in the circumstances of his story are the confidences or presumptions of law by which Judges give sentence so shall our words be not onely the means of declaring a secret sentence but a certain instrument of being absolved or condemned But upon these premises we see what reason we have to fear the sentence of that day who have sinned with our tongues so often so continually that if there were no other actions to be accounted for we have enough in this account to make us die and yet have committed so many evill actions that if our words were wholly forgotten wee have infinite reason to seare concerning the event of that horrible sentence The effect of which consideration is this that we set a guard before our lips and watch over our actions with a care equall to that fear which shall be at Doomes-day when we are to passe our sad accounts But I have some considerations to interpose 1. But that the sadnesse of this may a little be relieved and our endevours be encouraged to a timely care and repentance consider that this great sentence although it shall passe concerning little things yet it shall not passe by little portions but by generall measures not by the little errors of one day but by the great proportions of our life for God takes not notice of the infirmities of honest persons that alwayes endevour to avoid every sin but in little intervening instances are surprized but he judges us by single actions if they are great and of evill effect and by little small instances if they be habituall No man can take care concerning every minute and therefore concerning it Christ will not passe sentence but by the discernible portions of our time by humane actions by things of choice and deliberation and by generall precepts of care and watchfulnesse this sentence shall be exacted 2ly The sentence of that day shall be passed not by the proportions of an Angell but by the measures of a Man the first follies are not unpardonable but may bee recovered and the second are dangerous and the third are more fatall but nothing is unpardonable but perseverance in evill courses 3ly The last Judgement shall bee transacted by the same Principles by which we are guided here not by strange and secret propositions or by the fancies of men or by the subtilties of uselesse distinctions or evill perswasions not by the scruples of the credulous or the interest of sects nor the proverbs of prejudice nor the uncertain definitions of them that give laws to subjects by expounding the decrees of Princes but by the plain rules of Justice by the ten Commandements by the first apprehensions of conscience by the plain rules of Scripture and the rules of an honest mind and a certain Justice So that by this restraint and limit of the finall sentence we are secur'd we shall not fall by scruple or by ignorance by interest or by faction by false perswasions of others or invincible prejudice of our own but we shall stand or fall by plain and easie propositions by chastity or uncleannesse by justice or unjustice by robbery or restitution and of this wee have a great testimony by our Judge and Lord himselfe Whatsoever yee shall bind in earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever yee loose shall be loosed there that is you shall stand or fall according to the Sermons of the Gospel as the Ministers of the Word are commanded to preach so yee must live here and so yee must be judged hereafter yee must not look for that sentence by secret decrees or obscure doctrines but by plain precepts and certain rules But there are yet some more degrees of mercy 4. That sentence shall passe upon us not after the measures of Nature and possibilities and utmost extents but by the mercies of the Covenant we shall be judged as Christians rather then as men that is as persons to whom much is pardoned and much is pityed and many things are not accidentally but consequently indulged and great helps are ministred and many remedies supplyed and some mercies extraregularly conveyed and their hopes enlarged upon the stock of an infinite mercy that hath no bounds but our needs our capacities and our proportions to glory 5. The sentence is to be given by him that once dyed for us and does now pray for us and perpetually intercedes and upon soules that he loves and in the salvation of which himself hath a great interest and increase of joy And now upon these premises we may dare to consider what the sentence it self shall be that shall never be reversed but shall last for ever and ever Whether it be good or bad I cannot discourse now the greatnesse of the good or bad so farre I mean as is revealed to us the considerations are too long to be crouded into the end of a Sermon onely in generall 1. If it be good it is greater then all the good of this world and every mans share then in every instant of his blessed eternity is greater then all the pleasures of Mankind in one heap 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A man can never wish for any thing greater then this immortality said Posidippus 2. To which I adde this one consideration that the portion of the good at the day of sentence shall be so great that after all the labours of our life and suffering persecutions and enduring affronts and the labour of love and the continuall feares and