walked upon the pavements of heaven whose feet were clothed with stars whose eyes were brighter then the Sun whose voice is louder then thunder whose understanding is larger then that infinite space which we imagine in the uncircumscribed distance beyond the first orbe of heaven a person to whom felicity was as essential as life to God this was the onely person that was designed in the eternal decrees of the divine predestination to pay the price of a soul to ransom us from death lesse then this person could not do it for although a soul in its essence is finite yet there were many infinites which were incident and annexed to the condition of lost souls For all which because provision was to be made nothing lesse then an infinite excellence could satisfie for a soul who was lost to infinite and eternal ages who was to be afflicted with insupportable and indetermined that is next to infinite paines who was to bear the load of an infinite anger from the provocation of an eternal God and yet if it be possible that infinite can receive degrees this is but one half of the abysse and I think the lesser for that this person who was God eternal should be lessened in all his appearances to a span to the little dimensions of a man and that he should really become very contemptibly little although at the same time he was infinitely and unalterably great that is essential natural and necessary felicity should turn into an intolerable violent and immense calamity to his person that this great God should not be admitted to pay the price of our redemption unlesse he would suffer that horrid misery which that lost soul should suffer as it represents the glories of his goodnesse who used such rare and admirable instruments in actuating the designes of his mercy so it shewes our condition to have been very desperate and our losse invaluable A soul in Gods account is valued at the price of the blood and shame and tortures of the Son of God and yet we throw it a way for the exchange of sins that a man naturally is ashamed to own we lose it for the pleasure the sottish beastly pleasure of a night I need not say we lose our soul to save our lives for though that was our blessed Saviours instance of the great unreasonablenesse of men who by saving their lives lose them that is in the great account of Dooms-day though this I say be extreamly unreasonable yet there is something to be pretended in the bargain nothing to excuse him with God but something in the accounts of timerous men but to lose our souls with swearing that unprofitable dishonourable and unpleasant vice to lose our souls with disobedience or rebellion a vice that brings a curse and danger all the way in this life To lose our souls with drunkennesse a vice which is painfull and sickly in the very acting it which hastens our damnation by shortning our lives are instances fit to be put in the stories of fools and mad-men and all vice is a degree of the same unreasonablenesse the most splendid temptation being nothing but a prety well weaved fallacy a meer trick a sophisme and a cheating and abusing the understanding but that which I consider here is that it is an affront and contradiction to the wisdom of God that we should so slight and undervalue a soul in which our interest is so concerned a soul which he who made it and who delighted not to see it lost did account a fit purchase to be made by the exchange of his Son the eternal Son of God To which also I adde this additionall account that a soul is so greatly valued by God that we are not to venture the losse of it to save all the world For therefore whosoever should commit a sin to save kingdoms from perishing or if the case could be put that all the good men and good causes and good things in this world were to be destroyed by Tyranny and it were in our power by perjury to save all these that doing this sin would be so farre from hallowing the crime that it were to offer to God a sacrifice of what he most hates and to serve him with swines blood and the rescuing all these from a Tyrant or a hangman could not be pleasing to God upon those termes because a soul is lost by it which is in it self a greater losse and misery then all the evils in the world put together can out-ballance and a losse of that thing for which Christ gave his blood a price Persecutions and temporal death in holy men and in a just cause are but seeming evils and therefore not to be bought off with the losse of a soul which is a real but an intolerable calamity And if God for his own sake would not have all the world saved by sin that is by the hazarding of a soul we should do well for our own sakes not to lose a soul for trifles for things that make us here to be miserable and even here also to be ashamed 3. But it may be some natures or some understandings care not for all this therefore I proceed to the third and most material consideration as to us and I consider what it is to lose a soul which Hierocles thus explicates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An immortall substance can die not by ceasing to be but by losing all being well by becomming miserable And it is remarkable when our blessed Saviour gave us caution that we should not fear them that can kill the body onely but fear him he sayes not that can kill the soul But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 him that is able to destroy the body and soul in hell which word signifieth not death but tortures For some have chosen death for sanctuary and fled to it to avoid intolerable shame to give a period to the sence of a sharp grief or to cure the earthquakes of fear and the damned perishing souls shall wish for death with a desire impatient as their calamity But this shall be denied them because death were a deliverance a mercy and a pleasure of which these miserable persons must despair of for ever I shall not need to represent to your considerations those expressions of Scripture which the Holy Ghost hath set down to represent to our capacities the greatnesse of this perishing choosing such circumstances of character as were then usuall in the world and which are dreadful to our understanding as any thing Hell fire is the common expression for the Eastern nations accounted burnings the greatest of their miserable punishments and burning malefactours was frequent brimstone and fire to Saint John Revel 14. 10. calls the state of punishment prepared for the Devil and all his servants he adding the circumstance of brimstone for by this time the Devil had taught the world more ingenious pains and himself was new escaped out of boiling oil and brimstone and such
and our own consciences dear and be reconciled to the Judge by the severities of an early repentance and then we need to fear no accusers SERMON III. Part III. 3. IT remaines that we consider the Sentence it self We must receive according to what we have done in the body whether it be good or bad Judicaturo Domino lugubre mundus immugiet tribus ad tribum pectora ferient Potentissimi quondam reges nudo latere palpitabunt so St. Hierom meditates concerning the terror of this consideration The whole world shall groan when the Judge comes to give his Sentence tribe and tribe shall knock their sides together and through the naked breasts of the most mighty Kings you shall see their hearts beat with fearfull tremblings Tunc Aristotelis argumenta parum proderunt cum venerit filius pauperculae quaestuariae judicare orbem terra Nothing shall then be worth owning or the means of obtaining mercy but a holy conscience all the humane craft and trifling subtilties shall be uselesse when the Son of a poor Maid shall sit Judge over all the world When the Prophet Joel was describing the formidable accidents in the day of the Lords Judgement and the fearfull Sentence of an angry Judge he was not able to expresse it but flammered like a Childe or an amazed imperfect person A. A. A. diei quia propè est Dies Domini it is not sense at first he was so amazed he knew not what to say and the Spirit of God was pleased to let that signe remain like Agamemnon's sorrow for the death of Iphigenia nothing could describe it but a vail it must be hidden and supposed and the stammering tongue that is full of fear can best speak that terror which will make all the world to cry and shriek and speak fearfull accents and significations of an infinite sorrow and amazement But so it is there are two great days in which the fate of all the world is transacted This life is mans day in which man does what he please and God holds his peace Man destroys his Brother and destroyes himselfe and confounds Governments and raises Armies and tempts to sin and delights in it and drinks drunk and forgets his sorrow and heaps up great estates and raises a family and a name in the Annals and makes others fear him and introduces new Religions and confounds the old and changeth Articles as his interest requires and all this while God is silent save that he is loud and clamorous with his holy precepts and over-rules the event but leaves the desires of men to their owne choice and their course of life such as they generally choose But then God shall have his day too the day of the Lord shall come in which he shall speak and no man shall answer he shall speak in the voyce of thunder and fearfull noyses and man shall doe no more as he please but must suffer as he hath deserved When Zedekiah reigned in Jerusalem and persecuted the Prophets and destroyed the interests of Religion and put Jeremy into the Dungeon God held his peace save onely that he warned him of the danger and told him of the disorder but it was Zedekiah's day and he was permitted to his pleasure But when he was led in chains to Babylon and his eyes were put out with burning Basons and horrible circles of reflected fires then was Gods day and his voyce was the accent of a fearfull anger that broke him all in pieces It will be all our caâ—es unlesse we hear God speak now and doe his work and serve his interest and bear our selves in our just proportions that is as such the very end of whose being and all our faculties is to serve God and doe justice and charities to our Brother For if we doe the work of God in our own day wee shall receive an infinite mercy in the day of the Lord. But what that is is now to be inquired What wee have done in the body But certainly this is the greatest terror of all The thunders and the fires the earthquakes and the trumpets the brightnesse of holy Angels and the horror of accursed Spirits the voyce of the Archangel who is the Prince of the heavenly host and the Majesty of the Judge in whose service all that Army stands girt with holinesse and obedience all those strange circumstances which have been already reckoned and all those others which wee cannot understand are but little praeparatories and umbrages of this fearfull circumstance All this amazing Majesty and formidable praeparatories are for the passing of an eternall Sentence upon us according to what we have done in the body Woe and alas and God help us all All mankind is an enemy to God his nature is accursed and his manners are depraved It is with the nature of man and with all his manners as Philemon said of the nature of foxes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Every fox is crafty and mischievous and if you gather a whole herd of them there is not a good natur'd beast amongst them all so it is with man by nature he is the child of wrath and by his manners he is the child of the Devill wee call Christian and wee dishonour our Lord and we are Brethren but we oppresse and murther one another it is a great degree of sanctity now a-days not to be so wicked as the worst of men and wee live at the rate as if the best of men did design to themselves an easier condemnation and as if the generality of men consider'd not concerning the degrees of death but did beleeve that in hell no man shall perceive any ease or refreshment in being tormented with a slower fire For consider what we doe in the body 12 or 14 years passe before we choose good or bad and of that which remaines above halfe is spent in sleep and the needs of Nature for the other halfe it is divided as the Stag was when the beasts went a hunting the Lyon hath five parts of sixe The businesse of the world takes so much of our remaining portion that Religion and the service of God have not much time left that can be spar'd and of that which can if we consider how much is allowed to crafty arts of cousenage to oppression and ambition to greedy desires and avaritious prosecutions to the vanities of our youth and the proper sins of every age to the meer idlenesse of man and doing nothing to his fantastick imaginations of greatnesse and pleasures of great and little devices of impertinent law-suites and uncharitable treatings of our Brother it will be intolerable when we consider that we are to stand or fall eternally according to what we have done in the body Gather it all together and set it before thy eyes Almes and Prayers are the summe of all thy good Were thy prayers made in feare and holinesse with passion and
or to fall by their own crimes so much as is the action of God and so much as is the piety of the man that attends and prayes in the holy place with the Priest so far he shall prevail but no further and therefore the Church hath taught her Ministers to pray thus in her preparatory prayer to consecration Quoniam me peccatorem inter te eundem populum Medium esse voluisti licet in me boni operis testimonium non agnoscas officium dispensationiis creditae non recuses nec per me indignum famulum tuum eorum salutis pereat pretium pro quibus victima factus salutaris dignatus es fieri redemptio For we must know that God hath not put the salvation of any man into the power of another And although the Church of Rome by calling the Priests actuall intention simply necessary and the Sacraments also indispensably necessary hath left it in the power of every Curate to damn very many of his Parish yet it is otherwise with the accounts of truth and the Divine mercy and therefore he will never exact the Sacraments of us by the measures and proportions of an evill Priest but by the piety of the communicant by the prayers of Christ and the mercies of God But although the greatest interest of salvation depends not upon this Ministery yet as by this we receive many advantages if the Minister be holy so if he be vicious we lose all that which could be conveyed to us by his part of the holy Ministration every man and woman in the assembly prays and joynes in the effect and for the obtaining the blessing but the more vain persons are assembled the lesse benefits are received even by good men there present and therefore much is the losse if a wicked Priest ministers though the summe of affairs is not intirely turned upon his office or default yet many advantages are For we must not think that the effect of the Sacraments is indivisibly done at once or by one ministery but they operate by parts and by morall operation by the length of time and a whole order of piety and holy ministeries every man is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a fellow-worker with God in the work of his salvation and as in our devotion no one prayer of our own alone prevails upon God for grace and salvation but all the devotions of our life are upon Gods account for them so is the blessing of God brought upon the people by all the parts of their religion and by all assistances of holy people and by the ministeries not of one but of all Gods Ministers and relies finally upon our own faith and obedience and the mercies of God in Jesus Christ but yet for want of holy persons to minister much diminution of blessing and a losse of advantages is unavoidable therefore if they have great necessities they can best hope that God will be moved to mercy on their behalf if their necessities be recommended to God by persons of a great piety of a holy calling and by the most solemn offices Lastly I promised to consider concerning the signs of having our prayers heard concerning which there is not much of particular observation but if our prayers be according to the warrant of Gods Word if we aske according to Gods will things honest and profitable we are to relye upon the promises and we are sure that they are heard and besides this we can have no sign but the thing signified when we feel the effect then we are sure God hath heard us but till then we are to leave it with God and not to aske a sign of that for which he hath made us a promise And yet Cassian hath named one sign which if you give me leave I will name unto you It is a sign we shall prevail in our prayers when the Spirit of God moves us to pray cum fiduciâ quasi securitate impetrandi with a confidence and a holy security of receiving what we aske But this is no otherwise a sign but because it is a part of the duty and trusting in God is an endearing him and doubting is a dishonour to him and he that doubts hath no faith for all good prayers relye upon Gods Word and we must judge of the effect by prudence for he that askes what is not lawfull hath made an unholy prayer if it be lawfull and not profitable we are then heard when God denies us and if both these be in the prayer he that doubts is a sinner and then God will not hear him but beyond this I know no confidence is warrantable and if this be a signe of prevailing then all the prudent prayers of all holy men shall certainely be heard and because that is certain we need no further inquiry into signes I summe up all in the words of God by the Prophet Run to and fro thorow the streets of Jerusalem and see and know and seek in the broad places thereof if you can finde a man if there be any that executeth judgment that seeketh truth virum quaerentem fidem a man that seeketh for faith propitius ero ei and I will pardon it God would pardon all Jerusalem for one good mans sake there are such dayes and opportunities of mercy when God at the prayer of one holy person will save a people and Ruffinus spake a great thing but it was hugely true Quis dubitet mundum stare precibus sanctorum the world it self is established and kept from dissolution by the prayers of Saints and the prayers of Saints shall hasten the day of Judgement and we cannot easily find two effects greater But there are many other very great ones for the prayers of holy men appease Gods wrath drive away temptations resist and overcome the Devill Holy prayer procures the ministery and service of Angels it rescinds the Decrees of God it cures sicknesses and obtains pardon it arrests the Sun in its course and staies the wheels of the Charet of the Moon it rules over all Gods creatures and opens and shuts the storehouses of rain it unlocks the cabinet of the womb and quenches the violence of fire it stops the mouthes of Lions and reconciles our sufferance and weak faculties with the violence of torment and sharpnesse of persecution it pleases God and supplies all our needs But Prayer that can do thus much for us can do nothing at all without holinesse for God heareth not sinners but if any man be a worshipper of God and doth his will him he heareth Sermon VII Of godly Fear c. Part I. Heb. 12. part of the 28th and the 29th verses Let us have Grace whereby we may serve God with reverence and godly fear For our God is a consuming fire E 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so our Testaments usually read it from the authority of Theophylact Let us have grace But some copies read it in the indicative mood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we
beleeve in him and then obey him living such a life as Jesus taught and this is the summe totall of the whole design As we have liv'd to the flesh so we must hereafter live to the spirit as our nature hath been flesh not only in its originall but in habits and affection so our nature must be spirit in habit and choice in design and effectuall prosecutions for nothing can cure our old death but this new birth and this is the recovery of our nature and the restitution of our hopes and therefore the greatest joy of mankinde 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a fine thing to see the light of this sun and it is pleasant to see the storm allayed and turned into a smooth sea and a fresh gale our eyes are pleased to see the earth begin to live and to produce her little issues with particolour'd coats 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nothing is so beauteous as to see a new birth in a childlesse family And it is excellent to hear a man discourse the hidden things of Nature and unriddle the perplexities of humane notices and mistakes it is comely to see a wise man sit in the gates of the City and give right judgement in difficult causes But all this is nothing to the excellencies of a new birth to see the old man carryed forth to funerall with the solemn tears of repentance and buryed in the grave of Jesus and in his place a new creation to arise a new heart and a new understanding and new affections and excellent appetites for nothing lesse then this can cure all the old distempers 2. Our life and all our discourses and every observation and a state of reason and a union of sober counsels are too little to cure a peevish spirit and a weak reasoning and silly principles and accursed habits and evill examples and perverse affections and a whole body of sin and death It was well said in the Comedy Nunquam it a quisquam bene subductâ ratione ad vitam fuit Quin aetas usus semper aliquid apportet novi Aliquid moneat ut illa quae scire credas nescias Et quae tibi putas prima in experiundo repudies Men at first think themselves wise and are alwaies most confident when they have the least reason and to morrow they begin to perceive yesterdayes folly and yet they are not wise But as the little Embryo in the naturall sheet and lap of its mother first distinguishes into a little knot and that in time will be the heart and then into a bigger bundle which after some dayes abode grows into two little spots and they if cherished by nature will become eyes and each part by order commences into weak principles and is preserved with natures greatest curiosity that it may assist first to distinction then to order next to usefulnesse and from thence to strength till it arrive at beauty and a perfect creature so are the necessities and so are the discourses of men we first learn the principles of reason which breaks obscurely through a clond and brings a little light and then we discern a folly and by little and little leave it till that enlightens the next corner of the soul and then there is a new discovery but the soul is still in infancy and childish follies and every day does but the work of one day but therefore art and use experience and reason although they do something yet they cannot do enough there must be something else But this is to be wrought by a new principle that is by the Spirit of grace Nature and reason alone cannot do it and therefore the proper cure is to be wrought by those generall means of inviting and cherishing of getting and entertaining Gods Spirit which when we have observed we may account our selves sufficiently instructed toward the repair of our breaches and the reformation of our evill nature 1. The first great instrument of changing our whole nature into the state of grace flesh into the spirit is a firm belief and a perfect assent to and hearty entertainment of the promises of the Gospell for holy Scripture speaks great words concerning faith It quenches the fiery darts of the Devill saith St. Paul it overcomes the world saith St. John it is the fruit of the Spirit and the parent of love it is obedience and it is humility and it is a shield and it is a brestplate and a work and a mysterie it is a fight and it is a victory it is a pleasing God and it is that whereby the just do live by faith we are purified and by faith we are sanctified and by faith we are justified and by faith we are saved by this we have accesse to the throne of grace and by it our prayers shall prevail for the sick by it we stand and by it we walk and by this Christ dwels in our hearts and by it all the miracles of the Church have been done it gives great patience to suffer and great confidence to hope and great strength to do and infallible certainty to enjoy the end of all our faith and satisfaction of all our hopes and the reward of all our labours even the most mighty price of our high calling and if faith be such a magazine of spirituall excellencies of such universall efficacy nothing can be a greater antidote against the venome of a corrupted nature But then this is not a grace seated finally in the understanding but the principle that is designed to and actually productive of a holy life It is not only a beleeving the propositions of Scripture as we beleeve a proposition in the Metaphysicks concerning which a man is never the honester whether it be true of false but it is a beleef of things that concern us infinitely things so great that if they be so true as great no man that hath his reason and can discourse that can think and choose that can desire and work towards an end can possibly neglect The great object of our faith to which all other articles do minister is resurrection of our bodies and souls to eternall life and glories infinite Now is it possible that a man that beleeves this and that he may obtain it for himself and that it was prepared for him and that God desires to give it him that he can neglect and despise it and not work for it and perform such easie conditions upon which it may be obtained Are not most men of the world made miserable at a lesse price then a thousand pound a year Do not all the usurers and merchants all tradesmen and labourers under the Sun toil and care labour and contrive venture and plot for a little money and no man gets and scarce any man desires so much of it as he can lay upon three acres of ground not so much of will
was made prince of the Catholickchurch and as our Head was so must the members be God made the same covenant with us that he did with his most holy Son Christ obtaind no better conditions for us then for himself that was not to be looked for the servant must not be above his master it is well if he be as his Master if the world persecuted him they will also persecute us and from the dayes of John the Baptist the kingdome of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force not the violent doers but the sufferers of violence for though the old law was established in the promises of temporal prosperity yet the gospel is founded in temporal adversity It is directly a covenant of sufferings and sorrows for now the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God that 's the sence and designe of the text and I intend it as a direct antinomy to the common perswasions of tyrannous carnal and vicious men who reckon nothing good but what is prosperous for though that proposition had many degrees of truth in the beginning of the law yet the case is now altered God hath established its contradictory and now every good man must look for persecution and every good cause must expect to thrive by the sufferings and patience of holy persons and as men do well and suffer evil so they are dear to God and whom he loves most he afflicts most and does this with a designe of the greatest mercy in the world 1. Then the state of the Gospel is a state of sufferings not of temporal prosperities this was foretold by the prophets a fountain shall go out of the house of the Lord irrigabit torrentem spinarum so it is in the vulgar latin and it shall water the torrent of thorns that is the state or time of the gospel which like a torrent shall cary all the world before it and like a torrent shall be fullest in ill weather and by its banks shall grow nothing but thorns and briers sharp afflictions temporal infelicities and persecution This sense of the words is more fully explained in the book of the prophet Isa. upon the ground of my people shall thorns and briers come up how much more in all the houses of the city of rejoycing which prophecy is the same in the stile of the prophets that my text is in the stile of the Apostles the house of God shall be watered with the dew of heaven and there shall spring up briers in it judgement must begin there but how much more in the houses of the city of rejoycing how much more among them that are at ease in Sion that serve their desires that satisfie their appetites that are given over to their own hearts lust that so serves themselves that they never serve God that dwell in the city of rejoycing they are like Dives whose portion was in this life who went in fine linnen and fared deliciously every day they indeed trample upon their briers and thorns and suffer them not to grow in their houses but the roots are in the ground and they are reserved for fuel of wrath in the day of everlasting burning Thus you see it was prophesied now see how it was performed Christ was the captain of our sufferings and he began He entred into the world with all the circumstances of poverty he had a star to illustrate his birth but a stable for his bed chamber and a manger for his cradle the angels sang hymnes when he was born but he was cold and cried uneasy and unprovided he lived long in the trade of a carpenter he by whom God made the world had in his first years the businesse of a mean and an ignoble trade he did good where ever he went and almost where ever he went was abused he deserved heaven for his obedience but found a crosse in his way thither and if ever any man had reason to expect fair usages from God and to be dandled in lap of ease softnes and a prosperous fortune he it was onely that could deserve that or any thing that can be good But after he had chosen to live a life of vertue of poverty and labour he entred into a state of death whose shame and trouble was great enough to pay for the sins of the whole world And I shall choose to expresse this mystery in the vvords of scripture he died not by a single or a sudden death but he was the Lambe slain from the beginning of the world For he was massacred in Abel saith Saint Paulinus he was tossed upon the waves of the Sea in the person of Noah It was he that went out of his Countrey when Abraham was called from Charran and wandred from his native soil He was offered up in Isaac persecuted in Jacob betrayed in Joseph blinded in Sampson affronted in Moses sawed in Esay cast into the dungeon with Jeremy For all these were types of Christ suffering and then his passion continued even after his resurrection for it is he that suffers in all his members it is he that endures the contradiction of all sinners it is he that is the Lord of life and is crucified again and put to open shame in all the sufferings of his servants and sins of rebels and defiances of Apostates and renegados and violence of Tyrants and injustice of usurpers and the persecutions of his Church It is he that is stoned in Saint Stephen flayed in the person of Saint Bartholomew he was rosted upon Saint Laurence his Gridiron exposed to lyons in Saint Ignatius burned in Saint Polycarpe frozen in the lake where stood fourty Martyrs of Cappadocia Unigenitus enim Dei ad peragendum mortis suae sacramentum consummavit omne genus humanarum passionum said Saint Hilary The Sacrament of Christs death is not to be accomplished but by suffering all the sorrows of humanity All that Christ came for was or was mingled with sufferings For all those little joyes which God sent either to recreate his person or to illustrate his office were abated or attended with afflictions God being more carefull to establish in him the Covenant of sufferings then to refresh his sorrows Presently after the Angels had finished their Halleluiahs he was forced to fly to save his life and the air became full of shrikes of the desolate mothers of Bethlehem for their dying Babes God had no sooner made him illustrious with a voyce from heaven and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him in the waters of Baptisme But he was delivered over to be tempted and assaulted by the Devil in the wildernesse His transfiguration was a bright ray of glory but then also he entred into a cloud and was told a sad story what he was to suffer at Jerusalem And upon Palme-Sunday when he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem and was adorned with the acclamations of a King and a God he wet the Palmes with
out and the noise shall mingle with the Trumpet of the Archangell with the thunders of the dying and groaning heavens and the crack of the dissolving world when the whole fabrick of nature shall shake into dissolution and eternall ashes But this generall consideration may be hightned with four or five circumstances 1. Consider what an infinite multitude of Angels and Men and Women shall then appear it is a huge assembly when the Men of one Kingdome the Men of one Age in a single Province are gathered togother into heaps and confusion of disorder But then all Kingdomes of all ages all the Armies that ever mustered all that World that Augustus Caesar taxed all those hundreds of Millions that were slain in all the Roman Wars from Numa's time till Italy was broken into Principalities and small Exarchats all these and all that can come into numbers and that did descend from the loins of Adam shall at once be represented to which account if we adde the Armies of Heaven the nine orders of blessed Spirits and the infinite numbers in every order we may suppose the numbers fit to expresse the Majesty of that God and the terror of that Judge who is the Lord and Father of all that unimaginable multitude Eritterror ingens tot simul tantorúmque populorum 2. In this great multitude we shall meet all those who by their example and their holy precepts have like tapers enkindled with a beam of the Sun of righteousnesse enlightned us and taught us to walk in the paths of justice There we shall see all those good men whom God sent to preach to us and recall us from humane follies and inhumane practises and when we espie the good man that chid us for our last drunkennesse or adulteries it shall then also be remembred how we mocked at counsell and were civilly modest at the reproof but laugh'd when the man was gone and accepted it for a religious complement and took our leaves and went and did the same again But then things shall put on another face and what we smil'd at here and slighted fondly shall then be the greatest terror in the world Men shall feel that they once laugh'd at their own destruction and rejected health when it was offered by a man of God upon no other condition but that they would be wise and not be in love with death Then they shall perceive that if they had obeyed an easie and a sober counsell they had been partners of the same felicity which they see so illustrious upon the heads of those Preachers whose work is with the Lord and who by their life and Doctrine endeavoured to snatch the Soul of their friend or relatives from an intolerable misery But he that sees a crown put upon their heads that give good counsell and preach holy and severe Sermons with designs of charity and piety will also then perceive that God did not send Preachers for nothing on trifling errands and without regard but that work which he crowns in them he purposed should be effective to us perswasive to the understanding and active upon our consciences Good Preachers by their Doctrine and all good men by their lives are the accusers of the disobedient and they shall rise up from their seats and judge and condemn the follies of those who thought their piety to be want of courage and their discourses pedanticall and their reproofs the Priests trade but of no signification because they prefer'd moments before eternity 3. There in that great assembly shall be seen all those Converts who upon easier terms and fewer miracles and a lesse experience and a younger grace and a seldomer Preaching and more unlikely circumstances have suffered the work of God to prosper upon their spirits and have been obedient to the heavenly calling There shall stand the men of Nineveh and they shall stand upright in Judgement for they at the preaching of one man in a lesse space then forty dayes returned unto the Lord their God but we have heard him call all our lives and like the deaf Adder stopt our ears against the voice of Gods servants charme they never so wisely There shall appear the men of Capernaum and the Queen of the South and the Men of Berea and the first fruits of the Christian Church and the holy Martyrs and shall proclaim to all the world that it was not impossible to do the work of Grace in the midst of all our weaknesses and accidentall disadvantages and that the obedience of Faith and the labour of Love and the contentions of chastity and the severities of temperance and self-deniall are not such insuperable mountains but that an honest and a sober person may perform them in acceptable degrees if he have but a ready ear and a willing minde and an honest heart and this seen of honest persons shall make the Divine Judgement upon sinners more reasonable and apparently just in passing upon them the horrible sentence for why cannot we as well serve God in peace as others served him in war why cannot we love him as well when he treats us sweetly and gives us health and plenty honours or fair fortunes reputation or contentednesse quietnesse and peace as others did upon gibbets and under axes in the hands of tormentors and in hard wildernesses in nakednesse and poverty in the midst of all evill things and all sad discomforts Concerning this no answer can be made 4. But there is a worse sight then this yet which in that great assembly shall distract our sight and amaze our spirits There men shall meet the partners of their sins and them that drank the round when they crown'd their heads with folly and forgetfulnesse and their cups with wine and noises There shall ye see that poor perishing soul whom thou didst tempt to adultery and wantonnesse to drunkennesse or perjury to rebellion or an evill interest by power or craft by witty discourses or deep dissembling by scandall or a snare by evill example or pernicious counsell by malice or unwarinesse and when all this is summ'd up and from the variety of its particulars is drawn into an uneasie load and a formidable summe possibly we may finde sights enough to scare all our confidences and arguments enough to presse our evill souls into the sorrowes of a most intolerable death For however we make now but light accounts and evill proportions concerning it yet it will be a fearfull circumstance of appearing to see one or two or ten or twenty accursed souls despairing miserable infinitely miserable roaring and blaspheming and fearfully cursing thee as the cause of its eternall sorrowes Thy lust betray'd and rifled her weak unguarded innocence thy example made thy servant confident to lye or to be perjur'd thy society brought a third into intemperance and the disguises of a beast and when thou seest that soul with whom thou didst sin drag'd into hell well maist thou fear to drink the dregs of thy intolerable
potion And most certainly it is the greatest of evils to destroy a soul for whom the Lord Jesus dyed and to undoe that grace which our Lord purchased with so much sweat and bloud pains and a mighty charity And because very many sins are sins of society and confederation such are fornication drunkennesse bribery simony rebellion schisme and many others it is a hard and a weighty consideration what shall become of any one of us who have tempted our Brother or Sister to sin and death for though God hath spar'd our life and they are dead and their debt-books are sealed up till the day of account yet the mischief of our sin is gone before us and it is like a murther but more execrable the soul is dead in trespasses and sins and sealed up to an eternall sorrow and thou shalt see at Dooms-day what damnable uncharitablenesse thou hast done That soul that cryes to those rocks to cover her if it had not been for thy perpetuall temptations might have followed the Lamb in a white robe and that poor man that is cloathed with shame and flames of fire would have shin'd in glory but that thou didst force him to be partner of thy basenesse And who shall pay for this losse a soul is lost by thy means thou hast defeated the holy purposes of the Lord 's bitter passion by thy impurities and what shall happen to thee by whom thy Brother dies eternally Of all the considerations that concern this part of the horrors of Dooms-day nothing can be more formidable then this to such whom it does concern and truly it concerns so many and amongst so many perhaps some persons are so tender that it might affright their hopes and discompose their industries and spritefull labours of repentance but that our most mercifull Lord hath in the midst of all the fearfull circumstances of his second coming interwoven this one comfort relating to this which to my sense seems the most fearfull and killing circumstance Two shall be grinding at one mill the one shall be taken and the other left Two shall be in a bed the one shall be taken and the other left that is those who are confederate in the same fortunes and interests and actions may yet have a different sentence for an early and an active repentance will wash off this account and put it upon the tables of the Crosse and though it ought to make us diligent and carefull charitable and penitent hugely penitent even so long as we live yet when we shall appear together there is a mercy that shall there separate us who sometimes had blended each other in a common crime Blessed be the mercies of of God who hath so carefully provided a fruitfull shower of grace to refresh the miseries and dangers of the greatest part of mankind Thomas Aquinas was used to beg of God that he might never be tempted from his low fortune to Prelacies and dignities Ecclesiasticall and that his minde might never be discomposed or polluted with the love of any creature and that he might by some instrument or other understand the state of his deceased Brother and the story sayes that he was heard in all In him it was a great curiosity or the passion and impertinencies of a uselesse charity to search after him unlesse he had some other personall concernment then his relation of kindred But truly it would concern very many to be solicitous concerning the event of those souls with whom we have mingled death and sin for many of those sentences which have passed and decreed concerning our departed relatives will concern us dearly and we are bound in the same bundles and shall be thrown into the same fires unlesse we repent for our own sins and double our sorrows for their damnation 5. We may consider that this infinite multitude of men and women Angels and Devils is not ineffective as a number in Pythagoras Tables but must needs have influence upon every spirit that shall there appear For the transactions of that court are not like Orations spoken by a Grecian Orator in the circles of his people heard by them that croud nearest him or that sound limited by the circles of aire or the inclosure of a wall but every thing is represented to every person and then let it be considered when thy shame and secret turpitude thy midnight revels and secret hypocrisies thy lustfull thoughts and treacherous designes thy falshood to God and startings from thy holy promises thy follies and impieties shall be laid open before all the world and that then shall be spoken by the trumpet of an Archangell upon the house top the highest battlements of Heaven all those filthy words and lewd circumstances which thou didst act secretly thou wilt find that thou wilt have reason strangely to be ashamed All the wise men in the world shall know how vile thou hast been and then consider with what confusion of face wouldst thou stand in the presence of a good man and a severe if peradventure he should suddenly draw thy curtain and finde thee in the sins of shame and lust it must be infinitely more when God and all the Angels of heaven and earth all his holy myriads and all his redeemed Saints shall stare and wonder at thy impurities and follies I have read a story that a young Gentleman being passionately by his mother disswaded from entring into the severe courses of a religious and single life broke from her importunity by saying Volo servare animam meam I am resolved by all means to save my soul. But when he had undertaken a rule with passion he performed it carelesly and remifly and was but lukewarm in his Religion and quickly proceeded to a melancholy and wearied spirit and from thence to a sicknesse and the neighbourhood of death but falling into an agony and a phantastick vision dream'd that he saw himself summon'd before Gods angry throne and from thence hurryed into a place of torments where espying his Mother full of scorn she upbraided him with his former answer and asked him Why he did not save his soul by all means according as he undertook But when the sick man awaked and recovered he made his words good indeed and prayed frequently and fasted severely and laboured humbly and conversed charitably and mortified himself severely and refused such secular solaces which other good men received to refresh and sustain their infirmities and gave no other account to them that asked him but this If I could not in my extasie or dream endure my Mothers upbraiding my follies and weak Religion how shall I be able to suffer that God should redargue me at Dooms-day and the Angels reproach my lukewarmnesse and the Devils aggravate my sins and all the Saints of God deride my follies and hypocrisies The effect of that mans consideration may serve to actuate a meditation in every one of us for we shall all be at that passe that unlesse our shame and sorrowes
