Truth Let us therefore fontem à capite fodere as near as we can lay open the ground of this mistake and errour and we shall find it to be an errour as great as this and to have the same tast and relish with the fountain from whence it flowed They who make Gods permissive will effective at the very mention of Gods will think of that absolute will of his which cannot be resisted by which he made the heavens and the earth and so acknowledge no will of God but that which is absolute and effective as if that will of his by which he would have us do something were the same with that by which he will do something himself and so in effect they make not onely the conversion but the induration of a sinner the work of Omnipotency But were not men blind to all objects but those they delight to look on they might easily discern a great difference and that Gods will is broken every day His natural Desire which is his will to save mankind is that fulfilled If it were there could be no hell at all His Command that is his will what moment is there wherein that is not resisted We are those Devils who kindle that fire which he made not for us We are those sons of Anak those giant-like fighters against Heaven who break his commands with as great ease as Samson did his threads of tow We are those Leviathans who break the bounds he hath set us Job 14.27 29. who esteem iron as straw with whom the threatnings which he darteth at us are accounted as stubble And can we who so often break his will say that his will is alwayes fulfilled Again we must not imagin that all things that are done in the world are the work of his hand or the effect of that power by which he bringeth mighty things to pass Nor can we so much forget God and his Goodness as to imagin that upon every action of man he hath set a DIXIT ET FACTVM EST He spake the word and it was done he commanded and it became necessary For some actions there be which God doth neither absolutely will nor powerfully resist but in his wisdome permitteth to be done which otherwise could dot be done but by his permission Nor doth this will of Permission fall cross with any other will of his Not with his Absolute will for he absolutely permitteth them Not with his Primary and Natural will for though by his Natural will he would bring men to happiness though he forbid sin though he detest it as that which is most contrary to his very nature and which maketh Men devils and enemies to him yet he may justly permit it And the reason is plain For Man is not as God qui sibi sufficit ad beatitudinem who is all-sufficient and Happiness it self and therefore he was placed in an estate where he might work out his own happiness but still with a possibility of being miserable And herein was the Goodness and Wisdome of God made visible As from his Goodness it was that he loved his creature so in his Goodness and Wisdome he placed before him good and evil that he might lay hold on happiness and be good willingly and not of necessity For it is impossible for any finite creature who hath not his completeness and perfection in himself to purchase heaven but upon such terms as that he might have lost it nor to lose it but upon such terms as that he might have took it by violenee For every Law supposeth as a possibility of being kept so also a possibility of being broken which cannot be without permission of sin 1 Tim. 1.9 Lex justo non est posita If Goodness had been as essential to Man as his nature and soul by which he is if God had interceded by his Omnipotenty and by an irresistable force kept Sin from entring into the world the Jews had not heard the noise of the trumpet under the Law nor the Disciples the sermon on the mount under the Gospel there had been no use of the comfortable breath of Gods Promises nor of the terrour of his Threatnings For who would make a law against that which he knoweth will never come to pass A Law against sin supposeth a permission to sin and a possibility of sinning Lastly it standeth in no shew of opposition to Gods Occasioned and Consequent will For we must suppose sin before we can take up the least conceit of any will in God to punish Omnis poena si justa est peccati poena est saith Augustine in his Retractations All punishment that is just is the punishment of sin and therefore God who of his natural goodness would not have man commit sin out of his justice willeth man's destruction and will not repent L. 2. adv Marcion Sic totus Deus bonus est dum pro bono omnia est saith Tertullian Thus God is entirely good whilest all he is whether merciful or severe is for good Minus est tantummodò prodesse quia non aliud quid possit quà m prodesse His reward might seem too loose and not carry with it that infinite value and weight if he could not reach out his hand to punish as well as to reward and some distrust it might work in the creature that he could not do the one if he could not do both So then sin is permitted though God hate sin That which bringeth us to the gates of Death is permitted though God hath tendered his will with an oath that he will not have us die Though he forbiddeth sin though he punisheth it yet he permitteth it I have said too little Nay he could not forbid and punish it if he did not permit it Yet Permission is permission and no more nor is it such a Trojane horse nor can it swell to that bulk and greatness as to hide and contein within it those monsters of Fate and Necessity of Excaecation and Excitation of Incliation and Induration which devour a soul and cannot be resisted which bind us over unto Death when the noise is loud about us Why will ye die For this Permissive will of God or his will of Permission is not operative or efficacious Neither is it a remitting or slackning of the will of God upon which sin as some pretend must necessarily follow nor is it terminated in the thing permitted but in the permission it self alone For to permit sin is one thing and to be willing that sin should be committed is another It is written in the leaves of Aeternity that God will not have sin committed as being most abhorrent and contrary to his nature and will and yet this permission of sin is a positive act of his will for he will permit sin though he hath clothed it with Death to make us afraid of it and upon pain of eternal damnation he forbiddeth us to sin though it were his will to permit it These two
errour conclude that it was possible for the justest man alive to have been wicked If not why did he strive and labour and offer violence to himself And that it was possible for the wickedest man alive to have been just for Judas not to have betrayed his master Else why do we condemn him of despair and make that his greatest sin Villicus si velit omnia rectè facit saith Columella of Husbandry The farmer if he will may do all things in it as he should And it is true in Divinity Augustine the great Champion for the Grace of God saith Homo potest peccare Contra Faust. Manich. Lib. 22. Deum negare si nolit non facit Any man may sin and deny God but he doth not unless he will And to take the will from that to which it doth incline and draw it to that which God commandeth is that which we call Obedience In the wayes of Goodness God doth help us but not force us he useth all means which he in his eternal wisdom knoweth fittest but doth not by his omnipotent power bind and constrain us He that is necessarily good is not good And it is impossible he should be evil who is fettered in the chains of impossibility of being good In a word God forbiddeth sin but permitteth it commandeth obedience but doth not force it God biddeth us sin no more but he doth not tell us we cannot sin again for this were to take away the first by adding the second For how can these two stand together Sin no more and You cannot sin again God doth what he can and when he doth what he can in this respect he doth not alwaies make us good Say I this of my self or doth not even the Scripture speak as much Doth not God say as much Isa 5.3 4. and he cannot blaspheme himself Judge I pray you between me and my vineyard He maketh the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah his and their own Judges What could I have done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it He fenced it and gathered out the stones thereof and planted it with the choicest vine and built a tower in the midst of it he omitted nothing which might make it fruitful Hoc satìs est fecisse Deo And could he have done any more Yes he might he might have made it bring forth good grapes God saith he could not who is Truth it self Nor doth this any whit derogate from his omnipotent Power For even his Power doth seem to bow and act by his Wisdom And he can no more do what his Wisdom hath not set down then he cannot be wise then he cannot be God 3. That will of God's to permit sin and not to intervene with his omnipotency to hinder it doth not contradict that will which we call voluntatem praecepti his will exprest in the Command which he layeth upon his creature but the one supposeth the other For he doth not command us not to sin as he commanded the Paralytick to take up his bed and walk For every law as it supposeth a possibility of being kept so supposeth a possibility of being broken which could not be if God thought fit to make use of his uncontrollable and absolute power Lex justo non est posita If Goodness had been as essential to Man as his Nature and Soul by which he is if God's Omnipotency had interceded and by its irresistable force opposed Sin that it had not entered the world by Adam nor been known to his posterity the Jews had not heard the noise of the trumpet at the promulgation of the Law nor the Disciples the Sermon on the mount under the Gospel there had been no use of the comfortable breath of God's promises nor of the terrible sound of his threatnings For who will make a Law against that which he knoweth will never come to pass Last of all God's Permissive will standeth in no shew of opposition to his Occasioned and Consequent will by which he raineth down vengeance upon the disobedient For we must suppose a power to obey whether natural or as it is given we need not dispute but a power there must be but not such a power which is alwaies and infallibly brought into act We must suppose Sin or Obedience before we can take up the least conceit of any will in God to punish or to reward Omnis poena si justa est peccati poena est saith Augustine All punishment which is just is the punishment of sin And therefore God who biddeth Man sin no more out of his justice willeth his destruction when he sinneth and will not repent Sic totus Deus bonus est dum pro bono omnia est saith the Father Thus God is entirely good whilest all he is whether merciful or severe is for good Minus est tantummodo prodesse quia non aliud quid possit quà m prodesse His reward might lose and not carry with it that infinite value if he could not reach out his hand to punish as well as reward And some distrust it might work in the creature that he could not do one if he could not do both In a word neither is the Conversion nor the Induration of a sinner a work of God's incontrollable power nor of that will by which he made the heaven and the earth and by which he healeth the lame and raiseth the dead For when he speaketh the word the lame shall walk and when the trumpet soundeth the dead shall rise But how oft is his will to save us resisted How oft would I saith Christ and you would not For if it were fulfilled there could be no Hell at all Again the command is his will and what moment is there wherein that is not resisted We are those devils which kindle that fire which he made not for us We are those sons of Anak those giant-like fighters against Heaven which break God's commands with as much ease as Samson did his cords that bound him We are those Leviathans which break those bounds which God hath set us Which we could not do if he were pleased if he could be pleased if his wisdom would permit him to interpose his power to hinder us But it may be said that we lye in sin as this Paralytick did by the pool's side not able to help our selves and therefore have no power to work out our conversion We willingly grant it And therefore we have need of new strength and new power to be given us We deny it not And therefore not onely the power but the very act of our conversion is from God Who ever yet denyed it But then that Man can no more withstand his conversion then this man did his cure or an infant can its birth or the world could its creation or the dead can the resurrection that we are converted whether we will or no is a conclusion which these premisses will not yield This flint
it self the most disorderly thing in the world into order and maketh that which stands us against his law to meet with his Justice and that which runs from the order that his Mercy hath set up to be driven to the order of Equity For Sin is an offense against the Creation a breach and invertion of that order which the Wisdome of God did at first establish in the world My Adultery defileth my body my Oppression grindeth the poor my Anger rageth against my brother my particular sins have their particular objects but they all strike at the Universe and at that order which was at first set up Luke 15. Father I have sinned against thee and against heaven saith the Prodigal against thee and against thy Power and that Order which thou hast establisht in the highest heavens And therefore his Providence ruleth over all to reduce this inequality to an equality and this confusion into order to shew what harmony it can work in the greatest disorder what beauty he can raise out of the deformed and unnatural body of Sin striking them down by his hand who would not bow to his will Sin and Punishment are nothing of themselves but in us or rather in the wayes of Gods Providence they are something The one is voluntary that is Sin the other penal that is Smart That which is voluntary Sin is a foul deformity in nature and in that course which God hath set up and therefore the penal is added to order and place it there where it may be forced to serve for the grace and beauty of the whole that the punishment of Sin may wipe out the dishonour of Sin that he who against the will of God would tast the pleasure of Sin may against his own will drink deep of the cup of Bitterness Interest mundo Therefore it concerns the world and all that therein is that Sin be punished and that every thing be set in its own place This the whole creation seems to grone for this it earnestly expects this is the Creatures Jubilee Rom. 8. it is deliverance from the bondage of corruption Turpis est pars quae suo toti non convenit It is an ill member for which the whole body is the worse Vt in sermone litterae As Letters in a Word or Sentence so Men are the principles and parts which concur to make up a Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For Men are the World and Men are the City and Men are the Church Now every impertinent and unpunished Sinner is a letter too much or rather a blur in that sentence Let the hand of Providence therefore blot it out Let the whip be on the fools back and the sword in the murderers bowels Let Dives be in Hell let every seed have its own body and every work its proper wages and then every thing is in its own order and place and then the World is the work of Gods Hands the Church is the body of Christ and the composition is entire So this is an everlasting truth Gods Justice requires it his Providence works it the very Creature groans for it And deceive we our selves if we will and mock God if we dare If we do not well sin lyeth at the door Gen. 4.7 ready to break in with a whip and vengeance upon us For whatsoever a man sows that also shall he reap For in the next place God doth not onely punish sin but fits and proportions the punishment to the sin both in this life and in that which is to come He observes a kind of Arithmetical proportion and draws both parts together that the one may not crack of his purchase nor the other complain of his loss that the Sinner may not boast of his sin nor God lose any part of his glory The Prophet David hath fully exprest it He made a way to his anger LIBRAVlT ITER Psal 78 50. he weighed it as by the scales As they increased they sinned against me Hos 4.7 Therefore I will change their glory into shame Rom. 1.25 As they changed the truth of God into a lye so God delivered them up An Arithmetical and just proportion They took away Gods glory and they pay him with shame with the shame of a sinner which is Gods glory God under the Law did appoint particular punishments for particular sins as Famine by drought for Deteining of Tithes Pestilence for Injustice to destroy those that would not destroy the wicked nor plead the cause of the oppressed fierce and devouring Beasts for Perjury and Blasphemy and Captivity for Idolatry Lev. 10. Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire and were consumed by fire from Heaven Adonibezek had his thumbs cut off and his great toes Judg. 1.6 and in the next verse he confesseth Threescore and ten kings having their thumbs and great toes cut off gathered their meat under my table As I have done so God hath requited me Absalom's hearts desire was to get his Fathers crown and you may behold him with three darts thrust through his heart 2 Sam. 18 So in all ages it hath been observeable that men have been taken in their own net and been buried in the pit which they dig'd For this saith S. Basil is not onely a punishment but the very nature of Sin to make a net and to dig a pit for it self The Thief twists the halter that hangs him the Envious eateth out his own heart the Angry man slayeth himself the Wanton beast is burnt up with his own heat the Ambitious breaketh his own neck the Covetous pierceth his own soul and is choked as Crassus was with his own gold the Proud man breaks with his own swelling the Seditious is burnt with the fire he made So near doth Punishment follow Sin at the heels that in Scripture often one name and word serveth to signifie both and Sin is taken both for the guilt and the Punishment And this in this world But in the next Tophet is ordeined and prepared of old fitted and proportioned to every one that goes on in his sin as fit for an unrepentant sinner as a Throne is for a King or Heaven for an Angel For as there is some analogy between the joyes a good conscience yields on earth and thoss which we shall have at the right hand of God â—â—br 6.4 The Apostle calls it a tast of the heavenly gift and the Schoolmen tell us that Glory is the consummation of Grace which looked towards it and tended to it So is Sin an embleme of Hell carrying with it nothing but disorder confusion and torment Anselme thought it the uglier Hell of the two and more to be abhorred In Hell there is stench what more unsavory then Sin in Hell there is pain what more tormenting then Sin in Hell there is weeping what more lamentable then Sin in Hell there is a worm what more gnawing then Sin Sin entred in and then Hell was created Had
