a Miracle Iohn points to Iesus The next day Iohn seeth Iesus coming unto him and saith Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world This is he of whom I said after me cometh a man which is preserred before me for he was before me And I knew him not but that he should be made manifest to Israel Ioh. 1. 29 30 31. Christ turns water into wine There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee And there were set there six water pots of stone after the manner of the purifying of the Iewes containing two or three firkins a peice Iesus saith unto them fill the water pots with water and they filled them to the brim Iesus saith unto them draw out now c. This begin̄ing of miracles did Iesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested forth his glory Ioh. 2 6 7 8-11 1. AFTER that the Baptist by a sign from Heaven was confirmed in spirit and understanding that Jesus was the Messias he immediately published to the Jews what God had manifested to him and first to the Priests and 〈◊〉 sent in legation from the Sanhedrim he professed indefinitely in answer to their question that himself was not the CHRIST nor Elias nor that Prophet whom they by a special Tradition did expect to be revealed they knew not when And concerning himself definitely he said nothing but that he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness Make straight the way of the Lord. He it was who was then amongst them but not known a person of great dignity to whom the Baptist was not worthy to do the office of the lowest Ministery who coming after John was preferred far before him who was to increase and the Baptist was to decrease who did baptize with the Holy Ghost and with Fire 2. This was the Character of his personal Prerogatives but as yet no demonstration was made of his Person till after the descent of the Holy Ghost upon Jesus and then when-ever the Baptist saw Jesus he points him out with his finger Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the World This is he Then he shews him to Andrew Simon Peter's brother with the same designation and to another Disciple with him who both followed Jesus and abode with him all night Andrew brings his brother Simon with him and then Christ changes his name from Simon to Peter or Cephas which signifies a Stone Then Jesus himself finds out Philip of Bethsaida and bad him follow him and Philip finds out Nathanael and calls him to see Thus persons bred in a dark cell upon their first ascent up to the chambers of light all run staring upon the beauties of the Sun and call the partners of their darkness to communicate in their new and stranger revelation 3. When Nathanael was come to Jesus Christ saw his heart and gave him a testimony to be truly honest and full of holy simplicity a true Israelite without guile And Nathanael being overjoyed that he had found the Messias believing out of love and loving by reason of his joy and no suspicion took that for a proof and verification of his person which was very insufficient to 〈◊〉 a doubt or ratifie a probability But so we believe a story which we love taking probabilities for demonstrations and casual accidents for probabilities and any thing creates vehement presumptions in which cases our guides are not our knowing faculties but our 〈◊〉 and if they be holy God guides them into the right perswasions as he does little birds to make rare nests though they understand not the mystery of operation nor the design and purpose of the action 4. But Jesus took his will and forwardness of affections in so good part that he promised him greater things and this gave occasion to the first Prophecy which was made by Jesus For Jesus said 〈◊〉 him 〈◊〉 I said I saw thee under the Fig-tree believest thou Thou shalt see greater things than these and then he prophesied that he should see Heaven open and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man But being a Doctor of the Law Christ chose him not at all to the Colledge of Apostles 5. Much about the same time there happened to be a Marriage in Cana 〈◊〉 Galilee in the vicinage of his dwelling where John the Evangelist is by some supposed to have been the Bridegroom but of this there is no certainty and thither Jesus being with his 〈◊〉 invited he went to do civility to the persons espoused and to do honour to the holy rite of Marriage The persons then married were but of indifferent fortunes richer in love of neighbours than in the 〈◊〉 of rich possessions they had more company than wine For the Master of the Feast whom according to the order and piety of the Nation they chose 〈◊〉 the order of Priests to be the president of the Feast
Resurrection of his body after three days death but he expressed it in the metaphor of the Temple Destroy this Temple and I will build it again in three days He spake of the Temple of his Body and they understood him of the Temple at Jerusalem and it was never rightly construed till it was accomplished 2. At this publick Convention of the Jewish Nation Jesus did many Miracles published himself to be the Messias and perswaded many Disciples amongst whom was Nicodemus a Doctor of the Law and a Ruler of the Nation he came by night to Jesus and affirmed himself to be convinced by the Miracles which he had seen for no man could do those miracles except God be with him When Jesus perceived his understanding to be so far disposed he began to instruct him in the great secret and mysteriousness of Regeneration telling him that every production is of the same nature and condition with its parent from flesh comes flesh and corruption from the Spirit comes spirit and life and immortality and nothing from a principle of nature could arrive to a supernatural end and therefore the only door to enter into the Kingdom of God was Water by the manuduction of the Spirit and by this Regeneration we are put into a new capacity of living a spiritual life in order to a spiritual and supernatural end 3. This was strange Philosophy to Nicodemus but Jesus bad him not to wonder for this is not a work of humanity but a fruit of God's Spirit and an issue of Predestination For the Spirit bloweth where it listeth and is as the wind certain and notorious in the effects but secret in the principle and in the manner of production And therefore this Doctrine was not to be estimated by any proportions to natural principles or experiments of sense but to the secrets of a new Metaphysick and abstracted separate Speculations Then Christ proceeds in his Sermon telling him there are yet higher things for him to apprehend and believe for this in respect of some other mysteriousness of his Gospel was but as Earth in comparison of Heaven Then he tells of his own descent from Heaven foretells his Death and Ascension and the blessing of Redemption which he came to work for mankind he preaches of the Love of the Father the Mission of the Son the rewards of Faith and the glories of Eternity he upbraids the unbelieving and impenitent and declares the differences of a holy and a corrupt Conscience the shame and fears of the one the confidence and serenity of the other And this is the summ of his Sermon to Nicodemus which was the fullest of mystery and speculation and abstracted sences of any that he ever made except that which he made immediately before his Passion all his other Sermons being more practical 4. From Jerusalem Jesus goeth into the Country of Judaea attended by divers Disciples whose understandings were brought into subjection and obedience to Christ upon confidence of the divinity of his Miracles There his Disciples did receive all comers and baptized them as John at the same time did and by that Ceremony admitted them to the Discipline and Institution according to the custom of the Doctors and great Prophets among the Jews whose Baptizing their Scholars was the ceremony of their Admission As soon as John heard it he acquitted himself in publick by renewing his former testimony concerning Jesus affirming him to be the Messias and now the time was come that Christ must increase and the Baptist suffer diminution for Christ came from above was above all and the summ of his Doctrine was that which he had heard and seen from the Father whom God sent to that purpose to whom God had set his seal that he was true who spake the words of God whom the Father loved to whō he gave the Spirit without measure and into whose hands God had delivered all things this was he whose testimony the world received not And that they might know not only what person they sleighted but how great Salvation also they neglected he summs up all his Sermons and finishes his Mission with this saying He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not on the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him 5. For now that the Baptist had fulfilled his Office of bearing witness unto Jesus God was pleased to give him his writ of ease and bring him to his reward upon this occasion John who had so learned to despise the world and all its exteriour vanities and impertinent relations did his duty justly and so without respect of persons that as he reproved the people for their prevarications so he spared not Herod for his but abstaining from all expresses of the spirit of scorn and asperity mingling no discontents interests nor mutinous intimations with his Sermons he told Herod it was not lawful for him to have his Brother's wife For which Sermon he felt the furies and malice of a woman's spleen was cast into prison and about a year after was sacrificed to the scorn and pride of a lustful woman and her immodest daughter being at the end of the second year of Christ's Preaching beheaded by Herod's command who would not retract his promise because of his honour