pieces and slackens the band of the Christian faith which faith is That Christ consisting of two natures in one person suffered for the salvation of man So then not onely to take from Jesus one of his natures God or man but to adde to him another person this addition is a Diminution a dissolution an annihilation of Jesus So also to adde to the Gospel to adde to the Scriptures to adde to the articles of faith this addition is a Diminution a Dissolution an Annihilation of those Scriptures that Gospel that faith and the Author and finisher thereof Iesus grew in stature says the Gospel But he grew not to his lifes end we know to how many feet he grew So the Scriptures grew to the number of the books grew But they grow not to the worlds end we know to how many bookes they grew The body of man and the vessels thereof have a certain and a limited capacity what nourishment they can receive and digest and so a certaine measure and stature to extend to The soul and soul of the soul Faith and her faculties hath a certain capacity too and certain proportions of spirituall nourishments exhibited to it in certaine vessels certaine measures so many these Bookes of Scriptures And therefore as Christ saies Which of you can adde one Cubit to your stature how plentifully and how delicately soever you feed how discreetly and how providently soever you exercise you cannot doe that so may he say to them who pretend the greatest power in the Church Which of you can adde another booke to the Scriptures A Codicill to either of my Testaments The curse in the Revelation fals as heavy upon them that adde to the booke of God as upon them that take from it Nay it is easie to observe that in all those places of Scripture which forbid the taking away or the adding to the Book of God still the commandment that they shall not and still the malediction if they do is first placed upon the adding and after upon the taking away So it is in that former place Plagues upon him that takes away but first Plagues upon him that addes so in Deut. you shall not diminish but first you shall not adde So again in that Book whatsoever I command you observe to do it Thou shalt not diminish from it but first Thou shalt not adde to it And when the same commandment seems to be given in the Proverbs there is nothing at all said of taking away but onely of adding as though the danger to Gods Church consisted especially in that Every word of God is pure saith Solomon there Adde thou not unto his word lest thou be reproved and found a lyer For though heretofore some Heretiques have offered at that way to clip Gods coin in taking away some book of Scripture yet for many blessed Ages the Church hath enjoyed her peace in that point None of the Books are denied by any church there is no substraction offered But for addition of Apocryphal Books to Canonicall the Church of God is still in her Militant state and cannot triumph and though she have victory in all the Reasons the cannot have peace You see Christs way to them that came to heare him Audiistis and Audiistis This and that you have heard others say Egâ— autem dico your Rule is what I say for Christ spoke Scripture Christ was Scripture As we say of great and universall Scholars that they are viventes Bibliothecae living walking speaking Libraries so Christ was lâ—quens Scriptura living speaking Scripture Our Sermons are Text and Discourse Christ Sermons were all Text Christ was the Word not onely the Essentiall Word which was alwayes with God but the very written word too Christ was the Scripture and therefore when he refers them to himselfe he refers them to the Scriptures for though here he seem onely to call upon them to hearken to that which he spoke yet it is in a word of a deeper impression for it is Videte See what you hear Before you preach any thing for my word see it see it written see it in the body of the Scriptures Here then lies the double obligation upon the Apostles The salvation of the whole world lies upon your preaching of that of All That of onely That which you hear from me now And therefore take heed what you hear And farther we carry not your consideration upon this first acceptation of the words as they are spoken personally to the Apostles but passe to the second as by reflexion they are spoken to us the Ministers of the Gospel In this consideration we take in also our Adversaries for we all pretend to be successors of the Apostles though not we as they in the Apostolicall yet they as well as we in the Evangelicall and Ministeriall function for as that which Christ said to Saint Peter he said in him to all the Apostles Vpon this Rock will I build my Church so in this which he saith to all the Apostles he saith to all us also Take heed what you heare Be this then the issue between them of the Roman distemper and us whether they or we do best perform this commandment Take heed what you heare conceal nothing of that which you have heard obtrude nothing but that which you have heard Whether they or we do best apply our practise to this rule Preach all the Truth preach nothing but the Truth be this lis contestata the issue joyned between us and it will require no long pleading for matter of evidence first our Saviour saith Man liveth by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God And this Christ saith from Moses also so that in the mouth of two unreproachable witnesses Moses and Christ the Law and the Gospel we have this established Mans life is the Word of God the Word is the Scripture And then our Saviour saith further The Holy Ghost shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance and here is the Latitude the Totality the Integrality of the meanes of salvation you shall have Scriptures delivered to you by them the Holy Ghost shall teach you all things and then you shall be remembred of all by the explication and application of those Scriptures at Church where lies the principall operation of the Holy Ghost Now is this done in the Roman Church Are the Scriptures delivered and explicated to them To much of the Scriptures as is read to them in their Lessons and Epistles and Gospels is not understood when it is read for it is in an unknown language so that that way the Holy Ghost teaches them nothing Neither are all the Scriptures distributed into these Lessons and Epistles and Gospels which are read so that if they did understand all they heard yet they did not heare all they were bound to understand And for remembring them by the way of preaching though it be true that the
Sacrament yet he is always present in it Yet this plot the devill had upon the Church And whereas this first Epistle of Saint Iohn was never doubted to be Canonicall whereas both the other have been called into some question yet in this first Epistle the first verse of this text was for a long time removed or expung'd whether by malice of Heretiques or negligence of transcribers The first Translation of the new testament which was into Syriaque hath not this verse That which was first called Vulgata editio had it not neither hath Luther it in his Germane translation very many of the Latine Fathers have it not and some very ancient Greeke Fathers want it though more ancient then they have it for Athanasius in the Councell of Nice cites it and makes use of it and Cyprian beheaded before that Councell hath it too But now he that is one of the witnesses himselfe the Holy Ghost hath assured the Church that this verse belongs to the Scripture and therefore it becomes us to consider thankfully and reverently this first ranke of witnesses the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost The Father then hath testified De integritate Christi of this intirenesse that Christ should be all this and doe all this which we have spoken of abundantly he begunne before Christ was borne in giving his name Thou shalt call his name Iesus for he shall save his people from sin Well how shall this person be capable to doe this office of saving his people from sinne Why in him say God the father in the representation of an Angell shall be fulfilled that prophecy A virgin shall beare a Sonne and they shall call his name Emanuel which is by interpretation God with us This seemes somewhat an incertaine testimony of a Man with an Alià s dictus with two names God says he shall be called Iesus that the prophecy may be fulfilled which says he shall be called Emanuel but therein consists Integritas Christi this intirenesse he could not be Jesus not a Saviour except he were Emanuel God with us God in our nature Here then is Jesus a Saviour a Saviour that is God and Man but where is the Testimony De Christo that he was anointed and prepared for this sacrifice that this worke of his was contracted between the Father and him and acceptable to him It is twice testified by the Father both in Christs act of humiliation when he would be Baptized by Iohn when he would accept an ablution who had no uncleannesse then God says This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased he was well pleased in his person and he was well pleased in his act in his office And he testifies it againe in his first act of glory in his transfiguration where the Father repeates the same words with an addition Heare him God is pleased in him and would have Men pleased in him too He testified first onely for Iosephs sak that had entertained and lodged some scrupulous suspition against his wife the Blessed Virgine His second testimony at the baptisme had a farther extent for that was for the confirmation of Iohn Baptist of the preacher himselfe who was to convey his doctrine to many others His third testimony in the transfiguration was larger then the Baptisme for that satisfied three and three such as were to carry it farre Peter and Iames and Iohn All which no doubt made the same use of his testimony as we see Peter did who preached out of the strength of his manifestation we followed not deceivable fables but with our owne eyes we saw his Majesty for he received of God the Father honor and glory when there came such a voice to him from the Excellent glory This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased But yet the Father gave a more free a more liberall testimony of him then this at his Conception or Baptisme or Transfiguration when upon Christs prayer Father glorifie thy Name there came a voice from heaven I have both glorified it and will glorifie it againe For this all the people apprehended some imputed it to Thunder some to an Angel but all heard it and all heard Christs comment upon it That that voice came not for him but for their sakes so that when the Father had testified of a Iesus a Saviour and a Christ a Saviour sent to that purpose and a Sonne in whom he is pleased and whom we must heare when it is said of him moreover Gratificavit â—â—s in Dilectâ— he hath made us accepted in his beloved this is his way of comming in water and bloud that is in the sacraments of the Church by which we have assurance of being accepted by him and this is this Integritas Christi the intirenesse of Christ testified by our first witnesse that bears record in heaven The father The second witnesse in heaven is verâ—um The Word and that is a welcome message for it is Christ himselfe It is not so when the Lord sends a word The Lord sent a word unto Iacob and it lighted upon Israelâ— there the word is a judgement and an execution of the Judgement for that word that signifies 2 word there in the same letters exactly signifies a pestilence a Calamity It is a word and a blow but the word here is verbum cara that Word which for our sakes was made our selves The word then in this place is the second person in the Trinity Christ Iesus who in this Court of heaven where there is no corruption no falsification no passion but fair and just proceeding is admitted to be a witnesse in his owne cause It is Iesus that testifies for Iesus now when he was upon earth and said If I should beare witnesse of my selfe my witnesse were not true whether we take those words to be spoken per Coâ—nlventiam by an allowance and concession It is not true that is I am content that you should not beleeve my witnesse of my selfe to be true as Saint Cyrill understand them or whether we take them Humana mare that Christ as a man acknowledged truely and as he thought that inlegall proceeding a mans owne testimony ought not to be beleeved in his owne behalfe as Athanâ—â—ius and Saint Ambrose understand them yet Christ might safely say as he did Though I beare a record of my selfe yet my record is true why because I know whence I come and whither I goe Christ could not be Singularis â—â—stis a single witnesseâ— He was alwayes more then one witnesse because he had alwayes more then 〈◊〉 God and man and therefore Christ instructing Nicodemus speakes plurally we speake that 〈◊〉 know we testifie that we have seene and you receive not Testimoniâ—â— nâ—strum our witnesseâ— he does not say my witnesse but ours because although a singular yet he was a plurall person too His testimony then was credible but how did he testifie Integritatem this intirenesse
Evangelists that that voice added Hear him for after that Declaration that he who was visibly and personally come amongst them was the Sonne of God there was no reason to doubt of mens willingnesse to hear him who went forth in person to preach unto them in this world As long as he was to stay with them it was not likely that they should need provocation to hear him therefore that was not added at his Baptisme and entrance into his personall ministery But when Christ came to his Transfiguration which was a manifestation of his glory in the next world and an intimation of the approaching of the time of his going away to the possession of that glory out of this world there that voyce from heaven sayes This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased heare him When he was gone out of this world men needed a more particular solicitation to heare him for how and where and in whom should they heare him when he was gone In the Church for the same testimony that God gave of Christ to authorize and justifie his preaching hath Christ given of the Church to justifie her power The holy Ghost fell upon Christ at his Baptism and the holy Ghost fell upon the Apostles who were the representative Church at Whitsontide The holy Ghost tarried upon Christ then and the holy Ghost shall tarry with the Church usque ad consummationem till the end of the world And therefore as we have that institution from Christ Dic Ecclesiae when men are refractary and perverse to complaine to the Church so have they who are complained of to the Church that institution from Christ also Audi Ecclesiam Hearken to the voyce of God in the Church and they have from him that commination If you disobey them you disobey God in what fetters soever they binde you you shall rise bound in those fetters and as he who is excommunicated in one Diocese should not be received in another so let no man presume of a better state in the Triumphant Church then he holds in the Militant or hope for communion there that despises excommunication here That which the Scripture says God sayes says St. Augustine for the Scripture is his word and that which the Church says the Scriptures say for she is their word they speak in her they authorize her and she explicates them The Spirit of God inanimates the Scriptures and makes them his Scriptures the Church actuates the Scriptures and makes them our Scriptures Nihil salubrius says the same Father There is not so wholsome a thing no soule can live in so good an aire and in so good a diet Quà m ut Rationem praecedat authoritas Then still to submit a mans owne particular reason to the authority of the Church expressed in the Scriptures For certainly it is very truly as it is very usefully said by Calvin Semper nimia morositas est ambitiosa A frowardnesse and an aptnesse to quarrell at the proceedings of the Church and to be delivered from the obligations and constitutions of the Church is ever accompanied with an ambitious pride that they might enjoy a licentious liberty It is not because the Church doth truly take too much power but because they would be under none it is an ambition to have all government in their own hands and to be absolute Emperors of themselves that makes them refractary But if they will pretend to believe in God they must believe in God so as God hath manifested himself to them they must believe in Christ so if they will pretend to heare Christ they must heare him there where he hath promised to speake they must heare him in the Church The first reason then in this Trinity the person that directs is the Church the Trumpet in which God sounds his Iudgements and the Organ in which he delivers his mercy And then the persons of the second place the persons to whom the Church speakes here are Filiae Sion The daughters of Sion her owne daughters We are not called Filii Ecclesiae sonnes of the Church The name of sonnes may imply more virility more manhood more sense of our owne strength then becomes them who professe an obedience to the Church Therefore as by a name importing more facility more supplenesse more application more tractablenesse she calls her children Daughters But then being a mother and having the dignity of a Parent upon her she does not proceed supplicatorily she does not pray them nor intreat them she does not say I would you would go forth and I would you would looke out but it is Egredimini videte imperatively authoritatively Do it you must do it So that she showes what in important and necessary cases the power of the Church is though her ordinary proceedings by us and our Ministery be To pray you in Christs stead to be reconciled to God In your baptisme your soules became daughters of the Church and they must continue so as long as they continue in you you cannot devest your allegiance to the Church though you would no more then you can to the State to whom you cannot say ◠will be no subject A father may dis-inherit his son upon reasons but even that dis-inherited childe cannot renounce his father That Church which conceived thee in the Covenant of God made to Christians and their seed and brought thee forth in baptisme and brought thee up in catechizing and preaching may yet for thy misdemeanor to God in her separate thee à Mensa Toro from bed and board from that sanctuary of the soule the Communion Table and from that Sanctuary of the body Christian buriall and even that Christian buriall gives a man a good rise a good helpe a good advantage even at the last resurrection to be laid down in expectation of the Resurrection in holy ground and in a place accustomed to Gods presence and to have been found worthy of that Communion of Saints in the very body is some earnest and some kinde of first-fruits of the joyfull resurrection which we attend God can call our dead bodies from the sea and from the fire and from the ayre for every element is his but consecrated ground is our element And therefore you daughters of Sion holy and religious souls for to them onely this indulgent mother speaks here hearken ever to her voice quarrell not your mothers honor nor her discretion Despise not her person nor her apparell Doe not say she is not the same woman she was heretofore nor that she is not so well dressed as she was then Dispute not her Doctrine Despise not her Discipline that as you sucked her breasts in your Baptism in the other Sacrament when you entred and whilst you stayd in this life so you may lie in her bosome when you goe out of it Hear her a good part of that which you are to hear from her is envolv'd inwrapped in that w ch we have propos'd
If wee winke wee cannot chuse but see it if we stare wee know it never the better No man is yet got so neare to the knowledge of the qualities of light as to know whether light it selfe be a quality or a substance If then this naturall light be so darke to our naturall reason if wee shall offer to pierce so far into the light of this text the Essentiall light Christ Iesus in his nature or but in his offices or the supernaturall light of faith and grace how far faith may be had and yet lost and how far the freewill of man may concur and cooperate with grace and yet still remaine nothing in it selfe if wee search farther into these points then the Scripture hath opened us a way how shall wee hope to unentangle or extricate our selves They had a precious composition for lamps amongst the ancients reserved especially for Tombes which kept light for many hundreds of yeares we have had in our age experience in some casuall openings of ancient vaults of finding such lights as were kindled as appeared by their inscriptions fifteen or sixteen hundred years before but as soon as that light comes to our light it vanishes So this eternall and this supernaturall light Christ and faith enlightens warmes purges and does all the profitable offices of fire and light if we keep it in the right spheare in the proper place that is if wee consist in points necessary to salvation and revealed in the Scripture but when wee bring this light to the common light of reason to our inferences and consequencies it may be in danger to vanish it selfe and perchance extinguish our reason too we may search so far and reason so long of faith and grace as that we may lose not onely them but even our reason too and sooner become mad then good Not that we are bound to believe any thing against reason that is to believe we know not why It is but a slacke opinion it is not Beliefe that is not grounded upon reason He that should come to a Heathen man a meere naturall man uncatechized uninstructed in the rudiments of the Christian Religion and should at first without any preparation present him first with this necessitie Thou shalt burn in fire and brimstone eternally except thou believe a Trinitie of Persons in an unitie of one God Except thou believe the Incarnation of the second Person of the Trinitie the Sonne of God Except thou believe that a Virgine had a Soone and the same Sonne that God had and that God was Man too and being the immortall God yet died he should be so farre from working any spirituall cure upon this poore soule as that he should rather bring Christian Mysteries into scorne then him to a beliefe For that man if you proceed so Believe all or you burne in Hell would finde an easie an obvious way to escape all that is first not to believe Hell it selfe and then nothing could binde him to believe the rest The reason therefore of Man must first be satisfied but the way of such satisfaction must be this to make him see That this World a frame of so much harmony so much concinnitie and conveniencie and such a correspondence and subordination in the parts thereof must necessarily have had a workeman for nothing can make it selfe That no such workeman would deliver over a frame and worke of so much Majestie to be governed by Fortune casually but would still retain the Administration thereof in his owne hands That if he doe so if he made the World and sustaine it still by his watchfull Providence there belongeth a worship and service to him for doing so That therefore he hath certainly revealed to man what kinde of worship and service shall be acceptable to him That this manifestation of his Will must be permanent it must be written there must be a Scripture which is his Word and his Will And that therefore from that Scripture from that Word of God all Articles of our Beliefe are to bee drawne If then his Reason confessing all this aske farther proofe how he shall know that these Scriptures accepted by the Christian Church are the true Scriptures let him bring any other Booke which pretendeth to be the Word of God into comparison with these It is true we have not a Demonstration not such an Evidence as that one and two are three to prove these to be Scriptures of God God hath not proceeded in that manner to drive our Reason into a pound and to force it by a peremptory necessitie to accept these for Scriptures for then here had been no exercise of our Will and our assent if we could not have resisted But yet these Scriptures have so orderly so sweet and so powerfull a working upon the reason and the understanding as if any third man who were utterly discharged of all preconceptions and anticipations in matter of Religion one who were altogether neutrall disinteressed unconcerned in either party nothing towards a Turke and as little toward a Christian should heare a Christian pleade for his Bible and a Turke for his Alcoran and should weigh the evidence of both the Majesty of the Style the punctuall accomplishment of the Prophecies the harmony and concurrence of the foure Evangelists the consent and unanimity of the Christian Church ever since and many other such reasons he would be drawne to such an Historicall such a Grammaticall such a Logicall beliefe of our Bible as to preferre it before any other that could be pretended to be the Word of God He would believe it and he would know why he did so For let no man thinke that God hath given him so much ease here as to save him by believing he knoweth not what or why Knowledge cannot save us but we cannot be saved without Knowledge Faith is not on this side Knowledge but beyond it we must necessarily come to Knowledge first though we must not stay at it when we are come thither For a regenerate Christian being now a new Creature hath also a new facultie of Reason and so believeth the Mysteries of Religion out of another Reason then as a meere naturall Man he believed naturall and morall things He believeth them for their own sake by Faith though he take Knowledge of them before by that common Reason and by those humane Arguments which worke upon other men in naturall or morall things Divers men may walke by the Sea side and the same beames of the Sunne giving light to them all one gathereth by the benefit of that light pebles or speckled shells for curious vanitie and another gathers precious Pearle or medicinall Ambar by the same light So the common light of reason illumins us all but one imployes this light upon the searching of impertinent vanities another by a better use of the same light finds out the Mysteries of Religion and when he hath found them loves them not for the lights sake but for the naturall and
Fifty SERMONS PREACHED BY THAT LEARNED AND REVEREND DIVINE JOHN DONNE D r IN DIVINITY Late Deane of the Cathedrall Church of S. PAULS London The Second Volume LONDON Printed by Ia. Flesher for M. F. I. Marriot and R. Royston MDCXLIX TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BASIL EARLE OF DENBY My very good Lord and Patron My Lord IN a season so tempestuous it is a great encouragement to see your Lordship called to the Helme who in your publique negociations having spent so many yeares in that so famed Common-wealth of Venice must of necessity have brought home such excellent Principles of Government that if our Fate doe not withstand your Directions we may reasonably at last expect to see our new Brittish Lady excell that ancient Adriatique Queene Neither can I offend much against the State in begging your Patronage and perusall of this Book knowing that your Lordship first mastered all the Learning of Padoa before you did adventure upon that wise Senate who amongst all her other greatnesses has ever had a principall care that Learning might not be diminished When these Sermons were preached they were terminated within the compasse of an houre but your acceptance may make them outlive the very Churches that they were preached in and give them such a perpetuity that Nec Jovis Ira nec Amor edacior multò poterit abolere For though a fiery zeale in succeeding ages hath often both ruined the Temples and casheired the gods that were worshipped in them Yet such sacrifices as these have beemy laies kept unburnt and we are suffered to know those religions that we are not allowed to practice Nor can I expect any greater advantage for the paines I have taken in publishing this Book then that posterity may know I did it when I had the favor and protection of your Lordship and was allowed to stile my selfe Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BOLSTRED WHITLOCK RICHARD KEEBLE 〈◊〉 JOHN LEILE Lords Commissioners of the Great Seale THe reward that many yeares since was proposed for the publishing these Sermons having been lately conferred upon me under the authority of the Great Seale I thought my selfe in gratitude bound to deliver them to the world under your Lordships protection both to show how carefull you are in dispensing that part of the Churches treasure that is committed to your disposing and to encourage all men to proceed in their industry when they are sure to find so just and equall Patrons whose fame and memory must certainely last longer then Bookes can find so noble Readers and whose present favors doe not onely keep the Living alive but the Dead from dying Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE A Table directing to the severall Texts of SCRIPTURE handled in this Book Sermons preached at Mariages Sermon I. Preached at the Earl of Bridgwaters house in London on MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven p. 1. Serm ' II. GEN. 2. 18. And the Lord God said It is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a Help meet for him p. 9. Serm. III. HOSEA 2. 19. And I will mary thee unto me for ever p. 15 Sermons preached at Christnings Serm. IV. REVEL 7. 17. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall governe them and shall leade them unto the lively fountaines of waters and God shall wipe away all teares from their eyes p. 23 Serm. V. EPHES. 5. 25 26 27. Husbands love your wives even at Christ loved the Church and gave himselfe for it that he might sanctifie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the Word That he might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinckle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blame p. 31 Serm. VI. 1 JOH 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the blood and these three agree in one p. 39 Serm. VII GAL. 3. 27. For all yee that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. p. 50. Sermons preached at Churchings Serm. VIII CANT 5. 3. I have washed my feet how shall I defile them p. 59. Serm. IX MICAH 2. 10. Arise and depart for this is not your rest p. 67. Serm. X. A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 74. Sermons preached at Lincolns-Inne Serm. XI GEN. 28. 16 17. Then Iacob awoke out of his sleep and said Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware And he was afraid and said How fearefull is this place This is none other but the House of God and this is the gate of Heaven p. 83 Serm. XII JOH 5. 22. The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgement to the Sonne p. 94. Serm. XIII JOH 8. 15. I judge no man p. 101. Serm. XIIII JOB 19. 26. And though after my skin wormes destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God p. 106. Serm. XV. 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God p. 118. Serm. XVI COLOS. 1. 24. Who now rejoyce in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his bodies sake which is the Church p. 128. Serm. XVII MAT. 18. 7. Wo unto the world because of offences p. 136. Serm. XVIII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 142 Serm. XIX PSAL. 38. 2. For thine arrowes stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore p. 158. Serm. XX. PSA 38. 3. There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne p. 162. Serm. XXI PSAL. 38. 4. For mine iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me p. 174. Serm. XXII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 186. Serm. XXIII A third Serm. on the same Text. p. 192. Sermons preached at White-Hall Serm. XXIV EZEK 34. 19. And as for my flocke they eate that which ye have trodden with your feet and they drink that which yee have fouled with your feet 199. Serm. XXV A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 208. Serm. XXVI ESAI 65. 20. For the childe shall die a hundred yeers old but the sinner being a hundred yeers old shall be accursed p. 218 Serm. XXVII MARK 4. 24. Take heed what you hear p. 228 Serm. XXVIII GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our own Image after our likenesse p. 239. Serm. XXIX A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 250 Sermons preached to the Nobility Serm. XXX JOB 13. 15. Loe though he slay me yet will I trust in him p. 262. Serm. XXXI JOB 36.
