vae habitantibus terram Apoc. 8.13 a woe of desolation upon the whole world for God loves this world as the worke of his owne hands as the subject of his providence as the Scene of his glory as the Garden-plot that is watered by the Blood of his Son Since the Woe in this Text is not Esaies wo Vae genti peccatrici Esay 1.4 an increpation and commination upon our whole Nation for God hath not come so neare to any Nation and dealt so well with any Nation as with ours Since the Woe in this Text is not Ezekiels Woe Ezek. 24â— Vae Civitati sanguinum an imputation of injustice or oppression and consequently of a malediction laid upon the whole City for God hath carried his woes upon other Cities Vae Chorasin vae Bethsaida God hath laid his heavy hand of warre and other calamities upon other Cities that this City might see her selfe and her calamities long before in that glasse and so avoid them Since the Woe in this Text is not the Prophets other woe Ezek. 44.6 Ios 24.15 Vae domui not a woe upon any family for when any man in his family comes to Ioshua's protestation Ego domus mea As for me and my house we will serve the Lord the Lord comes to his protestation In mille generationes Esay 28.1 I will shew mercy to thee and thy house for a thousand generations Since the Woe in this Text is not Esaies woe againe Vae Coronae for the same Prophet tels us of what affection they are that they are Idolaters persons inclin'd to an idolatrous and superstitious Religion and fret themselves Esay 8 2â— and curse the King and their God we know that the Prophets Vae Coronae in that place is Vae Coronae superbiae and the crowne and heighth of Pride is in him who hath set himselfe above all that is called God Christian Princes know that if their Crownes were but so as they seeme all gold they should bee but so much the heavier for being all gold but they are but Crownes of thornes gilded specious cares glorious troubles and therefore no subject of pride To contract this since the Woe in this Text is no State woe nor Church woe for it is not Ezechiels Vae Pastoribus insipientibus which cannot feed their flock Ezek. 23.3 Ier. 23.1 nor Ieremies Vae Pastoribus disperdentibus Woe unto those lazie Shepheards which doe not feed their flock but suffer them to scatter Snce the Woe in this Text is not a woe upon the whole World nor upon the whole Nation nor upon the whole City nor upon any whole Family nor upon any whole ranke or calling of men when I have asked with Solomon Cui vae to whom belongs this woe I must answer with S. Paul Vae mihi Prov. 23.19 1 Cor. 9.16 woe unto me if I doe not tell them to whom it belongs And therefore since in spirituall things especially charity begins with it selfe I shall transferre this Vae from my selfe by laying it upon them whom your owne conscience shall find it to belong unto Vae desiderantibus diem Domini Woe be unto them that desire the day of the Lord c. But yet if these words can be narrow in respect of persons it is strange for in respect of the sins that they are directed upon they have a great compasse they reach from that high fin of Presumption and contempt and deriding the day of the Lord the judgements of God and they passe through the sin of Hypocrisie when we make shift to make the world and to make our selves beleeve that we are in good case towards God and would be glad that the day of the Lord the day of judgement would come now and then they come downe to the deepest sin the sin of Desperation of an unnaturall valuing of this life when overwhelmed with the burden of other sins or with Gods punishment for them men grow to a murmuring wearinesse of this life and to an impatient desire and perchance to a practise of their owne ends In the first acceptation the day of the Lord is the day of his Judgements and afflictions in this life In the second the day of the Lord is the day of the generall judgement And in the third the day of the Lord is that Crepusculum that twilight betweene the two lives or rather that Meridies noctis as the Poet cals it that noone of night the houre of our death and transmigration out of this world And if any desire any of these daies of the Lord out of any of these indispositions out of presumption out of hypocrisie out of desperation he fals within the compasse of this Text and from him we cannot take off this Vae desiderantibus First then the Prophet directs himself most literally upon the first sin of Presumption They were come to say 1 Part. that in truth whatsoever the Prophet declaimed in the streets there was no such thing as Dies Domini any purpose in God to bring such heavy judgements upon them to the Prophets themselves they were come to say You your selves live parched and macerated in a starved and penurious fortune and therefore you cry out that all we must die of famine too you your selves have not a foot of land a mong all the Tribes therfore you cry out that all the Tribes must be carried into another Land in Captivity That which you call the Day of the Lord is come upon you beggery and nakednesse and hunger contempt and affliction and imprisonment is come upon you and therefore you will needs extend this day upon the whole State but desideramus we would fain see any such thing come to passe we would fain see God goe about to do any such thing as that the State should not be wise enough to prevent him To see a Prophet neglected because he will not flatter to see him despised below because he is neglected above to see him injured insulted upon and really damnified because he is despised All this is dies mundi and not dies Domini it is the ordinary course of the world and no extraordinary day of the Lord but that there should be such a stupor and consternation of minde and conscience as you talk of and that that should be so expressed in the countenance Lam. 4.7 that they which had been purer then snow whiter then milk redder then Rubies smoother then Saphirs should not only be as in other cases pale with a sudden feare but blacker in face then a coale as the Prophet sayes there that they should not be able to set a good face upon their miseries nor disguise them with a confident countenance that there should be such a consternation of countenance and conscience and then such an excommunication of Church and State as that the whole body of the children of Israel should be without King Hos 3.4 without Sacrifice without Ephod without
nor reconcile after he shall have made up that account with his Son and told him These be all you dyed for these be all you purchased these be all whom I am bound to save for your sake for the rest their portion is everlasting destruction Under this law under this evidence under this sentence vae desiderantibus woe to them that pretend to desire this day of the Lord as though by their owne outward righteousnesse they could stand upright in this judgement Woe to them that say Let God come when he will it shall goe hard but he shall finde me at Church I heare three or foure Sermons a week he shall finde me in my Discipline and Mortification I fast twice a week he shall finde me in my Stewardship and Dispensation I give tithes of all that I possesse When Ezechias shewed the Ambassadors of Babylon all his Treasure and his Armour the malediction of the Prophet fell upon it that all that Treasure and Armour which he had so gloriously shewed should be transported to them to whom he had shewed it into Babylon He that publishes his good works to the world they are carried into the world and that is his reward Not that there is not a good use of letting our light shine before men too for when S. Paul sayes If I yet please men Gal. 1.10 I should not be the servant of Christ and when he saith I doe please all men in all things S. Austine found no difficulty in reconciling those two Navem quaero sayes he sed patriam When I goe to the Haven to hire a Ship it is for the love I have to my Country When I declare my faith by my works to men it is for the love I beare to the glory of God but if I desire the Lords day upon confidence in these works vae scirpo as Iob expresses it woe unto me poore rush Job 8.16 for sayes he the rush is greene till the Sun come that is sayes Gregory upon that place donec divina districtio in judicio candeat till the fire of the judgement examine our works they may have some verdure some colour but vae desiderantibus wo unto them that put themselves unto that judgement for their works sake For ut quid vobis to what end is it for you If your hypocriticall security could hold out to the last if you could delude the world at the last gasp if those that stand about you then could be brought to say he went away like a Lambe alas the Lambe of God went not away so the Lamb of God had his colluctations disputations expostulations apprehensions of Gods indignation upon him then This security call it by a worse name stupidity is not a lying down like a Lamb but a lying down like Issachers Asse between two burdens for two greater burdens cannot be then sin and the senslesnesse of sin Vt quid vobis what will ye doe at that day which shall be darknesse and not light God dwels in luce inaccessibili 1 Tim. 6.16 in such light as no man by the light of nature can comprehend here but when that light of grace which was shed upon thee here should have brought thee at last to that inaccessible light then thou must be cast in tenebras exteriores Mat. 8.12 into darknesse and darknesse without the Kingdome of heaven And if the darknesse of this world which was but a darknesse of our making could not comprehend the light when Christ in his person brought the light and offered repentance certainly in that outward darknesse of the next world the darknesse which God hath made for punishment they shall see nothing neither intramittendo nor extramittendo neither by receiving offer of grace from heaven nor in the disposition to pray for grace in hell For as at our inanimation in our Mothers womb our immortall soule when it comes swallowes up the other soules of vegetation and of sense which were in us before so at this our regeneration in the next world the light of glory shall swallow up the light of grace To as many as shall be within there will need no grace to supply defects nor eschew dangers because there we shall have neither defects nor dangers There shall be no night no need of candle Apoc. 22.5 nor of Sun for the Lord shall give them light and they shall raigne for ever and ever There shall be no such light of grace as shall work repentance to them that are in the light of glory neither could they that are in outward darknesse comprehend the light of grace if it could flow out upon them First you did the works of darknesse sayes the Apostle Rom. 13.12 and then that custome that practice brought you to love darknesse better then light and then as the Prince of darknesse delights to transforme himselfe into an Angell of light Iohn 3. so by your hypocrisie you pretend a light of grace when you are darknesse it selfe and therefore at quid vobis what will you get by that day which is darknesse and not light Now as this Woe and commination of our Prophet had one aime 3. Part. to beat down their scorne which derided the judgements of God in this world and a second aime to beat downe their confidence that thought themselves of themselves able to stand in Gods judgements in the next world so it hath a third mark better then these two it hath an aime upon them in whom a wearinesse of this life when Gods corrections are upon them or some other mistaking of their owne estate and case works an over-hasty and impatient desire of death and in this sense and acceptation the day of the Lord is the day of our death and transmigration out of this world and the darknesse is still everlasting darknesse Now for this we take our lesson in Iob Iob. 7.1 Vita militia mans life is a warfare man might have lived at peace Greg. he himselfe chose a rebellious warre and now quod volens expetiit nolens portat that warre which he willingly embarked himselfe in at first though it be against his will now he must goe through with In Iob we have our lesson and in S. Paul we have our Law Eph 63. Take ye the whole armour of God that ye may be able having done all to stand that is that having overcome one temptation you may stand in battle against the next for it is not adoloscentia militia but vita that we should think to triumph if we had overcome the heat and intemperance of youth but we must fight it out to our lives end And then we have the reward of this lesson and of this law limited nemo coronatur no man is crowned except he fight according to this law that is 2 Tim. 2.5 he persever to the end And as we have our lesson in Iob our rule and reward in the Apostle who were both great Commanders
in the warfare Mat. 26.38 so we have our example in our great Generall Christ Jesus Who though his soul were heavy and heavy unto death though he had a baptisme to be baptised with coarctabatur he was straightned and in paine till it were accomplished and though he had power to lay down his soul Iohn 10.18 and take it up againe and no man else could take it from him yet he sought it out to the last houre and till his houre came he would not prevent it nor lay downe his soule Vae desiderantibus woe unto them that desire any other end of Gods correction but what he hath ordained and appointed for ut quid vobis what shall you get by choosing your owne wayes Tenebrae non lux They shall passe out of this world in this inward darknesse of melancholy and dejection of spirit into the outward darknesse which is an everlasting exclusion from the Father of lights and from the Kingdome of joy their case is well expressed in the next verse to our Text they shall flie from a Lyon and a Beare shall meet them they shall leane on a wall and a Serpent shall bite them they shall end this life by a miserable and hasty death and out of that death shall grow an immortall life in torments which no wearinesse nor desire nor practice can ever bring to an end And here in this acceptation of these words this vae falls directly upon them who colouring and apparelling treason in martyrdome expose their lives to the danger of the Law Scribanius embrace death these of whom one of their own society saith that the Scevolaes the Caves the Porciaes the Cleopatraes of the old time were nothing to the Jesuites for saith he they could dye once but they lacked courage ad multas mortes perchance hee meanes that after those men were once in danger of the Law and forfeited their lives by one comming they could come again and again as often as the plentifull mercy of their King would send them away Rapiunt mortem spontanea irruptione sayes he to their glory they are voluntary and violent pursuers of their own death and as he expresses it Crederes morbo adesos Baron Martyrâ—â— 29. Decemb you would think that the desire of death is a disease in them A graver man then he mistakes their case and cause of death as much you are saith he incouraging those of our Nation to the pursuit of death in sacris septis ad martyrium saginati fed up and fatned here for martyrdome Sacramento sanguinem spospondistis they have taken an oath that they will be hanged but that he in whom as his great patterne God himselfe mercy is above all his works out of his abundant sweetnesse makes them perjured when they have so Tworne and vowed their owne ruine But those that send them give not the lives of these men so freely so cheaply as they pretend But as in dry Pumps men poure in a little water that they may pump up more so they are content to drop in a little blood of imaginary but traiterous Martyrs that by that at last they may draw up at last the royall blood of Princes and the loyall blood of Subjects vae desiderantibus woe to them that are made thus ambitious of their owne ruine ut quid vobis Tenebrae non lux you are kept in darknesse in this world and sent into darknesse from heaven into the next and so your ambition ad multas mortes shall be satisfied you dye more then one death morte moriemini this death delivers you to another from which you shall never be delivered We have now past through these three acceptations of these words Conclusion which have falne into the contemplation and meditation of the Ancients in their Expositions of this Text as this dark day of the Lord signifies his judgements upon Atheisticall scorners in this world as it signifies his last irrevocable and irremediable judgements upon hypocriticall relyers upon their own righteousnesse in the next world and between both as it signifies their uncomfortable passage out of this life who bring their death inordinately upon themselves and we shall shut up all with one signification more of the Lords day That that is the Lords day of which the whole Lent is the Vigil and the Eve All this time of mortification and our often meeting in this place to heare of our mortality and our immortality which are the two reall Texts and Subjects of all our Sermons All this time is the Eve of the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ That is the Lords day when all our mortification and dejection of spirit and humbling of our soules shall be abundantly exalted in his resurrection and when all our fasts and abstinence shall be abundantly recompenced in the participation of his body his bloud in the Sacrament Gods Chancery is alwayes open and his seale works alwaies at all times remission of sins may be sealed to a penitent soule in the Sacrament That clause which the Chancellors had in their Patents under the Romane Emperours Vt praerogativamgerat conscientiae nostrae is in our commission too for God hath put his conscience into his Church whose sins are remitted there are remitted in heaven at all times but yet dies Domini the Lords resurrection is as the full Terme a more generall application of this seale of reconciliation But vae desiderantibus woe unto them that desire that day only because they would have these dayes of preaching and prayer and fasting and trouble some preparation past and gone Vae desiderantibus woe unto them who desire that day onely that by receâ—â—ing the Sacrament day that they might delude the world as though they were not of a contrary religion in their heart vae desiderantibus woe unto them who present themselves that day without such a preparation as becomes so fearful and mystesious an action upon any carnall or collaterall respects Before that day of the Lord comes comes the day of his crucifying before you come to that day if you come not to a crucifying of your selves to the world and the world to you ut quid vobis what shall you get by that day you shall prophane that day and the Author of it as to make that day of Christs triumph the triumph of Satan and to make even that body and bloud of Christ Jesus Vehiculum Satanae his Chariot to enter into you as he did into Iudas That day of the Lord will be darknesse and not light and that darknesse will be that you shall not discerne the Lords body you shall scatter all your thoughts upon wrangling and controversies de modo how the Lords body can be there and you shall not discerne by the effects nor in your owne conscience that the Lords body is there at all But you shall take it to be onely an obedience to civill or Ecclesiasticall
And even God himselfe who had that omni-sufficiency in himselfe conceived a conveniency for his glory to draw a Circumference about that Center Creatures about himselfe and to shed forth lines of love upon all them and not to love himselfe alone Selfe-love in man sinks deep but yet you see the Apostle in his order casts the other sin lower that is into a worse place To be without naturall affections S. Augustine extends these naturall affections to Religious affections because they are naturall to a supernaturall man to a regenerate man who naturally loves those that are of the houshold of the faithfull that professe the same truth of Religion and not to be affected with their distresses when Religion it selfe is distressed in them is impietie He extends these affections to Morall affections the love of Eminent and Heroicall vertues in any man we ought to be affected with the fall of such men And he extends them to civill affections the love of friends not to be moved in their behalfe is argument enough that we doe not much love them For our case in the Text These men whom Jesus found weeping and wept with them were none of his kindred They were Neighbours and Christ had had a conversation and contracted a friendship in that Family V. 5. He loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus saies the Storie and he would let the world see that he loved them for so the Jewes argued that saw him weepe V. 36. Behold how he loved them without outward declarations who can conclude an inward love to assure that Iesus wept To an inordinatenesse of affections it never came to a naturall tendernesse it did and so far as to teares Laerymae and then who needs be ashamed of weeping Look away far from me for I will weep bitterly sayes Hierusalem in Esay But look upon me sayes Christ in the Lamentations Behold and see if ever there were any sorrow any teares like mine Not like his in value but in the roote as they proceeded from naturall affection they were teares of imitation and we may we must weepe teares like his teares They scourged him they crowned him they nailed him they pierced him and then blood came but he shed teares voluntarily and without violence The blood came from their ill but the teares from his owne good nature The blood was drawne the teares were given We call it a childish thing to weepe and a womanish and perchance we meane worse in that then in the childish for therein we may meane falshood to be mingled with weaknesse Christ made it an argument of his being man to weepe for though the lineaments of mans bodie eyes and eares hands and feet be ascribed to God in the Scriptures though the affections of mans mind be ascribed to him even sorrow nay Repentance it selfe is attributed to God I doe not remember that ever God is said to have wept It is for man And when God shall come to that last Act in the glorifying of Man when he promises to wipe all teares from his eyes what shall God have to doe with that eye that never wept He wept out of a nuturall tendernesse in generall and he wept now out of a particular occasion What was that Quia mortuus because Lazarus was dead We stride over many steps at once waive many such considerable circumstances as these Lazarus his friend was dead therefore he wept Lazarus the staffe and sustentatio of that family was dead he upon whom his Sisters relied was dead therefore he wept But I stop onely upon this one step Quia mortuus that he was dead Now a good man is not the worse for dying that is true and capable of a good sense because he is established in a better world but yet when he is gone out of this world he is none of us he is no longer a man The stronger opinion in the Schoole is That Christ himselfe when he lay dead in the grave was no man Though the God head never departed from the Carcasse there was no divorce of that Hypostaticall union yet because the Humane soule was departed from it he was no man Hugo de S. Victor who thinks otherwise that Christ was a man then thinkes so upon a weak ground He thinkes that because the soule is the form of man the soul is man and that therefore the soul remaining the man remaines But it is not the soule but the union of the soul that makes the man The Master of the Sentences Peter Lombard that thinks so too that Christ was then a man thinkes so upon as weak a ground He thinkes that it is enough to constitute a man that there be a soul and body though that soul and body be not united but still it is the union that makes the man And therefore when he is disunited dead he is none of us he is no man and therefore we weep how well soever he be Abraham was loath to let go his wife though the King had her A man hath a naturall lothnesse to let go his friend though God take him to him S. Augustine sayes that he knew well enough that his mother was in heaven and S. Ambrose that he knew wel enough that his master Theodosius the emperor was in heaven but because they saw not in what state they were they thought that something might be asked at Gods hands in their behalf and so out of a humane and pious officiousnesse in a devotion perchance indigested uncocted and retaining yet some crudities some irresolutions they strayed into prayers for them after they were dead Lazarus his sisters made no doubt of their brothers salvation they beleeved his soul to be in a good estate And for his body they told Christ Lord we know that he shall rise at the last day And yet they wept Here in this world we who stay lack those who are gone out of it we know they shall never come to us and when we shall go to them whether we shall know them or no we dispute They who think that it conduces to the perfection of happinesse in heaven that we should know one another think piously if they think we shall For as for the maintenance of publique peace States and Churches may think diversly in points of Religion that are not fundamentall and yet both be true and Orthodoxall Churches so for the exaltation of private devotion in points that are not fundamentall divers men may think diversly and both be equally good Christians Whether we shall know them there or no is problematicall and equall that we shall not till then is dogmaticall and certain Therefore we weep I know there are Philosophers that will not let us weep nor lament the death of any And I know that in the Scriptures there are rules and that there are instructions convayed in that example that David left mourning as soon as the childe was dead And I know that there are Authors of a
others have thought but that answers not the sicutiest and we know we shall see God not only the body of Christ as he is in his Essence Why did all that are said to have seene God face to face fee his Essence no. In earth God assumed some materiall things to appeare in and is said to have been seene face to face when he was seen in those assumed formes But in heaven there is no materiall thing to be assumed and if God be seen face to face there he is seen in his Essence S. Augustine summes it up fully In Psal 36.10 upon those words In lumine tuo In thy light we shall see light Te scilicet in te we shall see thee in thee that is sayes he face to face And then Vt cognitus what is it to know him as we are knowne First is that it which is intended here That we shall know God so as we are known It is not expressed in the Text so It is only that we shall know so not that we shall know God so But the frame and context of the place hath drawn that unanime exposition from all that it is meant of our knowledge of God then A comprehensive knowledge of God it cannot be To comprehend is to know a thing as well as that thing can be known and we can never know God so but that he will know himselfe better Our knowledge cannot be so dilated nor God condensed and contracted so as that we can know him that way comprehensively It cannot be such a knowledge of God as God hath of himselfe nor as God hath of us For God comprehends us and all this world and all the worlds that he could have made and himselfe But it is Nota similitudinis non aequalitatis As God knowes me so I shall know God but I shall not know God so as God knowes me It is not quantum but sicut not as much but as truly as the fire does as truly shine as the Sun shines though it shine not out so farre nor to so many purposes So then I shall know God so as that there shall be nothing in me to hinder me from knowing God which cannot be said of the nature of man though regenerate upon earth no nor of the nature of an Angell in heaven left to it selfe till both have received a super-illustration from the light of Glory And so it shall be a knowledge so like his knowledge as it shall produce a love like his love and we shall love him as he loves us For as S. Chrysostome and the rest of the Fathers whom Oecumenius hath compacted interpret it Cognoscam practicè idest accurrendo I shall know him Aug. that is imbrace him adhere to him Qualis sine fine festivitas what a Holy-day shall this be which no working day shall ever follow By knowing and loving the unchangeable the immutable God Mutabimur in immutabilitatem we shall be changed into an unchangeablenesse sayes that Father that never said any thing but extraordinarily He sayes more Idem Dei praesentia si in inferno appareret If God could be seene and known in hell hell in an instant would be heaven How many heavens are there in heaven how is heaven multiplied to every soule in heaven where infinite other happinesses are crowned with this this fight and this knowledge of God there And how shall all those heavens be renewed to us every day Qui non mir abimur hodiè Idem that shall be as glad to see and to know God millions of ages after every daies seeing and knowing as the first houre of looking upon his face And as this seeing and this knowing of God crownes all other joyes and glories even in heaven so this very crown is crowned 2 Pet. 1.4 There growes from this a higher glory which is participes erimus Divinae naturae words of which Luther sayes that both Testaments afford none equall to them That we shall be made partakers of the Divine nature Immortall as the Father righteous as the Son and full of all comfort as the Holy Ghost Let me dismisse you with an easie request of S. Augustine Fieri non potest ut seipsum non diligat qui Deum diligit That man does not love God that loves not himself doe but love your selves Imo solus se diligere novit qui Deum diligit Only that man that loves God hath the art to love himself doe but love your selves for if he love God he would live eternally with him and if he desire that and indeavour it earnestly he does truly love himself and not otherwise And he loves himself who by seeing God in the Theatre of the world and in the glasse of the creature by the light of reason and knowing God in the Academy of the Church by the Ordinances thereof through the light of faith indeavours to see God in heaven by the manifestation of himselfe through the light of Glory and to know God himself in himself and by himself as he is all in all Contemplatively by knowing as he is known and Practically by loving as he is loved SERMON XXIV Preached upon Easter-day 1629. JOB 4.18 Rehold he put no trust in his Servants And his Angels he charged with folly WE celebrate this day the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus Blessed for ever and in His all ours All that is the Resurrection of all Persons All that is the Resurrection of all kinds whether the Resurrection from calamities in this world Ezechiels Resurrection where God saies to him Putasne vivent Son of man doest thou thinke Ezek. 8.6 these scattered Bones can live againe or the Resurrection from sin S. Iohns Resurrection Apo. 20.5 1 Cor. 15. Blessed is he that hath his part in the first Resurrection Or of the Resurrection to Glory S. Pauls Resurrection that is more argued and more particularly established by that Apostle then by the rest This Resurrection to glory is the consummation of all the others therefore we looke especially at this and in this our qualification in this state of glory is thus expressed by our Saviour Christ himselfe Erimus sicut Angeli In the Resurrection Luke 20.36 we shall be as the Angels And that we might not flatter our selves in a dreame of a better estate then the Angels have in this text we have an intimation what their state and condition is Behold he put no trust in his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly In our handling of these words these shall be our two parts De quibus and De quo Divisio Of whom these words are spoken and then of what First what is positively said and then what is consequently inferred what proposed and what concluded what of the Angels and then what of us who shall be like the Angels In the first the Persons of whom these words are spoken because though our Interpreters vary in
He who onely is head of the whole Church Christ Jesus is this Archangell Heare him It is the voyce of the Archangell that is the trne and sincere word of God that must raise thee from the death of sin to the life of grace If therefore any Angell differ from the Archangell and preach other then the true and sincere word of God Gal. 1.8 Anathema saies the Apostle let that Angell be accursed And take thou heed of over-affecting overvaluing the gifts of any man so as that thou take the voice of an Angell for the voyce of the Archangell any thing that that man saies for the word of God Yet thou must heare this voice of the Archangell in the Trumpet of God In Tuba Dei The Trumpet of God is his loudest Instrument and his loudest Instrument is his publique Ordinance in the Church Prayer Preaching and Sacraments Heare him in these In all these come not to heare him in the Sermon alone but come to him in Prayer and in the Sacrament too For except the voyce come in the Trumpet of God that is in the publique Ordinance of his Church thou canst not know it to be the voyce of the Archangell Pretended services of God in schismaticall Conventicles are not in the Trumpet of God and therefore not the voyce of the Archangell and so not the meanes ordained for thy spirituall resurrection And as our last resurrection from the grave is rooted in the personall resurrection of Christ 1 Cor. 15.17 For if Christ be not raised from the dead we are yet in our sins saies the Apostle But why so Because to deliver us from sin Christ was to destroy all our enemies Now the last enemy is Death and last time that Death and Christ met upon the Crosse Death overcame him and therefore except he be risen from the power of Death we are yet in our sins as we roote our last resurrection in the person of Christ so do we our first resurrection in him in his word exhibited in his Ordinance for that is the voice of the Archangell in the Trumpet of God And as the Apostle saies here Ver. 15. This we say unto you by the word of the Lord that thus the last resurrection shall be accomplished by Christ himselfe so this we say to you by the Word of the Lord by the harmony of all the Scriptures thus and no other way By the pure word of God delivered and applied by his publique Ordinance by Hearing and Beleeving and Practising under the Seales of the Church the Sacraments is your first resurrection from sin by grace accomplished So have you then those three branches which constitute our first part That they that are dead before us shall not be prevented by us but they shall rise first That they shall be raised by the power of Christ that is the power of God in Christ That that power working to their resurrection shall be declared in a mighty voyce the voyce of the Archangell in the Trumpet of God And then then when they who were formerly dead are first raised and raised by this Power and this power thus declared then shall we we who shall be then alive and remaine be wrought upon which is our second and our next generall part When the Apostle sayes here 2. Part. Nos Nos qui vivimus We that are alive and remaine would he not be thought to speake this of himselfe and the Thessalonians to whom he writes Doe not the words import that That he and they should live till Christs comming to Judgement Some certainly had taken him so But he complaines that he was mistaken We beseech you brethren 2 Thes 2.2 be not soone shaken in minde nor troubled by word or letter as from us that the day of the Lord is at hand so at hand as that we determine it in our dayes in our life So that the Apostle speakes here but Hypothetically he does but put a case That if it should be Gods pleasure to continue them in the world till the comming of his Son Christ Jesus thus and thus they should be proceeded withall for thus and thus shall they be proceeded with sayes he that shall then be alive Our blessed Saviour hath such a manner of speech of an ambiguous sense in S. Matthew Mat. 16.28 That there were some standing there that should not taste of death till they saw the Son of man comming in his Kingdome And this might give them just occasion to think that that Kingdome into which the Judgement shall enter us was at hand For the words which Christ spoke immediatly before those were evidently undeniably spoken of that last and everlasting kingdome of glory The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his Angels c. Then follows Some standing here shall live to see this And yet Christ did not speak this of that last kingdome of glory but either he spoke it of that manifestation of that kingdome which was shewed to some of them to Peter and Iames and Iohn in the Transfiguration of Christ for the Transfiguration was a representation of the kingdome of glory or else he spoke it of that inchoation of the kingdome of glory which shined out in the kingdome of grace which all the Apostles lived to see in the personall comming of the Holy Ghost and in his powerfull working in the conversion of Nations in their life time And this is an inexpressible comfort to us That our blessed Saviour thus mingles his Kingdomes that he makes the Kingdome of Grace and the Kingdome of Glory all one the Church and Heaven all one and assures us That if we see him In hoc speculo in this his Glasse in his Ordinance in his Kingdome of Grace we have already begun to see him facie ad faciem face to face in his Kingdome of Glory If we see him Sicuti manifestatur as he looks in his Word and Sacraments in his Kingdome of Grace we have begun to see him Sicuti est As he is in his Essence in the Kingdome of Glory And when we pray Thy Kingdome come and mean but the Kingdome of Grace he gives us more then we ask an inchoative comprehension of the Kingdome of Glory in this life This is his inexpressible mercy that he mingles his Kingdomes and where he gives one gives both So is there also a faire beam of comfort exhibited to us in this Text That the number reserved for that Kingdome of Glory is no small number For though David said The Lord looked down from heaven and saw not one that did good no not one Psal 14.2 there it is lesse then a few though when the times had better means to be better when Christ preached personally upon the earth when one Centurion had but replyed to Christ Sir Mat. 8.10 you need not trouble your self to go to my house if you do but say the word here my servant will
