expresse himselfe Norah which is rather Reverendus Mal. 2.5 then Terribilis as that word is used I gave him life and peace for the feare wherewith he feared me and was afraid before my Name So that this Terriblenesse which we are called upon to professe of God is a Reverentiall a Majesticall not a Tyrannicall terriblenesse And therefore hee that conceives a God that hath made man of flesh and blood and yet exacts that purity of an Angel in that flesh A God that would provide himselfe no better glory then to damme man A God who lest hee should love man and be reconciled to man hath enwrapped him in an inevitable necessity of sinning A God who hath received enough and enough for the satisfaction of all men and yet not in consideration of their future sinnes but meerely because he hated them before they were sinners or before they were any thing hath made it impossible for the greatest part of men to have any benefit of that large satisfaction This is not such a Terriblenesse as arises out of his Works his Actions or his Scriptures for God hath never said never done any such thing as should make us lodge such conceptions of God in our selves or lay such imputations upon him The true feare of God is true wisedome It is true Joy Rejoice in trembling saith David Psal 2.11 There is no rejoycing without this feare there is no Riches without it Reverentia Ichovae The feare of the Lord is his treasure and that is the best treasure Thus farre we are to goe Heb. 12.28 Let us serve God with reverence and godly feare godly feare is but a Reverence it is not a Jealousie a suspition of God And let us doe it upon the reason that followes in the same place For our God is a consuming fire There is all his terriblenesse he is a consuming fire to his enemies but he is our God and God is love And therefore to conceive a cruell God a God that hated us even to damnation before we were as some who have departed from the sense and modesty of the Ancients have adventured to say or to conceive a God so cruell as that at our death or in our way he will afford us no assurance that hee is ours and we his but let us live and die in anxiety and torture of conscience in jealousie and suspition of his good purpose towards us in the salvation of our soules as those of the Romane Heresie teach to conceive such a God as from all eternity meant to damne me or such a God as would never make me know and be sure that I should bee saved this is not to professe God to be terrible in his works For his Actions are his works and his Scriptures are his works and God hath never done or said any thing to induce so terrible an opinion of him And so we have done with all those pieces which in our paraphrasticall distribution of the text at beginning did constitute our first our Historicall part Davids retrospect his commemoration of former blessings In which he proposes a duty a declaration of Gods goodnesse Dicite publish it speake of it He proposes Religious duties in that capacity as he is King Religion is the Kings care He proposes by way of Counsaile to all by way of Commandment to his owne Subjects And by a more powerfull way then either counsaile or Commandment that is by Example by doing that himselfe which he counsailes and commands others to doe Dicite Say speake It is a duty more then thinking and lesse then doing Every man is bound to speake for the advancement of Gods cause but when it comes to action that is not the private mans office but belongs to the publique or him who is the Publique David himselfe the King The duty is Commemoration Dicite Say speake but Dicite Deo Do this to God ascribe not your deliverances to your Armies and Navies by Sea or Land no nor to Saints in Heaven but to God onely Nor are ye called upon to contemplate God in his Essence or in his Decrees but in his works In his Actions in his Scriptures In both those you shall find him terrible that is Reverend majesticall though never tyrannicall nor cruell Passe we now according to our order laid downe at first to our second part the Propheticall part Davids prospect for the future and gather wee something from the particular branches of that Through the greatnesse of thy power thine enemies shall submit themselves unto thee In this our first consideration is that God himselfe hath enemies and then 2 Part. Habet Deus hostes how should we hope to be nay why would wee wish to be without them God had good that is Glory from his enemies And we may have good that is advantage in the way to glory by the exercise of our patience from enemies too Those for whom God had done most the Angels turned enemies first vex not thou thy selfe if those whom thou hast loved best hate thee deadliest There is a love in which it aggravates thy condemnation that thou art so much loved Does not God recompence that if there be such a hate as that thou art the better and that thy salvation is exalted for having beene hated And that profit the righteous have from enemies God loved us then when we were his enemies Rom. 5.10 and we frustrate his exemplar love to us if we love not enemies too The word Hostis which is a word of heavy signification and implies devastation and all the mischiefes of war is not read in all the New Testament Inimicus that is non amicus unfriendly is read there often very very often There is an enmity which may consist with Euangelicall charity but a hostility that carries in it a denotation of revenge of extirpation of annihilation that cannot This gives us some light how far we may and may not hate enemies God had enemies to whom he never returned The Angels that opposed him and that is because they oppose him still and are by their owne perversenesse incapable of reconciliation We were enemies to God too but being enemies Rom. 5.10 we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son As then actual reconciliation makes us actually friends so in differences which may be reconciled we should not be too severe enemies but maintaine in our selves a disposition of friendship but in those things which are in their nature irreconciliable we must be irreconciliable too There is an enmity which God himselfe hath made and made perpetuall Ponam inimicitias sayes God Gen. 3.15 God puts an enmity betweene the seed of the Serpent and the seed of the woman And those whom God joynes let no man sever those whom God severs let no man joyne The Schoole presents it well wee are to consider an enemy formally or materially that is that which makes him an enemy or that which makes him a man In that
troubling these Sadduces and these Pharisees I be content to let them agree and to divide my life between them so as that my presumption shall possesse all my youth and desperation mine age I have heard my sentence already The end of this man will be worse then his beginning How much soever God be incensed with me for my presumption at first he will be much more inexorable for my desperation at last And therefore interrupt the prescription of sin break off the correspondence of sin unjoynt the dependency of sin upon sin Bring every single sin as soon as thou committest it into the presence of thy God upon those two legs Confession and Detestation and thou shalt see that as though an intire Iland stand firme in the Sea yet a single clod of earth cast into the Sea is quickly washt into nothing so howsoever thine habituall and customary and concatenated sins sin enwrapped and complicated in sin sin entrenched and barricadoed in sin sin screwed up and riveted with sin may stand out and wrastle even with the mercies of God in the blood of Christ Jesus yet if thou bring every single sin into the sight of God it will be but as a clod of earth but as a graine of dust in the Ocean Keep thy sins then from mutuall intelligence That they doe not second one another induce occasion and then support and disguise one another and then neither shall the body of sin ever oppresse thee nor the exhalations and damps and vapors of thy sad soule hang between thee and the mercies of thy God But thou shalt live in the light and serenity of a peaceable conscience here and die in a faire possibility of a present melioration and improvement of that light All thy life thou shalt be preserved in an Orientall light an Easterne light a rising and a growing light the light of grace and at thy death thou shalt be super-illustrated with a Meridionall light a South light the light of glory And be this enough for the explication and application of these words and their complication with the day for the justifying of S. Pauls Stratagem in himselfe and the exemplifying and imitation thereof in us Amen That God that is the God of peace grant us his peace and one minde towards one another That God that is the Lord of Hosts maintaine in us that warre which himself hath proclaimed an enmity between the seed of the Woman and the seed of the Serpent between the truth of God and the inventions of men That we may fight his battels against his enemies without and fight his battels against our enemies within our own corrupt affections That we may be victorious here in our selves and over our selves and triumph with him hereafter in eternall glory SERMONS Preached upon the PENITENTIALL PSALMES SERM. L. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 6.1 O Lord Rebuke me not in thine Anger neither chasten me in thy het Displeasure GOD imputes but one thing to David but one sin The matter of Vriah the Hittite nor that neither but by way of exception not till he had first established an assurance that David stood well with him First he had said 1 King 25.5 David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord and turned not aside from any thing that he had commanded him all the dayes of his life Here was rectitude He did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord no obliquity no departing into by-wayes upon collaterall respects Here was integrity to Gods service no serving of God and Mammon Hee turned not from any thing that God commanded him And here was perpetuity perseverance constancy All the dayes of his life And then and not till then God makes that one and but that one exception Except the matter of Vriah the Hittite When God was reconciled to him he would not so much as name that sin that had offended him And herein is the mercy of God in the merits of Christ a sea of mercie that as the Sea retaines no impression of the Ships that passe in it for Navies make no path in the Sea so when we put out into the boundlesse Sea of the blood of Christ Jesus by which onely wee have reconciliation to God there remaines no record against us for God hath cancelled that record which he kept and that which Satan kept God hath nailed to the Crosse of his Son That man which hath seene me at the sealing of my Pardon and the seale of my Reconciliation at the Sacrament many times since will yet in his passion or in his ill nature or in his uncharitablenesse object to me the fins of my youth whereas God himselfe if I have repented to day knowes not the sins that I did yesterday God hath rased the Record of my sin in Heaven it offends not him it grieves not his Saints nor Angels there and he hath rased the Record in hell it advances not their interest in me there nor their triumph over me And yet here the uncharitable man will know more and see more and remember more then my God or his devill remembers or knowes or sees He will see a path in the Sea he will see my sin when it is drowned in the blood of my Saviour After the Kings pardon perchance it will beare an action to call a man by that infamous name which that crime which is pardoned did justly cast upon him before the pardon After Gods reconciliation to David he would not name Davids sin in the particular But yet for all this though God will be no example of upbraiding or reproaching repented sinnes when God hath so far exprest his love as to bring that sinner to that repentance and so to mercy yet that he may perfect his owne care he exercises that repentant sinner with such medicinall corrections as may inable him to stand upright for the future And to that purpose was no man evermore exercised then David David broke into anothers family he built upon anothers ground he planted in anothers Seminary and God broke into his family his ground his Seminary In no story can wee finde so much Domestick affliction such rapes and incests and murders and rebellions from their owne children as in Davids storie Under the heavy waight and oppression of some of those is David by all Expositors conceived to have conceived and uttered this Psalme Some take it to have beene occasioned by some of his temporall afflictions either his persecution from Saul or bodily sicknesse in himselfe of which traditionally the Rabbins speake much or Absoloms unnaturall rebellion Some others with whom wee finde more reason to joyne finde more reason to interpret it of a spirituall affliction that David in the apprehension and under the sense of the wrath and indignation of God came to this vehement exclamation or deprecation O Lord rebuke me not in thine anger neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure In which words we shall consider
Nature trees do bud out and there is an emission and emanation of flowers and fruits without any help of man or any act done by him to that tree we reade in Genesis That the earth had produced all plants and herbs before eyther any raine fell upon it or any man tilled it And these are good helps and illustrations to us after we have beleeved that a Virgin brought forth a Son but nothing deduced out of nature could prove this at first to any man except he beleeved it before And therefore blessed be God that hath given us that strength which the Egyptian Mid-wives said the women of Israel had that they brought forth children without the help of Mid-wives That we can humbly beleeve these mysteries of our religion by faith without the hand and help of Reason Si nondum mens idonea abstrusa investigare sine haesitatione credantur sayes St. Augustine In things which are not subject to any faculty of ours to be discerned by reason there is a present exercise of our faith As we know it to be true that the bush in which God spake to Moses was full of fire and did burne but not consume because God hath said so in his booke but yet we doe not know how that was done so we know by the same evidence that the Mother of our Saviour was a Virgin but for the manner of this Mystery we rest upon Epiphanius Rule Quaecunque dicit Deus credamus quòd sint quomodo Soli Deo cognitum whatsoever God in his word sayes was done let us beleeve it to be done how it was done as we know that God knowes so we are content not to inquire more then it hath been his pleasure to communicate to us She was then and she was alwaies a Virgin but because this Text is of his Humiliation he leaves that Name that proceeds from miracle and descends to that lower name of nature Made of a woman The Spirit of God fore-saw that the issue betweene the Church and the Heretiques would not be Virgin or no Virgin but whether Christ were made of a woman Some Heretiques did question the first The Helvidians denied her perpetuall Virginitie But that Heresie and some others that opposed her Virginitie vanished in a short time But the Manichees that lasted long and spred farre in the old times and the Anabaptists which abound yet deny that Christ was made of a woman They say that Christ passed through her as water through a Pipe but tooke nothing of her substance and then if he took not the nature of mankinde he hath not redeemed mankinde And therefore in that Prophesie of Ieremy that Christ should be borne and in this Gospel in our Text that Christ was borne the Holy Ghost mainttaines and continues that phrase Made of a woman And where he begins to expresse his Divinitie in miracles Joh. 2. at the marriage in Cana there Christ himselfe calls her by no other name Woman what have I to doe with thee And when he had drawne all his miracles to a glorious consummatum est upon the Crosse he cals her there by that name too Woman behold thy Son Joh. 19. Here then was no such curious insisting upon Styles and Titles and names of Dignities no unkindnesse no displeasure taken if one should leave out a Right Honourable or Right Worshipfull or an addition of an Office or Dignity The powerfulnesse of Christs birth consists in this That he is made of God The miraculousnesse of Christs birth consisted in this that he was made of a Virgin and yet the Prophet and the Apostle two principall Secretaries of the Holy Ghost present him with this addition made of a woman Christ had one priviledge in his birth which never any Prince had or shall have that is that he chose what Mother he would have and might have been borne of what woman he would have chosen And in this large and universall chovce though he chose a woman full of grace to be his Mother yet that he might give spirituall comfort to all sorts of women first to those who should be unjustly suspected and insimulated of sin and incontinency when indeed they were innocent hee was content to come of a Mother who should be subject to that suspicion and whom her husband should think to be with child before he marryed her and thereupon purpose to put her away And then Mat. 1. to fill those women who had been guilty of that sinne with reliefe in their consciences against the wrath of God and with reparation of their reputation and good name in the world it was his unsearchable will and pleasure that in all that Genealogie and pedigree which he and his spirit hath inspired the Euangelists to record of his Ancestors there is not one woman named of whom Christ is descended who is not dangerously noted in the Scriptures to have had some aspersion of incontinence upon her as both St. Hierome and St. Ambrose and St. Chrysostome observes of Thamar of Berseba and of Ruth also So then Christ Jesus who came onely for the reliefe of sinners is content to be known to have come not onely of poore parents but of a sinfull race and though he exempted his Blessed Mother more then any from sin yet he is now content to be born again of sinful Mothers In that soul that accuses it self most of sin In that soul that cals now to mind with remorce and not with delight the severall times and places and waies wherein she hath offended God In that soul that acknowledgeth it self to have bin a sink of uncleannesse a Tabernacle a Synagogue of Satan In that soul that hath been as it were possessed with Mary Magdalens seven Devils yea with him whose name was Legion with all Devils In that sinful soul would Christ Jesus fain be born this day and make that soul his Mother that he might be a regeneration to that soul We cannot afford Christ such a birth in us as he had to be born of a Virgin for every one of us wel-nigh hath married himself to some particular sin some beloved sin that he can hardly divorce himselfe from nay no man keepes his faith to that one sin that he hath marryed himselfe to but mingles himselfe with other sins also Though Covetousnesse whom he loves as the wife of his bosome have made him rich yet he will commit adultery with another sin with Ambition and he will part even with those riches for Honour Though Ambition be his wife his marryed sin yet he will commit adultery with another sin with Licentiousnesse and he will endanger his Honour to fulfill his Lust Ambition may be his wife but Lust is his Concubine We abandon all spirituall chastity all virginitie we marry our particular sinnes Ezech. 16. and then we divide our loves with other sins too Thou hast multiplyed thy fornications and yet art not satisfied is a complaint that reaches us all in spirituall
