and passive obedience of Christ The act of Justification is the act of a Judge and this cannot concern us so much as the benefit it self which is the greatest that can be given not so much as our duty to fit us for the act Oh that men would learn to speak of the acts of God in his own language and not seek out divers inventions which do not edifie but many times rend the Church in pieces and expose the truth it self to reproch which had triumphed gloriously over Errour had men contended only for that common faith which was once delivered to the Saints My sheep hear my voice saith Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Basil They hear and obey and do not dispute and ask questions They taste not trouble and mud that clear fountain of the water of life And as in Justification so in the point of Faith by which we are justified What profit is there so busily to enquire whether the nature of Faith consisteth in an obsequious assent or in the appropriation of the grace and mercy of God or in a meer fiducial apprehension and application of the merits of Christ What will this add to me what cubit what hair to my stature if so be I settle and rest upon this that the Faith by which I am justified must not be a dead faith but a faith working by charity Oh let me try and examine my Faith let me build my self up in it and upon it those actions of Obedience and Holiness which are the language of Faith and speak her to be alive and then I shall not trouble my self too much to determine utrùm fides quae viva or quà viva Whether a living Faith justifieth or whether it justifieth as a living Faith Whether Good works are necessary to Justification as Efficient or Concomitant For it is enough to know that a dead Faith is not sufficient for this work and that Faith void of good works is dead and therefore that must needs be a living Faith which worketh by charity Whether Charity concur with Faith to the act of Justification as some would have it Whether it have an equal efficacy or unequal or none at all Whether the power of justifying be attributed to Faith as the fountain and mother of all good works or as it bringeth these good works into act or it have this force by it self alone as it apprehendeth the merits of Christ although even in that act it is not alone In the midst of all this noise in the midst of all these doubts and disputations it is enongh for me to be justified And what is enough if it be not enough to be saved Which I may be by following in the way that is smooth and plain and not running out into the mazes and labyrinths of disputes It is the voice of the Gospel behind thee HAEC EST VIA This is the way FAITH WORKING BY CHARITY and thou mayest walk in it and never ask any more questions But if men will inquire let them inquire But let them take heed that they lose not themselves in their search and dispute away their Faith talk of Faith and be worse then Infidels of Justification and please themselves in unrighteousness of Christ's active obedience and be to every good work reprobate of his Passive obedience and deny him when they should suffer for him of the inconsistency of Faith and Good works in our justification and set them at as great a distance in their lives and conversation and because they do not help to justifie us think they have no concurrence at all in the work of our salvation For we are well assured of the one and fight for it and most men are too bold and confident in the other But the doctrine of the Cospel is a perfect Law and bindeth us to both both to believe and to do for it requireth a working and an active Faith In the book of God all our members were written All our members yea and all the faculties of our soul And in his Gospel he hath framed laws and precepts to order and regulate them all in every act in every motion and inclination which if the Eye offend pluck it out if the Hand cut it off limit the Understanding to the knowledge of God bind the Will to obedience moderate and confine those two Turbulent Tribunes of the soul the Concupiscible and Irascible appetites direct our Fear level our Hope fix our Joy restrain our Sorrow condescend to order our Speech frame our Gesture fashion our Apparel set and compose our outward Behaviour Instances in Scripture in every particular are many and obvious And the time would fail me to mention them all In a word then This Law is fitted to the whole man to every faculty of the soul to every member of the body fitted to us in every condition in every relation in every motion It will reign with thee it will serve with thee It will manage thy riches comfort thy poverty ascend the throne with thee sit down with thee on the dunghil It will pray with thee fast with thee labour with thee rest and keep a Sabbath with thee It will govern a Church it will order thy family It will raise a kingdom within thee not to be divided in it self free from mutinies and seditions and those tumults and disturbances which thy flesh with its lusts and affections may raise there It will live with thee stand by thee at thy death and be that Angel which shall carry thee into Abraham's bosom It will rise again with thee and set the crown of glory upon thy head And is there yet any more Or what need there more then that which is necessary There can be but one God one Heaven one Religion one way to Blessedness and there is but one Law And this runneth the whole compass directeth us not only ad ultimum sed usque ad ultimum not only to that which is the end but to the means to every passage and approch to every help and advantage towards it leadeth us through the manifold changes and chances of this world through fire and water through honour and dishonour through peace and persecution and uniteth us to that one God giveth us right and title to that one heaven and bringeth us home to that one end for which we were made And is there yet any more Yes Particular cases may be so many and various that they cannot all come within the compass of this Law It is true But then they are cases of our own making cases which we need not make sometimes raised by weakness sometimes by wilfulness sometimes even by that sin it self which reigneth in our mortal bodies And to such this Law is as an ax to cut them off But be their original what it will if this Law reach them not or if they bear no analogy or affinity with those cases which are contained in the Gospel nor depend upon them by any
Ignorance of our selves 481. Self-love 481. Pride 483. The extent and latitude of this duty 484 c. It is our principal work to examin both our weakness and our strength 601 602. After Examination amendment must follow 485 c. Against such as magisterially examin others before the Communion 494. Every man ought to examin himself 494 495. Examples have far more power upon our Wills then Precepts 1016 c. The power of an Example 826 827. The Examples of God's Saints are to be looked upon with a wary Ey 525. 1024. They are as it were pictures and statues of Virtues 1018. and a light to us 552 553. Let us bless God for them 553. 1022. We must set before us the Examples of the best 1020 c. 1023. Great Ex. should not discourage but quicken and hearten us 1023. v. Saints A shame it is that after so many fair Ex. Religion and Holiness should decay 1023 1024. We should strive to equal and excel the brightest Examples 1024. If an Ex. vary from the Command we must not follow it 1026 1027. GOD is the great Ex. for Man to follow 826 c. CHRIST's Example is the Standard by which all others are to be examined 1026. Every man ought to give good Ex. to others 555 556. A fearful thing to draw others to sin by our Ex. 380. Excusing of sin how ordinary how sinful 171 172. It is even natural to us and inseparable from Sin 1036. The mischief of it 1036 1037. It is greater then the Sin it self 1034 1035. Exercise It s mighty force 1117. Of the military Exercises of the Romanes 1118. Exod. vii 3. 412. ¶ xx 25. 372. Expedient In matters of indifferencie we are to do nothing that is not Exp. 1102. Experience begotten by Use and brought forth by Memory 533. No Masters so willing and able as the Scholars of Experience 533. Extremes are both evil and both to be avoided 374. Ey In the Ey the Mind sheweth it self 264. F. FAction An embittered Faction a type of Hell 492. Every Faction is wont to cry-up themselves and to cry-down all others 319 320. 491. 682. 1060. 1127 1128. which is carnal and sensual 320. v. Church Faith in Christ what 1075. How gained and encreased 669. Why God will not let the articles of our Faith become objects of our Sense 733 734. If Faith's object were clear and without difficulty it would not be Faith but Knowledge 41. The Senses help to confirm our Faith 727. Though it be an act of the Understanding yet it dependeth on the Will 734. How excellent a grace it is 274. It is a Prospective that presenteth to us things afar off 241. By it vve see Christ and lay hold on him 490. The miserable condition of him that wanteth F. 314. Many phansie they have F. that have not 1048. 1060. We must examine whether we be in the right F. 735. True and real F. is not idle or speachless or dead but active and operative 241. 765. Faith vvithout Righteousness will deceive them that rely on it 130. 136. Without Charity and Good vvorks it is nothing vvorth 275 276. Faith and Charity like Hippocrates's twins live and die together 490. F. is naturally productive of good vvorks 276. F. justifieth a sinner but a repentant sinner 872. It is attended with Hope 242. It maketh a man slight the threats and power of Tyrants 241. It expelleth base Fear and filleth the heart with courage and confidence 314. What kind of F. it is that must qualifie and prepare us for Christ's second coming 1049. The vast difference between a dead F. and a lively F. 316. How St. James and St. Paul may be reconciled in the point of F. 256. Why St. James putteth not Faith into his description of pure Religion 274 c. F. hath as its encreasings so its decreasings 458. 465. One that is strong in the F. may want skill to maintain it 734 735. We should at all times quicken our F. but then especially vvhen vve come to the Lord's Table 465. 489 490. Faith and Charity judge not alike 837. What maketh men fall from one F. to another 41 42. Self-love and Love of the vvorld frame mens Creeds 734. Many Questions about Faith may well be spared 1075 1076. Falling from grace v. Perseverance Familiarity with God hovv to be held 757. Fanaticks v. Holy Ghost Fasting commended 752. Different kinds of F. 752. Politick hypocritical Fasts inveyed against 277 278. 1051 c. Some cry-down Popish F. some all 750. The ends and use and benefit of F. 753. 791. 1056 1057. F. is not holiness but an help to it 1056. v. Duties Fate Against them that attribute all to Fate and Destiny 666. v. Decrees Necessity Whether it be Fate that bringeth Kingdoms to their ruine and not rather something else 213. Fear what 387. It may seem the most unprofitable of all the Passions 387. How great a burden F. is 936. Plato and Aristotle banish it their Schools 389 but both God's Law and Christ's Gospel command it 389 390. The errours of some Hereticks that cried-down F. as out of date under the Gospel 392. confuted 393 c. It is a fair introduction to Piety 389. It maketh us advise and consult what is best to do 388. How it worketh and becometh useful to forward our Repentance 387. c. It not onely keepeth us from sin but upholdeth us in the way of righteousness 392. 399. To avoid sin out of Fear is indeed an argument of imperfection but vve need it vvhile vve are here 395. Fear of God a soveraign antidote against Sin 258. Want of F. threvv our first Parents out of Paradise and novv keepeth men out of heaven 395. Of the distinction of Fear into Servile and Filial 396. What kind of F. Christ forbiddeth Luk. xii 32. 397. God's Children may yea must fear punishment 396 c. 399. Fear of judgment may vvell consist vvith Love 391. 394 c. vvitness Gods Saints and Martyrs 391. Hovv Love casteth out Fear 398. Fear beginneth the good vvorks oftentimes which Love afterward perfecteth 926. Fear may stand with Faith 398. and vvith Hope 399. Hope and Fear ever go together 387. Fear keepeth them all in a due temper 399. Christ telleth us vvhom vve must not fear and vvhom vve must 394. We should not fear men but God 236. 400. 642. Wherein our F. of God is seen 807. The F. of God should drive out all F. of men 673. How basely many fear men but not God at all 400. 642. Base F. of men how strangely it transporteth and transformeth us 117. 400. 642. 671. Feasting 618. We are bid to feast the poor c. but vvho vvhere is the man that doth so 690. Fellow-feeling ought to be among us 141. 148. v. Compassion Fire Basil's phansie concerning Fire 551. Flattery and Dissimulation hovv they differ 54 55. The holy Spirit useth neither 54. How the vvorld aboundeth with Flatterers 504. A seditious Flatterer 506.
can be the same numerical body with that which did walk upon the earth It is enough for me to know that it is sown in dishonour 1 Cor. 15.43 and shall be raised in glory and my business is to rise with Christ here and make good my part in this first Resurrection for then I am secure and need not to extend my thoughts to the end of the world to survey and comprehend the second To add one instance more in the point of Justification of a sinner in which after sixteen hundred years preaching of the Gospel and more we do not well agree and yet might well agree if we would take it as the Scripture hath reacht it forth and not burthen it with our own phansies and speculations with new conclusions forced out of the light to obscure and darken it For when this burden is upon it it must needs weigh according as the hand is that poiseth it And what necessity is there to ask Whether it consist in one or more acts so I do assure my self that it is the greatest blessing that God ever let fall upon the children of men or Whether it be perfected in the pardoning of our sins or the imputation of universal obedience or by the active and passive obedience of Christ when it is plain that the act of Justification is the act of the Judge and this cannot so much concern us as the benefit it self which is the greatest that can be given I am sure not so much as the duty which must fit us for the act It were to be wisht that men would speak of the acts of God in his own language and not seek out divers inventions which do not edifie but many times shake and rend the Church in pieces and lay the Truth it self open to reproch which had triumphed gloriously over Errour had men contended not for their own inferences and deductions Jude 3. but for that common faith which was once delivered to the Saints And as in Justification so in the point of Faith by which we are justified what Profit is it busily to enquire Whether the nature of Faith consisteth in an obsequious assent or in appropriating to our selves the grace and mercy of God or in the mere fiducial apprehension and application of the merits of Christ Whether it be an instrument or a condition Whether a living Faith justifieth or whether it justifieth as a living Faith What will this add to me what hair to my stature when I may settle and rest upon this which every eye must needs see That the Faith by which I am justified must not be a dead faith but a Faith working by Charity which is the language of Faith and demonstrateth her to be alive My sheep hear my voice saith Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gal. 5.6 saith Basil They hear and obey and never dispute or ask questions Joh. 10.27 they taste and not trouble and mud that clear water of life It is enough for us to be justified it is enough for us to be saved which we may be by pressing forward in the way which is smooth and plain and not running out into the mazes and labyrinths of disputes where we too oft lose our selves in our search and dispute away our Faith talk of Faith and the power of it and be worse then infidels of Justification and please our selves in unrighteousness of Christs active Obedience and be to every good Work reprobate Tit. 1.16 of his passive Obedience and deny him when we should suffer for him of the inconsistency of Faith and Good works in our Justification and set them at as great a distance in our lives and conversations and because they do not help to justifie us think they have no concurrence at all in the work of our salvation For we are well assured of the one and contend for it and too many are too confident of the other There is indeed a kind of intemperance in most of us a wild and irregular desire to make things more or less then they are and remove them well near out of sight by our additions and defalcations and few there are who can be content with the Truth and settle and rest in it as it appeareth in that nakedness and simplicity in which it was first brought forth but men are ever drawing out conclusions of their own spinning out and weaving speculations thin unsuitable unfit to be worn which yet they glory in and defend with more heat and animosity then they do that Truth which is necessary and by it self sufficient without this additional art For these are creatures of our own shaped out in our phansie and so drest up by us with all accurateness and curiosity of diligence that we fall at last in love with them and apply our selves to them with that closeness and adherency which dulleth and taketh off the edge of our affection to that which is most necessary and so leaveth that neglected and last in our thoughts which is the main Val. Max. 8. 11. As we read of Euphranor the painter who having stretcht his phansie and spent the force of his imagination in drawing Neptune to the life could not raise his after and wearied thoughts to the setting forth the majesty of Jupiter So when we are so lively and overactive in that which is either impertinent or not so considerable not much material to that which is indeed most material we commonly dream or are rather dead to those performances which the wisdome of God hath bound us to as the fittest and most proportioned to that end for which we were made And these I conceive are most necessary which are necessary to the work we have to do and will infallibly bring us to the end of our faith and hopes Others which our wits have hammered and wrought out of them may be peradventure of some use to those who are watchful over them to keep them in a pliableness and subserviency to that which is plain and received of all but may prove dangerous and fatal to others who have not that skill to manage them but favour them so much as to give them line and sufferance to carry them beyond their limit and then shut them up in themselves where they are lost to that truth which should save them which they leave behind them out of their eye and remembrance whilest they are busie in the pursuit of that which they overtake with danger and without which the Apostles of Christ and many thousands before them have attained their end and are now in bliss Certainly it would be more safe for us and more worthy our calling to be diligent and sincere in that which is plainly revealed to believe and in the strength and power of that Faith to crucifie our flesh with the affections and lusts Hoc opus Gal. 5.24 hic labor est then to be drawing out of Schemes and measuring out the actions and operations of God
man else They leap over all their Alphabet and are at their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their end before they begin They are at the top of the ladder before they have set a foot to the first step or round They study heaven but not the way to it Faith but not Good works Repentance without a Change or Restitution Religion without Order They are as high as Gods closet in heaven when they should be busie at his foot-stool They study Predestination but not Sanctity of life Assurance but not that Piety which should work it Heaven and not Grace and Grace but not their Duty And now no marvel if they meet not with saving Truth in this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this so great disorder and confusion No marvel when we have broke all rules and order and not observed the method of the Spirit if the Spirit lead us not who is a Spirit that loveth order and in a right method and orderly course leadeth us into the truth 4. The last is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Exercitation and Practice of the truths we learn This is so proper and necessary for a Christian that Christian Religion goeth under that name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Al. Strom. l. 4. and is called an exercise by Clemens Alexandrinus Nyssene Cyrill of Hierusalem and others And though they who lead a Monastical life have laid claim to it as their own they were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet it may well belong to every one that is the Spirit 's Scholar who is as a Monk in the world shut up out of it even while he is in it exercising himself in those lessons which the Spirit teacheth and following as he leadeth Which is to make the World it self a Monastery A good Christian is the true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and by this dayly exercise in the doctrines of the Spirit doth drive the Truth home and make it enter into the soul and spirit Talis quisque est qualibus delectatur Inter artificem artificium mira cognatio est Anaxagoras said well Manus causa sapientiae It is not the brain but the hand that causeth knowledge and worketh wisdome And true wisdome that which the Spirit teacheth consisteth not in being a good Critick and rightly judging of the sense of words or in being a good Logician drawing out a true and perfect definition of Faith and Charity or discoursing aptly and methodically of the Lessons of the Spirit or in being a good Oratour setting out the beauty and lustre of Religion to the very eye No saith the Son of Sirach Ecclus. 34.10 He that hath no experience knoweth little Ex mandato mandatum cernimus By practising the command we gain a kind of familiarity a more inward and certain knowledge of it If any man will do the will of God Joh 7.17 he shall know the Doctrine In Divinity and indeed in all knowledge whose end is practice that of Aristotle is true Those things we learn to do we learn by doing them We learn Devotion by prayer Charity by giving of alms Meekness by forgiving injuries Humility and Patience by suffering Temperance by every-day-fighting against our lusts As we know meat by the tast so do we the things of God by practice and experience and at last discover Heaven it self in piety And this is that which S. Paul calleth doctrine according to godliness We taste and see how gracious the Lord is 1 Tim. 6.3 Psal 34.8 1 Joh. 1.1 we do as it were see with our eyes and with our hands handle the word of truth In a word when we manifest the Truth and make it visible in our actions the Spirit is with us and ready in his office to lead us further even to the inner house and closet of Truth He displayeth his beams of light as we press forward and mend our pace He every day shineth upon us with more brightness as we every day strive to increase He teacheth us not so much by words as by actions and practice by the practice of those virtues which are his lessons and our duties We learn that we may practice and by practice we become as David speaketh Psal 119 99. Psal 19.2 wiser then our teachers To conclude Day unto day teacheth knowledge and every act of piety is apt to promote and produce a second to beget more light which may yet lead us further from truth to truth till at last we be strengthned and established in the Truth and brought to that happy estate which hath no shadow of falshood but like the Spirit of Truth endureth for evermore The First SERMON PART I. MICAH VI. 6 8. v. 6. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow my self before the high God Shall I come before him with burnt offerings c. v. 8. He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God Psal 4.6 THere be many who say Who will shew us any good saith the Prophet David For Good is that which men naturally desire And here the Prophet Micah hath fitted an answer to this question He hath shewed thee O man what is good And in the discovery of this Good he useth the same method which the Philosopher doth in the description of his moral Happiness First he sheweth us what it is not and then what it is And as the Philosopher shutteth out Honour and Riches and Pleasure as being so little necessary that we may be happy without them so doth the Prophet in the verses going before my Text in a manner reject and cast by Burnt-offerings and all the cerimonial and typical part of Moses Law all that outward busie expensive and sacrificing Religion as no whit esseâ—tial to that Good which he here fixeth up as upon a pillar for all eyes to look upon as being of no great alliance or nearness nor fit to incorporate it self with that Piety which must commend us to God And as a true Prophet he doth not only discover to the Jews the common errour of their lives but sheweth them yet a more excellent way first asking the question Non satis est reprehendisse peccantem si non doceas recti viam Colum. de Re Rust l. 11. c 1. Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams Whether Sacrifice be that part of Religion with which we may appear and bow before our God and be accepted and then in his answer in the words of my Text quite excluding it as not absolutely necessary and essential to that which is indeed Religion And here the Question Will the Lord be pleased with sacrifice addeth emphasis and energy and maketh the Denyal more strong and the Conclusion in the Text more positive and binding then if it had been in plain terms and formally denyed Then this Good had been shewed naked and alone and not brought in with
Faith so is Faith the foundation of an holy Conversation In this we edifie our selves and in this we sustain and uphold others In this we stand and in this we raise up others From Faith are the issues of life from Faith as from a fountain flow those waters of comfort which refresh the widow and the fatherless and that water of separation which purifieth us Numb 31.23 and keepeth us unspotted and white as snow But our Apostle mentioneth none of these and I will give you some reason at least a fair conjecture why he doth not First here where S. James telleth us what pure Religion is he doth not so much as name Faith For indeed Faith is the ground of the whole draught and portrayture of Religion and as we observe in it in pictures it is in shadow not exprest but yet seen It is supposed by the Apostle writing not to Infidels but to those who had already given up their names to Christ Faith is like those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Mathematicks which Tully calleth initia Mathematicorum beginnings and principles which if we grant not we can make no progress in that science S. Paul calleth Faith a principle of the doctrine of Christ Heb. 6.1 And what necessity was there for my Apostle to commend that unto Christians which they had already embraced to direct them in that wherein they were perfect to urge that which they could not deny not deny nay of which they made their boast all the day long No S. James is for Ostende mihi He doth not once doubt of their faith but is very earnest to force it out that it may shew it self by works Then Faith is a star when it streameth out light and its beams are the works of charity Then Faith is a ship when pure Religion is the rudder to steer and guide it 1 Tim 1 19. that it dash not on a rock and be split Then Faith is the soul of the soul when by its quickning and enlivening power we run the wayes of Christs commandments Purè credunt pure ergo vivant pure ergo loquantur saith the Father Their belief is right therefore let their conversation be sincere No other conclusion can naturally be deduced from Faith and of it self it can yield no other And this it will yield if you do not in a manner destroy it and spoil it of its power and efficacy For what an inconsequence is this I believe that Christ hath taught me to be merciful Luk. 6 36. 1 Tim. 4.8 as my heavenly Father is merciful that Charity hath the promise of the world to come Therefore I will shut up my bowels This I am sure is one part of our belief if it be not our Creed is most imperfect and yet such practical conclusions do our Avarice and Luxury draw Our Faith is spread about the world but our Charity is a candle under a bushel O the great errour and folly of this our age which can shew us multitudes of men and women who as the Apostle speaketh are ever learning 2 Tim. 3.7 and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth who have conned their Creed by heart but have little skill or forgot the skill they have in the royal Law who cry up Faith as the Jews did the Temple of the Lord Jer. 4.7 Ch. 2. v. 17 20 26. and are very zealous for it yet suffer it to decay and waste till it be dead as my Apostle speaketh eat out the very heart of it by a careless and profane conversation as the Jews with their own hands did set fire on that Temple which they so much adored And this may be a second reason why S. James mentioneth not Faith in his character of Religion The power and efficacy of Faith having been every where preached-up men carnally minded did so fill their thoughts with the contemplation of that fundamental virtue that they left no room for other virtues not so efficacious indeed to justifie a sinner yet as necessary as Faith it self they did commend and extoll the power of Faith when it had no power at all in them nay which is the most fatal miscarriage of all they did make Faith an occasion through which sin revived which should have destroyed in them the whole body of sin Rom. 6.6 it being common to men at last to fix and settle their minds upon that object which hath been most often presented to them as the countrey peasant having heard much talk of the City of Rome began at last to think there was no other city but that If we look forward to the second chapter of this Epistle we shall think this more then a conjecture For there the Apostle seemeth to take away from Faith its attribute of saving Can faith save a man What an Heretick what a Papist would he be that should but put up this question in these our dayes wherein the SOLA JVSTIFICAT hath left Faith alone in the work of our salvation and yet the Question may be put up and the Resolve on the negative may be true Faith cannot save him certainly that saith he hath faith and hath not works Thus though S. James dispute indeed against Simon the Sorcerer and others as we may gather out of Irenaeus yet in appearance he levelleth his discourse against Paul the Apostle For Not by works but by faith saith S. Paul Not by faith but by works saith S. James and yet both are true the one speaking to the Jews who were all for the Law the other to those Christians who were all for Faith To these who had buried all thought of Good works in the pleasing but deceitful contemplation of Faith our Apostle speaketh no other language but Do this and exalteth Charity to the higher place that their vain boasting of Faith might not be heard For Faith saith he hath no tongue nay nor life without her And thus in appearrance he taketh from the one to establish the other and setteth up a throne for Charity not without some shew and semblance of prejudice to Faith For last of all to give you one reason more Faith indeed is naturally productive of Good works For what madness is it to see the way to eternity of bliss and not to walk in it Each article of our Creed pointeth as with a finger to some virtue to be wrought in the mind and published in the outward man If I believe that Christ is God it will follow I must worship him If he died for sin the consequenee is plain enough We must die to it If he so loved us the Apostle concludeth We must love one another Charity is the proper effect of Faith and upon Faith and Charity we build up our Hope If we believe the promises and perform the conditions if we believe him that loved us and love him and keep his commandments we are in heaven already But yet we may observe that the
any great pains might be brought to fast and pray and perform all parts of religion which were not chargeable but could not be won with the most powerful eloquence or strongest reason to any part of it which did cost them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but one half-peny 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a cheap religion is as easy as cheap but Go sell all that you have Matth. 19.21 and give to the poor is a bitter pill which we hardly let down and with a sowre countenance And should we prescribe it now to men of this iron age would they not as S. Paul speaketh in another case 1 Cor. 14.23 say that we are out of our wits In the last place these two if they be truly in us are never can never be alone but suppose Faith which is sigillum bonorum operum as Chrysologus speaketh Serm. 23. the seal to every good work to make it currant and authentick He that is perfect in these cannot be to seek in the rest He that can govern a ship in a storm when the sea rageth and is unquiet may easily manage a cockboat in a calm He that can empty himself to his brother that thinketh the bellies of the poor the best granaries for his corn and the surest treasuries for his money that can give unto God the things that are Gods Matth. 22.21 and return them back by the hands of his Ambassadours the poor who beseech us in his name he that is an exile at home hath banisht himself from the world he lives in and so useth it as if he used it not 1 Cor. 7.30 31. he that hateth sin as an infectious plague and in a holy pride will keep his distance from it though it bow towards him in the person of his dearest friend that abhorreth an Oath though his friend sweareth it that lotheth Lasciviousness though his brother acteth it that detesteth Sacriledge though his father were inricht by it and passed it over to him as an inheritance He that can thus keep himself unspotted of the world will lift up pure hands and beat down his body and be ready to hearken what the Lord God will say He that sendeth up so many sacrifices to God he that thus maketh himself a sacrifice will offer up also the incense of his prayers He that can abstain from sin may fast from meat He that hath broke his heart will open his ear In a word he that approveth himself in these two cannot but be active and exact in the rest And now having shewed you what is but shadowed in this picture and description of Religion let us look upon the picture it self so look upon it as to draw it out and express it in our selves in every limb and part of it 1 Cor. 14.25 that they that behold us may say that God is in us of a truth and glorifie him at the sight of such religious men Eccl. 11.1 And first we see Charity stretching forth her hand and casting her bread upon the waters the bitter waters of Affliction going about to the widow and fatherless and doing good going about as Christ did and working miracles giving eyes to the blind and food to the hungry and light to them that sit in darkness and a staff to the lame an oracle to those who doubt and a pillar to those who droop and are ready to sink under the burden of their sins doing all those things which Jesus did and taught walking in love as Christ loved us Ephes 5.2 And this we may well call a part of Religion and a fair representation of it For by this the image of the likeness of God is repaired in us saith Bernard and is made manifest in us and as it were visible to the eye In every act of charity he that dwelleth on high cometh down in the likeness of men speaketh by the tongue and giveth by the hand of a mortal man moveth in him and moveth with him to perfect this work This maketh us as God in stead of God one to another For Homini homo quid praestat One man is not superiour to another as he is a man In the Heraldry of Nature all are of the same degree all are equal for all are men But when Charity filleth the heart of a man and stretcheth forth his hand then he taketh an higher place the place of God is his Ambassadour and Steward not of the same essence with God but bearing about with him his image saith Clemens Alexandrinus Put ye on saith S. Paul Strom. 2. Col. 3.12 bowels of mercy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the elect of God When we have put these on we then are indeed the elect of God endowed with his spirit carrying about with us the mercies of God sent as it were from his mercy-seat with comfort and relief to those who are minished and brought low by oppression affliction and sorrow We may flatter our selves Psal 107.39 and talk what we please of Election and if we please intail it on a Faction but most sure it is without Charity our election is not sure 2 Pet. 1 7-10 and without bowels of mercy we can be no more elect then Judas the traytor was Elect that is by interpretation The sons of perdition It is doing good alone that maketh us a royal priesthood and this honour have all his Saints 1 Pet. 2.9 Psal 149 9. The kings of the Gentiles saith our Saviour exercise lordship over them and they that exercise authority upon them are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 benefactours or gracious Lords are called what they should be not what they are for if they were gracious and benefactours then were they kings indeed anointed with the oyl of mercy which is sent down from heaven That day on which this distilled not from him on others Titus the Emperour did count as lost Diem perdidi so it is in Suetonius but Zonaras hath it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have not reigned to day This day I was not Gods Vicegerent We read that God gave Solomon largeness of heart 1 Kings 4.29 and Pineda glosseth it liberalem fecit He made him liberal and merciful And we read that David was a man after Gods own heart 1 Sam. 13.14 and Procopius upon the place giveth this as the probable reason of that denomination that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a lover of the poor merciful as God is merciful 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Imitation giveth us a kinde of nearness and familiarity with God That in which we represent him maketh us one with him Matth. 12.50 maketh a man as Christ speaketh his brother and sister and mother This is our affinity this is our honour this is in a manner our Divinity on earth For God and Man saith Synesius Epist. 30. have but one onely thing common to them both and that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to do good Heb.