it self and fill the world with Atheists which will learn by no Masters but such as instruct fools nor acknowledge any Keyes but those which may break their head But indeed we have had these Keyes too long in our hands For though they concern us yet are they not the keyes in the Text nor had we lookt upon them but that those of the Romish party wheresoever they find keys mentioned take them up and hang them on their Church But we must observe a difference betwixt the keyes of the kingdome of heaven Matth. 16.19 which were given to Peter and the keyes of Hell and of Death although with them when the Keyes are seen Heaven and Hell are all one For the key of David Rev. 3.7 which openeth and no man shutteth and shutteth and no man openeth was not given to the Apostles but is a regality and prerogative of Christ who only hath power of Life and Death over Hell and the Grave who therefore calleth himself the first and the last because although when he first publisht his Gospel he died and was buried yet he rose again to live for ever so to perfect the great work of our salvation and by his power to bind those in everlasting chains who stood out against him and to bring those that bow to his sceptre out of prison into liberty and everlasting life The power is his alone and he made it his by his sufferings Phil. 2.8 9. He was obedient to death therefore God did highly exalt him Phil. 2.7 11. He became a Lord by putting on the form of a servant But he hath delegated his power to his Apostles and those that succeed them to make us capable and fit subjects for his power to work upon which nevertheless will have its operation and effect either let us out or shut us up for ever under the power of Hell and of Death Were not he alive and to live for evermore we had been shut up in darkness and oblivion for ever But Christ living infuseth life into us that the bands of Hell and of Death can no more hold us than they can him There is such a place as Hell but to the living members of Christ there is no such place For it is impossible it should hold them You may as well place Lucifer at the right hand of God as a true Christian in Hell For how can Light dwell in Darkness How can Purity mix with stench How can Beauty stay with Horrour If Nature could forget her course and suffer contradictories to be drawn together and be both true yet this is such a contradiction as unless Christ could die again which is impossible can never be reconciled Matth. 5.18 Heaven and earth may pass away but Christ liveth for evermore and the power and virtue of his Life is as everlasting as Everlastingness it self Rev. 6.8 And again There was a pale horse and his name that sat on him was Death and he had power to kill with the sword and with hunger and with death and with the beasts of the earth But now he doth not kill us he doth but stagger us and fling us down that we may rise again and tread him under our feet and by the power of an everliving Saviour be the death of Death it self Job 18.14 Death was the King of terrors and the fear of Death made us slaves Heb. 2.15 and kept us in servility and bondage all our life long made our pleasures less delightful and our virtues more tedious made us tremble and shrink from those Heroick undertakings for the truth of God But now they in whom Christ liveth and moveth and hath his being as in his own dare look upon Death in all his horror expeditum morti genus saith Tertullian and are ready to meet him in his most dreadful march with all his army of Diseases Racks and Tortures Man before he sinned knew not what Death meant then Eve familiarly conversed with the Serpent so do Christians with Death Having that Divine Image restored in them they are secure and fear it not For what can that Tyrant take from them Col. 3.3 Their life That is hid with Christ in God Psal 37.4 It cannot cut them off from pleasure for their delight is in the Lord. Matth. 6.20 It cannot rob them of their treasure for that is laid up in heaven It can take nothing from them but what themselves have already crucified Gal. 5.24 their Flesh It cannot cut off one hope one thought one purpose for all their thoughts purposes and hopes were leveld not on this but on another life And now Christ hath his keyes in his hand Death is but a name it is nothing or if it be something it is such a thing as troubled S Augustine to define what it is We call it a punishment but indeed it is a benefit a favour even such a favour that Christ who is as omnipotent as he is everlasting who can work all in all though he abolished the Law of Moses and of Ceremonies yet would not abrogate the law by which we are bound over unto death because it is so profitable and advantageous to us It was indeed threatned but it is now a promise or the way unto it for Death it is that letteth us into that which was promised It was an end of all it is now the beginning of all It was that which cut off life it is now that through which as through a gate we enter into it We may say it is the first point and moment of our after-eternity for it is so neer unto it that we can hardly sever them We live or rather labour and fight and strive with the World and with Life it self which is it self a temptation and whilst by the power of our everliving Christ we hold up and make good this glorious contention and fight and conquer and press forward towards the mark either nature faileth or is prest down with violence and we dye that is our language but the Spirit speaketh after another manner we sleep we are dissolved we fall in pieces our bodies from our souls and we from our miseries and temptations and this living everliving Christ gathereth us together again breatheth life and eternity into us that we may live and reign with him for evermore And so I have viewed all the parts of the Text being the main articles of our Faith 1 Christs Death 2. his Life 3. his eternal Life and last of all his Power of the Keyes his Dominion over Hell and Death We will but in a word fit the ECCE the Behold in the Text to every part of it and set the Seal Amen to it and so conclude And first we place the ECCE the Behold on his Death He suffered and dyed that he might learn to have compassion on thy miseries and on thy dust and raise thee from both and wilt thou learn nothing from his compassion
another mightily and doth sweetly order all things For which way can frail Man come to see his God but by being like him What can draw him near to his pure Essence but Simplicity and Purity of spirit What can carry us to the God of Love but Charity What can lead us into the courts of Righteousness but Justice What can move a God of tender mercies but Compassion Certainly God will never look down from his Mercy-seat on them that have no bowels In a word what can make us wise but that which is good those virtues Temperance Justice and Liberality which are called the labours of Wisdome Wisd 8.7 Hebr. 6.5 What can bring us into Heaven but this full tast of the powers of the world to come So that there is some truth in that of Gerson Gloria est gratia consummata Glory is nothing else but Grace made perfect and consummate For though we cannot thus draw Grace and Glory together as to make them one and the same thing but must put a difference between the Means and the End yet Wisdome it self hath written it down in an indeleble character and in the leaves of Eternity That there is no other key but this Good in the Text to open the gates of the kingdom of Heaven and he that bringeth this along with him shall certainly enter Heaven and Glory is a thing of another world but yet it beginneth here in this and Grace is made perfect in Glory And therefore in the last place God's absolute Will is not only attended with Power and Wisdome but also with Love And these are the glories of his Will He can do what he will and he will do it by the most proper and fittest means and whatsoever he requireth is the dictate of his Love When he sent his Son the best Master and Wisest Lawgiver that ever was on whose shoulders the government was laid Isa 9.6 he was ushered in with a SIC DILEXIT So God loved the world John 3.16 God's Love seemeth to have the preeminence and to do more then his Power This can but annihilate us but his Love if we embrace it will change our souls and angelifie them change our bodies and spiritualize them endow us with the will and so with the power of God make us differ as much from our selves as if we were not annihilated which his Power can do but which is more made something else something better something nearer to God This is that mighty thing which his Love bringeth to pass We may imagin that a Law is a mere indication of Power that it proceedeth from Rigour and Severity that there is nothing commanded nothing required but there is smoke and thunder and lightning but indeed every Law of God is the natural and proper effect and issue of his Love from his Power it is true but his Power managed and shewn in Wisdome and Love For he made us to this end and to this end he requireth something of us not out of any indigency as if he wanted our company and service for he was as happy before the creation as after but to have some object for his Love and Goodness to work upon to have an exceptory and vessel for the dew of Heaven to fall into As the Jews were wont to say propter Messiam mundum fuisse conditum that the world and all mankind were made for the Messias Psal 2.7 whose business was to preach the Law which his Father said unto him and to declare his will And in this consisteth the perfection and beauty of Man For the perfection of every thing is its drawing near to its first principle and original The nearer and liker a thing is to the first cause that produced it the more perfect it is as that Heat is most perfect which is most intense and hath most of the Fire in it So Man the more he partaketh of that which is truly Good of the Divine nature of which his Soul is as it were a sparkle the more perfect he is because this was the only end for which God made him This was the end of all Gods Laws That he might find just cause to do Man good That Man might draw near to him here by obedience and conformity to his Will and in the world to come reign with him for ever in glory And as this is the perfection so is it the beauty of Man For as there is the beauty of the Lord Psal 27.4 so is there the beauty of the Subject The beauty of the Lord is to have Will and Power and Jurisdiction to have Power and Wisdome to command and to command in Love So is it the beauty of Man to bow and submit and conform to the will of the Lord for what a deformed spectacle is a Man without God in this world Eph. 2.12 which hath Power and Wisdome and Love to beautifie Beauty is nothing else but a result from Perfection The beauty of the Body proceedeth from the symmetrie and due proportion of parts and the beauty of the Soul from the consonancy of the will and affections to the will and law of God Oh how beautiful are those feet which walk in the wayes of life How beautiful and glorious shall he be who walketh in love as God loved him Eph. 5.2 who resteth on his Power walketh by his Wisdome and placeth himself under the shadow of his Love And thus much the substance of these words affords us What doth the Lord require Let us now cast an eye upon them in the form and habit in which they are presented and consider the manner of proposing them Now the Prophet proposeth them by way of interrogation And as he asked the question Wherewith shall I come before the Lord so doth he here ask what doth the Lord require He doth not speak in positive terms as the Prophet Jeremiah doth Ask for the old paths Jer 6.16 where is the good way and walk therein Isa 30.21 or as the Prophet Isaiah This is the way walk in it but shapeth and formeth his speach to the temper and disposition of the people who sought out many wayes but missed of the right And so we find Interrogations to be fitted and sharpned like darts and then sent towards them who could not be awaked with less noyse nor less smart And we find them of diverse shapes and fashions Sometimes they come as Complaints Psal 2.1 Why do the heathen rage sometimes as Upbraidings How camest thou in hither Matth. 22.12 2 Sam. 2 22. Matth. 22.18 sometimes as Admonitions Why should I now kill thee sometimes as Reproofs Why tempt ye me you Hypocrites And whithersoever they fly they are feathered and pointed with Reason For there is no reason why that should be done of which Christ asketh a reason why it is done The question here hath divers aspects It looketh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 forward and backward It looketh back upon the
spiritual wisdome which is that Salt which every Teacher should have in himself Matth. 5.13 Mark 9.50 to urge and press it to the multitude who are too ready to make an idol of that Serpent which is lifted up to cure them For how many weak hands and feeble knees and cowardly hearts hath this made How willing are we to hear of weakness and impossibilities because we would not keep the Law How oft do we lye down with this thought and do nothing or rather run away with it even against the Law it self and break it What polluted blind impotent cripled wretches are we ready to call our selves which were indeed a glorious confession were it made out of hatred to sin But most commonly these words are sent forth not from a broken but a hollow heart and comfort us rather than accuse us are rather flatteries then aggravation the oyl of sinners to break their heads and to infatuate them not to supple their limbs but benum them And they beget no other Resolution in us but this Not to gird up our loins because we are weak To sin more and more because we cannot but sin Not to do what God requireth because we have already concluded within our selves that it is impossible To conclude this The question is not Whether we can exactly keep a Law so as not to fail sometimes as men for I know no reason why this question should be put up but Whether we can keep it so far forth as God requireth and in his goodness will accept Whether we can be just and merciful and humble men And if this be impossible then will follow as sad an impossibility of being saved For the not doing what God requireth is that alone which shutteth the gates of Heauen against us and cutteth off all hope of eternal happiness And this were to unpeople Heaven this were a Dragons tail to draw down all the stars and cast them into hell But the Saints are sealed and have this seal That they did what God required And it is a thing so far from being impossible that the Prophet maketh but a But of it It is not impossible it is but to do justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God Secondly it is so far from being impossible that it is but an easie duty My yoke is easie Matth. 11.30 saith our Saviour and my burden light For it is fitted to our necks and shoulders and is so far from taking from our nature or pressing it with violence that it exalteth and perfecteth it All is in putting it about our necks Prov 1.9 and then this yoke is an ornament of grace as Solomon's chain about them And when this burden is layd on then it is not a burden but our Form to quicken us and our Angel to guide us with delight in all our waies And this the beloved Disciple suckt from his Master's bosome 1 John 5.3 This is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not grievous For here is Love and Hope to sweeten them and make them easie and pleasant Nor doth he speak this as an Oratour to take men by craft by telling them that that which he exhorted them to was neither impossible nor difficult and so give force to his exhortation and make a way for it to enter and work a full perswasion in them to be obedient to those commands but as a Logician he backeth and establisheth his affirmation with an undeniable reason in the next verse For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world and so his commandments are not grievous to those who have the true knowledge of God He that is born of God must needs have strength enough to pass through all hindrances whatsoever to tread down all Principalities and Powers to demolish all imaginations which set up and oppose themselves and so make these commands more grievous then they are in their own nature And this he strengthneth with another reason in the next verse For he that is born of God hath the help and advantage of Faith and full perswasion of the power of Jesus Christ which is that victory which overcometh the world So that whosoever saith the commandments are grievous with the same breath excommunicateth himself from the Church of Christ and maketh himself an hypocrite and professeth he is that which he is not a Christian when Christ's words are irksome and tedious unto him that he is born of God when he hath neither the language nor the motion of a child of God doth not what God requireth but doth the works of another father the Devil When men therefore pretend they cannot do what God requireth they should change their language for the truth is they will not If they would there were more for them then against them Salvian Totum durum est quicquid imperatur invitis To an unwilling mind every command carrieth with it the fearful shew of difficulty Mavult execrari legem quà m emendari mentem praecepta odisse quà m vitia A wicked man mavult emendare Deos quà m seipsum saith Seneca had rather condemn the Law then reform his life rather hate the precept then his sin Continence is a hard lesson but to the wanton Liberality to a Miser Temperance to a Glutton Obedience to a Factious and Rebellious spirit All these things are hard to him that loveth not Christ But where there is will there is strength enough Cant. 8 6. and Love is stronger then Death What was sweeter then Manna Isid Pelus 2. ep 67. what sooner gathered yet the children of Israel murmured at it What more bitter then Hunger and Imprisonment yet S. Paul rejoyced in them Nay 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Wickedness in its own nature is a troublesome and vexations thing Vitia magno coluntur saith Seneca Scarce any sin we commit but costeth us dear What more painful then Anger what more perplext and tormenting then Revenge what more intangled then Lust what can more disquiet us then Ambition what more fearful then Cruelty what sooner disturbed then Pride Nay further yet How doth one sin incroch and trespass upon another I fling off my Pleasure and Honour to make way to my Revenge I deny my Lust to further my Ambition and rob my Covetousness to satisfie my Lust and forbear one sin to commit another and so do but versuram facere borrow of one sin to lay it out on another binding and loosing my self as my corruption leadeth me but never at ease Tell me Which is easier saith the Father to search for wealth in the bowels of the earth nay in the bowels of the poor by oppression then to sit down content with thy own night and day to study the world or to embrace Frugality to oppress every man or to relieve the oppressed to be busie in the Market or to be quiet at home to take other mens goods or to give my own to be