cares of the whole duration and abode it rewards it all and gives infinitely more Non sunt condignae passiones hujus saeculi all the torments and evills of this world are not to be estimated with the joyes of the Blessed It is the gift of God a donative beyond the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the military stipend it is beyond our work and beyond our wages and beyond the promise and beyond our thoughts and above our understandings and above the highest heavens it is a participation of the joyes of God and of the inheritance of the Judge himselfe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a day of recompenses in which all our sorrowes shall be turn'd into joyes our persecutions into a crown the Crosse into a Throne poverty to the riches of God losse and affronts and inconveniences and death into scepters and hymnes and rejoycings and Hallellujahs and such great things which are fit for us to hope but too great for us to discourse of while we see as in a glasse darkly and imperfectly And he that chooses to do an evill rather then suffer one shall finde it but an ill exchange that he deferred his little to change for a great one I remember that a servant in the old Comedy did chuse to venture the lash rather then to feel a present inconvenience Quia illud aderat malum istud aberat longiùs illud erat
is like the compassion we have in other mens miseries we are not concerned in it and it is not our case and our hearts ake not when another mans children are made fatherlesse or his wife a sad widow and just so are our prayers for their relief If we thought their evils to be ours if wee and they as members of the same body had sensible and reall communications of good and evill if we understood what is really meant by being members one of another or if we did not think it a spirituall word of art instrumentall onely to a science but no part of duty or reall relation sure we should pray more earnestly one for another then we usually doe How few of us are troubled when he sees his brother wicked or dishonorably vicious Who is sad and melancholy when his neighbour is almost in hell when he sees him grow old in iniquity How many days have we set apart for the publick relief and interests of the Kingdome How earnestly have we fasted if our Prince be sick or afflicted What almes have we given for our brothers conversion or if this be great how importunate and passionate have we been with God by prayer in his behalf by prayer and secret petition But however though it were well very well that all of us would think of this duty a little more because besides the excellency of the duty it self it would have this blessed consequent that for whose necessities we pray if we doe desire earnestly they should be relieved we would when ever we can and in all we can set our hands to it and if we pity the Orphan children and pray for them heartily we would also when we could relieve them charitably but though it were therefore very well that things were thus with all men yet God who takes care for us all makes provision for us in speciall manner and the whole Order of the Clergy are appointed by God to pray for others to be Ministers of Christs Priesthood to be followers of his Advocation to stand between God and the people and present to God all their needs and all their desires That this God hath ordained and appointed and that this rather he will blesse and accept appears by the testimony of God himself for he onely can be witnesse in this particular for it depends wholly upon his gracious favour and acceptation It was the case of Abraham and Abimelech Now therefore restore the man his wife for he is a Prophet and he will pray for thee and thou shalt live and this caused confidence in Micah Now know I that the Lord will doe me good seeing I have a Levite to my Priest meaning that in his Ministery in the Ministery of Priests God hath established the alternate returns of blessing and prayers the entercouses between God and his people And thorough the descending ages of the synagogue it came to be transmitted also to the Christian Church that the Ministers of Religion are advocates for us under Christ by the Ministery of Reconciliation by their dispensing the holy Sacraments by the Keyes of the Kingdome of heaven by Baptisme and the Lords Supper by binding and loosing by the Word of God and Prayer and therefore saith St. James If any man be sick among you let him send for the Elders of the Church and let them pray over him meaning that God hath appointed them especially and will accept them in ordinary and extraordinary and this is that which is meant by blessing A Father blesses his childe and Solomon blessed his people and Melchisedec the Priest blessed Abraham and Moses blessed the Sons of Israel and God appointed the Leviticall Priests to blesse the congregation and this is more then can be done by the people for though they can say the same prayer and the People pray for their Kings and Children for their Parents and the Flock for the Pastor yet they cannot blesse him as he blesses them for the lesse is blessed of the greater and not the greater of the lesse and this is without all contradiction said S. Paul the meaning of the mysterie is this That God hath appointed the Priest to pray for