a participation of his felicities for he is strangely covetous who would enjoy the Sun or the Air or the Sea alone here was treasure sor him and all the world and by lighting his brother Simon' s taper he made his own light the greater and more glorious And this is the nature of Grace to be diffusive of its own excellencies for here no ãâã can inhabit the proper and personal ends of holy persons in the contract and transmissions of Grace are increased by the participation and communion of others For our Prayers are more effectual our aids increased our incouragement and examples more prevalent God more honoured and the rewards of glory have accidental advantages by the superaddition of every new Saint and beatified person the members of the mystical body when they have received nutriment from God and his Holy Son supplying to each other the same which themselves received and live on in the communion of Saints Every new Star gilds the firmament and increases its first glories and those who are instruments of the Conversion of others shall not only introduce new beauties but when themselves shine like the stars in glory they shall have some reflexions from the light of others to whose fixing in the Orb of Heaven themselves have been instrumental And this consideration is not only of use in the exaltations of the dignity Apostolical and Clerical but for the enkindling even of private charities who may do well to promote others interests of Piety in which themselves also have some concernment 4. These Disciples asked of Christ where he ãâã Jesus answered Come and see It was an answer very expressive of our duty in this instance It is not enough for us to understand where Christ inhabits or where he is to be found for our understandings may follow him afar off and we receive no satisfaction unless it be to curiosity but we must go where he is eat of his meat wash in his Lavatory rest on his beds and dwell with him for the Holy Jesus hath no kind influence upon those who stand at distance save only the affections of a Loadstone apt to draw them nigher that he may transmit his vertues by union and confederations but if they persist in a sullen distance they shall learn his glories as Dives understood the peace of Lazarus of which he was never to participate Although the Son of man hath not where to lay his head yet he hath many houses where to convey his Graces he hath nothing to cover his own but he hath enough to sanctifie ours and as he dwelt in such houses which the charity of good people then afforded for his entertainment so now he loves to abide in places which the Religion of his servants hath vowed to his honour and the advantages of Evangelical ministrations Thither we must come to him or any-where else where we may enjoy him He is to be found in a Church in his ordinances in the communion of Saints in every religious duty in the heart of every holy person and if we go to him by the addresses of Religion in Holy places by the ministery of Holy rites by Charity by the adherences of Faith and Hope and other combining Graces the Graces of union and society or prepare a lodging for him within us that he may come to us then shall we see such glories and interiour beauties which none know but they that dwell with him The secrets of spiritual benediction are understood only by them to whom they are conveyed even by the children of his house Come and see 5. S. Andrew was first called and that by Christ immediately his Brother Simon next and that by Andrew but yet Jesus changed Simon' s name and not the other 's and by this change design'd him to an eminency of Office at least in signification principally above his Brother or else separately and distinctly from him to shew that these Graces and favours which do not immediately cooperate to eternity but are gifts and offices or impresses of authority are given to men irregularly and without any order of predisponent causes or probabilities on our part but are issues of absolute predestination and as they have efficacy from those reasons which God conceals so they have some purposes as conccal'd as their causes only if God pleases to make us vessels of fair imployment and of great capacity we shall bear a greater burthen and are bound to glorifie God with special offices But as these exteriour and ineffective Graces are given upon the same good will of God which made this matter to be a humane Body when if God had so pleased it was as capable of being made a Fungus or a Sponge so they are given to us with the same intentions as are our Souls that we might glorifie God in the distinct capacity of Grace as before of a reasonable nature And besides that it teaches us to magnifie God's free mercy so it removes every such exalted person from being an object of envy to others or from pleasing himself in vainer opinions for God hath made him of such an imployment as freely and voluntarily as he hath made him a Man and he no more cooperated to this Grace than to his own creation and may as well admire himself for being born in Italy or from rich parents or for having two hands or two feet as for having received such a designation extraordinary But these things are never instruments of reputation among severe understandings and never but in the sottish and unmanly apprehensions of the vulgar Only this when God hath imprinted an authority upon a person although the man hath nothing to please himself withal but God's grace yet others are to pay the duty which that impression demands which duty because it rapports to God and touches not the man ãâã as it passes through him to the fountain of authority and grace it extinguishes all ãâã of opinion and pride 6. When Jesus espied ãâã who also had been called by the first Disciples coming towards him he gave him an excellent character calling him a true Israelite in whom was no guile and admitted him amongst the first Disciples of the Institution by this character in one of the first of his Scholars hallowing Simplicity of spirit and receiving it into his Discipline that it might now become a vertue and duty Evangelical For although it concerns us as a Christian duty to be prudent yet the Prudence of Christianity is a duty of spiritual effect and in instances of Religion with no other purposes than to avoid giving offence to those that are without and within that we cause no disreputation to Christianity that we do nothing that may incourage enemies to the Religion and that those that are within the communion and obedience of the Church may not suffer as great inconveniences by the indiscreet conduct of religious actions as by direct temptations to a sin These are the purposes of private Prudence to
hand is heavy and his sword is sharp and pierces to the dividing the marrow and the bones and he that considers the infinite distance between God and us must tremble when he remembers that he is to feel the issues of that anger which he is not certain whether or no it will destroy him infinitely and eternally 4. But if the whip be given into our hands that we become executioners of the Divine wrath it is sometimes worse for we seldom strike our selves for emendation but add sin to sin till we perish miserably and inevitably God scourges us often into Repentance but when a Sin is the whip of another sin the rod is put into our hands who like blind men strike with a rude and undiscerning hand and because we love the punishment do it without intermission or choice and have no end but ruine 5. When the Holy Jesus had whipt the Merchants in the Temple they took away all the instruments of their sin For a Judgment is usually the commencement of Repentance Love is the last of Graces and ãâã at the beginning of a new life but is reserved to the perfections and ripeness of a Christian. We begin in Pear The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom ãâã hen he smote them then they turned and enquired early after God And afterwards the impresses of Fear continue like a hedge of thorns about us to restrain our dissolutions within the awfulness of the Divine Majesty that it may preserve what was from the same principle begun This principle of their emendation was from God and therefore innocent and holy and the very purpose of Divine Threatnings is that upon them as upon one of the great hindges the Piety of the greatest part of men should turn and the effect was answerable but so are not the actions of all those who follow this precedent in the tract of the letter For indeed there have been some reformations which have been so like this that the greatest alteration which hath been made was that they carried all things out of the Temple the Money and the Tables and the Sacrifice and the Temple it self went at last But these mens scourge is to follow after and Christ the Prince of the Catholick Church will provide one of his own contexture moresevere than the stripes which ãâã felt from the infliction of the exterminating Angel But the Holy Spirit of God by making provision against such a Reformation hath prophetically declared the aptnesses which are in pretences of religious alterations to degenerate into sacrilegious desires Thou that abhorrest Idols dost thou commit sacriledge In this case there is no amendment only one sin resigns to another and the person still remains under its power and the same dominion The PRAYER OEternal Jesu thou bright Image of thy Father's glories whose light did shine to all the world when thy heart was inflamed with zeal and love of God and of Religion let a coal from thine Altar fanned with the wings of the Holy Dove kindle in my Soul such holy flames that I may be zealous of thy honour and glory forward in Religious duties earnest in their pursuit prudent in their managing ingenuous in my purposes making my Religion to serve no end but of thy glories and the obtaining of thy promises and so sanctific my Soul and my Body that I may be a holy Temple fit and prepared for the inhabitation of thy ever-blessed Spirit whom grant that I may never grieve by admitting any impure thing to desecrate the place and unhallow the Courts of his abode but give me a pure Soul in a chaste and healthful ãâã a spirit full of holy simplicity and designs of great ingenuity and perfect Religion that I may intend what thou commandest and may with proper instruments ãâã what I so intend and by thy aids may obtain the end of my labours the rewards of obedience and holy living even the society and inheritance of Jesus in the participation of the joys of thy Temple where thou dwellest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost O Eternal Jesus Amen DISCOURSE VIII Of the Religion of Holy Places 1. THE Holy Jesus brought a Divine warrant for his Zeal The selling Sacrifices and the exchange of Money and every Lay-employment did violence and dishonour to the Temple which was hallowed to Ecclesiastical ministeries and set apart for Offices of Religion for the use of holy things for it was God's House and so is every house by publick designation separate for Prayer or other uses of Religion it is God's House My house God had a propriety in it and had set his mark on it even his own Name And therefore it was in the Jews Idiome of speech called the Mountain of the Lord's House and the House of the Lord by David frequently God had put his Name into all places appointed for solemn Worship In all places where I record my Name I will come unto thee and bless thee For God who was never visible to mortal eye was pleased to make himself presential by substitution of his Name that is in certain places he hath appointed that his Name shall be called upon and by promising and imparting such Blessings which he hath made consequent to the invocation of his Name hath made such places to be a certain determination of some special manner of his Presence For God's Name is not a distinct thing from himself not an Idea and it cannot be put into a place in literal signification the expression is to be resolved into some other sence God's Name is that whereby he is known by which he is invocated that which is the most immediate publication of his Essence nearer than which we cannot go unto him and because God is essentially present in all places when he makes himself present in one place more than another it cannot be understood to any other purpose but that in such places he gives special Blessings and Graces or that in those places he appoints his Name that is himself specially to be invocated 2. So that when God puts his Name in any place by a special manner it signifies that there himself is in that manner But in separate and hallowed places God hath expressed that he puts his Name with a purpose it should be called upon therefore in plain signification it is thus In Consecrate places God himself is present to be invok'd that is there he is most delighted to hear the Prayers we make unto him For all the expressions of Scripture of God's ãâã the Tabernacle of God God's Dwellings putting his Name there his Sanctuary are resolved into that saying of God to Solomon who prayed that he would hear the Prayers of necessitous people in that place God granting the request expressed it thus I have sanctified the House which thou hast built that is the House which thou hast designed for my Worship I have designed for your Blessing what you have
partakers of thy Purities give unto us tender bowels that we may suffer together with our calamitous and necessitous Brethren that we having a fellow-feeling of their miseries may use all our powers to help them and ease our selves of our common sufferings But do thou O Holy Jesu take from us also all our great calamities the Carnality of our affections our Sensualities and Impurities that we may first be pure then peaceable living in peace with all men and preserving the peace which thou hast made for us with our God that we may never commit a sin which may interrupt so blessed an atonement Let neither hope nor fear tribulation nor anguish pleasure nor pain make us to relinquish our interest in thee and our portion of the everlasting Covenant But give us hearts constant bold and valiant to confess thee before all the world in the midst of all disadvantages and contradictory circumstances chusing rather to beg or to be disgraced or ãâã or to die than quit a holy Conscience or renounce an Article of Christianity that we either in act when thou shalt call us or always in preparation of mind suffering with thee may also reign with thee in the Church Triumphant O Holy and most merciful Saviour Jesu Amen DISCOURSE X. A Discourse upon that part of the Decalogue which the Holy JESVS adopted into the Institution and obligation of Christianity 1. WHen the Holy Jesus had described the Characterisms of Christianity in these Eight Graces and Beatitudes he adds his Injunctions that in these Vertues they should be eminent and exemplar that they might adorn the Doctrine of God for he intended that the Gospel should be as Leven in a lump of dough to season the whole mass and that Christians should be the instruments of communicating the excellency and reputation of this holy Institution to all the world Therefore Christ calls them Salt and Light and the societies of Christians a City set upon a hill and a ãâã set in a candlestick whose office and energy is to illuminate all the vicinage which is also expressed in these preceptive words Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in heaven which I consider not only as a Circumstance of other parts but as a precise Duty it self and one of the Sanctions of Christianity which hath so confederated the Souls of the Disciples of the Institution that it hath in some proportion obliged every man to take care of his Brother's Soul And since Reverence to God and Charity to our Brother are the two ãâã Ends which the best Laws can have this precept of exemplary living is enjoyned in order to them both We must shine as lights in the world that God may be glorified and our Brother edified that the excellency of the act may ãâã the reputation of the Religion and invite men to confess God according to the sanctions of so holy an Institution And if we be curious that vanity do not mingle in the intention and that the intention do not spoil the action and that we suffer not our lights to shine that men may magnifie us and not glorifie God this duty is soon performed by way of adherence to our other actions and hath no other difficulty in it but that it will require our prudence and care to preserve the simplicity of our purposes and humility of our spirit in the midst of that excellent reputation which will certainly be consequent to a holy and exemplary life 2. But since the Holy Jesus had set us up to be lights in the world he took care we should not be stars of the least magnitude but eminent and such as might by their great emissions of light give evidence of their being immediately derivative from the Sun of Righteousness He was now giving his Law and meant to retain so much of Moses as Moses had of natural and essential Justice and Charity and superadd many degrees of his own that as far as Moses was exceeded by Christ in the capacity of a Law-giver so far Christianity might be more excellent and holy than the Mosaical Sanctions And therefore as a Preface to the Christian Law the Holy Jesus declares that unless our righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees that is of the stricter sects of the Mosaical Institution we shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven Which not only relates to the prevaricating Practices of the Pharisees but even to their Doctrines and Commentaries upon the Law of Moses as appears evidently in the following instances For if all the excellency of Christianity had consisted in the mere command of Sincerity and prohibition of Hypocrisie it had nothing in it proportionable to those excellent promises and clearest revelations of Eternity there expressed nor of a fit imployment for the designation of a special and a new Law-giver whose Laws were to last forever and were established upon foundations stronger than the pillars of Heaven and Earth 3. But S. Paul calling the Law of Moses a Law of Works did well insinuate what the Doctrine of the Jews was concerning the degrees and obligations of Justice for besides that it was a Law of Works in opposition to the Law of Faith and so the sence of it is formerly explicated it is also a Law of Works in opposition to the Law of the Spirit and it is understood to be such a Law which required the exteriour Obedience such a Law according to which S. Paul so lived that no man could reprove him that is the Judges could not tax him with prevarication such a Law which being in very many degrees carnal and material did not with much severity exact the intention and purposes spiritual But the Gospel is the Law of the spirit If they failed in the exteriour work it was accounted to them for sin but to Christians nothing becomes a sin but a failing and prevaricating spirit For the outward act is such an emanation of the interiour that it enters into the account for the relation sake and for its parent When God hath put a duty into our hands if our spirits be right the work will certainly follow but the following work receives its acceptation not from the value the Christian Law hath precisely put upon it but because the spirit from whence it came hath observed its rule the Law of Charity is acted and expressed in works but hath its estimate from the spirit Which discourse is to be understood in a limited and qualified signification For then also God required the Heart and interdicted the very concupiscences of our irregular passions at least in some instances but because much of their Law consisted in the exteriour and the Law appointed not nor yet intimated any penalty to evil thoughts and because the expiation of such interiour irregularities was easie implicite and involved in their daily Sacrifices without special trouble therefore the old Law
weekly Sabbath the Disciples of Jesus pull ripe ãâã of corn rub them in their hands and eat them to satisfie their hunger For which he offered satisfaction to their scruples convincing them that works of necessity are to be permitted even to the breach of a positive temporary constitution and that works of Mercy are the best serving of God upon any day whatsoever or any part of the day that is vacant to other offices and proper for a religious Festival 3. But when neither Reason nor Religion would give them satisfaction but that they went about to kill him he withdrew himself from Jerusalem and returned to Galilee whither the Scribes and Pharisees followed him observing his actions and whether or no he would prosecute that which they called profanation of their Sabbath by doing acts of Mercy upon that day He still did so For entring into one of the Synagogues of Galilee upon the Sabbath Jesus saw a man whom S. Hierom reports to have been a Mason coming to Tyre and complaining that his hand was withered and desiring help of him that he might again be restored to the use of his hands lest he should be compelled with misery and shame to beg his bread Jesus restored his hand as whole as the other in the midst of all those spies and enemies Upon which act being confirmed in their malice the Pharisees went forth and joyned with the Herodians a Sect of people who said Herod was the Messias because by the decree of the Roman Senate when the Sceptre departed from Judah he was declared King and both together took counsel how they might kill him 4. Jesus therefore departed again to the sea-coast and his companies encreased as his fame for he was now followed by new multitudes from Galilee from Judaea from Jerusalem from Idumaea ãâã beyond Jordan from about Tyre and Sidon who hearing the report of his miraculous power to cure all diseases by the word of his mouth or the touch of his hand or the handling his garment came with their ambulatory hospital of sick and their possessed and they pressed on him but to touch him and were all immediately cured The Devils confessing publickly that he was the Son of God till they were upon all such occasions restrained and compelled to silence 5. But now Jesus having commanded a ship to be in readiness against any inconvenience or troublesome pressures of the multitude went up into a mountain to pray and continued in prayer all night intending to make the first ordination of Apostles which the next day he did chusing out of the number of his Disciples these twelve to be Apostles Simon Peter and Andrew James and John the sons of thunder Philip and Bartholomew Matthew and Thomas James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zelot Judas the brother of James and Judas ãâã With these descending from the mountain to the plain he repeated the same Sermon or much of it which he had before preached in the first beginning of his Prophesyings that he might publish his Gospel to these new Auditors and also more particularly inform his Apostles in the Doctrine of the Kingdom for now because he saw Israel scattered like sheep having no Shepherd he did purpose to send these twelve abroad to preach Repentance and the approximation of the Kingdom and therefore first instructed them in the mysterious parts of his holy Doctrine and gave them also particular instructions together with their temporary commission for that journey 6. For Jesus sent them out by two and two giving them power over unclean spirits and to heal all manner of sickness and diseases telling them they were the light and the eyes and the salt of the world so intimating their duties of diligence holiness and incorruption giving them in charge to preach the Gospel to dispense their power and Miracles freely as they had received it to anoint sick persons with oil not to enter into any Samaritan Town but to go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel to provide no viaticum for their journeys but to put themselves upon the Religion and Piety of their Proselytes he arms them against persecutions gives them leave to slye the storm from City to City promises them the assistances of his Spirit encourages them by his own example of long-sufferance and by instances of Divine providence expressed even to creatures of smallest value and by promise of great rewards to the confident confession of his Name and furnishes them with some propositions which are like so many bills of exchange upon the trust of which they might take up necessaries promising great retributions not only to them who quit any thing of value for the sake of Jesus but to them that offer a cup of water to a thirsty Disciple And with these instructions they departed to preach in the Cities 7. And Jesus returning to Capernaum received the address of a faithful Centurion of the Legion called the Iron Legion which usually quartered in Judaea in behalf of his servant whom he loved and who was grievously afflicted with the Palsie and healed him as a reward and honour to his Faith And from thence going to the City Naim he raised to life the only son of a widow whom the mourners followed in the street bearing the corps sadly to his funeral Upon the fame of these and divers other Miracles John the Baptist who was still in prison for he was not put to death till the latter end of this year sent two of his Disciples to him by divine providence or else by John's designation to minister occasion of his greater publication enquiring if he was the Messias To whom Jesus returned no answer but a Demonstration taken from the nature of the thing and the glory of the Miracles saying Return to John and tell him what ye see for the deaf hear the blind see the lame walk the dead are raised and the lepers are cleansed and to the poor the Gospel is preached which were the Characteristick notes of the Messias according to the predictions of the holy Prophets 6. When John's Disciples were gone with this answer Jesus began to speak concerning John of the austerity and holiness of his person the greatness of his function the Divinity of his commission saying that he was greater than a Prophet a burning and shining light the Elias that was to come and the consummation or ending of the old Prophets Adding withall that the perverseness of that Age was most notorious in the entertainment of himself and the Baptist for neither could the Baptist who came neither eating nor drinking that by his austerity and mortified deportment he might invade the judgment and affections of the people nor Jesus who came both eating and drinking that by a moderate and an affable life framed to the compliance and common use of men he might sweetly insinuate into the affections of the multitude obtain belief amongst them They could object
and perfection whereof he designed should be brought in by Christ. And how admirably did God herein condescend to the temper and humor of that people for being of a more rough and childish disposition apt to be taken with gaudy and sensible objects by the external and pompous institutions of the Ceremonial Dispensation he prepared them for better things as children are brought on by things accommodate to their weak capacities The Church was then an heir under age and was to be trained up in such a way as agreed best with its Infant-temper till it came to be of a more ripe manly age able to digest Evangelical mysteries and then the cover and the veil was taken off and things made to appear in their own form and shape 7. HENCE in the next place appears our happiness above them that we are redeemed from those many severe and burdensom impositions wherewith they were clogg'd and are now obliged only to a more easie and reasonable service That the Law was a very grievous and ãâã Dispensation is evident to any that considers how much it consisted of carnal ordinances costly duties chargeable sacrifices and innumerable little Rites and Ceremonies Under that state they were bound to undergo yea even new-born Infants the bloudy and painful ãâã of Circumcision to abstain from many sorts of food useful and pleasant to man's life to keep multitudes of solemn and stated times new Moons and Ceremonial Sabbaths to take long and tedious journeys to Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices at the Temple to observe daily washings and purifications to use infinite care and caution in every place for if by chance they did but touch an unclean thing besides their present confinement it put them to the expences of a sacrifice with hundreds more troublesome and costly observances required of them A cruel bondage heavy burdens and grievous to be born under the weight whereof good men did then groan and earnestly breath after the time of reformation the very Apostles complained that it was a yoke upon their necks which neither their Fathers nor they were able to bear But this yoke is taken off from our shoulders and the way open into the liberties of the children of God The Law bore a heavy hand over them as children in their minority we are got from under the rod and lash of its tutorage and Pedagogie and are no more subject to the severity of its commands to the exact punctilio's and numerousness of its impositions Our Lord has removed that low and troublesome Religion and has brought in a more manly and rational way of worship more suitable to the perfections of God and more accommodate to the reason and understandings of men A Religion incomparably the wisest and the best that ever took place in the World God did not settle the Religion of the Jews and their way of worship because good and excellent in it self but for its suitableness to the temper of that people Happy we whom the Gospel has freed from those intolerable observances to which they were obliged and has taught us to serve God in a better way more ãâã and acceptable more humane and natural and in which we are helped forwards by greater aids of Divine assistence than were afforded under that Dispensation All which conspire to render our way smooth and plain Take my yoke upon you for my yoke is easie and my burden is light 8. THIRDLY the Dispensation of the Gospel is founded upon more noble and excellent promises A better Covenant established upon better promises And better promises they are both for the nature and clearness of their revelation They were of a more sublime and excellent nature as being promises of spiritual and eternal things such as immediately concerned the perfection and happiness of mankind grace peace pardon and eternal life The Law strictly considered as a particular Covenant with the Jews at Mount Sinai had no other promises but of temporal blessings plenty and prosperity and the happiness of this life This was all that appeared above-ground and that was expresly held forth in that transaction whatever might otherwise by due inferences and proportions of reason be deduced from it Now this was a great defect in that Dispensation it being by this means considering the nature and disposition of that people and the use they would make of it apt to intangle and debase the minds of men and to arrest their thoughts and desires in the pursuit of more sublime and better things I do not say but that under the Old Testament there were promises of spiritual things and of eternal happiness as appears from ãâã Psalms and some passages in the Books of the Prophets But then these though they were under the Law yet they were not of the Law that is did not properly belong to it as a legal Covenant God in every age of the Jewish Church raising up some extraordinary persons who preached notions to the people above the common standard of that Dispensation and who spoke things more plainly by how much nearer they approached the times of the Messiah But under the Christian Oeconomy the promises are evidently more pure and spiritual not a temporal Canaan external prosperity or pardon of ceremonial uncleanness but remission of sins reconciliation with God and everlasting life are proposed and offered to us Not but that in some measure temporal blessings are promised to us as well as them only with this difference to them earthly blessings were pledges of spiritual to us spiritual blessings are ensurances of temporal so far as the Divine wisdom sees fit for us Nor are they better in themselves than they are clearly discovered and revealed to us Whatever spiritual blessings were proposed under the former state were obscure and dark and very few of the people understood them But to us the veil is taken off and we behold the glory of the Lord with open face especially the things that relate to another World for this is the promise that he hath promised us even Eternal Life Hence our Lord is said to have brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel Which he may be justly said to have done inasmuch as he has given the greatest certainty and the clearest account of that state He hath given us the greatest assurance and certainty of the thing that there is such a state The happiness of the other World was a notion not so firmly agreed upon either amongst Jews or Gentiles Among the Jews it was peremptorily denied by the Sadducees a considerable Sect in that Church which we can hardly suppose they would have done had it been clearly propounded in the Law of Moses And among the Heathens the most sober and considering persons did at some times at least doubt of it witness that confession of Socrates himself the wisest and best man that ever was in the Heathen World who when he came to plead his cause before his Judges and
had bravely discoursed of the happy state of good men in the other Life plainly consessed that he could be content ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã to die a thousand times over were he but assured that those things were true and being condemned concludes his Apologie with this farewell And now Gentlemen I am going off the stage it 's your lot to live and mine to die but whether of us two shall fare better is ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã unknown to any but to God alone But our blessed Saviour has put the case past all peradventure having plainly published this doctrine to the World and sealed the truth of it and that by raising others from the dead and especially by his own Resurrection and ãâã which were the highest pledge and assurance of a future Immortality But besides the security he hath given the clearest account of the nature of it 'T is very probable that the Jews generally had of old as 't is certain they have at this day the most gross and carnal apprehensions concerning the state of another Life But to us the Gospel has perspicuously revealed the invisible things of the other World told us what that Heaven is which is promised to good men a state of spiritual joys of chaste and rational delights a conformity of ours to the Divine Nature a being made like to God and an endless and uninterrupted communion with him 9. BUT because in our lapsed and degenerate state we are very unable without some foreign assistance to attain the promised rewards hence arises in the next place another great priviledge of the Evangelical Oeconomy that it is blessed with larger and more abundant communications of the Divine Spirit than was afforded under the Jewish state Under the one it was given by drops under the other it is poured forth The Law laid heavy and hard commands but gave little strength to do them it did not assist humane nature with those powerful aids that are necessary for us in our ãâã state it could do nothing in that it was weak through the flesh and by reason of the weakness and unprofitableness thereof it could make nothing ãâã ãâã was this made it an heavy yoke when the commands of it ãâã uncouth and troublesome and the assistances so small and inconsiderable Whereas now the Gospel does not only prescribe such Laws as are happily accommodate to the true temper of humane nature and adapted to the reason of mankind such as every wise and prudent man must have pitched upon but it affords the insluences of the Spirit of God by whose assistance our vitiated faculties are repaired and we enabled under so much weakness and in the midst of so many temptations to hold on in the paths of piety and vertue Hence it is that the plentiful effusions of the Spirit were reserved as the great blessing of the Evangelical state that God would then pour water upon him that is thirsty and sloods upon the dry ground that he would pour out his Spirit upon their seed and his blessing upon their off-spring whereby they should spring up as among the grass as willows by the water-courses That he would give them a new heart and put his Spirit within them and cause them to walk in his statutes and keep his judgments to do them And this is the meaning of those branches of the Covenant so oft repeated I will put my Law into their minds and write it in their hearts that is by the help of my Grace and Spirit ãâã enable them to live according to my Laws as readily and willingly as if they were written in their hearts For this reason the Law is compared to a dead letter the Gospel to the Spirit that giveth life thence stiled the ministration of the Spirit and as such said to ãâã in glory and that to such a degree that what glory the Legal Dispensation had in this ãâã is eclipsed into nothing For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect by reason of the glory that excelleth for if that which was done away was glorious much more that which remaineth is glorious Hence the Spirit is said to be Christ's peculiar mission I will pray the Father and he will send you another comforter even the Spirit of truth which was done immediately after his Ascension when he ascended up on high and gave gifts to men even the Holy Ghost which he shed on them abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour For the Holy Ghost was not yet given because that Jesus was not yet glorified Not but that he was given before even under the old Oeconomy but not in those large and diffusive measures wherein it was afterwards communicated to the World 10. FIFTHLY The Dispensation of the Gospel had a better establishment and confirmation than that of the Law for though the Law was introduced with great scenes of pomp and Majesty yet was the Gospel ushered in by more kindly and rational methods ãâã by more and greater miracles whereby our Lord unquestionably evinced his Divine Commission and shewed that he came from God doing more miracles in three years than were done through all the periods of the Jewish Church and many of them such as were peculiar to him alone He often raised the dead which Moses never did commanded the winds and waves of the Sea expelled Devils out of Lunaticks and possessed persons who fled assoon as ever he commanded them to be gone cured many inveterate and chronical distempers with the speaking of a word and some without a word spoken vertue silently going out from him He searched men's hearts and revealed the most secret transactions of their minds had this miraculous power always residing in him and could exert it when and upon what occasions he pleased and impart it to others communicating it to his Apostles and followers and to the Primitive Christians for the three first Ages of the Church he never exerted it in methods of dread and terror but in doing such miracles as were highly useful and beneficial to the World And as if all this had not been enough he ãâã down his own life after all to give testimony to it Covenants were ever wont to be ratified with bloud and the death of sacrifices But when out Lord came to introduce the Covenant of the Gospel he did not consecrate it with the bloud of Bulls and Goats but with his own most precious bloud as of a Lamb without spot and blemish And could he give a greater testimony to the truth of his doctrine and those great things he had promised to the World than to seal it with his bloud Had not these things been so t were infinitely unreasonable to suppose that a person of so much wisdom and goodness as our Saviour was should have made the World believe so and much less would he have chosen to die for it and that the most acute and ignominious
the first-fruits of the Ground but an honest heart and a pious life and a grateful acknowledgment of our dependance upon God in the publick Solemnities of his praise and worship For the Law and the Gospel did not differ in this that the one commanded publick worship the other not but that under the one publick worship was fixed to one only place under the other it is free to any where the providence of God has placed us it being part of the duty bound upon us by natural and unalterable obligations that we should publickly meet together for the solemn Celebration of the Divine honour and service 13. NOR is the Oeconomy of the Gospel less extensive in time than place the Old Testament was only a temporary dispensation that of the Gospel is to last to the end of the World the Law was to continue only for a little time the Gospel is an Everlasting Covenant the one to be quickly antiquated and abolished the other never to be done away by any other to succeed it The Jews indeed stickle hard for the perpetual and immutable obligation of the Law of Moses and frequently urge us with those places where the Covenant of Circumcision is called an Everlasting Covenant and God said to chuse the Temple at Jerusalem to place his name there for ever to give the Land of Canaan to Abraham and his seed for an everlasting possession thus the Law of the Passeover is called an Ordinance for ever the command of the First-fruits a statute for ever and the like in other places which seem to intimate a perpetual and unalterable Dispensation But the answer is short and plain that this phrase ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã for ever though when 't is applied to God it always denotes Eternity yet when 't is attributed to other things it implies no more than a periodical duration limited according to the will of the Law-giver or the nature of the thing thus the Hebrew Servant was to serve his Master for ever that is but for seven years till the next year of Jubilee He shall walk before mine anointed for ever says God concerning Samuel that is be a Priest all his days Thus when the Ritual services of the Mosaick Law are called Statutes for ever the meaning is that they should continue a long time obligatory until the time of the ãâã in whose days the Sacrifice and Oblation was to cease and those carnal Ceremonies to give way to the more spiritual services of the Gospel Indeed the very typical nature of that Dispensation evidently argued it to be but for a time the shadow being to cease that the substance might take place and though many of them continued some considerable time after Christ's death yet they lost their positive and obligatory power and were used only as things indifferent in compliance with the inveterate prejudices of new Converts lately brought over from Judaism and who could not quickly lay aside that great veneration which they had for the Rites of the Mosaick Institution Though even in this respect it was not long before all Jewish Ceremonies were thrown off and Moses quite turn'd out of doors Whereas the Evangelical state is to run parallel with the age and duration of the World 't is the Everlasting Covenant the Everlasting Gospel the last Dispensation that God will make to the World God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past by the Prophets hath in these last days spoken to us by his ãâã in which respect the Gospel in opposition to the Law is stiled a Kingdom that cannot ãâã moved The ãâã in the foregoing Verses speaking concerning the Mosaical state Whose voice says he then shook the Earth but now he hath promised saying Yet once more I shake not the Earth only but also the Heaven a phrase peculiar to the Scripture to note the introducing a new scene and state of things and this word Yet once more signisieth the removing of those things that are shaken as of things that are made that those things which cannot be shaken may remain that is that the state of the Gospel may endure for ever Hence Christ is said to have an unchangeable Priesthood to be a Priest for ever to be consecrated for evermore From all which it appears how incomparably happy we Christians are under the Gospel above what the Jews were in the time of the Law God having placed us under the best of Dispensations freed us from those many nice and troublesome observances to which they were tied put us under the clearest discoveries and revelations and given us the most noble rational and masculine Religion a Religion the most perfective of our natures and the most conducive to our happiness while their Covenant at best was faulty and after all could not make him that did the service perfect in things pertaining to the Conscience Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see for I ãâã you that many Prophets and Kings have desired to see those things which ye see and have not seen them and to hear those things which ye hear and have not heard them The End of the APPARATUS THE GREAT EXEMPLAR OF Sanctity and Holy Life according to the Christian Institution DESCRIBED In the HISTORY of the LIFE and DEATH of the ever-Blessed JESUS CHRIST THE SAVIOUR of the WORLD WITH CONSIDERATIONS and DISCOURSES upon the several parts of the Story And PRAYERS fitted to the several MYSTERIES IN THREE PARTS The Fifth Edition By JER TAYLOR Chaplain in Ordinary to King CHARLES the First and late Lord Bishop of Down and Conner LONDON Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston Bookseller to his most Sacred Majesty at the Angel in Amen-Corner 1675. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE and most truly Noble Lord CHRISTOPHER LORD HATTON Baron HATTON of Kirby c. MY LORD WHEN Interest divides the Church and the Calentures of men breathe out in Problems and unactive Discourses each part in pursuance of its own portion follows that Proposition which complies with and bends in all the flexures of its temporal ends and while all strive for Truth they hug their own Opinions dressed up in her imagery and they dispute for ever and either the Question is indeterminable or which is worse men will never be convinced For such is the nature of Disputings that they begin commonly in Mistakes they proceed with Zeal and fancy and end not at all but in Schisms and uncharitable names and too often dip their feet in bloud In the mean time he that gets the better of his adversary oftentimes gets no good to himself because although he hath fast hold upon the right side of the Problem he may be an ill man in the midst of his triumphant Disputations And therefore it was not here that God would have Man's Felicity to grow For our condition had been extremely miserable if our final state had been placed upon
and unlearned as the elements of our mother-tongue But so are Mathematicks to a Scythian boor and Musick to a Camel 44. But I consider that the wisest persons and those who know how to value and entertain the more noble Faculties of their Soul and their precious hours take more pleasure in reading the productions of those old wise spirits who preserved natural Reason and Religion in the midst of heathen darkness such as are Homer Euripides Orpheus Pindar and Anacreon AEschylus and Menander and all the Greek Poets Plutarch and Polybius Xenophon and all those other excellent persons of both Faculties whose choicest Dictates are collected by Stobaeus Plato and his Scholars Aristotle and after him Porphyrie and all his other Disciples Pythagoras and his especially Hierocles all the old Academies and Stoicks within the Roman Schools more pleasure I say in reading these than the triflings of many of the later School-men who promoted a petty interest of a Family or an unlearned Opinion with great earnestness but added nothing to Christianity but trouble scruple and vexation And from hence I hope that they may the rather be invited to love and consider the rare documents of Christianity which certainly is the great Treasure-house of those excellent moral and perfective discourses which with much pains and greater pleasure we find respersed and thinly scattered in all the Greek and Roman Poets Historians and Philosophers But because I have observed that there are some principles entertained into the perswasions of men which are the seeds of evil life such as are the Doctrine of late Repentance the mistakes of the ãâã of the sins of ãâã the evil understanding the consequents and nature of Original sin the sufficiency of Contrition in order to pardon the efficacy of the Rites of ãâã without the necessity of ãâã adherencies the nature of Faith and many other I was diligent to remark such Doctrines and to pare off the mistakes so far that they hinder not Piety and yet as near as I could without engaging in any Question in which the very life of Christianity is not concerned Haec sum profatus haud ambagibus Implicita sed quae regulis aequi boni Suffulta rudibus pariter doctis patent My great purpose is to advance the necessity and to declare the manner and parts of a good ãâã and to invite some persons to the consideration of all the parts of it by intermixing something of pleasure with the use others by such parts which will better entertain their spirits than a Romance I have followed the design of Scripture and have given milk for babes and for stronger men stronger meat and in all I have despised my own reputation by so striving to make it useful that I was less careful to make it strict in retired sences and embossed with unnecessary but graceful ornaments I pray God this may go forth into a blessing to all that shall use it and reflect blessings upon me all the way that my spark may grow greater by kindling my brother's Taper and God may be glorified in us both If the Reader shall receive no benefit yet I intended him one and I have laboured in order to it and I shall receive a great recompence for that intention if he shall please to say this Prayer for me That while I have preached to others I may not become a cast-away AN EXHORTATION To the Imitation of the Life of Christ. HOwever the Person of JESUS CHRIST was depressed with a load of humble accidents and shadowed with the darknesses of Poverty and sad contingencies so that the Jews and the contemporary Ages of the Gentiles and the Apostles themselves could not at first ãâã the brightest essence of Divinity yet as a Beauty artificially covered with a thin cloud of Cypress transmits its excellency to the eye made more greedy and apprehensive by that imperfect and weak restraint so was the Sanctity and Holiness of the Life of JESUS glorious in its Darknesses and found Confessors and Admirers even in the midst of those despites which were done him upon the contrariant designs of malice and contradictory ambition Thus the wife of Pilate called him that just person Pilate pronounced him guiltless Judas said he was innocent the Devil himself called him the Holy one of God For however it might concern any man's mistaken ends to mislike the purpose of his Preaching and Spiritual Kingdom and those Doctrines which were destructive of their ãâã and carnal securities yet they could not deny but that he was a man of God of exemplar Sanctity of an Angelical Chastity of a Life sweet affable and complying with humane conversation and as obedient to Government as the most humble children of the Kingdom And yet he was Lord of all the World 2. And certainly very much of this was with a design that he might shine to all the generations and Ages of the World and become a guiding Star and a pillar of fire to us in our journey For we who believe that Jesus was perfect God and perfect Man do also believe that one minute of his intolerable Passion and every action of his might have been satisfactory and enough for the expiation and reconcilement of ten thousand worlds and God might upon a less effusion of bloud and a shorter life of merit if he had pleased have accepted humane nature to pardon and favour but that the Holy Jesus hath added so many excellent instances of Holiness and so many degrees of Passion and so many kinds of Vertues is that he might become an Example to us and reconcile our Wills to him as well as our Persons to his heavenly Father 3. And ãâã it will prove but a sad consideration that one drop of bloud might be enough to obtain our Pardon and the treasures of his bloud running out till the fountain it self was dry shall not be enough to procure our Conformity to him that the smallest minute of his expence shall be enough to justifie us and the whole Magazine shall not procure our Sanctification that at a smaller expence God might pardon us and at a greater we will not imitate him For therefore Christ hath suffered for us saith the Apostle leaving an Example to us that we might follow his steps The least of our Wills cost Christ as much as the greatest of our Sins And therefore he calls himself the Way the Truth and the Life That as he redeems our Souls from death to life by becoming Life to our Persons so he is the Truth to our Understandings and the Way to our Will and Affections enlightning that and leading these in the paths of a happy Eternity 4. When the King of Moab was pressed hard by the sons of Isaac the Israelites and Edomites he took the King of Edom's eldest Son or as some think his own Son the Heir of his Kingdom and offered him as a Holocaust upon the wall and the Edomites presently raised the siege at