shall be rent into threds of light and scatter like the beards of comets Then shall bee fearfull earthquakes and the rocks shall rend in pieces the trees shall distill bloud and the mountains and fairest structures shall returne unto their primitive dust the wild beasts shall leave their dens and come into the companies of men so that you shall hardly tell how to call them herds of Men or congregations of Beasts Then shall the Graves open and give up their dead and those which are alive in nature and dead in fear shall be forc'd from the rocks whither they went to hide them and from caverns of the earth where they would fain have been concealed because their retirements are dismantled and their rocks are broken into wider ruptures and admit a strange light into their secret bowels and the men being forc'd abroad into the theatre of mighty horrors shall run up and downe distracted and at their wits end and then some shall die and some shall bee changed and by this time the Elect shall bee gathered together from the foure quarters of the world and Christ shall come along with them to judgment These signes although the Jewish Doctors reckon them by order and a method concerning which they had no revelation that appeares nor sufficiently credible tradition yet for the main parts of the things themselves the holy Scripture records Christs own words and concerning the most terrible of them the summe of which as Christ related them and his Apostles recorded and explicated is this The earth shall tremble and the powers of the heavens shall bee shaken the sun shall bee turned into darknesse and the moon into bloud that is there shall bee strange eclipses of the Sun and fearfull aspects in the Moon who when she is troubled looks red like bloud The rocks shall rend and the elements shall melt with fervent heat The heavens shall bee rolled up like a parchment the earth shall bee burned with fire the hils shall be like wax for there shall goe a fire before him and a mighty tempest shall be stirred round about him Dies irae Dies illa Solvet sêclum in favillâ Teste David cum Sibyllâ The Trumpet of God shall sound and the voice of the Archangell that is of him who is the Prince of all that great army of Spirits which shall then attend their Lord and wait upon and illustrate his glory and this also is part of that which is called the signe of the Son of Man for the fulfilling of all these praedictions and the preaching the Gospel to all Nations and the Conversion of the Jews and these prodigies and the Addresse of Majesty make up that signe The notice of which things some way or other came to the very Heathen themselves who were alarum'd into caution and sobriety by these dreadfull remembrances Sic cum compage solutâ Saecula tot mundt suprema coëgerit hora Antiquum repetens iterum chaos omnia mistis Sidera sideribus concurrent ignea pontum Astra petent tellus extendere littora nolet Excutietque fretum fratri contraria Phoebe Ibit Totaque discors Machina divulsi turbabit foedera Mundi Which things when they are come to passe it will be no wonder if mens hearts shall faile them for feare and their wits bee lost with guilt and their fond hopes destroyed by prodigie and amazement but it will bee an extreme wonder if the consideration and certain expectation of these things shall not awake our sleeping spirits and raise us from the death of Sin and the basenesse of vice and dishonorable actions to live soberly and temperately chastly and justly humbly and obediently that is like persons that believe all this and such who are not mad men or fools but will order their actions according to these notices For if they doe not believe these things where is their Faith If they doe believe them and sin on and doe as if there were no such thing to come to passe where is their Prudence and what is their hopes and where their Charity how doe they differ from beasts save that they are more foolish for beasts goe on and consider not because they cannot but we can consider and will not we know that strange terrors shall affright us all and strange deaths and torments shall seise upon the wicked and that we cannot escape and the rocks themselves will not bee able to hide us from the fears of those prodigies which shall come before the day of Judgement and that the mountains though when they are broken in pieces we call upon them to fall upon us shall not be able to secure us one minute from the present vengeance and yet we proceed with confidence or carelesnesse and consider not that there is no greater folly in the world then for a man to neglect his greatest interest and to die for trifles and little regards and to become miserable for such interests which are not excusable in a Childe He that is youngest hath not long to live Hee that is thirty forty or fifty yeares old hath spent most of his life and his dream is almost done and in a very few moneths hee must be cast into his eternall portion that is hee must be in an unalterable condition his finall Sentence shall passe according as hee shall then bee found and that will be an intolerable condition when he shall have reason to cry out in the bitternesse of his soule Eternall woe is to mee who refus'd to consider when I might have been saved and secured from this intolerable calamity But I must descend to consider the particulars and circumstances of the great consideration Christ shall be our Judge at Doomes-day SERMON II. Part II. 1. IF we consider the person of the Judge we first perceive that he is interested in the injury of the crimes he is to sentence Videbunt quem crucifixerunt and they shal look on him whom they have pierced It was for thy sins that the Judge did suffer such unspeakable pains as were enough to reconcile all the world to God The summe and spirit of which pains could not be better understood then by the consequence of his own words My God my God why hast thou forsaken me meaning that he felt such horrible pure unmingled sorrowes that although his humane nature was personally united to the Godhead yet at that instant he felt no comfortable emanations by sensible perception from the Divinity but he was so drenched in sorrow that the Godhead seemed to have forsaken him Beyond this nothing can be added but then that thou hast for thy own particular made all this in vain and ineffective that Christ thy Lord and Judge should be tormented for nothing that thou wouldst not accept felicity and pardon when he purchased them at so dear a price must needs be an infinite condemnation to such persons How shalt thou look upon him that fainted and dyed for love of thee and thou didst
makes intercession for us with groans unutterable and all the holy men in the world pray for all and for every one and God hath instructed us with Scriptures and precedents and collaterall and direct assistances to pray and he incouraged us with divers excellent promises and parables and examples and teaches us what to pray and how and gives one promise to publique prayer and another to private prayer and to both the blessing of being heard * Adde to this account that God did heap blessings upon us without order infinitely perpetually and in all instances when we needed and when we needed not * He heard us when we pray'd giving us all and giving us more then we desired * He desired that we should aske and yet he hath also prevented our desires * He watch'd for us and at his own charge sent a whole order of men whose imployment is to minister to our souls and if all this had not been enough he had given us more also * He promised heaven to our obedience a Province for a dish of water a Kingdome for a prayer satisfaction for desiring it grace for receiving and more grace for accepting and using the first * He invited us with gracious words and perfect entertainments * He threatned horrible things to us if we would not be happy * He hath made strange necessities for us making our very repentance to be a conjugation of holy actions and holy times and a long succession * He hath taken away all excuses from us he hath called us off from temptation he bears our charges he is alwaies before-hand with us in every act of favour and perpetually slow in striking and his arrowes are unfeathered and he is so long first in drawing his sword and another long while in whetting it and yet longer in lifting his hand to strike that before the blow comes the man hath repented long unlesse he be a fool and impudent and then God is so glad of an excuse to lay his anger aside that certainly if after all this we refuse life and glory there is no more to be said this plain story will condemn us but the story is very much longer and as our conscience will represent all our sins to us so the Judge will represent all his Fathers kindnesses as Nathan did to David when he was to make the justice of the Divine Sentence appear against him * Then it shall be remembred that the joyes of every daies piety would have been a greater pleasure every night then the remembrance of every nights sin could have been in the morning * That every night the trouble and labour of the daies vertue would have been as much passed and turned to as very a nothing as the pleasure of that daies sin but that they would be infinitely distinguished by the remanent effects 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So Musonius expressed the sense of this inducement and that this argument would have grown so great by that time we come to dye that the certain pleasures and rare confidences and holy hopes of a death-bed would be a strange felicity to the man when he remembers he did obey if they were compared to the fearfull expectations of a dying sinner who feels by a formidable and afrighting remembrance that of all his sins nothing remains but the gains of a miserable eternity * The offering our selves to God every morning and the thanksgiving to God every night hope and fear shame and desire the honour of leaving a fair name behinde us and the shame of dying like a fool every thing indeed in the world is made to be an argument and an inducement to us to invite us to come to God and be sav'd and therefore when this and infinitely more shall by the Judge be exhibited in sad remembrances there needs no other sentence we shall condemn our selves with a hasty shame and a fearfull confusion to see how good God hath been to us and how base we have been to our selves Thus Moses is said to accuse the Jewes and thus also he that does accuse is said to condemn as Verres was by Cicero and Claudia by Domitius her accuser and the world of impenitent persons by the men of Nineveh and all by Christ their Judge I represent the horror of this circumstance to consist in this besides the reasonablenesse of the Judgement and the certainty of the condemnation it cannot but be an argument of an intolerable despair to perishing souls when he that was our Advocate all our life shall in the day of that appearing be our Accuser and our Judge a party against us an injur'd person in the day of his power and of his wrath doing execution upon all his own foolish and malicious enemies * 2. Our conscience shall be our accuser but this signifies but these two things 1. that we shall be condemned for the evils that we have done and shall then remember God by his power wiping away the dust from the tables of our memory and taking off the consideration and the voluntary neglect and rude shufflings of our cases of conscience For then we shall see things as they are the evill circumstances and the crooked intentions the adherent unhandsomenesse and the direct crimes for all things are laid up safely and though we draw a curtain of cobweb over them and few figleaves before our shame yet God shall draw away the curtain and forgetfulnesse shall be no more because with a taper in the hand of God all the corners of our nastinesse shall be discovered And secondly it signifies this also that not only the Justice of God shall be confessed by us in our own shame and condemnation but the evill of the sentence shall be received into us to melt our bowels and to break our heart in pieces within us because we are the authors of our own death and our own inhumane hands have torn our souls in pieces Thus farre the horrors are great and when evill men consider it it is certain they must be afraid to dye Even they that have liv'd well have some sad considerations and the tremblings of humility and suspicion of themselves I remember S. Cyprian tels of a good man who in his agony of death saw a phantasme of a noble and angelicall shape who frowning and angry said to him Pati timetis exire non vultis Quid faciam vobis Ye cannot endure sicknesse ye are troubled at the evils of the world and yet you are loth to dye and to be quit of them what shall I do to you Although this is apt to represent every mans condition more or lesse yet concerning persons of wicked lives it hath in it too many sad degrees of truth they are impatient of sorrow and justly fearfull of death because they know not how to comfort themselves in the evill accidents of their lives and their conscience is too polluted to take death for sanctuary and
to hope to have amends made to their condition by the sentence of the day of Judgement Evill and sad is their condition who cannot be contented here nor blessed hereafter whose life is their misery and their conscience is their enemy whose grave is their prison and death their undoing and the sentence of Dooms-day the beginning of an intolerable condition 3. The third sort of accusers are the Devils and they will do it with malicious and evill purposes The Prince of the Devils hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for one of his chiefest appellatives The accuser of the Brethren he is by his professed malice and imployment and therefore God who delights that his mercy should triumph and his goodnesse prevail over all the malice of men and Devils hath appointed one whose office is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to reprove the accuser and to resist the enemy and to be a defender of their cause who belong to God The holy Spirit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a defender the evill spirit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the accuser and they that in this life belong to one or the other shall in the same proportion be treated at the day of Judgement The Devill shall accuse the Brethren that is the Saints and servants of God and shall tell concerning their follies and infirmities the sins of their youth and the weaknesse of their age the imperfect grace and the long schedule of omissions of duty their scruples and their fears their diffidences and pusillanimity and all those things which themselves by strict examination finde themselves guilty of and have confessed all their shame and the matter of their sorrowes their evill intentions and their little plots their carnall confidences and too fond adherences to the things of this world their indulgence and easinesse of government their wilder joyes and freer meals their losse of time and their too forward and apt compliances their trifling arrests and little peevishnesses the mixtures of the world with the things of the Spirit and all the incidences of humanity he will bring forth and aggravate them by the circumstance of ingratitude and the breach of promise and the evacuating all their holy purposes and breaking their resolutions and rifling their vowes and all these things being drawn into an intire representment and the bils clog'd by numbers will make the best man in the world seem foul and unhandsome and stained with the characters of death and evill dishonour But for these there is appointed a defender The holy Spirit that maketh intercession for us shall then also interpose and against all these things shall oppose the passion of our blessed Lord and upon all their defects shall cast the robe of his righteousnesse and the sins of their youth shall not prevail so much as the repentance of their age and their omissions be excused by probable intervening causes and their little escapes shall appear single and in disunion because they were alwaies kept asunder by penitentiall prayers and sighings and their seldome returns of sin by their daily watchfulnesse and their often infirmities by the sincerity of their souls and their scruples by their zeal and their passions by their love and all by the mercies of God and the sacrifice which their Judge offer'd and the holy Spirit made effective by daily graces and assistances These therefore infallibly go to the portion of the right hand because the Lord our God shall answer for them But as for the wicked it is not so with them for although the plain story of their life be to them a sad condemnation yet what will be answered when it shall be told concerning them that they despised Gods mercies and feared not his angry judgements that they regarded not his word and loved not his excellencies that they were not perswaded by the promises nor afrighted by his threatnings that they neither would accept his government nor his blessings that all the sad stories that ever hapned in both the worlds in all which himself did escape till the day of his death and was not concerned in them save only that he was called upon by every one of them which he ever heard or saw or was told of to repentance that all these were sent to him in vain But cannot the Accuser truly say to the Judge concerning such persons They were thine by creation but mine by their own choice Thou didst redeem them indeed but they sold themselves to me for a trifle or for an unsatisfying interest Thou diedst for them but they obeyed my commandements I gave them nothing I promised them nothing but the filthy pleasures of a night or the joyes of madnesse or the delights of a disease I never hanged upon the Crosse three long hours for them nor endured the labours of a poor life 33 years together for their interest only when they were thine by the merit of thy death they quickly became mine by the demerit of their ingratitude and when thou hadst cloathed their soul with thy robe and adorned them by thy graces we strip'd them naked as their shame and only put on a robe of darknesse and they thought themselves secure and went dancing to their grave like a drunkard to a fight or a flie unto a candle and therefore they that did partake with us in our faults must divide with us in our portion and fearfull interest This is a sad story because it ends in death and there is nothing to abate or lessen the calamity It concerns us therefore to consider in time that he that tempts us will accuse us and what he cals pleasant now he shall then say was nothing and all the gains that now invite earthly souls and mean persons to vanity was nothing but the seeds of folly and the harvest is pain and sorrow and shame eternall * But then since this horror proceeds upon the account of so many accusers God hath put it into our power by a timely accusation of our selves in the tribunall of the court Christian to prevent all the arts of aggravation which at Dooms-day shall load foolish and undiscerning souls He that accuses himself of his crimes here means to forsake them and looks upon them on all sides and spies out his deformity and is taught to hate them he is instructed and prayed for he prevents the anger of God and defeats the Devils malice and by making shame the instrument of repentance he takes away the sting and makes that to be his medicine which otherwise would be his death and concerning this exercise I shall only adde what the Patriarch of Alexandria told an old religious person in his hermitage having asked him what he found in that desert he was answered only this Indesinenter culpare judicare meipsum to judge and condemn my self perpetually that is the imployment of my solitude The Patriarch answered Non est alia via There is no other way By accusing our selves we shall make the Devils malice uselesse
God confirmed by miracles was an intire faith and although they might have false opinions or mistaken explications of true opinions either inartificiall or misunderstood yet we have reason to beleeve their faith to be intire for that which God would have the Heathen to beleeve and to that purpose prov'd it by a miracle himselfe intended to accept first to a holy life and then to glory The false opinion should burn and themselves escape One thing more is here very considerable that in this very instance of working miracles God was so very carefull not to hear sinners or permit sinners till he had prevented all dangers to good and innocent persons that the case of Christ and his Apostles working miracles was so clearly separated and remarked by the finger of God and distinguished from the impostures and pretences of all the many Antichrists that appeared in Palestine Cyprus Crâ—te Syria and the voicinage that there were but very few Christians that with hearty perswasions fell away from Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Galen It is not easie to teach anew him that hath been taught by Christ And St. Austin tels a story of an unbeleeving man that being troubled that his wife was a Christian went to the Oracle to aske by what means hee should alter her perswasion but he was answered it could never be done he might as well imprint characters upon the face of a torrent or a rapid river or himself fly in the air as alter the perswasion of a hearty and an honest Christian I would to God it were so now in all instances and that it were so hard to draw men from the severities of a holy life as of old they could be cousened disputed or forced out of their faith Some men are vexed with hypocrisie and then their hypocrisie was punished with infidelity and a wretchlesse spirit Demas and Simon Magus and Ecebolius and the lapsed Confessors are instances of humane craft or humane weaknesse but they are scarce a number that are remarked in Ancient story to have fallen from Christianity by direct persuasions or the efficacy of abusing arguments and discourses The reason of it is the truth in the text God did so avoyd hearing sinners in this affair that he never permitted them to doe any miracles so as to doe any mischief to the souls of good men and therefore it is said the enemies of Christ came in the power of signes and wonders able to deceive if it were possible even the very elect but that was not possible without their faults it could not be the elect were sufficiently strengthened and the evidence of Christs being heard of God and that none of his enemies were heard of God to any dangerous effect was so great that if any Christian had apostatized or fallen away by direct perswasion it was like the sin of a falling Angell of so direct a malice that he never could repent and God never would pardon him as St. Paul twice remarks in his Epistle to the Hebrews The result of this discourse is the first sense and explication of the words God heareth not sinners viz. in that in which they are sinners a sinner in his manners may be heard in his prayer in order to the confirmation of his faith but if he be a sinner in his faith God hears him not at all in that wherein he sins for God is truth and cannot confirm a lye and when ever he permitted the Devill to doe it he secur'd the interest of his Elect that is of all that beleeve in him and love him lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting 2. That which yet concerns us more neerly is that God heareth not sinners that is if wee be not good men our prayers will doe us no good wee shall be in the condition of them that never pray at all The prayers of a wicked man are like the breath of corrupted lungs God turns away from such unwholsome breathings But that I may reduce this necessary doctrine to a method I shall consider that there are some persons whose prayers are sins and some others whose prayers are ineffectuall some are such who doe not pray lawfully they sin when they pray while they remain in that state and evill condition others are such who doe not obtain what they pray for and yet their prayer is not a direct sin the prayer of the first is a direct abomination the prayer of the second is hindred the first is corrupted by a direct state of sin the latter by some intervening imperfection and unhandsome circumstance of action and in proportion to these it is required 1. that he be in a state and possibility of acceptation and 2. that the prayer it selfe be in a proper disposition 1. Therefore wee shall consider what are those conditions which are required in every person that prays the want of which makes the prayer to be a sin 2ly What are the conditions of a good mans prayer the absence of which makes that even his prayer returns empty 3ly What degrees and circumstances of piety are required to make a man fit to be an intercessor for others both with holinesse in himself and effect to them he prays for And 4ly as an appendix to those considerations I shall adde the proper indices and significations by which we may make a judgment whether God hath heard our prayers or no. 1. Whosoever prays to God while he is in a state or in the affection to sin his prayer is an abomination to God This was a truth so beleeved by all Nations of the world that in all Religions they ever appointed baptismes and ceremoniall expiations to cleanse the persons before they presented themselves in their holy offices Deorum Templa cum adire disponitis ab omni vos labe puros lautos castissimósque praestatis said Arnobius to the Gentiles When you addresse your selves to the Temples of your Gods you keep your selves chast and clean and spotlesse They washed their hands and wore white garments they refused to touch a dead body they avoyded a spot upon their clothes as they avoyded a wound upon their head 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That was the religious ground they went upon an impure thing ought not to touch that which is holy much lesse to approach the Prince of purities and this was the sense of the old world in their lustrations and of the Jews in their preparatory baptismes they wash'd their hands to signifie that they should cleanse them from all iniquity and keep them pure from bloud and rapine they washed their garments but that intended they should not be spotted with the flesh and their follies consisted in this that they did not looke to the bottome of their lavatories they did not see through the vail of their ceremonies Flagitiis omnibus inquinati veniunt ad precandum se piè sacrificasse opinantur si cutem laverint tanquam libidines intra pectus inclusas ulla amnis abluat
was so in the case of the prevaricating Israelites God was full of indignation against them and smote them Then stood up Phinehas and prayed and the plague ceased For this man was a good man and the spirit of an extraordinary zeal filled him and he did glory to God in the execution upon Zimri and his fair Madianite And it was a huge blessing that was intail'd upon the posterity of Abraham Isaac and Jacob because they had a great Religion a great power with God and their extraordinary did consist especially in the matter of prayers and devotion for that was eminent in them besides their obedience for so Maimonides tells concerning them that Abraham first instituted Morning prayer The affairs of Religion had not the same constitution then as now They worshipped God never but at their Memorials and in places and seldome times of separation The bowed their head when they came to a hallowed stone and upon the top of their staffe and worshipped when they came to a consecrated pillar but this was seldome and they knew not the secrets and the priviledges of a frequent prayer of intercourses with God by ejaculations and the advantages of importunity and the Doctors of the Jews that record the prayer of Noah who in all reason knew the secret best because he was to teach it to all the world yet have transmitted to us but a short prayer of some seaven lines long and this he onely said within the Ark in that great danger once on a day provoked by his fear and stirred up by a Religion then made actuall in those days of sorrow and penance But in the descending ages when God began to reckon a Church in Abraham's family there began to be a new institution of offices and Abraham appointed that God should be prayed to every morning Isaac being taught by Abraham made a law or at least commended the practise and adopted it into the Religion that God should be worshipped by decimation or tithing of our goods and he added an order of prayer to be said in the afternoon and Jacob to make up the office compleat added evening prayer and God was their God and they became fit persons to blesse that is of procuring blessings to their relatives as appears in the instances of their own families of the King of Egypt and the Cities of the Plain For a man of an ordinary piety is like Gideons fleece wet in its own locks but it could not water a poor mans Garden But so does a thirsty land drink all the dew of heaven that wets its face and a great shower makes no torrent nor digs so much as a little furrow that the drils of the water might passe into rivers or refresh their neighbours wearinesse but when the earth is full and hath no strange consumptive needs then at the next time when God blesses it with a gracious shower it divides into portions and sends it abroad in free and equall communications that all that stand round about may feel the shower So is a good mans prayer his own cup is full it is crowned with health and overflowes with blessings and all that drink of his cup and eat at his table are refreshed with his joys and divide with him in his holy portions And indeed he hath need of a great stock of piety who is first to provide for his own necessities and then to give portions to a numerous relation It is a great matter that every man needs for himself the daily expences of his own infirmities the unthriving state of his omission of duties and recessions from perfection and sometimes the great losses and shipwracks the plundrings and burning of his house by a fall into a deadly sin and most good men are in this condition that they have enough to doe to live and keep themselves above water but how few men are able to pay their own debts and lend great portions to others The number of those who can effectually intercede for others to great purposes of grace and pardon are as soon told as the number of wise men as the gates of a City or the entries of the river Nilus But then doe but consider what a great ingagement this is to a very strict and holy life If we chance to live in times of an extraordinary trouble or if our relatives can be capable of great dangers or great sorrows or if we our selves would doe the noblest friendship in the world and oblige others by acts of greatest benefit if we would assist their souls and work towards their salvation if we would be publick ministers of the greatest usefulness to our countrey if we would support Kings and relieve the great necessities of Kingdoms if we would be effective in the stopping of a plague or in the successe of armies a great and an exemplar piety and a zealous and holy prayer can do all this Semper tu hoc facito ut cogites Id optimum esse tute ut sis optimus si id nequeas saltem ut optimis sis proximus He that is the best man towards God is certainely the best Minister to his Prince or Countrey and therefore doe thou endevour to be so and if thou canst not be so be at least next to the best For in that degree in which our Religion is great and our piety exemplar in the same we can contribute towards the fortune of a Kingdome and when Elijah was taken into heaven Elisha mourn'd for him because it was a losse to Israel My Father my father the chariots of Israel and horsemen thereof But consider how uselesse thou art when thou canst not by thy prayers obtain so much mercy as to prevaile for the life of a single Trooper or in a plague beg of God for the life of a poor Maid-servant but the ordinary emanations of providence shall proceed to issue without any arrest and the sword of the Angel shall not be turn'd aside in one single infliction Remember although he is a great and excellent person that can prevaile of God for the interest of others yet thou that hast no stock of grace and favour no interest in the Court of heaven art but a mean person extraordinary in nothing thou art unregarded by God cheap in the fight of Angels uselesse to thy Prince or Countrey thou maist hold thy peace in a time of publick danger For Kings never pardon Murtherers at the intercession of Theeves and if a mean Mechanick should beg a Reprieve for a condemned Traitor he is ridiculous and impudent so is a vicious Advocate or an ordinary person with God It is well if God will hear him begging for his owne pardon hee is not yet disposed to plead for others And yet every man that is in the state of grace every man that can pray without a sinfull prayer may also intercede for others and it is a duty for all men to doe it all men I say who can pray at all acceptably I
will therefore that prayers and supplications and intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men and this is a duty that is prescrib'd to all them that are concern'd in the duty and in the blessings of Prayer but this is it which I say if their piety be but ordinary their prayer can be effectuall but in easy purposes and to smaller degrees but he that would work effectively towards a great deliverance or in great degrees towards the benefit or eaâ—e of any of his relatives can be confident of his successe but in the same degree in which his person is gracious There are strange things in heaven judgments there are made of things and persons by the measures of Religion and a plain promise produces effects of wonder and miracle and the changes that are there made are not effected by passions and interests and corporall changes and the love that is there is not the same thing that it is here it is more beneficiall more reasonable more holy of other designes and strange productions and upon that stock it is that a holy poor man that possesses no more it may be then an Ewe-lambe that eats of his bread and drinks of his cup and is a daughter to him and is all his temporall portion this poor man is ministred to by Angels and attended to by God and the Holy Spirit makes intercession for him and Christ joyns the mans prayer to his own advocation and the man by prayer shall save the City and destroy the fortune of a Tyrant army even then when God sees it good it should be so for he will no longer deny him any thing but when it is no blessing and when it is otherwise his prayer is most heard when it is most denyed 2ly That we should prevaile in intercessions for others we are to regard and to take care that as our piety so also must our offices be extraordinary He that prays to recover a family from an hereditary curse or to reverse a Sentence of God to cancell a Decree of heaven gone out against his friend hee that would heale the sick with his prayer or with his devotion prevaile against an army must not expect such great effects upon a Morning or Evening Collect or an honest wish put into the recollections of a prayer or a period put in on purpose Mamercus Bishop of Vienna seeing his City and all the Diocese in great danger of perishing by an earthquake instituted great Letanies and solemn supplications besides the ordinary devotions of his usuall hours of prayer and the Church from his example took up the practise and translated it into an anniversary solemnity and upon St. Mark 's day did solemnly intercede with God to divert or prevent his judgments falling upon the people majoribus Litani is so they are called with the more solemn supplications they did pray unto God in behalf of their people And this hath in it the same consideration that is in every great necessity for it is a great thing for a man to be so gracious with God as to be able to prevaile for himself and his friend for himself and his relatives and therefore in these cases as in all great needs it is the way of prudence and security that we use all those greater offices which God hath appointed as instruments of importunity and arguments of hope and acts of prevailing and means of great effect and advocation such as are separating days for solemn prayer all the degrees of violence and earnest addresse fasting and prayer almes and prayer acts of repentance and prayer praying together in publick with united hearts and above all praying in the susception and communication of the holy Sacrament the effects and admirable issues of which we know not and perceive not we loâ—e because we desire not and choose to lose many great blessings rather then purchase them with the frequent commemoration of that sacrifice which was offered up for all the needs of Mankind and for obtaining all favours and graces to the Catholick Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God never refuses to hear a holy prayer and our prayers can never be so holy as when they are offered up in the union of Christs sacrifice For Christ by that sacrifice reconcil'd God and the world And because our needs continue therefore we are commanded to continue the memory and to represent to God that which was done to satisfie all our needs Then we receive Christ we are after a secret and mysterious but most reall and admirable manner made all one with Christ and if God giving us his Son could not but with him give us all things else how shall he refuse our persons when we are united to his person when our souls are joined to his soul our body nourished by his body and our souls sanctified by his bloud and cloth'd with his robes and marked with his character and sealed with his Spirit and renewed with holy vows and consign'd to all his glories and adopted to his inheritance when we represent his death and pray in vertue of his passion and imitate his intercession and doe that which God commands and offer him in our manner that which he essentially loves can it be that either any thing should be more prevalent or that God can possibly deny such addresses and such importunities Try it often and let all things else be answerable and you cannot have greater reason for your confidence Doe not all the Christians in the world that understand Religion desire to have the holy Sacrament when they die when they are to make their great appearance before God and to receive their great consignation to their eternall sentence good or bad And if then be their greatest needs that is their greatest advantage and instrument of acceptation Therefore if you have a great need to be serv'd or a great charity to serve and a great pity to minister and a dear friend in a sorrow take Christ along in thy prayers in all thy ways thou canst take him take him in affection and take him in a solemnity take him by obedience and receive him in the Sacrament and if thou then offerest up thy prayers and makest thy needs known if thou nor thy friend be not relieved if thy party be not prevalent and the war be not appeased or the plague be not cured or the enemy taken off there is something else in it but thy prayer is good and pleasing to God and dressed with circumstances of advantage and thy person is apt to be an intercessor and thou hast done all that thou canst the event must be left to God and the secret reasons of the deniall either thou shalt find in time or thou maist trust with God who certainly does it with the greatest wisdome and the greatest charity I have in this thing onely one caution to insert viz. That in our importunity and extraordinary offices for others we must not make our accounts by multitude
fill a great house and is this sum that is such a trifle such a poor limited heap of dirt the reward of all the labour and the end of all the care and the design of all the malice and the recomponce of all the wars of the world and can it be imaginable that life it self and a long life an eternall and a happy life a kingdome a perfect kingdome and glorious that shall never have ending nor ever shall be abated with rebellion or fears or sorrow or care that such a kingdome should not be worth the praying for and quitting of an idle company and a foolish humour or a little drink or a vicious silly woman for it surely men beleeve no such thing They do not relye upon those fine stories that are read in books and published by Preachers and allow'd by the lawes of all the world If they did why do they choose intemperance and a feaver lust and shame rebellion and danger pride and a fall sacriledge and a curse gain and passion before humility and safety religion and a constant joy devotion and peace of conscience justice and a quiet dwelling charity and a blessing and at the end of all this a Kingdome more glorious then all the beauties the Sun did ever see Fides est velut quoddam aeternitatis exemplar praeterita simul praesentia futura sinu quodans vastissimo comprehendit ut nihil ei praetereat nil pereat praeeat nihil Now Faith is a certain image of eternity all things are present to it things past and things to come are all so before the eyes of faith that he in whose eye that candle is enkindled beholds heaven as present and sees how blessed thing it is to dye in Gods favour and to be chim'd to our grave with the Musick of a good conscience Faith converses with the Angels and antedates the hymnes of glory every man that hath this grace is as certain that there are glories for him if he perseveres in duty as if he had heard and sung the thanksgiving Song for the blessed sentence of Dooms-day And therefore it is no matter if these things are separate and distant objects none but children and fools are taken with the present trifle and neglect a distant blessing of which they have credible and beleeved notices Did the merchant see the pearls and the wealth he designs to get in the trade of 20 years And is it possible that a childe should when he learns the first rudiments of Grammar know what excellent things there are in learning whither he designs his labour and his hopes We labour for that which is uncertain and distant and beleeved and hoped for with many allaies and seen with diminution and a troubled ray and what excuse can there be that we do not labour for that which is told us by God and preach'd by his holy Son and confirmed by miracles and which Christ himself dyed to purchase and millions of Martyrs dyed to witnesse and which we see good men and wise beleeve with an assent stronger then their evidence and which they do beleeve because they do love and love because they do beleeve There is nothing to be said but that faith which did enlighten the blind and cleanse the Lepers and wash'd the soul of the Aethiopian that faith that cures the sick and strengthens the Paralytick and baptizes the Catechumens and justifies the faithfull and repairs the penitent and confirms the just and crowns the Martyrs that faith if it be true and proper Christian and alive active and effective in us is sufficient to appease the storm of our passions and to instruct all our ignorances and to make us wise unto salvation it will if we let it do its first intention chastise our errors and discover our follies it will make us ashamed of trifling interests and violent prosecutions of false principles and the evill disguises of the world and then our nature will return to the innocence and excellency in which God first estated it that is our flesh will be a servant of the soul and the soul a servant to the spirit and then because faith makes heaven to be the end of our desires and God the object of our love and worshippings and the Scripture the rule of our actions and Christ our Lord and Master and the holy Spirit our mighty assistance and our Counsellour all the little uglinesses of the world and the follies of the flesh will be uneasie and unsavory unreasonable and a load and then that grace the grace of faith that layes hold upon the holy Trinity although it cannot understand it and beholds heaven before it can possesse it shall also correct our weaknesses and master all our aversations and though we cannot in this world be perfect masters and triumphant persons yet we be conquerors and more that is conquerors of the direct hostility sure of a crown to be revealed in its due time 2. The second great remedy of our evill Nature and of the loads of the flesh is devotion or a state of prayer and entercourse with God For the gift of the Spirit of God which is the great antidote of our evill natures is properly and expresly promised to prayer If you who are evill give good things to your children that aske you how much more shall your Father from heaven give his holy Spirit to them that aske it That which in S. Luke is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the holy Spirit is called in St. Matthew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 good things that is the holy Spirit is all that good that we shall need towards our pardon and our sanctification and our glory and this is promised to Prayer to this purpose Christ taught us the Lords Prayer by which we are sufficiently instructed in obtaining this Magazine of holy and usefull things But Prayer is but one part of devotion and though of admirable efficacy towards the obtaining this excellent promise yet it is to be assisted by the other parts of devotion to make it a perfect remedy to our great evill He that would secure his evill Nature must be a devout person and he that is devout besides that he prayes frequently he delights in it as it is a conversation with God he rejoyces in God and esteems him the light of his eyes and the support of his confidence the object of his love and the desires of his heart the man is uneasie but when he does God service and his soul is at peace and rest when he does what may be accepted and this is that which the Apostle counsels and gives in precept Rejoyce in the Lord alwaies and again I say rejoyce that is as the Levites were appointed to rejoyce because God was their portion in tithes and offerings so now that in the spirituall sense God is our portion we should rejoyce in him and make him our inheritance and his service our imployment and the peace of conscience