the People and because he hath made it to be his ordinary office and imployment he also intends to be seen in that way which he hath appointed and chalked out for us his prayer if it be found in the way of righteousnesse is the surer way to prevaile in his intercessions for the people But upon this stock comes in the greatest difficulty of the text for if God heareth not sinners there is an infinite necessity that the Ministers of Religion should be very holy For all their ministeries consist in preaching and praying to these two are reducible all the ministeries Ecclesiasticall which are of divine institution so the Apostles summ'd up their imployment But we will give our selves continually to prayer and to the ministery of the Word to exhort to reprove to comfort to cast down to determine cases of conscience and to rule in the Church by the word of their proper Ministery and the very making lawes Ecclesiasticall is the ministery of the word for so their dictates passe into lawes by being duties injoyn'd by God or the acts or exercises or instruments of some injoyn'd graces To prayer is reduced administration of the Sacraments but binding and loosing and visitation of the sick are mixt offices partly relating to one partly to the other Now although the Word of God preached will have a great effect even though it be preached by an evill Minister a vicious person yet it is not so well there as from a pious man because by prayer also his preaching is made effectuall and by his good example his Homilies and Sermons are made active and therefore it is very necessary in respect of this half of the Ministers office The preaching of Word he be a good man unlesse he be much perishes to the people most of the advantages are lost But then for the other half all those ministeries which are by way of prayer are rendred extremely invalid and ineffectuall if they be ministred by an evill person For upon this very stock it was that St. Cyprian affirmed that none were to be chosen to the Ministery but immaculati integri antistites holy and upright men who offering their sacrifices worthily to God and holily may be heard in their prayers which they make for the safety of the Lords people But he presses this caution to a further issue that it is not only necessary to choose holy persons to these holy Ministeries for fear of losing the advantages of a sanctified Ministery but also that the people may not be guilty of an evill communion and a criminall state of society Nec enim sibi plebs blandiatur quasi immunis à contagione delicti esse possit cum sacerdote peccatore communicans the people cannot be innocent if they
in the state of any one sin whatsoever is at such distance from and contrariety to God that he provokes God to anger in every prayer hee makes And then adde but this consideration that prayer is the great summe of our Religion it is the effect and the exercise and the beginning and the promoter of all graces and the consummation and perfection of many and all those persons who pretend towards heaven and yet are not experienced in the secrets of Religion they reckon their piety and account their hopes onely upon the stock of a few prayers it may be they pray twice every day it may be thrice and blessed be God for it so farre is very well but if it shall be remembred and considered that this course of piety is so farre from warranting any one course of sin that any one habituall and cherished sin destroyes the effect of all that piety wee shall see there is reason to account this to be one of those great arguments with which God hath so bound the duty of holy living upon us that without a holy life we cannot in any sense be happy or have the effect of one prayer But if we be returning and repenting sinners God delights to hear because he delights to save us Si precibus dixerunt numina justis Victa remollescunt When a man is holy then God is gracious and a holy life is the best and it is a continuall prayer and repentance is the best argument to move God to mercy because it is the instrument to unite our prayers to the intercession of the Holy Jesus SERMON V. Part II. AFter these evidences of Scripture and reason deriv'd from its analogy there will be lesse necessity to take any particular notices of those little objections which are usually made from the experience of the successe and prosperities of evill persons For true it is there is in the world a generation of men that pray long and loud and aske for vile things such which they ought to fear and pray against and yet they are heard The fat upon earth eat and worship But if these men aske things hurtfull and sinfull it is certain God hears them not in mercy They pray to God as despairing Saul did to his Armour-bearer Sta super me interfice me stand upon me and kill me and he that obey'd his voice did him dishonour and sinn'd against the head of his King and his own life And the vicious persons of old pray'd to Laverna Pulchra Laverna Da mihi fallere da justum sanctúmque videri Noctem peccatis fraudibus objice nubem Give me a prosperous robbery a rich prey and secret escape let me become rich with theeving and still be accounted holy For every sort of man hath some religion or other by the measures of which they proportion their lives and their prayers