Kir-haraseth and went to their own Countrey The same and much more was God's design who took not his enemie's but his own Son his only begotten Son and God himself and offered him up in Sacrifice to make us leave our perpetual fightings against Heaven and if we still persist we are hardned beyond the wildnesses of the Arabs and Edomites and neither are receptive of the impresses of Pity nor Humanity who neither have compassion to the Suffering of Jesus nor compliance with the designs of God nor conformity to the Holiness and Obedience of our Guide In a dark night if an Ignis Fatuus do but precede us the glaring of its lesser flames do so amuse our eyes that we follow it into Rivers and Precipices as if the ray of that false light were designed on purpose to be our path to tread in And therefore not to follow the glories of the Sun of Righteousness who indeed leads us over rocks and difficult places but secures us against the danger and guides us into safety is the greatest both undecency and unthankfulness in the world 5. In the great Council of Eternity when God set down the Laws and knit fast the eternal bands of Predestination he made it one of his great purposes to make his Son like us that we also might be like his Holy Son he by taking our Nature we by imitating his Holiness God hath predestinated us to be conformable to the image of his Son saith the Apostle For the first in every kind is in nature propounded as the Pattern of the rest And as the Sun the Prince of all the Bodies of Light and the Fire of all warm substances is the principal the Rule and the Copy which they in their proportions imitate and transcribe so is the Word incarnate the great Example of all the Predestinate for he is the first-born among many brethren And therefore it was a precept of the Apostle and by his doctrine we understand its meaning Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ. The similitude declares the duty As a garment is composed and made of the same fashion with the body and is applied to each part in its true figure and commensuration so should we put on Christ and imitate the whole body of his Sanctity conforming to every integral part and express him in our lives that God seeing our impresses may know whose image and superscription we bear and we may be acknowledged for Sons when we have the air and features and resemblances of our elder Brother 6. In the practice of this duty we may be helped by certain considerations which are like the proportion of so many rewards For this according to the nature of all holy Exercises stays not for pay till its work be quite finished but like Musick in Churches is Pleasure and Piety and Salary besides So is every work of Grace full of pleasure in the execution and is abundantly rewarded besides the stipend of a glorious Eternity 7. First I consider that nothing is more honourable than to be like God and the Heathens worshippers of false Deities grew vicious upon that stock and we who have fondnesses of imitation counting a Deformity full of honour if by it we may be like our Prince for pleasures were in their height in Capreae because Tiberius there wallowed in them and a wry neck in Nero's Court was the Mode of Gallantry might do well to make our imitations prudent and glorious and by propounding excellent Examples heighten our faculties to the capacities of an evenness with the best of Precedents He that strives to imitate another admires him and confesses his own imperfections and therefore that our admirations be not flattering nor our consessions phantastick and impertinent it were but reasonable to admire Him from whom really all Perfections do derive and before whose Glories all our imperfections must confess their shame and needs of reformation God by a voice from Heaven and by sixteen generations of Miracles and Grace hath attested the Holy Jesus to be the fountain of Sanctity and the wonderful Counsellor and the Captain of our sufferings and the guide of our manners by being his beloved Son in whom he took pleasure and complacency to the height of satisfaction And if any thing in the world be motive of our affections or satisfactory to our understandings what is there in Heaven or Earth we can desire or imagine beyond a likeness to God and participation of the Divine Nature and Perfections And therefore as when the Sun arises every man goes to his work and warms himself with his heat and is refreshed with his influences and measures his labour with his course So should we frame all the actions of our life by His Light who hath shined by an excellent Righteousness that we no more walk in Darkness or sleep in Lethargies or run a-gazing after the lesser and imperfect beauties of the Night It is the weakness of the Organ that makes us hold our hand between the Sun and us and yet stand staring upon a Meteor or an inflamed jelly And our judgments are as mistaken and our appetites are as sottish if we propound to our selves in the courses and designs of Perfections any copy but of Him or something like Him who is the most perfect And lest we think his Glories too great to behold 8. Secondly I consider that the imitation of the Life of Jesus is a duty of that excellency and perfection that we are helped in it not only by the assistance of a good and a great Example which possibly might be too great and scare our endeavours and attempts but also by its easiness compliance and proportion to us For Jesus in his whole life conversed with men with a modest Vertue which like a well-kindled fire fitted with just materials casts a constant heat not like an inflamed heap of stubble glaring with great emissions and suddenly stooping into the thickness of ãâã His Piety was even constant unblameable complying with civil society without affrightment of precedent or prodigious instances of actions greater than the imitation of men For if we observe our Blessed Saviour in the whole story of his Life although he was without Sin yet the instances of his Piety were the actions of a very holy but of an ordinary life and we may observe this difference in the Story of Jesus from Ecclesiastical Writings of certain beatified persons whose life is told rather to amaze us and to create scruples than to lead us in the evenness and serenity of a holy Conscience Such are the prodigious Penances of Simeon Stylites the Abstinence of the Religious retired into the mountain Nitria but especially the stories of later Saints in the midst of a declining Piety and aged Christendom where persons are represented Holy by way of Idea and fancy if not to promote the interests of a Family and Institution But our Blessed Saviour though his eternal Union
and complacencies by the sweetnesses of a holy Conscience and joys spiritual promotes our temporal interests by the gains and increases of the rewards of Charity and by securing God's providence over us while we are in the pursuit of the Heavenly Kingdom And as in these dispositions she climb'd the mountains with much facility so there is nothing in our whole life of difficulty so great but it may be managed by those assistances we receive from the Holiest Jesus when we carry him about us as the valleys are exalted so the mountains are made plain before us 5. When her Cousin Elizabeth saw the Mother of her Lord come to visit her as the Lord himself descended to visit all the world in great humility she was pleased and transported to the height of wonder and prophecy and the Babe sprang in her womb and was sanctified first doing his homage and adoration to his Lord that was in presence And we also although we can do nothing unless the Lord first prevent us with his gracious visitation yet if he first come unto us and we accept and entertain him with the expresses and correspondencies of our duty we shall receive the grace and honour of Sanctification But if S. Elizabeth who received testimony from God that she walked in all the Commandments of the Lord blameless was carried into ecstasie wondring at the dignation and favour done to her by the Mother of her Lord with what preparations and holy solemnities ought we to entertain his addresses to us by his Holy Sacrament by the immissions of his Spirit by the assistances of his Graces and all other his vouchsafings and descents into our hearts 6. The Blessed Virgin hearing her Cousin full of spirit and prophecy calling her blessed and praising her Faith and confirming her Joy instantly sang her hymn to God returning those praises which she received to him to whom they did appertain For so we should worship God with all ourpraises being willing upon no other condition to extend one hand to receive our own honour but that with the other we might transmit it to God that as God is honoured in all his Creatures so he may be honoured in us too looking upon the Graces which God hath given us but as greater instruments and abilities to serve him being none of ours but talents which are intrusted into our Banks to be improved But as a precious Pearl is orient and medicinal because God hath placed those excellencies in it for ends of his own but it self is dcad to all apprehensions of it and knows no reflexions upon its own value only God is magnified in his work so is every pious person precious and holy but mortified to all vainer complacencies in those singularities and eminencies which God placed there because he was so pleased saying there he would have a Temple built because from thence he would take delight to receive glory and adoration 7. After all these holy and festival joys which the two glad Mothers feasted themselves withal a sad cloud did intervene and passed before the face of the Blessed Virgin The just and righteous Joseph her espoused Husband perceiving her to be with child was minded to put her away as not knowing the Divinity of the fountain which watered the Virgin 's sealed and hallowed Womb and made it fruitful But he purposed to do it privily that he might preserve the reputation of his Spouse whose Piety he knew was great and was sorrowful it should now set in a sad night and be extinct But it was an exemplar charity and reads to us a rule for our deportment towards erring and lapsed persons that we intreat them with meekness and pity and fear not hastening their ãâã nor provoking their spirit nor making their remedy desperate by using of them rudely till there be no worse thing for them to fear if they should be dissolved into all licentiousness For an open shame is commonly protested unto when it is remediless and the person either despairs and sinks under the burthen or else grows impudent and tramples upon it But the gentleness of a modest and charitable remedy preserves that which is Vertue 's girdle Fear and Blushing and the beginning of a punishment chides them into the horrour of remembrance and guilt but preserves their meekness and modesty because they not feeling the worst of evils dare not venture upon the worst of sins 8. But it seems the Blessed Virgin having received this greatest honour had not made it known to her Husband Joseph and when she went to her Cousin Elizabeth the Virgin was told of it by her Cousin before she spake of it her self for her Cousin had it by revelation and the spirit of prophecy And it is in some circumstances and from some persons more secure to conceal Visions and those heavenly Gifts which create estimations among men than to publish them which may possibly minister to vanity and those exteriour Graces may do God's work though no observer note them but the person for whose sake they are sent like rain falling in uninhabited Valleys where no eye observes showers yet the Valleys laugh and sing to God in their refreshment without a witness However it is better to hear the report of our good things from the mouths of others than from our selves and better yet if the beauty of the Tabernacle be covered with skins that none of our beauties be seen but by worshippers that is when the glory of God and the interests of Religion or Charity are concerned in their publication For so it happened to be in the case of the Blessed Virgin as she related to her Cousin Elizabeth and so it happened not to be as she referred to her Husband Joseph 9. The Holy Virgin could not but know that Joseph would be troubled with sorrow and insecure apprehensions concerning her being with child but such was her Innocence and her Confidence in God that she held her peace expecting which way God would provide a remedy to the inconvenience for if we commit our selves to God in well doing as unto a faithful Creator preserving the tranquillity of our spirits and the evenness of our temper in the assault of infamy and disreputation God who loves our Innocence will be its Patron and will assert it from the scandal if it be expedient for us if it be not it is not fit we should desire it But if the Holy Jesus did suffer his Mother to fall into misinterpretation and suspect which could not but be a great affliction to her excellent spirit rarely temper'd as an Eye highly sensible of every ruder touch we must not think it strange if we be tried and pressed with a calamity and unhandsome accidents only remember that God will find a remedy to the trouble and will sanctifie the affliction and secure the person if we be innocent as was the Holy Virgin 10. But Joseph was not hasty in the execution of his purposes nor of making
it is not easily apprehended to be the portion of her care to give it spiritual milk and therefore it intrenches very much upon Impiety and positive relinquishing the education of their Children when Mothers expose the spirit of the Child either to its own weaker inclinations or the wicked principles of an ungodly Nurse or the carelesness of any less-obliged person 12. And then let me add That a Child sucks the Nurse's milk and digests her conditions if they be never so bad seldom gets any good For Vertue being superaddition to Nature and Perfections not radical in the body but contradictions to and meliorations of natural indispositions does not easily convey it self by ministrations of food as Vice does which in most instances is nothing but mere Nature grown to Custom and not mended by Grace so that it is probable enough such natural distemperatures may pass in the rivulets of milk like evil spirits in a white garment when Vertues are of harder purchase and dwell so low in the heart that they but rarely pass through the fountains of generation And therefore let no Mother venture her child upon a stranger whose heart she less knows than her own And because few of those nicer women think better of others than themselves since out of self-love they neglect their own bowels it is but an act of improvidence to let my Child derive imperfections from one of whom I have not so good an opinion as of my self 13. And if those many blessings and holy prayers which the Child needs or his askings or sicknesses or the Mother's fears or joyes respectively do occasion should not be cast into this account yet those principles which in all cases wherein the neglect is vicious are the causes of the exposing the Child are extremely against the Piety and Charity of Christian Religion which prescribes severity and austere deportment and the labours of love and exemplar tenderness of affections and piety to children which are the most natural and nearest relations the Parents have That Religion which commands us to visit and to tend sick strangers and wash the feet of the poor and dress their ulcers and sends us upon charitable embassies into unclean prisons and bids us lay down our lives for one another is not pleased with a niceness and sensual curiosity that I may not name the wantonnesses of lusts which denies suck to our own children What is more humane and affectionate than Christianity and what is less natural and charitable than to deny the expresses of a Mother's affection which certainly to good women is the greatest trouble in the world and the greatest violence to their desires if they should not express and minister 14. And it would be considered whether those Mothers who have neglected their first Duties of Piety and Charity can expect so prompt and easie returns of Duty and Piety from their Children whose best foundation is Love and that love strongest which is most natural and that most natural which is conveyed by the first ministeries and impresses of Nourishment and Education And if Love descends more strongly than it ascends and commonly falls from the Parents upon the Children in Cataracts and returns back again up to the Parents but in gentle Dews if the Child's affection keeps the same proportions towards such unkind Mothers it will be as little as atoms in the Sun and never express it self but when the Mother needs it not that is in the Sun-shine of a clear fortune 15. This then is amongst those Instincts which are natural heightned first by Reason and then exalted by Grace into the obligation of a Law and being amongst the Sanctions of Nature its prevarication is a crime very near those sins which Divines in detestation of their malignity call Sins against Nature and is never to be excused but in cases of Necessity or greater Charity as when the Mother cannot be a Nurse by reason of natural disability or is afflicted with a disease which might be ãâã in the milk or in case of the publick necessities of a Kingdom for the securing of Succession in the Royal Family And yet concerning this last Lycurgus made a Law that the Noblest amongst the Spartan women though their Kings Wives should at least nurse their Eldest son and the Plebeians should nurse all theirs and Plutarch reports that the second son of King Themistes inherited the Kingdom in Sparta only because he was nursed with his Mother's milk and the eldest was therefore rejected because a stranger was his Nurse And that Queens have suckled and nursed their own children is no very unusual kindness in the simplicity and hearty affections of elder Ages as is to be seen in Herodotus and other Historians I shall only remark one instance out of the Spanish Chronicles which Henry Stephens in his Apology for Herodotus reports to have heard from thence related by a noble personage Monsieur Marillac That a Spanish Lady married into France nursed her child with so great a tenderness and jealousie that having understood the little Prince once to have suck'd a stranger she was unquiet till she had forced him to vomit it up again In other cases the crime lies at their door who inforce neglect upon the other and is heightned in proportion to the motive of the omission as if Wantonness or Pride be the parent of the crime the Issue besides its natural deformity hath the excrescencies of Pride or Lust to make it more ugly 16. To such Mothers I propound the example of the Holy Virgin who had the honour to be visited by an Angel yet after the example of the Saints in the Old Testament she gave to the Holy Jesus drink from those bottles which himself had filled for his own drinking and her Paps were as surely blessed for giving him suck as her Womb for bearing him and reads a Lecture of Piety and Charity which if we deny to our children there is then in the world left no argument or relation great enough to kindle it from a cinder to a flame God gives dry breasts for a curse to some for an affliction to others but those that invite it to them by voluntary arts love not blessing therefore shall it be far from them And I remember that it was said concerning Annius Minutius the Censor that he thought it a prodigy and extremely ominous to Rome that a Roman Lady refused to nurse her Child and yet gave suck to a Puppy that her milk might with more safety be dried up with artificial applications Let none therefore divide the interests of their own Children for she that appeared before Solomon and would have the Child divided was not the true Mother and was the more culpable of the two The PRAYER O Holy and Eternal God Father of the Creatures and King of all the World who hast imprinted in all the sons of thy Creation principles and abilities to serve the end of their own preservation and to Men
the whole body of Sin and to destroy every Province of Satan's Kingdom for these are direct antinomies to the Lusts of the flesh the Last of the eyes and the Pride of life Against the first Christ opposed his hard and uneasie Lodging against the second the poorness of his Swadling-bands and Mantle and the third is combated by the great dignation and descent of Christ from a Throne of Majesty to the state of a sucking Babe And these are the first Lessons he hath taught us for our imitation which that we may the better do as we must take him for our pattern so also for our helper and pray to the Holy Child and he will not only teach us but also give us power and ability The PRAYER O Blessed and Eternal Jesu at whose Birth the Quires of Angels sang praises to God and proclaimed peace to Men sanctifie my Will and inferiour Affections make me to be within the conditions of Peace that I be holy and mortified a despiser of the world and exteriour vanities humble and charitable that by thy eminent example I may be so fixed in the designs and prosecution of the Ends of God and a blissful Eternity that I be unmoved with the terrors of the world unaltered with its allurements and seductions not ambitious of its honour not desirous of its fulness and plenty but make me diligent in the imployment thou givest me faithful in discharge of my trust modest in my desires content in the issues of thy Providence that in such dispositions I may receive and entertain visitations from Heaven and Revelations of the Mysteries and blisses Evangelical that by such directions I may be brought into thy presence there to see thy Beauties and admire thy Graces and imitate all thy imitable Excellencies and rest in thee for ever in this world by the perseverance of a holy and comfortable life and in the world to come in the participation of thy essential Glories and Felicities O Blessed and Eternal Jesus Considerations of the Epiphany of the B. Jesus by a Star and the Adoration of Jesus by the Eastern Magi. 1. GOD who is the universal Father of all Men at the Nativity of the Messias gave notice of it to all the World as they were represented by the grand Division of Jews and Gentiles to the Jewish Shepherds by an Angel to the Eastern Magi by a Star For the Gospel is of universal dissemination not confined within the limits of a national Prerogative but Catholick and diffused As God's Love was so was the dispensation of it without respect of persons for all being included under the curse of Sin were to him equal and indifferent undistinguishable objects of Mercy And Jesus descended of the Jews was also the expectation of the Gentiles and therefore communicated to all the Grace of God being like the air we breathe and it hath appeared to all men saith S. Paul but the conveyances and communications of it were different in the degrees of clarity and illustration The Angel told the Shepherds the story of the Nativity plainly and literally The Star invited the Wise men by its rareness and preternatural apparition to which also as by a foot-path they had been led by the Prophecy of Balaam 2. But here first the Grace of God prevents us without him we can do nothing he lays the first Stone in every Spiritual Building and then expects by that strength he first gave us that we make the Superstructures But as a Stone thrown into a River first moves the water and disturbs its surface into a Circle and then its own force wafts the neighbouring drops into a larger figure by its proper weight so is the Grace of God the first principle of our spiritual motion and when it moves us into its own figure and hath actuated and ennobled our natural Powers by the influence of that first incentive we continue the motion and enlarge the progress But as the Circle on the face of the waters grows weaker till it hath smoothed it self into a natural and even current unless the force be renewed or continued so does all our natural endeavour when first set a-work by God's preventing Grace decline to the imperfection of its own kind unless the same force be made energetical and operative by the continuation and renewing of the same supernatural influence 3. And therefore the Eastern Magi being first raised up into wonder and curiosity by the apparition of the Star were very far from finding Jesus by such general and indefinite significations but then the goodness of God's Grace increased its own influence for an inspiration from the Spirit of God admonished them to observe the Star shewed the Star that they might find it taught them to acknowledge it instructed them to understand its purpose and invited them to follow it and never left them till they had found the Holy Jesus Thus also God deals with us He gives us the first Grace and adds the second he enlightens our Understandings and actuates our Faculties and sweetly allures us by the proposition of Rewards and wounds us with the arrows of his Love and inflames us with fire from Heaven ever giving us new assistances or increasing the old refreshing us with comforts or arming us with patience sometimes stirring our affections by the lights held out to our Understanding sometimes bringing confirmation to our understanding by the motion of our Affections till by variety of means we at last arrive at Lethlehem in the service and entertainments of the Holy Jesus Which we shall certainly do if we follow the invitations of Grace and exteriour assistances which are given us to instruct us to help us and to invite us but not to force our endeavours and cooperations 4. As it was an unsearchable wisdom so it was an unmeasurable grace of Providence and dispensation which God did exhibit to the Wise men to them as to all men disposing the Ministeries of his Grace sweetly and by proportion to the capacities of the person suscipient For God called the Gentiles by such means which their Customs and Learning had made prompt and easie For these Magi were great Philosophers and Astronomers and therefore God sent a miraculous Star to invite and lead them to a new and more glorious light the lights of Grace and Glory And God so blessed them in following the Star to which their innocent Curiosity and national Customs were apt to lead them that their Custom was changed to Grace and their Learning heightned with Inspiration and God crowned all with a spiritual and glorious event It was not much unlike which God did to the Princes and Diviners among the Philistines who sent the Ark back with five golden Emrods and five golden Mice an act proportionable to the Custom and sense of their Nation and Religion yet God accepted their opinion and divination to the utmost end they designed it and took the plagues of Emrods and Mice from them For
sweetnesses which represent the glory of the reward by the Antepasts and refreshments dispensed even in the ruggedness of the way and incommodities of the journey All other delights are the pleasures of Beasts or the sports of Children these are the Antepasts and preventions of the full Feasts and overflowings of Eternity 10. When they came to Bethlehem and the Star pointed them to a Stable they entred in and being enlightned with a Divine Ray proceeding from the face of the Holy Child and seeing through the cloud and passing through the scandal of his mean Lodging and poor condition they bowed themselves to the earth first giving themselves an Oblation to this great King then they made offering of their Gifts for a man's person is first accepted then his Gift God first regarded Abel and then accepted his Offering which we are best taught to understand by the present instance for it means no more but that all outward Services and Oblations are made acceptable by the prior presentation of an inward Sacrifice If we have first presented our selves then our Gift is pleasant as coming but to express the truth of the first Sacrifice but if our Persons be not first made a Holocaust to God the lesser Oblations of outward Presents are like Sacrifices without Salt and Fire nothing to make them pleasant or religious For all other sences of this Proposition charge upon God the distinguishing and acceptation of Persons against which he solemnly protests God regards no man's Person but according to the doing of his Duty but then God is said first to accept the Person and then the Gist when the Person is first sanctified and given to God by the vows and habits of a holy life and then all the actions of his Religion are homogeneal to their principle and accepted by the acceptation of the man 11. These Magi presented to the Holy Babe Gold Frankincense and Myrrh protesting their Faith of three Articles by the symbolical Oblation By Gold that he was a King by Incense that he was a God by Myrrh that he was a Man And the Presents also were representative of interiour Vertues the Myrrh signifying Faith Mortification Chastity Compunction and all the actions of the Purgative way of Spiritual life the Incense signifying Hope Prayer Obedience good Intention and all the actions and Devotions of the Illuminative the giving the Gold representing Love to God and our Neighbours the Contempt of riches Poverty of spirit and all the eminencies and spiritual riches of the Unitive life And these Oblations if we present to the Holy Jesus both our Persons and our Gifts shall be accepted our Sins shall be purged our Understandings enlightned and our Wills united to this Holy Child and entitled to a communion of all his Glories 12. And thus in one view and two Instances God hath drawn all the world to himself by his Son Jesus in the Instance of the Shepherds and the Arabian Magi Jews and Gentiles Learned and Unlearned Rich and Poor Noble and Ignoble that in him all Nations and all Conditions and all Families and all persons might be blessed having called all by one Star or other by natural Reason or by the secrets of Philosophy by the Revelations of the Gospel or by the ministery of Angels by the Illuminations of the Spirit or by the Sermons and Dictates of spiritual Fathers and hath consigned this Lesson to us That we must never appear before the Lord empty offering Gifts to him by the expences or by the affections of Charity either the worshipping or the oblations of Religion either the riches of the World or the love of the Soul for if we cannot bring Gold with the rich Arabians we may with the poor Shepherds come and kiss the Son lest he be angry and in all cases come and serve him with fear and reverence and spiritual rejoycings The PRAYER MOst Holy Jesu Thou art the Glory of thy people Israel and a light to the Gentiles and wert pleased to call the Gentiles to the adoration and knowledge of thy sacred Person and Laws communicating the inestimable riches of thy holy Discipline to all with an universal undistinguishing Love give unto us spirits docible pious prudent and ductile that no motion or invitation of Grace be ineffectual but may produce excellent effects upon us and the secret whispers of thy Spirit may prevail upon our Affections in order to Piety and Obedience as certainly as the loudest and most clamorous Sermons of the Gospel Create in us such Excellencies as are fit to be presented to thy glorious Majesty accept of the Oblation of my self and my entire services but be thou pleased to verifie my Offering and secure the possession to thy self that the enemy may not pollute the Sacrifice or divide the Gift or question the Title but that I may be wholly thine and for ever clarifie my Understanding sanctifie my Will replenish my Memory with arguments of Piety then shall I present to thee an Oblation rich and precious as the treble gift of the Levantine Princes Lord I am thine reject me not from thy favour exclude me not from thy presence then shall I serve thee all the days of my life and partake of the glories of thy Kingdom in which thou reignest gloriously and eternally Amen SECT V. Of the Circumcision of JESUS and his Presentation in the Temple The Circumcision of Iesus S. LUKE 2. 21. And when eight daies were accomphshed for the circumcising of the Child his name was called Iesus which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the Wombe The Purification and Presentation S. LUKE 2. 22. And when the dayes of her purification were accomplished they brought him to Ierusalem to present him to the Lord. 1. AND now the Blessed Saviour of the World began to do the work of his Mission and our Redemption and because Man had prevaricated all the Divine Commandments to which all humane nature respectively to the persons of several capacities was obliged and therefore the whole Nature was obnoxious to the just rewards of its demerits first Christ was to put that Nature he had assumed into a saveable condition by fulfilling his Father's preceptive will and then to reconcile it actually by suffering the just deservings of its Prevarications He therefore addresses himself to all the parts of an active Obedience and when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the Child he exposed his tender body to the sharpness of the circumcising stone and shed his bloud in drops giving an earnest of those rivers which he did afterwards pour out for the cleansing all Humane nature and extinguishing the wrath of God 2. He that had no sin nor was conceived by natural generation could have no adherences to his Soul or Body which needed to be pared away by a Rite and cleansed by a Mystery neither indeed do we find it expressed that Circumcision was ordained for abolition or pardon of original sin it
Princes in the conspiracy of Dathan that 's for the Temporal And to encourage this Duty I shall use no other words than those of Achilles in Homer They that obey in this world are better than they that command in Hell A PRAYER for the Grace of Holy OBEDIENCE O Lord and Blessed Saviour Jesus by whose Obedience many became righteous and reparations were made of the ruines brought to humane Nature by the Disobedience of Adam thou camest into the world with many great and holy purposes concerning our Salvation and hast given us a great precedent of Obedience which that thou mightest preserve to thy Heavenly Father thou didst neglect thy Life and becamest obedient even to the death of the Cross O let me imit ate so blessed example and by the merits of thy Obedience let me obtain the grace of Humility and Abnegation of all my own desires in the clearest Renunciation of my Will that I may will and refuse in conformity to thy sacred Laws and holy purposes that I may do all thy will chearfully chusingly humbly confidently and continually and thy will may be done upon me with much mercy and fatherly dispensation of thy Providence Amen 2. LOrd let my Understanding adhere to and be satisfied in the excellent ãâã of thy Commandments let my Affections dwell in their desires and all my other Faculties be set on daily work for performance of them and let my love to obey thee make me dutiful to my Superiors upon whom the impresses of thy Authority are set by thine own hand that I may never despise their Persons nor refuse their Injunctions nor chuse mine own work nor murmur at their burthens nor dispute the prudence of the Sanction nor excuse my self nor pretend ãâã or impossibilities but that I may be ãâã in my desires and resigned to the will of those whom thou hast set over me that since all thy Creatures obey thy word I alone may not disorder the Creation and cancel those bands and intermedial links of Subordination whereby my duty should pass to ãâã and thy glory but that my Obedience being united to thy Obedience I may also have my portion in the ãâã of thy Kingdom O Lord and Blessed Saviour Jesus Amen Considerations upon the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple 1. THE Holy Virgin-Mother according to the Law of Moses at the expiration of a certain time came to the Temple to be purified although in her sacred Parturition she had contracted no Legal impurity yet she exposed her self to the publick opinion and common reputation of an ordinary condition and still amongst all generations she is in all circumstances accounted blessed and her reputation no tittle altered save only that it is made the more sacred by this testimony of her Humility But this we are taught from the consequence of this instance That if an End principally designed in any Duty should be supplied otherwise in any particular person the Duty is nevertheless to be observed and then the obedience and publick order is reason enough for the observation though the proper End of its designation be wanting in the single person Thus is Fasting designed for mortification of the flesh and killing all its unruly appetites and yet Married persons who have another remedy and a Virgin whose Temple is hallowed by a gift and the strict observances of Chastity may be tied to the Duty and if they might not then Fasting were nothing else but a publication of our impure desires and an exposing the person to the confidence of a bold temptation whilst the young men did observe the Faster to be tempted from within But the Holy Virgin from these acts of which in signification she had no need because she sinned not in the Conception nor was impure in the production expressed other Vertues besides Obedience such as were humble thoughts of her self Devotion and Reverence to publick Sanctions Religion and Charity which were like the pure leaves of the whitest Lily fit to represent the beauties of her innocence but were veiled and shadowed by that sacramental of the Mosaick Law 2. The Holy Virgin received the greatest favour that any of the Daughters of Adam ever did and knowing from whence and for whose glory she had received it returns the Holy Jesus in a Present to God again for she had nothing so precious as himself to make oblation of and besides that every first-born among the Males was holy to the Lord this Child had an eternal and essential Sanctity and until he came into the World and was made apt for her to make present of him there was never in the world any act of Adoration proportionable to the honour of the great God but now there was and the Holy Virgin made it when she presented the Holy Child Jesus And now besides that we are taught to return to God whatsoever we have received from him if we unite our Offerings and Devotions to this holy Present we shall by the merit and excellency of this Oblation exhibit to God an Offertory in which he cannot but delight for the combination's sake and society of his Holy Son 3. The Holy Mother brought five Sicles and a pair of Turtle-doves to redeem the Lamb of God from the Anathema because every first-born was to be sacrificed to God or redeemed if it was clean it was the poor man's price and the Holy Jesus was never set at the greater prices when he was estimated upon earth For he that was Lord of the Kingdom chose his portion among the poor of this World that he might advance the poor to the riches of his inheritance and so it was from his Nativity hither For at his Birth he was poor at his Circumcision poor and in the likeness of a sinner at his Presentation poor and like a sinner and a servant for he chose to be redeemed with an ignoble price The five Sicles were given to the Priest for the redemption of the Child and if the Parents were not able he was to be a servant of the Temple and to minister in the inferiour offices to the Priest and this was God's seizure and possession of him for although all the servants of God are his inheritance yet the Ministers of Religion who derive their portion of temporals from his title who live upon the Corban and eat the meat of the Altar which is God's peculiar and come nearer to his Holiness by the addresses of an immediate ministration are God's own upon another and a distinct challenge But because Christ was to be the Prince of another Ministry and the chief Priest of another Order he was redeemed from attending the Mosaick Rites which he came to ãâã that he might do his Father's business in establishing the Evangelical Only remember that the Ministers of Religion are but God's ãâã as they are not Lords of God's portion and therefore must dispense it like Stewards not like Masters so the People are ãâã their Patrons in paying nor
certainly take away thy need or satisfie it he will feed thee himself as he did the Israelites or take away thy hunger as he did to Moses or send ravens to feed thee as he did to Elias or make charitable people minister to thee as the Widow to Elisha or give thee his own portion as he maintained the Levites or make thine enemies to pity thee as the Assyrians did the captive Jews For whatsoever the World hath and whatsoever can be conveyed by wonder or by providence all that is thy security for provisions so long as thou doest the work of God And remember that the assurance of Blessing and Health and Salvation is not made by doing what we list or being where we desire but by doing God's will and being in the place of his appointment we may be safe in Egypt if we be there in obedience to God and we may perish among the Babes of Bethlehem if we be there by our own election 4. Joseph and Mary did not argue against the Angel's message because they had a confidence of their charge who with the breath of his mouth could have destroyed Herod though he had been abetted with all the Legions marching under the Roman Eagles but they like the two Cherubims about the Propitiatory took the Child between them and fled giving way to the fury of Persecution which possibly when the materials are withdrawn might expire and die like fire which else would rage for ever Jesus fled undertook a sad Journey in which the roughness of the ways his own tenderness the youth of his Mother the old age of his supposed Father the smalness of their viaticum and accommodation for their voyage the no-kindred they were to go to hopeless of comsorts and exteriour supplies were so many circumstances of Poverty and lesser strokes of the Persecution things that himself did chuse to remonstrate the verity of his Nature the infirmity of his Person the humility of his spirit the austerity of his undertaking the burthen of his charge and by which he did teach us the same vertues he then expressed and also consign'd this permission to all his Disciples in future Ages that they also may fly from their persecutors when the case is so that their work is not done that is they may glorifie God with their lives more than with their death And of this they are ascertained by the arguments of prudent account For sometimes we are called to glorisie God by dying and the interest of the Church and the Faith of many may be concerned in it then we must abide by it In other cases it is true that Demosthenes said in apology for his own escaping from a lost field A man that runs away may fight again And S. Paul made use of a guard of Souldiers to rescue him from the treachery of the Jewish Rulers and of a basket to escape from the Inquisition of the Governour of Damascus and the Primitive Christians of Grotts and subterraneous retirements and S. Athanasius of a fair Ladie 's House and others of desarts and graves as knowing it was no shame to fly when their Master himself had fled that his time and his work might be fulfilled and when it was he then laid his life down 5. It is hard to set down particular Rules that may indefinitely guide all persons in the stating of their own case because all things that depend upon circumstances are alterable unto infinite But as God's glory and the good of the Church are the great considerations to be carried before us all the way and in proportions to them we are to determine and judge our Questions so also our infirmities are allowable in the scrutiny for I doubt not but God intended it a mercy and a compliance with humane weakness when he gave us this permission as well as it was a design to secure the opportunities of his service and the consummation of his own work by us And since our fears and the incommodities of flight and the sadness of exile and the insecurities and inconveniences of a strange and new abode are part of the Persecution provided that God's glory be not certainly and apparently neglected nor the Church evidently scandalized by our ãâã all interpretations of the question in favour of our selves and the declension of that part which may tempt us to apostasie or hazard our confidence and the chusing the lesser part of the Persecution is not against the rule of Faith and always hath in it less glory but oftentimes more security 6. But thus far Herod's Ambition transported him even to resolutions of murther of the highest person the most glorious and the most innocent upon earth and it represents that Passion to be the most troublesome and vexatious thing that can afflict the sons of men Vertue hath not half so much trouble in it it sleeps quietly without startings and affrighting fancies it looks chearfully smiles with much ãâã and though it laughs not often yet it is ever delightful in the apprehensions of some faculty it fears no man nor no thing nor is it discomposed and hath no concernments in the great alterations of the World and entertains Death like a Friend and reckons the issues of it as the greatest of its hopes but Ambition is full of distractions it teems with stratagems as Rebecca with strugling twins and is swelled with expectation as with a tympany and sleeps sometimes as the wind in a storm still and quiet for a minute that it may burst out into an impetuous blast till the cordage of his heart-strings crack fears when none is ãâã and prevents things which never had intention and falls under the inevitability of such accidents which either could not be foreseen or not prevented It is an infinite labour to make a man's self miserable and the utmost acquist is so goodly a purchase that he makes his days full of sorrow to enjoy the troubles of a three years reign for Herod lived but three years or five at the most after the flight of Jesus into Egypt And therefore there is no greater unreasonableness in the world than in the designs of Ambition for it makes the present certainly miserable unsatisfied troublesome and discontent for the uncertain acquist of an honour which nothing can secure and besides a thousand possibilities of miscarrying it relies upon no greater certainty than our life and when we are dead all the world sees who was the fool But it is a strange caitiveness and baseness of disposition of men so furiously and unsatiably to run after perishing and uncertain interests in defiance of all the Reason and Religion of the world and yet to have no appetite to such excellencies which satisfie Reason and content the spirit and create great hopes and ennoble our expectation and are advantages to Communities of men and publick Societies and which all wise men teach and all Religion commands 7. And it is not amiss to observe how Herod vexed
himself extremely upon a mistake The Child Jesus was born a King but it was a King of all the World not confined within the limits of a Province like the weaker beauties of a Torch to shine in one room but like the Sun his Empire was over all the World and if Herod would have become but his Tributary and paid him the acknowledgments of his Lord he should have had better conditions than under Caesar and yet have been as absolute in his own Jewry as he was before His Kingdom was not of this World and he that gives heavenly Kingdoms to all his servants would not have stooped to have taken up Herod's petty Coronet But as it is a very vanity which Ambition seeks so it is a shadow that disturbs and discomposes all its motions and apprehensions 8. And the same mistake caused calamities to descend upon the Church for some of the Persecutions commenced upon pretence Christianity was an enemy to Government But the pretence was infinitely unreasonable and therefore had the fate of senseless allegations it disbanded presently for no external accident did so incorporate the excellency of Christ's Religion into the hearts of men as the innocency of the men their inoffensive deportment the modesty of their designs their great humility and obedience a life expresly in enmity and contestation against secular Ambition And it is to be feared that the mingling humane interests with Religion will deface the image Christ hath stamped upon it Certain it is the metall is much abated by so impure allay while the Christian Prince serves his end of Ambition and bears arms upon his neighbour's Countrey for the service of Religion making Christ's Kingdom to invade Herod's rights and in the state Ecclesiastical secular interests have so deep a portion that there are snares laid to tempt a Persecution and men are invited to Sacrilege while the Revenues of a Church are a fair fortune for a Prince I make no scruple to find fault with Painters that picture the poor Saints with rich garments for though they deserved better yet they had but poor ones and some have been tempted to cheat the Saint not out of ill will to his Sanctity but love to his Shrine and to the beauty of the cloaths with which some imprudent persons have of old time dressed their Images So it is in the fate of the Church Persecution and the robes of Christ were her portion and her cloathing and when she is dressed up in gawdy fortunes it is no more than she deserves but yet sometimes it is occasion that the Devil cheats her of her Holiness and the men of the world sacrilegiously cheat her of her Riches and then when God hath reduced her to that Poverty he first promised and intended to her the Persecution ceases and Sanctity returns and God curses the Sacrilege and stirs up mens minds to religious Donatives and all is well till she grows rich again And if it be dangerous in any man to be rich and discomposes his steps in his journey to Eternity it is not then so proportionable to the analogy of Christ's Poverty and the inheritance of the Church to be sedulous in acquiring great Temporalties and putting Princes in jealousie and States into care for securities lest all the Temporal should run into Ecclesiastical possession 9. If the Church have by the active Piety of a credulous a pious and less-observant Age been endowed with great Possessions she hath rules enough and poor enough and necessities enough to dispend what she hath with advantages to Religion but then all she gets by it is the trouble of an unthankful a suspected and unsatisfying dispensation and the Church is made by evil persons a Scene of ambition and stratagem and to get a German Bishoprick is to be a Prince and to defend with niceness and Suits of Law every Custom or lesser Rite even to the breach of Charity and the scandal of Religion is called a Duty and every single person is bound to forgive injuries and to quit his right rather than his Charity but if it is not a duty in the Church also in them whose life should be excellent to the degree of Example I would fain know if there be not greater care taken to secure the Ecclesiastical Revenue than the publick Charity and the honour of Religion in the strict Piety of the Clergy for as the not ingaging in Suits may occasion bold people to wrong the Church so the necessity of ingaging is occasion of losing Charity and of great Scandal I find not fault with a free Revenue of the Church it is in some sense necessary to Governours and to preserve the Consequents of their Authority but I represent that such things are occasion of much mischief to the Church and less Holiness and in all cases respect should be had to the design of Christianity to the Prophecies of Jesus to the promised lot of the Church to the dangers of Riches to the excellencies and advantages and rewards of Poverty and if the Church have enough to perform all her duties and obligations chearfully let her of all Societies be soonest content If she have plenty let her use it temperately and charitably if she have not let her not be querulous and troublesome But however it would be thought upon that though in judging the quantum of the Church's portion the World thinks every thing too much yet we must be careful we do not judge every thing too little and if our fortune be safe between envy and contempt it is much mercy If it be despicable it is safe for Ecclesiasticks though it may be accidentally inconvenient or less profitable to others but if it be great publick experience hath made remonstrance that it mingles with the world and durties those fingers which are instrumental in Consecration and the more solemn Rites of Christianity 10. Jesus fled from the Persecution as he did not stand it out so he did not stand out against it he was careful to transmit no precedent or encouragement of resisting tyrannous Princes when they offer violence to Religion and our lives He would not stand disputing for privileges nor calling in Auxiliaries from the Lord of Hosts who could have spared him many Legions of Angels every single Spirit being able to have defeated all Herod's power but he knew it was a hard lesson to learn Patience and all the excuses in the world would be sought out to discourage such a Doctrine by which we are taught to die or lose all we have or suffer inconveniences at the will of a Tyrant we need no authentick examples much less Doctrines to invite men to War from which we see Christian Princes cannot be restrained with the engagements and peaceful Theorems of an excellent and a holy Religion nor Subjects kept from Rebelling by the interests of all Religions in the world nor by the necessities and reasonableness of Obedience nor the indearments of