and a rash vow he made in the gayety of his Lust and complacencies of his riotous dancings His head was brought up in a dish and made a Festival-present to the young girl who gave it to her mother a Cruelty that was not known among the Barbarisms of the worst of people to mingle banquetings with bloud and sights of death an insolency and inhumanity for which the 〈◊〉 Orators accused Q. Flaminius of Treason because to satisfie the wanton cruelty of Placentia he caused a condemned slave to be killed at supper and which had no precedent but in the furies of Marius who caused the head of the Consul Antonius to be brought up to him in his Feasts which he handled with much pleasure and insolency 6. But God's Judgments which sleep not long found out Herod and marked him for a Curse For the Wise of Herod who was the Daughter of Aretas a King of Arabia Petraea being repudiated by paction with Herodias provoked her Father to commence a War with Herod who prevailed against Herod in a great Battel defeating his whole Army and forcing him to an inglorious flight which the Jews generally expounded to be a Judgment on him for the unworthy and barbarous execution and murther of John the Baptist God in his wisdom and severity making one sin to be the punishment of another and neither of them both to pass without the signature of a Curse And Nicephorus reports that the dancing daughter of Herodias passing over a frozen lake the ice brake and she fell up to the neck in water and her head was parted from her body by the violence of the fragments shaked by the water and
represented in ceremony by the Immersion appointed to be the Rite of that Sacrament And then it is that God pours forth together with the Sacramental waters a salutary and holy fountain of Grace to wash the Soul from all its stains and impure adherences And therefore this first access to Christ is in the style of Scripture called Regeneration the New Birth Redemption Renovation Expiation or Atonement with God and Justification And these words in the New Testament relate principally and properly to the abolition of sins committed before Baptism For we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation to declare his Rightcousness for the remission of sins that are past To declare I say at this time his righteousness And this is that which S. Paul calls Justification by Faith that boasting might be excluded and the grace of God by Jesus made exceeding glorious For this being the proper work of Christ the first entertainment of a Disciple and manifestation of that state which is first given him as a favour and next intended as a duty is a total abolition of the precedent guilt of sin and leaves nothing remaining that can condemn we then freely receive the intire and perfect effect of that Atonement which Christ made for us we are put into a condition of innocence and favour And this I say is done regularly in Baptism and S. Paul expresses it to this sense after he had enumerated a series of Vices subjected in many he adds and such were some of you but ye are washed but ye are sanctified There is nothing of the old guilt remanent when ye were washed ye were sanctified or as the Scripture calls it in another place Ye were redeemed from your vain conversation 5. For this Grace was the formality of the Covenant Repent and believe the Gospel Repent and be converted so it is in S. Peter's Sermon and your sins shall be done away that was the Covenant But that Christ chose Baptism for its signature appears in the Parallel Repent and be baptized and wash away your sins For Christ loved his Church and gave himself for it That he might sanctifie and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word That he might present it to himself a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blemish The Sanctification is integral the Pardon is universal and immediate 6. But here the process is short no more at first but this Repent and be baptized and wash away your sins which Baptism because it was speedily administred and yet not without the preparatives of Faith and Repentance it is certain those predispositions were but instruments of reception actions of great facility of small employment and such as supposing the person not unapt did confess the infiniteness of the Divine mercy and fulness of the redemption is called by the Apostle a being justified freely 7. Upon this ground it is that by the Doctrine of the Church heathen persons strangers from the 〈◊〉 of grace were invited to a confession of Faith and dereliction of false Religions with a promise that at the very first resignation of their persons to the service of Jesus they should obtain full pardon It was S. Cyprian's counsel to old Demetrianus Now in the evening of thy days when thy Soul'is almost expiring repent of thy sins believe in Jesus and turn Christian and although thou art almost in the embraces of death yet thou shalt be comprehended of immortality Baptizatus ad horam securus bine exit saith S. Austin A baptized person dying immediately shall live eternally and gloriously And this was the case of the Thief upon the Cross he confessed Christ and repented of his sins and begged pardon and did acts enough to facilitate his first access to Christ and but to remove the hindrances of God's favour then he was redeemed and reconciled to God by the death of Jesus that is he was pardoned with a full instantaneous integral and clear Pardon with such a pardon which declared the glory of God's mercies and the infiniteness of Christ's merits and such as required a more reception and entertainment on man's part 8. But then we having received so great a favour enter into Covenant to correspond with a proportionable endeavour the benefit of absolute Pardon that is Salvation of our Souls being not to be received till the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord all the intervall we have promised to live a holy life in obedience to the whole Discipline of Jesus That 's the condition on our part And if we prevaricate that the mercy shewn to the blessed Thief is no argument of hope to us because he was saved by the mercies of the first access which corresponds to the Remission of sins we receive in Baptism and we shall perish by breaking our own promises and obligations which Christ passed upon us when he made with us the Covenant of an intire and gracious Pardon 9. For in the precise Covenant there is nothing else described but Pardon so given and ascertained upon an Obedience persevering to the end And this is clear in all those places of Scripture which express a holy and innocent life to have been the purpose and design of Christ's death for us and redemption of us from the former estate Christ bare our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead unto sins should live unto righteousness by whose stripes ye are healed Exinde from our being healed from our dying unto sin from our being buried with Christ from our being baptized into his death the end of Christ's dying for us is that we should live unto righteousness Which was also highly and prophetically expressed by S. Zachary in his divine Ecstasie This was the oath which he sware to our Fore-father Abraham That he would grant unto us that we being delivered out of the hands of our Enemies might serve him without fear In holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life And S. Paul discourses to this purpose pertinently and largely For the grace of God that bringeth Salvation hath appeared to all men Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts Hi sunt Angeli quibus in lavacro renunciavimus saith Tertullian Those are the evil Angels the Devil and his works which we deny or renounce in Baptism we should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world that is lead a whole life in the pursuit of universal holiness Sobriety Justice and Godlinèss being the proper language to signifie our Religion and respects to God to our neighbours and to our selves And that this was the very end of our dying in Baptism and the design of Christ's manifestation of
justifie that a holy life and a persevering Sanctity is enjoyned by the Covenant of the Gospel if I say in its first intention it be declared that we may as well and upon the same terms hope for Pardon upon a Recovery hereafter as upon the perseverance in the present condition 13. From these premisses we may soon understand what is the Duty of a Christian in all his life even to pursue his own undertaking made in Baptism or his first access to Christ and redemption of his person from the guilt and punishment of sins The state of a Christian is called in Scripture Regeneration Spiritual life Walking after the Spirit Walking in newness of life that is a bringing forth fruits meet for Repentance That Repentance which tied up in the same ligament with Faith was the disposition of a Christian to his Regeneration and Atonement must have holy life in perpetual succession for that is the apt and proper fruit of the first Repentance which John the Baptist preached as an introduction to Christianity and as an entertaining the Redemption by the bloud of the Covenant And all that is spoken in the New Testament is nothing but a calling upon us to do what we promised in our Regeneration to perform that which was the design of Christ who therefore redeemed us and bare our sins in his own body that we might die unto sin and live unto righteousness 14. This is that saying of S. Paul Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you Plainly saying that unless we pursue the state of Holiness and Christian communion into which we were baptized when we received the grace of God we shall fail of the state of Grace and never come to