Now as the holy Spirit of God teaching us to pray makes us like himself in order to a holy and an effective prayer and no man prayes well but he that prays by the Spirit of God the Spirit of holinesse and he that prayes with the Spirit must be made like to the Spirit he is first sanctified and made holy and then made fervent and then his prayer ascends beyond the cloud first he is renewed in the spirit of his minde and then he is inflamed with holy fires and guided by a bright starre first purified and then lightned then burning and shining so is every man in every of his prayers He is alwayes like the spirit by which he prayes If he be a lustfull person he prayes with a lustfull spirit if he does not pray for it he cannot heartily pray against it If he be a Tyrant or an usurper a robber or a murtherer he hath his Laverna too by which all his desires are guided and his prayers directed and his petitions furnished He cannot pray against that spirit that possesses him and hath seised upon his will and affections If he be fill'd with a lying spirit and be conformed to it in the image of his minde he will be so also in the expressions of his prayer and the sense of his soul. Since therefore no prayer can be good but that which is taught by the Spirit of grace none holy but the man whom Gods Spirit hath sanctified and therefore none heard to any purposes of blessing which the holy Ghost does not make for us for he makes intercession for the Saints the Spirit of Christ is the praecentor or the rector chori the Master of the Quire it followes that all other prayers being made with an evill Spirit must have an evill portion and though the Devils by their Oracles have given some answers and by their significations have foretold some future contingencies and in their government and subordinate rule have assisted some armies and discovered some treasures and prevented some snares of chance and accidents of men yet no man that reckons by the measures of reason or religion reckons witches and conjurors amongst blessed and prosperous persons these and all other evill persons have an evill spirit by the measures of which their desires begin and proceed on to issue but this successe of theirs neither comes from God nor brings felicity but if it comes from God it is anger if it descends upon good men it is a curse if upon evill men it is a sin and then it is a present curse and leads on to an eternall infelicity Plutarch reports that the Tyrians tyed their gods with chains because certain persons did dream that Apollo said he would leave their City and go to the party of Alexander who then besieged the town and Apollodorus tels of some that tied the image of Saturne with bands of wooll upon his feet So are some Christians they think God is tyed to their sect and bound to be of their side and the interest of their opinion and they think he can never go to the enemies party so long as they charme him with certain formes of words or disguises of their own and then all the successe they have and all the evils that are prosperous all the mischiefs they do and all the ambitious designs that do succeed they reckon upon the account of their prayers and well they may for their prayers are sins and their desires are evill they wish mischief and they act iniquity and they enjoy their sin and if this be a blessing or a cursing themselves shall then judge and all the world shall perceive when the accounts of all the world are truly stated then when prosperity shall be called to accounts and adversity shall receive its comforts when vertue shall have a crown and the satisfaction of all sinfull desires shall be recompensed with an intolerable sorrow and the despair of a perishing soul. Nero's Mother prayed passionately that her son might be Emperor and many persons of whom S. Iames speaks pray to spend upon their lusts and they are heard
but strangely prevailing almost as much without remedy as it is without pleasure for it enters first by folly and grows by custome and dwels with carelesnesse and is nurs'd by irreligion and want of the fear of God it profanes the most holy things and mingles dirt with the beames of the Sun follies and trifling talke interweav'd and knit together with the sacred name of God it placeth the most excellent of things in the meanest and basest circumstances it brings the secrets of heaven into the streets dead mens bones into a Temple Nothing is a greater sacriledge then to prostitute the great name of God to the petulancy of an idle tongue and blend it as an expletive to fill up the emptinesse of a weak discourse The name of God is so sacred so mighty that it rends mountains it opens the bowels of the deepest rocks it casts out Devils and makes Hell to tremble and fills all the regions of Heaven with joy the name of God is our strength and confidence the object of our worshippings and the security of all our hopes and when God had given himselfe a Name and immur'd it with dread and reverence like the garden of Eden with the swords of Cherubims and none durst speak it but he whose lips were hallowed and that at holy and solemn times in a most holy and solemne place I mean the High Priest of the Jews at the solemnities when he entred into the sanctuary then he taught all the world the majesty and veneration