accused in this case of torture Ignorantia Iudicis est calamitas plerumque innocentis sayes that Father for the most part even the ignorance of the Judge is the greatest calamity of him that is accused If the Judge knew that he were innocent he should suffer nothing If he knew he were guilty he should not suffer torture but because the Judge is ignorant and knowes nothing therefore the Prisoner must bee racked and tortured and mangled sayes that Father There is a whole Epistle in S. Hierome full of heavenly meditation and of curious expressions It is his forty ninth Epistle Ad Innocentium where a young man tortured for suspition of adultery with a certaine woman ut compendio cruciatus vitaret sayes he for his ease and to abridge his torment and that he might thereby procure and compasse a present death confessed the adultery though false His confession was made evidence against the woman and shee makes that protestation Tu testis Domine Iesu Thou Lord Jesus be my Witnesse Non ideo me negare velle ne peream sed ideo mentiri nolle ne peccem I doe not deny the fact for feare of death but I dare not belie my selfe nor betray mine innocence for feare of sinning and offending the God of Truth And as it followes in that story though no torture could draw any Confession any accusation from her she was condemned and one Executioner had three blowes at her with a Sword and another foure and yet she could not be killed And therefore because Storie abounds with Examples of this kinde how uncertaine a way of tryall and conviction torture is though S. Augustine would not say that torture was unlawfull yet he sayes It behoves every Judge to make that prayer Erue me Domine à necessitatibus meis If there bee some cases in which the Judge must necessarily proceed to torture O Lord deliver me from having any such case brought before me But what use soever there may be for torture for Confession in the Inquisition they torture for a deniall for the deniall of God and for the renouncing of the truth of his Gospell As men of great place think it concernes their honour to doe above that which they suffer to make their revenges not only equall but greater then their injuries so the Romane Church thinks it necessary to her greatnesse to inflict more tortures now then were inflicted upon her in the Primitive Church as though it were a just revenge for the tortures she received then for being Christian to torture better Christians then her selfe for being so In which tortures the Inquisition hath found one way to escape the generall clamour of the world against them which is to torture to that heighth that few survive or come abroad after to publish how they have been tortured And these first oppose Gods purpose in the making and preserving and dignifying the body of man Transgressors herein in the second kinde are they that defile the garment of Christ Jesus the body in which he hath vouchsafed to invest and enwrap himselfe and so apparell a Harlot in Christs cloathes and make that body which is his hers That Christ should take my body though defiled with fornication and make it his is strange but that I in fornication should take Christs body and make it hers is more Know ye not 1 Cor. 6.15 V. 16. sayes the Apostle that your bodies are the members of Christ And againe Know you not that he that is joyned to a harlot is one body Some of the Romane Emperours made it treason to carry a Ring that had their picture engraved in it to any place in the house of low Office What Name can we give to that sin to make the body of Christ the body of a harlot And yet the Apostle there as taking knowledge that we loved our selves better then Christ changes the edge of his argument and argues thus ver 18. He that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body If ye will be bold with Christs body yet favour your own No man ever hated his own body and yet no outward enemy is able so to macerate our body as our owne licentiousnesse Christ who tooke all our bodily infirmities upon him Hunger and Thirst and Sweat and Cold tooke no bodily deformities upon him he tooke not a lame a blinde a crooked body and we by our intemperance and licentiousnesse deforme that body which is his all these wayes The licentious man most of any studies bodily handsomenesse to be comely and gracious and acceptable and yet soonest of any deformes and destroyes it and makes that loathsome to all which all his care was to make amiable And so they oppose Gods purpose of dignifying the body Transgressors in a third kinde are they that sacrilegiously prophane the Temple of the Holy Ghost by neglecting the respect and duties belonging to the dead bodies of Gods Saints in a decent and comely accompanying them to convenient Funerals Heires and Executors are oftentimes defective in these offices and pretend better employments of that which would be say they vainly spent so But remember you of whom in much such a case that is said in S. Iohn John 12.6 This he said not because he cared for the poore but because he was a Thiefe and had the bagge and bore that which was put therein This Executors say not because they intend pious uses but because they beare and beare away the bagges Generally thy opinion must be no rule for other mens actions neither in these cases of Funerals must thou call all too much which is more then enough That womans Ointment poured upon Christs feet that hundred pound waight of perfumes to embalme his one body was more then enough necessarily enough yet it was not too much for the dignity of that person nor for the testimony of their zeale who did it in so abundant manner Now as in all these three waies men may oppose the purpose of God in dignifying the body so in concurring with Gods purpose for the dignifying thereof a man may exceed and goe beyond Gods purpose in all three God would not have the body torne and mangled with tortures in those cases but then hee would not have it pampered with wanton delicacies nor varnished with forraigne complexion It is ill when it is not our own heart that appeares in our words it is ill too when it is not our own blood that appeares in our cheekes It may doe some ill offices of blood it may tempt but it gives over when it should doe a good office of blood it cannot blush If when they are filling the wrinkles and graves of their face they would remember that there is another grave that calls for a filling with the whole body so even their pride would flow into a mortification God would not have us put on a sad countenance nor disfigure our face not in our fastings and other disciplines God would not have
shall know that I am the Lord God shall restore them to life and more to strength and more to beauty and comelinesse acceptable to himselfe in Christ Jesus Your way is Recollecting gather your selves into the Congregation and Communion of Saints in these places gather your sins into your memory and poure them out in humble confessions to that God whom they have wounded Gather the crummes under his Table lay hold upon the gracious promises which by our Ministery he lets fall upon the Congregation now and gather the seales of those promises whensoever in a rectified conscience his Spirit beares witnesse with your spirit that you may be worthy receivers of him in his Sacrament and this recollecting shall be your resurrection Beatus qui habet partem Apâ—â— 20.6 sayes S. Iohn Blessed is he that hath part in the first Resurrection for on such the second death hath no power He that rises to this Judgement of recollecting and of judging himselfe shall rise with a chearfulnesse and stand with a confidence when Christ Jesus shall come in the second Auâ— And Quando exacturus est in secundo quod dedit in primo when Christ shall call for an account in that second judgement how he hath husbanded those graces which he gave him for the first he shall make his possession of this first resurrection his title and his evidence to the second When thy body which hath been subject to all kindes of destruction here to the destruction of a Flood in Catarrhs and Rheums and Dropsies and such distillations to the destruction of a fire in Feavers and Frenzies and such conflagrations shall be removed safely and gloriously above all such distempers and malignant impressions and body and soule so united as if both were one spirit in it selfe and God so united to both as that thou shalt be the same spirit with God God began the first World but upon two Adam and Eve The second world after the Flood he began upon a greater stock upon eight reserved in the Arke But when he establishes the last and everlasting world in the last Resurrection he shall admit such a number as that none of us who are here now none that is or hath or shall be upon the face of the earth shall be denied in that Resurrection if he have truly felt this for Grace accepted is the infallible earnest of Glory SERMON XXII Preached at S. Pauls upon Easter-day 1627. HEB. 11.35 Women received their dead raised to life againe And others were tortured not accepting a deliverance that they might obtaine a better Resurrection MErcy is Gods right hand with that God gives all Faith is mans right hand with that man takes all David Psal 136. opens and enlarges this right hand of God in pouring out his blessings plentifully abundantly manifoldly there And in this Chapter the Apostle opens and enlarges this right hand of man by laying hold upon those mercies of God plentifully abundantly manifoldly by faith here There David powres downe the mercies of God in repeating and re-repeating that phrase For his mercy endureth for ever And here S. Paul carries up man to heaven by repeating and re-repeating the blessings which man hath attained by faith By faith Abel sacrificed By faith Enoch walked