can resolve thee scatter thee annihilate thee with a word and yet afford so many words so many houres conferences so many Sermons to reclaime thee why persecutest Thou Him Answer this question with Sauls answer to this question by another question Domine quid me vis facere Lord what wilt thou have me do Deliver thy selfe over to the will of God and God shall deliver thee over as he did Saul to Ananias provide thee by his Ministery in his Ordinance means to rectifie thee in all dejection of spirit light to cleare thee in all perplexities of conscience in the wayes of thy pilgrimage and more and more effectuall seals thereof at the houre of thy transmigration into his joy and thine eternall rest SERM. XLVII Preached at S. Pauls The Sunday after the Conversion of S. PAUL 27. Ian. 1627. ACT. 20.25 And now Behold I know that all yee among whom I have gone preaching the kingdome of God shall see my face no more WHen S. Chrysostome calls Christmas day Metropolin omnium festorum The Metropolitan Holyday the principall festivall of the Church he is likely to intend onely those festivalls which were of the Churches later institution and means not to enwrap the Sabbath in that comparison As S. Augustine sayes of the Sacrament of Baptisme that it is Limen Ecclesiae The threshold over which we step into the Church so is Christmas day Limen festorum The threshold over which we step into the festivall celebration of some other of Christs actions and passions and victorious overcommings of all the Acts of his Passion such as his Resurrection and Ascension for but for Christmas day we could celebrate none of these dayes And so that day is Limen festorum The threshold over which we passe to the rest But the Sabbath is not onely Limen or Ianua Ecclesiae The doore by which we enter into the Church and into the consideration what the Church hath done but Limen mundi The doore by which we enter into the consideration of the World how and when the World was made of nothing at the Creation without which we had been so far from knowing that there had been a Church or that there had been a God as that we our selves had had no being at all And therefore as our very being is before all degrees of well-being so is the Sabbath which remembers us of our being before all other festivalls that present and refresh to us the memory of our well-being Especially to us to whom it is not onely a Sabbath as the Sabbath is a day of Rest in respect of the Creation but Dies Dominicus The Lords day in respect of the Redemption of the world because the consummation of that worke of Redemption for all that was to be done in this world which was the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus was accomplished upon that day Levit. 23. which is our Sabbath But yet as it did please God to accompany the Great day the Sabbath with other solemne dayes too The Passeover and Pentecost Trumpets and Tabernacles and others and to call those other dayes Sabbaths as well as the Sabbath it selfe so since he is pleased that in the Christian Church other dayes of Holy Convocations should also be instituted I make account that in some measure I do both offices both for observing those particular festivalls that fall in the weeke and also for the making of those particular festivalls to serve the Sabbath when upon the Sabbath ensuing or preceding such or such a festivall in the weeke I take occasion to speake of that festivall which fell into the compasse of that weeke for by this course that festivall is not pretermitted nor neglected the particular festivall is remembred And then as God receives honour in the honour of his Saints so the Sabbath hath an honour when the festivalls and commemorations of those Saints are reserved to waite upon the Sabbath Hence is it that as elsewhere I often do so that is Celebrate some festivall that fals in the weeke upon the Sabbath so in this place upon this very day I have done the like and returne now to do so againe that is to celebrate the memory of our Apostle S. Paul to day though there be a day past since his day was in the ordinary course to have been celebrated The last time that I did so I did it in handling those words And he fell to the earth and heard a voyce saying Saul Saul why persecutest thou me which was the very act of his Conversion A period and a passage which the Church celebrates in none but in S. Paul though many others were strangely converted too she celebrates none but his In the words chosen for this day And now behold I know c. wee shall reduce to your memories first His proceeding in the Church after he was called I have gone preaching the kingdome of God among you And then the ease the reposednes the acquiescence that he had in that knowledge which God by his Spirit had given him of the approach of his dissolution and departure out of this life I know that all you shall see my face no more As those things which we see in a glasse for the most part must be behinde us so that that makes our transmigration in death comfortable unto us must be behinde us in the testimony of a good Conscience for things formerly done Now behold I know that all yee among whom I have gone c. In handling of which words our Method shall be this Our generall parts Divisio being as we have already intimated these two His way and his End His painfull course and his cheerfull finishing of his course His laborious battaile and his victorious triumph In the first I have gone preaching the kingdome of God among you wee shall see first That there is a Transivi as well as a Requievi acceptable to God A discharge of a Duty as well in going from one place to another as in a perpetuall Residence upon one Transivi sayes our Apostle I have gone among you But then in a second consideration in that first part That that makes his going acceptable to God is because he goes to preach Transivi praedicans I have gone preaching And then lastly in that first part That that that makes his Preaching acceptable is that he preached the kingdome of God Transivi praedicans regnum Dei I have gone amongst you preaching the kingdome of God And in these three characters of S. Pauls Ministery first Labour and Assiduity And then Labour bestowed upon the right means Preaching And lastly Preaching to the right end to edification advancing the kingdome of God we shall determine our first part In our second part we passe from his Transition to his Transmigration from his going up and downe in the world to his departing out of the world And now behold I know that yee shall see my face no more In which we
appliablenesse of Gods mercy that yeelds almost to any forme of words any words seeme to fit it But then the comfort of Gods returning to us comes nearest us in the third signification of this word Shubah not so much in Gods returning to us nor in his anger returning from us Psal 80.3 as in our returning to him Turne us againe O Lord sayes David Et salvi erimus and we shall be saved There goes no more to salvation but such a Turning So that this Returning of the Lord is an Operative an Effectuall returning that turnes our hearts and eyes and hands and feet to the wayes of God and produces in us Repentance and Obedience For these be the two legges which our conversion to God stands upon Deut. 32.2 For so Moses uses this very word Returne unto the Lord and heare his voyce There is no returning without hearing nor hearing without beleeving nor beleeving to be beleeved Mat. 11.21 without doing Returning is all these Therefore where Christ saies That if those works had been done in Tyre and Sidon Tyre and Sidon would have repented in sackcloth and ashes In the Syriack Translation of S. Matthew we have this very word Shubah They would have Returned in sack-cloth and ashes So that the word which David receives from the Holy Ghost in this Text being onely Returned and no more applies it selfe to all three senses Returne thy selfe that is Bring backe thy Mercy Returne thy Wrath that is Call backe thy Judgements or Returne us to thee that is make thy meanes and offers of grace in thine Ordinance powerfull and effectuall upon us Now when the Lord comes to us by any way though he come in corrections in chastisements not to turne to him is an irreverent and unrespective negligence If a Pursevant if a Serjeant come to thee from the King in any Court of Justice though hee come to put thee in trouble to call thee to an account yet thou receivest him thou entertainest him thou paiest him fees If any Messenger of the Lord come to attach thee whether sicknesse in thy body by thine own disorder decay in thy estate by the oppression of others or terrour in thy Conscience by the preaching of his Ministers turne thou to the Lord in the last sense of the word and his mercy shall returne to thee and his anger shall returne from thee and thou shalt have fulnesse of Consolation in all the three significations of the word If a Worme be trodden upon it turnes againe We may thinke that is done in anger and to revenge But we know not The Worme hath no sting and it may seeme as well to embrace and licke his foote that treads upon him When God treads upon thee in any calamity spirituall or temporall if thou turne with murmuring this is the turning of a Serpent to sting God to blaspheme him This is a turning upon him not a turning to him But if thou turne like a Worme then thou turnest humbly to kisse the rod to licke and embrace his foot that treads upon thee that is to love his Ministers which denounce his judgements upon thy sinnes yea to love them from whom thou receivest defamation in thy credit or detriment in thy state We see how it was imputed to Asa when God trod upon him that is 2 Chro. 16.12 diseased him in his feete and exalted his disease into extremity Yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord but to the Physitians He turned a by-way at least though a right way too soone to the Physitian before the Lord. This is that that exasperated God so vehemently Esay 9.13 Because the people turneth not to him that smiteth them neither do they seeke the Lord of Hosts when the Lord of Hosts lies with a heavy Army upon them Therefore sayes the Prophet there The Lord will cut off from Israel head and tayle branch and rush in one day God is not so vehement when they neglected him in their prosperity as when though he afflicted them yet they turned not to him Measure God by earthly Princes for we may measure the world by a Barly corne If the King come to thy house thou wilt professe to take it for an honour and thou wilt entertaine him and yet his comming cannot be without removes and troubles and charges to thee So when God comes to thee in his word or in his actions in a Sermon or in a sicknesse though his comming dislodge thee remove thee put thee to some inconvenience in leaving thy bed of sinne where thou didst sleepe securely before yet here is the progresse of the Holy Ghost intended to thy soule that first he comes thus to thee and then if thou turne to him he returnes to thee and settles himselfe and dwels in thee This is too lovely a Prospect to depart so soone from therefore looke we by S. Augustines glasse upon Gods comming and returning to man God hath imprinted his Image in our soules and God comes sayes that Father Vt videat imaginem Where I have given my Picture I would see how it is respected God comes to see in what case his Image is in us If we shut doores if we draw Curtaines between him and his Image that is cover our soules and disguise and palliate our sinnes he goes away and returnes in none of those former senses But if we lay them open by our free confessions he returnes againe that so in how ill case soever he finde his Image he may wash it over with our teares and renew it with his own bloud and Vt resculpat imaginem that he may refresh and re-engrave his Image in us againe and put it in a richer and safer Tablet And as the Angel which came to Abraham at the promise and conception of Isaac Gen. 18.10 gave Abraham a farther assurance of his Returne at Isaaes birth I will certainly returne unto thee and thy wife shall have a Sonne So the Lord which was with thee in the first conception of any good purpose Returnes to thee againe to give thee a quickning of that blessed childe of his and againe and againe to bring it forth and to bring it up to accomplish and perfect those good intentions which his Spirit by over-shadowing thy soule hath formerly begotten in it So then he comes in Nature and he returnes in Grace He comes in preventing and returnes in subsequent graces He comes in thine understanding and returnes in thy will He comes in rectifying thine actions and returns in establishing habits He comes to thee in zeale and returnes in discretion He comes to thee in fervour and returnes in perseverance He comes to thee in thy peregrination all the way and he returns in thy transmigration at thy last gaspe So God comes and so God returnes Yet I am loath to depart my selfe loath to dismisse you from this ayre of Paradise of Gods comming and returning to us Therefore we consider againe that as God
thy strength and thy labors in Then when the dishes upon thy table are doubled and thy cup overflows and the hungry and thirsty soules of the poore doe not onely feed upon the crums under thy table and lick up the overflowings of thy cup but divide dishes with thee and enter into the midst of thy Bolls Then when thou hast temporall blessings that is Gods silver and his grace to use those blessings well that is Gods gold then is the best time of finding the Lord for then he looks upon thee in the Sun-shine and then thy thankfull acknowledgement of former blessings is the most effectuall prayer thou canst make for the continuance and enlargement of them In a word then is a fit time of finding God Nunc. whensoever thy conscience tells thee he calls to thee for a rectified conscience is the word of God If that speake to thee now this minute now is thy time of finding God That Now that I named then that minute is past but God affords thee another Now he speaks againe he speaks still and if thy conscience tell thee that he speaks to thee now is that time This word of God thy conscience will present unto thee but that one condition which Moses presented to Gods people and that is That thou seeke the Lordwith all thy heart and all thy soule It is a kinde of denying the Infinitenesse of God to serve him by pieces and ragges God is not Infinite to me if I thinke a discontinued service will serve him It is a kinde of denying the Unity of God to joyne other gods Pleasure or Profit with him He is not One God to me if I joyne other Associates and Assistants to him Saints or Angels It is a kinde of diffidence in Christ as though I were not sure that he would stand in the favour of God still as though I were afraid that there might rise a new favorite in heaven to whom it might concerne me to apply me selfe If I make the balance so eaven as to serve God and Mammon if I make a complementall visit of God at his house upon Sunday and then plot with the other faction the World the Flesh and the Devill all the weeke after Jor. 9.13 The Lord promised a power of seeking and an infallibility of finding but still with this totall condition Ye shall seeke mee and ye shall finde me because ye shall seek mee with all your heart This he promised for the future that he would doe This he testified for the house of Iudah 2 Chro. 15.15 that he had done Iudah sought him with a whole desire and he was found of them and the Lord gave them rest round about And the Lord shall give you rest round about rest in your bodies and rest in your estates rest in your good name with others and rest in your consciences in your selves rest in your getting and rest in your injoying that you have got if you seeke him with a whole heart and to seek him with a whole heart is not by honest industry to seeke nothing else for God weares good cloathes silk and soft raiment in his religious servants in Courts as well as Cammels haire in Iohn Baptist in the Wildernesse and God manifests himselfe to man as well in the splendor of Princes in Courts as in the austerity of Iohn Baptist in the Wildernesse but to seeke God with the whole heart is to seeke nothing with that Primary and Radicall and Fundamentall affection as God To seek nothing for it selfe but God not to seeke world things in excesse because I hope if I had them I should glorifie God in them but first to finde established in my selfe a zealous desire to glorifie God and then a modest desire of meanes to be able to doe it And for this every one that is holy shall pray unto thee in a time when thou maist be found And so we have done with our first Part and the foure pieces that constitute that The Person Omnis sanctus Every godly man that is Sanctificatus and Sanctificandus Hee that is godly enough to pray and prayes that he may be more godly And the Object of prayer Ad te God alone for God alone can heare and God alone can give And then the Subject of prayer Hoc This this which David expresses forgivenesse of the punishment and of the iniquity of fin In which respect that David proposes and specificates the subject of prayer wee are fairely directed rather to accustome our selves to those prayers which are recommended to us by the Church then to extemporall prayers of others or of our owne effusion And lastly the Time of finding God that is Then when we seeke him with a whole heart seeke him as Principal and then receive temporall things as accessory and conducible to his glory Thus much hath fallen into the first Part the duty of Prayer A little remaines to be said of the benefit here assured Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him Taking these waters 2. Part. Hâ—â—r Aquae either Distributively to every one that is godly or Collectively as S. Hierome does to the whole Church the use will be all one The Holy Ghost who is a direct worker upon the soule and conscience of man but a Metaphoricall and Figurative expresser on himselfe to the reason and understanding of man abounds in no Metophor more then in calling Tribulations Waters particularly He would bring in waters upon Tyrus Eâ—â—k 26.3 Hosâ—â— 5. And He would poure out his wrath upon his enemies like waters Neither doth he onely intimate temporall but spirituall afflictions too in the name of Waters And as S. Hierome understands this whole place of the Church Hieron August collectively so S. Augustine understands these waters to be Varia Doctrinae those diverse opinions that disquiet and trouble the Church And though the Church of God were built upon a hill and compassed and environed and fenced with the blood of him that built it and defended and guarded by the vigilancy of the Apostles yet into this Jerusalem did these waters breake even in the Apostles time as we see by those severall those manifold those contradictory Heresies that sprung up them Christ and his Apostles had carried two Waters about his Church The water of Baptisme that is Limen Ecclesiae and Ianua Sacramentorum Argust The first Ferry by which we passe into the Church and by this Water came three thousand and five thousand at once to the Church upon particular Sermons of S. Peter And then Christ gave another Water by which they came to another Ablution to Absolution from actuall fins the water of contrite teares and repentance which he had promised before Eâ—â—k 24.35 I will poure cleane water upon you and you shall be cleane And by this water came Peter himselfe when his faith had failed And by this water came Mary Magdalen when her life had
performe that sacred Work And when to the amazement of some beholders he appeared in the Pulpit many thought he presented himselfe not to preach mortification by a living voice but mortality by a decayed body and dying face And doubtlesse many did secretly ask that question in Ezekiel Doe these bones live Ezek. 37.3 Or can that soule organise that tongue to speak so long time as the sand in that glasse will move towards its center and measure out an houre of this dying mans unspent life Doubtlesse it cannot Yet after some faint pauses in his zealous Prayer his strong desires inabled his weak body to discharge his memory of his pre conceived Meditations which were of dying The Text being To God the Lord belong the issues from death Many that saw his teares and heard his hollow voice professing they thought the Text Prophetically chosen and that D. Donne had preacht his owne Funerall Sermon Being full of joy that God had inabled him to performe this desired duty he hastned to his house out of which he never moved untill like S. Stephen Acts 8. He was carried by devout men to his grave And the next day after his Sermon his spirits being much spent and he indisposed to discourse a friend asked him Why are you sad To whom he replyed after this manner I am not sad I am in a serious contemplation of the mercies of my God to me And now I plainly see it was his hand that prevented me from all temporall employment And I see it was his will that I should never settle nor thrive untill I entred into the Ministery in which I have now lived almost twenty yeares I hope to his glory and by which I most humbly thank him I have been enabled to requite most of those friends that shewed me kindnesse when my fortunes were low And as it hath occasioned the expression of my gratitude I thank God most of them have stood in need of my requitall I have been usefull and comfortable to my good Father in Law Sir George More whose patience God hath been pleased to exercise by many temporall crosses I have maintained my owne Mother whom it hath pleased God after a plentifull fortune in her former times to bring to a great decay in her very old age I have quieted the consciences of many that groaned under the burthen of a wounded spirit whose Prayers I hope are availeable for me I cannot plead innocencie of life especially of my youth but I am to be judged by a mercifull God who hath given me even at this time some testimonies by his holy Spirit that I am of the number of his Elect. I am ful of joy and shall die in peace Upon Munday following he took his last leave of his beloved Studie and being hourely sensible of his decay retired himselfe into his bed-chamber and that week sent at severall times for many of his most considerable friends of whom he tooke a solemne and deliberate Farewell commending to their considerations some sentences particularly usefull for the regulation of their lives and dismist them as * Gen. 49. Iacob did his sons with a spirituall benediction The Sunday following he appointed his servants that if there were any worldly businesse undone that concerned them or himselfe it should be prepared against Saturday next for after that day he would not mixe his thoughts with any thing that concerned the world Nor ever did Now he had nothing to doe but die To doe which he stood in need of no more time for he had long studied it and to such a perfection that in a former sicknesse he called God to witnesse Devot Prayer 23. he was that minute prepared to deliver his soule into his hands if that minute God would accept of his dissolution In that sicknesse he begged of his God the God of constancy to be preserved in that estate for ever And his patient expectation to have his immortall soule disrobed from her garment of mortality makes me confident he now had a modest assurance that his prayers were then heard and his petition granted He lay fifteene dayes earnestly expecting his hourely change And in the last houre of his last day as his body melted away and vapoured into spirit his soule having I verily beleeve some revelation of the Beatifical Vision he said I were miserable if I might not die And after those words closed many periods of his faint breath with these words Thy kingdome come Thy will be done His speech which had long been his faithfull servant remained with him till his last minute and then forsook him not to serve another master but died before him for that it was uselesse to him who now conversed with God on earth as Angels are said to doe in heaven onely by thoughts and looks Being speechlesse he did as S. Stephen look stedfastly towards heaven till he saw the Sonne of God standing at the right hand of his Father And being satisfied with this blessed sight as his soule ascended and his last breath departed from him he closed his owne eyes and then disposed his hands and body into such a posture as required no alteration by those that came to shroud him Thus variable thus vertuous was the life thus memorable thus exemplary was the death of this most excellent man He was buried in S. Pauls Church in that place which he had appointed for that use some yeares before his death and by which he passed daily to his devotions But not buried privately though he desired it For besides an unnumbred number of others many persons of Nobility and eminency who did love and honour him in his life did shew it at his Funerall by a voluntary and very sad attendance of his body to the grave To which after his buriall some mournfull friends repaired And as Alexander the Great did to the grave of the famous Achillis Plutarch so they strewed his with curious and costly flowers Which course they who were never yet knowne continued each morning and evening for divers dayes not ceasing till the stones that were taken up in that Church to give his body admission into the cold earth now his bed of rest were againe by the Masons art levelled and firmed as they had been formerly and his place of buriall undistinguishable to common view Nor was this though not usuall all the honour done to his reverend ashes for by some good body who t is like thought his memory ought to be perpetuated there was 100. marks sent to his two faithfull friends * D. Henry King D. Mountfort and Executors the person that sent it not yet known they look not for a reward on earth towards the making of a Monument for him which I think is as lively a representation as in dead marble can be made of him HE was of stature moderately tall of a straight and equally proportioned body to which all his words and actions gave an unexpressible
pacto thus the contract led it to this he was obedient obedient unto death and unto the death of the Crosse Phil. 2.8 By bloud and not onely by comming into this world and assuming our nature which humiliation was an act of infinite value and not by the bloud of his Circumcision or Agony but bloud to death and by no gentler nor nobler death then the death of the Crosse was this peace to be made by him Though then one drop of his bloud had beene enough to have redeemed infinite worlds if it had beene so contracted and so applyed yet he gave us a morning showre of his bloud in his Circumcision and an evening showre at his passion and a showre after Sunset in the piercing of his side And though any death had beene an incomprehensible ransome for the Lord of life to have given for the children of death yet he refused not the death of the Crosse The Crosse to which a bitter curse was nayled by Moses Deut. 21 23. from the beginning he that is hanged is not onely accursed of God as our Translation hath it but he is the curse of God as it is in the Originall not accursed but a curse not a simple curse but the curse of God And by the Crosse which besides the Infamy was so painfull a death as that many men languished many dayes upon it before they dyed And by his bloud of this torture and this shame this painfull and this ignominious death was this peace made In our great work of crucifying our selves to the world too it is not enough to bleed the drops of a Circumcision that is to cut off some excessive and notorious practice of sin nor to bleed the drops of an Agony to enter into a conflict and colluctation of the flesh and the spirit whether we were not better trust in Gods mercy for our continuance in that sin then lose all that pleasure and profit which that sin brings us nor enough to bleed the drops of scourging to be lashed with viperous and venemous tongues by contumelies and slanders nor to bleed the drops of Thornes to have Thornes and scruples enter into our consciences with spirituall afflictions but we must be content to bleed the streames of naylings to those Crosses to continue in them all our lives if God see that necessary for our confirmation and if men will pierce and wound us after our deaths in our good name yea if they will slander our Resurrection as they did Christs if they will say that it is impossible God should have mercy upon such a man impossible that a man of so bad life and so sad and comfortlesse a death should have a joyfull Resurrection here is our comfort as that piercing of Christs side was after the Consummatum est after his passion ended and therefore put him to no paine as that slander of his Resurrection was after that glorious triumph He was risen and had shewed himselfe before and therefore it diminished not his power so all these posthume wounds and slanders after my death after my God and my Soule shall have passed that Dialogue Veni Domine Iesu and euge bone serve That I shall have said upon my death-bed Come Lord Jesu come quickly and he shall have said Well done good and faithfull servant enter into thy Masters joy when I shall have said to him In manus tuas Domine Into thy hands O Lord I commend my spirit And he to me Hodie mecum eris in paradiso This day this minute thou shalt be now thou art with me in Paradise when this shall be my state God shall heare their slanders and maledictions and write them all downe but not in my booke but in theirs and there they shall meet them at Judgement amongst their owne sinnes to their everlasting confusion and finde me in possession of that peace made by bloud made by his bloud made by the bloud of his Crosse which were all the peeces laid out for this second part with which we have done and passe from the qualification of the person It pleased the Father that in him all fulnesse should dwell which was our first part and the Pacification and the way thereof by the bloud of his Crosse to make peace which was our second to the Reconciliation it selfe and the Application thereof to all to whom that Reconciliation appertaines That all things whether they be things in earth or things in heaven might be reconciled unto him All this was done 3. Part. He in whom it pleased the Father that this fulnesse should dwell had made this peace by the bloud of his Crosse and yet after all this the Apostle comes upon that Ambassage 2 Cor. 5.20 We pray ye in Christs stead that ye be reconciled to God So that this Reconciliation in the Text is a subsequent thing to this peace The generall peace is made by Christs death as a generall pardon is given at the Kings comming The Application of this peace is in the Church as the suing out of the pardon is in the Office Ioab made Absaloms peace with his Father Bring the young man againe sayes David to Ioab 2 Sam. 14.22.2.28.24.16 but yet he was not reconciled to him so as that he saw his face in two yeare God hath sounded a Retreat to the Battle As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a sinner He hath said to the destroyer It is enough stay now thy hand He is pacified in Christ and he hath bound the enemy in chaines Now let us labour for our Reconciliation for all things are reconciled to him in Christ that is offered a way of reconciliation All things in heaven and earth sayes the Apostle And that is so large as that Origen needed not to have extended it to Hell too Origen and conceive out of this place a possibility that the Devils themselves shall come to a Reconciliation with God But to all in Heaven and Earth it appertaines Consider we how First then there is a reconciliation of them in heaven to God In coelis and then of them on earth to God and then of them in heaven and them in earth to one another by the blood of his Crosse If we consider them in heaven to be those who are gone up to heaven from this world by death they had the same reconciliation as we Animae either by reaching the hand of faith forward to lay hold upon Christ before he came which was the case of all under the Law or by reaching back that hand to lay hold upon all that hee had done and suffered when he was come which is the case of those that are dead before us in the profession of the Gospell All that are in heaven and were upon earth are reconciled one way by application of Christ in the Church so that though they be now in heaven yet they had their reconciliation here upon earth But