things of God and all other duties to be the things of the world for it was a Pharisaicall device to cry Corban and to refuse to relieve their aged Parents it is good to give to a Church but it is better to give to the Poor and though they must be both provided for yet in cases of dispute Mercy carries the cause against Religion and the Temple And although Mary was commended for choosing the better part yet Mary had done worse if she had been at the foot of her Master when she should have relieved a perishing brother Martha was troubled with much serving that was more then need and therefore she was to blame and sometimes hearing in some circumstances may be more then needs and some women are troubled with over-much hearing and then they had better have been serving the necessities of their house 4. This rule is not to be extended to the relatives of Religion for although the things of the Spirit are better then the things of the World yet a spirituall man is not in humane regards to be preferred before Princes and noble personages Because a man is called spirituall in severall regards and for various measures and manners of partaking of the Spirit of grace or co-operating toward the works of the Spirit * A King and a Bishop both have callings in order to godlinesse and honesty and spirituall effects towards the advancement of Christs Kingdome whose representatives severally they are * But whether of these two works more immediately or more effectively cannot at all times be known and therefore from hence no argument can be drawn concerning doing them civill regards * and possibly the partaking the Spirit is a neerer relation to him then doing his ministeries and serving his ends upon others * and if relations to God and Gods Spirit could bring an obligation of giving proportionable civill honour every holy man might put in some pretence for dignities above some Kings and some Bishops * But as the things of the Spirit are in order to the affairs of another world so they naturally can inferre onely such a relative dignity as can be expressed in spirituall manners But because such relations are subjected in men of this life and we now converse especially in materiall and secular significations therefore we are to expresse our regards to men of such relations by proportionable expressions but because civill excellencies are the proper ground of receiving and exacting civill honors and spirituall excellencies doe onely claim them accidentally and indirectly therefore in titles of honour and humane regards the civill praeeminence is the appendix of the greatest civill power and imployment and is to descend in proper measures and for a spirituall relation to challenge a temporall dignity is as if the best Musick should challenge the best cloathes or a Lute-string should contend with a Rose for the honour of the greatest sweetnesse * Adde to this that although temporall things are in order to spirituall and therefore are lesse perfect yet this is not so naturally for temporall things are properly in order to the felicity of man in his proper and present constitution and it is by a supernaturall grace that now they are thrust forward to a higher end of grace and glory and therefore temporall things and persons and callings have properly the chiefest temporall regard and Christ took nothing of this away from them but put them higher by sanctifying and ennobling them * But then the higher calling can no more suppose the higher man then the richest trade can suppose the richest man From callings to men the argument is fallacious and a Smith is a more usefull man then he that teaches Logick but not always to be more esteemed and called to stand at the chairs of Princes and Nobles * Holy persons and holy things and all great relations are to be valued by generall proportions to their correlatives but if wee descend to make minute and exact proportions and proportion an inch of temporall to a minute of spirituall we must needs be hugely deceived unlesse we could measure the motion of an Angell by a string or the progressions of the Spirit by weight and measure of the staple * And yet if these measures were taken it would be unreasonable that the lower of the higher kind should be preferr'd before the most perfect and excellent in a lower order of things A man generally is to be esteemed above a woman but not the meanest of her subjects before the most excellent Queen not alwayes this man before this woman Now Kings and Princes are the best in all temporall dignities and therefore if they had in them no spirituall relations and consequent excellencies as they have very many yet are not to be undervalu'd to spirituall relations which in this world are very imperfect weak partiall and must stay till the next world before they are in a state of excellency propriety and perfection and then also all shall have them according to the worth of their persons not of their calling * But lastly what men may not challenge is not their just and proper due but spirituall persons and the neerest relatives to God stand by him but so long at they dwell low and safe in humility and rise high in nothing but in labours and zeal of soules and devotion * In proportion to this rule a Church may be pull'd down to save a Town and the Vessels of the Church may be sold to redeem Captives when there is a great calamity imminent and prepared for reliefe and no other way to succour it But in the whole the duty of zeale requires that we neglect an ordinary visit rather then an ordinary prayer and a great profit rather then omit a required duty No excuse can legitimate a sin and he that goes about to distinguish between his duty and his profit and if he cannot reconcile them will yet tie them together like a Hyaena and a Dog this man pretends to Religion but secures the world and is indifferent and lukewarme towards that so he may be warme and safe in the possession of this 2. To that fervour and zeal that is necessary and a duty it is required that we be constant and persevering Esto fidelis ad mortem said the Spirit of God to the Angel of the Church of Smyrna Be faithfull unto death and I will give thee a crown of life For he that is warm to day and cold to morrow zealous in his resolution and weary in his practises fierce in the beginning and slack and easie in his progresse hath not yet well chosen what side he will be of he sees not reason enough for Religion and he hath not confidence enough for its contrary and therefore he is duplicis animi as St. James calls him of a doubtfull mind For Religion is worth as much to day as it was yesterday and that cannot change though we doe and if we doe we have left God and whither
teaches us to pray In a festivall fortune our prudence and our needs inforce us equally For though we feel not a present smart yet we are certain then is our biggest danger and if we observe how the world treats her darlings men of riches and honour of prosperity and great successe we cannot but confesse them to be the most miserable of all men as being in the greatest danger of losing their biggest interest For they are bigger then the iron hand of Law and they cannot be restrain'd with fear the hand grasps a power of doing all that which their evill heart can desire and they cannot be restrained with disability to sin they are flatter'd by all mean and base and indiligent persons which are the greatest part of mankinde but few men dare reprove a potent sinner he shall every day be flattered and seldome counselled and his great reflexions and opinions of his condition makes him impatient of reproof and so he cannot be restrain'd with modesty and therefore as the needs of the poor man his rent day and the cryes of his children and the oppression he groans under and his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his uneasie ill sleeping care will make him run to his prayers that in heaven a new decree may be passed every day for the provisions of his daily bread so the greater needs of the rich their temptations and their dangers the flattery and the vanity the power and the pride their businesse and evill estate of the whole world upon them cals upon them to be zealous in this instance that they pray often that they pray without ceasing For there is great reason they should do so and great security and advantage if they do For he that prayes well and prayes often must needs be a good and a blessed man and truly he that does not deserves no pity for his misery For when all the troubles and dangers of his condition may turn into his good if he will but desire they should when upon such easie terms he may be happy for there is no more trouble in it then this Aske and ye shall receive that 's all that is required no more turnings and variety in their road when I say at so cheap a rate a poor man may be provided for and a rich man may escape damnation they that refuse to apply themselves to this remedy quickly earnestly zealously and constantly deserves the smart of his poverty and the care of it and the scorne if he be poor and if he be rich it is fit he should because he desires it dye by the evils of his proper danger * It was observed by Cassian orationibus maximè infidiantur Daemones the Devill is more busie to disturb our prayers then to hinder any thing else For else it cannot be imagined why we should be brought to pray so seldome and to be so listlesse to them and so trifling to them No The Devill knowes upon what hard terms he stands with the praying man he also knows that it is a mighty cmanation of Gods infinite goodnesse and a strange desire of saving mankinde that he hath to so easie a duty promised such mighty blessings For God knowing that upon hard terms we would not accept of heaven it self and yet hell was so intolerable a state that God who loved us would affixe heaven to a state of prayer and devotion this because the Devill knowes to be one of the greatest arts of the Divine mercy he labours infinitely to supplant and if he can but make men unwilling to pray or to pray coldly or to pray seldome he secures his interest and destroys the mans and it is infinitely strange that he can and doth prevail so much in this so unreasonable temptation Opposuisti nubem ne transirot oratio the mourning Prophet complained there was a cloud passed between heaven and the prayer of Judah a little thing God knowes it was a wall which might have been blown down with a few hearty sighs and a few penitentiall tears or if the prayers had ascended in a full and numerous body themselves would have broken through that little partition but so the Devill prevails often opponit nubem he claps a cloud between some little objection a stranger is come or my head akes or the Church is too cold or I have letters to write or I am not disposed or it is not yet time or the time is past these and such as these are the clouds the Devill claps between heaven and us but these are such impotent objections that they were as soon confuted as pretended by all men that are not fools or professed enemies of Religion but that they are clouds which sometimes look like Lions and Bears Castles and wals of fire armies and horses and indeed are any thing that a man will fancy and the smallest article of objection managed and conducted by the Devils arts and meeting with a wretchlesse carelesse indevout spirit is a Lion in the way and a deep river it is impassable and it is impregnable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Sophister said in the Greek Comedy Clouds become any thing as they are represented Wolves to Simon Harts to Cleonymus For the Devill fits us with clouds according as we can be abused and if we love affairs of the world he can contrive its circumstances so that they shall crosse our prayers and so it is in every instance and the best way to cure this evill is prayer pray often and pray zealously and the sun of righteousnesse will scatter these clouds and warm our hearts with his holy fires But it is in this as in all acquired habits the habit makes the actions easie and pleasant but this habit cannot be gotten without frequent actions habits are the daughters of action but then they nurse their mother and produce daughters after her image but far more beautifull and prosperous For in frequent prayer there is so much rest and pleasure that as soon as ever it is perceived the contrary temptation appears unreasonable none are so unwilling to pray as they that pray seldome for they that do pray often and with zeal and passion and desire feel no trouble so great as when they are forced to omit their holy offices and hours of prayer It concerns the Devils interest to keep us from all the experience of the rewards of a frequent and holy prayer and so long as you will not try and taste how good and gracious the Lord is to the praying man so long you cannot see the evill of your coldnesse and lukewarm state but if you would but try though it be but for curiosity sake and informe your selves in the vanity of things and the truth of pretences and the certainty of Theologicall propositions you should finde your selves taken in a golden snare which will tye you to nothing but felicity and safety and holinesse and pleasures But then the caution which I intended to insert is this that
high Priest they kept Damascus with a Garrison they sent parties of souldiers to silence and to imprison the Preachers and thought they did God service when they put the Apostles to death and they swore neither to eat nor to drink till they had killed Paul It was an old trick of the Jewish zeal Non monstrare vias eadem nisi sacra colenti Quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos They would not shew the way to a Samaritan nor give a cup of cold water but to a circumcised brother That was their Zeal But the zeal of the Apostles was this they preached publickly and privately they prayed for all men they wept to God for the hardnesse of mens hearts they became all things to all men that they might gain some they travel'd through deeps and deserts they indured the heat of the Syrian Starre and the violence of Euroclydon winds and tempests seas and prisons mockings and scourgings fastings and poverty labour and watching they endured every man and wronged no man they would do any good thing and suffer any evill if they had but hopes to prevail upon a soul they perswaded men meekly they intreated them humbly they convinced them powerfully the watched for their good but medled not with their interest and this is the Christian Zeal the Zeal of meeknesse the Zeal of charity the Zeal of patience 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in these it is good to be zealous for you can never goe farre enough 2. The next measure of zeal is prudence For as charity is the matter of Zeal so is discretion the manner It must alwaies be for good to our neighbour and there needs no rules for the conducting of that provided the end be consonant to the design that is that charity be intended and charity done But there is a Zeal also of Religion or worshipping and this hath more need of measures and proper cautions For Religion can turn into a snare it may be abused into superstition it may become wearinesse in the spirit and tempt to tediousnesse to hatred and despair and many persons through their indiscreet conduct and furious marches and great loads taken upon tender shoulders and unexperienced have come to be perfect haters of their joy and despisers of all their hopes being like dark Lanthorns in which a candle burnes bright but the body is incompassed with a crust and a dark cloud of iron and these men keep the fires and light of holy propositions within them but the darknesse of hell the hardnesse of a vexed he art hath shaded all the light and makes it neither apt to warm nor to enlighten others but it turnes to fire within a feaver and a distemper dwels there and Religion is become their torment 1. Therefore our Zeal must never carry us beyond that which is profitable There are many institutions customes and usages introduced into Religion upon very fair motives and apted to great necessities but to imitate those things when they are disrobed of their proper ends is an importune zeal and signifies nothing but a forward minde and an easie heart and an imprudent head unlesse these actions can be invested with other ends and usefull purposes The primitive Church were strangely inspired with a zeal of virginity in order to the necessities of preaching and travelling and easing the troubles and temptations of persecution but when the necessity went on and drove the holy men into deserts that made Colleges of Religious and their manner of life was such so united so poor so dressed that they must live more non saculari after the manner of men divorc'd from the usuall entercourses of the world still their desire of single life increased because the old necessity lasted and a new one did supervene Afterwards the case was altered and then the single life was not to be chosen for it self nor yet in imitation of the first precedents for it could not be taken out from their circumstances and be used alone He therefore that thinks he is a more holy person for being a virgin or a widower or that he is bound to be so because they were so or that he cannot be a religious person because he is not so hath zeal indeed but not according to knowledge But now if the single state can be taken out and put to new appendages and fitted to the end of another grace or essentiall duty of Religion it will well become a Christian zeal to choose it so long as it can serve the end with advantage and security Thus also a zealous person is to chuse his fastings while they are necessary to him and are acts of proper mortification while he is tempted or while he is under discipline while he repents or while he obeys but some persons fast in zeal but for nothing else fast when they have no need when there is need they should not but call it religion to be miserable or sick here their zeal is folly for it is neither an act of Religion nor of prudence to fast when fasting probably serves no end of the spirit and therefore in the fasting dayes of the Church although it is warrant enough to us to fast if we had no end to serve in it but the meer obedience yet it is necessary that the superiors should not think the Law obeyed unlesse the end of the first institution be observed a fasting day is a day of humiliation and prayer and fasting being nothing it self but wholly the handmaid of a further grace ought not to be devested of its holinesse and sanctification and left like the wals of a ruinous Church where there is no duty performed to God but there remains something of that which us'd to minister to Religion The want of this consideration hath caus'd so much scandall and dispute so many snares and schismes concerning Ecclesiasticall fasts For when it was undressed and stripp'd of all the ornaments and usefull appendages when from a solemn day it grew to be common from thence to be lesse devout by being lesse seldome and lesse usefull and then it passed from a day of Religion to be a day of order and from fasting till night to fasting till evening-song and evening-song to be sung about twelve a clock and from fasting it was changed to a choice of food from eating nothing to eating fish and that the letter began to be stood upon and no usefulnesse remain'd but what every of his own piety should put into it but nothing was enjoyn'd by the Law nothing of that exacted by the superiours then the Law fell into disgrace and the design became suspected and men were first insnared and then scandalized and then began to complain without remedy and at last took remedy themselves without authority the whole affair fell into a disorder and a mischief and zeal was busie on both sides and on both sides was mistaken because they fell not upon the proper remedy which was to reduce the Law to the
sound his sleeps how quiet his breast how composed his minde how free from care how easie his provision how healthfull his morning how sober his night how moist his mouth how joyfull his heart they would never admire the noises and the diseases the throng of passions and the violence of unnaturall appetites that fill the houses of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious Nam neque divitibus contingunt gaudia solis These which you call pleasures are but the imagery and phantastick appearances and such appearances even poor men may have It is like felicity that the King of Persia should come to Babylon in the winter and to Susa in the summer and be attended with all the servants of 127 Provinces and with all the Princes of Asia It is like this that Diogenes went to Corinth in the time of vintage and to Athens when winter came and in stead of Courts visited the Temples and the Schooles and was pleased in the society of Scholars and learned men and conversed with the Students of all Asia and Europe If a man loves privacy the poor fortune can have that when Princes cannot if he loves noises he can go to Markets and to Courts and may glut himself with strange faces and strange voices and stranger manners and the wilde designs of all the world and when that day comes in which we shall dye nothing of the eating and drinking remains nothing of the pomp and luxury but the sorrow to part with it and shame to have dwelt there where wisdome and vertue seldome comes unlesse it be to call men to sober counsels to a plain and a severe and more naturall way of living and when Lucian derides the dead Princes and Generals and sayes that in hell they go up and down selling salt meats and crying Mussels or begging and he brings in Philip of Macedon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mending of shooes in a little stall he intended to represent that in the shades below and in the state of the grave the Princes and voluptuous have a being different from their present plenty but that their condition is made contemptible and miserable by its disproportion to their lost and perishing voluptuousnesse The result is this that Tiresias told the Ghost of Menippus enquiring what state of life was nearest to felicity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The private life that which is freest from tumult and vanity noise and luxury businesse and ambition nearest to nature and a just entertainment to our necessities that life is nearest to felicity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Therefore despise the swellings and the diseases of a disordered life and a proud vanity be troubled for no outward thing beyond its merit enjoy the present temperately and you cannot choose but be pleased to see that you have so little share in the follies and miscries of the intemperate world 2. Intemperance in eating and drinking is the most contrary course to the Epicures design in the world and the voluptuous man hath the least of pleasure and upon this proposition the consideration is more materiall and more immediately reducible to practise because in eating and drinking men please themselves so much and have the necessities of Nature to usher in the inordination of gluttony and drunkennesse and our need leads in vice by the hand that we know not how to distinguish our friend from our enemy and St. Austin is sad upon this point Thou O Lord hast taught me that I should take my meat as I take my Physick but while I passe from the trouble of hunger to the quietnesse of satisfaction in the very passage I am insnared by the cords of my own concupiscence Necessity bids me passe but I have no way to passe from hunger to fulnesse but over the bridge of pleasure and although health and life be the cause of eating and drinking yet pleasure a dangerous pleasure thrusts her self into attendance and sometimes endeavours to be the principall and I do that for pleasures sake which I would only do for health and yet they have distinct measures whereby they can be separated and that which is enough for health is too little for delight and that which is for my delight destroyes my health and still it is uncertain for what end I doe indeed desire and the worst of the evill is this that the soul is glad because it is uncertain and that an excuse is ready that under the pretence of health Obumbret negotium voluptatis the design of pleasure may be advanced and protected How farre the ends of naturall pleasure may lawfully be enjoyed I shall afterwards consider In the mean time if we remember that the Epicures design is pleasure principally we may the better reprove his folly by considering that intemperance is a a plain destruction to all that which can give reall and true pleasure 1. It is an enemy to health without which it is impossible to feel anything of corporall pleasure 2. A constant full table hath in it lesse pleasure then the temperate provisions of the Hermite or the Labourer or the Philosophicall table of Scholars and the just pleasures of the vertuous 3. Intemperance is an impure fountain of vice and a direct nurse of uncleannesse 4. It is a destruction of wisdome 5. It is a dishonour and disreputation to the person and the nature of the man It is an enemy to health which is as one cals it ansa voluptatum condimentum vitae it is that handle by which we can apprehend and perceive pleasures and that sauce that only makes life delicate for what content can a full table administer to a man in a feaver and he that hath a sickly stomach admires at his happinesse that can feast with cheese and garlick unctious breuuages and the low tasted spinage Health is the opportunity of wisdome the fairest scene of Religion the advantages of the glorifications of God the charitable ministeries to men it is a state of joy and thanksgiving and in every of its period feels a pleasure from the blessed emanations of a mercifull providence The world does not minister does not feel a greater pleasure then to be newly delivered from the racks or the gratings of the stone and the torments and convulsions of a sharp colick and no Organs no Harp no Lute can sound out the praises of the Almighty Father so spritefully as the man that rises from his bed of sorrowes and considers what an excellent difference he feels from the groans and intolerable accents of yesterday Health carries us to Church and makes us rejoyce in the communion of Saints and an intemperate table makes us to lose all this For this is one of those sins which S. Paul affirms to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 manifest leading before unto judgement It bears part of its punishment in this life and hath this appendage like the sin against the holy Ghost that it is not remitted in this world nor in the world to
and that which was private that which fools applauded and that which himself durst not own the secrets of his lust and the criminall contrivances of his thoughts the base and odious circumstances and the frequency of the action and the partner of his sin all that which troubles his conscience and all that he willingly forgets shall be proclaim'd by the trumpet of God by the voice of an Archangell in the great congregation of spirits and just men There is one great circumstance more of the shame of sin which extremely enlarges the evill of a sinfull state but that is not consequent to sin by a naturall emanation but is superinduc'd by the just wrath of God and therefore is to be consider'd in the third part which is next to be handled 3. When the Boeotians asked the Oracle by what they should become happy the answer was made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wicked and irreligious persons are prosperous and they taking the Devill at his word threw the inspired Pythian the ministring witch into the sea hoping so to become mighty in peace and warre The effect of which was this The Devill was found a lyar and they fools at first and at last felt the reward of irreligion For there are to some crimes such events which are not to be expected from the connexion of naturall causes but from secret influences and undiscernible conveyances * that a man should be made sick for receiving the holy Sacrament unworthily and blinde for resisting the words of an Apostle a preacher of the Lawes of Jesus and dye suddenly for breaking of his vow and committing sacriledge and be under the power and scourge of an exterminating Angell for climbing his Fathers bed these are things beyond the worlds Philosophy But as in Nature so in Divinity too there are Sympathies and Antipathies effects which we feel by experience and are forewarned of by revelation which no naturall reason can judge nor any providence can prevent but by living innocently and complying with the Commandements of God The rod of God which cometh not into the lot of the righteous strikes the sinning man with sore strokes of veng eance 1. The first that I shall note is that which I called the aggravation of the shame of sin and that is an impossibility of being concealed in most cases of heinous crimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 let no man suppose that he shall for ever hide his sin a single action may be conveyed away under the covert of an excuse or a privacy escaping as Ulysses did the search of Polyphemus and it shall in time be known that it did escape and shall be discover'd that it was private that is that it is so no longer But no wicked man that dwelt and delighted in sin did ever go off from his scene of unworthinesse without a filthy character The black veile is thrown over him before his death and by some contingency or other he enters into his cloud because few sins determine finally in the thoughts but if they dwell there they will also enter into action and then the thing discovers it self or else the injured person will proclaim it or the jealous man will talk of it before it 's done or curious people will inquire and discover or the spirit of detraction shall be let loose upon him and in spite shall declare more then he knowes not more then is true The Ancients especially the Scholars of Epicurus beleev'd that no man could be secured or quiet in his spirit from being discovered Scelus aliqua tutum nulla securum tulit They are not secure even when they are safe but are afflicted with perpetuall jealousies and every whisper is concerning them and all new noises are arrests to their spirits and the day is too light and the night is too horrid and both are the most opportune for their discovery and besides the undiscernible connexion of the contingencies of providence many secret crimes have been published by dreams and talkings in their sleep It is the observation of Lucretius Multi de magnis per somnum rebus loquuntur Indicióque sui facti persape fuêre And what their understanding kept a guard upon their fancy let loose fear was the bars and locks but sleep became the key to open even then when all the senses were shut and God rul'd alone without the choice and discourse of man And though no man regards the wilder talkings of a distracted man yet it hath sometimes hapned that a delirium and a feaver fear of death and the intolerable apprehensions of damnation have open'd the cabinet of sin and brought to light all that was acted in the curtains of night Quippe ubi se multis per somnia saepe loquentes Aut morbo delirantes protrâxe feruntur Et celata diu in medium peccata dedisse But there are so many wayes of discovery and amongst so many some one does so certainly happen that they are well summ'd up by Sophocles by saying that time hears all and tels all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A cloud may be its roof and cover till it passes over but when it is driven by a fierce winde or runs fondly after the Sun it layes open a deformity which like an ulcer had a skin over it and a pain within and drew to it a heap of sorrowes big enough to run over all its inclosures Many persons have betrayed themselves by their own fears and knowing themselves never to be secure enough have gone to purge themselves of what no body suspected them offer'd an Apology when they had no accuser but one within which like a thorn in the flesh or like a word in a fools heart was uneasie till it came out Non amo se nimium purgitantes when men are over-busie in justifying themselves it is a sign themselves think they need it Plutarch tels of a young gentleman that destroyed a swallow's nest pretending to them that repreved him for doing the thing which in their superstition the Creeks esteemed so ominous that the little bird accused him for killing his Father And to this purpose it was that Solomon gave counsell Curse not the King no not in thy thought nor the rich in thy bedchamber for a bird of the air shall carry the voice and that that hath wings shall tell the matter Murder and treason have by such strange wayes been revealed as if God had appointed an Angell president of the revelation and had kept this in secret and sure ministry to be as an argument to destroy Atheisme from the face of the earth by opening the secrets of men with this key of providence Intercepting of letters mistaking names false inscriptions errors of messengers faction of the parties fear in the actors horror in the action the majesly of the person the restlesnesse of the minde distracted looks wearinesse of the spirit and all under the conduct of the Divine wisdome and the Divine vengeance make the covers
and fighting came in the retinue But he that works and works alone he hath imployment and no opportunity But this is but a cure of the symptome and temporary effect but the disease may remain yet Therefore 5. Some advise that the businesse and imployment of the Tongue be changed into Religion and if there be a pruritus or itch of talking let it be in matters of Religion in prayers and pious discourses in glorifications of God and the wise sayings of Scripture and Holy men this indeed will secure the material part and make that the discourses in their nature shall be innocent But I fear this cure will either be improper or unsufficient For in prayers multitude of words is sometime foolish very often dangerous and of all things in the world we must be carefull we bring not to God the sacrifice of fooles and the talking much of the things of Scripture hath ministred often to vanity and divisions But therefore whoever will use this remedy must never dwell long upon any one instance but by variety of holy duties entertaine himselfe for he may easily exceed his rule in any thing but in speaking honorably of God and in that let him enlarge himselfe as he can he shall never come to equall much lesse to exceed that which is infinite 6. But some men will never be cured without a Canker or a Squinsie and such persons are taught by all men what to doe for if they would avoyd all company as willingly as company avoyds them they might quickly have a silence great as midnight and prudent as the Spartan brevity But Gods grace is sufficient to all that will make use of it and there is no way for the cure of this evill but the direct obeying of a counsel and submitting to the precept and fearing the divine threatning alwayes remembring that of every word a man speaks he shall give account at the day of Judgement I pray God shew us all a mercy in that day and forgive us the sins of the Tongue Amen Citò lutum colligit amnis exundans said St. Ambrose Let your language be restrained within its proper channels and measures for if the river swels over the banks it leaves nothing but dirt and filthinesse behinde and besides the great evills and mischiefs of a wicked tongue the vain tongue and the trifling conversation hath some proper evils 1. Stultiloquium or speaking like a fool 2. Scurrilitas or immoderate and absurd jesting 3. And revealing secrets 1. Concerning Stultiloquy it is to be observed that the Masters of spirituall life meane not the talke and uselesse babble of weak and ignorant persons because in their proportion they may serve their little mistaken ends of civility and humanity as seemingly to them as the strictest and most observed words of the wiser if it be their best their folly may be pityed but not reproved and to them there is no caution to be added but that it were well if they would put the bridle into the hands of another who may give them check when themselves cannot and no wisdome can be required or usefull to them but to suspect themselves and choose to be conducted by another For so the little birds and laborious bees who having no art and power of contrivance no distinction of time or foresight of new necessities yet being guided by the hand and counsel'd by the wisdome of the supreme power their Lord and ours doe things with greater nicenesse and exactnesse of art and regularity of time and certainty of effect then the wise Counsellour who standing at the back of the Princes chaire guesses imperfectly and counsels timorously and thinks by interest and determines extrinsecall events by inward and unconcerning principles because these have understanding but it is lesse then the infinity of accidents and contingences without but the other having none are wholly guided by him that knows and determines all things So it is in the imperfect designes and actions and discourses of weaker people if they can be rul'd by an understanding without when they have none within they shall receive this advantage that their owne passions shall not transport their mindes and the divisions and weaknesse of their owne sense and notices shall not make them uncertaine and indeterminate and the measures they shall walke by shall be disinterest and even and dispassionate and full of observation But that which is here meant by Stultiloquy or foolish speaking is the Lubricum verbi as St. Ambrose calls it the slipping with the tongue which prating people often suffer whose discourses betray the vanity of their spirit and discover the hidden man of the heart For no prudence is a sufficient guard or can alwayes stand in excubiis still watching when a man is in perpetuall flouds of talke for prudence attends after the manner of an Angels ministery it is dispatched on messages from God and drives away enemies and places guards and calls upon the man to awake and bids him send out spies and observers and then goes about his own ministeries above but an Angell does not sit by a man as a nurse by the babies cradle watching every motion and the lighting of a flie upon the childes lip and so is prudence it gives us rules and proportions cut our measures and prescribes us cautions and by generall influences orders our particulars but hee that is given to talke cannot be secured by all this the emissions of his tongue are beyond the generall figures and lines of rule and he can no more be wise in every period of a long and running talke then a Lutenist can deliberate and make every motion of his hand by the division of his notes to be chosen and distinctly voluntary And hence it comes that at every corner of the mouth a folly peeps out or a mischiefe creeps in A little pride and a great deale of vanity will soon escape while the man mindes the sequel of his talke and not that uglinesse of humour which the severe man that stood by did observe and was ashamed of Doe not many men talke themselves into anger skrewing up themselves with dialogues and fancy till they forget the company and themselves and some men hate to be contradicted or interrupted or to be discovered in their folly and some men being a little conscious and not striving to amend it by silence they make it worse by discourse a long story of themselves a tedious praise of another collaterally to do themselves advantage a declamation against a sin to undoe the person or oppresse the reputation of their neighbour unseasonable repetition of that which neither profits nor delights trifling contentions about a goats beard or the blood of an oyster anger and animosity spite and rage scorn and reproach begun upon Questions which concern neither of the litigants fierce disputations strivings for what is past and for what shall never be these are the events of the loose and unwary tongue which are like
passes on to intolerable calamities like a criminal to his scaffold through the execrable gates of Cities And though it is infinitely worse when the secret is laid open out of spite or treachery yet it is more foolish when it is discovered for no other end but to serve the itch of talking or to seem to know or to be accounted worthy of a trust for so some men open their cabinets to shew onely that a treasure is laid up and that themselves were valued by their friend when they were thought capable of a secret but they shall be so no more for he that by that means goes in pursuit of reputation loses the substance by snatching at the shadow and by desiring to be thought worthy of a secret proves himselfe unworthy of friendship or society D' Avila tels of a French Marquesse young and fond to whom the Duke of Guise had conveyed notice of the intended massacre which when he had whispered into the Kings ear where there was no danger of publication but onely would seem a person worthy of such a trust he was instantly murder'd lest a vanity like that might unlock so horrid a mysterie I have nothing more to adde concerning this but that if this vanity happens in the matters of Religion it puts on some new circumstances of deformity And if he that ministers to the souls of men and is appointed to restore him that is overtaken in a fault shall publish the secrets of a conscience he prevaricates the bands of Nature and Religion in stead of a Father he turns an Accuser a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he weakens the hearts of the penitent and drives the repenting man from his remedy by making it to be intolerable and so Religion becomes a scandall and his duty is made his disgrace and Christs yoke does bow his head unto the ground and the secrets of the Spirit passe into the shames of the world and all the sweetnesses by which the severity of the duty are alleviated and made easie are imbittered and become venemous by the tongue of a talking fool Valerius Soranus was put to death by the old and braver Romanes ob meritum profanae vocis quòd contra interdictum Romae nomen eloqui fuit ausus because by prating he profan'd the secret of their Religion and told abroad that name of the City which the Tusean rites had commanded to be concealed lest the enemies of the people should call from them their tutelar gods which they could not doe but by telling the proper relation And in Christianity all Nations have consented to disgrace that Priest who loves the pleasure of a fools tongue before the charity of souls and the arts of the Spirit and the noblenesse of the Religion and they have inflicted upon him all the censures of the Church which in the capacity of an Ecclesiasticall person he can suffer These I reckon as the proper evils of the vain and trifling tongue for though the effect passes into further mischief yet the originall is weaknesse and folly and all that unworthynesse which is not yet arrived at malice But hither also upon the same account some other irregularities of speech are reducible which although they are of a mixt nature yet are properly acted by a vain and a loose tongue and therefore here may be considered not improperly 1. The first is common Swearing against which St. Chrysostome spends twenty homilies and by the number and weight of arguments hath left this testimony that it is a foolish vice but hard to be cured infinitely unreasonable but strangely prevailing almost as much without remedy as it is without pleasure for it enters first by folly and grows by custome and dwels with carelesnesse and is nurs'd by irreligion and want of the fear of God it profanes the most holy things and mingles dirt with the beames of the Sun follies and trifling talke interweav'd and knit together with the sacred name of God it placeth the most excellent of things in the meanest and basest circumstances it brings the secrets of heaven into the streets dead mens bones into a Temple Nothing is a greater sacriledge then to prostitute the great name of God to the petulancy of an idle tongue and blend it as an expletive to fill up the emptinesse of a weak discourse The name of God is so sacred so mighty that it rends mountains it opens the bowels of the deepest rocks it casts out Devils and makes Hell to tremble and fills all the regions of Heaven with joy the name of God is our strength and confidence the object of our worshippings and the security of all our hopes and when God had given himselfe a Name and immur'd it with dread and reverence like the garden of Eden with the swords of Cherubims and none durst speak it but he whose lips were hallowed and that at holy and solemn times in a most holy and solemne place I mean the High Priest of the Jews at the solemnities when he entred into the sanctuary then he taught all the world the majesty and veneration of his Name and therefore it was that God made restraints upon our conceptions and expressions of him and as he was infinitely curious that from all the appearances he made to them they should not depict or ingrave an image of him so he tooke care that even the tongue should be restrained and not be too free in forming images and representments of his Name and therefore as God drew their eyes from vanity by putting his name amongst them and representing no shape so even when he had put his name amongst them he took it off from the tongue and placed it before the eye for Jehovah was so written on the Priests Mitre that all might see and read but none speak it but the Priest But besides all this there is one great thing concerning the Name of God beyond all that can be spoken or imagined else and that is that when God the Father was pleased to pour forth all his glories and imprint them upon his holy Son in his exaltation it was by giving him his holy Name the Tetragrammaton or Jehovah made articulate to signifie God manifested in the flesh and so he wore the character of God and became the bright image of his person Now all these great things concerning the Name of God are infinite reproofes of common and vain swearing by it Gods name is left us here to pray by to hope in to be the instrument and conveyance of our worshippings to be the witnesse of truth and the Judge of secrets the end of strife and the avenger of perjury the discerner of right and the severe exacter of all wrongs and shall all this be unhallowed by impudent talking of God without sense or feare or notices or reverence or observation One thing more I have to adde against this vice of a foolish tongue and that is that as much prating fils the discourse with lying so this