reipub ut quis re suâ bene utatur Private diligence is a publick good and the careful managing of every mans estate is advantageous to the whole And last of all he robbeth his own soul of the service and ministery of his body which was made a servant to it He robbeth his soul of his soul of all the power and activity it hath which serveth for no use but to carry him to a feast and from thence to his bed where he lyeth the picture and representation of himself of what he was when he was awake And he will be yet more like himself when he is in his grave For here he is but a walking talking breathing shadow nay dead compassed about with stench and rottenness whilst many evil spirits hover over his grave many temptations are ready to seize on him and we may say of him as Seneca did of his friend Vatia Epist 55. Hîc situs est In this world he doth not live but is buried I might here bring to this bar those cloystered Monks and Friars who leave the World as men do Virtue and Learning not because they loath and detest it but because the way thereunto is hard and rugged leave the World to enter into a Paradise where all things grow up of themselves Of many of them that of Martine Luther who was himself once a Monk is true Monachos ignavia fecit Idleness hath made more Monks then Religion who leave not the World for Christ but shadow themselves under their Coul and his Name that they may the more quietly enjoy it But to pass by these as none of the Horizon a sort of Christians there are and they think themselves of the best sort We may call them Monks at large as idle as they but not cloystered up Who though they labour for the things of this world because they love them well yet look not upon their labour as any acceptable service to God but break it off many times most unnecessarily and leave their duty behind them to go up with the Pharisee into the Temple not to pray but to hear a Sermon and then return back to their shop and commend and confute it hear and do not but do the contrary They call it Devotion but it is the Itch and Wantonness of the Ear which wasteth their Devotion and sometimes their estates This they delight in and this is their Religion nothing but words and noyse To this they sacrifice their time which is due to their calling and then too oft redeem it with fraud and cousenage which hath so often been presented to them as the gall of bitterness even in the dish which they love The word of God can we hear it too oft Yes if we do not practice it or if we practice the contrary if we can go from the Mount and break the Law whilst yet the thunder is in our ear I may ask with the Apostle Is all the body Hearing Doth all Religion dwell in the Ear Nay 1 Cor. 12.17 I will add further Doth all Religion consist in Prayer For what I must answer these men as S. Augustine did the Monks in his time are we not bound alike to all the precepts of God De Oper. Monach or may we lay out all our time in the performance of one duty and leave none for the rest Shall the Ear rob the Tongue and the Tongue the Hand Shall one duty swallow up another Si ab his avocandi non sumus nec manducandum est If we may not sometimes break off our devotion we must break another precept which bindeth us to work with our hands Sudaus messor psalmis se avocat curva attundens vites falce vinitor aliquod Davidicum canit Hieron Marcell And yet we need not so break it off but that we may carry it along with us even carry the savour of it which may mingle it self with the actions of our calling and so perfume them and make them pleasing and acceptable to God Arator stivam tenens Hallelujah cantat saith S. Hierome The Husbandman may pray and praise the Lord and sing an Hallelujah at the plough-tail and so may the Smith with the hammer in his hand And certainly if we would entertein them Religion and Devotion would wait upon us even in our shops and be the best attendants we have would make us honest and make us rich Palladius in his Lausiaca telleth us of a certain virgin who said seven hundred prayers in a day Take the gloss in the margent for it much took me when I first read it Decem orationes constitutae publicis rebus occupato non minoris pretii sunt quà m tercentum nihil agentis Ten prayers saith the Gloss made by a man imployed in publick affairs or in his own private calling are of as high an esteem and of force as available as three hundred conceived or uttered by him who doth nothing but pray I may be bold to adde He that heareth but one Sermon and meditateth thereon and repeateth and acteth it over in his life labouring painfully and honestly in his calling is more pleasing and acccptable to God then he that neglecteth his calling and if it were possible in one weak heareth an hundred And if you will not take my word I doubt not but you will give some respect to S. Augustines reason Citiùs exauditur una obedientis oratio quà m decem millia contemptoris One prayer of an obedient man who walketh in his calling according to the rule shall be sooner heard of God then ten thousand from him who maketh his Diligence to keep one commandment a priviledge and warrant to break the rest For what folly is it ut quod bonum est frequentiùs audiatur ideò facere nolle quod auditur under pretense of having time to hear to take no time at all to practice that truth which is heard But the devout Sluggard may perhaps find something in Scripture which may serve him as a pillow to sleep on For as the Covetous person can cull out certain thrifty Texts to countenance his Covetousness as that 1 Tim. 5.8 He that provideth not for his family is worse then an infidel and Let not him that laboureth not eat 2 Thess 3.10 Matth. 6.25 34. John 6.27 De Jejunio so hath the Idle and negligent person his as Take no care for the morrow Take no care for your life Labour not for the meat that perisheth Thus as Tertullian speaketh they can draw the Scripture either way ut haec restringere fraenos illae laxare videatur either to give a check or to let loose the reins to Idleness and Sloth But the Scripture is truth in every part and one part cannot contradict another For we may work with our hands and yet care no more for the morrow then if it were no part of time then if it were nothing and for ought we know it is so for who can say
he commandeth threatneth beseecheth calleth upon us again and again And the beseechings of Lords are commands preces armatae armed prayers backt with power And therefore next consider the Virtue and Power of his Dominion and bow before him and do what he commandeth with fear and trembling Let this Power walk along with thee in all thy wayes When thou art giving an alms let it strike the trumpet out of thy hand When thou fastest let it be in capite jejunii let it begin and end it When thou art strugling with a tentation let it drive thee on that thou faint not and fall back and do the work of the Lord negligently Jer. 48.10 When thou art adding virtue to virtue let it be before thy eyes that thou mayest double thy diligence and make it up complete in every circumstance And when thou thinkest of evil let it joyn with that thought that thou mayest hate the very appearance of it and chace it away Why should Dust and Ashes more aw thee then Omnipotency Why should thy Eye be stronger then thy Faith Not onely the frown but the look of thy Superiour composeth and modelleth thee putteth thee into any fashion or form thou wilt go or run or sit down thou wilt venture thy body would that were all nay thou wilt venture thy soul do any thing be any thing what his beck doth but intimate but thy Faith is fearless as bold as blind will venture on the point of the sword feareth what Man not what this Lord can do feareth him more that sitteth on the bench than him that sitteth at the right hand of God If we did believe as we profess we could not but lay this more to our hearts even lay it so as to break them For who can stand up when this Lord is angry Let us next view the Largeness and Compass of his Dominion which taketh in all that will come reacheth those who refuse to come and would not be contracted in its compass if none should come And why shouldst thou turn a Saviour into a Destroyer Why shouldst thou die in thy Physicians arms with thy cordials about thee Why shouldst thou behold him as a Lord till he be angry He calleth all inviteth all to come Why should Publicanes and sinners enter and thy disobedience shut thee out Lastly consider the Duration of his Dominion which shall not end but with the world nor end then when it doth end for the virtue of it shall reach to all eternity And then think that under this Lord thou must either be eternally happy or eternally miserable and let not a flattering but a fading World let not thy rebellious and traiterous Flesh let not the Father of lies a gilded temptation an apparition a vain shadow thrust thee on his left hand For both at his right and left there is Power which worketh to all eternity And now we have walkt about this Sion and told the towers thereof shewed you Christs Territories and Dominion the nature of his Laws the Virtue and Power the Largeness and Compass the Duration of his Kingdom we must in the next place consider his Advent consider him as now coming For we cannot imagin as was said before that he fitteth idle like Epicurus his God nec sibi facessens negotium nec alteri not regarding what is done below but like the true Prometheus governing and disposing the state of times and actions of men Divinum numen etiam qua non apparet rebus humanis intervenit M. Sen Contr. His Power insinuateth it self and worketh even there where it doth not appear Though he be in heaven yet he can work at this distance For he fileth the heaven and the earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He beholdeth all things he heareth all things He speaketh to thee and he speaketh in thee He heareth thee when thou speakest and he heareth thee when thou speakest not In his book are all things written nay he keepeth a book in the very closet of thy heart the onely book which shall go along with thee and when he cometh it shall fly open Every chapter every letter every character of sin shall be as plain to thy eye as to his And though we here seal up this book he can read it when it is shut He sitteth above tanquam venturus as one coming Indeed to us who like those Philosophers in Tully seeing nothing with our mind refer all to our sense and scarce believe any thing but that for which we have an ocular demonstration the eye of whose faith is so dull and heavy that it cannot clearly discern that eye of our Lord which is ten thousand times brighter then the Sun he is most times as lost like Epicurus his God doing nothing Eccl. 23.17 like Baal either in his journey or sleeping 1 Kings 18.27 And as at his first coming he was had in no reputation Phil 2 5. so now he is at the right hand of God he is in a manner forgot Wo do not insult over him in plain terms as those did in Theodoret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Luke 24.25 What doth the carpenters Son now do but we are as slow of heart to believe what we are taught and what we say we believe as those disciples which went to Emmaus We are told that he did rise again from the dead and ascended and sitteth at the right hand of God and will come again but it is a long time since those things were done and he is long a coming To the Atheist to the profane person to the luke-warm Christian to the hypocrite he is in a manner lost they have sealed up his grave and he will come no more And this is one argument that he will come even this That we so little regard it For can a Lord that breatheth forth nothing but Love bear with such contempt Can he whom the voice of God and Man whom Scripture and Miracles and Reason have placed on the tribunal and made Judge of all the world be kept back by these vain imaginations which are nothing else but the steam and exhalations of our sensual and brutish part Shall not he judge all the earth because we are guilty and deserve to be condemned No veniet veniet hic August etiamsi nolis veniet He will come he will certainly come whether thou wilt or no. Nor is delay in coming an argument that he will not come For the Lord is not slack concerning his promise and coming 2 Pet. 3.3 4 9. as some count slackness some scoffers who walk after their own lusts and ask Where is the promise of his coming Sensuality is the mother and nurse of Unbelief and the Sense flyeth the knowledge of that which is terrible to it and so we are as S. Peter telleth us willingly ignorant of that which we are taught and will not consider that the world is made of corruptible parts and therefore must at last be dissolved and
from heaven to those who enter our Olympicks who enter Religion and give up their names to Christ that they may fight for mastery and be crowned Our Saviour telleth them they must sit down Luke 14.31 and consider what that is wherein they have ingaged themselves how full of trouble and danger how many thorns and lets there be in their way how many adversaries It is not enough to name Christ 2 Tim. 2.19 but they that name him must depart from all iniquity and carefully provide that the Integrity of their life rather commend their Religion then Religion be suborned and brought in to countenance the Irregularity of their manners We cannot but observe that from the corruption of mens lives all those corruptions and mixtures have crept into Religion which carry with them a near likeness and resemblance to those spots which men have received from the world Ambition hath brought in her mixture and Covetousness hers and Pleasures have dropt their poison and left their very mark and characters in the doctrines of men which are framed and fashioned to favour and advance that evil humour which first set them up Covetousness and Ambition may set up a chair or Consistory and from thence shall provision be made to feed and nourish them both to a monstrous growth Nam ut in vita Lib. 12. c. prim sic in causis spes improbas habent saith Quintilian Those unlawful hopes and foul desires which sway us in our lives appear again and shew themselves as full of power to pervert and mislead us in point of doctrine One would think that the world had nothing to do in the School of Christ that Mammon could not hold the pen of the Scribe or conclude in the Schools or have a voice and suffrage in a Councel that Money and Honour and Pleasure could bring nothing to the stating of a Question but through the corruptness of mens mindes and manners it hath in all ages so fallen out that these have been the great deciders of controversies have started Questions and resolved them have called Councels and decreed with them We may be soon perswaded it was no other spirit then this which was sent from Rome in a cloakbag to the Councel of Trent We have seen enough to raise such a thought That the Church hath been governed by the world that that which we call Religion hath been carried on by private Interest From hence are those corruptions of Truth and mixtures in Religion from hence those generations of Questions those catalogues of Heresies from hence so many Religions and none at all For Faction cannot be Religion since it cutteth off the fairest part and member she hath Charity And thus if Religion lose one of these colours she loseth her beauty If she be not pure she cannot long be sincere and entire and if she be defiled she will receive additions the worship of Saints to the worship of God the fire of Purgatory to the blood of Christ the Indulgence of man to the free Pardon of God Irreverence and profaneness to our hatred of Superstition and to our Zeal Oppression and Murder In a word if it be not pure without mixture and undefiled without pollution it is not Religion And now I have shewed you the Picture of Religion in little represented it to you in these two Doing of good and Abstaining from evil filling the hungry with good things and purging and emptying our selves of all uncleanness You have seen its beauty in its graceful and glorious colours of Purity and Undefiledness Dignum Deo spectaculum a Picture to be hung up in the Church nay before God himself And thus it appeareth before God and the Father and hath its ratification from him God was the first that set it up to be looked upon He hath revealed his will by his Son who is the Wisdome of the Father who gave unto us the words which his Father gave him John 17.8 which give us a full an exact rule of life a method of obedience and glory the way to be like him in this world and to see him in the next And there needeth no other method no other way no other Rule neither a Basil nor a Benedict to enlarge it Nor is it of so easie and quick dispatch that it hath left to men leisure for further practice nor so imperfect that it should need supply from a second hand Why should the phansie the unsetled and whirling phansie of a Man who is ignorant as a beast before him take the boldness to prompt and instruct the wisdome of the Almighty Quod à Deo discitur totum est All that we need learn all that we can learn God alone can teach us By this Christian Religion hath the prerogative above all other Religions in the world For though there be many that are called Gods 1 Cor. 8.5 6. as S. Paul speaketh though there be many that are called Religions yet unto us as there is but one God so there is but one Religion which is commentum Divinitatis the invention or rather the Revelation of the Deity and had no authour could have no authour but God himself Take that which seemeth to carry a fairer shew then the rest and cometh abroad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 like Agrippa and Bernice Acts 25.23 with great pomp and ceremony with voluntary Humility and blinde Obedience with Sackcloth and Fasting with a Pilgrims staff with Penance and Satisfaction and we know from what hands it came of men and by men who many of them drew Religion out of the soul into the outward man betook themselves to this bodily exercise as to a sanctuary so to avoid the continual luctations and lasting agonies of the minde entred Religion that is the phrase but carried little Charity and all those spots they received from the world along with them What voice from heaven did Charles the fifth the Duke of Parma and others hear that having lived in all state and pomp they should count it meritorious to be buried in the hood of a Capuchine or what satisfaction is this before God and the Father Again take that which indeed is called Religion and with that noise and vehemency as if there were none but that yet is it as different from Religion as a picture is from a man Take all our mimick Gestures our forced and studied Deportment our Pharisaical extermination of the countenance our Libelling the Times which we help to make evil our Zeal our Revenge and Indignation against Sin in all but our selves all these are but puppets of our own making a creation of a sick and distempered phansie Luke 16.15 and do but justifie us before men as our Saviour speaketh and those too no wiser then our selves but that which followeth defaceth all our pageantry Spectat nos ex alto Deus rerum arbiter Men see us who see but our face but God also is a spectator and He knoweth the