of this life Call it Nuptias and that is derived à Nube a vaile a covering and that is an estranging a withdrawing her self from all such conversation as may violate his peace or her honour Call it Matrimonium and that is derived from a Mother and that implies a religious education of her children De latere sumpta nor-discedat à latere says Aâ—g Since she was taken out of his side let her not depart from his side but shew her self so much as she was made for Adjutorium a Helper But she must be no more If she think her self more then a Helper she is not so much He is a miserable creature whose Creator is his Wife God did not stay to joyn her in Commission with Adam so far as to give names to the creatures much lesse to give essence essence to the man essence to her husband When the wife thinks her husband owes her all his fortune all his discretion all his reputation God help that man himself for he hath given him no helper yet I know there are some glasses stronger then some earthen vessels and some earthen vessels stronger then some wooden dishes some of the weaker sexe stronger in fortune and in counsell too then they to whom God hath given them but yet let them not impute that in the eye nor eare of the world nor repeat it to their own hearts with such a dignifying of themselves as exceeds the quality of a Helper S. Hierome shall be her Remembrancer She was not taken out of the foâ—t to be troden upon nor out of the head to be an overseer of him but out of his side where she weakens him enough and therefore should do all she can to be a Helper To be so so much and no more she must be as God made Eve fimilis ei meet and fit for her husband She is fit for any if she have those vertues which always make the person that hath them good as chastity sobriety taciturnity verity and such for for such vertues as may be had and yet the possessor not the better for them as wit learning eloquence musick memory cunning and such these make her never the fitter There is a Harmony of dispositions and that requires particular consideration upon emergent occasions but the fitnesse that goes through all is a sober continency for without that Matrimonium jurata fornicatio Mariage is but a continuall fornication sealed with an oath And mariage was not instituted to prostitute the chastity of the woman to one man but to preserve her chastity from the tentations of more men Bathsheba was a little too fit for David when he had tried her so far before for there is no fitnesse where there is not continency To end all there is a Morall fitnesse consisting in those morall vertues of which we have spoke enough And there is a Civill fitnesse consisting in Discretion and accommodating her self to him And there is a Spirituall fitnesse in the unanimity of Religion that they be not of repugnant professions that way Of which since we are well assured in both these who are to be joyned now I am not sorry if either the houre or the present occasion call me from speaking any thing at all because it is a subject too mis-interpretable and unseasonable to admit an enlarging in at this time At this time therefore this be enough for the explication and application of these words SERMON III. Preached at a Mariage HOSEA 2. 19. And I will mary thee unto me for ever THE word which is the hinge upon which all this Text turns is Erash and Erash signifies not onely a betrothing as our later Translation hath it but a mariage And so it is used by David Deliver me my wife Michal whom I maried and so our former Translation had it and so we accept it and so shall handle it I will mary thee unto me for ever The first mariage that was made God made and he made it in Paradise And of that mariage I have had the like occasion as this to speak before in the presence of many honourable persons in this company The last mariage which shall be made God shall make too and in Paradise too in the Kingdome of heaven and at that mariage I hope in him that shall make it to meet not some but all this company The mariage in this Text hath relation to both those mariages It is it self the spirituall and mysticall mariage of Christ Jesus to the Church and to every mariageable soule in the Church And it hath a retrospect it looks back to the first mariage for to that the first word carries us because from thence God takes his metaphor and comparison sponsabo I will mary And then it hath a prospect to the last mariage for to that we are carried in the last word in aeternum I will mary thee unto me for ever Be pleased therefore to give me leave in this exercise to shift the scene thrice and to present to your religious considerations three objects three subjects first a secular mariage in Paradise secondly a spirituall mariage in the Church and thirdly an eternall mariage in heaven And in each of these three we shall present three circumstances first the Persons Me and Tibi I will mary thee And then the Action Sponsabo I will mary thee And lastly the Term In aeternam I will mary thee to mee for ever In the first acceptation then in the first the secular mariage in Paradise the persons were Adam and Eve Ever since they are he and she man and woman At first by reason of necessity without any such limitation as now And now without any other limitation then such as are expressed in the Law of God As the Apostles say in the first generall Councell We lay nothing upon you but things necessary so we call nothing necessary but that which is commanded by God If in heaven I may have the place of a man that hath performed the Commandements of God I will not change with him that thinks he hath done more then the Commandements of God enjoyned him The rule of marriage for degrees and distance in blood is the Law of God but for conditions of men there is no Rule given at all When God had made Adam and Eve in Paradise God did not place Adam in a Monastery on one side and Eve in a Nunnery on the other and so a River between them They that built wals and cloysters to frustrate Gods institution of mariage advance the Doctrine of Devils in forbidding mariage The Devil hath advantages enow against us in bringing men and women together It was a strange and super-devilish invention to give him a new advantage against us by keeping men and women asunder by forbidding mariage Between the heresie of the Nicolaitans that induced a community of women any might take any and the heresie of the Tatians that forbad all none might take any was
glory with the Father before the world was made thou didst admit a cloud and a slumber upon that glory and staiedst for thy glory till thy death yet thou givest us naturally inglorious and miserable creatures a reall possession of glory and of inseparablenesse from thee in this life This is that Copiosa redemptio there is with the Lord plentifull redemption though that were Matura redemptio a seasonable redemption if it should meet me upon my death-bed and that the Angels then should receive my soul to lay it in Abrahams bosome yet this is my Saviours plentifull redemption that my soul is in Abrahams bosome now whilest it is in this body and that I am already in the presence of his Throne now when I am in your sight and that I serve him already day and night in his Temple now when I meditate or execute his Commission in this service in this particular Congregation Those words are not then necessarily restrained to Martyrs they are not restrained to the state of the Triumphant Church they are spoken to all the Children of righteousnesse and of godlines and godlinesse hath the promises of the life present and that that is to come That which involves all these promises that which is the kernell and seed and marrow of all the last clause of the text God shall wipe all teares from their eyes those words that clause is thrice repeated intirely in the Scriptures When it is spoken here when it is spoken in the one and twentieth Chapter of the Revelation and at the fourth verse in both places it is derived from the Prophet Esay which is an Eacharisticall chapter a Chapter of thanksgiving for Gods deliverance of his children even in this world from the afflictions and tribulations thereof and therefore this text belongs also to this world This imprinting then of the seale in the forehead this washing of the robes in the bloud of the Lambe S. Ambrose places conveniently to be accomplished in the Sacrament of Baptisme for this is Copiosissima Redemptio this is the most plentiful redemption that that be applied to us not onely at last in Heaven nor at my last step towards heaven at my death nor in all the steps that I make in the course of my life but in my first step into the Church nay before I can make any step when I was carried in anothers armes thither even in the beginning of this life and so do divers of the later Men and of those whom we call ours understand all this of baptisme because if we consider this washing away of teares as Saint Cyprian says young children doe most of all need this mercy of God and this assistance of Man because as soone as they come into this world Plorantes ac flentes nihil aliud faciunt quam deprecantur they beg with teares something at our hands and therefore need this abstersion this wiping For though they cannot tell us what they aile though if we will enter into curiosities we cannot tell them what they aile that is we cannot tell them what properly and exactly Originall sin is yet they aile something which naturally disposes them to weep and beg that something might be done for the wiping away of teares from their eyes And therefore though the other errors of the Anabaptist be ancient 1000. year old yet the denying of baptisme to children was never heard of till within 100. years and lesse The Arrians and the Donatists did rebapsize those who were baptized by the true Christians whom they counted Heretiques but yet they refused not to baptize children The Pelegians denied originall sin in children but yet they baptized them All Churches Greek and Russian and Ethiopique howsoever they differ in the body of the Church yet they meet they agree in the porch in Limine Ecclesiae in the Sacrament of baptisme and acknowledge that it is communicable to all children and to all Men from the child new borne to the decrepit old Man from him that is come out of one mothers wombe to him that is going into another into his grave Sicut nullus prohibendus à baptisme it a nullus est qui non peccate moritur in baptismo As baptisme is to be denied to none so neither is it to be denied that all that are rightly baptized are washed from sin Let him that will contentiously say that there are some children that take no profit by baptisme shew me which is one of them and qui testatur de scientia testetur de mode scientiae If he say he knowes it let him tell us how he knowes that which the Church of God doth not know We come now to the second part in which we consider first this firstword quoniam for which is verbum praegnans a word that includes all those great blessings which God hath ordained for them whom in his eternall decree he hath prepared for this sealing and this washing Those blessings which are immediately before the text are that in Gods purpose they are already come out of great tribulations they have already received a whitenes by the bloud of the Lambe they are already in the presence of the threne of the Lambe they have already overcome all hunger and thirst and heat Those particular blessings we cannot insist upon that requires rather a Comment upon the Chapter then a Sermon upon the text But in this word of inference for we onely wil observe this That though all the promises of God in him are Yea and Amen certain and infallible in themselves though his Name that makes them be Amen Thus saith Amen the faithfull and true witnesse and therefore there needs no better security then his word for all those blessings yet God is pleased to give that abundant satisfaction to Man as that his reason shall have something to build upon as well as his faith he shall know why he should beleeve all these blessings to belong to them who are to have these Seales and this washing For God requires no such faith nay he accepts nay he excuses no such faith as beleeves without reason beleeves he knows not why As faith witout fruit witout works is no faith to faith without a roct without reason is no faith but an opinion All those blessings by the Sacrament of Baptism all Gods other promises to his children and all the mysteries of Christrian Religion are therefore beleeved by us becuase they are grounded in the Scriptures of God we beleeve them for that reason and then it is not a worke of my faith primarily but it is a worke of my reason that assures me that these are the Scriptures that these Scriptures are the word of God I can answer other Mens reasons that argue against it I can convince other men by reason that my reasons are true and therefore it is a worke of reason that I beleeve these to be Scriptures To prove a beginning of the world I
Christ which is Baptistrisum the font the Sea into which God flings all their sinnes who rightly and effectually receive that Sacrament These fountaines of waters then in the text are the waters of baptisime and if we should take them also in that sense that waters signifie tribulations and afflictions it is true too that in baptisme that is in the profession of Christ we are delivered over to many tribulations The rule is generall Castigat omnes he chastiseth all The example the precedent is peremptory Opertuit pati Christ ought to suffer and so enter into glory but howsoever waters be affictions they are waters of life too says the text Though baptisme imprint a crosse upon us that we should not be ashamed of Christ crosse that we should not be afraid of our owne crosses yet by all these waters by all these Crosse ways we goe directly to the eternall life the kingdome of heaven for they are lively fountaines fountaines of life And this is intended and promised in the last words Absterget omnem Lachrymam God shall wipe all teares from our eyes God shall give us a joyfull apprehension of heaven here in his Church in this life But is this a way to wipe teares from the childes face to sprinkle water upon it Is this a wiping away to powre more on It is the powerfull and wonderfull way of his working for as his red bloud makes our red soules white that his rednesse gives our rednesse a candor so his water his baptisime and the powerfull effect thereof shall dry up and wipe away Omnem â—achrymam all teares from our Eyes howsoever occasioned This water shall dry them up Christ had many occassion of teares we have more some of our owne which he had not we must weep because we are not so good as we should be we cannot performe the law We must weepe because we are not so good as we could be our free will is lost but yet every Man findes he might be better if he would but the sharpest and saltest and smartest occasion of our teares is from this that we must not be so good as we would be that the prosanenesse of the Libertine the reproachfull slanders the contumelious scandalls the seornfull names that the wicked lay upon those who in their measure desire to expresse their zeale to Gods glory makes us afraid to professe our selves so religious as we could find in our hearts to be and could truly be if we might Christ went often in contemplation of others foreseeing the calamities of Ierualem he wept over the City comming to the grave of Lazarus he wept with them but in his owne Agony in the garden it is not said that he weps If we could stop the stood of teares in our afflictions yet there belongs an excessive griefe to this that the ungodly disposion of other Men is slacking of our godlinesse of our sanctification too Christ Jesus for the joy that was set before him endured the Crosse we for the joy of this promise that God will wipe all teares from our eyes must suffer all this whether they be teares of Compunction or teares of Compassion teares for our selves or teares for others whether they be Magdalens teares or Peters teares teares for sinnes of infirmity of the flesh or teares for weaknesse of our faith whether they be teares for thy parents because they are improvident towards thee or teares for thy children because they are disobedient to thee whether they be teares for Church because our Sermons or our Censures pinch you or teares for the State that penall laws pecuniary or bloudy lie heavy upon you Deus absterget omneni lachryman here 's your comfort that as he hath promised inestimable blessings to them that are sealed and washed in him so he hath given you security that these blessings belong to you for if you find that he hath govened you bred you in his visible Church and led you to his fountaine of the water of lifein baptisme you may be sure that he will in his due time wipe all teares from your eyes establish the kingdome of heaven upon you in this life in a holy and modest infallibility SERMON V. Preached at a Christning EPHES. 5. 25 26 27. Husbands love your wives even as Christ loved the Church and gave himselfe for it that he might sanctisie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the Word That he might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle on any such thing but that it should be holy and without blame ALmighty God ever loved unity but he never loved singularity God was always alone in heaven there were no other Gods but he but he was never singular there was never any time when there were not three persons in heaven Pater ego unum summi The father and I are one says Christ one in Esseuct and one in Consent our substance is the same and our will is the same but yet Tecum fui ab initio says Christ in the person of Wisdome I was with thee disposing all things at the Creation As then God seemes to have been eternally delighted with this eternall generation with persons that had ever a relation to one another Father and Sonne so when he came to the Creation of this lower world he came presently to those three relations of which the whole frame of this world consists of which because the principall foundation and preservation of all States that are to continue is power the first relation was between Prince and Subject when God said to Man Subjecite dominamini subdue and govern all Creatures The second relation was between husband and wife when Adam said This now is house of my bone and flesh of my flesh And the third relation was between parents and children when Eve said that she had obtained a Man by the Lord that by the plentifull favour of God she had conceived and borne a sonne from that time to the dissolution of that frame from that beginning to the end of the world these three relations of Master and Servant Mans and Wife Father and Children have been and ever shall be the materialls and the elements of all society of families and of Cities and of Kingdomes And therefore it is a large and a subtill philosophy which S. Paul professes in this place to shew all the qualities and properties of these several Elements that is all the duties of these severall callings but in this text he handles onely the mutuall duties of the second couple Man and Wife and in that consideration shall we determine this exercise because a great part of that concernes the education of Children which especially occasions our meeting now The generall duty that goes through all these three relations is expressed Subditi estate invicevs Submit your selves to one another in the feare of God for God hath given no Master such imperiousnesse
no husband such a superiority no father such a soverainty but that there lies a burden upon them too to consider with a compassionate sensiblenesse the grievances that oppresse the other part which is coupled to them For if the servant the wife the sonne be oppressed worne out annihilated there is no such thing left as a Master or a husband or a father They depend upon one another and therefore he that hath not care of his fellow destroys himselfe The wife is to submit herselfe and so is the husband too They have a burden both There is a greater subjection lies upon her then upon the Man in respect of her transgression towards her husband at first Eyen before there was any Man in the world to sollicite or tempt her chastity she could sinde another way to be salfe and treacherous to her husband both the husband and the wife offended against God but the husband offended not towards his wife but rather eate the Apple Ne contristaretur delicias suas as S. Hierome assignes the cause left by refusing to cate when she had done so he should deject her into a desperate sense of her sinne And for this fault of hers her Subjection was so much aggravated Thy desire shall be subject to thy husband and he shall rule over thee But if she had not committed that fault yet there would have been a mutuall subjection between them as there is even in Nature between both the other couples for if Man had continued in innocency yet it is most probably thought that as there would certainly have been Mariage and so children so also there would have been Magistracy and propriety and authority and so a mutuall submitting a mutuall assisting of one another in all these three relations Now that submitting of which the Apostle speakes of here is a submitting to one another a bearing of one anothers burthens what this submission is on the wives part is expressed in the two former verses And I forbeare that because husbands at home are likely enough to remember them of it but in the duty in the submitting of the husband we shall consider first what that submitting is and that is love Husbands love your wives Even the love of the husband to the wife is a burthen a submitting a descent and secondly the patterne and example of this love Even as Christ loved his Church In which second part as sometimes the accessory is greater then the principall the Symptome the accident is greater then the disease so that from which the comparison is drawn in this place is greater then that which is illustrated by it the love of Christ to his Church requires more consideration then the love of the husband to the wife and therefore it will become us to spend most of our thoughts upon that and to consider in that Quod factum and Quis sinis what Christ did for his Church and that was a bounty which could not be exceeded seipsum tradidit he gave he delivered himselfe for it And then secondly what he intended that should worke and that was first that he might make it to himselfe a glorious Church and without spot and wrinkle in the Triumphant state of the Church at last And then that whilst it continues in a Militant state upon Earth it might have preparations to that glory by being sanctified and cleansed by the washing of water through his Word he provides the Church meanes of sanctification here by his Word and Sacraments First then De Amoremaritali of this contracting a Mans love to the person of a wife of one woman as we find an often exclamation in the Prophets Onus visionis The burden of my prophecy upon Nineveh and Onus verbi Domini The burden of the word of God upon Israel so there is Onus amoris a burden of love when a Man is appointed whom he shall love When Onan was appointed by his father Iudah to goe in to his brothers widow and to doe the office of a kinsman to her he conceived such an unwillingnesse to doe so when he was bid as that he came to that detestable act for which God slew him And therefore the Panegyrique that raised his wit as high as he could to praise the Emperour Constantine and would expresse it in praising his continence and chastity he expressed it by saying that he waried young that as soon as his years endangered him formavit animum maritalem nihil de concessu atati voluptatibus admittens he was content to be a husband and accepted not that freedome of pleasure which his years might have excused He concludes it thus Novum jam tum miraculum Iuvenis â—xorius Behold a miracle such a young Man limiting his affections in a wife At first the heates and lusts of youth overflow all as the waters overflowed all at the beginning and when they did so the Earth was not onely barren there were no Creatures no herbs produced in that but even the waters themselves that did overflow all were barren too there were no fishes no fowls produced out of that as long as a Mans affections are scattered there is nothing but accursed barrennesse but when God says and is heard and obeyed in it Let the waters be gathered into one place let all thy affections be setled upon one wife then the earth and the waters became fruitfull then God gives us a type and figure of the eternity of the joyes of heaven in the succession and propagation of children here upon the earth It is true this contracting of our affections is a burden it is a submitting of our selves All States that made Lawes and proposed rewards for maried Men conceived it so that naturally they would be loth to doe it God maried his first couple as soone as he made them he dignified the state of Mariage by so many Allegories and figures to which he compares the uniting of Christ to his Church and the uniting of our soules to Christ and by directing the first Miracle of Christ to be done at a Mariage Many things must concurre to the dignifying of Mariage because in our corrupt nature the apprehension is generall that it is burdenous and a submitting and a descending thing to mary And therefore Saint Hierome argues truly out of these words Husbands love your Wifes Audiant Episcopi audiant presbyteri audiant doctores subjectis suis se esse subjectos let Bishops and Priests and Doctors learne in this that when they have maried themselves to a charge They are become subject to their Subjects For by being a husband I become subject to that sex which is naturally subject to Man though this subjection be no more in this place but to love that one woman Love then when it is limited by a law is a subjection but it is a subjection commanded by God Nihil majus à te subjecti animo factum est quam quod imper are coepistiâ— A Prince
such a subjection as is a love and such a love as is upon a Reason for love is not alwayes so This is Quiauxor because our wife and that implies these three uses God hath given Man a wife Ad adjutorium ad sobolem ad medicinam for a Help for Children and for a Remedy and Physick Now the first Society and encrease we love naturally we would not be banish'd we would not be robb'd we would not be alone we would not be poor Society and encrease every Man loves but doth any Man love Physick he takes it for necessity but does he love it Husbands therefore are to love wives Ad Sobolem as the Mothers of their Children Ad adjutorium as the comforters of their lives but for that which is Ad medicinam for physick to avoid burning to avoid fornication that 's not the subject of our love our love is not to be placed upon that for so it is a love Quia mulier because she is a woman and not Quia uxor because she is my wife A Man may be a drunkard at home with his own wine and never goe out to Taverns A man may be an adulâ—erer in his wives bosome though he seek not strange women We come now to the other part the pattern of this love which is Christ Jesus we are commanded to be holy and pure as our Father is holy and pure but that 's a proportion of which we are incapable And therefore we have another Commandement from Christ Discite à me learn of me there is no more looked for but that we should still be Scholars and learners how to love we can never love so much as he hath lov'd It is still Discite still something to be learnt and added and this something is Quia mitis learn of me make me your pattern because I am meek and gentle not suspitious not forward not hard to be reconcil'd not apt to discomfort my spouse my Church not with a sullen silence for I speak to her alwayes in my Word not apt to leave her unprovided of apparell and decent ornaments for I have allow'd her such Ceremonies as conduce to edification not apt to pinch her in her diet she hath her two Courses the first and the second Sacrament And whensoever she comes to a spirituall hunger and thirst under the heat and weight of sin she knowes how and where there is plentifull refreshing and satisfaction to be had in the absolution of sinne Herein consists the substance of the Comparison Husbands love your wives as Christ did his Church that is expresse your loves in a gentle behaviour towards them and in a carefull providence of Conveniencies for them The comparison goes no farther but the love of Christ to his Church goes farther In which we consider first Quid factum what Christ did for his spouse for his Church It were pity to make too much hast in considering so delightfull a thing as the expressing of the love of Christ Jesus to his Church It were pity to ride away so fast from so pleasant so various a prospect where we may behold our Saviour in the Act of his liberality Giving in the matter of his liberality Giving himselfe and in the poor exchange that he took a few Contrite hearts a few broken spirits a few lame and blind and leprous sinners to make to himselfe and his Spirit a Church a house to dwell in no more but these and glad if he can get these First then Ille dedit He gave it was his own act as it was he that gave up the ghost he that laid down his soule and he that took it again for no power of Man had the power or disposition of his life It was an insolent and arrogant question in Pilate to Christ Nescis quia potestatem habcâ— Knowest not thou that I have power to Crucifie thee and have power to loose thee If Pilate thought that his power extended to Christ yet Tua damnaris sententia qui potestate latroneâ— absâ—lvis autorem vitae interficis His own words and actions condemned him when having power to condemn and absolve he would condemn the Innocent and absolve the guilty A good Judge does nothing sayes he Doâ—â—estice proposito voluntatis according to a resolution taken at home Nihil meditatum deme defert he brings not his judgement from his chamber to the bench but he takes it there according to the Evidence If pilate thought he had power his Conscience told him he misused that power but Christ tels him he could have none Nisi datum desuper Except it had been given him from above that is except Christ had given him power over himselfe for Christ speaks not in that place of Pilates generall power and Jurisdiction for so also all power is Desuper from above but for this particular power that Pilate boasts to have over him Christ tels him that he could have none over him except himselfe had submitted himselfe to it So before this passage with Pilat Iudâ—s had delivered Christ and there arose a sect of Heretiques Iudaists that magnified this act of Iudes and said that we were beholden to him for the hastning of our salvation because when he was come to the knowledge that God had decreed the Crucifying of Christ for Mankind Iudas took compassion of Mankind and hastned their Redemption by delivering up of Christ to the Iewes But Iudas had no such good purpose in his hast though our Iesus permitted Iudas to doe it and to doe it quickly when he said Quod facis fac citò For out of that ground in the Schooles Missia in divinis â—st movâ— operacio in Creatura When any person of the Trinity is said to be sent that onely denotes an extraordinary manner of working of that person Saint Augustine sayes truly that as Christ Misit seipsum he sent himself and Sanitificavit seipsum he sanctified himselfe so tradidit seipsum Iudas could not have given him if he had not given himselfe Pilate could not give him Iudas could not give him nay if we could consider severall wils in the severall Persons of the Trinity we might be bold to say That the Father could not have given him if he had not given himselfe We consider the unexpressible mercy of the Father in that he would accept any satisfaction at all for all our Sinnes We consider the unexpressible working of the Holy Ghost that brings this satisfaction and our soules together for without that without the application of the Holy Ghost we are as far from Christ's love now as we were from the Father 's before Christ suffered But the unexpressible and unconceiveable love of Christ is in this that there was in him a willingnesse a propensnesse a forwardnesse to give himselfe to make this great peace and reconciliation between God and Man It was himselfe that gave himselfe Nothing enclined him nothing wrought upon him but his own goodnesse
compelled to come as it is expressed in the Gospell when the Master of the feast sends into the streets and to the hedges to compell blind and lame to come in to his feast A fountaine breaks out in the wildernesse but that fountaine cares not whether any Man come to fetch water or no A fresh and fit gale blowes upon the Sea but it cares not whether the Mariners hoise saile or no A rose blowes in your garden but it calls you not to smell to it Christ Jesus hath done all this abundantly he hath bought an Hospitall he hath stored it with the true balme of Palestine with his bloud which he shed there and he calls upon you all to come for it Hoe every one that thirsteth you that have no money come buy Wine and Milke without money eate that which is good and let your soules delight in fatnesse and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you even the sure mercies of David This Hospitall this way and meanes to cure spirituall diseases was all that Christ had for himselfe but he improved it he makes it a Church and a glorious Church which is our last consideration Quis sinis to what end he bestowed all this cost His end was that he might make it to himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle but that end must be in the end of all here it cannot be Cum tot a dicat ecclesia quamdiu hîc est Dimitte debita nostra non utique hîc est sine macula et ruga Since as yet the whole Church says forgive us our Trespasses the Church as yet is not without spots or wrinkles The wrinkles are the Testimonies of our age that is our sinne derived from Adam and the spots are the sinnes which we contract our selves and of these spots and wrinkles we cannot be delivered in this world And therefore the Apostle says here that Christ hath bestowed all this cost on this purchase ut sisteret sibi Ecclesiam that he might setle such a glorious and pure Church to himselfe first ut sisteret that he might setle it which can onely be done in heaven for here in Earth the Church will always have earthquakes Opartet haereses esse stormes and schismes must necessarily be the Church is in a warfare the Church is in a pilgrimage and therefore here is no setling And then he doth it ut sisteret sibi to setle it to himselfe for in the tyranny of Rome the Church was in some sort setled things were carried quietly enough for no Man durst complaine but the Church was setled all upon the Vicar and none upon the Parson the glory of the Bishop of Rome had eclipsed and extinguished the glory of Christ Iesus In other places we have seen the Church setled so as that no man hath done or spoken any thing against the government thereof but this may have been a setling by strong hand by severed discipline and heavy Lawes we see where Princes have changed the Religion the Church may be setled upon the Prince or setled upon the Prelates that is be serviceable to them and be ready to promote and further any purpose of theirs and all this while not be setled upon Christ this purpose ut sisteret sibi to setle such a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle holy to himselfe is reserved for the Triumphant time when she shall be in possession of that beauty which Christ foresaw in her long before when he said Thou art all faire my love and there is no spot in thee and when we that shall be the Children of the Mariage Chamber◠shall be glad and rejoice and give glory to him because the Mariage of the Lambe is come and his wife hath made her selfe ready that is we that are of that Church shall be so clothed as that our own clothes shall not defile us againe as Io◠complaines that they doe as long as we are in this world for though I make me never so cleane yet mine own clothes defile me againe as it is in that place But yet Beloved Christ hath not made so improvident a bargaine as to give so great a rate himselfe for a Church so farre in reversion as till the day of Judgement That he should enter into bonds for this payment from all eternity even in the eternall decree between the Father and him that he should really pay this price his precious bloud for this Church one thousand six hundred years agoe and he should receive no glory by this Church till the next world◠Here was a long lease here were many lives the lives of all the men in the world to be served before him But it is not altogether so for he gave himselfe that he might settle such a Church then a glorious and a pure Church but all this while the Church is building in heaven by continuall accesse of holy Soules which come thither and all the way he workes to that end He sanctifies it and cleanses it by the washing of water through the word as we find in our Text. He therefore stays not so long for our Sanctification but that we have meanes of being sanctified here Christ stays not so long for his glory but that he hath here a glorious Gospell his Word and mysterious Sacraments here Here then is the writing and the Seale the Word and the Sacrament and he hath given power and commandement to his Ministers to deliver both writing and Seale the Word and Baptisme to his children This Sacrament of Baptisme is the first It is the Sacrament of inchoation of Initiation The Sacrament of the Supper is not given but to them who are instructed and presum'd to understand all Christian duties and therefore the Word if we understand the Word for the Preaching of the Word may seeme more necessary at the administration of this Sacrament then at the other Some such thing seems to be intimated in the institution of the Sacraments In the institution of the Supper it is onely said Take and eate and drinke and doe that in remembrance of me and it is onely said that they sand a Pslame and s◠departed In the institution of Baptisme there is more solemnity more circumstance for first it was instituted after Christs Resurrection and then Christ proceeds to it with that majesticall preamble All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth◠and therefore upon that title he gives power to his Apostles to joine heaven and earth by preaching and by baptisme but here is more then singing of a Psalme for Christ commands them first to teach and then to baptize and then after the commandement of Baptisme he refreshes that commandement againe of teaching them whom they baptized to observe all things that he had commanded them I speake not this as though Baptisme were uneffectuall without a Sermon S. Angustines words Accedat yerbum fiat Sacramentum when the Word is
joyned to the element or to the Action then there is a true Sacrament are ill understood by two sorts of Menâ— first by them that say that it is not verbum Deprecatorium nor verbum Conciâ—natâ—riuâ— not the word of Prayer nor the word of preaching but verbum Consecratorium and verbum Sacramentale that very phrase and forme of words by which the water is sanctified and enabled of it selfe to cleanse our Soules and secondly these words are ill understood by them who had rather their children dyed unbaptized then have them baptized without a Sermon whereas the use of preaching at baptisme is to raise the whole Congregation to a consideration what they promised by others in their baptisme and to raise the Father and the Sureties to a consideration what they undertake for the childe whom they present then to be baptized for therefore says Saint Augustine Acoedaâ— verbum there is a necessity of the word Non quâ—a dicitur sed quia creditur not because the word is prâ—ached but because it is beleeved and That Beleese faith belongs not at all to the incapacity of the child but to the disposition of the rest A Sermon is usefull for the congregation not necessary for the child and the accomplishment of the Sacrament From hence then arises a convenience little lesse then necessary in a kind that this administration of the Sacrament be accompanied with preaching but yet they that would evict an absolute necessity of it out of these words force them too much for here the direct meaning of the Apostle is That the Church is cleansed by water through the word when the promises of God expressed in his word are sealed to us by this Sacrament of Baptisme for so Saint Augustine answers himselfe in that objection which he makes to himselfe Cum per Baptisâ—â—â— fundati sint quare sermoni tribuit radicem He answers In Sermone intelligendus Baptismusâ— Quia sine Sermone non perficitur It is rooted it is grounded in the word and therefore true Baptisme though it be administred without the word that is without the word preached yet it is never without the word because the whole Sacrament and the power thereof is rooted in the word in the Gospell And therefore since this Sacrament belongs to the Church as it is said here that Christ doth cleanse his Church by Baptisme as it is argued with a strong probability That because the Apostles did baptize whole families therefore they did baptize some children so we argue with an invincible certainty that because this Sacrament belongs generally to the Church as the initiatory Sacrament it belongs to children who are a part and for the most part the most innocent part of the Church To conclude As all those Virgins which were beautifull were brought into Susan Ad domum mulierum to be anointed and persumed and prepared there for Assuerus delight and pleasure though Assuerus tooke not delight and pleasure in them all so we admit all those children which are within the Covenant made by God to the elect and their seed In domum Sanctorum into the houshold of the faithfull into the communion of Saints whom he chooseth for his Mariage day that is for that Church which he will settle upon himselfe in heaven we know not but we know that he hath not promised to take any into that glory but those upon whom he hath first shed these fainter beames of glory and sanctification exhibited in this Sacrament Neither hath he threatned to exclude any but for sinne after And therefore when this blessed child derived from faithfull parents and presented by sureties within the obedience of the Church shall have been so cleansed by the washing of water through the word it is presently sealed to the possession of that part of Christs purchase for which he gave himselfe which are the meanes of preparing his Church in this life with a faithfull assurance I may say of it and to it Iam mundus es Now you are cleanâ— through the word which Christ hath spoken unto you The Seale of the promises of his Gospell hath sanctified and cleansed you but yet Mandatus mundandus says Saint Augustine upon that place It is so sanctified by the Sacrament here that it may be farther sanctified by the growth of his graces and be at last a member of that glorious Church which he shall settle upon himselfe without spot or wrinkle which was the principall and final purpose of that great love of his whereby he gave himselfe for us and made that love first a patterne of Mens loves to their wives here and then a meanes to bring Man and wife and child to the kingdome of heaven Amen SERMON VI. Preached at a Christning 1 JOHN 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one IN great and enormous offences we find that the law in a well governed State expressed the punishment upon such a delinquent in that form in that curse Igni aqua interdicitor let him have no use of fire and water that is no use of any thing necessary for the sustentation of life Beloved such is the miserable condition of wretched Man as that we come all into the world under the burden of that curse Aqua igni interdicimâ—r we have nothing to doe naturally with the spirituall water of life with the fiery beames of the holy Ghost till he that hath wrought our restitution from this banishment restore us to this water by powring out his owne bloud and to this lively fire by laying himselfe a cold and bloudlesse carcasse in the bowels of the Earth till he who haptized none with waâ—er direct his Church to doe that office towards us and he without whom none was baptized with fire perfect that Ministeriall worke of his Church with the effectuall seales of his grace for this is his testimony the witnesse of his love Yea that law in cases of such great offences expressed it selfe in another Malediction upon such offenders appliable also to us Intestabiles sunte let them be Intestable Now this was a sentence a Condemnation so pregnant so full of so many heavy afflictions as that he who by the law was made intestable was all these ways intestable First he was able to make no Testament of his owne he had lost all his interest in his owne estate and in his owne will Secondly he could receive no profit by any testament of any other Man he had lost all the effects of the love and good disposition of other Men to him Thirdly he was Intestable so as that he could not testifie he should not be beleeved in the behalfe of another and lastly the testimony of another could doe him no good no Man could be admitted to