remedio laboramus By our own folly and the Devils craft our disease doth not hurt us so much as our remedy Repentance which was ordained as the best Physick to purge the soul is turned into that poyson that corrupteth and killeth it What wandring thought what idle word what profane action is there which is not laid upon this fair foundation Hope of pardon which yet will not bear up such hay and stubble We call Sin a disease and so it is a mortal one But Presumption is the greatest the very corruption of the blood and spirits of the best parts of the soul We are sick of Sin it is true but that we feel not But we are sick very sick of Mercy sick of the Gospel sick of Repentance sick of Christ himself and of this we make our boast And our bold relyance on this doth so infatuate us that we take little care to purge out the plague of our heart which we nourish and look upon as upon Health it self We are sick of the Gospel for we receive it and take it down and it doth not purge out but enrage those evil humours which discompose the soul John 13.27 We receive it as Judas did the sop we receive it and with it a devil For this bold and groundless Presumption of pardon maketh us like unto him hardeneth our heart first and then our face and carrieth us with the swelling sails of impudence and remorselessness to an extremity of daring to that height of impiety from which we cannot so easily descend but must fall and break and bruise our selves to pieces Praesumptio invericundiae portio saith Tertullian Presumption is a part and portion and the upholder of Immodesty It falleth and careth not whither it ruineth us and we know not how it abuseth and dishonoureth that Mercy which it maketh a wing to shadow it It hath been the best purveiour for Sin and the kingdome of Darkness We read but of one in the Gospel that despaired Matth. 27.5 Acts 1.25 and hanged himself and so went to his place but how many thousands have gone a contrary way with less anguish and reluctancy with fair but false hopes with strong but feigned assurances and met him there Oh it is one of the Devils subtilest stratagemes to make Sin and Hope of heaven to dwell under the same roof to teach him who is his vassal to walk delicately in his evil wayes to rejoyce alwaies in the Lord even then when he fights against him to assure himself of life in the chambers of death And thus every man is sure The Schismatick is sure and the Libertine is sure the Adulterer is sure and the Murderer is sure the Traitour is sure they are sure who have no savour no relish of salvation The Schismatick hath made his peace though he have no charity The Libertine looketh for his reward though he do not onely deny good works but contemn them The Adulterer absolveth himself without Penance The Murderer knoweth David is entred heaven and hopeth to follow him The prosperous Traitour is in heaven already His present success is a fair earnest of another inheritance That God that favoureth him here will crown him hereafter Every man can do what he list and be what he list do what good men tremble to think of and yet fear not at all but expect the salvation of the Lord first damne and then canonize himself For the greatest part of the Saints of this world have been of their own Creation made up in the midst of the land of darkness with noise with thunder and earthquakes We may be bold to say If Despair hath killed her thousands Presumption hath slain her ten thousands Foolish men that we are who hath bewitched us that we lay hold on Christ when we thrust him from us make him our own and appropriate him when we crucifie and persecute him every day that we had rather phansie and imagine then make our election sure that we will have health and yet care not how we feed or what poison we let down that we make salvation an arbitrary thing to be met with when we please and can as easily be Saints as we can eat and drink as we can kill and slay Good God! what mist and darkness is this which maketh men possessed with Sin that is an enemy ready to devour them to be thus quiet and secure Could we or would we but a little awake and consult with the light of our Faith and Reason we should soon let go our confidence and plainly see the danger we are in whilst we are in our evil wayes and find Fear tied fast unto them So saith S. Paul But if you sin Rom. 13.4 fear Christian Security and Hope of life is the proper and alone issue of a good Conscience through faith in Christ purged from dead and evil works If we will leave our Fear Hebr. 9.14 we must leave our Evil works behind us Assurance is too choice a piece to be beat out by the phansie and to be made up when we please at a higher price then to be purchased with a thought It is a work that will take up an age to finish it the engagement of our whole life to be wrought out with fear and trembling Phil. 2.12 not to be taken as a thing granted as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so set up as a pillar of hope when there is no better basis and foundation for it then a forced and fading thought which is next to air and will perish sooner The young man in the Gospel had yet no knowledge of any such Assurance-office and therefore he putteth up his question to our Saviour thus Good Master Matth. 19.16 Mark 10.17 what good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life He saw no hope of entring in at that narrow gate with such prodigious sins And our Saviour's answer is Keep the commandments that is Turn from thy evil wayes Be not Envious Malitious Covetous Cruel False Deceitful Despair is the daughter of Sin and Darkness but Confidence is the emanation of a good Conscience What Flesh and Blood maketh up is but a phantasme which appeareth and disappeareth is seen and vanisheth so soon gone that we scarce know whether we saw it or no. There can be no firm hope raised but upon that which is as mount Sion Psal 125.1 and standeth fast for ever which is our best guard in our way nay which is our way in this life and when we are dead will follow us Eras Adag Nothing can bear and afford it but this Vnum arbustum non alit duos erithacos Sin and Assurance are birds too quarrelsome to dwell in the same bush Therefore if you sin fear or rather turn from your evil wayes 1 John 3 21. and then you shall have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 boldness and confidence towards God We must therefore sink and fall low and mitigate our voice
wayes but delight themselves in their own and rest and please themselves in Errour as in Truth to awake them out of this pleasant dream we must trouble them we must thunder to them we must disquiet and displease them For who would give an opiate pill to these Lethargicks To please men then is to tell a sick man that he is well a weak man that he is strong an erring man that he is orthodox instead of purging out the noxious humour to nourish and increase it to smooth and strew the wayes of Errour with roses that men may walk with ease and delight and even dance to their destruction to find out their palate and to fit it to envenom that more which they affect as Agrippina gave Claudius the Emperour poyson in a Mushrome What a seditious flatterer is in a Common-wealth that a false-Apostle is in the Church For as the seditious flatterer observeth and learneth the temper and constitution of the place he liveth in and so frameth his speach and behaviour that he may seem to settle and establish that which he studieth to overthrow to be a Patriot for the publick good when he is but a promoter of his private ends to be a servant to the Common-wealth when he is a Traytor so do all seducers and false-teachers They are as loud for the Truth as the best champions she hath but either subtract from it or add to it or pervert and corrupt it that so the Truth it self may help to usher in a lye When the Truth it self doth not please us any lye will please us but then it must carry with it something of the Truth For instance To acknowledge Christ but with the Law is a dangerous mixture It was the errour of the Galatians here To magnifie Faith and shut out Good works is a dash That we can do nothing without Grace is a truth but when we will do nothing to impute it to the want of Grace is a bold and unjust addition To worship God in spirit and truth Joh. 4.23 our Saviour commandeth it but from hence to conclude against outward Worship is an injurious defalcation of a great part of our duty Gal. 5.1 To stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free the Apostle commandeth it but to stand so as to rise up in the face of the Magistrate is a Gloss of Flesh and Bloud and corrupteth the Text. Rom. 13.1 Let every soul be subject to the higher powers that is the Text but to be subject no longer then the Power is mannaged to our will is a chain to bind Kings with or a hammer to beat all Power down that we may tread it under our feet And when we cannot relish the Text these mixtures and additions and subtractions will please us These hang as Jewels in our ears these please and kill us beget nothing but a dead Faith and a graceless life not Liberty but Licentiousness not Devotion but Hypocrisie not Religion but Rebellion not Saints but Hypocrites Libertines and Traytors The Truth is corrupted saith Nyssene 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Orat. 1. contra Eunom by subtraction by alteration by addition And these we must avoid the rather because they go hand in hand as it were with the Truth and carry it along with them in their company as lewd persons do sometimes a grave and sober man to countenance them in their sportiveness and debauchery De nostro sunt sed non nostrae saith Tertullian De Proscript They invade that inheritance which Christ hath left his Church Some furniture some colour something they borrow from the Truth something they have of ours but ours they are not And therefore as S. Ambrose adviseth Gratian the Emperour of all errours in doctrine we must beware of those which come nearest and border as it were upon the Truth and so draw it in to help to defeat it self because an open and manifest errour carrieth in its very forehead an argument against it self and cannot gain admittance but with a veil whereas these glorious but painted falsehoods find an easie entrance and beg entertainment in the Name of Truth it self This is the cryptick method and subtil artifice of Men-pleasers that is Men-deceivers to grant something that they may win the more and that too in the end which they grant not rudely at first to demolish the Truth but to let it stand a while that they may the more securely raise up and fix that Errour with which it cannot stand long S. Paul saw it well enough though the Galatians did not Gal. 5.2 If you be circumcised Christ profiteth you nothing that is is to you as if there were no Christ at all If the false Apostles had flatly denied Christ the Galatians would have been as ready as S. Paul to have cut them off because they had received the Gospel but joyning and presenting the Law with Christ they did deceive and please them well who began in the Spirit and did acknowledge Christ but would not renounce the Law propter metum Judaeorum for fear of their brethren the Jews Now these Men-pleasers these Crows Dictam Diogenis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Athen. Deipnos l. 6. c. 17. which devour not dead but living men are from an evil eg and beginning are bred and hatcht in the dung in the love of this world and are so proud and fond of their original that it is their labour their religion the main design of their life to bring the Truth Religion and Christ himself in subjection under it And to this end they are very fruitful to bring forth those mishapen issues which savour of the earth and corruption and have onely the name of Christ fastned to them as a badge to commend them and bring them to that end for which they had a being which is to gain the world in the name but in despite of Christ And these are they who as S. Peter speaketh make merchandise of mens souls nummularii sacerdotes 2 Pet. 2.3 as Cyprian calleth them Doctours of the Mint who love the Image of Caesar more then the image of God and had rather see the one in a piece of gold then the other renewed and stampt in a mortal man And this image they carry along with them whithersoever they go and it is as their Holy Ghost to inspire them For most of the doctrines they teach savour of that mint and the same stamp is on them both The same face of Mammon which is in their heart is visible also in their doctrine Thus Hosea complained of the false Prophets in his time Hos 4.8 They eat up the sin of my people that is by pleasing them they have consented to their sin and from hence reaped gain for flattery is a livelyhood Or they did not seriously reprehend the sins of the people that they might receive more sacrifices on which they might feed Some render it Levabant animum
Will that profane person ever stoop to an Angel who is thus familiar with God himself And for the Law it goeth for a letter a title and no more For Ceremonies they were but shadows but are now monsters Christ in appearance left us two and but two and some have dealt with them as they use to do with monsters exposed them to scorn and flung them out Prov. 25.11 So that this counsel now in respect of us will not appear as an apple of gold with pictures of silver but may seem to be quite out of its place and season But yet let us view it once again and we shall find that it is a general prescript looking forward and applyable to every age of the Church an antidote against all errours and deviations And if we take it as we should it will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 look round upon all and either prevent or purge out all errour whatsoever For though our errours be not the same with the Colossians yet they may proceed from the same ground and be as dangerous or worse Peradventure we may be in no danger of Philosophy but we may be in danger of our selves and our Self-love may more ensnare us then Philosophical subtilties can do We may be too stiff to bow to an Angel but our eyes may dazle at the power and excellency of Men Eph. 4.14 and we may be carried about from doctrine to doctrine from errour to errour with every breath of theirs as with a mighty wind And though we stand out against the glory of an Angel yet we may fall down and miscarry by the example of a mortal man In a word we may defie all Ceremonies and yet worship our own imaginations which may be less significant then they Let us then as the Apostle elsewhere speaketh Hebr. 13.22 suffer this word of exhortation Let us view and handle this word of life and it will present us with these two things 1. A Christian mans Duty in these words AMBVLATE IN CHRISTO Walk in Christ. 2. The Rule by which we must regulate our motion and be directed in our Walk SICVT ACCEPISTIS We must so walk in him as we have received him Which two stand in flat opposition to two main errours of our life For either we receive Christ and not walk in him or walk in him but not with a SICVT not as we have received him Of these in their order In the handling of the first we shall point and level our discourse at two particulars and shew you 1. That Christianity is not a lazy and idle profession a sitting still or a standing or a speculation but a Walk 2. Wherein this Walk or motion principally consisteth First we find no word so expressive no word more commonly used in holy Writ then this To walk with God Gen. 5.22 24. to walk before God Gen. 17.1 and 24.40 to walk by faith 2 Cor. 5.7 to walk in good works Ephes 2.10 and in divers other places For indeed in this one word in this one syllable is contained the whole matter the end and sum of all all that can be brought in to make up the perfect man in Christ Jesus For first this bringeth forth a Christian like a pilgrime or traveller Phil. 3.13 forgetting what is behind and weary of the place he standeth in counting those few approches he hath made as nothing ever panting and striving gaining ground and pressing forward to a higher degree to a better place As there is motus ad perfectionem a motion to perfection so there is motus in perfectione a motion and progress even in perfection it self the good Christian being ever perfect and never perfect till he come to his journeyes end Secondly it taketh within its compass all those essential requisites to action It supposeth 1. Faculty to discover the way 2. a Power to act and move in it 3. Will which is nothing else but principium actionis as Tertullian saith the beginning of all motion the imperial power which as Queen commandeth and giveth act to the Understanding Senses Affections and those faculties which are subject to it And besides this to Walk implieth those outward and adventitious helps Knowledge in the Understanding and Love in the Will which are as the Pilgrimes staff to guide and uphold him in his way Rom. 13.13 2 Cor. 5.1 His Knowledge is as the day to him to walk as in the day And his Love maketh his journey shorter though it be through the wilderness of this world to a City not made with hands Hebr. 9.11 nor seen Faculty without Knowledge is like Polyphemus a body with power to move but without eye sight to direct and therefore cannot chuse but offend and move amiss And Faculty and Knowledge without Love and Desire are but like a body which wanting nourishment hath no sense of hunger to make it call for it and therefore cannot but bring leanness into the soul For be our natural faculty and ability what it will yet if we know not our way we shall no more walk in it then the traveller sound of body and limb can go the way aright of which he is utterly ignorant Again be our Abilities perfect and our Knowledge absolute yet if we want a Mind and have no Love if we suffer our selves to be overswayed by a more potent affection to something else we shall never do what we knovv vvell enough and are otherwise enabled to Novv To walk in Christ taketh in all these Faculty Povver Will Knovvledge Love Then you see a Christian in his Walk Psal 19.5 rejoycing as a mighty man to run his race when the Understanding is the counsellour and pointeth out This is the way walk in it Isa 30.21 and the Will hath an eye to the hand and direction of the Understanding boweth it self and as a Queen draweth with it those inferiour faculties the Senses and Affections when it openeth my Eye to the wonders of Gods Law Psal 119.18 Job 31.1 and shutteth it up by covenant to the vanity of the World when it boundeth my Touch and Tast with Touch not Tast not any forbidden thing Col. 2.21 when it maketh the Senses as windows to let in life not Death Jer. 9.21 and as gates shut fast to the World and the Devil and lifting up their heads to let the King of glory in Psal 24.7.9 when it composeth and tuneth our Affections to such a peace and harmony setting our Love to piety our Anger to sin our Fear to Gods wrath our Hope to things not seen our Sorrow to what is done amiss and so frameth in us nunc modulos temperantiae nunc carmen pietatis as S. Ambrose speaketh now the even measures of Temperance now a psalm of Piety now the threnody of a Broken heart even those songs of Sion which the Angels in heaven God himself delight in All these are virtually included in this one duty to
many times then that which we gain by lawful and prescribed means then that which we buy For it moveth like a tempest and driveth down all even the Truth it self before it Look over the whole catalogue of the sons of Belial and take a view of all the turbulent spirits that have been in the world and ye shall find the most of them to have been Enthusiasts pretenders to an unsought for and suddain revelation most wicked because so soon good and extremely ignorant because wise in an instant James 3.17 But the Truth which is from above and is not thrown down but bought from thence is pure and peaceable and easie to be intreated full of good works and without hypocrisie And it self is conveyed into us the right way so it ordereth every motion and action regulateth the whole progress of our life and maketh it like unto it self That may seem an harsh saying of Metellus Numidicus and had a Christian Divine uttered it Gell. lib. 1. c. 6. he had gone for a Pelagian His demum Deos propitios esse aequum est qui sibi adversarii non sunt Dii immortales approbare virtutem non adhibere debent It is a kind of justice that God should be favourable to those who are not enemies to themselves God sitteth above as one that hath set us our task and observeth our hands and doth not do all himself But his reason certainly is orthodox Quid nos à Deo diutiùs exspectemus nisi errationibus finem faciamus What can we expect from the God of truth if we still follow lies and will make no end of running from the truth God hath so ordered that nothing of great moment can be suddenly done Every work must find us fitted and prepared or else we shall find it will fly out of our reach Hence the Philosopher giveth this reason why there be so few wise men Quia pauci Sapientiam dignam putant nisi quam in transitu cognoscant Because the most have so low an opinion of the Truth that they think her not worth saluting unless it be by the by The reason why men know not the Truth is because they reverence it not but think it is a wind which will blow when they list that it will enter them without entreaty become theirs when they please yea whether they will or no. This is the cause why Truth which is the best merchandise is so seldom bought and phansies of our own are entertained in its place Hence it is that all our silver is dross our coyn counterfeit and our actions bear so little of the image and face of Truth upon them that To be merciful is but to fling a mite into the treasury To fast is to abstain for a day To pray is but to say Lord hear me or which is worse to multiply words without sense To love the Truth is but to hear it preached To be a Christian is onely to profess it To have faith is to boast of it To have hope is to say so and To be full of charity is but to do good to our selves These graces we deny not are infused yet they are gained encreased and confirmed in us by care and diligence Faith cometh by hearing saith the Apostle Rom. 10.17 We cannot but observe that in our greener years we are catechized and instructed and in our riper age when reason is improved in us we look over our evidence again and again and by the miracles and innocency of our Saviour and by the excellency of his doctrine and by the joynt testimony of the Apostles and the huge improbability that they should deceive us Jude 20. we are built up and building implieth labour on our most holy Faith which worketh by Charity Gal. 5.6 When that Faith which is not thus bought but is brought in without any motives or inducements without study or meditation which is not bought but created by our selves and so is a phansie rather then Faith bringeth forth nothing praiseworthy is not a foundation of good works but a mere pillar of our own setting up to lean upon and to uphold and comfort a spirit that would otherwise droop when we have committed evil If mens Faith did cost them more sure they would make more use of it then they do And for Hope What is it but a conclusion gathered by long experience by curious and watchful observation by a painful peregrination through all the powers of our soul and an exact search of all the actions of our life which if answerable to the Truth produce a firm Hope if not our Hope we may call an anchor Heb. 6.19 but it is of no more use then an anchor painted upon a wall or rather it is not an anchor but a rock at which we may shipwreck and sink I might instance in more For thus it is in all the passages of our life There is nothing wrought in us but with pains at least nothing that is worth possessing Nay those evils which we should dispossess our selves of do not alwayes enter with ease 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Chrysostome Even the things of the Devil are not attained without labour and cost How laborious is thy Revenge how busie thy Cruelty how watchful and studious thy Lust what penance doth thy Covetousness put thee to And if our vices cost us so dear and stand us at so high a rate shall we think that that Truth will run after us and follow us in all our wayes which bringeth along with it an eternal weight of glory Can a negligent and careless glance upon the Bible can our airy and empty speculations can the wantonness of our ear can our confidence and ignorance straight make us Evangelists Or is it probable that Truth should come è profundo putei out of the bottom of the well and offer her self to them who stand idle at the mouth and top of it and will let down no pitcher to draw it up 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Olymp. od 5. as Pinder speaketh Labour and cost wait still upon the Truth Nor will she visit and abide with us unless these usher her in and attend upon her Like Jabez Truth is most honourable but we bear it with pain 1 Chron. 4.9 In a word Truth is the gift of God but conditional given on condition that we fit our selves to receive it It cometh down from heaven but it must be called for here on earth Think not it will fall upon thee by chance or come to thee at any time Eccl. 11.9 12.1 if not in the dayes of thy youth yet in the evil dayes and the years in which thou shalt have no pleasure that it will offer it self in thine old age on thy bed of sickness that it will joyn and mingle it self with thy last breath and carry thy soul to happiness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now is the market now is the Truth set to sale as it
celestial dialect and not as some of late have been ready to make it the language of the Whore of Babylon as if Faith onely did make a Protestant and Good works were the mark of a Papist What mention we Papist or Protestant The Christian is the member of this Body and Common-wealth this is his language Zeph. 3.9 the pure language When Hand and Tongue Faith and Good works a full Persuasion and a sincere Obedience are joyned together then we shall speak this language plainly and men will understand us and glorifie God the Angels will understand and applaud us and the Lord will understand and crown us We shall speak it not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 faintly and feignedly ready upon any allurement or terrour to eat our words but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we shall make it plain by an Ocular demonstration And this is truly to say JESUS EST DOMINUS Jesus is the Lord. This is the Lesson our first Part. And thus far we are gone And we see it is no easie matter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to speak but these three words JESUS EST DOMINUS Jesus is the Lord. For we must comprehend Eph. 3.18 saith the Apostle the breadth and length and depth and height of this Divine mystery the breadth saith S. Augustine in the expansion and dilatation of my Charity the length by my continued perseverance unto the end the height in the exaltation of my hope to reach at things above and the depth in the contemplation of the bottomless sea of God's mercies These are the dimensions And if we will learn these Mathematicks because we see the Lesson is difficult we must have a skilful Master And behold my next Part bringeth him forth bringeth us news of one who is higher then heaven broader then the sea and longer then the earth as Job speaketh It is the holy Ghost For no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost And indeed good reason that he should be our Teacher For as the Lesson is such should the Master be The Lesson is spiritual the Teacher a Spirit The Lecture is a lecture of piety and the Spirit is an holy Spirit The Lesson proposeth a method to joyn Heaven and Earth God and Man Mortality and Immortality Misery and Happiness in one to draw us near unto God and make us one with him and the holy Ghost is that consubstantial and coeternal Friendship of the Father and the Son nexus amorosus as the Schools speak the essential Love and Love-knot of the undivided Trinity Flesh and blood cannot reveal this great mystery it must be a Spirit And the Spirit of this world bringeth no news from Heaven we may be sure It must be SPIRITUS SANCTUS the holy Ghost SPIRITUS SANCTUS for JESUS DOMINUS the holy Ghost for Jesus the Lord that by the grace of the holy Spirit we may learn the Power of the Son and by the inspiration of his Holiness learn the mystery of Holiness For it is not sharpness of wit or quickness of apprehension or force of eloquence that can raise us to this Truth but the Spirit of God must lead us to this tree of Knowledge Therefore Tertullian calleth Christian Religion commentum Divinitatis the invention of the Divine Spirit as Faith is called the gift of God not onely because it is given to every believer but because the Spirit first found out the way to save us by so weak a means as Faith O qualis artifex Spiritus sanctus What a skilful Artificer what an excellent Master is the blessed Spirit who found out a way to lift up Dust it self as high as Heaven and clothe it with eternity whose least beam is more glorious then the Sun and maketh it day unto us whose every whisper is as thunder to awake us cujus tetigisse docuisse est whose every touch and breathing is an instruction 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Nazianzene For this Spirit is wise and can he is loving and will teach us if we will learn He inspireth an Herdsman and he straight becometh a Prophet He calleth a Fisherman and maketh him an Apostle Et non opus est morâ Spiritui Sancto He standeth not in need of any help from delay Without him Miracles are sluggish and of no efficacy but upon his breathing our Saviour shall appear glorious in his ignominy and the Thief shall worship him on his cross as if he had been in his Kingdom in whom he wrought such an alteration that in S. Hierom's phrase mutavit homicidii poenam in martyrium he was so changed that he died not a thief or murtherer but a Martyr And such a powerful Teacher we stood in need of to raise our Nature and that corrupt unto so high a pitch as the participation of the Divine Nature For no act and so no act of holiness or spiritual knowledge can be produced by any power which is not connatural to it and as it were a principle of that act So that as there is a natural light by which we are brought to the apprehension of natural principles whether speculative or practick by which light many of the Heathen proceeded so far as to leave most of them behind them who have the Sun of righteousness ever shining upon them so there must be a supernatural light by which we may be guided to attain unto truths of a higher nature Which the Heathen wanting did run uncertainly as S. Paul speaketh and beat the air and all those glorious acts by which they did out shine many of us were but as the Rainbow before the Floud for shew but for no use at all The Power must ever be connatural to the Act. Nature may move in her own sphere and turn us about in that compass to do those things which Nature is capable of but Nature could not make a Saint or a member of Christ To spiritualize a man to make him Christi-formem to bring him to a conformity and uniformity with Christ is the work alone of the Spirit of Christ Which he doth sweetly and secretly powerfully characterizing our hearts and so taking possession of them The Apostle telleth us that Christ dwelleth in us by his Spirit by his power and efficacy Rom. 8.11 which worketh like fire enlightning warming and purging our hearts Matth. 3.11 which are the effects of Fire First by sanctifying our knowledge of him by shewing us the riches of his Gospel and the beauty and majesty of Christ's Dominion and Kingdom with that evidence that we are forced to fall down and worship by filling the soul with the glory of it as God filled the Tabernacle with his Exod. 30. that all the powers and faculties of our soul are ravished at the sight that we come willingly and fall down willingly before this Lord in a word by bringing on that Truth which our heart assenteth to with that clearness and fulness of demonstration that it passeth through all the