all publick Societies of men one word or an intimation from Christ would have sounded an alarm and put us into postures of defence when all Christ's excellent Sermons and rare exemplar actions cannot tie our hands But it is strange now that of all men in the World Christians should be such fighting people or that Christian Subjects should lift up a thought against a Christian Prince when they had no intimation of encouragement from their Master but many from him to endear Obedience and Humility and Patience and Charity and these four make up the whole analogy and represent the chief design and meaning of Christianity in its moral constitution 11. But Jesus when himself was safe could also have secured the poor Babes of Bethlehem with thousands of diversions and avocations of Herod's purposes or by discovering his own Escape in some safe manner not unknown to the Divine wisedom but yet it did not so please God He is Lord of his Creatures and hath absolute dominion over our lives and he had an end of Glory to serve upon these Babes and an end of Justice upon Herod and to the Children he made such compensation that they had no reason to complain that they were so soon made Stars when they shined in their little Orbs and participations of Eternity for so the sense of the Church hath been that they having dyed the death of Martyrs though incapable of making the choice God supplied the defects of their will by his own entertainment of the thing that as the misery and their death so also their glorification might have the same Author in the same manner of causality even by a peremptory and unconditioned determination in these particulars This sense is pious and nothing unreasonable considering that all circumstances of the thing make the case particular but the immature death of other Infants is a sadder story for though I have no warrant or thought that it is ill with them after death and in what manner or degree of well-being it is there is no revelation yet I am not of opinion that the securing of so low a condition as theirs in all reason is like to be will make recompence or is an equal blessing with the possibilities of such an Eternity as is proposed to them who in the use of Reason and a holy life glorifie God with a free Obedience and if it were otherwise it were no blessing to live till the use of Reason and Fools and Babes were in the best because in the securest condition and certain expectation of equal glories 12. As soon as Herod was dead for the Divine Vengeance waited his own time for his arrest the Angel presently brought Joseph word The holy Family was full of content and indifferency not solicitous for return not distrustful of the Divine Providence full of poverty and sanctity and content waiting God's time at the return of which God delayed not to recall them from Exile out of Egypt he called his Son and directed Joseph's fear and course that he should divert to a place in the jurisdiction of Philip where the Heir of Herod's Cruelty Archelaus had nothing to do And this very series of Providence and care God expresses to all his sons by adoption and will determine the time and set bounds to every Persecution and punish the instruments and ease our pains and refresh our sorrows and give quietness to our fears and deliverance from our troubles and sanctifie it all and give a Crown at last and all in his good time if we wait the coming of the Angel and in the mean time do our duty with care and sustain our temporals with indifferency and in all our troubles and displeasing accidents we may call to mind that God by his holy and most reasonable Providence hath so ordered it that the spiritual advantages we may receive from the holy use of such incommodities are of great recompence and interest and that in such accidents the Holy Jesus having gone before us in precedent does go along with us by love and fair assistences and that makes the present condition infinitely more eligible than the greatest splendour of secular fortune The PRAYER O Blessed and Eternal God who didst suffer thy Holy Son to fly from the violence of an enraged Prince and didst chuse to defend him in the ways of his infirmity by hiding himself and a voluntary exile be thou a defence to all thy faithful people when-ever Persecution arises against them send them the ministery of Angels to direct them into ways of security and let thy holy Spirit guide them in the paths of Sanctity and let thy Providence continue in custody over their persons till the times of refreshment and the day of Redemption shall return Give O Lord to thy whole Church Sanctity and Zeal and the confidences of a holy Faith boldness of confession Humility content and resignation of spirit generous contempt of the World and unmingled desires of thy glory and the edification of thy Elect that no secular interests disturb her duty or discompose her charity or depress her hopes or in any unequal degree possess her affections and pollute her spirit but preserve her from the snares of the World and the Devil from the rapine and greedy desires of Sacrilegious persons and in all conditions whether of affluence or want may she still promote the interests of Religion that when plenteousness is within her palaces and peace in her walls that condition may then be best for her and when she is made as naked as Jesus to his Passion then Poverty may be best for her that in all estates she may glorifie thee and in all accidents and changes thou mayest sanctifie and bless her and at last bring her to the eternal riches and abundances of glory where no Persecution shall disturb her rest Grant this for sweet Jesus sake who suffered exile and hard journeys and all the inconveniences of a friendless person in a strange Province to whom with thee and the eternal Spirit be glory for ever and blessing in all generations of the World and for ever and ever Amen SECT VII Of the younger years of JESVS and his Disputation with the Doctors in the Temple The House of Prayer It is written My house shall be called of all Nations the house of prayer Mark 11. 17. If they return confess thy name and pray and make supplication before thee in this House Then hear thou in heaven and forgive 2. Chron 6. 24. 26. IESUS disputing with the Doctors S. LUKE 2. 46. 47. They found him in the Temple sitting in the midst of the Doctors both hearing them and asking them questions And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding answers 1. FRom the return of this holy Family to Judaea and their habitation in Nazareth till the blessed Child Jesus was twelve years of age we have nothing transmitted to us out of any authentick Record but that they went to
of impenitents even abscission and fire unquenchable And from this time forward viz. From the days of John the Baptist the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence and the violent take it by force For now the Gospel began to dawn and John was like the Morning-star or the blushings springing from the windows of the East foretelling the approach of the Sun of Righteousness and as S. John Baptist laid the first rough hard and unhewen stone of this building in Mortification Self denial and doing violence to our natural affections so it was continued by the Master-builder himself who propounded the glories of the Crown of the heavenly Kingdom to them only who should climb the Cross to reach it Now it was that Multitudes should throng and croud to enter in at the strait gate and press into the Kingdom and the younger brothers should snatch the inheritance from the elder the unlikely from the more likely the Gentiles from the Jews the strangers from the natives the Publicans and Harlots from the Scribes and Pharisees who like violent persons shall by their importunity obedience watchfulness and diligence snatch the Kingdom from them to whom it was first offered and Jacob shall be loved and Esau rejected Ad SECT VIII Considerations upon the Preaching of John the Baptist. 1. FRom the Disputation of Jesus with the Doctors to the time of his Manifestation to Israel which was eighteen years the Holy Child dwelt in Nazareth in great obedience to his Parents in exemplar Modesty singular Humility working with his hands in his supposed Father's trade for the support of his own and his Mother's necessities and that he might bear the Curse of Adam that in the sweat of his brows he should eat his bread all the while he increased in favour with God and man sending forth excellent testimonies of a rare Spirit and a wise Understanding in the temperate instances of such a conversation to which his Humility and great Obedience had engaged him But all this while the stream ran under ground and though little bublings were discerned in all the course and all the way men looked upon him as upon an excellent person diligent in his calling wise and humble temperate and just pious and rarely temper'd yet at the manifestation of John the Baptist he brake forth like the stream from the bowels of the earth or the Sun from a cloud and gave us a precedent that we should not shew our lights to minister to vanity but then only when God and publick order and just dispositions of men call for a manifestation and yet the Ages of men have been so forward in prophetical Ministeries and to undertake Ecclesiastical imployment that the viciousness and indiscretions and scandals the Church of God feels as great burthens upon the tenderness of her spirit are in great part owing to the neglect of this instance of the Prudence and Modesty of the Holy Jesus 2. But now the time appointed was come the Baptist comes forth upon the Theatre of Palestine a fore-runner of the Office and publication of Jesus and by the great reputation of his Sanctity prevailed upon the affections and judgment of the people who with much case believed his Doctrine when they had reason to approve his Life for the good Example of the Preacher is always the most prevailing Homily his Life is his best Sermon He that will raise affections in his Auditory must affect their eyes for we seldom see the people weep if the Orator laughs loud and loosely and there is no reason to think that his discourse should work more with me than himself If his arguments be fair and specious I shall think them fallacies while they have not faith with him and what necessity for me to be temperate when he that tells me so sees no such need but hopes to go to Heaven without it or if the duty be necessary I shall learn the definition of Temperance and the latitudes of my permission and the bounds of lawful and unlawful by the exposition of his practice if he binds a burthen upon my shoulders it is but reason I should look for him to bear his portion too Good works convince more than Miracles and the power of ejecting Devils is not so great probation that Christian Religion came from God as is the holiness of the Doctrine and its efficacy and productions upon the hearty Professors of the Institution S. Pachomius when he wore the military girdle under Constantine the Emperor came to a City of Christians who having heard that the Army in which he then marched was almost starved for want of necessary provisions of their own charity relieved them speedily and freely He wondring at their so free and chearful dispensation inquired what kind of people these were whom he saw so bountiful It was answered they were Christians whose Profession it is to hurt no man and to do good to every man The pleased Souldier was convinced of the excellency of that Religion which brought forth men so good and so pious and loved the Mother for the Children's sake threw away his girdle and became Christian and Religious and a Saint And it was Tertullian's great argument in behalf of Christians See how they love one another how every man is ready to die for his brother it was a living argument and a sensible demonstration of the purity of the Fountain from whence such lympid waters did derive But so John the Baptist made himself a fit instrument of preparation and so must all the Christian Clergy be fitted for the dissemination of the Gospel of Jesus 3. The Baptist had till this time that is about thirty years lived in the Wilderness under the Discipline of the Holy Ghost under the tuition of Angels in conversation with God in great mortification and disaffections to the World his garments rugged and uneasie his meat plain necessary and without variety his imployment prayers and devotion his company wilde beasts in ordinary in extraordinary messengers from Heaven and all this not undertaken of necessity to subdue a bold lust or to punish a loud crime but to become more holy and pure from the lesser stains and insinuations of too free infirmities and to prepare himself for the great ministery of serving the Holy Jesus in his Publication Thirty years he lived in great austerity and it was a rare Patience and exemplar Mortification we use not to be so pertinacious in any pious resolutions but our purposes disband upon the sense of the first violence we are free and confident of resolving to fast when our bellies are full but when we are called upon by the first necessities of nature our zeal is cool and dissoluble into air upon the first temptation and we are not upheld in the violences of a short Austerity without faintings and repentances to be repented of and enquirings after the vow is past and searching for excuses and desires to reconcile our nature and our Conscience unless
our necessity be great and our sin clamorous and our Conscience loaden and no peace to be had without it and it is well if upon any reasonable grounds we can be brought to suffer contradictions of nature for the advantages of Grace But it would be remembred that the Baptist did more upon a less necessity and possibly the greatness of the example may entice us on a little farther than the customs of the World or our own indevotions would engage us 4. But after the expiration of a definite time John came forth from his Solitude and served God in Societies He served God and the content of his own spirit by his conversing with Angels and Dialogues with God so long as he was in the Wilderness and it might be some trouble to him to mingle with the impurities of Men amongst whom he was sure to observe such recesses from perfection such violation of all things sacred so great despite done to all ministeries of Religion that to him who had no experience or neighbourhood of actions criminal it must needs be to his sublim'd and clarified spirit more punitive and affictive than his hairen shirt and his ascetick diet was to his body but now himself that tried both was best able to judge which state of life was of greatest advantage and perfection 5. In his Solitude he did breath more pure inspiration Heaven was more open God was more familiar and frequent in his visitations In the Wilderness his company was Angels his imployment Meditations and Prayer his Temptations simple and from within from the impotent and lesser rebellions of a mortified body his occasions of sin as few as his examples his condition such that if his Soul were at all busie his life could not easily be other than the life of Angels for his work and recreation and his visits and his retirements could be nothing but the variety and differing circumstances of his Piety his inclinations to Society made it necessary for him to repeat his addresses to God for his being a sociable Creature and yet in solitude made that his conversing with God and being partaker of Divine communications should be the satisfaction of his natural desires and the supply of his singularity and retirement the discomforts of which made it natural for him to seck out for some refreshment and therefore to go to Heaven for it he having rejected the solaces of the World already And all this besides the innocencies of his silence which is very great and to be judged of in proportion to the infinite extravagancies of our language there being no greater perfection here to be expected than not to offend in our tongue It was solitude and retirement in which Jesus kept his Vigils the Desart places heard him pray in a privacy he was born in the ãâã ãâã he fed his thousands upon a Mountain apart he was transfigured upon a Mountain he died and from a Mountain he ãâã to his Father in which Retirements his Devotion certainly did receive the advantage of convenient circumstances and himself in such dispositions twice had the opportunities of Glory 6. And yet after all these Excellencies the Spirit of God called the Baptist forth to a more excellent Ministery for in Solitude pious persons might go to Heaven by the way of Prayers and Devotion but in Society they might go to Heaven by the way of Mercy and Charity and dispensations to others In Solitude there are fewer occasions of Vices but there is also the exercise of fewer Vertues and the Temptations though they be not from many Objects yet are in some Circumstances more dangerous not only because the worst of evils spiritual Pride does seldom miss to creep upon those goodly Oaks like Ivy and suck their heart out and a great Mortifier without some complacencies in himself or affectations or opinions or something of singularity is almost as unusual as virgin-purity and unstained thoughts in the Bordelli S. Hierom had tried it and found it so by experience and he it was that said so but also because whatsoever temptation does invade such retired persons they have privacies enough to act it in and no eyes upon them but the eye of Heaven no shame to encounter withal no fears of being discovered and we know by experience that a Witness of our conversation is a great restraint to the inordination of our actions Men seek out darknesses and secrecies to commit a sin and The evil that no man sees no man reproves and that makes the Temptation bold and confident and the iniquity easie and ready So that as they have not so many tempters as they have abroad so neither have they so many restraints their vices are not so many but they are more dangerous in themselves and to the World safe and opportune And as they communicate less with the World so they do less Charity and fewer offices of Mercy no Sermons there but when solitude is made popular and the City removes into the Wilderness no comforts of a publick Religion or visible remonstrances of the Communion of Saints and of all the kinds of spiritual Mercy only one can there properly be exercised and of the corporal none at all And this is true in lives and institutions of less retirement in proportion to the degree of the Solitude and therefore Church story reports of divers very holy persons who left their Wildernesses and sweetnesses of Devotion in their retirement to serve God in publick by the ways of Charity and exteriour offices Thus S. Antony and Acepsamas came forth to encourage the fainting people to contend to death for the Crown of Martyrdom and Aphraates in the time of Valens the Arian Emperor came abroad to assist the Church in the suppressing the flames kindled by the Arian Faction And upon this ground they that are the greatest admirers of Eremitical life call the Episcopal Function the State of perfection and a degree of ministerial and honorary excellency beyond the pieties and contemplations of Solitude because of the advantages of gaining Souls and Religious conversation and going to God by doing good to others 7. John the Baptist united both these lives and our Blessed Saviour who is the great Precedent of Sanctity and Prudence hath determined this question in his own instance for he lived a life common sociable humane charitable and publick and yet for the opportunities of especial Devotion retir'd to prayer and contemplation but came forth speedily for the Devil never set upon him but in the Wilderness and by the advantage of retirement For as God hath many so the Devil hath some opportunities of doing his work in our solitariness But Jesus reconcil'd both and so did John the Baptist in several degrees and manners and from both we are taught that Solitude is a good School and the World is the best Theatre the Institution is best there but the Practice here the Wilderness hath the advantage
poison to make experiment of the antidote and at the best it is but a running back to come just to the same place again for he that is not tempted does not sin but he that invites a Temptation that he might overcome it or provokes a Passion that he may allay it is then but in the same condition after his pains and his ãâã He was not sure he should come so far The PRAYER O Dearest God who hast framed Man of Soul and Body and fitted him with Faculties and proportionable instruments to serve thee according to all our capacities let thy holy Spirit rule and sanctifie every power and member both of Soul and Body that they may keep that beautious order which in our creation thou didst intend and to which thou dost restore thy people in the renovations of Grace that our Affections may be guided by Reason our Understanding may be enlightned with thy Word and then may guide and perswade our Will that we suffer no violent transportation of Passions nor be overcome by a Temptation nor consent to the impure solicitations of Lust that Sin may not reign in our mortal bodies but that both Bodies and Souls may be conformable to the Sufferings of the Holy Jesus that in our Body we may bear the marks and dying of our Lord and in our spirits we may be humble and mortified and like him in all his imitable perfections that we may die to sin and live to righteousness and after our suffering together with him in this world we may reign together with him hereafter to whom in the unity of the most mysterious Trinity be all glory and dominion and praise for ever and ever Amen SECT IX Of JESVS being Baptized and going into the Wilderness to be Tempted The Baptisme of Iesus S. MAT. 3. 17. And lo a voice from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased Luc. 3 23. And Iesus himselfe began to be about thirty yeares of age The Temqtation of Iesus S. MAT. 4 10 Get thee behind me Satan For it is written Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou sarue 1. NOW the full time was come Jesus took leave of his Mother and his Trade to begin his Father's work and the Office Prophetical in order to the Redemption of the World and when John was baptizing in Jordan Jesus came to John to be baptized of him The Baptist had never seen his face because they had been from their infancy driven to several places designed to several imployments and never met till now But immediately the Holy Ghost inspired S. John with a discerning and knowing spirit and at his first arrival he knew him and did him worship And when Jesus desired to be baptized John forbad him saying I have need to be baptized of thee and comest thou to me For the Baptism of John although it was not a direct instrument of the Spirit for the collation of Grace neither find we it administred in any form of words not so much as in the name of Christ to come as many dream because even after John had baptized the Pharisees still doubted if he were the Messias which they would not if in his form of Ministration he had published Christ to come after him and also because it had not been proper for Christ himself to have received that Baptism whose form had specified himself to come hereafter neither could it consist with the Revelation which John had and the confession which he made to baptize in the name of Christ to come whom the Spirit marked out to him to be come already and himself pointed at him with his ãâã yet it was a ceremonious consignation of the Doctrine of Repentance which was one great part of the Covenant Evangelical and was a Divine Institution the susception of it was in order to the fulfilling all righteousness it was a sign of Humility the persons baptized confessed their sins it was a sacramental disposing to the Baptism and Faith of Christ but therefore John wondred why the Messias the Lamb of God pure and without spot who needed not the abstersions of Repentance or the washings of Baptism should demand it and of him a sinner and his servant And in the Hebrew Gospel of S. Matthew which the ãâã used at ãâã as S. Hierom reports these words are added The Mother of the Lord and his brethren said unto him John Baptist baptizeth to the Remission of sins let us go and be baptized of him He said to them ãâã have I sinned that I should go and be baptized of him And this part of the Story is also told by Justin Martyr But Jesus wanted not a proposition to consign by his Baptism proportionable enough to the analogy of its institution for as others professed their return towards Innocence so he avowed his perseverance in it and though he was never called in Scripture a Sinner yet he was made Sin for us that is he did undergo the shame and the punishment and therefore it was proper enough for him to perform the Sacrament of Sinners 2. But the Holy Jesus who came as himself in answer to the Baptist's question professed to sulfil all rightcousness would receive that Rite which his Father had instituted in order to the manifestation of his Son For although the Baptist had a glimpse of him by the first irradiations of the Spirit yet John professed That he therefore came baptizing with water that Jesus might be manifested to Israel and it was also a sign given to the Baptist himself that on whomsoever he saw the Spirit descending and remaining he is the person that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost And God chose to actuate the sign at the waters of Jordan in great and religious assemblies convened there at John's Baptism and therefore Jesus came to be baptized and by this Baptism became known to John who as before he gave to him an indiscriminate testimony so now he pointed out the person in his Sermons and Discourses and by calling him the Lamb of God prophesied of his Passion and preached him to be the World's Redeemer and the Sacrifice for mankind He was now manifest to Israel he confirmed the Baptism of John he ãâã the water to become sacramental and ministerial in the remission of sins he by a real event declared that to them who should rightly be baptized the Kingdom of Heaven should certainly be opened he inserted himself by that Ceremony into the society and participation of holy people of which communion himself was Head and Prince and he did in a symbol purifie Humane nature whose stains and guilt he had undertaken 3. As soon as John had performed his Ministery and Jesus was baptized he prayed and the heavens were opened and the air clarified by a new and glorious light and the holy Ghost in the manner of a Dove alighted upon his sacred head and God the Father gave
a voice from Heaven saying Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased This was the inauguration and proclamation of the Messias when he began to be the great Prophet of the new Covenant And this was the greatest meeting that ever was upon earth where the whole Cabinet of the mysterious Trinity was opened and shewn as much as the capacities of our present imperfections will permit the Second Person in the veil of Humanity the Third in the shape or with the motion of a Dove but the First kept his primitive state and as to the Israelites he gave notice by way of caution Ye saw no shape but ye heard a voice so now also God the Father gave testimony to his Holy Son and appeared only in a voice without any visible representment 4. When the Rite and the Solemnity was over Christ ascended up out of the waters and left so much vertue behind him that as Gregorius Turonensis reports that creek of the River where his holy body had been baptized was indued with a healing quality and a power of curing Lepers that bathed themselves in those waters in the faith and with invocation of the holy Name of Jesus But the manifestation of this power was not till afterwards for as yet Jesus did no Miracles 5. As soon as ever the Saviour of the World was baptized had opened the Heavens which yet never had been opened to Man and was declared the Son of God Jesus was by the Spirit driven into the Wilderness not by an unnatural violence but by the efficacies of Inspiration and a supernatural inclination and activity of resolution for it was the Holy Spirit that bare him thither he was led by the good Spirit to be tempted by the evil whither also he was pleased to retire to make demonstration that even in an active life such as he was designed to and intended some recesses and temporary dimissions of the world are most expedient for such persons especially whose office is Prophetical and for institution of others that by such vacancies in prayer and contemplation they may be better enabled to teach others when they have in such retirements conversed with God 6. In the Desart which was four miles ãâã the place of his Baptism and about twenty miles from Jerusalem as the common computations are he did abide forty days and forty nights where he was perpetually disturbed and assaulted with evil spirits in the midst of wild beasts in a continual fast without eating bread or drinking water And the Angels ministred to him being Messengers of comfort and sustentation sent from his Father for the support and service of his Humanity and imployed in resisting and discountenancing the assaults and temporal hostilities of the spirits of darkness 7. Whether the Devils ãâã in any horrid and affrighting shapes is not certain but it is more likely to a person of so great Sanctity and high designation they would appear more Angelical and immaterial in representments intellectual in words and Idea's temptations and inticements because Jesus was not a person of those low weaknesses to be affrighted or troubled with an ugly ãâã which can do nothing but abuse the weak and imperfect conceptions of persons nothing extraordinary And this was the way which Satan or the Prince of the Devils took whose Temptations were reserved for the last assault and the great day of trial for at the expiration of his forty days Jesus being hungry the Tempter invited him only to eat bread of his own providing which might refresh his Humanity and prove his Divinity hoping that his hunger and the desire of convincing the Devil might tempt him to eat before the time appointed But Jesus answered It is written Man shall not live by Bread alone but by every word that ãâã out of the mouth of God meaning that in every word of God whether the Commandment be general or special a promise is either expressed or implied of the supply of all provisions necessary for him that is doing the work of God and that was the present case of Jesus who was then doing his Father's work and promoting our interest and ãâã was sure to be provided for and therefore so are we 8. The Devil having failed in this assault tries him again requiring but a demonstration of his being the Son of God He sets him upon the battlement of the Temple and invites him to throw himself down upon a pretence that God would send his Angels to keep his Son and quotes Scripture for it But Jesus understood it well and though he was secured of God's protection yet he would not tempt God nor solicite his Providence to a dereliction by tempting him to an unnecessary conservation This assault was silly and weak But at last he unites all his power of stratagem and places the Holy Jesus upon an exceeding high mountain and by an Angelical power draws into one Centre Species and Idea's from all the Kingdoms and glories of the World and makes an admirable Map of beauties and represents it to the eyes of Jesus saying that all that was put into his power to give and he would give it him if he would fall down and worship him But then the Holy Lamb was angry as a provoked Lion and commanded him away when his temptations were violent and his demands impudent and blasphemous Then the Devil leaveth him and the Angels came and ministred unto him bringing such things as his necessities required after he had by a forty days Fast done penance for our sins and consigned to his Church the Doctrine and Discipline of Fasting in order to a Contemplative life and the resisting and overcoming all the Temptations and allurements of the Devil and all our ghostly enemies Ad SECT IX Considerations upon the Baptizing Fasting and Temptation of the Holy JESVS by the Devil 1. WHen the day did break and the Baptist was busie in his Offices the Sun of Righteousness soon entred upon our Hemisphere and after he had lived a life of darkness and silence for thirty years together yet now that he came to do the greatest work in the World and to minister in the most honourable Embassie he would do nothing of singularity but fulfil all righteousness and satisfie all Commands and joyn in the common Rites and Sacraments which all people innocent or penitent did undergo either as deleteries of ãâã or instruments of Grace For so he would needs be baptized by his servant and though he was of Purity sufficient to do it and did actually by his Baptism purifie the Purifier and sanctifie that and all other streams to a holy ministery and effect yet he went in bowing his head like a sinner uncloathing himself like an imperfect person and craving to be washed as if he had been crusted with an impure Leprosie thereby teaching us to submit our selves to all those Rites which he would institute and although ãâã of them be like the
imitation of the whole action and the rite of Institution And the purpose of it is that we might secure the excellency and holiness of such predispositions and concomitant Graces which are necessary to the worthy and effectual susception of the external Rites of Christianity 4. After the Holy Jesus was baptized and had prayed the Heavens opened the holy Ghost descended and a voice from Heaven proclaimed him to be the Son of God and one in whom the Father was well pleased and the same ãâã that was cast upon the head of our High Priest went unto his ãâã and thence sell to the borders of his garment for as Christ our Head felt these effects in manifestation so the Church believes God does to her and to her meanest children in the susception of the holy Rite of Baptism in right apt and holy dispositions For the Heavens open too upon us and the Holy Ghost descends to ãâã the waters and to hallow the Catechumen and to pardon the passed and repented sins and to consign him to the inheritance of ãâã and to put on his military girdle and give him the Sacrament and oath of fidelity for all this is understood to be meant by those frequent expressions of Scripture calling Baptism the Laver of Regeneration Illumination a washing away the filth of the flesh and the Answer of a good conscience a being buried with Christ and many others of the like purpose and signification But we may also learn hence sacredly to esteem the Rites of Religion which he first sanctified by his own personal susception and then made necessary by his own institution and command and God hath made to be conveyances of blessing and ministeries of the Holy Spirit 5. The Holy Ghost descended upon Jesus in the manner or visible representment of a Dove either in similitude of figure which he was pleased to assume as the Church more generally hath believed or at least he did descend like a Dove and in his robe of fire hovered over the Baptist's head and then sate upon him as the Dove uses to sit upon the house of her dwelling whose proprieties of nature are pretty and modest Hieroglyphicks of the duty of spiritual persons which are thus observed in both Philosophies The Dove sings not but mourns it hath no gall strikes not with its bill hath no crooked talons and forgets its young ones soonest of any the inhabitants of the air And the effects of the Holy Spirit are symbolical in all the sons of Sanctification For the voice of the Church is sad in those accents which express her own condition but as the Dove is not so sad in her breast as in her note so neither is the interiour condition of the Church wretched and miserable but indeed her Song is most of it Elegy within her own walls and her condition looks sad and her joys are not pleasures in the publick estimate but they that afflict her think her miserable because they know not the sweetnesses of a holy peace and serenity which supports her spirit and plains the heart under a rugged brow making the Soul festival under the noise of a Threne and sadder groanings But the Sons of consolation are also taught their Duty by this Apparition for upon whomsoever the Spirit descends he teaches him to be meek and charitable neither offending by the violence of hands or looser language For the Dove is inoffensive in beak and foot and feels no disturbance and violence of passions when its dearest interests are destroyed that we also may be of an even spirit in the saddest accidents which usually discompose our peace and however such symbolical intimations receive their efficacy from the fancy of the contriver yet here whether this Apparition did intend any such moral representment or no it is certain that where-ever the holy Spirit does dwell there also Peace and Sanctity Meekness and Charity a mortisied will and an active dereliction of our desires do inhabit But besides this hieroglyphical representment this Dove like that which Noah sent out from the Ark did aptly signifie the World to be renewed and all to be turned to a new creation and God hath made a new Covenant with us that unless we provoke him he will never destroy us any more 6. No sooner had the voice of God pronounced Jesus to be the well-beloved Son of God but the Devil thought it of great concernment to attempt him with all his malice and his art and that is the condition of all those whom God's grace hath separated from the common expectations and societies of the world and therefore the Son of Sirach gave good advice My son if thou come to serve the Lord prepare thy Soul for temptation for not only the Spirits of darkness are exasperated at the declension of their own Kingdom but also the nature and constitution of vertues and eminent graces which holy persons exercise in their lives is such as to be easily assailable by their contraries apt to be lessened by time to be interrupted by weariness to grow flat and insipid by tediousness of labour to be omitted and grow infrequent by the impertinent diversions of society and secular occasions so that to rescind the ãâã of Vice made firm by nature and evil habits to acquire every new degree ãâã Vertue to continue the holy fires of zeal in their just proportion to ãâã the Devil and to reject the invitations of the World and the ãâã embraces of the Flesh which are the proper employment of the sons of God is a perpetual difficulty and every possibility of ãâã the strictness of a Duty is a Temptation and an insecurity to them who have begun to serve God in hard battels 7. The Holy Spirit did drive Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil And ãâã we are bound to pray instantly that we fall into no Temptation yet if by Divine permission or by an inspiration of the Holy Spirit we be engaged in an action or course of life that is full of Temptation and empty of comfort let us apprehend it as an issue of Divine Providence as an occasion of the rewards of Diligence and Patience as an instrument of Vertue as a designation of that way in which we must glorifie God but no argument of disfavour since our dearest Lord the most Holy Jesus who could have driven the Devil away by the Breath of his mouth yet was by the Spirit of his Father permitted to a trial and molestation by the spirits of Darkness And this is S. James's counsel My brethren count it all joy when ye enter into divers temptations knowing that the trial of your Faith worketh Patience So far is a Blessing when the Spirit is the instrument of our motion and brings us to the trial of our Faith but if the Spirit leaves us and delivers us over to the Devil not to be tempted but to be abused and ruined it is a sad
meat and tears our drink which although they are unpleasant and harsh to natural appetites yet by the operation and influences of God's Holy Spirit they are made instruments of health and life and Salvation 12. The Devil perceiving Jesus to be a person of greater eminency and perfection than to be moved by sensual and low desires makes a second assault by a Temptation something more spiritual and tempts him to Presumption and indiscreet confidence to a throwing himself down from the pinnacles of the Temple upon the stock of Predestination that God might secure him by the ministery of Angels and so prove his being the Son of God And indeed it is usual with the Devil when severe persons have so much mortified their lower appetites that they are not easily overcome by an invitation of carnality or intemperance to stir them to opinions of their own Sanctity and make their first escaping prove their second and greater dangers But that the Devil should perswade Jesus to throw himself down because he was the Son of God was an invitation to no purpose save only that it gave occasion to this truth That God's Providence secures all his sons in the ways of Nature and while they are doing their duty but loves not to be tempted to acts unreasonable and unnecessary God will protect his servants in or from all evils happening without their knowledge or against their will but not from evils of their own procuring Heron an inhabitant of the Desart suffered the same Temptation and was overcome by it for he died with his fall sinfully and ingloriously For the caresses of God's love to his Saints and servants are security against all but themselves The Devil and all the World offer to do them mischief but then they shall be safe because they are innocent if they once offer to do the same to themselves they lose their Protection because they lost their Prudence and their Charity But here also it will concern all those who by their eminent imployment and greater ministeries in Ecclesiasticals are set upon the pinnacle of the Temple to take care that the Devil tempt not them to a precipice a fall from so great a height will break the bones in pieces and yet there also the station is less firm the posture most uneasie the prospect vertiginous and the Devil busie and desirous to thrust us headlong 13. S. Hierom here observes well the Devil intending mischief to our Blessed Saviour invited him to cast himself down He may perswade us to a fall but cannot precipitate us without our own act And it is an infinite mercy in God that the Devil who is of malice infinite is of so restrained and limited a power that he can do us no ghostly disadvantage but by perswading us to do it our selves And then it will be a strange imprudence to lay violent and unreasonable hands upon our selves and do that mischief which our strongest and most malicious Adversary cannot or to be invited by the only Rhetorick of a dog's barking to come near him to untie his chain to unloose his muzzle for no other end but that we may be bitten Just such a fool is every person that consents to the Temptations of the Devil 14. By this time the Devil began to perceive that this was the Son of God and designed to be the King of all the World and therefore resolved for the last assault to profer him the Kingdoms of the World thinking Ambition more likely to ruine him because he knew it was that which prevailed upon himself and all those fallen Stars the Angels of Darkness That the Devil told a lie it is most likely when he said he had power to dispose the Kingdoms of the World for originally and by proper inherent right God alone disposes all Governments but it is also certain that the Devil is a person capable of a delegate imployment in some great mutation of States and many probabilities have been observed by wise personages perswading that the Grandeur of the Roman Empire was in the degrees of increment and decrement permitted to the power and managing of the Devil that the greatness of that Government being in all appearance full of advantage to Satan's Kingdom and imployed for the dis-improvement of the weak beginnings and improbable increase of Christianity might give lustre and demonstration to it that it came from God since the great permissions of power made to the Devil and acted with all art and malice in defiance of the Religion could produce no other effect upon it but that it made it grow greater and the greatness was made more miraculous since the Devil when his chain was off fain would but could not suppress it 15. The Lamb of God that heard him with patience tempt him to do himself a mischief and to throw himself headlong could by no means endure it when he tempted to a direct dishonouring of God Our own injuries are opportunities of patience but when the glory of God and his immediate Honour is the question then is the occasion and precise minute for the ãâã of a clear-shining and unconsuming Zeal But the care of God's Glory had so filled and imployed all the Faculties of Jesus that he takes no notice of the offer and it were well also that we had fewer opinions of the lustre of worldly dignities or at least that we in imitation of our Blessed Master should resuse to accept all the World when it is to be bought of the Devil at the expence of a deadly sin For that Government cannot be very honourable that makes us slaves to the worst of Tyrants and all those Princes and great personages who by injury and usurpation possess and invade others rights would do well to consider that a Kingdom is too dearly paid for if the condition be first to worship the Devil 16. When the Devil could do no good he departed for a time If he could ever have spied a time of returning he wanted not will nor malice to observe and use it And although Jesus was a person without danger yet I doubt not but the Holy Ghost described that circumstance that we should not have the securities of a deep peace when we have had the success of conquerors for a surprise is most full of horror and of more certain ruine so that we have no security but a perpetual observation that together with the grace of God who takes care of all his servants and will drive away the Tempter when he pleases and help us always when we need is as great an argument for our confidence and encouragement to our prayers and address to God as it is safety to our person and honour to our victory And let us account it our honour that the trials of Temptation which is the greatest sadness of our condition are hallowed by the Temptation of Jesus and our condition assured by his assistances and the assistances procured by our Prayers most easily upon
with Water and then with Bloud and afterwards built it up by the hands of the Spirit Himself enter'd at that door by which his Disciples for ever after were to follow him for therefore he went in at the door of Baptism that he might hallow the entrance which himself made to the House he was now building 2. As it was in the old so it is in the new Creation out of the waters God produced every living creature and when at first the Spirit moved upon the waters and gave life it was the type of what was designed in the Renovation Every thing that lives now is born of Water and the Spirit and Christ who is our Creator and Redeemer in the New birth opened the fountains and hallowed the stream Christ who is our Life went down into the waters of Baptism and we who descend thither find the effects of life it is living Water of which whose drinks needs not to drink of it again for it shall be in him a Well of water springing up to life eternal 3. But because every thing is resolved into the same principles from whence they are taken the old World which by the power of God came from the Waters by their own sin fell into the Waters again and were all drowned and only eight persons were saved by an Ark and the World renewed upon the stock and reserves of that mercy consigned the Sacrament of Baptism in another figure for then God gave his sign from Heaven that by water the World should never again perish but he meant that they should be saved by water for Baptism which is a figure like to this doth also now save us by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 4. After this the Jews report that the World took up the doctrine of Baptisms in remembrance that the iniquity of the old world was purged by water and they washed all that came to the service of the true God and by that Baptism bound them to the observation of the Precepts which God gave to Noah 5. But when God separated a Family for his own special service he gave them a Sacrament of Initiation but it was a Sacrament of bloud the Covenant of Circumcision and this was the fore-runner of Baptism but not a Type when that was abrogated this came into the place of it and that consigned the same Faith which this professes But it could not properly be a Type whose nature is by a likeness of matter or ceremony to represent the same Mystery Neither is a Ceremony as Baptism truly is properly capable of having a Type it self is but a Type of a greater mysteriousness And the nature of Types is in shadow to describe by dark lines a future substance so that although Circumcision might be a Type of the effects and graces bestowed in Baptism yet of the Baptism or Ablution it self it cannot be properly because of the unlikeness of the symbols and configurations and because they are both equally distant from substances which Types are to consign and represent The first Bishops of Jerusalem and all the Christian Jews for many years retained Circumcision together with Baptism and Christ himself who was circumcised was also baptized and therefore it is not so proper to call Circumcision a Type of Baptism it was rather a Seal and Sign of the same Covenant to Abraham and the Fathers and to all Israel as Baptism is to all Ages of the Christian Church 6. And because this Rite could not be administred to all persons and was not at all times after its institution God was pleased by a proper and specifick Type to consign this Rite of Baptism which he intended to all and that for ever and God when the family of his Church grew separate notorious numerous and distinct sent them into their own Countrey by a Baptism through which the whole Nation pass'd for all the Fathers were under the Cloud and all passed through the Sea and were all baptized unto Moses in the Cloud and in the Sea so by a double figure foretelling that as they were initiated to Moses's Law by the Cloud above and the Sea beneath so should all the persons of the Church men women and children be initiated unto Christ by the Spirit from above and the Water below for it was the design of the Apostle in that discourse to represent that the Fathers and we were equal as to the priviledges of the Covenant he proved that we do not exceed them and it ought therefore to be certain that they do not exceed us nor their children ours 7. But after this something was to remain which might not only consign the Covenant which God made with Abraham but be as a passage from the Fathers through the Synagogue to the Church from Abraham by Moses to Christ and that was Circumcision which was a Rite which God chose to be a mark to the posterity of Abraham to distinguish them from the Nations which were not within the Covenant of Grace and to be a Seal of the righteousness of Faith which God made to be the spirit and life of the Covenant 8. But because Circumcision although it was ministred to all the males yet it was not to the females although they and all the Nation were baptized and initiated into Moses in the Cloud and in the Sea therefore the Children of Israel by imitation of the Patriarchs the posterity of Noah used also Ceremonial Baptisms to their Women and to their Proselytes and to all that were circumcised and the Jews deliver That Sarah and Rebecca when they were adopted into the family of the Church that is of Abraham and Isaac were baptized and so were all strangers that were married to the sons of Israel And that we may think this to be typical of Christian Baptism the Doctors of the Jews had a Tradition that when the Messias would come there should be so many Proselytes that they could not be circumcised but should be baptized The Tradition proved true but not for their reason But that this Rite of admitting into Mysteries and Institutions and Offices of Religion by Baptisms was used by the posterity of Noah or at least very early among the Jews besides the testimonies of their own Doctors I am the rather induced to believe because the Heathens had the same Rite in many places and in several Religions so they initiated disciples into the Secrets of Mithra and the Priests of ãâã were called ãâã because by Baptism they were admitted into the Religion and they thought Muther Incest Rapes and the worst of crimes were purged by dipping in the Sea or fresh Springs and a Proselyte is called in ãâã ãâã ãâã a Baptized person 9. But this Ceremony of Baptizing was so certain and usual among the Jews in their admitting Proselytes and adopting into Institutions that to baptize and to make Disciples are all one and when John the Baptist by an order from Heaven went to
the time of his first MIRACLE until the Second Year of his PREACHING WITH CONSIDERATIONS and DISCOURSES upon the several parts of the Story And PRAYERS fitted to the several MYSTERIES THE SECOND PART Chrysost. ad Demet. ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã LONDON Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston 1675. TO The Right Honourable and Excellent Lady THE LADY MARY Countess Dowager of NORTHAMPTON I AM now to present to your Honour part of that Production of which your great love to Sanctity was Parent and which was partly designed to satisfie those great appetites to Vertue which have made you hugely apprehensive and forward to entertain any Instrument whereby you may grow and encrease in the Service of God and the Communion and Charities of holy people Your Honour best knows in what Soil the first Design of these Papers grew and but that the Excellent Personage who was their first Root is transplanted for a time that he may not have his righteous Soul vexed with the impurer Conversation of ill-minded men I am confident you would have received the fruits of his abode to more excellent purposes But because he was pleased to leave the managing of this to me I hope your Honour will for his sake entertain what that rare Person conceived though I was left to the pains and danger of bringing forth and that it may dwell with you for its first relation rather than be rejected for its appendent imperfections which it contracted not in the fountain but in the chanels of its progress and emanation Madam I shall beg of God that your Honour may receive as great increment of Piety and ghostly strength in the reading this Book as I receive honour if you shall be pleased to accept and own this as a confession of your great Worthiness and a testimony of the Service which ought to be payed to your Honour by Madam Your Honour 's most humble and most obliged Servant JER TAYLOR SECT X. Of the first Manifestation of JESVS by the Testimony of John and a Miracle Iohn points to Iesus The next day Iohn seeth Iesus coming unto him and saith Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world This is he of whom I said after me cometh a man which is preserred before me for he was before me And I knew him not but that he should be made manifest to Israel Ioh. 1. 29 30 31. Christ turns water into wine There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee And there were set there six water pots of stone after the manner of the purifying of the Iewes containing two or three firkins a peice Iesus saith unto them fill the water pots with water and they filled them to the brim Iesus saith unto them draw out now c. This beginÌing of miracles did Iesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested forth his glory Ioh. 2 6 7 8-11 1. AFTER that the Baptist by a sign from Heaven was confirmed in spirit and understanding that Jesus was the Messias he immediately published to the Jews what God had manifested to him and first to the Priests and ãâã sent in legation from the Sanhedrim he professed indefinitely in answer to their question that himself was not the CHRIST nor Elias nor that Prophet whom they by a special Tradition did expect to be revealed they knew not when And concerning himself definitely he said nothing but that he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness Make straight the way of the Lord. He it was who was then amongst them but not known a person of great dignity to whom the Baptist was not worthy to do the office of the lowest Ministery who coming after John was preferred far before him who was to increase and the Baptist was to decrease who did baptize with the Holy Ghost and with Fire 2. This was the Character of his personal Prerogatives but as yet no demonstration was made of his Person till after the descent of the Holy Ghost upon Jesus and then when-ever the Baptist saw Jesus he points him out with his finger Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the World This is he Then he shews him to Andrew Simon Peter's brother with the same designation and to another Disciple with him who both followed Jesus and abode with him all night Andrew brings his brother Simon with him and then Christ changes his name from Simon to Peter or Cephas which signifies a Stone Then Jesus himself finds out Philip of Bethsaida and bad him follow him and Philip finds out Nathanael and calls him to see Thus persons bred in a dark cell upon their first ascent up to the chambers of light all run staring upon the beauties of the Sun and call the partners of their darkness to communicate in their new and stranger revelation 3. When Nathanael was come to Jesus Christ saw his heart and gave him a testimony to be truly honest and full of holy simplicity a true Israelite without guile And Nathanael being overjoyed that he had found the Messias believing out of love and loving by reason of his joy and no suspicion took that for a proof and verification of his person which was very insufficient to ãâã a doubt or ratifie a probability But so we believe a story which we love taking probabilities for demonstrations and casual accidents for probabilities and any thing creates vehement presumptions in which cases our guides are not our knowing faculties but our ãâã and if they be holy God guides them into the right perswasions as he does little birds to make rare nests though they understand not the mystery of operation nor the design and purpose of the action 4. But Jesus took his will and forwardness of affections in so good part that he promised him greater things and this gave occasion to the first Prophecy which was made by Jesus For Jesus said ãâã him ãâã I said I saw thee under the Fig-tree believest thou Thou shalt see greater things than these and then he prophesied that he should see Heaven open and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man But being a Doctor of the Law Christ chose him not at all to the Colledge of Apostles 5. Much about the same time there happened to be a Marriage in Cana ãâã Galilee in the vicinage of his dwelling where John the Evangelist is by some supposed to have been the Bridegroom but of this there is no certainty and thither Jesus being with his ãâã invited he went to do civility to the persons espoused and to do honour to the holy rite of Marriage The persons then married were but of indifferent fortunes richer in love of neighbours than in the ãâã of rich possessions they had more company than wine For the Master of the Feast whom according to the order and piety of the Nation they chose ãâã the order of Priests to be the president of the Feast
