who is our Comforter if so the following Verse here will tell us That He can Reprove as well as Comfort But on the other side if we obey his Motions submit to his Dictates follow his Guidance and Direction in a word be led by Him we shall then be the Sons of God and the only-begotten of the Father will not fail to send him to us as He did to his Apostles Then especially above all other times when we eat and drink his flesh and bloud in the Holy Sacrament For as his Bloud was the meritorious Cause to procure us his Spirit so is his Holy Sacrament the Pipe or Conduit to convey Him unto us For hereby we are all made to drink into one Spirit 1 Cor. 12. 13. And then as there is plentifull Redemption here on Christ's part so if we duly partake of that Redemption there will be plentifull Effusion of his Spirit on us Which God of his infinite Mercy grant c. Amen Soli Deo gloria in aeternum A SERMON Preached on Michaelmas-day HEB. I. 14. Are they not all ministring spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation 'T IS the great happiness and priviledge of Saints to be under the care and protection of an Almighty God Others have the benefit of his general Providence These of his particular Love and Kindness The clearest Evidence of that his Love appears in sending his only beloved Son into the World to merit Salvation for them and next to that in employing Angels to further it He being our alone Saviour These our Guardians and Assistants Wherein the Almighty has abundantly provided as well for the honour as the security of his Servants For what greater honour next to the having Christ for our Brother than that we should have such glorious Creatures as Angels for our Ministers Their Nature we know places them above us and yet God's Love and their Humility sets them here below us Even while those excellent Spirits attend on the Throne of God we may see them waiting on us Men While they behold his Face there they cast a benign aspect on us here These bright Morning-stars do at the same time praise Him and assist and guide us Their Employment in Heaven does not exempt them from their Services on Earth dividing them as it were between those two places ever ascending and descending i. e. perpetually employ'd in discharging their Duties to their Creator and for his sake performing all good Offices to their fellow Creatures 2. And hence it is That in consideration of those great and various Benefits she receives by their appointed Aid and Ministration The Church has set apart this Day as to praise Him who makes use of such glorious Instruments for her safeguard and protection so gratefully to commemorate those advantageous Services they doe her And although the Title of this Festival carries but a particular denomination of St. Michael's Day yet does the Church herein celebrate the general Memorial of all Angels and the Text I have chosen leads us to it as the Scope thereof does to the whole Chapter wherein the Apostle's design is to compare Christ with Angels and to prove his Superiority over them which He does by several Arguments taken 1. From his Sonship He God's Son by Eternal generation These only by Creation and Resemblance v. 2. 2. From his Name more excellent than that of Angels v. 4. 3. From the Worship peculiarly due to Him even from Angels themselves v. 6. 4. From his being the Head of Angels who at best are but his Ministring spirits v. 7. 5. From his Kingly Authority over all Creatures Men and Angels too v. 8. 6. From his creating the Heavens and the Earth which Angels neither did nor could doe v. 10. 7. And lastly from his sitting as Equal with God at his right hand whereas the most glorious Angels doe but stand there as Ministers of his Will and Commands and to serve the necessities of his Chosen ones in the question here put Are they not all c. In which Words you may observe 1. Something imply'd or suppos'd and that is Their Existence Are they not c. The Apostle speaks of them as of persons really and actually subsisting 2. Something plainly exprest and those are four Particulars here mention'd 1. The Essence or Nature of Angels They are Spirits i. e. intellectual immortal and incorporeal Substances 2. Their Office Ministring spirits and that without any reserve All of them such none excepted not the most glorious not the most excellent of their Order 3. Their Commission from God who sends them forth deputing them their several Ministerial Charges and Employments 4. The End or Design for which they are employ'd viz. God's glory and the benefit of those who shall be heirs of Salvation These be the several Stages through which I shall lead you And first of the Existence or Being of Angels suppos'd in the question Are they not all c. 1. Since the Being of Angels is here suppos'd and taken for granted one would think there should need no farther proof of it and surely 't would be needless did not the Infidelity of some Men make it necessary And 't is strange that Divine Revelation should not be sufficient to settle this Truth among Christians which Heathens by the dim light of Nature have so clearly discern'd For what-ever mistakes they were guilty of as to the Nature they believ'd the Existence of spiritual Substances and we find them very curious in