speak of him before tyrants and not be ashamed then he hath cast out a spirit which was dumb But I rather keep me to the words of the Text As he spake these things Doth he not still speak the same things Hebr. 13.8 Jesus Christ is yesterday and to day and the same for ever Nec refert saith the Father per quem sed quid à quo It is not material whose tongue is made use of so it be Christ that speaketh these things And how often doth he speak these things But where is the FACTUM EST that which cometh to pass is scarcely discernable Auditis laudatis Ye hear him speak and perhaps ye commend him Deo gratias God be thanked for that yet But when this is done nothing cometh to pass Semen accipitis verba redditis Ye receive the seed of the Word and all the harvest vve see is but weeds We see it not in the extension of your hands in the largeness of your alms in the lifting up of your hands in your devotion at prayers we see it not in your reverence meekness and patience Well saith the Father Toleramus illae tremimus inter illa We suffer it and tremble at it Your words are but leaves it is fruit and encrease that we require Be not deceived Every good lesson should be unto you as a miracle to move you to give sentance for Christ against the Pharisees and all the enemies he hath against the Pride that despiseth him the Luxury that defileth him that Disobedience that trampleth him under foot Every good motion for therein Christ speaketh to us should beget a resolution every resolution a good work every good work a love of goodness and the love of goodness should root and stablish and build us in the faith In a word every DIXIT of Christ's should be answered with a FACTUM EST from us every work every word of his should be a sufficient motive and a fair occasion to us to magnifie the power of the Speaker in our souls and in our bodies and with this Woman here in the very face of the enemie in the midst of all the noise Detraction can make to lift up our voice and give testimony unto Christ who is so powerful both in word and deed And so I pass from the Motive and Occasion to the Person who from what she saw and heard gave this free attestation A certain woman of the company Here are two circumstances that may seem to weaken and infringe the testimony and take from the credit of the miracle 1. that she was a Woman and 2. that she was but one of the multitude S. Gregory will tell us MVLIER tam pro infirmitate ponitur quà m pro sexa That this word Woman in Scripture sometimes noteth the Sex and sometimes signifieth Infirmity And in the antient Comedians Mulier es is a term of reproch For as the Schoolman hath observed foeminarum aviditas pertinacior in affectu fragilior in cognitione The affections of Women commonly outrun their understanding and they are then most in flame when they have least light Again this circumstance That she was but one of the multitude might have been laid hold on by the Pharisees as an argument against Christ Might they not have reviled her as they did the man who was born blind and received his sight and said unto her Thou art but one Joh. 9.34 and dost thou teach us But such is the nature of Truth that it can receive no prejudice but will prevail against all contradiction though it have but one witness and find no better champion then a Woman Suis illa contenta est viribus nec spoliatur vi suâ etiamsi nullum habeat vindicem saith Arnobius She resteth upon her own basis and is content with her own strength which she cannot lose though she find no undertaker Truth doth not fail though a Pharisee oppose it but is of strength sufficient to make the weakest of its champions conquerer For the foolishness of God is wiser then men 1 Cor. 1.25 and the weakness of God is stronger then men Neither Number nor Sex hath so much power upon Truth as to alter its complexion Whether they be many or few weak or strong that profess it Truth is still the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of one and the same hue and colour Gen. 49.19 As it was said of Gad A troop may overcome it may silence and suppress it for a while but it shall overcome at the last Yet a conceit hath possessed the world That there is a kind of virtue or magick in Number and the Truth breatheth onely in those quarters where there are most voices to proclaim it And many are so bewitched that they think it a gross absurdity for one man in the defense of Truth to stand up against a multitude and they will make this advocate because he is but one an argument against the Truth What would these men have thought of Christ had they seen him among the Pharisees or heard the shout of the people crying aloud John 18.40 Not this man but Barabbas Indeed neither the Paucity nor the Number of professours is an argument to demonstrate the Truth These pillars do not support her We have rather great reason to suspect the doctrine that is cryed up by the voice and humme of the multitude I have much wondred that they who talk so much of the Church have made this a note and mark whereby we may know it For experience hath sufficiently taught us that were it to put to the vote of the multitude we should scarce have any face of a Church at all It never went so well with the world that the most should be best Therefore S. Hierome is peremptory that multitude of associates demonstrate rather an Heretick then a Catholick We may be then well content to hear the Church of Rome boast and triumph that she hath enlarged her dwelling and spred her self from one end of the world unto the other and to lay it as an imputation upon us that our number is so small that we scarce are visible sed illos Defendit numerus junctaeque umbone phalanges The whole world is theirs praeter Italian Hispaniam totam All Italy and all Spain is theirs And besides these and many other Kingdomes which the Cardinal reckoneth up they may take-in the New world for advantage An happiness which we hereticks cannot hope for Non enim debet nunc incipere Ecclesia crescere cùm jam senuerit saith he For the Church cannot encrease now she is old and hide-bound and past growth Who would ever have thought that so sick and lothsome meditations should have dropped from so learned a pen Might not the antient Hereticks have taken-up the same plea when the whole world as S Hierome speaketh was become Arian And himself confesseth that if one province alone hold the true faith that one province may be
assimilation to and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our union with God in whom alone those two powers of the soul those two horsleaches which ever cry Give give the Understanding which is ever drawing new conclusions and the Will which is ever pursuing new objects have their eternal Sabbath and rest Hic Rhodus hic saltus This is the end and this is the way Our Saviour here seems to make two Hearing and Doing but indeed they are but one and cannot be severed for the one leads into the other as the Porch into the Temple It is the great errour of the times conjuncta dividere to divide those duties which God hath joyned together to have quick ears and withered hands to hear and not to do to let in and let out nay to let in and to loath And in this reciprocal intercourse of hearing and neglecting many spin out the thread of their lives and at the end thereof look for Blessedness And certainly if Blessedness would dwell in the ear there would be more blessed on earth then in heaven And if an open ear were the mark of a Saint what great multitudes how many millions are there sealed to be kept unto salvation But to hear is not enough and yet it may be too much and may set us at a fadder distance from Blessedness then we had been at if we had been deaf Our Ear may turn into a Tongue and be a witness against us For that plea which the hypocrites make Lvke 3.26 We have eaten and drunk in thy presence and thou hast taught in our streets is a libel and an accusation and draws down a heavier sentence upon them For he bids them depart from him who would work iniquity after they had heard him in their streets Blessed are they that hear the word of God reacheth not home and therefore there is a conjunction copulative to draw it closer and link with Obedience Blessed are they that hear the word of God AND keep it So this conclusion will necessarily follow That Evangelical Obedience and the strict observation of the doctrin of Faith and Good works is the onely and immediate way to Blessedness For not the hearers of the word but the doers shall be justified Rom. 2.13 saith S. Paul And indeed there is no way but this For first God hath fitted us hereunto For can we imagine that he should thus build us up and stamp his own image upon us that we should be an habitation for owls and Satyrs for wild and brutish imaginations that he did give us Understandings to find out an art of pleasure a method and craft of injoying that which is but for a season Was the Soul made immortal for that which passeth away as a shadow and is no more or have we dominion over the beasts of the field that we should fall and perish with them No we are ad majora nati born to eternity and in our selves we carry an argument against our selves if we keep not Gods word Indeed Faith in respect of the remoteness of the object and its elevation above the ken of Nature may seem a hard lesson yet in the Soul there is a capacity to receive it and if the other condition of Obedience and Doing Gods will did not lye heavy upon the Flesh the more brutish part we should be readier scholars in our Creed then we are If we could hate the world we should be soon in heaven If we would imbrace that which we cannot but approve our infidelity and doubtings would soon vanish as a mist before the Sun Augustine hath observed in his book De Religione that multitudes of good moral men especially the Platonites came in readily and gave up their names unto Christ But the Agenda the precepts of practice are as the seed and the heart of man as the earth the matrix the womb to receive it They are so proportioned to our Reason that they are no sooner seen but approved being as it were of neer alliance and consanguinity with those notions and principles which we brought with us into the world Onely those are written in a book these in the heart At the most the one is but a Commentary on the other What precept of Christ is there which is not agreeable and consonant to right Reason Doth he prescribe purity The heart applauds it Doth he bless Meekness The mind of man soon says Amen Doth he command us to do to others as we would others should do to us We entertain it as our familiar and contemporary Doth he prescribe Sobriety We soon subscribe to it for what man would profess himself a beast And hence it comes to pass that we see something that is good in the worst that we hear a panegyrick of Virtue from a man of Belial that when we do evil we are ready to maintein it as good and when we do an injury we call it a benefit For no man is so evil that he desires not to seem good There is saith Basil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the the Soul of man a natural distast of that which is evil But Virtue though it have few followers yet hath the votes of all Temperance the drunkard will sing her praises Justice every hand is ready to set a Crown upon her Head Valour is admired of all and Wisdome is the desire of the whole earth So you see Gods precepts are proportioned to the Soul and the Soul to God's precepts which hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a formative quality a power to shape and fashion and to bring forth something of the same nature a creature made up in obedience in holiness and righteousness Christs exhortation to Prayer begets that devotion which opens the gates of heaven his command to take up the cross begets an army of martyrs his command to deny our selves lifts us up above our selves to that Blessedness which is everlasting Secondly as the precepts of Christ are proportioned to the Soul so being embraced they fill it with light and joy and give it a tast of the world to come For as Christs yoke is easie but not till it is put on so his precepts are not delightful till they are kept Aristotle's Happiness in his books is but an Idea and Heaven it self is no more to us till we enjoy it The precepts of Christ in the letter may please the understanding part which is alwaies well affected and inclinable to that which is apparently true but till the Will have set the Feet and Hands at liberty even that which we approve we distast and that which we call honey is to us as bitter as gall Contemplation may delight us for a time and bring some content but the perversness of our Will breeds that worm which will soon eat it up It is but a poor happiness to think and speak well of Happiness as from a mount to behold that Canaan which we cannot enjoy A thought hath not strength and wing enough to carry
in the Gospel as it were with the Sun-beams S. Paul giveth it this character that it is profitable that is 2 Tim. 3.16 17. sufficient for doctrine which is either of things to be believed or of things to be done for reproof of greater and more monstrous crimes for correction of those who fall by weakness or infirmity for instruction in righteousness that those who have begun well may grow up in grace and every vertuous work that the man of God may be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 perfect and consummate throughly furnished unto all good works Take him in what capacity you please there in the Scripture in the New Testament especially yea and in that alone he may find what will fill and qualifie him and fit him in every state and condition Take him in the worst condition as an unbeliever there is that will beget faith and form Christ in him as wavering in the faith there is that will confirm him as believing and fallen into errour or sin there is that will restore him as rooted and built up in Christ there is that will settle and establish him as under the cross there is that will strengthen him as crowned with peace there is that will crown that crown and settle it on his head as in health there is that will make him run the wayes of God's commandments as in sickness there is that will tune his grones and quicken him even when he is giving up the ghost as a King there is that which will manage his sceptre as a Subject there he may learn to bow Take him as a Master or a Servant as Rich or Poor as in prison or at liberty living or dying there he shall find what is necessary for him in that condition of life even to the last moment and period of it and not onely that which is necessary but under that formality as necessary so fitted and proportioned to the end that without it we can never attain it They that lay hold of it shall have peace with God and they who despise it shall have a worm ever gnawing them These shall go away saith our Saviour into everlasting punishment but the righteous who look into this perfect Law into life eternal Will you behold the Object of your Faith There you shall see not onely a picture of Christ but Christ even crucified as S. Paul speaketh to the Galatians before your eyes Will you behold that Faith which shall save you There you shall behold both what she is and what wonders she can work Have you so little Charity as not to know what she is There you may see her in every limb and lineament in every act and operation which is proper to her her Hand her Ear her Eye her Bowels There you may see what is worth your sight Et quod à Deo discitur totum est We can learn no more then God will teach us When we affect more and pour forth all the lust of our curiosity to find it out we at last shall be weary and sit down and complain that we have lost our labour For thus Curiosity which is a busie Idleness punisheth it self as a frantick person is punished with his madness Quicquid nos beatos facturum est aut in aperto est saith Seneca aut in proximo Whatsoever can make us happy is either open to the eye or near at hand We will instance but in one and that the main point Justification because the Church of Rome hath set it in the front of those points of doctrine which are imperfectly or obscurely delivered in the Gospel and therefore require a visible and supreme Judge of controversies to settle and determine them It is true indeed The Gospel hath been preached these sixteen hundred years and above and many questions have been started and many controversies raised about Justification For though men have been willing to go under the name of Justified persons yet have they been busie to enquire how Justification is wrought in them They are justified they know not how Many and divers opinions have been broached amongst the Canonists and Confessionists and others Osiander nameth twenty And there are many more at this day And yet all may consist well enough for ought I see and still that sense which is delivered in Scripture as necessary remain entire For 1. it is necessary to believe that no man can be justified by the works of the Law precisely taken And in this all agree 2. It is necessary to believe that we are not justified by the Law of Moses either by it self or joyned with Faith in Christ And in this all agree 3. It is necessary to believe that Justification is by Faith in Christ And in this all agree 4. That Justification is not without Remission of sins and Imputation of righteousness And in this all agree 5. That a Dead Faith doth not justifie And here is no difference 6. That that is a Dead faith which is not accompanied with Good works and a holy and serious purpose of good life And in this all agree 7. Lastly that faith in Christ Jesus implieth an advised and deliberate assent that Christ is our Prophet and Priest and King Our Prophet who hath fully delivered the will of his Father to us in his Gospel the knowledge of all his precepts and promises Our Priest to free us from the guilt of sin and condemnation of death by his bloud and intercession Our King and Law-giver governing us by his Word and Spirit by the vertue and power of which we shall be redeemed from death and translated into the Kingdom of heaven And in this all agree Da si quid ultrà est And is there yet any more All this which is necessary is plainly delivered in the Gospel And what is more is but a vapour from Curiosity which when there is a wide door and effectual is ever venturing at the needles eye This is so plain that no man stumbleth at it But those interpretations and comments and explications which have been made upon this nihil ampliùs quà m sonant make a noise but no Musick at all nec animum faciunt quia non habent nor can they add spirit to us in the way to bliss because they have none And as we find them not in the Scripture so have we no reason to list them amongst those doctrines which are necessary As to instance for the act of Justification what mattereth it whether I believe or not believe know or not know that our Justification doth consist in one or more acts so that I certainly know and believe that it is the greatest blessing that God can let fall upon his creature and believe that by it I am made acceptable in his sight and though I have broke the Law yet shall be dealt with as if I had been just and righteous indeed whether it be done by pardoning all my sins or imputing universal obedience to me or the active
evident and necessary consequence they are not to be reckoned in the number of those which are necessary because we are assured from the Truth it self that all such are within the reach and verge of this Law Some things indeed there be which are indifferent in themselves quae Lex nec vetat nec jubet which the Law neither commandeth nor forbiddeth but become necessary by reason of some circumstance of Time or Place or Quality or Persons c. For quod per se necessarium est semper est necessarium that which is necessary in it self is alwayes necessary But some things are made necessary for some place some person some times and yet are in their own nature indifferent still Lex haec ad omnia occurrit This Law reacheth even these and containeth rules certain and infallible to guide us even in these if we become not Lawes unto our selves and fling them by to wit the rules of Charity and Prudence to which if we give heed it is not possible we should miscarry It is Love of our selves and Love of this world not Charity and spiritual Wisdom which make this noise abroad this desolation on the earth The acts of Charity are manifest 1 Cor. 13. She suffereth long even errours and injuries and doth not rise up against shadows and apparitions is not rash to beat down every thing that our own hand hath not set up is not puffed up swelleth not against an harmless and useful constitution though it be of man doth not behave it self unseemly layeth not a necessity upon us of not doing that which Autority even then styleth an Indifferent thing when it commandeth it to be done seeketh not her own treadeth not the publick peace under foot to procure our own which is to satisfie an ill-raised humour is not easily provoked checketh not at every feather nor startleth at that monster which is a creation of our own thinketh no evil doth not see a serpent under every leaf nor Idolatry in every bow of devotion If we were charitable we should be peaceable If Charity did govern mens actions there would be abundance of peace so long as the Moon endureth Multa facienda sunt non jubente lege sed liberâ charitate saith Augustine Charity is free to suffer and do many things which the Law doth not expresly command and yet it doth command them in general when it enjoyneth Obedience to Autority The acts I say of Charity are manifest But those of Prudence are not particularly designed Prudentia respicit ad singularia That eye is given us to view and consider particular occurrences And it dependeth upon those things which are without us whereas Charity is an act of the will and here we cannot be to seek For how easie is it to a willing mind to apply a general precept to particular actions especially if Charity fill our hearts which is the bond of perfection and the end and complement of the Law which indeed is our spiritual wisdom In a word In these cases when we go to consult with Reason we cannot err if we leave not Charity behind us But the time will not permit to press this further All that I intended was to shew the Perfection of the Gospel how sufficient means it administreth to bring us to to the end for which it was promulged So then it is perfect in it self In the next place it is perfect in respect of the Law of Moses That indeed was the Law of God and so made to be a lantern to our feet and a light to our paths But the Apostle telleth us that this light is not sufficient for us Heb. 7.18 as being not bright enough to direct us to our end 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it was a weak and unprofitable light Besides as the Law was altogether unsufficient to justifie a sinner so was it defective in respect of light which is more abundantly poured forth in the Gospel In the Law it is written Thou shalt not commit adultery Under the Gospel an Eunuch may commit that sin and do it with his eye For he that looketh upon a woman to lust after her is guilty of that pollution saith our Law-giver The Law permitted many wives The Christian is soli uxori masculus a Man to his wife alone an Eunuch to all the Sex besides The language of the Law was An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth But now it is Good for evil and a blessing for a curse Et Lex plus quà m amisit invenit saith Ambrose The Law was no loser by this precept but a gainer For the more perfect it is the more it is a Law You have heard it spoken to them of old Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thy enemy But I say unto you Love your enemies Here it is plain that Christ did advance and increase the strictness of the Law by adding something to it In melius reformavit He reformed it and made it better then it was Heb. 9.10 The Gospel is called the time of reformation Christ did enlarge the Law he set his last hand to it and did perfect it The Gospel saith Nazianzene is far easier then the Law 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in respect of the hope that is set before us and that great reward which is promised Such a mark will draw us The sight of Heaven smootheth every path maketh the weak strong bringeth him in as a giant to run his race Otherwise it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 far more painful and laborious hath a streighter way and a narrower gate In a word Whatsoever Moses required that doth our Law-giver exact and more an Humility more bending a Patience more constant a Meekness more suffering a Chastity more pure a Flesh more subdued because the heavenly promises are more and more clearly proposed in the Gospel then under the Law For is not Eternity a stronger motive then the Basket and temporary enjoyments is not Heaven more attractive then the Earth or when should we more love God then when he displayeth himself in all his beauty Hence it is that the old Law in comparison of the Gospel is said to be imperfect Heb. 7.19 Rom. 10.4 Gal. 3.24 And Christ is called the end of the Law And the Law a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ We know there is a Righteousness most proper to the Gospel which the Jew saw through types and figures as through a glass darkly but we see face to face by open manifestation And this very righteousness of Faith is so far from excluding the righteousness of Works that the Gospel exacteth them more then the Law and justifieth none that are not full of them And in this respect as the Christian hath more helps and light then the Jew so he must as far exceed the perfection of a Jew as the grace of the Gospel doth the rigour of the Law Crescit onus cum beneficio The larger the privilege
it requireth no more at our hands for the obtaining of eternity of bliss but this Faith this persuasion If so be we be holy and innocent and remain in this Law and by this faith overcome the world BLESSEDNES then is as the Sun and looketh and shineth on all putteth life in the Law raiseth our Perfection begetteth and upholdeth our Liberty maketh Conscience quick and lively either to affright or joy us either to seourge or feast us If in this life onely we had hope our faith were vain nay this Law the Gospel were vain And therefore in every storm and tempest under the shadow and wings of this Hope we find shelter We flie for refuge saith the Apostle to lay hold upon the hope which is sâ—t before us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We flie out of the world a shop of vanity and uncertainty the region of changes and chances to this Hope as to an anchor of the soul sure and stedfast which cannot deceive us if we lay hold on it for it entereth into that within the veil and so is firm and safe fastened on this Blessedness as an anchor that reacheth to the bottom and sticketh fast in the ground Blessedness upholdeth and setleth our Hope and on our Hope our Obedience is raised to reach that Blessedness on which our Hope is setled In a word Blessedness like Christ himself is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first and the last the end and yet the first mover of us in those wayes which lead unto it Christiano coelum antè patuit quà m via Heaven is opened to a Christian and then the way And he that walketh in it shall enter in he that doeth the work shall be blessed in it Now BEATUS ERIT He shall be blessed may either look upon this span or upon that immeasurable space of eternity And it is true in both both here where we converse with Men and Misery and there where we shall have the company of Seraphim and Cherubim and follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth Here we have something in hand there the accomplishment some ears we have we shall have the whole sheaf Here we have one part of Blessedness peace of conscience there remaineth the greater the reversion in the highest heavens As Christ said of the two Commandements This is the great Blessedness and the other is like unto it that Joy which is the resultance of every good work which we call our Heaven upon earth That which is to come is a state of perfection an aggregation of all that is truly good without the least tincture and shew of evil as Boethius speaketh This cannot be found here on earth in the best Saint whose joy and peace is sometimes interrupted for a while by the gnawings of some sin or other which overtaketh him or by the sight of imperfection which will not suffer his joy to be full The best peace on earth may meet with disturbance Therefore Peace is found alone in the most perfect Good even God himself who is Perfection it self whose delight and paradise is in his own bosom Which he openeth and out of which he poureth a part of it on his creature and of which we do in a manner take possession when we look into and remain in the perfect Law of Liberty which is an emanation from him a beam of that Law which was with God from all eternity and by which as we are made after the image so are we transformed after the similitude of God which Plato himself calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 assimilation and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 union with God In whom alone those two powers of the soul those two Horseleaches which ever cry Give Give the Understanding which is ever drawing new conclusions and the Will which is ever pursuing new objects have their eternal sabbath and rest He that doeth the work shall be blessed in the work 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this man and none but this shall be blessed So then this is the conclusion That Evangelical Obedience the constant observation of this Law of Liberty of the doctrine of Faith and Good works is the onely and immediate way to Blessedness For not the hearers of the word but the doers shall be justified saith S. Paul And indeed there is no way but this For First God hath fitted us to this Law and this Law to us He hath fitted us for this heavenly treasure For can we imagine that God did thus build us up and stamp his own Image upon us that we should be an habitation for owles and satyres Rom. 12 3. for wild and brutish imaginations that he did give us Understandings to forge deceit to contrive plots to find out an art of pleasure a method and craft of enjoying that which is but for a season that he did give us Wills to wait upon the Flesh which fighteth against the Spirit and his Image which is in us Was the Soul made immortal for that which passeth away as a shadow and is no more or hath he given us dominion over the beasts of the field that we should fall and perish with them No We are ad majora nati born mortal but to eternity And we carry an argument about us against our selves if we remain not in this Law For take it in credendis in those conclusions which it commendeth to our Faith though Faith indeed in respect of the remoteness of its object and its elevation be above Nature yet in the soul God hath left a capacity to receive it and if the other condition of persevering in it did not lie heavy upon the flesh the brutish part we should be readier scholars in our Creed then we are If we could hate the world we should soon be in heaven If we could embrace that which we cannot but approve our Infidelity and Doubtings would soon vanish as the mist before the Sun S. Augustine hath observed it in his book De Religione that multitudes of good moral men especially the Platonicks came in readily and gave up their names unto Christ The Moral man did then draw on the Christian But now I know not how the Christian is brought in to countenance those who deserve another name But then for the Agenda and precepts of practice They are as the seed and the Heart of man the earth the Matrix the womb to receive them And they are so proportioned to our Reason that they are no sooner seen but approved they bring as it were of near alliance and consanguinity with those notions and principles which we brought with us into the world Onely those are written in a book these in the heart indeed the one are but a commentary on the other What precept of Christ is there which is not agreeable and consonant to right Reason Doth he prescribe Purity The heart applaudeth it Doth he bless Meekness The mind of man soon sayeth Amen Doth he enjoyn Sobriety We soon subscribe
Wilt thou not by him and by thy own sins and miseries which drew from him tears of blood learn to pity thy self Wilt thou still rejoyce in that iniquity that troubled his spirit and shed his blood which he was willing should gush out of his heart so it might melt thine and work but this in thee pity to thy self We talk of a first Conversion and a second and I know not what Cycles and Epicycles we have found out to salve our irregular motion in our wayes to bliss If we could once have compassion on our selves the work were done And When were you converted or How were you converted were no such hard questions to be answered For I may be sure I am converted if I be sure that I truly pity my self Shall Christ only have compassion on thy soul But then again shall he shed his blood for his Church that it may be one with him and at unity in it self and canst thou not drop a tear when thou seest this his body thus rent in pieces as it is at this day When thou seest the World the Love of the world break in and make such havock in the Church oh it is a sad contemplation will none but Christ weep over Jerusalem Luk. 19.41 Secondly let us look upon him living and not take our eye from off him to fill and feed and delight it with the vanities of this world with that which hath neither life nor spirit with that which is so neer to nothing with that which is but an idole Behold he liveth that which thou so dotest on hath no life nor can it prolong thy life a moment Who would not cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils Isa 2.22 and then what madness is it to trust in that which hath no breath at all Shall Christ present himself alive to us and for us and shall we lay hold on Corruption and Rottenness And when Heaven openeth it self to receive us shall we run from it into a Charnel-house and so into Hell it self In the third place Behold he liveth for evermore and let us not bound and imprison our thoughts within a span and when immortality is offered affect no other life but that which is a vapour Jam. 4.14 Let us not raise that swarm of thoughts which must perish but build up those works upon our everliving Saviour which may follow us follow us through the huge and unconceivable tract of eternity Doth our Saviour live for evermore and shall we have no spirit in us but that which delighteth to walk about the earth and is content to vanish with it Eternity is a powerful motive to those who never have such pensive thoughts as when they remember their frailty and are sick even of health it self and in a manner dead with life when they consider it as that blessing which shall have an end Eternity is in our desire though it be beyond our apprehension What he said of Time is truer of Eternity If you do not ask what it is we know but if you ask we are not able to answer and resolve you or tell you what it is When we call it an infinite duration we do but give it another name two words for one a short Paraphrase but we do not define what it is And indeed our first conceptions of it are the fairest For when they are doubled and redoubled they are lost in themselves and the further they extend â—hemselves the more weary they are and at greater loss in every proffer and must end and rest at last in this poor and unsatisfying thought That we cannot think what it is Yet there is in us a wild presage an unhandsome acknowledgment of it for we phansie it in those objects which vanish out of fight whilst we look upon them we set it up in every desire for our desires never have an end Every purpose of ours every action we do is Aeternitati sacrum and we do it to eternity Prov. 23.5 Psal 49.11 We look upon Riches as if they had no wings and think our habitations shall endure for ever We look upon Honour as if it were not air but some Angel confirmed a thing bound up in eternity We look upon Beauty and it is our heaven and we are fixt and dwell on it as if it would never shrivel and be gathered together as a scroul and so in a manner make Mortality it self eternal And therefore since our desires do so enlarge themselves and our thoughts so multiply that they never have an end since we look after that which we cannot see and reach after that which we cannot grasp God hath set up that for an object to look on which is eternal indeed in the highest Heavens and as he hath made us in his own image so in Christ who came to renew it in us he hath shewed us a more excellent way unto it and taught us to work out eternity even in this world in this common shop of change to work it out of that in which it is not which is neer to nothing which shall be nothing to work it out of Riches by not trusting them out of Honour by contemning it out of the Pleasures of this world by loathing them out of the Flesh by crucifying it out of the World by overcoming it and out of the Devil himself by treading him under our feet For this is to be in Christ and to be in Christ is to be for evermore Christ is the eternal Son of God and he was dead and liveth and liveth for evermore that we may dye and live for evermore and not only attain to the Resurrection of the dead but to eternity Last of all let us look upon the keyes in his hand and knock hard that he may open to us and deliver our soul from hell and make our grave not a prison but a bed to rise from to eternal life If we be still shut in we our selves have turned the key against our selves Christ is ready with his Keyes to open to us and we have our Keyes too our key of Knowledge to discern between life and Death and our key of Repentance and when we use these Christ is ready to put his even into our hands and will derive a power unto us mortals unto us sinners over Hell and Death And then in the last place we shall be able to set on the Seal the AMEN and be confirmed in the certainty of his Resurrection and Power by which we may raise those thoughts and promote those actions which may look beyond our threescore years and ten Psal 90.10 through all successive generations to immortality and that glory which shall never have an end This is to shew and publish our faith by our works as S. James speaketh Jam. 2.18 this is with the heart to believe as S. Paul Rom. 10.10 For he that believeth from the heart cannot but be obedient to the Gospel unless we