was come and gone for so much as belonged to the accomplishing of the types of the old law then Christ came againe to us by water and bloud in that wound which he received upon his side from which there flowed out miraculously true water true bloud This wound Saint Augustine calls Ianuam utriusque Sacramenti the doore of both sacraments where we see he acknowledges but two and both presented in this water and bloud and so certainely doe most of the fathers make this wound if not the foundation yet at least a sacrament of both the sacraments And to this water and bloud doth the Apostle here without doubt aime principally which he onely of all the Evangelists hath recorded and with so great asseveration and assurednesse in the recording thereof He that saw it bare record and his record is true and he knoweth that he saith truth that yee might beleeve it Here then is the matter which these six witnesses must be beleeved in here is Integritas Iesu quae non solvenda the intirenesse of Christ Jesus which must not be broken That a Saviour which is Iesus appointed to that office that is Christ figured in the law by ablutions of water and sacrifices of bloud is come and hath perfected all those figures in water and bloud too and then that he remaines still with us in water and bloud by meanes instituted in his Church to wash away our uncleannesses and to purge away our iniquities and to apply his worke unto our Soules this is Integritas Iesu Iesus the sonne of God in heaven Jesus the Redeemer of man upon earth Jesus the head of a Church to apply that to the end this is Integritas Iesu all that is to be beleeved of him Take thus much more that when thou comest to hearken what these witnesses shall say to this purpose thou must finde something in their testimony to prove him to be come not onely into the world but into thee He is a mighty prince and hath a great traine millions of ministring spirits attend him and the whole army of Martyrs follow the Lambe wheresoever he goes Though the whole world be his Court thy soule is his bedchamber there thou maist contract him there thou maist lodge and entertaine Integrum Iesum thy whole Saviour And never trouble thy selfe how another shall have him if thou have him all leave him and his Church to that make thou sure thine owne salvation When he comes to thee he comes by water and by bloud If thy heart and bowels have not yet melted in compassion of his passion for thy soule if thine eyes have not yet melted in tears of repentancâ— and contrition he is not yet come by water into thee If thou have suffered nothing for sinne nor found in thy selfe a chearfull disposition to suffer if thou have found no wresting in thy selfe no resistance of Concupiscences he that comes not to set peace but to kindle this war is not yet come into thee by bloud Christ can come by land by purchases by Revenues by temporall blessings for so he did still convey himselfe to the Jewes by the blessing of the land of promise but here he comes by water by his owne passion by his sacraments by thy tears Christ can come in a mariage and in Musique for so he delivers himselfe to the spouse in the Canticles but here he comes in bloud which comming in water and bloud that is in meanes for the salvation of our soules here in the militant Church is the comming that he stands upon and which includes all the Christian Religion and therefore he proves that comming to them by these three great witnesses in heaven and three in earth For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the word and the holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which bear record in the earth The spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be confirmed says Christ out of the law That 's as much as can be required in any Civill or Criminall businesse and yet Christ gives more testimony of himselfe for here he produces not Duos testes but Duas Classes two rankes of witnesses and the fullest number of each not two but three in heaven and three in earth And such witnesses upon earth as are omni exceptione majores without all exception It is not the testimony of earthly men for when Saint Paul produces them in abundance The Patriarch the Iudges the Prophets the elders of the old times of whom he exhibits an exact Catalogue yet he calls all them but Nubes testium cloudes of witnesses for though they be cloudes in Saint Chrysostomes sense that they invest us and enwrap us and so defend us from all diffidence in God we have their witnesse what God did for them why should we doubt of the like though they be cloudes in Athanasius sense they being in heaven showre downe by their prayers the dew of Gods grace upon the Church Though they be cloudes they are but cloudes some darkenesse mingled in them some controversies arising from them but his witnesses here are Lux inaccessibilis that light that no eye can attaine to and Pater Luminum the father of lights from whom all these testimonies are derived When God imployed a man to be the witnesse of Christ because men might doubt of his testimony God was content to assigne him his Compurgators when Iohn Baptist must preach that the kingdome of God was at hand God fortifies the testimony of his witnesse then Hic enim est for this is he of whom that is spoken by the prophet Esay and lest one were not enough he multiplies them as it is written in the prophets Iohn Baptist might be thought to testifie as a man and therefore men must testifie for him but these witnesses are of a higher nature these of heaven are the Trinity and those of earth are the sacraments and seales of the Church The prophets were full of favor with God Abraham full of faith Stephen full of the Holy Ghost many full of grace and Iohn Baptist a prophet and more then a prophet yet never any prophet never any man how much soever interessed in the favor of Almighty God was such an instrument of grace as a sacrament or as Gods seales and institutions in his Church and the least of these six witnesses is of that nature and therefore might be beleeved without more witnesses To speake then first of the three first the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost it was but a poore plot of the devill to goe about to rob us of their testimony for as long as we have the three last the spirit the water and bloud we have testimony enough of Christ because God is involved in his ordinance and though he be not tyed to the worke of the
aquarum by the power of waters many waters and in this verse this witnesse is delivered in the plurall spirit and waters and so waters in that signification which signification they have often in the Scriptures that is affliction and tribulation be good testimonies that our Lord Jesus doth visit us though the waters of Coâ—trition and repentant teares be another good testimony of that too yet that water which testifies the presence of Jesus so as that it doth always infallibly bring Jesus with it for the Sacraments are never without Grace whether it be accepted or no there it is â— That water which is made equall with the preaching of the Word so farre as to be a fellow-witnesse with the Spirit that is onely the Sacrament of baptisme without which in the ordinary dispensation of God no soule can be surer that Jesus is come to him then if he had never heard the Word preached he mistakes the spirit the first witnesse if he refuse the water the second The third witnesse upon earth is bloud and that is briefly the Communion of the body and bloud of Iesus in the Lords Supper But how is that bloud upon earth I am not ashamed to confesse that I know not how but the bloud of Christ is a witnesse upon earth in the Sacrament and therefore upon the earth it is Now this Witnesse being made equall with the other two with preaching and with baptisme it is as necessary that he that will have an assuranceâ— that Iesus is come into him doe receive this Sacrament as that he doe heare Sermâ—nâ— and that he be baptized An over vehement urging of this necessity brought in an erroneous custome in the Primitive Church That they would give the Sacrament of the body of Christ to Children as soon as they were baptized yea and to dead man too But because this Sacrament is accompanied with precepts which can belong onely to Men of understanding for they must doe it in Remembrance and they must discerne the Lords body therefore the necessity lies onely upon such as are come to those graces and to that understanding For they that take it and doe not discerne it not know what they do they take it dangerously But else for them to whom this Sacrament belongs if they take it not their hearing of Sermons and their baptisme doth them no good for what good can they have done them if they have not prepared themselves for it And therefore as the Religion of the Church holds a stubborne Recusant at the table at the Communion bord as farre from her as a Recusant at the Pew that is a Non-communicant as ill as a not commer or a not hearer so I doubt not but the wisdome of the state weighs them in the same balance For these three agree in one says the text that is first they meet in one Man and then they testifie the same thing that is Integritatem Iesu that Iesus is come to him in outward Meanes to save his soule If his conscience find not this testimony all these availe him nothing If we remaine vessells of anger and of dishonour still we are under the Vae vâ—bis Hypocritis woe unto you Hypocrites that make cleane onely the outside of your cuppes and Platters That baptize and wash your owne and your childrens bodies but not their mindes with instructions When we shall come to say Docuisti in plateis we have heard thee preach in our streets we have continued our hearing of thy Word when we say Manducavimus coram te we have eate in thy presence at thy table yea Manducavimus tâ— we have eaten thee thy selfe yet for all this outward show of these three witnesses of Spirit and Water and bloud Preaching and Baptisme and Communion we shall heare that fearfull disclaiming from Christ Jesus Nescio vos I know not whence you are But these witnesses he will always heare if they testifie for us that Jesus is come unto us for the Gospell and the preaching thereof is as the deed that conveys Iesus unto us the water the baptisme is as the Seale that assures it and the bloud the Sacrament is the delivery of Christ into us and this is Integritas Iesu the entire and full possession of him To this purpose therefore as we have found a Trinity in heaven and a Trinity in earth so we must make it up a Trinity of Trinities and finde a third Trinity in our selves God created one Trinity in us the observation and the enumeration is Saint Bernards which are those three faculties of our soule the reason the memory the will That Trinity in us by another Trinity too by suggestion towards sin by delight in sinne by consent to sinne is fallen into a third Trinity The memory into a weaknesse that that comprehends not God it glorifies him not for benefits received The reasen to a blindnesse that that discernes not what is true and the will to a perversnesse that that wishes not what 's good But the goodnesse of God by these three witnesses on earth regenerates and reestablishes a new Trinity in us faith and hope and charity Thus farre that devout Man carries it And if this new Trinity faith and hope and charity witnesse to us Integritatem Christi all the worke of Christ If my faith testifie to me that Christ is sealed to my soule and my hope testifie that at the Resurection I shall have a perfect fruition in soule and body of that glory which he purchased for every beleever and my charity testifies to the world that I labour to make sure that salvation by a good life then there 's a Trinity of Trinities and the six are made nine witnesses There are three in heaven that testifie that this is done for all Mankinde Three in the Church that testifie this may be done for me and three in my soule that testifie that all this is applied to me and then the verdict and the Judgement must necessarily goe for me And beloved this Judgement will be grounded upon this intirenesse of Jesus and therefore let me dismisse you with this note That Integritas is in continuitate not in contignitate It is not the touching upon a thing nor the comming neare to a thing that makes it intire a fagot where the sticks touch a peece of cloth where the threds touch is not intire To come as neare Christ as we can conveniently to trie how neare we can bring two Religions together this is not to preserve Integritatem Iesu In a word Intirenesse excludes deficiency and redundancy and discontinuance we preserve not intirenesse if we preserve not the dignity of Christ in his Church and in his discipline and that excludes the defective Separatist we doe not preserve that entirenesse if we admit traditions and additions of Men in an equality to the word of God and that excludes the redundant Papist neither doe we preserve the entirenesse if we admit a discontinuance
of his word or in scantler measure not to be always a Christian but then when thou hast use of being one or in a different fashion to be singular and Schisâ—aticall in thy opinion for this is one but an ill manner of putting on of Christ as a garment The second and the good way is to put on his righteousnesse and his innocency by imitation and conforming our selves to him Now when we goe about earnestly to make our selves Temples and Altars and to dedicate our selves to God we must change our clothes As when God bad Iacob to goe up to Bethel to make an Altar he commanded all his family to change their clothes In which work we have two things to doe first we must put off those clothes which we had and appeare naked before God without presenting any thing of our owne for when the Spirit of God came upon Saul and that he prophecyed his first act was to strip himselfe naked And then sâ—condly we come to our transfiguration and to have those garments of Christ communicated to us which were as white as the light and we shall be admitted into that little number of which it is said Thou hast a few Namees in Sardis which have not defiled their garments and they shall walke with â—e in white And from this which is Induere vestem from this putting on Christ as a garment we shall grow up to that perfection as that we shall Inâ—â—ere personam put on hiâ— his person That is we shall so appeare before the Father as that he shall take us for his owne Christ we shall beare his name and person and we shall every one be so accepted as if every one of us were all Mankind yea as if we were he himselfe He shall find in all our bodies his woundes in all our mindes his 〈◊〉 in all our hearts and actions his obedience And as he shall doe this by impâ—tation so really in all our Agonies he shall send his Angels to minister unto us as he did to Eliâ—s In all our tentations he shall furnish us with his Scriptures to confoâ—â—d the Tempter as be in person did in his tentation and in our heaviest tribulation which may exâ—â—â—â— from us the voice of diffidence My God My God why hast 〈◊〉 forsaken me He shall give us the assurance to say In manus tuas câ— Into thy â—ands O Lord have I coâ—â—â—â—nded my spirit and there I am safe He shall use us in all things as his sonne and we shall find restored in us the Image of the whole Trinity imprinted at our creation for by this Regeneration we are adopted by the Father in the bloud of the Sonne by the sanctification of the holy Ghost Now this putting on of Christ whereby we stand in his place at Gods Tribunall implies as I said both our Election and our sanctification both the eternall purpose of God upon us and his execution of that purpose in us And because by the first by our Election we are members of Christ in Gods purpose before baptisme and the second which is sanctification is expressed after baptisme in our lives and conversation therefore Baptisme intervenes and comes between both as a seale of the first of Election and as an instrument and conduit of the second Sanctification Now Abscendita Dominâ— Dea nostro quae manifesta suâ—s nobis let no Man be too curiously busie to search what God does in his hedchamber we have all enough to answer for that which we have done in our bedchamber For Gods eternall decree himselfe is master of those Rolls but out of those Rolls he doth exemplifie those decrees in the Sacrament of baptisme by which Copy and exemplification of his invisible and unsearchable decree we plead to the Church that we are Gods children we plead to our owne consciences that we have the Spirit of adoption and we plead to God himselfe the obligation of his own promise that we have a right to this garment Christ Iesus and to those graces which must sanctifie us for from thence comes the reason of this text for all yeâ— that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. As we cannot see the Essence of God but must see him in his glasses in his Images in his Creatures so we cannot see the decrees of God but must see them in their duplicats in their exemplification in the sacraments As it would doe him no good that were condemned of treason that a Bedchamber man should come to the Judge and swear he saw the king signe the prisoners pardon except he had it to pleade so what assurance soever what priâ—y marke soever those men which pretend to be so well acquainted and so familiar with the decrees of God to give thee to know that thou art elect to eternall salvation yea if an Angel from heaven comedowne and tell thee that he saw thy name in the booke of life if thou have not this Exemplification of the decree this seale this Sacrament if thou beest not baptized never delude thy selfe with those imaginary assurances This Baptisme then is so necessary that first as Baptisme in a large acceptation signifies our dying and buriall with Christ and all the acts of our regeneration so in that large sense our whole life is a baptisme But the very sacrament of Baptismeâ— the actuall administration and receiving thereof was held so necessary that even for legall and Civill uses as in the law that child that dyed without circumcision had no interest in the family no participation of the honor nor name thereof So that we see in the reckning of the Genealogy and pedegree of David that first sonne of his which he had by Bathshebae which dyed without circumcision is never mentioned nor toucht upon So also since the time of Mâ—ses law in the Imperiall law by which law a posthume child borne after the fathers death is equall with the rest in division of the state yet if that child dye before he be baptized no person which should derive a right from him as the mother might if he dyed can have any title by him because he is not considered to have been at all if he dye unbaptized And if the State will not beleeve him to be a full Man shall the Church beleeve him to be a full Christian before baptisme Yea the apprehension of the necessity of this Sacrament was so common and so generall even in the beginning of the Christian Church that out of an excessive advancing of that trnth they came also to a falshoodâ— to an error That even they that dyed without baptisme might have the benefit of baptisme if another were baptized in their name after their deathâ— And so out of a mistaking of those words Else what shall they doe Qui baptizantur pro mortuis which is that are ready to dye when they are baptized the Marcionites induc'd a custome to lay one under the dead bodyes
over the pursuite of it till you overtake it Persquere follow it but first Inquire says David seek after it find where it is for here is not your rest Vnaquâ—que res in sua patria fortior If a Starre were upon the Earth it would give no light If a tree were in the Sea it would give no fruit every tree is fastest rooted and produces the best fruit in the soile that is proper for it Now here we have no continuing City but we seek one when we finde that we shall finde rest Here how shall we hope for it for our selves Intus pugnae foris timores we feel a warre of concupiscencies within aand we feare a battery of tentations without Si dissentiunt in domo uxor maritus periculâ—sa molestia says Saint Augustine If the Husband and wife agree not at home it is a troublesome danger and that 's every mans case for Care conjux our flesh is the wife and the spirit is the husband and they two will never agree But si dominetur uxor perversa pax says he and that 's a more ordinary case then we are aware of that the wife hath got the Mastery that the weaker vessell the flesh hath got the victory and then there is a show of peace but it is a stupidity a security it is not peace Let us depart out of our selves and looke upon that in which most ordinarily we place an opinion of rest upon worldly riches They that will be rich fall into tentations and snares and into many foolish and noysome lusts which drowne Men in perdition and in destruction for the desire of money is the root of evill Not the having of Money but the desire of it for it is Theophylacts observation that the Apostle does not say this of them that are rich but of them that will be made rich that set their heart upon the desire of riches and will be rich what way soever As the Partridge gathereth the young which she hath not brought forth so he that gathereth riches and not by right shall leave them in the midst of his dayes and at his end shall be a foole he shall not make a wise will But shall his folly end at his end or the punishment of his folly We see what a restlesse fool he is all the way first because he wants roome he says he will pull downe his barnes and build new thus farre there 's no rest in the Diruit and adificat in pulling downe and building up Then he says to his soule live at ease he says it but he gives no ease he says it as he shall say to the Hills fall downe and cover usâ— but they shall stand still and his soule shall heare God say whilest he promises himselfe this case O foole this night they shall fetch away thy soule God does not onely not tell him who shall have his riches but he does not tell him who shall have his soule He leaves him no affurance no ease no peace no rest Here. This rest is not then in these things not in their use for they are got with labor and held with feare and these labour and feare admit no rest not in their nature for they are fluid and transitory and moveable and these are not attributes of rest If that word doe not reach to Land the land is not movable yet it reaches to thee when thou makest thine Inventory put thy selfe amongst the moveables for thou must remove from it though it remove not from thee So that what rest foever may be imagined in these things it is not your rest for howsoever the things may seem to rest yet you doe not It is not here at all not in that Here which is intimated in this Text not in the falling that is Here for sinne is a stupidity it is not a rest not in the rising that is Here for this remorse this repentance is but as a surveying of a convenient ground or an emptying of an inconvenient ground to erect a building upon not in the departing that is here for in that is intimated a building of new habits upon the ground so prepared and so a continuall and laborious travaile no rest falling and rising and departing and surveying and building are no words of rest for give these words their spirituall sense that this sense of our fall which is remorse after sinne this rising from it which is repentance after sinne this departing into a safer station which is the building of habits contrary to the former doe bring an ease to the conscience as it doth that powerfully and plentifully yet as when we journey by Coach we have an ease in the way but yet our rest is at home so in the ways of a regenerate Man there is an unexpressible ease and consolation here but yet even this is not your rest for as the Apostle says If I be not an Apostle unto others yet doubtlesse I am unto you so what rest soever others may propose unto themseleves for you whose conver sation is in heaven for this world to the righteous is Atrium templi and heaven is that Temple it selfe the Militant Church is the porch the Triumphant is the Sanctum Sanctorum this Church and that Church are all under one roofe Christ Jesus for you who appertaine to this Church your rests is in heaven And that consideration brings us to the last of the three interpretations of these words The first was a Commination a departing without any Rest propos'd to the Jewes The second was a Commonition a departing into the way towards Rest proposed to repentant sinners And this third is a Consolation a departing into Rest it selfe propos'd to us that beleeve a Resurrection It is a consolation and yet it is a funerall for to present this eternall Rest we must a little invert the words to the departing out of this world by death and so to arise to Judgement Depart and arise for c. This departing then is our last Exodus our last passeover our last transmigration our departing out of this life And then the Consolation is placed in this that we are willing and ready for this departing Qua gratia breve nobis tempus praescripsit Deus How mercifully hath God proceeded with Man in making his life short for by that means he murmurs the lesse at the miseries of this life and he is the lesse transported upon the pleasures of this life because the end of both is short It is a weaknesse sayes Saint Ambrose to complain De immaturitate mortis of dying before our time for we were ripe for death at our birth we were born mellow Secundum aliquem modum immortalis dici posset homo si esset tempus intra quod mori non posset is excellently said by the same Father If there were any one minute in a mans life in which he were safe
gate into Heaven in thy selfe If thou beest not sensible of others mens poverties and distresses yet Miserere animae tuae have mercy on thine own soule thou hast a poor guest an Inmate a sojourner within these mudwals this corrupt body of thine be mercifull and compassionate to that Soule cloath that Soul which is stripp'd and left naked of all her originall righteousnesse feed that Soule which thou hast starv'd purge that Soule which thou hast infected warm and thaw that Soul which thou hast frozen with indevotion coole and quench that Soul which thou hast inflamed with licentiousness Miserere animae tuae begin with thine own Soule be charitable to thy self first and thou wilt remember that God hath made of one bloud all Mankind and thou wilt find out thy selfe in every other poor Man and thou wilt find Christ Jesus himselfe in them all Now of those divers gates which God opens in this life those divers exercises of charity the particular which we are occasion'd to speak of here is not the cloathing nor feeding of Christ but the housing of him The providing Christ a house a dwelling whether this were the very place where Solomons Temple was after built is perplexedly and perchance impertinently controverted by many but howsoever here was the house of God and here was the gate of Heaven It is true God may be devoutly worshipped any where In omni loco dominationis ejus benedic anima mea Domino In all places of his dominion my Soule shall praise the Lord sayes David It is not only a concurring of men a meeting of so many bodies that makes a Church If thy soule and body be met together an humble preparation of the mind and a reverent disposition of the body if thy knees be bent to the earth thy hands and eyes lifted up to heaven if thy tongue pray and praise and thine ears hearken to his answer if all thy senses and powers and faculties be met with one unanime purpose to worship thy God thou art to this intendment a Church thou art a Congregation here are two or three met together in his name and he is in the midst of them though thou be alone in thy chamber The Church of God should be built upon a Rock and yet Iob had his Church upon a Dunghill The bed is a scene and an embleme of wantonnesse and yet Hezekiah had his Church in his Bed The Church is to be placed upon the top of a Hill and yet the Prophet Ieremy had his Church in Luto in a miry Dungeon Constancy and setlednesse belongs to the Church and yet Ionah had his Church in the Whales belly The Lyon that roares and seeks whom he may devour is an enemy to this Church and yet Daniel had his Church in the Lions den Aquae quietudinum the waters of rest in the Psalme were a figure of the Church and yet the three children had their Church in the fiery furnace Liberty life appertaine to the Church and yet Peter Paul had their Church in prison and the thiefe had his Church upon the Crosse. Every particular man is himselfe Templum Spiritus sancti a Temple of the holy Ghost yea Solvite templum hoc destroy this body by death and corruption in the grave yet there shall be Festum encaeniorum a renuing a reedifying of all those Temples in the generall Resurrection when we shall rise againe not onely as so many Christians but as so many Christian Churches to glorifie the Apostle and High-priest of our profession Christ Jesus in that eternall Sabbath In omni loco domiâ—ationis ejus Every person every place is fit to glorifie God in God is not tyed to any place not by essence Implet continendo implet God fills every place and fills it by containing that place in himselfe but he is tyed by his promise to a manifestation of himselfe by working in some certain places Though God were long before he required or admitted a sumptuous Temple for Solomons Temple was not built in almost five hundred years after their returne out of Egypt though God were content to accept their worship and their sacrifices at the Tabernacle which was a transitory and moveable Temple yet at last he was so carefull of his house as that himselfe gave the modell and platforme of it and when it was built and after repaired again he was so jealous of appropriating and confining all his solemne worship to that particular place as that he permitted that long schisme and dissention between the Samaritans and the Iews onely about the place of the worship of God They differed not in other things but whether in Mount Sion or in Mount Garizim And the feast of the dedication of this Temple which was yearly celebrated received so much honor as that Christ himselfe vouchsafed to be personally present at that solemnity though it were a feast of the institution of the Church and not of God immediatly as their other festivalls were yet Christ forbore not to observe it upon that pretence that it was but the Church that had appointed it to be observed So that as in all times God had manifested and exhibited himselfe in some particular places more then other in the Pillar in the wildernesse and in the Tabernacle and in the poole which the Angell troubled so did Christ himselfe by his owne presence ceremoniously justifie and authorise this dedication of places consecrated to Gods outward worship not onely once but anniversarily by a yearly celebration thereof To descend from this great Temple at Jerusalem to which God had annexed his solemne and publique worship the lesser Synagogues and Chappell 's of the Iews in other places were ever esteemed great testimonies of the sanctity and piety of the founders for Christ accepts of that reason which was presented to him in the behalfe of the Centurion He is worthy that thou shouldst do this for him for he loveth our Nation And how hath he testified it He hath built us a Synagogue He was but a stranger to them and yet he furthered and advanced the service of God amongst them of whose body he was no member This was that Centurions commendation Et quanto commedatior qui adificat Ecclesiam How much more commendation deserve they that build a Church for Christian service And therefore the first Christians made so much haste to the expressing of their devotion that even in the Apostles time for all their poverty and persecution they were come to have Churches as most of the Fathers and some of our later Expositors understand these words Have ye not houses to eate and drinke or doe ye despise the Church of God to be spoken not of the Church as it is a Congregation but of the Church as it is a Material building Yea if we may beleeve some authors that are pretended to be very ancient there was one Church dedicated to the memory
of Saint Iohn and another by Saint Marke to the memory of Saint Peter whilest yet both Saint John and Saint Peter were alive Howsoever it is certaine that the purest and most innocent times even the infancy of the Primitive Church found this double way of expressing their devotion in this particular of building Churches first that they built them onely to the honour and glory of God without giving him any partner and then they built them for the conserving of the memory of those blessed servants of God who had sealed their profession with their bloud and at whose Tombs God had done such Miracles as these times needed for the propagation of his Church They built their Churches principally for the glory of God but yet they added the names of some of his blessed servants and Martyrs for so says he who as he was Peters successor so he is the most sensible feeler and most earnest and powerfull promover and expresser of the dignities of Saint Peter of all the Fathers speaking of Saint Peters Church Beato Petri Basilica quae uni Deo vero vivo dicata est Saint Peters Church is dedicated to the onely living God They are things compatible enough to beare the name of a Saint and yet to be dedicated to God There the bodies of the blessed Martyrs did peacefully attend their glorification There the Histories of the Martyrs were recited and proposed to the Congregation for their example and imitation There the names of the Martyrs were inserted into the publique prayers and liturgies by way of presenting the thanks of the Congregation to God for having raised so profitable men in the Church and there the Church did present their prayers to God for those Martyrs that God would hasten their glory and finall consummation in reuniting their bodies and soules in a joyfull resurrection But yet though this divers mention were made of the Saints of God in the house of God Non Martyres ipsi sed Deus â—orum nobis est Deus onely God and not those Martyrs is our God we and they serve all one Master we dwell all in one house in which God hath appointed us severall services Those who have done their days work God hath given them their wages and hath given them leave to goe to bed they have laid down their bodies in peace to sleep there till the Sunne rise againe till the Sunne of grace and glory Christ Iesus appeare in judgment we that are yet left to work and to watch we must goe forward in the services of God in his house with that moderation and that equality as that we worship onely our Master but yet despise not our fellow servants that are gone before us That we give to no person the glory of God but that we give God the more glory for having raised such servants That we acknowledge the Church to be the house onely of God and that we admit no Saint no Martyr to be a lointenant with him but yet that their memory may be an encouragement yea and a seale to us that that peace and glory which they possesse belongs also unto us in reversion and that therefore we may cheerfully gratulate their present happinesse by a devout commemoration of them with such a temper and evennesse as that we neither dishonor God by attributing to them that which is inseparably his nor dishonor them in taking away that which is theirs in removing their Names out of the Collects and prayers of the Church or their Monuments and memorialls out of the body of the Church for those respects to them the first Christian founders of Churches did admit in those pure times when Illa obsequia ornamenta memoriarum nâ—n sacrificia mortuorum when those devotions in their names were onely commemorations of the dead not sacrifices to the dead as they are made now in the Romane Church when Bellarmine will needs falsifie Chrysostome to read Adoramus monumenta in stead of Adornamus and to make that which was but an Adorning an adoring of the Tombes of the Martyrs This then was in all times a religious work an acceptable testimony of devotion to build God a house to contribute something to his outward glory The goodnesse and greatnesse of which work appears evidently and shines gloriously even in those severall names by which the Church was called and styled in the writings and monuments of the Ancient Fathers and the Ecclesiastique story It may serve to our edification at least and to the axalting of our devotion to consider some few of them First then the Church was called Ecclesia that is a company a Congregation That whereas from the time of Iohn Baptist the kingdome of heaven suffers violence and every violent Man that is every earnest and zealous and spiritually valiant Man may take hold of it we may be much more sure of doing so in the Congregation Quando agâ—â—ine factâ— Deum obsidemus when in the whole body we Muster our forces and besiege God For here in the congregation not onely the kingdome of heaven is fallen into our hands The kingdome of heaven is amongst you as Christ says but the King of heaven is fallen into our hands When two or three are gathered together in my Name I will be in the midst of you not onely in the midst of us to encourage us but in the midst of us to be taken by us to be bound by us by those hands those covenants those contracts those rich and sweet promises which he hath made and ratified unto us in his Gospell A second name of the Church 〈◊〉 in use was Dominicum The Lords possession It is absolutely it is intirely his And therefore as to shorten and contract the possession and inheritance of God the Church so much as to confine the Church onely within the obedience of Rome as the Donatists imprisoned it in Afrique or to change the Landmarks of Gods possession and inheritance which is the Church either to set up new works of outward prosperity or of personall and Locall succession of Bishops or to remove the old and true marks which are the Word and Sacraments as this is Injuria Dominico mystico a wrong to the mysticall body of Christ the Church so is it Injuria Dominico materiali an injury to the Materiall body of Christ sacrilegiously to dilapidate to despoile or to demolish the possession of the Church and so farre to remove the marks of Gods inheritance as to mingle that amongst your temporall revenues that God may never have nor ever distinguish his owne part againe And then to passe faster over these names It is called Domus Dei Gods dwelling house Now his most glorious Creatures are but vehicula Dei they are but chariots which convey God and bring him to our sight The Tabernacle it selfe was but Mobilis domus and Ecclesia portatilis a house without a foundation a running a progresse house but
the Church is his standing house there are his offices fixed there are his provisions which fat the Soule of Man as with marrow and with fatnesse his precious bloud and body there work his seales there beats his Mint there is absolution and pardon for past sinnes there is grace for prevention of future in his Sacraments But the Church is not onely Domus Dei but Basilica not onely his house but his Court he doth not onely dwell there but reigne there which multiplies the joy of his houshold servants The Lord reigneth let all the earth rejoyce yea let the multitude of the Islands be glad thereof That the Church was usually called Martyrium that is a place of Confession where we open our wounds and receive our remedy That it was called Oratorium where we might come and aske necessary things at Gods hands all these teach us our severall duties in that place and they adde to their spirituall comfort who have been Gods instruments for providing such places as God may be glorified in and the godly benefited in all these ways But of all Names which were then usually given to the Church the name of Temple seems to be most large and significant as they derive it à Tuendo for Tueri signifies both our beholding and contemplating God in the Church and it signifies Gods protecting and defending those that are his in his Church Tueri embraces both And therefore though in the very beginning of the Primitive Church to depart from the custome and language and phrase of the Iews and Gentiles as farre as they could they did much abstain from this name of Temple and of Priest so that till Ireneus time some hundred eighty years after Christ we shall not so often find those words Temple or Priest yet when that danger was overcome when the Christian Church and doctrine was established from that time downward all the Fathers did freely and safely call the Church the Temple and the Ministers in the Church Priests as names of a religious and pious signification where before out of a loathnesse to doe or say any thing like the Iews or Gentiles where a concurrence with them might have been misinterpretable and of ill consequence they had called the Church by all those other names which we passed through before and they called their Priests by the name of Elders Presbyteros but after they resumed the use of the word Temple againe as the Apostle had given a good patterne who to expresse the principall holinesse of the Saints of God he chooses to doe it in that word ye are the Temples of the holy Ghost which should encline us to that moderation that when the danger of these ceremonies which corrupt times had corrupted is taken away we should returne to a love of that Antiquity which did purely and harmelesly induce them when there is no danger of abuse there should be no difference for the use of things in themselves indifferent made necessary by the just commandement of lawfull authority Thus then you see as farre as the narrownesse of the time will give us leave to expresse it the generall manner of the best times to declare devotion towards God to have been in appropriating certaine places to his worship And since it is so in this particular history of Iacobs proceeding in my text I may be hold to invert these words of David Nisi Deus aedificaverit domum unlesse the Lord doe build the house in vaine doe the labourers work thus much as to say Nisi Domino aedificaveritis domum except thou build a house for the Lord in vaine dost thou goe about any other buildings or any other businesse in this world I speake not meerly literally of building Materiall Chappell 's yet I would speake also to further that but I speake principally of building such a Church as every man may build in himselfe for whensoever we present our prayers and devotions deliberately and advisedly to God there we consecrate that place there we build a Church And therefore beloved since every master of a family who is a Bishop in his house should call his family together to humble and powre out their soules to God let him consider that when he comes to kneele at the side of his table to pray he comes to build a Church there and therefore should sanctifie that place with a due and penitent consideration how voluptuously he hath formerly abused Gods blessings at that place how superstitiously and idolatrously he hath flatter'd and humour'd some great and usefull ghests invited by him to that place how expensively he hath served his owne ostentation and vain-glory by excessive feasts at that place whilest Lazarus hath lien panting and gasping at the gate and let him consider what a dangerous Mockery this is to Christ Iesus if he pretend by kneeling at that table fashionally to build Christ a Church by that solemnity at the table side and then crucifie Christ again by these sinnes when he is sat at the table When thou kneelest down at thy bed side to shut up the day at night or to beginne it in the morning thy servants thy children thy little flock about thee there thou buildest a Church too And therefore sanctifie that place wash it with thy tears and with a repentant consideration That in that bed thy children were conceived in sinne that in that bed thou hast turned mariage which God afforded thee for remedy and physique to voluptuosnesse and licenciousnesse That thou hast made that bed which God gave thee for rest and for reparation of thy weary body to be as thy dwelling and delight and the bed of idlenesse and stupidity Briefly you that are Masters continue in this building of Churches that is in drawing your families to pray and praise God and sanctifie those severall places of bed and board with a right use of them And for you that are servants you have also foundations of Churches in you if you dedicate all your actions consecrate all your services principally to God and respectively to them whom God hath placed over you But principally let all of all sorts who present themselves at this table consider that in that receiving his body and his bloud every one doth as it were conceive Christ Jesus anew Christ Jesus hath in every one of them as it were a new incarnation by uniting himselfe to them in these visible signes And therefore let no Man come hither without a search and a privy search without a consideration and re-consideration of his conscience Let him that beganne to think of it but this morning stay till the next When Moses pulled his hand first out of his bosome it was white as snow but it was leprous when he pulled it the second time it was of the color of flesh but it was sound When thou examinest thy conscience but once but flightly it may appear white as snow innocent but examine it againe and it
not harbouring for not visiting The sum of all is that this is the overflowing goodnesse of God that he deales with man by the sonne of man and that hee hath so given all judgement to the Sonne as that if you would be tryed by the first judgement are you elected or no The issue is doe you believe in Christ Jesus or no If you would be tryed by the second judgement are you justified or no The issue is doe you find comfort in the application of the Word and Sacraments of Christ Jesus or no If you would be tryed by the third Judgement do you expect a Glorification or no The issue is Are you so reconcil'd to Christ Jesus now by hearty repentance for sinnes past and by detestation of occasion of future sin that you durst welcome that Angel which should come at this time and sweare that time should be no more that your transmigration out of this world should be this minute and that this minute you might say unfeignedly and effectually Veni Domine Iesu come quickly come now if this be your state then are you partakers of all that blessednesse which the Father intended to you when for your sake he committed all Judgment to the Son SERMON XIII Preached at Lincolns Inne JOHN 8. 15. I judge no man THe Rivers of Paradise did not all run one way and yet they flow'd from one head the sentences of the Scripture flow all from one head from the holy Ghost and yet they seem to present divers senses and to admit divers interpretations In such an appearance doth this Text differ from that which I handled in the forenoon and as heretofore I found it a usefull and acceptable labour to employ our Evening exercises upon the vindicating of some such places of Scripture as our adversaries of the Roman Church had detorted in some point of controversie between them and us and restoring those places to their true sense which course I held constantly for one whole year so I think it a usefull and acceptable labour now to employ for a time those Evening exercises to reconcile some such places of Scripture as may at first sight seem to differ from one another In the morning we saw how Christ judged all now we are to see how he judges none I judge no man To come then to these present words here we have the same person Christ Jesus and hath not he the same Office Is not he Judge certainly though he retain'd all his other Offices though he be the Redeemer and have shed his blood in value satisfactory for all our sins though he be our Advocate and plead for us in heaven and present our evidence to that Kingdome written in his blood seal'd in his wounds yet if hee bee not our Judge wee cannot stand in judgement shall hee bee our Judge and is hee not our Judge yet Long before wee were hee was our Judge at the separation of the Elect and Reprobate in Gods eternall Decree Was he our Judge then and is hee not so still still he is present in his Church and cleares us in all scruples rectifies us in all errors erects us in all dejections of spirit pronounces peace and reconciliation in all apprehensions of his Judgements by his Word and by his Sacraments was hee and is he and shall he not be our Judge still I am sure my Redeemer liveth and he shall stand the last on earth So that Christ Jesus is the same to day and yesterday and for ever before the world begun and world without end Sicut erat in principio as he was in the beginning he is and shall be ever our Judge So that then these words are not De tempâ—re but De modo there was never any time when Christ was not Judge but there were some manner of Judgements which Christ did never exercise and Christ had no commission which he did not execute for hee did all his Fathers will 1. In secularibus in civill or criminall businesses which belong meerly to the Judicatures and cognisance of this world Iudicat neminem Christ judges no man 2. Secundum carnem so as they to whom Christ spake this who judged as himself says here according to fleshly affections Iudicat neminem he judges no man and 3. Ad internecionem so as that upon that Judgement a man should despair of any reconciliation any redintegration with God again and be without hope of pardon and remission of sins in this world Iudicat neminem he judges no man 1. Christ usurps upon no mans Jurisdiction that were against justice 2. Christ imputes no false things to any man that were against charity 3. Christ induces no man to desperation that were against faith and against Justice against charity against faith Iudicat neminem First then Christ judgeth not in secular judgements and we note his abstinence therein first in civill matters when one of the company said to him Master bid my brother divide the inheritance with me as Saint Augustine says the Plaintiffe thought his cause to be just and hee thought Christ to bee a competent Judge in the cause and yet Christ declines the judgement disavows the authority and he answers Homo quis me constituit Iudicem Man who made me a Judge between you To that Generall which we had in the morning Omne judicium the Son hath all judgement here is an exception of the same Judges own making for in secular judgements Nemo constituit he had no commission and therefore Iudicat neminem he judges no man he forbore in criminall matters too for when the woman taken in adultery was brought before him he condemned her not It is true he absolv'd her not the evidence was pregnant against her but he condemned her not he undertook no office of a Judge but of a sweet and spirituall Counsellor Go and sinne no more for this was his Element his Tribunall When then Christ says of himself with such a pregnant negative Quis me constituit Iudicem may not we say so too to his pretended Vicar the Bishop of Rome Quiâ—te Who made you Judge of Kings that you should depose them in criminall causes Or who made you proprietary of Kingdomes that you should dispose of them as of civill inheritances when to countenance such a pretence they detort places of Scripture not onely perversly but senselesly blasphemously ridiculously as ridicolously as in their pasquils wheÌ„ in an undiscreet shamlesnes to make their power greater then it is they make their fault greater then it is too fil their histories with examples of Kings deposed by Popes which in truth were not depos'd by them for in that they are more innocent then they will confesse themselves to be when some of their Authors say that the Primitive Church abstain'd from deposing Emperors onely because she was not strong enough to do it when some of them say That all Christian Kingdomes of the earth may fall into