see the glories of the Lord. And a little before Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of Faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water That 's the first state of our Redemption that 's the Covenant God made with us to remember our sins no more and to put his laws in our hearts and minds And this was done when our bodies were washed with water and our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience that is in Baptism It remains then that we persist in the condition that we may continue our title to the Covenant for so it follows Let us hold fast the profession of our Faith without wavering For if we sin wilfully after the profession there remains no more sacrifice that is If we hold not fast the profession of our Faith and continue not the condition of the Covenant but fall into a contrary state we have forfeited the mercies of the Covenant So that all our hopes of Blessedness relying upon the Covenant made with God in Jesus Christ are ascertained upon us by holding fast that profession by retaining our hearts still sprinkled from an evil conscience by following peace with all men and holiness For by not failing of the grace of God we shall not fail of our hopes the mighty price of our high calling but without all this we shall never see the face of God 15. To the same purpose are all those places of Scripture which intitle us to Christ and the Spirit upon no other condition but a holy life and a prevailing habitual victorious Grace Know you not your own selves Brethren how that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be reprobates There are but two states of being in order to Eternity either a state of the Inhabitation of Christ or the state of Reprobation Either Christ is in us or we are reprobates But what does that signifie to have Christ dwelling in us That also we learn at the feet of the same Doctor If Christ be in you the body is dead by reason of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousness The body of Sin is mortified and the life of Grace is active busie and spiritual in all them who are not in the state of Reprobation The Parallel with that other expression of his They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts If sin be vigorous if it be habitual if it be beloved if it be not dead or dying in us we are not of Christ's portion we belong not to him nor he to us For whoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God that is every Regenerate person is in a condition whose very being is a contradiction and an opposite design to Sin When he was regenerate and born anew of water and the spirit the seed of God the original of Piety was put into him and bidden to encrease and multiply The seed of God in S. John is the same with the word of God in S. James by which he begat us and as long as this remains a Regenerate person cannot be given up to sin for when he is he quits his Baptism he renounces the Covenant he alters his relation to God in the same degree as he enters into a state of sin 16. And yet this discourse is no otherwise to be understood than according to the design of the thing it self and the purpose of God that is that it be a deep ingagement and an effectual consideration for the necessity of a holy life but at no hand let it be made an instrument of Despair nor an argument to lessen the influences of the Divine Mercy For although the nicety and limits of the Covenant being consigned in Baptism are fixed upon the condition of a holy and persevering uninterrupted Sanctity and our Redemption is wrought but once compleated but once we are but once absolutely intirely and presentially forgiven and reconciled to God this Reconciliation being in virtue of the Sacrifice and this Sacrifice applied in Baptism is one as Baptism is one and as the Sacrifice is one yet the Mercy of God besides this great Feast hath fragments which the Apostles and Ministers spiritual are to gather up in baskets and minister to the afterneeds of indigent and necessitous Disciples 17. And this we gather as fragments are gathered by respersed sayings instances and examples of the Divine mercy recorded in Holy Scripture The Holy Jesus commands us to forgive our brother seventy times seven times when he asks our pardon and implores our mercy and since the Divine mercy is the pattern of ours and is also procured by ours the one being made the measure of the other by way of precedent and by way of reward God will certainly forgive us as we forgive our brother and it cannot be imagined God should oblige us to give pardon oftner than he will give it himself especially since he hath expressed ours to be a title of a
of Christ's servants the Apostles and the Primitive Christians had no other verification of this Promise but this that rejoycing in tribulation and knowing how to want as well as how to abound through many tribulations they entered into the Kingdom of Heaven For that is the Countrey in which they are co-heirs with Jesus But if we will certainly understand what this reward is we may best know it by understanding the duty and this we may best learn from him that gave it in commandment Learn of me for I am meek said the Holy Jesus and to him was promised that the uttermost ends of the earth should be his inheritance and yet he died first and went to Heaven before it was verified to him in any sense but only of content and desire and joy in suffering and in all variety of accident And thus also if we be meek we may receive the inheritance of the Earth 10. The acts of this Grace are 1. To submit to all the instances of Divine Providence not repining at any accident which God hath chosen for us and given us as part of our lot or a punishment of our deserving or an instrument of vertue not envying the gifts graces or prosperities of our neighbours 2. To pursue the interest and imployment of our calling in which we are placed not despising the meanness of any work though never so disproportionable to our abilities 3. To correct all malice wrath evil-speaking and inordinations of anger whether in respect of the object or the degree 4. At no hand to entertain any thoughts of revenge or retaliation of evil 5. To be affable and courteous in our deportment towards all persons of our society and entercourse 6. Not to censure or reproach the weakness of our neighbour but support his burthen cover and cure his infirmities 7. To excuse what may be excused lessening severity and being gentle in reprehension 8. To be patient in afflictions and thankful under the Cross. 9. To endure reproof with shame at our selves for deserving it and thankfulness to the charitable Physician that offers the remedy 10. To be modest and fairly-mannered toward our Superiours obeying reverencing speaking honourably of and doing honour to aged persons and all whom God hath set over us according to their several capacities 11. To be ashamed and very apprehensive of the unworthiness of a crime at no hand losing our fear of the invisible God and our reverence to visible societies or single persons 12. To be humble in our exteriour addresses and behaviour in Churches and all Holy places 13. To be temperate in government not imperious unreasonable insolent or oppressive lest we provoke to wrath those whose interest of person of Religion we are to defend or promote 14. To do our endeavour to expiate any injury we did by confessing the fact offering satisfaction asking forgiveness 11. Fourthly Blessed are they that Hunger and thirst after Righteousness for they shall be filled This Grace is the greatest indication of spiritual health when our appetite is right strong and regular when we are desirous of spiritual nourishment when we long for Manna and follow Christ for loaves not of a low and terrestrial gust but of that bread which came down from heaven Now there are two sorts of holy repast which are the proper objects of our desires The bread of Heaven which is proportioned to our hunger that is all those immediate emanations from Christ's pardon of our sins and redemption from our former conversation holy Laws and Commandments To this Food there is also a spiritual Beverage to quench our thirst and this is the effects of the Holy Spirit who first moved upon the waters of Baptism and afterwards became to us the breath of life giving us holy inspirations and assistences refreshing our wearinesses cooling our fevers and allaying all our intemperate passions making us holy humble resigned and pure according to the pattern in the mount even as our Father is pure So that the first Redemption and Pardon of us by Christ's Merits is the Bread of Life for which we must hunger and the refreshments and daily emanations of the Spirit who is the spring of comforts and purity is that drink which we must thirst after A being first reconciled to God by Jesus and a being sanctisied and preserved in purity by the Holy Spirit is the adequate object of our desires Some to hunger and thirst best fancy the analogy and proportion of the two Sacraments the Waters of Baptism and the Food of the Eucharist some the Bread of the Patin and the Wine of the Chalice But it is certain they signifie one desire expressed by the most impatient and necessary of our appetites hungring and thirsting And the object is whatsoever is the principle or the effect the beginning or the way or the end of righteousness that is the Mercies of God the Pardon of Jesus the Graces of the Spirit a holy life and a holy death and a blessed Eternity 12. The blessing and reward of this Grace is fulness or satisfaction which relates immediately to Heaven because nothing here below can satisfie us The Grace of God is our Viaticum and entertains us by the way its nature is to increase