It will concern us to take heed how he findeth us when be cometh Oh let him not find us digging of pits and spreading of nets to catch our brethren spinning the spiders web wearying and wasting our selves in vanity Let him not find us in strange apparel in spotted garments in garments stained with blood Let not this Lord find thee in rebellion against him this Saviour find thee a destroyer this Christ who should anoint thee find thee bespotted of the world Let not an humble Lord find thee swelling a meek Lord find thee raging a merciful Lord find the cruel an innocent Lord find thee boasting in mischief the Son of man find thee a beast But to day if ye will hear his voice harden not your hearts This is your Day and this day you may work out Eternity Psal 95.7 8. This is your hour to look into your selves to be jealous of your selves Hebr. 3.7 8. vereri omnia opera to be afraid of every word work and thought every enterprise you take in hand For whatsoever you are saying whatsoever you are doing whatsoever you are imagining whilst you act whilst you speak before you speak whilst you think and that thought is a promise or prophecy of riches and delights and honours which are in the approch and ready to meet you or a seal and confirmation of those glories which are already with you whilst you think as the Prophet David speaketh that your houses shall continue for ever Psal 49.11 even then he may come upon you and then this inward thought all your thoughts perish or return again upon you like Furies to lash and torment you for ever And therefore to conclude since the Premisses are plain the Evidence fair Since he is a Lord and will come to judge us Since he will certainly come Since the time of his coming is uncertain and since it is sudden he is no Christian he is no Man but hath prostituted that which maketh him so his Reason to his Sense and Brutish part who cannot draw this Conclusion to himself That he must therefore watch Which is in the next place to be considered The Twelfth SERMON PART III. MATTH XXIV 42. Watch therefore c. WE have seen Christ our Lord at the right hand of God considered him 1. as our Lord 2. as coming 3. as keeping from our eye and knowledge the time of his coming And now what inference can we make He is a Lord and shall we not fear him To come and shall we not expect him To come at an hour we know not and shall we not watch This every one of them naturally and necessarily affordeth and no other conclusion can be drawn from them But when we consult with Flesh and Blood we force false conclusions even from the Truth it self and to please and flatter our sensual part conclude against Nature to destroy our selves Sensuality is the greatest Sophister that is worketh Darkness out of Light Poyson out of Physick Sin out of Truth See what paralogismes she maketh God is merciful Therefore presume He is patient Therefore provoke him He delayeth his coming We may now beat our fellow-servants and eat and drink with the drunken It is uncertain when he will come Therefore he will never come This is the reasoning of Flesh and Blood this is the Devils Logick And therefore that we be not deceived nor deceive our selves with these Fallacies behold here Wisdome it self hath shewn us a more excellent way and drawn the Conclusion to our hands VIGILATE ERGO He is a Lord and to come and at an hour ye know not of Watch therefore And this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vigilate is verbum vigilans as Augustine speaketh a waking busy stirring word and implieth as the Scholiast telleth us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all manner of care and circumspection And what are all the Exhortations in Scripture but a commentary and exposition of this Duty There we find it rendred by Awaking Working Running Striving Fasting Praying We shall find it to be Repentance Faith spiritual Wisdome that golden chain wherein all Virtues and Graces that Vniversitas donorum as Tertullian speaketh that Academy that World of spiritual Gifts meet and are united When we awake we watch to look about and see what danger is near When we work we watch till our work be brought to perfection that no trumpet scatter our Alms no hypocrisie corrupt our Fast no unrepented sin deny our Prayers no wandring thought defile our Chastity no false fire kindle our Zeal no lukewarmness dead our Devotion When we strive we watch that lust which is must predominant And Faith if it be not dead hath a restless eye an eye that never sleepeth which maketh us even here on earth like unto the Angels For so Anastasius defining an Angel calleth him a reasonable creature but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such a one as never sleepeth Corde vigila fide vigila spe vigila charitate vigila saith S. Augustine An active Faith a waking Heart a lively Hope a spreading Charity Assiduity and perseverance in the work of this Lord these make up the VIGILATE the Watching here These are the seals Faith Hope and Charity set them on and the Watch is sure But this is too general To give you yet a more particular account we must consider first That God hath made man a Judge and Lord of all his actions and given him that freedom and power which is libripens emancipati à Deo boni Tert. l. 2. cont Marcion doth hold as it were the ballance and weigh and poyse both good and evil and may touch or strike which scale it please that either Good shall out weigh Evil or Evil Good For Man is not evil by necessity or chance but by his will alone See Dent. 30.15.19 I have set before thee this day Life and Good Death and Evil Therefore chuse Life Secondly God hath placed an apparancy of some good on that which is evil by which Man may be wooed and enticed to it and an apparency of smart and evil on that which is good Difficulty Calamity Persecution by which he may be frighted from it But then thirdly he hath given him an Understanding by which he may discover the horrour of Evil though coloured over and drest with the best advantage to deceive and behold the beauty and glory of that which is good though it be discouloured and defaced with the blackness and darkness of this world He hath given him a Spirt Prov. 20.27 which the Wiseman calleth the Candle of the Lord searching the inward parts of the belly his Reason that should sway and govern all the parts of the body and faculties of the soul by which he may see to eschew evil and chuse that which is good adhere to the good though it distaste the sense and fly from evil though it flatter it By this we discover the enemy and by this we conquer him By this we
affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world NOthing more talkt of in the world then Religion nothing less understood nothing more neglected there being nothing more common with men then to be willing to mistake their way to withdraw themselves from that which is indeed Religion because it standeth in opposition to some pleasing errour which they are not willing to shake off Multi sibi sidem ipsi totuis consttiuunt quà m accipiunt dum quae volunt sapiunt nolunt sapere quae verá sunt cùm sapientiae haec veritas sit ea interdum sapere quae nolis Hilar l. 8. De Trin. Jam. 1.22 23. Ch. 4.3 Ch 1 26. and by the help of an unsatisfied and complying phansie to frame one of their own and call it by that name That which flattereth their corrupt hearts that which is moulded and attempered to their brutish designs that which smileth upon them in all their purposes and favoureth them in their unwarrantable undertakings that which biddeth them Go on and prosper in the wayes that leadeth unto death that with them is true Religion In this Chapter and indeed in every Chapter of this Epistle our Apostle hath made this discovery to our hands Some there were as he observeth that placed Religion in the ear did hear and not do and rested in that Some placed it in a formal devotion did pray but pray amiss and therefore did not receive Some placed it in a shadow and appearance seemed to be very religious but could not bridle their tongue and were safe they thought under this shadow Others there were that were partial in themselves despisers of the poor Ch. 2.4.6 17 c. Ch. 3.6 that had faith but no works and did boast of this Others had hell fire in their Tongue and carried about with them a world of iniquity which did set the wheel the whole course of Nature on fire Last of all some he observed warring and fighting and killing that they might take the prey Ch. 4.1 2. and divide the spoil Yet all these were religious Wisd 1.12 Every one sought out death in the errour of his life Phil. 3.14 and yet every one seemed to press forward towards the mark for the price of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus To these as to men ready to dash upon the rock shipwrack doth our Apostle cry out as from the shore to turn their compass and steer their course the right way Seeing them as it were run several wayes all to meet at last in the common gulf of eternal destruction he calleth and calleth aloud after them To the superstitious to the profane to the disputer the scribe to them that do but hear and to them that do but babble to them that do but profess and to them that do but believe the word is Be not deceived That is not it but this is pure Religion This is as the Prophet speaketh a voice behind them Isa 30.21 saying This is the way walk in it This is as a light held forth to shew them where they are to walk as a royal Standard set up to bring them to their colours This doth infinitatem rei ejicere as the Civilians speak taketh them from the Devils latitudes and exspatiations from frequent but fruitless Hearing from loud but heartless Prayer from their beloved but dead Faith from undisciplined and malitious Zeal from noise and blood from fighting and warring which could not but defile them and make them fit to receive nothing but the spots of the world from the infinite mazes and by-paths of errour and bringeth them into the way where they should be where they may move with joy and safety Eccl. 12.13 looking stedfastly towards the end Let us now hear the conclusion of the whole matter Whatsoever Divines have taught whatsoever Councels have determined whatsoever Schoolmen have defined whatsoever God spake in the old times whatsoever he spake in these last dayes that which hath filled so many volumes and brought upon us that weariness of the flesh which Solomon complaineth of Eccl. 12.12 in reading that multitude of books which the world doth now swarm with that which we study and contend and fight for as if it were in Democritus his well Rom. 13.9 or rather in Hell it self quite out of our reach or if there be any truth that is necessary any other commandment it is briefly comprehended in this saying even in this of S. James Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this To visit the fatherless and widows c. I may call it the Picture of Religion in little in a small compass yet presenting all its lines and dimensions the whole Signature of Religion fit to be hung up in the Church of Christ and to be lookt upon by all that the people which are and shall be born may truly serve the Lord. May it please you therefore a while to cast your eyes upon it and with me to view I. The full Proportion and several Lineaments of it as it were its essential Parts which constitute and make it what it is We may distinguish them as the Jew doth the Law by Do and Do not The first is affirmative To do good To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction The second is negative Not to do evil To keep our selves unspotted from the world II. The colours and Beauty of it first in its Purity having no mixture secondly its Vndefiledness having no pollution III. The Epigraphe or Title of it the Ratification or Seal which is set to it to make it authentick and that not of men or by men but by the hand of God himself Matth. 3.17 17.5 which drew the first copy and pattern This is pure Religion before God and the Father As he gave witness to his Son from heaven This is my beloved Son so doth he also to Christian Religion Hebr. 12.2 of which he is the Authour and Finisher HAEC EST This is it and in this I am well pleased Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this Let us now in order view these And these two To do Good and To abstain from Evil our Charity to others in the one and our Charity to our selves in the other in being as those Dii benefici those Tutelar Gods to the Widows and Fatherless and as those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 keeping all evil from our selves I call the essential parts of Religion without which it can no more subsist then a man can without a soul Jam. 2.26 For as the body without the spirit is dead so faith without works is dead also Not that we exclude Faith or Prayer or Hearing of the Word For without Faith Religion is but an empty name and it cometh by Hearing and is increased by Devotion Amb. in Psal 118. Faith is a foundation upon a foundation for as Truth is the foundation of
by the neglect of their duty which is quite lost and forgot in an unseasonable acknowledgement of what God can and a lazy expectation of what he will work in them and so make God Omnipotent to do what his Wisdom forbiddeth and themselves weak and impotent to do what by the same Wisdom he commandeth and then when they commune with their heart and find not there those longings and pantings after piety that true desire and endeavour to mortifie their earthly members which God requireth when in this Dialogue between one and himself their hearts cannot tell them they have watched one hour with Christ flatter and comfort themselves that this emptiness and nakedness shall never be imputed to them by God who if he had pleased might have wrought all in them in a moment by that force which flesh and blood could never withstand And thus they sin and pray and pray and sin and their Impiety and Devotion like the Sun and the Moon have their interchangeable courses it is now night with them and anon it is day and then night again and it is not easie to discern which is their day or which is their night for there is darkness over them both They hear and commend Virtue and Piety and since they cannot but think that Virtue is more then a breath and that it is not enough to commend it they pray and are frequent in prayer pray continually but do nothing pray but do not watch pray but do not strive against a temptation but leave that to a mightier hand to do for them and without them whilst they pray and sin call upon God for help when they fight against him as if it were God's will to have it so If he would have had it otherwise he would have heard their prayers and wrought it in them And therefore he will be content with his Talent though hid in a napkin which if he had pleased might have been made ten and with his seed again which if he had spoke the word had brought forth fruit a hundred-fold Hence it cometh to pass that though they be very evil yet they are very secure 1 Joh. 5.4 this being the triumph of their Faith not to conquer the world but to leave that work for the Lord of hosts himself and in all humility to stay till he do it For they can do nothing of themselves and they have done what they can which is nothing And now this heartless and feeble and if I may so speak this do-nothing devotion which may be as hot on the tongue of a Pharisee and tied to his phylactery must be made a sign of their election before all times Gal. 5.21 Phil. 3.18 who in time do those things of which we have been told often that they that do them shall not inherit the kingdome of heaven I do not derogate from the power of Gods Grace They that do are not worthy to feel it but shall feel that power which shall crush them to pieces They rather derogate from its power who bring it in to raise that obedience which coming with that tempest and violence it must needs destroy and take away quite For what obedience is there where nothing is done where he that is under command doth nothing Vis ergò ista non gratia saith Arnobius This were not Grace or Royal favour but a strange kind of emulation to gain the upper hand We cannot magnifie the Grace of God enough which doth even expect and wait upon us woo and serve us It is that unction that precious ointment 1 John 2.27 1 Thess 5.19 20. S. John speaketh of but we must not pour it forth upon the hairy scalp of wilful offenders who loath the means despise prophecy quench the spirit and so hinder it in its operation of men who are as stubborn against Grace as they are loud in its commendations as active to resist as to extoll it For this is to cast it away and nullifie it this is to make it nothing by making it greater nay to turn it into wantonness But it may be said That when we are fallen from God we are not able to rise again of our selves We willingly grant it That we have therefore need of new strength and new power to be given us which may raise us up We deny it not And thirdly That not onely the power but the very act of our recovery is from God Ingratitude it self cannot deny it But then That man can no more withstand the power of that grace which God is ready to supply us with then an infant can his birth or the dead their resurrection That we are turned whether we will or no is a conclusion which those premisses will not yield This flint vvill yield no such fire though you strike never so oft We are indeed sometimes said to sleep and sometimes to be dead in sin but it is ill building conclusions upon no better Basis then a figure and because we are said to be dead in sin infer a necessity of rising when we are called Nor is our obedience to Gods inward call of the same nature with the obedience of the Creature to the voice and command of the Creatour for the Creature hath neither reason nor will as Man hath nor doth Gods power work after the same manner in the one as in the other How many Fiats of God have been frustrate in this kind How often hath he smote our stony and rocky hearts and no water flowed out How often hath he said Fiat Lux let there be light and we remained still in darkness We are free agents and God made us so when he made us men and our actions when his power is mighty in us are not necessary but voluntary nor doth his Power work according to the working of our phansie nor lie within the level of our carnal imaginations to do what they appoint but it is accompanied and directed by that Wisdom which he is and he doth nothing can do nothing but what is agreeable to it As it was said of Caesar in Lucane though in another sense Velle putant quodcunque potest we think that God will do whatsoever he can But we must know that as he is powerful and can do all things so he is wise and sweetly disposeth all things as he will and he will not save us against our will For to necessitate us to goodness were not to try our obedience but to force it Et quod necessitas praestat depretiat ipsa Necessity taketh off the price and value of that it worketh and maketh it of no worth at all And then God doth not voluntarily take his Grace from any but if the power of it defend us not from Sin and Death it is because we abuse and neglect it and will not work with it which is ready to work with us For Grace is not blind as Fortune nec cultores praeterit nec haeret contemtoribus She will neither pass
This is my body And be not faithless but believing Here shake off that chilness that restiveness that acedie that weariness that faintness of your Faith here warm and actuate and quicken it that it may be a working fighting conquering Faith For thus to do it is to do this in remembrance of Christ Secondly It taketh in Repentance By this we do most truly remember Christ remember his Birth and are born again for Repentance is our new birth remember his Circumcision and circumcise our hearts for Repentance is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the great circumcision saith Epiphanius go about with him doing good for Repentance is our obedience remember him on his Cross for Repentance setteth up a Cross in imitation of his and lifteth us up upon it stretcheth and dilateth all the powers of our soul pierceth our hearts and so crucifieth the flesh and the affections and lucts thereof Our Repentance if it be true is an imitation of Christs suffering a revenge upon our selves for what the Jews did to him the proper issue and effect of his Love For what Christ worketh in us he first worketh upon us maketh us see and feel and handle his Love that we may be active in those duties of love which by his command and ensample we owe to him and in him to our brethren He dyed to be a propitiation for our sins that is 1 John 2.2 4.10 that he might make sin to cease for so the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implyeth He giveth us strength by Repentance quite to extinguish and abolish sin Thus if we repent thus if we do we do it in remembrance of him And this we are alwaies to do but then especially when we prepare our selves to make our addresses to Christs Table For though Repentance be the fruit of a due Examination of our selves yet we may and must examin our Repentance it self And the time to do it is now Now thou art to renew thy Covenant thou must also renew thy Repentance In the feast of the Atonement the Lord telleth his people Lev. 23.29 Whatsoever soul should not be afflicted that day should be cut off This is a day for it in this day thou must do it This is the season to ransack thy soul to see how many grains of Hypocrisie were left behind in thy former Repentance what hollowness was in thy Grones what coldness in thy Devotion to see what advantage Satan hath since taken what ground he hath won in thy soul And then in remembrance of Christs Love set afresh to the work of Mortification wound thy heart deeper lay on surer blows empty thy self of thy self of all that rust and rubbish which thy Self-love left behind And then stir up those graces in thee which through inadvertency and carelessness lye raked up as in the ashes In a word refine every Virtue quicken every Grace intend thy Will exalt thy Faith draw nearer to Christ and so renew thy Covenant and sit down at his Table And thus if thou do it thou dost it in remembrance of him I might here take in the whole train the whole circle and crown of Christian graces and virtues and draw them together and shut them within the compass of this one word Remembrance for it will comprehend them all Knowledge Obedience Love Sincerity Thankfulness from whence the Sacrament hath its name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Meditation and Prayer For he that truly believeth and repenteth as he is sick of sin so is he sick of Love of that Love which in the Sacrament is sealed and confirmed to us he is full of saving knowledge is ever bowing to Christs sceptre is sincere and like himself in all his wayes will meditate on Christs Love day and night will drive it ab animo in habitum as Tertullian speaketh from the mind to the motions and actions of the body from the conscience into the outward man till it appear in liberal hands in righteous lips and in attentive ears will breathe forth nothing but Devotion Prayers Hallelujahs Glory Honour and Praise for this his Love And so he will become as the picture and image and face of Christ reflecting all his favours and graces back upon him as a pillar engraven with Gods loving kindnesses a memorial of Gods goodness thankfully set up for ever And thus to do it is to do it in remembrance of Christ To conclude Thus if we do it if we thus remember him he will also remember us Cant. 8.6 remember us and set us as seals upon his heart and signets on his arm remember us as his peculiar treasure And as our Remembrance of him taketh up all the duty of a Christian so doth his Remembrance of us comprehend all the benefits of a Saviour Our Love of him and his Love to us are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nazian orat 17. will be as matter and fuel to nourish and uphold this remembrance between us for ever We shall remember him in humility and obedience and he shall remember us in love and power We shall remember him on earth and he shall remember us in heaven and prepare a place for us He shall remember our affliction and uphold us he shall remember our prayers and make them effectual our almes and make them a pleasing sacrifice He shall remember our failings and settle and establish us our tears and turn them into joy He shall remember all that we do or suffer all but our sins those he hath buried in his grave for ever And now we are drawing near to his Table with fear and reverence he will remember us and draw nearer to us in these outward Elements then Superstition can feign him beyond the fiction of Transsubstantiation Psal 36.8 He will abundantly satisfie us with the fatness of his house feed us though not with his flesh yet with himself and move in us that we may grow up in him In a word he will remember us in heaven more truly then we can remember him on earth and distill his grace and blessings on us be ever with us and fill our hearts with rejoycing Which will be a fair pledge of that solid pure and everlasting joy in the highest heavens And Lord remember us thus now thou art in thy Kingdome The Five and Twentieth SERMON 1 COR. XI 26. For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye do shew or shew ye the Lord's death till he come THere is nothing so good in it self but it may prove the the worst of evils if it be not carried on to its right end and fitly applied to that use for which it was ordained Frustrà est quod rationem finis non ducit saith the Philosopher Every thing hath its use from its end If it decline from that it is not onely unprofitable but hurtful I do not warm my self with a plainer nor smooth a table with fire for this were not onely vain but would destroy my work The
Arts themselves are not liberal but when they make men so free and ingenuous Arithmetick and Geometry are but a kind of Legerdemain if they teach men onely metiri latifundia accommodare digitos avaritiae to measure Lordships and to tell money What need we instance in these The Word of God which bringeth salvation may bring death if it be not received with the meekness of a babe that we may grow thereby The Sacrament the blessed Sacrament of the Lord's Supper which hath been magnified too much and yet cannot be magnified enough was ordained as Physick to renew and revive and quicken our souls but if it be not received to that end for which it was first instituted it is not Physick but damnation Non QUID sed QUEMADMODUM vers 29. It is not the bare Doing of a thing but the Manner of doing it the driving it on to its right end which giveth it its full beauty and perfection A sincere Heart and the Glory of God set the true image of Liberality on the gift of a mite Attention and Obedience make the Word the savour of life Humility and Repentance sanctifie a fast and Shewing of the death of the Lord maketh us truly partakers of his body and bloud Our Saviour Christ hath fully decided this controversie in a word and with one breath as it were hath said enough to still the tumults of the disputers which have been as the raging of the sea and to settle all the vain and needless controversies of this age John 6.63 even in this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The flesh profiteth nothing it is the Spirit that quickeneth For to say his flesh profiteth nothing is a plain declaration that he meant not to give it us to eat That which is nourishment to the body is not proportioned to the soul nor will that which reneweth a soul restore the body to a healthful temper Who would go about to recover a sick man with an Oration of Tully's or set a joynt with an axiom of Philosophy Who can restore a sick soul with bread and wine with flesh or bloud Although these two parts the Soul and the Body are knit and united rogether and do sympathize so as that which refresheth the body doth affect and please the mind and that which cheareth the mind doth strengthen the body yet both the parts receive that which is proper to them the body that which is of a corporeal nature and the soul that which is spiritual and both mutually communicate to each other the fruit and benefit of both without the least confusion of their operations and proprieties Although we see the actions of the body as Hunger and Thirst many times attributed to the soul and the functions of the soul as to Will and the like to the body Therefore we must distinguish between the Meritorious cause and the Efficiency and Application of it which are both joyntly necessary but their manner of operation is diverse It was necessary that the flesh and bloud of Christ should be separated from each other in his violent death on the cross that his most precious bloud should be poured out for remission of sins but to make it a physical potion to make it nourishment to our souls it was not necessary that his bodily substance should be taken into ours For if it should our Saviout telleth us it would profit nothing And the reason is plain Because the merit and virtue of his death which is without us is made ours not by any fleshly conjunction or union with him who merited for us by offering himself but 1. by his Will by which he in a manner maketh it over unto us and 2. by our due receiving of it which is made complete by our Consent and Faith and Giving of thanks which is the work alone of that Spirit which quickeneth and giveth life The blessed Virgin did no doubt partake of the merit of Christ but not because she conceived and bore him nine moneths in her womb but in that she conceived him by faith in her heart Luke 11.27 28. The womb was blessed that bare him and the paps that gave him suck but they rather were blessed who heard his word and kept it The Flesh and Bloud of Christ doth truly quicken us as it was offered up for us a sacrifice on the cross as a meritorious cause and as he gave it for the salvation of the world But it doth not quicken by being received into our bodies but by being received into our souls His merit was enough to save the whole world and yet his merit were nothing if not applied and that application is not wrought without but within us not by the Spirit of life but by the force and power of his death and passion the meritorious cause Rom. 8.2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the Law of Sin and Death What need we hear stir this Water of life and turn it into gall and bitterness Why should this Bread be gravel between our teeth Why should Christ's love be made the matter of war and contention It is called the Body and Bloud of Christ and it is called Bread and Cup in my Text And it is a miserable servitude saith Augustine signa pro rebus accipere to take the signs of things for the things themselves and not to be able to lift up the eye of our mind a-above the corporeal creature to take in eternal light That we may lift up ours let us fix it upon the end for which Christ offered his body and bloud and upon the end for which we are to receive the Sacrament and signs of it And let one end be the measure and rule of the other Let Christ lifted upon the cross draw us after him to follow as he leadeth His body was bruised and his bloud shed to purge us from all iniquity and to make us a peculiar people unto himself That was Christ's end And our end must be proportioned to it So to receive the Sacrament of his body and bloud that it may be instrumental to that end Which cannot be by eating his flesh and bloud that flesh which was crucified and that bloud which was shed One would think it impossible that any should think our Saviour should command us that which is impossible or shew us a way which cannot lead to the end Flesh and Bloud taken down into the stomach can no more feed and quicken a Soul then it can enter into the Kingdom of heaven But his Obedience his Humility his Cross and Passion his meritorious Suffering and Satisfaction these have power and influence on the Soul These are here presented to us as Manna and better then Manna and if we take them down and digest them they will turn into good bloud and feed us to eternal life His Body and Bloud were thus given and thus we must receive them Our Saviour calleth it his