which in a greater measure and upon more variety of rules the Governours of Churches are obliged But that which Christian Simplicity prohibits is the mixing arts and unhandsome means for the purchase of our ends witty counsels that are underminings of our neighbour destroying his just interest to serve our own stratagems to deceive infinite and insignificant answers with fraudulent design unjust and unlawful concealment of our purposes fallacious promises and false pretences flattery and unjust and unreasonable praise saying one thing and meaning the contrary pretending Religion to secular designs breaking faith taking false oaths and such other instruments of humane purposes framed by the Devil and sent into the world to be perfected by man Christian Simplicity speaks nothing but its thoughts and when it concerns Prudence that a thought or purpose should be concealed it concerns Simplicity that silence be its cover and not a false vizor it rather suffers inconvenience than a lie it destroys no man's right though it be inconsistent with my advantages it reproves freely palliates no man's wickedness it intends what it ought and does what is bidden and uses courses regular and just sneaks not in corners and walks always in the eye of God and the face of the world 7. Jesus told Nathanael that he knew him when he saw him under the Fig-tree and Nathanael took that to be probation sufficient that he was the ãâã and believed rightly upon an insufficient motive which because Jesus did accept it gives testimony to us that however Faith be produced by means regular or by arguments incompetent whether it be proved or not proved whether by chance or deliberation whether wisely or by occasion so that Faith be produced by the instrument and love by Faith God's work is done and so is ours For if S. Paul rejoyced that Christ was preached though by the ãâã of peevish persons certainly God will not reject an excellent product because it came from a weak and sickly parent and he that brings good out of evil and rejoyces in that good having first triumphed upon the evil will certainly take delight in the Faith of the most ignorant persons which his own grace hath produced out of innocent though insufficient beginnings It was folly in Naaman to refuse to be cured because he was to recover only by washing in Jordan The more incompetent the means is the greater is the glory of God who hath produced waters from a rock and fire from the collision of a sponge and wool and it is certain the end unless it be in products merely natural does not take its estimate and degrees from the external means Grace does miracles and the productions of the Spirit in respect of its instruments are equivocal extraordinary and supernatural and ignorant persons believe as strongly though they know not why and love God as ãâã as greater spirits and more excellent understandings and when God pleases or if he sees it expedient he will do to others as to Nathanael give them greater arguments and better instruments for the confirmation and heightning of their ãâã than they had for the first production 8. When Jesus had chosen these few Disciples to be witnesses of succeeding accidents every one of which was to be a probation of his mission and Divinity he entred into the theatre of the world at a Marriage-feast which he now first hallowed to a Sacramental signification and made to become mysterious he now began to chuse his Spouse out from the communities of the world and did mean to endear her by unions ineffable and glorious and consign the Sacrament by his bloud which he first gave in a secret ãâã and afterwards in ãâã and apparent effusion And although the Holy Jesus did in his own person consecrate Coelibate and Abstinence and Chastity in his Mother's yet by his ãâã he also hallowed Marriage and made it honourable not only in civil account and the rites of Heraldry but in a spiritual sence he having new sublim'd it by making it a Sacramental representment of the union of Christ and his ãâã the Church And all married persons should do ãâã to remember what the conjugal society does represent and not break the matrimonial bond which is a ãâã ligament of Christ and his Church for whoever dissolves the sacredness of the Mystery and unhallows the Vow by violence and impurity he dissolves his relation to Christ. To break faith with a Wife or Husband is a divorce from Jesus and that is a separation from all possibilities of Felicity In the time of the ãâã Statutes to violate Marriage was to do injustice and dishonour and a breach to the sanctions of Nature or the first constitutions But two bands more are added in the Gospel to make Marriage more sacred For now our Bodies are made Temples of the Holy Ghost and the Rite of Marriage is made significant and Sacramental and every act of Adultery is Profanation and Irreligion it ãâã a Temple and deflours a Mystery 9. The Married pair were holy but poor and they wanted wine and the Blessed Virgin-Mother pitying the ãâã of the young man complained to Jesus of the want and ãâã gave her an answer which promised no satisfaction to her purposes For now that Jesus had lived thirty years and done in person nothing answerable to ãâã glorious Birth and the miraculous accidents of his Person she longed till the time ãâã in which he was to manifest himself by actions as miraculous as the Star of his Birth She knew by the rejecting of his Trade and his going abroad and probably by his own ãâã to her that the time was near and the forwardness of her love and holy desires ãâã might go some minutes before his own precise limit However ãâã answered to this purpose to shew that the work he was to do was done not to satisfie her importunity which is not occasion enough for a Miracle but to prosecute the great work of Divine designation For in works spiritual and religious all exteriour relation ceases The world's order and the manner of our nature and the infirmities of our person have produced Societies and they have been the parents of Relation and God hath tied them fast by the knots of duty and made the duty the occasion and opportunities of reward But in actions spiritual in which we relate to God our relations are sounded upon the Spirit and therefore we must do our duties upon considerations separate and spiritual but never suffer temporal relations to impede our Religious duties Christian Charity is a higher thing than to be confined within the terms of dependence and correlation and those endearments which leagues or nature or society have made pass into spiritual and like Stars in the presence of the Sun appear not when the heights of the Spirit are in place Where duty hath prepared special instances there we must for Religion's sake promote them but even to our Parents or our Children the charities
of Religion ought to be greater than the affections of Society And though we are bound in all offices exteriour to prefer our Relatives before others because that is made a Duty yet to purposes spiritual all persons eminently holy put on the efficacy of the same relations and pass a duty upon us of religious affections 10. At the command of Jesus the Water-pots were filled with water and the water was by his Divine power turned into wine where the different oeconomy of God and the world is highly observable Every man sets forth good wine at first and then the worse But God not only turns the water into wine but into such wine that the last draught is most pleasant The world presents us with fair language promising ãâã convenient fortunes pompous honours and these are the outsides of the bole but when it is swallowed these dissolve in the instant and there remains ãâã and the malignity of Coloquintida Every sin ãâã in the first address and carries light in the face and hony in the lip but when we have well drunk then comes that which is worse a whip with six strings fears and terrors of Conscience and shame and displeasure and a caitive disposition and diffidence in the day of death But when after the manner of the purifying of the Christians we fill our Water-pots with water watering our couch with our tears and moistening our cheeks with the perpetual distillations of Repentance then Christ turns our water into wine first Penitents and then Communicants first waters of sorrow and then the wine of the Chalice first the justifications of Correction and then the sanctifications of the Sacrament and the effects of the Divine power joy and peace and serenity hopes full of confidence and confidence without shame and boldness without presumption for Jesus keeps the best wine till the last not only because of the direct reservations of the highest joys till the nearer approaches of glory but also because our relishes are higher after a long ãâã than at the first Essays such being the nature of Grace that it increases in relish as it does in fruition every part of Grace being new Duty and new Reward The PRAYER O Eternal and ever-Blessed Jesu who didst chuse Disciples to be witnesses of thy Life and Miracles so adopting man into a participation of thy great imployment of bringing us to Heaven by the means of a holy Doctrine be pleased to give me thy grace that I may ãâã and revere their Persons whom thou hast set over me and follow their Faith and imitate their Lives while they imitate thee and that I also in my capacity and proportion may do some of the meaner offices of spiritual building by Prayers and by holy Discourses and ãâã Correption and friendly Exhortations doing advantages to such Souls with whom I shall converse And since thou wert pleased to enter upon the stage of the World with the commencement of Mercy and a Miracle be pleased to visit my Soul with thy miraculous grace turn my water into wine my natural desires into supernatural perfections and let my sorrows be turned into joys my sins into vertuous habits the weaknesses of humanity into communications of the ãâã nature that since thou keepest the best unto the last I may by thy assistance grow from Grace to Grace till thy Gifts be turned to Reward and thy Graces to participation of thy Glory O Eternal and ever-Blessed Jesu Amen DISCOURSE VII Of Faith 1. NAthanael's Faith was produced by an argument not demonstrative not certainly concluding Christ knew him when he saw him first and he believed him to be the Messias His Faith was excellent what-ever the argument was And I believe a GOD because the Sun is a glorious body or because of the variety of Plants or the fabrick and rare contexture of a man's Eye I may as fully assent to the Conclusion as if my belief dwelt upon the Demonstrations made by the Prince of Philosophers in the 8. of his Physicks and 12. of his Metaphysicks This I premise as an inlet into the consideration concerning the Faith of ignorant persons For if we consider upon what ãâã terms most of us now are Christians we may possibly suspect that either Faith hath but little excellence in it or we but little Faith or that we are mistaken generally in its definition For we are born of Christian parents made Christians at ten days old interrogated concerning the Articles of our Faith by way of anticipation even then when we understand not the difference between the Sun and a Tallow-candle from thence we are taught to say our Catechism as we are taught to speak when we have no reason to judge no discourse to dilcern no arguments to contest against a Proposition in case we be catechised into False doctrine and all that is put to us we believe infinitely and without choice as children use not to chuse their language And as our children are made Christians just so are thousand others made Mahumetans with the same necessity the same facility So that thus sar there is little thanks due to us for believing the Christian Creed it was indifferent to us at first and at last our Education had so possest us and our interest and our no temptation to the contrary that as we were disposed into this condition by Providence so we remain in it without praise or excellency For as our beginnings are inevitable so our progress is imperfect and insufficient and what we begun by Education we retain only by Custom and if we be instructed in some slighter Arguments to maintain the Sect or Faction of our Country Religion as it disturbs the unity of Christendom yet if we examine and consider the account upon what slight arguments we have taken up Christianity it self as that it is the Religion of our Country or that our Fathers before us were of the same Faith or because the Priest bids us and he is a good man or for something else but we know not what we must needs conclude it the good providence of God not our choice that made us Christians 2. But if the question be Whether such a Faith be in it self good and acceptable that relies upon insufficient and unconvincing grounds I suppose this case of Nathanael will determine us and when we consider that Faith is an ãâã Grace if God pleases to behold his own glory in our weakness of understanding it is but the same thing he does in the instances of his other Graces For as God enkindles Charity upon variety of means and instruments by a thought by a chance by a text of Scripture by a natural tenderness by the sight of a dying or a tormented beast so also he may produce Faith by arguments of a differing quality and by issues of his Providence he may engage us in such conditions in which as our Understanding is not great enough to chuse the best so neither is it furnished with
Resurrection of his body after three days death but he expressed it in the metaphor of the Temple Destroy this Temple and I will build it again in three days He spake of the Temple of his Body and they understood him of the Temple at Jerusalem and it was never rightly construed till it was accomplished 2. At this publick Convention of the Jewish Nation Jesus did many Miracles published himself to be the Messias and perswaded many Disciples amongst whom was Nicodemus a Doctor of the Law and a Ruler of the Nation he came by night to Jesus and affirmed himself to be convinced by the Miracles which he had seen for no man could do those miracles except God be with him When Jesus perceived his understanding to be so far disposed he began to instruct him in the great secret and mysteriousness of Regeneration telling him that every production is of the same nature and condition with its parent from flesh comes flesh and corruption from the Spirit comes spirit and life and immortality and nothing from a principle of nature could arrive to a supernatural end and therefore the only door to enter into the Kingdom of God was Water by the manuduction of the Spirit and by this Regeneration we are put into a new capacity of living a spiritual life in order to a spiritual and supernatural end 3. This was strange Philosophy to Nicodemus but Jesus bad him not to wonder for this is not a work of humanity but a fruit of God's Spirit and an issue of Predestination For the Spirit bloweth where it listeth and is as the wind certain and notorious in the effects but secret in the principle and in the manner of production And therefore this Doctrine was not to be estimated by any proportions to natural principles or experiments of sense but to the secrets of a new Metaphysick and abstracted separate Speculations Then Christ proceeds in his Sermon telling him there are yet higher things for him to apprehend and believe for this in respect of some other mysteriousness of his Gospel was but as Earth in comparison of Heaven Then he tells of his own descent from Heaven foretells his Death and Ascension and the blessing of Redemption which he came to work for mankind he preaches of the Love of the Father the Mission of the Son the rewards of Faith and the glories of Eternity he upbraids the unbelieving and impenitent and declares the differences of a holy and a corrupt Conscience the shame and fears of the one the confidence and serenity of the other And this is the summ of his Sermon to Nicodemus which was the fullest of mystery and speculation and abstracted sences of any that he ever made except that which he made immediately before his Passion all his other Sermons being more practical 4. From Jerusalem Jesus goeth into the Country of Judaea attended by divers Disciples whose understandings were brought into subjection and obedience to Christ upon confidence of the divinity of his Miracles There his Disciples did receive all comers and baptized them as John at the same time did and by that Ceremony admitted them to the Discipline and Institution according to the custom of the Doctors and great Prophets among the Jews whose Baptizing their Scholars was the ceremony of their Admission As soon as John heard it he acquitted himself in publick by renewing his former testimony concerning Jesus affirming him to be the Messias and now the time was come that Christ must increase and the Baptist suffer diminution for Christ came from above was above all and the summ of his Doctrine was that which he had heard and seen from the Father whom God sent to that purpose to whom God had set his seal that he was true who spake the words of God whom the Father loved to whoÌ he gave the Spirit without measure and into whose hands God had delivered all things this was he whose testimony the world received not And that they might know not only what person they sleighted but how great Salvation also they neglected he summs up all his Sermons and finishes his Mission with this saying He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not on the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him 5. For now that the Baptist had fulfilled his Office of bearing witness unto Jesus God was pleased to give him his writ of ease and bring him to his reward upon this occasion John who had so learned to despise the world and all its exteriour vanities and impertinent relations did his duty justly and so without respect of persons that as he reproved the people for their prevarications so he spared not Herod for his but abstaining from all expresses of the spirit of scorn and asperity mingling no discontents interests nor mutinous intimations with his Sermons he told Herod it was not lawful for him to have his Brother's wife For which Sermon he felt the furies and malice of a woman's spleen was cast into prison and about a year after was sacrificed to the scorn and pride of a lustful woman and her immodest daughter being at the end of the second year of Christ's Preaching beheaded by Herod's command who would not retract his promise because of his honour and a rash vow he made in the gayety of his Lust and complacencies of his riotous dancings His head was brought up in a dish and made a Festival-present to the young girl who gave it to her mother a Cruelty that was not known among the Barbarisms of the worst of people to mingle banquetings with bloud and sights of death an insolency and inhumanity for which the ãâã Orators accused Q. Flaminius of Treason because to satisfie the wanton cruelty of Placentia he caused a condemned slave to be killed at supper and which had no precedent but in the furies of Marius who caused the head of the Consul Antonius to be brought up to him in his Feasts which he handled with much pleasure and insolency 6. But God's Judgments which sleep not long found out Herod and marked him for a Curse For the Wise of Herod who was the Daughter of Aretas a King of Arabia Petraea being repudiated by paction with Herodias provoked her Father to commence a War with Herod who prevailed against Herod in a great Battel defeating his whole Army and forcing him to an inglorious flight which the Jews generally expounded to be a Judgment on him for the unworthy and barbarous execution and murther of John the Baptist God in his wisdom and severity making one sin to be the punishment of another and neither of them both to pass without the signature of a Curse And Nicephorus reports that the dancing daughter of Herodias passing over a frozen lake the ice brake and she fell up to the neck in water and her head was parted from her body by the violence of the fragments shaked by the water and
For Faith being the gift of God and an illumination the Spirit of God will not give this light to them that prefer their darkness before it either the Will must open the windows or the light of Faith will not shine into the chamber of the Soul How can ye believe said our Blessed Saviour that receive honour one of another Ambition and Faith believing God and seeking of our selves are incompetent and totally incompossible And therefore Serapion Bishop of Thmuis spake like an Angel saith Socrates saying that the Mind which feedeth upon spiritual knowledge must throughly be cleansed The Irascible faculty must first be cured with brotherly Love and Charity and the Concupiscible must be suppressed with Continency and Mortification Then may the Understanding apprehend the mysteriousness of Christianity For since Christianity is a holy Doctrine if there be any remanent affections to a sin there is in the Soul a party disaffected to the entertainment of the Institution and we usually believe what we have a mind to Our Understandings if a crime be lodged in the Will being like icterical eyes transmitting the species to the Soul with prejudice disaffection and colours of their own framing If a Preacher should discourse that there ought to be a Parity amongst Christians and that their goods ought to be in common all men will apprehend that not Princes and rich persons but the poor and the servants would soonest become Disciples and believe the Doctrines because they are the only persons likely to get by them and it concerns the other not to believe him the Doctrine being destructive of their interests Just such a perswasion is every persevering love to a vicious habit it having possessed the Understanding with fair opinions of it and surprised the Will with Passion and desires whatsoever Doctrine is its enemy will with infinite difficulty be entertained And we know a great experience of it in the article of the Messias dying on the Cross which though infinitely true yet because to the Jews it was a scandal and to the Greeks ãâã it could not be believed they remaining in that indisposition that is unless the Will were first set right and they willing to believe any Truth though for it they must disclaim their interest Their Understanding was blind because the Heart was hardened and could not receive the impression of the greatest moral demonstration in the world 8. The Holy Jesus asked water of the Woman unsatisfying water but promised that himself to them that ask him would give waters of life and satisfaction infinite so distinguishing the pleasures and appetites of this world from the desires and complacencies spiritual Here we labour but receive no ãâã we sow many times and reap not or reap and do not gather in or gather in and do not ãâã or possess but do not enjoy or if we enjoy we are still ãâã it is with ãâã of spirit and circumstances of vexation A great heap of riches make ãâã our ãâã warm nor our meat more nutritive nor our beverage more ãâã and it seeds the eye but never fills it but like drink to an hydropick person increases the thirst and promotes the torment But the Grace of ãâã though but like a grain of ãâã dseed fills the furrows of the heart and as the capacity increases it self grows up in equal degrees and never suffers any emptiness or dissatisfaction but carries content and fulness all the way and the degrees of augmentation are not steps and near approaches to satisfaction but increasings of the capacity the ãâã is satished all the way and receives more not because it wanted any but that it can now hold more is more receptive of ãâã and in every minute of ãâã there is so excellent a condition of joy and high satisfaction that the very calamities the afflictions and persecutions of the world are turned into ãâã by the activity of the prevailing ingredient like a drop of water falling into a tun of wine it is ascribed into a new family losing its own nature by a conversion into the more noble For now that all passionate desires are dead and there is nothing remanent that is vexatious the peace the ãâã the quiet sleeps the evenness of spirit and contempt of things below remove the Soul from all neighbourhood of displeasure and place it at the foot of the throne whither when it is ascended it is possessed of Felicities eternal These were ãâã waters which were given to us to drink when with the rod of God the Rock ãâã ãâã was smitten the Spirit of God moves for ever upon these waters and when the Angel of the Covenant hath stirred the pool who ever descends hither shall find health and peace joys spiritual and the satisfactions of Eternity The PRAYER O Holy Jesus Fountain of eternal life thou Spring of joy and spiritual satisfactions let the holy stream of bloud and water issuing from thy sacred side cool the thirst soften the hardness and refresh the barrenness of my desert Soul that I thirsting after thee as the wearied Hart after the cool stream may despise all the vainer complacencies of this world refuse all societies but such as are safe pious and charitable mortifie all ãâã appetites and may desire nothing but thee seek none but thee and rest in thee with intire ãâã of my own caitive inclinations that the desires of Nature may pass into desires of Grace and my thirst and my hunger may be spiritual and my hopes placed in thee and the expresses of my Charity upon thy relatives and all the parts of my life may speak thy love and obedience to thy Commandments that thou possessing my Soul and all its Faculties during my whole life I may possess thy glories in the fruition of a blessed Eternity by the light of thy Gospel here and the streams of thy Grace being guided to thee the fountain of life and glory there to be inebriated with the waters of Paradise with joy and love and contemplation adoring and admiring the beauties of the Lord for ever and ever Amen Considerations upon Christ's first Preaching and the Accidents happening about that time Jesus preaching to the people Mauh 4. 17. From that time Jesus began to preach saying Repent for the Kingodm of heaven is at hand V. 29. And he went about all Gallilee teaching preaching the Gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of sickness c. V. 25. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee and from Dââapolis and from Ierusalem etc. Christ sending forth his Apostles Mark 6. 7. And he called unto him y e twelve began to send them forth by two and two and gave them power over unclean spirits And conunanded them that they should take nothing for their journey etc. V. 12 And they went out and preached that men should repent 1. WHen John was cast into Prison then began Jesus to preach not only because the Ministery of John
Souls let them have the diligence and the craft of Fishers the watchfulness and care of Shepherds the prudence of Politicks the tenderness of Parents the spirit of Government the wariness of Observation great knowledge of the dispositions of their people and experience of such advantages by means of which they may serve the ends of God and of Salvation upon their Souls 7. When Peter had received the fruits of a rich Miracle in the prodigious and prosperous draught of fishes he instantly falls down at the feet of Jesus and confesses himself a sinner and unworthy of the presence of Christ. In which confession I not only consider the conviction of his Understanding by the testimony of the Miracle but the modesty of his spirit who in his exaltation and the joy of a sudden and happy success retired into Humility and consideration of his own unworthiness lest as it happens in sudden joys the lavishness of his spirit should transport him to intemperance to looser affections to vanity and garishness less becoming the severity and government of a Disciple of so great a Master For in such great and sudden accidents men usually are dissolved and melted into joy and inconsideration and let fly all their severe principles and discipline of manners till as Peter here did though to another purpose they say to Christ Depart from me O Lord as if such excellencies of joys like the lesser Stars did disappear at the presence of him who is the fountain of all joys regular and just When the spirits of the Body have been bound up by the cold Winter air the warmth of the Spring makes so great an aperture of the passages and by consequence such dissolution of spirits in the presence of the Sun that it becomes the occasion of Fevers and violent diseases Just such a thing is a sudden Joy in which the spirits leap out from their cells of austerity and sobriety and are warmed into Fevers and wildnesses and forfeiture of all Judgment and vigorous understanding In these accidents the best advice is to temper and allay our joys with some instant consideration of the vilest of our sins the shamefulness of our disgraces the most dolorous accidents of our lives the worst of our fears with meditation of Death or the terrours of Dooms-day or the unimaginable miseries of damned and accursed spirits For such considerations as these are good instruments of Sobriety and are correctives to the malignity of excessive Joys or temporal prosperities which like Minerals unless allayed by art prey upon the spirits and become the union of a contradiction being turned into mortal medicines 8. At this time Jesus preached to the people from the Ship which in the fancies and tropical discoursings of the old Doctors signifies the Church and declares that the Homilies of order and authority must be delivered from the Oracle they that preach must be sent and God hath appointed Tutors and Instructors of our Consciences by special designation and peculiar appointment if they that preach do not make their Sermons from the Ship their discourses either are the false murmurs of Hereticks and false Shepherds or else of Thieves and invaders of Authority or corrupters of Discipline and Order For God that loves to hear us in special places will also be heard himself by special persons and since he sent his Angels Ministers to convey his purposes of old then when the Law was ordained by Angels as by the hands of a Mediatour now also he will send his servants the sons of men since the new Law was ordained by the Son of man who is the Mediatour between God and man in the New Covenant And therefore in the Ship Jesus preach'd but he had first caused it to put off from land to represent to us that the Ship in which we preach must be put off from the vulgar communities of men separate from the people by the designation of special appointment and of special Holiness that is they neither must be common men nor of common lives but consecrated by order and hallowed by holy living lest the person want authority in destitution of a Divine Character and his Doctrine lose its energy and power when the life is vulgar and hath nothing in it holy and extraordinary 9. The Holy Jesus in the choice of his Apostles was resolute and determined to make election of persons bold and confident for so the Galilaeans were observed naturally to be and Peter was the boldest of the Twelve and a good Sword-man till the spirit of his Master had fastened his sword within the scabbard and charmed his spirit into quietness but he never chose any of the Scribes and Pharisees none of the Doctors of the Law but persons ignorant and unlearned which in design and institutions whose divinity is not demonstrated from other Arguments would seem an art of concealment and distrust But in this which derives its raies from the fountain of wisdom most openly and infallibly it is a contestation against the powers of the world upon the interests of God that he who does all the work might have all the glory and in the productions in which he is fain to make the instruments themselves and give them capacity and activity every part of the operation and causality and effect may give to God the same honour he had from the Creation for his being the only workman with the addition of those degrees of excellency which in the work of Redemption of Man are beyond that of his Creation and first being The PRAYER O Eternal Jesu Lord of the Creatures and Prince of the Catholick Church to whom all Creatures obey in acknowledgment of thy supreme Dominion and all according to thy disposition cooperate to the advancement of thy Kingdom be pleased to order the affairs and accidents of the world that all things in their capacity may do the work of the Gospel and cooperate to the good of the Elect and retrench the growth of Vice and advance the interests of Vertue Make all the states and orders of men Disciples of thy holy Institution Let Princes worship thee and defend Religion let thy Clergy do thee honour by personal zeal and vigilancy over their Flocks let all the world submit to thy Scepter and praise thy Righteousness and adore thy Judgments and revere thy Laws and in the multitudes of thy people within the enclosure of thy Nets let me also communicate in the offices of a strict and religious duty that I may know thy voice and obey thy call and entertain thy Holy Spirit and improve my talents that I may also communicate in the blessings of the Church and when the Nets shall be drawn to the shore and the Angels shall make separation of the good Fishes from the bad I may not be rejected or thrown into those Seas of fire which shall afflict the enemies of thy Kingdom but be admitted into the societies of Saints and the everlasting communion of
nature and manner of the present communication Only this last because it is more malicious and a declension from a greater grace is something like the fall of Angels And of this the Emperour Julian was a sad example 19. But as these are degrees immediately next and a little less so the hopes of pardon are the more visible Simon Magiss spake a word or at least thought against the Holy Ghost he thought he was to be bought with mony Concerning him S. Peter pronounced Thou art in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity Yet repent pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee Here the matter was of great difficulty but yet there was a possibility ãâã at least no impossibility of recovery declared And therefore S. Jude bids us of some to have compassion making a difference and others save with fear pulling them out of the fire meaning that their condition is only not desperate And still in descent retaining the same proportion every lesser sin is easier pardoned as better consisting with the state of Grace the whole Spirit is not destroyed and the body of sin is not introduced Christ is not quite ejected out of possession but like an oppressed Prince still continues his claim and such is his mercy that he will still do so till all be lost or that he is provoked by too much violence or that Antichrist is put in substitution and sin reigns in ãâã mortal body So that I may use the words of Saint John These things I write unto you that ' you sin not But if any man sin we have an Advocate with the ãâã Jesus Christ the Righteous And he is a propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world That is plainly Although the design of the Gospel be that we should erect a Throne for Christ to reign in our spirits and this doctrine of Innocence be therefore preached that ye sin not yet if one be overtaken in a fault despair not Christ is our Advocate and he is the Propitiation he did propitiate the Father by his death and the benefit of that we receive at our first access to him but then he is our Advocate too and prays perpetually for our perseverance or restitution respectively But his purpose is and he is able so to do to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his Glory 20. This consideration I intend should relate to all Christians of the world And although by the present custom of the Church we are baptized in our infancy and do not actually reap that fruit of present Pardon which persons of a mature age in the primitive Church did for we yet need it not as we shall when we have past the calentures of Youth which was the time in which the wisest of our Fathers in Christ chose for their Baptism as appears in the instance of S. Ambrose S. Austin and divers others yet we must remember that there is a Baptism of the Spirit as well as of water and when-ever this happens whether it be together with that Baptism of water as usually it was when only men and women of years of discretion were baptized or whether it be ministred in the rite of Confirmation which is an admirable suppletory of an early Baptism and intended by the Holy Ghost for a corroborative of Baptismal grace and a defensative against danger or that lastly it be performed by an internal and merely spiritual Ministery when we by acts of our own election verifie the promise made in Baptism and so bring back the Rite by receiving the effect of Baptism that is when-ever the filth of our flesh is washt away and that we have the answer of a pure conscience towards God which S. Peter affirms to be the true Baptism and which by the purpose and design of God it is expected we should not defer longer than a great reason or a great necessity enforces when our sins are first explated and the sacrifice and death of Christ is made ours and we made God's by a more immediate title which at some time or other happens to all Christians that pretend to any hopes of Heaven then let us look to our standing and take heed lest we fall When we once have tasted of the heavenly gift and are made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come that is when we are redeemed by an actual mercy and presential application which every Christian that belongs to God is at some time or other of his life then a fall into a deadly crime is highly dangerous but a relapse into a contrary estate is next to desperate 21. I represent this sad but most true Doctrine in the words of S. Peter If after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ they are again entangled therein and overcome the latter end is worse with them than the beginning For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after they have known it to turn from the holy Commandment delivered unto them So that a relapse after a state of Grace into a state of sin into confirmed habits is to us a great sign and possibly in it self it is more than a sign even a state of reprobation and final abscission 22. The summ of all is this There are two states of like opposite terms First Christ redeems us from our vain conversation and reconciles us to God putting us into an intire condition of Pardon Favour Innocence and Acceptance and becomes our Lord and King his Spirit dwelling and reigning in us The opposite state to this is that which in Scripture is called a crucifying the Lord of Life a doing despite to the Spirit of grace a being entangled in the pollutions of the world the Apostasie or falling away an impotency or disability to do good viz. of such who cannot cease from sin who are slaves of sin and in whom sin reigns in their bodies This condition is a full and integral deletery of the first it is such a condition which as it hath no Holiness or remanent affections to Vertue so it hath no hope or revelation of a mercy because all that benefit is lost which they received by the death of Christ and the first being lost there remains no more sacrifice for sins but a certain fearful expectation of Judgment But between these two states stand all those imperfections and single delinquencies those slips and falls those parts of recession and apostasie those grievings of the Spirit and so long as any thing of the first state is left so long we are within the Covenant of grace so long we are within the ordinary limits of mercy and the Divine compassion we are in possibilities of
the same Saint When we are judged we are chastened of the Lord but if we would judge our selves we should not be judged where he expounds judged by chastened if we were severer to our selves God would be gentle and ãâã And there are only these two cautions to be annexed and then the direction is sufficient 1. That when promise of Pardon is annexed to any of these or another Grace or any good action it is not to be understood as if alone it were effectual either to the abolition or pardon of sins but the promise is made to it as to a member of the whole body of Piety In the coadunation and conjunction of parts the title is firm but not at all in distinction and separation For it is certain if we fail in one we are guilty of all and therefore cannot be repaired by any one Grace or one action or one habit And therefore Charity hides a multitude of sins with men and God too Alms deliver from death ãâã pierceth the clouds and will not depart before its answer be gracious and Hope purifieth and makes not ashamed and Patience and Faith and Piety to parents and Prayer and the eight Beatitudes have promises of this life and of that which is to come respectively and yet nothing will obtain these promises but the harmony and uniting of these Graces in a holy and habitual confederation And when we consider the Promise as singularly relating to that one Grace it is to be understood comparatively that is such persons are happy if compared with those who have contrary dispositions For such a capacity does its portion of the work towards complete Felicity from which the contrary quality does estrange and disintitle us 2. The special and minute actions and instances of these three preparatives of Repentance are not under any command in the particulars but are to be disposed of by Christian prudence in order to those ends to which they are most aptly instrumental and designed such as are Fasting and corporal severities in Satisfaction or the punitive parts of Repentance they are either vindictive of what is past and so are proper acts or effects of Contrition and godly sorrow or else they relate to the present and future estate and are intended for correction or emendation and so are of good use as they are medicinal and in that proportion not to be omitted And so is Confession to a Spiritual person an excellent instrument of Discipline a bridle of intemperate Passions an opportunity of Restitution Ye which are spiritual ãâã such a person overtaken in a fault saith the Apostle it is the application of a remedy the consulting with a guide and the best security to a weak or lapsed or an ignorant person in all which cases he is ãâã to judge his own questions and in these he is also committed to the care and conduct of another But these special instances of Repentance are capable of suppletories and are like the corporal works of Mercy necessary only in time and place and in accidental obligations He that relieves the poor or visits the sick chusing it for the instance of his Charity though he do not redeem captives is charitable and hath done his Alms. And he that cures his sin by any instruments by external or interiour and spiritual remedies is penitent though his diet be not ãâã and afflictive or his lodging hard or his sorrow bursting out into tears or his expressions passionate and dolorous I only add this that acts of publick Repentance must be by using the instruments of the Church such as she hath appointed of private such as by experience or by reason or by the counsel we can get we shall learn to be most effective of our penitential purposes And yet it is a great argument that the exteriour expressions of corporal severities are of good benefit because in all Ages wise men and severe Penitents have chosen them for their instruments The PRAYER O Eternal God who wert pleased in mercy to look upon us when we were in our ãâã to reconcile us when we were enemies to forgive us in the midst of our provocations of thy infinite and eternal Majesty finding out a remedy for us which man-kind could never ask even making an atonement for us by the death of thy Son sanctifying us by the bloud of the everlasting Covenant and thy all-hallowing and Divinest Spirit let thy ãâã so perpetually assist and encourage my endeavours conduct my will and fortifie my intentions that ãâã may persevere in that holy condition which thou hast put me in by the grace of the Covenant and the mercies of the Holy Jesus O let me never fall into those sins and retire to that vain conversation from which the eternal and merciful Saviour of the World hath redeemed me but let me grow in Grace adding Vertue to vertue reducing my purposes to act and increasing my acts till they grow into habits and my habits till they be confirmed and still confirming them till they be consummate in a blessed and holy perseverance Let thy Preventing grace dash all Temptations in their approach let thy Concomitant grace enable me to resist them in the assault and overcome them in the fight that my hopes be never discomposed nor my Faith weakned nor my confidence made remiss or my title and portion in the Covenant be lessened Or if thou permittest me at any time to ãâã which Holy Jesu avert for thy mercy and compession sake yet let me not sleep in sin but recall me instantly by the clamours of a nice and tender Conscience and the quickning Sermons of the Spirit that I may never pass from sin to sin from one degree to another lest sin should get the dominion over me lest thou be angry with me and reject me from the Covenant and I perish Purifie me from all ãâã sanctifie my spirit that I may be holy as thou art and let me never provoke thy jealousie nor presume upon thy goodness nor distrust thy mercies nor ãâã my Repentance nor rely upon vain confidences but that I may by a constant sedulous and timely endeavour make my calling and election sure living to thee and dying to thee that having sowed to the Spirit I may from thy mercies reap in the Spirit bliss and eternal sanctity and everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Saviour our hope and our mighty and ever-glorious Redeemer Amen Vpon Christ ' s Sermon on the Mount and of the Eight Beatitudes Moses delivers the Law Joh. 1. 17. The Law was given by Moses but Grace and Truth came by Iesus Christ. These words the Lord spake unto all the Assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire with a great voice he wrote them in two Tables of stone delivered them unto me Deut. 5. 22. Christ preaches in the Mount He went up into a mountain opened his mouth taught them saying Blessed are the poor in
yet there was some imperfection in David and more violent recessions for so saith the Scripture of Josiah Like unto him was there no King before him David was not so exact as he and yet he followed God with all his heart From which these two Corollaries are certainly deducible That to love God with all our heart admits variety of degrees and the lower degree is yet a Love with all our heart and yet to love God requires a holy life a diligent walking in the Commandments either according to the sence of innocence or of penitence either by first or second counsels by the spirit of Regeneration or the spirit of Renovation and restitution The summ is this The sence of this Precept is such as may be reconciled with the Infirmities of our Nature but not with a Vice in our Manners with the recession of single acts seldom ãâã and always disputed against and long fought with but not with an habitual aversation or a ready obedience to sin or an easie victory 15. This Commandment being the summ of the First Table had in Moses's Law particular instances which Christ did not insert into his Institution and he added no other particular but that which we call the Third Commandment concerning Veneration and reverence to the Name of God The other two viz. concerning Images and the Sabbath have some special considerations 16. The Jews receive daily offence against the ãâã of some Churches who ãâã COM. in the recitation of the Decalogue omit the Second Commandment as supposing it to be a part of the first according as we account them and their offence rises higher because they observe that in the New Testament where the Decalogue is six times repeated in special recitation and in summaries there is no word prohibiting the making retaining or respect of Images Concerning which things Christians consider that God for bad to the Jews ãâã very having and making Images and Representments not only of the true God or of false and imaginary Deities but of visible creatures which because it was but of temporary reason and relative consideration of their aptness to Superstition and their conversing with idolatrous Nations was a command proper to the Nation part of their Govenant not of essential indispensable and eternal reason not of that which we usually call the Law of Nature Of which also God gave testimony because himself commanded the signs and representment of Seraphim to be set upon the Mercy ãâã toward which the Priest and the people made their addresses in their religious Adorations and of the Brazen Serpent to which they looked when they called to God for help against the sting of the venomous Snakes These instances tell us that to make Pictures or Statues of creatures is not against a natural reason and that they may have uses which are profitable as well as be abused to danger and Superstition Now although the nature of that people was apt to the abuse and their entercourse with the Nations in their confines was too great an invitation to entertain the danger yet Christianity hath so far removed that danger by the analogy and design of the Religion by clear Doctrines Revelations and infinite treasures of wisdom and demonstrations of the Spirit that our Blessed Law-giver thought it not necessary to remove us from Superstition by a prohibition of the use of Images and Pictures and therefore left us to the sence of the great Commandment and the dictates of right Reason to take care that we do not dishonour the invisible God with visible representations of what we never saw nor cannot understand ãâã yet convey any of God's incommunicable Worship in the forenamed instances to any thing but himself And for the matter of Images we have no other Rule left us in the New Testament the rules of Reason and Nature and the other parts of the Institution are abundantly sufficient for our security And possibly S. Paul might relate to this when he affirmed concerning the Fifth that it was the first Commandment with promise For in the Second Commandment to the Jews as there was a great threatning so also a greater promise of shewing mercy to a thousand generations But because the body of this Commandment was not transcribed into the Christian Law the first of the Decalogue which we retain and in which a promise is inserted is the Fifth Commandment And therefore the wisdom of the Church was remarkable in the variety of sentences concerning the permission of Images At first when they were blended in the danger and impure mixtures of Gentilism and men were newly recovered from the snare and had the reliques of a long custom to superstitious and false worshippings they endured no Images but merely civil but as the danger ceased and Christianity prevailed they found that Pictures had a natural use of good concernment to move less-knowing people by the representment and declaration of a Story and then they knowing themselves permitted to the liberties of Christianity and the restraints of nature and reason and not being still weak under prejudice and childish dangers but fortified by the excellency of a wise Religion took them into lawful uses doing honour to Saints as unto the absent Emperors according to the custom of the Empire they erected Statues to their honour and transcribed a history and sometimes a precept into a table by figures making more lasting impressions than by words and sentences While the Church stood within these limits she had natural reason for her warrant and the custom of the several Countreys and no precept of Christ to countermand it They who went farther were unreasonable and according to the degree of that excess were Superstitious 17. The Duties of this Commandment are learned by the intents of it For it was directed against the false Religion of the Nations who believed the Images of their Gods to be filled with the Deity and it was also a caution to prevent our low imaginations of God lest we should come to think God to be like Man And thus far there was indispensable and eternal reason in the Precept and this was never lessened in any thing by the Holy Jesus and obliges us Christians to make our addresses and worshippings to no God but the God of the Christians that is of all the world and not to do this in or before an Image of him because he cannot be represented For the Images of Christ and his Saints they come not into either of the two considerations and we are to understand our duty by the proportions of our reverence to God expressed in the great Commandment Our Fathers in Christianity as I observed now made no scruple of using the Images and Pictures of their Princes and Learned men which the Jews understood to be forbidden to them in the Commandment Then they admitted even in the Utensils of the Church some coelatures and engravings Such was that Tertullian speaks of The good