have born the image of the earthly so let us beare the Image of the heavenly there from Tertullian it must necessarily be referred to the first Resurrection the Resurrection by grace in this life for says he there Non refertur ad substantiam resurrectionis sed ad prâ—â—sentis temporis disciplinam the Apostle does not speak of our glorious resurrection at last but of our religious resurrection now Portemus non portabimus Let us bear his image says the Apostle Let us now not that we shall bear it at the last day Praeceptive dictum non promissive The Apostle delivers it as a duty that we must not as a reward that wee shall bear that image And therefore in Tertulliâ—â— construction it is not onely indifferent and probable but necessary to refer this Text to the first Resurrection in this life where it will be fittest to pursue that order which we proposed at first first to consider Quid regnum what Kingdome it is that is pretended to And then Quid haeredetas what estate and term is to be had in it It is an Inheritance And lastly Quid care sanguis what flesh and blood it is that is excluded out of this Kingdome Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God First for this kingdome of God in this world let us be glad that it is a kingdome that it is so much that the government is taken out of the hands of Saints and Angels and re-united re-annexed to the Crown restoted to God to whom we may come immediately and be accepted Let us be glad that it is a kingdome so much and let us be glad that it is but a kingdome and no more not a Tyranny That we come not to a God that will damâ—e us because he will damâ—e us but a God that proposes Conditions and enables us to performe those conditions in such a measure as he will vouchsafe to accept from us A God that governs us by his word for in his word is truth and by his law for in his law is clearnesse Will you aske what this kingdome of God is What did you take it to be or what did you mean by it when even now you said with me in the Lords prayer Thy kingdome come Did you deliberately and determinately pray for the day of Judgment and for his comming in the kingdome of glory then Were you all ready for that when you said so Purae conscientiae grandis audaciae est It is a very great confidence and if it be not grounded upon a very pure conscience it must have a worse name Regnum Dei postul are judicium non timeâ—â— To call upon God for the day of Judgment upon confidence of our own righteousnesse is a shrewd distemper To say Vâ—ni Domine Iesu come Lord Iesuâ— come and take us as thou findst us is a dangerous issue But Adveniat regnum and then veniat Rex let his kingdome of grace come upon us in this life and then let himselfe come too in his good time and when his good pleasure shall be in the kingdome of Glory Sive velimus sive nolimus regnum Dei utique veniet what need we hasten him provoke him says Saint Augustine whether we will or no his kingdome his Judgment will come Nay before we called for it even his kingdome of grace was come Christ said to the Scribe Non longè Thou art not far from the kingdome of God And to the Pharisees themselves he said Intra vos the kingdome of God is among you within you But where there is a whole Hospitall of three hundred blinde men together as there is at Paris there is as much light amongst them there as amongst us here and yet all they have no light so this kingdome of God is amongst us all and yet God knows whether we see it or no. And therefore Adveniat ut manifestetâ—r Deus says S. Augustine his kingdom come that we may discerne it is come that we may see that God offers it to us and Adveniat regnum ut manefestemur Deo his kingdome come so that he may discernus in our reception of that Kingdom and our obedience to it He comes when we see him and he comes again when we receive him Quid est Regnum ejus veniat quà m ut nos bonos inveniat Then his Kingdome comes when he finds us willing to be Subjects to that Kingdome God is a King in his own right By Creation by Redemption by many titles and many undoubted claimes But Aliud est Regem esse aliud regnare It is one thing to be a King another to have Subjects in obedience A King is not the lesse a King for a Rebellion But Verè justum regnum est says that Father quando Rex vult homines habere sub se cupiunt homines esse sub â—o when the King would wish no other Subjects nor the Subjects other King then is that Kingdom come come to a durable and happy state When God hath shewed himself in calling us and wee have shewed our willingnesse to come when God shewes his desire to preserve us and we adhere onely to him when there is a Dominus regnat Latetur terra When our whole Land is in possession of peace and plenty and the whole Church in possession of the Word and Sacraments when the Land rejoyces because the Lord reigns and when there is a Dominus regnat Laetentur Insulae Because the Lord reigneth every Island doth rejoice that is every man that every man that is encompassed within a Sea of calamities in his estate with a Sea of diseases in his body with a Sea of scruples in his understanding with a Sea of transgressions in his conscience with a Sea of sinking and swallowing in the sadnesse of spirit may yet open his eyes above water and find a place in the Arke above all these a recourse to God and joy in him in the Ordinances of a well established and well governed Church this is truly Regnum Dei the Kingdome of God here God is willing to be present with us that he declares in the preservation of his Church And we are sensible of his presence and residence with us and that wee declare in our frequent recourses to him hither and in our practise of those things which we have learnt here when we are gone hence This then is the blessed state that wee pretend to in the Kingdome of God in this life Peace in the State peace in the Church peace in our Conscience In this that wee answer the motions of his blessed Spirit here in his Ordinance and endevour a conformity to him in our life and conversation In this hee is our King and wee are his Subjects and this is this Kingdome of God the Kingdome of Grace Now the title by which we make claim to this Kingdome is in our text Inheritance Who can and who
cannot inherit this Kingdome of God I cannot have it by purchase by mine own merits and good works It is neither my former good disposition nor Gods fore-sight of my future cooperation with him that is the cause of his giving mee his grace I cannot have this by Covenant or by the gift or bequeathing of another by works of Supererogation that a Martyr of the primitive Church should send mee a violl of his blood a splinter of his bone a Collop of his flesh wrapped up in a halfe sheet of paper in an imaginary six-penny Indulgence from Rome and bid mee receive grace and peace of Conscience in that I cannot have it by purchase I cannot have it by gift I cannot have it by Curtesie in the right of my wife That if I will let her live in the obedience of the Roman Church and let her bring up my children so for my selfe I may have leave to try a Court or a worldly fortune and bee secure in that that I have a Catholique wife or a Catholique child to pray and merit for mee I have no title to this Kingdome of God but Inheritance whence growes mine Inheritance Ex semine Dei because I am propagated of the seed of God I inherit this peace Whosoever is born of God doth not commit finne for his seed remaineth in him and hee cannot sinne because hee is born of God That is hee cannot desire to sinne Hee cannot antidate a sinne by delighting in the hope of a future sin and sin in a praefruition of his sinne before the act Hee cannot post-date a sinne delight in the memory of a pastsinne and sin it over againe in a post-fruition of that sinne Hee cannot boast himself of sinne much lesse bely himself in glorying in sinnes never done Hee cannot take sinnes dyet therefore that hee may bee able to sinne againe next Spring Hee cannot hunger and thirst and then digest and sleepe quietly after a sinne and to this purpose and in this sense Saint Bernard says Praedestinati non possunt peccare That the Elect cannot sinne And in this also That when the sinnes of the Elect are brought to tryall and to judgement there their sinnes are no sinnes not because they are none in themselves but because the blood of Jesus covering them they are none in the eyes of God I am Heir then as I am the Son of God born of the seed of God But what is that seed Verbum Dei the seed is the word of God Of his own will beg at he us says that Apostle with the word of truth And our Saviour himselfe speaks very clearly in expounding the Parable The seed is the word of God We have this Kingdome of God as we have an inheritance as we are Heirs we are Heirs as we are Sons we are Sons as we have the seed and the seed is the Word So that all ends in this We inherit not this Kingdome if we possesse not the preaching of the Word if we professe not the true â—ligion still for the word of this text which we translate to inherit for the most part in the translation of the Septuagint answers the Hebrew word Nachal and Nachal is Haereditas cum possessione not an inheritance in reversion but in possession Take us O Lord for thine inheritance says Moses Et possideas nos as Saint Hâ—erome translates that very place Inherit us and Possesse us Et erimus tibi whatsoever we are we will bee thine says the Septuagint You see then how much goes to the making up of this Inheritance of the Kingdome of God in this world First Vt habeamus verbum That we have this seed of God his word In the Roman Church they have it not not that that Church hath it not not that it is not there but they the people that have it not and then Vt possideamus That we possesse it or rather that it possesse us that we make the Word the onely rule of our faith and of our actions In the Roman Church they do not so they have not pure wheat but mestlin other things joyned with this good seed the word of God and lastly Vt simus Deo That we be his that we be so still that we doe not begin with God and give over but that this seed of God of which we are born may as Saint Peter says be incorruptible and abide for ever that wee may be his so entirely and so constantly as that we had rather have no beeing then for any time of suspension or for any part of his fundamentall truth be without it and this the Roman Church cannot be said to do that expunges and interlines articles of faith upon Reason of State and emergent occasions God hath made you one says the Prophet who bee the parties whom God hath maryed together and made One in that place you and your religion as our expositors interpret that place And why One says the Prophet there That God might have a godly seed says he that is a continuation a propagation a race a posterity of the same religion Therefore says he Let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth Let none divorce himself from that religion and that worship of God which God put into his armes and which he embraced in his Baptism Except there be errour in fundamentall points such as make that Church no Church let no man depart from that Church and that religion in which he delivered himself to the service of God at first Wo be unto us if we deliver not over our religion to our posterity in the same sincerity and the same totality in which our Fathers have delivered it us for that that continuation is that that makes it an inheritance for to conclude this every man hath an inheritance in the Law and yet if he be hanged he is hanged by the Law in which hee had his inheritance so wee have our inheritance in the Word of God and yet if wee bee damned we are damned by that Word If thy heart turn away so as that thou worship other Gods I denounce unto you this day that you shall surely perish So then wee have an inheritance in this Kingdome if we preserve it and we incurre a forfeiture of it if wee have not this seed The Word the truth of Religion so as that we possesse it that is conform our selves to him whose Word it is by it and possesse it so as that we persevere in the true profession of it to our end for Perseverance as well as Possession enters into our title and inheritance to this Kingdome You see then what this Kingdome of God is It is when he comes and his welcome when he comes in his Sacraments and speaks in his Word when he speaks and is answered knocks and is received he knocks in his Ordinances and is received in our Obedience to them he knocks in his example and most holy
infirmer voice rise together in this resurrection of grace Let him that hath been buried sixty years forty years twenty years in covetousnesse in uncleannesse in indevotion rise now now this minute and then as Adam that dyed five thousand before shall be no sooner in heaven in his body then you so Abel that dyed for God so long before you shall be no better that is no fuller of the glory of heaven then you that dye in God when it shall be his pleasure to take you to him SERMON XVI Preached at Lincolns Inne COLOS. 1. 24. Who now rejoyce in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his bodies sake which is the Church WE are now to enter into the handling of the doctrine of Evangelicall counsailes And these words have been ordinarily used by the writers of the Roman Church for the defence of a point in controversie between them and us which is a preparatory to that which hereafter is to be more fully handled upon another Text. Out of these words they labour to establish works of supererogation in which they say men doe or suffer more then was necessary for their owne salvation and then the superfluity of those accrues to the Treasury of the Church and by the Stewardship and dispensation of the Church may be applied to other men living here or suffering in Purgatory by way of satisfaction to Gods justice But this is a doctrine which I have had occasion heretofore in this place to handle And a doctrine which indeed deserves not the dignity to be too diligently disputed against And as we will not stop upon the disproving of the doctrine so we need not stay long nor insist upon the vindicating of these words from that wresting and detortion of theirs in using them for the proofe of that doctrine Because though at first they presented them with great eagernesse and vehemence and assurance Quicquid haeretici obstrepunt illustris hic locus say the Heretiques what they can this is a clear and evident place for that doctrine yet another after him is a little more cautelous and reserv'd Negari non potest quin ita expeni possint it cannot be denied but that these words may admit such an exposition And then another more modified then both says Primò propriè non id intendit Apostolus the Apostle had no such purpose in his first and proper intention to prove that doctrine in these words Sed innuitur ille sensus qui et si non genuinus tamen à pari deduci potest some such sense says that author may be implied and intimated because though it be not the true and naturall sense yet by way of comparison and convenience such a meaning may be deduced Generally their difference in having any patronage for that corrupt doctrine out of these words appeares best in this that if we consider their authors who have written in controversies we shall see that most of them have laid hold upon these words for this doctrine because they are destitute of all Scriptures and glad of any that appear to any any whit that way inclinable But if we consider those authors who by way of commentary and exposition either before or since the controversies have been stirred have handled these words we shall find none of their owne authors of that kind which by way of exposition of these words doth deliver this to be the meaning of them that satisfaction may be made to the justice of God by the works of supererogation one man for another To come then to the words themselves in their true sense and interpretation we shall find in them two generall considerations First that to him that is become a new creature a true Christian all old things are done away and all things are made new As he hath a new birth as he hath put on a new man as he is going towards a new Ierusalem so hath he a new Philosophy a new production and generation of effects out of other causes then before he finds light out of darknesse fire out of water life out of death joy out of afflictions Nunc gaâ—deâ— now I rejoyce in my sufferings c. And then in a second consideration he finds that this is not by miracle that he should hope for it but once but he finds an expresse and certaine and constant reason why it must necessarily be so because I still up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ c. It is strange that I should conceive joy out of affliction but when I come to see the reason that by that affliction I fill up the sufferings of Christ c. it is not strange it cannot chuse but be so The parts then will be but two a proposition and a reason But in the first part it will be sit to consider first the person not meerely who it is but in what capacity the Apostle conceives this joy And secondly the season Now for joy is not always seasonable there is a time of mourning but now rejoycing And then in a third place we shall come to the affection it selfe Joy which when it is true and truly placed is the nearest representation of heaven it selfe to this world From thence we shall descend to the production of this joy from whence it is derived and that is out of sufferings for this phrase in passionibus in my sufferings is not in the middest oâ— my sufferings it is not that I have joy and comfort though I suffer but in passionibus is so in suffering as that the very suffering is the subject of my joy I had no joy no occasion of joy if I did not suffer But then these sufferings which must occasion this joy are thus conditioned thus qualified in our text That first it be passio mea my suffering and not a suffering cast by my occasion upon the whole Church or upon other men mea it is determined and limited in my selfe and mea but not prome not for my selfe not for mine owne transgressions and violating of the law but it is for others pro vobis says the Apostle for out of that root springs the whole second part why there appertaines a joy to such sufferings which is that the suffering of Christ being yet not unperfect but unperfected Christ having not yet suffered all which he is to suffer to this purpose for the gathering of his Church I fill up that which remaines undone And that in Carne not onely in spirit and disposition but really in my flesh And all this not only for making sure of mine own salvation but for the establishing and edifying a Church but yet his Church for men seduced and seducers of men have their Churches too and suffer for those Churches but this is for his Church and that Church of his which is properly his body and that is the visible Church and
purpose Can I put an Euge upon his vae a vacat upon his Fiat a Nonobstante upon his Amen God is not man not a false man that he can lie nor a weake man that he can repent Where then is the restorative the consolatory nature of these words In this beloved consists our comfort that all Gods vae's and Amens all judgments and all his executions are Conditionall There is a Crede vives Beleeve and thou shalt live there is a Fac hoc vives doe this and thou shalt live If thou have done otherwise there is a Converte vives turne unto the Lord and thou shalt live If thou have done so and fallen off there is a Revertere vives returne againe unto the Lord and thou shalt live How heavy so ever any of Gods judgements be yet there is always roome for Davids question Quis scit who can tell whether God will be gracious unto mee What better assurance could one have then David had The Prophet Nathan had told David immediately from the mouth of God this child shall surely dye and ratified it by that reason because thou hast given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme this child shall surely dye yet David fasted and wept and said who can tell whether the Lord will be gratious unto me that the child may live There is always roome for Davids question Quis scit who can tell Nay there is no roome for it as it is a question of diffidence and distrust every man may and must know that whatsoever any Prophet have denounced against any sinne of his yet there are conditions upon which the Lord will be gracious and thy soule shall live But if the first condition that is Innocency and the second that is Repentance be rebelliously broken then every man hath his vae and every vae hath his Amen the judgements are denounced against him and upon him they shall bee executed for God threatens not to fright children but the Mountains melt and Powers and Thrones and Principalities tremble at his threatning And so have you the doubled signification of the first word vae as it is vox Dolentis and as it is Vox minantis God is loath but God will infallibly execute his judgement and we proceed to the extension of this vae over all vae mundo woe unto the world and the double signification of that word I have wondred sometimes that that great Author and Bishop in the Roman Church Abulensis is so free as to confesse that some Expositors amongst them have taken this word in our Text Mundo adjectivè not to signify the world but a clean person a free man that it should be vae immuni woe unto him that is free from offences that hath had no offences perchance they mean from crosses And so though it be a most absurd and illiterate and ungrammaticall construction of the place that they make yet there is a doctrine to bee raised from thence of good use As God brought light out of darknesse and raises glory out of sin so we may raise good Divinity out of their ill Grammar for vae mundo indeed vae immuni woe be unto him that hath had no crosses There cannot be so great a crosse as to have none I lack one loaf of that dayly bread that I pray for if I have no crosse for afflictions are our spirituall nourishment I lacke one limb of that body I must grow into which is the body of Christ Jesus if I have no crosses for my conformity to Christ and that 's my being made up into his body must be accomplished in my fulfilling his sufferings in his flesh So that though our adversaries out of their ignorance mislead us in a wrong sense of the place the Holy Ghost leads us into a true and right use thereof But there is another good use of their error too another good doctrine out of their ill Grammar Take the word mundo adjectivè for an adjective and vae mundo vae immuni wo unto him that is so free from all offences as to take offence at nothing to be indifferent to any thing to any Religion to any Discipline to any form of Gods service That from a glorious Masse to a sordid Conventiâ—le all 's one to him all one to him whether that religion in which they meet and light candles at Noon or that in which they meet and put out candles at midnight what innovations what alterations what tolerations of false what extirpations of true Religion soever come it shall never trouble never offend him 'T is true Vae mundo indeed wo unto him that is so free so unsensible so unaffected with any thing in this kinde for as to bee too inquisitive into the proceedings of the State and the Church out of a jealousie and suspicion that any such alterations or tolerations in Religion are intended or prepared is a seditious disaffection to the government and a disloyall aspersion upon the persons of our Superiours to suspect without cause so not to be sensible that the Catterpillars of the Roman Church doe eat up our tender fruit that the Jesuites and other enginiers of that Church doe seduce our forwardest and best spirits not to be watchfull in our own families that our wives and children and servants be not corrupted by them for the Pastor to sâ—acken in his duty not to be earnest in the Pulpit for the Magistrate to slacken in his not to be vigilant in the execution of those Laws as are left in his power vae mundo vae immuni woe unto him that is unsensible of offences Jealously suspiciously to mis-interpret the actions of our Superiours is inexcusable but so is it also not to feel how the adversary gains upon us and not to wish that it were and not to pray that it may be otherwise vae mundo vae immuni wo to him that is un-offended unsensible thus But as I have wondred that that Bishop would so easily confesse that some of their Expositors were so very unlearned so barbarously ignorant so enormously stupid as to take this vae mundo adjective so doe I wonder more that after such confessions and acknowledgements of such ignorances and stupidities amongst them they will not remedy it in the cause but still continue so rigid so severe in the maintenance of their own Translation their Vulgate Edition as in places and cases of doubt not to admit recourse to the Originall as to the Supreme Judge nor to other Translations for by either of those ways it would have appeared that this vae mundo could not be taken adjectivè but is a cloud cast upon the whole world a woe upon all no place no person no calling free from these scandals and offences from tentations and tribulations when there was a vae Sodom that God raigned fire and brimstone upon Sodom yet there was a Zoar where Let might be safe When there was a
nor that melancholy that dampes me in a jealousie and suspicion a diffidence and distrust in God The Devill had no hand in composing me in my constitution But the Devill knows which of these govern and prevail in me and ministers such tentations as are most acceptable to me and this is Scandalum amoris the scandall of Love So have ye then the Name and Nature and extent of the Active Scandall against which the inhibition given in this Text is generall wee are forbidden to scandalize any person by any of these ways The scandall of Example or the scandall of Perswasion The scandall of Fear or the scandall of Love For there is scarce any so free to himselfe so entirely his own so independent upon others but that Example or Perswasion or Fear or Love may scandalize him that is Lead him into tentation and make him doe some things against his own mind Our Saviour Christ had spoken De pusillis of little children of weak persons easie to be scandalized before this Text and he returns ad pusillos to the consideration of little children persons easie to bee scandalized again this Text is not of them or not of them onely but of all say not thou of any man aetatem habet he is old enough let him look to himselfe he hath reason as other men have he hath had a learned and a religious education ill example can doe him no harm but give no ill example to any study the setling and the establishing of all for scarce is there any so strong but may bee shaked by some of these scandals Example Perswasion Fear or Love And hee that employs his gift of wit and Counsell to seduce and mislead men or his gift of Power and Authority to intimidate and affright men or his gift of other graces lovelinesse of person agreeablenesse of Conversation powerfulnesse of speech to ensnare and entangle men by any of these scandals may draw others into perdition but he falls also with them and shall not be left out by God in the punishments inflicted upon them that fall by his occasion The Commandement is generall scandalize none scarce any but may bee overthrown by some of these ways And then the Apostles practise was generall too we give no occasion of offence in any thing As he requires that wee should eat and drinke to the glory of God so hee would have us study to avoid scandalizing of others even in our eating and drinking If meat make my brother to offend offend either in eating against his own conscience or offend in an uncharitable mis-interpretation of my eating In aeternum says the Apostle there I will eat no flesh while the world standeth Nor destroy my brother with my meat for whom Christ dyed That 's the Apostles tendernesse in things He would give no occasion of offence in any thing And it is as generall in contemplation of persons he would have no offence given neither to the Iew nor to the Grecian nor to the Church of God He was as carefull not to scandalize not to give just occasion of offence to Jew not Gentile as not to the Church of God so must we be towards them of a superstitions religion amongst us as carefull as towards one another not to give any scandall any just cause of offence But what is to be called a just cause of offence towards those men Good ends and good ways plain and direct and manifest proceedings these can be called no scandall no just cause of offence to Jew nor Gentile to Turk nor Papist nor does Saint Paul intend that we should forbear essentiall and necessary things for fear of displeasing perverse and peevish men To maintain the doctrinall truths of our religion by conferences by disputations by writing by preaching to avow and to prove our religion to be the same that Christ Jesus and his Apostles proposed at beginning the same that the generall Councels established after the same that the blessed Fathers of those times unanimely and dogmatically delivered the same that those glorious Martyrs quickned by their death and carryed over all the world in the rivers in the seas of their blood to avow our religion by writing and preaching to be the same religion an then to preserve and protect that religion which God hath put into our hearts by all such meanes as hee hath put into our hands in the due execution of just Laws this is no scandall no just cause of offence to Jew not Gentile Turke nor Papists But when leaving fundamentall things and necessary truths we wrangle uncharitably about Collaterall impertinencies when wee will refuse to doe such things as conduce to the exaltation of Devotion or to the order and peace of the Church not for any harme in the things but onely therefore because the Papists doe them when because they kneel in the worship of the bread in the Sacrament wee will not kneel in Thanksgiving to God for the Sacrament when because they pray to Saints we will reproach the Saints or not name the Saints when because they abuse the Crosse we will abhor the Crosse This is that that Saint Paul protests against and in that protestation Catechizes us that as he would give no just occasion of offence to the true Church of God so neither would hee doe it to a false or infirme Church He would not scandalize the true Church of God by any modifications any inclinations towards the false nor hee would not scandalize the false and infirme Church by refusing to communicate with them in the practise of such things as might exalt our Devotion and did not endanger nor shake any foundation of religion which was the wisdome of our Church in the beginning of the Reformation when the Injuctions of our Princes forbad us to call one another by the odious names of Papist or Papisticall Heretique or Schismatique or Sacramentary or such convitions as the word of the Injunction is and reprâ—achfull names but cleaving always intirely and inseparably to the fundamentall truths of our own religion as farre as it is possible we should live peaceably with all men Saint Paul would give no offence to the true Church of God he would not prevaricate nor to the Jew nor Gentile neither he would not exasperate And this may bee enough to have been said of the active scandallâ— and passe we now in our order to the Passive It is no wonder to see them who put all the world into differences the Jesuits to differ sometimes amongst themselves And therefore though the Jesuit Maldonat say of this Text That Christ did not here intend to warne or to arm his Disciples against scandals as scandals occasions of sin but onely from offering injury to one another That scandall in this text is nothing but wrong yet another Jesuit Vincemius Rhegius is not onely of another opinion himselfe but thinks that opinion as he calls it absurd It is absurd says he
an Army there is for many times they intimidate weake men when they shoote nothing but Paper when they are onely Paper-Armies and Pamphlet-Victories and no such in truth Illico scandalizatur yet with these forged rumours presently hee is scandalized and hee comes apace to those dangerous conclusions Non potens Deus for any thing I see God is not so powerfull a God as they make him for his enemies Armies prevaile against his Non sapiens Deus for any thing I see God does not take so wise courses for his glory of which hee talkes so much and pretends to bee so jealous for his enemies Counsels prevaile against his And hee comes at last to the Non est Deus to labour to over-rule his own Conscience and make himselfe bebeleeve or at least to wish though hee cannot beleeve it that there were no God Now to correct or to repair this weaknesse you see our Saviours physique here If thy foot thy hand thine eye scandalize thee offend thee abscinde projâ—ce erue projice Cut it off pull it out and then cast it away You see Christs method in his physique It determines not in a preparative that does but stirre the humours for every remorse and every compunction and every sense that a man hath that such and such company leades him into tentation does that it workes in the nature of such a preparative as stirres the humours affects the soul Christs physique determines not in a blood-letting no not in cutting off the gangren'd part for it is not onely Cut off and pull out but Cast away it is an absolute evacuation and purging out of the peccant humour It is not a halting with the foot nor a shifting with the hand it is not a winking with the eye but abscinde and erue Cut off pull out and after that Though hee bee the foot upon which thou standest thy Master thy Patron thy Benefactor Though hee be thy hand by which thou gettest thy living thy meanes the instrument of thy maintenance or preferment Though hee bee thine eye the man from whom thou receivest all thy Light and upon whose learning thou engagest thy Religion abscindatur projice if hee scandalize thee shake thee in thy Religion at the heart or in the ways of godlinesse in thine actions Cut him off that is cut off thy selfe from that conversation and cast him away returne no more within distance of that tentation for as sinne hath that quality of a worm that it gnawes it gnawes the conscience so hath it also that quality of a worm that if you cut it into pieces yet if those pieces come together again they will re-unite again sinne though discontinued will finde his old pieces if they keep not farre asunder And since it is said of God himself by David Cum perverso perverteris That God will grow froward with the froward and since God says of himselfe That with them that goe crookedly hee will goe crookedly too that the behaviour of other men are said to make impressions upon God himselfe cosider the slipperinesse of our corrupt nature how easily the vices of other men insinuate and infuse themselves into us and how much need wee have of all Christs physique abscinde erue projice Cut off pull out and cast away But to come to our last note Besides the woe arising from the strength of the scandall and the woe from the corruptnesse of our weak nature there is a woe upon our wilfulnesse upon our easinesse in being scandalized by an over-jealousie and suspicious mis-interpretations of the actions of other men And for this in the highest consideration as it hath relation to our Saviour himselfe and his Gospell it may be enough to consider that which himselfe says Blessed is hee whosoever shall not be offended in me But Quis homo What man is hee that is not offended in him and his Gospel Qui non crubescit aut timet what man is he that is not ashamed of the Gospel or afraid of it that does not desire that the religion that he professes were a religion of more liberty of less threatnings We see that though the Cross of Christ that is Christ crucified were daily represented to the Jews in their sacrifices preached to the in the succession of their Prophets yet this Crosse of Christ was Scandalum Iudais a scandal to the Jews It was as the Apostle says there Stultitia Gracis to the Gentiles that had no such preparation to the Gospel as the Jews had in their Law and Sacrifices the Gospel was meer foolishnes a religion unconformable to nature and to reason but even to the Jews themselves it was a scandal a stumbling block they grudged that that religion left them so narrow a way open to pleasure and to profit and that it referred all to a spirituall Kingdome whereas the Jews looked for a temporall Kingdome in their Messias And so truly Christ and his Gospel will be a scandal to all them that will needs set Christ a price at which hee shall sell his Gospel If Tithes or some some small matter in lieu of Tithes will serve his turn and now and then a groat to a Brief and sometimes an extraordinary contribution when extraordinary knowledge may bee taken of it if this will serve his turn hee shall have it But if it must come to a Non pacem that Christ profess hee comes not to settle peace but to kindle a warre if wee must maintain armies for his Gospel if it come to an Odisse vitam to hate Father and Mother and Wife and Children and our owne lifes for his Gospel this is too high a price Nolumus hunc regnare now the Gospell growes a Tyran and wee will not be under a tyrannous government If hee will govern by his Law that hee be content with our coming to Church every Sunday and our receiving every Easter wee will live under his Law but if he come to exercise his Prerogative and presse us to extraordinary duties in watching all our particular actions and calling our selves to an account for words and thoughts then Christ and his Gospell become a scandall a stumbling block unto us and lye in our way and retard our ends our pleasures and our profits But if we can overcome this one scandall of the Gospell that we be not ashamed nor afraid of that that is well satisfied in the sufficiency of that Gospel for our salvation and then content to suffer for that Gospel if we can devest this scandall no other shall trouble us Great peace have they which love thy Law says David To love it is to prefer it before all things and great peace have they that doe so says he Wherein consists this peace In this Et non est illis scandalum Great peace have they that love thy Law for they have no scandals nothing shall offend them There shall no evill happen to the just says his son Solomon
choice whether hee should pardon me all those actuall and habituall sins which I have committed in my life or extinguish Originall sinne in me I should chuse to be delivered from Originall sin because though I be delivered from the imputation thereof by Baptism so that I shall not fall under a condemnation for Originall sin onely yet it still remains in me and practises upon me and occasions all the other sins that I commit now for all my actuall and habituall sins I know God hath instituted meanes in his Church the Word and the Sacraments for my reparation But with what a holy alacrity with what a heavenly joy with what a cheerfull peace should I come to the participation of these meanes and seals of my reconciliation and pardon of all my sins if I knew my selfe to be delivered from Originall sinne from that snake in my bosome from that poyson in my blood from that leaven and tartar in all my actions that casts me into Relapses of those sins which I have repented And what a cloud upon the best serenity of my conscience what an interruption what a dis-continuance from the sincerity and integrity of that joy which belongs to a man truly reconciled to God in the pardon of his former sins must it needs be still to know and to know by lamentable experiences that though I wash my selfe with Soap and Nitâ—e and Snow water mine own cloathes will defile me again though I have washed my selfe in the tears of Repentance and in the blood of my Saviour though I have no guiltinesse of any former sin upon me at that present yet I have a sense of a root of sin that is not grub'd up of Originall sinne that will cast me back again Scarce any man considers the weight the oppression of Originall sinne No man can say that an Akorn weighs as much as an Oak yet in truth there is an Oak in that Akorn no man considers that Originall sinne weighs as much as Actuall or Habituall yet in truth all our Actuall and Habituall sins are in Originall Therefore Saint Pauls vehement and frequent prayer to God to that purpose could not deliver him from Originall sin and that stimulus carnis that provocation of the flesh that Messenger of Satan which rises out of that God would give him sufficient grace it should not worke to his destruction but yet he should have it Nay the infinite merit of Christ Jesus himself that works so upon all actuall and habituall sins as that after that merit is applyed to them those sins are no sins works not so upon Originall sin but that though I be eased in the Dominion and Imputation thereof yet the same Originall sin is in me still and though God doe deliver me from eternall death due to mine actuall and habituall sins yet from the temporall death due to Originall sin he delivers not his dearest Saints Thus sin is heavy in the seed in the grain in the akorn how much more when it is a field of Corn a barn of grain a forest of Oaks in the multiplication and complication of sin in sin And yet wee consider the weight of sin another way too for as Christ feels all the afflictions of his children so his children will feel all the wounds that are inflicted upon him even the sins of other men as Lots righteous soule was grieved with sins of others If others sin by my example provocation or by my connivence and permission when I have authority their sin lies heavyer upon me then upon themselves for they have but the weight of their own sinne and I have mine and theirs upon me and though I cannot have two souls to suffer and though there cannot be two everlastingnesses in the torments of hell yet I shall have two measures of those unmeasurable torments upon my soul. But if I have no interest in the sins of other men by any occasion ministred by me yet I cannot chuse but feel a weight a burthen of a holy anguish and compassion and indignation because every one of these sins inflict a new wound upon my Saviour when my Saviour says to him that does but injure me Why persecutest thou me and feels the blow upon himselfe shall not I say to him that wounds my Saviour Why woundest thou me and groane under the weight of my brothers sin and my Fathers my Makers my Saviours wound If a man of my blood or allyance doe a shamefull act I am affected with it If a man of my calling or profession doe a scandalous act I feel my self concerned in his fault God hath made all mankinde of one blood and all Christians of one calling and the sins of every man concern every man both in that respect that I that is This nature is in that man that sins that sin and I that is This nature is in that Christ who is wounded by that sin The weight of sin were it but Originall sin were it but the sins of other men is an insupportable weight But if a sinner will take a true balance and try the right weight of sin let him goe about to leave his sin and then he shall see how close and how heavily it stook to him Then one sin will lay the weight of seelinesse of falshood of inconstancy of dishonour of ill nature if you goe about to leave it and another sin will lay the weight of poverty of disestimation upon you if you goe about to leave it One sin will lay your pleasures upon you another your profit another your Honour another your Duty to wife and children and weigh you down with these Goe but out of the water goe but about to leave a sin and you will finde the weight of it and the hardnesse to cast it off Gravatae sunt Mine iniquities are heavy that was our first and gravatae nimis they are too heavy which is a second circumstance Some weight some balast is necessary to make a ship goe steady we are not without advantage in having some sinne some concupiscence some tentation is not too heavy for us The greatest sins that ever were committed were committed by them who had no former sinne to push them on to that sin The first Angels sin and the sin of Adam are noted to be the most desperate and the most irrecoverable sins and they were committed when they had no former sin in them The Angels punishment is pardoned in no part Adams punishment is pardoned in no man in this world Now such sins as those that is sins that are never pardoned no man commits now not now when he hath the weight of former sins to push him on Though there be a heavy guiltinesse in Originall sin yet I have an argument a plea for mercy out of that Lord my strength is not the strength of stones nor my flesh brasse Lord no man can bring a clean thing out of uncleannesse Lord no man can say after I have