we have the Spirit S. John spake a hard saying but by the spirit of manifestation we are also taught to understand it Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God The seed of God is the spirit which hath a plastic power to efform us in similitudinem filiorum Dei into the image of the sons of God and as long as this remains in us while the Spirit dwels in us We cannot sin that is it is against our natures our reformed natures to sin And as we say we cannot endure such a potion we cannot suffer such a pain that is we cannot without great trouble we cannot without doing violence to our nature so all spirituall men all that are born of God and the seed of God remains in them they cannot sin cannot without trouble and doing against our natures and their most passionate inclinations A man if you speak naturally can masticate gums and he can break his own legs and he can sip up by little draughts mixtures of Aloes and Rhubarb of Henbane or the deadly Nightshade but he cannot do this naturally or willingly cheerfully or with delight Every sin is against a good mans nature he is ill at case when he hath missed his usual prayers he is amazâ—d if he have fallen into an errour he is infinitely ashamed of his imprudence he remembers a sin as he thinks of an enemy or the horrors of a midnight apparition for all his capacities his understanding and his choosing faculties are filled up with the opinion and perswasions with the love and with the desires of God and this I say is the Great benefit of the Spirit which God hath given to us as an antidote against worldly pleasures And therefore S. Paul joynes them as consequent to each other For it is impossible for those who were once enlightned and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come c. First we are enlightned in Baptisme and by the Spirit of manifestation the revelations of the Gospel then we relish and taste interiour excellencies and we receive the Holy Ghost the Spirit of confirmation and he gives us a taste of the powers of the world to come that is of the great efficacy that is in the Article of eternall life to perswade us to religion and holy living then we feel that as the belief of that Article dwels upon our understanding and is incorporated into our wils and choice so we grow powerfull to resist sin by the strengths of the Spirit to defie all carnall pleasure and to suppresse and mortifie it by the powers of this Article those are the powers of the world to come 2. The Spirit of God is given to all who truly belong to Christ as an anidote against sorrows against impatience against the evil accidents of the world and against the oppression and sinking of our spirits under the crosse There are in Scripture noted two births besides the naturall to which also by analogy we may adde a third The first is to be born of water and the Spirit It is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one thing signified by a divided appellative by two substantives water and the Spirit that is Spiritus aqueus the Spirit moving upon the waters of Baptisme The second is to be born of Spirit and fire for so Christ was promised to baptize us with the Holy Ghost and with fire that is cum spiritu igneo with a fiery spirit the Spirit as it descended in Pentecost in the shape of fiery tongues And as the watry spirit washed away the sins of the Church so the spirit of fire enkindles charity and the love of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sayes Plutarch the Spirit is the same under both the titles and it enables the Church with gifts and graces And from these there is another operation of the new birth but the same Spirit the spirit of rejoycing or spiritus exultans spiritus laetitiae Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in beleeving that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost There is a certain joy and spirituall rejoycing that accompanies them in whom the Holy Ghost doth dwell a joy in the midst of sorrow a joy given to allay the sorrows of saecular troubles and to alleviate the burden of persecution This S. Paul notes to this purpose And ye became followers of us and of the Lord having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost Worldly afflictions and spirituall joyes may very well dwell together and if God did not supply us out of his storehouses the sorrows of this world would be mere and unmixt and the troubles of persecution would be too great for naturall confidences For who shall make him recompence that lost his life in a Duel fought about a draught of wine or a cheaper woman What arguments shall invite a man to suffer torments in testimony of a proposition of naturall Philosophy And by what instruments shall we comfort a man who is sick and poor and disgrac'd and vitious and lies cursing and despairs of any thing hereafter That mans condition proclaims what it is to want the Spirit of God the Spirit of comfort Now this Spirit of comfort is the hope and confidence the certain expectation of partaking in the inheritance of Jesus This is the faith and patience of the Saints this is the refreshment of all wearied travellers the cordiall of all languishing sinners the support of the scrupulous the guide of the doubtfull the anchor of timorous and fluctuating souls the confidence and the staff of the penitent He that is deprived of his whole estate for a good conscience by the Spirit he meets this comfort that he shall finde it again with advantage in the day of restitution and this comfort was so manifest in the first dayes of Christianity that it was no infrequent thing to see holy persons court a Martyrdom with a fondnesse as great as is our impatience and timorousnesse in every persecution Till the Spirit of God comes upon us we are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inopis nos atque pusilli finxerunt animi we have little souls little faith and as little patience we fall at every stumbling block and sink under every temptation and our hearts fail us and we die for fear of death and lose our souls to preserve our estates or our persons till the Spirit of God fills us with joy in beleeving and a man that is in a great joy cares not for any trouble that is lesse then his joy and God hath taken so great care to secure this to us that he hath turn'd it into a precept Rejoyce evermore and Rejoyce in the Lord always and again I say rejoyce But this
to choose and a promise to exchange for our temperance and faith and charity and justice for these I say happinesse exceeding great happinesse that we shall be Kings that we shall reigne with God with Christ with all the holy Angels for ever in felicities so great that we have not now capacities to understand it our heart is not big enough to think it there cannot in the world be a greater inducement to engage us a greater argument to oblige us to do our duty God hath not in heaven a bigger argument it is not possible any thing in the world should be bigger which because the Spirit of God hath revealed to us if by this strength of his we walk in his wayes and be ingrafted into his stock and bring forth his fruits the fruits of the Spirit then we are in Christ and Christ in us then we walk in the spirit and the Spirit dwels in us and our portion shall be there where Christ by the Spirit maketh intercession for us that is at the right hand of his Father for ever and ever Amen Sermon III. THE DESCENDING AND ENTAILED CVRSE Cut off Exodus 20. part of the 5. verse I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me 6. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my Commandements IT is not necessary that a Common-wealth should give pensions to Oratours to disswade men from running into houses infected with the plague or to intreat them to be out of love with violent torments or to create in men evil opinions concerning famine or painfull deaths Every man hath a sufficient stock of self love upon the strength of which he hath entertained principles strong enough to secure himself against voluntary mischiefs and from running into states of death and violence A man would think that this I have now said were in all cases certainly true and I would to God it were For that which is the greatest evil that which makes all evils that which turns good into evil and every naturall evil into a greater sorrow and makes that sorrow lasting and perpetual that which sharpens the edge of swords and makes agues to be fever and 〈◊〉 to turn into plagues that which puts stings into every fly and uneasinesse to every trifling accident and strings every whâ—â— with scorpions you know I must needs mean sin that evil men suffer patiently and choose willingly and run after it greedily and will not suffer themselves to be divorced from it and therefore God hath hired servants to fight a-against this evil he hath set Angels with fiery swords to drive us from it he hath imployed Advocates to plead against it he hath made Laws and Decrees against it he hath dispatched Prophets to warn us of it and hath established an Order of men men of his own family and who are fed at his own charges I mean the whole Order of the Clergy whose office is like watchmen to give an alarum at every approach of sin with as much affrightment as if an enemy were neer or the sea broke in upon the flat Countrey and all this onely to perswade men not to be extremely miserable for nothing for vanity for a trouble for a disease for some sins naturally are diseases and all others are naturall nothings meer privations or imperfections contrary to goodnesse to felicity to God himself And yet God hath hedged sin round about with thorns and sin of it self too brings thorns and it abuses a man in all his capacities and it places poison in all those seats and receptions where he could possibly entertain happinesse For if sin pretend to please the sense it doth first abuse it shamefully and then humours it it can onely feed an impostume no naturall reasonable and perfective appetite and besides its own essentiall appendages and proprieties things are so ordered that a fire is kindled round about us and every thing within us above below us and on every side of us is an argument against and an enemy to sin and for its single pretence that it comes to please one of the senses one of those faculties which are in us the same they are in a Cow it hath an evil so communicative that it doth not onely work like poison to the dislolution of soul and body but it is a sicknesse like the plague it infects all our houses and corrupts the air and the very breath of heaven for it moves God first to jealousie and that takes off his friendship and kindnesse towards us and then to anger and that makes him a resolved enemy and it brings evil not onely upon our selves but upon all our relatives upon our selves and our children even the children of our Nephews Ad natos natorum qui nascentur ab illis to the third and fourth generation and therefore if a man should despise the eye or sword of man if he sins he is to contest with the jealousie of a provoked God If he doth not regard himself let him pity his pretty children If he be angry and hates all that he sees and is not solioitous for his children yet let him pitty the generations which are yet unborn let him not bring a curse upon his whole family and suffer his name to rot in curses and dishonours let not his memory remain polluted with an eternal stain if all this will not deter a man from sin there is no instrument left for thats mans vertue no hopes of his felicity no recovery of his sorrows and sicknesses but he must sink under the stroaks of a jealous God into the dishonour of eternal ages and the groanings of a never ceasing sorrow God is a jealous God that is the first great stroke he strikes against sin he speakes after the manner of men and in so speaking we know he that is jealous is suspicious he is inquisitive he is implacable 1. God is pleased to represent himself a person very suspioious both in respect of persons and things For our persons we give him cause enough for we are sinners from our Mothers woâ—â—b we make solemn vows and break them instantly we cry for pardon and still renew the sin we desire God to try us once more and we provoke him ten times further we use the means of grace to cure us and we turn them into vices and opportunites of sin we curse our sins and yet long for them extremely we renounce them publickly and yet send for them in private and shew them kindnesse we leave little offiences but our faith and our charity is not strong enough to Master great ones and sometimes we are sham'd out of great ones but yet entertain little ones or if we disdain both yet we love to remember them and delight in their past actions and bring them home to us at least by fiction of imagination and we love to be
l. 1. Vivere quod propero pauper nec inutilis annis Da veniam proper at vivere nemo satis Differat hoc patrios optat qui vincere census Atriaqueimmodicis arctat imaginibus Mart. l. 2. ep 90. Sermon VII THE DECEITFVLNESSE Of the HEART 17. Jeremy 9. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperatly wicked who can know it FOlly and subtiltie divide the greatest part of mankinde and there is no other difference but this that some are crafty enough to deceive Others foolish enough to be cozened and abused And yet the scales also turn for they that are the most craftie to cozen others are the veriest Fools and most of all abused themselves They rob their neighbour of his mony and loose their own innocency they disturb his rest and vex their own Conscience they throw him into prison and themselves into Hell they make poverty to be their brothers portion and damnation to be their own Man entred into the world first alone but as soon as he met with one companion he met with three to cozen him The Serpent and Eve and himself all joyned first to make him a foole and to deceive him and then to make him miserable But he first cozened himself giving himself up to believe a lie and being desirous to listen to the whispers of a tempting spirit he sinned before he fell that is he had within him a false understanding and a depraved will and these were the Parents of his disobedience and this was the parent of his infelicity and a great occasion of ours And then it was that he entred for himself and his posterity into the condition of an ignorant credulous easie wilful passionate and impotent person apt to be abused and so loving to have it so that if no body else will abuse him he will be sure to abuse himself by ignorance and evil principles being open to an enemy and by wilfulnesse and Sensuality doing to himself the most unpardonable injuries in the whole world So that the condition of Man in the rudenesses and first lines of its visage seemes very miserable deformed and accursed For a man is helplesse and vain of a condition so exposed to calamity that a raisin is able to kill him any trooper out of the Egyptian army a flie can do it when it goes on Gods errand the most contemptible accident can destroy him the smallest chance affright him every future contingency when but considered as possible can amaze him and he is incompass'd with potent and malicious enemies subtle and implacable what shall this poor helplesse thing do trust in God Him he hath offended and he fears him as an enemy and God knows if we look onely on our selves and our own demerits we have to much reason so to doe Shall he rely upon Princes God help poor Kings they rely upon their Subjects they fight with their swords levy forces with their money consult with their Counsels hear with their ears and are strong onely in their union and many times they use all these things against them but however they can do nothing without them while they live and yet if ever they can die they are not to be trusted to Now Kings and Princes die so sadly and not criously that it was used for a proverbe in holy scripture ye shall die like men and fall like one of the Princes Who then shall we trust in in our Friend Poorman he may help thee in one thing and need thee in ten he may pull thee out of the ditch and his foot may slip and fal into it himself he gives thee counsel to choose a wife and himself is to seek how prudently to choose his religion he counsels thee to abstain from a duel and yet slayes his own soul with drinking like a person void of all understanding he is willing enough to preserve thy interest and is very carelesse of his own for he does highly despise to betray or to be false to thee and in the mean time is not his own friend and is false to God and then his friendship may be useful to thee in some circumstances of fortune but no security to thy condition But what then shall we relie upon our patron like the Roman Clients who waited hourly upon their persons and daily upon their baskets and nightly upon their lusts and married their friendships and contracted also their hatred and quarrels This is a confidence will deceive us For they may lay us by justly or unjustly they may grow weary of doing benefits or their fortunes may change or they may be charitable in their gifts and burthensom in their offices able to feed you but unable to counsel you or your need may be longer then their kindnesses or such in which they can give you no assistance and indeed generally it is so in all the instances of men we have a friend that is wise but I need not his counsel but his meat or my patron is bountiful in his largesses but I am troubled with a sad spirit and money and presents do me no more ease then perfumes do to a broken arme we seek life of a Physician that dies and go to him for health who cannot cure his own breath or gowt and so become vain in our imaginations abused in our hopes restlesse in our passions impatient in our calamity unsupported in our need exposed to enemies wandring and wilde without counsel and without remedy At last after the infatuating and deceiving all our confidences without we have nothing left us but to return home and dwell within our selves for we have a sufficient stock of self-love that we may be confident of our own affections we may trust our selves surely for what we want in skill we shall make up in diligence and our industry shall supply the want of other circumstances and no man vnderstands my own case so well as I do my self and no man will judge so faithfully as I shall do for my self for I am most concern'd not to abuse my self and if I do I shall be the loser and therefore may best rely upon my self Alas and God help us we shall finde it to be no such matter For we neither love our selves well nor understand our own case we are partial in our own questions deceived in our sentences carelesse of our interests and the most false perfidious creatures to our selves in the whole world even the Heart of a man a mans own heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it And who can choose but know it And there is no greater argument of the deceitfulnesse of our Hearts then this that no man can know it all it cosens us in the very number of its cosenage But yet we can reduce it all to two heads We say concerning a false man trust him not for he will deceive you and we say concerning a weak and broken staffe lean not upon it for that will also
deceive you The man deceives because he is false and the staffe because it is weak and the heart because it is both So that it is deceitful above all things that is failing and disabled to support us in many things but in other things where it can it is false and desperately wicked The first sort of deceitfulnesse is its calamitie and the second is its iniquity and that is the worst Calamitie of the two 1. The heart is deceitfull in its strength and when we have the groweth of a Man we have the weaknesses of a childe nay more yet and it is a sad consideration the more we are in age the weaker in our courage It appears in the heats and forwardnesses of new converts which are like to the great emissions of Lightning or like huge fires which flame and burn without measure even all that they can till from flames they descend to still fires from thence to smoak from smoak to embers from thence to ashes cold and pale like ghosts or the phantastick images of Death And the primitive Church were zealous in their Religion up to the degree of Cherubins and would run as greedily to the sword of the hangman to die for the cause of God as we do now to the greatest joy and entertainment of a Christian spirit even to the receiving of the holy Sacrament A man would think it reasonable that the first infancy of Christianity should according to the nature of first beginnings have been remisse gentle and unactive and that according us the object or evidence of faith grew which in every Age hath a great degree of Argument superadded to its confirmation so should the habit also and the grace the longer it lasts the more obiections it runs through it still should shew a brighter and more certain light to discover the divinity of its principle and that after the more examples and new accidents and strangenesses of providence and daily experience and the multitude of miracles still the Christian should grow more certain in his faith more refreshed in his hope and warm in his charity the very nature of these graces increasing and swelling upon the very nourishment of experience and the multiplication of their own acts And yet because the heart of man is false it suffers the fires of the Altar to go out and the flames lessen by the multitude of fuel But indeed it is because we put on strange fire put out the fire upon our hearths by letting in a glaring Sun beam the fire of lust or the heates of an angry spirit to quench the fires of God and suppresse the sweet cloud of incense The heart of man hath not strength enough to think one good thought of itself it cannot command its own attention to a prayer of ten lines long but before its end it shall wander after some thing that is to no purpose and no wonder then that it grows weary of a holy religion which consists of so many parts as make the businesse of a whole life And there is no greater argument in the world of our spiritual weaknesse and falsnesse of our hearts in the matters of religion then the backwardnesse which most men have alwayes and all men have somtimes to say their prayers so weary of their length so glad when they are done so wittie to excuse and frustrate an opportunity and yet there is no manner of trouble in the duty no wearinesse of bones no violent labours nothing but begging a blessing and receiving it nothing but doing our selves the greatest honour of speaking to the greatest person and greatest king of the world and that we should be unwilling to do this so unable to continue in it so backward to return to it so without gust and relish in the doing it can have no visible reason in the nature of the thing but something within us a strange sicknesse in the heart a spiritual nauseating or loathing of Manna something that hath no name but we are sure it comes from a weake a faint and false heart And yet this weak heart is strong in passions violent in desires unresistable in its appetites impatient in its lust furious in anger here are strengths enough one would think But so have I seen a man in a feaver sick and distempered unable to walk lesse able to speak sence or to do an act of counsel and yet when his feaver hath boild up to a delirium he was strong enough to beat his nurse keeper and his doctor too and to resist the loving violence of all his friends who would faine binde him down to reason and his bed And yet we still say he is weak and sick to death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for these strengths of madnesse are not health but furiousnesse and disease 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is weaknesse another way And so are the strengths of a mans heart they are fetters and manacles strong but they are the cordage of imprisonment so strong that the heart is not able to stir And yet it cannot but be a huge sadnesse that the heart shall pursue a temporal interest with wit and diligence and an unwearied industry and shall not have strength enough in a matter that concerns its Eternal interest to answer one obiection to resist one assault to defeate one art of the divel but shall certainly and infallibly fall when ever it is tempted to a pleasure This if it be examined will prove to be a deceit indeed a pretence rather then true upon a just cause that is it is not a natural but a moral a vicious weaknesse and we may try it in one or two familiar instances One of the great strengths shall I call it or weaknesses of the heart is that it is strong violent and passionate in its lusts and weak and deceitful to resist any Tell the tempted person that if he act his lust he dishonours his body makes himself a servant to follie and one flesh with a harlot he defiles the Temple of God and him that defiles a Temple will God destroy Tell him that the Angels who love to be present in the nastinesse and filth of prisons that they may comfort and assist chast souls and holy persons there abiding yet they are impatient to behold or come neer the filthynesse of a lustful person Tell him that this sin is so ugly that the divels who are spirits yet they delight to counterfeit the acting of this crime and descend unto the daughters or sons of men that they may rather lose their natures then not help to set a lust forward Tell them these and ten thousand things more you move them no more then if you should read one of Tullies orations to a mule for the truth is they have no power to resist it much lesse to master it their heart fails them when they meet their Mistresse and they are driven like a fool to the stocks or a Bull to the slaughter-house And
before Reason and their understandings were abused in the choice of a temporall before an intellectuall and eternall good But they alwayes concluded that the Will of man must of necessity follow the last dictate of the understanding declaring an object to be good in one sence or other Happy men they were that were so Innocent that knew no pure and perfect malice and lived in an Age in which it was not easie to confute them But besides that now the wells of a deeper iniquity are discovered we see by too sad experience that there are some sins proceeding from the heart of man which have nothing but simple and unmingled malice Actions of meer spite doing evil because it is evil sinning without sensuall pleasures sinning with sensuall pain with hazard of our lives with actuall torment and sudden deaths and certain and present damnation sins against the Holy Ghost open hostilities and professed enmities against God and all vertue I can go no further because there is not in the world or in the nature of things a greater Evil. And that is the Nature and Folly of the Devil he tempts men to ruine and hates God and onely hurts himself and those he tempts and does himself no pleasure and some say he increases his own accidentall torment Although I can say nothing greater yet I had many more things to say if the time would have permitted me to represent the Falsenesse and Basenesse of the Heart 1. We are false our selves and dare not trust God 2. We love to be deceived and are angry if we be told so 3. We love to seem vertuous and yet hate to be so 4. We are melancholy and impatient and we know not why 5. We are troubled at little things and are carelesse of greater 6. We are overjoyed at a petty accident and despise great and eternall pleasures 7. We beleeve things not for their Reasons and proper Arguments but as they serve our turns be they true or false 8. We long extreamly for things that are forbidden us And what we despise when it is permitted us we snatch at greedily when it is taken from us 9. We love our selves more then we love God and yet we eat poysons daily and feed upon Toads and Vipers and nourish our deadly enemies in our bosome and will not be brought to quit them but brag of our shame and are ashamed of nothing but Vertue which is most honourable 10. We fear to die and yet use all means we can to make Death terrible and dangerous 11. We are busie in the faults of others and negligent of our own 12. We live the life of spies striving to know others and to be unknown our selves 13. We worship and flatter some men and some things because we fear them not because we love them 14. We are ambitious of Greatnesse and covetous of wealth and all that we get by it is that we are more beautifully tempted and a troop of Clients run to us as to a Pool whom first they trouble and then draw dry 15. We make our selves unsafe by committing wickednesse and then we adde more wickednesse to make us safe and beyond punishment 16. We are more servile for one curtesie that we hope for then for twenty that we have received 17. We entertain slanderers and without choice spread their calumnies and we hugg flatterers and know they abuse us And if I should gather the abuses and impieties and deceptions of the Heart as Chrysippus did the oracular Lies of Apollo into a Table I fear they would seem Remedilesse and beyond the cure of watchfulnesse and Religion Indeed they are Great and Many But the Grace of God is Greater and if Iniquity abounds then doth Grace superabound and that 's our Comfort and our Medicine which we must thus use 1. Let us watch our hearts at every turn 2. Deny it all its Desires that do not directly or by consequence end in godlinesse At no hand be indulgent to its fondnesses and peevish appetites 3. Let us suspect it as an Enemy 4. Trust not to it in any thing 5. But beg the grace of God with perpetuall and importunate prayer that he would be pleased to bring good out of these evils and that he would throw the salutary wood of the Crosse the merits of Christs death and passion into these salt waters and make them healthful and pleasant And in order to the mannaging these advises and acting the purposes of this prayer let us strictly follow a rule and choose a Prudent and faithful guide who may attend our motions and watch our counsels and direct our steps and prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths streight apt and imitable For without great watchfulnesse and earnest devotion and a prudent Guide we shall finde that true in a spiritual sense which Plutarch affirmed of a mans body in the natural that of dead Buls arise Bees from the carcases of horses hornets are produced But the body of man brings forth serpents Our hearts wallowing in their own natural and acquired corruptions will produce nothing but issues of Hell and images of the old serpent the divel for whom is provided the everlasting burning Sermon IX THE FAITH and PATIENCE OF THE SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed 1 Peter 4. 17. For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God and if it first begin at us what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God 18. And if the righteous scarcely be saved where shal the ungodly and the sinner appear SO long as the world lived by sense and discourses of natural reason as they were abated with humane infirmities and not at all heightned by the spirit divine revelations So long men took their accounts of good and bad by their being prosperous or unfortunate and amongst the basest and most ignorant of men that onely was accounted honest which was profitable and he onely wise that was rich and that man beloved of God who received from him all that might satisfie their lust their ambition or their revenge Fatis accede deisque colâ— felices miseros fuge sidera terra ut distant flamma maeri sic utile recto But because God sent wise men into the world and they were treated rudely by the world and exercised with evil accidents and this seemed so great a discouragement to vertue that even these wise men were more troubled to reconcile vertue and misery then to reconcile their affections to the suffering God was pleased to enlighten their reason with a little beame of faith or else heightned their reason by wiser principles then those of vulgar understandings and taught them in the clear glasse of faith or the dim perspective of Philosophy to look beyond the cloud and there to spie that there stood glories behinde their curtain to which they could not come but by passing through the cloud and being wet with the dew of heaven and the
be filled up by his body the Church and happy are they that put in the greatest symbol for in the same measure you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ in the same shall ye be also of the consolation And therefore concerning S. Paul as it was also concerning Christ there is nothing or but very little in Scripture relating to his person and chances of his private life but his labours and persecutions as if the holy Ghost did think nothing fit to stand upon record for Christ but sufferings And now began to work the greatest glory of the divine Providence here was the case of Christianity at stake The world was rich and prosperous learned and full of wise men the Gospel was preached with poverty and persecution in simplicity of discourse and in demonstration of the Spirit God was on one side and the Devil on the other they each of them dressed up their city Babylon upon Earth Jerusalem from above the Devils city was full of pleasure triumphs victories and cruelty good news and great wealth conquest over Kings and making nations tributary They bound Kings in chains and the Nobles with links of iron and the inheritance of the Earth was theirs the Romans were Lords over the greatest parts of the world and God permitted to the Devil the Firmament and increase the wars and the successe of that people giving to him an intire power of disposing the great changes of the world so as might best increase their greatnesse and power and he therefore did it because all the power of the Romane greatnesse was a professed enemy to Christianity and on the other side God was to build up Jerusalem and the kingdom of the Gospel and he chose to build it of hewen stone cut and broken the Apostles he chose for Preachers and they had no learning women and mean people were the first Disciples and they had no power the Devil was to lose his kingdom and he wanted no malice and therefore he stirred up and as well as he could he made active all the power of Rome and all the learning of the Greeks and all the malice of Barbarous people and all the prejudice and the obstinacy of the Jews against this doctrine and institution which preached and promised and brought persecution along with it On the one side there was scandalum crucis on the other patientia sanctorum and what was the event They that had overcome the world could not strangle Christianity But so have I seen the Sun with a little ray of distant light challenge all the power of darknesse and without violence and noise climbing up the hill hath made night so to retire that its memory was lost in the joyes and spritefulnesse of the morning and Christianity without violence or armies without resistance and self-preservation without strength or humane eloquence without challenging of priviledges or fighting against Tyranny without alteration of government and scandall of Princes with its humility and meeknesse with tolerations and patience with obedience and charity with praying and dying did insensibly turn the world into Christian and persecution into victory For Christ who began and lived and died in sorrows perceived his own sufferings to succeed so well and that for suffering death he was crowned with immortality resolved to take all his Disciples and servants to the fellowship of the same suffering that they might have a participation of his glory knowing God had opened no gate of heaven but the narrow gate to which the Crosse was the key and since Christ now being our High Priest in heaven intercedes for us by representing his passion and the dolours of the Crosse that even in glory he might still preserve the mercies of his past sufferings for which the Father did so delight in him he also designes to present us to God dressed in the same robe and treated in the same manner and honoured with the marks of the Lord Jesus He hath predestinated us to be conformable to the image of his Son And if under a head crowned with thorns we bring to God members circled with roses and softnesse and delicacy triumphant members in the militant Church God will reject us he will not know us who are so unlike our elder brother For we are members of the Lamb not of the Lion and of Christs suffering part not of the triumphant part and for three hundred yeers together the Church lived upon blood and was nourished with blood the blood of her own children Thirty three Bishops of Rome in immediate succession were put to violent and unnaturall deaths and so were all the Churches of the East and West built the cause of Christ and of Religion was advanced by the sword but it was the sword of the persecutours not of resisters or warriours They were all baptized into the death of Christ their very profession and institution is to live like him and when he requires it to die for him that is the very formality the life and essence of Christianity This I say lasted for three hundred yeers that the prayers and the backs and the necks of Christians fought against the rods and axes of the persecutours and prevailed till the Countrey and the Cities and the Court it self was filled with Christians And by this time the army of Martyrs was vast and numerous and the number of sufferers blunted the hangmans sword For Christ first triumphed over the princes and powers of the world before he would admit them to serve him he first felt their malice before he would make use of their defence to shew that it was not his necessity that required it but his grace that admitted Kings and Queens to be nurses of the Church And now the Church was at ease and she that sucked the blood of the Martyrs so long began now to suck the milk of Queens Indeed it was a great mercy in appearance and was so intended but it proved not so But then the Holy Ghost in pursuance of the designe of Christ who meant by sufferings to perfect his Church as himself was by the same instrument was pleased now that persecution did cease to inspire the Church with the spirit of mortification and austerity and then they made Colleges of sufferers persons who to secure their inheritance in the world to come did cut off all their portion in this excepting so much of it as was necessary to their present being and by instruments of humility by patience under and a voluntary undertaking of the Crosse the burden of the Lord by self deniall by fastings and sackcloth and pernoctations in prayer they chose then to exercise the active part of the religion mingling it as much as they could with the suffering And indeed it is so glorious a thing to be like Christ to be dressed like the prince of the Catholick church who was so a man of sufferings and to whom a prosperous and unafflicted person is very unlike that in all ages
be expected from them For who are fit to be hangmen and executioners of publike wrath but evil and ungodly persons And can it be a wonder that they whose cause wants reason should betake themselves to the sword that what he cannot perswade he may wrest onely we must not judge of the things of God by the measures of men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the things of men have this world for their stage and their reward but the things of God relate to the world to come and for our own particulars we are to be guided by rule and by the end of all not by events intermedial which are varied by a thousand irregular causes For if all the evil men in the world were unprosperous as most certainly they are and if all good persons were temporally blessed as most certainly they are not yet this would not move us to become vertuous If an angel should come from heaven or one arise from the dead and preach repentance or justice and temperance all this would be ineffectuall to those to whom the plain doctrines of God delivered in the Law and the Prophets will not suffice For why should God work a signe to make us to beleeve that we ought to do justice if we already beleeve he hath commanded it no man can need a miracle for the confirmation of that which he already beleeves to be the command of God And when God hath expressely bidden us to obey every ordinance of man for the Lords sake the King as supreme and his deputies as sent by him It is a strange infidelity to think that a rebellion against the ordinance of God can be sanctified by successe and prevalency of them that destroy the authority and the person and the law and the religion The sin cannot grow to its height if it be crushed at the beginning unlesse it prosper in its progresse a man cannot easily fill up the measure of his iniquity but then that the sin swels to its fulnesse by prosperity and grows too big to be suppressed without a miracle it is so far from excusing or lessening the sin that nothing doth so nurse the sin as it It is not vertue because it is prosperous but if it had not been prosperous the sin could never be so great Facere omnia saevè Non impunè licet nisi dum facis A little crime is sure to smart but when the sinner is grown rich and prosperous and powerfull he gets impunity Jusque datum sceleri But that 's not innocence and if prosperity were the voice of God to approve an action then no man were vitious but he that is punished and nothing were rebellion but that which cannot be easily suppressed and no man were a Pirate but he that robs with a little vessell and no man could be a Tyrant but he that is no prince and no man an unjust invader of his neighbours rights but he that is beaten and overthrown Then the crime grows big and loud then it calls to Heaven for vengeance when it hath been long a growing when it hath thrived under the Devils managing when God hath long suffered it and with patience in vain expecting the repentance of a sinner he that treasures up wrath against the day of wrath that man hath been a prosperous that is an unpunished and a thriving sinner but then it is the sin that thrives not the man and that is the mistake upon this whole question for the sin cannot thrive unlesse the man goes on without apparent punishment and restraint And all that the man gets by it is that by a continual course of sin he is prepared for an intollerable ruine The Spirit of God bids us look upon the end of these men not the way they walk or the instrument of that pompous death When Epaminondas was asked which of the three was happiest himself Chalrias or Iphicrates bid the man stay till they were all dead for till then that question could not be answered He that had seen the Vandals besiege the city of Hippo and have known the barbarousnesse of that unchristned people and had observed that S. Augustine withall his prayers and vows could not obtain peace in his own dayes not so much as a reprieve for the persecution and then had observed S. Augustine die with grief that very night would have perceived his calamity more visible then the reward of his piety and holy religion When Lewis sirnamed Pius went his voyage to Palestine upon a holy end and for the glory of God to fight against the Saracens and Turks and Mamalukes the world did promise to themselves that a good cause should thrive in the hands of so holy a man but the event was far otherwise his brother Robert was killed and his army destroyed and himself taken prisoner and the money which by his Mother was sent for his redemption was cast away in a storm and he was exchanged for the last town the Christians had in Egypt and brought home the crosse of Christ upon his shoulder in a real pressure and participation of his Masters sufferings When Charles the fifth went to Algier to suppresse pirates and unchristned villains the cause was more confident then the event was prosperous and when he was almost ruined in a prodigious storme he told the minutes of the clock expecting that at midnight when religious persons rose to Mattins he should be eased by the benefit of their prayers but the providence of God trod upon those waters and left no footstoops for discovery his navie was beat in pieces and his designe ended in dishonour and his life almost lost by the bargain Was ever cause more baffled then the Christian cause by the Turks in all Asia and Africa and some parts of Europe if to be persecuted and afflicted be reckoned a calamity What prince was ever more unfortunate then Henry the sixt of England and yet that age saw none more pious and devout and the title of the house of Lancaster was advanced against the right of York for three descents but then what was the end of these things the persecuted men were made Saints and their memories are preserved in honour and their souls shall reigne for ever and some good men were ingaged in a wrong cause and the good cause was sometimes managed by evil men till that the suppressed cause was lifted up by God in the hands of a young and prosperous prince and at last both interests were satisfied in the conjunction of two roses which was brought to issue by a wonderful chain of causes managed by the divine providence and there is no age no history no state no great change in the world but hath ministred an example of an afflicted truth and a prevailing sin For I will never more call that sinner prosperous who after he hath been permitted to finish his businesse shall die and perish miserably for at the same rate we may envie the happinesse of a poor fisherman who
us choose God and let God choose all the rest for us it being indifferent to us whether by poverty or shame by lingring or a sudden death by the hands of a Tyrant Prince or the despised hands of a base usurper or a rebell we receive the crown and do honour to God and to Religion 3. Whoever suffer in a cause of God from the hands of cruell and unreasonable men let them not be too forward to prognosticate evil and death to their enemies but let them solace themselves in the assurance of the divine justice by generall consideration and in particular pray for them that are our persecutours Nebuchadnezzar was the rod in the hand of God against the Tyrians and because he destroyed that city God rewarded him with the spoil of Egypt and it is not alwayes certain that God will be angry with every man by whose hand affliction comes upon us And sometimes two armies have met and fought and the wisest man amongst them could not say that either of the Princes had prevaricated either the lawes of God or of Nations and yet it may be some superstitious easie and half witted people of either side wonder that their enemies live so long And there are very many cases of warre concerning which God hath declared nothing and although in such cases he that yeelds and quits his title rather then his charity and the care of so many lives is the wisest and the best man yet if neither of them will do so let us not decree judgements from heaven in cases where we have no word from heaven and thunder from our Tribunals where no voice of God hath declared the sentence But in such cases where there is an evident tyranny or injustice let us do like the good Samaritan who dressed the wounded man but never pursued the thief let us do charity to the afflicted and bear the crosse with noblenesse and look up to Jesus who endured the crosse and despised the shame but let us not take upon us the office of God who will judge the Nations righteously and when he hath delivered up our bodies will rescue our souls from the hands of unrighteous judges I remember in the story that Plutarch tels concerning the soul of Thespesius that it met with a Prophetick Genius who told him many things that should happen afterwards in the world and the strangest of all was this That there should be a King Qui bonus cum sit tyrannide vitam finiet An excellent Prince and a good man should be put to death by a rebell and usurping power and yet that Prophetick soul could not tell that those rebels should within three yeers die miserable and accursed deaths and in that great prophecy recorded by Saint Paul That in the last dayes perillous times should come and men should be traitours and selvish having forms of godlinesse and creeping into houses yet could not tell us when those men should come to finall shame and ruine onely by a generall signification he gave this signe of comfort to Gods persecuted servants But they shall proceed no further for their folly shall be manifest to all men that is at long running they shall shame themselves and for the elects sake those dayes of evil shall be shortned But you and I may be dead first And therefore onely remember that they that with a credulous heart and a loose tongue are too decretory and enunciative of speedy judgements to their enemies turn their religion into revenge and therefore do beleeve it will be so because they vehemently desire it should be so which all wise and good men ought to suspect as lesse agreeing with that charity which overcomes all the sins and all the evils of the world and sits down and rests in glory 4. Do not trouble your self by thinking how much you are afflicted but consider how much you make of it For reflex acts upon the suffering it self can lead to nothing but to pride or to impatience to temptation or a postacy He that measures the grains and scruples of his persecution will soon sit down and call for ease or for a reward will think the time long or his burden great will be apt to complain of his condition or set a greater value upon his person Look not back upon him that strikes thee but upward to God that supports thee and forward to the crown that is set before thee and then consider if the losse of thy estate hath taught thee to despise the world whether thy poor fortune hath made thee poor in spirit and if thy uneasie prison sets thy soul at liberty and knocks off the fetters of a worse captivity For then the rod of suffering turns into crowns and scepters when every suffering is a precept and every change of condition produces a holy resolution and the state of sorrows makes the resolution actuall and habituall permanent and persevering For as the silk-worm eateth it self out of a seed to become a little worm and there feeding on the leaves of mulberies it grows till its coat be off and then works it self into a house of silk then casting its pearly seeds for the young to breed it leaveth its silk for man and dieth all white and winged in the shape of a flying creature So it the progresse of souls when they are regenerate by Baptisme and have cast off their first stains and the skin of world 〈…〉 by feeding on the leaves of Scriptures and the fruits of 〈…〉 and the joyes of the Sacrament they incircle themselves in the rich garments of holy and vertuous habits then by leaving their blood which is the Churches seed to raise up a new generation to God they leave a blessed memory and fair example and are themselves turned into Angels whose felicity is to do the will of God as their imployments was in this world to suffer it fiat voluntas tua is our daily prayer and that is of a passive signification thy will be done upon us and if from thence also we translate it into an active sence and by suffering evils increase in our aptnesses to do well we have done the work of Christians and shall receive the reward of Martyrs 5. Let our suffering be entertained by a direct election not by collateral ayds and phantastick assistances It is a good refreshment to a weak spirit to suffer in good company and so Phocion encouraged a timerous Greek condemned to die and he bid him be confident because that he was to die with Phocion and when 40 Martyrs in Cappadocia suffered and that a souldier standing by came and supplyed the place of the one Apostate who fell from his crown being overcome with pain it added warmth to the frozen confessors and turnd them into consummate Martyrs But if martyrdom were but a phantastick thing or relyed upon vain accidents and irregular chances it were then very necessary to be assisted by images of things and any thing lesse then the