with God By faith Noah built an Arke c. And as in that Psalme Gods mercies are exprest two waies First in the good that God did for his servants He remembred them in their low estate Ver 23. Ver. 24. for his mercy endureth for ever And then againe He redeemed them from their enemies for his mercy endureth for ever And then also in the evill that he brought upon their enemies He slew famous Kings for his mercy endureth for ever And then He gave their land for an heritage for his mercy endureth for ever So in this Chapter the Apostle declares the benefits of faith two wayes also First how faith enriches us and accommodates us in the wayes of prosperity By faith Abraham went to a place which he received for an inheritance And so By faith Sarah received strength to conceive seed Ver. 8. Ver. 11. Ver. 34. And then how faith sustaines and establishes us in the wayes of adversity By faith they stopt the mouthes of Lions by faith they quencht the violence of fire by faith they escaped the edge of the sword in the verse immediatly before the Text. And in this verse which is our Text the Apostle hath collected both The benefits which they received by faith Women received their dead raised to life againe And then the holy courage which was infused by Faith in their persecutions Others were tortured not accepting deliverance that they might receive a better Resurrection And because both these have relation evidently pregnantly to the Resurrection for their benefit was that the Women received their dead by a Resurrection And their courage in their persecution was That they should receive a better Resurrection therefore the whole meditation is proper to this day in which wee celebrate all Resurrections in the Root in the Resurrection of the First fruits of the dead our Lord and Saviour Christ Iesus Our Parts are two How plentifully God gives to the faithfull Divisio Women receive their dead raised to life againe And how patiently the faithfull suffer Gods corrections Others were tortured not accepting c. Though they be both large considerations Benefits by Faith Patience in the Faithfull yet we shall containe our selves in those particulars which are exprest or necessarily implyed in the Text it selfe And so in the first place we shall see first The extraordinary consolation in Gods extraordinary Mercies in his miraculous Deliverances such as this Women received their dead raised to life again And secondly we shall seethe examples to which the Apostle refers here What women had had their dead restored to life againe And then lastly in that part That this affection of joy in having their dead restored to life againe being put in the weaker sexe in women onely we may argue conveniently from thence That the strength of a true and just joy lies not in that but that our virility our holy manhood our religious strength consists in a faithfull assurance that we have already a blessed communion with these Saints of God though they be dead and we alive And that we shall have hereafter a glorious Association with them in the Resurrection though we never receive our dead raised to life again in this world And in those three considerations we shall determine that first part And then in the other The Patience of the Faithfull Others were tortured c. we shall first look into the examples which the Apostle refers to who they were that were thus tortured And secondly the heighth and exaltation of their patience They would not accept a deliverance And lastly the ground upon which their Anchor was cast what established their patience That they might obtaine a better Resurrection
Reddiderunt not Acceperunt By faith They that is the Prophets restored the dead not By faith They that is the mothers received their dead But God forbid that naturall affections even in an exaltation and vehement expressing thereof should be thought to destroy faith God forbid that I should conclude an extermination of faith in Moses Dele me Pardon this people or blot my name out of thy Book or in S. Pauls Anathema pro fratribus That he desired to be separated from Christ rather then his brethren should or in Iob or in Ieremy or in Ionas when they expostulate and chide with God himself out of a wearinesse of their lives or in the Lord of Life himself Christ Jesus when he came to an Vt quid dereliquisti To an apprehension that God had forsaken him upon the Crosse God that could restore her cold childe could keep his childe her faith alive in those hot embers of Passion So God did But he did it thus The childe was taken from the mothers warm and soft bosome and carried to the Prophets hard and cold bed Beloved we die in our delicacies and revive not but in afflictions In abundancies the blow of death meets us and the breath of life in misery and tribulation God puts himself to the cost of one of his greatest Miracles for her Faith He raises her childe to life And then he makes up his own work he continues with that childe and makes him a good man There are men whom even Miracles will not improve but this childe we will not dispute it Proâ—â—m in Ionam but accept it from S. Ierome who relates it became a Prophet It was that very Ionas whom God imployed to Ninive in which Service he gave some signes whose Son he was and how much of his mothers passion he inherited in his vehement expostulations with God Be this then our doctrinall instruction for this first example the Widow of Zareptha first that God thinks nothing too deare for his faithfull Children not his great Treasure not his Miracles And then God preserves this faith of theirs in contemplation of which only he bestows this Treasure this Miracle in the midst of the stormes of naturall affections and the tempest of distempered passions and then lastly that he proceeds and goes on in his own goodnesse Here he makes a Carkasse a Man and then that man a Prophet Every day he makes a dead soul a soul again and then that soul a Saint The other example in this point is that Shunamite 2 Reg. 4. whose dead son Elisha restored to life In the beginning of that Chapter you heare of another Widow A certaine woman of the wives of the sons of the Prophets cryed unto Elisha Thy servant my husband is dead And truly a Widow of one of the sons of the Prophets a Church-mans Widow was like enough to be poore enough And yet the Prophet doth not turne upon that way either to restore her dead husband or to provide her another husband but onely enquires how she was left and finding her in poore estate and in debt provides her meanes to pay her debts and to bring up her children and to that purpose procures a miracle from God in the abundant increase of her oyle but he troubles not God for her old or for a new husband But our example to which the Apostle in our Text referres himselfe is not this Widow in the beginning but that Mother in the body of the Chapter who having by Elisha's prayers obtained a Son of God after she was past hope and that Son being dead in her lap in her also as in the former example we may consider how Passion and Faith may consist together She asks her husband leave V. 22. That she might run to the Prophet her zeale her passionate zeale hastned her she would run but not without her husbands leave As S. Ierome forbids a Lady to suffer her daughter to goe to what Churches she would so may there be indiscretion at least to suffer wives to goe to what meetings though holy Convocations they will she does not harbour in her house a person dangerous to the Publike State or to her husbands private state nor a person likely to solicite her chastity though in a Prophets name We may finde women that may have occasion of going to Confession for something that their Confessors may have done to them In this womans case there was no disguise She would faine goe and run but not without her husbands knowledge and allowance Her husband asks her Why she would goe to the Prophet then being neither Sabbath V. 23. nor new Moone He acknowledges that God is likelier to conferre blessings upon Sabbaths and new Moones upon some dayes rather then other That all dayes are not alike with God then when he by his ordinance hath put a difference between them And he acknowledges too that though the Sabbath be the principall of those dayes which God hath seposed for his especiall working yet there are new Moones too there are other Holy-dayes for holy Convocations and for his Divine and Publique Worship besides the Sabbath But this was neither Sabbath nor new Moone neither Sunday nor Holy-day Why would she goe upon that day Beloved though for publique meetings in publique places the Sabbaths and Holy-dayes be the proper dayes yet for conference and counsell and other assistances from the Prophets and Ministers of God all times are seasonable all dayes are Sabbaths She goes to the Prophet she presses with so much passion and so much faith too and so good successe for she had her dead son restored unto her that as from the other so from this example arises this That in a heart absolutely surrendred to God vehement expostulation with God and yet full submission to God and a quiet acquiescence in God A storme of affections in nature and yet a setled calme and a fast anchorage in grace a suspition and a jealousie and yet an assurance and a confidence in God may well consist together In the same instant that Christ said Si possibile he said Veruntamen too though he desired that that cup might passe yet he desired not that his desire should be satisfied In the same instant that the Martyrs under the Altar say Vsque quò Domine How long Lord before thou execute judgement they see that he does execute judgement every day in their behalfe All jealousie in God does not destroy our assurance in him nor all diffidence our confidence nor all feare our faith These women had these naturall weaknesses that is this strength of affections and passions and yet by this faith these women received their dead raised to life againe But yet which is a last consideration Foeminile and our conclusion of this part this being thus put onely in women in the weaker sexe that they desired that they rejoyced in this resuscitation of the dead may well intimate thus much unto us that