Though mine iniquities be got over my head as a wall of separation yet in Christo omnia possum In Christ I can doe all things Mine iniquities are got over my head but my head is Christ and in him I can doe whatsoever hee hath done by applying his sufferings to my soule for all my sins are his and all his merit is mine And all my sins shall no more hinder my ascending into heaven nor my sitting at the right hand of God in mine own person then they hindered him who bore them all in his person mine onely Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus blessed for ever SERMON XXIV Preached at White-Hall EZEK 34. 19. And as for my flock they eate that which yee have troen with your feet and they drink that which yee have foulded with your feet THose four Prophets whom the Church hath called the great Prophets Esay and Ieremy Ezekiel and Daniel are not onely therefore called great because they writ more then the lesser Prophets did for Zecbary who is amongst the lesser writ more then Daniel who is amongst the greater but because their Prophecies are of a larger comprehension and extent and for the most part speake more of the comming of Christ and the establishing of the Christian Church then the lesser Prophets doe who were more conversant about the temporall deliverance of Israel from Babylon though there be aspersions of Christ and his future government in those Prophets too though more thinly shed Amongst the four great ones our Prophet Ezekiel is the greatest I compare not their extraction and race for though Ezekiel were de genere sacerdotali of the Leviticall and Priestly race And as Philo Iudâ—us notes all nations having some markes of Gentry some calling that ennobled the professors thereof in some Armes and Merchandize in some and the Arts in others amongst the Iews that was Priesthood Priesthood was Gentry though Ezekiel were of this race Esay was of a higher for he was of the extraction of their Kings of the bloud royall But the extraordinary greatnesse of Ezekiel is in his extraordinary depth and mysteriousnesse for this is one of those parts of Scripture as the beginning of Genesis and the Canticles of Solomon also are which are forbid to be read amongst the Iews till they come to be thirty years old which was the Canonicall age to be made Priests In so much that Saint Gregory says when he comes to expound any part of this Prophet Noctunum iter ago that he travelled by night and did but ghesse at his way But besides that many of the obscure places of the Prophets are more open to us then they were to the ancients because many of those prophecies are now fulfilled and so that which was Prophecy to them is History to us in this place which we have now undertaken there never was darknesse not difficulty neither in the first emanation of the light thereof nor in the reflection neither in the Literall nor in the Figurative sense thereof for the literall sense is plainly that that amongst the manifold oppressions under which the Children of Israel languished in Babylon this was the heaviest that their own Priests joyned with the State against them and infused pestilent doctrines into them that so themselves might enjoy the favour of the State and the people committed to their charge might slacken their obedience to God and surrender themselves to all commandements of all men This was their oppression the Church joyned with the Court to oppresse them Their own Priests gave these sheep grasse which they had troden with their feet doctrines not as God gave them to them but as they had tampered and tempered them and accommodated them to serve turnes and fit their ends whose servants they had made themselves more then Gods And they gave them water to drink which they had troubled with their feet that is doctrines mudded with other ends then the glory of God And that therefore God would take his sheep into his own care and reduce them from that double oppression of that Court and that Church those Tyrannous officers and those over-obsequious Priests This is the literall sense of our text and context evident enough in the letter thereof And then the figurative and Mysticall sense is of the same oppressions and the same deliverance over againe in the times of Christ and of the Christian Church for that 's more then figurative fully literall soon after the Text I will set up one shepheard my servant David And I will raise up for them a plant of renoune which is the same that Esay had called A rod out of the stem of Iesse and Ieremy had called A righteous brâ—nch a King thus should raigne and prosper This prophecy then comprehending the kingdome of Christ it comprehends the whole kingdome of Christ not onely the oppressions and deliverances of our forefathers from the Heathen and the Heretiques in the Primitive Church but that also which touches us more nearly the oppressions and deliverance of our Fathers in the Reformation of Religion and the shaking off of the yoak of Rome that Italian Babylon as heavy as the Chaldâ—an We shall therefore at this time fix our meditations upon that accommodation of the Text the oppression that the Israel of God was under then when he delivered them by that way the Reformation of Religion and consider how these metaphors of the holy Ghost The treading with their feet the grasse that the sheep were to eae and the troubling with their feet the water that the sheep were to drink doe answer and set out the oppressions of the Roman Church then as lively as they did in the other Babylon And so having said enough of the primary sense of these words as they concern Gods Israel in the first Babylon and something by way of commemoration and thankfulnesse for Gods deliverance of his Israel from the persecutions in the Primitive Church insist we now upon the severall metaphors of the Text as the holy Ghost continues them to the whole reigne of Christ and so to the Reformation First the greatest calamity of those sheep in Babylon was that their own shepherds concurred to their oppression In Babylon they were a part but in Rome they were all In Babylon they joyned with the State but in Rome they were the State Saint Hierome notes out of a Tradition of the Iews that those loafes which their priests were to offer to the Lord were to be of such corne as those Priests had sowed and reaped and threshed and ground and baked all with their own hands But they were so farre from that at Babylon and at Rome as that they ploughed iniquity and sowed wickednesse and reaped the same and as God himselfe complaines trod his portion under foot That is first neglected his people for Gods people are his portion And then whatsoever pious men had given to the Church is his portion too and that portion
these helps is the more ful and the more ready the more able for Church service he be not also thereby made the more bold and the more confident Nec ament decipere verisimili sermone lest because he is able to make any thing seem probable and likely to the people by his eloquence he come to infuse paradoxicall opinions or schismaticall or which may be beleeved either way problematicall opinions for certain and constant truths and so be the lesse conversant and the lesse diligent in advancing plaine and simple and fundamentall doctrines and catechisticall which are truely necessary to salvation as though such plaine and ordinary and catechisticall doctrines were not worthy of his gifts and his great parts In a word in sheep-pastures you may plant fruit trees in the hedge-rowes but if you plant them all over it is an Orchard we may transfer flowers of secular learning into these exercises but if they consist of those they are but Themes and Essays But why insist we upon this Was there any such conformity between the two Babylons as that the Italian Babylon can be said to have troden down the grasse in that kinde with overcharging their Sermons with too much learning Truly it was far very very far from it for when they had prevailed in that Axiome and Aphorisme of theirs that it was best to keep the people in ignorance they might justly keep the Priest in ignorance too for when the people needed no learned instruction what needed the Church a learned instructer And therefore I laid hold of this consideration the treading down of grass by oppressing it with secular learning there by to bring to your remembrance the extreme ignorance that damp'd the Roman Church at that time where Aristotles Metaphysicks were condemned for Heresie and ignorance in generall made not onely pardonable but meritorious Of which times if at any time you read the Sermons which were then preached and after published you will excuse them of this treading down the grass by oppressing their auditories with over-much learning for they are such Sermons as will not suffer us to pity them but we must necessarily scorne and contemne and deride them Sermons at which the gravest and saddest man could not choose but laugh not at the Sermon God forbid nor at the plainness and homeliness of it God forbid but at the Soloecismes the barbarismes the servilities the stupid ignorance of those things which fall within the knowledge of boys of the first forme in every School This was their treading down of grass not with over-much learning but with a cloud a dampe an earth of ignorance After an Oxe that oppresseth the grass after a Horse that devours the grass sheep will feed but after a Goose that stanches the grass they will not no more can Gods sheep receive nourishment from him that puts a scorne upon his function by his ignorance But in the other way of treading down grass that is the word of God by the Additions and Traditions of men the Italian Babylon Rome abounded superabounded overflowed surrounded all And this is much more dangerous then the other for this mingling of humane additions and traditions upon equall necessity and equall obligation as the word of God it selfe is a kneading an incorporating of grasse and earth together so as that it is impossible for the weake sheep to avoid eating the meat of the Serpent Dust shalt thou eate all the days of thy life Now man upon his transgression was not accursed nor woman The sheep were not accursed But the earth was and the Serpent was and now this kneading this incorporating of earth with grasse traditions with the word makes the sheep to eate the cursed meat of the cursed Serpent Dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life Now in this treading down this grasse this way this suppressing it by traditions be pleased to consider these two applications some traditions doe destroy the word of God extirpate it annihilate it as when a Hog doth root up the grass In which case not onely that turfe withers and is presently useless and unprofitable to the sheep but if you dig never so low after down to the Center of the earth it is impossible ever to finde any more grass under it so some traditions doe utterly oppose the word of God without having under them any mysterious signification or any occasion or provocation of our devotion which is the ordinary pretext of traditions and Ceremoniall additions in their Church And of this sort was that amongst the Iews of which our blessed Saviour reproches them that whereas by the law children were to relieve decayed parents they had brought in a tradition of Commutation of Compensation that if those children gave a gift to the Priest or compounded with the Priest they were discharged of the former obligation And of this sort are many traditions in the Roman Church where not onely the doctrines of men but the doctrine of Devills as the Apostle calls the forbidding of Mariage and of meats did not onely tread down but root up the true grass The other sort of Traditions and Ceremonies doe not as the Hog root up the grass but as a Mole cast a slack and thin earth upon the face of the grass Now if the shepheard or husbandman be present to scatter this earth againe the sheep receive no great harme but may safely feed upon the wholesome grass that is under but if the sheep who are not able to scatter this earth nor to finde the grass that lies under be left to their own weakness they may as easily starve in this case as in the other the Mole may damnifie them as much as the Hog And of this sort are those traditions which induce Ceremonies into the Church in vestures in postures of the body in particular things and words and actions in Baptisme or Mariage or any other thing to be transacted in the Church These ceremonies are not the institutions of God immediately but they are a kind of light earth that hath under it good and usefull significations which when they be understood conduce much to the encrease and advancement of our devotion and of the glory of God And this is the iniquity that we complaine of in the Roman Church that when we accuse them of multiplying impertinent and insupportable ceremonies they tell us of some mysterious and pious signification in the institution thereof at first They tell us this and it is sometimes true But neither in Preaching nor practise doe they scatter this earth to their own sheep or shew them the grass that lies under but suffer the people to inhere and arrest their thoughts upon the ceremony it selfe or that to which that ceremony mis-leads them as in particular for the time will not admit many examples when they kneel at the Sacrament they are not told that they kneel because they are then in the act of
receiving an inestimable benefit at the hands of God which was the first reason of kneeling then And because the Priest is then in the act of prayer in their behalfe that that may preserve them in body and soule unto eternall life But they are suffered to go one in kneeling in adoration of that bread which they take to be God We deny not that there are Traditions nor that there must be ceremonies but that matters of faith should depend of these or be made of these that we deny and that they should be made equall to Scriptures for with that especially doth Tertullian reproch the Heretiques that being pressed with Scriptures they fled to Traditions as things equall or superiour to the word of God I am loth to depart from Tertullian both because he is every where a Patheticall expresser of himselfe and in this point above himselfe Nobis curiositate opus non est post Iesum Christum nec Inquisitione post Evangelium Have we seen that face of Christ Jesus here upon earth which Angels desired to see and would we see a better face Traditions perfecter then the word Have we read the four Evangelists and would we have a better Library Traditions fuller then the word Cum credimusâ— nihil desideramus ultra credere when I beleeve God in Christ dead and risen againe according to the Scriptures I have nothing else to beleeve Hoc enim prius credimus non esse quod ultra credere debeamus This is the first Article of my Faith that I am bound to beleeve nothing but articles of faith in an equall necessity to them Will we be content to be well and thank God when we are well Hilary tells us when we are well Bene habet quod iis quae scripta sunt contentus sis then thou art well when thou satisfiest thy self with those things which God hath vouchsafed to manifest in the Scriptures Si aliquis aliis verbis quà m quibus à Deo dictum est demonstrare velit if any man will speake a new language otherwise then God hath spoken and present new Scriptures as he does that makes traditions equall to them Aut ipse non intelligit aut legentibus non intelligendum relinquit either he understands not himself or I may very well be content not to understand him if I understand God without him The Fathers abound in this opposing of Traditions when out of those traditions our adversaries argue an insufficiency in the Scriptures Solus Christus audiendus says Saint Cyprian we hearken to none but Christ nec debemus attendere quid aliquis ante nos faciendum putarit neither are we to consider what any man before us thought fit to be done sed quid qui ante emnes est fecerit but what he who is before all them did Christ Iesus and his Apostles who were not onely the primitive but the pre-primitive Church did and appointed to be done In this treading down of our grasse then in the Roman Church first by their supine Ignorance and barbarisme and then by traditions of which some are pestilently iufectious and destroy good words some cover it so as that not being declared to the people in their signification they are uselesse to them no Babylon could exceed the Italian Babylon Rome in treading down their grasse Their oppression was as great in the other In troubling their water My sheep drink that which you have troubled When the Lord is our shepherd he leadeth us ad aquas quietudinum to the waters of rest of quietnesse of these in the plurall quietudinum quietness of body and quietness of Conscience too The endowments of heaven are Ioy and Glory joy and glory are the two Elements the two Hemispheres of Heaven And of this Joy and this Glory of heaven we have the best earnest that this world can give if we have rest satisfaction and acquiescence in our religion for our beleefe and for our life and actions peace of Conscience And where the Lord is our shepherd he leads us and ad aquas quietudinum to the waters of rest multiplyed rest all kind of rest But the shepherds in our text troubled the waters and more then so for we have just cause to note the double signification of this word which we translate Trouble and to transfer the two significations to the two Sacraments as they are exhibited in the Roman Babylon The word is Mirpas and it denotes not onely Conturbationem a troubling a mudding but Obturationem too an interception a stopping as the Septuagint translates it Prov. 35. and in these two significations of the word a troubling and a stopping of the waters hath the Roman Church exercised her tyranny and her malignity in the two Sacraments For in the Sacrament of Baptisme they had troubled the water with additions of Oile and salt and spittle and exorcismes But in the other Sacrament of they came Ad obturationem to a stopping to an intercision to an interruption of the water the water of life Aquae quietudinum the water of rest to our souls and peace to our consciences in withholding the Cup of salvation the bloud of Christ Jesus from us So that if thou come to Davids holy expostulation Quid retribuam what shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me And pursue it to Davids holy resolution Accipiam Calicem I will take the Cup of salvation you shall be told Sir you must take Orders first or you cannot take that Cup. But water is as common as Aire And as that Element Aire in our spirituall food that is preaching which is Spiritus Domini the breath of God is common to all Iâ—e praedicate omni Creaturae goe preach the Gospell to every Creature so is this water of life in the Sacrament common to all Bibite ex eo omnes Drink yee all of this and thereby doe the names of Communion and participation accrew to it because all have an interest in it This is that bloud of which Saint Chrysostome says Hic sanguis facit ut Imago Dei in nobis floreat That we have the Image of God in our souls we have by the benefit of the same nature by which we have our souls There cannot be a humane soule without the Image of God in it But ut floreat that this Image appear to us and be continually refreshed in us ut non Languescat animae nobilitas that this holy noblenesse of the soule doe not languish not degenerate in us we have by the benefit of this bloud of Christ Iesus the seale of our absolution in that blessed and glorious Sacrament And that bloud they deny us This is that bloud of which they can make as much as they will with a thought with an intention so as they pretend a power of changing a whole vintage at once all the wine of all the nations in the world into the bloud of Christ if the Priest have an intention to
1000 The infection grew hotter and hotter in Rome their may came to a must those things which were done before de facto came at last to be articles of Faith and de jure must be beleeved and practised upon salvation They chide us for going away and they drove us away If we abstained from communicating with their poysons being now growen to that height they excommunicated us They gave us no room amongst them but the fire and they were so forward to burne Heretiques that they called it heresie not to stay to be burnt Yet we went not upon their driving but upon Gods calling As the whole prophecy of the deliverance of Israel from Babylon belongs to the Christian Church both to the Primitive Church at first and to the Reformed since so doth that voice spoken to them reach unto us Egredimini de Babylone Goe ye out of Babylon with a voice of singing declare show to the ends of the earth that the Lord hath redeemed his servant Iacob For that Rome is not Babylon they have but that one half-comfort that one of their own authors hath ministred that Romae regulariter male agitur that Babylon is Confusion disorder but at Rome all sinnes are committed in order by the book and they know the price and therefore Rome is not Babylon And since that many of their authors confesse that Rome was Babylon in the time of the persecuting Emperours and that Rome shall be Babylon againe in the time of Antichrist how they will hedge in a Ierusalem a holy City between these two Babylons is a cunning peece of Architecture From this Babylon then were our Fathers called by God not onely by that whispering sibilation of the holy Ghost sibilabâ— populum I will hisse for my people and so gather them for I have redeemed them and they shall increase not onely by private inspirations but by generall acclamations every where principall writers and preachers and Princes too as much as could stand with their safety crying out against them before Luther howsoever they will needs doe him that honour to have been the first mover in this blessed revolution They reproach to us our going from them when they drove us and God drew us and they discharge themselves for all by this one evasion That all that we complain of is the fault of the Court of Rome and not of the Church of the extortion in the practise of their Officers not of error in the doctrine of their Teachers Let that be true as in a great part it is for almost all their errors proceed from their covetousness and love of money this is that that we complain most of and in this especially lies the conformity of the Iewish Priests in the Chaldean Babylon and these Prelates in the Roman Babylon that the Court and the Church joined in the oppression But since the Court of Rome and the Church of Rome are united in one head I see no use of this distinction Court and Church If the Church of Rome be above the Court the Church is able to amend these corruptions in the Court If the Court be got above the Church the Church hath lost or sold away her supremacy To oppresse us and ease themselves now when we are gone from them they require Miracles at out hands when indeed it was miracle enough how we got from them But magnum charitatis argumentum credere absque pignoribus miraculorum He loves God but a little that will not beleeve him without a miracle Miracles are for the establishing of new religions All the miracles of and from Christ and his Apostles are ours because their Religion is ours Indeed it behooves our adversaries to provide new miracles every day because they make new articles of Faith every day As Esop therefore answered in the Market when he that sold him was asked what he could do that he could do nothing because his fellow had said that he could do all so we say we can do no miracles because they do all all ordinary cures of Agues and tooth-ach being done by miracle amongst them We confesse that we have no such tye upon the Triumphant Church to make the Saints there do those anniversary miracles which they do by their reliques here upon their own holy days ten days sooner every year then they did before the new computation We pretend not to raise the dead but to cure the sick and that but by the ordinary Physique the Word and Sacraments and therefore need no miracles And we remember them of their own authors who do not onely say that themselves do no miracles in these latter times but assigne diligently strong reasons why it is that they doe none If all this will not serve we must tell them that we have a greater miracle then any that they produce that is that in so few years they that forsook Rome were become equall even in number to them that adhered to her We say with Saint Augustine That if we had no other miracle hoc unum stupendum potentissimum miraculum esse that this alone were the most powerfull and most a mazing miracle ad hanc religionem totius orbis amplitudinem sine miraculis subjugatam that so great a part of the Christian world should become Protestants of Papists without any miracles They pursue us still being departed from them and they aske us How can ye pretend to have left Babylon confusion Dissention when you have such dissentions confusions amongst your selves But neither are our differences in so fundamental points as theirs are for a principall author of their own who was employed by Clement the eight to reconcile the differences between the Iesuits and the Dominicans about the concurrence of the grace of God and the free will of man confesses that the principall articles and foundations of faith were shaken between them between the Iesuits and Dominicans neither shall we finde such heat and animosity and passion between any persons amongst us as between the greatest amongst them The succeeding Pope mangling the body of his predecessor casting them into the river for buriall disannulling all their decrees and ordinations their Ordinations so that no man could be sure who was a Priest nor whether he had truely received any Sacrament or no. Howsoever as in the narrowest way there is most justling the Roman Church going that broad way to beleeve as the Church beleeves may scape some particular differences which we that goe the narrower way to try every thing by the exact word of God may fall into Saint Augustine tells us of a City in Mauritania Caesarea in which they had a custome that in one day in the year not onely Citizens of other parishes but even neighbours yea brethren yea Fathers did fling stones dangerously and furiously at one another in the streets and this they so solemnized as a custome received from their
their deliverance Venies usque ad Babylonem Ibi liberaberis To Babylon thou shalt come there I will deliver thee but not till then that is till you come to a holy sense of the miseries you are in and what hath brought you to them Though then you have suffred the calamities of all these Babylons in some proportions though you be not Incolae but Indigenae not naturalized but borne Babylonians Originall sinne makes you so yet since you are within the Covenant heare him that sayd to you in Abrahams ears Egredere de terrâ tuâ Get thee out of thy Country and from thy kindred unto the land I will shew thee Come out of Babylon to Jerusalem since ye are within his Adoption and may cry Abba father hear that voice Egredimini filiae Sion Come forth ye daughters of Sion come to Jerusalem Though ye be dead and buryed and putrefyed in this corrupted and corrupting flesh yet since he cries with a loud voice as it is said in that Text Lazare veni for as Lazarus come forth come forth of your Tombs in Babylon to this Jerusalem come from your troubled waters your waters of contention of anxiety of envy of solicitude and vexation for worldly encumbrances and come Ad aquas quietudinum to the waters of rest the application of the merits of Christ in a true Church Vinum non habetis have ye no wine to refresh your hearts no merits of your own to take comfort in Implete Hydrias aquâ fill all your vessels with water that water of life remorsefull teares perchance he will change your water into wine as he did in that place perchance he will give you abundance of temporall blessings perchance he will change that water into blood as in Egypt that is into persecutions into afflictions into Martyrdome for his sake for hee will accept our water for blood our tears of repentance and contrition for Martyrdome ut cum desit Martyrium sanguinis habeamus Martyrium aquae that we may be Martyrs in his sight and shed no blood Martyrs of a new die white Martyrs That our waters of sorrow for sinne may answer our Saviours tears over Lazarus and over Ierusalem and the sweat of our brows in a lawfull calling may answer our Saviours sweat of water and blood in his agony and that our reverent and profitable receiving of the Sacrament may answer the water and blood that issued from his side which represented omnia Sacramenta all the Sacraments That as we do we may still feed upon grace that is not troden and drink water that is not troubled with the feet of others or our own that we be never shaked in the sinceritie nor in the integritie of Religion with their power nor our own distempers of fears or hopes But that our meat may be to do the will of him that sent us and to finish his work Joh. 4. 2. SERMON XXVI Preached to the King at White-Hall the first Sunday in Lent ESAI 65. 20. For the child shall die a hundred years old But the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed PEace is in Sion Gods whole Quire is in tune Nay here is the musick of the Sphears all the Sphears all Churches all the Stars in those Sphears all Expositours in all Churches agree in the sense of these words and agree the words to be a Prophesie of the Distillation nay Inundation of the largenesse nay the infinitenesse of the blessings and benefits of Almighty God prepared and meditated before and presented and accomplisht now in the Christian Church The Sun was up betimes in the light of nature but then the Sun moved but in the winter Tropick short and cold dark and cloudy dayes A Diluculum and a Crepusculum a Dawning and a Twilight a little Traditionall knowledge for the past and a little Conjecturall knowledge for the future made up their day The Sunne was advanced higher to the Iewes in the Law But then the Sunne was but in Libra as much day as night There was as much Baptisme as Circumcision in that Sacrament and as much Lamb as Christ in that Sacrifice The Law was their Equinoctiall in which they might see both the Type and that which was figured in the Type But in the Christian Church the Sun is in a perpetuall Summer Solstice which are high degrees and yet there is a higher the Sun is in a perpetuall Meridian and Noon in that Summer solstice There is not onely a Surge Sol but a Siste Sol God hath brought the Sunne to the height and â—ixt the Sun in that height in the Christian Churchâ— where he in his own Sonne by his Spirit hath promised to dwell usque ad consummationem till the end of the world Here is Manna and not in Gomers but in Barns and Quails and not in Heaps but in Hills the waters above the Firmament and not in drops of Dew but in showers of former and latter Rain and the Land of Canaan not in Promise onely nor onely in performance and Possession but in Extention and Dilatation The Graces and blessings of God that is means of salvation are so aboundantly poured upon the Christian Church as that the triumphant Church if they needed means might fear they should want them And of these means and blessings long life as it is a Modell and abridgement of Eternity and a help to Eternitie is oneâ— and one in this Text The Childe shall die 100. yeares old But shall we receive good from God and not receive evill too shall I shed upon you Lumen visionis the light of that vision which God hath afforded me in this Prophecie the light of his countenance and his gracious blessings upon you and not lay upon you Onus visionis as the Prophetts speak often The burthen of that vision which I have seen in this Text too It was a scorn to David that his servants were half cloath'd The Samaritane woman beleeved that if she might see Christ he would tell her all things Christ promises of the Holy Ghost that he should lead them into all Truth And the Apostles discharge in his office was that he had spoken to them all Truth And therefore lest I should be defective in that integritie I say with Saint Augustine Non vos fallo non praesumo non vos fallo I will not be so bold with you as flatter you I will not presume so much upon your weaknesse as to go about to deceive you as though there were nothing but blessing in God but shew you the Commination and judgement of this Text too that though the childe should die a hundred years old yet the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed If God had not lengthened his childes life extended my dayes but taken me in the sinnes of my youth where had I been may every soul here say And where would you be too if no man should tell you that though The
24. Take heed what you heare WHether that which is recorded by this Evangelist in and about this Chapter be one intire Sermon of our Saviours preached at once or Notes taken and erected from severall Sermons of his we are no further curious to inquire then may serve to ground this Note that if it were one intire Sermon our Saviour preached methodically and eased his hearers with certain landmarks by the way with certain divisions certain transitions and callings upon them to observe the points as they arose For as he beginneth so Hearken Behold so he returneth to that refreshing of their considerations Et dixit illis He said unto them and Again he said unto them seaven or eight times in this Chapter so many times he calleth upon them to observe his passing from one point to another If they be but Notes of severall Sermons we onely note this from that That though a man understand not a whole Sermon or remember not a whole Sermon yet he doth well that layeth hold upon such Notes therein as may be appliable to his own case and his own conscience and conduce to his own edification The widow of Sarepta had no Palaces to build and therefore she went not out to survay Timber she had onely a poore cake to bake to save her own and her childs life and she went out to gather a few sticks two sticks as she told the Prophet Elias to do that work Every man that cometh to heare here every man that cometh to speak here cometh not to build Churches nor to build Common-wealths to speak onely of the duties of Kings and of Prelates and of Magistrates but that poore soul that gathers a stick or two for the baking of her own cake that layeth hold upon any Note for the rectifying of her own perverseness hath performed the commandment of this Text Take heed what ye heare He that is drowning will take hold of a bulrush and even that bulrush may stay him till stronger means of succour come If you would but feel that you are drowning in the whirlepooles of sinne and Gods judgements for sin and would lay hold upon the shallowest man be that man dignified with Gods Character the Character of Orders and lay hold upon the meanest part of his speach be that speach dignified with Gods Ordinance be it a Sermon even I and any thing that I say here and say thus spoken by a Minister of God in the house of God by the Ordinance of God might stop you till you heard better and you might be the fitter for more if you would but take heed now what you heard Take heed what you heare These words were spoken by Christ to his Apostles upon this occasion He had told them before That since there was a candle lighted in the world it must not be put under a bushell nor under a bed verse 21. That all that is hid should be made manifest That all that was kept secret should come abroad verse 22. That if any man had ears to heare he might heare verse 23. That is that the Mystery of salvation which had been hid from the world till now was now to be published to the world by their Preaching their Ministery their Apostleship And that therefore since he was now giving them their Commission and their instructions since all that they had in charge for the salvation of the whole world was onely that that he delivered unto them that which they heard from him they should take heed what they heard Take heed what you heare In which he layeth a double obligation upon them First All that you hear from me you are to preach to the world and therefore Take heed what you heare forget none of that And then you are to preach no more then you heare from me and therefore Take heed what you heare adde nothing to that Be not over-timorous so to prevaricate and forbear to preach that which you have truely heard from me But be not over-venturous neither to pretend a Commission when you have none and to preach that for my word which is your own passion or their purpose that set you up And when we shall have considered these words in this their first acceptation as they were spoken literally and personally to the Apostles we shall see also that by reflexion they are spoken to us the Ministers of the Gospell and not onely to us of the Reformation but to our Adversaries of the Romane perswasion too and therefore in that part we shall institute a short comparison whether they or we do best observe this commandment Take heed what you heare Preach all that preach nothing but that which you have received from me And having passed through these words in both those acceptations literally to the Apostles and by reflexion to all the Ministers of the Gospell the Apostles being at this time when these words were spoken but Hearers they are also by a fair accommodation appliable to you that are Hearers now Take heed what you heare And since God hath extended upon you that glorification that beatification as that he hath made you regale Sacerdotium a royall Priesthood since you have a Regality and a Priesthood imprinted upon you since by the prerogative which you have in the Gospell of the Kingdome of Christ Jesus and the co-inheritance which you have in that Kingdome with Christ Jesus himself you are Regum genus and Sacerdotum genus of kin to Kings and of kin to Priests be carefull of the honour of both those of whose honour you have the honour to participate and take heed what you heare of Kings take heed what you heare of Priests take heed of hearkning to seditious rumours which may violate the dignity of the State or of schismaticall rumours which may cast a cloud or aspersion upon the government of the Church Take heed what you hear First then as the words are spoken in their first acceptation literally to the Apostles the first obligation that Christ layes upon them is the publication of the whole Gospell Take heed what you heare for all that which you hear from me the world must heare from you for for all my death and resurrection the world lies still surrounded under sinne and Condemnation if this death and resurrection be not preached by you unto them Therefore the last words that ever our Saviour spoke unto them were a ratification of this Commission You shall be my witnesses both in Ierusalem and in Iudea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth God proceeds legally Publication before Judgement God shall condemn no man for not beleeving in Christ to whom Christ was never manifested 'T is true that God is said to have come to Eliah in that still small voice and not in the strong wind not in the Earth-quake not in the fire So God says Sibilabâ— populum meum I will but kisse I will but whisper for my
and our North and South at another tyde and another gale First then we looke towards our East the fountaine of light and of life There this world beganne the Creation was in the east And there our next world beganne too There the gates of heaven opened to us and opened to us in the gates of death for our heaven is the death of our Saviour and there he lived and dyed there and there he looked into our west from the east from his Terasse from his Pinacle from his exaltation as himselfe calls it the Crosse. The light which arises to us in this east the knowledge which we receive in this first word of our text Faciamus Let us where God speaking of himselfe speakes in the Plurall is the manifestation of the Trinity the Trinity which is the first letter in his Alphabet that ever thinks to read his name in the book of life The first note in his Gammut that ever thinks to sing his part in the Quire of the Triumphant Church Let him him have done as much as all the Worthies and suffered as much as all Natures Martyrs the penurious Philosophers let him have known as much as they that pretend to know Omne scibile all that can be known nay and in-intelligibilia In-investigabilia as Turtullian speakes un-understandable things unrevealed decrees of God Let him have writ as much as Aristotle writ or as is written upon Aristotle which is multiplication enough yet he hath not learnt to spel that hath not learnt the Trinity not learnt to pronounce the first word that cannot bring three Persons into one God The subject of naturall philosophy are the foure elements which God made the Subject of supernaturall philosophy Divinity are the three elements which God is and if we may so speake which make God that is constitute God notifie God to us Father Sonne and holy Ghost The naturall man that hearkens to his owne heart and the law written there may produce Actions that are good good in the nature and matter and substance of the worke He may relieve the poore he may defend the oppressed But yet he is but as an open field and though he be not absolutely barren he bears but grasse The godly man he that hath taken in the knowledge of a great and a powerfull God and enclosed and hedged in himselfe with the feare of God may produce actions better then the meere naturall man because he referres his actions to the glory of his imagined God But yet this man though he be more fruitfull then the former more then a grassy field yet he is but a ploughed field and he bears but corne and corne God knowes choaked with weeds But that man who hath taken hold of God by those handles by which God hath delivered and manifested himselfe in the notions of Father Sonne and holy Ghost he is no field but a garden a Garden of Gods planting a Paradise in which grow all things good to eate and good to see spirituall resection and spirituall recreation too and all things good to cure He hath his beeing and his diet and his physique there in the knowledge of the Trinity his beeing in the mercy of the Father his physique in the merits of the Sonne his diet his daily bread in the daily visitations of the holy Ghost God is not pleased not satisfied with our bare knowledge that there is a God For it is impossible to please God without faith and there is no such exercise of faith in the knowledge of a God but that reason and nature will bring a man to it When we professe God in the Creed by way of beleefe Credo in Deum I beleeve in God in the same article we professe him to be a Father too I beleeve in God the father Almighty And that notion the Father necessarily implies a second Person a Sonne And then we professe him to be maker of heaven and earth And in the Creation the holy Ghost the Spirit of God is expresly named So that we doe but exercise reason and nature in directing our selves upon God We exercise not faith and without faith it is impossible to please God till we come to that which is above nature till we apprehend a Trinity We know God we beleeve in the Trinity The Gentiles multiplyed Gods There were almost as many Gods as men that beleeved in them And I am got out of that thrust and out of that noise when I am come into the knowledge of one God But I am got above staires got in the Bedchamber when I am come to see the Trinity and to apprehend not onely that I am in the care of a great and a powerfull God but that there is a Father that made me a Sonne that Redeemed me a holy Ghost that applies this good purpose of the Father and Sonne upon me to me The root of all is God But it is not the way to receive fruits to dig to the root but to reach to the boughs I reach for my Creation to the Father for my Redemption to the Sonne for my sanctification to the holy Ghost and so I make the knowledge of God a Tree of life unto me and not otherwise Truly it is a sad Contemplation to see Christians scratch and wound teare one another with the ignominious invectives and uncharitable names of of Heretique and Schismatique about Ceremoniall and Problematicall and indeed but Criticall verball controversies and in the meane time the foundation of all the Trinity undermined by those numerous those multitudinous Anthills of Socinians that overflow some parts of the Christian world and multiply every where And therefore the Adversaries of the Reformation were wise in their generation when to supplant the credit of both those great assistants of the Reformation Luther and Calvin they impute to Calvin fundamentall error in the Divinity of the second Person of the Trinity the Sonne And they impute to Luther a detestation of the very word Trinity and an expunction thereof in all places of the Liturgy where the Church had received that word They knew well if that slander could prevaile against those persons nothing that they could say could prevaile upon any good Christians But though in our doctrine we keep up the Trinity aright yet God knowes in our practice we doe not I hope it cannot be said of any of us that he beleeves not the Trinity but who amongst us thinkes of the Trinity considers the Trinity Father and Sonne doe naturally imply and induce one another and therefore they fall oftner into our consideration But for the holy Ghost who feels him when he feels him Who takes knowledge of his working when he works Indeed our Fathers provided not well enough for the worship of the whole Trinity nor of the holy Ghost in particular in the endowments of the Church and Consecrations of Churches and possessions in their names What a spirituall dominion in the prayers and worship of
And whereas the humiliation of my Saviour is in all things to be imitated by me yet herein I am bound to depart from his humiliation that whereas he being in the forme of God tooke the forme of a servant I being in the forme of a servant may nay must take upon me the forme of God in being Deiformis homo a man made in Christ the Image of God So have I the Image of God intirely in his unity because I professe that faith which is but one faith and under the seale of the Baptisme which is but one Baptisme And then as of this one God so I have also the Image of the severall persons of the Trinity in this capacity as I am a Christian more then in my naturall faculties The Attributes of the first Person the Father is Power and none but a Christian hath power over those great Tyrants of the world Sinne Satan Death and Hell For thus my Power accrues and growes unto me First Possum Iudicare I have a Power to Judge a judiciary a discretive power a power to discerne between a naturall accident and a Judgement of God and will never call a Judgement an accident and between an ordinary occasion of conversation and atentation of Satan Possum judicare and then Possum resistere which is another act of power When I finde it to be a tentation I am able to resist it and Possum stare which is another I am able not onley to withstand but to stand out this battell of tentations to the end And then Possum capere that which Christ proposes for a tryall of his Disciples Let him that is able to receive it receive it I shall have power to receive the gift of continency against all tentations of that kinde Bring it to the highest act of power that with which Christ tryed his strongest Apostles Possum bibere calicem I shall be able to drinke of Christs Cup even to drinke his bloud and be the more innocent for that and to powre out my bloud and be the stronger for that In Christo omnia possum there 's the fulnesse of Power in Christ I can doe all things I can want or I can abound I can live or I can die And yet there is an extension of Power beyond all this in this Non possum peccare being borne of God in Christ I cannot sinne This that seemes to have a name of impotence Non possum I cannot is the fullest omnipotence of all I cannot sinne not sinne to death not sinne with a desire to sinne not sinne with a delight in sinne but that tentation that overthrowes another I can resist or that sinne which being done casts another into desperation I can repent And so I have the Image of the first Person the Father in Power The Image of the second Person whose Attribute is Wisdome I have in this that Wisdome being the knowledge of this world and the next I embrace nothing in this world but as it leads me to the next For thus my wisdome my knowledge growes First Scio cui credidi I know whom I have beleeved in I have not mislaid my foundation my foundation is Christ and then Scio non moriturum my foundation cannot sinke I know that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more againe Scio quod desideret Spiritus I know what my spirit enlightned by the Spirit of God desires I I am not transported with illusions and singularities of private spirits And as in the Attribute of Power we found an omnipotence in a Christian so in this there is an omniscience Scimus quia omnem Scientiam habemus there 's all together we know that we have all knowledge for all Saint Pauls universall knowledge was but this Iesum Crucifixum I determine not to know any thing save Jesus Christ and him Crucified and then the way by which he would proceed and take degrees in this Wisdome was Sultitia praedicandi the way that God had ordained when the world by Wisedome knew not God it pleased God by the foolishnesse of preaching to save them that beleeve These then are the steps of Christian Wisedome my foundation is Christ of Christ I enquire no more but fundamentall doctrines him Crucified and this I apply to my selfe by his ordinace of Preaching And in this wisdome I have the Image of the second Person And then of the third also in this that his Attribute beeing Goodnesse I as a true Christian call nothing good that conduces not to the glory of God in Christ Jesus nor any thing ill that drawes me not from him Thus I have an expresse Image of his Goodnesse that Omnia cooperantur in bonum all things worke together for my good if I love God I shall thanke my fever blesse my poverty praise my oppressor nay thanke and blesse and praise even some sinne of mine which by the consequences of that sinne which may be shame or losse or weaknesse may bring me to a happy sense of all my former sinnes and shall finde it to have been a good fever a good poverty a good oppression yea a good sinne Vertit in bonum says Ioseph to his brethren you thought evill but God meant it unto good and I shall have the benefit of my sinne according to his transmutation that is though I meant ill in that sinne I shall have the good that God meant in it There is no evill in the City but the Lord does it But if the Lord doe it it cannot be evill to me I beleeve that I shall see Bona Dei the goodnesse of the Lord in the land of the living that 's in heaven but David speakes also of Signum in bonum shew me a token of good and God will shew me a present token of future good an inward infallibility that this very calamity shall be beneficiall and advantageous unto me And so as in Nature I have the Image of God in my whole soule and of all the three Persons in the three faculties thereof the Understanding the Will and the Memory so in Grace in the Christian Church I have the same Images of the Power of the Father of the Wisedome of the Sonne of the Goodnesse of the holy Ghost in my Christian profession And all this we shall have in a better place then Paradise where we considered it in nature and a better place then the Church as it is Militant where we considered it in grace that is in the kingdome of heaven where we consider this Image in glory which is our last word There we shall have this Image of God in perfection for if Origen could lodge such a conceit that in heaven at last all things should ebbe backe into God as all things flowed from him at first and so there should be no other Essence but God all should be God even the Devill himselfe