ranking and disposing them into their several Classes and describing the Hierarchy of their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with as much exactness I had almost said as good ground as the pretended Dionyfius has done that of Angels whom the Schoolmen so passionately doat on And the same reason which taught Heathens so much Divinity fetches this Truth also from the Order of Nature which seems to require it For as here we find some things without life others living but without sense some again sensible and others rational yet so as to be of a mixt Nature partly Corporal and partly Spiritual there would want one main link in the Chain of Providence had not the Divine Power made some Creatures purely Intellectual such as might be a Mean between God and Man as Man is between them and Beasts to prevent a chasm or vacuum in Nature Besides since every part and place in the World is fill'd with Inhabitants proper for it it seems but requisite that the highest Heavens should not be left void of such as might be fit to dwell in those pure and glorious Mansions But not to build so necessary and important a Truth on meer rational Conjectures we have a more solid foundation for it which is Divine Revelation the Scriptures every-where not only mentioning the Being of Angels but giving us a clear account of their Creation of their manifold Apparitions and Discoveries to Men on Earth together
leaving it and that which He hath purchased so very glorious that some have mistaken it for his Eternal one To all this which He hath obtained for Himself let us add what He hath merited for us in that flesh He this day took upon Him and wherein He wrought out our Redemption offering up Himself to God and giving Himself for us the greatest gift He could give or we receive whereof in the next place II. Who gave Himself for us Every word here has its weight 1. He gave 2. Gave Himself and 3. For us 1. He gave A Gift this as much above Man's Desert as 't was above his Comprehension 'T was a free gift too no Attractive here but misery no Motive but his own goodness The Romanists indeed to establish their rotten Doctrine of Merit will needs persuade us that some Ancient Fathers before and under the Law did ex congruo if not ex condigno merit Christ's Incarnation or at least the hastning of its accomplishment This conceit of theirs they mainly ground on Gen. 22. 18. where 't is said to Abraham In thy seed shall all the Nations of the Earth be blessed Because thou hast obeyed my voice As if that Because denoted the meritorious Cause of Christ's Incarnation to have been Abraham's Obedience whereas Zachary ascribes it not to the Merits of any the most holy persons of old but to God's mercy and free promise to the Forefathers Luke 1. 72. St. Paul to the riches of God's mercy Ephes. 2. 4. To his benignity and loving-kindness to mankind here Tit. 3. 4. As our Lord Himself does also John 3. 16. God so loved the World that He gave his only begotten Son and so well did that his Son love it too that He gave Himself for us says the Text. 2. Himself And surely more He could not give For as the Apostle speaks in another case Because God could swear by no greater He sware by Himself So may we here because He had no greater thing to give us He gave us Himself The Almighty could go no higher than this Infinite goodness was here at its non ultra He who is All in All could bestow no more than that All. More then He could not give but could He not have given less and that less have been enough Or might not the party offended have freely remitted the Offence without any farther satisfaction or have obliged some other to make it Sent some glorious Creature some blessed Spirit of the noblest Order of created Beings to be a sufficient expiatory Sacrifice for Mankind and so have sav'd Himself the trouble of an Incarnation 'T is not for us here to be too inquisitive what God might have done let us rather admire and extoll his Goodness for not contenting Himself with less than what He did and withall dread the severity of his Justice not to be atton'd by any other Sacrifice than that of his own Son And indeed the most glorious the most innocent and perfect Creature God could make being but Finite it cannot possibly be conceived how it could satisfie an infinite Justice much less was it in the power of Man to satisfie for himself of the party guilty to expiate its own guilt This knot was too hard for any but a God to untie Nay the Godhead its self it seems could not doe it without the assistance of the Manhood For as the divine Nature could not suffer so the humane one could not merit This furnished the bloud but that made it passable and valuable None then but He who united both Natures in the Person of the word Incarnate He who was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God and Man could be a perfect Reconciler of both Parties This as his Justice and our Necessities required so his alone Goodness prompted him unto and his as infinite Wisedom found out the only way to doe it by taking our Nature upon Him and so giving Himself for us 3. For Us. This circumstance does yet very much heighten the Blessing and set off God's infinite Love to Mankind That He should give Himself for us us Sinners and Rebels and for us alone Were there no other Objects for his Mercy besides us Were there not Angels to be redeemed as well as Men Or were they not worth the Redeeming who were by Nature so much above them That God should pass by them and only vouchsafe to look upon us This is the great Mystery of his Love And that He did so is clear from Heb. 2. 