in Scripture words of Command and Duty carry with them more then they shew and have wrapped up in them both the Act and the End and are of the largest signification in the Spirit 's Dictionary To HEAR is to Hear and to Doe To KNOW is to Know and to Practice To BELIEVE is to Believe and to Obey The Schools will tell us FIDES absque addito in Scriptura formata intelligitur Where Faith is named in Scripture without some addition as a dead Faith a temporary Faith an hypocritical Faith there evermore that Faith is commended which worketh by Charity And so to shew or to preach the death of the Lord is more then to Utter it with the tongue and Profess it For thus Judas might shew it as well as Peter thus the Jews might shew it that crucified him Thus the profane person that crucifieth him every day may shew it Yea Christ's death may be the common subject for discourse and the language of the whole world Therefore our shewing must look farther even to the end For what is Hearing without Doing What is Knowledge without Practice What is Faith without Chariâ—y What is shewing the death of the Lord if we do it not to that end for which he did die Our hearing is but the sensuality of the ear our Knowledge but an empty speculation our Faith but phansie and our shewing the death of the Lord a kind of nailing him again to the cross For to draw his picture in our ear or mind to character him out in our words and yet fight against him is to put him to shame We must then understand our selves when we speak to God as we understand God when he speaketh to us and in the same manner we must shew him to himself and the world as he is pleased to shew and manifest himself unto us Christ did not present us with a picture with a phantasm with a bare shew and appearance of suffering for us Nor must we present him with shadows and shews And what is God's shewing himself Psal 80. Thou that sittest between the Cherubims shew thy self saith the Psalmist shine thou clearly to our comfort and to the terrour of our enemies God manifesteth his Power and breaketh the Cedars of Libanus He maketh known his Wisdom and teacheth the children of men He publisheth his Love and filleth us with good things His Words are his blessings and his demonstrations in glory He speaketh to us by peace and shadoweth us by plenty and our garners are full And see how the creature echoeth back again to him The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handy-work Day unto day uttereth welleth out speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge God's language is Power God's language is Love and God's language is Hope God planted a vineyard Isa 5. that expresseth his Power and built a tower in it and made a wine-press therein there is his Love and he lookâ—d for grapes there Hope speaketh for he that planteth planteth in hope He spake by his Prophets he spake by his judgments and he spake by his mercies but still he spake in hope for he doth neither shine nor thunder but in hope This is the heavenly dialect and we must take it out We must not speak as one that beggeth on a stage but as he that beggeth on the high way naked and cold and pinched with hunger Verba in opera vertenda By a religious Alchymie we must turn words into works and when God speaketh to us by his Prophets answer him by our obedience when he speaketh to us in Love give him our hearts and when he looketh for grapes be full of good works This is Christ's own dialect and he best understandeth it and his reply is a reward But from shews and words he turneth away his ears and will not hear that is for still in God's language more is understood then spoke he will bring us to judgment And now we see what it is to shew the death of the Lord not to draw it out in our imagination or to speak it with the tongue but to express the power and virtue of it in our selves to labour and travel in birth till Christ be fully formed in us till all Christian virtues which are as the spirits of his bloud be quick and operative in us till we be made perfect to every good work And thus we shew his death by our Faith For Faith if it be not dead will speak and make it self known to all the world speak to the naked and clothe him to the hungry and feed him to those who erre and are in darkness and shine upon them This is the dialect of Faith But if the cold frost of temptations as S. Gregorie speaketh hath so niped it that it is grown chil and cold and can speak but faintly if we have talked so long of Faith till we have left her speechless if she speak but imperfectly and in broken language now by a drop of water and now by a mite and then silent shew the death of Christ onely in some rare and slender performance behold this is your hour and the power of light this your time of receiving the Sacrament is the time to actuate and quicken your Faith to make it more apprehensive more operative more lively to give it a tongue that it may shew and preach the wonderful works of the Lord. And as we shew the Lord's death by our Faith so we shew it by our Hope which if it be that Hope which purifieth the heart will awake our glory the Tongue If it be well built and underpropped with Charity it will speak and cry and complain And the language is the same with that of the souls under the Altar How long Lord Rev. 6. How long shall the Flesh fight against the Spirit How long shall we struggle with temptations When wilt thou deliver us from this body of death When shall we appear in the presence of our God Though we fall we shall rise again Though we are shaken we shall not be overthrown Though thou killest us yet we will trust in thee This is the dialect of Hope And here at this Table we must learn to speak out to speak it more plainly to raise and exalt it to a Confidence which is the loudest report it can make Thirdly we shew and preach the Lord's death by our Love Which is but the echo of his Love And we speak it fully as he doth to us fill up the sentence and leave not out a word make it manifest in the equality and universality of our obedience as he offered up himself a full perfect and sufficient sacrifice for us Quicquid propter Deum fit aequaliter fit Our love to Christ must be equal and like himself not meet him at Church and run from him in the streets not embrace him in a Sermon and throw him from us in our conversation not flatter him with a peny
and grind him with our oppression not build him a tabernacle in his glory and deny him at his cross No Love speaketh to Christ as the Israelites did to Joshua Josh 1. Whatsoever he commandeth it will do and whithersoever he leadeth it will go against powers and principalities against tribulation and persecution against the power of darkness and the Devil himself This is the dialect of Love And if Love wax cold that it doth not plainly speak this holy tongue here is the Altar and from it thou mayst take a live cole to touch it that it may revive and burn within thee And that heart is not cold but dead which the Love of Christ presented and tendered in the Sacrament cannot quicken and stir up into a flame If this work not a miracle in us and dispossess us of the dumb spirit it is because of our unbelief Again we shew the Lord's death by our Repentance which speaketh in grones and sighs unutterable When we dye to sin we then best shew the death of the Lord. Then his sorrow is seen in ours and his agony in our strugling and contention with our selves His complaints are heard in ours and are the very same My God my God why hast thou forsaken me We are lifted up as it were on a cross the powers of our soul are stretched and dilated our hearts are pierced our Flesh is crucified and Sin fainteth and when all is finished will give up the ghost And then when we rise to newness of life it will be manifest that Christ is in us of a truth A penitent sinner is the best shew of the best Sermon on a crucified Saviour And here in this so visible presentment of his Body and Bloud our wounds must needs bleed afresh our Anger be more hot our Indignation higher our Revenge more bitter and our Complaints louder Here we shall repent of our Repentance it self that it is not so serious so true so universal as it should be Here our wounds as David speaketh will corrupt and putrefie But the bloud of Christ is a precious balm to cure them Christ shall wash away our tears still our complaints take away our sorrow and by the power of his Spirit seal us to the day of Redemption Last of all we must shew the Lord's death with Reverence With Reverence why the Angels desire to look into it Thrones and Dominations bow and adore it and shall not Dust and ashes sinning dying men fall down and worship that Lord who hath taken away the sting of Death which is Sin and swallowed up Death it self in victory Let us then shew the Lord's death with fear and rejoyce with trembling By Reverence I do not mean that vain unnecessary apologizing Reverence which withdraweth us from this Table and detaineth us amongst the swine at the husks because we have made our selves unworthy to go to our Father's house a Reverence which is the daughter and nurse of Sin begot of Sin and multiplying Sin the Reverence of Adam behind the bush who was afraid and hid himself unwilling to come out of the thicket when God called him a Reverence struck out of these two Conscience of sin and Unwillingness to forsake it And what Reverence is that which keepeth the sick from the Physician maketh the wounded afraid of balm and a sinner run from his Saviour This Reverence we must tread under foot with the mother that bare it and dash it against the Rock the Rock Christ Jesus First be reverent and sin no more and then make our approches to Christ with reverence Shew our death to sin that we may shew the death of the Lord for it First leave our sin behind us and then draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith When as Job speaketh we are afraid of all our works of our Faith that it is but weak and call to him to strengthen it of our Love that it is not hot enough and then stir it up of our Hope that it is but feeble and then feed it with the bloud of Christ of our Sorrow that it is not great enough and then drop a tear of our Repentance that it is not sincere enough and then smite our hearts look upon the wounds of Christ and then rip up our own that they may open and take in his bloud when we are afraid of our Reverence that it is not low enough and then lay the cross of Christ upon it all the benefits of a Saviour and our own sins to press it down lower and make him more glorious and us more vile in our own eyes When we have thus washed our hands in innocencie and our souls in the bloud of the immaculate Lamb then Faith will quicken us and Hope embolden us and Love encourage us and Repentance lead us on with fear and reverence to compass his Altar For these are operative and will evaporate will break thy heart humble thy look cast down thy countenance bow thy knee and lay thee prostrate before the Mercy-seat the Table of the Lord. Thus if we shew his Death he will shew himself to us a Lord and a Saviour he will shew us his hands and his side he will shew his wounds and his bloud the virtue of his sufferings shall stream out upon our souls and water and refresh them and we shall return from his Table as the Disciples did from his sepulchre with great joy even with that joy which is a pledge and type of that eternal jubilating joy at his Table in the Kingdom of Heaven The Six and Twentieth SERMON 1 COR. XI 28. But let a man examine himself and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. AMongst all the duties of a Christian whether Moral or Ceremonial there is not one but requireth something to be done before it be done 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Clemens Those velitations and trials which are before the sight are a part of that exercise and they are called Mysteries which do but make way and lead us to the mysteries themselves Preparation to the duties of Christianity we must count as a part of those duties or else we shall come short in the performance of them so do them as that it had been better we had left them undone Eccl. 5.1 It is good to go up to the house of the Lord but we must first keep our feet subdue our foul and irregular affections It is good to offer sacrifice but we must first clense our hands or else we shall but give the sacrifice of fools It is good to give alms with our right hand but so that our left hand know it not It is good to pray but not standing in the synagogues or the corners of the streets It is good to fast but vvithout a disfigured face In all our approches to God vve must keep our feet vvalk forvvard vvith reverence and preparation for the place is not onely holy but dangerous to stand in
down to meat and will come forth and sâ—rve thee that is will fill thee with all those comforts enrich thee with all those blessings give thee all that honour which he hath promised to those who trie and examine and make themselves fit to be guests at his Table I must conclude though I should proceed to the second Part the Grant and the Privilege But he that hath performed the first is already intitled to the second and may nay ought to eat of that bread â—nd drink of that cup For even the Privilege it self is a Duty But the time is spent and I fear your patience I will but re-assume my Text and there needeth no more Use For you see my Text it self is an Exhortation Let a man examine himself A man that is every man Let him that taketh the tribunal and sitteth upon the life and death of his brethren that exalteth himself as God and taketh the keyes out of his hand and bindeth and looseth at pleasure that wondereth how such or such a man who is not his brother in evil as factious as himself dareth approch the Table of the Lord let him examine himself Let him look into himself and there he shall see a great wonder a Wolf and a Lamb a John Baptist and a Herod a Devil and a Saint bound up together in one man the greatest prodigy in the world and as ominous as any ominous to his neighbours ominous to Commonwealths and ominous to all that live in the same coasts And let them examine themselves who with their Tribunitial VETO forbid all to come to this Feast who will not submit to their Examination Young men and maids old men as well as children they that have been catechised and instructed in season and out of season whom they themselves have taught for many years all must pass by this door of Trial to the Table of the Lord. I shall be bold to ask them a question since they ask so many WHERE IS IT WRITTEN Ostendat scriptum Hermogenis officina It is plain in my Text that we are bound to examine our selves but that some should be set apart to examine others we do not read And quorsum docemur si semper docendi simus why are we taught so much if we are ever to learn Certainly that Charity believeth little which will suspect that a man full of years and who hath sate at his feet many of them should now in his old age and gray hairs be to be instructed in the principles of faith It is true we cannot be too diligent in instructing one another in the common salvation we cannot labour enough in this work of building up one another in our holy faith and it concerneth every man to seek knowledge at those lips that preserve it and if he doubt to make them his oracle who are set over him in the Lord For Ignorance as well as Profaneness maketh us uncapable of this Privilege unfit to come to this Feast But this formal and magisterial Examination for ought we can judge can proceed from no other Spirit then that which was sent from Rome to Trent in a Cloke-bag and there at the XIII Session made Auricular Confession a necessary preparative for the receiving of the Sacrament Sacramental Confession and Sacramental Examination may have the same ends and the same effects and there may be as idle and as fruitless questions asked at the one as at the other But I judge them not onely call upon them in the Apostle's words Let them examine themselves whether Love of the world Love of preeminence or Love of mens souls do fan that fiery zele which is so hot in the defence of it Let them also examine themselves who are God's familiars and yet fight against him who know what is done in his closet and do what they please at his footstool and so upon a feigned assurance of life build nothing but a certainty of death who think nay profess and write it that the Elect of which number you may be sure they make themselves may fall into the greatest sins Adultery Murther and Treason and yet still remain men after God's heart and the members of Christ and that to think the contrary is an opinion Stygiae infernalis incredulitatis which upholdeth a Stygian and hellish incredulity and can proceed from none but the Devil himself Let these I say examine themselves And if this Luciferian pride will once bow to look into this charnel-house of rotten bones if the hypocrite will pluck off his visour and behold his face naked as it is in the glass of God's Word we need not call so loud on open and notorious offenders Intestinum malum periculosius These intestine secret applauded errours are most dangerous and that wound which is least visible must be most searched But the exhortation concerneth all Let the Pharisee examine himself and let the Publican examine himself Let the Oppressour examine himself and melt in compassion to the poor Let the Intemperate examine himself and wage war with his appetite Let the Covetous person examine himself and tread Mammon under his feet Let the Deceitful man examine himself and do that which is just Let him that is secure and let him that feareth Let him that is confident and let him that wavereth Let the proud spirit and let the drooping spirit examine himself Let every man examine himself Let every man that nameth Christ and in that Name draweth near to his Table depart from all iniquity And then behold here is a Grant passed over to them a Privilege enrolled and upon record They may eat of this bread and drink of thiâ— cup taste and see how gracious the Lord is be partakers of his body and bloud that is of all the benefits of his Cross Redemption Justification his continued and uninterrupted Intercession for us Peace of conscience unspeakable Joy in the holy Ghost And when he shall come again in glory they shall have a gracious reception and admittance to sit down at his Table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the Patriarchs and all the Apostles and that noble army of Martyrs in the Kingdom of heaven And with these ravishing thoughts I shut up all and leave them with you to dwell and continue and abound in you and to bring you with comfort on the next great Lord's day to the Table of the Lord. The Seven and Twentieth SERMON GAL. I. 10. The last part of the Verse For do I now perswade men or God or do I seek to please men For if I yet pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ WHich words admit a double sense but not contrary for the one is virtually included in the other As first If I should yet do as I did when I was a Jew seek to please men and to gain repute and honour and wealth fit my doctrine to their corrupt disposition I should never have entred into Christs service which setteth
bring him forward to that end for which the miracle was wrought Therefore the same providence and mercy which raised him up at the pool's side found him out in the Temple to make yet deeper impressions in him to open his understanding that he might know what he was yet ignorant of who it was that had made him whole and so believe in him and be saved For indeed we are too ready to gaze so long on the miracle till we forget the hand that wrought it to delight our selves so much in health as not to think of the Physician and to lose a benefit by our enjoying of it Christ must therefore appear a second time again and again and find us out or we shall lose him and our selves for ever Christ will find them will be found of them that seek him not that they may learn to seek him His love is never weary and yet never resteth but in its end He worketh miracles and can he do more Yes give light to the miracle and make it a lesson to instruct us even sow his miracles that we may reap the fruit of them cure our eyes that our understandings may be opened to know him give us ears that we may hearken to his word restore our limbs that we may take up our cross and follow him that the diseases of our bodies being cured may be to us as the serpent in the wilderness was to the Israelites to be looked upon that we may be healed that our former deafness may make us more ready to hear what God will say our former blindness may make us more delight to behold the wonders of his Law our former palsie may teach us not to be wavering or double-minded but to move regularly in the wayes of God and to persevere therein unto the end The miracle is even cast away if it have no further operation then on our bodies Christ's love is cast away if we take his loaves and feed not on him if we behold his miracles and not believe if he give us sight and we see him not if he give us life and we be dead to him if he give us health and we make our strength the law of unrighteousness if we draw not down his miracles to that end for which he wrought them Rise saith he take up thy bed and walk The lame impotent man doth so and goeth his way but Christ followeth him as if the miracle were yet nothing followeth him to the Temple and then beginneth his cure when the man was whole Mark 8. When he first put his hands upon the blind man he saw men walking as trees This was miraculous but not a miracle But Christ again put his hands upon his eyes and then he looked up and saw every man clearly Christ ever worketh to perfeâ—â—â—on He came into the world that they that see not may see and that they that are lame may go but he doth not leave them when they but see men walk like trees in a weak and uncertain knowledge of him he doth not begin and desist but followeth his cure presseth upon us giveth us daily visits leaveth no means unassayed no way untroden nothing unattempted which his wisdom thinketh fit His end is to drive up every thing to the end to make his miracles his benefits his miraculous birth his glorious oeconomy his victorious death and passion powerful to attain their end to wit the glory of his Father and the salvation of our souls If I do not love the Creatouâ—â—â—â—t is all the beauty of the Universe If I do not repent what are a◠〈◊〉 glories of the Gospel If I do but walk and go and rejoyce in my health what is the miracle of curing How should this love of Christ affect and ravish our souls how should this fire kindled in our flesh inflame and incite us to cooperate with him and to help him to his end Nor will he take it as a disparagement if when he hath wrought what he pleased we put to our hand and work what we ought if when he hath wrought a miracle we do our duty if when he hath made us whole we flye that sin as a serpent which first bit us and struck us lame if when he hath provided us materials to our hand and taught us to be workmen we build up our selves in our most holy Faith Oh it is a foul and sad ingratitude to defeat Christ of his end and when he would finish his work to hinder him when he maketh his benefits a reason why we should sin no more to be so unreasonable as to sin more and more to look no further then the miracle which is done then the benefit we receive to feel our blood dancing in our veins to see our garners full to have our bodies cured and our estates cured and then think all is done Behold Christ still followeth after us to find us out nor will he leave us so For most true it is he would not work miracles but for this end Where he saw unbelief ready to step in between the miracles and the end he would not do them Matth. 13.58 He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief No whatsoever he did whatsoever he spake was for us men and for our salvation As he said of the voice of the Angel which was heard as thunder from heaven Joh. 12.29 30. This voice came not for me but for your sakes so all his miracles all his benefits even the Creation it self are for our sakes He made not the world for himself For his happiness is in himself Patuit coelum antè quà m via saith the Father He made heaven for Man and then shevved him the way to enter into it and take possession of it Whatsoever he doth in heaven and in earth tendeth to dravv us nearer to him He vvould not thunder but to make us melt he would not come towards us in a tempest but to teach us to bow to his power and so make it a buckler to defend us he would not shine upon us but to draw us to the true light he would not have sent his Prophets he would not have sent his Son to vvork vvonders amongst us but to dravv us vvith these cords of love to himself and that we might believe God to be the onely true God and him whom he hath sent Jesus Christ For this end Christ found this man and for this end he seeketh out us that all his miracles and benefits and promises may have their end And why then should he still suffer such contradiction of sinners Why do we then rejoyce at our health and be afraid of his precepts be willing to be raised and yet stiâ—â— carry that enemy about with us which first cast us down rise and walk and then sin again This is to defeat the miracle to abuse the mercy and to resist the power of Christ that though it work what we wonder at yet it shall
Key still a golden Key but to open no gates but those of Death Power is a gift of God for there is no power but of him to shadow the innocent to take the prey from the oppressour to stand between two opposite parties till it draw them together and make them one to work equality out of inequality to give Mephibosheth his own lands to be the peace of the Church the wall of the Common-wealth and the life of the Laws This is the end why power is given And what may it be made Of a Sword it may be made a Rasor to cut deceitfully to cut a purse nay to cut a throat to kill and take possession as Ahab did to make Virtue vice and Vice virtue to condemn the innocent bloud and make him a Saint who hath no other father then him who was a murtherer from the beginning to make the Law a nose of wax and the Scripture as pliable as that to make that Religion not which is best but which is fittest for it self to make Men beasts and God nothing in this world to make the Common-wealth an asylum and Sanctuary for Libertines a nest of Atheists a Synagogue of hypocrites in a word a map and representation of Hell it self This I say Power may be And so may every blessing of God be drawn from that end for which it was given Wit may make us fools Riches may beget pride Power confusion and Peace it self war Health may breed wantonness and that which was made to be the womb of good may be the mother of evil as we read in Aelian that Nicippus's Sheep did yean a Lion God oft complaineth of this in holy Scripture And indeed this abuse of God's gifts is the seed-plot and cause of all the evil in the world Were it not for this we should not hear such complaints from such a place of peace as Heaven is I have brought thee out of the land of Egypt and thou breakest my statutes I took thee from the sheepcoat 2 Sam. 12. and anointed thee King and gave thee thy masters house and thou hast despised my command I washed thee with water I decked thee with ornaments Ezek. 16. I gave thee beauty and thou playedst the harlot I have chosen you twelve John 6. chosen you all to the same end Judas as well as Peter and yet one of you is a Devil It is indeed a complaint but if we slight and neglect it it will end in judgment God will confound our Wisdom blow upon our Riches and shake our Power and our Wit shall ruine us our Riches undo us our Power crush us to pieces and our Greatness make us nothing And if this were all yet it might well deserve an Ecce and be an object to be looked upon even by Atheists themselves But there is another end an end without end a fire ready kindled to devoure these adversaries a worm that shall gnaw their hearts who received the gifts of God and corrupted them torment for Health poverty for Riches and everlasting slavery for Power abused And then how happy had it been for Ahitophel if he had not been wise for Dives if he had not been rich for Hereticks if they had not been witty for Ahab and Nero if they had not been Kings how happy for the swaggerer and wanton if he had been a Clinick or a Recluse confined to his bed or shut up between two walls all the dayes of his life And now I think you will say we may well fix an Ecce to remember us of that we have received whether Health or Wit or Riches or Power that what was meant for our good turn not to our destruction So from the object considerable we pass to the Act What it is to behold and consider it ECCE Behold is as an asterisk or a finger pointing out to something remarkable some object that calleth for our eye and observation and that is already held up and we behold it That is soon done you will say for what is more sudden then the cast and twinckling of an eye If a thing be set up and placed before us we cannot but behold it But we shall find that this Ecce is of a large extent and latitude and very operative to awake all the powers and faculties of our souls to excite our faith and to enflame our love that it requireth the sedulous endeavour the contention the labour the travel of the mind Many times we do not know what we know and what we behold we do not behold because we do not rightly consider it Tantum valet unum vocabulum Of such force and energy is this finger this star this one word Behold John 1. Behold the Lamb of God saith the Baptist He points out to Christ as with a finger Why they could not but behold him But they are called upon with an ecce to behold him better The Pharisees beheld Christ the Jews beheld him but they did not behold and consider him as the Lamb of God For had they thus beheld him they had not blasphemed him 1 Cor. 2.8 they had not butchered him as they did Had they known him they had not crucified the Lord of glory We behold the heavens the work of God's fingers the Moon and the Stars which he hath ordained Rom. 1.19 We behold this wonderful frame 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That which may be known of God God hath shewed us But we do not as David speaketh consider it It doth not raise us up to the admiration of God's Majesty nor bring us down to a due acknowledgment of our subjection We are no more affected with it then as if it were still without form and void a lump a Chaos We behold our selves and we behold our selves mouldring away and decaying and yet we do not behold our selves For who considereth himself a mortal We carry our tombs upon our heads like those aves sepulcrales those sepulcral birds which Galen speaketh of we bear about with us our own funerals Every place we stand in is our grave for in every place we draw nearer to corruption Yet who considereth he is a living-dying man Dives in his purple never thought how he came into the world or how he should go out of it We neither look backward to what we were made nor forward to what we shall be Can Herod an Angel a God be struck with worms We dye daily and yet think we shall not dye at all The Certainty of death may stand for an article of our faith and as hard a one almost as the Resurrection In a word we are in our consideration any thing but what we are We sin and behold it and sin again but never look upon Sin as the work of the Devil as the deformity of the soul as that which hath no better wages then death Our Paralytick did rise and walk and could not but behold it yet Christ here in the Temple calleth upon
ship and an undefiled Conscience as the rudder If you strike off the rudder or let it go the ship will soon dash against the rocks But yet let us suppose that such a case may fall out though very rarely that the Conscience having been asleep for a long while may at length be awakened by the horrour of a prison and captivity and then break forth with power and strength to make such a man a champion for the Truth We may here say Men and brethren what shall this man do Shall he forsake the Truth against conscience God forbid For if that which is not of faith that is of conscience and a full perswasion of mind be sin then that which is against it is greater But may he not deny it with a mind to gain further time of repentance and so to fit himself to this work to make himself a better and more acceptable sacrifice to God No this is as dangerous as the other For evil is no good foundation to raise up that which is good upon We must not saith S. Paul do evil that good may come thereby And how can we hope that God should give us time to repent of our former sins when we adde this sin to the rest the Denial of the Truth Why may we not rather fear that he will cut us off in this very thought who to flie from the fire of his jealousie run further into it Certainly we cannot merit of God by our demerits We cannot make one sin a way to the remission of the rest It is not likely we should be carried into heaven on the Devil 's back or go through hell into paradise What shall he do then Shall he lay down his life Yes he must for it is better to die then to sin better to breathe out my last then to countermand my conscience better not to be then to be an apostate But then you will say being pressed down with the burthen of his sins how shall he be able to lift up his head What hope can breathe to comfort him in the midst of so many clamours and affrights When Conscience is loud against him what shall silence her Whither should he flie or whither should he go Even let him bow to that power which is over him and now come and desire him and in all humility beg the prorogation of life for so much time in which he may approve his repentance and make it evident both to God and man But if this be not granted as persecutors are alwaves in hast cannot sleep till he that offendeth them be in his grave then let him throw himself down before the throne of God and before his mercy-seat and with the Thief on the cross confess he doth receive the due reward of his deeds and with him cry loud unto Jesus to remember him And why should not we hope well of this man though he came in but at the eleventh hour of the day nay when his sun was even setting and his day well-near shut up Although he hath not the excuse that no man hired him yet he hath this comfort that his Lord may do what he will with his own He may rouse up himself with the extraordinary favour and mercy of God whose eye is good howsoever ours be evil and who though he hath bound us to timely repentance yet hath not bound himself not to accept of the latest if it be serious And that this man's is so no better argument can be brought then that which is written with his own bloud And now what is his hope His hope is even in Christ if not the most certain hope as certain as theirs who have served him in righteousness and holiness all the dayes of their life yet it cometh so near unto it that there cannot be one more certain then this And to conclude this we need not fear to number him amongst those who are persecuted for righteousness sake amongst those of whom that voice from heaven speaketh Rev. 14.13 Blessed are the dead who dye in the Lord 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those who are destined as sacrifices and appointed as children to death for they shall rest from their labours and their works shall follow them And thus have you seen Persecution entailed as it were upon the children of God and What it is to suffer for righteousness sake Thus have we led you through this Field of bloud Let us now look back upon it and see what we can bring along with us for our further use and instruction And it looketh indifferently both upon those whose feet are swift to shed bloud and on those righteous persons who are fitted to poure it forth Eadem catena militem custodiam They are as it were linked together The persecuted and persecutor imply and suppose one another and are never asunder But let them that suffer have the first place And first knowing these terrours as the Apostle speaketh seeing Persecution is as it were entailed upon the righteous person seeing there is a kind of providence and necessity it should be so let us learn first as S. Peter speaketh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not to think it strange concerning this fiery tryal not to dote too much upon this outward guilded peace and perpetuity in publick profession or when we see these things think some strange thing is come unto us For what strange thing is it that wicked men should persecute the righteous that a serpent should bite or a lion roar that the world should be the world and the Church the Church Or what is now done which hath not been done in all the ages of the world For let us ask the dayes of old and they will tell us that outward Peace and Perpetuity of profession have more diligently attended Superstition and Idolatry then true Profession Look upon the Kingdom of Judah and see how there as upon a stage the service of God and Idolatry had interchangeably as it were their scenes and mutually succeeded one another But Superstition was still longer-lived and breathed with less trouble then true Religion which did shine for a while in peace but was soon over-shadowed with a cloud All that I shall say is but what our Saviour said to Nicodemus of our new birth Nolite mirari Wonder not at it For whatsoever changes and alterations there be in the outward profession of Religion Religion and the Church are ever the same the same in a cloud and obscurity that they were when they shined gloriously before the sun and the people the same in persecution which they were in peace but far more glorious For from these outward things if we would speak in the holy language befalleth the true Church of Christ neither peace nor war but as the blessed Angels have their motions and qualities and attributes which we are utterly ignorant of yet known to themselves so Peace and War and Persecution and other attributes we give the Church are such as