staid with it then as closely as when he wrought his greatest miracles Beyond all this God having thus maried soule and body in one man and man and God in one Christ he maries this Christ to the Church Now consider this Church in the Type and figure of the Church the Arke in the Arke there were more of every sort of cleane Creatures reserved then of the uncleane seven of those for two of these why should we feare but that in the Church there are more reserved for salvation then for destruction And into that room which was not a Type of the Church but the very Church it selfe in which they all met upon whitsunday the holy Ghost came so as that they were enabled by the gift of tongues to convay and propagate and derive God as they did to every nation under heaven so much does God delight in man so much does God desire to unite and associate man unto him and then what shall disappoint or frustrate Gods desires and intentions so farre as that they should come to him but singly one by one whom he cals and wooes and drawes by thousands and by whole Congregations Be pleased to carry your considerations upon another testimony of Gods love to the society of man which is his dispatch in making this match his speed in gathering and establishing this Church for forwardnesse is the best argument of love and dilatory interruptions by the way argue no great desire to the end disguises before are shrewd prophecies of jealousies after But God made hast to the consummation of this Marriage between Christ and the Church Such words as those to the Colosrians and such words that is words to such purpose there are divers The Gospell is come unto you as it is into all the world And againe It bringeth forth fruit as it doth in you also And so likewise The Gospell which is preached to every creature which is under heaven such words I say a very great part of the Antients have taken so literally as thereupon to conclude That in the life of the Apostles themselves the Gospell was preached and the Church established over all the world Now will you consider also who did this what persons cunning and crafty persons are not the best instruments in great businesses if those businesses be good as well as great Here God imployed such persons as would not have perswaded a man that grasse was green that blood was red if it had been denyed unto them Persons that could not have bound up your understanding with a Syllogisme nor have entendred or mollified it with a verse Persons that had nothing but that which God himselfe calls the foolishnesse of preaching to bring Philosophers that argued Heretiques that wrangled Lucians and Iulians men that whet their tongues and men that whet their swords against God to God Unbend not this bowe blacken not these holy thoughts till you have considered as well as how soone and by what persons so to what Doctrine God brought them Wee aske but St. Augustins question Quis tantam multitudinem ad legem carni sanguini centrariam induceret nisi Deus Who but God himselfe would have drawn the world to a Religion so contrary to flesh and blood Take but one piece of the Christian Religion but one article of our faith in the same Fathers mouth Res incredibilis resurrectio That this body should be eaten by fishes in the sea and then those fishes eaten by other men or that one man should be eaten by another man and so become both one man and then that for all this assimilation and union there should arise two men at the resurrection Res incredibilis sayes he this resurrection is an incredible thing Sed magis incredibile totum mundum credidisse rem tam incredibilem That all the world should so soone believe a thing so incredible is more incredible then the thing it selfe That any should believe any is strange but more that all such believe all that appertains to Christianity The Valentinians and the Marcionites pestilent Heretiques grew to a great number Sed vix duo vel tres de iisdem eadem docebant says Irenaeus scarce any two or three amongst them were of one opinion The Acatians the Eunomians and the Macedonians omnes Arium parentem agnoscunt sayes the same Father they all call themselves Arians but they had as many opinions not onely as names but as persons And that one Sect of Mahomet was quickly divided and sub-divided into 70 sects But so God loved the world the society and company of good soules ut quasi una Domus Mundus the whole world was as one well governed house similiter credunt quasi una anima all beleeved the same things as though they had all but one soule Constanter praedicabant quasi unum os At the same houre there was a Sermon at Ierusalem and a Sermon at Rome and both so like for fundamentall things as if they had been preached out of one mouth And as this Doctrine so incredible in reason was thus soone and by these persons thus uniformely preached over all the world so shall it as it doth continue to the worlds end which is another argument of Gods love to our company and of his loathnesse to lose us All Heresies and the very names of the Heretiques are so utterly perished in the world as that if their memories were not preserved in those Fathers which have written against them we could finde their names no where Irenaeus about one hundred and eighty yeers after Christ may reckon about twenty heresies Tertullian twenty or thirty yeares after him perchance twenty seven and Epiphanius some a hundred and fifty after him sixty and fifty yeare after that St. Augustine some ninety yet after all these and but a very few yeares after Augustine Theodoret sayes that in his time there was no one man alive that held any of those heresies That all those heresies should rot being upheld by the sword and that onely the Christian Religion should grow up being mowed down by the sword That one graine of Corne should be cast away and many eares grow out of that as Leo makes the comparison That one man should be executed because he was a Christian and all that saw him executed and the Executioner himself should thereupon become Christians a case that fell out more then once in the primitive Church That as the flood threw down the Courts of Princes and lifted up the Arke of God so the effusion of Christian blood should destroy heresies and advance Christianity it self this is argument abundantly enough that God had a love to man and a desire to draw man to his society and in great numbers to bring them to salvation I will not dismisse you from this consideration till you have brought it thus much nearer as to remember a later testimony of Gods love to our
company in the reformation of Religion A miracle scarce lesse then the first propagation thereof in the primitive Church In how few yeares did God make the number of learned â—riters the number of persons of all qualities the number of Kings in whose Dominions the reformed Religion was exercised equall to the number of them who adhered to the Roman Church And yet thou must not depart from this contemplation till thou have made thy self an argument of all this till thou have concluded out of this that God hath made love to thy soule thy weake soule thy sick and foule and sinfull soule That he hath written to thee in all his Scriptures sent Ambassage to thee in all his preachers presented thee in all his temporall and spirituall blessings That he hath come to thee even in actions of uncle annesse in actions of unfaithfulnesse towards men in actions of distrustfulnesse towards God and hath checked thy conscience and delivered thee from some sins even then when thou wast ready to commit them as all the rest That that God who is but one in himselfe is yet three persons That those three who were all-sufficient to themselves would yet make more make Angels make man make a Christ make him a Spouse a Church and first propagate that by so weake men in so hard a doctrine and in so short a space over all the world and then reforme that Church againe so soone to such a heighth as these I say are to all the world so be thou thy self and Gods exceeding goodnesse to thee an argument That that God who hath shewed himself so loath to lose thee is certainly loath to lose any other soule but as he communicates himself to us all here so he would have us all partake of his joy and glory hereafter he that fils his Militant Church thus would not have his Triumphant Church empty So far we consider the accessiblenesse the communicablenesse the conversation of our good and gracious God to us in the generall There is a more speciall manner intimated even in the first word of our Text After this After what After he had seene the servants of God sealed sealed This seale seales the contract betweene God and Man And then consider how generall this seale is First God sealed us in imprinting his Image in our soules and in the powers thereof at our creation and so every man hath this seale and he hath it as soone as he hath a soule The wax the matter is in his conception the seale the forme is in his quickning in his inanimation as in Adam the waxe was that red earth which he was made of the seale was that soule that breath of life which God breathed into him Where the Organs of the body are so indisposed as that this soule cannot exercise her faculties in that man as in naturall Idiots or otherwise there there is a curtaine drawn over this Image but yet there this Image is the Image of God is in the most naturall Idiot as well as in the wisest of men worldly men draw other pictures over this picture other images over this image The wanton man may paint beauty the ambitious may paint honour the covetous wealth and so deface this image but yet there this image is and even in hell it selfe it will be in him that goes down into hell uri potest in gehenna non exuri sayes St. Bernard The image of God may burne in hell but as long as the soule remaines that image remaines there too And then thou who wouldest not burne their picture that loved thee wilt thou betray the picture of the Maker thy Saviour thy Sanctifier to the torments of hell Amongst the manifold and perpetuall interpretations of that article He descended into hell this is a new one that thou senâ—est him to hell in thy soule Christ had his Consummatum est from the Iewes he was able to say at last All is finished concerning them shall he never have a Consummatum est from thee never be at an end with thee Never if his Image must burne eternally in thy soule when thou art dead for everlasting generations Thus then we were sealed all sealed all had his image in our creation in the faculties of our soules But then we were all sealed againe sealed in our very flesh our mortall flesh when the image of the invisible God Christ Iesus the onely Sonne of God tooke our nature for as the Tyrant wished that all mankinde were but one body that he might behead all mankinde at a blow so God tooke into his mercie all mankinde in one person As intirely as all mankinde was in Adam all mankinde was in Christ and as the seale of the Serpent is in all by originall sinne so the seale of God Christ Iesus is on us all by his assuming our nature Christ Jesus tooke our souls and our bodies our whole nature and as no Leper no person how infectiously soever he be diseased in his body can say surely Christ never tooke this body this Leprosie this pestilence this rottennesse so no Leprous soule must say Christ never tooke this pride this adultery this murder upon himself he sealed us all in soule and body when he tooke both and though both dye the soule in sin daily the body in sicknesse perchance this day yet he shall afford a resurrection to both to the soule here to the body hereafter for his seale is upon both These two seales then hath God set upon us all his Image in our soules at our making his Image that is his Sonne upon our bodies and soules in his incarnation And both these seales he hath set upon us then when neither we our selves nor any body else knew of it He sets another seale upon us when though we know not of it yet the world the congregation does in the Sacrament of Baptisme when the seale of his Crosse is a testimony not that Christ was borne as the former seale was but that also he dyed for us there we receive that seale upon the forehead that we should conforme our selves to him who is so sealed to us And after all these seales he offers us another and another seale Set me as a seale upon thy heart and as a seale upon thine arme says Christ to all us in the person of the spouse in the Heart by a constant faith in the Arme by a declaratory works for then are we sealed and delivered and witnessed that 's our full evidence then have we made sure our salvation when the works of a holy life doe daily refresh the contract made with God there at our Baptisme and testifie to the Church that we doe carefully remember what the Church promised in our behalfe at that time for otherwise beloved without this seale upon the arme that is a stedfast proceeding in the works of a holy life we may have received many of the other seales and yet deface
Other sheep have I which are not of this fold says Christ them also I must bring in I must it is expressed not onely as an act of his good will but of that eternall decree to which he had at the making thereof submitted himself I must bring them who are they Many shall come from the east and from the west and shall sit downe with Abraham Isacc and Iacob in the kingdom of heaven from the Eastern Church and from the WesterN Church too from the Greek Church and from the Latine too and by Gods grace from them that pray not in Latine too from every Church so it be truly and fundamentally a Church Many shall come How many a multitude that no man can number For the new Ierusalem in the Revelation which is heaven hath twelve gates three to every corner of the world so that no place can be a stranger or lacke accesse to it Nay it hath says that Text twelve foundations Other foundation can no man lay then that which is layd Christ Iesus But that first foundation-stone being kept though it be not hewed nor layd alike in every place though Christ be not preached nor presented in the same manner for outward Ceremonies or for problematicall opinions yet the foundation may remaine one though it be in such a sort varied and men may come in at any of the twelve gates and rest upon any of the twelve foundations for they are all gates and foundations of one and the same Ierusalem and they that enter are a multitude that no man can number If then there be this sociable this applyable nature in God this large and open entrance for man why does Christ call it a straite gate and a narrow way Not that it is strait in it self but that we think it so and indeed we make it so Christ is the gate and every wound of his admits the whole world The Church is the gate And in omnem terram says David she hath opened her mouth and her voice is gone over all the world His word is the gate And thy Commandement is exceeding broad says David too His word and his light reaches to all cases and all distresses Lata porta Diabolus saith Saint Chrysostome The Devill is a broad gate but he tells us how he came to be so Mon magnitudine potestatis extensus sed superbiae licentia dilatatus not that God put such a power into his hands at first as that we might not have resisted him but that he hath usurp'd upon us and we have given way to his usurpations so says that Father Angusta porta Christus Christ is a narrow gate but he tels us also wherein and in what respect Non parvitate potestatis exiguus sed humilitatis ratione collectus Christ is not a narrow gate so as that the greatest man may not come in but called narrow because he fits himselfe to the least child to the simplest soule that will come in not so strait as that all may not enter but so strait as that there can come in but one at once for he that will not forsake Father and Mother and wife and children for him cannot enter in Therefore we call the Devils way broad because men walke in that with all their equipage all their sumpters all their state all their sinnes and therefore we call Christs way strait because a man must strippe himselfe of all inordinate affections of all desires of ill getting and of all possessions that are ill gotten In a word it is not strait to a mans selfe but if a man will carry his sinfull company his sinfull affections with him and his sinfull possessions it is strait for then he hath made himselfe a Camel and to a Camel Heaven gate is as a needles eye But it is better comming into heaven with one eye then into hell with two Better comming into heaven without Master or Mistresse then into hell for over-humouring of either There The gates are not shut all day says the Prophet and there is no night there And here if we shut the doore yet Christ stands at the doore and knocks Be but content to open thy doore be but content to let him open it and he will enter and be but thou content to enter into his content to be led in by his preaching content to be drawn in by his benefits content to be forced in by his corrections and he will open his since thy God would have dyed for thee if there had been no man born but thou never imagine that he who lets in multitudes which no man can number of all Nations c. would ever shut out thee but labour to enter there ubi non intrat inimicus ubi non exit amicus where never any that hates thee shall get to thee nor any that loves thee part from thee We have but ended our first part The assurance which we have from Gods manner of proceeding that Religion is not a sullen but a cheerfull Philosophy and salvation not cast into a corner but displayed as the Sunne over all That which we called at first our second part must not be a Part admit it for a Conclusion It is that and beyond that It is beyond our Conclusion for it is our everlasting endowment in heaven and if I had kept minutes enough for it who should have given me words for it I will but paraphrase the words of the Text and so leave you in that which I hope is your gallery to heaven your own meditations The words are You shall stand before the Throne and before the Lamb clothed with white Fobes and palms in their hands First stabitis you shall stand which is not that you shall not sit for the Saints shall sit judg the world they shall sit at the right hand of Godâ— It is not that you shall not sit nor that you shall not lie for you shall lye in Abraham bosom But yet you shal stand that is you shall stand sure you shall never fall you shall stand but yet you shall but stand that is remaine in a continuall disposition and readinesse to serve God and to minister to him And therefore account no abundance no height no birth no place here to exempt you from standing and labouring in the service of God since even your glorious state in heaven is but a station but a standing in readinesse to doe his will and not a posture of idlenesse you shall stand that is stand sure but you shall but stand that is still be bound to the service of God Stabitis ante Thronum you shall stand and stand before the Throne Here in the militant Church you stand but you stand in the porch there in the triumphant you shall stand in Sancto sanctorum in the Quire and the Altar Here you stand but you stand upon Ice perchance in high and therefore in slippery places
to you for our third part Goe forth behold Solomon c. Here are two duties enjoyn'd at least two steps two degrees Egredimini Go forth and then Videte Behold contemplate And after the duty or wrap'd in the duty we have the Object which we are to look upon in that divers things to be considered as we shall see in their order First when we are bid to Go forth it is not to go so far as out of that Church in which God hath given us our station for as Moses says That the word of God is not beyond Sea so the Church of God is not so beyond Sea as that we must needs seek it there either in a painted Church on one side or in a naked Church on another a Church in a Dropsie overflowne with Ceremonies or a Church in a Consumption for want of such Ceremonies as the primitive Church found usefull and beneficiall for the advancing of the glory of God and the devotion of the Congregation That which Christ says to the Church it selfe the Church says to every soule in the Church Goe thy way forth by the footsteps of the flocke Associate thy selfe to the true shepheard and true sheep of Christ Jesus and stray not towards Idolatrous Chappels nor towards schismaticall Conventicles but goe by the footsteps of the flock there must be footsteps some must have gone that way before take heed of Opinions that begin in thy selfe and the whole flock must have gone that way take heed of opinions vented by a few new men which have not had the establishment of a Church And truly the best way to discerne footsteps is Daniels way Daniels way was to straw ashes and so their footsteps that had been there were easily discerned Walke in thine own ashes in the meditation of thine own death or in the ashes of Gods Saints who are dead before thee in the contemplation of their example and thou wilt see some footsteps of the flock some impressions some directions how they went and how thou art to follow to the heavenly Jerusalem In conversing evermore with them which tread upon Carpets or upon Marbles thou shalt see no footsteps Carpets and Marbles receive no impressions Amongst them that tread in ashes in the ways of holy sorrow and religious humiliation thou shalt have the way best marked out unto thee Goe forth that is goe farther then thy selfe out of thy selfe at least out of the love of thy self for that is but a short a giddy a vertiginous walk how little a thing is the greatest man If thou have many rooms in thy selfe many capacities to contemplate thy selfe in if thou walke over the consideration of thy selfe as thou hast such a title of Honour such an Office of Command such an Inheritance such a pedegree such a posterity such an Allyance if this be not a short walke yet it is a round walke a giddy a vertiginous proceeding Get beyond thine own circle consider thy selfe at thine end at thy death and then Egredere Goe further then that Go forth and see what thou shalt be after thy death Still that which we are to look upon is especially our selves but it is our selves enlarg'd extended into the next world for till we see what we shall be then we are but short-sighted Wouldst thou say thou knew'st a man because thou hadst seen him in his Cradle no more canst thou be said to have known thy self because thou knowest the titles and additions which thou hast received in this world for all those things w ch we have here are but swadling clouts all our motions preferments from place to place are but the rocking of a cradle The first thing that Christ says to his spouse in the Canticles is If thou know not thy selfe for so all the Ancients read it and so the Originall beares it If thou know not thy selfe O thou fairest of women she might know that she was the fairest of women and yet not know her selfe Thou mayst know that thou art the happyest of men in this world and yet not know thy self All this life is but a Preface or but an Index and Repertory to the book of life There at that book beginnes thy study To grow perfect in that book to be dayly conversant in that book to find what be the marks of them whose names are written in that book and to finde those marks ingenuously and in a rectified conscience in thy selfe To finde that no murmuring at Gods corrections no disappointing of thy hopes no interrupting of thy expectations no frustrating of thy possibilities in the way no impatience in sicknesse and in the agony of death can deface those marks this is to goe forth and see thy self beyond thy self to see what thou shalt be in the next world Now we cannot see our own face without a glasse and therefore in the old Temple In or about that laver of brasse where the water for the uses of the Church was reserved Moses appointed looking-glasses to be placed that so at the entring into the Temple men might see themselves and make use of that water if they had contracted any foulnesse in any part about them Here at your coming hither now you have two glasses wherein you may see your selves from head to foot One in the Text your Head Christ Iesus represented unto you in the name and person of Solomon Behold King Solomon crowned c. And another under your feet in the dissolution of this great Monarch our Royall Master now layd lower by death then any of us his Subjects and servants First then behold your selves in that first glasse Behold King Solomon Solomon the sonne of David but not the Son of Bathsheba but of a better mother the most blessed Virgin Mary For Solomon in this text is not a proper Name but an Appellative a significative word Solomon is pacificus the Peacemaker and our peace is made in and by Christ Jesus and he is that Solomon whom we are called upon to see here Now as Saint Paul says that he would know nothing but Christ that 's his first abridgement and then he would know nothing of Christ but him crucifyed and that 's the re-abridgement so we seek no other glasse to see our selves in but Christ nor any other thing in this glasse but his Humiliation What need we Even that his lowest humiliation his death is expressed here in three words of exaltation It is a Crown it is a Mariage it is the gladnesse of heart Behold King Salomon crowned c. The Crown which we are called to see him crowned with his mother put upon him The Crown which his Father gave him was that glory wherewith he was glorifyed with the Father from all eternity in his divine nature And the Crown wherewith his Father crowned his Humane nature was the glory given to that in his Ascension His Mother could give him no such Crown she
her selfe had no Crown but that which he gave her The Crown that she gave him was that substance that he received from her our flesh our nature our humanity and this Athanasius and this Saint Ambrose calls the Crown wherewith his Mother crowned him in this text his infirm his humane nature Or the Corwn wherewith his Mother corwned him was that Crown to which that infirme nature which he tooke from her submitted him which was his passion his Crown of thornes for so Tertullian and divers others take this Crown of his from her to be his Crown of thorns Woe to the Crown of pride whose beauty is a fading flower says the Prophet But blessed be this Crown of Humiliation whose flower cannot fade Then was there truly a Rose amongst Thorns when through his Crown of Thorns you might see his title Iesus Nazarenus for in that very name Nazarenus is involved the signification of a flower the very word signifies a flower Esay's flower in the Crown of pride fades and is removed This flower in the Crown of Thornes fades not nor could be removed for for all the importunity of the Jews Pilate would not suffer that title to be removed or to be changed still Nazarenus remained and still a rose amongst thorns You know the curse of the earth Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee It did so to our Solomon here it brought forth thornes to Christ and he made a Crown of those thorns not onely for himself but for us too Omnes aculei mortis in Dominici Corporis tolerantia â—btusi sunt All the thorns of life and death are broken or blunted upon the head of our Solomon and now even our thorns make up our Crown our tribulation in life our dissolution in death conduce to our glory Behold him crowned with his Mothers Crown for even that brought him to his Fathers Crown his humiliation to exaltation his passion to glory Behold your Solomon your Saviour again and you shall see another beam of Comfort in your tribulations from his for even this Humiliation of his is called his Espousals his marriage Behold him crowned in the day of his Espousals His Spouse is the Church His marriage is the uniting of himselfe to this Spouse in his becomming Head of the Church The great City the heavenly Jerusalem is called The Bride and The Lambs wife in the Revelation And he is the Head of this body the Bridegroom of this Bride the Head of this Church as he is The first-borne of the Dead Death that dissolves all ours made up this marriage His Death is his Marriage and upon his Death flowed out from his side those two Elements of the Church water and bloud The Sacraments of Baptisme and of the Communion of himself Behold then this Solomon crowned and married both words of Exaltation and Exultation and both by Death and trust him for working the same effects upon thee That thou though by Death shalt be crowned with a Crown of Glory and married to him in whose right and merit thou shalt have that Crown And Behold him once again and you shall see not a beam but a stream of comfort for this day which is the day of his death he calls here The day of the gladnesse of his heart Behold him crowned in the day of the gladnesse of his heart The fulnesse the compasse the two Hemispheres of Heaven are often designed to us in these two names Ioy and Glory If the Crosse of Christ the Death of Christ present us both these how neare doth it bring how fully doth it deliver Heaven it self to us in this life And then we heare the Apostle say We see Iesus for the suffering of Death crowned with Honour and Glory There is half Heaven got by Death Glory And then for the joy that was set before him he indured the Crosse There is the other half Ioy All Heaven purchased by Death And therefore if any man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed saith the Apostle but let him glorifie God In isto Nomine as the vulgate read it In that behalfe as we translate it But In isto Nomine saith S. August Let us glorifie God in that Name Non solum in nomine Christiani sed Chriani patientis not onely because he is a Christian in his Baptisme but a Christian in a second Baptisme a Baptisme of bloud not onely as he hath received Christ in accepting his Institution but because he hath conformed himself to Christ in fulfilling his sufferings And therefore though we admit naturall and humane sorrow in the calamities which overtake us and surround us in this life for as all glasses will gather drops and tears from externall causes so this very glasse which we looke upon now our Solomon in the Text our Saviour had those sadnesses of heart toward his Passion and Agonies in his passion yet count it all Ioy when you fall into tentations saith the Apostle All Ioy that is both the interest and the principall hath the earnest and the bargain for if you can conceive joy in your tribulations in this world how shall that joy be multiplied unto you when no tribulation shall be mingled with it There is not a better evidence nor a more binding earnest of everlasting Joy in the next world then to find Ioy of heart in the tribulations of this fixe thy self therefore upon this first glasse this Solomon thy Saviour Behold King Solomon crownd c. and by conforming thy self to his holy sadnesse and humiliation thou shalt also become like him in his Joy and Glory But then the hand of God hath not set up but laid down another Glasse wherein thou maist see thy self a glasse that reflects thy self and nothing but thy selfe Christ who was the other glasse is like thee in every thing but not absolutely for sinne is excepted but in this glasse presented now The Body of our Royall but dead Master and Soveraigne we cannot we doe not except sinne Not onely the greatest man is subject to naturall infirmities Christ himself was so but the holiest man is subject to Originall and Actuall sinne as thou art and so a â—it glasse for thee to see thy self in Ieat showes a man his face as well as Crystall nay a Crystall glasse will not show a man his face except it be steeled except it be darkned on the backside Christ as he was a pure Crystall glasse as he was God had not been a glasse for us to have seen our selves in except he had been steeled darkened with our humane nature Neither was he ever so throughly darkened as that he could present us wholly to our selves because he had no sinne without seeing of which we do not see our selves Those therefore that are like thee in all things subject to humane infirmities subject to sinnes and yet are translated and translated by Death to everlasting Ioy and Glory
to fetch fire at the hearth and incapable of any drop of Christs blood from heaven or of any teare of contrition in themselves not a sheard to fetch water at the pit I will breake them as a Potters vessell quod non potest instaurari says God in Ieremy There shall be no possible meanes of those means which God hath ordained in his Church to recompact them againe no voice of Gods word to draw them no threatnings of Gods judgements shall drive them no censures of Gods Church shall fit them no Sacrament shall cement and glue them to Christs body againe In temporall blessings he shall be unthankfull in temporall afflictions he shall be obdurate And these two shall serve as the upper and nether stone of a mill to grinde this reprobate sinner to powder Lastly this is to be done by Christs falling upon him and what is that I know some Expositors take this to be but the falling of Gods judgements upon him in this world But in this world there is no grinding to powder all Gods judgements here for any thing that we can know have the nature of Physick in them may are wont to cure no man is here so absolutely broken in pieces but that he may be re-united we chuse therefore to follow the Ancients in this That the falling of this stone upon this Reprobate is Christs last irrecoverable falling upon him in his last judgment that when hee shall wish that the Hills might fall and cover him this stone shall fall grinde him to powder He shall be broken and he no more found says the Prophet yea he shall be broken and no more sought No man shall consider him what he is now nor remember him what he was before For that stone which in Daniel was cut out without hands which was a figure of Christ who came without ordinary generation when that great Image was to be overthrown broke not an arme or a leg but brake the whole Image in peeces and it wrought not onely upon the weak parts but it brake all the clay the iron the brasse the silver the gold so when this stone fals thus when Christ comes to judgement he shall not onely condemn him for his clay his earthly and covetous sinnes nor for his iron his revengefull oppressing and rustly sinnes nor for his brasse his shining and glittering sinnes which he hath filed and polished but he shall fall upon his silver and gold his religious and precious sinnes his hypocriticall hearing of Sermons his singular observing of Sabbaths his Pharisaicall giving of almes and as well his subtill counterfeiting of Religion as his Atheisticall opposing of religion this stone Christ himselfe shall fall upon him and a showre of other stones shall oppresse him too Sicut pluit laqueâ—s says David As God rained springs and snares upon them in this world abundance of temporall blessings to be occasions of sinne unto them So plues grandinem he shall raine such haile-stones upon them as shall grinde them to powder there shall fall upon him the naturall Law which was written in his heart and did rebuke him then when he prepared for a sinne there shall fall upon him the written Law which cryed out from the mouthes of the Prophets in these places to avert him from sinne there shall fall upon him those sinnes which he hath done and those sins which he hath not done if nothing but want of means opportunity hindred him from doing them there shall fall upon him those sinnes which he hath done after anothers dehortation and those which others have done after his provocation there the stones of Nineveh shall fall upon him and of as many Cities as have repented with lesse proportions of mercy and grace then God afforded him there the rubbage of Sodom and Gomorrah shall fall upon him and as many Cities as in their ruine might have been examples to him All these stones shall fall upon him and to add weight to all these Christ Jesus himselfe shall fall upon his conscience with unanswerable questions and grinde his soule to powder But hee that overcometh shall not bee hurt by the second death he that feeles his own fall upon this stone shall never feel this stone fall upon him he that comes to a remorse early and earnestly after a sinne and seeks by ordinary meanes his reconcileation to God in his Church is in the best state that man can be in now for howsoever we cannot say that repentance is as happy an estate as Innocency yet certainly every particular man feels more comfort and spirituall joy after a true repentance for a sin then he had in that degree of Innocence which he had before he committed that sinne and therefore in this case also we may safely repeat those words of Augustine Audeo dicere I dare be bold to say that many a man hath been the better for some sin Almighty God who gives that civill wisdome to make use of other mens infirmities give us also this heavenly wisdome to make use of our own particular sins that thereby our own wretched conditions in our selves and our meanes of reparation in Iesus Christ may be the more manifested unto us To whom with the blessed Spirit c. SERMON XXXVI Preached at Saint Pauls upon Christmasse day 1621. JOHN 1. 8. He was not that Light but was sent to bear witnesse of that Light IT is an injury common to all the Evangelists as Irenaeus notes that all their Gospels were severally refused by one Sect of Hereticks or other But it was proper to Saint Iohn alone to be refused by a Sect that admitted all the other three Evangelists as Epiphanius remembers and refused onely Saint Iohn These were the Alogiani a limme and branch of the Arians who being unable to looke upon the glorious Splendour the divine Glory attributed by Saint Iohn to this Logos which gave them their name of Alogiani this Word this Christ not comprehending this Mystery That this Word was so with God as that it was God they tooke a round way and often practised to condemne all that they did not understand and therefore refuse the whole Gospell Indeed his whole Gospell is comprehended in the beginning thereof In this first Chapter is contracted all that which is extensively spred and dilated through the whole Booke For here is first the Foundation of all the Divinitie of Christ to the 15. verse Secondly the Execution of all the Offices of Christ to the 35. verse And then the Effect the Working the Application of all that is who were to Preach all this to the ends of the world the calling of his Apostles to the end of the Chapter for the first Christs Divinity there is enough expressed in the very first verse alone for there is his Eternitie intimated in that word In principio in the beginning The first booke of the Bible Genesis and the last booke that is that
watchfulnesse that we fall not into sinne we have lucem essentiae possession and fruition of heaven and of the light of Gods presence and then if we doe by infirmity fall into sinne yet by this denudation of our soules this manifestation of our sinnes to God by confession and to that purpose a gladnesse when we heare our sinne spoken of by the preacher we have lumen gloriae an inchoation of our glorified estate and then an other couple of these lights which we propose to be considered is lumen fidei and lumen naturae the light of faith and the light of nature Of these two lights Faith and Grace first and then Nature and Reason we said something before but never too much be cause contentious spirits have cast such clouds upon both these lights that some have said Nature doth all alone and others that Nature hath nothing to do at all but all is Grace we decline wranglings that tend not to edification we say onely to our present purpose which is the operation of these severall couples of lights that by this light of Faith to him which hath it all that is involved in Prophecies is clear and evident as in a History already done and all that is wrapped up in promises is his own already in performance That man needs not goe so high for his assurance of a Messias and Redeemer as to the first promise made to him in Adam nor for the limitation of the stock and race from whence this Messias should come so far as to the renewing of this promise in Abraham nor for the description of this Messias who he should be and of whom he should be born as to Esaias nor to Micheas for the place nor for the time when he should accomplish all this so far as to Daniel no nor so far as to the Evangelists themselves for the History and the evidence that all this that was to be done in his behalf by the Messias was done 1600. yeares since But he hath a whole Bible and an abundant Library in his own heart and there by this light of Faith which is not onely a knowing but an applying an appropriating of all to thy benefit he hath a better knowledge then all this then either Propheticall or Evangelicall for though both these be irrefragable and infallible proofs of a Messias the Propheticall that he should the Evangelicall that he is come yet both these might but concern others this light of Faith brings him home to thee How sure so ever I be that the world shall never perish by water yet I may be drowned and how sure so ever that the Lamb of God hath taken away the sinnes of the world I may perish without I have this applicatory Faith And as he needs not looke back to Esay nor Abraham nor Adam for the Messias so neither needs he to looke forward He needs not stay in expectation of the Angels Trumpets to awaken the dead he is not put to his usquequo Domine How long Lord wilt thou defer our restitution but he hath already died the death of the righteous which is to die to sinne He hath already had his buriall by being buried with Christ in Baptisme he hath had his Resurrection from sinne his Ascension to holy purposes of amendment of life and his Iudgement that is peace of Conscience sealed unto him and so by this light of applying Faith he hath already apprehended an eternall possession of Gods eternall Kingdome And the other light in this second couple is Lux naturae the light of Nature This though a fainter light directs us to the other Nature to Faith and as by the quantitie in the light of the Moone we know the position and distance of the Sunne how far or how neare the Sunne is to her so by the working of the light of Nature in us we may discern by the measure and virtue and heat of that how near to the other greater light the light of Faith we stand If we finde our naturall faculties rectified so as that that free will which we have in Morall and Civill actions be bent upon the externall duties of Religion as every naturall man may out of the use of that free will come to Church heare the Word preached and believe it to be true we may be sure the other greater light is about us If we be cold in them in actuating in exalting in using our naturall faculties so farre we shall be deprived of all light we shall not see the Invisible God in visible things which Saint Paul makes so inexcusable so unpardonable a thing we shall not see the hand of God in all our worldly crosses nor the seal of God in all our worldly blessings we shall not see the face of God in his House his presence here in the Church nor the mind of God in his Gospell that his gracious purposes upon mankinde extend so particularly or reach so far as to include us I shall heare in the Scripture his Vinite omnes come all and yet I shall thinke thatâ— his eye was not upon me that his eye did not becken me and I shall heare the Deus vult omnes salves that God would save all and yet I shall finde some perverse reason in my selfe why it is not likely that God will save me I am commanded scrutari Scripturas to search the scriptures now that is not to be able to repeat any history of the Bible without booke it is not to ruffle a Bible and upon any word to turne to the Chapter and to the verse but this is exquisit a scrutatio the true searching of the Scriptures to finde all the histories to be examples to me all the prophecies to induce a Saviour for me all the Gospell to apply Christ Jesus to me Turne over all the folds and plaits of thine owne heart and finde there the infirmities and waverings of thine owne faith and an ability to say Lord I beleeve help mine unbeleefe and then though thou have no Bible in thy hand or though thou stand in a dark corner nay though thou canst not reade a letter thou hast searched that Scripture thou hast turned to Marke 9. ver 24 Turne thine eare to God and heare him turning to thee and saying to thy soule I will marry thee to my selfe for ever and thou hast searched that Scripture and turned to Hos. 2. ver 19. Turne to thine owne histery thine owne life and if thou canst reade there that thou hast endeavoured to turne thine ignorance into knowledge and thy knowledge into Practice if thou finde thy selfe to be an example of that rule of Christs If you know these things blessed are you if you do them then thou hast searched that Scripture and turned to Io. 13. ver 14. This is Scrutari Scripturas to Search the Scriptures not as though thou wouldest make a concordance but an application as thou wouldest search a