not to satisfie the appetites not because the Grace is empty and unprofitable as are the things of the world but because it is excellent but yet in order to a greater perfection it invites the appetite by its present goodness but it leaves it unsatisfied because it is not yet arrived at glory and yet the present imperfection in respect of all the good of this World's possession is rest and satisfaction and is imperfect only in respect of its own future complement and perfection and our hunger continues and our needs return because all we have is but an antepast But the glories of Eternity are also the proper object of our desires that 's the reward of God's Grace this is the crown of righteousness As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness and when I awake up after thy likeness I shall be satisfied with it The acts of this Vertue are multiplied according to its object for they are only 1. to desire and 2. pray for and 3. labour for all that which is Righteousness in any sense 1. For the Pardon of our sins 2. for the Graces and Sanctification of the Spirit 3. for the advancement of Christ's Kingdome 4. for the reception of the holy Sacrament and all the instruments ordinances and ministeries of Grace 5. for the grace of Perseverance 6. and finally for the crown of Righteousness 13. Fisthly Blessed are the Merciful for they shall obtain mercy Mercy is the greatest mark and token of the 〈◊〉 elect and predestinate persons in the world Put ye on my beloved as the elect of God the bowels of mercy holy and precious For Mercy is an attribute in the manifestation of which
material and circumstantiate actions of Piety For these have great powers and influences even in Nature to restore health and preserve our lives Witness the sweet sleeps of temperate persons and their constant appetite which Timotheus the son of Conon observed when he dieted in Plato's Academy with severe and moderated diet They that sup with Plato are well the next day Witness the symmetry of passions in meek men their freedome from the violence of inraged and passionate indispositions the admirable harmony and sweetness of content which dwells in the retirements of a holy Conscience to which if we add those joys which they only understand truly who feel them inwardly the joys of the Holy Ghost the content and joys which are attending upon the lives of holy persons are most likely to make them long and healthful For now we live saith S. Paul if ye stand fast in the Lord. It would prolong S. Paul's life to see his ghostly children persevere in holiness and if we understood the joys of it it would do much greater advantage to our selves But if we consider a spiritual life abstractedly and in it self Piety produces our life not by a natural efficiency but by Divine benediction God gives a healthy and a long life as a reward and blessing to crown our Piety even before the sons of men For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the Earth but they that be cursed of him shall be cut off So that this whole matter is principally to be referred to the act of God either by ways of nature or by instruments of special providence rewarding Piety with a long life And we shall more fully apprehend this if upon the grounds of Scripture Reason and Experience we weigh the contrary Wickedness is the way to shorten our days 19. Sin brought Death in first and yet Man lived almost a thousand years But he sinned more and then Death came nearer to him for when all the World was first drowned in wickedness and then in water God cut him shorter by one half and five hundred years was his ordinary period And Man sinned still and had strange imaginations and built towers in the air and then about Peleg's time God cut him shorter by one half yet two hundred and odd years was his determination And yet the generations of the World returned not unanimously to God and God cut him off another half yet and reduced him to one hundred and twenty years And by Moses's time one half of the final remanent portion was pared away reducing him to threescore years and ten so that unless it be by special dispensation men live not beyond that term or thereabout But if God had gone on still in the same method and shortned our days as we multiplied our sins we should have been but as an Ephemeron Man should have lived the life of a Fly or a Gourd the morning should have seen his birth his life have been the term of a day and the evening must have provided him of a shroud But God seeing Man's thoughts were onely evil continually he was resolved no longer so to strive with him nor destroy the kinde but punish individuals onely and single persons and if they sinned or if they did obey regularly their life should be proportionable This God set down for his rule Evil shall 〈◊〉 the wicked person and He that keepeth the Commandments keepeth his own Soul but he that despiseth his own ways shall die 20. But that we may speak more exactly in this Probleme we must observe that in Scripture three general causes of natural death are assigned Nature Providence and Chance By these three I onely mean the several manners of Divine influence and operation For God only predetermines and what is changed in the following events by Divine permission to this God and Man in their several manners do cooperate The saying of David concerning Saul with admirable Philosophy describes the three ways of ending Man's life David said furthermore As the LORD liveth the LORD shall smite him or his day shall come to die or he shall descend into battel and perish The first is special Providence The second means the term of Nature The third is that which in our want of words we call Chance or Accident but is in effect nothing else but another manner of the Divine Providence That in all these Sin does interrupt and retrench our lives is the undertaking of the following periods 21. First In Nature Sin is a cause of dyscrasies and distempers making our bodies healthless and our days few For although God hath prefixed a period to Nature by an universal and antecedent determination and that naturally every man that lives temperately and by no supervening accident is interrupted shall arrive thither yet because the greatest part of our lives is governed by will and understanding and there are temptations to Intemperance and to violations of our health the period of Nature is so distinct a thing from the period of our person that few men attain to that which God had fixed by his first law and 〈◊〉 purpose but end their days with folly and in a period which God appointed 〈◊〉 with anger and a determination secondary consequent and accidental And therefore says David Health is far from the 〈◊〉 for they regard not thy statutes And to this purpose is that saying of Abenezra He that is united to God the Fountain of Life his Soul being improved by Grace communicates to the Body an establishment of its radical moisture and natural heat to make it more healthful that so it may be more instrumental to the spiritual operations and productions of the Soul and it self be preserved in perfect constitution Now how this blessing is contradicted by the impious life of a wicked person is easie to be understood if we consider that from drunken Surfeits come Dissolution of members Head-achs Apoplexies dangerous Falls Fracture of bones Drenchings and dilution of the brain Inslammation of the liver Crudities of the stomach and thousands more which Solomen sums up in general terms Who hath woe who hath sorrow who hath redness of eyes they that tarry long at the 〈◊〉 I shall not need to instance in the sad and uncleanly consequents of Lusts the wounds and accidental deaths which are occasioned by Jealousies by Vanity by Peevishness vain Reputation and Animosities by Melancholy and the despair of evil Consciences and yet these are abundant argument that when God so permits a man to run his course of Nature that himself does not intervene by an extraordinary 〈◊〉 or any special acts of providence but only gives his ordinary assistence to natural causes a very great part of men make their natural period shorter and by sin make their days miserable and few 22. Secondly Oftentimes Providence intervenes and makes the way shorter God for the iniquity of man not suffering Nature to take her course but stopping