it What is comfort to him that will not be comforted What is heaven to a child of perdition It is a word of the future tense as all promises are of things to come And it is verbum operativum a word full of efficacy and virtue to awake and stir up our Faith to raise our Hope and enflame our Charity It hath a kindly aspect upon all these And first upon our Faith For ideò abcessit Dominus ut fides nostra aedificetur Our Saviour was therefore taken up into heaven that our faith which may reach him there may be built up here on earth He therefore lay hid that this eye might search him out Faith is a kind of Prospective or optick instrument by which we see things afar off as if they were near at hand and things that are not yet as if they now were It turneth Veniet into the present tense and beholdeth Christ as â—ow already descending with a shout And this is sancta impudentia fidei the holy boldness and confidence of Faith to break through all difficulties whatsoever if the object be in heaven to place it on earth if it be invisible to make it visible and if Christ say he will come to say he is come already And now Beloved try and examine your selves whether ye be in this faith In other things how cautelous we are what counsel do we ask how do we use our own and other mens eyes and how are we grieved how crest-fallen if we be over-reached as one that is beaten in battel and hath lost the day But then how easily are we abused how willing to deceive our selves how well pleased to erre where the errour is fatal and deleterial to the soul Will not a weak and groundless opinion a phansie a shadow be taken for that Faith which is the substance of things not seen Glorious things are spoken of Faith It is called a full assent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a full assurance a full persuasion of mind And is ours so Nay for the most of us would we did but believe the second coming of Christ as we do a story out of our own Chronicles nay as many times we believe a lie Would our faith were but as a grain of mustard-seed Even such a faith if it did not remove mountains yet would level many would silence many a proud word would restrain us from those sins which have nothing of the pain but are as loathsome as Hell it self Nequicquam segniùs credita movent quà m cognita saith one Those things which are but credible and believed move and set us a working many times as powerfully as those things which we know What maketh us venture our selves by sea and by land rise up early and lie down late bear all things endure all things but a firm belief that this is the way to honour and wealth What Faith then is that which cannot strike the timbrel out of our hands nor the strumpet out of our arms which cannot make us displease our selves nor unfold our arms not silence a word not stifle a thought but leaveth us with as little life and motion as those who have been dead long ago although the VENIET the doctrine of Christ's second Advent sound as loud as the Trump shall do at the last day Faith shall we call this or a Dream or an Echo from a sepulcher of rotten bones which when all the world proclaimeth Christ's second coming resoundeth it back again into the world a Faith that can speak but cannot walk nor work a Faith that may dwell in the heart of an hypocrite a murtherer a traitor a Devil For all these may believe or at least profess that Christ will come again and yet be that liar that Antichrist which denieth Jesus to be the Christ or that he ever came in the flesh Secondly as this VENIET casteth an aspect upon Faith so it doth upon Hope which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the bloud of our soul saith Clement without which it will be faint and pale and languish Therefore oportet habere aliquem spei cumulum saith Terrullian this addition of Hope to Faith is most necessary For if we had all Faith and had no Hope this all would profit us nothing Faith without Hope may be in hell as well as on earth For magnifie Faith as much as you please and make it an Idol and fall down and worship it It is a true saying and worthy of all acceptation BY FAITH WE ARE SAVED But we have reason to fear that this true saying hath damned many not in it self for so Tâ—uth can bring forth nothing but life but through the corruption of mens hearts which turneth Manna it self into poison and Life into Death And let me tell you Hope will not raise it self upon every Faith nor is Faith alvvayes a fit basis for Hope to build on He that despaireth believeth or he could not despair For vvho can droop for fear of that VENIET that Judgment vvhich he believeth vvill never come Oh foolish men that vve are who hath bewitched us that vve should glory in Faith and Hope make them the subject of our songs of praise and rejoycing when our Faith is but such a one as is dead and our Hope at last will make us ashamed when our Faith is the same which is in hell and our Hope vvill leave us vvith the Devil and his Angels a Faith vvorse then Infidelity and a Hope as dangerous as Despair and that serve onely to adde to the number of our stripes yet this is the Faith this is the Hope of the world These are thy Gods O Israel Therefore in the third place that vve may joyn these tvvo together Faith and Hope vve must dravv in that excellent gift of Charity which is copulatrix virtus the coupling vertue not onely of Men but of these two Theological vertues For as I told you though Hope do suppose Faith yet Faith may shew it self vvhen Hope is thrust out of doors and many there be vvho have subscribed to the VENIET that Christ will come again vvho have small reason to hope for his coming How many believe that he will come and bring his reward with him and yet strike off their own chariot-wheels and drive but heavily towards it How many believe there is a Judge to come and wish there were none Faith and Hope dwell not in the heart till Charity hath taken up the room But when she is shed and spred abroad in our hearts then they are in conjunction and meet together and kiss each other Therefore this promise of Christ's coming is a threat a thunderbolt if these three Graces meet not if Faith work not by Love and both together raise a Hope And as VENIET here looketh upon our Faith and Hope so it calleth for our Charity For velimus nolimus veniet whether we will or no whether we bâ—lieve or no whether we hope or no he will certainly come But when
word which is a work which will break forth into action a word like unto that of God who spake and it was done Psal 33.9 Psal 62.11 who speaketh and repenteth not God hath spoken once that is immobiliter saith a Father His word is immutable IBIMUS We will go Here is their Resolution a strong will begotten of Love vehemens bene ordinata voluntas a vehement and well-ordered will Lord Psal 26.8 I have loved the habitation of thy house saith the Psalmist This is invictissimè constantissimè velle as S. Augustine speaketh a preserving and unconquered will a resolution taken up once for all not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Stoicks speak an assent that it is fit so to do but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an active motion by which the mind is carried along and in a manner forced to that it desireth a full perswasion as that of Abraham Rom. 4. as that of S Paul Acts 21. who Rom. 4.21 Acts 21 11-14 though he was so sure to be bound and put in fetters by the Jews at Jerusalem yet he would go up thither and by no arguments nor intreaties nor tears be persuaded to the contrary as that of Martine Luther who would enter the city Wormes though every tile on every house were a devil as that of the blessed Martyrs whom neither threats nor flatteries could at all work upon but their firm and setled purpose of mind added strength to the weaker part animated and quickned and as it were spiritualized their bodies and made them subservient and ministerial to bring their resolution into act Hence in a manner they suffered as if they suffered not They seemed to be ignorant of their stripes senseless of their wounds unconcerned in their torments Death appeared to them in as fair a shape as Life it self yea was desired before it This is it we call Resolution to will and do or to will which is to do For quicquid imperavit sibi animus obtinuit Whatsoever the mind commandeth it self whatsoever it resolveth on is as good as done already For when we have looked upon the object and approved it when we have beheld its glory and confirmed our selves in the liking of it when we have cast by all objections which flesh and bloud may bring in of danger or difficulty when we have fastned the thing to our soul and made it as it were a part of it when it is become as Christ saith our meat John 4.34 then there is such an impression of it made iâ—â—he heart such a character as is indeleble and we are as violently carried towards it as an hungry man is to his food and refreshment neither difficulty nor danger neither principalities nor powers neither life nor death can so stand between as to keep us from it My heart is fixed O God my heart is fixed saith David Psal 57.7 and then he cannot but sing and give praise The heart being fixed to the object carrieth it about with it is joyned to it even when it is out of sight when at the greatest distance Finis operi adulatur The end we propose and the glory thereof doth give light and lustre to our endeavours yea and cast a kind of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and loveliness even on that which would deterre us from it and leaveth not in us the consideration or memory of any thing besides it self This is Resolution This maketh an IBIMUS We will go significant without this we cannot clearly pronounce IBIMUS we cannot truly say We will go into the house of the Lord. Such a resolution David here observed at least supposed in the people of Israel For whether the Ark were to be setled or the Temple to be edified or re-edified any of these might well stir up a desire in them and a resolution to see it done For the Ark was a Sam. 4.21 22. Psal 78.61 the glory of Israel and b Jer. 7.4 The Temple of the Lord was a frequent and solemn word in their mouthes they c Psal 44.8 made it their boast all the day long their long absence therefore could not but whet their desire raise their expectation fix and setle their will and make them impatient of delay Oh when shall we appear in the presence of God! When shall we go into the house of the Lord Thence we heard the oracles of God There is the mercy-seat There we offered sacrifices and burnt-offerings There we called upon God's name There are set thrones of judgment the thrones of the house of David There the glory of the Lord appeared and made it as heaven it self We will go This was their Resolution We now pass to behold 3. Their Agreement and joynt Consent Which is visible in the pronoun WE We will go Much hath been said of Pronouns of the power and virtue of them of Meum and Tuum what swords they have whet what bloud they have spilt what fires they have kindled what tumults they have raised in the world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Nazianzene How long shall we hear in the Church these quarrelsome words Mine and Thine My understanding and Thy understanding My wit and Thy wit My preacher and Thy preacher My Church and Thy Church It is not Mine or Thine but Ours WE is a bond of peace and love that tieth us all together and maketh us all one We are all Israelites we are one people we are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fellow-citizens and members of the same body We have one Law one Temple one Religion one Faith one God one Heaven cur non omnes unus dicantur saith Origen and why may not all then be one Yes we are all one And there is as great unity between us if we be of the same body saith Cyprian as there is between the beams and the Sun between rivers and their fountain between branches and their root WE taketh in a whole nation a whole people the whole world and maketh them one DECERNIMUS We decree We ordein is taken for a word of state and majesty but it is indeed a word of great moderation and humility an open profession that though Princes command yet they do it not alone but by the advise and counsel of others For in making a Law the King and his Counsel are but one So WE maketh Manasseh and Ephraim all Israel all the Tribes one WE maketh a Common-wealth and WE maketh a Church Though there be Lords and peasants Pastours and people Acts 1.15 though the number of the names together be an hundred and twenty yea many millions yet WE by interpretation is but one 1 Cor. 12.8 c. To one is given the word of wisdom to another the word of knowledge to another faith to another the gifts of healing to another the working of miracles c. But it is by one and the same Spirit And as there is but one Spirit so there is but one Christ and in
heart can make lawful for us unless we will conclude that the Law can make us perfect and that which is so weak and unprofitable bring us to the kingdom of God Hebr. 7.18 There is a third kind of Righteousness mentioned in Sc ipture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees the learnedest amongst the Jews and those who were most famous for sanctity and strictness of life Christ himself speaketh of their Righteousness and the Righteousness of some of them was true according to the Law Matth. 5.20 For where our Saviour telleth us that except our righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees we shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven he meaneth not hypocritical but real righteousness saith Chrysostom Otherwise he had compared not Righteousness with Righteousness but Righteousness with Hypocrisie which is the greatest unrighteousness And yet all this will not reach home nor make up that which the Christian is to seek For even these wise and righteous persons did come short of true wisdom and righteousness The sons of Levi who did purifie others were to be purified themselves that they might offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness Mal. 3.3 S. Paul himself who was a Pharisee and had sate at the feet of Gâ—maliel where he learned the Law telleth us That he was unblameable Phil. 3.6 but touching the righteousness which is by the Law And what Seneca speaketh is true in this case also Angusta est innocentia ad legem bonum esse That righteousness is but of a narrow compass which looketh no further then the Laws which restraineth no more then the outward man Therefore the Apostle in many places calleth the Law the Law of works not onely in opposition to the Law of faith but to that better and more perfect Law which doth not onely bind the hand but the thought The Righteousness which was by the Law was indeed justifiable but before men and had no other reward but of the Basket of temporal blessings And in plain terms we read of none else But the Righteousness which hath the promise of this life and of that which is to come whose reward is eternity of bliss is more spiritual and offereth up no other sacrifice then the man himself is busie in purging and cleansing the soul in rooting out those evils which are visible and naked to God though the eye of flesh cannot behold them in curing those diseases which neither Jew nor Gentile were sensible of but rejoyced in them as in health it self For this is it with which Christ and his blessed servant S. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans upbraid the Jews that they would not yield their necks to Christ's yoke though it were easie nor put their shoulders to his burthen though it were light that they would not be obedient to the righteousness of God which is spiritual but set up and established and gloried in one of their own The Righteousness then neither of the Heathen nor of the Jew in general nor of the strictest Sect of them the Scribes and Pharisees is meant here in this place nor indeed doth it deserve that name There is then a fourth kind justitia Christianorum the Righteousness of Christians Which was revealed by the most exact Master that ever was and commanded by that Majesty which pierceth the very heart and reins and which cannot be contemned Now even Christians themselves do not agree about this Righteousness but have made and left the word ambiguous Some stand much upon an Imputed Righteousness and it is true which they say if they understood themselves and upon Christ's righteousness imputed to us which might be true also if they did not interpret what they say For this in a pleasing phrase they call to appear in our elder Brother's robes and apparel that as Jacob did we may steal away the blessing Thus the adulterer may say I am chast with Christ's chastity the intemperate I am sober with Christ's temperance the covetous I am poor with Christ's poverty the revenger I am quiet with Christ's meekness And if he please every wicked person may say that with Christ he is crucified dead and buried and that though he did nothing yet he did it though he did ill yet he did well because Christ did it For no better use can be drawn out of such doctrines as do not offer themselves unto us but are forced out of the word of God We have a story in Seneca of one Calvisius Sabinus who thought he did himself what any servant of his did Putabat se scire quod quisquam in domo suâ sciret Such an opinion possest him that he thought himself skilled in that which any of his family knew If his servant were a good Poet he was so too if his servant were well limbed he could wrastle if his servant were a good Grammarian he could play the Critick Now Christ we know took upon him the form of a servant he came not to be served but to serve and some men are we I content to be of Sabinus his mind to think that whatsoever Christ did they do also or at least that they may be said to do it If he fasted forty dayes and forty nights they fast as long though they never abstained from a meal If he overcame the Devil when he tempted him they are also victorious though they never resist him If Christ was as a sheep which opened not his mouth they also are sheep though they open theirs as a sepulchre Therefore what the Stoick speaketh of that man Nunquam vidi hominem beatum indecentiùs I never saw man whose happiness did less become him will fit and apply it self to these men This Righteousness if they have no other doth but ill become them because it had no artificer but the phansie to make it For that Christ's Righteousness is thus imputed to any we do not read no not so much as that it is imputed though in some sense the phrase may be admitted For what is done cannot be undone no not by Omnipotency it self for it implyeth a contradiction Deo qui omnia potest hoc impossibile saith Hierom God who can do all things cannot restore a lost virginity or make that to be no sin which was a sin He may forgive it blot it out bury it not impute it account of it as if it had never been but a sin it was We read indeed Rom. 4.3 that Faith was imputed to Abraham for righteousness And the Apostle interpreteth himself out of the 32. Psalm Blessed is the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works that is as followeth whose sins are forgiven to whom the Lord imputeth no sin And Abraham believed God Gal. 3.6 2 Cor. 5.21 and it was imputed to him for righteousness And We are made the righteousness of God in him that is we are counted righteous for his sake And it is more
man thus qualified is fitted for the highest imployment in the Church even for the glory of Martyrdom Yea he is a Martyr already sine sanguine though he come not under the sword nor shed his bloud This is an addition indeed greater then that in kind This maketh our very poverty as rich as the greatest wealth a dungeon more honourable then the highest place and that a heaven upon earth which carnal men tremble at and run from even into hell it self In a word this blesseth our store promoteth our counsels maketh profit it self profitable this taketh away the name of Rich and Poor and maketh them both the same For betwixt Rich and Poor in this world in respect of our last landing as it were and entrance into our haven it is but as in S. Paul's broken ship Acts 27.43 44 Some by swimming some on broken parts of the ship some this way some that some in one condition some in another but all by the conduct of Righteousness come safe to land rich and poor high and low weak and strong the brethren of low degree and they in the highest seat all at last meet together in the haven in the Kingdom of heaven For conclusion then You have seen Righteousness what it is and that it is desireable in it self that it is desireable before all things and that it draweth all things after it not onely the dew of heaven but the fatness of the earth in her womb like Rebecca bearing twins a Jacob and an Esau spiritual and temporal blessings the Kingdom of heaven and the world with all that therein is as an appendix or addition This is the Object And this is Christ's method that Righteousness should be first in our desires because it is all in all and bringeth the rest along with it And this method we must exactly follow For why should not we think Christ a perfect Methodist Why should the Flesh and the World so prevail with us as to persuade us that Wisdom it self may be deceived Our own experience might easily confute us For we see men are never more fools never more foully fail of their ends then when they will be wiser then God and prescribe to Wisdom it self then they seek out many inventions follow their uncertain providence through the many turnings and windings and mazes and labyrinths which it hath made please themselves in their own wayes dream of happiness and in the end meet with ruine and destruction They seek for meat and are more hungry then before they pursue Honour and lye in the dust they are greedy of Riches and become beggers they cry they fight for Liberty and are made slaves Their craft deceiveth them their policy undoeth them their wisdom befooleth their strength ruineth them They think they are making a staff to lean on and when they have shaped and fashioned it behold it is a rod to scourge them This we have seen with our eyes folly shamed and defeated in her own wayes and confounded in her method and course of proceeding The thoughts of men are perverse and their method contrary to that which true Wisdom prescribeth For it proceedeth ab apparentibus ad vera from apparent good things to real evils from that which may satisfie my Envy or feed my Covetousness or flatter and fulfil my Lusts to that which â—ill destroy both body and soul It beginneth in honour and endeth in dishonour it beginneth in pleasure and endeth in torment it beginneth in visions and dreams and pleasant speculations of what may be and endeth in bitterness and horrour and amazement The method of this world is no method and the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God And it would appear so to us too if it had not first blinded us and put out our eyes For how do the children of this world who are wise in their generation every day fail under their own wisdom fall under their own strength and that before the sun and the people Let us then forsake our own wayes and method and follow that which is prescribed by Wisdom it self which proceedeth ab asperis ad laeta from that which appeareth irksom to that which is truly delightful which leadeth us through rough and rugged wayes into a paradise of pleasure through the valley of death into the land of the living through many tribulations into heaven This one would think were a strong motive and inducement to follow it But there is more yet Our Saviour doth even blandiri condescend to flatter our infirmity and provideth for our bodies as well as our souls For the same method will serve both The love of Righteousness is our purveyour here for these things and our harbinger for the Kingdom of God Would you see this miracle wrought It is daily wrought And if it be not wrought on you it is because of your unbelief Faith is required as a condition not onely for the working of miracles but also for the procuring of every blessing of God And if we believe if we distrust not if we question not the providence and promise of God it will be made good upon us and we shall have enough here and more then we can desire hereafter we shall receive these things and make of them such friends as when all these things shall fail will receive us into everlasting habitations Which God grant unto us for Jesus Christ's sake The Eight and Twentieth SERMON PART I. GALAT. VI. 7. Be not deceived God is not mocked For whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap WE shall not take these words in that reference they bear to the foregoing verse in which they that are taught in the word are exhorted to communicate to those who teach them in all good things For this is a Doctrine not so sutable to these times And were S. Paul now alive to preach it he would be set to his old trade of making of Tents his practice would be turned upon him to confute his doctrine and that made a duty which was but a charitable yielding and condescension for the Churches sake If for their sakes and to take off all scandall and offense from the Gospel of Christ he will labor with his hands this his voluntary submission shall be made a Law to bind him and his posterity for ever Teach he should and labor he should with his hands He that teaches must labor and every laborour may teach Every man may teach and none communicate So that Text of communicating is lost quite and the duty of Teaching left to every one that will take it up Every man may be a teacher every man a S. Paul though he never sate at the feet of Gamaliel We will not then take our rise here but call your thoughts rather to a view of my Text as it looks forwards to the next verse He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption which presents the shew of a reason but is indeed no more
a seed which may be sown in any ground and will grow up even in Epicurus his garden Who deny'd indeed the Providence but not the Foreknowledge of God as thinking the events and motions of things on earth rather below his care then out of his sight And though he had the confidence to deny the Administration he had not the power to deny the Nature of God In a word it is a principle of Nature written in our hearts by the finger of God himself and we must first loose our selves before we can blot it out And yet as undeniable as it is S Peter foretells that there will come mockers in the last times even mockers of God And the words here are not a bare negative proposition and no more but a silent reprehension and being urged and preached as it were a plain intimation that some there might be who deceiving themselves in their religion would take courage at last to question a principle of Nature Psal 10. His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud under his tongue is mischief and vanity saith David and then it follows in the close God hath forgotten he hideth his face Ezek. 9.9 and will never see it nor require it The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great and the land is full of bloud and the city full of perversness for they say The Lord hath forsaken the earth and the Lord seeth not Psâ—l 53.1 They say as the fool doth in his heart There is no God say it rather by rote as that they would have then make an article of their faith For none believe that there is no God but they for whom it were better there were none indeed None believe he doth not see but those who do those works of darkness which he cannot look upon but in anger May we then conclude that there be some who attempt to cosen God as the Cerarians did their Jupiter who think they can bâ—ffle him and put a trick upon him obtrude dross for silver and a gilded sin for true holiness and righteousness A hard saying this who can bear it Yet such no doubt there are and we have just cause to fear not a few who are secretly possest of such a phansie For this their folly is manifested unto all men as the Apostle speaketh And it shews it self 1. in vita hominum in mens Lives 2. in votis hominum in the Wishes of wicked men 3. in studio in their Desire and Study to make themselves believe it And first if we look into the lives and conversations of men we shall find the whole course and order thereof to be nothing else but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of scene and as it were an action upon a stage What masks and disguises do they put on and all populo ut placeant that they may deceive the people who indeed are delighted with shews and will swallow down any pill be it to their own ruine and destruction if it be gilded over with a fair pretense who cannot think themselves wise but by being constant or rather stubborn fools Thus first they deceive and mock themselves then they deceive and mock others come forth in this shew and saint-like majesty as Herod in his royal apparel that they may be taken for Gods not Men. And now they dare tell any Prophet in the world though they peradventure will not call him Blessed of the Lord that they have fulfilled the Commandment of the Lord. For having gained this applause they tread their measures with more state and majesty they begin to feel themselves to be those persons whom they did present as Quintilian observes of some Players that they put on that affection which they were but to express and went weeping off the stage Now they are Holy now they are Just now they are Defenders of the faith and by degrees work in themselves a belief that God also is of their opinion delighted in shews and apparitions And therefore in this habit which at first they did put on but for a purpose they commend themselves to God himself like the Pantomime or Dancer in Seneca who because he pleased the people well was wont every day to go up into the Capitol and dance before Jupiter and thought he did the God great pleasure in it Did I say this folly was seen in the course of mens lives You may think it is rather hid there It is true but so hid as the Bee was in the gumme latet lucet hid but so hid that with half an eye we may see it well enough For the Hypocrite though he carry on his actions with that art and subtle continuance as if he would deceive the eyes of the Sun and of Justice yet some one thing or other there will be which shall discover and unmask him I have performed the commandment of the Lord said Saul to Samuel And Samuel said 1 Sam. 15.13 What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear I am just and holy saith the Hypocrite what meaneth then this loud Oppression this raging Malice this devouring Covetousness which are as the bleating of the sheep and lowing of the oxen to discover all and make this Angel of light as full of horrour as the Devil himself And as it is seen in close and painted iniquity so is it most visible in open profaneness in those sins which we commit before the Sun and the people And in these we do not so much mock God as laugh him to scorn think that he will keep siâ—ence at our Oaths shut his eyes at our uncleanness fall asleep whilest we watch whole nights in prodigious intemperance and be at last a Father of mercy to those rebellious children which defie him to his face Such Mockers the world is full of These Locusts swarm and cover the face of the earth and corrupt the whole land Quae regio in terris What corner of the earth is there where these do not quarter Look into the Court there the King is the Preacher and his example a lasting Sermon I doubt not but there be many who do sub larva servire aulae as Nazianzene spake of his brother Caesarius who wait upon the King to do service to the King of Kings and make their place here but a step to a better in heaven Yet if we may prophesie in the Kings Court we may discover some who by their colour and complexion do not make shew as if they had lived so near the Sun or wiâ—hin the beams and influence of so resplendent an example Look into the Camp I cannot think but there be many there qui sub paludamento alterius alteri militant who in their coat-armour serve the Lord of Hosts and so live as those that fight his battels But are there none whose very words are clothed with death and whose swords are instruments of violence