16. Verily He took not on Him the Nature of Angels but He took on Him the Seed of Abraham whereupon He is called the Saviour of all Men but not of Angels 1 Tim. 4. 10. Whether it was because the sin of Angels had more of Wilfulness in it and less of Temptation or because they did not All fall as we did some of them still preserving their Station let the Schools dispute These may serve for plausible Conjectures but to find the true cause hereof we must go out of the World and seek it in the bosom of the Father and in the bowels of his own Son whose Love did even transform him into us this day whereon He was born for no other purpose but to dye for us and by his meritorious Death rescue us from the slavery of Sin the primary end of his Incarnation and the third Thing to be spoken to III. That He might redeem us For the better comprehending the benefit we reap from the Incarnation of our blessed Lord We must consider the main end and design of it which the Text says was to redeem us Now Redemption being a Relative supposes Bondage For we cannot say his Irons are struck off who never had them on or pronounce him releas'd who never was a prisoner Now such was all Mankind till Christ delivered it by taking upon Him the form of a servant and being made in the likeness of men For as Aristotle hath made some men born slaves and as others tell us of a Law whereby all the Posterity of Captives were Bondmen So in Divinity 't is a certain truth that not some but all Mankind are born under the Fork and that the Womb of our first Parent was like that in Tacitus Subjectus servitio Uterus a Womb from which issues a race of Slaves Christ then found us in Captivity and that according to the Divinity of the Schools a threefold one 1. To Sin as the Merit obliging 2. To Death as the Reward or Punishment 3. To the Devil as to the Executioner And to each of these the Scripture hath assign'd a Dominion over us and that in terms of the greatest subjection and which in the conveyance of Power give the strongest Empire For the first St. Paul hath told us That we are the servants of Sin so far 't is our Master And in another place 't is said to reign in our mortal Bodies That makes it our Prince And indeed as some
Vertue to its conservation and that not only by a divine benediction but by a natural efficiency Let us then cast up our several mischiefs and see how many of them are owing to our vertues whether Temperance did ever drown our parts or Chastity make us roar under the Chirurgeon's hand whether the sleeps of sober men be not sweet and their appetites constant whether the symmetry of Passions in the meek their freedome from the rage of them with that admirable harmony and sweetness of content do not by making them chearfull render them healthy too Whereas the contrary of these do manifestly impair our bodies waste our estates and ruine our reputations For what are the fruits of Intemperance but Collicks Surfeits Aches and the like Who hath woe and sorrow redness of eyes contention and wounds but the Drunkard What vast expence doth the Glutton put himself to not to allay his hunger but to provoke it How dearly doth he buy new wants when a small cost would relieve nature how much is he at to oppress it And how does he many times pay more than one Farm for a Fever And yet when all this is done the best that can be expected is that the feast must be fasted of Whereas it often proves worse than so that a horrid potion must purge off the too full goblet and it shall cost as much to remove the Surfeit as to procure it and yet after all this charge and trouble the Man can scarce hope to be so well as he was before it such enemies are Vices to our health and they are no less to our reason For whereas Vertues improve our understandings by subduing our lusts and moderating our passions These fully and darken our minds and by clogging our spirits render them unapt for higher and nobler acts of reason Even the most refined ones such as envy hatred pride and malice tincture the mind with false colours and so fill it with prejudice and undue apprehensions of things Let experience here give in its verdict and if it be so that Vertue preserves Nature and Vice destroys it they cannot possibly be the same things such different effects arguing a manifest contrariety in their causes And were it not so were not the opposition here very natural I know not how natural Men without any help of divine Revelation should by the mere Light of their reason be able so clearly to discern and so exactly to make it out as some of them have done A task well performed by Tully in his Offices Et de finibus bonorum malorum wherein the several bounds of moral good and evil are so precisely set out as they have been by some ancient Philosophers especially Aristotle that Reason and Scripture do herein little differ Non aliud natura aliud sapientia dicit Nature and Revelation