of his Name and therefore it was that God made restraints upon our conceptions and expressions of him and as he was infinitely curious that from all the appearances he made to them they should not depict or ingrave an image of him so he tooke care that even the tongue should be restrained and not be too free in forming images and representments of his Name and therefore as God drew their eyes from vanity by putting his name amongst them and representing no shape so even when he had put his name amongst them he took it off from the tongue and placed it before the eye for Jehovah was so written on the Priests Mitre that all might see and read but none speak it but the Priest But besides all this there is one great thing concerning the Name of God beyond all that can be spoken or imagined else and that is that when God the Father was pleased to pour forth all his glories and imprint them upon his holy Son in his exaltation it was by giving him his holy Name the Tetragrammaton or Jehovah made articulate to signifie God manifested in the flesh and so he wore the character of God and became the bright image of his person Now all these great things concerning the Name of God are infinite reproofes of common and vain swearing by it Gods name is left us here to pray by to hope in to be the instrument and conveyance of our worshippings to be the witnesse of truth and the Judge of secrets the end of strife and the avenger of perjury the discerner of right and the severe exacter of all wrongs and shall all this be unhallowed by impudent talking of God without sense or feare or notices or reverence or observation One thing more I have to adde against this vice of a foolish tongue and that is that as much prating fils the discourse with lying so this trifling swearing changes every trifling lye into a horrid perjury and this was noted by St. James But above all things swear not at all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that ye may not fall into condemnation so we read it following the Arabian Syrian and Latin books and some Greek Copies and it signifies that all such swearing and putting fierce appendages to every word like great iron bars to a straw basket or the curtains of a tent is a direct condemnation of our selves For while we by much talking regard truth too little and yet bind up our trifles with so severe a band we are condemned by our owne words for men are made to expect what you bound upon them by an oath and account your trifle to be serious of which when you faile you have given sentence against your selfe And this is agreeable to those words of our blessed Saviour Of every idle word you shall give account for by thy words thou shalt be condemned and by thy words thou shalt be justified But there is another reading of these words which hath great emphasis and power in this article Swear not at all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that you may not fall into hypocrisie that is into the disreputation of a lying deceiving cousening person for he that will put his oath to every common word makes no great matter of an oath for in swearing commonly he must needs sometimes swear without consideration and therefore without truth and he that does so in any company tels the world he makes no great matter of being perjured All these things put together may take off our wonder at St. James expression of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 above all things sweare not it is a thing so highly to be regarded and yet is so little considered that it is hard to say whether there be in the world any instance in which men are so carelesse of their danger and damnation as in this The next appendage of vain and trifling speech is contention wrangling and perpetuall talke proceeding from the spirit of contradiction Profert enim mores plerumque oratio animi secreta detegit Nec sine causâ Graeci prodiderunt ut vivat quemque etiam dicere said Quintilian For the most part a mans words betray his manners and unlocks the secrets of the mind And it was not without cause that the Greeks said As a man lives so he speaks for so indeed Menander 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Aristides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So that it is a signe of a peevish an angry and quarrelling disposition to be disputative and busie in Questions and impertinent oppositions You shall meet with some men such were the Sceptics and such were the Academics of old who will not endure any man shall be of their opinion and will not suffer men to speak truth or to consent to their own propositions but will put every man to fight for his owne possessions disturbing the rest of truth and all the dwellings of unity and consent clamosum altercatorem Quintilian calls such a one This is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an overflowing of the heart and of the gall and it makes men troublesome and intricates all wise discourses and throws a cloud upon the face of truth and while men contend for truth error drest in the same habit flips into her chaire and all the litigants court her for the divine sister of wisdome Nimirùm altercando veritas amittitur There is noyse but no harmony fighting but no victory talking but no learning all are teachers and all