man that suffers sorrow and persecution ought to be relieved by us but needs not be pitied in the summe of affairs But since the two estates of the world are measured by time and by eternity and divided by joy and sorrow and no man shall have his portions of joyes in both the durations the state of those men is insupportably miserable who are fatted for slaughter and are crowned like beasts for sacrifice who are feared and fear who cannot enjoy their purchases but by communications with others and themselves have the least share but themselves are alone in the misery and the saddest dangers and they possesse the whole portions of sorrows to whom their prosperity gives but occasions to evil counsels and strength to do mischief or to nourish a serpent or oppresse a neighbour or to nurse a lust to increase folly and treasure up calamity And did ever any man see or story tell that any tyrant Prince kissed his rods and axes his sword of justice and his Imperiall ensignes of power They shine like a taper to all things but it self but we read of many Martyrs who kissed their chains and hugged their stakes and saluted their hangman with great endearments and yet abating the incursions of their seldom sins these are their greatest evils and such they are with which a wise and a good man may be in love And till the sinners and ungodly men can be so with their deep groans and broken sleeps with the wrath of God and their portions of eternity till they can rejoyce in death and long for a resurrection and with delight and a greedy hope can think of the day of judgement we must conclude that their glasse gems and finest pageantry their splendid outsides and great powers of evil cannot make amends for that estate of misery which is their portion with a certainty as great as is the truth of God and all the Articles of the Christian Creed Miserable men are they who cannot be blessed unlesse there be no day of judgement who must perish unlesse the word of God should fail If that be all their hopes then we may with a sad spirit and a soul of pity inquire into the Question of the Text Where shall the ungodly and sinner appear Even there where Gods face shall never shine where there shall be fire and no light where there shall be no Angels but what are many thousands yeers ago turned into Devils where no good man shall ever dwell and from whence the evil and the accursed shall never be dismissed O my God let my soul never come into their counsels nor lie down in their sorrows Sermon XII THE MERCY OF THE DIVINE IVDGMENTS OR Gods Method in curing Sinners 2. Romanes 4. Despisest thou the riches of his goodnesse and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that the goodnesse of God leadeth thee to repentance FRom the beginning of Time till now all effluxes which have come from God have been nothing but emanations of his goodnesse clothed in variety of circumstances He made man with no other designe then that man should be happy and by receiving derivations from his fountain of mercy might reflect glory to him And therefore God making man for his own glory made also a paradise for mans use and did him good to invite him to do himself a greater for God gave forth demonstrations of his power by instances of mercy and he who might have made ten thousand worlds of wonder and prodigy and created man with faculties able onely to stare upon and admire those miracles of mightinesse did choose to instance his power in the effusions of mercy that at the same instant he might represent himself desireable and adorable in all the capacities of amability that is as excellent in himself and profitable to us For as the Sun sends forth a benigne and gentle influence on the seed of Plants that it may invite forth the active and plastick power from its recesse and secresie that by rising into the tallnesse and dimensions of a tree it may still receive a greater and more refreshing influence from its foster-father the prince of all the bodies of light and in all these emanations the Sun its self receives no advantage but the honour of doing benefits so doth the Almighty Father of all the creatures He at first sends forth his blessings upon us that we by using them aright should make our selves capable of greater while the giving glory to God and doing homage to him are nothing for his advantage but onely for ours our duties towards him being like vapours ascending from the earth not at all to refresh the region of the clouds but to return back in a fruitfull and refreshing shower And God created us not that we can increase his felicity but that he might have a subject receptive of felicity from him thus he causes us to be born that we may be capable of his blessings he causes us to be baptized that we may have a title to the glorious promises Evangelicall he gives us his Son that we may be rescued from hell and when we constraine him to use harsh courses towards us it is also in mercy he smites us to cure a disease he sends us sicknesse to procure our health and as if God were all mercy he his mercifull in his first designe in all his instruments in the way and in the end of the journey and does not onely shew the riches of his goodnesse to them that do well but to all men that they may do well he is good to make us good he does us benefits to make us happy and if we by despising such gracious rayes of light and heat stop their progresse and interrupt their designe the losse is not Gods but ours we shall be the miserable and accursed people This is the sense and paraphrase of my Text. Despisest thou the riches of his goodnesse c. Thou dost not know that is thou considerest not that it is for further benefit that God does thee this the goodnesse of God is not a designe to serve his own ends upon thee but thine upon him The goodnesse of God leadeth thee to repentance Here then is Gods method of curing man-kind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 First goodnesse or inviting us to him by sugred words by the placid arguments of temporall favour and the propositions of excellent promises Secondly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 at the same time although God is provoked every day yet he does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he tolerates our stubbornnesse he forbears to punish and when he does begin to strike takes his hand off and gives us truce and respite For so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies laxamentum and inducias too Thirdly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 still a long putting off and deferring his finall destroying anger by using all meanes to force us to repentance and this especially by the way of judgements these being the last reserves of the Divine mercy and
how ever we esteem it is the greatest instance of the divine long sufferance that is in the world After these instruments we may consider the end the strand upon which these land us the purpose of this variety of these laborious and admirable arts with which God so studies and contrives the happinesse and salvation of man it is onely that man may be brought by these meanes unto repentance and by repentance may be brought to eternall life This is the treasure of the Divine goodnesse the great and admirable efflux of the eternal beneficence the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the riches of his goodnesse which whosoever despises despises himself and the great interest of his own felicity he shall die in his impenitence and perish in his folly 1. The first great instrument that God chooses to bring us to him is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 profit or benefit and this must needs be first for those instruments whereby we have a being are so great mercies that besides that they are such which give us the capacities of all other mercies they are the advances of us in the greatest instances of promotion in the world For from nothing to something is an infinite space and a man must have a measure of infinite passed upon him Before he can perceive himself to be either happy or miserable he is not able to give God thanks for one blessing untill he hath received many But then God intends we should enter upon his service at the beginning of our dayes because even then he is before-hand with us and hath already given us great instances of his goodnesse What a prodigy of favour is it to us that he hath passed by so many formes of his creatures and hath not set us down in the rank of any of them till we came to be paul◠minores angelis a little lower then the angels and yet from the meanest of them God can perfect his own praise The deeps and the snows the hail and the rain the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea they can and do glorifie God and give him praise in their capacity and yet he gave them no speech no reason no immortall spirit or capacity of eternall blessednesse but he hath distinguished us from them by the absolute issues of his predestination and hath given us a lasting and eternall spirit excellent organs of perception and wonderfull instruments of expression that we may joyn in consort with the morning star and bear a part in the Chorus with the Angels of light to sing Alleluiah to the great Father of men and Angels But was it not a huge chain of mercies that we were not strangled in the regions of our own naturall impurities but were sustained by the breath of God from perishing in the womb where God formed us in secreto terrae told our bones and kept the order of nature and the miracles of creation and we lived upon that which in the next minute after we were born would strangle us if it were not removed but then God took care of us and his hands of providence clothed us and fed us But why do I reckon the mercies of production which in every minute of our being are alike and continued and are miracles in all senses but that they are common and usuall I onely desire you to remember that God made all the works of his hands to serve him and indeed this mercy of creating us such as we are was not to lead us to repentance but was a designe of innocence he intended we should serve him as the Sun and the Moon do as fire and water do never to prevaricate the laws he fixed to us that we might have needed no repentance But since we did degenerate and being by God made better and more noble creatures then all the inhabitants of the air the water and the earth besides we made our selves baser and more ignoble then any For no dog crocodile or swine was ever Gods enemy as we made our selves yet then from thence forward God began his work of leading us to repentance by the riches of his goodnesse He causeth us to be born of Christian parents under whom we were taught the mysteriousnesse of its goodnesse and designes for the redemption of man And by the designe of which religion repentance was taught to mankind and an excellent law given for distinction of good and evil and this is a blessing which though possibly we do not often put into our eucharisticall Letanies to give God thanks for yet if we sadly consider what had become of us if we had been born under the dominion of a Turkish Lord or in America where no Christians do inhabite where they worship the Devil where witches are their priests their prophets their phisitians and their Oracles can we choose but apprehend a visible notorious necessity of perishing in those sins which we then should not have understood by the glasse of a divine law to have declined nor by a revelation have been taught to repent of But since the best of men does in the midst of all the great advantages of lawes and examples and promises and threatnings do many things he ought to be ashamed of and needs to repent of we can understand the riches of the Divine goodnesse best by considering that the very designe of our birth and education in the Christian religion is that we may recover of and cure our follies by the antidote of repentance which is preached to us as a doctrine and propounded as a favour which was put into a law and purchased for us by a great expence which God does not more command to us as a duty then he gives us a blessing For now that we shall not perish for our first follies but be admitted to new conditions to be repaired by second thoughts to have our infirmities excused and our sins forgiven our habits lessened and our malice cured after we were wounded and sick and dead and buried and in the possession of the Devil this was such a blessing so great riches of the Divine goodnesse that as it was taught to no religion but the Christian revealed by no law-giver but Christ so it was a favour greater then ever God gave to the Angels and Devils for although God was rich in the effusion of his goodnesse towards them yet they were not admitted to the condition of second thoughts Christ never shed one drop of blood for them his goodnesse did not lead them to repentance but to us it was that he made this largesse of his goodnesse to us to whom he made himself a brother and sucked the paps of our mother he paid the scores of our sin and shame and death onely that we might be admitted to repent and that this repentance might be effectuall to the great purposes of felicity and salvation And if we would consider this sadly it might make us better to understand our madnesse and folly in refusing to
grown and so judge of the state of our duty and concerning our finall condition of being saved 1. Concerning the state of grace I consider that no man can be said to be in the state of grace who retaines an affection to any one sin The state of pardon and the divine favour begins at the first instance of anger against our crimes when we leave our fondnesses and kinde opinions when we excuse them not and will not endure their shame when we feele the smarts of any of their evil consequents for he that is a perfect lover of sin and is sealed up to a reprobate sense endures all that sin brings along with it and is reconciled to all its mischiefes can suffer the sicknesse of his own drunkennesse and yet call it pleasure he can wait like a slave to serve his lust and yet count it no disparagement he can suffer the dishonour of being accounted a base and dishonest person and yet look confidently and think himself no worse But when the grace of God begins to work upon a mans spirit it makes the conscience nice and tender and although the sin as yet does not displease the man but he can endure the flattering and alluring part yet he will not endure to be used so ill by his sin he will not be abused and dishonoured by it But because God hath so allayed the pleasures of his sin that he that drinks the sweet should also strain the dregs through his throat by degrees Gods grace doth irreconcile the convert and discovers first its base attendance then its worse consequents then the displeasure of God that here commences the first resolutions of leaving the sin and trying if in the service of God his spirit and the whole appetite of man may be better entertained He that is thus far entred shall quickly perceive the difference and meet arguments enough to invite him further For then God treats the man as he treated the spies that went to discover the land of promise he ordered the year in plenty and directed them to a pleasant and a fruitful place and prepared bunches of grapes of a miraculous and prodigious greatnesse that they might report good things of Canaan and invite the whole nation to attempt its conquest so Gods grace represents to the new converts and the weak ones in faith the pleasures and first deliciousnesses of religion and when they come to spie the good things of that way that leads to heaven they presently perceive themselves cased of the load of an evil conscience of their fears of death of the confusion of their shame and Gods spirit gives them a cup of sensible comfort and makes them to rejoyce in their prayers and weep with pleasures mingled with innocent passions and religious changes and although God does not deal with all men in the same method or in manners that can regularly be described and all men do not feele or do not observe or cannot for want of skill discern such accidental sweetnesses and pleasant grapes at his first entrance into religion yet God to every man does minister excellent arguments of invitation and such that if a man will attend to them they will certainly move either his affections or his will his fancy or his reason and most commonly both But while the spirit of God is doing this work of man man must also be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fellow worker with God he must entertain the spirit attend his inspirations receive his whispers obey all his motions invite him further and utterly renounce all confederacy with his enemy sin at no hand suffering any root of bitternesse to spring up not allowing to himself any reserve of carnal pleasure no clancular lust no private oppressions no secret covetousnesse no love to this world that may discompose his duty for if a man prayes all day and at night is intemperate if he spends his time in reading and his recreation be sinful if he studies religion and practises self interest if he leaves his swearing and yet retaines his pride if he becomes chast and yet remains peevish and imperious this man is not changed from the state of sin into the first stage of the state of grace he does at no hand belong to God he hath suffered himself to be scared from one sin and tempted from another by interest and hath left a third by reason of his inclination and a fourth for shame or want of opportunity But the spirit of God hath not yet planted one perfect plant there God may make use of the accidentally prepared advantages But as yet the spirit of God hath not begun the proper and direct work of grace in his heart But when we leave every sin when we resolve never to return to the chaines when we have no love for the world but such as may be a servant of God then I account that we are entred into a state of grace from whence I am now to begin to reckon the commencement of this precept grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2. And now the first part of this duty is to make religion to be the businesse of our lives for this is the great instrument which will naturally produce our growth in grace and the perfection of a Christian. For a man cannot after a state of sin be instantly a Saint the work of heaven is not done by a flash of lightning or a dash of affectionate raine or a few tears of a relenting pity God and his Church have appointed holy intervals and have taken portions of our time for religion that we may be called off from the world and remember the end of our creation and do honour to God and think of heaven with hearty purposes and peremptory designes to get thither But as we must not neglect those times which God hath reserved for his service or the Church hath prudently decreed nor yet act religion upon such dayes with forms and outsides or to comply with customs or to seem religious so we must take care that all the other portions of our time be hallowed with little retirements of all thoughts and short conversations with God and all along be guided with a holy intention that even our works of nature may passe into the relations of grace and the actions of our calling may help towards the obtaining the price of our high calling while our eatings are actions of temperance our labours are profitable our humiliations are acts of obedience and our almes are charity our marriages are chast and whether we eat or drink sleep or wake we may do all to the glory of God by a direct intuition or by a reflex act by designe or by supplement by fore sight or by an after election and to this purpose we must not look upon religion as our trouble and our hinderance nor think almes chargeable or expensive nor our fastings vexatious and burdensom nor our prayers a wearinesse of spirit
himself but his spirit suffers violence and his reason is invaded and his infirmities are mighty and his aids not yet prevailing But when this single temptation hath prevailed for a single instance and leaves a relish upon the palate and this produces another and that also is fruitfull and swels into a family and kinred of sin that is it grows first into approbation then to a clear assent and an untroubled conscience thence into frequency from thence unto a custome and easinesse and a habit this man is fallen into the fire There are also some single acts of so great a malice that they must suppose a man habitually sinfull before he could arrive at that height of wickednesse No man begins his sinfull course with killing of his Father or his Prince and Simon Magus had preambulatory impieties he was covetous and ambitious long before he offered to buy the Holy Ghost Nemo repente fuit turpissimus and although such actions may have in them the malice and the mischief the disorder and the wrong the principle and the permanent effect of a habit and a long course of sin yet because they never or very seldom go alone but after the praedisposition of other huishering crimes we shall not amisse comprise them under the name of habituall sins For such they are either formally or equivalently and if any man hath fallen into a sinfull habit into a course and order of sinning his case is little lesser then desperate but that little hope that is remanent hath its degree according to the infancy or the growth of the habit 1. For all sins lesse then habitual it is certain a pardon is ready to penitent persons that is to all that sin in ignorance or in infirmity by surprize or inadvertency in smaller instances or infrequent returns with involuntary actions or imperfect resolutions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Clemens in his Epistles Lift up your hands to Almighty God and pray him to be mercifull to you in all things when you sin unwillingly that is in which you sin with an imperfect choice for no man sins against his will directly but when his understanding is abused by an inevitable or an intolerable weaknesse our wills follow their blind guide and are not the perfect mistresses of their own actions and therefore leave a way and easinesse to repent and be ashamed of it and therefore a possibility and readinesse for pardon And these are the sins that we are taught to pray to God that he would pardon as he gives us our bread that is every day For in many things we offend all said Saint James that is in many smaller matters in matters of surprize or inevitable infirmity And therefore Posidices said that Saint Austin was used to say That he would not have even good and holy Priests go from this world without the susception of equall and worthy penances and the most innocent life in our account is not a competent instrument of a peremptory confidence and of justifying our selves I am guilty of nothing said Saint Paul that is of no ill intent or negligence in preaching the Gospel yet I am not hereby justified for God it may bee knows many little irregularities and insinuations of sin In this case we are to make a difference but humility and prayer and watchfulnesse are the direct instruments of the expiation of such sinnes But then secondly whosoever sins without these abating circumstances that is in great instances in which a mans understanding cannot be cozened as in drunkennesse murder adultery and in the frequent repetitions of any sort of sin whatsoever in which a mans choice cannot be surprized and in which it is certain there is a love of the sin and a delight in it and a power over a mans resolutions in these cases it is a miraculous grace and an extraordinary change that must turn the current and the stream of the iniquity and when it is begun the pardon is more uncertain and the repentance more difficult and the effect much abated and the man must be made miserable that he may be accursed for ever 1. I say his pardon is uncertain because there are some sins which are unpardonable as I shall shew and they are not all named in particular and the degrees of malice being uncertain the salvation of that man is to be wrought with infinite fear and trembling It was the case of Simon Magus Repent and ask pardon for thy sin if peradventure the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee If peradventure it was a new crime and concerning its possibility of pardon no revelation had been made and by analogy to other crimes it was very like an unpardonable sin for it was a thinking a thought against the Holy Ghost and that was next to speaking a word against him Cains sin was of the same nature It is greater then it can be forgiven his passion and his fear was too severe and decretory it was pardonable but truly we never finde that God did pardon it 2. But besides this it is uncertain in the pardon because it may be the time of pardon is passed and though God hath pardoned to other people the same sins and to thee too some times before yet it may be he will not now he hath not promised pardon so often as we sin and in all the returns of impudence apostacy and it gratitude and it may be thy day is past as was Jerusalems in the day that they crucified the Saviour of the world 3. Pardon of such habitual sins is uncertain because life is uncertain and such sins require much time for their abolition and expiation And therefore although these sins are not necessariò mortifera that is unpardonable yet by consequence they become deadly because our life may be cut off before we have finished or performed those necessary parts of repentance which are the severe and yet the onely condition of getting pardon So that you may perceive that not onely every great single crime but the habit of any sin is dangerous and therefore these persons are to be snatched from the fire if you mean to rescue them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if you stay a day it may be you stay too long 4. To which I adde this fourth consideration that every delay of return is in the case of habitual sins an approach to desperation because the nature of habits is like that of Crocodiles they grow as long as they live and if they come to obstinacy or confirmation they are in hell already and can never return back For so the Pannonian Bears when they have clasped a dart in the region of their Liver wheel themselves upon the wound and with anger and malicious revenge strike the deadly barbe deeper and cannot be quit from that fatal steel but in flying bear along that which themselves make the instrument of a more hasty death So is every vitious person struck with a deadly wound
any known sin if I should descend to particulars I might lay a snare to scrupulous and nice consciences This onely every confirmed habitual sinner does manifest the divine justice in punishing the sins of a short life with a never dying worm and a never quenched flame because we have an affection to sin that no time will diminish but such as would increase to eternal ages and accordingly as any man hath a degree of love so he hath lodged in his soul a spark which unless it be speedily effectively quenched will break forth into unquenchable fire Sermon XVIII THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE Matthew 16. Ver. 26. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul WHen the eternal mercy of God had decreed to rescue mankinde from misery and infelicity and so triumphed over his own justice the excellent wisdom of God resolved to do it in wayes contradictory to the appetites and designes of man that it also might triumph over our weaknesses and imperfect conceptions So God decreeing to glorifie his mercy by curing our sins and to exalt his wisdome by the reproof of our ignorance and the representing upon what weak and false principals we had built our hopes and expectations of felicity Pleasure and profit victory over our enemies riches and pompous honours power and revenge desires according to sensual appetites and prosecutions violent and passionate of those appetites health and long life free from trouble without poverty or persecution Hac sunt jucundissime Martialis vitam quae faciunt beatiorem These are the measures of good and evil the object of our hopes and fears the securing our content and the portion of this world and for the other let it be as it may But the Blessed Jesus having made revelations of an immortal duration of another world and of a strange restitution to it even by the resurrection of the body and a new investiture of the soul with the same upper garment clarified and made pure so as no Fuller on earth can whiten it hath also preached a new Philosophy hath cancelled all the old principles reduced the appetites of sence to the discourses of reason and heightned reason to the sublimities of the spirit teaching us abstractions and immaterial conceptions giving us new eyes and new objects and new proportions For now sensual pleasures are not delightful riches are drosse honours are nothing but the appendages of vertue and in relation to it are to receive their account but now if you would enjoy life you must die if you would be at ease you must take up Christs crosse and conform to his sufferings if you would save your life you must lose it and if you would be rich you must abound in good works you must be poor in spirit and despise the world and be rich unto God for whatsoever is contrary to the purchases and affections of this world is an endearment of our hopes in the world to come and therefore he having stated the question so that either we must quit this world or the other our affections I mean and adherencies to this or our interest and hopes of the other the choice is rendered very easie by the words of my text because the distance is not lesse then infinite and the comparison hath terms of a vast difference heaven and hell eternity and a moment vanity and real felicity life and death eternal all that can be hoped for and all that can be feared these are the terms of our choice and if a man have his wits about him and be not drunk with sensuality and senslessenesse he need not much to dispute before he passe the sentence For nothing can be given to us to recompence the losse of heaven and if our souls be lost there is nothing remaining to us whereby we can be happy What shall it profit a man or what shall a man give is there any exchange for a mans soul the question is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the negative Nothing can be given for an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a price to satisfie for its losse The blood of the son of God was given to recover it or as an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to God and when our souls were forfeit to him nothing lesse then the life and passion of God and man could pay the price Isay to God who yet was not concerned in the losse save onely that such was his goodnesse that it pitied him to see his creature lost But to us what shall be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what can make us recompence when we have lost our own souls and are lost in a miserable eternity what can then recompence us not all the world not ten thousand worlds and of this that miserable man whose soul is lost is the best judge For the qustion is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and hath a potential signification and means 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is suppose a man ready to die condemned to the sentence of a horrid death heightned with all the circumstances of trembling and amazement what would he give to save his life eye for eye tooth for tooth and all that a man hath will he give for his life and this turned to a proverb among the Jews for so the last words of the text are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which proverb being usually meant concerning a temporal death and was intended to represent the sadnesses of a condemned person our blessed Saviour fits to his own purpose and translates to the signification of death eternal which he first revealed clearly to the world and because no interest of the world can make a man recompence for his life because to lose that makes him incapable of enjoying the exchange and he were a strange fool who having no designe upon immortality or vertue should be willing to be hanged for a thousand pound per annum this argument increases infinitely in the purpose of our Blessed Saviour and to gain the world and to lose our souls in the Christian sence is infinitely more madnesse and a worse exchange then when our souls signifie nothing but a temporal life and because possibly the indefinite hopes of Elysium or an honorable name might tempt some hardy persons to leave this world hoping for a better condition even among the heathens yet no excuse will acquit a Christian from madnesse If for the purchase of this world he lose his eternitie Here then first we will consider the propositions of the exchange the world and a mans soul by way of supposition supposing all that is propounded were obtained the whole world Secondly we will consider what is likely to be obtained really and indeed of the world and what are really the miseries of a lost soul For it is propounded in the text by way of supposition If a man should gain the world which no man ever did nor ever can and he
to allay a sorrow For imagine a man great in his dominion as Cyrus rich as Solomon victorious as David beloved like Titus learned as Trismegist powerful as all the Roman greatnesse all this and the results of all this give him no more pleasure in the midst of a feaver or the tortures of the stone then if he were only lord of a little dish and a dishfull of fountain water Indeed the excellency of a holy conscience is a comfort and a magazine of joy so great that it sweetens the most bitter potion of the world and makes tortures and death not only tolerable but amiable and therefore to part with this whose excellency is so great for the world that is of so inconsiderable a worth as not to have in it recompence enough for the sorrows of a sharp disease is a bargain fit to be made by none but fools and mad men Antiochus Epiphanes Herod the great his grand child Agrippa were sad instances of this great truth to every of which it happened that the grandeur of their fortune the greatnesse of their possessions and the encrease of their estate disappeared and expired like Camphire at their arrest by those several sharp diseases which covered their head with Cypresse and hid their crowns in an inglorious grave For what can all the world minister to a sick person If it represents all the spoils of nature and the choicest delicacies of land and sea Alas his appetite is lost and to see a pibble stone is more pleasing to him For he can look upon that without loathing but not so upon the most delicious fare that ever made famous the Roman luxury Perfumes make his head ake if you load him with jewels you presse him with a burden as troublesome as his grave-stone and what pleasure is in all those possessions that cannot make his pillow easie nor tame the rebellion of a tumultuous humour not restore the use of a withered hand or straighten a crooked finger vain is the hope of that man whose soul rests upon vanity and such unprofitable possessions 5. Suppose a man lord of all this world an universal Monarch as some princes have lately designed all that cannot minister content to him not that content which a poor contemplative man by the strength of Christian Philosophy and the support of a very small fortune daily does enjoy All his power and greatnesse cannot command the sea to overflow his shores or to stay from the retiring to the opposit strand It cannot make his children dutiful or wise though the world admired at the greatness of Philip the second 's fortune in the accession of Portugal and the East Indies to his principalities yet this could not allay the infelicitie of his family and the unhandsomenesse of his condition in having a proud and indiscreet and a vitious young prince likely to inherit all his greatnesse And if nothing appears in the face of such a fortune to tell all the world that it is spotted and imperfect yet there is in all conditions of the world such wearinesse and tediousnesse of the spirits that a man is evermore pleased with hopes of going off for the present then in dwelling upon that condition which it may be others admire and think beauteous but none knoweth the smart of it but he that drank off the little pleasure and felt the ill relish of the appendage How many Kings have groaned under the burden of their crowns and have sunk down and died How many have quitted their pompous cares and retired into private lives there to enjoy the pleasures of Philosophy and religion which their thrones denied And if we consider the supposition of the Text the thing will demonstrate it self For he who can be supposed the owner and purchaser of the whole world must either be a King or a private person A private person can hardly be supposed to be the man For if he be subject to another how can he be Lord of the whole world But if he be a King it is certain that his cares are greater then any mans his fears are bigger his evils mountainous the accidents that discompose him are more frequent and sometimes intolerable and of all his great possessions he hath not the greatest use and benefit But they are like a great harvest which more labourers must bring in and more must eat of onely he is the centre of all the cares and they fix upon him but the profits run out to all the lines of the circle to all that are about him whose good is therefore greater then the good of the Prince Because what they enjoy is the purchase of the Princes care and so they feed upon his cost Privatusque magis vivam to Rege beatus Servants live the best lives for their care is single onely how to please their Lord but all the burden of a troublesome providence and ministration makes the outside pompous and more full of ceremony but they intricate the condition and disturb the quiet of the great possessor And imagine a person as blest as can be supposed upon the stock of worldly interest when all his accounts are cast up he differs nothing from his subjects or his servants but in meer circumstance nothing of reality or substance He hath more to wait at his Table or persons of higher rank to do the meanest offices more ceremonies of addresse a fairer Escutcheon louder titles But can his multitude of dishes make him have a good stomack or does not satiety cloy it when his high diet is such that he is not capable of being feasted and knows not the frequent delights and oftener possibilities a poor man hath of being refreshed while not onely his labour makes hunger and so makes his meat delicate and then it cannot be ill fare let it be what it will but also his provision is such that every little addition is a direct feast to him while the great owner of the world giving to himself the utmost of his desires hath nothing left beyond his ordinary to become the entertainment of his festival dayes but more loads of the same meat And then let him consider how much of felicity can this condition contribute to him In which he is not further gone beyond a person of a little fortune in the greatnesse of his possession then he is fallen short in the pleasures and possibility of their enjoyment And that is a sad condition when like Midas all that the man touches shall turn to gold and his is no better to whom a perpetual full table not recreated with fasting not made pleasant with intervening scarcity ministers no more good then a heap of gold does that is he hath no benefit of it save the beholding of it with his eyes Cannot a man quench his thirst as well out of an Urn or Chalice as out of a whole River It is an ambitious thirst and a pride of draught that had rather lay
of the world and that it is possible for a young man to be tyed upon a bed of flowers and fastned by the arms and band of a curtesan and tempted wantonly and yet to escape the danger and the crime and to triumph gloriously for so Saint Hierome reports of a son of the king of Nicomedia and riches and a free fortune are designed by God to be a mercy and an opportunity of doing noble things and excellent charity and exact justice and to protect innocence and to defend oppressed people yet it is a mercy mixt with much danger yet it is like the present of a whole vintage to a man in a hectick feaver he will be shrewdly tempted to drink of it and if he does he is inflamed and may chance to die with the kindnesse Happy are those persons who use the world and abuse it not who possesse a part of it and love it for no other ends but for necessities of nature and conveniencies of person and discharge of all their duty and the offices of religion and in charity to Christ and all Christs members but since he that hath all the world cannot command nature to do him one office extraordinary and enjoyes the best parts but in common with the poorest man in the world and can use no more of it but according to a limited and a very narrow capacity and whatsoever he can use or possesse cannot out-weigh the present pressure of a sharp disease nor can it at all give him content without which there can be nothing of felicity since a prince in the matter of using the world differs nothing from his subjects but in mere accedents and circumstances and yet these very many trifling differences are not to be obtained but by so much labour and care so great expence of time and trouble that the possession will not pay thus much of the price and after all this the man may die two hours after he hath made his troublesome and expensive purchase and is certain not to enjoy it long Adde to this last that most men get so little of the world that it is all together of a trifling and inconsiderable interest that they who have the most of this world have the most of that but in title and in supreme rights and reserved priviledges the real use descending upon others to more substantial purposes that the possession of this trifle is mixt with sorrow upon other accidents and is allayed with fear and that the greatnesse of mens possessions increase their thirst and enlarge their wants by swelling their capacitie and above all is of so great danger to a mans vertue that a great fortune and a very great vertue are not alwayes observed to grow together He that observes all this and much more he may observe will see that he that gains the whole world hath made no such great bargain of it although he had it for nothing but the necessary unavoidable troubles in getting it but how great a folly is it to buy so great a trouble so great a vanity with the losse of our pretious soules remains to be considered in the folowing parts of the text Sermon XIX The foolish exchange Part II. ANd lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul And now the question is finally stated and the dispute is concerning the sum of affaires De morte hominis nulla est cunctatio longa And therefore when the soul is at stake not for its temporal but for its eternal interest it is not good to be hasty in determining without taking just measures of the exchange Solomon had the good things of the world actually in possession and he tried the touch-stone of prudence and natural value and found them allayed with vanitie and imperfection and wee that see them wayed in the ballance of the sanctuary and tryed by the touch-stone of the spirit finde them not onely light and unprofitable but pungent and dolorous but now we are to consider what it is that men part with and lose when with passion and impotency they get the world and that will present the bargain to be a huge infelicity And this I observe to be intimated in the word lose for he gives gold for cloth or pretious stones for bread serves his needs of nature and loses nothing by it and the merchant that found a pearle of great price and sold al that he had to make the purchase of it made a good venture he was no loser but here the case is otherwise when a man gains the whole world and his soul goes in the exchange he hath not done like a merchant but like a childe or a prodigal he hath given himself away he hath lost all that can distinguish him from a slave or a miserable preson he loses his soul in the exchange for the soul of a man all the world cannot be a just price a man may lose it or throw it away but he can never make good exchange when he parts with this Jewel and therefore our blessed Saviour rarely well expresses it by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is fully opposed to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 gain it is such an ill market a man makes as if he should proclaim his riches goods vendible for a garland of thistles decked and trimmed up with the stinking poppy But we shall better understand the nature of this bargain if we consider the soul that is exchanged what it is in it self in order not of nature but to felicity and the capacities of joy secondly what price the Son of God payed for it and thirdly what it is to lose it that is what miseries and tortures are signified by losing a mans soul. First if we consider what the soul is in its own capacity to happinesse we shall finde it to be an excellency greater then the sun of an angelicall substance sister to a cherubin an image of the divinity and the great argument of that mercy whereby God did distinguish us from the lower form of beasts and trees and minerals For so it was the scripture affirmes that God made man after his own image that is secundum illam imaginem ideam quam concepitipse not according to the likenesse of any of those creatures which were prexistent to mans production not according to any of those images or ideas whereby God created the heavens and the earth but by a new form to distinguish him from all other substances he made him by a new idea of his own by an uncreated exemplar and besides that this was a donation of intelligent faculties such as we understand to be perfect and essential or rather the essence of God it was also a designation of him to a glorious immortality and a communication of the rayes and reflections of his own essential felicities But the soul is al that whereby we may be and without which we cannot be happy It is not the eye that sees the beauties