the consideration of that place where our soules should be for ever and we could consider God then but then wee could not see God in his Essence As it may be fairely argued that Christ suffered not the very torments of very hell because it is essentiall to the torments of hell to be eternall They were not torments of hell if they received an end So is it fairely argued too That neither Adam in his extasie in Paradise nor Moses in his conversation in the Mount nor the other Apostles in the Transfiguration of Christ nor S. Paul in his rapture to the third heavens saw the Essence of God because he that is admitted to that sight of God can never look off nor lose that sight againe Only in heaven shall God proceed to this patefaction this manifestation this revelation of himself And that by the light of glory The light of glory is such a light as that our School-men dare not say confidently Lux Cloris That every beam of it is not all of it When some of them say That some soules see some things in God and others others because all have not the same measure of the light of glory the rest cry down that opinion and say that as the Essence of God is indivisible and he that sees any of it sees all of it so is the light of glory communicated intirely to every blessed soul God made light first and three dayes after that light became a Sun a more glorious Light God gave me the light of Nature when I quickned in my mothers wombe by receiving a reasonable soule and God gave me the light of faith when I quickned in my second mothers womb the Church by receiving my baptisme but in my third day when my mortality shall put on immortality he shall give me the light of glory by which I shall see himself To this light of glory the light of honour is but a glow-worm and majesty it self but a twilight The Cherubims and Seraphims are but Candles and that Gospel it self which the Apostle calls the glorious Gospel but a Star of the least magnitude And if I cannot tell what to call this light by which I shall see it what shall I call that which I shall see by it The Essence of God himself and yet there is something else then this sight of God intended in that which remaines I shall not only see God face to face but I shall know him which as you have seen all the way is above sight and know him even as also I am knowne In this Consideration God alone is all in all the former there was a place Deus omnia solus and a meanes and a light here for this perfect knowledge of God God is all those Then sales the Apostle God shall be all in all Hic agit omnia in omnibus sayes S. Hierome 1 Cor. 15.28 Here God does all in all but here he does all by Instruments even in the infusing of faith he works by the Ministery of the Gospel But there he shall be all in all doe all in all immediately by himself for Christ shall deliver up the Kingdome to God even the Father Ver. 24. His Kingdome is the administration of his Church by his Ordinances in the Church At the resurrection there shall be an end of that Kingdome no more Church no more working upon men by preaching but God himself shall be all in all Ministri quasi larvae Dei saies Luther It may be somewhat too familiarly too vulgarly said but usefully The ministery of the Gospell is but as Gods Vizar for by such a liberty the Apostle here calls it aenigma a riddle or as Luther sayes too Gods picture but in the Resurrection God shall put of that Vizar and turne away that picture and shew his own face Therefore is it said That in heaven there is no Temple but God himselfe is the Temple God is Service Apoc. 21.22 August and Musique and Psalme and Sermon and Sacrament and all Erit vita de verbo sine verbo We shall live upon the word and heare never a word live upon him who being the word was made flesh the eternall Son of God Hîc nonest omnia in omnibus Hieron sed pars in singulis Here God is not all in all where he is at all in any man that man is well In Solomone sapientia saies that Father It was well with Solomon because God was wisdome with him and patience in Iob and faith in Peter and zeale in Paul but there was something in all these which God was not But in heaven he shall be so all in all Idem Vt singuli sanctorum omnes virtutes habeant that every soule shall have every perfection in it self and the perfection of these perfections shall be that their sight shall be face to face and their knowledge as they are known Since S. Augustine calls it a debt a double debt a debt because she asked it Facie ad faciem a debt because he promised it to give even a woman Paulina satisfaction in that high point and mystery how we should see God face to face in heaven it cannot be unfit in this congregation to aske and answer some short questions concerning that Is it alwaies a declaration of favour when God shewes his face No. I will set my face against that soule Levit. 17.10 that eateth blood and cut him off But when there is light joyned with it it is a declaration of favour This was the blessing that God taught Moses for Aaron to blesse the people with The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious to thee Numb 6.25 And there we shall see him face to face by the light of his countenance which is the light of glory What shall we see by seeing him so face to face not to inlarge our selves into Gregories wild speculation Qui videt videntem omnia oninia videt because we shall see him that sees all things we shall see all things in him for then we should see the thoughts of men rest we in the testimony of a safer witnesse a Councell Senon In speculo Divinit at is quicquid eorum intersit illucescet In that glasse we shall see whatsoever we can be the better for seeing First all things that they beleeved here they shall see there and therefore Discamus in terris Hicron quorum scicntia nobiscum perseveret in Caelis let us meditate upon no other things on earth then we would be glad to think on in heaven and this consideration would put many frivolous and many fond thoughts out of our minde if men and women would love another but so as that love might last in heaven This then we shall get concerning our selves by seeing God face to face but what concerning God nothing but the sight of the humanity of Christ which only is visible to the eye So Theodoret so some
all knowledge in heaven is experimentall As all knowledge in this world is causall we know a thing if we know the cause thereof so the knowledge in heaven is effectuall experimentall we know it because we have found it to be so The endowments of the blessed those which the School calls Dotes beatorum are ordinarily delivered to be these three Visio Dilectio Fruitio The sight of God the love of God and the fruition the injoying the possessing of God Now as no man can know what it is to see God in heaven but by an experimentall and actuall seeing of him there nor what it is to love God there but by such an actuall and experimentall love of him nor what it is to enjoy and possesse God but by an actuall enjoying and an experimentall possessing of him So can no man tell what the eternity and everlastingnesse of all these is till he have passed through that eternity and that everlastingnesse and that he can never doe for if it could be passed through then it were not eternity How barren a thing is Arithmetique and yet Arithmetique will tell you how many single graines of sand will fill this hollow Vault to the Firmament How empty a thing is Rhetorique and yet Rherorique will make absent and remote things present to your understanding How weak a thing is Poetry and yet Poetry is a counterfait Creation and makes things that are not as though they were How infirme how impotent are all assistances if they be put to expresse this Eternity The best help that I can assigne you is to use well Aeternum vestrum your owne Eternity as S. Gregory calls our whole course of this life Aeternum nostrum our Eternity Aequum est ut qui in aeterno suo peccaverit in aeterno Dei puniatur sayes he It is but justice that he that hath sinned out his owne Eternity should suffer out Gods Eternity So if you suffer out your owne Eternity in submitting your selves to God in the whole course of your life in surrendring your will intirely to his and glorifying of him in a constant patience under all your tribulations It is a righteous thing with God sayes our Apostle in his other Epistle to these Thessalonians To recompence tribulation to them that trouble you 2 Thess 1.6 and to you that are troubled rest with us sayes hee there with us who shall be caught up in the Clouds to meete the Lord in the Ayre and so shall be with the Lord for ever Amen SERMON XXVII Preached to the LL. upon Easter-day at the Communion The KING being then dangerously sick at New-Market PSAL. 89.47 What man is he that liveth and shall not see death AT first God gave the judgement of death upon man when he should transgresse absolutely Morte morieris Thou shalt surely dye The woman in her Dialogue with the Serpent she mollifies it Ne fortè moriamur perchance if we eate we may die and then the Devill is as peremptory on the other side Nequaquam moriemini do what you will surely you shall not die And now God in this Text comes to his reply Quis est homo shall they not die Give me but one instance but one exception to this rule What man is hee that liveth and shall not see death Let no man no woman no devill offer a Ne fortè perchance we may dye much lesse a Nequaquam surely we shall not dye except he be