consideration is particular because there are fewer capacities of making sins to become national than personal and therefore if we understand when a sin is National we may the rather understand the meaning of God's hand when he strikes a People For National sins grow higher and higher not merely according to the degree of the sin or the intension alone but according to the extension 〈◊〉 to its being 〈◊〉 so it is productive of more or less mischief to a Kingdom Customary iniquities amongst the People do then amount to the account of National sins when they are of so universal practice as to take in well-near every particular such as was that of Sodom not to leave ten righteous in all the Countrey and such were the sins of the Old world who left but eight persons to escape the angry baptism of the Floud And such was the murmur of the children of Israel refusing to march up to Canaan at the commandment of God they all murmured but Caleb and 〈◊〉 and this God in the case of the Amalekites calls the fulfilling of their sins and a filling up the measure of their iniquities And hither also I reckon the defection of the Ten Tribes from the House of Judah and the Samaritan Schism these caused the total extirpation of the offending People For although these sins were personal and private at first yet when they come to be universal by diffusion and dissemination and the good People remaining among them are but like drops of Wine in a Tun of Water of no consideration with God save only to the preservation of their own persons then although the persons be private yet all private or singular persons make the Nation But this hath happened but seldome in Christianity I think indeed never except in the case of Mutinies and Rebellion against their lawful Prince or the attesting violence done in unjust Wars But God only knows and no man can say that any sin is national by diffusion and therefore in this case we cannot make any certain judgment or advantage to our selves or very rarely by observing the changes of Providence upon a People 9. But the next above this in order to the procuring popular Judgments is publick impunities the not doing Justice upon Criminals publickly complained of and demanded especially when the persons interested call for Justice and execution of good Laws and the Prince's arm is at liberty and in full strength and there is no contrary reason in the particular instance to make compensation to the publick for the omission or no care taken to satisfie the particular Abimelech thought he had reason to be angry with Isaac for saying 〈◊〉 was his Sister for one of the people might have ly'ne with thy wife and thou shouldst have brought 〈◊〉 upon us meaning that the man should have escaped unpunished by reason of the mistake which very impunity he feared might be expounded to be a countenance and encouragement to the sin But this was no more than his fear The case of the Benjamites comes home to this present article for they refused to do justice upon the men that had ravished and killed the Levite's Concubine they lost twenty five thousand in battel their Cities were destroyed and the whole Tribe almost extinguished For punishing publick and great acts of injustice is called in Scripture putting away the evil from the land because to this purpose the sword is put into the Prince's hand and he bears the sword in vain who ceases to protect his People and not to punish the evil is a voluntary retention of it unless a special case intervene in which the Prince thinks it convenient to give a particular pardon provided this be not encouragement to others nor without great reason big enough to make compensation for the particular omission and with care to render some other satisfaction to the person injured in all other cases of impunity that sin becomes National by forbearing which in the acting was personal and it is certain the impunity is a spring of universal evils it is no thank to the publick if the best man be not as bad as the worst 10. But there is a step beyond this and of a more publick concernment such are the Laws of Omri when a Nation consents to and makes ungodly Statutes when mischief is established as a Law then the Nation is engaged to some purpose When I see the People despise their Governours scorn and rob and disadvantage the Ministers of Religion make rude addresses to God to his Temple to his Sacraments I look upon it as the insolency of an untaught People who would as readily do the contrary if the fear of God and the King were upon them by good Examples and Precepts and Laws and severe executions And farther yet when the more publick and exemplar persons are without sense of Religion without a dread of Majesty without reverence to the Church without impresses of Conscience and the tendernesses of a religious fear towards God as the persons are greater in estimation of Law and in their influences upon the People so the score of the Nation advances and there is more to be paid for in popular Judgments But when Iniquity or Irreligion is made a Sanction and either God must be dishonoured or the Church exauthorated or her Rites invaded by a Law then the fortune of the Kingdom is at stake No sin engages a Nation so much or is so publick so solemn iniquity as is a wicked Law Therefore it concerns Princes and States to secure the Piety and innocency of their Laws and if there be any evil Laws which upon just grounds may be thought productive of God's anger because a publick misdemeanour cannot be expiated but by a publick act of Repentance or a publick Calamity the Laws must either have their edge abated by a desuetude or be laid asleep by a non-execution or dismembred by contrary proviso's or have the sting drawn forth by interpretation or else by abrogation be quite rescinded But these are National sins within it self or within its own Body by the act of the Body I mean diffusive or representative and they are like the personal sins of men in or against their own bodies in the matter of Sobriety There are others in the matter of Justice as the Nation relates to other People communicating in publick Entercourse 11. For as the Entercourse between man and man in the actions of commutative and distributive Justice is the proper matter of Vertues and Vices personal so are the Transactions between Nation and Nation against the publick rules of Justice Sins National directly and in their first original and answer to Injustice between man and man Such are commencing War upon unjust titles Invasion of neighbours territories Consederacies and aids upon tyrannical interest Wars against true Religion or Sovereignty Violation of the Laws of nations which they have consented to as the publick instrument of accord and negotiation
with an issue of bloud twelve years without hope of remedy from art or nature and therefore she runs to Jesus thinking without precedent upon the confident perswasions of a holy Faith that if she did but touch the hem of his garment she should be whole She came trembling and full of hope and reverence and touched his garment and immediately the 〈◊〉 of her unnatural emanation was stopped and reverted to its natural course and offices S. Ambrose says that this woman was Martha But it is not likely that she was a Jewess but a Gentile because of that return which she made in memory of her cure and honour of Jesus according to the Gentile rites For Eusebius reports that himself saw at Caesarea Philippi a Statue of 〈◊〉 representing a woman kneeling at the feet of a goodly personage who held his hand out to her in a posture of granting her request and doing favour to her and the inhabitants said it was erected by the care and cost of this woman adding whether out of truth or easiness is not certain that at the pedestal of this Statue an usual plant did grow which when it was come up to that maturity and height as to arrive at the fringes of the brass monument it was medicinal in many dangerous diseases So far Eusebius Concerning which story I shall make no censure but this that since S. Mark and S. Luke affirm that this woman before her cure had spent all her substance upon Physicians it is not easily imaginable how she should become able to dispend so great a summ of money as would purchase two so great Statues of brass and if she could yet it is still more unlikely that the Gentile Princes and Proconsuls who searched all places publick and private and were curiously diligent to destroy all honorary monuments of Christianity should let this alone and that this should escape not only the diligence of the Persecutors but the fury of such Wars and changes as happened in Palestine and that for three hundred years together it should stand up in defiance of all violences and changeable fate of all things However it be it is certain that the Book against Images published by the command of Charles the Great 850 years ago gave no credit to the story and if it had been true it it more than probable that Justin Martyr who was born and bred in Palestine and Origen who lived many years in Tyre in the neighbourhood of the place where the Statue is said to stand and were highly diligent to heap together all things of advantage and reputation to the Christian cause would not have omitted so notable an instance It is therefore likely that the Statues which Eusebius saw and concerning which he heard such stories were first placed there upon the stock of a heathen story or Ceremony and in process of time for the likeness of the figures and its capacity to be translated to the Christian story was by the Christians in after-Ages attributed by a fiction of fancy and afterwards by credulity confidently applied to the present Narrative 21. When Jesus was come to the Ruler's house he found the minstrels making their funeral noises for the death of Jairus's daughter and his servants had met him and acquainted him of the death of the child yet Jesus turned out the minstrels and entred with the parents of the child into her chamber and taking her by the hand called her and awakened her from her sleep of death and commanded them to give her to eat and enjoyned them not to publish the Miracle But as 〈◊〉 suppressed by violent detentions break out and rage with a more impetuous and rapid motion so it happened to Jesus who endeavouring to make the noises and reports of him less popular made them to be 〈◊〉 for not only we do that most greedily from which we are most restrained but a great merit enamell'd with humility and restrained with modesty grows more beautious and florid up to the heights of wonder and glories 22. As he came from Jairus's house he cured two blind men upon their petition and confession that they did believe in him and cast out a dumb Devil so much to the wonder and amazement of the people that the Pharisees could hold no longer being ready to burst with envy but said he cast out Devils by help of the Devils Their malice being as usually it is contradictory to its own design by its being unreasonable nothing being more sottish than for the Devil to divide his kingdom upon a plot to ruine his certainties upon hopes future and contingent But this was but the first eruption of their malice all the year last past which was the first year of Jesus's Preaching all was quiet neither the Jews nor the Samaritans nor the Galileans did malign his Doctrine or Person but he preached with much peace on all hands for this was the year which the Prophet Isaiah called in his prediction the acceptable year of the Lord. Ad SECT XII Considerations upon the Entercourse happening between the Holy Jesus and the Woman of Samaria The Woman of Samaria Iohn 4 7. There cemeth a woman of Samaria to draw water Iesus saith unto her giue me to drink 9. Then saith the Woman of Samaria unto him How is it that thou being a Iew askest drink of me which am a woman of Samaria The great draught of Fishes Luk. 5. 