the patients though the world perhaps cannot distinguish them and Death it self which is a key to open the gates of hell to the one may be to the other what the Rabbines conceive it would have been to Adam had he not fallen but osculum pacis a kiss of peace a gentle and loving dismission into a better state To conclude this then A people a chosen people a people chosen out of this choice Gods servants and friends may be smitten Josiah may fall in the battle Daniel may be led into captivity John Baptist may lose his head and yet we may hold up our Inscription DOMINVS EST It is the Lord. Let us now a little see what use we may make of this doctrine And first since the judgments of God are many times powred out upon whole nations without respect and beat upon the righteous as well as the wicked let us not be rash either to judge others when the hand of God hath touched them or to flatter our selves when he seemeth to shine upon our tabernacle For the hand of God may touch may strike down to the dust whom notwithstanding he meaneth to lift up to the highest pitch of happiness and he may shine upon the tabernacle of others when he is coming towards them in a tempest of blackness and darkness For though affliction be often the punishment of sin yet it is not alwaies so There were worse sinners then those Galilaeans whose bloud Pilate mingled with their sacrifices Luke 13. and they were not the greatest sinners on whom the tower of Siloa fell Good and bad may fall together in the battle and they may survive and escape the edge of the sword who amongst the bad were the worst The sword as David said 2 Sam. 11.25 devoureth one as well as another But what it was that did put an edge to the sword and strength to the hand of the enemy can be certainly known to none but God whose providence he moveth by is like the light he dwelleth in so past finding out that no mortal eye can reach and attain it I will not be so bold as to make Prosperity a sign of a bad man or Affliction and Poverty of a good For in whatsoever estate we are we may work out our salvation Abraham the rich man was in heaven Luke 16. and the poor man in his bosome Through Afflictions if we bear them and through riches if we contemn them and so make them our friends we may enter into the kingdome of heaven But it will be a part of our spiritual wisdome to be jealous rather of the flatteries of this world than of its frowns because the one maketh us reflect upon our selves the other commonly corrupteth and blindeth us and where Affliction slayeth her thousand Prosperity we may justly fear killeth her ten thousand It will be good indeed when calamity seizeth upon us to seize upon our selves to judge and condemn our selves to say This Fever burneth me up for the heat of my lust This Dropsie drowneth me for my intemperance This Lethargy is come upon me for my forgetfulness of Gods commands and my drowsiness in his service And here if I erre the errour is not dangerous but advantageous for this errour leadeth me to the knowledge of my self But when the like calamities befall others to draw the same inference and positively to conclude the same of them is boldly to take the chair and deliver my uncharitable conjectures for the oracles of God The messenger that brought the sad news That Israel was fled before the Philistines 1 Sam. 4.7 said no more then what was too true but had he also inferred that the Philistine was better then the Israelite or that God did favour him more then the other he had brought the Truth to usher in a lie he had related that which he knew and affirmed that which he could not know For Israel may fly before the Philistine and yet God is not the God of Ekron but of Israel In the second place as we must not be rash to judge others when they are cast down so must we not be ready to flatter our selves when some kindly gale of prosperity hath lifted us up above our brethren or to make Prosperity a mark of a righteous person as they of the Papacy do of the true Church For this were indeed to set Dagon above the Ark to plead for Baal to consecrate every sin and make it a virtue to place Dives in Abraham's bosome and Lazarus in hell to prefer Mahomet before Christ to pull Christ out of his kingdome the Martyrs out of heaven and to pluck the white robes from those who were sealed and who washed them white in the bloud of the Lambâ— this were to countenance Nimrod Rev. 7.14 and Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander and all the priviledged thieves and robbers of the earth This were to countenance all the oppressours and murderers of the world who have been so unhappy as to be happy in bringing their bloody purposes to an end For though good intents may have an happy end yet those arts are much to be suspected which have nothing else to commend them but prosperity and good success A conquerd Israelite is not alwaies so evil as a victorious Phelistine For if Prosperity were an argument under the Law which yet it was not for who then more fat more lusty and strong then the wicked yet I do not see how it can be so under the Gospel where affliction is not threatned but promised nay given To you it is given to suffer for Christs sake Phil. 1.29 where Persecution cometh forth with a crown on her head Blessed are ye when men persecute you And indeed this conceit of temporal felicity thwarteth the scope and primary intent of the Gospel which biddeth us look upon our actions with no other perspective but the rule and in respect of our conformity to that count all the prosperity in the world as dung For if I be an adulterer can impunity make me chast if I be a murderer shall that be my sanctuary If I be an oppressour can my gathering of riches make me just If I do that which Nature and Religion forbid and a Heathen would tremble to think on shall I comfort my self that it is done without sin because I have done it without controll Let us not deceive our selves When we have plunged our selves in sin and are fast in the devils chain prosperity and good success will prove but a weak deceitful ladder to climb up by into heaven For let us on the one side behold the Israelite flying before the Philistine For ought we know he may be flying also from his sin unto his God Let us behold the four and thirty thousand dead in the field and can we think that they all together fell into hell because they all together fell in the battel Or shall we call the Philistines the people of God because they vanquisht
2.11 and resist it pray for it and refuse it Behold the Grace of God hath appeared to all men appeared in the doctrine of the Gospel and it appeareth in those good thoughts which are the proper issue of that doctrine and are begot by the Word of Truth When the heart sendeth them forth she sendeth them as Messengers of Grace to invite and draw us out of our evil wayes And if the Devil can raise such a Babel upon an evil thought why may not God raise up a Temple unto himself upon a good I appeal to your selves and shall desire you to ask your selves the question How often have you enjoyed such gratious ravishing thoughts how often have you felt the good motions of the Spirit how oft have you heard a voice behind you Isa 30.21 say Do this How many checks how many inward rebukes have you had in your evil wayes how oft have these thoughts followed and pursued in the wayes of evil and made them less pleasing what a damp have they cast upon your delight what a thorn have they been in your flesh even when it was wanton How oft are you so composed and byassed by these heavenly insinuations that heart and hand are ready to joyn together as partners in the Turn How oft would you and yet will not turn How oft are you the Preacher Eccles 1.2 and tell your selves Vanity of vanities all is vanity and that there is no true rest but in God I speak to those who have some feeling and presage of a future estate Hebr. 6.5 some tast of the powers of the world to come for too many we see have not I speak this to our shame Now is the Time Now is the Now. Pers sat 3. nunc nunc properandus acri Fingendus sine fine rota Now thou must turn the wheel about and frame and fashion thy self into a vessel of honour consecrate unto the Lord Now make up a child of God the new creature Now we must nourish and make much of these good motions and inclinations wrought in us either by the word of God or the rod of God They are fallen upon us and entred into us but how long they will stay how long we shall enjoy them we cannot tell A smile from the World a dart from Satan if we take not heed if we be not tender of them may chase them away This is the time this is the Now. For at another time being fallen from this heaven our cogitations may be from the earth earthly such gross and durty thoughts as will not melt but harden in the sun Our faculties may be corrupt our understandings dull and heavy our wills froward and perverse that we shall either not will that which is good or so will it as not to have strength to bring forth and draw it into act If we approve and look towards it we shall soon start back as from an enemy as from that which suiteth not with our present disposition but is distastful to it tanquam fas non sit as if it were some unlawful thing as we read of the Sybarite who was grown so extremely dainty that he would fall into a cold sweat and faint at another mans labour Now therefore Now let us close with it whilest it appeareth in beauty and is amiable in our eyes whilest our will beginneth to bend and our heart inclineth to it If we let this so fair an opportunity pass within a while Vanity it self will appear in glory and that Holiness which should make us like unto God will be taken for a monster There will be honey on the Harlots lips and gall on Chastity a Lordship shall be more desirable then Paradise and three lives in that then eternity in Heaven Now God is God and if we do not Now fall down and worship him the next Now Baal will be God the World will be our God and the true God whom but now we acknowledged will not be in all our wayes The first Now the first opportunity is the best the next is most uncertain the next may be never But now if we will stand to distinguish times by the events as by their several faces the divers complexions they receive either from peace or trouble from prosperity or adversity then certainly the best time to turn to God is when he turneth his face to us cùm candidi fulgent soles when God shineth brightly upon our tabernacles and speaketh to us not out of the whirlwind but in a still voice when Plenty crowneth the Common-wealth and Peace shadoweth it when God appeareth to us not as Jupiter to Semele in thunder but as to Danae in a showre of gold It is best to open to him whilest he standeth as it were at the door and intreateth entrance and not stay till he knock with the hammer or break in upon us with his sword To turn to him now in this brightness will rather be an act of our Love then of our Fear and so make our Repentance a free-will-offering a sacrifice of a sweet smelling savour unto God This will make it evident that we understand the voice of his calling the language of his benefits the miracle which he worketh which is to cure our inward blindness with clay with these outward things that we may see to turn from our evil wayes unto the Lord. This is truly to prayse the Lord for all his benefits this is truly to honour him to bear our selves with that fear and reverence that we leave off to offend this God of blessings Negat beneficium qui non honorat he denieth he despiseth a blessing that doth not thus honour it Ingratitude is contumelious to God it is the bane of merit the defacer of goodness the sepulchre and the hell of all blessings for by it they are turned into a curse Ingratitude loatheth the light loatheth the land of Canaan and looketh for milk and honey in Egypt This is it the Prophets every where complain of that the people did enjoy the light of Gods countenance but by it walkt oh in their evil wayes and made no other use of it then this That they did per tantorum bonorum detrimenta Deum contemnere Ad Celantiam as Hierom speaketh lose the favour of God in their contempt and were made worse by that which should have turned them from being evil that being Gods pleasant plant Isa 5.7 they brought forth nothing but wilde grapes To apply this to our selves Dare we now look back to the former times What face can turn that way and not gather blackness God gave us light and we sâ—â—t our eyes against it He made us the envie and we were ambitious to make our selves the scorn of all nations He gave us milk and honey and we turned it into gall and bitterness He gave us plenty and peace and the one we loathed as the Jews did their Manna the other we abused Our Peace brought forth
not please and flatter our selves in our formalities in a lazy and unsignificant devotion cast-down looks forced sighs open confessions some-few dayes sequestration of our selves from the noise and business of the world which we delight in from those sins which we carry about with us when we seem to leave them and which we cast a look of love back upon when we renounce them Be not deceived God is the purest essence Heaven and Happiness are realities the Lord's Table is not a phantasm or apparition but presenteth that food which will feed and nourish us all God's promises gifts and blessings whatsoever he speaketh whatsoever he doth are real and will not enter the heart which is not like them and fitted for them These realities are not bought with shews and shadows this dew from heaven will not fall upon the hairy scalp of him that goeth on still in his sins A thousand looks and trials are not so effectual as one single victory over one single lust Examination is but lost labour without amendment A survey is the extremity of folly if I look and search and see the errours and faults in my spiritual building and then let it sink and fall to the ground Realities must be answered with realities We must be good ground for the good seed If it fall upon stony places a look of the Sun will scorch it and having no roâ—t it will soon wither away Not a drop of mercy can fall but into a broken heart The Sacrament is but the sign of the thing and yet it conveyeth the thing it self into a prepared heart For as the Priest consecrateth and setteth apart the Bread and Wine to this holy use so doth the Receiver after a manner consecrate them to himself and by complete and perfect Examination and Approving of himself receiveth the outward signs and with them Christ and all the riches and glories of the Gospel all the blessings and comforts it affordeth This is the true Examination this is the true preparation Silent and hearty Devotion receiveth the promises and blessings sealeth the promises maketh them blessings when they withdraw themselves or rather prove curses to them who fill up their Examination and Trial of themselves with noise and shews I urge this the rather because we see some care taken for the one but the other laid aside and buried in the land of oblivion We can forbear for a time our common imployments nay our common delights We can enter our chamber and commune with our hearts but leave off before the Dialogue be perfect We can confess and fast and pray go mournfully and hang down our heads like a bulrush And all this is requisite and praise-worthy but all this doth not fill up nor fully express the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth not bring our Examination home to its end The main is a Good Christian a Just man The sum and end of all is Eecl 12.13 the fear of God and Obedience to his commandements Let the bridegroom go out of his chamber and the bride out of her closet as the Prophet Joel exhorteth let us take off our thoughts from lawful contents but we then approve and prepare our selves for that mercy of God which shineth in these pledges of his love casteth its beams upon us even from these outward Elements when we sequester our selves from our selves Let the bridegroom go out of his chamber yea and let the sinner go out of himself Let the Bloud thirsty man stifle murther his malice and crucifie his lusts and affections Let the Covetous rise from the dead rouse himself from the earth wherein he lieth buried and tread it under his feet Let the Proud degrade himself and make himself equal to them of low degree Let the Contentious bind himself in the bond of peace Let the Wanton make himself an eunuch for the kingdome of heaven Let every man fight against that lust which is predominant and prevaileth in him And then he hath past and gone through his Trial he hath duely examined and approved himself and may eat of this bread and drink of this cup. This is as that clean linen cloth in which the body of Jesus must be wrapped It will not lie in noise and shews and shadows in the thin cobwebs of our own spinning much less will it abide in a soul torn and distracted or bespotted with the world and the flesh To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices Isai 1. saith the Lord. To what purpose is this outward pomp and formality Why do we send out our thoughts and fasten them upon these and not imploy them on that which will take them up and exercise them to their utmost extent and which indeed deserveth our greatest care These things we ought to do and not to leave the other undone Let me tell you A good Christian is fitted and prepared for the Lord's Table at all times And accordingly in the first and purest times they did receive almost at every meeting and refreshment This was their practice till Iniquity broke in and made Religion a trade and merchandise to promote mens ends to fill their purses not to purifie their souls Nor did they forget that other ceremonious preparation nor was it possible they should For he that hath sweat in the heat of the day will not fail or fall short to perform those offices which may be done in the cool He that stood out and shewed his strength in that great work of mortification will not shrink in or contract himself and neglect that part of piety which is more easie and not so terrible to flesh and bloud He that can deny himself can deny his affairs He that flieth from sin may easily abstain from meat He that can shut himself out of the world will find it no hard task to retire for a while from the business of the world He whose whole life is a seeking of God or as the Father speaketh one continued prayer cannot but lift up his heart and pour forth his soul in earnest supplications on this solemn occasion In a word they are both necessary the one as the end the other as the means We must trouble our selves in those things but one thing is necessary indeed Holiness of life without which we cannot see God and with which we shall see him with which we receive Christ in the Sacrament and without which we receive but a sop but bread and with it the Devil our own condemnation The other without this are but the noise of those who cry Lord Lord open unto us and receive no other answer from him but this I know you not This is the main the chief ingredient I may say the very essence of our Preparation He is most meet to receive Christ who carrieth him alwaies about with him but into a froward heart into a heart fiâ—led with nothing but sin and formality into a hollow heart he will not enter The Love
sojourners and strangers in the earth It is true strangers we are for all are so and passing forward apace to our journeys end but not to that end for which we were made Therefore that we may reach and attain to it we must make our selves so Eph. 4.22 put off the old man which loveth to dwell here take off our hopes and desires from the world look upon all its glories as dung look upon it as a strange place Phil. 3.8 upon our selves as strangers in it and look upon the place to which we are going fling off every weight shake off every vanity Hebr. 12.1 every thing that is of the earth earthy make haste delay not but leave it behind us even while we are in it for a Christian mans life is nothing else but a going out of it And to this end in the last place you must take along with you your viaticum your Provision the Commandments of Gods Hide not thy commandments from me saith David And he spake as a stranger and as in a strange place as in a place of danger as in a dark place where he could not walk with safety if this light did not shine upon him Here we meet with variety of objects Here are Serpents to flatter us and Serpents to bite us here are Pleasures and Terrours all to deceive and detein us Here we meet with that Archenemy to all strangers and pilgrimes in several shapes now as a roaring Lion 1 Pet. 5.8 and sometimes as an Angel of light 2 Cor. 11.14 And though we try it not out at fists with him as those foolish Monks boasted they had often tried this kind of hardiment though we meet him not as a Hippocentaur Hic on de vita Pauli Eremitae Malchi Hilarionis as the story telleth us Paul the Hermite did or as a Satyre or she-Wolf as Hilarion did to whom were presented many fearful things the roaring of Lions the noise of an Army Chariots of fire coming upon him Wolves Foxes Sword-plaiers and I cannot tell what though we do not feel him as a Satyre yet we feel him as voluptuous though we do not see him as a Wolf yet we apprehend him thirsting after bloud though we meet him not in the shape of a Fox yet non ignoramus versutias 2 Cor. 2.11 we are not ignorant of his wiles and enterprises though we do not see him in the Tempest we may in our fear and though his hand be invisible yet we may feel him in our impatience and falling from the truth We cannot say in our affliction This is his blow but we may hear him roar in our murmuring Or we may see him in that mongrel Christian made up of Ignorance and Fury of a Man and a Beast which is more monstrous then any Centaure We may see him in that Hypocrite that deceitful man who is a Fox and the worst of the cub We may meet him in that Oppressour who is a Wolf in that Tyrant and Persecutour who is a roaring Lion In some of these shapes we meet him every day in this our Pilgrimage And here in the world we can find nothing to secure us against the World Adversity may swallow up Pleasure in victory but not the Love of it Impotency and Inability may bridle and stay my Anger but not quench it Providence may defend me from evil but not from Fear of it Nor can the World yield us any weapon against it self Therefore God hath opened his Armoury of heaven and given us his Commandments to be our light our provision our defense in our way to be as our Pilgrimes staff our Scrip our Letters commendatory Ps 91.11 to be our Angels to keep us in all our waies And there is no safe walking for a stranger without them And as when the children of Israel were in the wilderness God rained down Manna upon them and led them as it were by the hand till he brought them to the land of promise so he dealeth still with all that call upon his name whilest they are in via in this their peregrination ever and anon beset with temptations which may detein and hinder them He raineth down abundance of his grace Wisd 16.20 which like that Manna will serve the appetite of him that taketh it is like to that which every man wanteth and applieth it self to every tast to all callings and conditions to all the necessities of a stranger Thus we walk by faith 2 Cor. 5.7 Festina fides Faith is on the wing and leaveth the world behind us Heb. 11.1 is the substance and evidence of things not seen It looketh not on those things which are seen 2 Cor. 4.18 and please a carnal eye or if it do it looketh upon them as Joshua did upon Ai Josh 8.5 c. first turneth the back and then all its strength against them maketh us fly from them that we may overcome them 1 Joh. 5.4 For this is the victory which overcometh the world even our faith Hebr. 6.19 20 And Festina spes Hope too is in her flight and followeth our Forerunner Jesus to enter with him that which is within the veil even the Holy of holies Heaven it self Spe jam sumus in coelo We are already there by hope And to him that hath seen the beauty of Holiness the World is but a loathsome spectacle to him that truly trusteth in God it is lighter then Vanity and he passeth from it And then our Love of God is our going forth our peregrination It is a perishing a death of the soul to the world If it be truly fixt no pleasure no terrour nothing in the world can concern us but they are to us as those things which the traveller in his way seeth and leaveth every day and we think no more of the glory of them then they who have been dead long ago Col. 3.3 For we are dead saith the Apostle and our life is hid hid from the world with Christ in God Our Temperance tasteth not our Chastity toucheth not our Poverty in spirit handleth not those things which lye in our way but we pass by them as impertinencies as dangers as things which may pollute a soul more then a dead body could under the Law The stranger the pilgrime passeth by all His Meekness maketh injuries and his Patience afflictions light and his Christian Fortitude casteth down every strong hold every imagination which may hinder him in his course Every act of Piety is a kind of sequestration and driveth us if not from the right yet from the use of the world Every Virtue is to us as the Angel was to Lot Gâ—n 19.14 17. and biddeth Arise and go out of it taketh us by the hands and biddeth us haste and escape for our life and not look behind us And with this Provision as it were with the two Tables in our hands we