not Christ meerly as the Son of God but the Son of Mary too And that generation the Holy Ghost hath told us was in the fulnesse of time When the fulnesse of time was come God sent forth c. In which words Divisio we have these three considerations First the time of Christs comming and that was the fulnesse of time And then the maner of his comming which is expressed in two degrees of humiliation one that he was made of a woman the other that he was made under the Law And then the third part is the purpose of his comming which also was twofold for first he came to redeem them who were under the Law All And secondly he came that we we the elect of God in him might receive adoption When the fulnesse of time was come c. For the full consideration of this fulnesse of time 〈◊〉 we shall first consider this fulnesse in respect of the Jews and then in respect of all Nations and lastly in respect of our selves The Jews might have seen the fulnesse of time the Gentiles did in some measure see it and we must if we will have any benefit by it see it too It is an observation of S. Cyril That none of the Saints of God nor such as were noted to be exemplarily religious and sanctified men did ever celebrate with any festivall solemnity their own birth-day Pharaoh celebrated his own Nativity 〈◊〉 40.22 but who would make Pharaoh his example and besides he polluted that festivall with the bloud of one of his servants Herod celebrated his Nativity but who would think it an honor to be like Herod and besides he polluted that festivall with the blood of Iohn Baptist But the just contemplation of the miseries and calamities of this life into which our birth-day is the doore and the entrance is so far from giving any just occasion of a festivall as it hath often transported the best disposed Saints and servants of God to a distemper to a malediction and cursing of their birth-day 〈…〉 Cursed be the day wherein I was born and let not that day wherein my mother bare me be blessed Let the day perish wherein I was born let that day be darknesse Job 3. and let not God regard it from above How much misery is presaged to us when we come so generally weeping into the world that perchance in the whole body of history we reade but of one childe Zoroaster that laughed at his birth What miserable revolutions and changes what downfals what break-necks and precipitations may we justly think our selves ordained to if we consider that in our comming into this world out of our mothers womb we doe not make account that a childe comes right except it come with the head forward and thereby prefigure that headlong falling into calamities which it must suffer after Though therefore the dayes of the Martyrs which are for our example celebrated in the Christian Church be ordinarily called natalitia Martyrum the birth-day of the Martyrs yet that is not intended of their birth in this world but of their birth in the next when by death their soules were new delivered of their prisons here and they newly born into the kingdome of heaven that day upon that reason the day of their death was called their birth-day and celebrated in the Church by that name Onely to Christ Jesus the fulnesse of time was at his birth not because he also had not a painfull life to passe through but because the work of our redemption was an intire work and all that Christ said or did or suffered concurred to our salvation as well his mothers swathing him in little clouts as Iosephs shrowding him in a funerall sheete as well his cold lying in the Manger as his cold dying upon the Crosse as well the puer natus as the consummatum est as well his birth as his death is said to have been the fulnesse of time First we consider it to have been so to the Jews for this was that fulnesse Indeic in which all the prophecies concerning the Messias were exactly fulfilled Dan. 2. Hagg. 2. Mich. 5. Esay 7. That he must come whilest the Monarchy of Rome flourished And before the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed That he must be born in Bethlem That he must be born of a Virgin His person his actions his passion so distinctly prophecyed so exactly accomplished as no word being left unfulfilled this must necessarily be a fulnesse of time So fully was the time of the Messias comming come that though some of the Jews say now that there is no certain time revealed in the Scriptures when the Messias shall come and others of them say that there was a time determined and revealed and that this time was the time but by reason of their great sins he did not come at his time yet when they examine their own supputations they are so convinced with that evidence that this was that fulnesse of time that now they expresse a kinde of conditionall acknowledgement of it by this barbarous and inhumane custome of theirs that they alwayes keep in readinesse the blood of some Christian with which they anoint the body of any that dyes amongst them with these words if Jesus Christ were the Messias then may the blood of this Christian availe thee to salvation So that by their doubt and their implyed consent in this action this was the fulnesse of time when Christ Jesus did come that the Messias should come It was so to the Jews and it was so to the Gentiles too Gontibus It filled those wise men which dwelt so far in the East that they followed the star from thence to Jerusalem Herod was so full of it that he filled the Countrey with streames of innocent bloud and lest he should spare that one innocent childe killed all The two Emperours of Rome Vespasian and Domitian were so full of it that in jealousie of a Messias to come then from that race they took speciall care for the destruction of all of the posterity of David All the whole people were so full of it that divers false-Messiahs Barcocab and Moses of Crete and others rose up and drew and deceived the people as if they had been the Messiah because that was ordinarily knowne and received to be the time of his comming And the Devill himself was so full of it as that in his Oracles he gave that answer That an Hebrew childe should be God over all gods and brought the Emperour to erect an Altar to this Messiah Christ Jesus though he knew not what he did This was the fulnesse that filled Jew and Gentile Kings and Philosophers strangers and inhabitants counterfaits and devils to the expectation of a Messiah and when comes this fulnesse of time to us that we feele this Messiah born in our selves In this fulnesse in this comming of our Saviour into us Nobis we should
from the tyran to cancell the covenant betweene hell and them and restore them so far to their liberty as that they might come to their first Master if they would this was Redeeming But in his other worke which is Adoption and where the persons were more particular Adoptio not all but wee Christ hath taken us to him in a straiter and more peculiar title then Redeeming For A servando Servi men who were by another mans valour saved and redeemed from the enemy or from present death they became thereby servants to him that saved and redeemed them Redemption makes us who were but subjects before for all are so by creation servants but it is but servants but Adoption makes us who are thus made servants by Redemption sons 〈◊〉 for Adoption is verbum forense though it be a word which the Holy Ghost takes yet he takes it from a civill use and signification in which it expresses in divers circumstances our Adoption into the state of Gods children First he that adopted another must by that law be a man who had no children of his owne And this was Gods case towards us Hee had no children of his owne wee were all filii irae The children of wrath not one of us could be said to bee the child of God by nature if we had not had this Adoption in Christ Secondly he who Eph. ◠by that law might Adopt must be a Man who had had or naturally might have had children for an Infant under yeares or a man who by nature was disabled from having children could not Adopt another And this was Gods case towards us too for God had had children without Adoption for by our creation in Innocence we were the sons of God till we died all in one transgression and lost all right and all life and all meanes of regaining it but by this way of Adoption in Christ Jesus Againe no man might adopt an elder man then himselfe and so our Father by Adoption is not onely Antiquus dierum The ancient of Daies but Antiquior diebus ancienter then any Daies before Time was he is as Damascene forces himselfe to expresse it Super-principale principium the Beginning and the first Beginning and before the first beginning He is saies he aeternus and prae-aeternus Eternall and elder then any eternity that we can take into our imagination So likewise no man might adopt a man of better quality then himselfe and here we are so far from comparing as that we cannot comprehend his greatnesse and his goodnesse of whom and to whom S. Augustin saies well Quid mihi es If I shall goe about to declare thy goodnesse not to the world in generall but Quid mihi es how good thou art to me Miserere ut loquar saies he I must have more of thy goodnesse to be able to tell thy former goodnesse Be mercifull unto me againe that I may bee thereby able to declare how mercifull thou wast to me before except thou speake in me I cannot declare what thou hast done for me Lastly no man might be adopted into any other degree of kindred but into the name and right of a son he could not be an adopted Brother nor cosin nor nephew And this is especially our dignity wee have the Spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba Father So that as here is a fulnesse of time in the text so there is a fulnesse of persons All and a fulnesse of the worke belonging to them Redeeming Emancipation delivering from the chaines of Satan we were his by Creation we sold our selves for nothing and he redeemed us without money that is Esa 52. without any cost of ours but because for all this generall Redemption we may turne from him and submit our selves to other services therefore he hath Adopted us drawne into his family and into his more especiall care those who are chosen by him to be his Now that Redemption reached to all there was enough for all this dispensation of that Redemption this Adoption reaches onely to us all this is done That wee might receive the Adoption of Sonnes But who are this Wee why they are the elect of God But who are they Nos who are these elect Qui timidè rogat docet negare If a man aske me with a diffidence Can I be the adopted son of God that have rebelled against him in all my affections that have troden upon his Commandements in all mine actions that have divorced my selfe from him in preferring the love of his creatures before himselfe that have murmured at his corrections and thought them too much that have undervalued his benefits and thought them too little that have abandoned and prostituted my body his Temple to all uncleannesse and my spirit to indevotion and contempt of his Ordinances can I be the adopted son of God that have done this Ne timidè roges aske me not this with a diffidence and distrust in Gods mercy as if thou thoughtst with Cain thy iniquities were greater then could be forgiven But aske me with that holy confidence which belongs to a true convert Am not I who though I am never without sinne yet am never without hearty remorce and repentance for my sinnes though the weaknesse of my flesh sometimes betray mee the strength of his Spirit still recovers me though my body be under the paw of that lion that seekes whom hee may devoure yet the lion of Judah raises againe and upholds my soule though I wound my Saviour with many sinnes yet all these bee they never so many I strive against I lament confesse and forsake as farre as I am able Am not I the child of God and his adopted son in this state Roga fidenter aske me with a holy confidence in thine and my God doces affirmare thy very question gives me mine answer to thee thou teachest me to say thou art God himselfe teaches me to say so by his Apostle The foundation of God is sure and this is the Seale God knoweth who are his and let them that call upon his name depart from all iniquity He that departs so far as to repent former sinnes and shut up the wayes which he knows in his conscience doe lead him into tentations he is of this quorum one of us one of them who are adopted by Christ to be the sonnes of God I am of this quorum if I preach the Gospell sincerely and live thereafter for hee preaches twice a day that followes his owne doctrine and does as he saies And you are of this quorum if you preach over the Sermons which you heare to your owne soules in your meditation to your families in your relation to the world in your conversation If you come to this place to meet the Spirit of God and not to meet one another If you have sate in this place with a delight in the Word of God and not in the words of any speaker If you goe out of this
place in such a disposition as that if you should meet the last Trumpets at the gates and Christ Jesus in the clouds you would not intreat him to goe back and stay another yeare To enwrap all in one if you have a religious and sober assurance that you are his and walke according to your beleefe you are his and as the fulnesse of time so the fulnesse of grace is come upon you and you are not onely within the first commission of those who were under the Law and so Redeemed but of this quorum who are selected out of them the adopted sons of that God who never disinherits those that forsake not him SERMON IV. Preached at S. Pauls upon Christmas day 1626. LUKE 2.29 30. Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word For mine eyes have seen thy salvation THe whole life of Christ was a continuall Passion others die Martyrs but Christ was born a Martyr He found a Golgatha where he was crucified even in Bethlem where he was born For to his tendernesse then the strawes were almost as sharp as the thornes after and the Manger as uneasie at first as his Crosse at last His birth and his death were but one continuall act and his Christmas-day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day And as even his birth is his death so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us is his birth for Epiphany is manifestation And therefore though the Church doe now call twelf-Twelf-day Epiphany because upon that day Christ was manifested to the Gentiles in those Wise men who came then to worship him yet the Ancient Church called this day the day of Christs birth the Epiphany because this day Christ was manifested to the world by being born this day Every manifestation of Christ to the world to the Church to a particular soule is an Epiphany a Christmas-day Now there is no where a more evident manifestation of Christ then in that which induced this text Lord now lettest thou thy servant c. It had been revealed to Simeon whose words these are that he should see Christ before he dyed And actually and really substantially essentially bodily presentially personally he does see him so it is Simeons Epiphany Simeons christmas-Christmas-day So also this day in which we commemorate and celebrate the generall Epiphany the manifestation of Christ to the whole world in his birth all we we who besides our interest in the universall Epiphany and manifestation implyed in the very day have this day received the Body and Blood of Christ in his holy and blessed Sacrament have had another Epiphany another Christmas-day another manifestation and application of Christ to our selves And as the Church prepares our devotion before Christmas-day with foure Sundayes in Advent which brings Christ nearer and nearer unto us and remembers us that he is comming and then continues that remembrance again with the celebration of other festivals with it and after it as S. Stephen S. Iohn and the rest that follow so for this birth of Christ in your particular soules for this Epiphany this Christmas-day this manifestation of Christ which you have had in the most blessed Sacrament this day as you were prepared before by that which was said before so it belongs to the through celebration of the day and to the dignity of that mysterious act and to the blessednesse of worthy and the danger of unworthy Receivers to presse that evidence in your behalf and to enable you by a farther examination of your selves to depart in peace because your eyes have seen his salvation To be able to conclude to you selves that because you have had a Christmas-day a manifestation of Christs birth in your soules by the Sacrament you shall have a whole Good-Friday a crucifying and a consummatum est a measure of corrections and joy in those corrections tentations and the issue with the tentation And that you shall have a Resurrection and an Ascension an inchoation and an unremoveable possession of heaven it self in this world Make good your Christmas day that Christ by a worthy receiving of the Sacrament be born in you and he that dyed for you will live with you all the yeare and all the yeares of your lives and inspire into you and receive from you at the last gasp this blessed acclamation Lord now lettest thou thy servant c. The end of all digestions Divisio and concoctions is assimilation that that meate may become our body The end of all consideration of all the actions of such leading and exemplar men as Simeon was is assimilation too That we may be like that man Therefore we shall make it a first part to take a picture to give a character of this man to consider how Simeon was qualified and prepared matured and disposed to that confidence that he could desire to depart in peace intimated in that first word Now now that all that I look for is accomplished And farther expressed in the first word of the other clause For for mine eyes have seen thy salvation Now now the time is fulfilled For for mine eyes have seen And then enters the second part what is the greatest happinesse that can be well wished in this world by a man well prepared is that he may depart in peace Lord now lettest thou c. And all the way in every step that we make in his light in Simeons light we shall see light we shall consider that that preparation and disposition and acquiescence which Simeon had in his Epiphany in his visible seeing of Christ then is offered to us in this Epiphany in this manifestation and application of Christ in the Sacrament And that therefore every penitent and devout and reverent and worthy receiver hath had in that holy action his Now there are all things accomplished to him and his For for his eyes have seen his salvation and so may be content nay glad to depart in peace In the first part then 1 Part. in which we collect some marks and qualities in Simeon which prepared him to a quiet death qualities appliable to us in that capacity as we are â—â—tred for the Sacrament Praesentatio for in that way only we shall walk throughout this exercise wee consider first the action it self what was done at this time At this time our Saviour Christ according to the Law by which all the first born were to be presented to God in the Temple at a certain time after their birth was presented to God in the Temple and there acknowledged to be his And then bought of him again by his parents at a certain price prescribed in the Law A Lord could not exhibite his Son to his Tenants and say this is your Land-lord nor a King his Son to his Subjects and say this is your Prince but first he was to be tendred to God his they were all He that is not
the eldest almost in all vulgar languages the name of a Lord or magistrate hath no other derivation then so an Elder Senior noster is a word that passes freely through the authors of the middle age for our Lord or our King and the same derivation hath the name of Priest in a holy language Presbyter an Elder So evermore in the course of the Scripture all counsell and all government is placed in the Elders and all the service of God is expressed so even in heaven too by the foure and twenty Elders Apoc. 4.9 Thy Creator will be remembred in the dayes of thy youth but God hath had longer experience of that man and longer conversation with that man who is come to a holy age That wise King who could carry nothing to a higher pitch in any comparison then to a Crowne saies Age is a crowne of glory Prov. 16.31 when it is found in the wayes of the righteous but in the waies of righteousnesse no blessing is a blessing and in the waies of righteousnesse wealth may be a crowne of our labours and health may be a crowne of our temperance but age is the crowne of glory of reverence â—hat crowne the crowne of reverence the Lord the righteous Judge hath reserved to that day the day of our age because our age is the seale of our constancy and perseverance In this blessed age Simeon was thus dignified admitted to this Epiphany this manifestation of Christ And to be admitted to thy Epiphany and manifestation of Christ in the Sacrament thou must put off the yong man and put on the old God to whose Table thou art called is represented as Antiquus Dierum the ancient of Daies and his Guests must be of mortified affections He must be crucified to the world that will receive him that was crucified for the world the lusts of youth the voluptuousnesse of youth the revengefulnesse of youth must have a holy damp and a religious stupidity shed upon them that come thither Nay it is not enough to bee suddenly old to have sad and mortified thoughts then no nor to be suddenly dead to renounce the world then that houre that morning but quatriduani sitis you should have been dead three daies as Lazarus you should have passed an Examination an accusation a condemnation of your selves divers daies before ye came to that Table God was most glorified in the raising of Lazarus when he was long dead and putrified God is most glorified in giving a resurrection to him that hath been longest dead that is longest in the Contemplation of his owne sinfull and spirituall putrefaction For he that stinks most in his owne by true contrition is the best perfume to Gods nostrils and a conscience troubled in it selfe is Odor quietis as Noahs sacrifice was a savor of rest to God This assistance we have to the exaltation of our devotion from that circumstance that Simeon was an old man Sacerdos we have another from another that he was a Priest and in that notion and capacity the better fitted for this Epiphany this Christmas this Manifestation of Christ We have not this neither in the letter of the story no nor so constantly in Tradition that he was a Priest as that he was an old man But it is rooted in Antiquity too In Athanasius in St. Cyrill in Epiphanius in others who argue and inferre it fairly and conveniently out of some Priestly acts which Simeon seemes to have done in the Temple as the taking of Christ in his armes which belongs to the Priest and the blessing of God which is the Thanks-giving to God in the behalfe of the congregation and then the blessing of the people in the behalfe of God which are acts peculiar to the Priest Accepting him in that quality a Priest we consider that as the King takes it worse in his houshold servants then in his Subjects at large if they goe not his wayes so they who dwell in Gods house whose livelihood growes out of the revenue of his Church and whose service lies within the walls of his Church are most inexcusable if they have not a continuall Epiphany a continuall Manifestation of Christ All men should looke towards God but the Priest should never looke off from God And at the Sacrament every man is a Priest I had rather that were not said which yet a very Reverend Divine sayes That this Simeon might be aliquis plebeius homo Calvin some ordinary common man that was in the Temple at that time when Christ was brought He who is of another sub-division Chemnicius though in the reformed Church too collects piously that God chose extraordinary men to give testimony of his Sonne Nicodemus a great Magistrate Gamaliel a great Doctor Iairus a Ruler in the Synagogue and this Simeon in probability pregnant enough a Priest But was that any great Addition to him if hee were so For holinesse certainly it was But for outward dignity and respect it was so too Josephus amongst them In omni Natione certum aliquod Nobilitatis argumentum Every Nation hath some particular way of ennobling and some particular evidence and declaration of Nobility Armes for a great part is that in Spaine and Merchandize in some States in Italy and learning in France where besides the very many preferments by the Church in which some other Nation may be equall to them there are more preferments by other wayes of learning especially of Judicature then in any other Nation All Nations sayes Iosephus had some peculiar way and amongst the Jews sayes he Priesthood was that way A Priest was even for civill priviledges a Gentleman Therefore hath the Apostle not knighted nor ennobled but crowned every good soule with that style Regale Sacerdotium That they are a Royall Priesthood To be Royall without Priesthood seemed not to him Dignity enough Consider then that to come to the Communion Table is to take Orders Every man should come to that Altar as holy as the Priest Erasmus for there he is a Priest And Sacer dotem nemo agit qui libenter aliud est quam Sacerdos No man is truly a Priest which is any thing else besides a Priest that is that entangles himselfe in any other businesse so as that that hinders his function in his Priesthood No man comes to the Sacrament well that is sorry hee is there that is whom the penalty of the law or observation of neighbours or any collaterall respect brings thither There thou art a Priest though thou beest but a lay-man at home And then no man that hath taken Orders can deprive himselfe or devest his Orders when he will Thou art bound to continue in the same holinesse after in which thou presentest thy selfe at that Table As the sailes of a ship when they are spread and swolne and the way that the ship makes shewes me the winde where it is though the winde it selfe be an invisible thing so thy
at the Kings table certain portions of bread are made bread of Essay to passe over every dish whether for safety or for Majesty not only so civilly changed but changed supernaturally no nor Theophylacts transformatus est which seemes to be the word that goes farthest of all for this transforming cannot be intended of the outward form and fashion for that is not changed but be it of that internall form which is the very essence and nature of the bread so it is transformed so the bread hath received a new form a new essence a new nature because whereas the nature of bread is but to nourish the body the nature of this bread now is to nourish the soule And therefore Cum non dubitavit Dominus dicere hoc est corpus meum August cum signum daret corporis Since Christ forbore not to say This is my body when he gave the sign of his body why should we forbeare to say of that bread this is Christs body which is the Sacrament of his body You would have said at noone this light is the Sun and you will say now this light is the Candle That light was not the Sun this light is not the Candle but it is that portion of aire which the Sun did then and which the Candle doth now enlighten We say the Sacramentall bread is the body of Christ because God hath shed his Ordinance upon it and made it of another nature in the use though not in the substance Almost 600. years agoe the Romane Church made Berengarius sweare sensualiter tangitur frangitur teritur corpus Christs That the body of Christ was sensibly handled and broken and chewed They are ashamed of that now and have mollified it with many modifications and God knowes whether 100. yeares hence they will not bee as much ashamed of their Transubstantiation and see as much unnaturall absurdity in their Trent Canon or Lateran Canoâ—â— â—s they doe in Berengarius oath As they that deny the body of Christ to be in the Sacrament lose their footing in departing from their ground the expresse Scriptures so they that will assign a particular manner how that body is there have no footing no ground at all no Scripture to Anchor upon And so diving in a bottomlesse sea they poppe sometimes above water to take breath to appeare to say something and then snatch at a loose preposition that swims upon the face of the waters and so the Roman Church hath catched a Trans and others a Con and a Sub and an In and varied their poetry into a Transubstantiation and a Consubstantiation and the rest and rymed themselves beyond reason into absurdities and heresies and by a young figure of similiter cadens they are fallen alike into error though the errors that they are fallen into be not of a like nature nor danger We offer to goe no farther then according to his Word In the Sacrament our eyes see his salvation according to that so far as that hath manifested unto us and in that light wee depart in peace without scruple in our owne without offence to other mens consciences Having thus seene Simeon in these his Dimensions with these holy impressions 2 Part. these blessed characters upon him first 1 A man in a reverend age then 2 In a holy function and calling and with that 3 Righteous in the eyes of men and withall 4 Devout in the eyes of God 5 And made a Prophet upon himselfe by the holy Ghost 6 still wayting Gods time and his leasure 7 And in that desiring that his joy might be spread upon the whole Israel of God 8 Frequenting holy places the Temple 9 And that upon holy motions and there 10 seeing the salvation of the Lord that is Discerning the application of salvation in the Ordinances of the Church 11 And lastly contenting himselfe with so much therein as was according to his word and not inquiring farther then God had beene pleased to reveale and having reflected all these severall beames upon every worthy Receiver of the Sacrament the whole Quire of such worthy receivers may joyne with Simeon in this Antiphon Nunc Dimittis Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace c. S. Ambrose reades not this place as we doe Nunc dimittis but Nunc dimitte not Lord thou doest so but Lord doe so and so he gives it the forme of a prayer and implyes not only a patience and a contentednesse but a desire and an ambition that he might die at least such an indifferency and equanimity as Israel had when he had seen Ioseph Gen. 46.30 Now let me die since I have seen thy face after he had seen his face the next face that he desired to see was the face of God For howsoever there may bee some disorder some irregularity in S. Pauls Anathema pro fratribus that he desired to be separated from Christ rather then his brethren should that may scarce be drawen into consequence or made a wish for us to imitate yet to S. Pauls Cupio dissolvi to an expresse and to a deliberate desire to be dissolved here and to be united to Christ in heaven still with a primary relation to the glory of God and a reservation of the will of God a godly a rectified and a well-disposed man may safely come And so I know not upon what grounds Nicephorus fayes Simeon did wish and had his wish he prayed that he might die and actually he did die then Neither can a man at any time be fitter to make and obtain this wish then when his eyes have seen his salvation in the Sacrament At least make this an argument of your having beene worthy receivers thereof that you are in Aequilibriâ—o in an evennesse in an indifferency in an equanimity whether ye die this night or no. For howsoever S. Ambrose seem to make it a direct prayer that he might die he intends but such an equanimity such an indifferency Quasi servus nonrefugit vitae obsequium quasi sapiem lucrum mortis amplectitur sayes that Father Simeon is so good a servant as that he is content to serve his old master still in his old place in this world but yet he is so good a husband too as that hee sees what a gainer he might be if he might be made free by death If thou desire not death that is the case of very few to doe so in a rectified conscience and without distemper if thou beest not equally disposed towards death that should be the case of all and yet we are far from condemning all that are not come to that equanimity yet if thou now feare death inordinately I should feare that thine eyes have not seen thy salvation to day who can feare the darknesse of death that hath had the light of this world and of the next too who can feare death this night that hath had the Lord of life in his hand to day It is a question of
consternation a question that should strike him that should answer it dumb as Christs question Amice quomodo intrasti Friend how camest in hither did him to whom that was said which Origen askes in this case When wilt thou dare to goe out of this world if thou darest not goe now when Christ Jesus hath taken thee by the hand to leade thee out This then is truly to depart in peace In pace by the Gospell of peace to the God of peace My body is my prison and I would be so obedient to the Law as not to break prison I would not hasten my death by starving or macerating this body But if this prison be burnt down by continuall feavers or blowen down with continuall vapours would any man be so in love with that ground upon which that prison stood as to desire rather to stay there then to go home Our prisons are fallen our bodies are dead to many former uses Our palate dead in a tastlesnesse Our stomach dead in an indigestiblenesse our feete dead in a lamenesse and our invention in a dulnesse and our memory in a forgetfulnesse and yet as a man that should love the ground where his prison stood we love this clay that was a body in the dayes of our youth and but our prison then when it was at best wee abhorre the graves of our bodies and the body which in the best vigour thereof Gen. 40. was but the grave of the soule we over-love Pharaohs Butler and his Baker went both out of prison in a day and in both cases Ioseph in the interpretation of their dreames calls that their very discharge out of prison a lifting up of their heads a kinde of preferment Death raises every man alike so far as that it delivers every man from his prison from the incumbrances of this body both Baker and Butler were delivered of their prison but they passed into divers states after one to the restitution of his place the other to an ignominious execution Of thy prison thou shalt be delivered whether thou wilt or no thou must die Foole this night thy soule may be taken from thee and then what thou shalt be to morrow prophecy upon thy selfe by that which thou hast done to day If thou didst depart from that Table in peace thou canst depart from this world in peace And the peace of that Table is to come to it in pace desiderii with a contented minde and with an enjoying of those temporall blessings which thou hast without macerating thy self without usurping upon others without murmuring at God And to be at that Table in pace cogitationum in the peace of the Church without the spirit of contradiction or inquisition without uncharitablenesse towards others without curiosity in thy selfe And then to come from that Table in pace domestica with a bosome peace in thine own Conscience in that seale of thy reconciliation in that Sacrament that so riding at that Anchor and in that calme whether God enlarge thy voyage by enlarging thy life or put thee into the harbour by the breath by the breathlesnesse of Death either way East or West thou maist depart in peace according to his word that is as he shall be pleased to manifest his pleasure upon thee SERMON V. Preached at Pauls upon Christmas Day 1627. EXOD. 4.13 O my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send IT hath been suspitiously doubted more then that freely disputed more then that too absolutely denied that Christ was born the five and twentieth of December that this is Christmas-day yet for all these doubts and disputations and denials we forbeare not with the whole Church of God constantly and confidently to celebrate this for his Day It hath been doubted and disputed and denied too that this Text O my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send hath any relation to the sending of the Messiah to the comming of Christ to Christmas-day yet we forbeare not to wait upon the ancient Fathers and as they said to say that Moses having received a commandement from God to undertake that great employment of delivering the children of Israel from the oppressions of Pharaoh in Aegypt and having excused himselfe by some other modest and pious pretences at last when God pressed the imployment still upon him he determines all in this O my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send or as it is in our Margin when thou shouldest send It is a work next to the great work of the redemption of the whole world to redeem Israel out of Aegypt And therefore doe both workes at once put both into one hand and mitte quem missurus es send him whom I know thou wilt send him whom pursuing thine own decree thou shouldest send send Christ send him now to redeem Israel from Aegypt These words then though some have made that interpretation of them and truly not without a faire apparance and probability and verisimilitude doe not necessarily imply a slacknesse in Moses zeale that he desired not affectionately and earnestly the deliverance of his Nation from the pressures of Aegypt nor doe they imply any diffidence or distrust that God could not or would not endow him with faculties fit for that imployment But as a thoughtfull man a pensive a considerative man that stands still for a while with his eyes fixed upon the ground before his feete when he casts up his head hath presently instantly the Sun or the heavens for his object he sees not a tree nor a house nor a steeple by the way but as soon as his eye is departed from the earth where it was long fixed the next thing he sees is the Sun or the heavens so when Moses had fixed himselfe long upon the consideration of his own insufficiency for this service when he tooke his eye from that low peece of ground Himselfe considered as he was then he fell upon no tree no house no steeple no such consideration as this God may endow me improve me exalt me enable me qualifie me with faculties fit for this service but his first object was that which presented an infallibility with it Christ Jesus himselfe the Messias himselfe and the first petition that he offers to God is this O my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send For me as I am I am altogether unfit when thou shalt be pleased to work upon me thou wilt finde me but stone hard to receive thy holy impressions and then but snow easie to melt and lose those holy formes again There must be labour laid and perchance labour lost upon me but put the businesse into a safe had and under an infallible instrument and Mitte quem missurus es send him whom I know thou wilt send him whom pursuing thine own decree thou shouldest send send him send Christ now As much as Paradise exceeded all