4. 5. etc. He said unto Simon Let down your nets for a draught And they enclosed a great multitude of fishes and when Simon Peter saw it he fell down att Jesus knees for he was astonished all that were with him at the draught of the fishes And Jesus said to Simon Fear not from henceforth thou shalt catch men 1. WHen the Holy Jesus perceiving it unsafe to be at Jerusálem returned to Galilee where the largest scene of his Prophetical Office was to be represented he journeyed on foot through Samaria and being weary and faint hungry and thirsty he sate down by a Well and begged water of a Samaritan woman that was a Sinner who at first refused him with some incivility of language But he in stead of returning anger and passion to her rudeness which was commenced upon the interest of a mistaken Religion preached the coming of the Messias to her unlock'd the secrets of her heart and let in his Grace and made a fountain of living water to spring up in her Soul to extinguish the impure flames of Lust which had set her on fire burning like Hell ever since the death of her fifth Husband she then becoming a Concubine to the sixth Thus Jesus transplanted Nature into Grace his hunger and thirst into religious appetites the darkness of the Samaritan into a clear revelation her Sin into Repentance and Charity and so quenched his own thirst by relieving her needs and as it was meat to him to do his Father's will so it was drink to
him to bring us to drink of the fountain of living water For thus God declared it to be a delight to him to see us live as if he were refreshed by those felicities which he gives to us as communications of his grace and instances of mercy and consignations to Heaven Upon which we can look with no eye but such as sees and admires the excellency of the Divine Charity which being an emanation from the mercies and essential compassion of Eternity God cannot chuse but 〈◊〉 in it and love the works of his Mercy who was so well pleased in the works of his Power He that was delighted in the Creation was highly pleased in the nearer conveyances of himself when he sent the Holy Jesus to bear his image and his mercies and his glories and offer them to the use and benefit of Man For this was the chief of the works of God and therefore the Blessed Master could not but be highliest pleased with it in imitation of his heavenly Father 2. The woman observing our Saviour to have come with his face from 〈◊〉 was angry at him upon the quarrel of the old Schism The Jews and the Samaritans had differing Rites and the zealous persons upon each side did commonly dispute themselves into Uncharitableness and so have Christians upon the same confidence and zeal and mistake For although righteousness hath no fellowship with unrighteousness nor Christ with Belial yet the consideration of the crime of Heresie which is a spiritual wickedness is to be separate from the person who is material That is no spiritual communion is to be endured with Heretical persons when it is certain they are such when they are convinced by competent authority and sufficient argument But the persons of the men are to be pitied to be reproved to be redargued and convinced to be wrought upon by fair compliances and the offices of civility and invited to the family of Faith by the best arguments of Charity and the instances of a holy life having your conversation honest among them that they may beholding your good works glorifie God in the day when he shall visit them Indeed if there be danger that is a weak understanding may not safely converse in civil society with a subtile Heretick in such cases they are to be avoided not saluted But as this is only when the danger is by reason of the unequal capacities and strengths of the person so it must be only when the article is certainly Heresie and the person criminal and interest is the ingredient in the perswasion and a certain and a necessary Truth destroyed by the opinion We read that S. John spying Cerinthus in a Bath refused to wash there where the enemy of God and his Holy Son had been This is a good precedent for us when the case is equal S. John could discern the spirit of Cerinthus and his Heresie was notorious fundamental and highly criminal and the Apostle a person assisted up to infallibility And possibly it was done by the whisper of a Prophetick spirit and upon a miraculous design for immediately upon his retreat the Bath fell down and crushed Cerinthus in the ruines But such acts of aversation as these are not easily by us to be drawn into example unless in the same or the parallel concourse of equally-concluding accidents We must not quickly nor upon slight grounds nor unworthy instances call Heretick there had need be a long process and a high conviction and a competent Judge and a necessary Article that must be ingredients into so sad and decretory definitions and condemnation of a person or opinion But if such instances occur come not near the danger nor the scandal And this advice S. Cyprian gave to the Lay-people of his Diocese Let them decline their discourses whose Sermons creep and corrode like a Cancer let there be no colloquies no banquets no commerce with such who are excommunicate and justly driven from the Communion of the Church For such persons as S. Leo descants upon the Apostle's expression of heretical discourses creep in humbly and with small and modest beginnings they catch with flattery they bind gently and kill privily Let therefore all persons who are in danger secure their persons and Perswasions by removing far from the infection And for the scandal S. Herminigilda gave an heroick example which in her perswasion and the circumstances of the Age and action deserved the highest testimony of zeal religious passion and confident perswasion For she rather chose to die by the mandate of her tyrant-Father Leonigildus the Goth than she would at the Paschal solemnity receive the blessed Sacrament at the hand of an Arrian Bishop 3. But excepting these cases which are not to be judged with forwardness nor rashly taken measure of we find that conversing charitably with persons of differing Perswasions hath been instrumental to their Conversion and God's glory The believing wife may sanctifie the unbelieving husband and we find it verified in Church-story S. Cecily converted her husband Valerianus S. Theodora converted Sisinius S. Monica converted Patricius and Theodelinda Agilulphus S. Clotilda perswaded King Clodoveus to be a Christian and S. Natolia perswaded Adrianus to be a Martyr For they having their conversation honest and holy amongst the unbelievers shined like virgin Tapers in the midst of an impure prison and amused the eyes of the sons of darkness with the brightness of the flame For the excellency of a holy life is the best argument of the inhabitation of God within the Soul and who will not offer up his understanding upon that Altar where a Deity is placed as the President and author of Religion And this very entercourse of the Holy Jesus with the Woman is abundant argument that it were well we were not so forward to refuse Communion with dissenting persons upon the easie and confident mistakes of a too-forward zeal They that call Heretick may themselves be the mistaken persons and by refusing to communicate the civilities of hospitable entertainment may shut their doors upon Truth and their windows against Light and refuse to let Salvation in For sometimes Ignorance is the only parent of our Perswasions and many times 〈◊〉 hath made an impure commixture with it and so produced the issue 4. The Holy Jesus gently insinuates his discourses If thou hadst known who it is that asks thee water thou wouldest have asked water of him Oftentimes we know not the person that speaks and we usually chuse our Doctrine by our affections to the man but then if we are uncivil upon the stock of prejudice we do not know that it is Christ that calls our understandings to obedience and our affections to duty and compliances The Woman little thought of the glories which stood right against her He that sate upon the Well had a Throne placed above the heads of Cherubims In his arms who there rested himself was the Sanctuary of rest