speak the same things and we may well say with Tertullian Tam facilè pronuncias quà m Christiano necesse est Reason here utters baptized truth and each man's Soul is Christian And therefore the same Father in his Book De Testimonio Animae draws such a plain Confession of these Truths from a Heathen Soul that he wonders how a thing not Christian should have so much Christianity as to rejoyce at good actions and to grow sullen after bad to promise itself a reward for Vertue and fear a judgment to come for Vice Rather than be an Atheist to commit Idolatry and rather than God should not be worshipped to offer Sacrifices to the Devil and then concludes That 't is all one here to go by Reason or Revelation Nec multum referre an à Deo formata sit Animae conscientia an à literis Dei that the difference is little between the Book of the Law and the Conscience of a Man Some Principles of Law breathed into us with our Soul being so manifest that they are seen by their own light and stand upon their own bottom Nature approves them and condemns the contrary and this we learn from St. Paul himself For as Rom. 1. 26. he brands some vile Practices of the Gentile Romans as so many Violences and Contumelies to Nature and Ephes. 5. 12. mentions other things done by them in secret which 't was a shame to name that is such as were in the very Nature and Constitution of them shamefull So Phil. 4. 8. He speaks of other things that were true and honest just praise-worthy and of good report and to shew the difference of such things to be natural he appeals in a certain case to the Judgment of Nature 1 Cor. 11. 14. Doth not even nature it self teach you not general custome as Grotius there the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 refuseth that interpretation and the learned Salmasius clearly confutes it And our Lord himself doth the same too Luke 12. 57. Why even of your selves judge ye not what is right As if he should have said you need go no further than your selves to learn your Duty your own Reason is able to tell you what is right and what not But there are whom nothing can satisfie and though God and Nature the general Sense and Reason of Mankind and Scripture to boot do make a plain difference between Good and Evil yet either will own none in the Nature of the things themselves or else are so partial as to give Evil the precedency to Good if we may measure their Judgments by their Lives and Conversations Those I may term speculative and these practical Epicureans 1. Of the first sort are they who resolve all Morality into the Wills and Pleasures of Legislators that will allow nothing to be good or bad but what civil Magistrates in order to politick Ends shall declare to be so making all under them with the first matter equally susceptible of whatsoever Forms they shall please to introduce As if Vertue and Vice like Coin were to have a publick stamp upon them to make them currant or that Morality like changeable Taffety were to vary according to the different Reflection of that Light men cast upon it An opinion which if it should prevail would leave no moral Honesty much less Religion in the World For should Governors be as bad as they who broach this Doctrine are and would have them to be what a strange Rule should Mankind have to go by And if publick Interest were to be the Measure and Standard of Good and Evil when that should alter as nothing is more variable what is now a Vertue might perhaps in a short time become a Vice and so Rewards and Punishments have their Vicissitudes also and at last interfere 'T is certain that some Laws have been enacted that were so many direct Violations of the Law of Nature and contrary to the general Sense of Mankind and that such might still be made 't is not impossible while there remain in men the same unreasonable Lusts and Passions whereof such Laws were the results and yet these if
they have the publick Seal upon them shall be as good and binding as the best that ever were established in the opinion of these Promoters of a moral Indifferency whereas in the Judgment of all Learned men humane Laws are then void and null when they do in the least swerve from that of Nature And 't is a great Error to think that men's Laws do make things morally good or bad whereas they do but declare them to be so supposing them to be such in their own Natures and deriving all their Vertue from that very supposition They take it for granted that there are such things as Vertue and Vice and add Rewards and Punishments to invite or deterr us from what naturally we are prone or averse to but would not so readily embrace or decline without these External motives or restraints All they do here is to graft on Natures stocks to cherish and nurse up those Seeds of Vertue which are already in our very Being and Constitution For before there were any positive Laws of men there were Natural certain moral Principles of Good and Evil which Reason obliged all men to As To do as we would be done to to worship God obey and honour Parents The latter so congenial to us that Moses and other Legislators have thought it superfluous to order any Punishment for parricide imagining none could be so unnatural as to commit it Such natural Obligations are antecedent to