swore by himselfe because he could propose no greater thing in himself no clearer notion of himself then life for his life is his eternity and his eternity is himselfe does therefore through all the Law and the Prophets still sweare in that form Vivo ego vivit Dominus As I live saith the Lord and as the Lord liveth still he sweares by his own life As that solemne Oath which is mentioned in Daniel is conceived in that form too He lift up his right hand and his left hand to heaven Dan. 12.7 and swore by him that liveth for ever that is by God and God in that notion as he is life All that the Queen and the Councell could wish and apprecate to the King was but that Life In sempiternum vive vive in aeternum O King live for ever God is life Dan. 5. and would not the death of any We are not sure that stones have not life stones may have life neither to speak humanely is it unreasonably thought by them that thought the whole world to be inanimated by one soule and to be one intire living creature and in that respect does S. Augustine prefer a fly before the Sun 1 Tim. 5.6 because a fly hath life and the Sun hath not This is the worst that the Apostle sayes of the young wanton widow That if she live in pleasure she is dead whilst she lives So is that Magistrate that studies nothing but his own honour and dignity in his place dead in his place And that Priest that studies nothing but his owne ease and profit dead in his living And that Judge that dares not condemne a guilty person And which is the bolder transgression dares condemne the innocent deader upon the Bench then the Prisoner at the Barre God hath included all that is good Dcut. 30.15 in the name of Life and all that is ill in the name of Death when he sayes See I have set before thee Vitam Bonum Life and Good Mortem Malum Death and Evill This is the reward proposed to our faith Hab. 2.4 Iustus fide sua vivit To live by our faith And this is the reward proposed to our works Fac hoc vives to live by our works All is life And this fulnesse this consummation of happinesse Life and the life of life spirituall life and the exaltation of spirituall life eternall life is the end of Christs comming I came that they might have life And first Vt daret ut daret that he might give life bring life into the world that there might be life to be had that the world might be redeemed from that losse which S. Augustine sayes it was falne into Perdidimus possibilitatem boni That we had all lost all possibility of life For the heaven and the earth and all that the Poet would call Chaos was not a deader lump before the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters then Mankind was before the influence of Christs comming wrought upon it But now that God so loved the world as that he gave his Son now that the Son so loved the world as that he gave himselfe Psal 19.6 as David sayes of the Sun of the firmament the father of nature Nihit absconditum there is nothing hid from the heat thereof so we say of this Son of God the Father of the faithfull in a far higher sense then Abraham was called so Nihilabsconditum there is nothing hid from him no place no person excluded from the benefit of his comming The Son hath paid the Father hath received enough for all not in fingle money for the discharge of thy lesser debts thy idle words thy wanton thoughts thy unchast looks but in massie talents to discharge thy crying debts the clamors of those poore whom thou hast oppressed and thy thundring debts those blasphemies by which thou hast torne that Father that made thee that Sonne that redeemed thee that boly Ghost that would comfort thee 1 Reg. 5. There is enough given but then as Hiram sent materials sufficient for the building of the Temple but there was something else to be done for the fitting and placing thereof so there is life enough brought into the world for all the world by the death of Christ but then there is something else to be done for the application of this life to particular persons intended in this word in our Text ut haberent I came that they might have life There is Ayre enough in the world Vt haberent to give breath to every thing though every thing doe not breath If a tree or a stone doe not breathe it is not because it wants ayre but because it wants meanes to receive it or to returne it All egges are not hatched that the hen sits upon Matt. 23.37 neither could Christ himselfe get all the chickens that were hatched to come and to stay under his wings That man that is blinde or that will winke shall see no more sunne upon S. Barnabies day then upon S. Lucies no more in the summer then in the winter solstice Psal 130.7 And therefore as there is copiosa redemptio a plentifull redemption brought into the world by the death of Christ so as S. Paul found it in his particular conversion there is copiosa lux Acts 22.6 a great a powerfull light exhibited to us that we might see and lay hold of this life in the Ordinances of the Church in the Confessions and Absolutions and Services and Sermons and Sacraments of the Church Christ came ut daret that he might bring life into the world by his death and then he instituted his Church ut haberent that by the meanes thereof this life might be infused into us and infused so as the last word of our Text delivers it Abundantiùs I came that they might have life more abundantly Dignaris Domine Abūdantiùs August ut eis quibus debita dimittis te promissionibus tuis debitorem facias This O Lord is thine abundant proceeding First thou forgivest me my debt to thee and then thou makest thy selfe a debter to me by thy large promises and after all performest those promises more largely then thou madest them Indeed God can doe nothing scantly penuriously singly Even his maledictions to which God is ever loth to come his first commination was plurall it was death and death upon death Morte morieris Death may be plurall but this benediction of life cannot admit a singular Chajim which is the word for life hath no singular number This is the difference betweene Gods Mercy and his Judgements that sometimes his Judgements may be plurall complicated enwrapped in one another but his Mercies are alwayes so and cannot be otherwise he gives them abundantiùs more abundantly More abundantly then to whom Illis gentibus The naturall man hath the Image of God imprinted in his soule eternity is God himselfe man hath not
that not eternity but the Image of eternity that is Immortality a post eternity there is in the soule of man And then man is all soule in Moses expression For hee does not say that man had Gen. 2.7 but that man was a living soule So that the naturall man hath life more abundantly then any other creature howsoever Oakes and Crowes and Harts may bee said to out-live him because he hath a life after this life But Christ came to give life more abundantly then this That he did when he came to the Jews in promises in Types and Figures and Sacrifices Illis Iudaeis He gave life more abundantly to the Jew then to the Gentile because he gave him better meanes to preserve that life better meanes to illustrate that Image of God in his soule that is to make his Immortality Immortall happinesse for otherwise our Immortality were our greatest curse better meanes to conforme himselfe to God by having a particular Law for the direction of all his actions which the Gentiles had not For therein especially consisted the abundant favour of God to the Jews as it is expressed by Moses Vnto what Nation are their gods come so neare unto them as the Lord our God is come unto us And in what consisted this nearnesse In this What Nation hath Lawes and Statutes so righteous as we have God gave man life more abundantly then other creatures because he gave him Immortality God gave the Jews life more abundantly then other men by giving them a Law to make their Immortality Immortall happinesse and yet there is a further abundantiùs Christ came to give us us Christians life more abundantly then Gentile or Jew Iustin Martyr denies that ever any understood the true God till Christ came Illis Christianis He goes upon the same ground that S. Paul does Whilst you were without Christ you were without God that is without such an evidence such a manifestation such an assurance of God as faith requires or as produces faith For the Ceremoniall Lawes of the Jewes cast as many shadowes as it did lights and burdened them in easing them Whereas the Christian Religion is as Greg. Nazianz. sayes Simplex nuda nisi pravè in artem difficilimam converteretur It is a plaine an easie a perspicuous truth but that the perverse and uncharitable wranglings of passionate and froward men have made Religion a hard an intricate and a perplexed art so that now that Religion which carnall and worldly men have by an ill life discredited and made hard to be beleeved the passion and perversnesse of Schoole-men by Controversies hath made hard to bee understood Whereas the Christian Religion is of it selfe Iugumsuave a sweet and an easie yoak and verbum abbreviatum an abridgement and a contracted doctrine for where the Jews had all abridged in decem verba as Moses calls the ten Commandements ten words the Christian hath all abridged in duo verba into two words love God love thy neighbour So Christ hath given us us Christians life abundantiùs more abundantly then to the Gen tile or to the Jew but there is a farther abundance yet all this is but abundantiùs illis more abundantly then to others but Christ hath given us life abundantiùs ipsis more abundantly then to our selves That is in the Christian Church Abundantiùs ipsis he hath given us meanes to be better to day then yesterday and to morrow then to day That grace which God offers us in the Church does not onely fill that capacity which we have but give us a greater capacity then we had And it is an abuse of Gods grace not to emprove it or not to procure such farther grace as that present grace makes us capable of As it is an improvident and dangerous thing to spend upon the stock so is it to rely upon that portion of grace which I thinke I had in my election or that measure of Sanctification which I came to in my last sicknesse Christ gives us life abundantiùs illis better meanes of eternall life then to Gentile or Jew and abundantiùs ipsis better that is nearer assurance in our growth of grace and encrease of Sanctification every day then in the consideration of any thing done by God in our behalfe heretofore Now with these abundances in which we exceed illos and ipsos Ecclesta others and our selves Christ comes to us in this that he hath constituted and established a Church and therefore wee consider his abundant proceeding in that work From this day in which the first stone of that building the Church was laid for though the foundations of the Church were laid in Eternity yet that was under ground the first stone above ground that is the manifestation of Gods purpose to the world was laid this day in Christs birth from this day the Incarnation of Christ for of all those names by which the ancients designe this day Christmas day Athanasius calling it the Substantiation of Christ Tertullian the Incorporation of Christ Damascen the Humanation of Christ Of all those fifty names which are collected out of the Fathers for this day most concurre in that name The Incarnation of Christ from this day God proceeded so abundantly in enlarging his Church as that within two hundred yeares Tertullian was able to say Ipsa hospitalia aegrorum The very hospitals of the Christians are more and more sumptuously built and more richly endowed then the very Temples of the Idols or then the Palaces of Idolatrous Princes And still abundantiùs not to compare onely with Idolaters but with the Jews themselves and with them in that wherein they magnified themselves most their Temple That Church which Iustinian the Emperour built at Constantinople and dedicated to Sophia to the wisedome of God and the wisedome of God is Christ Christ is the Power of God and the Wisedome of God 1 Cor. 1.24 is found by them who have written that story in bignesse and in beauty to have exceeded Solomons Temple Though in that there were employed for many yeares thirty thousand Carpenters and forty thousand Masons and other endowments of rich vessell being proportionable to it more then twenty thousand Bowls and Goblets of gold and silver yet Iustinians Church at Constantinople exceeded that Unto the riches of this wisedome of God Christ Jesus flowed all the treasure of the World and upon this Wisedome of God Christ Jesus waited all the wisedome of the World For at that time when Christ came into the world was learning at that heighth as that accounting from Cicero and Virgil two great Masters in two great kindes to the two Plinies which may shut up one age we may reckon in that one state under whose government Christ was born Rome Psal 118.24 seaven or eight score Authors more then ever they had before or after This is the day which the Lord hath made we will rejoyce and be glad in it And as Constantine
Consistory but that the Pope for a certain time inhibites them to give voice And let Aquinas present his arguments to the contrary That those spirits have no naturall power to know thoughts we seek no farther but that Christ Jesus himselfe thought it argument enough to convince the Scribes and Pharisees and prove himselfe God by knowing their thoughts Eadem Majestate potentia sayes S. Hierome Since you see I proceed as God in knowing your thoughts why beleeve you not that I may forgive his sins as God too And then in the last act he joynes both together he satisfies the patient Dat sanitatem and he satisfies the beholders too he gives him his first desire bodily health He bids him take up his bed and walk and he doth it and he shewes them that he is God by doing that which as it appears in the Story was harder in their opinion then remission of sins which was to cure and recover a diseased man only by his word without any naturall or second means And therefore since all the world shakes in a palsie of wars and rumors of wars since we are sure that Christs Vicar in this case will come to his Dimitmittuntur peccata to send his Buls and Indulgences and Crociatars for the maintenance of his part in that cause let us also who are to do the duties of private men to obey and not to direct by presenting our diseased and paralytique souls to Christ Jesus now when he in the Ministery of his unworthiest servant is preaching unto you by untiling the house by removing all disguises and palliations of our former sins by true confession and hearty detestation let us endeavour to bring him to his Dimittuntur peccata to forgive us all those sins which are the true causes of all our palsies and slacknesses in his service and so without limiting him or his great Vicegerents and Lieutenants the way or the time to beg of him that he will imprint in them such counsels and such resolutions as his wisdome knows best to conduce to his glory and the maintenance of his Gospell Amen SERMON XII Preached upon Candlemas day MAT. 5.2 Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God THe Church which is the Daughter of God and Spouse of Christ celebrates this day the Purification of the blessed Virgin the Mother of God And she celebrates this day by the name vulgarly of Candlemas day It is dies luminarium the day of lights The Church took the occasion of doing so from the Gentiles At this time of the yeare about the beginning of February they celebrated the feast of Februus which is their Pluto And because that was the God of darknesse they solemnized it with a multiplicity of Lights The Church of God in the outward and ceremoniall part of his worship did not disdain the ceremonies of the Gentiles Men who are so severe as to condemne and to remove from the Church whatsoever was in use amongst the Gentiles before may before they are aware become Surveyors and Controllers upon Christ himself in the institution of his greatest seales for Baptisme which is the Sacrament of purification by washing in water and the very Sacrament of the Supper it self religious eating and drinking in the Temple were in use amongst the Gentiles too It is a perverse way rather to abolish Things and Names for vehement zeale will work upon Names as well as Things because they have been abused then to reduce them to their right use We dealt in the reformation of Religion as Christ did in the institution thereof He found ceremonies amongst the Gentiles and he took them in not because he found them there but because the Gentiles had received them from the Jews as they had their washings and their religious meetings to eat and drink in the Temple from the Jews Passeover Christ borrowed nothing of the Gentiles but he took his own where he found it Those ceremonies which himself had instituted in the first Church of the Jews and the Gentiles had purloined and prophaned and corrupted after he returned to a good use againe And so did we in the Reformation in some ceremonies which had been of use in the Primitive Church and depraved and corrupted in the Romane For the solemnizing of this Day candlemas-Candlemas-day when the Church did admit Candles into the Church as the Gentiles did it was not upon the reason of the Gentiles who worshipped therein the God of darknesse Februus Pluto but because he who was the light of the world was this day presented and brought into the Temple the Church admitted lights The Church would signifie that as we are to walk in the light so we are to receive our light from the Church and to receive Christ and our knowledge of him so as Christ hath notified himself to us So it is a day of purification to us and a day of lights and so our Text fits the Day Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God In these words we shall consider first Divisie Qui sint who they are that are brought into consideration that are put into the balance and they are mundi corde such as are pure of heart And secondly Quid sint what they come to be and it is Beati blessed are the pure in heart And lastly Vnde from whence this blessednesse accrews and arises unto them and in what it consists and that is Videbunt Deum blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God Gen. 6.5 Ask me wherein these men differ from other men and it is in this main difference Mundi corde that whereas every imagination of the thought of mans heart is only evill continually They are pure of heart Ask me what they get by that They get this main purchase Beati That which all the books of all the Philosophers could never teach them so much as what it was that is true Blessednesse That their pocket book their Manuall their bosome book their conscience doth not only shew them but give them not only declare it to them but possesse them of it Ask me how long this Blessednesse shall last because all those Blessednesses which Philosophers have imagined as honour and health and profit and pleasure and the like have evaporated and vanished away this shall last for ever Videbunt Deum they shall see God and they shall no more see an end of their seeing God then an end of his being God Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God These then are our three parts first the Price mundities cordis cleannesse and cleannesse of heart Secondly the Purchase Beati Blessednesse and present possession of blessednesse Blessed are they And then thirdly the Habendum the term Everlastingnesse because it consists in the enjoying of him who is everlasting They shall see God These arise out of the Text but from whence arises the Text it selfe The Text it self is a piece of a Sermon of
be strong enough to make benefit of that assistance And so death adheres when sin and Satan have weakned body and minde death enters upon both And in that respect he is Vltimus hostis the last enemy and that is Sextum vestigium our sixth and next step in this paraphrase Death is the last and in that respect the worst enemy In an enemy Novisssnsâ—s hostis that appeares at first when we are or may be provided against him there is some of that which we call Honour but in the enemie that reserves himselfe unto the last and attends our weake estate there is more danger Keepe it where I intend it in that which is my spheare the Conscience If mine enemie meet me betimes in my youth in an object of tentation so Iosephs enemie met him in Putifars Wife yet if I doe not adhere to this enemy dwell upon a delightfull meditation of that sin if I doe not fuell and foment that sin assist and encourage that sin by high diet wanton discourse other provocation I shall have reason on my side and I shall have grace on my side and I shall have the History of thousand that have perished by that sin on my side Even Spittles will give me souldiers to fight for me by their miserable example against taht sin nay perchance sometimes the vertue of that woman whom I sollicite will assist me But when I lye under the hands of that enemie that hath reserved himselfe to the last to my last bed then when I shall be able to stir no limbe in any other measure then a Feaver or a Palsie shall shake them when everlasting darknesse shal have an inchoation in the present dimnesse of mine eyes and the everlasting gnashing in the present chattering of my teeth and the everlasting worme in the present gnawing of the Agonies of my body and anguishes of my minde when the last enemie shall watch my remedilsse body and my desconsolate soule there there where not the Physitian in his way perchance not the Priist in hi shall be able to give any assistance And when he hath sported himselfe with my misery upon that stage my death-bed shall shift the Scene and throw me from that bed into the grave and there triumph over me God knowes how many generations till the Redeemer my Redeemer the Redeemer of all me body aswell as soule come againe As death is Novissimus hostis the enemy which watches me at my last weaknesse and shall hold me when I shall be no more till that Angel come Who shall say and sweare that time shall be no more in that consideration in that apprehension he is the powerfullest the fearefulest enemy and yet evern there this enemy Abolebitur he shall be destroyed which is Septimum vestigium our seventh and last step in this paraphrase This destruction this abolition of this last enemy is by the Resurrection Abolebieur for the Text is part of an argument for the Resurrection And truly it is a faire intimation and testimony of an everlasting end in that state of the Resurrection that no time shall end it that we have it presented to us in all the parts of time in the past in the present and in the future We had a Resurrection in prophecy we have a Resurrection in the present working of Gods Sprit we shall have a Resurrection in the finall consummation The Prophet speaks in the furture He will swallow up death in victory there it is Abolebit Esay 25.8 All the Erangelists speak historically of matter of fact in them it is Abolevit And here in this Apostle it is in the present Aboletur now he is destroyed And this exhibites unto us a threefold occasion of advancing our devotion in considering a threefold Resurrection First a Resurrection from dejections and calamities in this world a Temporary Resurrection Secondly a Resurrection from sin a Spirituall Resurrection and then a Resurrection Secondly a Resurrection A calamitate When the Prophets speak of a Resurrection in the old Testament 1. A calamitate for the most part their principall intention is upon a temporall restitution from calamities that oppresse them then Neither doth Calvin carry those emphaticall words which are so often cited for a proofe of the last Resurrection Job 19.25 That he knows his Redeemer lives that he knows he shall stand the last man upon earth that though his body be destroyed yet in his flesh and with his eyes he shall see God to any higher sense then so that how low soeve he bee brought to what desperate state soever he be reducedin the eyes of the world yet he assures himself of a Resurrection a reparation a restitution to his former bodily health and worldly fortune which he had before And such a Resurrection we all know Iob had In that famous and most considerable propheticall vision which God exhibited to Ezekiel where God set the Prophet in a valley of very many and very dry bones and invites the severall joynts to knit again tyes them with their old sinews and ligaments clothes them in their old flest wraps them in their old skin and cals life into them again Gods principall intention in that vision was thereby to give them an assurance of a Resurrection from their present calamity not but that there is also good evidence of the last Resurrection in that vision too Thus far God argues with them áre nota from that which they knew before the finall Resurrection he assures them that which they knew not till then a present Resurrection from those pressures Remember by this vision that which you all know already that at last I shall re-unite the dead and dry bones of all men in a generall Resurrection And them if you remember if you consider if you look upon that can you doubt but that I who can do that can also recollect you from your present desperation and give you a Resurrection to your former temporall happinesse And this truly arises pregnantly necessarily out of the Prophets answer God asks him there Son of man cna these bones live And he answers Domine tu nósti O Lord God thou knowest The Prophet answers according to Gods intention in the question If that had been for their living in the last Resurrection Ezekiel would have answered God as Martha answered Christ John 11.24 when he said Thy brother Lazarus shall rise again I know that he shall rise again at the Resurrection at the last day but when the question was whether men so macerated so seattered in this world could have a Resurrection to their former temprorall happinesse here that puts the Prophet to his Domine tu nósti It is in thy breast to proposeit itis in thy hand to execute it whether thou do it or do it not thy name be glorisied It fals not within our conjecture which way it shall please thee to take for this Resurrection Domine tu nósti Thou
to seale to them that Patent that Commission Quorum remiseritis That others might receive remission of sins by their power So the Holy Ghost fell upon these men here for the benefit of others that thereby a great doubt might be removed a great scruple devested a great disputation extinguished whether it were lawfull to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles Ver. 2. or no for as we see in the next Chapter Peter himselfe was reproved of the Jews for this that he had done and therefore God ratified and gave testimony to this service of his by this miraculous falling of the Holy Ghost as S. Augustine makes the reason of this falling very justly to have been so then this falling of the Holy Ghost was not properly or not meerly an infusing of justifying grace but an infusing of such gifts as might edifie others for S. Peter speaking of this very action in the next Chapter Ver. 15. fayes The Holy Ghost fell on them as on us in the beginning Which was when he fell upon them as this day This doth not imply Graduum aequalitatem an equall measure of the same gifts as the Apostles had who were to passe over the whole world and work upon all men But it implies Doni identitatem it was the same miraculous expressing of the presence and working of the Holy Ghost for the confirmation of Peter that the Gentiles might be preached unto and for the consolation of the Gentiles that they might be enabled to preach to one another for so it is expresly said in this Chapter Ver. 46. That they heard these men speake with divers tongues they that heard the Preacher were made partakers of the same gifts that the Preacher had A good hearer becomes a good Preacher that is able to edifie others It it true that these men were not to be literally Preachers as the Apostles upon whom the Holy Ghost fell as upon them were and therefore the gift of tongues may seeme not to have beene so necessary to them But it is not onely the Preacher that hath use of the tongue for the edification of Gods people but in all our discourses and conferences with one another we snould preach his glory his goodnesse his power that every man might speake one anothers language and preach to one anothers conscience that when I accuse my selfe and confesse mine infirmities to another man that man may understand that there is in that confession of mine a Sermon and a rebuke and a reprehension to him if he be guilty of the same sin Nay if he be guilty of a sin contrary to mine For as in that language in which God spoke the Hebrew the same roote will take in words of a contrary signification as the word of Iobs wife signifies blessing and cursing too so the covetous man that heares me confesse my prodigality should argue to himself If prodigality which howsoever it hurt a particular person yet spreads mony abroad which is the right and naturall use of money be so heavy a sin how heavy is my covetousnesse which besides that it keepes me all the way in as much penuriousnesse as the prodigall man brings himselfe to at last is also a publique sin because it emprisons that money which should be at liberty and employed in a free course abroad And so also when I declare to another the spirituall and temporall blessings which God hath bestowed upon me he may be raised to a thankfull remembrance that he hath received all that from God also This is not the use of having learnt divers tongues to be able to talke of the wars with Durch Captains or of trade with a French Merchant or of State with a Spanish Agent or of pleasure with an Italian Epicure It is not to entertaine discourse with strangers but to bring strangers to a better knowledge of God in that way wherein we by his Ordinance do worship and ferve him Now this place is ill detorted by the Roman Church for the confirmation of their Sacrament of Confirmation That because the Holy Ghost fell upon men at another time then at Baptisme therefore there is a lesse perfect giving of the Holy Ghost in Baptisme It is too forward a triumph in him who sayes of this place Pamclius Annot in Cypr. Epist 72. Locus insignis ad assertionem Sacramenti manus impositionis That is an evident place for Confirmation of the Sacrament of Confirmation It is true that S. Cyprian sayes there That a man is not truly sanctified Nisi utroque Sacramento nascatur Except he be regenerate by both Sacraments And he tels us what those two Sacraments are Aqua Spiritus Water and the Spirit That except a man have both these seales inward and outward he is not safe And S. Cyprian requires and usefully truly an outward declaration of this inward seale of this giving of the Holy Ghost For he instances expresly in this which was done in this Text That there was both Baptisme and a giving of the Holy Ghost Neither would S. Cyprian forbeare the use of Confirmation because it was also in use amongst some Heretiques Quia Novatianus facere audet non putabimus nos esse faciendum Cypr. Epist 72. Shall we give over a good custome because the Novatians doe the like Quia Novatianus extra Ecclesiam vendicat sibi veritatis imaginem relinquemus Ecclesiae veritatem Shall the Church forbeare any of those customes which were induced to good purposes because some Heretiques in a false Church have counterfaited them or corrupted them And therefore sayes that Father It was so in the Apostles time Et nunc quoque apud nos geritur We continue it so in our time That they who are Baptized Signaculo Dominico consummentur That they may have a ratification a consummation in this seale of the Holy Ghost Which was not in the Primitive Church as in the later Roman Church a confirmation of Baptisme so as that that Sacrament should be but a halfe-Sacrament but it was a Confirmation of Christians with an encrease of grace when they came to such yeares as they were naturally exposed to some tentations Our Church acknowledges the trueuse of this Confirmation for in the first Collect in the office of Confirmation it confesses that that child is already regenerated by water and the holy Ghost and prayes onely for farther strength And having like a good mother taught us the right use of it then our Church like a supreme Commander too enjoyns expresly that none be admitted to the Communion till they have received their Confirmation And though this injunction be not in rigour and exactnesse pursued and executed yet it is very necessary that the purpose thereof should be maintained That is that none should be received to the Communion till they had given an account of their faith and proficiencie For he is but an interpretative but a presumptive Christian who because he is so old ventures upon the Sacrament A