off from this sad discourse onely I shall crave your attention to a word of exhortation That you take care lest for the purchase of a little trifling inconsiderable portion of the world you come into this place and state of torment Although Homer was pleased to complement the beauty of Helena to such a height as to say it was a sufficient price for all the evils which the Greeks and Trojans suffered in ten years 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Yet it was a more reasonable conjecture of Herodotus that during the ten years siege of Troy Helena for whom the Greeks fought was in Egypt not in the city because it was unimaginable but that the Trojans would have thrown her over the walls rather then for the sake of such a trifle have endured so great calamities we are more sottish then the Trojans if we retain our Helena any one beloved lust any painted Devil any sugar'd temptation with not the hazard but the certainty of having such horrid miseries such in valuable losses And certainly its a strange stupidity of spirit that can sleep in the midst of such thunder when God speaks from heaven with his lowdest voice and draws aside his curtain and shows his arsenal and his armory full of arrows steeled with wrath headed and pointed and hardned with vengeance still to snatch at those arrows if they came but in the retinue of a rich fortune or a vain Mistris if they wait but upon pleasure or profit or in the reare of an ambitious designe But let not us have such a hardinesse against the threats and representments of the divine vengeance as to take the little imposts and revenues of the world and stand in defiance against God and the fears of hell unlesse we have a charm that we can be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 invisible to the judge of heaven and earth and are impregnable against or are sure we shall be insensible of the miseries of a perishing soul. There is a sort of men who because they will be vitious and Atheistical in their lives have no way to go on with any plaisance and without huge disturbances but by being also Atheistical in their opinions and to believe that the story of hell is but a bug-bear to affright children and fools easy believing people to make them soft and apt for government and designes of princes and this is an opinion that befriends none but impure and vicious persons others there are that believe God to be all mercy that he forgets his justice believing that none shall perish with so sad a ruine if they do but at their death-bed ask God forgivenesse and say they are sorry but yet continue their impiety till their house be ready to fall being like the Circassians whose Gentlemen enter not into the Church till they be threescore years old that is in effect till by their age they cannot any longer use rapine till then they hear service at their windows dividing unequally their life between sin and devotition dedicateing their youth to robbery and their old age to a repentance without restitution Our youth and our man-hood and old age are all of them due to God and justice and mercy are to him equally essential and as this life is a time of the possibilities of mercy so to them that neglect it the next world shall be a state of pure and unmingled justice Remember the fatal and decretory sentence which God hath passed upon all man-kinde it is appointed to all men once to die and after death comes judgement and if any of us were certain to die next morning with what earnestnesse should we pray with what hatred should we remember our sins with what scorn should we look upon the licentious pleasures of the world then nothing could be welcome unto us but a prayer book no company but a Comforter and a Guide of souls no imployment but repentance no passions but in order to religion no kindnesse for a lust that hath undone us and if any of you have been arrested with alarmes of death or been in hearty fear of its approach remember what thoughts and designes then possessed you how precious a soul was then in your account and what then you would give that you had despised the world and done your duty to God and man and lived a holy life It will come to that again and we shall be in that condition in which we shall perfectly understand that all the things and pleasures of the world are vain and unprofitable and irkesome and that he onely is a wise man who secures the interest of his soul though it be with the losse of all this world and his own life into the bargain When we are to depart this life to go to strange company and stranger places and to an unknown condition then a holy conscience will be the best security the best possession it wil be a horror that every friend we meet shall with triumph upbraid to us the sottishnesse of our folly Lo this is the goodly change you have made you had your good things in your life time and how like you the portion that is reserved to you for ever The old Rabbins those Poets of religion report of Moses that when the courtiers of Pharaoh were sporting with the childe Moses in the chamber of Pharaohs daughter they presented to his choice an ingot of gold in one hand and a cole of fire in the other and that the childe snatched at the coal thrust it into his mouth and so singed and parched his tongue that he stammered ever after and certainly it is infinitely more childish in us for the glittering of the small gloworms and the charcoal of worldly possessions to swallow the flames of hell greedily in our choice such a bit will produce a worse stammering then Moses had for so the aeccursed and lost souls have their ugly and horrid dialect they roare and blaspheme blaspheme and roare for ever And suppose God should now at this instant send the great Archangel with his trumpet to summon all the world to judgement would not all this seem a notorious visible truth a truth which you will then wonder that every man did not lay to his heart and preserve therein actual pious and effective consideration let the trumpet of God perpetually sound in your ears surgite mortui venite ad judicium place your selves by meditation every day upon your death-bed and remember what thoughts shall then possesse you and let such thoughts dwell in your understanding for ever and be the parent of all your resolutions and actions The Doctors of the Jews report that when Absalom hanged among the oakes by the haire of the head he seemed to see under him hell gaping wide ready to receive him and he durst not cut off the hair that intangled him for fear he should fall into the horrid lake whose portion is flames and torment but chose to protract his miserable life a few
minuts in that pain of posture and to abide the stroke of his pursuing enemies His condition was sad when his arts of remedy were so vain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soph. A condemned man hath but small comfort to stay the singing of a long psalm it is the case of every vitious person Hell is wide open to every impenitent persevering sinner to every unpurged person Noctes atque dies patet atri Janua Ditis And although God hath lighted his candle and the lantern of his word and clearest revelations is held out to us that we can see hell in its worst colours and most horrid representments yet we run greedily after bables into that praecipice which swallows up the greatest part of man kinde and then onely we begin to consider when all consideration is fruitlesse He therefore is a huge fool that heaps up riches that greedily pursues the world and at the same time for so it must be heaps of wrath to himself against the day of wrath when sicknesse death arrests him then they appear unprofitable himself extreamly miserable if you would know how great that misery is you may take account of it by those fearful words and killing Rhetorick of Scripture It is a fearful things to fall into the hands of the living God and who can dwell with the everlasting burning That is No patience can abide there one houre where they must dwell for ever Sermon XX. OF CHRISTIAN PRVDENCE Matthew 10. latter part of Ver. 16. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmlesse as doves WHen our B. Saviour entailed a law a condition of sufferings promised a state of persecution to his servants and withall had charmed them with the bands unactive chains of so many passive graces that they should not be able to stir against the violence of Tyrants or abate the edge of axes by any instrument but their own blood being sent forth as sheep among wolves innocent and silent harmlesse and defencelesse certainly exposed to sorrow and uncertainly guarded in their persons their condition seemed nothing else but a designation to slaughter and when they were drawn into the folds of the church they were betrayed into the hands of evil men infinitely and unavoidably and when an Apostle invited a proselyte to come to Christ it was in effect a snare laid for his life and he could neither conceal his religion nor hide his person nor avoid a captious question nor deny his accusation nor elude the bloody arts of Orators and informers nor break prisons nor any thing but die If the case stood just thus it was well eternity stood at the outer doors of our life ready to receive such harmlesse people but surely there could be no art in the designe no pitying of humane weaknesses no complying with the condition of man no allowances made for customs and prejudices of the world no inviting men by the things of men no turning nature into religion but it was all the way a direct violence and an open prostitution of our lives and a throwing away our fortune into a sea of rashnesse and credulity But therefore God ordered the affaires and necessities of religion in other wayes and to other purposes Although God bound our hands behinde us yet he did not tie our understandings up although we might not use our swords yet we might use our reason we were not suffered to be violent but we might avoid violence by all the arts of prudence and innocence if we did take heed of sin we might also take heed of men because in al contentions between wit and violence prudence rudenesse learning and the sword the strong hand took it first and the strong head possessed it last the strong man first governed and the witty man succeeded him and lasted longer it came to passe that the wisdom of the Father hath so ordered it that all his Disciples should overcome the power of the Roman legions by a wise religion and prudence and innocence should become the mightiest guards and the Christian although exposed to persecution yet is so secured that he shall never need to die But when the circumstances are so ordered that his reason is convinced that then it is fit he should fit I say in order to Gods purposes and his own For he that is innocent is safe against all the rods and the axes of all the Consuls of the world if they rule by justice and he that is prudent will also escape from many rudenesses and irregular violences that can come by injustice and no wit of man no government no armies can do more for Caesar perished in the midst of all his legions and all his honours and against chance and irregularities there is no provision lesse then infinite that can give security and although prudence alone cannot do this yet innocence gives the greatest title to that providence which onely can if he pleases and will if it be fitting Here then are the two armes defensive of a Christian Prudence against the evils of men Innocence against the evils of Devils and all that relates to his kingdom Prudence fences against persecution and the evil snares against the opportunities and occasions of sin it prevents surprizes it fortifies all its proper weaknesses it improves our talents it does advantage to the kingdom of Christ and the interests of the Gospel it secures our condition and instructs our choice in all the wayes and just passages to felicity it makes us to live profitably and die wisely and without it simplicity would turn to sillinesse zeal into passion passion into fury religion into scandal conversation into a snare civilities into temptation curtesies into danger and an imprudent person falls into a condition of harmelesse rich and unwary fools or rather of birds sheep and bevers who are hunted and persecuted for the spoils of their Fleece or their flesh their skins or their entrails and have not the foresight to avoid a snare but by their fear and undefending follies are driven thither where they die infallibly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Every good man is incircled with many enemies and dangers and his vertue shall be rifled and the decency of his soul and spirit shall be discomposed and turned into a heap of inarticulate and disorderly fancies unlesse by the methods and guards of prudence it be mannaged and secured But in order to the following discourse and its method we are first to consider whether this be or indeed can be a commandement or what is it For can all men that give up their names in baptisme be enjoyned to be wise and prudent It is as if God would command us to be eloquent or witty men fine speakers or strait bodied or excellent schollers or rich men If he please to make us so we are so and prudence is a gift of God a blessing of an excellent nature and of great leisure and a wise opportunity and a severe education and a
lustfull powers but can they do honour or satisfaction in any thing that must last and that ought to be provided for No All the things of this world are little and trifling and limited and particular and sometimes necessary because we are miserable wanting and imperfect but they never do any thing toward perfection but their pleasure dies like the time in which it danced a while and when the minute is gone so is the pleasure too and leaves no footstep but the impression of a sigh and dwells no where but in the same house where you shall finde yesterday that is in forgetfulnesse and annihilation unlesse its onely childe sorrow shall marry and breed more of its kinde and so continue its memory and name to eternall ages It is therefore the most necessary part of prudence to choose well in the main stake and the dispute is not much for if eternall things be better then temporall the soul more noble then the body vertue more honourable then the basest vices a lasting joy to be chosen before an eternall sorrow much to be preferred before little certainty before danger publike good things before private evils eternity before moments then let us set down in religion and make heaven to be our end God to be our Father Christ our elder Brother the Holy Ghost the earnest of our inheritance vertue to be our imployment and then we shall never enter into the portion of fools and accursed ill-choosing spirits Nazianzen said well Malim prudentiae guttam quà m foecundioris fortunae pelagus One drop of prudence is more usefull then an ocean of a smooth fortune for prudence is a rare instrument towards heaven and a great fortune is made oftentimes the high-way to hell and destruction However thus farre prudence is our duty every man can be so wise and is bound to it to choose heaven and a cohabitation with God before the possessions and transient vanities of the world 2. It is a duty of Christian prudence to pursue this great end with apt means and instruments in proportion to that end No wise man will sail to Ormus in a cock-boat or use a childe for his interpreter and that Generall is a Cyclops without an eye who chooses the sickest men to man his Towns and the weakest to fight his battels It cannot be a vigorous prosecution unlesse the means have an efficacy or worth commensurate to all the difficulty and something of the excellency of that end which is designed And indeed men use not to be so weak in acquiring the possessions of their temporals But in matters of religion they think any thing effective enough to secure the greatest interest as if all the fields of heaven and the regions of the Kingdom were waste ground and wanted a Colony of planters and that God invited men to heaven upon any terms that he might rejoyce in the multitude of subjects For certain it is men do more to get a little money then for all the glories of heaven Men rise up early and sit up late and eat the bread of carefulnesse to become richer then their neighbours and are amazed at every losse and impatient of an evil accident and feel a direct storm of passion if they suffer in their interest But in order to heaven they are cold in their religion indevour in their prayers incurious in their walking unwatchfull in their circumstances indifferent in the use of their opportunities infrequent in their discoursings of it not inquisitive of the way and yet think they shall surely go to heaven But a prudent man knows that by the greatnesse of the purchase he is to make an estimate of the value and the price When we ask of God any great thing As wisdom delivery from sicknesse his holy Spirit the forgivenesse of sins the grace of chastity restitution to his favour or the like do we hope to obtain them without a high opinion of the things we ask and if we value them highly must we not desire them earnestly and if we desire them earnestly must we not pray for them fervently and whatsoever we ask for fervently must not we beg for frequently and then because prayer is but one hand toward the reaching a blessing and God requires our cooperation and endeavour and we must work with both hands are we not convinced that our prayers are either faint or a designe of lazinesse when we either ask coldly or else pray loudly hoping to receive the graces we need without labour A prudent person that knows to value the best object of his desires will also know that he must observe the degrees of labour according to the excellency of the reward Prayer must be effectuall servent frequent continuall holy passionate that must get a grace or secure a blessing The love that we must have to God must be such as to keep his commandements and to make us willing to part with all our estate and all our honour and our life for the testimony of a holy conscience Our charity to our neighbours must be expressive in a language of a reall friendship aptnesse to forgive readinesse to forbear in pitying infirmities in relieving necessities in giving our goods and our lives and quitting our privileges to save his soul to secure and support his vertue Our repentance must be full of sorrows and care of diligence and hatred against sin it must drive out all and leave no affections towards it it must be constant and persevering fearfull of relapse and watch-full of all accidents Our temperance must sometimes turn into abstinence and most commonly be severe and ever without reproof He that striveth for masteries is temperate saith Saint Paul in all things he that does all this may with some pretence and reason say he intends to go to heaven But they that will not deny a lust nor refrain an appetite they that will be drunk when their friends do merrily constrain them or love a cheap religion and a gentle and lame prayer short and soft quickly said and soon passed over seldome returning and but little observed How is it possible that they should think themselves persons disposed to receive such glorious crowns and scepters such excellent conditions which they have not faith enough to believe nor attention enough to consider and no man can have wit enough to understand But so might an Arcadian shepherd look from the rocks or thorow the clefts of the valley where his sheep graze and wonder that the messenger stayes so long from comming to him to be crowned King of all the Greek Ilands or to be adopted heir to the Macedonian Monarchy It is an infinite love of God that we have heaven upon conditions which we can perform with greatest diligence But truely the lives of men are generally such that they do things in order to heaven things I say so few so trifling so unworthy that they are not proportionable to the reward of a crown of oak or a yellow riband
distinctions and devices thought of for legitimating the worshipping of images And those people that are liberal in their excommunications make men think they have reason to say their Judges are proud or self willed or covetous or ill natured people These that are the faults of Governours and continued are quickly derived upon the sect and cause a disreputation to the whole society and institution And who can think that congregation to be a true branch of the Christian who makes it their profession to kill men to save their souls against their will and against their understanding who calling themselves disciples of so meek a Master do live like bears upon prey and spoil and blood It is a huge dishonour to the sincerity of a mans purposes to be too busie in fingring money in the matters of religion and they that are zealous for their rights and tame in their devotion furious against sacrilege and a companion of drunkards implacable against breakers of a Canon and carelesse and patient enough with them that break the fifth or sixth Commandments of the Decalogue tell all the world their private sense is to preserve their own interest with scruple and curiosity and leave God to take care for his Thus Christ reproved the Pharisees for straining at a gnat and swallowing a Camel the very representation of the manner and matter of fact discovers the vice by reproving the folly of it They that are factious to get a rich proselyte and think the poor not worth saving dishonour their zeal and teach men to call it covetousnesse and though there may be a reason of prudence to desire one more then the other because of a bigger efficacy the example of the one may have more then the other yet it will quickly be discovered if it be done by secular designe and the Scripture that did not allow the preferring of a gay man before a poor Saint in the matter of place will not be pleased that in the matter of souls which are all equal there should be a faction and designe and an acceptation of persons Never let us pollute our religion with arts of the world nor offer to support the arke with unhallowed hands nor mingle false propositions with true nor make religion a pretence to profit or preferment nor do things which are like a vice neither ever speak things dishonorable of God nor abuse thy brother for Gods sake nor be solicitous and over busie to recover thy own little things neither alwayes think it fit to lose thy charity by forcing thy brother to do justice and all those things which are the outsides and faces the garments and most discerned parts of religion be sure that they be dressed according to all the circumstances of men and by all the rules of common honesty and publick reputation Is it not a sad thing that the Jew should say the Christians worship images or that it should become a proverb that the Jew spends all in his passeover the Moore in his marriage and the Christian in his law suits that what the first sacrifice to religion and the second to publick joy we should spend in malice covetousnesse and revenge Pudet haec opprobria nobis dici potuisse non potuisse refelli But among our selves also we serve the Devils ends and minister to an eternal dis-union by saying and doing things which look unhandsomely One sort of men is superstitious phantastical greedy of honour and tenacious of propositions to fill the purse and his religion is thought nothing but policy and opinion Another sayes he hath a good religion but he is the most indifferent and cold person in the world either to maintain it or to live according to it the one dresses the images of Saints with fine clothes the other lets the poor go naked and disrobes the priests that minister in the religion A third uses God worse then all this and sayes of him such things that are scandalous even to an honest man and such which would undo a good mans reputation And a fourth yet endures no governour but himself and pretends to set up Christ and make himself his lieutenant And a fifth hates all government and from all this it comes to passe that it is hard for a man to choose his side and he that chooses wisest takes that which hath in it least hurt but some he must endure or live without communion and every Church of one denomination is or hath been too incurious of preventing infamy or disreputation to their confessions One thing I desire should be observed that here the Question being concerning prudence and the matter of doing reputation to our religion it is not enough to say we can with learning justifie all that we do and make all whole with 3. or 4. distinctions for possibly the man that went to visit the Corinthian Lais if he had been asked why he dishonoured himself with so unhandsome an entrance might finde an excuse to legitimate his act or at least to make himself beleeve well of his own person but he that intends to do himself honour must take care that he be not suspected that he give no ocasion of reproachful language for fame and honour is a nice thing tender as a womans chastity or like the face of the purest mirrour which a foul breath or an unwholesome air or a watry eye can fully and the beauty is lost although it be not dashed in pieces When a man or a sect is put to answer for themselves in the matter of reputation they with their distinctions wipe the glasse and at last can do nothing but make it appear it was not broken but their very abstersion and laborious excuses confesse it was foul and faulty We must know that all sorts of men and all sects of Christians have not onely the mistakes of men and their prejudices to contest withall but the calumnies and aggravation of Devils and therefore it will much ease our accounts of dooms-day if we are now so prudent that men will not be offended here nor the Devils furnished with a libell in the day of our great account To this rule appertains that we be curious in observing the circumstances of men and satisfie all their reasonable expectations and do things at that rate of charity and religion which they are taught to be prescribed in the institution There are some things which are undecencies rather then sins such which may become a just Heathen but not a holy Christian a man of the world but not a man professing godlinesse Because when the greatnesse of the man or the excellency of the Law engage us upon great severity or an exemplar vertue whatsoever is lesse then it renders the man unworthy of the religion or the religion unworthy of its fame Men think themselves abused and therefore return shame for payment We never read of an Apostle that went to law and it is but reasonable to expect that of all men in the
man destroyes the efficacy of that authority that is just and naturall Now this is directly an office of Christian prudence that good offices and great authority become not ineffective by ill conduct Hither also it appertains that in publike or private reproofs we observe circumstances of time of place of person of disposition The vices of a King are not to be opened publikely and Princes must not be reprehended as a man reproves his servant but by Categoricall propositions by abstracted declamations by reprehensions of a crime in its single nature in private with humility and arts of insinuation And it is against Christian prudence not onely to use a Prince or great Personage with common language but it is as great an imprudence to pretend for such a rudenesse the examples of the Prophets in the old Testament For their case was extraordinary their calling peculiar their commission special their spirit miraculous their authority great as to that single mission they were like thunder or the trump of God sent to do that office plainly for the doing of which in that manner God had given no commission to any ordinary minister And therefore we never finde that the Priests did use that freedom which the Prophets were commanded to use whose very words being put into their mouthes it was not to be esteemed an humane act or a lawfull manner of doing an ordinary office neither could it become a precedent to them whose authority is precarious and without coërcion whose spirit is allayed with Christian graces and duties of humility whose words are not prescribed but left to the conduct of prudence as it is to be advised by publike necessities and private circumstances in ages where all things are so ordered that what was fit and pious amongst the old Jews would be incivil and intolerable to the latter Christians He also that reproves a vice should also treat the persons with honour and civilities and by fair opinions and sweet addresses place the man in the regions of modesty and the confines of grace and the fringes of repentance For some men are more restrained by an imperfect feared shame so long as they think there is a reserve of reputation which they may secure then they can be with all the furious declamations of the world when themselves are represented ugly and odious full of shame and actually punished with the worst of temporal evils beyond which he fears not here to suffer and from whence because he knows it will be hard for him to be redeemed by an after-game of reputation it makes him desperate and incorrigible by fraternall correption A zealous man hath not done his duty when he calls his brother drunkard and beast and he may better do it by telling him he is a man and sealed with Gods Spirit and honoured with the title of a Christian and is or ought to be reputed as a discreet person by his friends and a governour of a family or a guide in his countrey or an example to many and that it is huge pity so many excellent things should be sullied and allayed with what is so much below all this Then a reprover does his duty when he is severe against the vice and charitable to the man and carefull of his reputation and sorry for his reall dishonour and observant of his circumstances and watchfull to surprize his affections and resolutions there where they are most tender and most tenable and men will not be in love with vertue whither they are forced with rudenesse and incivilities but they love to dwell there whither they are invited friendly and where they are treated civilly and feasted liberally and lead by the hand and the eye to honour and felicity 6. It is a duty of Christian prudence not to suffer our souls to walk alone unguarded unguided and more single then in other actions and interests of our lives which are of lesse concernment Uae soli singulari said the Wise man Wo to him that is alone and if we consider how much God hath done to secure our souls and after all that how many wayes there are for a mans soul to miscarry we should think it very necessary to call to a spirituall man to take us by the hand to walk in the wayes of God and to lead us in all the regions of duty and thorow the labyrinths of danger For God who best loves and best knows how to value our souls set a price no lesse upon it then the life-blood of his Holy Son he hath treated it with variety of usages according as the world had new guises and new necessities he abates it with punishment to make us avoid greater he shortned our life that we might live for ever he turns sicknesse into vertue he brings good out of evil he turns enmities to advantages our very sins into repentances and stricter walking he defeats all the follies of men and all the arts of the Devil and layes snares and uses violence to secure our obedience he sends Prophets and Priests to invite us and to threaten us to felicities he restrains us with lawes and he bridles us with honour and shame reputation and society friends and foes he layes hold on us by the instruments of all the passions he is enough to fill our love he satisfies our hope he affrights us with fear he gives us part of our reward in hand and entertains all our faculties with the promises of an infinite and glorious portion he curbs our affections he directs our wills he instructs our understandings with Scriptures with perpetuall Sermons with good books with frequent discourses with particular observations and great experience with accidents and judgements with rare events of providence and miracles he sends his Angels to be our guard and to place us in opportunities of vertue and to take us off from ill company and places of danger to set us neer to good example he gives us his holy Spirit and he becomes to us a principle of a mighty grace descending upon us in great variety and undiscerned events besides all those parts of it which men have reduced to a method and an art and after all this he forgives us infinite irregularities and spares us every day and still expects and passes by and waits all our dayes still watching to do us good and to save that soul which he knowes is so precious one of the chiefest of the works of God and an image of divinity Now from all these arts and mercies of God besides that we have infinite reason to adore his goodnesse we have also a demonstration that we ought to do all that possibly we can and extend all our faculties and watch all our opportunities and take in all assistances to secure the interest of our soul for which God is pleased to take such care and use so many arts for its security If it were not highly worth it God would not do it If it were not all of it
had the gift of prophecy and by this character the Holy Ghost in all ages hath given us caution to avoid such assemblies where the speaking and ruling man shall be the canker of government and a preacher of sedition who shall either ungirt the Princes sword or unloose the button of their mantle 9. But the Apostles in all these prophecies have remarked lust to be the inseparable companion of these rebel prophets they are filthy dreamers they defile the flesh so Saint Jude they walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleannesse so Saint Peter they are lovers of pleasure more then lovers of God incontinent and sensual So Saint Paul and by this part of the character as the Apostles remarked the Nicolatians and Gnosticks the Carpocratians and all their impure branches which began in their dayes and multiplied after their deaths so they prophetically did foresignifie al such sects to be avoided who to catch silly women laden with sins preach doctrines of ease and licenciounesse apt to countenance and encourage vile things and not apt to restrain a passion or mortifie a sin Such as those that God sees no sin in his children that no sin will take us from Gods favour that all of such a party are elect people that God requires of us nothing but faith and that faith which justifies is nothing but a meere believing that we are Gods chosen that we are not tied to the law of commandments that the law of grace is a law of liberty and that liberty is to do what we list that divorces are to be granted upon many and slight causes that simple fornication is no sin these are such doctrines that upon the belief of them men may doe any thing and will do that which shall satisfie their own desires and promote their interests and seduce their shee disciples and indeed it was not without great reason that these three Apostles joyned lust and treason together because the former is so shameful a crime and renders a mans spirit naturally averse to government that if it falls upon the person of a Ruler it takes from him the spirit of government and renders him diffident pusillanimous private and ashamed if it happen in the person of a subject it makes him hate the man that shall shame him and punish him it hates the light and the Sun because that opens him and therefore is much more against government because that publishes and punishes too One thing I desire to be observed that though the primitive heresies now named and all those others their successors practised and taught horrid impurities yet they did not invade government at all and therefore those sects that these Apostles did signifie by prophecy and in whom both these are concentred were to appear in some latter times and the dayes of the prophecy were not then to be fulfill'd what they are since every age must judge by its own experience for its own interest But Christian religion is so pure and holy that chastity is sometimes used for the whole religion and to do an action chastly signifies purity of intention abstraction from the world and separation from low and secular ends the virginity of the soul and its union with God and all deviations and estrangements from God and adhesion to forbidden objects is called fornication and adultery Those sects therefore that teach incourage or practise impious or unhallowed mixtures and shameful lusts are issues of the impure spirit and most contrary to God who can behold no unclean thing 10. Those prophets and Pastors that pretend severity and live loosely or are severe in small things and give liberty in greater or forbid some sins with extreme rigour and yet practise or teach those that serve their interest or constitute their sect are to be suspected and avoided accordingly Nihil est hominum ineptâ persuasione falsius nec fictâ severitate ineptius All ages of the Church were extremely curious to observe when any new teachers did arise what kinde of lives they lived and if they pretended severely and to a strict life then they knew their danger doubled for it is certain all that teach doctrines contrary to the established religion delivered by the Apostles all they are evil men God will not suffer a good man to be seduced damnably much lesse can he be a seducer of others and therefore you shall still observe the false Apostles to be furious and vehement in their reproofs and severe in their animadversions of others but then if you watch their private or stay till their numbers are full or observe their spiritual habits you shall finde them indulgent to themselves or to return from their disguises or so spiritually wicked that their pride or their revenge their envie or their detraction their scorn or their complacency in themselves their desire of preheminence and their impatience of arrival shall place them far enough in distance from a poor carnal sinner whom they shall load with censures and an upbraiding scorn but themselves are like Devils the spirits of darknesse the spiritual wickednesses in high places Some sects of men are very angry against servants for recreating and easing their labours with a lesse prudent and an unsevere refreshment but the patron of their sect shall oppresse a wicked man and an unbelieving person they shall chastise a drunkard and entertain murmurrers they shall not abide an oath and yet shal force men to break three or four This sect is to be avoided because although it is good to be severe against carnal or bodily sins yet it is not good to mingle with them who chastise a bodily sin to make way for a spiritual or reprove a servant that his Lord may sin alone or punish a stranger and a begger that will not approve their sins but will have sins of his own Concering such persons Saint Paul hath told us that they shall not proeecd far but their folly shall bemanifest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Lysias Cito ad naturam sicta reciderunt sua They that dissemble their sin and their manners or make severity to serve loosnesse and an imaginary vertue to minister to a real vice they that abhor Idols and would commit sacrilege chastise a drunkard and promote sedition declaime against the vanity of great persons and then spoil them of their goods reform manners and engrosse estates talk godly and do impiously these are teachers which the Holy spirit of God hath by three Apostles bid us to beware of and decline as we would run from the hollownesse of a grave or the despaires and sorrows of the damned 11. The substance of al is this that we must not chose our doctrine by our guide but our guide by the doctrine if we doubt concerning the doctrine we may judge of that by the lives and designes of the Teachers By their fruits you shall know them and by the plain words of the scripture by the Apostles Creed and by
gerens Nimisque pulchram turpibus faciem induens It is a crafty life that men live carrying designes and living upon secret purposes Pudor impudentem celat audacem quies piet as nefandum vera fallaces probant simulantque molles dura Men pretend modesty and under that red vail are bold against Superiours saucy to their betters upon pretences of religion invaders of others rights by false propositions in Theology pretending humility they challenge superiority above all orders of men and for being thought more holy think that they have title to govern the world they bear upon their face great religion and are impious in their relations false to their trust unfaithful to their friend unkinde to their dependants 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 turning up the white of their eye and seeking for reputation in the streets so did some of the old hypocrites the Gentile Pharisees Asperum cultum intonsum caput negligentiorem barbam nitidum argento odium cubile humi positum quicquid aliud ambitionem viâ perversâ sequitur being the softest persons under an austere habit the loosest livers under a contracted brow under a pale face having the reddest and most spritely livers these kinde of men have abused all ages of the world and all religions it being so easie in nature so prepared and ready for mischiefs that men should creep into opportunities of devouring the flock upon pretence of defending them and to raise their estates upon colour of saving their souls Introrsum turpes speciosi pelle decorâ Men that are like painted sepulchres entertainment for the eye but images of death chambers of rottennesse and repositories of dead mens bones It may sometimes concern a man to seem religious Gods glory may be shewed by fair appearances or the edification of our brother or the reputation of a cause but this is but sometimes but it alwayes concerns us that we be religious and we may reasonably think that if the colours of religion so well do advantage to us the substance and reality would do it much more For no man can have a good by seeming religious and another by not being so the power of godlinesse never destroys any well built fabrick that was raised upon the reputation of religion and its pretences Nunquam est peccare utile quia semper est turpe said Cicero It is never profitable to sin because it is always base and dishonest and if the face of religion could do a good turn which the heart and substance does destroy then religion it self were the greatest hypocrite in the world and promises a blessing which it never can perform but must be beholding to its enemy to verifie its promises No. We shall be sure to feel the blessings of both the worlds if we serve in the offices of religion devoutly and charitably before men and before God if we ask of God things honest in the sight of men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Pythagoras gave in precept praying to God with a free heart and a publike prayer and doing before men things that are truly pleasing to God turning our heart outward and our face inwards that is conversing with men as in the presence of God and in our private towards God being as holy and devout as if we prayed in publike and in the corners of the streets Pliny praising of Ariston gave him the title of an honest and hearty religion Ornat hunc maguitudo animi quae nihil ad ostentationem omnia ad conscientiam refert rectèque facti non ex populi sermone mercedem sed ex facto petit And this does well state the question of a sincere religion and an ingenuous goodnesse It requires that we do nothing for ostentation but every thing for conscience and we may be obliged in conscience to publish our manner of lives but then it must be not that we may have a popular noise for a reward but that God may be glorified by our publike worshippings and others edified by our good examples Neither doth the sincerity of our religion require that we should not conceal our sins for he that sins and dares to own them publikely may become impudent and so long as in modesty we desire our shame should be hid and men to think better of us then we deserve I say for no other reason but either because we would not derive the ill examples to others or the shame to our selves we are within the protection of one of vertues sisters and we are not far from the gates of the kingdom of heaven easie and apt to be invited in and not very unworthy to enter But if any other principle draws the vail if we conceal our vices because we would be honoured for sanctity or because we would not be hindered in our designes we serve the interest of pride and ambition covetousnesse or vanity if an innocent purpose hides the ulcer it does half heal it but if it retires into the secrecy of sin and darknesse it turns into a plague and infects the heart and it dies infallibly of a double exulceration The Macedonian boy that kept the coal in his flesh and would not shake his arm lest he should disturbe the sacrifice or discompose the ministery before Alexander the Great concealed his pain to the honour of patience and religion But the Spartan boy who suffered the little fox to eat his bowels rather then confesse his theft when he was in danger of discovery payed the price of a bold hypocrisie that is the dissimulation reproveable in matter of manners which conceals one sin to make way for another 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lucian notes it of his Philosophical hypocrites dissemblers in matter of deportment and religion they seem severe abroad but they enter into the vaults of harlots and are not ashamed to see a naked sin in the midst of its uglinesse and undressed circumstances A mighty wrastler that had won a crown at Olympus for contending prosperously was observed to turn his head and go forward with his face upon his shoulder to behold a fair woman that was present and he lost the glory of his strength when he became so weak that a woman could turn his head about which his adversary could not These are the follies and weaknesses of man and dishonours to religion when a man shall contend nobly and do handsomly and then be taken in a base or a dishonorable action and mingle venome with his delicious ointment Quid quod olet gravius mistum dia pasmate virus Atque duplex animae longius exit odor When Fescenia perfumed her breath that she might not smell of wine she condemned the crime of drunkennesse but grew ridiculous when the wine broke thorow the cloud of a tender perfume and the breath of a Lozenge and that indeed is the reward of an hypocrite his laborious arts of concealment furnish all the world with declamation and severity against the crime which himself condemnes with