thy 〈◊〉 and Glories O Blessed and Eternal Jesu Amen DISCOURSE IX Of Repentance 1. THE whole Doctrine of the Gospel is comprehended by the Holy Ghost in these two Summaries Faith and Repentance that those two potent and imperious Faculties which command our lower powers which are the fountain of actions the occasion and capacity of Laws and the title to reward or punishment the Will and the Understanding that is the whole man considered in his superiour Faculties may become subjects of the Kingdom servants of Jesus and heirs of glory Faith supplies our imperfect conceptions and corrects our Ignorance making us to distinguish good from evil not onely by the proportions of Reason and Custome and old Laws but by the new standard of the Gospel it teaches us all those Duties which were enjoyned us in order to a participation of mighty glories it brings our Understanding into subjection making us apt to receive the Spirit for our Guide Christ for our Master the Gospel for our Rule the Laws of Christianity for our measure of good and evil and it supposes us naturally ignorant and comes to supply those defects which in our Understandings were left after the spoils of Innocence and Wisdome made in Paradise upon Adam's prevarication and continued and encreased by our neglect evil customes voluntary deceptions and infinite prejudices And as Faith presupposes our Ignorance so Repentance presupposes our Malice and Iniquity The whole design of Christ's coming and the Doctrines of the Gospel being to recover us from a miserable condition from Ignorance to spiritual Wisdome by the conduct of Faith and from a vicious habitually-depraved life and ungodly manners to the purity of the Sons of God by the instrument of Repentance 2. And this is a loud publication of the excellency and glories of the Gospel and the felicities of man over all the other instances of Creation The Angels who were more excellent Spirits than humane Souls were not comprehended and made safe within a Covenant and Provisions of Repentance Their first act of volition was their whole capacity of a blissful or a miserable Eternity they made their own sentence when they made their first election and having such excellent Knowledge and no weaknesses to prejudge and trouble their choice what they first did was not capable of Repentance because they had at first in their intuition and sight all which could afterward bring them to Repentance But weak Man who knows first by elements and after long study learns a syllable and in good time gets a word could not at first know all those things which were sufficient or apt to determine his choice but as he grew to understand more saw more reasons to rescind his first elections The Angels had a full peremptory Will and a satisfied Understanding at first and therefore were not to mend their first act by a second contradictory But poor Man hath a Will alwayes strongest when his Understanding is weakest and chuseth most when he is least able to determine and therefore is most passionate in his desires and follows his object with greatest earnestness when he is blindest and hath the least reason so to do And therefore God pitying Man begins to reckon his choices to be criminal just in the same degree as he gives him Understanding The violences and unreasonable actions of Childhood are no more remembred by God than they are understood by the Child The levities and passions of Youth are not aggravated by the imputation of Malice but are sins of a lighter dye because Reason is not yet impressed and marked upon them with characters and tincture in grain But he who when he may chuse because he understands shall chuse the evil and reject the good stands marked with a deep guilt and hath no excuse left to him but as his degrees of Ignorance left his choice the more imperfect And because every sinner in the style of Scripture is a fool and hath an election as imperfect as is the action that is as great a declension from Prudence as it is from Piety and the man understands as imperfectly as he practises therefore God sent his Son to take upon him not the nature of Angels but the 〈◊〉 of Abraham and to propound Salvation upon such terms as were possible that is upon such a Piety which relies upon experience and trial of good and evil and hath given us leave if we chuse amiss at first to chuse again and chuse better Christ having undertaken to pay for the issues of their first follies to make up the breach made by our first weaknesses and abused understandings 3. But as God gave us this mercy by Christ so he also revealed it by him He first used the Authority of a Lord and a Creator and a Law-giver he required Obedience indeed upon reasonable terms upon the instance of but a few Commandments at first which when he afterwards multiplied he also appointed ways to expiate the smaller irregularities but left them eternally bound without remedy who should do any great violence or a crime But then he bound them but to a Temporal death Only this as an eternal death was also tacitely implied so also a remedy was secretly ministred and Repentance particularly preached by Homilies distinct from the Covenant of Moses's Law The Law allowed no Repentance for greater crimes he that was convicted of Adultery was to die without mercy but God pitied the miseries of man and the inconveniences of the Law and sent Christ to suffer for the one and remedy the other for so it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead and that Repentance and Remission of sins should be preached in his Name among all Nations And now this is the last and only hope of Man who in his natural condition is imperfect in his customs vicious in his habits impotent and criminal Because Man did not remain innocent it became necessary he should be penitent and that this Penitence should by some means be made acceptable that is become the instrument of his Pardon and restitution of his hope Which because it is an act of favour and depends wholly upon the Divine dignation and was revealed to us by Jesus Christ who was made not onely the Prophet and Preacher but the Mediatour of this New Covenant and mercy it was necessary we should become Disciples of the Holy Jesus and servants of his Institution that is run to him to be made partakers of the mercies of this new Covenant and accept of him such conditions as he should require of us 4. This Covenant is then consigned to us when we first come to Christ that is when we first profess our selves his Disciples and his servants Disciples of his Doctrine and servants of his Institution that is in Baptism in which Christ who died for our sins makes us partakers of his death For we are buried by Baptism into his death saith S. Paul Which was also
they deny the fact and double it When they would repair their losses they fall to Gaming and besides that they are infinitely full of fears passions wrath and violent disturbances in the various chances of their game that which they use to restore their 〈◊〉 ruines even the little remnant and condemns them to beggery or what is worse Thus evil men 〈◊〉 for content out of things that cannot satisfie and take care to get that content that is they raise War to enjoy present Peace and renounce all Content to get it They strive to depress their Neighbours that they may be their equals to disgrace them to get reputation to themselves which arts being ignoble do them the most disparagement and resolve never to enter into the felicities of God by content taken in the prosperities of man which is a making our selves wretched by being wicked Malice and Envy is indeed a mighty curse and the Devil can shew us nothing more foolish and unreasonable than Envy which is in its very formality a curse an eating of coals and vipers because my neighbour's table is full and his cup is crowned with health and plenty The Christian Religion as it chuseth excellent ends so it useth proportionate and apt means The most contradictory accident in the world when it becomes hallowed by a pious and Christian design becomes a certain means of felicity and content To quit our lands for Christ's sake will certainly make us rich to depart from our friends will encrease our relations and beneficiaries but the striving to secure our temporal interests by any other means than obedient actions or obedient sufferings is declared by the Holy Jesus to be the greatest improvidence and ill husbandry in the world Even in this world Christ will repay us an hundred fold for all our losses which we suffer for the interests of Christianity In the same proportion we find that all Graces do the work of humane felicities with a more certain power and 〈◊〉 effect than their contraries Gratitude endears Benefits and procures more Friendships Confession gets a Pardon Impudence and lying doubles the fault and exasperates the offended person Innocence is bold and rocks a man asleep but an evil Conscience is a continual alarm Against this folly of using disproportionate means in order to their ends the Holy Jesus hath opposed the Eight Beatitudes which by contradictions of nature and improbable causes according to humane and erring estimate bring our best and wisest ends to pass infallibly and divinely 32. But this is too large a field to walk in for it represents all the flatteries of sin to be a mere cozenage and deception of the Understanding and we find by this scrutiny that evil and unchristian persons are infinitely unwise because they neglect the counsel of their superiours and their guides They dote passionately upon trifles they rely upon false foundations and deceiving principles they are most confident when they are most abused they are like shelled fish singing loudest when their house is on fire about their ears and being merriest when they are most miserable and perishing when they have the option of two things they ever chuse the worst they are not masters of their own actions but break all purposes at the first temptation they take more pains to do themselves a mischief than would 〈◊〉 Heaven that is they are rude ignorant foolish unwary and undiscerning people in all senses and to all purposes and are incurable but by their Obedience and conformity to the Holy Jesus the eternal Wisdome of the Father 33. Upon the strength of these premisses the yoke of Christianity must needs be apprehended light though it had in it more pressure than it hath because lightness or heaviness being relative terms are to be esteemed by comparison to others Christianity is far easier