the Schoolemen have called all these six not without just reason and good use by that heavy name And some of the Fathers have extended it farther then to these six S. Bernard in particular sayes Nolle obedire To resist lawfull Authority And another Simulata poenitentia To delude God with relapses counterfait repentances and another also Omne schisma All schismaticall renting of the peace of the Church All these they call in that sense Sins against the Holy Ghost Now all sins against the Holy Ghost are not irremissible Stephen told his persecutors Acts 7.51.60 They resisted the Holy Ghost and yet he prayed for them But because these sins may and ordinarily doe come to that sin stop betimes David was far from the murder of Vriah when he did but looke upon his Wife as she was bathing A man is far from defying the holy Ghost when he does but neglect him and yet David did come and he will come to the bottome quickly It may make some impression in you to tell and to apply a short story In a great Schisme at Rome Ladislaus tooke that occasion to debauch and corrupt some of the Nobility It was discerned and then to those seven Governors whom they had before whom they called Sapientes Wise men they added seven more and called them Bonos Good men honest men and relied and confided in them Goodnesse is the Attribute of the Holy Ghost If you have Greatness you may seeme to have some of the Father for Power is his If you have Wisdome you may seeme to have some of the Son for that is his If you have Goodnesse you have the Holy Ghost who shall lead you into all truth And Goodnesse is To be good and easie in receiving his impressions and good and constant in retaining them and good and diffusive in deriving them upon others To embrace the Gospel to hold fast the Gospel to propagate the Gospel this is the goodnesse of the Holy Ghost And to resist the entrance of the Gospel to abandon it after we have professed it to forsake them whom we should assist and succour in the maintenance of it This is to depart from the goodnesse of the Holy Ghost and by these sins against him to come too neare the sin the irremissible sin in which the calamities of this world shall enwrap us and deliver us over to the everlasting condemnation of the next This is as much as these words do justly occasion us to say of that sin and into a more curious search thereof it is not holy sobriety to pierce SERM. XXXVI Preached upon Whitsunday JOHN 16.8 9 10 11. And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousnesse and of judgement Of sin because ye belceve not on me Of righteousnesse because I goe to my Father and ye see me no more Of judgement because the Prince of this world is judged OUr Panis quotidianus Our daily bread is that Iuge sacrificium That daily sacrifice of meditating upon God Our Panis hodiernus This dayes bread is to meditate upon the holy Ghost To day if ye will heare his voice to day ye are with him in Paradise For wheresoever the holy Ghost is Luk. 23.43 he creates a Paradise The day is not past yet As our Saviour said to Peter Hodie in nocte hac Mar. 14.10 This day even in this night thou shalt deny me so Hodie in nocte hac Even now though evening the day-spring from on high visits you Esay 38.8 God carries back the shadow of your Sun-dyall as to Hezechias And now God brings you to the beginning of this day if now you take knowledge that he is come who when he comes Reproves the world of sin c. The solemnity of the day requires Divisio and the method of the words offers for our first consideration the Person who is not named in our text but designed by a most emphaticall denotation Ille He He who is all and doth all But the word hath relation to a name proper to the holy Ghost for in the verse immediatly preceding our Saviour tels his disciples That he will send them the Comforter So forbearing all other mysterious considerations of the holy Ghost we receive him in that notion and function in which Christ sends him The Comforter And therefore in this capacity as The Comforter we must consider his action Arguet He shall reprove Reprove and yet Comfort nay therefore comfort because reprove And then the subject of his action Mundum The world the whole world no part left unreproved yet no part left without comfort And after that what he reproves the world of That multiplies Of sin of righteousnesse of judgement Can there be comfort in reproofe for sin Or can there lie a reproofe upon righteousnesse or upon judgement Very justly Though the evidence seem at first as strange as the crime for though that be good evidence against the sin of the world That they beleeve not in Christ Of sin because ye beleeve not on me yet to be Reproved of righteousnesse because Christ goes to his Father and they see him no more And to be Reproved of judgement because the Prince of this world is judged this seemes strange and yet this must be done and done to our comfort For this must be done Cum venerit Then when the holy Ghost and he in that function as the Comforter is come is present is working Beloved Reproofes upon others without charity rather to defame them then amend them Reproofes upon thy selfe without shewing mercy to thine own soule diffidences and jealousies and suspitions of God either that he hated thee before thy sin or hates thee irremediably irreconciliably irrecoverably irreparably for thy sin These are Reproofes but they are Absente spiritu In the absence of the holy Ghost before he comes or when he is gone When he comes and stayes He shall reprove and reprove all the world and all the world of those errours sin and righteousnesse and judgement and those errours upon those evidences Of sin because ye beleeve not on me c. But in all this proceeding he shall never devest the nature of a Comforter In that capacity he is sent in that he comes and works I doubt I shall see an end of my houre and your patience before I shall have passed those branches which appertaine most properly to the celebration of this day the Person the Comforter his action Reproofe the subject thereof the world and the Time Cum venerit When he comes The inditement of what the accusation is and the evidence how it is proved may exercise your devotion at other times Acts 2.2 This day the holy Ghost is said to have come suddenly and therefore in that pace we proceed and make haste to the consideration of the Person Ille When he He the holy Ghost the Comforter is come Ille Spiritus sanctus Gen. 3.15 Ille alone He is
is that he hath infused and imprinted in all their hearts whom hee hath called effectually to the participation of the meanes of salvation in the true Church a constant and infallible assurance that all the world that is all the rest of the world which hath not imbraced those helps lies unrecoverably by any other meanes then these which we have imbraced under sin under the waight the condemnation of sin So that the comfort of this reproofe as all the reproofes of the holy Ghost in this Text are given by him in that quality as he is The Comforter is not directly and simply and presently upon all the world indeed but upon those whom the holy Ghost hath taken out of this world to his world in this world that is to the Christian Church them he Reproves that is Convinces them establishes delivers them from all scruples that they have taken the right way that they and onely they are delivered and all the world beside are still under sin When the Holy Ghost hath brought us into the Ark from whence we may see all the world without sprawling and gasping in the flood the flood of sinfull courses in the world and of the anger of God when we can see this violent flood the anger of God break in at windowes and there devoure the licentious man in his sinfull embracements and make his bed of wantonnesse his death-bed when we can see this flood the anger of God swell as fast as the ambitious man swels and pursue him through all his titles and and at last suddenly and violently wash him away in his owne blood not alwayes in a vulgar but sometimes in an ignominious death when we shall see this flood the flood of the anger of God over-flow the valley of the voluptuous mans gardens and orchards and follow him into his Arbours and Mounts and Terasses and carry him from thence into a bottomlesse Sea which no Plummet can sound no heavy sadnesse relieve him no anchor take hold of no repentance stay his tempested and weather-beaten conscience when wee finde our selves in this Ark where we have first taken in the fresh water of Baptisme and then the Bread and Wine and Flesh of the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus Then are we reproved forbidden all scruple then are we convinced That as the twelve Apostles shall sit upon twelve seats and judge the twelve Tribes at the last day So doth the Holy Ghost make us Judges of all the world now and inables us to pronounce that sentence That all but they who have sincerely accepted the Christian Religion are still sub peccato under sin and without remedy For we must not waigh God with leaden or iron or stone waights how much land or metall or riches he gives one man more then another but how much grace in the use of these or how much patience in the want or in the losse of these we have above others When we come to say Hi in curribus Hi in equis Psal 20.7 nos autem in nomine Domini Dei nostri invocabimus Some trust in chariots and some in horses Ver. 8. but we will remember the name of the Lord our God Ipsi obligati sunt ceciderunt nos autem surreximus erecti sumus They are brought downe and fallen but we are risen and stand upright Obligati sunt ceciderunt They are pinion'd and falleâ— fettered and manacled and so fallen fallen and there must lie Nos autem erecti Wee are risen and enabled to stand now we are up When we need not feare the mighty nor envy the rich Quia signatum super nos lumen vultus tui Domine Because the light of thy countenance O Lord Ver. 7. is not onely shed but lifted up upon us Quia dedisti laetitiam in corde nostro Because thou hast put gladnesse in our heart more then in the time that their corne and their wine increased when we can thus compare the Christian Church with other States and spirituall blessings with temporall then hath the Holy Ghost throughly reproved us that is absolutely convinced us that there is no other foundation but Christ no other name for salvation but Jesus and that all the world but the true professors of that name are still under sin under the guiltinesse of sin And these be the three acceptations of this word Arguet He shall carry the Gospel to all before the end Arguit Hee does worke upon the faculties of the naturall man every minute and Arguit againe Hee hath manifested to us that that they who goe not the same way perish And so wee passe to the second Reproofe and Conviction He shall reprove the world De Iustitia Of Rightcousnesse This word 2 Part. Dejustitia Iustificare To justifie may be well considered three wayes First as it is verbum vulgare as it hath an ordinary and common use And then as it is verbum forense as it hath a civill and a legall use And lastly as it is verbum Ecclesiasticum as it hath a Church use as it hath been used amongst Divines The first way To justifie is to averre and maintaine any thing to be true as wee ordinarily say to that purpose I will justifie it Psal 19.9 and in that sense the Psalmist sayes Iustificata judicia Domini in semetipso The judgements of the Lord justifie themselves prove themselves to be just And in this sense men are said to justifie God Luke 7.29 The Pharisees and Lawyers rejected the counsell of God but all the people and the Publicans justified God that is testified for him In the second way as it is a judiciall word To justifie is only a verdict of Not guilty and a Judgement entred upon that That there is not evidence enough against him and therefore he is justified that is Prov. 17.14 acquited In this sense is the word in the Proverbs He that justifieth the wicked and he that condemneth the just even they both are an abomination to the Lord. Now neither of these two wayes are we justified we cannot be averred to be just God himselfe cannot say so of us Exod. 23.7 of us as we are we Non justificabo impium I will not justifie the wicked God will not say it God cannot doe it A wicked man cannot be he cannot by God be said to be just they are incompatible contradictory things Nor the second way neither consider us standing in judgement before God no man can be acquited for want of evidence Psal 143.2 Enter not into Iudgement with thy servant for in thy sight shall none that liveth be justified For if we had another soule to give the Devill to bribe him to give no evidence against this if we had another iron to seare up our consciences against giving of evidence against our selves then yet who can take out of Gods hands those examinations and those evidences which he hath registred exactly as often as we have
root and bring that comfort to the fruit and confesse that God who is both is the God of all comfort Follow God in the execution of this good purpose upon thee to thy Vocation and heare him who hath left East and West and North and South in their dimnesse and dumnesse and deafnesse and hath called thee to a participation of himselfe in his Church Go on with him to thy justification That when in the congregation one sits at thy right hand and beleeves but historically It may be as true which is said of Christ as of William the Conquerour and as of Iulius Caesar and another at thy left hand and beleeves Christ but civilly It was a Religion well invented and keeps people well in order and thou betweene them beleevest it to salvation in an applying faith proceed a step farther to feele this fire burning out thy faith declared in works thy justification growne into sanctification And then thou wilt be upon the last staire of all That great day of thy glorification will breake out even in this life and either in the possessing of the good things of this world thou shalt see the glory and in possessing the comforts of this World see the joy of Heaven or else which is another of his wayes in the want of all these thou shalt have more comfort then others have or perchance then thou shouldest have in the possessing of them for he is the God of all comfort and of all the wayes of comfort And therefore Blessed be God even the Father c. SERM. XXXIX Preached upon Trinity-Sunday 1 PET. 1.17 And if ye call on the Father who without respect of persons judgeth according to every mans works passe the time of your sojourning here in feare YOu may remember that I proposed to exercise your devotions and religious meditations in these exercises with words which might present to you first the severall persons in the Trinity and the benefits which we receive in receiving God in those distinct notions of Father Son and holy Ghost And then with other words which might present those sins and the danger of those sins which are most particularly opposed against those severall persons Of the first concerning the person of the Father we spoke last and of the other concerning sins against the Father these words will occasion us to speak now It is well noted upon those words of David Psal 51.1 Have mercy upon me O God that the word is Elohim which is Gods in the plurall Have mercy upon me O Gods for David though he conceived not divers Gods yet he knew three divers persons in that one God and he knew that by that sin which he lamented in that Psalme that peccatum complicatum that manifold sin that sin that enwrapped so many sins he had offended all those three persons For whereas we consider principally in the Father Potestatem Power and in the Son Sapientiam Wisdome and in the holy Ghost Bonitatem Goodnesse David had sinned against the Father in his notion In potestate in abusing his power and kingly authority to a mischievous and bloody end in the murder of Vriah And he had sinned against the Son in his notion In sapientia in depraving and detorting true wisdome into craft and treachery And he had sinned against the holy Ghost in his notion In bonitate when he would not be content with the goodnesse and piety of Vriah who refused to take the eases of his owne house and the pleasure of his wifes bosome as long as God himselfe in his army lodged in Tents and stood in the face of the Enemy Sins against the Father then we consider especially to be such as are In potestate Either in a neglect of Gods Power over us or in an abuse of that power which we have from God over others and of one branch of that power particularly of Judgement is this Text principally intended If ye call on the Father who without respect of persons judgeth c. In the words we shall insist but upon two parts Divisio First A Counsaile which in the Apostles mouth is a commandement And then a Reason an inducement which in the Apostles mouth is a forcible an unresistible argument The Counsell that is The commandement is If ye call on the Father feare him stand in feare of him And the reason that is the Argument is The name of Father implyes a great power over you therefore feare him And amongst other powers a power of judging you of calling you to an account therefore feare him In which Judgement this Judge accepts no persons but judges his sons as his servants and therefore feare him And then he judges not upon words outward professions but upon works actions according to every mans works and therefore feare him And then as on his part he shall certainly call you to judgement when you goe hence so on your part certainly it cannot be long before you goe hence for your time is but a sojourning here it is not a dwelling And yet it is a sojourning here it is not a posting a gliding through the world but such a stay as upon it our everlasting dwelling depends And therefore that we may make up this circle and end as we begun with the feare of God passe that time that is all that time in fear In fear of neglecting and undervaluing or of over-tempting that great power which is in the Father And in feare of abusing those limnes and branches and beames of that power which he hath communicated to thee in giving thee power and authority any way over others for these To neglect the power of the Father or To abuse that power which the Father hath given thee over others are sinnes against the Father who is power If ye call on the Father c. First then for the first part the Counsell Si invocatis If ye call on the Father In timore 1. Part. Doe it in feare The Counsell hath not a voluntary Condition and arbitrary in our selves annexed to it If you call then feare does not import If you doe not call you need not feare It does not import That if you professe a particular forme of Religion you are bound to obey that Church but if you doe not but have fancied a religion to your selfe without precedent Or a way to salvation without any particular religion Or a way out of the world without any salvation or damnation but a going out like a candle if you can think thus you need not feare This is not the meaning of this If in this place If you call on the Father c. But this If implyes a wonder an impossibility that any man should deny God to be the Father If the author the inventer of any thing usefull for this life be called the father of that invention by the holy Ghost himselfe Gen. 4.20 Iabal was the father of such as dwell in Tents and Tubal his brother
This is my beloved Son this day have I begotten him And with such Copies it seemes both Iustin Martyr and Irenaeus met for they reade these words so and interpret them accordingly But these words are misplaced and mis-transferred out of the second Psalme where they are And as they change the words and in stead of In quo complacui In whom I am well pleased reade This day have I begotten thee S. Cyprian addes other words to the end of these which are Hunc audite Heare him Which words when these words were repeated at the Transfiguration were spoken but here at the Baptisme they were not what Copy soever misled S. Cyprian or whether it were the failing of his own memory But S. Chrysostome gives an expresse reason why those words were spoken at the Transfiguration and not here Because saies he Here was onely a purpose of a Manifestation of the Trinity so farre as to declare their persons who they were and no more At the Trans-figuration where Moses and Elias appeared with Christ there God had a purpose to preferre the Gospel above the Law and the Prophets and therefore in that place he addes that Hunc audite Heare him who first fulfills all the Law and the Prophets and then preaches the Gospel He was so well pleased in him as that he was content to give all them that received him Eph. 1.6 power to become the Sons of God too as the Apostle sayes By his grace he hath made us accepted in his beloved Beloved That you may be so Come up from your Baptisme as it is said that Christ did Rise and ascend to that growth which your Baptisme prepared you to And the heavens shall open as then even Cataractae coeli All the windowes of heaven shall open and raine downe blessings of all kindes in abundance And the Holy Ghost shall descend upon you as a Dove in his peacefull comming in your simple and sincere receiving him And he shall rest upon you to effect and accomplish his purposes in you If he rebuke you as Christ when he promises the Holy Ghost though he call him a Comforter John 16.7 sayes That he shall rebuke the world of divers things yet he shall dwell upon you as a Dove Quae si mordet osculando mordet sayes S. Augustine If the Dove bite it bites with kissing if the Holy Ghost rebuke he rebukes with comforting And so baptized and so pursuing the contract of your Baptisme and so crowned with the residence of his blessed Spirit in your holy conversation hee shall breathe a soule into your soule by that voyce of eternall life You are my beloved Sonnes in whom I am well pleased SERM. XLIV Preached at S. Dunstanes upon Trinity-Sunday 1627. REV. 4.8 And the foure Beasts had each of them sixe wings about him and they were full of eyes within And they rest not day and night saying Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty which was and is and is to come THese words are part of that Scripture which our Church hath appointed to be read for the Epistle of this day This day which besides that it is the Lords day the Sabbath day is also especially consecrated to the memory and honour of the whole Trinity The Feast of the Nativity of Christ Christmas day which S. Chrysostome calls Metropolin omnium festorum The Metropolitane festivall of the Church is intended principally to the honour of the Father who was glorified in that humiliation of that Son that day because in that was laid the foundation and first stone of that house and Kingdome in which God intended to glorifie himselfe in this world that is the Christian Church The Feast of Easter is intended principally to the honour of the Son himselfe who upon that day began to lift up his head above all those waters which had surrounded him and to shake off the chaines of death and the grave and hell in a glorious Reserrection And then the Feast of Pentecost was appropriated to the honour of the Holy Ghost who by a personall falling upon the Apostles that day inabled them to propagate this Glory of the Father and this death and Resurrection of the Son to the ends of the world to the ends in Extention to all places to the ends in Duration to all times Now as S. Augustine sayes Nullus eorum extra quemlibet eorum est Every Person of the Trinity is so in every other person as that you cannot think of a Father as a Father but that there falls a Son into the same thought nor think of a person that proceeds from others but that they from whom he whom ye think of proceeds falls into the same thought as every person is in every person And as these three persons are contracted in their essence into one God-head so the Church hath also contracted the honour belonging to them in this kinde of Worship to one day in which the Father and Son and Holy Ghost as they are severally in those three severall dayes might bee celebrated joyntly and altogether It was long before the Church did institute a particular Festivall to this purpose For before they made account that that verse which was upon so many occasions repeated in the Liturgy and Church Service Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost had a convenient sufficiency in it to keep men in a continuall remembrance of the Trinity But when by that extreame inundation and increase of Arians these notions of distinct Persons in the Trinity came to be obliterated and discontinued the Church began to refresh her selfe in admitting into to the formes of Common Prayer some more particular notifications and remembrances of the Trnity And at last though it were very long first for this Festivall of this Trinity-Sunday was not instituted above foure hundred yeares since they came to ordaine this day Which day our Church according to that peacefull wisedome wherewithall the God of Peace of Unity and Concord had inspired her did in the Reformation retaine and continue out of her generall religious tendernesse and holy loathnesse to innovate any thing in those matters which might bee safely and without superstition continued and entertained For our Church in the Reformation proposed not that for her end how shee might goe from Rome but how she might come to the Truth nor to cast away all such things as Rome had depraved but to purge away those depravations and conserve the things themselves so restored to their first good use For this day then were these words appointed by our Church Divisic And therefore we are sure that in the notion and apprehension and construction of our Church these words appertaine to the Trinity In them therefore we shall consider first what these foure creatures were which are notified and designed to us in the names and figures of foure Beasts And then what these foure creatures did Their Persons and their Action will be our two
sayes Let us us in the plurall make man we are glad to finde such a plurall manner of expressing God by the Holy Ghost as may concurre with that which we believed before that is divers persons in one God To the same purpose also is that of the Prophet Esay where God sayes Esay 6.8 Whom shall I send or who shall goe for us There we discerne a singularity one God Whom shall I send and a plurality of persons too Who shal go for us But what man that had not been catachized in that Doctrine before would have conceived an opinion or established a faith in the Trinity upon those phrases in Moses or in Esay without other evidence Certainly it was the Divine purpose of God to reserve and keep this mystery of the Trinity unrevealed for a long time even from those who were generally to have their light and instruction from his word They had the Law and the Prophets and yet they had no very clear notions of the Trinity For this is evident that in Trismegistus and in Zoroaster and in Plato and some other Authors of that Ayre there seeme to be clearer and more literall expressings of the Trinity then are in all the Prophets of the old Testament We take the reason to be that God reserved the full Manifestation of this mystery for the dignifying and glorifying of his Gospel And therefore it is enough that we know that they of the old Testament were saved by the same faith in the Trinity that we are How God wrought that faith in them amongst whom he had established no outward meanes for the imprinting of such a faith let us not too curiously inquire Let us be content to receive our light there where God hath been pleased to give it that is in those places of the new Testament which admit no contradiction nor disputation As where Christ saies Mat. 28.19 Goe and teach all Nations baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost And where it is said There are three that beare witnesse in heaven The Father 1 Iohn 5.7 the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one There are Obumbrations of the Trinity in Nature and Illustrations of the Trinity in the old Testament but the Declaration the Manifestation thereof was reserved for the Gospel Now this place this Text is in both It is in the old and it is in the new Testament here and in Esay And in both places agreed by all Expositors to be a confession of the Trinity in that three-fold repetition Holy holy holy Where by the way you may have use of this note that in the first place in the Prophet Esay we have a faire intimation that that use of Subalternation in the service of God of that which we have called Antiphones and Responsaries in the Church of God when in that service some things are said or sung by one side of the Congregation and then answered by the other or said by one man and then answered by the whole Congregation that this manner of serving God hath a pattern from the practise of the Triumphant Church For there the Seraphim cryed to one another or as it is in the Originall this Seraphim to this Holy Holy Holy so that there was a voice given and an answer made and a reply returned in this service of God And as the patterne is in the Triumphant Church for this holy manner of praising God so in the practise therof the Militant prescribes for it hath been alwaies in use And therefore that religious vehemence of Damascen speaking of this kind of service in the Church in his time may be allowed us Hymnum dicemus etsi Daemones disrumpantur How much soever it anger the devil or his devilish instruments of schisme and sedition we wil serve God in this manner with holy cheerefulness with musique with Antiphones with Responsaries of which we have the patterne from the Triumphant and the practise from the Primitive Church Now as this Totality and Integrity of their Religion which they professe first with an Ingenuity openly then with an Assiduity incessantly hath as it were this dilatation this extention of God into three Persons which is the character and specification of the Christian Religion for no Religion but the Christian ever inclined to a plurality of Persons in one God so hath it also such a contracting of this infinite Power into that one God as could not agree with any other Religion then the Christian in either of those two essentiall circumstances first that that God should be Omnipotent and then that he should be Eternall The Lord God Almighty which was and is and is to come All the Heathen gods were ever subordinate to one another Omnipotens That which one god could not or would not do another would and could And this oftentimes rather to anger another god then to please the party And then there was a Surveyor a Controller over them all which none of them could resist nor intreat which was their Fatum their Destiny And so in these subsidiary gods these occasional gods there could be no Omnipotence no Almightinesse Our God is so Omnipotent Almighty so as that his Power hath no limitation but his owne Will Tertul. Nihil impossibile nisi quod non vult He can do whatsoever he will do And he can do more then that For he could have raised sons to Abraham out of stones in the street And as their gods were not Omnipotent Aeternus so neither were they Eternall They knew the history the generation the pedegree of all their gods They knew where they were born and where they went to schoole as Iustin Martyr sayes that Esculapius and Apollo their gods of Physick learnt their Physick of Chiron so that the Scholars were gods and their Masters none and they knew where their gods were buried They knew their Parents and their Uncles their Wives and their Children yea their Bastards and their Concubines so far were they from being eternall gods But if we remit and slacken this consideration of Eternity which is never to have had beginning consider only Perpetuity which is never to have end these gods were not capable of a perpetuall Honour an Honour that should never end For we see that of those three hundred several Iupiters which were worshiped in the World before Christ came though the World abound at this day with Idolatry yet there is not one of those Idols not one of those three hundred Iupiters celebrated with any solemnity no not knowne in any obscure corner of the World They were mortall before they were Gods They are dead in their Persons and they were mortall when they were Gods They are dead in their Worship In respect of Eternity which is necessary in a God Perpetuity is but Mobilis Imago as Plato cals it a faint and transitory shadow of Eternity and Pindarus makes it
a cloud of witnesses of his own infirmities Angelus and the manifold afflictions of this life for Dies diei eructat verbum Psal 19.2 Day unto day uttereth the same and night unto night teacheth knowledge The bells tell him in the night and fame tels him in the day that he himselfe melts and drops away piece-meal in the departing of parents and wife and children out of this world yea he heares daily of a worse departing he hears of the defection and back-sliding of some of his particular acquaintance in matter of religion or of their stifnesse and obduration in some course of sin which is the worse consumption Dies diei eructat every day makes him learneder then other in this sad knowledge And he knowes withall Quod cuiquam accidere potest cuivis potest that any of their cases may be his case too Man that is compassed with such a cloud of such witnesses had need of some light to shew him the right way and some strength to enable him to walk safely in it And this light and strength is here proposed in the assistance of an Angel Which being first understood of Angels in generall affords a great measure of comfort to us because the Angels are seduli animae pedissequae Bern. faithfull and diligent attendants upon all our steps They doe so they doe attend the service and good of man because it is illorum optimum It is the best thing that Angels as Angels can doe to doe so For evermore it is best for every thing to doe that for which it was ordained and made and they were made Angels for the service and assistance of man Bern. Vnum tui Angeli optimum est Man and Angels have one and the same thing in them which is better then any thing else that they have Nothing hath it but they and both they have it Deus nihil sui optimum habet unum optimum totus It is not so with God Idâ—â— God hath nothing in him that is Best but he is altogether one intire Best But Man and Angels have one thing common to them both which is the best thing that naturally either of them hath that is Reason understanding knowledge discourse consideration Angels and Men have grace too that is infinitely better then their Reason but though Grace be the principall in the nature and dignity thereof yet it is but accessory to an Angel or to man Grace is not in their nature at first but infused by God not to make them Angels and Men but to make them good Angels and good men This very reason then which is Illorum optimum The best thing that Angels as Angels naturally have teaches them that the best thing that they can doe is the performance of that for which they were made And then howsoever they were made spirits for a more glorious use to stand in the presence of God and to enjoy the fulnesse of that contemplation yet he made his spirits Angels for the love which he had to be with the sons of men Sufficit illis Bern. et pro magno habeant Let this content the Angels and let them magnifie God for this Quòd cum spiritus sint conditione ex gratia facti sunt Angeli That whereas by nature they are but spirits and the devill is so by favour and by office they are made Angels messengers from God to man Now as the Angels are not defective in their best part their Reason and therefore do their office in assisting us so also let us exalt our best part our Reason too to reverence them with a care of doing such actions onely as might not be unfit for their presence Both Angels and we have the Image of God imprinted in us the Angels have it not in summo though they have it in tuto They have it not in the highest degree for so Christ onely is the Image of the invisible God but they have it in a deep impression Colos 1.15 so as they can neither lose it nor deface it We have this Image of God so as that we cannot lose it but we may and doe deface it Vri potest non exuri The Devil hath this Image in him Bern. and it cannot be burnt out in hell for it is imprinted in the very naturall faculties of the soule But if we consider how many waters beat upon us in this world to wash off this Image how many rusty and habituall sins gnaw upon us to eat out this Image how many files passe over our souls in calamities and afflictions in which though God have a purpose Resculpere imaginem to re-engrave to refresh to polish this Image in us August by those corrections yet the devill hath a harsh file too that works a murmuring a comparing of our sinnes with other mens sinnes and our punishments with other mens punishments and at last either a denying of Providence That things so unequally carried cannot be governed by God or a wilfull renouncing of it in Desperation That his Providence cannot bee resisted and therefore it is all one what wee doe If wee consider this wee had need looke for Assistants Let us therefore looke first to that which is best in us naturally that is Reason For if we lose that our Reason our Discourse our Consideration and sinke into an incapable and barren stupidity there is no footing no subsistence for grace All the vertue of Corne is in the seed but that will not grow in water but onely in the earth All the good of man considered supernaturally is in grace but that will not grow in a washy soule in a liquid in a watery and dissolute and scattered man Grace growes in reason In that man and in that minde that considers the great treasure what it is to have the Image of God in him naturally for even that is our earnest of supernaturall perfection And this Image of God even in the Angels being Reason and the best act of rectified Reason The doing of that for which they were made It is that which the Angels are naturally inclined to doe to be alwayes present for the assistance of man for therefore they are Angels And since they have a joy at the Conversion of a sinner and every thing affects joy and therefore they indeavour our Conversion yea since they have an increase of their knowledge by being about us for S. Paul sayes That he was made a Preacher of the Gospel Eph. 3.10 to the intent that Angels might know by the Church the manifold wisedome of God And every thing affects knowledge these Saints of God upon earth intended in our Text might justly promise themselves a strong and a blessed comfort and a happy issue in all tribulations by this Scripture if there were no more intended in it but onely the assistance of Angels I saw an Angel But our security of deliverance is in a safer Angelus Christus and a