hath written a book De arte nihil credendi of the Art of believing nothing and he lays it down as a tryed conclusion Oportet priùs Calvinistam fieri qui Atheus esse vult He that would be an Atheist must first turn Calvinist Which Maldonate the Jesuite receives as he would an Oracle But know from what coasts it breaths and may name it a prophane scoff and a most malitious speech merum pus venenum Yet this use we may make of it That we watch the Serpents head and beware the beginnings of evil For if we once serve in the Devils tents we may be engaged further then we ever thought we should and by going from our God we may learn to slight and mock him For there be steps and degrees and approches to Atheism nor is any man made an Atheist in the twinkling of an eye and this wilfull deceiving of our selves leads apace that way even to a distast of God We first mock our selves and then are willing to mock him For we never hate God till we have given him just reason to hate us Odium timor spirat saith Tertullian Hatred is an exhalation from Fear and we then begin to wish he had no Eye when we have cause to fear the weight of his Hands This is a sad declination even to the condition of the damned spirits nay of the Devil himself whose first wish was To be as God the next That there should be no God at all And thus much of the second point That we may have it in voto in our wish and desire to delude and mock God But now in the third and last place we may yet descend a step lower even to the gates of Hell it self I may say lower yet for as we may have it in voto so we may have it in studio As we may wish it were so so may we strive and study to believe it and use all means to make it present it self unto us as an article of our Creed which the damned cannot do We may strive to blot out those characters which are indeleble to rase out those afflicting thoughts of God out of our memory to drown the cry of one sin with the noise of more to feed our Love of the world with more wealth our Lust with more uncleanness and our Revenge with more bloud make a sin a vertue a crying sin an advocate by committing it often and answer our chiding Conscience with a song There be Amos 6. saith the Prophet that put far from them that evil day and to this end they chant to the sound of the viol and invent instruments of musick like David They bespeak the Vanities of the world to come in and make their peace call in the pleasure of the Flesh to abate the anguish of the Spirit work out the very thought of evil by the content and profit they reap in doing it laughing and jesting sin out of their memory adding sin unto sin till their conscience be seared as with a hot iron as the Apostle speaks Magnis sceleribus etiam jura naturae intereunt saith the Orator Whilest we are thus familiar with the works of darkness the light of Nature begins to wax dim and by degrees to vanish out of fight First as Bernard speaketh a spiritual chilness possesses the soul and finding no resistance seizeth on the inward man infects the very bowels of the heart chokes up the very wayes of counsel And then these domestick and inward remembrances the voice of Nature and the principles of Reason fail and speak in a broken and imperfect language In a word they are to us as we would have our God be not at hand as the Prophet speaketh but afar off The Historian will tell us that Theivery and Piracy were so frequently practised in some part of Greece that they were accounted no crimes at all And we read of those African parents that they made it a sport nay a religion to sacrifice their children and could not be disswaded from that inhumane custome and long it was before being conquered they were forced to lay it down And if we look abroad into the world we shall find some few indeed of those tender consciences who frame a law to condemn themselves by and so make more sins then there are But quocunque in populo quocunque sub axe in every nation in every corner of the earth we meet vvith those who frame mischief by a law take a pride to quarrel at Articles of their faith and are as active to nullifie the law of works Is Blasphemy a sin they speak it as their language Is Sacrilege a sin All things are alike to them as unholy as themselves Is Revenge a sin It an Heroick vertue Is adultery a sin It was a sin a mortal sin but in these latter and perillous times it hath spoke better things to them who are bold to present it as pleasing to their Understanding as to their Sense Is Rebellion a sin There be that call it by another name If the Son of man come shall he find sin upon the earth Certainly admit our glosses apologies distinctions evasions take us in our big triumphant thoughts there will be none that do evil no not one For what we read of the men of the first age that they know not what it was to dye but fell to their graves as men use to fall upon their beds is true of many now in respect of their spiritual estate they fall into sin as if it were nothing but to ly down and rest to satisfie the sense and please the appetite as if to sin were as natural as to eat And now all is night about us But even in this darkness there is sometimes a scintillation a beam of light darted in upon us which waxeth and waineth as the hand of God is upon us or removed In our ruff and jollity it seems well-near exstinct but in our misery and afflictions it revives many times and begins to move and at last when God strikes us to the ground when our feather is turned into a night cap when Death comes towards us on his pale horse it kindles and blazes as a Comet that foretells our everlasting destruction Now this our way uttereth our foolishness For what a folly is it to follow a Meteor exhal'd from the earth and not that light which is from heaven heavenly to be drove about with a ly and unmoveable as a rock when the Truth speaketh to preserve a wandring thought before an everlasting principle to embrace a suborn'd deceitful solicitation and turn our selves from those native and importunate suggestions from the dictates and counsel of the Spirit of God and though they haunt and pursue us run from them as from our enemies as if we were like to that fabulous rock in Pliny which you could not stir with all your strength but yet might shake with the touch of your finger We may say of this as the
but Love joynes the Will and the Tongue and the Hand together and indeed is nothing else but a vehement and well ordered will Knowledge may be but a dream but Love is ever awake up and doing 1 John 2.3 I may so know the truth that I may be said not to know it but I cannot so love the truth that I may be said to hate it For though the Scripture sometimes attributeth knowledge of the truth to them who so live as if they knew it not yet it never casts away the pretious name of Love on those who so live as if they loved it not A Pharisee an hypocrite may know the truth but it was never written that they loved it but that they loved the praise of men more then of God And this was the reason that they had eyes and saw not eares and heard not nor understood that they had tongues and spake not that they would not be perswaded when they were convinced and withstood the truth when they were overcome In a word Knowledge may leave us like unto the idoles of the heathen with hands that handle not and mouths that speak not Love onely emulateth the power of our Saviour and works a miracle casts out the spirit which is dumb For when he spake these things not the Pharisees but a woman of the company lift up her voice And thus her heart was truly affected and she lift up her voice As the Prophet speaks Jer. 20.9 The Love of Christ was in her heart as a burning fire shut up in her bones and she was weary of forbearing and she could not stay It was like that coal of the Seraphins which being laid on her mouth Isa 6.7 she spake with her tongue Now in the next place what was it that begat her love but the admiration of Christs person his power and his wisdome This was it which kindled that heat within her which broke out at her lips Plato calls Admiration the beginning of Philosophy We admire and dwell upon the object and view it well till we have wrought the Idea of it in our minds Whence Clemens citeth this saying out of the Gospel according to the Hebrew Qui admiratus fuerit regnabit qui regnabit requiescet He that at first admires that which to him is wonderful shall at last reign and he that reigns shall be at rest shall not waver or doubt or struggle formidine contrarii with fear that the contrary should be true and that that which he saw should be but a false apparition and a deception of the sight This woman here saw and wondred and loved she saw more then the Pharisees to whom a sign from heaven appeared in no fairer shape then the work of Beelzebub She saw Christs miracles were as his letters of credence that he came from God himself She had heard of Moses and his miracles but beholds a greater then Moses here For 1. Christs miracles breathed not forth horrour and amazement as those of Moses did in and about the mountain of Sinon Nor 2. were they noxious and fatal to any as those which Moses wrought in Pharaohs court and in Aegypt He did not bring in tempest and thunder but spake the word and men were healed He did not bury men alive but raised men out of their graves He brought upon men no fiery serpents but he cast out devils If he suffered the devils to destroy the hogs yet he tyed them up from hurting of men and what is a Hog to a Man In a word Moses's miracles were to strike a terrour into the people that he might lead them by fear but Christs were to beget that admiration which might work love in those whom he was to lead with the cords of men with the bonds of love All Christs miracles were benefits Acts 10.38 For he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed with the devil for God was with him Christs miracles were above the reach and power of Nature Nature had no hand in the production of any of them All that we vvonder at are not Miracles not an Eclipse of the Sun vvhich the common people stand amazed at because they know not the cause of it Nor is that a Miracle vvhich is besides the ordinary course of Nature For then every Monstre should be a Miracle Nor that vvhich is done against Nature for so every child that casteth a stone up into the air doth vvork a Miracle But that is a Miracle vvhich is impossible in Nature and vvhich cannot be vvrought but by a supernatural Hand 2. Christs miracles vvere done not in a corner but before the sun and the people This Woman here heard the dumb speak she savv the blind see the lame go and the lepers cleansed Miracles vvhen they are wrought are not the object of our faith but of our sense They are signs and tokens to confirm that which we must believe 3. Christs miracles were done as it were in an instant With a touch at a word he cured diseases which Nature cannot do though helpt by the art of the Physician All the works of Nature and of Art too are conceived and perfected in the womb of Time 4. Last of all Christs miracles were perfect and exact When he raised Jairus's daughter Luke 8.55 he presently commanded them to give her meat When he cured Peters wives mother forthwith she was so strong that she arose and ministred unto them Matth. 8 1â— He gave his gifts in full measure nor could more be desired then he gave And shall not these miracles and these benefits appear wonderful in our eyes Shall not his Power beget Admiration and Admiration Love and Love command our voice Shall a woman see his wonders and shall we be as blind as the Pharisees Shall she lift up her voice and shall we still keep in us the devil that is dumb It came to pass as he did and spake these things a certain woman of the company lift up her voice and said And now we should pass to what she said but I see the time passeth away Let us therefore make some use of what hath already been said and so conclude And first let us learn from this woman here to have Christs wonderful works in remembrance to look upon them with a stedfast and a fixed eye that they may appear unto us in their full glory and fill us with admiration For Admiration is a kind of voice of the soul Miracula obstupuisse dixisse est saith Gregory Thus Silence it self may become vocal and truly to wonder at his works is to profess them This motion of the heart stirred up with reverence to the ears of the uncircumscribed Spirit is as the lifting up of the voice which speaks within us by those divers and innumerable formes and shapes of admiration which are the inward expressions of the soul When the soul is in an ecstasie when it is transported and wrapt up above it self
time of age it was best for men to marry it was answered That for old men it was too late and for young men too soon This was but a merry reply But the truth is many of our civil businesses whensoever they are done are either done too soon or too late for they are seldome done without some inconvenience But this our Rising may peradventure be too late for old men but it can never be too timely for the young It is a lesson in Husbandry Serere nè metuas Be not afraid to sow your seed when the time comes delay it not And it is a good lesson in Divinity Vivere nè metuas Be not afraid to live You cannot be alive too soon Vult non vult He wills and he wills not is the character of a Sluggard which would rise and yet loves his grave would see the light and yet loveth darkness better then light like the twin Gen. 38. puts forth his hand and then draws it back again doth make a shew of lifting up himself and sinks back again into his sepulchre Awake then from this sleep early and stand up from the dead at the first sound of the trump at the first call of grace But if any have let pass the first opportunity let him bewail his great unhappiness that he hath stayed longer in this place of horrour in these borders of hell then he should and as travellers which set out late moram celeritate compensare recompense and redeem his negligence by making greater speed And now we should pass to our last consideration That the manifestation of this our Conversion and Rising consists in the seeking of those things which are above But the time is welnear spent and the present occasion calls upon me to shorten my Discourse For conclusion Let me but remember you that this our Rising must have its manifestation and as S. James calls upon us to shew our faith by our works so must we shew and manifest our Resurrection by our seeking those things which are above It is not enough with S. Paul to rise into the third heaven but we must rise and ascend with Christ above all heavens Nor can we conceal our Resurrection and steal out of our graves but as Christ arose and was seen 1 Cor. 15. as S. Paul speaks of above five hundred brethren at once and as S. Luke having told us of Christ The Lord is risen presently adds and hath appeared unto Simon so there must be after our Resurrection an Apparuit we must appear unto our brethren appear in our Charity forgiving them in our Patience forbearing in our Holiness of life instructing them in our Hatred of the world and our Love of those things which are above Indeed some mens rising is but an apparition a phantasme a shadow a visour and no more But this hinders not us when we are risen but we may make our appearance nor must the Pharisee fright away the Christian Quaedam videntur non sunt Many things appear to be that which indeed they are not But this action cannot be if it do not appear If there be no apparition there is no Resurrection It is natural to us when we rise to shâ—w our selves If we rise to honour Acts 25. you may see us in the streets like Agrippa and Bernice 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with great pomp If we rise in our Estates for that is the Worldlings Resurrection and not to rise thus with him is indeed to be dead you may see it in the next purchase If we rise and increase in knowledge which is a rising from the grave of Ignorance then scire meum nihil est we are even sick till we vent knowledge is nothing it the world cry us not up for men of knowledge And shall we be so ready to publish that which the world looks upon with an evil eye and conceal that from mens eyes which onely is worth the sight and by beholding of which even evil-doers may glorifie God in the day of visitation Shall Dives appear in his purple and Herod in his royal apparel and every scribler be in print and do we think that rising from sin is an action so low that it may be done in a corner that we may rise up and never go abroad to be seen in albis in our Easter-day-apparel in the white garment of Innocency and Newness of life never make any shew of the riches and glory of the Gospel have all our Goodness locked up in archivis in secret nothing set forth and publisht to the world What is this but to conceal nay to bury our Resurrection it self Nay rather since we are risen with Christ let us be seen in our march accoutred with the whole armour of God Ephes 2. â—0 Let us be full of those good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them for by these we appear to be risen and they make us shine as stars in the firmament We may pretend perhaps that God is the searcher and seer of the heart Well he is so sed tamen luceat opera saith the Father yet let thy light shine forth make thy apparition For as God looketh down into thy heart so will thy good works ascend and come before him and he hath pleasure in them Lift up your hearts They are the words we use before the Administration and you answer We lift them up unto the Lord. Let it appear that you do And therefore as you lift up your hearts so lift up your hands also Lift up pure and clean hands such hands as may be known for the hands of men risen from the dead Let us now begin to be that which we hope to be spiritual bodies that the Body being subdued to the Spirit we may rise with Christ here to newness of life which is our first Resurrection and when he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead we may have our second Resurrection to glory in that place of bliss where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God To which he bring us who is our Resurrection and Life even Jesus Christ the righteous who died for our sins and rose again for our justification To whom with the Father and the holy Ghost be all honour and glory for evermore The Six and Thirtieth SERMON PHILIPP I. 23. For I am in a strait betwixt two having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better Or For I am greatly in doubt on both sides desiring to be loosed and to be with Christ which is best of all WE may here behold our blessed Apostle S. Paul as it were between heaven and earth doubtfully contemplating the happiness which his Death and the profit which his Life may bring perplexed and labouring between both and yet concluding for neither side To be with Christ is best for him to remain on earth is best for the Philippians
give our selves in one Lent five and forty thousand stripes what though we should with the Euchite take S. Paul's words litterally and pray continually what though we hear the word every day and that from morning to night yet when all is done nothing is done unless all be drawn home to the end for which all were enjoyned which is sincere and universal obedience Without which we cannot think those services acceptable to God but as things which degenerate so much the worse by how much the better they had been if they had been carried and brought home to a right end What a sin is it that Prayer which was made to open the gates of heaven should devour widows houses that I should open my ears and greedily suck in the doctrine of truth and then as greedily confute the Preacher by my practice And what is a Fast if it be for oppression and bloud Fasting is no vertue saith S. Hierom who liked of Fasting well enough Adjumentum est non perfectio sanctitatis It is a good help and way to vertue but it is no part of the perfection and beauty of holiness And it will concern us to take heed how we flatter our selves when we fast as if we had performed some special part of God's service and to lose the benefit it might have brought with it Magìs hoc providendum est nè tibi hoc quòd licita contemnas securitatem quandam illicitorum faciat lest by Fasting or the rest we think we have highly merited at God's hands and that our abstinence from what is lawful encourage us not and countenance us in something that is most unlawful and thus make Fasting a stale and bawd for our sin Behold saith the people to God we have fasted and thou regardest it not They thought that to hang down the head for a day was religion when their lives were otherwise spotted with uncleanness And it is the nature of Ceremony to put a trick as it were upon Devotion and to assume that unto it self which is due to Religion And as it was sometimes said of Church mens wealth Religio peperit divitias sed filia devoravit matrem so standeth the case between Ceremony and Religion Religion was the first that brought it forth and the daughter with many men eateth up the mother Those duties which were ordained to promote Holiness of life undermine and supplant it and then stand in its place obtain not the end but are either taken for it or drawn to worse We fast as Saul made the people for a day and then as they did at night 1 Sam. 14. we eat with the bloud Therefore what S. Paul spake of Circumcision is true of Fasting They are in a manner both made of the same matter and upon the same mould Circumcision and so Fasting verily profitteth if thou keep the Law but if thou break the Law thy circumcision is made uncircumcision thy Fasting is turned into sin Again these duties which look further then themselves and are instrumental to others are of easier dispatch then those which they are ordained to advance It is far easier to fast to pray to hear to tithe mint and rue and anise and cumin then to do the weightier matters of the Law judgment mercy and faith These we must make our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or preparations the greatest difficulty is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the work it self It is an harder matter to fight against lust then to fast for a day to be in the body and yet out of the body it is harder to crucifie the flesh then to punish it with the loss of a meal It is harder for the wanton to make himself an eunuch then to forbear his bread harder for the Mammonist to â—â—e rich in good works then to pay his tithes To sacrifice the oalves of our lips â—â—o open our ears to afflict our selves for a day many slender motives many by and earthy respects may persuade us How soon will war or famine or a plague bring us into the house of mourning and pull us on our knees when not all these judgments nor the terrour of the wrath to come can prevail with us to deny our selves can prevail with the covetous to scatter his bread with the sacrilegious to hold off his hand from that which is holy with the oppressour to beat out his teeth with the wanton to keep his feet from the house of the foolish woman Heaven it self hath not force enough to keep us out of hell nor hell terrour enough to drive us from it Here here is the agony and contention here is the strugling the labour the warfare of a Christian not in hearing but in doing not in abstaining from meat but from sin Here the mind is put to the utmost of its activity here it is put upon the rack here it is in labour and travel not to bring forth a hollow eye or an open ear a sigh or grone or many prayers but a new creature Hoc opus hic labor est This is a work indeed the work of a Christian Formalities and outward performances Hearing and Fasting and the like are set forth like those labourers in the parable early in the morning and begin the work but true Piety Obedience and Self-denial these bear the burthen and heat of the day Those may change nay may be turned into sin but these abide for ever and are as lasting as the heavens Thirdly the strict and severe observing of outward duties many times maketh us more slack and remiss in those which are more essential and necessary as Euphranor the painter having vvearied his phansie and art in drawing the pictures of the petty Gods failed and came short in setting out the Majesty of Jupiter Hovv often doth Sacrifice swallow up Obedience May not a man be more deceitful for his Prayers more wicked for the many Sermons he hath heard and more bloudy for a Fast May not a man cry out with Saul I have kept the commandment of God when he hath broke it sit down and rest in these types and shadows and deal with the substance as the Jews did with Christ revile and spit upon it and put it to open shame That of the Father is true Vbi quod non oportet adhibetur quod oportet negligitur Where we place our diligence in that which is less we withdraw and take it off from that which is more necessary are great fasters and greater sinners A Pharisee is never more a wolf or a viper then after a fast Last of all for I must hasten God is not so much glorified in a Fast as in the renewing of his image which is more visibly seen in a chaste just pious merciful man then in all the Anchorets or Fasters in the world For herein we are like him and resemble him We cannot say we hear as God doth hear or fast as God doth fast or pray as God doth pray but we are just as
I need not be large in their character you may know them by their language I fast twice in the we e. They fast and they pray and they hear and they believe and they are assured of heaven They are and they alone The rest stand before them as Publicans or excommunitate persons Can any good thing can any Prophet come out of Nazareth Can any know any good or do any good that is not of that faction Enlarge thy phylacteries if thou canst thou Pharisee and paint that sepulchre of rotten bones vvhich thou art vvith more art and coriosity then these blow thy trumpet louder or draw thy face to more figures then these Lord what is now become of Religion It was placed in judgment and mercy it is now managed with cruelty and craft It vvas committed to every nation and all people it is now shut up in a party It vvas seated in the Will and Understanding it is now whirled about in the Phansie It vvas a wedding-garment it is now made a cloke of maliciousness It vvas once true He that loved Christ and kept his commandments was his Disciple but he is now no good Christian who is so if he be not so after such a mode and such a fashion We see it in the Church of Rome No salvation out of her territories God grant vve feel it not nearer home Beloved he that shall look abroad and vvell consider the conversation of many may be tempted perhaps to an unworthy thought that either there is no Religion or that Religion is nothing For vvherein is it placed In a Fast and that to our ovvn vvills in Hearing and that but vain in Prayer and that many times but babling in Faith and that but dead in Formalities and Shews It s sound is gone through the earth and it is lost in the noise Religion vve fight for and Religion vve fight against Religion vve extoll and Religion vve shame We cry it up and tread it under foot and are never less religious then vvhen the Pharisee speaketh vvithin us and telleth the vvorld and maketh it known to all the people that we are so Non apparemus mali ut plus malignemur We will not appear evil that vve may do the more evil seem very good that vve may be vvorse and vvorse Let us take an Inventory of our Jewels and our best things let us set down our virtues We fast vvith all our sins about us full of iniquity and many times feed it vvith a fast We fast and make it a prologue sometimes to a Comedy sometimes to a Tragedy and at once call down judgments and deprecate them humble our selves before God and provoke him We hear and that is all and vvould to God that vvere all But here that curse is upon it Deut. 28.38 We carry much seed out but gather little in We hear much and remember little and practise less nay vve practise the contrary to that vvhich vve heard vvith so much attention and delight We pray for one thing and desire another We make it a trade a craft and occupation to take indeed a pearl but not the kingdom of heaven I but vve believe I am unwilling to say Faith is a ceremony but in many it is not so much and signifieth nothing at all a meteor hanging in the phansie vvhich portendeth nothing but sterility and barrenness rather a scutcheon for shew then a buckler to quench a fiery dart We call Christ a foundation and we build upon him We lay our cruelty upon him who was a Lamb our malice upon him who prayed who died for his enemies our pride upon him who made himself of no reputation our hypocrisie upon him who was Truth it self and our rebellion upon him who was a pattern of obedience We believe in Christ and crucifie him again For this the wrath of God is revealed from heaven Rom. 1 1â— because we hold the truth of God in unrighteousness For this his Anger is not turned away but his hand is stretched out still not so much for the breach as for the contempt of his word and commandments not so much tor our offending him as for our dallying with him not so much for our sin as for our hypocrisie not onely for our obedience but for our hearing not onely for our defects but for our devotion not onely for our infidelity but for our faith not onely for our intemperance but for our fast For what can provoke God more then to see such pearls trode under foot by swine I do not mention paying of tithes for neither the Law of God nor of man can defend them nor any thing else that looketh like a prey And therefore for conclusion let me bespeak you as Christ did his Disciples Take heed of the leven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisie Luke 12. for it will leven and sowre the whole lump the whole body of your Religion taint and poison your Fast frustrate your Hearing turn your Prayer into sin make your Faith vain and leave you in your sins The One and Fortieth SERMON PART I. JAMES I. 25. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work this man shall be blessed in his deed THere is nothing more talked of then the Gospel nothing more wilfully mistook nothing more frequently abused The sound of it is gone through the earth is heard from the East to the West but men have set and tuned it to their own lusts and humours No Psalm will please us but a Psalm of Mercy For Judgment is a harsh note Mercy and Judgment though David put them together in his Song with us are such discords that they yield no harmony Mercy and Judgment Law and Liberty though they may meet and delight us though they must meet to save us yet we set them at distance cleave to the one and hate the other please and delight our selves under the shadow of Mercy till Judgment falleth upon as a tempest to overwhelm us loose our Liberty in our embraces forfeit Mercy by laying hold of it and the Gospel of Christ is made the Gospel of man nay saith S. Augustine Evangelium Diaboli the Gospel of the Devil himself This our blessed Apostle had discovered in the dispersed Tribes to whom he wrote That they were very ready to publish and magnifie the Gospel that they loved to speak of it that they loved to hear of it that they were perfect in their Creed that Faith was set up aloft and crowned even when it was dead that they did believe and were partial that they did believe and despise the poor that they did believe and blaspheme that worthy Name by which they were called And therefore to draw them back from this so dangerous a deviation Vers 19. he exhorteth them first to hear the word of truth that he disliketh not but then secondly to receive it into their hearts
unto death There is lex Factorum the Law of Works For they are not all Credenda in the Gospel all articles of Faith there be Agenda some things to be done Nor is the Decalogue shut out of the Gospel Nay the very articles of our Creed include a Law and in a manner bind us to some duty and though they run not in that imperial strain Do this and live yet they look towards it as towards their end Otherwise to believe them in our own vain and carnal sense vvere enough and the same faith vvould save us vvith vvhich the Devils are tormented No thy Faith to vvhich thou art also bound as by a Law is dead that is is not faith if it do not vvork by a Law Thou believest there is a God Thou art then bound to vvorship him Thou believest that Christ is thy Lord Thou art then obliged to do what he commandeth His Word must be thy Law and thou must fulfill it His Death is a Law and bindeth thee to mortification His Cross should be thy obedience his Resurrection thy righteousness and his Coming to judge the quick and the dead thy care and solicitude In a word in a Testament in a Covenant in the Angel's message in the Promises of the Gospel in every Article of thy Creed thou mayest find a Law Christ's Legacy his Will is a Law the Covenant bindeth thee the Good news obligeth thee the Promises engage thee and every Article of thy Creed hath a kind of commanding and legislative power over thee Either they bind to some duty or concern thee not at all For they are not proposed for speculation but for practice and that consequence vvhich thou mayest easily draw from every one must be to thee as a Law What though honey and milk be under his tongue and he sendeth embassadours to thee and they intreat and beseech thee in his stead and in his name Yet is all this in reference to his command and it proceedeth from the same Love which made his Law And even these beseechings are binding and aggravate our guilt if we melt not and bow to his Law Principum preces mandata sunt the very intreaties of Kings and Princes are as binding as Laws preces armatae intreaties that carry force and power with them that are sent to us as it were in arms to invade and conquer us And if we neither yield to the voice of Christ in his royal Law nor fall down and worship at his condescensions and loving parlies and earnest beseechings we increase our guilt and make sin sinful in the highest degree Nor need we thus boggle at the word or be afraid to see a Law in the Gospel if either we consider the Gospel it self or Christ our King and Lord or our selves who are his redeemed captives and owe him all service and allegeance For first the Gospel is not a dispensation to sin nor was a Saviour born to us that he should do and suffer all and we do what we list No the Gospel is the greatest and sharpest curb that was ever yet put into the mouth of Sin The grace of God saith S. Paul hath appeared unto all men teaching us that is commanding us Tit. 2.11 to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts Libertas in Christo non fecit innocentiae injuriam saith the Father Our liberty in Christ was not brought in to beat down innocency before it but to uphold it rather and defend it against all those assaults which flesh and bloud our lusts and concupiscence are ready to make against it Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world He taketh away those sins that are past by remission and pardon but he setteth up a Law as a rampire and bulwork against Sin that it break not in and reign again in our mortal bodies There Christ is said to take away not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sins but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sin of the world that is the whole nature of Sin that it may have no subsistence or being in the world If the Gospel had nothing of Law in it there could be no sin under the Gospel For Sin is a transgression of a Law But flatter our selves as we please those are the greatest sins which we commit against the Gospel And it shall be easier in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah then for those Christians who turn the grace of God into wantonness who sport and revel it under the very wings of Mercy who think Mercy cannot make a Law but is busie onely to bestow Donatives and Indulgences who are then most licencious when they are most restrained For what greater curb can there be then when Justice and Wisdom and Love and Mercy all concur and joyn together to make a Law Secondly Christ is not onely our Redeemer but our King and Law-giver As he is the wonderful Counsellour Isa 9 6. Psal 2.6 so he came out of the loyns of Judah and is a Law-giver too Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion The government shall be upon his shoulder He crept not to this honour Isa 9.6 but this honour returned to him as to the true and lawful Lord With glory and honour did God crown him and set him over the works of his hands Heb. 2.7 As he crowned the first Adam with Understanding and freedom of Will so he crowned the second Adam with the full Knowledge of all things with a perfect Will and with a wonderful Power And as he gave to Adam Dominion over the beasts of the field so he gave to Christ Power over things in heaven and things on earth And he glorified not himself Heb. 5.5 but he who said Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee he it was that laid the government upon his shoulder Not upon his shoulders For he was well able to bear it on one of them For in him the Godhead dwelleth bodily And with this power he was able to put down all other rule autority and power 1 Cor. â—5 24 to spoil principalities and powers and to shew them openly in triumph to spoil them by his death and to spoil them by his Laws due obedience to which shaketh the power of Hell it self For this as it pulleth out the sting of Death so also beateth down Satan under our feet This if it were universal would be the best exorcism that is and even chase the Devil out of the world which he maketh his Kingdom For to run the way of Christ's commandments is to overthrow him and bind him in chains is another hell in hell unto him Thirdly if we look upon our selves we shall find there is a necessity of Laws to guide and regulate us and to bring us to the End All other creatures are sent into the world with a sense and understanding of the end for which they come and so without particular direction and yet unerringly