of Moses law but would use it when there was just reason which was one part of the things which the using of circumcision could signifie So our blessed Saviour pretended that he would passe forth beyond Emaus out if he intended not to do it yet he did no injury to the two disciples for whose good it was that he intended to make this offer and neither did he prevaricate the strictnesse of simplicity and sincerity because they were persons with whom he had made no contracts to whom he had passed no obligation and in the nature of the thing it is proper and natural by an offer to give an occasion to another to do a good action and in case it succeeds not then to do what we intended not and so the offer was conditional But in all cases of bargaining although the actions of themselves may receive naturally another sense yet I am bound to follow that signification which may not abuse my brother or pollute my own honesty or snatch or rifle his interest Because it can be no ingredient into the commutation if I exchange a thing which he understands not and is by errour lead into this mistake and I hold forth the fire and delude him and amuse his eye for by me he is made worse But secondly as our actions must be of a sincere and determinate signification in contracts so must our words in which the rule of the old Roman honesty was this Uterque si ad eloquendum venerit non plus quam semel eloquetur Every one that speaks is to speak but once that is but one thing because commonly that is truth truth being but one but errour and falsehood infinitely various and changeable and we shall seldom see a man so stiffned with impiety as to speak little and seldome and pertinaciously adhere to a single sense and yet that at first and all the way after shall be a lie Men use to go about when they tell a lie and devise circumstances and stand off at distance and cast a cloud of words and intricate the whole affair and cozen themselves first and then cozen their brother while they have minced the case of conscience into little particles and swallowed the lie by crumbs so that no one passage of it should rush against the conscience nor do hurt until it is all got into the belly and unites in the effect for by that time two men are abused the Merchant in his soul and the Contractor in his interest and this is the certain effect of much talking and little honesty but he that means honestly must speak but once that is one truth and hath leave to vary within the degrees of just prices and fair conditions which because they have a latitude may be enlarged or restrained according as the Merchant please save onely he must never prevaricate the measures of equity and the proportions of reputation and the publike But in all the parts of this traffick let our words be the significations of our thoughts and our thoughts designe nothing but the advantages of a permitted exchange In this case the severity is so great so exact and so without variety of case that it is not lawfull for a man to tell a truth with a collateral designe to cozen and abuse and therefore at no hand can it be permitted to lie or equivocate to speak craftily or to deceive by smoothnesse or intricacy or long discourses But this precept of simplicity in matter of contract hath one step of severity beyond this In matter of contract it is not lawfull so much as to conceal the secret and undiscernable faults of the merchandize but we must acknowledge them or else affix prices made diminute and lessened to such proportions and abatements as that fault should make Caveat emptor is a good caution for him that buyes and it secures the seller in publike Judicature but not in court of conscience and the old lawes of the Romans were as nice in this affair as the conscience of a Christian. Titus Claudius Centimalus was commanded by the Augures to pull down his house in the Coelian mountain because it hindred their observation of the flight of birds he exposes his house to sale Publius Calpurnius buyes it and is forced to pluck it down But complaining to the Judges had remedy because Claudius did not tell him the true state of the inconvenience He that sels a house infected with the plague or haunted with evil spirits sels that which is not worth such a price which it might be put to if it were in health and peace and therefore cannot demand it but openly and upon publication of the evil To which also this is to be added that in some great faults and such as have danger as in the cases now specified no diminution of the price is sufficient to make the Merchant just and sincere unlesse he tels the appendant mischief because to some persons in many cases and to all persons in some cases it is not at all valuable and they would not possesse it if they might for nothing Marcus Gratidianus bought a house of Sergius Orata which himself had sold before But because Sergius did not declare the appendant vassalage and service he was recompenced by the Judges for although it was certain that Gratidianus knew it because it had been his own yet Oportuit ex bonâ fide denunciari said the law it concerned the ingenuity of a good man to have spoken it openly In all cases it must be confessed in the price or in the words But when the evil may be personal and more then matter of interest and money it ought to be confessed and then the goods prescribed lest by my act I do my neighbour injury and I receive profit by his dammage Certain it is that ingenuity is the sweetest and easiest way there is no difficulty or cases of conscience in that and it can have no objection in it but that possibly sometimes we lose a little advantage which it may be we may lawfully acquire but still we secure a quiet conscience and if the merchandise be not worth so much to me then neither is it to him if it be to him it is also to me and therefore I have no losse no hurt to keep it if it be refused but he that secures his own profit and regards not the interest of another is more greedy of a full purse then of a holy conscience and prefers gain before justice and the wealth of his private before the necessity of publike society and commerce being a son of earth whose centre is it self without relation to heaven that moves upon anothers point and produces flowers for others and sends influence upon all the world and receives nothing in return but a cloud of perfume or the smell of a fat sacrifice God sent justice into the world that all conditions in their several proportions should be equall and he that receives a good should pay
say he intends not to afflict the disobedient with scorpions and axes and it had been hugely necessary that God had scar'd the Jews from their sins by threatning the pains of hell to them that disobeyed if he intended to inflict it for although many men would have ventured the future since they are not affrighted with the present and visible evil yet some persons would have had more Philosophical and spiritual apprehensions then others and have been infallibly cured in all their temptations with the fear of an eternall pain and however whether they had or no yet since it cannot be understood how it consists with the Divine justice to exact a pain bigger then he threatned greater then he gave warning of so we are sure it is a great way off from Gods mercy to do so He that usually imposes lesse and is loth to inflict any and very often forgives it all is hugely distant from exacting an eternall punishment when the most that he threatned and gave notice of was but a temporall The effect of this consideration I would have to be this that we may publikely worship this mercy of God which is kept in secret and that we be not too forward in sentencing all Heathens and prevaricating Jews to the eternall pains of hell but hope that they have a portion in the secrets of the Divine mercy where also unlesse many of us have some little portions deposited our condition will be very uncertain and sometimes most miserable God knows best how intolerably accursed a thing it is to perish in the eternall flames of hell and therefore he is not easie to inflict it and if the joyes of heaven be too great to be expected upon too easie termes certainly the pains of the damned are infinitely too big to passe lightly upon persons who cannot help themselves and who if they were helped with clearer revelations would have avoided it But as in these things we must not pry into the secrets of the Divine Oeconomy being sure whether it be so or no it is most just even as it is so we may expect to see the glories of the Divine mercy made publike in unexpected instances at the great day of manifestation And indeed our dead many times go forth from our hands very strangely and carelesly without prayers without Sacraments without consideration without counsel and without comfort and to dresse the souls of our dear people to so sad a parting is an imployment we therefore omit not alwayes because we are negligent but because the work is sad and allay the affections of the world with those melancholy circumstances but if God did not in his mercies make secret and equivalent provisions for them and take care of his redeemed ones we might unhappily meet them in a sad eternity and without remedy weep together and groan for ever But God hath provided better things for them that they without us that is without our assistances shall be made perfect Sermon XXVII The Miracles of the Divine Mercy Part III. THere are very many more orders and conjugations of mercies but because the numbers of them naturally tend to their own greatnesse that is to have no measure I must reckon but a few more and them also without order for that they do descend upon us we see and feel but by what order of things or causes is as undiscerned as the head of Nilus or a sudden remembrance of a long neglected and forgotten proposition 1. But upon this account it is that good men have observed that the providence of God is so great a provider for holy living and does so certainly minister to religion that nature and chance the order of the world and the influences of heaven are taught to serve the ends of the Spirit of God and the spirit of a man I do not speak of the miracles that God hath in the severall periods of the world wrought for the establishing his lawes and confirming his promises and securing our obedience though that was all the way the overflowings and miracles of mercy as well as power but that which I consider is that besides the extraordinary emanations of the Divine power upon the first and most solemn occasions of an institution and the first beginnings of a religion such as were the wonders God did in Egypt and in the wildernesse preparatory to the sanction of that law and the first covenant and the miracles wrought by Christ and his Apostles for the founding and the building up the religion of the Gospel and the new covenant God does also do things wonderfull and miraculous for the promoting the ordinary and lesse solemn actions of our piety and to assist and accompany them in a constant and regular succession It was a strange variety of naturall efficacies that Manna should stink in 24. hours if gathered upon Wednesday and Thursday and that it should last till 48. hours if gathered upon the Even of the Sabbath and that it should last many hundreds of yeers when placed in the Sanctuary by the ministery of the high Priest but so it was in the Jews religion and Manna pleased every palate and it filled all appetites and the same measure was a different proportion it was much and it was little as if nature that it might serve religion had been taught some measures of infinity which is every where and no where filling all things and circumscribed with nothing measured by one Omer and doing the work of two like the crowns of Kings fitting the browes of Nimrod and the most mighty Warriour and yet not too large for the temples of an infant Prince And not onely is it thus in nature but in contingencies and acts depending upon the choice of men for God having commanded the sons of Israel to go up to Jerusalem to worship thrice every yeer and to leave their borders to be guarded by women and children and sick persons in the neighbourhood of diligent and spitefull enemies yet God so disposed of their hearts and opportunities that they never entered the land when the people were at their solemnity untill they desecrated their rites by doing at their Passeover the greatest sin and treason in the world till at Easter they crucified the Lord of life and glory they were secure in Jerusalem and in their borders but when they had destroyed religion by this act God took away their security and Titus besieged the City at the feast of Easter that the more might perish in the deluge of the Divine indignation To this observation the Jews adde that in Jerusalem no man ever had a fall that came thither to worship that at their solemn festivals there was reception in the Town for all the inhabitants of the land concerning which although I cannot affirm any thing yet this is certain that no godly person among all the tribes of Israel was ever a begger but all the variety of humane chances were over-ruled to the purposes of providence and
is There is a yet in the Text For all this yet doth God devise means that his banished be not expelled from him All this sorrow and trouble is but a phantasme and receives its account and degrees from our present conceptions and the proportion to our relishes and gust When Pompey saw the Ghost of his first Lady Julia who vexed his rest and his conscience for superinducing Cornelia upon her bed within the ten moneths of mourning he presently fancied it either to be an illusion or else that death could be no very great evil Aut nihil est sensus animis in morte relictum Aut morsipsa nihil Either my dead wife knows not of my unhandsome marriage and forgetfulnesse of her or if she does then the dead live longae canitis si cognita vitae Mors media est Death is nothing but the middle point between two lives between this and another concerning which comfortable mystery the holy Scripture instructs our faith and entertains our hope in these words God is still the God of Abraham Isaak and Jacob for all do live to him and the souls of Saints are with Christ I desire to be dissolved saith S. Paul and to be with Christ for that is much better and Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord they rest from their labours and their works follow them For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God a house not made with hands eternall in the heavens and this state of separation S. Paul calls a being absent from the body and being present with the Lord This is one of Gods means which he hath devised that although our Dead are like persons banished from this world yet they are not expelled from God They are in the hands of Christ they are in his presence they are or shall be clothed with a house of Gods making they rest from all their labours all tears are wiped from their eyes and all discontents from their spirits and in the state of separation before the soul be reinvested with her new house the spirits of al persons are with God so secured and so blessed and so sealed up for glory that this state of interval and imperfection is in respect of its certain event and end infinitely more desirable then all the riches and all the pleasures and all the vanities and all the Kingdoms of this world I will not venture to determine what are the circumstances of the aboad of Holy Souls in their separate dwellings and yet possibly that might be easier then to tell what or how the soul is and works in this world where it is in the body tanquam in alienâ domo as in a prison in fetters and restraints for here the soal is discomposed and hindered it is not as it shall be as it ought to be as it was intended to be it is not permitted to its own freedom and proper operation so that all that we can understand of it here is that it is so incommodated with a troubled and abated instrument that the object we are to consider cannot be offered to us in a right line in just and equal propositions or if it could yet because we are to understand the soul by the soul it becomes not onely a troubled and abused object but a crooked instrument and we here can consider it just as a weak eye can behold a staffe thrust into the waters of a troubled river the very water makes a refraction and the storm doubles the refraction and the water of the eye doubles the species and there is nothing right in the thing the object is out of its just place and the medium is troubled and the organ is impotent At cum exierit in liberum coelum quasi in domum suam venerit when the soul is entred into her own house into the free regions of the rest and the neighbourhood of heavenly joyes then its operations are more spiritual proper and proportioned to its being and though we cannot see at such a distance yet the object is more fitted if we had a capable understanding it is in it self in a more excellent and free condition Certain it is that the body does hinder many actions of the soul it is an imperfect body and a diseased brain or a violent passion that makes fools no man hath a foolish soul and the reasonings of men have infinite difference and degrees by reason of the bodies constitution Among beasts which have no reason there is a greater likenesse then between men who have as by faces it is easier to know a man from a man then a sparrow from a sparrow or a squirrel from a squirrel so the difference is very great in our souls which difference because it is not originally in the soul and indeed cannot be in simple and spiritual substances of the same species or kind it must needs drive wholly from the body from its accidents and circumstances from whence it follows that because the body casts fetters and restraints hindrances and impediments upon the soul that the soul is much freer in the state of separation and if it hath any any act of life it is much more noble and expedite That the soul is alive after our death S. Paul affirms Christ died for us that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with him Now it were strange that we should be alive and live with Christ and yet do no act of life the body when it is asleep does many and if the soul does none the principle is lesse active then the instrument but if it does any act at all in separation it must necessarily be an act or effect of understanding there is nothing else it can do But this it can For it is but a weak and an unlearned proposition to say That the Soul can do nothing of it self nothing without the phantasmes and provisions of the body For 1. In this life the soul hath one principle clearly separate abstracted immaterial I mean the Spirit of grace which is a principle of life and action and in many instances does not all at communicate with matter as in the infusion superinduction and the creation of spiritual graces 2. As nutrition generation eating and drinking are actions proper to the body and its state so extasies visions raptures intuitive knowledge and consideration of its self acts of volition and reflex acts of understanding are proper to the soul. 3. And therefore it is observable that S. Paul said that he knew not whether his visions and raptures were in or out of the body for by that we see his judgement of the thing that one was as likely as the other neither of them impossible or unreasonable and therefore that the soul is as capable of action alone as in conjunction 4. If in the state of blessednesse there are some actions of the soul which doe not passe through
the body such as contemplation of God and conversing with spirits and receiving those influences and rare immissions which coming from the Holy and mysterious Trinity make up the crown of glory it follows that the necessity of the bodies ministery is but during the state of this life and as long as it converses with fire and water and lives with corn and flesh and is fed by the satisfaction of material appetits which necessity and manner of conversation when it ceases it can be no longer necessary for the soul to be served by phantasmes and material representations 5. And therefore when the body shall be re-united it shall be so ordered that then the body shall confesse it gives not any thing but receives all its being and operation its manner and abode from the soul and that then it comes not to serve a necessity but to partake a glory For as the operations of the soul in this life begin in the body and by it the object is transmitted to the soul so then they shall begin in the soul and pass to the body and as the operations of the soul by reason of its dependence on the body are animal natural and material so in the resurrection the body shall be spiritual by reason of the preeminence influence and prime operation of the soul. Now between these two states stands the state of separation in which the operations of the soul are of a middle nature that is not so spirituall as in the resurrection and not so animal and natural as in the state of conjunction To all which I adde this consideration That our souls have the same condition that Christs soul had in the state of separation because he took on him all our nature and all our condition and it is certain Christs soul in the three dayes of his separation did exercise acts of life of joy and triumph and did not sleep but visited the souls of the Fathers trampled upon the pride of Devils and satisfied those longing souls which were Prisoners of hope and from all this we may conclude that the souls of all the servants of Christ are alive and therfore do the actions of life and proper to their state and therefore it is highly probable that the soul works clearer and understands brighter and discourses wiser and rejoyces louder and loves noblier and desires purer and hopes stronger then it can do here But if these arguments should fail yet the felicity of Gods Saints cannot fail For suppose the body to be a necessary instrument but out of tune and discomposed by sin and anger by accident and chance by defect and imperfections yet that it is better then none at all and that if the soul works imperfectly with an imperfect body that then she works not at all when she hath none and suppose also that the soul should be as much without sense or perception in death as it is in a deep sleep which is the image and shadow of death yet then God devises other means that his banished be not expelled from him For 2. God will restore the soul to the body and raise the body to such a perfection that it shall be an Organ fitt to praise him upon it shall be made spiritual to minister to the soul when the soul is turned into a Spirit then the soul shall be brought forth by Angels from her incomparable and easie bed from her rest in Christs Holy Bosome and be made perfect in her being and in all her operations And this shall first appear by that perfection which the soul shall receive as instrumental to the last judgement for then she shall see clearly all the Records of this world all the Register of her own memory For all that we did in this life is laid up in our memories and though dust and forgetfulnesse be drawn upon them yet when God shall lift us from our dust then shall appear clearly all that we have done written in the Tables of our conscience which is the souls memory We see many times and in many instances that a great memory is hindered and put out and we thirty years after come to think of something that lay so long under a curtain we think of it suddenly and without a line of deduction or proper consequence And all those famous memories of Simonides and Theodectes of Hortensius and Seneca of Sceptius Metrodorus and Carneades of Cyneas the Embassadour of Pyrrhus are onely the Records better kept and lesse disturbed by accident and desease For even the memory of Herods son of Athens of Bathyllus and the dullest person now alive is so great and by God made so sure a record of all that ever he did that assoon as ever God shall but tune our instrument and draw the curtains and but light up the candle of immortality there we shal finde it all there we shall see all and all the world shall see all then we shall be made fit to converse with God after the manner of Spirits we shall be like to Angels In the mean time although upon the perswasion of the former discourse it be highly probable that the souls of Gods servants do live in a state of present blessednesse and in the exceeding joyes of a certain expectation of the revelation of the day of the Lord and the coming of Jesus yet it will concern us onely to secure our state by holy living and leave the event to God that as S. Paul said whether present or absent whether sleeping or waking whether perceiving or perceiving not we may be accepted of him that when we are banished this world and from the light of the sun we may not be expelled from God and from the light of his countenance but that from our beds of sorrows our souls may passe into the bosome of Christ and from thence to his right hand in the day of sentence For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ then if we have done wel in the body we shal never be expelled from the beatifical presence of God but be domesticks of his family and heires of his Kingdom and partakers of his glory Amen I Have now done with my Text but yet am to make you another Sermon I have told you the necessity and the state of death it may be too largely for such a sad story I shal therefore now with a better compendium teach you how to live by telling you a plain narrative of a life which if you imitate and write after the copy it will make that death shall not be an evil but a thing to be desired and to be reckoned amongst the purchases and advantages of your fortune When Martha and Mary went to weep over the grave of their brother Christ met them there and preached a Funeral Sermon discoursing of the resurrection and applying to the purposes of faith and confession of Christ and glorification of God We have no other we can have no better precedent
despiser of base things hugely loving to oblige others and very unwilling to be in arrear to any upon the stock of courtesies and liberality so free in all acts of favour that she would not stay to hear her self thanked as being unwilling that what good went from her to a needful or an obliged person should ever return to her again she was an excellent friend and hugely dear to very many especially to the best and most discerning persons to all that conversed with her and could understand her great worth and sweetnesse she was of an Honourable a nice and tender reputation and of the pleasures of this world which were laid before her in heaps she took a very small and inconsiderable share as not loving to glut her self with vanity or to take her portion of good things here below If we look on her as a Wife she was chast and loving fruitful and discreet humble and pleasant witty and complyant rich and fair wanted nothing to the making her a principal and a precedent to the best Wives of the world but a long life and a full age If we remember her as a Mother she was kinde and severe careful and prudent very tender not at al fond a greater lover of her childrens souls then of their bodies and one that would value them more by the strict rules of honour and proper worth then by their relation to her self Her servants found her prudent and fit to Govern and yet open-handed and apt to reward a just Exactor of their duty and a great Rewarder of their diligence She was in her house a comfort to her dearest Lord a guide to her children a Rule to her Servants an example to all But as she related to God in the offices of Religion she was even and constant silent and devout prudent and material she loved what she now enjoyes and she feared what she never felt and God did for her what she never did expect Her fears went beyond all her evil and yet the good which she hath received was and is and ever shall be beyond all her hopes She lived as we al should live and she died as I fain would die Et cum supremos Lachesis perneverit annos Non aliter cineres mando jacere meos I pray God I may feel those mercies on my death-bed that she felt and that I may feel the same effect of my repentance which she feels of the many degrees of her innocence Such was her death that she did not die too soon and her life was so useful and so excellent that she could not have lived too long Nemo parum diu vixit qui virtutis perfectae perfecto functus est munere and as now in the grave it shall not be enquired concerning her how long she lived but how well so to us who live after her to suffer a longer calamity it may be some ease to our sorrows and some guide to our lives and some securitie to our conditions to consider that God hath brought the piety of a yong Lady to the early rewards of a never ceasing and never dying eternity of glory And we also if we live as she did shall partake of the same glories not onely having the honour of a good name and a dear and honoured memory but the glories of these glories the end of all excellent labours and all prudent counsels and all holy religion even the salvation of our souls in that day when all the Saints and amongst them this excellent Woman shall be shown to all the world to have done more and more excellent things then we know of or can describe Mors illos consecrat quorum exitum qui timent laudant Death consecrates and makes sacred that person whose excellency was such that they that are not displeased at the death cannot dispraise the life but they that mourn sadly think they can never commend sufficiently The end CLERVS DOMINI OR A DISCOURSE OF THE DIVINE INSTITUTION Necessity Sacrednesse and Separation OF THE OFFICE MINISTERIAL TOGETHER WITH THE NATURE AND MANNER OF its Power and Operation WRITTEN By the speciall command of our late KING BY JER TAYLOR D. D. ACADEMIA â—† OXONIENSIS â—† LONDON Printed by James Flesher for R. Royston at the Angel in Ivie-Lane 1651. THE Divine institution and necessity OF THE OFFICE MINISTERIAL c. SECT I. WHen severall Nations and differing Religions have without any famous mutuall intercourse agreed upon some common rites and formes of Religion because one common effect cannot descend from chance it is certain they come to them by reason or tradition from their common Parents or by imitation something that hath a common influence If reason be the principle then it is more regular and lasting and admits of no other variety then as some men grow unreasonable or that the reason ceases If tradition be the fountain then it is not onely universall and increases as the world is peopled but remains also so long as we retain reverence to our Parents or that we doe not think our selves wiser then our forefathers But these two have produced Customes and Laws of the highest obligation for whatsoever we commonly call the Law of Nature it is either a custome of all the world derived from Noah or Adam or else it is therefore done because naturall reason teaches us to doe it in the order to the preservation of our selves and the publique But imitation of the customes of a wise nation is something lesse and yet it hath produced great consent in externall rites and offices of Religion And since there is in ceremonies so great indifferency there being no antecedent law to determine their practise nothing in their nature to make them originally necessary they grow into a Custome or a Law according as they are capable For if a wise Prince or a Governour or a Nation or a famous family hath chosen rites of common Religion such as were consonant to the Analogy of his duty expressive of his sense decent in the expression grave in the forme or full of ornament in their representment such a thing is capable of no greater reason and needs no greater authority but hath been and may reasonably enough be imitated upon the reputation of their wisdome and disinterested choice who being known wise persons or nations took them first into their religious offices Thus the Jews and the Gentiles used white garments in their holy offices and the Christians thought it reasonable enough from so united example to doe so too Example was reason great enough for that The Gentile Priests were forbid to touch a dead body to eate leavened bread to mingle with secular imployments during their attendance in holy offices these they took up from the pattern of the Jews and professed it reasonable to imitate a wise people in the rituals of their religion The Gentile Priests used Ring and Staffe and Mitre saith Philostratus the Primitive
Bishops did so too and in the highest detestation of their follies thought they might wisely enough imitate their innocent customes and Priestly ornaments and hoped they might better reconcile their mindes to the Christian Religion by compliance in ceremonials then exasperate them by rejecting their ancient and innocent ceremonies for so the Apostles invited and inticed Judaisme into Christianity And Tertullian complains of the Devils craft who by imitating the Christian rites reconciled mens mindes with that compliance to a more charitable opinion of the Gentile superstition The Devill intending to draw the professors of truth to his own portion or to preserve his own in the same fetters he first put upon them imitates the rites of our religion adopting them into his superstition He baptizes some of his disciples and when he initiates them to the worship of Mithra promiseth them pardon of sins by that rite he signes his souldiers in their forehead he represents the oblation of bread and introduces representments of the resurrection and laboriously gets martyrs to his cause His Priests marry but once he hath his virgins and his abstemious and continent followers that what Christians love and the world commends in them being adopted into the rituals of Idolatry may allure some with the beauty and fair imagery and abuse others with colour and phantastick faces And thus also all wise men that intended to perswade others to their religion did it by retaining as much as they innocently could of the other that the change might not be too violent and the persons be more endeared by common rites and the relation and charity of likenesse and imitation Thus did the Church and the Synagogue thus did the Gentiles both to the Jews and to the Christians and all wise men did so The Gentiles offered first fruits to their Gods and their tithes to Hercules kept vigils and anniversaries forbad marriages without the consent of Parents and clandestine contracts these were observed with some variety according as the people were civill or learned and according to the degree of the tradition or as the thing was reasonable so these customes were more or lesse universall But when all wise people nay when absolutely all the world have consented upon a rite it cannot derive from a fountain lower then the current but it must either be a command which God hath given to all the world and so Socrates in Xenophon Quod ab omnibus gentibus observatum est id non nisi à Deo sancitum esse dicendum est or a tradition or a law descending from our common parents or a reason derived from the nature of things there cannot in the world be any thing great enough to take away such a rite except an expresse divine commandement and a man by the same reason may marry his nearest relative as he may deny to worship God by the recitation of his prayses and excellencies because reason and a very common tradition have made almost all the world consent in these two things that we must abstain from the mixtures of our nearest kindred and that we must worship God by recounting and declaring excellent things concerning him I have instanced in two things in which I am sure to finde the fewest adversaries I said the fewest for there are some men which have lost all humanity but these two great instances are not attested with so universall a tradition and practise of the world as this that is now in question For in some nations they have married their sisters so did the Magi among the Persians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Tatianus in Clemens Alexandrinus and Bardisanes Syrus in Eusebius And the Greeks worshipped Hercules by railing and Mercury by throwing stones at him But there was never any people but had their Priests and Presidents of religious rites and kept holy things within a mure that the people might not approach to handle the mysteries and therefore besides that it is a recession from the customes of mankinde and charges us with the disrespect of all the world which is an incuriousnesse next to infinite it is also a doing against that which all the reason of all the wise men of the world have chosen antecedently or ex post facto and he must have a strange understanding who is not perswaded by that which hath determined all the world For religion cannot be at all in communities of men without some to guide to minister to preserve and to prescribe the offices and ministeries What can profane holy things but that which makes them common and what can make them common more then when common persons handle them when there is no distinction of Persons in their ministration For although places are good accessories to religion yet in all religions they were so accidentall to it that a sacrifice might hallow the place but the place unlesse it were naturally impure could not desecrate the sacrifice and therefore Jacob worshipped upon a stone offered upon a turfe and the Arke rested in Obed-Edoms house and was holy in Dagons Temple and hils and groves fields and orchards according to the severall customes of the nations were the places of addresse But a common person ministring was so near a circumstance and was so mingled with the action that since the materiall part and exteriour actions of Religion could be acted and personated by any man there was scarce any thing left to make it religious but the attrectation of the rites by a holy person A Holy place is something a separate time is something a prescript form of words is more separate and solemn actions are more yet but all these are made common by a cōmon person therfore without a distinction of persons have not a natural and reasonable distinction of solemnity exterior religion And indeed it were a great disreputation to religion that all great and publique things and every artifice or profitable science should in all the societies of men be distinguished by professors artists and proper ministers and onely religion should lie in common apt to be bruised by the hard hand of mechanicks and sullied by the ruder touch of undiscerning and undistinguished persons for although the light of it shines to all and so farre every mans interest is concerned in religion yet it were not handsome that every man should take the taper in his hand and religion is no more to be handled by all men then the laws are to be dispensed by all by whom they are to be obeyed though both in religion and the laws all men have a common interest For since all meanes must have some equality or proportion towards their end that they may of their own being or by institution be symbolicall it is but reasonable that by elevated and sublimed instruments we should be promoted towards an end supernaturall and divine now besides that of all the instruments of distinction the
were the Elei among the Grecians as being sacred to Jupiter safe from the hostility of a professed enemy the same which was observed amongst the Romans Quis homo est tantâ confidentiâ Qui sacerdotem audeat violare At magno cum malo suo fecit Herculè But this is but one instance of advantage The Gentiles having once separated their Priests and affixed them to the ministeries of religion thought nothing great enough either to expresse the dignity of their imployment or good enough to doe honour to their persons and it is largely discoursed of by Cicero in the case of the Roman Augures Maximum autem praestantissimum in Rep. jus est Augurum cum est authoritati conjunctum neque verò hoc quia sum ipse Augur ita sentio sed quia sio existimare nos necesse est Quid enim majus est si de jure quaerimus quà m posse à summis imperiis summis potestatibus comitia tollere concilia vel instituta dimittere vel habita rescindere Quid magnificentius quà m posse decernere ut magistratu se abdicent consules quid religiosius quà m cum populo cum plebe agendi jus aut dare aut non dare It was a vast power these men had to be in proportion to their greatest honour they had power of bidding and dissolving publick meetings of indicting solemnities of religion just as the Christian Bishops had in the beginning of Christianity they commanded publick fasts at their indiction onely they were celebrated Benè autem quod Episcopi universae plebi mandare jejunia assolent non dico industriâ stipium conferendarum ut vestrae capturae est sed interdum aliquâ sollicitudinis Ecclestasticae causâ The Bishops also called publick conventions Ecclesiasticall Aguntur praecepta per Graecias illas certis in locis concilia ex universis Ecclesiis per quae et altior a quaeque in commune tractantur ipsarepraesentatio totius nominis Christiani magna veneratione celebratur It was so in all religions the Antistites the presidents of rites and guides of consciences had great immissions and influences into the republick and communities of men and they verified the saying of Tacitus Deûm munere summum pontisicem etiam summum hominem esse non aemulatione non odio aut privatis affectionibus obnoxium The chief Priest was ever the chief man and free from the envies and scornes and troubles of popular peevishnesse and contumacy and that I may use the expression of Tacitus utque glisceret dignatio sacerdotum for all the great traverses of the republick were in their disposing atque ipsis promptior animus foret ad capessendas ceremonias the very lower institutions of their religion were set up with the markes of speciall laws and priviledges insomuch that the seat of the Empresse in the Theatre was among the Vestall virgins But the highest had all that could be heaped upon them till their honours were as sublimed as their functions Amongst the Ethiopians the Priests gave laws to their Princes and they used their power sometimes to the ruine of their Kings till they were justly removed Among the Egyptians the Priests were their Judges so they were in Athens for the Areopagites were Priests and the Druids among the Gaules were Judges of murder of titles of land of bounds and inheritances magno apud eos sunt honore nam fere de omnibus controversiis publicis privatisque constituunt and for the Magi of Persia and India Strabo reports 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they conversed with Kings meaning they were their counsellours and guides of their consciences And Herodotus in Eustathius tells us of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the divine order of Prophets or Priests in Delphos 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they did eate of the publick provisions together with Kings By these honours they gave testimony of their religion not onely separating certain persons for the service of their Temples but also separating their condition from the impurities and the contempt of the world as knowing that they who were to converse with their Gods were to be elevated from the common condition of men and vulgar miseries 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As soon as I was made a Priest of Idaean Jupiter all my garments were white and I declined to converse with mortals Novae sortis oportet illum esse qui jubente Deo canat said Seneca He had need be of a distinct and separate condition that sings to the honour and at the command of God thus it was among the Jews and Heathens SECT II. NOw if Christian Religion should doe otherwise then all the world hath done either it must be because the rites of Christianity are of no mystery and secret dispensation but common actions of an ordinary addresse and cheap devotion or else because we under value all religion that is because indeed we have nothing of it The first is dishonorable to Christianity and false as its greatest enemy The second is shame to us and both so unreasonable and unnaturall that if we separate not certain persons for the ministeries of Christianity we must confesse we have the worst religion or that we are the worst of men But let us consider it upon its proper grounds When Christ had chosen to himselfe twelve Apostles and was drawing now to the last scene of his life he furnished them with commissions and abilities to constitute and erect a Church and to transmit such powers as were apt for its continuation and perpetuity And therefore to the Apostles in the capacity of Church officers he made a promise That he would be with them untill the end of the world they might presonally be with him untill the end of the world but he could not be here with them who after a short course run were to goe hence and be no more seen and therefore for the verification of the promise it is necessary that since the promise was made for the benefit of the Church and to them as the ministers of the benefit so long as the benefit was to be dispensed so long they were to be succeeded to and therefore assisted by the Holy Jesus according to that glorious promise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Not onely to the Apostles but absolutely and indefinitely to all Christs disciples their successors he promised to abide for ever even to the consummation of the world to the whole succession of the Clergy so Theophylact upon this place And if we consider what were the power and graces Jesus committed to the dispensation of the Apostles such as were not temporary but lasting successive and perpetuall we must also conclude the ministery to be perpetuall I instance first in the power of binding and loosing remitting and retaining sins which Christ gave them together with his breathing on them the holy Spirit and a