stronger hand then this not in these Ministeriall and Missive Angels onely but in his that sends them yea in his that made them Col. 1.16 17. By whom and for whom they and the Thrones and Dominions and Principalities and Powers and all things were created and in whom they consist For as the name of Angel is attributed to Christ Mal. 3.1 Angelus Testamenti The Angel of the Covenant And many of those miraculous passages in the deliverances of Israel out of Egypt which were done by the second Person of the Trinity by Christ in Exodus are by Moses there and in the abridgement of that story Acts 7. by Stephen after attributed to Angels So in this Text this Angel which doth so much for Gods Saints is not inconveniently by many Expositors taken to be our Saviour Christ himselfe And will any man doubt of performance of conditions in him Will any man looke for better security then him who puts two and two such into the band Christ and Iesus An anointed King able an actuall Saviour willing to discharge not his but our debt He is a double Person God and Man He ingages a double pawn the old and the new Testament the Law and the Gospel and you may be bold to trust him that hath paid so well before since you see a performance of the Prophesies of the old Testament in the free and glorious preaching of the Gospel trust also in a performance of the promises of the Gospel in timely deliverances in this life and an infallible and eternall reposednesse in the life to come Hee tooke our nature that he might know our infirmities experimentally He brought down a better nature that he might recover us restore us powerfully effectually and that hee might be sure to accomplish his work he brought more to our reparation then to our first building The God-head wrought as much in our Redemption as in our Creation and the Man-hood more for it began but then And to take from us all doubt of his power or of his will in our deliverance he hath taken the surest way of giving satisfaction Esay 53.4 He hath payed beforehand Verè tulit He hath truly born all our infirmities He hath already And with his stripes are we healed we that are here now are healed by his stripes received sixteen hundred yeares since Apoc. 13.8 Nay he was Occisus ab origine The Lamb slaine from the beginning of the world That day that the frame of the world was fully set up in the making of man That day that the fairest piece of that frame fell down again in the fall of Adam That day that God repaired this ruine again in the promise of a Messias all which we take ordinarily to have fallen in one day the sixt day that day in that promise was this Lamb slain and all the debts not only of our fore-fathers and ours but of the last man that shall be found alive at the last day were then payed so long before-hand This security then Angelus Ecclesiae for our deliverance and protection we have in this Angel in our Text I saw an Angel as this Angel is Christ but yet we have also another security more immediate and more appliable to us As men that lend money in the course of the world have a desire to have a servant in the band with the Master not that they hope for the money from him but that they know better how to call upon him and how to take hold of him so besides this generall assistance of Angels and besides this all-sufficiency of the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus we have for our security in this Text I saw an Angel the servants of Christ too This Angel is the Minister of his Word the Administrer of his Sacraments the Mediator betweene Christ and Man He is this Angel as S. Iohn so often in the Revelation and the Holy Ghost in other places of Scripture styles them This Angel is indeed the whole frame and Hierarchy of the Christian Church For though this Angel be called in this text The Angel in the singular yet to make use of one note by Anticipation now though in our distribution of the Branches we reserved it to the end because it fits properly our present consideration though this Angel be named in the singular and so may seeme to be restrained to Christ alone yet we see the Office when it comes to execution after is diffused and there are more in the Commission for those phrases that Wee Wee may seale the servants of Our Our God have a plurality in them a consent a harmony and imply a Congregation and doe better agree with the Ministery of the Church then with the Person of Christ alone So then to let go none of our assistants our sureties our safety is in the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus radically fundamentally meritoriously It is in the ministery of the Angels of heaven invisibly but it is in the Church of God and in the power of his Ministers there manifestly sensibly discernibly Mal. 2.7 They should seek the Law at the Priests mouth They should and therefore they are to blame that do not but fly to private expositions But why should they Quia angelus domini exercituum as it follows there Because the Priest is the Angel of the Lord of Hosts Yea the Gospell which they preach is above all messages which an Angel can bring of himselfe Gal. 1.8 If an Angel from heaven preach otherwise unto you then we have preached let him be accursed The ministery of celestiall Angels is inferiour to the ministery of the Ecclesiasticall The Gospel which belongs to us is truly Euangelium the good Ministery of good Angels the best ministery of the best Angels for though we compare not with those Angels in nature we compare with them in office though our offices tend to the same end to draw you to God yet they differ in the way and though the service of those Angels enlighten your understanding and assist your belief too yet in the ministery of these Angels in the Church there is a blessed fulfilling and verification of those words Now is salvation nearer Rom. 13.11 then when we beleeved You beleeve because those celestiall Angels have wrought invisibly upon you and disperst your clouds and removed impediments You beleeve because the great Angel Christ Jesus hath left his history his action and passion written for you and that is a historicall faith But yet salvation is nearer to you in having all this applied to you by them who are like you men and there where you know how to fetch it the Church That as you beleeve by reading the Gospels at home that Christ died for the world So you may beleeve by hearing here that he dyed for you This is Gods plenteous Redemption Quòd linguam meam assumsit in opus suum Bernar. That having so great a work
to doe as the salvation of soules he would make use of my tongue And being to save the world by his word that I should speak that word Docendo vos quod per se faciliùs suaviùs posset That he calls me up hither to teach you that which he could teach you better and sooner at home by his Spirit Indulgentia ejus est non indigentia It is the largenesse of his mercy towards you not any narrownesse in his power that he needs me And so have you this Angel in our text in all the acceptations in which our Expositors have delivered him It is Christ It is the Angels of heaven It is the Ministery of the Gospel And this Angell whosoever whatsoever S. Iohn saw come from the East I saw an Angel come from the East which was our second Branch and fals next into consideration This addition is intended for a particular addition to our comfort Ab oriente it is a particular endowment or inlargement of strength and power in this Angel that he comes from the East If we take it to goe the same way that we went before first of naturall Angels even the Westerne Angels Qui habuere occasum Those Angels which have had their Sun-set their fall they came from the East too Quomodo cecidisti decoelo Lucifer filius orientis Esay 14 12. How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer the Son of the morning He had his begetting his Creation in the East in the light and there might have stayed for any necessity of falling that God laid upon him Take the Angel of the text to be the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus and his name is The East he cannot be knowne he cannot bee said to have any West Zech. 6.12 Ecce vir Oriens nomen ejus so the vulgat reads that place Behold the Man whose name is the East you can call him nothing else for so the other Zachary the Zachary of the New Testament cals him too Luke 1.78 Per viscera misericordiae Through the tender bowels of his mercy Visitavit nos Oriens The East the day spring from on high hath visited us And he was derived à Patre luminum He came from the East begotten from all eternity of the Father of lights Iohn 16.28 I came out from the Father and came into the world Take this Angel to be the Preacher of the Gospel literally really the Gospell came out of the East where Christ lived and dyed and Typically figuratively Paradise which also figured the place to which the Gospel is to carry us Heaven that also was planted in the East and therefore S. Basil assignes that for the reason why in the Church service we turne to the East when we pray Quia antiquam requirimus patriam Wee looke towards our ancient country where the Gospel of our salvation was literally acted and accomplished and where Heaven the end of the Gospel was represented in Paradise Every way the Gospel is an Angel of the East But this is that which we take to be principally intended in it That as the East is the fountaine of light so all our illumination is to be taken from the Gospell Spread we this a little thinner and we shall better see through it If the calamities of the world or the heavy consideration of thine own sins have benummed and benighted thy soule in the vale of darknesse and in the shadow of death If thou thinke to wrastle and bustle through these strong stormes and thick clouds with a strong hand If thou thinke thy money thy bribes shall conjure thee up stronger spirits then those that oppose thee If thou seek ease in thy calamities that way to shake and shipwrack thine enemies In these crosse winds in these countermines to oppresse as thou art oppressed all this is but a turning to the North to blow away and scatter these sadnesses with a false an illusory and a sinfull comfort If thou thinke to ease thy selfe in the contemplation of thine honour thine offices thy favour thy riches thy health this is but a turning to the South the Sun-shine of worldly prosperity If thou sinke under thy afflictions and canst not finde nourishment but poyson in Gods corrections nor justice but cruelty in his judgements nor mercy but slacknesse in his forbearance till now If thou suffer thy soule to set in a cloud a dark cloud of ignorance of Gods providence and proceedings or in a darker of diffidence of his performance towards thee this is a turning to the West and all these are perverse and awry But turne to the East and to the Angel that comes from thence The Ministery of the Gospel of Christ Jesus in his Church It is true thou mayst find some darke places in the Scriptures Basil and Est silentii species obscuritas To speake darkly and obscurely is a kinde of silence I were as good not be spoken to as not be made to understand that which is spoken yet fixe thy selfe upon this Angel of the East the preaching of the Word the Ordinance of God and thine understanding shall be enlightned and thy beliefe established and thy conscience thus far unburthened that though the sins which thou hast done cannot be undone yet neither shalt thou bee undone by them There where thou art afraid of them in judgement they shall never meet thee but as in the round frame of the World the farthest West is East where the West ends the East begins So in thee who art a World too thy West and thy East shall joyne and when thy Sun thy soule comes to set in thy death-bed the Son of Grace shall suck it up into glory Our Angel comes from the East Angelus Ascendens a denotation of splendor and illustration of understanding and conscience and there is more he comes Ascending I saw an Angel ascend from the East that is still growing more cleare and more powerfull upon us Take the Angel here of naturall Angels 1 Sam. 28.13 and then when the Witch of Endor though an evill Spirit appeared to her yet saw him appeare so Ascending she attributes that glory to it I see gods Ascending out of the earth Take the Angel to be Christ and then his Ascension was Foelix clausula totius itinerarii Bernar. The glorious shutting up of all his progresse and though his descending from Heaven to earth and his descending from earth to hell gave us our title his Ascending by which he carried up our flesh to the right hand of his Father gave us our possession His Descent his humiliation gave us Ius ad rem but his Ascension Ius in re But as this Angel is the Ministery of the Gospel God gave it a glorious ascent in the Primitive Church Psal 19.6 when as this Sun Exultavit ut gigas ad currendam viam ascended quickly beyond the reach of Heretiques wits and Persecutors swords and as glorious an ascent in the
ends but since we see no such ends nor use of this we are at our liberty to doubt of the thing it selfe God told Simeon that he should not die till he had seen Christ but he did not tell him that he should die as soone as he had seen him But so much as was told him was enough to make him content to die when he had seen him and to come to his Nunc dimittis to that chearfulnesse as to sing his owne Requiem God accustomed S. Paul no doubt to such notifications from him and such apprehensions in himselfe of death as because it was not new it could not be terrible When S. Paul was able to make that protestation I protest by your rejoycing which I have in Christ Iesus our Lord I die dayly 1 Cor. 15.31 2 Cor. 11.23 And againe I am in prisons oft and often in deaths I die often No Executioner could have told him you must die to morrow but he could have said Alas I died yesterday and yesterday was twelve-month and seaven yeare and every yeare and month and weeke and day and houre before that There is nothing so neare Immortality as to die daily for not to feele death is Immortality and onely hee shall never feele death that is exercised in the continuall Meditation thereof Continuall Mortification is Immortality As Cordials lose their vertue and become no Cordials if they be taken every day so poysons do their venome too If a man use himselfe to them in small proportions at first he may grow to take any quantity He that takes a dram of Death to day may take an ounce to morrow and a pound after He that begins with that mortification of denying himselfe his delights which is a dram of Death shall be able to suffer the tribulations of this world which is a greater measure of death and then Death it selfe not onely patiently but cheerefully And to such a man death is not a dissolution but a redintegration not a divorce of body and soule but a sending of both divers wayes the soule upward to Heaven the body downeward to the earth to an indissoluble marriage to him who for the salvation of both assumed both our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus Psal 2.17 Therefore does S. Paul say of himselfe If I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith I joy and rejoyce with you all that is It is a just occasion of our common joy on your part and on mine too And therefore does S. Augustine say in his behalfe whatsoever can be threatned him Si potest vivere tolerabile est Whatsoever does not take away life may be endured for if it could not be endured it would take away life and Si non potest vivere sayes he If it doe take away life what shall he feele when hee is dead He adds the reason of all Opus cum fine merces sine fine Death hath an end but their reward that dye for Christ and their peace that dye in Christ hath no end Therefore was not S. Paul afraid of melancholique apprehensions by drawing his death into contemplation and into discourse he was not afraid to thinke nor to talke of his death But then S. Paul had another end in doing so here which is our last consideration To make the deeper impression in them to whom he preached then by telling them that he knew they should see his face no more This that S. Paul sayes Moriturus he sayes to the Ephesians but not at Ephesus He was departed from thence the yeare before for upon the newes that Claudius the Emperour who persecuted the Christians was dead he purposed to goe by Jerusalem to Rome In that peregrination and visitation of his his way fell out after to be by Miletus a place not far from Ephesus Ver. 22. He was bound in the Spirit as he sayes here to go to Ierusalem and therefore he could not visit them at Ephesus A man may have such obligations even for the service of God upon him as that it shall not be in his power to doe that service which he may owe and desire to pay in some particular Church It was in part S. Pauls case Vers 17. But yet he did what he could from Miletus he sent to Ephesus to call the Elders of that Church thither And then he preached this short but powerfull Sermon And as his manner ever was though still without prevaricating or forbearing to denounce the judgements of God upon them in cases necessary to make those whom he preached or writ to as benevolent and well-affected to him as he could for he was Omnia omnibus Made all things to all men to which purpose it is that he speakes and poures out himselfe Gal 4.14 with such a loving thankfulnesse to the Galatians Ye received me as an Angel of God even as Christ Iesus himselfe pursuing I say this manner of a mutuall endearing and a reciprocall embowelling of himselfe in the Congregation and the Congregation in him as certainely if we consider all unions the naturall union of Parents and children the matrimoniall union of Husband and Wife no union is so spirituall nor so neare to that by which we are made Idem spiritus cum Domino The same Spirit with the Lord as when a good Pastor and a good flock meete and are united in holy affections to one another to unite himselfe to his Ephesians inseparably even after his separation to be still present with them in his everlasting absence and to live with them even after death to make the deeper impressions of all his past and present instructions he speaks to them as a dying man I know you shall see my face no more Why did he so S. Paul did not dye in eleven yeares after this But he dyed to them for bodily presence now They were to see him no more As the day of my death is the day of Judgement to me so this day of his departing was the day of his death to them And for himselfe from this time when he gave this judgement of death upon himselfe all the rest of his life was but a leading far off to the place of execution For first very soone after this Agabus gave him notice of manifold afflictions in that Girdle which we spake of before There he was bound and emprisoned at Jerusalem from thence sent bound to Caesarea practised upon to be killed by the way forced to appeale to Caesar upon that Appeale sent prisoner to Rome ship-wracked upon the way at Malta Emprisoned under guard though not close prisoner two yeares after his comming thither and though dismissed and so enabled to visit some Churches yet laid hold upon againe by Nero and executed So that as it was literally true that the Ephesians never saw his face after this valediction so he may be said to have dyed then in such a sense as himselfe sayes to the Corinthians 1 Cor.
Christ Ephes 2.12 for so S. Paul sayes to the Ephesians Absque Christo absque Deo If ye be without Christ ye are without God For as it is the same absurdity in nature to say There is no Sun and to say This that you call the Sun is not the Sun this that shines out upon you this that produces your fruits and distinguishes your seasons is not the Sun so is it the same Atheisme in these dayes of light to say There is no God and to say This Christ whom you call the Son of God is not God That he in whom God hath manifested himselfe He whom God hath made Head of the Church and Judge of the world is not God This then is our double Sadduce Davids Atheist that beleeves not God S. Pauls Atheist that beleeves not Christ And as our Sadduce is so is our Pharisee twofold also There is a Pharisee Duplex Pharisaeus that by following private expositions separates himselfe from our Church principally for matter of Government and Discipline and imagines a Church that shall be defective in nothing and does not onely think himself to be of that Church but sometimes to be that Church for none but himselfe is of that perswasion And there is a Pharisee that dreames of such an union such an identification with God in this life as that he understands all things not by benefit of the senses and impressions in the fancy and imagination or by discourse and ratiocination as we poore soules doe but by immediate and continuall infusions and inspirations from God himselfe That he loves God not by participation of his successive Grace more and more as he receives more and more grace but by a communication of God himselfe to him intirely and irrevocably That he shall be without any need and above all use of Scriptures and that the Scriptures shall be no more to him then a Catechisme to our greatest Doctors That all that God commands him to doe in this world is but as an easie walk downe a hill That he can doe all that easily and as much more as shall make God beholden to him and bring God into his debt and that he may assigne any man to whom God shall pay the arrerages due to him that is appoint God upon-what man he shall confer the benefit of his works of Supererogation For in such Propositions as these and in such Paradoxes as these doe the Authors in the Roman Church delight to expresse and celebrate their Pharisaicall purity as we find it frequently abundantly in them In a word some of our home-Pharisees will say That there are some who by benefit of a certaine Election cannot sin That the Adulteries and Blasphemies of the Elect are not sins But the Rome-Pharisee will say that some of them are not onely without sin in themselves but that they can save others from sin or the punishment of sin by their works of Supererogation and that they are so united so identified with God already as that they are in possession of the beatificall Vision of God and see him essentially and as he is in this life for that Ignatius the father of the Jesuits did so Sandaeus Theolog pâ—r 1. fo 760. some of his Disciples say it is at least probable if not certaine And that they have done all that they had to doe for their owne salvation long agoe and stay in the world now onely to gather treasure for others and to worke out their salvation So that these men are in better state in this life then the Saints are in heaven There the Saints may pray for others but they cannot merit for others These men here can merit for other men and work out the salvation of others Nay they may be said in some respect to exceed Christ himselfe for Christ did save no man here but by dying for him These men save other men with living well for them and working out their salvation These are our double Sadduces our double Pharisees now beloved Dissentio if we would goe so far in S. Pauls way as to set this two-fold Sadduce Davids Atheist without God and S. Pauls Atheist without Christ against our twofold Pharisee our home-Catharist and our Rome-Catharist If we would spend all our wit and all our time all our Inke and our gall in shewing them the deformities and iniquities of one another by our preaching and writing against them The truth and the true Church might as S. Paul did in our Text scape the better But when we we that differ in no such points tear and wound and mangle one another with opprobrious contumelies and odious names of sub-division in Religion our Home-Pharisee and our Rome-Pharisee maligners of our Discipline and maligners of our Doctrine gaine upon ns and make their advantages of our contentions and both the Sadduces Davids Atheist that denies God and S. Pauls Atheist that denies Christ joyne in a scornfull asking us Where is now your God Are not we as well that deny him absolutely as you that professe him with wrangling But stop we the floodgates of this consideration it would melt us into teares Sadducaei Pharisaei interni End we all with this That we have all all these Sadduces and Pharisees in our owne bosomes Sadduces that deny spirits carnall apprehensions that are apt to say Is your God all Spirit and hath bodily eyes to see sin All Spirit and hath bodily hands to strike for a sinne Is your soule all spirit and hath a fleshly heart to feare All spirit and hath sensible sinews to feele a materiall fire Was your God who is all Spirit wounded when you quarrelled or did your soule which is all spirit drink when you were drunk Sins of presumption and carnall confidence are our Sadduces and then our Pharisees are our sins of separation of division of diffidence and distrust in the mercies of our God when we are apt to say after a sin Cares God who is all Spirit for my eloquent prayers or for my passionate teares Is the giving of my goods to the poore or of my body to the fire any thing to God who is all Spirit My spirit and nothing but my spirit my soule and nothing but my soule must satisfie the justice the anger of God and be separated from him for ever My Sadduce my Presumption suggests that there is no spirit no soule to suffer for sin and my Pharisee my Desperation suggests That my soule must perish irremediably irrecoverably for every sinne that my body commits Now if I go S. Pauls way to put a dissention between these my Sadduces and my Pharisees Via Pauli to put a jealousie between my presumption my desperation to make my presumption see that my desperation lies in wait for her and to consider seriously that my presumption will end in desperation I may as S. Paul did in the Text scape the better for that But if without farther
they hide the marks and infect others and wrastle against Gods notifications of their former sinnes And then the last of these three words which is here rendred Griefe Indignatio does properly signifie Indignation and Anger And therefore S. Augustine upon this place puts himselfe to that question If Davids constitution be shaken if his complexion and countenance be decayed and withered Prae indignatione for Indignation for Anger from whom proceeds this Indignation and this Anger sayes that blessed Father If it proceede from God sayes he it is well that he is but Turbatus and not Extinctus that he is but troubled and not distracted but shaken and not overthrowne but overthrowne and not ground to powder not trodden as flat as durt in the streets as the Prophet speaks For David himselfe had told us but a few Psalmes before Psal 2. ult That when the Sonne is angry and when we speake of the Sonne we intend a person more sensible and so more compassionate of our miseries then when we speake of God of God considered in the height of his Majesty and but a little angry which amounts not to this provocation of God which David had falne into here we may perish and perish in the way perish in a halfe repentance before we perfect our Reconciliation In the way so before we come to our end or in the way in these outward actions of repentance if they be hypocritically or occasionally or fashionally or perfunctorily performed and not with a right heart towards God Though this be the way we may perish in the way Now Aquinas places this fury as the Vulgat calls it this indignation in Absolom and not in David He takes Davids sorrow to rise out of his sons rebellion and furious prosecution thereof That David was thus vehemently affected for the fault of another And truly it is a holy tendernesse and an exemplar disposition to be so sensible and compassionate for the sins of other men Though Absolom could not have hurt David David would have grieved for his unnaturall attempt to doe it So in Aquinas sense it is Excandescentia pro inimicis a sorrow for his enemies Not for his owne danger from them but for their sin in themselves But Gregory Nyssen takes it de excandescentia in inimicos for an indignation against his enemies And that David speaks this by way of confession and accusation of himselfe as of a fault that he was too soone transported to an impatience and indignation against them though enemies And taking that sense we see how quickly even the Saints of God put themselves beyond the hability of making that Petition sincerely Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespasse against us How hard it is even for a good man to forgive an enemy Heg And how hard it is Nihil in peccatore odisse nisi peccatum to sever the sin from the sinner and to hate the fault and not the man But leaving Thomas and Gregory Aquinas and Nyssen to that Exposition in which I think they are singularly singular either that this sorrow in David was a charitable and compassionate sense of others faults which is Aquinas way or that it was a confession of uncharitablenesse in himself towards others which is Gregories way the whole stream for the most part of ancient Expositors divide themselves into these two channels Either that this indignation conceived by David which withered and decayed him was a holy scorn and indignation against his owne sins that such wretched things as those should separate him from his God and from his inheritance according to that chaine of Affections which the Apostle makes 2 Cor. 7. That godly sorrow brings a sinner to a care He is no longer carelesse negligent of his wayes and that care to a clearing of himselfe not to cleare himselfe by way of excuse or disguise but to cleare himselfe by way of physick by humble confession and then that clearing brings him to an indignation to a kind of holy scorne and wonder how that tentation could worke so Such an affection as we conceive to have been in the Spouse when she said Lavi pedes I have washed my feet how shall I defile them I have emptied my soul by Confession is it possible I should charge it with new transgressions Or else they place this affection this indignation in God And then they say it was an apprehension of the anger of God to be expressed upon him in the day of Judgement And against this Vermination as the Originall denotes against this gnawing of the worme that may bore through and sink the strongest vessell that sailes in the seas of this world there is no other varnish no other liniment no other medicament no other pitch nor rosin against this worme but the bloud of Christ Jesus And therefore whensoever this worme this apprehension of Gods future indignation reserved for the Judgement bites upon thee be sure to present to it the bloud of thy Saviour Never consider the judgement of God for sin alone but in the company of the mercies of Christ It is but the hissing of the Serpent and the whispering of Satan when he surprises thee in a melancholy midnight of dejection of spirit and layes thy sins before thee then Looke not upon thy sins so inseparably that thou canst not see Christ too Come not to a confession to God without consideration of the promises of his Gospel Even the sense and remorse of sin is a dangerous consideration but when the cup of salvation stands by me to keep me from fainting David himselfe could not get off when he would but as he complaines there which is the last act of his sorrow to be considered in this which is all his part and all our first part Inveteravit He waxed old because of all his enemies The difference is not of much importance Inveteravit whether it be Inveteravi or Inveteravit in the first or in the third person Whether Davids eyes or David himselfe be thus decayed and waxen old imports little But yet that which Bellarmine collects upon this difference imports much For because the Vulgat Edition and the Septuagint such a Septuagint as we have now reade this in the first person of David himselfe Inveteravi and the Hebrew hath it in the third Inveteravit Bellarmine will needs think that the Hebrew the Originall is falsified and corrupted still in advancement of that dangerous Position of theirs That their Translation is to be preferred before the Originall and that is an unsufferable tyrannie and an Idolatrous servility The Translation is a reverend Translation A Translation to which the Church of God owes much but gold will make an Idol as well as wood and to make any Translation equall or better then the Originall is an Idolatrous servility It is true that that which is said here in the third person implyes the first And it is David that after his sighing and
or of remporall blessings doe but destroy us But God begun the new world the Christian Church with water too with the Sacrament of Baptisme Pursue his Example begin thy Regeneration with teares If thou have frozen eyes thou hast a frozen heart too If the fires of the Holy Ghost cannot thaw thee in his promises the fire of hell will doe it much lesse which is a fire of obduration not of liquefaction and does not melt a soule to poure it out into a new and better form but hardens it nails it confirmes it in the old Christ bids you take heed Mat. 24.20 that your flight be not in winter That your transgmigration out of this world be not in cold dayes of Indevotion nor in short dayes of a late repentance Take heed too that your flight be not in such a summer as this That your transmigration out of this world be not in such a drought of summer as David speaks of here that the soule have lost her Humidum radicale all her tendernesse or all expressing of that tendernesse in the sense of her transgressions So did David see himselfe so did he more fore-see in others that should farther incurre Gods displeasure then he by Gods good nesse had done this exsiccatian this incineration of body and soule sinne burnes and turnes body and soule to a Cinder but not such a Cinder but that they can and shall both burne againe and againe and for ever And the dangerous effect of this silence and roaring Ossa Naturalia Drut 29.5 David expresses in another phrase too Inveter averunt ossa That his bones were waxen old and consumed for so that word Balah signifies Your Clothes are not waxed old upon you nor your shooes waxed old upon your feet In the Consuming of these Bones as our former Translation hath it the vehemence of the Affliction is presented and in the waxing old the continuance Here the Rule fayls Si longa levis sigravis brevis Calamities that last long are light and if they be heavy they are short both wayes there is some intimation of some ease But God suffers not this sinner to injoy that ease God will lay inough upon his body to kill another in a weeke and yet he shall pant many yeares under it As the way of his Blessing is Apprehendet tritura vindemiam Lâ—vit 26. Your vintage shall reach to your threshing and your threshing to your sowing So in an impenitent sinner his fever shall reach to a frenzy his frenzy to a consumption his consumption to a penury and his penury to a wearying and tyring out of all that are about him and all the sins of his youth shall meet in the anguish of his body But that is not all Ossa Spiricualia Etiam animae membra sunt sayes S. Basil The soule hath her Bones too And those are our best actions Those which if they had been well done might have been called Good works and might have met us in heaven But when a man continues his beloved sinne when he is in doloso spiritu and deals with God in false measures and false waights makes deceitfull Confessions to God his good works shall doe him no good his Bones are consumed not able to beare him upright in the sight of God This David sees in himselfe and foresees in others and he sees the true reason of all this Quia aggravata manus Because the hand of God lyes heavy upon him which is another branch of his Confession It was the safety of the Spouse Aggravata manus Câ—at 2.6 Gregor That his left hand was under her head and that his right hand embraced her And it might well be her safety for Per laevam vita pr aesens per dextram aeterna designatur sayes S. Gregory His left hand denotes this and his right the other life Our happinesse in this our assurance of the next consists in this that we are in the hands of God But here in our Text Gods hand was heavy upon him and that is an action of pushing away and keeping downe And then when we see the great power and the great indignation of God upon the Egyptians Exed 8.19 is expressed but so Digitus Dei the finger of God is in it how heavy an affliction must this of David be esteemed Quando aggravata manus when his whole hand was and was heavy upon him Here then is one lesson for all men and another peculiar to the children of God This appertains to all That when they are in silentio in a seared and stupid forgetting of their sinnes or in Doloso spiritu in half-Confessions half-abjurations half-detestations of their sinnes The hand of God will grow heavy upon them Tell you your children of it sayes the Prophet and let your children tell their children and let their children tell another generation for this belongs to all That which is left of the Palmer worme the Grashopper shall eat and that that he leaves the Canker worme shall eat and the residue of the Canker worme the Caterpiller The hand of God shall grow heavy upon a silent sinner in his body in his health and if he conceive a comfort that for all his sicknesse he is rich and therefore cannot fayle of helpe and attendance there comes another worme and devours that faithlesnesse in persons trusted by him oppressions in persons that have trusted him facility in undertaking for others corrupt Judges heavy adversaries tempests and Pirats at Sea unseasonable or ill Markets at land costly and expensive ambitions at Court one worme or other shall devoure his riches that he eased himselfe upon If he take up another Comfort that though health and wealth decay though he be poore and weake yet he hath learning and philosophy and morall constancy and he can content himselfe with himselfe he can make his study a Court and a few Books shall supply to him the society and the conversation of many friends there is another worme to devoure this too the hand of divine Justice shall grow heavy upon him in a sense of an unprofitable retirednesse in a disconsolate melancholy and at last in a stupidity tending to desperation This belongs to all to all Non-confitents That thinke not of confessing their sinnes at all To all Semi-confitents that confesse them to halfs without purpose of amendment Aggravabitur manus The hand of God will grow heavy upon them every way and stop every issue every posterne every saly every means of escape But that which is peculiar to the Children of God is That when the hand of God is upon them they shall know it to be the hand of God and take hold even of that oppressing hand and not let it goe till they have received a Blessing from it that is raysed themselves even by that heavy and oppressing hand of his even in that affliction Psal 82. Psal 77. Habak 3.16 That when God shall fill their faces with shame yet they