Pulpit-flatterers 506. Flattering Preachers are vvorse then Judas 510 511. The root of Flattery is Covetousness 507 c. How apt vve are to flatter our selves 442. 480. 742. 875. v. Assurance Presumtion Security Flesh v. Body Flesh and Spirit contrary 175. 562. 767. ever contending one vvith another 312. Florimundus Raimundus 556. Folly Whence all the Folly that so aboundeth in the vvorld 689 690. Fools and Mad-men vvhat to be thought of 96. None such Fools as they vvho think themselves vvise 500 501. Forgetfulness of the World reproved 1116. Forgiveness How short our Forgiveness cometh of God's 817. God's F. is free and voluntary and so must ours be 818. Whether we are bound to forgive an injury before acknowledgment made 818. God forgiveth fully and so must vve not onely forgive but forget 819. By this vve become like unto God 820. Though vve must forgive yet is not the office of the Judge or going to Law unlawful 821. God's F. is not the less free because it engageth us to forgive 824. What force our F. hath to obtain F. of God 824 825 830 c. What influence God's F. should have on us 826 c. How it cometh to pass that it doth not alwayes vvork in us the likeness of it self 827 828. That we may forgive our Brother vve must oft call to mind and meditate upon the Mercy of God 828 829. and apply it aright 829. What vve must do to get our sins forgiven 833. Grace to forgive one another is never single but accompanied vvith other graces 833. Form A Form of godliness nothing worth vvithout the power thereof 663. yet it deceiveth many 77. 79. and contenteth them 74 c. 303 304. 487. and vvorketh confidence and security in their hearts 74. 76. 1127 1128. and they conceit that God himself also is much taken vvith such pageantry 82. 108 109. Indeed the Form is accepted vvhen the power is not wanting 79 80. otherwise not 487 488. Why a bare Form vvithout substance is so hateful to God 75-79 It hath the same motive with our greatest sins 76. It is mere mockery 80. 877. It is as pleasing to the Devil as it is odious to God 77. v. Hearing Piety Worship Formality v. Outward Duties It is compared to motions by vvater-works 845. Formalities are easy essential duties difficult 1057. Formal repentance is the grossest hypocrisie 372. Fornication eloquently and excellently declaimed against 750 752. Excuses for it answered 750. It dishonoureth the body and defileth the soul 750. It maketh the members of Christ the members of an harlot 750. It is of all sins the most carnal 750. It effeminateth both mind and body 751. It is the Devil's net to catch two at once 751. How strictly Christ forbiddeth it 751. What presumtions there are of its abounding in this Age 751 752. That the very Heathen thought it foul appeareth from their custome of bathing after it 751. Frailty Of humane Frailty 535 c. Friendship obligeth to duty 105. No Friendship is lasting that is not built upon Virtue 371. A wise Friend will shun the least suspicion of offense 380. 612. Fundamentals of Protestants Religion 285 Fundamental and necessary points are plain and evident in Script 1084 1085. Funeral rites at the death of a Romane Emperour 423. Future events unknown to us 250. 1043. v. Time G. GAin v. Profit How greedily and basely pursued not onely by Heathens but by many Christians also 131 132. The gainfullest use of riches 143. Gal. ii 20. 521. ¶ v. 21. 375. ¶ vi 12. 501. Galene's helps in the pursuit of knowledge 66. Gallant The profane Gallant a despicable wretch 528. Gen. iii. 19. In the sweat of thy brows thou shalt eat thy bread a command as well as a curse 218. ¶ 22. 158. 630 631. ¶ vi 3. 795. ¶ xlii 21 22. 387. ¶ Gen. xlvi 27 28. handsomely applied 321. Gentleman No Gentleman hath a licence to be idle 222. GHOST The HOLY GHOST a distinct Person 53. Several titles of his and operations 54. Why called the Spirit of truth 54. 57. Though sent by the Father and the Son yet is his coming voluntary 56. The end of Christ's coming and of the H. Ghost's 52. 760. The H. Ghost though not so solemnly as of old yet still cometh effectually upon the faithful 52. 760. He is ever consonant to himself 55. He is our chief our sole Instructour 760. 772. Though the Church and the Word and Discipline be our Teachers yet the H. Ghost may be truly called our sole Teacher 778. How he is said to teach us all truth 58. How he teacheth us 773. Means must be used for the obteining the gifts of the H. Ghost 61. 67 68. Into what posture we must put our selves if we will receive him 779. We must be careful not to disquiet and grieve him 773 774. Many pretend to be led by the H. Ghost when their design is to oppose him 62. 64. Which is a sin perhaps more dangerous then flatly to deny him 63. 774. Whence it is that so few follow his guidance 65. He hath worse enemies nowadayes then the Eunomians and Sabellians 774. What horrible wickedness some in this Age entitle him to 774. But because some mistake and abuse the Spirit we must not thence conclude that none are taught by him 775. He not onely taught the Church in the Apostles times but teacheth it still in all ages 776. His operations indeed are not easily perceived 775. but that he hath wrought we may find 776. How we may prove the Spirit 780 781. and discern his instructions from the suggestions of Satan and the dreams of fanaticks 64. 66. 777. 780. Glorifying of God what 744 c. 748. 754. 1009. We must glorifie God in soul and in body 744 c. Whether an actual intention of God's glory perpetually in our mind be necessary 745. More is required of us then to glorifie God verbally 754. God's Glory must be the first mover of our obedience 1008. It is not so resplendent in a Starre nor in the Sun as in the New creature 1009. If we glorifie God here we shall glorifie him to eternity 747. Gnosticks 167. GOD cannot be spoken of with too much reverence 7. 409. He is a most simple Essence 78. incomprehensible 165. Bold and curious searching of him unlawful 164 165. He is to be seen by faith not curiously gazed upon 729. Though he be invisible yet we may see Him by the light that shineth in his Works in our Conscience and in his Word 784 c. ¶ God delighteth in his Wisdome more then in any other of his Attributes 326. 1029. Of his Omnipresence and Omniscience 164. Errours concerning God's Presence 165. Belief of God's Presence the greatest curb of sin 164. 167 c 258. God's Wisdome drew his Justice and Mercy together and reconciled them in Christ's Satisfaction and ours 327. Counsels which some men fasten upon God contrary to his Wisdome and Goodness 326. 407
speak in Faith speak in the bitterness of your souls speak in Hope and speak in the heavenly dialect which is Love ye then truly say JESUS EST DOMINUS Jesus is the Lord. And this Jesus shall be your Jesus shall plead and intercede for you fill you with all the comforts and ravishments of his Gospel And this Lord shall descend to meet you here and welcome you to his Table And when he shall descend with a shout with the voice of the Archangel and with the trump of God he will enable and encourage you to meet him in the air and take you up with him into heaven that ye may be and rejoyce with Jesus the Lord for evermore Which the Lord grant for his infinite mercy's sake The Eighteenth SERMON PART II. 1 COR. XII 3. Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost WE have hitherto detained you in the Lesson Which is indeed a short one but in it is comprised the whole Gospel For when we have let loose our phansie and sought out many inventions when we have even wearied our selves in the uncertain gyres and Meanders which our imaginations cut out when we have laid out that time in following that we cannot overtake which we should have imployed in that work which is visible and put into our hands when our Curiosity hath even spent it self this is all Jesus is the Lord. And to profess him to be the Lord whom we must obey in all things who hath power in heaven and in earth a power to command our Understandings to bow to the Truth and our Wills to imbrace it is compendium Evangelii the sum of Religion the whole intent and scope of the Gospel of Christ This is the Lesson And I told you in the next place we must learn to say it that is first to Profess it But that is not enough All Nations have said it and the Devils have said it And what Religion is that in which the sons of perdition and the Devils themselves may joyn with us What a Profession is that which may be heard in Hell What a poor progress do we make towards happiness if the cursed Spirits go along with us and reach as far as we There is then secondly verbum mentis a word conceived in the mind a perswasion of the Truth And this also may come too short For many times there is not so much Rhetorick and power in this to move us to our duty as there is in a piece of money or a painted face to carry us from it but it lieth useless and of no efficacy at all suffering our members to rebel our flesh to riot it our passions to break loose and hurry us into by-wayes and dangerous precipices speaking to us for the Lord whilst we despise and tread him under foot For if we consider that intimacy and familiarity that many men have with those sins which cannot but present to the mind so much monstrosity as might fright them from them if we behold with what eagerness and delight men pursue that which is as loathsome as Hell it self how they labour and dig for it as for treasure how they devote both body and mind to its service how every trifle is in esteem above Grace and every Barabbas preferred before Jesus the Lord we might easily be induced to conclude that they do not believe that there is a God or that Jesus is the Lord but as the Heathen in scorn did ask Ecquis Christus cum suâ fabulâ count the Gospel and Christianity as a fable For it is not easie to conceive how a man that is verily persuaded in his heart that Jesus is the Lord and that to break Christ's command is to forfeit his soul that for every wilful sin he loseth Paradise and for a moments brutish pleasure he shall find no better purchase then an irreversible state in hell should dare to do that which he doeth every day in a kind of triumph and Jubilee or dip but the tip of his finger in the water of bitterness which he drinketh down greedily as an oxe But upon a review and more mature consideration we may observe that Sin is not alwaies the effect of Infidelity but sometimes of Incogitancy and because we do not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 stoop and look intentively upon this truth that we have indeed learned this lesson but when we should make use of it to restrain us are willing to forget that Jesus is the Lord. We believe that we shall die but so live as if we were eternal We believe there is hell-fire but stoln waters are sweet and quench those flames We believe that there is a heaven but every trifle is a better sight We believe that Jesus is the Lord but the object that next smileth upon us becometh our Master We believe but are willing to forget what we believe Heaven and Hell the Law and the Gospel and the Lord himself In a word we believe that Death is the wages of sin but the pleasures and vanities of the world come towards us in a gaudy and triumphant march and swallow up this faith and this persuasion in victory detain it and put it in chains that it is not able to do its office not to move and work by Charity For if Heaven did display all its glory and Hell breathe forth all its terrour yet if we do but look upon it and then turn away our eye our persuasion will soon shrink back and withdraw it self and leave us naked and open to every temptation weak and impotent not able to struggle and resist it and we shall laetari in rebus pessimis rejoyce in evil sport and delight our selves at the very gates of hell as an intoxicated thief may laugh and jest at the ridge of the gallows Be not then too well persuaded of every persuasion For if it be but the word and the language of the mind it may soon be silenced And therefore we must nourish and soment it stir it up and enliven it that in the last place it may be of force to move the Tongue and the Hand that as the Heart doth speak to the Lord by a sincere belief Lord I belive so we may speak it with our Hands and Eyes and Feet and sound it out with every member that we have and together make that glorious report which may enter the highest heavens Lord we are ready to do whatsoever thou commandest that we may pray in his ears and weep in his ears Numb 11.18 that our Alms may speak louder then our Trumpet and our Fasting and Humility may houl unto him and not our exterminated face that he may hearken to our thoughts as well as to our words and that an universal Obedience may declare our Faith as the heavens do his glory This is the language of Canaan the
the same Apostle telleth the Athenians Act. 17.14 c. that God made the world and all things therein and made of one bloud all nations that they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us not far from us if we will seek him The Schools call it vehiculum creaturae the chariot of the creature by which we may be carried up as Elijah was to Heaven by which Man who amongst all the creatures was made for a supernatural end is lifted up nearer to that end For as the Angels have the knowledge of the Creature in the Creator himself saith Bernard for what a poor sight is the Creature to an Angel that seeth the face of him that made it so Man by degrees gaineth a view of God by looking on the works of his hands Secondly As God manifesteth himself in his creature so he appeareth as a light in our very souls Prov. 20.27 He hath set up a candle there Solomon calleth it so The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord searching all the inward parts of the belly a light to all the faculties of the soul and to all the parts of the body to guide and direct them in the seeking after God By this light it is that thou lookest upon thy self and art afraid of thy self By this light they that are in darkness they that are darkness it self the profanest Atheists in the world at one time or other behold themselves as stubble and God as a consuming fire behold that horror in themselves which striketh them into a trembling fit This candle may burn dim being compassed about with the damp of our corruptions but it can no more be put out then the light of the Sun In my prosperity I said I shall never be moved I am a Saint of God a man of blessings guided assisted applauded by God himself Here the candle burneth dim But when Fortune or rather Providence shall turn the wheel and throw me on the ground then it will blaze and by that light I shall behold God my enemy whom I called my friend and fellow-worker Whilest we are men we have reason or we are not men and whilest the spirit remaineth it is a candle though we use it not as we should but are guided rather by the prince of darkness Thirdly to quicken and revive this light God hath sent another Light into the world God was made manifest in the flesh 1 Tim. 3 16. John 1.14 saith S. Paul The Word was made flesh not onely to dwell amongst us but to teach us to improve the light of nature and all those principles of the knowledge of good and evil with which we were born John 17.26 He declared his father's name he made him visible to the eye and set him up as an ensample of purity and justice of mercy and love His Flesh being the window through which Immortality and Eternity and God himself was discovered to mortal men that so he might joyn finem principio the end to the beginning Man to God that so we might seek him in the light of his face God being made thus conspicuous in his Gospel Psal 89.15 shining in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face and person of Jesus Christ who is the brightness of his glory 2 Cor. 4.6 Hebr. 1.3 and the express image of his person And indeed to seek God is not to seek his essence which is past finding out but his will which Chirst hath fully manifested in his Gospel This true light hath made God an object indeed hath given us a more distinct knowledge of him then the light of Nature could do hath declared his attributes revealed his will rent every veil cleared all obscurity scattered every mist and cloud made him of an unknown a known God hath revealed his arm his power to punish us if we seek him not hath opened his bowels proclaimed a jubilee a re-instating of all those who will forsake their old wayes and seek him with their whole heart For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works Ephes 2.10 2 Cor. 5.17 which God hath ordained before that we should walk in them that so we might be new creatures that as he created the world out of a rude heap or mass without form to bring forth fruits so he might make us of disobedient and disorderly men composed and plyable to his will that he might draw us out of the chaos of our own confused imaginations and redeem us from bondage into the glorious liberty of the sons of God which liberty consisteth alone in seeking and serving him Thus then you see though God be invisible and incomprehensible yet he hath discovered himself so far as to draw us after him we may see so much of him as to seek him so much as to make us happy and unite us to him And is not this enough Is it not enough for us to be happy Unhappy we if we neglect this delight by desiring more Unhappy we if we do not seek him because he is not as visible as our selves This were indeed to make him like unto our selves to confine and limit him that is to deny him to be God this were to be the worst Anthropomorphites in the world to give God hands and eyes and voice and not believe he is unless he object and offer himself to our very senses And yet see he doth in a manner present himself to thy very sense For why shouldst thou not hear him in his thunder see him in his miracles feel him in every work of his hands Or rather why canst thou not hear him in his Word for that is his voice see him in thy self for thou art built up after his image and no hand but that which is Almighty could have raised such a structure Why canst thou not feel him in his sweet and secret insinuations in the inward checks he giveth thee when thou art doing evil and in his incitements to piety When we feel these we may truly say Est Deus in nobis that God is in us of a truth Hold up then the buckler against this temptation against this fiery dart of Satan which is of force if thou repellest it not to consume and wast thy soul this temptation I say That God and Divine things appear not in so visible a shape as thou wouldst have them What folly is it to aim at impossibilities and to desire to see that which cannot be seen It is plain they are the worst and meanest things that are open to the eye Who ever saw Vertue saith Ambrose who ever handled Justice And wouldst thou dust and ashes have thy God appear in such a shape as thou mayst behold him Walk then by faith For that is the eye thou hast to see him with whilest thou art in this mortal body
And by the light which shineth in his works in thy self and in his word quasi porrectâ manu as Lactantius speaketh as with a hand stretched out he beckeneth to thee to raise thee from the dust and out of thy bloud that thou mayst lift up thy head to look up and seek him who is so manifest to the eye and so willing to be found For in the next place as God is an object to be sought so he is the sole and adequate object of our desires For howsoever they may wander and with the Bee seek honey on every leaf and plant yet they are unquiet and restless and never satisfied but in God Therefore as he hath graciously condescended to open and discover some part of his beauty and majesty that we might love him and fall down and worship him so he hath also made the mind of man a thing of infinite capacity utterly unsatiable in this world There is not any finite thing which can possibly give it full content Covetousness is not filled with riches Ambition is not dulled or taken off with honours nor Lust quenched with pleasure These daughters of the horse-leach when they are full and ready to break still cry Give Give Hoc habent non respiciunt They never look back upon what they have but still drive forward for more If these things were fit objects to seek they would no doubt do what at first sight they promise satisfie the desire But Desire maketh haste and flyeth towards them and when it hath overtaken them is as restless as before Sitis altera crescit Still as one desire is satisfied another ariseth Nay the same desire multiplyeth it self We wander from one object from one vanity to another and many times back again unto the same and that befalleth us which befalleth unskilful builders quibus sua semper displicent ut semper destruant quod semper aedificent who are alwayes displeased with what they do and what they build they destroy and then build again We will and we will not and we will again and indeed know not what to will Or it fareth with us as it doth with some men who have queasie stomachs our appetite cometh by eating majora cupere ex his discimus the obtaining of some is the way and means to desire more Now we cannot think that this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this infinite appetite of a soul is a thing that befalleth us by chance For then certainly it would not be alwayes nor would it be in all For those things saith the Philosopher which fall out alwayes or for the most part cannot be casual but have set and constant cause And if this vast appetite be not casual and by chance then it must needs be implanted in the soul by God himself And if so then it must necessarily have something to which it tendeth For it is a known axiom in Philosophy Deus natura nihil frustra faciunt God and Nature make nothing in vain Look into the body of man so many parts so many passages so many desires yet none of them in vain He that hath made hunger hath made bread to stanch it he that hath made thirst hath made drink to quench it he hath fitted some object to every look and inclination to every motion and desire And we cannot think but that the same God hath proportioned something to this infinite Thirst and Hunger in the soul to allay it Which if we cannot find here neither in the seat of Honour when it is built highest nor in our barns and granaries when they are most filled nor in the field of Pleasure when it yieldeth most variety neither in the Throne nor in our Treasures nor in Dalilah's lap seeing the whole world is not large enough for the heart of man nor can afford any thing that can fill it though we walk about it and double Methusalah's age nay though we should not end but with it we shall be forced to confess that we must seek satisfaction somewhere else even in God who can alone satisfie this infinite appetite of our souls in whose presence there is fulness of joy and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore So having presented to you the true Object and shewed you what you must seek to wit God alone I pass to the Act to teach you what it is to seek him which is my next part Seek yee the Lord. Having discovered the beauty and majesty of the Object one would think our desire should be on the wing nor should there need the voice of a Prophet to quicken us and bid us seek him The Prophet David Psal 24. telleth us there is a generation of them that seek the Lord. Some seek him in lectulo in their bed have peradventure a pleasant dream of God talk much of him as men may do in a dream and when judgement shall awake them behold it was but a dream to be interpreted as dreams use to be by contraries Some seek him in plateis in the wide and open streets think to find him with ease with hearkning after him but then it followeth quaerunt sed non inveniunt eum they seek him but they do not find him Some seek him and sit still and gaze some seek him and gad and wander some seek him and are unwilling to find him as St. Augustine in his Confessions telleth us that he prayed to God against sin but was afraid God should hear him too soon especially in the sin of lust quam malebat expleri quà m extingui which he had rather should be satisfied then quenched Every man is a severe Justitiary against another mans sin but a patron and protector of his own Sin oh it is an ugly monster and every man is ready to fling his dart at it Sin it is that for which the Land mourneth by which the Church is rent and the whole world put out of frame This the worst sinners breathe forth with as much ease as they commit sin But In my rebellion saith the traitour In my lust saith the wanton I◠〈◊〉 oppression saith the covetous In this sin the Lord be merciful to mâ—â—â— mâ—â—â—ful unto me though I love it and love to commit it Some sin or other there is to which our natural temper and complexion swayeth us which we can willingly hear reviled and which we can disgrace our selves and yet are unwilling to leave it behind us when we seek Nay we may say as the Disciples did to Christ in the Gospel A multitude there be that throng and press upon God as if they could not overtake him soon enough How doth their zeal wax hot as an oven how do their words fall from them not like dew but like hailstones and coales of fire how do they mourn for Zion and cry down the iniquities of the time when no mans iniquity cryeth louder for vengeance then theirs how do they monopolize the Spirit appropriate Assurance of salvation and
purged from all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness Vers 21. And in the third place to drive it home he urgeth them to the Practice and full Obedience of what they hear and believe His first reason is Because to hear and not to do is to put a cheat upon our selves to defraud our selves of the true end of Hearing which when we do we must necessarily fall upon a worse end If we hear and not do we shall do that which will destroy us His second reason is taken ab utili from the huge advantage we shall reap by it For Blessedness is entailed not upon the Hearers but the Doers of the Word as you find it in my Text But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein c. In which words you have I. the Character of a true Gospeller of a Christian indeed He looketh into the Gospel and he continueth in it by frequent meditation and by constant obedience by not forgetting and by doing the work which the Gospel enjoyneth This is his Character II. his Crown He shall be blessed in his deed So that here the Apostle taketh the Christian by the hand and pointeth out to him his end namely Blessedness And that he may press forward to it he chalketh out his way before him the Gospel or the doctrine of the Gospel of Christ Here if he walk and make progress here if he remain and persevere the end is Blessedness and it is laid up for him and even expecteth and waiteth to meet him Thus we see it and thus we set forward towards it Doing is the Duty and Blessedness is the Reward These are the Parts In the first the Character of a true Christian you have the Character of the Gospel it self and that one would think a strange one For who would look for Law in the Gospel or who would look for liberty in a Law The Gospel is good news but a Law is terrible we cannot endure to hear that which is commanded And one would think that the Law were vanished with the smoke at mount Sinai And Liberty is a Jubilee bringeth rest and intermission but a Law tieth and fettereth us to hard tasks to be up and doing to labour and pain And yet there is Law in the Gospel and there is Liberty in the Gospel and these two will friendly joyn and comply together and the truest way to liberty is by this Law The Gospel then or the Doctrine of the Gospel is 1. a Law and so requireth our obedience 2. a perfect Law and exacteth a perfect and complete obedience 3. a Law of liberty that our obedience may be free and voluntary And these if we continue to the end will draw on the reward which is the end of all the end of this Law the end of our obedience We shall be blessed in our work We begin with the Character of the Gospel or the doctrine of the Gospel And first we see the Apostle calleth it a Law And though it may seem an improper speech to say the Gospel is Law yet it will bear a good and profitable sense For there is a new Law as well as an old Et lex antiqua suppletur per novam saith Tertullian The old Law receiveth addition and perfection by the new Take it in what sense you please in the best and most pleasing signification it implieth a Law If you take it for a Testament as it is called that is the Will of the Testator Hebr. 7.22 and his will is a Law It is called so mandatum a command an injunction contestatio mentis saith Gellius a declaration of our mind John 17.14 I have given them thy word saith Christ I have delivered all thy mind and will which we are bound to observe as a Law Take it for a Covenant It is called so the new covenant And what is a Covenant but a Law It was a Law upon Christ to do what belonged to his office and it is a Law upon us to do our duties unless we can think that Christ onely was under the Law that we might be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lawless and do what we please Take it as the name importeth for Good news Even that pleasing sound the Angels Anthem the Musick of Heaven may conveigh a Law For what was the good news That we should be delivered from our enemies That is but an imperfect narration but a part of the news The Law is tied as fast to it as we are to the Law That we should serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness all the dayes of our life Take it in the Angels words To you is born a Saviour And though TO YOU may take all mankind within its compass and be as large as the whole world yet it is a Law that appropriateth and applieth these words and draweth them down to particulars For though they take in all yet they do not take in a Libertine or lawless person To you a Saviour is no good news to the impenitent sinner to him that will not be obedient to this Law to the Gospel of Christ Facit infidelitas multorum ut non omnibus nascatur qui omnibus natus est saith Ambrose To you a Saviour is born is universally true but Infidelity and Disobedience interpret it against themselves He is not your Saviour unless you receive him with his own conditions and his conditions make a Law and are obligatory For in the last place look upon his promises of Expiation and Pardon and Remission of Life and Eternity look upon them in all their brightness and radiancie and even from thence you may hear a Law as the Israelites did from the thick cloud and thunders For Love may have a Law bound up in it as vvell as Terrour Love hath its commands Indeed it is it self a Law especially the Love of the God of Love who is equal to himself in all his wayes vvhose promises are made as all things else vvhich are made by him in order number and weight vvhose Love and Promises are guided and directed by his Justice and Wisdom He doth not promise to purge those vvho vvill vvallow in the mire or to pardon those vvho vvill ever rebel or to give them life vvho love death or eternal pure spiritual joy to those vvho seek eternity onely in their lusts No his promises are alwayes attended with conditions fitted to that Wisdom that made them and to our condition that receive them He doth not ex conditionibus facere promissiones as some have been bold to say condition vvith us to do his vvill and then turn the condition into a promise but rather ex promissionibus facere conditiones make conditions out of promises For every promise in the Gospel is loaded vvith its condition Thou shalt be saved but it is if thou believe There is lex Fidei the Law of Faith I will give thee a crown of life but it is if thou be faithful