it threatned in these words Lest a worse thing come unto thee That these words Sin no more are plain and that Christ meant as he spake appeareth by this Commination Lest a worse thing come unto thee For if we will read his meaning in his words we may say this is machaera conditionalis his conditional sword as the Father calleth it which if we sin again will be latched in our sides If one evil will not cure us God's quiver is full and he hath more arrows to shoot Sin no more Take heed thou be not the same thou wert before those thirty eight years nor commit that sin again which crippled thee and brought thee to the pool's side If thou darest yet venture a worse punishment standeth at thy doors ready to seize upon thee Now a Man is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one living creature made up of two diverse substances the Soul and the Body so the danger which besetteth him the evils which compass him about and threaten him are of a diverse nature Some strike at the body others enter the soul There are terrours by night and the arrow that flyeth by day and there is another plague the plague of the Heart A worse thing will come unto thee worse to thy Body and worse to thy Soul Thou shalt be a worse Paralytick and a worse Man nearer to death and nearer to hell The reiteration of thy sin shall awake heavier judgments which shall fall both on thy outward and on thy inward man We shall speak something of them both and first of God's Temporal judgments The last is the worst It was so with Pharaoh The death of the First-born in Egypt was more terrible then the Frogs or the Locusts or the Hail or the Murrain It was so with God's own people He punished them and they sinned still and he increased their punishment When they were fed to the full they did commit adultery and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots houses As fed horses in the morning they neighed after their neighbours wives God hireth out forein enemies Egypt and Assyria he sendeth out his great army his Caterpillars and Palmer-worms he hireth out Nebuchadnezzar and calleth him his servant and payeth him his wages How oft did they provoke him and how oft did he punish them He leadeth them into Captivity and bringeth them back again For all this they sinned yet more against him and committed those sins which even the Heathen were ashamed of And at last they killed the Prince of life and crucified their Messias who was manifested unto them by signs and wonders And now behold their house is left desolate and they are become the scorn of Nations and a proverb to all the world Afflictions and calamities sometimes are corrections sometimes executions In the first God cometh as a Father in the last as a Judge God goeth like the Consuls of Rome Virgas habet secures He hath a Rod and an Axe carried before him At first he chastiseth us with his Rods and then with his Axe Job on the Dunghil David flying before Absalom these felt his Rod But the old World before the Floud the Cananite and the Amorite when their wickedness was full the Jews and Jerusalem these were hewen down with the Axe This impotent man at the pool's side was but under the Rod but when Christ telleth him if he sin again a worse thing should fall unto him he sheweth him the Axe and holdeth it over his head Quod solus fulmen mittit Jupiter placabile est saith Seneca perniciosum de quo deliberat The first thunderbolt God sendeth carrieth not so much fire with it but rather light to shew us our danger But if we put him to deliberate and to enter into controversie with us if we put him to the question What shall I do that I have not done the next will scatter us and dash us to pieces The first is light the second is a consuming fire Correct us O Lord in thy judgment not in thy fury is a prayer for the first kind against the second Pius Quintus lying on his death bed grievously tormented with the Stone was often heard to send forth this pious prayer Domine addas ad dolorem modò addas ad patientiam Lord adde unto my grief so thou adde unto my patience Patience in this kind as it is the best remedy of a disease so doth increase our crown and glory O felicem servum cujus emendationi instat Dominus cui dignatur irasci Oh happy servant whom the Lord taketh such pains to correct whom he loveth so well as thus to be angry with him But if we will not hearken to his Rod then he whetteth his Axe and maketh it ready Perdidimus utilitatem calamitatis We have lost all the profit which we might have received He hath spent his rods in vain and therefore if we take not heed he will strike us so as to cut us off and will give us our portion with sinners The judgments of God are like unto the Waters which came out of the Temple At first they are shallow and come up but to the ankles anon they are deeper Ezek. 47. and come up to the loins and at last they are so deep that we can gain no passage over them Thus doth the Justice and Providence of God follow us in all our wayes Aeschylus calleth it the harmony of God others his Geometry by which he observeth a kind of method and measure and proportion Librat iter ad iram suam saith the Psalmist Psal 78.50 He maketh a way to his anger He weigheth the Punishment and the Sin as in the scales He correcteth us if we fall and if we will fall again Hos 5.5 he layeth on heavier strokes He maketh our iniquity testifie against us maketh what we do witness and proclaim that to be just which we suffer Which though it be not alwaies visible to the eye for Deo constat justitiae suae ratio The reason as of God's Mercy so also of his Justice is ever with himself yet is it certain and judgment followeth the wicked whithersoever they go and hangeth over them as the sword did over Damocles by a hair ready to fall And that it falleth not but leaveth them in their ruff and jollity in their pride going on in their sin is to their greatest punishment Nam quanta est poena nulla poena Not to be punished at all is the greatest punishment of all and nothing is more deplorable then the happiness of a wicked man For the delay of punishment is but to make it more seasonable to stay it now and inflict it at such a time and in such a place and after such a manner as God's wisdome knoweth to be fittest God's wayes are in the whirlwind saith Nahum and his footsteps are not known saith the Psalmist yet his end is certain to work an harmony out of the greatest disorder to raise beauty
For shew me he that can one passage of Scripture that looketh favourably on Riches Luke 18.24 It is plainly said How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! but it would puzzle the wit of the best Logician in the world to draw out of Scripture but by way of consequence this conclusion BEATI DIVITES Blessed are the rich Indeed when men are rich the Scripture giveth them good counsel what to do Not to trust in them To make them a sacrifice To distribute and communicate which indeed is to contemn them to empty them out It counselleth us to be rich in good works and then the Vae will fly away from us as a mist doth before the Sun I am unwilling to leave the Rich and the Wo so near together but would set them at that distance that they may never meet To conclude then let us not be too familiar wich Riches lest whilest we embrace them we take the plague and the Wo enter into our very bowels The love of the world is a catching disease and it is drawn on with dallying with a very look The covetous man saith Aristotle first seeketh money for his want and then falleth in love with it And love of money increaseth with our heaps so that even a mountain of gold is counted but a mole-hill He that is grown rich complaineth he is poor And so indeed he is poorer then that Lazar that lieth naked at his door This plague the Love of the world is got insensibly we know not how For the Eye is the burning-glass of the soul and as we see in glasses of that nature if we wag and stir them up and down they produce no flame but if we hold them fixed and steddy between the Sun and the object it will presently kindle so if we plant our eyes and hold them steddy betwixt the glittering wedge of gold and the catching matter of our heart it will unite and grow strong and strike a fire into our soul which is not so easily quenched as it might have been avoided We see nothing but glory in Riches when they are gendring a Wo. Let us therefore rather look upon them as strangers for our traffick and our trading should be in heaven Alienum est à nobis omne quod seculi est saith Hierome The World and a Christian are of a diverse nature and constitution We do not traffick for gold where there are no mines nor can we find God in the world He that maketh him his purchase will find business enough to take up his thoughts and little time left for conference and commerce in the world scarce any time to look upon it but by the By and in the passage as we use to look upon a stranger A look is dangerous a look of liking is too much but a look of love will bury us in the world where we are sown in power but are raised in dishonour We rest and sleep in this dust and when we awake the Wo which hung over our heads falleth upon us In a word then let us not onely look upon Riches as strangers but handle them as serpents warily lest they sting us to death Let us take them by the right end and then that which was a serpent may prove a rod to work wonders Your riches like the widow's oyle shall increase by being poured forth and you shall purchase most when you sell all that you have So you shall turn the Vae into an Euge the Wo into a Blessing Make these strangers these enemies these Riches of unrighteousness to be friends by keeping a kind of state and distance from them Work off their paint force from them their deceitfulness and malignancy Make them such friends as shall plead and intercede on your behalf be your Harbingers to prepare a place for you and when you faile when they faile open the gates of heaven and make a way for you to be received into everlasting habitations The Seventh SERMON PART I. 1 PET. V. 6. Humble your selves therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time I May call my Text ITINERARIUM MENTIS AD DEUM The Journal of the Soul to God or A bref Discovery of the way to heaven and of the occurrences and remarkable passages therein For here we have two terms Humility and Exaltation a Valley and a Hill a Valley of tears and a holy Hill Now you see there is a great distance between these two terms as great as between SURSUM and DEORSUM below and above And between these two there is a God to be bowed to an hand to awe us and a mighty hand to shake and shiver us into a spiritual nothing Whether it be his hand which he reacheth forth to help us or his hand which he stretcheth forth to strike us whether it be his hand with which he leadeth his people or his hand with which he bruiseth the nations his hand of Mercy or his hand of Vengeance his hand it is and a mighty hand mighty to lay us on the ground and mighty to raise us up again able to turn our dunghil into a throne our sackcloth into a triumphant robe and our humility into glory Now Humility is causa removens prohibens the cause that putteth by all obstacles and retardances that prepareth our way and maketh our paths straight nay causa movens the moving cause that hath an operative causality and efficacious virtue in it illex misericordiae as Tertullian that matureth and ripeneth us for God's mercy and draweth on and inviteth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his mighty hand to crown us Fear not Mary saith the Angel for thou hast found favour with God And fear not thou virgin humble soul thou shalt find favour with God Thy vileness is thy honour thy low estate is thy high preferment thy minoration thy exinanition thy nothing is thy All For see Humility looketh directly upon Glory Between them there is but a short line nay there is an hand in the Text that draweth them both together and uniteth them as it were in puncto The whole line the whole course of a Christian is Humility and Glory And as in a Line there be infinite Points yet thou canst not say Here is this point and here is that to distinguish them so our Humility must be continued degree upon degree sigh upon sigh contrition upon contrition so close so without pause or interval as to be impercepâ—â—ble I am sure our Exaltation shall be infinitely and imperceiveably continued Onely here is the difference Our Humility is drawn on in a straight but short line it hath it extremes an end it hath but our Exaltation shall be everlasting and run round in a Circle as Eternity This is the sum of these words The Division now is easie The parts are but two First our part Humbling of our selves Secondly God's part he will raise us up again Now the Wise-man will
it self in his mouth will be heretical and whatsoever droppeth from his pen will be poyson Hence it hath come to pass that we have heard the innocent condemned and things laid to their charge which they never did that they have been branded with the name of murderers who abhorred murder of injurious who suffered wrong of persecutors who were oppressed of idolaters who hated idoles of hereticks who were the strongest pillars of the Truth We are wont to say Love is blind and tell me now Is not Hatred blind also In the next place let one Feaâ— chase away another Let the Fear of God whose wrath is everlasting expell the Fear of Man whose breath is in his nostrils whose anger and power like the wind breathe themselves out who whilest he destroyeth destroyeth nothing but that which is as mortal as himself The reason why we miss of Truth is because we are so foolish and ignorant that we Fear man more then God and the shaking of his whip then the scorpions of a Deity How hath this ill-placed Fear unmanned us how hath it shaken the powers of our soul and made us say what we do not believe and believe that to be true which we cannot but know is false There hath passed an ungracious speeâ—h amongst us and often rung in our ears and this base degenerate Fear did dictate it Men have been so bad and bold as to say They had rather trust God with their souls then Man with their estates and lives Had they not thought they had stated the question they would not have proclaimed it with such ostentation they would not have sung it out and rejoyced in it Certainly if a proverb as the Philosopher saith be a publick testimony and do discover the constitution of the place where it is taken up then our Jerusalem is not the city nor our Countrey the region of Truth Trust man with our estates When we persevere in the Truth and suffer for it we trust not our estates with Man but put them into his hands who gave them and who can make the greatest Leviathan that playeth in the sea of this world Job 41.31 and maketh it boil like a pot disgorge himself and cast out the prey We do not trust them with Man but offer them a sacrifice to the Lord. But we will trust God with our souls say they See how a lie multiplieth in our hands We will trust God with our souls and pollute them and when we have polluted them still trust in the Lord. It is good to trust in the Lord but it is good too to take heed what a soul we trust him with Wilt thou trust an unclean soul with the God of purity a soul guilty of bloud with the God of mercy a distracted soul with the God of peace an earthy soul with the God of heaven a perjured soul with that God who is Truth it self Let not thy love of the world and thy fear of losing it draw so false and foul conclusions from so radiant and excellent a truth And if thou art in earnest and wouldst buy the Truth Matth. 10.28 then fear not them which kill the body and after that have no more that they can do Luke 12.4 5. but fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell yea I say unto you fear him Now in the last place what is our Hope If it be in this life onely we are of all men the most miserable 1 Cor. 15.19 For this world is not the region of Truth here is nothing to be found but vanity and lies Pergula pictoris veri nihil omnia falsa Here are false Riches painted Glories deceitful Honours I may say the world is a monument a painted sepulchre and within it lie Errour Delusions and Lies like rotten bones And wilt thou place thy Hope here upon that which is a lie Shall this be thy compass to steer by in thy travel and adventure for Truth Shall the lying Spirit the God of this world be thy holy or rather unholy Ghost to lead thee to it O spem fallacem This is a deceitful Hope and will lead thee into by-paths and dangerous precipices wheel and circle thee about from one lie to another Mark 9.22 cast thee like that evil spirit into fire and water waste and wash away thy intellectual and discerning faculties which should sever Falshood from Truth make thy religion as deceitful as thy hopes and when all thy hopes and thoughts perish deliver thee over to the Father of lies Be sure then to take of thy Hope from these things on eâ—rth why should it stoop so low And raise it up to enter into that within the veil Hebr. 6.19 that it may not flie after shadows and phantasms but lay hold on the Truth it self that the World and the Devil may find nothing in thee to lead thee from the light into that ignorance which is darker then darkness it self that thou mayest say to them What have I to do with you and so pass on with courage and chearfulness to the purchase of that Truth which abideth for ever The Eleventh SERMON PART II. PROV XXIII 23. Buy the truth and sell it not also wisdome and instruction and understanding YE have heard of part of the payment But the price of the Truth is yet higher and there is more to be given And indeed we shall find that the merchandise is unvaluable and that it will be cheap when we have given all for it What are the Vanities of the world yea what is the whole World it self nay what is our Understanding Will and Affections what is Man in comparison of that Truth without which he is worse then nothing What is it then that we must lay down more when we come to this mart We must part with that which cleaveth many times so close unto us that we cannot so much as offer any thing for the Truth First we must remove all Prejudice out of our minds that they may be still tanquam rasa tabula though they have something written in them yet that they receive not any opinion so deeply in as not to be capable of another which hath more reason to commend it that they cleave not so close to that which was first entertained upon weak peradventure carnal motives as to stand out against that which bringeth with it a cloud of witnesses and proofs yea light it self to make entrance for it Secondly we must remove all Malice all distast and loathing of the Truth we must take heed we do not wilfully reject it as if it concerned us not nor were worth the buying Till our mind be clear of both these Prejudice and Malice we may talk of the Truth but onely as a blind man doth of the light we may commend the Truth but as a man of Belial may honour a Saint we may cry out Magna est Veritas praevalebit 1 Esdr 4.41 and yet