lust to the mule both because the mule is Carne virgo Hieron but Mente impudicus which is one high degree of lust to have a lustfull desire in an impotent body And then he is engendred by unnaturall mixture which is another high degree of the same sin And these two vices we take to be presented here as the two principall enemies the two chiefe corrupters of mankinde pride to be the principall spirituall sin and lust the principall that works upon the body To avoid both consider we both in both these beasts It is not much controverted in the Schooles Superbia but that the first sin of the Angels was Pride But because as we said before the danger of man is more in sinking down then in climbing up in dejecting then in raising himselfe we must therefore remember that it is not pride August to desire to be better Angeli quaesiverunt id ad quod pervenissent si stetissent The Angels sin was pride but their pride consisted not in aspiring to the best degrees that their nature was capable of but in this that they would come to that state by other meanes then were ordained for it It could not possibly fall within so pure and cleare understandings as the Angels were to think that they could be God that God could be multiplied That they who knew themselves to be but new made could think not only that they were not made but that they made all things else To think that they were God is impossible this could not fall into them though they would be Similes Altissimo Like the most High But this was their pride and in this they would be like the most High That whereas God subsisted in his Essence of himselfe for those degrees of perfection which appertained to them they would have them of themselves They would stand in their perfection without any turning towards God without any farther assistance from him by themselves and not by meanes ordained for them This is the pride that is forbidden man not that he think well of himselfe In genere suo That hee value aright the dignity of his nature in the Creation thereof according to the Image of God and the infinite improvement that that nature received in being assumed by the Son of God This is not pride but not to acknowledge that all this dignity in nature and all that it conduces to that is grace here and glory hereafter is not onely infused by God at first but sustained by God still and that nothing in the beginning or way or end is of our selves this is pride Man may and must think that God hath given him the Subjicite and Dominamini A Majesticall Character even in his person to subdue and governe all the creatures in the world That he hath given him a nature already above all other creatures and a nature capable of a better then his owne is yet 2 Pet. 1.4 1 John 3.9 Acts 17.28 1 Cor. 6.17 Dan. 3.17 for By his precious promises we are made partakers of the Divine nature We are made Semen Dei The seed of God borne of God Genus Dei The off-spring of God Idem Spiritus cum Domino The same Spirit with the Lord He the same flesh with us and we the same spirit with him In Gods servants to have said to Nebuchadnezzar Our God is able to deliver us and he will deliver us but if he doe not yet we will not serve thy Gods In the Martyrs of the Primitive Church to have contemned torments and tormentors with personall scornes and affronts In all calamities and adversities of this life to rely upon that assurance I have a better substance in me then any man can hurt I have a better inheritance prepared for me then any man can take from me I am called to Triumph and I goe to receive a Crown of Immortality these high contemplations of Kingdomes and Triumphs and Crowns are not pride To know a better state and desire it is not pride for pride is onely in taking wrong wayes to it So that to think we can come to this by our own strength without Gods inward working a beliefe or to think that we can believe out of Plato where we may find a God but without a Christ or come to be good men out of Plutarch or Seneca without a Church and Sacraments to pursue the truth it selfe by any other way then he hath laid open to us this is pride and the pride of the Angels Now there is also a pride which is the Horses pride conversant upon earthly things To desire Riches and Honour and Preferment in this world is not pride for they have all good uses in Gods service but to desire these by corrupt meanes or to ill ends to get them by supplantation of others or for oppression of others this is pride and a Bestiall pride And this proud man is elegantly expressed in the Horse Job 39.19 The horse rejoyceth in his strength he goes forth to meet the armed man he mocks at feare he turnes upon the sword and he swallowes the ground The River is mine sayes Pharaoh Ezek. 29.3 and I have made it for my sefl They take all and they mistake all That which is but lent them for use they think theirs The River is mine That which God gave them they think of their own getting I made it And that which God placed upon them as his Stewards for the good of others they appropriate to themselves I have made it for my self But when time is Job 39.21 Zech. 12.4 Job 39.27 God mounteth on high and he mocks the horse and the rider In that day I will smite every horse with astonishment and his rider with madnesse The horse beleeveth not that it is the sound of the Trumpet When the Trumpet sounds to us in our last Bell for the last Bell that carries us out of this world and the Trumpet that cals us to the next is all one voyce to us for we heare nothing between the worldly man shall not beleeve that it is the sound of the Trumpet he shall not know it not take knowledge of it but passe away unsensible of his own condition So then is Pride well represented in the Horse and so is the other Lust Mulus licentiousnesse in the Mule For besides that reason of assimilation that it desires and cannot and that reason that it presents unnaturall and promiscuous lust for this reason is that vice well represented in that Beast because it is so apt to beare any burdens For certainly no man is so inclinable to submit himselfe to any burden of labour of danger of cost of dishonour of law of sicknesse as the licentious man is He refuses none to come to his ends Neither is there any tree so loaded with boughs any one sin that hath so many branches so many species as this Shedding of blood we can limit in murder and manslaughter
a right value upon Holinesse and to give a due respect to holy men For so where we read Psal 78.63 Their Maidens were not given in Marriage we finde this word of our Text Their Maidens were not praised that is there was not a due respect held of them nor a just value set upon them So that this retribution intended for the upright in heart as in the growth and extension of the word it reaches to Joy and Glory and Eminency and Respect so in the roote it signifies Praise And it is given them by God as a Reward That they shall be Praised now Praise sayes the Philosopher is Sermo elucidans magnitudinem virtutis It is the good word of good men a good testimony given by good men of good actions And this difference we use to assigne betweene Praise and Honour Laus est in ordine ad finem Honor eorum qui jam in fine Praise is an encouragement to them that are in the way and so far a Reward a Reward of good beginnings Honour is reserved to the end to crowne their constancy and perseverance And therefore where men are rewarded with great honours at the beginning in hope they will deserve it they are paid beforehand Thanks and Grace and good countenance and Praise are interlocutory encouragements Honours are finall Rewards But since Praise is a part of Gods retribution a part of his promise in our text They shall be praised we are thereby not onely allowed but bound to seeke this praise from good men and to give this praise to good men for in this Coine God hath promised that the upright in heart shall be paid They shall be praised To seeke praise from good men by good meanes Laus à bonis quaerenda Prov. 22.1 Bernar. is but the same thing which is recommended to us by Solomon A good name is rather to be chosen then great riches and loving favour then silver and Gold For Habent mores colores suos habent odores Our good works have a colour and they have a savor we see their Candor their sincerity in our owne consciences there is their colour for in our owne consciences our works appeare in their true colours no man can be an hypocrite to himselfe nor seriously deliberately deceive himselfe And when others give allowance of our works and are edified by them there is their savour their odor their perfume their fragrancy And therefore S. Hierom and S. Augustin differ little in their manner of expressing this Hieron Non paratum habeas illud è trivio Serve not thy selfe with that triviall and vulgar saying As long as my conscience testifies well to me I care not what men say of me August And so sayes that other Father They that rest in the testimony of their owne consciences and contemne the opinion of other men Imprudenter agunt crudeliter They deale weakly and improvidently for themselves in that they assist not their consciences with more witnesses And they deale cruelly towards others in that they provide not for their edification by the knowledge and manifestation of their good works For as he adds well there Qui à criminibus vitam custodit bene facit He that is innocent in his owne heart does well for himselfe but Qui famam custodit in alios misericors est He that is known to live well he that hath the praise of good men to bee a good man is mercifull in an exemplary life to others and promoves their salvation For when that Father gives a measure how much praise a man may receive and a rule how he may receive it when he hath first said Nec totum nec nihil accipiatur Receive not all but yet refuse not all praise he adds this That that which is to be received is not to be received for our owne sakes sed propter illos quibus consulere non potest si nimia dejectione vilescat but for their sakes who would undervalue goodnesse it selfe if good men did too much undervalue themselves or thought themselves never the better for their goodnesse And therefore S. Bernard applies that in the Proverbs to this case Prov. 25.16 Hast thou found Honey eate that which is sufficient Mellis nomine favor humanae laudis sayes he By Honey favour and praise and thankfulnesse is meant Meritóque non ab omni sed ab immoderato edulio prohibemur We are not forbid to taste nor to eate but to surfet of this Honey of this praise of men S. Augustine found this love of praise in himselfe and could forbid it no man Laudari à bene viventibus si dicam nolo mentior If I should say that I desired not the praise of good men I should belie my selfe He carries it higher then thus He does not doubt but that the Apostles themselves had a holy joy and complacency when their Preaching was acceptable and thereby effectuall upon the Congregation Such a love of praise is rooted in Nature and Grace destroyes not Nature Grace extinguishes not but moderates this love of praise in us nor takes away the matter but onely exhibits the measure Certainly he that hath not some desire of praise will bee negligent in doing praise-worthy things and negligent in another duty intended here too that is To praise good men which is also another particular branch in this Part. The hundred forty fift Psalme is Laus danda aliis in the Title thereof called A Psalme of Praise And the Rabbins call him Filium futuri Seculi A child of the next World that sayes that Psalme thrice a day We will interpret it by way of Accommodation thus that he is a child of the next World that directs his Praise every day upon three objects upon God upon himselfe upon other men Of God there can be no question And for our selves it is truly the most proper and most literall signification of this word in our Text Iithhalelu That they shall praise themselves that is They shall have the testimony of a rectified conscience that they have deserved the praise of good men in having done laudible service to God And then for others That which God promises to Israel in their restauration Zephan 3.19 belongs to all the Israel of the Lord to all the faithfull I will get thee praise and fame in every land and I will make thee a name and a praise amongst all the people of the earth This God will doe procure them a name a glory By whom When God bindes himselfe he takes us into the band with him and when God makes himselfe the debtor he makes us stewards when he promises them praise he meanes that we should give them that praise Be all waies of flatterings and humourings of great persons precluded with a Protestation with a detestation Be Philo Iudaeus his comparison received His Coquus and his Medicus One provides sweetnesse for the present taste but he is but a
edification to consider in some particulars in the Christian Church And first consider we it in our manners and conversation Christ sayes In moribus Iohn 15.14 Mat. 22.12 Henceforth I call you not servants but friends But howsoever Christ called him friend that was come to the feast without the wedding garment he cast him out because he made no difference of that place from another First then remember by what terrible things God answers thee in the Christian Church when he comes to that round and peremptory issue Marke 16.16 Qui non credider it damnabitur He that beleeves not every Article of the Christian faith with so stedfast a belief as that he would dye for it Damnabitur no modification no mollification no going lesse He shal be damned Consider too the nature of Excōmunication That it teares a man from the body of Christ Jesus That that man withers that is torne off and Christ himselfe is wounded in it Consider the insupportable penances that were laid upon sinners by those penitentiall Canons that went through the Church in those Primitive times when for many sins which we passe through now without so much as taking knowledge that they are sins men were not admitted to the Communion all their lives no nor easily upon their death-beds Consider how dangerously an abuse of that great doctrine of Predestination may bring thee to thinke that God is bound to thee and thou not bound to him That thou maiest renounce him and he must embrace thee and so make thee too familiar with God and too homely with Religion upon presumption of a Decree Consider that when thou preparest any uncleane action in any sinfull nakednesse God is not onely present with thee in that roome then but then tels thee That at the day of Judgement thou must stand in his presence and in the presence of all the World not onely naked but in that foule and sinfull and uncleane action of nakednesse which thou committedst then Consider all this and confesse that for matter of manners and conversation The God of thy Salvation answers thee by terrible things And so it is also if we consider Prayer in the Church God House is the house of Prayer In oratione It is his Court of Requests There he receives petitions there he gives Order upon them And you come to God in his House as though you came to keepe him company to sit downe and talke with him halfe an houre or you come as Ambassadors covered in his presence as though ye came from as great a Prince as he You meet below and there make your bargaines for biting for devouring Usury and then you come up hither to prayers and so make God your Broker You rob and spoile and eat his people as bread by Extortion and bribery and deceitfull waights and measures and deluding oathes in buying and selling and then come hither and so make God your Receiver and his house a den of Thieves His house is Sanctum Sanctorum The holiest of holies and you make it onely Sanctuarium It should be a place sanctified by your devotions and you make it onely a Sanctuary to priviledge Malefactors A place that may redeeme you from the ill opinion of men who must in charity be bound to thinke well of you because they see you here Offer this to one of your Princes as God argues in the Prophet and see if he will suffer his house to be prophaned by such uncivill abuses Psal 47.3 And Terribilis Rex The Lord most high is terrible and a great King over all the earth Psal 96.4 and Terribilis super omnes Deos More terrible then all other Gods Let thy Master be thy god or thy Mistresse thy god thy Belly be thy god or thy Back be thy god thy fields be thy god or thy chests be thy god Terribilis super omnes Deos The Lord is terrible above all gods Psal 95.3 Deut. 28.58 A great God and a great King above all gods You come and call upon him by his name here But Magnū terribile Glorious and fearefull is the name of the Lord thy God And as if the Son of God were but the Son of some Lord that had beene your Schoole-fellow in your youth and so you continued a boldnesse to him ever after so because you have beene brought up with Christ from your cradle and catechized in his name Psal 111.4 his name becomes lesse reverend unto you And Sanctum terribile Holy and reverend Holy and terrible should his name be Consider the resolution that God hath taken upon the Hypocrite and his prayer What is the hope of the Hypocrite Iob 27.8 Hos 7.14 when God taketh away his soule Will God heare his cry They have not cryed unto me with their hearts when they have howled upon their beds Consider that error in the matter of our prayer frustrates the prayer and makes it ineffectuall Zebedees Sons would have beene placed at the right hand Mat. 20.21 and at the left hand of Christ and were not heard Error in the manner may frustrate our prayer and make it ineffectuall too Iam. 4.3 Ye ask and are not heard because ye ask amisse It is amisse if it be not referred to his will Luke 5.12 Iam. 1.6 Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean It is amisse if it be not asked in faith Let not him that wavereth thinke he shall receive any thing of the Lord. It is amisse if prayer be discontinued 1 Thes 5.17 Luke 22.44 Esay 1.15 intermitted done by fits Pray incessantly And it is so too if it be not vehement for Christ was in an Agony in his prayer and his sweat was as great drops of blood Of prayers without these conditions God sayes When you spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes when you make many prayers I will not heare you Their prayer shall not only be ineffectuall Prov. 28.9 Psal 129.7 but even their prayer shall be an abomination And not only an abomination to God but destruction upon themselves for Their prayer shall be turned to sin And when they shall not be heard for themselves no body else shall be heard for them Though these three men Ezek. 14.14 Noah Iob Daniel stood for them they should not deliver thē Though the whole Congregation consisted of Saints they shall not be heard for him nay they shall be forbidden to pray for him forbidden to mentiō or mean him in their prayers as Ieremy was When God leaves you no way of reconciliation but prayer and then layes these heavy and terrible conditions upon prayer Confesse that though he be the God of your salvation and do answer you yet By terrible things doth the God of your salvation answer you And consider this againe as in manners and in prayer so in his other Ordinance of Preaching Thinke with your selves what God lookes for from you In
would be rightly understood that is that I speake of such poverty as is contracted by our owne lazinesse or wastfulnesse For otherwise poverty that comes from the hand of God is as rich a blessing as comes from his hand He that is poore with a good conscience that hath laboured and yet not prospered knows to whom to go Psal 4.7 and what to say Lord thou hast put gladnesse into my heart more then in the time when corne and wine increased more now then when I had more I will lay me downe and sleepe for thou Lord onely makest me to dwell in safety Does every rich man dwell in safety Can every rich man lye downe in peace and sleepe no nor every poore man neither but he that is poore with a good conscience can And though he that is rich with a good conscience may in a good measure do so too sleepe in peace yet not so out of the spheare and latitude of envy and free from the machinations and supplantations and underminings of malicious men that feed upon the confiscations and build upon the ruines of others as the poore man is Though then S. Chrysostome call riches Absurditatis parentes the parents of absurdities That they make us doe not onely ungodly but inhumane things not onely irreligious but unreasonable things uncomely and absurd things things which we our selves did not suspect that we could be drawne to yet there is a growing rich which is not covetousnesse and there is a desire of honor and preferment which is not Pride For Pride is as we said before Appetitus perversus A perverse and inordinate desire but there is a defire of honor and preferment regulated by rectified Reason and rectified Reason is Religion And therefore as we said how ever other affections of man may and are by the Holy Ghost in Scriptures in some respects ascribed to God yet never Pride Nay the Holy Ghost himselfe seemes to be straitned and in a difficulty when he comes to expresse Gods proceedings with a proud man and his detestation of him and aversion from him There is a considerable a remarkable indeed a singular manner of expressing it perchance you finde not the like in all the Bible where God sayes Psal 101.5 Hini that hath a high looke and a proud heart I will not in our last I cannot in our former translation Not what Not as it is in those translations I cannot suffer him I will not suffer him for that word of Suffering is but a voluntary word supplied by the Translators In the Originall it is as it were an abrupt breaking off on Gods part from the proud man and if we may so speake a kinde of froward departing from him God does not say of the proud man I cannot worke upon him I cannot mend him I cannot pardon him I cannot suffer him I cannot stay with him but meerly I cannot and no more I cannot tell what to say of him what to doe for him Him that hath a proud heart I cannot Pride is so contrary to God as that the proud man and he can meet in nothing And this consideration hath kept us thus long from that which we made our first and principall collection That this commandment of Humility was imprinted in our very first word Sequere follow be content to come after to denote how early and primary a sin Pride is and how soone it entred into the world and how soone into us and that consideration we shall pursue now We know that light is Gods eldest childe his first borne of all Creatures Superbia in Angelis and it is ordinarily received that the Angels are twins with the light made then when light was made And then the first act that these Angels that fell did was an act of Pride They not thanke nor praise God for their Creation which should have been their first act They did not solicite nor pray to God for their Sustentation their Melioration their Confirmation so they should have proceede But the first act that those first Creatures did was an act of pride a proud reflecting upon themselves a proud overvaluing of their own condition and an acquiescence in that in an imaginary possibility of standing by themselves without any farther relation or beholdingnesse to God So early so primary a sin is Pride as that it was the first act of the first of Creatures So early so primary a sin as that whereas all Pride now is but a comparative pride Superbia positiva this first pride in the Angels was a positive a radicall pride The Pharisee is but proud that he is not as other men are that is but a comparative pride Luk. 18.11 No King thinks himselfe great enough yet he is proud that he is independant soveraigne subject to none No subject thinks himselfe rich enough yet he is proud that he is able to oppresse others that are poorer Et gloriatur in malo quia potens est He boasteth himselfe in mischiefe Psal 52.1 because he is a mighty man But all these are but comparative prides and there must be some subjects to compare with before a King can be proud and some inferiors before the Magistrate and some poore before the rich man can be proud But this pride in those Angels in heaven was a positive pride There were no other Creatures yet made with whom these Angels could compare themselves and before whom these Angels could prefer themselves and yet before there was any other creature but themselves any other creature to undervalue or insult over these Angels were proud of themselves So early so primary a sin is Pride So early so primary as that in that ground which was for goodnesse next to heaven Superbia in Paradiso that is Paradise Pride grew very early too Adams first act was not an act of Pride but an act of lawfull power and jurisdiction in naming the Creatures Adam was above them all and he might have called them what he would There had lyen no action no appeale if Adam had called a Lyon a Dog or an Eagle an Owle And yet we dispute with God why he should not make all us vessels of honor and we complaine of God that he hath not given us all all the abundances of this world Comparatively Adam was better then all the world beside and yet we finde no act of pride in Adam when he was alone Solitude is not the scene of Pride The danger of pride is in company when we meet to looke upon another But in Adams wife Eve her first act that is noted was an act of Pride Gen. 3.5 a hearkning to that voyce of the Serpent Ye shall be as Gods As soone as there were two there was pride How many may we have knowne if we have had any conversation in the world that have been content all the weeke at home alone with their worky day faces as well as with their worky day clothes
Father and see him made ours in him And then a third beame of this Consolation is That in this house of his Fathers Mansiones thus by him made ours there are Mansions In which word the Consolation is not placed I doe not say that there is not truth in it but the Consolation is not placed in this That some of these Mansions are below some above staires some better seated better lighted better vaulted better fretted better furnished then others but onely in this That they are Mansions which word in the Originall and Latin and our Language signifies a Remaining and denotes the perpetuity the everlastingnesse of that state A state but of one Day because no Night shall over-take or determine it but such a Day as is not of a thousand yeares which is the longest measure in the Scriptures but of a thousand millions of millions of generations August Qui nec praeceditur hesterno nec excluditur crastino A day that hath no pridie nor postridie yesterday doth not usher it in nor to morrow shall not drive it out Methusalem with all his hundreds of yeares was but a Mushrome of a nights growth to this day And all the foure Monarchies with all their thousands of yeares And all the powerfull Kings and all the beautifull Queenes of this world were but as a bed of flowers some gathered at six some at seaven some at eight All in one Morning in respect of this Day In all the two thousand yeares of Nature before the Law given by Moses And the two thousand yeares of Law before the Gospel given by Christ And the two thousand of Grace which are running now of which last houre we have heard three quarters strike more then fifteen hundred of this last two thousand spent In all this six thousand and in all those which God may be pleased to adde In domo patris In this House of his Fathers there was never heard quarter clock to strike never seen minute glasse to turne No time lesse then it selfe would serve to expresse this time which is intended in this word Mansions which is also exalted with another beame that they are Multa In my Fathers House there are many Mansions In this Circumstance Multa an Essentiall a Substantiall Circumstance we would consider the joy of our society and conversation in heaven since society and conversation is one great element and ingredient into the joy which we have in this world We shall have an association with Christ himselfe for where he is it is his promise that we also shall be We shall have an association with the Angels and such a one as we shall be such as they We shall have an association with the Saints and not onely so to be such as they but to be they Mat. 8.11 And with all who come from the East and from the West and from the North and from the South and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Iacob in the kingdome of heaven Where we shall be so far from being enemies to one another as that we shall not be strangers to one another And so far from envying one another as that all that every one hath shall be every others possession where all soules shall be so intirely knit together as if all were but one soule and God so intirely knit to every soule as if there were as many Gods as soules Be comforted then sayes Christ to them for This which is a House and not a Ship not subject to stormes by the way nor wrecks in the end My Fathers House not a strangers in whom I had no interest A House of Mansions a dwelling not a sojourning And of many Mansions not an Abridgement a Modell of a House not a Monastery of many Cells but an extension of many Houses into the City of the living God This house shall be yours though I depart from you Christ is nearer us when we behold him with the eyes of faith in Heaven then when we seeke him in a piece of bread or in a sacramentall box here Drive him not away from thee by wrangling and disputing how he is present with thee unnecessary doubts of his presence may induce fearfull assurances of his absence The best determination of the Reall presence is to be sure that thou be really present with him by an ascending faith Make sure thine own Reall presence and doubt not of his Thou art not the farther from him by his being gone thither before thee No nor though Peter be gone thither before thee neither which was the other point in which the Apostles needed consolation They were troubled that Christ would goe and none of them and troubled that Peter might goe and none but he What men soever God take into heaven before thee though thy Father that should give thee thy education though thy Pastor that should give thee thy instruction though these men may be such in the state and such in the Church as thou mayest thinke the Church and state cannot subsist without them Discourage not thy selfe neither admit a jealousie or suspition of the providence and good purpose of God for as God hath his panier full of Manna and of Quailes and can powre out to morrow though he have powred them out plentifully upon his friends before so God hath his Quiver full of arrows and can shoot as powerfully as heretofore upon his Enemies I forbid thee not S. Pauls wish Cupio dissolvi To desire to be dissolved therefore that thou mayest be with Christ I forbid thee not Davids sigh Hei mihi Woe is me that I must dwell so long with them that love not peace I onely enjoyne thee thy Saviours Veruntamen Yet not mine but thy will O Father be done That all thy wishes may have relation to his purposes and all thy prayers may be inanimated with that Lord manifest thy will unto me and conforme my will unto thine So shalt thou not be afrighted as though God aymed at thee when he shoots about the marke and thou seest a thousand fall at thy right hand and ten thousand at thy left Nor discouraged as though God had left out thee when thou seest him take others into garrison and leave thee in the field assume others to Triumph and leave thee in the Battell still For as Christ Jesus would have come down from heaven to have dyed for thee though there had been no soule to have been saved but thine So is he gone up to heaven to prepare a place for thee though all the soules in this world were to be saved as well as thine Trouble not thy selfe with dignity and priority and precedency in Heaven for Consolation and Devotion consist not in that and thou wilt be the lesse troubled with dignity and priority and precedency in this world for Rest and Quietnesse consist not in that SERM. LXXIV Preached at VVhite-hall the 30. Aprill 1620 PSAL. 144.15 Being the first Psalme for the day Blessed