must be severe in our discourses and neither lie in a great matter nor a small for the custom thereof is not good saith the son of Sirach I could add concerning this Precept That Christ having left it in that condition he found it in the Decalogue without any change or alteration of circumstance we are commanded to give true testimony in Judgment which because it was under an Oath there lies upon us no prohibition but a severity of injunction to swear truth in Judgment when we are required The securing of Testimonies was by the sanctity of an Oath and this remains unaltered in Christianity 41. Thou shalt not covet This Commandment we find no-where repeated in the Gospel by our Blessed Saviour but it is inserted in the repetition of the Second Table which S. Paul mentioned to the Romans for it was so abundantly expressed in the inclosures of other Precepts and the whole design of Christ's Doctrine that it was less needful specially to express that which is every-where affixed to many Precepts Evangelical Particularly it is inherent in the first Beatitude Blessed are the poor in spirit and it means that we should not wish our Neighbour's goods with a deliberate entertained desire but that upon the commencement of the motion it be disbanded instantly for he that does not at the first address and ãâã of the passion suppress it he hath given it that entertainment which in every period of staying is a degree of morose delectation in the appetite And to this I find not Christ added any thing for the Law it self forbidding to entertain the desire hath commanded the instant and present suppression they are the same thing and cannot reasonably be distinguished Now that Christ in the instance of Adultery hath commanded to abstain also from occasions and accesses towards the Lust in this hath not the same severity because the vice of Covetousness is not such a wild-fire as Lust is not inflamed by contact and neighbourhood of all things in the world every thing may be instrumental to libidinous desires but to covetous appetites there are not temptations of so different natures 42. Concerning the order of these Commandments it is not unusefully observed that if we account from the first to the last they are of greatest perfection which are last described and he who is arrived to that severity and dominion of himself as not to desire his Neighbour's goods is very far from actual injury and so in proportion it being the least degree of Religion to confess but One God But therefore Vices are to take their estimate in the contrary order he that prevaricates the First Commandment is the greatest sinner in the world and the least is he that only covets without any actual injustice And there is no variety or objection in this unless it be altered by the accidental difference of degrees but in the kinds of sin the Rule is true this onely The Sixth and Seventh are otherwise in the Hebrew Bibles than ours and in the Greek otherwise in Exodus than in Deuteronomy and by this rule it is a greater sin to commit Adultery than to Kill concerning which we have no certainty save that S. Paul in one respect makes the sin of Uncleanness the greatest of any sin whose scene lies in the body Every sin is without the body but he that commits Fornication sins against his own body The PRAYER O Eternal Jesus Wisdome of the Father thou light of Jews and Gentiles and the great Master of the world who by thy holy Sermons and clearest revelations of the mysteries of thy Father's Kingdom didst invite all the world to great degrees of Justice Purity and Sanctity and instruct us all in a holy Institution give us understanding of thy Laws that the light of thy celestial Doctrine illuminating our darknesses and making bright all the recesses of our spirits and understandings we may direct our feet all the lower man the affections of the inferiour appetite to walk in the paths of thy Commandments Dearest God make us to live a life of Religion and Justice of Love and Duty that we may adore thy Majesty and reverence thy Name and love thy Mercy and admire thy infinite glories and perfections and obey thy Precepts Make us to love thee for thy self and our neighbours for thee make us to be all Love and all Duty that we may adorn the Gospel of thee our Lord walking worthy of our Vocation that as thou hast called us to be thy Disciples so we may walk therein doing the work of faithful servants and may receive the adoption of sons and the gift of eternal glory which thou hast reserved for all the Disciples of thy holy Institution Make all the world obey thee as a Prophet that being redeemed and purified by thee our High Priest all may reign with thee our King in thy eternal Kingdom O Eternal Jesus Wisdom of thy Father Amen Of the Three additional Precepts which Christ superinduced and made parts of the Christian Law DISCOURSE XI Of CHARITY with its parts Forgiving Giving not Judging Of Forgiveness PART I. 1. THE Holy Jesus coming to reconcile all the world to God would reconcile all the parts of the world one with another that they may rejoyce in their common band and their common Salvation The first instance of Charity forbad to Christians all Revenge of Injuries which was a perfection and endearment of duty beyond what either most of the old Philosophers or the Laws of the Nations ãâã of Moses ever practised or enjoyned For Revenge was esteemed to unhallowed unchristian natures as sweet as life a satisfaction of injuries and the onely cure of maladies and affronts Onely Laws of the wisest Commonwealths commanded that Revenge should be taken by the Judge a few cases being excepted in which by sentence of the Law the injured person or his nearest Relative might be the Executioner of the Vengeance as among the Jews in the case of Murther among the Romans in the case of an Adulteress or a ravished daughter the Father might kill the Adulteress or the Ravisher In other things the Judge onely was to be the Avenger But Christ commanded his Disciples rather than to take revenge to expose themselves to a second injury rather offer the other cheek than be avenged for a blow on this For vengeance belongs to God and he will retaliate and to that wrath we must give place saith S. Paul that is in well-doing and evil suffering commit our selves to his righteous judgment leaving room for his execution who will certainly do it if we snatch not the sword from his arm 2. But some observe that our Blessed Saviour instanced but in smaller injuries He that bad us suffer a blow on the cheek did not oblige us tamely to be sacrificed he that enjoyned us to put up the loss of our Coat and Cloak did not signifie his pleasure to be that we should ãâã
affections and confidences these Miracles of Christ had produced in all persons he too late strives to lessen the argument by playing an after-game and weakly endeavours to abuse vicious persons whose love to their sensual pleasures was of power to make them take any thing for argument to retain them by such low few inconsiderable uncertain and suspicious instances that it grew to be the greatest confirmation and ãâã ãâã in behalf of Religion that either friend or foe upon his own industry could have represented Such as were the making an Image speak or fetching fire from the clouds and that the images of Diana Cyndias and Vesta among the Jasiaeans would admit no rain to wet them or cloud to darken them and that the bodies of them who entred into the Temple of Jupiter in Arcadia would cast no shadow which things Polybius himself one of their own Superstition laughs at as impostures and says they were no way to be excused unless the pious purpose of the inventors did take off from the malice of the lie But the Miracles of Jesus were confessed and wondred at by Josephus were published to all the world by his own Disciples who never were accused much less convicted of forgery and they were acknowledged by Celsus and Julian the greatest enemies of Christ. 8. But farther yet themselves gave it out that one Caius was cured of his blindness by AEsculapius and so was ãâã Aper and at Alexandria Vespasian cured a man of the Gout by treading upon his Toes and a blind man with spittle And when Adrian the Emperour was sick of a Fever and would have killed himself it is said two blind persons were cured by touching him whereof one of them told him that he also should recover But although Vespasian by the help of Apollonius Tyaneus who was his familiar who also had the Devil to be his might do any thing within the power of nature or by permission might do much more yet besides that this was of an uncertain and less credible report if it had been true it was also infinitely short of what Christ did and was a weak silly imitation and usurping of the argument which had already prevailed upon the perswasions of men beyond all possibility of confutation And for that of Adrian to have reported it is enough to make it ridiculous and it had been a strange power to have cured two blind persons and yet be so unable to help himself as to attempt to kill himself by reason of anguish impatience and despair 9. Fifthly When the Jews and Pharisees believed not Christ for his Miracles and yet perpetually called for a Sign he refused to give them a Sign which might be less than their prejudice or the perswasions of their interest but gave them one which alone is greater than all the Miracles which ever were done or said to be done by any Antichrist or the enemies of the Religion put all together a Miracle which could have no suspicion of imposture a Miracle without instance or precedent or imitation and that is Jesus's lying in the grave three days and three nights and then rising again and appearing to many and conversing for forty days together giving probation of his Rising of the verity of his Body making a glorious promise which at Pentecost was verified speaking such things which became Precepts parts of the Law for ever after 10. Sixthly I add two things more to this consideration First that the Apostles did such Miracles which were infinitely greater than the pretensions of any adversary and inimitable by all the powers of man or darkness They raised the dead they cured all diseases by their very shadow passing by and by the touch of garments they converted Nations they foretold future events they themselves spake with Tongues and they gave the Holy Ghost by imposition of hands which inabled others to speak Languages which immediately before they understood not and to cure diseases and to eject Devils Now supposing Miracles to be done by Gentile Philosophers and Magicians after yet when they fall short of these in power and yet teach a contrary Doctrine it ãâã a demonstration that it is a lesser power and therefore the Doctrine not of Divine authority and sanction And it is remarkable that among all the Gentiles none ever reasonably pretended to a power of casting out Devils For the Devils could not get so much by it as things then stood And besides in whose name should they do it who worshipped none but Devils and false gods which is too violent presumption that the Devil was the Architect in all such buildings And when the seven sons of Sceva who was a Jew amongst whom it was sometimes granted to cure Demoniacks offered to exorcize a possessed person the Devil would by no means endure it but beat them for their pains And yet because it might have been for his purpose to have enervated the reputation of S. Paul and by a voluntary cession equalled S. Paul's enemies to him either the Devil could not go out but at the command of a Christian or else to have gone out would have been a disservice and ruine to his kingdom either of which declares that the power of casting out Devils is a testimony of God and a probation of the Divinity of a Doctrine and a proper argument of Christianity 11. Seventhly But besides this I consider that the Holy Jesus having first possessed upon just title all the reasonableness of humane understanding by his demonstration of a miraculous power in his infinite wisdome knew that the Devil would attempt to gain a party by the same instrument and therefore so ordered it that the Miracles which should be done or pretended to by the Devil or any of the enemies of the Cross of ChrisÌt should be a confirmation of Christianity not do it disservice for he foretold that Antichrist and other enemies should come in prodigies and lying wonders and signs Concerning which although it may be disputed whether they were truly Miracles or mere deceptions and magical pretences yet because they were such which the People could not discern from Miracles really such therefore it is all one and in this consideration are to be supposed such but certainly he that could foretell such a future contingency or such a secret of Predestination was able also to know from what principle it came and we have the same reason to believe that Antichrist shall do Miracles to evil purposes as that he shall do any at all he that foretold us of the man foretold us also of the imposture and commanded us not to trust him And it had been more likely for Antichrist to prevail upon Christians by doing no Miracles than by doing any For if he had done none he might have escaped without discovery but by doing Miracles as he verified the wisdom and prescience of Jesus so he declared to all the Church that he was the enemy of their Lord
against every thing but nothing could please them But wisdom righteousness had a theatre in its own family and is justified of all her children Then he proceeds to a more applied reprehension of Capernaum and Chorazin and Bethsaida for being pertinacious in their sins and infidelity in defiance and reproof of all the mighty works which had been wrought in them But these things were not revealed to all dispositions the wife and the mighty of the world were not subjects prepared for the simplicity and softer impresses of the Gospel and the down-right severity of its Sanctions And therefore Jesus glorified God for the magnifying of his mercy in that these things which were hid from the great ones were revealed to babes and concludes this Sermon with an invitation of all wearied and disconsolate persons loaded with sin and misery to come to him promising ease to their burthens and refreshment to their weariness and to exchange their heavy pressures into an easie yoke and a light burthen 9. When Jesus had ended this Sermon one of the Pharisees named Simon invited him to eat with him into whose house when he was entred a certain woman that was a sinner abiding there in the City heard of it her name was Mary she had been married to a noble personage a native of the Town and Castle of Magdal from whence she had her name of Magdalen though she her self was born in Bethany a widow she was and prompted by her wealth liberty and youth to an intemperate life and too free entertainments She came to Jesus into the Pharisee's house not as did the staring multitude to glut her eyes with the sight of a miraculous and glorious person nor as did the Centurion or the ãâã or the Ruler of the Synagogue for cure of her sickness or in behalf of her friend or child or servant but the only example of so coming she came in remorse and regret for her sins ãâã came to Jesus to lay her burthen at his feet and to present him with a broken heart and a weeping eye and great affection and a box of Nard Pistick salutary and precious For she came trembling and fell down before him weeping bitterly for her sins pouring out a ãâã great enough to wash the feet of the Blessed Jesus and wiping them with the hairs of her head after which she brake the box and anointed his feet with ointment Which expression was so great an ecstasie of love sorrow and adoration that to anoint the feet even of the greatest Monarch was long unknown and in all the pomps and greatnesses of the Roman Prodigality it was not used till Otho taught it to Nero in whose instance it was by Pliny reckoned for a prodigy of unnecessary profusion and in it self without the circumstance of ãâã free a dispensation it was a present for a Prince and an Alabaster-box of Nard Pistick was sent as a present from ãâã to the King of Ethiopia 10. When Simon observed this sinner so busie in the expresses of her Religion and ãâã to Jesus he thought with himself that this was no Prophet that did not know her to be a sinner or no just person that would suffer her to touch him For although the Jews Religion did permit Harlots of their own Nation to live and enjoy the priviledges of their Nation save that their Oblations were refused yet the Pharisees who pretended to a greater degree of Sanctity than others would not admit them to civil ãâã or the benefits of ordinary society and thought Religion it self and the honour of a Prophet was concerned in the interests of the same superciliousness and therefore Simon made an objection within himself Which Jesus knowing for he understood his thoughts as well as his words made her Apology and his own in a civil question expressed in a Parable of two Debtors to whom a greater and a less debt respectively was forgiven both of them concluding that they would love their merciful Creditor in proportion to his mercy and donative and this was the case of Mary Magdalen to whom because much was forgiven she loved much and expressed it in characters so large that the Pharisee might read his own incivilities and inhospitable entertainment of the Master when it stood confronted with the magnificency of Mary Magdalen's penance and charity 11. When Jesus had dined he was presented with the sad sight of a poor Demoniack possessed with a blind and a dumb Devil in whose behalf his friends intreated Jesus that he would cast the Devil out which he did immediately and the blind man saw and the dumb spake so much to the amazement of the people that they ran in so prodigious companies after him and so scandalized the Pharisees who thought that by means of this Prophet their reputation would be lessened and their Schools empty that first a rumour was scattered up and down from an uncertain principle but communicated with tumult and apparent noises that Jesus was beside himself Upon which rumour his friends and kindred came together to see and to make provisions accordingly and the holy Virgin-mother came her self but without any apprehensions of any such horrid accident The words and things she had from the beginning laid up in her heart would furnish her with principles exclusive of all apparitions of such fancies but she came to see what that persecution was which under that colour it was likely the Pharisees might commence 12. When the Mother of Jesus and his kindred came they found him in a house encircled with people full of wonder and admiration And there the holy Virgin-mother might hear part of her own Prophecy verified that the generations of the earth should call her blessed for a woman worshipping Jesus cried out Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that gave thee suck To this Jesus replied not denying her to be highly blessed who had received the honour of being the Mother of the Messias but advancing the dignities of spiritual excellencies far above this greatest temporal honour in the world Yea rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and do it For in respect of the issues of spiritual perfections and their proportionable benedictions all immunities and temporal honours are empty and hollow blessings and all relations of kindred disband and empty themselves into the greater chanels and flouds of Divinity 13. For when Jesus being in the house they told him his Mother and his Brethren staid for him without he told them those relations were less than the ties of Duty and Religion For those dear names of Mother and Brethren which are hallowed by the laws of God and the endearments of Nature are made far more sacred when a spiritual cognation does supervene when the relations are subjected in persons religious and holy but if they be abstract and separate the conjunction of persons in spiritual bands in the same Faith and the same Hope and the union of them
that is to come That is plain And although Christ revealed his Father's mercies to us in new expresses and great abundance yet he took nothing from the world which ever did in any sense invite Piety or indear Obedience or cooperate towards Felicity And ãâã the Promises which were made of old are also presupposed in the new and mentioned by intimation and implication within the greater When our Blessed Saviour in seven of the Eight Beatitudes had instanced in new Promises and Rewards as Heaven Seeing of God Life eternal in one of them to which Heaven is as certainly consequent as to any of the rest he did chuse to instance in a temporal blessing and in the very words of the Old Testament to shew that that part of the old Covenant which concerns Morality and the rewards of Obedience remains firm and included within the conditions of the Gospel 16. To this purpose is that saying of our Blessed Saviour Man liveth not by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God meaning that besides natural means ordained for the preservation of our lives there are means supernatural and divine God's Blessing does as much as bread nay it is Every word proceeding out of the ãâã of God that is every Precept and Commandment of God is so for our good that it is intended as food and Physick to us a means to make us live long And therefore God hath done in this as in other graces and issues Evangelical which he purposed to continue in his Church for ever He first gave it in miraculous and extraordinary manner and then gave it by way of perpetual ministery The Holy Ghost appeared at first like a prodigy and with Miracle he descended in visible representments expressing himself in revelations and powers extraordinary but it being a Promise intended to descend upon all Ages of the Church there was appointed a perpetual ministery for its conveyance and still though without a sign or miraculous representment it is ministred in Confirmation by imposition of the Bishop's hands And thus also health and long life which by way of ordinary benediction is consequent to Piety Faith and Obedience Evangelical was at first given in a miraculous manner that so the ordinary effects being at first confirmed by miraculous and extraordinary instances and manners of operation might for ever after be confidently expected without any dubitation since it was in the same manner consigned by which all the whole Religion was by a voice from Heaven and a verification of Miracles and extraordinary supernatural effects That the gift of healing and preservation and restitution of life was at first miraculous needs no particular probation All the story of the Gospel is one entire argument to prove it and amongst the fruits of the Spirit S. Paul reckons gifts of healing and government and helps or exteriour assistences and advantages to represent that it was intended the life of Christian people should be happy and healthful for ever Now that this grace also descended afterwards in an ordinary ministery is recorded by S. James Is any man sick amongst you let him call for the Elders of the Church and let them pray over him anointing him with oyl in the name of the Lord that was then the ceremony and the blessing and effect is still for the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up For it is observable that the blessing of healing and recovery is not appendent to the Anealing but to the Prayer of the Church to manifest that the ceremony went with the first miraculous and extraordinary manner yet that there was an ordinary ministery appointed for the daily conveyance of the blessing the faithful prayers offices of holy Priests shall obtain life and health to such persons who are receptive of it and in spiritual and apt dispositions And when we see by a continual flux of extraordinary benediction that even some Christian Princes are instruments of the Spirit not only in the government but in the gifts of healing too as a reward for their promoting the just interests of Christianity we may acknowledge our selves convinced that a holy life in the faith and obedience of Jesus Christ may be of great advantage for our health and life by that instance to entertain our present desires and to establish our hopes of life eternal 17. For I consider that the fear of God is therefore the best antidote in the World against sickness and death because it is the direct enemy to sin which brought in sickness and death and besides this that God by spiritual means should produce alterations natural is not hard to be understood by a Christian Philosopher take him in either of the two capacities 2. For there is a rule of proportion and analogy of effects that if sin destroys not only the Soul but the Body also then may Piety preserve both and that much rather for if sin that is the effects and consequents of sin hath abounded then shall grace superabound that is Christ hath done us more benefit than the Fall of Adam hath done us injury and therefore the effects of sin are not greater upon the body than either are to be restored or prevented by a pious life 3. There is so near a conjunction between Soul and Body that it is no wonder if God meaning to glorifie both by the means of a spiritual life suffers spirit and matter to communicate in effects and mutual impresses Thus the waters of Baptism purifie the Soul and the Holy Eucharist not the symbolical but the mysterious and spiritual part of it makes the Body also partaker of the death ãâã Christ and a holy union The flames of Hell whatsoever they are torment accursed Souls and the stings of Conscience vex and disquiet the Body 4. And if we consider that in the glories of Heaven when we shall live a life purely spiritual our Bodies also are so clarified and made spiritual that they also become immortal that state of Glory being nothing else but a perfection of the state of Grace it is not unimaginable but that the Soul may have some proportion of the same operation upon the Body as to conduce to its prolongation as to an antepast of immortality 5. For since the Body hath all its life from its conjunction with the Soul why not also the perfection of life according to its present capacity that is health and duration from the perfection of the Soul I mean from the ornaments of Grace And as the blessedness of the Soul saith the Philosopher consists in the speculation of honest and just things so the perfection of the Body and of the whole Man consists in the practick the exercise and operations of Vertue 18. But this Problem in Christian Philosophy is yet more intelligible and will be reduced to certain experience if we consider good life in union and concretion with particular
they deny the fact and double it When they would repair their losses they fall to Gaming and besides that they are infinitely full of fears passions wrath and violent disturbances in the various chances of their game that which they use to restore their ãâã ruines even the little remnant and condemns them to beggery or what is worse Thus evil men ãâã for content out of things that cannot satisfie and take care to get that content that is they raise War to enjoy present Peace and renounce all Content to get it They strive to depress their Neighbours that they may be their equals to disgrace them to get reputation to themselves which arts being ignoble do them the most disparagement and resolve never to enter into the felicities of God by content taken in the prosperities of man which is a making our selves wretched by being wicked Malice and Envy is indeed a mighty curse and the Devil can shew us nothing more foolish and unreasonable than Envy which is in its very formality a curse an eating of coals and vipers because my neighbour's table is full and his cup is crowned with health and plenty The Christian Religion as it chuseth excellent ends so it useth proportionate and apt means The most contradictory accident in the world when it becomes hallowed by a pious and Christian design becomes a certain means of felicity and content To quit our lands for Christ's sake will certainly make us rich to depart from our friends will encrease our relations and beneficiaries but the striving to secure our temporal interests by any other means than obedient actions or obedient sufferings is declared by the Holy Jesus to be the greatest improvidence and ill husbandry in the world Even in this world Christ will repay us an hundred fold for all our losses which we suffer for the interests of Christianity In the same proportion we find that all Graces do the work of humane felicities with a more certain power and ãâã effect than their contraries Gratitude endears Benefits and procures more Friendships Confession gets a Pardon Impudence and lying doubles the fault and exasperates the offended person Innocence is bold and rocks a man asleep but an evil Conscience is a continual alarm Against this folly of using disproportionate means in order to their ends the Holy Jesus hath opposed the Eight Beatitudes which by contradictions of nature and improbable causes according to humane and erring estimate bring our best and wisest ends to pass infallibly and divinely 32. But this is too large a field to walk in for it represents all the flatteries of sin to be a mere cozenage and deception of the Understanding and we find by this scrutiny that evil and unchristian persons are infinitely unwise because they neglect the counsel of their superiours and their guides They dote passionately upon trifles they rely upon false foundations and deceiving principles they are most confident when they are most abused they are like shelled fish singing loudest when their house is on fire about their ears and being merriest when they are most miserable and perishing when they have the option of two things they ever chuse the worst they are not masters of their own actions but break all purposes at the first temptation they take more pains to do themselves a mischief than would ãâã Heaven that is they are rude ignorant foolish unwary and undiscerning people in all senses and to all purposes and are incurable but by their Obedience and conformity to the Holy Jesus the eternal Wisdome of the Father 33. Upon the strength of these premisses the yoke of Christianity must needs be apprehended light though it had in it more pressure than it hath because lightness or heaviness being relative terms are to be esteemed by comparison to others Christianity is far easier than the yoke of Moses's Law not only because it consists of fewer Rites but also because those perfecting and excellent Graces which integrate the body of our Religion are made easie by God's assisting and the gifts of the Holy Ghost and we may yet make it easier by Love and by Fear which are the proper products of the Evangelical Promises and Threatnings For I have seen persons in affrightment have carried burthens and leaped ditches and climbed walls which their natural power could never have done And if we understood the sadnesses of a cursed Eternity from which we are commanded to fly and yet knew how near we are to it and how likely to fall into it it would create fears greater than a sudden fire or a mid-night alarm And those unhappy souls who come to feel this truth when their condition is without remedy are made the more miserable by the apprehension of their stupid folly For certainly the accursed Spirits feel the smart of Hell once doubled upon them by considering by what vain unsatisfying trifles they lost their happiness with what pains they perished and with how great ease they might have been beatified And certain it is Christian Religion hath so furnished us with assistences both exteriour and interiour both of perswasion and advantages that whatsoever Christ hath doubled upon us in perfection he hath alleviated in aids 34. And then if we compare the state of Christianity with Sin all the preceding discourses were intended to represent how much easier it is to be a Christian than a vile and wicked person And he that remembers that whatever fair allurements may be pretended as invitations to a sin are such false and unsatisfying pretences that they drive a man to repent him of his folly and like a great laughter end in a sigh and expire in weariness and indignation must needs confess himself a fool for doing that which he knows will make him repent that he ever did it A sin makes a man afraid when it thunders and in all dangers the sin detracts the visour and affrights him and visits him when he comes to die upbraiding him with guilt and threatning misery So that Christianity is the easiest Law and the easiest state it is more perfect and less troublesome it brings us to Felicity by ways proportionable landing us in rest by easie and unperplexed journeys This Discourse I therefore thought necessary because it reconciles our Religion with those passions and desires which are commonly made the instruments and arguments of sin For we rarely meet with such spirits which love Vertue so metaphysically as to abstract her from all sensible and delicious compositions and love the purity of the Idea S. Lewis the King sent Ivo Bishop of Chartres on an Embassy and he told that he met a grave Matron on the way with fire in one hand and water in the other and observing her to have a melancholick religious and phantastick deportment and look asked her what those symbols meant and what she meant to do with her fire and water She answered My purpose is with the fire to burn Paradise and with my water to quench
the flames of Hell that men may serve God without the incentives of hope and fear and purely for the love of God Whether the Woman were onely imaginative and sad or also zealous I know not But God knows he would have few Disciples if the arguments of invitation were not of greater promise than the labours of Vertue are of trouble And therefore the Spirit of God knowing to what we are inflexible and by what we are made most ductile and malleable hath propounded Vertue clothed and dressed with such advantages as may entertain even our Sensitive part and first desires that those also may be invited to Vertue who understand not what is just and reasonable but what is profitable who are more moved with advantage than justice And because emolument is more felt than innocence and a man may be poor for all his gift of ãâã the Holy Jesus to endear the practices of Religion hath represented Godliness unto us under the notion of gain and sin as unfruitful and yet besides all the natural and reasonable advantages every Vertue hath a supernatural reward a gracious promise attending and every Vice is not only naturally deformed but is made more ugly by a threatning and horrid by an appendent curse Henceforth therefore let no man complain that the Commandments of God are impossible for they are not onely possible but easie and they that say otherwise and do accordingly take more pains to carry the instruments of their own death than would serve to ascertain them of life And if we would do as much for Christ as we have done for Sin we should find the pains less and the pleasure more And therefore such complainers are without excuse for certain it is they that can go in foul ways must not say they cannot walk in fair they that march over rocks in despight of so many impediments can travel the even ways of Religion and Peace when the Holy Jesus is their Guide and the Spirit is their Guardian and infinite felicities are at their journey's end and all the reason of the world political oeconomical and personal do entertain and support them in the travel of the passage The PRAYER O Eternal Jesus who gavest Laws unto the world that man-kind being united to thee by the bands of Obedience might partake of all thy glories and felicities open our understanding give us the spirit of discerning and just apprehension of all the beauties with which thou hast enamelled Vertue to represent it beauteous and amiable in our eyes that by the allurements of exteriour decencies and appendent blessings our present desires may be entertained our hopes promoted our affections satisfied and Love entring in by these doors may dwell in the interiour regions of the Will O make us to love thee for thy self and Religion for thee and all the instruments of Religion in order to thy glory and our own felicities Pull off the visors of Sin and discover its deformities by the lantern of thy Word and the light of the Spirit that I may never be bewitched with sottish appetites Be pleased to build up all the contents I expect in this world upon the interests of a vertuous life and the support of Religion that I may be rich in Good works content in the issues of thy Providence my Health may be the result of Temperance and severity my Mirth in spiritual emanations my Rest in Hope my Peace in a good Conscience my Satisfaction and acquiescence in thee that from Content I may pass to an eternal Fulness from Health to Immortality from Grace to Glory walking in the paths of Righteousness by the waters of Comfort to the land of everlasting Rest to feast in the glorious communications of Eternity eternally adoring loving and enjoying the infinity of the ever-Blessed and mysterious Trinity to whom be glory and ãâã and dominion now and for ever Amen DISCOURSE XVI Of Certainty of Salvation 1. WHen the Holy Jesus took an account of the first Legation and voyage of his Apostles he found them rejoycing in priviledges and exteriour powers in their authority over unclean spirits but weighing it in his balance he found the cause too light and therefore diverted it upon the right object Rejoyce that your names are written in Heaven The revelation was confirmed and more personally applied in answer to S. Peter's Question We have for saken all and followed thee what shall we have therefore Their LORD answered Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel Amongst these persons to whom Christ spake Judas was he was one of the Twelve and he had a throne allotted for him his name was described in the book of life and a Scepter and a Crown was deposited for him too For we must not judge of Christ's meaning by the event since he spake these words to produce in them Faith comfort and joy in the best objects it was a Sermon of duty as well as a Homily of comfort and therefore was equally intended to all the Colledge and since the number of Thrones is proportioned to the number of men it is certain there was no exception of any man there included and yet it is as certain Judas never came to sit upon the throne and his name was blotted out of the book of life Now if we put these ends together that in Scripture it was not revealed to any man concerning his final condition but to the dying penitent Thief and to the twelve Apostles that twelve thrones were designed for them and a promise made of their inthronization and yet that no man's final estate is so clearly declared miserable and lost as that of Judas one of the Twelve to whom a throne was promised the result will be that the election of holy persons is a condition allied to duty absolute and infallible in the general and supposing all the dispositions and requisites concurring but fallible in the particular if we fall off from the mercies of the Covenant and prevaricate the conditions But the thing which is most observable is that if in persons so eminent and priviledged and to whom a revelation of their Election was made as a particular grace their condition had one weak leg upon which because it did rely for one half of the interest it could be no stronger than its supporters the condition of lower persons to whom no revelation is made no priviledges are indulged no greatness of spiritual eminency is appendent as they have no greater certainty in the thing so they have less in person and are therefore to work out their salvation with great fears and tremblings of spirit 2. The purpose of this consideration is that we do not judge of our final condition by any discourses of our own relying upon God's secret Counsels and Predestination of Eternity This is a mountain upon which whosoever climbs like Moses to behold the land of Canaan at great distances may please his eyes or
on the waters The Lord did so and Peter throwing himself upon the confidence of his Master's power and providence came out of the ship and his fear began to weigh him down and he cried saying Lord save me Jesus took him by the hand reproved the timorousness of his Faith and went with him into the ship where when they had worshipped him and admired the Divinity of his Power and Person they presently came into the land of Genesareth the ship arriving at the Port immediately and all that were sick or possessed with unclean spirits were brought to him and as many as touched the border of his garment were made whole 3. By this time they whom Jesus had left on the other side of the Lake had come as far as Capernaum to seek him wondring that he was there before them but upon the occasion of their so diligent inquisition Jesus observes to them That it was not the Divinity of the Miracle that provoked their zeal but the satisfaction they had in the loaves a carnal complacency in their meal and upon that intimation speaks of celestial bread the divine nutriment of souls and then discourses of the mysterious and symbolical manducation of Christ himself affirming that he himself was the bread of life that came down from Heaven that he would give his Disciples his flesh to eat and his bloud to drink and all this should be for the life of the World to nourish unto life eternal so that without it a happy eternity could not be obtained Upon this discourse divers of his Disciples amongst whom S. Mark the Evangelist is said to be one though he was afterwards recalled by Simon Peter for sook him being scandalized by their literal and carnal understanding of those words of Jesus which he intended in a spiritual sence For the words that he spake were not profitable in the sence of flesh and bloud but they are spirit and they are life himself being the Expounder who best knew his own meaning 4. When Jesus saw this great defection of his Disciples from him he turned him to the twelve Apostles and asked if they also would go away Simon Peter answered Lord whither shall we go thou hast the words of eternal life And we believe and are sure thou art that CHRIST the Son of the living God Although this publick confession was made by Peter in the name and confidence of the other Apostles yet Jesus told them that even amongst the twelve there was one Devil meaning Judas Iscariot who afterwards betrayed him This he told them Prophetically that they might perceive the sad accidents which afterwards happened did not invade and surprize him in the disadvantages of ignorance or improvision but came by his own knowledge and providence 5. Then came to him the Pharisees and some Scribes which came from Jerusalem and Galilee for Jesus would not go to Judaea because the Jews laid wait to kill him and quarrelled with him about certain impertinent unnecessary Rites derived to them not by Divine sanction but ordinances of man such as were washing their hands oft when they eat baptizing cups and platters and washing tables and beds which ceremonies the Apostles of Jesus did not observe but attended diligently to the simplicity and spiritual Holiness of their Master's Doctrine But in return to their vain demands Jesus gave them a sharp reproof for prosecuting these and many other traditions to the discountenance of Divine Precepts and in particular they taught men to give to the Corban and refused to supply the necessity of their parents thinking it to be Religion though they neglected Piety and Charity And again he thunders out woes and sadnesses against their impieties for being curious of minutes and punctual in rites and ceremonials but most negligent and incurious of Judgment and the love of God for their Pride for their Hypocrisie for their imposing burthens upon others which themselves helped not to support for taking away the key of knowledge from the people obstructing the passages to Heaven for approving the acts of their Fathers in persecuting the Prophets But for the Question it self concerning Washings Jesus taught the people that no outward impurity did stain the Soul in the sight of God but all pollution is from within from the corruption of the heart and impure thoughts unchast desires and unholy purposes and that Charity is the best purifier in the world 6. And thence Jesus departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon and entred into a house that he might not be known The diligence of a Mother's love and sorrow and necessity found him out in his retirement for a Syrophoenician woman came and be sought him that he would cast the Devil out of her daughter But Jesus discoursed to her by way of discomfort and rejection of her for her Nation 's sake But the seeming denial did but enkindle her desires and made her importunity more bold and undeniable she begged but some crums that fell from the childrens table but one instance of favour to her daughter which he poured forth without measure upon the sons and daughters of Israel Jesus was pleased with her zeal and discretion and pitied her daughter's infelicity and dismissed her with saying The Devil was gone out of her Daughter 7. But Jesus stayed not long here but returning to the Sea of Galilee through the midst of ãâã they brought unto him a man deaf and dumb whom Jesus cured by touching his tongue and putting his fingers in his ears which caused the people to give a large testimony in approbation of all his actions And they followed him unto a mountain bringing to him multitudes of diseased people and he healed them all But because the people had followed him three days and had nothing to eat Jesus in pity to their need resolved to ãâã them once more at the charge of a Miracle therefore taking seven ãâã and a few small fishes he blessed them and satisfied four thousand men besides women and children And there remained seven baskets full of broken bread and fish From whence Jesus departed by ship to the coasts of Mageddon and Dalmanutha whither the Pharisees and Sadduces came seeking of him a sign But Jesus rejected their impertinent and captious demand knowing they did it to ill purposes and with disaffection reproving them that they discerned the face of the sky and the prognosticks of fair or foul weather but not the signs of the times of the Son of man However since they had neglected so great demonstrations of Miracles gracious Discourses holy Laws and Prophecies they must expect no other sign but the ãâã of the Prophet Jonas meaning the Resurrection of his Body after three days burial and so he dismissed the impertinent inquisitors 8. And passing again over the Lake as his Disciples were solicitous because they had forgot to take bread he gave them caution to beware of the leven of the Pharisees and Sadduces and the leven of Herod meaning the
Hypocrisie and vanities of the one and the Heresie of the other For Herod's leven was the pretence that he was the Messias which the Sect of the ãâã did earnestly and spitefully promote And after this ãâã of themselves by the way they came together to Bethsaida where Jesus cured a blind man with a collyrium of spittle salutary as Balsam or the purest Eyebright when his divine benediction once had hallowed it But Jesus staid not there but departing thence into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi out of Herod's power for it was in Philip's jurisdiction after he had prayed with his Disciples he enquired what opinion the world had of him and whom they reported him to be They answered Some say thou art John the Baptist some that thou art Elias or Jeremias or one of the Prophets for in ãâã especially the Sect of the Pharisees was mightily disseminated whose opinion it was that the Souls of dead men according to their several merits did transmigrate into other bodies of very perfect and excellent persons And therefore in all this variety none hit upon the right or fansied him to be a distinct person from the ancients but although they differed in the assignation of his name yet generally they agreed it was the Soul of a departed Prophet which had passed into another Body But Jesus asked the Apostles their opinion and Peter in the name of all the rest made an open and confident Confession Thou art CHRIST the Son of the living God 9. This Confession Jesus not only confirmed as true but as revealed by God and of fundamental necessity for after the blessing of Peter's person upon allusion of Peter's name Jesus said that upon this Rock the article of Peter's Confession he would build his Church promising to it assistances even to perpetuity insomuch that the gates of hell that is persecution and death and the grave should never prevail against it adding withall a promise to Peter in behalf of all the rest as he had made a Confession for them all that he would give unto him the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven so that whatsoever he should bind on earth should be bound in Heaven and whatsoever he should loose on earth should be loosed in Heaven a power which he never communicated before or since but to their successors greater than the large Charter of Nature and the donative of Creation in which all the creatures under Heaven were made subject to Man's Empire but till now Heaven it self was never subordinate to humane ministration 10. And now the days from hence forward to the Death of Jesus we must reckon to be like the Vigils or Eves of his Passion for now he began and often did ingeminate those sad predictions of his unhandsome usage he should shortly find that he ãâã be rejected of the Elders and chief Priests and Scribes and suffer many things at Jerusalem and be killed and be raised up the third day But Peter hearing that sad discourse so contrary to his hopes which he had blended with temporal expectances for he had learned the Doctrine of Christ's Advent but not the mystery of the Cross in great and mistaken civility took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him saying Be it far from thee Lord this shall not be unto thee But Jesus full of zeal against so soft and humane admonition that savoured nothing of God or of abstracted immaterial considerations chid Peter bitterly Get thee behind me Satan thou art an offence unto me And calling his Disciples to him told them a second part of a sad doctrine that not only himself but all they also must suffer For when the Head was to be crowned with thorns if the Members were wrapped in softnesses it was an unhansome undecency and a disunion too near an antipathy and therefore who ever will be the Disciple of Jesus must take up his Cross deny himself and his own fonder appetites and trace his Master's foot-steps marked out with bloud that he shed for our Redemption and restitution And that there be no escape from the participation of Christ's suffering Jesus added this Dilemma He that will save his life shall lose it and he that will lose it shall save it to eternity Which part soever we chuse there is a life to be lost but as the first are foolish to the extremest misery that will lose their Souls to gain the World so they are most wise and fortunate that will give their lives for him because when the Son of Man shall come in his own glory and his Father's and of his Angels he shall reward every man according to his works This discourse Jesus concluded with a Prophecy that some standing in that presence should not die till they saw the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom 11. Of the greater glories of which in due time to be revealed Jesus after eight days gave a bright and excellent probation For taking with him Peter and James and John he went up into the mountain Tabor to pray and while he prayed he was transfigured before them and his face did shine like the Sun and his garments were white and ãâã And there appeared talking with him Moses and Elias gloriously speaking of the decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem which glory these Apostles after they had awaked from sleep did behold And the Interlocutors with Jesus having finished their embassy of death which they delivered in forms of glory representing the excellencies of the reward together with the sharpness of the passage and interval departed leaving the Apostles full of fear and wonder and ãâã insomuch that Peter talked he knew not what but nothing amiss something Prophetical saying Master it is good to be here ãâã us build three tabernacles And some devout persons in memory of the mystery did ãâã three Churches in the same place in after-Ages But after the departure of those attendent Saints a cloud incircled Jesus and the Disciples and a voice came from the excellent glory This is my beloved Son hear him The cloud quickly disappeared and freed the Disciples from the fear it had put them in So they attended Jesus and descended from the mountain being commanded silence which they observed till the Resurrection 12. The next day came to Jesus a man praying in behalf of his son Lunatick and sore troubled with a Devil who sought oft to destroy him in fire and water that Jesus would be pleased to deliver him For his Apostles tried and could not by reason of the want of Faith for this Grace if it be true though in a less degree is of power to remove mountains to pluck up trees by the roots and to give them solid foundation in the waters And Jesus rebuked the Devil and ãâã departed out of him from that very hour Thence Jesus departed privately into Galilee and in his journey repeated those sadnesses of his approaching Passion Which so afflicted the spirits of the Disciples that they durst