we speak to our servant and say Go he must go if we say Do this he must do it and he must do it now dicto citiùs as soon as it is spoken A deliberative pausing obedience obedience in the future tense to say I will do it strippeth him of his livery and thrusteth him out of doors And shall dust and ashes take a convenient time to seek the Lord Shall our Now be when we please Shall one morrow thrust on another and that a third Shall we demur and delay it till we are ready to be thrust into our graves If the Lord say Now this Now is it and no other For all other Nows as our dayes are in his hands and he may shut them up if he please and not open them to give thee another Domini non servi negotium agitur The business is the Lord's and not the servant's and the time is in his hands and not in ours Now then now the word soundeth in thy ears now is the time Again now that thou hast any good thought any thought that hath any relish of salvation For that thought if it be not the voice if the whisper of the Lord. If it be a good thought it is from him who is the fountain of all good and he speaketh to thee by it as he did to the Prophets by visions and dreams In a dream in a vision of the night in a thought then he openeth the ears of men Job 33.15.16 and sealeth their instruction And why should he speak once and twice and we perceive it not Why should the Devil that would destroy us prevail with us more then our God who would save us Why should an evil thought arise in our hearts and swell and grow and be powerful to roule the eye to lift up the head to stretch out the hand to make our feet like hind's feet in the wayes of death and a holy thought a good intention which is it were the breath of the Almighty be stopped and checked and slighted and at last chased away into the land of oblivion Why should a good thought as a bubble vanish as soon as it is seen and an evil thought increase and multiply shake the powers of the soul command the will and every â—aâ—â—â—y of the mind and every part of the body and at last bring forth a Cain an Esau a Herod a Pharisee a profane person an hypocrite an adulterer a murderer Why should vve so soon devest our selves of the one and morari stay and dvvell in the other as in a place of pleasure a Seraglio a Paradise Let us but give the same friendly enterteinment to the good as vve do to the bad let us as joyfully embrace the one as vve do the other let us fix our heart on the things above as vve do on the things belovv let us be as speculative men in the vvayes of God as vve are in our ovvn and then vve shall seek the Lord. I appeal to your selves and shall desire you to ask your selves the question How often do you enjoy ravishing thoughts Hovv often do you feel the good motions of the Spirit and seem as it vvere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to vvalk on the pavement of heaven to converse vvith Seraphim and Cherubim and to be lull'd in your Saviour's lap Hovv often are you so composed and biassed by these svveet and heavenly insinuations that heart and hand are ready to joyn together as partners in the seeking of the Lord the heart ready to endite a good matter and the tongue and hand to be as the pen of a ready writer Hovv often art thou the Preacher and telleth thy self Vanity of vanities all is vanity that there is no rest but in God I speak to those vvho have any sense and feeling of a future estate any tast of the powers of the world to come for too many vve see have not I speak this to our shame novv is the time nunc nunc properandus acri Fingendus sine fine rota novv thou must turn the vvheel about and frame and fashion thy self into a vessel of honour consecrate unto the Lord make up a child of God the new creature Now nourish and make much of these good motions They are fallen upon us and entred into us but how long they will stay how long we shall enjoy them we do not know A smile from the world a dart from Satan if we take not heed may chase them away Let us now run and meet our Saviour whilest he knocketh and lay hold on him lest if we seek him not whilest he cometh crowned with all his rayes and beauty whilest he may be found he withdraw himself that we shall not find him or which is worse so forsake us that we shall not seek to find him or if we do then seek him when we shall find nothing but despair This is the DONEC the While the time the Now. For at another time being fallen from this heaven our cogitations may be from the earth earthy such durty thoughts as will not melt but harden in the sun Our Faculties may be corrupt our Understandings dull and heavy our Wills froward and perverse that we can either not will that which is good or so will it that we shall not act it approve incline to it look towards it and then start back as from an enemy as from that which suiteth not with our present disposition but is distastful to it Now now let us close with it whilest it is amiable in our eyes whilest our heart is towards it For another time Vanity it self may appear in glory and Obedience may be a monster Now God is God but anon the World will be our God and we shall seek and worship that The first Now the first opportunity is the best the next is uncertain the next may be never But now if we will stand to distinguish times by the events by the several complexions they receive either by prosperity or adversity certainly the best time to seek the Lord is when he seeketh us when he shineth upon our tabernacle when he wooeth us by his manifold blessings The best time to call upon him is when he calleth upon us and loadeth us daily with his benefits cùm prata rident when our vallies do stand so thick with corn that they do even laugh and sing when God speaketh to us not out of the whirlwind but in a still voice when Plenty crowneth the Commonwealth and Peace shadoweth it when God appeareth to us not as the Poet 's Jupiter to Semele in thunder but as to Danae in a showre of gold whilest he standeth at the door and knocketh as it were with his finger by the motions of the blessed Spirit and not stay till he knock with the hammer of his judgments till he break in upon us with his sword Because then tâ— seek him in this brightness will rather be an act of our love then of our fear
God grant there be no legio sulminatrix in this sense no thundring Regiment to call down the tempest of Gods wrath not upon their enemies but themselves Look into the Temple There God is present we may be sure as present as in heaven it self and no doubt many come to it as to the place of his habitation But we may with the cast of an eye discover not a few who come disguised indeed as if they meant to hide themselves from God but of so irreverent deportment as if the place were not dreadful and God were not here Look into the City That is Jerusalem the faithful city But how is the faithful city become an harlot what is her Religion but a mockery What mock fasts when she fasts to turn away Gods judgment and is her self the greatest judgment God hath sent upon the land What mock-prayer whilest she prayes for that she will not have prays for peace and beats up the drum I should not indeed have given her her portion with the Hypocrite but that her shew of holiness is too thin a scarf and her wickedness is too transparent Look into the Country I know there is sancta rusticitas that God may be served with the hammer in the hand and will hearken to an Halelujah sung at the Plow tayl But what coldness do we find amongst many what indifferency what halting between God and Baal I hope there are not many but a few are too many of those who can salute Anthony or Caesar as occasion serves and will be very good subjects when the King prevails And now last of all look into the Church that indeed is made a spectacle unto the world unto Angels unto men and hath been lookt upon with such an evil eye that now we can scarce see it unless we will seek it in a Conventicle which they call a Synod a great part whereof scarce understands the word Yet look upon this Heaven in its beauty before the powers of it were shaken and we fear we might have seen some Angels fallen from their estate some wandring stars some reaping plentifully that did sow nothing that indeed had nothing to sow many striving to enter in but not at the strait gate Go run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem Look into that part of the world which we call Christendom and there you shall see Religion follow and lacquey it to the World to the lust of the flesh the lust of the eye and the pride of life varying in its shape and complexion as that alters and changes running along in the same stream and channel looking towards one haven but carryed as it were with the tide into another carryed captives according to the will of the enemy and yet triumphing in the name of the Lord. There you may see men that call themselves the Temples of the Holy Ghost like those Egyptian Temples of a fair and glorious fabrick without but having nothing but Cats and Crocodiles within instead of Gods There you may observe the same men professing Christ sighing and groning out Christ and yet putting him to open shame making this poor Christ a way to Riches this humble Christ a way to Honour making this meek Lamb a Butcher bringing him as the Jesuite doth as a patron and promoter and abettor of all the cruelty they practice upon their brethren of all their unjust designs not an accessory but principal for they are begun and ended in his name The same Christians ravisht at the glory of his Promises and crest-fall'n at the voice of his Command confessing themselves sinners yet not sensible of their sin proclaiming Heaven the onely blessed estate and yet never moving towards it bound to the Haven of rest and yet steering their course into the gulf of destruction calling Christ with one Prophet the desire of all nations and yet looking upon him with so small regard as if as another Prophet speaketh there were nothing to be seen in him that we should desire him begging Life most importunately and yet most passionately making love to Death made up of so many contradictions that it might pose a considering man and make him at one view resolve as the Cynick did when he beheld the Philosopher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Man is the most generous plant in nature and at another view with the same Cynick when he saw the Sooth-sayers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pronounce Man the most ridiculous creature in the mass Run I say to and fro through the world by the wonderful frame whereof we might learn to know God but we turn away our eye from Christ and learn to mock him by its vanities These are the last dayes and S. Peters prophesie is fulfilled It is become the language of the world an oeconomical language Tush God doth not see Atheisme and Profaneness will certainly bring this gray-headed World with sorrow to its grave For as Demodocus said of the Melesians that they were not fools but did the same things which fools use to do so may we of these profane mockers Atheists we will not call them but most plain it is they do the very same things for which we call men so And thus much of the first point That the Conversation of men for the most is but a mockery of God We see then that this disease doth eructare se ab animo in superficiem as Tertullian speaks exhale and breathe it self forth and is visible in the outward man And the behaviour of many profess what they will is but a mocking of God But further yet in the second place it may be in votis We may not onely live as if God did not see but we may wish from our hearts that he had no eye at all For we never make worse wishes then when we are the servants of Sin our Wishes commonly being proportioned to our Actions Lust brings forth the one and Fear the other If we sin we fear and if Fear be the mother and midwife of our Wish the Wish that it brings forth will prove a monster Take us in any state in any condition but this non satis patemus Deo we are never open enough to God Fling us into prison and we desire our sighs may come before him Lead us into captivity we cry out with the Prophet Behold Lord for we are in distress Lay us on our bed of sickness and we call upon him to look upon us and to come so near as to turn our bed Lay us in our grave and our hope is he will breathe upon our dust but when we sin and our conscience presents unto us the countenance of an angry God then we put him far from us we are willing he should depart from us who have departed from him we wish for some rock to hide us or some mountain to cover us from his sight then we could be content and it is even our wish that he had no eye at all We have an author who
of the world cannot receive a poor Christ The Pride of life cannot receive an humble Christ The Lust of the flesh cannot receive a chaste Christ The sinner who confesseth and crucifieth him cannot receive him Those Antichrists cannot receive Christ no though they knock and knock again though they cry and cry aloud though they fast and pray and sequester themselves at some set times Then onely we are fit to receive him when we are Christi-formes made conformable to him The humble and obedient heart is his house his Temple and he will dwell in it for he taketh a delight therein Sequester then your selves draw your thoughts and apply them to this great benefit fast and pray and commune with your selves but do not then say We have done all that thou commandest us but let all these begin and end in obedience and holiness Let that be on the top the chief mark you aim at Tie it to you as an ornament of grace upon your head as a chain about your neck all the dayes of your life This will make you fit for Christ fit to receive his Body and Bloud and all the benefits of his Cross and his love will stream forth in the bloud which he shed and feed and nourish your souls to eternal life This I conceive to be the full compass of this duty of Examining of our selves And as it is necessary at all times so ought we especielly at this time to use it when we are to approch the Table of the Lord to make it our preparation before the receiving of the Sacrament He that neglected the Passeover was to be cut off from among his people And he that eateth and drinketh unworthily without examination of himself eateth and drinketh his own damnation because he discerneth not that is neglecteth the Lord's body Here at this Table thou dost as it were renew thy Covenant and here thou must renew thy Examination and see what failings and defects thou hast had and what diligence thou hast used in keeping of thy Covenant and bewail the one and increase and advance the other Consider whose Body and Bloud it is thou art to receive and in what habitude and relation thou art unto him and try thy Repentance thy Faith thy Charity For these unite thee to Christ bring thee so near as to dwell in him transform thee after his image and so give thee right and title to him and to all the riches and wisdom which are hidden in him Examine first your Repentance therefore Whether it be true and unfeigned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that circumcision made without hands Col. 2.11 Whether it be moved and carried on by a true spring hatred of sin and love of Christ Whether it be constant and uniform and universal consisting not in a head hanging down and a heart lifted up in to-day's sorrow and to-morrow's relapse in the detestation of idolatry and the love of sacrilege For this is as Luther saith poenitere simul non poenitere satis to repent and not repent to rise and fall and fall and rise This is not to repent but prevaricate to forsake our own cause and promote the Devil's No that Repentance which must place us at this Table must devote and consecrate us wholly to him whose Table it is And as our sins crucified him so must our repentance crucifie us and offer us up unto him as a holocaust or whole-burnt-offering who offered up himself a full perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world In the next place the Apostle exhorteth us to examine our selves whether we be in the Faith or no 2 Cor. 13.5 to prove our selves whether Christ be in us Without Faith there is no true Repentance There may be some distaste some regret some sorrow but not according to God Some distaste even those have had who never heard of Christ But it will not raise and improve it self not draw on a constant and serious resolution to shake off that which distasteth us to lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us till Faith possesseth our hearts and a firm persuasion that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself 2 Cor. 5.19 I believed and therefore I spake saith David We believe and therefore we examine our selves and take a strict survey of our souls we grone under our burthen and desire ease we find our selves sick and run to the Physician we find our selves dead in sin and flie to the Fountain of life Faith is the salt which seasoneth all our actions Nor will Christ admit us to his Table without it nor give himself to those who do not believe in him Faith is the mouth of the soul and with it we receive Christ To come unto him and receive him and believe in him are one and the same thing As the Word preached did not profit them that heard it Hebr. 4.2 not being mixed with faith not having this salt so the Sacraments are but bare signs and signifie nothing to them that believe not Accedens Verbum ad elementum facit Sacramentum non quia dicitur sed quia creditur saith Augustine The Word added to the Element maketh a Sacrament not because it is spoken but because it is believed That is without faith it profiteth nothing in respect of us although by Divine institution it hath force and power and ought to quicken and enliven us By the eye of Faith alone we follow Christ through every passage and period of his blessed oeconomy we behold him in the manger in his swadling-cloths and worship him we follow him in the streets going about and doing good and imitate him we behold him in his agonie and are nailed with him to his cross we see him rising and ascending and behold the heavens open and Jesus sitting at the right hand of God and lastly we behold him here in the Sacrament and lift up our hearts above these visible Elements to those things which are spiritual and invisible we see in them Christ's body lifted up upon the cross as the Serpent was in the wilderness and by this sight by this Faith we are cured Here in the Sacrament our Saviour again presenteth himself unto us openeth his wounds sheweth us his hands and his side speaketh to us as he did to Thomas Reach hither your fingers and behold my hands and reach hither your hands and thrust them into my side Take eat This is my body and be not faithless but believing Here shake off that chilness that restiveness that weariness and faintness of your faith here warm and actuate and quicken it Here God doth not shew us his face his extraordinary glory and majesty which no mortal can behold and live but we see him as it were in his back-parts and in these outward Elements Here he exhibiteth and giveth us his Son who is the brightness of his glory and the express image of his Person in whom he hath