calling by being personally here at these exercises of Religion thou art some kinde of witnesse of this light For in how many places of the world hath Christ yet never opened such doors for his ordinary service in all these 1600. yeers And in how many places hath he shut up these doors of his true worship within these three or foure yeers Quod citaris huc That thou art brought hither within distance of his voyce within reach of his food intra sphaeram Activitatis within the spheare and latitude of his ordinary working that is into his house into his Church this is a citation a calling answerable to Iohn Baptists first calling from his fathers dead loins and his mothers barren wombe and his second citation was before he was borne in his mothers wombe When Mary came to visit Elizabeth the childe sprang in her belly as soone as Maries voice sounded in her eares And though naturally upon excesse of joy in the mother the childe may spring in her yet the Evangelist meanes to tell an extraordinary and supernaturall thing and whether it were an anticipation of reason in the childe some of the Fathers think so though St. Augustine do not that the childe understood what he did or that this were a fulfilling of that prophecy That he should be filled with the holy Ghost from his mothers wombe all agree that this was an exciting of him to this attestation of his Saviours presence whether he had any sense of it or no. Exultatio significat sayes St. Augustine This springing declared that his mother whose forerunner that childe should be was come And so both Origen and St. Cyrill refer that commendation which our Saviour gives him Inter natos Mulierum Among those that were born of women there was not a greater Prophet that is none that prophecyed before he was borne but he And such a citation beloved thou mayest have in this place and at this time A man may upon the hearing of something that strikes him that affects him feel this springing this exultation this melting and colliquation of the inwardest bowels of his soule a new affection a new passion beyond the joy ordinarily conceived upon earthly happinesses which though no naturall Philosopher can call it by a name no Anatomist assigne the place where it lyes yet I doubt not through Christ jesus but that many of you who are here now feele it and understand it this minute Citaris huc thou wast cited to come hither whether by a collaterall and oblique and occasionall motion or otherwise hither God hath brought thee and Citaris hîc here thou art cited to come neerer to him Now both these citations were before Iohn Baptist was borne both these affections to come to this place and to be affected with a delight here may be before thy regeneration which is thy spirituall birth a man is not borne not borne againe because he is at Church nor because he likes the Sermon Iohn Baptist had and thou must have a third citation which was in him from the desert into the publique into the world from contemplation to practice This was that mission that citation which most properly belongs to this Text when the word came to the voyce The word of God came to Iohn in the wildernesse and he came into all the Countrey preaching the Baptisme of repentance To that we must come to practise For in this respect an Vniversity is but a wildernesse though we gather our learning there our private meditation is but a wildernesse though we contemplate God there nay our being here is but a wildernesse though we serve God here if our service end so if we do not proceed to action and glorifie God in the publique And therefore Citaris huc thou art cited hither here thou must be and Citaris hîc thou art cited here to lay hold upon that grace which God offers in his Ordinance and Citaris hinc thou art cited from hence to embrace a calling in the world He that undertakes no course no vocation he is no part no member no limbe of the body of this world no eye to give light to others no eare to receive profit by others If he think it enough to be excrementall nayles to scratch and gripe others by his lazy usury and extortion or excrementall hayre made onely for ornament or delight of others by his wit or mirth or delightfull conversation these men have not yet felt this third citation by which they are called to glorifie God and so to witnesse for him in such publique actions as Gods cause for the present requires and comports with their calling And then Iohn Baptist had a fourth citation to bear witnesse for Christ by laying down his life for the Truth and this was that that made him a witnesse in the highest sense a Martyr God hath not served this citation upon us nor doth he threaten us with any approches towards it in the feare of persecution for religion But remember that Iohn Baptists Martyrdome was not for the fundamentall rock the body of the Christian religion but for a morall truth for matter of manners A man may be bound to suffer much for a lesse matter then the utter overthrow of the whole frame and body of religion But leaving this consideration for what causes a man is bound to lay downe his life consider we now but this that a man lays downe his life for Christ and beares witnesse of him even in death when he prefers Christ before this world when he desires to be dissolved and be with him and obeyes cheerefully that citation by the hand of death whensoever it comes and that citation must certainly be served upon you all whether this night in your beds or this houre at the doore no man knowes You who were cited hither to heare and cited here to consider and cited hence to worke in a calling in the world must be cited from thence too from the face to the bosome of the earth from treading upon other mens to a lying downe in your owne graves And yet that is not your last citation there is fifth In the grave Iohn Baptist does and we must attend a fifth citation from the grave to a Iudgement The first citation hither to Church was served by Example of other men you saw them come and came The second citation here in the Church was served by the Preacher you heard him and beleeved The third from hence is served by the law and by the Magistrate they binde you to embrace a profession and a calling and you do so The fourth which is from thence from this to the next world is served by nature in death he touches you and you sinke This fifth to Iudgement shall be by an Angell by an Archangell by the Lord himself The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout with the voyce of the Archangell and with
Circumcision in the flesh after the spirituall Circumcision in the heart is established by the Gospell their end is not Circumcision but Concision they pretend Reformation but they intend Destruction a tearing a renting a wounding the body and frame and peace of the Church and by all means and in all cases Videte Concisionem Beware of Concision First then we shall from these words consider the lothnesse of God to lose us For first he leaves us not without a Law he bids and he forbids and then he does not surprise us with obsolete laws he leaves not his laws without proclamations he refreshes to our memories and represents to us our duties with such commonefactions as these in our Text Videte Cavete this and this I have commanded you Videte see that ye do it this and this will hinder you Cavete beware ye do it not Beware of Concision And this thus derived and digested into these three branches first Gods lothnesse to lose us and then his way of drawing us to him by manifestation of his will in a law and lastly his way of holding us with him by making that law effectuall upon us by these his frequent commonefactions Videte Cavete looke to it beware of it this will be our first part And then our second will be the thing it self that falls under this inhibition and caution which is Concision that is a tearing a renting a shredding in peeces that which should be intire In which second part we shall also have as we had in the former three branches for we shall consider first Concisionem corporis the shredding of the body of Christ into fragments by unnecessary wrangling in Doctrinall points and then Concisionem vestis the shredding of the garment of Christ into rags by unnecessary wrangling in matter of Discipline and ceremoniall points and lastly Concisionem spiritus which will follow upon the former two the concision of thine owne spirit and heart and minde and soule and conscience into perplexities and into sandy and incoherent doubts and scruples and jealousies and suspitions of Gods purpose upon thee so as that thou shalt not be able to recollect thy self nor reconsolidate thy self upon any assurance and peace with God which is onely to be had in Christ and by his Church Videte Concisionem beware of tearing the body the Doctrine beware of tearing the Garment the Discipline beware of tearing thine owne spirit and conscience from her adhaesion her agglutination her cleaving to God in a holy tranquillity and acquiescence in his promise and mercy in the merits of his Sonne applyed by the holy Ghost in the Ministry of the Church For our first consideration of Gods lothnesse to lose us this is argument enoughâ— That we are here now now at the participation of that grace which God alwayes offers to al such Congregations as these gathered in his name For I pray God there stand any one amongst us here now that hath not done something since yesterday that made him unworthy of being here to day and who if he had been left under the damp and mist of yesterdayes sinne without the light of new grace would never have found way hither of himself If God be weary of me and would faine be rid of me he needs not repent that he wrapped me up in the Covenant and derived me of Christian parents though he gave me a great help in that nor repent that he bred me in a true Church though he afforded me a great assistance in that nor repent that he hath brought me hither now to the participation of his Ordinances though thereby also I have a great advantage for if God be weary of me and would be rid of me he may finde enough in me now and here to let me perish A present levity in me that speake a present formality in you that heare a present Hypocrisie spread over us all would justifie God if now and here he should forsake us When our blessed Saviour sayes When the Son of man comes shall he finde faith upon earth we need not limit that question so if he come to a Westminster to an Exchange to an Army to a Court shall he finde faith there but if he come to a Church if he come hither shall he finde faith here If as Christ speaks in another sense That Iudgement should begin at his owne house the great and generall judgement should begin now at this his house and that the first that should be taken up in the clouds to meet the Lord Jesus should be we that are met now in this his house would we be glad of that acceleration or would we thank him for that haste Men of little faith I feare we would not There was a day when the Sonnes of God presented themselves before the Lord and Satan came also amongst them one Satan amongst many Sonnes of God Blessed Lord is not our case far otherwise do not we we who as we are but we are all the Sonnes of Satan present our selves before thee and yet thou Lord art amongst us Is not the spirit of slumber and wearinesse upon one and the spirit of detraction and mis-interpretation upon another upon one the spirit of impenitence for former sinnes and the spirit of recidivation into old or of facility and opennesse to admit tentations into new upon another We as we are but we are all the Sonnes of Satan and thou Lord the onely Sonne of God onely amongst us If thou Lord wert weary of me and wouldest be rid of me may many a soule here say Lord thou knowest and I know many a midnight when thou mightest have been rid of me if thou hadst left me to my selfe then But vigilavit Doninus the Lord vouchsafed to watch over me and deliciae ejus the delight of the Lord was to be with me And what is there in me but his mercy but then what is there in his mercy that that may not reach to all as well as to me The Lord is loth to lose any the Lord would not the death of any not of any sinner much lesse if he do not see him nor consider him so the Lord would not lose him though a sinner much lesse make him a sinner that he might be lost Vult omnes the Lord would have all men come unto him and be saved which was our first consideration and we have done with that and our second is The way by which he leads us to him that he declares and manifests his will unto us in a Law he bids and he forbids The laborers in the Vine-yard took it ill at the Stewards hand and at his Masters too that those which came late to the labour were made equall with them who had borne the heate and the burden of the day But if the Steward or the Master had never meant or actually never had given any thing at all to them that had borne the heate and the
shall feare the Lord and his goodnesse in the later dayes And beyond this land there is no more Sea beyond this mercy no more Judgement for with this mercy the Chapter ends Consider our text then as a whole Globe as an intire Spheare and then our two Hemispheares of this Globe our two parts of this text will bee First that no perversnesse of ours no rebellion no disobedience puts God beyond his mercy nor extinguishes his love still hee calls Israel rebellious Israel his Children nay his owne anger his owne Judgements then when hee is in the exercise thereof in the execution thereof puts him not beyond his mercy extinguishes not his love hee hides not his face from them then hee leaves them not then in the darke hee accompanies their calamity with a light hee makes that time though cloudy though overcast yet a day unto them the Children of Israel shall abide many days in this case But then as no disobedience removes God from himself for he is love and mercy so no interest of ours in God doth so priviledge us but that hee will execute his Judgements upon his Children too even the Children of Israel shall fall into these Calamities And from this first part wee shall passe to the second from these generall considerations That no punishments should make us desperate that no favours should make us secure we shall passe to the particular commination and judgements upon the children of Israel in this text without King without Prince c. In our first part we stop first upon this declaration of his mercy in this fatherly appellation Children the children of Israel He does not call them children of Israel as though hee disavowed them and put them off to another Father but therefore because they are the Children of Israel they are his Children for hee had maried Israel and maried her to himselfe for ever Many of us are Fathers and from God here may learne tendernesse towards children All of us are children of some parents and therefore should hearken after the name of Father which is nomen pietatis potestatis a name that argues their power over us and our piety towards them and so concernes many of us in a double capacity as we are children and parents too but all of us in one capacity as we are children derived from other parents God is the Father of man otherwise then he is of other creatures He is the Father of all Creatures so Philo calls all Creatures sorâ—res suas his sisters but then all those sisters of man all those daughters of God are not alike maried God hath placed his Creatures in divers rankes and in divers conditions neither must any man thinke that he hath not done the duty of a Father if he have not placed all his Sonnes or not matched all his daughters in a condition equall to himselfe or not equall to one another God hath placed creatures in the heavens and creatures in the earth and creatures in the sea and yet all these creatures are his children and when he looked upon them all in their divers stations he saw omnia valde bora that all was very well And that Father that imploies one Sonne in learning another to husbandry another to Merchandise pursues Gods example in disposing his children his creatures diversly and all well Such creatures as the Raine though it may seem but an imperfect and ignoble creature fallen from the wombe of a cloud have God for their Father God is the Father of the Raine And such creatures as light have but God for their Father God is Pater lâ—minum the Father of lights Whether we take lights there to be the Angels created with the light some take it so or to be the severall lights set up in the heavens Sun and Moon and Stars some take it so or to be the light of Grace in infusion by the Spirit or the light of the Church in manifestation by the word for all these acceptations have convenient Authors and worthy to be followed God is the Father of lights of all lights but so he is of raine and clouds too And God is the Father of glory as Saint Paul styles him of all glory whether of those beames of glory which he sheds upon us here in the blessings and preferments of this life or that waight of glory which he reserves for us in the life to come From that inglorious drop of raine that falls into the dust and rises no more to those glorious Saints who shall rise from the dust and fall no more but as they arise at once to the fulnesse of Essentiall joy so arise daily in accidentiall joyes all are the children of God and all alike of kin to us And therefore let us not measure our avowing or our countenancing of our kindred by their measure of honour or place or riches in the world but let us looke how fast they grow in the root that is in the same worship of the same God who is ours and their Father too He is nearest of kin to me that is of the same religion with me as they are creatures they are of kin to me by the Father but as they are of the same Church and religion by Father and mother too Philo calls all creatures his sisters but all men are his brothers God is the Father of man in a stronger and more peculiar and more masculine sense then of other Creatures Filius particeps con-dominus cum patre as the law calls the Sonne the partner of the Father and fellow-Lord joint-Lord with the Father of all the possession that is to descend so God hath made man his partner and fellow-Lord of all his other creatures in Moses his Dominamini when he gives man a power to rule over them and in Davids Omnia subjecisti when he imprints there a naturall disposition in the creature to the obedience of man So high so very high a filiation hath God given man as that having another Sonne by another filiation a higher filiation then this by an eternall generation yet he was content that that Sonne should become this Sonne that the Sonne of God should become the Sonne of Man God is the Father of all of man otherwise then of all the rest but then of the children of Israel otherwise then of all other men For he bought them and is not be thy Father that hath bought thee says God by Moses Not to speake of that purchase which he made by the death of his Sonne for that belongs to all the world he bought the Jews in particular at such a price such silver and such gold such temporall and such spirituall benefits such a Land and such a Church such a Law and such a Religion as certainly he might have had all the world at that price If God would have manifested himselfe poured out himselfe to the Nations as hee did to
in that Dispersion which hath continued upon the Jews ever since the destruction of Ierusalem the Jews have been so far from having had any King as that they have not had a Constable of their owne in any part of the world no interest at all in any part of the Magistracy and Jurisdiction of the world any where but they are a whole Nation of Cains fugitives and vagabonds But howsoever it be the heat and the vehemency of this Commination fals upon this particular sine Rege they shall be without a King It was long before God afforded the Jews a King and he did not easily doe it then when he did it Not that he intended not that form of Government for them but because they would extort it from him before his time and because they asked it onely in that respect That they might be like their neighbours to whom God would not have had them too like And also because God to keep their thankfulnesse still awake would reserve and keep back some better thing then he had given them yet to give them at last For so he says as the Coronation of all his benefits to Israel of which there is a glorious Inventary in that Chapter Thou didst prosper into a Kingdome Till the Crown of glory be presented in the comming of the Messias thou canst not be happier Those therefore that allow but a conditionall Soveraignty in a Kingdome an arbitrary a temporary Soveraignty that may be transferred at the pleasure of another they oppose the Nolumus hoc we would not have we would not live under this form of Government not under a temporall Monarchy Nolumus hoc Those that determine Allegiance and civil obedience onely by their own religion and think themselves bound to obey none that is of another perswasion they oppose the Nolumus hunc We will not have this man to reign over us and so make their relations and fix their dependencies upon forein hopes Nolumus hunc Those that fix a super-Soveraignty in the people or in a Presbytery they oppose the Nolumus sic we would not have things carried thus They pretend to know the happinesse of living under that form A Kingdome and to acknowledge the person of the King but they would be governed every man according to his own minde And all these the Nolumus hoc they that desire not the continuance of that form of a Kingdome in an Independency but would have a dependency upon a forein power And the Nolumus hunc they that are disaffected to the person of him that governs for the present And the Nolumus sic they that will prescribe to the King ends and ways to those ends all these assist this malediction this commination which God interminates here as the greatest calamity sine Rege They shall be without a King for this is to Canton out a Monarchy to Ravell out a Kingdome to Crumble out a King There is another branch in this Part which is of Temporall calamities That they shall be sine Principe Without a King and without a Prince The word in the originall is Sar and take it as it sounds most literally in our Translation The Prince is the Kings Son so this very word is used in Esay Sar Salem The Son of God is called the Prince of Peace And so the commination upon the Jews is thus farre aggravated That they shall be without a Prince that is without a certain heire and Successor which uncertainty more then any thing else slackens the industry of all men at home and sharpens the malice of all men abroad fears at home and hopes abroad discompose and disorder all where they are sine Principe without a certain heire But the word enlarges it selfe farther for Sar signifies a Iudge when Moses rebuked a Malefactor he replies to Moses Who made thee a Iudge And in many very many places Sar signifies a Commander in the Warres So that where the Iustice of the State or the Military power of the State faile and they faile where the men who doe or should execute those places will not or dare not doe what appertains to their places there this Commination fals They are without a Prince that is without future assurance without present power or Justice But we passe to the spirituall Commination that is They shall be without Sacrifice without Ephod without Image without Teraphim It is not that their understanding shall be taken away no nor that the tendernesse of their conscience or their zeale shall be taken away It is not that they shall come to any impiety or ill opinion of God They may have religious and well-disposed hearts and yet be under a curse if they have not a Church an outward Discipline established amongst them It is not enough for a man to beleeve aright but he must apply himself to some Church to some outward form of worshipping God It is not enough for a Church to hold no error in doctrine but it must have outward assistances for the devotion of her children and outward decency for the glory of her God Both these kindes are intended in the particulars of this Text Sacrifice and Ephod Image and Teraphim First it is a part of the curse to be without Sacrifice Now if according to S. Hieromes interpretation this Text be a Prophecy upon the Jews after Christs time and that the Malediction consist in this That they shall not embrace the Christian Religion nor the Christian Church entertain them if the Prophet drive to this They shall bee without Sacrifices because they shall not be of the Christian Church certainly the Christian Church is not to be without Sacrifice It is a miserable impotency to be afraid of words That from a former holy and just detestation of reall errors we should come to an uncharitable detestation of persons and to a contentious detestation of words We dare not name Merit nor Penance nor Sacrifice nor Altar because they have been abused How should we be disappointed and disfurnished of many words in our ordinary conversation if we should be bound from all words which blasphemous men have prophaned or uncleane men have defiled with their ill use of those words There is Merit there is Penance there is Sacrifice there are Altars in that sense in which those blessed men who used those words first at first used them The Communion Table is an Altar and in the Sacrament there is a Sacrifice Not onely a Sacrifice of Thanksgiving common to all the Congregation but a Sacrifice peculiar to the Priest though for the People There he offers up to God the Father that is to the remembrance to the contemplation of God the Father the whole body of the merits of Christ Iesus and begges of him that in contemplation of that Sacrifice so offered of that Body of his merits he would vouchsafe to return and to apply those merits to that Congregation A Sacrifice as farre
himself is fearelesse of others he betrayes he circumvents And he oppresses with scorne him whom poverty hath made the subject of pity and of prayers he makes the anvile of scorne and of jeasts For so far our first word Gnashak carries his signification and our meditation he oppresses by violence by deceit by scorne brutishly devillishly and more which is the qualification of the fault and was our first consideration and all this upon the poore which is the specification of the persons and is our second You see who this oppressor is and how you may know him you have his markes Violence deceit scorne But who is this poor man and how shall you know him How shall you know whether he that askes be truly poor or no Truly beloved there is scarce any one thing in which our ignorance is more excusable then in this To know whether he to whom we give be truly poor or no In no case is our inconsideration more pardonable then in this God will never examine me very strictly why I was no stricter in examining that mans condition to whom I gave mine almes If I give to one that is poor in my sight I shall finde that almes upon Gods score amongst them who were poor in Gods sight And my mistaking the man shall never make God mistake my meaning Where I finde undeniable unresistible evidence to the contrary when I see a man able in his limbes live in continuall idlenesse when I see a man poore in his meanes and oppressed with his charge spend in continuall drunkennesse in this case I were the oppressor of the poor if I should give to that man for this were to give the childrens bread to dogs And that is not a name too bad for them for foris Canes they are dogs that are without that is without the Church And how few of these who make beggery an occupation from their infancy were ever within Church how few of them ever Christned or ever maried Foris Canes they are dogs that are without and the Childrens bread must not be given to Dogs But to pursue our first intention and so to finde out these poor in the origination of the words chosen by the holy Ghost here we have in this text two words for the poor One is Ebion and Ebion is a begger It was the name given to one of those first heretiques who occasioned the writing of St. Iohns Gospell he was called Ebion So that it may well be imagined that those first Heretiques were Mendicants Men that professed begging and lived upon the labours and sweat of other men For the Ebionit is a begger not onely he that needs but he that declares his need that askes that craves that begs for the root of Ebion is Ahab which is not onely to desire but to declare that desire to aske to crave to beg Now this poor man must be relieved The charity that God required in Israel was that no man should be put to this necessity but provided for otherwise There shall be no begger amongst you for there is our very word no Ebionite that is no poor man shall be put to beg But yet in the Prophet Ieremy that man is well spoken of that did good even to the Ebionit to the begger he that is brought to a necessity of asking must be relieved Not that we are not bound to give till another aske or never to open our hand till another open his mouth for as Saint Iohn did in the beginning of the Revelation a man may see a sound see a voice A sad aspect a pale look a hollow cheek a bloudlesse lip a sonke eye a trembling hand speake so lowd as that if I will not heare them from him God will heare them against me In many cases and with many persons it is a greater anguish to aske then to want and easier to starve then to beg therefore I must hearken after another voice and with another organ I must hearken with mine eye Many times I may see need speake when the needy man says nothing and his case may cry aloud when he is silent Therefore I must lay mine eare to the ground and hearken after them that lie in the dust and enquire after the distresses of such men for this is an imitation of Gods preventing grace that grace then which we can conceive no higher thing in God himselfe that God should be found of them that seek him not if I relieve that man that was ashamed to tell me he wanted The Ebionit the begger but not he onely must be relieved for our word in this part of the text is not Ebion but a word derived from Dalal and Dalal in this word signifies Exhaustum attenuatum a man whose former estate is exhausted and gone or whose present labours doe not prosper but that God for ends best known to himselfe exercises him with continuall poverty the word signifies also a man enfeebled and decrepit with age and more then that the word signifies sicknesse too for this very word we have in Hezekiahs mouth The Lord will cut me off with sicknesse So that now you have the specification of the person who is the poor man that is most properly the object of your charity he whose farmer estate is wasted and not by his vices but by the hand of God He whose present industry does not prosper He who is overtaken with Age and so the lesse able to repaire his wants and in his age afflicted with sicknesse and so the lesse able to indure his wants And this poor man this labouring man this decayed man this aged man this sickly man this oppressor in our text pursues and pursues with violence with deceit with scorne And so have you the qualification of the fault which was our first and the specification of the persons which was our second consideration But before we depart from this branch I remember I asked leave at first onely to stirre this consideration onely to propound this Probleme onely to aske this question whether Envy and Emulation and supplantation of Superiors or this oppression and conculcation of Inferiours in this kinde were in the nature and root thereof the greater sinne and surely the sentence and the Judgement will be against this oppressor of the poor For Envy conceived against a man in place hath evermore some emulation of those gifts which enable a man for that place Whosoever labours to supplant another that he may succeed will in some measure endevour to be fit for that succession So that though it be but a squint-eye and not a direct look yet some eye some aspect the envious man hath upon vertue Besides he that envies a higher person he does not practise as the Poet says sine talione He deales with a man that can be at full even with him and can deale as ill with him But he that oppresses the poor digs in a dunghill for wormes And he
departs from that posture which God in nature gave him that is erect to look upward for his eye is always down upon them that lie in the dust under his feet Certainly he that seares up himselfe and makes himselfe insensible of the cries and curses of the poor here in this world does but prepare himselfe for the howlings gnashings of teeth in the world to come It is the Serpents taste the Serpents diet Dust shalt thou eate all the days of thy life and he feeds but on dust that oppresses the poor And as there is evidently more inhumanity more violation of nature in this oppression then in emulation so may there well seem to be more impiety and more violation of God himselfe by that word which the holy Ghost chooses in the next place which is Reproach He that oppresses the poor reproaches his Maker This word which we translate to Reproach Theodotion translates to Blaspheme And blasphemy is an odious thing even towards men For men may be blasphemed The servant of God Moses is blasphemed as well as God And Goliah blasphemed the Israel of God as well as the God of Israel and for the most part where we read Reviling the word is Blaspheming Our word here that we may still pursue our first way a reverent consideration of the elegancy of the Scriptures in the origination of the words is Charak and this word Iob uses as it is used in our text for reproach My heart shall not reproach me so long as I live And this this reproaching of the heart is in many cases a Blaspheming and a strange one a self-blaspheming When I have had by the goodnesse of Gods Spirit a true sense of my sinnes a true remorse and repentance of those sinnes true Absolution from those sinnes true seales of reconciliation after those sinnes true diligence and preclusion of occasions of relapsing into those sinnes still to suspect my state in Gods favour and my full redintegration with him still to deny my selfe that peace which his Spirit by these meanes offers me still to call my repentance imperfect and the Sacramentall seales ineffectuall still to accuse my selfe of sinnes thus devested thus repented this is to reproach this is to to blaspheme mine owne soule If I will say with Iob My heart shall reproach me of nothing this is not that I will accuse my selfe of no sinne or say the elect of God cannot sinne no nor that God sees not the sinnes of the elect nor that God is not affected or angry with those sinnes and those sinners as long as they remaine unrepented but after I have accused my selfe of those sinnes and brought them into Judgement by way of Confession and received my pardon under seale in the Sacrament and pleaded that pardon to the Church by a subsequent amendment of life then I reproach my selfe of nothing for this were a self-blaspheming and a reproaching of mine owne soule Now the word of our text in the root thereof Charak is manifestare prostituere It is to publish the fault or to prostitute the fame of any man extrajudicially not in a right forme of Judgement and amongst those men who are not to be his Judges So to fill itching eares with rumours and whisperings so to minister matter and fuell to fiery tongues so to lay imputations and aspersions upon men though that which we say of those men be true is a libelling is a calumny is a blaspheming and a reproach in the word of this text for it is manifestare prostituere to publish a mans faults and to prostitute a mans fame there where his faults can receive no remedy if they be true nor his fame Reparation if they be false It is properly to speake ill of a man and not before a competent Judge And in such a sense a man may reproach God himselfe But is there then a Judge between God and man Shall not the Iudge of all the earth doe right is Abrahams question but there that Judge of all the earth is God himself But is there a Judge of heaven too A Judge between God and man for Gods proceeding there There is The Scripture is a Judge by which God himself will be tryed As the Law is our Judge and the Judge does but declare what is Law so the Scripture is our Judge and God proceeds with us according to those promises and Judgements which he hath laid down in the Scripture When God says in Esay Iudge betweene me and my Vineyard certainly God means that there is something extant some contract some covenant something that hath the nature of a Law some visible some legible thing to judge by And Christ tels us what that is Search the Scriptures says hee for by them wee must bee tryed for our lives So then if I come to thinke that God will call me in question for my life for my eternall life by any way that hath not the Nature of a Law And by the way it is of the Nature and Essence of a Law before it come to bind that it be published if I think that God will condemn me by any unrevealed will any reserved purpose in himself this is to reproach God in the word of this Text for it is prostituere to prostitute to exhibit God otherwise then he hath exhibited himselfe and to charge God with a proceeding upon secret and unrevealed purposes and not rest in his Scriptures God will try us at last God himself will be tryed all the way by his Scriptures And to charge God with the damnation of men otherwise then by his Tantummodo Crede I have commanded thee to beleeve and thou hast not done that And by his Fac hoc vives I have commanded thee to live well and thou hast not done that which are conditions evidently laid downe in the Scriptures and not grounded upon any secret purpose is a reproaching of God in the word of this Text. This this Oppressor of the poor is said to doe here He reproaches the Maker God in that notion as he is the Creator Now this is the clearest notion and fastest apprehension and first handle that God puts out to man to lay hold upon him by as hee is The Creator For though God did elect mee before hee did actually create mee yet God did not mean to elect mee before hee meant to create mee when his purpose was upon me to elect me surely his purpose had passed upon me to create mee for when he elected me I was I. So that this is our first notion of God towards us as he is The Creator The School will receive a pregnant child from his parents and work upon him The Vniversity will receive a grounded Scholar from the School and work upon him The State or the Church will receive a qualified person from the University and worke by him But still the State and the Church and the University and the first School it self
man whom he hath not made him able to relieve So then no more being needfull to be said of the persons the poor nor of the Act showing of mercy to the poor there remaines no more in this last part but according to our way all the way to consider the origination and latitude of this last word Cahad this honouring of God The word does properly signifie Augere ampliare To enlarge God to amplifie to dilate God to make infinite God shall I dare to say more God certainely God to more then he was before O who can expresse this abundant this superabundant largenesse of Gods goodnesse to man that there is a power put into mans hands to enlarge God to dilate to propagate to amplifie God himselfe I will multiply this people says God and they shall not be few I will glorifie them and they shall not be small there 's the word of our text God enables me to glorifie him to amplifie him to encrease him by my mercy my almes For this is not onely that encrease that Saint Hierom intends that he that hath pity on the poor Foeneratur Domino he lends upon use to the Lord for this though it be an encrease is but an encrease to himselfe but he that showes mercy to the poore encreases God says our text dilates enlarges God How Corpus aptasti mihi when Christ comes into the world says Saint Paul he says to his Father Thou hast prepared and fitted a body for me That was his naturall body that body which he assumed in the bowels of the blessed Virgin They that pretend to enlarge this body by multiplication by making millions of these bodies in the Sacraments by the way of Transubstantiation they doe not honour this body whose honour is to sit in the same dimensions and circumscriptions at the right hand of God But then as at his comming into this world God had fitted him a body so in the world he had fitted himselfe another body a Mysticall body a Church purchased with his bloud Now this body this Mysticall body I feed I enlarge I dilate and amplifie by my mercy and my charity For as God says to Ierusalem Thou wast in thy bloud thou wast not salted nor swadled no eye pityed thee but thou wast cast out into the open field and I loved thee I washed thee I apparelled and adorned thee prosperataes in regnum I never gave thee over till I saw thee an established kingdome so may all those Saints of God say to God himselfe to the Sonne of God invested in this body this mysticall body the Church thou was cast out into the open field all the world persecuted thee and then we gave thee suck with our bloud we clothed thee with our bodies we built thee houses and adorned and endowed those houses to thine honour prosperatus es in regnum we never gave over spending and doing and suffering for thy glory till thou hadst an established kingdome over all the earth And so thou thy body thy mysticall body the Church is honoured that is amplified dilated enlarged by our mercy Magnificat Anima mea Dominum was the exultation of the blessed Virgin My soule doth magnifie the Lord. When the meditations of my heart digested into writing or preaching or any other declaration of Gods glory carry or advance the knowledge of God in other men then My soule doth magnifie the Lord enlarge dilate amplifie God But when I relieve any poor wretch of the houshold of the faithfull with mine almes then my mercy magnifies the Lord occasions him that receives to magnifie the Lord by this thanksgiving and them that see it to magnifie the Lord by their imitation in the like works of mercy And so far doe these two elegant words chosen here by the holy Ghost carry our meditation in the first Canan God makes the charitable man partaker of his own highest power mercy and in the other Cabad God enables us by this mercy to honour him so far as to dilate to enlarge to amplifie him that is that body which he in his Sonne hath invested by purchase his Church We have done If you will but claspe up all this in your owne bosomes if you will but lay it to your owne hearts you may goe A poorer thing is not in the world nor a sicker which you may remember to have been one signification of this word poore then thine own soule And therefore the Chalde paraphrase renders this text thus He that oppresses the poore reproaches his owne soule for his owne soule is as poore as any whom he can oppresse To a begger that needs and askes but bodily things thou wilt say Alasse poore soule and wilt thou never say Alasse poore soule to thy self that needest spirituall things If thy affections thy pleasures thy delights beg of thee and importune thee so farre to bestow upon them say unto them I have those that are nearer me then you Wife and Children and I must not empoverith them to give unto you I must not sterve my family to feed my pleasures But if this Wife and Children begge and importune so farre say unto them too I have one that is nearer me then all you a soule and I must not endanger that to satisfie you I must not provide Ioyntures and Portions with the damnifying with the damning of mine owne soule It is a miserable Alchimy and extracting of spirits that stills away the spirit the soule it selfe and a poore Philosophers Stone that is made with the coales of Hell-fire a lamentable purchase when the soule is payed for the land And therefore show mercy to this soule Doe not oppresse this soule not by Violence which was the first signification of this word Oppression Doe not violate doe not smother not strangle not suffocate the good motions of Gods Spirit in theeâ— for it is but a wofull victory to triumphe over thine owne conscience and but a servile greatnesse to be able to silence that Oppresse not thy soule by Fraud which was the second signification of this word Oppression Defraud not thy soul of the benefit of Gods Ordinances frequent these exercises come hither And be not here like Gideons fleece dry when all about it was wet parched in a remorselesnesse when all the Congregation about thee is melted into holy tears Be not as Gideons fleece dry when all else is wet nor as that fleece wet when all about it was dry Be not jealous of God stand not here as a person unconcerned disinteressed as though those gracious promises which God is pleased to shed down upon the whole Congregation from this place appertained not to thee but that all those Judgements denounced here over which they that stand by thee are able by a faithfull and cheerfull laying hold of Gods offers though they stand guilty of the same sinnes that thou doest to lift up their heads must still necessarily overflow and surround thee
them To sever the King and the Kingdome and pretend the weale of the one without the other is to shake and discompose Gods building Historically this was the Jewes case when Ieremy lamented here if he lamented the declination of the State in the death of the King Iosiah And if he lamented the transportation of Zedekiah and that that crosse were not yet come upon them Or if he lamented the future devastation of that Nation occasioned by the death of the King of Kings Christ Jesus when he came into the world this was their case prophetically Either way historically or prophetically Ieremy looks upon the Kingdome but yet through that glasse through the King The duty of the Day and the order of the Text invites us to an application of this branch too Our adversaries did not come to say to themselves Nolumus Regnum hoc we will not have this Kingdome stand the materiall Kingdome the plenty of the Land they would have been content to have but the formall Kingdome that is This forme of Government by a Soveraigne King that depends upon none but God they would not have So that they came implicitely 〈◊〉 Nolumus Regnum hoc we will not have this Kingdome governed thus and they came explicitely to a Nolumus Regem hunc as the Jewes were resolved of Christ We will not have this King to governe at all Non hunc Will you not have him you were at your Nolumus hanc long before Her whom God had set over you before him you would not have Your not Anniversary but Hebdomadary Treasons cast upon her a necessity of drawing blood often and so your Nolumus hâ—nc your desire that she were gone might have some kinde of ground or colour But for your Nolumus hunc for this King who had made no Inquisition for blood who had forborne your very pecuniary penalties who had as himself witnesses of himself made you partakers with his Subjects of his own Religion in matters of grace and in reall benefits and in Titles of Honour Quare fremuerant Why did these men rage and imagine a vaine thing What they did historically we know They made that house which is the hive of the Kingdome from whence all her honey comes that house where Iustice her self is conceived in their preparing of Laws and inanimated and quickned and borne by the Royall Assent there given they made that whole house one Murdring peece and charged that peece with Peers with People with Princes with the King and meant to discharge it upward at the face of heaven to shoot God at the face of God Him of whom God hath said Dii estis You are Gods at the face of God that had said so as though they would have reproached the God of heaven and not have been beholden to him for such a King but shoot him up to him and bid him take his King again with a nolumus hunc regnare we will not have this King to reign over us This was our case Historically and what it is Prophetically as long as that remains to bee their doctrine which he against whom that attempt was principally made found by their examination to be their doctrine That they and no Sect in the world but they did make Treason an article of Religion That their Religion bound them to those attempts so long they are never at an end Till they dis-avow those Doctrines that conduce to that prophetically they wish prophetically they hope for better successe in as ill attempts It is then the kingdome that Ieremy laments but his nearest object is the King Hee laments him First let it be as with S. Hierome many of the Ancients and with them many of the later Rabbins will have it for Josiah for a good King in whose death the honour and the strength of the kingdome took that deadly wound to become tributary to a forain Prince for to this lamentation they refer those words of the Prophet which describe a great sorrow In that day shall there be a great mourning in Ierusalem as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon which was the place where Iosiah was slain There shall be such a lamentation says the Prophet in this interpretation as was for the death of Iosiah This then was for him for a good King Wherein have we his goodnesse expressed Abundantly Hee did that which was right in Gods fight And whose Eye need he fear that is right in the Eye of God But how long did he so To the end for Nero who had his Quinquennium and was a good Emperour for his first five years was one of the worst of all Hee that is ill all the way is but a Tyran Hee that is good at first and after ill an Angels face and a Serpents taile make him a Monster Iosiah began well and persevered so He turned not aside to the right â—and nor to the left That is if we apply it to the Iosiah of our times neither to the fugitive that leaves our Church and goes to the Roman nor to the Separatist that leaves our Church and goes to none In the eighteenth year of his reign Iosiah undertook the reparation of Gods house If we apply this to the Iosiah of our times I think in that year of his reign he visited this Church and these wals and meditated and perswaded the reparation thereof In one word Like unto Iosiah there was no King before nor after And therefore there was just cause of lamentation for this King for Iosiah historically for the very loss of his person prophetically for the misery of the State after his death Our errand is to day to apply all these branches to the day Those men who intended us this cause of lamentation this day in the destruction of our Iosiah spared him not because he was so because so because he was a Iosiah because he was good no not because he was good to them his benefits to them had not mollified them towards him for that is not their way Both the French Henries were their own and good to them but did that rescue either of them from the knife And was not that Emperour whom they poisoned in the Sacrament their own and good to them and yet was that any Antidote against their poison To so reprobate a sense hath God given them over herein as that though in their Books they ly heaviest upon Princes of our Religion yet truly they have destroyed more of their own then of ours Thus it is Historically in their proceedings past And Prophetically it can be but thus since no King is good in their sense if he agree not to all points of Doctrine with them And when that is done not good yet except he agree in all points of Iurisdiction too and that no King can doe that will not be their Farmer of his Kingdome Their Authours have disputed Auferibilitatem Papae whether the Church of God might not be