torments is the everlasting absence of God and the everlasting impossibility of returning to his presenâ—â— Horrendum est sayes the Apostle It is a fearefull thing to fall into the hands of the living God Heb. 10.31 Yet there was a case in which David found an ease to fall into the hands of God to scape the hands of men Horrendum est when Gods hand is bent to strike it is a fearefull thing to fall into the hands of the living God but to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression beyond our imagination That God should let my soule fall out of his hand into a bottomlesse pit and roll an unremoveable stone upon it and leave it to that which it finds there and it shall finde that there which it never imagined till it came thither and never thinke more of that soule never have more to doe with it That of that providence of God that studies the life of every weed and worme and ant and spider and toad and viper there should never never any beame flow out upon me that that God who looked upon me when I was nothing and called me when I was not as though I had been out of the womb and depth of darknesse will not looke upon me now when though a miserable and a banished and a damned creature yet I am his creature still and contribute something to his glory even in my damnation that that God who hath often looked upon me in my foulest uncleannesse and when I had shut out the eye of the day the Sunne and the eye of the night the Taper and the eyes of all the world with curtaines and windowes and doores did yet see me and see me in mercy by making me see that he saw me and sometimes brought me to a present remorse and for that time to a forbearing of that sinne should so turne himselfe from me to his glorious Saints and Angels as that no Saint nor Angel nor Christ Jesus himselfe should ever pray him to looke towards me never remember him that such a soule there is that that God who hath so often said to my soule Quare morier is Why wilt thou die and so often sworne to my soule Vivit Dominus As the Lord liveth I would not have thee dye but live will nether let me dye nor let me live but dye an everlasting life and live an everlasting death that that God who when he could not get into me by standing and knocking by his ordinary meanes of entring by his Word his mercies hath applied his judgements and hath shaked the house this body with agues and palsies and set this house on fire with fevers and calentures and frighted the Master of the house my soule with horrors and heavy apprehensions and so made an entrance into me That that God should frustrate all his owne purposes and practises upon me and leave me and cast me away as though I had cost him nothing that this God at last should let this soule goe away as a smoake as a vapour as a bubble and that then this soule cannot be a smoake a vapour nor a bubble but must lie in darknesse as long as the Lord of light is light it selfe and never sparke of that light reach to my soule What Tophet is not Paradise what Brimstone is not Amber what gnashing is not a comfort what gnawing of the worme is not a tickling what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation to be secluded eternally eternally eternally from the sight of God Especially to us for as the perpetuall losse of that is most heavy with which we have been best acquainted and to which wee have been most accustomed so shall this damnation which consists in the losse of the sight and presence of God be heavier to us then others because God hath so graciously and so evidently and so diversly appeared to us in his pillar of fire in the light of prosperity and in the pillar of the Cloud in hiding himselfe for a while from us we that have seene him in all the parts of this Commission in his Word in his Sacraments and in good example and not beleeved shall be further removed from his sight in the next world then they to whom he never appeared in this But Vincenti credenti to him that beleeves aright and overcomes all tentations to a wrong beliefe God shall give the accomplishment of fulnesse and fulnesse of joy and joy rooted in glory and glory established in eternity and this eternity is God To him that beleeves and overcomes God shall give himselfe in an everlasting presence and fruition Amen SERM. LXXVII Preached at S. PAULS May 21. 1626. 1 COR. 15.29 Else what shall they doe which are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all why are they then baptized for the dead I Entred into the handling of these words upon Easter day for though the words have received divers Expositions good and pervers yet all agreed that the words were an argument for the Resurrection and that invited me to apply them to that Day At that Day I entred into them with Origens protestation Odit Dominus qui festum ejus unum putat diem God hates that man that thinks any holy-day of his lasts but one day that never thinks of the Resurrection but upon Easter day And therefore I engaged my selfe willingly according to the invitation and almost the necessity of the words which could not conveniently scarce possibly be determined in one day to returne againe and againe to the handling thereof For they are words of a great extent a great compasse The whole Circle of a Christian is designed and accomplished in them for here is first the first point in that Circle our Birth our spirituall birth that is Baptisme Why are these men thus baptized sayes the Text And then here is the point directly and diametrally opposed to that first point our Birth that is Death Why are these men thus baptized for the dead sayes the Text And then the Circle is carried up to the first point againe to our Birth in another Birth in the Resurrection Why are these men thus baptized for the dead if there be no Resurrection So that if we consider the Militant and the Triumphant Church to be as they are all one House and under one roofe here is first Limen Ecclesiae as S. Augustine calls Baptisme The Threshold of the Church we are put over the Threshold into the Body of the Church by Baptisme and here we are remembred of Baptisme Why are these men thus baptized And then here is Chorus Ecclesiae The Quire the Chancell of the Church in which all the service of God is officiated and executed for we are made not onely hearers and spectators but actors in the service of God when we come to beare a part in the Hymnes and Anthems of the Saints by our Death and here we are
remembred of Death Why are these men thus baptized for the Dead And then here is Sanctum Sanctorum The innermost part of the Church The Holy of Holyes that is the manifestation of all the mysterious salvation belonging to soule and body in the Resurrection Why are these men thus baptized for the dead if there be no Resurrection Our first dayes worke in handling these words was to accept and then to apply that in which all agreed that these words were an argument for the Resurrection And we did both those offices we did accept it and so shew you how the assurance of the Resurrection accrues to us and what is the office of Reason and what is the office of Faith in that affayre And then we did apply it and so shew you divers resemblances and conformities between naturall Death and spirituall Death and between the Resurrection of the body to glory at last and the Resurrection of the soule by grace in the way and wherein they induced and assisted and illustrated one another And those two miles made up that Sabbath dayes journey When we shall returne to the handling of them the next day which will be the last we shall consider how these words have been misapplyed by our Adversaries of the Romane Church and then the severall Expositions which they have received from sound and Orthodoxall men that thence we may draw a conclusion and determination for our selves And in those two miles wee shall also make up that Sabbath Dayes journey when God shall be pleased to bring us to it This dayes Exercise shall be to consider that very point for the establishment whereof they have so detorted and mis-applyed these words which is their Purgatory That this Baptisme for the Dead must necessarily prove Purgatory and their Purgatory So then this Dayes Exercise will bee meerely Polemicall the handling of a Controversie which though it be not alwayes pertinent yet neither is it alwayes unseasonable There was a time but lately when he who was in his desire and intension the Peace-maker of all the Christian world as he had a desire to have slumbred all Field-drums so had he also to have slumbred all Pulpit-drums so far as to passe over all impertinent handling of Controversies meerly and professedly as Controversies though never by way of positive maintenance of Orthodoxall and fundamentall Truths That so there might be no slackning in the defence of the truth of our Religion and yet there might bee a discreet and temperate forbearing of personall and especially of Nationall exasperations And as this way had piety and peace in the worke it selfe so was it then occasionally exalted by a great necessity He who was then our hope and is now the breath of our nostrils and the Anointed of the Lord being then taken in their pits and in that great respect such exasperations the fitter to be forborne especially since that course might well bee held without any prevarication or cooling the zeale of the positive maintenance of the religion of our Church But things standing now in another state and all peace both Ecclesiasticall and Civill with these men being by themselves removed and taken away and hee whom we feared returned in all kinde of safety safe in body and safe in soule too whom though their Church could not their Court hath chatechised in their religion that is brought him to a cleere understanding of their Ambition for Ambition is their Religion and S. Peters Ship must saile in their Fleets and with their winds or it must sink and the Catholique and Militant Church must march in their Armies though those Armies march against Rome it selfe as heretofore they have done to the sacking of that Towne to the holding of the Pope himselfe in so sordid a prison for sixe moneths as that some of his nearest servants about him died of the plague to the treading under foot Priests and Bishops and Cardinals to the dishonouring of Matrons and the ravishing of professed Virgins and committing such insolencies Catholiques upon Catholiques as they would call us Heretiques for beleeving them but that they are their owne Catholique Authors that have written them Things being now I say in this state with these men since wee heare that Drums beat in every field abroad it becomes us also to returne to the brasing and beating of our Drums in the Pulpit too that so as Adam did not onely dresse Paradise but keepe Paradise and as the children of God did not onely build but build with one hand and fight with another so wee also may employ some of our Meditations upon supplanting and subverting of error as well as upon the planting and watering of the Truth To which purpose I shall prepare this day for the vindicating and redeeming of these words from the Adversary which will bee the worke of the next day by handling to day that point for which they have misapplied them which is Purgatory and the mother and the off-spring of that for what can that generation of vipers suck from this Text which is not If there be no such Purgatory but If there be no such Resurrection why then are these men baptized for the dead Heaven and earth shall passe away saith Christ but my word shall not passe away Matt 24.35 But rather then Purgatory shall passe away his word must admit such an Interpretation as shall passe away and evacuate the intention and purpose of the Holy Ghost therein How much of the earth is passed away from them wee know who acknowledge the mercy and might and miracle of Gods working in withdrawing so many Kingdomes so many Nations of the earth in so short time from the obedience and superstition of Rome as that if Controversies had been to have been tried by number they would have found as many against them as with them so much of the earth is passed from them How much of heaven is passed from them that is how much lesse interest and claime to heaven they can have now when God hath afforded them so much light and they have resisted it then when they were in so great a part under invincible ignorance God onely who is the onely Judge in such causes knowes and he of his goodnesse enlarge their title to that place by their conversion towards it But how much soever of earth or heaven passe away they will not lose an acre an inch of Purgatory For as men are most delighted with things of their owne making their owne planting their owne purchasing their owne building so are these men therefore inamoured of Purgatory Men that can make Articles of faith of their owne Traditions And as men to elude the law against new Buildings first build sheds or stables and after erect houses there as upon old foundations so these men first put forth Traditions of their owne and then erect those Traditions into Articles of faith as ancient foundations of Religion Men that make God himselfe of a piece of bread
certaine dayes Daniel would not onely not be bound by this Proclamation and so continue his set and stationary houres of private prayer in his chamber but he would declare it to all the world He would set open his chamber windows that he might be seen to pray for though some determine that act of Daniel in setting open his windows at prayer in this That because the Jewes were bound by their law wheresoever they were in war in captivity upon the way or in their sick beds to turne towards Jerusalem and so towards the Temple whensoever they prayed according to that stipulation which had passed between God and Solomon at the Dedication of the Temple When thy servants pray towards this house heare them in it Therefore as Hezekias in his sicke bed when he turned towards the wall to pray is justly thought to have done so therefore that he might pray towards the Temple which stood that way so Daniel is thought to have opened his windows to that purpose too that he might have the more free prospect towards Jerusalem from Babylon though some I say determine Daniels act in that yet it is by more and more usefully extended to an expressing of such a zeale as in so apparant a dishonor to his God could not be suffocated nor extinguished with a Proclamation In which act of his which was a direct and evident opposing and affronting of the State though I dare not joyne with them who absolutely and peremptorily condemne this act of Daniel because Gods subsequent act in a miraculous deliverance of Daniel seems to imply some former particular revelation from God to Daniel that he should proceed in that confident manner yet dare I much lesse draw this act of Daniels into consequence and propose it for an Example and precedent to private men least of all to animate seditious men who upon pretence of a necessity that God must be served in this and this and no other manner provoke and exasperate the Magistrate with their schismaticall conventicles and separations But howsoever that may stand and howsoever there may be Circumstances which may prevaile either upon humane infirmity or upon a rectified Conscience or howsoever God in his Judgements may cast a cloud upon his own Sunne and darken the glory of the Gospel in some place for some time yet though we lose our Ranan our publique Rejoycing we shall never lose our Shamach our inward gladnesse that God is our God and we his servants for all this God will never leave his servants without this internall joy which shall preserve them from suspicions of Gods power that he cannot maintaine or not restore his cause and from jealousies that he hath abandoned or deserted them in particular God shall never give them over to an indifferency nor to a stupidity nor to an absence of tendernesse and holy affections that it shall become all one to them how Gods cause prospers or suffers But if I continue that way prayer and prayer so qualified if I lose my Ranan my outward declarations of Rejoycing If I be tyed to a death-bed in a Consumption and cannot rejoyce in comming to these publique Congregations to participate of their prayers and to impart to them my Meditations If I be ruined in my fortune and cannot rejoyce in an open distribution to the reliefe of the poore and a preaching to others in that way by example of doing good works If at my last minute I be not able to edifie my friends nor Catechize my children with any thing that I can doe or say if I be not able so much as with hand or eye to make a signe though I have lost my Ranan all the Eloquence of outward declaration yet God shall never take from me my Shamach my internall gladnesse and consolation in his undeceivable and undeceiving Spirit that he is mine and I am his And this joy this gladnesse in my way and in my end shall establish me for that is that which is intended in the next and last word Omnibus diebus we shall Rejoyce and be Glad all our dayes Nothing but this testimony Omnibus diebus That the Spirit beares witnesse with my spirit that upon my prayer so conditioned of praise and prayer I shall still prevaile with God could imprint in me this joy all my dayes The seales of his favour in outward blessings fayle me in the dayes of shipwracke in the dayes of fire in the dayes of displacing my potent friends or raysing mine adversaries In such dayes I cannot rejoyce and be glad The seales of his favour in inward blessings and holy cheerfulnesse fayle me in a present remorse after a sinne newly committed But yet in the strength of a Christian hope as I can pronounce out of the grounds of Nature in an Eclipse of the Sunne that the Sunne shall returne to his splendor againe I can pronounce out of the grounds of Gods Word and Gods Word is much better assurance then the grounds of Nature for God can and does shake the grounds of Nature by Miracles but no Jod of his Word shall ever perish that I shall returne againe on my hearty penitence if I delay it not and rejoyce and be glad all my dayes that is what kinde of day soever overtake me In the dayes of our youth when the joyes of this world take up all the roome there shall be roome for this holy Joy that my recreations were harmelesse and my conversation innocent and certainly to be able to say that in my recreations in my conversation I neither ministred occasion of tentation to another nor exposed my selfe to tentations from another is a faire beame of this rejoycing in the dayes of my youth In the dayes of our Age when we become incapable insensible of the joyes of this world yet this holy joy shall season us not with a sinfull delight in the memory of our former sinnes but with a re-juveniscence a new and a fresh youth in being come so neere to another to an immortall life In the dayes of our mirth and of laughter this holy joy shall enter And as the Sunne may say to the starres at Noone How frivoulous and impertinent a thing is your light now So this joy shall say unto laughter Thou art mad and unto mirth Eccles 2.2 what dost thou And in the mid-night of sadnesse and dejection of spirit this joy shall shine out and chide away that sadnesse with Davids holy charme My soule why art thou cast downe why art thou disquieted within me In those dayes which Iob speaks of Iob 30.27 Praevenerunt me dies afflictionis meae Miseries are come upon me before their time My intemperances have hastned age my riotousnesse hath hastned poverty my neglecting of due officiousnesse and respect towards great persons hath hastned contempt upon me Afflictions which I suspected not thought not of have prevented my feares and then in those dayes which Iob speaks of againe Possident me dies
Leo Magnus 42. B. 48. C. D. 63. B. 221. E. 321. B. 431. B. 535. D. 604. A. Leo Castrius 695. D. Lex XII Tabularum 445. D. Lombardus 237. B. notatus 334. E. Lorinus 426. C. 574. C. 687. E. 695. D. Lutherus 18. D. 130. B. 205. A. 231. C. 232. D. 271. D. 301. D. 404. C. Apophthegma ejus 405. C. 417. B. 426. A. 479. E. 501. A. 687. B. 786. B. 798. E. Lyra. 50. B. 555. D. M Magdeburgenses 489. C. 799. C. Maldonatus 197. D. 356. E. 489. D. 739. D. 771. B. 798. A. Mariana 687. E. Martialis 550. B. S. Martialis 758. C. P. Martyr 271. B. 347. C. Masoritae 153. C. Maximus 63. A. 535. E. Matchiavel 744. B. Melancthon 92. C. 744. C. 798. E. Melchior Canus 42. A. 740. B. Menander 220. A. Mendoza 162. B. D. Munsterus 747. C. Musculus 775. A. N Nicephorus 31. D. dictum ejus de Chrysostomo 490. C. 699. B. O Oecumenius 66. A. 232. C. 527. A. Oleaster 391. D. Origenes 99. D. 102. A. 118. C. 128. E. 170. E. 201. C. 262. D. 263. C. 299. B. 333. B. 362. C. 363. D. 386. B. 411. C. 546. C. 700. C. 710. E. primus concionator 758. D. 770. D. 784. C. Osiander 221. C. 298. B. P Palladius 473. C. Pamelius 329. C. Panigorolla 166. A. Papias 739. E. Paracelsus 64. E. Paraphrastes Chaldaeus 134. A. 269. D. 404. B. Pellicanus 221. C. 404. C. Peltanus 97. E. Pererius 50. A. 740. A. Philo Judaeus 170. B. 417. D. 420. C. 550. B. 561. C. 680. D. 812. C. Picus 531. D. Pindarus 442. D. Piscator 46. C. 49. E. 131. E. 737. E. 799. A. Plato 46. D. 68. E. 168. D. 318. D. 442. D. 752. E. 783. E. 812. C. Plinius 17. A. 222. A. 385. C. 537. D. 617. B. 665. B. 713. A. 788. B. Plotinus 812. C. Plutarchus 665. C. Polycarpus 758. C. Polybius 482. D. 551. A. Porphyrius 207. B. 289. B. Prosper 240. D. Prudentius 262. E. Psalmi Arabicè 582. A. Ptolomaeus 818. B. Q Quintilianus 289. B. R Rabbi Aben Ezra 131. C. Rabbi Moyses 63. E. 66. B. 608. B. Rabbi Solomon 50. B. 404. B. Reuchlinus 541. C. Rhemigius 4. B. 340. A. Ribera 184. C. Roffensis 789. A. Ruffinus 270. E. Rupertus 51. B. S Salmeron 489. D. Sanctius 151. E. 405. E. Sandaeus 495. A. 690. D. Scotus 111. B. Scribanius 142. C. Schonfeldius 743. B. Seneca 147. E. 168. E. 362. B. 387. E. 388. A. 713. E. 789. B. 812. D. Serarius 406. B. Septuaginta Interpretes 404. B. 416. A. 528. B. 585. A. Severianus 249. C. Sextus Senensis 786. E. Sidonius Apollinaris 33. B. Sophronius 490. C. Stenartius 605. E. Strabo 198. D. Stunnica 133. A. Synodus Dordrecthana 742. C. T Tacitus 481. E. Talmud 379. C. 492. A. Tannerus 605. D. Tertullianus 17. C. 18. A. 33. E. 80. A. memoria lapsus 101. B. 152. A. 168. C. 181. E. 207. E. 289. B. 290. D. 309. D. 312. B. 334. B. 337. B. C. 369. E. 370. E. 379. B. 388. A. 395. B. E. 397. E. 400. A. B. 408. A. 414. E. 504. B. 739. E. 783. E. 794. C. 800. E. Testamentum Syriacum 636. C. 737. E. Theocritus 478. A. Theodoretus 91. B. 232. A. 305. D. 462. A. 578. D. 795. A. Theophylactus 91. B. 181. B. 246. B. 527. A. 609. C. 795. C. Tremellius 131. E. 133. E. 510. A. 560. C. 585. A. 690. B. 737. E. 809. C. Trismegistus 287. B. 295. B. 347. C. 379. C. 501. C. Turrecremata 603. C. V G. Valentia 356. D. 605. D. Vincentius Lyrinensis 47. A. 699. B. 722. D. Virgilius 744. C. 784. A. Vita P. Nerei 116. E. Vega. 339. D. Ulpianus 194. E. Vossius 740. A. Us pergensis 208. A. Vulgata Editio 146. D. 157. D. 162. C. 260. A. 288. D. 311. A. 505. C. 610. E. 711. D. 717. C. 743. C. 761. B. W Waldo 291. D. AN ALPHABETICALL TABLE OF THE PRINCIPALL CONTENTS IN THIS BOOK The number of the Figures referreth to the Page the Letter to the like Letter in the Margin A ABsolute Decree how dangerously man may be abused by it 691. E There is no such in God of punishing man but as a sinner 675. C. D. E Absolution of sinnes the power of it 143. A. B The cheerefulnesse of their spirits that have newly received it 264. A 596. B The necessity of it 370. A. B Active life and Contemplative both good 30. D One not to despise the other ibid. Admiration and Wonder how it stands between Knowledge and Faith 194. A Adoption in civill use the Lawes and Customes of it 27. B Applyed to our spirituall Adoption ibid. Adversity not the best time to seeke the Lord in 139. C. D. 245. D. E Whether Adversity or Prosperity be the cause of most sinnes 658. D Adultory God expresseth all carnall and spirituall sinne by the name of Adultery 632. E Advice to bee mixed with Love and Charitie 93. C How many doe miscarry in it ibid. D Afflictions wherefore inflicted upon Men 109. C Wherefore on godly men 129. B. 480. A. B. C 664. E They are not evill 170. D Common as well to the good as bad 420. E Age the center of Reverence 31. D Allelujah Psalmes which they are and how many 654. A Almes to be done 94. B. 106. C Cheerfully and without delay 107. D Against those that neglect them 414. B Wee not to consider the person too severely that is to receive them 764. A Against being Alone 51. E. 761. E. 762. A Alphonso King of Casteel his blasphemy 640. E Amen ever doubled by Saint John and why 658. B Anabaptists their wicked opinions 23. C. 91. C 344. D Anathema the severall acceptations of it 401. E Saint Andrew the first Saint in the Calendar and why 718. C. D Angels how reconciled by the death of Christ 9. B Whether they understand thoughts 111. B Or see the Essence of God 120. E. 121. D. E They pray for us 130. A Whether they shall give account of their Stewardship over us at the day of Judgement 234. E. 235. A Thought in the Greeke Church to be created before the World 235. E Nothing in Scripture about their creation 235. D Not in themselves Immortall 237 B. C. Some men called by the ministry of Angels even from the beginning of the world 261. E They that fell might have repented according to the Schooles 262. B They that fell shall never befor given 346. B Of tutelar Angels 422. B Angels created with the Light 729. C Anger in God two errours about it noted by Lactantius 408. D Anointing in Scripture not alwayes taken for reall Unction 44. E. 45. A c Anointing proper to Kings as well as Priests 396. A Ant and the Bee the difference betweene their labour and yet we are commanded to learne of both 712. E Apatheia against indolencie and emptinesse of all Affections 156. A Apochrypha Bookes the good use that is made of them 220. D Of their esteeme
a phrase very remarkeable by David He bringeth the winde out of his Treasuries And then follow in that place Psal 135.7 all the Plagues of Egypt stormes and tempests ruines and devastations are not onely in Gods Armories but they are in his Treasuries as hee is the Lord of Hosts hee fetches his judgements from his Armories and casts confusion upon his enemies but as he is the God of mercy and of plentifull redemption he fetches these judgements these corrections out of his treasuries and they are the Money the Jewels by which he redeemes and buyes us againe God does nothing God can doe nothing no not in the way of ruine and destruction but there is mercy in it he cannot open a doore in his Armory but a window into his Treasury opens too and he must looke into that But then Gods corrections are his Acts as the Physitian is his Creature God created him for necessity When God made man his first intention was not that man should fall and so need a Messias nor that man should fall sick and so need a Physitian nor that man should fall into rebellion by sin and so need his rod his staffe his scourge of afflictions to whip him into the way againe But yet sayes the Wiseman Ecclus. 38.1 Honour the Physitian for the use you may have of him slight him not because thou hast no need of him yet So though Gods corrections were not from a primary but a secondary intention yet when you see those corrections fall upon another give a good interpretation of them and beleeve Gods purpose to be not to destroy but to recover that man Do not thou make Gods Rheubarbe thy Ratsbane and poyson thine owne soule with an uncharitable misinterpretation of that correction which God hath sent to cure his And then in thine owne afflictions flie evermore to this Prayer Satisfie us with thy mercy first Satisfie us make it appeare to us that thine intention is mercy though thou enwrap it in temporall afflictions in this darke cloud let us discerne thy Son and though in an act of displeasure see that thou art well pleased with us Satisfie us that there is mercy in thy judgements and then satisfie us that thy mercy is mercy for such is the stupidity of sinfull man That as in temporall blessings we discerne them best by wanting them so do we the mercies of God too we call it not a mercy to have the same blessings still but as every man conceives a greater degree of joy in recovering from a sicknesse then in his former established health so without doubt our Ancestors who indured many yeares Civill and forraine wars were more affected with their first peace then we are with our continuall enjoying thereof And our Fathers more thankfull for the beginning of Reformation of Religion then we for so long enjoying the continuance thereof Satisfie us with thy mercie Let us still be able to see mercy in thy judgements lest they deject us and confound us Satisfie us with thy mercie let us be able to see that our deliverance is a mercy and not a naturall thing that might have hapned so or a necessary thing that must have hapned so though there had beene no God in Heaven nor providence upon earth But especially since the way that thou choosest is to goe all by mercy and not to be put to this way of correction so dispose so compose our minds and so transpose all our affections that we may live upon thy food and not put thee to thy physick that we may embrace thee in the light and not be put to seeke thee in the darke that wee come to thee in thy Mercy and not be whipped to thee by thy Corrections And so we have done also with our second Part The pieces and petitions that constitute this Prayer as it is a Prayer for Fulnesse and Satisfaction a Prayer of Extent and Dilatation a Prayer of Dispatch and Expedition and then a Prayer of Evidence and Declaration and lastly a Prayer of Limitation even upon God himselfe Satisfie and satisfie us and us early with that which we may discerne to be thine and let that way be mercy There remaines yet a third Part 3 Part. Gaudium what this Prayer produces and it is joy and continual joy That we may rejoyce and be glad all our dayes The words are the Parts and we invert not we trouble not the Order the Holy Ghost hath laid them fitliest for our use in the Text it selfe and so we take them First then the gaine is joy Joy is Gods owne Seale and his keeper is the Holy Ghost wee have many sudden ejaculations in the forme of Prayer sometimes inconsiderately made and they vanish so but if I can reflect upon my prayer ruminate and returne againe with joy to the same prayer I have Gods Seale upon it And therefore it is not so very an idle thing as some have mis-imagined it to repeat often the same prayer in the same words Our Saviour did so he prayed a third time and in the same words This reflecting upon a former prayer is that that sets to this Seale this joy and if I have joy in my prayer it is granted so far as concernes my good and Gods glory It hath beene disputed by many both of the Gentiles with whom the Fathers disputed and of the Schoolemen who dispute with one another An sit gaudium in Deo de semet Whether God rejoyce in himselfe in contemplation of himselfe whether God be glad that he is God But it is disputed by them onely to establish it and to illustrate it for I doe not remember that any one of them denyes it It is true that Plato dislikes and justly that salutation of Dionysius the Tyran to God Gaude servato vitam Tyranni jucundam that he should say to God Live merrily as merrily as a King as merrily as I doe and then you are God enough to imagine such a joy in God as is onely a transitory delight in deceivable things is an impious conceit But when as another Platonique sayes Plotinus Deus est quod ipse semper voluit God is that which hee would be If there be something that God would be and he be that If Plato should deny that God joyed in himselfe we must say of Plato as Lactantius does Deum potius somniaver at quà m cognoverat Plato had rather dreamed that there was a God then understood what that God was Bonum simplex sayes S. Augustine To be sincere Goodnesse Goodnesse it selfe Ipsa est delectatio Dei This is the joy that God hath in himselfe of himselfe And therefore sayes Philo Iudaeus Hoc necessarium Philosophiae sodalibus This is the tenent of all Philosophers And by that title of Philosophers Philo alwaies meanes them that know and study God Solum Deum verè festum agere That only God can be truly said to keepe holy day and to rejoyce This
joy we shall see when we see him who is so in it as that he is this joy it selfe But here in this world so far as I can enter into my Masters sight I can enter into my Masters joy I can see God in his Creatures in his Church in his Word and Sacraments and Ordinances Since I am not without this sight I am not without this joy Here a man may Transilire mortalitatem Seneca sayes that Divine Morall man I cannot put off mortality but I can looke upon immortality I cannot depart from this earth but I can looke into Heaven So I cannot possesse that finall and accomplished joy here but as my body can lay downe a burden or a heavy garment and joy in that ease so my soule can put off my body so far as that the concupiscencies thereof and the manifold and miserable enâ— cumbrances of this world cannot extinguish this holy joy And this inchoative joy David derives into two branches To rejoyce and to be glad The Holy Ghost is an eloquent Author Exultatio a vehement and an abundant Author but yet not luxuriant he is far from a penurious but as far from a superfluous style too And therefore we doe not take these two words in the Text To rejoyce and to be glad to signifie meerely one and the same thing but to be two beames two branches two effects two expressings of this joy We take them therefore as they offer themselves in their roots and first naturall propriety of the words The first which we translate To rejoyce is Ranan and Ranan denotes the externall declaration of internall joy for the word signifies Cantare To sing and that with an extended and loud voyce for it is the word which is oftnest used for the musique of the Church and the singing of Psalmes which was such a declaration of their zealous alacrity in the primitive Church as that when to avoyd discovery in the times of persecution they were forced to make their meetings in the night they were also forced to put out their Candles because by that light in the windowes they were discovered After that this meeting in the darke occasioned a scandall and ill report upon those Christians that their meetings were not upon so holy purposes as they pretended they discontinued their vigils and night-meetings yet their singing of Psalmes when they did meet they never discontinued though that many times exposed them to dangers and to death it selfe as some of the Authors of the secular story of the Romans have observed and testified unto us And some ancient Decrees and Constitutions we have in which such are forbidden to be made Priests as were not perfect in the Psalmes And though S. Hierome tell us this with some admiration and note of singularity That Paula could say the whole book of Psalmes without booke in Hebrew yet he presents it as a thing well known to be their ordinary practise In villula Christi Bethlem extrapsalmos silentium est In the village where I dwell sayes he where Christ was borne in Bethlem if you cannot sing Psalmes you must be silent here you shall heare nothing but Psalmes for as he pursues it Arator stivam tenens The husbandman that follows the plough he that sowes that reapes that carries home all begin and proceed in all their labours with singing of Psalmes Therefore he calls them there Cantiones amatorias Those that make or entertaine love that seeke in the holy and honorable way of marriage to make themselves acceptable and agreeable to one another by no other good parts nor conversation but by singing of Psalmes So he calls them Pastorum sibilum and Arma culturae Our shepheards sayes S. Hierome here have no other Eclogues no other Pastoralls Our labourers our children our servants no other songs nor Ballads to recreate themselves withall then the Psalmes And this universall use of the Psalmes that they served all for all gives occasion to one Author in the title of the Booke of Psalmes to depart from the ordinary reading which is Sepher Tehillim The booke of Praise and to reade it Sepher Telim which is Acervorum The booke of Heapes where all assistances to our salvation are heaped and treasured up And our Countryman Bede found another Title in some Copies of this booke Liber Soliloquiorum de Christo The Booke of Meditations upon Christ Because this booke is as Gregory Nyssen calls it Clavis David that key of David which lets us in to all the mysteries of our Religion which gave the ground to that which S. Basil sayes that if all the other Books of Scripture could be lost he would aske no more then the Booke of Psalmes to catechize children to edifie Congregations to convert Gentils and to convince Heretiques But we are launched into too large a Sea the consideration of this Booke of Psalmes I meane but this in this That if we take that way with God The way of prayer prayer so elemented and constituted as we have said that consists rather of praise and thankesgiving then supplication for future benefits God shall infuse into us a zeale of expressing our consolation in him by outward actions to the establishing of others we shall not disavow nor grow slacke in our Religion nor in any parts thereof God shall neither take from us The Candle and the Candlestick The truth of the Gospel which is the light And the cheerfull and authorized and countenanced and rewarded Preaching of the Gospel which is the Candlestick that exalts the light nor take from us our zeale to this outward service of God that we come to an indifferency whether the service of God be private or publique sordid or glorious allowed and suffered by way of connivency or commanded and enjoyned by way of authority God shall give us this Ranan this rejoycing this extern all joy we shall have the publique preaching of the Gospel continued to us and we shall shew that we rejoyce in it by frequenting it and by instituting our lives according unto it But yet this Ranan this Rejoycing this outward expressing of our inward zeale Delectabimur may admit interruptions receive interceptions intermissions and discontinuances for without doubt in many places there live many persons well affected to the truth of Religion that dare not avow it expresse it declare it especially where that fearfull Vulture the Inquisition hovers over them And therefore the Holy Ghost hath added here another degree of joy which no law no severe execution of law can take from us in another word of lesse extent Shamach which is an inward joy onely in the heart which we translate here to be Glad How far we are bound to proceed in outward declarations of Religion requires a serious and various consideration of Circumstances Dan. 6.10 You know how far Daniel proceeded The Lords had extorted a Proclamation from the King That no man should pray to any other God then the King for