down to meat and will come forth and sâ—rve thee that is will fill thee with all those comforts enrich thee with all those blessings give thee all that honour which he hath promised to those who trie and examine and make themselves fit to be guests at his Table I must conclude though I should proceed to the second Part the Grant and the Privilege But he that hath performed the first is already intitled to the second and may nay ought to eat of that bread â—nd drink of that cup For even the Privilege it self is a Duty But the time is spent and I fear your patience I will but re-assume my Text and there needeth no more Use For you see my Text it self is an Exhortation Let a man examine himself A man that is every man Let him that taketh the tribunal and sitteth upon the life and death of his brethren that exalteth himself as God and taketh the keyes out of his hand and bindeth and looseth at pleasure that wondereth how such or such a man who is not his brother in evil as factious as himself dareth approch the Table of the Lord let him examine himself Let him look into himself and there he shall see a great wonder a Wolf and a Lamb a John Baptist and a Herod a Devil and a Saint bound up together in one man the greatest prodigy in the world and as ominous as any ominous to his neighbours ominous to Commonwealths and ominous to all that live in the same coasts And let them examine themselves who with their Tribunitial VETO forbid all to come to this Feast who will not submit to their Examination Young men and maids old men as well as children they that have been catechised and instructed in season and out of season whom they themselves have taught for many years all must pass by this door of Trial to the Table of the Lord. I shall be bold to ask them a question since they ask so many WHERE IS IT WRITTEN Ostendat scriptum Hermogenis officina It is plain in my Text that we are bound to examine our selves but that some should be set apart to examine others we do not read And quorsum docemur si semper docendi simus why are we taught so much if we are ever to learn Certainly that Charity believeth little which will suspect that a man full of years and who hath sate at his feet many of them should now in his old age and gray hairs be to be instructed in the principles of faith It is true we cannot be too diligent in instructing one another in the common salvation we cannot labour enough in this work of building up one another in our holy faith and it concerneth every man to seek knowledge at those lips that preserve it and if he doubt to make them his oracle who are set over him in the Lord For Ignorance as well as Profaneness maketh us uncapable of this Privilege unfit to come to this Feast But this formal and magisterial Examination for ought we can judge can proceed from no other Spirit then that which was sent from Rome to Trent in a Cloke-bag and there at the XIII Session made Auricular Confession a necessary preparative for the receiving of the Sacrament Sacramental Confession and Sacramental Examination may have the same ends and the same effects and there may be as idle and as fruitless questions asked at the one as at the other But I judge them not onely call upon them in the Apostle's words Let them examine themselves whether Love of the world Love of preeminence or Love of mens souls do fan that fiery zele which is so hot in the defence of it Let them also examine themselves who are God's familiars and yet fight against him who know what is done in his closet and do what they please at his footstool and so upon a feigned assurance of life build nothing but a certainty of death who think nay profess and write it that the Elect of which number you may be sure they make themselves may fall into the greatest sins Adultery Murther and Treason and yet still remain men after God's heart and the members of Christ and that to think the contrary is an opinion Stygiae infernalis incredulitatis which upholdeth a Stygian and hellish incredulity and can proceed from none but the Devil himself Let these I say examine themselves And if this Luciferian pride will once bow to look into this charnel-house of rotten bones if the hypocrite will pluck off his visour and behold his face naked as it is in the glass of God's Word we need not call so loud on open and notorious offenders Intestinum malum periculosius These intestine secret applauded errours are most dangerous and that wound which is least visible must be most searched But the exhortation concerneth all Let the Pharisee examine himself and let the Publican examine himself Let the Oppressour examine himself and melt in compassion to the poor Let the Intemperate examine himself and wage war with his appetite Let the Covetous person examine himself and tread Mammon under his feet Let the Deceitful man examine himself and do that which is just Let him that is secure and let him that feareth Let him that is confident and let him that wavereth Let the proud spirit and let the drooping spirit examine himself Let every man examine himself Let every man that nameth Christ and in that Name draweth near to his Table depart from all iniquity And then behold here is a Grant passed over to them a Privilege enrolled and upon record They may eat of this bread and drink of thiâ— cup taste and see how gracious the Lord is be partakers of his body and bloud that is of all the benefits of his Cross Redemption Justification his continued and uninterrupted Intercession for us Peace of conscience unspeakable Joy in the holy Ghost And when he shall come again in glory they shall have a gracious reception and admittance to sit down at his Table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the Patriarchs and all the Apostles and that noble army of Martyrs in the Kingdom of heaven And with these ravishing thoughts I shut up all and leave them with you to dwell and continue and abound in you and to bring you with comfort on the next great Lord's day to the Table of the Lord. The Seven and Twentieth SERMON GAL. I. 10. The last part of the Verse For do I now perswade men or God or do I seek to please men For if I yet pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ WHich words admit a double sense but not contrary for the one is virtually included in the other As first If I should yet do as I did when I was a Jew seek to please men and to gain repute and honour and wealth fit my doctrine to their corrupt disposition I should never have entred into Christs service which setteth
me up as it were in opposition to the world and the counsels of the world and so layeth me open to scorn and hatred to misery and poverty Or more plainly this If being an Apostle of Christ I should yet please men attemper my doctrine to their tast and relish whatsoever I call my self yet certainly I shall in no degree approve my self to be the servant of Christ And in this sense if we view the form and manner of the words they are at the first sound but a meer supposition of S. Pauls but if we hear them again and well observe and consider them we shall find them to be a Satyre and bitter reprehension of those false Apostles who did mingle and confound Christ and the Law and of all those who shall leave the truth behind them to meet and comply with the humours of men I say a plain and flat redargution but clothed in the garment and habit of a hypothetical proposition Nobis non licet esse tam disertis It is not for us Latines to be thus elegant The Latine Poet speaketh it of himself but indeed lasheth that too much liberty which the Greeks assumed to themselves And If I yet pleased men is as a finger pointing out to the false Doctours who were pleasers of men Again as it is an artificial Reprehension so if you shall please to look upon it intentively you shall find it to be a Rule and Precept For as some Commentatours on Aristotle have observed that his rule many times is contained and lieth hid in the example and instance which he bringeth as when he giveth you the instance of a Magnificent man you shall there easily discover the face and beauty and full proportion of Magnificence so what S. Paul speaking of himself laieth down as a Supposition is indeed a Rule and Precept And this which hath been observed of Aristotle is the constant method of the holy Ghost That which is brought for instance is a Precept When Joshua speaketh of himself Josh 24.15 I and my houshold will serve the Lord he draweth the character of a good Master of a family When Job saith I put on righteousness and it clothed me Job 29.14 Psal 6.6 he fitteth a robe for a good Magistrate When David saith I water my couch with my tears he hath presented us with the most lively picture of a Penitentiary My meat is to do the work of him that sent me John 4.34 are the words of our Saviour in S. Johns Gospel and as they lie seem to be but a bare narration but they are a command and speak in effect thus much unto us that as to him it was so to us it must be even meat and drink to do the will of our Father which is in heaven And here If yet I pleased men I were not the servant of Christ S. Paul speaketh it of himself but it is a command given to all those who have given up their name unto Christ and every man may make this deduction to himself That to please men and to serve Christ are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 incompatible and cannot stand together That the best way to keep Christs livery on our backs is not to be so much slaves unto men as to please them And then these three things are wrapt up in this Supposition 1. our Apostles Purgation of himself That he is no pleaser of men 2. a sharp Reprehension of men pleasers 3. a flat Command against it Or thus Here is something implied and something plain and positive That which is implied is That most men are willing to be pleased That which is plain and positive is That there be others that will be too ready to please them And then the parts will be three We shall discover 1. the humour of desiring to be pleased and the danger of it 2. a humour which is ready to meet and answer the other an art and readiness of pleasing others of knowing their tast and palate and dishing out instructions with such sawces as shall delight them of making addresses to them in that shape and posture which they most love to look upon and are ready to welcome and reward and 3. last of all the huge distance and inconsistency which is between these two the pleasing of men and the being a servant of Christ And of these we shall speak plainly in their order And first we need not doubt that most men desire to be pleased and it may seem a needless labour to go about to prove it For do but whisper do but breathe against their humour and you have made a demonstration that it is so S. Paul indeed maketh it his wonder v. 6. I wonder that you are so soon removed And we might well wonder at his wonder but that his miror carrieth with it more of reproof then admiration For the consideration of this humour this desire to be pleased taketh off our admiration And when we have discovered this we cease to wonder though we see men transplant themselves out of a goodly heritage into a barren soil from the Gospel of Christ which bringeth salvation but withal trouble to the flesh to another Gospel which is no Gospel but excludeth both in a word to see men begin in the spirit and end in the flesh Omnis rei displicentis etiam opinio reprobatur saith Tertullian The very thought of that which displeaseth us displeaseth us almost as much as the thing it self For indeed it is nothing but thought that troubleth us and it is not the matter or substance of Truth but Opinion and our private Humour which maketh Truth such a bitter pill that we cannot take it down It was the usual speach of Alexander the Great to his Master Aristotle Doce me facilia Leave I pray you your knotty and intricate discourses and teach me those things which are easie which the Understanding may not labour under but such as it may receive with delight And it is so with us in the study of that Art of arts which alone can make us both wise and happy We love not duros sermones those hard and harsh lessons which discipline the flesh and bring it into subjection and demolish those strong holds which it hath set up and in which it trusteth A Parasite is more welcome to us then a Prophet He is our Apostle who will bring familiar and beloved arguments to perswade us to that to which we have perswaded our selves already and further our motion to that to which we are flying We find almost the parallel in the 30 of Esai 10. v. of those who say to the Seers See not and to the Prophets Prophesie not unto us right things speak unto us smooth things prophesie deceits men who had rather be cosened with a pleasing lie then saved with a frowning and threatning truth rather be wounded to death with a kiss then be rowsed with noise rather die in a pleasant dream then be awaked to
the Church is and not like unto the world Wonder not then for the Church hath its peace even in persecution And that we may not think it strange let us not frame and fashion to our selves a Church by the world For by looking too stedfastly upon this world we carry the impression it maketh in us whithersoever we go and that maketh Persecution appear to us in such a monstrous shape that we begin to question the providence of God in suffering it to rage within his territories How doth it amaze us to see Innocency trod down by Power to see a Saint whipped by a Devil But in the world we are born in the world we are the world is the greatest part of our study and hence it cometh to pass that in the pursuit of the knowledge of Christ and his Church we are ready to phansie something to our selves like unto the world Temporal Felicity and Peace is the desire of the whole world and upon this some have made it a note and mark of the true Church like the Musician in Tully who being asked what the Soul was answered that it was an harmony is à principiis artis suae non recessit He knew not saith he how to leave the principles of his own art From hence it is that when we see persecution and the sword and fire rage against the true professours we are at our wits end and think that not onely the glory is departed but the light of Israel is quite put out that when desolation hath shaken a Kingdom the gates of hell have prevailed against the Church As groundless a conceit well near as if we should take the description of Heaven in the Revelation to be true in the letter and that it is a City of pure Gold that the foundations of the walls are adorned with pretious stones that every gate is a pearl and the streets shine like glass Let us then wipe out this carnal errour out of our hearts That the Kingdom of Christ doth hold proportion with the form and managing of these Kingdoms below here on earth that the same peace doth continue and the same division and pâ—â—secution dissolve and ruine both that the same violence which removeth the Candlestick doth blow out the light And let us abstract and wean our selvâ—â— from the world let us be dead to the world let us crucifie the world in a word let us not love the world nor the things of the world and we shall then begin to think persecution a blessing and all these conceits of outward peace and felicity will vanish into nothing And therefore in the third place let us cast down these imaginations these bubbles of wind blown and raised up by the flesh the worser part which doth soonest bring on a persecution and soonest fear one and let us in the place of these build up a royal fort build up our selves in our most holy faith and so fit and prepare our selves against this fiery tryal For as those are called mysteries which are precedaneous and go before the mysteries and he may be said to fight who doth but flourish and arm and fit himself for the battel so the blessed Spirit of God every where calleth upon those who are his souldiers to watch and stand upon their guard to put on the whole armour of God that when the devil assaulteth them in a storm of persecution they may be able to stand Eph. 6.11 to look upon the sword beforehand to take it up and handle it to dispute it out of its force and terrour and so by a familiar conversing with it beforehand by opposing our hopes of happiness and the promises of life to the terrours that death may bring opposing the second part of my Text to the first the Kingdom of heaven to persecution we may abate its force and violence and so by a due preparation conquer before we suffer and leave the persecutor no more power but to kill us And to this end let us view and well look upon the beauty and glory of Righteousness and learn to love it to make it our counsellour our oracle whilest the light shineth upon our heads to let it have a command over us and when it saith Do this to do it For if we thus make it our joy and our crown display it abroad in every action of our life in the time of peace we shall not part with it at a blast nor fling it off and forsake it in time of persecution If we love Righteousness Righteousness will love us and cleave close to us when our friends and acquaintance leave us and fall away like leaves in Autumn A good conscience is an everlasting never-failing foundation but the clamours and checks of a polluted one will give us no leisure at all to build up an holy resolution For when we have a long time detained the truth in righteousness kept it down as a prisoner and not suffered it to work in us when in the whole course of our life we have kept her captive under our sensual lusts and affections it is not probable that in time of danger and astonishment it should have so much power over us as to win us to suffer for its sake but these sensual lusts which in time of peace did keep the Truth and Righteousness under will now shew themselves again in time of persecution and be as forcible to deter us from those evils which are so but in shew and appearance as they were to plunge us into those evils of sin which are true and real If then thou wilt be fitted for Persecution and so for Blessedness first persecute thy self crucifie thy flesh with the lusts and affections raise up a persecution in thy own breast banish every idle thought silence every loud and clamorous desire whip and correct every wandring phansie beat down every thing that standeth in opposition to Righteousness be thus dead unto thy self and then neither death nor life neither fear of death nor hopes of life neither principalities nor powers neither present evils nor those to come shall ever be able to shake thy confidence or separate thee from the love of Righteousness which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And now as we have brought the Righteous person into this Field of bloud and prepared and strengthned him against the horror of it so must we bring the Persecutor also that he may behold what desolation he hath made Why boastest thou thy self in thy mischief O mighty man That thou hast sped that thou hast divided the prey that thou hast made Innocence it self to lick the dust of thy feet that thou hast spilt the bloud of the righteous as water on the ground Thus did the tyrants of old triumph and dance in the bloud which they shed Behold thou persecutest thy self and though the righteous fall under thee yet thou sufferest most Every blow thou givest them entereth into thy own soul that power with which