upon whom no such visible signatures have been imprinted The purpose of such chances is that we should repent lest we perish in the like judgment 28. About this time a certain Ruler of a Synagogue renewed the old Question about the observation of the Sabbath repining at Jesus that he cured a woman that was crooked loosing her from her infirmity with which she had been afflicted eighteen years But Jesus made the man ashamed by an argument from their own practice who themselves loose an oxe from the stall on the Sabbath and lead him to watering And by the same argument he also stopt the mouths of the Scribes and Pharisees which were open upon him for curing an Hydropick person upon the Sabbath For Jesus that he might draw off and separate Christianity from the yoke of Ceremonies by abolishing and taking off the strictest Mosaical Rites chose to do very many of his Miracles upon the Sabbath that he might do the work of abrogation and institution both at once not much unlike the Sabbatical Pool in Judaea which was dry six days but gushed out in a full stream upon the Sabbath For though upon all days Christ was operative and miraculous yet many reasons did concur and determine him to a more frequent working upon those days of publick ceremony and convention But going forth from thence he went up and down the Cities of Galilee re-enforcing the same Doctrine he had formerly taught them and daily adding new Precepts and cautions and prudent insinuations advertising of the multitudes of them that perish and the paucity of them that shall be saved and that we should strive to enter in at the strait gate that the way to destruction is broad and plausible the way to Heaven nice and austere and few there be that find it teaches them modesty at Feasts and entertainments of the poor discourses of the many excuses and unwillingnesses of persons who were invited to the feast of the Kingdom the refreshments of the Gospel and tacitly insinuates the rejection of the Jews who were the first invited and the calling of the Gentiles who were the persons called in from the high ways and hedges He reprehends Herod for his subtilty and design to kill him prophesies that he should die at Jerusalem and intimates great sadnesses future to them for neglecting this their day of visitation and for killing the Prophets and the Messengers sent from God 29. It now grew towards Winter and the Jews feast of Dedication was at hand therefore Jesus went up to Jerusalem to the Feast where he preached in Solomon's Porch which part of the Temple stood intire from the first ruines and the end of his Sermon was that the Jews had like to have stoned him But retiring from thence he went beyond Jordan where he taught the people in a most elegant and perswasive Parable concerning the mercy of God in accepting Penitents in the Parable of the Prodigal son returning discourses of the design of the Messias coming into the world to recover erring persons from their sin and danger in the Apologues of the Lost sheep and Goat and under the representment of an Unjust but prudent Steward he taught us so to employ our present opportunities and estates by laying them out in acts of Mercy and Religion that when our Souls shall be dismissed from the stewardship and custody of our body we may be entertained in everlasting habitations He instructeth the Pharisees in the question of Divorces limiting the permissions of Separations to the only cause of Fornication preferreth holy Coelibate before the estate of Marriage in them to whom the gift of Continency is given in order to the Kingdom of Heaven He telleth a Story or a Parable for which is uncertain of a Rich man whom Euthymius out of the tradition of the Hebrews nameth Nymensis and Lazarus the first a voluptuous person and uncharitable the other pious afflicted sick and a begger the first died and went to Hell the second to Abraham's bosome God so ordering the dispensation of good things that we cannot easily enjoy two Heavens nor shall the infelicities of our lives if we be pious end otherwise than in a beatified condition The Epilogue of which story discovered this truth also That the ordinary means of Salvation are the express revelations of Scripture and the ministeries of God's appointment and whosoever neglects these shall not be supplied with means extraordinary or if he were they would be totally ineffectual 30. And still the people drew water from the fountains of our Saviour which streamed out in a full and continual emanation For adding wave to wave line to line precept upon precept he reproved the Fastidiousness of the Pharisee that came with Eucharist to God and contempt to his brother and commended the Humility of the Publican's address who came deploring his sins and with modesty and penance and importunity begged and obtained a mercy Then he laid hands upon certain young children and gave them benediction charging his Apostles to admit infants to him because to them in person and to such in embleme and signification the Kingdom of Heaven does appertain He instructs a young man in the ways and counsels of perfection besides the observation of Precepts by heroical Renunciations and acts of munificent Charity Which discourse because it alighted upon an indisposed and an unfortunate subject for the young man was very rich Jesus discourses how hard it is for a rich man to be saved but he expounds himself to mean they that trust in riches and however it is a matter of so great temptation that it is almost impossible to escape yet with God nothing is impossible But when the Apostles heard the Master bidding the young man sell all and give to the poor and follow him and for his reward promised him a heavenly treasure Peter in the name of the rest began to think that this was their case and the promise also might concern them but they asked the Question What shall we have who have forsaken all and followed thee Jesus answered that they should sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel 31. And Jesus extended this mercy to every Disciple that should forsake either house or wife or children or any thing for his sake and the Gospel's and that they should receive a hundred fold in this life by way of comfort and equivalency and in the world to come thousands of glories and possessions in fruition and redundancy For they that are last shall be first and the first shall be last and the despised people of this world shall reign like Kings and contempt it self shall swell up into glory and poverty into an eternal satisfaction And these rewards shall not be accounted according to the priviledges of Nations or priority of vocation but readiness of mind and obedience and sedulity of operation after calling which Jesus taught his Disciples in the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard to whom the
after when he heard the cock crow he wept remembring the old instrument of his Conversion and his own unworthiness for which he never ceased to do actions of sorrow and sharp Repentance 24. On the morning the Council was to assemble and whilest Jesus was detained in expectation of it the servants mocked him and did all actions of affront and ignoble despite to his Sacred head and because the question was whether he were a Prophet they covered his eyes and smote him in derision calling on him to prophesie who smote him But in the morning when the high Priests and rulers of the people were assembled they sought false witness against Jesus but found none to purpose they railed boldly and could prove nothing they accused vehemently and the allegations were of such things as were no crimes and the greatest article which the united diligence of all their malice could pretend was that he said he would destroy the Temple and in three days build it up again But Jesus neither answered this nor any other of their vainer allegations for the witnesses destroyed each others testimony by their disagreeing till at last Caiaphas who to verifie his Prophecy and to satisfie his Ambition and to bait his Envy was furiously determined Jesus should die adjures him by the living God to say whether he were the CHRIST the Son of the living God Jesus knew his design to be an inquisition of death not of Piety or curiosity yet because his hour was now come openly affirmed it without any expedient to elude the high Priest's malice or to decline the question 25. When Caiaphas heard the saying he accused Jesus of Blasphemy and pretended an apprehension so tragical that he over-acted his wonder and feigned ãâã for he rent his garments which was the interjection of the Countrey and custom of the Nation but forbidden to the High Priest and called presently to sentence and as it was agreed before-hand they all condemned him as guilty of death and as far as they had power inflicted it for they beat him with their fists smote him with the palms of their hands spit upon him and abused him beyond the licence of enraged ãâã When Judas heard that they had passed the final and decretory sentence of death upon his Lord he who thought not it would have gone so far repented him to have been an instrument of so damnable a machination and came and brought the silver which they gave him for hire threw it in amongst them and said I have sinned in betraying the innocent ãâã But they incurious of those Hell-torments Judas felt within him because their own fires burnt not yet dismissed him and upon consultation bought with the money a field to bury strangers in And Judas went and hanged himself and the Judgment was made more notorious and eminent by an unusual accident at such deaths for he so swelled that he burst and his bowels gushed out But the Greek Scholiast and some others report out of Papias S. John's Scholar that Judas fell from the Fig-tree on which he hanged before he was quite dead and survived his attempt some while being so sad a spectacle of deformity and pain and a prodigious tumour that his plague was deplorable and highly miserable till at last he burst in the very substance of his Trunk as being extended beyond the possibilities and capacities of nature 26. But the High Priests had given Jesus over to the secular power and carried him to Pilate to be put to death by his sentence and military power but coming thither they would not enter into the Judgment-hall because of the Feast but Pilate met them and willing to decline the business bid them judge him according to their own Law They replied it was not lawful for them to put any man to death meaning during the seven days of unlevened bread as appears in the instance of Herod who detained Peter in prison intending after Easter to bring him out to the people And their malice was restless till the Sentence they had passed were put in execution Others thinking that all the right of inflicting capital punishments was taken from the Nation by the Romans and Josephus writes that when Ananias their High Priest had by a Council of the Jews condemned S. James the Brother of our Lord and put him to death without the consent of the Roman President he was deprived of his Priesthood But because Pilate who either by common right or at that time was the Judge of capital inflictions was averse from intermedling in the condemnation of an innocent person they attempted him with excellent craft for knowing that Pilate was a great servant of the Roman Greatness and a hater of the Sect of the Galileans the High Priest accused Jesus that he was of that Sect that he denied paying tribute to ãâã that he called himself King Concerning which when Pilate interrogated Jesus he answered that his Kingdom was not of this world and Pilate thinking he had nothing to do with the other came forth again and gave testimony that he found nothing worthy of death in Jesus But hearing that he was a Galilean and of Herod's jurisdiction Pilate sent him to Herod who was at Jerusalem at the Feast And Herod was glad because he had heard much of him and since his return from Rome had desired to see him but could not by reason of his own avocations and the ambulatory life of Christ and now he hoped to see a Miracle done by him of whom he had heard so many But the event of this was that Jesus did there no Miracle Herod's souldiers set him at nought and mocked him And that day Herod was reconciled to Pilate And Jesus was sent back arrayed in a white and splendid garment which though possibly it might be intended for derision yet was a symbol of Innocence condemned persons usually being arrayed in blacks And when Pilate had again examined him Jesus meek as a lamb and as a sheep before the shearers opened not his mouth insomuch that Pilate wondred perceiving the greatest Innocence of the man by not offering to excuse or lessen any thing for though Pilate had power to release him or crucifie him yet his contempt of death was in just proportion to his Innocence which also Pilate concealed not but published Jesus's Innocence by Herod's and his own sentence to the great regret of the Rulers who like ravening wolves thirsted for a draught of bloud and to devour the morning prey 27. But Pilate hoped to prevail upon the Rulers by making it a favour from them to Jesus and an indulgence from him to the Nation to set him free for oftentimes even Malice it self is driven out by the Devil of Self-love and so we may be acknowledged the authors of a safety we are content to rescue a man even from our own selves Pilate therefore offered that according to the custom of the Nation Jesus should be released for the
satisfied with her own meditations that now that great Mystery determined by Divine Predestination before the beginning of all Ages was fulfilled in her Son and the Passion that must needs be was accomplished she therefore first bathes his cold body with her warm tears and makes clean the surface of the wounds and delivering a winding napkin to Joseph of Arimathaea gave to him in charge to enwrap the Body and embalm it to compose it to the grave and do it all the rites of Funeral having first exhorted him to a publick confession of what he was privately till now and he obeyed the counsel of so excellent a person and ventured upon the displeasure of the Jewish Rulers and went confidently to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus And Pilate gave him the power of it 39. Joseph therefore takes the body binds his face with a napkin washes the body anoints it with ointment enwraps it in a composition of myrrh and aloes and puts it into a new tomb which he for himself had hewen out of a rock it not being lawful among the Jews to interr a condemned person in the common coemeteries for all these circumstances were in the Jews manner of burying But when the Sun was set the chief Priests and Pharisees went to Pilate telling him that Jesus whilest he was living foretold ãâã own resurrection upon the third day and lest his Disciples should come and steal the body and say he was risen from the dead desired that the sepulchre might be secured against the danger of any such imposture Pilate gave them leave to do their pleasure even to the satisfaction of their smallest scruples They therefore sealed the grave rolled a great stone at the mouth of it and as an ancient Tradition says bound it about with labels of iron and set a watch of souldiers as if they had intended to have made it surer than the decrees of Fate or the never-failing laws of Nature Ad SECT XV. Considerations of some preparatory Accidents before the entrance of JESVS into his Passion Christ riding in triumph Matth. 21. 7. And they brought y e Ass. put on their clothes set him thereon and a very great multitude spread their garments others cut down branches from y e trees strawed them in y e way And the multitude y t went before and y t followed after cried Hosannah etc. Mary pouring ointment on Christ's head Mark 14. 3. As he sat at meat in the house of Simon y e leper there came a woman having an Alabaster-box of ointment very pretious poured it on his head And Jesus said let hir alone she is come aforehand to anoint my body to y e burying 1. HE that hath observed the Story of the Life of Jesus cannot but see it all the way to be strewed with thorns and sharp-pointed stones and although by the kisses of his feet they became precious and salutary yet they procured to him sorrow and disease it was meat and drink to him to do his Father's will but it was bread of affliction and rivers of tears to drink and for these he thirsted like the earth after the cool stream For so great was his Perfection so exact the conformity of his Will so absolute the subordination of his inferiour Faculties to the infinite love of God which sate Regent in the Court of his Will and Understanding that in this election of accidents he never considered the taste but the goodness never distinguished sweet from bitter but Duty and Piety always prepared his table And therefore now knowing that his time determined by the Father was nigh he hastened up to Jerusalem he went before his Disciples saith S. Mark and they followed him trembling and amazed and yet before that even then when his brethren observed he had a design of publication of himself he suffered them to go before him and went up as it were in secret For so we are invited to Martyrdom and suffering in a Christian cause by so great an example the Holy Jesus is gone before us and it were a holy contention to strive whose zeal were forwardest in the designs of Humiliation and Self-denial but it were also well if in doing our selves secular advantage and promoting our worldly interest we should follow him who was ever more distant from receiving honours than from receiving a painful death Those affections which dwell in sadness and are married to grief and lie at the foot of the Cross and trace the sad steps of Jesus have the wisdom of recollection the tempers of sobriety and are the best imitations of Jesus and securities against the levity of a dispersed and a vain spirit This was intimated by many of the Disciples of Jesus in the days of the Spirit and when they had tasted of the good word of God and the powers of the world to come for then we find many ambitious of Martyrdom and that have laid stratagems and designs by unusual deaths to get a Crown The Soul of S. Laurence was so scorched with ardent desires of dying for his Lord that he accounted the coals of his Gridiron but as a Julip or the aspersion of cold water to refresh his Soul they were chill as the Alpine snows in respect of the heats of his diviner flames And if these lesser Stars shine so brightly and burn so warmly what heat of love may we suppose to have been in the Sun of Righteousness If they went fast toward the Crown of Martyrdom yet we know that the Holy Jesus went before them all no wonder that he cometh forth as a Eridegroom from his chamber and rejoyceth as a giant to run his course 2. When the Disciples had overtaken Jesus he begins to them a sad Homily upon the old Text of Suffering which he had well nigh for a year together preached upon but because it was an unpleasing Lesson so contradictory to those interests upon the hopes of which they had entertained themselves and spent all their desires they could by no means understand it for an understanding prepossessed with a fancy or an unhandsome principle construes all other notions to the sence of the first and whatsoever contradicts it we think it an objection and that we are bound to answer it But now that it concerned Christ to speak so plainly that his Disciples by what was to happen within five or six days might not be scandalized or believe it happened to Jesus without his knowledge and voluntary entertainment he tells them of his Sufferings to be accomplished in this journey to Jerusalem And here the Disciples shewed themselves to be but men full of passion and indiscreet affection and the bold Galilean S. Peter took the boldness to dehort his Master from so great an infelicity and met with a reprehension so great that neither the Scribes nor the Pharisees nor Herod himself ever met with its parallel Jesus called him Satan meaning that no greater contradiction can be offered to the
the griefs of a Christian whether they be instances of Repentance or parts of Persecution or exercises of Patience end in joy and endless comfort Thus Jesus like a Rainbow half made of the glories of light and half of the moisture of a cloud half triumph and half sorrow entred into that Town where he had done much good to others and to himself received nothing but affronts yet his tenderness encreased upon him and that very journey which was Christ's last solemn visit for their recovery he doubled all the instruments of his Mercy and their Conversion He rode in triumph the ãâã sang Hosannah to him he cured many diseased persons he wept for them and pitied them and sighed out the intimations of a Prayer and did penance for their ingratitude and stayed all day there looking about him towards evening and no man would invite him home but he was forced to go to Bethany where he was sure of an hospitable entertainment I think no Christian that reads this but will be full of indignation at the whole City who for malice or for fear would not or durst not receive their Saviour into their houses and yet we do worse for now that he is become our Lord with mightier demonstrations of his eternal power we suffer him to look round about upon us for months and years together and possibly never entertain him till our house is ready to rush upon our heads and we are going to unusual and stranger habitations And yet in the midst of a populous and mutinous City this great King had some good subjects persons that threw away their own garments and laid them at the feet of our Lord that being devested of their own they might be re-invested with a robe of his Righteousness wearing that till it were changed into a stole of glory the very ceremony of their reception of the Lord became symbolical to them and expressive of all our duties 7. But I consider that the Blessed Jesus had affections not less than infinite towards all mankind and he who wept upon Jerusalem who had done so great despight to him and within five days were to fill up the measure of their iniquities and do an act which all Ages of the world could never repeat in the same instance did also in the number of his tears reckon our sins as sad considerations and incentives of his sorrow And it would well become us to consider what great evil we do when our actions are such as for which our Blessed Lord did weep He who was seated in the bosom of Felicity yet he moistened his ãâã Lawrels upon the day of his Triumph with tears of love and bitter allay His day of Triumph was a day of Sorrow and if we would weep for our sins that instance of sorrow would be a day of triumph and ãâã 8. From hence the Holy Jesus went to Pethany where he had another manner of reception than at the Holy City There he supped for his goodly day of Triumph had been with him a fasting-day And Mary Magdalen who had spent one box of Nard pistick upon our Lord's feet as a sacrifice of Eucharist for her Conversion now bestowed another in thankfulness for the restitution of her Brother Lazarus to life and consigned her Lord unto his Burial And here she met with an evil interpreter ãâã an Apostle one of the Lord 's own Family pretended it had been a better Religion to have given it to the poor but it was Malice and the spirit either of Envy or Avarice in him that passed that sentence for he that sees a pious action well done and seeks to undervalue it by telling how it might have been better reproves nothing but his own spirit For a man may do very well and God would accept it though to say he might have done better is to say only that action was not the most perfect and absolute in its kind but to be angry at a religious person and without any other pretence but that he might have done better is spiritual Envy for a pious person would have nourished up that infant action by love and praise till it had grown to the most perfect and intelligent Piety But the event of that man gave the interpretation of his present purpose and at the best it could be no other than a rash judgment of the action and intention of a religious thankful and holy person But she found her Lord who was her ãâã in this become her Patron and her Advocate And hereafter when we shall find the Devil the great Accuser of God's Saints object against the Piety and Religion of holy persons a cup of cold water shall be accepted unto reward and a good intention heightned to the value of an exteriour expression and a piece of gum to the equality of a ãâã and an action done with great zeal and an intense love be acquitted from all its adherent imperfections Christ receiving them into himself and being like the Altar of incense hallowing the very smoak and raising it into a flame and entertaining it into the embraces of the firmament and the bosom of Heaven Christ himself who is the Judge of our actions is also the entertainer and object of our Charity and Duty and the Advocate of our persons 9. Judas who declaimed against the woman made tacite reflexions upon his Lord for suffering it and indeed every obloquy against any of Christ's servants is looked on as an arrow shot into the heart of Christ himself And now a Persecution being begun against the Lord within his own Family another was raised against him from without For the chief Priests took crafty counsel against Jesus and called a Consistory to contrive how they might destroy him and here was the greatest representment of the goodness of God and the ingratitude of man that could be practised or understood How often had Jesus poured forth tears for them how many sleepless nights had he awaked to do them advantage how many days had he spent in Homilies and admirable visitations of Mercy and Charity in casting out Devils in curing their sick in correcting their delinquencies in reducing them to the ways of security and peace and that we may use the greatest expression in the world that is his own in gathering them as a Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings to give them strength and warmth and life and ghostly nourishment And the chief Priests together with their faction use all arts and watch all opportunities to get Christ not that they might possess him but to destroy him little considering that they extinguish their own eyes and destroy that spring of life which was intended to them for a blissful immortality 10. And here it was that the Devil shewed his promptness to furnish every evil-intended person with apt instruments to act the very worst of his intentions the Devil knew their purposes and the aptness and proclivity of Judas and by bringing these together he
praise of men from unhandsome actions from flatteries and unworthy discourses nor entertain the praise with delight though it proceed from better principles but fear and tremble lest we deserve punishment or lose a reward which thou hast deposited for all them that seek thy glory and despise their own that they may imitate the example of their Lord. Thou O Lord didst triumph over Sin and Death subdue also my proud Understanding and my prouder Affections and bring me under thy yoak that I may do thy work and obey my Superiours and be a servant of all my brethren in their necessities and esteem my self inferiour to all men by a deep sense of my own unworthiness and in all things may obey thy Laws and conform to thy precedents and enter into thine inheritance O Holy and Eternal Jesus Amen DISCOURSE XIX Of the Institution and Reception of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper 1. AS the Sun among the Stars and Man among the sublunary creatures is the most eminent and noble the Prince of the inferiours and their measure or their guide so is this action among all the instances of Religion it is the most perfect and consummate it is an union of Mysteries and a consolidation of Duties it joyns God and Man and confederates all the Societies of men in mutual complexions and the entertainments of an excellent Charity it actually performs all that could be necessary for Man and it presents to Man as great a thing as God could give for it is impossible any thing should be greater than himself And when God gave his Son to the world it could not be but he should give us all things else and therefore this Blessed Sacrament is a consigning us to all Felicities because after a mysterious and ineffable manner we receive him who is Light and Life the fountain of Grace and the sanctifier of our secular comforts and the author of Holiness and Glory But as it was at first so it hath been ever since Christ came into the world and the world knew him not so Christ hath remained in the world by the communications of this Sacrament and yet he is not rightly understood and less truly valued But Christ may say to us as once to the woman of Samaria Woman if thou didst know the gift of God and who it is that speaks to thee thou wouldst ask him So if we were so wise or so fortunate to know the excellency of this Gift of the Lord it would fill us full of wonder and adoration joy and thankfulness great hopes and actual felicities making us heirs of glory by the great additions and present increment of Grace 2. After supper Jesus took bread and blessed it and made it to be a heavenly gift He gave them bread and told them it was his body that Body which was broken for the redemption of Man for the Salvation of the world S. Paul calls it bread even after Consecration The Bread which we break is it not the communication of the Body of Christ So that by divine Faith we are taught to express our belief of this Mystery in these words The Bread when it is consecrated and made sacramental is the Body of our Lord and the fraction and distribution of it is the communication of that Body which died for us upon the Cross. He that doubts of either of the parts of this Proposition must either think Christ was not able to verifie his word and to make bread by his benediction to become to us to be his body or that S. Paul did not well interpret and understand this Mystery when he called it bread Christ reconciles them both calling himself the bread of life and if we be offended at it because it is alive and therefore less apt to become food we are invited to it because it is bread and if the Sacrament to others seem less mysterious because it is bread we are heightned in our Faith and reverence because it is life The Bread of the Sacrament is the life of our Soul and the Body of our Lord is now conveyed to us by being the Bread of the Sacrament And if we consider how easie it is to Faith and how impossible it seems to Curiosity we shall be taught confidence and modesty a resigning our understanding to the voice of Christ and his Apostles and yet expressing our own articles as Christ did in indefinite significations And possibly it may not well consist with our Duty to be inquisitive into the secrets of the Kingdom which we see by plain event hath divided the Church almost as much as the Sacrament hath united it and which can only serve the purposes of the School and of evil men to make Questions for that and Factions for these but promote not the ends of a holy life Obedience or Charity 3. Some so observe the literal sence of the words that they understand them also in a natural Some so alter them by metaphors and preternatural significations that they will not understand them at all in a proper We see it we feel it we taste it and we smell it to be Bread and by Philosophy we are led into a belief of that substance whose accidents these are as we are to believe that to be fire which burns and flames and shines but Christ also affirmed concerning it This is my Body and if Faith can create an assent as strong as its object is infallible or can be as certain in its conclusion as sense is certain in its apprehensions we must at no hand doubt but that it is Christ's Body Let the sence of that be what it will so that we believe those words and whatsoever that sence is which Christ intended that we no more doubt in our Faith than we do in our Sense then our Faith is not reproveable It is hard to do so much violence to our Sense as not to think it Bread but it is more unsafe to do so much violence to our Faith as not to believe it to be Christ's Body But it would be considered that no interest of Religion no saying of Christ no reverence of Opinion no sacredness of the Mystery is disavowed if we believe both what we hear and what we see He that believes it to be Bread and yet verily to be Christ's Body is only tied also by implication to believe God's Omnipotence that he who affirmed it can also verifie it And they that are forward to believe the change of substance can intend no more but that it be believed verily to be the Body of our Lord. And if they think it impossible to reconcile its being Bread with the verity of being Christ's Body let them remember that themselves are put to more difficulties and to admit of more Miracles and to contradict more Sciences and to refuse the testimony of Sense in affirming the special manner of Transubstantiation And therefore it were safer to admit the words in their first sence in
multitude of Law-suits the personal hatreds and the ãâã want of Charity which hath made the world miserable and wicked may in a great degree be attributed to the neglect of this great symbol and instrument of Charity The Chalice of the Sacrament is called by S. Paul The cup of blessing and if children need every day to beg blessing of their Parents if we also thirst not after this Cup of blessing blessing may be far from us It is called The communication of the bloud of Christ and it is not imaginable that man should love Heaven or felicity or his Lord that desires not perpetually to bathe in that salutary stream the Bloud of the Holy Jesus the immaculate Lamb of God 21. But I find that the religious fears of men are pretended a colour to excuse this Irreligion Men are wicked and not prepared and busie and full of cares and affairs of the world and cannot come with due Preparation and therefore better not come at all Nay men are not ashamed to say they are at ãâã with certain persons and therefore cannot come Concerning those persons who are unprepared because they are in a state of sin or uncharitableness it is true they must not come but this is so far from excusing their not coming that they increase their sin and secure misery to themselves because they do not lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset them that they may come to the Marriage-supper It is as if we should excuse our selves from the duties of Charity by saying we are uncharitable from giving Alms by saying we are covetous from Chastity by saying we are lascivious To such men it is just that they graze with the Goats because they refuse to wash their hands that they may come to the Supper of the Lamb. 2. Concerning those that pretend cares and incumbrances of the world If their affairs make sin and impure affections to stick upon them they are in the first consideration but if their office be necessary just or charitable they imitate Martha and chuse the less perfect part when they neglect the offices of Religion for duties oeconomical 3. But the other sort have more pretence and fairer vertue in their outside They suppose like the Persian Princes the seldomer such mysterious rites are seen the more reverence we shall have and they the more majesty and they are fearful lest the frequent attrectation of them should make us less to value the great earnests of our Redemption and Immortality It is a pious consideration but not becoming them For it cannot be that the Sacrament be under-valued by frequent reception without the great unworthiness of the persons so turning God's grace into lightness and loathing Manna nay it cannot be without an unworthy communication for he that receives worthily increases in the love of God and Religion and the fires of the Altar are apt to kindle our sparks into a slame and when Christ our Lord enters into us and we grow weary of him or less fond of his frequent entrance and perpetual cohabitation it is an infallible sign we have let his enemy in or are preparing for it For this is the difference between secular and spiritual objects Nothing in this world hath any pleasure in it long beyond the hope of it for the possession and enjoyment is found so empty that we grow weary of it but whatsoever is spiritual and in order to God is less before we have it but in the fruition it swells our desires and enlarges the appetite and makes us more receptive and forward in the entertainment and therefore those acts of Religion that set us forward in time and backward in affection do declare that we have not well done our duty but have communicated unworthily So that the mending of our fault will answer the objection Communicate with more devotion and repent with greater contrition and walk with more caution and pray more earnestly and meditate diligently and receive with reverence and godly fear and we shall find our affections increase together with the spiritual emolument ever remembring that pious and wise advice of S. Ambrose Receive every day that which may profit thee every day But he that is not disposed to receive it every day is not fit to receive it every year 22. And if after all diligence it be still feared that a man is not well prepared I must say that it is a scruple that is a trouble beyond a doubt and without reason next to Superstition and the dreams of Religion and it is nourished by imagining that no duty is accepted if it be less than perfection and that God is busied in Heaven not only to destroy the wicked and to dash in pieces vessels of dishonour but to break a bruised reed in pieces and to cast the smoaking flax into the flames of hell In opposition to which we must know that nothing makes us unprepared but an evil Conscience a state of sin or a deadly act but the lesser infirmities of our life against which we daily strive and for which we never have any kindness or affections are not spots in these Feasts of Charity but instruments of Humility and stronger invitations to come to those Rites which are ordained for ãâã against infirmities of the Soul and for the growth of the spirit in the strengths of God For those other acts of Preparation which precede and accompany the duty the better and more religiously they are done they are indeed of more advantage and honourary to the Sacrament yet he that comes in the state of Grace though he takes the opportunity upon a sudden offer sins not and in such indefinite duties whose degrees are not described it is good counsel to do our best but it is ill to make them instruments of scruple as if it were essentially necessary to do that in the greatest height which is only intended for advantage and the fairer accommodation of the mystery But these very acts if they be esteemed necessary preparations to the Sacrament are the greatest arguments in the world that it is best to communicate often because the doing of that which must suppose the exercise of so many Graces must needs promote the interest of Religion and dispose strongly to habitual Graces by our frequent and solemn repetition of the acts It is necessary that every Communicant be first examined concerning the state of his Soul by himself or his Superiour and that very Scrutiny is in admirable order towards the reformation of such irregularities which time and temptation negligence and incuriousness infirmity or malice have brought into the secret regions of our Will and Understanding Now although this Examination be therefore enjoyned that no man should approach to the holy Table in the state of ruine and reprobation and that therefore it is an act not of direct Preparation but an enquiry whether we be prepared or no yet this very Examination will find so many
think the infelicities of our nature and the calamities of our temporal condition to become criminal so long as they make us not omit a duty or dispose us to the election of a crime or force us to swallow a temptation nor yet to exceed the value of their impulsive cause He that grieves for the loss of friends and yet had rather lose all the friends he hath than lose the love of God hath the sorrow of our Lord for his precedent And he that fears death and trembles at its approximation and yet had rather die again than sin once hath not sinned in his fear Christ hath hallowed it and the necessitous condition of his nature is his excuse But it were highly to be wished that in the midst of our caresses and levities of society in our festivities and triumphal merriments when we laugh at folly and rejoyce in sin we would remember that for those very merriments our Blessed Lord felt a bitter sorrow and not one vain and sinful laughter but cost the Holy Jesus a sharp pang and throe of Passion 4. Now that the Holy Jesus began to taste the bitter Cup he betook him to his great Antidote which himself the great Physician of our Souls prescribed to all the world to cure their calamities and to make them pass from miseries into vertue that so they may arrive at glory he prays to his heavenly Father he kneels down and not only so but falls flat upon the earth and would in humility and fervent adoration have descended low as the centre he prays with an intension great as his sorrow and yet with a dereliction so great and a conformity to the Divine will so ready as if it had been the most indifferent thing in the world for him to be delivered to death or from it for though his nature did decline death as that which hath a natural horrour and contradiction to the present interest of its preservation yet when he looked upon it as his heavenly Father had put it into the order of Redemption of the World it was that Baptism which he was straitned till he had accomplished And now there is not in the world any condition of prayer which is essential to the duty or any circumstances of advantage to its performance but were concentred in this one instance Humility of spirit lowliness of deportment importunity of desire a fervent spirit a lawful matter resignation to the will of God great love the love of a Son to his Father which appellative was the form of his address perseverance he went thrice and prayed the same prayer It was not long and it was so retired as to have the advantages of a sufficient solitude and opportune recollection for he was withdrawn from the most of his Disciples and yet not so alone as to lose the benefit of communion for Peter and the two Boanerges were near him Christ in this prayer which was the most fervent that he ever made on earth intending to transmit to all the world a precedent of Devotion to be transcribed and imitated that we should cast all our cares and empty them in the bosom of God being content to receive such a portion of our trouble back again which he assigns us for our spiritual emolument 5. The Holy Jesus having in a few words poured out torrents of innocent desires was pleased still to interrupt his Prayer that he might visit his charge that little flock which was presently after to be scattered he was careful of them in the midst of his Agonies they in his sufferings were fast asleep He awakens them gives them command to watch and pray that is to be vigilant in the custody of their senses and obervant of all accidents and to pray that they may be strengthened against all incursions of enemies and temptations and then returns to prayer and so a third time his Devotion still encreasing with his sorrow And when his Prayer was full and his sorrow come to a great measure after the third God sent his Angel to comfort him and by that act of grace then only expressed hath taught us to continue our Devotions so long as our needs last It may be God will not send a Comsorter till the third time that is after a long expectation and a patient ãâã and a lasting hope in the interim God supports us with a secret hand and in his own time will refresh the spirit with the visitations of his Angels with the emissions of comfort from the Spirit the Comforter And know this also that the holy Angel and the Lord of all the Angels stands by every holy person when he prays and although he draws before his glories the curtain of a cloud yet in every instant he takes care we shall not perish and in a just season dissolves the cloud and makes it to distill in holy dew and drops sweet as Manna pleasant as Nard and wholsome as the breath of Heaven And such was the consolation which the Holy Jesus received by the ministery of the Angel representing to Christ the Lord of the Angels how necessary it was that he should die for the glory of God that in his Passion his Justice Wisdom Goodness Power and Mercy should shine that unless he died all the World should perish but his bloud should obtain their pardon and that it should open the gates of Heaven repair the ruine of Angels establish a holy Church be ãâã of innumerable adoptive children to his Father whom himself should make heirs of glory and that his Passion should soon pass away his Father hearing and granting his Prayer that the Cup should pass speedily though indeed it should pass through him that it should be attended and followed with a glorious Resurrection with eternal rest and glory of his Humanity with the exaltation of his Name with a supreme dominion over all the world and that his Father should make him King of Kings and Prince of the Catholick Church These or whatsoever other comforts the Angel ministred were such considerations which the Holy Jesus knew and the Angel knew not but by communication from that God to whose assumed Humanity the Angel spake yet he was pleased to receive comfort from his servant just as God receives glory from his creatures and as he rejoyces in his own works even because he is good and gracious and is pleased so to do and because himself had caused a voluntary sadness to be interposed between the habitual knowledge and the actual consideration of these discourses and we feel a pleasure when a friendly hand lays upon our wound the plaister which our selves have made and applies such instruments and considerations of comfort which we have in notion and an ineffective habit but cannot reduce them to act because no man is so apt to be his own comforter which God hath therefore permitted that our needs should be the occasion of a mutual Charity 6. It was a great season for
the Angel's coming because it was a great necessity which was incumbent upon our Lord for his sadness and his Agony was so great mingled and compounded of sorrow and zeal fear and desire innocent nature and perfect grace that he sweat drops as great as if the bloud had started through little undiscerned fontinels and outrun the streams and rivers of his Cross. Euthymius and Theophylact say that the Evangelists use this as a tragical expression of the greatest Agony and an unusual sweat it being usual to call the tears of the greatest sorrow tears of ãâã But from the beginning of the Church it hath been more generally apprehended literally and that some bloud mingled with the ãâã substance issued from his veins in so great abundance that they moistened the ground and bedecked his garment which stood like a new firmament studded with stars portending an approaching storm Now he came from Bozrah with his garments red and bloudy And this Agony verified concerning the Holy Jesus those words of David I am poured out like water my bones are dispersed my heart in the midst of my body is like melting wax saith Justin Martyr Venerable Bede saith that the descending of these drops of bloud upon the earth besides the general purpose had also a particular relation to the present infirmities of the Apostles that our Blessed Lord obtained of his Father by the merits of those holy drops mercies and special support for them and that effusion redeemed them from the present participation of death And S. Austin meditates that the Body of our Lord all overspread with drops of bloudy sweat did prefigure the future state of Martyrs and that his Body mystical should be clad in a red garment variegated with the symbols of labour and passion sweat and bloud by which himself was pleased to purifie his Church and present her to God holy and spotless What collateral designs and tacite significations might be designed by this mysterious sweat I know not certainly it was a sad beginning of a most dolorous Passion and such griefs which have so violent permanent and sudden effects upon the body which is not of a nature symbolical to interiour and immaterial causes are proclaimed by such marks to be high and violent We have read of some persons that the grief and fear of one night hath put a cover of snow upon their heads as if the labours of thirty years had been extracted and the quintessence drank off in the passion of that night but if Nature had been capable of a greater or more prodigious impress of passion than a bloudy sweat it must needs have happened in this Agony of the Holy Jesus in which he undertook a grief great enough to make up the imperfect Contrition of all the Saints and to satisfie for the impenitencies of all the world 7. By this time the Traitor Judas was arrived at Gethsemani and being in the vicinage of the Garden Jesus rises from his prayers and first calls his Disciples from their sleep and by an Irony seems to give them leave to sleep on but reproves their drousiness when danger is so near and bids them henceforth take their rest meaning if they could for danger which now was indeed come to the Garden-doors But the Holy Jesus that it might appear he undertook the Passion with choice and a free election not only refused to flie but called his Apostles to rise that they might meet his Murtherers who came to him with swords and staves as if they were to surprise a Prince of armed Out-laws whom without force they could not reduce So also might Butchers do well to go armed when they are pleased to be afraid of Lambs by calling them Lions Judas only discovered his Master's retirements and betrayed him to the opportunities of an armed band for he could not accuse his Master of any word or private action that might render him obnoxious to suspicion or the Law For such are the rewards of innocence and prudence that the one secures against sin the other against suspicion and appearances 8. The Holy Jesus had accustomed to receive every of his Disciples after absence with entertainment of a Kiss which was the endearment of persons and the expression of the oriental civility and Judas was confident that his Lord would not reject him whose feet he had washed at the time when he foretold this event and therefore had agreed to signifie him by this sign and did so beginning war with a Kiss and breaking the peace of his Lord by the symbol of kindness which because Jesus entertained with much evenness and charitable expressions calling him Friend he gave evidence that if he retained civilities to his greatest enemies in the very acts of hostility he hath banquets and crowns and scepters for his friends that adore him with the kisses of Charity and love him with the sincerity of an affectionate spirit But our Blessed Lord besides his essential sweetness and serenity of spirit understood well how great benefits himself and all the World were to receive by occasion of that act of Judas and our greatest enemy does by accident to holy persons the offices of their dearest friends telling us our faults without a cloak to cover their deformities but out of malice laying open the circumstances of aggravation doing us affronts from whence we have an instrument of our Patience and restraining us from scandalous crimes lest we become a scorn and reproof to them that ãâã us And it is none of God's least mercies that he permits enmities amongst men that animosities and peevishness may reprove more sharply and correct with more severity and simplicity than the gentle hand of friends who are apter to bind our wounds up than to discover them and make them smart but they are to us an excellent probation how friends may best do the offices of friends if they would take the plainness of enemies in accusing and still mingle it with the tenderness and good affections of friends But our Blessed Lord called Judas Friend as being the instrument of bringing him to glory and all the World to pardon if they would 9. Jesus himself begins the enquiry and leads them into their errand and tells them he was JESUS of Nazareth whom they sought But this also which was an answer so gentle had in it a strength greater than the Eastern wind or the voice of thunder for God was in that still voice and it struck them down to the ground And yet they and so do we still persist to persecute our Lord and to provoke the eternal God who can with the breath of his mouth with a word or a sign or a thought reduce us into nothing or into a worse condition even an eternal duration of torments and cohabitation with a never-ending misery And if we cannot bear a soft answer of the merciful God how shall we dare to provoke the wrath of the Almighty Judge But in
this instance there was a rare mixture of effects as there was in Christ of Natures the voice of a Man and the power of God For it is observed by the Doctors of the Primitive Ages that from the Nativity of our Lord to the day of his Death the Divinity and Humanity did so communicate in effects that no great action passed but it was like the Sun shining through a cloud or a beauty with a thin veil drawn over it they gave illustration and testimony to each other The Holy Jesus was born a tender and a crying Infant but is adored by the Magi as a King by the Angels as their GOD. He is circumcised as a Man but a name is given him to signifie him to be the SAVIOUR of the World He flies into Egypt like a distressed Child under the conduct of his helpless Parents but as soon as he enters the Country the Idols fall down and confess his true Divinity He is presented in the Temple as the Son of man but by Simeon and Anna he is celebrated with divine praises for the MESSIAS the SON OF GOD. He is baptized in Jordan as a Sinner but the Holy Ghost descending upon him proclaimed him to be the well-beloved of God He is hungry in the Desart as a Man but sustained his body without meat and drink for forty days together by the power of his Divinity There he is tempted of Satan as a weak Man and the Angels of light minister unto him as their supreme Lord. And now a little before his death when he was to take upon him all the affronts miseries and exinanitions of the most miserable he receives testimonies from above which are most wonderful For he was tranfigured upon Mount Tabor entred triumphantly into Jerusalem had the acclamations of the people when he was dying he darkned the Sun when he was dead he opened the sepulchres when he was fast nailed to the Cross he made the earth to tremble now when he suffers himself to be apprehended by a guard of Souldiers he strikes them all to the ground only by replying to their answer that the words of the Prophet might be verified Therefore my people shall know my Name therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak behold it is I. 10. The Souldiers and servants of the Jews having recovered from their fall and risen by the permission of Jesus still persisted in their enquiry after him who was present ready and desirous to be sacrificed He therefore permitted himself to be taken but not his Disciples for he it was that set them their bounds and he secured his Apostles to be witnesses of his suffering and his glories and this work was the Redemption of the world in which no man could have an active share he alone was to tread the wine-press and time enough they should be called to a fellowship of sufferings But Jesus went to them and they bound him with cords and so began our liberty and redemption from slavery and sin and cursings and death But he was bound faster by bands of his own his Father's Will and Mercy Pity of the world Prophecies and Mysteries and Love held him fast and these cords were as strong as death and the cords which the Souldiers malice put upon his holy hands were but symbols and figures his own compassion and affection were the morals But yet he undertook this short restraint and condition of a prisoner that all sorts of persecution and exteriour calamities might be hallowed by his susception and these pungent sorrows should like bees sting him and leave their sting behind that all the sweetness should remain for us Some melancholick Devotions have from uncertain stories added sad circumstances of the first violence done to our Lord That they bound him with three cords and that with so much violence that they caused bloud to start from his tender hands That they ãâã then also upon him with a violence and incivility like that which their Fathers had used towards Hur the brother of Aaron whom they choaked with impure spittings into his throat because he refused to consent to the making a golden Calf These particulars are not transmitted by certain Records Certain it is they wanted no malice and now no power for the Lord had given himself into their hands 11. S. Peter seeing his Master thus ill used asked Master shall we strike with the sword and before he had his answer cut off the ear of Malchus Two swords there were in Christ's family and S. Peter bore one either because he was to kill the Paschal Lamb or according to the custom of the Country to secure them against beasts of prey which in that region were frequent and dangerous in the night But now he used it in an unlawful war he had no competent authority it was against the Ministers of his lawful Prince and against our Prince we must not draw a sword for Christ himself himself having forbidden us as his kingdom is not of this world so neither were his defences secular he could have called for many legions of Angels for his guard if he had so pleased and we read that one Angel slew 185000 armed men in one night and therefore it was a vast power which was at the command of our Lord and he needs not such low auxiliaries as an army of Rebels or a navy of Pirates to ãâã his cause he first lays the foundation of our happiness in his sufferings and hath ever since supported Religion by patience and suffering and in poverty and all the circumstances and conjunctures of improbable causes Fighting for Religion is certain to destroy Charity but not certain to support Faith S. Peter therefore may use his keys but he is commanded to put up his sword and he did so and presently he and all his fellows fairly ran away and yet that course was much the more Christian for though it had in it much infirmity yet it had no malice In the mean time the Lord was pleased to touch the ear of Malchus and he cured it adding to the first instance of power in throwing them to the ground an act of miraculous mercy curing the wounds of an enemy made by a friend But neither did this pierce their callous and obdurate spirits but they led him in uncouth ways and through the brook Cedron in which it is said the ruder souldiers plunged him and passed upon him all the affronts and rudenesses which an insolent and cruel multitude could think of to signifie their contempt and their rage And such is the nature of evil men who when they are not softned by the instruments and arguments of Grace are much hardned by them such being the purpose of God that either Grace shall cure sin or accidentally increase it that it shall either pardon it or bring it to greater punishment for so I have seen healthful medicines abused by the incapacities of a