provided of an answer to this question except he can give an instance against this generall except he can produce that mans name and history that hath lived and shall not see death Wee are all conceived in close Prison in our Mothers wombes we are close Prisoners all when we are borne we are borne but to the liberty of the house Prisoners still though within larger walls and then all our life is but a going out to the place of Execution to death Now was there ever any man seen to sleep in the Cart between New-gate and Tyborne between the Prison and the place of Execution does any man sleep And we sleep all the way from the womb to the grave we are never throughly awake but passe on with such dreames and imaginations as these I may live as well as another and why should I dye rather then another but awake and tell me sayes this Text Quis homo who is that other that thou talkest of What man is he that liveth and shall not see death In these words we shall first for our generall humiliation consider the unanswerablenesse of this question There is no man that lives and shall not see death Secondly we shall see how that modification of Eve may stand fortè moriemur how there may be a probable answer made to this question that it is like enough that there are some men that live and shall not see death And thirdly we shall finde that truly spoken which the Devill spake deceitfully then we shall finde the Nequaquam verified we shall finde a direct and full answer to this question we shall finde a man that lives and shall not see death our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus of whom both S. Augustine and S. Hierome doe take this question to be principally asked and this Text to be principally intended Aske me this question then of all the sons of men generally guilty of originall sin Quis homo and I am speechlesse I can make no answer Aske me this question of those men which shall be alive upon earth at the last day when Christ comes to judgement Quis homo and I can make a probable answer forte moriemur perchance they shall die It is a problematicall matter and we say nothing too peremptorily Aske me this question without relation to originall sin Quis homo and then I will answer directly fully confidently Ecce homo there was a man that lived and was not subject to death by the law neither did he actually die so but that he fulfilled the rest of this verse Eruit animam de inferno by his owne power he delivered his soule from the hand of the grave From the first this lesson rises Generall doctrines must be generally delivered All men must die From the second this lesson Collaterall an unrevealed doctrines must be soberly delivered How we shall be changed at the last day we know not so clearly From the third this lesson arises Conditionall Doctrines must be conditionally delivered If we be dead with him we shall be raised with him First then 1. Part. Quis homo for the generality Those other degrees of punishment which God inflicted upon Adam and Eve and in them upon us were as absolutely and illimitedly pronounced as this of death and yet we see they are many wayes extended or contracted To man it was said In sudore vultus In the sweat of thy browes thou shalt eate thy bread and how many men never sweat till they sweat with eating To the woman it
that Father The second birth which he had at his Baptisme was the more honourable birth for Ab illa se Pater qui putabatur Ioseph excusat At his first birth Ioseph his reputed Father did not avow him for his Son In hac se Pater qui non putabatur insinuat At this his second birth God who was not known to be his Father before declares that now Ibi labor at suspicionibus Mater quia professioni deerat Pater There the Mothers honour was in question because Ioseph could not professe himselfe the Father of the childe Hic honoratur genetrix quia filium Divinitas protestatur Here her honour is repaired and magnified because the God-head it selfe proclaimes it selfe to be the Father If then Christ himselfe chose to admit an addition of dignity at his Baptisme who had an eternall generation in heaven and an innocent conception without sin upon earth let not us undervalue that dignity which is afforded us by Baptisme though our children be borne within the Covenant by being borne of Christian Parents for the Covenant gives them Ius ad rem a right to Baptisme children of Christian Parents may claime Baptisme which aliens to Christ cannot doe but yet they may not leave out Baptisme A man may be within a generall pardon and yet have no benefit by it if he sue it not out if he plead it not a childe may have right to Baptisme and yet be without the benefit of it if it be neglected Christ began at Baptisme Naturall things he did before He fled into Aegypt to preserve his life from Herods Persecution before And a miraculous thing he did before He overcame in disputation the Doctors in the Temple at twelve yeares old but yet neither of these neither before his Circumcision which was equivalent to Baptisme to this purpose but before he accepted or instituted Baptisme he did some naturall and some miraculous things But his ordinary work which he came for his preaching the Gospel and thereby raising the frame for our salvation in his Church he began not but after his Baptisme And then after that it is expresly and immediatly recorded That when he came out of the waters he prayed and then the next thing in the history is that he fasted and upon that his tentation in the wildernesse I meane no more in this but this That no man hath any interest in God to direct a prayer unto him how devoutly soever no man hath any assurance of any effect of his endeavours in a good life how morally holy soever but in relation to his Baptisme in that seale of the Covenant by which he is a Christian Christ took this Sacrament his Baptisme before he did any other thing and he took this three yeares before the institution of the other Sacrament of his body and blood So that the Anabaptists obtrude a false necessity upon us that we may not take the first Sacrament Baptisme till we be capable of the other Sacrament too for first in nature Priùs nascimur quà m pascimur we are borne before we are fed and so in Religion we are first borne into the Church which is done by Baptisme before we are ready for that other food which is not indeed milk for babes but solid meat for stronger digestions They that have told us that the Baptisme that Christ took of Iohn was not the same Baptisme which we Christians take in the Church speak impertinently John 1.6 for Iohn was sent by God to baptize and there is but one Baptisme in him It is true that S. Augustine calls Iohns Baptisme Praecursorium ministerium as he was a fore-runner of Christ his Baptisme was a fore-running Baptisme It is true that Iustin Martyr calls Iohns Baptisme Euangelicae gratiae praeludium A Prologue to the grace of the Gospel It is true that more of the Fathers have more phrases of expressing a difference between the Baptisme of Iohn and the Baptisme of Christ But all this is not De essentia but De modo Not of the substance of the Sacrament which is the washing of our soules in the blood of Christ but the difference was in the relation Iohn baptized In Christum morituturum Into Christ who was to dye and we are baptized In Christum mortuum Into Christ who is already dead for us Damascen expresses it fully Christus baptizatur suo Baptismo Christ was baptized with his own Baptisme It was Iohns Baptisme and yet it was Christs too And so we are baptized with his Baptisme and there neither is nor was any other And that Baptisme is to us Ianua Ecclesiae as S. Augustine cals it The Doore of the Church at that we enter And Investitura Christianismi The investing of Christianity as S. Bernard cals it There we put on Christ Jesus And as he whom wee may be bold to match with these two floods of spirituall eloquence for his Eloquence that is Luther expresses it Puerpera regni Coelorum The Church in Baptisme is as a Woman delivered of child and her child is the Kingdome of Heaven and that kingdome she delivers into his armes who is truly Baptized This Sacrament makes us Christians this denominates us both Civilly and Spiritually there we receive our particular names which distinguish us from one another and there we receive that name which shall distinguish us from the Nations in the next World at Baptisme wee receive the name of Christians Act. 11.26 and there we receive our Christian names When the Disciples of Christ in generall came to be called Christians wee finde It was a name given upon great deliberation Barnabas had Preached there who was a good Man and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith himselfe But he went to fetch Paul too a Man of great gifts and power in Preaching and both they continued a yeare Preaching in Antioch and there first of all the Disciples were called Christians Before they were called Fideles and Fratres and Discipuli The Faithfull and the Brethren and the Disciples and as S. Chrysostome sayes De via Men that were in the way for all the World besides were beside him who was The Way the Truth and the Life But by the way we may wonder what gave S. Chrysostome occasion of that opinion or that conjecture since in the Ecclesiastique Story I thinke there is no mention of that name attributed to the Christians And in the Acts of the Apostles it is named but once when Saul desired Letters to Damascus Acts 9.2 to punish them whom he found to be of That way Where we may note also the zeale of S. Paul though then in a wrong cause against them who were of That way that is That way inclined And our stupidity who startle not at those men who are not onely inclined another way a crosse way but labour pestilently to incline others and hope confidently to see all incline that way againe Here then at Antioch they began to be called Christians