a distinct and a new message Prophets must not offer any doctrine to the people or pretend a doctrine for which they had not a commission from God But which way soever they be expounded they will conclude right in this particular For if they signifie an ordinary mission then there is an ordinary mission of preachers which no man must usurpe unlesse he can prove his title certainly and clearly derivative from God which when any man of the Laity can doe we must give him the right hand of fellowship and wish him good speed But if these words signifie an extraordinary case and that no message must be pretended by Prophets but what they have commission for then must not ordinary persons pretend an extraordinary mission to an ordinary purpose for besides that God does never doe things unreasonably nor will endure that order be interrupted to no purpose he will never give an extraordinary Commission unlesse it be to a proportionable end whosoever pretends to a license of preaching by reason of an extraordinary calling must look that he be furnished with an extraordinary message lest his Commission be ridiculous and when he comes he must be sure to shew his authority by an argument proportionable that is by such a probation without which no wise man can reasonably beleeve him which cannot be lesse then miraculous and divine In all other cases he comes under the curse of the non missi those whom God sent not they goe on their own errand and must pay themselves their wages But besides that the Apostles were therefore to have an immediate mission because they were to receive new instructions these instructions were such as were by an ordinary and yet by a distinct ministery to be conveyed for ever after and therefore did design an ordinary successive and lasting power and authority Nay our blessed Lord went one step further in this provision even to remark the very first successors and partakers of this power to be taken into the lot of this ministery and they were the seventy two whom Christ had sent as probationers of their future preaching upon a short errand into the Cities of Judah But by this assignation of more persons then those to whom he gave immediate commission he did declare that the office of preaching was to be dispensed by a separate and peculiar sort of men distinct from the people and yet by others then those who had the commission extraordinary that is by such who were to be called to it by an ordinary vocation As Christ constituted the office and named the persons both extraordinary and ordinary present and successive so he provided gifts for them too that the whole dispensation might be his and might be apparent And therefore Christ when he ascended up on high gave gifts to men to this very purpose and these gifts comming from the same Spirit made separation of distinct ministeries under the same Lord. So S. Paul testifies expresly Now there are diversities of gifts but the same spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there are different administrations differencies of ministeries it is the proper word for Church offices the ministery is distinguished by the gift It is not a gift for the ministery but the ministery it selfe is the gift and distinguished accordingly An extraordinary ministery needs an extraordinary and a miraculous gift that is a miraculous calling and vocation and designation by the holy Ghost but an ordinary gift cannot sublime an ordinary person to a supernaturall imployment and from this discourse of the differing gifts of the Spirit S. Paul without any further artifice concludes that the Spirit intended a distinction of Church officers for the work of the ministery for the conclusion of the discourse is that God hath set some in the Church first Apostles secondarily Prophets thirdly Teachers and lest all Gods people should usurpe these offices which God by his Spirit hath made separate and distinguished he addes Are all Apostles are all Prophets are all Teachers If so then were all the body one member quite contrary to nature and to Gods Oeconomy And that this designation of distinct Church officers is for ever S. Paul also affirmes as expresly as this question shall need He gave some Apostles some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors and Teachers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the work of the ministery till we all arrive at the unity of faith which as soon as it shall happen then commeth the end Till the end be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the work of the Ministery must goe forwards and is incumbent upon the Pastors and Teachers this is their work and they are the ministers whom the holy Ghost designed 1. For I consider that either to preach requires but an ordinary or an extraordinary ability if it requires an extraordinary they who are illiterate and unlearned persons are the unfittest men in the world for it if an ordinary sufficiency will discharge it why cannot they suppose the clergy of a competency and strength sufficient to doe that which an ordinary understanding and faculties can performe what need they entermeddle with that to which no extraordinary assistance is required or else why do they set their shoulder to such a work with which no strength but extraordinary is commensurate in the first case it is needlesse in the second it is uselesse in both vain and impertinent For either no man needs their help or if they did they are very unable to help I am sure they are if they be unlearned persons and if they be learned they well enough know that to teach the people is not a power of speaking but is also an act of jurisdiction and authority and in which order is at least concerned in an eminent degree Learned men are not so forward and those are most confident who have least reason 2. Although as Homilies to the people are now used according to the smallest rate many men more preach then should yet besides that to preach prudently gravely piously and with truth requires more abilities then are discernible by the people such as make even a plain work reasonable to wise men and usefull to their hearers and acceptable to God besides this I say the office of teaching is of larger extent then making homilies or speaking prettily enough to please the common and undiscerning auditors They that are appointed to teach the people must respondere de jure give account of their faith in defiance of the numerous armies of Hereticks they must watch for their flock and use excellent arts to arme them against all their weaknesses from within and hostilities from without they must streng then the weak confirme the strong compose the scrupulous satisfie the doubtfull and be ready to answer cases of conscience and I beleeve there are not so little as 5000 cases already started up among the Casuists and for ought I know there may be 5000 times 5000. And
something which others have not or if he be onely imployed in praying and presenting sacrifices of beasts for the people yet that such a person should be admitted to a neerer addresse and in behalf of the people must depend upon Gods acceptation and therefore upon divine constitution for there can be no reason given in the nature of the thing why God will accept the intermediation of one man for many or why this man more then another who possibly hath no naturall or acquired excellency beyond many of the people except what God himself makes after the constitution of the person If a spirituall power be necessary to the ministration it is certain none can give it but the fountain and the principle of the Spirits emanation Or if the graciousnesse and aptnesse of the person be required that also being arbitrary preternaturall and chosen must derive from the divine election For God cannot be prescribed unto by us whom he shall hear and whom he shall entertain in a more immediate addresse and freer entercourse And this is divinely taught us by the example of the high Priest himself who because he derived all power from his Father and all his gratiousnesse and favour in the office of Priest and Mediator was also personally chosen and sent and took not the honour but as it descended on him from God that the honour and the power the ability and the ministery might derive from the same fountain Christ did not glorisie himself to become high Priest Honour may be deserved by our selves but always comes from others and because no greater honour then to be ordained for men in things pertaining to God every man must say as our blessed High Priest said of himself If I honour my self my honour is nothing it is God that honoureth me For Christ being the fountain of Evangelicall ministery is the measure of our dispensations and the rule of Ecclesiasticall oeconomy and therefore we must not arrogate any power from our selves or from a lesse authority then our Lord and Master did and this is true and necessary in the Gospell rather then in any ministery or Priesthood that ever was because of the collation of so many excellent and supernaturall abilities which derive from Christ upon his Ministers in order to the work of the Gospel And the Apostles understood their duty in this particular as in all things else for when they had received all this power from above they were carefull to consign the truth that although it be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a divine grace in a humane ministery and that although 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is He that is ordained by men yet receives his power from God not at all by himself and from no man as from the fountain of his power And this I say the Apostles were carefull to consign in the first instance of Ordination in the case of Mathias Thou Lord shew which of these two thou hast chosen God was the Elector and they the Ministers and this being at the first beginning of Christianity in the very first designation of an ecclesiasticall person was of sufficient influence into the religion for ever after and taught us to derive all clericall power from God and therefore by such means and Ministeries which himself hath appointed but in no hand to be invaded or surprized in the entrance or polluted in the execution This descended in the succession of the Churches doctrine for ever Receive the holy Ghost said Christ to his Apostles when he enabled them with Priestly power and S. Paul to the Bishops of Asia said The holy Ghost hath made you Bishops or Overseers because no mortall man no Angel or Archangell nor any other created power but the Holy Ghost alone hath constituted this order saith S. Chrysostome And this very thing besides the matter of fact and the plain donation of the power by our blessed Saviour is intimated by the words of Christ otherwhere Pray ye therefore the Lord of the vineyard that he will send labourers into his harvest Now his mission is not onely a designing of the persons but enabling them with power because he never commands a work but he gives abilities to its performance and therefore still in every designation of the person by what ever ministery it be done either that ministery is by God constituted to be the ordinary means of conveying the abilities or else God himself ministers the grace immediately It must of necessity come from him some way or other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. James hath adopted it into the family of Evangelicall truths 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 every perfect gift and therefore every perfecting gift which in the stile of the Church is the gift of Ordination is from above the gifts of perfecting the persons of the Hierarchy and ministery Evangelicall which thing is further intimated by S. Paul Now he which stablisheth us with you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in order to Christ and Christian Religion is God and that his meaning be understood concerning the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of establishing him in the ministery he addes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and he which anointeth us is God and hath sealed us with an earnest of his Spirit unction and consignation and establishing by the holy Spirit the very stile of the Church for ordination 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it was said of Christ Him hath the Father sealed that is ordained him the Priest and Prophet of the world and this he plainly spoke as their Apostle and President in religion Not as Lords over your faith but fellow-workers he spake of himself and Timothy concerning whose Ministery in order to them he now gives account 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God anoints the Priest and God consigns him with the holy Ghost that is the Principale quaesitum that is the main question And therefore the Author of the books of Ecclesiasticall hierarchy giving the rationale of the rites of Ordination says that the Priest is made so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of proclaiming and publication of the person signifying That the holy man that consecrates is but the proclaimer of the divine election but not by any humane power or proper grace does he give the perfect gift and consecrate the person And Nazianzen speaking of the rites of ordination hath this expression with which the divine grace is proclaimed And Billius renders it ill by superinvocatur He makes the power of consecration to be declarative which indeed is a lesser expression of a fuller power but it signifies as much as the whole comes to for it must mean God does transmit the grace at or by or in the exteriour ministery and the Minister is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a declarer not by the word of his mouth distinct from the work of
way of naturall or proper operation it is not vis but facultas not an inherent quality that issues out actions by way of direct emanation like naturall or acquired habits but it is a grace or favour done to the person and a qualification of him in genere politico he receives a politick publick and solemn capacity to intervene between God and the people and although it were granted that the people could do the externall work or the action of Church ministeries yet they are actions to no purpose they want the life and all the excellency unlesse they be done by such persons whom God hath called to it and by some means of his own hath expressed his purpose to accept them in such ministrations And this explication will easily be verified in all the particulars of the Priests power because all the ministeries of the Gospell are in genere orationis unlesse we except preaching in which God speaks by his servants to the people the minister by his office is an intercessor with God and the word used in Scripture for the Priests officiating signifies his praying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they were ministring or doing their Liturgy the work of their supplications and intercession and therefore the Apostles positively included all their whole ministery in these two but we will give our selves to the word of God and to prayer the prayer of consecration the prayer of absolution the prayer of imposition of hands they had nothing else to doe but pray and preach And for this reason it was that the Apostles in a sense neerest to the letter did verifie the precept of our blessed Saviour Pray continually that is in all the offices acts parts and ministeries of a dayly Liturgy This is not to lessen the power but to understand it for the Priests ministery is certainly the instrument of conveying all the blessings of the people which are annexed to the ordinary administration of the Spirit But when all the office of Christs Priesthood in heaven is called intercession for us and himself makes the sacrifice of the Crosse effectuall to the salvation and graces of his Church by his prayer since we are ministers of the same Priesthood can there be a greater glory then to have our ministery like to that of Jesus not operating by virtue of a certain number of syllables but by a holy solemn determined and religious prayer in the severall manners and instances of intercession according to the analogy of all the religions in the world whose most solemn mystery was then most solemn prayer I mean it in the matter of sacrificing which also is true in the most mysterious solemnity of Christianity in the holy Sacrament of the Lords supper which is hallowed and lifted up from the common bread and wine by mysticall prayers and solemn invocations of God And therefore S. Dionysius calls the forms of consecration 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prayers of consecration and S. Cyrill in his 3 mystagogique Catechism says the same The Eucharisticall bread after the invocations of the holy Ghost is not any longer common bread but the body of Christ. For although it be necessary that the words which in the Latin Church have been for a long time called the words of consecration which indeed are more properly the words of institution should be repeated in every consecration because the whole action is not completed according to Christs pattern nor the death of Christ so solemnly enunciated without them yet even those words also are part of a mysticall prayer and therefore as they are not onely intended there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of history or narration as Cabasil mistakes so also in the most ancient Liturgies they were not onely read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or as a meer narrative but also with the form of an addresse or invocation Fiat hic panis corpus Christi fiat hoc vinum sanguis Christi Let this bread be made the body of Christ c. So it is in S. James his Liturgy S. Clement S. Marks and the Greek Doctors And in the very recitation of the words of institution the people ever used to answer Amen which intimates it to have been a consecration in genere orationis called by S. Paul benediction or the bread of blessing and therefore S. Austin expounding those words of S. Paul Let prayers and supplications and intercessions and giving of thanks be made saith Eligo in his verbis hoc intelligere quod omnis vel pene omnis frequent at ecclesia ut precationes accipiamus dictas quas fecimus in celebratione sacramentorum antequam illud quod est in Domini mensâ accipiat benedici orationes cum benedicitur ad distribuendum comminuitur quam totam orationem pene omnis ecclesia Dominicâ oratione concludit The words and form of consecration he calls by the name of orationes supplications the prayers before the consecration preces and all the whole action oratio and this is according to the stile and practise and sense of the whole Church or very neer the whole And S. Basil saith that there is more necessary to consecration then the words recived by the Apostles and by the Evangelists * The words of invocation in the shewing the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing who of all the Saints have left to us For we are not content with those which the Apostle and the Evangelists mention but both before and after we say other words having great power towards the mystery 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we have received by tradition These words set down in Scripture they retained as a part of the mystery cooperating to the solemnity manifesting the signification of the rite the glory of the change the operation of the Spirit the death of Christ and the memory of the sacrifice but this great work which all Christians knew to be done by the holy Ghost the Priest did obtain by prayer and solemn invocation according to the saying of Proclus of C. P. speaking of the tradition of certain prayers used in the mysteries and indited by the Apostles as it was said but especially in S. James his Liturgy By these prayers saith he they expected the coming of the holy Ghost that his divine presence might make the bread and the wine mixt with water to become the body and bloud of our blessed Saviour And S. Justin Martyr very often calls the Eucharist food made sacramentall and eucharisticall by prayer and Origen we eat the bread holy and made the body of Christ by prayer Verbo Dei per obsecrationem sanctificatus bread sanctified by the word of God and by prayer viz. the prayer of consecration prece mystica is S. Austins expression of it Corpus Christi sanguinem dicimus illud tantum quod ex fructibus terrae acceptum pree mystica consecratum ritè sumimus That onely we call the
according to the exigence of the present rite and the form of words doth not alter the case for Ego benedico Deus benedicat is the same and was no more when God commanded the Priest in expresse terms to blesse the people onely the Church of late chooses the indicative form to signifie that such a person is by authority and proper designation appointed the ordinary minister of benediction For in the sense of the Church and Scripture none can give blessing but a superiour and yet every person may say in charity God blesse you He may not be properly said to blesse for the greater is not blessed of the lesser by Saint Pauls rule the Priest may blesse or the Father may and yet their benediction save that it signifies the authority and solemn deputation of the person to such an ordinary Ministery signifies but the same thing that is it operates by way of prayer but is therefore prevalent and more effectuall because it is by persons appointed by God And so it is in absolution for he that ministers the pardon being the person that passes the act of God to the penitent and the act of the penitent to God all that manner that the Priest interposes for the penitent to God is by way of prayer and by the mediation of intercession for there is none else in this imaginable and the other of passing Gods act upon the penitent is by way of interpretation and enunciation as an Embassador and by the word of his ministery in persona Christi condonavi I pardon in the person of Christ saith S. Paul in the first he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the second he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in both a minister of divine benediction to the people the anointing from above descends upon Aarons beard and so by degrees to the skirts of the people and yet in those things which the Priest or the Prophet does but signifie by divine appointment he is said to doe the thing which he onely signifies and makes publick as a Minister of God thus God sent Jeremie he set him over the Nations to root out and to pull down and to destroy to throw down and to build and to plant and yet in all this his ministery was nothing but Propheticall and he that converts a sinner is said to save him and to hide a multitude of sins that is he is instrumentall to it and ministers in the imployment so that here also Verbum est oratio the word of God and prayer do transact both the parts of this office And I understand though not the degree and excellency yet the truth of this manner of operation in the instance of Isaac blessing Jacob which in the severall parts was expressed in all forms indicative optative enunciative and yet there is no question but it was intended to do Jacob benefit by way of impetration so that although the Church may expresse the acts of her ministery in what form she please and with design to make signification of another article yet the manner of procuring blessings and graces for the people is by a ministery of interpellation and prayer we having no other way of addresse or return to God but by petition and eucharist 17. I shall not need to instance any more S. Austin summes up all the Ecclesiasticall ministeries in an expression fully to this purpose Si ergo ad hoc valet quod dictum est in Evangelio Deus peceatorem non audit ut per peceatorem sacramenta non celebrentur Quomodo exaudit deprecantem vel super aquam baptismi vel super oleum vel super Eucharistiam vel super capita eorum super quibus manus imponitur with S. Austin praying over the symbols of every Sacrament and sacramental is all one with celebrating the mystery And therefore in the office of Consecration in the Greek Church this power passes upon the person ordained That he may be worthy to aske things of thee for the salvation of the people that is to celebrate the Sacraments and Rites and that thou wilt hear him which fully expresses the sense of the present discourse that the first part of that grace of the holy Spirit which consecrates the Priest the first part of his sanctification is a separation of the person to the power of intercession for the people and a ministeriall mediation by the ministration of such rites and solemn invocations which God hath appointed or designed And now this sanctification which is so evident in Scripture tradition and reason taken from proportion and analogy to religion is so far from making the power of the holy man lesse then is supposed that it shews the greatnesse of it by a true representment and preserves the sacrednesse of it so within its own cancels that it will be the greatest sacriledge in the world to invade it for who ever will boldly enter within this vail nisi qui vocatur sicut Aaron unlesse he be sanctified as is the Priest who is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Nazianzen calls him a Minister cooperating with Christ he does without leave call himself a man of God a Mediator between God and the people under Christ he boldly thrusts himself into the participation of that glorious mediation which Christ officiates in heaven all which things as they are great honours to the person rightly called to such vicinity and indearments with God so they depend wholly upon divine dignation of the grace vocation of the person 2 Now for the other part of spirituall emanation or descent of graces in sanctification of the Clergy that is in order to the performance of the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that 's the sense of it that God who is the lover of soules may grant a pure and unblameable Priesthood and certainly they who are honoured with so great a grace as to be called to officiate in holy and usefull Ministeries have need also of other graces to make them persons holy in habit and disposition as well as holy in calling and therefore God hath sent his Spirit to furnish his Emissaries with excellencies proportionable to their need and the usefulnesse of the Church At the beginning of Christianity God gave gifts extraordinary as boldnesse of spirit fearless courage freedome of discourse excellent understanding discerning of spirits deep judgement innocence and prudence of deportment the gift of tongues these were so necessary at the institution of the Christian Church that if we had not had testimony of the matter of fact the reasonablenesse of the thing would prove the actuall dispensation of the Spirit because God never fails in necessaries But afterward when all the extraordinary needs were served the extraordinary stock was spent and God retracted those issues into their fountains and then the graces that were necessary for the well discharging the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Priestly function were such as make the person of more benefit to the
people not onely by being exemplary to them but gracious and loved by God and those are spirituall graces of sanctification And therefore Ordination is a collation of holy graces of sanctification of a more excellent faith of fervent charity of providence and paternall care Gifts which now descend not by way of miracle as upon the Apostles are to be acquired by humane industry by study and good letters and therefore are presupposed in the person to be ordained to which purpose the Church now examines the abilities of the man before she lays on hands and therefore the Church does not suppose that the Spirit in ordination descends in gifts and in the infusion of habits and perfect abilities though then also it is reasonable to beleeve that God will assist the pious and carefull endeavours of holy Priests and blesse them with speciall ayds and cooperation because a more extraordinary ability is needfull for persons so designed But the proper and great aid which the spirit of ordination gives is such instances of assistance which make the person more holy And this is so certainly true that even when the Apostle had ordained Timothy to be Bishop of Ephesus he calls upon him to stirre up the gift of God which was in him by the putting on of his hands that gift is a rosary of graces what graces they are he enumerates in the following words God hath not given us the spirit of fear but of power of love 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and of a modest and sober mind and these words are made part of the form of collating the Episcopall order in the church of Eng. Here is all that descend from the Spirit in ordination 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 power that is to officiate and intercede with God in the parts of ministery and the rest are such as implie duty such as make him fit to be a Ruler in paternal and sweet government modesty sobriety love And therfore in the forms of ordination of the Gr. Church which are therfore highly to be valued because they are most ancient have suffered the least change been polluted with fewer interests the mystical prayer of ordination names graces in order to holiness We pray thee that the grace of the ever holy Spirit may descend upon him Fill him ful of all faith love and power sanctification by the illumination of thy holy life-giving Spirit the reason why these things are desir'd given is in order to the right performing his holy offices that he may be worthy to stand without blame at thy Altar to preach the Gospell of thy Kingdome to minister the words of thy truth to bring to thee gifts spiritual sacrifices to renew the people with the laver of regeneratiō And therefore S. Cyrill says that Christs saying receive ye the Holy Ghost signifies grace given by Christ to the Apostles whereby they were sanctified that by the Holy Ghost they might be absolved from their sins saith Haymo and Saint Austin says that many persons that were snatched violently to be made Priests or Bishops who had in their former purposes determined to marry and live a secular life have in their ordination received the gift of continency And therefore there was reason for the greatnesse of the solemnities used in all ages in separation of Priests from the world insomuch that whatsoever was used in any sort of sanctification or solemn benediction by Moses law all that was used in consecration of the Priest who was to receive the greatest measure of sanctification Eadem item vis etiam Sacerdotem augustum honorandum facit novitate benedictionis à communitate vulgi segregatum Cum enim heri unus è plebe esset repente redditur praeceptor praeses Doctor pietatis mysteriorum latentium Praesul c. Invisibili quadam vi ac gratia invisibilem animam in melius transformatam gerens that is improved in all spiritual graces which is highly expressed by Martyrius who said to Nectarius Tu ô beate recens baptizatus purificatus mox insuper sacerdotio auctus es utr aque autem haec peccatorum expiatoria esse Deus constituit which are not to be expounded as if ordination did conferre the first grace which in the Schools is understood onely to be expiatorious but the increment of grace and sanctification and that also is remissive of sins which are taken off by parts as the habit decreases and we grow in Gods favour as our graces multiply or grow Now that these graces being given in ordination are immediate emanations of the holy Spirit and therefore not to be usurped or pretended to by any man upon whom the holy Ghost in ordination hath not descended I shall lesse need to prove because it is certain upon the former grounds and will be finished in the following discourses and it is in the Greek Ordination given as a reason of the former prayer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For not in the imposition of my hands but in the overseeing providence of thy rich mercies grace is given to them that are worthy So that we see more goes to the fitting of a person for Ecclesiasticall Ministeries then is usually supposed together with the power a grace is specially collated and that is not to be taken up and laid down and pretended to by every bolder person The thing is sacred separate solemn deliberate derivative from God and not of humane provision or authority or pretence or disposition SECT VIII THe holy Ghost was the first consecrator that is made evident and the persons first consecrated were the Apostles who received the severall parts of the Priestly order at severall times the power of consecration of the Eucharist at the institution of it the power of remitting and retaining sinnes in the octaves of Easter the power of baptizing preaching together with universall jurisdiction immediately before the Ascension when they were commanded to goe into all the world preaching and baptizing This is the whole office of the Priesthood and nothing of this was given in Pentecost when the holy Spirit descended and rested upon all of them the Apostles the brethren the women for then they received those great assistances which enabled them who had been designed for Embassadors to the world to doe their great work and others of a lower capacity had their proportion as the effect of the promise of the Father and a mighty verification of the truth of Christianity Now all these powers which Christ had given to his Apostles were by some means or other to be transmitted to succeeding persons because the severall Ministeries were to abide for ever All nations were to be converted a Church to be gathered and continued the new Converts to be made Confessors and consigned with baptism sins to be remitted flocks to be fed and guided and the Lords death declared represented exhibited and commemorated untill his second coming
garments they had it but in imperfection and unactive faculties So saith Theophylact He breathed not now giving to them the perfect gift of the Holy Ghost for that he intended to give at Pentecost but he prepared them for the fuller reception of it They had the gift before but not the perfect consummation of it that was reserved for the great day and because the power of consecration is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or perfection of the Priestly order it was the proper emanation of this days glory then was the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the perfection of what power Christ had formerly consigned For of all faculties that is not perfect which produces perfect and excellent actions in a direct line actions of a particular sort but that which produces the actions and enables others to doe so too for then the perfection is inherent not onely formally but virtually and eminently and that 's the crown of habits and naturall faculties Now besides the reasonablenesse of the thing this is also verified by a certainty that will not easily fail us by experience and ex postfacto For as we doe not find the Apostles had before Pentecost a productive power which made them call for a miracle or a speciall providence by lots so we are sure that immediately after Pentecost they had it for they speedily began to put it in execution and it is remarkable that the Apostles did not lay hands upon Mathias he being made Apostle before the descent of the Holy Ghost they had no power to doe it they were not yet made Ministers of the Spirit which because afterwards presently they did concludes fairly that at Pentecost they were amongst other graces made the ordinary Ministers of Ordination This I say is certain that the holy Ghost descending at Pentecost they instantly did officiate in their ministeriall offices they preached they baptized they confirmed and gave the holy Spirit of obsignation and took persons into the Lot of their Ministery doing of it by an externall rite and solemn invocation and now the extraordinary way did cease God was the fountain of the power but man conveyed it by an externall rite And of this Saint Paul who was the onely exception from the common way takes notice calling himself an Apostle not of man nor by man but by Jesus Christ implying that he had a speciall honour done to be chosen an Apostle in an extraordinary way therefore others might be Apostles and yet not so as he was for else his expression had been all one as if one should say Titius the sonne of a man not begotten of an Angell or Spirit nor produced by the Sunne or Starre but begotten by a man of a woman the discourse had been ridiculous for no man is born otherwise and yet he also had something of the ordinary too for in an extraordinary manner he was sent to be ordained in an ordinary ministery And yet because the ordinary ministery was setled Saint Paul was called to an account for so much of it as was extraordinary and was tyed to doe that which every man now is bound to doe that shall pretend a calling extraordinary viz. to give an extraordinary proof of his extraordinary calling which when he had done in the College of Jerusalem the Apostles gave him the right hand of fellowship and approved his vocation which also shews that now the way of Ordination was fixed and declared to be by humane ministery of which I need no other proof but the instances of Ordinations recorded in Scripture and the no instances to the contrary but of Saint Paul whose designation was as immediate as that of the 11 Apostles though his Ordination was not I end this with the saying of Job the Monk Concerning the Order of Priesthood it is supernaturall and unspeakable He that yesterday and the day before was in the form of Ideots and private persons to day by the power of the Holy Ghost and the voice of the chief Priest and laying on of hands receives so great an improvement and alteration that he handles and can consecrate the divine mysteries of the holy Church and becomes under Christ a Mediator Ministeriall between God and man and exalted to hallow himself and sanctifie others The same almost with the words of Gregory Nyssen in his book De sancto baptismate This is the summe of the preceding discourses God is the Consecrator man is the Minister the separation is mysterious and wonderfull the power great and secret the office to stand between God and the people in the ministery of the Evangelicall rites the calling to it ordinary and by a setled Ministery which began after the descent of the holy Ghost in Pentecost This great change was in nothing expressed greater then that Saul upon his Ordination changed his name which Saint Chrysostome observing affirms the same of S. Peter I conclude Differentiam inter ordinem plebem constituit Ecclesiae authoritas honor per ordin is consessum sanctificatus à Deo saith Tertullian The authority of the whole Church of God hath made distinction between the person ordained and the people but the honour and power of it is derived from the sanctification of God It is derived from him but conveyed by an ordinary Ministery of his appointing Whosoever therefore with unsanctified that is with unconsecrated hands shall dare to officiate in the ministerial office separate by God by gifts by graces by publick order by an established rite by the institution of Jesus by the descent of the holy Ghost by the word of God by the practise of the Apostles by the practise of sixteen ages of the Catholick Church by the necessity of the thing by reason by analogy to the discourse of all the wise men that ever were in the world that man like his predecessor Corah brings an unhallowed Censer which shall never send up a right cloud of incense to God but yet that unpermitted and disallowed smoak shall kindle a fire even the wrath of God which shall at least destroy the sacrifice His work shall be consumed and when upon his repentance himself escapes yet it shall be so as by fire that is with danger and losse and shame and trouble For our God is a consuming fire Remember Corah and all his company 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The End The Printer to the Reader THe absence of the Author and his inconvenient distance from London hath occasioned some lesser escapes in the impression of these Sermons and the Discourse annexed The Printer thinks it the best instance of pardon if his Escapes be not layd upon the Author and he hopes they are no greater then an ordinary understanding may amend and a little charity may forgive A Table to both the Volumes of Sermons A. WHo shall be the Accusers of sinners that belong not to life in the great judgement Vol. 1. p. 23 Almes wherein and how far our respects to
shall escape for being secret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And all prejudices being laid aside it shall be considered concerning our evill rules and false principles Cum cepero tempus ego justitias judicabo when I shall receive the people I shall judge according unto right so we read When we shall receive time I will judge justices and judgements so the vulgar Latin reads it that is in the day of the Lord when time is put into his hand and time shall be no more he shall judge concerning those judgements when men here make of things below and the fighting man shall perceive the noises of drunkards and fools that cryed him up for daring to kill his Brother to have been evill principles and then it will be declared by strange effects that wealth is not the greatest fortune and ambition was not but an ill counsellor and to lye for a good cause was no piety and to do evill for the glory of God was but an ill worshipping him and that good nature was not well imploy'd when it spent it self in vicious company and evill compliances and that piety was not softnesse and want of courage and that poverty ought not to have been contemptible and that cause that is unsuccessefull is not therefore evill and what is folly here shall be wisdome there then shall men curse their evill guides and their accursed superinduced necessities and the evill guises of the world and then when silence shall be found innocence and eloquence in many instances condemned as criminall when the poor shall reign and Generals and Tyrants shall lye low in horrible regions when he that lost all shall finde a treasure and he that spoil'd him shall be found naked and spoil'd by the destroyer then we shall finde it true that we ought here to have done what our Judge our blessed Lord shall do there that is take our measures of good and evill by the severities of the word of God by the Sermons of Christ and the four Gospels and by the Epistles of S. Paul by Justice and charity by the Lawes of God and the lawes of wise Princes and Republicks by the rules of Nature and the just proportions of Reason by the examples of good men and the proverbs of wise men by severity and the rules of Discipline for then it shall be that truth shall ride in triumph and the holinesse of Christs Sermons shall be manifest to all the world that the Word of God shall be advanced over all the discourses of men and Wisdome shall be justified by all her children Then shall be heard those words of an evill and tardy repentance and the just rewards of folly We fools thought their life madnesse but behold they are justified before the throne of God and we are miserable for ever Here men think it strange if others will not run into the same excesse of riot but there they will wonder how themselves should be so mad and infinitely unsafe by being strangely and inexcusably unreasonable The summe is this The Judge shall appear cloathed with wisdome and power and justice and knowledge and an impartiall Spirit making no separations by the proportions of this world but by the measures of God not giving sentence by the principles of our folly and evill customes but by the severity of his own Laws and measures of the Spirit Non est judicium Dei sicut hominum God does not judge as Man judges 6. Now that the Judge is come thus arrayed thus prepared so instructed let us next consider the circumstances of our appearing and his sentence and first I consider that men at the day of Judgement that belong not to the portion of life shall have three sorts of accusers 1. Christ himself who is their Judge 2. Their own conscience whom they have injured and blotted with characters of death and foul dishonour 3. The Devill their enemy whom they served 1. Christ shall be their accuser not only upon the stock of those direct injuries which I before reckoned of crucifying the Lord of life once and again c. But upon the titles of contempt and unworthinesse of unkindnesse and ingratitude and the accusation will be nothing else but a plain representation of those artifices and assistances those bonds and invitations those constrainings and importunities which our dear Lord used to us to make it almost impossible to lye in sin and necessary to be sav'd For it will it must needs be a fearfull exprobration of our unworthinesse when the Judge himself shall bear witnesse against us that the wisdome of God himself was strangely imployed in bringing us safely to felicity I shall draw a short Scheme which although it must needs be infinitely short of what God hath done for us yet it will be enough to shame us * God did not only give his Son for an example and the Son gave himself for a price for us but both gave the holy Spirit to assist us in mighty graces for the verifications of Faith and the entertainments of Hope and the increase and perseverance of Charity * God gave to us a new nature he put another principle into us a third part of a perfective constitution we have the Spirit put into us to be a part of us as properly to produce actions of a holy life as the soul of man in the body does produce the naturall * God hath exalted humane nature and made it in the person of Jesus Christ to sit above the highest seat of Angels and the Angels are made ministring spirits ever since their Lord became our Brother * Christ hath by a miraculous Sacrament given us his body to eat and his bloud to drink he made waies that we may become all one with him * He hath given us an easie religion and hath established our future felicity upon naturall and pleasant conditions and we are to be happy hereafter if we suffer God to make us happy here and things are so ordered that a man must take more pains to perish then to be happy * God hath found out rare wayes to make our prayers acceptable our weak petitions the desires of our imperfect souls to prevail mightily with God and to lay a holy violence and an undeniable necessity upon himself and God will deny us nothing but when we aske of him to do us ill offices to give us poisons and dangers and evill nourishment and temptations and he that hath given such mighty power to the prayers of his servants yet will not be moved by those potent and mighty prayers to do any good man an evill turn or to grant him one mischief in that only God can deny us * But in all things else God hath made all the excellent things in heaven and earth to joyn towards holy and fortunate effects for he hath appointed an Angell to present the prayers of Saints and Christ makes intercession for us and the holy Spirit