had been the excellency and exemplar Piety and prudence of the life of Jesus that if they pretended against him questions of their Law they were not capital in a Roman Court if they affirmed that he had moved the people to sedition and affected the Kingdom they saw that all the world would convince them of ãâã testimony At last after many attempts they accused him for a figurative speech a trope which they could not understand which if it had been spoken in a literal sence and had been acted too according to the letter had been so far from a fault that it would have been a prodigy of power and it had been easier to raise the Temple of Jerusalem than to raise the temple of his Body In the mean time the Lamb of God left his cause to defend it self under the protection of his heavenly Father not only because himself was determined to die but because if he had not those premisses could never have inferred it But this Silence of the Holy Jesus fulfilled a Prophecy it made his enemies full of murmur and amazement it made them to see that he despised the accusations as certain and apparent calumnies but that himself was fearless of the issue and in the sence of morality and mysteries taught us not to be too apt to excuse our selves when the semblance of a fault lies upon us unless by some other duty we are obliged to our defences since he who was most innocent was most silent and it was expedient that as the first Adam increased his sin by a vain apology the silence and sufferance of the second Adam should expiate and reconcile it 3. But Caiaphas had a reserve which he knew should do the business in that assembly he adjured him by God to tell him if he were the CHRIST The Holy Jesus being adjured by so sacred a Name would not now refuse an answer lest it might not consist with that honour which is due to it and which he always payed and that he might neither despise the authority of the High Priest nor upon so solemn occasion be wanting to that great truth which he came down to earth to perswade to the world And when three such circumstances concur it is enough to open our mouths though we let in death And so did our Lord confessed himself to be the CHRIST the Son of the living God And this the High Priest was pleased as the design was laid to call Blasphemy and there they voted him to die Then it was the High Priest rent his cloaths the veil of the Temple was rent when the Passion was finished the cloaths of the Priests at the beginning of it and as that signified the departing of the Synagogue and laying Religion open so did the rending the garments of Caiaphas prophetically signifie that the Priesthood should be rent from him and from the Nation And thus the personated and theatrical admiration at Jesus became the type of his own punishment and consigned the Nation to delition and usually God so dispenses his Judgments that when men personate the tragedies of others they really act their own 4. Whilest these things were acting concerning the Lord a sad accident happened to his servant Peter for being engaged in strange and evil company in the midst of danger surprised with a question without time to deliberate an answer to find subterfuges or to fortifie himself he denied his Lord shamefully with some boldness at first and this grew to a licencious confidence and then to impudence and denying with perjury that he knew not his Lord who yet was known to him as his own heart and was dearer than his eyes and for whom he professed but a little before he would die but did not do so till many years after But thus he became to us a sad example of humane infirmity and if the Prince of the Apostles fell so ãâã it is full of pity but not to be upbraided if we see the fall of lesser stars And yet that we may prevent so great a ruine we must not mingle with such company who will provoke or scorn us into sin and if we do yet we must stand upon our guard that a sudden motion do not surprise us or if we be arrested yet let us not enter farther into our sin like wild beasts intricating themselves by their impatience For there are some who being ashamed and impatient to have been engaged take sanctuary in boldness and a shameless abetting it so running into the darkness of Hell to hide their nakedness But he also by returning and rising instantly became to us a rare example of Penitence and his not lying long in the crime did facilitate this restitution For the spirit of God being extinguished by our works of darkness is like a taper which if as soon as the ãâã is blown out it be brought to the fire it sucks light and without trouble is re-enkindled but if it cools into death and stiffness it requires a longer stay and trouble The Holy Jesus in the midst of his own sufferings forgat not his servant's danger but was pleased to look upon him when the Cock crew and the Cock was the Preacher and the Look of Jesus was the Grace that made the Sermon effectual and because he was but newly fallen and his habitual love of his Master though interrupted yet had suffered no natural abatement he returned with the swiftness of an Eagle to the embraces and primitive affections of his Lord. 5. By this time suppose Sentence given Caiaphas prejudging all the Sanhedrim for he first declared Jesus to have spoken Blasphemy and the fact to be notorious and then asked their votes which whoso then should have denied must have contested the judgment of the High Priest who by the favour of the Romans was advanced Valerius Gratus who was President of Judaea having been his Patron and his Faction potent and his malice great and his heart set upon this business all which inconveniences none of them durst have suffered unless he had had the confidence greater than of an Apostle at that time But this Sentence was but like strong dispositions to an enraged fever he was only declared apt and worthy for death they had no power at that time to inflict it but yet they let loose all the fury of mad-men and insolency of wounded smarting souldiers and although from the time of his being in the house of Annas till the Council met they had used him with studied indignities yet now they renewed and doubled the unmercifulness and their injustice to so great a height that their injuries must needs have been greater than his Patience if his Patience had been less than infinite For thus Man's Redemption grows up as the load swells which the Holy Jesus bare for us for these were our portion and we having turned the flowers of Paradise into thistles should for ever have felt their infelicity had not Jesus paid the debt But
he bearing them upon his tender body with an even and excellent and dispassionate spirit offered up these beginnings of sufferings to his Father to obtain pardon even for them that injured him and for all the World 6. Judas now seeing that this matter went farther than he intended it repented of his fact For although evil persons are in the progress of their iniquity invited on by new arguments and supported by confidence and a careless spirit yet when iniquity is come to the height or so great a proportion that it is apt to produce Despair or an intolerable condition then the Devil suffers the Conscience to thaw and grow tender but it is the tenderness of a Bile it is soreness rather and a new disease and either it comes when the time of Repentance is past or leads to some act which shall make the pardon to be impossible and so it happened here For Judas either impatient of the shame or of the sting was thrust on to despair of pardon with a violence as hasty and as great as were his needs And Despair is very often used like the bolts and bars of Hell-gates it ãâã upon them that had entred into the suburbs of eternal death by an habitual sin and it secures them against all retreat And the Devil is forward enough to bring a man to Repentance provided it be too late and Esau wept bitterly and repented him and the five foolish Virgins lift up their voice aloud when the gates were shut and in Hell men shall repent to all eternity But I consider the very great folly and infelicity of Judas it was at midnight he received his money in the house of Annas betimes in that morning he repented his bargain he threw the money back again but his sin stuck close and it is thought to a ãâã eternity Such is the purchace of Treason and the reward of Covetousness it is cheap in its offers momentany in its possession unsatisfying in the fruition uncertain in the stay sudden in its ãâã horrid in the remembrance and a ruine a certain and miserable ruine is in the event When Judas came in that sad condition and told his miserable story to them that set him on work they ãâã him go away unpitied he had served their ends in betraying his Lord and those that hire such servants use to leave them in the disaster to shame and to sorrow and so did the Priests but took the money and ãâã to put it into the treasury because it was the price of bloud but they made no scruple to take it from the treasury to buy that bloud Any thing seems lawful that serves the ends of ambitious and bloudy persons and then they are scrupulous in their cases of Conscience when nothing of Interest does intervene for evil men make Religion the servant of Interest and sometimes weak men think that it is the ãâã of ãâã Religion and suspect that all of it is a design because many great Politicks make it so The end of the Tragedy was that Judas died with an ignoble death marked with the circumstances of a horrid Judgment and perished by the most infamous hands in the world that is by his own Which if it be confronted against the excellent spirit of S. Peter who did an act as contradictory to his honour and the grace of God as could be easily imagined yet taking sanctuary in the arms of his Lord he lodged in his heart for ever and became an example to all the world of the excellency of the Divine Mercy and the efficacy of a holy Hope and a hearty timely and an operative Repentance 7. ãâã now all things were ready for the purpose the High Priest and all his Council go along with the Holy Jesus to the house of Pilate hoping he would verifie their Sentence and bring it to execution that they might ãâã be rid of their fears and enjoy their sin and their reputation quietly S. ãâã ãâã that the High Priest caused the Holy Jesus to be led with a cord about his neck and in memory of that the Priests for many Ages ãâã a stole about theirs But the Jews did it according to the custom of the Nation to signifie he was condemned to death they desired Pilate that he would crucifie him they having ãâã him worthy And when Pilate enquired into the particulars they gave him a general and an indefinite answer If he were not guilty we would not have brought him ãâã thee they intended not to make Pilate Judge of the cause but ãâã of their cruelty But Pilate had not learned to be guided by an implicite faith of such persons which he knew to be malicious and violent and therefore still called for instances and arguments of their Accusation And that all the world might see with how great unworthiness they prosecuted the ãâã they chiefly there accused him of such crimes upon which themselves condemned him not and which they knew to be false but yet likely to move Pilate if he had been passionate or inconsiderate in his sentences He offered to make himself a King This ãâã happened at the entry of the Praetorium for the ãâã who made no conscience of killing the King of Heaven made a conscience of the external customs and ceremonies of their Law which had in them no interiour sanctity which were apt to separate them ãâã the Nations and remark them with characters of Religion and abstraction it would defile them to go to a Roman Forum ãâã a capital action was to be judged and yet the effusion of the best bloud in the world was not esteemed against their ãâã so violent and blind is the spirit of malice which turns humanity into ãâã wisdom into craft diligence into subornation and Religion into Superstition 8. Two other articles they alledged against him but the first concerned not Pilate and the second was involved in the third and therefore he chose to examine him upon this only of his being a King To which the Holy Jesus answered that it is true he was ãâã King indeed but not of this world his Throne is Heaven the Angels are his Courtiers and the ãâã Creation are his Subjects His Regiment is spiritual his ãâã are the Courts of Conscience and Church-tribunals and at Dooms-day the Clouds The Tribute which he demands are conformity to his Laws Faith ãâã and Charity no other Gabels but the duties of a holy Spirit and the expresses of a religious Worship and obedient Will and a consenting Understanding And in all this Pilate thought the interest of ãâã was not invaded For certain it is the Discipline of Jesus confirmed it much and supported it by the strongest pillars And here Pilate saw how impertinent and malicious their Accusation was And we who declaim against the unjust proceedings of the Jews against our dearest Lord should do well to take care that we in accusing any of our Brethren either with malicious purpose or with
with purple and crowned him with thorns and put a cane in his hand for a scepter and bowed their knees before him and saluted him with mockery with a Hail King of the Jews and ãâã beat him and spate upon him and then Pilate brought him forth and shewed this sad spectacle to the people hoping this might move them to compassion who never loved to see a man prosperous and are always troubled to see the same man in misery But the Earth which was cursed for Adam's sake and was sowed with thorns and thistles produced the full harvest of them and the Second Adam gathered them all and made garlands of them as ensigns of his Victory which he was now in pursuit of against Sin the Grave and Hell And we also may make our thorns which are in themselves ãâã and dolorous to be a Crown if we bear ãâã patiently and unite them to Christ's Passion and offer them to his honour and bear them in his cause and rejoyce in them for his sake And indeed after such a grove of ãâã growing upon the head of our Lord to see one of Christ's members soft delicate and effeminate is a great indecency next to this of seeing the Jews use the King of glory with the greatest reproach and infamy 12. But nothing prevailing nor the Innocence of Jesus nor his immunity from the sentence of Herod nor the industry and diligence of Pilate nor the misery nor the sight of the afflicted Lamb of God at last for so God decreed to permit it and Christ to ãâã it Pilate gave sentence of death upon him having first washed his hands of which God served his end to declare the Innocence of his Son of which in this whole process he was most curious and suffered not the least probability to adhere to him yet Pilate served no end of his nor preserved any thing of his innocence He that ãâã upon a Prince and cries Saving your honour you are a Tyrant and he that strikes a man upon the face and cries him mercy and undoes him and says it was in jest does just like that person that sins against God and thinks to be excused by saying it was against his Conscience that is washing our hands when they are stained in bloud as if a ceremony of purification were enough to cleanse a soul from the stains of a spiritual impurity So some refuse not to take any Oath in times of Persecution and say it obliges not because it was forced and done against their wills as if the doing of it were washed off by protesting against it whereas the protesting against it declares me criminal if I rather chuse not death than that which I profess to be a sin But all the persons which cooperated in this death were in this life consigned to a fearful judgment after it The Jews took the bloud which Pilate seemed to wash off upon themselves and their children and the bloud of this Paschal Lamb stuck upon their forehead and marked them not to escape but to fall under the sword of the destroying Angel and they perished either by a more hasty death or shortly after in the extirpation and miserable ruine of their Nation And Pilate who had a less share in the crime ãâã ãâã a black character of a secular Judgment for not long after he was by Vitellius the President of Syria sent to Rome to answer to the crimes objected against him by the Jews whom to please he had done so much violence to his Conscience and by ãâã sentence he was banished to Vienna deprived of all his honours where he lived ingloriously till by impatience of his calamity he killed himself with his own hand And thus the bloud of Jesus shed for the Salvation of the world became to them a Curse and that which purifies the Saints stuck to them that shed it and mingled it not with the tears of Repentance to be a leprosie loathsome and incurable So Manna turns to worms and the wine of Angels to Vineger and Lees when it is received into impure vessels or tasted by wanton palats and the Sun himself produces Rats and Serpents when it reflects upon the dirt of Nilus The PRAYER O Holy and immaculate Lamb of God who wert pleased to ãâã shame and sorrow to be brought before tribunals to be accused maliciously betrayed treacherously condemned unjustly and scourged most ãâã suffering the most severe and most unhandsome inflictions which could be procured by potent subtle and extremest malice and didst ãâã this out of love greater than the love of Mothers more affectionate than the tears of joy and pity dropt from the eyes of most passionate women by these fontinels of bloud issuing forth life and health and pardon upon all thine enemies teach me to apprehend the baseness of Sin in proportion to the greatest of those calamities which my sin made it necessary for thee to susfer that I may hate the cause of thy ãâã and adore thy mercy and imitate thy charity and copy ãâã thy patience à nd humility and love thy person to the uttermost extent and degrees of my affections Lord what am I that the eternal Son of God should ãâã one stripe for me But thy Love is infinite and how great a misery is it to provoke by sin so great a mercy and despise so miraculous a goodness and to do fresh despite to the Son of God But our sins are innumerable and our infirmities are mighty Dearest Jesu pity me for I am accused by my own Conscience and am found guilty I am stripped naked of my Innocence and bound fast by Lust and tormented with stripes and wounds of enraged Appetites But let thy Innocence excuse me the robes of thy Righteousness cloath me thy Bondage set me free and thy Stripes heal me that thou being my Advocate my Physician my Patron and my Lord I may be adopted into the union of thy Merits and partake of the efficacy of thy Sufferings and be crowned as thou art having my sins changed to vertues and my thorns to rays of glory under thee our Head in the participations of Eternity O Holy and immaculate Lamb of God Amen DISCOURSE XX. Of Death and the due manner of Preparation to it 1. THE Holy Spirit of God hath in Scripture revealed to us but one way of preparing to Death and that is by a holy life and there is nothing in all the Book of Life concerning this exercise of address to Death but such advices which suppose the dying person in a state of Grace S. James indeed counsels that in sickness we should send for the Ministers Ecclesiastical and that they pray over us and that we confess our sins and they shall be forgiven that is those prayers are of great efficacy for the removing the sickness and taking off that punishment of sin and healing them in a certain degree according to the efficacy of the ministery and the dispositions or capacities of the sick person But
galled with the iron at his heels and nailed even before his Crucifixion But this and the other accidents of his journey and their malice so crushed his wounded tender and virginal body that they were forced to lay the load upon a Cyrenian fearing that he should die with less shame and smart than they intended him But so he was pleased to take man unto his aid not only to represent his own need and the dolorousness of his Passion but to consign the duty unto man that we must enter into a ãâã of Christ's sufferings taking up the Cross of Martyrdom when God requires us enduring affronts being patient under affliction loving them that hate us and being benefactors to our enemies abstaining from sensual and intemperate delight forbidding to our selves lawful festivities and recreations of our weariness when we have an end of the spirit to serve upon the ruines of the bodie 's strength mortifying our desires breaking our own will not seeking our selves being entirely resigned to God These are the Cross and the Nails and the Spear and the Whip and all the instruments of a Christian's Passion And we may consider that every man in this world shall in some sence or other bear a Cross few men escape it and it is not well with them that do but they only bear it well that ãâã Christ and tread in his steps and bear it for his sake and walk as he walked and he that follows his own desires when he meets with a cross there as it is certain enough he will bears the cross of his Concupiscence and that hath no fellowship with the Cross of Christ. By the Precept of bearing the Cross we are not tied to pull evil upon our selves that we may imitate our Lord in nothing but in being afflicted or to personate the punitive exercises of Mortification and severe Abstinencies which were eminent in some Saints and to which they had special assistances as others had the gift of Chastity and for which they had special reason and as they apprehended some great necessities but it is required that we bear our own Cross so said our dearest Lord. For when the Cross of Christ is laid upon us and we are called to Martyrdom then it is our own because God made it to be our portion and when by the necessities of our spirit and the rebellion of our body we need exteriour mortifications and acts of self-denial then also it is our own cross because our needs have made it so and so it is when God sends us sickness or any other calamity what-ever is either an effect of our ghostly needs or the condition of our temporal estate it calls for our sufferance and patience and equanimity for therefore Christ hath suffered for us saith S. Peter leaving us an example that we should follow his steps who bore his Cross as long as he could and when he could no longer he murmured not but sank under it and then he was content to receive such aid not which he chose himself but such as was assigned him 3. Jesus was led out of the gates of Jerusalem that he might become the sacrifice for persons without the pale even for all the world And the daughters of Jerusalem followed him with pious tears till they came to Calvary a place difficult in the ascent eminent and apt for the publication of shame a hill of death and dead bones polluted and impure and there beheld him stript naked who cloaths the field with flowers and all the world with robes and the whole globe with the canopy of Heaven and so dress'd that now every circumstance was a triumph By his Disgrace he trampled upon our Pride by his Poverty and nakedness he triumphed over our Covetousness and love of riches and by his Pains chastised the Delicacies of our flesh and broke in pieces the fetters of Concupiscence For as soon as Adam was clothed he quitted Paradise and Jesus was made naked that he might bring us in again And we also must be despoil'd of all our exteriour adherencies that we may pass through the regions of duty and divine love to a society of blessed spirits and a clarified immortal and beatified estate 4. There they nailed Jesus with four nails fixed his Cross in the ground which with its fall into the place of its station gave infinite torture by so violent a concussion of the body of our Lord which rested upon nothing but four great wounds where he was designed to suffer a long and lingring torment For Crucifixion as it was an excellent pain sharp and passionate so it was not of quick effect towards taking away the life S. Andrew was two whole days upon the Cross and some Martyrs have upon the Cross been rather starved and devoured with birds than killed with the proper torment of the tree But Jesus took all his Passion with a voluntary susception God heightning it to the great degrees of torment supernaturally and he laid down his life voluntarily when his Father's wrath was totally appeased towards mankind 5. Some have phansied that Christ was pleased to take something from every condition of which Man ever was or shall be possessed taking Immunity from sin from Adam's state of Innocence Punishment and misery from the state of Adam fallen the fulness of Grace from the state of Renovation and perfect Contemplation of the Divinity and beatifick joys from the state of Comprehension and the blessedness of Heaven meaning that the Humanity of our Blessed Saviour did in the sharpest agony of his Passion behold the face of God and communicate in glory But I consider that although the two Natures of Christ were knit by a mysterious union into one Person yet the Natures still retain their incommunicable properties Christ as God is not subject to sufferings as a man he is the subject of miseries as God he is eternal as man mortal and commensurable by time as God the supreme Law-giver as man most humble and obedient to the Law and therefore that the Humane nature was united to the Divine it does not infer that it must in all instances partake of the Divine felicities which in God are essential to man communicated without necessity and by an arbitrary dispensation Add to this that some vertues and excellencies were in the Soul of Christ which could not consist with the state of glorified and beatified persons such as are Humility Poverty of spirit Hope Holy desires all which having their seat in the Soul suppose even in the supremest ãâã a state of pilgrimage that is a condition which is imperfect and in order to something beyond its present For therefore Christ ought to suffer saith our Blessed Lord himself and so enter into his glory And S. Paul affirms that we see Jesus made a little lower than the Angels for the suffering of death ãâã with glory and honour And again Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto
death even the death of the Cross Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a Name above every name Thus his present life was a state of merit and work and as a reward of it he was crowned with glory and immortality his Name was exalted his Kingdom glorified he was made the Lord of all the Creatures the first-fruits of the Resurrection the exemplar of glory and the Prince and Head of the Catholick Church and because this was his recompence and the fruits of his Humility and Obedience it is certain it was not a necessary consequence and a natural efflux of the personal union of the Godhead with the Humanity This I discourse to this purpose that we may not in our esteem lessen the suffering of our dearest Lord by thinking he had the supports of actual Glory in the midst of all his Sufferings For there is no one minute or ray of Glory but its fruition does outweigh and make us insensible of the greatest calamities and the spirit of pain which can be extracted from all the infelicities of this world True it is that the greatest beauties in this world are receptive of an allay of sorrow and nothing can have pleasure in all capacities The most beautious feathers of the birds of Paradise the Estrich or the Peacock if put into our throat are not there so pleasant as to the eye But the beatifick joys of the least glory of Heaven take away all pain wipe away all tears from our eyes and it is not possible that at the same instant the Soul of Jesus should be ravished with Glory and yet abated with pains grievous and ãâã On the other side some say that the Soul of Jesus upon the Cross suffered the pains of Hell and all the torments of the damned and that without such sufferings it is not imaginable he should pay the price which God's wrath should demand of us But the same that reproves the one does also reprehend the other for the Hope that was the support of the Soul of Jesus as it confesses an imperfection that is not consistent with the state of Glory so it excludes the Despair that is the torment proper to accursed souls Our dearest Lord suffered the whole condition of Humanity Sin only excepted and freed us from Hell with suffering those sad pains and merited Heaven for his own Humanity as the Head and all faithful people as the Members of his mystical Body And therefore his life here was only a state of pilgrimage not at all trimmed with beatifick glories Much less was he ever in the state of Hell or upon the Cross felt the formal misery and spirit of torment which is the ãâã of damned spirits because it was impossible Christ should despair and without Despair it is impossible there should be a Hell But this is highly probable that in the intension of degrees and present anguish the Soul of our Lord might feel a greater load of wrath than is incumbent in every instant upon perishing souls For all the sadness which may be imagined to be in Hell consists in acts produced from principles that cannot surpass the force of humane or Angelical nature but the pain which our Blessed Lord endured for the expiation of our sins was an issue of an united and concentred anger was received into the heart of God and Man and was commensurate to the whole latitude of the Grace Patience and Charity of the Word incarnate The Crucisixion Mark 15 25. Erat autem Hora tertia crucifixerunt eum Mark 15 25. And is was the third houre they crucified him The takeing down from the Cross. Luk. 23 50 And there was a man named Ioseph a Counsellour he was a good man a lust y e same had not consented to y e counsell deed of them 52. This man went unto Pilate begged y e Body of Iesus 53 And he took it down wrapped it in linen layd it in a Sepulehre that was hewn in stone wherein never man before was layd 6. And now behold the Priest and the Sacrifice of all the world laid upon the Altar of the Cross bleeding and tortured and dying to reconcile his Father to us and he was arrayed with ornaments more glorious than the robes of Aaron The Crown of Thorns was his Mitre the Cross his Pastoral staffe the Nails piercing his hands were in stead of Rings the ancient ornament of Priests and his flesh rased and checker'd with blew and bloud in stead of the parti-coloured Robe But as this object calls for our Devotion our Love and Eucharist to our dearest Lord so it must needs irreconcile us to Sin which in the eye of all the world brought so great shame and pain and amazement upon the Son of God when he only became engaged by a charitable substitution of himself in our place and therefore we are assured by the demonstration of sense and experience it will bring death and all imaginable miseries as the just expresses of God's indignation and hatred for to this we may apply the words of our Lord in the prediction of miseries to Jerusalem If this be done in the green tree what shall be done in the dry For it is certain Christ infinitely pleased his Father even by becoming the person made ãâã in estimate of Law and yet so great Charity of our Lord and the so great love and pleasure of his Father exempted him not from suffering pains intolerable and much less shall those escape who provoke and displease God and despise so great Salvation which the Holy Jesus hath wrought with the expence of bloud and so precious a life 7. But here we see a great representation and testimony of the Divine Justice who was so angry with sin who had so severely threatned it who does so essentially hate it that he would not spare his only Son when he became a conjunct person relative to the guilt by undertaking the charges of our Nature For although God hath set down in holy Scripture the order of his Justice and the manner of its manifestation that one Soul shall not perish for the sins of another yet this is meant for Justice and for Mercy too that is he will not curse the Son for the Father's fault or in any relation whatsoever substitute one person for another to make him involuntarily guilty But when this shall be desired by a person that cannot finally perish and does a mercy to the exempt persons and is a voluntary act of the suscipient and shall in the event also redound to an infinite good it is no deflection from the Divine Justice to excuse many by the affliction of one who also for that very suffering shall have infinite compensation We see that for the sin of Cham all his posterity were accursed the Subjects of David died with the Plague because their Prince numbred the people Idolatry is punished in the children of the fourth generation
spices then begin to consider who shall remove the stone but yet they still go on and their love answers the objection not knowing how it should be done but yet resolving to go through all the difficulties but never remember or take care to pass the guards of Souldiers But when they came to the Sepulchre they found the Guard affrighted and removed and the stone rolled away for there had a little before their arrival been a great Earthquake and an Angel descending from Heaven rolled away the stone and sate upon it and for fear of him the guards about the tomb became astonished with fear and were like dead men and some of them ran to the High Priests and told them what happened But they now resolving to make their iniquity safe and unquestionable by a new crime hire the Souldiers to tell an incredible and a weak fable that his Disciples came by night and stole him away Against which accident the wit of man could give no more security than themselves had made The women entred into the Sepulchre and missing the body of Jesus Mary Magdalen ran to the eleven Apostles complaining that the body of our Lord was not to be found Then Peter and John ran as fast as they could to see for the unexpectedness of the relation the wonder of the story and the sadness of the person moved some affections in them which were kindled by the first principles and sparks of Faith but were not made actual and definite because the Faith was not raised to a flame they looked into the Sepulchre and finding not the body there they returned By this time Mary Magdalen was come back and the women who stayed weeping for their Lord's body saw two Angels sitting in white the one at the head and the other at the ãâã at which unexpected sight they trembled and bowed themselves but an Angel bid them not to fear telling them that Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified was also risen and was not there and called to mind what Jesus had told them in Galilee concerning his Crucifixion and Resurrection the third day 2. And Mary Magdalen turned her self back and saw Jesus but supposing him to be the Gardiner she said to him Sir if thou have born him hence tell me where thou hast laid him and I will take him away But Jesus said unto her Mary Then she knew his voice and with ecstasie of joy and wonder was ready to have crushed his feet with her imbraces but he commanded her not to touch him but go to his Erethren and say I ascend unto my Father and to your Father to my God and your God Mary departed with satisfaction beyond the joys of a victory or a full vintage and told these things to the Apostles but the narration seem'd to them as talk of abused and phantastick persons About the same time Jesus also appeared unto Simon Peter Towards the declining of the day two of his Disciples going to Emmans sad and discoursing of the late occurrences Jesus puts himself into their company and upbraids their incredulity and expounds the Scriptures that Christ ought to suffer and rise again the third day and in the breaking of bread disappeared and so was known to them by vanishing away whom present they knew not And instantly they hasten to Jerusalem and told the Apostles what had happened 3. And while they were there that is the same day at evening when the Apostles were assembled all save Thomas secretly for fear of the Jews the doors being shut Jesus came and stood in the midst of them They were exceedingly troubled supposing it had been a Spirit But Jesus confuted them by the Philosophy of their senses by feeling his ãâã and bones which spirits have not For he gave them his benediction shewing them his hands and his feet At which sight they rejoyced with exceeding joy and began to be restored to their indefinite hopes of some future felicity by the returns of their Lord to life and there he first breathed on them giving them the holy Ghost and performing the promise twice made before his death the promise of the Keys or of binding and loosing saying Whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted to them and whose soever sins ye retain they are retained And that was the second part of Clerical power with which Jesus instructed his Disciples in order to their great Commission of Preaching and Government ãâã These things were told to Thomas but he believed not and resolved against the belief of it unless he might put his finger into his hands and his hand into his side Jesus therefore on the Octaves of his Resurrection appeared again to the Apostles met together and makes demonstration to Thomas in conviction and reproof of his unbelief promising a special benediction to all succeeding Ages of the Church for they are such who saw not and yet have believed 4. But Jesus at his early appearing had sent an order by the women that the Disciples should go into ãâã and they did so after a few days And Simon Peter being there went a fishing and six other of the Apostles with him to the Sea of Tiberias where they laboured all night and caught nothing Towards the morning Jesus appeared to them and bad them cast the net on the right side of the ship which they did and inclosed an hundred and fifty three great fishes by which prodigious draught John the beloved Disciple perceived it was the Lord. At which instant Peter threw himself into the Sea and went to Jesus and when the rest were come to shore they din'd with broiled fish After dinner Jesus taking care for those scattered sheep which were dispersed over the face of the earth that he might gather them into one Sheepfold under one ãâã asked Peter Simon son of Jonas lovest thou me more than these Peter answered Yea Lord thou that knowest all things knowest that I love thee Then Jesus said unto him Feed my Lambs And Jesus asked him the same question and gave him the same Precept the second time and the third time for it was a considerable and a weighty imployment upon which Jesus was willing to spend all his endearments and stock of affections that Peter owed him even upon the care of his little Flock And after the intrusting of this charge to him he told him that the reward he should have in this world should be a sharp and an honourable Martyrdom and withall checks at Peter's curiosity in busying himself about the temporal accidents of other men and enquiring what should become of John the beloved Disciple Jesus answered his question with some sharpness of reprehension and no satisfaction If I will that he tarry till I come what is that to thee Then they phansied that he should not die But they were mistaken for the intimation was expounded and verified by S. John's surviving the destruction of Jerusalem for after the attempts of persecutors and the miraculous escape
of prepared torments he died a natural death in a good old age 5. After this Jesus having appointed a solemn meeting for all the Brethren that could be collected from the dispersion and named a certain mountain in ãâã appeared to five hundred Brethren at once and this was his most publick and solemn manifestation and while some doubted Jesus came according to the designation and spake to the eleven sent them to preach to all the world Repentance and Remission of sins in his Name promising to be with them to the end of the world He appeared also unto James but at what time is uncertain save that there is something concerning it in the Gospel of S. Matthew which the Nazarens of ãâã used and which it is likely themselves added out of report for there is nothing of it in our Greek Copies The words are these When the Lord had given the linen in which he was wrapped to the servant of the High Priest he went and appeared unto James For James had vowed after he received the Lord's Supper that he would eat no bread till he saw the Lord risen from the grave Then the Lord called for bread he blessed it and brake it and gave it to James the Just and said My Brother eat bread for the Son of man is risen from the sleep of death So that by this it should seem to be done upon the day of the Resurrection But the relation of it by S. Paul puts it between the appearance which he made to the five hundred and that last to the Apostles when he was to ascend into Heaven Last of all when the Apostles were at dinner he appeared to them upbraiding their incredulity and then he opened their understanding that they might discern the sence of Scripture and again commanded them to preach the Gospel to all the world giving them power to do Miracles to cast out Devils to cure ãâã and instituted the Sacrament of Baptism which he commanded should together with the Sermons of the Gospel be administred to all Nations in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Then he led them into Judaea and they came to Bethany and from thence to the mount Olivet and he commanded them to stay in Jerusalem till the Holy Ghost the promise of the Father should descend upon them which should be accomplished in few days and then they should know the times and the seasons and all things necessary for their ministration and service and propagation of the Gospel And while he discoursed many things concerning the Kingdom behold a Cloud came and parted Jesus from them and carried him in their sight up into Heaven where he sits at the right hand of God blessed for ever Amen 6. While his Apostles stood gazing up to Heaven two Angels appeared to them and told them that Jesus should come in like manner as he was taken away viz. with glory and majesty and in the clouds and with the ministry of Angels Amen Come Lord JESUS come quickly Ad SECT XVI Considerations upon the Accidents happening in the intervall after the Death of the Holy JESUS untill his Resurrection Jesus and Mary in the Garden Joh. 20. 14. 15. 16. Mary turning about saw Jesus standing knew not y t it was Jesus Jesus saith woman whom seekest thou Shee supposing him to be the garidner saith sir if thou have born him hence tell me etc. Jesus saith unto her Mary she turned her self and saith unto him Rabboni which is Master Jesus saith unto her touch me not for etc. Mary Magdalen came and told the desciples that she had seen the Lord. Our Lords Ascension Acts. 1. 9. And when he had spoken these things while they beheld he was taken up a Cloud received him out of their sight 10. And while they stedfastly looked toward heaven behold two men stood by them in white apparell 11. Which also said this same Iesus shall so come as you have seen him go into heaven 1. THE Holy Jesus promised to the blessed Thief that he should that day be with him in Paradise which therefore was certainly a place or state of Blessedness because it was a promise and in the society of Jesus whose penal and afflictive part of his work of Redemption was finished upon the Cross. Our Blessed Lord did not promise he should that day be with him in his Kingdom for that day it was not opened and the everlasting doors of those interiour recesses were to be shut till after the Resurrection that himself was to ascend thither and make way for all his servants to enter in the same method in which he went before us Our Blessed Lord descended into Hell saith the Creed of the Apostles from the Sermon of Saint Peter as he from the words of David that is into the state of Separation and common receptacle of Spirits according to the style of Scripture But the name of Hell is no-where in Scripture an appellative of the Kingdom of Christ of the place of final and supreme Glory But concerning the verification of our Lord's promise to the beatified Thief and his own state of Separation we must take what light we can from Scripture and what we can from the Doctrine of the Primitive Church S. Paul had two great Revelations he was rapt up into Paradise and he was rapt up into the third Heaven and these he calls visions revelations not one but divers for Paradise is distinguished from the Heaven of the blessed being it self a receptacle of holy Souls made illustrious with visitation of Angels and happy by being a repository for such spirits who at the day of Judgment shall go forth into eternal glory In the interim Christ hath trod all the paths before us and this also we must pass through to arrive at the Courts of Heaven Justin Martyr said it was the doctrine of heretical persons to say that the Souls of the Blessed instantly upon the separation from their Bodies enter into the highest Heaven And Irenaeus makes Heaven and the intermediate receptacle of Souls to be distinct places both blessed but hugely differing in degrees Tertullian is dogmatical in the assertion that till the voice of the great Archangel be heard and as long as Christ sits at the right hand of his Father making intercession for the Church so long blessed Souls must expect the assembling of their brethren the great Congregation of the Church that they may all pass from their outer courts into the inward tabernacle the Holy of Holies to the Throne of God And as it is certain that no Soul could enter into glory before our Lord ãâã by whom we hope to have access so it is most agreeable to the proportion ãâã the mysteries of our Redemption that we believe the entrance into Glory to have been made by our Lord at his glorious Ascension and that his Soul went not thither before ãâã to come back again
of Visions 61. 23. Sins of Infirmity explicated 105. 10. seq Intentions though good excuse not evil Actions 107. 13. Incontinence destroys the Spirit of Government 189. 5. Instruments weak and unlikely used by GOD to great purposes 197. Incarnation of Jesus instrumental to God's Glory and our Peace 31. Inevitable Infirmities consistent with a state of Grace 207. Injuries great and little to be forgiven 252. Intention of Spirit how necessary in our Prayers 267. 17. Images their Lawfulness or unlawfulness considered 237. 16. Admitted into the Church with difficulty and by degrees 237. 16. Images of Jupiter and Diana Cyndias did ridiculous and weak Miracles 279. 7. Imprisonment sanctified by the binding of Jesus 387. Ingratitude of Judas 360. 9. John the Baptist his Life and Death 66. 5. 77. 78. and 79. 93. 292. 18. His Baptism 93. Whether the form of it were in the Name of Christ to come ibid. Joyes spiritual increase by communication 156. 3. Joyes of Eternity recompense all our Sorrowes in every instant of their fruition 426. Joyes sudden and violent are to be allayed by reflexion on the vilest of our Sins 196. 7. John Patriarch of Alexandria appeased the anger of Patricius 245. 30. Innocence is security against evil Actions 10. Justice of GOD in punishing Jesus cleared 415. 7 8. Several degrees of Justification answerable to several degrees of Faith 162. 7. Judgment of Life and Death is to be only by the supreme Power or his Deputy 253. A Jew condemned of Idolatry for throwing stones though in detestation at the Idol of Mercury 354. 32. Judging our Brother how far prohibited 260. 5. Judas's name written in Heaven and blotted ãâã again 313. 1. His manner of death 352. 25. Ingrateful 360. 8. He valued the Ointment at the same rate he sold his Lord 361. 11. He enjoyed his Money not Ten Hours 386. 7. Julian desired but could not be a Magician 361. 10. Judgment of GOD upon Sinners their causes and manner 336. 1. seq Judgments National 340. 8. Not easily understood by Men 339. 5. Joseph of Arimath embalmed the Body of Jesus 356. 38. Whether Judas received the Holy Sacrament 375. 13. K. KIng and Church have the same Friends and Enemies 336. Kingdom of Christ not of this World 352. What it is 392. 8. Kingdom of God what 263. 5. Kingdom of Grace and Glory ibid. A King came to Jesus in behalf of his Son 182. 6. Kings specially to be prayed for 365. 13. King's Enemies how to be prayed against ibid. To Kill the assaulting Person in what cases lawful 253. 3. L. LAws evil make a National Sin 341. 10. Law of Nature Vide Pref. per tot 20. 7. Laws of Man to be obeyed but not always to be thought most reasonable 42. 7. 48. 21. Laws of God and Man in respect of the greatness of the subject matter compared 46. 49. Laws of Men bind not to Death or an insufferable Calamity rather than not to break them 48. 21. Laws of Superiours not to be too freely disputed by Subjects 49. 23. Laws of order to be observed even when the first reason ceases 52. 1. It is not safe to do all that is lawful 45. 15 16. Law and Gospel how differ 194. 3. 232. 3. 295. S. Paul often by a Fiction of Person speaks of himself not as in the state of Regeneration under the Gospel but as under the imperfections of the Law 104. 8. Law of Nature perfected by Christianity Pref. Law of Moses a Law of Works how 232. Law of Jesus a Law of the Spirit and not of Works in what sence ibid. Law-Suits to be managed charitably 256. When lawful to be undertaken ibid. Lazarus restored to Life 345. 2. Leonigildus kill'd his Daughter for not communicating with the Arians 188. 2. Leven of Herod what 321. 8. Lepers cured 324. 18. Sent to the Priest ibid. Unthankful ibid. The Levantine Churches afflicted the cause uncertain 338. 4. S. Laurence his Gridiron less hot than his Love 358. 2. 7. ãâã 17. Life of Man cut off for Sin 303. 305. It hath several periods ibid. 274. Good life necessary to make our Prayers acceptable 266. 13. A comparison between a Life in Solitude and in Society 80. 5. Lord's Supper the greatest of Christian Rites 369. It manifests God's Power 371. 4. His Wisdome and his Charity 371. 5 6. It is a Sacrament of Union 371. 5 6. A Sacrament and a Sacrifice in what sence 372. 7. As it is an act of the Ecclesiastical Officer of what efficacy 373. 8. It is expressed in mysterious words when the value is recited 373. Not to be administred to vicious persons 374. 12. Whether persons vicious under suspicion only are to be deprived of it 376. 13. How to be received 377. 15. What deportment to be used after it 378. 17. To be received by dying Persons 407. 23. Of what benefit it is to them ibid. Love and Obedience Duties of the first Commandment 234. 8. Love and Obedience reconciled 427. 9. Love of God its extension 234. 9. It s intension ibid. n. 11. Love the fulfilling of the Law explicated 233. 5. It consists in latitude 236. 13. It must exclude all affection to sin ibid. 14. Signs of true love to God 236. 14. Love to God with all our hearts possible and in what sence ibid. Love of God and love of money compared 361. 11. Lord's Day by what authority to be observed 244. 24. And how ibid. Lucian's Cynick an Hypocrite 366. 7. Likeness to God being desired at first ruined us now restores us 364. 3. Lying in that degree is criminal as it is injurious 250. 40. M. MArriage honoured by Christ's presence and the first Miracle 154. Hallowed to a Mystery 158. 8. Marriage-breakers are more criminal now than under Moses's Law 158. The smaller undecencies must be prevented or deprecated Of Martyrdom 229. 18. Magi at the sight of Christ's Poverty renounce the World and retire into Philosophy 28. 13. Mary a Virgin alwayes 14. 2. An excellent Personage 2 3. 8. She conceived Jesus without Sin and brought him forth without Pain 13. Her joy at the Prophecies concerning her Son attempered with Predictions of his Passion 30. 4. Full of Fears when she lost Jesus 73. 1. She went to the Temple to pray and there found him ibid. Full of Piety in Her countenance and deportment 113. 32. She converted many to thoughts of Chastity by her countenance and aspect ibid. Mary Magdalen's Story 377. 9. 360. 5. 391. 9. 346. 5. 349. 13. Mary's Choice preferred 326. 26. Mark for sook Jesus upon a Scandal taken but was reduced by S. Peter 320. 3. Malchus an Idumaean Slave smote Jesus on the Face 389. 1. Meditation described 54. It turns the understanding into spirit 55. Its Parts Actions manner of Exercise Fruits and Effects Disc. 3. per tot 54. Men ought not to run into the Ministery till they are called 99. 3.