thou beatest them down as a whirlwind carrieth them to heaven but driveth thee back to the pit of destruction Thou makest them the off scouring of the world which will quickly loath vertue in such a dress but thou makest them glorious in the sight of God Thou wreakest thy wrath upon them but treasurest up wrath for thy self Thou spoilest them that is makest them richer thou disgracest them that is makest them more honourable thou tormentest them that is increaseth their joy thou sendest them into their graves that is into heaven An eye of flesh cannot discern this but the eye of faith glorieth in the Martyr and pitieth the murtherer For when he looketh upon those he hath oppressed and pleaseth himself in it So so thus would I have it he doth but subscribe to the sentence which is already past against him and in effect triumpheth in his own damnation Nor can this help him although sometimes it doth comfort him That God hath delivered them into his hand and so make power an argument of justice and good success a sign and mark of a predestinate Saint For God may deliver the soul of his turtle-doves into the hand of the wicked and yet they be as wicked as before Psal 71.11 You know who they were that cryed God hath forsaken him God may deliver the Jews into captivity and yet the Heathen be aliens still He doth not onely deliver up Sihon King of the Amorites and Og King of Basan but his own people into his enemies hands For it is one thing what God is willing to permit another what he is willing should be done He permitteth all the murthers and massacres and tragedies that have been acted in the world but his permitting them is no Plaudite no approbation of them He permitteth all the sin that hath or shall be committed from Adam the first man to him that shall stand last upon earth and yet that conclusion standeth firm The wages of sin is death Rom. 8.32 He delivered up his Son for us all and yet his bloud was upon those Jews that spilt it Neither is good success or ill success an argument of God's favour or dislike Lazarus was not in Abraham's bosome onely because he was poor nor Dives in hell for that he was rich Josiah did not fall to hell when he fell in battel nor was Pharaoh-Necho a Saint because he slew him But yet I should sooner suspect prosperity then adversity because it hath slain so many fools Blessed are they that are persecuted the words are plain But where do we read Blessed are they that prosper in their wayes Go and prosper and that shall be a sign to thee that thou art highly beloved Let this either in terms or by deduction be produced out of Scripture and I will straight subscribe to a conclusion which may canonize Infidels and Turks Cain and Nimrod and those brethren in evil Judas and the Jews and the Devil himself who too often prevaileth in his wiles and enterprizes and leadeth us captive according to his will Then that of Christ will be true in this sense also That Publicans and sinners harlots and men of Belial shall enter the kingdom of heaven and the children of the kingdom the poor unfortunate children shall be shut out I am weary of this argument And I hope there is none amongst us which will nourish such a serpent in his bosom which may at first flatter him shew him an apple something that is fair to look upon but at last sting him to death an opinion which may drive him upon any pricks on those sins which the righteous do tremble to think of an opinion which may waste and consume a soul and make it like to the souls of the beasts that perish I had rather turn my speech to them that suffer and so conclude and exhort them to humility and patience under the cross For Patience is one of the fairest branches of Righteousness the proper effect of Faith Rom. 5.3 for which we suffer all things and by which we suffer nothing which maketh tribulation joyful the cross a crown and persecution a blessing Adam brought in Labour and Abel Patience Sin invented the one and Righteousness the other Phil. 4.13 And by the virtue of it S. Paul professeth he could do and suffer all things And this the omnipotency of Patience is demonstratively true For if the eye of our faith were as clear as the reward is glorious we should not be either dazled with the smile and beauty of a flattering nor dismayed with the terrour of a black temptation but pleasure would be vanity and persecution a crown For what is this span of misery to bliss without end Persecution strippeth thee and Persecution clotheth thee Persecution beateth at the door of life to let out thy soul and it openeth the gates of heaven to place it there It is that violence which taketh the Kingdom of heaven He that is persecuted for righteousness beleaguereth Heaven undermineth it payeth down a price for it his sufferings Which though they be but momentany and too light yet are accepted as full weight To sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to give saith Christ Vendit Matth. 20.23 non intuitu consanguinitatis dat He doth not give it saith Augustine for relation and kindreds sake but he selleth it Coelum venale Deúsque see Heaven is set at a price and the price is thy bloud As there is a covenant so there is a contract a bargain between God and man and the covenant is a contract My son saith God give me thy heart Give me a contrite heart a bleeding heart a broken heart and thou shalt have for grief joy for labour rest for dishonour glory for ignominy honour for death life and for poverty a Kingdom For Persecution which is but momentany advanceth to a Kingdom which shall have no end The Thirteenth SERMON PHILIPP III. 10 11. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead THat I may know him carrieth but an imperfect sense and sendeth us back to that which goeth before Where we shall find our blessed Apostle at his holy Arithmetick at a strict computation ad digitos calculos cogentem casting up his accounts as it were at his fingers ends He beginneth with Circumcision ver 2. proceedeth to the Law ver 5. riseth up to the Righteousness which is in the Law ver 6. He taketh in his Stock his Tribe his Sect his Zele his unblameable Course of life And that his Audite may be exact ver 8. he bringeth in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all things These be the Particulars But what is the Sum Circumcision the Law Zele Righteousness All things a large account and which is strange the sum is Nothing And will Nothing make a sum
For a Debt and a Forfeiture may be paid at last and if the debtor be not able to pay he may give his service his body some satisfaction and some satisfaction is better then none But he that committeth Sin is the servant of sin for ever and can never redeem it if for no other reason yet for this alone that he did commit it For not a myriad of vertues can satisfie for any one breach of our obligation and no hand but that of Mercy can cancell and make it void If we be in debt with God nothing can quit us but forgiveness And therefore we pray Forgive us our debts And so we fall upon our next part What is meant by Remission of sins or Forgiveness of debts And here we lie prostrate before the throne of God and desire forgiveness And what that is we cannot be to seek if we consider those judicial terms which the Scripture useth For we read of a a 1 Cor. 4.4 Judge of a b 2 Cor. 5.10 judgment seat of a c Rom. 2.15 witness of a d Rom. 3.19 conviction of a e Col. 2.14 hand-writing of an f 1 John 2.1 Advocate and in this Petition our sins are delivered in the notion of debts So that when we pray for the forgiveness of our sins we do as it were stand at the bar of God's justice and plead for mercy acknowledge the hand-writing but beseech him to cancel it confess our sins but sue out our pardon that we may be justified from those things from which by the Law we could not and though we are not yet for his sake who is our Surety and Advocate to count us righteous and pronounce us innocent This is all we learn in Scripture concerning Remission of sins Et quicquid à Deo discitur totum est as the Father speaketh That which we learn from God is all we can learn But as the Philosophers agreed there was a chief good and happiness which man might attain unto but could not agree what it was so it hath fallen out with Christians They all consent that there is mercy with God that we may be saved they make Remission of sins an article of their Creed but then they rest not here but to the covering of their sins require a garment of righteousness of their own thread and spinning to the blotting out of their sins some bloud and some virtue of their own and to the purging them out some infused habit of herent righteousness and so by their interpretations and additions and glosses they leave this Article in a cloud then which the day it self is not clearer As Astronomers when a new star appeareth in their Hemisphere dispute and altercate till that star go out and remove it self out of their sight so have we disputed and talked Justification and Remission of sins almost out of sight For there is nothing more plain and even without rub or difficulty nothing more open to the eye and yet nothing at which the quickest apprehensions have been more dazled Not to speak of the heathen who counted it a folly to believe there were any such thing and could not see how he that killed a man should not be a homicide or he no adulterer who had defiled a woman quibus melius fide quam ratione respondetur whom we may give leave to reason whilest we believe It hath been the fault of Christians when the truth lay in their way to pass it by or leap over it and to follow some phansies and imaginations of their own How many combates had S. Paul with the false brethren who would bring in the observation of the Ceremonial and Moral Law as sufficient to salvation How did he travel in birth again of the Galatians that Christ might be truly formed in them And yet how many afterwards did Galaticari as Tertullian speaketh were as foolish as the Galatians How many made no better use of it then to open a gap and make a way to let in all licentiousness and profaneness of life nay went so far as to think it most necessary as if Remission of sins were not a medicine to purge but a provocative to inerease sin Nor was this doctrine onely blemished by those monsters of men who sate down and consulted and did deliberately give sentence against the Truth but received some blot and stain from their hands who were the stoutest champions for it who though they saw the Truth and did acknowledge it yet let that fall from their pens which posterity after took up to obscure this doctrine and would not rest content with that which is as much as we can desire and more then we can deserve Remission of sins Hence it was that we were taught in the Schools That Justification is a change from a state of unrighteousness to a state of righteousness That as in every motion there is a leaving of one term to acquire another so in Justification there is expulsion of sin and infusion of grace Which is most true in the concrete but not in the abstract in the Justified person but not in Justification which is an act of God alone From hence those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those unsavoury and undigested conclusions of the Church of Rome That to justifie a sinner is not to pronounce but to make him just That the formal cause of Justification is inherent sanctity That our righteousness before God consisteth not onely in remission of sins That we may redeem our sins as well as Christ we from temporal as he from eternal pain And then this Petition must run thus FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES that is Make us so just that we may need no forgiveness Forgive us the breach of the Law because we have kept the Law Forgive us our sins for our good works Forgive me my intemperance for my often fasting my incontinency for my zeal my oppression for my alms my murther for the Abby and Hospital which I built my fraud my malice my oppression for the many Sermons I have heard A conceit which I fear findeth room and friendly enterteinment in those hearts which are soon hot at the very mery mention of Popery or Merit In a word they say and unsay sometimes bring in Remission of sins and sometimes their own Satisfaction and so set S. Paul and their Church at such a distance that neither St. Peter himself nor all the Angels and Saints she prayeth to will be able to reconcile them and make his Gratis and their Merits meet in one It is true every good act doth justifie a man so far as it is good and God so far esteemeth them holy and good and taketh notice of his graces in his â—â—â—ldren he registereth the Patience of Job the Zeal of Phinehas the Devotion of David not a cup of cold water not a mite flung into the Treasury but shall have its reward But yet all the works of all the Saints in the world cannot satisfie
for the breach of the Law For let it once be granted what cannot be denied that we are all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 guilty and culpable before God that all have sinned Rom. 3.19 and are come short of the glory of God then all that noise the Church of Rome hath filled the world with concerning Merits and Satisfaction and inherent Righteousness will vanish as a mist before the Sun and Justification and Remission of sins will appear in its brightness in that form and shape in which Christ first left it to his Church Bring in Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the Patriarchs and Prophets and Apostles and deck them with all those vertues which made them glorious but yet they sinned Bring in the noble army of Martyrs who shed their bloud for Christ but yet they sinned They were stoned they were sawen asunder they were slain with the sword but yet they sinned and he that sinneth is presently the servant of sin obnoxious to it for ever and cannot be redeemed by his own bloud because he sinned but by the bloud of him in whom there was no sin to be found JUSTIFICATIO IMPII This one form of speech of justifying a sinner doth plainly exclude the Law and the works of it and may serve as an axe or hammer to beat down all their carved work and those Anticks which are fastned to the building which may perhaps take a wandering or gadding phansie but will never enter the heart of a man of understanding We do not find that beauty in their forced and artificial inventions that we do in the simple and native Truth neither are those effects which are as radiations and resultances from Forgiveness of sins so visible in their Justification by Faith and Works as in that free Remission which is by Faith alone The urging of our Merits is of no force to make our peace with God They may indeed make us gracious in his eyes after Remission but have as much power to remove our sins as our breath hath to remove a mountain or put out the fire of hell For every sin is as Seneca speaketh of that of Alexander's in killing Callisthenes crimen aeternum an eternal crime which no vertue of our own can redeem As often as any man shall say He slew many thousands of Persians it will be replied He did so but he killed Callisthenes also He slew Darius but he slew Callisthenes too And as often as we shall swell our minds and fill them with the conceit of our good deeds our Conscience will reply But we have sinned Let me adde my Passions to my Actions my Imprisonment to my Alms let me suffer for Christ let me dye for Christ But yet I have sinned Let us outgo all the ancient examples of piety and sanctity But yet we have sinned And none of all our acts can make so much for our glory and comfort as our sin doth for our reproch Our sins may obscure and darken our vertues but our vertues cannot abolish our sins For what peace so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel as our sins be so many Ot what ease can a myriad of vertues do him who is under arrest under a curse who if Mercy come not in between is condemned already And therefore we may observe those Justitiaries who will not build upon Remission or Not-imputation of sins how their complexion altereth how their colour goeth and cometh how they are not the same men in their Controversies and Commentaries that they are in their Devotions and Meditations Nothing but Merit in their ruff and jollity and nothing but Mercy on their death-beds nothing but the bloud of Martyrs then and nothing but Christ's now nothing but their own Satisfaction all their lives and nothing but Christ's at their last gasp Before magìs honorificum it was more honourable to bring in something of our own towards the Forgiveness of our sins but now for the uncertainty of our own Righteousness which were no whit available to a guilty person if it were certain because there is no harbour here Christ's Righteousness is called in with a Tutissimum est as the best shelter And here they will abide till the storm be over-past To conclude then Remission of sins hath no relation or dependence on any thing which is in man is not drawn on or furthered by any merit of ours but is an act of the Mercy and Providence of God by which he is pleased to restore us to his favour who were under his wrath to count us righteous who were guilty of death and in Christ to reconcile us unto himself and though he have a record of our sin yet not to use it as an indictment against us but so to deal with us as if his book were rased and so to look upon us as if we had not sinned at all Et merebimur admitti jam exclusi And we who were formerly shut out for our sin shall be led into the land of the living by a merciful and perfect and all-sufficient Mediatour It is his Mercy alone that must save us This is as the Sanctuary to the Legal offendor This is as mount Ararat to Noah's tossed Ark as Noah's hand to his weary Dove as Ahasuerus his golden sceptre to the humble penitent Come then put on your royal apparel your wedding garment and touch the top of it But touch it with reverence Bring not a wavering and doubtful heart an unrepented sin a rebellious thought with thee For canst thou touch this Sceprre in thy lust or anger canst thou touch it with hands full of bloud Such a bold irreverent touch will turn this Sceptre into a Sword to pierce thee through For nothing woundeth deeper then abused Mercy Behold God holdeth it forth to thee in his Word Come unto him all ye that are heavy laden and touch it and you are eased He holdeth it forth in his Sacrament first in the flesh of his Son and then in the signs and representations of it and here to touch it unworthily is to touch nay to embrace Death it self The woman in the Gospel came behind Christ and did but touch the hem of his garment and was healed Most wretched we saith the Father who touch him nay feed on him so oft in his Sacrament and our issue of bloud runneth still we are still in our sins our Pride as swelling our Malice as deadly our Appetite as keen our Love of the world as great as before and all because we do not touch it with reverence nor discern the Lord's body which must not be touched by every rude and unclean hand Wash you then make you clean and then as your Sins are pardoned so here your Pardon is sealed with the bloud of the Lamb. Here thou dost see thy ransome Onely believe and come with a heart fit to receive him The best enterteinment and welcome thou canst give him is a broken contrite and reverent heart a a heart