glorified in those victories which we by his grace gaine over the Devill Nescit Diabolus quant a bona de illo fiunt etiam cum saevit August Little knowes the Devill how much good he does us when he tempts us for by that we are excited to have our present recourse to that God whom in our former security we neglected who gives us the issue with the tentation Ego novi quid apposuerim Idem I know what infirmities I I have submitted thee to and what I have laid and applied to thee Ego novi unde aegrotes ego novi unde saneris I know thy sicknesse and I know thy physick Sufficit tibi gratiamea Whatsoever the disease be my grace shall be sufficient to cure it For whether we understand that as S. Chrysostome does De gratia miraculorum That it is sufficient for any mans assurance in any tentation or tribulation to consider Gods miraculous deliverances of other men in the like cases or whether we understand it according to the generall voyce of the Interpreters that is Be content that there remaine in thy flesh Matter and Subject for me to produce glory from thy weaknesse and Matter and Subject for thee to exercise thy faith and allegeance to me still these words will carry an argument against the expedience of absolute praying against all tentations for still this Gratiamea sufficit will import this amount to this I have as many Antidotes as the Devill hath poisons I have as much mercy as the Devill hath malice There must be Scorpions in the world but the Scorpion shall cure the Scorpion there must be tentations but tentations shall adde to mine and to thy glory and Eripiam I will deliver thee This word is in the Originall Chalatz which signifies Eripere in such a sense as our language does not fully reach in any one word So there is some defectivenesse some slacknesse in this word of our Translation Delivering For it is such a Delivering as is a sudden catching hold and snatching at the soule of a man then when it is at the brink and edge of a sin So that if thy facility and that which thou wilt make shift to call Good Nature or Good Manners have put thee into the hands of that subtile woman that Solomon speaks of That is come forth to mect thee and seek thy face Prov. 7.10.15 If thou have followed her As an Oxe goeth to the slaughter and as a foole to the correction of the stocks Even then when the Axe is over thy head then when thou hast approacht so neare to destruction then is the season of this prayer Eripe me Domine Catch hold of me now O Lord Gen. 39.10 and Deliver my soule When Ioseph had resisted the tentations of his Masters Wife and resisted them the onely safe way not onely not to yeeld but as the Text sayes not to come in her company and yet she had found her opportunity when there was none in the house but they he came to an inward Eripe me Domine O Lord take hold of me now and she caught and God caught She caught his garment and God his soule She delivered him and God delivered him She to Prison and God from thence If thy curiosity or thy considence in thine owne spirituall strength carry thee into the house of Rimmon to Idolatry to a Masse trust not thou to Naamans request Ignoscat Dominus servo in bacre 2 Kings 5. That God will pardon thee as often as thou doest so but since thou hast done so now now come to this Eripe animam O Lord deliver my soule now from taking harme now and hereafter from exposing my selfe to the like harme For this is the purpose of Davids prayer in this signification of this word that howsoever infirmity or company or curiosity or confidence bring us within the distance and danger within the Spheare and Latitude of a tentation that though we be not lodged in Sodome yet we are in the Suburbs though we be not impailed in a sin yet we are within the purlues which is not safely done no more then it is in a State to trust alwaies to a Defensive Warre yet when we are ingaged and enthralled in such a tentation then though God be not delighted with our danger yet then is God most delighted to help us when we are in danger and then he comes not only to deliver us from that imminent and particular danger according to that signification of this word but according to that Interpretation of this word which the Septuagint have given it in the Prophet Esay Esay 58.11 Iachalitz Pinguefaciet He shall proceed in his worke and make fat thy soule That is Deliver thee now and preserve and establish thee after to the fulfilling of all that belongs to the last Petition of this prayer Salvum me fac O Lord save me Though he have been absent he shall Returne and being Returned shall not stand still nor stand Neutrall but deliver thee and having delivered thee shall not determine his love in that one act of mercy but shall Save thee that is Imprint in thee a holy confidence that his salvation is thine So then Salvum me fac Esay 19.20 in that manner is Gods Deliverance exprest They shall cry unto him till wee cry he takes no knowledge at all and then he sends to them there is his returning upon their cry and then He shall deliver them sayes that Prophet and so the two former Petitions of this prayer are answered but the Consummation and Establishment of all is in the third which followes in the same place He shall send them a Saviour and a great one Esay 62.11 But who is that what Saviour Doubtlesse he that is proclaimed by God in the same Prophet Behold the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world Behold thy salvation commeth For that word which that Prophet uses there and this word in which David presents this last Petition here is in both places Iashang and Iashang is the very word from which the name of Iesus is derived so that David desires here that salvation which Esay proclaimed there salvation in the Saviour of the world Christ Jesus and an interest in the assurance of his merits We finde this name of Saviour attributed to other men in the Scriptures then to Christ In particular distresses when God raised up men to deliver his people sometimes those men were so called Saviours And so S. Ierome interprets those words of the Prophet Ascendent salvatores Obad. 1.21 Saviours shall come up on Mount Sion of Prophets and Preachers and such other Instruments as God should raise for the salvation of soules Those whom in other places he calls Angels of the Church here he calls by that higher name Saviours But such a Saviour as is proclaimed to the ends of the world to all the world a Saviour in the Mountaines in the height
last motive Iosh 7.19 must be the glory of God Therefore Ioshuah sayes to Achan My Son give I pray thee glory unto the Lord God of Israel and make Confession unto him Now the glory of God arises not out of the Confessing but because every true Confessing is accompanied with a detestation of the sin as it hath separated me from God and a sense of my re-union and redintegration with God in the abjuration of my former sins for to tell my sin by way of a good tale or by boasting in it though it be a revealing a manifesting is not a Confession in every true confession God hath glory because he hath a straid soule re-united to his Kingdome And to advance this Glory David confesses Peccata sins which is our next Consideration I said I will confesse my sins unto the Lord. First he resents his state All is not well Then he examines himselfe Peccata vera Thus and thus it stands with me Then he considers then he resolves then he executes He confesses so far we are gone and now he confesses sins For the Pharisees though he pretended a Confession was rather an exprobration how much God had beene beholden to him for his Sabbaths for his Almes for his Tithes for his Fasting David confesses sins first such things as were truly sins For as the element of Ayre that lyes betweene the Water and the Fire is sometimes condensed into water sometimes rarified into fire So lyes the conscience of man betweene two operations of the Devill sometimes he rarifies it evaporates it that it apprehends nothing feeles nothing to be sin sometimes he condenses it that every thing falls and sticks upon it in the nature and takes the waight of sin and he mis-interprets the indifferent actions of others and of his owne and destroyes all use of Christian liberty all conversation all recreation and out of a false feare of being undutifull to God is unjust to all the world and to his owne soule and consequently to God himselfe who of all notions would not be received in the notion of a Cruell or Tyrannicall God In an obdurate conscience that feeles no sin the Devill glories most but in the over-tender conscience he practises most That is his triumphant but this is his militant Church That is his Sabbath but this is his six dayes labour In the obdurate he hath induced a security in the scriptures which the Holy Ghost hath exprest in so many names as Sin Sin Wickednesse Iniquity Transgressions Offences Many many more And all this that thereby we might reflect upon our selves often and see if our particular actions fell not under some of those names But then lest this should over-intimidate us there are as many names given by the Holy Ghost to the Law of God Law Statutes Ordinances Covenants Testimony Precept and all the rest of which there is some one at least repeated in every verse of the hundred and nineteenth Psalme that thereby we might still have a Rule to measure and try our actions by whether they be sins or no. For as the Apostle sayes He had not knowne sinne if he had not knowne the Law So there had beene no sin if there had beene no Law And therefore that soule that feeles it selfe oppressed under the burden of a Vow must have recourse to the Law of God and see whether that Vow fall under the Rule of that Law For as an over-tender conscience may call things sins that are not and