Ordinary Means and Ministeries are to be used when they are to be had whereof the Star appearing to the Wise men was an emblem 33. 6. VVhat is signified by the Inheritance of the Earth in the reward of Meekness 224. 9. The Parts Actions and Reward of Meekness ibid. Mortification described its Parts Actions Rules Designs and Benefits 82. Master of the Feast his Office among the Jews 152. 5. Mercy a mark of Predestination 227. To be expressed in Affections and Actions ibid. Its Object Acts Reward ibid. Merope's answer to Polyphontes 254. 6. A Mason's withered hand cured by Jesus 290. 3. Members of Christ ought not to be soft and nice 393. 9. Miseries of this Life not always tokens of precedent Sin 325. 326. Miracles of Christ and his Apostles weakly imitated by the Devil 279. ãâã Greater than the pretences of their Enemies 280. 10. Which were done by Christ were primarily for conviction of the Jewes those by the Apostles for the Gentiles 279. 6. Vide 277. Were confirmed by Prophecies of Jesus ibid. Mount Olivet the place of the Romans first Incamping 347. 7. Mourning a duty its Acts Duty Reward 223. Multitudes fed by Christ 319. 321. 7. N. NAme of God put into H. places in what sence 172. 1. Name of Jesus its mysteriousness explicated 39. 8. It s excellency and efficacy ibid. Good Name to be sought after 367. Names of some of the LXXII 325. 24. Names of some that were supposed to rise after the Passion of Jesus 425. 3. Good Nature an Instrument of Vertue 91. 24. Nard pistick poured upon Jesus's Head and Feet 346. 5. 361. 11. Natural to love God when we understand him 296. 3. Natures of Christ communicated in Effects 387. 9. National Sins and Judgements 340. 8. Their Cure ibid. Necessity to Sin laid upon no Man 105. 9. Necessity to be obeyed before positive Constitutions 289. Necessity of Holy Living 204. ãâã Necessities of our selves and other men in several manner to be prayed for 265. 12. Nicodemus his ãâã with Jesus 167. New Creation at the Passion 431. Nero first among the Romans ãâã with Nard 291. 9. Nursing Children a duty of Mothers 19. O. OAths forbidden and how 240. Oaths ãâã Judicature if contradictory not to be admitted 241. Oaths promissory not to be exacted by Princes but in great necessity 240. Vide Swearing Obedience to God and Man its Parts Actions Necessity Definition and Constitution 41. 224. 205. Obedience in small instances stated 44. 12 13. Obedience to GOD our only security for defence and provisions 68. 3. Obedience of Jesus to his Parents 72. Obedience and Love ãâã in the holy Women and how reconciled 427. 9. Occasions of Sin to be avoided 110. 24. Offending Hand or Eye to be cut off or pull'd out 323. 17. Ordinary means of Salvation to be pursued 32. 5. Original Sin disputed to evil purposes 37. Considered and stated in order to Practice 38. 4. Opinion of our selves ought to be small and true 365. 5. It was the Duke of Candia's Harbinger 365. 6. In what mean opinion of our selves consists ibid. Oswy's Vow 270. 19. Outward ãâã addes reverence to Religion 177. 12. P. PAradise distinct from Heaven 424. 1. Place of GOD's special appearance in Paradise 175. 7. Patriarchs why desirous to be ãâã in the Land of Promise 425. 3. Pardon of Sins by Christ is most properly of Sins committed before Baptism 193. Pardon of Sins after Baptism how consigned 200. 201. It is more uncertain and difficult ibid. It is less and to fewer purposes 204. Alwayes imperfect after Baptism ibid. It is by Parts ibid. Possibility of Pardon hath a period in this life 210. Patrons to present able persons to their Benefices 194. 2. How far lawful to prefer their Kindred ibid. Parents in order of Nature next to God 244. 25. Duty to Parents the band of Republicks ibid. What it consists of ibid. Passion of Jesus 355. 412. Passions sanctified by Jesus 384. 3. Paschal Rites representative of moral Duties 364. Patience to be preserved by Innocents accused 393. And in Sickness 404. 17. Paul calling himself the greatest Sinner in what sence he understood it 264. 8. He hoped for Salvation more confidently towards his end 317. 9. Palms cut down for the Reception of Jesus 347. Persecution an earnest of future Bliss 229. 18. It is lawful to fly it 290. 69. 4. Not to fight against it 70. The Duty of Suffering explicated 229. 18. Peacefulness its Acts and Reward 228. 17. Peace ãâã from God by Christ 29. 5. Personal Priviledges not to be insisted upon so much as strict Duty 37. Personal Infirmity of Princes excuses not our Disobedience 46. Person of a Man first accepted and then his Gift in what sence true 33. Parental Piety of the Virgin Mary 15. Person of Christ of great excellency 15. Presentation of Jesus the only Present that was commensurate to God's excellency 52. Poverty of Christ's Birth in many circumstances 15. Christ chose his Portion among the poor of this World 52. 3. Poverty better than Riches ibid. 222. 3. No shame to be poor ibid. 29. 15. 4. Christ was revealed first to poor Men 29. Poverty of Spirit described 222. Its Parts Acts and Offices ibid. Peter for want of Faith ready to drown 320. Providence of God provides Bread for us It unites causes disparate in one event 13. Providence of GOD disposes evil Men to evil events 66. And good Men to good secretly but certainly ibid. It is wholly to be relied upon for provisions and defence 67. 71. 99. It supplies all our needs 358. 361. 371. Sometimes it shortens Man's life 264. 307. 22. S. Paphnutius converted a Harlot by the argument of the Divine Presence 113. 32. Plato's reproof of Diogenes 112. 30. Preachers ought to be of good Example 79. 2. Ambitious seeking of Prelacy hath been the Pest of the Church 96. 2. For liberty of Prophesying 187. 2. 233. 18. Presbyters have no power by Divine right to reject from the Communion those that present themselves and desire to receive it 376. 13. Passions if violent though for God are irregular 10. 270. Publick and private Devotions compared 75. 2. Presence of God an Antidote against Temptations 168. 29. Publication to be made of the Divine Excellencies 9. Prosperity dangerous how to be managed ibid. Podavivus his imitation of Wenceslaus 4. Exh. 10. Prodigies of Greatness and Goodness in Christ's Person 16. Prayer the easiest and most pleasant Duty and yet we are averse from it and why 83. A great Remedy against Temptation 115. 37. It must be joyned with our own endeavour ibid. Its Definition Conditions Matter Manner Efficacy Excellency Rules 267. Lord's Prayer explicated 267. Mental and Vocal Prayer compared 271. 23. Presumption in dying persons carefully to be distinguished from Confidence 403. 15. Means of curing it ibid. Presumption upon false Opinions in Religion how to be cured 402. Physicians to be obeyed
Communication 94. 3. Triumphant riding of Jesus 359. 4. Thief upon the Cross pardoned and in what sence 200. 8. An excellent Penitent 354. 32. Themistocles appeased King Admetus by ãâã his Son to his sight 372. 7. Thomas's Infidelity 420. 3. Tongue-murther 247. V. VAin Repetitions in Prayer to be avoided 270. Value of the Silver pieces Judas had 349. 14. Value of Jesus in this World was always at a low rate 57. 4. Vespasian upon the Prophecies concerning the Messias ãâã himself into hopes of the Empire 25. 2. Vinegar and Gall offered to Jesus 355. 35. Virginity preserred before Marriage 327. Vertue is honourable 301. 11. Productive of ãâã 299. 7. More pleasant than Vice 69. 6. The holy Virgin incouraged Joseph of Arimathea to a publick Confession of Jesus 356. 38. She caused Ministers to take her Son's Body from the Cross 356. Full of sorrow at the Passion 356. 37. She was saluted Blessed by a Capernaite 292. 12. Vice a great Spender 301. 9. It ãâã from Vertue sometimes but in one nice degree 45. 15. Why we are more prone to Vice than Vertue 37. 4. A Virgin shut her self up twelve Years in a Sepulchre to cure her Temptation 114. 34. Vicious persons not to be admitted to the Sacrament 374. 12. Unitive way of Religion to be practised with caution 60. 20. Vows are a good instance of Importunity in Prayer 270. 20. To be made with much caution and prudence ibid. Uncleanness of Body and Spirit forbidden to Christians 249 W. WAter-pots among the Jews at Feasts and why 152. 7. Way to Heaven narrow in what sence 297. Washing the Feet an hospitable civility to Strangers 350. 16. Washing the Disciples Feet ib. Wandring thoughts in Prayer to be prayed against 268. Watchfulness designed in the Parable of the ten Virgins 348. Want cannot be where God undertakes the Provision 77. Wenceslaus King of Bohemia led his Servant by a vigorous example 4. Exh. 10. Widows two Mites accepted 348. Widowhood harder to preserve Continence than Virginity 86. Wise-mens expectation lessened at the sight of the Babe lying in a Stable 28. But not ãâã ibid. They publickly consess him 33. Wilderness chosen by Christ he was not involuntarily driven by the evil Spirit 95. Works of Religion upon our Death-bed after a pious Life are of great concernment 403. Women must be lovers of Privacy 9. Instrumental to Conversion of Men 182. 3. To Heresie 189. 5. Not to be conversed withall too freely by Spiritual persons ibid. They ãâã Religious Friendships with Apostles and Bishops ibid. 6. Cautions concerning Conversation with Women ibid. They ministred to Christ 293. 17. Go early to the Sepulchre 419. Will for the Deed accepted how to be understood 213. 41. Will of God is to be chosen before our own 247. 267. World to be refused when the Devil offers it 100. Wine mixed with Myrrhe offered to Jesus 353. Y. YOak of Christianity easie 295. Yoak of Moses and Yoak of Sin broken by Christ 295. 1. Z. ZEal of Elias not imitable by us 324. 18. Zeal of Prayer of great efficacy 269. 18. It discomposed Moses and Elisha 85. 8. Zacchaeus his Repentance 346. 4. Zebedee's Sons Petition ibid. Zechary slain by Herod and why 66. 5. His Bloud left a Tincture in the Pavement for a long while after ibid. The End of the TABLE ERRATA PAge 85. Line 13. for Consulted by three things read Consulted by three Kings Antiquitates Apostolicae OR THE LIVES ACTS and MARTYRDOMS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES OF OUR SAVIOUR To which are added The Lives of the two EVANGELISTS SS MARK and LVKE By WILLIAM CAVE D. D. Chaplain in Ordinary to his MAJESTY ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Euseb. H. Eccl. lib. 1. cap. 10. pag. 28. ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Chrysost. Praesat in Epist. ad Philem. pag. 1733. LONDON Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston Bookseller to his most Sacred Majesty at the Angel in Amen-Corner 1675. TO THE READER IT will not I suppose seem improbable to the Reader when I tell him with how much reluctancy and unwillingness I set upon this undertaking Besides the disadvantage of having this piece annexed to the Elaborate Book of that excellent Prelate so great a Master both of Learning and Language I was intimately conscious to mine own unfitness for such a Work at any time much more when clogg'd with many habitual Infirmities and Distempers I considered the difficulty of the thing it self perhaps not capable of being well managed by a much better Ten than mine few of the Ancient Monuments of the Church being extant and little of this nature in those few that are Indeed I could not but think it reasonable that all possible honour should be done to those that first Preached the Gospel of peace and brought glad tidings of good things that it was fit men should be taught how much they were obliged to those excellent Persons who were willing at so dear a rate to plant Christianity in the World who they were and what was that Piety and that Patience that Charity and that Zeal which made them to be reverenc'd while they liv'd and their Memories ever since to be honourably celebrated through the World infinitely beyond the glories of Alexander and the triumphs of a Pompey or a Caesar. But then how this should be done out of those few imperfect Memoires that have escaped the general shipwrack of Church-Antiquities and much more by so rude and unskilful a hand as mine appear'd I confess a very difficult task and next door to impossible These with some other considerations made me a long time obstinately resolve against it till being overcome by importunity I yielded to do it as I was able and as the nature of the thing would bear THAT which I primarily designed to my self was to draw down the History of the New Testament especially from our Lord's death to enquire into the first Originals and Plantations of the Christian Church by the Ministery of the Apostles the success of their Doctrine the power and conviction of their Miracles their infinite Labours and hardships and the dreadful Sufferings which they underwent to consider in what instances of Piety and Vertue they ministred to our imitation and served the purposes of Religion and an Holy Life Indeed the accounts that are left us of these things are very short and inconsiderable sufficient possibly to excite the appetite not to allay the hunger of an importunate Enquirer into these matters A consideration that might give us just occasion to lament the irreparable loss of those Primitive Records which the injury of time hath deprived us of the substance being gone and little left us but the shell and carcass Had we the Writings of Papias Bishop of Hierapolis and Scholar says Irenaeus to S. John wherein as himself tells us he set down what he had learnt from those who had familiarly conversed with the Apostles the sayings and discourses of Andrew and Peter of Philip and Thomas c.
we find him paying Tribute an House over which Nicephorus tells us that Helen the Mother of Constantine erected a beautiful Church to the honour of S. Peter This place was equally advantageous for the managery of his Trade standing upon the Influx of Jordan into the Sea of Galilee and where he might as well reap the fruits of an honest and industrious diligence A mean I confess it was and a more servile course of life as which besides the great pains and labour it required exposed him to all the injuries of wind and weather to the storms of the Sea the darkness and tempestousness of the Night and all to make a very small return An imployment whose restless troubles constant hardships frequent dangers and amazing horrours are for the satisfaction of the learned Reader thus elegantly described by one whose Poems may be justly stiled Golden Verses receiving from the Emperour Antoninus a piece of Gold for every Verse ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã But meanness is no bar in God's way the poor if virtuous are as dear to Heaven as the wealthy and the honourable equally alike to him with whom there is no respect of persons Nay our Lord seemed to cast a peculiar honour upon this profession when afterwards calling him and some others of the same Trade from catching of Fish to be as he told them Fishers of men 5. AND here we may justly reflect upon the wise and admirable methods of the Divine providence which in planting and propagating the Christian Religion in the World made choice of such mean and unlikely instruments that he should hide these things from the wise and prudent and reveal them unto babes men that had not been educated in the Academy and the Schools of Learning but brought up to a Trade to catch Fish and mend Nets most of the Apostles being taken from the meanest Trades and all of them S. Paul excepted unfurnished of all arts of learning and the advantages of liberal and ingenuous education and yet these were the men that were designed to run down the World and to overturn the learning of the prudent Certainly had humane wisdome been to manage the business it would have taken quite other measures and chosen out the profoundest Rabbins the acutest Philosophers the smoothest Orators such as would have been most likely by strength of reason and arts of rhetorick to have triumph'd over the minds of men to grapple with the stubberness of the Jews and baffle the finer notions and speculations of the Greeks We find that those Sects of Philosophy that gain'd most credit in the Heathen-world did it this way by their eminency in some Arts and Sciences whereby they recommended themselves to the acceptance of the wiser and more ingenious part of mankind Julian the Apostate thinks it a reasonable exception against the Jewish Prophets that they were incompetent messengers and interpreters of the Divine will because they had not their minds cleared and purged by passing through the Circle of polite arts and learning Why now this is the wonder of it that the first Preachers of the Gospel should be such rude unlearned men and yet so suddainly so powerfully prevail over the learned World and conquer so many who had the greatest parts and abilities and the strongest prejudices against it to the simplicity of the Gospel When Celsus objected that the Apostles were but a company of mean and illiterate persons sorry Mariners and Fishermen Origen quickly returns upon him with this answer That hence 't was plainly evident that they taught Christianity by a Divine power when such persons were able with such an uncontrouled success to subdue men to the obedience of the Word for that they had no eloquent tongues no subtle and discursive heads none of the refin'd and rhetorical Arts of Greece to conquer the minds of men For my part says he in another place I verily believe that the Holy Jesus purposely made use of such Preachers of his Doctrine that there might be no suspicion that they came instructed with Arts of Sophistry but that it might be clearly manifest to all the World that there was no crafty design in it and that they had a Divine power going along with them which was more efficacious than the greatest volubility of expression or ornaments of speech or the artifices which were used in the Graecian compositions Had it not been for this Divine power that upheld it as he elsewhere argues the Christian Religion must needs have sunk under those weighty pressures that lay upon it having not only to contend with the potent opposition of the Senate Emperors People and the whole power of the Roman Empire but to conflict with those home-bred wants and necessities wherewith its own professors were oppressed and burdened 6. IT could not but greatly vindicate the Apostles from all suspicion of forgery and imposture in the thoughts of sober and unbyassed persons to see their Doctrine readily entertained by men of the most discerning and inquisitive minds Had they dealt only with the rude and the simple the idiot and the unlearned there might have been some pretence to suspect that they lay in wait to deceive and designed to impose upon the World by crafty and insinuative arts and methods But alas they had other persons to deal with men of the acutest wits and most profound abilities the wisest Philosophers and most subtle disputants able to weigh an argument with the greatest accuracy and to decline the force of the strongest reasonings and who had their parts edg'd with the keenest prejudices of education and a mighty veneration for the Religion of their Country a Religion that for so many Ages had governed the World and taken firm possession of the minds of men And yet notwithstanding all these disadvantages these plain men conquered the wise and the learned and brought them over to that Doctrine that was despised and scorned opposed and persecuted and that had nothing but its own native excellency to recommend it A clear evidence that there was something in it beyond the craft and power of men Is not this says an elegant Apologist making his address to the Heathens enough to make you believe and entertain it to consider that in so short a time it has diffused it self over the whole World civilized the most barbarous Nations softned the roughest and most intractable tempers that the greatest Wits and Scholars Orators Grammarians Rhetoricians Lawyers Physicians and Philosophers have quitted their formerly dear and beloved sentiments and heartily embraced the Precepts and Doctrines of the Gospel Upon this account Theodoret does with no less truth than elegancy insult and
passions ready to over-run the banks not able to endure a thought that so much evil should befall his Master broke out into an over-confident and unseasonable interruption of him He took him and began to rebuke him saying Be it far from thee Lord this shall not be unto thee Besides his great kindness and affection to his Master the minds of the Apostles were not yet throughly purged from the hopes and expectations of a glorious reign of the Messiah so that Peter could not but look upon these sufferings as unbecoming and inconsistent with the state and dignity of the Son of God And therefore thought good to advise his Lord to take care of himself and while there was time to prevent and avoid them This our Lord who valued the redemption os Mankind infinitely before his own ease and safety resented at so high a rate that he returned upon him with this tart and stinging reproof Get thee behind me Satan The very same treatment which he once gave to the Devil himself when he made that insolent proposal to him To fall down and worship him though in Satan it was the result of pure malice and hatred in Peter only an error of love and great regard However our Lord could not but look upon it as mischievous and diabolical counsel prompted and promoted by the great Adversary of Mankind A way therefore says Christ with thy hellish and pernicious counsel Thou art an offence unto me in seeking to oppose and undermine that great design for which I purposely came down from ãâã In this thou savourest not the things of God but those that be of men in suggesting to me those little shifts and arts of safety and self-preservation which humane prudence and the love of mens own selves are wont to dictate to them By which though we may learn Peter's mighty kindness to our Saviour yet that herein he did not take his measures right A plain evidence that his infallibility had not yet taken place 5. About a week after this our Saviour being to receive a Type and Specimen of his future ãâã took with him his three more intimate Apostles Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and went up into a very high mountain which the Ancients generally conceive to have been Mount Thabor a round and very high mountain situate in the plains of Galilce And now was even literally fulfilled what the Psalmist had spoken Tabor and Hermon shall rejoyce in thy Name for what greater joy and triumph than to be peculiarly chosen to be the holy Mount whereon our Lord in so eminent a manner received from God the Father honour and glory and made such magnificent displays of his Divine power and Majesty For while they were here earnestly imployed in Prayer as seldom did our Lord enter upon any eminent action but he first made his address to Heaven he was suddenly transformed into another manner of appearance such a lustre and radiancy darted from his face that the Sun it self shines not brighter at Noon-day such beams of light reflected from his garments as out-did the light it self that was round about them so exceeding pure and white that the Snow might blush to compare with it nor could the Fullers art purifie any thing into half that whiteness an evident and sensible representation of the glory of that state wherein the just shall walk in white and shine as the Sun in the Kingdom of the Father During this Heavenly scene there appeared Moses and Elias who as the Jews say shall come together clothed with all the brightness and majesty of a glorified state familiarly conversing with him and discoursing of the death and sufferings which he was shortly to undergo and his departure into Heaven Behold here together the three greatest persons that ever were the Ministers of Heaven Moses under God the Instituter and promulgator of the Law Elias the great reformer of it when under its deepest degeneracy and corruption and the blessed Jesus the Son of God who came to take away what was weak and imperfect and to introduce a more manly and rational institution and to communicate the last Revelation which God would make of his mind to the World Peter and the two Apostles that were with him were in the mean time fallen asleep heavy through want of natural rest it being probably night when this was done or else over-powred with these extraordinary appearances which the frailty and weakness of their present state could not bear were fallen into a Trance But now awaking were strangely surprised to behold our Lord surrounded with so much glory and those two great persons conversing with him knowing who they were probably by some particular marks and signatures that were upon them or else by immediate revelation or from the discourse which passed betwixt Christ and them or possibly from some communication which they themselves might have with them While these Heavenly guests were about to depart Peter in a great rapture and ecstasie of mind addressed himself to our Saviour telling him how infinitely they were pleased and delighted with their being there and to that purpose desiring his leave that they might erect three Tabernacles one for him one for Moses and one for Elias While he was thus saying a bright cloud suddenly over-shadowed and wrapt them up out of which came a voice This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased hear ye him which when the Apostles heard and saw the cloud coming over them they were seised with a great consternation and fell upon their faces to the ground whom our Lord gently touched bade them arise and disband their fears whereupon looking up they saw none but their Master the rest having vanished and disappeared In memory of these great transactions Bede tells us that in pursuance of S. Peter's petition about the three Tabernacles there were afterwards three Churches built upon the top of this Mountain which in after times were had in great veneration which might possibly give some foundation to ãâã report which one makes that in his time there were shew'd the ruines of those three Tabernacles which were built according to S. Peter's desire 6. After this our Lord and his Apostle's having travelled through Galilce the gatherers of the Tribute-money came to Peter and asked him whether his Master was not obliged to pay the Tribute which God under the Mosaick Law commanded to be yearly paid by every Jew above Twenty years old to the use of the Temple which so continued to the times of Vespatian under whom the Temple being destroyed it was by him transferred to the use of the Capitol at Rome being to the value of half a Shekel or Fifteen pence of our money To this question of theirs Peter positively answers yes knowing his Master would never be backward either to give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's or to God the things that are God's Peter going into the house
them Indeed herein justly commendable that they could not brook the least dishonourable reflexion upon any Deity and therefore Apollonius Tyanaeus tells Timasion that the safest way was to speak well of all the Gods and especially at Athens where Altars were dedicated even to Unknown Gods And so S. Paul here found it for among the several Shrines and places of Worship and Devotion he took more particular notice of one Altar inscribd To the Unknown God The intire Inscription whereof the Apostle quotes only part of the last words is thought to have been this TO the Gods of Asia Europe and Africa to the strange and UNKNOWN GOD. Saint Hierom represents it in the same manner onely makes it Gods in the plural number which because says he S. Paul needed not he only cited it in the singular Which surely he affirms without any just ground and warrant though it cannot be denied but that Heathen Writers make frequent mention of the Altars of unknown Gods that were at Athens as there want not others who speak of some erected there to an unknown God This Notion the Athenians might probably borrow from the Hebrews who had the Name of God in great secrecy and veneration This being one of the Titles given him by the Prophet ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã a hidden God or a God that hides himself Sure I am that Justin Martyr tells us that one of the principal names given to God by some of the Heathens was ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã one altogether hidden Hence the Egyptians probably derived their great God Ammon or more truly Amun which signifies occult or hidden Accordingly in this passage of S. Paul the Syriac Interpreter renders it the Altar ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã of the hidden God The Jews were infinitely superstitious in concealing the Name of God not thinking it lawful ordinarily to pronounce it This made the Gentiles strangers at best both to the Language and Religion of the Jews at a great loss by what Name to call him only stiling him in general an uncertain unspeakable invisible Deity whence Caligula in his ranting Oration to the Jewes told them that wretches as they were though they refused to own him whom all others had confessed to be a Deity yet they could worship ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã their own nameless God And hence the Gentiles derived their custom of keeping secret the name of their Gods Thus Plutarch tells us of the Tutelar Deity of Rome that it was not lawful to name it or so much as to enquire what Sex it was of whether God or Goddess and that for once revealing it Valerius Soranus though Tribune of the People came to an untimely end and was crucified the vilest and most dishonourable kind of death Whereof among other reasons he assigns this that by concealing the Author of their publick safety ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã not he only but all the other Gods might have due honour and worship paid to them Hence in their publick adorations after the Invocation of particular Deities they were wont to add some more general and comprehensive form as when Cicero had been making his address to most of their particular Gods he concludes with a Caeteros item Deos Deasque omnes imploro atque obtestor Usually the form was DII DEAEQUE OMNES. The reason whereof was this that not being assured many times what that peculiar Deity was that was proper to their purpose or what numbers of Gods there were in the World they would not ãâã or offend any by seeming to neglect and pass them by And this Chrysostome thinks to have been particularly designed in the erection of this Athenian Altar ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã they were afraid lest there might be some other Deity besides those whom they particularly worshipped as yet unknown to them though honoured and adored elsewhere and therefore ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã for the more security they dedicated an Altar to the unknown God As for the particular occasion of erecting theso Altars at Athens omitting that of Pans appearing to Philippides mentioned by Occumenius the most probable seems to be this When a great Plague raged at Athens and several means had been attempted for the removal of it they were advised by ãâã the Philosopher to build an Altar and dedicate it ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã to the proper and peculiar Deity to whom it did appertain be he what he would A course which proving successful no doubt gave occasion to them by way of gratitude to erect more shrines to this unknown God And accordingly Laertius who lived long after S. Paul's time tells us that there were such nameless Altars he means such as were not inscribed to any particular Deity in and about Athens in his days as Monuments of that eminent deliverance 7. BUT whatever the particular cause might be hence it was that S. Paul took occasion to discourse of the true but to them unknown God For the Philosophers had before treated him with a great deal of scorn and derision asking what that idle and prating fellow had to say to them Others looking upon him as a propagater of new and strange Gods because he preached to them Jesus and Anastasis or the Resurrection which they looked upon as two upstart Deities lately come into the World Hereupon they brought him to the place where stood the famous Senate-house of the Areopagites and according to the Athenian humour which altogether delighted in curious novelties running up and down the ãâã and places of publick concourse to see any strange accident or hear any new report a vice which their own great Orator long since taxed them with they asked him what that new and strange Doctrine was which he preached to them Whereupon in a neat and elegant discourse he began to tell them he had observed how much they were over-run with superstition that their zeal for Religion was indeed generous and commendable but which miserably over-shot its due measures and proportions that he had taken notice of an Altar among them Inscribed To the unknown God and therefore in compassion to their blind and misguided zeal he would declare unto them the Deity which they ignorantly worshipped and that this was no other than the great God the Creator of all things the Supreme Governor and Ruler of the World who was incapable of being confined within any Temple or humane Fabrick That no Image could be made as a proper Instrument to represent him that he needed no Gifts or Sacrifices being himself the Fountain from whence Life Breath and all other blessings were derived to particular Beings That from one common original he had made the whole Race of Mankind and had wisely fixed and determined the times and bounds of their habitation And all to this end that Men might be the stronglier obliged to seek after him and sincerely to serve and worship him A duty which they might easily
attain to though otherwise sunk into the deepest degeneracy and over-spread with the grossest darkness he every where affording such palpable evidences of his own being and providence that he seemed to stand near and touch us It being intirely from him that we derive our life motion and subsistence A thing acknowledged even by their own Poct that We also are his Off-spring If therefore God was our Creator it was highly unreasonable to think that we could make any Image or Representation of Him That it was too long already that the Divine patience had born with the manners of Men and suffered them to go on in their blind Idolatries that now he expected a general repentance and reformation from the World especially having by the publishing of his Gospel put out of all dispute the case of a future judgment and particularly appointed the Holy Jesus to be the Person that should sentence and judge the World By whose Resurrection he had given sufficient evidence and assurance of it No sooner had he mentioned the Resurrection but some of the Philosophers no doubt Epicureans who were wont to laugh at the notion of a future state mocked and derided him others more gravely answered that they would hear him again concerning this matter But his discourse however scorned and slighted did not wholly want its desired effect and that upon some of the greatest quality and rank among them In the number of whom was Dionysius one of the grave Senators and Judges of the Areopagus and Damaris whom the Ancients not improbably make his Wife 8. THIS Dionysius was bred at Athens in all the learned Arts and Sciences at sive and twenty Years of Age he is said to have travelled into Egypt to perfect himself in the study of Astrology for which that Nation had the credit and renown Here beholding the miraculous Eclipse that was at the time of our Saviour's Passion he concluded that some great accident must needs be coming upon the World Returning to Athens he became one of the Senators of the Arcopagus disputed with S. Paul and was by him converted from his Errours and Idolatry and being thoroughly instructed was by him as the Ancients inform us made the first Bishop of Athens As for those that tell us that he went afterwards into France by the direction of Clemens of Rome planted Christianity at and became Bishop of Paris of his suffering Martyrdom there under Domitian his carrying his Head for the space of two Miles in his Hand after it had been cut off and the rest of his Miracles done before and after his Death I have as little leisure to enquire into them as I have faith to believe them Indeed the foundation of all is justly denied viz. that ever he was there a thing never heard of till the times of Charles the Great though since that Volumes have been written of this controversie both heretofore and of later times among which J. Sirmondus the Jesuit and Monsieur Launoy one of the learned Doctors of the Sorbon have unanswerably proved the Athenian and Parisian Dionysius to be distinct Persons For the Books that go under his name M. Daillé has sufficiently evinced them to ãâã of a date many Hundred Years younger than S. Denys though I doubt not but they may claim a greater Antiquity than what he allows them But whoever was their Author I am sure Suidas has over-stretched the praise of them beyond all proportion when he gives them this character ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã that whoever considers the elegancy of his discourses and the profoundness of his notions and speculations must needs conclude that they are not the issue of any humane understanding but of some Divine and Immaterial Power But to return to our Apostle SECT IV. Of S. Paul's Acts at Corinth and Ephesus S. Paul's arrival at Corinth The opposition made by the Jews The success of his Preaching upon others His first Epistle to the Thessalonians when written His Arraignment before Gallio The second Epistle to the Thessalonians and the design of it S. Paul's voyage to Jerusalem His coming to Ephesus Disciples baptized into John's Baptism S. Paul's preaching at Ephesus and the Miracles wrought by him Ephesus noted for the study of Magick Jews eminently versed in Charms and Inchantments The Original of the Mystery whence pretended to have been derived The ill attempt of the Sons of Sceva to dipossess Daemons in the name of Christ. S. Paul's doctrine greatly successful upon this sort of men Books of Magick forbidden by the Roman Laws S. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians why and when written Diana's Temple at Ephesus and its great stateliness and magnificence The mutiny against S. Paul raised by Demetrius and his party S. Paul's first Fpistle to the Corinthians upon what occasion written His Epistle to Titus Apollonius Tyanaeus whether at Ephesus at the same time with S. Paul His Miracles pretended to be done in that City 1. AFTER his departure from Athens he went to Corinth the Metropolis of Greece and the residence of the Proconsul of Achaia where he found Aquila and Priscilla lately come from Italy banished out of Rome by the Decree of Claudius And they being of the same trade and profession wherein he had been educated in his youth he wrought together with them lest he should be unnecessarily burdensom unto any which for the same reason he did in some other places Hither after some time Silas and Timothy came to him In the Synagogue he frequently disputed with the Jews and Proselytes reasoning and proving that Jesus was the true Messiah They according to the nature of the men made head and opposed him and what they could not conquer by argument and sorce of reason they endeavoured to carry by noise and clamour mixed with blasphemies and revilings the last refuges of an impotent and baffled cause Whereat to testifie his resentment he shook his Garments and told them since he saw them resolved to pull down vengeance and destruction upon their own heads he for his part was guiltless and innocent and would henceforth address himself unto the Gentiles Accordingly he left them and went into the house of Justus a religious Proselyte where by his preaching and the many miracles which he wrought he converted great numbers to the Faith Amongst which were Crispus the chief Ruler of the Synagogue Gaius and Stephanus who together with their Families embraced the doctrine of the Gospel and were baptized into the Christian Faith But the constant returns of malice and ingratitude are enough to tire the largest charity and cool the most generous resolution therefore that the Apostle might not be discouraged by the restless attempts and machinations of his enemies our Lord appeared to him in a Vision told him that not withstanding the bad success he had hitherto met with there was a great harvest to be gathered in that place that he should not be afraid of his enemies but go
by the reverence of his person to restrain all inordination by his discretion to govern and order the Circumstances by his religious knowledge to direct the solemnities of Marriage and to retain all the persons and actions in the bounds of prudence and modesty complained to the Bridegroom that the Guests wanted ãâã 6. As soon as the Holy Virgin-Mother had notice of the want out of charity that uses to be imployed in ãâã even the minutes and smallest articles of necessity as well as the clamorous importunity of extremities and great indigencies she complained to her Son by an indefinite address not desiring him to make supply for she knew not how he should but either out of an habitual commiseration she complained without hoping for remedy or else she looked on him who was a fountain of holiness and of plenty as expecting a derivation from him either of discourses or Miracles But Jesus answered her Woman what have I to do with thee mine hour is not yet come By this answer intending no denial to the purpose of his Mother's intimation to whom he always bare a religious and pious reverence but to signifie that he was not yet entred into his period and years of Miracles and when he did it must be not for respect of kindred or civil relations but as it is a derivation of power from above so it must be in pursuit of that service and design which he had received in charge together with his power 7. And so his Mother understood him giving express charge to the ministers to do whatsoever he commanded Jesus therefore bad them fill the water-pots which stood there for the use of frequent washings which the Jews did use in all publick meetings for fear of touching pollutions or contracting legal impurities which they did with a curiousness next to superstition washing the very beds and tables used at their Feasts The ministers filled them to the brim and as they were commanded drew out and bare ãâã the Governour of the Feast who knew not of it till the Miracle grew publick and like light shewed it self for while they wondred at the oeconomy of that Feast in keeping the best wine till the last it grew apparent that he who was the Lord of the Creatures who in their first seeds have an obediential capacity to receive the impresses of what forms he pleases to imprint could give new natures and produce new qualities in that subject in which he chuses to glorifie his Son 8. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee For all those Miracles which are reported to be done by Christ in his Infancy and interval of his younger years are Apocryphal and spurious feigned by trifling understandings who think to serve God with a well-meant lie and promoted by the credulity of such persons in whose hearts easiness folly and credulity are bound up and tied fast with silken thread and easie softnesses of religious affections not made severe by the rigours of wisdom and experience This first Miracle manifested his Glory and his Disciples believed in him Ad SECT X. Considerations touching the Vocation of five Disciples and of the first Miracle of JESVS done at Cana in Galilee Christ calling Peter and Andrew Matth. 4. 18 19 20. Jesus walking by the sea of Galilee saw two brethren Simon called Peter Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea for they were fishers And he saith unto them follow me and I will make you fishers of men And they straightway left their nets and followed him Nathanaels coming to Christ. John 45 46. Philip findeth Nathanael saith unto him we have found him of whom Moses in yeâ and y e prophets did write Jesus of Nazareth y e son of Joseph Nathanael said unto him can any good thing come out of Nazareth Philip saith unto him come and see Jesus saw Nathanael coming said Behold an Israelite indeed etc. 1. AS soon as ever John the Baptist was taught by the descent of the Holy Spirit that this was Jesus he instantly preaches him to all that came near him For the Holy Ghost was his Commission and instruction and now he was a Minister Evangelical and taught all those that have the honour to be servants in so sacred imployment that they must not go till they be sent nor speak till they be instructed ãâã yet hold their peace when their Commission is signed by the consignation of the Spirit in ordinary Ministery For all power and all wisdom is from above and in spiritual ministrations is a direct emanation from the Holy Spirit that as no man is fit to speak the Mysteries of Godliness be his person never so holy unless he derive wisdom in order to such ministeries so be he never so instructed by the assistance of art or infused knowledge yet unless he also have derived power as well as skill authority as well as knowledge from the same Spirit he is not enabled to minister in publick in ordinary ministrations The Baptist was sent by a prime designation to prepare the way to Jesus and was instructed by the same ãâã which had sanctified or consecrated him in his Mother's womb to this holy purpose 2. When the Baptist had shewed Jesus to Andrew and another Disciple they immediately followed him with the distances and fears of the first approach and the infirmities of new Converts but Jesus seeing them follow their first light invited them to see the Sun For God loves to cherish Infants in grace and having sown the immortal seed in their hearts if it takes root downwards and springs out into the verdure of a leaf he still waters it with the gentle rain of the Holy Spirit in graces and new assistances till it brings forth the fruits of a holy conversation And God who knows that Infants have need of pleasant and gentle and frequent nutriment hath given to them this comfort that himself will take care of their first beginnings and improve them to the strength of men and give them the strengths of nature and the wisdom of the Spirit which ennoble men to excellencies and perfections By the preaching of the Baptist they were brought to seek for Christ and when they did Christ found them and brought them home and made them stay all night with him which was more favour than they look'd for For so God usually dispenses his mercies that they may run over our thoughts and expectations and they are given in no proportion to us but according to God's measures he considering not what we are worthy of but what is fit for him to give he only requiring of us capacities to receive his favour and fair reception and entertainment of his graces 3. When Andrew had found Jesus he calls his Brother Simon to be partaker of his joys which as it happens in accidents of greatest pleasure cannot be contained within the limits of the possessor's thoughts But this calling of Peter was not to a beholding but to