invested in the light of joy and my body in the light of glory How glorious is God as he looks down upon us through the Sunne How glorious in that glasse of his How glorious is God as he looks out amongst us through the king How glorious in that Image of his How glorious is God as he calls up our eyes to him in the beauty and splendor and service of the Church How glorious in that spoufe of his But how glorious shall I conceive this light to be cum sub loco viderim when I shall see it in his owne place In that Spheare which though a Spheare is a Center too In that place which though a place is all and every where I shall see it in the face of that God who is all face all manifestration all all Innotescence to me for facies Deiest qua Deus nobis innotescit that 's Gods face to us by which God manifests himselfe to us I shall see this light in his face who is all face and yet all hand all application and communication and delivery of all himselfe to all his Saints This is Beatitudo in Auge blessednesse in the Meridionall height blessednesse in the South point in a perpetuall Sommer solstice beyond which nothing can be proposed to see God so Then There And yet the farmers of heaven and hell the merchants of soules the Romane Church make this blessednesse but an under degree but a kinde of apprentiship after they have beatified declared a man to be blessed in the fruition of God in heaven if that man in that inferiour state doe good service to that Church that they see much profit will rise by the devotion and concurrence of men to the worship of that person then they will proceed to a Canonization and so he that in his Novitiat and years of probation was but blessed Ignatius and blessed Xavier is lately become Saint Xavier aud Saint Ignatius And so they pervert the right order and method which is first to come to Sanctification and then to Beatification first to holinesse and then to blessednesse And in this method our blessed God bee pleased to proceed with us by the operation of his holy Spirit to bring us to Sanctification here and by the merits and intercession of his glorious Sonne to Beatification hereafter That so not being offended in him but resting in those meanes and seales of reconciliation which thou hast instituted in thy Church wee may have life and life more abundantly life of grace here and life of glory there in that kingdome which thy Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud Amen SERMON XLV Preached at Saint Dunstans Aprill 11. 1624. The first sermon in that Church as Vicar thereof DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no Childe the Wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her FRom the beginning God intimated a detestation a dislike of singularity of beeing Alone The first time that God himselfe is named in the Bible in the first verse of Genesis hee is named plurally Creavit Dit Gods Gods in the plurall Created Heaven and Earth God which is but one would not appeare nor bee presented so alone but that hee would also manifest more persons As the Creator was not Singular so neither were the creatures First he created heaven and earth both together which were to be the generall parents and out of which were to bee produced all other creatures and then he made all those other creatures plurally too Male and female created hee them And when he came to make him for whose sake next to his own glory he made the whole world Adam he left not Adam alone but joyned an Eve to him Now when they were maried we know but wee know not when they were divorced we heare when Eve was made but not when shee dyed The husbands death is recorded at last the wives is not at all So much detestation hath God himselfe and so little memory would hee have kept of any singularity of being alone The union of Christ to the whole Church is not expressed by any metaphore by any figure so oft in the Scripture as by this of Mariageâ— and there is in that union with Christ to the whole Church neither husband nor wife can ever die Christ is immortall as hee is himselfe and immortall as hee is the head of the Church the Husband of that wife for that wife the Church is immortall too for as a Prince is the same Prince when he fights a battaile and when hee triumphs after the victory so the militant and the triumphant Church is the same Church There can bee no widower There can bee no Dowager in that case Hee cannot shee cannot die But then this Metaphore this spirituall Mariage holds not onely betweene Christ and the whole Church in which case thee can be no Widow but in the union between Christs particular Ministers and particular Churches and there in that case the husband of that wife may die The present Minister may die and so that Church be a Widow And in that case and for provision of such Widows wee consider the accommodation of this Law If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no childe the wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger c. This law was but a permissive law rather a dispensation then a law as the permitting of usury to bee taken of strangers and the permitting of divorces in so many cases were At most it was but a Iudiciall law and therefore layes no obligation upon any other nation then them to whom it was given the Iews And therefore wee enquire not the reasons of that law the reasons were determined in that people wee examine not the conveniences of the law the conveniences were determined in those times wee lay hold onely upon the Typique signification and appliablenesse of the law as that secular Mariage there spoken of may be appliable to this spirituall Mariage the Mariage of the Minister to the Church If brethren dwell together c. From these words then wee shall make our approaches and application to the present occasion by these steps First there is a mariage in the case The taking and leaving of a Church is not an indifferent an arbitrary thing It is a Mariage and Mariage implies Honour It is an honourable estate and that implies charge it is a burdensome state There is Honos and Onus Honour and labour in Mariage You must bee content to afford the honour wee must bee content to endure the labour And so in that point as our Incumbencie upon a Church is our Mariage to that Church wee shall as farre as the occasion admits see
what mariage includes and what it excludes what it requires what it forbids It is a mariage and a mariage after the death of another If one dye sayes the Text Howsoever the Romane Church in the exercise of their Tyranny have forbidden Church-men to mary then when they have orders and forbidden orders to bee given to any who have formerly beene maried if they maried Widowes God is pleased here to afford us some intimation some adumbration a Typicall and exemplar knowledge of the lawfulnesse of such mariages hee maries after the death of a former husband and then farther a brother maries the wife of his deceased brother Now into the reasons of the law literally given and literally accepted wee looke not It is enough that God hath a care of the preservation of names and families and inheritances in those distinctions and in those Tribes where hee layd them then but for the accommodation of the law to our present application it must bee a brother a spirituall brother a professor of the same faith that succeeds in this mariage in this possession and this government of that widow Church It must be a brother and Frater câ—habitans says our Text a brother that dwelt together with the former husband he must be of the same houshold of the faithfull as well as professe the same faith he must dwell in the house of God not separate himselfe or encourage others to doe so for matter of Ceremonies and discipline Idolaters must not Separaists must not be admitted to these mariages to these widow churches And then it is a surrendring to a brother dead without children In this spirituall procreation of children we all dye without children of our own Though by our labours when God blesses them you become children yet you are Gods children not ours we nurse you by his word but his Spirit begets you by the same word we must not challenge to us that which God onely can doe And then being thus maried to this widow taking the charge of this Church he must says our text performe the duty of a husbands brother He must it is a personall service not to be done always by Proxy and Delegates He must and he must performe not begin well and not persist commence and not consummate but performe the worke and performe the worke as it is a duty It is a meer mercy in God to send us to you but it is a duty in us to doe that which we are sent for by his Word and his Sacraments to establish you in his holy obedience and his rich and honourable service And then our duty consists in both these that we behave our selves as your husband which implies a power an authority but a power and authority rooted in love and exercised with love and then that we doe all as brothers to the former husband that as one intentation of this law was that inheritances and temporall proprieties might be preserved so our care might be through predecessor and successor and all that all rights might be preserved to all men that nothing not due or due onely in rigor be extorted from the people nothing that is in truth or in equity due be with-held from the Minister but that the true right of people and Pastor and Patron be preserved to the preservation of love and peace and good opinion of one another First then that which we take upon us is a Mariage Amongst the Iews it was almost an ignominious an infamous thing to die unmaried at least to die without children being maried Amongst the gentiles it was so too all well governed States ever enlarged themselves in giving places of command and profit to maried men Indeed such men are most properly said to keep this world in reparations that provide a succession of children and for the next world though all that are borne into this world doe not enter into the number of Gods Saints in heaven yet the Saints of heaven can be made out of no other materialls but men borne into this world Every stone in the quarry is not sure to be imployed in the building of the church but the Church must be built out of those stones and therefore they keep this world they keep heaven it selfe in reparation that mary in the feare of God and in the same feare bring up the children of such a mariage But I presse not this too literally nor over perswasively that every man is bound to Mary God is no accepter of persons nor of conditions But being to use these words in their figurative application I say every man is bound to marry himselfe to a profession to a calling God hath brought him from being nothing by creating him but he resolves himselfe into nothing againe if he take no calling upon him In our Baptisme we make our contract with God that we will believe all those Articles there recited there 's our contract with hiâ— and then pursuing this contract in the other Sacrament when we take his body and his blood we are maried to him So at the same time at our Baptisme we make a contract in the presence of God and his congregation with the world that we wil forsake the covetous desires of the world that is the covetous proprieting of all things to our selves the covetous living onely for our selves there 's our contract with the world that we will mutually assist and serve our brethren in the world and then when we take particular callings by which we are enabled to perform that former contract then we are maried to the world so every man is duly contracted to the world in Baptisme and lawfully maried to the world in accepting a profession And so this service of ours to the Church is our mariage Now in a Matrioniall state there is onus and Honos a burden to be born an Honour to be received The burden of the sinnes of the whole world was a burden onely for Christs shoulders but the sinnes of this Parish willly upon my shoulders if I be silent or if I be indulgent and denounce not Gods Judgement upon those sinnes It will be a burden to us if we doe not and God knowes it is a burden to us when be do denounce those Judgements Esay felt and groned under this burden when he cried Onus Babylonis Onus Moab and Onus Damasci O the burden of Babylon and the burden of Damscus and so the other Prophets grone often under this burden in contemplation of other places It burdened it troubled it grieved the holy Prophets of God that they must denounce Gods judgements though upon Gods enemies We reade of a compassionate Generall that looking upon his great Army from a hill fell into a bitter weeping upon this consideration that in fiftie or sixtie years hence there will not be a man of these that fight now alive upon the earth What Sea could furnish mine eyes with teares enough to poure out if I should
think that of all this Congregation which lookes me in the face now I should not meet one at the Resurrection at the right hand of God! And for so much as concerns me it is all one if none of you be saved as if none of you be saved by my help my means my assistance my preaching If I put you upon miraculous wayes to be saved without hearing or upon extraordinary wayes to be saved by hearing others this shall aggravate my condemnation though you be saved How much more heavy must my burden be if by my negligence both I and you perish too So then this calling this marriage is a burden every way When at any midnight I heare a bell toll from this steeple must not I say to my selfe what have I done at any time for the instructing or rectifying of that mans Conscience who lieth there now ready to deliver up his own account and my account to Almighty God If he be not able to make a good account he and I are in danger because I have not enabled him and though he be for himself able that delivers not me if I have been no instrument for the doing of it Many many burdens lie upon this calling upon this marriage but our recompense is that marriage is as well an honourable as a painefull calling If be a Father where is mine Honour faith God If you can answer God why you have it in your Prophets They have it that satisfieth him that dischargeth you For he that receiveth them receiveth him But if Christ who repeats that complaint in every one of us That a Prophet hath no honour in his own Countrie that a Pastor is least respected of his own stock you have not your Quctus est for the honour due to God God never discharges the honour due to him if it be not paid into their hands whom he sendeth for it to them upon whom he hath directed it Would the King believe that man to honour him that violateth his Image or that calumniateth his Ambassadour Every man is the Image of God every Creature is the Ambassadour of God The Heavens and as well as the Heavens the Earth declare the glory of God but the Civill Magistrate and the Spirituall Paster who have married the two Daughters of God The state and the Church are the Images and Ambassadours of God in a higher and more peculiar sense and for that marriage are to be honoured And then Honour implieth that by which Honour subsisteth maintenance and they which withdraw that injuriously or with-hold that contentiously dishonour God in the dishonour of his servants and so make this marriage this calling onely burdensome and not honourable So then the interest of your particular Minister and the particular Church being such as between Man and Wife a marriage we consider the uses of marriage in Gods first intention and apply them to this marriage Gods first intentions in marriage were two In adjutorium for mutuall helpers and in prolem for procreation and education of Children For both these are we made Husbands of Churches in prolem to assist in the regeneration of Children for the inheritance of Heaven and in adjutorium to be helpers to one another And therefore if the husband the Pastor put the wife his flock in a circumcision to pare themselves to the quick to take from their necessary means to sustain their families to satisfie him the wife will say as Zipporah said to Moses sponâ— sus sanguinum a bloudy husband art thou that exactest and extortest more then is due In that case the Husband is no helper But if we be alwayes ready to help your children over the threshold as Saint Augustine calls Baptisme Limen Ecclesiae alwayes ready to Baptize the Children if we be alwayes ready to help you in all your spirituall diseases to that Cordiall that Balsamum the body and bloud of Christ Iesus If we be alwayes ready to help you in all your bodily distresses ready even at your last gasp to open your eyes then when your best friends are ready to close them ready to deliver your souls into the hands of God when all the rest about you are ready to receive into their hands that which you leave behinde you and then ready to lay up the garments of your soules your bodies in the wardrobe the grave till you call for them and put them on again in the resurrection then are we truely helpers true husbands and then if the Wife will say as Iobs wife to the husband Curse God and die be sorry that thou hast taken this Profession upon thee and live in penury and die in povertie In a word if he presse too much if she withdraw too much this frustrates Gods purpose in making that a marriage they are not mutuall helpers to one another These were Gods two principall intentions in marriage in adjutorium in prolem But then mans fall induced a third in remedium That for a remedy against burning and to avoid fornication every man should have his own wife every woman her own husband And so in remedium for a remedy against spirituall fornication of running after other men in other places out of disaffection to their own Pastor or over affecting another God hath given every wife her own husband Every Church her own Pastor And to all these purposes our function is a marriage It is a marriage it deserves the honour it undertakes the burden of that state and then it is a marriage of a widow of a Church left in widow-hood by the death of her former husband In the Law literally God forbad the High Priest to marry a widdow The Romane Church continues that literally and more they extend it that which was in figure enjoined to the High Priest onely they in fact extend to all Priests no man that ever married a widow may be a priest though she be dead when he desires orders There is no question but there is a more exemplary sanctity required in the Priest then in other persons and more in those who are in high places in the Church then in those of inferiour Jurisdictions and the name and title of Virginity hath ever been exhibited as an Embleme as a Type of especiall Sanctity And as such the Apostle uses it when he saith That he would present the Church of Corinth as a chaste Virgine to Christ That is as chaste as a Virgin though married for so he saith in the words immediately before That he had espoused them to a husband As marriage is an honourable state though in poverty so is the bed undefiled with strange lust a chaste bed even in marriage And in the accommodation of the Figure to the present occasion our marriage to severall Churches If we might marry no widowes no Churches which had been wives to former husbands we should finde few Virgins that is Churches newly erected for us But when the wife of a former husband is left
a widow Nubat in Domino saith the Apostle In Gods name let her marry But the former husband must be dead The husbands absence makes not the wife a widow nor doth the necessary and lawfull absence of the Pastor make the Church vacant The sicknesse of the husband makes not a widow The bodily weaknesse nay the spirituall weaknes of the Pastor in case that his parts and abilities and faculties be grown but weak do not make his Church vacant If the Pastor be suspended or otherwise censured this is but as a separation or as a divorce and as the wife is not a widow upon a divorce so neither is the Church vacant upon such censures And therefore for them that take advantages upon the weaknesses or upon the disgrace or upon the povertie of any such incumbent and so insinuate themselves into his Church this is intrusion this is spirituall adultery for the husband is not dead though he be sick Nay if they would remove him by way of preferment yet that is a supplantation when Iacob had Esau by the heel whether he kept him in till he might be strong enough to goe out before him or whether he pushed him out before he would have gone Iacob was a supplanter Some few cases are put when a wife becomes as a widow her husband living but regularly it is by death In some few cases Churches may otherwise be vacant but regularly it is by death And then Esto vidua in Domâ— Patris saith Iudah to Thamar Remain a widow at thy fathers house Then the Church remaineth in the house in the hands of her Father the Bishop of that Diâ—ces till a new husband be lawfully tendred unto her And till that time as our Saviour Christ recommended his most blessed Mother to Saint Iohn but not as a wife so that Bishop delivers that Church to the care and administration of some other during her widowhood till by due course she become the wife of another Thus our calling is a mariage It should have honour It must have labour and it is a lawfull mariage upon a just and equitable vacancy of the place without any supplantation upon death And then it is upon death of a brother If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no childe the wife c. Aswell Saint Gregory as Saint Augustine before interpret this of our elder our eldest brother Christ Iesus That hee being dead we mary his wife the Church and become husbands to her But Christ in that capacity as he is head of the Church cannot die That to which the application of this law leads us is That predecessor and successor bee brethren of the same faith and the same profession of faith The Sadduces put a case to Christ of a woman maried successively to seven men let seven signifie infinite still those seven were brethren How often soever any wife change her husband any Church her Pastor God sends us still a succession of brethren sincere and unfeigned Preachers of the same truth sonnes of the same father Who is that father God is our Father Have we not all one Father says the Prophet Yes we have and so a worme and we are brethren by the same father and mother the same God the same Earth Hath not the raine a father The raine hath and the same that wee have More narrowly and yet very largely Christ is our father One of his names is The everlasting Father And then after these after God after Christ the King is our father See my father the skirt of thy robe in my hand says David to his King Saul Now if any husband should be offered to any widow any Pastor to any vacant Church who were not our brother by all these fathers in a right beliefe in God the Father of all men in a right profession of Christ Iesus the Father of all Christians in a right affection and allegiance to the King the Father of all Subjects Any that should incline to a forain father an imaginary universall father he of whom his Vice-fathers his Junior fathers the Iesuites for all the Jesuits are Fathers says That the Fathers of the Church are but sons and not fathers to him They that say to a stock to the Image of the beast Thou art my father who not in a sense of humiliation as Iob speaks the words but of pride say to corruption Thou art my father that is that prostrate themselves to all the corruptions of a prostitute Church If any so inclined of himself or so inclinable if occasion should invite him or rather tempt him be offered for husband to any widow for a Pastor to any vacant Church he is not within the accommodation of this law hee is not our brother by the whole bloud who hath not a brotherhood rooted in the same religion and in the allegiance to the same Soveraign He must be a brother and Frater Cohabitans a brother dwelling with the former brother As he is a brother we consider the unity of faith As he dwels in the same house we consider the unity of discipline That as he beleeves and professes the same articles of faith so by his own obedience and by his instructing of others hee establish the same government A Schismatique is no more a brother to this purpose then an Heretique If we look well we shall see that Christ provided better for his garments then for his flesh he suffered his flesh to be torn but not his seamlesse garment There may bee in many cases more mischief in disobeying the uniformity of the discipline of the Church then in mistaking in opinion some doctrine of the Church Wee see in Gods institution of his first Church whom he called brethren Those who were instructed and cunning in the songs of the Church they are called brethren To oppose the orders of the Church solemnly ordained or customarily admitted for the advancement of Gods glory and the devotion of the Congregation forfeits this brotherhood or at least discontinues the purpose and use of it for howsoever they may bee in a kinde brothers if they succeed in the profession of the same faith yet wee see where the blessednesse is settled Blessed are they that dwell in thy house And we see where the goodnesse and the pleasantnesse is settled Behold how good and how pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity So that if they be not brothers in the same faith and brothers in the same houshold of the faithfull and brothers in the same allegiance If they advance not the truth of the Church and the peace of the Church and the head of the Church fomentors of Error and of Schisme and Sedition are not husbands for these widows Pastors for these Churches Hee must bee a brother A brother dwelling in the same house of Christ and then brother to one
dead without children as Tertullian expresses it in his particular elegancy Illiberis that is content to be his brother in that sense in that capacity to claime no children no spirituall children of his own begetting not to attribute to himself that holy generation of the Saints of God as though his learning or his wit or his labour had saved them but to content himselfe to have been the foster father and to have nursed those children whom the Spirit of God by over-shadowing the Church hath begot upon her for though it be with the word of truth in our preaching yet of his own will begot he us though by the word says the Apostle Saint Paul might say to the Corinthians Though you have tenne thousand instructors in Christ yet have yee not many fathers for in Christ Iesus I have begotten you through the Gospel And hee might say of his spirituall sonne Onesimus That he begot him in his bonds Those to whom he first of any presented the Gospel That had not heard of a Christ nor a holy Ghost before They into whom he infused a new religion new to them might well enough bee called his children and hee their father But we have no new doctrine to present no new opinion to infuse or miracles to amaze as in the Romane Church they are full of all these wee have no children to beget of our own Paul was not crucified for you nor were you baptized in the name of Paul sayes Paul himself as he sayes again who is Paul but a Minister by whom ye beleeved and that also not by him but as the Lord gave to every man Not as Paul preached to every man for he preached alike to every man but as the Lord gave to every man I have planted says he it is true but he that planteth is nothing says he also Only they that proceed as they proceed in the Romane Church Ex opere operato to tye the grace of God to the action of the man will venter to call Gods children their children in that sense My prayer shal be against that commination That God will not give us a miscarrying womb nor dry breasts that you may always suck pure milk from us and then not cast it up but digest it to your spirituall growth And I shall call upon God with a holy passion as vehement as Rachels to Iacob Da mihi liberos give me children or I die That God would give me children but his children that he by his Spirit may give you an inward regeneration as I by his ordinance shall present to you the outward means that so being begot by himselfe the father of life and of light you may be nursed and brought up in his service by me That so not attributing the work to any man but to Gods Ordinances you doe not tye the power of God nor the breath of life to any one mans lips as though there were no regeneration no begetting but by him but acknowledging the other to be but an instrument and the weakest to be that you may remember also That though a man can cut deeper with an Axe then with a knife with a heavy then with a lighter instrument yet God can pierce as far into a conscience by a plain as by an exquisite speaker Now this widow being thus maried This Church thus undertaken He must perform the duty of a husbands brother First it is a personall office he must doe it himself When Christ shall say at the Judgement I was naked and ye cloathed me not sick and ye visited me not it shall be no excuse to say When saw we thee naked when saw we thee sick for wee might have seen it wee should have seen it When we shall come to our accompt and see them whose salvation was committed to us perish because they were uninstructed and ignorant dare we say then we never saw them show their ignorance wee never heard of it That is the greatest part of our fault the heaviest weight upon our condemnation that we saw so little heard so little conversed so little amongst them because we were made watchmen and bound to see and bound to hear and bound to be heard not by others but by our selves My sheep may be saved by others but I save them not that are save so nor shall I my self be saved by their labour where mine was necessarily required The office is personall I must doe it and it is perpetuall I must perform it sayes the text goe through with it Lots wife looked backe and God never gave her leave to look forward again That man who hath put his hand to the plow and looks back Christ disables him for the kingdome of God The Galatians who had begun in the spirit and then relapsed before whose eyes Christ Iesus had been evidently set forth as the Apostle speaks fall under that reproach of the Apostle to bee called and called againe fooles and men bewitched If I beginne to preach amongst you and proceed not I shall fall under that heavy increpation from my God you beganne that you might for your owne glory shew that you were in some measure able to serve the Church and when you had done enough for your own glory you gave over my glory and the salvation of their souls to whom I sent you God hath set our eyes in our foreheads to look forward not backward not to be proud of that which we have done but diligent in that which we are to doe In the Creation if God had given over his worke the third or fift day where had man been If I give over my prayers due to the Church of God as long as God enables me to doe it service I lose my thanks nay I lose the testimony of mine own conscience for all My office is personall and it is perpetuall and then it is a duty He must perform the duty of a husbands brother unto her It is not of curtesie that we preach but it is a duty it is not a bounty given but it is a debt paid for though I preach the Gospel I have nothing to glory of for a necessity is laid upon me sayes Saint Paul himself It is true that as there is Vae si non Wo be unto mee if I doe not preach the Gospel so there is an Euge bone serve Well done good and faithfull servant to them that doe But the Vae is of Iustice the Euge is of Mercy If doe it not I deserve condemnation from God but if I doe it I deserve not thanks from him Nay it is a debt not onely to God but to Gods people to you and indeed there is more due to you then you can claime or can take knowledge of For the people can claime but according to the laws of that State and the Canons of that Church in which God hath placed them such preaching as those Laws and
is incorporated and manifested in a body by works and the way to both is that Hearing which amounts to this Hearkning to a diligent to a considerate to a profitable Hearing In which one essentiall circumstance is that we be not over affectionately transported with an opinion of any one person but apply our selves to the Ordinance Come and hearken unto me To any whom God sends with the Seale and Character of his Minister which is our fourth and last branch in your part David doth not determine this in his own person that you should hearken to him and none but him but that you should hearken to him in that capacity and qualification which is common to him with others as we are sent by God upon that Ministery Me. that you say to all such Blessed art thou that comest in the Name of the Lord. St. Augustine and not he alone interprets this whole Psalme of Christ that it is a thankesgiving of Christ to his Father upon some deliverance received in some of his Agonies some of his persecutions and that Christ calleth us to hearken unto him To him so as he is present with us in the Ministery of his Church He is a perverse servant that will receive no commandment except he have it immediately from his Masters mouth so is he too that pretendeth to rest so wholly in the Word of God the Scriptures as that he seeks no interpretation no exposition no preaching All is in the Scriptures but all the Scriptures are not alwaies evident to all understandings He also is a perverse servant that wil receive no commandment by any Officer of his Masters except he like the man or if his Master might in his opinion have chosen a fitter man to serve in that place And such a perversnesse is in those hearers who more respect the man then the Ministery and his manner of delivering it then the message that he delivers Let a man so account of us as of the Ministers of Christ and Stewards of the mysteries of God That is our Classis our rank our station what names soever we brought into the world by our extraction from this or that family what name soever we took in our baptisme and contract between God and us that name in which we come to you is that The Ministers of Christ The Stewards of the Mysteries of God And so let men account of us says the Apostle Invention and Disposition and Art and Eloquence and Expression and Elocution and reading and writing and printing are secondary things accessory things auxiliary subsidiary things men may account us and make account of us as Orators in the pulpit and of Authors in the shop but if they account of us as of Ministers and Stewards they give us our due that 's our name to you All the Evangelists mention Iohn Baptist and his preaching but two of the foure say never a word of his austerity of life his Locusts nor his Camels haire and those two that do Matthew and Marke they insist first upon his calling and then upon his actuall preaching how he pursued that Calling And then upon the Doctrine that he preached Repentance and Sanctification and after that they come to these secondary and subsidiary things which added to his estimation and assisted the passage of his Doctrine His good life Learning and other good parts and an exemplar life fall into second places They have a first place in their consideration who are to call them but in you to whom they are sent but a second fixe you in the first place upon the Calling This Calling circumcised Moses uncircumcised lips This made Ieremy able to speak though he called himself a childe This is Esays coale from the Altar which takes away even his sinne and his iniquity Be therefore content to passe over some infirmities and rest your selves upon the Calling And when you have thus taken the simplicity of Children they are the persons which was our first step and are come to the Congregation that is your Action and was our second and have conformed your selves to hearken that also is the Disposition here which was our third And all this with a reverence to the Calling before an affection to the man that is your submission to Gods Ordinance and was our fourth and last step you have then built up our first part in your selves laid together all those peeces which constitute your Duty Come ye Children and hearken unto me And from hence we passe to our duty I will teach you the fear of the Lord. In this second part we made two steps first The manner Docebo I will teach And then the Matter Timorem Domini I will teach you the feare of the Lord. Upon the first we will stay no longer but to confesse That we are bound to teach and that this teaching is to preach And Vae si non Wâ— be unto us if we do not preach Wo to them who out of ease or state silence themselves And woe to them too who by their distemper and Schismaticall and seditious manner of preaching occasion and force others to silence them and think and think it out of a profitable and manifold experience That as forbidden books sell best so silence Ministers thrive best It is a Duty Docendum we must teach Preach but a duty that excludes not Catechizing for cateching seems especially to be intended here where he calls upon them who are ot be taught by that name Children It is a duty that excludes not Praying but Praying excludes not it neither Prayer and Preaching may consist nay they must meet in the Church of God Now he that will teach must have learnt before many yeers before And he that eill preach must have thought of it before many days before Extemporall Ministers that resolve in day what they will be Extemporall Preachers that resolve in a minute what they will say outgo Gods Spirit and make too much hast It was Christs way He tooke first Disciples to learne and thenâ— out of them he tooke Apostles to teach an those Apostles made more Disciples Though your first consideration be upon the Calling yet our consideration must be for our fitnesse to that Calling Our Prophet David hath put them both together well O God thou hast taught me from my youth you see what was his Vniversity Moses was his Aristotle he had studied Divinity from his youth And hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works says he there Hitherto How long was that It follows in the next verse Now am I old and gray headed and yet he gave not over Then Gods work goes well forward when they whom God hath taught teach others He that can say with David Docnistime O God thou hast taught me may say with him too Docebo vos I will teach you But what that remains only I will teach you the fear of the Lord. There is a fear which needs no teaching a
laqueorum whether this shall prove such a shoure as shall nourish our soule spiritually in thankfulnesse to God and in charitable workes towards his needy Servants or whether it shall prove a shoure of snares to minister occasions of tentations so when he raines afflictions upon us it is much in our gathering whether it shall be Roris or Grandinis whether it shall be a shoure of fatning dew upon us or a shoure of Fgyptian haile-stones to batter us in peeces as a Potters Vessell that cannot be renewed Our murmuring makes a rod a staffe and a staffe a sword and that which God presented for physick poyson The double effect and operation of Gods Rod and Corrections is usefully and appliably expressed in the Prophet Zachary where God complaines That he had fed the sheep of slaughter that he had been carefull for them who would needs dye say he what he could Therefore he was forced to come to the Rod to correction So he does And I tooke unto me sayes he there two Staves the one I called Beauty the othâ—r Bands Two wayes of correction a milder and a more vehement When his milder way prevailed not Then said I I will not feed you I will take no more care of you That which dyeth let it dye sayes he and that which is to be cut off let it be cut off And I tooke my staffe of Beauty and cut it asunder that I might breake my Covenant which I had made with them Beloved God hath made no such Covenant with any State any Church any soule but that being provoked he is at liberty to break it But then upon this when the stubborne and the refractory the stiff-necked and the rebellious were cut off The poore of the sheep sayes God that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord. It is not every mans case to mend by Gods corrections onely the poore of the sheep the broken hearted the contrite spirit the discerner of his owne poverty and infirmity could make that good use of affliction as to finde Gods hand and then Gods purpose in it For this Rod of God this Shebet can kill Affliction can harden as well as mollifie and entender the heart And there is so much the more danger that it should worke that effect that obduration because it is Virga Irae The rod of his wrath which is the other weight that aggravates our afflictions In all afflictions that fall upon us from other instruments there is Digitus Dei The finger of God leads their hand that afflicts us Though it be sicknesse by our intemperance though it be poverty by our wastfulnesse though it be oppression by the malice or by our exasperation of potent persons yet still the finger of God is in all these But in the afflictions which we speake of here such as fall upon us when we thinke our selves at peace with God and in state of grace it is not Digitus but Manus Dei the whole worke is his and man hath no part in it Whensoever he takes the Rod in hand there is a correction towards but yet it may be but his Rod of Beauty of his Correction not Destruction But if he take his Rod in anger the case is more dangerous for though there be properly no anger in God yet then is God said to do a thing in anger when he does it so as an angry man would do it Upon those words of David O Lord rebuke me not in thine anger Saint Augustine observes that David knew Gods rebukes and corrections were but for his amendment but yet In Ira corrigi noluit in Ira emendari noluit David was loth that God should go about to mend him in anger afraid to have any thing to do with God till his anger were over-passed Beloved to a true anger and wrath and indignation towards his children God never comes but he comes so neare it as that they cannot discerne whether it be anger or no. A Father takes a Rod and looks as angerly as though he would kill his childe but means nothing but good to him So God brings a soule to a sad sense of an angry countenance in God to a sad apprehension of an angry absence to a sad jealousie and suspition that God will never returne to it againe And this is a heavy affliction whilst it lasts Our Saviour Christ in that case came to expostulate it to dispute it with his Father Vt quid dereliquisti My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Do but tell me why Foâ— if God be pleased to tell us why he is angry his anger is well allayd and we have a faire overture towards our restitution But in our infirmity wee get not easily so farre we apprehend God to be angry we cannot finde the cause and we sinke under the burden we leave the disease to concoct it self and we take no Physick And this is truly the highest extent and exaltation of affliction That in our afflictions we take God to be angryer then he is For then is God said to take his Rod in anger when he suffers us to thinke that he does so and when he suffers us to decline and sinke so low towards diffidence and desperation that we dare not looke towards him because we beleeve him to be so angry And so have you all those peeces which constitute both the branches of this first part The generality and extent of afflictions considered in the nature of the thing in the nature of the word this name of man Gheber and in the person of Ieremy the Prophet of God And then the intenseneâ—â—e and weight and vehemency of afflictions considered in these three particulars That they are His The Lords That they are from His Rod And from the Rod of his anger But to weigh down all these we have comforts ministred unto us in our Text which constitute our other part Of these the first is Vidi I have seen these afflictions for this is an act of particular grace and mercy when God enables us to see them for naturally this is the infirmity of our spirituall senses that when the eyes of our understanding should be enlightened our understanding is so darkened as that we can neither see prosperity nor adversity for in prosperity our light is too great and we are dazeled in adversity too little none at all and we are benighted we do not see our afflictions There is no doubt but that the literall sense of this phrase To see afflictions is to feele to suffer afflictions As when David sayes What man is he that liveth and shall not see death and when Christ sayes Thou shalt not suffer thine holy one to see corruption to see death and to see corruption is to suffer them But then the literall sense being thus duly preserved That the children of God shall certainly see that is certainly suffer afflictions receive we also that sweet odour