so be afraid of things that never were so may it also of things that were but are not now of such sins as were truly sins and fearfull sins but are now dead dead by a true repentance and buried in the Sea of the blood of Christ Jesus and sealed up in that Monument under the seale of Reconciliation the blessed Sacrament and yet rise sometimes in this tender conscience in a suspition and jealousie that God hath not truly not fully forgiven them And as a Ghost which we thinke we see afrights us more then an army that we doe see So these apparitions of sins of things that are not against any Law of God and so are not sins or sins that are dead in a true repentance and so have no being at all by the Devils practise worke dangerously upon a distempered conscience for as God hath given the Soule an Imagination and a Fancy as well as an Understanding So the Devill imprints in the conscience a false Imagination as well as a fearefull sense of true sin David confesses sins sins that were truly sins But the more ordinary danger is Omniae in our not calling those things which are truly sins by that name For as sometimes when the Baptisme of a Child is deferred for State the Child dyes unbaptized So the sinner defers the Baptisme of his sin in his teares and in the blood of his Saviour offered in the blessed Sacrament till he dye namelesse namelesse in the booke of Life It is a Character that one of the ancientest Poets gives of a well-bred and well-governed Gentleman That he would not tell such lyes as were like truths not probable lyes nor such truths as were like lyes not wonderfull not incredible truths It is the constancy of a rectified Christian not to call his indifferent actions sins for that is to slander God as a cruell God nor to call sins indifferent actions for that is to undervalue God as a negligent God God doth not keepe the Conscience of man upon the wrack in a continuall torture and stretching But God doth not stupifie the conscience with an Opiate in an insensiblenesse of any sin The law of God is the balance and the Criterium By that try thine actions and then confesse David did so Peccata he confessed sinnes nothing that was not so as such neither omitted he any thing that was so And then they were Peccata sua His sins I said I will confesse my sins unto the Lord. First Sua. Sua His sinnes that is à se perpetrata sins which he confesses to have been of his voluntary committing He might and did not avoyd them When Adam said by way of alienation and transferring his fault The woman whom thou gavest me And the woman said Gen. 3.12 The Serpent deceived me God tooke this by way of Information to finde out the Principall but not by way of extenuation or alleviation of their faults Every Adam eats with as much sweat of his browes and every Eve brings forth her Children with as much paine in her travaile as if there had been no Serpent in the case If a man sin against God who shall plead for him If a man lay his sins upon the Serpent upon the Devill it is no plea but if he lay them upon God it is blasphemy Iob finds some ground of a pious Expostulation with God in that My flesh is not brasse nor my strength stones And such as I am thou hast made me
baptized for the Dead As in the Old Testament there is no precept no precedent 2 Part no promise for prayer for the Dead So in the Old Testament they confesse there was no Purgatory no such place as could purifie a soule to that cleannesse as to deliver it up to Heaven For thither to Heaven no soule say they had accesse till after Christs ascension But as the first mention of prayer for the dead was in time of the Maccabees so much about the same time was the first stone of Purgatory laid and laid by the hands of Plato For Plato Tertul. Hareticorum Patriarchae Philosophi sayes Tertullian The Philosophers were the Patriarchs of Heretiques evermore they had recourse to them And then Plato being the Author of Purgatory we cannot deny but that the Greeke Church did acknowledge Purgatory that is that Greeke Church of which Plato is a Patriarch for for the Christian Greeke Church that never acknowledged Purgatory so as the Roman that is A place of torment from which our prayers here might deliver soules there But yet Platoes invention or his manner of expressing it Eusebius Anno 326. tooke such roote and such hold as that Eusebius when he comes to speake of Purgatory delivers it in the very words of Plato and makes Platoes words his words and Plato his Patriarch for the Greeke Church The Latin Church had Patriarchs too for this Doctrine though not Philosophers yet Poets for of that which Virgil sayes of Purgatory Virgil. Lactantius Anno 290. Lactantius sayes propemodum vera Virgil was very neere the truth Virgil was almost a Catholique but then later men say Haec prorsus vera This is absolutely true that Virgil sayes and Virgil is a perfect a downe-right Catholique for an upright Catholique in the point of Purgatory were hard to finde These then are the first Patriarchs of the Greek and Latin Church Philosophers and Poets And when it came farther to Christians it gained not much at first for the first mention of Purgatory amongst Christians hath this double ill lucke that first it is in a Booke which no side beleeves the Booke called Pastor whose Author is said to bee Hermes Hermes and he fancied to be S. Pauls Disciple And then that which is said of Purgatory in that Booke is put into an old womans mouth and so made an old wives tale she tels that she had a vision of stones fallen from a towre and then mended after they were fallen and laid in the building againe And this Towre must be the Church and these fallen stones must be soules in Purgatory and then they must be made fit to be placed in the uppermost part of the building in the Triumphant Church But to consider this plant in better grounds then Philosophers or Poets or old wives tales Clem. Alexan. or supposititious books amongst men of more waight and gravity Clement of Alexandria within little more then two hundred yeares after Christ spake doubtfully uncertainly suspiciously disputably of Purgatory And within twenty yeares after him Origen Origen who was evermore transported beyond the letter upon mysteries somewhat directly But yet when all is done Origens Purgatory is a purgatory that would do them no good for it would bring them in no money and they could be as well content that there were none as that it were nothing worth except they may have the letting and setting of Purgatory at their price they care not though it were pulled downe And Origens Purgatory is such a purgatory as the best men must come into it even Martyrs themselves that are re-baptized in their owne blood and will this purgatory serve their turnes And it is such a purgatory as the worst of all even the Devill himselfe may and shall get out of it And will this purgatory serve their turnes Neither is this an error peculiar to Origen That all soules must passe through Purgatory but common with others of the Fathers too Sive Paulus sive Petrus sayes Origen whether it be S. Paul or S. Peter Ambrose thither he must come And sive Petrus sive Iohannes sayes S. Ambrose whether it be the Disciple that loved Christ S. Peter or the Disciple whom Christ loved S. Iohn thither he must come And S. Hilary extends it farther he drawes in the blessed Virgin Mary her selfe into purgatory And that we may see cleerely that that Purgatory which the Fathers intended is not the Purgatory now erected in the Roman Church S. Ambrose consigns to his Purgatory even the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Testaments Igne filii Levi igne Ezekiel igne Daniel The holiest generation the Sons of Levi and the greatest of the Prophets must passe through this fire And will such a purgatory serve their turnes as was kindled in the Old Testament Well Interrogant nos They are very loath to be put to their speciall plea very loath to answer what Purgatory of the Fathers they will stand to They would not be put to answer They chuse rather to interrogate us and they ask us Since the Fathers are so pregnant so frequent in the name of Purgatory one Purgatory or other will you beleeve none None upon the strength of that argument that the Fathers mention Purgatory except they will assigne us a Purgatory in which those Fathers agree and agree it to be matter of faith to beleeve it for from how many things which passe through the Fathers by way of opinion and of discourse are they in the Romane Church departed onely upon that That the Fathers said it but said it not Dogmatically but by way of discourse or opinion But then they aske us againe Since it is cleare that they did use prayer for the dead what could they meane by those prayers but a Purgatory a place of torment where those soules needed helpe and from whence those prayers might helpe them What could they meane els Certainly we cannot tell them what they meant If they should aske them who made those prayers they could hardly tell them If a man should have surprized S. Ambrose at his prayers and stood behinde him and heard him say Non dubitamus Ambrose etiam Angelorum testimoniis credimus Lord I cannot doubt it for thou by thine Angels hast revealed it unto me Fide ablutum aeterna voluptate perfrui That my dead Master the Emperour was baptized in his faith and is now in possession of all the joyes of heaven and yet have heard S. Ambrose say sometimes to God sometimes to his dead Master Si quid preces if my prayers may prevaile with thee O God and then Oblationibus vos frequentabo I will waite upon you daily with my Oblations I will accompany you daily with my Sacrifices And for what Vt des Domine requiem That thou O Lord wouldest afford rest and peace and salvation to that soule And if this man after all this should have asked S. Ambrose What he meant to pray