any humane Constitutions and in the Judgment of Aristotle as fixt and determined as any physical Beings So that as there will be Colours though there were no Eye to view them there will be such a thing as Virtue and Vice though there were no Law either for or against it Nor can any pretence of publick Interest alter their Property Utilitas prope justi mater aequi though in some sense very commendable for all Laws should aim at the publick good without which they should be no better than Snares and Traps yet in that wherein some take it 't is in no wise tolerable Their meaning by it being in short this that there is no Interest but what is merely secular that Vertue and Vice are in themselves insignificant things to be taken up or laid down as they are subservient to politick Ends As if God and Nature were to stoop to Mammon or that the distance between Honestum and Utile were so irreconcileable that 't were impossible for them to meet together An Error as old as Tully's Days which he complains of and confutes which excellently serves the turns of loose men who cannot better defame and exterminate Morality than by persuading the World 't is an useless thing as indeed it is to them that desire not to be bound up by it and therefore decry it in all others especially them who are to make Laws and see them executed who if they should be vertuous must of necessity shame and punish all those who resolve to be vitious But could these men once persuade Legislators that just and unjust were things indifferent and alterable at their pleasure they would no doubt at last as easily persuade themselves too that obedience and disobedience to them were as arbitrary and indifferent What disorder and confusion this one Principle would introduce into the World that Vertue and Vice were founded only in humane Constitutions and politick Interest and not in the Nature of the things themselves is easie to judge by putting this one Supposition Suppose the reverse of all we now call Vertue were solemnly enacted and the Practice of Fraud Perjury and Falseness to a man's word and all manner of Vice and Wickedness were established by a Law I ask now if the cafe between Vertue and Vice were thus altered would that we call Vice in process of time gain the reputation of Vertue and that which we call Vertue grow odious and contemptible to humane Nature If it would not then there is something in the Nature of Good and Evil of Vertue and Vice which does not depend upon the pleasure of Authority nor is subject to any Arbitrary Constitution But that it would not be thus is most certain because no Government could subsist upon such Terms For the very enjoyning of Fraud and Rapine Perjury and breach of Trust doth apparently destroy the greatest End of Government which is to preserve men in their Rights against the Encroachments of Fraud and Violence And this End being destroyed humane Societies would immediately fly in pieces and men would necessarily fall into a state of War Which plainly shows that Vertue and Vice are not Arbitrary things but that there is a natural immutable and eternal Reason for that we call moral Good and against that we call moral Evil. God has established these things upon as firm and solid a Basis as he has done the Earth which none can remove And therefore what Tertullian Ironically said of the Roman Senate that would not allow Christ a Room among their Gods at the Instance and recommendation of Tiberius Nisi homini Deus placuerit Deus non erit is applicable to all those who make the Wills of Legislators the Measure of Good and Evil Vertue must not be Vertue nor Vice Vice without men's Consent and Approbation 2. But besides these there is another sort of men who not content to make Good and Evil indifferent are so wickedly partial as to prefer Evil to Good These are all practical Epicureans who set up Anti-tables in opposition to those of God and Nature live as if they aimed at being scandalous as well as vitious and loved the Guilt as well as the Pleasures of Sin that give all the reputation they can to Vice which is the natural Reward of Vertue decry all Goodness in themselves and others and stamp God's Image on Satan's Dross Such are all they who as St. Paul says glory in their shame Quorum novissima voluptus infamia est the Character which the Roman Historian gives of a prodigious Impiety that boast of their Infamy one of his Atheism another of the Trophies of his Drunkenness and a third of the Variety of his Uncleanness Pride compasseth them about like a Chain Psal. 73. 6. They deck themselves with it as with a Robe of Honour wear it as their Ornament and bring it forth into open view like Agrippa and Bernice in the Acts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with much Pomp and State glorying as much in the Scars they receive in Satan's service as ever St. Paul did in the Marks of the Lord Jesus and have not so much as the Religion of Hypocrisie Sin is called the Work of Darkness because they who commit it usually hate the Light and therefore They that are drunk are drunk in the Night says the Apostle This was wont to be the Custom Vice durst not show its ugly Face by day But how many turn the Works of Darkness into Works of Light and produce them on the