than the yoke of Moses's Law not only because it consists of fewer Rites but also because those perfecting and excellent Graces which integrate the body of our Religion are made easie by God's assisting and the gifts of the Holy Ghost and we may yet make it easier by Love and by Fear which are the proper products of the Evangelical Promises and Threatnings For I have seen persons in affrightment have carried burthens and leaped ditches and climbed walls which their natural power could never have done And if we understood the sadnesses of a cursed Eternity from which we are commanded to fly and yet knew how near we are to it and how likely to fall into it it would create fears greater than a sudden fire or a mid-night alarm And those unhappy souls who come to feel this truth when their condition is without remedy are made the more miserable by the apprehension of their stupid folly For certainly the accursed Spirits feel the smart of Hell once doubled upon them by considering by what vain unsatisfying trifles they lost their happiness with what pains they perished and with how great ease they might have been beatified And certain it is Christian Religion hath so furnished us with assistences both exteriour and interiour both of perswasion and advantages that whatsoever Christ hath doubled upon us in perfection he hath alleviated in aids 34. And then if we compare the state of Christianity with Sin all the preceding discourses were intended to represent how much easier it is to be a Christian than a vile and wicked person And he that remembers that whatever fair allurements may be pretended as invitations to a sin are such false and unsatisfying pretences that they drive a man to repent him of his folly and like a great laughter end in a sigh and expire in weariness and indignation must needs confess himself a fool for doing that which he knows will make him repent that he ever did it A sin makes a man afraid when it thunders and in all dangers the sin detracts the visour and affrights him and visits him when he comes to die upbraiding him with guilt and threatning misery So that Christianity is the easiest Law and the easiest state it is more perfect and less troublesome it brings us to Felicity by ways proportionable landing us in rest by easie and unperplexed journeys This Discourse I therefore thought necessary because it reconciles our Religion with those passions and desires which are commonly made the instruments and arguments of sin For we rarely meet with such spirits which love Vertue so metaphysically as to abstract her from all sensible and delicious compositions and love the purity of the Idea S. Lewis the King sent Ivo Bishop of Chartres on an Embassy and he told that he met a grave Matron on the way with fire in one hand and water in the other and observing her to have a melancholick religious and phantastick deportment and look asked her what those symbols meant and what she meant to do with her fire and water She answered My purpose is with the fire to burn Paradise and with my water to quench
the flames of Hell that men may serve God without the incentives of hope and fear and purely for the love of God Whether the Woman were onely imaginative and sad or also zealous I know not But God knows he would have few Disciples if the arguments of invitation were not of greater promise than the labours of Vertue are of trouble And therefore the Spirit of God knowing to what we are inflexible and by what we are made most ductile and malleable hath propounded Vertue clothed and dressed with such advantages as may entertain even our Sensitive part and first desires that those also may be invited to Vertue who understand not what is just and reasonable but what is profitable who are more moved with advantage than justice And because emolument is more felt than innocence and a man may be poor for all his gift of 〈◊〉 the Holy Jesus to endear the practices of Religion hath represented Godliness unto us under the notion of gain and sin as unfruitful and yet besides all the natural and reasonable advantages every Vertue hath a supernatural reward a gracious promise attending and every Vice is not only naturally deformed but is made more ugly by a threatning and horrid by an appendent curse Henceforth therefore let no man complain that the Commandments of God are impossible for they are not onely possible but easie and they that say otherwise and do accordingly take more pains to carry the instruments of their own death than would serve to ascertain them of life And if we would do as much for Christ as we have done for Sin we should find the pains less and the pleasure more And therefore such complainers are without excuse for certain it is they that can go in foul ways must not say they cannot walk in fair they that march over rocks in despight of so many impediments can travel the even ways of Religion and Peace when the Holy Jesus is their Guide and the Spirit is their Guardian and infinite felicities are at their journey's end and all the reason of the world political oeconomical and personal do entertain and support them in the travel of the passage The PRAYER O Eternal Jesus who gavest Laws unto the world that man-kind being united to thee by the bands of Obedience might partake of all thy glories and felicities open our understanding give us the spirit of discerning and just apprehension of all the beauties with which thou hast enamelled Vertue to represent it beauteous and amiable in our eyes that by the allurements of exteriour decencies and appendent blessings our present desires may be entertained our hopes promoted our affections satisfied and Love entring in by these doors may dwell in the interiour regions of the Will O make us to love thee for thy self and Religion for thee and all the instruments of Religion in order to thy glory and our own felicities Pull off the visors of Sin and discover its deformities by the lantern of thy Word and the light of the Spirit that I may never be bewitched with sottish appetites Be pleased to build up all the contents I expect in this world upon the interests of a vertuous life and the support of Religion that I may be rich in Good works content in the issues of thy Providence my Health may be the result of Temperance and severity my Mirth in spiritual emanations my Rest in Hope my Peace in a good Conscience my Satisfaction and acquiescence in thee that from Content I may pass to an eternal Fulness from Health to Immortality from Grace to Glory walking in the paths of Righteousness by the waters of Comfort to the land of everlasting Rest to feast in the glorious communications of Eternity eternally adoring loving and enjoying the infinity of the ever-Blessed and mysterious Trinity to whom be glory and 〈◊〉 and dominion now and for ever Amen DISCOURSE XVI Of Certainty of Salvation 1. WHen the Holy Jesus took an account of the first Legation and voyage of his Apostles he found them rejoycing in priviledges and exteriour powers in their authority over unclean spirits but weighing it in his balance he found the cause too light and therefore diverted it upon the right object Rejoyce that your names are written in Heaven The revelation was confirmed and more personally applied in answer to S. Peter's Question We have for saken all and followed thee what shall we have therefore Their LORD answered Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel Amongst these persons to whom Christ spake Judas was he was one of the Twelve and he had a throne allotted for him his name was described in the book of life and a Scepter and a Crown was deposited for him too For we must not judge of Christ's meaning by the event since he spake these words to produce in them Faith comfort and joy in the best objects it was a Sermon of duty as well as a Homily of comfort and therefore was equally intended to all the Colledge and since the number of Thrones is proportioned to the number of men it is certain there was no exception of any man there included and yet it is as certain Judas never came to sit upon the throne and his name was blotted out of the book of life Now if we put these ends together that in Scripture it was not revealed to any man concerning his final condition but to the dying penitent Thief and to the twelve Apostles that twelve thrones were designed for them and a promise made of their inthronization and yet that no man's final estate is so clearly declared miserable and lost as that of Judas one of the Twelve to whom a throne was promised the result will be that the election of holy persons is a condition allied to duty absolute and infallible in the general and supposing all the dispositions and requisites concurring but fallible in the particular if we fall off from the mercies of the Covenant and prevaricate the conditions But the thing which is most observable is that if in persons so eminent and priviledged and to whom a revelation of their Election was made as a particular grace their condition had one weak leg upon which because it did rely for one half of the interest it could be no stronger than its supporters the condition of lower persons to whom no revelation is made no priviledges are indulged no greatness of spiritual eminency is appendent as they have no greater certainty in the thing so they have less in person and are therefore to work out their salvation with great fears and tremblings of spirit 2. The purpose of this consideration is that we do not judge of our final condition by any discourses of our own relying upon God's secret Counsels and Predestination of Eternity This is a mountain upon which whosoever climbs like Moses to behold the land of Canaan at great distances may please his eyes or